A comprehensive dictionary of organ stops - Allen Organ Studio of ...

A WORK
FOREWORD.
of this kind will hardly need any apology, for its utility is
sufficiently obvious to commend it to all earnest students of the
organ. There seems to be nothing in existence quite like it,
although it must often have happened that young players, confronted by
some unfamiliar system of stop-nomenclature, have felt the need of a
manual such as this. The art of organ building has made enormous
strides during the past thirty years, and various builders have added vastly
to the resources of the instrument, both as regards tone and mechanism.
In the meantime some stop-names have fallen into comparative disuse,
while many more have been devised, and have met with partial acceptance.
Although various attempts have been made from time to time to evolve an
universal system of nomenclature, we are, at present, in a somewhat
chaotic state, for even in our own country we are continually confronted
by the difficulties which of necessity arise through stops of a similar
character being called by more than one name, or (and this is more
puzzling still) stops of varying effect being designated by the same term.
It is the function of this manual to make provision for this unsatisfactory
state of affairs, rather than to attempt to remedy it. From a long personal
friendship with the author, combined with a careful study of his writings
on organ matters in the musical press for a number of years, I feel that I
shall be voicing the opinion of many others if I say that there is no one
more highly qualified to undertake a work of this kind than he. That
part of the book dealing with stop-names at present in vogue in England, is
the outcome of many years study, combined with a practical acquaintance-
ship with every important organ in the country. The section treating of
Continental nomenclature has been tested by the author in the course of
his travels in France, Germany, Norway, Holland, Belgium and Switzerland,
and is, moreover, largely corroborated by one of the greatest of French
experts, while the inclusion of the names and descriptions of obsolete
stops will be of special value to those students of old specifications who
may desire to realize what the organs of the past were really like.
FRANCIS BURGESS.