1859 Hook organ destroyed in fire at First Baptist Church, Jamaca Plain

Leonardo Ciampa is currently Director of Music at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline, Massachusetts. During his twelve-year tenure in Jamaica Plain, he documented the now-destroyed Hook organ on two compact discs for AFKA Records, No Room at the Inn and No Room at the Inn, Vol. II. First Baptist Church vows to rebuild, and Mr. Ciampa is chairing their committee to find and restore another historic instrument.

"We Americans can make our most significant
contribution to the history of the organ if we just remember that, above all,
the organ is expected to be a musical instrument. If its sound can attract and
increase the interests of the general public as well as that of musicians and
composers, it will have fulfilled its purpose . . ."

--John Brombaugh1

Posthumous panegyrics--there's something
suspicious about them. I once attended a funeral of an aunt, whose grandson got
up to the pulpit and offered a eulogy brimming with praiseful ooze. In my pew I
overheard a relative whisper to another, "He didn't call her twice
in the last five years." It's easy to gush over what is gone.
It's harder to praise what is still here.

As I write this it is January 20, less than 48 hours after
that indelible, abhorrent moment--the moment when I heard the appalling
news out of Jamaica Plain. My emotions right now? Melancholy. Unfillable void.
Grief. I don't want to write from those emotions.

Instead, I offer you words I wrote before January 18, when
the organ resided tranquilly, as we thought it would forever.

Only twenty hours before the fire started, I wrote Brian
Jones that switching church jobs in 2001

was definitely an adjustment for me. I think in a sense I
was in "mourning." The Hook just had that silvery sound, every pipe
of it.2

In the 1994 program notes to Volume I of No Room at the Inn,
I wrote

In terms of the beauty of individual ranks, this organ is
without rival in Boston, the other Hooks included.

A strong statement, considering that within one square
kilometer of Jamaica Plain there are two other three-manual Hooks from the
1850s. One of them, at the Unitarian Church, Thomas Murray made famous by his
Mendelssohn recordings. Though that Hook is freestanding and boasts a Pedal
Trombone, Susan Armstrong shared my opinion. "Sure, everyone likes the
Unitarian Hook, because it's louder and has the Trombone. But your Hook
is a lady."3 Still, I thought Susan and I were alone in our preference
for Opus 253. But no less than William T. Van Pelt was quoted by the Boston
Globe as saying, "Though cherished in their own respects, the other Hook
organs in Jamaica Plain could not match the sound of the one at First
Baptist."4

There may have been a reason for this. Starting around 1881,
many of the area Hooks were entrusted to a Canadian immigrant named Erasme
Lahaise (1851-1949), who worked for the Hook firm and personally met one
or both of the Hook brothers. He, his children, and grandchildren cared for
Opus 253 until its demise. During the 1920s and '30s, Eddie
Lahaise--son of Erasme, brother of Henri, and uncle of Robert and Richard--lived
down the street from First Baptist.

[Then-organist] Merton Stoddard [also] lived very close to
the church. The two met nearly every Saturday, and what little fiddling that
was done to Opus 253 was carried out during that period. The pitch was lowered
from A-448 to A-440, the Swell Tremulant was slowed to its present, rather
luscious rate, and the Great-to-Pedal Reversible . . . and new Balanced Swell
Pedal were installed. The only other known alteration was the slight revoicing
of the 17 Stopped Bass pipes on the Great. The mouths were raised a bit so as
to match the Clarabella Treble in power.5

Some say the Clarabella was revoiced as well. No matter:
that was a flute that no one could stop talking about. Said Dick Lahaise,
"It's like pouring cream."6 

Could it be that those years of expert maintenance by Eddie
Lahaise--who, like the other Lahaises, had direct Hook knowledge--had
something to do with the smooth, silvery sound that Opus 253 emanated, that je
ne sais quoi that the other two Jamaica Plain Hooks lacked?

Six years passed before the release of Volume II of No Room
at the Inn. The passage of time in no way diminished my fascination with the
instrument.

December of 2000 [marked] my twelfth Christmas at First
Baptist. The organ still teaches, still inspires. . . . [Regarding the
console,] no one was thinking about comfort in 1859. . . . But for all the
discomfort, for all the crashing of the stopknobs and clicking of the keys, all
it takes is a few notes to remind me of why I'm still in Jamaica Plain.
The sound! I still say that, in terms of beauty of sound, this is the best
organ in Boston. I never play it without feeling transported.7

On 18 June 2003, I wrote an article for my website entitled
E. & G. G. Hook: "International" Organbuilders. I'd long
felt that (a) the Hooks were the greatest organbuilders of their time in the
world (not just in America); and (b) the Hooks achieved more eclecticism
without trying than the American builders 100 years later who actually tried to
build eclectic instruments. In the article I defend both arguments:

The Organ Revival in America came slightly later than the
analogous Orgelbewegung in Germany. The radio broadcasts and recordings of E.
Power Biggs had an incalculably strong influence on everyone--organists,
organ builders, organ audiences, and organ composers. Suddenly German Baroque
sounds (that is, what we thought were German Baroque sounds) were the only ones
anyone wanted to hear.

While the international respect for contemporary American
organbuilders and organists rose, the work of 19th-century builders like Hook,
Hutchings, Woodberry, Simmons, Johnson, Stevens, etc. plummeted into even
deeper oblivion. Countless Hooks were replaced or irrevocably changed during
this period. Subsequently, the Organ Historical Society was formed (again, with
Biggs as a prime instigator), and at least Americans started to realize the
value and incredible beauty of these instruments.

But what about the Europeans? Several of my [American]
colleagues [including Barbara Owen8] agreed with me that what Hook was building
in the 1850s was as good as, if not better than, what Walcker et al. were
building in the 1850s. Of course, that was impossible to prove: the two
builders' organs were an ocean apart.

Until now.

Woburn, Massachusetts, is a city twelve miles (less than 20
km) north of Boston. In 1991, the First Unitarian Church closed its doors.
Meanwhile a buyer was sought for its precious organ, E. & G. G.
Hook's Opus 553, built in 1870. Then the stunning news came: the buyer would
be a church in Berlin! It would be the very first American organ in
Germany.9 

The degree to which the Berliners have taken Hook Op. 553
into their hearts is a source of great joy and pride for us. But it is not a
surprise. Hooks were the best organs we ever built. And they were also the most
eclectic. We Americans spent the better part of the 20th century striving for
"the eclectic organ," an instrument that could play the
"whole repertoire." The results of this striving can today seem
embarrassing. Electro-pneumatic instruments from the 1930s to the 1950s could
"sort of play" the whole repertoire. Yet on them Franck sounds
inauthentic, Mendelssohn sounds inauthentic, and to today's ears, Baroque
music is unlistenable. The only thing that really sounds "right" on
a typical American Classic organ is--not surprisingly--20th-century
American music. Eclecticism among trackers built in the 1960s, '70s, and
'80s fared no better. It is appalling to revisit some of these organs
today. Builders thought nothing of combining strident plenums and chiff with
huge Romantic reeds and celestes--and then tuning the whole organ to
Kirnberger or Werckmeister! These issues were much on my mind when I was an
organ student during the 1980s. But in 1989 everything changed. I discovered E.
& G. G. Hook. Quickly I realized that beautiful eclectic organs, with
tracker action, slider chests, and low wind pressure, had been achieved long
before the Organ Revival.

[ . . . ]

[T]he home of [Hook's] Opus 253 (1859) [is] the First
Baptist Church [in Jamaica Plain], where I was the Music Director from 1989 to
2001. Of the three Jamaica Plain Hooks, Op. 253 is in some ways the least
altered. Though it lacks the freestanding gallery placement and Pedal Trombones
of the other two Jamaica Plain Hooks, the Baptist Hook has arguably the most
distinctive voicing of the three. Individually or ensemble, there is not a
pipe--flue or reed--that you could imagine could be more perfect or
beautiful. I had the honor of making the first commercial recordings on this
instrument, No Room at the Inn (1994) and No Room at the Inn, Vol. II (2000),
both for AFKA Records. I chose an extreme variety of repertoire, aiming to show
the widest possible spectrum of tone colors. I included soloists and guest
artists as well, to demonstrate the organ's amazing adaptability as an
accompanist.

No one will dispute that Mendelssohn sounds ideal on these
organs, with that perfect combination of Germanic and English flavorings. The
big surprise is how beautifully everything else sounds. The Great plenum seems
beyond reproach and gives perfect contrapuntal clarity for Bach (though the
Pedal can be insufficient) and other Baroque music (though the magnificent Open
Diapason is a bit too large-scale for, say, Frescobaldi). As for Franck, I
found the overall mid-19th-century color to be perfectly appropriate. Hook
reeds have that amazing quality of being perfect as solo reeds and chorus
reeds. And unlike on modern trackers, one can play Romantic music without
having to cringe, wondering what will happen when the Mixture comes on. The
Hook Mixture seems to do just what a Romantic mixture should do: crown the
ensemble. In many Hooks the Seventeenth (Terz) is actually a component of the
Mixture. It lends a reed color which blends perfectly, not at all unbecoming in
Romantic literature.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of all is how well contemporary
music (well, some contemporary music) sounds on the Hook. The Jamaica Plainers
often heard the music of Charles Callahan, which organists tend not to play on
instruments without celestes and octave couplers. But ultimately, the primary
requirement of this music is warmth. That is something the Hook possesses.

I myself began to compose during my tenure in Jamaica Plain.
The instrument was a constant and inexhaustible muse. Why? Because the sound is
beautiful. I once remarked to Lois Regestein (a former organist of the church)
how it had to be the furthest thing from the Hooks' minds how well Bach
or 20th-century music would sound on their instruments. As Lois so perfectly
responded, "They just built good organs." That simple statement is
so true. When you do nothing more than to build a beautiful instrument, in
which each pipe is beautiful--and without trying to "prove"
anything--there is no limit to the music that can be made.

The recent fire was not the first one in First
Baptist's history.

On 30 October 1975, First Baptist Church was arsoned by two
delinquent youths, who set four fires in the lower church. They kindled the
flames with Bibles, religious books from the Christian Library, and baptismal
robes. One of the four fires raced through the crawl space under the pulpit,
where in the 1800s a pump boy would hand pump the organ bellows. Another fire
raged in the choir loft, right in front of the organ. On the scene as quickly
as, if not before, the firemen were Bob and Dick Lahaise and a parishioner
named William C. Latham. Mr. Latham directed the firemen where to point and not
point their hoses. Meanwhile, the Lahaises narrowly prevented the firemen from
breaking a boarded-up window on the outside wall behind the organ chamber.
These three marvelous men saved this organ, for had the firemen succeeded in
their actions, the entire organ would have become one large torch and not a
pipe would have survived. Though a corner of the bellows and some other
mechanical parts were charred, not one pipe in the organ was harmed. Photos
reveal that the rest of the church was in ruins. Only the most hardened atheist
would fail to see the miracle in this. I am mindful of this miracle every time
I lay hands and feet upon E. & G. G. Hook's Opus 253.10

Both sanctuary and organ were painstakingly restored to
their previous splendor. But in 1976, as the Lahaises were immersed in their
work, the firemen sprayed a powdery chemical throughout the organ [as well as
the ceiling of the whole church] to eliminate the charred smell which,
especially in the summer, would have been prevalent in the sanctuary. This
caused Bob and Dick a great deal more work, and when I arrived on the scene 13
years later (1989), the Great and Swell reeds were still dirty from the powder,
which had even chemically reacted with the brass of the reeds. Thus, until my
two-year series of 25 organ-and-piano recitals (1989-1991) raised the
four-digit figure necessary to finance their repair, these three reeds were
very unstable and unpredictable.11

At the end of the Volume II program notes, I wrote:

Throughout 141 years of dramatic changes and challenges . .
. the organ has remained a constant, emitting the same remarkable sounds to
which our congregation joined voices in the days before Abe Lincoln and the
Civil War.

Then came a sentence that I reread painfully:

As each new generation lifts its praises to God, there is no
sign that the melodious tones of Opus 253 will be silenced any time
soon.12 

Sanctuary and organ were both dedicated on Thursday, 25
August 1859. The next day, the event was front-page news in the Boston Daily
Evening Traveller. Astute observations about the tone of the organ were made,
special praise being reserved for the "clarionet, that speaks as though
filled by the skilful [sic] breath of Thomas Ryan." The article concluded
with a sentence that would remain true for 146 years:

[W]e are confident that any impartial judge will agree with
us in saying that a finer organ of the same capacity cannot be named.

