While the name Aeoline is most commonly used for a soft string stop, it has also been used, mainly in Germany, for a free reed stop of 8' or 16' pitch and soft tone. It was sometimes made without resonators, as with the Physharmonika, or with small bells or conical resonators. According to Wedgwood, it had thin, narrow tongues, and its tone resembled a soft Oboe. Grove dates it from around 1815. While Seidel and Hamel describe it as being imitative of the aeolian harp, Bonavia-Hunt says that the aeoline was “a form of accordian introduced by Wheatstone before the concertina”. The name Aeoline Reed is mentioned only in passing by Irwin, who neglects to define it but implies that it is a “tubeless reed”; we assume it to be a synonym for the reed form of the Aeoline.

See Claväoline.

Variants

Examples

No examples of the name Aeoline Reed are known.

Aeoline 8', Oberwerk; St. Magnus, Esens, Ostfriesland, Germany; Rohlfs 1848-1860. The Osiris stop list marks this stop “(vac)”, which may indicate that this stop was winded by vacuum rather than wind pressure.

Äoline 16', Echowerk; Cathedral, Merseburg, Germany; Ladegast 1853-55.

Aeoline 16', Manual IV; Dom, Schwerin, Germany; Ladegast 1871 (restored 1980's).

Bibliography