It is the largest and most expensive musical instrument. It fills large church halls with polyphonic timbres and yet it can be played by a single performer.
It is a complex interplay of mechanical and pneumatic apparatus. It has so many switches, levers, keys and slides and yet it is a unity.
It is a child of history, has heard many different styles, known many different masters, shown many different facades and developed in many different directions.
The organ is an altogether extraordinary instrument, often barely noticed in its smallest forms, reverently marvelled at in its largest forms.
This book aims to pay attention to it, to tell a little about it and to be a small manual for its music, technique and history - a small manual.
Wiebke Veth
