A concert by Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini and Gustav Leonhardt at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, held on October 27, 2000, provided the inspiration for writing an article on the historical Italian organ, its tradition and development. My goal is to give a panoramic view of the subject, and anyone knows that when looking at a panoramic view much of the detail is lost. Still, such an attempt is worth carrying out because some general guidelines can in any case be drawn. To do so, it is necessary to go back a number of centuries and try to understand the original role of the organ in the musical world of Italian churches.
The Basilica of San Petronio is no ordinary place from the standpoint of organbuilding history. It enjoys the presence of two unique instruments: the oldest Italian organ in existence, built by Lorenzo da Prato between 1471 and 1475, roughly 20 years prior to the discovery of America by Columbus,1 and a later organ, built by Baldassarre Malamini in 1596. The instruments are located face to face in the area traditionally reserved for the choristers, behind the high altar.
The program notes for the Tagliavini-Leonhardt concert, written by Marc Vanscheevwijck, well explain the use for which organs of medieval and renaissance times were intended:
Alternatim performance practice, i.e., the performance of liturgical pieces alternating contrasting musical forces in the various versets of the sacred texts, originates in the old antiphonal singing of psalms of the first centuries A.D. In responsorial music a soloist or a small group of singers alternated with the larger choir. Sometimes they alternated plainchant with polyphonic settings of the text. Probably as early as the organ began to be used in church, the organist already improvised "versets," alternating with the choir singing the counter versets in Gregorian chant. Obviously, the schola never repeated the texts of the versets played by the organist, who improvised (and later composed) on the relative Gregorian melodies. The earliest source of such a practice is the Faenza Codex, compiled c.1420. During the following century this alternatim practice spread throughout Italy. Many alternatim settings, particularly of the mass proper, have been preserved, some of the most famous of which were composed by Girolamo Cavazzoni, Claudio Merulo, Andrea Gabrieli, and (in the 17th century) the Fiori Musicali of Girolamo Frescobaldi.2
Two aspects immediately come to mind:
1. The organ location, which for effective responsorial use had to be near the choir and not necessarily in a favorable position for the congregation,
2. A tonal structure suitable for dialogue with a small group of singers.
There was no need for a sound big enough to accompany the choir, simply because the organ was intended as a soloist. And accompanying the congregation was certainly not in the agenda, since people did not sing during liturgy in Italian Catholic churches until very recently.3
What effect did all of this have on the sound? Since power was not the issue, early Italian organbuilders developed their talents in other areas, and tonal quality became the priority. They created relatively small instruments, mostly with only one manual, with gentle, beautifully voiced stops. Wind pressures were in most cases quite low, down to 42-45 mm. at the water column, and the voicing techniques as well as the tonal design in general reflected such an approach.
Listening to music by Antegnati (also a famous Italian organbuilder), Segni, Veggio, Gabrieli and others performed on the beautiful organs of San Petronio gave me and the entire audience (a few hundred people all gathered in the large space behind the high altar, to be able to best hear the organs) a good perspective of the musical experience which was originally expected from such instruments.
It is my belief that the original DNA of ancient Italian pipe organs, as defined by their original use in the liturgy, played a decisive role in the subsequent evolution of the instruments. This was due to a strong sense of tradition among the vast majority of builders and to their reluctance to introduce changes to a practice which was considered successful. Examples to the contrary do exist, but any effort of generalizing, or extracting general rules from a complex reality, always ends up sacrificing notable exceptions.
