Bunn=Minnick Pipe Organs featured in <i>Columbus Dispatch</i> series, &quot;Made Here&quot;

Nunc Dimittis

Robert V. (Bob) Clement, 67, of Avondale, Pennsylvania, died November 18 after a brief illness. An electrical engineer by profession, his greatest passion was music. He started piano lessons at age five. and on a visit to the U.S. Air Force Academy Chapel at age 17 he discovered the pipe organ. He immediately began lessons and continued to play at churches for weddings and other services throughout his life. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Texas at El Paso, and moved to South Carolina after graduation to work for the DuPont Company in the Fibers Division. He served churches for 25 years, ending at Hanover Presbyterian Church.

Clement retired in 2011 after 38 years with DuPont/INVISTA. He married his interests in designing, model building, and music by building his own Hauptwerk organ in the basement of his home. He became treasurer of the Albert Schweitzer Organ Festival, joined the board of the Delaware American Guild of Organists chapter, and became the director of the English Cathedral Tour, which offered the chance to play pipe organs in famous cathedrals around the United Kingdom. 

Clement’s other hobbies included architecture (he designed two homes that were built in Lugoff, South Carolina), home computers, and learning about the Titanic. One of his lifelong dreams was completing a trans-Atlantic crossing by boat, which he did in 2012 during the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic. He was fascinated with London, its history and cathedrals, and golf. 

Robert Clement is survived by his wife Karen Hudson of Avondale, Pennsylvania; son Chris Clement of Newark, Delaware; daughter Renee and husband Dan Roush of Haymarket, Virginia; grandchildren Megan Diehl, Davis Roush, and Maggie Roush; mother Shirley Fouts; and siblings Brian Clement, Carol Abraham, and Rosemary Schultz.

Richard Gordon Enright, 93, died December 23, 2016, in Atlanta, Georgia. Born on November 29, 1923, in Freeport, Illinois, he had completed two years of study at the University of Dubuque when World War II broke out. Subsequently he served in Patton’s Third Army of the 26th Infantry Division from 1943 until the war ended in 1946.

Enright received his Bachelor of Music degree from Northwestern University in 1948, followed by a Master of Music degree a year later and a Doctor of Music in 1961. While at Northwestern, he met his future wife, Clara Mae (Sandy) Sandehn, an organist and singer. They were married in 1949. Enright served on the faculty of the School of Music at Northwestern for 35 years, becoming chairman of the department of church music and organ in 1969 and serving until his retirement in 1989, when he was named Professor Emeritus of Church Music and Organ.

Enright pursued additional study at the Royal School of Church Music in England and at the Staatliche Hochschule fur Musik in Frankfort, Germany. His text on organ instruction, Fundamentals of Organ Playing, continues in wide use. He lectured at Chicago Theological Seminary and at the Music Teachers Conference in Berkeley. He presented numerous recitals across the United States. He served as associate organist and choirmaster at Fourth Presbyterian Church of Chicago under the direction of his teacher Barrett Spach, followed by a 22-year tenure as organist and choirmaster at First Presbyterian Church in Evanston. He then served the First Presbyterian Church of Lake Forest as organist for 23 years, retiring at age 70. In 2005 Dick and Sandy relocated to Atlanta to be closer to their daughter and her family. 

Richard Gordon Enright is survived by his wife of 67 years, Sandy, daughter Catharine (Walton Reeves) and son Steven (Krista) of Fort Worth, and grandsons Harrison Reeves and Kevin and Scott Enright. A memorial service was held January 6 at Trinity Presbyterian Church of Atlanta. Donations may be made in his memory to the Adele McKee Music Fund of Trinity Presbyterian Church, 3003 Howell Mill Road, NW, Atlanta, Georgia 30327.

Thomas Harmon, organist and educator, died November 14 at age 77 in Medford, Oregon, after a long illness. Born in Springfield, Illinois, on February 28, 1939, he began playing the piano at age 6 and organ at age 11. He played regularly at the First Methodist Church, on radio, and in local restaurants and lounges. He also is remembered for renovating the theatre organ from the Orpheum Theatre and moving it to Springfield High School.

