Folks at 11AM worship today were treated to a relative rarity: a cipher on the organ. For an inexplicable reason a pipe sounds on its own. It our case this morning, it was one of the loud reed pipes and it began during the pastoral prayer.
The cipher actually sounded thrice. The first during the prayer: I checked my hands and feet to make sure I wasn't touching anything. I also re-cancelled all the stops and checked the crescendo pedal, thus turning everything absolutely off. But it happened again. I turned the instrument off. Several minutes passed while the liturgy continued. I turned the organ back on for the offertory (a soft selection from the Vierne 24 Pieces), and about 2/3 of the way through it sounded again (remember it's the solo reed). Off went the organ again, and I played the rest of the liturgy from the piano.
In olden days a bit of dust or other debris could get wedged below the pipe preventing the pipe valve from closing all the way, thus letting a relatively small bit of air into the pipe, and ultimately producing a sound. In modern instruments (like ours) very often electricity controls the flow of wind to the pipe. It could still be a bit of dust, but it could also be something hinky in the wiring to the specific pipe.
Whether it was dust or a wire, it happened to us today. And of course it was not one of the soft pipes under expression. It was a pipe in the solo reed stop, one of the loudest on our instrument. And it didn't happen during the postlude, when many are on their way out and only half listening. It happened during the pastoral prayer, a particularly moving prayer, after a particularly introspective sermon. Of course.
The organ is not broken. But it is most likely something in the wiring. I'll take a look myself in the morning, but I already have made a call to the service technician. They are usually good about getting round quickly in a situation like this.
Let's hope we've heard the last of this sort of surprise for a while!
Photo courtesy of creativecommons.com
1 comment:
The tech was by this afternoon. He couldn't find a single specific source of the trouble. But he replaced a transistor and a diode for the note involved and believes that will take care of the problem. There was voltage getting to the pipe's switch which would cause it to sound. But the sporadic nature of the trouble had him puzzled. I suggested he write a paper for publication on the situation!
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