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![T](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/25/T._Mortier_Dance_Hall_Organ_in_Utrecht.jpg)
A dance organ (french: Orgue de danse) is a
mechanical organ
A mechanical organ is an organ that is self-playing, rather than played by a musician. For example, the barrel organ is activated either by a person turning a crank, or by clockwork driven by weights or springs.
Usually, mechanical organs are pip ...
designed to be used in a dance hall or
ballroom
A ballroom or ballhall is a large room inside a building, the primary purpose of which is holding large formal parties called balls. Traditionally, most balls were held in private residences; many mansions and palaces, especially historic man ...
. Originated and popularized in
Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...
, it is intended for use indoors as dance organs tend to be quieter than the similar
fairground organ
A fairground organ (french: limonaire) is a French pneumatic musical organ covering the wind and percussive sections of an orchestra. Originated in Paris, France, it was designed for use in commercial fairground settings to provide loud music ...
.
History
Dance organs were principally used in mainland Europe. In their earliest days before the First World War they were used in France, Spain, Belgium and the Netherlands. After the First World War their use waned apart from in Belgium and the Netherlands where they became a mainstream form of music at public venues until the Second World War.
The dance organ came into its own during the early 1900s, with many large instruments built by
Gavioli Gavioli & Cie were a Franco– Italian organ builder company that manufactured fairground organs in both Italy and later France.
History
Gavioli was founded in 1806 in Cavezzo, Italy, by Giacomo Gavioli (1786–1875). Giacamo's hobby was the de ...
and
Marenghi. In the early 1910s the firm of
Mortier began expanding out the sound-schemes of these instruments with a variety of novel and new pipework and percussion adapted to the new emerging styles of early 20th century popular music. Other manufacturers such as Hooghuys and Fasano followed suit. Many instruments with older style sound schemes from Gavioli and Marenghi were modernized by Mortier and others either partially or entirely.
In Antwerp, Arthur Bursens built several hundred relatively small roll and book-operated café orchestrions under the trade name "Ideal" and "Arburo" (Arthur Bursens and (Gustav) Roels). Roels was an early business partner, succeeded by Frans de Groof. The smaller cafes of the Antwerp area were Bursens' main customers, as these premises often did not have space or income to justify a larger (Mortier or Decap) dance organ. A coin was dropped into a wallbox that allowed one tune from a roll that usually had three or four tunes on it to be played. At the end, the roll would rewind ready to play from the beginning again. Multi-tune rolls were produced frequently to keep up with the demand to hear the latest popular hits.
By the early 1920s
Mortier were the predominant brand closely followed by Gaudin of Paris - successors to Marenghi. Throughout the 1920s the sound-schemes of the instruments constantly evolved to keep up with the trends of jazz-age dance music. Facade styles also followed the fashions of the era moving progressing naturally from the
art nouveau
Art Nouveau (; ) is an international style of art, architecture, and applied art, especially the decorative arts. The style is known by different names in different languages: in German, in Italian, in Catalan, and also known as the Modern ...
towards the
art-deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the United ...
of the 1920s and 1930s.
In the 1930s the dominance of Mortier was matched by the instruments from the firm of Gebroeders Decap Antwerpen (Dutch for Decap Brothers Antwerp). By the end of the 1930s both Mortier and Decap had reached their zenith both in art-deco facade design and musical abilities. Dance organs came in every size. More compact versions were used in cafes and smaller public venues where they bridged the gap between
orchestrions
Orchestrion is a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll and less commonly book music. The sound is us ...
and the giant dance organs. Just like many cafe coin pianos and orchestrions some of the smaller instruments were set up so that they could be coin-operated remotely.
After the Second World War Decap Herentals and Decap Antwerp made further developments to include use of the latest technology and instrumentation ideas.
