I’ve got a friend, another composer, who was asked to write an organ piece. He’s an excellent composer, but not the least bit technical insofar as music software–and he’s never written for organ. He’s riding Finale to the bitter end. The pipe organ that comes with Finale (like the basic organ that comes with any notation program) is pretty weak, so I told him I’d be happy to put it on a better instrument in Dorico. I’ve got the Spitfire Union Chapel instrument, which is a perfectly decent organ. I set up an expression map that would give me a reasonable set of choices.
I just got the MusicXML file from my friend and got it into Dorico without problems. In setting up the project, I saw a number of places where he’d done some basic indications of stops. Even though I couldn’t match them all, I could get close enough. I’ve not written for organ myself, but Ihave done a little quick research that gets me through most of this little project.
But it’s the couplers that make me worry. For the “full organ” he’s got everything coupled to everything. I know this may or may not be possible, depending on instrument. Assuming the coupling is mechanical and not electronic, does this mean that all instruments would be equally operated from any manual and/or pedals? To simplify that with an example, if he specified Great to Pedal, does this mean that the coupled organs could be played from either the great or the pedals? Or does it mean that the Great manual would operate Great + Pedal and the Pedals would operate only pedals?
There are a number of places in the score where a change of stops is requested, but there’s a held note somewhere in those measures. It looks like the held note is on something that would have to be decoupled in order to have the requested timbral change (for instance “strings only”). I don’t know if that’s even possible, but if so it surely wouldn’t sound so good.
My inclination is to recommend to my friend that he only couple Great and Pedals and leave Choir and Swell alone. It’s a short piece and I suspect that those manuals could provide the desired alternate timbres with little or no re-stopping during the piece. I fear this has already taken me more time than I planned, but I fear he’s going to need to rethink a few things.
Sorry to go off topic here, so I’m hoping this is an easy answer for someone. Thank you!
Different organs are different. The three manual I play has all these couplers: Swell to Great; Swell to Choir; Choir to Great; Swell to Pedal; Great to Pedal; Choir to Pedal. That’s pretty standard for a three manual. (There are other names used, like positiv, solo, echo and antiphonal instead of Choir).
With Great to Pedal coupled, it would only add the Great sounds to the pedal. The Great manual would only play the Great stops, not the pedal stops. It’s a one-way coupling.
As an example, with Swell to Great, when playing the Great, the Swell pipes would also play so you would get the sound (the stops) of the Swell with the Great manual sounds. What is more important is what stops are being coupled. Sometimes there are couplings that make no sense like coupling a dulciana in the choir to the great manual that has principals 8, 4, 2 & 1’ selected. You probably would never hear the dulciana as it is so soft a stop. It’s like asking a flute to play middle C while you have 6 horns playing a C chord above and below middle C. You’ll never hear the flute.
Changing stops can be done through pistons (presets, registrations). Many organs have toe pistons as well as pistons in between manuals. Unless your hands and feet are too busy, it is no problem to de-couple as you are playing. The sound of the manual you’re playing on would continue to sound while the sounds from the previously coupled manual would no longer be played. Again, it would depend on what registration (stops) are selected as to how the de-coupling would sound.
Can you provide a screen shot or file example of the coupler issue? In addition to the couplers that @JAMES_GILBERT described there can also be Sub (16’) and Super (4’) couplers both within the manual division itself as well as between manual divisions. Only Super couplers could apply to the Pedal division.
So, if you can share a snapshot of the issue, I’m sure we can help you understand what would happen in real life and, if appropriate, what might actual work to provide what the composer intended. A lot of people write for pipe organ without a clue as to how it even works (not necessarily a bad thing) thinking that they have to give all the registration details when there might be better ways to achieve what they want.
Thank you so much! That really clarifies a whole lot and I appreciate that you took time to read and respond. @kasky1 has asked for a screenshot that exemplifies one remaining thing. I’ll get to that in just a minute.
My friend has written this on only 3 staves, which doesn’t help much. There’s nothing going on on the pedal just now, so no need to copy it. To set this up a little more, he’s left an instruction at the beginning of the score to couple everything to everything. I guess he wants it loud
In the right hand you can see that the F/C chord goes three beats into the 5/4 measure. The first-beat rest in the left hand is the only place you could uncouple the Swell (the strings are on the choir in my VI, but it doesn’t matter). Uncoupling would take the Swell off the Great, but midway through the notes that are being held. So I wonder what happens. Is there a sudden change in the timbre of the chord in the RH (assuming it’s on the Great)? Does the decoupling fail? Doesn’t seem like a good result either way.
