21st Annual Organ Conference , University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Harbinger of 21st Century Directions

Marcia Van Oyen earned master's and doctoral degrees in organ and church music at the University of Michigan, where she studied organ with Robert Glasgow. She is the Director of Music at Glenview Community Church (UCC) in Glenview, Illinois and is past Dean of the North Shore AGO. She also writes reviews for The Diapason.

At "The Organ in the New Millennium" conference held in April 1999 at Pacific Lutheran University, it was reported that, "The Pacific Northwest builders are in the process of creating a new organ type that will not merely incorporate, but will fuse the previous organ styles that feed into it, and thus will transcend all of them."1   The new Fritts organ at Pacific Lutheran University, which was featured prominently at the conference, is undoubtedly a noble example of flexibility, faithfulness to historical precedent, and innate beauty. That instrument and the work of other Northwest builders may indeed be heading toward the creation of a new type of organ, but this phenomenon isn't confined to the Pacific Northwest. An examination of the "new instruments" columns in pipe organ journals reveals that many organ-builders claim to be striving towards and reaching new stylistic territory with their recent work. Two noteworthy instruments whose attributes point to the coalescence of a new style of pipe organ are the Fisk-Rosales at Rice University and the Fisk at the Myerson Symphony Center. Large instruments such as these give builders artistic latitude to explore eclecticism and amalgamation of various elements. Smaller instruments display qualities that transcend established practices as well, beautifully exemplified by organs such as the Taylor & Boody at St. Thomas Church in New York City.

The post-modern trends of the late 20th century are being fused with the eclecticism that has dominated American organ-building for decades. These elements, combined with a desire to create instruments that serve the whole spectrum of organ literature, have motivated the creation of instruments of great flexibility. Remaining true to the organ's nature as an ensemble instrument, espousing proportion and balance, and emphasizing tonal color, organ-builders are reconciling opposing stylistic elements by blending them with one another. They are melding high-level craftsmanship founded on classical principles with tonal diversity and ingenuity, guided by an over-arching goal of musicality and beauty. These efforts have led to the creation of a new style of organ that I have dubbed the post-modern fusion style.

That the new style is a goal of many organ-builders today is proved by their own statements. Consider F. Christian Holtkamp's view of the matter: "While not being period or nationality specific, [the Holtkamp organ at the Peabody Institute] possesses a range of timbre and an internal balance that enables it to deal effectively with the full range of the literature. Because it is not eclectic, not a pastiche or collage of sounds drawn from unrelated sources, it is an artistically unified whole, an instrument of coherent integrity and sound."2 Dan Jaeckel espouses the idea as well. In commenting on the new Jaeckel organ at Trinity Lutheran Church in Duluth, Minnesota, Director of Music Greg Vick observed, "Although the concepts come from various styles, it is possible to blend them into one organ without the loss of integrity if the builder understands where the concepts overlap. Having designed and built highly stylized organs of various historic ideals, [Jaeckel] believes that the resulting amalgamation in this organ achieves integrity without compromise. Instead of being simply an 'eclectic' organ, this organ has the ability to play a great variety of music without compromising the stylist tonality, but, at the same time and because of its inherent integrity, can make wonderful music of other styles as well, even though the tonal design does not specifically take these into account."3 Despite such claims, however, the new style is in process. Few instruments built to date have reached the goal. The desire to build instruments which fuse disparate elements and the actual attempts to do so have not yet led to a mature aesthetic. Based on that, some would argue against the declaration of the arrival of a new style. 

In an extensive article for The Tracker, Jonathan Ambrosino has commented that the end of the twentieth century finds the organ-building world in the United States highly pluralistic, defying definition: "The organ world has become as complex as modern life. Like our televisions, it has gained numerous channels in place of a former few. We have almost ceased to try to define our culture because it has grown beyond the tidy definitions we used to enjoy. Without any recognizable consensus on style, the organ of today is amorphous, difficult to codify."4 To his credit, Ambrosino does later add that "if we . . . look at where things seem to be headed, [ . . . ] the eclecticism that is currently driving us forward [may become] an identifiable style that may be in place by the year 2010."5

The organ-building world at present does indeed defy "tidy" definitions; however, it does not defy definition of any sort. Identification of a style according to a common set of principles evident in a spectrum of work is not only possible, but is also a productive way of making sense of the current situation. Furthermore, it is impossible to ignore a trend that is recognizable in the work of the most respected organbuilders in the United States. Pluralism is dominant; it is this very atmosphere of diversity that has allowed and promoted the birth of a new style, providing fertile soil for its development. The post-modern fusion style, still in its infancy, encompasses a variety of manifestations, but it is fair to say that the style has taken up residence in American organ-building.

Additional evidence that suggests the arrival of an identifiable new style is the export of American pipe organs. This exportation points toward the international recognition of the high quality workmanship of pipe organs produced in the United States. The ambassadors of the American organbuilding industry are firms that are building classically-inspired instruments which represent an amalgamation of styles. Shortly before his death in 1983, Charles Fisk had been in discussion with the leadership of St. Giles Cathedral of Edinburgh, Scotland about the possibility of his firm building a new organ there.6 Nearly twenty years later, Austin, Brombaugh, Fisk, Noack, and Taylor & Boody have installations and/or contracts in Asia. On the European front, John Brombaugh's two-manual instrument for Göteborg, Sweden, was a breakthrough. Equally significant are the two organs Fritz Noack is building for Reykjavik, Iceland.7 Still more compelling, though, is the selection of Fisk to build an instrument of 141 ranks for the Cathedral of Lausanne, Switzerland. Guy Bovet eloquently stated the significance of this organ in a report for La Tribune de L'Orgue: "By choosing Fisk as its builder, Lausanne will have an instrument which is different from anything which has been seen in Europe until now, and which will without a doubt define an epoch. As not long ago, grape vines which had been transplanted to the New World, and thereby escaped the disease which destroyed French viniculture, were then re-imported to reconstruct the noble viniculture ancestry, so the organ for Lausanne re-institutes for us a true tradition of organ building, which comes back 'home' enriched by the experience of a long journey of fruitful education."8 The best of American organ-builders are poised to become the world leaders in the 21st century, and it is these leaders whose work represents a new American style.

Six principles comprise the framework of the post-modern fusion style.

1. Emphasis on Historical Tonal Archetypes

The "historically-inspired" organ-building trend which reached its zenith in the 1980s, represented by instruments such as the French Classic Bedient at St. Mark's Episcopal in Grand Rapids, has received much attention and has been well-documented.9 Emulation of historic European organs based on painstaking study has provided a spectrum of facsimiles of the sounds heard in the instruments of Clicquot, Silbermann, Schnitger, and Cavaillé-Coll, among others. The use of ornate casework modeled on historic examples, including luxurious materials such as gold leaf and exotic species of hardwood (e.g. Honduras mahogany), can be construed as a post-modern reaction to the utilitarian arrangements of exposed pipework and lackluster facades of years past. Although it can be described as an unprecedented looking backward in American organ-building history, the "historically inspired" movement has nevertheless left a deep imprint on the organ-building milieu. It has motivated builders in their quest for artistic integrity, based in part on the realization that facsimiles of historical voices aren't necessarily successful in American acoustical environments.

2. Cultural Conditions Germane to the United States

Far from being a tradition-bound society on the whole, the atmosphere in the United States, home of democratic capitalism, gives free reign to creativity and free enterprise, especially if it proves viable in the marketplace. The concept of freedom of speech is extended to every corner of American life, and at its best this freedom unleashes experimentation and ingenuity. Embracing pastiche is part of our culture. The current trend toward worship which blends a variety of styles, reflected in recently published hymnals, is but one example. American organ-builders have followed suit, creating instruments that are "melting pots" for a variety of historical, technological, and home-grown characteristics. As Steve Dieck has said, "It is a fun game to mix and match different styles into one American style. Americans want everything."10

3. Pre-eminence of Musicality

The tonal personalities of the best organs built today are characterized by profundity and lyricism, coupled with a legibility of tone, to borrow a phrase from the late Charles Fisk. These organs speak with passionate, emotional voices and they speak clearly. They are delicately forthright, articulate yet powerful, and possess ensembles characterized by vitality and color. Harsh edginess and mushy unintelligibility are avoided. Here again we can thank the influence of historical models. European craftsmen of past centuries were building organs primarily to be musical, to fill a room with beautiful sounds, inspiring the composition of music for their instruments. Organ-builders have returned to this touchstone, realizing that the pursuit of authenticity or flexibility at the expense of tonal quality results in instruments that are idiosyncratic or uninteresting.

4. Repertoire-Driven Designs

Organs built today are subject to the crucible of being able to adequately, if not authentically, play the entire range of organ literature. Compromise is inherent in such a task; however, builders are discovering that pursuing the goal of versatility need not result in either pastiche or blandness. They are also learning where the boundaries of the "all-purpose" organ--a myth in the minds of some--need to be set. In a report on recitals heard on the Fritts organ at Pacific Lutheran University, Herbert Huestis commented, "This organ speaks to our own time with the same authority as the age of J.S. Bach. Historically-inspired organs can attain tremendous flexibility for the performance of the repertoire. The Fritts organ was not at all restrictive. It is capable of playing a very big slice of organ literature very well."11 Successful instruments are those which can render a significant portion of the literature musically rather than authentically. The best organbuilders display a circumspect artistic sense regarding service to organ literature, resisting the urge to sacrifice integrity to the whims of performers, even if the resident organist voices a desire to play the Grigny Tierce en taille and the Franck E major Choral with precisely the correct sounds. "Sometimes the specific commission the artist is working on will challenge the rules, and it is how well he can honor his convictions, but also meet the need of the commission, which will determine the creative prowess of the artist."12 Artistic maturity is crucial.

5. Pre-eminence of Artisan Builders

The leaders in American organbuilding today are small firms, led by highly-educated individuals who have found organ building a cause as much as a job.13 Generally founded by an individual with a vision and a passion for organbuilding, these shops emphasize craftsmanship and artistry. A social platform now undergirds quality organ building. It has evolved out of renewed interests in formal design, craftsmanship, education, and personal participation. These "artisan builders," spurred on by fervent convictions, preach their gospels through the organs they build. In their minds, pipe organs are works of art, not merely functional entities. A post-modern rejection of the utilitarian in favor of beauty and a shift away from mass production in favor of consummate workmanship by individuals is the modus operandi of the artisan builders. According to Lynn Dobson, "We must recognize the art in our profession in order to give purpose to the craft and science of organ-building. In all of life it is the human spirit which sparks the inquiring mind. The art of our work is what sends our minds and souls soaring when we experience the sight of a beautiful organ, or hear subtle sound, or even feel the vibrations of its power. It surely is our art which gives us the cause to master the technology."14

6. Fusion of Disparate Styles into a Blended Whole

The melding of disparate stylistic characteristics represents a return to balance and integrity, progress beyond a polyglot approach. Screaming mixtures, hyper-chiffy flues and other idiosyncratic qualities that draw attention to themselves have been cast aside in favor of a sophisticated eloquence, a matured eclecticism. Historical European voices are both emulated and manipulated, designed not only to be contiguous with their American neighbors, but also to dovetail with them. John-Paul Buzard has articulated the importance of process in creating an instrument that blends several styles: "A balanced eclecticism must be embraced. It is through the refiner's fire of a single artistic vision that such eclecticism can be cohesive and have integrity as the organ-builder's individual style."15 In order to produce instruments that are beautiful, functional, and unique, organ-builders must have the artistic capability to make wise stylistic decisions, or as Frank Lloyd Wright put it, "Style is a by-product of the process and comes of the man or the mind in the process." Success in the post-modern fusion style is achieved when history begets benchmark, syncretism gives way to synthesis, pastiche becomes poetry, and genuine artistic expression emerges.

The path that organ-building in the United States has taken has been a productive and instructive continuum. The growth and the growing pains experienced along this sometimes convoluted path (populated by the likes of E.M. Skinner, G. Donald Harrison, Hope-Jones, M.P. Möller, the Orgelbewegung, et. al.) has yielded answers about what isn't desirable as much as it has illuminated worthy goals. It has truly been, as Bovet observed, "a long journey of fruitful education." The most astute American organbuilders have heeded the lessons well. These organ-builders are maintaining their personal convictions, building upon the integrity of historic antecedents, and harnessing the energy of eclecticism in order to craft organs that have stylistic endurance. "A fine builder does not merely 'abide by the rules,' but injects such qualities as mystery, playfulness, majesty, or warmth. This character comes about in an ineffable rather than 'scientific' way, although it involves great care in choice of materials, the overall concept of the instrument, its winding, and voicing, and scaling of the pipes. The best instruments might be said to have a quality of flesh and blood, or to breathe, and have lives of their own."16 Such instruments will stand the test of time.

Steve Dieck, describing the Fisk organ recently built for St. James's Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, made a comment which succinctly summarizes the post-modern fusion style: "While rooted firmly in historical principles, the organ's tonal profile is fresh and innovative, a modern-day fusion of diverse elements, offering a singular and resolute musical statement."17 Historically grounded and inventive, serving the repertoire and delighting the ear, post-modern fusion organs offer an intricately woven tapestry of sound created by skilled artisans. Manifestations of one or more of the characteristics in my definition can certainly be found in the work of many an organ-builder; my six-pronged framework is intentionally broad. I do not consider an instrument to be representative of the post-modern fusion style, however, unless it contains all of the six elements to some degree.

Let's examine the Fritts organ at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington for features of the post-modern fusion style. It is an instrument with strong North German roots as interpreted through the personal artistic convictions of Paul Fritts. David Dahl comments that the resulting sounds are "not so much 'historically specific' as they are credible within various musical contexts." I have already cited Herbert  Huestis's comments regarding its flexibility in rendering a large array of literature. To offer performers more choices, Fritts has provided two pedal boards--flat and BDO--and an on/off control for the wind stabilizer. Also note these pertinent features: 250 square feet of hand-carved pipe shades on a case whose design is inspired by the 1658 Stellwagen organ of the Marienkirche in Stralsund, Germany. Regarding musicality, Huestis reports, "The listener was introduced to a kind of feminine nobility that few organs possess. Beyond power, this organ has profundity and lyricism."18 This instrument clearly fits the post-modern fusion profile. (For a more complete description of the instrument, refer to the June 1999 issue of The Diapason, p. 19).

Another fine example of the style is the Edythe Bates Old Grand Organ at Rice University, built by Fisk and Rosales. Its tonal personality is based primarily on French organs of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, which its designers felt would offer the greatest flexibility in performing a large selection of literature. The vertical towers of the organ's case were inspired by French Classical examples. Despite its traditional appearance, however, this case doesn't have a roof, a back, or sides, in an innovative effort to direct its powerful sounds towards the ceiling to achieve an appropriate effect in the recital hall. The organ has tracker action that is assisted by a servo-pneumatic machine on the lowest manual, developed by Stephen Kowalyshn of Fisk, that reduces resistance when full organ with couplers is engaged. Like the Fritts at Pacific Lutheran, the Fisk Rosales organ at Rice has an on/off control for its wind stabilizer. In addition, the performer may also select one of three methods for controlling the pistons: mode Americain--the usual way; mode Français I--toe studs function as ventils; or mode Français II--ventil pistons unaffected by combination action.