I want to keep to my promise and not eulogize out of my
present mourning. However, I cannot close without stating an indisputable fact.
My tenure at First Baptist Church was from 1989 to 2001. However, I was born in
1971. When I was hired, I was 18 and still in high school. When I left I was 30
and dating my present wife. My transition from student to professional, child
to adult, occurred at First Baptist. Into the fabric of who I am as a musician
and a person were woven the tones of that Hook organ! The Great Open Diapason
that on its own sounded like full organ. The aforementioned
"creamy" Clarabella. The perfectly scaled and voiced plenum. The
Great Trumpet whose sound, alone or with the plenum, was beyond the reproach of
the most persnickety critic. The Swell Gamba, located high above the Choir
Dulciana--together they were the perfect celeste. The Swell Hautboy with
the tremolo--or the Stopped Diapason with the same tremolo, in the high
register. The 4¢ Chimney Flute in the Choir, as beautiful as any chimney
flute I've ever heard on either side of the Atlantic. And saving the best
for last: that Clarionet! Because there was no room in the chamber for the
bells of a traditional clarinet stop, the Hooks put in a French Cremona
instead, without the bells. Forget Thomas Ryan; Stoltzman himself would have
been jealous of this Clarionet! 

These are the sounds--the otherworldly
sounds--that entered me during my most permeable years as a musician. The
fire burned not only the church and the organ but also a hole in my heart that
will never be refilled.

From the ashes

In the September 2005 issue of The Diapason, I wrote about the destruction of a venerable pipe organ in a Boston church. E. & G. G. Hook’s Opus 253 of three manuals and 25 stops was built in 1859 and was destroyed on Tuesday, January 18, 2005, in a five-alarm fire that gutted the First Baptist Church of Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. The response of firefighters was such that the parsonage (just a few feet from the church building) and the rest of the close urban neighborhood were preserved. But the church’s loss was deeply felt in the community and in the wider world of those who appreciate historic organs. [See also “In Memoriam E. & G. G. Hook, Opus 253 (1859–2005),” by Leonardo Ciampa, in the March 2005 issue of The Diapason.]
Many professional organists and organbuilders will argue that E. & G. G. Hook was among the finest organbuilding firms in the history of the art (See Photo 1: Hook factory). Under three different names (E. & G. G. Hook, E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings, and Hook & Hastings) the firm produced over 2,600 instruments in its more than 100-year history. The factory was located in Roxbury (another of Boston’s neighborhoods) on a site now occupied by Northeastern University, about two miles from Jamaica Plain. Until the Jamaica Plain fire, three of the seven surviving pre-Civil War Hook organs were located on Centre Street in Jamaica Plain within easy walking distance of one another. George Greenleaf Hook, the younger of the Hook brothers, lived less than two blocks up a side street from Centre Street. What a neighborhood!
Television news broadcasts carried the story while the fire was burning and Boston’s organ community crowded the phone lines. The church’s pastor, the Rev. Ashlee Wiest-Laird, was prominent in both television and newspaper reporting, assuring the congregation and the community that they would rebuild. The publicity surrounding the fire included much information about the organ, making it clear that the church was well aware of its importance and the heritage it represented. Mariko Irie, the church’s current organist, past organist Leonardo Ciampa, and local organist and friend of the congregation Lois Regestein all joined Pastor Wiest-Laird in asserting the intention that the rebuilding of the church would include the acquisition of a comparable organ to replace the loss. The smoke cleared and the dust settled. A double-wide trailer was installed on the church yard providing space for worship and meetings. Committees went to work to plan the rebuilding project. It became clear that the walls and steeple of the building could be retained, but the entire interior and roof would have to be replaced. (See Photo 2: First Baptist Church)

A glimmer . . .

My work frequently takes me to New York, a city rich in great churches with wonderful organs and organists and outstanding music programs. The city is so crowded that outside the grand public parks there are few places where the actual earth is apparent through the pavement. It’s something of a surprise to see real dirt when walking past a water-main repair in progress. As such, there is precious little open land available in the city so real estate developers are perfecting the practice of adding high-rises on top of existing buildings. An institution such as a church can realize a powerful economic boost by selling air rights above their building.
In August of 2005 I received a call from The Rev. Dr. Edward Earl Johnson, pastor of the Mt. Moriah Baptist Church in Harlem, on Fifth Avenue in New York City. His church was planning a large-scale renovation project stemming from the sale of their air rights and plans for construction of a large condominium development overhead. The back wall of the sanctuary would be drastically rebuilt to provide support for the new building—in the wall were the chambers that housed an old pipe organ they weren’t using any more. Could the Organ Clearing House help? The next time I was in the city, I visited Mt. Moriah, and what did I find but a three-manual organ built by E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings in 1872—the year that Frank Hastings was made a partner in the firm! (See Photo 3: Opus 668, Mt. Moriah Baptist Church)
Opus 668 was originally built for the Church of the Disciples on Madison Avenue in New York. It was moved to Mt. Moriah by Hook & Hastings early in the 20th century where it was installed in two chambers on either side of a choir loft above the preacher’s platform—a very unusual installation for a 19th-century tracker-action organ! Trackers assisted by a pneumatic Barker-lever machine ran more than 30 feet from the keydesk under the floor of the choir loft to the Swell division. A study of the organ’s building frames implies that the instrument was also originally installed in two locations—the free-standing structure that supports the remote Swell is “original equipment.”
I must admit that because of the unusual configuration of this organ, I had some trouble imagining how it might be relocated. But I promised Dr. Johnson that I would try to find a new home for the organ, took photographs and measurements, wrote down the stoplist, and posted the organ on the Organ Clearing House website as #2112. I gave it the headline, “the wonders of technology,” reflecting the presence of the Barker-lever machine that allowed the split installation. Look at a photo of the installation and you would never recognize this as a Hook organ. But glance at the stoplist and you’ll have no doubt. A call from Lois Regestein suggested that a colleague of hers had noticed the listing on the website and wondered if the organ might be a candidate to replace Opus 253 in Jamaica Plain. What a thought. If the organ had been installed twice in divided configurations, why couldn’t it be reworked into a more common layout and take its place in the neighborhood where it was built?

E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings, Opus 668

Great
16' Open Diapason
8' Open Diapason
8' Viola da Gamba
8' Gemshorn
8' Doppel Flute
4' Octave
3' Twelfth
2' Fifteenth
III Mixture
8' Trumpet

Swell
16' Bourdon
8' Open Diapason
8' Stopped Diapason
8' Viola
4' Violina
4' Flauto Traverso
2' Flautino
8' Cornopean
8' Oboe

Choir
8' Geigen Principal
8' Dulciana
8' Melodia
4' Flute d’Amour
2' Piccolo
8' Clarinet

Pedal
16' Open Diapason
16' Bourdon
8' Violon Cello

It was a poignant moment, gathering with pastor, organist, moderator, and parishioners in the temporary trailer in the shadow of the burned church building to discuss this exciting possibility. In March 2006 an agreement was signed between the First Baptist Church of Jamaica Plain and Mt. Moriah Baptist Church of New York for the purchase and sale of the organ. On April 24, 2006, the crew from the Organ Clearing House arrived in Harlem to dismantle the organ. One important detail remained. There were not even architectural plans for the rebuilding of the burned church. We needed a place to store the dismantled organ. It was Pastor Wiest-Laird who worked the magic. Earlier in the year a large church building on Centre Street had been vacated (the Casavant organ had been purchased by a parish in San Antonio, Texas and dismantled and shipped by the Organ Clearing House). While plans for the future use of the building were being developed, it would be available for the storage of the organ from Harlem. So just a few months after removing one organ, we placed another in storage in the same building!
Construction is under way at Mt. Moriah Baptist Church. Opus 668 is safely in storage in Jamaica Plain. The First Baptist Church is proceeding with their planning process. Stay tuned for future developments. Send your donations to:

The Organ Fund
Pastor Ashlee Wiest-Laird
The First Baptist Church
633 Centre Street
Jamaica Plain, MA 02130-2526

The Phoenix Project

A year ago, Hurricane Katrina caused widespread destruction along the coast of the Gulf of Mexico, especially in Mississippi and Louisiana. And in February of this year a series of fires, intentionally set, destroyed rural church buildings in Alabama. Laurence Libin, recently retired Curator of Musical Instruments at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, and newly elected vice-president of the Organ Historical Society, responded by conceiving the Phoenix Project, an initiative of the OHS supported by the American Institute of Organbuilders and the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America. This exciting project is for the purpose of placing “redundant” pipe organs in churches that have suffered such losses. If you know of such a church that needs a pipe organ, or of one that has an organ to give away, contact Laurence Libin at .
As the Organ Clearing House is a good source for experienced pipe organs, Mr. Libin and I corresponded several times about the Phoenix Project. I would soon be in New York for the dismantling of the Mt. Moriah Hook organ, and I suggested we might get together. When I told him what I was up to, his deep appreciation of historic musical instruments got the better of him, and he volunteered to help. I told him to wear old clothes! He spent two days with us immersed in pipe organ preservation. In fact, he had pipe organ preservation all over him. If you haven’t seen it first hand, you cannot imagine how deep is the dirt in a pipe organ that has been sitting still for a hundred years in New York City. Walking through a hotel lobby at the end of the day creates quite a spectacle. (See Photo 4: Bishop and Libin)

There’s no such thing as a free lunch.

When a pipe organ is made available “free to a good home,” there is almost always a string attached. The cost of relocating and renovating the organ is still there. The church that receives a free organ will likely have significant expense attached. However, that cost is typically competitive with the price of an electronic instrument, and but a fraction of the price of a new pipe organ. The Phoenix Project is a wonderful way for any church that has suffered loss through disaster to obtain a fine pipe organ.

There’s more than one way.

I believe that I am safe in saying that many readers of The Diapason share a concept of an effective church music program. There is a choir of adults, perhaps another of children, perhaps another of teenagers. There is an organ, a piano or two, a library of anthems. The organist/music director plans programming and rehearses the choirs. The congregation is used to singing three or four hymns in the course of a service. Music is offered at regular worship services, festivals, funerals, and weddings. Get the picture?
There is a lot of talk and action these days about alternative forms of musical expression in public worship. Praise bands, folk instruments, and rock-and-roll have found their place in the church. It’s here to stay. Recently I was participating in a public forum about organ music, and an audience member asked what I thought about such new trends in church music. I answered that what we consider to be a traditional music program is what works for me, that I know that many churchgoers are spiritually fed by alternative and contemporary forms of church music, and that whatever music is offered in church as part of worship should be the very best it can be—that contemporary should not be synonymous with poor quality.
If you would like to hear public worship offered in a special language, I recommend the choir of Mt. Moriah Baptist Church, 2050 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York. You will hear a splendid Gospel choir—exquisitely trained, enthusiastic in their presentation, singing from memory, accompanied by a wizard on a Hammond organ. Terrific. They have toured churches in Brazil several times, and people come from far and wide to share their art. The night before we began dismantling the Hook & Hastings organ there, people from the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain visited New York, shared a meal with the people of Mt. Moriah, and worshipped together. A wonderful witness of the work of the wide church, and testament to the work of a great organbuilder from another age.

Is there really no such thing as bad publicity?

I had my first real job in an organbuilder’s workshop during the summer after my freshman year in college. I’ve often told the story of my first day--I was stationed outside in the parking lot by myself with the façade pipes of an old organ, sawhorses, a garden hose, and a gallon of Zipstrip®. I can imagine the previous week’s production meeting: “save it for the new kid!” It was a tough start, but it quickly got better. I remember that summer as a series of adventures as we worked on projects throughout New England, and I’m still at it.

Along with many other firsts I experienced that summer was my first exposure to media coverage of the pipe organ business. We were working in a church building installing a rebuilt instrument and a reporter from the local newspaper came to do a story that was published under a front-page photo that showed a colleague “voicing” a large organ pipe. I knew that what he had in his hands was a dummy façade pipe (one of those I had stripped)--it was both amazing and amusing to see how serious and erudite an organ builder can look while raising a virtual languid. (Remember “The Emperor’s New Clothes”?)

Five minutes of fame

Since then I have read many such stories in local newspapers. They often get some important technicality wrong, giving us a chance for a knowing snicker, but they have great value in raising public consciousness about the instrument. Many an organbuilder has been made a local celebrity by a photo and story published in a home-town newspaper. Alan Laufman, my predecessor at the Organ Clearing House, was notorious for seeking out the press whenever he went to work in a new town. He wasn’t looking for personal notoriety, he was spreading the word. 

