Whence
Pipe organ
Music & dance

Where does Pipe organ come from?

The pipe organ began in Alexandria, Egypt, in the 3rd century BC. There the Greek engineer Ctesibius built the hydraulis, a 'water organ' that used water pressure to keep a steady supply of air flowing to its pipes. It was the world's earliest keyboard instrument.

Ctesibius and his water organ

Ctesibius, active in Alexandria between about 285 and 222 BC, was a barber's son and probably the first head of the city's Museum. In his hydraulis, pumps pushed air into a cone-shaped reservoir standing open-ended in a tank of water. When the air pressure fell, the water rose inside the cone and squeezed the air, so the pipes sounded evenly. Keys let the air into the pipes, and Ctesibius and his wife Thais were said to be skilled players.

From Roman arenas to churches

The hydraulis spread through the Roman world, where its loud, penetrating sound rang out in arenas and at outdoor entertainments. In 1931 some 400 pieces of one, dated by an inscription to AD 228, were found at Aquincum, a Roman town in what is now Hungary. True bellows began to appear in the Byzantine Empire in the 6th or 7th century. In 757 the Byzantine emperor Constantine V sent an organ with 'great leaden pipes' to Pepin the Short, King of the Franks, and the organ took root in Western Europe.

Why people think of Germany

Germany has produced an exceptionally large amount of organ music, and its organ history runs deep. The first organ documented as permanently installed was built there in 1361, in Halberstadt: its keys were wide enough to strike with a fist, and ten men worked its twenty bellows. German builders such as Arp Schnitger and Gottfried Silbermann made instruments admired as works of art, and Johann Sebastian Bach wrote large-scale organ works. But the instrument's story had begun more than 1,500 years earlier, in Alexandria.

Sources: en.wikipedia.org › Water organ ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Pipe organ ↗ · en.wikipedia.org › Ctesibius ↗ · britannica.com ↗

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