The elusive and sonorous meantone of Dom Bédos

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, voiced, and researched pipe organs since 1973. Stimulating work as a research engineer in magnetic recording paid the bills. He is working on his Opus 5, which explores how an understanding of the human sensitivity to the changes in sound can be used to increase emotional impact. Opus 5 includes double expression, a controllable wind dynamic, chorus phase shifting, and meantone. Stay tuned.

Many of the organ compositions of Dieterich Buxtehude (c. 1637–1707) and Nicolaus Bruhns (1665–1697) contain bass accidentals that are not playable on the short-octave manual and pedal basses of the late-seventeenth-century organs of Lübeck. The bass octave of Buxtehude’s organs contained just eight notes—C, D, E, F, G, A, A-sharp, and B—a consequence of meantone tuning. It is impossible to imagine that these wonderful and dramatic compositions were not played in some manner on those organs, but that is the extraordinary claim of at least one modern researcher.¹

A solution to this problem might lie in its history. The original scores of the organ works of Buxtehude and Bruhns were written in tablature, an older form of notation that looks nothing like modern notation. Figure 1 shows an example of tablature and modern notation for the same composition. And here is the key point: none of the tablature originals have survived. All extant versions in tablature are copies, and copies often contain errors. Our modern scores are transcriptions from tablature to modern notation. Transcriptions may contain errors, not the least of which is that the intended octave in tablature is often ambiguous.^{2, 3, 4} Figure 2 shows an example of a tablature copy of Bruhns’s Praeludium in E Minor (the smaller of the two E minor praeludia).

What might have motivated eighteenth- and nineteenth-century musicians to modify the original tablature manuscripts to be unplayable on the organs for which they were composed? The musicians who later copied or transcribed the originals were familiar with later organs that had full-compass basses, or perhaps only a missing low C-sharp. We should also note that the later shift toward equal temperament eliminated the intense gravity of meantone’s pure major thirds, whose resultants sound a full two octaves lower in pitch. The disappearance of this gravity may have influenced the desire to shift tenor accidentals and the phrases in which they were embedded to the bass octave. The ambiguity of the intended octave in tablature may have also provided the rationalization to do so. Equal temperament’s loss of gravity was a strong motivation for eighteenth-century organ builders to include deeper and very costly pitches in their stoplists.⁵

Meantone, unlike equal temperament, has intense key color. Modern-received wisdom relates that the strong dissonances in meantone were avoided in practice; history teaches us otherwise. Dom Bédos argued that meantone was more musical than equal temperament because it presented the composer with useful tensions between the purity of its eight major thirds and the dissonance of its four Pythagorean thirds. Bédos was explicitly referring to quarter-comma meantone.⁶ Restoring bass accidentals to the tenor heightens their dissonance (beat rates will double), setting up tension for later resolution with meantone’s pure thirds.

The short bass octave is an essential feature of the great meantone organs of Lübeck on which the compositions of Buxtehude and Bruhns were most logically composed and played. The short octave with its four missing accidentals has an unusual key order:

         D     E     A#

C  F     G     A     B

This indicates the use of an original form of meantone, i.e., quarter-syntonic comma, not the later and much less colorful versions like Gottfried Silbermann’s fifth-comma meantone. Dissonances were used to good effect, but dissonances in quarter-comma meantone also supported the elimination of accidental bass pipes, saving space in their layouts and considerable cost. Later versions of meantone in the eighteenth century reduced both the dissonances and the purity of meantone; this supported the use of more accidentals in the bass of new organs, often omitting only the C-sharp in a normal order of the bass keys:

           D#          F#      G#     A#

C     D     E   F       G        A       B

We know that the organ compositions of Buxtehude and Bruhns were composed when the large organs of Lübeck had short bass octaves, and there is evidence that those organs were not retuned from their original meantone in Buxtehude’s time.⁷ This suggests that the presence of any bass accidentals other than A-sharp in the organ works of Buxtehude and Bruhns very likely denotes deliberate changes in modern transcriptions to accommodate later organs with more complete bass octaves and much less colorful temperaments.

We will never know if any of our reconstructions are faithful to the originals—they are all lost. But we can use our knowledge of meantone’s inherent dissonant tension and majestic purity to aim for a reconstruction that heightens the emotional impact of these compositions. This is completely in character with the stylus phantasticus, a term coined for the freely composed organ works of Buxtehude and Bruhns—works that speak to modern ears with emotional intensity and dramatic rhythms. These works perfectly express the unique sound of a pipe organ’s principal chorus and thundering pedal bass. And unlike modern compositions, these works feature the musicality and gravity of seventeenth-century meantone.

I am an organbuilder, not a musician skilled in composition. I built my Opus 5 for, among other things, the purpose of showcasing the effect of quarter-comma meantone on the works of Buxtehude and Bruhns, only to discover that many of the modern scores are deeply flawed. Finding no one willing to address this problem, I have evaluated and restored the following scores:

Dieterich Buxtehude: Praeludium in C Major, BuxWV 137, restored; Toccata in D Minor, BuxWV 155, restored; Toccata in F Major, BuxWV 157, no issues; Ciaccona in E Minor, BuxWV 160, no issues; Fuga in C Major, BuxWV 174, no issues;

Nicolaus Bruhns: Praeludium in E Minor (“Little”), restored.

At the end of this article you will find my suggested corrections, all of which are in the pedal, noting the editions I used. If a reader objects that others are much more qualified to make these corrections, I could not agree with you more, and I wholeheartedly welcome those with more skill to propose solutions that are playable on historically correct, short-octave organs.

We can debate how much of a phrase containing bass accidentals needs to be moved to the tenor. We can debate whether the bass accidentals are themselves errors that represent different notes. But if we accept that Buxtehude and Bruhns created their compositions on the organs of their time, we must also accept that the accidentals C-sharp, D-sharp, F-sharp, and G-sharp in the bass octaves of modern scores are not faithful to the original compositions.

Claiming that these compositions were not meant to be played on the large and grand late-seventeenth-century organs of Lübeck is analogous to saying that the Scherer family and Friedrich Stellwagen made and maintained beautiful organs with wonderful sounds, but those short-octave organs were not meant to be played—they were just exercises in thought.

Notes

1. Ibo Ortgies, Die Praxis der Orgelstimmung in Norddeutschland im 17. und 18. Jahrhundert und ihr Verhältnis zur zeitgenössischen Musik, Göteborgs universitet, 2007, page 2, Abstract: “An analysis of payments to bellows pumpers as recorded in church account books shows that the organs of St. Marien, Lübeck, were not retuned during the tenures of Franz Tunder and Dieterich Buxtehude. Thus, some of their organ works could not have been played on the organs available to them during their lifetimes.” [translated by John Brombaugh]

2. organscore.com/buxtehude-complete-organ-works, accessed June 2022. “Editing Buxtehude’s organ work is a delicate task because we do not have access to any holographic source of these works. The available manuscripts are all copies by eighteenth- and nineteenth-century organists, mostly written in modern notation system—the originals were probably in German organ tablature—and contain transcription errors such as missing notes, confused voices, incorrect note heights or accidentals, and poorly placed bars. In places where the music is obviously corrupted and no complementary source is available, the editor must reconstruct the music by guessing at the original idea. Because of this, no modern edition can claim to be the genuine composer’s text.”
3. en.opera-scores.com/O/Dieterich+Buxtehude/Herr%2C+ich+lasse+dich+nicht%2C+BuxWV+36.html, accessed June 2022. “Copies made by various composers are the only extant sources for the organ works: chorale settings are mostly transmitted in copies by Johann Gottfried Walther, while Gottfried Lindemann’s and others’ copies concentrate on free works. Johann Christoph Bach’s manuscript is particularly important, as it includes the three known ostinato works and the famous Praeludium in C Major, BuxWV 
137. Although Buxtehude himself most probably wrote in organ tablature, the majority of the copies are in standard staff notation.

“The nineteen organ praeludia form the core of Buxtehude’s work and are ultimately considered his most important contributions to the music literature of the seventeenth century. They are sectional compositions that alternate between free improvisation and strict counterpoint. They are usually either fugues or pieces written in fugal manner; all make heavy use of pedal and are idiomatic to the organ. These preludes, together with pieces by Nicolaus Bruhns, represent the highest point in the evolution of the north German organ prelude and the so-called stylus phantasticus. They were undoubtedly among the influences on J. S. 
Bach, whose organ preludes, toccatas, and fugues frequently employ similar techniques.

“Occasionally the introduction will engage in parallel thirds, sixths, etc. For example, BuxWV 149 begins with a single voice, proceeds to parallel counterpoint for nine bars, and then segues into the kind of texture described above. . . . [Note the reference to writing in parallel thirds and sixths. This works extremely well with meantone’s pure thirds. All of equal temperament’s major thirds are very, and equally, dissonant.]

“Buxtehude’s other pieces that employ free writing or sectional structure include works titled toccata, praeambulum, etc. A well-known piece is BuxWV 146, in the rare key of F-sharp minor; it is believed that this prelude was written by Buxtehude especially for himself and his organ, and that he had his own way of tuning the instrument to allow for the tonality rarely used because of meantone temperament.” [The key of F-sharp minor in Pietro Aron’s quarter-comma meantone, with the wolf placed on the interval G-sharp to D-sharp, is very useful; its minor third is much less dissonant than an equal temperament minor third. Furthermore, the minor third beats at exactly twice the rate of the fifth. This is a sonorous key in meantone. (See the beat rate chart on page 131 in The Sound of Pipe Organs, Michael McNeil, 2012.) As there were no pedal F-sharp bass keys on Buxtehude’s organs, this note would have been played in the tenor.]

4. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organ_tablature, accessed June 2022. “. . . The feature of organ tablature that distinguishes it from modern musical notation is the absence of staves, noteheads, and key signatures. Pitches are denoted by letter names written in script, durations by flags (much like modern notation), although in early notations durations were shown using mensural indications, and octave displacement by octave lines drawn above a letter. There was some variation in the notation of accidentals, but sometimes sharps were specified by the addition of a loop to the end of the letter. B-natural and B-flat were represented by h and b respectively. Naturals are not indicated, as accidentals do not carry through the entire measure as in modern notation. Key signatures are not specified; they are implied by the indicated sharps.

“. . . Repertoire originally written in tablature has been translated into modern notation. However, this translation carries a risk of error. In German script an A and an E can become confused, as can an F and a G. Likewise, an octave line over a series of notes can begin or end ambiguously. Different solutions are given by different editors, and this is one manifestation of the improvisatory tradition of organ performance of the period.”

5. Michael McNeil, “The elusive and sonorous meantone of Dom Bédos,” The Diapason, September 2020, pages 14–17.

6. John Brombaugh analyzed Bédos’s tables of meantone intervals, and McNeil found the result was virtually identical to Pietro Aron’s equal-beating quarter-syntonic-comma meantone (see Owen Jorgensen, Tuning the Historical Temperaments by Ear, Northern Michigan University Press, 1977, pages 173–177).

7. Ibo Ortgies. See quotation in Note 1.

 

 

Restorations for performance on meantone organs with short bass octaves, C, D, E, F, G, A, A-sharp, and B

All examples are in the bass clef in the pedal.

 

Edition Peters 4855, Nicolaus Bruhns, 1968

Nr. 3, Praeludium und Fuge e-moll (“Little”), pages 20–24. See Examples 1 and 2.

Edition Renaud Vergnet, D. Buxtehude, Volume 1, 2018

Praeludium in C Major, BuxWV 137, pages 5–7. See Examples 3 through 16.

 

Edition Renaud Vergnet, D. Buxtehude, Volume 2, 2018

Toccata in D Minor, BuxWV 155, pages 2–5. See Examples 17 
through 19.

An analysis by Michael McNeil from data published in 2016 by William Drake, Ltd., Organbuilder

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with twenty-seven patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Editor’s note: The Diapason offers for the first time here a new feature at our digital edition—two sound clips. Any subscriber can access this by logging into our website (www.thediapason.com), click on Current Issue, View Digital Edition, scroll to this page, and click on <soundclip> in the text.

John Snetzler

By 1750 England had become a nation with a large middle class with an appetite for music and art performance. “It proved to be a magnet to foreigners such as Handel and J. C. Bach. It is no surprise at all to find a continental organbuilder making a substantial impact in England in the 1750s.”¹ John Snetzler, born in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, in 1710, may have arrived in London as early as 1740. His earliest known instruments date from 1742, one of them a chamber organ at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut. According to Charles Burney, who knew Snetzler personally, he may have worked on Christian Müller’s famous organ at the Bavokerk in Haarlem, the Netherlands, during its construction in 1735 to 1738.² Although his stop nomenclature looks very much like normal English fare of the time, Snetzler’s sound is much bolder and brighter. This voicing style led to the development of true string tone in Snetzler’s Dulcianas.

Large contracts for English cathedrals eluded him, and Snetzler never achieved the fame of builders like Samuel Green. He produced many smaller chamber organs along with a few larger instruments. According to Bicknell, Snetzler may have been excluded by the remains of the Guild system.

“To claim that Snetzler cornered the market in chamber organs would be an exaggeration, although it is difficult to escape the conclusion that he led the field in re-establishing their popularity.”³ Bicknell was a gifted English writer, fully at ease in organbuilding technology, music theory, and historical context. His description of a chamber organ built by Snetzler in 1763 for Radburne Hall, Derbyshire, but now residing in Schaffhausen, Switzerland, gives a clear idea of Snetzler’s tonal concept:

A pedal raises and lowers the lid of the organ to provide a simple swelling device. In 1982 the organ was very clean and well preserved and still retained most of its original leather work. The pipes had been crudely torn to alter the tuning, but once repairs had been made it became clear that the instrument had been tuned in 1⁄4-comma meantone temperament or something very close to it. The effect, in the home keys, of the Fifteenth and the strong quint and tierce in the Sesquialtera and Cornet is astonishingly bold. The effect of playing a chord of C major, with the tutti very strongly coloured by dissonant intervals in the upperwork, is disconcerting. Moreover, the Stopped Diapason and Flute sound the unison rather weakly, with a very strong first harmonic (the octave quint). The result is that the notes of a G major triad are represented almost as strongly as those of C major. To analyse a chorus in this way is to challenge the very principles of organ tone, and it has to be accepted that the multiple dissonances and consonances found in a principal chorus actually produce a musical effect full of interest and colour. But here, with such a Spartan distribution of the harmonic components and heard at very close quarters the tonality of this or any other chord is highly ambiguous. However, as soon as it is put into musical context, all becomes clear, and the vigour and daring of Snetzler’s method is suddenly justified. The combination of boldly voiced mutations and shifting patters of consonance and dissonance (always a part of a performance on a keyboard instrument tuned to meantone temperament) highlights the harmonic structure of the composition played, and in particular emphasises modulations away from the home key. That home key will itself have its own colour, depending on how many sharps or flats it has. This tonal world is one that is almost completely unfamiliar to modern ears, despite the early music movement and interest in authentic performance: the insights it provides are well worth pursuing.⁴

Snetzler built a chamber organ in 1755 with one of his larger specifications, whose original provenance is unknown but today resides in Clare College, Cambridge, and has survived without significant alterations. The “vigour and daring of Snetzler’s method” can be heard in a Youtube recording of this organ (pre-restoration) of Bach’s Fugue in C Minor, BWV 575.⁵ <soundclip1 here> Although containing only one manual and no pedal, it extends in the English style of the time from GG, AA to f′′′, a compass that descends well into the 16′ octave. The performance of the fugue incorporates the use of this extended bass compass with revisions to the score to accommodate the original pedal line. The balances in the voicing allow all voices to be clearly heard and the emotional impact is startling.

Like other English builders of his time Snetzler used a form of meantone tuning (not heard in the Youtube recording), whose pure or nearly pure major thirds added significant gravity with their low resultants. The gravity of meantone tuning along with the extended manual bass compass goes a long way to explain why the lack of an independent pedal persisted in English organs well into the early nineteenth century.⁶ <soundclip2 here>

But what makes this particular organ most interesting is that it has been restored and documented in unprecedented detail by William Drake, Ltd., who have placed on their website descriptions, drawings, data, and photographs from which Snetzler’s work can be fully understood.⁷ This is no small achievement; organs are almost never documented in such detail.

Preface to the analysis

Good documentation of organs with enough pipe measurements to permit an analysis of both scaling and voicing is extremely rare. Pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights (cutups) may be found to some degree, but toe diameters and especially flueway depths are extremely rare. William Drake, Ltd.’s documentation of the 1755 Snetzler organ includes all of this and much more—detailed dimensions of the windchest and wind system that allow a full analysis of wind flow and wind dynamics, parameters having an enormous impact on the sound of an organ. A full narrative of the restoration in William Drake, Ltd’s. documentation includes the data that support the very few restorative changes made to the instrument, all of which were guided by carefully documented investigative work.

William Drake, Ltd., gives us a good model for documentation, where they have chosen to provide photographs and detailed hand drawings of the organ along with the important dimensions. While computer drawings are nice, most organbuilders do not have the time or funding to make them. If we want to see good documentation in print, we must also be willing to accept the lack of polish in hand drawings. The editorial staff of The Diapason has shown courage in their willingness to publish such drawings.

The data in this analysis are presented in normalized scales for inside pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights. Tables showing how raw data are converted into normalized scales may be found in the article on the E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322 published in The Diapason, July 2017, pages 17–19. The set of data and the Excel spreadsheet used to analyze the Snetzler may be obtained at no charge by emailing the author.⁸ Readers interested in a deeper understanding of the models used in the analysis may refer to the book The Sound of Pipe Organs.⁹

Pitch, temperament, wind pressure, and compass

The Snetzler organ is pitched at A = 422.5 Hz at 17.5 degrees Celsius. The current tuning is Young II temperament with indications of original meantone. The wind pressure, water column, is quite low at 51 mm (2 inches). The compass is GG, AA to f′′′. The organ has no pedal but derives bass tone from its extended manual compass, which with its lower pitch extends nearly a halftone below GG. The stops are divided bass and treble:

Bass, GG, AA to b

Sesquialtera (17–19–22)

Principal (4′, full compass)

Flute (4′)

Dulciana (8′, GG to F# grooved)

Diapason (8′)

 

Treble, c′ to f′′′

Hautbois (8′, expressive)

Cornett (8–12–17)

Fifteenth (2′, full compass)

Flute (4′)

Dulciana (8′)

Diapason (8′)

The wind system

The wind system can be modeled from two viewpoints: 1) the restriction of flow from the areas of the wind trunks, pallets, channels, and pipe toes, and 2) the dynamics of the wind. Wind dynamics are fully explained in The Sound of Pipe Organs and are a very important aspect of an organ’s ability to sustain a fast tempo with stability or enhance the grand cadences of historic literature. The superb data set on the Snetzler allows us to explore all of these characteristics. Figure 1 shows the Snetzler wind flow model.