On a wider stage, Craig Whitney, veteran foreign correspondent and assistant managing editor of the New York Times as well as organist and organ-enthusiast, has published a number of excellent and informative articles in the Times in recent memory. In his articles, Mr. Whitney’s compelling writing focuses the interest of the layperson, and his reporting skills produce content profound enough to educate the professional. His contribution to our field is immeasurable. I have had countless conversations with people who respond to hearing what I do for a living by saying, “Pipe organ builder! I didn’t know there were any of you left.” But whenever one of Whitney’s articles is published in the Times, friends and family from around the country call to be sure I know about it, and for the following couple weeks, daily conversations with new acquaintances invariably lead to, “I just read a story in the Times about that.” It’s a special pleasure to be able to respond by saying that I agree it was a good story and he really got it right. For those few days, people seem to be aware of the organ business.

This subject is on my mind these days because of a story broadcast recently on WBUR, “Boston’s NPR News Station.” On January 18, 2005, the First Baptist Church in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts was destroyed by fire. The church’s organ was lost that night, robbing the neighborhood of the distinction of being home to two pre-Civil War three-manual organs built by E. & G. G. Hook. A month or so ago, I was approached by Keith O’Brien, a local freelance writer who was preparing a story for The Boston Globe about the loss of that organ. In the course of his conversations with church officials and members, he had learned about the work of The Organ Clearing House and asked me for an interview during which we discussed the preservation of nineteenth-century instruments, their artistic and historical value, and their relevance to modern music making. 

Working on that story Mr. O’Brien became aware of the Organ Historical Society convention about to begin in southeastern Massachusetts, and began preparing a subsequent story for NPR. He asked me for another interview and I looked forward to hearing what seemed to be a well-conceived story. It was to be broadcast on NPR’s Morning Edition so I knew I’d hear it first thing in the morning on the bedroom radio. There it was, the pleasure of hearing organ music on the radio news. But there was that familiar theme: “I didn’t know there were any of you left.” 

Most organs don’t burn up

On the surface, the story was just fine. It was nice that the Organ Historical Society’s convention was noticed and mentioned so prominently in the press. The center of the story was the “resurrection” of an organ built in 1876 for Trinity Church in Boston by Hilborne Roosevelt, now installed in Our Lady of Guadalupe in New Bedford. The organ had been little used, seriously damaged by water due to leaks in the church’s roof and tower, completely silent for decades, and made playable again by heroic volunteer efforts on the part of OHS members. I’m certain that those listening to the story were compelled by the idea of a group of enthusiasts working hard to preserve a slice of antiquity. But I doubt that a listener would understand that there is any good reason for preserving antique organs. Following several comments that included phrases like “fumbling with the keys . . . “ that did little to impress the listener about the skills of an organbuilder, the clincher for me was when O’Brien said with reference to the Jamaica Plain fire, “most organs don’t burn up--they just fade away.” Yikes! I hope I’m never inside an organ when it fades away.

Who am I, and why am I here?

The story missed the point. Or as I reflected after hearing the story, I should have made a point of making the point: We are not a small sect of aficionados preserving antique organs to satisfy our own interests. Rather, we recognize the beauty and historicity of these instruments for their relevance to modern worship and modern music-making as well as for their antiquity. It’s special to realize that a century-old instrument is durable enough for regular use. But we must be sure to point out that it’s amazing that the instrument keeps its place in our modern society on its artistic merits as well. The pipe organ is not a relic from an earlier age--and neither are we who devote our lives to it.

The website of the Organ Historical Society, <www.organsociety.org&gt;, is worth a visit. It will keep you current with the Society’s activities, and it’s a terrific place to shop for music and books. As I thought about the story on WBUR, I remembered that the Society’s bylaws are published on the website and I took a look to refresh my memory. Here’s the relevant excerpt:

2. PURPOSE. The Society is an international organization for friends of the organ. The purpose of the Society is:

(a) To encourage, promote, and further an active interest in the organ and its builders, particularly those in North America . . .

I think some words are missing--or perhaps a better way to put it, I think some missing words are implied. I doubt that the bylaws’ authors intended that the active interest we are to further should be limited to the “friends of the organ.” I believe that it is our responsibility to our art to broadcast its relevance, its beauty, its majesty whenever and wherever we can. If the organ world is considered arcane, mysterious, or worse irrelevant, how can we assure its future?

The cost of building a new pipe organ has increased dramatically since my introduction to Zipstrip®. When I was first in the organ business a new twelve-stop organ built by a premier builder was installed in my home town for about $36,000. Today, that sum will purchase somewhere between one and two stops. Imagine a hypothetical random survey of modern organists, asking them to write down an “ideal” stoplist. I bet most of them would show more than 50 stops. That hypothetical 50-stop “ideal” organ certainly costs more than a million dollars today. Put enough of those pesky 32s in the stoplist and you will exceed $1.5 million. That’s the equivalent of at least fifty or sixty years of the salary of many of the organists I know.

Any monumental public art work is the product of vision and ambition. It’s easy to underestimate the appropriate scope of the vision. The newly hired organist of a church can play on a tired old instrument for a few weeks and mention casually during coffee hour that the church needs a new organ. That’s an observation, not a vision. The vision--the credible, mature, thrilling vision that involves a new organ necessarily includes an understanding of the capabilities and priorities of the community. Does this mean that a vision has to be realistic? Perhaps a vision is realistic only to the visionary. Everyone else sees it as a fantasy until they are persuaded that it’s possible--until they can share the vision.

Seers have everything!

Cyrus Curtis (1850-1933) was a visionary. He founded the Curtis Publishing Company which brought him fame and fortune principally through the success of The Ladies Home Journal and The Saturday Evening Post. Our culture would still be the richer if Curtis’ contribution was measured only by Norman Rockwell’s nearly half-century (1916-1963) of cover illustrations for The Saturday Evening Post. (Now that’s an important patronage!) Curtis grew up in Portland, Maine where Hermann Kotzschmar, organist of the family’s church, was one of his father’s closest friends, a friendship that was close enough that the son’s full name was Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis. The young C.H.K. Curtis was so fascinated and inspired by Kotzschmar’s playing that he taught himself to play the organ well enough to master four-part hymns. As he achieved fantastic financial success, he installed instruments built by the Aeolian Organ Company in his home in Wyncote, Pennsylvania. Aeolian’s Opus 784 was built for Curtis in 1896 and enlarged by five ranks in 1903 as Opus 943. Opus 1374 was installed in the house in 1916, incorporating Opus 943 as the Antiphonal Organ.1 But the lasting proof of Cyrus H.K. Curtis’ devotion to the pipe organ is the grand instrument he gave to the City of Portland, built by the Austin Organ Company, dedicated to his father’s friend, and known to this day as The Kotzschmar Organ. Today the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ (www.FOKO.org) oversees the maintenance of the instrument and presents a popular series of concerts each year.

Was it Cyrus Curtis’s vision that the organ he named for his father’s friend would still be in prominent public use, a beloved fixture of a small city nearly a century later? (It’s a safe bet that without the municipal organ, we would not remember that Hermann Kotzschmar was the organist of the First Parish Unitarian Church in Portland for 47 years.) Was he challenging people he would never meet--those people who formed The Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ when a fiscal crisis ended the city’s financial support for the organ? How often do we take such grand public fixtures for granted? And let’s take a step back. Was it Cyrus Curtis’s idea to place the organ in City Hall, or did some enterprising bureaucrat approach the wealthy native son?  

Portland is the largest city in Maine with a population of only 64,000 people. The population of the metropolitan area is about 230,000.2 If five percent of American cities that size had hundred-rank municipal organs, there would be a lot more people subscribing to The Diapason. And why not? It’s simply a matter of public relations. Is there a visionary in your town? I know where to find the organs!                        n

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

Shiny side up
The work of the Organ Clearing House involves trucks. Lots of trucks. We rent trucks when we are working on projects small enough to fit into a single truck body. And we have a trucking company in Nevada that we call when we need a semi-trailer or a little fleet of semi-trailers. After many years of jumping around from one company to another, it was a relief to begin working consistently with a single firm that could meet most of our needs.
When we are dismantling an organ, loading day is heavy work. A crew runs in and out of a church building all day long carrying heavy parts down stairs and fitting them into a truck like a giant Tetris® game. When the truck is full there’s often a moment when the crew and truck driver “shoot the breeze” for a few minutes before the load hits the road. We’ve heard a few doozies. One driver mentioned that it was a good thing we weren’t sending him to Canada because he had been convicted for smuggling firearms and wasn’t allowed to drive there anymore. We had just loaded an Aeolian-Skinner organ into his trailer.
Sometimes it’s pearls of wisdom: “You can drive down that hill too slow as many times as you want. You can only drive down it too fast once.”
And the friendly greeting as he puts it in gear and lets out the clutch, “keep the shiny side up!” Good advice, especially with my organ in the back!

Skootch
In 1979 I was part of a crew installing a new European organ in Cleveland. (You historians can route out which organ that was . . .) The church’s sexton, a fifty-ish German man, was involved in setting up the scaffolding, and I as “the young guy” was up there with him. As we were putting up the last scaffold frame we ran into the pitch of the ceiling. “Hold this,” he said, handing me the scaffold frame. I was standing on a plank. He pushed against the ceiling with his hands, gave the scaffold tower a kick with both feet, and the whole thing jumped a couple inches toward the center of the room. We were up high enough to be able to put a bridge from the top of the tower across the top of the organ to another tower. It was a three-manual free-standing organ in a classic organ loft with a spiral stairway. Must have been 50 feet. After his kick the tower didn’t stop making noise for several seconds, and because I was holding that frame I couldn’t steady myself. Nothing bad happened, but as I reflect on that moment, especially watching our crews set up massive towers of scaffolding today, I can hardly believe the risk that guy exposed me to without asking. I would have said no.
In another Cleveland church my boss and I witnessed a near disaster. We walked through the nave heading for the rear gallery where we were finishing renovation of the antiphonal organ. The pews were divided into three sections across the room, so there were in effect two center aisles and no side aisles. The walls featured unusually large stained-glass windows. A couple guys from the church’s maintenance staff were changing light bulbs in the chandeliers, using the kind of scaffolding that’s made of two-inch aluminum tubes and has a two-by-six-foot footprint. They were four sections high, and had the outriggers (stabilizers) pointing up the aisles the “long way,” rather than between the pews. From inside the organ chamber we heard “that” noise and ran down the stairs to find the tower at a 45-degree angle, the bottom of the tower still in the aisle, and Mr. Lightbulb on top with his foot on the wall next to a window. A couple inches to the right and he would have gone through the glass and fallen a long way to the lawn. Telling him to hang on, we yanked the tower straight again, and I had to go up to help the guy down.
What kind of maintenance supervisor would let that happen? Oh yeah, in the first story he was the guy on top of the tower with the big feet.

