ibrary at Madrid, stating that the clavier at that epoch
comprised as many as thirty-one keys, and that the larger pipes were
placed on one side, and small pipes in the center, the same as now.
The earliest chromatic keyboards known are those in the organ erected
at Halberstadt cathedral in 1361. This instrument had twenty-two keys,
fourteen diatonics and eight chromatics, extending from B natural up
to A; and twenty bellows blown by ten men. Its larger pipe B stood in
front, and was thirty-one Brunswick feet in length and three and a
half feet in circumference. This note would now be marked as a
semitone below the C of thirty-two feet. In this organ for the first
time a provision was made for using the soft stop independently of the
loud one. This result was obtained by means of three keyboards. The
keys were very wide, those of the upper and middle keyboards measuring
four inches from center to center. The sharps and flats were about two
and a half inches above the diatonic keys, and had a fall of about one
and a quarter inches. The mechanical features of the organ were very
greatly improved during the next century, but it was not until the old
organ in the Church of St. AEgidien in Brunswick that the sharps and
naturals were combined in one keyboard in the same manner as at
present. The keys were still very large, the naturals of the great
manual being about one and three-quarters inches in width. It was to
the organ at Halberstadt that pedals were added in 1495, but no pipes
were assigned to them. They merely pulled down the lower keys of the
manual.

[Illustration: Fig. 45.

BELLOWS BAGS IN THE ORGAN AT HALBERSTADT, AND METHOD OF BLOWING.

(Praetorius.)]

Some time before the beginning of the seventeenth century the organ
had acquired nearly the entire variety of tone that it has ever had.
The mechanism was rude, no doubt, and the voicing perhaps imperfect.
The tuning was by the unequal system, throwing the discords into
remote keys as much as possible. In Michael Praetorius' "_Syntagma
Musica_," the great source of information upon this part of the
history (published at Wolfenbuettel, 1618), he describes a number of
large organs. Among them he mentions the organ in the Church of St.
Mary at Danzig, built in 1585, having three manuals and pedal; there
were fifty-five stops. The balance must have been very bad, since
there were in the great organ three stops of sixteen feet, and only
three of eight feet. There