In Figure 1 we see two lists of all of the stops with the pipe toe diameters for a note in each octave in the compass at the top and their calculated areas directly below. These toe areas are then added together (this is the first set of boxed values). The key channels must be sufficiently large to flow wind to these pipe toes, and the pallets activated by the keys must be sufficiently large to flow wind to the key channels.

A model for the total required wind flow of the full organ assumes a maximum of ten pallets (a ten-fingered chord) as described in the next line in the table, and the combined toe areas are multiplied by the number of these pallets played in each octave of the compass. Here we see that the sum of the flow of all of the pipe toes in the full organ (the next boxed value) is 2,982 mm².

Next in the table are values for the pallet opening lengths, the extent that the pallets are pulled open when a key is depressed (estimated from the ratios in the drawings), and the height and widths of the key channels that are fed wind by the pallets. These data allow us to calculate the relative wind flow of the channels (height times width), and we find that there are robust margins in the windflow from the channels to the pipe toes (see the boxed values of 201% at low GG to 549% at high c′′′).

Now we can calculate the flow of the pallets that feed the channels (the sum of the opening length and channel width times the pallet pull), and we find the ratio of the flow of the pallet openings to the channels (the next boxed values) is less robust and ranges from 88% in the bass to 187% in the high treble. The pallets still adequately flow wind to the bass pipes when we consider the more robust margins in channel flow. The estimate of the pallet pull may also be low. It is interesting to speculate that pallets that just barely flow the required wind to the channels may allow some degree of modulation of touch to the organist. Smaller pallets also require less force to open and are easier to play.

The next value, the area of the wind trunk, is 10,230 mm², and we see that the area of the wind trunk affords 3.4 times more wind than all of the pipe toes in the full organ, so much in fact that it does not function as an effective resistance in the system. Interestingly, the Isnard organ at St. Maximin uses the wind trunk as a strong resistor to dampen Helmholtz resonances in the wind system, and it has a ratio of wind trunk area to a plenum toe area of 1.07 for the coupled principal chorus of the Grand-Orgue and Positif (no reeds, flutes, or mutations). Helmholtz resonances are the source of what is normally called wind shake, and we might expect some mild wind shake with the Snetzler wind system with its large wind duct and low damping.

The underlying dynamics of a wind system are the result of its mass and volume. These factors produce a natural resonance that can enhance the grand cadences of literature with a long surge in the wind, or it can produce a nervous shake if it is too fast. A grand surge in the wind is characterized by a resonant frequency of less than 2Hz (cycles per second), and it is most often produced by a weighted wedge bellows. A nervous shake is characterized by much higher resonant frequencies, and it is produced by a sprung, vertical rise bellows with low mass. We correct the latter condition with small concussion bellows in modern organs, but the Snetzler wind system does not have such devices; instead, it features a weighted wedge bellows.

We can model the dynamic response of an organ by using its wind pressure, the area of the bellows plate, and the combined internal volume of its bellows, wind trunk, and pallet box. The model in Figure 2 shows the dynamic response of the Snetzler wind system at a relaxed 1.52 Hz, producing a wind surge of 0.66 seconds. William Drake, Ltd., found that the original wedge bellows had been modified to a vertical rise design, which the model shows would have resonated at about 2.26 Hz with 0.44 seconds surge, and they wisely restored the original design. The restorers found that with the wedge bellows, “The wind is lively but smooth and enhances the sound in a musically pleasing way.”⁷

The scaling

The Normal Scale of pipe diameters is a way to visualize relative power, where a flat line from bass to treble will produce relatively constant power. Pipes with data extending higher in the graph will produce more power. Each half tone on the vertical scale is worth 0.5 dB of power. Readers may refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 8–32, for a discussion of the underlying theory and principles. The Snetzler metal principal chorus pipes have a constant scale where all pipes of the same pitch have the same diameter regardless of the stops in which they appear. Snetzler mildly increased his treble scales from about 1⁄2′ in pitch in Figure 3, a reflection of the smaller acoustics of chamber organs and less need to compensate for distance losses. The flute has wider treble scales. The Snetzler Dulciana descends dramatically; it shares the bass with the Diapason. The scales of the wood pipes are represented by their diagonals, not their relative areas; this represents the true power capability of the standing wave in the pipe, as pointed out by John Nolte, and correctly relates to metal pipes. The GG compass is represented by notations on the pitch axis as “10, 5, 2.5,” indicating rough approximations of the length in feet for the extended bass compass.

The Normal Scale of mouth widths operates just like the pipe diameters, where a flat line from bass to treble will produce relatively constant power. Pipes extending higher in the graph will produce more power. Each half tone on the vertical scale is worth 0.5 dB of power.

Mouth widths are nearly always a better indicator than pipe diameters of power balances; this is because mouth widths can be designed to vary considerably within the same diameters of pipes. Narrower mouths will produce less power, other voicing parameters like flueways and toe diameters being equal.

In Figure 4 we see that Snetzler greatly reduced the mouth widths of the 8′ Diapason and the 4′ Flute. The mouth width reduction of the Diapason in Figure 4 reduces the power to blend seamlessly into the tenor of the Dulciana; it also makes the upperwork seem relatively much more powerful. This example of the seamless blend of the Snetzler mouth widths for the Diapason and the Dulciana shows why it is often advantageous to use mouth widths, not diameter scales, to understand the balances of power in a chorus. The Dulciana has very narrow mouths consistent with its role as a soft string stop.

The voicing

Mouth height, or “cutup” as it is commonly called by voicers, is the primary means of adjusting the timbre of a pipe. Low cutups will create a bright tone with many higher harmonics while high cutups will produce smoother tone. Readers may refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 68–80. It is not uncommon to find flute pipes cut as much as 12 half tones higher than principal pipes in classical pipe organs.

In the Normal Scale of mouth heights, a higher cutup value on the vertical scale will result in smoother tone. Cutups may be adjusted higher for two reasons: 1) the voicer wants a smoother timbre, or 2) the voicer wants more power at the same timbre. More power means more wind, and this means a larger toe or flueway opening to admit more wind. More wind will always produce a brighter tone, so the voicer can make a pipe louder and preserve the original timbre by opening the toe or flueway and raising the cutup until the timbre is restored.

Pipe toe diameters can be normalized (this is the “C” parameter in Figure 6) to the diameter of the pipe, the width of the mouth, and the depth of the flueway; larger values of “C” will admit more wind to the pipe. Readers may find the derivation of this normalization in The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 43–47.

Now we can understand the Snetzler graphs. In Figure 5 we see exceptionally low cutups in the bass that are low even for the very modest 51 mm. pressure. Snetzler’s use of bold nicking on the languids of the bass and mid-range pipes stabilizes the speech with such low cutups. This is consistent with the “slower” speech of Snetzler’s voicing, where the languids are kept high and the resulting timbre is brighter (the speech is not actually slower, just brighter—the pipes are slower to overblow to the octave on higher pressure).¹⁰ Gottfried Silbermann took this concept to an extreme with upper lips constructed to extend far in front of the flueway; this virtually required the voicer to raise the languid well above the edge of the lower lip, with the consequence that the timbre became very bright. Snetzler was more moderate in his use of this voicing technique.

But lower mouth heights can also be explained by reduced toe diameters, and we see very consistent and greatly reduced toe diameters for the Snetzler upperwork in Figure 6 where only the wood pipes of the 8′ Diapason and 4′ Flute have generous toes. As we will see later, those wood pipes also have reduced flueways. The reduction in toe diameters in Figure 6 reduces the wind pressure at the mouth of those stops, allowing the use of lower cutups.

Of interest in Figure 6 are Snetzler’s very reduced toes on the 8′ Dulciana stop. This is consistent with the very low mouth heights of this stop in Figure 5, giving the stop low power with significant harmonic overtone structure; Snetzler used box beards to stabilize the speech of the Dulciana. Taken together, this is a very powerful demonstration of Snetzler’s skills in scaling and voicing where he achieves good balances with the metal chorus pipes and the common bass with the Dulciana.

Like the pipe toe, flueway depth controls the flow of wind and strongly correlates to the power and the speed of the speech of the pipe. Readers may refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 50–63 and 77–82.

In Figure 7 we see very generous flueways for the metal pipes of the Snetzler chorus, while the wood pipes and Dulciana have much more restrained flueways. In the chorus pipes Snetzler is controlling the power balances with scaling and toe diameters, not flueways, a technique more commonly found in classical French voicing. The reduced flueways of Snetzler’s wood Diapason and Flute are more typical of classical Germanic voicing, where power is controlled at the flueway rather than the toe. It is unusual to find a chorus with both voicing styles.

The languids are boldly nicked at an angle in the bass pipes progressing to finer nicks in the higher pitches and ultimately little or no nicking in the highest trebles. Ears are present on pipes up to 1-1⁄3′ pitch and absent at higher pitches. Upper lips are lightly skived to about one half of the metal thickness.

The flow of wind and power balances are controlled by the voicer at the toe and flueway of a pipe. The ratio of the area of the toe to the area of the flueway is important. If the area of the toe is less than the area of the flueway, which is a ratio less than “1,” the speech will be slower. “Slowness” in this instance does not refer to the voicer’s term (which reflects how the voicer adjusts the relative position of the languid and upper lip), but rather to the effect of resistances (toe and flueway areas) and capacitance (volume of the pipe foot) on the rate of the buildup of pressure at the mouth, which in turn affects the buildup of pipe speech to full power. Readers may refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 56–63 and 114–116, for a discussion of this very important musical characteristic. A well-knit chorus of pipes may have pipes that speak less promptly or pipes that speak more promptly, but never both; a chorus with both would have a confused and ill-defined attack. The effect here is subtle and measured in milliseconds, but the human ear is very sensitive to such fine variations.

The ratio is exactly “1” when the area of the toe and flueway are equal, and this is the normal lower limit for pipes with prompt speech; for example, the vast majority of the principal chorus pipes in the Isnard organ at St. Maximin in the range of 4′ to 1′ pitch exhibit a value of almost exactly “1,” with the highest pitches approaching a value of “3.”

The wood pipes of the 8′ Diapason and 4′ Flute in Figure 8 have ratios far in excess of “1,” and this is another way of looking at Snetzler’s technique for pushing these pipes harder with their narrower mouth widths and narrower flueways. In stark contrast, the Snetzler metal pipes have ratios trending at or well below a value of “1,” suggesting that they speak a bit less promptly. The recording made by Anne Page prior to the restoration demonstrates the full chorus and supports this conclusion. Slightly slower speech is not necessarily a defect, and it can be used to dramatic advantage.

Very rarely do we find anything in the organ literature about voicing, and very rarely do we find documentation with enough data to analyze the voicing of an organ. With William Drake, Ltd.’s data we can understand Snetzler’s voicing and tonal concepts in depth.

Further paths

This short essay cannot begin to do justice to the documentation done by William Drake, Ltd., on the Snetzler organ. Readers are encouraged to visit their website to view their wonderful PDF files.⁷ The casual reader can simply peruse the photos and notes to see what the inside of an eighteenth-century organ looks like. The motivated organbuilder can fully recreate the Snetzler sound from these notes. This is a gold standard of documentation.

Notes

1. Stephen Bicknell, The History of the English Organ, Cambridge University Press, 1996, Cambridge, p. 174.

2. Ibid, p. 174.

3. Ibid, pp. 203–204.

4. Ibid, pp. 204–206.

5. Anne Page, Fugue in C minor, BWV 575, www.youtube.com/watch?v=slgjVr97FLY. This is a pre-restoration recording made during the 2011–2012 time frame. The volume is set very low in this recording and should be turned up. It is important to keep in mind that the tuning has been modified from its original meantone to something much closer to modern equal temperament.

6. The gravity induced by meantone must be heard to be appreciated. The 1739 Clicquot organ at Houdan is tuned in meantone and may be heard to advantage in the superb new recording reviewed in The Diapason, July 2018, p. 15, Magnificat 1739, Regis Allard, available from www.editionshortus.com. This organ has no 16′ stops, but 16′ tone is strongly evident in the resultants of the pure major thirds.

7. William Drake, Ltd., The Restoration of the 1755 John Snetzler Organ at Clare College, Cambridge, PDF documents accessed August 16, 2016, www.williamdrake.co.uk/portfolio-items/clare-college-cambridge/.

8. The author’s email address is: [email protected].

9. Michael McNeil, The Sound of Pipe Organs, CC&A, 2012, Mead, 191 pp., Organ Historical Society and Amazon.com.

10. The History of the English Organ, p. 178, “Snetzler’s chorus consists of ranks all made to the same scale and voiced at the same power . . . . The speech of the individual pipes is significantly slower than that of earlier generations, and this encourages brightness (as well as facilitating the development of the new string-toned stops). Any tendency of the pipes to spit or scream is controlled by the consistent use of firm, slanted nicking on the languids of the pipes—a hallmark of Snetzler material.” Joost de Boer, the director of William Drake, Ltd., confirmed the use of higher languids and slower speech on the Snetzler pipes in a personal communication in 2018.

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, voiced, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in magnetic recording with 27 awarded patents. He has authored four books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, which explores the scaling and voicing of organ pipes, the effects of wind system dynamics on musicality, and the relationship of temperaments to tonal design.

Editor’s note: The Diapason offers a feature at our digital edition—two sound clips. Any subscriber can access this by logging into our website (thediapason.com), click on Magazine, then this issue, View Digital Edition, scroll to this page, and click on each <soundclip> in the text.

This article was written after the author received reed pipes built to specifications in this article by Aug. Laukhuff GmbH. A victim of the economic retraction during the pandemic of 2020 and 2021, Aug. Laukhuff GmbH closed its doors in June of 2021. Established in 1823, it served the needs of organbuilders worldwide. Its unimaginable loss is catastrophic to the profession, not only in the unique products it provided, but also in the centuries-old expertise of its managers and employees. Making an historic reed with the necessary detail will be a challenge.

The sound of an historic reed chorus may strike us like an emotional thunderclap and leave us with the wish that we might make such reeds today. I had one such experience with the sound of the reed chorus from the 1754 Joseph Riepp organ at Dole. Those reeds were a later addition in 1787 by the French builder François Callinet. You can get a sense of the drama of these reeds from a performance by the late Michel Chapuis <soundclip1>.¹ The great Romantic organbuilder Cavaillé-Coll often preserved Callinet reeds in the organs he rebuilt.

The sheer complexity of reed construction is daunting, but we might begin to understand reeds by trying to recreate one we like. Although one of my dear colleagues rejoiced that I did not tackle the subject of reeds in my recent book on the sound of pipe organs, this article takes a deep dive into the subject. An exact copy would be prohibitively expensive, but we can capture the sound using the resources available to us from modern suppliers. For this example we used the resources of Aug. Laukhuff GmbH, Weikersheim, Germany, as they described their capabilities in great detail on their website. 

There are hurdles to clear before we can reproduce such a reed, and perhaps the greatest of these is sufficient documentation. The detailed data required to really understand a reed is extremely rare, and the greatest practitioner of data collection was Pierre Chéron. We owe him a great debt for the complete measurements of every pipe in the 1774 Isnard organ at St. Maximin.²

The data

Sufficiently complete measurements of the reeds at Dole are unknown to the author, but a wonderful book gives just enough data to get a feel for the scaling of the entire reed chorus of that organ.^{3, 9}
Although we lack sufficient data for the Dole reeds, it is our great fortune that Chéron’s data for the 1st Trompette from the 1790 Callinet organ at Auxonne has been published in exquisite detail by Laurent Plet.4 The complete data from the Callinet reed at Auxonne and the limited data from Dole correlate very well. Chéron took the Auxonne reed data in 1990 prior to the restoration of the organ by Laurent Plet, and you will find a wealth of data and photos on Plet’s website for this organ.⁵ The complete table may be seen in Figure 25.

Chéron’s table has lettered data columns that are made clear by the drawing of a reed pipe in Figure 1 and the detail of a shallot in Figure 2. Chéron’s dimensions are in millimeters except thicknesses of the tongues, which are in hundredths of a millimeter. Here are descriptions of Chéron’s lettered columns:

Description of the Chéron data

Diameters

A is the name of the note (there is no bass C-sharp)

B is the inside top diameter of the resonator

C is the thickness of the resonator at the top

E is the inside bottom diameter of the resonator

F is the thickness of the resonator at the bottom

Lengths

G is the length of the shallot from the block, or “nut” 

H is the height of the block, or “nut”

K is the length of the resonator from the block to the top 

L is the total tuned length of the reed (there are no tuning slots)

Shallots

M is the outside diameter of the shallot

N is the outside depth of the shallot at the block

O is the outside depth of the shallot at the end

P is the inside diameter of the shallot

Q is the wall thickness of the shallot

R is width of the shallot face (the slot opening width is R-2Q)

S is the total shallot length, including the section inserted into the block

Tongues

T is the width of the tongue

U is the thickness of the tongue under the wedge

V is the thickness of the tongue under the tuning wire

W is the thickness of the tongue at the free end

X is the vibrating length of the tongue

Y is the extension of the tongue beyond the end of the shallot

Boots

AA is the diameter of the toe hole in the boot.

This seems like a lot of detail, but as you will see, Chéron recorded exactly what is needed to understand a reed.

Diameters 

Let’s start with the top diameters in the table in Figure 3, which control power. The amplitude of a standing wave in a resonator gets larger with larger resonator diameters, and Callinet’s diameters are very robust. In Figure 3, column 1 we see the raw values of the Callinet diameters. 

We will use an Excel spreadsheet to analyze the Callinet reed, and we will start by graphing the raw diameters. The beauty of the Excel spreadsheet is that a simple click of the mouse on the graph finds the equation of the line that best fits those diameters. That exponential equation is shown in the graph in Figure 4.
We can use that equation in Excel to calculate the smoothed data we see in Figure 3, column 2, which now fills in all of the missing gaps! Note that there are many missing pipes in the original data. The diameters in Figure 3, column 2 are placed into an Excel table, Figure 5, which will be the basis for the new design.

