Mortier 120mm Rayé Tracté Modèle F1
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{{otheruses Mortier was an
organ Organ and organs may refer to: Biology * Organ (biology), a group of tissues organized to serve a common function * Organ system, a collection of organs that function together to carry out specific functions within the body. Musical instruments ...
manufacturer from
Antwerp Antwerp (; ; ) is a City status in Belgium, city and a Municipalities of Belgium, municipality in the Flemish Region of Belgium. It is the capital and largest city of Antwerp Province, and the third-largest city in Belgium by area at , after ...
,
Belgium Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. Situated in a coastal lowland region known as the Low Countries, it is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeas ...
that made
dance organ A dance organ () is a mechanical organ designed to be used in a dance hall or ballroom. Originated and popularized in Paris, it is intended for use indoors as dance organs tend to be quieter than the similar fairground organ. History Dance orga ...
s and
orchestrion 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 ...
s.


History

The company was founded by Theophile Mortier (1855–1944). Mortier started in 1898 as a vending agent for the Parisian organ builder Gavioli & Cie, in a period when the French and German organ industry was in full bloom. Theophile Mortier was originally the manager of a dance hall, in which there was always a Gavioli organ playing. He made it a habit to sell the installed organ after a short while. He was fortunate enough most of the time to make a profit on selling these used organs. As time went by he became more and more an organ dealer and a very good customer of Gavioli. He set up a repair shop in order to provide maintenance and repair for the organs, which he had sold. The organ builder Guillaume Bax managed this shop. In 1906 Mortier started to build organs himself, as an annex of the Gavioli company. Due to internal operations difficulties, Gavioli could after a while not deliver enough orders and Mortier began to manufacture the dance organs under his own name. After the First World War the company expanded to a size where they employed 80 personnel and had a capacity to build about 20 large dance organs per year. No other manufacturer has matched the cubic meter volume of organs produced by Mortier. The company stayed active until 1948.


See also

*
Museum Speelklok Museum Speelklok (previously known as Museum van Speeldoos tot Pierement) is a museum in Utrecht, Netherlands, specializing in self-playing musical instruments. Since 1984, it has been housed in the centre of Utrecht in a former church called ...
,
Utrecht Utrecht ( ; ; ) is the List of cities in the Netherlands by province, fourth-largest city of the Netherlands, as well as the capital and the most populous city of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Utrecht (province), Utrecht. The ...
* National Heritage Museum, Arnhem *
Pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a Musical keyboard, keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single tone and pitch, the pipes are provide ...


External links


Fairground organs
with a photograph of a colorful 112-key Mortier dance organ
Dance Organs (Dansorgels)Website about the Mortier firm and the book 'The Mortier Story'
Pipe organ building companies Manufacturing companies based in Antwerp Musical instrument manufacturing companies of Belgium