The Water Organ and Other Related Sound-Producing Automata

MUE 564 — History of Music Instruments

December 11, 2000

Joseph R. Curtis

The Water Organ and Other Related Sound-Producing Automata

The water organ, often referred to as the hydraulic organ, is an instrument of great interest and curiosity to the contemporary student of music or early technology. Though none of the actual instruments have survived, there is a surprising amount of written and iconographic material available on these organs. Terminology has the potential to be quite confusing here. There are a number of early instruments that have been variously called water organ, hydraulic organ and hydraulis. The nomenclature is not always used consistently, though the term hydraulis nearly always refers to a pneumatic, bellows-powered instrument in which the wind pressure is stabilized by the use of a water chamber or pnigeus. The hydraulis requires a performer. The term hydraulic organ normally refers to an automatic instrument, and the term water organ has been used in various sources to describe both automatic and non-automatic instruments. The subject of this paper is the automatic instrument, and the designation water organ will be used to describe this instrument from this point forward.

Water organs required no human intervention except perhaps to turn on a tap. "These automatic organs play without human intervention once they are set in action. Automatic water organs or automatons were popular in the Arab and Byzantine world, and reached magical connotation during the Renaissance. These automatons (at least in the Renaissance) had no pnigeus, and their sound was most likely quite wavering." Descriptions of the water organ can be found in the writings of the ancient Greeks, the Arabs and Europeans of the Medieval and Renaissance Periods. The mechanisms by which they were powered vary from very simple to quite complex, and the music produced by them ranges from examples employing a single note to highly complex composed tunes of up to 30 measures length and as many pitches. In every example, the movement of water provided the power source. In a few examples the energy provided by the sun provided an additional source of power. Some of the instruments described utilize only one or two sounding pipes and hence are probably not organs in the strictest sense of the word. However they utilize wind pressure directed through a pipe, and the power source is that of water.

Since the beginning of recorded history people have been fascinated with mechanical principles and the concept of creating machines which would operate automatically once constructed. Greek treatises are filled with examples of automata, both musical and non-musical. Several of these treatises describe the water organ, among them are those written by Ktesibius (300-270 BC), Philo (third-century BC) and Hero (AD 62). It is thought that these organs, like other music instruments, had great significance in Greek philosophy. The writings speak of water-blown pipes, which were used to simulate the singing of birds and the sound of a trumpet blown by a statue of Memnon in Thebes. This statue has been called one of the world’s wonders. When the sun shone upon the statue from a certain angle (particular time of day), an awe-inspiring sound was emitted, according to Tacitus, Pausanius and other writers. They compared the sound, produced by two organ pipes, to the sound of the bursting strings of a lyre or harp. The sun's rays fell onto a sealed tank, which was partially filled with water. When the water was heated and had expanded sufficiently, it was forced through a siphon into a second tank. The air, which was displaced from the second tank, blew the two pipes. During the cooler night, a vacuum was created in the first tank causing water to be drawn in from a reservoir thus making the instrument ready for the next day. The tank was shielded from the sun so that the sun’s energy would warm it only at a very specific time of day.

In another Greek example, a pipe or whistle was blown to imitate the chirping of a bird. An artificial bird was placed on top of an artificial tree on top of a mechanism similar to the one described above. The warbling of the bird was imitated by the inversion of the sounding pipe into a tank filled with water. This instrument was not solar-powered, and had to be activated by turning on a tap. It could only play until all of the water had flowed from the first tank into the second one. Aristokles (second-century BC) speaks of an instrument he calls the organon referring to a water organ, which made figures play wind, string and percussion instruments.

Many early Greek treatises were translated into Arabic and now survive only in that language. One such treatise, attributed to Archimedes, describes what is called a klepsydra in which a small flue pipe is sounded by hydraulic pressure. Another treatise of his deals with an automatic wind instrument in which a flue pipe or a reed pipe is sounded in the same way. In Jean Perrot’s book, The Organ from its Invention in the Hellenistic Period to the end of the Thirteenth Century, he describes musical automata in the palace of Emperor Theophilus (829-842 AD). "This Theophilus had also constructed a musical tree which he had installed in one of the great reception rooms in the palace. …It consisted of a golden tree with small birds perched on its branches, twittering musically by means of a pneumatic mechanism which sent air through concealed tubes." Figure 1 is taken from the treatise attributed to Archimedes. It shows a figure playing a flue or reed pipe, which is made to sound by air being forced through it by the fall of water into a cistern.

