Camian Military Academy Chapel Organ

Camian Military Academy Chapel Organ

Classification	Pipe organ
Playing range
GGGGG – c8
Musicians
Capt. George Beck (resident organist)
Builders
G. Tilby & Co.

The Camian Military Academy Chapel Organ is a large pipe organ located in the Camian Military Academy's chapel, in New Aldgate, Camia. The instrument was built by Graham Tilby Co. between 1919 and 1921 for the academy's chapel that was completed during the same period. It possesses some 23,750 pipes, making it one of the largest in the world.

Background

The Camian government voted to grant a special fund for the re-erection of a chapel on the grounds of the Camian Military Academy after the previous one burned down in 1916. To celebrate the nation's recent military achievements, it was decided to enlarge the chapel considerably. To that end several dormitories were demolished and a small pond drained to make space for a large chapel. The finished building measured 240 feet down its nave. As the organ in the original chapel had been destroyed by the fire, a new organ was planned and contracted to Graham Tilby's organ company.

Graham Tilby is recognized as Camia's foremost organ builder, having been responsible for several other large-scale instruments in the Cathedral of the Incarnation, St. James's Cathedral, and the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. These instruments, however, were not considered appropriate models for the CMA chapel by Tilby, because he regarded the Military Academy's chapel primarily as a social or academic space, not a religious one: it was "for one morning a week it is a church, and at all other times a gathering hall." This was true of the chapel's uses at that time as a general meeting space for various social and ceremonial activities, and vocal and instrumental performances were frequent. Tilby thus regarded this opportunity as one to express his abilities in an organ in the symphonic style, which were rapidly becoming popular in Casaterra.

In 1918, Tilby gave serious consideration to the design of the organ as a potential contender for the world's largest organ, which at that time was the one in Percy's Store, with around 18,000 pipes. However, it soon became clear that the budget would not accommodate his ambition unless the quality of the instrument be so far reduced that it would mar instead of burnish his own reputation. The director of music at the Military Academy, who also had a prominent role in the instrument's design, insisted that the instrument be larger than the one at Kien-k'ang City Hall, which was the largest when it was completed with 13,100 pipes in 1901. Thus, Tilby reluctantly gave an estimate of $165,000 for an instrument at 13,420 pipes.

Stops

Tonal design

The CMA organ was built with a tonal design in stride with the leading theories of its age, emphasizing the unison voices (8-foot in the manuals and 16-foot in the pedal) and suppressing treble ones. A large range of orchestral voices, which are imitative of strings, woodwinds, and brasses, are provided in the organ. These innovations were conditioned by a century of Romantic tonal evolution that sought to expand the organ's tonal palette, to the end that it could imitate the sound of an orchestra.

Improvements in technology also enabled the organ to have a larger dynamic range, by providing chests on differing wind pressures. With the CMA instrument's mechanical blowers, pressure could be as high as 25 inches and as low as 2 inches in different chests, compared with the uniform 3 to 5 inches that were achievable with manual bellows. However, because each pipe can be voiced for only one wind pressure, multiple pipes would be required if the same sound is required at differing dynamic levels. This is the case on the CMA instrument, which has five 8-foot Diapason stops on 20, 12, 8, 5, and 3 inches of wind; they have similar tonal characters but speak at different volumes.

Traditionally, a louder voice was achieved by sounding pipes at different pitch levels (usually the second and third partials, and their octaves); this is because the human ear perceives two sounds at different pitches as added loudness even if the two sounds are equally loud. But this approach, carried out fully to fill a large space, easily created a very sharp sound, especially in the treble range, that tonal designers of the 1910s and 20s considered antiquated. With higher wind pressures, they were able to achieve the necessary loudness at a desired pitch, obviating the playing of "consecutive octaves and fifths across the entire musical range". The designer of the organ, Tilby, said that the "octaves and fifths of yesterday are musical litter now to be excised from a modern instrument."

Higher pitches no longer necessary, the organ's sound is dominated by the unison pitch, further permitting it to imitate the sound of the orchestra. Tilby desired a sound in the CMA organ much as his other projects, which is to say "warm, rich, and free of dissonance".

