{{Short description|Musical organ installed in a personal home}} [[File:Kulturbilder 353.JPG|thumb|right|This picture by Israhel van Meckenem the Younger illustrates a very early type, of the many types, of residence organ, in this instance a single manual pipe organ powered by air pumped via two hand bellows by the organist's wife. The four levers at the side are probably decorations, but could have been slider controls.<ref name=Kassel2006a/>]] A '''residence organ''' (also known variously as a '''house''', '''box''', '''cabinet''', '''choir''', '''continuo''', '''home''', '''practice''', '''trunk''', or '''chamber''' '''organ''') is a musical organ installed in a personal home. Strictly speaking, the names ''residence'' and ''house'' organ are the most correct, the others being types of organs that can physically be used as residence organs, but that are not restricted to use solely in that context, and can also be used in, say, small churches, theatres, and so forth. A portative organ or a positive organ (which are also, but imprecisely, known as ''box'', ''trunk'', and ''cabinet'' organs) can be used in a residential setting, but the notion of a residence organ strictly embodies a permanence of place that is belied by the notion of portability embodied by the portatives and positives. Similarly, a chamber organ (also known imprecisely as a ''cabinet'', ''desk'', or ''bureau'' organ) is in general a small organ for a room, but not necessarily for a room of someone's home.<ref name=Kassel2006a/><ref name=Fesperman2006a/>

== Use, construction, and evolution == The overlap of definitions parallels an overlap of uses. Residence organs can be used as ''practice'' organs, for practice at home by a professional organist, or as home instruments for amateur organists.<ref name=Kassel2006a/> Their use can be traced as far back as the 16th century where Henry VIII of England owned more than a dozen residence organs, as did many members of his nobility.<ref name=Owen2003a/>

In construction, they are generally less elaborate than church organs, being constricted by the relative paucity of space for the mechanisms in a residence as opposed to a church, theatre, or other larger building. They commonly have no pedals, a few stops, and a single manual. They are also generally less ornate than other kinds of organs, having plainer façades as the major effort in their construction goes towards miniaturization of the mechanism and achieving a church organ sound with domestic acoustics.<ref name=Kassel2006a/>

Various construction techniques are employed in pursuit of the latter goal. The lengthy pipework of the low registers in a church organ simply doesn't fit into a home, and so devices such as a quint, a Haskell bass, and a stopped pipe are employed to achieve the same sound but with more compact mechanisms.<ref name=Kassel2006a/>

The action is also engineered for compactness. In early designs, the action was very simple and comprised a sprung arrangement where air was compressed in the lower chest of the organ, and depressing a key would open a pallet that would release the air up to the pipe ranks. Later designs, as technology progressed, started to encompass more of what could be found in church and other organs and more complex mechanisms, including rollerboards, pedalboards, reed organs (rather than pipes), and eventually electric rather than mechanical actions.<ref name=Kassel2006b/><ref name=Owen2003b/>

Such residence organs were the province of professional house organ makers (who continue to exist even today) in the main, with a notable exception of Toggenburg where (at that time) residence organs were often constructed by amateurs and enthusiasts themselves. Several such purpose-built residence organs survive from centuries past, including Claudio Merulo's organ in the Parma Conservatory, and the residence organ of Marie Antoinette that is preserved at Versailles.<ref name=Owen2003b/> For comparison, out of the 761 residence organs built by Aeolian between 1894 and 1932, only 65 survived to the end of the 20th century. (One such was the one at Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania.)<ref name=Owen2003c/>

Residence organs rose to greater popularity in the 17th century, and by the 18th century much larger ones were being built, in England, Holland, and France. It was the end of the 19th century and the turn of the 20th that saw the advent of large and complex purpose-built residence organs in the private homes of those wealthy enough to afford such things, usually not played by the owners themselves but by professional organists whose services they would hire, for private concerts and the like. A four-manual organ was built in Blenheim Palace in 1891 by the Willis company, for example, and such things were symbols of ostentation and opulence on the parts of their owners.<ref name=Owen2003b/>

But things changed in the 20th century with the advent of new technologies. Right at the start of the century the paper-roll playing mechanisms of the pianola were incorporated into residence organs, which had the side-effect of eliminating the profession of residence organist, requiring the operator to do no more than operate the organ stops and expression pedals (which, in its turn, was eliminated within a decade, that too being encoded onto the paper roll itself). Residence organs in the 1930s grew to encompass an even wider range of instruments with the advent of the electronic organ and (later) the analogue synthesizer as home organs. There has been a "purist" backlash against these; and even today one can find companies that will build "real" (i.e. not electronic) residential organs, customized for individual homes.<ref name=Kassel2006b/><ref name=Owen2003b/> But by the turn of the 21st century, with a few occasional exceptions, it was the electronic organ and the synthesizer to which professionals and amateurs now turned to for practice and informal use at home.<ref name=Owen2003c/>

