1863 E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322 Church of the Immaculate Conception Boston, Massachusetts, Part 2

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this article was published in the August 2018 issue of The Diapason, pages 16–20.

 

The casework in pictures

The entire casework of Opus 161 is executed in solid black walnut, and in the author’s opinion is among the best of Johnson’s cases with its elegant proportions and understated Gothic ornamentation. The window above the entrance of Eastside Presbyterian Church, its original home, displayed similar, restrained Gothic form and ornamentation. Elsworth’s book illustrates a great many of Johnson’s organs, among them Opus 134, built in 1862 for St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Lanesborough, Massachusetts.¹⁷ Opus 134 has nearly identical stiles and ornamentation, but its proportions do not soar in the elegant manner of Opus 161, perhaps the result of limitations in height. It is ironic that one of Johnson’s best aesthetic creations has languished in anonymity for decades. Many American churches built in the early nineteenth century did not have a provision for a pipe organ, and as a consequence Elsworth noted that most of Johnson’s earlier organs were furnished with sides to the cases of the free-standing organs produced for such churches.¹⁸ As previously noted, Opus 161 originally had such side panels to its casework, and these were found crudely sawn and nailed behind the façade. The Piru church elected to place the façade casework flush with the wall of the church, necessitating the removal of the side panels.

As was typical of nearly all nineteenth century organs, the façade contains no smaller pipes. The side flats contain pipes of the Open Diapason with considerable overlengths. This is the only architectural flaw in this otherwise stunningly designed case. The use of pipes of very different lengths is an important architectural device—it gives a sense of scale, making the larger pipes appear more imposing in contrast. But façades with pipes of extremely different size are more complex and more expensive to make. Compared to the vast majority of nineteenth-century façades, Opus 161 is one of the finest aesthetic designs.

 

The keydesk in pictures

The reader should refer to Part 1 of this series for photographs of the keydesk and stop jambs (August 2018, pages 17–18). Elsworth described the keydesks of Johnson organs from the period of Opus 43, 1855, to Opus 268, 1868:

 

The manual compass was invariably fifty-six notes, from CC to G3. The stop knobs were disposed in vertical rows on each side of the manual keyboards, and always had square shanks with round knobs that had flat faces. Into these faces were set the ivory labels with the stop names. The labels were always engraved in Spencerian script with no pitch indication. The nameplates up to about 1867 or 1868 were of silver, engraved “Wm. A. Johnson, Westfield, Mass.”¹⁹

 

This description provides some evidence that the organ was modified during its installation at Piru. The stop action does indeed have square shanks leading to the bellcranks, but the shafts connecting to the square shanks and leading through the stop jambs are round. The author had initially believed that the stop jambs were original, observing well-worn and professionally installed felt bushings in the openings of the stop jambs. But a more likely explanation is that the round shafts and extant jambs were added at a later date, and this goes a long way to explain the disappearance of the split bass stops, all of which were screwed together to make continuous stops with no splits. And this nicely explains the current specification with 20 controls instead of the 22 controls indicated in the opus list of the Johnson factory.

The organ was initially supplied with a hook-down Swell shoe, normal fare for Johnson’s work of this time. This feature was deleted, and a balanced Swell shoe was installed by crudely re-routing the action of the Great to Pedal coupler rollerboard. Note the added Swell pedal in Figure 7, the missing hook-down pedal in Figure 8, and the damage to the action in Figure 9 and Figure 10. All of this damage was repaired in the 1976 restoration and the original hook-down mechanism refabricated. The figures show the condition of the console prior to the restoration.

 

The key action in pictures

The basic layout of the key action can be seen in Figure 6 in Part 1 of this series (August 2018, page 20). With the exception of the repositioning of the Swell chest and the addition of the balanced Swell pedal, the key and stop action of Opus 161 was well worn but virtually unaltered in 1976. The damage to the trackers on the Pedal couplers from the installation of the balanced Swell pedal was repaired in 1976 with new trackers, wires, felts, and buttons, and basic repairs to the stickers on the Swell to Great coupler were made, but this was a stopgap solution. At this time the console was in need of a complete disassembly and refurbishment of the leather on the couplers, the felts, and the leather buttons. The action was well designed, had served for a period of more than a hundred years, and had survived a move from Stockton to Piru. But the leather facings of the key tails where the coupler stickers made contact and the felts and leather buttons were showing their age. There were no funds for such work in 1976. 

In Johnson’s action we see similarities to Samuel Green. Bicknell writes: 

 

Green introduced or developed numerous refinements to the mechanism. He often arranged pipes from f# up in chromatic order on the soundboards, even in large organs. This reduced the extent to which rollerboards were required. . . . To make the key action readily adjustable the ends of the trackers were fitted with tapped wires and leather buttons. The appearance of Green’s consoles was enhanced by the use of ivory inserts screwed into the heads of the stop knobs, engraved with the name of the stop. . . . Green also usually made keyboards with white naturals and black sharps. . . .²⁰

 

All of these features are found on Opus 161. The photographs of the action were all taken in 1976 prior to the restoration work.

 

The stop action in pictures

The stop action of Opus 161 is conventional, with metal squares and square wooden shanks. The stop action to the Pedal 16′ Double Open Diapason is a ventil valve to the three windchests of that stop, which are placed at the sides (largest pipes, diatonic) and the treble pipes at the back (chromatic). The photographs show the details of the stop action construction.

A description of the stops and general notes on the scaling and voicing

This section provides a detailed description of the stops; two of the Swell stops were not measured (16′ Bourdon and 8′ Stopped Diapason). For the stops which were measured, a table of data in millimeters is shown. The photographs show some details of the construction, although the poor resolution of the camera is regrettable.

As earlier noted, there is a close resemblance between the organs of Samuel Green in late eighteenth century England and the organs of William A. Johnson in nineteenth-century America. Bicknell writes:

 

On the tonal side Green seems to have adopted the trend towards delicacy and developed it still further. . . . Green’s first line of development in securing the effect he desired was to experiment . . . with the scales of the chorus . . . . in 1778 the Open Diapason is larger than the rest of the chorus. . . . The appearance of extra pipes in some ranks, definitely by Green and contemporary with the instruments themselves, together with re-marking of the pipes, suggests that Green took spare pipes with him to the site and rescaled stops during the tonal finishing in the building. This is considerably removed from the standardised scaling and voicing adopted by, for example, Snetzler. The reasons for this become clearer when one understands that Green’s voicing broke new ground in other aspects as well. Delicacy was achieved partly by reduction of the size of the pipe foot and by increasing the amount of nicking. The loss of grandeur in the chorus was made up for by increasing the scales of the extreme basses. . . .²¹

As we will see in the graphical analysis of the data, all of the features mentioned by Bicknell about Samuel Green would apply equally well to Johnson’s Opus 161. Bicknell observes, “Where Snetzler provided a chorus of startling boldness and with all the open metal ranks of equal power, Green introduced refinement and delicacy and modified the power of the off-unison ranks to secure a new kind of blend.”²²

As earlier noted by Elsworth, Johnson’s wind pressure during the period of 1855 to 1868 “was generally between 21⁄2 and 23⁄4 inches (63 and 70 mm), and in rare examples, nearly 3 inches.”²³ The lower wind pressures, narrower scales of the upperwork, and reduced toes produced a sound with restrained brilliance. 

Referring to his conversations with Edwin B. Hedges (1872–1967), a voicer for Johnson organs, Elsworth made some telling observations. In the process of making the pipework, “ . . . the languids were carefully soldered in place, and the flues were properly adjusted.”²⁴ This is a very important comment, because today the flueway is considered a variable for adjusting power in some voicing styles, especially North Germanic voicing. Johnson’s flueways are very open, often the maximum that would produce good speech, even with Johnson’s bold nicking. Power balances, for Johnson as well as Green, were designed into the scales and further adjusted by the voicer at the toe. “The voicing of flue pipes, such as Diapason, Dulcianas, and strings, consists of nicking the languid, cutting up the upper lips to the proper mouth height, and adjusting the positions of the languid and the upper and lower lips. The amount of wind entering the pipe foot must be carefully adjusted by opening or closing the orifice in the pipe toe.”²⁵ There is no direct evidence that William A. Johnson had first-hand knowledge of the 1792 Samuel Green organ delivered to Boston, but the legacy of Green is obvious in Johnson’s work.

A few comments are in order on the nicking and languid treatment. The languids contain a counterface with a negative angle; the more usual angle is vertical, or 90 degrees. The Isnards made a positive-angled counterface at about 75 degrees with a normal bevel at about 45 to 55 degrees. The negative counterface of the Johnson languid is unusual. This languid is nicked at an angle with a knife, cutting a fine nick as deep as halfway into the languid bevel. Long knife cuts were also in evidence inside the lower lip. As a general rule there are the same number of nicks on a languid, regardless of pitch. These languids work well and produce fast speech even when the lower, negative languid bevel shows above the top edge of the lower lip; the upper lip is not pulled out to compensate for this languid position. Ears are generally found up to 1′ in pitch in the principal chorus, but they are very narrow, not extending far in front of the mouth.

Many of the pipes were found in 1976 to be crudely pinched at the top, part of an effort to reduce the pitch to the modern standard. All of this damage was repaired on mandrels, and tuning slides were fitted.

 

Great division

 

8′ Open Diapason 

This is the first stop on the front of the Great windchest. It has zinc resonators from low C to tenor B and planed common metal feet from about tenor E. All pipes from middle C are planed common metal (30% tin, 70% lead). Zinc wind conductors to the façade pipes supply copious wind; the conductor diameters are 38 mm at low C and 25 mm at tenor C. If memory serves, at least one or two of the pipes in the side flats were dummy pipes, implying that the speaking façade pipes extended to tenor D. The façade pipes were tuned with scrolls at the back, which were entirely rolled up as a consequence of the drop in pitch to 440 Hz, where the original pitch was probably closer to 450 Hz. See the earlier notes on the pitch and wind pressure. As with all of the stops in the principal chorus, the ears are very narrow. 

The author feels obligated to point out a grave error he made in the restoration by removing the heavy nicking on the languids of the Open Diapason, and only on this stop. To make the record clear, David Sedlak advised against doing this, and the author regrets that he did not take Sedlak’s advice. These nicks should be renewed in the manner used by Johnson.

8′ Keraulophon

The second stop on the chest, the Keraulophon pipes were found badly pinched at the top along with crudely reduced toe bores in an effort to reduce the pitch. All of the pipes were straightened on mandrels and tuning slides added. Toes that were not damaged were used as a guide for readjusting damaged toes. This stop is voiced with tuning slots and ears, but no beards of any kind. The bass octave is common with the Clarabella, five pipes from tenor C to E have zinc resonators, and the rest have planed common metal resonators. The nicking is bold and often crossed to keep the speech stable. Flueways were often more closed on one side. This is a bolder string than a Dulciana. 

