Swallow's nest organ

A swallow's nest organ in the Grote Kerk, Haarlem, depicted by Saenredam in 1636.

A swallow's nest organ (French: orgue en nid d'hirondelle, German: Schwalbennestorgel) is a form of pipe organ which takes its name from its resemblance to the nests built by swallows. Rather than placed on a gallery or on the floor, the swallow's nest organ case sits on a platform suspended on a wall, with the wall as its sole support. In some churches it was wedged into the triforium (a shallow arched gallery built into a wall above the nave). In swallow's nest organs from the Renaissance period, the base of the suspended platform, called a tribuna, typically tapered into a point.[1] There is generally only room in a swallow's nest for one person, the organist, who accesses it by a ladder or from a staircase concealed behind the wall.[2]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference Baldi was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Kassel, Richard (2006). "Swallow's Nest" in Douglas Earl Bush and Richard Kassel (eds.), The Organ: An Encyclopedia, pp. 546–547. Routledge. ISBN 0415941741