Positive organ

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A positive organ (or portable organ) was a medieval chamber organ that could be carried from place to place without being taken to pieces. When played, it was placed on a table or stool, and it required—besides a performer—a person to operate the bellows. It was larger and more cumbersome than the portative organ, with which it has often been confused.

The positive organ had usually but one kind of pipe, the open diapason of 2 ft. tone, and in the 16th century the best types had three registers by means of which each note could be sounded with its fifth and octave, or each by itself, or again in combinations of twos.

The positive organ differed from the regal in having flue pipes, whereas the latter had beating reeds in tiny pipes, one or two inches long, concealed behind the keyboard. During the early Middle Ages most of the pneumatic organs belonged to this type.

A well-known instance of an early positive or portable organ of the 4th century occurs on the obelisk erected to the memory of Theodosius I on his death in A.D. 395. Among the illuminated manuscripts of the British Museum there are many miniatures representing interesting varieties of the portable organ of the Middle Ages, including Add. MS. 29902 (fol. 6), Add. MS. 27695b (fol. 13), and Cotton MS. Tiberius A VII. fol. 104d., all of the 14th century, and Add. MS. 28962 and Add. MS. 17280, both of the 15th century.

These little organs were to be found at every kind of function, civil and religious; they were used in the dwellings and chapels of the rich; at banquets and court functions; in choirs and music schools; and in the small orchestras of Jacopo Peri and Claudio Monteverdi at the dawn of the musical drama or opera.

This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, a publication now in the public domain.