A trip to Wanamakers at Christmas (including eating in the top-floor restaurant and listening to scheduled organ concerts) was a treasured fixture of my childhood in the late 50s and early 60s. If I remember correctly, there was a monorail-like tram that ran around the periphery of the toy department too. Christmas lights festooned the facade of the organ.
That beast must surely require an orangutan to play it properly! Six manuals and the rest means that you don't exactly play it, more like you dance on it. Whacking out something complicated, written by Bach, on that thing is going to raise a serious sweat and I hope no one has ever tried to play "The flight of the bumblebee" without getting into peak physical condition first.
I thought this would be about the Luray Cavern’s Great Stalacpipe Organ.
“The Great Stalacpipe Organ is an electrically actuated lithophone located in Luray Caverns, Virginia, USA. Covering 3.5 acres of the cavern, it is considered the world's largest instrument by Guinness World Records.”
It looks like it has a 64' pipe labeled "Gravissima". I know only how pipe organs work mechanically, not the terminology (Google translate thought Gravissima was Italian—translated to "Very Serious" in English, ha ha).
Those low frequencies though are the draw for me.
The lowest frequency I have come across in pop music might be the backing organ from the song "Prologue" on ELO's album Time. I had the vinyl in the day… One wonders: even with RIAA bass compensation, I suspect it might have been close to jumping the needle out of the groove.
This is not the largest in the world but it is enormous, and is also amazing for having been built by a 15-year old to answer the question: "When I was 14 I asked my piano teacher how long a bass a string would need to be if it had no copper on it at all".
I love this follow-up quote: "I think because I was so young I absolutely knew it was totally possible to do, I was fully determined and without consulting any professionals I had no barrier stopping me."
There's also something quintessentially New Zealand about the whole story - making it in a mate's garage, and then moving the project to a farm tractor shed when it got too big and the inaugural concert that looks like it's still in the same shed, the photo of the tractor moving it for the outdoor concert...
The Wanamaker building is fascinating. Around Christmas time, they'd turn the 3rd floor into a sort of model Dickensian village to walk through. There's a small chapel with original stained glass by Tiffany, and a wood-paneled ballroom of sorts with ornate ceilings and electric lamps by the original Edison company that are still operating. There's a large room in Egyptian-revival architecture used for fashion shows, and a chandelier-lined ornate grand ballroom with glass atrium that can seat 1,000 people. There also used to be a complete model house you could walk through, and a functional monorail to bring kids around the toy department floor.
The Friends of the Wanamaker Organ society is doing work with the new owners towards preservation. I doubt it's going anywhere, but concerts will be sporadic for a while.
Can't see it described as the world's biggest instrument on the wiki page - only the biggest pipe organ. Is it really bigger than the biggest carillon?
Calling an organ "an instrument" is like calling an entire orchestra "an instrument". You kind of hit the "what does instrument even mean" wall very, very hard: an organ this size is a control surface for 1000+ instruments.
This is extremely far-fetched. Would you call a piano a control surface for 88 instruments? No, you wouldn't. An individual pipe from a pipe organ is pretty useless on its own as it can only create one note, just like a piano string.
It sounds like you don't actually know how a real organ works, which literally has different instrument groups all over the place behind the walls, with your stops controlling which instruments sound out, and your separate decks giving you additional control over which sections to play.
You'll want to give https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeB3JnKp8To a watch, where Rob Scallon takes us on a trip to discover how incredible these instruments are, and should highlight just how little an organ is like a piano (not even "four pianos") and how much it really is an entire orchestra.
Does it have a stop labeled "Vox Dei"?
“The Great Stalacpipe Organ is an electrically actuated lithophone located in Luray Caverns, Virginia, USA. Covering 3.5 acres of the cavern, it is considered the world's largest instrument by Guinness World Records.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Stalacpipe_Organ
A great place to visit btw
Those low frequencies though are the draw for me.
The lowest frequency I have come across in pop music might be the backing organ from the song "Prologue" on ELO's album Time. I had the vinyl in the day… One wonders: even with RIAA bass compensation, I suspect it might have been close to jumping the needle out of the groove.
I love this follow-up quote: "I think because I was so young I absolutely knew it was totally possible to do, I was fully determined and without consulting any professionals I had no barrier stopping me."
https://www.alexanderpiano.nz/page/the-alexander-piano
There's also something quintessentially New Zealand about the whole story - making it in a mate's garage, and then moving the project to a farm tractor shed when it got too big and the inaugural concert that looks like it's still in the same shed, the photo of the tractor moving it for the outdoor concert...
In December they also have a huge light show featuring the organ and a very cool Charles Dickens walk-through village.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iJyUwk6L9lA
https://www.mindspace.me/philadelphia/wanamaker/
John Wanamaker purchases the organ to move it to 13th and Market, which took a series of freight cars to transport.
:(
Still an impressive object.
You'll want to give https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JeB3JnKp8To a watch, where Rob Scallon takes us on a trip to discover how incredible these instruments are, and should highlight just how little an organ is like a piano (not even "four pianos") and how much it really is an entire orchestra.