Prof.Chip Ross: Inside The Organ at High Street

Inside The Organ at High Street: Swell Pipes

Each pipe of an organ plays one solitary note, one single pitch. Each pipe belongs to a whole set of pipes having the same tone quality (eg, flute, or horn) but different pitches, from low notes (produced by long pipes) to high notes (short pipes). The pipes of a given sound are made available when the organist pulls a corresponding knob on the console called a stop; then pressing the keys causes the individual pipes of that stop to speak. Each stop of the swell division (the stops playable from the top of the organ's two keyboards) has 73 pipes: one for each key on the keyboard, and an extra octave's worth at the high-pitched end for "coupling". There are some 511 pipes altogether for the swell division; slightly over a third of them appear in the picture to the right, beginning on the left side with the pipes of the 8' Flugel Horn (the metal pipes with notches cut near the tops), followed by the square, wooden pipes of the 8' Gedeckt (they have the curious handles on the tops), then the 4' Flute, the 8' Voix Celeste, the 4' Viola, and the 8' Salicional. The longest pipes of these stops are on the back wall of the
	The pipes of the swell division are contained in a big box the size of a small room. Now, each pipe of an organ always "speaks" at some preset loudness; individual pipes cannot play softly sometimes and loudly at others. The loudness of the pipes in the swell box can appear to change however, because the box is fitted with a series of shutters on the front which can be made to open widely or partly, or be fully shut, letting a proportional amount of sound project out into the sanctuary. Control of the shutters is by a pedal operated by the organist's foot. The swell shutters can be seen on the left in this picture; they're partially open. The sanctuary is out to the left; on the back wall of the swell box (to the right in this photo) is where the longest pipes of the swell are located (and I don't have a picture, unfortunately!)
The pipes of the 2-2/3' Nazard sit on their own air supply. They can be partially seen at the top left in picture above. The picture onthe right gives a fuller view of the Nazard pipes. The sanctuary is out beyond the swell shutters on the left. The white area you see in the middle of the picture is the inside of the organ case near the top.

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