Those little voices
That Cleveland area organbuilder I was working with is Jan Leek of Oberlin, Ohio. I was privileged to work in his shop part time when I was a student, and then full-time for about five years after I graduated. He had learned the trade in Holland in what could best be described as an old-world apprenticeship, and as he taught me how to handle tools and operate machinery, he had a way of saying, “listen for those little voices.” If the little voice in your head says, “you’re going to cut your finger with that chisel if you do that once more,” the little voice is right. It’s a great image, and I am sure that his description taught me to conjure up those voices. I can still hear them. “The paint is going to drip on the carpet.” “The keyboard is going to fall on the floor.” “Your finger will touch that saw blade.”
The apprentice doesn’t hear the voices. The journeyman hears them and doesn’t listen. The master hears them and does listen.
An open quart can of contact cement is sitting on the chancel carpet next to the organ console. Of course it’s going to get knocked over when you stand up. The price of the glue, $4.79. The price of the carpet, $47,500.
A row of tin façade pipes is standing against the workshop wall. A worker is using a five-pound hammer to break up the crates that the pipes came in. The head flies off the hammer and dents one of the pipes, and they all fall over, one at a time in slow motion like 15-foot-tall tin dominos and there’s nothing anyone can do.
Cheery, isn’t it?
This subject is on my mind for several reasons. One is that I’ve spent the last couple days negotiating the rental of a huge amount of scaffolding and rigging equipment for a large project we will start next week, so I’ve been talking with salesmen about weight and height limits and what accessories are necessary to ensure safety. Another reason is that a locally owned small manufacturing company near us suffered a catastrophic fire last week. And as we work with scaffolding companies in New York we hear stories about the construction industry, especially relating to recent serious accidents involving cranes used in the construction of high-rise buildings.
I love the image of the organbuilder at a wooden workbench, a window open next to him providing a gentle breeze, a sharp plane in his hands, and the sweet smell of fresh wood wafting off the workpiece as the shavings curl from the blade of the plane. Or that of the voicer sitting in seclusion with beautiful new pipes in front of him coming to life under his ministrations.
But think of that majestic organ case in the rear gallery with an ornate monumental crown on the top of the center tower, covered with moldings, carvings, and gilding, and pushed up against the ceiling. Uplifting, isn’t it? It might be eight feet long, six feet wide, and three feet tall. It might weigh 500 pounds, and someone had to put it there. Making it is one thing. Getting it 50 feet off the floor and placed on those 20-foot legs that hold it up is another thing altogether. Uplifting, all right.
Organbuilders have a variety of skills. We work with wood, metal, and leather. We work with electricity and solid-state circuitry. We have acute musical ears for discerning minute differences in pipe speech and for setting temperaments. And we must be material handlers—that specialization of moving heavy things around safely.
To put that tower crown in place you need scaffolding, hoisting equipment, and safety gear to keep you from falling. How high up do you need to be before you need that gear? Easy. Ask yourself how far you’re willing to fall. Twenty feet? Thirty feet? Four years ago the Organ Clearing House dismantled the huge Möller organ in the Philadelphia Civic Center. (That organ is now under renovation in the new workshop of the American Organ Institute at the University of Oklahoma.) The organ chamber was above the ceiling, 125 feet above the floor. The demolition company (the building was to be torn down) cut a hole in the floor of the blower room big enough for the organ parts to pass through. And we were left standing on the edge of an abyss. We used full-body harnesses and retractable life lines. If you fell you’d drop about six feet and the ratchet-action of the retractable would stop you, something like the seatbelts in your car. And there you are, hanging 120 feet up.

Away aloft
A sailor hollers “Away aloft” as the halyard hoists the sail up the mast. The rigger might do the same. He ties a line around the load, hooks it to the line from the winch, and up it goes. It’s important to choose the right type of line—you don’t want chanciness caused by a line that stretches, for example. But what really matters is the knots you use. Some knots are meant to slip. Some are meant to be permanent. A favorite is the bowline, which cannot untie, but also cannot pull so tight that it cannot be undone. It was developed by early sailors to tie a ship to a dock or mooring. Think of a large sailing vessel, bow tied to a mooring, bouncing on the waves and pulled by the wind for weeks. There’s a terrific amount of force on that knot. But you give the top of the knot a push sideways and it can be taken apart easily. Beginning sailors are taught how to tie the bowline both left- and right-handed, blindfolded. I once had to tie a bowline while diving under a boat in order to repair a centerboard control.
Different knots are intended for different purposes.
A half-hitch is a great knot for securing something temporarily, but it looks a lot like a slip knot. If you don’t know the difference you might tie a slip knot by mistake. How will that work when the weight of a windchest shifts while being hoisted into the organ?
If your skill set doesn’t include three or four good reliable knots, I recommend you learn them. There are neat books for this purpose, predictably available from boating-supply companies. Some come with little lengths of line so you can practice in the comfort of your home.
When hoisting heavy parts you can also use nylon webbing. It’s available in neat pre-cut lengths with loops on each end for easy tying. The webbing is easy on the corners of the piece you’re lifting, and it’s very strong. A one-inch wide web is rated for 2,000 pounds in vertical lift. But keep a good eye on its condition. Recently there was an eerie photo in the New York Times in the aftermath of the collapse of a construction crane. It showed a piece of torn webbing dangling from a hook. That photo prompted us to purchase new webbing for our next rigging job!
In the nineteenth century, the great Boston organbuilding firm of E. & G.G. Hook suffered two serious fires, both of which destroyed their workshops. I know of two North American organbuilders who have had bad fires in the last decade. Neither was caused by carelessness; in fact, one was caused by lightning. I thought about those two colleague firms working to rebuild their companies when we heard of a terrible fire at a boatyard near us. Washburn & Doughty is a family-owned company with about a hundred employees that builds heavy commercial vessels like tugboats, fireboats, and ferryboats. It’s quite a spectacle to see a hundred-foot tugboat under construction in a small village. And a mighty amount of steel goes into the building of such a boat. On Friday, July 11, sparks from a cutting torch ignited a fire that destroyed the building. It was routine work for a place like that, and newspaper stories told that the fire was officially accidental. They were able to save a hundred-foot tug that had been launched and was being completed at the dock—they cast it adrift! But two others that were still in the buildings were lost and 65 employees were laid off temporarily while the owners work out how to rebuild.
Ten years ago I was restoring an organ built by E. & G.G. Hook with lots of help from volunteers from the parish. We were refinishing the walnut case, and I mentioned the fire hazard of rags that were soaked with linseed oil. They must be spread out to dry. If they’re left in a heap they will spontaneously combust. One of the volunteers took a pile of the rags home and put them in a bucket in the middle of his backyard. He told us later that it had only taken about ten minutes before the bucket was full of fire!
This is a pretty gloomy subject. But I write encouraging my colleagues to look around their workplaces with a critical eye toward safety. Be sure you have the proper gear for lifting and moving the things you’re working on. Store your paints and finishes in a fire-proof cabinet. Eliminate the possibility of sparks finding a pile of sawdust and spread out those oily rags. Encourage your workers to use safety equipment. Safety glasses may look nerdy, but it’s not cool to lose an eye!
Get your hands on a good industrial supply catalogue—I have those from Grainger and McMaster-Carr on my desk. Go to the “safety” pages and leaf through. You’ll see lots of things that protect against stuff you haven’t imagined could happen! Organbuilders are precious. Let’s keep them all in good health.

We’re going in circles.

Have you noticed? I grew up in Boston in the 1960s and ’70s in what was a thrilling time for the art of organbuilding. Charles Fisk was well into his brilliant and innovative—and sadly foreshortened—career. Fritz Noack had established his company and was building the first of an impressive succession of instruments. Churches in the area were commissioning instruments from a wide variety of American and European builders, and organists and students of the organ were delving into the relationships between these “newfangled”—or was it “oldfangled”—tracker-action organs and the music of the baroque era that had inspired the concepts behind them.

The Organ Historical Society was an important part of that revolution—America’s nineteenth-century heritage of organbuilding was being rediscovered and celebrated. We recognized how many wonderful venerable instruments had been sacrificed to make way for the “new-fangled” electro-pneumatic organs of the early twentieth century. By the time I graduated from high school there were two Fisk organs in my hometown, and I was organist of a church in the next town that has a three-manual Hook organ built in 1860. I thought I knew all I needed to know.

I was a freshman at Oberlin in 1974, the year that the new Flentrop organ in Warner Concert Hall was dedicated. That organ has plenty of mutations, historically inspired reeds, suspended and “unbushed” tracker action. It was tuned in Werckmeister III, an historic temperament that sounds wonderful in many keys (let’s say for simplicity, up to four sharps or flats), but when I played Widor for one of my required performances and wound up in B-flat minor, I felt it in my fillings. And of course, that performance was offered without the grace or benefit of a Swell box. Forgive me, Charles-Marie.

While I was a student at Oberlin, Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland received a three-manual Flentrop organ, and I was privileged to work with the team from Holland installing it. You don’t forget the first day of an installation, when the organ in parts is unloaded from a shipping container and carried up the front steps of the church. It’s heavy work. And I’ll not forget noticing a crate that contained Celeste pipes, or realizing that I was carrying a bundle of Swell shutters. I was perhaps too naïve to realize all the implications, but that sure seemed like part of a circle.

Recently I had a lengthy conversation and correspondence with several colleagues that set me to thinking about this circle and what it means to our art. The exchange started when the organbuilding firm Juget-Sinclair of Montreal announced an open house at which they would exhibit the new organ they had built for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Wellesley, Massachusetts. (Visit their website at http://www.cam.org/~sinc/.) The e-mails started flying between organbuilders John Brombaugh, Hellmuth Wolff, and Karl Wilhelm. John remembered that the first time he met Hellmuth and Karl was in Wellesley during the installation of that church’s Casavant organ. (It’s no secret that the Casavant was installed in 1964, so these guys were younger then than they are now!) John also told us that at the moment he was involved with the relocation of the organ he built for the Ashland Avenue Baptist Church in Toledo, Ohio (Opus 9, 1972). That congregation was moving to a new building and their original sanctuary had been sold to a congregation with musical priorities that did not involve a Brombaugh organ. The organ would be installed temporarily at Sacred Heart Cathedral in Rochester, New York (where it will presumably be available to students at the Eastman School of Music) until its permanent home at Sonoma University is ready.

When a new organ is finished, the builder might be proud of his accomplishment, relieved to be finished with particular complications, excited about moving on to the next project—but he is certainly not imagining that the organ he just finished will be replaced in thirty or forty years. Pipe organs seem permanent. I’ve had contact with many people who are surprised when they realize that an organ can be taken apart and moved. They thought it was part of the building. But isn’t an organ an expression of its builder’s current philosophy? While an organbuilder might hope that his work would never be replaced, would it be good for organbuilding in general if churches routinely purchased two new organs every century?

Because I had been involved in arranging the sale of the Wellesley Casavant to St. Theresa’s Roman Catholic Church in South Hadley, Massachusetts, I jumped into the conversation explaining that while the people of St. Andrew’s remained dedicated to the concept of tracker action, they felt they would benefit from having an instrument with more emphasis on fundamental tone. I added that the Organ Clearing House had relocated an instrument built by Hellmuth Wolff (Opus 17, 1976), installing it in St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Durham, North Carolina. It was a coincidence that St. Paul’s previous instrument was a one-manual organ built by John Brombaugh—and rather than being replaced, the Brombaugh was moved to the front of the church where it is used as a liturgical organ.

As I was writing that letter I remembered an amusing and poignant story about Ernest Skinner, an organbuilder whose brilliant innovations in many ways defined the twentieth-century American organ. He who gave us pitman stop action, whiffle-tree Swell engines, French Horns, and vertical-selector combination actions, and who built instruments that emphasized fundamental tone, colorful orchestral solo stops, and shimmering strings was later criticized for failing to keep up with fast-changing trends, insisting that his instruments were the ideal and should not be changed. The story I refer to was quoted in All the Stops, the wonderful book about the twentieth-century American pipe organ written by Craig Whitney (PublicAffairs, 2003). (If you haven’t read this book yet, you’ve missed much. You can order it from the OHS catalogue: http://store.yahoo.com/ohscata log/crrwhallst.html.)


Whitney wrote:


Skinner was effectively frozen out of the company that bore his name, associated with it now in name only. But it was not only at Aeolian-Skinner that tastes were changing. To the romantic-orchestral organ that Skinner had built in the Cleveland Museum of Art in 1922, the young Cleveland organbuilder Walter Holtkamp added in 1933 something new and revolutionary—a small rückpositiv division designed along German classical lines. Though technically the term applied only to that part of a baroque organ that was detached from the rest and behind the organist’s back, typically in the gallery of a church, Holtkamp’s imitation was freestanding, playable via electro-pneumatic connections to the organ console, but its clear-speaking high-pitched stops were intended to produce a brighter tonality than the rest of the Skinner organ had. The addition produced much comment among organists and other builders, and it was seen as another blow to Skinner’s now old-hat notions that an organ should try to imitate an orchestra. At an organists’ convention, [Dorothy] Holden’s biography relates, Holtkamp saw Skinner standing alone, ignored now that he had gone out of fashion, and thought, ‘Now, this is a perfect shame! There stands one of the greatest figures in the art of organ-building, and all those sissies are afraid to go up to speak to him, for fear they might lose face among their peers!’ As Holtkamp told the story to Robert Bates, an organist friend, he went up to Skinner and said, “Mr. Skinner, I am Walter Holtkamp from Cleveland, and I just want to thank you for all you have meant and done for the art of organ-building through your splendid career.” Apparently, “Cleveland” was all that registered on Skinner, who was by then hard of hearing, and rejoined, “Cleveland! Say, you know, I have one of my best organs out there in the Art Museum, and some damn fool has come along and just ruined it.”1



I finished my letter to John Brombaugh saying: “Poor Skinner’s organ only lasted 11 years before Holtkamp got his hands on it. A Rückpositiv in 1933—who knew?” That was a pretty radical innovation for 1933. We raise the question, did Walter Holtkamp improve the Cleveland Museum’s organ? Who is the judge of that?

