JULIAN RHODES' DREAM ORGANS
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This page last revised 20 March 2000Organ builders are not often mentioned by name in fiction. There are, however, some notable exceptions.
The following is from 'The Uncommon Prayer-Book' (1925) by M.R. James:
The fictional Willis organ of 'Tolnbridge Cathedral' appears in Edmund Crispin's murder mystery 'Holy Disorders'; this is described in 'The organist in literature, part 2'.Even if Brockstone Court has not been illustrated in Rural Life... I do not propose to point out its excellencies here; but of the Chapel a word must be said... It is a stone building about seventy feet long, and in the Gothic style, as that style was understood in the middle of the seventeenth century...
Screen-work, pulpit, seating and glass - all were of the same period; and as he advanced into the nave and sighted the organ-case with its gold embossed pipes in the western gallery, [Mr. Davidson's] cup of satisfaction was filled...
While Mr. Davidson was still busy examining the remains of the organ (attributed to one of the Dallams, I believe), old Mr. Avery had stumped up into the chancel and was lifting the dust-cloths from the blue-velvet cushions of the stall desks...
'Murther and Walking Spirits' (1991) by Robertson Davies features a Casavant organ:
Samuel Butler's semi-autobiographical novel 'The Way Of All Flesh' was published in 1903, though he began to write it some 30 years earlier. Set in provincial England, the organ recurs as a leitmotif in the lives of the narrator (through his experiences with a local amateur organ-builder) and the protagonist (who is consoled in the misery of his schooldays by the organ and its music; he proposes to build an instrument for himself). For extracts from the novel, click here.He had put the choir at the back of the church in a gallery - in a gallery, can you believe it - with the organ up there too, and the elders of the church just laughed. Listen, they said; our daughters sing in that choir and we want to see 'em doing it. And we're not paying through the nose for a big Casavant organ with a harp stop and a euphoneum stop and even a contraption that makes a noise like a drum and the dear knows what else, to have it hidden in a gallery. And in the end it was a proper Protestant church, with the pulpit in the middle of the business end, backed by a beautiful set of organ pipes - decorative, of course, because all the real whistles were behind it, made of metal and wood - and the choir in front of it in curved pews... and the organ sunk in front of 'em, so that you caught sight of the organist's head over a red curtain.
Organ-building was mentioned in passing by Ralph Waldo Emerson:
The following is from 'A Tale of Two Cities' (1859) by Charles Dickens:If a man has good corn, or wood, or boards, or pigs, to sell, or can make better chairs or knives, crucibles or church-organs, than anybody else, you will find a broad hard-beaten road to his house, though it be in the woods.
(Quoted in 'The Dictionary of Misinformation' (1975) by Tom Burnam)
The premises mentioned by Dickens had belonged to Snetzler; during the period to which Dickens refers (1790-1) Thomas Eliott was at work there.The quiet lodgings of Doctor Manette were in a quiet street-corner not far from Soho-square... A quainter corner than the corner where the Doctor lived, was not to be found in London. There was no way through it, and the front windows of the Doctor's lodgings commanded a pleasant little vista of street that had a congenial air of retirement on it... The Doctor occupied two floors of a large still house... In the building at the back, attainable by a court-yard where a plane-tree rustled its green leaves, church-organs claimed to be made, and silver to be chased, and likewise gold to be beaten... Very little of these trades... was ever heard or seen.
Charles Palliser's novel 'The Unburied' (1999) is an historical pastiche, set in the fictional English Cathedral town of Thurchester in 1882. Two old friends discuss the work currently underway in the Cathedral:
The narrator visits the cathedral:'They are merely working on the organ.'
'Even so, that can do considerable damage.'
'Hardly likely. And it will immensely improve the organ. They are introducing steam-power to blow it and carrying the action down from the old console to a new gallery.'
I could not help shaking my head in dismay. 'Quite uneccesary. It will sound no better.'
