Sacred Resonance Sound Archive # 1: The Pipe Organ in Flesh and Spirit. A Sacred Ecstasy

Amar Priganica´s Sound Archive explores the acoustic vibrations of the sacred – from organ drones and sound experiments to recordings in religious spaces. It gathers works where resonance becomes both a spiritual and corporeal experience.

The pipe organ stands as a unique phenomenon in the history of music, uniting sound, religion, and technology in ways that demand renewed aesthetic reflection. Far more than a relic of liturgical tradition, the organ persists as a vital force in the contemporary sonic imagination. Long celebrated for its majestic timbre—famously hailed by Mozart as the “King/Queen of Instruments”—the organ also bears a complex past, rich in metaphysical symbolism and marked by striking contradictions.

Central to this examination is the organ’s transformation from an instrument of imperial spectacle to one of spiritual resonance. The notion of an “acoustic theology,” in which the resonance of architecture itself evokes the voice of the divine, further highlights how musical modes and drones have shaped emotional, spiritual, and political dynamics throughout history. This inquiry traces the organ’s path from the technological ingenuity of ancient Alexandria to the reverberant spaces of Gothic cathedrals, encompassing philosophical debates in Plato’s academy, the mystical works of Hildegard von Bingen, biblical narratives, and contemporary sound experiments.

By considering the organ not merely as an instrument, but as a philosophical and theological idea, this discussion addresses megaphonic power, religious ecstasy, immersive soundscapes, and the complexities of sacred violence. The exploration culminates in the presentation of an original organ composition, Virgo, which synthesizes these historical and conceptual strands in a contemporary artistic context.

The story of the organ begins not in a church at all, but in the bustling, Hellenistic workshops of 3rd-century BC Alexandria. There, it is said that the engineer Ctesibius of Alexandria invented the hydraulis, the first mechanical pipe organ, which used water pressure to push air through pipes . This ingenious device – the world’s first „keyboard“ instrument – was not aimed at heavenly praise but at secular spectacle. The hydraulis’s sound was loud and penetrating, designed to thrill crowds in open-air arenas . In fact, during the late Roman Republic and Empire, organs were a centerpiece of imperial games and circuses, blasting triumphant tunes to accompany chariot races, gladiatorial combat, and public entertainments . It is chilling to consider that the earliest Christians may have died in the arenas with the organ’s blare ringing in their ears – the same instrument that would later lead hymns in their basilicas. This dark irony was not lost on the early Church. The Church Fathers, witnessing how the organ’s ancestor (and its reed-voiced kin, the pagan aulos) inflamed crowds into frenzies of lust and bloodlust, were deeply suspicious. To their ears, the organ carried the sonic residue of Dionysian excess – wanton dances, drunken ecstasy, the “wail of the aulos” associated with orgiastic rites. How could such an instrument ever be reconciled with the chaste worship of Christ?

For centuries, instruments were banished from Christian liturgy as being too “carnal.” Yet the organ’s story is one of eventual transformation and sublimation of its “fleshly power” into spirit. The turning point came through detours of history: by the 6th–7th centuries AD, organ technology had improved (the clumsy water hydraulics were replaced by efficient bellows ), and the instrument found its place in the Byzantine court. In Constantinople, organs became imperial regalia – marvelous diplomatic gifts and emblems of the Christian emperor’s glory. In 757 AD, the Byzantine emperor Constantine V sent a splendid organ as a gift to King Pepin the Short of the Franks . This royal curiosity astonished the West. Pepin’s son, Charlemagne, soon requested one for his chapel in Aachen , planting the seed of the organ in Western Europe. Over the next few centuries, organs cautiously entered churches, first as prestigious ornaments and later as functional musical instruments. By the Gothic era, nearly every major cathedral boasted organ pipes in its choir loft.

Crucially, as the organ moved from amphitheater to cathedral, its symbolic character began to change. What had been an instrument of imperial spectacle and even war (one medieval legend speaks of a terrifying “war organ” used to rout enemies with sound) was reborn as an instrument of spiritual awe. Medieval thinkers even reinterpreted the organ’s pagan heritage in Christian terms: the multi-piped organ could symbolize the many voices of humanity joined in one harmony of praise. The 14th century Roman Catholic Bishop and composer Phlippe de Vitry likened the diversity of an organ’s pipes to the diversity of peoples in the Church – each pipe producing a different tone, yet all tuned to a common purpose of simultaneous worship. In the grand unity of the organ’s sound, he saw an antidote to discord – or, more provocatively, a kind of “holy synchronization” of souls.

