Pump organ: India musical instrument

The pump organ or harmonium a kind of reed organ that creates sound with the use of foot-pumped bellow.

source of picture: commons.wikimedia.org

More portable that the pipe organ, reed organs were widely used in smaller churches and in some private homes in the 19^th century, but their tonal volume and tonal range are limited and they commonly had one or two manuals, with pedal-boards being rare. The finer musical instruments have a distinctive tone and the cabinets of those proposed for churches and wealthy homes were normally excellent pieces of furniture. Many million reed organs and melodeons were manufactured in United States between the 1850s and the 1920s. during this period, Estey Organ and Mason Hamlin were popular producers of the musical instrument. The melodeon is another reed keyboard musical instrument, often stored in a table-like casing that predates the pump organ. In reference to the music of India, melodeon often refers to a concertina accordion, while the harmonium refers to the smaller version of the hand-pumped organ.

A professor of physiology at Copenhagen, Christian Gottlieb Kratzenstein, was credited with the first free-reed musical instrument manufactured in the western world, after winning the annual prize in the year 1780 from the Imperial Academy of St. Petersburg. The design of the harmonium includes free reeds and derives from the earlier imperial. A musical instrument that is like the harmonium was exhibited by Gabriel Joseph Grenie in the year 1810. He called the musical instrument ‘orgue expressif’, because his musical instrument was capable of greater expression, and also capable of manufacturing a crescendo and diminuendo. Grenie’s musical instrument was improved by Alexandre Debain. He gave the instrument the name harmonium when he patented his version of the instrument in the year 1840. There was concurrent development of analogous musical instruments. A mechanic who had operated in the factory of Alexandre in Paris emigrated to U.S and conceived the idea of a drag bellow, rather than the common bellow that forces the air outward via the reeds of the musical instrument. In 1860, the firm of Mason and Hamlin of Boston, manufactured their musical instrument with the drag bellows, and this pattern of construction soon superseded all other pattern of production in the America.

The musical instrument reached the height of their popularity in the West in the later part of the 19^th century and the early part of the 20^th century. They were specifically popular in small churches and chapels, where a pipe organ would be too big or would be too expensive to buy. Harmonium commonly weigh less that pianos of analogous size and are not as easily damaged in transport, that is why the musical instruments were popular throughout the colonies of the European powers in this period, this is not only because the instrument was easier to ship out to where it was needed, but it was also easier to transport overland in areas where there is non-existent of good quality road and railway. An added attraction of the musical instrument in tropical regions was that the musical instrument held its tune not minding the humidity and heat of the environment, unlike the piano. This export market was satisfactorily profitable for producers to manufacture harmoniums with cases impregnated with chemical to avoid wood worm and any other destroying organism that can be found in the tropism.

At the peak of the western popularity of this musical instrument in 1900, a wide variety of patterns of the instrument were being manufactured. These ranged from the simple models of the instrument with plain cases and only four or five stops, up to the larger models of the musical instrument with decorated cases, up to a dozen stops and some other mechanisms like the couplers. Expensive harmoniums were normally carved to resemble the pipe organ, with ranks of fake pipe fixed to the top of the musical instrument. Small numbers of the musical instrument were constructed with two keyboards. Some of the musical instruments were constructed with pedal keyboards that needed the use of an assistant to run the bellows or, for some of the later versions of the instrument, an electrical pump. The larger versions of the musical instrument were primarily intended for home use like permitting the players of the musical instrument to practice on a musical instrument on the scale of a pipe organ, though without the physical size or volume of a musical instrument like that. For missionaries, the chaplains in the armed forces, traveling evangelist, etc., reed organs that pleated up into an ampule the size of a very big suitcase or small trunk were manufactured, these instruments had short keyboard and few stops, but they were more than good for keeping hymn singers more or less on pitch.

The fabrication of the electronic organ in the mid-1930s pronounced the end of the success of the musical instrument in the west. The Hammond organ could emulate the tonal quality and range of a pipe organ while holding the compact element and cost-effectiveness of the harmonium and reducing conservation needs and permitting a greater number of stops and some other feature on the musical instrument. By this time, the harmoniums had gotten to high levels of mechanical complexity, not just through the need to offer musical instrument with greater tonal range, but also because of the patent laws. It is usual for manufacturers to manifest the action mechanism that are used on their musical instruments, as such requiring any fresh producer of the musical instrument to improve their own version of the instrument; as the number of producers grew, this led to some musical instrument having massively complex arrays of levers, cranks, rods and shafts that was replaced by the electronic version of the musical instrument and even more attractive.

