The 1864 William A. Johnson Opus 161, Piru Community United Methodist Church Piru, California, Part 1: A virtually complete documentation and tonal analysis derived from the data, drawings, and photographs from the restoration of 1976

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 I of this article was published in the July issue of The Diapason, pages 17–19.

 

Mouth heights 

Mouth height, or “cutup,” as it is more commonly called by voicers, is the primary means of adjusting the timbre of a pipe. Low cutups will create a brighter tone with many harmonics, while high cutups will produce smoother tone with fewer harmonic overtones. For interested readers, see The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 68–80. In older organs, it is not uncommon to find flute pipe mouths cut twelve half tones higher than principal chorus pipes.

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: 1) the voicer wants a smoother timbre, or 2) the voicer wants more power at the same timbre. More power means more wind, and this means a larger toe and/or flueway to admit more wind at the mouth. More wind at the mouth will always produce a brighter tone, so the voicer can make a pipe louder and preserve its original timbre by opening the toe and raising the cutup until the timbre is restored.

Now we can understand the graphs. In Figure 6 we see that the Hook principal chorus has high cutups and that they do not significantly vary from bass to treble. Hook pushes pipes to higher power with much more open toes (Figure 8), and the voicer raises the cutups to avoid a strident timbre at the increased power. The timbres are relatively constant from bass to treble. Note the lower mouth heights of the William A. Johnson Cymbal VII, which makes its timbre brighter than the Hook voicing (also note that the Cymbal’s toes are winded as robustly as the Hook pipes in Figure 8).

In contrast, the Isnard chorus in Figure 7 shows much lower cutups in the bass and mid-range, and much higher cutups in the highest treble. We will see in the data for toe diameters in Figure 9 that Isnard is restraining his pipes for less power and voicing for an ascending treble.

 

Pipe toe “C” values

Pipe toe diameters can be normalized to the diameter of the pipe, the width of the mouth, and a normalized depth of the flueway. For interested readers, the derivation of this normalization is explained in detail in The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 43–47. Higher “C” values mean the toe is larger and flows more wind relative to its mouth width and flueway depth. This is a primary voicing tool for regulating power.

The contrast in the toe diameters of these two organs is striking in many ways. The Hook toes in Figure 8 are much wider overall than the Isnard toes in Figure 9, demonstrating the primary source of the power of the Hook. This power would normally encourage chiff in the pipe speech, but this is suppressed in the Hook by the use of very deep and regular nicking of the languids of the pipes. Ninety percent of the Isnard pipes are free of nicks, and when nicks are found, there are typically only two or three very fine, shallow nicks on a languid. Contrast this with the treatment of the 16′ Open Diapason of the Hook: 22 fine nicks at C1, 20 nicks at c13, 29 nicks at c25, 24 medium nicks at c37, and 19 medium nicks at c49, all of the pipes having their nicks cut very deeply into the languid. There is no discernible “chiff” to the speech, but this is desirable for the interpretation of Romantic music. Interested readers can refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 94–96, for a graphic illustration of the effects of such nicking on speech transients.

Figure 8 demonstrates another key element of the Romantic tradition—large toes supplying more wind and power to the bass and mid-range. In contrast, the toe constants of the Isnard are much smaller, more constant across the compass, more constant for all stops of the chorus, and exhibit a subtle rise to support an ascending treble. 

 

Flueway depths 

Like the pipe toe, the flueway depth also controls the flow of wind and strongly correlates to the power of the pipe. Interested readers can refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 50–63 and 77–82. 

In Figure 10 we see another essential characteristic of Romantic voicing—a very deep flueway. Much of the Romantic voicing tradition grew out of the French Classical voicing style, which maintained deep flueways and controlled the power of a pipe by restricting its toe, much as we see in Figure 9. The restorer of the Isnard organ, Yves Cabourdin, noted that the flueways of the Isnard organ seen in Figure 11 are “closed up” relative to normal French Classic practice, yet the flueways of the Isnard are very deep relative to the common North German practice of regulating power by closing down the flueways while maintaining open toes. For interested readers, some examples of historical practice in flueway depths may be found in The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 50–51.

The extremely deep flueways of the Hook organ are consistent with Romantic voicing in general, along with more generous toe diameters and the nicking required to suppress chiffing in the pipe speech at the greatly increased power levels of this style. 

The flueways of the Hook organ appeared in general to be very well preserved and were very consistent. The anomalous lower value of the flueway in Figure 10 for the Hook 16′ Open Diapason at c25 (4′ pitch) may have been the result of handling damage to that pipe or modifications when the pitch was changed. The robust flueway depth of the Hook 16′ low C pipe is literally off the chart at 4.8 mm.

 

Ratios of toe and flueway areas

The flow of wind and power balances 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, it will cause a significant drop in the pressure at the mouth, and what is more important, the speech will be noticeably slower. When the area of the toe and flueway are equal, the ratio is exactly 1:1, and this is the lower limit for pipes with faster speech. Interested readers can refer to The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 56–63 and 114–116 for a discussion of this very important musical characteristic and its effect on the cohesion of a chorus. (A well-knit chorus may contain slower pipes or faster pipes, but never both.)

The Hook ratios in Figure 12 never descend below a ratio of 1:1 and typically ascend to extremely high values in the treble. It is this technique with which Hook obtains an ascending treble.

The Isnard ratios in Figure 13 reside at a value of 1:1 for the bass and mid-range and ascend to much higher values at the highest pitches. Like the Hooks, the Isnards achieved an ascending treble with this technique, but unlike the Hooks, the Isnards crafted the bass and mid-range ratios to values of almost exactly 1:1. The Isnard pipe speech has a lovely “bloom,” which is a direct result of these very carefully crafted ratios; the term “bloom” refers to a slower buildup of power in the initial speech of a pipe. The Hook organ also exhibits a distinct bloom, but this bloom has no speech transients, and it derives from the low resonant frequency of the wind system when it is working hard to supply wind.

 

The wind system 

The design of the wind system plays a large role in the dynamics of the wind and the musicality of the organ. Dry acoustics favor faster wind systems, which support faster tempos; live acoustics fill dramatic pauses with a halo of reverberation and encourage slower tempos. Wind systems can be designed to enhance the grand cadences of historic literature written for live acoustics, and such wind systems will have a slower response. For interested readers, this response can be described as the resonant frequency of the wind system, and it is fully described in The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 99–113, using the Isnard organ as a worked example.

Documentation of the wind system is probably the most overlooked feature in descriptions of pipe organs. The Hook’s wind system was measured in some detail, but not completely due to the constraints of time.

The wind of the Hook organ has no perceptible shake. The tutti does not noticeably sag in pitch. The speech onset of the full Hook plenum is characterized by a dramatic surge, the result of weighted bellows and large system capacitances. The current wind system shows some modification of the 1863 design, largely as a result of the 1902 addition of the Solo Division. 

The static wind pressure of the Great was measured to be 75 mm water column at c′(25) of the 4′ Clarion, the last stop on the back of the chest. The static wind pressure at a′′′(58) of the 16′ Open Diapason was measured to be 76 mm; drawing all of the stops reduced that pressure to 67 mm.

All divisions in the organ are fed with ducts that have cross sections many times what is necessary to wind the tutti. These ducts are also very long, with the result that they are calculated to have Helmholtz resonances in the very low range of about 4 Hz; this frequency is not audible when the organ is played, suggesting that the damping of the wind system is considerable (some concussion bellows are present). The main ducts have about 0.56 m³ of volume.

The two bellows that together feed the Great and Choir (and originally also the Swell), are massive with 8.4 m³ of volume, having two inward folds and one outward fold. The resonant frequency of the two bellows, two pallet boxes of the Great division, and wind ducts as a function of their mass and volume is calculated to be 1.23 Hz. Such a low resonant frequency is the primary source of the grand surge in the tutti of this instrument. It is a musical wind with grand drama, exhibiting none of the nervousness of organs with sprung bellows. Both the mass and volume of this wind system compare favorably with the Isnard organ. And although the Hook organ features double-rise bellows and the Isnard features wedge bellows, they have very similar and low resonant frequencies at 1.23 Hz and 1.20 Hz, respectively. Figure 14 is a table showing the measurements of the wind system and its calculated resonance. 

Another important characteristic of a wind system is its wind flow and damping. The total demand on a wind system is equal to the areas of all of the toes of all of the pipes that can be played at the same time on full organ. We then look to see if the key channels can flow sufficient wind to those toes, if the pallets can flow sufficient wind to the key channels, and if the wind ducts can flow sufficient wind to all of the pallets. This analysis was performed on the Isnard organ (see The Sound of Pipe Organs, pp. 120–127), with the interesting result that the Isnard wind trunk just barely flows adequate wind for the coupled principal choruses of the Grand Orgue and Positif, but it is wholly inadequate for any form of tutti. This sort of restriction is not uncommon in older organs, and it performs the function of adding significant resistance to the wind flow, which in turn dampens Helmholtz resonances in the cavities of the wind system, e.g., wind shake from the wind trunks and pallet boxes. We do not have enough data for all of the stops of the Hook to perform this analysis, but the very large cross-section of the wind trunk suggests that it has much more winding than the Isnard, and that would be consistent with a Romantic organ and the requirement that it support a full tutti. The table in Figure 15 shows the data for wind flow in the windchests of the Great division.

 

The Great division 

There are two windchests for the Great division, split diatonically C and C# with the bass notes at the outer ends and a walkboard in the middle. Figure 16 shows the pipes on the C side windchest from the 8′ Open Diapason Forte at the left (front of the chest) to the treble end of the III Mixture at the right. The order of stops is:

 

8′ Open Diapason Forte

8′ Clarabella

16′ Open Diapason

8′ Viola da Gamba

8′ Open Diapason Mezzo

4′ Octave

4′ Flute Harmonique

3′ Twelfth

2′ Fifteenth

III Mixture

V Mixture

VII Cymbal (Johnson, 1870)

16′ Trumpet

8′ Trumpet

4′ Clarion

 

Figure 17 shows the treble end of the mixtures on the C side. The toeboard on the left contains both the III Mixture and V Mixture. From left to right, we see the III Mixture, V Mixture, and on the right toe board, the later addition of the VII Cymbal (red arrow).

Most of the treble pipes are cone tuned and exhibit almost no damage. This is a tribute to the tuning skills of the Lahaise family. Few organs of this age have survived with such intact mixture pipes. The pre-restoration photos of the Isnard organ at St. Maximin show the more typical fate of such pipes.

All of the tin-lead pipes in this organ are constructed of spotted metal, with the notable exception of the Cymbal (added by Johnson in 1870), which is planed metal. This accounts for the obvious difference in the construction of the rackboard for this stop. The VII Cymbal (red arrows) includes a third-sounding rank, and in the style of Johnson it is silvery (lower cutups) and restrained in power (very narrow pipe diameters and mouth scales). Although no records exist, there must have been a fascinating story behind the inclusion of a competitor’s mixture in this organ.

