Why Pipe Organs Sound Scary

this video is brought to you by viewers like you thanks for keeping it spooky samantha steeleman asked why is organ music so closely associated with horror when did this happen also when was the takata and feugun d minor first used in a horror scene so there's the easy answer to that and then there's the complicated answer the easy answer is hollywood they just kept using creepy organs for villains throughout hollywood history especially box tacot and feugun d minor and it's just kind of stuck it's just one of those things that originated in hollywood and ever since the earliest film scores it's just kind of been there the more complicated answer though is uh complicated like think about it for a minute there are plenty of instances where you can hear organ music that isn't scary [Music] there's boring church organ music and then we're all used to hearing an organ during a baseball game right he also gets ideas from an elite roster so it isn't really the instrument itself that's scary and i mean i guess you could argue that it's a specific type of music like everyone knows the takata and fugan d minor by bach but not all bach music is scary not even all bach organ music is scary not even all of the takata infused in d minor is scary the truth is that the answer to this one is really more complicated than it seems and you're gonna find that it's not what you think believe it or not the villain from beauty and the beast too actually makes way more sense than you might originally think we're gonna actually come back to this so first if you wanna get to the real nitty gritty of this then you kind of need to understand the history of the organ it's basically a piano with rabies you have this keyboard that's hooked up to a crap ton of pipes and in each of these pipes there's stuff sometimes there's like a reed like a woodwind instrument or a harmonica sometimes there's a fipple like you'd see on a recorder and yes the technical term for this little hole is a fipple and yeah it is one of the funniest words in the english language but sometimes there's a fipple in the pipe and it basically makes it whistle and so when you press a key air or as organists like to call it wind goes through the pipes and makes a sound or as the organists like to call it makes the pipes speak you're going to find with this video that organists are a really really strange breed keep that in mind so in order for air or wind to go through the pipes and have them make a sound or speak you need something supplying air pressure nowadays they attach electric motors to a pump and that's what supplies the air pressure but way back when in ancient greece so the first pipe organs you'd have a uh unpaid intern work some bellows to provide air for the instrument and that's one of the things about pipe organs is that they're crazy old they first appeared all the way back in ancient greece in like the 3rd century bc and then you hear stories about like in the 700s a.d there was an organ in the byzantine empire that had quote unquote great lead in pipes and by the 800s pipe organs started spreading around europe to quote the first organ of which any detailed record exists was built in the winchester cathedral in the 10th century it was a huge machine with 400 pipes which needed two men to play it and 70 men to blow it and its sound could be heard throughout the city but like i said nowadays to run off electric motors to supply the air pressure and that's kind of something you really need to keep in mind here pipe organs are extremely powerful instruments they tend to be these massive contraptions that are literally built into the building that they're housed in they have entire rooms dedicated just to their function and maintenance they're these monumental absolutely insane instruments that are capable of just incredible volume if you've never been in a room and listen to one of these things play it is a visceral reaction because it's not just that they're loud but they can achieve incredibly low pitches lower than what humans can hear that's the 128 foot sorry that's the 64 foot and i've got a problem with a wall rattling over there and in actual fact you can probably see that box lid shaking and so that was the 64 here's 128. most unmusical but great fun some of these pipes are several stories tall they have a 64-foot pipe in the atlantic city convention center that's a musical instrument that is four and a half stories tall and you have to remember that this this beautiful interior this is just the control panel for a much larger instrument the organ itself is over 150 tons of equipment and it's all located behind the walls in the building so when you come into the building you don't see the 150 tons of equipment you just see the grill work that the organ speaks out of so i say that these organs are powerful i mean they're powerful really it's basically a heavy metal rock concert in a cathedral you can just imagine two dudes in the 1700s being like oh yeah yohan if you haven't been to saint luger kirsha in northern to hear the new schnitzkart then you don't even understand the noise and organ score packable had nothing on box to huda yah that is the dumbest joke i've ever made oh my god but these organs aren't just powerful they're extraordinarily complicated both in their construction and in what they afford the performer in terms of harmonic capacity which is a fancy way of saying that they're really expensive and nerds love them see unlike the piano which has pedals that like make people who don't know how to articulate properly sound good the pedals on an organ work exactly like the keys on a keyboard that's right organists are so weird that they don't just play with both hands they also play with their feet there are entire pieces of music written explicitly for just the petals of the organ because organists are feet