The Recent Revolution in Organ Building: Being an Account of Modern Developments — John Stuart Mill — John Shaqi
The Recent Revolution in Organ Building: Being an Account of Modern Developments
John Stuart Mill · en
The harmonics of a pianoforte string can be easily demonstrated by the
following experiment: Depress the "loud" pedal and strike any note in
the bass a sharp blow. On listening intently, the 3d, 5th, and 8th
(the common chord) of the note struck will be heard sounding all the
way up for several octaves. In this case the other strings of the
piano act as _resonators_, enabling the harmonics to be heard.
Coming back to our Flute again and applying the knowledge we have
gained to an organ pipe, we observe:
1. That the _pitch_ of the sound depends on the length of the tube.
2. That the pitch of the sound _also_ depends on the amount of wind
pressure.
From this last will be seen how important it is that the pressure of
the wind in an organ should be steady and uniform. Otherwise the pipes
will speak a harmonic instead of the sound intended--as, indeed,
frequently happens.
When a stop is labeled "8 ft.," that means that the bottom pipe, CC is
8 feet long and the pitch will be that of the key struck. A "16-ft."
stop will sound an octave lower; a "4-ft." stop an octave higher.
These measurements refer to pipes which are open at the top and are
only correct in the case of very narrow pipes, such as the stop called
Dulciana. Wider pipes do not require to be so long in order to produce
8-ft. tone.
"If a tube * * * open at both ends be blown across at one end, the
fundamental tone of the tube will be sounded; but if the hand be placed
at one end of the tube, so as to effectually close it, and the open end
be blown across as before, a sound will be heard exactly one octave
below that which was heard when both ends of the tube were open. One
of these pipes was an open pipe, the other a stopped pipe; and the
difference between the two is that which constitutes the two great
classes into which the flue pipes of organs are divided." [1]
Thus by stopping up the end of an organ pipe we get 8-ft. tone from a
pipe only 4 ft. long, 16-ft. tone from a pipe 8 ft. long, and so on,
but with loss of power and volume. The harmonics produced from stopped
pipes are entirely different from those of the open ones; their
harmonic scale is produced by vibrations which are as 1, 2, 3, 4, etc.,
those of a stopped pipe by vibrations which are as 1, 3, 5, 7. All
these harmonics are also called upper partials.
The Estey Organ Company claim to have discovered a new principle in
acoustics in their Open Bass pipes, of which we show a drawing
opposite. This invention (by William E. Haskell) enables the builders
to supply open bass tone in organ chambers and swell boxes where there
is not room for full-length pipes.
[Illustration: Fig. 16. Estey's Open Bass Pipes--Wood and Metal]
Referring to the illustration, it will be seen that the pipes are
partly open and partly stopped, with a tuning slide in the centre. The
builders write as follows: