A Word or Two About the Harmonium

As it so happens, this Sunday the Episcopalians of Dixon will be celebrating the holy mysteries out at St. Peter's chapel in Grand Detour. (The name of that town, like so many American town-names, is not pronounced the way you think it is. Locals are wont to pronounce it as one word, with the accent, improbably, on the first syllable. Thus, in IPA: ['gɹæn.diˌtɔ˞].) Rather than have Mass out in the "cheap showiness of nature" (as Reverend Lovejoy once called it), we'll be inside the little limestone building, which has a reed organ in the back. It will be my job to play this thing, and I thus selected appropriate repertoire for such an instrument: a Franck piece from L'Organiste and one of Elgar's Vesper Voluntaries. Both were originally written for the harmonium, which I mistakenly assumed is just a more fancy name for the reed organ. As it so happens, that is not quite the case: one operates with a suction bellows, and t'other with a pressure bellows, apparently. But, not being mechanically-minded, I am not particularly interested in what seems like a pedantic detail.

Browsing the literature composed for the harmonium, it appears it was widespread about a century ago, much like the piano. (On my more pessimistic days I believe the piano will probably follow the harmonium into obsolescence; certainly it is nowhere near as common as it once was in middle-class households, and in this age of decline the state of music education is only getting worse.) Much of the repertoire is charming, and little-heard (at least in its original instrumentation) nowadays. A favorite set, which I hope to someday perform with some string-player friends, is Dvořák's Five Bagatelles, Op. 47.

Dvořák, Op. 47, Nos. 1-3:

Dvořák, Op. 47, Nos. 4-5: