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Post by Ginnie on Sept 23, 2007 20:06:19 GMT -4
I always thought it was sad that when they built the new Chicago Stadium, the old organ couldn't go in it. Apparently, the old organs pipes were so much part of the old stadium that it couldn't be moved, or prohibitively expensive to do so. Also it would take up a lot of room instead of those corporate seats.
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Post by Joe Durnavich on Sept 23, 2007 20:18:49 GMT -4
Yes: specifically the Aeolian-Skinner organ in the Salt Lake Tabernacle
Has the In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida organ solo ever been played on it?
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Jason
Pluto
May all your hits be crits
Posts: 5,579
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Post by Jason on Sept 23, 2007 23:44:42 GMT -4
Oh yeah, that's totally the Tabernacle Organ. Sorry - I haven't been watching this thread very closely. They do hold non-religious music performances in the Tabernacle, so I'm sure lot's of classical stuff has been played on it. I doubt they've ever played In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida on it, but someone might have. One of the most interesting thing about that organ is that the biggest pipes in the front are actually tree trunks painted to look like brass.
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Post by JayUtah on Sept 24, 2007 0:11:49 GMT -4
Actually, the vast majority of the performances on the Aeolian-Skinner are non-religious. Not much classic rock, although some traditional theater organ tunes have been played on it.
The gilded case pipes in the flats are faux. The case pipes in the tower are speaking pipes. They are indeed made principally of local wood, although not from a solid piece. They were made barrel-stave fashion by the original builder, a gentleman named Ridges, then gessoed and guilded with gold leaf. The barrel-stave construction has proved their undoing: they don't survive thermal cycling well and are susceptible to longitudinal cracking. They still speak today, but with a rather emphysemic tone. Not like the modern 32-foot Contrabombarde, which can pretty much wake the dead. The pedal stops are also augmented with a digital low-tone generator to compensate for the relatively prodigious absorption of the structure.
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Post by Ginnie on Sept 24, 2007 19:59:06 GMT -4
Jay, can you explain to the layman you're last post? Just kidding - but I still am puzzled. ;D I just had to pick essentially a science forum to join didn't I?
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Post by JayUtah on Sept 25, 2007 2:10:28 GMT -4
...although some traditional theater organ tunes have been played on it.
Theater pipe organs are designed differently than classical or church organs. Theater organs are louder, in general. However, the theater repertoire is generally considered more "fun" and so many guest organists play it in that fashion for a tune or two.
The gilded case pipes in the flats are faux.
Case pipes in a pipe organ are those you can see from the spectator's point of view. They are the ones incorporated into the case, or big wooden box enclosing the rest of the instrument. The other major parts of any organ are rather mechanically laid out and not frequently suitable for display.
The Salt Lake Tabernacle organ has a case designed and built according to a pattern from the Methuen organ in Boston. Ironically the Methuen organ is now regarded as of lesser importance. It was extended to each side by Austin in the 1920s to provide more room. There have been a total of five different instruments installed in that case since it was first built. Organs don't last forever.
Most case pipes are just for show. They don't actually make any sound. The "flats" are the rows of case pipes that make a sort of curtain. The "towers" are the clusters of case pipes set in a group.
This makes more sense if you can see a picture of the organ. Google for "mormon tabernacle organ" and you can't miss.
The case pipes in the tower are speaking pipes.
The two prominent towers in the case, capped with domed capitals, and the other similar structures in the case house the case pipes that actually are connected to a wind supply. This is uncommon in organs of that day, which relied on purely mechanical connections between the keys and valves under the pipes.
They are indeed made principally of local wood, although not from a solid piece. They were made barrel-stave fashion by the original builder...
Jason suggested the large speaking case pipes were made from tree trunks. They were indeed made from local pine, but not carved from solid trunks. Organ pipes have internal structure that would be hard to create that way.
They were instead put together the way barrels are, out of long slats with tapered cross sections, glued together between the slats and then smoothed with a plane both inside (prior to assembly) and out.
...then gessoed and guilded with gold leaf.
That should be "gilded." Gesso (Italian for "chalk") is an artist's material composed of a fine gypsum powder mixed with some sort of binder, frequently gum arabic. You can think of it as a sort of thin spackling compound. It was originally use to prime canvas for oil painting. But here it was used to create an airtight seal and to provide a smooth surface for finishing.
The pipes were originally just painted gold, but subsequently have been covered in gold leaf. They are lit by a series of ellipsoidal stage lights with bright golden gels in them to accentuate the golden color. The domed ceiling behind the case is lit by cyclorama lights behind the choir seats. A set of buttons on the organ console is wired into the lighting controller to allow the organist to change the cyclorama color.