Figure 1-- The Archimedes Automatic Wind Instrumentalist

Henry George Farmer, The Organ of the Ancients (London: William Reeves, 1931), 80.

A description of an additional water organ with diagrams has been attributed to Apollonios. Figure 2 shows the Apollonios Automatic Water Organ as included in an Arabic treatise.

Figure 2 --The Apollonios Automatic Hydraulic Organ

Henry George Farmer, The Organ of the Ancients (London: William Reeves, 1931), 82.

In his book, The Organ of the Ancients, Henry George Farmer, states that the principles outlined in the treatise of Apollonios were borrowed and improved upon by the Arabs as evidenced in the elaborate treatise attributed to the Banu Musa (ninth-century) entitled, The Instrument Which Plays Itself. The surviving manuscript of this treatise, dating from the twelfth-century, exists in the Library of the Three Moons College of the Orthodox Greek Church at Beirut, Syria. Farmer’s book contains the complete translation of this work. The instrument described is called a perpetual organ, and consists of a water wheel to provide wind power, a cylinder containing teeth, similar to the mechanism in a common music box, a large water wheel used to turn this cylinder, and 8 levers connected each to its own organ pipe. Means for increasing or decreasing the tempo of the piece played and for changing the melody itself are also described. Furthermore, the treatise contains directions for concealing the instrument in the form of a man that can be made to look as though it were playing the instrument. The end of a reed pipe is placed in his mouth and the body of the pipe held in his hands. His fingers can even be attached to the levers by strings to show movement on the holes of the pipe. It is stated that the wheel can be made to go around by the use of a donkey but that using water provides a steadier motion in the wheel.

The primary source for information on the water organ in Arabic remains this treatise attributed to Banu Musa. The manuscript speaks of adding figures that dance and follow the music of the organ and even mentions an organ, which was given to China "presented by the Muslim Kingdoms as an offering from the lands of the west". The organ is described as having figures of peacocks on the instrument, which flapped their wings and danced in time with the music.

Nothing more is known of the water organ until the thirteenth-century in Europe. In her New Grove article on the water organ, Susi Jeans states that "the instruments had arrived in Europe by the end of the thirteenth-century and that followers of the hermetic and esoteric sciences during the Renaissance attributed magical and metaphysical powers to the organs." The instruments were owned by the rich and powerful and were usually placed in ornate cases in gardens or grottos and often under an arch, becoming an outdoor focal point of the gardens at palaces and mansions. In addition to playing music, they could also feature singing birds that flapped their wings, figurines that danced and cyclopes that hammered. All of these movements could be controlled by mechanisms attached to a musical cylinder .

At other times water organs were placed out of view and were used to simulate the playing of instruments by statues that were also operated hydraulically. In 1575 Mario Cartaro described an instrument at the Villa d’Este at Tivoli, near Rome, as "an organ which by force of water sounds of itself some madrigals and many other things." The organ stood six meters high under an arch, and a large waterfall fed its mechanism.

In his Le Diverse Artificiose Machine (Diverse and Ingenious Machines) of 1588, Agostino Ramelli includes descriptions of several hydraulically operated singing birds which, of course, had existed in other cultures for centuries by this time. Michel Montaigne published a work in 1581 which contains his impressions of organs that played music to the accompanying of falling waters and devices which imitated the sounds of trumpets. He states that birds began to sing and when an owl appeared on a rock, the birds stopped singing. This sequence was borrowed in its entirety from Heron of Alexander and will be borrowed again by Isaac de Caus, as shall be seen later. The brothers Tommaso and Alessandro Francini (late sixteenth century to early seventeenth century) designed powerful water organs at Chateau Hellbrunn, Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Versailles.

The water organ seems to have made its first European appearance in Italy, and then it rapidly spread throughout Europe. Hydraulically powered musical instruments illustrate just one facet of the Europeans’ fascination with automata during the Renaissance. The large waterworks in St. Germain-en-Laye embellished a series of terraces with grottos and fountains. In one fountain a figure of Perseus descended from the ceiling and killed a dragon with a sword after the dragon had arisen from a great basin of water. To one side Andromeda was chained to a rock while on the other Bacchus sat drinking atop a barrel. Many of the finest automata of the time were astronomical clocks some of which made use of hydraulic power. Jacques Vaucanson (1709-1782) brought the production of life-like automata to its highest point of development. One of his creations was an "artificial duck of gilt brass which drinks, eats, flounders in water, digests and excretes like a like duck" (figures 3 and 4). The body of the duck was pierced with openings to allow the public to observe the process of digestion.

