This page last revised 19 June 2000

In 'The Island of the Day Before' (1994), Umberto Eco features a mechanical water-organ. The novel is set in the year 1643 when such automata - and indeed all technological toys - were popular. The instrument is fully described in an extract here.

In 'À Rebours' (1884) J.K. Huysmans makes the organ a symbol for an unusual drinks dispenser:

He made his way to the dining room, where there was a cupboard built into one of the walls containing a row of little barrels, resting side by side on tiny sandalwood stands and each broached at the bottom with a silver spigot.
This collection he called his mouth organ.
A rod could be connected to all the spigots, enabling them to be turned by one and the same movement, so that once the apparatus was in position it was only necessary to press a button concealed in the wainscoting to open all the conduits simultaneously and so fill with liqueur the minute cups underneath the taps.
The organ was then open. The stops labelled 'flute', 'horn' and 'vox angelica' were pulled out, ready for use. Des Esseintes would drink a drop here, another there, playing internal symphonies to himself, and providing his palate with sensations like those which music dispenses to the ear.
Indeed, each and every liqueur, in his opinion, corresponded in taste with the sound of a particular instrument... [the analogies are worked out at length, and Des Esseintes plays whole compositions of taste inside his head.]
But tonight Des Esseintes had no wish to listen to the taste of music; he confined himself to removing one note from the keyboard of his organ, carrying off a tiny cup which he had filled with genuine Irish whiskey.

'Circuit Breaker' (1987) by Melinda Snodgrass is set in the future, and tells of the tribulations of a colony on the planet Mars. A temple is built on the surface of the planet:

He craned his head back and gazed up the side of the incredible structure. The low Martian gravity had allowed him to indulge in his dream-born fantasies, so thin spires like wentletrap seashells twisted into the sky, the clerestory extended several hundred feet and contained fifty lancet arch windows. [The windows] swirled with fantastic colors; deep purples shot through with traceries of yellow, green, iridescent blues. In short it was a dream structure, a fairy place... all that remained was to bolt in the pews and fit the pipes into the massive organ, and those pipes would arrive on the next transport from Earth.

In due course Gustav, an Austrian organ builder, arrives with the pipes. When the work has been completed, the scene inside the temple is described:

Her heels rang out on the great red flags that paved the nave as she walked to the chancel... Suddenly a barrage of sound erupted from the choir as all seven thousand of the pipes on the German organ let loose. For a moment the walls and the vaulted ceiling flung back a cacophony of runs, scales, and chords that slowly resolved into the opening chords of Bach's awesome Toccata and Fugue in D minor, then the mood shifted as the unseen organist began the final movement of Mozart's Exsultate.

Staying with the science-fiction genre, in Isaac Asimov's 'Prelude to Foundation' (1988) the characters are discussing the Sacratorium, a hallowed temple, and what might be concealed within it:

"Would you know if there was a special place; a hidden place?"
"There's only the Elders' aerie. Only Elders go there, but there's nothing there."
"Have you ever been there?"
"No, of course not."
"Then how do you know?"
"I don't know that there's no pomegranate tree there. I don't know that there's no laser-organ there. I don't know that there's no item of a million different kinds there. Does my lack of knowledge of their absence show they are all present?"

In Arthur C. Clarke's 'The Songs of Distant Earth' (1986), a composer writes about his 'Lamentation for Atlantis':

But now something strange happens, whenever I hear the Lento lugubre - as I am doing in my mind at this very moment...
It begins at bar 136, when the series of chords descending to the organ's lowest register first meets the soprano's wordless aria, rising higher and higher out of the depths...

And in 'Cradle' (1988) by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee:

Soft local lights located in a few of the wall panels came on as soon as Carol's feet contacted the floor of the room. Her arrival also triggered two or three notes from some kind of a musical instrument. It sounded like an organ and was apparently way off in the distance in another part of the cathedral area enclosed by the vast arched ceilings that were again above her...

