Foundation stop · 8 ft and 4 ft
The Montre and the Prestant
The open stops that form the backbone of the organ: the montre, whose pipes stand in the façade, and the prestant, an octave higher, to which all the other stops are tuned.
Foundation stop
What it is
Dom Bedos divides flue stops into two families: the “octave or foundation” stops and the mutations. Open foundation stops are named after the height of their largest pipe, the 16-foot, the 8-foot; but the 4-foot is called prestant and the 2-foot doublette. A stop twice the size of another sounds an octave lower.
The open 8-foot is a stop of medium scale, made of tin, running the full compass of the keyboard, and usually placed “en montre”, that is, in the façade. The prestant is an open 4-foot, also of medium scale and of fine tin; there is one on the great organ and a similar one on the positive. The “scale” of a pipe is its width in relation to its height: Dom Bedos distinguishes narrow, medium and wide scales.
These large open stops give their name to the whole instrument: an organ is said to be “an 8-foot” or “a 16-foot en montre”. Façade pipes, being visible, are often more carefully finished and richer in tin than those inside.
L'Art du facteur d'orgues
What Dom Bedos says
Le Prestant porte ce beau nom, non pas pour l’excellence de son harmonie, mais uniquement parce qu’on se sert de ce Jeu pour accorder tous les autres.
TranslationThe Prestant bears this fine name not for the excellence of its tone, but solely because this stop is used to tune all the others.
In practice
In the music of the Couperins and their contemporaries
Montres and prestants are the heart of the plein jeu. In 1690 Jacques Boyvin made it up as follows: on the positive, “the Montre, which is either eight feet or four feet” (if it is four feet, “it serves as the Prestant”), with the bourdon, doublette, fourniture and cymbale; on the great organ, the same stops with the open eight-foot, the sixteen-foot bourdon “and the sixteen-foot Montre if there is one”. Eighty years later Dom Bedos still drew all the montres and prestants of both keyboards for it.
The prestant also supports the reeds: Dom Bedos adds it to the cromorne for a treble récit, and to two trompettes to make the récit more incisive. To accompany a récit, on the other hand, he advises against it, because of its sharpness, and prefers a 4-foot flute.
See also
- Plein jeu →Combination
- Doublette →Foundation stop
- Bourdon →Foundation stop
- Fond d’orgue →Combination
- 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, « Montre (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.