The Sydney Opera House Grand Organ is the world's largest mechanical tracker-action

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...

. It is located in the concert hall of

Sydney Opera House The Sydney Opera House is a multi-venue performing arts centre in Sydney. Located on the foreshore of Sydney Harbour, it is widely regarded as one of the world's most famous and distinctive buildings and a masterpiece of 20th-century architec ...

Sydney Sydney ( ) is the capital city of the state of New South Wales, and the most populous city in both Australia and Oceania. Located on Australia's east coast, the metropolis surrounds Sydney Harbour and extends about towards the Blue Mountain ...

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

, and was designed by

Ronald Sharp Ronald William Sharp (8 August 1929 – 21 July 2021) was an Australian organ builder. He was awarded the Silver Jubilee Medal (1977) and the British Empire Medal (1980). Sharp was self-taught and built his first organ in 1960. He speciali ...

, who was assisted by Mark Fisher, Myk Fairhurst and Raymond Bridge. It is in six divisions, five manuals plus pedals, and is the largest

tracker action Tracker action is a term used in reference to pipe organs and steam calliopes to indicate a mechanical linkage between keys or pedals pressed by the organist and the valve that allows air to flow into pipe(s) of the corresponding note. This is ...

organ ever built, with 131 speaking

stops Stop may refer to: Places *Stop, Kentucky, an unincorporated community in the United States * Stop (Rogatica), a village in Rogatica, Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina Facilities * Bus stop * Truck stop, a type of rest stop for truck dri ...

served by 200 ranks of pipes consisting of 10,244

pipes Pipe(s), PIPE(S) or piping may refer to: Objects * Pipe (fluid conveyance), a hollow cylinder following certain dimension rules ** Piping, the use of pipes in industry * Smoking pipe ** Tobacco pipe * Half-pipe and quarter pipe, semi-circula ...

. It is a neo-baroque organ in style. The contract for the construction of the organ was awarded in 1969, during the construction of the Opera House, and the organ was completed in 1979, six years after the opening of the building. Since then the electronics have been updated, including a major refit in 2002, but the musical specification is unchanged from that developed by Sharp starting in 1967. In April 1994 the Sydney Opera House Trust awarded the contract for ongoing maintenance of the organ to Mark Fisher, one of the original staff of Ronald Sharp. In addition to its mechanical action, the organ can be played remotely by an electronic system, enabling it to be played from a remote console, or a performance or passage can be recorded by a system built into the keyboards and played back by the electronic action. This system is used by visiting organists to select the registration (the combination of stops) that they will use, enabling them to stand in different parts of the hall and hear the results. Its stops are entirely electronically operated and programmed.

Specifications

Speaking Stops

Sydney Opera House Concert Hall Grand Organ console upper 01

Couplers

Gallery

Additional pictures of the organ and its components. File:Sydney Opera House Concert Hall Grand Organ ranks 3.jpg, Ranks of metal pipes with wooden tracker-action struts visible. In the background are louvres of the ''oberwerk'' enclosed division. Sydney Opera House Concert Hall Grand Organ ranks 1.jpg, Six ranks of pipes, all different voice types.

References

External links

Sydney Opera House Grand Organ specification
(

PDF Portable Document Format (PDF), standardized as ISO 32000, is a file format developed by Adobe in 1992 to present documents, including text formatting and images, in a manner independent of application software, hardware, and operating systems. ...

, 110KB.) Sydney, Sydney Opera House Grand Organ Sydney Opera House 1979 establishments in Australia {{FreeReed-instrument-stub