It is now time to examine some examples of Audsley's organ designs. In 1922 he wrote:

Sixty years ago, I keenly realised the toy-like shortcomings of the small two-manual organ of the time, and devoted considerable thought to the possibility of its improvement; especially with regard to its tonal appointment and the extention of its powers of expression. As the organ was primarily a musical instrument, it was obvious that extreme development along both these lines was a simple necessity.
...
There were no possible hopes of anything I might propose being put to actual test in an organ constructed... by any organ builder of the time. Accordingly, the only course left for me to pursue was personally to construct an organ in which my proposed system of general and compound tonal flexibilty and expression could practically be set forth, so far as possible, in a necessarily small Chamber Organ having only two manual claviers.

Audsley describes how he found the technical information in the first edition of Hopkins' and Rimbault's 'The Organ' unsatisfying. He visited the branch factory of Gray & Davison in Liverpool:

...and I remember the kindly and sympathising smile that came over the countenance of the manager... when I told him I was going to build an organ, and would be obliged if he would allow me to see any work he had then in hand.
...
It is unecessary to give any particulars of the tedious process of constructing my organ. It is sufficient to say that I turned the largest room in my residence into a workshop and furnished it with all the necessary appliances and tools; and therein I spent most of my evenings and spare time during a period of seven years, working lovingly at the instrument which I aimed at making and which was destined to be the most remarkable and tonally perfect of any organ of its size ever conceived up to that time.

The stop-names of his organ were in Italian. Audsley wrote:

Very early in my studies of organ matters I wondered at the confusion of tongues obtaining in the nomenclature of stops used by English organ-builders, and also the common, incorrect rendering of the foreign names which appeared on the stop-knobs of their instruments. This decided me to adopt a nomenclature of a single language... and, on thinking the question over from various points, I decided on adopting Italian as the most suitable, it being the language commonly used in musical terms and generally understood in that direction.

Audsley's first organ was installed in his London residence, 'Ivy Villa', Kew, c.1865. ('Ham House' and 'Devon Nook, Chiswick' have also been given as the location of this instrument, presumably reflecting house moves through the years. I am fairly sure that the Kew address was the original one.) Here is the stoplist; for clarification I have added traditional stop-names in italics.

LOWER (1st organ)
 
1st subdivision - unenclosed:
     8       Principale Grande	              Open Diapason
 
2nd subdivision - enclosed in box 1:
     8       Flauto Tedesca      wood         Clarabella
     4       Flauto Traverso     wood         Harmonic Flute
     2       Piccolo 
     8       Oboe   
 
3rd subdivision - enclosed in box 2:
     8       Flauto Primo        wood         Doppel Flute  
     8       Flauto Secondo                   Lieblich Gedact
     8       Viola d'Amore       tin          Viola
     4       Ottava                         
     V       Ripieno di Cinque              
     8       Tromba                           Trumpet
     8       Clarinetto                     
     8       Voce Umana                       Vox Humana
             
 
UPPER (2nd organ) (enclosed in box 1)
     8       Principale Dolce                 Dulciana
     8       Corno di Caccia                  Keraulophon
     4       Flauto d'Amore                   Flute d'Amour
 
PEDAL
    16       Principale          op. wood
    16       Contra-Basso        st. wood
    16       Contra-Saxophone    free-reeds
 
Couplers:  Upper to Lower 8ve, unison, sub8ve; Upper to Pedal; Lower to Pedal.
 
Foot levers:
Forte combination to box 1 stops.  Piano combination to box 2 stops.
 
Trigger pedal to box 1.  Balanced pedal to box 2.
 
On & Off thumb-pistons to the 3rd subdivision of Lower.
 
'Tremolant' to all enclosed stops, affecting those in box 2 more strongly
than those in box 1.
 
2 3/8in. w.g.

The Ivy Villa organ was the first of his small organ designs

...moderate in cost, rich in tonal structure, and furnished with the means for the production of practically inexhaustable expressive tonal effects and refined nuances; absolutely impossible of production on two-manual organs schemed and tonally appointed on the old-fashioned one-swell system, still followed in the organ-building world, and blindly accepted by organists who seem satisfied to recognise as sufficient for their needs whatever organ-builders think proper to give them.

It is instructive to compare the Ivy Villa stoplist with other similarly sized British residence organs from the same period:

Residence of James Turle, The Cloisters, Westminster Abbey.
J.W. Walker, 1865
 
Great: Open Diap., Stopped Diap., Dulciana, Gamba, Principal, Flute, Piccolo
Swell: Horn Diap., Stopped Diap., Salicional, Voix Celeste, Principal, II Mixture
Pedal: Open Diap., Bourdon
 
Residence of A.D. Keightley, The Old Hall, Milnthorpe.
Forster & Andrews, 1866-7.
 
