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Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1456, National Presbyterian Church, Celebrates 40 years with new Solo division

Jan Childress

Jan Childress, a graduate of the Indiana University School of Music with a degree in voice and theater, began her career on the musical stage. For 25 years, she was a publicist, writer, and editor for arts organizations and nonprofits in the nation’s capital. As a freelance writer, she continues to focus on the performing arts.

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On Sunday, October 10, organist William Neil presented a gala concert at the National Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C., to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the dedication of the church’s Aeolian-Skinner organ, Opus 1456, and to introduce its new Solo division. Neil, who also serves as organist of the National Symphony Orchestra, invited several colleagues to join him for the event: the Eclipse Chamber Orchestra, led by founder and conductor Sylvia Alimena, NSO French hornist; Steven Hendrickson, principal trumpet of the symphony; NSO violinist Heather Green, and soprano Jane-Anne Tucker. They performed works by Widor, Vitali, Hertel, Lili Boulanger, and Poulenc.
The concert marked the culmination of a long campaign by Neil and curator Michael Hart of the Di Gennaro-Hart Organ Company to create a Solo division for Opus 1456. From the outset, the two agreed that all pipework had to be from Ernest M. Skinner.
Ironically, the church’s leaders had requested a Solo division for Opus 1456 when they contracted with the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company in the 1960s to design and build a large organ for their new sanctuary. Their former church, razed to make way for Washington’s expanding business district, had a four-manual Möller organ, including a Solo division. As construction began at the new uptown site near the American University, architectural plans included a large and carefully designed organ chamber behind the chancel, which would house more than 6,000 pipes arranged in two stories above the chancel choir loft. A cloth screen was all that would separate the pipes from the chancel and nave, allowing the organ to speak freely into the sanctuary. “The room became part of the instrument,” says Neil. “It was very well planned and the acoustics are still the proof.”
It was atypical of the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company—then the Rolls-Royce of organ builders in North America—to build Solo divisions. Orchestral characteristics were no longer in vogue in the 1960s. “It was the era of the organ reform movement,” says Hart. “Organ builders were striving for a sound that was less romantic, more suited for interpreting the music of the Baroque era.” He ads, “American organ building is very exciting right now. We’ve taken the good qualities of the organ reform movement, but we’re also embracing some of those earlier romantic sounds.”
In 1989, the Di Gennaro-Hart Organ Company installed the first Solo stop—a vintage 1932 Aeolian-Skinner English Harmonic Tuba, which came from an Aeolian residence organ in Chevy Chase, Maryland. It had been ordered from Aeolian in late 1931, but the order was fulfilled by the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company in 1932, right after the merger of Aeolian with E. M. Skinner. This is the church’s only Solo stop that is not enclosed within an expression box. It was installed according to the English cathedral tradition—that is, where two Tubas are present, the larger is left unexpressive.
The renewed popularity of Solo divisions in recent years made the acquisition of Skinner pipes more difficult for Neil and Hart. With their tonal director Lawrence Trupiano, they eventually located ten Skinner stops (three flues, seven reeds) in Connecticut. Among them were an Orchestral Oboe and a Dolcan Gamba and Dolcan Gamba Celeste. There, as well, they found a Clarinet to add to the Choir. The pipes had been removed from a church in Montclair, New Jersey, and some were in fairly rough condition. The pipes were sent to A.R. Schopp’s Sons, Inc., in Alliance, Ohio, for repair of damaged resonators. Schopp’s also made the new Solo and Choir Clarinet windchest actions.
In Ohio, a second Tuba and a French Horn made by Skinner in 1923 for a residence organ near Toledo were also located. Although these pipes were in better condition than those found in Connecticut, they, too, needed some restoration.
Once the repairs were completed, the pipes were hand-delivered to companies for cleaning, finishing, and voicing—the flues to the Mann & Trupiano shop in Brooklyn and the reeds to Samuel Hughes in East Hartford, Connecticut.
New 16′ and 8′ trumpets for the Great division were also ordered to replace an older set (8′ and 4′) that had been in use since the 1980s, when the original trumpets by a German manufacturer were taken out. The original small-scaled fractional-length trumpets and their 1980s replacements had always taken away from the gravitas of the organ, Neil and Hart believed. With a Solo division about to be installed, now was the time to replace them. The new trumpets were manufactured by A.R. Schopp’s Sons.
The console, expanded and rebuilt in 1987 by Di Gennaro-Hart, had room for extra drawstops and was now ready to receive them. Neil arranged the Solo drawstop layout. Additional electrical work was required as well. In 2003, the organ’s entire electrical system had been replaced with a Solid State Organ Systems relay. The switching system, modular in design, needed to be expanded for the extra outputs of the Solo division and Choir Clarinet.
Finally, a new blower was custom-built in Germany to support the Solo division and the new Choir Clarinet. The blower was installed next to the existing main blower, located a floor beneath the console. An additional wind pipe, 10 inches in diameter, now runs from the blower room, through several walls and a staircase enclosure to the organ chamber above the chancel choir loft, reaching past the Choir division to the Solo division, a distance of more than 50 feet.
The pipes, restored and voiced, arrived back in Washington, D.C., in 2009, and Trupiano began the job of tonal finishing the new additions. A few weeks before the AGO national convention, the work was completed, and Opus 1456—now enhanced to 115 ranks and 7,000 pipes—was ready to demonstrate its new colors and voices to the national organ community. Recitals by Nathan Laube and Jonathan Biggers drew enthusiastic praise from the two soloists and audience members.
Nearly every weekend from September to June, the National Presbyterian Church provides the setting for recitals and concerts, presented by organist William Neil and Michael Denham, director of music ministries, and by prominent local artists and touring groups. The current season is no exception. Already a dozen choruses and instrumental ensembles have filled the sanctuary with music, ably supported by the John Jay Hopkins Memorial Organ. 

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New Organs

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Buzard Pipe
Organ Builders, Champaign, Illinois

Opus 29,
completed November, 2003

All Saints
Episcopal Church, Atlanta, Georgia

Some years ago I was contacted about a new organ for All Saints Episcopal
Church by the assistant organist, Jefferson McConnaughey. We seemed to be
speaking the same language concerning how we thought organs should sound, and I
was eager to meet him, music directors Ray and Elizabeth Chenault, and to visit
the church. Our conversations were put on hold while the parish called a new
rector and undertook other projects. At the time we were blessed with
commissions to build the organ at St. Paul's Episcopal Cathedral, Oklahoma
City, and large instruments for Glenview Community Church (III/71) and Holy
Family Catholic Church of Rockford, Illinois (III/56).

A few years went by, and I was invited to visit the church. Judging from the
size of the instrument under discussion, I expected to enter a huge space.
Instead, the church was more modest than vast, the acoustic more understated
than generous. At first blush, it seemed that 40 stops could have adequately
met their needs. But, no real lady ever gives up all her secrets at once, and
so I patiently looked and listened.

I listened to their former instrument while walking around the room, and
observed the acoustical phenomena under which the musicians had been laboring
for so long. The organ, although installed in the chancel in relatively close
proximity to the congregation, diminished drastically in volume in the nave. I
concluded that a part of the organ had to be installed in the body of the
church, to support singing and "pull" the sound out of the main part
of the organ installed in the chancel. Additionally, sound generated in the
nave lost its energy quickly; sound simply didn't travel well without becoming
garbled.

The musicians wanted to be able to properly register an organ to
"text-paint" Anglican Chant, choral anthems and ceremonial music in
the Anglican musical tradition. They needed a wide variety of accompanimental
tone colors at every dynamic level so that the organ could always support the
singers, even at pianissimo volume levels. It was equally important that the
organ musically render the great body of organ literature, even that of the
French Baroque school, of which Mr. McConnaughey seemed quite fond. And, the
Chenaults are duo organists; the literature which has been (and has yet to be)
commissioned for them had to be accommodated. This requires a large organ, as
coloristic stops outside the component voices for the essential choruses had to
be included and integrated into the design. Fortunately, these stops were never
in competition for space or funding, nor were our classic concepts of the
hierarchical scaling of divisions within the instrument ever compromised. Some
specific organs were studied: The Temple Church, London; King's College,
Cambridge; and St. Paul's Cathedral, London.

There is a beautiful chapel behind the Epistle side choir stalls, at 90
degrees to the axis of the church, which also serves as an overflow room on
Sundays. Worshippers there were relegated to viewing services on a small
closed-circuit TV, and could not participate in the hymn-singing because, being
outside the body of the church, they couldn't hear the organ. If the new organ
were to address and meet all the musical and acoustical requirements of the
church, then the chapel also needed to have some pipes in it, so that those
seated there could feel a part of the worshiping community.

All of these requirements were brought to bear upon a single instrument. Yes,
I agreed, this instrument has to be large--very large. Even if the room seats
only 550 souls, the musical and physical requirements dictated an organ of a
size which one might initially think out of proportion.

The position and installation of the new Main Organ was relatively
straightforward. The Great, Swell, Choir, Tuba, and Pedal would have to be
installed in the chancel, in an enlarged version of their existing chamber,
plus spaces created by cantilevering steel platforms into the chancel space on
both Epistle and Gospel sides.

The antiphonal division, a romantic Solo Organ including a Diapason Chorus
which mirrors the Great, had to be installed in the nave. But there was no
floor space for cases, no desire to see columns, and windows everywhere, many
of them signed by Louis Comfort Tiffany. By clever engineering of the diatonic
windchest layouts (which we had first used at St. Paul's Cathedral in Oklahoma
City) we were able to tuck the Solo Organ cases up in the rafters of the church
above the narthex, on either side of a central great window. By creative use of
perspective, we were able to engineer the location of the supporting steel
platforms so that they wouldn't block the view of the Tiffany windows in the
side aisles, yet give us sufficient height for the pipes inside the cases.

As conversations concerning the tonal design took shape, Ray, Elizabeth, and
Jeff fell in love with our tonal style which, while embracing eclecticism, has
its own unique personality. They visited both our large organs, and Jeff
actually played Sunday services on our Opus 7 organ at The Chapel of St. John
the Divine in my wife Linda's stead. The All Saints organ is a very logical
outgrowth of our style as practiced in our smaller organs, and as our two
larger organs have led us. The humble beginnings of Opus 7 at the Chapel, in
which we made 29 stops into a cathedral organ, can be seen all over this much
larger organ. Well-informed national and historical inspirations are
distributed throughout, so that the whole is at unity with itself. No German
Hauptwerk, French Récit or English Chair Organs for us. For example the
Great includes the mature English practice of 8' First & Second Open
Diapasons, married nicely to the French Fonds d'Orgue. A voluptuous Full English
Swell has continental fire by virtue of the authentic (but modified) French
reed battery, but the lyrical soft solo reed is a plaintive English Oboe. No
quirky nomenclature either. Although rooted in 19th-century English practice of
"Diapason, Principal, Twelfth, Fifteenth," etc., the stops in our
organs are what they say they are. If the Swell reed is spelled
"Trompette," you can be assured that you will hear a Trumpet with
French shallots and pipe construction.

The Great is based upon a 16' Double Open Diapason of tin which stands
proudly in the Gospel side case along with the rest of the division. A complete
Diapason chorus through Mixture, flutes at 8' & 4', and a Viola da Gamba
make up the flue work, and the reeds are Trombas, brought up to the manuals from
the Pedal Trombone. The Mixture breaks at octaves, rather than at fifth
intervals. In this way, one doesn't hear alternating unison and fifths playing
as the top rank, and the breaks are virtually unheard.

The Great also incorporates an harmonic corroborating stop which was more at
home in English and American concert organs of the early part of the last
century. Our four-rank Harmonic Mixture has in it a unison, a quint, a tierce,
and a flat-seventh. These are all the harmonics present in Tromba class reeds,
which are on the Great at 8' and 4' pitches. We originally included the
Harmonic Mixture as a way to prevent the dark Trombas from covering the
brightness of the mixture work in full organ, but have found that when used
sans Trombas, the ancient flavor of 18th-century Dutch organs is perceived in
an uncanny way. One could even imagine the wind to be unsteady--but of course
it's not!

The Solo has a Diapason Chorus nearly mirroring the Great, and despite its
distance from the Main Organ, it can exactly balance the Great Plenum in
certain contexts. The Solo contains a pair of E. M. Skinner-inspired Gambas,
the celesting rank in the case across the church from its unison pair. Now
that's a Celeste! The Flügel Horn, while a lyrical romantic solo reed, has
just enough harmonic interest to function beautifully as a chorus reed. The
Bassett Horn is certainly at home playing obbligato parts in Elgar, but has
just enough Cromorne in it to play Daquin with a French nose in the air.

One can use the Choir in a classic context, as a Positiv when a lighter foil
to the Great is desired. But this division is the real choral accompanying
workhorse. It's one of the most elegant, light, but profound Choir divisions we
have created. The Choir features a flute chorus from 16' up, and a proper
Diapason chorus complete with a four-rank quint mixture, a fifth interval
higher than the Great. But the luxurious feature in this day and age is our
Dulciana Chorus, which includes a three-rank mixture in which the 4' enters
early on at tenor C. Our Dulcianas are truly small Diapasons, and there is
nothing like the effect of accompanying voices with Diapason color, but at such
a soft volume. The Dulciana Mixture has many uses in coloring and painting
texts, 90% of which I would never have envisioned. Our Cornopeans are
small-scaled, but fundamental Trumpets as the original prototypes were, not the
horn-like Cornopeans one would otherwise love to hate. The Clarinet is truly of
English style, and the English Horn is orchestral in color with enough body to
be the foundation of the Choir reed battery, yet enough jazz in the color to
differentiate itself from the more fundamental Swell English Oboe.

The Chapel Organ includes a small-scaled Diapason Chorus at 8' and 4' to
lead the hymn-singing, and an 8' Aeoline and Vox Angelica. These very, very
soft string-toned stops allow the worshippers there to feel connected, and also
provide a powerfully effective pianissimo "wrap-around" effect as the
softest sounds concluding a smooth decrescendo. These little strings can just
be barely heard in the nave as the expression box closes on the Solo Flute
Cœlestis. When they play alone, they are literally in another room, off in
the distance.