people do with that what you will and i will say it is incredibly awkward to watch one of your friends play one of those pieces under pressure for their recital i'm not saying she did a bad job it's just like being forced to watch a music video directed by quentin tarantino so you're probably wondering what's with all the rows of keys or manuals as they're called by the feet people well your instinct would be that each key would correspond with a certain pipe in the pipe organ right no of course not that would be too easy you have these little things called stops all along the sides of the console each stop corresponds to a collection of pipes called a rank that is to say each little button corresponds to a certain collection of pipes but instead of pushing the stops you have to pull them pulling all the stops means that you're engaging every single pipe in the organ that's where the saying comes from you're literally going to 100 but remember not every pipe is the same some have reeds some have fipples which i just can't get over that word and by the 1920s with a silent film era companies like wurlitzer started selling organs with all kinds of different instruments attached to them like they could double as a piano it could play various drums the marimba xylophone orchestral bells chimes woodblocks you name it this thing had it the whole point was to basically replace a full orchestra with just one performer the other thing that's really unique about this instrument is that it has an incredible number of percussions everything from tuned percussions like xylophones and marimbas and glockenspiels to untuned percussions drums and tambourine sound effects you'll also notice that these wurlitzer organs have tongue shaped buttons instead of stops that's because there's no standardization in the organ world now there are conventions like having stops for the lower registered ranks they tend to be at the bottom of the console but because oregon's been all over europe for such a long period of time there's really no guarantee and of course this is all assuming that we're talking about an english manufacturer building an organ in an english-speaking country different organs in different countries will be arranged differently and labeled in different languages depending on where you are you have to be some kind of freak of nature genius to manage everything that's going on with an organ remember you aren't just changing the stops and playing on three rows of manuals you're also doing all of that with your feet then some organs have this like secondary pedal that can help with like a vibrato effect i guess it's insane so you have to be some kind of giant octopus to play these instruments it really takes a special breed but on top of that organs allow their performers well to literally just do more let me tell you this story about bach okay so like with everything in the western european canon everything and everyone is surrounded by mystery and intrigue in every story there's some point where jesus just appears and lightning bolt's artistic content to these dudes you get the idea there's a story that as a young musician bach went to a church at a place somewhere in germany that i can't remember right now and he was able to take a pre-written melody and improvise eight part harmony that means that he played the melody and off the top of his head with both hands and both his feet was able to sit down at an organ and place seven other melodies that created a piece of music and that's why he's a genius blah blah blah you get the story now that's really impressive because well see practicing for an organist was really difficult back then remember these organs require teams of people just to make a sound and then when they do the entire town would be able to hear you practicing your scales and crying about not being as good as the kids on youtube pianos didn't exist back then bach was actually alive when the first pianos came around and he commented on how the early prototypes just weren't that great and harpsichords just kind of suck they're a pain to tune and even then they lack the pedals that you'd really need to have that full organ sound so you could try and practice on a smaller organ but that would still require a number of people so there really weren't any good replacements for being able to perform that kind of harmony with both your hands and your feet so really they just kind of had to do the best with what they had so experienced organists appeared to be these like hyper privileged music genius types that would be able to just touch the console and seemingly produce music out of nowhere no one heard them practicing on the harpsichord in the back room they just showed up and bam incredible music one person could produce eight part harmony at their fingertips was the power of eight human voices loud enough to be heard throughout a city it's some pretty insane stuff when you think about it but on top of all that on top of everything else about the organs organs are a really religious instrument or the very least have serious christian connotations in western european history and in the western european music canon so like look at it this way we aren't talking about some little portable organ here these little hand-powered ones are basically a harmonica attached to a keyboard and a hand pump we're talking about these massive expensive intricate extraordinarily involved and powerful instruments that had to be designed around by architects the lack of portability made organs perfect for churches and cathedrals and all kinds of other religious establishments throughout europe on top of that the churches were really the only ones of the money to be able to sponsor the construction of such enormous endeavors but if you know anything about cathedral architecture and the psychology behind it the organs only amplified the wonder