Hope-Jones, Robert
English musician and organ builder (9 February 1859 – 13 September 1914) who is considered to be the inventor of the theatre organ in the early 20th century. Collaborated with the Wurlitzer company, who acquired his patents and whose Cinema organs exploit many Hope-Jones innovations.
Hope-Jones was born in Cheshire and started learning the organ at an early age, playing for some church services at nine years old. A church organist and choirmaster by 15, he trained a successful choir and installed an organ at St Luke's Church, Tranmere. He became a prominent churchwarden, organist, choirmaster and composer.
Leaving school at 16, he was apprenticed to Laird's Shipbuilders in Birkenhead and was then appointed as chief electrician of the Lancashire and Cheshire Telephone Company where he devised many improvements. This experience led him to instal an organ at St John's Church, Birkenhead, where he was choirmaster and honorary organist, with electo-pneumatic control and a moveable console in place of the traditional mechanical linkages and console necessarily in a fixed position.
Hope-Jones licensed established organbuilders to exploit his inventions but by 1890 had left the Telephone Company and established the Hope-Jones Organ Company in Hereford, employing some of the choir men and boys who had voluntarily helped him at Birkenhead.
He built over 100 church organs in the UK using his new techniques, facing fierce opposition from traditionalist competitors. Many of his innovative organs were sabotaged.
After a partner discovered his unhealthy interest in choirboys, Hope-Jones left for the USA in 1903, where he collaborated in the building of 40 organs until his arrest in 1908 for inappropriate conduct with a 15 year-old boy. The consequent fine, which he paid from company funds, brought down the business.
In 1910, the Rudolph Wurlitzer Company, hitherto importers and makers of musical instruments, acquired the factory and the patents for Hope-Jones's innovations and hired him to continue building organs under his own name. Wurlitzer became dissatisfied with Hope-Jones's unbusinesslike and frequently unprofitable practices but feared competition from him if he left the company's employ. Wurlitzer placed restrictions on his actions, eventually requiring him to work outside the main factory. In 1914, however, he did leave and only a few months later killed himself, claiming in his suicide note imminent court action of which the inquest found no evidence, reaching a verdict of suicide whilst insane.
Hope-Jones Innovations
Electrical (or rather electro-pneumatic) control
Necessary for several of the other Hope-Jones Innovations, this freed the console from the fixed position it must adopt in an organ controlled by mechanical linkages.
Higher wind pressure
In a Hope-Jones Cinema organ wind pressure is anywhere between 10 and 50 inches of water, where traditional organs would operate on wind pressure around 3 inches. The higher pressure was achieved by using a powerful electrically driven centrifugal pump in place of the traditional bellows, often operated by a couple of choirboys. It increased the power of the instrument and allowed the use of new types of pipe.
Expression.
Enclosing all the ranks within thick-walled swell cabinets allowed the organist greater control of the dynamic. In a traditional organ, usually only one section of the organ would be housed within a swell cabinet.
The use of electro-pneumatic control allowed the use of a single extended rank of pipes to serve all manuals and every pitch. This multiplied the options available to the organist.
Electro-pneumatic control eliminated the need for draw-stops; knobs mechanically linked to the valves that opened the wind to a rank of pipes. Their function is performed by small tongue-shaped tabs arranged in a horseshoe pattern around the manuals.
Electro-pneumatic control allowed the keys on the manuals to be provided with two switches, so that one registration will play when the keys are depressed normally, but other ranks can be added when the keys are further depressed. The feature is sometimes known as double touch.
New stops
Hope-Jones devised several new organ pipes, some more successful than others. Among those that became usual in Cinema organs were the Diaphone and the modern Tibia Clausa.