Howarth House Organ

The Organ in Our Home

On the left is our house organ, a 3 manual lighted draw knob JOHANNUS organ, model R-370. The speakers are located on the balcony behind the plants. The cascading ivy hides the speaker cables.

The openness of the room and relatively remote placement of the speakers, similar to organ pipes located away from the console, adds immensely to the organ's "presence". The instrument is voiced fairly softly, with an emphasis on articulation. The built-in reverberation is quite effective when used sparingly.

Just because we are engineers as much as (most, including former teachers, would say more than) musicians, the organ is supplemented (via the built-in MIDI features) with 3 Ahlborn Modules with an Alesis reverb unit. These units add variety to the instrument — which it does not really need — but are fun to use. Soon a Hauptwerk based "Virtual Organ" will be added just to complicate the issue.

Our Links	Feature — Organs and Organists
Dorian Organs a great place to buy organs in the Texas/mid-west area — this website was originally developed and maintained by us. The organ above was obtained from Dorian, which is the JOHANNUS dealer for much of Texas. LilyPond, a really nice freeware program for engraving sheet music, but a little hard to master and Noteworthy Composer, a marvelous shareware program for music notation, are among our favorites. Thought stimulator: What does, "Sesquipedalian Verbiage, " mean? Answer ...	As always, there is a raging debate in the organ world as to what constitutes "artistic" organs and organ playing as opposed to crowd pleasing and/or, in the opinion of some, non-artistic organs or organ playing. There are some purists who state that given a beautifully voiced 8' Diapason, they could make more real music than could be made on a large instrument that does not have the voicing or quality of pipework of which they approve. Another retorts that there is a real place for variety, especially in non-academic environments where it is necessary to please those paying for the instrument or the organist's time. Although this debate and many others like it will never be satisfied to everyone's (or even anyone's) satisfaction, let it be said that there exist many styles of organ, organists and organ music which can be a joy to those who love the instrument.

Our Links

Feature — Organs and Organists

Dorian Organs a great place to buy organs in the Texas/mid-west area — this website was originally developed and maintained by us. The organ above was obtained from Dorian, which is the JOHANNUS dealer for much of Texas.

LilyPond, a really nice freeware program for engraving sheet music, but a little hard to master and Noteworthy Composer, a marvelous shareware program for music notation, are among our favorites.

Thought stimulator: What does, "Sesquipedalian Verbiage, " mean?
Answer ...

As always, there is a raging debate in the organ world as to what constitutes "artistic" organs and organ playing as opposed to crowd pleasing and/or, in the opinion of some, non-artistic organs or organ playing.

There are some purists who state that given a beautifully voiced 8' Diapason, they could make more real music than could be made on a large instrument that does not have the voicing or quality of pipework of which they approve. Another retorts that there is a real place for variety, especially in non-academic environments where it is necessary to please those paying for the instrument or the organist's time.

Although this debate and many others like it will never be satisfied to everyone's (or even anyone's) satisfaction, let it be said that there exist many styles of organ, organists and organ music which can be a joy to those who love the instrument.