The Fugue

So I’ve been reading up on what makes organ pipes tick (ok, so they don’t tick). It’s very fascinating and yet very simple. It has surprised even me that it has made me think about making my own.

Now, I’m not crazy enough to build a large organ, at least not without gobs of time and money and the proper tools. I’m still nurturing the dream of building just a MIDI pedalboard, remember.

Still, there is a project that I can see myself taking on someday. I could build a positive organ. (”Positive” rhymes with “beef.”) It’s a little one-manual organ that has just a couple of stops. It’s portable like a dresser with wheels is.

But not just any positive organ. A crazy simple positive organ. I’m thinking PVC pipe, because working with metal and wood intimidates me (and I don’t have the tools). That may change before I actually build it. Who needs a case? If I’m going to build a pipe organ it’s going to be naked so that people can see how an organ works. So build it onto/into a simple push cart or something. As for wind, what good is a portable organ if you have a loud motor that needs electricity? If I had cash for a nice quiet blower that would be one thing, but since I don’t maybe I’ll go with a simple bellows like they did in the olde days. Keyboard? Tracker’s the only way to go on something like this, which means I’ll have to break my anti-woodworking pact. But on a positive organ where the pipes are right there, the action should be simple.

This is very early stages of the dream, but I’m imagining 8′, 4′, 2′, and 2 2/3′. 8′ and 4′ for sure. Probably 49 notes (4 octaves) on the manual. So that’s 100–200 pipes. I hope my attention span is that large. Of course I can always start with one stop and go from there.

You may wonder how I’m going to fit an 8′ stop in an organ I pretend will be portable. You can take a 4′ pipe and cover the end and it will resonate like an 8′ pipe (and though it’s not made of wood will hopefully sound not entirely unlike a Gedackt).

If none of that made any sense, just click on this link and say “that’d be cool!”

I’m a bit of a Bach organ music nut. I have CDs of his complete organ works, and I have the CD Sheet Music collection of his complete works for organ.

Unfortunately there are quite a few songs that have been attributed to Bach which were probably not written by Bach. These are known as spurious works. Editors generally leave works that they believe to be truly spurious out of compilations, both audio and paper. The problem is, some of these spurious works are delightful, and if they weren’t written by Bach then we don’t know who did write them. Just try finding “that nice baroque pastoral setting of In Dulci Jubilo for organ written by somebody who we don’t know other than we know it’s not Bach” in your library. So I prefer the practice of admitting spuriousity and just including it anyway.

I have the bad habit of choosing to learn to play pieces that are in Herrick’s collection but are not in CD Sheet Music (supposedly because of spuriousity). BWV 577 the “Gigue” Fugue, and BWV 751 In Dulci Jubilo are two of these. They both happen to be in Edition Peters volume 9 but figuring that out via Google was a gargantuan task. In fact I never did find that out from Google, but only by emailing a few organists did I learn that. Once I learned it I was home free because NMSU’s library has it (BYU’s library doesn’t have volume 9, much to my dismay a couple of years ago when I was looking for BWV 577).

Edition Peters is an urtext, so I have decided to make life easier for other bach organ nuts who have an affinity for the tune In Dulci Jubilo, and contributed it to the Mutopia Project. It’s typeset using the marvelous program LilyPond.

If you’re a budding organist, this is an easy piece to learn. It’s a trio, meaning 3 voices: one for your right hand, one for your left, and one for your feet. The pedal voice is very lethargic, you only have about 4 measures of any movement to speak of that you need to learn. The manuals are not difficult to learn for a moderately accomplished pianist. There are many nuances to articulation and expression that could be focused on, of course, but if you were subconsciously searching for the perfect short Christmas organ tune to learn, this is it. Enjoy!