In post-Renaissance times, organ use became widespread. All Italian churches had at least one organ and often one or two Positivo4 instruments in addition to the main organ. And a very significant change took place: in addition to being used as a solo instrument for improvisations and for the performance of written music, the organ also became an accompanimental instrument for the choir. Its location within the building also changed in most cases, taking into greater consideration the congregation as the beneficiary of musical performances: the preferred location for new instruments became a balcony facing the nave, which is still considered by many to be the ideal location for the best possible diffusion of sound within a building. Naturally, broader tonal resources had to be made available in order to accommodate this new function, but this did not cause a significant change in the original voicing practices. In other words, more stops were introduced and a Pedal division was added (normally consisting of one or two stops), but the basic tonal structure remained the same and no major changes took place in the sound: still low pressures and gentle voicing. After all, organs still did not need to be big or powerful, because they were not intended to support an entire congregation, just a choir.5
A further, major evolution took place as a result of the greater demands by the repertoire of the Romantic period. A great number of new stops were introduced: reeds of various types, more flutes, strings, even percussion: drums, cymbals, bells and the like. The organs built by the Serassi family of Bergamo towards the end of the eighteenth century and during the following century are a good example of the romantic Italian organ. The occupation of Bergamo by the troops of Napoleon (1796-1813) and subsequently by the Austrians (1814-1859) influenced organbuilding practices by introducing new musical models and, as a consequence, by contributing to the development of new devices and new sounds that would improve the performance of the music inspired by the teaching of Simon Mayr (1763-1845), by his pupil Gaetano Donizetti (1797-1848) and by Gioacchino Rossini.6 The famous composer Felice Moretti (also known as Father Davide da Bergamo), a Franciscan monk and a family friend of the Serassi, composed music that was deeply influenced by opera. Also, Giuseppe II Serassi, the most innovative member of the family, introduced new devices aimed at facilitating the dynamic control of sound: the third hand, or mechanical super coupler, the fourth hand, or sub coupler, the expression shades, pedals for pre-set combinations of stops, an easier system for the coupling of the manuals (by means of a pedal and no longer by the sliding of the upper manual into position), settable combinations of stops, and the Tiratutti or Tutti for the Ripieno ranks.7
In spite of all of this, the ancient core of the instrument and the basic tonal concept behind it remained virtually unchanged for a good part of the nineteenth century. Low wind pressures were still the rule, as well as unforced voicing, fairly open pipe toes, and few nicks at the languids. As a consequence, there was a broad harmonic development in the sound, allowing a very effective use of each stop in combination with others and forming an ensemble of rare cohesion and beauty. Pressures of sometimes less than 50 mm. at the water column naturally presented a real challenge, particularly for the voicing of reed stops, but this had the effect of encouraging builders to find original design and voicing methods to overcome the difficulties.8
At this point, it is necessary to define the tonal core of the organ which I have indicated as an element of continuity in Italian organbuilding throughout the centuries. Its main component is the Ripieno. The term does not translate to Mixture, but rather it defines a series of individual Principal scaled ranks of pipes at various pitches, creating a system of sounds at harmonic intervals, normally beginning with 8' pitch as the foundation of the manual.
The composition of a typical Ripieno with its traditional nomenclature follows:
Principale (I) 8'
Ottava (VIII) 4'
Decimaquinta (XV) 2'
Decimanona (XIX) 11/3'
Vigesima seconda (XXII) 1'
Vigesima sesta (XXVI) 2/3'
Vigesima nona (XXIX) 1/2'
Trigesima terza (XXXIII) 1/3'
Trigesima sesta (XXXVI) 1/4'
And occasionally:
Quadragesima (XL) 1/6'
Quadragesima Terza (XLIII) 1/8'
The highest pitch in the entire Ripieno is in most cases the note C at 1/8'. Beyond this limit a ritornello or break begins with pipes double the length, or one full octave lower in pitch.9
Table 1 is intended to give a clear and comprehensive idea of the tonal composition of the Ripieno. The method I am utilizing is unconventional and it consists of identifying each pipe by a number corresponding to its place in an ideal succession of notes starting with number 1 as low C of the 8' Principal. Low C at 4' will consequently be numbered as 13, low C at 2' will be numbered as 25 and so on. The highest pitch pipe in the Ripieno will be number 73, corresponding to the pitch limit of 1/8'. Once a rank reaches note number 73 it will break back and start a ritornello with note C#62 (or one full octave lower). To simplify matters, I am showing the first octave as complete (12 notes). The most common arrangement in Italian historical organs calls for a short first octave (8 notes, with C#, D#, F# and G# missing). Notes are identified by octave number, according to the Italian system, by which C1 corresponds to note C of the first octave, F3 to note F of the third octave, and so on. The chosen compass for our example is of 49 keys, C1 to C5. This system, by numbers rather than by footage, is intended to provide a more immediate idea of the repetition of equal size pipes throughout the compass for the entire Ripieno. Equal number means equal size pipe.
