JULIAN RHODES' DREAM ORGANS
THE ORGAN IN LITERATURE

This page last updated 11 June 2000.

In 'The Well of Loneliness' by Radclyffe Hall (1928), the setting is typically British:

In the morning they all went to church in the village, and the church smelt of coldness... Very redolent of England it was, that small church, with its apple-cheeked choirboys in newly washed garments... with its trim congregation of neighbouring gentry who had recently purchased an excellent organ, so that now they could hear the opening bars of the hymns with a feeling of self-satisfaction, but with something else too that came nearer to Heaven...

A similarly prideful congregation appears in Ken Follett's 'A Dangerous Fortune' (1993):

Kensington Methodist Hall expressed in stone the ambivalent feelings of prosperous Methodists, who believed in religious simplicity but secretly longed to display their wealth. Although it was called a hall, it was as ornate as any Anglican or Catholic church. There was no altar, but there was a magnificent organ. Pictures and statues were banned, but the architecture was baroque, the mouldings were extravagant and the decor was elaborate.

An organ in rather worse condition features in M.R. James' 'The Story of a Disappearance and an Appearance' (1919):

The next episode was in church... I was uncomfortable. The organ wolved - you know what I mean: the wind died - twice in the Christmas Hymn....

The same thing happens in 'The Skull Beneath the Skin' (1982) by P.D. James:

The church received them into its archaic, multi-coloured silence. Simon was persuaded to seat himself at the organ... The organ was old, requiring to be pumped, and Oldfield was already there, hand at the ready... Simon managed the organ competently enough, although Oldfield let it run out of wind at the end of the Te Deum and it produced a late, noisy and discordant amen.

In 'The Nine Tailors' (1934) by Dorothy L. Sayers, a story of crime and campanology, the organ at St. Paul, Fenchurch has at least the benefit of a fine situation: "like a young cathedral... East Anglia is famous for the size and splendour of its parish churches". Lord Peter Wimsey is shown around the church by the Rector's wife:

Some vandal in the nineteenth century tore down the screen behind the choir stalls to put the organ in. It's a hideous thing, isn't it? We put in a new set of pipes a few years ago, and now the bellows want enlarging. Poor Potty has his work cut out to keep the wind-chest filled when Miss Snoot is using the full organ. They call him Potty Peake, but he's not really potty, only a little lacking, you know...

A disfunctional organ appears in David Morrell's 'Desperate Measures' (1994):

Pitman stood at the rear of the church, smelled incense, listened to an organ that sounded as if it needed repair, and surveyed the impressive amount of worshippers who, unmindful of the bleak surroundings, had come for Sunday mass.

And in Thomas Harris's 'The Silence of the Lambs' (1988):

On the other side of the wall a pipe organ wheezed as the service got under way in the front of the funeral home.

And in 'Staying On' by Paul Scott (1977), set in India:

Miss Williams... had not only inherited a talent for hairdressing from her mother who in the days of the raj had listed most of the memsahibs of Pankot among her clients, but also acquired a taste for music and flower-arrangement. She played the piano at St. John's (the organ had long ago seized up and there was no money for its repair) and also decorated the altar.

But later in the novel:

Gradually the explanation of the organ's otherwise miraculous resurrection had been unfolded. Father Sebastian had had a look at it. He knew something about organs. He suspected that things were not so bad as they had been allowed to seem... He also knew of an expert technician, in Calcutta. The man had come up. He had stayed with Susy. Mr. Thomas had let him into the church with the spare key. Within ten days he had worked the miracle and for days afterwards Susy had been practising.

The following gloomy description is from Herbjorg Wassmo's 'Dina's Book' (1994):

They walked into the empty church, through the sacristy... It was quite dark inside, now that there were no candles burning. Their steps echoed from the stone walls. They walked the entire length of the church, from the choir to the main door. Side by side, without saying a word. Up the steps to the organ loft. There, it was even darker than below. The organ leaned over them, ponderous and silent.

