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| Music Encyclopedia: Organ |
A wind instrument consisting of one or more scale-like rows of individual pipes which are made to sound by air under pressure admitted to the pipes by valves operated from one keyboard or more. Most organs have several stops which, when drawn, enable one or more ranks of pipes to be used. The wind-chest is fed by bellows. When a key is depressed, mechanical (or tracker) action causes wind to accumulate in the corresponding pallet valve; the wind is admitted to each stop by means of a perforated slip of wood (‘slider’), which can be aligned either to allow wind to pass to each pipe or to prevent it from doing so by means of rods, trundles and levers operated by a ‘stop-knob’ near the player. With tubular-pneumatic action, air under pressure in the touch-box above the depressed key flows along tubing to the pneumatic motor operating the pipe-chest pallet. In a ‘direct electric action’, a magnet pulls the pallet open. See
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Flue pipes are the most common type, made of a tin-lead alloy or pure tin. Air from the chest passes through the foot-hole (bore) at the base of the pipe-foot and through the flue or windway to strike the edge of the upper lip. Reed pipes have a thin, flexible brass reed-tongue which sets the air column in the pipe into vibration. In a flue pipe, the pitch of the note is primarily affected by the pipe's length; the size of flue and bore, and position of the lips, affect the tone quality. In reed pipes, the frequency is determined by the length of the air column and by the length, mass and stiffness of the reed-tongue (the longer it is, the lower the pitch). The regulation of tone quality and loudness is termed ‘ Voicing ’. A ‘stopped’ pipe will sound an octave lower than if it were open. A unison open flue stop at C is eight feet long (8′); a 4′ stop sounds an octave above, a 16′ an octave below. Measurements in feet are used to describe the pitch of a rank of pipes: see
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Tone families, controlled by the ‘stop-knob’ mechanism, are determined by the diameters of pipes in relation to their length (see Scaling). A narrow scaling in flue pipes produces a bright quality known as Principal tone. Principals are open pipes and include the narrow Geigen and the fuller Open Diapason. Flutes are produced from wider scaling and are usually stopped (Bourdon, Gedackt); they can be made of wood or metal (Principals are usually of metal). Some stop names describe only the tone family (Principal 8′, Flute 4′) or the construction of the pipe (Hohlflöte); others take their name from the instrument imitated (Trumpet, Horn). By the late 16th century, names had become regular and reliable as indication of a stop's purpose. Mixture stops are composed of several ranks of pipes at various pitches, most often octaves, and 5ths, to add brilliance. Mutation (overtone) stops, similarly, are pitched at the 5th, 3rd, 7th, 9th etc of an upper octave. The selection and combination of stops is known as Registration.
Manual keyboards (usually two or three) are operated by the hands and a pedalboard by the feet; a coupling device enables the pipes of one manual to be sounded from another. The pipes for each division are placed on separate cases, the most usual being the Great or Hauptwerk, Chair or Choir or Rückpositiv, Oberwerk, Brustwerk and Pedal. Many organs have a Swell manual, controlled by shutters so that the player can decrease the volume.
The invention of the pipe organ is credited to Ctesibius, an Alexandrian engineer in the 3rd century bc, whose Hydraulis was more a demonstration of the principles of hydraulics than a musical instrument as such. By the 2nd century ad; the Roman organ was heard in theatres and games; a surviving model dated 228 from Aquincum is very small, with four rows of 13 bronze flue pipes, one open and three stopped. Organ construction was abandoned until the 9th and 10th centuries when the instrument was reintroduced from Byzantium, with bellows often replacing the cylinder-pump water organ. Instruments were used as diplomatic gifts or signs of royal power. The 10th century monastic revival contributed to the introduction of organs in the Western church.