of stepping into one of those religious buildings you walk in from working on the field and all of a sudden there's this monstrosity of metal and sound that you can hear from miles away and it's playing music from the only power that you know surely only god himself could power something so formidable it's some pretty metal stuff and as time went on and technology developed and everyone tried to flex on the design of their organs and so you could make the prettiest colors coolest design blow out the eardrums of everyone sitting in the front row you know standard religious stuff which again meant that if you were the church organist you were kind of this loner freak of nature that was somehow gifted enough to understand this intimidating machine and could play all the music that kept to all the old complicated music theory rules that the church enforced and basically made this wall of an instrument make beautiful music now as we already talked about one piece of music that everybody knows that was written for this instrument was box takata and fugue in d minor there's a very small problem with that though bach didn't write box takata and fugan d minor i don't really want to get into it because scholars aren't really sure about it but the story involves like bach having like lazy students that didn't bother checking their homework and this nerd called mendelssohn who was the biggest bach fanboy you'd ever meet but he was also kind of a hard ass about copying music if you're alive today he would probably have very strong opinions on magic the gathering he was that kind of guy super puritan when it came to copying old music so instead of being good at my job and explaining why bach isn't actually the author of box staccato d minor we're just going to jump ahead to like 19 20-ish okay so the year is 1920-ish and silent films are all the rage warlords are selling their organs to theater halls for organist accompany film scores and it is the god damn wild west of trying to figure out who's writing what music i don't know anyone studies music in the silent film era because it is absolutely bananas so people collected music into these catalogs to play for silent films i have a whole video about it if you want to know more but sometimes they literally just copy and paste classical music from europe and just changed the name of the piece they'd slap their own name on it and publish it as their own original music and just looking stuff up about trying to find bach pieces in the silent film era i found this one dude james m dohring who went to the library of congress and physically looked at every single trade magazine that he could find about scoring music for silent film from the era because he was just looking for pieces by bock not the dakotan fugue just by bach at times he couldn't figure out which bach had written a piece of music like we have johan sebastian bach that one bach that everybody knows then there was the german british composer leonard emil bach then there was carl bach who i'm pretty sure was bach's second son colloquially known as cpe bach and then there was some other poor bastard called christopher bach that lived in milwaukee and this is of course assuming that the publishers were actually putting the right names on pieces in the first place also assuming that they didn't just randomly change the titles of the pieces for absolutely no reason it's all chaos and trying to make sense of it just makes you want to curl up in a hot shower and clean out his saliva oreos then on top of that you would have these teachers and these industry professionals coming forward with stuff like oh it's good to practice the organ with the old masters like bach but don't play it for films because it's pretentious and it doesn't fit also it's too difficult for most people to perform well anyway so like even if the music appears in a catalog it doesn't mean that it actually appeared for films cool great wonderful this is good everything's fine everything's fine okay so like i said it's a nightmare trying to get a straight answer and then on top of all of that you still have to deal with crappy directors they just don't care like at all some things never change am i right like the first instance of box dakota and fugue in d minor appearing for a film that i found referenced during this time period was for a silent film called deception or anne boleyn depending on where you're from it's about anne boleyn and king henry viii cutting off her head or whatever the idea is that people were instructed to play the takata and fugue as a post lewd as opposed to a prelude they were supposed to play it after the film and why were they instructed to play this particular piece of music at the end of the film because it sounded old this is a film about england in the 1500s and they're using a piece of music from germany in the 1700s they just literally did not care at all but here's where our story actually picks up so it's 1931 and films have sound now and that means that they have soundtracks yay synchronized sound that goes with the picture which means that all those organists are out of the job which is why it's around this time when you started seeing those wurlitzers getting recycled by baseball teams and carnival attractions but it's 1931 and we get dr jackal and mr hyde and for the opening credits of this film they went with an orchestral arrangement of the takata and fugan d minor but immediately following the opening credits we see dr jekyll playing the organ he isn't just playing the organ though he's playing another piece by bach a chorale called ish roof zudir jerezukrist or i call to you lord jesus christ on top of that this chorale is originally an f minor they transposed it down a minor third to d minor to match the takata and fugue that opened the movie in other words they changed this piece of music that he's playing to