And in Scott Smith's 'A Simple Plan' (1993):

It was a cloudy afternoon, grey and overcast... The view was desolate and empty. Beyond the church and the low scattering of tombstones, there was nothing but the horizon... Inside St. Jude's, someone was practising the organ. I could hear the sound coming faintly through the brick wall, the same low, throbbing sequence of notes repeated over and over again.

The organ is used to accompany a black mass in Dion Fortune's 'The Goat-Foot God' (1936):

And as [Murchison] stood extended on the black Cross of Sacrifice watching it all, a strange feeling began to steal over him... the alleged victims began to dance in diaphanous draperies... Finally, Astley struck his pedestal a resounding crash, the organ went off full blast, all the lights went out, and Murchison knew they had got to business at last, and tensed himself for whatever might be forthcoming.

Unsatisfactory memories of the organ are evoked in Barry Unsworth's 'The Rage of the Vulture' (1982):

His father's voice when he talked about the man had been like a sort of rising and falling drone, the sort of sound that would go on whether there was anyone there to listen or not, like the lonely organ music in the chapel at his school in England.

'Sin City' by Wendy Perriam (1987) is set in Las Vegas, and depicts more bleak memories:

It's cool in the cathedral. Very quiet. No one here at all. The stained-glass windows shut the sun out. I still feel very hot, though. Hot and frightened. Carole said I've got to do some shopping, but I'll have to have a rest first. There's a banging in my head and my chest feels very tight.
I sit down on a bench. My legs keep trembling still. Carole's getting married. Not in a real church, but in a shop. This is a real church, high, with strong stone walls. Those wedding chapels are only paste and cardboard. Everything costs money there, even things like organs and a choir. Sister Agnes played the organ at St. Joseph's. She didn't charge for it. Carole can't get married in a cardboard church. She can't get married anywhere. She hasn't got a dress.

A slightly jaded account of the organ through a child's eyes appears in 'Forgotten Life' (1988) by Brian Aldiss:

... father was a figure I admired from afar... Both he and Mater had musical ability. Every Sunday, father played the organ in church. We entered solemnly into God's temple, and nipped solemnly out of the same to the mighty strains he evoked. Evenings, he worked late in our shop, doing the orders.

And from 'A Taste for Death' by P.D. James (1986):

She had seen the school chapel once on an outing to Windsor. It had impressed her... Someone had been playing the organ and she had sat listening with pleasure to what she thought must have been a Bach cantata, but for her there were no secret harmonies.

A more up-beat account of a school organ is found in Aldous Huxley's 'Attic Hay' (1923):

'The moment had now come for the hymn. This being the first Sunday of the Summer term, they sang that special hymn, written by the headmaster, with music by Dr. Jolly, on purpose to be sung on the first Sundays of terms. The organ quietly sketched out the tune... He particularly liked the third verse. At this point Dr. Jolly enriched his tune with a thick accompaniment in the lower registers, artfully designed to symbolise the depth, the gloom and general repulsiveness of the Tempter's home... Amen! Dr. Jolly blew the two sumptuous jets of reverence into the air.'

In O. Henry's short story 'The Cop and the Anthem' (1900s) the sound of organ music has a transformative effect on a down-and-out in New York:

At length Soapy reached one of the avenues to the east where the glitter and turmoil was but faint. He set his face down this toward Madison Square, for the homing instinct survives even when the home is a park bench.
But on an unusually quiet corner Soapy came to a standstill. Here was an old church, quaint and rambling and gabled. Through one violet-stained window a soft light glowed, where, no doubt, the organist loitered over the keys, making sure of his mastery of the coming Sabbath anthem. For there drifted out to Soapy's ears sweet music that caught and held him transfixed against the convolutions of the iron fence.
The moon was above, lustrous and serene; vehicles and pedestrians were few; sparrows twittered sleepily in the eaves - for a little while the scene might have been a country churchyard. And the anthem that the organist played cemented Soapy to the iron fence, for he had known it well in the days when his life contained such things as mothers and roses and ambitions and friends and immaculate thoughts and collars.
The conjunction of Soapy's receptive state of mind and the influences about the old church wrought a sudden and wonderful change in his soul... He would pull himself out of the mire; he would make a man of himself again; he would conquer the evil that had taken possession of him.