Should we alter works of art? We wouldn’t change a portrait by Rembrandt because Parisian clothing designers are featuring green this year or because it’s not stylish to put feathers in hats these days. We wouldn’t change a Shakespeare play because the word methinks isn’t part of every day speech now.
We would, however, alter an historic building by installing wheelchair ramps and elevators. Those instances where we condone such alterations often have to do with usefulness. You don’t have to consider the usefulness of a painting or sculpture. It is what it is. It’s a snapshot of an instant from another time. We can appreciate it (whether or not we like it) as an artist’s expression and we don’t depend on it for anything else.

Organs are different. A fine organ stands as a work of art, but it is also a tool to be used by contemporary artists to another artistic end. And, more than any other instrument, the organist is stuck with the instrument. If you are the regular organist of a church, all you do must be done with the existing instrument. If you are traveling to play a concert in a distant city, you must channel your creativity through whatever instrument you encounter.

When an organ is playing, the art of the builder, the player, and the composer are being combined to create yet another artwork, which is the performance itself—a virtual, temporary structure that thrills, moves, excites, or angers the listener, and that is gone as soon as the sound dies away. What’s more, it might thrill one listener and anger another. And each listener is responding to each component—the playing, the music, and the instrument. Does this view of performing music give the player license to propose alterations to the instrument, or more to my point, to replace the instrument with another?
There are of course many reasons why an organ might be relocated. Sometimes a parish has closed, either because its congregation has disbanded or merged with another. Sometimes an institution gets a new organist whose interests are different from those of predecessors. Sometimes, let’s face it, we are replacing an instrument that was never any good to begin with.

It is interesting to watch trends. We have spent a huge amount of energy relearning ancient skills, and developing new appreciations of early styles. E. Power Biggs and his contemporaries took us on virtual tours of older European organs (using the vinyl conveyances of the day). We assimilated, imitated, and built on the sounds we heard then. That work gave us greater ability to analyze and understand the components of sound, allowing us new ways to appreciate other styles. If we were devoted to the examples left by Arp Schnitger in the eighteenth century, suddenly we could appreciate and understand anew what Ernest Skinner was up to in 1920.

There was a wonderful moment at the convention of the Organ Historical Society in North Carolina in 2001 when on Wednesday, June 27, the convention visited the chapel at Duke University, home to three excellent and wildly varying pipe organs. There were three recitals—Mark Brombaugh played on the Flentrop organ, Margaret Irwin-Brandon played on the Brombaugh, and Ken Cowan played on the Aeolian. We were taken from Scheidemann to Wagner, from Liszt to Frescobaldi, from Buxtehude to Bossi all in a single day. What a dazzling display of the variety of the pipe organ and its music, and how passionately people defended their preferences as the buses took us back to Winston-Salem! I thought it would have been fun to have each of the performers play on each of the organs, but I had trouble finding supporters.

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist . . .

A good friend of mine is a terrific singer whose husband is an astrophysicist. He works in a Smithsonian-affiliated lab at Harvard University using a telescope in Arizona that he operates remotely by computer. Once at a party Jane was asked what it’s like to live with such a brilliant person. “You know how they say, it doesn’t take a rocket scientist?” she replied. “There are lots of things around the house that really don’t need a rocket scientist!”

Now I’m no rocket scientist, but I know there’s a navigation trick called a gravitational slingshot that’s used to propel interplanetary probes through space. The vehicle is steered toward a planet and makes use of that body’s gravity to fling itself further into space. For example, on August 27, 1981, Voyager 2 used the gravity of Saturn to fling itself toward Uranus, where it arrived on January 30, 1986.2
I wonder if a gravitational slingshot could be used to break the circle and send the art of organbuilding to new places, new concepts, and new plateaus. It seems to me that many of the more recent innovations in organbuilding have been “returns” to one idea or another. When Craig Whitney described Holtkamp’s addition of a Rückpositiv as “new and revolutionary,” he was in fact referring to a concept that was some five hundred years old. We reach back through history to recreate the technology of the slider windchest and of voicing organ pipes on low wind pressures just as we reach back through history to understand again the glory of high-pressure reeds and air-tight swell boxes. We have incorporated computer technology to duplicate and enhance the registration equipment developed early in the twentieth century. We have built new organs using ancient architectural elements and we have modified those ancient elements to incorporate them in contemporary designs. But I suggest that no specific instrument or style of instrument, and the work of no one organbuilder can stand for the future of the instrument.

Igor Stravinsky assimilated all the tools of musical composition he had inherited and produced music that startled the world. And that music that caused riots when it was first performed is celebrated today as part of the wealth of musical expression. Is the future of the pipe organ based on the comparison between the instruments of early eighteenth-century Europe and early twentieth-century America or can we assimilate all we’ve inherited to create new concepts for the organ, new ways to use the organ, and new ways to listen to it?

Boston, Massachusetts

Wednesday, August 16

Imagine this. A church packed to the rafters with organists
from around the country, parishioners, and Boston organ lovers. An organ in a
stunning case fills the west gallery of the church. The chairs that fill the
nave have all been turned around so the audience can sit and gaze up into the
balcony. A priest steps forward to the railing and says simply, "Good
evening. I'm Fr. Thomas Carroll, rector of this church," followed by what
can only be described as tumultuous applause, shouting, and a standing ovation!
Do this on a regular basis, and seminaries will be overflowing with candidates
for the priesthood--but of course there is a special tale to tell about this
visceral reaction, and Fr. Tom Carroll, organist and OHS member, is the
deserving symbol of a happy ending to an almost sad story. It was in 1986 that
organists and OHS members learned from the organ journals, and later from
mainstream media, that this struggling parish was preparing to make serious
changes to its church. The interior of the building would be sufficiently
reduced in size (to make way for rentable office space) that its landmark
instrument would be rendered unusable. The nave would be vastly forshortened,
leaving a small "worship center." The great space would nevermore be
seen--the great organ would never sound into its intended space again. The OHS,
and later, architectural conservation and preservation groups in the city,
managed to convince the church to reverse its plans. Three ultimately removable
office structures were indeed built in the side aisles of the west end of the
nave, but the word is that plans are afoot to remove them soon. What is left is
by no means shabby. It's a glorious place. In other good news, this parish is
now growing and thriving, with many new members to enjoy the beautiful
architectural and musical treasures left to it by earlier generations.

In part, the OHS exists to honor, protect, and present great
instruments, so perhaps it is at the Church of the Im-maculate Conception that
we see this function at its best. It is therefore fitting that the convention
began and ended with concerts on E. & G.G. Hook Opus 322 (1863) / E. &
G.G. Hook & Hastings Opus 1959 (1902), played by two great musicians who
have supported the work of the Society and been heard in many conventions over
the years. Peter Sykes began the week, which ended with Thomas Murray.

When the pandemonium settled, Fr. Carroll offered a warm
welcome, after which Jonathan Ambrosino, president of the Society (and also
editor of this year's Organ Handbook and Convention Program), officially opened
the convention and introduced Scot Huntington, this year's convention chairman.
Peter Sykes then assumed the bench, accompanied by his registrants, Michael
Murray on the right and Stuart Forster on the left.

A lovely feature of OHS convention recitals/organ
demonstrations is the inclusion of a hymn in every program. It makes perfect
sense to hear instruments doing one of the jobs for which they were designed.
Sykes's chosen tune was Helmsley to the Advent text "Lo, He comes with
clouds descending"--what a fabulous big, rich, unison sound we made in a
splendid acoustic, to a rich, varied, and totally supportive accompaniment.

The first work on the program was Mendelssohn, Prelude and
Fugue in C Minor, op. 37, no. 1. The combination of Peter Sykes, Felix
Mendelssohn, the great Hook and Hook & Hastings, and the acoustic of
"The Immaculate," conspired for a most satisfying experience. From
Annés de Pélerinage of Liszt, we heard two Sykes transcriptions,
Ave Maria von Arcadelt (which demonstrated some of the lovely sounds of this
instrument), and Sposalizio (betrothal), based on a painting of Raphael. Next,
Six Fugues on B-A-C-H, by Robert Schumann. Played together, these works become
something of a satisfying larger sonata. After intermission, Grand
Prélude (from a set of eleven dedicated to Franck) by Charles-Valentin
Alkan, and Franck's Grande Pièce Symphonique (dedicated to Charles
Alkan). Peter Sykes played this spacious and wonderful work with both breadth
and fire.

Thursday, August 17

A marathon day

The day began with a lecture, "Time, Taste, and the
Organ Case," tailored here by Matthew Bellocchio to include some of the
famous Boston organs heard at the convention.

Then on to the bus at about 10:15 to thread our way through
New York-style traffic to Most Holy Redeemer Church, East Boston. Well worth
it! Occasionally at OHS conventions, the program book says "Program to be
announced." This is never the result of indecision, disorganization, or
laziness. It's a signal that at any given moment, up to and including the first
notes of the recital, there is doubt about what will and what will not play on
the organ! In pretty bad shape, this instrument is, nonetheless, worth the
pilgrimage. Not only is it the largest remaining instrument by William Simmons
(1823-1876), but it is also the "oldest extant two-manual organ with a
detached, reversed console," quoting from the Organ Handbook. Kevin Birch
teaches at the University of Maine School of Performing Arts in Orono, and is director
of music at St. John Roman Catholic Church in Bangor, where he has developed an
important musical program, including the preservation of the church's 1860 E.
& G.G. Hook organ. For the convention, he developed a completely satisfying
program which demonstrated the capabilities of the instrument in its present
condition. The instrument is so dusty and dirty that it has not been possible
to tune it completely for a long time, so avoidance of upperwork was the order
of the day. There was lots of foundation tone, and excellent stuff it is, too.
He began with a fine performance of the Bach Pastorale, the perfect piece for
the circumstances, showing a few small but distinguished combinations of
sounds. All of the combinations were announced before he began the work. Next,
three beautiful organ pieces by Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Arietta, Elegy, and
Melody, all from 1898. Birch found the perfect solution to the problems of the
organ's state of health by calling on a 'cellist friend, Jonathan Cortolano, to
play the melody lines, requiring that the meager functioning voices of the
organ play only accompaniment for the most part. With a really beautiful 'cello
tone, this enterprise was a great success. 

Birch had promised to demonstrate some of the notes of the
Oboe that were working, and did so charmingly with a bit of Jesu Bambino by
Pietro Yon. After this, an early 18th-century tune (Sweet Sacrament) found in
Worship III to the text "Jesus, my Lord, my God, my All." We had a
great sing, and took full advantage of a very nice harmonization. This is the
organ upon which, in 1975, Thomas Murray recorded the Mendelssohn sonatas,
recently reissued on CD. It is only through many volunteer hours by Richard
Lahaise that we were able to hear any of this marvellous but sadly neglected
instrument.

Next, on to Most Precious Blood Roman Catholic Church in
Hyde Park, to hear Stephen Roberts on the 1892 Carlton Michell instrument, much
of which was probably built by Hunter in London, and which was originally in
St. Stephen's Church in the South End of Boston. Originally tubular pneumatic,
it was electrified by Richard Lahaise when moved to Precious Blood in 1956 and
fitted with a new console. Franz Schmidt, Toccata for Organ (1924); the hymn
Ave Verum Corpus to a 14th-century plainsong tune; Everett Titcomb, Communion
Meditation on "Ave Verum Corpus." It was helpful to have sung the
entire plainsong melody before hearing Titcomb's work based upon it. The
program ended with the brilliant and brilliantly-played Allegro Vivace from the
Widor 5th Symphony.

Then, on to Christ Church Unity (Sears Chapel) in Brookline
for a fine recital by Andrew Scanlon, winner of the 1999 Boston Chapter AGO
Competition for Young Organists, and a student of Ann Labounsky at Duquesne. He
also has studied with John Walker, John Skelton, and David Craighead. Currently
organist and choir director at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Export,
Pennsylvania, he was one of the six young organists chosen to play at the New
York National in 1996. This Sears Chapel has a rather handsome exterior and a
somewhat disappointing interior. The organ is chambered in the west gallery,
with an attractive facade with stenciled pipes, but is a smallish gem (nineteen
stops) being asked to speak down a rather long carpeted nave filled with
thickly cushioned pews. It is all a bit distant, sadly, but the instrument, E.
& G.G. Hook from 1862, is intact and well cared for, and was presented on
this occasion with the handsome OHS plaque. Bach, Prelude and Fugue in C Major
(545); Mendelssohn, Second Sonata: Grave and Adagio; Trumpet Dialogue from the
Couperin Convent Mass; Allein Gott by Dudley Buck; a Rondeau and Deo Gracias by
Joseph Wilcox Jenkins (b. 1928), lovely, modal, spirited stuff, perhaps
somewhat in the Hindemith mode.