Figure 18 shows the back of the C side Great chest. The order of reed stops, from left to right, is: 16′ Trumpet, 8′ Trumpet, and 4′ Clarion. Note that the 4′ Clarion is cut dead length in all pipes except the newer, slotted low C pipe added at the time of repitching the organ. Trebles of the 16′ and 8′ ranks are also cut dead length without slots. The intent here is obvious: don’t tune these reeds on the scrolls, tune them on the wire.

 

General observations

 

16′ Open Diapason

All of the pipes of the 16′ Open Diapason from the mid-range downward into the deep bass exhibit very bright harmonic content. The reason for this becomes apparent with a close examination of the middle D pipe. When the organ was repitched from A=450 to A=435 Hz, a new low C pipe was made for many of the stops and the original pipes were moved up one half step. The tuning distance between 435 Hz and 450 Hz is less than a half step, with the result that the pipes were now much too flat. The scrolls were then rolled down to bring the pipes into tune at 435 Hz. We can see from Figure 19 that to achieve correct tuning on the middle D pipe, the tin-lead scroll was completely removed and the zinc resonator was crudely cut and broken to make the slot deeper.

This was apparently not sufficient to bring this pipe into tune. Figure 20 shows that the toe of this pipe was crudely opened and flared outward without the benefit of a normal toe reamer or toe chamfering tool. This is very informative because it explains the much brighter timbre of this pipe relative to its treble or other foundations. The opening of the toe increased the pitch and brought the pipe into tune, but at the expense of more power and a much brighter timbre relative to the original voicing. Even with this increased power it would have been possible to have preserved the original timbre by slightly raising the cutup. Inspection of the upper lips indicates that this was not done; the upper lips of all pipes are slightly skived to about one half of the metal thickness, and this was still intact on all pipes. Note that the crudely damaged toe shows bright metal; there was no bright metal on the upper lips, indicating original cutups but modified toes. This voicing damage is typical throughout the bass of this stop. 

Figure 21 shows the back of the low D façade pipe. Note that the tin-lead scroll is completely missing, the zinc is rolled back at the bottom of the slot, and the tin-lead adjacent to the top of the slot is bent outwards on both sides. The author verified that the wind to the toe was likely altered as well; the wooden slides in the toeboard that regulate wind flow were completely open. The façade pipes were all speaking on maximum wind. Figure 22 illustrates the condition of the scrolls in the back of the façade for 16′ c, 16′ G#, 8′ C, 8′ D, 8′ E, and 8′ F#, going from left to right in the figure.

 

8′ Open Diapason Forte

The cutups appear original, the toes were crudely opened, and this stop indeed sounds too loud and too bright relative to any other 8′ stop. In fact, this stop obliterates the sense of chorus when using it in the traditional French fonds. One would normally expect the 8′ Forte to be slightly more powerful, but less bright, than the 8′ Open Diapason Mezzo; they would then combine as a fine chorus. In fact, this stop is much more powerful than the Open Diapason Mezzo and also brighter. This rank shows the same tuning modification seen in Figure 19, and the toes of this rank were opened in the same crude manner seen in Figure 20. 

While there is some evidence of selective toe adjustment in other stops, no other ranks show such crude treatment and excessive opening of the toes. They have normal chamfers and round bores. Lending further evidence to the hypothesis that this was damage inflicted at the time of repitching the organ, it was seen that the same crude method of opening the toes was applied to all of the new low C pipes in all of the ranks.

We are fortunate in at least one respect. The workmanship during the repitching was very crude, and this allows us to better understand the order of events and the anomalous tonal balances.

 

III Mixture

The mixture pipes were all moved up one half step when the organ was repitched, widening the scales by a half step and moving the breaks up by the same amount. The new pipes added at low C were crudely matched in diameters, mouth widths, and toes. The width scales of the fifths are about two half tones narrower than the 4′ Octave, similar to the scaling of the Twelfth. The octaves are as wide as the foundations. The current breaks are:

 

C1 2′ 11⁄3′ 1′

c#26 4′ 22⁄3′ 2′

 

V Mixture

Although not measured, the flueways were visually consistent with other Hook stops. This mixture is scaled about 3 to 5 half tones narrower than the foundations. The current breaks are:

 

C1 2′ 11⁄3′ 1′ 2⁄3′ 1⁄2′

c#14 22⁄3′ 2′ 11⁄3′ 1′ 2⁄3′

c#26 4′ 22⁄3′ 2′ 11⁄3′ 1′

c#38 8′ 4′ 22⁄3′ 2′ 11⁄3′

c#50 8′ 51⁄3′ 4′ 22⁄3′ 2′

 

VII Cymbal (Johnson, 1870)⁴

Although not measured, the flueways were visually consistent with the other Hook pipework. This mixture, designed and built by William A. Johnson and installed in 1870, is 6 to 7 half tones narrower than the foundations. It has similar robust winding in its toes and flueways to the Hook work, but it is cut up relatively lower than the Hook mixtures, giving the Johnson mixture a more silvery timbre. It is a magnificent sound and provides a scintillating crown to the principal chorus of the Hook. Unlike the spotted metal of the Hook pipework, these Johnson pipes are all made of planed metal, probably containing Johnson’s typical alloy of 33% tin.⁵ This stop includes a third-sounding rank; its current breaks are:

C1 13⁄5′ 11⁄3′ 1′ 2⁄3′ 1⁄2′ 1⁄3′ 1⁄4′

c#14 2′ 13⁄5′ 11⁄3′ 1′ 2⁄3′ 1⁄2′ 1⁄3′

g20 22⁄3′ 2′ 13⁄5′ 11⁄3′ 1′ 2⁄3′ 1⁄2′

c#26 4′ 22⁄3′ 2′ 13⁄5′ 11⁄3′ 1′ 2⁄3′

g32 51⁄3′ 4′ 22⁄3′ 2′ 13⁄5′ 11⁄3′ 1′

d#40 8′ 51⁄3′ 4′ 22⁄3′ 2′ 13⁄5′ 11⁄3′

c#50 16′ 8′ 51⁄3′ 4′ 31⁄5′ 22⁄3′ 2′ ν

Notes and Credits

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

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.

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 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.

Allison Alcorn

Allison A. Alcorn received her PhD from the University of North Texas, Denton, in 1997 and is now professor of musicology at Illinois State University, where she is active in the Honors Program, Study Abroad, and Faculty Development and mentoring. Alcorn served as editor of the Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society from 2012–2017 and joined the AMIS Board of Governors in 2017. She has previously been councilor for research for the Organ Historical Society and on the governing board of the American Organ Archives. Publications include articles for the Grove Dictionary of American Music and the Grove Dictionary of Musical Instruments as well as articles in a variety of national and international journals.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this article was published in the February issue of The Diapason, pages 22–24.

 

Hinners & Albertsen in Red Wing, Minnesota

The Red Wing organ’s specification list represents the standard style 2/10, available in style A, B, or C; that is, in the mail order, the congregation indicated whether it should be built to go on the left, center, or right of the altar. This was a substantial investment for the church at just less than $1,000.00. Clearly, this organ (Figure 10) is nothing elaborate or extravagant. It is a meat and potatoes organ. No dessert here, no fancy garnishes, only what is absolutely needed:

GREAT

8′ Open Diapason (metal, 61 pipes)

8′ Melodia (wood, 61 pipes)

8′ Dulciana (metal, 49 pipes)

4′ Principal (metal, 61 pipes)

SWELL

16′ Bourdon (wood, 49 pipes)

8′ Violin Diapason (metal, 61 pipes)

8′ Lieblich Gedackt (wood, 61 pipes)

8′ Salicional (metal, 49 pipes)

4′ Flauto Traverso (metal, 61 pipes)

PEDAL

16′ Bourdon (wood, 27 pipes)

 

Couplers

Swell & Octave to Great Coupler

Swell to Great Coupler

Swell to Pedal Coupler

Great to Pedal Coupler

 

Accessories

Swell Tremulant

Blowers Signal

Wind Indicator

 

Pedal movements

Great Forte

Great Piano

Balanced Swell Pedal

 

Red Wing was originally the site of a Lakota farming village, and then in 1837 missionaries with the Evangelical Missionary Society of Lausanne began a decade of relatively sporadic missionary activity until several treaties were signed with the Sioux and Mendota in the 1850s and a U. S. Land Office opened in Red Wing in 1855. Within a few years, the town of Red Wing—named after the Lakota chief who used a dyed swan wing as a symbol of rank—became a busy river port. A more stable white settlement was established with the opening of a leather and shoe factory—the beginning of the famous Red Wing Shoe empire—and a pottery factory—the Red Wing Pottery empire—in the 1860s. However, it was the wheat trade that spurred rapid growth throughout the 1870s and then ironically also led to a serious economic downturn because of depleted soil and increased problems with blight and rust exacerbated by a series of severe storms.

Industrial diversification probably saved the town of around 4,000 inhabitants; flour mills opened along with lime quarrying and furniture building, lumber, and millwork. Red Wing Iron Works, founded in 1866, was perhaps the chief contributor that enabled the city to diversify and save itself. The iron works was owned and run by Benjamin and Daniel Densmore, Benjamin being the father of Frances Densmore, a true pioneer in American musicology and ethnomusicology.

Frances’s letters provide a good sense of what Red Wing was like in the era in which the Hinners & Albertsen organ came to the city. Frances wrote about having grown up going to bed at night listening to the drums and chanting of the Lakota on Trenton Island, directly across the Mississippi River from her house. She could see their fires from her bedroom window. In 1889 the Lakota were forced onto the Prairie Island Reservation, but they remained both a physical and aural presence in Red Wing.⁵

The Norwegian Lutheran Hauge Synod established a significant stronghold in Red Wing beginning in the 1870s and opened a seminary there in 1879, high on the bluff overlooking the city. The ladies seminary was opened in 1889 and was known especially for its Conservatory of Music and its director, Dr. Bernard F. Laukandt, who was also organist at St. Peter Norwegian Lutheran Church; therefore, the organist for the 1898 Hinners & Albertsen.⁶ The conservatory was divided into three departments: piano, voice, and pipe organ (the auditorium had a Kilgen organ) and ran a concert series that brought performers from the East coast. People would take the train from Minneapolis for the concerts, so despite the hardships of life in turn-of-the-century Red Wing, people also found a measure of cultured entertainment. The residents of Red Wing clearly appreciated music, so the climate was amenable to raising money for a good pipe organ. On the other hand, the reality was that Red Wing was rural and largely blue collar, and so while they sincerely appreciated the organ, a Möller or a Casavant was out of the question.

Red Wing’s organ was order number 360, placed August 6, 1898, by Carl N. Lien, secretary of St. Peter Norwegian Lutheran Church (Figure 11). It was to be shipped October 10 and dedicated October 23, 1898. As of December 7, however, it was still being hoped for, but for an unknown reason, it was not shipped until January 25, 1899.⁷ It weighed 5,690 pounds and was shipped on the Santa Fe Railroad at a cost of $34.14. The price of $1,050.00 was payable thirty days after delivery. The organ finally arrived about February 1, 1899, and was installed later that week, ready for the dedication concert the following weekend.

