A sound-effect stop that imitates the warbling of birds by immersing the ends of two or more small metal pipes in a vessel of water or light oil. Oil is preferred because it does not evaporate. It dates from at least as far back as 1450. Synonyms include Nachtigall, Nightingale,
Vogelgesang, Pájaros, Passarinhos, Rossignol, and Vo-gelgeschrei.
See also Stop
Edward L. Stauff
bIShoP
English organ-building firm. James Chapman Bishop (ca. 1783–1854) founded his firm around 1807; it was known as Bishop and Starr (1854–57, 1861–73), Bishop, Starr and Richardson (1857–61), and Bishop and Son (from 1873 on).
Bishop was apprenticed to Benjamin Flight, whose business consisted mainly of making barrel and ma-chine organs. He set up in business on his own ac-count in London in around 1807, supplying parts and building chamber and barrel organs. By the 1820s his church trade had expanded, and he secured a number of major London contracts, including St. John, Waterloo Road (1824), All Souls, Langham Place (1825), and St. Paul’s Cathedral (1826). In 1829 he built a twenty-eight-stop organ for St. James, Bermondsey, with a twenty-five-note Pedal with three stops (Double 16', Unison 8', Trombone 8') that could be played either with the feet or from a finger keyboard to the left of the Choir keys.
The Bermondsey organ included other innovative features pioneered by Bishop during the 1820s. The first documented use of the composition pedal is 1820.
Bishop claimed its invention, although this was dis-puted by Flight and Robson. He made a number of other improvements to winding introduced during the 1820s. He also experimented with the use of a closed shallot for reeds (Bermondsey has three types), all used by Victorian organbuilders. A further (tonal) novelty, the Clarabella, an open wood Flute of melodic charac-ter, was apparently not on the Bermondsey stoplist, but was frequently used by Bishop after 1819.
His later organs were less innovative. Bishop was a reluctant convert to the German-style organs of the 1840s, and the C-compass organ with thirty-nine stops at St. Giles, Camberwell (1844), built in collabora-tion with S. S. Wesley, lacks conviccollabora-tion, bearing out an obituarist’s observation that he entertained “certain prejudices . . . as to tone, which always interfered with his success in constructing a large organ.”
On Bishop’s death a partnership was formed be-tween his son, Charles Augustus Bishop (b. 1821) and the firm’s manager, John Starr; a third partner, William Ebenezar Richardson, joined in 1857 but withdrew four years later. When Starr retired in 1873, Charles K. K.
Bishop (1850–81), author of Notes on Church Organs (London, 1873), became his father’s partner. The firm built a number of significant instruments during the BIRD WHISTLE
third quarter of the nineteenth century (Brompton, Oratory, 1857; Nottingham, St. Mary, 1871; Bombay, Town Hall, 1873), but the business came into diffi-culties and was acquired in 1880 by Edward Hadlow Suggate (1852–1946). The firm is still in existence with premises in London and Ipswich; it was respon-sible for the reconstruction of the Thamer organ at Framlingham (1970) and the new organ for Lancaster University (1979).
Nicholas J. Thistlethwaite
bibliography
Bicknell, Stephen. The History of the English Organ.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
Elvin, Laurence. Bishop and Son, Organ Builders. Lincoln, UK: Elvin, 1984.
Thistlethwaite, Nicholas J. “The Early Career of J. C. Bishop, Organ-Builder, 1807–29.” British Institute of Organ Studies Journal 25 (2001): 6–29.
———. The Making of the Victorian Organ. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1990.
bLAngz
See SuiSSe, hanS
bLASI (bIAgI), LucA (cA. 1545–1608)
Italian organbuilder. Luca Blasi was born in Perugia;
his brother, Stefano, was also an organbuilder. Lu-ca’s first organ was built for S. Maria Nuova, Perugia (1585; repl. 1960), an organ particularly known for its stunning facade. By 1595 Blasi had moved to Rome where, after constructing the organ at the Frascati Ca-thedral, he opened his own organ workshop. There Blasi secured work from the organist Zucchelli, build-ing the organs at S. Lorenzo Damaso and the Cappella Gregoriana in St. Peter’s.
However, Blasi is most revered for his organ at S. Giovanni in Laterano, Rome (1599; inaugurated 1600), commissioned by Clement VIII. In addition to a sixty-six-channel spring-chest, the original or-gan consisted of one manual (a second manual was added in the eighteenth century) with a compass of F', G', A'-f'' and fifteen stops, a Principale Profondo 24', Principale Ottava 12', Flauto in VIII, Flauto in xV, Decimaquinta 6', Decimanona 4', Vigesimaseconda 3', Vigesimasesta, Vigesemasesta II, and Zampogne-Trombe 12'. The organ also had seven split keys, six bellows, a tremulant, and probably a pull-down pedal.