 

8′ Clarabella

This is the third stop on the chest. Bass pipes C to tenor E are stopped wood; the remainder are open wood with lead plates covering the tops for tuning. These lead plates are somewhat closed down to accommodate the lowered pitch. The internal blocks forming the languids are lower than the front plates by 2.0 mm at tenor E, and 1.5 mm at tenor F. The bevel of the upper lip is internal for the open pipes and external for the stopped pipes. The stopped pipes have narrow, slanted strips at the sides of the mouth to form narrow ears; the open pipes have no extra strips functioning as ears. The nicking is deeper and heavier than the pipes of the principal chorus. The scales and voicing of this stop place its power on the same level as the principal chorus foundations. The only concession to power is a greatly reduced mouth width in the bass octave, a concession to its function as a common bass to the Keraulophon. 

The effective inside diameter of a wooden pipe is a calculation of its diagonal, a method proposed by Nolte.²⁶ The potential power of a round pipe is related to the amplitude of the standing wave in the pipe, which is in turn related to its diameter. Following this logic, Nolte has pointed out that the amplitude of a standing wave in a rectangular pipe is related to its widest point, i.e., its diagonal. We often see modern conversions of wood pipe scales by relating their rectangular areas to those of round metal pipes with equivalent areas, but this does not produce balanced power. The consequence is that conventional modern wisdom decrees that wood pipes should be scaled a few half tones narrower than round pipes of equivalent area. This disconnect disappears with Nolte’s observation of the relevance of the diagonal, not equivalent areas. This is not a new idea. Many older organs, e.g., J. A. Silbermann’s organ of 1746 at Marmoutier, show very disjointed scales between the rectangular wood bass of the 16′ Montre and its metal pipes when plotting by equivalent areas. Convert the Silbermann wood bass scales to diagonals and those scales merge seamlessly into the scales of the metal pipes. Diagonal computations of the effective diameters for the Johnson Clarabella can be found in the table, and those calculations are used in the graphical analysis. 

 

4′ Principal

The fourth stop on the chest, the Principal has five zinc resonators from C to E; the rest are all planed common metal. These pipes showed very little damage. The flueway depths are remarkably wide, especially in the treble, and demonstrate that Johnson regulated power entirely at the toe, not the flueway. Such flueway depths are often found in classical French voicing. This data set can be taken as reasonably accurate evidence of Johnson’s unmolested voicing.

 

4′ Flute И CheminОe

 The fifth stop on the chest from tenor C, this is a classically constructed flute in planed common metal with soldered domed tops, chimneys with no tuning mechanism, and very large ears for tuning. Those large ears had been pushed in far enough to virtually touch each other when found in 1976, another effort to reduce the pitch. The cutups were lightly arched. There was considerable handling damage to the flueways. The toes were reasonably intact. The reduction in pressure from 76 mm to 63 mm allowed these pipes to speak much more freely with the ears much more opened (but not completely straightened). The pipe construction becomes open at g#′′, i.e., the last twelve pipes, and they are noticeably wider across the break. The table above shows a calculation of the total resonator length, i.e., the body length plus the chimney, and the percentage of the chimney length to the total length. This gives an idea of the harmonics that Johnson was trying to emphasize with the chimney. At tenor C the chimney is 25% of the total length, emphasizing the fourth harmonic, while at middle C the chimney is 30% of the total length, roughly emphasizing the third harmonic. The chimney progresses to larger percentages of the total length as the pitch rises. The chimney is not a constant percentage of the total length.  The photograph shows the classical construction of this stop. 

 

22Џ3′ Twelfth

The sixth stop on the chest, this stop consists entirely of planed common metal pipes that had minimal damage.

 

2′ Fifteenth

The seventh and last flue stop on the chest, the 2′ Fifteenth continues the trend of extremely deep flueways and closed toes. The flueway depths of this stop are perhaps the largest the author has measured on any organ. Remarkably, this planed, common metal stop has no ears on any pipe, and its sound is exquisite. The toes are very restrained and represent the means of controlling power. The diameter and mouth width scales are considerably narrower than the Open Diapason, continuing the trend of narrower scaling with higher stop pitches, a characteristic introduced by Samuel Green. This progression can be clearly seen in the graphical analysis, in stark contrast to the Hook’s constant scaling of  the principal chorus. By this means Johnson and Green achieved a chorus with more refinement and less impact, but they compensated with very wide scaling of the extreme basses.

 

8′ Trumpet

The extant pipework of this eighth and last stop on the chest was constructed of planed common metal with zinc bottom sections from tenor C to tenor B. The Trumpet has an obscure history. In 1976 only two octaves of pipes were found from tenor C 13 to C 37. These were all in fairly good condition without obvious modifications; some crude slotting of the tops was repaired and the pipes spoke well on 63 mm wind. All of the original pipes were cut to exact length with no tuning slots or scrolls. The bass octave of the Trumpet was originally separated on the slider, but found screwed together in 1976. Interestingly, while the bass topboards were bored and chamfered to receive pipes, the chamfers were not burned in like all other borings on both windchests. With the repositioning of the Swell chest over the Great chest, it was now impossible to reconstruct a full-length bass set of pipes, and a half-length set was fabricated with limited tonal success (a few of the half-length pipes needed mitering to clear the Swell chest). The missing treble pipes were recreated by the firm of Stinkens to scales extrapolated from the original pipework. These were quite successful and a good tonal match. The high treble from c#′′′ to g′′′ were obviously flue pipes, and the rackboard borings provided guidance for their scales. All shallots are brass and are marked “H. T. Levi,” one of the reed voicers for William A. Johnson, according to both Barbara Owen²⁷ and Elsworth.²⁸ This stop bears a strong resemblance to the Trumpet heard in the recording of the Samuel Green organ at Armitage, Staffordshire, England (see the section on Recordings).

The Trumpet was carefully disassembled during the restoration and its measurements carefully tabulated; see the drawings and tables below. Measurements unfortunately omitted were the height of the block and the length and width at the top of the main taper on the tongues.

 

II Mixture

The author added a two-rank mixture in planed common metal to the Great during the 1976 restoration. While the merits of this can be debated, it was added in a manner that did not affect the other stops. A thick oak board was mounted at the back of the key channels, extending backwards and upwards, making this the ninth stop on the Great. The pipework was narrowly scaled in the manner of Johnson, roughly -7 half tones from 2⁄3′ pitch to 1⁄4′ pitch, then widening to about -3 half tones at 1⁄8′ pitch. A great many Johnson organs of this size had mixtures. It should be noted that Johnson mixtures of the time period during which Opus 161 was created were called Sesquialtera, and they included third-sounding ranks. Elsworth states, “ . . . these were composed of 17th, 19th, and 22nd ranks [i.e., 13⁄5′, 11⁄3′, and 1′, the same pitches observed in Samuel Green’s Sesquialteras] with two or three breaks.”²⁹ The mixture added by the author is more typical of later Johnson work in its composition without thirds.

The voicing of the cutups was a fortunate accident, where the pipes were mouth-voiced before realizing that they were left many half tones overlength by the pipemaker. When the cone-tuned pipes were cut to length, it was obvious that the cutups were very high. But this was fortuitous, because it taught the lesson that high cutups can have a superb blend, and this mixture provided a fine sparkling glitter in the plenum with no hint of harshness. There are no ears on any pipes. The toes are relatively more open than what Johnson would have done and the cutups are higher. The mixture composition is as follows:

 

C 2⁄3′ 1⁄2′

c 1′ 2⁄3′

c′ 11⁄3′ 1′

c′′ 2′ 11⁄3′

c′′′ 4′ 2′

 

Barbara Owen noted that William A. Johnson was hired to add a VII Cymbal to the Hook organ.³⁰ This mixture was installed in 1870, and no records indicate how this happened. The political implications invite much speculation, of course. The differences in scaling and voicing of the Johnson mixture relative to the Hook chorus illuminates the different approach to chorus design between Johnson and Hook. We will look at this in detail in the graphical analysis. The Johnson VII Cymbal provides a scintillating crown to the Hook chorus and contains a third-sounding rank. In 1871 William H. Johnson, the son of William A. Johnson, joined his father as a partner in the firm and the mixtures built from that time deleted the third-sounding rank.³¹ ν

Notes and Credits

All photos, drawings, tables, and illustrations are courtesy of the author’s collection if not otherwise noted. Most of the color photos were unfortunately taken by the author with an inferior camera in low resolution. David Sedlak used a high quality camera, lenses, and film to produce the high-resolution color photos of the church and its architectural details; these are all attributed to Sedlak.

17. The Johnson Organs, p. 50.

18. Ibid, p. 22.

19. Ibid, p. 23.

20. The History of the English Organ, p. 186.

21. The History of the English Organ, p. 185.

22. Ibid, p. 207.

23. The Johnson Organs, p. 25.

24. Ibid, p. 45.

25. Ibid, p. 47.

26. John M. Nolte, “Scaling Pipes in Wood,” ISO Journal, No. 36, December 2010, pp. 8–19.

27. Scot L. Huntington, Barbara Owen, Stephen L. Pinel, Martin R. Walsh. Johnson Organs 1844–1898, The Princeton Academy of the Arts, Culture, and Society, 2015, Cranbury, pp. 11, 13, 14, 16.

28. The Johnson Organs, p. 36.

29. Ibid, p. 48.

30. Johnson Organs 1844–1898, pp. 17-18.

31. The Johnson Organs, p. 48.

To be continued.

 A virtually complete documentation and tonal analysis derived from the data, drawings, and photographs from the restoration of 1976

by Michael McNeil and David Sedlak

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this article was published in the August 2018 issue of The Diapason, pages 16–19. Part 2 was published in the September 2018 issue, pages 20–25. See the October 2018 issue, pages 26–28 for Part 3.

 

A graphical analysis of William Johnson’s scaling and voicing

The graphical models used in this section provide a visual means of understanding the scaling and voicing of an organ. More importantly, they serve as a means of comparing other styles of scaling and voicing. From these models we can understand how the tonal structure of an organ can be designed to suit any desired outcome.

The graphical data of Johnson’s 1864 Opus 161 at Piru Community United Methodist Church are presented side-by-side with data from E. & G. G. Hook’s Opus 322, built for the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1863. Unfortunately, no recordings of Johnson’s Opus 161 are known, but the Samuel Green organ originally built for Litchfield Cathedral and now located at the Church of St. John the Baptist, Armitage, Staffordshire, bears a striking resemblance to the scaling, voicing, and tonal quality of the Johnson. The Green organ can be heard in the CD listed in the section on Recordings at the end of this article.