While honoring the artistic visions of both Fisk and Rosales, this organ combines tone colors from French, German, Spanish, and American organs with new sounds that move beyond the stylistic parameters of each firm. Jonathan Ambrosino has provided a detailed description of the instrument's tonal features in "A History of the Organ" on the Rice University web site (http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~organ/history.html). Not only has the combined expertise and experience of each firm been fully exploited, but together they have forged exciting new paths.19 Their achievements with this instrument pervasively traverse the territory of the post-modern fusion style, representing its superlative manifestation.

Eclecticism and the American Classic style are both important precursors of the post-modern fusion organ. One might in fact say that eclecticism has matured and developed to become a second-generation American Classic organ, albeit more sophisticated and eloquent. Again, builders are claiming to have accomplished that, for example, "While on paper the stoplist might seem to point toward yet another large American Classic organ, in practice this instrument is no mere echo of its predecessor or of any other instrument. The organ's tonal principles reflect a more eclectic nature, renewing rather than merely reviewing the tenets of that style."20 But let's be cautious with the term, "American Classic." It has been bandied about and used in both pejorative and positive sense to refer to various expressions of organbuilding, and upon occasion to organ performance.

For the purposes of my study, the term shall refer to the work of the Aeolian-Skinner firm under G. Donald Harrison, roughly over the years 1935-1955. It was Emerson Richards who actually coined the term in 1943: "I am endeavoring to give [this] the name of American Classic, although it is going to be awfully hard to dislodge the word Baroque. An expressive word for the new organ which is only quasi-Baroque in principle with some French, English and American practice makes a new word imperative but difficult to find."21 It is also important to be aware, however, that Richards had earlier clarified his understanding of the use of the word "classic" in a letter to William King Covell written in 1935: "When I speak of a 'forward step in the Renaissance of the classic organ in America' I am talking about the new birth of the classic organ in the U.S.A. I don't mean to imply that it ever existed here before, but that it is as much a creation of Art based upon classic lines as the work of Michelangelo or Raphael. [Their work] was nationalistically Italian not Greek, so in this case I think the thing will develop as nationalistically American."22

No doubt some readers have noticed by this point that I have avoided discussing issues of mechanism, resisting the temptation to jump into the electric-action vs. tracker action fray. I do so with intent. Although these issues will be touched upon in passing, my investigation deals primarily with tonal concerns. It is true that most of the instruments typifying the post-modern fusion style have tracker action. That is not to say, however, that an organ built with electric action could not be a post-modern fusion organ. Tracker and electric actions are becoming less and less tied to a particular tonal style and, therefore, I find the issue of action to be largely irrelevant to this discussion.

In order to shed more light on the roots and manifestations of the post-modern fusion style as I have defined it, I spoke with seven organ-builders about their work. I asked them to share with me how it relates to the American Classic style, how it compares and contrasts with the work of their peers, and where it fits in the organ-building scene in the United States. In the interest of presenting a balanced picture, I selected two distinct groups of builders, ostensibly identifying them with the terms "classic" and "romantic," although the picture is considerably more complex than those terms would imply. For my purposes, "classic" will indicate adherence to organ-building principles established in Europe during the 15th-19th centuries. This group includes Gene Bedient, John Brombaugh, Steve Dieck, Manuel Rosales, and George Taylor--the five lecturers at the 1998 University of Nebraska-Lincoln Conference on historically informed organ-building. "Romantic" indicates an emphasis on 19th-century French and English elements, expressive capacity and a symphonic or orchestral tonal profile. I spoke with Jack Bethards, president of the high-profile Schoenstein and Co., and John-Paul Buzard, who has been identified as a leader among electric-action builders.23 Buzard's unabashedly English cathedral style meshes with my definition of the term "romantic," while Bethards himself uses the term "American Romantic" to refer to his work.24

By including two "romantic" builders in my study, both known for electric-slider and electro-pneumatic actions, I hope to present a balanced picture. The fact remains, however, that tracker builders have led the historical style revival, a key component of the post-modern fusion style, and by and large they receive the lion's share of attention and respect. Comments such as "The electric-action people surely realize that among them there isn't a single name that is taken as seriously as the leading lights of the tracker world,"25 underline that fact. To dismiss or ignore the high quality work of electric-action builders because of such remarks or fashionable opinion is irresponsible. Their work merits serious consideration. Furthermore, at the risk of being accused of having an entirely convoluted view of organ-building, I will venture to say that each of the builders included in my articles is pursuing a common goal, albeit reaching that goal with vastly different methods. I am striving solely to identify areas of common ground, all of which I believe represent the post-modern fusion style, in order to encourage the development of a fresh, and perhaps more productive, perspective.

Consider well an admonishment from Stephen Bicknell: "Though there are countless areas in which the builder can strive to make the instrument better (more musical and artistic, more truly worthy of its role in worship or concert), it is ultimately the rest of us--listeners, players and purchasers--who need to be most alert to questions of good and bad. There is a task to be performed in trying to decide amongst ourselves what is truly excellent and worth encouraging, and what may be ignored. That task may not be easy, but the endless variety to be found in our instrument should make it enjoyable and informative. Gradually, by comparing instruments, analysing what we hear, and discussing our opinions, we can help mold the path of organ-building and thus of organ music and playing."26

The author wishes to thank Brian K. Davis for advice and consultation in the development of this article.

First Congregational Church, Los Angeles, January 12-16, 2001

"Despite the nay-sayers, the organ is very much alive and we're going to keep it that way." With that hopeful remark, Fred Swann opened the third annual Organ Alive! conference at First Congregational Church of Los Angeles. Swann started this conference when he assumed the position of organist at the church three years ago, in response to a request from the church leaders for more prominence for the organ. The previous year's conference in January 2000 had been a retrospective of the organ in the 20th century. This year focused on the future of the organ and young emerging talents who will help keep the organ profession vital, hence the subtitle, "The Organ in the 21st century--Quo vadis?"

First Congregational Church of Los Angeles, founded in 1867, is the oldest Protestant church in continuous service in Los Angeles. It is built in gothic style of reinforced concrete, with a square tower rising to a height of 157 feet. The church is a large multi-storied facility--157,000 square feet--with fellowship

/dining hall, chapel, meeting rooms, parlors, and lovely courtyards, providing a very pleasant atmosphere and ample space for the conference events. Thanks to Swann's planning and music administrator Kathie Freeman's organizational wizardry, the conference was well-planned and organized. An army of volunteers from the church gave up their weekend to serve as ushers, set tables, provide refreshments, drive the shuttle bus, give directions, and see that visitors were comfortable. 175 people from 21 states and three  foreign countries were registered for the conference (the original registration limit was 120, they increased it to 175 and still had to turn 63 people away).

After formally opening the conference, Fred Swann asked everyone to stand and launched into a "name that tune" game. He played very brief excerpts from organ literature, starting with the opening of the Bach D-minor Toccata and getting progressively more difficult. When you couldn't identify one, you had to sit down. There were prizes for the winners--great fun for all. The organ in Shatto chapel--34 stops, including seven digital voices installed by Robert Walker--proved able to suggest the characteristic sounds to help us identify the pieces from hearing only a few notes.

The Great Organs

"Like Zephyrus, Eurus, Boreas and Notus, the four winds of classical antiquity, the quartet of organs at historic First Congregational Church are awesome to contemplate, even when calm in the stillness of their vaulted home. From the gossamer evanescence of their lightest stops to the redwood-strength and majesty of their full fury unleashed, they are positively mind-altering in power and heart-stopping in passion." (--Peter Rutenberg, in the program notes for Double Organ and Chorus concert)

While some readers might be put off by the poetic effusion of Rutenberg's description, the great organs at First Congregational are magnificent indeed. Few places in the world can boast of the musical resources available in these organs. The color, contrast, and spatial distribution of the pipes make the sanctuary a very exciting place to hear organ music.

The original 58-rank organ was built in 1932 by Ernest M. Skinner, with William H. Barnes serving as consultant. The organ was greatly enlarged in 1969, but the Skinner hallmark sounds--rich diapasons, lush strings--were unaltered. A large new instrument was built in the rear gallery by the Schlicker Organ Company in 1969, adding great versatility to the church's musical resources with its 17th-century North German character. Schlicker also constructed an Italian-style continuo organ located above the south choir.  In 1984, a state trumpet was added to the chancel organ. In 1990, the church began a renovation and renewal project with three phases: replacement of the consoles with two new consoles built by Möller, new windchests and mechanical repairs for the chancel organ, and, thanks to a substantial gift, the installation of 100 additional ranks to the organs. The two new consoles are the largest drawknob consoles ever built in North America (the movable chancel console was completed shortly before the Möller company closed). All of the organs can be played from either or both of the twin five-manual consoles, one in the chancel, the other in the rear gallery. Richard F. Muench, longtime curator of the organs at First Church, undertook the second and third parts of the work until his death in 1992. William Zeiller, present organ curator, continued the project. The present renovations to the Great Organs will make them collectively one of the largest musical instruments ever built, and one of the largest and most complete organs in any church in the world. When the restoration work in progress is completed, the Great Organs will consist of more than 346 ranks, 265 stops, 233 voices, and 20,000 pipes.

Sunday morning worship

I was eager to attend the Sunday service at 11:00 am, looking forward to observing a master service player in action. I tend to dislike services put together solely to demonstrate repertoire, etc., for conference attendees (though enjoyable, they always have an ersatz feel), so I was glad to be attending a regular Sunday service at First Congregational. Upon entering the narthex, I was greeted by ushers in morning coats, and took my place to listen to Swann's extended prelude--Chorale from Symphony II, Vierne;  Choralfantasy "How Brightly Shines the Morning Star", Buxtehude; Came Three Holy Kings, Glière; and The Children of God, Messiaen. People listened in silence. Attendance was sparse, but those there exhibited enthusiasm. I looked and listened with admiration as Swann played the hymns from memory and skillfully accompanied the conference choir and the First Congregational choir.

Concerts and recitals

Sunday afternoon featured a concert given by the Los Angeles Master Chorale. The program included Kodály's Missa Brevis, Laudes Organi, and Vierne's Messe Solennelle, with organists Fred Swann and Philip Allen Smith. As concert time approached, the sanctuary was filled to capacity--people were standing in the aisles. The 60-voice Los Angeles Master Chorale, under the direction of Paul Salamunovich, is marvelous. Their sound is a seamless and rich straight tone, the altos and basses particularly strong, never outshone by the tenors and sopranos. Fred Swann knew when to keep the organ just behind the choir, and when to let it be at least equal, skillfully using the Skinner organ sounds to blend wonderfully with the voices. Kodály's festive "Laudes Organi" was premiered by Swann at the national AGO convention in Atlanta in 1966.

The Vierne "Messe Solennelle" was handled skillfully by Philip Allen Smith at the gallery organ and Swann at the chancel console. It was a treat to hear this work in an environment that shares important characteristics with the one for which it was conceived. Parry's "I Was Glad" was a thrilling close to an outstanding concert, rewarded with thunderous, extended applause.

The evening before the conference officially began, participants were invited to attend a keyboard tribute to Fred Bock at the First Presbyterian Church of Bel Air. The concert featured organists and pianists playing repertoire from two collections--"Encore, Encore" and "Bock's Best Friends," both published by Fred Bock Music Company--honoring the memory of Fred Bock, composer, music publisher, and former organist of First Presbyterian of Hollywood.

The organ at First Presbyterian of Bel Air was built by Robert Tall & Associates, blending 60 ranks of pipes salvaged from the previous Casavant organ (destroyed in the Northridge earthquake in 1994) with Rodgers digital voices to create an instrument with 151 ranks and 118 speaking stops. Although the organ's range of sounds is impressive, tuning and blend problems were evident. John West, artist in residence at First Presbyterian of Bel Air, demonstrated his expertise in effectively and tastefully handling the instrument's non-organ sound MIDI voices, while Fred Swann handled the instrument's traditional sounds with elegance in absentia (performing via MIDI playback, having been called to a rehearsal), in his own arrangement of "Great Is Thy Faithfulness." A fabulous Steinway concert grand was given equal time on the program, as pianists Jan Sanborn, Dwight Elrich, Mark Hayes, William Phemister, Michele Murray and Dick Bolks performed some lovely hymn-tune settings, several of which were arranged by the performers. These works are published in the collection "Bock's Best Friends" (Fred Bock Music, catalog number BG0967).

In keeping with the conference theme, two young artists were featured in recitals--Felix Hell and Svetlana Fiakhretdinova. The programs were well attended, the audience nearly filling the main floor of the 1000-seat sanctuary.

Felix Hell, 15-year-old organ prodigy, exudes a natural musicality and a palpable eagerness to perform. Dwarfed by the monster five-manual console, from the first notes of his performance he took command. His Bach, Buxtehude and Mendelssohn were elegantly expressive: he lingered over cadential harmonies and exuberantly freed the fantasy sections. His Bach D-major Prelude and Fugue was heroic. The fiendish Schlafes Brüder, his signature piece, sizzled, Felix negotiating its fistfuls of notes with aplomb. Felix hasn't quite grown into the expansive legato style of the Franck B-minor Choral, which also suffered from ineffective registration (though limited practice time while on tour might have been a factor). The Adagio from Widor's fifth sounded hurried, but he romped through the famous Toccata with ease. His encore was the Final from Vierne's Symphony I, and the second encore a repeat of "Schlafes Bruder."

Svetlana Fiakhretdinova, native of Moscow, Russia, was a regional winner in the AGO Young Artists Competition and is a student of John Weaver at the Curtis Institute. She played her program from memory, opening with Guillou's Toccata, demonstrating a very quiet technique. Her Vierne Adagio showed a good sense of the long lines in French music, and the stops of the Skinner organ sang warmly. Her Bach Trio Sonata, though rhythmically supple, was hindered by memory lapses, but she hit her stride with the Duruflé Suite. The Prelude flowed well and rumbled satisfyingly, the Sicilienne bubbled along gracefully at an impressive tempo, and the Toccata was electrifying yet solidly under control.

Noon organ concerts were offered on Saturday, Monday, and Tuesday by Robert Plimpton, Melody Steed, and Sean O'Neal, performers from the Los Angeles area.

Conference workshops

The conference workshops focused on two main topics--performance and organbuilding. Sessions on improvisation, repertoire, MIDI, the role of the accompanist, and organ maintenance made up the performance-related offerings of the conference.

