Music and materials: Art and science of organ pipe metal
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Introduction From the 14th century until the end of the 18th century, at the dawn of the industrial revolution, the organ was the embodiment of scientific and artistic universality. Tracing a legacy back to antiquity, the organ claimed a mythic status as the oldest western instrument; at the same time, it was at the forefront of technological and scientific advances. In the organ, acoustics, metallurgy, fluid dynamics, mechanics, architecture, sculpture, theology, painting, music composition, and performance come together to embody cultural collaborations and collisions. Surviving historical instruments document the social, political, scientific, and artistic impulses that yielded them. Organs are lasting cultural monuments—the oldest continuously used organs date from the 15th century—and because of the expense of their construction, they are often objects of great civic pride, treasured for centuries. One celebrated example is the instrument in the church of St. Bavo in Haarlem, The Netherlands, constructed from 1735 to 1738 by the German builder C. Müller. This organ stands in an immensely grand and highly decorated case that advertises the city’s wealth, civic pride, and cultural patronage. Huge in scale (over 65 feet tall), with 32-foot-long pedal pipes dominating the facade, the organ
was designed by Müller in conjunction with the best architects, painters, and sculptors of the day. The young Mozart played on this instrument, and today, it draws organists and audiences from all around the world. New organs inspired by instruments like the Müller organ at the St. Bavo church are now being built in Europe, the United States, and Asia, either closely based on historical models or incorporating knowledge learned from them about design, construction, and the choice and treatment of materials.1,2 As multimedia artworks and models of interdisciplinarity, organs have long been a laboratory for experimentation and research, especially into the interaction of music and materials. Recently, collaborative projects in organ restoration, preservation, and construction conducted by researchers at the Göteborg Organ Art Center (GOArt) at the University of Gothenburg and the Chalmers University of Technology in Sweden, and at Cornell University and Oberlin College in the United States, have employed materials research to understand the physical environment of vulnerable historical organs and to make modern copies of surviving antiques that convey the aesthetic and material qualities of the originals. We will describe the ways builders in the past understood the relationship between the materials from which an instrument
Catherine M. Oertel, Oberlin College, USA; [email protected] Annette Richards, Cornell University, USA; [email protected] doi:10.1557/mrs.2016.294
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