Harmon earned bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in music with honors at Washington University, St. Louis, and a master’s degree in music with honors at Stanford University. He was awarded a Fulbright Scholarship to study organ in Austria with Anton Heiller. It was there that he met and married fellow Fulbright student Sue Snow in June 1964. His special research interest was the organ works of J. S. Bach.

Harmon’s academic career was devoted to the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA), where he began in 1968 as assistant professor and university organist. He went on to become full professor and served as chairman of the Department of Music for seven years. Harmon performed frequently as organist with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Chamber Orchestras, American Youth Symphony, UCLA Philharmonic Orchestra, UCLA Wind Ensemble, and the Los Angeles Master Chorale.

Thomas Harmon performed recitals across the United States, with broadcasts on American Public Radio, the BBC, as well as in Mexico, Japan, and numerous European countries. As university organist, he oversaw a major renovation of the UCLA concert hall organ after damage from the 1994 Northridge earthquake. During his tenure at UCLA he also served for 20 years as organist of First United Methodist Church in Santa Monica.

Harmon retired in 2002 to Medford, Oregon, where he continued to perform in concerts and churches. He was preceded in death by his domestic partner, John Crutcher.

Thomas Harmon is survived by his brothers, Charles Harmon of Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Bob Harmon of Jacksonville, Florida, and his former wife, Sue Harmon of Ashland, Oregon. A memorial service was held on November 21. Donations may be made to the American Guild of Organists/Southern Oregon Chapter, c/o Margaret Evans, 1250 Green Meadows Way, Ashland, Oregon 97520.

Sister Marie Juan Maney, OP, died December 2, 2016, at Sinsinawa, Wisconsin. Sister Marie Juan was born April 25, 1927, in Big Bend, Wisconsin. She made her first religious profession as a Sinsinawa Dominican 1947 and her final profession in 1950. She taught music for 37 years, served as liturgist and music director for six years, and directed numerous choirs and coordinated musical events for 24 years, serving communities in Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Nebraska, and Minnesota. As a liturgist and music director, she served St. Cajetan Parish, Chicago, 1984–1988, as well as St. Peter Parish, Forest Lake, Minnesota, 1988–1990. She was organist and choir director for St. Augustine Parish, Platteville, Wisconsin, 1990–2010, as well as at her motherhouse in Sinsinawa from 1990 until 2014. There, she also orchestrated the Elizabethan Dinner, the Sinsinawa Summer Organ Concert Series, and the annual Messiah concert at “Sinsinawa Mound.”

Sister Marie Juan Maney is survived by two sisters, Eileen Nettesheim and Margaret Loughney, and her Dominican Sisters with whom she shared life for 69 years. The funeral Mass for Sister Marie Juan Maney was held in Queen of the Rosary Chapel at Sinsinawa, December 5. Memorials may be made to the Sinsinawa Dominicans, 585 County Road Z, Sinsinawa, Wisconsin, 53824-9701 or online at www.sinsinawa.org.

Philip D. Minnick, 68, died December 26 in Columbus, Ohio. He was born August 25, 1948, in Springfield, Ohio, and attended Capital University of Columbus, from 1966 to 1969, majoring in voice and organ studies. His interest in the pipe organ began in 1960 with the installation of an organ by
M. P. Möller in Central Methodist Church (now Faith United Methodist Church), Springfield. While in college he worked for A. W. Brandt Pipe Organ Company of Columbus. During this time, he met his future business and life partner, Robert W. Bunn, Jr. In 1969, the Bunn=Minnick Pipe Organ Company was formed in Columbus, a firm which has built organs for installations in Florida, Indiana, Kentucky, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and West Virginia. Philip Minnick was a founding member of the Ohio Village Singers, a member of the Columbus Maennerchor, the Broad Street United Methodist Church of Columbus, and the American Institute of Organbuilders.

Philip Minnick is survived by his business and life partner, Robert W. Bunn, Jr., of Columbus, sister Lisa of Ft. Myers, Florida, and adopted sister, Karen Freudigman of Columbus.

Reflections ten years later

Joyce Johnson Robinson is editorial director of The Diapason. 