By the 15th century the large organ, usually located near the cantores, could be distinguished from the smaller portative and positive organs. Portatives were portable, with a compass of up to two octaves, and were blown by bellows operated by one of the player's hands. Positives were blown by larger bellows operated by a second person. By 1500 the average church organ in northern Italy or southern France had about ten stops and one manual. Those of the upper Rhineland were the most advanced in Europe, with two or three manuals. In England, organs remained single-manual until the 17th century; pipes were wooden and the key compass slightly larger than northern European models. A number of new stops were invented (above all Flutes and Reeds, often for specific colour imitations) and instruments were able to produce a variety of tonal effects.
In the 16th century regional schools began to emerge. By the mid-17th, the French organ had achieved its classic form; its reeds had a bass depth and brilliance, and the flute mutation rank (Tierce) was very popular; builders included Thierry, Joyeuse and the Clicquot family. The instrument demonstrated extravagant contrasts, big choruses (plein jeu and grand jeu), echoes and clearly marked colours. Its development was set back by the French Revolution, but revived in the 1840s by Cavaillé-Coll who introduced many tonal innovations.
Organ building in England, hindered during the Reformation, had increased considerably by the late 17th century with the instruments of Bernard (‘Father’) Smith and Renatus Harris, in which French influence was strong. The pedalboard was probably not used until c 1720 and the Swell developed at the same time, ousting the Choir organ as the chief second manual. Mid-18th century instruments by the émigré Snetzler introduced continental features such as colourful stops, manual coupler and Tremulant. These techniques were incorporated on concert-hall organs in the 19th century.
16th-century Spanish organs were influenced by the Flemish school. By the 18th, reed pipes were placed horizontally, projecting from the organ case, and were used for ‘battle-pieces’ and ceremonial occasions; half-stops providing separate registrations for each hand were also developed. The standard Italian instrument by 1575 was modelled on the one-manual Brescian classical organ; second manuals, reed stops and swell boxes were not widely used until the 18th century.
In central Germany extravagant court chapel organs were built with rich mechanical layouts, allowing an immense array of stop combinations, and were geared towards subtle colour and musical variety. A flourishing school of builders grew up, including the Fritzsche and Compenius families, Silbermann and Casparini; such composers as Froberger, Pachelbel and J.S. Bach were inspired by the instrument. As it became increasingly associated with congregational hymn singing in the 18th century it developed a powerful 16′ pedal tone and extremes of loud and soft. 17th-century Dutch organs were used for secular purposes, and demonstrate a magnificent array of mutations and flute and reed colours. German builders dominated the instrument during the 18th century and produced large, powerful instruments which lacked the older German brilliance or French distinction. Organs were used in Central America by 1530 and in Canada by 1657. English instruments were imported in North America throughout the 18th century and a vigorous native school was established in Boston and New York, its work rooted in the English tradition.
The 19th-century Bach revival resulted in the alteration of countless old English and French organs and some Italian and Spanish: pedals and second choruses were added and short manuals completed, but the national identity was usually retained. Technical developments on Germany c 1825 had an influence throughout Europe: octave couplers became popular and double pedalboards and solo manuals were used on larger instruments. In England, swell boxes were improved, higher pressure was applied to reed pipes and the mechanical-pneumatic action (‘Barker lever’) was in use by 1833. Fully pneumatic and electric actions, which helped establish the organ as an imitator of the orchestra, were developed in France and England in the mid-century; the latter became the norm in the USA in the early 20th century.
An organ revival (Orgelbewegung) was instigated in Germany during the 1920s, concerned with reviving some of the instrument's historic principles. Attempts were made to reconstruct the tonal character of a Baroque instrument and old models were restored. The movement spread throughout Europe and the USA, awareness for historical accuracy increasing in the years after World War II. The tendency towards strict and specific stylistic imitation has become increasingly marked, particularly in the field of authentic temperaments.
| Encyclopedia of Judaism: Organ |
By 1850, the installation of an organ had begun to identify Reform synagogues in Hungary, England, the United States, and other countries. While Isaac Noah Mannheimer excluded the use of an organ from his Vienna Stadt-Tempel to preserve communal unity, some otherwise traditional congregations in France followed the new trend. Many Conservative synagogues in the United States now also allow the playing of an organ on Sabbaths and festivals, at least by a non-Jew. Orthodoxy throughout the world maintains its halakhic objection to the practice, but some modern Orthodox congregations (in England, for example, since the late 19th century) do permit organ accompaniment to wedding and civic services held on weekdays.
