\"Highly Applauded, as Novelties Are\": Science, Politics, and the Pipe Organs of Tomás Pereira, S.J.

David Francis Urrows/The Pipe Organs of Tomás Pereira/page 1

“Highly applauded, as novelties are”: Science, Politics, and the Pipe Organs of Tomás Pereira, s.j.

David Francis Urrows

The Pipe Organ in China Project/Hong Kong Baptist University

Text-only format. Published in: Leuven Chinese Studies XXIX. History of the Catholic Church in China: From its beginnings to the Scheut Fathers and the 20th century. Unveiling

some less known sources, sounds and pictures, pp. 99-124. Ferdinand Verbiest Institute (eds.) ©2015 by Ferdinand Verbiest Institute, K.U. Leuven. ISBN: 9789082090949.

This text contains, however, the correct versions of Charts 2 and 3. All correspondence should be directed to the author at [email protected]

1.

In November 2008, I was invited to be the discussant in the music panel session of the conference, “In the Light and Shadow of an Emperor”1, held in Macau. Much interesting and original research was presented and I admired the work that had been accomplished by scholars around the globe. When it came to describing the pipe organs which Tomás Pereira (1646-1708) was said to have built, I had however nagging and I think very reasonable doubts about some of the accounts I heard. I came to feel that so confused and unresolved were some important questions – in particular, the number and nature of his pipe organs – that had the sort of evidentiary standards I was observing been employed in a court case, the presiding judge would almost immediately have declared a mistrial. Thus, I have attempted to set the record straight to my satisfaction.

As an organist and sometimes organ-builder, I found contradictions and anomalies from a technical standpoint in the descriptions of the instruments; and even the number of organs he was said to have built differed from speaker to speaker. Dates of construction were not always the same. Contradictions in the primary, secondary, and even tertiary literature were obvious, but neither addressed nor reconciled. There was a great deal of citation from the writings of Pereira’s colleagues, followers, and later-comers to the scene (all treated, in essence, as of equal value as evidence), but relatively little from Pereira himself. Translations made by non-musicians were sometimes in error. Some instruments seemed had been counted twice. I, too, was unsure as to the exact story, and I said as much in a tentative article which I published in the same year.2

1 “In the Light and Shadow of an Emperor: Tomás Pereira, S.J., the Kangxi Emperor and the Jesuit Mission in China”, international symposium held in Macau on November 27-29, 2008, under the auspices of the Instituto Ricci de Macau, the Instituto do Oriente ISCSP (Universidade Técnica de Lisboa), and the Centro de História das Ciências (Universidade Clássica de Lisboa.) 2 David Francis Urrows, “The Pipe Organ and the Jesuits in China: A Brief Survey.” (David C. Lam Centre for East-West Studies, Working Paper Series No. 81) (Hong Kong, Hong Kong Baptist University, 2008.)

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In my analysis of Pereira’s organ building activity I have adopted a basic principle, which is that Pereira’s own descriptions and statements must be taken as prima facie evidence. I start, then, with what Pereira himself said about the instruments he built, and have tried to reconcile Pereira’s own few contradictions. After that I consider several anomalies which arise from comparing what others said about his pipe organs with his own comments, and offer some new interpretations of the design and technical specifications of his instruments. I will also comment briefly on the technical innovations which Pereira adopted from examples current in Europe (during an era of a mania for mechanical devices), and I hope to offer some new thoughts as to how these instruments served the Beijing mission on a diplomatic level.

To begin with, I have made a summary chart (Chart 1, see appendix) of all the instruments which Pereira stated that he built, along with references to the places where he made these statements (the organs are numbered here according to the census in The Pipe Organ in China Project):

Perhaps the most striking thing to emerge from this list is that Pereira himself only mentions four pipe organs, completed in a period of five years from 1679 to 1683 (counting the years inclusively.) As we see, he also built at least one harpsichord during this time, and in a sense it is quite artificial to separate his organ-building from his other musical activities, including the construction of the clock-cum-carillon (PEK1677), and various mechanical devices with musical features.3 One of the organs (PEK1679) was evidently produced in multiple examples, as I shall discuss later. However, his 1683 comment about having built “many” (muitos) organs needs to be examined, as on the surface it seems to be a bit of an exaggeration. From an organ builder’s perspective it would certainly have been no shame for Pereira to have completed ‘only’ four instruments in five years. This remains an impressive achievement, especially under the circumstances that came with living in late 17th century Beijing.4 Moreover, an important piece of information emerges here: in his 1682 letter he numbered his organs for Kangxi, referring to PEK1683 as “a third organ” (o 3º Orgão.) Counting backwards we can tell that the organ with the yunluo trap5 (PEK1682) was the second organ, and the two-rank positive (PEK1679) must logically have been the first (since Pereira does not mention other organs for the Emperor beyond his dubious remark about “many”.) As far as I know, no one has ever commented on Pereira’s enumeration of his instruments; and it is significant that he numbered only the organs for Kangxi, conspicuously leaving out the Nantang (Xitang) organ (PEK1680).

3 Since this paper is limited to his pipe organs, I have to make such a separation here. 4 In speaking of Pereira building these instruments, we must keep in mind that he did not work alone. He had a staff of helpers, and had ‘inherited’ the botica (workshop) of his mentor, Gabriel de Magalhães. See Noël Golvers, “F. Verbiest, G Magalhães, T. Pereyra and the others. The Jesuit Xitang College in Peking (1670-1688) as an extra-ordinary professional milieu”, in Luís Filipe Barreto (Ed.), Tomás Pereira (1646-1708): Life, Work and World (Lisbon, Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau, 2010), pp. 277-98. 5 Trap is a technical term for a sound-effects stop or device attached to an organ. Birdsongs, bells, whistles, drums, ‘thunder’ effects, etc., are examples of traps which were popular in Italian and Iberian organs of the 17th century.

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2.

A second chart (Chart 2, see appendix) will add to the information Pereira provides, remembering of course that contradictions (of which several are quite striking) will need to be reconciled. Here I present a digest of the secondary sources which are contemporary with Pereira and written by people who both knew him and had the opportunity to see his pipe organs (if indeed they did not assist him in some aspects of his work.) These comments go a long way to reinforcing and corroborating Pereira’s own statements. They also introduce at least one major problematic concern – as to whether or not the Nantang organ had an automatic playing mechanism – which I will address shortly.

With regard to PEK1679, Pereira stated in 1681 that “…we made some curious and scientific things (which the Emperor has deigned to praise) among which is an organ with two ranks of pipes, that is two organs [registers] joined in one, which was made by a Father here [Pereira refers to himself the third person] and which much pleased the Emperor; also a harpsichord made by the same Father.”6 Grimaldi confirmed that it had “two ranks of pipes, one of open pipes, and one stopped, with a total number of 90 pipes.”7 This conforms to a 45-note, four-octave keyboard, with the usual short octave in the bass, as I have posited elsewhere.8 Likely this ‘processional’ style organ had a stopped 4' rank and an open 2' rank (or, if a larger positive, a stopped 8' and open 4'.) Grimaldi casually mentions in his Annual Letter for 1680/81 that “they also made another two small ones [organs] of two ranks.”9 Here we have a reasonable clue to understanding Pereira’s “many”: PEK1679 was apparently made in several examples, three in total according to Grimaldi’s comment. If this is so, then Pereira was only acting as any organ builder would: even today is it standard operating procedure for small organs to be made in sets of two, three, or four. The economies of scale and labor make this sensible and practical. So perhaps we can deduce from this that Pereira – and his co-workers, notice the plural articles “we” and “they” – made in total six organs between 1679 and 1683.