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

A matter of manners

In the first days of the twentieth century my great-grandfather and his seven brothers ran a large and successful silk business, importing thread from China and weaving fabric. There was a sprawling mill complex in Manchester, Connecticut bearing the family name that included a company assembly hall, which is still home to a lovely organ by E. & G. G. Hook. Glad to know my forebears had good taste in pipe organs. Eight grand houses shared an expanse of lawn, one of which was still my great-grandmother’s home when I was growing up. Each year at Columbus Day we drove to Manchester for a visit, and I remember exploring that huge house with its endless corridors, seemingly dozens of bedrooms, and a third-floor playroom complete with a swing hung from the ceiling.

Hanging in our guest bathroom we have reproductions of flowery advertisements from the company, touting showrooms in Manhattan, and depicting tidy maids helping their mistresses with their frocks. My great-grandmother would have hated Downton Abbey.

Lunch at that house was a formal affair with fancy china, and plenty of forks, knives, and spoons, and we were coached in their proper use. After my great-grandmother died, the immense brass candlesticks from her table were converted into lamps, one of which lights my desk as I write today.  

My grandfather and father were both Episcopal priests, which had the trickle-down effect that my siblings and I were brought up accustomed to a succession of fancy and formal dinners, endless stacks of elegant china, stemware, and utensils having found their way through the generations to our adolescent dinner table. Now that my parents are living in a retirement community and their household has been downsized a couple times, we have realized that our children and the subsequent generations will have little to do with all that finery. Beautiful as it is, the stuff is a nuisance because the gold bands on the plates mean they can’t go in the dishwasher.

These remaining traces of formality in family life combined with the community’s expectation of the rector’s family (ever wonder how Preachers’ Kids got such a reputation?) mean that we were brought up to know good manners. We knew which fork to use for salad, and how to set the table with the dessert forks and spoons in the proper place, and yes, there were always dessert forks and spoons. My father carved the meat at the head of the table, passing plates to my mother at the foot, ensuring that the food was cold before anyone could take a bite. The most senior female guest was seated to Dad’s right, male to Mom’s right. It was usually obvious who those people were, but I bet there was more than one feather ruffled when someone who considered herself to be senior was seated in the middle of the table. When we ate at my grandparents’ table, the carving went a little better. Poppy had been a surgeon before entering the priesthood and the turkey seemed to fall apart into appropriate serving sizes the moment he lifted his oft-honed scalpel of a carving knife!

Today when we entertain, Wendy sets a beautiful table, but sometimes I can’t help speaking up to protect the memory of that grand succession of mothers who brought me up to know which way the dessert fork should face. What is it they say, choose your battles?

I’ve read many novels about life in the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, and chuckle because so many of the dinner-table rituals I grew up with are present at the tables of the Captain while at sea, battles or no battles. And British officers serving in distant outposts of the empire were never without their silver and table finery, their sherry and port wine, a custom exquisitely lampooned by the British comedy troupe Monty Python. We can deduce that the formalization of dining rituals set the stage for freer exchange of ideas in conversation.

When you get right down to it, good manners in just about any situation are a statement of respect for the occasion and the people participating in it.

§

A couple months ago, I wrote of my fascination with the fast-growing world of cell-phone Apps. Those snazzy little bits of software that are being created to simplify our lives at ninety-nine cents a pop seem like gifts from God because they drop from heaven with no effort at all, with the potential of enlightening us like mega-bytes of holy grail. But in fact, when used without consideration, our cell phones and all they contain are playing a large role in the decay of social order. How’s that for sounding like an old, um, codger?

But I don’t think I’m being sanctimonious. How many of us have stood tapping our feet in a long line at the bank while the guy at the teller window can’t finish his transaction because he’s on the phone? How many of us have traveled to attend a meeting that was continually interrupted by its leader answering his phone or e-mails while we wait? (“Sorry, I’ve been waiting for this call.”) And how many of us have tried to pass someone on a city sidewalk who’s weaving from side to side and walking at a snail’s pace with a phone glued to her ear, making herself into a double-wide with her gesticulations?

