Foundation stop · 8 ft (stopped 4-ft pipes)
The Bourdon
A foundation stop with stopped pipes, sounding an octave lower than its length would suggest: the soft and indispensable bass of every organ.
Foundation stop
What it is
A stopped pipe always sounds an octave lower than an open pipe of the same height. Dom Bedos explains why: instead of escaping at the top, the wind is held back by the cap and must turn back to leave through the mouth, so it travels twice the height of the pipe. All the stopped foundation stops are called bourdons, and they are named after their pitch: the stopped 4-foot is called the 8-foot bourdon, or “petit bourdon”.
The 8-foot bourdon is a wide-scaled stop running the full compass; its first octave is of wood and the rest of étoffe (lead with a little tin), and its pipes are either fully stopped or “à cheminée”, with a chimney. The chimney, a small tube soldered onto the cap, brings the sound closer to that of an open pipe the wider and taller it is made. A similar stop is placed on the positive.
L'Art du facteur d'orgues
What Dom Bedos says
Il faut ajouter qu’il n’y a point d’Orgue où il n’y ait au moins un petit Bourdon pareil, pour servir de fondement à l’harmonie ; sans quoi l’Orgue parleroit une octave plus haut ; ce qui seroit un aigu désagréable.
TranslationIt should be added that there is no Organ without at least one such small Bourdon to serve as the foundation of the harmony; otherwise the Organ would speak an octave higher, which would be a disagreeable shrillness.
In practice
In the music of the Couperins and their contemporaries
The bourdon underlies almost every combination. “Récits are played in various ways; their accompaniment on the great organ is always the Bourdon and the Prestant,” wrote Jacques Boyvin in 1690; he also puts it in the jeu de tierce, and uses it with the flute alone to accompany the voix humaine.
In Dom Bedos, the “two 8-foot stops” that accompany every récit are the open 8-foot and the stopped 4-foot, that is, this bourdon. To accompany a weak voice he keeps only the small bourdon. Boyvin observes, however, that it should not be added to the cromorne for a fast bass: being in unison with the cromorne, the bourdon “slows it down”.
See also
- Montre and Prestant →Foundation stop
- Fond d’orgue →Combination
- Jeu de tierce →Combination
- Cornet →Mutation stop
- All the stops →
Sources
- Dom Bedos de Celles, L’Art du facteur d’orgues, Ire partie, Paris, 1766 (texte de l’exemplaire BnF, IMSLP)
- Dom Bedos de Celles, L’Art du facteur d’orgues, IIIe partie, chap. IV, « Les principaux mêlanges ordinaires des Jeux de l’Orgue », Paris, 1770 (transcription Wikisource)
- Jacques Boyvin, Premier livre d’orgue, Paris, 1690, « Avis au public concernant le mélange des jeux de l’orgue » (transcription Wikisource)
- Wikipédia, « Bourdon (orgue) »
The musical programme of the Chaumes-en-Brie organ aims to serve this repertoire; its specification will be defined with the selected organ builder.