6 Tomás Pereira to Fr. Francisco Lopes, 30 Aug. 1681, ARSI Jap-Sin 199-1 fo. 42. (Hereafter, Pereira, 1681.) “…inventando cousas curiosas, e scientificas; (de que o Emperador faz digna estimação) entre as quais foi hum Orgão de duas ordens de canudos, hoc est dous Orgãos juntos em hum só, que fez aqui hum nosso Padre; de que folgou muito o Emperador; e de hum cravo, que o mesmo Padre lhe fez.”Also see: Tomás Pereira: Obras Vols. 1 and 2, Ed. Barreto, L.F, A. do Espírito Santo, A.C. da Costa Gomes, I.M. Pina, and P.L. Correia (Lisbon, Centro Científico e Cultural de Macau, 2011.) I have worked, however, from copies in the Jesuit Archives in Vanves, France; and these have been transcribed by my colleague, Dr. Tereza Sena, Macau Polytechnic Institute. This transcription varies in some minor details from the 2011 Obras. Dr. Sena and I have collaborated on the English translations. 7 ARSI JS 116 fo 167v. “…organum ab Imperatore petitum absolutum iam perfectumque esset, idque duplici (ut aiunt) registro constans, uno videlicet tuborum apertorum, altero clausorum, universim numero nonaginta.” 8 D.F. Urrows, “The Pipe Organ”, p. 10. Another article on this topic has recently been published in the proceedings of the 2008 conference in Lisbon: J. P. Janeiro, “The Organist and Organ Builder Tomás Pereira: Some New Data on his Activity”, in: Artur K. Wardega, António Vasconselos de Saldanha, (Eds.), In the Light and Shadow of an Emperor: Tomás Pereira, SJ (1645-1708), the Kangxi Emperor and the Jesuit Mission in China, (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2012), pp. 546-67. While some intriguing information has appeared in this article, I differ in some respects from Prof. Janeiro in my interpretation of the record of Pereira’s activity. 9 F. Grimaldi, annual letter for 1680/81, ARSI JS 163 fo 109v “...tem feito otras dous menores de 2 registros.”

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I come here, however, to the first major contradiction between Pereira’s evidence, and his colleagues’ descriptions: the nature of the Nantang organ (PEK1680). There has been an assumption that the organ had an automatic playing mechanism, though Pereira himself did not mention this. This organ was completed in early 1680 and installed in an organ chamber in the church’s new south-east tower with great solemnity. Grimaldi described it as follows:

“Also in this year [of 1679] the same Father Tomás Pereira was very active in building an elegant organ for our church in Beijing. It contains four ranks, the first is a rank of open pipes, the next rank is stopped, the third is a vox humana, and the fourth imitates the sounds of animals and birds. The total number of pipes is about two hundred, equivalent to the majority of organs in European regions [or “whose greatest length is equal to more than the European measurement of two orgya.”10]

Verbiest was the first writer to mention the automatic playing mechanism, in the Astronomia Europaea:

“As the European organ which we had given to the Emperor [PEK1671] was very small and imperfect, Father Tomás Pereira is now [1679] working on another one [PEK1680] which has yet to receive its finishing touches, and which I hope will shortly be installed in our church in Beijing. I believe that in all the East the like will not be found [to this organ], as it will play European as well as Chinese music [tunes] all by itself, thanks to an ingenious barrel drum mechanism.”11

(A second anomaly emerges in this comment, which I will have to discuss later, but which I will point out now: the case of non sequitur between the first clause of the first sentence (describing PEK1671), and the second clause which describes PEK1680. Why has Verbiest jumped from discussing an organ given to Kangxi, to an organ intended for the Nantang? The one is not a replacement for the other, surely! To me at least, this sentence makes no sense. Its impact on the other hand has been far-reaching.)

Verbiest, however, was not the only person to mention the barrel drum mechanism. In 1712 the organ was heard and seen by a Korean diplomatic visitor to Beijing, Kim Chang-ŏp (1658-1721), who wrote of his encounter with instrument. Kim implied that by this time it had six ranks. 12 A possible explanation lies in Kim’s description of the façade as being 10 ARSI, JS 117, fo 168r: “Eodem hoc anno idem P. Thomas Pereira moliri aggressus est aliud perquam elegans organum pro Pekinensi nostra ecclesia, quattuor registris instructum, quorum unum tubis seu fistulis apertis, alterem clausis constat, tertium voces humanas, quartum denique animalium aviumque imitabitur; universum ducentarum prope fistualrum numero, quorum maior duas orgyas Europeas longitudine suâ æquabit.” Janeiro (“The Organist and Organ Builder Tomás Pereira”, p. 561) posits the interpretation of orgya as a measurement, here of about 1.95 meters, or six and half feet. 11Noël Golvers, The Astronomia Europæa of Ferdinand Verbiest (Dilligen, 1687) (hereafter, AE), (Nettetal, Steyler Verlag, 1993.) Chapter 25, p. 439 (91.) “Organum illud Europæum Imperatorii oblatum, cùm valde exiguum & imperfectum sit, P. Thomas Pereyra jam aliud præ manibus habet, omnibus numeris suis absolvendum, ac in temple nostro Pekinensi brevì, ut spero, collocandum, cui in toto hoc oreinte non puto simile reperiendum, automate ingenioso, & tympano harmanico [sic.] musicam Europæam simul & Sinicam sponte sua exhibiturum.” (The translation here is based on Prof. Golvers’, with some adjustments of my own.) 12 Kim Chang-ŏp’s account is known today only through its citation in a record of a visit to Beijing in 1780 by Pak (Park) Chi-won (1737-1805) in his Jehol Diary [Yŏrhailgi. ］ See: Database of Korean Classics,

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divided into two levels, with two pipe towers above and four below. Thus he may have thought that there were six ‘divisions’ to the organ.