Normal Scale tables were copied into a spreadsheet and restructured in a manner that would allow an Excel matching function to find the Normal Scale values of the Johnson data. The spreadsheet for the Johnson data calculates mouth width fractions of the pipe circumferences, C values of the pipe toes, toe areas, flueway areas, and ratios of toe areas to flueway areas. The spreadsheet generates graphs for Normal Scale pipe diameters, Normal Scale mouth widths, Normal Scale mouth heights, toe C values, flueway depths, and ratios of toe areas to flueway areas. Spreadsheets of both the Johnson and Hook organs may be obtained at no charge from the author; see References at the end of this article.

Scot L. Huntington carefully documented the restoration of Johnson’s Opus 16 on pages 163–207 in the book, Johnson Organs 1844–1898, co-authored with Barbara Owen, Stephen L. Pinel, and Martin Walsh (see References). The only important data missing from this work are pipe flueway depths, but the flueway data on Opus 161 likely provides a guide for Opus 16 as well. The basis for this assumption is the similarity in scaling and voicing of the two Johnson organs, both of which show a significant reduction in power as the pitch of the stops in the principal chorus rises, and both are very unlike the Hook. The reader can find Huntington’s tabulated data in the new book.

 

Pipe diameters

The Normal Scale of pipe diameters is a way to visualize relative power, where a flat line from bass to treble will produce relatively constant power. Pipes extending higher in the graph will produce more power. Each half tone on the vertical scale is worth 0.5 dB of power. Interested readers can refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs for a discussion of the underlying theory and principles of all of the graphical models of the Johnson data. 

The scales of the principal chorus of the Hook in Figure 15 are relatively constant, i.e., they are the same for all of the pipes of a given pitch—only the Hook V Mixture is significantly narrower than the foundations. By contrast in Figure 14, the scales of the Johnson upperwork descend as the pitch of their stops rises, i.e., the scales of the 4′ Principal are narrower than the 8′ Open Diapason, and the 2′ Fifteenth is narrower than the 4′ Principal. The narrowest stop in the Hook chorus, the VII Cymbal represented by the blue line, was built by Johnson in 1870.

Note the extremes of Johnson scaling in the wide 8′ Clarabella and the narrow 8′ Keraulophon. These stops share a common narrow bass, which was scaled to match the modest power of the Keraulophon.

Like Samuel Green, Johnson greatly widens his deepest foundation pipes; note the scale of the 16′ Pedal Double Open Diapason at +9 half tones, the single blue data point in the upper left of Figure 14. This stop produces a strong tactile effect even in the dry acoustic of the Piru church, whose walls are too thin to reinforce bass tone.

 

Mouth widths

The Normal Scale of mouth widths operates just like the pipe diameters, where a flat line from bass to treble will produce relatively constant power. Pipes extending higher in the graph will produce more power. Each half tone on the vertical scale is worth 0.5 dB of power. 

Mouth widths are nearly always a better indicator than pipe diameters of power balances; this is because mouth widths can be designed to vary considerably within the same diameters of pipes. Narrower mouths will produce less power. 

The Johnson principal chorus in Figure 16 remains mostly unchanged, but the 8′ Clarabella mouths are now slightly narrower than the 8′ Open Diapason. 

Note that the bass of Johnson’s 8′ Open Diapason is as wide as the Hook 8′ Open Diapason in Figure 17—this is remarkable when we consider that the Johnson was built for a much smaller acoustic. Again note that the Johnson VII Cymbal in the Hook chorus in Figure 17 is the narrowest stop in that chorus, even though it was designed for the large and vibrant acoustics of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston, the original home of the Hook. We can see how Johnson compensated for the larger acoustic at Immaculate Conception by observing that he scaled this VII Cymbal slightly wider than the 2′ Fifteenth in his Opus 161 in Figure 16.

The wind pressure of the Johnson was probably about the same pressure as the Hook (76 mm) in its original state. The reduction of the scales of Johnson’s upperwork stops shows that he wanted a very refined chorus, and indeed the Johnson chorus is never overbearing. Like Samuel Green, Johnson provides grandeur to his chorus by making his basses extremely wide and powerful; note how the mouth widths of the Great Open Diapason increase rapidly from the tenor to the bass, and also note how the mouth width of the Pedal Double Open Diapason (the single data point in the upper left of Figure 16) extends this trend linearly to 16′ low C.

 

Mouth heights and toe diameters

Mouth height, or “cutup,” as it is commonly called by voicers, is the primary means of adjusting the timbre of a pipe. Low cutups will create a bright tone with many higher harmonics, while high cutups will produce smoother tone. It is not uncommon to find flute pipes cut as much as 12 half tones higher than principal pipes in many classical pipe organs.

In the Normal Scale of mouth heights, a higher cutup value on the vertical scale will result in smoother tone. Cutups may be adjusted higher for one or both of two reasons: the voicer wants a smoother timbre, or the voicer wants more power at the same timbre. More power means more wind, and this means a larger toe opening (or deeper flueway) to admit more wind and raise the pressure at the mouth. More pressure at the mouth will always produce a brighter tone, so the voicer can make a pipe louder and preserve a certain timbre by opening the toe and raising the cutup until the timbre is restored.

Pipe toe diameters can be normalized to the diameter of the pipe, the width of the mouth, and the depth of the flueway. Higher values of C indicate larger toes with more flow of wind and higher pressures in the pipe foot. 

Now we can understand the graphs. In the Hook graph of mouth heights (Figure 19) and toe C numbers (Figure 21) we see very high values. Hook was after power, and these graphs show how you get it, even on a modest pressure of 76 mm.

In the graphs for Johnson’s mouth heights (Figure 18) we see that the mouth heights are cut lower as the pitches of the stops rise. This would normally make the upperwork brighter, but Johnson also reduces the toe C numbers (Figure 20) as the pitches of his stops rise, and this keeps the timbre constant. The net effect is that Johnson’s upperwork is significantly reduced in power; the 4′ Principal is quieter than the 8′ Open Diapason and the 2′ Fifteenth is quieter than the 4′ Principal. This fits the description of Samuel Green’s work by Stephen Bicknell perfectly.

We can see how Johnson compensated for the larger acoustic at Immaculate Conception by observing that the toe C numbers of his VII Cymbal in Figure 21 are as wide as the Hook voicing and as fully winded as the Hook pipes—these VII Cymbal toe C numbers are much larger than the toe C numbers of the Opus 161 2′ Fifteenth in Figure 20. In contrast, Johnson’s VII Cymbal in the Hook chorus in Figure 19 has lower mouth height than the Hook voicing, and it is indeed brighter than the Hook mixtures.

Note the mouth height of the low C of the Johnson Pedal 16′ Double Open Diapason in the extreme upper left of Figure 18. At a value of +11 half tones, this stop produces copious power on full wind without harmonic stridency, a further extension of the balances sought by Green.

 

Flueway depths

Like the pipe toe, the flueway depth controls the flow of wind and strongly correlates to the power and the speed of the speech of the pipe. Both organs, the Johnson in Figure 22 and the Hook in Figure 23, exhibit flueways that are deep enough to claim that power is not at all regulated by the flueway. These flueways are characteristic of Romantic and Classical French voicing. Power in these pipes is regulated at the toes. The flueways of the Johnson 4′ Principal and 2′ Fifteenth in Figure 22 are wide even by normal Romantic standards. Classical Germanic voicing typically maintains an open toe and controls power at the flueway. Gottfried Silbermann is the famous exception to the Germanic custom; he learned organbuilding in France.

In his book, The Johnson Organs, John Elsworth noted that the Johnson pipemakers would set the flueway and the Johnson voicers would adjust the toe and mouth height. It is probably safe to assume that a Johnson voicer would adjust the flueway depth if it were needed, but Elsworth’s description of this process is interesting—it is the exact opposite of Germanic practice.

 

Ratio of toe and flueway areas

Once the scaling is set, the flow of wind and the available range of power are controlled by the voicer at the toe and flueway of a pipe. The ratio of the area of the toe to the area of the flueway is important. If the area of the toe is less than the area of the flueway, which is a ratio less than 1:1, the speech will be slower. “Slowness” in this instance does not refer to the voicer’s term (which reflects how the voicer adjusts the relative position of the languid and upper lip) but rather to the effect of resistances (the toe and flueway areas) and capacitance (the volume of air in the pipe foot). These resistances affect the rise time of the buildup of sound to full power. The ratio is exactly 1:1 when the area of the toe and flueway are equal, and this is the normal lower limit for pipes with prompt speech. For example, the vast majority of the principal chorus pipes in the range of 4′ to 1′ pitch in the Isnard organ at St. Maximin, France, exhibit a value of almost exactly 1:1, with higher pitches approaching a value of 3:1. This gives the Isnard foundation pipes a lovely “bloom” to their speech.

The speed of pipe speech is important. A well-knit chorus of pipes may have slower pipes or faster pipes, but never both. The ear is very sensitive to the speed of pipe speech—it can sense changes in milliseconds.

With this background in mind, we can see that the speech of the Johnson chorus is slower than the Hook chorus. Indeed, the voicing of the lovely Johnson chorus works well with the relatively low resonant frequency of its wind system to impart what the author noted in 1976 as a “light ‘give’ on full organ, a relatively fast buildup to full flow.” The Johnson 8′ Open Diapason is a bit faster with toe-to-flueway ratios above 1:1, but the upperwork is slower with ratios well below 1:1.

The Hook speech is very fast. The Hook chorus develops a lovely surge on full organ; this is not due to the voicing but rather the lower resonant frequency of its wind system. 

 

Reflections

The William A. Johnson tonal design is eminently suited to the dry acoustics of most American churches. Johnson’s VII Cymbal in the Hook organ provides us with a window into Johnson’s thinking on the scaling and voicing for a much larger and reverberant acoustical setting.