The diameter of the bottom tip of the resonator is usually not less than the inside diameter of the shallot, and it is often larger. Reiner Janke relates that Cavaillé-Coll used a ratio of approximately 8 for top to bottom diameters.⁶ The Callinet data shows ratios changing from 10.9 in the bass to 9.3 in the treble. These bottom diameters are narrower than Cavaillé-Coll would have specified (larger ratios yield smaller bottom resonator diameters), but as we will see, Callinet carefully designed the bottom inside resonator diameters to be about one millimeter wider than the inside diameters of his shallots, making a smooth transition from the bore of the shallot to the bore of the resonator. 

Using these Callinet ratios we let Excel calculate the inside bottom diameters of the resonators. Callinet tapers the thickness of his resonators in the bass, making them thicker at the bottom for added strength. These thicknesses are entered in the Excel file, and we have the specifications for the resonators. We also added a note to make the resonators of 75% polished tin, the highest tin alloy Laukhuff offered. Figure 5 shows the first steps in this table for the low octave. We will show the entire table when it is complete.

Lengths

Resonators will be longer with a lower temperature, lower pitch, higher wind pressure, and the flat-tuned intervals in an unequal temperament. For this exercise we will specify temperature at 20 degrees Celsius, wind pressure at 85 mm (the original Callinet pressure), pitch at A = 440 Hz, and Pietro Aaron’s 1⁄4-comma meantone temperament.¹⁵

Lengths obviously relate to the pitch, but they also strongly influence the timbre. Resonators voiced to the maximum lengths will have a strong “Bourdon” fundamental in the tone, and resonators voiced shorter will have less fundamental and stronger harmonic fire. The goal in the total tuned length is a resonator where the “flip” or “Bourdon” point preserves considerable fundamental in the tone while not sacrificing harmonic fire. The Bourdon point can be modified to some degree with the curve of the tongue and the diameter of the foot hole during voicing. An article by Reiner Janke has an excellent discussion of the Bourdon point.^{6, 10} Those interested in the math of the effect of temperature on pitch can refer to a very useful website (www.sengpielaudio.com/calculator-pitchchange.htm). The calculator on this website indicates that pitch changes a full halftone from 32 to 92 degrees Fahrenheit. 

As we can see, resonator length is very important, and it is doubly so if we are designing resonators with no tuning slots—like most classical, “dead-length” French resonators. Tuning slots are often used to tune reeds to changing temperatures, and while this maintains the timbre of the reed, such tuning slots nearly always end up molested thus that the pipes become extremely uneven in voicing. The lack of tuning slots in French pipes has preserved the intent of their voicers; the reeds are tuned “on the wire.”

Although we have been talking about resonator lengths, the important length in a reed is its total tuned length, and this includes the length of the resonator, the block to which the resonator attaches, and the extension of the shallot below the block. This total length is what really determines the pitch and timbre of the pipe. Chéron gives us the total tuned length in column L of his data. The original pitch of the Callinet organ was A = 415 Hz, and Plet displays a table for these pipes with the estimated total tuned lengths they would have had at their original pitch.⁷ The current lengths of the pipes in the Chéron table reflect a pitch closer to A = 440 Hz, and as this pitch is the goal of our new reed, we will use those lengths with the understanding that there is uncertainty in Callinet’s intended pitch of the Bourdon point. 

We can enter the total lengths of the Callinet pipes into Excel and fit a curve. Figure 6 shows a table with the raw total tuned length data in column 1. Figure 7 graphs that data for the actual Callinet tuned lengths and shows a fitted curve with its exponential equation. The very high R2 value indicates a close fit to the data.¹⁶ With this equation we can fill in the missing gaps with the fitted data in Figure 6, column 2. 

We need to add one more wrinkle to the lengths—temperament. The intended 1⁄4-comma meantone temperament will give us an opportunity to show how to make length corrections (the original Callinet temperament with the missing bass C-sharp probably had major thirds of less purity than the Pietro Aaron meantone). We can approximate that correction by calculating an octave of frequencies for this temperament and finding the differences in the intervals as seen in Figure 8. For this type of meantone, pipes speaking C-sharp, E, F-sharp, G-sharp, and B will need to have resonators with lengths that are approximately 2⁄3 of the whole step in which they reside, not the typical half step of equal temperament. Figure 6, column 4 shows the total tuned meantone lengths of new pipes with adjusted lengths in blue font. The values in Figure 6, column 2 work well for equal temperament. 

We can now enter these total tuned length values into our Excel table in Figure 9. The estimated block height “H” values are placeholders that will be modified by the pipemaker to suit the Laukhuff blocks. The estimated shallot, from block, “G” values are likewise placeholders; the entered values are approximations based on the vibrating lengths of the tongues plus the necessary clearances of the tuning wires to the wedges. Once the values for “H” and “G” are known, the pipemaker will subtract them from the total tuned length “L” to give the estimated resonators “K,” i.e., K = L - (H + G). The values of the estimated resonator lengths in the table reflect that equation.  

It is important to note that the octave ratios of the lengths are 1.94, where the resonators are shorter than a pure doubling of length at the octave as they descend into the bass. This will be addressed in the comments on voicing.

Shallots

Shallots are usually made of brass, and they provide the surface and openings on which the tongues beat to make the sounds we hear. A variety of shallot and opening sizes and shapes gives us a vast range of power and timbres.¹⁷ Callinet shallots are parallel with parallel slot openings. It would be prohibitively expensive to make custom shallots for every pipe, so we will refer to Laukhuff’s selection of shallots to achieve a close approximation of Callinet’s ratios of resonator top diameters to shallot inside diameters. Figure 10 shows a portion of Laukhuff’s shallot selection for their Type II Clicquot shallots with rounded ends, which closely resemble the Callinet shallots in shape (all dimensions are in millimeters).

Callinet’s ratio of “12” for resonators to shallot inside diameters is a crucial part of his sound. Reiner Janke relates that Cavaillé-Coll’s ratio is approximately 11, and this means that Callinet’s shallots are slightly smaller and drive his wide resonators with slightly less energy.⁶ In the first three rows of our Excel table under the heading “Shallots” in Figure 11 we see the Laukhuff shallot number, the shallot inside diameter “P,” and ratio we are trying to achieve. The Excel file calculates the ratio for us. We cannot achieve exact ratios with the shallot sizes available to us, so we select shallots to get as close as we can to a ratio of 12, i.e., a range of about 11.5 to 12.5. We enter the Laukhuff wall thicknesses in the next row, and the table calculates the outside diameter “M” as simply the inside diameter plus two times the wall thickness. 

The slot opening width of the shallot, “CC” in Figure 12, is extremely important; wider slots yield more power and more harmonic fire. While Chéron did not measure this parameter directly, it is implied in his measurement of the face width “R” minus two times the wall thickness “Q,” a calculation that is accurate for shallots that are cut deeply and nearly fully open. The “face” is the surface of the shallot on which the tongue beats. Tables of reed data most often record the height of the cut of the shallot (Chéron’s data “N” and “O”), but this is a very indirect method of getting at the slot width, especially if the wall thickness is unknown. A more direct method is to simply specify that the shallots are cut until they yield the desired slot opening width, and these are the values you see in the next to last row of Figure 11, slot width “CC.” The last row is a calculation of the ratio of the slot width “CC” to the shallot inside diameter “P,” and while the Callinet data is somewhat noisy, it averages about 0.85, a very widely cut shallot. We adjust our slot widths to achieve that ratio. The pipemaker can now cut the shallots of a given Laukhuff number to the same height and slot widths.

Blocks

We specified Laukhuff’s French blocks for this reed. French boots extend well beyond the block, or the “nut” as it is often called, to support the resonator, a design that minimizes the collapse of the resonator above the block, a common problem in reeds. Bass resonators have a narrower taper, and to keep the boot from extending too far, a “ring” is inserted above the block on the resonators of those pipes. This ring is deleted when the resonator taper sufficiently widens. Figure 13 shows the two classical forms. We specified half-round teak wedges and tinned bronze tuning wires bent at the top at right angles for ease in tuning. The Callinet originals at Dole have wires bent in this manner.

Tongues

We specified Laukhuff’s tongues made of rolled, spring elastic brass. Laukhuff gave us the option of voiced or unvoiced reeds, and we specified voiced with French tongue curves. The art of reed voicing encompasses power, the Bourdon point and timbre, and the promptness of the speech. With a dead length resonator, the voicer adjusts the diameter of the toe opening in the boot to control the wind along with the stiffness and curve of the tongue.

Stiffness relates to wind pressure and the amount of curve that can be tolerated. With a large curve a thick tongue may speak slowly or not at all. If too thin, it will speak quickly but the sound will be weak in fundamental. A range of timbres can be coaxed from tongues with different curves. We will start by characterizing the Callinet tongues with their stiffness. The power of this method will be demonstrated, and it appears that to some degree Callinet thought in these terms as well.

The stiffness of a tongue, especially if it is a simple parallel tongue, may be understood with some very simple ideas. Stiffness is inversely proportional to length, meaning that a tongue of half the length will be twice as stiff. You can demonstrate this to yourself by taking a metal ruler, holding it down at the edge of a table, and letting a portion of the ruler extend beyond the edge of the table; pull up the ruler at the free end, let it go, and listen to the sound it makes. Now extend the ruler only half as far off the table and listen to the sound it makes—it will sound an octave higher with twice the stiffness. Tongues obviously come in different lengths, and the longer tongues beat at lower pitches. Tongues also come in different widths, and what is intuitively obvious is also correct—a tongue of half the width will have half the stiffness.

Tongues also come in different thicknesses, but our intuition may fail us here—the stiffness will be the cube of the thickness. For example, if we double the thickness of a tongue, its stiffness will be 23, and that means it will be eight times stiffer (23 = 8). That makes thickness by far the most sensitive parameter.

In Figure 14 we see a portion of Laukhuff’s thicknesses for tongue brass. These dimensions, like Chéron’s, are in hundredths of a millimeter, e.g., brass with a thickness of “25” is 0.25 mm thick.

Figure 15 shows a table compiled from Chéron’s data on tongues. Chéron gives us not only tongue thickness in column 6 and width in column 5, he also gives us the vibrating length of the tongue from the tuning wire to its end in column 4, a parameter that is very rarely seen in reed documentation. With this data we can make a calculation of the stiffness of the tongues. These stiffness values involve relatively complex calculations that are illustrated in Figure 24. You do not need to understand them in detail if the math is daunting, and they are already worked into the Excel spreadsheet available from the author.⁹

The real point of using stiffness values is that we get a method to adapt the tongues to our shallots and to available tongue thicknesses. The value of this may not at first be obvious, but bear with me. We will take it step by step.

We first take the raw values for vibrating lengths in Figure 15, column 4, graph the values, fit an equation, and calculate the smoothed and missing data in column 2. Figure 16 shows the raw data and fitted equation; the fit with an R2 value of 0.99 is quite reasonable. 

The next step is to calculate the stiffness of Callinet’s tongues.¹³ We use the raw data in Figure 15, columns 4, 5, and 6 to calculate the Callinet tongue stiffnesses shown in column 7. We graph those stiffnesses in Figure 17, and fit it to an equation. This data is quite noisy with a low R2 value.¹⁶ The new equation yields the smoothed stiffness data for all of the tongues in Figure 15, column 8.

This has been a long slog through data and calculations, but we are now very close to reaping the rewards. In our Excel table for tongues in Figure 18 we have entered the smoothed Callinet vibrating length data in the row for vibrating length “X” and the smoothed Callinet stiffness data in the row for target Callinet stiffness. With this data we can now design our tongues.

We make trial entries in the rows for “width” and “thickness,” and the Excel spreadsheet calculates the resulting stiffness in the row “stiffness.” The last row, “width of tongue-slot/2,” tells us when the width we have entered is so narrow that the tongue will literally fall into the slot opening of the shallot, i.e., when the value in this row is zero or less. Ideally, we would like to have a generous overhang of the tongue on the slot opening of the shallot, and this would be something like a minimum of 2 mm on each side of the bass shallot openings and at least 1 mm on each side of the treble openings. It does not matter if the tongue is significantly wider than the face of the shallot (the slot opening width plus the two shallot walls), but it cannot be less than the slot opening itself. 

Now look at the table in Figure 18. The first data column is low C followed by C-sharp, etc. We enter the thickness for low C at 0.47 mm, then we adjust the tongue width until the relative stiffness matches the target Callinet stiffness. A few iterations gives us a tongue width of 14.3 mm and produces a 2.5 mm overhang of the tongue (last row, “width of tongue – slot/2”). If we had selected Laukhuff’s 0.50 mm tongue thickness, we would need to significantly narrow the tongue to achieve the target stiffness, and while it would not fall into the slot, it would be dangerously narrow. This is all there is to it. Just keep doing this for all 49 tongues!

Callinet apparently thought of tongue design in similar terms, although his noisy stiffness data indicates that he was not at all rigorous about this.16 In the table in Figure 19 we see the first two rows of Chéron’s data for the low C and low D pipes. The columns for tongue thickness, “V” and “W,” show that the tongue for D is thinner than the tongue for C. But note in the column for tongue width, “T,” that the 13.0 mm tongue for D is wider than the 12.5 mm tongue for C. Remember that thickness is our most sensitive parameter (it is a cube function of stiffness), while width is simply proportional to stiffness. The thinner tongue for D would lack the necessary stiffness if it were narrower than the tongue for C, and Callinet has compensated by treating tongue widths as an independent variable; he does not care if the tongue is wider than the face of the shallot, and the math for stiffness explains why we should not care, either.

To summarize, we have reproduced Callinet’s stiffness of the tongues with this method. We have achieved this while accommodating the shallots and tongue thicknesses that were available to us from Laukhuff. Figure 20 shows the tongue thicknesses we selected to make the tongues wide enough to extend over the shallot faces, and Figure 21 shows the final adjustments we made to the tongue widths to achieve continuous stiffness. With careful voicing we should be able to reproduce Callinet’s sound <soundclip2>.¹⁴

Boot toe hole diameters 

Toe hole diameters may be used to control the pressure in the boot, and there is evidence that Callinet made extensive use of this. In the bass and tenor octaves the toe holes are narrower than the shallot inside diameters (the maximum flow of wind is limited by the shallot diameter and its opening). These toe hole diameters, Figure 22, are much narrower than those found in Chéron’s data for a Trompette of similar scales and wind pressure in the Isnard organ at St. Maximin.⁸ I have entered the fitted data of Callinet’s toe hole diameters in the last data row of Figures 23a and 23b. Like the stiffness data, the toe hole diameters are quite noisy with an R2 value of 0.49, indicating that Callinet used the toe holes as a voicing variable. There is a poor R2 correlation of 0.20 between the tongue stiffnesses and the toe hole diameters, perhaps indicating that Callinet used this variable to accommodate different tongue curves, thicknesses, and widths.

We can now see our completed table in Figures 23a and 23b (the bass and treble are shown separately to make the table more readable). This table specifies our reproduction of the Callinet 1st Trompette at Auxonne, France! The Excel file shown in this article took considerable time to create, and it is available at no charge from the author.⁹ It can be used as a template for other reeds.

Voicing 

Power balances are greatly affected by scaling and voicing, and Callinet’s data are instructive. Total tuned lengths will be approximately a ratio of 2 for each descending octave if bass power is strong relative to the treble, and we find octave ratios averaging 1.99 for the three Trompettes in the Raisonnance and Grand Orgue of the Isnard organ at Saint Maximin. The Callinet octave ratios are significantly smaller at 1.94, indicating shorter tuned lengths with descending octaves and reduced power in the bass. Reduced wind pressure and reduced power will result in shorter resonators at the same Bourdon point, i.e., at the same timbre.¹⁰ This observation is reinforced by the significantly reduced toe hole diameters in the bass and tenor of Callinet’s reeds. The Bourdon point is also affected by the curve of the tongue—a larger curve makes the sound more powerful, the timbre brighter, and moves the Bourdon point to a longer resonator. Larger curves require more pressure and larger toe holes for prompt speech.

We begin to get a feel for Callinet’s power balances: a restrained power in the bass with still brilliant timbre and fundamental warmth—or put another way, a more ascending treble. A smoother, more sonorous treble can be accentuated with a Bourdon point that is closer to the tuned point in the treble, farther in the bass. For example, Reiner Janke relates that Cavaillé-Coll voiced normal-length reeds close to their Bourdon point just before they transitioned to harmonic-length reeds.¹¹

We might also note that Callinet lets his tongues extend by a small and varying amount beyond the end of his shallots, a technique that subtly affects timbre in much the same manner as adding weights to the tongues. See Chéron’s data in column Y, Figure 25. 

Reed voicing is a complex subject with much subjective opinion. The goal in voicing this reed, and especially the curve of its tongues, is the scintillating French voicing of Callinet. I can think of no better source for understanding French reed voicing than the wonderful essay on this subject by Reiner Janke.⁶ I have translated this essay into English, and it is available by contacting him at [email protected]. He has a gift for finding the important variables in scaling and voicing; see the professional documentary in which he shows how to make and voice perfect copies of a Baroque Silbermann pipe and a Romantic Walcker pipe.¹²

Janke provides further guidance in the voicing of tongues.¹¹ Tongue brass is made by rolling sheets to the desired thickness. The process of rolling produces work-hardened surfaces, and the direction of rolling produces a grain with more stiffness in the direction of rolling. Tongues will be less stiff if they are cut from sheets where the grain is parallel to the width of the tongue. Baroque voicers also commonly filed their tongues to different thicknesses, and this removed the work-hardened surfaces, making their tongues less stiff. A thinner tongue will yield a more rounded timbre, and a thicker and stiffer tongue will be brighter in timbre. Narrowing the tongue will make it louder (it will be less stiff and can be curved more). These are all issues to keep in mind during the voicing process, and they probably account for most of the variability we see in the Callinet stiffnesses in Figure 17 and the toe holes in Figure 22. For those who want to experiment with different tongue configurations, you will need an assortment of reed brass of different thicknesses and a guillotine to cut tongues.

Reflections

This analysis of a Callinet Trompette helps us understand Callinet’s intentions. For those wishing to replicate the entire Callinet chorus at Dole, the Excel model described in this article may be useful as a template to help us interpret the more limited data available to us for the Dole organ.^{3, 9} The author ordered and received a Trompette from Laukhuff based on these specifications as part of a new organ to demonstrate the range of wind dynamics, among other things. This new organ will be fully described in a future issue of this journal with sound clips—stay tuned.

There are many ways to design a reed, and the varieties of reeds and their sounds are virtually limitless. This essay on reed design should not be understood as the only way to tackle this complex subject, but taken rather as a contribution to its discussion. When we hear a sound that commands our attention like the Callinet reeds at Dole, this article reminds us that a great deal of time and effort is required before we can understand those sounds. Callinet reeds are worth our time.

