What is a Raconteur Stop?

[myorgan]

In looking through eBay, I found a 4-manual pipe organ console being sold from this organ: https://pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/45649. The eBay listing is available if you search this item number on eBay: 284914388526.

It is an entirely French nomenclature console, but on the Great I find the stop 16' Raconteur (61 pipes), and an extra 12 pipes for each of the 8' Raconteur, and the 4' Raconteur. I looked in the Encyclopedia of Organ Stops (organstops.org), but they don't have it listed. I attempted to use Google Translate to get an idea, but couldn't find a translation.

Anyone ever encountered this stop before? Flute, Diapason, or String? How would one describe the stop?

Thanks in advance.

Michael

[Larason2]

It’s probably an Erzhaler rank. Raconte means “recount,” and it’s used much the way many American organs used Erzhaler ranks (“storyteller” in German). It’s a fairly straight translation into French.

[michaelhoddy]

Yes. Other iterations of that organ (the original Moller, the 1995 Reuter organ, etc) have stops in that division and elsewhere (hard to tell what got moved around) variously listed as Dolcan, Gemshorn, and Erzahler. Moller in the 1980's up to their end had a habit of using French nomenclature to create "French" stop names that you'd rarely- if ever- see on an actual French organ, stretching things more than a little bit! Often, they were transliterations like this.

"Cor de Chamois" is probably the most famous one, which is a transliteration of Gemshorn, meaning literally, "Goat Horn." I'm sure there are a few in France, but it's not a name that's really part of French organ building tradition by any stretch!

[myorgan]

Moller in the 1980's up to their end had a habit of using French nomenclature to create "French" stop names that you'd rarely- if ever- see on an actual French organ, stretching things more than a little bit! Often, they were transliterations like this.

What's odd is that when I attempted to translate the stop name, it didn't translate. When I added or removed a letter I thought should have been there, it came up with "storyteller", and that wasn't very descriptive for me so I thought I had made a mistake.

"Cor de Chamois" is probably the most famous one, which is a transliteration of Gemshorn, meaning literally, "Goat Horn."

Michael, that actually makes sense for me. I was looking at organs on the database lately, and came across a Jewish Synagogue with an organ that had Shofar as one of its stops. I wonder if the Cor de Chamois stop was on an organ in a Synagogue? That would make sense to me, as it's sometimes part of their worship.

Thank you all for clarifying that mystery for me. It's kinda like the Aliquot stop I had on an organ where I was doing a concert, and we discussed that stop 5-10 years ago. In the case of the organ I played, it was just some name they came up with to fill the blank. It was last altered by Berkshire Organ Co. in MA, so I don't know if it was the original organ builder or Berkshire who did that. It sounds like something Mr. Cogswell might have done.

Michael

[gtc]

"came across a Jewish Synagogue with an organ that had Shofar as one of its stops"

Shofar, shogood?

[myorgan]

Baaaad!

Michael