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The reed organ was once an important domestic instrument, offering a cheap alternative to the ever-popular family piano while at the same time providing a suitable instrument for accompanying family hymns on a Sunday. It was the product of a world-wide industry which turned out hundreds of thousands of organs a year at its peak. Reed organs are today the province of collectors and museums. They are often found neglected in junk shops and furniture stores where their often impressively tall cases, redolent of the Victorian fondness for decoration and embellishment, immediately catch the eye of the curious. |
Briefly, the reed organ works by a suction bellows drawing air out
from within the action of the organ. When a note is played by
depressing a key, air is sucked into the action through a small chamber
containing a free reed. The passing air causes the reed to vibrate,
producing a tone. Stops are used to control which sets of reeds are to
be employed for playing. This is done by either allowing or blocking
air to the reed chambers.
To find out more about the physics of the reed organ, there is an
excellent paper on the net titled
The Physics
of the Pump Organ by Kristina Knupp.
One thing that should be noted is that the number of stops is usually greater than the number of sets of reeds. Often stops will control only one-half of a full set of reeds; sometimes they only control physical enhancements of the sound, such as a "Vox Humana" stop, which is actually a rotating cardboard fan that causes a tremulant effect. One British manufacturer went to the extreme of having each octave of a full set of reeds being controlled by its own stop. Since the uninitiated equated more stops with "more organ", this allowed the manufacturer to charge a higher price!
You can learn more about the reed organ by taking a look inside a typical reed organ from the 1870's.
Return to the Reed Organ Home Page
John K. Estell - 10 December 1997