The last mass producer of the musical instrument in the west was Estey Company that ceased the production of the musical instrument in the 1950s. As the existing stock of musical instrument aged and spare parts of the instruments became hard to acquire, more and more were either scrapped or sold. It was common for the musical instrument to be modernized by having electric blower fixed on the instrument, normally unsympathetically. Most of the western versions of the musical instrument are in the hands of the enthusiasts today, but the musical instrument remains very popular in the south Asia.

Among the musical instruments, the harmonium, on account of its consistently constant tone, the penetrating character of its timbre, and the acceptable combinational tones, is specifically sensitive to imprecisions of intonations. And as its vibrators also acknowledge of a subtle and durable tuning, is tuned out to be unusually appropriate for experiments on more perfect system of tones.

Using two manuals and two various tuned stops sets, he was able to gradually liken Pythagorean to just and equal-tempered tunings and observe the degrees of inharmonicity inherent to the different temperaments. Pythagorean subdivided the octave of the musical instrument to 28 tones, so as to be able to play modulations of 12 minor and 17 major keys in just intonations without going into harsh disagreement that is present with the normal octave division in this tuning. This particular arrangement was very hard to play on. Additional altered or novel musical instrument were used for experimental and educational functions. Recorded, Generalized keyboard of Bosabquet, fabricated in the year 1873 for use with 53-tone scale. In practice, that version of the musical instrument was carved with 84 keys, for convenience of fingering. Another popular reed organ that was evaluated was fabricated by Poole.

Lord Rayleigh also used the musical instrument to devise for indirectly gauging frequency correctly, using roughly known equal temperament intervals and their overtone beats. The musical instrument had the advantage if providing clear overtones that allowed the dependable counting of beats by two listeners, one per note. Meanwhile, Rayleigh recognized that maintaining constant pressure in the bellows id hard and fluctuation of the pitch arises somewhat frequently because of that.

In the history of its tone, the musical instrument is analogous to an accordion or concertina, though not in its installation, as an accordion is held in both hands while the reed organ is often placed on the floor in a wooden casing. The reed organs are operated either with pressure or with drag bellows. Pressure bellows allows a wider range to alter the volume, depending on if the pedaling of the bellows is slower or faster. In the North America, and in the United Kingdom, a reed organ with pressure bellow is called harmonium, while in continental Europe, any reed organ is known as harmonium not minding whether it has pressure or suction bellows. As reed organs that have pressure bellows are hard to manufacture and therefore more expensive, North American and British versions of the musical instrument and melodeons commonly use suction bellow and operate on vacuum.

The frequencies of the reed organ depend on the blowing pressure given to the instrument; the main frequency reduces with medium pressure compare to low pressure, though it upsurges again at high pressure by many hertz for the bass note measured. American reed organ measurement showed its sinusoidal undulation with the use of sharp pressure changes when the reed bends above and below the frame.

The harmonium was fairly incorporated by the European and American composers of classical music. The musical instrument was also used commonly in the folk music of the Appalachians and the southern parts of the United States. The musical instrument performed an important role in the new rise of Nordic folk music, specifically in Finland. In the later part of the 1970s, a version of the musical instrument could be found in most schools where the band come together, and it turned out to be natural for the bands to use the musical instrument in their setup. Some popular players of the musical instrument in the new rise of Nordic folk music have been Timo Alakotila and Milla Viljamaa.

Missionaries brought French-made hand-pumped harmonium to India during the mid-19^th century. The musical instrument quickly became well-known in the country: it was transportable, easy to learn and reliable. The musical instrument has remained very popular up to the present day and the musical instrument remains a crucial musical instrument in many genre of the Indian music. For example, it is a staple of vocal North Indian classic music concerts. The musical instrument is commonly found in many Indian homes. Though the musical instrument is derived from the fashion fabricated in France, the musical instrument was fabricated in India in distinctive ways, such as the addition of the drone stops and a scale-changing apparatus.