A theatre organ (also known as a theater organ, or, especially in the United Kingdom, a cinema organ) is a type of pipe organ developed to accompany silent films from the 1900s to the 1920s.
Console of the Rhinestone Barton theatre organ, installed in Theatre Cedar Rapids
Theatre organs have horseshoe-shaped arrangements of stop tabs (tongue-shaped switches) above and around the instrument's keyboards on their consoles. Theatre organ consoles were typically decorated with brightly colored stop tabs, with built-in console lighting. Organs in the UK had a common feature: large translucent surrounds extending from both sides of the console, with internal colored lighting. Theatre organs began to be installed in other venues, such as civic auditoriums, sports arenas, private residences, and churches.
There were over 7,000 such organs installed in America and elsewhere from 1915 to 1933, but fewer than 40 instruments remain in their original venues.[1][failed verification] Though there are few original instruments, hundreds of theatre pipe organs are installed in public venues throughout the world today,[2] while many more exist in private residences.
History
Originally, films were accompanied by pit orchestras in larger houses, and pit pianists in small venues. The first organs installed in theatres were church organs. These organs were ill-suited to accompanying the film and the performance.
The earliest concepts of the theatre organ were modified pianos with a few ranks of pipes and various sound effects, housed in one cabinet, and typically located in the pit area. These were photoplayers.
Robert Hope-Jones's concept, which he called a "unit orchestra", was developed and promoted, initially by the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company of North Tonawanda, New York. A new type of instrument, the Wurlitzer Hope Jones Unit-Orchestra, or simply theatre organ, was born. Soon, hundreds of instruments were being ordered from Wurlitzer and other manufacturers who copied the design for their own theatre organs.
The Rudolph Wurlitzer company, to whom Robert Hope-Jones licensed his name and patents, was the most well-known manufacturer of theatre organs, and the phrase Mighty Wurlitzer became an almost generic term for the theatre organ. After some major disagreements with the Wurlitzer management, Robert Hope-Jones committed suicide in 1914.
In Europe, the theatre organ appeared in cinemas after World War I. Some came from Wurlitzer, but there were European organ builders like M. Welte & Söhne and Walcker in Germany, and Standaart in the Netherlands.
After the development of sound movies, theatre organs remained installed in many theatres to provide live music between features. After the "golden years" of the 1920s and 1930s, many were scrapped or sold to churches, private homes, museums, ice rinks, rollatoriums, and restaurants.
In the 1950s, the development of high-fidelity recording and the LP phonograph record created new interest in the theatre organ. This period also saw the formation of the American Theatre Organ Society (ATOS), originally the American Theatre Organ Enthusiasts (ATOE).
As in a traditional pipe organ, a theatre organ uses pressurized air to produce musical tones. Unification and extension give the theatre organ its unique flexibility. A rank is extended by adding pipes above and below the original pitch, allowing the organist to play that rank at various pitches by selecting separate stop tabs.
Marimba in the Solo Chamber at Ann Arbor's Michigan Theatre (3/13 Barton)
The electro-pneumatic action was invented by Robert Hope-Jones. Up to the turn of the 20th century, all pipe organs were operated by a tracker, tubular pneumatic, or pneumatic Barker-lever action, where the keys and pedals were physically connected to the pipe valves via wooden trackers, except in the case of tubular pneumatic, where all actions were operated by air pressure. Hope-Jones' electro-pneumatic action used electric solenoids to operate the pipe valves, and solenoids and pistons to control and operate the various stop tabs, controls, keys and pedals on the console. This action allowed the console to be physically detached from the organ. All signals from the console were transmitted by an electric cable to an electro-pneumatic relay, and from there to the pipes and effects in the organ chambers.[9]
Percussion on a Wurlitzer at the Meyer Theatre in Green Bay, Wisconsin.
Another feature of theatre organs is the addition of chromatic, or tuned percussions. Hope-Jones added pneumatically and electrically operated instruments such as xylophones, wood harps, chimes, sleigh bells, chrysoglotts and glockenspiels to reproduce the orchestral versions of these instruments.
Wurlitzer added other effects, such as drums, cymbals, wood blocks and other non-chromatic percussions and effects to allow the theatre organ to accompany silent movies.[10] Examples of sound effects included car horns and flings.