| Architecture and Landscaping: organ |
Large musical instrument consisting of many pipes supplied with wind which sound when valves are opened by means of depressed keys. The accommodation of organs in churches and concert-halls requires much space, and the arrangement of pipes has prompted many impressive architectural solutions, notably in the
| Columbia Encyclopedia: organ |
Early Organs
Ktesibios of Alexandria, in the 3d cent. B.C., invented the hydraulis, in which water pressure was used to stabilize the wind supply. The pipes were arranged in rows upon the wind chest and the air was permitted to enter any pipe at will by means of wooden sliders. The hydraulis was the prevailing organ for several centuries and reappeared at intervals throughout the Middle Ages.
Evidence of the first purely pneumatic organ is found on an obelisk erected at Byzantium before A.D. 393. Byzantium became the center of organ building in the Middle Ages, and in 757 Constantine V presented a Byzantine organ to Pepin the Short. This is the earliest positive evidence of the appearance of the organ in Western Europe. By the 10th cent., however, organ building had made considerable progress in Germany and England. The organ built c.950 in Winchester Cathedral is said to have had 400 pipes and 26 bellows and required two players and 70 men to operate the bellows.
The keyboard, or manual, was a creation of the 13th cent., making possible the performance of more complex music. The earliest extant music written specifically for organ, dating from the early 14th cent., gives evidence that by then the manuals of the organ had full chromatic scales, at least in the middle registers. Organs in the Middle Ages already had several ranks of pipes, each key causing a number of pipes to sound simultaneously. All were diapasons, or principals, the pipes of timbre characteristic only of the organ, and the various pipes controlled by one key were tuned to the fundamental and several harmonics of a given tone.
The Development of the Modern Organ
The 15th cent. saw considerable development of the organ, particularly in Germany and Flanders. It became possible to sound single pipes from a rank through the use of stops. Mutation and mixture stops that produce several harmonics of the unison pitch came to be used in combination with the unison to vary tone color. Solo stops imitative of other instruments, mainly flute and reed pipes, were added, and the pedal became standard. Until the 19th cent., Italy and England preferred an organ with no pedals.
It was the Flemish and German builders who developed the organ of distinctive and contrasting timbres, and the peak in organ building was reached in the German organ of the baroque, as described by Michael Praetorius in his Syntagma musicum (1618). The greatest organ builder, perhaps of all time, was Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753) of Dresden. His organs produced a light, transparent tone, ideal for the performance of the great baroque polyphonic music. After this period the art of organ building degenerated, and the organ lost its place in the center of musical life.
The 19th-century desire for a highly expressive organ led to the obscuring of diapason tone by the large number of stops imitative of orchestral tone and to the common employment of the swell and the crescendo pedal. The swell involves enclosing one or more divisions of the organ in a wooden box on one side of which are shutters opened or closed by means of a swell pedal; the crescendo pedal, when gradually opened or closed, adds or takes off stops one by one.
The early 20th cent. saw the electrification of the mechanical parts of the organ, fulfilling the trend toward monstrous size and overwhelming power. In America, this large "king of instruments" became a feature of municipal auditoriums, movie palaces, churches, department stores, schools, and many other institutions. The master architect of these colossal orchestral organs was Ernest M. Skinner. In the early 20th cent., however, Albert Schweitzer was active in the preservation and restoration of many fine old organs, and there was a movement back to the ideals of Silbermann. In the United States, Walter Holtkamp, beginning in 1932, and G. Donald Harrison, in 1935, became the leading figures in this movement. Harrison designed many organs suitable for the performance of music of all periods. In the United States much of the repertoire was performed by the two leading organists of the era, E. Power Biggs and Virgil Fox. By the beginning of the 21st cent., European and American organ builders continued to concentrate on early principles for the construction of their instruments.