Tickets were sold for 50 cents for adults and 25 cents for children, a good indication that the organ had been purchased with a payment plan, which was typical for the company, and selling tickets for the dedication concert is a feature that appears in the histories for many of the Hinners organs. The concert featured Professor Rydning from St. Paul, a virtuoso organist and graduate of the Conservatory of Christiana, Norway. Professor Chally (from the seminary) and other participants in the concert were from Red Wing. The newspaper reported that the turnout was excellent, given how cold it was on that February night.⁸ Professor Rydning was active in the region from the 1890s through the early part of the twentieth century, appearing in newspaper concert program announcements with great frequency.

 

Characteristics of the organs

The stoplists, pipe scales, mouth shapes and cut-ups, and high wind pressures indicate that the Hinners company espoused a romantic tonal ideal. Further, small swell boxes jammed to the edges with pipes, and the packed interior mechanical set-up demonstrate that Hinners was committed to offering as much organ as possible for the limited amount of space available in small churches. The identical nature of measurements from one organ to the next strongly suggests mass-production techniques and certain stock models that could be altered for particular requirements. A number of features stand out as typical of the Hinners organs as represented by this 1898 instrument. First, draw knobs rather than tabs were standard until sometime in the 1920s. Second, early organs have a system of two pre-set mechanisms that were mechanical and could not be reset. One of the pre-sets combined all the loud ranks, while the other combined all the soft ranks. Economically minded construction is seen in details such as lower octave pipes built of wood rather than metal and lower octave pipes of one rank shared with at least one other rank. Some of the organs have a Quintotone in which the stopper doubles the pipe length, making it sound an octave lower without the cost of additional metal. Especially noteworthy because of its uniqueness among contemporary organ builders, Hinners & Albertsen normally avoided traditional reed ranks and instead included a labial reed stop in the Swell. Labial reeds hold pitch through temperature variations in addition to being less susceptible to dirt than a traditional reed pipe. Perhaps most important is that the labial reed, because it does not have an actual reed, was supremely practical for rural congregations without regular access to an organ technician.⁹

Pedalboards used native woods, the sharps stained somewhat darker than the naturals. The pedalboards were flat and short-compassed until the late 1920s, when the company made an effort to conform with the standards set forth by the American Guild of Organists and began building full concave, radiating pedalboards. The façade pipes were painted and stenciled until shortly after 1910, with muted color schemes designed to blend with the natural colors of the console wood. Many of the original pipe stencils (Figure 12) do not offer shining examples of stellar stenciling work. For the most part, the Hinners factory workers were German immigrants with backgrounds in furniture building, not painting, and the stenciling is frequently sloppy in places. Generally, the factory employees took great pride in their work and believed their instruments were giving voice to their own thoughts and feelings, sometimes rather metaphysically. For example, when the Rutz Organ Company rebuilt a 1918 Hinners for Holy Nativity Evangelical Lutheran Church in New Hope, Minnesota, they found a penciled inscription inside the Great chest on the valve spring board: “Peace Proposal of Austria to USA rejected. To Hell with the war Lords. Dade Johnson and F. C. Muehlenbrink 9/18/18.”¹⁰

Nicking of pipe mouths is heavy in all Hinners organs. Metal pipes are nicked on the languid and wooden pipes are nicked in the windway. Hinners used three tuning methods: stoppers, scrolls, and key-hole tuners. Any sleeves found on these instruments were added after the scroll broke. 

The manual keyboards are constructed with ivory slips on the naturals and ebony sharps. Pedal ranks and façade pipes often use a tubular pneumatic winding action while the key action is mechanical throughout.¹¹ Even as regards winding, though, unreliable electricity in rural areas kept Hinners using pump handles for quite awhile after most builders had switched to electric blower systems. Despite eventually having electric blowers, most organs still retained the capability for manual pumping precisely because of that unreliable electricity. Typical Hinners console design is quarter-sawn oak with a dark stain, decorated with raised panels and carved finials and moldings characteristic of early twentieth-century furniture styles. Grillework is sometimes integrated with façade pipes.

 

Continuing History of the Red Wing Hinners & Albertsen

The 1928 photograph in Figure 13 is the only extant image of the 1898 Red Wing Hinners & Albertsen while it belonged to St. Peter’s. Professor Laukandt is seated at the organ. In 1930—two years after this photo—the two Norwegian Lutheran churches in Red Wing merged, taking Trinity Lutheran’s name and building. The St. Peter building was sold to the Christian Science Church in 1933. At some point the Christian Scientists decided to update the sanctuary. This has virtually never been good news for organs—and the 1898 Hinners & Albertsen was moved to the center of the front platform with small side rooms built to its left and right. The console was whitewashed (Figure 14) and the façade pipes were painted gold (Figure 15), but the working parts remained untouched. It was rather untidy, but it was all there, and the paint-just-the-visible-front job on the pipes allowed for later restoration to the original color scheme. That the church members were able to uninstall and reinstall even a ten-rank pipe organ seems to be a testament to the basic mechanical sense used by Hinners and to the general battleship quality of these little organs. This is one of the precise things that made Hinners so successful in the small rural church market—anyone with fundamental mechanical sense could care for the organ; it was sturdy enough to stand up to the rigors of rural life. The 1926 Hinners at Immanuel Lutheran Church in Dimock, South Dakota, went through the Dust Bowl, had not been cleaned in about 60 years, and still sounded beautiful through two inches of solidified dust.

In the mid-1980s, the former St. Peter Church building was purchased by the Apostolic Face Lighthouse Church, and in August 1995 by the Four Square Church. By 1996 the pastor confirmed to me they were about to “throw [the organ] away.” I contacted Tom Erickson, a Casavant representative who lived in Red Wing. Erickson took up the cause. For the next year, Erickson was tireless in attending Kiwanis meetings, Rotary meetings, Lions, city council, and chamber of commerce—any group that would listen to the organ’s story and might agree to help. He first made headway when he raised enough money to purchase the instrument, for by now, the church had become quite convinced of its treasure, and while they would certainly not harm the instrument, they could be convinced to sell it. Next, Erickson persuaded the owners of the historic St. James Hotel to let him store the organ in the hotel’s recently acquired Red Wing Iron Works building that was, at that point, sitting empty while they decided what to do with it. Erickson kept raising money, and the keydesk was sent to Luhm’s Refinishing, a Minneapolis firm that specializes in historic furniture and pianos. A local artist, Delores Fritz, re-stenciled the pipes. In the meantime, the owner of the St. James Hotel agreed to give the organ a home in its lobby and accept the responsibility for its care. It now has become part of the identity of the hotel—“you know, the historic hotel in Minnesota with a pipe organ in the lobby”—so much so that the organ even appears on the hotel’s Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._James_Hotel_(Red_Wing,_Minnesota)), in its TripAdvisor photos and reviews, and ubiquitously on Instagram with the stjameshotel location tag.

The St. James built a small balcony and fashioned a window into a door in order to access the organ for servicing (Figure 16). A ladder is required to climb into the balcony off the exterior stairs, and then the door opens straight into the organ. To get into the swell box, the side façade pipes have to be removed, but that is not unusual for a Hinners. The very compactness and space efficiency that made Hinners organs so attractive to small congregations without much square footage in the sanctuary conversely also made the organs into real maintenance challenges as far as simply accessing its various components. They are intuitive constructions to the mechanically minded, to be sure, but one must first somehow reach the part in need of attention.

As with any organ’s story, this instrument has had to accept compromises along the way in order to continue serving the needs of its changing audiences. Most significantly, the corner façade pipes had to be lowered by about a foot to fit it in the space, and the rear six side façade pipes had to be left off entirely. The Hinners & Albertsen organ is used regularly. Hotel guests may request the blower key between the hours of 10 a.m. and 10 p.m.; as one might guess, the historic St. James Hotel does a brisk wedding business, and the organ is a frequent participant. The hotel staff works hard to keep it safe, and current management seems cognizant of its historic value. The St. Peter Norwegian Lutheran Church building has taken on a new life in recent years as well, now serving as The Red Wing Church House (https://www.redwingchurchhouse.com), a luxury vacation rental that rents for about $2,500 a week (Figure 17).

 

Nuts and Bolts

The Hinners & Albertsen organ company was, even in its time, sometimes dismissed as being the producer of inferior instruments, as was the Hinners Organ Company for decades after it. Gradually, and sometimes with a bit of sentimental nostalgia for the instruments on which so many organists cut their teeth, the organ world began to realize that the organs are not inferior at all, but that they represent a “nuts and bolts” type of organ. Hinners & Albertsen organs offered churches a perfectly serviceable and respectable musical alternative to the reed organ that would fulfill the needs and meet the budget of a small congregation without the nice but unnecessary expense of a large number of ranks on an organ that was individually designed for each particular church.

Other companies built stock organs, to be sure, and other companies used a catalog approach to sales. Lyon & Healy, Kimball, Felgemaker, Estey, and Wangerin-Weickhardt all had a similar product line and methodology—particularly Felgemaker with the Patent Portable Organ. On the other hand, certainly for Hinners & Albertsen, operations were focused nearly exclusively in the realm of the small stock organ. The vast majority of all Hinners instruments were organs of about ten ranks—the largest Hinners organ ever built had only twenty-eight ranks. Moreover, Hinners built these small pipe organs for nearly 50 years, long after the other companies had followed the trend to larger organs with strictly electric actions. Hinners & Albertsen organs, and ultimately the Hinners Organ Company, supplied a unique need in American society that arose from circumstances peculiar to the American situation. The frontier was closed and settlements were progressing beyond concern for mere survival to concerns for improving their quality of life. Raised in small mission churches around the rural Midwest, John L. Hinners felt the people’s desire for a pipe organ and understood their frustration with the expense and complexity of the instrument that made it impractical for small country churches. In a creative combination of business methods and comprehension of musical and construction issues, the Hinners & Albertsen Organ Company brought pipe organs to rural America and, in the case of the Red Wing, Minnesota, organ, filled the bluffs of the Mississippi River with music.

 

Notes

5. Frances played organ, and for many years she was a church organist at the Red Wing Episcopal church. It seems a safe assumption that Frances would at least have known this Hinners & Albertsen organ, likely heard it, and possibly even played it.

6. The school’s students included girls who wanted to marry ministers, but also “status offenders,” that is, girls who had committed no crime but had become impossible to control.

7. This is an excessively delayed schedule, even for a business at the time. Hinners typically turned around its orders well within three months, with some organs shipping within a matter of a few weeks.

