All Hail the Pipe Organ!
  • francis
    Posts: 10,828
    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/ponderanew/2017/05/10/2785
  • Richard MixRichard Mix
    Posts: 2,802
    [no other instrument] can do it with the musical fineness that the can: The crescendo into the doxology; The improvisation at Communion; the voluntary to send the Body of Christ out into the world, the rattle of the church or cathedral at a Tenebrae service.

    Almost had me until the end! ;-)
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,416
    From its introduction to the west as gifts from Byzantium to Pepin and Charlemagne and its subsequent presence in western churches, the organ has found churchly use in supporting chant, improvising at certain points in the liturgy, playing alternatim chant versets, accompanying choirs and congregational song, providing ecstatically joyful and triumphant music or a soothing meditative balm. As such, Beethoven dubbed the organ the 'king of instruments'. As such, it surely, more than any instrument other than the human voice, may be said to be the instrument of the King of kings. Certainly, no other instrument may lay claim to having an existential relationship with our Lord and his Church.
    Thanked by 3Antonio CHGiffen StimsonInRehab
  • noel jones, aagonoel jones, aago
    Posts: 6,611
    the rattle of the church or cathedral at a Tenebrae service.


    Note clusters on a tracker organ with no stops drawn.
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,416
    Clever, Noel. I guess that that could be an (eccentric) alternative to slamming books shut?

    And, Francis, as I'm sure he knows, could have chosen a better advertisement for the organ than that rather gaudy version of Moscow - one of the most boring, tiresome, and worn out tunes in the repertory.
    There is a somewhat better rendering of it from Washington's Cathedral of Ss Peter and Paul (aka the 'National Cathedral') on youtube.
  • francis
    Posts: 10,828
    ha... i never listened to the music but I trust your judgement is most likely spot on MJO
  • Richard R.
    Posts: 776
    "As such, it surely, more than any instrument other than the human voice, may be said to be the instrument of the King of kings. Certainly, no other instrument may lay claim to having an existential relationship with our Lord and his Church."

    "Existentialism (/ɛɡzɪˈstɛnʃəlɪzəm/) is the work associated mainly with certain late-19th- and 20th-century European philosophers who, despite profound doctrinal differences, shared the belief that philosophical thinking begins with the human subject—not merely the thinking subject, but the acting, feeling, living human individual." [Wikipedia]

    With all due respect, no instrument nor any other object, no matter how artfully used in divine service, can be said to be in existential relationship with our Lord. You'd do better to direct your paean toward the poor soul on the bench.
    Thanked by 1lhouston58
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,416
    Richard -
    with all due respect to the unarguability of your scholarship...

    My judgement is that, historically, the organ would not exist but for its relationship with Christ's Church in the West. It is, in my intended sense, but a step from 'exist' to 'existent', and another one to 'existential'. The organ eventually died out in the East (though it did have some history within Muslim realms, which borrowed it from the Byzantines), and found its way into our churches under the auspices of Charlemagne. Perhaps a little (or, considerable, depending on your perspective) 'leeway' is called for here. I will continue to assert that, in this sense, there is, indeed, an 'existential' relationship betwixt Christ's Church and the organ. May I suggest a little more poetry in your philosophy? (Thanks for the retort!)
  • Richard R.
    Posts: 776
    Ah, see now, you failed to detect the thoroughly passionate basis for my philosophy, which I have iterated on this forum before, and no doubt lost a few organist friends in the process, having to do with the tyranny of the organ in modern Western worship. It doesn't help me at all to hear otherwise erudite people like yourself anthropomorphizing the thing.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,416
    So, then!, what we have here is a red herring! This is not about philosophy after all! What's behind all this is that you don't like the organ, or at best think it too dominant in Christian worship. Ha! You are now unmasked. Of course, in the sad aftermath of the recent council (which praised the organ) you have plenty of company - in fact, your chances of going to mass and not hearing an organ within a 100-mile radius are (sad to say!) pretty good.
    Thanked by 1KARU27
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,982
    So, you don't like the organ, do you? May an out-of-tune guitar be placed in parts of your body known only to God.

