GAINESWOOD

The Flutina (Barrel Organ)

Notes to accompany the audio recording about the conservation of the Gainswood barrel organ, how it operates, and some observations about the practical playing of it.

How was the organ prepared for the 2001 recording?

Before the recording, the Hicks barrel organ had long been unplayable – a fact which contributed to its relatively good condition. Although greatly weakened by age, the organ retained nearly all of its original material, workmanship and adjustment. There was no doubt that the instrument had not been taken apart since it was made 142 years earlier.

It is inescapable that “use uses up.” The Gaineswood organ is an excellent example of just how vulnerable an old un-restored organ is. Here, the historical integrity of every internal detail was assured as long as it was left alone. Had the treatment been a more traditional restoration, all the original bellows leather, tuning stopper leather, drum heads, and many of the barrel pins would have been replaced.

The objective of the 2001 conservation was to perform the least intrusive treatment possible for just two purposes: to record the organ’s music and to stabilize the most active deterioration. It was agreed between the conservators and the Gainswood administration that cosmetic problems would receive only stabilization treatments and not restoration.

The organs handle presented a conservation challenge that illustrates our approach. The original handle could have worked, but its connection to the driveshaft had long ago developed wear that would have gotten much worse if we used the handle for our recording. To minimize wear, we manufactured a temporary new crank just for the recording. A soft lead washer between the crank and the old crankshaft protected the old worn surfaces from new wear.

The treatment was successful in its objectives: We have an audio recording that can be played as often as we like, without additional wear to the fragile original organ, and the organ survived this precarious moment in its long life with its most vulnerable historical material still intact.

Thanks to this recording, we can all participate in the preservation of the organ by enjoying the music of the instrument without pulling it out of retirement and causing any further wear.

What was it like to operate the organ?

· Each tune repeats continuously as long as you crank the organ. Surely for the dancing tunes at least, and for many of the other tunes as well, it would have been normal to play several continuous repetitions of the tune. For this recording, we played only once through each tune, and found it sometimes difficult to stop precisely at the end, when there was very little space between the end and the beginning.

· We found it impossible to keep a very steady tempo – as if the crank was not being turned at an even rate. This was in spite of the fact that both operators (or performers if you like), Louis Dolive and John Watson, had musical performance credentials, yet could not steady the tempo. The difficulty seems to be in the pinning of the barrels themselves, and the results on the CD must fairly represent how the organ sounded in 1859.

· Changing barrels was surprisingly difficult because of the hazards to the mechanism of catching barrel pins on the tangents. It appears that the people of Gainswood were keenly aware of this, and must have taken great care themselves. Although a fair amount of damage from this action had accumulated, there could have been very much more if the organ were not always treated with the utmost care.

Is this exactly how the organ sounded when it was new?

· Almost but not exactly. The recording reflects our determination not to erase the organ’s well-deserved and authenticating signs of age. We have learned that it is often in these footprints of time that historic objects bear testimony of the past. Here are a few of the allowances we must make for the organs preservation.

· The tuning is imperfect. After documenting precise tuning evidence we set out to tune the pipes. We soon realized, however, that the tuning stoppers were stuck firmly in place. Tuning those pipes with tuning stoppers would mean destroying original leather and workmanship. In fact, it seems likely that the journey from New York to Demopolis in 1859 left the organ somewhat out of tune, and that it may have sounded much like this from the beginning. We did tune those pipes that had tuning flaps.

· There are wrong notes and missing notes. This is due to damage in the barrels themselves, where the pins are broken off, or bent. Only a few of these were straightened in the conservation, but corrosion of the metal makes them prone to break off.

· The drum does not sound exactly as it should because it was deemed too weak to give it proper tension.

How does the organ work?

There are four parts of an organ: the wind system, the windchest, the pipework, and the mechanical action.

· Turning the organ’s crank sets in motion the wind system.

· A crankshaft alternately opens and collapses two wedge-shaped, leather-webbed “feeder bellows” which together supply air to another bellows called the “reservoir.”

· The reservoir maintains an even wind pressure by means of some springs, and supplies air to the windchest.

· The windchest is like a switching station, routing air to the intended pipes.

· Air supplied to the chest is stored under pressure in the “pallet box” where there is a pallet (valve) for each pitch of the organ.

· When a pallet opens, air is allowed to rush into a channel that leads to the three pipes for that pitch

· A “slider” under each of the three sets (also called “ranks”) of pipes, serves as an on-off switch for that set of pipes. Some of the pins on the barrel are for turning the highest-pitched rank of pipes on or off.

· The pipework of the organ consists of three sets of wooden pipes.

· A set of pipes tuned to normal pitch 

· Another set of pipes tuned an octave above normal pitch

· And a third set of pipes sounding two octaves above normal pitch

· In organ jargon, the specification is 8’ (stopped in the bass and tapered in middle and upper range), 4’ stopped, and 2’.

· Turning the organ’s crank also sets in motion the mechanical action

· A long, pinned wooden barrel, similar to the smaller barrel found in music boxes, starts to rotate. A pin on the barrel comes in contact with a tangent (feeler pin), which sets off a series of motions conveyed by levers and rods (called stickers). 

· When a sticker pushes open a pallet, the air flows into the intended pipe(s).

· Each barrel has ten tunes. Sliding the barrel about an eighth of an inch and locking down a knife lever into one of the grooves near the end of the barrel’s pivot, aligns the barrel for the next tune. One of the barrels is spiral-grooved, so it plays continuously through its entire repertoire.

John R. Watson

Colonial Williamsburg Foundation

September 21, 2001