Music for the Organ
The organ repertory is vast and varied. The great organ masterpieces of the 17th and 18th cent. include works by John Bull, Handel, Jan Sweelinck, Girolamo Frescobaldi, and Dietrich Buxtehude. In the compositions of J. S. Bach the capabilities of the organ found their most magnificent expression.
Bibliography
See H. Gleason, Methods of Organ Playing (5th ed. 1962); C. F. Williams, The Story of the Organ (1903, repr. 1972); W. L. Sumner, The Organ (rev ed. 1973); P. Williams and B. Owens, The Organ (1988); C. R. Whitney, All the Stops: The Glorious Pipe Organ and Its American Masters (2003).
| Wikipedia: Organ (music) |
 1741 Pipe organ in Église Saint-Thomas, Strasbourg, France. |
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| Classification | Keyboard instrument (Aerophone) |
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| see Keyboard instrument | |
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| see List of pipe organ builders and category:Organ builders | |
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| Pipe organ · Theatre organ · Electronic organ · Hammond organ · Reed organ · Organ repertoire | |
The organ (from Greek όργανον organon, "organ, instrument, tool") is a keyboard instrument of one or more divisions, each played with its own keyboard operated either with the hands or with the feet. The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition [1] , dating from the time of Ctesibius of Alexandria who is credited with the invention of the hydraulis. By around the eighth century it had overcome early associations with gladiatorial combat and gradually assumed a prominent place in the liturgy of the western church; subsequently it has reemerged as a secular and recital instrument.
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Today's pipe organs are descended from a kind of early pipe organ[citation needed] which uses wind moving through pipes to produce sounds. From the 16th century, pipe organs used various materials of pipes which can vary widely in timbre and volume, and are divided into ranks and controlled by the use of hand stops and/or combination pistons. The keyboard touch is not expressive and does not affect dynamics; some divisions may be enclosed in a swell box, allowing the dynamics to be controlled by shutters. These instruments vary greatly in size, ranging from a cubic yard to a height reaching five floors [2] , and are built in churches, synagogues, concert halls, and homes. Small organs are called positive (i. e. easily placed in different locations) or portative (small enough to carry while playing). Increasingly hybrid organs are appearing in which pipes are augmented with electronic additions; great economies of space as well as cost are possible especially when the lowest (and largest) of the pipes can be so replaced.
Non-piped organs include the reed organ or harmonium which like the accordion, harmonica or mouth organ use air to excite free reeds.
Electronic organs or digital organs which generates its electronically-produced sound through one or more loudspeakers. .
Mechanical organs includes such as the barrel organ, water organ, and Orchestrion, etc. These are controlled by mechanical means such as pinned barrels or book music. Barrel organ dispense with the hands and feet of an organist and may be[citation needed] powered by an organ grinder or by other means such as an electric motor.
The pipe organ is the grandest musical instrument in size and scope, and has existed in its current form since the 14th century (though other designs, such as the hydraulic organ, were already used in Antiquity). Along with the clock, it was considered one of the most complex human-made creations before the Industrial Revolution. Organs (the "pipe" designation is generally assumed) range in size from a single short keyboard to huge instruments which can have over 10,000 pipes. A large modern organ typically has three or four manuals with five octaves (61 notes) each, and a two-and-a-half octave (32-note) pedalboard.
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart called the organ the "King of instruments"[3]. Some of the biggest instruments have 64-feet pipes (a foot here means "sonic-foot", a measure quite close to the English measurement unit), and it sounds to an 8 Hz frequency fundamental tone. Perhaps the most distinctive feature is the ability to range from the slightest sound to the most powerful, "plein-jeu" impressive sonic discharge, which can be sustained in time indefinitely by the organist. For instance, the Wanamaker organ, located in Philadelphia, USA, has sonic resources comparable with three simultaneous symphonic orchestras. Another interesting feature lies in its intrinsic "polyphony" approach: each set of pipes can be played simultaneously with others, and the sounds get truly mixed and interspersed only when they reach the environment, not in the instrument itself (this is the main difference with digital organs, where the sound comes from loudspeakers which plays the resultant electric waveform of several tones being played).
