Checking on the "frein", I found a note in another small book, more a
booklet, which was published by the "Nederlands Openlucht- museum" (Dutch
Open Air Museum), with lot's of historic buildings, most of them complete
with -visitable- interiors.  When the museum celebrated its 60th birthday
it displayed a really big beautiful original, 100% restored, Gavioli
organ (87-keys).

In just 40 pages the authors (Mr. Brink and Mr. Koesen) not only relate
the history of the mechanical organ in general, and of this Gavioli in
particular, but they also inform us very well about the restoration.
Moreover a lot of pictures are included.

I would not have mentioned this booklet, if upon re-reading I hadn't
found some nice additional information about Gavioli, and the
Gavioli-frein.  The authors write about the inventions made by Gavioli.
Regarding the frein they wrote

"... his most famous patents were more or less "cribbed", "copied".  The
  so-called "frein-harmonique", a piece of curved brass sheet in the form
  of the letter "T", used to improve the tonal qualities of a violin-pipe,
  already was used by the well-known church-organ builder Cavaille-Coil at
  Paris in 1844, at the "Voix celeste"  register in the organ at the church
  of St. Madeleine."

(! Was not Carl Frei combining his Bourdon "op zang" with a "celeste" ?
Frei worked with Gavioli in Paris.)

Probably Gavioli saw and heard this frein, and found out that this
invention not yet was protected by a patent.  So he patented it, and as
you might know: not the guy who invents it, but the guy who gets the
invention patented can make money.

By the way, in church-organ building a frein would be described as a
"baard" (E: ear), indicating anything mounted on the "labium" (mouth) of
a pipe.  We know about at least five types of "baarden" (ears), one of
them being the "rolbaard" (E: bridge) which works like a frein, making
the sound of the pipe more violin-like.  On square wooden pipes it's easy
to mount a frein, since the wood allows you to mount the frein with
screws.  On metal pipes a frein cannot be screwed (the screw would pass
through the metal, influencing the sound), so the alternative, a soldered
"rolbaard" had to be developed.

I have a picture of a pipe with a frein as well as with a rolbaard.
I could scan them, but the Digest does not work with pictures, does it?

Jan Kijlstra

 [ Send the image to kravitz@foxtail.com and Jody can place it at the
 [ MMD Archives.  Thanks, Jan.  -- Robbie