Q.
They are the best of friends. There for you when things are going annoyingly well. There for you when things have slid into the muckiest of bogs. Now, they’re coming for dinner. Let’s fancify all the best flowers, foods, throw pillows, drinks. For them, we’ll pull out all of the stops.

Where does this ‘pull out all of the stops’ phrase originate?

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A.

It’s a phrase that comes from the world of music, from an Ancient Greek water and air instrument first created in the 3rd Century BC. All thanks to engineer Ktesibios – aka Ctesibius and Tesibius – who worked his formulas, and built his inventions in Alexandria, Egypt.

Mozart called future iterations of Ktesibios’ ‘hydraulis’: ‘the King of Instruments.’  Bach is also not surprised we’re still talking about an instrument he offers a dexterous thumbs up: the pipe organ.

How humbling that this most massive, mind-bending, note-leaping instrument retains much of the complexity it already had in the 17th Century. No one’s just waltzing in and mastering the organ. As Schumann said: ‘Miss no opportunity to practise on the organ. No other instrument takes such an immediate revenge on sloppiness in composition and playing.’

Included in the organ’s phalanx of pipes, pallets, bellows, ranks, and manuals, are stops. You might have seen ever busy organists pull out  stop knobs – often white – to control which pipes or types of instrument sounds are featured.  This one sounds like a flute, this one like a bassoon, this one sounds like cellos, this one emits an unidentifiable bass growl.

Want to really make a spectacle? Pull out all of the organ stops.

Actually, doing so will likely send Ktesibios, Mozart, Bach, and Schumann running for the exits, ears ablaze. But, you get the idea. Pulling out a great many of the stops leads to a swell of sound worthy of an important occasion.

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Header Art: Henry Lerolle. The Organ Rehearsal. 1885