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| Inner view of organ mechanism assembly undergoing overhaul |
Organ parts undergoing overhaul (Augusta Victoria church - Jerusalem) 2009 |
The principal purpose of most organs in North America, South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand is to play in Christian and Reform Jewish religious services.[citation needed] An organ used for this purpose is generally called a church organ. The introduction of church organs is traditionally attributed to Pope Vitalian in the seventh century. Due to its ability to simultaneously provide a musical foundation below the vocal register, support in the vocal register, and increased brightness above the vocal register, the organ is ideally suited to accompany human voices, whether a congregation, a choir or a cantor or soloist. Most services also include solo organ repertoire for independent performance rather than by way of accompaniment, often as a prelude at the beginning the service and a postlude at the conclusion of the service.
Today this organ may be a pipe organ (see above), a digital or electronic organ which generates the sound with Digital Signal Processing (DSP) chips or a combination of pipes and electronics. It may be called a church organ or classical organ to differentiate it from the theatre organ, which is a distinctly different instrument. However, as classical organ repertoire was developed for the pipe organ and in turn influenced its development, the line between a church and a concert organ is hard to draw.
Organs are also used to give recital concerts, called organ recitals. In the early twentieth century, symphonic organs flourished in secular venues in the U.S. and UK, designed to replace symphony orchestras by playing transcriptions of orchestral pieces. Symphonic and orchestral organs largely fell out of favor as the Orgelbewegung (Organ Reform Movement) took hold in the middle of the twentieth century and organ builders began to look to historical models for inspiration in constructing new instruments. Today, modern builders construct organs in a variety of styles and for both secular and sacred applications.
A chamber organ is a small pipe organ, often with only one manual, and sometimes without separate pedal pipes, that is placed in a small room, that this diminutive organ can fill with sound. It is often confined to chamber organ repertoire, as often, the organs have too little voice capabilities to rival the grand pipe organs in the performance of the classics. The sound and touch are unique unto the instrument, sounding nothing like a large organ with few stops drawn out, but rather much more intimate. They are usually tracker instruments, although the modern builders are often building electropneumatic chamber organs.
The theatre organ or cinema organ was designed to accompany silent movies. Like a symphonic organ, it is made to replace an orchestra. However, it includes many more gadgets, such as percussion and special effects, to provide a more complete array of options to the theatre organist. Theatre organs tend not to take nearly as much space as standard organs, relying on extension and higher wind pressures to produce a greater variety of tone and larger volume of sound from fewer pipes.
This extension is called "unification", meaning that instead of one pipe for each key at all pitches, the higher octaves of pitch (and in some cases, lower octaves) are achieved by merely adding 12 pipes (one octave) to the top and/or bottom of a given division. Since there are sixty-one keys on an organ manual, a classical or concert organ will have, for diapason stops at 8', 4' and 2' pitch, a total of 183 pipes (61 plus 61 plus 61). The same chorus of diapasons on a theatre organ will have only 85 pipes (61 plus 12 plus 12). Some ranks, such as the Tibia Clausa, with up to 97 pipes, allow the organist to draw stops at 16', 8', 4', 2', and mutations from a single rank of pipes.
Unification gives a smaller instrument the capability of a much larger one, and works well for monophonic styles of playing (chordal, or chords with solo voice). The sound is, however, thicker and more homogeneous than a classically-designed organ, and is very often reliant on the use of tremulant, which has a depth greater than that usually found on a classical organ. Unification also allows pipe ranks to be played from more than one manual and the pedals.