By the 13th century, the organ had firmly established itself in the house of God. The timing was apt: Europe was in the midst of building the great Gothic cathedrals, those towering “stone bibles” and acoustical marvels. (Already By 1033, a thousand years after Christ’s death, many expected his return—just as the Book of Revelation foretold Satan’s release “for a short time” after Christ’s millennial reign. But heaven stayed silent. In response, a surge of church-building swept across Europe—from Cluny to Speyer—as if to fill the apocalyptic void with sacred architecture.) These new cavernous spaces cried out for a colossal sound to match their scale. And so the organ, once a sideshow noisemaker, was consecrated as the “Queen of Instruments” at the heart of the sacred service. The fleshly power of the organ’s sound – its capacity to awe and overwhelm – was now channeled to serve the spirit. What had been circus music became the voice of the cathedral.

It is in the Gothic cathedral that the organ’s metaphysical potential truly blossomed. These cathedrals were not only visual triumphs of stone and glass, but also acoustic triumphs – resonant chambers carefully tuned for worship. In a Gothic church, the architecture itself is an extension of the organ. Every ribbed vault, every arch, every hollow triforium becomes part of a giant resonating chamber, a sounding board for the instrument. As one moves from the Romanesque to the Gothic, there is a marked shift: walls thin into stained glass, interiors soar higher – and the reverberation times increase. Sound lingers and layers in the air. Music (and especially the organ’s music) begins to blur the boundary between source and space.

The medieval builders might not have articulated it in modern terms, but they intuitively grasped an acoustic theology of resonance: build a space so large and reverberant that human voices and instruments merge into something more. At the dedication of Solomon’s Temple, the Scripture in Second Chronicles, chapter five, verses eleven to fourteen, reads as follows:
11 And when the priests came out of the Holy Place (…) 12 and all the Levitical singers, (…) ,their sons and kinsmen, arrayed in fine linen, with cymbals, harps, and lyres, stood east of the altar with 120 priests who were trumpeters) 13 and it was the duty of the trumpeters and singers to make themselves heard in unison in praise and thanksgiving to the Lord, and when the song was raised, with trumpets and cymbals and other musical instruments, in praise to the Lord: “For he is good,for his steadfast love endures forever,” the house, the house of the Lord, was filled with a cloud, 14 so that the priests could not stand to minister because of the cloud, for the glory of the Lord filled the house of God.”. 
Likewise in a Gothic cathedral, sound itself becomes that mystical cloud filling the house. The organ, when it plays, does not sing alone – it plays the entire space. Each note launches cascades of echoes from the stone pillars and vaults, until “the whole room becomes an instrument” . The faithful listening are enveloped by a sonic cloud, a many-layered halo of tones. It was thought that in the cathedral, the music “reflects so that the voice of God may lodge in the heads of the faithful” . This is a theology of acoustics: God’s voice isn’t a literal thunderclap or a mystical whisper, but a resonance, a standing wave in the air that induces awe and inner reverberation. The drone of a deep organ pedal rolling through the nave can feel like creation’s own primordial hum, the “OM“, or like the very breath of God, the “ruach“ which blew Adam into life, vibrating in your bones.

Even before organs were common, the Gothic soundscape was being shaped by human voices through techniques like the organum in early polyphony. Imagine a single plainchant melody, now sustained as a slow-moving drone in the bass while other voices weave around it in sinuous lines. Medieval composers discovered that this could flood a church with sound. A low pedal tone (the bourdon or drone) would excite the building’s acoustics, making the whole space hum. If you have ever heard medieval organum performed in a stone church, you know the uncanny power of a single sustained note. In those reverberant spaces, a deep bass note isn’t just heard – it’s felt, saturating the air. Chroniclers tell us of early organs (before they had keyboards as we know them) that could only play “Mixture” chords – each key sounding a stack of parallel fifths and octaves . These primitive organs did not play elaborate melodies; they acted more like drones or harmonic anchors, adding a splendid halo of overtones to the choir. Parallel fifths (consecutive fifth intervals) were considered a pure, ringing sonority since antiquity – Pythagoras had deemed the fifth second only to the octave in natural consonance of the harmonic overtone series . When the organ doubled voices in perfect fifths and fourths (a practice called organum itself), it created a shimmering, otherworldly effect – as if angelic trumpet harmonies were descending to blend with human song.