Whatever the reader’s opinion of the aesthetic value of the Johnson chorus, its documentation has proved to be quite valuable. The Piru church disregarded the advice of the author to engage the services of Manuel Rosales for the maintenance of the organ when the author departed California in 1993. Some time after the Northridge, California, 6.7-magnitude earthquake in 1994, the church contracted a different Los Angeles firm to rebuild Johnson Opus 161; Piru was approximately 30 miles distant from the epicenter. The work had not been completed by the summer of 2017 when Manuel Rosales was contracted to perform an inventory of the organ and assess its condition; the organ had been dismantled leaving only the windchests stripped of their topboards and sliders in the frame. The pipes, topboards, sliders, and most of the mechanical parts, stored in trays in the parish hall, were suffering damage from constant handling. In an effort to keep the pipework intact, Kevin R. Cartwright has been engaged recently by the church to reinstall the pipework in the organ; there is no funding to make it playable. The documentation in this essay has provided a useful reference during the reassembly. Mr. Cartwright has twenty-one years’ experience in organbuilding, the last three of them working as a contractor to Manuel Rosales.³²

This essay on Johnson Opus 161 was a considerable effort. The goal was to provide a template for the documentation of important and historically valuable organs. Such documentation is often the only insurance we have against well-intentioned modernizations. It is the author’s hope that this essay will inspire more thorough documentation of the world’s priceless gems.

Although drawings crafted on computers are visually pleasing, most organbuilders do not have the time or funding to make such graphics. If we want to see good documentation in print, we must also be willing to accept the lack of polish in hand drawings. The editorial staff of The Diapason has shown courage in their willingness to publish such drawings.

There is some evidence that the need for more thorough documentation is gaining traction in the organbuilding community. Pierre Chéron and Yves Cabourdin published complete scaling and voicing data on the Isnard organ at St. Maximin in 1991; Frank-Harald Greß published similar data on the organs of Gottfried Silbermann in 1989, although neither work addressed the documentation and analysis of wind systems. Of great importance is the work of William Drake, Ltd., in the United Kingdom. Their recent restoration of a 1755 Snetzler organ included documentation that has the depth of the data found in this essay on Johnson. This gold-standard level of documentation can be found on their website: www.williamdrake.co.uk/portfolio-items/clare-college-cambridge/. If more organbuilders follow the lead of Drake we will begin to really understand how the sounds that inspire us are achieved.

Notes and Credits

All photos, drawings, tables, and illustrations are courtesy of the author’s collection, if not otherwise noted. Most of the color photos were unfortunately taken by the author with an inferior camera in low resolution. David Sedlak used a high quality camera, lenses, and film to produce the high-resolution color photos of the church and its architectural details; these are all attributed to Sedlak.

32. see www.cartwrightpipeorgan.com/
recent-projects/.

 

Recordings

Preston, Simon. 5 Organ Concertos, The English Concert, Simon Preston, 1984, Archiv D 150066. The organ concertos of George Frederick Handel are played on the Samuel Green organ, 1789–1791, Church of St. John the Baptist, Armitage, Staffordshire, England. Although this organ was built for Litchfield Cathedral and was later moved to its present location in a smaller acoustic (lending more force to the impact of the organ), its sound bears a striking resemblance to that of William A. Johnson’s Opus 161. The Green organ on this CD is tuned in meantone, resulting in a gravity that enhances the already rich timbre of Green’s scaling and voicing. The Johnson organ would sound equally at home in this temperament. There are, unfortunately, no known recordings of Johnson Opus 161.

Murray, Thomas. The E. & G. G. Hook Organ, Immaculate Conception Church, Boston, Sheffield Town Hall Records, Album S-11 (ACM149STA-B), Santa Barbara, CA.

Murray, Thomas. An American Masterpiece, CD, AFKA SK-507. (E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322)

 

References

Bicknell, Stephen. The History of the English Organ, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996, 407 pp.

Cabourdin, Yves, and Pierre Chéron. L’Orgue de Jean-Esprit et Joseph Isnard dans la Basilique de la Madeleine à Saint-Maximin, ARCAM, Nice, 1991, 208 pp.

Elsworth, John Van Varick. The Johnson Organs: The Story of One of Our Famous American Organ Builders, The Boston Organ Club, 1984, Harrisville, 160 pp.

Greß, Frank-Harald. Die Klanggestalt der Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns, VEB Deutscher Verlag für Musik, Leipzig, 1989, 176 pp.

Huntington, Scot L., Barbara Owen, Stephen L. Pinel, Martin R. Walsh. Johnson Organs 1844–1898, The Princeton Academy of the Arts, Culture, and Society, 2015, Cranbury, 239 pp. 

McNeil, Michael. The Sound of Pipe Organs, CC&A, Mead, 2012, 191 pp., Amazon.com.

McNeil, Michael. Johnson_161_170807, an Excel file containing all of the raw data and the models used to analyze the Johnson Opus 161, 2017, available at no charge by emailing the author at [email protected].

McNeil, Michael. Hook_322 Scales Voicing_170228, an Excel file containing all of the raw data and the models used to analyze the Hook Opus 322, 2017, available at no charge by emailing the author at [email protected].

Nolte, John M. Scaling Pipes in Wood, ISO Journal, No. 36, December 2010, pp. 8–19.

Owen, Barbara. The Organ in New England, The Sunbury Press, Raleigh, 1979, 629 pp. 

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this article was published in the July issue of The Diapason, pages 17–19. Part 2 was published in the August issue, pages 18–21.

 

Re-pitching of the Pedal 

In Figure 23 we see the C side of the Pedal 16′ Trombone in the front row, and the Pedal 16′ Open Diapason in the back row. Both stops have their pipes in the original position. Note the crude addition of boards to the top of the Trombone pipes as the means of lowering the pitch from A450 to A435 Hz. Relative to its original voicing, this stop is choked off in power and brilliance. Also note the more professional lengthening of the resonators of the Pedal 16′ Open Diapason pipes.

 

Impact of the Solo division 

The Solo division was added in 1902 as Opus 1959 of E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings, placing the windchest over the C# side of the Pedal and Great divisions. Figure 24 is a view from below up into the bottom of the Solo chest. The Pedal wood Trombone pipe in the center is speaking directly into the bottom of the Solo chest, muffling its tone. The Trombone pipe on the left has been mitered to clear the Solo chest.

In Figure 25 one can see that the low C# pipe of the Great 16′ Trumpet speaks directly into the bottom of the Solo chest. In an effort to restore the tuning and power to the pipe, the entire scroll has been crudely forced open. In Figure 26 one can see the more normal scroll of the unobstructed low C pipe of the Great 16′ Trumpet. The diatonic differences heard in the voicing of many bass pipes are entirely due to the unfortunate placement of the Solo division. The craftsmanship and engineering skills of 1902 were clearly inferior to those of 1863.

The change of pitch

The organ was originally pitched at A=450 Hz. Sometime before 1902 the organ was repitched to A=435 Hz.⁶ The current pitch of the organ, 435.3 Hz at 74 degrees F, was measured in June 2000 with a Widener electronic tuner using the 4′ Octave of the Great as the reference pitch, while confirming that this stop was in good tune with itself and the rest of the chorus. The tuning of the organ is quite stable as a result of the use of scrolls in the bass pipes, cone tuning for the trebles, and generous pipe flueways, which do not easily become choked with dust. 

 

Resonator lengths of the reeds

How did this change of pitch affect the timbre of the reed chorus? Raising the pitch of a reed pipe by pushing down on its tuning wire will eventually force it to overblow to its octave. As an overblowing reed pipe’s tuning wire is slowly raised and the pitch flattened, the pipe will at some point flip back to its fundamental pitch. This is called the “flip point,” and it represents the pitch with the warmest fundamental power. As the wire is raised further, tuning to yet lower pitches, the fundamental will weaken and the harmonics will strengthen in power. The same effect will occur if the resonator is shortened at the flip point. Most reed pipe resonators are adjusted to a length where the flip point is just slightly sharp of the desired pitch—the speech is faster and the harmonic balances are more pleasing with good fundamental warmth and some fire in the harmonics. A good resonator length is not so close to the flip point that it “flips” to the octave when it is tuned on the wire to the flue pipes on the hottest summer days, but it is close to that condition.

With this in mind, the author saw an opportunity to explore the flip points of the Hook chorus reeds. With the exception of the low C pipe, which was added when the organ was repitched to 435 Hz, the resonators of the 4′ Clarion were cut dead length with no scrolls and no evidence of having been shortened. This afforded the opportunity to explore the timbre of these stops relative to what they might have been in 1863. 

The reeds were tested for flip points at 70 degrees Fahrenheit when the tuning of the 4′ Octave was 434 Hz. The pipes were tuned on the wire sharp to their overblowing octaves, then tuned down carefully to their flip points, and the pitch of the pipe relative to A was measured on a Widener electronic tuner. The table below (Figure 27) shows the flip point frequencies for the Great reed chorus and Pedal Trombone.

 

16′ 8′ 4′ 2′ 1′

Gt 16′ 434.2 441.4 434.3 434.5 445.2

Gt 8′ 435 444.2 435.8 434.5

Gt 4′ 444.1 439.2 449

Pd 16′ 437 434.6 432.6

Pitch @ 70° 434 434 434 434 434

Figure 27

 

When looking at this table we need to bear in mind that the flip point frequencies need to be higher than the relative pitch of A to which we want to tune the chorus, i.e., these flip points should be significantly higher than 434 Hz. What we find are values ranging from 432.6 Hz to 449 Hz. The direct inference, assuming that the pipes have not been otherwise modified, is that the original chorus was significantly brighter than what we now hear. The dead length reed resonators were apparently not shortened and their tuning wires were used to achieve A=435 Hz, pushing many of the pipes very close to, or even beyond, their flip points. This is a significant offset in the flip point from the original voicing. It is clear that as beautiful and inspiring as it is, we hear a darker approximation of the original 1863 reed chorus in the present organ.

 

The magnitude of the deficit

The issue of pitch is complicated. Figure 28 shows a graphic depiction of the problem. The shift in pitch at middle A from 450 to 435 Hz is a change of 15 Hz. The distance between a half step at this pitch is about 25 Hz, and when the pipes were moved up a half step, middle A was then repitched to about 425 Hz. The 10 Hz deficit between 425 and 435 Hz was corrected by retuning the pipes. In the case of the dead length reeds, the tuning wires were simply pushed down to raise the pitch, so we know that the original Hook pipes in the table in Figure 27 would have “flipped” at frequencies about 10 Hz higher (at middle A) than what we measured in the table. To bring the pipes back to their original timbre at the current 435 Hz, the resonators would need to be shortened on all reed pipes by an amount that would produce about a 10 Hz increase in pitch at middle A. This may be inadvisable as it would reduce the scale of the resonators.

The Pedal Trombone was not moved up a half step, but large flaps of wood were added to drop its pitch from 450 to 435 Hz, covering the tops of its resonators and reducing its power and brilliance (Figure 23). The correction would entail the removal of the flaps and a lengthening of the resonators, which may be also inadvisable, as it would increase the scale of the pipes, an effect opposite to the correction needed for the reed chorus pipes of the Great division. 