Notes & References

1. Michel Chapuis. Michel Chapuis joue la suite gothique à Dole, a Youtube video by Frederic Munoz, January 25, 2018 <soundclip1>. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oxWHMPS6Lp4.

2. Yves Cabourdin and Pierre Chéron. L’Orgue de Jean-Esprit et Joseph Isnard dans la Basilique de la Madeleine à Saint-Maximin. Nice: ARCAM, 1991, 208 pages, ISBN 2-906700-12-6. 

3. Pierre-Marie Gueritéy et al. L’orgue de Dole, Canevas Editeur, Frasne, France, 1995, 127 pages, ISBN 2-88382-058-9.

4. Laurent Plet. Restauration de l’orgue d’Auxonne, accessed January 11, 2019. lplet.org/orgues/auxonne/tuyaux/tgo_tr1c.htm.

5. Laurent Plet. Restauration de l’orgue d’Auxonne, accessed January 11, 2019. lplet.org/orgues/auxonne/auxonne.htm#sommaire.

6. Reiner Janke. See the article Grundzüge Zungenintonation, accessed January 3, 2019. www.orgel-info.de/. An English translation is also available. The Cavaillé-Coll ratios are general approximations and were reported to Janke by Pierre Chéron. 

7. Plet, Laurent. Restauration de l’orgue d’Auxonne, accessed January 11, 2019. lplet.org/orgues/auxonne/tuyaux/tgo_tr1.htm.

8. L’Orgue de Jean-Esprit et Joseph Isnard dans la Basilique de la Madeleine à Saint-Maximin, pages 139, 155, 156.

9. Michael McNeil. Designing an Historic Reed, Excel file, Mead, Colorado, 2019. Email the author for a free copy: [email protected]. This file also contains data on the Callinet reeds at Dole.

10. See also my discussion of the Bourdon or “flip” point in “1863 E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322, Church of the Immaculate Conception, Boston, Massachusetts, Part 3,” The Diapason, September 2017, pages 20–22.

11. Personal communications, January and March 2019.

12. Reiner Janke. Organ Voicing, Experiential Knowledge of Reiner Janke. www.youtube.com/watch?v=isEWba9rLRY&feature=youtu.be. This professionally produced video by the Universität Göttingen, April 26, 2018, is a revelation for those wishing to understand the voicing of flue pipes. The sound track is in English.

13. In Figure 24 we see the stiffness calculations of the tongues with proper physical units of Newtons of force and Newtons/meter of stiffness. While the force is admittedly applied uniformly over the surface of the tongue and not at the end as modeled in the equations, the resulting stiffness increases uniformly with pitch in the expected manner. See the website: www.tribology-abc.com/calculators/t14_9.htm.

14. Michel Chapuis. Beauvarlet à Dole avec Michel Chapuis, a Youtube video by Frederic Munoz, December 5, 2017
<soundclip2>. www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_wPdGUfuD8&feature=youtu.be.

15. This temperament is described in detail in the author’s article, “Exploring the Sound of Keyboard Tunings,” The Diapason, April 2016, pages 20–21.

16. The term “R2” or “R-squared” describes how closely the data fits to the equation on the graph. If all of the data points fall on the line, the R² is equal to “1” and the fit is perfect. If the R2 is zero, the data is just a scatterplot looking much like a shotgun blast with no correlation at all to the line described by the equation. A click of the mouse in Excel will show the R2 for any graphed data fitted to an equation. The noisy fit of R2 = 0.56 for the Callinet tongue stiffnesses in Figure 17 may very likely indicate that Callinet used stiffness as a variable during voicing.

17. Personal communication of March 2019. Janke points out that the shallot functions as a resonator which strongly affects the timbre of the sound. Extremely wide shallots, typical of North German Baroque practice, produce an “oo” vowel with strong harmonics in the range of 200 Hz; less wide shallots will produce an “ah” vowel with strong harmonics in the range of 400 Hz; French Baroque shallots are narrower and produce an “ee” vowel with strong harmonics in the range
of 600 Hz.

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with twenty-seven patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Very few organs survive the depredations of time. Some are the victims of wars and fires, but most are the victims of the good intentions and interventions driven by changing tastes in sound. Those few that have survived such calamities usually have something special about them in their sound or their visual impact. The 1750 Joseph Gabler organ at Weingarten, Germany, is special on both counts—its dramatic chorus makes music come alive, and the architecture of its casework and façade is a stunning tour de force.

The Gabler organ has been criticized since almost the time it was built for its lack of power, having almost a chamber instrument quality. But the Gabler organ has a dramatic flair and musicality that sets it apart from most pipe organs, perhaps teaching us some valuable lessons in tonal design.

Human sensory perception takes notice only of changes. The old joke about cooking a live frog has more than a grain of truth to it. Place a frog in hot water, and it jumps out; raise the temperature of the water slowly, and the frog will take no notice and become dinner. It is the same with sounds. If a sound does not change, we do not notice it or we lose interest. Gabler was a master of the control of change in sound, and this is the heart of the drama in his organ. By way of example, Johann Sebastian Bach’s early composition, the Toccata in E major, BWV 566, requires an organ with a dramatic sound to pull it off, not just a loud organ. Peter Stadtmüller’s 1975 recording of BWV 566 on the Gabler organ takes us to new emotional dimensions <soundclip1>.¹ The Gabler organ’s lessons go to the heart of musicality.

In 1986 Friedrich Jakob and the organbuilding firm of Kuhn published a wonderful book on the Gabler organ at Weingarten. Die Grosse Orgel der Basilika zu Weingarten is available from Orgelbau Kuhn AG, Männedorf, Switzerland.² We are very fortunate that Jakob and Orgelbau Kuhn took the time to write this book and publish it. In an effort to better understand the sound of this instrument, I translated some of its passages with Google Translate, edited the translation as an organbuilder would understand it, and then graphically analyzed the data from the appendix of this book. This is but a very small part of what this book has to offer, and those seriously interested in this organ should purchase this wonderful book.

The current basic specifications of the organ after the restoration by Kuhn are:

Manuals: compass C to c′′′, 49 notes; pitch a′ = 419 Hz at 15 degrees Celsius; wind pressure = 70 mm water column.

Pedal: compass C to d′, 27 notes (originally C to g); pitch a′ = 419 Hz at 15 degrees Celsius; wind pressure = 70 mm water column.

Orgelbau Kuhn restored the Gabler organ between 1981 and 1983. The work was carried out partly in Männedorf, partly in Weingarten, and was summarized as follows:  

A. Static remedial measures:

• Renovation of the gallery floor, partial replacement of supporting beams. 

• Improvement of the Kronpositiv position. 

• Improved support for the bracing of the Positive chest.

B. Removal of added features:

• Demolition of the additional works built in 1954.

• Rebuilding of the Barker machine and restoration of the continuous direct mechanics.

• Rebuilding of the electric trackers for the Kronpositiv, reconnection to the Oberwerk by means of the original conductor blocks.

• Rebuilding of the numerous bellows as well as the newer wind ducts and blower system.

• A reconstructed wind system with six wedge bellows.

C. Normal cleaning and restoration work.

• Make the whole organ wind-tight again.

• Treatment against wood pests. 

• Reworking of all mechanical parts, in particular the axle points. 

• Repair and reconstruction work on the pipework. 

• Tuning in an unequal temperament.³  

Pipework repair

Orgelbau Kuhn performed the normal repairs on pipes that would be expected from centuries of tuning damage. Split pipe seams and loose languids were resoldered, deformed pipe bodies were rounded, and new sections were added to the tops of damaged pipes. 

The effect of the wind system on sound dynamics

The dynamic response of the Gabler wind system is one of most important aspects of its dramatic sound. While measurement data of the wind system is lacking, Orgelbau Kuhn carefully described what they found and what they changed:

The Gabler wind supply in the north tower had already been replaced for the first time in the work of 1861/62. In place of the six original wedge bellows, there were ten box bellows of a new design. Probably in 1912 during the installation of an electric blower the wind system was again modernized by the construction of a large, so-called double-rise bellows.

In the course of the restoration, six wedge bellows were again set up, however, according to practical requirements, with motor operation. The old beams of the bellows chamber did not allow any definite conclusions as to the former position of these six bellows, so free assumptions had to be made.

The original wind duct system, in so far as this had not been done earlier, was practically completely expanded in 1954 and replaced by a new version with cardboard pipes. On the basis of a large number of traces (cut-outs on the casework, color traces on the walls, cut-outs on the beams and on the grids, as well as on the original windchest connections), the course as well as the dimensioning of the Gabler wind duct system could be known.

In three places, where it was obviously not possible to expand, some of the original ducts were preserved. On the one hand, these are the supply ducts to the two Rückpositives under the floor, on the other by a section of the connecting channel above the façade middle flat. This remainder was of particular importance. This is a double channel (57 x 17.5 cm outer dimensions) with a middle wall. The upper part of the duct is marked with “Manual” and the lower part with “Pedal” with a weakly readable red pencil. This was the proof of the actual execution of the wind separation for manual and pedal, which was already required in the contract.⁴

Data on the size of the bellows, ducts, and pallet boxes would allow a calculation of the capacitance (volume) and the inductance (mass, or weight on the bellows) of the wind system. From this data the resonant frequency could be calculated, giving insight into the slow, dramatic risetime of this wind system on full demand. What we do know from the elegant layout drawings of the Gabler organ by Orgelbau Kuhn is that the wind ducts were very long, and the cardboard ducting from 1954 (heard in the 1975 recording by Peter Stadtmüller) was apparently larger in cross section. (“In three places, where it was obviously not possible to expand, some of the original ducts were preserved.”⁴) This means that the internal volume of the wind ducts was larger in 1975, and the sheer length of the ducting indicates a very large internal volume for the entire wind system.

In the 1975 recording we hear a very long, slow surge in the sound of the full pleno driven by a very low resonant frequency in the wind system, and this is a large part of the dramatic sound of the instrument. Such a slow wind system obviously forces a slower tempo, and that is how Stadtmüller interpreted the Toccata in E Major in the glorious acoustics of the basilica. From this we see an essential component of dramatic change: a slow buildup of power when the full organ is played and the wind system is forced to work hard <soundclip2>.¹ The current sound of the organ post-restoration still retains a very dramatic sound, but it is slightly faster, and may be the consequence of the smaller ducting cross sections with less capacitance.¹⁵ When asked about the pipe organ, Igor Stravinsky is reported to have said, “The monster doesn’t breathe.” Although it may have been unintended, Gabler’s gift to us is that he makes the organ breathe.

To put this into perspective, the author took careful measurements in 1996 of the J.-E. & J. Isnard wind system on their organ at St. Maximin, France, and calculated its resonant frequency to be 1.2 cycles per second, a value that correlated very well with actual measurements of the slow, grand surge of this wind system.⁵ Although it is not as long a surge as what we hear in the Gabler organ, the J.-E. & J. Isnard organ at St. Maximin also features a dramatic buildup in power on full organ, the result of high capacitance and high mass in the wind system.

Famous organs with dramatic chorus effects, e.g., the Isnard at St. Maximin, tend to exhibit a purposeful starving of the wind supply where the total area of the toes that can be played in a full plenum are roughly equal to or even greater than the cross section of the wind duct that feeds them. Gabler’s reduction of ranks in the Kronpositiv to alleviate wind starvation, as noted by Orgelbau Kuhn, does indeed suggest that Gabler restricted the cross sections in his ducting. To more fully understand the wind flow of this organ we need measurements of the ducting, pallet openings, channels, and pipe toe diameters for each division.

The effect of the mixture designs on sound dynamics

Pipes are very effective sources of change in sound when they are out of tune (think of the richness of a celeste). We also hear complex dynamic changes in the sound when the speech transients of many pipes combine to form a complex onset of speech in the attack of a chord. The most obvious sources of tonal change are Gabler’s immense mixtures that contain as many as twelve ranks in a single stop. His Sequialters are also constructed of many ranks, and they are scaled exactly like the mixtures. The combination of the Hauptwerk Mixtur, Cymbalum, and Sesquialter contains a vast number of pipes that, as Jakob nicely phrased it, have the effect of a “string choir.”

Multiple ranks at the same pitch do not produce significantly more power (the power increase of doubling the pipes at a single pitch is the square root of 2, or 1.4 times the power). The significant effect is in the depth of the chorus, which is heard as subtle celesting (mistuning) in sustained chords, and which is also heard in the attack of a chord where many pipes speaking together have subtle differences in the speed of their speech and their harmonic content. To some degree these effects are mitigated by the “pulling” effect; pipes of the same pitch placed closely together on the same channel will tend to “pull” each other into tune. But the Gabler chorus has not only many duplicated pitches in a single mixture, it has three such mixtures on the Hauptwerk with limitless possibilities for subtle mistuning effects. The upper pitch ceiling in Gabler’s mixtures is a 1⁄8′ pipe. The preponderance of mixture tone resides in the region from 1⁄2′ to 1⁄8′ pitch, precisely the frequencies to which human ears are most sensitive.

Understanding the sound of the Gabler organ

The appendix of the book contains wonderful data on pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights (cutups). No data exists on the diameters of the toe openings or the depths of the pipe flueways. This data would allow us to understand the very high cutups of the pipework in this organ. Furthermore, the ratio of the areas of toes to flueways plays a large role in the speech of these pipes. We can only hope that this data will someday be made available. The very useful reed pipe scales in the appendix would benefit from additional data on shallot opening widths, tongue lengths from the tuning wire, tongue widths, and tongue thicknesses, all of which would help us to better understand the sound, especially the very effective Pedal 16′ Bombarde.

Orgelbau Kuhn addressed the low power of the Gabler organ in their description of its scaling and voicing.

The sound of the Gabler organ was already felt as comparatively weak, often as too weak. From the construction period, there were no complaints, because the deadlines and costs were too much in the foreground. Even so, the sound development must have been perceived as partially deficient. This is borne out by the various supplementary technical measures taken by Gabler to increase the sound: the lifting of the roofs by means of cable mechanics, the opening of the side walls of the Oberwerk and the Pedal. All these changes, however, did not benefit much. The reason lay deeper . . . .

The weak sound of the Gabler organ . . . finally led to the construction of auxiliary works, along with stylistic considerations as a result of the altered sound tastes of the time. This resulted in 1912 in the construction of the Seraphonwerk with seven high-pressure registers (150 mm water column) as well as the supplementation of the Kronpositiv by a Cymbal.

What is the source of the relatively weak sound, or rather the relatively low decibel performance of this organ? According to our findings, there are essentially four. The scales of the pipework by Gabler, the sometimes precarious wind conditions, the inhibited sound egress due to Gabler’s compact design, and finally the throttling by the narrowing of the toeholes of the pipes. The number of nicks is irrelevant in this context.

Orgelbau Kuhn pointed to the casework as a source for the low power of the organ.

A[nother] reason for the relative weakness of the sound is to be found in the comparatively small openings for egress of the sound . . . . The big façade pipes are very closely spaced. Apart from the triangle openings around the pipe feet only very narrow slots between the pipes are available for the egress of sound.

Interestingly, images of the façade show that Gabler added carved ornaments between the feet of the façade pipes, further blocking the egress of sound.

Massive, unperforated pipe shades also reduce the egress of sound. While the three problems of scaling, wind supply, and compact construction were already present, the fourth problem only arose as the organ aged: the narrowing of the toe holes due to the very steep angles of the toeboard bore chamfers on which they sat. Last but not least, it was also due to late maintenance. This secondary damage was discovered and corrected in the course of the restoration, while the other characteristics of the Gabler style, of course, remain untouched.⁶

Scaling

The scaling of the Gabler organ is unusually narrow for such a large acoustical space. And unlike the French who scaled their foundations wide but kept the upperwork stop scales narrow, Gabler uses a constant scale, which is narrow in both the foundations and upperwork. Why would Gabler do this? The answer may lie in the layout of his unusual principal chorus, which with its enormous mixtures looks more like an ancient Blockwerk than a typical chorus of his time. Here is Orgelbau Kuhn’s description of the problem:

We can only confirm: Gabler had difficulty with the scales. It is not only in the strings, but in general, that the composition of the scaling is quite narrow. Obviously, he looked at the size of the scales as an absolute one, whereas in reality they were dependent on space. For the giant room of the Weingartner Basilica, respectable distance considerations were appropriate. As a result of these under-nourishing scales, the principal is already near the strings, while the strings are already struggling against the frontier, where a clean, precise, and reliable approach to the fundamental tone is scarcely possible.

That is why Gabler also had to make extensive use of voicing aids, not only of nicking, but also of other voicing aids such as front and box beards. By making use of these aids, at least, all the pipes were able to speak in the fundamental, but a development of the power of the organ was not possible.

Gabler sought to compensate for this scaling deficit through numerous double-ranked and multiple-ranked voices. In the mixture voices, Gabler goes much further. In the Hauptwerk, for example, he built the Mixtur 2′ with ten ranks, the Cimbel 1′ with twelve ranks, and the Sesquialter with nine ranks. Through these chorus effects, Gabler sought to achieve sound power, a power that was not due to the too narrow scales. As we have seen in the Kronpostiv, but also in the Mixturbass, he had wanted to go further in this direction of multiple ranks, but he was, to a certain extent, overtaken by the second evil: he came to the limits of the wind supply. The long wind trunks made an inadequate supply, so that in the course of the work he was forced to cut back on the number of ranks (in the Kronpositiv, for example, a reduction from 18 to 2 ranks).

This struggle for sound and wind is clearly visible to the expert on the evidence in the construction. This desperate wrestling resulted in a great success. But it is clearly a struggle and not a virtuosic play with the principles of organbuilding. The result is a result of the struggle and not artistic design.⁶

The wonderful scaling data in this book was entered into a spreadsheet that normalized the measurements into Normal Scales for pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights (or “cutups” to a voicer). This graphical presentation allows a much easier interpretation of the data. A set of graphs of the Hauptwerk (Figures 7, 8, and 9) and Pedal (Figures 10, 11, and 12), with commentary, are presented at the end of this article.

The graphs of the pipe diameters (Figure 7) corroborate Orgelbau Kuhn’s assertion that much of the low power was due to narrow scaling. Mouth widths are usually a better indication of relative balances of power, but Gabler used mouth widths that were generally very close to the normalized mouth width scale (one fourth of the pipe circumference), and as such, the normalized mouth width scales (Figure 8) are very similar to the normalized pipe diameters.