Figure 3 Figure 4

Athanasius Kircher (1602-1680) author of Musurgia Universalis (1650) describes an automatic water organ very similar to the one described by Banu Musa. The English translation of the entire treatise is contained in the Farmer text. Kircher states that three things are necessary for a water organ: water, air and a recording barrel. The recording barrel is the pinned cylinder common to so many of these instruments.

Though the water organ spread throughout Europe, some of the finest examples remained in the gardens of Italy’s rulers and noblemen. Francis Mortoft, an Englishman who took an extended trip through German and Italian speaking lands in 1658-1659, was fascinated with the artificial waterworks at Belvedere Gardens and at the Palace of Prince Ludovski at Frascati. Regarding Belvedere he writes that one grotto contained a pair of organs on which the water played and kept time while Apollo and the nine muses made music on all kinds of instruments. He describes singing birds moving and chirping by the force of water in another grotto and states, "If anything in the world may be counted a heaven on earth, this place is it. Concerning the gardens at Frascati he describes a satyr blowing a horn and Hercules playing the bagpipes as well as a pair of organs. To Mortoft the organs are "made with such art that noe man can play and keep better tyme on a paire of organs than the water doth upon these."

Other Italian organs, from near Rome and Florence, are described by Salomon de Caus and G.A. Boeckler. They record their impressions of waterworks in which Orpheus plays the bass viol and a musical contest takes place between Apollo, playing a lyre and Midas playing a syrinx. They describe a scene at the Villa Aldobrandini in which a nymph plays an organ, Pan plays a syrinx, a cock crows and a bird sings. All of these movements were attached to the musical barrel or cylinder. In one Italian grotto, the figure of a nymph played on a water organ, while another nymph played echoes on a smaller organ in a distant part of the grotto.

In the book Reisen (Travels) of 1753, German J.A.F. Uffenbach describes a grotto of the Papal palace in Rome. There a mechanical organ, powered by water, featured a centaur blowing a horn, muses playing musical instruments on Mt. Parnassus and a statue of the god of the shepherds playing a flute. He says, "the total effect was the sound of a small choir and orchestra performing for the listeners a mechanical program of complete overtures and delightful choruses." Other travelers to Italy write of water organs. Thomas Nash felt that the Italians used excess water with which to make music rather than letting it run off in spouts. Thomas Powell was impressed with the musical water works in Pratolino near Florence where he heard mechanical birds singing and Pan playing a pipe. Both Kircher and Gasparus Schotto were German Jesuits and mathematicians who lived in Italy for a time and wrote separately about water organs.

Some water organs outside of Italy have already been mentioned. There were the waterworks at the Chateau Hellbrunn as well as the waterworks and attendant organs constructed by the Frascati brothers at St. Germain-en-Laye as well as at Versailles. Martin Löhner (1636-1707), an engineer in Nürnberg, built models of Italian organs in a courtyard adjacent to his house. These included a scene with Mt. Parnassus and the nine muses as well as a water organ, which played several tunes. The gardens at Heidelberg Castle became famous for their elaborate and intricate waterworks, which were laid out by Salomon de Caus for Prince Palatine Friedrich V and his wife, the English princess Elizabeth.

By the seventeenth-century water organs were being built in England. Cornelius Drebbel, a Dutchman, built an instrument for King James I, and Salomon de Caus built several for Prince Henry. Drebbel wrote a letter to James I in 1651 making references to a visit by the King and to visits by thousands of other people to see his water organ in which appeared Neptune with a sea goddess. Trumpeters also appeared, and Phoebus came out of the clouds in a carriage drawn by four horses while playing music. Robert Fludd, an English physician, described several water organs including novel means of playing the pipes, which were not shown elsewhere. John Evelyn, an Englishman, translated the work of Kircher and Schotto in his unpublished book "Elysium Britannicum." He had seen all of the famous organs in Italy and felt it essential to have music in the ideal garden.

