The organ rising from the primaeval swamp
When we think about church music in the west, we think of choirs and we think of the organ, but the organ is not an instrument mentioned in the psalms, unless you include the wonderful prophetic reference in Psalm 41 (42) : ‘Deep calleth unto deep at the sound of thy waterspouts’. Sadly even this doesn’t survive into more modern translations; The Grail has ‘…in the roar of waters’, new Grail ‘…in the roar of your torrents’, which are powerful and frankly make better sense, but I regret losing the organ reference. The Anglican psalter has ‘ One deep calleth another, because of the noise of the waterpipes’, which is definitely prophetic, but perhaps the translation then was influenced by knowing that organs started that way, rather than the other way round. Still, it delights any organist.
First water pressure then air
The organ is the first keyboard instrument (press not plink) and the biggest of all the instruments, according to my trusty Ladybird book. The Greeks thought of it first, as so often; possibly it was Ctesibius of Alexandria . It was indeed water pipes, and about the third century BC (so about 700 years after the psalms). Bellows instead of water power came in around the fourth century AD. It was always a large instrument, because each note needs a separate pipe to sound, so it tended to be built into large buildings. Deep notes need very long pipes.
Great cathedrals and great organs
It was Guillaume de Machaut who called it ‘the king of instruments’. He was born in 1300, went off to work for the King of Bohemia in 1323 and that’s another place that has fine historical organs. We remember also that at this stage, kings tended to be much bigger than other people because of a better diet. The great mediaeval cathedrals had big beautiful organs built into them (Machaut went on to work in Rheims), and this style of organ just kept getting bigger, as ingenious musical engineers developed new stops and more potential volume. (I know of an organ builder who puts a special local stop into any organ he builds. The last one was bagpipes.) But these organs were built in and so fixed in position, so later developments are the portative organ, small and portable as the name suggests, and the positive organ (not easily portable, but which could be moved, maybe standing on a table). Bach had pedals, and so did the other Europeans, but they were not part of English organ building until nearly the end of the eighteenth century, and then the cunning French worked out how to use electricity in 1867 to power the organ, so it was all debugged and fully operational in time for Messiaen (born in 1908).
Getting bigger, getting smaller
Until the telephone exchange was invented, the organ was the biggest and most complicated machine in existence. Now we have computers, and they just keep shrinking. So do the telephones. Now we have electronic organs and keyboards, which are portable, but they don’t make the same noise as those wonderful enormous church organs. However, those do need to be sensitively played when accompanying, or they can easily swamp any number of voices, but when they are playing solo, there is nothing comparable. Except possibly the voice of the Almighty, which is also preceded by the rushing of a mighty wind.
Saint Cecilia sadly not involved
I am really sorry to have to admit that Saint Cecilia was not involved in the invention of the organ. I had a woolly idea of her inventing the organ on the sea shore because of the inspiration of the wind and the waves, but alas, no. I think it’s partly confusion between Britten’s Ode to Saint Cecilia and Britten’s own memorial on the beach at Aldeburgh.
Cecilia is an early martyr (died around 167 AD), and she’s the patron saint of music because when her parents decided to marry her against her will to a pagan husband, she sang in her heart to the Lord during the wedding, not in gladness but in supplication. The Lord sorts everything out, the husband converts and his brother also, and eventually after many other converts, including all the soldiers sent to arrest this most persuaive lady, all the Christians are killed on the orders of Marcus Aurelius (presumably in one of his less humane moments). Chaucer’s Second Nun in the Canterbury Tales tells the story of St Cecilia, but interestingly it’s all about vows of virginity and converting lots of people on the way to death, so the music angle evidently became more important later. We really know almost nothing about her, but I think her popularity is grounded in the natural desire to honour a patron saint of something so important to so many people.
Patron saints and tactless iconography
It’s good to find a positive patron saint (especially a female one). Often they are special because of their method of martyrdom (teeth for St Apollonia, eyes for Lucy), even using them as namebadges in mediaeval portraits (Catherine and the wheel, Lawrence and the grill), so it’s good to find St Cecilia accompanied by various instruments, harps, lyres, trumpets, other instruments; but very often a portative organ. Any sort of organ except the original hydraulis is going to be of far later date than the saint; and what I think we have here is evidence of the idea that because organs are in churches, they are uniquely suitable to music on sacred themes. I think this is wrong. I think any musical instrument, like any language, can be just as appropriate as any other for singing to or about God.
All are welcome, not just organists
People have preferences, and that’s good. It keeps things varied and interesting. What I don’t like is when someone insists that ‘only’ one specific instrument is the right one, whatever it is. Church musicians are a band, like any other band. Just like in so many films, you assemble the band, and then you play the gig. So on a Sunday, or hopefully at the rehearsal beforehand, you work with the musicians who present themselves. One of the most encouraging psalms says,’ Make a joyful noise unto the Lord’. Not a refined noise, or a performance with no errors, or a gloomy little whisper, just a joyful noise. And we can all manage that.
Thank you to Mary who first asked the question, to wikipedia, to various reference books I happen to have (Oxford Dictionary of Music, Oxford Companion ditto), to Geoffrey Chaucer, and my old Ladybird book. This has been a fascinating distraction from all the other things I should have been doing!
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