The Crying Need for Electric Action
The instance of St. Paul’s Cathedral cited above shows the demand that existed at that time for means whereby the organ could be played with the keyboards situated at some distance from the main body of the instrument. In the Cathedrals the organ was usually placed on a screen dividing the Choir from the Nave, completely obstructing the view down the church. There was a demand for its removal from this position (which was eventually done at St. Paul’s, Chester, Durham, and other Cathedrals). Then in the large parish churches the quartet of singers in the west gallery where the organ was placed had been abolished. Boy choirs had been installed in the chancel, leaving the organ and organist in the west gallery, to keep time together as best they could. In the Cathedrals, too, the organist was a long way off from the choir. How glorious it would be if he could sit and play in their midst! Henry Willis & Sons stated in a letter to the London Musical News, in 1890, that they had been repeatedly asked to make such arrangements but had refused, “because Dame Nature stood in the way,”—which she certainly did if tubular pneumatics had been used. The fact was that up to this time all the electric actions invented had proved more or less unreliable, and Willis, who had an artistic reputation to lose, refused to employ them. As an instance of their clumsiness we may mention that the best contact they could get was made by dipping a platinum point in a cell containing mercury! Other forms of contact rapidly oxidized and went out of business.
Dr. Gauntlet, about the year 1852, took out a patent covering an electric connection between the keys and the pallets of an organ,[2] but the invention of the electro-pneumatic lever must be ascribed to Barker and Dr. Péschard. The latter seems to have suggested the contrivance and the former to have done the practical work.
Bryceson Bros. were the first to introduce this action into English organs. They commenced work along these lines in 1868, under the Barker patents, their first organ being built behind the scenes at Her Majesty’s Opera House, Drury Lane, London, the keys being in the orchestra. This organ was used successfully for over a year, after which it was removed and shown as a curiosity in the London Polytechnic Institute, recitals being given twice daily.
Schmole and Molls, Conti, Trice and others took a leading part in the work on the European continent, and Roosevelt was perhaps its greatest pioneer in the United States.
Various builders in many countries have more recently made scores of improvements or variations in form and have taken out patents to cover the points of difference, but none of these has done any work of special importance.
Not one of the early electric actions proved either quick or reliable, and all were costly to install and maintain.[3]
This form of mechanism, therefore, earned a bad name and was making little advance, if not actually being abandoned, when a skilled electrician, Robert Hope-Jones, entered the field about 1886. Knowing little of organs and nothing of previous attempts to utilize electricity for this service, he made with his own hands and some unskilled assistance furnished by members of his voluntary choir, the first movable console,[4] stop-keys, double touch, suitable bass, etc., and an electric action that created a sensation throughout the organ world. In this action the “pneumatic blow” was for the first time attained and an attack and repetition secured in advance of anything thought possible at that time, in connection with the organ or the pianoforte.
Hope-Jones introduced the round wire contact which secures the ideally perfect “nibbing points,” and he makes these wires of dissimilar non-corrosive metals (gold and platinum).
He replaced previous rule-of-thumb methods by scientific calculation, recognized the value of low voltage, good insulation and the avoidance of self-induction, with the result that the electro-pneumatic action has become (when properly made) as reliable as the tracker or pneumatic lever mechanism.