Page:The Early English Organ Builders and their work.djvu/33

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Organ Builders.
21

period pipes of the large dimension of sixteen and of thirty-two feet began to be made. The clumsy keys had disappeared long before, and the number of those which replaced them was increased both upwards and downwards. In fact the progress of harmony rendered these improvements inevitable.

Chromatic notes now gradually began to appear in the keyboard; the F sharp in the fourteenth century; the C sharp and E flat early in the following century; and the G sharp towards its close. The B flat was contained in the Winchester organ before alluded to, and probably in many of the earlier instruments, as it formed part of the Greek scale.

Before the close of the sixteenth century all the principal stops now employed had come into use, and the general plan of a large organ, in all its most important particulars was fully developed.

I have now arrived at that part of my lecture when it will be necessary to introduce to your notice some of those old