​42 ²⁄₃-foot stops

The CMA organ is unusual as its lowest is not an octave-sounding rank, but a fifth-sounding one at ​42 ²⁄₃-foot, or GGGGG below 32-foot CCCC. This note has a fundamental frequency of 12.25 Hz, which is not as much heard by the human ear but felt as a vibration. There are two stops at this pitch, the Diaphone Profunda and Contra Trombone. It is often said that the chapel settled for a ​42 ²⁄₃-foot stop over a 64-foot stop owing to want of space, though an extension to CCCCC had been considered on multiple occasions. Currently, that pitch is available on the instrument through the resultant 64-foot stop.

32-foot stops

To provide desired grandeur in the pedal, the CMA organ was completed with six 32-foot stops (including the two ​42 ²⁄₃-foot ones drawn at 32-foot) in 1921, believed to be unique at that time. A seventh, the Contra Bombardon, was added in 1974. In the major augmentation of 2005 – 10, two more stops at this pitch were added, the Contra Bassoon and Major Bass. Amongst these stops, the 32-foot Military Trumpet is believed to be unique, as far as its en chamade positioning is concerned. This stop's full-length, polished-brass resonator is mounted horizontally and directly over the chapel's nave, and it is one of the organ's most visible features.

Stop	Division	Pressure
Sub Principal	Great	12
Military Trumpet	Swell	25
Double Diapason	Pedal	12
Contra Violone	Pedal	8
Diaphone Profunda	Pedal	25
Contra Bombarde	Pedal	20
Contra Trombone	Pedal	12
Contra Bombardon	Pedal	12
Major Bass	Pedal	8
Contra Bassoon	Pedal	5

Culture

Size debate

The CMA organ is often mentioned in the context of its size relative to the City Hall Organ of Kien-k'ang, Themiclesia. At 23,750 pipes, it is the largest organ in Camia and slightly larger than the instrument in Kien-k'ang, which has 23,220 pipes. However, the CMA organ's pipes are organized into 327 ranks, while those at City Hall into 459 ranks. Part of this difference is attributable to CMA's longer compasses, with 61 and 32 notes in the manual and pedal compasses, which are 6 and 2 notes longer than City Hall's compasses.

The CMA organ is estimated to be about three times the weight of the City Hall instrument. The chief contributor to this weight is the organ's many bass stops, which are much heavier than treble stops even one octave higher: the lowest 12 pipes of a 16-foot rank is twice the weight of an entire 8-foot rank of 61 pipes. In total, the organ has two ​42 ²⁄₃-foot stops, seven 32-foot stops, 71 16-foot stops, and 157 8-foot stops. These figures reflect Tilby's desire to emphasize the unison pitches of the manuals and pedal respectively. Other than the City Hall organ's unique, full-length 64-foot stop, the CMA organ easily outweighs that instrument.

Because both instruments are central edifices in established musical cultures, they each possess a considerable and avid group of afficionados, who at times have attacked the other instrument in the interest of establishing the superiority of their own. Common points of discussion include the accuracy of the pipe count, the quality and direction of the tonal design, ability to play certain repertoires, and the work of the organ builder(s). Some of these discussion arise from conflicting beliefs about the principles of building organs. Disputations first occurred in print and, with shifted to the Internet at its advent and grew in scope as more became aware of these instruments and the arguments surrounding them.

It was long understood by most authorities that the City Hall instrument was slightly larger in terms of pipe count, which was placed around 20,000 in the 1950s as opposed to about 16,000 at the CMA in 1970. As early as 1919, Tilby singled out the City Hall instrument as one where the builder attempted to inflate the pipe count by "building a multitude of musically useless, shrill, shrieking small pipes, over a few, useful, and well-crafted large ones". Tilby's point was reiterated by many of the CMA organ's fans, attracting the ire of the opposite following who defended the prepondrance of small pipes as deference to organ-building tradition and a source of "sonic clarity and brilliance".

Historically speaking, Tilby's criticisms were not unknown to the City Hall organ's curators, who did add 16 unison voices to the organ between 1920 and 1930; however, as unison voices were added to that organ's chambers, treble ones were too introduced, to "crown the voice with brilliance". Tilby's belief that the City Hall organ was a "chorus piccolos crowned by dog whistles" is, in Dr. Kram's opinion, "more a dismissal of the registration of the organist, than of the tonal possibilities afforded by the instrument's builder."

See also

• Camia