8. Sadly, weather data for Red Wing is recorded only as far back as 1902.

9. Allison Alcorn, “A History of the Hinners Organ Company of Pekin, Illinois,” The Tracker, vol. 44, no. 3 (2000), 17.

10. This organ was built for Church of the Sacred Heart, Spring Valley, Illinois, and was moved to Minnesota in 1990.

11. One of Hinners’s distinctive characteristics is how late the company relied on tracker actions. Even in its few theater contracts, Hinners remained loyal to tracker action and was probably the last builder to give up theater trackers, with two installed as late as 1916.

Stephen L. Pinel

Stephen L. Pinel holds two degrees from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, New Jersey, and did further graduate work in historical musicology at New York University. A church musician for 45 years, he retired from full-time work during the fall of 2017. He held a Langley Fellowship at New York University, is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society, an honorary member of the Organ Historical Society, and a past chair of the St. Wilfrid Club of New York City. He is also the author of several books and regularly contributes articles pertaining to American organ history both here and abroad.

After attending Morning Prayer at Christ Church during the summer of 1873, a visitor wrote:

 

The church bells ring at half past nine, and speak in suggestive and pleasant tones to those who are accustomed to answer their call. The bells are rung again at a quarter past ten, and soon after the streets present a scene to delight the heart of any Christian. The multitude of those who go forth, embraces people of all ages, from the prattling child to hoary and tottering old age, and including all conditions, from the affluent to the humble poor. . . .

We are favorably impressed as we approach the edifice [of Christ Church] by its massive and substantial front. We are met at the door by attentive ushers, and feel at once that though strangers we are welcome. An appropriate voluntary upon the organ is in progress, and as the worshippers come in one after another and proceed quietly to their places all about us and engage, as is the beautiful custom of the denomination, in silent prayer, we feel the truth of the sentiment which spans the arch above the chancel. “The Lord is in His Holy Temple. . . .” 

The musical part of the service—aside from the metrical hymns—is sometimes in anthem and sometimes in chant form, and is at present under the direction of the organist, Mr. Horace H. Scribner. One will hear many fine adaptations here by Warren, Thomas, Buck and others. Among the worshippers are Hon. Timothy P. Redfield, Hon. B. F. Fifield, Dr. J. Y. Dewey, Hon. Charles Dewey, Hiram Atkins, T. C. Phinney, Fred E. Smith, and J. W. Ellis. . . .¹

 

Christ Church was the fashionable parish in the capital city. It was the place where people of affluence, culture, education, prominence, and social stature went to church. The Hon. Timothy P. Redfield (1812–1888), an 1836 graduate of Dartmouth College, was a justice on the Vermont Supreme Court.² The Hon. Benjamin F. Fifield (1832–1918), a staunch Republican and an 1855 graduate of UVM,³ was the primary legal counsel for the Vermont Central Railroad.⁴ Dr. Julius Y. Dewey (1799–1866) was a notable Vermont physician who, after the state issued an 1848 charter for the National Life Insurance Company, became its chief medical officer.⁵ Of his sons, Charles Dewey (1826–1905) served as president of the same company between 1877 and 1901.⁶ Another son, the Admiral George Dewey (1837–1917), surpassed both of them in national fame when he became an American naval hero during the Spanish-American War. In May 1898, his squadron decimated the Spanish flotilla near the Philippines without the loss of a single American life.⁷ Hiram Atkins (1831–1892), a prominent Vermont Democrat, was the editor and publisher of the Argus and Patriot, a Montpelier weekly.⁸ Truman C. Phinney (1827–1901) served 25 years as the sergeant-at-arms for the Vermont State Legislature.⁹ Fred E. Smith (1836–1907), who later figured prominently in the narrative of Christ Church and its organs, was the president of the Vermont Life Insurance Company.¹⁰ And J. W. Ellis was an illustrious Montpelier banker. Christ Church was the society church in central Vermont.

In addition to its influential parishioners, Christ Church was also known for its fashionable music. The parish has owned six different pipe organs during its 178-year history, more than any other congregation in the state. The first was a small instrument probably made by organbuilder William Nutting, Jr. (1815–1869), who had a shop in nearby Randolph. In 1854, it gave way to a larger, two-manual organ built by Stevens & Jewett of Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1902, accepting the recommendation of a former organist, Samuel B. Whitney (1842–1914), the parish bought a two-manual Hutchings-Votey organ. In a freakish twist of fate, that instrument was lost in a fire less than a year later, so the Vestry turned again to the firm for a replacement. In November 1927, their second Hutchings-Votey organ was wrecked in the Great Vermont Flood, so the following year, the parish ordered a new instrument built by the Estey Organ Company in Brattleboro. The Estey remained until 1972, when the current elegant instrument—the “Abiel M. Smith Organ”—was built for the parish by Karl Wilhelm of St.-Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada. Christ Church has the bizarre “distinction” of losing two of its pipe organs to natural disasters!

Christ Church has also had its share of fine organists. The prominent Mr. Whitney served between 1862 and 1866,¹¹ followed by George W. Wilder (1825–1901), the proprietor of a Montpelier music store.¹² Horace H. Scribner (1849–1895) was the parish’s organist for twenty-five years and is memorialized by a stained-glass window in the church.¹³ Cecil George Egg, a native of Ontario, Canada, served Christ Church from 1908 to 1916. He was an 1899 graduate of Dominion College in Montréal and had played between 1900 and 1908 at Trinity Church in Shelburne, Vermont.¹⁴ Abiel M. Smith (1897–1967), who became organist in 1941, served twenty-five years and was held in high esteem;¹⁵ the 1972 Wilhelm was posthumously named in his honor. Jack Russell followed Smith; he was the consultant for the Wilhelm organ and played the dedicatory recital on June 4, 1972.¹⁶ Dr. Brian P. Webb (1948–2014), a native of New Zealand, was the organist until his tragic death on August 23, 2014, in a boating accident on Lake Champlain.¹⁷ He was a distinguished graduate of both the University of Auckland and Indiana University, the music director and conductor of the Vermont Philharmonic, and served as associate dean, Master of Arts, at Union Institute and University in Montpelier. Carl Schwartz served seasonally as associate organist between 1998 and 2015, and twice as interim organist/choirmaster, first in 2013 and then between December 2014 and June 2015. Since the summer of 2015, the parish has been ably served by Lynnette Combs, a distinguished graduate of Swarthmore College and one of Vermont’s better-known organists.¹⁸

 

The origins of Christ Church

The organizational framework for the parish was laid when the Rt. Rev. John Henry Hopkins (1792–1868), the first bishop of the Diocese of Vermont, visited the capital in 1839 and officiated at confirmation. Almost a year later, he reported the event to the diocesan convention:

On Tuesday, the 15th of October [1839], I visited Montpelier, at the request of some friends of the Church. . . . The desire was expressed by many that a parish might be organized in this important place, but no immediate action was resolved upon.¹⁹

Montpelier residents were said to be rowdy, unchurched, and uncatechised. Cryptically, one mid-nineteenth-century author opined that “Puritanism was then rampant here, and it is said very many were so ignorant of the fasts and festivals of the church as to suppose Christmas a day appointed by the Governor!”²⁰

The bishop reported again in September 1842:

 

I commenced my visitation on Friday, January 7th, of the present year [1842], at Montpelier; where I preached, morning and afternoon, at the Methodist Chapel, which was kindly offered for that purpose, on the following Sunday, being the first
after the Epiphany. There was considerable conversation held with our friends upon the building of a Church, but nothing concluded. My second visit was on Friday, the 15th July, on which occasion I was rejoiced to find a subscription actually begun, and now a handsome and appropriate edifice is so far advanced that it is expected to be ready for consecration by November.²¹

 

Christ Church had been organized in 1840 by Deacon George B. Manzer (1803–1862), then a candidate for Holy Orders who, after his ordination, became the founding rector of the parish. Manzer was a New Haven, Connecticut, native, who graduated from Dartmouth, Class of 1825, Middlebury College, and later received his Doctor of Divinity degree from Norwich University in 1853. After leaving Montpelier in 1849, he became the rector of St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in Bennington, Vermont,²² where he served until his death.²³

The Christ Church Vestry was elected on Easter Monday, 1841, and the first representatives of the parish attended the diocesan convention in September 1842.²⁴ A modest frame building with a small bell tower in front was begun in the fall of 1842. When it was finished, the consecration ceremony was announced in the local newspaper:

 

The Episcopal Church, erected in this village the past season, will, by favor of Divine Providence, be consecrated to the public worship of God, on Thursday the 19th inst. Services to commence at half past ten o’clock, forenoon.

Montpelier, 14th Dec. 1842.²⁵

 

Recalling the event, the bishop wrote:

 

On Thursday, December 29th, 1842, I was called to perform the most acceptable duty of consecrating, to the service of Almighty God, the building in which we are now assembled, the Rev. Messrs. Clap, Hicks, Sabine, John T. Sabine, Hoit, Sprague, Bostwick, and Manser, assisting.²⁶

 

Little is actually known of the architecture, cost, furnishings, interior arrangements, or seating capacity of the building, but a circa 1865 stereograph of the exterior shows a modest, clapboard structure.

 

An organ by an unknown maker, before 1850

To date, only one reference has surfaced to the first organ in Christ Church. The 1850 parochial report to the diocesan convention reads:

 

Among other measures of improvement in externals, may be mentioned the renovation of the organ, the purchase of a fine-toned Bell from the excellent establishment of A. Meneely, Troy, N. Y., who kindly contributed $12.00 to the sum elsewhere specified.²⁷

Use of the word “renovated” suggests that the organ had been in service awhile, perhaps since the consecration of the building, but it was surely a small organ. The geographical proximity of Montpelier to Randolph supposes that it was possibly the work of William Nutting, Jr., but there is no evidence to confirm or deny that presumption. Nor is it known what happened to the organ when it was replaced.

 

An organ by Stevens & Jewett, 1854

Much more is known about the second organ at Christ Church. It was built in Cambridge, Massachusetts, by Stevens & Jewett, a partnership of William Stevens (1808–1896) and James Jewett (1810–1890). William was the younger brother of George Stevens (1803–1894), and Jewett was a carpenter turned organ builder. The partnership lasted only a few years during the 1850s, although Jewett returned to work for William Stevens during the 1860s, after the firm had moved to Boston. In December 1862, Stevens & Jewett built another large organ for a Vermont congregation—First Congregational Church in St. Albans.²⁸

The instrument was completed in December 1854, and a notice in the Patriot provided some details:

 

New Church Organ.

We take especial pleasure in being able to state that the new Church Organ, contracted for some two months since by the Episcopal Society in this village, has been completed, and now stands in its place in the Church, ready for use. It is, to both eye and ear, a beautiful and perfect instrument. In the variety of its stops, and the number of its pipes, it is perhaps seldom equaled, except in the cities. It is built with extended Keyboard and has two banks of Keys, twenty-eight registers and about one thousand pipes. Its compass is from c c to G in alt., exclusive of a pedal bass which runs down to c c c—a sixteen feet pipe.