be in the same key signature as the opening of the film that's really important because it makes this whole thing blend well and work together it shows that they put thought into how these two pieces of music were going to fit together on the screen if you happen to be watching this video in a classroom try to ignore your teacher having a stroke over the fact that they transposed a piece by bach anyway so what's interesting about this scene is that the original novella says nothing about jekyll being a musician let alone an organist see what they're doing is they're using this religious piece of music along with the instrument that you're used to seeing in a church to function as shorthand for what kind of character this guy is remember organs are powerful they're complicated and they have strong religious connotations this is a highly intelligent privileged powerful probably wealthy religious individual it's all the information that we need we have a great idea of who this guy is and the film is barely even getting started in an interesting turn in this film you can even see dr jekyll pray and try to atone for his sins at one point just to emphasize the religious aspect see dr jekyll and mr hyde was one of the few films to exist in what was called pre-code hollywood the five years between 1929 and 1934 where films had sound but hollywood hadn't established the haze code or the motion picture production code on censorship what that meant was that these films were like almost taboo in how frightening they could be especially a film like dr jacqueline mr hyde that played into freudian concepts that the audiences of the time would have recognized while at the same time having depictions of assault having the takata and fugan d minor function as the opening theme to this film was likely the genesis of the takada and fugue being this terrifying piece of music for example only three years later the 1934 film the black cat would use the dakota and fugan d minor to directly convey the horror of our villain but this time we hear it in its original instrumentation [Music] it's about as on the nose as you can get without directly looking to the camera and saying i'm the villain i'm the leader of the satanic cult you can tell by my vegeta esque widow's peak but we also get a clever twist not only do we hear the takata and fugan d minor played on an organ we also get some other organ music during this satanic ritual [Music] instead of hearing organ to represent pure religious music we're hearing it in a celebration of a satanic cult all of the religious connotations have been corrupted this powerful complex instrument has been manipulated to serve the satanic forces of evil but how what kind of person would do such a thing who would have the understanding of such a complicated instrument with the capability and resources of housing and maintaining such a powerful piece of equipment and yet be so warped as to alter it to fit their own personal needs and from here box takata and fugan d minor basically becomes the theme music for halloween and anything remotely creepy it's the go-to scary music max whatever your name is what are my things doing here i'm talking to you my clothes and things are up in the room naturally i brought them myself so he turns on the duke and with what you suppose he turns on the duke what master a flashlight [Music] but here's the thing see there's a lot more to the organ than just this one piece of music there's still a creepy element to it even if we aren't hearing this specific piece of music by bach there is something about the organ that makes it creepy there's actually kind of a false bottom to this puzzle here if you really want to know what's going on if you really want to know what makes an organ scary then you have to look at the 1962 film carnival of souls in this film mary henry's riding in a car with her friends when they're pushed off a road and into a river and while the crash seems substantial she walks away unscathed spoilers she's dead and while it's not really clear this is kind of like an afterlife purgatory sort of situation but throughout the film she works as an organist at the local church and as the film goes on she finds that she's less able to keep up with the specific music that she's expected to perform at the church and slowly her organ playing warps and mutates into this atonal and dissonant performance that upsets the minister profane sacrilege what are you playing in this church have you no respect do you feel no reverence and i feel sorry for you and your lack of soul as she loses her connection to the living world she struggles to play the religious music from the church and begins to deviate into something else which to the people who are used to only hearing the organ in a religious setting ends up feeling unsettling as she loses her soul she can't perform religious music on the organ and right here we're basically given all the clues as to what makes an organ scary it isn't the organ per se but who's playing it someone who comes from such a privileged background that they can house and maintain the organ who probably through their education also understands how to play it either through the church or an upper-class upbringing who is now using the instrument for their own selfish purposes think about it if you look at this from the perspective of someone from medieval europe this guy has managed to manifest the power of god at his fingertips from the comfort of his own home there is a selfish corrupted unholy tone to how they perform the organ and looking at it from that context it is almost supernaturally frightening normally organists just by the nature of the instrument end up spending a lot of time alone to work out the intricacies necessary to not sound awful in front of hundreds if not thousands of people multiple times every week you take that same kind of