The barrel-stave construction has proved their undoing: they don't survive thermal cycling well and are susceptible to longitudinal cracking.
The seams between the slats the run the length of the pipes do not stay closed very well. The wood was still somewhat green when the pipes were built, and over the many years the wood has warped in the dry climate and wild temperature fluctuations. The organ is cared for locally by a full-time organ technician staff. (There are seven pipe organs on or near Temple Square, all but three of them accessible to the public.) For major work on any of the instruments, Shoenstein and Co. from San Francisco are consulted. They have managed to keep the long case pipes in reasonably suitable condition.
They still speak today, but with a rather emphysemic tone.
They wheeze and take quite a while to come up to speech, unlike more conventionally built pipes. If you press the corresponding pedal, it takes up to two seconds for the pipe to begin to speak, and it speaks quietly with a breathy tone. A normal pipe should begin to speak almost instantly.
Not like the modern 32-foot Contrabombarde, which can pretty much wake the dead.
Organ stop pitches are given in halves and multiples of eight feet, which is the theoretical speaking length (mouth to top) of the largest pipe in the stop. An 8-foot stop sounds in the same octave as a piano. A 4-foot stop sounds an octave higher, for the corresponding note on the keyboard. A 32-foot stop is thus four octaves lower. In fact, the lowest note in a 32-foot stop is just above the lower limit of the normal range of human hearing.
Stops have names, too, which suggest the kind of sound they make. The Bombarde is a beating-reed stop. Organ pipes come in two major designs: the whistle-type and the beating-reed type. A saxophone uses a beating reed, for example, while a harmonica uses a free reed. Reed stops tend to be very loud. (The foghorn in San Francisco Bay is another beating-reed apparatus.) A Contrabombarde is simply a very low Bombarde, and is a very powerful stop in any organ in which it appears. The Aeolian-Skinner organ in the Salt Lake Tabernacle has several extremely loud stops (e.g., the Tuba Mirabilis), which can play solo melodies heard above the rest of the organ.
The pedal stops are also augmented with a digital low-tone generator to compensate for the relatively prodigious absorption of the structure.
Although this is likely to change as the result of the earthquake-proofing structural repairs currently being done on the building, the Salt Lake Tabernacle's famous domed roof is actually quite acoustically absorptive. It is a wooden truss structure overlaid with lath and plaster. The plaster tends to absorb sound energy in the high frequencies while the entire structural assemblies tend to absorb energy in the low frequencies. This makes it difficult for certain pitches to propagate as planned.
Most organs are installed in stone churches that reflect sound very well, so the Tabernacle presents a serious challenge to organ tonal designers. It is far more elastic than the typical organ-enclosing structure. After much discussion and much ongoing controversy, Schoenstein and Co. installed some digital low-tone generators to augment the lower notes. These are essentially massive subwoofers that generate a sine wave of the appropriate pitch to play along with the sound from the pipe. The pipes shape and give character to the tone while the subwoofers give the sort of acoustic power that is expected of an instrument that size. Organ purists discourage the use of electronically-generated sound, believing that the only proper means of generating sound in a pipe organ is acoustic.
The absorption in the high frequencies was corrected by adding stops in those frequencies and by revoicing some of the existing stops to speak more aggresively.
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Post by nomuse on Sept 25, 2007 2:10:31 GMT -4
I am happy to say that not one thing Jay said in the last post left me scratching my head. Although one thing did mildly surprise me.
This makes a welcome relief from my experience of reading most of his posts.
(Whew. Stay away, Ginnie...I'm too tired to see my words, much less make them come out in English.)
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Post by JayUtah on Sept 25, 2007 2:13:41 GMT -4
Although one thing did mildly surprise me.
Which thing?
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Post by Joe Durnavich on Sept 25, 2007 4:40:59 GMT -4
I have read that a 32' pipe can generate a 16 Hz fundamental. Is the purpose of such a low note musical, or is it to strike the fear of God into the audience?
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Post by JayUtah on Sept 25, 2007 10:33:54 GMT -4
I have read that a 32' pipe can generate a 16 Hz fundamental.
Absolutely true; plus, in the case of reed stops, a wealth of relatively higher-pitched overtones.
Is the purpose of such a low note musical, or is it to strike the fear of God into the audience?
Both, naturally.
