Welcome, sophisticated viewers, to today’s edition of Enlightening Entertainment, where we will learn about an instrument with an extraordinary history and fascinating qualities: the organ.

The organ is a relatively old musical instrument in the Western musical tradition. It is believed that the Greek inventor and mathematician Ctesibius of Alexandria, who lived from 285-222 BC, invented the hydraulis, a water organ considered to be the precursor of the modern pipe organ.

By around the 8th century, it has become closely associated with Catholic Church services. Later, it became a well-enjoyed secular recital instrument. The organ impresses most people because of its diverse repertoire and stirring range of sounds.

In the first part of the program, Dr. James Welch, music lecturer at Santa Clara University in California, USA and an organist at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Palo Alto, will guide us in exploring one of the largest organs in the western United States.

We are now in the basement directly below the chancel. This is the blower room where the wind pressure comes from. It takes a tremendous amount of air to power 4,568 pipes, some of which are 16 feet high. This is a large blower and it makes a lot of noise, so it’s downstairs here in the basement in an insulated room.

This is one of the many sets of reservoirs between the blower and the organ itself. We are now in the choir chamber. This is one of the side chambers above the chancel. And you can see a number of ranks of pipes. What you are seeing now are the positive pipes, which are exposed. And the choir chamber is behind them.

This is the 8-foot Spitz principle on the choir. These pipes are tuned by moving a sleeve on top of the pipe, and as you move it up the pipe becomes longer and the pitch goes lower. This is an example of one of the mitered pipes that they had to turn so it would fit in this smaller space. The access to the great, swell and pedal divisions, the largest of these chambers, is accessed through this door on the outside of the church.

At the back wall of the organ, on the either side, are the longest pipes. These belong to the pedal. These are the long reed pipes. They’re 16-feet long at the longest. These pipes are tuned, interestingly, by pushing a little wire up and down that changes a vibrating metal tongue that’s inside the boot of pipe. The pipes way up the top of the chamber are the great pipes.

We are now high in the great organ chamber, and what you are seeing are the pipes that are used typically for playing loud music and for playing hymns. These are the principal pipes, running from 16-feet long down to just a fraction of an inch. In some concerts and services you’ll hear a bell device, a rotating bell device. And hear it is. When I turn on a switch or a stop at the organ it makes that rotate.

This is the longest principal pipe in the organ. You can see it’s huge in scale. The 16-foot open principal. This is the 32-foot reed rank in the pedal.

This is entirely a pipe organ, with one exception; the bottom 12 notes of the 32-foot rank, the flue rank in the pedal, is electronic. And the sound comes out of this woofer. There is a tremendous amount of electrical wiring in this organ.

To get into the swell chamber itself you have to remove this trapdoor, and crawl through on your hands and knees. Inside the swell chamber there are pipes again the range from 16-feet long down to just a fraction of an inch. On the right are some of the oboe and trumpet pipes. On the left are the vox humana, the human voice pipes, with a little tuning wire.

This is another 16-foot reed pipe. It was too long for this, the tight space in this chamber, and so they’ve curled it around itself like a trombone. Now we’re in the old narthex underneath the gallery. This part of the organ needs its own blower, and it’s located in this closet here. This is the console in the gallery. It’s only a one-manual organ, and it can only play the organ up here.

The main organ, in the chancel, can play both the front organ and the gallery organ. The pipes in this gallery division are unusual. There are only some soft flutes for accompanying a choir, and some very loud reeds for leading the melody in a hymn for instance. Now you have seen one of the largest and finest organs anywhere in the country. We’re very fortunate to have such a fine organ here at Saint Mark’s.

Mr. Raymond Ruckle is an organist and Sunday school instructor at the Seventh Day Adventist Church in the San Francisco/ San Jose Bay Area, California, USA. He shared his abundant knowledge of the history of organs with us.

If you go way back actually before the time of Christ, there was some experimentation going on with the Greeks and they had what was called a hydraulis. And what they would do is they would have water rush into this tank. So they would pour it at a certain rate and then they had some pipes that they had already begun experimenting with. They could play on all those notes and of course they had probably wider, wider keys than what we have today.

