What’s in a name?
or,
Say what you mean.
JULIET:
O Romeo, Romeo! Wherefore art thou, Romeo?
Deny thy father, and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.
ROMEO [Aside]:
Shall I hear more, or shall I speak at this?
JULIET:
’Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What’s Montague? It is not hand, not foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What’s in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call’d,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.1
This might be one of the most recognizable moments in all of Shakespeare’s plays. What childhood is without some recognition of Romeo’s wherefores? And how many times has the sweet-smelling rose been misquoted?
I spend a lot of time writing. Each month I spend most of a day writing this column. Before I start, I’ve settled on a subject and have rattled it around between my ears for several days. In my work with the Organ Clearing House, I spend considerable time writing to describe the scope, details, and terms of proposed projects. The committee of a church might ask me to write up a description—I wonder how many committee members realize that the exercise might take a couple days of desk time.
Because I spend so much time working with words, I’m sensitive to (often annoyed by) their misuse—especially when that misuse finds its way into what might be called the official lexicon. Here’s an example. The word anniversary is defined as “an annual event.” (I’m taking all my definitions of English words from the American Heritage Dictionary published by Houghton Mifflin Company in 2000.) By extension, annual is synonymous with yearly. So when I first heard someone refer to the “five-year-anniversary” of something, I thought it sounded funny. Considering the root meanings of those words, isn’t that something like saying “five-year-year?” I think it’s correct to say fifth anniversary. It’s clear, concise, and it’s not redundant. But I guess I’ll lose that battle. Even commentators on National Public Radio routinely get this wrong—according to them we’ve just had the sixty-seven-year-anniversary of the attack at Pearl Harbor. (If you agree with me about this, help me start a revolution.)
Any specialized field has its own language. My brother is a scientist and university professor working in genetic research. During his last visit, he was busy with a student’s dissertation—I glanced at a couple pages and knew instantly that if those were the secrets of the universe they’d be safe with me. I couldn’t understand a single sentence.
The organ is one of those specialized fields rife with jargon. My spell-checker lights up like the proverbial Christmas tree when I type a stoplist. (In fact, it doesn’t even approve of the word stoplist.) My brilliant brother would be just as lost trying to understand what I wrote as I was with his student’s paper. As I’ve gotten to know the pipe-organ jargon—thirty-five years in the vineyards will at least get you started—I’ve realized how specific and how misused it can be. For example, a drawknob marked Prestant 4′ means something very specific, and if I find one on an organ installed in a chamber with no façade, I consider it a misnomer.
The name Prestant comes from the Latin prestare, which translates roughly as “to stand in front.” So by definition a Prestant comprises the pipes of the façade. If you take the name literally (and I suggest we should), a Prestant does not stand behind anything. If the layout of the windchest has other stops in front of that four-foot Principal, call it something else—there are plenty of choices. But wait! If the division in question has a Principal 8′ you can’t use Principal 4′ because Principal implies the principal pitch of the division, and a division can only have one Principal. If there’s a Principal 8′ you call your four-footer Octave because that’s what it is. Sometimes a rose by any other name isn’t quite a rose. Or more accurately, a rose is a rose is a rose, but to equate with this organ-babble, horticulturists would need different words for the rose in front and the rose in back, even if both were red.
Werkprinzip is a precise organ term that describes an organ that explains itself. In such an organ you can tell by looking at the façade what the various divisions are, where they are located, and what their principal pitch is. In the Pedal you might have Principal 32′ and Octave 16′, in the Hauptwerk (literally “main work” or principal division) you would find Principal 16′ and Octave 8′, and in the Positiv, Principal 4′ and Octave 2′. In all three divisions, you could replace the name Principal with Prestant if the pipes were in the façade.
If the Positiv division is located on the balcony rail behind the organist’s back, you could call it Rückpositiv (German) or Rugwerk (Dutch) as rück or its variations means “back.” A German hiker carries a Rücksack. (The German language has some exquisite precision in its nouns—for example, a Handschuh (“hand shoe”) is a glove.) The hole in this theory would be the organ with a Positiv division on the balcony rail and a detached and reversed console. In that instance the organist would be facing the altar and therefore Positiv, with the bulk of the organ behind him. In that case I suppose we’d coin the name Vorpositiv.
The photo above is a postcard from our daughter, whose travel plans included a layover in Reykjavik, Iceland—such a good girl to go into a church and buy a postcard! It shows the Klais organ in the Hallgrímskirku in Reykjavik, a great example of a Werkprinzip organ. Assume that the door beneath the organ is about eight feet tall and use it for scale. With that, we know that the tallest pipes in the side towers are the Pedal Prestant 32′, the three towers of the upper case house the pipes of the Great (Hauptwerk) Prestant 16′, and the façade of the Rückpositiv is the Prestant 8′.
After I wrote the previous paragraph I went to the website of Klais Orgelbau in Bonn and found the specification of the organ (http://www.orgelbau-klais.com/m.php?tx=86). I’m proud to say that I got it just right, except that Klais publishes that the name of the division played by the lowest manual is Positiv (correct, although Rückpositiv would have been more explanatory), and those out-in-front Principals are called Praestant, also correct—simply a variation on Prestant.
In a three-manual American Classic organ such as those built in the mid-twentieth century by Aeolian-Skinner or M. P. Möller, we expect to find two enclosed divisions, Swell and Choir. Can we have Swell shutters in front of the Choir division? I think we should call them Choir shutters. Or if it’s bulky to have two different kinds of shutters in the organ, let’s simplify it and call them all expression shutters. I’m reminded of a succinct comment made to me by friend and mentor George Bozeman in 1976. I was preparing to play a recital on the Bozeman-Gibson organ in Castleton, Vermont, and George was coaching me: “If they named the division after hearing you play, they’d have called it Crush, not Swell.” His simple comment still informs my playing.