The normalized mouth height (or cutup) scales (Figure 9) are remarkable. Gabler’s mouth heights are generally fairly low in the bass increasing to extremely high values in the trebles, so high in fact, that 1⁄8′ pipes are cut up roughly 40% of their mouth widths. The relatively high mouths would suggest pipes with very open toes and flueways, although this data is unfortunately not tabulated. 

Gabler knew how to use very wide scales, but he only used them in his flutes (see the graph of the Hauptwerk, Figure 7). Is Gabler showing us what a Gothic chorus would look like? The chorus effects of these multiple-ranked mixtures are astounding, unique, and very musical. Chorus dynamics, not power, may have been his objective. The subtle imperfections of tuning in these ranks produce subtle celesting on a grand scale. Subtle differences in voicing will produce a rich chorus effect resulting from random differences in the speech onset of the pipes in these mixtures. Gabler may have aimed at the grand sound of a Gothic Blockwerk, not loud, but rich in texture and chorus effects.

Few unmolested pipes remain from the Gothic period, much less complete organs, but one example stands out: the 1475 organ by da Prato in the Basilica of San Petronio, in Bologna, Italy. As recent research shows, this organ is largely original and serves as an elegant example of a Gothic chorus.⁷ The author graphed and combined the data for both the Gabler and da Prato organs. In Figure 1 we see data for normalized pipe diameters, and in Figure 2 we see normalized mouth widths. The data for the da Prato chorus extends to 24′ low F; the 32′ value is a straight-line extrapolation of the 16′ and 24′ da Prato data.8 The Gabler chorus includes the Hauptwerk and Pedal pipes, which extend to 32′.

Scaling data are intrinsically noisy; variations from the intended scale are produced both by the pipemaker and by the person who measures a pipe. Variations of +/- a halftone are normal. The data are remarkable because both sets of data converge on the same intended diameter and mouth scale. We do not know if Gabler imitated the da Prato scales or any other Gothic design, but the similarity of the Gabler and da Prato scales is unquestionable. The dotted black line represents the approximate intended scale, the red lines represent the actual Gabler pipes, and the blue lines represent the actual da Prato pipes.

Gothic pipework (Figure 3) from an organ by an unknown builder in Ostönnen, Germany, exhibits an unusual design characteristic also seen on the façade pipes of the Gabler organ (Figure 4). Figure 3 shows an extension of the upper lip at the sides of the mouth (red arrow), making the mouth width slightly narrower than the width of the flueway.⁹ We do not know if Gabler was taking his cue from a Gothic model, but the comparison is interesting.

Voicing

The minimum data set to understand the voicing of an organ includes the mouth height (“cutup”), toe diameters, flueway depths, treatment of the languids (bevel angles and types of nicking), and presence or absence of ears and other such devices. Like the da Prato organ of 1475, the Gabler organ exhibits no ears on the façade pipes and presumably none on the internal pipes of the principal chorus. Orgelbau Kuhn provides data on cutups, but not on toe diameters or flueway depths. Voicers adjust toe diameters and flueway depths to affect the flow of wind for more or less power. Voicers raise cutups to make the pipe tone smoother with less harmonic bite. More wind, from either the toe or flueway, will increase power and make the tone brighter with more harmonic bite. A more powerful and brighter timbre can be made smoother again with higher cutup. Hence, it is important that we know all three variables—cutups, toe diameters, and flueway depths—if we are to understand the voicing. We have only mouth height data. 

A common precept of neo-Baroque voicing was the rule that the mouth height should be 1⁄4 of the width of the mouth. There is, of course, no basis for this in historic work, nor is there any theoretical basis, and it produces a rather strident timbre in most pipework. The normalized mouth heights of the Gabler organ, seen in Figure 5, are remarkable. Only in the bass do they approach a value which produces a height 1⁄4 of the mouth width (this occurs when the normalized mouth height scale in halftones is the same as the normalized mouth width scale in halftones). But as the pitch ascends for the Gabler pipes, so do their normalized mouth heights, until at the highest 1⁄8′ pitches the mouths are very high, about 40% of their mouth widths. Also of note is that the treble mouth heights of the principal chorus are almost as large as the mouth heights of the very wide flutes in the Hauptwerk. The same trend is seen in Figure 6 of the da Prato mouth heights, but the typical da Prato values are lower, a reflection of that organ’s lower wind pressure. The highest mouths in the da Prato graph are also those of its flutes. Gabler’s treatment of mouth height looks very much like the Gothic work of da Prato, adjusted for higher wind pressure.

Reiner Janke sent the author photos of pipe mouths from the 1743 choir organ at Weingarten, also built by Gabler. These photos show very generous flueway depths and deep, fine nicking. Although we do not have toe diameters to confirm this, it may be reasonable to assume that Gabler’s high mouth heights in the treble reflect a desire for a more ascending treble.

Orgelbau Kuhn limited their analysis of the voicing to the presence of nicking and the method of tuning:

While ‘tuning’ means the mere regulation of the pitch, the ‘voicing’ includes the processing of all partial aspects of a musical tone, including the loudness, the tone color, the tone accent, or the transient response. This eminently artistic work is generally performed only when a new organ is being built, or when a major rebuilding is carried out.

A restoration, especially if it also includes changes or regressions in the wind supply system (bellows and wind duct system), also causes a new voicing of the pipework. It is necessary to think philosophically about the original Gabler voicing, and it would be wrong to assert that it had remained intact, for the intervening interventions were too great. Of course, we did studies on other Gabler organs, but also on instruments of other South German masters such as Holzhay and Höss, but there were no exact models for the voicing in the Weingarten types, one simply had to work with the existing pipe material. The technical procedure can be easily rewritten. First, the pipes were normalized and repaired where necessary (open solder seams and loose languids soldered). The languids were then carefully placed in the correct position for an optimal response to the pipe in the fundamental. In the rest, as little as possible was changed.

Gabler has made extensive use of nicking. This can be seen in the non-speaking but voiced façade pipes c′–d′ of the Kronpositiv, which are completely unchanged. In addition to the original nicking of Gabler, the main body of the pipes also contains nicking of other handwork. It turned out to be impossible to assign only the newer nicking, but to leave the Gabler nicking unmarked. So it was decided not to work the languids; the insertion of new languids was not considered at all . . . .

The labial bass pipes are provided with cleanly inscribed tuning slots proportioned to the pipe diameter up to the 2′ position. Attempts have shown that stops without these tuning slots could not be tuned over the entire range of octaves. These tuning slots are therefore to be regarded as original. In contrast to later practices, however, these tuning slots are only scribed and not fully enrolled.

Tuning 

The absolute pitch is A = 419 Hz at 15 degrees Celsius. The original temperament was very similar to Gottfried Silbermann’s meantone. It was characterized by eight not pure, but good, major thirds, eleven tempered fifths, and one large Wolf fifth on D-sharp to G-sharp. It had an equal temperament fifth at C, extending to -12 cents at G-sharp and extending to +5 cents at D-sharp.

The current milder tuning deviates from the original meantone and has an equal temperament fifth at C, extending to -9 cents at G-sharp and extending to +1 cent at D-sharp.10 It is not known if the Musical Heritage Society recording of 1975 reflects Gabler’s original tuning or something closer to the present tuning.1 Like Gottfried Silbermann, Gabler uses high cutups in his voicing for a less strident timbre, and this works well with meantone temperaments, mitigating the harshness of the more dissonant intervals.

Reflections

Friedrich Jakob reflected on the sound of the Gabler organ:

How is the sound of the Gabler organ to be characterized? We are confronted with the general problem of describing sound with words. With features such as warm, round, pointed, sonorous, bright, and so on, no exact statements are possible. Still, be tempted.

The Gabler organ is certainly not a forceful organ. Power and brilliance are missing in comparison to the normal large organ. The sound is somewhat reserved, veiled, poetic, and pastel colored. The tremendous multiple ranks of the mixtures give the effect of a string orchestra. Minimal deviations of the individual voices do not result in any false tone, but a larger range of the right one. It was very important to leave the organ intimate in character with the chamber music and not to have a wrong symphonic influence. But since everything is wind-tight again, and every pipe is speaking the fundamental, the organ sounds a little more powerful than before.¹¹

The claim has been made that Gabler did not understand the principles of scaling as they relate to larger rooms, and Jakob describes very convincing evidence that Gabler struggled with the power. But the inflection point of Gabler’s constant scale at 1⁄2′ demonstrates that Gabler had a good grasp on the effect of distance on the sound absorption of higher frequencies. Tones extending from the deep bass up to the pitch of a 1⁄2′ pipe will carry very effectively over long distances, but pitches above that point will lose energy in their interaction with the atmosphere, so much so that the sound of a 1⁄8′ pipe will lose 5 dB in power at 500 feet.¹² One halftone of scaling is equivalent to 0.5 dB of power, so this means that 10 halftones of wider scaling must be used at 1⁄8′ to compensate for the atmospheric losses at 500 feet. Gabler widened his mixture pipes by 8 halftones from 1⁄2′ pitch to 1⁄8′ pitch. The length of the Basilica of Saint Martin and Saint Oswald at Weingarten is 102 meters, or 335 feet. Gabler has compensated very well for the distance losses. The absolute values of these scales are indeed much narrower than what we would typically find in rooms of this size, but the mathematics show that Gabler was cognizant of the effects of large distances. But Jakob also convincingly demonstrates that Gabler was not satisfied with the power, went to some trouble to correct it, and ultimately failed in the effort.

Figures 7 and 8 show the diameter and mouth width scales of the Hauptwerk. Note how much wider Gabler scales his flutes relative to the principal chorus. These flutes are quite powerful and provide an extremely effective contrast to the mixture plenum. A wonderful example of this contrast can be heard in Ton Koopman’s interpretation of the Bach Concerto in A Minor after Vivaldi, “Allegro,” BWV 593 <soundclip3>.¹⁵ Here Koopman demonstrates that Gabler’s flutes can cut through the principal chorus. While typical interpretations of this concerto use contrasting principal choruses, Koopman’s performance gives a clarity and beauty to this concerto that can only be heard with Gabler’s tonal balances. Gabler’s organ, if it is not powerful, is extremely musical, and we can learn much from his example, all of it applicable to organs with more power.

To summarize, some of Gabler’s musicality derives from the intense chorus effects of the mixtures with their many ranks, the many duplicated pitches, and the subtle depth created by the mistuning of those multiple ranks. Multiple ranks do not significantly increase power, but they do increase the sense of chorus.

Another aspect of the musicality of the organ resides in its very slow wind response, which takes the form of a dramatic surge to full power when the organ is playing a full pleno. Another effect that produces a slower wind is a high resistance in the wind system, and Jakob mentions this in his description of the Kronpositiv ducting, which was so restrictive that Gabler was forced to remove a large number of ranks on that chest. Many classical organs feature wind trunks that were purposely designed with smaller cross sections to barely flow the required wind, or even starved the wind to a degree.¹³  

Finally, Gabler employed very large scales in the deep bass of the Pedal. Along with the robust Bombarde 16′, the Pedal produces a tactile effect underpinning the modest power of the manual pleno. The overall effect of the Gabler organ is intensely dramatic without being at all overbearing. To reduce this to a basic philosophy, Gabler was a master of designing for a sense of change in the sound, both aural and tactile. The acoustician R. Murray Schafer observed that “. . . a sound initiated before our birth, continued unabated and unchanging throughout our lifetime and extended beyond our death, would be perceived by us as—silence.”¹⁴ His point was that for a sound to have drama, to grab our attention, it must change: change in pitch with the subtle mis-tunings of his multiple-ranked mixtures, and change in power with the slow rise in the pressure of the wind. The organ at Weingarten is the singular achievement of a master, and even if by today’s standards the overall power seems modest, we can use Gabler’s lessons to great advantage.

 

Excellent recordings exist of the restored Gabler organ.¹⁵ See also Youtube for a cut from this CD: Präludium & Fuga C Moll, BWV 549: www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWWtpS-yvKI.

 

The following normalized graphical data for the Hauptwerk and Pedal were constructed from Jakob’s data. Email the author for a copy of the original Excel file with the data and normalizations, which also includes the Oberwerk: [email protected]. Readers interested in the theory behind these normalizations may refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs.¹²

Hauptwerk data (see Figures 7–9)

Jakob’s claim that narrow scaling is responsible for much of the low power of this organ is amply supported by the normalized pipe diameter data. Gabler is using a “constant scale,” where all pipes speaking the same pitch are the same scale, regardless in which stop they appear or in which part of the keyboard compass they appear. This constant scale averages -7 halftones from 16′ to 1⁄2′ pitches, then increases rather linearly to +1 halftone at 1⁄8′ pitch. The normalized mouth widths seen in the next graph follow a similar trend because Gabler scaled his mouth widths very close to 1⁄4 of the pipe’s circumference, the basis of the normal mouth width scale.

Gabler’s normalized mouth heights are remarkable in their deviation from the pipe diameter and mouth width Normal Scales, and they tell us something about Gabler’s intentions in power balance from the bass to treble. High mouths are a tool of the voicer to achieve a smoother, less bright tone, or alternatively, a more powerful tone when the pipe is winded with larger toes or larger flueways. Gabler uses the mouth height as an independent variable, perhaps to achieve an ascending treble power in the plenum. Data on the toe diameters and flueway depths would give us a deeper understanding.

The diameter and mouth scales of the Hauptwerk 8′ and 2′ flutes are very wide. The Gabler flutes are very smooth and liquid in tone and have very high mouths when plotted on the Normal Scale, but those mouth cutups would appear low when looking at the actual pipes because the diameter and mouth scales are very wide. Gabler knew how to use very wide scales, but he only applied such scales to the flutes, perhaps suggesting that his narrow principal chorus scales were an intended result, even in this large acoustic.

Pedal data (see Figures 10–12)

In Gabler’s Pedal we also see a constant scale, but it has a different shape, averaging about +3 halftones at 32′ pitch, descending linearly to about -7 halftones at 2′ pitch, and thereafter remaining roughly flat at that scale up to 1⁄2′ pitch. These wide scales in the deep bass are the source of the tactile effect in Gabler’s sound. Human hearing becomes dramatically less efficient in the bass; at about 20 Hz we hear and feel a sound at about the same level. Below that frequency we tend to only feel the sound. The frequency of a 32′ pipe is 16 Hz and is much more felt than heard. Note the very wide scales of the 16′ Octavbass. It is powerful enough to achieve a strong tactile effect; also note its very high cutups, which imply full wind at the toes and flueways. 

Like the Hauptwerk, the Pedal mouth widths are similar in normalized scaling to the pipe diameters and tell a similar story. Also like the Hauptwerk, the Pedal mouth heights dramatically ascend with higher pitch. 

The Pedal Bombarde is full length with rectangular wooden resonators. The effective scale of a wooden resonator is its diagonal measurement, i.e., the width of its standing wave, and this reed measures a very generous 240 mm at low C. Combined with the tactile character of the deep bass flue pipes, the Bombarde is a very strong component of the drama achieved by the Gabler chorus.

Notes:

1. Peter Stadtmüller, Toccata in E major, BWV 566, J. S. Bach, Musical Heritage Society MHS 3195, Gabler organ, Basilica of Saint Martin and Saint Oswald at Weingarten.

2. Friedrich Jakob, Die Grosse Orgel der Basilika zu Weingarten, Geschichte und Restaurierung der Gabler-Orgel, Verlag Orgelbau Kuhn, Männedorf, Switzerland, 1986, 146 pages. The book and shipping totaled 73.00 Swiss Francs. At this time Kuhn is only able to receive funds wired to their account, which makes the book rather expensive to those of us who live across the Atlantic Ocean. Email Orgelbau Kuhn AG: [email protected]. Website: www.orgelbau.ch.

3. Ibid., pp. 40–43.

4. Ibid., pp. 55–56.

5. My statement of the “. . .motions of the bellows plates. . . to be ≈ 1.25 Hz” for the Isnard wind system in The Sound of Pipe Organs, page 108, has errors that I missed as a result of the closeness of the calculated resonance in Hz and the measured period of the response in seconds. My measurement of the bellows response at 1.25 seconds represented three motions of the bellows, down-up-down, which is 1.5 times the period of the wind surge. Therefore, the correct period, one cycle of two motions, down-up, is 1.25 / 1.5 = 0.83 seconds. Inverting that (1 / 0.83 seconds) gives us 1.20 Hz, or cycles per second, which perfectly correlates to the correctly calculated resonant frequency of the system.

6. Die Grosse Orgel der Basilika zu Weingarten, pp. 72–79.

7. Oscar Mischiati and Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, Gli Organi della Basilica di San Petronio in Bologna, Pàtron Editore, Bologna, 2013, 577 pp.

8. Michael McNeil, A Comparative Analysis of the Scaling and Voicing of Gothic and Baroque Organs from Bologna and St. Maximin, e-publication, PDF, Mead, Colorado, 2016. Email the author for free copy:
[email protected].

9. See Youtube video of the organ at Ostönnen: www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxmsZ5ksaVY. Also see the Youtube panoramic video of the Gabler organ in which you can zoom in to see the same treatment of the façade pipe mouths: www.panorama-rundblick.de/gabler-orgel-weingarten. Click on the red arrow to move to the front of the console to see the 32′ façade.

10. Die Grosse Orgel der Basilika zu Weingarten, p. 78.

11. Ibid., p. 79.

12. The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 13–14.

13. Ibid., pp. 119–127. See the example of the wind flow calculations for the Isnard organ at St. Maximin.

14. R. Murray Schafer, The Tuning of the World, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1977, p. 262.

15. Ton Koopman, J. S. Bach Orgelwerke II, Gabler-Orgel, Basilika Weingarten, Novalis CD, 150 020-2, 1988.

 

Photo: The 1750 Joseph Gabler organ, Basilica of Saint Martin and Saint Oswald, Weingarten, Germany (photo credit: Thomas Keller; see the source in Note 9)

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, voiced, and researched pipe organs since 1973. Stimulating work as a research engineer in magnetic recording paid the bills. He is working on his Opus 5, which explores how an understanding of the human sensitivity to the changes in sound can be used to increase emotional impact. Opus 5 includes double expression, a controllable wind dynamic, chorus phase shifting, and meantone. Stay tuned.

Editor’s note: The Diapason offers here a feature at our digital edition—two sound clips. Any subscriber can access this by logging into our website, click on Magazine, then this issue, View Digital Edition, scroll to this page, and click on each <soundclip> in the text.

