JULIAN RHODES' DREAM ORGANS
THE ORGAN IN LITERATURE

The following pages contain accounts of the organ in literature. They are fully illustrated by quotations and extracts from novels and poetry. I have avoided musical treatises and specialist writing about the organ; interesting as they may be, they fall outside the literary mainstream.

Most of the references I have encounted in literature before 1900 are included. A large number of 20th-century novels refer briefly to the organ, usually in the context of a church service. To cite all these would be tedious. I have therefore included only those examples in which the organ or organist is especially vividly portrayed, or plays a central role.

Most recent updates: 19 June 2000

• The organ in classical literature
• The organ in medieval literature pt.1 (Byzantium and the Arab world)
• The organ in medieval literature pt.2 (Western Europe)
• The organ as a church instrument pt.1 (from 1750 to 1900)
• The organ as a church instrument pt.2 (from 1900 to the present day)
• Celestial Harmony: Saint Cecilia and John Milton
• Instrument of awe: the romantic heritage
• The organ as a cultural icon: Hermann Hesse and 'The Glass Bead Game'
• Some organs mentioned by name
• The domestic organ and the theatre organ
• Some unusual organs
• Organ-building in literature
• The organist in literature pt.1 (from the classical world to 1880)
• The organist in literature pt.2 (from 1880 to the present day)
• Some suggestive organs
• Organ similes and miscellaneous
• 'The Organ in Victorian Poetry' by D. Batigan Verne
  - an article reproduced from 'The Organ', October 1923

Here are some longer literary extracts, which are also linked from the pages above:

• 'Song for St. Cecilia's Day, 1687' by John Dryden
• From 'An Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, 1692' by Nicholas Brady
• From 'Westminster Abbey' by Washington Irving
• 'Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha' by Robert Browning
• From 'Hans Brinker' by Mary Mapes Dodge
• From 'The Old Nurse's Story' by Elizabeth Gaskell
• Maese Pérez, the organist, by Gustavo Adolfo Bécquer
• 'Song of the Soul of the Organ' by Alice Meynell
• 'The Organist in Heaven' by T.E. Brown
• From 'The Way of All Flesh' by Samuel Butler
• 'The Chapel-Organist' by Thomas Hardy
• 'Old Music' by Hermann Hesse
• From 'Within a Budding Grove' by Marcel Proust
• From 'The Island of the Day Before' by Umberto Eco

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Useful sources for the organ in classical and medieval times are 'The Organ: from its invention in the Hellenistic Period to the end of the 13th century' by Jean Perrot (Oxford, 1971), and 'The Organ' by W.L. Sumner (London, 1973). I have drawn on both these works in my accounts of classical and medieval literature.

I am grateful to Nigel Tilley for translations from the French, German and Italian.

My thanks go to Agnes Armstrong, Paul T. Barte, Thomas Chase, Pastor de Lasala, Randolph Runyon, Keith Toth and Patrick Unverricht, who all contributed to a discussion about the organ in literature on the electronic mailing list piporg-l. Bernard Edmonds' column in the BIOS Reporter has contained short extracts from literature. Arthur LaMirande, Joan Tilley, Malcolm Wechsler and especially my girlfriend Helena Wojtczak have given invaluable help. Otherwise, these pages are inevitably limited by the extent of my own reading and research.