Barely had the peals of bells [from Pereira’s clock-carillon, built in 1677] died down when suddenly the sound of a gust of wind emerged from the inside of the arch by the [south-] east door. It sounded like many wheels moving together. Then music was played, it was [like] the sound of string and wind instruments. I didn’t know where it was coming from. The official who interpreted said that it was Chinese music. After a long while it stopped, and then another melody was played. This was like the one I heard while paying obeisance and offering congratulations to the Emperor. [The interpreter] indicated, ‘This is Manchurian music.’ It stopped after a considerably long time, and then yet another piece with a fast beat was played, and the interpreter pointed out, ‘This is Mongolian music.’ The music then stopped completely and the six ranks [of pipes] shut [down] automatically on their own.13

It remains unexplained why Pereira himself said nothing about the barrel drum mechanism. Quite to the contrary, Pereira wrote that he was worn out with having to play the organ himself for the people who flocked to see and hear it. In his 1681 letter, he wrote that it

“…was so applauded, such crowds were raised [by the organ] that made it necessary to station soldiers at the church and in the courtyard, to stop any disorderly people. And great crowds came to hear and to see this [organ and carillon], who had never heard or seen such a thing in their own realm. All this made the writer [Pereira] on more than one occasion play for many hours each day, and many times at each quarter of the hour, for at each quarter a new crowd replaced the one that had been there.”14

From this, it is clear that Pereira was playing the organ, and not merely setting a mechanism in motion. But if it had the mechanism in the first place, why did he have to tire himself out performing in this manner? Perhaps as originally installed, PEK1680 had no such automatic playing mechanism. Pereira offers a further clue to this when he states that just around this time the plans for the disposition of the organ and carillon had changed. Writing to the Assistant for Portugal (Francesco Lopez) in his 1682 letter, Pereira began by noting that

“In this letter Your Reverence tells me that you had not received mine [of 1681] which was taken by the Muscovite; and it adds that Your Reverence would like a description of the carillon; for which reason (not having thought of this before) I have been moved to redo the sketch [I made]; I am sending Your Reverence the front

http://db.itkc.or.kr/index.jsp?bizName=KO&url=/itkcdb/text/nodeViewIframe.jsp?bizName=KO&seojiId=kc_ko_h010&gunchaId=av011&muncheId=08&finId=172&NodeId=&setid=671233&Pos=0&TotalCount=1&searchUrl=ok (Accessed 15 November 2012.) By this date (1780), the Nantang of Pereira's day had burned down (on the night of the 13/14 February 1775) and the organ destroyed, as Pak noted to his great disappointment. 13 Kim Chang-ŏp, in: Park Chi-won, Jehol Diary. 14 Pereria, 1681. “…e foi tal o aplauso, e concurso, que teve; que fomos obrigados, a por soldadesca na Igreja, e seu pateo, para evitar desordens de gentios; e da muita turba que concurria a ver, e ouvir cousa nunca vista, nem ouvida em sua Corte. Sendo obrigado o Auctor a tanger mais de hum mes inteiro cada dia muita horas; e muitas dellas acada 4o para dar vasão a muita gente que corrie, e se renovava cada quarto de hora.”

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elevation of the whole of our church [the Nantang], in which Your Reverence will see along with the bells which you asked about, the great organ in the other tower, of which I thought Your Reverence would have been apprised last year. I must point out that the two towers are different than those in the sketch sent with Father Philippe Couplet15; because after the said Father left here (there being [only?] one drawing finished) I changed my mind and built the towers seen in this example [drawing], because even though this cost us more labor it seemed to be better suited to our plans for the organ and the bells, because we arranged the bells is another way. The crowds that come to see these two things have been incredible. The Lord is greatly to be praised, and much more for my making of these things, of which I never dreamed [I would].”16

What he mentions here is that the towers were of different design, and that the bells were arranged “in another way.” He does not give much information about the organ, but clearly the whole layout in the cramped organ chamber of the Nantang had been changed. So it is possible that the automatic playing mechanism was provided at a slightly later date, but on this Pereira is silent. Some of these questions could surely be answered if the drawings Pereira mentioned ever turn up.

A second matter for examination comes in assessing the evidence to judge just how large the Nantang organ was. It was only ‘large’ in comparison to the many small chamber organs, portatives and positives, which were commonly employed as domestic instruments at the time, and large in that there was nothing else in China like it at that date. First, then, Perieria’s own descriptions of the organ:

“At that same time [1679/80] I had the opportunity to make another organ for our church, the largest pipe of which is 2 braças long with proportionally correct diameter, with four

15 Verbiest sent Couplet back to Europe in December 1681with a great deal of material to be published and circulated to the clergy and intelligencia, apparently including Pereira’s drawings. Couplet finally reached the Netherlands in October 1683, and proceeded on a ‘grand tour’ of Europe on his errand. Pereira, writing in Beijing in June 1682, could not have known of Couplet’s 13-month delay at Batavia from January 1682 to February 1683. See Willy F. Vande Walle, “Geographical Intelligence on the Tartar Lands in Pereyra’s time. The Peking-Moscow-Amsterdam Connection”, in L.F. Barreto (Ed.), Tomás Pereira (1646-1708), op. cit, pp. 397-98; and Jeroom Heyndrickx (Ed.), Philippe Couplet, S.J. (1623-93): The man who brought China to Europe (Nettetal, Steyler Verlag, 1990.) 16 Tomás Pereira to Fr. Francisco Lopes, 10 June 1682, ARSI JS 199-1 fo. 45. (Hereafter, Pereira, 1682.) “Nesta carta me diz Vossa Reverência não chegaram as minhas, que levara o Moscovita, e acrescenta Vossa reverência desejariam lá a descrição dos sinos músicos, pelo que (não tendo eu já este pensamento), com a ordem de Vossa Reverência, me animei a renovar o rascunho, enviando a Vossa Reverência todo o frontispício de nossa Igreja no qual verá Vossa Reverência juntamente os sinos, que deseja, e o Orgão grande em outra torre, de que já o ano passado dei notícia a Vossa Reverência, e suponho já ser chegada. Advirto que as duas torres são diversas das que levou o Padre Philippe Couplet em debuxo porque, depois do dito Padre partir (sendo aquele debuxo ainda in fini), mudei de parecer, fazendo as torres como se vê no presente exemplar, por me ficarem mais acomodadas a nossos intentos do Orgão e sinos músicos, ainda que com mais algum trabalho, pois estavam já os sinos colocados de outro modo. É cousa incrível o concurso que têm estas duas cousas. Seja o Senhor muito louvado, e muito mais por me fazer obrar cousas que nunca sonhei.”

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stops, among which one when played sounds like human voices, and another imitates animal sounds.”17

And a year later, he described it in similar, though not identical terms:

“For this reason the same Father [Pereira again refers to himself in the third person] made another organ, containing 4 different registers (which in an earlier letter [1680] I have given the principal points about how it all started) whose longest pipe is more than two varas in length. It was installed this year [1680/81] in the church…”18

These comments confirm a four-rank, single-manual instrument of about five octaves (again with a short octave in the bass), much suggesting an instrument in the Italian tradition of the Antegnati family. If my deductions about the length of the pipes is correct (see below) then the open rank must have been at 8' pitch; the stopped rank at 4', or possibly 8'; the vox humana probably at 8'; and the birdsong/animal sound traps (very popular at this date in Italian and Iberian organs) probably involved small sets of relatively high-pitched pipes sounding in combinations, and activated by draw-knobs or levers.