A traditional organ console was not adequate to control a theatre organ, as the large number of draw knobs required made the console so huge an organist could not possibly reach all of them while playing. Thus, the horseshoe console was born. Based on a curved French console design and using stop tabs instead of drawknobs, the horseshoe console now allowed the organist to reach any stop or control while playing any piece of music, eliminating the need to move around awkwardly on the bench. The smaller stop tabs also permitted the addition of many more stops on the console than could be added on a traditional console.
New and old organs
Avalon Casino's Page Organ console with portraits of Gaylord Carter and Bob Salisbury.
So-called "new" organs have been recently built, mainly from parts of other theatre organs, with construction of new pipework, windchests and consoles.
Some of these refurbished organs have had their original electro-pneumatic relays replaced with electronic or computerized relays and modern, electronic consoles.
See also
Capri Theatre, home of Australia's second largest theatre organ
Photoplayer, an automatic piano and orchestra used by smaller theatres to accompany silent films
↑ Steven Ball. The Story of The Hollywood Barton. "Steven Ball". Archived from the original on 2012-02-08. Retrieved 2013-08-23.Journal of the American Theatre Organ Society (November/December), citing The Hollywood Theatre, Detroit, MI Detroit News March 17, 1963.
↑ Bush, Douglas Earl; Kassel, Richard, eds. (2006). The Organ: An Encyclopedia. Psychology Press. p.253.
↑ The earliest unit orchestras utilized a separate wind supply to the console to operate combination pistons, which at that time were pneumatically operated. Later designs electrified the combination action, eliminating the need for the console wind supply.
↑ Various builders of church organs, notably Möller, Austin, Aeolian-Skinner and Kimball, added a limited number of chromatic percussions to their church instruments.
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre, volume, and construction throughout the keyboard compass. Most organs have many ranks of pipes of differing pitch, timbre, and volume that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops.
In music, the organ is a keyboard instrument of one or more pipe divisions or other means for producing tones. The organs have usually two or three, up to five, manuals for playing with the hands and a pedalboard for playing with the feet. With the use of registers, several groups of pipes can be connected to one manual.
An electric organ, also known as electronic organ, is an electronic keyboard instrument which was derived from the harmonium, pipe organ and theatre organ. Originally designed to imitate their sound, or orchestral sounds, it has since developed into several types of instruments:
Mathias Peter Møller, commonly known as M.P. Möller or Moeller, was a prolific pipe-organ builder and businessman. A native of the Danish island of Bornholm, he emigrated to the United States in 1872 and founded the M.P. Moller Pipe Organ Company in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, in 1875. The city of Hagerstown, Maryland, took notice of Möller's early successes and induced him to move his business there in 1881 to help make it a viable business center in Western Maryland. The company remained in business in Hagerstown until 1992, with hundreds of employees at its peak and a lifetime production of over 12,000 instruments.
Robert Hope-Jones was an English musician who is considered to be the inventor of the theatre organ in the early 20th century. He thought that a pipe organ should be able to imitate the instruments of an orchestra, and that the console should be detachable from the organ.
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George Wright was an American musician, possibly the most famous virtuoso of the theatre organ of the modern era.
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The photoplayer is an automatic mechanical orchestra used by movie theatres to produce photoplay music to accompany silent films.
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Martin Ellis is an American church, concert and theatre organist. He is currently the organist for Rose City Park Presbyterian Church in Portland, Oregon. He was Principal Organist and Assistant Music Director at North United Methodist Church, and Senior Staff Pianist/Organist, Staff Arranger and Orchestrator for the Indianapolis Children's Choir and Youth Chorale in Indianapolis, Indiana until August, 2014. He works with Gresham High School's Theatre Arts Department as their resident piano accompanist.
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Casavant Frères Ltée. Opus 1841 is a pipe organ built by the famous Casavant Frères of Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec. The organ was first completed in 1911 as Casavant Brothers - Opus 452 for St. Andrew's Presbyterian Church at 40 Bentinck Street, Sydney, Nova Scotia, Canada. St. Andrew's later became St. Andrew's United Church and is now the Highland Arts Theatre.
The Organ Grinder Restaurant was a Portland, Oregon pizzeria in operation from 1973 to 1996. At one point it housed the largest theater pipe organ of its type in the world.
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