In the All Saints organ, the Great, Swell, Choir, Solo, and a portion of the
Pedal divisions play upon 4 inches of wind pressure. The Trombones and Trombas
play upon 7 inches of wind, the Solo Festival Trumpets on 6 inches, and the
Major Tuba plays upon 20 inches of wind. The Tuba is housed in its own
expression box, and the organist can easily select which expression shoe may be
used to operate the Tuba's expression (or whether it is to remain open) by a
simple rotary switch. We aim to expand the color and dynamic range of the pipe
organ, while keeping the console controls simple and straightforward.

Before I was selected as their builder, Ray, Elizabeth, and Jeff charged me
to design the perfect instrument for all their requirements, and they would
undertake the responsibility of presenting this plan to the organ committee to
get their reaction, and see if the instrument would have to suffer at the hands
of "value engineers." Although my past experience made me somewhat
timid about presenting such a large (expensive) instrument as part of a
selection competition, we arrived at the specification of 63 straight speaking
stops, 87 ranks of pipes (5229 pipes overall), in five free-standing cases
throughout their church.

I will never forget the evening of a crucial organ committee meeting when I
received an excited telephone call from Ray. The musicians presented the
proposal and the room fell silent. People on the committee asked questions to
the effect: "Now, do all three of you musicians agree on this builder? Do
all three of you agree with each other in every respect to this instrument?"
When the answer was an emphatic yes, a committee member said: "How many
times do musicians agree with each other about anything, let alone every of the
many thousands of details in this organ's design!? This is what we need for All
Saints, and we need John-Paul to build it for us." A member of the
committee, Sarah Kennedy, later wrote a check for the entire project, in loving
memory and in honor of her family, The Kenans.

The organs' visual designs were developed during August and September of
2001. The first draft of the Chapel Organ's design was revised to be more in
keeping with the modern nature of the chapel (and less like King's College,
Cambridge). The Main Organ and the Solo Organs were built according to my first
pen-and-ink renderings.

All of my design drawings are executed by hand. The discipline of cleaning
the drafting table and truing the parallel bars and 90-degree instruments
contributes to clearing my mind of everything except what I need to think about
for the organ on the blank piece of paper.

It is always my goal to design organ cases which appear as though they had
always been in the church. The All Saints cases use shapes and colors found
throughout the room, and mirror the restrained nature of the Victorian Gothic
design. But the cases become vivid, exciting, and dramatic by incorporation of
the fabulous red enamel and gold leaf adorning the church's clerestory. The
inclusion of the red gave me license to add contracting pieces of red-stained
Honduras mahogany in the stained white oak cases. The soaring nature of the
Solo Organs, as their lines ascend while moving toward the great window, seemed
to cry out for heraldic angels, announcing the Great Day of Judgment on
gold-leafed trumpets. Thanks to parishioner David Foerster for making these
possible.

All of us will remember exactly where we were on 9/11. I was at the drafting
table finishing the designs for the Main Organ cases. I had penciled the
drawing the day before and was preparing to ink the drawing when I heard the
news reports. My entire staff came up to the drafting room and we all went to
the conference area where a small television showed us the horrors unfold as
the second airliner smashed into the second building. As we heard a large
airplane overhead, being sent to land at our local airport, I was asked if we
were going to close for the day. I said, no. We had to go about our task of
making beautiful things, especially in light of the ugliness that visited
itself on our country that day. If we wanted to take time off individually to
mourn our country's losses, go with my blessing, but the doors would remain
open and I would continue to draw a beautiful pair of pipe organ cases.

I set to cleaning out my India ink pens, and put on a CD of The English
Anthem II
from St. Paul's Cathedral,
London.

Oh Lord, look down from heaven, and behold the habitation
of Thy holiness and of Thy glory: Where is Thy zeal and Thy strength? Thy
mercies towards me, are they restrained?

My deepest thanks to the musicians at All Saints Church, everyone on the
organ committee, Greg Kellison, chairman; Paul Elliott, the rector; David
Foerster, and Sarah Kennedy for selecting me and my firm for this tremendous
commission.

My overwhelming gratitude goes to the members of my staff whose hard work
and dedication made such an excellent instrument so sublime: Charles Eames,
executive vice president, general manager and chief engineer; Brian K. Davis,
associate tonal director; Keith Williams, service department director; Shayne
Tippett, shop manager; Jay Salmon, office manager; Evan Rench, pipe maker,
voicer; Steve Downes, tonal assistant; C. Robert Leach, cabinetmaker; Stuart
Martin, cabinetmaker; Kenneth McCabe, winding systems; Ray Wiggs, consoles,
windchests; Robert Ference, service technician; Stuart Weber, service
technician; Jonathan Borchardt, service technician; JoAnne Hutchcraft Rench,
receptionist.

--John-Paul Buzard

GREAT (4-inch wind pressure)

Manual II - unenclosed pipework

16' Double Open Diapason

8' First Open Diapason

8' Second Open Diapason (ext 16')

8' Viola da Gamba

8' Harmonic Flute

8' Bourdon

4' Principal

4' Spire Flute

22/3' Twelfth

2' Fifteenth

2' Fourniture V

13/5' Harmonic Mixture IV

16' Double Trumpet

8' Trombas (ext Ped)

4' Clarion (ext Ped)

Tremulant

Chimes

8' Major Tuba (20" wind)

8' Tuba Solo (melody coupler)

8' Fanfare Trumpets (Solo)

SWELL (4-inch wind pressure)

Manual III - enclosed and expressive

8' Open Diapason

8' Stopped Diapason

8' Salicional

8' Voix Celeste

4' Principal

4' Harmonic Flute

22/3' Nazard

2' Flageolet

13/5' Tierce

22/3' Full Mixture V

16' Bassoon

8' Trompette

8' Oboe

8' Vox Humana

4' Clarion (ext 16')

Tremulant

8' Major Tuba (Gt)

8' Fanfare Trumpets (Solo)

CHOIR (4-inch wind pressure)

Manual I - enclosed and expressive

16' Lieblich Gedeckt (wood)

8' English Open Diapason

8' Flûte à Bibéron

8' Gedeckt Flute (ext 16')

8' Dulciana

8' Unda Maris

4' Principal

4' Koppel Flute

2' Recorder

2' Mixture III–IV (Dulcianas)

11/3' Fourniture IV

Sesquialtera II (22/3' & 13/5')

16' English Horn

8' Cornopean

8' Clarinet

Tremulant

Cymbalstern (14 bells)

8' Major Tuba (Gt)

8' Fanfare Trumpets (Solo)

Harp (digital)

Celesta (digital)

ANTIPHONAL SOLO (4- & 51/2-inch wind)

Manual IV - in twin cases over the narthex (expressive)

8' Open Diapason

8' Viola da Gamba

8' Gamba Celeste (CC)

8' Melodia

8' Flute Cœlestis II (Ludwigtone)

4' Principal

4' Flûte d'Amour

2' Doublette

11/3' Mixture IV

8' Flügel Horn

8' Corno di Bassetto

Tremulant

Cymbalstern (8 bells)

Chimes (Gt)

8' Fanfare Trumpets

8' Major Tuba (Gt)

Harp (digital)

Celesta (digital)

PEDAL (various wind pressures)

32' Double Open Diapason (digital)

32' Subbass (digital)

32' Lieblich Gedeckt (Ch, digital)

16' First Open Diapason

16' Second Open Diapason (Gt)

16' Bourdon

16' Lieblich Gedeckt (Ch)

8' Principal

8' Bass Flute (ext 16' Bourdon)

8' Gedeckt Flute (ext 16' Lieblich)

4' Choral Bass

4' Open Flute (ext 16' Bourdon)

22/3' Mixture IV

32' Contra Trombone (wood)

16' Trombone (wood, ext 32')

16' Double Trumpet (Gt)

16' Bassoon (Sw)

8' Trumpet (ext 16')

4' Clarion (Sw)

8' Major Tuba (Gt)

8' Fanfare Trumpets (Solo)

CHAPEL (4-inch wind, floating)

8' Open Diapason

8' Aeoline

8' Vox Angelica (tc)

4' Principal

Chapel on Great

Chapel on Swell

Chapel on Choir

Chapel on Solo

Chapel on Pedal

Intraddivisional couplers

Gt/Gt 16-UO-4

Sw/Sw 16-UO-4

Ch/Ch 16-UO-4

Solo/Solo 16-UO-4

Interdivisional couplers

Gt/Ped 8, 4

Sw/Ped 8, 4

Ch/Ped 8, 4

Solo/Ped 8, 4

Sw/Gt 16, 8, 4

Ch/Gt 16, 8, 4

Solo/Gt 16, 8, 4

Sw/Ch 16, 8, 4

Solo/Ch 16, 8, 4

Pedal Stops to Divisional Pistons


The Wicks Organ Company, Highland,
Illinois has built a new organ for the Barrington United Methodist Church,
Barrington, Illinois. In 1999 the church building was destroyed by fire. Their
losses included a 41-rank Möller pipe organ, which had been rebuilt as
recently as 1988. As planning for their new building began, the search for a
new pipe organ started. The church’s demands for their new organ were
that it had to be a great congregational organ, but also able to perform for
recitals as well. The sanctuary was to be a top-notch performance facility as
well as a place of worship. The church desired an organ of 3 manuals and 5
divisions, including an antiphonal. Each division was to have a principal
chorus, and the foundations of the Great organ were to be exposed.

The church committee heard many styles of instruments built by Wicks over
the last seven decades. This included, a North German neo-Baroque style
instrument, a symphonic organ scaled and designed by Henry V. Willis, an
American Classic, and an Aeolian instrument from the 1920s that had been
rebuilt by the Wicks Organ Company in conjunction with Mr. Madison Lindsey. The
service playing abilities of each instrument were demonstrated to the
committee, and they identified and found themselves drawn to the
English/symphonic style of the rebuilt Aeolian instrument. The organ committee
chose Wicks over several other builders after hearing several new Wicks
installations and the company ‘s recent success in exactly this style of
instrument.

The completed organ is described as an English service organ with orchestral
capabilities. The instrument is able to not only provide a seamless crescendo
from ppp to fff, but can do it with flair. In addition to service music, the
organ is able to perform every possible type of organ literature from the
Renaissance to the present. It is also able to realize orchestral
transcriptions with great skill, thanks to the presence of many orchestral solo
stops in each division, blending choruses, and 2-inch thick beveled and overlapping
felted shades. The completed organ consists of 24 ranks of pipes and 25 digital
voices. The Wicks design team pre-engineered space to accommodate real pipe
ranks to replace these voices. The Swell is on 7 inches of wind, the Pedal 10
inches; the Choir and Great are on 6 inches, with the exception of the
Clarinet, English Horn, and Tuba in the choir, which are all on 10 inches.

The solo reeds of this organ are of a unique style, derived from the
Willis/Wicks style reeds used in many Wicks organs over the decades, married to
the traditional ideas of Skinner solo reeds. The end results were clear,
smooth, stops of unique color and great versatility throughout the compass. The
greatest asset to the organ is the lively acoustical environment of the sanctuary.
The collaboration of the building committee, acousticians Kirkegaard &
Associates of Chicago, and the Wicks Organ Company have resulted in a
beautiful, successful combination of organ and room.

The console is drawknob style with 45-degree side jambs, a glass music rack,
and P&S keys with ivory resin naturals and ebony sharps. The drawknobs are
made of polished hardwood. Made of red oak, the interior is very light and the
exterior is stained to match the woodwork of the chancel furnishings. The console
features a tilt tab that allows the digital Tuba and Festival Trumpet to
emanate from the antiphonal division located in the rear of the church instead
of their native divisions. The console also has a Manual I/II transfer for
French literature.

Installation of Opus 6412 began in August of 2003, and an initial tonal
finishing and adjustment of digital voices took place in early September. After
the church’s dedication, Wicks tonal director Dr. William Hamner and reed
voicer Greg Caldwell completed an entire tonal finishing.