Barthélémy Formentelli restored the organ between 1987 and 1989.
Blasi secured further success with his water organ in Rome’s Quirinale gardens (1598), a work that guar-anteed the organbuilder a twenty-year privilege by
Clement VIII. Between 1603 and 1608 he worked on a number of projects, including the completion of a two-manual organ for S. Maria in Aracoeli, Rome (ac-tually built by Benvenuti and Palmieri), and the organ of SS Annunziata, Sulmona (1604). In 1605 he was the Custode de Montecavallo, the keeper of the organ at Quirinale. For much of his life, Blasi was also in de-mand for his skills in organ restoration. He maintained the organ at Rome, S. Giovanni in Laterano until his death in that city.
Thomas Cimarusti
bibliography
Giorgetti, Renzo. “Gli organari Luca e Stefano Blasi: gli anni e le opere giovanili.” Recercare 3 (1991): 105–45.
Luccichenti, Furio. “Luca Blasi (c. 1545–1608): profilo di un organaro.” L’organo 19 (1981): 113–31.
bLock
See Boot; flue; Shallot
bLockFLötE
A large-scale Flute stop of 8', 4', 2' or 1' pitch, named after the instrument (recorder) and sometimes imita-tive of it. It is usually open metal, but sometimes of wood, and may be stopped, conical, or even harmonic (double-length). It is most often found at 2' pitch, and dates from as early as 1620. Only W. L. Sumner ex-plicitly equates this stop with Recorder; another syno-nym is Block Flute.
SeealSo Stop
Edward L. Stauff
bLockWErk
(Dutch Blokwerk) An organ or section of an organ com-posed of inseparable ranks of pipes. Evidence for large Gothic organs invariably points to a Blockwerk design, where octave and fifth ranks accumulate to reinforce the fundamental, often based upon a double Principal.
Although the four-hundred-pipe Blockwerk described by Wulfstan of Winchester is probably a hyperbolic account, eleventh-century sources such as Theophilus, the Bern Codex (Cuprum purissimum), and the Sélestat manuscript document the presence of several pipes to a note, including octave doublings. Avenary argues that a Hebrew manuscript from the first half of the eleventh century provides the earliest evidence for the use in or-gan building of mixtures containing fifth ranks. Quoika cites the three inseparable octave ranks of the Freising Cathedral organ as a twefth-century Blockwerk; he also BLOCKWERK
explains the drawing of a positive in Conrad von Schey-ern’s Glossarium Salomonis (traditionally dated 1245) as a six-rank Blockwerk, a highly questionable inter-pretation.
Michael Praetorius’s description of the Halberstadt Blockwerk (1357–61) contrasts the deep rumbling sound of the Prestant with the powerful shrillness of the Mixture. More information about the four-teenth-century Blockwerk is found in Henri Arnault de Zwolle’s treatise (ca. 1440), which describes the organ in Notre Dame, Dijon (1350). The Fourniture is specifically mentioned, perhaps because it could be separated from the other ranks. Arnault also provides the dispositions of four Blockwerks, all with increasing numbers of ranks toward the treble. One of these has a compass of F (8 ranks)-e''' (21 ranks) and three types of sound—Principal, Cymbal, and Fourniture—sug-gesting that it was possible to play them separately by means of a second keyboard or mechanical device.
Especially significant is the composition of the three-rank Cymbal, which contains a Tierce three-rank, the earli-est known reference to this combination.
The threefold chorus division of Principal, Fourniture, and Cymbal described by Arnault de Zwolle was used by Hendrik van den Houwe on his Rückpositiv at St.
John’s, Malines (1498). It is also documented on instru-ments in Nürnberg, St. Sebald (H. Traxdorf, 1439–41), Koblenz, St. Florian (1467), Hagenau, St. George (1491), and Louvain, St. Quintinus (1522). By adding new divisions where sounds could be isolated, builders were able to attain diversity without the risk inherent in dividing the windchests of preexisting Blockwerks.
