The Influence of the Organ in History

Dudley Buck

Dudley Buck

The Influence of the Organ in History Inaugural Lecture of the Department of the Organ in the College of Music of Boston University

SECTION I

Ladies and Gentlemen: —

It having become my duty to deliver this, the inaugural lecture of the organ department attached to this institution, I have found myself considerably embarrassed as to choice of subjects.

The trouble lay in the quantity of material at hand, and not in any lack of it.

The history of the Organ runs back so far into the centuries, that no matter what point one might select for examination, it can scarcely be brought into the scope of a lecture except in a very empty and skeleton form. You will bear with me, then, for the superficial manner in which I shall be forced to treat many important points. As many of those present do not propose to make a study of the organ, I shall avoid treating of the instrument itself in any technical sense, and would offer a few thoughts on the subject of

The Influence Of the Organ in History,

with a glance at the "schools of playing" thus created.

The Organ is called the "king of instruments."

This phrase has been used so often that it has become decidedly well worn and trite. None the less, however, is the expression full of significance; and to what an extent (especially in a historical sense) is known to but comparatively few persons, among whom I fear far too few organists would be found.

To bring up some of these neglected facts; to examine them in their historical and theoretical bearing, as well as in practice; to thus create a greater love for and appreciation of the instrument on the part of its students, – to do this, I say, is, if I apprehend it aright, one of the principal objects which the Boston University has had in view in founding this department.

The organ, then, is called the "king of instruments."

If we look at the phrase a little closer, it will be perceived that the simile is a striking one. A king, in the so-called "good old times of yore," if he were a man of any force of character, generally possessed, along with the divine right theoretical, any quantity of the human power practical. The day of more or less ornamental constitutional figure-heads had not yet arrived.

In other words, the live kings of the past, of the feudal time, moulded to their own tastes and characters their age, their people, or only their court, according to the innate ability they might possess. In turn they were themselves affected, to a degree, by their surroundings, but to a far lesser extent than is the case at this day, the balance of influence remaining largely in their favour.

I will endeavour to show that among musical instruments this "kingship," as regards the organ, held good in a parallel way, – that by its own nature as to construction, by its very faults and weaknesses, by the mission it was called upon to fulfil, it did, in very fact, long reign supreme as king of instruments.

Absolute power, as represented by a monarch, became narrowed down, in the lapse of centuries, by external forces working out their own independence, thus checking and limiting this absolutism. Here, too, I will endeavour to draw a parallel, and show that as years rolled on, the influence of the organ upon music in the abstract diminished. The process became inverted, and music began to affect the organ, rather than the organ it. To this we owe the vast improvements in the construction of the instrument, the many additions of new qualities of tone, and numberless new inventions of value still going on in our day, with a rapidity difficult to keep pace with. To fairly appreciate this past or present relation of things, it becomes necessary to take a hasty and necessarily superficial glance backward at the origin of the organ, – its invention and development.

All writers attribute the origin of the organ to that simplest as well as most ancient of musical instruments, called by the Greeks the "pipes of Pan," – Pan, in the ancient mythology, being the god o