Harmonium

As Printed on a Score

Labels a grand staff for the reed organ (Harmonium; in some older German scores Physharmonika). Registration — stop names or numbers — may be printed above the part.

Also spelled: Physharmonika

How Composers Use It

A free-reed keyboard: pumped bellows drive air through metal reeds, giving a sustained, slightly nasal tone that can swell and fade under the player’s feet or knee levers. It served as a cheap substitute for the organ, but composers also chose it for its own colour — Dvořák’s Bagatelles, Op. 47, for two violins, cello and harmonium, and Mahler’s Eighth Symphony. It blends well with strings and supports a choir softly; it cannot match a pipe organ’s weight.

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