    The majority of Catholic churches in this area have keyboards, guitars, and aging hippies. Only a few churches actually have organs, and they are the ones with more decent sacred music.
    Thanked by 2M. Jackson Osborn KARU27
  • bhcordovabhcordova
    Posts: 1,165
    My church has an organ, but either no one knows how to play it or the ones that do know don't want to play at our church. (One of our church members is a professor of organ at Stephen F. Austin State University, but plays for the Methodists, who are willing to pay him for his service.)
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,982
    I'm a decent enough organist, I suppose, with a degree if that matters. Surely I could play better if I practiced more, and were not so cranky. But I have said before that if I needed the money, I couldn't afford to work in the parish where I play. What I receive is pin money and I either give much of it away, or use it to fund my music program. I am playing for a wedding in 3 weeks and my fee is going to buy choir music for Christmas. Many talented musicians have to go elsewhere to get a living wage, especially if they are supporting families.
  • Richard R.
    Posts: 776
    Now MJO, even I will admit that what I might like or dislike is thoroughly irrelevant. But even the most aurally intoxicated organ enthusiast must surely admit that the Roman Rite is primarily, essentially, and inescapably vocal. The dearth of competent organists today may be a sad state of affairs. The dearth of competent liturgical choirs is scandalous. But is training and hiring vocalists, choral specialists, and chant experts our first priority? Based on the job notices I read, hardly.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,416
    Now Richard -

    I grant all your points about the purity of the Roman rite being, as in the Eastern rites and Orthodoxy, fundamentally vocal and a cappella. We have long since, though, past any era in which all but a relative few persons can sing all the people's chants required for mass with confidence and without an organ. They can't (or won't) even do it in monasteries! This is why we have quite a number of zealous 'accompanied chant' enthusiasts - who (truth be known) really love their 'accompaniments' more than they do the chant. Nonetheless, the organ has been used to 'support' chant since the middle ages, it has been used to supply organ versets in alternatim chant and hymnody, and in later years has become a full-fledged voice of its own, playing all manner of voluntaries and such. Would you really want to banish Bach, Buxtehude, Frescobaldi, Froberger, de Cabezon, de Grigny, Tomkins, Gibbons, and all the rest from our worship? Would you really never want to hear the organ grace our worship? What a terrible and sad loss that would be

    While you and I could be in 'heaven' celebrating an all chant mass with no organ or any other instrument, we are members of a very small remnant (and I have a fundamental aversion to the 'faithful remnant' syndrome, just as I do to the 'victim' syndrome).

    This brings us to the fact that there will be in our time only a few scattered unaccompanied chant masses. It also brings us to the actual beauty of the organ, its native sacred repertory, and its wondrous capacity to grace Catholic worship with the sublime outpourings of gloriously inspired tonal prayer and praise which gave the IInd Vatican council cause to single it (it and NO other instrument!) out as uniquely suitable for Catholic worship. (This is why all genuine 'Vatican Two' people have organs in their churches and see to it that they are well played.)

    Perhaps you haven't occasion to hear much well-played organ music. If this is so, such poor playing can be an understandable 'put-off'. The likelihood of hearing a genuine organist playing genuine organ literature genuinely well in a Catholic church is relatively small. One would do as well to look for snow in Houston.

    I do share your 'outlook', though I don't hie to it exclusively. There is too much worthy musical evolution in the church to ignore altogether. Ideally (and I am a Platonistical idealist), we should have both in our churches, and our people should love each of the variety of flowers in our musical dower.
    Thanked by 2noel jones, aago lhouston58
  • jonathanrivera
    Posts: 1
    This is really amazing instrument!
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,934
    From its introduction to the west as gifts from Byzantium


    Dr. Rice, Dr. Jackson, don't you see? This is all a trap laid for us by the Easterners! They don't use it themselves - want to see us divided over this! Charles, you and your sly Oriental craftiness are behind all this. It has ALL the earmarkings of your doing!
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,982
    Hah! Can't take credit. Organs were used in the West during the time of the Roman Empire for secular purposes. The organs disappeared for a time in the West because the civilization and culture collapsed. Then they were brought back for church use. In the East, they never lost their secular associations. Organs, oh yeah, we used those for chariot races. They never made it into church.
  • melofluentmelofluent
    Posts: 4,160
    Much ado.
    My exhaustive research, from the top of my recliner to my big toe, indicates that:

    citharas, hurdy gurdy's, balalaikas, nose harps, shakuhachis, old Korg drum machines, hammered ducilmers, wash tub basses, alto saxes, and drumming fingers on a trash basket

    are totally licet for worship.
    On Mars and Neptune.
    Thanked by 2CharlesW StimsonInRehab
  • lhouston58
    Posts: 52
    Then again, there's the 'magrepha', though the jury is still out trying to decide what it was. Some scholars believe it was an early sort of pipe organ like the hydraulis. Others believe it was some sort of ritual shovel thrown to the ground at a certain point during ceremonies in the Temple of Jerusalem. In either case, it made a great racket indeed!
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • ClergetKubiszClergetKubisz
    Posts: 1,912
    Melo, Those instruments are appropriate for worship OF Mars or Neptune.
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,934
    Don't even get me started on the revised lectionaries of the Martian and Neptunian Rites!!!

