Prof.Chip Ross: Overview: The Organ at High Street

An Overview of The Pipe Organ at High Street

At High Street, both the organ and the organ console are at the front of the church sanctuary. Sitting in a pew, you see 29 pipes on front of the organ's case, but there are almost 900 more inside! The console, where the organist sits, is on the right side in this photo; it's hidden by the white paneling. Click the picture to get a wide angle view of the whole sanctuary.

Using the picture on the left, we created this "schematic" to use on these pages to show where internal parts of the organ are.

Each pipe of a pipe organ sounds just one single note, always at the same pitch, tonal quality and loudness level. A pipe creates its sound when air is blown into it from its "foot". Each pipe belongs to one whole set of pipes all having the same tone quality (eg, flute, or horn) but different pitches corresponding to the keys on the keyboard, from low notes (produced by long pipes) to high notes (short pipes). Such a set of pipes is called a "stop". The pipes of a stop are made ready to play when the organist pulls on a corresponding on/off switch, called a stop-knob, (or also, simply, a "stop"), on the console. When a stop-knob is pulled, pressing the keys causes the individual pipes of that stop to speak. "Pulling out all the stops" means the organ is ready to sound with everything it has, ready to put on a big show.

As we said above, there are almost 900 more pipes tucked away inside the case; above is a picture of some of them. Their different shapes, materials, and constructions produce a wide variety of sounds.

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