The introduction of stops (groups of pipes, each of which produces a different timbre) in the mid-15th century was a major innovation. By the 10th century there was a report of a large organ installed in a cathedral in Windsor, England had 400 pipes, 26 bellows and two keyboards of 40 keys each - and required 70 men to operate! The use of the pipe organ in churches soon became commonplace. ![]() The instrument was first brought to Western Europe sometime in the 7th century, where it was used for public performance and other secular purposes.Īt around this time, the organ began developing in mechanical complexity, with pitch determined by the length and diameter of the pipe (one for each key on the keyboard), and tonal quality becoming a function of the material used to craft the pipe and other design characteristics. In the 6th century, the Romans invented the bellows, a manual pump mechanism for forcing air - an innovation that had a huge impact on the development of the organ since it enabled air to be selectively sent to multiple pipes under the control of a keyboard, allowing several notes at a time to be played. The earliest pipe organs could only play one note at a time and used water (either naturally falling from a waterfall, or manually pumped) to blow air into the tube. Incredibly, the organ dates all the way back to the 3rd century, credited to the Greek inventor Ctesibius of Alexandria, who first came up with the concept of moving air through a tuned pipe to produce a note. Here’s a look at the history of this remarkable instrument. ![]() ![]() In fact, no other keyboard has had such a major impact on music across the ages - and it remains as popular as ever. There are few musical instruments that have had as long a path of continual development as the organ.
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