You’re sitting in a coffee shop enjoying your non-fat-triple-shot-soy-praline-half-caff beverage. Nice, but there are two people in the shop with their ties loosened and sleeves rolled halfway up their cubits, laptops open, talking in full voices on the phone. One is fighting with his wife; the other is clearly the most brilliant and insightful businessperson in town. So much for reading the paper—on my iPad.

Under the pews

Last week I got together with a friend in New York. We had lunch in a nice little French café, then walked to his church to see the organ. It’s a large old church with a fascinating nineteenth-century organ, but what really caught my eye was on the literature table in the narthex—a stack of photocopied sheets with the title “Church Etiquette Page.” It starts out defining Christ’s presence in the Tabernacle, suggesting that it’s appropriate to bow or genuflect when walking past, and continues with a statement: Please observe the following courtesies when you are visiting the church.

• Silence is the norm while in church. Conversation is to be confined to the narthex or the courtyard. Since the acoustics in the church are very fine, any necessary talking needs to be at a whisper.

• Proper attire is expected. Since this is relative to taste and fashion, you are expected to use your good judgment.

• Food and beverages have no place in a church. However it is permitted in the narthex and courtyard. The use of alcohol and tobacco is prohibited on church premises. This is not the O.K. Corral.

• Gum is not to be chewed in church.*

• Running is inappropriate. Parents or caretakers need to stay close to their children. Adults mustn’t run either, unless they’re chasing after a child.

• Reading newspapers, using cell phones, applying cosmetics, changing clothes (yes, it’s happened) and other similar activities do not have a place in church.

• Refuse should not be left in the pews or the floor around you.

• Dogs are allowed to enter the church as long as they observe silence and know the difference between a holy water font and a fire hydrant. After all, they can be better behaved than some humans.

• Smoking is simply not to occur anywhere on church property.

*Please use this paper to discard your gum rather than the underside of a pew.

How did that priest know I’ve been sticking gum under the pew? I thought I was getting away with it. But how refreshing to see this simple expression expecting respect. By setting out a code of decorum with a twinkle in his eye, he has taken the pressure off anyone who didn’t know how to behave in church, while giving a nudge to those who know perfectly well but seem to have forgotten. I’ve heard many stories from colleagues who, sitting in princely splendor at their console in the chancel, look out across a congregation full of Tetris, Words-With-Friends, e-mails, and texting. One told me how a man answered a phone call during worship, then walked around behind a pillar, thinking that would keep his fellow worshippers from hearing him. (“Hey Mister, churches have acoustics!”)  

One of my Words-With-Friends friends is organist of a church in Hawaii. Last week she shared a YouTube video on the subject of cell phones in church, saying that she used to play for the church in the video. Here’s the link—it’s worth a look: www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2_c81Nnsc0.

But organists, don’t think you’re exempt from this rant. At 10:45 on a Sunday morning I receive a text from an organist, “cn u fx ded note tmrw?” Hey, you’re still sitting on the organ bench, sermon probably halfway through. Put your phone away. From the pews fifty feet away congregants can see that pale glow reflected on your face. We know it’s not the console indicator lights, and it’s certainly no halo. Let’s not txt our friends from the organ bench during worship. I know it happens a lot.

Who is it?

On January 10, 2012, music director Alan Gilbert was leading the New York Philharmonic Orchestra in a performance of Mahler’s Ninth Symphony in Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall. According to an indignant blogger:

It was in the fourth movement. (Funny how these disturbances never happen in fortissimo passages.) After the last climax, as the movement begins to wind down, toward that sublime last page of the score where music and silence are almost indistinguishable. In other words, just about the worst possible moment. (After a quick check of my Dover score, I think it was about 13 bars before the last Adagissimo.)

You guessed it. A cell phone rang. The iPhone Marimba. In the front row. In Avery Fisher Hall. It kept ringing. It rang and rang.  

Someone in the audience yelled, “Thousand dollar fine.”

The first sentence of reviewer Daniel Wakin’s article in the January 12 edition of the New York Times read, “They were baying for blood in the usually polite precincts of Avery Fisher Hall.”
Maestro Gilbert stopped the performance, turned to face the audience, located the offender and stood staring at him. An article in the January 11th issue of (the online version of the famous British newspaper) added, “During a pause of several minutes, the music director asked ‘Are you finished?’ When the culprit didn’t reply he said: ‘Fine, we’ll wait.’” Holy cow! The incident was covered and commented on by newspapers around the world. Google “Alan Gilbert cell phone” and you’ll get a flood of newspaper stories.