== See also == * Aeolian-Skinner

== References == {{Reflist|30em|refs=

<!-- books --> <ref name=Fesperman2006a>{{harvnb|Fesperman|2006|pp=106}}</ref> <ref name=Kassel2006a>{{harvnb|Kassel|2006|pp=261}}</ref> <ref name=Kassel2006b>{{harvnb|Kassel|2006|pp=262}}</ref> <ref name=Owen2003a>{{harvnb|Owen|2003|pp=317}}</ref> <ref name=Owen2003b>{{harvnb|Owen|2003|pp=318}}</ref> <ref name=Owen2003c>{{harvnb|Owen|2003|pp=319}}</ref>

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'''Works cited''' {{Refbegin}} * {{cite encyclopaedia|article=chamber organ|encyclopedia=The organ: an encyclopedia|volume=3|series=Encyclopedia of keyboard instruments|editor=Douglas Earl Bush and Richard Kassel|first=John T.|last=Fesperman|authorlink=John T. Fesperman|publisher=Routledge|year=2006|isbn=978-0-415-94174-7|url=https://archive.org/details/organencyclopedi0000unse}} * {{cite encyclopaedia|article=house organ|encyclopedia=The organ: an encyclopedia|volume=3|series=Encyclopedia of keyboard instruments|editor=Douglas Earl Bush and Richard Kassel|first=Richard|last=Kassel|publisher=Routledge|year=2006|isbn=978-0-415-94174-7|url=https://archive.org/details/organencyclopedi0000unse}} * {{cite encyclopaedia|pages=317&ndash;318|article=residence organ|encyclopedia=Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World: Performance and production|volume=2|editor=John Shepherd|publisher=Continuum International Publishing Group|year=2003|isbn=978-0-8264-6322-7|first=Barbara|last=Owen}} {{Refend}}

== Further reading == * {{cite encyclopaedia|pages=[https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofau0000bowe/page/973 973]|article=residence organ|encyclopedia=Encyclopedia of automatic musical instruments|first=Q. David|last=Bowers|publisher=Vestal Press|year=1972|isbn=978-0-911572-08-7|url=https://archive.org/details/encyclopediaofau0000bowe/page/973}} * {{cite book|chapter=The Residence Organ in an Industrial Society, 1860&ndash;1930|title=The Bicentennial Tracker: in commemoration of the Bicentennial of the United States of America, 1776&ndash;1976, and the twentieth anniversary of the Organ Historical Society, inc., 1956&ndash;1976|first=Albert F.|last=Robinson|publisher=Organ Historical Society|year=1976}} * {{cite book|title=The History of the Organ in the United States|author=Orpha Caroline Ochse|publisher=Indiana University Press|year=1988|isbn=978-0-253-20495-0|pages=[https://archive.org/details/historyoforganin00ochs/page/330 330&ndash;332]|url=https://archive.org/details/historyoforganin00ochs/page/330}} * {{cite news|title=Rich Men Who Have Organs Built in Their Homes|work=The New York Times|date=1911-09-17|pages=SM12}} * {{cite journal|title=A Novel Phase of Musical Development|first=Gustav|last=Kobbé|journal=The Lotus Magazine|volume=3|issue=2|date=November 1911|pages=44&ndash;51|jstor=20543341}} * {{cite journal|title=Why You Should Buy a Residence Organ|journal=Stop, Open and Reed|volume=1|issue=2|year=1922}} * {{cite book|pages=32&ndash;37|chapter=Monster Organs, Mammoth Audiences|title=All the Stops: The Glorious Pipe Organ and Its American Masters|first=Craig|last=Whitney|publisher=PublicAffairs|year=2004|isbn=978-1-58648-262-6}} * {{cite book|title=The Contemporary American Organ Its Evolution, Design And Construction|url=https://archive.org/details/contemporaryamer007616mbp|url-access=limited|year=1937|first=William Harrison|last=Barnes|publisher=J. fischer & Bro|location=New York|edition=reprinted by READ BOOKS, 2007|isbn=978-1-4067-6023-1|chapter=Location and Space Requirements of the Organ|pages=[https://archive.org/details/contemporaryamer007616mbp/page/n217 208]&ndash;210}}

==External links== * [http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~uno/organ.html Donald Knuth's pipe organ]

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Category:Keyboard instruments Category:Organs (music)