The afternoon ended with two rather amazing events. At the
United Parish in Brookline we were all impressed by Peter Krasinski and
Aeolian-Skinner opus 885 and much more. First, we were welcomed in a recording
by Ernest Skinner himself, apparently from a welcoming speech he made to an AGO
gathering at some point very late in his life. It was loud and clear, and a
stunning opening, with no warning whatsoever! But there was more. After singing
"O God our help" from the hymnal in the pews, there was a program of
two works--not your usual organ recital. First, Peter and the Wolf, transcribed
by Peter Krasinski, narrated by a woman from the church's Board of Deacons who
had earlier graciously received an OHS Plaque for the organ. This was clearly a
new translation from the Russian, beginning more-or-less thusly: "Peter
lifted the heavy rolltop, and threw the switch, activating the great Spencer
blower." And then we had Peter being hustled inside, to escape the evil
Clarinet. And then, with Peter, we cowered in the face of "Evil hunters,
seeking unaltered Skinner organs!" It was all so perfectly done--the
narration was really dramatically delivered, and Peter Krasinski--what to say?
The transcription, the performance, the organ--it was nothing less than
fabulous--requiring a chapter of its own in any history ever written about OHS
Conventions We Have Known. For a bit more icing on an already rich cake, Peter
Krasinski's own transcription of von Suppé's Poet and Peasant Overture.

At the end of the afternoon, the astonishing, amazing--whatever--computer-driven
Boston University Symphonic Organ, hosted by its creator, Nelson Barden. The
whole thing had its genesis in a small Skinner (opus 764) instrument in a
Rockefeller mansion in Greenwich, Connecticut. When the organ was disposed of,
it was to become one of the organic wonders of the world. Further donations of
house and other organs kept the thing growing to its present size, and it now
lives in its permanent home on a great balcony overlooking a large kind of
banqueting hall. On screen, one can see what the computer operator sees on his
monitor up in the balcony: the four keyboards plus a short one for the
pedalboard laid out, surrounded by lists of all the stops available--colored
lights indicate which keys and which stops are playing. We heard a performance,
electronically recorded, of Carlo Curley playing Fiddle Faddle, Edwin Lemare
playing the Bach "Jig" Fugue, and lots of other goodies. An exciting
aspect of this is the ability to reproduce here the many performances committed
to paper rolls in Germany in the 20s and 30s, at a time when sound recording
was not yet totally viable on location, and, of course, the immense resources
of this instrument make possible just about any registrational requirement.
After the great show, most of our large party took advantage of being able to
walk right through this marvel, to see, under glass, the whole thing operating.

After dinner, off to The Mission Church to hear Julian
Wachner on Hutchings Opus 410 of 1897, sounding out of its great west gallery
case into a superb acoustical space. Bach, Pièce d'Orgue; Mendelssohn,
Prelude and Fugue in C Minor; Cantabile from Widor 6th, played on a gorgeous
Oboe; Duruflé Prelude and Fugue on ALAIN. After intermission, we were
driven hastily back to our seats by a fabulous improvised fanfare, using the
splendid, if un-Englishy, Tuba; then the Boston premiere of Les Trés
Riches Heures (An Organ Book of Hours) by Marjorie Merryman--the six movements
are entitled 1. Procession, 2. Dialogues, 3. Cycle of the Year, 4. Rebellion,
5. De Profundis, and 6. Celebrations. The evening ended with "Holy Holy
Holy" to, of course, Nicaea. After the hymn Wachner went into a pretty
wild improvisation on Nicaea.

Friday, August 18

Promenade day

Friday began with a lecture by Barbara Owen on "The
Hook Years," not an overstatement when you realize what an enormous number
of instruments that workshop turned out each year in the mid-1800s. Then the
convention traveled to Hook Country, Jamaica Plain, and the lovely yellow home
of Elias Hook. We were split into three groups at this time, so that no church
was overly crowded--this meaning, of course, that each performer had to play
three times. My group began not with a Hook, but with Central Congregational
Church's Aeolian-Skinner opus 946 of 1936, a versatile and effective 14-stop
instrument. It can do anything asked of it and today, it met just the right
player to direct it. Possibly, this organ should not really function as it
does--after all, it is stuffed into a chamber on the north side of the
chancel--but the room is welcoming, and aided by 5≤ of wind pressure and
scaling and voicing to match, it reaches every corner of the room. This should
not suggest to anyone that it is loud--it simply projects very well in all directions.
The organ is entirely enclosed in one swell box. The program by Mark Dwyer: the
chorale Freu dich sehr; Pachelbel, Partitia on "Freu dich sehr";
Sowerby, Arioso; Bach, Trio on "Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend";
Darke, Fantasy, op. 39; Dupré, Placare Christe servulis. The splendid
playing of Mark Dwyer is no surprise to those who have heard him play. This
organ, on the other hand, was a total surprise: fourteen stops, and look at the
program it played, and all beautifully and essentially authentically!

We walked through pleasant streets with lovely Victorian
houses all around, to First Baptist Church, with its essentially unaltered 1859
Hook, for a concert by Lois Regestein: Hanff, Wär' Gott nicht mit uns
diese Zeit, using a registration which Hook had set as the plenum, just through
2' on the Great, without the mixture; Pinkham, Pastorale on "The Morning
Star"; three Haydn Musical Clock pieces, Minuet, March, and Andantino,
revealing the absolutely beautiful flutes on this organ; Respighi, Prelude on a
chorale of Bach; Ciampa, Agnus Dei (with singer Dianna Daly); Telemann, Trumpet
Tune in D; Brahms, Prelude in G Minor; and a rousing performance of the hymn
"Praise, my soul, the King of Heaven."

Another pleasant walk led to First Parish, Unitarian, for a
program by Gregory Crowell, director of music at Trinity UMC in Grand Rapids
and on the faculty at Grand Valley State University. The organ is E. & G.G.
Hook Opus 171 of 1854. In 1860 Hook added the Choir organ, which was apparently
prepared for in 1854. The program began with the hymn "Spirit of God,
descend upon my heart" to the tune Morecambe, and included the Mendelssohn
Fourth Sonata.

The last venue in Jamaica Plain was St. Thomas Aquinas
Church. Scot Huntington managed to give lots of his time to trying to get this
glorious 1854 Hook (moved to this church in 1898 and somewhat rebuilt by George
Hutchings) playing--it had not been heard in 20 years! This is a major part of
the OHS Convention History--the hours or weeks of time freely given by OHS member
builders to making ill instruments well enough to be heard at conventions. The
organ was permitted to remain there (west gallery) only because it looked so
nice. (It is indeed an unusually attractive case.) The new pastor welcomed the
OHS in a really fine speech that made it clear where his sympathies lie, and he
was roundly cheered. No doubt with his encouragement many parishioners were in
attendance, some of whom had ventured into the balcony for the first time to
see what the organ really looked like. Scot Huntington demonstrated the organ,
an-nouncing registrations as he went along, and even doing a creditable
performance of the "St. Anne Prelude." He then accompanied the hymn
"O worship the King" (Hanover), and many of the attending
parishioners were overwhelmed. The building is not without resonance, and to
hear 400+ musicians filling that room was impressive.

George Bozeman is always a major presence at OHS
conventions, this sometimes taking the form of an organ he has carefully
restored, but most often in the form of an interesting and somewhat unusual
recital. Here, he fulfilled both roles, playing on an 1860 E. & G.G. Hook
(Opus 283) of 32 stops (rebuilt in 1913), which in 1992 had "tonal
re-instatements and recreations; refurbishment and restoration" at the
hands of George Bozeman--at First Congregational Church in Woburn. The program:
Bach, Prelude & Fugue in G Minor (535); C.P.E. Bach, Sonata in A; the hymn,
"Eternal Spirit of the living Christ," to a strong, unnamed, tune by F.
William Voetberg; Franck, Choral in B Minor; four exquisitely registered and
played chorale preludes of Brahms: Herzlich tut mich erfreuen, Schmücke
dich, O wie selig, and Herzlich tut mich verlangen; three selections from the
Bartok Mikrokosmos; and finally Concert Sonata No. 5 in C by Eugene Thayer.

An OHS Boston Weekend

After a fairly energetic and busy Friday, the prospect of a
somewhat more relaxed convention weekend seemed a good one. Saturday began with
Jonathan Ambrosino's lecture entitled "Ernest M. Skinner & G. Donald
Harrison, Retrospective and Review." Ambrosino is president of the
Society, bringing a distinguished background in both communications and
organbuilding, and he is making his strengths very much felt throughout the
organization.

The first concert of the day was by Richard Hill at First
Parish in Arlington, one of the truly great recitals of the convention, on one
of its very best organs--an 1870 Hook (Opus 529) of fifteen stops, moved into
First Parish's fine modern building from a church in Philadelphia. The program
began with a hymn that rather set the tone for the rest of the program,
"Stand up, stand up for Jesus," to the tune Webb. The organ is tucked
in a corner in the front of the church, and has facades on two sides, and the
whole thing resonates like one big soundboard--it really is rich and full, and
beautiful besides. The Triumphal March of Dudley Buck is the kind of spirited
stuff that can really be effective in the hands of a strong and sure player
with spirit to match--really good fun. Then, by Amy Beach, a lovely work,
Prelude on an Old Folk Tune, very Irish sounding. The next piece was the kind
of thing that would keep a congregation around for the postlude, Toccatina by
George E. Whiting (1840-1923). The beginning was a bit reminiscent of the
Lemmens Fanfare. Next, David the King, based on a theme of William Billings, by
Gardner Read--a lament on the death of Absalom. Finally, the grand finale,
Allegro comodo, from Suite in D by Arthur Foote. This work might have suffered
from a lesser performance, but there was nothing lesser about what we heard--a
great ending, to much applause and a quick stand up!

On to Follen Community Church, the oldest church in
Lexington, boasting as one of its ministers Ralph Waldo Emerson. What a
beautiful place and beautiful instrument, both to see and to hear. E. &
G.G. Hook Opus 466 of 1869 was originally in a church in Stoneham, but was
given as a gift and moved to Follen Church in 1995. Erik Suter, with degrees
from both Oberlin and Yale, is now assistant organist and choirmaster at
Washington National Cathedral. The program: Pinkham, "Festive March"
from Music for a Quiet Sunday, which was commissioned by the church to
celebrate the instrument; Mendelssohn, Third Sonata: Sweelinck, Variations on Balletto
del granduca, for which organbuilder John Bishop operated the hand pump, which
really did make a noticeable difference--the wind was rather gentle and supple.
The program ended quietly with the Paul Manz Aria, which featured the Melodia
stop, living up to its name, and toward the end of the piece, an octave up,
where it was ravishing. The final hymn: "Come down, O Love Divine"
(Down Ampney). Suter launched into a quite cathedral-like improvisation on Down
Ampney which sent everyone out very cheerfully indeed.

Sometimes food claims a place on the list of OHS convention
memories. On this Saturday evening, we had an example of this, and what an
example! At 5:30 in the beautiful evening light we boarded a large and very
fast boat for Thompson Island, the history of which is complex and off topic
here, other than to say it is a quite large, hilly, and scenic place from
which, in the right spot, one neither sees nor senses the presence of the big
city so near. I have been to one clambake in my life, a small, private affair,
memorable for wonderful seafood and for good company. This was that experience
writ large; there was no end to the wonderful food. There were various salad
things, baked beans, a wonderful piece of steak, a large pile of steamed clams
and an enormous lobster on a separate plate. We were seated in a great tent,
with some outside places for those who enjoy mosquitos. At the end
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  we hiked down to the dock through the
cool darkness, and after a bit of a wait, our boat appeared to take us back to
the mainland, giving a gorgeous moonlit ride back to Boston Harbor.

