A Harmonium or Reed Organ is a free-standing musical keyboard instrument similar to a pipe organ. It consists of free reed pipes and sound is produced by air being pushed or sucked over reeds resulting in a sound similar to that of an accordion.
The air is supplied by foot-operated (or, as with the type of harmonium used in Indian music, hand-operated) bellows alternately depressed by the player.
The harmonium was invented in Paris in 1842 by Alexandre Debain, though there was concurrent development of similar instruments.
Harmoniums reached the height of their popularity in the West in the late 19th- and early-20th centuries.
They were especially popular in small churches and chapels where a pipe organ would be too large or too expensive. Harmoniums generally weigh less than similarly-sized piano and are not as easily damaged in transport, thus they were also popular throughout the colonies of the European powers in this period- not only because it was easier to ship the instrument out to where it was needed, but it was also easier to transport overland in areas where good-quality roads and railways may have been non-existent.
An added attraction of the harmonium in tropical regions was that the instrument held its tune regardless of heat and humidity, unlike the piano. This 'export' market was sufficiently lucrative for manufacturers to produce harmoniums with cases impregnated with chemicals to prevent woodworm and other damaging organisms found in the tropics.
At the peak of the instruments' popularity around 1900, a wide variety of styles of harmoniums were being produced. These ranged from simple model with plain cases and only 4 or 5 stops (if any at all), up to large instruments with ornate cases, up to a dozen stops and other mechanisms such as couplers. Expensive harmoniums were often built to resemble pipe organs, with ranks of fake pipes attached to the top of the instrument.
Small numbers of harmoniums were built with two manuals (keyboards).
The invention of the electronic organ in the mid-1930s spelt the end of the harmonium's success (although it's popularity as a household instrument declined in the 1920s as musical tastes changed).
The last mass-producer of harmoniums in the West was the Estey company, which ceased manufacture in the mid-1950s.
As the existing stock of instruments aged and spare parts became hard to find, more and more were either scrapped or sold. It was not uncommon for harmoniums to be 'modernised' by having electric blowers fitted, often very unsympathetically. The majority of harmoniums today are in the hands of enthusiasts.
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