Harmonium

"Harmonium" is a popular name for a reed organ--a small organ, often intended for use in domestic settings, in which sound is produced by a free metal reed that vibrates in a stream of air. A modest selection of "draw stops"--knobs drawn out from the body of the instrument--enable the player to vary the organ's tone quality. After the introduction of the Chinese sheng mouth organ to Europe in the 1770s, instrument builders began to experiment with the free-reed principle, and small organs came on the market in several countries in the early nineteenth century. They found ready buyers among the growing middle classes, especially in America, where the harmonium was closely involved with the growth of religious music on the frontier, and in the British colony of India, where the instrument maintains a foothold. Through the late nineteenth century the harmonium vied with the piano for supremacy in the average American living room, and even today they are often found in antique shops. The instrument's potential for the evocation of nostagia has given it a wide range of uses in popular music of many genres, and it has often served jazz players as an easily portable and highly expressive keyboard instrument.

Keyboard Instruments