Arts and Humanities Commons^™

The Pipe Organ: An Honors Special Study, Mary Dearmond

Honors Theses

Largest and most complex of musical instruments, the pipe organ is fundamentally a wind instrument. The average modern grand organ consists not of one organ but of three or more, arranged so that the player can operate them all at once. Each of these organs has its own set of pipes and its own keyboard. The keyboards, called manuals, have a stairlike arrangement but overlap into the playing unit, called the console, and a special pedal keyboard operated by the player's feet is placed on the floor underneath the manuals.