JULIAN RHODES' DREAM ORGANS
THE ORGAN IN LITERATURE

In his book 'The Organ' (1984), Arthur Wills wrote:

The organ is not at its best when it attempts to express the agonies and ecstasies of ego-dominated modern man... (but) when dealing with spiritual themes, it is the God instrument, not simply because it is used in church but because of its intrinsic nature.

In this sense the organ is more than a devotional accessory or a device to accompany church congregations. Indeed, its traditional associations link it to Saint Cecilia, the patroness of ecclesiastical music:

And while the organs maden melodie
To God alone in hart thus sang she:
'O Lord, my soule and eek my body gye
Unwemmed, lest confounded be.'
(Geoffrey Chaucer: Second Nun's Tale)

When the full organ joins the tuneful choir,
Th'immortal Powr's incline their ear.
(Alexander Pope: Ode for Musick, on St. Cecilia's Day, c.1708)

Near gilded organ-pipes, her hair
Wound with white roses, slept St. Cecily.
(Alfred Tennyson: The Palace of Art)

...'this innocent virgin
Constructed an organ to enlarge her prayer,
And notes tremendous from her great engine
Thundered out on the Roman air.
(W.H. Auden: from 'Song for St. Cecilia's Day)

The sentiment may be admirable, but the historical accuracy is questionable. It was not until the fifteenth century that artists began to portray Saint Cecilia playing the organ. By that time it had evidently been forgotten that rather than accompanying the devotions of the early Christians, the instrument was played in the Roman arenas when they were given to the animals.

Nicholas Brady's 'Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, 1692' lauds the organ as a 'Wondrous Machine!', against which other instruments contend in vain:

Thou summ'st their diff'ring Graces up in One,
And art a Consort of them All within thyself alone.

For a fuller extract from this poem click here.

John Dryden's 'Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687' contains the famous lines:

But oh! what art can teach,
What human voice can reach
    The sacred organ's praise?
Notes inspiring holy love,
Notes that wing their heavenly ways
    To mend the choirs above.

For the full text of the poem, click here.

Like Dryden's poem, Milton's 'Ode on the Morning of Christ's Nativity' mentions the music of the spheres, that universal harmony created by the movement of each part of the cosmos in its own appointed round. In Milton's poem the organ symbolises the cosmos itself:

Ring out, ye crystal spheres!
Once bless our human ears,
If ye have power to touch our senses so;
And let your silver chime
Move in melodious time;
And let the base of heaven's deep organ blow;
And with your ninefold harmony
Make up full consort to the angelic symphony.

Milton is credited by tradition with a fondness for the organ. He possessed an organ himself; and the instrument from Magdalen College Chapel, Oxford, was removed by Cromwell after 1654 to Hampton Court Palace, and played by Milton.

In the seventh book of 'Paradise Lost' (1674), Milton describes the celestial music that was heard on the seventh day of creation:

    the harp
Had work and rested not, the solemn pipe,
And dulcimer, all organs of sweet stop,
All sounds on fret by string or golden wire
Tempered soft tunings, intermixed with voice
Choral or unison...

In the eleventh book of 'Paradise Lost' Adam is shown a vision of what is to come up to the time of the flood. He sees Jubal, the first Biblical musician, playing upon the harp and organ:

He looked and saw a spacious plain, whereon
Were tents of various hue; by some were herds
Of cattle grazing; others, whence the sound
Of instruments that made melodious chime
Was heard, of harp and organ; and who moved
Their stops and chords was seen: his volant touch
Instinct through all proportions low and high
Fled and pursued transverse the resonant fugue.

Milton is paraphrasing the most famous reference to the organ in literature, the book of Genesis chapter 4, verse 21, which in the Authorised Version of the Bible (1611) reads:

And his brother's name was Jubal: he was the father of all such as handle the harp and organ.

In the interests of accuracy the verse has been amended thus:

His brother's name was Jubal; he was the father of all those who play the lyre and pipe.
(Revised Standard Version, 1952)

or indeed, who play:

...the lyre and the flute.
(Jerusalem Bible, 1966)

In Milton's 'Il Pensoroso', the organ is heard in a more familiar setting:

But let my due feet never fail
To walk the studious cloister's pale
And love the high-embowed roof,
With antique pillars massy proof
And storied windows richly dight
Casting a dim religious light:
There let the pealing organ blow,
To the full voic'd quire below,
In service high, and anthems clear,
As may with sweetness, through mine ear,
Dissolve me into ecstasies,
And bring all Heav'n before mine eyes.

From celestial organs to infernal organs: the instrument is used as a simile in book one of 'Paradise Lost', when the work of reprobate spirits is described:

    There stood a hill not far whose grisly top
Belched fire and rolling smoke...
Nigh on the plain in many cells prepared,
That underneath had veins of liquid fire
Sluiced from a lake, a second multitude
With wondrous art founded the massy ore,
Severing each kind, and scummed the bullion dross.

A third as soon had formed within the ground
A various mold, and from the boiling cells
By strange conveyance filled each hollow nook,
As in an organ from one blast of wind
To many a row of pipes the sound-board breathes.

It is appropriate that Milton himself was compared with the organ in a tribute by Tennyson:

O mighty-mouthed inventor of harmonies,
O skill'd to sing of Time or Eternity,
God-gifted organ-voice of England,
Milton, a name to resound for ages.

While in his preface to 'High and Low' John Betjeman wrote about the English language:

With MILTON it has organ power
As loud as bells in Redcliffe tower
(Preface to 'High and Low')

Peter Ackroyd plays on Milton's known affection for the organ in his novel 'Milton in America' (1996). In this fictional history, Milton sails for the New World; we read from a diary kept by Milton's servant:

April 12, 1660. There is an organ on board this ship! Captain Farrel told my godly master that it had been taken as cargo on the last journey from Gravesend, and, its owner dying of cabin fever before reaching land, it has never yet been played. Mr. Milton could hardly keep his hands from trembling at the news. 'My father loved music,' he said to the captain, 'and likewise he taught me well. We need a sweet air on a journey such as this.' So we were led down beneath the hatches into the forward hold, but he stopped before he entered it and asked me to fetch his black gown. 'I cannot wear kersey while I play,' he said. 'It is not fit.' ... He was waiting impatiently for me, but I made sure to dress him slow and reverential. Then we processed into the hold and the captain pointed to a piece of dark cloth in a corner. 'There she lies, quiet as the day we took her on board.'
I removed the cloth, which was as dusty as an old virgin. 'It is only a small thing,' I said. I had expected all the pipes and pedals of St. Paul's.
When he put his fingers on the instrument, he sighed. 'It is a portative organ. Is there a chair or stool?' A sea chest was found and, when he sat upon it, he sighed again. 'Some of our travelling brethren consider music to be the harmony of fallen angels. But why should the devil have the best tunes? Our good English airs have no taint of the mass about them.' He could reach the pedals with his feet and pretty soon he was playing and singing like a ballad-seller. It was no devotional air, either, but that piece of sad nonsense, 'Go, crystal tears', which is always to be heard in Cornhill and suchlike.

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