A few individuals were invited to the Church, last Wednesday evening [i.e., December 20], to hear it played. The exhibition was eminently satisfactory. All were delighted who heard it. We have never heard better or purer tones from any organ. It was manufactured at the Establishment of Messrs. Stevens & Jewett, Boston [sic, Cambridge], and cost about $2000. It reflects great credit to the builders, as well as on the enterprise of the Society and individuals by whose very liberal subscriptions it has been purchased. Long may they live to enjoy it.²⁹

 

A similar notice appeared in the Montpelier Watchman.³⁰ Indeed, a manual compass of 56 notes, CC to g³ was “extended” when compared to CC to f³, 54 notes, then the current standard. Bishop Hopkins noticed the organ when he reported to the 1855 diocesan convention: “Here I was gratified to find a splendid new organ, the most costly in the Diocese. . . .”³¹ For its time and place, the Stevens & Jewett organ must have been a remarkable acquisition.

In 1868, following the completion of the new building, the organ was installed in a right-hand chamber beside the chancel and presumably lost its original case. An 1885 notice of the instrument remarked:

 

The organs of Bethany [Congregational, Wm. A. Johnson, Op. 264 (1868), 3m] and Christ churches have been tuned during the past week by Mr. [Henry J.] Poole of Boston, assisted by Mr. [Wm. A.] Briggs. . . .
Mr. Poole expressed much satisfaction with the working of the Perry & Canning [water] motor at Christ church.³²

 

The removal of the Stevens & Jewett occurred in February 1902, just before the congregation acquired a new organ from Hutchings-Votey: “The new organ for Christ Church has arrived from Boston and the old organ will be placed in the boxes in which the new organ came, so that it can be readily shipped wherever a sale is made.”³³ What happened to it next is undocumented, but Edgar A. Boadway (1936–2016), Vermont’s foremost organ historian, asserted that it was moved second-hand to Montpelier’s First Baptist Church. It remained there until replaced by another second-hand organ about 1920.³⁴

 

The new church, 1868

In March 1866, the wooden edifice of Christ Church was in such dilapidated condition that the Vestry proceeded with plans to erect a new building. Nine days later, land was acquired on the south side of State Street near the Vermont State House, and a subscription list was opened to raise funds for the project.³⁵ The Vestry appointed a committee, and by May 4, 1866, the design for a new building was in hand: “The plan for the new Episcopal Church by J. J. Randall, of Rutland, is a very neat one, in the Gothic style. We learn that the intention is to build of granite.”³⁶ By November, the foundation had been laid, and the cornerstone ceremony was reported in the local newspaper:

 

The cornerstone of Christ Church will be laid with appropriate ceremonies, according to the ritual of the church, at eleven A.M. of Thursday the 8th inst., Providence permitting. If the day prove stormy the ceremony will be delayed until the same hour on Friday. There will be Divine service in the old church, on Thursday evening, at half-past seven o’clock.³⁷

In September 1867 the interior was nearing completion. The tower was finished during the summer of 1868, and the pews were sold in May 1868.³⁸

Abby Maria Hemenway (1828–1890), Vermont’s audacious lady historian, described the interior:

 

The ground plan includes nave and aisles, chancel, organ chamber and sacristy, the tower being engaged in the northern end of the east aisle. Exterior, 108 by 55 feet; tower and spire, 100 feet; interior—nave, 22 feet wide, separated by two colonnades from two aisles, each 11 feet wide; chancel, 17 feet wide by 23 deep; whole exterior, except roof and clerestory, 

light-colored Barre and Berlin granite; aisle walls without buttresses; clerestory, timber slated outside. The north front is the most imposing part of the exterior. . . .³⁹

 

Hemenway also mentioned the placement for the organ: “The organ chamber, on the west, opens by a narrow arch in the church, and by a broader one into the nave; the organ is a powerful instrument.”⁴⁰

A newspaper mentioned the music at the consecration, which occurred on June 2, 1868:

 

The singing on the occasion, under the direction of Mr. A. J. Phillips, the excellent tenor, whose effort was handsomely sustained by the fine soprano of Mrs. C. J. Gleason, the alto of Miss Laura T. Field, and the bass of Mr. L. T. Gleason, and the organ-playing by Mr. George W. Wilder, were remarkably good, and added much interest and solemnity to the occasion.⁴¹

By the late 1890s, there was increasing dissatisfaction with the Stevens & Jewett organ. A report in the archives of Christ Church dated November 30, 1898, outlined some of the issues. The unsigned document was typed on stationery from the Vermont Mutual Fire Insurance Company, and was surely written by Fred E. Smith, the same Mr. Smith noticed by our 1873 visitor to Christ Church at the start of this essay. He wrote:

 

On account of the continued trouble with the mechanical attachments to our organ, the repeated breakings of the trackage [sic, trackers], and failure of the valves and slides, we must recognize that some important change must be made at no distant day or we shall be obliged to give up our organ entirely and face the question of procuring a new one. From the best advices [sic] I can obtain I am satisfied that we cannot install a new organ of proper size and quality for a cost less than $2500, to $3,000.00. From equally good sources of information I am led to believe that by the expenditure of from $500, to $800, our own organ can be put in just as good condition for practical service with a prospect of finer tone than we could get from a new one. . . .⁴²

 

Smith then asserted that the old pipework could be placed on new wind chests with tubular-pneumatic playing action.

An unsolicited letter from organbuilder Geo. S. Hutchings (1835–1913) arrived a few months later:

 

Boston, Apr. 28, 1899

Mr. Frederick E. Smith

Montpelier, Vt.

 

Dear Sir:—

Mr. Almar Green, who is familiar with my work, has suggested that I address you regarding an organ for your church to cost between $3,500 and $4,000. I have therefore taken the liberty of handing you under separate wrapper my catalog, together with other printed matter which may interest you.

Before I can make a definite proposition I need to know what space in height, width and depth can be given to the organ, because the cost of building depends materially upon this. I would also like to know about when the organ would be needed. If you will inform me on these points, I shall take pleasure in making a definite proposal for your consideration.

I desire very much to build the organ for you and shall await your reply with interest.

Trusting you will command me freely for any information in my line.

Yours truly, Geo. S. Hutchings⁴³

Enclosed was a proposal for a small, mechanical-action organ of twelve registers distributed over two manuals and pedals.

On February 1, 1899, organbuilder Emmons Howard (1845–1931) visited Montpelier to inspect the organ. Again, it was Smith who issued the report, stating:

 

. . . after examining the Church and organ with Mr. Hutchinson [not Geo. Hutchings] and myself, he quite positively gave his opinion that we would not be warranted in going to such expense on our organ as we had contemplated. He found the value of the organ much less than we had supposed, and was quite positive that it would cost $1500, to $2000, to make the changes we had talked about, with the new additions which would be necessary—such as tubular pneumatic action, new bellows, air-chest, etc.—saying that our organ would still be an old one and imperfect in many features. . . .⁴⁴

 

With the prospect of repairing the organ increasingly unfeasible, an organ committee was formed in September 1901 for “the purchase of a new organ.”⁴⁵ Within a week, financial canvassers were at work,⁴⁶ and a “final” reference to the Stevens & Jewett appeared in the local newspaper during February 1902, when: “The organ builders are at work in Christ Church, taking down the old organ. . . .” ⁴⁷

 

Hutchings-Votey Organ Co., Opus 1538, 1902

In November 1901, former organist Samuel B. Whitney was consulted. Writing to Smith on October 29, 1901, Joseph A. De Boer, another committee member communicated the substance of a meeting he had had with Whitney in Boston. Whitney recommended Hutchings-Votey. Two letters from John H. Waterhouse, the treasurer at Hutchings, to Smith indicated that acquiring an organ was underway:

 

Boston, Nov. 7, 1901

Col. Fred E. Smith

Montpelier, Vt.

Dear Sir:—

 

We received your letter of Oct. 31st and have been considering what we should be able to do. After Mr. De Boer left the other day, Mr. Whitney seemed very anxious to have us put in 49 notes of the Vox Celestis. When upon receipt of your letter we went over our figures very carefully, but do not feel that we can really afford to make any difference in the price. We will, however, deduct $100 to assist you in the purchase of this organ. Will say, however, that this is very largely because we know that Mr. Whitney is very desirous that you should purchase one of our organs, and as his good opinion is valuable to us, we are ready to do the very best we can in a case in which he is especially interested. In looking over the scheme we do not feel that there is any stop which could be very well left out. The scheme is well balanced, and would make a very fine instrument.

We think the plan you sent us showing the key-desk and openings in the arches as you propose is very good, and that in this way the sound would come out into the church very well.

It would seem too bad in purchasing an organ which will last for several generations, to allow a few hundred dollars to stand in the way of a desirable instrument. Regarding the cost of our organ, we believe without question that it would be cheaper for you in the long run to purchase one of our make than it would to buy a cheaper grade, outside of the advantage you would have in the way of tone and voicing. We desire very much to build the organ, and trust you will see your way clear to meet us in this matter. I suppose we shall have to know before very long in order to begin this with the other instrument which we mentioned. We should be willing to allow the difference between the $3,900 and the sum which you have to stand for six months or a year without interest if it will help you out.

Yours truly, Hutchings-Votey Organ Co.⁴⁸

 

•

 

Boston, Nov. 8, 1901

Col. Fred E. Smith

Montpelier, Vt.

Dear Sir:—

 

Regarding the position of the console, we could place the console in practically any position you may wish, and this would have no bearing on the building of the rest of the organ; so that if we should start to build the organ we would not necessarily have to know the position of the console for a couple of weeks. Mr. Whitney suggests that it be placed where we have drawn it in pencil, his reason being that from this position the organist could see the altar, which is quite necessary, and it would be possible to get into the space where the quartet would sing on the other side or on the front, we presume. This would make the quartet, if you had one, at the side of and back of the organist, but as they would be very close, it would not be very hard and perhaps considering all things, this position would be the most advantageous.

Yours truly, Hutchings-Votey Organ Co.⁴⁹

 

The contract for the organ has not survived, but it was apparently signed around November 10, 1901, for on November 29, Waterhouse wrote Smith asking, “Have you decided the matter of decorating the front pipes for the organ?”⁵⁰ 

The completed organ was shipped on March 1, 1902, and a notice in the Argus related:

 

S. B. Whitney, formerly organist of Christ church in this city, but now occupying a similar position with the Church of the Advent in Boston, has had the oversight of the new organ which has been built for Christ Church, that instrument having been finished. Mr. Whitney says of it that he is sure that it will delight everyone who hears it. It is now being taken down to be shipped, having been tested twice by Mr. Whitney. . . .”⁵¹

 

The installation took the better part of a month, and on March 24 the Evening Argus stated: “The new organ has been installed in Christ Church and will be ready for the rehearsal Thursday and Friday and for Easter Sunday.”⁵²

The organ was described in detail on the front page of the Argus on March 26:

 

The new organ for Christ church is fast reaching a state of completion and will be ready to peal forth its inspiring sounds to the worshippers Easter morning.