--Brent Johnson

Great (exposed)

16’ Violone*

8’ First Open Diapason

8’ Second Open Diapason

8’ Violoncello

8’ Harmonic Flute (Ch)

4’ Principal

4’ Flute Octaviante

2’ Fifteenth

IV Full Mixture

8’ Chorus Tuba (Ch)

8’ Festival Trumpet* (Ant)

8’ Tuba Mirabilis* (Ant)

Chimes* (Ant)

Swell (expressive)

16’ Minor Bourdon*

8’ Open Diapason

8’ Stopped Diapason*

8’ Viola*

8’ Viola Celeste*

8’ Flauto Dolce*

8’ Flute Celeste*

4’ Octave Diapason

4’ Triangular Flute*

22/3’ Nazard*

2’ Recorder*

13/5’ Tierce*

IV Plein Jeu

16’ Waldhorn*

8’ Cornopean

8’ Oboe*

4’ Clarion

8’ Festival Trumpet* (Ant)

8’ Tuba Mirabilis* (Ant)

Tremolo

Choir (expressive)

8’ Geigen (1-12*)

8’ Concert Flute

8’ Dolcan*

8’ Dolcan Celeste*

4’ Octave Geigen

4’ Transverse Flute

2’ Harmonic Piccolo

16’ Bass Clarinet

8’ Clarinet

8’ English Horn

8’ French Horn*

8’ Festival Trumpet* (Ant)

8’ Tuba Mirabilis* (Ant)

8’ Chorus Tuba

Tremolo

Harp*

Antiphonal (unenclosed - floating) (prepared)

8’ Festival Trumpet*

8’ Tuba Mirabilis*

Chimes*

Antiphonal Pedal (prepared)

Pedal

32’ Contre Bourdon*

16’ Open Wood

16’ Major Bourdon

16’ Violone* (Gt)

16’ Minor Bourdon* (Sw)

8’ Principal

8’ Flute

8’ Stopped Flute

4’ Octave

4’ Harmonic Flute (Gt)

32’ Ophicleide*

16’ Trombone (1–12*)

16’ Waldhorn (Sw)

8’ Tromba

8’ Trumpet (Sw)

4’ Oboe (Sw)

7-bell zimbelstern

*= Digital Voices

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Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders, Inc., Denver, North Carolina
Media Presbyterian Church, Media, Pennsylvania

From the senior pastor
If one were to remove all that was sacred from the library of the great music of the Western world, one would be left with a very empty room. And while beautiful music certainly has merit in and of itself, that which is written sola gloria Dei has accompanied the faithful saying their prayers for nearly two millennia. The pipe organ has been at the center of this sacred enterprise for nearly half that time and is undergoing a kind of renaissance in our time. The Elizabeth Strine Memorial Organ is a wonderful instrument that represents the merging of the ancient mechanical art of organ construction with the new cutting edge of digital technology. This is an analogy of what Chesterton called the “romance of orthodoxy,” which is the timeless truth of the gospel heard anew in the language and thought world of every age. This beautiful instrument and renovated steeple are a renewed affirmation of a commitment to proclaim the good news of God’s reconciling work to this community and the world. It also says that we plan to continue saying our prayers at Media Presbyterian indefinitely.
This organ would not exist without the generous contribution of Walter Strine and his family in loving memory of their wife and mother, Elizabeth Strine. Elizabeth Margaret Sterling Strine faithfully served Media Presbyterian Church as organist for over 35 years. A Media High School and Philadelphia Conservatory of Music graduate, “Betty” was both an accomplished accompanist and a renowned piano and organ teacher who taught thousands of Delaware County students. A professional leader who helped to expand our area’s performing arts scene, she served as the first female president of the Media Community Concert Association and was later instrumental in developing the Media Theatre for the Performing Arts. Mrs. Strine died September 7, 2002 at the age of 94. The first question of the Shorter Catechism of the Westminster Confession of Faith asks “What is the chief end of man'” to which is answered: “Man’s chief end is to glorify God and to enjoy him forever.” May this organ be a tool by which this present and future congregations enjoy and glorify God as we move towards eternity.
The Reverend William L. Borror

From the organ task team chair
Our former pipe organ was an instrument put together from several sources. It started life as a turn of the twentieth century orchestral transcription player for the Bock family mansion in Wyncote, Pennsylvania, built by the former Aeolian Company of Boston, Massachusetts. At that time, pipe organs were home entertainment systems for the wealthy. Although it had two manuals and pedals, it was never intended to be a church instrument. In the mid 1930s this instrument was acquired by Media Presbyterian Church and installed in the sanctuary’s front upper right hand chamber. The organ console was attached to the front wall beneath the chamber. To its side was seating for the choir. It served until about 1961, when the organ and choir were relocated to a larger space in the back gallery.
The relocated gallery organ was enlarged to three manuals by a local organ builder. A new console was fabricated by Austin Organs, Inc. of Hartford, Connecticut. Additional pipes and components from various unknown sources were incorporated into the instrument. Concurrently, a small Echo division consisting of five pipe ranks remained in the upper front chamber. Although this instrument served the church until February 2006, it was tonally deficient and incapable of creating a proper sound for worship and meditation. Three years ago, senior pastor Rev. William Borror requested that an organ task team be formed as part of the church capital campaign. The seven-person team assessed the former instrument’s condition and studied remediation alternatives. A busy two years followed, whereby the team considered the church’s musical requirements, studied proper organ design and tone, solicited proposals, and listened to and evaluated typical instruments by each builder. In an April 2006 presentation to the Session, the organ task team recommended that a new instrument be designed and built by Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders of Denver, North Carolina.
The new Zimmer organ, Opus 94, is a three-manual and pedal instrument comprising 96 stops, derived from 23 pipe ranks and 63 digital ranks. The solid walnut console controls five divisions: Great, Swell, Choir, Chancel and Pedal, and has 107 drawknobs, 21 tilting coupler tabs, tracker touch keyboards, an abundant multi-level combination capability to assist with stop registration, and full MIDI capability. The two-tone casework with walnut trim and gold accented pipes harmonizes with the sanctuary’s architectural themes. All new pipes were fabricated in the Zimmer shop or by Luc Ladurantaye of Canada. In addition, selected Aeolian pipe ranks from our former organ were refurbished, rescaled where applicable, and revoiced. The recycled pipes blend perfectly with the other new pipe ranks. All voicing and tonal finishing was done by the Zimmer staff.
The organ’s digital equipment was engineered by Walker Technical Company of Zionsville, Pennsylvania. Thanks to digital technology, we were able to acquire a more versatile organ than if we had adhered to an all-pipe instrument. Due to lack of space, an all-pipe instrument of this same specification would be impossible to install in the gallery.
The tonal orientation of our new organ is based on the American Classic design. Fundamentally, this instrument will allow the organist to perform music of all periods and play it in style. Due to the broad range of music performed in our church, the American Classic tonal design best fulfills our purposes. Upon examination of the stop specification, one can discover fully developed principal and flute choruses, an abundance of solo and chorus reed stops, and multiple celeste ranks. Also included are chimes, a harp and a zimbelstern. The twelve-stop chancel division is a self-contained organ designed to supplement the main gallery organ and provide accompaniment for small vocal ensembles. Hence, after 155 years of existence, Media Presbyterian Church now has an organ specifically designed for its sanctuary.
This new organ would not have happened had it not been for the very generous gift by Walter M. Strine, Sr. Given in memory of his wife, Elizabeth, longtime organist at Media Presbyterian Church and teacher of many piano students, this new instrument enables Media Presbyterian Church to enhance its worship and better serve the cultural community. We thank Cornel Zimmer and his highly talented staff for designing and building this fine organ. Their expertise and work ethic enabled the project to proceed very smoothly. We are grateful for this new relationship with the Zimmer organization.
Special thanks to the organ task team members who gave their time and skills to work with me and address the many questions and concerns that come with such a project: Martha Harriz, Harry Tully, Richard Zensen, Scott MacDonald, and Beth Kalemkarian. During the project, we mourned the loss of Don Harriz, team member and longtime choir member, who would have thoroughly rejoiced at the completion of this project. Additional thanks to the senior craftsmen who did a masterful job in preparing the back gallery to accommodate the new instrument. Special thanks to Michael Trinder, friend and organist colleague, who reviewed the specifications and contributed helpful suggestions. Thanks also to Art Kalemkarian, Jr. (BSEE) for his consultation on electrical and audio issues.
Finally, from my viewpoint as an organist, the installation of a new organ for our church was a very exciting and perhaps a once in a lifetime opportunity. It is an event in which I will always delight. I personally thank Rev. William Borror, the Media Presbyterian Church, and the Strine family for entrusting me to chair this project. May the end result bring glory to God both now and in the future.
Arthur P. Kalemkarian, Sr.
Organ task team chairman
and curator of the Elizabeth M. Strine Memorial Organ

From the organbuilder
It is indeed a thrilling opportunity for an organ builder to work in a warm and inviting space, especially one with the historical significance of Media Presbyterian Church. From the beginning of the project, honoring the architecture of the church was of great importance. The organ was to be primarily an instrument to support the many musical needs of a vibrant congregation, but would also be required to serve as a solo instrument. All of this needed to be accomplished while not overwhelming the choir, which shares the gallery space with the organ. With these requirements in mind, we set out to design an organ with a broad dynamic range, capable of appropriately interpreting a wide variety of musical styles.
Considering the organ’s location, it was important to achieve an audible balance to lead the congregation and to fill the sanctuary without overwhelming the choir. Fortunately, the sanctuary’s acoustics work in the organ’s favor, and the sound projects well from the balcony with normal relaxed voicing. The new casework and pipe façades, designed and built by our company, spread the Great, Swell, Choir and Pedal divisions over three locations in the choir gallery. This spreading of sound sources creates a broader spatial projection of the organ’s resources, and yet the blend heard in the sanctuary is quite pleasing.
The organ has a broad tonal palette of contrasting yet compatible choruses and solo voices. Moderate pipe scales in the Great and Pedal principal choruses react well with the room’s acoustics to provide a solid foundation for congregational singing. Along with the new Great and Pedal principal choruses, the Swell contains six ranks of Aeolian pipework from the previous organ. These diapasons, flutes and strings work well in the accompaniment role of the Swell. The Choir division is of great importance as it is centered directly behind the choir. It has a wealth of accompaniment stops, including several sets of soft celestial stops and a complete principal chorus. Also found in the Choir division is the Tuba, a powerful reed voice that lends itself to solo lines as a crowning reed over full organ.
The Chancel organ provides another visual and spatial aspect to the organ’s presence. It can support choirs that may perform in the chancel area, reinforce the quieter registrations of the main organ for congregational singing with sound sources at two locations in the sanctuary, and lend itself to music that employs echo or antiphonal effects. The Festival Trumpet found in the Chancel division is an appropriate foil to the Tuba found in the Choir, and is extremely flexible as it is under expression with the other stops of the Chancel organ.
We chose to retain several stops from the previous organ that were quite beautiful and would blend well with the new organ. Tonal director Jim Twyne and his assistant, Sheldon Kargis, voiced these pipes, as well as the new pipes built by our own pipe maker, Tommy Linder, and Luc Ladurantaye of Canada. The stunning casework and console were designed by Cornel Zimmer and built by master cabinetmaker George Zong with assistance from David Caldwell. Eric Molenaar completed the wiring of the console and windchests with assistance from Nathan Bryson.
Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders is deeply grateful to Media Presbyterian Church and the Strine family for the opportunity to build a new instrument for this wonderful setting. It is our sincere hope that it will serve this congregation for many generations and will stand as a testament to the glory of God.
Nathan Bryson, project manager, and Jim Twyne, tonal director
Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders, Inc., Denver, North Carolina

GREAT (Unenclosed, Manual II)
16' Gemshorn*
8' Principal 61 pipes
8' English Diapason (Choir)
8' Harmonic Flute*
8' Bourdon 61 pipes
8' Gamba*
8' Gemshorn*
8' Gemshorn Celeste*
4' Octave 61 pipes
4' Prestant (Choir)
4' Flute Ouverte 61 pipes
2  2/3' Twelfth*
2' Fifteenth 61 pipes
1 1/3' Mixture IV 244 pipes
16' Posaune*
8' Festival Trumpet* (non-coupling)
8' Tuba (Choir) (non-coupling)
8' Trumpet*
8' Cromorne* (enclosed with Choir)
Chimes*
Tremulant

SWELL (Expressive, Manual III)
16' Lieblich Gedeckt*
8' Geigen Diapason 61 pipes+
8' Rohrflute 61 pipes
8' Viola 61 pipes+
8' Viola Celeste 61 pipes+
8' Still Gedeckt 61 pipes+
8' Flute Celeste 61 pipes+
4' Principal 61 pipes+
4' Flute Triangulaire*
22'3' Quint*
2' Octavin 61 pipes
13'5' Terz*
2' Plein Jeu IV 244 pipes
16' Basson*
8' Festival Trumpet (Great) (non-coupling)
8' Tuba (Choir)
8' Trompette*
8' Hautbois*
4' Clairon*
Tremulant
Swell to Swell 16'
Swell Unison Off
Swell to Swell 4'

CHOIR (Expressive, Manual I)
16' Dulciana*
8' English Diapason*
8' Gedeckt*
8' Concert Flute*
8' Dulciana*
8' Unda Maris*
8' Erzahler*
8' Erzahler Celeste*
4' Prestant*
4' Koppelflute*
2 2/3' Nazard*
2' Blockflute*
1 3/5' Tierce*
1 1/3' Larigot*
1' Sifflute*
1' Scharff III*
16' Corno di Bassetto*
8' Festival Trumpet (Gt) (non-coupling)
8' Tuba* (non-coupling)
8' Petite Trompette*
8' English Horn*
4' Musette*
Tremulant
Choir to Choir 16'
Choir Unison Off
Choir to Choir 4'
Harp*

CHANCEL (Expressive, floating)
8' Cor de Nuit*
8' Dolcan*
8' Dolcan Celeste*
4' Spitz Principal*
4' Flauto d’Amore*
4' Unda Maris II*
2' Flautino*
8' Flugelhorn*
8' Vox Humana*
Tremulant

CHANCEL PEDAL
16' Bourdon*
8' Bourdon*

PEDAL
32' Contra Bourdon*
32' Contra Violone*
16' Principal*
16' Violone 32 pipes
16' Bourdon*
16' Gemshorn (Great)
16' Lieblich Gedeckt (Swell)
16' Dulciana (Choir)
8' Octave Principal 32 pipes
8' Lieblich Flute (Swell)
8' Gemshorn (Great)
8' Rohr Bourdon*
4' Choral Bass 12 pipes
4' Doppel Flute*
2 2/3' Rauschpfeife II*
32' Contra Basson*
16' Posaune*
16' Basson (Swell)
8' Trumpet (Great)
8' Festival Trumpet (Great)
8' Tuba (Choir)
4' Rohr Schalmei*
4' Clairon*
Chimes (Great)

*Stops by Walker Technical Co.
+Aeolian pipework

 

Paul Callaway, Roy Perry and the Washington Cathedral Organ—A History and Memoir

Neal Campbell

Neal Campbell grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended the University of Maryland. He holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned the DMA in 1996. He held church and synagogue positions in Washington, Virginia, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York, before assuming his present position at St. Luke’s Church, Darien, Connecticut, in 2006. He was for ten years on the adjunct faculty of the University of Richmond, and served three terms on the AGO National Council.

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In preparing the outline for a volume of memoirs reflecting on Aeolian-Skinner organs I have known, it became clear that my involvement with the organ in Washington Cathedral was sufficient in recollection, scope, and primary sources to warrant a chapter all its own. That is what is presented here, along with enough commentary to place the topic in context.
A note about the cathedral’s name: its full ecclesiastical name is the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington. In most of the cathedral’s publications today it is called the Washington National Cathedral. During the era I was familiar with it (ca. 1964–1976), the cathedral was called simply Washington Cathedral in its weekly orders of service and other publications, listings in the local newspapers, and on all Aeolian-Skinner correspondence, so for ease of continuity that is how I refer to it in this article.

