Customer Reviews

Organ Building and Design.

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Like "The Organ" of WL Sumner, this is a fundamental text into which one can plunge or just take a dip. In either case, you may come out of the pool dripping but considerably enriched, whatever your previous level of knowledge.

After a brief introduction to the physics of sound, we find ourselves immersed in a study of different types of pipes and a (Northern European) variety of stops.

The Werk-prinzip found in ancient organs in Germany, Holland and Denmark having hit many organ builders and organists in the 1960s, the approach of Dr Andersen to organ construction favours this sort of tonal design. Having explained this design with the aid of old prints, he commences a history of organ building in Western Europe. There are an important number of stop lists and mixture compositions to illustrate this evolution from medieval times to the present (the great romantic organ builders are not entirely neglected).

Final chapters are dedicated to the Organ Case (after Hill's 1883 book, this is most welcome), where best to place an instrument, the Organ Reform Movement, rebuilding and maintenance (detecting and eventually curing problems).

For those who search more detailed information on the nature and scale of pipes and encyclopedia of stop names, one can read Sumner or Herbert & HJ Norman's "The Organ Today".

I should certainly mention the intersting bibliography for further reading and the 123 (!) photographic plates.

[My copy BTW is published by George Allen & Unwin in 1969, a (sometimes curious) translation of the 1966 Danish original.]