A work on English gardens by Isaac de Caus (1590-1648), a relative of garden designer Salomon de Caus, is certainly the most important source of information on water organs in England and perhaps the most important source on the construction of water organs anywhere. It is entitled Wilton Garden: New and Rare Inventions of Water-Works and was first published circa 1645. It was re-published with a preface by John Dixon Hunt in 1982 as part of the series The English Landscape Garden by Garland Publishers. The Wilton garden was created for Philip Herbert, earl of Pembroke, and the book contains a series of plans and views of the garden, including details and drawings of grottos and fountains. Many features of the gardens, including plantings, statuary, walls, arches, grottos, and the all-important waterworks are treated to drawings and verbiage with great descriptive detail. It is from this book that much of the information on the mechanics of the water organ can be learned. The detailed descriptions found here can easily be applied to the much more scantily described organs in Italy, Germany, France and even the older organs of the Arab world and Greece.

Following are a number of illustrations with descriptions of the mechanism shown in each. All of these are taken from the Isaac de Caus book.

Figure 5 shows a mechanical contraption, about which de Caus writes, "To represent divers birds that shall sing diversly when an owl turns towards them: and when said owl turns back again, they shall cease their singing." It seems somewhat curious that the birds sing when the owl is looking towards them, but this is how the device is described by de Caus.

Figure 5

As has been mentioned earlier, this sequence is taken directly from Hero of Alexander and Montaigne. In the figure one sees a wheel marked A turning in a tank marked C. de Caus states that the tank is included simply to keep the water from splattering the rest of the mechanism. There is a constant supply of water coming down from above and directed at the wheel A. As the force of the water turns the wheel, the wheel in turn acts upon the wheel D and the cylinder H. The teeth Q and R cause the three levers marked M to move and open three pipes or whistles. The beaks and tails of the birds above can be made to move by strings attached to the levers M. A second water supply meanwhile fills the vessel X. When the vessel becomes heavy enough, it descends by means of a pulley T. As the vessel descends a brake is pulled which stops the motion of the barrel at the same time the owl is rotated by the mechanism marked S. When the owl is turned towards the birds, they are made to sing by the turning of the cylinder H. When the owl is rotated so that its back is to the birds, the cylinder is stopped, thereby closing the pipes. What is not described here is how the pipes are pressurized and where the air comes from or how the vessel X is emptied so that the process can start anew. Perhaps when the vessel drops far enough and continues to fill, it tips and empties of its own weight. Later figures and descriptions will provide clues to the winding mechanism of these automata.

Figure 6 is describe by de Caus as "An engin by which Galata shall be presented, which shall be drawn upon the water by two dolphins, going in a right line and returning of her self, while a cyclope plaies upon a flajolet." It looks as though the "cyclope" is playing a set of panpipes consisting of four or more pipes. This set of panpipes must be what de Caus calls the flajolet. In this case a water wheel turns a toothed wheel which turns a barrel attached to it. By bringing the water in from either side of the wheel, it can be made to turn either way, thereby moving Galata forwards or backwards.

Figure 6

Figure 7 shows the mechanism by which the flajolet in figure 6 is made to sound. de Caus’s heading here is, "An engin by which the sound of the flajolet shall be represented by the course of the water." A is a toothed cylinder like that found in a common music box. de Caus calls it the musical wheel. This cylinder is rotated by a pinion d, which is attached to a water wheel. The keyboard h, called the summer by de Caus is mounted one-half inch from the cylinder. The cylinder is divided into twenty or thirty equal parts (measures of music) each of

Figure 7

which is further divided by eight (beats). The teeth on the cylinder protrude three-quarters of an inch so that as the cylinder turns the keys will be "plucked". As the keys are plucked each one causes a valve to open which allows wind to move through a pipe. de Caus remarks that the teeth are put in according to the tune you want the flajolet to play and that the cylinder can be detached from the rest of the mechanism for retrofitting with a new tune. One can see in this drawing that twelve separate pitches are playable, some of them having been labeled on the keys. Wind is conveyed from the summer by copper or lead tubing to the organ pipes. Again, no mention is made of how the wind gets to the summer. Above the cylinder, the hooks labeled O and Y are for convenience of repairs when lifting the cylinder becomes essential.

One must marvel at the sophistication of the music that could have been played on this instrument. Tunes could utilize twelve distinct pitches and consist of up to thirty measures, each divided into eight quarter notes, which de Caus says can be further divided into eighth notes. Here is the beginning of a tune, which de Caus has included in his book along with the assertion that it is one of the tunes played on the water organ.