The new organ in 1937
Much misinformation and technical ambiguity surrounds the Washington Cathedral organ. This is due to the fact that by the time the cathedral organ was built, Ernest Skinner had left the company he founded in 1901. Also, at some point in the early 1930s the Skinner Organ Company merged with the pipe organ division of the Aeolian Company, creating the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company. The entangling alliances of these dramas are beyond the scope of this article, but it is fascinating reading, and the reader is referred to Charles Callahan’s two books1 for the complete saga as told by the principals in their own words.
In 1932 Aeolian-Skinner built a small two-manual organ as its Opus 883 and lent it to Washington Cathedral while Ernest Skinner was still with the firm. Later in the decade, as the Great Choir was nearing completion, Ernest Skinner’s new company, the Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company, was contracted to build a large four-manual organ for the cathedral, and the small organ on loan was reinstalled by Aeolian-Skinner in Lasell Junior College in Newton, Massachusetts, retaining the 883 opus number. The organ no longer exists.2
By this time the cathedral worship space consisted of the Great Choir and two side chapels, a rather sizable and impressive edifice in itself, in spite of the fact that it represented but 20% of the finished cathedral church as planned. The new organ was built by the Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company of Methuen, Massachusetts, as their Opus 510. This was the company that Ernest Skinner and his son Richmond set up in a factory adjacent to Serlo Organ Hall in Methuen, now known as the Methuen Memorial Music Hall. Edward Searles, an eccentric organ aficionado living in Methuen, commissioned Henry Vaughan to build a new music hall, completed in 1909, to contain the old Boston Music Hall organ. In 1889, on a site adjacent to the hall, Searles had purchased an old textile mill and had Vaughan renovate it to function as an organ factory for James Treat. Treat had worked for Hutchings, Plaisted & Company in Boston, which is probably where Searles met him, as Searles had purchased an organ from Hutchings in 1880.3 From this factory they manufactured organs under the name of the Methuen Organ Company. Skinner purchased the factory and the hall during the Depression, and ran concerts in the hall and built several notable organs in the factory from about 1936 until the factory was destroyed by fire in 1943. Of the organs they built, the one for Washington Cathedral was by far the largest.4
Given the fierce loyalty in some circles to Skinner, and given his longevity (1866–1960), one wonders whether he might have been a stronger competitor had not the Methuen factory been destroyed by fire in 1943. For example, the Skinner organ for the new St. Thomas Church in 1913, Opus 205, was built in collaboration with T. Tertius Noble, and it remained one of Skinner’s favorites. Noble was likewise devoted to Skinner. From the Methuen factory Skinner electrified an old Johnson organ for Noble’s St. Thomas studio. The company also relocated and revised the organ in the Brick Church in New York when the church moved to its new and present location under Clarence Dickinson’s direction in 1940. Dickinson had also played the opening recital on Skinner’s Opus 150 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1911. The records show that most of the work of the new Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company was limited to rebuilding and relocating some of Skinner’s former organs. Of the four-manual organs Skinner built in Methuen, only two survive: the organ in the chapel of Mt. Holyoke College (built in 1938 as his Opus 511, which was rebuilt from his previous organ in the chapel), and the organ in St. Martin’s Church in Harlem, a rebuilt Skinner from a previous location. He did build a completely new four-manual organ for St. John’s Lutheran Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania, but it has since been extensively modified. And a three-manual organ for St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church in New York is extant and unaltered, but unplayable.5
The committee to select a new organ for Washington Cathedral included Noble and Channing Lefebvre of Trinity Church in New York, each enthusiastic supporters of Ernest Skinner. So it is not hard to imagine the cathedral turning to this new company headed by Skinner to build its first organ, in spite of its somewhat shaky organization. According to Ernest Skinner, authentic Skinner organs were available only through the new company building out of Methuen—and this was arguably true. Advertisements in The Diapason and The American Organist about this time barely disguise Skinner’s contempt of the tonal philosophy of the continuing Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, and his letters to the editor are openly hostile to G. Donald Harrison. Harrison for his part never responded in kind, though his business correspondence shows that Skinner’s remarks disturbed him. He ultimately let his own instruments speak for themselves as growing numbers of younger organists, many of whom had studied in Europe during and after World War II, found favor with his classically inspired instruments. Paul Callaway, the cathedral’s new organist, also studied with Dupré in Paris and later served in the war as a bandmaster in the South Pacific.

An organ for the completed
cathedral emerges

The Ernest M. Skinner and Son Opus 510 organ served the cathedral well in essentially unaltered form—albeit with additions—until 1973, at which time the major renovation began, the result of which is the present organ. In 1957, with the projected completion of the nave in sight, the cathedral began a series of consultations with Aeolian-Skinner regarding what steps it should take in providing for the organ. Although G. Donald Harrison designed a small, two-manual organ for the cathedral’s Bethlehem Chapel6 in 1951, he had nothing to do with the design of the main organ, and I have not discovered any comments by him about it. By the late 1950s the crossing, transepts and first three bays of the nave were nearing completion. The big decision before the building committee at that time was whether to build the great central tower over the crossing and let the nave wait its turn, or complete the interior of the nave and build the tower later. There were persuasive arguments for both approaches, but it was decided to build the tower and let the nave wait.
With all of that in mind, it was decided to develop a master plan for the organ with a view to gradually altering and enlarging the organ to accommodate the full cathedral. Joseph S. Whiteford, the new president and tonal director of Aeolian-Skinner, developed this in consultation with the cathedral organ committee, which in reality amounted to Callaway and his associate Richard Wayne Dirksen, reporting to and receiving reactions from the Dean, the Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre, Jr. Whiteford’s scheme specified what might be called a post-Harrison American Classic concept—a standard four-manual layout, together with a large Positiv, independent choruses on manual and pedal divisions, along with a plethora of imitative voices (some new and some saved from the old organ) and softer sounds to accompany the choir. The correspondence shows Whiteford to be in total command of the subject, including convincing arguments surrounding the scientific properties of physics and acoustics involved in the emerging cathedral space.
Responding to a request from the organ committee of the cathedral in February 1957, he says:

The present enclosed volume of air, which has so much to do with the acoustics of both the organ and choir, is between 60 and 70% of the completed Cathedral. Furthermore, the surfaces normal, or adjacent to the organ and choir, are approximately 90% complete. These are the most important surfaces and the most important air volume, since they have the most to do with the projections of the sound to the listener. The air spaces and surfaces at the West end of the Cathedral, for instance, while important as a terminus, do not shape and control the sound in anywhere near the same capacity as the Great Choir and Crossing.
The present organ is truly magnificent in certain respects. It has a wealth of soft voices which create an extremely fine effect. These were the high points of the period in which the organ was built. Since that time tremendous strides have been made in making instruments of this character greatly more flexible with regard to the many periods of music . . . [which] demands primarily, highly focused and clear sound, rather than the nebulous, floating, ethereal sounds of many strings and flutes in which the present organ now abounds.7

From this point Whiteford’s letter continues in language reminiscent of Harrison and Emerson Richards a decade earlier. He posits that the best location for the organ would be the yet-to-be-built west gallery, but that idea never received serious consideration. He then takes the cathedral through a logical long-range plan to accomplish the task, beginning with the console, wiring, and relays (“the nervous system of the organ” he says), then adding the Brustwerk and Positiv divisions nearer the choir and in direct sight line to the congregation, continuing with the replacement and relocation of various portions of the remaining divisions. This letter remained the vision statement for the work on the organ that culminated in 1976, when the full length of the nave was finally completed some 19 years later.
A thorough study of Whiteford and an analysis of his extant organs has yet to be undertaken, but his contributions to Aeolian-Skinner in his own right are considerable and warrant such a study. In fact, Whiteford worked very closely with Harrison during the building of some of the company’s most successful organs, and it often fell to him to implement the details of the schemes Harrison wrought. At the time when Callaway and Whiteford were discussing the future of the cathedral’s organ in 1957–58, some of Whiteford’s own most successful organs were built. Opus 1308 for St. Mark’s Church (now Cathedral) in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Opus 1309 for the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (now called the Community of Christ), in Independence, Missouri, come to mind. These were large four-manual organs in new, highly visible venues—very different in concept, use, and outcome, but important manifestations of Aeolian-Skinner as it emerged following the death of G. Donald Harrison. The Shreveport organ in particular derived much of its distinction through the on-site alterations and finishing of Roy Perry and J. C. Williams8, noted Aeolian-Skinner representatives in that part of the country. Callaway particularly liked the Shreveport organ and measured plans for Washington Cathedral against its success.
It is true that Whiteford did not come to organ building through the traditional apprentice method, and there is no doubt that many of the Aeolian-Skinner craftsmen (several of whom were old enough to be his father) didn’t respond well to what some perceived as Whiteford’s Johnny-come-lately status. But from my experience with many of his organs, I tend to agree with Emerson Richards in his report to Henry Willis III in England when, after Harrison’s death, he wrote “I think that he [Whiteford] has more ability than he is given credit for but he is impatient and for some reason does not inspire confidence—just why I cannot say.”9
By this time Ernest Skinner’s star had set, his attempts failed to set up a shop after the Methuen fire, and even though he was on the scene and continued to offer his diatribes against what he considered the desecrations of his masterpieces, no one paid much attention to him. Still, it is still hard not to feel a bit sorry for the grand old man as he saw his early successes at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, then St. Thomas Church, and now Washington Cathedral fall prey to advancing ideas carried out by the company still bearing his name!
The first step in the lofty long-range plan was to provide a new four-manual console to control the completed organ. The new console was encased in elaborate Gothic panels designed for the previous console by cathedral architect Philip Hubert Frohman, which had pedalboard, swell shoes, and toe studs on a hydraulic elevator. Thus, while the bench height remained the same, the pedalboard could be raised or lowered. Presumably this was to accommodate the disparate heights of the cathedral’s organist and his associate—Paul Callaway, who was unusually short, and Richard Dirksen, who was unusually tall. This 1958 console was referred to by Aeolian-Skinner as Opus 883-A, picking up on the opus number of the small two-manual it lent the cathedral in 1932, even though the original #883 was in place in Newton, Massachusetts, and the Ernest M. Skinner and Son Opus 510 was the only organ in situ.10 Sparse in design by comparison with the digital age of multiple levels of memory, it was luxurious for the time. It had 18 generals, remote combination action, and the usual couplers and pistons to make for ease in playing. The nomenclature engraved on the knobs reflected the projected new organ and only approximately correlated to the actual stops of the 1937 organ it controlled. On the Great, for example, the Prinzipal, Spitz Prinzipal, and Salicional actually drew Diapasons I, II, and III respectively. It was a bit confusing to the traveling weekly recitalist, but it somehow made sense and had the psychological effect of projecting the vision of the new organ. The console functioned in this way until the overhaul began in 1973.
The next step was to add two unenclosed divisions in 1963 named Brustwerk and Positiv with matching pedal in the so-called musicians’ galleries11, lofts above the canopies of the stalls in the Great Choir, in the first bay on either side of the Choir, carrying the job number 883-B. In 1965 as Opus 883-C, the Trompette en Chamade was installed in the triforium over the high altar.12 This was the organ I knew growing up: the 4-manual Ernest M. Skinner and Son, Opus 510, plus the new console, Brustwerk and Positiv, and Trompette en Chamade. During high school and college years I attended weekly services and events at the cathedral, and I played a recital on the Sunday afternoon series in 1971 while I was a senior in high school and a student of William Watkins. Unfortunately, I was too young to have been considered for the extraordinary College of Church Musicians, the graduate-level school founded at the cathedral by Leo Sowerby, which had closed its doors by the time I was of college age. I did know several of the Fellows of the College, and heard all of them as they played their recitals following Evensong on Sunday afternoons. Sowerby himself was often in attendance, and recitals frequently included his music.
While attending the University of Maryland, I did study privately with Paul Callaway for a year and observed his rehearsals and services, and will always be grateful to his memory for his helpful mentorship as I began my trek into the intricacies of the Episcopal Church. Weekly attendance at Evensong and the organ recitals that followed left an indelible memory. The variety of the repertoire and sheer amount of it was remarkable. The choir sang the Responses, Psalms, anthem settings of the canticles, and an anthem at the offertory. On the last Sunday of the month there was a cantata or group of anthems in place of the sermon. At Evensong the Psalms were either sung either to Anglican chant or plainsong, and the service began in one of two ways: 1) a processional hymn, followed by the Responses with the choir in place, followed by the Psalms to Anglican chant; or 2) the Responses were sung where the choir gathered in the north transept, and the Psalms were sung to plainsong in processional accompanied by handbell changes.
In addition to the standard cathedral repertoire of the late 19th and early 20th century, Callaway offered large doses of early music and modern music. I recall one Evensong when all of the music was by Byrd. The movable cathedral chairs for the congregation were arranged facing the north transept with a portable altar, candles, and officiants’ chairs set up on the nave floor, while the choir sang from the gallery above, and the entire service was unaccompanied. New works were also frequently premiered; particularly memorable was the dedication of the central tower in 1964 when new works by Samuel Barber, Lee Hoiby, Stanley Hollingsworth, Roy Hamlin Johnson, John La Montaine, Milford Myhre, Ned Rorem, and Leo Sowerby were given first performances.
Callaway usually played the organ voluntaries himself. His repertoire was vast, and he listed preludes and postludes to each service. The now-familiar practice of the principal musician as conductor, with the assistant doing all the playing, was not then in vogue, and Callaway usually played anthem accompaniments as well. Typically, the assistant organist turned pages, and perhaps played the sermon hymn. In retrospect it is easy to suggest that the technical security of the choir suffered, as they were only able to see Callaway through a series of mirrors. But it was the way things were done at the time, and it offered a window of opportunity to hear this extraordinary organist in the roles of recitalist playing the repertoire, service player, and accompanist. Callaway excelled in each of these capacities following the examples of his mentors, T. Tertius Noble and particularly David McK. Williams.
Even though Callaway was a pupil of T. Tertius Noble at St. Thomas Church, he was great friends with David McK. Williams at St. Bartholomew’s and often spoke of how much he learned from him. Part of Callaway’s duties as Noble’s student was to play the services at St. Thomas Chapel (now All Saints’ Church on East 60th Street) where Evensong on Sunday evening was late enough that he usually turned pages for David McK. Williams at 4:00 Evensong at St. Bartholomew’s. Here he observed in close-up detail Williams’s absolute control from the console, where by all accounts his accompaniments and improvisations were extraordinary. Callaway often told me of the profound effect David’s playing had on him, even though he was careful to say that never studied with him formally. Callaway was approached about the position at St. Bartholomew’s when David McK. Williams was forced to resign in 1946, but having just returned to the cathedral following service in World War II, he declined, and Harold Friedell was appointed.
Callaway’s playing of large doses of Bach chorale preludes and trio sonatas using the Brustwerk and Positiv were models of accuracy, style, liturgical appropriateness, and performance practice not as a subject unto itself, but a natural vehicle for expressive playing. The contrapuntal textures were clear and focused, and the new Brustwerk and Positiv divisions were the ultimate in Joseph Whiteford’s development of the classic Aeolian-Skinner sound in the post-Harrison era. They were characterized by low wind pressures, articulate yet even voicing, pipes of high tin content, and a location within sight lines of the choir and congregation. The Brustwerk and Positiv could be used by themselves in Baroque music; added to the old organ they added immediacy and clarity. In combination with the main organ and Trompette en Chamade, the combined divisions were good vehicles for thrilling performances of Callaway’s hefty doses of romantic and modern organ music. The organ is fairly well documented in LP recordings accompanying the choir and in solo repertoire, including a multi-volume complete performance of the Bach Clavierübung, Callaway playing Part III on the cathedral organ, and Ralph Kirkpatrick playing the other parts on harpsichord. Just before the 1973–76 work began, Callaway recorded an album of music of Gigout, Franck, Tournemire, and Messiaen on the organ, the specific intent being to document the organ prior to the renovation. The plan was then to record the same repertoire on the new organ in 1976, which he did. To my knowledge these LPs have not been transferred to CD, but are fairly easy to find through the various search engines.

