THESE PIPES AREN'T CALLING ME

Of course the pipes that were calling in "Danny Boy" were uilleann pipes, not the pipe organs most of us know. And those uilleann pipes--elbow-powered relatives of the Scottish bag-pipes--were melodic, and they didn't pretend to be orchestras.

The pipe-organ is a completely different thing. Its ambition in modern times--since the late seventeenth century--is a curiously un-musical one. The "Age of Enlightenment" celebrated its white male self as enlightened by reason--though we might say, today, that its founders were but reasonably enlightened.

Among other things, they thought that only European males were enlightened or susceptible to enlightenment. Women had no rights; the African slave trade was in its heyday; Native Americans--despite their marvellous civilisation--were slaughtered as "savages." I'm not sure that Spinoza, Locke, Diderot, and Jefferson considered the Chinese as enlightened or enlightenible. And they seem to have excluded their unbleached brothers in India, with whom they shared both genes and language, from the white male state of, if not yet perfection, at least perfectibility.

The pipe organ rose to prominence in the Age of Enlightenment. It was the most complete "thing" man had ever made. One enlightened white male, with ten fingers and two feet--and a slave to pump the bellows--could replace a whole orchestra.

The ancient Greek word "orchestra" signified the place in the theatre where the chorus danced. In modern use, it is the place where musicians and singers perform in a theatre, or a collective term for the musicians themselves. The London Symphony Orchestra, for example, is made up of a large group of musicians, playing together.

But one glorious organist could play a symphony all by himself. Of course his violins didn't sound like violins, nor did his various horns sound like real horns. His flutes and woodwinds squeaked and squawked. But it made a lot of noise--and one man (with the help of his bellows-slave) could do it all. And when he really wanted to make noise he could unleash an outrageous throbbing and window-rattling bass rat-tat-tat that didn't even pretend to be musical.

What an achievement! It symbolised perfectly the idea of the Age of Enlightenment. It was a celebration of self, of ego, of power, of independence. Or almost so; there was still that bellows-slave who made the great teetotum work.

People flocked to the great cathedrals to hear the organ. Ten fingers, two feet, and one machine. Never mind that the man's "instruments" didn't sound as much like real musical instruments as those of the later one-man-band on the street-corner would sound, but they made more noise. They filled great cathedrals with noise.

The relation of the Age of Enlightenment to the pipe organ is one of arrogance and power. Jonathan Swift's satirical representation of the "enlightened" musicians of Laputa ("whore's land) in book three of Gulliver's Travels was an early (1735) mockery of "enlightenment" in England; he could have had much more fun with competing universal pipe organs for the fabulous Laputans to play.

So. No arrogant mock-musical honkings for me, thank you, neither live nor recorded. No arrogant organists drowning out beautiful children's voices singing Christmas carols. No organists playing Bach. No whipped-cream Wurlitzers. I would rather hear farts, screams, automobile engines, and jack-hammers than pipe organs.

And as for the Age of Enlightenment. . .