04 May 2010

A curious case of organological iconography




Here's a nice window I saw in Bristol a couple of years ago.  Being a musician, I am a mildly keen collector of images of St Cecilia -- she being the patron saint of the poverty-afflicted!

I always get a kick out of gothic revival images of St Cecilia, because these are about the most common image of a woman making music that you'll find in churches of a certain period.  They are part of a wider pictorial discourse about the place of music in the construction of femininity.




A wider reason for this fascination is the intersection between iconography and the technological transformation of the organ in England during the second half of the nineteenth century.  The instruments got bigger -- this is why we nowadays regard an instrument with two or three manuals and about 20 stops as a modest affair rather than a major feat of engineering.

Now, look at the picture again.  The portative organ clearly has three manuals.  Here's a closeup:



I wonder if the parish organist was putting his case for more stops (you know the old line about organists and horses wanting more stops, don't you?  Boom-boom...).  As a matter of fact, the church where I found this window has a very fine two-manual instrument; I doubt whether there's space for a further division within the organ chamber.

There's a little bit more about portative organs here.

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