The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and PoliticsVarious
History
The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863: A Magazine of Literature, Art, and Politics
Various
American periodicals
The mere comparison of numbers of pipes and of stops, or of external
dimensions, though it gives an approximative idea of the scale of an
organ, is not so decisive as it might seem as to its real musical
effectiveness. In some cases, many of the stops are rather nominal than
of any real significance. Even in the Haarlem organ, which has only
about two-thirds as many as the Boston one, Dr. Burney says, "The
variety they afford is by no means what might be expected." It is
obviously easy to multiply the small pipes to almost any extent. The
dimensions of an organ, in its external aspect, must depend a good deal
on the height of the edifice in which it is contained. Thus, the vaulted
roof of the Cathedral of Ulm permitted the builder of our Music-Hall
organ to pile the _facade_ of the one he constructed for that edifice up
to the giddy elevation of almost a hundred feet, while the famous
instrument in the Town Hall of Birmingham has only three-quarters of the
height of our own, which is sixty feet. It is obvious also that the
effective power of an organ does not depend merely on its size, but that
the perfection of all its parts will have quite as much to do with it.
In judging a vocalist, we can form but a very poor guess of the compass,
force, quality of the voice, from a mere inspection of the throat and
chest. In the case of the organ, however, we have the advantage of being
able to minutely inspect every throat and larynx, to walk into the
interior of the working mechanism, and to see the adaptation of each
part to its office. In absolute power and compass the Music-Hall organ
ranks among the three or four mightiest instruments ever built. In the
perfection of all its parts, and in its whole arrangements, it
challenges comparison with, any the world can show.
Such an instrument ought to enshrine itself in an outward frame that
should correspond in some measure to the grandeur and loveliness of its
own musical character. It has been a dream of metaphysicians, that the
soul shaped its own body. If this many-throated singing creature could
have sung itself into an external form, it could hardly have moulded one
more expressive of its own nature. We must leave to those more skilled
in architecture the detailed description of that noble _facade_ which
fills the eye with music as the voices from behind it fill the mind
through the ear with vague, dreamy pictures. For us it loses all
technical character in its relations to the soul of which it is the
body. It is as if a glorious anthem had passed into outward solid form
in the very ecstasy of its grandest chorus. Milton has told us of such a
miracle, wrought by fallen angels, it is true, but in a description rich
with all his opulence of caressing and ennobling language:--
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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