The nature of the vox humana (vozes humanas) can only be guessed at, and there are two possibilities. One is the short-resonator reed stop with a metal (or more rarely, wood) tongue precisely fitted to beat against a concave ‘shallot’ (rather like a clarinet mouthpiece.) As such pipes would have been very tricky to make, and possibly inappropriate on a small organ, it seems at first glance that this stop was more likely the Italian-style voce umana, a celeste-type stop tuned slightly flat with a similar rank of pipes to give an undulating effect (the voce umana rank was often placed only in the treble register.19) Verbiest, in one of his letters from 1680, mentions that the pipes of at least one rank were made of tin (probably the 8' open rank, though not a possible 16' extension, discussed below) which indicates that more sophisticated organ building was now possible. Pereira’s voce umana might thus have been a diapason céléste, detuned slightly flat to undulate with the open 8' rank. However, the influence of Kircher’s Musurgia Universalis on the Beijing Jesuits suggests the opposite. (There were already multiple copies in China when Pereira arrived there in 1671, and I and others have maintained were an important source of information and inspiration for the Jesuits in Beijing, particularly for their organ building activity and the construction of mechanical devices in general. 20 ) Kircher devoted a chapter of his book to

17 Tomás Pereira to Antão Gonçalves, 20 March 1680. ARSI, JS 199-I, fo 34r-35v-36r. (Hereafter, Pereira, 1680.) “Por ocasião do Orgão se acometeu a fazer outro para a nossa Igreja, cujo maior canudo terá de comprido duas braça com sua proporcionada grossura, e com 4 registros, entre os quais há um que, tangendo, parecem vozes humanas, e outro que arremeda os animais.” 18 Pereira, 1681. “Pello que fez aqui o mesmo Padre, que asima, outro orgão, que inclúe em si 4 de diversas vozes (entre si de que suponho pellas cartas passaads haver la materia de seus principios) cujo mayor canudo será comprido mais de duas varas de medida. Colocouse este anno na Igreja...” 19 See the stop lists in: Barbara Owen, The Registration of Baroque Organ Music. (Bloomington, Indiana University Press, 1997), pp. 121-123. The voce umana was typically not found in 16th and early 17th century Italian organs; so if indeed PEK1680 had this stop, then this innovation showed a certain awareness of developing trends in organ building of the time. 20 D.F. Urrows, “The Pipe Organ and the Jesuits in China” pp. 13-16. The Jesuit library in Beijing also had a copy of Henning Grosse’s Theatri machinarum of 1614, and also its source, Ramelli’s Le diverse et artificiose

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“Anthropoglossarum fistularum proportiones determinare” (‘on working out the proper scale of vox humana pipes’.) This discussion goes on for several pages. 21 Kircher waxed enthusiastic about the vox humana:

There is also another type of [organ] pipe which we not incorrectly call a Vox humana [Anthropoglosson]. It really does imitate the sound of human speech or laughter, for which miracle of grace, in the whole of the system of the [pipe] organ nothing has come down to us which is regarded with greater admiration, [or] which enraptures more vehemently the mind of the listeners. This particular pipe is different from the zooglossa, and has a conical rather than a [straight] cylinder [resonator].22

What is surprising is that both the animal and vox humana pipes shown by Kircher are reed pipes. It has to be admitted then, that Pereira may have been describing a reed stop when he mentioned the specs of PEK1680, however difficult and unlikely an assignment making these pipes may have been for him. His complaints aside, he was not someone to shy away from challenges.

However, the comments Pereira made about the length of the longest pipe are at odds in the 1680 and 1681 letters. Two braças are equal to 4.4 meters, or about of 14 feet, 6 inches; the vara, however, was half this length. “Mais de duas varas de medida” would mean a pipe a bit longer than 2.2 meters, or about eight feet, a highly suggestive length. And another description of the organ, in the Annual Letter for 1680, (written by Grimaldi) describes it as “do orgão grande de nossa igreja de 4 registros e de tal modo que o mayor dos canudos não he menor de dua braça Sinica.”23 Through the need to qualify braça, Grimaldi suggests that the ‘Chinese braça’ was different from the Portuguese. And as mentioned earlier, Grimaldi elsewhere appears to have cited “more than two orgya” [i.e., something over 1.95 meters].

All these measures create a perplexing question. If the longer braça is right, this had to be a pipe at something near 16' pitch (Italian organs of this date, on which Pereira seems to have modeled PEK168024, sometimes had ‘transposing’ ranks at odd pitch levels.) It is also possible that the (8') open rank may have had a 16' extension of perhaps six to eight pipes. If so, then these were probably activated by rudimentary hitch-down pedals, meaning they could not be used melodically, but provided a ‘pedal point’ on the instrument. But all this is

machine of 1588. Also see Noël Golvers, “F. Verbiest, G. Magalhães, T. Pereyra and the others. The Jesuit Xitang College in Peking (1670-1688) as an extra-ordinary professional milieu”, in L.F. Barreto (Ed.) Tomás Pereira, S.J. (1646-1708). Life, work, and world, op. cit, p. 297, on Verbiest beginning a Chinese translation of the Musurgia. 21Athanasius Kircher, Musurgia universalis (Rome, 1650), Vol. 1, pp. 513-15. 22 Ibid., p. 514: “Est aliud adhuc fistularum genus, quod nos nõ incongruè Anthropoglosson appellamus, propè verum enim sermonem humanum risumque mentitur, adeos miram cōfert gratiam, ut in toto organico systemate nihil admiration dignius, quodque animum auditorium vehementius rapiat, inveniatur. Estq. fistula mixta ex zooglossa & tubo non purè cylindraceo sed conico cylindraceo.” 23 ARSI, JS 163 fo 109v. “…the grand organ of our church with four ranks, and of such design that the largest of the pipes is not less than two Chinese braça [in length].” 24 I do not have room here to go into greater discussion of the specifications of PEK1680. That will have to wait for my forthcoming book chapter, “The Pipe Organ of the Baroque Era in China”, to be published in East-West Musical Encounters, Michael Saffle and Hon-lun Yang (Eds.) (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming.)

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unlikely in such a (relatively) modest organ. Given that there has never been any mention of a pedal division on this instrument, the vara and the braça Sinica should in my view be treated as equivalent, and as correct for this context: this would also accord roughly with the orgya measurement, and finally also with the length of the ell or ‘arm’ used in 1695 by Dionysius Kao in his A short description of the vast Empire of China, and where he (or the translators) equated the longer brachia/braça with the English ‘long ell’.25

My conclusion is that Pereira used braça [Sinica] and vara interchangeably; Grimaldi used the braça Sinica and the orgya, noting that the latter is slightly shorter. The longest pipe in PEK1680, then, was probably a bit over two meters in length; it was at or near 8' (concert) pitch (though this concept is somewhat anachronistic); and thus at least one of the four stops of the organ was pitched to accompany voices at written registers. This also implies that only the longer pipes protruded much into the tower from the level of the organ in the gallery (or Coro, as it was called26) and it is hard to see how they could have spoken to the courtyard (out of doors), an extremely unwise arrangement anyway given climatic conditions in Beijing. As the ‘footprint’ of the southern end of the Nantang seems to have been very slightly smaller in Pereria’s day than at present, the available space for PEK1680 was quite restricted, an enlarged tower added in the 1670s or no. Adding the inevitable platform on which the organ was constructed (of say 10-15cm in height) to level the surface of the Coro and allow space for wires, trackers, and wind ducts to pass underneath (the bellows, according to Kim Chang-ŏp, were on the ground floor underneath the organ in the gallery, along with the drum-and-barrel mechanism), all this meant that four ranks of pipes were probably all that would fit in the case at the time. Again, finding Pereira’s drawing of the front of the church would be an immense help in knowing more