No one captured the idea of cosmic harmony via the organ better than the 17th-century polymath Athanasius Kircher. In his grand vision of universal knowledge, Kircher loved to illustrate analogies between music and the cosmos. He even famously portrayed the Creation of the World as an organ: each of the six days of Creation corresponded to one of the organ’s stops, which God pulled in succession to bring the universe into being . For Kircher and his contemporaries like Gaspar Schott, the organ was the perfect symbol of divine order and universal harmony . Think about it – an organ contains a miniature universe of sounds: dozens of stops, each a different timbre, all governed by a single musician. It can be as soft as a breath or as loud as a thunderclap. It can imitate the chirp of a bird or blast like an entire brass band. To Kircher, this made the organ a microcosm of Creation: diverse yet unified, material yet animated by spirit (the wind). The organist pulling stops on an organ was akin to God issuing forth creation by Logos (Word) and Pneuma (Breath). In a very real sense, every organ is operated by wind (air pressure) and thus every organ performance is an allegory of the divine breath – the ruach – moving through the world. The metaphysical resonance of a single organ chord in a cathedral can thus be seen as a mini reenactment of the Creation: “And God said, let there be sound… and there was sound.”

Thus, by the High Middle Ages, the organ had shed its taint of the arena and had donned a sacred mantle. It became at once an instrument and an architectural event. Its authority in sacred space was undisputed – so much so that even during times of iconoclasm and reform, the organ often evoked fierce protection. (The organ’s “holy authority” has not entirely faded: consider how even today, in a moment of national mourning or celebration in a cathedral, it is the organ’s voice that confers solemnity and grandeur, more than any amplified recording could.)

Let us turn from architecture to music itself – to the mystical language of musical modes and tonalities. If the organ is the body, the mode (scale) is the soul of the music it plays. In antiquity, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle believed that different musical modes held distinct moral and emotional powers. Music wasn’t just art – it was ethics and politics by other means. Plato, in his Republic, rather infamously banned most traditional Greek modes in his ideal city, allowing only those that he thought nurtured virtue. “Leave me the Dorian and the Phrygian,” says Plato – for these, he thought, could suitably imitate the accents of a brave man or the calm of a temperate one . Dorian, in Plato’s mind, was sturdy and warlike – the musical equivalent of a disciplined hoplite. The Phrygian mode he associated with more peaceable, contemplative moods (somewhat contrary to how later ages imagined Phrygian; there is room for confusion here because the medieval names of modes got scrambled relative to the Greek ones !). Aristotle later added his own twist: Phrygian mode inspires enthousiasmos, a kind of divine ecstatic fervor, he noted, and is thus especially powerful . This idea of music inducing en-theos (being “possessed by a god”) was not abstract – think of the frenzied rites of Dionysus where flutes and drums drove dancers into trance, or the solemn chants of Eleusinian mysteries. Different modes were thought to tune the soul in different ways: one for courage, one for moderation, others for sorrow or for unbridled pleasure.

The medieval Church inherited these ideas in a modified form through Boethius and others, developing the system of Gregorian church modes. By naming the ecclesiastical scales after Greek modes (Dorian, Phrygian, Lydian, etc.), they implicitly acknowledged that music has spiritual effects. Modes became associated with sacred or emotional atmospheres: for example, “Lydian” chants were often jubilant; “Phrygian” chants, with their flat second note, carried an eerie, plaintive quality. Composers like the 12th-century mystic Hildegard von Bingen exploited these modal colors for spiritual ends. Hildegard – a visionary abbess, poet, and composer – wrote music of unprecedented expressive range for her nuns. In her cycle of chants honoring Saint Ursula and the 11,000 virgin martyrs, Hildegard chose the mode that we call Phrygian (the 2nd mode) for several pieces . To modern ears, the Phrygian mode has an “oriental,” byzantine, otherworldly tinge – it feels slightly unstable, as if yearning or grieving. For Hildegard, telling the story of Ursula’s mass martyrdom (a brutally violent and yet spiritually triumphant tale), this mode was apt. It clothed the narrative in an archaic, exotic aura, perhaps to evoke the ancient battlefield of faith on which Ursula stood.