Hammond organ
The Hammond organ is an electric organ invented by Laurens Hammond and John M. Hanert and first manufactured in 1935. Multiple models have been produced, most of which use sliding drawbars to vary sounds. Until 1975, Hammond organs generated s ...
tone generators were incorporated following the trend of popular music into electronic instruments and creating a partial replacement for tone generation via conventional pipework.
In the 21st century dance organs are still being built by a small number of manufacturers. Modern technology in all its varied forms is frequently adapted with the result than many new instruments are wi-fi and midi operable and tones electronically generated to modern standards, have percussion with dynamic playing capability,
karaoke
Karaoke (; ; , clipped compound of Japanese ''kara'' "empty" and ''ōkesutora'' "orchestra") is a type of interactive entertainment usually offered in clubs and bars, where people sing along to recorded music using a microphone. The music is ...
systems, volume control and other improvements.
Instrumentation
It is important to note that the dance organ developed to closely follow the new emerging styles of
popular music
Popular music is music with wide appeal that is typically distributed to large audiences through the music industry. These forms and styles can be enjoyed and performed by people with little or no musical training.Popular Music. (2015). ''Fun ...
. The earliest organs musically aim to replicate and replace a small dance orchestra playing musical styles of the late 1800s—early 1900s and the sounds of the
bal-musette Bal-musette is a style of French instrumental music and dance that first became popular in Paris in the 1880s. Although it began with bagpipes as the main instrument, this instrument was replaced with accordion, on which a variety of waltzes, polkas ...
. The musical rhythms are mainly the older formal dances such as
waltz
The waltz ( ), meaning "to roll or revolve") is a ballroom and folk dance, normally in triple ( time), performed primarily in closed position.
History
There are many references to a sliding or gliding dance that would evolve into the wa ...
,
two-step,
polka
Polka is a dance and genre of dance music originating in nineteenth-century Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. Though associated with Czech culture, polka is popular throughout Europe and the Americas.
History
Etymology
The term ...
etc. During these early years the instruments were, in addition to loud performance, capable of soft solo playing with distinct solo pipework voices coupled with swell shutters in order to handle the characteristic gentle ballroom dances of the early 1900s such as the valse tres-lente, the valse boston (or
Cross-step waltz
Cross-step waltz (originally, the French Valse Boston) is a social ballroom dance in time, performed primarily in closed position, to slower tempo waltz music (around 110 to 120 beats per minute). It is characterized by a " primary cross-step" w ...
) and the Hesitation waltz styles.
By the 1910s the harmonic complexity of popular music has started to move away from the 19th century model. With the development of the
foxtrot
The foxtrot is a smooth, progressive dance characterized by long, continuous flowing movements across the dance floor. It is danced to big band (usually vocal) music. The dance is similar in its look to waltz, although the rhythm is in a tim ...
and
one-step during the mid-1910s dance organs adapted with provision for greater musical
chromaticism
Chromaticism is a compositional technique interspersing the primary diatonic scale, diatonic pitch (music), pitches and chord (music), chords with other pitches of the chromatic scale. In simple terms, within each octave, diatonic music uses o ...
to provide higher degrees of musical flexibility.
In the late 1910s with the emergence of
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major ...
there grew a need for more complex percussion and this was mirrored with organs acquiring xylophones and extended jazz percussion.
The jazz music of the '20s was based predominantly around brass instruments and the saxophone and its variants in particular. At this point the dance organ acquired many new novel pipework generated sounds of its own. The structure of bands moved to the
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s an ...
format and dance organ capabilities and musical arrangements followed accordingly.
