A Pipe Dream

[HiWire]

I was just listening to J.S. Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565 (a delayed reaction to Hallowe'en) when I had a bit of an epiphany... why do people send their kids to take piano lessons when they could be learning the pipe organ (common sense answer: because pipe organs are crazy big and complex and expensive and rare)?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toccata_and_Fugue_in_D_minor,_BWV_565

The Wikipedia article suggests that Bach may have composed the piece to test pipe organs... do people use pipe organ repertoire to test their music systems? Listening to this piece on my computer speakers, I can understand why pipe organs are used for liturgical purposes because of their power and frequency range, but my interests are purely secular. I blame author Alan Bradley for piquing my interest – his detective/chemist heroine, Flavia de Luce, discovers a dead pipe organist in the church's tomb in the novel Speaking from Among the Bones (also,  I strongly recommend the Flavia de Luce mystery series).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pipe_organ

Also, I always thought I was too dumb to understand them, since all those keys and pedals are kind of intimidating. A synthesizer would cut down on the size and complexity, obviously, but even electric organs are a bit complicated compared to the piano.

Who else is interested in pipe organ music and pipe organs? I always thought pipe organ music was kind of boring as a kid, but I'm pretty sure that is because I only associated it with church music.

 

Edited November 23, 2017 by HiWire

[gepardcv]

The advice I heard is a piano student should be able to easily play Bach’s Inventions and Sinfonias collection before studying the organ. Real pipe instruments are obviously huge, rare, expensive, and hard to get practice time on. Digital ones with nice consoles and pedal boards are accessible but still pretty large (not much worse than a grand piano, though less acceptable as living room decor). There is the small matter of adapting to the vastly different tactile feel of an organ keyboard, of course...

As far as testing audio equipment goes, Marie-Claire Alain’s recordings are a standby for me (not least because few other instruments actually produce low frequency sounds). And if you like BWV 565, try 582 and 537.

Edited November 23, 2017 by gepardcv

[HiWire]

Thanks, I'll check those recordings out! The breadth and history of the repertoire is huge.

I think the modern view of pipe organ music mistakenly implies something solemn and monolithic when it is actually life-affirming, varied, and complex.

Edited November 23, 2017 by HiWire

[swt61]

Something made me believe this thread was going to be about a different kind of pipe.

[Dusty Chalk]

My teacher had me learn quite a bit of Bach, especially the two-part inventions.  Never thought about playing them on an actual organ, I ought to give that a try.

And yes, for the longest time, various renditions of Saint-Saens' Organ Symphony were excellent test pieces I used.

[HiWire]

I'll have to make a point of visiting some cathedrals for their pipe organ music the next time I'm abroad.

Also, I'll look into ways of synthesizing organs. There seem to be a lot of options out there (obviously, the most accessible way of doing it is simply playing an electric organ on a MIDI keyboard or in a program like Garageband):

https://www.gearslutz.com/board/so-much-gear-so-little-time/1102873-what-best-pipe-church-organ-keyboard-organ.html

http://www.pykett.org.uk/choosing-a-virtual-pipe-organ.htm

[Dusty Chalk]

My two favourite synthesized organs are:  Prophet 5, patch 3-1, pipe organ flutes -- this is a really easy patch to get wrong, so trying to figure it out on your analog synthesizer of choice is a great exercise in learning synthesis link

...and the other end of the spectrum, Kurzweil's organ emulation in the K2x00 series, which is impossible to synthesize, sounds much more realistic, and is worth obtaining if you can.