The Los Angeles AGO Chapter, a sponsor of the Saturday events of the conference, had requested that the conference include workshops on improvisation. Two such workshops were held on Saturday afternoon: "Improvisation for the Advanced" led by Bruce Neswick, and "Improvisation for the Challenged" led by Fred Swann. Since I had heard Bruce Neswick speak before, I attended Fred Swann's session. He distributed a handout--"Basic Improvisation Suggestions for the Doodling/Noodling Challenged," which was full of great advice and guidelines, all demonstrated by Swann. The talk was interspersed with anecdotes from his experiences at Riverside Church and the Crystal Cathedral. Mark Thallender, associate organist at the Crystal Cathedral, was coaxed to the bench to demonstrate as well. These workshops were followed by an improvisation recital by Bruce Neswick.

Craig Phillips

If you haven't played anything written by Craig Phillips, call your music supplier. His works have a modern sound with somewhat modal harmony, are rhythmically interesting, and are very appealing to the listener. His oeuvre consists of organ solo and choral works as well as a smattering of works for organ with instruments and various instrumental ensembles. Craig Phillips serves as music associate at All Saints' Episcopal Church in Beverly Hills. He's a fine organist and demonstrated several works based on hymn tunes, including Torah Song, a well-crafted piece based on a tune from the Hymnal 1982. His yet unpublished Pastorale for Bassoon and Organ was lovely, and beautifully played by a bassoonist from his church. He commented that organ repertoire is inextricably linked to the development of the instrument, tied to the church, and for utilitarian purposes, with many works associated with specific instruments and churches. His influences are Buxtehude, Mendelssohn, Franck, Widor and Messiaen, and he views his work as part of a well-established continuum.

Thomas Somerville

Thomas Somerville, director of music at First Congregational, gave a workshop titled "What a Choral Director Expects of an Organist." Far from being a dry, didactic "how-to" session, Somerville's workshop was inspiring and well-planned. His affable nature and obvious respect for his colleagues communicated as much as his outline and remarks. He stressed the importance of communication--about the music and about working together. He distributed a sample of the detailed music schedule he prepares, relating how he discusses accompaniments and plans with Fred Swann and other staff members.

Somerville defines our purpose as church musicians as follows: "to point to, and glorify God as the author of goodness, the creator of beauty, the giver of artistic sensibility and talent, and focus of adoration and praise." He shared five points towards achieving our purpose as musicians in the church: choose music that embodies our purpose, prepare to perform the music to the best of our ability, commit to a musical partnership with all who will rehearse and perform the music with us, maintain an attitude of respect for all who will hear the music, do this with joy insofar as possible. Fred Swann concurrently gave a workshop on designing recital programs. A lively discussion had arisen at the end of Somerville's lecture, and Swann, having finished his workshop, poked his head in the door to tease Somerville about going a few minutes over time.

Robert Noehren

Having been an avid reader of his work and played his instruments, I was thrilled to have the opportunity to hear Robert Noehren speak after dinner on Saturday evening. This elder statesman of the organ world offered a new perspective on listening to music, noting that when you're ninety years old, you definitely live one day at a time. He asked himself two questions: "Do I listen to music simply for the pleasure of it?" "Have I missed that in my profession?" He realized he had been guilty of not truly listening to music. He believes you can't truly listen to music and do anything else, so now he sets aside time each day just to listen--behaving like an amateur, listening with curiosity. This practice has brought music to him in a refreshing new way and has virtually changed his outlook on music. Each morning he looks forward to his listening time.

He detailed some of the repertoire he listens to, and some of his experiences as performer and organbuilder, and made a parallel with food. He wants to make eating an art, to take great pleasure in it. In closing, he recommended choosing only music that you like, playing everything beautifully, and taking pleasure in doing things as well as you can. Live your life with a sense of artistic purpose. Sound advice for a world of people rushing around, often too busy to savor the substance of life. (See the text of Noehren's lecture in this issue, pages 15-16.)

Organbuilding workshops

Organbuilding workshops featured presentations by several prominent personalities from the organ world. John Wilson, organ curator at the Crystal Cathedral, gave a workshop on organ maintenance, offering advice on how the organist can help organ technicians, and what the organist should not do. He shared some anecdotes about the challenges of keeping the Crystal Cathedral organ in tune. Meanwhile, Robert Tall of Robert Tall & Associates, Inc.--a company that builds pipe and digital organs--gave a workshop, "The Magic of MIDI," demonstrating with equipment brought in for the workshop.

Manuel Rosales

Anticipation was in the air as Manuel Rosales took the podium on Monday afternoon, the audience eager to hear what this outspoken organbuilder had to say. Rosales feels it unwise to try to predict the organ's future, but prefers to look back and synthesize the ideas of the past to create something new. He seeks an organ design that allows a vast range of music to be played, not necessarily authentically, but convincingly, allowing performers to bring out the best in their own playing. In the 20th century, much of what the 19th century developed was discarded; the 21st century is now reversing that. He calls this idea the "universal" organ, citing examples from his opus list, pointing out the "restoration of the 8¢ principal in each division," something not common in tracker organs built in the second half of the 20th century.

Two of his latest projects are of particular interest--the organs for Disney Hall and the Catholic Cathedral, both in Los Angeles. The Cathedral organ will be housed in a new building, with a sanctuary seating 3500. The instrument will be built by Lynn Dobson (with electric action and a movable console), with Rosales as the consultant, overseeing the voicing of the instrument. He described the Disney Hall organ as a further development of his "universal organ" ideas. (See the article, "A Brief History of the Walt Disney Concert Hall Organ Project," by Manuel Rosales, in the July issue, pp. 12-13.) For this project, he will be collaborating with Glatter-Götz Orgelbau, a firm he has worked successfully with on two other organs. G-G is building the pipes and other components, while Rosales is overseeing the voicing. The organ's tonal design (4M, 72 stops, 107 ranks) is a traditional three-manual concept, but very grand. He described the organ's 4th manual division, the Llamarada, as "Spanish on steroids," including the Llamada (Spanish for bugle call) and Trompeta de Los Angeles, stops that are "spicy as a chili pepper." The organ will be mainly tracker action, but the big bass pipes and the Llamarada division will be on electric action, a necessity, Rosales says, in large tracker instruments. In fact, the entire organ will have redundant electric action, and a second, movable console will be provided to help the organist hear and be seen. The organ's façade was greatly influenced by the architect Frank Gehry (designer of the concert hall complex), and has been the subject of much discussion. About the design, Rosales commented, "It's something you'll never forget and people will have an opinion about it. However, its unusual design will incite people's curiosity and they'll want to hear it!"

Jeff Dexter

Jeff Dexter is tonal director of Schantz Organ Company, probably the youngest person in such a position in American organbuilding, and an organist himself. Dexter's lecture, "A Look Beyond the Stoplist," dealt with unraveling the intricacies of creating a stoplist and what goes into making it a reality. Dexter excels at presenting technical information in easily digestible form, with a personable style. His purpose was to illuminate what the stoplist reveals: the musical intent of the builder, particular musical goals, desires of the client, and a link to the past. He outlined the building blocks of tonal design: scaling (historical practice and empirical knowledge) and pipe construction (materials appropriate for desired sound), and reliable mechanism so the vision can succeed. He described tonal finishing as the ultimate realization of the tonal design, molding the sound and polishing it.

Panel discussion

Given the framework questions and the organbuilders involved, the panel discussion promised to be interesting. The discussion questions included: Is the pipe organ doomed? What are the trends? What can we do to keep it alive? What "style" will dominate? Fred Swann opened the session by saying, "There's an audience for every type of organ. The main criterion is can you make music on it?" He had invited four organbuilders representing four schools of thought to be on the panel: Gene Bedient--tracker; Jack Bethards--Romantic/symphonic, electro-pneumatic; Jeff Dexter of Schantz--tried and true middle of the road; Robert Walker--digital sounds. Each builder was invited to make an opening statement about his own work and point of view. Excerpts follow.

Gene Bedient: We at Bedient believe first and foremost in creating beautiful, acoustical sounds made by organ pipes. I'm constantly struck these days by the amount of knowledge there is in the organbuilding world--knowledge of types of sounds, of different national styles. My interest is in how we combine those exceptional sounds--and that does not mean only sounds from 16th-century Italy, but everything I've learned abroad and in this country from the early history of the organ through the present. American culture is diverse and has many facets, but the pipe organ is not inherent in our culture like it is in some cultures. It's important that we as organists, organbuilders and organ-lovers engender enthusiasm in the pipe organ among the rest of society.

Jack Bethards, Schoenstein: Our tonal philosophy is based on the romantic or symphonic tradition and it's our goal to try to carry forward this tradition into the modern age by increasing the musical expressiveness of the pipe organ through two main means--increasing its dynamic range and the range of tonal colors. This type of instrument has a solid place in the church because it is so suited to the role of accompaniment and playing a wide variety of repertoire--things that all churches want and need. It is a very musically flexible style.

I see an extremely bright future for the pipe organ in terms of quality and variety. I give a lot of credit for this to sources that may seem surprising. First,  the electronic organ. The electronic organ has now progressed to the point where pipe organ builders do not have to try to satisfy every need, every budget. It leaves pipe organ builders free to concentrate on highly specialized work for discriminating clients who really love the pipe organ. In a way, that is a real blessing. Second is the tracker organ revival. The organ reform movements have been a great boon to the whole organbuilding world in two ways. One, bringing back the idea of thorough research into organbuilding, developing knowledge of what went on before. Another, the interest in fine hand-craftsmanship. Now what we are seeing is a variety of organbuilders working in all sorts of fields, but most of them working for high quality in both mechanical and musical matters.

What about the quantity of organs being built? This is another story, and I'm very concerned about it. The real problem is the music that's being played on the organ. I would classify the music by type and quality. There is music that is organistic and music that is not organistic. What I see creeping into the church is music that is primarily based on rhythm with vanilla harmonic structure. This is a serious problem for those of us who love the great choral and organ tradition. We're being inundated with cheaply-constructed, terrible pop music. I'm concerned that we're not doing enough both as builders and players and as educators to fight this trend of cheapness. We must not back down on standards. We're not in a relativistic world. There are good things and bad things and we need to stand up and fight for the good.

Jeff Dexter, tonal director, Schantz: It was said of our firm by a very distinguished colleague of mine that the Schantz organ company has the distinct quality of building ordinary church organs. While I'm not sure that this colleague meant that as a compliment, we take that as a very, very high compliment. We unapologetically build church organs; 95% of our business is associated with building church organs. I would wholeheartedly echo the sentiments of Mr. Bethards about the quality of church music and how important that is, and how important it is that organbuilders, organists, choirmasters, and leaders of church music make sure that the quality of the music is the absolute best. We need to get young people involved in this art form. We have to be tireless in our advocacy of getting young students involved and interested in what we do and what we build.

One of the things that we're going to see in the early part of the 21st century is something that really has been evolving over the past several decades--an actual American organbuilding school, much like we think of Germanic or French or Spanish schools. I think we're going to see more and more coalescing of that which is "American," just as Willis sounds English or Cavaillé-Coll sounds French.

As organbuilders, whatever discipline we find ourselves in, I believe there is room for everybody at this table in terms of American organbuilding. There are some basic tenets that we could all agree to. First, we have to have organs that are accessible in a variety of ways. They have to be easy to play in the sense that they must be approachable. They must not put off people. They must be flexible in their ability to perform a wide variety of literature, and above all, they must be musical. If they're not musical, we've failed on a very basic level.

Robert Walker, Walker Technical Company: I look at things abstractly because I'm centered in the pipe organ business but I'm not really in it. I love the sound of a pipe organ more than anything--nothing is like it. What we're doing is imitation. It's very good and getting better, but not the same. What makes the pipe organ live for hundreds of years? The pipe organ appeals to the senses more than any other instrument. You feel it, you can feel the 32¢ sounds. The overall grandeur of the organ is going to last. You can create various moods with an organ.

One of the worst aspects of reproducing pipe sounds by digital means is that speakers project in a conical fashion, which is fine for reeds but is terrible for flues. A flue pipe is a spherical radiator. One of the reasons electronic reproduction has not been successful is its speaking system. The one thing we really love at our company is to have an enclosure because we can aim speakers in different directions at different surfaces to get all reflective sound; 80-90% of pipe organ sound is reflective energy. And it's the reflective energy that fills the building as opposed to being directed at it. The pipe organ moves the building whereas speakers move the air. So in order for us to reproduce what a pipe is doing, we need a chamber to really be able to move the chamber in addition to the air.

Walker's last comment sparked some questions regarding organs with cases or unencased and straight vs. concave radiating pedal boards. Further discussion dealt with what the aspects of an American sound are and the fight against pop-style church music. The most interesting exchanges dealt with the marriage of digital voices and pipes. The builders were asked to give their thoughts on the matter.

Walker: Digital sounds can be effective if a quality perspective is taken. All aspects must be considered--how do the sound families match? How will they be tuned? How will maintenance be undertaken and synchronized with pipe maintenance? It requires a great deal of custom work.

Bedient:  "This is one situation where divorce is justified." (great laughter from the audience)

Dexter: Schantz uses digital voices for 32¢ pedal stops and percussion sounds, but no manual stops are digital. Schantz was a founding member of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America, which has strict guidelines. Schantz never uses a digital sound to substitute for a real rank of pipes. Their philosophy is if it won't fit, don't do it in digital.

Bethards: Schoenstein uses digital percussion sounds and no others. "We are PIPE ORGAN builders." His concerns about the marriage were related to service and maintenance, and the need to find qualified people who can do both. Also, digital sounds tempt people to make additions to organs that shouldn't have additions. Instruments that have unity and balance can be thrown off by being able to add anything. It's a slippery slope.

At this point, Fred Swann quickly raised his hand and said, "Guilty as charged! I've had digital stops added here." But Swann knows how those sounds should be integrated with the instrument, and how to use them effectively, key concepts to grasp when traversing the "slippery slope" of the world of digital sounds.

Thank you, Fred Swann

The future of the Organ Alive! conference is uncertain due to Swann's retirement in May. In fact, the entire First Congregational music staff--Swann, Thomas Somerville and music administrator Kathie Freeman--retired at the same time. Martin Neary will assume the position of director of music at First Congregational. It is hoped that  he will be able to continue to share the great organs and ample facilities of the church as Fred Swann has with the Organ Alive! conferences.

During the conference, many peopled shared anecdotes about Fred Swann, and reminiscences of performances and of his kindnesses. I was amused by the way he often pipes in with a quip of some sort. My favorite was: "More souls have been saved by two notes on the chimes than by all the mixtures in captivity." He often uses humor to get a point across and is self-effacing. He has served the field of church music for sixty years with his excellent musicianship and inviting manner.

Expressing his appreciation for the presence of the many conference attendees, Fred Swann graciously said, "I can't thank you enough if I thank you every time I see you." No Fred, WE can't thank YOU enough if we thank you every time we see you.