    This is what happens when the Plutonian Rite is (unjustly) abrogated. The Space Pope Rigel XIV, in no uncertain terms, could ever go against the decree of his predecessors laid down at the Third Council of Clavicus!
    Thanked by 2CharlesW melofluent
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,982
    I recently attended a Greek Orthodox wedding where they used an organ. Is outrage, of course. Apparently, some of the Greeks now use organs, at least in the U.S. Don't know about anywhere else.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,416
    That is sad, Charles.
    I played for a wedding at Annunciation Greek Cathedral here in Houston back in the seventies.
    It wasn't even a real organ - one of those.... simulacra.
    The bride was forty-five minutes late!
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,982
    Beware of Greeks, I guess. ;-) Instruments are a real departure from eastern tradition and I am sure the Russians, who consider themselves guardians of all things Orthodox, have condemned them soundly.
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,416
    I had long thought that it was Beethoven who dubbed the organ 'the king of instruments', but in reviewing Sumner's historic tome last night I discovered that this epithet has a much earlier pedigree - none other than Guillaume de Machaut sometime in his long XIVth century life said that the organ was de tout instruments le roi.

    Sumners also says that it was Pope Vitalian in the VIIth century who introduced the organ into Roman liturgy. This predates considerably the well-known Charlemagne connexion. There is even evidence that the organ was used in the Roman Church as early as the VIth century.
    Thanked by 1CHGiffen
  • Incardination
    Posts: 832
    The bride was forty-five minutes late!


    :) MJO's post reminds me of a wedding in LA a few years ago. The invitations deliberately specified the wedding an hour in advance of the planned time - because they knew many of the guests would be at least an hour late. Had to be one of the more interesting approaches I've ever seen taken by the couple.

    The church was very nice, but I was really pulling my hair out - an ad-hoc group of volunteers mostly from around LA (I'm from Cincinnati, coming in the week before) with a robust repertoire. Thank goodness I insisted on a quartet - they saved our bacon. Twelve singers in all, two from Cincinnati, two from Pennsylvania, the quartet from San Diego, rest from LA - apart from the curious time anomaly and non-music-related misunderstandings here and there, the wedding music itself went wonderfully well.

    TLM in a N.O. parish.

    The other challenge - I asked the choir to sing from the loft. The organ was down below just outside the sanctuary. Most of our program was a cappella, but what we did together with organ worked surprisingly well.

    Memorable wedding...
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,416
    .
  • mmeladirectress
    Posts: 1,100
    >> memorable wedding

    um, would that be LA, as in Louisiana, or LA, as in, Los Angles?
    just checking
    Thanked by 1eft94530
  • M. Jackson Osborn
    Posts: 8,416
    .
  • Incardination
    Posts: 832
    Los Angeles. Turned it into a bit of vacation, traveled there and back by train. Interesting all the way around.
  • dad29
    Posts: 2,232
    some of the Greeks now use organs


    Yup. The "conservative" Greek Ortho church in Milwaukee has a simulacra. Don't know what the "liberal" one has, aside from its very famous building.
    Thanked by 1CharlesW
  • bhcordovabhcordova
    Posts: 1,165
    When did worship of Mars & Neptune become licit? Is worship of Juno, Minerva, and Artemis also now licit, or just Mars & Neptune?
  • StimsonInRehabStimsonInRehab
    Posts: 1,934
    Juno, Minerva, and Artemis


    That's what they're called in the Byzantine rites . . . of space.
  • ClergetKubiszClergetKubisz
    Posts: 1,912
    Stim, you should have said Rigel VII: you'd have gotten props for yet another appropriate Star Trek reference.
    Thanked by 1StimsonInRehab
  • CharlesW
    Posts: 11,982
    If they were Byzantine, they would more likely be Barsanuphius, Chrysostom, and Theophylact.
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