I got really excited this morning when I saw this from the Washington Post:

Oh, I’m not excited about hearing that there’s a new covid variant called omicron on the horizon, in fact, it was reported that there’s even a case of omicron in Hawaii. What I was excited about was that the White House used a term from the organ world: pulling out all the stops!

I’ve written about this term before, when discussing all the media blitz we had to do when publicizing the Monteverdi Vespers (“Pulling out all the stops for Monteverdi“) and when a lady described decorating houses in New Orleans, LA when Mardi Gras was cancelled as “Pull out all the stops.”

Here’s what I wrote back in February of this year:

According to the American Guild of Organists, “The pipes are arranged in rows or ranks, according to these tone colors. To bring a rank of pipes into play, the organist pulls a knob or operates a tablet called a ‘stop.’” Pushing a knob in “stops” the pipes from producing sound, and pulling out the stops increases the musical volume. Now just imagine pulling out all the stops. … Aha!

The name comes from the fact that stops can be used selectively by the organist; each can be “on” (admitting the passage of air to certain pipes), or “off” (stopping the passage of air to certain pipes). (Wikipedia)

Truth be told, I don’t think there is ever a time when I literally pull out every single stop on the organ—as I think the sound would be horrible! On a large organ, I would omit the celestes in organo pleno, and other stops which would not sound good mixed with the foundations. Even on a moderately-sized organ such as the Beckerath at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu, there are some stops I leave out of the grand ensemble— like the Tremulants for example!

Just because you can literally pull out every single stop doesn’t mean that you should! I remember back to a regional convention of the American Guild of Organists in the 70s when I think the recitalist pulled out all the trumpets en chamade (the horizontal trumpets) at the former Crystal Cathedral organ, and a bunch of us had our hands over our ears! It was like being underneath a jet plane with the engines running full speed … sooooo loud it was painful!

Let’s hope that this pandemic will be over soon.