Individual organs are conceived and designed based on national and historic styles. We easily recognize the difference between a nineteenth-century French organ and a seventeenth-century Dutch organ. A stoplist that begins Prestant 16′, Octaaf 8′, Roerfluit 8′ implies something different from one with Montre 16′, Diapason 8′, Flûte à Cheminée 8′. Both describe Principals at sixteen and eight and an eight-foot Chimney Flute, but one is Classic Dutch, the other romantic French. In this context it would be technically correct to have Montre 16′ and Roerfluit 8′ in the same organ, but in my opinion it would be a messy cross-reference that could imply stops that don’t belong in the same organ.
In French, haut means “high” and bois means “ wood.” Haut also implies excellence. Haute cuisine is food cooked to a high standard, haute école (literally high school) refers to expert horsemanship. And by the way, the English word haughty (“Scornfully and condescendingly proud”) comes sarcastically from the French haut. Hautbois is literally the “high wood” of the orchestra—in English we say Oboe. We wouldn’t be surprised to see Hautbois and English Horn on the same stoplist, but Hautbois and Cor Anglais would be more linguistically precise.
As I write, I’m checking myself by flipping through various stoplists, and as I’m in a literal frame of mind I find many inconsistencies—instances of multiple languages used in the same instrument—and I realize that it is often intentional. After all, many organbuilders work hard to instill eclecticism in their instruments. They mean to imply the French characteristic of the Hautbois with the originally American invention of French Horn or English Horn (both invented by American organbuilder Ernest Skinner). They mean to have both Swell and Positiv divisions in the same instrument, though the names imply differing origins.
This allows the organist the flexibility to play baroque or romantic music with authentic registrations, assuming of course that the skill of the organ’s voicer provided a roster of stops that blend well with each other even if they are representing different historical and geographical styles. The rich harmonic development of the baroque Roerfluit would not blend well with the creamy Skinner Diapason, but both stops can be modified in character to approach each other in style.
The purist will say that this diminishes the quality and effect of the organ. If an instrument tries to cover too many styles it may fail at all of them, following the adage Jack of all trades and master of none. Conversely, installing a singularly specialized instrument in a modern church may not be serving well the needs of a congregation. After all, there is more to life than Sweelinck and Scheidemann, and while the modern churchgoer may be happy to hear one or the other once in a while, too much and too often will start to wear. Reminds me of A. A. Milne’s (1882–1956) touching reference to the haughtiness of assuming that someone likes something:
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She’s crying with all her might and main,
And she won’t eat her dinner—rice pudding again—
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I’ve promised her dolls and a daisy-chain,
And a book about animals—all in vain—
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She’s perfectly well, and she hasn’t a pain;
But, look at her, now she’s beginning again!—
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
I’ve promised her sweets and a ride in the train,
And I’ve begged her to stop for a bit and explain—
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
She’s perfectly well and she hasn’t a pain,
And it’s lovely rice pudding for dinner again!
What is the matter with Mary Jane?
Have I gone off the deep end, equating Scheidemann with rice pudding? I hope you get my drift!
These reflections on terminology may seem fussy, but pipe-organ jargon is a highly developed and precise language. If organbuilders use it thoughtfully as they create new instruments (or rebuild old ones), they provide insight for the musicians about how the organ is laid out internally. If the musicians use and understand the terminology well, they play their instruments with a deeper understanding of what’s going on inside—of how the sounds are made and how they blend.
But accurate use of the jargon is not the most important thing. I refer back to this column in the October 2008 issue of The Diapason in which I urged my fellow organists to listen. Listen to how the stops blend. Build your registrations because they sound good. You can and should be informed by knowledge of various historical styles of organs and organ music, but if you always and only play by established rules of registration, you’ll likely be dipping back into the rice pudding. A composer may have specified a list of stops, or research may tell you that a Cornet is the combination of stops of five pitches (8′, 4′, 22⁄3′, 2′, 13⁄5′). But does it tell you that all five should be flutes, or can you substitute a principal at 2′ for a brighter sound? If the five stops together produce a dark and heavy sound, try the various combinations. Leave out the four-foot. Try substituting something else for the eight-foot flute. No one will clap you in irons. It has to sound good.
§
With all this huffiness about precise language, a glaring error in the December 2008 issue of this column (page 12) sticks in my craw. I wrote about riding the subway in New York listening to a woman with an electronic keyboard grinding out some of the great classics of church music, and I referred to the Broadway Express as the “1” train. In fact, the Express trains are the “2” and “3.” The three lines run on the same tracks up and down Broadway, but the “2” and “3” stop only at express stops (42nd, 72nd, 96th, 168th), while the “1” fills in the blanks. If you want to go from the Church of St. Mary the Virgin (marvelous Aeolian-Skinner organ) on 46th Street to the Cathedral of St. John the Divine (a great ride for the orgo-tourist), you can take the “2” or “3” from 42nd (Times Square) to 96th and transfer to the “2” or “3” for two stops to Cathedral Parkway (110th Street). The transfer is easy—you get off one train, walk about fifty feet across a platform on to the express train. Then you walk two blocks north on Broadway, turn right onto 112th and walk a quiet block past housing for Columbia University, facing the façade of the cathedral the whole way. I hope my misspeak didn’t lead anyone astray.■