The bamboo organ called Bambuso sonoro is an experimental custom-made instrument designed by Hans van Koolwijk. The instrument has 100 flutes made of bamboo.[5]
The reed organ and harmonium was the other main type of organ before the development of electronic organs. It generated its sounds using reeds similar to those of a piano accordion. Smaller, cheaper and more portable than the corresponding pipe instrument, these were widely used in smaller churches and in private homes, but their volume and tonal range was extremely limited, and they were generally limited to one or two manuals, pedalboards being extremely rare.
The chord organ was invented by Laurens Hammond in 1950.[6] It provided chord buttons for the left hand, similar to an accordion. Other reed organ manufacturers have also produced chord organs.[7]
Since the 1930s, pipeless electric instruments have been available to produce similar sounds and perform similar roles to pipe organs. Many of these have been bought both by houses of worship and other potential pipe organ customers, and also by many musicians both professional and amateur for whom a pipe organ would not be a possibility. Far smaller and cheaper to buy than a corresponding pipe instrument, and in many cases portable, they have taken organ music into private homes and into dance bands and other new environments, and have almost completely replaced the reed organ.
The Hammond organ was the first successful electric organ, released in the 1930s. It used mechanical, rotating tonewheels to produce the sound waveforms. Its system of drawbars allowed for setting volumes for specific sounds, and it provided vibrato-like effects. The drawbars allow the player to choose volume levels of 1-8 for each of the members of the harmonic series starting from 16'. By emphasizing certain harmonics from the overtone series, desired sounds (such as 'brass' or 'string') can be imitated. Generally, the older Hammond drawbar organs had only preamplifiers and were connected to an external, amplified speaker. The Leslie speaker became the most popular, which is a rotating type speaker. The three most popular models of Hammond organs were the consoles: the B-3, C-3, and A-100. Inside all three models, the tone generators, drawbars, and keyboards were identical. The B-3 cabinet stood on 4 legs, the C-3 was an enclosed "church" model, and the A100 series had built in amplifiers speakers.
In addition to these console models, Hammond also produced spinet models, which differed from the consoles in the size of keyboard (44 keys per keyboard versus 61 for the consoles, and 12 or 13 pedals instead of 25). Other features of the console such as vibrato or percussion were included in the spinets; all the spinet models featured a built in amplifier and speaker; when used with the external amplified speaker (e.g.: Leslie) they sound the same. These smaller all-in-one organs were intended primarily for use in homes or very small churches.
Though originally produced to replace organs in the church, the Hammond organ, especially the model B-3, became popular in jazz, particularly soul jazz, and in gospel music. Since these were the roots of rock and roll, the Hammond organ became a part of the rock and roll sound. It was widely used in rock and popular music during the 1960s and 1970s by bands like The Doors, Pink Floyd, Procol Harum, Santana (band) and Deep Purple. Its popularity resurged in pop music around 2000, in part due to the availability of clonewheel organs that were light enough for one person to carry.
Frequency divider organs used oscillators instead of mechanical parts to make sound. These were even cheaper and more portable than the Hammond. They featured an ability to bend pitches.
In the 1940s until the 1970s, small organs were sold that simplified traditional organ stops. These instruments can be considered the predecessor to modern portable keyboards, as they included one-touch chords, rhythm and accompaniment devices, and other electronically assisted gadgets. Lowrey was the leading manufacturer of this type of organs in the smaller (spinet) instruments, with Conn-Selmer and Rodgers dominating the larger instrument market, although the larger models were movable but were not considered portable.
Conn and others also made electronic organs that used separate oscillators for each note, giving them a richer sound, closer to a pipe organ, due to the slight imperfections in tuning, by not using precise division.
In the '60s and '70s, a type of simple, portable electronic organ called the combo organ was popular, especially with pop and rock bands, and was a signature sound in the pop music of the period, such as The Doors, Led Zeppelin, and Iron Butterfly. The most popular combo organs were manufactured by Farfisa and Vox.