Rudolf Zuiderveld is Professor of Music and College Organist at Illinois College, Jacksonville, Illinois, and organist of First Presbyterian Church, Springfield, Illinois.

Wednesday, June 12

Acoustics dominated the discussion with David Pike of C.B. Fisk and acoustician Dana Kirkegaard, who has made modifications to the stage area, with handsome wood structures to improve the acoustical environment for performing musicians, and enhancing the ceiling area over the stage--work that can be carried further in the future, and perhaps (if the building is equipped with air conditioning) address the acoustically transparent windows. More reverberation time and better bass response would be a desirable result.

Improvising in a predominantly homophonic French-Romantic style, William Porter demonstrated the peculiar qualities of slotted Cavaillé-Coll principals alone (as they are seldom employed) and combined with strings and flutes, producing subtle tonal variety that added up to more than the sum of its parts. The blended ensemble sounds of the French Romantic organ form the true criteria that make a Cavaillé-Coll "symphonic" rather than "orchestral"--as heard in early 20th-century American organs with their highly individual, un-blending voicing using electric actions. Like Cavaillé-Coll's organs, the Fisk retains the classic air-channel, slider windchest, but, rather than using Barker-lever machines to manage the heavy touch, employs a "servo-pneumatic" aid, in which the action follows the motion of the key exactly in attack and release.

It must have been a pleasure for Professors David Boe and Haskell Thomson to introduce the Fisk organ to over 170 registrants, repeating the dedicatory recital from last September (reviewed by Larry Palmer in The Diapason, January 2002, pp. 18-19), playing another historically-informed "period organ" at Oberlin, which joins John Brombaugh's 1981 organ in Fairchild Chapel and the comprehensive Flentrop organ in Warner Recital Hall, enabling students to study organs authentic to the Renaissance, Baroque, Romantic, and Modern eras.

David Boe opened with an exciting performance of the Final from Vierne's First Symphony, followed by a subtly impressionistic "La Vallée du Béhorléguy, au matin" from Paysages euskariens by Ermend Bonnal, and Franck's Grande Pièce Symphonique, op. 17. Organ and performer combined to give a true sense of the large-scale architectural proportions of the work; Boe's strong, rhythmically vital playing, with nuance expressing sentiment (not sentimentality), projected an overall sense of unity to Franck's masterpiece.

Haskell Thomson followed with later music of the French repertoire, conveying many refined tonal subtleties: Duruflé's colorful Veni Creator variations, the strings and soaring harmonic flute in the "Andante sostenuto" from Widor's Tenth Symphony, and the piquant, picturesque sounds of "birds and springs" in the Communion of Messiaen's Pentecost Mass. The Fisk's power was again demonstrated in the Sortie from the Mass--more clearly heard in the relatively dry acoustics of Finney Chapel than in the wash of sound in an immense stone cathedral. In the conclusion of Franck's Third Choral, it was difficult to hear the thematic quality of the manual figuration when combined with the chorale theme, all over a thundering pedal (which perhaps masked the figuration). A programmed, entertaining encore, Scène pastorale by Lefébure-Wély, complete with twittering birdsongs (Messiaen's musical ancestor?), drew smiles, and a comment that, by comparison, Franck's Pastorale is an "art of fugue"!

A gracious reception hosted by Oberlin Conservatory, with time to visit with colleagues from far-flung places, concluded a rewarding day.

Thursday, June 13

Thursday morning's lecture by Jean Boyer showed thorough knowledge of keyboard performance practice in 19th-century France, based on contemporary piano technique as illustrated in common piano methods, illuminating "Legato matters through Franck's organ works." This is not the place to review these insightful lectures; rather, one hopes that papers by Boyer, Near, Ericsson, Peeters, Porter, and Peterson will be made available in print. The panel-of-experts discussions following each lecture/paper produced varied insights, such as the lesson procedure followed for American students in France: literature first, then the maître's works.

John Near's outstanding scholarly editions of Widor's organ works for A-R Editions will soon be supplemented by a biography on this influential and authoritative "Napoleonic commander" of the French musical world from 1870 to 1937. (Perhaps it is only historically coincidental that Widor became titulaire at St. Sulpice in 1870, just as Pope Pius IX was promulgating the doctrine of papal infallibility in matters of faith and doctrine at Vatican I.) A photo and sample scrawled signature of "Widor" confirmed the point. Near spoke about Cavaillé-Coll as a "poet architect of sounds," an inspiration to Widor and the further development of the French organ symphony.

In a late Thursday afternoon session, versatile improviser William Porter played the marvelously colorful collection of 12 stops in John Brombaugh's 1981 organ in little Fairchild Chapel. Having just heard the Fisk's great variety of subtle stop combinations, it became clear how individual stops can be voiced with strong character, like the surprisingly stringy spitzflute, richly colorful regal and trumpet, and singing "vocale" praestant (so different from the amalgam of stops that comprise an "instrumentale" French "fonds"). Also, equal temperament produces a kind of evened-out blandness in the Fisk's warm Romantic sound, compared to the kaleidoscopic harmonic colors and degrees of harmonic tension heard in the ensembles of the small meantone organ. "In te Domine speravi" of Samuel Scheidt made a grand impression in a plenum that reached greater brilliance (shimmering "zing" in the mixture) than in the attenuated top of the full French Romantic organ sound.

Two masterful artists concluded Thursday's schedule. Martin Jean gave a superb performance of Vierne's Fifth Symphony, in honor of his teacher Robert Glasgow who was present. Jean played with control, refinement and grandeur, demonstrating fine technique and superb musicianship. The third movement scherzo was delightful in using some of the high-pitched aliquots (a "carillon" can be synthesized using Positiv mutations 13/5', 11/3', and 1' registers). Robert Glasgow's championing the French symphonic repertoire was amply rewarded in this virtuosic, profoundly satisfying performance.

Hans-Ola Ericsson of Sweden played an interesting group of Olivier Messiaen's organ works, surveying music from 1932 to 1984. With the performer playing in a darkening chapel, with immense control, occasionally conducting himself, the recital became a kind of spiritual experience in the hands of this devoted Messiaen interpreter. Messiaen's repertoire of organ effects included extended birdsong (Chant d'Oiseaux from Livre d'Orgue), rhythmically free plainsong-like monody (including the two-page Monodie of 1963), the adaptation of ordinary meters into timeless unending rhythmic reveries, plus extreme dynamic contrasts. The overwhelmingly loud held last chord of Verbe et Lumière from the Holy Trinity meditations produced a mental hallucination (a bit like seeing flashes of light with one's eyes closed)--near the threshold of aural pain. Ericsson created a totally entrancing musical tableau in his powerful performance.

Friday, June 14

 serious, thoughtful manner characterized Hans-Ola Ericsson's lecture the next morning, focusing on the special characteristics of Cavaillé-Coll's organ at La Trinité in Paris during Messiaen's tenure. Addition of stops so useful to Messiaen's coloristic musical effects created a kind of "North-German concept." The organ's comprehensive restoration (perhaps prompted by the mid-1950s poor-sounding recordings made by Messiaen), showed the improviser/composer's close connection to the special beauties of his La Trinité organ (not that he did not favor adapting his music to other organ styles). Ericsson proved to have many insights to share, having spent a great deal of time with Messiaen in his last years.

Musicologist Paul Peeters, former editor of the Dutch journal Het Orgel, now working at the Göteborg GOArt project in Sweden, shared a wealth of information about Belgian/French Romantic organ culture, based on a deep and wide knowledge of the instruments, for example the existence of carillon registers in Dutch organs a century before the French Romantic organ incorporated them. Varied, rather than standardized, registration was his theme--as in the different ways to compose a "fond d'orgue" sound, depending on the disposition of a particular organ. (On the Fisk the fonds with its integral oboe sounded at one point like a harmonium--perhaps the intention.) It was during the following discussion that Jesse Eschbach pointed out that St. Clotilde's organ (built with Franck's advice, as he was already titulaire) had both a classic mixture in its Great plenum for the required traditional improvised Kyrie registration (Plein Jeu plus pedal trumpet), and a novel "progressive, harmonic" mixture on the Positif for the new symphonic organ music (intended for concert rather than liturgical music?).

The following panel discussion was moderated by Fenner Douglass, recently awarded a well-earned honorary doctorate from Oberlin, and for whom the new Fisk represents the culmination of a dream in a career devoted to solid research into French organ culture. He was present to enjoy his accomplishments in the company of many grateful students and admiring colleagues.

Again as a welcome foil to all things French and Romantic, Haskell Thomson gave a demonstration of the 1974 Flentrop organ in Warner Concert Hall, and William Porter demonstrated the Brombaugh organ of First Methodist Church, adjacent to the campus. Professor Thompson gave a comprehensive demonstration of the "all-purpose" Flentrop--less authentically "Dutch" in the sound of its flues than the specification and visual design implies, with brighter principals and choruses than typical in Dutch historic instruments, but very pleasing nevertheless, and a good match for the pleasant daytime-light-filled ambience of the modern concert hall. Revised reeds, including solid, North-German style pedal reeds by Taylor and Boody, and a wonderfully full sounding colorful Bovenwerk trumpet revised by Oberlin's organ curator Hal Gober, give the organ a more authentically Dutch/German character.

The 1974 Brombaugh 18-stop organ of First United Methodist Church gave proof to the idea that North-German/Dutch style organs are tonally appropriate in a typically dry American sanctuary acoustic. Although the organ was not in perfect condition, given the un-air-conditioned hot and humid June weather, it was effectively demonstrated by William Porter in congregational music, culminating in a rousing rendition of Cwm Rhondda.

Jean Boyer's recital on Friday evening was spectacular in his brilliant performance of Widor's Sixth Symphony. Played a bit more quickly than usual (perhaps responding to the relatively dry acoustics), the outer movements were especially effective in their driving rhythms with Boyer truly "playing" spontaneously with the music. The Final, indeed the entire Symphony, proved an exhilarating tour de force in Jean Boyer's bravura performance.

Saturday, June 15

In a closely reasoned paper, William J. Peterson, adapting French scholar F. Sabatier's three-part scheme in Cavaillé-Coll's stylistic development--(1) Classic (1841-58), (2) Romantic (1858-75), and (3) Symphonic (1875-98)--considered ten organs built between 1870 and 1898. These included some of the builder's most famous organs: at the Trocadéro in Paris, St-Étienne in Caen, St-Sernin in Toulouse, and St-Ouen in Rouen. Cavaillé-Coll seems to have returned to classical precepts in his late-period organs (such as dropping the progressive mixture in favor of the more historically traditional breaking mixtures). Oddly, it was an introductory recording of the Caen organ that proved revealing: its clearly heard fiery French-style bombarde/trompette/clarion reeds produced typical Grand Jeu timbres evident in both 17th/18th-century classic-period organs and surviving in the Romantic Cavaillé-Colls, but not so apparent in the smoother reed choruses of the Oberlin Fisk. The big Fisk reeds seem more like those at St-Sernin in Toulouse, where their sound needs to travel down an extremely long and relatively narrow nave. Perhaps Barbara Owen spoke to this point in the stimulating panel discussion that followed, describing the Fisk organ as an "English Town Hall Organ."

In further discussion, David Pike emphasized the "symphonic," "sounding together" ensemble character of the organ, necessitating a mindset in organ builders (especially voicers) that goes beyond naive, simplistic ideas of copying historic instruments. Steven Dieck, giving candid insight into how the Fisk company continues to grow artistically, made an interesting point about approaching compromise of a Fisk ideal that an organ breathe "with a single breath," related to the necessity of employing double-pallet, divided windchests at Oberlin. Paul Peeters, commenting on the size of the proposals for the Antwerp O.L.V. Cathedral organ in 1888, recalled that Pierre Schyven proposed 87 stops, Walcker 100 stops, and Cavaillé-Coll only 75--"build as many as needed, as few as possible" was Cavaillé-Coll's recommendation. The Belgian Schyven firm got the contract.

Saving some of the most intriguing music for last, two distinguished performers shared a remarkable program. Christa Rakich opened with Jeanne Demessieux's Repons pour le Temps de Pâques, a brilliant toccata/fantasy (comparable to Touremire's improvisation, transcribed by Duruflé) employing the "Victimae Paschali" chant, followed by four chorale preludes from Demessieux's Opus 8--each a gem, beautifully realized on the Fisk's refined individual stops and small combinations, concluding with a thrilling Veni Creator Spiritus toccata. A little known "Nocturne" by Germaine Tailleferre (1892-1983) (a member of "Les Six," explained Christa Rakich in her engaging verbal program notes), proved to a be a gentle lullaby, a song without words. Marcel Dupré's famous Opus 7 Preludes and Fugues closed Rakich's half of the recital, but she effectively played No. 3 first, then No. 2, on the organ's warm fonds, and concluded with the carillon effects of No. 1. Sitting at various places in the chapel for the recitals, it was obvious from the palpably shaking pews under the rear balcony that the Fisk was producing plenty of bass sound. The instrument speaks with authority!

Westfield Center president Susan Ferré concluded the recital and the conference with music by Tournemire, Alain, and Langlais, completing a wide-ranging survey of French Romantic organ music performed during the conference, perhaps surprising, given the Center's more usual focus on early music. Two excerpts from Tournemire's Opus 67 masterpiece, Sept Chorals-Poemès d'orgue pour les Sept paroles du Xrist (which had 39 people at its St. Clotilde premiere in 1937), "Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani" and "Consummatum est," proved to be  some of the most powerfully moving music of the entire conference. The organ's fonds (with the harmonic flute giving a rich, pervasive sound), the smooth clarinet, the pleading vox humana, the serene flute harmonique solo, and the piercing jabs of the full organ--all sounded perfectly authentic on the Fisk, contributing to Susan Ferré's spiritually moving performance. In Jehan Alain's Variations on "Lucis Creator," a trumpet solo accompanied by a full Swell, delicate flutes, and Plein Jeu plus cantus firmus trumpet demonstrated additional Fiskian Cavaillé-Coll aural authenticity. Jean Langlais' turbulent, abrupt and tragic Chant Héroïque, dedicated to the memory of Jehan Alain, was followed by the pastiche and sentimental simplicity of Boystown (1961). A refreshing (Neo-Baroque?) Trio (1957) concluded the Langlais group. Gregorian chant and birdsong-like motives incorporated into the Paraphrase-Carillon from Tournemire's In Assumptione B.M.V. (1928), showed the connection to Messiaen's inspiration, and ended the recital and an entire conference that had managed to touch on most of the major organist-composers of the French Symphonic School. (Guilmant was mentioned but not heard.)

Serious scholarship presented in stimulating lectures and panel discussions, perfection in performance on authentic organs, and convivial collegiality combined to make the Oberlin conference one of the most informative, entertaining, and inspiring in recent memory.

