COMPOUND S•ors, in Music, is a term for those sets of ranges of pipes on an organ, whose notes are made to sound at the same time, by touching a single finger key. Or, compound stops are such, wherein each fin ger-key acts upon two, three, four, or even five pipes of different pitches, and causes them all to sound toge ther. The most common of these stops in our church organs are, the CORNET, the SESQUIALTER, and the MIXTURE, or furniture stops: (See those several arti cles.) These compound stops, when used in full pieces, with other stops that are not pitched or tuned to the ac tual note which they represent, in the diapason stop, (which is considered as a sort of standard,) but to the xiith, or xviith of such notes, (see LARIGOT, TIERCE, and TWELFTH stops,) cannot fail of introducing a great number of actual discords even into the common chord, besides beating concords in plenty, with the notes of other finger-keys, as any one might readily satisfy him self, by writing down the values of the several notes thus sounded together, or even their artificial commas would be sufficient, taken from the first range, or Vs, in the last column of Plate XXX. Vol. II. ; or, these se
veral notes might all be deliberately sounded together in succession, or in different pairs, on the single simple stop of an organ with an extended scale, like that of Mr Liston. From a series of experiments on such an instrument, when truly tuned, the reason might per haps be discovered why the car can tolerate such a mix ture and jargon of discordant sounds as a full chord on an is with compound stops presents ; and whether it s merely by disregarding the discords, as it does any extraneous noise during a concert, as some have sup posed. (c)