But wait, there’s more. On January 7, the Dayton (Ohio) Philharmonic Orchestra was starting its Saturday evening concert with Debussy’s Prelude to “The Afternoon of a Faun” when a baby started to cry. It cried and cried. The Dayton Daily News reported:

The youngster had been wailing for quite some time when [conductor] Gittleman stopped the music, turned to the audience, and asked that the child be removed. Some audience members applauded . . . . Gittleman said he’s had to stop concerts due to cell phones in the past, but this was the first time a child had caused enough commotion to require him to stop and begin a piece again. “The very first noise that the baby made was just as the flute was beginning her solo,” he says. “The piece begins with a big, long, famous, hard, flute solo and my job at the beginning of that piece is to make the flute as comfortable as possible.”

The story continued:

Many who attended the concert as well as those who heard about the incident felt that it was handled in the best possible way.

Jim and Ellen Ratti of Middletown are season DPO subscribers who witnessed ‘the whole affair.’ “The baby cried several times, not just once, and due to the outstanding acoustics in the Schuster, the sound carried throughout the concert hall,” Jim says, adding the cries were very loud, disruptive and distracting.

“I’m sure that some will say that Maestro Gittleman was inconsiderate and rude for calling attention to the offending parent(s),” he adds. “My reply to those criticisms would be that it’s inconsiderate and rude to bring a child of that age to an event which holds no interest for him or her. It is also inconsiderate and rude to disrupt the listening pleasure of everyone else in the concert hall, or to expect that such disruption would be excused.”

My grandmother would have agreed. But had she been the conductor in either of these situations, she wouldn’t have had to say a word. Just one look. Violet, the Dowager Countess of Grantham, had nothing on her. You might as well be using the wrong fork.

§

Anyone who knows me might call me a hypocrite for ranting about cell phones. To borrow a phrase from a colleague-friend, I hold the thing “like a crack pipe,” checking e-mails constantly, texting friends with quick thoughts and observations, keeping up with phone messages. I use it to check the weather, keep my calendar and contacts, look up maps and directions, choose restaurants, make travel reservations, and even sometimes, to the horror of our daughter, Google to find the answers that end dinner-time arguments. (Yes, Roger Maris did hit his 61st home run in the 161st game of the 1961 season. Nice symmetry.)

I think the cell phone has made possible great flexibility for people during the working day. And well used, it’s a vehicle for good manners. There’s no excuse for not calling to say you’re on your way, but you’ll be a few minutes late. But we need to create a new social order to deal with them. Here are a few general rules I propose to the social court:

• Don’t put a phone ahead of a personal, face-to-face conversation.

• Don’t let your phone call impede or delay someone else.

• Don’t let your phone diminish anyone else’s enjoyment of anything.

• Don’t assume that it’s okay with everyone around you to be forced to listen to your conversation.

Does anyone out there in Diapason land want to add to my list?

A few weeks ago a bad thing happened to my iPhone while crossing Broadway in lower Manhattan. Luckily, there was an AT&T store right there and twenty minutes later I was upgraded to the iPhone 4S. For those not familiar with the jargon, this is the new model which includes Siri, a voice-recognition program that allows you to speak to your phone, asking it to place a call, send a text message, or pretty much anything else, except to play an audio book. I asked the polite female computer-generated voice to play one of the books in my audio library. She replied, “I’m not able to do that.” I said, “You can’t play an audio book?” “I’m not able to do that.” “What good are you?” “Now, now…” “I’m sorry.” “That’s OK.”  

Next, I have no idea what got into me: “You’re cute.” Her reply: “You say that to all the virtual assistants.”

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House

A world unto itself

In July 2010, a reporter for the Wall Street Journal was working on a story in Washington, D.C., when she noticed a large group of people milling about on the front lawn of a church. Had it been a Sunday, it might not have attracted her attention, but this was a weekday morning, and the group was wearing nametags and sporting tote bags, a scene she recognized from countless conventions and trade shows. Her curiosity was piqued and she walked up to the group to ask what they were about.