In the 1930s the natural progress continued with further extended percussion to cope with the trends for Latin American
rumba
The term rumba may refer to a variety of unrelated music styles. Originally, "rumba" was used as a synonym for "party" in northern Cuba, and by the late 19th century it was used to denote the complex of secular music styles known as Cuban rumba ...
and other new rhythms in popular music. After the Second World War the developments already made with regard to percussion capabilities were adequate for the various post Second World War Latin dance rhythms such as the
mambo
Mambo most often refers to:
*Mambo (music), a Cuban musical form
*Mambo (dance), a dance corresponding to mambo music
Mambo may also refer to:
Music
*Mambo section, a section in arrangements of some types of Afro-Caribbean music, particular ...
and
cha-cha-cha
Cha cha cha may refer to:
* ''Cha-cha-chá'' (music), a style of Cuban dance music
* Cha-cha-cha (dance), a Latin American dance accompanying the music
Film and television
* ''Cha Cha Cha'' (film), a 2013 Italian crime film
* ''Cha Cha Cha'' ...
.
With rhythm being an important part of any
dance
Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoir ...
, dance organs generally have many more
percussion
A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...
instruments than other types of mechanical organs. For visual effect in addition to the facade itself there are often complex lighting effects. Some instruments have further visual interest provided by displaying automatically operated accordions, visible percussion and occasionally dummy saxophones rigged so that they appear to be playing, but actually the sax sound is made by a rank of reed pipes within the pipework case.
The pinnacle of the organ builder's craft was exemplified by organs such as the
robot
A robot is a machine—especially one programmable by a computer—capable of carrying out a complex series of actions automatically. A robot can be guided by an external control device, or the control may be embedded within. Robots may be c ...
band of which seven were built by Decap of Antwerp in the early 1950s. Built in Decap's trademark
art deco
Art Deco, short for the French ''Arts Décoratifs'', and sometimes just called Deco, is a style of visual arts, architecture, and product design, that first appeared in France in the 1910s (just before World War I), and flourished in the Unite ...
style, each organ featured three highly articulated robots, one of which played percussion, one played a saxophone and the last played a conceptualised and flattened brass instrument (both voiced by hidden pipes). The organ also featured the more usual hidden ranks of pipes and a visible accordion. The robot drummer turned to align his drumsticks with snare drums, cymbal or tempo block as required, his foot playing a
hi-hat
A hi-hat (hihat, high-hat, etc.) is a combination of two cymbals and a pedal, all mounted on a metal stand. It is a part of the standard drum kit used by drummers in many styles of music including rock, pop, jazz, and blues. Hi-hats consist o ...
. The other two robots, normally seated, would stand when they were required to perform. Their shoulders would rise and fall and their cheeks would puff out as they played to emulate blowing into their instrument. In addition, the wind players would tap a foot in time to the beat of the music. As a piece de resistance, the two wind players also take a bow at the end of a music roll.
The principal chronology of manufacturers of dance organs is essentially: Gavioli (Paris), Marenghi (Paris), Mortier (Antwerp), Hooghuys (Grammont), Fasano (Antwerp), Decap (Antwerp) and Bursens (Hoboken, Antwerp)
See also
*
Organ (music)
Carol Williams performing at the United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel.">West_Point_Cadet_Chapel.html" ;"title="United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel">United States Military Academy West Point Cadet Chapel.
...
*
Barrel Organ Museum Haarlem, Netherlands
*
Barrel organ
A barrel organ (also called roller organ or crank organ) is a French mechanical musical instrument consisting of bellows and one or more ranks of pipes housed in a case, usually of wood, and often highly decorated. The basic principle is the sa ...
*
Fairground organ
A fairground organ (french: limonaire) is a French pneumatic musical organ covering the wind and percussive sections of an orchestra. Originated in Paris, France, it was designed for use in commercial fairground settings to provide loud music ...
*
Street organ
A street organ (french: orgue de rue or ''orgue de barbarie''; german: Straßenorgel) played by an organ grinder is a French-German automatic mechanical pneumatic organ designed to be mobile enough to play its music in the street. The two most co ...
*
Organ grinder
A street organ (french: orgue de rue or ''orgue de barbarie''; german: Straßenorgel) played by an organ grinder is a French-German automatic mechanical pneumatic organ designed to be mobile enough to play its music in the street. The two most co ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Dance Organ
Organs (music)
Mechanical musical instruments
French musical instruments
Music in Paris