This page last revised 20 March 2000

Antipatros of Eleuthernes, a player of the hydraulic organ, is mentioned on an inscription at Delphi (c. 90BC):

Given that an embassy had been dispatched by the city to Antipatros, son of Breucos and a citizen of Eleuthernes, a player upon the hydraulic organ, and that this man arrived in Delphi at the invitation of the archons of the city; and given that he competed for a space of two days, covering himself with glory in a remarkable manner worthy of Apollo and of both the city of Eleuthernes and of our own city, by virtue of which he was crowned victor in the contest [and rewarded with] a bronze statue and all other tokens of honour, for his overwhelming performance in honour of Apollo...
For these reasons a decree was passed, in the name of Good Fortune, to sing the praises of Antipatros, son of Breucos, of Eleuthernes, player of the hydraulic organ, for his reverence and devotion to Apollo, for the resolution he shows towards fulfilling his art, and for his goodwill towards our city.

The Emperor Nero was a keen organist. Suetonius relates how, at a time when Rome faced acute crisis:

...he summoned a number of the leading citizens to his house, and after consulting them briefly spent the remainder of the day showing them his hydraulic organs, of a new and hitherto unknown type, which he demonstrated in detail, explaining the principles and complexities of each one, and assuring them that he would soon exhibit them all in the theatre.

A similar scene is described by Cassius Dio; both call to mind:

Organ Morgan, you haven't been listening to a word I said. It's organ organ all the time with you.
(Dylan Thomas: Under Milk Wood)

Other ancient organists included the Emperor Elagabalus (r. 218-222), of whom Lampridus wrote:

He could sing, dance, blow the tibia, sound the trumpet, play the pandora and handle an organ.

And his successor, Alexander Servus (r. 222-235):

He played the lyre, the tibia, the organ and the trumpet.

A papyrus discovered at Oxyrhynchus in the 1890s, thought to date from the second quarter of the 4th century, says:

From Eutrygios to his assistant Dioscorus: greetings. Give to Gorgonios, who plays the hydraulic organ, according to the agreement, two artaba of wheat...

The following is an epitaph engraved on a sarcophagus at Aquinium, near modern Budapest. It is believed to date from around 400AD:

Entombed in stone, here lies a dutiful wife, the beloved Sabina. Well grounded in the arts, she alone outshone her husband. Her voice was a delight, and her fingers skilfully plucked the stringed instruments; but now, untimely snatched from life, she is dumb. Her years numbered three times ten, all but five, alas! plus three months and twice seven days. In her lifetime she took part in public concerts on the hydraulic organ, thereby giving great pleasure. Be happy, you who read these lines; may the gods preserve you. Lift up your voice in solemn farewell to Aelia Sabina.
T. Aelius Justus, stipendary organist to the 2nd Legion Adjutrix, her husband, erected this monument at his own cost.

A performance by the organist and composer Francesco Landini is described in 'Il Paradiso degli Alberi' (1389) by Giovanni da Patro:

The whole assembly is excited by his organ playing; the young dance and sing, the old hum with him, all are enchanted. He draws wonders from the little organ. The birds cease their song, and in their astonishment draw near to listen - especially a nightingale, which sits on a twig over his head, above the organ.

Still in a secular setting is the following verse from the Scottish poet Gavin Douglas's 'The Palice of Honour' (c1501):

In modulatioun hard I play and sing
Faburdoun, pricksang, discant, countering,
Cant organe, figuratioun, and gemmell,
On croud, lute, harp, with mony gudlie spring,
Schalmes, clariounis, portatiues, hard I ring,
Monycord, organe, tympane, and cymbell.
Sytholl, psalttrie, and voices sweit as bell,
Soft releschingis in dulce deliuering,
Fractionis diuide, at rest, or clois compell.

In 1641 George Wither wrote a poem aimed at the moral improvement of musicians. In its introduction he says:

Many musicians are more out of order than their Instruments: such as are so, may by singing this Ode, become reprovers of their own untuneable affections.

