Organ Stop - Nomenclature

Nomenclature

Pipe ranks have particular names, which depend on a number of factors ranging from the physical and tone attributes of the pipes in that rank, to the country and era in which the organ was manufactured, to the pipes' physical location within the organ. Each stop knob is labeled with the name of the rank it controls. In general, that label gives the organist two vital pieces of information about the rank of pipes in question:

• Which octave of pitches the rank is natively tuned to
• Which tone quality the rank possesses (for example trumpet, flute, etc.)

This is an example of a typical pipe organ stoplist, showing both common stop names and conventional formatting (flue pipes listed in black, reed pipes listed in red):