Cuckoo call (organ)

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The cuckoo call (also cuculus from Latin cucūlus , cuckoo) is an effect register of the organ that imitates the call of the cuckoo .

technology

The register is structured similarly to the cuckoo call in cuckoo clocks . It consists of two organ pipes (usually wooden pipes), each connected to a small bellows. When the register is actuated, a mechanism is set in motion in which first the smaller and then the larger pipe are blown on by means of the respective bellows. The bellows themselves are usually not connected to the organ's wind turbine. Rather, each bellows “inflates” itself “independently”, ie by means of a spring mechanism, and is then activated by the register mechanism. Or the bellows is weighted down with a weight and is folded when at rest, is then tightened by the register mechanism and thus filled with air, so that the weight guides the air into the pipe.

history

The cuckoo call has been handed down since the 16th century and is particularly popular in baroque organs. The Gabler organs in Weingarten (there with four pipes and therefore two different "cuckoo calls " that sound alternately) and Ochsenhausen each contain a cuculus register. In Ochsenhausen, when the register is actuated, an ox's head also comes out of a church portal attached to the back positive, so that the impression is given that an ox is whistling the cuckoo tones. It is a heraldic gimmick, because an ox stepping out of a church adorns the coat of arms of the monastery.

After 1750, the cuckoo call was hardly ever built and was judged disparagingly in the 19th century: The whole system is one of those absurd and silly gimmicks that can still be found here and there in old organs .

See also

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Eberlein: Organ register. 2016, p. 382.
  2. ^ Johann Julius Seidel: The organ and its construction. A systematic manual. Breslau 1843, p. 76 ( digitized version ).