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Medieval Organs (Portative) No portative has survived to modern times but the iconography shows many different sizes and designs. One of the clearest pictures is on the Memling Altarpiece in Bruges, Belgium (circa 1450). I designed this organ from an instrument depicted on a fourteenth century copy of a manuscript by M. Severinus Boethius, De Arytmetica, de Musica, Naples, Biblioteca Nazionale. ms V. S. 14 (see picture). I calculated the pipe lengths by measuring the length of the player's forearm and the height of the bench in this picture. This gave the longest pipe as 2 ft (middle C). The scalings were not calculable but were adapted to fit the available space. The scaling system (where the pipe width halves in size) was designed on an appropriate medieval system - the golden number = ratio 1.618: 1. Pitch varied considerably in medieval times and so I have taken modern pitch, A440, as the standard.
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