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 completed in 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.

Layout

The CMA organ is distributed at six locations or chambers: the main organ located behind the altar, the two choir wings, the echo organ located in the clerestories, the antiphonal organ located at the other end of the nave, and the bombarde organ opposite the echo. The main organ case extends 40 foot in height and features a Romantic design.

Chamber	Division
Nave	Positive, Swell, Great, Solo, Pedal
Choir Left	Orchestral
Choir Right	Orchestral
Echo	Echo, Echo Pedal
Antiphonal	Antiphonal, Antiphonal Pedal
Bombarde	Trumpet, Bombarde

Tonal design

Distribution

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 achievable with manual bellows. However, because each pipe can be voiced for only one wind pressure, multiple pipes would be required to produce the same voice at differing dynamic levels. This is too 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 dynamic levels.

Traditionally, a louder voice was achieved by sounding pipes of similar tone at successive pitch levels (usually the second and third partials, and their octaves); this is because the human ear perceives similar tones at different pitches as added loudness, even if they 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 early 20th century considered antiquated or at least unfashionable. With higher wind pressures, they achieved the necessary loudness at a desired pitch, obviating the playing of "consecutive octaves and fifths across the entire musical range", which was said to muddy the sound and detract from focus. The designer of the organ, Tilby, said that the "octaves and fifths of yesterday are musical litter now to be excised from a modern, rational 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".

Unification

Traditional pipe organs had mostly independent stops, which draw on their own rank or ranks of pipes that do not form any other stop. Conversely, electric action introduced in the 1890s permitted multiple stops to draw on the same rank, or at least parts of the same rank. This technique permitted organ-builders to remove duplicated pipes across different pitchs. For example, a 8-foot diapason and 4-foot diapason would theoretically have—if built and voiced thus—identical pipes across four of their octaves, the 4-foot having one extra octave on the top end; thus, these duplicated pipes stand to be "unified", that is, share the same physical pipes. Thus, a 61-pipe rank could be extended to 73 pipes and support two stops, or to 85 pipes for three stops, and so forth. A more extreme form of this measure was to list the same rank as multiple stops belonging to different manuals, a practice called "transmission".

This practice was considered useful for instruments constrained by physical space or finance but unreservedly condemned by some theoreticians. Their chief criticism is that identical pipes still contribute to the "richness" of the instrument's sound, as they are rarely truly in tune and would produce a gentle wavering when speaking together. Furthermore, it is contended that no "organ-builder worth his salt" would produce identical ranks in an instrument, and even the same stop across different pitches would, in sound practice, be varied in scale and voice. Unifying them, as it is argued, would rob the instrument of grandeur and performative flexibility. The supporters of this practice, such as Tilby, rejoined that economies obtained from unification are better spent on more voices, which in their opinion contribute more to the sound of the instrument than could duplicate pipes of the same voice. He wrote:

In my plan for the Military Academy's chapel organ, I have used unification and transmission generally but not unscrupulously. In an instrument of this magnitude, a certain class of my competitors would argue there to be no possible justification for unification and transmission, but I seek to show these grounds to exist. My clients desire that their instrument should represent the fullest variety of musical voices the modern world can offer, and even a purse as generous as theirs cannot suffer to invest in duplicate or unusable stops. An orchestra is not improved by duplicating the violin line at 16, 8, 4, 2, and 1-foot. The only kind of music where unification is a reasonable objection is that which has unreasonably many parallel octaves. The melody of all modern instruments is carried at one pitch only.

Thus, Tilby's plans called for unification and transmission extensively on the CMA organ. More than half of its stops are extended in some way, and its famed Military Trumpet is drawn at 16 separate pitches—32', 16', ​10 ²⁄₃', 8', ​6 ²⁄₅', ​5 ¹⁄₃', ​4 ⁴⁄₇', 4, ​3 ¹⁄₅', ​2 ²⁄₃', ​2 ²⁄₇', 2', ​1 ³⁄₅', ​1 ¹⁄₃', ​1 ¹⁄₇', and 1'. Tilby apologized for himself and in 1922 challenged his critics to find any military music which has parallel octaves on a trumpet line, which would reveal the shortcomings of unification in that stop.

Stops

​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 ample grandeur in the pedal, the CMA organ was completed with five 32-foot stops (including the two ​42 ²⁄₃-foot ones drawn at 32-foot) in 1921, the most in any instrument then in the world. Others were added during the organ's life. In the major augmentation of 2005 – 10, two more stops at this pitch were installed, 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. Currently, the organ possesses 14 stops at 32-foot pitch, 11 independent, 2 unified, and 1 stopped, the largest number of any instrument worldwide.

The multitude of 32-foot stops in the CMA organ has invited international attention from both the organ world and the forum of experimental, subsonic music. Dr. Kran of Themiclesia said that, with so many 32-foot stops, one could "speak of a 32-foot chorus, rather than a chorus based on a 32-foot." Practitioners of subsonic music are often interested in its 32-foot chorus and experiment with such voices in the extreme bass. However, "not all organists hold this tonal architecture as artistic or pleasing," and some call it an "orgiastic collection of 32-footers."

Stop	Division	Pressure	Notes
Sub Principal 32′	Great	12″	Wood, extended
Contra Bassoon 32′	Swell	10″	Extended
Contra Gemshorn 32′	Choir	8″	Metal from TC, extended
Tibia Profunda 32′	Solo	25″	Open, extended
Military Trumpet 32′	Pedal	25″	Brass, extended
Double Diapason 32′	Pedal	12″	Metal, extended
Contra Violone 32′	Echo	8″	Extended
Diaphone Profunda 32′	Pedal	25″	From Diaphone Profunda ​42 2⁄3′
Contra Bombarde 32′	Pedal	20″
Contra Trombone 32′	Pedal	12″	From Contra Trombone ​42 2⁄3′
Contra Bombardon 32′	Pedal	12″	Metal
Major Bass 32′	Pedal	8″
Lieblichegedackt 32′	Echo	5″	Stopped, extended
Contra Dulciana 32′	Antiphonal	10″	Metal, extended

Digital stops

The CMA organ is the world's largest pipe organ to employ digital stops. These were installed on an experimental basis in 2013 and uses the organ's existing stops as samples. Through digital work, the ​42 ²⁄₃-foot stops were doubled down to ​85 ¹⁄₃-foot stops, adding more foundation and gravity to the organ's extensive bass department. These very grave voices were produced by giant subwoofers mounted behind the altar.

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 20,750 pipes, it is the largest organ in Camia and slightly larger than the instrument in Kien-k'ang, which has 18,720 pipes. However, the CMA organ's more numerous pipes are organized into 307 ranks, while those at City Hall into 409 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 stops even one octave higher: the lowest 12 pipes of a 16-foot rank weighs an entire 8-foot rank of 61 pipes. In total, the organ has two ​42 ²⁄₃-foot, 12 32-foot, 71 16-foot, and 157 8-foot ranks. These figures reflect Tilby's desire to emphasize the unison and sub-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 their argumentative milieux.

It was long understood by most authorities that the City Hall instrument was slightly larger in terms of pipe count, which was placed around 18,000 after its augmentation in 1951, 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, treble ones were too introduced, to "crown the voice with brilliance". Tilby's belief that the City Hall organ was a "chorus of 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 designer."

See also

• Camia
• City Hall Organ