person but give them a nefarious motivation and all of a sudden you have this secretive mad genius plotting in the background waiting for the perfect moment at the very least this is someone who likely came from a religious background who has fallen from grace i.e the story of satan all of the power of a god with none of the good intentions so while yeah the takata and fugue and d minor put that organ sound in the forefront of our minds when it comes to something spooky really anything on the organ that is even remotely minor at this point evokes that same sort of dread you could take fan of the opera for example sure in every adaptation you'll end up seeing him play the organ but even in the android weber version you can hear how he uses the organ to communicate that the phantom is this dark scheming character like when he's not playing it the organ is just sitting in the background of his underground sewer lair his mo is that he's been scheming this plan ever since christine was a child i guess he was passing the time by playing smash or something and that is what we call a gamer joke or yeah you can look at the villain from the beauty and the beast too again he's this evil loner that is plotting to keep everyone cursed because he likes the power that the curse gives him he is plotting and he is evil and he's an organ and voiced by tim curry and i love him he's great davey jones and pirates of the caribbean again he's this corrupted unholy soul that's plotting to get his revenge everyone is a pawn in his plans and davey jones playing the organ was probably a reference to captain nemo in 20 thousand leagues under the sea who plays the takata and fugan d minor on an organ in a submarine like one where does he get the money to finance that and two what kind of upbringing would you have to have in order to think yeah my submarine absolutely has to have an organ in it he's this mysterious character that keeps to himself highly intelligent clearly comes from money and no one really knows what he has planned it's the exact same story for the penguin in batman returns we get it when we see his birth into an upper class family [Applause] [Music] [Applause] and it's the same for sweeney todd a mysterious man with a gift seeking revenge and it opens with an organ [Music] it's even the same for gannon in the legend of zelda the thing that makes organs so scary is that it takes someone with intense planning and preparation just to properly play it just having it make a sound requires a tremendous amount of work and resources whoever's playing it has the money and power to throw at it they're loud and powerful and whoever can control it has the confidence and understanding to commit to broadcasting that musical idea for a far far distance and they're doing this in complete isolation they don't need an orchestra they don't need help they don't need anyone an eccentric genius broken and left in complete isolation to plot and plan a historically religious instrument that's been corrupted by a broken mind something that can be powerful and serene that's been made unholy who could do such a thing the scary thing about organ music isn't the organ it's who's playing it if you can hear the organ it's because someone wants you to and everything is going exactly as they planned happy halloween thanks for watching i'd like to thank my patrons for making these videos possible with an extra special thank you to abe wintersheit alec kulkowski alex clinker always posh ariela giglam captain casey charlie holly christian clara tan darren almgren edith with the man hands at least in thomas constantine eyeball boy for the horde google it gregory holdenness hayden elza hayden jondro heptonian hermes quaraz i want you to tell me if my fear is justified that no one will pay attention to me if i'm honest about my addiction to ice cream it was too long before but ice cream dude is valid jason kim joe engel john egbert jordan adams joseph spiros josh bachday joshua park julian dubois justin harley karen rosenell keltier looney majors ladwina elizabeth iv the lanyard gwen quijinggu mia dorothy michael hubbard mike wisdom iron jauntitaron nicole nicholas cohen praylock progressive app store rasputin russia's greatest heat machine rafael martinez raven horn rich marzullo rick osborne ryan vick sideway tastic mr bend sky pilot taliver heath tara femira transpanic power hour who am i wisdom manari you are loved you are valid you deserve to live you are not the exception you shall call me the pumpkin queen and a little a symbol of i think it's a honeycomb i'm not actually sure but thank you very much i appreciate it adam jensen andrew luke anna bearch anthony de donato bailey bogle ben liebschwager daniel colquitt donovan hodges emmett hussman ethan rooney isabo bisa fife fofisa mimei momiza isa jacob solis kim coletto kylo the husky matt noah gray and rxdude aka terence b um i'd also like to thank samantha stillman for their great question about organs diving into these little corridors of music history are always tons of fun i love doing it especially when it's seasonal like for halloween um if you like what you saw here be sure to subscribe and check out my other videos follow me on twitter twitch to have musical questions answered live and if you really like what i'm doing then consider supporting the channel on patreon but that's all i got for now thanks for watching

Channel: Sideways

Views: 905,813

Rating: 4.9205151 out of 5

Keywords: Pipe, Organ, Pipe Organ, Toccata and Fugue, Bach, Buxtehude, Pachabell, Bellows, Fipple, Reed, Flue, Halloween, Scary, Creepy, Menacing, Jekyll, Hide, Black Cat, Silent Film, Carnival of Souls, Forte, Davy Jones, Phantom of the Opera, Manuals, Pedals, Baseball, Carnival, Wurlitzer

Id: WT934eTbmuY

Length: 25min 44sec (1544 seconds)

Published: Sat Oct 31 2020

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