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We've all heard it, the audio file dubbed "Messiah Organist on Crack", but unless you're an organist, you might have wondered how this could have happened.

I would postulate that the famous excerpt is a result of inadvertent transposer use.

Unless I miss my guess, the organist in question is performing on some incarnation of a pipeless (digital) organ. (If those really are pipes, they sound pretty nasty.) Many pipeless organs, like synthesizers, are equiped with transposers -- for you see, not being concerned with what pipes can play what notes, they can freely move the playable range of the instrument up and down willy-nilly.

There are two distinct designs for organ transposers. The most common is an inauspicious knob off to the side of the console that turns to the right to transpose up and to the left to transpose down -- usually about six in each direction (this just about covers all the keys). The other design, which is much less common, employs the transposer as a series of separate buttons underneath one of the keyboards.

A majority of all organ consoles, however, are equiped with buttons that look just like these: pistons. Each piston stores a specific, settable combination of stops. When the piston is pressed, those stops are drawn as if by magic!

So, the problem in this system of transposer buttons is that they can easily be confused with piston buttons. I believe that's what's happening here. Toward the end of the piece, the organist would want to add more sound; he would do this by selecting a piston.

Here's a possible rundown on the scenario:

• A mid-size church with an pipeless organ wants to perform selections from the Messiah. The bring in an outside guest organist who is relatively unfamiliar with the instrument.
• The organist hired typically plays at an Episcopal church where he is familiar with the technique of making small changes with divisional pistons (affecting only a part of the organ) and large changes with general pistons (affecting the entire organ).
• Toward the end of the "Hallelujah" chorus the organist presses what he believes to be a divisional piston (affecting the stops on a portion of the organ), but, in fact, he has inadvertently pressed the tranposer and lowered the organs pitch. (You can hear the organ's pitch separate from that of the orchestra's pretty early on in the excerpt).
• At the cesura, the organist takes advantage of the break in the action to hit a general piston. This adds to the organs sound considerably and the previous mistake becomes readily apparent to all. The organist continues playing while searching for means to make the correction which he finds only at the last chord.

The performance ends up sounding a little strange, but I would be lying if I said it couldn't have happened to me.

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