In one of the author's typically ironic twists, Soapy is immediately arrested for loitering and sent to prison for three months.

John Betjeman's poems contain many references to the organ in an ecclesiastical setting. Here are some examples:

Boy! pump the organ! let the anthem flow
With promise for the chosen saints below!
(Calvinistic Evensong)

Up the Butterfield aisle rich with Gothic enlacement,
  Licensed now for embracement
  Pam and I, as the organ
Thunders over you all.
(Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden)

Miss Rhoda Poulden pulls the tremolo,
The oboe, flute and vox humana stops;
A Village Voluntary fills the air
And ceases suddenly as it began...
"Praise ye the Lord!" and in another key
The Lord's name by harmonium be praised.
(Sunday Afternoon Service in St. Endoc Church, Cornwall)

Great red church of my parents, cruciform crossing they knew -
Over these same encaustics they and their parents trod
Bound through a red-brick transept for a once familiar pew
Where the organ set them singing and the sermon let them nod.
(St. Saviour's, Aberdeen Park, Highbury, London, N.)

And countless congregations as the generations pass
Join choir and great crowned organ case, in centuries of song
To praise Eternity contained in Time and coloured glass.
(Sunday Morning, King's Cambridge)

And prosperous mice from fields away
Come in to hear the organ play...
(Diary of a Church Mouse)

In 'Anna of the Five Towns' (1902) by Arnold Bennett, the organ is upstaged by a cornet player:

Mr. Banks gave out the last verse of the hymn, and simultaneously with the leading chord from the organ the revivalist seized his cornet and joined the melody. Massive yet exultant, the tones rose clear over the mighty volume of vocal sound, an incitement to victorious effort. The effect was instant: an ecstatic tremor seemed to pass through the congregation, like wind through ripe corn, and at the close of the hymn it was not until the revivalist had put down his cornet that the people resumed their seats.

Vestergothland in Sweden is the setting for M.R. James' story 'Count Magnus' (1904), which presents the following scene:

'...and you climbed a steep knoll... and on the top of this stood the church. It was a curious building to English eyes. The nave and aisles were low, and filled with pews and galleries. In the western gallery stood the handsome old organ, gaily painted, and with silver pipes.'

Also set in Sweden is the following, from Jostein Gaarder's 'The Christmas Mystery' (1992):

'They entered a town and stopped in front of an old church with two tall towers above the entrance.
The angel told them that they were in Scania, that the town was called Lund and that the big church was an ancient cathedral. He looked at his angel watch and said, 'The watch says 1745'...
Inside was the most beautiful sound Elisabet had ever heard. From the great organ there swelled such rich and powerful melodies that tears came to her eyes. When the angel saw it, he said, 'Yes, weep, my child. That wonderful music was composed by Johann Sebastian Bach. He is alive in Germany at this time, and his music will be heard throughout Europe. That's not surprising, for his music is like a tiny shred of the glory of heaven.'

The Florentine village of Santa Reparata is visited by one of modern fiction's most intriguing criminals, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, in Thomas Harris's 'Hannibal' (1999):

The Devil's Armour with its horned helmet is a splendid suit of fifteenth-century Italian armour that has hung high on the wall of the village church... since 1501.
...
From the organ loft, Dr. Lecter can just reach over the railing and, leaning between the horns, raise the dusty visor on the helmet of the Devil's Armour. Inside, a fishhook... suspends a package hanging carefully... passports of the best Brazilian manufacture, identification, cash, bankbooks, keys.

In 'Peking' (1988) by Anthony Grey, a missionary in China reflects:

... and reluctantly, at last, he admitted to himself that the fascination of his European face for Chinese who had never seen a foreigner of any kind and even the sound of a phonograph or a small church organ were as responsible for drawing the peasant crowds as anything he was able to say about the power of Christianity.

Back in England, M.R. James evoked the Gothic revival of the 19th-century in 'An Episode of Cathedral History' (1919):

It was in 1840 that the wave of Gothic revival smote the Cathedral of Southminster. "There was a lot of lovely stuff went then, sir," said Worby, with a sigh. "My father couldn't hardly believe it when he got his orders to clear out the choir... Crool it was, he used to say: all that beautiful wainscot oak, as good as the day it was put up, and garlands-like of foliage and fruit, and lovely old gilding work on the coats of arms and the organ pipes. All went to the timber yard..."