Here are two verses from the poem:

What will he gain
  By touching well his lute,
Who shall disdain
  A grave advice to hear?
What from the sounds
  Of organ, fife or lute
To him redounds,
  Who doth no sin forbear?
A mean respect,
  By tuning strings, he hath,
Who doth neglect
  A rectifièd-path.

Therefore, oh Lord,
  So tunèd, let me be
Unto thy word
  And thy ten-stringèd-law
That in each part
  I may thereto agree;
And feel my heart
  Inspir'd with loving awe.
He sings and plays
  The Songs which best thou lovest
Who does and says
  The things which thou approvest.

The following lines are from a poem by Leigh Hunt (1784-1859), upon hearing Vincent Novello (1781-1861) perform "by the aid of a capital organ" (Charles Lamb) in his home at 240 Oxford Street, London:

And Vincent, you who with like mastery
Can chace the notes with fluttering finger-tips,
Like fairies down a hill hurrying their trips,
Or sway the organ with firm royalty.

An especially vivid figure is the organist in Browning's poem 'Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha' (1842). He is playing a fugue by the deceased Master:

Page after page as I played,
Every bar's rest, where one wipes
Sweat from one's brow, I looked up and surveyed,
O'er my three claviers, yon forest of pipes
Whence you still peeped in the shade.

For the full text of this vigorous poem, click here.

Browning devoted a poem to Charles Avison (1709-70) 'of Newcastle organist'. Musical history and philosophy are discussed therein, rather than the organ and its repertoire, though the following lines are characteristic:

Give me some great glad 'subject,' glorious Bach,
Where cannon-roar not organ-peal we lack!

'Martin Chuzzlewit' (1844) by Charles Dickens includes the character Tom Pinch, whose dreams 'were all of holidays, church organs, and seraphic Pecksniffs.'

'A pretty church!' said Martin, observing that his companion slackened the slack pace of the horse, as they approached.
'Is it not?' cried Tom with great pride. 'There's the sweetest little organ there you ever heard. I play it for them.'
'Indeed?' said Martin. 'It is hardly worth the trouble, I should think. What do you get for that, now?'
'Nothing,' answered Tom.
'Well,' returned his friend, 'you are a very strange fellow!'
To which remark there succeeded a brief silence.
'When I say nothing,' observed Mr. Pinch cheerfully, 'I am wrong, and don't say what I mean, because I get a great deal of pleasure from it, and the means of passing some of the happiest hours I know. It led to something else the other day; but you will not care to hear about that, I dare say?'
'Oh yes, I shall. What?'
'It led to my seeing,' said Tom in a lower voice, 'one of the loveliest and most beautiful faces you can possibly picture to yourself.'

Tom explains that his mysterious female visitor came several times, always when no-one else was present. Martin asks him:

'And you never followed here, when she went away?'
'Why should I distress her by doing that?' said Tom Pinch. 'Is it likely she wanted my company? She came to hear the organ, not to see me; and would you have had me scare her from a place she seemed to grow quite fond of? Now, Heaven bless her!' cried Tom, 'to have given her but a minute's pleasure every day, I would have gone on playing the organ at those times until I was an old man; quite contented if she sometimes thought of a poor fellow like me, as a part of the music; and more than recompensed if she ever mixed me up with anything she liked as well as she liked that!'

Later, Tom Pinch has other visitors to the church:

'I was in the church just now sir, touching the organ for my own amusement, when I happened to look round, and saw a gentleman and lady standing in the aisle listening. They seemed to be strangers, sir, as well as I could make out in the dusk: and I thought I didn't know them: so presently I left off, and said, would they walk up into the organ-loft or take a seat? No, they said, they wouldn't do that; but they thanked me for the music they had heard. In fact,' observed Tom, blushing, 'they said, "Delicious music!" at least she did; and I am sure, that was a grater pleasure and honour to me, than any compliment I could have had....'