You guessed it—it was the national convention of the American Guild of Organists, and the conventioneers were hanging about, waiting for the buses that would whisk them off to the next venue. The reporter was fascinated by having run into a group of devoted enthusiastic people involved in a world she had never thought about. Of course, there are pipe organs lurking in the balconies of thousands of churches, but who would have thought about the people who would have put them there, who would play them, let alone study or celebrate them.  

The reporter was Jennifer Levitz, who works from the WSJ offices in Boston. She called me in mid-August, telling me of her encounter with “our crowd” in Washington, saying that someone in that group had given her my name, and that she planned to write an article for the paper about current trends in church music as they relate to the pipe organ.

I was flattered by her interest and we talked on the phone for quite a while, ending the conversation by making plans to meet so she could interview me. We met in a coffee shop in Boston’s Faneuil Hall Marketplace (that grand example of 1970s Urban Renewal, celebrated at the time as the revitalization of a derelict neighborhood, where today unwitting tourists are privileged by the opportunity to buy t-shirts and baseball caps festooned with lobsters—colloquially misspelled as lobstahs—and the logo from Cheers) and talked about the pipe organ for an hour-and-a-half. During the conversation, I mentioned that I was going that afternoon to visit a closed church building in neighboring Cambridge, where we were working on the sale of an Aeolian-Skinner organ. She asked if she could come along.

Is renewal another word 

for destruction?

The Organ Clearing House was founded in 1961—like our neighbor C.B. Fisk, Inc., this is our fiftieth year—the time at which urban renewal was gaining momentum, and the construction of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Interstate Highway System was in full swing. There’s no question that those highways were a stupendous improvement to the country’s transportation system (inspired by the German Autobahn, which so impressed General Eisenhower as a strategic military asset), but the clearing of the huge swaths necessary for highway rights-of-way caused the destruction of hundreds of neighborhoods, including homes, businesses, schools, and churches, along with their pipe organs. I’ve referred to the Organ Clearing House as the Dwight D. Eisenhower Memorial Pipe Organ Rescue Movement (DDEMPORM). OCH founder Alan Laufman was among the founders of the Organ Historical Society (which was established in 1956—the year of my birth and the death of
G. Donald Harrison, fifty-nine days apart) and an early leader in the renewed appreciation of America’s nineteenth- and early twentieth-century heritage of organbuilding. The rapid and rampant destruction of venerable church buildings and their contents alarmed Laufman and his peers, leading to the inception of the work we now continue.

It’s easy to bewail the destruction of any great building. Candidly now, can New York’s Madison Square Garden be considered a cultural improvement over McKim, Mead, & White’s Beaux-Arts masterpiece that was Pennsylvania Station? And while anyone who’s visited New York City can appreciate the value and necessity of parking garages, that which replaced St. Alphonsus Church (310 West Broadway near Canal Street, the original home of E. & G.G. Hook’s Opus 576, built in 1871 and now located in St. Mary’s Church, New Haven, Connecticut) can hardly be considered an improvement.

But here’s where the issue gets complicated. I am not in the thrall of professional hockey and basketball, I am not interested in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show (though I loved the movie Best in Show), and it’s a long time since I’ve been to the circus, so at the risk of offending those who feel differently, I freely state my opinion that the construction of Madison Square Garden was not a worthy reason for the destruction of Penn Station. 

St. Alphonsus Church is another story. It’s a terrible shame for such a beautiful edifice to be razed, whatever the reason, and it must have been heartbreaking for the parishioners, clergy, and musicians who worshipped there and loved the place. But the hard fact is that hundreds, dare I say thousands, of church buildings have become redundant—not only in the United States but throughout Europe as well. When such a building is no longer useful, no amount of sentiment or nostalgia will refund its value or usefulness.

When the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston (home to a large organ by Hook & Hastings, which is one of America’s finest instruments) was closing, a group of local organists and organ-lovers gathered around, and one friend suggested it should be made into a concert hall. A lovely thought, but if the church is being closed because two million dollars of deferred maintenance was coming due and the frightful cost of heating the place was the death knell, how would we ever fund its transformation into a concert hall? Thankfully, the organ has been dismantled and stored, but this is especially poignant for us—I’ll not forget singing “The day thou gavest, Lord, is ended” at Alan Laufman’s funeral in that building in early 2001.

