The Thursford Collection

Tawdry, garish, ostentatious, baroque and loud, but there is much more to the fairground organ than meets the eye or ear. *

For the August bank holiday the wife and I visited the Thursford collection, a private museum of yesteryear farm and fairground machinery; traction engines, steam engines, carousels and organs.

As I have always been interested in machinery I thought I would be especially interested in the traction engines – well I was, but as am not a musical person I was surprised to find that I was even more interested in the fairground organs. The loud and gaudy exterior of these machines, usually to found in the raucous environment of the fairground has always been a put off for me, but on a second harder look within the subdued light and tranquility of the Thursford environment, however, these machines proved fascinating and their complex reality readily connected with my interest in computers.

The technology of mechanically reproducing sounds of all qualities simply from the vibration modes of a single surface recieving input from some kind of recording medium was not developed enough in the latter half of the nineteenth century to provide fairground music of sufficient body and quality. The fairground organ solves this problem by hiding behind its ostentatious exterior what is effectively a real orchestra: a large ensemble of wind and percussion instruments operated by compressed air. In the machines at Thursford this mechanical unmanned orchestra is programmed by books of punched card. The picture below was taken behind the ornate façade and you can see the racks of punched cards on the left. Also visible is the card reader as well as the pump supplying the compressed air.


Fairground organs are a fine example of a machine that can be programmed with a next to infinite combination of possibilities and this quasi-universality is, of course, very reminiscent of computers. It follows, therefore, that fairground organ music can be digitally analyzed into a set of punched hole instructions. Everything that happens during the playing of one of these wonderful machines is tokenized in the formal patterns on the cards. And yet if one didn’t know otherwise this reductive analysis gives no hint at all of the astounding holistic experience of standing in front of one of these organs as the whole show is powered up and its complicated rhythms, patterns, and harmonies fill the airwaves. That in the main fairground organs have been reserved for catchy popular music so easily reproduced on their tireless mechanics has unfortunately cheapened the experience. Moreover, association with the ungenteel and flamboyant culture of traveling fairground folk unconnected with the values of landed society have not helped place fairground organ music into the realm of fashionable high culture.

But as time moves on the associations of fairground organs with low culture will recede and the beauty and cleverness of these machines may be better appreciated. Call me musically naive but if one pays attention to the music generated by a fairground organ one hears a veritable wall of sound perfectly blending the rhythms and harmonies of its large ensemble of instruments. into a seamless whole. Give the machine another set of punched cards and a new wall of sound seems to come from nowhere, tirelessly and faultlessly reproduced.

As one stands in the front of one of these performing machines sight and sound all meld into one facade, but behind the scenes analysis and reductionism holds sway. The fairground organ is, needless to say, a fine metaphor of the experience vs. mechanism dichotomy. It all may start with an initial taking for granted of an experience that seems integrated to the point of indivisibility, but when curiosity kicks in there is a desire to look behind the scenes, to undress nature, to view its back end as it were and analyse it. In the case of a fairground organ, however, it’s a short walk round to the back of the machine to see how the show really works. But the sharp contrast between experience and underlying mechanism remains. On one level, everything one experiences is explicable in terms of mechanism; there is nothing that happens in a fairground organ performance that cannot be described without reference to the formalities of the punched cards and the model of computation model represented by the mechanical hardware. And yet although the sound is analyzable into an carefully orchestrated ensemble in the final analysis this formality of structure fails to capture the experience itself; formality is a good predictor of structure but a poor predictor of quality.

We must thank the private collector George Cushing who has left us with such a fascinating and beautiful legacy.

George Cushing 1904-2003
https://www.thursford.com/default.aspx

* footnote
The times on my photos look dodgy; I was supposed to be at work at that time. The explanation? The clock on my camera is 2-3 hours slow. The proof? The Thursford collection doesn't open until 12 o'clock mid day!