The new organ 1973–76
With America’s Bicentennial observances on the horizon, the cathedral in the early 1970s poured considerable energy into completing the nave and organ, and planned several special services that culminated in the “Dedication of the Nave for the Reconciliation of Peoples of Earth,” in the presence of President and Mrs. Ford, and Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip on July 8, 1976. I sang during the service as a member of the University of Maryland Chorus. All aspects of the cathedral’s bicentennial programs were well reported in the media. The actual bicentennial date, July 4, 1976, was a Sunday, and the front page of the Style section of The Washington Post featured a picture of Roy Perry in the organ blowing a pipe, and a lengthy article by Paul Hume saying:

When Queen Elizabeth walks down the aisle of Washington Cathedral Thursday morning, she will be hearing one of the greatest pipe organs in the world . . . Perry worked among the thousands of pipes with the precision and infinite care of a jeweler cutting a priceless diamond so that its facets would produce the greatest possible beauty. And like the diamond, the sounds of the Washington Cathedral’s organ pipes can be expected to last, with care, indefinitely . . . they now stand ready . . . to create new beauty in a newly completed setting. There are those who know no beauty in all of music that can surpass theirs.13

Aeolian-Skinner had just ceased operation when the cathedral began its work in 1973. Joseph Whiteford, even though he retired from Aeolian-Skinner before its denouement, continued to be the person with whom the cathedral (that is, Callaway) corresponded regarding the new work, and it was always assumed that he would oversee the work for Aeolian-Skinner, even though he was officially retired. Whiteford, the son of a prominent Washington attorney and a graduate of St. Alban’s School on the cathedral close, was a good friend of Callaway, and it was natural that these two would be the point persons in the cathedral’s ever-evolving planning of the organ. Reading the 1957 correspondence, we see that the cathedral’s estimated time line for the completion of the cathedral was optimistic by several years. In hindsight, it is providential that the cathedral’s work was delayed. Had the cathedral contracted to accomplish its ambitious scheme with Aeolian-Skinner during its final days, the results would likely have included artistic difficulties and financial disasters.14
Roy Perry’s role in the cathedral organ renovation was an afterthought. Many of the former Aeolian-Skinner men who weren’t retired were still in business as suppliers to the trade. It was decided to gather a consortium—the cathedral’s term—of workers to design, build, voice, and finish the necessary pipes and chests, all under the direction of Whiteford, following the plan of his 1957 design. The one catch was that Whiteford, who lived in California, did not fly and apparently did not want to relocate to Washington for the long periods of time the job required. Whiteford pitched the idea to Callaway that Perry, as one of Aeolian-Skinner’s most successful field representatives and finishers, be the on-site supervisor and finisher for the cathedral, working under his (Whiteford’s) direction from California via telephone and hard copy correspondence. It is poignant to read Perry’s negotiations with the cathedral regarding his compensation. At this time Perry was retired and drawing Social Security payments. He explained to Dirksen—who was the cathedral’s agent in business and logistical matters pertaining to the new organ—that if in any given month he earned more than $175 his Social Security would be knocked out for the month. He therefore suggested that for the duration of the project, he be paid “$175 per month as a salary, plus expenses, for a total of $5,875 for the period April 1973–December 1975,”15 and the cathedral agreed to this schedule of payments.
In short order the cathedral had letters of agreement with Aeolian-Skinner pipemaker Thomas Anderson and head flue voicer John Hendricksen to provide the necessary new pipes. The new chests were made by the Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company of East Kingston, New Hampshire, the continuing company Skinner started when he left Aeolian-Skinner. Anthony Bufano, another Aeolian-Skinner alumnus, who was by then curator of the organs in the Riverside Church in New York, re-covered many of the pouches with Perflex and facilitated the necessary console details. Other structural components were entrusted to Arthur Carr and the Durst Organ Supply Company of Erie, Pennsylvania. All local arrangements were coordinated through the Newcomer Organ Company and their outstandingly gifted foreman Robert Wyant, who had taken care of the cathedral organ for many years. Among these principals—the cathedral (usually via Dirksen), Newcomer in Washington, Whiteford in California, Perry in Texas, Anderson and Hendricksen in Massachusetts, Bufano in New York, and Carr in Erie—flowed frequent communications for three years: correspondence, pipe orders, voicing notes, shop talk of every kind, travel arrangements, and occasional items of humor or personal and family notes of interest. In spite of intense seriousness of purpose and high artistic standards, it is obvious that there was a sense of family about this consortium.
It was a laudable plan that attracted huge interest in the organ community in Washington and elsewhere as word spread. It called for several unusual features to be built, retaining a large portion of the existing Ernest M. Skinner and Son divisions, and the Aeolian-Skinner Brustwerk and Positiv divisions located in the musicians’ galleries. The Trompette en Chamade over the high altar was of course to remain.
The Great in the first bay north triforium was to consist largely of new pipework intended to complement the two Baroque divisions. The tonal relationships (and to a large degree the pipes as well) of the three enclosed divisions were to remain, because of their proven effectiveness in accompanying the choir. Seated at the console, these divisions were located directly above the organist’s line of sight. Directly above, behind the case in the second bay north triforium was the Swell, followed by the Choir and Solo, in the succeeding third and fourth bay triforium galleries. The Pedal, located throughout the south triforium, was to be a combination of new and existing pipes, including the four full-length 32′ stops.
A small division, a typical Ernest Skinner Echo, which was played with the Swell division, was located in the fifth bay south triforium, opposite the main organ near the high altar. This was the location of the original organ that Aeolian-Skinner lent to the cathedral in 1932. It consisted of an 8′–4′ five-rank Choeur des Violes, an 8′ Éoliènne Céleste, and an 8′ Voix Humaine.16 To this was added a unique stop Perry developed with the curious name Flûte d’Argent II. Perry told me that once he had found an interesting flute stop built by Estey called Zartflöte or Silver Flute, which was a tapered flute that was also harmonic. It had a cool, clear sound that Perry thought would sound good with a celeste added to it, so he ordered it in some of the organs he finished for Aeolian-Skinner.17 I was present the night Perry pitched the idea to Dirksen to add this unique stop to the organ. Wayne liked it and said he would find the money somehow; it wasn’t cheap! In Roy’s previous use of this stop he called it Harmonic Spitzflöte II, or simply Silver Flute. Whiteford was fanatical about nomenclature and insisted that stops in the Great be given German names, and those of the Swell, French. So, this new stop became in Whiteford’s nomenclature Flûte d’Argent—Silver Flute. In French, of course, argent has more than one meaning, and many a visiting organist has wondered if it was a joke that the cathedral organ contained a “Money Flute.” It was an expensive stop to build and voice, so the double meaning may indeed be appropriate.
One of the chief goals of the new organ was to provide more sound directly into the crossing and nave, so it was decided to build a new division of significant tonal properties in the first bay south triforium, directly opposite the Great. This enclosed division had swell shade openings into the chancel and south transept, and was built with funds solicited in memory of Leo Sowerby, so the division became known as the Sowerby Memorial Swell division, since it was also to be played via the Swell manual. In effect, if not in planning, it was a Bombarde or Grand Choeur division—small but telling, consisting of a principal chorus topped by two mixtures, a chorus of French reeds, and an exceptional string celeste of special construction that extended all the way to 16′ C in the unison and celeste ranks.
Therefore, the Swell manual played pipes located in three locations: 1) the main Swell directly in front of the organist behind the north case, 2) the Sowerby Swell, opposite the Great, and 3) the Echo Swell in the fifth bay south triforium. Roy Perry told me that the job ought to have had a five-manual console, and it is easy to understand the organizational logic in such a plan. The organ would have benefited from having the Bombarde (Sowerby division) and Echo occupying the fifth manual, but in the pre-digital, pre-solid state age, it would have been enormously expensive, if not impossible, and the big plan did call for retaining the 1958 console. This brings up the important point that consistently stands out in the project: no expense was spared on what was done, but nothing was done that was considered unnecessary, and console rearrangements fell into that category. As it was, the total cost of the new 1973–76 organ was projected to be $216,000,18 which would equal a 2007 value of between 1.3 and 1.8 million dollars.19
Other unusual features included extending the 32′ Bombarde into the 64′ range for three notes for pieces ending in B, B-flat, or A. I recall that these three notes were ineffective, being half-length metal pipes extended from a full-length wooden 32′ rank. There weren’t many miscalculations in the project, but in a job of this scope a few were inevitable—some humorous, others serious. Perry may be best remembered for his beautifully finished celestes, but he was equally adventurous in designing bold, complex mixtures.20 For the cathedral he and Whiteford designed the unusual VI–X Terzzymbel intended initially to flank the Trompette en Chamade over the high altar, but eventually placed with the Great. He also called for an unusual mixture in the Solo called None Kornett to replace Skinner’s full mixture, but (in his words) “it was a vast disappointment on the voicing machine, so you may prefer to abandon these two top boards and re-engrave the [draw] knob PERRY’S FOLLY.”21 On the other hand, the use of Perflex, which Dirksen insisted upon, stung the cathedral badly in ensuing years, as it did many other jobs of the era when everyone was desperate to find a substitute for chest leather. In the 1960s some New York churches found that leather lasted less than a decade. As it turned out, Perflex itself was indestructible, but there seemed to be no satisfactory way to glue it to the wooden chests, so in short order Perflex was deemed even less suitable than leather.
The 1973–76 organ in Washington Cathedral is really the final statement of Aeolian-Skinner’s concept of the American Classic Organ. Among the cathedral consortium it was informally referred to as Opus Posthumous. Perry went a step further and printed stationery in jest (I think!) with the title “Organbuilders Anonymous” in a shaded copperplate font, listing the names of those taking part: “Roy Perry, Most Anonymous; Tommy Anderson, Almost Anonymous; John Hendricksen, All But Anonymous; Bob Wyant, Nearly Anonymous; and Honorary Anonymouses: Joe Whiteford, Wayne Dirksen, Harold Newcomer, Kim Bolten [sic], Arthur Carr, Jim Williams, Tony Bufano, Carl Basset [sic], Adolph Zajic, Bon Smith.”22 It was Perry’s hope to actually build organs in his post-cathedral days with this consortium. He and Jim Williams had previously built a few organs independent of Aeolian-Skinner using the services of several of them. Humor aside, this is as complete a list of workers as may be found anywhere else in the documentation of the building of the organ. They are all persons associated either with Aeolian-Skinner or the cathedral, with the exception of Adolph Zajic, the well-known reed voicer still working at Möller at the time, and the independent Carr. The one piece of the puzzle missing in the original consortium of Aeolian-Skinner alumni was a reed voicer. Oscar Pearson, the famous voicer who created the State Trumpet at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine23 was still alive, but had retired and was deaf.24 Herb Stimson, Aeolian-Skinner’s last reed voicer, died just about the time Aeolian-Skinner went out of business. So, for the cathedral, Möller built and Zajic voiced the Great reeds.
Roy Perry was central to the tonal outcome of the cathedral organ. I would venture to say that his influence was greater than that of Whiteford, who never made the trip to Washington either during the work or after. The correspondence often shows Perry dutifully asking permission to make various alterations, some slight, others significant. Except for stop nomenclature, it appears that Whiteford never tried to second-guess him. Perry’s on-the-job adjustments, combined with his natural gifts as a finisher, resulted in the unique sound stamped with his genius.
I had nothing official to do with the cathedral or its organ project. I had met Roy Perry in the summer of 1972 when I was a finalist in the AGO National Organ Playing Competition at its national convention in Dallas. My teacher, William Watkins, knew Perry and had played and recorded at his church in Kilgore, the First Presbyterian Church—home of the well-known Aeolian-Skinner organ, which in the 1950s and 60s was prominently featured in company sales literature and on the “King of Instruments” series of recordings. Volume II has recordings of both Perry and Watkins on the Kilgore organ, and Volume X featured the Kilgore organ and choirs. It was through these recordings that Perry’s name became known outside of the Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana territory he covered for Aeolian-Skinner. The English choral repertoire on Volume X is standard fare now, but was revelatory at the time. However, it was in the American music that Perry used the organ to greatest effect, notably in his accompaniment of David McK. Williams’s anthem In the year that King Uzziah died, and Bruce Simonds’s Prelude on Iam sol recedit igneus, which he introduced to the organ world through the recording.25 Watkins thought it important that I meet Perry and see the Kilgore organ, and that was the source of our association.
When I learned of Perry’s involvement in the cathedral project I, still a student living in Washington, offered to meet him at the airport, run errands for him, and in the course of events introduced him to my fellow organists and showed him around town. His trips were a whirlwind of activity and were red letter days on my calendar.
On the one hand I was fortunate to have been able to simply sit and watch him at work finishing the various stops as installments of new pipework arrived. He listened as I played the pieces I was working on and came to some of my church services. His musical insights from his perspective as an organbuilder were valuable, especially regarding registration.
His knowledge of the repertoire was vast and greatly belied his humble upbringing. In designing several stops for the cathedral he would have special pieces of music in mind, and would often request that I have such and such a piece ready when such and such a stop arrived. For the new strings in the Sowerby Swell, he wanted to hear Duruflé’s Veni creator Adagio. And he wanted to hear Bach’s chorale prelude Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659, beginning with the accompaniment on the new celestes, especially the opening pedal notes on the new 16′ Violoncelle Celeste against the boldest cornet in the organ.26 As the project completion drew near toward Holy Week 1975, he was particularly looking forward to the full ensembles in Langlais’ Les Rameaux, which was on the program for Palm Sunday. And he was irritated when Wayne Dirksen (in fact a fine organist who was in the class of Virgil Fox at the Peabody Institute) on Good Friday played Bach’s O Mensch bewein with the cantus firmus, in his words, “played on a lard-butted clarinet, with four cornets in the organ to choose from!”—a curious admonition given his preferred registration for the Bach Nun komm! He did love the cornet combination for Bach ornamented chorales, and I think he perceived string celestes, as a family of tone in his design, as an equally viable and appropriate accompaniment as are flutes or principals, and—who knows—he may have a point. He was a wonderful teacher, vivid in imagination, yet grounded in a thorough knowledge of the repertoire. I still feel his influence when practicing and playing.
On the other hand, in social settings stories of the personalities he had known and worked with flowed in a heady ether wherever we went. Early in his career he had come to New York to study with Hugh McAmis, and it was then that he met David McK. Williams and struck up their lifelong friendship. He told of how his involvement with Aeolian-Skinner began by accident and lasted for 25 years, during which time his sales amounted to roughly 25% of Aeolian-Skinner’s business, and he was full of humorous anecdotes of Donald Harrison’s trips through the Southwest on various jobs.
Likewise, for his part, Harrison had great regard for Perry and enjoyed his trips to Texas, as he relates in a letter to Henry Willis in England:

Roy Perry, or Perriola, as he is affectionately referred to in our organization, has supervised, with the aid of Jack Williams and his son, most of our important installations in Texas. He is an accomplished organist and has a wonderful ear. He is a top notch finisher and during my periodic visits to Texas I cannot remember a time when I have had to suggest that something might have been done a little differently. He just has that kind of organ sense.
I think you will also enjoy him as a personality. He knows some good southern stories and, by the way, he is an expert at southern hospitality. I always look forward to my trips down to his neck of the woods as we have a glorious time just waiting for sundown to start on a little nourishment.27

As the work was in the planning stages at the cathedral, I remember several of us being given a tour through the organ. Roy was explaining where the various stops and divisions were to be located or relocated. He was particularly proud of two sets of string celestes he was designing.28 These were to be of varying scales, very broad in tone, becoming narrower as the notes descended in the compass, and having 2/7 mouth construction, a mouth width usually found only on principal pipes. He said we would “smell the rosin” when we heard it. Being the eager and easily malleable students we were, we expressed appropriate awe, and he said rather matter of factly “well boys, the way I see it, if you can’t fill the house with string tone you’re just not sittin’ in the front of the bus.”
Roy was a character! He was part of that vanishing (vanished?) breed of larger than life extrovert, totally uninhibited Louisiana Cajun humorists, the likes of which Episcopal Washington had never seen. Though I was not part of it, he had a non-musical, non-organ-related social orbit involving the higher echelons of the cathedral hierarchy. Usually his trips, which brought him to Washington two or three times a year, sometimes for four or five weeks’ duration, included a big party where he cooked his famous Louisiana gumbo. These were the talk of the cathedral work force, and not just the music office. Accounts of these gatherings and recipes are also mentioned in the correspondence, taking their place along side voicing notes and complex cathedral schedules.
Roy made friends easily with all of the cathedral staff, especially the vergers and volunteer tour guides called Aides. He regaled us at dinner one night telling of a sight he swore he witnessed. A very tall “professional Texan” as he called him, complete with Stetson hat in hand, tooled leather cowboy boots, shirt with pearl buttons, and long, thick, white sideburns (think Jock Ewing in the nighttime soap opera “Dallas”) came up to Ginny Hammond, the Head Aide. He drew himself up as he took in the wide vistas of the transepts, the newly completed nave, then the high altar with the Trompette en Chamade atop, and said in his thickest Texan drawl, “Tell me, ma’m, is this yer MAIN SANC-tu-ar-y?”
At some point midway through the work, word got out that this former Aeolian-Skinner representative and finisher was nearby and consulting offers began to appear. He actually designed a rather interesting organ for All Saints’ Church in Chevy Chase, where I was assistant organist. The case was made that we could get a new organ in essentially the same way as the cathedral had via the consortium, but nothing came of the plan. I accompanied him to the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, which had sought his advice regarding their organ.29 He also did a thorough inspection and report for All Saints’ Church in Worcester, Massachusetts,30 and—in 1977 after the cathedral work was complete—made a visit and proposed additions at St. George’s-by-the-River, in Rumson, New Jersey.31 Also in 1977 he did what turned out to be his final work in some tonal refinishing to the organ in Church of the Epiphany in Washington, D.C.32 He died in May 1978.
I moved away from the city of my youth in 1976 just as the Bicentennial furor was dying down. I did return to play a Sunday afternoon recital at the cathedral in 1977 in a program of music I had coached with Roy. I have not played the organ since, although I have occasionally attended services at the cathedral when traveling, notably at the memorial service for Dirksen in July 2003, and have heard it on the telecasts of funerals and memorial services of national figures. The organ had its eccentricities and could easily be mismanaged by visiting recitalists lacking practice time. But the sound was still unmistakable as a creation imbued with Roy Perry’s magic and the Aeolian-Skinner aesthetic. The organ in its post-1976 state has been featured in several recordings, notably the series of live Sunday afternoon recitals on the JAV label, where the performances of Erik Wm. Suter, Gerre Hancock, Peter Richard Conte, Ann Elise Smoot, Todd Wilson, Daniel Roth, and John Scott display the great variety, contrast, and depth of this unique organ.
In reading the correspondence and technical data surrounding the creation of the cathedral organ, what impresses me most is the humility tinged with pride, innate talent, sense of history, exuberance, and exceeding devotion to the cathedral that this unique consortium exhibited. It is summed up best by Wayne Dirksen himself in a report as the work was nearing completion:

We began twenty-six months ago with the security of long planning (since 1957), the thorough experience and knowledge of two principal consultants, with confidence in our craftsmen and maintainers, and with ample time to correlate and coordinate a complex project toward the perfect result we believed possible.
Now the largest part is accomplished. During this Holy Week 1975, thousands will hear with their ears what we knew in our hearts: that an incomparably magnificent pipe organ will grace this cathedral for centuries to come, the result of extraordinary talents, devotion, and skills we have combined for its creation.33

The 1937 Ernest M. Skinner and Son Organ, Opus 510

GREAT
16′ Diapason 61
8′ First Diapason 61
8′ Second Diapason 61
8′ Third Diapason 61
Muted String Ensemble
8′ Principal Flute 61
8′ Clarabella 61
8′ Viola 61
8′ Erzähler 61
51⁄3′ Quint 61
4′ Octave 61
4′ Principal 61
4′ Harmonic Flute 61
22⁄3′ Twelfth 61
2′ Fifteenth 61
IV Harmonics 244
VII Plein Jeu 427
III Cymbale 183
16′ Posaune 61
8′ Tromba 61
8′ Trumpet 61
4′ Clarion 61

SWELL
16′ Bourdon 73
16′ Dulciana 73
8′ First Diapason 73
8′ Second Diapason 73
8′ Claribel Flute 73
8′ Gedackt 73
8′ Viol d’Orchestre 73
8′ Viol Celeste 73
8′ Salicional 73
8′ Voix Celeste 73
8′ Flauto Dolce 73
8′ Flute Celeste 61
Muted String Ensemble
8′ Aeoline 73
8′ Unda Maris 73
4′ Octave 73
4′ Harmonic Flute 61
4′ Gemshorn 73
4′ Violin 73
4′ Unda Maris II 122
22⁄3′ Twelfth 61
2′ Fifteenth 61
V Cornet 305
V Full Mixture 305
III Carillon 183
16′ Posaune 73
8′ Trumpet 73
(light wind)
8′ Cornopean 73
8′ Flügel Horn 73
8′ Vox Humana 73
4′ Clarion 61
Tremolo

CHOIR
16′ Gemshorn 73
8′ Diapason 73
8′ Concert Flute 73
8′ Gemshorn 73
8′ Viol d’Orchestre 73
8′ Viol Celeste 73
8′ Kleiner Erzähler II 134
4′ Harmonic Flute 73
4′ Gemshorn 73
4′ Violin 73
22⁄3′ Nazard 61
2′ Piccolo 61
13⁄5′ Tierce 61
11⁄7′ Septieme 61
III Carillon 183
16′ Orchestral Bassoon 61
8′ Trumpet 73
(small orchestral type)
8′ Clarinet 61
8′ Orchestral Oboe 61
Tremolo
Celesta 61
Celesta Sub 61

SOLO
8′ Flauto Mirabilis 73
8′ Gamba 73
8′ Gamba Celeste 73
4′ Orchestral Flute 61
VII Compensating Mixture 427
16′ Ophicleide 73
16′ Corno di Bassetto 12
8′ Tuba Mirabilis 73
8′ Trumpet 73
8′ French Horn 61
8′ Cor d’Amour 61
8′ English Horn 61
8′ Corno di Bassetto 61
4′ Clarion 73
Tremolo

PEDAL
32′ Diapason 12
32′ Violone 12
16′ Diapason 32
16′ Diapason (metal) 32
16′ Contra Bass 32
16′ Violone 32
16′ Bourdon 32
16′ Echo Lieblich Sw
16′ Gemshorn Ch
16′ Dulciana Sw
8′ Octave 12
8′ Principal (metal) 12
8′ Gedackt 12
8′ Still Gedeckt Sw
8′ Cello 12
8′ Gemshorn Ch
51⁄3′ Quinte Ch
4′ Super Octave 32
4′ Still Flute 32
4′ Still Gedeckt Sw
V Mixture 160
IV Harmonics 128
32′ Bombarde 12
32′ Fagotto 12
16′ Trombone 32
16′ Fagotto 32
8′ Tromba 12
8′ Fagotto 12
4′ Clarion 12
4′ Fagotto 12

Source: Aeolian-Skinner Archives <http://www.aeolian-skinner.110mb.com&gt; (accessed 16 September 2008). See also The Diapason, March 1937, pp. 1–2.

The New 1973–76 Organ
GREAT First bay, north triforium

16′ Diapason
16′ Violon (ext)
16′ Bourdon
8′ Prinzipal
8′ Spitz Prinzipal
8′ Waldflöte
8′ Holz Bordun
8′ Salicional
8′ Violon
8′ Erzähler
4′ Spitzoktav
4′ Koppel Flöte
22⁄3′ Quinte
2′ Super Oktav
2′ Blockflöte
II Sesquialtera
IV Klein Mixtur
IV–V Mixtur
IV Scharf
VI–X Terzzymbel
16′ Bombarde
8′ Posthorn
8′ Trompette
4′ Clairon
8′ Trompette en Chamade (Solo)
8′ Tuba Mirabilis (Solo)

CHOIR Third bay, north triforium
16′ Gemshorn
8′ Chimney Flute
8′ Viola Pomposa
8′ Viola Pomposa Celeste
8′–4′ Choeur des Violes V (Sw)
8′ Viole Céleste II
8′ Kleiner Erzähler II
4′ Principal
4′ Harmonic Flute
4′ Fugara
22⁄3′ Rohrnasat
2′ Hellflöte
13⁄5′ Terz
III–IV Mixture
II Glockenspiel
16′ Orchestral Bassoon
8′ Trumpet
8′ Cromorne
4′ Regal
8′ Tuba Mirabilis (Solo)
8′ Trompette en Chamade (Solo)
8′ Posthorn (Gt)
Harp
Celesta
Zimbelstern
Tremolo

SWELL
First bay, south triforium
(Sowerby Memorial)

16′ Violoncelle (ext)
8′ Montre
8′ Violoncelle Céleste II
4′ Prestant
V Plein Jeu
IV Cymbale
16′ Bombarde
8′ Trompette
4′ Clairon
Second bay, north triforium
16′ Flûte Courte
8′ Bourdon
8′ Flûte à Fuseau
8′ Viole de Gambe
8′ Viole Céleste
8′ Voix Céleste II
8′ Flute Celeste II
4′ Octave
4′ Flûte Traversière
22⁄3′ Nasard
2′ Octavin
13⁄5′ Tierce
IV Petit Jeu
16′ Posaune
8′ 2ème Trompette
8′ Hautbois
8′ Cor d’Amour
4′ 2ème Clairon
Tremolo
Fifth bay, south triforium
8′ Flûte d’Argent II
8′–4′ Choeur des Violes V
8′ Éoliènne Céleste II
8′ Voix Humaine
Tremolo