§

My work with the Organ Clearing House makes me something of a grim reaper of the pipe organ (remember the scene in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life with the robed reaper and the tinned salmon?). More than once people have said to me, partly in jest, “What are you doing here, we love our organ?” But the reality of redundant church buildings is part of my daily work. Organbuilders are used to working with a church’s Organ Committee (often called Organ Task Force)—a committee that by definition, if not by actuality, is formed for the inception of a creative process. I’ve had dozens of associations with De-Accession Committees, sometimes called Disbursement Committee—that group of faithful worshippers charged with emptying their church building before Repurposing. These folks are filling dumpsters with church-school supplies, choir robes, and pageant costumes (I love the white Oxford shirt with cotton-balls glued all over to make a sheep-suit for Christmas Eve). They are packing hymnals and octavo scores to be given to neighboring churches, and they are ferreting off little mementos while (they think) no one is looking.  

They show me family photos of weddings, baptisms, funerals, and First Communions in which the organ is prominent in the background. Their eyes are moist, and sometimes they’re openly weeping.

One church I visited recently was simply abandoned. It was an 1,800-seat building with an 80-rank organ. The congregation, down to just a few dozen, had soldiered on until the last of the money was gone and simply walked away after the last worship service. The Sunday bulletins were still on the ushers’ station, the unfinished glass of water was still on the pulpit, and there was a melted unwrapped cough drop on the organ console. (Organists must have terrible health if the collective consumption of cough drops is any indication!) There was unopened mail on the secretary’s desk. It was like the scene in the movie where tumbleweeds blow down the street and the saloon doors are still swinging.

§

Jennifer Levitz’s article, “Trafficking in Organs, Mr. Bishop Pipes Up to Preserve a Bit of History,” appeared on the front page of the Wall Street Journal on Friday, September 16, 2011. Here’s a link that will take you to it on the WSJ website: . I’ve received a lot of winks and barbs from friends about the word trafficking.

Any company loves exposure like that. We were flattered and pleased to have Ms. Levitz’s attention, and there have been several inquiries in the past week directly attributable to the article. But here’s the problem. She did great reporting on all the reasons why pipe organs become redundant. We discussed “Contemporary Worship” and closing and merging parishes, but while I talked about the exciting sides of the organ business like the restoration of venerable organs and the construction of new ones, the general tone of the story was glum.

Ted Alan Worth, student and friend of Virgil Fox and a successful touring organist, has been quoted as saying, “The organ world is the worst world in the world.” I’m pretty sure he was referring to the gossipy, introverted, and sometimes nasty interchange between colleagues. Perhaps the most famous example was the decades-long squabble between Virgil Fox and E. Power Biggs, both important and brilliant performers from two divergent artistic points of view, whose disdain for each other was well documented. But that same artistic divide was extended to the devotees of organs with tracker action versus electric and pneumatic actions. I use the word “versus” with intent. When I was a young pup of an organist, reveling in the Renaissance of classic principles of pipe organ building in Boston in the sixties and seventies, I was aware and no doubt made use of terms like tracker-backer and pneumatic-nut. Those who preferred symphonic organs were decadent, as if the exploration of artistic expression were a character flaw; those who preferred tracker organs were zealots, anti-musicians, anti-expression.

In 1979 my mentor and I assisted a team from Flentrop Orgelbouw installing the grand new organ at Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio. It’s a classic design—werkprinzip mahogany case with carved pipe shades, rückpositiv, and a spiral staircase to the tiny balcony. But as we unloaded the container on the sidewalk of Euclid Avenue (the organ had been shipped from the Netherlands directly to the port of Cleveland through the St. Lawrence Seaway—the name of the ship was Kalliope) I realized I was carrying a box of pipes marked Celeste. A bundle of Swell shutters followed. Humph! I didn’t know Flentrop built Swell boxes?