The flue pipes suffered a similar fate and were retuned 10 Hz higher by one or both of two methods: making the pipes shorter and/or opening their toes. Of the two methods, the opening of the toes had a major effect on the timbre and power of the pipes. The impact of such changes is described in the notes on the 16′ Open Diapason and the 8′ Open Diapason Forte, with the result that the current balances deviate markedly from the original intentions of the Hooks. The correction would entail a reduction of the toes where they were opened, and a further shortening of the pipes. Since nearly all façade pipes have had their scrolls rolled down to the maximum extent, or even removed, the correction would require deeper cutouts and new scrolls on all pipes, not a simple or necessarily desirable proposition.

Raising the pitch from 435 to 440 Hz would push some reeds beyond the flip point, further darkening the sound, and it would increase the tuning deficit to 15 Hz. Such an increase in pitch would require further deepening of the façade pipe scroll openings, most of which are already at their limit. Further opening of the toes of the façade pipes would make their timbre and power even more imbalanced than their current state. All of these reasons suggest why the organ was never repitched to 440 Hz. 

  

Reflections

The Hook organ was put back into regular service use during the tenure of Fr. Thomas Carroll, SJ, as the director of the Jesuit Urban Center at the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Many notable organists at that time visited the church and played the instrument in concerts that were warmly and appreciatively received. 

It is hoped that the research presented in this study will inform those who restore this organ at a future date. Virtually all of the tonal modifications made to this organ resulted from the change to its pitch and the addition of the Solo division; the rest is vintage and very well preserved E. & G. G. Hook. 

Serious consideration should be given to the relocation of the Solo division in a manner that does not encroach upon the tuning of the original Hook pipes or limit the sound egress of the original Hook layout. The raw data indicate that the 1902 installation of the Solo division had a major impact on both counts. If the decision is made to remove the 1902 Solo division from the organ, and that conclusion should not be reached lightly, it should be carefully crated and stored, not discarded. It is a part of the Romantic tapestry and history of this organ.

Three possibilities now suggest themselves: 

1) Leave the organ at 435 Hz and reposition the Solo division to allow sufficient clearance to the Great and Pedal bass pipes. This preserves the current sound but corrects for the tonal and mechanical damage inflicted by the Solo division installation. It does not address the darker character of the reed chorus or the tonal imbalances of the 16′ and 8′ Open Diapasons.

2) Same as Option 1, but shorten the manual reed resonators to their original flip points, i.e., about 10 Hz shorter at middle A. Lengthen the wooden resonators of the Pedal Trombone and remove the obstructing boards. Restore the toes of the Diapasons to their original values and further deepen the tuning slots of all façade pipes. This involves significant expense in pipework restoration, it comes closer to the original Hook sound and power balances, but it permanently and perhaps inadvisedly changes the diameter scales of the many reeds that are cut to length.

Note that most of the scrolls on the reed pipes in Figure 29 (see page 22) are excessively rolled down in an effort to achieve 435 Hz; restoring the original pitch would correct this, so . . .

3) Repitch the organ to its original 450 Hz and move the pipes back to their original positions and voicing, restore the toes of the two Diapasons back to their original values, and restore the tuning scrolls of all pipes back to their original positions. This restores the original sound of the Hook. Repositioning of the Solo division is still essential.

Option 3 would not be the exact sound familiar to those of us who have heard the organ at Immaculate Conception, but it would be faithful to the original intent of the Hooks. The reed chorus would come alive. The author strongly recommends Options 1 or 3 over Option 2. Repitched to 450 Hz, the organ will not be compatible with orchestral instruments tuned to 440 Hz, but neither is the present organ compatible at 435 Hz, and the pipework will clearly not support 440 Hz. The argument can be made that we have a great many organs tuned to 440 Hz in our concert halls, while we have very few large Hook organs in their original state designed for superb acoustics like those of Immaculate Conception. Hook Opus 322 presents us with a unique challenge: it has been passed down to us in superb condition by the careful attention of the Lahaise family, and it may be the best opportunity we have to hear a large, well-preserved Hook chorus of Civil War vintage designed for a stunning acoustic.

The importance of the choice we make of the restoration options pales in comparison to the decision of the site of the organ’s new home. Much of this organ’s fame was the result of its placement in the stunning acoustics of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. When selecting or building a new acoustic for this organ it is important to realize that architects are not accustomed to the requirements of pipe organs. Be especially aware that definitions of reverberation by architects will not even remotely correlate with your musical perception of those acoustics. See The Sound of Pipe Organs, p. 32, for a detailed discussion of this ubiquitous problem. If the Church of the Immaculate Conception still exists in its original acoustical form, an unlikely event, take the architects there and make the accurate replication of those acoustics a requirement. If that acoustic doesn’t exist, take the architects to the Duke University Chapel in Durham, North Carolina. Architects will know how to measure it, but they will be stunned by the request to replicate it. The fame of the Hook organ and its original acoustical environment are inseparable. As any organbuilder will tell you, the best stop in any organ is the room in which it is placed, or to put it more bluntly, a wonderful organ placed in a mediocre room will sound­—mediocre.

Professor Thomas Murray, Yale University organist, has been deeply involved with this Hook organ, has made recordings of it (listed in the discography), and possesses a deep knowledge of the Romantic literature. Future restorers of this organ could benefit from his advice. 

We are incredibly fortunate to have at least some detailed data on the Hook organ, and we owe the Jesuit community and especially Fr. Thomas Carroll, SJ, a great debt for the opportunity to acquire it. Fr. Carroll now resides at the Collegio Bellarmino in Rome, Italy, a home to a community of more than 70 Jesuits representing more than 35 countries. He is the spiritual director for many of the Jesuits pursuing advanced theological degrees, conversing with about half in English and half in Italian. He provides guidance for young Jesuit scholars in the preparation of theses written in English, and for whom English may be a second, third, or fourth language.

 

Notes and Credits

All photographs, tables, graphs, and data are by the author except as noted.

1. Owen, Barbara. “A Landmark within a Landmark: The 1863 Hook Organ,” undated typescript.

2. Excel files with all raw data taken on the Hook and the spreadsheets that produced the graphs and tables may be obtained at no charge by e-mailing the author at: [email protected].

3. McNeil, Michael. The Sound of Pipe Organs, CC&A, Mead, 2012, 191 pp., Amazon.com.

4. Huntington, Scot L., Barbara Owen, Stephen L. Pinel, Martin R. Walsh, Johnson Organs 1844–1898, OHS Press, Richmond, Virginia, pp. 17–18.

5. Elsworth, John Van Varick. The Johnson Organs, The Boston Organ Club Chapter of the Organ Historical Society, Harrisville, New Hampshire, 1984, p. 45.

6. Noack, Fritz. Preliminary Report about the Pipework of the 1863 E. & G. G. Hook Organ, July 9, 1999.

Discography

Murray, Thomas. The E. & G. G. Hook Organ, Immaculate Conception Church, Boston, Sheffield Town Hall Records, Album S-11 (ACM149STA-B), Santa Barbara, CA.

Murray, Thomas. An American Masterpiece, CD, AFKA SK-507.

 

Useful References

Cabourdin, Yves, and Pierre Chéron. L’Orgue de Jean-Esprit et Joseph Isnard dans la Basilique de la Madeleine à Saint-Maximin, ARCAM, Nice, France, 1991, 208 pp.

Huntington, Scot L., Barbara Owen, Stephen L. Pinel, Martin R. Walsh, Johnson Organs 1844–1898, The Princeton Academy of the Arts, Culture, and Society, Cranbury, New Jersey, 2015, 239 pp.

McNeil, Michael. The Sound of Pipe Organs, CC&A, Mead, 2012, 191pp, Amazon.com.

Owen, Barbara. The Organ in New England, The Sunbury Press, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1979, 629 pp.

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Preface

Good documentation of organs with enough pipe measurements to permit an analysis of both scaling and voicing is extremely rare. Pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights (cutups) may be sometimes found, but toe diameters and especially flueway depths are rare. Rarer still are wind system data, allowing a full analysis of wind flow and wind dynamics, parameters that have an enormous impact on the sound of an organ. The reader will find all of this in the following essay on William A. Johnson’s Opus 161.

Good documentation is important for several reasons. We can make useful comparisons with other organs to learn how a specific sound is achieved. And perhaps most importantly, we can document the organ for posterity; while organs are consumed in wars and fires, they are most often replaced or modified with the changing tastes of time. They never survive restorations without changes. Comprehensive documentation may also serve to deter future interventions that intend to “modernize” an organ. Lastly, future restorations of important organs will be more historically accurate if they are based on good documentation.

The mid-nineteenth-century scaling and voicing of William A. Johnson is very similar to the late-eighteenth-century work of the English organbuilder Samuel Green, as evidenced by the data from Johnson’s Opus 16 and Opus 161. Stephen Bicknell provides us with detailed descriptions of Green’s work.¹ Johnson’s scaling is utterly unlike the work of E. & G. G. Hook, whose 1843 Opus 50 for the Methodist Church of Westfield, Massachusetts, set Johnson on a career in organbuilding when he helped the Hooks with its installation.² In this essay we will explore Johnson’s Opus 161 in detail and contrast it with the Opus 322 of the Hooks, both of which were constructed within a year of each other.³ While the Hooks used a Germanic constant scale in their pipe construction, Johnson significantly reduced the scale of his upperwork stops, much in the manner of Samuel Green and classical French builders.

The question arises as to whether Johnson came to his design theory by way of a process of convergent evolution (i.e., independently), or whether he was exposed to the organ Samuel Green shipped to the Battle Square Church in Boston in 1792, and which “was played virtually unaltered for a century,” according to Barbara Owen.⁴ The author suggested to Owen that the Green organ may have had a strong influence on Johnson, but she thought it unlikely that Johnson would have made the long trip from Westfield, far to the west of Boston. 

Travel would indeed have been much more difficult in 1843 when Johnson was exposed to the Hook organ at Westfield. But of some significance was the extension of the Western Railroad from Boston to Westfield in 1843. This new railroad may have been the means by which the Hook organ was shipped to Westfield. Elsworth (see endnote 2) clearly makes the case that Johnson was intoxicated by organbuilding with his exposure to the Hook organ. It is easy to imagine that he would have made a pilgrimage to Boston, at the time a mecca of American organbuilding, perhaps invited by the Hooks to accompany them after finishing their installation in Westfield.⁵

The author was engaged in 1976 by Mrs. Gene Davis, the organist of the Piru Community United Methodist Church, to evaluate the organ at that church. The identity of the organ was in question as no nameplate was in evidence on the console, the organ was barely playable, and its sound was greatly muted by the crude placement of panels in front of the Great division to make it expressive by forcing its sound through the shades of the Swell division above it. An inspection showed that nearly all of the pipework was intact, and a contract was signed to restore the organ to playable condition. The organ was cleaned, the pipes repaired, the few missing pipes replaced, and much of the action repaired by Michael McNeil and David Sedlak.

