An organ stop (or just stop) is a component of a pipe organ that admits pressurized air (known as wind) to a set of organ pipes. Its name comes from the fact that stops can be used selectively by the organist; some can be "on" (admitting the passage of air to certain pipes), while others can be "off" (stopping the passage of air to certain pipes).
The term can also refer to the control that operates this mechanism, commonly called a stop tab, stop knob, or drawknob.
The term is also sometimes used as a synonym for register, referring to rank(s) of pipes controlled by a single stop. Registration is the art of combining stops.
Read more about Organ Stop: Mechanics, Pitch and Length, Nomenclature, Notable Organ Stops, Further Reading
Famous quotes containing the words organ and/or stop:
“But alas! I never could keep a promise. I do not blame myself for this weakness, because the fault must lie in my physical organization. It is likely that such a very liberal amount of space was given to the organ which enables me to make promises, that the organ which should enable me to keep them was crowded out. But I grieve not. I like no half-way things. I had rather have one faculty nobly developed than two faculties of mere ordinary capacity.”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)
“The mastery of one’s phonemes may be compared to the violinist’s mastery of fingering. The violin string lends itself to a continuous gradation of tones, but the musician learns the discrete intervals at which to stop the string in order to play the conventional notes. We sound our phonemes like poor violinists, approximating each time to a fancied norm, and we receive our neighbor’s renderings indulgently, mentally rectifying the more glaring inaccuracies.”
—W.V. Quine (b. 1908)