Everything is in readiness now with the exception of three sets of pipes which will be in position at the close of this week.

The new organ is one of the best in the State and combines all of the latest improvements of stops, copulas [sic], pistons and action, making it as easy of action, even with the great [and] swells on, as a piano.

Charles Bowen, of Boston, has had charge of setting up the instrument. It is so adjusted that the very lightest touch will produce strains of harmony.

A little over four weeks ago Mr. Bowen, who is assisted by W. H. Colbath, commenced installing the organ, which was made especially for Christ Church by the Hutchings-Votey Organ company, of Boston. The old one had to be taken out and this was also done by them. The work has been done in a very short time, considering the amount of it.

The organ occupies the same position as the old one, at the right of the chancel, but the key desk has been moved so that it sets at the left across the chancel. The lower part of the organ is of antique oak, with a dark finish, and above this is a row of speaking pipes, gilded.

The key desk is a model of convenience and is equipped with all the modern improvements. The stops are set in such a way as to face the player and be of the easiest possible access.

The organ has 1,098 pipes. Lead tubing runs underneath the floor from the key desk to these pipes and nearly a mile and a half of it was used for this purpose. Through these tubes the air passes and the quickness of the response to the touch of the player is remarkable. The desk has two manuals of 61 notes each. The combination pistons are placed under each manual, four of them operating the swell stops and three the great stops.

An indicator is placed a little to the right of the center of the front of the desk, which shows which piston is being used. At the right of the desk is the pedal and great stops, while at the left are the swell stops. All told there are 18 speaking stops. Seven cupolas [sic] are placed just over the upper manual in the center of the desk.

A full set of pedals, 30 in all, occupy their place, and in connection with these there are two pedals, a crescendo, which brings on the stops one at a time and closes them in a similar manner: also the balanced swell pedal, operating two sets of shades. To the left of these pedals there are three smaller ones, the reversible great to pedal, full organ and Tremulant.

The whole action is tubular pneumatic, compressed air being produced by a hydraulic water motor. This motor was adjusted by Allen D. Moore and is controlled by a wire running from the bellows to the shut off. The water motor can be controlled by the organist, as there is a valve at the left of the organ desk.

All who have seen and heard the organ say it is one of the finest that they have ever listened to.

Mr. Whitney, of Boston, will give a recital. . . .⁵³

 

The organ was a cause of jubilation when it was first heard on Easter Day 1902: “Prof. A. J. Phillips with Miss Laura A. Rugg as organist, and Christ church vested choir of about forty mixed voices outdid, if possible, previous efforts in preparing an Easter musical program. His efforts were augmented to a large extent by the magnificent new pipe organ which was recently placed in the church. . . .”⁵⁴ On April 2, the two installers, Bowen and Colbath, returned to Boston.⁵⁵

Whitney opened the organ on May 20, and the program was billed as “the finest musical feature of the season.”⁵⁶ The program opened with Miss Rugg at the console, followed by the church choir processing to “The Day Is Gently Sinking to a Close.” Whitney played selections of Guilmant, Handel, Lemaigre, Rinck, and Wagner, but it was Master John B. Findlay, a solo boy treble from the choir of the Church of the Advent in Boston, who stole the show with his rendition of “With Verdure Clad” from Haydn’s Creation. A newspaper reported that “The recital and concert was a thorough success musically. . . .”⁵⁷
The project had taken years of planning, and everyone at Christ Church was delighted by the outcome.

 

The 1903 Fire

Taken in context, imagine the congregation’s distress when only seven months later the chancel end of the church was gutted by fire. The headline in the Daily Journal said it all: “FIRE! Discovered 3:30. This afternoon in Christ Church. Organ Will Be Ruined.” An unnamed author in the Inter-State Journal put the disaster into larger perspective:

 

For a season when coal was unobtainable at any price and wood had to be used in coal furnaces, as during the past winter, it is not surprising that many destructive fires have occurred and that many incipient blazes were discovered just in time to save the property. Among the cheifest [sic] conflagrations in central Vermont was that of the partial destruction of Christ’s (Episcopal) Church, at Montpelier, on Jan. 24.⁵⁸

 

Although the interior and roof were badly damaged, the building was not destroyed. The organ, however, was a total loss.⁵⁹

Months passed before the congregation could rebuild, and then a number of construction problems caused further delays. An August 1903 announcement in the Argus and Patriot noted that the stained-glass was late, the black walnut wainscoting around the altar was being installed, and painters had finally completed their work on the interior.⁶⁰

 

Hutchings-Votey Organ Company, 1904

A second contract with the Hutchings-Votey Organ Co. was signed on June 29, 1903, for a replica of the previous instrument, but the organ did not arrive until January 1904. An announcement in the Daily Journal remarked:

 

The work of installing the new organ at Christ church is progressing rapidly, but is not sufficiently advanced to permit the holding of services in the church next Sunday.⁶¹

 

Two weeks later, this notice appeared:

 

Will Be Opened Sunday.

Mr. Mendal of Boston is at work today tuning the new organ in Christ church, which has been in the process of installation for several days. Services have been held in the church for a few weeks only since the burning of the church a year ago this month. They had to be suspended on account of work of putting in the new organ. The organ is one of the finest Hutchings & Votey makes and the melodious sound of the instrument will be a welcome part of the services, long dispensed with. It is planned now to have the church in readiness for services on Sunday if nothing unforeseen obstructs the plans of those in charge of the work. The rehearsal for the Sunday music will be held in the church on Saturday evening instead of Friday.⁶²

A final report stated:

 

A very large congregation attended the morning service at Christ church Sunday at which time the instrumental music was furnished by the organ, for the first time since the fire last January.

The instrument had been placed in position and although there is still three or four days’ work to be done upon it, it was possible to use it at the services, and the result was wholly satisfactory. The musical part of the service was especially fine and those who participated were highly commended. . . .⁶³

 

The tubular-pneumatic action organ cost $4,000.⁶⁴ It remained in the church until it was water-damaged on November 3, 1927.

 

The 1927 Flood

Following a particularly wet autumn, there were torrential rains in the days leading up to November 2–4, 1927. Montpelier is located at the confluence of the North Branch and the Winooski River, and late on November 1, 1927, the rivers began to rise. By November 3, the water on State Street in downtown Montpelier was 12 feet high, up to the top of the first story on most of the buildings. For church buildings at ground level, the flooding caused considerable damage, including the loss of two church organs: the 1868 Wm. A. Johnson at Bethany Congregational Church and the 1904 Hutchings-Votey at Christ Church. The 1927 Flood is universally considered the worst natural disaster in Vermont’s modern history. It resulted in 84 deaths, crippled communications and transportation networks throughout the state, and the property losses were reported to be some $21,000,000,⁶⁵ a staggering amount for the time. Montpelier was particularly hard hit.

 

Estey Organ Company, Opus 2730, 1928

After the waters receded, it was obvious that Christ Church needed a new organ. The Vestry looked south to Brattleboro and ordered an instrument from the Estey Organ Company. Estey reused the case front of the old organ so the new instrument did not look any different, but the mechanism was entirely new. The Estey organ was actually smaller than the 1904 Hutchings-Votey had been, with 4 ranks on the Great, 7 in the Swell, and 2 in the Pedal. The shop order specified a luminous console (which soon malfunctioned and was replaced!), and many of the ranks were extended to either 73 or 85 pipes to speak at multiple pitches. The finished organ was due for delivery on June 15, 1928, but it was not completed until early in the following year.

A February 9, 1929, notice in the Evening Argus related: “The new organ at Christ church will be dedicated Sunday evening at 8 p.m. by Ruth Bampton, member of the American Guild of Organists and instructor at [the] Montpelier Seminary.”⁶⁶ She was a sister of the famed Metropolitan Opera soprano, Rose Bampton. Two days later, another report stated:

 

The new organ is a 21-stop Estey organ, modern in every way, of a fine quality of tone well adapted for the Christ church, and Miss Bampton, who commenced playing the organ as soon as it was set up by representatives of the Estey company, handles it easily, for she is much at home with pipe organs, being not only an organist but composer as well. By some it was said that last evening the recital was the equal of any given in Montpelier in a long time. Miss Bampton played the program that she announced in Saturday’s edition, which included a variety that brought the best tones out of the organ, showed its soft sweet low tones as well as the volume that can be produced.⁶⁷

 

The program included works by Bach,  Borowski, Chadwick, Karg-Elert, Tchaikovsky, and Widor, and was well received.⁶⁸  

By the 1960s, the Estey was showing signs of age. Cracks and splits had developed in the windchests, and after studying the situation, a parish committee recommended buying a new organ.⁶⁹ The Estey remained until it was replaced in April 1972.

 

Karl Wilhelm, Opus 27, 1972

The desire for a new organ actually came earlier than April 1969, when it was announced to the annual diocesan convention that Christ Church was embarking on a capital improvement program involving an expenditure of some $50,000. The parish had just celebrated the centennial of the building, and work on the narthex was necessary. The project was expanded to include painting, reorganization of the choir space, a new organ, and the building of a chapel where the former Estey organ had stood. The new organ was dedicated in memory of Abiel M. Smith, who for twenty-five years had been the organist of Christ Church.⁷⁰ The project was the visionary effort of Jack Russell, then the organist, and the rector, the Rev. David Brown.

The contract went to Karl Wilhelm of St.-Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada. Following an energetic discussion regarding the placement of the organ in the building, the two-manual, mechanical-action instrument was installed in the spring of 1972. Christophe Linde designed the instrument, and Jacques L’Italien did the tonal finishing. Boadway described the installation in the Boston Organ Club Newsletter:

 

The new organ stands free in the right side aisle, the front of the case facing the opposite side wall of the nave, and the choir is thus seated with the congregation. The tall and shallow case of white oak displays five flats of Prinzipal pipes, the tall central group being a tower above the Brustwerk doors. The pipe shades and doors are carved, and the appearance of the case is indeed very handsome. . . . The attached key desk has manuals with black naturals and ivory-capped sharps; the Pedal sharps are capped with rosewood; the plain, large, flat drawknobs are arranged in double columns at each side with, unfortunately, machine-engraved labels that are not of ivory; the hitch-down brass coupler pedals are labeled as indicated in the stoplist above; there is no combination action; the stop and key action is mechanical but the Tremolo is electric; the very silent blower is within the case; the bass 12 pipes of the Subbass are exposed at the rear of the case with the access doors above; the lowest 12 pipes of the 8′ Rohrflöte are of stopped wood; and the Fagott is of half-length cylindrical spotted metal pipes.⁷¹

 

The noted Canadian organist Bernard Lagacé played a program for the Vermont Chapter of the American Guild of Organists on May 7, 1972, including works of Alain, Bach, Buxtehude, Reger, and Sweelinck.⁷² The organ was described in The Diapason⁷³ and remains in the church today. A. David Moore is the current caretaker of the instrument.