Part 1 of this series appeared in the December 2022 issue, pages 12–17.

Deductive logic is tautological; there is no way to get a new truth out of it, and it manipulates false statements as readily as true ones. If you fail to remember this, it can trip you—with perfect logic. . . . Inductive logic is much more difficult—but can produce new truths.²¹

A range of voicing styles

In Part 1 we discovered the features of Silbermann’s pipe construction and voicing that make his sound unique. What could we learn by comparing Silbermann’s voicing to other styles? A great deal, as it turns out, and to do this we will take a much deeper dive into the voicing parameters shown in Part 1.

Toe diameters

Toe diameters control power by limiting the flow of wind and reducing the pressure in the pipe foot. We often hear the term “open toe” voicing, but what does this really mean? And how could we compare the very different regulation of toes in Germanic and French voicing? Tables of raw pipe toe diameters do not convey the intent of the organbuilder or allow us to make meaningful comparisons. 

In 1972 Dirk Flentrop advised me that a starting point for estimating the diameter of a pipe toe is the square root of its resonator diameter, and that is assuredly not the widest possible toe.²² Building on this idea I devised what I call a toe constant “c” to compare the flow of wind through pipe toes. Flentrop’s advice, the square root of a pipe’s diameter, defines a toe constant “c” of exactly 1. Interestingly, the toe constant for Andreas Silbermann’s pipe shown in Figure 2 in Part 1 is 0.97, virtually identical to Flentrop’s guidance.

Toe constants can be larger or smaller to suit the acoustics and the power balances within a chorus, and they can vary for different levels of wind pressure. For example, if we want more power at the same pressure, we will use larger toe constants and larger toes, and vice versa for less power. If we want the same power at a higher pressure, we will use smaller toe constants.

The toe constant also needs to take into account the larger or smaller flows of wind needed by different mouth widths. Mouth widths are specified as a fraction of the pipe circumference. A 2⁄7-width mouth is wider than a 1⁄4-width mouth on the same pipe, and it will need a larger toe to feed more wind to the wider flueway of that mouth. I added a term to Flentrop’s advice (he typically used 1⁄4 mouth widths) to adjust the wind required to feed wider or narrower mouths. For example, Silbermann’s toe constants in Figure 8 (page 17) have values of 1 at 2′ pitch, but those values reflect toes that are larger in diameter than the square root of their pipe diameters—those toe diameters are adjusted proportionally larger to provide the extra wind needed by the flueways of Silbermann’s wider 2⁄7 mouths. Note 23 shows the very simple equation for calculating the toe diameter from the pipe diameter, mouth width fraction, and toe constant. 

The toe constant now allows us to visually compare the relative flow of wind among voicing styles and wind pressures for pipes of any scale or mouth width. While the term “open toe” is vague, the toe constant is quantifiable.

Silbermann adjusted the toes of the Freiberg Dom chorus in Figure 8 for more wind flow in the bass and treble. None of the toe constants are below Flentrop’s guidance of 1. The highest trebles at 1⁄8′ pitch have reduced wind flow, and we will soon see a very interesting explanation for this. 

Note the regularity of Silbermann’s toe constants. All pipes of the same pitch have the same toe constants and wind flow regardless of where they appear in the stops or the compass. The mixtures appear to have slightly larger toes, perhaps as a compensation for their slightly narrower scale, indicating that Silbermann wanted the same power from the mixtures but with the brighter timbre of their narrower scale. 

Such regularity is extremely rare, and it suggests that Silbermann calculated his toe diameters prior to voicing. These data also suggest the idea that he approached organ design from an inductive viewpoint, using data to infer the design rules with which he achieved his sound. Some might criticize this regularity, but we might also learn something from it. Let’s see how other builders controlled their pipe toes.

Figure 14 (page 14) shows the toe constants for a vast range of voicing styles, most of which represent 4′ Octave stops in the main manual division. All of these styles have toe constants entirely above a value of 1 except for two cases: the classical French voicing of the Isnards and the high treble of D. A. Flentrop’s example. 

The data in the pink line are from D. A. Flentrop’s 1977 organ at California State University, Chico, voiced on a low pressure of 66 mm. This organ was built at a time when all classical voicing was considered “open toe,” but readers may be surprised to see that Flentrop’s voicing does not remotely use the most open toes in Figure 14. He deviated from his guidance (the square root of the pipe diameter) as needed, extending above 1 in the bass and mid-range, and dropping below 1 in the highest treble. The acoustically dry concert hall in which the Flentrop resides is also the smallest of the acoustics in Figure 14. His wind pressure is the lowest in Figure 14, and this might suggest the use of the most open toes, but Flentrop was willing to restrain these toes for a more restrained treble power.

The data in the orange line are from Silbermann’s organ at Großhartmannsdorf on 90 mm pressure, and the data in light blue are from his organ at Reinhardtsgrimma on 70 mm pressure. Note that Silbermann uses much more open toes on lower pressure. The Großhartmannsdorf data is virtually identical to the toe constants at the Freiberg Dom in Figure 8, evidence that these toes may have been calculated to accommodate the similar wind pressures of these organs. 

The data in the dark blue line are from the 1774 Isnard organ at Saint Maximin on 83 mm pressure. Here we have mid-range toe constants that dip well below a value of 1, and with this visual graphic we can now see what is meant by “closed toes” in this French voicing example.

The individual data points in the pink boxes are from the 16′ Hauptwerk Principal in Arp Schnitger’s 1688–1692 organ at the Jacobikirche in Hamburg on 80 mm pressure, one of the largest acoustics in the Figure 14 examples.²⁴ These are widely open toes, and they also compensate for the wind pressure drop that occurs in the conductors between the windchest and the pipe feet of these offset façade pipes. Principal pipes that sit on the windchest of the Schnitger organ have toe constants closer to those of Silbermann at Reinhardtsgrimma in the light blue line. All of the other pipes in Figure 14 from 4′ to ¼′ pitch sit directly on the windchest without pressure losses.

The data in the yellow line are from the 1863 organ by E. & G. G. Hook at the former Immaculate Conception Catholic Church in Boston. This Romantic organ is voiced on 76 mm pressure, and it may surprise readers to see that it has the most “open toe” voicing in Figure 14 for pipes sitting directly on the windchest. 

The toe constants in Figure 14 show us that all of these organbuilders adjusted the toe to regulate wind flow and power. The toe constant gives us the means to make meaningful comparisons.

Flueway depths

Flueway depths control power. Flueway data are essential for understanding organ sound, but they are exceedingly rare. Figure 15 shows how flueway depths are measured. Figure 16 shows flueway depths for the same pipes shown in Figure 14. Figure 9 shows the very deep flueways of the Freiberg Dom Silbermann.

The Flentrop data in the pink line in Figure 16 explore the lower limits of flueway depths with excellent musical effect on 66 mm pressure. Figure 17 shows the bright, harmonically rich, “instrumental” voicing of a Flentrop pipe from about 1980. In addition to the two obvious deeper nicks and the extremely light nicks in the middle of the counterbevel, note the unusual bold nicks placed at the far right and left sides of the flueway, the absence of ears, and the moderate cutup. Flentrop’s harmonically rich voicing contrasts with the much less bright vocale style of voicing.

The data in the yellow line from the Romantic Hook organ explore the upper limits of musicality. These pipes are voiced on 76 mm pressure with many bold nicks. The Flentrop and the Hook data give us some idea of the range of historic flueway depths.

The Silbermann flueways in the orange and light blue lines represent the range of Silbermann’s flueway depths for the range of pressures represented by these data. Note that at 90 mm of pressure at Großhartmannsdorf, Silbermann’s flueways are virtually identical to the flueways of the Freiberg Dom chorus in Figure 9, more evidence suggesting calculation of flueways for a specific wind pressure. The treble flueways are as deep as those found in the Hooks’ Romantic voicing.

It is interesting that Silbermann adjusted his flueways shallower at lower pressure and deeper at higher pressure, an unexpected relationship. Open flueways without bolder nicking have a breathy component to their sound, and Silbermann may have adjusted his flueways shallower in smaller, more intimate acoustics to minimize that effect. The high frequencies that characterize breathiness are absorbed by the atmosphere, and distance reduces their audibility in larger acoustics.

The restorers of the Isnard organ interestingly noted that the very generous flueways in the dark blue line were more “closed up” relative to typical French voicing. As we will later see, the Isnards appear to have adjusted their flueways and toes to achieve remarkable balances. 

The individual data points in the Figure 16 pink boxes are from Schnitger’s 16′ Principal on 80 mm pressure. These Schnitger flueways correlate extremely well to the deepest flueways used by Gottfried Silbermann. All of the illustrated Schnitger data were taken by Hans Henny Jahnn in 1925.

For those interested in Schnitger’s work, Figure 18 shows a subset of Jahnn’s original data (he took data on every pipe in this stop). The data in the pink font in Figure 18 are represented in Figure 16 by the pink boxes. 

The single pink triangular data point well below the Flentrop data at 1′ pitch is the razor-thin flueway of the neo-Baroque pipe illustrated in Figure 3 of Part 1; it is voiced on 65 mm pressure with a very low cutup. The data clearly show that this flueway does not remotely resemble any historic voicing style in Figure 16, and the reason for that brings us to cutups.

Cutups

Cutups (also known as “mouth height”) are often described as some fraction of the mouth width. While using a mouth width fraction with dividers to scribe preliminary cutup heights on upper lips has some practical value during voicing, it has been shown that the tonal effect of cutup has absolutely nothing to do with the width of the mouth.²⁵

Cutups are adjusted to control timbre, and cutups will be higher for the same timbre at a higher level of power. We will get continuously less bright timbres as cutups are increased at any specific power. Cutups that are too low will cut the vortex in the flueway at too high a frequency for the resonator to quickly respond, and the fundamental will form more slowly.

Some neo-Baroque efforts to recapture historic voicing invoked a recipe where cutups were required to be ¼ of the mouth width and toes were vaguely required to be “open.” This recipe is a perfect example of an untested opinion based on deductive logic (which the author, too, naively embraced in his Opus 1).

Pipes voiced with deep flueways, wide-open toes, and low cutups will either screech with powerful harmonics or overblow to the octave on higher pressures. Closing the flueway takes away the strident screech, but it also strangles the power of the fundamental. Using the neo-Baroque recipe of wide-open toes and ¼-cutups, the voicer was forced to close the flueway to extremely small values. Without reducing the wind pressure, this was the only option left to the voicer. A typical compromise in this style of voicing allowed for some stridency in the timbre to preserve some modest power in the fundamental, and in this condition the pipe was often too close to overblowing. The result was the slow, gulping speech and thin fundamental so often heard in early Orgelbewegung movement voicing. 

The solution to this problem is by now quite obvious to the reader—adjust the toe and/or the flueway (according to your preferences) until the desired fundamental power is achieved, and then raise the cutup to get the desired timbre and prompt speech. If Silbermann had used ¼-cutups at the Freiberg Dom, the values of his Normal Scale mouth heights in Figure 10 would look identical to the values of his Normal Scale mouth widths in Figure 5. Unsurprisingly, Silbermann’s high cutups bear no relationship at all to his mouth widths. 

Figure 19 shows cutups for the same pipes shown in Figure 16. The data in the pink line are from the Flentrop organ voiced on 66 mm pressure. Cutups trend higher on higher wind pressures, depending, of course, on the regulation of toes and flueways. The Flentrop data represent the lowest wind pressure in this graph with a harmonically rich, restrained power in the smallest acoustic among these examples. The lower cutups of the Flentrop voicing are no surprise.

The data in the orange line are from Silbermann’s organ at Großhartmannsdorf on 90 mm pressure, and the data in light blue are from the Reinhardtsgrimma organ on 70 mm pressure. This is the same data we saw in Part 1 where Silbermann used higher cutups at higher wind pressures to maintain similar timbres. Again, it is no surprise that these cutups are higher than Flentrop’s lower pressure voicing. In Figure 19 the wind pressures appear just to the right of the data lines, and in the treble they progress smoothly from lower cutups on lower pressure to higher cutups on higher pressure.

The data in the dark blue line are from the Isnard organ on 83 mm pressure. The Isnard cutups follow the same wind pressure trend as the Silbermann data and lie mostly between them. We might expect the 83 mm pressure Isnard cutups to lie closer to Silbermann’s 90 mm cutups. Figure 14 tells you why they do not (hint: look at the Isnard toe constants and the implied pressure drop in the pipe feet).

The individual data points in the pink boxes are from the Schnitger example on 80 mm pressure. The treble cutups from 4′ pitch reflect significant power in this 16′ stop, as would be expected from its copiously winded toes and flueways in Figures 14 and 16. 

The data in the yellow line are from the Romantic Hook organ voiced on 76 mm pressure. The highest treble data lie just above Silbermann’s 70 mm pressure data as expected. But the bass and mid-range cutups are much higher than expected, and this reflects the higher bass power of a Romantic organ, a power fed by the largest toes in Figure 14 and the deepest flueways in Figure 16. The Hook does not have the highest wind pressure in Figure 19, but it is a good example of getting more power out of larger toes and deeper flueways (and bold nicking). 

Higher cutup with more wind gives us power, and a good example is the Pedal 32′ Bourdon at Saint Ignatius Catholic Church in San Francisco, California. This large room seats about 1,800 people, and as a 64′ resultant this Bourdon is able to cause visible vibrations in the pews at its 8 Hz pitch. It has a scale of 535 mm on the diagonal, a mouth width of 349 mm, a 4.0 mm flueway, a 100 mm toe, and it is winded on 203 mm (8 inches) pressure. The power of this pipe is reflected in its cutup of +20 HT (203 mm average, arched). This cutup is literally way off the top of the graph in Figure 19. You do not hear such a sound; you feel it. On his next visit to the Atlantic City organ, John Bishop might regale us with the cutup of the Pedal 32′ Contra Diapason on 20 inches of pressure!

Toe and flueway ratios 

Areas are more important in many ways than diameters and depths, and the ratio of the toe area to the flueway area strongly affects speech articulation (also known as “chiff”). Figure 20 shows these ratios for the same pipes in Figure 19. Figure 11 shows the ratios for Silbermann’s Freiberg Dom organ. 

Ratios larger than 1 mean that we are trending toward more “open toe” voicing, where a pipe’s toe area is larger than its flueway area. A ratio less than 1 means that we are trending toward more “closed toe” voicing, where the toe is smaller and will flow less wind than the flueway. Examples of pipes with ratios far below 1 with very closed toes feeding especially deep flueways are common in theatre organs on exceptionally high wind pressures.

Articulation provides percussive clarity to rhythm, but lower ratios will reduce articulation. Wind pressure builds more slowly in the foot with smaller toes, and a slower buildup of pressure will make articulation more gentle and less percussive. Ratios above 1 tend to accentuate more articulate speech, and this is why we hear more articulation with “open toe” voicing. Classical French voicing, with its closed toes, deeply open flueways, and lower ratios will have much less articulation than North German voicing and less response to the touch of the key. 

All of the pipes below 1′ in pitch in the entire Grand Orgue principal chorus of the Isnard organ at Saint Maximin originally had ratios so close to 1 as to suggest that it was a purposeful goal.26 It is an exception in classical French voicing with its more moderate flueway depths, and it exhibits gentle articulation. In this soundclip we hear the exquisite articulation of the Isnard Positif 8′ Montre in Louis Marchand’s Tibi omnes angeli. <soundclip 4>
From the middle of the compass to the high treble, the toe constants of this stop range from 0.6 to 1.2, and the toe/flueway ratios range from 0.7 to 1.8.27

In Figure 20 we see that Silbermann’s organ at Großhartmannsdorf has ratios that never drop below 1, and they closely parallel the French voicing of the Isnards. The ratios of the Freiberg Dom organ in Figure 11 on a similar wind pressure are virtually identical, and we might gain some insight from this data to explain why the toe constants in Figure 8 drop at 1⁄8′ pitch. The ratios in Figure 11 continue to rise right up to 1⁄8′ in pitch, and this means that the flueways in Figure 9 have increasingly more wind from the toes as the pitch rises. The toe constants at 1⁄8′ pitch in Figure 8 obviously drop in their relative flow of wind, but those toes are still feeding increasingly more wind to much smaller flueway areas (i.e., the flueway areas are dropping at a faster rate than the toe areas). This is very strong evidence that Silbermann was calculating toe and flueway areas. 

Silbermann’s lower pressure organs have much higher ratios, i.e., they are much more “open toe,” and the more unmolested examples tend to exhibit more articulate speech. This is why the Orgelbewegung, which prized clear articulation, emphasized “open toe” voicing on lower wind pressures. The movement got it partly right, that more open toes will emphasize articulation, but the factor that matters more is the ratio, not the diameter of the toe. D. A. Flentrop’s voicing does not have the most open toes in Figure 14, but with the most closed flueways in Figure 16, the Flentrop ratios are generally the highest in Figure 20, and the articulation of this Flentrop is very clear.

Arp Schnitger did not use heavy nicking. His ratios in Figure 20 are high in both bass and treble, and his more unmolested pipes have clear articulation.

Fine nicking will reduce articulation, but bold nicking will eliminate it in all conditions. (Nicks likely stabilize the formation and position of the vortex on the languid edge.) About 90% of the pipes in the Isnard organ have no visible nicks on their languids. Much of the very fine nicking occurs on the separate mutations, giving them a smoother legato as a solo voice.²⁸ French Romantic voicing evolved from the deep flueways of Classical French voicing, and it employed bold nicking to achieve a smooth Romantic legato. Nicking also has the same effect as raising the cutup, and the sound is less bright after adding nicks, i.e., nicking permits lower cutups for the same timbre. The Hook ratios in Figure 20 are high, but the bold nicking of the Romantic Hook voicing completely suppresses its speech articulation.

While on the subject of Romantic voicing we should note that this style often employs a tuning device, known as a Reuter tuning slot, which greatly reduces articulation. The tuned length is achieved by cutting a slot into the pipe that does not extend to the top of the pipe. If you want clear articulation, pipes need to be cut dead length or fitted with tuning slides that extend to the top of the pipe. Anything that makes the tuned length of the pipe indeterminate will reduce articulation. Classical French façade pipes with extreme overlengths and multiple cutouts at their backs to achieve the correct pitch have little articulation, and this is consistent with their closed toe voicing style. Articulate Germanic voicing trends toward dead-length tuning, which is also typical of Silbermann’s work. 