'On the contrary. It is also being tuned to equal temperament and extensively improved. At present it has a short compass and no clarion or cremona.'
He converses with the head verger, who opines:I turned and my gaze fell on an utter monstrosity: a huge and hideous new organ-gallery thrusting itself forward in the transept. With its gleaming pipes, polished ivory and shining ebony it resembled nothing so much as a huge cuckoo-clock from some feverish nightmare.
The 'Leckingfield Proverbs' (c.1520) include the following verse, which shows some technical knowledge of the instrument, and a final line like a constipated limerick:'They've built a new console in the transept. You must have noticed that dreadful new-fangled thing that's more like a traction-engine than an organ.'
...
'But what's wrong with the original console? As far as I recall it's a beautiful piece of work from the early seventeenth century.'
'That it is, sir. But it wasn't good enough, it seems. Not for His Nibs who had to play it - and that's more important than us that hears it, seemingly. Or that will have to see that Babylonish monstrosity every day of our lives.'
'You are speaking of the organist?'
He went on without noticing my question: 'For some of the canons wanted the organ to be big and loud and to be right out here where the congregation could see it and would join in the singing, and them on the other side wanted to keep the old one because it sounds so well with the choir and doesn't drown out the voices the way this one will.'
'Such disputed between Ritualists and Evangelists have divided every Chapter in the country,' I said.
'The Organ Maker's Wife' (1981) by Paul Britten Austin evokes the 16th-century world of Master John of Winchester, "a poor artificer, or craftsman, that maketh organs, coffins, chests, virginals and rebecks". The novel joins him on his way to Romsey to build new organs for the Abbey church. He had told Abbess Ryperose about the organs of the Low Countires:The Swete Orgayne pipis comforteth a stedfaste mynde.
Wrong handlynge of the stoppis may cause them to sypher from their kynde.
But he that playeth of pipis, wher so grete nowmber is
Must handill the keyes al lyke that by misgovernance they Souwnde (not) amyss.
The new organs are duly ordered, with the condition... how in their churches be organs twice, nay, ten times as great as ever sang in ours; and whose voices beside ours be as a peal of bells in a tower to a tinkling sacring bell; and whose pipes of gleaming tin, like unto silver, do reach up top the loftiest vaults, on such wise as they verily do seem to hold up the roof. Whereat the Abbess laugheth merrily, saying:
"Nay, nay, Master! Thou canst convince me of many things. But not of so monstrous great organs. For whereto would they serve?"
Saith he:
"Reverend madam. They serve unto the greater glory of God's majesty. Be he and his saints ten mile off and upon never so urgent business, yet sing those great organs so lustily, straightway heareth he their voices and cometh running."
The novel describes John's marriage to the Abbess's ward Kate, a fey, other-worldly girl, and its ensuing tragedy. Let us conclude with the narrator's tribute to Master John:"That the pipes withinforth, and more especially the principals and those that do shew shall be as fine metal and stuff as the utter parts: that is to say, of pure tin, or very nearly, and even such as Master John saith he with his own eyes hath seen and heard among the Belgies and the Dutch men. And upon its case twain gilden angels, marvellously counterfeited, blowing upon trumpets."
And besides those organs that he did build in our churches and in gentlemen's houses hereabouts, in number above two-score, there hath not been in all England (if one or two in London were set aside) one that for the sweetness of its tone went beyond him. None knew better than he how with a tierce to set off a quint, or how movingly so to double the principals that the voice of two were worth wonderfully more than in sum the hearing of either had given reasonable expectation of. And all were fashioned of the very worthiest timber, both above and beneath; and their keys of ebony, curiously wrought. Yet be these garnishings toys and trifles, and an organ's substance lieth ever in its song. Organs there be, whose all their stops being on a sudden draw together, do gasp and warble, and find themselves short-winded as a man stricken on a sudden of a football in his belly. Nor wanted his organs wind, but were ever in good breath. And besides those he did build, are they all bunglers in comparison of him.