Despite the loss of two instruments to natural disasters, Christ Church remains at the forefront of Montpelier’s musical, religious, and social culture today. The choir, led by Lynnette Combs, is one of the finer church choirs in central Vermont. The parish’s six pipe organs have mirrored the progression of style and taste in American organ design, and the church’s fine musical program has been a beacon of culture in central Vermont for 178 years. ν

 

Sidebar I: Stoplists

 

Stevens & Jewett, 1854

Great, CC–g3, 56 notes

16′ Tenoroon, TC, 44 pipes

  8′ Open Diapason, 56 pipes

8′ Dulciana, 56 pipes

  8′ Keraulophon, TG, 37 pipes

  8′ Melodia Treble, TG, 37 pipes

  8′ St. Diapason Bass, 19 pipes

  4′ Principal, 56 pipes

  4′ Flute, TC, 44 pipes

  22⁄3′ Twelfth, 56 pipes

  2′ Fifteenth, 56 pipes

  8′ Trumpet, TC, 44 pipes

Swell, CC–g3, 56 notes,
enclosed

16′ Bourdon Treble, TC, 44 pipes

16′ Bourdon Bass, 12 pipes

  8′ Open Diapason, TC, 44 pipes

  8′ Viol de Gamba, TC, 44 pipes

  8′ St. Diap. Treble, TC, 44 pipes

  8′ St. Diap. Bass, 12 pipes

  4′ Principal Treble, TC, 44 pipes

  4′ Principal Bass, 12 pipes

  2′ Fifteenth, TC, 44 pipes

  II Cornet, TC, 88 pipes, 12th and 17th

  8′ Hautboy, TC, 44 pipes

Pedal, CCC–FF, 18 notes

16′ Sub Bass, 18 pipes, an Open Diapason

 

Couplers and Mechanicals

Swell to Great

Pedal to Great

Pedal to Swell

Pedal Check (see notes below)

Tremolo

No combination pedals

 

The Pedals are coupled to the Swell when the Pedal Check is drawn (no ‘Pedal to Swell’ stop), except when Pedal to Great is drawn out. Pedals cannot be coupled to both manuals at the same time, nor can they be uncoupled from both of them.

 

Source: Reconstructed from notes made in 1898–1901 by Almar Green, when the organ was to be rebuilt, sold, or replaced; and “A correspondent from Montpelier is loud in his praises. . . .,” (Boston) Daily Evening Traveller [sic] 10, no. 257 (Feb. 2, 1855): 1.

•

Estey Organ Company, Opus 2730, 1928

Great Organ, CC–c4, 61 notes

8′ Open Diapason (Leathered Inside 

    Bass), 73 pipes

8′ Dulciana, 73 pipes

8′ Melodia, 73 pipes

4′ Flute Harmonic, 73 pipes

Swell Organ, CC–c4, 61 notes

16′ Bourdon, 97 pipes

8′ Stopped Diapason, 73 notes

4′ Flute d’Amour, 73 notes

2′ Flautino, 61 notes

22⁄3′ Nasard, 61 notes

13⁄5′ Tierce, 61 notes

8′ Open Diapason, 73 pipes

8′ Salicional, 73 pipes

8′ Aeoline, 73 pipes

8′ Vox Celeste, TC, 61 pipes

4′ Violina (use top board wide enough 

    for Cornopean), 73 pipes

8′ Oboe, 73 pipes

Pedal Organ, CCC–G, 32 notes

16′ Open Diapason, 44 pipes

8′ Octave (Fm. Ped. Open), 32 notes

16′ Bourdon, 44 pipes

8′ Flute (Fm. Ped. Bdn.), 32 notes

16′ Lieb. Ged. (Fm. Sw. Bdn.), 32 notes

 

Tremolo

 

Couplers

Gt. to Gt. 4

Sw. to Gt. 16–8–4

Sw. to Sw. 16–4

Sw. to Ped. 8–4

Gt to Ped.

Gt. Uni. Sep.

Sw. Uni Sep.

 

Source: Estey Shop Order

•

Karl Wilhelm, Opus 27, 1972

Hauptwerk, CC–g3, 56 notes

8′ Prinzipal, 56 pipes

8′ Rohrfloete, 56 pipes

4′ Octav, 56 pipes

4′ Koppelfloete, 56 pipes

22⁄3′ Nazard, 56 pipes

2′ Waldfloete, 56 pipes

11⁄3′ Mixture IV, 224 pipes

8′ Trompete, 56 pipes

Brustwerk, CC–g3, 56 notes

8′ Holzgedackt, 56 pipes

4′ Rohrfloete, 56 pipes

2′ Prinzipal, 56 pipes

11⁄3′ Quinte, 56 pipes

Sesquialtera II, 78 pipes

2⁄3′ Zimbel II–III, 150 pipes

8′ Regal, 56 pipes

Tremulant

Pedal, CCC–F, 30 notes

16′ Subbass, 30 pipes

8′ Offenfloete, 30 pipes

4′ Choral Bass, 30 pipes

16′ Fagott, 30 pipes

 

Couplers

HW/PED

BW/PED

BW/HW

 

Mechanical key and stop action

 

Source: Dedication program

 

Sidebar II: Mr. Whitney’s Recommendations

October 29, 1901

Hon. F. E. Smith

Chairman, Organ Committee

Christ Church,

Montpelier, Vt.

Dear Mr. Smith:— 

Conformably to your wishes, I met Mr. Whitney, the former organist at Christ Church, on the 24th. inst. in Boston. He was extremely kind and courteous and exhibited the greatest possible interest in our affairs of a new church organ, having evidently given the subject, as the result of your correspondence with him, close and critical attention. All told, we spent two and one-quarter hours together, at my rooms in review of the various specifications, at his church in concrete illustration of the organ there, and at the shops of Hutchings & Votey, where I met the elder Mr. Hutchings and also your correspondent, Mr. Waterhouse, as I recall the name.

Mr. Whitney’s advices, summarized, may be expressed as follows:

(1) He is a strong advocate of Hutchings & Votey of Boston as the proper manufacturers of the proposed organ upon the grounds that their work is absolutely of the highest grade, sure of giving the church the best possible quality and finish, and is beyond all doubt of chicanery or misdirection.

(2) He believes that a good two manual organ is the thing to buy and declares that such an instrument, particularly with all the special connections set forth in the Hutchings & Votey specifications, will afford a wide range of both volume and harmony and prove eminently satisfactory in our church.

(3) He strongly advises the use of what he calls the tubular pneumatic action, particularly this action as supplied by the aforenamed firm, claiming that it does not get out of order, that it is strong in character and that it vastly contributes to the ease of playing, apart from the consideration that it enables you to locate the keyboard anywhere you wish.

(4) He emphasizes particularly the positive value and high importance of “putting the organ out”, meaning by its removal out of the present box and placing the pipes clear out, flaring with the music stand of the choir loft, that is, directly filling the arch facing the church. He also urges the making of an arch above the wainscoting in the chancel, the same to be filled with pipes, in order that volume and quality of tone may be conserved. The organist “should sit in the chancel” he claims, able to see and direct, if necessary, the choristers and in a position which will enable him to hear the organ and the singers. This is his advice upon this point, although in conversation he was ready to admit that want of space might force us to modify his wish in this respect, but on the whole he thought that we could so arrange it and, if we could, it certainly ought to be done.

(5) He was of the impression that we could satisfactorily arrange for the organist in the chancel, especially if there was a possibility of using a small choir for the purposes of the church. He thought in respect to this point that the object should be to get and hold a small, effective choir, effectiveness being the great point rather than numbers, and to keep reserves in hand out of which to supplement and recruit the regulars. I did not discuss this particularly but make it a part of this report as his suggestion in connection with our discussion of space limitations.

Permit me further to state the following items as bearing on the subject. Mr. Whitney had had this talk with Hutchings & Votey on the supposition that the church had $4,000 to spend for the purpose of an organ. That firm made its specifications to you in view of its now having a second organ to build, thus making a saving on both. They stated that possibly something might be saved on pipes and particularly on the case, a suggestion growing out of my statement that we had command of only $3500.00, but if there is to be a saving on the pipes and case it will depend upon where the organ is placed.

The matter was therefore left in this way: Mr. Whitney was to write you in substance all that he had said to me and return your papers. We are to send Hutchings & Votey full, exact and detailed measurements of all spaces affected, in order to enable them to refigure the price and to make any suggestions which their experiences may determine. I would suggest that this matter of making measurements be placed in charge of Mr. Phillips of the committee and that all measures be independently checked before being forwarded to Boston.

It is right to add that Mr. Whitney showed intense interest in this matter, often referring to his early work here and to old memories, and repeatedly expressed his wish to have Christ Church possess an organ of unquestioned merit, “and when it is installed”, said he, “I will come up and give an organ recital, bringing one of my best boy soloists”, adding with a smile, “without cost to you except for transportation of the boy”.

Trusting that all this may be found satisfactory by the Committee, I remain,

Yours very truly, Joseph A. De Boer

 

Sidebar III: Hutchings-Votey Organ Co., Contract, 1903

Boston, Mass., June 29, 1903.

MEMORANDUM OF AGREEMENT made this day by and between Hutchings-Votey Organ Co., Organ Builders of Boston, Mass., party of the first part, and Christ
P. E. Church of Montpelier, Vt., party of the second part.

To wit:—

The party of the first part shall build an Organ according to the annexed specifications, of the best materials and in the most thorough manner, and set it up in the above church in good working order, ready for use, warranted perfect in every respect on or about October 1st, 1903, barring any detention from labor troubles.

The party of the second part shall prepare the place for the Organ, and allow suitable convenience and opportunity in the church for the work of setting up and tuning it; shall fully insure it in the name of the party of the first part as soon as it or its parts shall have been deposited in the Church; shall keep said insurance in force until title to the organ shall be transferred to the party of the second part; and in full consideration for the finishing and delivery of the Organ as above, shall pay to the party of the first part, the sum of three thousand, four hundred and seventy-one dollars and sixty cents ($3,471.60), payable as follows—at least $1771.60 to be paid on completion of the organ in the church and the balance in two installments of $850 each in six and twelve months without interest, in Boston or New York funds.

It is agreed that the title to the organ shall be vested in the party of the first part until all payments and obligations, cash and deferred, have been paid in full, whereupon the title shall be given to the party of the second part.

John H. Waterhouse, Tres.

Hutchings-Votey Organ Co.

Fred E. Smith, Jr. Warden

Christ Church, Montpelier

 

SPECIFICATION OF AN ORGAN

prepared by

Hutchings-Votey Organ Co., Organ Builders, of Boston, Mass.

for 

Christ P. E. Church, Montpelier, Vt.