What I know now is that what’s important to us is good organs. Simple. I love good organs of any description. And there are just as many bad, even decadent tracker organs as there are bad electro-pneumatic or electric-action organs. The Renaissance Revival that has been so celebrated and ballyhooed certainly was cause for the destruction or displacement of many wonderful electro-pneumatic organs. My hometown of Winchester, Massachusetts has two churches in which organs by Skinner and Aeolian-Skinner were replaced with organs by Fisk. The Skinner was a very early organ (Opus 128, 1905!). My father was rector of the church, so I had easy access to it for practicing when I first took organ lessons, but I quickly moved to the neighboring First Congregational Church (where my teacher John Skelton was organist), whose Fisk organ was installed in 1972.  

I didn’t know much about Skinner organs then, and I celebrated its replacement by Fisk in 1974. I don’t think that particular Skinner was a very good instrument—but I’d sure love to get a look at it today to see what Mr. Skinner was up to in 1905.

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The 1995 movie Apollo 13 (Tom Hanks, Kevin Bacon, et al.) was a gripping telling of the nearly disastrous explosion on that mission to the moon, launched in April 1970. Two days after the launch, an oxygen tank explodes and astronauts and NASA officials scramble to devise a way to abort the mission safely. In the chaos of the first moments of the emergency, NASA flight director Gene Kranz (played by Ed Harris) holds up his hand, calls for silence, and asks, “What have we got on this spacecraft that’s good?”

My thanks to Ms. Levitz for noticing the organ world lurking on that lawn in Washington, and for giving her considerable energy and talent to creating the story. But she told only half the story. The rest is up to us. And we’re at a great moment to do it, to tell it, to live it.

We are an energetic group of devotees to a high expression of the arts and humanities. The pipe organ stands for so much that’s good about the human condition. For centuries it was among the most complex of all human contrivances, for centuries it was the source of some of the loudest sounds anyone heard. Today, too many people see the organ as the realm of dead white men. That’s not the fault of the organ, it’s the fault, the oversight, the result of its professional practitioners getting wrapped up in scholarship—the understanding of this special niche, its complex history, the relationships between the instruments’ builders and the artists who created and played the music.  

Too often we present programs to the public based on our interest and devotion to obscure styles and periods of composition. This afternoon I was talking with a colleague on the lawn outside her church building. We talked about the levels of public interest in the music of the pipe organ. I said something like, “You don’t attract Joe Public into a church to hear an all-Buxtehude recital.” She said, “I love Buxtehude.” I said, “So do I (and I do!), but if we don’t give them something else, something that excites and inspires them, something they can sing to themselves in the car on the way home from the recital, they’re not going to come back.” And for decades now, they haven’t been coming back.

I celebrate the long list of young performers who are lighting new fires under the pews—those players whose impeccable musicianship comes first, who understand the art of performing, which is different from the art of playing, whose sense of programming inspires the simple and necessary act of attendance, and whose public carriage brings dignity and respect to a profession that has for so long been marked by flamboyant but shallow behavior and performance.

The organ world need not be the worst world in the world. It’s a world full of brilliant young talent. It’s a world full of talented organbuilders. It’s a world full of exciting new instruments. And it’s our responsibility to project the best of all of it to the public, especially those who are still unaware of the delights and majesty of the pipe organ.  

That revival, that renaissance has given us dozens of organbuilding firms who produce some of the best instruments ever made—both mechanical and electric actions. Compare an instrument built by Paul Fritts with one by Schoenstein. Compare an instrument built by C. B. Fisk with one by Quimby. Compare an instrument by Dobson with one by Nichols & Simpson. What’s not to like? Ours is a small world with space for everyone. 

I’m not suggesting we abandon Buxtehude, Scheidt, Scheidemann, de Grigny, and the countless masters whose efforts have collected to form what we know as the world of the pipe organ. I’m not suggesting we shouldn’t celebrate the heritage of the organ. I am suggesting that a public that’s offered myriad opportunities for entertainment and enrichment ranging from professional sports to video games, to symphony concerts, and to organ recitals, is going to choose an option that’s exciting, stimulating, enriching, and at some level, just plain fun. You or I might think it’s fun to rattle through a half-dozen Buxtehude Preludes and Fugues, but would your next-door neighbor agree? n