SOLO Fourth bay, north triforium
8′ Diapason
8′ Flauto Mirabilis II
8′ Gamba
8′ Gamba Celeste
4′ Orchestral Flute
VII Full Mixture
16′ Corno di Bassetto (ext)
8′ Trompette Harmonique
8′ French Horn
8′ Corno di Bassetto
8′ English Horn
8′ Flügel Horn
4′ Clairon Harmonique
8′ Trompette en Chamade
8′ Tuba Mirabilis
16′ Posthorn (Gt)
8′ Posthorn (Gt)
Tremolo

PEDAL
First through fourth bays, south triforium
32′ Subbass (ext)
32′ Kontra Violon (ext)
16′ Contre Basse
16′ Principal
16′ Diapason (Gt)
16′ Bourdon
16′ Violon (Gt)
16′ Violoncelle (Sw)
16′ Gemshorn (Ch)
16′ Flûte Courte (Sw)
102⁄3′ Quinte (from Gross Kornett)
8′ Octave
8′ Diapason (Gt)
8′ Spitzflöte
8′ Gedackt
8′ Violoncelle Céleste II (Sw)
8′ Flûte Courte (Sw)
51⁄3′ Quinte
4′ Choralbass
4′ Cor de Nuit
2′ Fife
II Rauschquint
IV Fourniture
III Acuta
IV Gross Kornett
64′ Bombarde Basse (ext)
32′ Contra Bombarde
32′ Contra Fagotto (ext)
16′ Ophicleide
16′ Bombarde (Sw)
16′ Fagotto
8′ Trompette
8′ Bombarde (Sw)
8′ Posthorn (Gt)
8′ Tuba Mirabilis (So)
8′ Trompette en Chamade (So)
4′ Clairon
2′ Zink

BRUSTWERK
First bay, north gallery
8′ Spitz Prinzipal
4′ Praestant
22⁄3′ Koppel Nasat
2′ Lieblich Prinzipal
IV–VI Mixtur
8′ Rankett

POSITIV First bay, south gallery
8′ Nason Gedackt
4′ Rohrflöte
2′ Nachthorn
13⁄5′ Terz
11⁄3′ Larigot
1′ Sifflöte
IV Zymbel
4′ Rankett (Brustwerk)
Tremulant

GALLERY PEDAL
First bays, north and south galleries
16′ Gedacktbass (ext)
8′ Oktav
8′ Nason Gedackt (Positiv)
4′ Superoktav (ext)
4′ Rohrflöte (Positiv)
16′ Rankett (Brustwerk)
4′ Rankett (Brustwerk)

Source: Washington Cathedral website <http://www.nationalcathedral/org&gt; (accessed 16 September 2008)

Annotated bibliography and sources
Callahan, Charles. The American Classic Organ: A History in Letters. Richmond: Organ Historical Society, 1990.
______________. AEolian-Skinner Remembered: A History in Letters. Minneapolis: Randall Egan, 1996.
Two volumes of letters, commentary, shop notes, and photographs, which chronicle the history of the Skinner and Aeolian-Skinner Organ Companies. Aeolian-Skinner Remembered also has essays and reminiscences by G. Donald Harrison’s son and other former Aeolian-Skinner employees.
Diapason, The. Arlington Heights, IL, Scranton Gillette Communications, Inc.
Feller, Richard T., and Fishwick, Marshall W. For Thy Great Glory. Culpeper, VA: the Community Press of Culpeper, 1965, 1979.
A history of the construction of the cathedral.
Workman, William G., and Dirksen, Wayne, comp. The Gloria in excelsis Tower Dedication Book. Washington Cathedral, 1964. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: R64-1214, with recording.
Contains the complete orders of service for the dedication of the central tower on Ascension Day, 1964, together with the music commissioned for the occasion.
“Guide to Washington Cathedral, A.” The National Cathedral Association, 1965. Library of Congress Catalogue Number 25-2355.
Contains much information and photographs about the cathedral’s music and organs, including a stoplist of the organ at that time. Also contains information about the College of Church Musicians.
“Guide to Washington Cathedral, A.” The National Cathedral Association, 1953.
Contains a photograph of the original Ernest M. Skinner and Son console, and other information on the organ also available in the 1940 edition.
Kinzey, Allen, and Lawn, Sand, comp., E. M. Skinner / Aeolian-Skinner Opus List. Richmond: Organ Historical Society, 1997.
Opus list and notes on the Skinner Organ Company, Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, Ernest M. Skinner and Son Organ Company, and organs built by Carl Bassett, Skinner’s foreman.
Morgan, William. The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan. New York: The Architectural History Foundation, 1983.
Biography and analysis of the work of the noted architect, who was the first architect of Washington Cathedral and architect of Serlo Organ Hall, now known as Methuen Memorial Music Hall. Includes an entire chapter on the patronage of Edward Searles in Methuen.
“View Book of Washington Cathedral, A.” The National Cathedral Association, 1940.
Contains information about and photographs of the new organ.
Roy Perry Papers.
Files pertaining to the building of the cathedral organ 1973–76, consisting of correspondence and technical data. In the possession of the author.
Liner notes on recordings of the cathedral organ 1964–1976.

Web sites
Aeolian-Skinner Archives
<http://aeolian-skinner.110mb.com&gt;
Opus lists, notes, and photographs of organs built by the Skinner Organ Company, Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, and Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company. Based on material in the Kinsey-Lawn OHS book of opus lists.
Vermont Organ Academy
<http://www.vermontorganacademy.com&gt;
Writings and photographs of Roy Perry from the archives of First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas. “Aeolian-Skinner Legacy” series of recordings.
Washington National Cathedral
<http://www.nationalcathedral.org&gt;
Music pages include information on the cathedral organs.

Cover feature

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Russell & Co. Organ Builders,
Chester, Vermont
First Presbyterian Church, Ithaca, New York

