Even the largest organ is called positive. This name comes from the Latin word placed – placed. Sometimes it happens to see that in Latvian we write “ergeļpositivs” or even more wrongly “pozitīvergeles”. One can already understand the desire to avoid the word “positive” – understanding means good, but it only indicates a low language culture. Then the name “grand pianos” should also be used, because the word “grand piano” was used in architecture in the past to denote the projection of a building.
Organ builder Jānis Kalniņš in the process of work: the panel for switching on the registers of the organ table of the Kaunas Garrison Church is being assembled
Photo: from the personal archive of Jānis Kalniņas
So the positive is a relatively easy-to-move organ with rarely more than 5-7 registers, one manual, very compact stave placement, the key is just above the rod, which opens the valve when the key is pressed. Such instruments are often used in chamber ensembles continuo for parts in orchestras instead of harpsichord, in churches as choir organ.
The positive made in the organ workshop of Jānis Kalniņš in Ugāle, which is currently in the Örebro Chapel in Sweden. The Ugāle organ workshop has built a relatively large number of such positives – 14, of which five are located in Latvia
Photo: from the personal archive of Jānis Kalniņas
Church organs often become so large that discussions begin: whether the organ is a movable or immovable object. No matter how strange it is, this question is very relevant in modern accounting and all types of procurement. It must be said that there is no unequivocal answer to this question yet. Since the end of the 19th century, there has been a division between church organs and concert organs. This is quite conditional, because the concert can be played on any good instrument. In addition, modern instruments in churches are also mostly equipped with modern control systems that facilitate the work of the organist.
Sigulda Lutheran Church organ, the largest instrument made in Latvia in 2011 by the Ugāle workshop
Photo: from the personal archive of Jānis Kalniņas
When the silent film era began, cinema organs were built into the large, luxurious co-op theaters. Here the monopoly belonged to the American company “Wurlitzer”, whose manufactured instruments were installed all over the world. The “Wurlitzer” organ already had an electropneumatic tractor, a multiplex system – this means that the same stem was used in several registers. This did not interfere in any way, because the repertoire of these instruments included cinema and theater music; they included all kinds of sound effects like thunder, rustling of leaves, rustling of wind, etc. to illustrate silent film episodes.
However, paradoxically, the world’s largest Wurlitzer organ is not in a theater, but in a pizzeria in Arizona!
Just like the world’s largest organ, which has 7 manuals, two pedal keyboards, 450 registers and over 30,000 staves, is not in some gigantic concert hall, but in a department store in Philadelphia! Well, what can you say – Americans…
Churches, concert halls, chapels, supermarkets and pizzerias – is there any place where an organ cannot be found? No, they are not – if nothing else, they can be taken by cart or car to any yard, market square or square. Of course I’m talking about the street organ, in English street organcalled layer boxes in our country.
Leijerkaste with all the four-legged owners in the Greenberg family
Photo: from the program “Piccolo” / photo author – Kārlis Rütentāls
Maybe someone still remembers the scene from the movie “Vārnu ielas republika”, where a sniper entered the yard. It is also an organ, only there the keys are pressed not by the fingers of a master organist, but by nails driven into a simple roll or the pneumatic system is operated by a perforated paper tape.
I have heard a story that Giovanni Badjigalupo, the most famous Berlin lyre box maker, tested the sound of his instrument by having his assistant play it on the other side of the Spree River. If you could hear everything well, the instrument is recognized as good and put on sale.
Jānis Kalniņš next to the 16′ staves of the organ “Principalbass” built in 1939 by Valkera of the Kaunas Garrison Church. The longest pole right there is 6 meters long!
Photo: from the personal archive of Jānis Kalniņas
do you know
In the Latvian Radio 3 cycle “Did you know?” cultural researchers, historians and other experts explain many different terms, tell about interesting artifacts and unusual ideas.
Sometimes such instruments reached very considerable dimensions and required a steam engine or, in more recent times, an electric motor to operate their bellows. Unlike the previous ones, they are called in English fairground organ, it is even difficult to translate this name in Latvian, because they were not known in our country. In Western Europe, such instruments sounded in market squares, they were inseparable companions of carousels – wherever the people had fun, these organs sounded. But even in ancient times, mechanical organs were even built into clocks – both those that stood in rooms and also in church towers. Such clocks, which are called “Flötenuhr” in German (literally, flute clock), were composed by many great composers, including Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven.
Our list would be incomplete if we did not mention the calliope (calliope) – a steam organ, where not air was blown in the stalls, but real, hot steam!
Therefore, it is understandable that the staves and windbreaks should have been made of metal so that the steam would not damage anything. The source of steam was the most common steam boiler found in every steamboat. Of course, only Americans could come up with something like that – such an organ was on the proudest steamboats that plied the Mississippi River. Upon entering the port, the greeters were greeted not only by the ship’s whistle, but also by a whole organ concert!
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2023-11-26 12:35:30
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