16.2

//Source(s): Experimental Musical Instruments Volume 10 #1, Sept. 1994.// FIRE MUSIC Introductory Notes by Bart Hopkin Here is how to make flame sing: obtain a glass tube, one or two inches in diameter, open at both ends, and perhaps two or three feet long. Light a propane torch or similar burner, and insert the nozzle about one fourth of the way into the open lower end of the tube. If conditions are right, you will hear the tone will begin == not abruptly, but with a growing volume. Gather together a tuned set of such tubes, develop the mechanisms to shut the flames on and off in a controlled manner, and you will have created a flame organ. The sounds of such an arrangement, according to people who have worked with flame tones, are highly varied. The system can be refined so as to dependably produce clear, steady tones at the frequency of the tube's fundamental. Or the mechanism can be adjusted to bring out harmonics. On the other hand, you can take a less controlling approach, and let the system come forth with a menagerie of whoops, shrieks and moans. One consistent characteristic: the attacks are not sharp; rather, each tone grows as the resonance establishes itself. The earliest references to "burning harmonica" or "chemical harmonica" come to us from the late 1700s. A century later the physicist Georges Fredric Eugene Kastner published *Les flammes chantantes* (Paris, 1875), a description of his fire organ, the pyrophone. A photograph of this instrument appeared in Kenneth Peacock's article on color organs in Experimental Musical Instruments, Volume VII #2, September 1991. It appears as a moderately large console containing a small keyboard, with ten glass pipes rising from it. Later references to fire music generally take Kastner's pyrophone as a starting point. Of modern fire organs there are not many. One has been created by engineers at the Tokyo Gas Company. It is fully functional and played regularly in public. In the following pages you will read about three more, created by contemporary artists-in-fire. BIBLIOGRAPHY, SORT OF Published information on flame organs is rather scarce. Most references are brief. Following are a few sources that touch on the topic. Bragg, William: World of Sound (Dover, 1920; 2nd ed. 1968). Hauch (?): Article in Kopenhagen (phys. chem. naturh. und math.), Abhandl. aus der neuen Sammlung der Wissenschaften, ubersetz von D.P. Scheel und C.F. Degen, Kopenhagen, 1798, Vol 1, 1st part, p. 55. Kastner, Georges Fredric Eugene: Les flammes chantantes (Paris, 1875). Rayleigh, Lord: Theory of Sound (1877). Sachs, Curt: Reallexicon der Musikinstrumente (Berlin 1913). Richard Kadrey (kadrey@well.com)
 * Dead medium: The Flame Organ; The Burning Harmonica; the Chemical Harmonica; Kastner's Pyrophone**
 * From: Kadrey@well.com (Richard Kadrey)**

Comments on Dead Media Working Note 16.2
//Date: Thu, 27 Jul 2000 03:54:26 -0500 (CDT)// The site is : http://perso.club-internet.fr/orguafeu (there's an english version) And you'll find there a picture of the 1st fire organ, created in the 18th century!
 * Anonymous Coward** on Saturday July 08, @08:34PM EDT (#52) - About 15 years ago, I attended a very weird lecture sponsored by the "Visual Music Alliance" in Los Angeles. The presenter was a very eccentric UCLA professor who studied the history of "visual music." He traced the history back as far as the ancient Greeks, who had concerts accompanied by a "light organ" which had little candles behind colored pieces of glass with a shutter, to project colors on a screen. But the one thing of this lecture that most impressed me was his tales about the Flame Organ. Apparently, back in the 19th century, in the heyday of pipe organs, there were quite a few flame organs. These were usually made with transparent glass tubes, and flammable gasses would be fed into the tubes, ignited by a sparking electrode under the organist's control. Different gasses that burned in different colors would be used in different tubes, the effect was as much visual as musical, and the colors were said to be quite vivid. He says that Wagner was particularly enamored by the flame organ, and there is still one remaining vintage flame organ, Wagner's personal machine, in the Wagner museum (wherever the hell that is). Considering the long history of this device, I'm not impressed with the new "hot pipe organ." Stuff like this has been done before, and better, by groups like Survival Research Labs. Its just another huge emitter of greenhouse gasses.
 * Petethelate** (pdbrooksatpacbelldotnet) on Saturday July 08, @09:59PM EDT (#112) -- Wagner museum is in Bayreuth, where the Ring opera cycle is shown.
 * Anonymous Coward** on July ?? - I don't recall the lecturer going into that much detail about the actual gases and the mechanism. One thing I forgot to mention was that these were indoor pipe organs, they didn't shoot columns of flame out the top like the modern ones, the flames were visible inside the glass pipes. These were regular pipes like any pipe organ, the tone results from gas passing over a small slot. The lecturer described the flames shooting up the pipe, but didn't mention any columns of flame coming out the top. I imagine that would have burned the place down. What we really need is some recon at the Wagner museum. The lecturer said the Flame Organ is in playable condition, but they're afraid to play it in case they blow up the only intact example. Its more valuable as a relic than as a musical instrument.
 * danakil** (danakilATifranceDOTcom) on Saturday July 08, @08:36PM EDT (#54) -- A french artist has a site describing his own fire organ, you'll find some impressive pics there. He has several instruments (including drums) working this way.