Besides Pereira, Verbiest and Grimaldi referred very briefly to the two later organs made for Kangxi, but without giving significant new data. The first of these (PEK1682) was an organ built on commission for the Emperor in 1681/82.27 This instrument, at the emperor’s request, included a percussion trap featuring one of the oldest of all Chinese instruments, the yunluo28:

“The King [sic.] wanted me to make another organ [PEK1682], in addition to the one I already made [PEK1679] (which I haven’t described or shown in the drawings because it is quite ordinary.) This one, however, has to play by itself without being

25 See: Dionysius Kao, A short description of the vast Empire of China, in: E. Ysbrants Ides, Three Years Travels from Moscow over-land to China… (London, W. Freeman, 1706; reprint, Singapore, Ascanio Books, 2007) p. 165. 26 An interesting article has recently been published on the architectural reconstruction of the late 18th Century Nantang: Lianming Wang and Francesco Maglioccola, “I disegni architettonici di una chiesa gesuita del diciottesimo secolo a Pechino (Nantang – Chiesa del Sud): analisi e ricostruzione” in: Le Vie dei Mercanti: S.A.V.E. Heritage: The IX International Forum of Studies “Safeguard of Architectural, Visual, Environmental Heritage (Aversa, 2011.) However, this does not mention the organ(s) at all. 27 In a sense, these two (PEK1682 and 1683) are not pipe organs at all, but mechanical musical instruments with pipe organ divisions: but as they are so closely bound up with Pereira’s activities, it would be pointless to omit them from the census of organs in China which I have been keeping since 1989. 28 Yunluo (雲鑼) ‘cloud gongs’. The Wade-Giles romanization, still encountered, is yün-lo.

David Francis Urrows/The Pipe Organs of Tomás Pereira/page 10

touched, and has to play along with a Chinese instrument called the yunluo, which consists of discs of bronze arranged in a frame. When they are struck by a small mallet (although in the drawing I have enclosed, each disc has its own proper mallet) [it must be] coordinated so as to play the same tune along with the organ, something upon which the King insisted (and no creative, ad libitum stuff.) But in spite of all these difficulties, with the help of God I will make this or another instrument to the King’s satisfaction, who at [Chinese] New Year [1683] will show this off, as if a marvel, to the mandarins of the Court.”29

Verbiest also described this instrument (“ingenho de musica”), and explained that it was installed with the organ division on the ground, and the yunluo somehow elevated, “… like our carillons that play the hours on a large clock in Europe.”30 As if this were not enough, Kangxi kept up his demands:

“And the King wants me to make a third organ [PEK1683], but with the most problematic specifications: that it should play by itself without being touched; that it should in the first place be a very elaborate and tall organ of great artifice when it starts to play, similar in sound to [one of] their old instruments, but [at the same time?] something completely original. Of the success of this I will write next year, if I am still living and the Lord keeps me to see his light.”31

And finally, Pereira mused on the unusual turn which his career had taken:

“I’m well aware that, on first glance, the Portuguese will be very surprised to see a priest of the [Jesuit] Mission among this pile of tubes. But I hope that the Lord, to whose greater glory they will sing, and for whose ends they have been tuned, will lift me and many others up to enjoy Him among them, the final and proper end of all our aims.”32

29 Pereira, 1682. “Quis o Rei lhe fizesse outro Orgão além do que já lhe tinha feito (de que não falo, nem mando debuxo, por de forma ordinária). Este, porém, agora quis tangesse de si, sem ser tocado, [e que] juntamente concorde com um instrumento Sínico, a que chamam yûnlô. que consta de uns pratinhos de bronze colocados em sua armação, aonde se tocam com um martelinho (ainda que no debuxo, que vai incluso, cada pratinho tem seu martelo), parapoder de si tanger uniforme com o orgão a mesma dança que o mesmo Rei assinou e não ad libitum do artífice, para não faltar esta dificuldade; o que, com a ajuda do Senhor, se fez em um e outro instrumento à satifação do Rei que, no seu ano novo (como maravilha), mostrou a obra aos Régulos desta Corte.” 30 F. Verbiest, Correspondance, pp. 366-367 (15 September 1681) cited in N. Golvers, “F. Verbiest, G. Magalhães, T. Pereyra and the others”, p. 297. “…que remedão as nossas campainhas dos preludios dos horlogios grandes em Europa.” 31 Pereira, 1682. “Quer de novo lhe faça o 3º Orgão, mas com circunstâncias mais molestas porque, demais de tanger de si sem ser tocado, quer que suba primeiro ao alto com artifício, aonde chegando comece a tanger. Pensamento este acomodado a suas fingidas antiguidades, mas em espécie muito diversa. De seu sucesso escreverei, vivendo, o ano seguinte, dando o Senhor ajuda para sair à Luz.” 32 Ibid. “Bem sei que, primo intuitu sera extranho ao olho portugues o Apóstolo na missão, entre tanta gaitas; mas espero no Senhor, cuja mayor gloria se canta com ellas, e a cujo fim se temperão, que entre ellas me levaría com outros muytos a gozar de si, ultimo e adequado fim de todos nossos intentos.” Also see: Joel Canhão, “Um músico português do sécula XVII na corte de Pequim: o Padre Tomás Pereira”, Revista de Cultura, 4, (Macau, Instituto Cultural de Macau, 1988) pp. 27-39.

David Francis Urrows/The Pipe Organs of Tomás Pereira/page 11

This hopeful summary is a key to understanding Pereira’s view of himself, in relation to his colleagues, and to his mission in the kingdom of China. Pereira never doubted what a stroke of luck it had been that Kangxi was an organ enthusiast: “All these honors,” he wrote in 1683, “have been accorded to us on account of these tubes of ours.”33 Kangxi was as interested in the mechanisms as he was in the music played on them. Pereira explained that “…for our talents, he has great admiration, and he admired the organ I have made this time just as much, as you don’t need hands and feet to play it…when it was all finished I took it to him and he looked it over and tried to activate the tracker [mechanism] with his hands…May the Lord be praised, who is served [in this way] by the least of his servants.”34 This, Pereira’s final major instrument (PEK1683) occupied him from late 1682 to 1683 in very trying circumstances. By his 1683 letter, written on 1 August, he could explain his delays, which he maintained were due to:

“…a lot of new assignments which I have asked to undertake. I am struggling to get out from under many major annoyances, and for the past six months have continually had more than 50 court officials on my back; and my own hands will never heal from all these cuts from tools (an occupational hazard) which during the winter [of 1682/83] got worse. All this requires ever-greater patience, from me who has little.

“I was reporting [in the letter of 1682] on the completion [sic.] of a new organ for the Emperor [PEK1683] (after many that I have made) in which I made for him [some] new inventions, and which is raised to a height of 12 braças35 and plays Chinese melodies all by itself. And the Lord (whose glory in cymbalis bene sonantibus is also [expressed as] a part of this machine) brought this work to His desired conclusion, including by his [the emperor’s] orders the well-tempered bells which play the same tune along with the organ in the same registers.