On Sunday morning the Annual Meeting of the Society was
scheduled for 8:30. There were reports from all the committees carrying on the
work of the Society, including the Historic Organs Citation Committee, the
superb OHS Archives in a new home in Princeton, the Biggs Fellowship Committee,
the Convention Committee, the Publications Committee, and so much more. At this
convention about a half-dozen plaques were presented to churches that have
recognized the historic significance and musical importance of their
instruments and have continued to maintain them properly. This recognition,
plus the very presence of several hundred musicians in their church coming to
hear the instrument, sends a strong message of support and encouragement. The
Biggs Fellowship is a great program, and its ability to assist interested
people in attending a convention when they might not otherwise be able to do
so, has been greatly enhanced by a major gift from the estate of Peggy Biggs,
the wife of E. Power, who died recently. This year the convention was enriched
by the presence of four Biggs Fellows: Daniel W. Hopkins of Lockeport, Nova
Scotia; Ted Kiefer of Franklinville, New Jersey; Tony Kupina of
Montréal, Québec; and Daniel B. Sanez of Hollywood, California. A
visit to the OHS Archives in Princeton finds one in a place where one could
happily stay for days on end, exploring the amazing riches, holdings unequaled
by any other resource anywhere in the world. Many have studied there helped by
one of the research grants available through OHS. The Archives were bursting at
the seams in the old space in the Westminster Choir College Library, and
through gifts from business and arts organizations and individuals, the sum of
$85,000 was collected to make possible the move to new and spacious quarters.
Confident in the knowledge that OHS is important to all its members, important
enough that they are willing to help the organization financially over and
above the membership fees, a new fund has been established and announced at
this year's annual meeting. This endowment fund will help stabilize the
finances of the organization and enable it to expand its work in a number of
areas where money has been a bit tight. The goal is a half-million dollars, and
amazingly, a small group of officers and close friends of the Society has
already pledged the sum of $58,000. I hope anyone reading this who is not a
member of OHS will consider now joining. Try: . By
the way, next summer's convention will be in Winston-Salem, North Carolina,
June 21-28.

On this Sunday afternoon, there were some opportunities to
visit Cambridge organs and also the astonishing beauties of Mount Auburn
Cemetery, which for American organists and organbuilders, might be a rough
equivalent to an Englishman visiting Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey. Some
recitals were played in Cambridge, and some churches held special musical
events for conventioneers. I chose to stay close to the hotel before the great
evening event, a concert about which I almost fear to write, so controversial
was it. Catching all the buzz on the walk back to the hotel and in the exhibit
room later, there seemed to be no agreement whatsoever about the instrument,
the player, her registrations, the music she chose--even what she wore! That
Cherry Rhodes is the consummate concert artist cannot be in dispute. Nor can
one deny the historicity and significance of the enormous 1952 Aeolian-Sinner
organ, much upgraded and changed both mechanically and tonally over the years,
but still bearing the stamp of the makers, working under consultant Larry
Phelps. Beyond that, I heard those things that I thought I rather liked being
roundly condemned by some, and those things that I thought I did not like being
roundly praised by others. If nothing else, the organ is a great amusement.
There is much to gaze upon, with all manner of pipes mounted in all kinds of
arrangements. There is nothing to suggest the historic structure of The Pipe
Organ, perhaps even less so than in some of the exposed organs of Walter
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Holtkamp, Sr. Looking at those, one
usually knew what was where. Not so here in the First Church of Christ,
Scientist, known familiarly as The Mother Church. The great heaps of pipework
are not identifiable without some sort of guidance. The exposed pipework speaks
into an enormous space, seating about eight thousand people, and amazingly, it
projects fairly well, coming to the listener's ear, I think, with the aid of
the various domed shapes in the building. It is capable of gentleness and also
of bombast, all sounding to my ears just a bit on the thin side, and looking at
the pipework, one does have the impression of thin. I am sure I will pay for
this in some way, but I have to say that at the end of the first piece, a large
plenum with tons of mixture ranks in play caused me to say that I thought it
all sounded incredibly electronic.

The program (12 pieces, only two of which I had ever heard)
began with a piece that made use of the spacious layout of the organ, a work by
Frank Ticheli (b. 1958) dedicated in its organ arrangement to Cherry Rhodes.
Pacific Fanfare (1999) began very softly and finally did build up to live up to
its name, exploring the many reeds of various volumes on this instrument. This
was followed by the Sweelinck Bergamasca, using what is called the Continuo
division of the organ; Deuxième Légende of Bonnet, a beautiful
work; from the Vierne Pièces de Fantaisie, "Impromptu";
Méditation by Gabriel Dupont (1878-1914, an organ student of Widor);
Sportive Fauns, by the Yugoslav composer, Deszö d'Antalffy-Zsiross
(1885-1945), who studied with, among others, Max Reger. After intermission, the
obligatory hymn, "I love thy way of freedom, Lord" to a Hubert Parry
tune, Heavenward. The accompaniment was unusual, being almost a gentle wash of
sound much in the manner of some English Psalm accompaniments, very much in the
background. Then Four Pieces for the Mass by José Lidón; Clarence
Mader's "The Afternoon of a Toad"; and Variations on "Victimae
Paschali," by Jiri Ropek (b. 1922 in Prague).

Whatever misgivings people might have had about the concert,
at the end of the Ropek there was a spontaneous and essentially unanimous
standing ovation, and it kept going long enough that it was clear an encore was
needed, the lovely and quiet Salve Festa Dies by Marius Walter. Hailing the
festival day was a very gentle affair, but beautiful. And thus ended Sunday and
the weekend.

Monday, August 21

The recitals this day were part of an elective involving visits
to instruments in the Newton area. The alternative was the Mount Auburn
Cemetery, also available the previous day. A third choice was to do nothing and
ride a bus later to a concert at The Korean Church in Cambridge.

First stop: Church of the Redeemer, Chestnut Hill, Newton,
something of a cookie-cutter Anglican pretend Gothic building, of which there
must be thousands around the country. It boasted pretend Gothic acoustics as
well. Heard from the third row on the south side, the Noack organ was overpowering.
I suspect that this chancel installation caused the builder to push the
instrument so it could lead those in the back row of the church. Gretchen
Longwell gave a program that one might play on a North German-oriented
mechanical-action organ in a good room in an academic environment. The audience
was made up almost completely of organists, but the recital missed one of the
features of OHS programming--showing a variety of things the organ can do. Many
thought that we could have heard some Vierne, Mendelssohn, or anything else
that might show the Romantic possibilities which probably exist in this
instrument. The program: Buxtehude, Praeludium in G Minor; Boehm, Wer nur den
lieben Gott lasst walten; the hymn 
"If thou but trust in God to guide you"; two Schübler
chorales: Meine Seele and Ach bleib bei uns, both really well played; and the
Ernst/Bach, Concerto in G.

The next recital featured a new instrument built by George
Bozeman at Eliot Church (Congregational) in Newton Corner, Newton. The instrument
has rather active or flexible wind, a bit more so than wanted, as there was
clearly no room for the main reservoir right with the instrument--it is in the
next room--and even fitted with concussion bellows, things occasionally get a
bit bouncy. But the overall effect is very good. There is an amazing wooden 16'
Pedal Trombone, tremendously round and full in sound, not loud, and perhaps a
bit slow of speech, but really fun when it opens out. The recitalist was
Kimberly Ann Hess, director of chapel music and college organist at Stonehill
College in Easton, Massachusetts. The program: de Grigny, Veni Creator, played
with glorious ornamentation and clarity on a very sympathetic organ in
Kirnberger I; Schumann, Four Sketches from Opus 58; Bach, Toccata in F (BWV
540), including the most expressive playing of that long Pedal solo I have ever
heard; and the hymn "We are your people" to Sine Nomine.

Brian Jones has been featured at OHS conventions seemingly
forever. To be sure, his playing is always wonderful, but he gives more,
steeped as he is in the history of the instrument, the OHS, and New England
itself. Léfebure-Wély, Boléro de Concert; Concerto in D by
Charles Avison (1817-1953); Jongen, Scherzetto, op. 108, no. 1. The next and
final work on the program was dedicated to Alan Laufman, director of the Organ
Clearing House, who, as a young man, first turned pages for Jones for the same
piece quite a few years back at an OHS Convention on The Cape. Jones gave a
spirited reading of the Bach Prelude and Fugue in A Minor (BWV 543); and
finally the hymn, "How shall I sing that majesty which angels do
admire," to the tune Coe Fen.

Next on the schedule was Nancy Granert at The Korean Church
(formerly Pilgrim U.C.C.) in Cambridgeport, Cambridge. The 22-stop Hutchings instrument
of 1886 was not very telling in a fully carpeted room, unfortunately, and the
program began with three early works that just did not make sense on the
instrument and in the non-intimate environment: Spanieler Tanz of Johannes Weck
(early 16th century), Mit ganzem Willen wünsch ich ihr of Paumann, and
Kochersperger Spanieler of Hans Kotter; then two Bach settings of Liebster
Jesu, the first on the really warm Open Diapason, and the second using the
Dolce Cornet for the cantus, quiet but pungent. We then sang the chorale, with
a chance to sing harmony in the middle stanza. Then George Chadwick,
Canzonetta; Frank Donahoe, Impromptu. We finally heard the (rather
underwhelming) full organ in the Arthur Foote Prelude in C. Nancy Granert is
now organist at Emmanuel Church (Boston) and Temple Sinai (Brookline), and is
on the faculty at the Boston University School for the Arts. The audience stood
all around the walls, around the altar, and in extra seats in each of the
aisles. The organ did not have a chance, but Granert put in a valiant effort,
and it was clear that she is an excellent player.

We had heard four recitals already, and it was getting on
for 5 pm, but most did not accept the proffered escape bus to the hotel,
instead opting to hear Rosalind Mohnsen at the beautiful St. Catherine of Genoa
Church in Somerville, with its fine 1894 Jardine, and decent acoustic. Mohnsen
shared her program with a wonderful, expressive soprano, Maura Lynch, who added
a great deal of interest to the program. First, three Antiphons from the
Fifteen Pieces of Dupré, "His left hand is under my head,"
"Lo, the Winter is Past," and "How Fair and Pleasant art
Thou"; the hymn "Come Holy Ghost, Creator Blest" sung to a
pleasant minor-key tune from the Pius X Hymnal--written by Theodore Marier;
then Schumann, two of the Fugues on the Name of Bach. Ms. Lynch stepped forward
to the balcony rail and sang "The Flag of Prospect Hill" by J.W.
Bailey. We then sang an interesting cantor and response sort of hymn "Now
Help Us, Lord," with Ms. Lynch serving as cantor. Next, for soprano and
organ, Der Schmetterling ist in die Rose verliebt, op. 14, no. 2 of Henry
Hadley (1871-1937). Last on the program was Henry Dunham's (1853-1929) Fantasia
and Fugue in d, op. 19. Rosalind Mohnsen is director of music at Immaculate
Conception Church in Malden, and this was her 15th OHS convention recital.

Dinner on this evening was a barbeque at the Charlestown
Navy Yard. The food really was delicious, and we were only a short walk from
St. Mary Roman Catholic Church, Charlestown, where Dana Robinson played a
stunning recital. This church was one of a number of very old, large, Catholic
churches that have been recently re-stored. This was a great evening of great
organ music suited to the grand old Woodberry and Harris Organ of 1892 in a
fine acoustic. Parker, Introduction and Fugue in E Minor; a duet version of six
Schumann Studies for Pedal Piano (Opus 56) with Paul Tegels assisting; Franck,
E-Major Chorale; the hymn "Immaculate Mary" to the Lourdes Hymn; Widor,
the complete Symphonie Gothique. Dr. Robinson teaches at the School of Music of
the University of Illinois.

Tuesday, August 22

Tuesday the 22nd began with a lecture by Pamela Fox
concerning the Hook & Hastings factory in Weston, which involves more of
interest than might meet the eye. This was an attempt at a complete
"community of labor," with workers' cottages, a company-built
recreation hall, and other facilities. The move to Weston took place in 1880.

This was it--my first chance to hear the legendary
instrument at Old West Church, and its legendary organist, Yuko Hayashi.
Perhaps the experience of the organ was a bit underwhelming (to me) because we
have all heard so many wonderful instruments in a similar style that have been
built since this pioneer Fisk organ appeared in 1971. Many of these, I think,
surpass Old West in terms of color and clarity, an excellent example of which
we heard at our next stop. The program: Buxtehude, Toccata in D Minor; Bach,
Wenn wir in höchsten Nöthen sein; Clérambault, Suite on the
Second Tone. The Basse de Cromorne was something else, given the monster
Cromorne on this instrument, full of color and character. The Récit de
nasard revealed another monster, the Nasard itself--quite big and colorful in
combination. We did sing a hymn, "Now thank we all our God," in the
strange unison version found at number 396 in the 1982 Hymnal. Had anyone
turned one more page, they would have come to the harmonization
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  by Monk, following Mendelssohn's
symphony version, which would have been infinitely more fun.

