Is the American organist’s 30 year war finally over?
By Jason Barnsley The slider chest is the oldest, most reliable form of pipe organ chest in the world, that is still in use today. Originally, windchests had only one style and that was a “blockwerk” chest. Simply put, all the ranks for any given note played all the time, as each note had its own ‘note channel’ upon which all the pipes sat. These instruments were excellent at creating ‘din’ for the church service, but weren’t much useful for anything else. By the 15th century, organists had a desire to ‘stop’ some of these sounds and thus the slider was invented. The slider is a thin board with holes that match the holes in the toeboard. When the organist wanted that particular rank of pipes to sound he would simply pull a drawknob, which through various mechanisms, would move the slider so that the holes lined up, allowing the air to pass through to the pipe. These chests are very durable, lasting hundreds of years, as there are extant centuries-old organs in Europe and even in Americ