 

Two manuals, Compass from C to c 4, 61 notes

Compass of Pedals from C to f1, 30 notes

 

–GREAT ORGAN–

1. 8 ft. Open Diapason metal 61 pipes

2. 8 ft. Dolcissimo " 61 "

3. 8 ft. Melodia " 61 "

4. 4 ft. Octave " 61 "

5. 2 ft. Super Octave " 61 "

6. 8 ft. Trumpet " 61 "

 

–SWELL ORGAN–

7. 16 ft. Bourdon Treble wood 61 pipes

8. 16 ft. Bourdon Bass

9. 8 ft. Open Diapason

wood and metal 61 "

10. 8 ft. Salicional " 61 "

11. 8 ft. Stopped Diapason wood 61 "

12. 8 ft. Vox Celestis metal 61 "

13. 4 ft. Flute Harmonique " 61 "

14. 4 ft. Violina " 61 "

15. 2 ft. Flautino " 61 "

16. II Rks. Dolce Cornet " 122 "

17. 8 ft. Oboe " 61 "

 

–PEDAL ORGAN–

18. 16 ft. Open Diapason wood 30 pipes

19. 16 ft. Bourdon " 30 "

 

–COUPLERS–

20. Swell to Great

21. Swell to Swell 4 ft.

22. Swell to Swell 16 ft.

23. Great to Swell

24. Great to Pedal

25. Great to Great 16 ft.

26. Swell to Pedal

 

–COMBINATIONS–

1) Operating on Great and Pedal

2)

3)

0)

 

1) Operating on Swell and Pedal

2)

3)

4)

0)

 

General Release

Pedal Release

 

–PEDALS–

1. Reversible Great and Pedal

2. Balanced Swell

3. Tremolo

4. Sforzando (Full Organ)

5. Balanced Crescendo

 

Tubular pneumatic action

Extended keydesk

 

The builders are to have the privilege of using such parts of the old organ as can be used without detriment to the new instrument.

 

Notes

1. “The Sabbath at the State Capital,” The Rutland (Vt.) Daily Globe 1, no. 92 (Aug. 16, 1873): 1.

2. Jacob G. Ullery, Men of Vermont: An Illustrated Biographical History of Vermonters and Sons of Vermont (Brattleboro, Vt.: Transcript Publishing Company, 1894), 160.

3. Universitas Viridis Montis; or, The University of Vermont. 

4. “Hon. Benjamin Franklin Fifield,” Genealogical and Family History of the State of Vermont: A Record of Achievements of Her People in the Making of a Commonwealth and the Founding of a Nation (New York and Chicago: The Lewis Publishing Company, 1903), 1–4; and “Hon. Benjamin F. Fifield,” The Vermonter 4, no. 7 (Feb. 1899): 112.

5. The Vermont Encyclopedia s.v. “Dewey, Julius Y.”

6. “In Memoriam—Charles Dewey,” (Oak Park, Ill.) Life Insurance Courant 11, no. 2 (Sept. 7, 1905): 47–48.

7. The Vermont Encyclopedia s.v. “Dewey, George.” 

8. Norwich University, 1819–1911, Her History, Her Graduates, Her Roll of Honor (Montpelier, Vt.: The Capital City Press, 1911), 1.

9. “Phinney, Truman C.,” Men of Vermont: An Illustrated Biographical History of Vermonters and Sons of Vermont (Brattleboro, Vt.: Transcript Publishing Company, 1894), 312–13.

10. “Col. Fred E. Smith Dead,” (Montpelier, Vt.) Argus and Patriot 57, no. 17 (Feb. 27, 1907): 3; hereafter AP.

11. The Bicentennial of the Pipe Organ in Vermont, 1814–2014. Richmond, Virginia: OHS Press [2013], 70–79. 

12. “Old Business Man Gone,” AP 51, no. 23 (Apr. 17, 1901): 3.

13. George A. McIntyre, The History of Christ Episcopal Church (Montpelier, Vermont: Christ Church, 1982), 35; hereafter McIntyre.

14. Encyclopedia [of] Vermont Biography: A Series of Authentic Biographical Sketches of the Representative Men of Vermont and Sons of Vermont in other States (Burlington, Vermont: Ullery Publishing Company, 1912), 180.

15. “Rites for Mr. Smith,” The (Montpelier) Times Argus 71, no. 75 (June 12, 1967): 2. 

16. “New Wilhelm Tracker to Montpelier, Vermont,” The Diapason 63, no. 11 (Oct. 1972): 10.

17. Amy Ash Nixon, “Body of Local Orchestra Conductor Found,” (Montpelier) Times-Argus (Aug. 28, 2014); and “Brian P. Webb, Obituary On-Line,” Guare & Sons, Barbar & Lanier, Funeral Service, 30 School St., Montpelier, Vt.

18. Organ Handbook (2013): 66.

19. John Henry Hopkins, “Address,” Journal of the Proceedings of the Fiftieth Annual Convention of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the Diocese of Vermont; Being the Eighth Annual Convention Since the Full Organization of the Diocese; Held in St. James’ Church, Woodstock on the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Days of September (Burlington: Chauncey Goodrich, 1840), 5; hereafter Vermont Convention Proceedings. 

20. “Historical Sketch of Christ Church, Montpelier,” AP 18, no. 25 (June 11, 1868): 3.

21. Hopkins, “Address,” Vermont Convention Proceedings (1842), 6.

22. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Issued Quarterly, Under the Direction of the New England Historical Genealogical Society for the Year 1863 17 (Albany: J. Munsell, 1863), 177.

23. John Spargo, The Consecrated Century: An Outline History of St. Peter’s Protestant Episcopal Church, Bennington, Vermont (Bennington: Vestry of St. Peter’s Church, 1934), 16–17.

24. McIntyre, 25–26.

25. “Consecration,” (Montpelier) Vermont Watchman & State Journal 38, no. 16 (Dec. 23, 1842): 3; hereafter VWSJ.

26. Hopkins, “Address,” Vermont Convention Proceedings (1843), 7.

27. Vermont Convention Proceedings (1850), 29. 

28. “New Organ at the Congregationalist Church,” The St. Albans (Vt.) Messenger 26, no. 7 (Dec. 25, 1862): 3; hereafter SAM.

29. “New Church Organ,” (Montpelier) Vermont Patriot & State Gazette 30, no. 1 (Dec. 22, 1854): 3.

30. “Church Organ,” VWSJ 49, no. 6 (Jan. 5, 1855): 3. 

31. Hopkins, “Address,” Vermont Convention Proceedings (1855), 9.

32. “The organs of . . .,” The (Montpelier) Vermont Watchman 80, no. 29 (July 1, 1885): 1; hereafter VW.

33. “Montpelier Mere Mention,” AP 52, no. 16 (Feb. 26, 1902): 3.

34. E. A. Boadway, “An Annotated Catalog of Known Pipe Organs in Vermont,” The Bicentennial of the Pipe Organ in Vermont, 1814–2014 (Richmond, Virginia: OHS Press, [2013]), 200. 

35. McIntyre, 27.

36. “The plan for the . . .,” VWSJ 61, no. 27 (May 4, 1866): 2.

37. “The cornerstone of . . .,” VWSJ 62, no. 2 (Nov. 9, 1866): 2.

38. “State Items,” (St. Albans) Vermont Daily Transcript 1, no. 2 (May 14, 1868): 3.

39. Abby Maria Hemenway, The History of the Town of Montpelier, Including that of the Town of East Montpelier, for the First One Hundred and Two Years (Montpelier, Vt.: Published by Miss A. M. Hemenway, 1882), 412.

40. Ibid.

41. “Historical Sketch,” AP 18, no. 25 (June 11, 1868): 3.

42. MS, Church records, Report from an Organ Committee, November 30, 1898. Christ Church, Episcopal, Montpelier, Vermont [photocopied during the 1970s by E. A. Boadway; cited with permission]. 

43. Ibid.

44. Ibid., undated Organ Committee Report, likely Feb., 1899.

45. “Organ For Christ Church,” AP 51, no. 43 (Sept. 4, 1901): 3.

46. “Christ Church Organ,” AP 51, no. 44 (Sept. 11, 1901): 4.

47. “The organ builders. . .,” Montpelier (Vt.) Daily Journal 53, no. 70 (Feb. 24, 1902): 3; hereafter MDJ.

48. MS, Church records.

49. Ibid.

50. Ibid.

51. “New Organ For Christ Church,” AP 52, no. 16 (Feb. 26, 1902): 3.

52. “The new organ . . .,” The (Montpelier, Vt.) Evening Argus 5, no. 122 (Mar. 24, 1902): 4; hereafter EA.

53. “New Organ Placed in Christ Church,” EA 5, no. 124 (Mar. 26, 1902): 1; a similar article appeared as “New Church Organ,” MDJ 53, no. 100 (Mar. 31, 1902): 2.

54. “Glad Easter,” MDJ 53, no. 100 (Mar. 31, 1902): 1.

55. “Montpelier and Vicinity,” MDJ 53, no 102 (Apr. 2, 1902): 4.

56. “Organ Recital,” AP 52, no. 26 (May 2, 1902): 3.

57. “Whitney Organ Recital,” AP 52, no. 29 (May 28, 1902): 3.

58. “A Recent Fire at Montpelier, Vt., and its Probable Origin,” Inter-State Journal: An Illustrated Monthly of the Connecticut Valley 5, nos. 10–11 (Jan.–Feb., 1903): n.p.

59. “Christ Church Badly Damaged by Fire and Water,” MDJ 54 (Jan. 26, 1903): 1.

60. “Work on Church Delayed,” AP 53, no. 42 (Aug. 26, 1903): 4.

61. “Montpelier Locals,” MDJ 54 (Jan. 7, 1904): 4.

62. “Will Be Opened Sunday,” MDJ 54 (Jan. 21, 1904): 4.

63. “Services at Christ Church,” EA 7, no. 73 (Jan. 25, 1904): 4.

64. Vermont Convention Proceedings (1904), 122.

65. The Vermont Encyclopedia s.v. “Flood of 1927.”

66. “Christ Church,” (Montpelier, Vt.) Evening Argus 32, no. 87 (Feb. 9, 1929): 4; hereafter EA. 

67. “Dedication Services Occurred Sunday Including an Organ Recital,” EA 32, no. 88 (Feb. 11, 1929): 8.

68. “Christ Church,” EA 32, no. 87 (Feb. 9, 1929): 4.

69. MS, Vestry minutes. Christ Church, Montpelier, Vt. [custody of the church; cited with permission].

70. “Annual Episcopal Convention,” SAM 109, no. 85 (Apr. 30, 1969): 10. 

71. E. A. Boadway, “Christ Episcopal Church, Montpelier, Vermont.” The Boston Organ Club Newsletter 8, no. 4 (April, 1972): 6–7.

72. “Capital Organ Concert Sunday,” The (Montpelier-Barre, Vt.) Times-Argus 76, no. 43 (May 4, 1972): 24.

73. “New Wilhelm Tracker to Montpelier, Vermont,” The Diapason 63, no. 11 (Oct. 1972): 10.