The conventional method is shown in Table 2. The Ripieno here is comparable, in pure terms of number of pipes, to a Principal chorus with 8', 4' and 2' stops plus a six-rank mixture. But by looking at Table 2 one can immediately appreciate the vast difference from such an arrangement. At note C#2 the first doubling or double pitch appears: pipes from the 1/2' rank (XXIX) and 1/4' rank (XXXVI) become of identical size. Consequently, between notes C#2 and F2 the tonal effect is not that of a six-rank mixture but rather of a five-rank mixture with one of the ranks doubled. This aspect becomes more and more prominent as we move up the keyboard, to the point that at note C#4 (key number 38) with all ranks from Decimaquinta (2') up drawn, only two pitches can be heard: 2', repeated 4 times, and 11/3', repeated three times. As one can easily appreciate, such tonal structure cannot be compared with that of a Mixture, or Fourniture or any other multiple-rank stop designed as a single entity. The Ripieno is simply different. It is conceived as a sum of individual ranks at different pitches, each separately usable in combinations with any other rank and all usable at once as a pleno.10
Obviously, this feature provides a great deal of flexibility in the tonal palette. From an organbuilder"s practical standpoint, it has two effects:
1. It forces the voicer to be extremely scrupulous as to the tonal balance, regulation and speech adjustment of each pipe even in the highest pitched ranks, since each can be separately used;
2. It makes tuning more difficult, due to the drawing effect on the equal pitched pipes when they play together. Only a tuner who knows how to deal with such a problem can obtain a stable tuning of the Ripieno.11
Tuning with double pitches was nothing new to ancient builders. In fact, pre-Renaissance and Renaissance organs, in Italy as well as in other European countries, often had double or even triple notes of equal length in the treble of the Principal, the Octave and sometimes the Fifteenth, to enhance the singing qualities of the instrument in the treble. This practice strangely survived, in some areas of Italy, all the way to the beginning of the 19th century. This proves that the difficulties connected with the tuning of multiple equal-pitched pipes never bothered Italian organbuilders too much.12
Other traditional stops forming the original core of the historical Italian organ include the following:
Flauto in Ottava (4'), normally tapered or cylindrical, sometimes stopped
Flauto in Decimaquinta (2') in the earlier instruments
Flauto in Duodecima (22/3')
The Terzino, or Tierce flute (13/5') was later added and, in the nineteenth century, the Flauto Traverso or Fluta (8', normally in the treble only).
Early strings appeared in the eighteenth century, at 4' in the bass and occasionally over the entire compass, but such stops were vastly different from what we think of as a string today. They had no ears, no beards, no nicks at the languids. These characteristics, combined with a very narrow scale, contributed to produce a sound with a very prominent transient at the attach and a cutting sustained tone, strongly imitative of early string instruments.
The Voce Umana or Fiffaro, a Principal-scaled stop at 8' pitch (treble only) was also used in the Renaissance and became increasingly more common in the Baroque and later periods. Its pipes were normally tuned sharp against the 8' Principal, except in the Venetian tradition and among a few builders in the south of Italy, where flat tuning was preferred.
The above description, as I have said earlier, represents a simplification of a much more complicated subject, and many examples exist that do not follow the rule.13 Also, all of those who are familiar with ancient Italian organs will agree that the tonal experience that comes from a Callido or a Nacchini organ is vastly different from that of an Agati or a Catarinozzi. They were expressions of very different artistic environments and the builders were very faithful to their own local traditions.