Carol finds herself surrounded by sixteen thin strings, and realises that she is standing inside a musical instrument. She discovers a writing table which acts as a console:

There were indentations in the table, sixty-four altogether, set up in eight rows and eight columns. Pressing each key produced a different sound... While she was teaching herself to play, she stopped often to listen to the delicate crystal sound that it made... Eventually she played an entire verse of 'Silent Night' without making a mistake. Carol smiled, pleased with herself, and relaxed momentarily. During this interlude the great organ in the distance (which she had heard briefly when she had enetered the room and could now pinpoint as being somewhere in the uppper reaches of the cathedral area) suddenly began to play... What is that organ playing? she thought ot herself, it sounds like an overture. She listened for a few seconds. Why... that's an introduction. To 'Silent Night! It's very creative.
The organ sound was joined by several others, each emanating from somewhere in the ceiling. All the instruments together played a complex version of the 'Silent Night' that Carol had so painstakingly pounded out on the writing table a few moments before. The beautiful music swelled throughout the cathedral. Carol looked up and then closed her eyes. She spun her body around and around in a little dance.

Let us return to earth with an extract from 'Chloe' (1997) by Freya North. This scene is set at the Giant's Causeway in Eire:

She turns back for the path and heads for the distant cliff. There she can see a patch of land peeled back to reveal an infrastructure of more basalt columns. It is the Organ. It is famous. She will have it all to herself. Close to, the columns soar upwards and again Mendelssohn booms out. Chloe knows she ought to reserve him until Scotland but as she does not know where she will be, she lets him ring out here. Just in case.

In 'Snow Falling on Cedars' (1995) by David Guterson, Robert Hope-Jones's diaphone makes itself heard on a night-time boating expedition:

From the lighthouse station far to the east he could hear the low, steady intonation of the fog signal diaphone. It was the sound he associated with blind nights at sea - lonely, familiar, hushed, and so melancholy he could never listen without emptiness.

It is unusual to find an account of an organ performance in a secular setting. The following is from 'Sketches by Boz' ('Characters', chapter 4) by Charles Dickens, c.1835. His protagonists go to a concert in the Rotunda. ('Shrub' is an alcoholic drink).

...and people were crowding to the door of the Rotunda; and in short the whole scene was, as Miss J'mima Ivins, inspired by the novelty, or the shrub, or both, observed - "one of dazzling excitement." As to the concert-room, never was anything half so splendid. There was an orchestra for the singers, all paint, gilding, and plate-glass; and such an organ! Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man whispered it had cost "four hundred pound," which Mr. Samuel Wilkins said was "not dear neither;" an opinion in which the ladies perfectly coincided. The audience were seated on elevated benches round the room, and crowded into every part of it; and everybody was eating and drinking as comfortably as possible.
. . .
The concert commenced - overture on the organ. "How solemn!" exclaimed Miss J'mima Ivins, glancing, perhaps unconsciously, at the gentleman with the whiskers... "Ancore!" cried Miss J'mima Ivins's friend. "Ancore!" shouted the gentleman in the plaid waistcoat immediately, hammering the table with a stout- bottle. Miss J'mima Ivins's friend's young man eyed the man behind the waistcoat from head to foot, and cast a look of interrogative contempt towards Mr. Samuel Wilkins. Comic song, accompanied on the organ. Miss J'mima Ivins was convulsed with laughter - so was the man with the whiskers.

An organ is played in a rehearsal for a concert in a fictionalised Oxford the following brief extract from Thomas Hardy's 'Jude the Obscure' (1896):

It was a warm, cloudless, enticing day. She shut the front door, and hastened round into Chief Street, and when near the theatre could hear the notes of the organ, a rehearsal for a coming concert being in progress.

Finally here is an extract from 'Fortunata and Jacinta' (1887) by Benito Perez Galdos:

On Calle de Toledo the weary organs started up again, and two in particular fought, clawing at each other. One played a light tune from the Mascota and the other a symphonic theme from Semiramis. They cranked away like mad, about thirty steps apart, tearing out hair, biting and collapsing together in the mingled cacophony of their sounds. Finally Semiramis won, resounding proudly and emphasising its noble accents, while the notes of its rival were extinguished, whimpering more and more faintly until they were lost in the bustle of the street.