4 Pipe Organ Facts You Didn’t Know
The pipe organ is a classic and majestic instrument that has been around for centuries. The thought of this instrument evokes grand imagery of medieval cathedrals and beautiful symphonies. Viscount Organs is proud to provide these fine instruments to talented performers all around the world. If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about this classic means of art and creativity, now is your chance. Here are four pipe organ facts you should know!
Organists Play With their Hands and Feet
The pipe organ is a classic and majestic instrument that has been around for centuries. The thought of this instrument evokes grand imagery of medieval cathedrals and beautiful symphonies. Viscount Organs is proud to provide these fine instruments to talented performers all around the world. If you’ve ever wanted to learn more about this classic means of art and creativity, now is your chance. Here are four pipe organ facts you should know!
Organs Are the Largest Instrument in the World Played By a Single Person
If you’ve ever been in a cathedral or seen a church organ in person, you’ll know these are massive instruments. For scale, the pipe organ in the Concert Hall Shizuoka AOI has three manuals, a 2.5-octave pedalboard and 2,868 pipes, a natural size for such a large hall. But this organ looks positively tiny in comparison to the organ in the main auditorium of Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City. That organ is so large that the actual number of pipes is not known though it is thought to be in the range of 32,000. Needless to say, pipe organs can be massive. And yet, only one organist is needed to make beautiful music with them. That’s nothing short of incredible!
Organs Were the Most Complex Machine Made Before the Industrial Revolution
Organs are complex pieces of machinery. A lot of care and diligent planning goes into creating them. They are truly a marvel of human ingenuity. Given the sheer size and complexity of an organ, it truly is incredible to know they were invented before the adoption of the steam engine. Something so complex seems like it shouldn’t have existed before the industrial revolution but music is that inspiring!
Oftentimes, the Visible Pipes in a Church Organ Are a Facade
The pipes you can see when you walk into a concert hall are misleading. There are typically several chambers behind the facade that house even more pipes. Typically, the visible facade pipes make up only a small portion of the total number of pipes on the instrument.