Ears 

There are more details that affect voicing in more subtle ways that are not within the scope of this article, but we should address one of them: ears. Romantic and neo-Baroque voicing make consistent use of ears because they significantly increase the power of the fundamental by about 1.5 dB. This is not trivial, and it represents a scaling increase of three halftones. But ears also come at a price with a strong increase in the power of a few discrete higher harmonics, and the resulting blend is worse. The blend of pipes with high cutups and few harmonics will be less impacted by ears. The spectral data on the change in power and timbre caused by ears is shown in the author’s book.²⁹

Classically inspired voicing

We can readily grasp the Silbermann brothers’ use of deep flueways from their exposure to French voicing. But the deep flueways of Arp Schnitger’s work shown in Figure 18 are unexpected. Schnitger may indeed have significantly reduced his flueways for a more restrained power in smaller acoustics, much as we see in the data for D. A. Flentrop’s organ, but this is speculation without data on unmolested pipes. The Steinkirchen organ is reportedly the least tonally modified of Schnitger’s organs, but Rudolf von Beckerath’s documentation of that organ lamentably omits the crucial toe diameters and flueway depths.³⁰

Perhaps of more interest, Schnitger’s Germanic voicing is not considered vocale by some American organ builders who practice that style; it is considered an instrumental style with brighter harmonic richness more like that of D. A. Flentrop. The vocale voicing I have observed trends to more open toes, more closed flueways in modern work (and very deeply open flueways in some ancient examples), varying degrees of languid counterbevels, and very high cutups in both older and modern work. Vocale cutups tread in that range of timbres between a principal and a brighter flute.31 Subjective impressions suggest that vocale voicing cuts the vortex above the height where it spins at the frequency of the tuned resonator, i.e., above the point where Coltman’s impedances match and Ising’s fundamental forms most quickly at I = 2. This is a very rough model for vocale voicing, but voicing data are virtually non-existent for pre-Schnitger vocale archetypes or their modern American practitioners. A recent YouTube video featuring George Taylor and John Boody contains an excellent discussion of vocale cutups: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_NT65GJNBrU.

American classically inspired voicing has evolved. In their description of their lovely Opus 24 in The Diapason, Richards, Fowkes & Co. stated that “voicing our pipes a little slower relaxes the speech and helps them blend better.”³² “Slower voicing” does not mean that a pipe’s speech is slow to form, it means quite the opposite. With slower voicing the speech is slower to overblow to the octave when blown on higher pressure, and in that condition Ising has shown that the fundamental forms more quickly. To obtain this condition we raise the cutups and/or the languids. (Harmonic flutes will more easily overblow to their octave with languids set very low.) Gottfried Silbermann built very fast speech and “slower voicing” into his pipes with his extended upper lip, extremely high languids, and generous cutups. The blend of a Silbermann chorus is exceptional.

Bruce Shull has worked with John Brombaugh, Taylor & Boody, and Paul Fritts & Co. He has recently written a very informative article on the tonal qualities of sand-cast pipe metal. When voicing pipes made with this metal,

. . . [they] behave the best when they are rather open at their wind[flue]ways. . . . A counter bevel on the front edge of the languids is quite frequently found in antique pipework; today this can be achieved simply by abrading the front edge of the languid with a simple brass file with cross hatching scribed into one surface. The inside edge of the lower lip should remain smooth and must have a burr-free inside edge. . . . It may be that voicing styles that utilize nicking of the languid front edge will produce tonal results that are not very different between sand-cast and stone-cast pipe metal. . . . The organs [voiced with these pipes] have a solid and full sound with a very sweet character at the same time. There is a hint of breath in the sound due to the open windways and abraded languid fronts but the speech is immediate and yet gentle, and the blend is superb. The speech is such that the voicers find themselves doing less “fussing” with the pipes, and, in fact, the pipes have taken much less time to finish on site.³³

Although Silbermann’s resonators had thin and very stiff walls of about 90% hammered tin, he would no doubt agree with these voicing comments.

The power of inductive logic

The sound of a pipe organ can spark strong emotions, and the subject of voicing can spark fierce emotional debate. Voicing is indeed complex. We could spend a lifetime exploring its wonderful variety, but with some effort it is comprehensible.

This brings us full circle to the leading quote in this article: “Inductive logic is much more difficult­—but can produce new truths.” Inductive logic requires data, and the collection of data and its analysis requires effort. Some may find the effort required by inductive logic inconvenient if they accept the idea that all opinions have equal value, an extraordinary belief that curiously took root in American public education in the 1970s. But we have known since the time of Francis Bacon’s formalization of the scientific method that Nature yields only to data and cares nothing about our opinions. The inductive models in this article represent a significant effort to understand the data, and as new data emerges these models will no doubt be refined or replaced by others with better models. This is the power of inductive logic.

Silbermann’s inductive brilliance

The organs built at Freiberg in 1714 and much later at Großhartmannsdorf in 1741 are voiced on similar wind pressures. The regularity and similarity of the toes and flueways in these two organs establish that Silbermann devised successful models of voicing at the beginning of his career. Many organbuilders experiment with these complex variables to improve their sound over the course of their careers. Data previously published in The Diapason suggest that Silbermann’s regularity is probably unique among organbuilders. Figure 21, for example, shows that the Hooks treated toe constants as a completely free variable.³⁴ The regularity of Silbermann’s work may imply a limited tonal palette, but his youthful brilliance in finding a set of scaling and voicing models that would work in a wide range of acoustics and wind pressures is simply astounding. 

Silbermann’s data reveal an intellect that embraced inductive models. These models are not recipes from received wisdom. They are unique to Silbermann, and they exhibit the traits of inductive logic based on experimental data. Consider for a moment that Silbermann, the son of a carpenter, was not likely given a formal education in mathematics and science; this was the province of the wealthy and political elite during the time of Silbermann’s youth. Greß’s data and their implied theoretical models of voicing clearly represent an intellectual tour de force. Silbermann’s sound is indeed controversial, but Silbermann’s insights can teach us a great deal about the theoretical foundations of tonal design and voicing.

Organ literature often waxes nostalgic about the “secrets” of the old masters. The secret to their success was just the hard work of analyzing the problems they faced. Whether we are looking at the balanced ratios of the Isnards, the carefully calculated toes and flueways of Silbermann, or the Romantic sounds of Cavaillé-Coll, we see the work of analytical minds in the pursuit of artistic beauty. It may come as a surprise to know that Cavaillé-Coll and John Brombaugh were both trained as engineers. There is no gulf between art and science; they are mutually bound.

Silbermann’s unique sound

Gottfried Silbermann’s sound does not follow classical North German or French models. A typical North German chorus has a restrained power from its more closed flueways, a chorus fire supplied by its mixtures, and a strong fundamental supplied by the very wide, leathered shallots of its chorus reeds. A Classical French chorus has a restrained power from its more closed toes and a chorus fire supplied by its reeds. Silbermann combines powerful French reed fire with a powerful flue chorus derived from deep flueways, more open toes, and the widest possible mouths. Gottfried Silbermann’s sound is not a synthesis of classical French and North German organs, it is unique, and its blend and clarity make the sound of Bach come alive. Follow this YouTube link to the carefully restored Silbermann at Lebusa: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oOoSkB2UVMw.³⁵ The temperament is a form of meantone devised by F.-H. Greß.³⁶

Meantone

Gottfried Silbermann’s voicing and blend work very well in meantone. With the exception of “big city” organs such as the Frauenkirche organ in Dresden, Silbermann maintained the use of a very mild 1⁄6-comma meantone even when confronted with strong opposition from Johann Sebastian Bach. There is no dispute that equal temperament is essential to a vast range of wonderful literature, but we have also come to understand that meantone has a tonal beauty and gravity sorely lacking in equal temperament. This was a concept well understood by Bédos, who abhorred equal temperament.³⁷ Meantone was perhaps a part of Silbermann’s French legacy. 

Very few of Silbermann’s organs have survived in any form of meantone, but the lovely organ in the Freiberg Dom had organists who mostly succeeded in protecting it from the good intentions of its restorers. Here is a soundclip of the end of Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, BWV 582, written in Bach’s early years, and played on the Freiberg Dom organ in 1980 in an approximation of its original meantone. The Picardy shift to C major at the end of the fugue resolves in a radiant third. This is Gottfried Silbermann’s sound. <soundclip 5>

Uncredited images reside in the collection of the author. Fr. Thomas Carroll, S.J., graciously suggested clarifications in the prose of this article.

Notes

21. Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973). 

22. In 1972 I asked Dirk Flentrop for permission to measure his pipework and organs, which he graciously gave, adding that imitation was the finest form of flattery. Flentrop went on to predict that I would use my observations of his work to find my own sound (“Your ears will be different than mine”). He was a generous teacher, and secure in his knowledge. The Flentrop data shown in Figures 14, 16, 19, and 20 were taken in 1978 with the kind permission of David Rothe. The Hook data were taken in 2000 with the kind permission of Fr. Thomas Carroll, S.J. The Isnard data can be found in the original source in Note 26 and fully graphed in the source in Note 23.

23. Michael McNeil, The Sound of Pipe Organs, CC&A, 2014, Amazon.com. The toe constant equation: diameter of the toe = √ (toe constant*4*mouth width fraction*pipe diameter).

24. Heimo Reinitzer, Die Arp Schnitger-Orgel der Hauptkirche St. Jacobi in Hamburg, 1995. This is one of only three publications known to the author to include complete data for understanding the sound of an organ, i.e., its pipework, windchests, wind system, temperament, action, and layout. The other examples can be found in the author’s “The 1755 John Snetzler Organ, Clare College, Cambridge, restored by William Drake, Ltd., Joost de Boer, Director,” The Diapason, September 2019, pages 17–21, and “The 1864 William A. Johnson Opus 161, Piru Community United Methodist Church, Piru, California,” The Diapason, August 2018, pages 16–20, September 2018, pages 20–25, October 2018, pages 26–28, and November 2018, pages 20–24. I use Jahnn’s data for the Hauptwerk 16′ Principal on page 117 for Schnitger’s voicing; located in the façade, these pipes may have been the least accessible to changes in voicing. The restorer, Jürgen Ahrend, states on page 252 that the cutup, flueway, and toe hole data in this book were taken after his voicing (“. . . nach meiner Intonation”). Ahrend had to deal with previous interventions, and the current sound reflects his voicing. The toe data of the 16′ Principal taken after the restoration show extremely wide variations and some excessively open toes; Jahnn brilliantly solved this problem in 1925 by measuring the smallest diameters in the wind conduction between the windchests and the offset pipe feet—these are the values shown in Figure 14.

25. The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 64–80. 

26. Pierre Chéron and Yves Cabourdin, L’Orgue de Jean-Esprit et Joseph Isnard dans la Basilique de la Madeleine à Saint-Maximin, ARCAM, Nice, 1991. The Isnard Grand Orgue toe/flueway area ratios on page 166 are almost exactly 1 up to 1′ in pitch for the entire principal chorus including both mixtures. The 8′ Montre deviates because it was revoiced in 1885. See page 59 on “closed up flueways” and page 175 on languids, which have about 50-to-58-degree bevels and about 75-degree counterbevels that slope inwards (counterbevels are more commonly vertical). Per my on-site observations on June 24, 1995, the upper lips are aligned with the lower lips, and the languids are lower than Silbermann’s, where the top of the Isnard counterbevel is level with the top edge of the lower lip.

27. McNeil. The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 177–182.

28. Pierre Chéron and Yves Cabourdin, L’Orgue de Jean-Esprit et Joseph Isnard dans la Basilique de la Madeleine à Saint-Maximin, pages 132–133.

29. McNeil, The Sound of Pipe Organs, page 94.

30. Richards, Fowkes, & Co. See richardsfowkes.com/5_technical/beckerath for the Schnitger data taken by Beckerath. 

31. Vocale voicing has affinities to smooth Romantic English voicing with its very high cutups. None of the English Romantic chorus stops are harmonically rich, but they are intense with deep flueways; brightness is built by adding the smoothly voiced sounds of higher pitched stops. Instrumental voicing features harmonic richness in the individual stops, and those harmonics, when carefully voiced, can create a chorus of rich harmonics; this is the sound of a D. A. Flentrop. This distinction is also applicable to a reed chorus. The broad, leathered shallots of English and German reeds add smooth fundamental power. The rich harmonics of Clicqout, Callinet, and Cavaillé-Coll chorus reeds create a scintillating chorus depth. Much voicing resides in the broad range between these styles.

32. Opus 24, “Cover Feature,” The Diapason, May 2021, pages 26–28.

33. Bruce Shull, “Casting Pipe Metal on Sand,” Vox Humana, April 25, 2021.

34. See the toes, flueways, and ratios for E. & G. G. Hook, J.-E. & J. Isnard, W. A. Johnson, and J. Snetzler in “1863 E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322, Church of the Immaculate Conception, Boston, Massachusetts,” Part 2, The Diapason, August 2017, pages 18–21, “The 1864 William A. Johnson Opus 161, Piru Community United Methodist Church, Piru, California,” Part 4, The Diapason, November 2018, pages 20–24, and “The 1755 John Snetzler Organ, Clare College, Cambridge, restored by William Drake, Ltd., Joost de Boer, Director,” The Diapason, September 2019, pages 17–21. With the sole exception of Gottfried Silbermann, these are free variables for all other builders known to the author.

35. J. S. Bach, Komm, Heiliger Geist, Herre Gott, BWV 651, Christopher Lichtenstein, organist.

36. Frank-Harald Greß, Die Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns (Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2007), pages 72–73.

37. Michael McNeil, “The elusive and sonorous meantone of Dom Bédos,” The Diapason, September 2020, pages 14–17.

Soundclips

4. [00:33] Louis Marchand, Tibi omnes angeli, Jean-Esprit Isnard, Couvent Royal de Saint-Maximin, 1774, Bernard Coudurier, BNL 112851 A, © SCAM/BNL 1995.

5. [00:55] Johann Sebastian Bach, Passacaglia and Fugue in C Minor, BWV 582, Gottfried Silbermann, Freiberg Dom, 1714, Karl Richter, Archiv 2533 441, © Siegfried Schmalzriedt, 1980.

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, voiced, and researched pipe organs since 1973. Stimulating work as a research engineer in magnetic recording paid the bills. He is working on his Opus 5, which explores how an understanding of the human sensitivity to the changes in sound can be used to increase emotional impact. Opus 5 includes double expression, a controllable wind dynamic, chorus phase shifting, and meantone tuning. Stay tuned.

Editor’s note: The Diapason offers here a feature at our digital edition—three sound clips. Any subscriber can access this by logging into our website (thediapason.com), click on Magazine, then this issue, View Digital Edition, scroll to this page, and click on each <soundclip> in the text.

Part 2 of this article is found here.

Deductive logic is tautological; there is no way to get a new truth out if it, and it manipulates false statements as readily as true ones. If you fail to remember this, it can trip you—with perfect logic. . . . Inductive logic is much more difficult—but can produce new truths.¹

 

The late Peter Williams, pipe organ scholar extraordinaire, occasionally remarked to John Brombaugh that he most favored the sound of Gottfried Silbermann. Brombaugh thought this was perhaps a contrarian view, a position Williams often took in their conversations.² Silbermann’s sound is indeed both deeply admired and controversial.

The sound of an organ is the sum of its scaling, voicing, temperament, windchest design, action, layout, wind system, wind pressure, position in the room, and room acoustics. Among these factors, only the art of voicing is perceived as the elite province of a select and gifted few, shrouded in mystery. But as Reiner Janke has so ably demonstrated, voicing can be understood by anyone willing to commit the effort.³

Pipe organ literature abounds with subjective opinions of organ sound and the received wisdom of voicing recipes. These often contain a kernel of truth, but they can sometimes lead us down perilous paths. We will use data and inductive logic to give us insight into Silbermann’s voicing. And in Part 2 of this article we will use those insights to gain a wider perspective on voicing in general by comparing Silbermann’s voicing with a wide range of other styles. In the process we will see what makes Gottfried Silbermann’s sound so interesting.

Fundamentals of scaling and voicing

A quick overview of the features of organ pipes, scaling, and voicing may help readers unfamiliar with these terms. Figure 1 shows the basic features of an organ pipe and the terms used in this article.

Scaling and wind pressure determine the maximum power of a pipe. Scaling includes the diameter of a pipe’s resonator and the width of its mouth. Wider resonators and wider mouths will produce more power, as will higher wind pressure. Scaling also affects the vowel sound, or timbre, of a pipe, ranging from the “ah” of wider scales to the “ee” of narrower scales. The “ah” consists of the fundamental that increases in power in wider resonators. Narrower resonators will emphasize the power of higher harmonics with a brighter timbre.

In Figure 1 we see that the flueway of a pipe is the slit formed by the lower lip and the languid, the horizontal plate soldered on top of the pipe’s foot. The wind from the chest enters through the toe hole into the pipe’s foot and exits through the flueway slit. The languid’s edge turns the sheet of wind formed by the flueway into a spinning vortex. The upper lip cuts the vortex, creating pulsations of pressure that will drive the resonator to sound if the conditions are right.

The vortex spins fastest at the languid edge and spins slower as it expands towards the upper lip. If the height, or “cutup,” of the mouth’s upper lip cuts the vortex where it pulsates at the same frequency that the resonator is tuned, the pipe will speak very quickly.⁴ Lower cutups create higher frequency pulsations where the vortex spins faster. The resonator has more difficulty with faster pulsations, and the speech is both slower to form and brighter with more powerful harmonics. Keep lowering the cutup, and at some point the resonator cannot “resonate” with the vortex at the fundamental, and an open pipe will overblow to the octave, its second harmonic. More pressure or more wind from a larger toe will make the vortex spin faster with more energy, and the cutup will have to rise.

Voicing begins by adjusting the flueway depth and/or the diameter of the toe to control the power (this is also known as “regulation”). More wind from larger toes and deeper flueways produces more power.

A voicer will raise the height of the cutup by degrees to adjust the timbre, making the sound continuously less bright and more like a flute as cutup is increased. Cutup is by far the most sensitive aspect of voicing—very small changes in cutup will make big changes in timbre. While toe areas, flueway areas, and wind pressure have proportional effects on a pipe’s power, its cutup has an exponential effect on its timbre; Ising showed that it is a cube function!

