For Good Measure

From the Roman Arena to the Cathedral Choir: The Organ Gets Religion

Organ History with Dr. Robert M. Thompson

In the third article of this series, we journey from the hydraulis to bellows-style organs, and from their extremely negative connotations for early Christians to a prominent role in sacred music in the Middle Ages.

The hydraulis gained huge popularity from its invention in the third century BCE by the Alexandrian engineer Ktesibios. Ktesibios’s wife Thais learned to play the instrument as well, and could be considered one of the first if not the first organist in history. A hydraulis in antiquity was a prized possession of nobility and upper classes and a status symbol. But due to its pagan use and Christians being thrown to their death in outdoor festivities to the sound of a hydraulis, it’s no wonder that early Christians were slow to accept the instrument. However, it did gain popularity in the early Middle Ages, though not necessarily with the clergy. There is little evidence for the transition from the hydraulis to bellows-style organs in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages, but it is clear that bellows-style organs were known and used in the Byzantine Empire. In the eighth century CE, Constantine V gifted the court of Pepin the Short with a large pipe organ powered by bellows.

A bellows-style organ (on the left) is depicted in the ninth-century Utrecht Psalter.

Large pipe organs powered by bellows and designed for public events and worship may have been installed in major churches and cathedrals as early as the twelfth century. Smaller pipe organs for private and often secular use were built at the same time. The smallest instruments, called portative organs and designed to be playable on the go, were associated with secular music but may have been used in procession on festive days in the church, and may also been used to teach nuns and monks how to sing their chants.

Portative organ (organetto) with button keys. Angel musician from the Reliquary of St Ursula by Hans Memling (ca.1489). Bruges, St John’s Hospital Museum.

Larger organs, designed to be placed on a table rather than carried, were developed alongside the portative organ and termed positive organs. Both portative and positive organs were in common use in churches and cathedrals by 1100 CE, and some positives were quite large, with multiple stops of varying timbre. In the following two centuries more and more evidence, from records of payments to organists to illuminations in manuscripts, accumulates to show the organ assuming a key place in sacred music.