Figure 8 shows a detailed view of the cylinder A, what de Caus calls the musical wheel, the water wheel C and the organ pipes themselves E. de Caus indicates that it is important to have a wall at least one foot thick separating the cylinder, water wheel and attendant mechanism from the pipes so that the mechanical noise does not interfere with the music. G, H and I are called registers, and these were turned on and off by hand. Thirty-one tubes can be seen leading from the summer to the board into which the pipes are placed, but only sixteen pipes can be counted. The board contains thirty-one holes, but only one row of pipes is shown so as not to obscure the view of the rest of the mechanism. Each of the registers controls one rank of pipes. Finally in figure 9 can be seen a method for supplying air pressure to one of these instruments.

Figure 8

Figure 9

de Caus calls this "an engin by which the bellows of the foregoing engin may be lifted up to give wind to the pipes of the organs."

de Caus says that there are two ways to provide air, by use of bellows and by use of a cistern. In the book he explains only the bellows mechanism. It is assumed that the method for providing air by use of a cistern would be similar to the early instruments of the Greeks and the Arabs. Figure 9 shows a relatively simple mechanism. The water turns the wheel, which is, mounted it its own small reservoir. The water wheel turns a pinion and a cog wheel which

Figure 10

moves the irregular shaped bar made of iron or copper and causes a pumping action of the bellows in alternating fashion. de Caus says that the bellows are made of wood and joined with leather.

In figure 10, de Caus represents the cylinder or musical wheel. Only a portion of the keys, summer and cylinder can be seen because, as de Caus says, he didn’t have paper large enough to draw the entire system. He writes that this illustration represents six measures of music marked by black, gray and white. Holes are to be pierced in the cylinder for the insertion of the pins when one desires to change the tune. "Then you shall put the said pins so as they may touch upon the keys about the thickness of one of the said pins, and so as the one touch not harder then the other." He further instructs that demi-crochets or quavers (eighth notes) should not touch as hard as the other notes because of the faster rhythm so that "confused music" will not be created. Studying figure 10 allows us to see how the various note lengths were created. The longer pins, closest to the keys in the picture, are going to keep the organ pipe open for a much longer time as the cylinder is turning than are the shorter pins. The pins representing the shortest notes have the same size base as the notes, which are slightly longer, presumably for strength. de Caus cautions that the cylinder should be made of well-dried oak with the pieces well joined and glued together and that the pins should be made of brass or hard wood.

Figure eleven represents a different kind of instrument, one that harks back to the loud statue of Memnon in ancient Thebes. de Caus’s explanation is, "To make organs, or trumpets of organs, to sound alwaies when the sun shall be south, without any other principle of motion, but the heat of the sun and the water." The sun heats a vessel A only at noon, which is fed from a constant source of running water. When the sun is directly to the south, it shines on the vessel causing expansion. As the water expands it runs out of a tube C into a bucket D that is already half full. When the bucket fills, it descends and causes a valve G to open. When the valve opens, the water wheel H begins to turn, which in turn rotates the cylinder on which are pins or

Figure 11

teeth. As seen in figure 10, the pins or teeth strike the keys, which open valves and cause the pipes to sound. de Caus explains that a bellows or cistern can again provide wind. The mechanism is stopped by another mechanism, also illustrated in figure eleven. The vessel marked E is made of copper and has a small hole in its bottom. The chord from which it is suspended is fastened to valve G. Water to fill the vessel comes from pipe L so that when valve G is opened, water will run into the vessel. When tank F starts to run dry, no more water will flow into vessel E, and it will eventually run dry because of the small hole in its bottom. The vessel is timed to be empty in the time that it takes the cylinder to make one rotation or provide one repetition of the tune. When vessel E is empty, valve G will close. It is very important that the valve be heavier than the weight of the two vessels combined and that it be lighter than the vessels when they are filled. All of this represents a highly sophisticated, and one would assume, touchy mechanism. de Caus finishes this description by stating, "In sum, if all the parts of this motion be well ordered, you shall have the desired effect with admiration to the hearers."

Figure twelve illustrates a view of a simple hydraulically operated mechanism that must be much like the statue of Memnon. In fact de Caus references that ancient Greek statue. This drawing illustrates, without much detail, the cistern mechanism for supplying wind pressure to pipes. It is also heat activated by the sun’s rays. A the water in cistern F is heated, it is forced through tube B into cistern C where it displaces air which causes the two organ pipes to sound. A is the valve by which water enters the cistern F.