The church office files produced an undated, typed document that stated: 

 

The pipe organ in the Methodist Church of Piru was built by William Johnson, of Westfield, Mass., in the early 1860s, making it probably the oldest operating pipe organ in California. It was a second-hand organ when transported by sailing ship 17,000 miles around Cape Horn before 1900, and installed in a Roman Catholic Church in San Francisco. After the earthquake and fire of 1906, the organ was moved to another church and probably at this time parts damaged in the quake were replaced. After many more years of service it was retired and put into storage until, in 1935, Mr. Hugh Warring was persuaded to purchase it for the Piru church. It was purchased for the storage cost of $280.

Evidence of a different and more likely provenance was discovered during the removal of pipework and the cleaning of the organ. Three labels were found glued to the bottom of the reservoir (perhaps as patches for leaks). Two labels read: “Geo. Putnam ‘Janitor’ Stockton California July 1 ’99.” A third label read: “From the Periodical Department, Presbyterian Board of Publication, and Sabbath = Schoolwork, Witherspoon Bldg, 1319 Walnut St., Phila. PA.” At a much later time Reverend Thomas Carroll, SJ, noticed that the clues of Stockton, California, and the Presbyterian church correlated to an entry in the opus list of Johnson organs, compiled in Elsworth’s 1984 book, The Johnson Organs. Opus 161 was shipped in 1864 to the “Presbyterian Church, Stockton, Cal. The church is Eastside Presbyterian.” The organ was listed as having two manuals and 22 stops.⁶ At this time such features as couplers and tremulants were counted as “stops,” and this roughly fit the description of the Piru organ. The façade of the Piru organ is also consistent with the architecture of organs built by Johnson in the 1864 time frame. Elsworth’s illustrations include a console layout of Opus 200 (1866) virtually identical to the Piru organ layout; Opus 134 (1862) exhibits the impost, stiles, and Gothic ornamentation of the Piru organ; Opus 183 (1865) has similar pipe flats and also the console layout of the Piru organ.⁷ Many other details verified the Johnson pedigree, among them the inscription “H. T. Levi” on the reed pipes. Barbara Owen pointed out that Levi was Johnson’s reed voicer during the time of manufacture of Opus 161.⁸ The pieces of evidence fell together when Jim Lewis discovered a newspaper photo of Opus 161 in the Eastside Presbyterian Church of Stockton that matched the façade of the Piru organ. The most likely scenario is that Johnson shipped Opus 161 directly to that church. The Gothic architecture of the Johnson façade also reflects the architecture of the Eastside Presbyterian Church façade. A handwritten note on the Piru church document stated: “Pipe organ and art glass memorial windows dedication June 2, 1935 per Fillmore Herald May 31, 1935, a gift of Hugh Warring.”

It is possible that the organ went from the Presbyterian church into storage, and was later moved to its present location in the 1934–1935 time frame. Even so, we can say with nearly absolute certainty that this organ is William A. Johnson’s Opus 161.

 

Tonal design overview

It is obvious from even a casual glance at Elsworth’s study of Johnson organs that the Johnson tonal style was based on a classical principal chorus that included mixtures in all but the more modest instruments. But the voicing style is gentle and refined, and bears great similarity to the late-eighteenth-century English work of Samuel Green, whose meantone organ at Armitage in Staffordshire is an excellent surviving example.⁹ Tuned in meantone, Johnson Opus 161 would easily pass muster as the work of Green. The tonal contrast between Green and Hook is stark, and the Hook data serve as an excellent counterpoint to the data from the Johnson organ. Green was the organbuilder favored by the organizers of the Handel Commemoration Festival of 1784, who went so far as to have one of Green’s organs temporarily installed in Westminster Abbey for that occasion. King George III paid Samuel Green to build an organ for Saint George’s Chapel at Windsor.

Stephen Bicknell’s The History of the English Organ relates important details of Samuel Green’s work that we find in Johnson’s Opus 161. “. . . Green’s voicing broke new ground . . . . Delicacy was achieved partly by reducing the size of the pipe foot and by increasing the amount of nicking. The loss of grandeur in the chorus was made up for by increasing the scales of the extreme basses.”¹⁰ And “Where Snetzler provided a chorus of startling boldness and with all the open metal ranks of equal power, Green introduced refinement and delicacy and modified the power of the off-unison ranks to secure a new kind of blend.”¹¹ The Hooks, like Snetzler, used a constant scale where all of the pipes in the principal chorus at a given pitch had about the same scale and power.

The most basic data set for describing power balances and voicing must include, at a minimum, pipe diameters, widths of mouths, heights of mouths (“cutup”), diameters of foot toe holes, and depths of mouth flueways. The data in this essay are presented in normalized scales for inside pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights. Tables showing how raw data are converted into normalized scales may be found in the article on the E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322 published in The Diapason, July 2017. The full set of Johnson data and the Excel spreadsheet used to analyze them may be obtained at no charge by emailing the author.¹² Also available is the book The Sound of Pipe Organs, which describes in detail the theory and derivation of the models used in this essay.¹³

 

Pitch, wind pressure, and general notes

The current pitch of the Johnson and Hook organs is dissimilar and should be taken into consideration when observing the scaling charts. The Hook organ is now pitched at A=435.3 Hz at 74 degrees Fahrenheit, while the Johnson organ is now pitched at 440 Hz. The original pitch of the Hook organ was 450 Hz; new low C pipes were added when the pitch was changed to 435 Hz, and the original pipework was moved up a halftone, widening its scales by a halftone. The original pitch of the Johnson organ was approximately 450 Hz; the pipes were lengthened to achieve a lower pitch.¹⁴ The Hook and Johnson organs are both tuned in equal temperament. The wind pressure, water column, of the Hook is 76 mm (3 inches); the Johnson organ was measured at 76 mm static and 70 mm under full flow on the Great division. The pressure was reduced during the restoration to 63 mm static. This allowed the pitch of the pipes to drop, making the adjustment to 440 Hz with fewer changes to the pipe lengths; most of the pipes that were originally cut to length had been crudely pinched at the top to lower their pitch. With the reduction in pressure the ears of the 4′ Flute à Cheminée, with its soldered tops, achieved a more normal position. 

The Piru room acoustic was reasonably efficient, and while the Johnson voicing is very restrained, it was adequate to fill this room on the reduced pressure. The Piru church seats 109, has plastered walls, wood and carpet flooring, and a peaked ceiling about 30 feet high; the reverberation, empty, as heard with normal ears, is well under one second (this is not the measurement used by architects that erroneously reports much longer reverberation). Elsworth relates that “the wind pressure which Johnson used during this period was generally between 21⁄2 and 23⁄4 inches [63.5 and 70 mm], and, in rare examples, nearly 3 inches [76 mm].”¹⁵ The photograph of the original Eastside Presbyterian Church for which the Johnson was designed implies a larger acoustical space than that of the Piru church.

The compass of the Johnson organ is 56 notes in the manuals, C to g′′′, and 27 notes in the pedal, C to d′.

 

Stoplist

The Johnson console was found in poor condition, missing the builder’s nameplate and many of its stop knob faces. Correct stop names were derived from the markings on the pipes and the missing faces were replaced. The original stoplist is reconstructed as follows (Johnson did not use pitch designations):

GREAT

8′ Open Diapason

8′ Keraulophon

8′ Clarabella

4′ Principal

4′ Flute à Cheminée (TC)

22⁄3′ Twelfth

2′ Fifteenth

8′ Trumpet

SWELL

16′ Bourdon (TC)

8′ Open Diapason

8′ Stopped Diapason

8′ Viol d’Amour (TF)

4′ Principal

8′ Hautboy (TF)

Tremolo

PEDAL

16′ Double Open Diapason

 

Couplers

Great to Pedal

Swell to Pedal

Swell to Great

 

Blower signal

The above list adds up to 20 controls. The Johnson company opus list describes Opus 161 as having 22 “stops.” This may have reflected the original intention to supply the organ with stops having split basses, which are commonly found in Johnson specifications. The sliders for the Keraulophon and the Trumpet were found with separate bass sections from C to B, professionally screwed together with the sections from tenor C to d′′′. The two additional bass stops would account for a total of 22 “stops.” There are no extra holes in the stop jambs to indicate the deleted split bass stop actions. The extant stopjambs are apparently a later modification from the time of the installation at Piru or before. Elsworth noted that all Johnson organs of this period were constructed with square stop shanks.¹⁶ The current shanks are round where they pass through the stopjambs and are square where they connect to the stop action.

Several stop knobs were switched during the 1935 installation at Piru; e. g., the Viole d’Amour in the pre-restoration photo of the right jamb belongs in the position noted on the left jamb with the black plastic label “Bell Gamba,” which indeed is how this stop was constructed. The Swell Stopped Diapason was operated by a knob labeled “Principal” [sic]. The illustrations of the left stopjamb and right stopjamb diagrams provide the correct nomenclature as restored in the correct positions, with the incorrect 1935 nomenclature in parentheses ( ) and the correct pitches in brackets [ ].

 

The wind system

The wind system can be modeled from two viewpoints: the restriction of flow from the wind trunks, pallets, channels, and pipe toes; and the dynamics of the wind. Wind dynamics are fully explained in The Sound of Pipe Organs and are a very important aspect of an organ’s ability to sustain a fast tempo with stability or conversely to enhance the grand cadences of historic literature. The data set on the Johnson allows us to model all of these characteristics. Figure 1 shows the Johnson wind flow model.

In Figure 1 we see a table of the pipe toe diameters and their calculated areas; values in red font are calculations or interpolations from the data (e.g., wood pipe toes are difficult to measure when they have wooden wedges to restrict flow). These areas are measured for a single note in each octave of the compass.

A model for the total required wind flow of the full plenum of the organ assumes a maximum of ten pallets (a ten-fingered chord), as described in the table, and the flow is multiplied by the number of the pallets played for each octave in the compass. The sum of the toe areas of all ten manual pallets in the tutti is 5,057 mm². The total area of the manual wind trunks is 38,872 mm², and we see that the wind trunks afford 7.7 times more wind than the tutti requires, so much in fact that the trunks do not at all function as an effective resistance in the system.