What happened in nineteenth-century Italian organbuilding is worth investigating a bit more closely. Early signs of rejection of the Italian romantic organ appeared. In 1824 the Cardinal Vicar of Rome promulgated an edict stating: "Organists may not play on the organ music written for theater, or with profane character, but only music that can encourage meditation and devotion . . . "14 Still, many of the major builders in the north, as well as many in other parts of the country, continued in their tradition of building instruments without changing their style.15 But at some point, foreign influence became a strong factor16 and the "new inventions," the Barker lever first and then pneumatic and electric action, came into the picture.17 Pneumatic action in particular and the new sounds, such as the "modern strings" and harmonic stops demanded higher wind pressures, and the organ sound became stronger and aggressive. But, as we all know, pneumatic action represented only a relatively short transition period in organbuilding history, and a further evolution of the instrument was soon marked in the following century by a perfected electric action and by the rediscovery, in the mid 1960s, of tracker action. This movement was immediately promoted by some of the major Italian builders18 and it became stronger and stronger over the years. The neoclassical instrument was created, based on mechanical action and on the re-discovery of the traditional sounds and voicing techniques. But, as it is often the case, the intent was not that of copying the past but rather of preserving the best of tradition within a new context which was calling for a new use of the organ: the support of congregational singing.
One may get the impression that it is impossible to extract a general trend from this entire process of evolution. Still, I believe that one common denominator can be found: the unforced, pleasing singing quality that has survived unchanged for over five centuries, and which effectively represents, in musical form, the character of the Italian language.
Notes
1. The instrument consists of one manual and short pedalboard, as follows. Manual: F1-A4 without F#1, G#1; divided keys G#1/Ab1, G#2/Ab2, G#3/Ab3; Pedal: F1-D2 directly connected to the corresponding manual keys. The stoplist follows:
Principale contrabasso (24', façade) - doubled from C#3
Principale (12', rear façade - doubled from C#3, triple from Bb3)
Flauto in VIII
Flauto in XII
Ottava (doubled from Bb3)
XII
XV
XIX
XXII
XXVI-XXIX
Spring windchest, A = 470 Hz, meantone temperament; restoration by Tamburini, 1974-1982. The above information is the courtesy of Liuwe Tamminga, recitalist and organist at the Basilica of San Petronio.
2. Concerning earlier use of the organ in western world churches, see Peter Williams (Duke University, Durham, NC) in his essay "The origin of the Christian organ with some particular reference to Italy," Acts of the International Symposium on "I Serassi--L"arte organaria fra sette e ottocento," Ed. Carrara, Bergamo, 1999, p. 12. Referring to the early Middle Ages, he writes: "I don"t know any evidence that organs were brought into church in order to accompany singing--whether it was the celebrant singing at mass, the lay people responding with their own acclamations, or the monks chanting their daily office in private or in public. All that one can be certain about is that organs were there to provide sound, and whatever later music historians may have assumed, it is seldom if ever clear what kind of sound they made, or for what purpose and at what point they made it. Only from the thirteenth century onwards the picture is clear . . ."
3. While the practice of congregational singing at celebrations in Italian churches may have had its first examples at the end of the nineteenth century, it was during the Second Vatican Council that this practice was actually encouraged.
4. A Positivo can be described as a smaller size "cabinet" organ, self-contained, whose casework is normally divided in two sections: the lower case, containing the bellows (normally two multi-fold hinged bellows activated by levers), and the upper case, which sits on top and which holds the keyboard, the windchest and pipes. It was almost invariably built without independent pedal stops, and its pedalboard, when present, consisted normally of one short octave, whose keys were connected to the corresponding keys of the first octave at the manual by means of strings or wires. Although easily movable (sometimes large handles on the sides of the two sections of the case indicate this possibility), it is different from a Portativo, an even smaller instrument whose primary function was that of providing music during outdoor processions.