The fictional Cathedral of Aldminster features in 'The Choir' (1988) by Joanna Trollope. The author acknowledges her debt to the organist of Gloucester Cathedral in researching the novel, and it is therefore no coincidence that the situation at Aldminster strongly resembles that at Gloucester. The Dean reflects:

He would think instead about the organ, that great tour de force of restoration that was nearing completion, and which would give Aldminster the distinction of possessing about the only double-case seventeenth-century organ to survive in its bold and original glory... Day after day he had gone exultantly into the Cathedral while the Victorian overpainting of the pipes and pipe-shades and cornices came away to reveal the vigorous colours of the Restoration, tassels and flowers and birds, oak trees and roses, a girl holding an apple, King David playing exuberantly upon the harp. He had made it his business to understand the infinite ingenuity necessary to insert a modern organ into an ancient case, and was very happy to have the organ builders instruct him in the use of different materials for different pipes, and to extol to him the wonderful advantages of an electro-mechanical organ. With them he rejoiced over the unique size of the Pedal Open stop - '1821', he said in awe to his wife who was trying to telephone the window cleaner - and the soundness of the original choir case and exclaimed over the unsympathetic hands which had perpetually rebuilt the instrument for two centuries.

The dedication service for the rebuilt instrument is described in detail, with solo organ music by Bach and Widor. Near the end of the novel, the cathedral organist leaves Aldminster for a school in Sussex which has:

"An 1885 Walker. Very good of course, of its kind, but only forty-eight speaking stops so I shall miss the size. Nice solo stops though - ".

He pays a final visit to the Cathedral organ:

He went into the Cathedral for his own private farewell to the organ. He simply sat at the console, lightly stroking the ivory of the keys and the thumb pistons and the stop controls. He took his shoes off to feel the pedals better. He had spent hours in that organ loft, probably some of the best as well as the happiest hours he had ever spent in his life, hours in which he had sometimes felt himself so much part of the great central life force of humanity because of the music he was making, that he had been moved to tears. It was a terrible parting. He had no wish at all to relinquish this extraordinary instrument, at once passionately human in its capabilities and superbly indifferent of its historic permanence, into the hands of anyone else. Its vast old personality seemed to engulf him, dwarf him and at the same time to be withdrawing itself, inch by inch, and holding itself apart, ready for the next man. He drew the beechwood cover down over the console and laid his cheek against it and listened to the huge breathing quiet of the place. He must go. If he stayed any longer, he would hardly be able to.

Bach's organ music is mentioned passim in novels by both Jonathan and Faye Kellerman; also in Mary Wesley's 'The Vacillations of Poppy Carew' (1986), where the vicar is planning a funeral service:

"Suppose our organist, if I can get Mr. Ottway to play - he's really very good - suppose we do away with hymns and ask Mr. Ottway to play a lot of Bach."

The same idea occurs to a character in Penelope Lively's 'Heat Wave' (1996), this time for a wedding service:

"Do you really need a hymn? Why don't you just have some organ music?"
"That's a good idea." Hugh perks up. "Bach. Organ music is always Bach, isn't it? I'll tell them to do that."

Bach fares rather badly in 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' (1995) by Kate Atkinson:

At last the bridal pair vanish into the vestry and someone plays Bach, very badly, on a tired organ while the divided congregation - his and hers - whisper frantically to each other about what they think of it so far. Finally, 'The Wedding March' bleats triumphantly and we sweep down the aisle while everyone grins like idiots at us...

And during a wedding in 'Virginia Fly is Drowning' (1972) by Angela Huth, someone tries to talk to the best man:

But the best man did not respond. On one of his trouser legs his fingers drummed in time to the ponderous Bach.

During a wedding in Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence' (1920), Mendelssohn's Wedding March is mentioned:

The ring was on her hand, the Bishop's benediction had been given, the bridesmaids were a-poise to resume their place in the procession, and the organ was showing preliminary symptoms of breaking out into the Mendelssohn March, without which no newly-wedded couple had ever emerged upon New York.

