56: Organ Stops

 We saw yesterday that organs are so difficult to play because of the complexity involved in playing in two dimensions— not just on one keyboard, left to right, but on a stack of keyboards, left to right and up and down. Now, let’s talk about one of the primary reasons one would do that, and explain the origin of a popular expression.

Organs are, fundamentally, instruments of polyphony. You play them with both hands and both feet, so they’re begging to have multiple lines moving at the same time. That is very often the case, and composers have known and taken advantage of this for centuries. 


Each organ is built by a particular firm for the space in which it’s going to be played, by the particular kinds of people who are going to play it, for the particular things it’s going to be asked to do. Each organ, therefore, is completely unique; my parish’s is completely different from my cathedral’s is completely different from the one at the Episcopalian cathedral a few miles away, is completely different from the one at St. Peter’s in Rome.


Part of what makes each organ unique is its sound. The number one way you can influence the sound of an organ is by the addition of stops. Normally, the number of stops correlates with the number of manuals (keyboards) an organ has— more manuals, more stops. For a long time, my grandmother was in a choir at a Carmelite convent, and their Masses were played on a two- (one?-)manual electric organ. I’m not sure if it had any stops at all. In contrast, the organ at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Manhattan has 5 manuals and probably about 250 different stops.

The stops vary by builder, but there are several that make the organ sound like strings, like flutes, like oboes, like bassoons, trumpets, and so on. Organs can effectively mimic the sounds of other instruments. Organists will very frequently mix these stops, so that, for example, there’s a string stop on the left hand, but a flute stop on the right.

Playing with no stops engaged produces a sound that’s characteristically “organ-like”— it has no comparison, because no stops that are trying to mimic the sound of something else are active. Stops are controlled by a series of pistons that surround the organist (at the “console”). Push the piston in to disengage, and pull it out toward you to engage it. There are ways to “couple” stops, that is, to have them act together, and/or on multiple keyboards at the same time. If one then pulls out all the pistons, one has “pulled out all the stops”— that is, done all they can to get the most booming, majestic sound out of the instrument because all stops are active simultaneously—and this is a sound to which words can’t do justice; you really do have to be there to experience it. 

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