Interestingly, the Isnard organ at St. Maximin, France, used the main wind trunk as a strong resistor to dampen Helmholtz resonances in the wind system, and that organ has ratios of wind trunk area to a plenum toe area of only 1.07 for the coupled principal chorus of the Grand-Orgue and Positif, but with no reeds, flutes, or mutations. Helmholtz resonances are the source of what is normally called wind shake, and we would expect some mild wind shake with the Johnson’s large wind ducts and low damping resistance. The author’s notes from 1976 state: “Very little sustained shake . . . a considerable fluctuation in pitch when playing moderately fast legato scales, which stabilizes very rapidly . . . this imparts a shimmer . . . .”

In Figure 1 we also see dimensions of the key channels, pallet openings, and the pallet pull length (estimated from the ratios in the action). These allow us to calculate the relative wind flow of the channels and pallets. We find that there are robust margins in wind flow from the channels to the pipe toes (244% at low C to 737% at high C on the Great). This accounts for the small drop in static pressure at 76 mm to a full flow pressure of 70 mm with all stops drawn. Pallet openings are less robust and flow about 100% of the channel area for the first three octaves and 190% in the high treble.

The underlying dynamics of a wind system are the result of the mass of its bellows plate and the volume of air in the system. These factors produce a natural resonance that can enhance the grand cadences of literature with a long surge in the wind, or it can produce a nervous shake if it is too fast. A grand surge in the wind is characterized by a resonant frequency of less than 2 Hz (cycles per second), and it is most often produced by a weighted bellows. A nervous shake results from a sprung bellows. We correct the latter condition with small concussion bellows in modern organs, but the Johnson organ does not have such devices; instead, it features only a large, weighted, double-rise bellows. 

We can model the dynamic response of an organ by using its wind pressure, the area of the bellows plates, and the combined internal volume of its bellows, wind trunks, and pallet boxes. The model in Figure 2 shows the dynamic response of the current Johnson wind system at a relaxed 1.61 Hz. This low resonant frequency drops further to 1.47 Hz when the pressure is raised to its original value of 76 mm. The author’s notes from 1976 state: “Light ‘give’ on full organ; relatively fast buildup to full flow.” That “light give” is the result of the low resonant frequency of the system. The resonant frequency of the Hook organ was modeled at 1.23 Hz, a value lower than the Johnson, and the Hook chorus does indeed exhibit a slower and grander surge on full organ. Figure 3 shows the modeled resonant frequency at the original pressure of 76 mm for the Johnson organ. The equation for modeling the resonant frequency of a wind system along with a worked example on the 1774 Isnard organ at St. Maximin may be found in The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 99–113.

 

The wind system in pictures

See the accompanying pictures: Notebook sketch 1, Great windchest, Toeboard, Notebook sketch 2, Notebook sketch 3, Notebook sketch 4, Great pallet box, Pallet springs, Notebook sketch 5.

 

The layout in pictures

“Green’s organs stand on an independent building frame with the case erected around it, rather than being supported by the structure of the case itself.”¹⁷ Bicknell’s description of a Samuel Green organ applies equally well to this Johnson organ. The casework is built entirely of black walnut, a wood mentioned by Elsworth in reference to Johnson cases. The organ is situated within the front wall of the church. The original black walnut side panels (typical of early Johnson organs) were found crudely cut up and nailed behind the façade in an effort to make the whole organ expressive through the Swell shades. This had the effect of making the Great division sound like a diminutive Echo division. The typical layout of a Johnson organ is well described by Elsworth: “The framework was arranged to carry the chests of the Great organ and the supporting framework for the Swell, which was usually above the Great organ and slightly to the rear.”¹⁸ Such layouts, shown in Figure 4, are common in nineteenth-century American organbuilding. The walkway behind the Great allowed access to the pipes and pallets placed at the rear of that chest, and the rollerboard to the Swell division was normally placed just behind this walkway, allowing access to the Swell pallets that were placed at the front of the Swell windchest. Opus 161 was installed in an opening in the Piru church that was far too shallow to allow the depth of a rearward placement of the Swell division. 

As a result, there is evidence that the Swell windchest may have been reversed, placing its pallets to the back of the windchest, and the chest brought forward over the Great division. Note the lack of clearance between the 4′ Principal pipe and the bottom of the Swell chest in Figure 5. The internal framework shows signs of crude saw cuts; the order of the notes on the Swell chest is the same as the Great, but it is reversed; the Swell rollerboard appears to have been likewise reversed and now faces toward the walkway where the action and rollers are exposed to damage. 

To say that the Piru layout was cramped would be an understatement; no one weighing over 150 pounds would gain access to the pipes for tuning or to the action for adjustment without damaging the pipework or the key action. The author weighed less (at the time) and was barely able to navigate inside the organ. The current layout is shown in Figure 6. 

It is also possible that the current layout reflects the original layout by Johnson, but that the Swell was simply lowered to fit the height of the Piru church and brought forward to fit the limited depth available, reducing the depth of the walkway.

Notes and credits

All photos, drawings, tables, and illustrations are courtesy of the author’s collection if not otherwise noted. Most of the color photos were unfortunately taken by the author with an inferior camera in low resolution. David Sedlak used a high quality camera, lenses, and film to produce the high-resolution color photos of the church and its architectural details; these are all attributed to Sedlak.

1. Stephen Bicknell, The History of the English Organ, Cambridge University Press, 1996, Cambridge, pp. 185–187, 190–191, 207.

2. John Van Varick Elsworth, The Johnson Organs, The Boston Organ Club, 1984, Harrisville, p. 18.

3. A detailed study of the E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322 may be found in The Diapason, July, August, and September issues, 2017.

4. Barbara Owen, The Organ in New England, The Sunbury Press, 1979, Raleigh, pp. 18–19.

5. see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_and_Albany_Railroad.

6. The Johnson Organs, p. 100.

7. Ibid, pp. 23, 50, 57, respectively.

8. The Organ in New England, p. 275.

9. 5 Organ Concertos, 1984, Archiv D 150066, Simon Preston, Trevor Pinnock, The English Concert.

10. The History of the English Organ, p. 185.

11. Ibid, p. 207.

12. McNeil, Michael. Johnson_161_170807, an Excel file containing all of the raw data and the models used to analyze the Johnson Opus 161, 2017, available by emailing the author at [email protected].

13. McNeil, Michael. The Sound of Pipe Organs, CC&A, Mead, 2012, 191 pp., Amazon.com.

14. The Organ in New England, p. 75.

15. The Johnson Organs, p. 25.

16. Ibid, p. 23.

17. The History of the English Organ, p. 187.

18. The Johnson Organs, p. 23.

 

To be continued.

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Preface

The 1863 E. & G. G. Hook organ, Opus 322, is not only one of the best preserved of the earlier instruments of that firm, it had the good fortune to be placed in the superlative acoustics of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston, Massachusetts. Rooms with long acoustical reverberation are rare in the United States. Rarer still is a room where all frequencies of sound die away cleanly at a similar rate. At Immaculate Conception the clean diffusion of sound without slap echoes was enabled by a profusion of complex cornices and a coffered ceiling with intricate ornamentation; it is a wonderful example of a fusion of form and musical function.

Designed by noted architect Patrick Charles Keely, the classical façade of the church is executed in granite. The organ resided directly behind the windows above the main doors. The Church of the Immaculate Conception is situated in a historic district of Boston. Nearby elegant row houses reflect an age when architectural design valued a balance of form and the texture that cornices, corbels, and moldings bring to a structure. These classical elements live and reverberate into the new millennium.

Detailed documentation of such a universally acclaimed organ is important for several reasons. We can learn how the Hooks designed their organ to suit the acoustics. We can make useful comparisons with other organs and learn how this Hook differs from other styles of organ design. And perhaps most importantly, we can document this organ for posterity. Organs are consumed in wars and fires; they are replaced or modified with the changing tastes of time; and they never survive a restoration without changes. In a quirk of fate that makes this documention all the more valuable, the organ was dismantled in 2008 and placed in storage for Boston College. Plans by developers now exist to convert the Church of the Immaculate Conception into condominiums.

In June of 2000 the Jesuit Urban Center and its director, Fr. Thomas Carroll, SJ, invited the author to reside with them for a week at the Church of the Immaculate Conception with the goal of acquiring detailed data on the Hook organ. The author immersed himself in this work to such a degree that he often lost track of the passage of time. The resident Jesuits would ascend to the organ loft to remind the author that it was time to end a long day of work, promising good conversation and good libations as a reward, to which the author always happily acquiesced. The following study is an analysis of the data taken while a guest of the author’s most generous hosts.

The data showed that the Hook organ is in remarkably original condition, primarily the result of its careful maintenance by many generations of the Lahaise family. The data also revealed some crude interventions originating from the repitching of the organ and the 1902 installation of the Solo division, all of which are reversible.

 

Current stoplist

Great

16′ Open Diapason

8′ Open Diapason Forte

8′ Open Diapason Mezzo

8′ Viola da Gamba

8′ Clarabella

4′ Octave

4′ Flute Harmonique

3′ Twelfth

2′ Fifteenth

III Mixture

V Mixture

VII Cymbal

16′ Trumpet

8′ Trumpet

4′ Clarion

Swell

16′ Bourdon

8′ Open Diapason

8′ Stopped Diapason

8′ Viol di Amour

8′ Voix Celeste

8′ Quintadena

4′ Octave

4′ Violina

4′ Flauto Traverso

2′ Flautino

V Mixture

16′ Contra Fagot

8′ Cornopean

8′ Oboe

8′ Vox Humana

4′ Clarion

Choir

16′ Contra Dolce

8′ Open Diapason

8′ Melodia

8′ Gedeckt

8′ Viola

8′ Dulciana

4′ Octave

4′ Fugara

4′ Hohlpfeife

4′ Flauto Traverso

2′ Piccolo

8′ Clarinet

Pedal

32′ Contra Bourdon

16′ Open Diapason

16′ Violone

16′ Bourdon

12′ Quint Floete

8′ Violoncello

8′ Flute

16′ Trombone

8′ Trumpet

Solo

8′ Open Diapason

8′ Concert Flute

4′ Flute Harmonique

8′ Tuba Mirabilis

8′ Orchestral Oboe

8′ Orchestral Clarinet

4′ Tuba Octave

 

Casework and façade

Built in 1863, the Hook organ casework is constructed of pine, not a hardwood. Perhaps the Civil War took its toll on the availability of materials. The case façade was designed by the church architect, Patrick C. Keely.¹ Although it employs extreme over-lengths in the façade pipes, the case and nave are a successful fusion of the architectural style.

