Pulling Out All the Stops

You've probably heard, "pulling out all the stops," before in reference to someone exhausting every last resource they have, but have you ever considered where the phrase originated? It's one of those coloquiallisms that becomes so engrained in a language that it grows into a sort of enigma. It's like a photograph on the wall of your favorite restaurant or the home of a relative; you've seen it so many times that it becomes familiar, but chances are that, to you, the story behind the photograph remains a mystery. None of us had ever considered the story behind, "pulling out all the stops," with the exception of Dr. Tegels. 

    -Organ and interior of the Dom, or Berlin Cathedral-

While one of the main focuses of this J-Term course is organs, none of us students are organists, and we have generally limited music backgrounds (Read: I remember how to play some scales, read music, and crank out some incredibly basic songs as a result of piano lessons and middle school band. End knowledge). As a result, Dr. Tegels and the other organists we meet have to routinely explain things to us that would be absolutely rudimentary to organ students, including what stops are in relation to an organ. 

    -Stop detail and Dr. Tegels playing the organ at St. Jacobi Kirche in Lüdingworth, Germany-

At one of our stops, no pun intended (but a pun that I like all the same), in Lüdingworth, Germany at the St. Jacobi Kirche, Dr. Tegels gave us a quick explanation of what stops are how they affect an organ. Basically, the sound emitted from an organ is the product of a lot of air going through the pipes, but it is the job of the organist to decide which pipes that air is available to. When a stop, which are the myriad knobs extending from the organ (for those of you who are reading this as musically inept as I am), is pulled out, air can travel to a specific set of pipes, allowing for sound to be made and music to be enjoyed. This is the point in Dr. Tegels' explanation in which Emma exclaimed, "...WAIT. Is that where 'pulling out all the stops comes from?!'" And you know what? It most certainly is. 

There has been no shortage of opportunities to learn new things this J-Term, from millitary, church, and art history to even basic things like where coloquiallisms in our language come from and how certain instruments work. I'm still far from being an organ student, and at this point in my life I'll probably never become one, but I have developed an immense appreciation for all things related to organs. Organists, organ builders, and organs themselves all have immense intricacies and nuances, and in the case of the humans included in that list: a great wealth of knowledge and talent. To think that such complex instruments were being constructed by people over 500 years ago, and that sometimes I can't even figure out how to put IKEA furniture together, is amazing and incredibly humbling. 

    -Stevenskerk organ, Nijmegen, Netherlands-