My thinking at this point is not to have Swell to Great in force at this time. The Swell (Choir on my VI) could have the simple string stop(s) in force. The left hand could go there on beat 2 and the right on beat 4.
That is perfectly appropriate instructions to this organist mind. There is no need to adjust any couplers. That instructions says to play on the Swell using only String stops. Typically many instruments and much of the organ literature do not have other manuals coupling to the Swell (i.e., playing the Swell causing also the Positif or Choir to sound simultaneously, for example) but will have the Swell coupling to other manuals or the pedal as that does not causing an issue in this example. Coupler rules to know:
Intra manual couplers typically do not couple to other divisions (e.g., Swell Super 4’ or Choir Sub 16’).
inter manual couplers cause the “coupled to” division to sound both that division and the coupled division but not in the reverse (e.g., Swell to Great causes both the Swell and Great to sound when playing on the Great but does not sound the Great division when playing on the Swell).
Unless stated otherwise, division to division couplers are at 8’ (normal) pitch (e.g. Swell to Choir is normal pitch coupler while Swell 4’ to Choir only couples the next higher octave (without standard pitch coupled) to the Choir.
It helps quite a lot! Although it’s not my piece, I’ve been wandering through the wonderland of organ documentation online trying to get prepared for this. I will be glad to get back to my own piece soon, but a friend is a friend.
At this point, all he needs is a decent audio render, but I’ll break the score out into multiple manuals, just to help myself. I’ll give him the score afterwards and he can use it to practice with Dorico when the move from Finale happens. And who knows–maybe I’ll do an organ piece of my own at some point.
Both you and @JAMES_GILBERT have really helped me find my way through this one. I really do appreciate it!
If I might ask one last question of this little group. I can’t seem to find an expression to cancel a coupler. In harpsichord, it’s really easy: -couple, -C, coupler off are pretty standard ways to do it. Since there’s only one coupler, there’s no real rocket science there. But in this organ world there can be more than one coupler in force, so I’m not quite sure if there’s a generic way of doing it. I’m not even going into the briar patch of transposing couplers and such. Thanks much.
It sure would be nice if Dorico could extend the changer changer in expression maps to also offer a channel multiplier. In other words, you’d be able to emit MIDI on the “normal” channel for the instrument and also double that output to another channel. This would really help simplify playback with couplers. Short of that, I haven’t found a way that doesn’t involve copying and hiding passages.
We must remember that the organ as we know it shared a lot of history alongside the harpsichord as far as development is concerned. Renaissance and early Baroque organs were much more limited in stops than modern day instruments. Now we can have enough stops to play almost every era of organ music on a singular instrument that was heretofore not really possible until the last 100 years or so.
Absolutely. I went too far down the rabbit hole yesterday and learned far more about the hydraulos than I may have needed to know. Several years ago I heard the organ at the Madeleine in Paris. What a monster that thing is! Heard Bach and Messiaen in that recital, which certainly helps make your point.
I suppose I prefer the less grandiose use of the instrument in the Baroque (Netherlands Bach Society really exemplifies that). But it still knocks my socks off in the fugal movement of the Ives 4th or the Varese Ecuatorial.
Couplers do not necessarily affect volume much. They’re more about changing timbre, usually. Inter-division couplers such as Swell to Great, if both manuals have registrations that have mostly softer sounds, the perceived volume will not go up noticeably. Let’s say you have soft strings on the Great, with soft flutes on the Swell, coupled to the Great. Then if you are playing on the Great you will get both the flutes and the strings, but both will still be soft.
This is not to say that you can’t increase volume by using couplers. Indeed you can. But the two effects do not necessarily go hand in hand.
My question was really more general: even though I don’t have plans for any organ music of my own, I still benefit from learning all I can. You never know what can happen.
Having said that, my friend told me that he did want it loud. There are places in the piece where I want to talk him off that ledge a little bit. But I have to be careful, since it’s not my piece and I just want to get this rendering done.