There’s a possibility that in the sanctuary, in Jerusalem, that they may have actually had some form of a pipe organ. Because they had their festivals, and they had trumpets and you know, all the singers and it’s possible they might have had something like that.

But around the 4th century, and I believe it was, where they began to get really serious about refining what they had already accomplished. And it was too much bother to have water being poured in. So they wanted to come up with another way.

And somebody must have noticed that when you’re doing this with something to help some coals get brighter, push some air on them. They came up with a way of putting weights on those, sealing it off. And as it would go down, it would have a valve in there, as it would go down it would have a constant pressure. When it got down to a certain point there would be another one that would be on its way down and somebody would lift it back up. There was a place called Halberstadt Cathedral, and there were pictures of guys pushing on these bellows.

The organ, a musical instrument built through human intelligence and creativity, has evolved differently in various countries. However, as human’s innate quest for beauty and art is the same throughout space and time, the elevating organ music has never failed to accompany people on many occasions.

So we have everything from real high pitches like… …may not hear that, I’m going probably out of hearing range… to this 32 foot. And I’m going to add with it the 16 foot because it kind of adds a little more gravity to it. I’m going to go down from the middle pedal, and these are arranged just like what you play with your hands. This is like a keyboard on a piano except that it’s only 5 octaves.

Some of the ones who want to copy German organs, they stop short 3 notes, and they stop 2 notes short on the pedal board. Some pedal boards are flat and straight. This one copies something that was invented over in England.

In the organs of France, they had quite an interesting system, everything came down to the bottom manual. Germans, they had a different way of doing it. This manual came up to here, this was the main manual, then the others came down to here, so they were up one.

The organ is an intricately designed musical instrument. Mastering its mechanical details serves as the base for creating elevating music.

One thing that the viewers may wonder about is all these buttons, what does that all have to do? We talked about these buttons up here, they’re tilting tablets. But these help us to be able to play a bunch of these at one time to make changes suddenly, because in the old days they didn’t have that.

They had to have somebody sitting on each side of the organist and they had to draw knobs, and at certain points they would have written down what was supposed to go off or what was to go on. Then, a little bit later, they came up with a ventil system which they would push a button in the pedals. And what it would do is they pushed that particular button, it would flood a chest with air, so they could keep all the reeds, the trumpets and all that kind of sound.

They could have all stops drawn but there’s no air. So when they’re ready for them they would push that and on would come the reeds. That’s about as far as they had gotten. Then somebody came up with the idea of combination pistons, and that’s what we have here. So you notice as I push this one, that all comes on, that comes on.

See how it changes with the lighting of the stops. Exactly the same button is duplicated for the pedals. So that if your hands are busy, you push this one, same lighting would happen, and so these are quiet ones.

In North America, South America, Europe, Australia and New Zealand, the organ is a part of Christian and some Jewish religious services. The introduction of church organs is traditionally attributed to Pope Vitalian in the 7th century. In the last part of the program, Mr. Ruckle will play us some beautiful organ music.

We have one percussions stop and that’s the chimes. So if I play softly in the service… A lot of times right after a prayer I will play softly.

And it rings just like a bell.

Because this is a fairly large organ, we have different celeste stops, like flute celeste, as a soft kind of a hybrid. And then we have this one, like cellos. So when we combine all of those together, we get sounds like this. With the vox humana wiggling its way, we can get this kind of a sound.

And then some streaming sounds. And to lead a hymn, you have the principles pulled together.

Sometimes you set up stops so that you have a tuba, but you have to accompany that in a way that’s appropriate. So if we do like “Come Ye Thankful People, Come”…

Our appreciation, Mr. Ruckle and Mr. Welch for introducing us to the complex and delightful world of the organ. May its deeply resonating melodies uplift our hearts for many more centuries to come.

Thank you, blessed viewers, for your company on Enlightening Entertainment. Now, please join us for Words of Wisdom, right after Noteworthy News, here on Supreme Master Television. May your days be full of beauty and love.