Near the end of the conference, the double CD "September 28, 2001 Inaugural Concert" recorded live in Finney Chapel was released. The program opens with The Oberlin Orchestra, conducted by Paul Polivnick, performing Elgar's Nimrod variation from Enigma Variations with loving tenderness, a moving memorial to the tragedy of September 11, followed by the audience joining in singing a thrilling Star Spangled Banner. David Boe is soloist in Oberlin graduate Robert Sirota's organ concerto In the Fullness of Time, which incorporates Bach's "Es ist genug" into a colorful, lyrical and dramatic work for organ with a large virtuoso orchestra. The outstanding undergraduate student orchestra also performs two chestnuts of the symphony plus organ repertoire, Saint-Saëns' Third Symphony, with David Boe, and Joseph Jongen's Symphonie Concertante, the latter brilliantly performed with Haskell Thomson, organ soloist. Both are impassioned, professional-level performances, played with the extra edge of a live event--all in all, a spectacular concert and CD!

A special feature on the recording is another Oberlin graduate, Michael Barone, giving a musical guide to organs at Oberlin. David Boe plays H. Praetorius on the Brombaugh, Andrew Fredel plays Rheinberger on the first Holtkamp "Martini," and Christopher Harrell plays Hakim on the Warner Flentrop. So listen for yourself to the superb music making found at one of America's leading undergraduate colleges! It is available for $25 (plus shipping) from Oberlin Music and Cafe, an outstanding source for obtaining high quality organ music, books, and CDs, operated by Oberlin graduate James Dawson (; ph 440/774-9139; fax 440/774-8430) who also sponsored the coffee breaks during the conference.

Part 2

Northwest Spaces

Physical, metaphysical, mental and spiritual; Concerts expand one's perceptions and test prejudices

A random survey around the convention seemed to reveal a tie vote for favorite recitals, between the paired events at Pacific Lutheran's Fritts organ and the Kynaston recitals at St. James Cathedral. The balance was tipped by the "Catholic Worship," the office of Lauds offered three times at the Cathedral, not most by the music, the ceremony, nor the incense ("not a fragrance-free corner"), but by the sermon of the Cathedral's Pastor, the Very Rev. Michael Ryan. Imagine a room of musicians listening intently to a sermon! Fr. Ryan suggested that, in a twist on the imagery of Donne, visitors and music in the place are made honest parts of the Sacrament.

The new Rosales organ was dedicated only two weeks before the convention, in a solo recital by Cathedral organist Joseph Adam proving the success of the marriage between old and new instruments in literature from Bach to Widor. The program featured a large solo work by Naji Hakim, The Last Judgment, on motifs from the windows around which the organ case is spaced on the theme, "As ye did it to the least of these, my brethren." Those who managed to be at the Cathedral at supper time on July 4th heard it in reprise; a virtuoso prelude to fireworks, of course, a sort of rondo returning to great bass clusters; a better work than the one with orchestra which ended the convention. I'd already heard the organ accompanying a professional choir the week before that, and was struck by the way Manuel Rosales has sprouted a new and different organ from the same tonal roots as grew the Hutchings-Votey in the gallery almost a century ago. If hubris can be said to have characterized the Fisk project, one can say that the Rosales work betrays a certain humility.

I can't add much to what has been said about the PLU Fritts, save that I find the work to be so blended in tone that I like to sit as close in as possible--and that the beauties of the sound bear that close examination. Neither quirky nor subdued, it is simply a work of great balance and maturity. A close third in favorite recitals was John Weaver's at the new Reuter organ at University Presbyterian Church. This church is only a few blocks from my home, and I've been there on a Sunday morning, as well as early on when I asked the organist how they were going to fit a tracker into this chancel. "Not a tracker," she said, "Absolutely not a tracker." I came to scoff, but left with praise.

The Northwest had for decades exactly one electropneumatic builder, with a sort of "American Classic" style, whose best work was heard in a Kimberly Marshall program with wind ensemble--but in reaction to which, the area has grown its strong "Baroque revival" tracker bias and trend. A Skinner, several Kimballs, a Kilgen, and an Austin are long gone; the Hutchings at St. James, possibly not the best of the lot, is all that remains of what the region has deemed an outworn style. In this vein, one very fine young teacher left the Weaver event steaming, outraged that such outdated playing should be allowed!

The pendulum swings, with a half-period of about thirty years; warm fundamental sound has come back even to "Baroque" organs. What we heard when John Weaver played this large Reuter organ seemed to me not to be highly colored; in the Brahms preludes we heard varieties and textures of gray, mauve, pastels--subtly varied and never extreme. The playing was skilled, tasteful, assured. The Bach transcription of Ernst which opened displayed a legato manner we simply don't hear around here; when was the last time I saw legato manual changes? Weaver's own Suite (1995) was followed by an encore, a paraphrase on "For All the Saints" and "When the Saints," whose themes are inversions of each other. Commissioned by the Reuter firm, the piece elicited requests for copies; it's in print (Boosey and Hawkes, I think) and appears on the CD Weaver has already made on this organ, available from the OHS. For our prejudice, we are admonished.

For the record, this Reuter organ was opened last winter by Dame Gillian Wier, as was, a couple of years back, a large Casavant across the lake in Bellevue, Washington, played by James Holloway of PLU in the convention's "Protestant Worship." On Sunday Dame Gillian made a pre-convention appearance at University Methodist Church, just down the street from home of this new Reuter organ, playing on the remains of a Kimball rebuilt by the local builder in the '70s. Despite the lateness of the program book, and thus of the ad for the event, a good house was present to admire the poised skills of another major figure.

Young Artists Edie Johnson and Paul Johnson shared a recital at the Church of the Epiphany's new Fritz Noack tracker, a finely made, chambered installation which does not speak very well into a not very hospitable room. My notes remind me that Ms. Johnson ended with Hakim's Homage to Stravinski, where a pulsing crescendo really wants an acoustic lacking in this parish church. She opened with a Handel concerto with lavish ornament and articulation, transcribed from an early barrel organ, in a stately manner reminding me of a Stanley voluntary. Mr. Jacobs played all Bach; a rhapsodic Praeludium and Fugue in a, preceded by the e-minor trio sonata whose first movement featured quite a lot of rubato which I thought not quite completely under control, and opening with the Sinfonia from Cantata #29 in Dupré's transcription, a broad orchestral sound which brought out the best of the organ's German side. This was really advanced playing from two already admired stars of the near future.

David Hurd's program on the Willis was a bit of a puzzlement. His opening Toccata served chiefly to demonstrate the under winding of the organ, a problem present since the low-bid 1987 installation. This organ was thrust upon the Jesuit-led parish before they were ready for it--it was an Organ Clearing House panic salvage from a redundant West End London church--and is still a bit of a mystery to the Jesuit-led congregation, who still ask "Is this a good organ?" Its virtues were clearer in a Mendelssohn f-minor sonata; one could imagine Felix playing on just such sounds. Sad to say, the commission by old friend Roupen Shakarian, "Inner Places for brass quintet and organ," was not a success. The inner movement was the best, with a night call and the sound of the Willis strings, but elsewhere the 20th-century brass utterly overpowered the gentle 19th-century pipes. Roupen, a widely heard conductor as well as composer, has always seemed an exuberant fellow; an introspective piece didn't reflect the qualities I know. The improvisation ending the recital made one regret the lost opportunity to have heard this playing on an adequately restored organ.

--DC

We often hear the term "in this space," in reference to lofty sanctuaries or cathedral churches. "Sacred places" are set aside in recognition of their special qualities of wonder, awe and spiritual power. Two such places exist in Seattle, and they are the cathedrals of St. Mark and St. James.

Christa Rakich's performance and playing ability was exquisitely matched to the justly famous Flentrop at St. Mark's Cathedral, Seattle. She seemed to innately sense the length of phrase for the magnificent acoustic of this formidable box of a room that was once a war-time armory. As sunlight streamed through the immense clear glass windows onto massive whitewashed columns, she spun phrases of Bach, Franck and Hindemith in perfect harmony with the space of the church and gorgeous sonority of the instrument. There are few places where one can hear neo-classic pipes with such a comely tone. Mixtures sparkle and pipe speech is transformed into a rich cusp of sound, announcing imminent warmth and generosity.

St. James Cathedral is not quite walking distance from St. Mark's. It is a much larger room with a vaulted ceiling and central dome of huge proportions. Like St. Mark's, it is a mystical place which invited the commission of a unique organ for the year 2000, just as St. Mark's Cathedral did in 1965.

Nicholas Kynaston must have wide experience playing English organs in immense cathedral spaces, because he presented a flawless performance on the two organs that occupy this large space. In reality, they are more than a city block apart. He played with such consummate rhythmic assurance, that one sensed only the acoustical union of the two instruments. And a May-December marriage it is.  Manuel Rosales completed this new organ for the chancel of the church just in time for the convention, yet it perfectly complements a 1907 Ferrand-Votey in the balcony! Scaling and voicing of the two organs give a "hand in glove" effect that is truly uncanny.

St. James Cathedral has such generous reverberation that a lesser organist could be trapped into "playing to the chancel," and letting chords fall like glass shards. Kynaston knew the formula for playing to the entire room with an immensely musical result. He gave a reading of mostly unfamiliar works--his choices seemed if anything, to add to the magic of the performance.

Another significant performance at St. James Cathedral was Bach's B-minor Mass, very ably conducted by Martin Haselböck with local choral and orchestral forces. Haselböck has a fluid conducting technique that is inspiring to watch. He is able to whip up crisp accents then relax as the music flows on, almost by itself. His is an innately musical approach which drives, but never forces the music.

A short conversation with James Savage, music director of this Cathedral Church, revealed that the new Rosales organ fulfilled the dreams of the late Howard Hoyt, who, as organist, pressed for such an instrument for some 17 years. Mr. Savage is justifiably proud of this accomplishment, which is surely the dream that Howard Hoyt nourished all that time.

--HH

Bookends:

Guy Bovet opening recital and Gala closing concert with the Seattle Symphony and Hatsumi Miura, Carole Terry and Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet-Hakim on the Fisk organ at Benaroya Hall

It is unusual for a major convention to bookend first and last concerts with one particular organ; however in Seattle the opening and closing concerts showcased the Fisk Organ at Benaroya Hall, the new home of the Seattle Symphony. It is far more common to exhibit important new organs with symposia of one form or another, where the weight of time bears less heavily, since the organs are finished well in advance of the event and not freshly minted just in time for a major assemblage.

We avoided a chronological account of the convention for a number of reasons, one of which was the somewhat controversial reception of this organ and the room in which it makes its home. We also point out that the immense success of this convention is the result of not one new organ in the city, but many. Seattle floats in a sea of new and impportant organs!

The Rosales organ at St. James Cathedral was, at convention time, just a few weeks old, the new Reuter organ at University Presbyterian a few months old, the Fritts organ at Pacific Lutheran University just a year old, and Martin Pasi's organ at Lynnwood just five years old. There were also some very significant organs that were not heard because the rooms were too small to house the crowd: John Brombaugh's landmark instrument at Christ Church, Tacoma, and Paul Fritts' new organ at the Church of the Ascension come to mind.  In a word, the sophistication of the organ culture in the Northwest is legendary and the task of building a new organ there might be compared to composing opera in nineteenth-century Italy. There is formidable competition!

I would like to believe that the Fisk organ at Benaroya Hall is not a finished work, but might be subject to the artistic vision of its creators for some time to come. Some organ builders prefer to withhold performance on their instruments until the moment of "acceptance." I remember one episode, where as representative of a major organ builder, I waited for that "acceptance" while a local organist called all around the village, trying to find someone who would be brave enough to "accept" the organ! I much prefer the strategy I have come to know with the organ builders Martin Pasi and Paul Fritts--new stops are played in public, one by one, as they are installed in the organ. This seems to be a sure-footed way to test the organ in the room with and without an audience. I sincerely hope that the Fisk organ has begun this process of testing so that the necessary adjustments may take place.

--HH

Let me admit to some bias. I've known and admired Guy Bovet for a quarter century and more, and some aeons ago made a harpsichord for him. His brilliant mind and iconoclastic bent are givens; his ear and skills indisputable. All the odder, then, that in his recital on the monumental new Fisk which now completes the Seattle Symphony's two-year-old home, he managed to convince many a hearer, including me, that this is not a success.

In The Diapason of February 1982, Calvin Hampton laid out basics of organ for use with orchestra, including needs for sheer loudness, what Steven Dieck has called "a wall of opaque sound." That article was basic reference in early planning for the new hall. Local AGO folk had witnessed a "demonstration" of the organ in February, under odd ground rules: no literature, nor anything more than four bars, was to be played, and no sounds not considered "finished" were to be heard at all. We came away then with the impression of a Great geigen chorus heard through the wrong end of a telescope, a somewhat smaller Swell chorus, some interesting flutes, promising reeds, and one overwhelming Bombarde, setting the upper limit of the sound, the only register to involve the room at all--and an injunction not to discuss the evening, lest we offend. 'Twas said that since then the normal choruses had been brought up a bit--but for impact and presence, the organ still seems to depend on high-pressure "stentor" ranks.

The Seattle Symphony, in its former home, played on a large stage below a high scenery fly into a large opera house, sawing away to make themselves heard. The new hall was planned with as small a stage and as low a ceiling as practicable, placing the band at the mouth of a horn for maximum projection and accuracy. The players have been struggling to refine their sound downward in this efficient space. Musical Director Gerard Schwartz wanted the room to be relatively dry; in an exchange with M. Bovet, he remarked that he "really likes to hear the notes." That one can do; I've heard my harpsichord perfectly from the top of the back balcony. Smoothness and blend are other matters, as we heard the last night of the convention; but that's another tale.

The confined space below that ceiling forced a horizontal design to the organ; not encased, as the Flentrop at Rotterdam's De Dolen [The Diapason, June 1969,] but really in a room extending up behind the ceiling; far from our current thoughts about spaces for organs! The chests are spaced around this room in a way far from the classical encasements of the successful Fisks in Dallas and Yokohama; whoever remarked to me that this was an electropneumatic organ which happened to have trackers was not far from the mark. Although Fisk has the best record in North America with orchestral hall instruments, this might have been a project better built by someone else.

Seattle organ fans have been spoiled, maybe, by a number of wonderful matches of organs with unusual rooms; Benaroya concert hall isn't one of them. Maybe elsewhere one would find this organ wonderful. Other observers, who moved about the hall, found the effect to vary widely. The room had been praised for the well distributed, if not blended, sound of the orchestra in every seat. Barbara Owen, for one, reported the sound from lower side seats not to be loud, and Richard Campbell, critic for the daily paper, commented at length on the organ's uneven sound about the room. Michael Barone reports that on tape the organs sounds just fine. For me, forward and back, it was mostly crude and LOUD; loud enough to be industrial, to threaten hair cells in the inner ear. Charles Fisk, on leaving a career of bomb making for organs, remarked (I paraphrase) that "the only way an organ can hurt anyone is to fall over on him." He was wrong.

