BACH
The father of all organ music. Although important composers preceded him, it was Bach who fused brillant compositional style, notably toccatas, fugues and chorale preludes, with astounding organ playing technique.

BAROQUE
Roughly from 1600 to the death of Bach in 1750, this period witnessed great achievements in organ building and composition, driven largely by the development of the Protestant church.

BOMBARDE
A French term for the heaviest reed stops of the organ, denoting a distinctly militaristic tone.

CHAMADE
Billiant trumpet pipes that are aplaced horizontally and sometimes constructed in flaming copper. Their bombastic tone is especially appropriate for fanfares.

DIAPASON
Referring to tone color, the Diapason pipes are to the organ what violins are to an orchestra—the principal “sound.”

DIVISION
A particular section of the organ, usually controlled by its own keyboard. A division can contain many stops and is located in one particular area of the organ pipe chamber.

FAÇADE
The front, or display pipes that are usually polished and quite large. Often they are for looks only and do not produce any tone. The First Church organs contain fully functioning façade pipes.

PEDALS
This is what sets the organ apart from the piano—the organist plays with both hands and both feet! The pedals play the lowest bass pipes of the organ, and include ones that reach 32 feet in length.

PIPE
The essential building blocks of the organ. In order to produce a tone, a pipe must be bult in a certain shape and length, and be constructed of an appropriate material, such as wood or metal. Each pipe is hand made and tuned by the organ builder.

RANK
A set of pipes (one or more for each note of the keyboard) that are constructed in the same manner so as to produce the same tone, but at each different pitch of the musical scale. A rank of oboe pipes, for example, contains a set of 61 pipes that all sound with a reedy oboe tone.

STOP
The actual knob on the console that turns a rank of pipes on and off. Some stops control several ranks of pipes, and others control non-pipe effects, such as vibrato, couplers and chimes.

VOICE
A general term that encompasses all of the voices of the organ, whether they are pipe ranks of percussion.