“This novelty was highly applauded, as novelties are. It was used publically for the performance of comedies, which the Emperor attended for 10 days, in celebration of the pacification of the [Chinese] Empire.36 On this occasion, given the height I’ve mentioned, and the organ and bells playing all by themselves, it was the subject of many laudatory comments, which I don’t need to repeat here. I could not possibly take [a] part in these comedies, which are continually played here.”37

33 Tomás Pereira to Fr. Francisco de Almada, 1 August 1683, ARSI, JS 199-I, fo 46. (Hereafter, Pereira, 1683.) “Em todas estas honras nos acompanhão nossas gaitas...” 34 Ibid. “...no Orgão grande, que se fez no mesmo tempo[,] cuja facilidade admirou tanto mais; quanto menos pees nem cabeça nellas açhava dantes...Quando acabado lho levei; considerando elle, vendo e menejando a traça com suas mãos...Seja o Senhor louvado, que se serve de meyos tão humildes e abjectos...” 35 Here again, the confusion over the term, ‘braça’. I opt once more for the braça Sinica, which would make the organ about 13 meters high (about 43 feet). It is hard to imagine how anything taller than this could have had the requisite stability to be moved around, as Pereira implies, given the weight of the bells hanging from the structure. 36 Pereira is probably referring to the successful suppression of the ‘Revolt of the Three Feudatories’ in the south of China (1673-81). 37 Pereira, 1683. “…pois o trabalho de dar novas, a quem supponho as deseja; me serve de alivio contra mayores molestias; que forão ellas por mais de meyo anno continuas com 50 e mais officiais ás costas; álem das mãos

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Just as he was inclined to slightly aggrandize the number of organs (“many”), Pereira occasionally catches himself and sounds a defensive note about his not-apparently-evangelical activities. All his labor has suddenly become no more than a “novelty”, an ephemeral construction passed off to credulous observers whose jaded sensibilities and tastes required new thrills. We must remember here the audience to which he was writing in Europe: there is a certain degree of ‘spin’ in the missionary correspondence at this time, whose goal (as Noël Golvers has said to me) was not so much “docere but persuader”. When he let his guard down, Pereira was justifiably proud of his instruments; and he was just as aware that there was a greater theme and aim in the building of them, than merely amusing the Emperor and his sycophants.

3.

I now come to the comments about Pereira’s organs made by others who were not involved with their construction, and most of them from later dates. From about 1703, for a period of about eight years the Nan Tang underwent a very major rebuilding. Pereira began work on a new organ, but died in 1708 and did not live to see the new church completed; one of his colleagues, Father Leopold Liebstein (1667-1711), apparently continued some work on the organ prior to his own death in 171138 (Chart 3, see appendix). From this we can see that (1.) the instruments for Kangxi disappear from the historical record, and that (2.) PEK1680 was still being attributed to Pereira after his death (by Matteo Ripa), but that the instrument was recycled in the usual way with organs. The usable parts (in particular the pipes) were salvaged, worn-out part were replaced, and the instrument was enlarged and improved several times between 1703 and the 1750s. This was required in particular due to the earthquake of 1730; and probably stimulated by the arrival in 1739 of Florian Bahr (1706-71), the only missionary known to have been trained as an organ-builder. 39 It is the remarks of Jean-Baptiste du Halde, published in 1735/36, which have caused great confusion:

“I have earlier spoken of an organ that was present to the Emperor [PEK1671]. As it was very small and defective in many respects, Father Pereira then made a larger one [PEK1680] which he placed in the Jesuit church in Beijing [Nantang]. The novelty

proprias, que nunqua se virão livres de feridas (precalsos do officio) que no inverno augmentão motivos de paciencia, a quem tem pouca... Dava tãobem no fim daquellas principios a novos Orgãos; que o Emperador (depois de muitos ja) quiz lhe fiƒesse de novas invençois: hum dos quais levantado em altura de 12 braças tange de si sem tangedor mudanças Chinas; a que o Senhor (cuja gloria, in cymbalis bene sonantibus de que tãobem constava a machina, incluindo em sy huã ordem de campaynhas bem temperadas, que ao som do Orgão, tocão de si as mesmas mudanças a compaço) tãobem se acha; deo o sucesso desejado. Foi notavel o aplauso, que teve a novidade; ajuntando-se-lhe a occurrencia de públicas comedias, a que o Emperador por 10 dias assistiu, congratulando-se com o povo a paz universal do Imperio; a cuja vista na sobredita altura, tangendo o nosso Orgão de si mesmo com suas campaynhas, faƒia soberba figura; da qual se disserão cousas tais; quais a mim me não convem escrever. Não posso porem negar o faƒer figura na Comedia, que aqui contenuamente representamos .” 38 See J.P. Janeiro, “The Organist and Organ Builder Tomás Pereira”, p. 565. 39 Bahr was the son of a Silesian organ builder, and had travelled to Beijing from Macau in 1739 along with Hallerstein and others, including the French painter J.D. Attiret (1702-68). Along with Pedrini and Walter, in 1743 they were called to the court to teach organ, violin, and flute to 18 of the courtiers. See: Willi Henkel, “Florian Bahr (1706-1771), ein schlesischer Jesuitenmissionar in China und Musiker am Hof in Peking”, Archiv für Schlesische Kirchengeschichte, Vol. 34 (1976) pp. 59-91.

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and harmony of this instrument charmed the Chinese. But what really astonished them was that this organ played European and Chinese melodies all by itself, and it also came to be seen as a very pleasant combination of two music traditions.”40

Du Halde was here merely copying Verbiest almost without thinking; indeed he preserved (and even aggravated, through his punctuation) the non-sequitur which I pointed out earlier. With respect to the non-sequitur, I assume that there is some material missing from the passage in the Astronomia, the passage which du Halde later paraphrased. It seems to me that after mentioning PEK1671, Verbiest intended to discuss PEK1679 (the two-rank positive for Kangxi, which did in fact replace PEK1671.) Somehow, either some written material was lost at this point, or perhaps he lost the thread in his writing and jumped in his excitement to a description of the nearly-completed PEK1680, without realizing that this did not logically follow the earlier part of his sentence.

4.