Bovet played for the last Seattle National Convention in 1978; a program of French and Spanish music, on an organ of the most severe North German school. Before beginning, he offered a brief demonstration of the stops "so that you can hear the organ before the magic of performance converts it into something it was perhaps never intended to be." There was no such magic this year. Like Ron Weasley's broken wand (of Harry Potter lore), Sunday's recital backfired. The early days to follow were filled with speculation, as some who read the Internet organ gossip columns will know, about Bovet's intent, even possible malice. Bovet is heavily involved in a much larger forthcoming Fisk, for the cathedral in Lausanne, and some thought he was sending Fisk a message. I had one chance to corner him to ask--but he headed the other way.

My sharpest commentator suggested to me the obvious: that what we heard was the demonstration; that, finding the organ of too little interest to inspire artistry, Bovet just let us hear what the organ really was. It might be so. The decision to open the recital with the St. Anne Prelude and Fugue played, not on the normal choruses, but on the solo stentor division, began the controversy. Steven Dieck, president of the Fisk firm, was still shaking his head two days later: "We never, ever, imagined that anyone would ever do that." Add to that such minor details as a couple of timing errors with the combination action, and one knew that at the very least we were not hearing the skill and subtleties which are Bovet's usual virtues.

It was, typically for Guy, an unusual if not an odd program, pairing familiar Franck and some of Bovet's stock Balbastre with Alain, Karg-Elert, and some of Bovet's own "compositions." We heard some lively playing on beautiful flutes and a somewhat Germanic Franck, but not the promised " . . . refined, colorful world of the German Romantic organ."

I find that I have, on tape, an interview with Bovet from the House of Hope Fisk, in which he can be heard to say, "I'm not a composer, but I compose anyway." I take him at his word. His pieces, some of them now rather famous, I suspect of being tests for the listener. These three "Tangos ecclesiaticos" did let us hear unusual sounds, but not the attractive side of this multi-faceted personality. However heard, it was an oddly disconcerting beginning to a fabulous week of music.

-- DC

The opening recital of the AGO Seattle 2000 convention by Guy Bovet provided no Mozartean cadences to go gentle on the ear. Rather, he threw the organ into the hall in a brutal embrace. So began AGO Seattle 2000 with a Fisk organ that duels with orchestra, rather than augmenting it. Who said the organ was required to exceed the power of an orchestra? Surely, this is a misconception, carried to its absurd conclusion at Benaroya Hall, Seattle.

Perhaps Bovet found himself in the infamous court of the emperor with no clothes, where the only alternative, given the obligation of performing the opening recital, was to "tell it like it is," pull out all the stops and let 'er rip. The angry sound that ensued succeeded in driving more than a few listeners to the far reaches of the hall. It was a simple matter of finding a back row and inquiring if there was an empty seat. There, one could hear the organ with a more rational perspective, but surely, something is wrong when the best seats in the house are in the back rows!

--HH

The final event featured organists Hatsumi Miura, incumbent at the Fisk organ in Yokohama; Carole Terry; and Marie-Bernadette Dufourcet-Hakim. I was pleased by several personal touches: Dr. Terry's playing of the Copland Organ Symphony was underwritten in memory of Northwest native Leonard Raver. Playing in the augmented percussion section were Matt Kozmirowski, whose earliest gig in Seattle was with Raver at St. Mark's, and Paul Hansen, son of beloved Edward.

The concluding concert with the Seattle Symphony had been prefigured the night before the convention opening, when in the official premiere of the Fisk organ (sold out a year in advance) James David Christie of Boston opened with the Bach Prelude and Fugue in G, BWV 550, and later the last movement of Guilmant's Symphony No. 1 in d. Bovet played a Handel Concerto in F, Op. 4, No. 4, and the Pièce Héroïque of Franck. Carole Terry, consultant on this project and named "Resident Organist and Curator," offered a Haydn Concerto No. 2 in C, and the world premiere of David Diamond's Symphony No. 10, begun a decade ago but lately completed to include the organ in the last two movements. The debut was broadcast and recorded. I can report from the wireless that Bovet's playing of the Handel displayed all his usual witty use of rubato and some quite beautiful flutes, and convincing Franck. Christie's playing was bravura; he was able to stay on to play the complete Guilmant for the Symphony's subscription audience after the convention. Terry's was straightforward; the Diamond was long and rather dull. (Maestro Schwartz has been a long-time supporter of Diamond; doubtless a recording will appear.)

Schwartz' faults as conductor do not run to over-subtlty. A trumpeter, he demands full-out playing from his brass, with matching brightness elsewhere. All the music for the Finale was of this model; a former conductor of Seattle's orchestra is quoted [I paraphrase again] "People don't like music; they like the noise it makes." [Wasn't it Beecham who said this? If not, never mind.] In Robert Sirota's commissioned In the Fullness of Time, with a tuned bell ostinato, the orchestra submerged the organ at the end. On the other hand, I noticed that in the Poulenc Concerto the ascending string figure was obscured by organ tone.

The whole concluded with Hakim's Seattle Concerto in three movements; big and splashy in the manner of Stravinsky, it quoted Night on Bald Mountain a couple of times, contained a Slavic march, and ended with a great noise with an echoing cheer from the audience. One anonymous Bostonian said that this convention was the first to exceed the high standard set in 1976. As a local, I think that visitors had a good view of the reasons the Northwest takes pride in its organ culture, along with some shortcomings. The weather was hospitable; for the first time in living memory, it didn't rain on the fireworks, either on the 4th of July or from the organs.

--DC

Reflections on the "Seattle Organ Culture"

As an epilogue to a review of the AGO Seattle 2000 convention, it seems mandatory to recognize the overwhelming presence of an organ culture in the Pacific Northwest that is most unusual and compelling. The organ is a vibrant instrument here, full of mystery and charm and more than anything else, known to hundreds of thousands of people in the area.

This all began with the installation of the now famous Dirk Flentrop organ at St. Mark's Cathedral in 1965. Perhaps audiences were captivated by the unique space and spiritual energy of this church; perhaps it was the acoustics; perhaps the beauty of the instrument--most likely all these qualities lead to enormously well attended weekly concerts, year after year. One cannot forget that this came about while Peter Hallock was Cantor of St. Mark's. He has left this legacy to his successors.

The Pacific Northwest, once dubbed "Tracker Alley" by John Hamilton (from the University of Oregon) is simply full of wondrous sounds of the organ from a variety of gifted builders. John Brombaugh moved out west from Germantown, Ohio to be part of it. Martin Pasi encountered these famous organs when he visited as a guest of David Dahl, recently retired professor of organ at Pacific Lutheran University, Tacoma. Dahl has singlehandedly "professed" the qualities of finely crafted organs to church after church in the area and as a consequence, left an indelible mark on the history of organ art in this place.

Edward Hansen created the now famous "noon recitals" at Plymouth Congregational Church in Downtown Seattle. Most convention goers knew him as past president of the AGO. Locally, he was revered as a professor at the University of Puget Sound and looked up to by his students as a moral and spiritual icon by which they could set their compass. These disciples have gone on to major posts in the organ world, but more importantly, they have become moral and spiritual icons for their students.

Randall J. McCarty worked tirelessly to bring pipe organs to countless churches in the Northwest, especially through auspices of the Organ Historical Society and Alan Laufman's Organ Clearing House. As a performer of early music and instructor in harpsichord at Pacific Lutheran University, he influenced students and local organists year after year. A testament to his influence in the area is the fact that after his passing, local interest in the organ as a musical instrument gained momentum, rather than losing it. Perhaps this whole phenomenon is like the space shuttle--once it goes into orbit, it stays there.

The "Seattle Organ Culture" gives way to the "Northwest Fusion Organ," as organ building goes from strength to strength in the Pacific Northwest. It might be said that it has entered its second generation. Edward Hansen was succeeded by Steven Williams as organist of Plymouth Congregational Church, and chair of the AGO Seattle 2000 committee. David Dahl has been succeeded by James Halloway at Pacific Lutheran University. Melvin Butler is successor to Peter Hallock at St. Mark's Cathedral. Joseph Adam carries on the memory of Howard Hoyt as organist of St. James Cathedral. And my co-reviewer David Calhoun walks to a great extent in the footsteps of his late partner Randall McCarty. It is a second generation organ culture now, and as such, has become world class, resting squarely on the shoulders of those who created it and their able successors who foster it today. It is time to reflect on this magnificent legacy.              HH

R. E. Coleberd is an economist and petroleum industry executive.

In his seminal article "The Economics of Superstars," in The American Economic Review1, Sherwin Rosen, professor of economics at the University of Chicago and recently (1994) honored as vice president of the American Economic Association, analyzed what he termed "an increasingly important market phenomenon in our time" and developed the economic implications of it. This is the phenomenon of the superstar, the tendency of talented performers to be singled out as superior to all others and, thereby, to dominate the market in which they perform. He asserted that the paradigm is found virtually everywhere in contemporary economic life; in professional athletics, arts and letters and in show business. In economic parlance, the analytical framework is "a special type of assignment problem, the marriage of buyers to sellers, including the assignment of audiences to performers, of students to textbooks, patients to doctors, and so forth."2  Superstars all share what is termed "box office appeal" which is the ability to attract a large following (audience) and to generate a substantial volume of transactions. Rosen was quick to comment that there is no magic formula for becoming a superstar but it involves a combination of talent and charisma in uncertain proportions.

Professional athletes and rock singers are obvious examples
of superstars today. However, Rosen gives one interesting example from the
world of music which occurred nearly two hundred years ago and which was cited
by the eminent nineteenth-century English economist Alfred Marshall.3 In 1801,
a Mrs. Elizabeth Billington reportedly earned the then princely sum of between
£10,000 and £15,000 singing Italian Opera in Covent Garden and
Drury Lane.4 With her extraordinary voice she defined Italian opera and female
vocal performance to the sophisticated urban gentry who flocked to her
performances throughout her career and who discounted other singers of lesser
ability.

Upon reflection, the author, an economist and longtime
student of market phenomena and the economics of pipe organ building, believes
the concept of superstars described by Rosen has a novel and intriguing
application to the King of Instruments and its builders in the last 100 years.
Perhaps it offers a partial explanation of the quixotic, always fascinating,
and endlessly intriguing market for the pipe organ and for the fortunes of
several builders. A glance at the history of the industry shows that certain
builders enjoyed a large following or "box office appeal" during
their era. What was the combination of "talent and charisma" that
accounted for their success?

Our definition of superstar as it applies to the pipe organ
hinges upon the ability of a builder to preempt substantially a particular
market during his era through tonal or mechanical characteristics, perhaps
working together, in his instruments. This builder virtually redefines the pipe
organ with the result that previous instruments are now considered obsolete and
the work of other builders noncompetitive. In economic analysis this concept
rests upon "imperfect substitution" among sellers which, in the
superstar market phenomenon, means that buyers invariably will single out a
particular product or service as best meeting their (individual and group)
needs. They do not consider other products and services to be an acceptable
alternative. Parallel to Rosen's observation of a conspicuous concentration of
output among sellers who have the most talent (as in rock singers) is the share
of certain nameplates in particular well-defined markets for pipe organs.
Although the pipe organ historically has had a large and diverse audience, we
must look at specific categories of the general market:
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> movie theaters in the 1920s in which
Wurlitzer fits the definition, the residential market of that period in which
Aeolian gets the nod, and the college and university market in the immediate
postwar period in which Holtkamp is the outstanding example, and Schlicker is
perhaps a very good one.

A word of caution: definitions and concepts are always
arbitrary and frequently narrow. Thus they will evoke different interpretations
and diverging opinions among other observers. The author elects to make Rosen's
word "superstar" synonymous with his own term "trophy
builder." The readers, in their definition of trophy builders and
instruments, may elect to focus on certain instruments (The Mormon Tabernacle),
regions (New England), the work of tonal architects and voicers (Richard O.
Whitelegg) or inventions and systems (John T. Austin). Or, they may wish to
recognize, if not include in the definition, Robert Hope-Jones, whose
pioneering work in the emerging instrument at the turn of the century, was to
exert a pronounced influence on the industry. Well and good. The author merely
hopes that his own interpretation in the following discussion will shed light
on a unique aspect of the rich history of pipe organ building in America.

Roosevelt

Our first illustration of the superstar concept in American
organbuilding is Hilborne L. Roosevelt. His instrument for the Centennial
Exposition in Philadelphia, and many that followed, were truly a watershed in
the evolution of the pipe organ. As noted historian Orpha Ochse observed:
"One may say that the Roosevelt organs actually marked the beginning of a
new era in organ history."5 Through successful application of electricity
in non-mechanical action and the introduction of several new stops, he, in
effect, redefined the instrument. Now tracker action was increasingly
considered out of style in the growing urban market characterized by the
construction of large churches. 
The new voices, embracing the European romantic tradition, made possible
in part by the new action, suggested that the tonal pallet of the tracker was
out of date as well.  His
instruments embodied the hallmarks of the new era:  liberal use of enclosed divisions in divided chambers, echo
divisions, a detached console, 
adjustable combination action and the electric motor blower for wind
supply.  The affluent urban
customer got the message: there was something new in  pipe organs out there. They were quick to recognize it and
they were interested.  Roosevelt's
star rose swiftly and in the brief two decades he flourished he won what must
have been a lion's share of the business in New York City, and important
contracts elsewhere as well. News of the "new organ" traveled swiftly
across the country. Thus we had Roosevelt instruments in Danville, Illinois and
Kansas City, Missouri, among other 
small cities, all of considerable distance from New York. The most
widely publicized instrument of the Roosevelt era, if not in retrospect its
crown jewel, was the four-manual for the Cathedral of the Incarnation in Garden
City, Long Island.6

Ernest Skinner, who was to pick up the baton after
Roosevelt's untimely death (and his brother's decision to liquidate the
business), acknowledged Roosevelt's position in the evolution of the instrument
and the industry when he wrote: "Many organs were built by Roosevelt
according to the above plan (individual valve chest), which, together with his
fine tone, earned for him the most distinguished name of any builder of his
time."7

E. M. Skinner

The next trophy builder, who fits our definition eloquently,
is the renowned Ernest M. Skinner. Roosevelt had opened the door to a new era;
now Skinner would hoist his banner and march triumphantly through the city
church landscape for the next three decades.  The Skinner name became a household word and defined the
pipe organ among the knowledgeable urban gentry. What Tiffany was to glass
Skinner was to the pipe organ among socially conscious city folks. "And we
have a Skinner Organ" is one of the ways these people described their churches. This type of product identification, with perhaps no parallel in the pipe organ industry, is the dream of every advertising manager in business today. Skinner also enjoyed the same preferred position in the college and university market during his era that Holtkamp and Schlicker were to savor in the period after World War II.