Great: Open Diap., Stopped Diap., Dulciana, Principal, Harm. Flute, Twelfth, Fifteenth
Swell: Bourdon t.c., Spitz Flöte t.c., Viola d'Amour, Fl. Traverso 4', Flautino 2', Oboe
Pedal: Bourdon, Violoncello 8'

These schemes throw into relief the forward looking nature of Audsley's stoplist. For 1865 it is especially remarkable: the whittling down of chorus work in favour of a variety of soft colours is 30 or 40 years ahead of its time. There is a deliberately cosmopolitan stance. The Doppelflöte and pedal free-reed show German influence; the inclusion of a generous complement of reeds, with a Vox Humana, recalls French practice. The Keraulophon ('Corno di Caccia') and 5-rank mixture come from progressive British designs of the 1840s. (Henry John Gauntlett, writing in 1846, had credited to Hill the invention of "the Echo Dulciana Cornet, a stop of five ranks of pipes, of the delicate scale and voicing in use for the Organ of the drawing-room".) It marries a complete absence of tonal duplication with a complete departure from normal division-types.

Audsley's house became popular with musicians. Many organists played his instrument, and he received enthusiastic comments about his 'compound expression':

It was this great and absolutely new advance in tonal apportionment that caused M. Saint-Saens, after playing for nearly two hours... to pronounce it 'The most expressive organ he had ever played'.

Walker Joy, the well-known organ enthusiast and benefactor, wrote:

I could only form one opinion, and that was that the Instrument was the most artistic, the most unique, I ever touched. Apart from the perfection of the tone, whether separate or combined, the mechanical appliances are simply marvellous. During my thirty-five years of practical experience in amateur Organ-building, I never saw or heard anything like it.

Daniel Wood, the organist at Exeter Cathedral, wrote:

It opened up to my imagination quite a vista of new and previously impossible effects in organ playing.

The American virtuoso Clarence Eddy wrote:

(Your organ's) fame had gone across the Atlantic: I had heard and read much of its characteristic features, but I assure you that I was not prepared to see and hear so admirable a work of art. To the eye it is 'a thing of beauty,' while to the ear it is a constant surprise in the variety of its tonal coloring and peculiarly charming effects... The degree of expressive power contained in your beautiful little organ is remarkable; and let us hope that this feature will receive just recognition, and prove a source of emulation to organ builders.

These extraordinarily fulsome comments are worth quoting at length because Audsley is still tainted withthe reputation of having been

...insufficiently grounded in the actual experience of organ-building (so) that his place in the organ world is that, not of an authority, but of a dillettante.
(Edward W. Flint)

In about 1906 Audsley designed a 22-stop chamber organ for the residence of Eugene C. Clark at Yonkers, N.Y.  This appears to have been one of the first instruments built by Philipp Wirsching for the Art Organ Company of New York, of which Audsley was a joint director. Several of these 'orgues de salon', usually equipped with a player mechanism, were built between 1905 and 1909. Their tonal ideals were described in the company's catalogue in 1907:

Though not the actual orchestra, it is the analogy of the orchestra, so artistic, and with such characteristic individuality of its own infused into it as to make it stand absolutely unprecedented in the organ world.

The stoplist of the Yonkers organ shows how Audsley's ideas about small organ design had developed in the intervening years.

MANUAL ORGAN
 
Unexpressive Subdivision:
     8       Principale Maggiore
     8       Viola Pomposa	            
 
First Expressive Subdivision - enclosed in box 1:
    16       Bordone Dolce
     8       Principale Minore
     8       Flauto Doppio
     4       Ottava           
     4       Flauto Traverso     
     2       Flauto Piccolo 
     8       Tromba Reale
             Tremolant 1   
 
Second Expressive Subdivision - enclosed in box 2:           
     8       Violoncello
     8       Violino
     8       Violino Celestiale                           
     V       Dolce Cornetto
    16       Contrafagotto
     8       Oboe                         
     8       Clarinetto                     
             Tremolant 2
 
PEDAL ORGAN 
    16       Principale Grande
    16       Violone
     8       Flauto Aperto       ext. Principale
     8       Violoncello         ext. Violone
 
Auxilliary - Expressive:
    16       Bordone Dolce       Manual
    16       Contrafagotto       Manual
 
Couplers:  Upper to Lower 8ve, unison, sub8ve.
           Lower 8ve, unison off, sub8ve.   Upper 8ve, unison off, sub8ve. 
           Lower to Pedal unison.   Upper to Pedal unison, 8ve.
 
Five thumb-pistons unde Lower, controlling all manual & pedal stops.
Five thumb-pistons under Upper ditto.
On & Off pistons to: Tremolant 1, Tremolant 2.
 
Balanced pedals to: box 1. box 2.
Balanced register crescendo pedal.
Reversible pedals to: Lower to Pedal unison, Upper to Pedal octave.
 

Every manual stop was playable from both manual keyboards. This was one of the tenets of Audsley's fully-developed philosophy of small organ design:

That all the Stops of the three Divisions of the Manual Organ shall be commanded alike by each of the Manual Claviers, and at the same time. Any combination being drawn on each Clavier, at the will of the performer.

Two complete sets of stop-controls were provided:

That any Stops drawn by the Knobs or Tablets located on the right hand of the Claviers shall be commanded by the Lower Clavier and Pedalier; and that any Stops drawn by the corresponding Knobs or Tablets on the left hand shall, in precisely the same manner, be commanded by the Upper Clavier and Pedalier. By this novel arrangement, the complete tonal appointment of the Manual Organ is equally available on both Claviers; and three powers of tonal flexibility and expression are imparted to both the Manual Claviers.

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