The 32-foot stops generate quite a rumble, but it's a tuned musical rumble. The Aeolian-Skinner at the Tabernacle has several 32-foot pedal stops: Montre (case pipes), Contre Bourdon (large wooden pipes behind the back of the case), Flute Ouverte (even larger wooden pipes), and the Bombarde (double-mitered reeds).
Only about half the Montre speaks at all, so it tends to strike fear into the organist that nothing will happen.
The Bourdon and Flute Ouverte stops have the same basic character, with the former sounding stronger than the latter. The Flute Ouverte provides a low gentle rumble that is not at all unpleasant to hear. It would work very well at the end of a contemplative piece.
The Bombarde is intended mostly to provide the foundation for the full organ. LDS hymnody includes a few particular hymns that we would classify as "barn-burners," and when 7,000 attendees and 400 choristers are singing one, the full organ is barely sufficient to accompany, and the Bombarde barely sufficient to provide the harmonic foundation.
Put simply: the Aeolian-Skinner is that big because it needs to be.
Heard in concert alone, it can obviously generate a fairly rich and powerful sound. The harmonic theory behind organ-building specifies the extension and reinforcement of sound at the fundamental pitch by the specific reinforcement of its overtones at the octaves, then at the fifths and thirds. This harmonic arms race extends upward in pitch into overtones, but begins to sound shrill and unappealing without a firm anchor at the lower pitches. Many organ stops can generate pitches in the 50 kHz range at considerable amplitude; and musically you do indeed require the nearly-subsonic tones in order to retain musicality.
Full organ, however, is used liturgically in any church generally only in times of extreme celebration. Far from putting the fear of God into people, it's more likely to be employed putting the joy of God there. Not to say a good Dies irae won't employ musical strength, but you're more likely to get a hefty dose of organ on Easter morning than on the first day of Advent. Vaughan Williams' coronation "Old 100th" uses the organ to great effect: there is first a brass and percussion introduction, then the statement of the hymn tune in unison on full organ.
In non-ecclesiastical use the organ is usually sized for the hall. The fortissimo may be minute in the grand scheme of things. One of the practice organs on Temple Square has only five stops but it is in a room where five stops sound quite loud. So composers who wrote for the organ simply gave the usual dynamics markings, leaving it up to the organist to interpret that for his instrument.
Few composers wrote for the organ and orchestra. However, the Saint-Saens "Organ" Symphony is one that requires a substantial instrument. The Utah Symphony Orchestra performs in its own hall now, which is sadly bereft of a pipe organ (as are many symphony halls). So when performing this work they have to use an electronic organ attached to an array of amplifiers. But in good old Maurice Abravanel's day, the orchestra performed in the Salt Lake Tabernacle. And there are some vinyl recordings of the Saint-Saens composition performed by the Utah Symphony accompanied by the Aeolian-Skinner that, in my opinion, are probably what Saint-Saens had in mind when he wrote it.
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Post by scooter on Sept 25, 2007 22:33:06 GMT -4
Yeah, it's worth it. 1. As Jay says, there are indeed many lurking, and they see the tilt of the evidence and arguments. 2. We always learn. As an HB brings up a small, often repetitious point, they are buried in data, observations, facts. On the rare occasion that an HB brings up a specific technical point, then the books come out, and the learning really begins in earnest, at least for those so inclined. Those are the ones I enjoy. Be it one of Jay's dissertations on logic, or a technical discussion of the thermal control system of the CSM, it's a wonder to watch unfold. Yeah, it's constructive.
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Post by dickshane on Sept 29, 2007 18:17:02 GMT -4
and when 7,000 attendees and 400 choristers are singing one, the full organ is barely sufficient to accompany, and the Bombarde barely sufficient to provide the harmonic foundation. Wowsa! A good job you're not over the San Andreas fault as that may lead to a genuine Dies Irae... The Great Organ has always seemed to me to be a sort of Old Testament version of the modern orchestra, with its blurry grandeur. But old VW - VW's 7th (Sinfonia Antartica) uses the organ to represent the impassable ice. Here are Scott's latter, beautiful words: "I do not regret this journey; we took risks, we knew we took them, things have come out against us, therefore we have no cause for complaint." That is a man.
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Post by Obviousman on Sept 29, 2007 18:24:31 GMT -4
I'm surprised no-one has brought up any 'organ' jokes.
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Post by JayUtah on Sept 29, 2007 18:51:22 GMT -4
A good job you're not over the San Andreas fault as that may lead to a genuine Dies Irae...
I live about 1,000 feet from the Wasatch Fault.
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Post by dickshane on Sept 29, 2007 19:08:15 GMT -4
Well then, you're livin dangerously...
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