In the forgoing, I have begged one essential question, infrequently addressed much less answered adequately in the literature. Tomás Pereira was a priest, and he was gifted in musical and mechanical arts to a high degree. To accept that is not enough, however, to answer the question, where and when did he acquire his organ-building skills? 41 Could Pereira really have acquired such specific skills in addition to his musical, religious, and general education while a teenaged student in Portugal? It seems unlikely, and there are circumstantial factors which militate against this assumption. It was first of all not a trade he would have learned within his family, as did most organ builders. Second, despite the rich musical tradition within which Pereira grew up, it was not a good time for organ builders in Portugal in general. In an economically depressed environment, the years of Pereira’s youth were a very fallow time for this craft:

“Not many new instruments were built [in Portugal] in the 17th century. The main reason was probably economical. The 17th Century was for a long time a period of austerity which had seen the crown under Spanish domination; and even after 1640, when Portugal regained its independence, the situation did not immediately improve. Organs must have been occasionally [at least] enlarged.”42

Third, Pereira was only 19 when he sailed for China, along with Grimaldi, who later attested to Pereira’s talent for and study of music since his childhood. All of this suggests that he acquired his organ building and mechanical skills somewhere else, somewhere other than

40 J.B. du Halde, Description de l’Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise (Paris, la Haye, 1735-36) p. 334-35. “J’ai déja parlé d’une orgue qui avoit été présentée à l’Empereur. Comme elle étoit très-petit & defécteuse en beaucoup de choses, le P. Pereyra en fit faire une plus grande, qu’il plaça dans l’Eglise des Jésuites de Pekin. La nouveauté & l’harmonie de cet instrument, charma les Chinois. Mais ce qui les étonna davantage, c’est que cette Orgue joüoit d’elle-même des airs d’Europe & de la Chine, et faisoit même quelquefois un fort agréable melange de deux Musiques.” 41 For Pereira’s life up to his departure for Goa in 1666, see: Ana Christina da Costa Gomes, “Tomás Pereira – Family and Training in Portugal”, in L.F. Barreto, Tomás Pereira (1646-1708): Life, Work and World, pp. 33-42. 42 Carlos de Azevedo, Baroque Organ-Cases of Portugal (Amsterdam, Knuf, 1972) pp. 9-10.

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Portugal, and yet he had them when he arrived in China in 1671. Noёl Golvers has postulated that Pereira acquired these skills in his first six years in Beijing (1673-79), and sees “a direct continuity between [Gabriel de] Magalhães’s specialty of building enormous clocks, with musical automata” and Pereira’s work. 43 This is doubtless in large part true; but organ-building – in particular pipe-making – requires both technical and aesthetic skills which I doubt he could have acquired only from books such as the Musurgia. I would like to propose here a new line of inquiry, that this ‘somewhere else’ might have been Goa.44

Regrettably there is little data relating to Pereira’s years in Goa. There are however indications that a tradition, if a small one, of organ-building had been established at Goa in the 16th century. Ian Woodfield has documented organs being taken by Portuguese missionaries to Goa as early as 1520. Francis Xavier brought a ‘monacordio’ to Japan in 1551, and organs followed; and Alessandro Valignano, the Jesuit Visitor to Japan and China, arrived in Japan in July 1579 with two portatives brought from Goa via Macau.45 By 1600 there were active traditions of organ building in the Spanish missions in Mexico and the Philippines, which shows the viability of such an industry at the time.46 Whether brought from Europe, or made on the spot, Goa was a clearing-house for such things as organs and other musical instruments. Grimaldi and Pereira had sailed from Lisbon to Goa in April 1666. They reached Goa in October, where Pereira spent then five years completing his studies, eventually leaving for Macau in May 1671. Grimaldi left Goa in 1669, two years earlier, and he was in Macau and later in Guangzhou by the end of that year. While little has been written about Pereira’s years in Goa, these five years are precisely the time when, in addition to studying for the priesthood, he would have been at the right point career-wise (if I may indulge in very modern language) for him to acquire specialized skills. That is, if we could show (and this is what I mean by a line of inquiry) further evidence for organ-building in Goa, beyond the circumstantial evidence, and comments such as that of Sir Thomas Roe, made in India around 1615, that the local people “imitate everything wee bring.”47

To theorize further on this, I might refer to the one organ with a Pereira connection which I have not considered much, PEK1671. This is the instrument, derided by Verbiest and du Halde, presented along with a harpsichord on 20 February 1672 to Kangxi by Grimaldi and Herdtrich.48 In the event, Grimaldi was sick, and Herdtrich went to the palace alone, and

43 N. Golvers, “F. Verbiest, G. Magalhães, T. Pereyra and the others”, p. 294. It may also be that Pereira’s experience as an organ builder was of help to Grimaldi when he constructed a hydraulic organ in a courtyard of the Forbidden City in the 1680s. See: Jonathan D. Spence, Emperor of China: A Self-portrait of K’ang-shi (New York, Penguin, 1974) pp. 72f, which quotes from the 1688 Flettinger Manuscript in the Hague. This ‘organ’ has the number PEK1687 in the census. 44 For Pereira in Goa, see: Isabel M. Pina, “From Lisbon to Beijing” in L.F. Barreto, Tomás Pereira (1646-1708): Life, Work and World. pp. 185-201. 45 Ian Woodfield, “The keyboard recital in oriental diplomacy, 1520-1620”, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 115/1 (1990), pp. 33-62. 46 See: David R.M. Irving, Colonial Counterpoint: Music in early modern Manila (London, Oxford University Press, 2010.) 47 I. Woodfield, “The Keyboard Recital in Oriental Diplomacy, 1520-1620”, p. 56 48 F. Verbiest, Correspondance, pp. 338-39, cited in N. Golvers, “F. Verbiest, G. Magalhães, T. Pereyra and the others”, op. cit., p. 283.

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played both the harpsichord and the organ for Kangxi. 49 Kangxi then tried out both instruments and appointed both priests to work at the court on the spot. This organ (PEK1671) might have been made in Europe, in which case it was probably quite small, given the distance it had to travel.50 Circumstantial evidence can, however, sometimes be persuasive: I will go as far as to conjecture that this organ – possibly even made by Pereira himself – might have been brought from Goa to Macau in mid-late 1671 by Pereira, and then taken to Beijing by Grimaldi and Herdtrich at the end of the year. The dates fit very well. Pereira’s arrival in Macau in perhaps September, and the departure of Grimaldi and Herdtrich at the end of the year, are reasonably well-documented51, and it is immensely attractive to think that PEK1679 was Pereira’s response to his own earlier work, “très-petit & defécteuse en beaucoup de choses.” Perhaps a small bit of corroboration lies in Verbiest’s comment that in the case of PEK1679, Pereira “jam aliud præ manibus habet” (has now set his hands to [making] another one), with the possible implication that he (Verbiest) knew that PEK1671 had been made by Pereira, though clearly not in China given the date of Pereira’s arrival in Macau.52

Pereira tended toward Realpolitik in his assessment of the situation in China, and in his 1681 letter, he explained the frustrations he and his colleagues experienced with the realities of court patronage. Continuing his discussion of PEK1680, he observed with some exasperation:

“We hope that this [organ] will give occasion for the Emperor to visit the church, he who has been impeded [from doing this] for all these years by politics, and who has had for the time being to exercise patience, and who has had to master his appetite and interests which he would like to show [towards us]. Nothing else could be obstructing this [visit], no other motive or issue than politics, or else his curiosity would easily have won out, for he showed a great desire to see the organ when he first heard about it.”53

In the end, Pereira and the Jesuits had to wait three more years for Kangxi’s visit to the Nantang (in May 1684), but Pereira’s spin on the situation was positive: “This novelty has really shaken things up here in this court [realm], as the sound of our organ [PEK1680] has been heard by the people, among whom we hope many will be penetrated to the heart.”54