Ventil systems on the new divisions admitted wind into different sections of the chest, making it possible to play the Principals independently of the upper work, and vice versa. But individually separable registers were present on organs by the early fifteenth century. A large positive at the Aragonese royal chapel is reported to have “cinch tirants” in 1420; Arnault describes “quinque registra”
(two Principal, two Quints, and an Octave) on the Dijon court chapel organ. When the technology of separable registers was applied to larger organs, spring-chests and slider-chests replaced the old Blockwerks. This oc-curred very early in Bordeaux, Lombardy, and Tuscany:
the organ of San Petronio, Bologna, had nine single-rank stops by 1474–83. The organ built for Utrecht Nicolaikerk (now in Middelburg) represents progressive layers of chest design: both spring-chest and slider-chest divisions were added to the original (1480) Blockwerk F-a'' (8-17 ranks).
Kimberly Marshall
bibliography
Avenary, H. “The Mixture Principle in the Medieval Organ.”
Musica Disciplina 4 (1950): 51–57.
LeCerf, Georges, and Labande, E.-R., eds. Les traités d’Henri-Arnault de Zwolle et de divers anonyme. 1932. Reprint, Kassel, Germany: Documenta musicologica, 1972.
Perrot, Jean. L’Orgue de ses origines hellénistiques à la fin du XIIIe siècle. Paris: Picard, 1965. Translated by Norma Deane as The Organ, from Its Invention in the Hellenistic Period to the End of the Thirteenth Century. London:
Oxford University Press, 1971.
Praetorius, Michael. Syntagma musicum. II: De
Organographia. 1619. Facsimile reprint ed. by Wilibald Gurlitt. Kassel, Germany: Bärenreiter, 1958.
Quoika, Rudolf. Vom Blockwerk zur Register-Orgel. Kassel, Germany: Bärenreiter, 1966.
Rhodes, Julian. “The Blockwerk: An Historical Sketch.”
<http://www.ondamar.demon.co.uk/essays/block1.htm>.
Vente, Maarten Albert. Die Brabanter Orgel. Amsterdam: H. J.
Paris, 1958.
Williams, Peter, and Barbara Owen. The Organ. New Grove Musical Instruments Series. New York and London:
Macmillan, 1988.
bLoWEr
A mechanical device to generate the wind pressure for the organ, supplanting the bellows. From the hy-draulus of the ancient Romans through the 1800s the organ bellows was hand- or foot-pumped by human power. By the mid-nineteenth century, bellows were being powered mechanically, by crankshafts attached to water wheels. When pressurized water from mu-nicipal water systems became popular, the resulting force water was used to drive pistons to pump the bel-lows. As the Industrial Revolution continued, steam engines were applied to pumping; even gasoline en-gines evolved to do the work. The aforementioned ap-proaches relied on bellows fitted with two unidirec-tional valves: motion of the bellows in one direction filled the bellows with air, while movement in the op-posite direction put the air under pressure, exhausting it through the second valve into the reservoir. Human-powered organs could be and were made larger, but this had required increasing the number of pumping stations to accommodate more people. With mecha-nized pumping, the size of the instrument, in terms of the number of pipes and required wind pressure, could expand to greater limits.
The first modern design innovation and a major break from the use of bellows for organ winding came about in England with the invention of the rotary cen-trifugal air turbine. From the 1860s the turbine moved air for forges, ventilation in ships’ holds and large buildings, and eventually for pipe organ wind power, although widespread implementation or acceptance spanned another thirty years. This basic invention uti-lized the cyclonic action of a rotating set of blades, BLOWER
colloquially called a fan, to spin the air outward within a casing to create the pressure.
Later, these rotary fans were directly connected to an electric motor, removing previous limitations to the volume of pressurized air produced and to the wind pressure itself. This led to very large organs and previ-ously unattainable wind pressures. One consequence was that organ design was radically changed begin-ning in the early 1900s; pipe scales were increased, Pedal divisions enlarged, voicing pressures moved upward, and the pressurized air used pneumatically to operate such mechanisms as the swell shutters.
The world’s largest pipe organ, the Atlantic City, New Jersey, Municipal Auditorium Organ, would not have been possible without such power behind it.
However, the unrelenting power of the electric blower risked overwhelming the capacity of the instru-ment, wearing out movable parts in the winding process.
Firms such as Laukhuff have devised compensating devices to control the force of the wind pressure. One belated effect of the Organ Reform Movement has been the somewhat ironic desire for less steady (“breath-ing”) wind, as part of the neobaroque credo. It is im-possible to know exactly how Johann Sebastian Bach’s standard for steady winding (a documented concern in his examination of organs) would have translated to cur-rent technology. In the late twentieth- and early twenty-first centuries, many smaller instruments have returned to human power for winding, while most larger instru-ments have stayed with electric power. A good number of small and many medium-sized organs offer both op-tions as a compromise.
Alfred F. Sefl