But in Robertson Davies' 'The Rebel Angels' (1981):

I am fussy about music and will permit no 'O Promise Me' or 'Because God Made Thee Mine'; I discourage the wedding march by Mendelssohn, which is theatre music, and the other one from Lohengrin, which was a prelude to a notably unsuccessful marriage.

In 'Gaudy Night' (1936) by Dorothy L. Sayers:

The blessing was given; the voluntary rolled out - something fugal and pre-Bach... The Dean, who was fond of early fugues, remained quietly in her place, and Harriet sat dreamily beside her, with her eyes fixed on the softly-tinted saints in the rood-screen.

Typical of the social paraphernalia of British church life is the following, from Kathleen Rowntree's 'Between Friends' (1992):

"Do you recall, Tessa, all those things we got up last year in aid of the organ fund - the coffee mornings and the jumble sale, and that delightful painting of the kissing gate you gave us for the raffle? Well, as there was quite a sum left over when the work on the organ was done, the committee decided - and I know this will please you, my dear - to commission a small plate commemorating Winifred's years as our organist. A very discreet and tasteful brass plaque to be put on the organ front..."

Kathleen Rowntree shows herself a thorough researcher in 'A Prize for Sister Catherine' (1990):

Angelica, keeping a careful eye on the psalm's pointing, was thinking how clever she had been to find this blameless little chant in F major. It had just the right air of innocent cheerfulness, and voiced by the light bright stops she had selected conveyed nothing of a thumping victory...
When a hand appeared from nowhere and snatched out the eight-foot diapason, Angelica almost fell off the bench. 'What y'doing?' she hissed, fighting to control her suddenly dithering fingers.
'Just keep playing,' Agnes said in her ear.
'Get out, you fool!' Angelica steadied herself and stared hard at the text, fearing she would lose her place in the pointing. But Agnes not only remained, she pulled out further stops: the four-foot principal, the two-foot, the oboe, the trumpet. 'Come on, put a bit of life into it. This isn't a funeral.'
'Will you stop? You must be mad.'
Angelica ploughed on, wondering what on earth her friend would be making of this uneven and crude crescendo. 'That was diabolical,' she hissed at the psalm's end. 'I don't know what you think you're doing, but will you please clear off?'

In the same author's 'Between Friends' (1992), the organ sounds when no stop is drawn:

Timothy crossed the chancel, inclining his head to the altar as he went, and pushed up the shutters covering the organ console. He pressed the switch, waited until the bellows were full, then struck a bass C.

In 'Brother of the More Famous Jack' (1982), Barbara Trapido writes about prayer:

"At least C of Es do it with a book... Quakers go on forever when the spirit moves them..."
"Pentecostals do it to a Wurlitzer," I say. "Get moved, I mean. I heard them on the radio."

In a similarly swinging mood is the following, an account of a funeral service in Edward Stewart's 'Deadly Rich' (1991):

Twenty minutes later the priest blessed the departed and blessed the congregation. The pallbearers wheeled the coffin back down the aisle. Two doors slammed like cannon shots and the organ broke into a roof-ripping postlude - Cole Porter's 'From This Moment On'.

At a wedding service in Bruce Chatwin's 'Utz' (1988):

The organ poured forth Sigmund Romberg's 'When I'm calling you...' and as the pair came out into the sunlight, the crowd assembled on the steps broke into a round of hand-clapping.

Kate Atkinson evokes a service at a Spiritualist church in 'Behind the Scenes at the Museum' (1995):

It's very hot in the basement and there is an odd sickly-sweet small like Parma Violets mixed with Dettol. There are a lot of people here already, chatting away as if they were at the theatre, and it takes them a long time to settle down but eventually a small organ strikes up and we sing a hymn but, as I can't read the words in the hymn book, I have to open and close my mouth in a variety of ways in what I hope is a polite imitation of singing.
...the little organ strikes up another hymn identical to the last one (all the hymns in the Church of the Spirit are exactly the same - a phenomenon that, interestingly, nobody seems to notice).

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