Also available are hybrids, starting from early 20th century [8], which incorporating a few ranks of pipes to produce some sounds, and using electronic circuits or digital samples for other sounds and to resolve borrowing collisions. Major manufacturers include Allen, Walker, Compton, Wicks, Marshall & Ogletree, Phoenix, Makin Organs, Wyvern Organs and Rodgers.
The development of the integrated circuit enabled another revolution in electronic keyboard instruments. Electronic organs sold since the 1980s utilize sampling to produce the sound.
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Virtual Pipe Organs use MIDI to access samples of real pipe organs stored on a computer, as opposed to digital organs that use DSP and processor hardware inside a console to produce the sounds or deliver the sound samples. They have high polyphony (up to about 40,000 pipes/1PC), which is necessary as there is a sample for every single pipe on the organ, plus samples and modeling effects such as mechanical action noise and pipe wind fluctuations. Addition of touch screen monitors or custom midi controllers allows the user to control the virtual organ console (drawing stops, operating couplers etc.) In its basic form, without a traditional wooden console, a Virtual Organ can be obtained at a much lower cost than other digital classical organs. With minimum 2-channel Stereo audio system can be used to some effect, in order to approach the acoustic realism of a real pipe organ, a multi-channel audio system is used for different pipe ranks are amplified and spoken separately. For example, for most Virtual Organs with a pedal division containing 16 ft or 32 ft pipes, a subwoofer arrangement is required to reproduce the powerful movement of air at frequencies around 16 Hz or lower. For personal purpose, typically small studio quality near-field monitors with subwoofer are used.[9]
The wind can also be created by using pressurized steam instead of air. The steam organ, or calliope, was invented in the United States in 19th century. Calliopes usually have very loud and clean sound. Calliopes are used as outdoors instruments, and many have been build on wheeled platforms.
The organ has had an important place in classical music throughout its history. Antonio de Cabezón, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck, and Girolamo Frescobaldi were three of the most important composers and teachers before 1650. Influenced by these composers, the North German school then rose to prominence with notable composers including Dieterich Buxtehude and especially Johann Sebastian Bach, considered by many to have achieved the height of organ composition. During this time, the French Classical school also flourished.
After Bach, the organ's prominence gradually lost ground to the piano. Felix Mendelssohn, A.P.F. Boëly, and César Franck led a resurgence in the mid-1800s, leading a Romantic movement that would be carried further by Max Reger, Charles-Marie Widor, Louis Vierne, and others. In the 20th century, composers such as Marcel Dupré and Olivier Messiaen added significant contributions to the organ repertoire.
Because the organ has both manuals and pedals, organ music has come to be notated on three staves. The music played on the manuals is laid out like music for other keyboard instruments on the top two staves, and the music for the pedals is notated on the third stave or sometimes, to save space, added to the bottom of the second stave as was the early practice. To aid the eye in reading three staves at once, the bar lines are broken between the lowest two staves; the brace surrounds only the upper two staves. Because music racks are often built quite low to preserve sightlines over the console, organ music is usually published in oblong or landscape format.
From their creation on radio in the 1930s to the times of television in the early 1970s, soap operas were perhaps the biggest users of organ music. Day in and day out, the melodramatic serials utilized the instrument in the background of scenes and in their opening and closing theme songs. Some of the best-known soap organists included Charles Paul, John Gart, and Paul Barranco. In the early 1970s, the organ was phased out in favor of more dramatic, full-blown orchestras, which in turn were replaced with more modern pop-style compositions.
