Vero Hyperion

Viscount’s Hyperion is the most musically sophisticated digital organ of its type. It meets the expectations of discerning institutions and musicians who understand the role of realistic pipe organ emulation when other solutions are not possible.

Hyperion is a 4-manual, 128-rank instrument that was developed for Viscount by historian and pipe organ builder Sebastian M. Glück. Although custom concert and church organs have been built for decades, the digital organ community sought similar erudition in stock offerings, so Viscount’s North American Tonal Director vowed to making every new model in each of our collections meet the demands of the great organ literature in response to ongoing global scholarship. From Pre-Revolutionary to Post-Napoleonic France, from the North European Baroque to the German Romantics, from Italian to Iberian literature, from English organ and choral music between the wars to the American Post-Victorian Symphonic School, almost any score that is brought to Hyperion’s console can be performed with authenticity.

The elegant oak cabinetry of this formal drawknob console complements every venue. Its comprehensive control system, vast combination action, MIDI capabilities, and selection of specialized accessories grants the serious musician complete command of the instrument for worship services, teaching, rehearsing, concertizing, and recording. Viscount’s comfortable tracker-touch keyboards have Skinner profile key cheeks, and the drawknob fields and acrylic music desk (adjustable for height and distance) make Hyperion one of the most comfortable consoles available today.

Every traditional division of Hyperion is founded on a complete Diapason chorus. They are differentiated by scaling, voicing, and tonal characteristics rather than by tiered pitch bases, the common tactic that robs the chorus-work of its nobility. The mixtures, essential to hymnody and to all schools of organ literature, are composed and balanced to enhance the character of each chorus without compromising interdivisional balances. Emulations of ten different pipe forms are generated for more than two dozen flute stops.

All stops are placed in their proper divisions at the correct pitches for the performance of the established concert literature. Each manual division contains a tierce combination from a different culture and era, including the components of a rare 16’ Gros Cornet. There are seven pairs of undulants (what Americans call “celestes”) in the organ, including a 16’ Unda Maris in the Pedal, where six other string stops are found. Hyperion’s 20 ranks of strings include the Swell’s own string division from the 16’ Bell Gamba through the Harmonia Ætheria III.

The frustrating “identity crisis” and weakness so common in Choir divisions is remedied by providing the structure and power of a large 18^th century Positiv and adding the fonds de huit pieds, mezzo-forte fluework, and rich reed resources of the Romantic and Symphonic schools. The division’s Herald Trumpet is the appropriate foil to the Solo Tuba Mirabilis.

Hyperion’s selection of color stops, both dramatic and subtle, fulfills the desires of the discerning recitalist, teacher, composer, transcriber, and improviser. In addition to the sumptuous Solo division and its Tuba chorus, lyrical brass and woodwind voices, all under expression, are distributed throughout the design so that they can be played in dialogue and in alternatim.

With 35 equivalent ranks, Hyperion’s Pedal division provides the most luxurious selection of voices without resorting to borrowing or unification. Subtly individualized, pitch-defining varieties of open fluework and ten reeds of differing power and timbre combine with a superb chorus structure to deliver a Pedal which exceeds the capabilities of most any organ, pipe or digital.