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Your Questions... Answered
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ON THE MIDMER-LOSH ORGAN, WHY DO SOME OF THE MAIN CONSOLE'S MANUALS HAVE MORE KEYS THAN OTHERS?
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The usual compass of organ keyboards is 61 notes, but the main console's Swell manual has 73 (six octaves, from GGG to g4) and the Great and Choir have 85 (seven octaves, CCC to c5). These extended manuals were the idea of the Midmer-Losh President Seibert Losh. In The American Organist magazine of December, 1925, he wrote: "To play a Grossflöte at 8' pitch throughout the manual range and then drop to the pedal board for its 16' octave would make anyone wonder who decreed that the organ, the first instrument to have a keyboard, must have a range of only five octaves while its upstart imitator, the piano ... may have more than seven. Yes, and when we want the four-foot register of this same Grossflöte we must draw another stop!"
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On the Convention Hall organ, the Choir manual includes a Grand Choir department derived from Pedal Left stops, and the Great manual has a Grand Great derived from Pedal Right stops. In common with the other manual departments, stop-keys on these Grand departments indicate the pitches of their registers at the CC key. However, because the manuals extend down to CCC, pipes with a longer speaking length than that shown will sound when any of the 12 lowest keys are played.
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The extended Swell manual is a different matter, as its lowest five keys (GGG to BBB) are purley cosmetic. They have no pipes of their own, although they will sound notes if the Choir to Swell coupler is drawn and some of the Grand Choir's registers are on. All stops on the Swell organ do, however, have pipes for the extra seven notes at the top of the manual.
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The 85-note keyboard was also an attempt to place the Pedal organ's resources at the disposal of pianists who sometimes had to deputize for organists, because it allowed them to use the deep-pitched Pedal stops without actually playing the pedals. As with many of Seibert Losh's ideas, the logic behind the seven-octave keyboard is understandable but its usefulness is a matter of opinion.
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ATLANTIC CITY CONVENTION HALL ORGAN SOCIETY, INC.
1009 BAY RIDGE AVENUE PMB 108, ANNAPOLIS, MD 21403, U.S.A.
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