Church-style pipe organs are occasionally used in popular music. In some cases, groups have sought out the sound of the pipe organ, such as Tangerine Dream, and Arrogant Worms which combined the distinctive sounds of electronic synthesizers and pipe organs when it recorded both music albums and videos in several cathedrals in Europe. Rick Wakeman of British progressive rock group Yes also used pipe organ to excellent effect in a number of the group's albums (including Close to the Edge and Going for the One). Wakeman has also used pipe organ in his solo pieces such as "Jane Seymour" from The Six Wives Of Henry VIII and "Judas Iscariot" from Criminal Record. Even more recently, he has recorded an entire album of organ pieces – Rick Wakeman at Lincoln Cathedral. George Duke employed the pipe organ in a flamboyant manner in the piece "50/50" on the Frank Zappa album Over-Nite Sensation. Dennis DeYoung of American rock group Styx used the pipe organ at Chicago's St. James Cathedral on the song "I'm O.K." on the group's 1978 album Pieces of Eight. In 2000 Radiohead frontman Thom Yorke played the organ on the Kid A album to great effect, most notably in "Motion Picture Soundtrack". More recently, Arcade Fire have used a church organ on the songs "Intervention" and "My Body Is a Cage" on their newest album Neon Bible. Muse have also used a church organ on their album Origin of Symmetry in the form of "Megalomania", played by their frontman Matt Bellamy. It has been performed live only once on a pipe organ, at the Royal Albert Hall.
On the other hand, electronic organs and electromechanical organs such as the Hammond organ have an established role in a number of non-"Classical" genres, such as blues, jazz, gospel, and 1960s and 1970s rock music. Electronic and electromechanical organs were originally designed as lower-cost substitutes for pipe organs. Despite this intended role as a sacred music instrument, electronic and electromechanical organs' distinctive tone-often modified with electronic effects such as vibrato, rotating Leslie speakers, and overdrive-became an important part of the sound of popular music. Billy Preston and Iron Butterfly's Doug Ingle have featured organ on popular recordings such as "Let it Be" and "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida", respectively. Well-known rock artists using the Hammond organ include Pink Floyd, Hootie & the Blowfish, Sheryl Crow, and Deep Purple.
Recent performers of Popular organ music include William Rowland of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma who is noted for his compositions of "Piano Rags" which he plays on a Wurlitzer theatre organ in Miami, Oklahoma; George Wright (1920–1998) whose "Jealousie" and "Puttin on the Ritz" are some of the finest performances of this genre and Virgil Fox (1912–1980), who bridged both the classical and religious areas of music with pop and so-called Heavy Organ concerts that he played on an electronic organ accompanied by a light show similar to those created in the 1960s for rock concerts. Jimmy Smith was a famous jazz organist of the twentieth century.
The American Theatre Organ Society ATOS has been instrumental in programs to preserve the instruments originally installed in theatres for accompaniment of silent movies. In addition to local chapter events they hold an annual convention each year, highlighting performers and instruments in a specific locale. These instruments feature the Tibia pipe family as their foundation stops and regular use of tremulants. They were usually equipped with mechanical percussion accessories, pianos, and other imitative sounds useful in creating movie sound accompaniments such as auto horns, doorbells, and bird whistles.
Organ music is commonly associated with several American sports, most notably baseball. The first team to introduce an organ during breaks of play (before and after games, in between innings, and during longer stoppages) was the Chicago Cubs, who put an organ in Wrigley Field as an experiment in 1940 and kept it there after positive public reaction. Over the years, many ballparks caught on to the trend, and many organists became well-known and associated with their parks or signature tunes: Eddie Layton playing at Old Yankee Stadium for over 50 years, Jane Jarvis greeting the New York Mets at Shea Stadium with their club song "Meet the Mets", Ernie Hays serenading a Busch Memorial Stadium crowd with "Here Comes the King", or Nancy Faust urging Chicago White Sox fans to tell an opposing pitcher or a Pale Hose home run to "Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss Him Goodbye)". During the 1990s, several teams fired their organists and replaced them entirely with recorded music and sound effects. However, many fans support organs at ballparks, believing it to be a traditional aspect of the game. As a result, several teams (notably the Los Angeles Dodgers, St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates) have begun to feature organ music more prominently, and in 2009 the Atlanta Braves re-introduced an organist at Turner Field, even going so far as to promote his Twitter feed to take requests from fans.
The electronic organ, especially the Hammond B-3, has occupied a significant role in jazz ever since Jimmy Smith made it popular in the 1950s. It can function as a replacement for both piano and bass in the standard jazz combo.
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