Like Roosevelt's, Skinner's instruments were a combination
of mechanical and tonal innovations. "The mechanical and tonal factors of
the organ are dependent upon each other for a fulfillment of their
purposes,"8 he wrote. A major contributor was the pitman windchest,
light-years ahead of the Roosevelt ventil system, which would stand the test of
time and be adopted by numerous builders in succeeding decades. The origins of
the pitman action are found, no doubt, in the many experimenters in
single-valve action during the turn of the century.  One of them, reportedly, was August Gern,
Cavaillé-Coll's foreman, who later built organs in England under his own
name. But it remained for Skinner to take it to Mount Olympus. When the
lightning fast  pitman key action
(thirty-three milliseconds between key touch and pipe speech) and equally
responsive (and quiet) stop action was coupled with exotic orchestral voices,
the Skinner organ quickly became the "box office favorite."

William H. Barnes listed the stops, not always invented by
Skinner, but developed and utilized in his trophy installations, which became
hallmarks of his work and era. All stops are 8' unless otherwise noted.9

Erzähler-Christ Church, Hartford, Connecticut

Orchestral Oboe-Tompkins Avenue Congregational Church,
Brooklyn, New York

English Horn (8' and 16')-City College, New York

French Horn-Williams College, Williamstown, Masssachusetts

Kleine Erzähler-Fourth Presbyterian, Chicago

Gross Gedeckt-Second Congregational, Holyoke, Massachusetts

Corno Di Bassetto-Williams College, Williamstown,
Massachusetts

Tuba Mirabilis-Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York

French Trumpet-Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York

Orchestral Bassoon (16')-Skinner Studio, Boston

Gambe Celeste-Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York

Bombarde (32')-Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York

Violone (32')-Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York

Sub Bass (32')-Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York

Contra Bassoon (32')-Princeton University, Princeton, New
Jersey

Skinner's icon image was eloquent confirmation of the
fact  that an organbuilding
enterprise is the lengthened shadow of the key figure behind it.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  As his biographer Dorothy Holden wrote:  "In all truth, it was this ability to infuse his instruments with all the vitality, warmth, and charm of his own personality that created the very essence of the Skinner organ."10

Aeolian Skinner and G. Donald Harrison

The Aeolian Skinner organ was the gold standard for affluent
urbanites with champagne tastes, many of them Episcopalians, who viewed the
church and its appointments as the logical extension of their commanding
economic and social position in the community. That the instrument was built in
Boston, the fountainhead of American culture, was reassuring, and the name
Skinner in the logo denoted continuity with a firm of established reputation.
G. Donald Harrison had filled E. M. Skinner's shoes admirably and moved ahead
to carve out his own niche in the pantheon of great American builders.

Harrison's lasting imprint on American pipe organ heritage
began about 1932; for example, in Northrup Auditorium at the University of
Minnesota, and was well-established in 1935 with Groton School and Church of
the Advent in Boston instruments, which in the public mind were the
cornerstones of his era. These two trophy instruments were
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  milestones in the emergence of the
American Classic tradition of which he was the leading exponent during his
time. As Ochse explains: "He coupled an appreciation for some of the
outstanding European styles with his thorough background in English organ
building."11 His goal was an eclectic instrument on which all schools and
styles of organ music could be played with clarity and with reasonable
authenticity.

In superstar products, endorsement is a key to status as is
the demonstration effect, which is the identification of purchasers with peer
groups and the desire to emulate them. With Aeolian-Skinner the demonstration
effect was most important and endorsement not as crucial. When prospective
clients were reminded of the Skinner legacy and shown the opus list: Symphony
Hall Boston, St. Thomas Episcopal, New York and Fourth Presbyterian, Chicago, to
name a few, they said "that's us" and signed up.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  With Holtkamp and Schlicker, on the
other hand, endorsement was paramount.

Aeolian

The Aeolian Duo Art pipe organ was the instrument of choice
among the business and social elite in the first three decades of this
century.  Their opulent life style
was anchored in castles, Italian villas and French chateaus featuring mirrored
ballrooms, manicured gardens and pipe organs and was augmented
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  frequently by polo fields, yachts and
private railroad cars. The Aeolian reputation was initially distinguished by
its self-playing mechanism and superior roll library.  Then, the nameplate took over. The "Lords of
Creation" were only too glad to pay steep prices for the Aeolian
instrument in order to "keep up with the Joneses."
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Below is a sampling of familiar
names  among the captains of
industry who had Aeolian Duo Art residence organs.12

The Automotive Industry:

Dodge, Horace E., Detroit, Michigan

Dodge, John F., Detroit, Michigan

Firestone, H. S., Akron, Ohio

Ford, Edsel B., Detroit, Michigan

Kettering, C. F., Dayton, Ohio

Olds, R. E., Lansing, Michigan

Packard, W. D., Warren, Ohio

Seiberling, F. A., Akron, Ohio

Studebaker, J. M., Jr., South Bend, Indiana

Merchants and Manufacturers:

Armour, J. O., Lake Forest, Illinois

Cudahay, J. M., Lake Forest, Illinois

DuPont, Irenee, Wilmington, Delaware

DuPont, Pierre S., Wilmington, Delaware

Swift, G. F. Jr., Chicago, Illinois

Woolworth, F. W., New York, New York

Wrigley, Wm. Jr., Chicago, Illinois

Publishers:

Bok, Edward, Merion, Pennsylvania

Curtis, C.H.K., Wyncote, Pennsylvania

Pulitzer, Mrs. Joseph, New York, New York

Scripps, W. E., Detroit, Michigan

Railroads and Public Utilities:

Flagler, John H., Greenwich, Connecticut

Harriman, E. H., Arden, New York

Vanderbilt, W. K., New York, New York

Vanderbilt, W. K. Jr., Northport, Long Island, New York

Steel and Oil:

Carnegie, Andrew, New York, New York

Frick, H. C., Pride's Crossing, Massachusetts

Rockefeller, John D., Pocantico Hills, New York

Rockefeller, John D., Jr., New York, New York

Schwab, Charles M., New York, New York

Teagle, Walter C., Portchester, New York

Wurlitzer

The tidal wave of capital pouring into the construction of movie theaters after the turn of the century created an insatiable demand for the wondrous new musical medium, the theater pipe organ, pioneered in concept by
Robert Hope-Jones. Investors clamored to capture the fortunes awaiting them in
motion pictures, a spectacular new form of mass entertainment. No movie
theater, be it an ornate palace in a downtown metropolitan area or a small town
storefront cinema, was complete (or competitive) without a theater organ. The
demand spawned an entirely new industry--Barton, Link, Robert Morton, Marr
& Colton, Page and, of course, Wurlitzer which, bolstered by
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  clever streetcar advertising, became
the generic term for the theater organ. What Kodak was to amateur photography
and Gillette was to shaving, Wurlitzer was  to the theater pipe organ.

The new industry emerged because the theater organ was a
radically different instrument; characterized by significantly higher wind
pressures, the horseshoe console, unification of the stoplist, and the tibia
and kinura, among others, as distinctive voices in the tonal pallet.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Other builders produced theater organs,
chiefly during the years of peak demand, but they were primarily identified
with the church instrument and market. We award Wurlitzer the trophy accolade
because their output of over 2,000 instruments was more than twice the number
of their nearest competitor Robert Morton, who built slightly fewer than 900.13

Holtkamp

Walter Holtkamp was a true innovator in the Schumpeterian
sense, i.e., the concrete expression of ideas in marketable goods.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  He had the wisdom and good judgment to
recognize that the classical revival and the North German paradigm, which he
sought to emulate, required a radical departure from existing norms. It was not
a matter of substituting a stop here and there, of lowering wind pressure an
inch or two, or of dispensing with the ubiquitous strings and celestes of the
1920's. It would begin with the wholesale elimination of melodias, cornopeans,
flutes d'amour and numerous other stops, all arranged in a horizontal tonal
pallet dominated by the eight-foot pitch with an occasional four-foot stop. He
would introduce a vertical tonal pallet with a pitch range of 16' through
mixtures, and underscore the principal as the foundation of
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  an organ chorus. Capped or semi-capped
flutes would provide color and harmonic development and blend well. He would
use primarily chorus reeds of Germanic "free tone" style as opposed
to "dark tone" English reeds in his ensemble.

To his great credit, Holtkamp surrounded himself with
knowledgeable people, and these persons of influence found in him the
pathfinder who would lead them to the promised land of a baroque organ. He was
said to be a stubborn man but he was a good listener.  William H. Barnes remarked that he had the good fortune to
be located in Cleveland where he benefited enormously from the friendship and
support of three important people in the organ reform movement: Walter
Blodgett, Arthur Quimby and Melville Smith.14 As his biographer John Ferguson
noted: "The continuing association with organists and musicians
sympathetic to his ideas was of central importance to the development of his
work."15 His close collaboration with architects legitimatized bringing
the organ out of chambers and resulted in the distinctive "Holtkamp
look."  Widely copied by other
builders, it was a distinguishing feature of his instruments and era.

After World War II he built a group of loyal followers, many
of them academics, led by Arthur Poister of Oberlin and Syracuse, whose
students moved on to choice academic and church positions and spread the gospel
of Holtkamp.  Soon he enjoyed a
preferred if not a virtual monopoly position in the upscale college and
university market where these leaders of the organist profession flourished.

The Holtkamp organ was the marquee instrument for
academe.  To have a Holtkamp was to
make a statement.  Installations at
Yale University and the University of California at Berkeley as well as
Syracuse University and Oberlin College, quickly convinced many schools, including small colleges like Erskine in Due West, South Carolina, that an important milestone on the road to academic excellence and peer recognition was a Holtkamp organ. Invidious comparison and competitive emulation (Thorstein
Veblen) were--and are--alive and well in academe. Thus it is no mere
coincidence that each of the three prestigous women's colleges in
Virginia--Hollins, Sweetbriar and Randolph-Macon--has a three-manual Holtkamp
instrument. When Hollins got the first one, the other two schools could not
have done anything else. 

Other builders couldn't compete with him in this market. As
one industry veteran, who asked not to be identified, remarked: "If they
were interested in a Holtkamp or a Schlicker, we knew we might as well fold our
tent." This market had pre-judged other builders and in the clamor for
peer recognition; it was the name that counted. Even if other builders used the
same scales and voicing techniques, they could not build a Holtkamp organ.
Poister, a grand person who was widely acknowledged as one of the finest organ
teachers of his or any generation, exerted what can only be described as a
fantastic influence on the fortunes of this builder. His championing of the
Holtkamp organ was surely the equal of the endorsement for breakfast foods and
athletic footwear by professional athletes today.

Schlicker

The market for a neobaroque instrument embracing the
Orgelbewegung  movement was growing
and the established industry was caught with an image problem it could not yet
overcome, opening the door for yet another builder to rise to prominence and by
redefining  the instrument and
capturing a preferred position in a specific market, to achieve trophy status
under our definition. This was Herman Schlicker. His launching pad was the rebuild of the 1893 Johnson organ in the Grace Episcopal Church in Sandusky, Ohio in 1950 with the advice and encouragement of Robert Noehren.16
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Schlicker would go on to etch his
definition of the pipe organ in bold relief: a comparatively severe instrument earmarked by a mild fundamental, a shift in the tonal balance with an emphasis on upperwork, and a reduction in the percentage of strings in the tonal resources as well as a preference for 18th-century strings of an almost soft principal timbre to the exclusion of romantic (pencil) strings.  Baroque style chorus and color reeds were featured in stoplists favoring early music, often suggesting the Praetorius mantra
(reflecting the influence of close friend and confidant Paul Bunjes).
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 

To augment his tonal resources, Schlicker devised a
"Tonkanzell" electropneumatic windchest featuring a long channel with
the valve closing against a side rail as opposed to closing directly under the
toehole as in conventional pouch-action chests. This was designed to buffer aerodynamically the effect of the opening valve on the pipe foot and to approximate the wind characteristics of the slider chest.17 He was also an early advocate of the slider chest in nonmechanical construction and incorporated it in several instruments.

Schlicker's tonal philosophy and his instruments were
especially appealing to German Lutheran congregations eager to embrace their
historical roots and to academics who shared his definition of the pipe organ.
Robert Noehren, from his lofty perch as university organist and
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  professor at the University of
Michigan, enjoyed a wide following at one of the thriving centers for graduate
study in organ during this period. His recordings, recitals and convention
appearances earned for him a stellar reputation as a leading spokesman for the
organ reform movement and, thereby, directly and indirectly for the Schlicker
instrument.  E. Power Biggs also
was caught  up in the Schlicker
movement.18 The importance of endorsements by key spokesmen cannot be
overestimated in the fortunes of the Schlicker Company.

Fisk

By 1970 a phalanx of American organists had traveled to
Europe--on sabbaticals, tours and Fulbright Scholarships-- and been introduced
to many schools and streams of historical organbuilding. They became aware of
new possibilities in their own situations and responsive to a domestic builder
who articulated their ideas. This was Charles Fisk. His Harvard background was
convincing and his Boston location reassuring. In his writings and appearances
before professional groups, Fisk conveyed an in-depth knowledge of European
instruments, his own sympathy with continental ideas and his ability to execute
them.

The epic two-manual tracker organ Fisk built at Mt. Calvary
Church in Baltimore in 1961 was earmarked by the werkprinzip in case design,
suspended key action and, in this example, the tonal philosophy of Andreas
Silbermann.19  This instrument was
his springboard to an illustrious, though tragically short, career. He became
the first American tracker builder to challenge successfully the dominance of
such European builders as Flentrop, Rieger and von Beckerath, in the
construction of large instruments. In response to a loyal and enthusiastic
following, Fisk built a number of contemporary organs as well as period instruments patterned after specific historical antecedents. His rise to prominence is further evidence that each generation looks for--and finds--a new trophy builder, a shiny new nameplate that commands that elusive "box office appeal" and with it an unchallengeable (monopoly) position in a particular market. Over the years his instruments at Harvard and Stanford clinched his reputation much as Holtkamp's organs at Yale and Berkeley had done for him--a reputation still well-deserved  by the Fisk firm after the premature passing of Charles Fisk.

Summary and Conclusions

The trophy builder analysis based upon Rosen's superstar
phenomenon, offers a useful perspective on the all-important market dimension
of the economics of the pipe organ industry.  Its ingredients are: tonal and mechanical innovation,
location, the demonstration effect and endorsement, and each generation's
search for something new under the sun. Veblen's time honored psycho-social
phenomenon of invidious comparison and competitive emulation cannot be
ignored.  Who will be the next
trophy builder?