 

There are seven flats of pipes in the façade. The flats at the extreme sides contain three dummy pipes each. The Hooks utilized bass pipes from both the 16′ Open Diapason and the 8′ Open Diapason Forte in the façade. A few bass pipes that would normally be a continuous part of the façade were placed just behind the façade on offset boards in an effort to keep a normal progression of widths when using the pipes of two different stops. This resulted in some very large overlengths with many cutouts at the back of some pipes. Here is the order of speaking case pipes, facing the case, from left to right: 

9 pipes: 8′ F#, 8′ E, 8′ D, 8′ C, 16′ G#, 16′ c, 16′ d, 16′ e, 16′ f#;

3 pipes: 16′ c′, 16′ a#, 8′ A#;

9 pipes: 16′ A#, 16′ F#, 16′ E, 16′ D, 16′ C, 16′ C#, 16′ D#, 16′ F, 16′ A;

3 pipes: 8′ B, 16′ a, 16′ b;

9 pipes: 8′ G, 16′ d#, 16′ c#, 16′ B, 16′ G, 8′ C#, 8′ D#, 8′ F, 16′ f.

 

The form and presentation of the data 

Pipe measurements, which include enough data to reconstruct the voicing, were taken on selected pipes of the principal chorus of the Great division. Measurements taken by the author were entered into a laptop computer with the gracious help of Paul Murray, a volunteer at the church. The computer was set up within the expansive casework to make efficient use of time.

A total of 25 measurements and notes were taken on each of the selected pipes of the principal chorus; 34 measurements and notes were taken on a Clarion reed pipe. While this may seem excessive by normal practice, the standard for this type of documentation was pioneered by Pierre Chéron in his classic work on the Isnard organ at St. Maximin, L’Orgue de Jean-Esprit et Joseph Isnard dans la Basilique de la Madeleine à Saint-Maximin, France.

 

The scaling sheets devised by Mr. Chéron were adapted by the author to a spreadsheet.² Analysis of that data enabled a detailed understanding of the changes made to the 1863 organ. The missing gaps in the data reflect the inability to gain easy access without risk of damage to some pipes, along with the limitations of time. 

The author has shown how this data can be portrayed to advantage in his book, The Sound of Pipe Organs, published in 2012.³ This book describes models which can be used to intuitively compare the scaling and voicing of different organs, allowing us to visualize and understand the differences. The reader is referred to this book for a deeper understanding of the models which are presented in this study of the Hook. 

The basic data set to describe scaling and voicing must include, at a minimum, pipe diameters, widths of mouths, heights of mouths (“cutups”), diameters of foot toe holes, depths of mouth flueways, and treatment of the languids. The data in this study of the Hook principal chorus is graphically presented side-by-side with a graphical reduction of the data compiled by Chéron from the famous Isnard organ at St. Maximin, France. This is an instructive comparison. The two organs are of similar size and were designed for similar acoustics, but they represent very different tonal ideals ranging from the late 18th-century French Classical traditions of the Isnards to the fully Romantic middle 19th-century traditions of the American Hooks.

Normalized data is presented for inside pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights (cutups). The tables in Figure 1 show how the raw data was converted into normalized data.

 

Scaling and voicing

 

Pipe diameters

The Normal Scale of pipe diameters is a way to visualize relative power, where a flat line from bass to treble will produce relatively constant power. Pipes with data extending higher in the graph will produce more power. Each half tone on the vertical scale represents 0.5 dB of power. Interested readers can refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 8–32 for a discussion of the underlying theory.

With the exception of the narrower Mixture V and Cymbal VII, the chorus of the Hook organ in Figure 2 is compressed, i.e., the foundation and upperwork stops have a similar, or “constant,” scale, and the trebles are relatively flat in scaling. In stark contrast in Figure 3, the Isnard scales become narrower as the pitch of the stops ascend, while the 4′ and Mixture scales widen dramatically in the treble.

Wind pressure has a very large effect on power, but fortunately the wind pressure of the Hook organ at 76 mm water column is close to that of the Isnard organ at 83 mm. Power balance differences in these two organs result from differences in the pipe construction (pipe diameters and mouth widths) and differences in the voicing parameters (toe hole diameters and flueway depths).

 

Mouth widths 

The Normal Scale of mouth widths operates just like the pipe diameters, where a flat line from bass to treble will produce relatively constant power. Pipes extending higher in the graph will produce more power. Each half tone on the vertical scale again represents 0.5 dB of power. 

Mouth widths are often a better indicator of power balances than pipe diameters, simply because mouth widths can be designed to vary within the same diameter of a pipe. Narrower mouths will produce less power, even if the pipe diameters are wide. 

The chorus of the Hook organ in Figure 4 is again compressed, much like the pipe diameters in Figure 2. The Mixture III is scaled as wide as the foundation stops. Note how the Cymbal VII and the Mixture V are the only narrow upperwork stops. Furthermore, the mouth scales of those two mixtures actually descend from bass to treble. The Cymbal VII was made and installed in 1870 by William A. Johnson,⁴ and it is representative of his typical chorus scaling with wide foundations and much narrower upperwork.

In Figure 5 the scales of the 4′ and Mixtures on the Isnard organ ascend dramatically from 1′ pitch to 1/8′ pitch. Isnard’s intent here is two-fold: the upperwork not only ascends in scale for an ascending treble, it is also scaled to compensate for the losses of power due to the atmospheric absorption of sound over long distances at higher frequencies. Interested readers can refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 13–14, for a discussion of the foundations of this very important scaling principle.

These two graphs show the basic differences in the tonal balances of these organs, where the Isnard exhibits a well-balanced full spectrum of frequencies, while the Hook is tailored for warm and powerful foundations with a restrained full frequency spectrum.

 

Notes and Credits

All photographs, tables, graphs, and data are by the author except as noted.

1. Owen, Barbara. “A Landmark within a Landmark: The 1863 Hook Organ,” undated typescript.

2. Excel files with all raw data taken on the Hook and the spreadsheets that produced the graphs and tables may be obtained at no charge by e-mailing the author at: [email protected].

3. McNeil, Michael. The Sound of Pipe Organs (Mead, Colorado: CC&A), 2012, 191 pp., Amazon.com.

4. Huntington, Scot L., Barbara Owen, Stephen L. Pinel, Martin R. Walsh, Johnson Organs 1844–1898 (Richmond, Virginia: OHS Press), pp. 17–18.

 

To be continued.

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this article was published in the August 2018 issue of The Diapason, pages 16–19. Part 2 was published in the September 2018 issue, pages 20–25.

 

We continue with the description of the Swell and Pedal stops of Johnson Opus 161 along with data on their scaling and voicing. In the final installment we will graphically analyze the scaling and voicing data of the Great and Pedal divisions, comparing them to the Great principal chorus of the 1863 E. & G. G. Hook organ formerly at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston.

 

Swell division

 

8′ Open Diapason

 

The Open Diapason is the first stop from the front of the chest. The pipes from C–F# are stopped wood, bass G to tenor E are open wood, and tenor F to the top are all planed common metal. The effective scale of the bass of this stop is larger than the Great 8′ Open Diapason in the façade. The photographs show how mouth height is used as a voicing variable; it is virtually a constant 22 mm in all of the open pipes from bass G to tenor E.

 

16′ Bourdon

There are no data on the pipes of this stop, which play from tenor C. Some of the tenor pipes are tubed off and are placed at the sides, outside of the swell box. Note the classical construction of the stoppers.

 

8′ Stopped Diapason

There are no data for this stop.

8′ Viole d’Amour

The fourth stop on the chest, the Viole d’Amour plays from tenor F with no grooves and no common bass with the 8′ Stopped Diapason. The pipes are all planed common metal. The ears are very large and serve as the only tuning device. Many pipes showed crimping in the neck (red arrow in Figure 11) where the top resonator bell meets the main tapered resonator, presumably a means of tuning, and probably done by the factory. This is the softest stop in the organ. The flueway depths are generous, and the toes are very constricted, the method by which the extremely low power was obtained.

 

4′ Principal

The fifth stop on the chest, the 4′ Principal consists of tapered zinc resonators with planed common metal feet from low C to tenor E, and planed common metal cylindrical resonators for the remainder of the stop. It is scaled and voiced very delicately and combines well with either the 8′ Stopped Diapason or the 8′ Viole d’Amour. The mouths of the bass pipes from low C to tenor E are very high and arched.

 

8′ Hautboy 

The sixth and last stop on the Swell chest, the Hautboy was found with extensive damage, which was repaired on mandrels. The photograph of the unrestored Hautboy pipes and the author was taken around 1976 in the workshop at Rancho San Julian, Lompoc, California. The original compass is likely tenor F, as all pipes from this point are made of planed common metal. Original flue pipes with Reuter slots were made from c#′′′ to g′′′. Pipes were found in the positions from C to tenor E, but these are later additions; they have spotted metal bells, zinc boots, shallot end cuts with positive angles (the Johnson shallots have negative 7 degree angle cuts, see Figure 13), Reuter tuning slots in the bells, and crude miters. All of the Johnson reed resonators are cut to dead length with no slots or scrolls (see Figure 12). Johnson shallots from tenor F are made of copper; the shallots of the spurious bass pipes are brass.

 

Pedal division

In the tradition of Samuel Green, Johnson greatly widened the scales of the Pedal 16′ Double Open Diapason. The diagonal measurement yields an effective scale diameter of 390 mm, or +9 half tones, an extremely wide scale for a modestly-sized organ. Johnson was probably well aware of the bass inefficiency of the vast majority of American churches, past and present—the bass simply passes through the thin wood and plaster walls of these churches. The mouth width scale is nearly +5 half tones. There are two indications that Johnson drove these pipes with copious wind: the flueway depth is an extremely generous 2.5 mm and the mouth height, or cutup, is an even more generous 85 mm. A cutup of this magnitude represents a normal scale value of +11 half tones, and this, more than any other variable, shows Johnson’s desire for a bass tone that was powerful and tactile.

The largest 18 pipes are laid out, front to back, at the sides of the Great, nine to each side; the remainder are laid out behind the reservoir in chromatic order, making three separate windchests. The stop action is a ventil to all three chests. This is a classically constructed and voiced stop. It has no nicks, no arching to the cutups, and no extra ear extensions, beards, or rollers. As a result, it has superb blend and speech characteristics. The photographs show details of its construction and layout.

Notes and Credits

All photos, drawings, tables, and illustrations are courtesy of the author’s collection if not otherwise noted. Most of the color photos were unfortunately taken by the author with an inferior camera in low resolution. David Sedlak used a high quality camera, lenses, and film to produce the high-resolution color photos of the church and its architectural details; these are all attributed to Sedlak.

To be continued.