Next First Lutheran Church, where Richards, Fowkes &
Company Opus 10 was in the final stages of installation, sufficiently far along
to allow William Porter to improvise his way through many combinations of
sounds. This organ, in its hideous Piero Belluschi building, should be a
fabulous addition to the Boston organ scene.

For the next program, Frederick Jodry V gave a really
interesting performance on a 1938 Wicks instrument in a fine acoustical
environment, Most Holy Name Parish, West Roxbury, the instrument designed and
voiced by Henry Vincent Willis. Wow! Broad foundation tone! Reading through the
very detailed stoplist provided, some features stand out. The Great has no
mixture, going only to the 2' Principal. There are, however, two Open Diapasons
at 8'. The flues are on 95mm of wind, but the Great Trumpet is on 145mm. The
Choir (enclosed--73 note chest) has a French Horn with its own tremolo. It is
on 140mm of wind, while the rest of the division is on 95mm. The Swell has flues
on 100mm, a Vox Humana which automatically engages its own Tremolo, on 105mm,
with the four other reeds on 140mm. The Pedal has a 16' Open Diapason and a 16'
Bourdon. All else is either borrowed or extended from somewhere. There is a
small sanctuary organ, but it is not working, and was not made available for
inspection. The program: Woodman, Little Partita for Easter; Chadwick,
Pastorale, demonstrating a truly wonderful Harmonic Flute;
Léfebure-Wély, March; the hymn "The Strife is O'er" at
an incredibly fast clip. The program finished with a really interesting
Postlude on a Theme of Palestrina by Dudley Buck.

One of the happy-making experiences of this convention has
been seeing quite a few ornate, very old, Roman Catholic churches that have
been newly loved and spruced up with great care and taste. Saint Patrick Church
in Roxbury is not one of these, possibly lacking the enormous amount of money
required for a major fix-up. It does have rather nice stations, set in small
tabernacles, perhaps two or three feet high, and lighted indirectly from above.
The room is disfigured by ugly loudspeakers stuck all over the place. The organ
is an E. & G.G. Hook & Hastings from 1880, rebuilt by Hutchings in
1893, adding a Barker lever to the Great and its couplers. The pipework and
chests are original Hook & Hastings, but the Choir organ was added by
Hutchings. It is visually reminiscent of the Covington Holtkamp that has been
discussed on Piporg-l, with exposed pipework in a pleasing pattern--rather
remarkable for its time.

In this church, Kristin Farmer played one of those
"Program will be announced" events, again of necessity, given the
precarious condition of the organ. Kristin and her organbuilder husband John
Farmer have donated countless hours to getting this organ up and playing for
the convention. After the organ received an OHS Plaque, we heard the following
program: Langlais, Hommage; three Dupré Antiphons; Meditation from
Thaïs; and a Gigue by John Bull. The Langlais really worked on the instrument,
which is quite beautiful doing mystic bits, and also capable of some richness
as the volume rises. There is a strong and independent 16' Open on the Great.
In the Dupré "I am black but comely," the Flute had a
wonderful open sound. The John Bull Gigue was played rather full out, and the
upperwork was irritatingly out of tune, sounding for all the world like a
supercoupler forcing into play pipes that have not been noticed (or tuned) in
years--but there is no supercoupler. At the end, we sang "Glory, love, and
praise," to the pleasant tune "Benifold," by Francis Westbrook
(1903-1975).

It was getting on for tea time, and at First Parish
(Unitarian) in Roxbury the convention split into two groups: one group going to
the recital and the other to what was billed in the book as a
"reception." This meant not high tea, but various cool drinks and
cookies out under the trees in back of the church. The recital of one hour and
ten minutes (surely the longest daytime event of the convention) took place on
a rather anemic instrument in a totally dead acoustic in a quite large
building. (The building is quite beautiful, if greatly run down, but a grant
has apparently been secured and further funds are being sought for its
restoration.) Robert Barney gave another performance of the Brahms Prelude and
Fugue in G Minor, which was effective in the space, followed by another good
choice, the Hindemith Second Sonata. But nothing could overcome the effect of
the hour, the hopelessly dull acoustic and the instrument. There was a certain
amount of merriment when folks realized the hymn to come was "Sleepers
Wake! A voice astounds us." But wait, there was yet more to come. The
Reger Fantasy on Wachet Auf really did not belong in this building, on this
organ, and for that trivial matter, at this time of day. Two people were sound
asleep in my pew. We ran, not walked, to the waiting buses.

The evening venue was Holy Cross Cathedral. Anyone, in New
England at least, who receives mail at all, has probably had a mailing from Leo
Abbott concerning his ongoing effort to restore this most wonderful instrument
in a glorious space. The instrument, Hook & Hastings from 1875, is simply
enormous, with all mod cons of the period, including Barker lever to the Great
and its couplers, pneumatic stop action, eight mixtures, and imported French
reeds from Zimmerman, some with Cavaillé-Coll shallots. It was
electrified around 1929 by Laws. Henri Lahaise and Sons have been working
steadily to keep it going, while doing restoration work as time and funds permit.
Along with lots of AGO members and other members of the Boston musical
community, in addition to lots of parishioners, we were a huge audience to hear
four well-known organists in a program that became even more remarkable than we
were led to expect.

George Bozeman led off with some charming Pepping Chorale
Preludes, ones from the Kleines Orgelbüch. Julian Wachner, who had given a
full evening recital earlier in the week, offered the Bach Dorian Toccata and
Fugue. The Toccata was a bit thick for the registration and building, but the
Fugue was magical, with a hardly noticeable but very real build-up that left
one breathless at the final cadence. Next came Wachner's transcription of El
Salon Mexico of Copland. I guess there are cannon shots in the score, and Leo Abbott
was ready in the balcony with an enormous bass drum, which he struck with
immense authority. At the first blow, the whole audience rose quite visibly
just a bit off its seats. Peter Sykes began the second half with a stunning
performance of the Reger Fantasy and Fugue on BACH. This was our first chance
to hear the organ full out in a major piece of organ literature. It was totally
tremendous, and the audience response was enormous. Leo Abbott assumed his
familiar bench at his familiar reversed horseshoe theater organ console (long
story, but the thing works!), and led the hymn "The Royal Banners Forward
Go" (Agincourt Hymn), with lots of wonderful fanfares and interludes. He
then gave a magnificent improvisation on Salve Regina, which, among other things,
was a great tour through the instrument. After the last chord had died away,
there were whoops and cheers, and an audience completely on its feet. What a
night!

The final great day

Wednesday, August 23

On this last day, it was hard to
refrain from commenting on the weather. With the exception of one evening of
some rain, the days were cool, sunny, and dry. One's impressions of a
convention are somewhat tempered, I think, by whether one has or has not sat in
broiling hot churches with perspiration pouring down. We had essentially none
of that.

This day began with a lecture on
"Organ Pedagogy in Boston 1850-1900," and included a discussion of
the personalities, the publications, and institutions of the period. To attend
a Friday noon recital at Trinity, Copley Square, is to learn that this organ
culture remains very much alive today. It will be you and about 299 others in
attendance! The AGO chapter is one of the largest and most active in the
country.

For the first two concerts of
the day we were split into two groups, so today's performers each played twice.
Our group began at First Baptist Church in Framingham at 11:30 with a totally
satisfying event. The church is the oldest in the area, clearly well-loved and
well kept. Victoria Wagner gave a program of organ works and songs in which she
accompanied soprano Nancy Armstrong. The organ is gentle, the room not resonant
but small and clear. The idea of this combination organ concert and song
recital was just right. The instrument, William Simmons of 1853, 17 stops, is
lovely, but not perhaps compelling enough to carry a full program on its own.
Like the church, it has been well cared for, and was presented with an OHS
plaque before the music began. The program: Handel, Voluntary XI; two Purcell
songs, "We Sing to Him" (Harmonia Sacra) and "Tecum principium
in die virtutis" from Dixit Dominus; the hymn "Rock of Ages" to
"Toplady"; James Woodman's song, Rock of Ages. Next, the premiere of
Peter Sykes's "Arise my love" for organ and soprano, a truly lovely
addition to the repertoire for voice and organ. The perfect finish to this
lovely event was Festival March, by Christian Teilman. Victoria Wagner is
director of music at Trinitarian Congregational Church in Concord, organ
instructor at Regis College in Weston, and on the piano faculty at the Noble
& Greenough School in Dedham.

It was lunch time. If you were
in Group A, you ate at St. Andrew's Church, Wellesley, but Group B, of which I
was a member, ate at Village Congregational, also in Wellesley. There were no
concerts scheduled for these churches--only the use of their facilities for the
meal. Then onward to the Chapel at Wellesley College. The complications of the
keyboard require quite a bit of time and understanding. There are split sharps
and a "short octave," and nothing quite feels like what one is used
to at home. But the whole thing represents the kind of creative adventure,
unique, I think, to the questing and curious mind of Charles Brenton Fisk. I
need to quote a bit of history from the ever-helpful Organ Handbook: "In
1972, Wellesley College signed a contract with C. B. Fisk for a two-manual
organ based on Dutch models, c. 1620. Inaugurated in 1981, this organ and its
design underwent considerable evolution in the decade leading to its fruition.
From the beginning, it was intended that a specialized instrument, built
‘in the spirit of uncompromising authenticity' would allow students a
European experience in America." The Pedal Posaune was added in 1983, as
were carved pipeshades. Additional Pedal stops were added in 1987, and the case
was oiled and gilded in 1992. At the other (east) end is an Aeolian-Skinner
instrument which is, in fact, used for accompanying the choir and congregation
up front.

On the above-described Fisk
instrument, Margaret Irwin-Brandon gave a most elegant recital: Scheidemann,
Fantasia in C; Weckmann, Canzon in G Major; a choral prelude by Franz Tunder,
Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, der von uns, served in alternation to our
singing of the chorale in or with various harmonizations. Next, the Buxtehude G
Minor. While there is an electric blower for practice, in normal public
playing, the organ is human-pumped. One person can do it all, although there is
room for two at the pumping apparatus. One must carefully go backwards up a
short staircase, step out over a beam connected to one of the feeder bellows,
and glide down, propelled by one's own weight, on that beam until the bellows
hits bottom. At this point, one goes back up the stairs, and vigilance is
wanted to wait for the last-pumped bellows to rise almost to the top, at which
point one rides down on the other one. It's an exercise that adds a most
graceful visual component to the playing of this instrument. As you look at the
case, to the left, you see the pumper backing up the stairs, and then
ever-so-gracefully riding down quite slowly on the bellows, after which the
work is repeated. A couple of our Biggs Fellows had the honor of raising the
wind.

For various reasons I missed a
recital at St. Mary R.C. Church, Waltham, by Libor Dudas, music director and
organist at the famous Old North Church. The program included the Brahms A
Minor Prelude & Fugue, the Elgar Vesper Voluntaries, and the Franck Finale,
on an 1874 Hook & Hastings instrument, restored by Henri Lahaise and Son
during the 1990s.

The last concert of the
convention took us back to Immaculate Conception where, before an enormous
audience of conventioneers, AGO members, and Boston music lovers, Thomas Murray
gave one final fabulous musical memory. The whole program was a procession of
delights, all played in the elegant Murray manner and wonderfully registered
with great care: Guilmant, Sonata IV in D Minor; Reger, Benedictus; Schumann,
Three Studies for Pedal-Piano; Bonnet, Matin Provençale (No. 2 from Poèmes
d'Automne, 1908); Franck, Fantasy in A Major. We sang a rousing hymn,
"Praise the Lord, ye heavens adore him," to a grand Victorian tune
called "Faben," composed by the first organist of Immaculate
Conception Parish, who served until his death in 1875, John Henry Wilcox. Next,
three more of the Schumann Studies; finally, the Mulet Carillon-Sortie. And
sortie we did, back to the exhibit hall cum bar, for a last social time with
friends from far and near.

What a wonderful convention! I
hope this report might help some readers to consider making plans now to attend
next summer in North Carolina, from June 21st to the 28th.

--Malcolm Wechsler

Mander Organs, USA

The author thanks Mark Nelson,
William Van Pelt, Judy Ollikkala, and Anonymous for corrections and additions
to this article after its original Internet appearance.