AND
THE THEATRE ORGAN
JULIAN RHODES' DREAM ORGANS
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This page last revised 7 January 2001
Many of the organs in the ancient, Byzantine and Arab worlds were residence organs, usually found in palaces and the homes of the wealthy. Having no role in the church, they were played at entertainments or on ceremonial occasions.There's an organ in the parlor, to give the house a tone,
And you're welcome every evening at Maggie Murphy's home.
(Edward Harrigan: Maggie Murphy's Home, 1890)
The organ in the Phantom of the Opera's sub-basement apartment is undoubtedly the most famous example of a literary residence organ. Click here to read extracts from Gaston Leroux's novel.
In 'The Ash-Tree' (1904) M.R. James evokes those instruments which, during the 18th and 19th centuries, often graced English country-houses:
Alternatively, the organ might be in the chapel of the house, as in the following from M.R. James' 'The Haunted Doll's House' (1925):Then I like the pillared portico - perhaps stuck on to a red-brick Queen Anne house which has been faced with stucco to bring it into line with the 'Grecian' taste of the end of the eighteenth century; the hall inside, going up to the roof, which hall ought always to be provided with a gallery and a small organ.
'The Old Nurse's Story' (1852) by Elizabeth Gaskell includes a large country house with a "great organ", a ghostly organist, a phantom child, and a dark family secret.The house front glimmered out again before long. But now there was a difference. The lights were in other windows, one at the top of the house, the other illuminating the range of coloured windows of the chapel... The interior was as carefully furnished as the rest of the establishment, with its minute red cushions on the desks, its Gothic stall-canopies, and its western gallery and pinnacled organ with gold pipes.
For longer extracts from this story, click here.As winter drew on, and the days grew shorter, I was sometimes almost certain that I heard a noise as if some one was playing on the great organ in the hall. I did not hear it every evening; but, certainly, I did very often; usually when I was sitting with Miss Rosamond, after I had put her to bed, and keeping quite still and silent in the bed-room. Then I used to hear it booming and swelling away in the distance.
Tolstoy's 'War and Peace' (1865-8) is possibly the greatest novel of western literature. The only mention of an organ is the following passing reference to a harmonium:
There is a brief mention of a domestic organ in 'Dubliners' (1904-7) by James Joyce:Tchernyshev was sitting at a window of the outer room with a French novel in his hand. This room had at one time probably been a music-room: there was still an organ in it on which some rugs were piled...
In 'The Old Wives' Tale' (1911) by Arnold Bennett, the "grand organ" in Duck Bank Wesleyan Chapel appears briefly, concluding a hymn "with a clangour of all its pipes"; but it is the domestic harmonium which runs through the novel like a leitmotif, a fleeting symbol of stability amidst the upheavals of the plot.Mary Jane, who was then a little girl in short clothes, was now the main prop of the household, for she had the organ in Haddington Road. She had been through the Academy and gave a pupils' concert every year in the upper room of the Ancient Concert Rooms.
The non-fiction novel 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil' (1994) by John Berendt features Mercer House in Savannah, GA.
The pipe-organ is mentioned a few times as incidental colour in the book, which gives an account of Williams' trial for murder.If Mercer House was not quite the biggest private house in Savannah, it was certainly the most grandly furnished. Architectural Digest had devoted six pages to it... Mercer House was the envy of house-proud Savannah. Jim Williams lived in it alone.
. . .
For the better part of an hour, Jim Williams had taken me on a tour of the Mercer House... In the ballroom, he played the pipe organ, first a piece by Bach, then 'I Got Rhythm.' Finally, to demonstrate the organ's deafening power, he played a passage from César Franck's 'Pièce Héroique.' "When my neighbours let their dogs howl all night," said Williams, "this is what they get in return."
Cinema organs appear infrequently in literature. Then again, few plots are set in cinemas. The following is from William Hjortsberg's 'Falling Angel' (1979), filmed as 'Angel Heart'. Here, a cinema is used for a religious rally:
In Stephen Baxter's science-fiction disaster novel 'Moonseed' (1998), geologist Henry Meacher visits No. 10 Downing Street, London, for a meeting with the British Prime Minister:A life-sized cardboard cutout of Louis Cyphre in his sheikh's outfit stood by the empty ticket booth, beckoning the faithful with an outstretched arm. The lobby was a gilded plaster pagoda, a movie-palace pleasure-dome. In place of popcorn and candy, the refreshment stand carried a complete line of inspirational literature.
We found seats off the side aisle. An organ murmured behind the closed red-and-gold curtains. The orchestra and balcony filled to capacity.
"What denomination is this?" I whispered.
"Basic Baptist with frills." Epiphany folded her gloved hands in her lap. "This is the Reverend Love's church. Don't tell me you haven't ever heard of him?"
I confessed my ignorance.
"Well, his car is about five times bigger than your office," she said.
The houselights dimmed, the organ music swelled, and the curtain parted to reveal a one-hundred-voice choir grouped in the shape of a cross. The congregation rose to their feet, singing "Jesus was a Fisherman." I joined in the hand clapping and bestowed my smile upon Epiphany who surveyed the proceedings with the stern detachment of a true believer among the barbarians.
Nigel Richardson's 'Breakfast in Brighton' (1998) is a portrait of the town past and present.It was just a smart old town house, on the surface. But Henry knew there was more to it than met the eye. For instance there were corridors that led to the other houses in the row, such as Number Eleven, the residence of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the finance minister. So, behind the facade, this was all one big house, like the Beatles' shared home in Help!; he half-expected to see John Lennon playing a Wurlitzer come ascending from the floor.
The organ in the Regent was in fact by Hill Horman & Beard, an unextended 34-stop organ installed in 1921.They took the bus from Hove into Brighton... and there, just down the hill in North Street, was the fabulous bowed frontage of the Regent picture palace, newly opened that year, 1921, with seating for 1,700 people... Inside the Wurlitzer organ boomed around the gloomy cavern, the carpet felt thick enough to reach their knees, the seats were like upholstered clouds. And then the organ sank, and the lights faded, and then the film itself...Klaus Wunderlich, the popular light-music performer on electronic entertainment organs, is mentioned in 'The Love Hexagon' by William Sutcliffe (2000). Two characters are diuscussing a variety of music recordings, and the mis-spelling is authorial:
The late-20th century 'keyboard' makes a rare literary appearance in 'Stars and Bars' by William Boyd (1984):'...And you forgot Klaus Wunderlicht's organ renditions of favourite Beatles tunes.'
'You're not into organ renditions of favourite tunes? I love those.'
'Sometimes,' he says. 'If I'm in the right mood. If I've lent out all my Coldstream Guards Marching Band Plays Popular TV Themes albums, I might put on a few organ renditions.'
Henderson walked down... to the bar... It was filled with grim curtain-wallahs who were being entertained by a haggard country and western chanteuse sated at an electric organ on a small dais at the end of the room... She set her Japanese electric organ (thin as an ironing-board) to plangent and sang heartrendingly of suicide, abortion, adultery, desertion, mental and physical cruelty, alcoholism and terminal illness... She switched her machine to 'soughing violins' for the chorus... but Henderson decided he'd had as much as he could take.