Figure thirteen shows the inside of what de Caus refers to as the musical summer. The valves are marked M, the springs H, and the keys L. He calls E groves and doesn’t bother to explain F and G. He does explain that the summer should be made of well-dried oak. To finish

Figure 12

this section of his book he says, "…we might say divers things, and extend it more at large, but I think that it is not here needful." For further information on "systems and measures" regarding organs or organ pipes, he refers the reader to unspecified treatises on the construction of organs. The value of the de Caus work cannot be overstated in terms of research into the water organ.

The method of maintaining pressurized air for the larger de Caus organs is stated as involving the use of a bellows, as illustrated, or the use of a cistern. The early Greek models and many of the later instruments did not make use of a bellows and therefore must have utilized

Figure 13

some kind of a cistern. For a very long time historians and musicologists had been puzzled

about the system of supplying air to the pipes. Many who wrote about the water organ including Giovanni Battista Porta, Kircher, Schotto and Evelyn never showed a system for air supply. It was even stated at one point by Sir John Hawkins that the water organs as described and illustrated in early treatises could not possibly have functioned. Finally, in 1954 an article about the water organ, accompanied by a diagram was published in the Dutch journal, Het Orgel. It was presented to the journal’s readers as a puzzle. Who could solve the puzzle? A Dutch engineer, Van Dijk, responded to the article with the idea that the air supply was the same as that used in forges and smelting works where there was a good fall of water in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The reason it wasn’t shown, he felt, was that the system was so well known in the sixteenth and seventeenth-centuries, there was no need to show it.

The water must suck in air. One way in which this can be done is through the use of a small pipe placed within a larger vertical pipe which carries the water from a stream or pond. Air and water arrive together in an underground chamber or cistern called the camera aeolis. The air and water naturally separate, and the air rises and goes into a wind chamber to blow the organ pipes. As the water leaves the underground chamber it is used to drive a water wheel that turns a cylinder with pins attached to it. Two diaphragms with little holes in them protect the pipes from the spray of water. In order to start the organ, a tap above the entry pipe must be turned on. The organ would play until the tap was turned off. Figure 14 shows a very simple model of the camera aeolis and related mechanisms.

Figure 14

In a short treatise on water organs, Salomon de Caus gives much practical advice on their building and maintenance. "He says that a register of a water organ comprises two or three ranks of pipes according to the water supply. He gives suggestions for various combinations of stops, and one of his instruments consists of two ranks of closed pipes of 6 foot and two ranks of open pipes of 3 foot length." He advises using copper for the pipes so that the mouth and feet don’t become blocked with rust. Perhaps this was a frequent occurrence as evidenced in the following lines taken from Davenant’s play, Love and Honor.

Very little is known about the music that was played on water organs. Mentioned earlier was the line from Cartaro’s treatise asserting that the organ at Villa d’Este could play "madrigals and many other things." The one surviving bit of notated music from the de Caus book has already been shown. Jeans states in her aforementioned article, "Water Organs", that some of them could play up to eight different melodies. Salomon de Caus set a madrigal by A. Striggio titled, Chi fare fede al cielo for the water organ. In comparing it with a keyboard version of the same piece, Jeans states that Caus shortened the work and used slower, simpler ornaments. Evelyn said that music for water organs should be grave and solemn, without chromaticism, and if possible, in the Dorian, Phrygian or Lydian mode.

The water organ and other sound-producing automata from various periods in history are extremely interesting and give students of music, students of early technology and students of architecture and landscape much valuable information. The builders of the instruments were more often scientists, mathematicians and gardeners than they were musicians. The ingenuity of these inventors is impressive, but not one of these famous, spectacular instruments has survived. By the end of the seventeenth-century most of them were abandoned and left to decay. To conclude her article in Music, Libraries and Instruments, Susi Jeans asserts, "I would like to suggest that water organs should be again introduced into our country to add music to the many other charms of English gardens." With the increasing fascination Americans seem to have with artificial ponds, lakes and streams and elaborate fountains, it seems that a next logical step in the development of water gardens could very well be the inclusion of some form of sound-producing, water-powered automata.

Bedini, Silvio. "The Role of Automata in the History of Technology." Technology and

Culture, Vol. V, No. 1 (winter, 1964): 24-42. (T1.T27 Science)

A scholarly paper presented in 1963 in Los Angeles as part of a symposium on Automata and Simulated Life as Central Theme in the History of Science including descriptions of early water clocks, birds and other automatons.

