Page:A Dictionary of Music and Musicians vol 2.djvu/607

ORGAN. arrangement by which the lower portion of a stop, or even the stop entire, could be made to act on two different manuals 'by communication' as it was termed. He introduced this device for the first time in his organ at the Temple, and afterwards in those at St. Andrew's Holborn, St. Andrew Undershaft, St. John's Chapel, Bedford Row, etc.; but the account of the last-mentioned instrument is here selected for illustration, as it presented some other noticeable peculiarities. This organ had a 'Sesquialtera Bass' of reeds, consisting of 17th, 19th, and 22nd, up to middle B, planted on a small separate soundboard; each rank being made to draw separately. (See nos. 13, 14, and 15, below.) It was however nearly always out of order, and produced at best but an indifferent effect. The four ranks of the Cornet in the Echo (12th, 15th, Tierce, and Larigot) were made to draw separately; an arrangement evidently adopted rather for ostentation, as these sets of little pipes could scarcely have been required separately for any useful purpose.

The above organ was standing, a few years ago, in a church at Blackheath.

This organ is said to have been built by 'one Jordan, a distiller, who,' as Sir John Hawkins tells us in his History of Music, 'had never been instructed in the business, but had a mechanical turn, and was an ingenious man, and who, about the year 1700, betook himself to the making of organs, and succeeded beyond expectation.' He certainly built several excellent and substantial instruments. The one under notice had a 16-ft. octave of metal pipes acting on the Great Organ keys from tenor C down to CC. These large pipes originally stood in the front of the case, where they made a very imposing appearance, as their full length was presented to view, without nearly a yard of the upper part being hidden behind the case, as at St. Paul's. They however were dismounted many years ago, and put out of sight, and the instrument was enclosed in a case of inferior dimensions. This organ doubtless had an Echo; but no account of it has been preserved.

In the year 1710 Renatus Harris erected in Salisbury Cathedral, in place of the instrument put up by his father, an organ possessing four manuals (for the first time in England) and fifty stops, including 'eleven stops of Echos,' and on which 'may be more varietys express'd, than by all y$e$ organs in England, were their several excellencies united.' Such was the glowing account given of the capabilities of this new organ, on the engraving of its 'East Front.' The instrument, however, presented little more than an amplification of the peculiarities exhibited in the St. John's Chapel organ already noticed. The extra department consisted of a complete borrowed organ of 13 stops derived from the Great organ. The Choir organ had its own real stops; and the '11 Stops of Echos' were to a great extent made up of the single ranks of the ordinary Cornet. There was a 'Drum Pedal, CC,' the 'roll' of which was caused by the addition of a second pipe sounding a semitone below the first pipe, with which it caused a rapid beat. Smith had previously put 'a Trimeloe' into his organ at St. Mary-at-Hill, and 'a Drum,' sounding D, into that at St. Nicholas, Deptford.