Hildegard’s sequence “O Ecclesia” is a striking example. It recounts in symbolic poetry the fate of Ursula, a Christian princess who, with her company of virgins, was slaughtered by pagan Huns near Cologne after refusing to renounce her faith. This grisly subject – arrows piercing virgins’ hearts, blood and sanctity intermingling – is transfigured by Hildegard into a mystical meditation. And the sound of that meditation is rooted in a low drone and the winding Phrygian melody above it. In a contemporary interpretation by the early music ensemble “Graindelavoix“ male voices hold a nasal bourdon (drone) – perhaps on a single “modal final” note – while female voices (or soloists) spin out melismatic lines that float above . The effect is hypnotic and intense. The drone is like the earth or the Church – immovable, firm. The melodies rising above are like the souls of the martyrs ascending in ecstasy even as their bodies fall. The Phrygian modality, with its lowered second scale degree, injects a sense of solemn tension, a gravity that never quite resolves – fitting for a story that, in worldly terms, did not have a happy ending, yet in spiritual terms was a great victory.

The musical mode becomes a vector of meaning – emotional, spiritual, even political. When Plato warned that the wrong music could trigger social chaos, he implicitly acknowledged music’s political vector. Jump to centuries later: Hildegard’s music, composed within cloister walls, may not be overtly political, but it is profoundly social and spiritual. By invoking the “extatic” Phrygian colors, she aligns the suffering of Ursula with the ecstatic suffering of Christ, with the holy madness of martyrdom.
Music can be bliss, but it can also be weaponry. The ancients knew this well, and so do modern governments (consider the use of loudspeakers, sirens, or even “sound cannons” for crowd control). The line between religious ecstasy and sonic violence is intriguingly thin. Let’s venture into the realm of speculation and myth, where sound becomes an almost supernatural force – both creative and destructive. The Bible is an excellent source of such sonic lore. We find in its pages a series of episodes that could be compiled into a veritable history of sacred sonic warfare. For example, consider:

The Fall of Jericho: Joshua’s army was instructed to march around the walled city blowing shofars (ram’s horn trumpets) for seven days. On the final day, with a great blast and shout, the mighty walls of Jericho miraculously came tumbling down. In military terms, it was psychological warfare; in spiritual terms, it was sound as the hand of God. (Fascinatingly, modern acousticians and mythologists alike have speculated: was this story a memory of some real sonic effect, or purely metaphor? Either way, Jericho stands as a symbol of sound overpowering the physical world.)

Mount Sinai Revelation: When Moses brought the Israelites to Sinai to receive the covenant, the mountain was engulfed in cloud and thunder – and notably, a “loud trumpet blast” rang out from the heavens, growing louder and louder, causing the people to tremble in fear . This unearthly shofar sound is depicted as the very voice of God’s presence, instilling terror and awe to prepare the people for the divine law. Here, sound mediates between the mortal and the immortal, literally shaking humans to their core as a prelude to spiritual transformation.

The Trumpets of Apocalypse: In the New Testament’s Book of Revelation, seven angels blow seven trumpets, each unleashing a cosmic catastrophe – from hail and fire to falling stars and plagues. The apocalyptic trumpet is the ultimate megaphone of God, a signal that announces world-shattering events. Again, sound is more than symbol; it is an active agent of change (or destruction) in the fabric of reality.

Such stories highlight what we might call the “megaphonic power” of sacred sound: when deployed in ritual or mythic contexts, a loud sound (a trumpet blast, a chorus, an organ chord) becomes a channel for divine or cosmic force. The philosopher Giorgio Agamben notes how aesthetic experiences can produce a kind of “holy terror” – an awe so deep it’s indistinguishable from dread . The biblical trumpets exemplify this holy terror: they are beautiful in their purpose and terrifying in their effect. This duality – ecstasy and dread entwined – is at the heart of many religious sound traditions.