De Caus, Isaac. Wilton Garden: New and Rare Inventions of Water Works. London: Moxon, 1659. In John Dixon Hunt, ed. The English Landscape Garden.

London: Garland Publishing, 1982. (SB 466.G8 W543 1982 Arch)

A primary source of information on the water organ and other water-operated automata, which gives written and iconographic descriptions of the Wilton Gardens created for Philip Herbert, earl of Pembroke by Salomon de Caus.

De Solla Price, Derek. "Automata in History: Automata and the Origins of Mechanism

A scholarly paper presented in 1963 in Los Angeles as part of a symposium on Automata and Simulated Life as Central Theme in the History of Science including information on sixteenth century water gardens and water organs.

Drachmann, A. G. The Mechanical Technology of Greek and Roman Antiquity.

Copenhagen: Munksgaard, 1963. (QC 122.D7 Science)

A study of the literary sources of the mechanical technology of Greek and Roman Antiquity including a final chapter titled "Sundries" with a detailed description of a water organ invented by Ctesibios.

Eggebrecht, Hans Heinrich. International Symposium: Organ of Classical Antiquity:

A series of scholarly papers dealing with the organ unearthed in the Roman City of Aquincum presented in September 1994 in Budapest. Papers presented by musicologists, archeologists, chemists and physicists are included.

Farmer, Henry George. The Organ of the Ancients. London: William Reeves

Bookseller, 1931. (ML 553.F2 Music)

A contribution toward the history of the ancient organ, and the water organ or hydraulic organ in particular, with English translations for all the known references to the ancient organ in the Hebrew-Aramaic literature.

________. The Sources of Arabian Music. Leiden, Netherlands: E.J. Brill, 1965.

(ML 120 A7F3 1965 Music)

An annotated bibliography of Arabic manuscripts which deal with the theory, practice and history of Arabic music from the eighth century through the seventeenth century.

Jeans, Susi. "Water Organ." New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, Vol. 20,

Ed. Stanley Sadie (Washington D.C.: Macmillan, 1980), 841-843. (ML 100.N48 Music)

A concise overview of the water organ with some useful illustrations and bibliographic citations. (The article in New Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments is also by Jeans and is identical to the article here)

________. "Water Organs." Music, Libraries and Instruments (Hinrichen’s

A very useful article describing the water organ, its known history and how it worked in great detail complete with drawings and photographs of early iconographic materials.

________. "Water-blown Organs in the Seventeenth Century." The Organ. No.

151, Vol. 38 (January 1959) 153-156. (ML 550.068x Music)

A description of a "puzzle" involving the mechanism that operated the water organ and a possible solution to the puzzle that was suggested in 1954.

Letts, Malcom, ed. Francis Mortoft: His Book: Being His Travels through Germany and Italy,

1658-1659. London: Hakluyt Society, 1925. (Interlibrary Loan)

A reprinted monograph containing details of Francis Mortoft’s travels, including his observations on the water organs in Belvedere and Frascati.

Nash, Thomas. The Unfortunate Traveller. Facsimile of 1594 work. Menston, England: Scholar Press, 1971. (PR 2326.N3 U5 1971)

A facsimile edition of a 1594 work by Thomas Nash which includes his descriptions of German and Italian water organs.

Perrot, Jean. The Organ from its Invention in the Hellenistic Period to the End of the

Thirteenth Century. Trans. By Norma Deane. London: Oxford University Press,

1971. (ML 553.P4713 Music)

The seminal work on the early history of the organ, written in French in 1965, translated into English in 1971. Includes a wealth of information on the Greek and Roman organs, the Arabic organ and the hydraulic organ.

"The Apollonios instrument, as set down in the San’at al-zamir (Construction of the Wind Instrumentalist), is quite an elaborate affair. It is made of three compensating cisterns, one on top of the other, the bottom one having two divisions. The top cistern (khazanat al-ma) A, supplied the water, which flowed from it through a channel (mi’zab) B, on to a water wheel (dulab) C, emptying itself into the cistern X. On the axis of the water wheel there was a cogwheel (da’ira) D, which interlocked with another cogwheel which worked on a vertical axis (amud) E, at the bottom of which there was a disc (nusf da’ira) F, with a portion of it cut out, G. This disc, in rotating, lifted alternately, two rods (qadib) G, which opened and closed alternately two valves (bab) J, in the bottom of the cistern X." Henry George Farmer, The Organ of the Ancients (London: William Reeves, 1931), 80-83.