Residenсe organs

The Aeolian organ from the Museum Collection is a remarkable example of the exceptionally spectacular and entertaining category known as “residence organs.” Instruments of this elite class were custom-built for affluent houses in the early decades of the 20^th century. In addition to manual playing, they were performing music automatically from perforated paper rolls. Moreover, thanks to special registers, these organs were rendering not only sacred or classical repertoire but the contemporary music of fashionable genres of the 1910–1920’s – jazz, blues, ragtime, and swing. In some estates, the pipes of such organs were hidden behind walls, in basements, or in attics. Historical records confirm the presence of similar instruments in Windsor Castle, in the Imperial Palace in Beijing, and in the mansions of the Churchills, the Dodges, the Rockefellers, the Fords, and other prominent families during the interwar decades. By the 1930s, those instruments were installed in concert halls, seminaries, cinemas, and luxury ocean liners.

Structure

The organ is comprised of two major parts – mahogany case with a set of organ pipes, and external console with the bench. The case façade lower part is decorated with panels, the upper part is divided into three acoustic windows, covered with yellow-green fabric. The windows are covered with decorative goldish, stopped pipes. Pilasters with ionic capitals ornament are on the case upper part. Organ flue pipes are assembled in fourteen registers – five lower registers of stopped wooden pipes and nine middle and upper registers of open metal pipes. The remote control has two manuals with sixty-one keys and foot keyboard with thirty keys. Vertical rows of register switches are to the right and left sides of the manuals. Volume control buttons are beneath the keys. A row of regulators and switches is above the manuals. Organ key action is electric. 286-mm wide electro-pneumatic device for paper music rolls reproduction is mounted at the top of the remote control.

Musical Media

The Aeolian organ from the museum Collection comes with approximately 500 perforated rolls. As a rule, they were recorded using special devices, ‘auto-perforators,’ which were connected to control panels or installed inside manuals and, during the organist's performance, independently marked perforations on blank paper. Thus, this technology is the first method of author's sound recording that conveys individual nuances of touch. Each perforated paper roll created using this method is a transcript of the musician's hand movements with their unique style, temperament and talent. Their popularity in the 1910s led to the first precedents for the extension of copyright to musical performances in the United States. Some composers went further and even wrote music specifically for Aeolian self-playing instruments that humans cannot physically perform.

Conservation

In the 1890-1930s, Aeolian, a multinational corporation that brought together dozens of companies and thousands of the best organ builders around the world, produced more than 40,000 automatic instruments, including about 1,000 organs. Starting in the 1940s, as a result of the Great Depression and World War II, improvements in gramophone music and radio, these titanic instruments, which seemed like an excessively luxurious relic of the distant ‘Roaring Twenties’ and ‘Jazz Age,’ along with the galaxy of masters involved in their development, began to disappear. Since self-playing organs were designed for a specific room, after dismantling them it was practically impossible to use them once more, thus they were destroyed or dismantled. According to musicologist A. Ord-Yum, there were about a hundred Aeolian self-playing organs installed in the United Kingdom, but only four remain nowadays, and only one is capable of playing music from perforated rolls.
Between 1890-1930s, Aeolian – one of the first multinational musical corporations – produced more than 40,000 automatic instruments, including approximately 1,000 organs. From the 1940s onward, however, these colossal items – symbols of the extravagant “Roaring Twenties” and the early jazz age – began to vanish. The Great Depression, World War II, and the rapid rise of radio and recorded sound left little room for such costly marvels. Since each organ was designed for a specific premises, removal usually meant destruction. According to the musicologist Arthur Ord-Hume, only four Aeolian organs survived in the United Kingdom nowadays, and just one of them still plays perforated paper rolls.
The conservation center of the Museum Collection worked for more than two years to return this Aeolian organ to life: completely rebuilt the console, recreated the electrical control system, repaired the bellows and tuned more than 300 sound pipes. By bringing this organ back to life and making the museum its new ‘home,’ our restorers, in a sense, brought back to life the great musicians of the early 20^th century: their performances, in which their souls are felt, have been preserved on rolls. On January 22, 2025, the first concert was held within the walls of the museum Collection.

Museum Collection also features other automatic instruments by the Aeolian Company, as well as a more advanced model of a residence organ built by the Welte-Kimball company.

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