It’s not only Western or biblical culture that links sound with power and ecstasy. Think of the Dionysian rites in ancient Greece – frenzied music (pipes, drums, clashing cymbals) driving maenads into states of possession. Or the Sufi ceremonies with their droning chants and dizzying repetition, designed to induce trance and communion with the divine. Everywhere, we see a pattern: drone, rhythm, and high volume are age-old tools to alter consciousness. They can be used benignly – to heal, unify, or bring spiritual visions – but they can also overwhelm and subjugate. Sound can flood our sensory field, bypassing rational defenses, which is why it can be used to sway crowds or even incapacitate. (Modern scientists have experimented with infrasonic frequencies that cause anxiety or nausea – a grim techno-echo of the walls of Jericho.)

One modern thinker-artist who explores this is Steve Goodman (aka Kode9) in his book Sonic Warfare: Sound, Affect, and the Ecology of Fear. Goodman writes about Gregory Whiteheads 2004 BBC radio essay, which dubs the Jericho story “Project Jericho” – framing it as the first known use of sound as a weapon . It’s a startling lens: reading ancient myth as a military R&D case study. While this might be tongue-in-cheek, it underscores a serious point: loud, immersive, or infrasound has a physiological impact. At certain intensities, sound is a physical force, not just a metaphorical one.
Now, let’s relate this back to the organ and architecture. A Gothic cathedral with a full organ and choir in blast is perhaps the closest pre-modern Europe got to a sonic weapon. Envision a medieval feast day: the organ’s pipes roar, the bells in the towers peal, a hundred voices chant – for an uninitiated peasant entering from the quiet outside, it must have been overwhelming, a shock-and-awe for the soul. But unlike a weapon aimed to harm, this sonic onslaught was meant to annihilate the ego, to humble and uplift simultaneously. I often think of it as a kind of benign bombardment: the stone walls quake with alleluias, the floor rumbles with pedal tones, your chest vibrates, your ears ring – and ideally, your spirit yields, your heart opens. In that state, it is believed that the sacred terror can seep in deeply.

Consider the term “immersion” — now used positively in contexts like immersive art or immersive sound. Its Latin root, immergere, means ‘to plunge into’ or ‘to dip deeply.’ It comes from in- (into) and mergere (to sink or submerge). The word once evoked the act of being fully enveloped — in water, in darkness, in mystery — and still carries that sense of surrender into something vast and overwhelming. To be immersed in sound is to be bathed, even drowned in it. Many religious rituals symbolically “sacrifice” the individual self to achieve communion – through fasting, dance until collapse, or indeed through being immersed in overwhelming sound. The shouts at Jericho, the trumpets at Sinai, the organ thunder at Easter Vigil – all involve a kind of surrender: walls fall, people tremble, congregants weep. This is sacred violence in a peculiar sense: not violence against so much as violence within – a breaking of ordinary boundaries.

Friedrich Nietzsche famously wrote about the Apollonian vs. Dionysian principles in art – the orderly, rational, measured (Apollonian) versus the chaotic, ecstatic, boundary-dissolving (Dionysian). He held that Greek tragedy was powerful because it united both: the beautiful form with the intoxicating content. I propose that the organ in a cathedral is a Dionysian machine operated for Apollonian ends. The architecture and liturgy provide the strict form (Apollonian structure), but the sound itself – especially at its peak – unleashes Dionysian ecstasy. When the two principles unite, as Nietzsche dreamt, the result is transformative. The listener may be carried to a state of holy rapture, a “sacred psychosis” as it were – not in the sense of true mental illness, but a temporary stepping outside oneself, an exalted madness that the Greeks would have seen as divine inspiration. The organ’s droning foundations, the repetition of chants or chords, the intensifying registrations – these are tools to induce trance, to transport the mind beyond the here and now.

The themes explored throughout this discussion are embodied in the original organ composition, Virgo. Drawing on the historical and theoretical contexts outlined above, the piece incorporates techniques such as sustained bourdon tones, heavy reed registrations, and the evocative use of the Phrygian mode. Additional elements include dense tone clusters and the intentional creation of “Schwebungen” (subtle phase beating) through partially engaged organ stops. In this way, Virgo serves both as a reflection on the organ’s enduring legacy and as an artistic experiment in the continuing possibilities of acoustic and spiritual experience.