Accessory
The tremblant doux and the tremblant fort
Two mechanisms that are not stops but modifications of the wind: they make the sound of the pipes waver, gently or forcefully.
Accessory
What it is
The tremulant is not a stop: it is, says Dom Bedos, “a modification of the wind”. There are usually two. The tremblant doux is a weighted valve hung inside the main wind trunk, which “floats” on the airflow and gives it a swaying motion passed on to the sound of the pipes.
The tremblant fort, which some call the “tremblant à vent perdu” because it lets a little wind escape, consists of two opposed valves, set in motion by the wind, which beat in turn and make a clearly audible noise. Its effect, writes Dom Bedos, is “to whip or agitate the wind”.
L'Art du facteur d'orgues
What Dom Bedos says
Il y a dans l’Orgue le plus ordinairement deux Tremblants, l’un appellé le Tremblant doux, & l’autre nommé le Tremblant fort, que quelques-uns appellent le Tremblant à vent perdu, parce qu’il se perd un peu de vent lorsqu’il joue.
TranslationThere are most usually two Tremulants in the Organ, one called the Tremblant doux, and the other named the Tremblant fort, which some call the Tremblant à vent perdu, because a little wind is lost when it plays.
In practice
In the music of the Couperins and their contemporaries
Taste changed between the seventeenth and the eighteenth century. In 1690 Boyvin readily used the tremblant doux for the quatuor, the concert of flutes, trios with two trebles and the voix humaine, and the tremblant à vent perdu for basses de trompette and the grand dialogue.
Dom Bedos, in 1770, is far stricter. He tolerates the tremblant doux only with the voix humaine, which cannot imitate the voice without it, and reports that great organists nicknamed it the disturber of the organ’s stops. He bans the tremblant fort from the grand jeu, the fugue grave and the basse de trompette, where it spoils the beauty of the reeds, and allows it hardly at all, except to mask the faults of badly tuned reeds or, rarely, to give a singular expression to some caprice. In his preface he notes, moreover, that people have “grown very tired today” of the tremulant.
See also
- Voix humaine →Reed stop
- Grand jeu →Combination
- Basse de trompette →Registration
- 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)
The musical programme of the Chaumes-en-Brie organ aims to serve this repertoire; its specification will be defined with the selected organ builder.