Still later, Tom's eyes are opened to the true qualities of his employer, Pecksniff, as the result of a further conversation in the church, at the end of which he:

...then went wandering up into the organ-loft, and touched the keys. But their minstrelsy was changed, their music gone; and sounding one long, melancholy chord, Tom drooped his head upon his hands and gave it up as hopeless.

At the very end of the novel, Dickens bids Tom farewell in a marvellous peroration which is worth quoting at length:

What sounds are these that fall so grandly on the ear! What darkening room is this!
And that mild figure seated at an organ, who is he! Ah Tom, dear Tom, old friend!
Thy head is prematurely grey, though Time has passed between thee and our old association, Tom. But, in those sounds with which it is thy wont to bear the twilight company, the music of thy heart speaks out: the story of thy life relates itself.
Thy life is tranquil, calm, and happy, Tom. In the soft strain which ever and again comes stealing back upon the ear, the memory of thine old love may find a voice perhaps; but it is a pleasant, softened whispering memory, like that in which we sometimes hold the dead, and does not pain or grieve thee, God be thanked!
Touch the notes lightly, Tom, as lightly as thou wilt, but never will thine hand fall half so lightly on that Instrument as on the head of thine old tyrant brought down very, very low; and never will it make as hollow a response to any touch of thine, as he does always...
. . .
Thou glidest now, into a graver air; an air devoted to old friends and bygone times; and in thy lingering touch upon the keys, and the rich swelling of the mellow harmony, they rise before thee...
And coming from a garden, Tom, bestrewn with flowers by children's hands, thy sister, little Ruth, as light of foot and heart as in old days, sits down beside thee. From the Present, and the Past, with which she is so tenderly entwined in all thy thoughts, thy strain soars onward to the Future. And it resounds within thee and without, the noble music, rolling round ye both, shuts out the grosser prospect of an earthly parting, and uplifts ye both to Heaven!

The organist becomes a symbol in Alice Meynell's poem 'Song of the Soul of the Organ' (1869), and she the organ responding to him:

Play, lest thy soul should break O organ-player.
Thy harmonies have strength that shall up-bear
The pale and faltering thoughts of many a prayer.
. . .
I alone shudder and moan to thy great things,
O wildly loved! and clasp thy sufferings
With arms of music cast about thy wings.

For the full text of the poem, click here.

A famous organist is mentioned in 'Middlemarch' (1872) by George Eliot:

Most of us, indeed, know little of the great originators until they have been lifted up among the constellations and already rule our fates. But that Herschel, for example, who 'broke the barriers of the heavens' - did he not once play a provincial church-organ, and give music lessons to stumbling pianists?

S.S. Wesley was the most famous organist in early Victorian England. Upon his death in 1876 T.E. Brown wrote a humorous and touching tribute, 'The Organist in Heaven', in which Wesley summons the celestial thunders and lightenings to be his pedals and manuals. For the full text of this poem, click here.

Charles Palliser's novel 'The Unburied' (1999) is an historical pastiche, set in the fictional English Cathedral town of Thurchester in 1882. It includes Slattery, a young assistant organist who is 'handsome, spoilt and demanding':

'I'm sorry I only heard a minute or two of your playing,' I said.
'I played abominably,' he replied with a charming smile. 'You missed nothing.'
...
'I'm sure that isn't true,' I muttered without reflection.
'I give you my word I played worse than I've ever played in this Cathedral. I could do nothing with my hands. They seemed to have a will of their own.' He held them out in front of him as if lining them up for indictment, looking at them with a suggestion of ironic respect which I found strangely disturbing. 'A damnable leave-taking to the organ.'

Slattery believes that life 'should be an affair of drama, excitement', and longs to leave the provincial Cathedral town for a more vivid life in Italy. As the plot unfolds, the narrator is shocked to find his old friend and Slattery in a homosexual embrace. Layers of deception must be peeled away before the murder at the centre of the plot is solved.

As an envoi, here is an epitaph from a memorial to an organist at York Minster who died in about 1573:

Musician and logician both
John Wynard lieth here
Who made the organs erst to speak
As if, or as it were.