In search of an appropriate name: consolidation of the Vox Humana designation

ENThe naming of certain music timbres is considered to be a highly inventive aspect in the terminology of pipe organ stops. Most names match the produced sound of stops, for example, Flute, Violina, Gamba, Posaune,or Trompete. Other stops were invented to imitate nature and environmental sounds, such as the Vogelgesang (“birdsong”), the Nachtigall or Rosignolo (“nightingale”), the Unda maris (“wave of the sea”), the Vox angelica (“voice of an angel”), or the Vox humana (“human voice”). The etymology of the eloquent expression “Vox humana” originated from Latin; its attribution to a certain organ sound presents a contradictory centuries-long process. The first examples of the designation Voxhumana go back to the beginning of sixteenth-century France, where the Voix humaine was used alongside Jeu d’enfants. Eventually, organ builders in European countries adopted their own versions of the name, for example, Voz humana[-e] (used in Spanish organs), Voce umana (Italy), and Anthropoglossa and Menschenstimme (Germany). This chapter comments on the variety of names for the Vox humana stop and highlights the disagreement between the name and sound of the stop based on excerpts from treatises written from the seventeenth to beginning of the twentieth centuries.