49 See: Ugo Baldini, “Engineering in the Missions and Missions as Engineering: Claudio Filippo Grimaldi until his return to Beijing (1694), in L.F. Barreto, Tomás Pereira (1646-1708): Life, Work and World, op. cit., p. 95. 50F. Verbiest, AE, Ch. 25, where Verbiest describes going with Pereira and Grimaldi to see the emperor sometime in 1676 and play on the “organum, & clavicymbalum Europæum, quod olim obtulimus…” 51 See I.M. Pina, “From Lisbon to Beijing”, pp. 194-96. 52 J.P. Janeiro (“The Organist and Organ Builder Tomás Pereira”, p. 558) also suggests that PEK1671 may have been made by Pereira. 53 Pereira, 1681. “Esperamos que com esta occasião vehna à Igreja o Emperador, impedido todos estes annos de sua politica; a qual entendo terá paciencia por esta vez; deixando se vencer de seu appetitte, e desejo, que mostrou de ouvir. Nem se deixará mortificar este, não tendo para isso outro motivo que politico; o qual (dominando o appetitte) facilmente se capeya; de que mostrou bom desejo, quando soube a primeira nova do Orgão…” 54 Ibid. “Coisa novatel foi o aballo que fez nesta Corte o som do nosso Orgão, nos ouvidos dos gentios; dos quais muitos, deixandoo penetrar aos da alma.”

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This statement also implies that the idea that the missionaries invariably had (or were resigned to) only a very limited ‘audience’ within the court for their productions and novelties, such as the pipe organ, is an oversimplification of the actual situation. Pereira was in no way a normal organ builder, and the instruments he constructed were an eclectic collection of oddities – ‘curious and scientific things’, in a sense truly baroque. PEK1682 and 1683, for example, would today be almost unrecognizable as pipe organs. But they reflected the craze of the time for mechanical devices which had been growing since the late Renaissance, encouraged by widespread printing of books on the topics such as those of Kircher, Grosse, and Ramelli which found their way to Beijing.55 In sum, the pipe organ in all its manifestations was at the time the most complex mechanical device in Western culture (as it had been since antiquity) and would not be supplanted in this regard until the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. It was this complexity innate to the research-and-development model they adopted, of which Pereira and his colleagues made use – highly original use in many respects – for their diplomatic, political, and evangelical agenda in China under the Kangxi Emperor.

55 See fn. 20.

PEK 1679 PEK 1680 PEK 1682 PEK 1683 (PEK 1677) Other

Instrument Document

2-rank positive organ for Kangxi (“1o”).

4-rank organ for the Nan (Xi) Tang, placed in the Coro under the south-east tower.

Automatic organ with yunlo trap for Kangxi (“2o”).

Automatic carillon-organ for Kangxi (“3o”).

(Clock- carillon in south-west tower of Nan (Xi) Tang).

PEK 1671: a small positive presented to Kangxi by Grimaldi and Herdtrich in 1672.

Pereira, 20 March 1680 ARSI JS 199-I, fo 36

Kangxi commissions (in 1679) an organ and a harpsichord; work interrupted by the earthquake of 2 Sep. 1679.

Mentions the organ “for our church”; longest pipe “2 braças” in length. [Organ completed prior to this letter.]

Mentions that he played an “organ [PEK1671] and harpsichord” for Kangxi.

Pereira, 30 August 1681 ARSI JS 199-I, fo 42

Mentions this organ having “two ranks of pipes, hoc est two organs joined in one” [plural form for an organ with more than one rank.]

4-rank organ; longest pipe “more than 2 varas” in length; mentions the crowd in the courtyard

Pereira, 10 June 1682 ARSI JS 199-I, fo 45

Mentions “ordinary organ” made for the Emperor (= 1o).

Mentions the carillon (PEK 1677) and the “great organ.”

Automatic organ for Kangxi with a yunluo trap, not yet completed (= 2o) and intended for the Chinese New Year (1683) celebrations.

A “third organ” (= 3o) for Kangxi, “very tall” and playing automaticallywith a drum mechanism.

Mentions that he is sending a drawing of the façade, with the carillon and the organ in the 2 towers, and a drawing of PEK1682.

Pereira, 1 August 1683 ARSI, JS 199-I, fo 46

An automatic carillon-organ for Kangxi, “12 braças high”, moveable and used in public in comic plays.

Mentions the completion of PEK 1683 “among many that I have made”.

Chart 2 PEK 1679 PEK 1680 PEK 1682 PEK 1683 (PEK 1677) Other

F. Verbiest, Astronomia Europaea (1679), p. 91

Organ by Pereira, “brevi, ut spero, collocandum”. Mentions the barrel drum automatic mechanism .

p. 93, Mentions the clock-carillon and crowds in the courtyard.

Verbiest, ARSI JS 116 fo 168r (L.A. for 1678/79)

“duplici (ut aiunt) registro constans, uno videlicet tuborum apertorum, altero clausorum, universim numero nonaginta. ”

Mentions the 4-rank organ for the Nantang (Xitang) begun in 1679.

Mentions “organum et clavicymbalum & chelim…” (“organum” probably refers to PEK1671.)

F. Grimaldi, ARSI JS 163 fo

104r, 109v (1680)

Mentions the 4-rank organ, “hum grande e muy bem feito Orgao.”

Mentions the organ with the yunluo trap.

“tem feito otras dous menores de 2 registros” [copies of PEK1679].

Verbiest, Corr., pp. 305-06, 1681

Mentions the Nantang (Xitang) bells and organ in the towers of the church, and crowds in the courtyard.

Verbiest, Corr., pp. 366-67 (15 Sept. 1681)

Refers to this organ, though possibly to PEK 1683.

(see at left)

11 May 1684 Kangxi visits the Nantang (Xitang).

JS 150 fo 141r (13 Feb. 1687)

Organ repaired.

JS 150 fo 143r (6 Mar. 1687)

Further repairs.

Chart 3 PEK 1679 PEK 1680 PEK 1682 PEK 1683 (PEK 1677) Other You Tong (尤侗) ca. 1700, “Europe” (歐羅巴)

Mentions PEK1680 in this zhuzhici ( folk poem, 竹枝詞) .

E.Y. Ides, Driejaarige Reize naar China 1694/pub. 1704

In 1694, visits Nantang (Xitang) and mentions “a large Organ, made by Father Thomas Pereyra”

Mentions the clock-carillon.

M. Ripa, ca. 1710-23

Mentioned an organ “built by a Portuguese priest”, but this refers to the 1711organ Nantang.

Kim Chang-op (김창업/金昌業) 1712

Mentions the 1711 organ playing automatically; bellows/ barrel drum mechanism on ground floor.

Cited 1780 by Park Chi Won, Yŏrhailgi (Jehol Diary).

J.B. Du Halde, Description de l’Empire de la Chine, 1735-36

Mentions Pereira, and states that PEK 1680 “played European and Chinese melodies all by itself.”

Zhao Yi (趙翼), Yan pu za ji (檐曝

杂记.) ca. 1759

Describes an organ in the Nantang, extensively rebuilt from Pereira and Liebstein’s 1703-11 instrument.

J-B. J. de Grammont, Lettres de J. de Grammont ad familiare, early 1776, ASJ, Vanves

13/14 February 1775: Nantang entirely destroyed by fire: “a été brulée et réduite en cendres.”

Claims that the organ could have survived 1775 must be dismissed as wishful thinking.