5. Larger instruments are not unknown to historical Italian organbuilding. I will mention two examples of rare complexity:
a.) The instrument at the church of San Nicolo L"Arena in Catania, by Donato del Piano (1698-1785), with a total of five keyboards, divided between three consoles attached to the case (1 manual - 3 manuals - 1 manual) with the larger console in the center and one pedalboard for the center console, plus a separate small automatic pipe instrument activated by a rotating drum. This enormous, beautiful instrument, now in a poor state of disrepair (among other things, the pipes have all been removed and stored), includes pipework of extremely unusual shape.
b.) The great organ at the Church of the Cavalieri di S. Stefano in Pisa, built between 1733 and 1738 by Azzolino Bernardino della Ciaia (1671-1755) with the help of other organbuilders from different parts of Italy, with four manuals plus a fifth manual activating a harpsichord. This organ was later converted into a pneumatic instrument and subsequently electrified. Only a portion of the original pipework survives.
6. See Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, "Le risorse dell"organo Serassiano e il loro sfruttamento nella prassi organistica dell"epoca," in Acts of the International Symposium on "I Serassi--L"arte organaria fra sette e ottocento", Ed. Carrara, Bergamo, 1999, pp. 80-84.
7. See Giosue Berbenni, Acts of the International Symposium on "I Serassi--L"arte organaria fra sette e ottocento," Ed. Carrara, Bergamo, 1999, pp. 22-24.
8. The lower the wind pressure, the thinner the tongues must be to obtain promptness of speech. But thin tongues also produce undesirable side effects, notably: a) A thinner timbre in general, with greater development of overtones and less fundamental; b) Uncontrollable sound at the bass register, where any reed naturally tends to become louder; c) Very weak trebles. To overcome these problems, a series of interesting methods were developed. I will mention a few:
a.) Wide and deep shallots to increase the volume of air excited by the tongue, with the effect of increasing the prominence of the fundamental in the tone;
b.) Double or even triple tongues at the low register, to control volume, timbre and stability;
c.) Variable tongue thickness at the treble, with the filing of the tip to obtain promptness while retaining a good volume of sound.
For a more complete description of voicing methods on low pressure reeds, with specific reference to the reeds of Serassi organs, see Francesco Ruffatti in "I registri ad ancia negli organi Serassi," Acts of the International Symposium on "I Serassi--L"arte organaria fra sette e ottocento," Ed. Carrara, Bergamo, 1999 pp. 144-150.
9. When the lowest pitched stop on the manual is the Principal 16' the nomenclature remains the same, although all stops start one octave lower in pitch. The stoplist becomes:
Principale (16')
Ottava (8')
Decimaquinta (4')
Decimanona (22/3')
and so on. In essence, the organ is still seen as based on the 8' Principal, with the extension of a counter octave towards the bass (see my article on Gaetano Callido, December, 1999 issue of The Diapason, p. 17, Note 8).
10. Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini in his article "Il ripieno," L"organo, Year 1, No. 2, July-December, 1960, Ed. Patron, Bologna, points out the difference between the Italian Ripieno and the northern European mixtures as follows:
"a) The classical Italian ripieno is divided into its constitutive elements, corresponding to separate stops, while the foreign mixtures, starting from a certain pitch (from 4', from 22/3', from 2', from 11/3' etc.) are condensed into one stop;
b) Both in the ripieno and in the northern mixtures a gradual "compression" towards the treble takes place, a compression which is more limited in the German and northern European organ, greater in the Italian organ. In fact a ripieno will have a "compressed" extension in the treble, reduced from 8' to 2', while in the Mixtur-Scharf scheme the treble is extended between 8' and 1';
c) The "masking" of the jumps produced by the breaks is done differently in Italy from abroad; in Italy, by the division of breaks into two different points, one for the octave stops and one for the quint stops; abroad by the partial or complete substitution of the break in quint and fourth with the one in octave.
The northern European mixtures, through a particular interpretation of the break and without any fear of going beyond the pitch limits in the bass and the treble as imposed by the Italian ripieno, tend to make the tonal "density" more uniform, by reducing the difference between the tonal richness of the bass and the treble. Part of such uniformity is sacrificed by the Italian organbuilder in favor of tonal beauty. This is why the use of the Italian ripieno is mostly chordal and for toccatas, while the northern European organum plenum, especially the German, can also perform a polyphonic role."