Perhaps this 
builder will reflect the swing of the pendulum back to the romantic
tradition and the emergence of an eclectic instrument embracing the
contemporary as well as an historical perspective in liturgical music. This
builder, and the entire industry, must be able to confirm the stature of the
pipe organ within the myriad of musical options such as synthesizers,
sequencers and auto-accompaniment being promoted today. The King of Instruments
must be recognized as the legitimate and time-honored vehicle for musical
expression in corporate worship. In retrospect, the history of the instrument
in the American experience is perhaps closely tied to the fortunes of the
mainline denominations and the middle class, both increasingly challenged by
the sweeping socio-economic changes now evident in our society. Ethnic and
language characteristics of migrant populations mitigate against identification
with traditional religious groups and the realities of a rapidly changing
global marketplace impact the wage profile and employment structure of our
economy.  As one industry veteran
explained, the danger as we move into the 21st century is that "the
reorganization of religious expression makes the sounds of the pipe organ less
vital to 'religiousness,' hence less important."20 Our challenge is to
reverse this mindset and to assert that the pipe organ is central to musical
expression in religion and these other developments are ancillary to it.
style='mso-tab-count:1'>          n

The topic of the twelfth San Anselmo Organ Festival was
“The Organ in California: Successive Styles and Changes.” The
underlying premise of the conference was that change is inevitable, as seen in
;the relatively short history of California since its first settlement by
Europeans. Linda Clark, Director of the Master of Sacred Music program at
Boston University School of Theology, provided sociological and theological
insight into each successive era. She emphasized that we “stand on the
shoulders of people who have faced similar situations and have inherited
practices from them.” “Practices” she defined as “a
complex set of culturally specific ways of accomplishing something of enduring
importance to people.” We have been formed by practices. Clark developed
her subject in brief daily “meditations” which were followed by
five minutes of silence and then the performance by Michael Struck of an organ
work relevant to the subject matter of the day.

Monday: Spanish/Mexican California

The entire conference was in the form of a giant organ
crawl. The first excursion was to Mission San José, which was founded in
1797 as the 15th in a series of Franciscan missions in California. Although an
organ had been ordered in the 19th century, it was not installed due to the demise of the missions when California became part of the United States. Therefore, its first organ is the new instrument installed in 1988 by Rosales Organ Builders. It is historically faithful to the early 19th-century Mexican organs, with a split keyboard, and is tuned in 1/4 syntonic comma meantone. Robert Bates of Stanford University played a recital which illustrated the poignancy of the tuning.

Juan Pedro Gaffney delivered a lecture on the music of the
Franciscan missions, pointing out that the rich musical life of the missions
was based on the mature tradition of musical practice in Mexico City, where
many of the friars had studied. The indigenous Californians adapted easily to
traditional western music as singers and instrumentalists.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Mission San José, for instance,
had a resident orchestra in the early 19th century. The friars also provided
Christian texts in native language and recorded historical narratives from
Aztec nobles.  Gaffney directed his
Coro Hispano de San Francisco in a vespers for the feast of St. John the
Baptist using music almost entirely from the great polyphonic choirbooks of
Mexico City Cathedral and other great Baroque Mexican churches.

Tuesday: Anglo Settlement of California

The first part of the 19th century under the Franciscans was
relatively stable politically and economically, and the arts flourished. But
beginning in 1840 the missions were secularized, the great rancheros began to
disappear, and non-Hispanic pioneers began to infiltrate the culture. The 1849
gold rush brought hordes of new settlers from around the world. San Francisco
grew into a city overnight. The miners found that the capriciousness of fate
was the central fact of existence; there was a wide chasm between religious
practice on the west and east coasts in that the pioneers’ commitment to
traditional values was not as widespread or deep. Moreover, the climate and
natural beauty of the region furnished transcendent experiences outside of
organized religion.

A remarkable collection of photographs of 19th-century
organs in California was shared by Jim Lewis. Most of the organs shown were
destroyed in the great San Francisco earthquake and fire in 1906. Of particular
interest was a seventeen-section panorama of San Francisco in 1878 showing a
profusion of churches. A prolific Bay Area organ builder of the time was John
Bergstrom, one of whose organs was heard at Christ Episcopal Church in
Sausalito where David Farr conducted the members of the Ragazzi Boys Chorus and
David Farr Chorale in a 1905 Victorian Matins.

After proceeding to San Francisco by ferry, we heard three
pre-fire organs played by students from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music
and their teacher, Wyatt Insko. At the First United Lutheran Church (the first
English-speaking Lutheran church in San Francisco), Frederick DeBoer played a
short program including Dudley Buck’s Concert Variations on the Star
Spangled Banner. The Woodbury & Harris organ (1899), in its third home, was
restored by Manuel Rosales, and has a flat 27-note pedalboard and mechanical
key and stop action. We then heard Franck’s Pièce
Héroïque played by Jung Ran Lim on a 1906 Pilcher organ at Central
Seventh Day Adventist Church. The Philadelphian Seventh-Day Adventist church
has a tubular pneumatic organ built by the Los Angeles Art Organ Company,
successor to Murray M. Harris. The blower was electric from the start. Yishiu
Chen performed Conrad Susa’s “March for a Joyous
Occasion.” 

The 1904 Möller organ in the Church of St. John the
Evangelist has been modified extensively. For example, the 16¢ Lieblich
Gedeckt has been reconstituted from four different ranks from other builders,
but the sound is seamless. Wyatt Insko played J. S. Bach’s transcription
of a Concerto in G Major by Duke Wilhelm Ernst of Weimar. The day concluded
with a wine-tasting and tour hosted by Jack Bethards of the historic
Schoenstein organ factory, founded in 1877.

Wednesday:  San
Francisco after the 1906 Fire

Wayne Leupold argued that transcriptions are now
respectable, citing arrangers from 1300 to the present—including, among
others, J. S. Bach, Boëly, Liszt, Saint-Saëns, Franck, Widor, and
Novello.  Some of the compositions
emerged “new and improved” with the transcriber’s own opus
number.  In the early 1900s Edwin
Lemare brought transcriptions to a new level of sophistication, as demonstrated
by Frederick Hohman, who played Lemare’s transcription of Tchaikovsky’s Romeo and Juliet Overture at a “1924 Concert of Organ Music” on the Skinner organ in Trinity Episcopal Church, which was installed in that year.

Christian Elliott accompanied a screening of Buster
Keaton’s film “Steamboat Bill Jr.” on the Wurlitzer organ at
the Castro Theater, performing his own score. His synchronization with
Keaton’s “singing” of the Prisoner’s Song and also with
the impact of various falling objects was faultless.

Civic organs were discussed at the Palace of the Legion of
Honor by John Fenstermaker, Ed Stout, and Jonathan Ambrosino. The
museum’s Skinner organ was installed with the premise that great music
should accompany great art. Ed Stout is currently restoring this 63-rank 1924
organ, rebuilding the console and adding a computerized combination action. The
organ has many unusual features, including an Arch Clarion and Chimes which are
designed to be heard in the courtyard. 
Another unusual aspect of the organ is that there are no obvious
“grills” or means for the organ to be heard in the museum. All of
the openings were originally covered in muslim and painted to imitate the stone
walls which surround them. Over the years, the paint had become so thick that
the sound of the organ was severely compromised. The restoration will include
the installation of a more suitable covering.

The First Church of Christ, Scientist in San Francisco has a
splendid example of the orchestral style of organ building —a 1924
Kimball that has been virtually unchanged. All the pipework is enclosed so that
“one can accompany the Aeoline with the Tuba Mirabilis,” according
to organist C. Thomas Rhoads, who demonstrated the tonal families and then
played a program which included his own transcription of the “Serenade of
the Doll” from Debussy’s Children’s Corner Suite.

Thursday:  The
American Classic Organ and The Early Organ Reform Movement

Jonathan Ambrosino showed how pipe organs were everywhere
during Victorian times—not only in churches but in private homes and even
yachts. If there was no resident organist, music was played from rolls; it was
the home entertainment center. There was—and still is—an Austin
organ in Balboa Park in San Diego where Edwin Lemare gave a concert series in
1902. Ambrosino  gave an absorbing
account of Murray M. Harris’ ups and downs, E. M. Skinner’s falling
out with three prominent California organists (Moore, Sabin and Allen) and the
ascendancy of G. Donald Harrison. Between 1930 and 1965 organs underwent swift
and dramatic change, but Harrison never rejected the romantic organ; he just
wanted to make it better. He looked backward for authentic organ sounds that
would serve previous periods of music, not imitations of orchestral sounds. He
never lost sight of the organ’s purpose, which was accompanying choirs.
He believed that all sounds in an organ needed to work together. A small
Æolian-Skinner organ (1939) at St. Boniface Church demonstrated this
emerging neo-classical trend with only eight ranks plus Plein Jeu. Other
builders reacted against the perceived sentimental excesses of the romantic
organ.

One of Harrison’s crowning achievements was the organ
at Grace Cathedral where we heard Evensong. Christopher Putnam gave a rousing
performance of Searle Wright’s Lyric Rhapsody for the prelude and John
Fenstermaker conducted the men’s choir in a setting of Psalm 126 by
Sowerby.

A concert of “Organ and Chamber Music for the American
Classic Organ” was performed at First Presbyterian Church in San Anselmo
by three organists. Layten Heckman’s portion included Hovhaness’
Dawn Hymn and Three Pieces for a Ceremony by Michael McCabe with the Festival
Brass Ensemble conducted by David Farr. Wilbur Russell played Wilbur
Held’s Music for the New Year, recently commissioned by the host church.
In Theme and Variations on “The Old Year Now Has Passed Away”
Russell showed the varying colors of the 1966 Æolian-Skinner.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  John Pagett accompanied Susan Rode
Morris on the piano for Prayers, Songs and Praises by David Clark Isele. The
evening ended with a hilarious rendition of “The King of Instruments: A
Parade of Music and Verse.” The Ogden Nash-like text, by Albright and
Eugene Haun, was delightfully hammed up by Chandler Stokes, the pastor of the
church.

Friday: 
Latter-Day Reform Movement; The Tracker Revival; Historical Copies

The 1910 Hutchings organ at Old First Presbyterian Church
was a victim in 1950 of the trend toward neo-baroque voicing. Shrill upperwork
was added and important 8¢ ranks discarded. Visscher Associates has just
rebuilt and greatly enlarged the organ, keeping it faithful to the
organ’s original tonal purpose while expanding the instrument’s
versatility.  George Becker played
a historically diverse program including Franck’s Choral in B Minor in
which the Vox Humana was particularly effective.

At Stanford University Robert Bates introduced us to the
three magnificent organs at Memorial Church. A brand new addition is the
Katherine Potter-Brinegar cabinet organ built in Renaissance style (after
Compenius) by Paul Fritts and Company. 
It is tuned in 1/4 comma meantone temperament with suspended mechanical
key action, and easily movable to other locations in the church. The size of
the instrument is deceptive; the sounds, some pure and sweet and others
surprisingly sonorous, carry through the church with ease. The oldest organ in
the church is the large 1901 Murray M. Harris instrument which has been
reworked by Johnston Organ Company (a successor to Murray Harris), Ernest
Skinner, Æolian-Skinner, Rosales, and in 1995 by John DeCamp and Mark
Austin.  The 1984 Fisk-Nanney organ
epitomizes the tracker revival and can be played either in well temperament or
in one-fifth comma meantone by moving a lever.

We visited the home of Jacques Littlefield, in which there
is a large Fisk organ (1987) showing mixed French and German influences.
Noteworthy are the Dom Bedos Tremblant Doux and the harmonic flute which
changes greatly in character as it gets higher, demonstrated by Matthew Dirst
with D’Aquin’s Noël Étranger. Ewert (“Red”)
Wetherill gave an overview of  the
acoustical revisions of  Memorial
Church. He noted that the mosaic work on the walls provides superb
reflectivity, but that the jointed, lightweight plank ceiling is absorptive
especially in the lower registers. Improvements included removing a thick layer
of hair-covered felt from the entire ceiling of the church. The afternoon ended
with a typical Sunday morning service of Holy Communion at All Saints’
Episcopal Church where Gwen Adams is the music director. It is the
parish’s custom to print a large quantity of music directly in the Sunday
program, thereby encouraging maximum congregational participation. The parish
sings the same setting of the liturgy for the whole of a given church season so
that the congregation can learn it; they sing new hymns three or four weeks in
a row for the same reason.

The final event of the 1996 Festival was a concert with the
three organs at Stanford entitled: “Five Centuries of Transcriptions for
Organ.” Particularly effective was Paduana Lachrimae by Dowland,
intabulated by Sweelinck and played antiphonally by Robert Bates on the
Potter-Brinegar at the front of the church and Matthew Dirst on the Fisk in the
rear top gallery.  A rousing end to
the evening and the Festival was provided by Frederick Hohman with the
“Ride of the Valkyries” complete with Brunnhilde’s portamento
up to the high note, played on the Murray M. Harris.

In a follow-up conference in October titled “A
Changing Profession:  Embracing the
New Century,” the common thread of need for more education persisted.
Drawing on his article in the February 1996 edition of The American Organist,
“Leonard Bernstein, a Lodestar for the American Church Musician,”
Steve Pilkington urged us to “lighten up” in dealing with the gap
between the organist’s traditional musical orientation and the
congregational comfort level. We must educate congregations more and make music
accessible and inclusive the way Bernstein did in his young people’s
concerts. Harriet Nelson noted that shared traditions hold institutions
together while generational differences work against this. To confront this
trend we should be willing to adapt, have integrity, seek quality and develop
competence.

During research for her book Music in Churches, Linda Clark
studied the style of three Methodist congregations. The style of the first, a
rural congregation, was characterized by energy and hubbub; the second, located
in a suburban neighborhood, was formal and dignified; the third, a downtown
Boston African-American church, was characterized by rhythm, power, and a
call-and-response culture. She feels that conflicts over popular musical style
involve two separate issues:  the
quality of the music and the style in which it is performed.

John Pagett advised us to rededicate ourselves to aggressive
education, keeping aware of the pervasiveness of popular culture.

Jack Bethards, Manuel Rosales and Jonathan Ambrosino
discussed developments in organ design. Electronic organs have taken over the
cheap market. With the reduced volume of work there is less feedback and less
opportunity for development, but builders still get excited about reproducing a
sound they hear inside their head.

In an upbeat sharing session attendees contributed various
suggestions:  improve your
publicizing skills; play a congregant’s favorite hymns on their birthdays
(perhaps for donations to the music fund); write articles in the bulletin about
the organ music performed that day; investigate new electronic sounds (not
duplicative ones); improve acoustics of the church as much as possible; include
everyone possible as ‘extras’ in your music programs.

The Festival fully explored its subject matter and this
reviewer came away more aware of the debt we owe to those who came before us
and the responsibility we have in handing on to succeeding generations their
and our own “practices.” Change is endemic to every period and
provides the stimulus for a thoughtful determination of what our own
“practice” will be.