When we say that an organ is voiced in a Germanic or French style, what does this mean? Received wisdom relates that Germanic voicing leaves the toe wide open and closes the flueway to regulate power, while French voicing emphasizes a deeply open flueway and closes the toe to regulate power. Does this make a difference? Charles Fisk thought it made a great difference, and he wrote with passion about the musicality of deeper flueways in 1975.⁵ Subjective impressions suggest that deeper flueways result in a warmer fundamental with less percussive speech when power is regulated with closed toes. Physics tells us that the pressure in the foot and the velocity of air in the flueway will be lower as the toe area decreases and the flueway area increases, and the vortex will spin more slowly.

The musical range of flueway depths spans the very deep flueways of romantic voicing to the more closed flueways exemplified by the work of organ builders like D. A. Flentrop. The received wisdom of Germanic voicing often assumes the sole use of closed flueways to regulate power, but the reality is more complex. How do we know this?

The minimum required data

Typical organ documentation lists pipe diameters, mouth widths, and cutups, but ignores the crucial voicing data of flueway depths and toe diameters, and this unfortunately tells us little about the sound. For example, without the toe and flueway data we do not know if the cutup data imply a softer and smoother sound with more closed toes and flueways or a powerful, brighter sound with more open toes and flueways. As Ising has shown, cutups and the timbre they control are extremely sensitive to changes in pressure and the flow of wind in toes and flueways.

While voicing data of most organbuilders, including Arp Schnitger, are exceedingly rare, our knowledge of Gottfried Silbermann is made possible by the work of Frank-Harald Greß and his documentation of voicing for several of Silbermann’s organs.^{6, 7, 8} To make matters far worse in our quest to understand historic voicing, many organs have been revoiced, repitched, retuned in new temperaments, and their wind pressures raised or lowered during their restorations, often on multiple occasions. We will have great difficulty discovering the original sound of most older organs. We owe a great debt to F.-H. Greß, who has documented the changes made to each of Silbermann’s surviving organs.

Early influences

Gottfried Silbermann was born in 1683 in Kleinbobritzsch, Saxony, the son of a carpenter. His older brother, Andreas, “left home in great haste to avoid military conscription” and worked for Eugenio Casparini on the Görlitz organ before settling in Strasbourg, Alsace, as an independent organbuilder.⁹ Andreas spent the years 1704–1706 learning French organbuilding from François Thierry in Paris. Andreas was at first rebuffed in Paris, but found a willing mentor in Thierry, who would later build the organ we now see in Notre Dame de Paris. Little is known of Gottfried’s youth, but we know that he joined Andreas in Strasbourg in 1702, earned his title as a master organbuilder, and returned to Saxony with two journeymen and an apprentice. He built his first organ in Frauenstein in 1709 and 1710 and spent the rest of his life building nearly all of his organs in Saxony. Gottfried died late one night in August of 1753 while voicing the organ in the Dresden Hofkirche.¹⁰

Gottfried “was accustomed to throw his cane on the floor when he wanted to judge the acoustics in a church.”¹¹ This shrewd test creates a broad range of frequencies which will decay at different rates, informing Silbermann of the room’s different absorption of sound from bass to treble. This is very similar to what acousticians do today with a blank gunshot. He notoriously refused to build organs in churches whose acoustics were poor, and he would likely be appalled at the acoustics of most American churches.¹²

Scaling

Gottfried Silbermann’s scaling, voicing, and stoplists were extremely consistent. He had three sets of principal chorus scales, wider to narrower, which he used to differentiate the timbre of his different divisions. He also used one of the narrower scales for his mixtures.¹³ More wind pressure was employed to fill larger or less efficient acoustics. Unlike most other organbuilders, he never found the need to experiment with different sounds.

Silbermann’s layouts were well engineered and featured easy access, which probably has much to do with the longevity of his organs. He has been criticized for the regularity of his tonal schemes, but this regularity helps us understand how he achieved that sound by comparing his least modified surviving organs. Silbermann became relatively wealthy as an organbuilder, an impossible achievement for modern organbuilders who design their classically inspired organs as completely unique creations.

We will use graphs presented in Normal Scales to understand Silbermann’s sound. Tables of raw numbers do not convey the underlying intent of the organbuilder, and Normal Scales allow us to make easy visual comparisons. These Normal Scales were published in the author’s article, “1863 E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322: Church of the Immaculate Conception, Boston, Massachusetts, Part 1,” The Diapason, July 2017, page 18. Those who want actual measurements can use those tables to convert the Normal Scale data in this article into raw data.¹⁴

Diameter scales of the 1714 Freiberg Dom Hauptwerk principal chorus are shown in Figure 4. The mid-range scales are narrower, emphasizing less power and more harmonic brightness. In Figure 5 we see the mouth widths. Normal Scale mouth widths are based on mouths which are ¼ of the pipe circumference. Silbermann’s mouths are wider, a very unusual practice. The figure captions describe Silbermann’s scaling in more detail.

Influence of French voicing

The roots of Gottfried Silbermann’s sound lie in French voicing, and an essential feature of classical French voicing is a deeply open flueway. Figure 2 shows an image taken by Reiner Janke of Andreas Silbermann’s voicing. We are looking down into the mouth of a tenor G pipe from the Hauptwerk 4′ Prestant in the 1709 organ at Marmoutier. Note the deep 0.7 mm flueway, the absence of ears, and the alternating deeper and shallower nicks on the languid edge. To put this flueway into perspective, Figure 3 shows an image of a modern, “neo-Baroque” pipe of a similar pitch with a low cutup, a flueway of 0.27 mm depth, and ears. The flueway in Figure 3 is the thin black line.

Divergence from French influence

Gottfried Silbermann designed his organs for exceptional power, even by modern standards. While the sound of Gottfried Silbermann is based on the deep flueways of French voicing, it differs from French voicing in specific ways to get that power.

French flueways tend to be very deep, pushing the maximum limits of musicality, and this might lead us to think that these pipes are very powerful. But classical French voicing uses more closed pipe toes to limit the wind for a more restrained power. We will see in Part 2 that Gottfried’s toes are more open than typical French voicing, and they feed wider mouths.

Mouth widths range from about 2⁄7 to 1⁄7 of the circumference of a pipe. Wider mouths on the same resonator will have more wind flow and proportionally more power. Very small mouths will have a delicate effect. Classical French scaling does not trend toward the maximum limits in mouth widths, but the scaling of Gottfried Silbermann’s principal chorus does exactly that. The combination of very wide mouths, deep flueways, and more open toes is the source of Silbermann’s power. To get a sense of his wind pressures, Andreas Silbermann’s 1709 organ at Marmoutier is voiced on 69 mm, Gottfried’s organ at the Rötha Georgenkirche is voiced on 76 mm, and Gottfried’s Freiberg Dom organ originally had pressures of 97 mm in the manuals and 109 mm in the pedal.¹⁵

Unusual pipe construction

Figure 6 shows the basic features of Gottfried Silbermann’s pipework as recreated by C. B. Fisk, Inc. The bottom image in Figure 6 shows a generous flueway and very fine nicking. The 2⁄7 mouth width is evident here, the maximum practical width. The image at top shows a vertical counterbevel (also called a “counterface”) on the languid and a very high position of the languid; you can see the bottom edge of the languid rising just above the top edge of the lower lip. Such a languid position will move the windsheet outwards, and to compensate for this, Fisk has moved the upper lip outwards by extending the side walls of the pipe. There are no added ears. These are the hallmarks of Gottfried Silbermann’s pipes. The pipe in Figure 2 by Andreas Silbermann shares the deep flueway, counterbevel, and nicking, but it does not have the extended upper lip, high languid, and wider mouth.

The sound

At the 1980 American Institute of Organbuilders convention Charles Fisk demonstrated the voicing of a pipe constructed in the style of Gottfried Silbermann. This pipe produced a sound with very prompt and articulate speech of great power and intensity, which I measured at 90 dB at a distance of one meter.¹⁶ The mouth of this pipe is shown in Figure 7.

In voicing this pipe Fisk first set the toe diameter and the flueway depth. He then raised the cutup by degrees and added nicks by degrees to reduce harmonic brightness, while adjusting the languid height for prompt speech. He set the languid high as a consequence of the outward extension of the side walls and upper lip.¹⁷ To hear the sound of this pipe, listen to a soundclip of Bach’s Duetto I in E Minor, BWV 802, on Silbermann’s nearly original Principal at the Rötha Georgenkirche. <soundclip 1>

Zacharias Hildebrandt apprenticed to Gottfried Silbermann in 1714. He and Silbermann soon became bitter rivals, but upon Silbermann’s death in 1753, Hildebrandt was given the task of finishing Silbermann’s last organ in the Dresden Hofkirche. The sound of Hildebrandt’s 1746 organ at Naumburg is reminiscent of Silbermann’s deep flueways, but I do not have data to confirm this. Like Silbermann, Hildebrandt used different scales of principals to give his divisions a different character. Here is a soundclip of the Naumburg principals, played in contrast to each other in Bach’s Concerto in D Minor after Vivaldi, BWV 596. <soundclip 2>

The voicing

Voicing data for the Freiberg Dom Hauptwerk are shown in Figure 8, Toe Constants, Figure 9, Flueway Depths, Figure 10, Mouth Heights (cutups), and Figure 11, Ratios of Toe Areas to Flueway Areas. See the figure captions for descriptions of these voicing parameters; their derivations can be found in the author’s book.¹⁸ In the simplest terms, toe and flueway areas control power, cutups control timbre, and the ratio of the toe area and flueway area affects speech articulation (also known as “chiff”). The crucial takeaway is that Silbermann’s toes and flueways were extremely regular and not treated as free variables. The free variable for Silbermann was cutup.

The regularity of Silbermann’s voicing is remarkable, and it suggests that he calculated his flueway depths and toe diameters prior to voicing. In Part 2 we will see that this regularity is consistent with other organs voiced on similar wind pressures and built at very different times. The regularity of his tonal designs, scaling, and voicing is evidence that he approached organ design from a set of inductively-derived design rules based on very early experimentation. As we will see in Part 2, the design rules for Silbermann’s toes and flueways were different for lower wind pressures.

Greß’s voicing data encompass several of Silbermann organs in acoustics ranging from smaller and more intimate to spacious and grand.¹⁹ Silbermann used higher wind pressure for more power, and at higher pressure a pipe is also brighter. Higher cutups will restore a pipe’s timbre at a higher power.²⁰ In Figure 12 we see mouth heights (cutups) plotted in Normal Scale halftones against pitch. The data in the orange line show the higher cutups of powerful principal pipes voiced on 90 mm pressure at Großhartmannsdorf; the data in the light blue line show the lower cutups of less powerful principal pipes voiced on 70 mm pressure at Reinhardtsgrimma; the timbres are similar.

Gottfried Silbermann used cutups to differentiate the timbre of his flutes and principals at the same pressure. In Figure 13 we see that Silbermann cut his 8′ Bordon pipes at the Freiberg Dom (data in the blue line) far higher than his principals (Figure 12 data in the orange line). This is why a Silbermann Bordon is extremely smooth and his principal has harmonic bite. It is also why they have similar power and can be played against each other. If the flueways had been closed to make the Bordon less bright, it would have had far less power than the principal. Listen to a soundclip at the Rötha Georgenkirche of Bach’s O Mensch, bewein’ dein Sünde Groß, BWV 622, where the Bordon holds its own against the powerful principal. <soundclip 3>

The striking feature of Silbermann’s voicing is that he used only cutup as a free variable during voicing to achieve his sound. The regularity of his toe diameters and flueway depths is virtually unique, and that regularity strongly implies that they were calculated.

In Part 2 we will take a much deeper dive into these voicing parameters and compare Silbermann’s voicing to the work of other organbuilders. Some of the data may challenge conventional assumptions and yield surprising and very useful insights.

To be continued.

Uncredited images reside in the collection of the author. Fr. Thomas Carroll, S.J., graciously suggested clarifications in the prose of this article.

Notes

1. Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973).

2. John Brombaugh. Personal communication, used by permission via telecommunication of June 2, 2021.

3. Reiner Janke, Copy and Intonation: The tacit knowledge of Reiner Janke, Universität Göttingen, 2018, Youtube video: youtube.com/watch?v=isEWba9rLRY&feature=youtu.be. Figure 2 image is at 9:47. In this video Janke skillfully demonstrates a recreation of the Andreas Silbermann pipe in Figure 2 and its exact voicing. You will not find a better tutorial on voicing. Here are Janke’s instructions to the pipemaker (translated from German), with my notes in brackets [ ]. Pitch: g° Prestant 4′. Wind pressure: 69 mm. Alloy of resonator: 85% tin. Alloy of foot and languid: 10% tin. Inside diameter: 36.5 mm [-2.5 HT]. Mouth width: 29 mm (¼ of circumference) inscribed straight and only lightly pressed [-2.5 HT]. Mouth height (cutup): 8–8.5 mm, upper lip not beveled [arched 0 to +1.5 HT]. Resonator wall thickness: 0.8 mm. Foot wall thickness: 0.9 mm. Foot length: 200 mm. Resonator length: 426 mm. Languid face: 50° with a small counter bevel, 90° to the languid underside. Toe hole: 6 mm [0.97 toe constant and 1.4 toe/flueway ratio]. Flueway depth: 3⁄4 metal thickness [0.68 mm]. Soft, intense, warm onset. Soft attack without harshness, set slightly fast. (“Weich, intensiv, warmer Strich. Weiche Ansprache ohne Härten, etwas zu schnell eingestellt.”)

4. Michael McNeil, The Sound of Pipe Organs (CC&A, amazon.com, 2014). When the pipe speaks most quickly, John Coltman would say that the impedances match and Hartmut Ising would say that I = 2; for more detailed descriptions see pages 64–67 and 77–80. Coltman dealt only with the fundamental harmonic, but Ising’s equation shows the crucial relationships between pressure, flueway depth, and cutup on timbre. For descriptions of toe diameters see pages 43–47. The toe constant equation: diameter of the toe = √(toe constant * 4 * mouth width fraction * pipe diameter). A full graphical analysis of the Isnard organ at Saint Maximin on pages 159–190 can be compared to the Silbermann data at Freiberg.

5. Charles B. Fisk, “Pipe Flueways,” Music: The AGO and RCCCO Magazine, December 1975, page 45. A reprint of the article can be found on the website of C. B. Fisk, Inc., www.cbfisk.com/writing/pipe-flueways/.

6. Heimo Reinitzer, Die Arp Schnitger-Orgel der Hauptkirche St. Jacobi in Hamburg (1995). This is one of only three publications known to the author to include complete data for understanding the sound of an organ, i.e., its pipework, windchests, wind system, temperament, action, and layout. The other examples can be found in the author’s “The 1755 John Snetzler Organ, Clare College, Cambridge, restored by William Drake, Ltd., Joost de Boer, Director,” The Diapason, September 2019, pages 17–21, and “The 1864 William A. Johnson Opus 161, Piru Community United Methodist Church, Piru, California,” The Diapason, August 2018, pages 16–20, September 2018, pages 20–25, October 2018, pages 26–28, and November 2018, pages 20–24.

7. Frank-Harald Greß, Die Klanggestalt der Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1989). Regrettably, this crucially important book is not easy to find.

8. Frank-Harald Greß, Die Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns (Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2007), pages 36, 52. Greß carefully documents the modern changes to Silbermann’s organs, e.g., wind pressures, temperament, voicing, pitch, etc.

9. Poul-Gerhard Andersen, Organ Building and Design (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), page 192.

10. Ibid, pages 193, 200.

11. Ibid, page 26.

12. The architectural standard of -60dB for the measurement of reverberation length has a solid basis in physics, but it creates vast confusion and disappointment. At -60dB reverberation is 1/1000 or 0.1% of its original power, the lowest level of sound perceptible to (young) human ears. We do not even remotely hear such sounds in the context of music and singing. Reverberation that is audible during singing and organ performance will be louder than about -26dB, or 5% of its original level. The -60dB standard is not relevant to human perception in the context of music. Now you know why your architect will guarantee you three seconds of reverberation in your new church, but you are aghast when you first walk into the new room and find the reverberation barely audible. The residual of sound for reverberation length should be specified at no less than -26dB to architects and acousticians, a request that will make them quite aghast, too, but your music will come alive.

13. Greß, Die Klanggestalt der Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns.

14. An Excel analysis of diameters, mouth widths, mouth heights, toe diameters, and flueway depths of the Freiberg Dom Hauptwerk, Oberwerk, and Pedal can be obtained from the author by emailing [email protected]. Wind pressures on the Freiberg Dom organ have been lowered. The 85 mm pressure noted in Figures 4 and 5 is the current pressure; the original pressure according to Greß was 97 mm.

15. Greß, Die Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns, page 36.

16. Specifications of Fisk’s pipe: Inside diameter 24.5 mm [-2.5 HT]. Pitch 4′ middle e, about 659 Hz. Very thin and stiff 0.36 mm wall of 90% hammered tin. Mouth width 19.6 mm [-2 HT]. Toe 7.7 mm [2.35 toe constant] with 65 mm pressure. An upper lip extension approximately equal to the wall thickness. Cutup 6.6 mm [+5 HT]. Languid counterbevel 90 degrees with five fine nicks alternating with four extremely fine nicks. Flueway depth 0.8 mm [2.9 toe/flueway area ratio].

17. I attended the featured voicing demonstration by Charles Fisk. Our conversation afterward turned to the dynamics of the wind system, and with a common analytical approach to such problems, we became deeply engaged in this subject. Fisk started looking for a place where we could have a conversation without interruption. He found a janitor’s closet with folding metal chairs and shut the door. He gave me the pipe in Figure 7 and offered me the chance to work for a few months in his shop, and to this day I regret not taking him up on that offer; he died three years later.

18. McNeil, The Sound of Pipe Organs.

19. Greß, Die Klanggestalt der Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns.

20. McNeil, The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 64–80.

 

Soundclips

1. [00:18] Johann Sebastian Bach, Duetto I in E Minor, BWV 802 (Clavierübung III), Gottfried Silbermann, St. Georgenkirche 1718, Rötha, Johannes Unger, GEMA VKJK 0111 (2001), © Verlag Klaus-Jürgen Kamprad 2001.

2. [00:27] Johann Sebastian Bach, “Grave,” Concerto in D Minor after Vivaldi, BWV 596, Zacharias Hildebrandt, Wenzelskirche, 1746, Naumburg, Robert Clark, Calcante CAL CD041, © Calcante Recordings, Ltd. 2001.

3. [00:35] Johann Sebastian Bach, O Mensch, bewein’ dein Sünde Groß, BWV 622, Gottfried Silbermann, St. Georgenkirche 1718, Rötha, Johannes Unger, GEMA VKJK 0111 (2001), © Verlag Klaus-Jürgen Kamprad 2001.