In c) Tagliavini refers to alternation of quint and unison breaks within the same rank in all ranks of the mixture.
The pitch limit of northern European mixtures and related stops is often C at 1/16', close to the limit of human hearing, one full octave higher than the Ripieno and this factor alone determines a dramatic difference in the sound from the Ripieno.
11. Drawing is an acoustical phenomena by which the sound of a pipe is drawn or pulled into tune by the sound of a second pipe which is playing an interval close to being pure or in tune. This effect is stronger between unison pipes; when tuning the second pipe to the first, its sound will slide into tune as soon as its frequency approaches that of the first pipe, but before it actually reaches the same value, thus determining an apparent tuning condition. Adding a third pipe and trying to tune it to the two previous sounds becomes impossible if the first two pipes are in a status of apparent unison, because each of the two sounds will react to the third pipe differently, according to their real frequency value. The difficulties increase exponentially from note C#4 up in the example shown, where two groups of 4 and 3 equal size pipes respectively play at once. The procedure to tune the Ripieno is consequently different and definitely more complicated than that of a regular mixture stop, as it must take into account the drawing of equal length pipes.
12. I am here mentioning two organs, built in Tuscany by the Paoli family of Campi Bisenzio at the beginning of the 19th century, both restored by Fratelli Ruffatti in recent years:
a.) the organ in the Church of S. Francesco in Pontassieve, near Florence, built by Giacobbe Paoli, which includes doublings at the Principale starting with note Bb3, at the Ottava from note F3 and at the Decimaquinta also from note F3;
b.) the organ built by Michelangelo Paoli in the Basilica of S. Maria, Impruneta - Firenze, utilizing the pipes of a previous instrument by Bernardo d"Argenta, 1535, which has doublings at the Principale starting from note F#3, at the Ottava from note B3 and at the Decimaquinta from C4. Having re-built the windchest entirely, the builder could have easily eliminated the doublings had he not believed in the validity of such tonal approach.
13. As an example, Sicilian organs in the 18th century were often built with multiple Ripieno ranks activated by a single stop control.
14. See "La riforma dell"Organo Italiano" by Baggiani, Picchi, Tarrini, Ed. Pacini, Ospedaletto (Pisa), 1990, pp. 9-10.
15. The largest instrument built by the Serassi family, the "Organum maximum" with three keyboards and over three thousand pipes, was built in the romantic style as late as in 1882. This instrument was restored by Fratelli Ruffatti between 1983 and 1985. It includes many of the effects which were rejected by liturgists, such as the drum, a bell and other percussion.
16. Ferdinando Casamorata (1807-1881), musician and music scholar, introduced the work of Cavaillé-Coll to the Italian musical scene by making public the work of J. A. De La Fage "Orgue de l"Église Royale de Saint Dénis, construit par MM Cavaillé-Coll père et fils, Facteur d"orgues du Roi." Rapport. II edition, Paris, 1846. See "La riforma dell"Organo Italiano" by Baggiani, Picchi, Tarrini, Ed. Pacini, Ospedaletto (Pisa), 1990, p. 12. He gave explanations and favorable comments on some of the most remarkable characteristics of the instrument, notably the variety of wind pressures, the Barker lever, the "strength" of the upper registers, especially the reed stops, etc., and presenting them as valuable innovations worth imitating.
17. An important role in this process was played by George William Trice (1848-1920), a British merchant who became an organbuilder and established a factory in Italy. He built the first electric action organ in 1888 for the Church of S. Andrea, Genoa. Other notable instruments followed, among which the three-manual instrument for the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Genoa, inaugurated in 1890 with concerts by Alexander Guilmant and Filippo Capocci.
18.
Tamburini and Ruffatti were the first major Italian companies, in the early 1960s, to resume building mechanical action instruments.
Francesco Ruffatti has been a partner since 1968 of Fratelli Ruffatti, builders and restorers of pipe organs, in Padova, Italy. Besides being the tonal director of the firm, he is actively involved in the research on historical Italian organs and the supervision of the many historical restorations performed by the firm.