From the builder
The term magnum opus is often used in the organbuilding trade to denote the apotheosis of an organbuilder’s career. It is an impressive expression, and the organs that receive such an accolade are usually equally impressive. It is interesting to note, however, that the distinction of magnum opus can be an ephemeral one. What a builder thinks of as his ‘biggest and best’ may be eclipsed just a few years later with an opus magnum novum. In any event, at the outset of a project an organbuilder has termed his magnum opus, he inevitably approaches the creation of the instrument with great reverence and dedication. When we received the contract to build our opus 47 for First Presbyterian Church in Ithaca, New York, we knew this would be our magnum opus and, regardless of whether a grander organ would leave our shop in years to come, took on the project in this way, making no little plans to design and build a pipe organ worthy of this special moniker.
First Presbyterian is a grand Romanesque stone structure built in 1894 and located in the heart of downtown Ithaca. The sanctuary seats 500 under a high barrel vault, coffered and richly ornamented with plaster florets. The church enjoys a large, vibrant congregation and an equally active music program, including a sizable adult choir, children’s choir, and handbell choir. In conjunction with the organ project, the sanctuary was renovated to remedy the less-than-desirable acoustics. Previously, the entire floor of the room was carpeted, and the pews were cushioned in heavy velvet. A completely new ceramic tile floor, new and less-absorbent seat cushions, hardened wall surfaces, and a new rear wall designed to reflect sound randomly all contribute to a lively and supportive acoustic, approaching three seconds of reverberation.
The preceding instrument began its life in 1901 as Austin’s opus 39—a three-manual instrument of 47 ranks, including a five-rank Echo organ added in 1930. The organ was installed in the front of the church behind a handsome white oak case crowned with a magnificent central tower rising nearly the full height of the sanctuary. Designed in traditional early 20th-century style, the organ contained the typical myriad of foundation stops, with sparse trimmings of upperwork, undergirded by an ample and satisfying pedal department. Sixty-five years later, Austin was called to rebuild the organ in keeping with the tonal thinking of the day. The result was completely new pipework typical of late 1960s construction and voicing; the Echo organ, thanks to the organist, Dorothy Arnold, was retained and unchanged. With many manual stops sharing common basses, and the pedal division largely borrowed from the manuals, there was little foundation tone. The scaling of the new pipework exacerbated this condition, with halving ratios that resulted in a thin bass and a treble ascendancy unwelcome in so dry a room. The impressive 16¢ and 8¢ 1901 façade was completely replaced by much narrower-scaled pipes with English bay mouths, leaving large, odd-looking gaps between the pipes.
By the 1990s, the organ proved to be inadequate for the many demands the church’s music program placed upon it. Mounting mechanical problems toward the end of the decade that rendered the instrument increasingly unreliable led the church’s organist, George Damp, and the director of music, Larry Doebler, to realize that a completely new instrument was needed to correct the tonal inadequacies of the existing instrument and to fill the needs of the extensive music program. The church named John Schwandt as consultant on the project. Dr. Schwandt recommended requesting proposals from lesser-known builders of high quality. After a national search, Russell & Co. of Chester, Vermont was selected in late 2002 to build the new organ.
A profusion of new romantic organs in recent years, as well as a renewed reverence and interest in the work of early 20th-century American builders, specifically Skinner, was the milieu for the design and construction of this instrument. While Russell & Co. have built several large instruments along French romantic lines, an American romantic/ symphonic organ presented a new challenge: how to take all the lessons learned from our previous instruments, combine them with a century of progress in American organbuilding, and produce an organ capable of accompanying congregational song, playing choral and orchestral literature, and still be able to play the solo organ repertoire, all the while staying true to a ‘symphonic’ ideal.
This challenge was met valiantly with an effective partnership between our firm and George Damp. Having spent all his professional life as an organist, teacher, and church musician, George brought years of experience and a clear idea of what he wanted to the drawing board—a grand, large-scale organ that would make Ernest Skinner proud, but would also not disappoint the likes of G. Donald Harrison. While orchestral voices and ensembles were of great importance, so too was the presence of well-developed and blended choruses in each division.
Our initial proposal was for a three-manual organ with a separately enclosed Solo and Choir sharing one manual. However, during our early discussions with the church music staff, it became clear that to fill all the demands placed upon it, a significantly larger, four-manual instrument would be better suited and would eliminate several reluctant compromises in the original design. Having completed the rebuild of a four-manual Æolian-Skinner, opus 1433, for First Unitarian Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, and the building of a new, large three-manual French romantic organ for the Cathedral of St. Paul, also in Worcester, we felt ready to tackle our first new four-manual organ. During the selection process, George visited Worcester’s First Baptist Church, home to a rebuilt Reuter for which we constructed a new, large four-manual Skinner-style console. Skinner consoles have long been renowned for their visual elegance, impeccable craftsmanship, and intuitive and comfortable ergonomics. It was agreed First Presbyterian should possess such a console to complement the new organ.
First Presbyterian has long been host to performances of choral and chamber music by numerous local ensembles, and the acoustical renovation that preceded the organ installation only made the space more attractive for outside groups’ use. Knowing this, we included in the initial proposal a small division designed for use as a continuo organ at chancel level. George was hesitant at first—it seemed like a water and oil situation to have such a division included in a grand romantic organ. However, with a large, higher-pressure instrument as the main organ, George and Larry Doebler agreed that it would be futile to attempt to use it in continuo playing, and not only agreed to the division’s inclusion, but encouraged its enlargement. What started out as a small five-stop division grew into a full-fledged low-pressure Positiv, complete with a Sesquialtera and a very gently voiced four-rank Scharff. Its elegant case makes use of the crown and columns of the large throne chair that used to sit in the middle of the chancel, blending the case with the rest of the chancel decoration.
While spacious, the two front organ chambers had previously housed 47 ranks of pipes, including a very small pedal division. One of the project’s greatest challenges was to make 79 ranks of pipes fit in these same chambers—including a large-scale independent pedal division with three 32' stops—while maintaining easy access to each pipe and mechanism. After much experimenting in the forgiving world of computer-aided design, a layout that achieved both of these goals was reached. Aside from the Antiphonal and Positiv, the entire instrument is installed behind the organ case, with the Great, Solo and Choir divisions to the congregation’s left, and the Swell and Pedal on the right. There is no ceiling over these chambers, allowing for a great deal of sound to ascend into the barrel vault over the chancel, creating a wonderful blending chamber of sorts, which then projects the sound well into the room. Even from the center of the chancel, it is difficult to tell from which side sounds are coming.
The Antiphonal organ is located high up in the right rear corner of the sanctuary. The Antiphonal Swell division, consisting of the original Echo organ with two additions, is housed in the former Echo organ chamber. The two stops of the Antiphonal Great sit on a newly constructed ledge in front of the chamber, with the pipes from the 8' Prestant forming a simple and elegant façade.
The console constructed for opus 47 models the console at First Baptist in Worcester. Built of quarter-sawn red oak and walnut with a hand-rubbed oil and stain finish, it complements the elegance of the renovated sanctuary and restored organ case. With manual keys of 10th-cut ivory and ebony, and pedals of maple and ebony, the console immediately has a luxurious tactile feel. Through many consultations with George as well as with the organists working in our own shop, the selection and layout of controls were designed to be as intuitive to the player as possible. The stopjamb layout takes its cue from the tall consoles of English cathedrals; this provides the vertical space to lay out the complete choruses of each division in one line, making drawing every plenum quick and straightforward. Though a complete list of playing aids and mechanicals accompanies the specification, several are worth noting here. With the choral accompanist in mind, the Swell is provided with ten divisional pistons, and pedal-to-manual combination couplers with discrete memories are available on each division. A 99-level combination action is included with 16 general pistons and a sequencer; additionally, each piston can be easily modified as to which stops it affects, releasing the player from the distinction and restraints of divisional and general pistons. Divisional cancels are also provided by pushing the division nameplate on the stopjamb.
The key and stop action throughout the instrument is electro-pneumatic, a departure from our usual practice of employing slider and pallet chests. The chests are modeled on late 1960s Aeolian-Skinner pitman chests, with several of our own modifications. Even the Positiv, speaking on 23⁄4" pressure, plays on a pitman chest and works beautifully, resulting in quick and desirable pipe speech, ideal for its anticipated continuo use.
A design goal from the outset of the project was to make the organ large enough to have four complete manual divisions (seven, including the Positiv and Antiphonal Great and Swell), but to keep costs manageable, all the while not sacrificing quality. To this end, we looked to the existing Austin pipework, all having been new (with the exception of the Echo) in 1969, to see what might be reused in the new organ. While hard to believe this neo-baroque pipework could blend its way into an American romantic organ, we found much of the pipework was well constructed and cut up low enough to permit its successful rescaling and revoicing in a very different style.
Of the 40 completely new ranks of pipes added to the organ, all new choruses and flutes are constructed of 94% lead alloy, a practice we have long employed, allowing our voicers to achieve a degree of tonal superiority unattainable with the use of lighter, higher tin content alloys. In general, this allows the 8¢ line to be weighty and warm, progressing through a velvety chorus to light and silvery upperwork—all mixtures in the organ are also of the same high-lead content. The epitome of this construction and voicing style is the 8¢ Montre on the Great, a 42-scale Diapason more English than French, despite its name. Being placed outside the Great expression box, the Montre’s tone is commanding, warm and strong, and is paired with the enclosed 44-scale 8' Principal for lighter choruses. True to the design objective, choruses through at least 4¢ were provided in the three main manual divisions (Great, Swell, Choir), resulting in three very independent divisions that terrace and blend successfully for the performance of French literature. With the old Great 8' Principal revoiced as the Swell Diapason, and the 45-scale English Diapason in the Choir of special variable scale, the five combined 8' Diapasons create a rich, singing tone that serves as a lush solo color, as well as the basis for the aforementioned well-blended choruses.
One of the hallmarks of an American symphonic organ is the abundance of orchestral reeds, so carefully developed by the likes of Skinner a century ago. Fittingly, opus 47 has a delicious array of imitative stops spread out amid the manual divisions. The demand for these stops allowed us to use several ranks we had been storing in our stockroom for many years while the popular organ style called for very different reed stops. In the Choir division, the Clarinet finds its traditional home, and comes to Ithaca as a restored Johnson Bell Clarinet. In our study of early 20th-century American organs, a common finding was that the Choir division, while potentially having enough foundation tone, nearly always lacked the trumpet-class reed timbre to assert itself against the Swell organ. In this light, the second Choir reed deserves special note as an unusual stop, even in this age of rediscovered orchestral sounds. The 8' Waldhorn uses restored Aeolian pipes from the Higgins estate in Worcester, Massachusetts. This medium-scaled, capped trumpet is not quite a French Horn, and not quite a Trumpet, but something in between. It has a chameleon-like quality in that it is a beautiful and haunting solo voice, but when drawn with the full Choir, it acts as a chorus reed, giving the Choir a definite presence amidst full organ.
Two new reeds, the English Horn in the Solo, and the Orchestral Oboe in the Antiphonal Swell, were beautifully voiced by Chris Broome, turning out exactly as we had wanted them, and possessing striking imitative qualities.
For climactic moments in both repertoire and accompaniments, two solo chorus reeds are provided in the Solo division. The enclosed Tuba Mirabilis has harmonic resonators from tenor F# and is voiced on 15" pressure, providing the traditional dark, smooth and powerful tone suggested by its name. The 8' Silver Trumpet, played on 10" pressure, serves to contrast with the Tuba for a different effect. Envisioned in the same manner as the Solo Trumpet Harmonique at Yale’s Woolsey Hall, the pipes are constructed with French shallots and placed outside the Solo enclosure, yielding a brighter and brassier tone. While neither stop is oppressively loud, when combined they yield a tone of refined power that can top full organ with single notes.
Another criterion from early on in the project was to have a profusion of string stops of varying power and brightness to enable a truly orchestral string crescendo from pp to ff. While there are the usual strings sprinkled throughout the Choir and Swell, the Solo strings truly cap the string chorus, possessing incredible intensity and brilliance. Although the Solo was originally designed with one pair, the discovery of two ranks of Skinner orchestral strings in our stockroom led to the addition of a second set to be the pinnacle of the string chorus. Voicer Ted Gilbert worked wonders with these two pairs—the Gamba is the quieter of the two, possessing an almost woody quality, whereas the Cello represents the extreme limit of bright, powerful, shimmering string voicing. Twelve ranks of string or undulating tone in the organ, from the Swell Flauto Dolce through the Solo Cello, provide a seamless powerful crescendo, made even more effective with the use of double expression in the Solo.
No symphonic organ is complete without an expression system that can fully restrain the power of the instrument and instantly change the dynamic of the stops drawn. To this end, no fewer than six Skinner-replica whiffletree expression motors are used in this organ. While the Swell, Choir, and Antiphonal Swell are enclosed and expressive as expected, the Solo and Great warrant description of their expressive capabilities. From the outset, we had designed the Great to be partially enclosed, mainly the reeds and upperwork. Additionally, the Solo was to speak through its own shades into the Great box, providing the division with the aforementioned double expression.
The Great organ’s expressive capabilities were expanded early on with the decision to enclose the entire division with the exception of the 8' Montre and 16' Principal. Through careful scaling and voicing, the division doesn’t suffer its enclosure with the shades open, and contains the tonal resources necessary to lead enthusiastic congregational singing with all 500 seats filled, as well as serving its traditional role in the performance of organ literature. However, with the added benefit of 16-stage expression, these same tonal resources can be manipulated to match any congregation size, as well as provide another enclosed division of power for choral accompaniment.
At the same time, to give the Solo and Great more independence from each other, we added a second set of shades to the Solo, allowing the division to speak directly into the chancel. This provides the Solo division with a third expressive option. As installed, the Solo swell box is behind the Great box and four feet higher. The primary Solo shades open into the Great, with the Solo chancel shades being at the very top of the Solo box, four feet high, and opening directly into the room. While giving an acceptable dynamic range, these smaller shades provide an enormous timbral range, noticed especially with the strings. With the full Solo string chorus playing and the main Solo shades open, the full weight of the 8' stops comes through—one can almost hear bows drawn across the strings. However, when the upper shades open, the full range of upper harmonics from these stops erupts from the box, filling out the sound just when you thought it couldn’t be any brighter and more sonorous.
The control of all these expression options is met with four swell shoes, including the crescendo shoe. The Solo shoe normally controls the chancel shades. However, when the “Solo Double Expression” drawknob is drawn, the Solo shoe operates both sets of Solo shades, as well as the Great shades, in a set sequence to give the maximum crescendo possible. Additionally, a second drawknob closes the Solo chancel shades should that be desired, and sets the Solo shoe to control only the main Solo shades. The Great and Antiphonal Swell expression functions are independently assignable to any shoe, including crescendo. When not assigned, the shades default to a position settable by the organist. Harris Precision Products retrofitted two of their standard drawknob units with potentiometers to set these defaults, and thus these controls are seamlessly integrated into the console via rotating drawknobs. All Swells to Swell is provided to afford simple control over the entire dynamic range of the organ, and indicators are provided below the coupler rail to show the position of each set of shades.
The use of such sophisticated expression functions allows the organist to present the full dynamic range of the orchestra, and the use of the smaller Solo chancel shades allows for the ultimate in dynamic and timbral expression, a feature unique to this organ, and one we hope to further develop and use in subsequent installations.
To complement the varied and colorful manual divisions, a large, independent Pedal division affords the appropriate bass sonority for whatever registration is drawn on the manuals. Consisting of eleven independent ranks and 29 stops, the Pedal organ is augmented by judicious borrowing from the manuals. Four 32' stops are provided to underpin the instrument and provide a true feeling of gravitas. From the initial planning phases of the project, it was made clear that no digital voices were to be used in the organ; thus, all 32' stops play real pipes, or are derived. The Bourdon, of generous scale, is voiced gently for use with the softest registrations, but with enough quint in its tone to be made stronger as more pedal stops are added. The 32' Principal, an extension of the 16¢, uses Haskell pipes to GGGG#, the rest of the 32' octave being a resultant. The full-length 32' Contra Posaune, also masterfully voiced by Chris Broome, gives plenty of weight and power to full organ, but without being brash or rattling. For a ‘second’ 32' reed, the Harmonics is a 102⁄3' cornet, derived from the Great 16' Double Trumpet and 16' Gemshorn, giving the semblance of 32' reed tone underneath smaller tutti registrations.
With the added features of sophisticated expression, as well as the inclusion of more fully developed choruses, First Presbyterian’s instrument represents a logical and successful extension and merging of the two dominant styles of 20th-century American organbuilding: the symphonic and American classic schools. The instrument serves as a platform for the successful performance of a wide body of organ literature, as well as fulfilling its accompanimental roles. In its design, construction, voicing and tonal finishing, we feel truly proud to call this instrument our magnum opus, regardless of what instruments leave our shop in years to come, and thank First Presbyterian for the opportunity to set our sights high and build an organ we have so long dreamed of creating. We therefore commend this instrument to the glory of God and the people of First Presbyterian Church as a product of our finest craftsmanship. May it long bring joy and inspiration to those who hear and play it, just as it has inspired us as organbuilders in its creation.
Those working on the project included: Stephen Russell, David Gordon, Gail Grandmont, Carole Russell, Theodore Gilbert, Jonathan Ortloff, Larry Chace, Frank Thompson, Matthew Russell, Peter Walker, Allan Taylor, Eric Johansson, and Andrew Lawrence.
—Jonathan Ortloff

From the organist
Now in my fifth decade of deep affection for the pipe organ, its music, and its role in worship, I am brought to this point of extraordinary magnificence in the creation of the opus 47 Russell & Co. organ. During these five decades, I have witnessed many trends and fads in organbuilding. The commitment of this church to the pipe organ as its primary medium for the leading of congregational song is all the more inspiring to me.
This instrument transcends the fads of recent decades. The organ/sanctuary committee, formed by this church in the fall of 2000 and guided by our organ consultant, John Schwandt, selected several organbuilders to consider for the project. This committee authorized my colleague Larry Doebler and me to travel far and wide to experience the work of the builders we had selected as finalists, each of whom subsequently visited the church to inspect the sanctuary space and existing organ. In the end, we all had no doubt that Russell & Co. was the appropriate choice for us.
While we were confident that our new organ would be very fine indeed, we could not have anticipated the level of magnificence that has been achieved here by Stephen Russell and his colleagues. In my 50 years of playing pipe organs, I have never been privileged to play an organ so elegant, expressive and versatile as this one. The word synergy is one that I have never before been comfortable using. This powerful word, meaning “combined or cooperative action or force,” is the perfect term to describe the wondrous emergence and continuing presence of this organ. Beginning with the collective sharing of the original committee, the guidance of Anita Cummings, pastor of this church at the outset of the project, the beneficence of Mrs. Dorothy Park, church member and donor of funds for this organ, the courage and vision of church members to undertake and fund the acoustical transformation of the sanctuary from sonically “dead” to vibrant and moderately reverberant, and the mutual respect and creative sharing of organbuilder, consultant and resident organist, have resulted in the ultimate synergy: the harmonious blending of thought, craft, sound and space that is far greater than the sum of its parts.
I offer gratitude and the highest of commendations to master organbuilder/voicer, Stephen Russell, his dedicated staff, and the many others who have had a hand in the three-year process of the emergence of opus 47!
—George Edward Damp

From the church
The history of our new Russell organ begins with the construction of our current sanctuary in 1894. In 1901, the Austin Company installed our first permanent organ (the oak façade that currently supports the visible organ pipes behind the choir is part of that original installation). In 1930, the Echo organ (above the southwest entrance to the sanctuary) was added. In 1969, Austin built a completely new organ in the chancel, one typical of that period—an instrument that, with its sheer power and rough voicing, overwhelmed our beautiful, but acoustically rather dead, sanctuary.
Problems with the Austin organ started to appear in the early 1990s. Minor problems continued to occur, and it was clear that something needed to be done. An organ/sanctuary committee was formed that, early in its existence, possessed the keen insight that the sanctuary itself was a part of the organ (the box that the organ’s voice is dispersed into), and that any renovations to the organ must be accomplished within the acoustical framework of the sanctuary.
As a result, the committee hired an organ consultant, John Schwandt, and an acoustical consultant, Scott Riedel, to guide them through the decision-making process of repairing our organ. Each made an initial, individual presentation to the committee, but most memorable was their joint participation in a lengthy “town meeting” with the committee and members of the congregation. The meeting ended with a focus for the project—to improve our worship experience by enhancing both music and the spoken word through renovations to both the organ and the sanctuary.
Early on in this process, then-pastor Anita Cummings and organist George Damp approached Mrs. Dorothy Park with the invitation to become a supporter of this exciting adventure for the church. After several subsequent discussions, Mrs. Park indicated that the church deserved the finest organ created by the finest builder, and that she would cover the cost of the organ if the congregation would pay for the acoustical renovations.
A clear consensus decided that Stephen Russell was the right person to build the new organ. At the same time, Schickel Architecture of Ithaca was selected to design the renovations to the sanctuary. Several significant changes to the sanctuary were implemented to improve the acoustical environment. Certainly the most outstanding component of the sanctuary renovations is the reconstruction of the rear wall of the sanctuary. Its subtle sunburst pattern surrounding a high circular window is both extremely pleasing to the eye as well as functional in randomly scattering sound.
Suffice it to say, every aspect of the organ, from its general layout to the voicing of each individual pipe (all 5,000 of them) was accomplished with the unique features of our sanctuary in mind. The outcome is truly a gift for the ages, something that First Presbyterian Church can share with Ithaca and the surrounding area for decades to come. One can only hope that the generosity of Mrs. Park and the efforts of those involved in this project will be more than repaid by the joy and exhilaration shared by all those who experience our wonderful new organ.
—Tom Owens,
Elder and member of session,
First Presbyterian Church

From the consultant
It is a privilege to offer a few words regarding Russell & Co. opus 47. In a world that so desperately hungers for and needs beauty, it is satisfying to have been a part of a long process that has ultimately yielded a thing of great beauty that will inspire the generations yet to come.
My primary involvement in this project occurred before contract-signing. It is my fervent belief that consultants should provide general education and thereby enable church committees to make an informed decision about what is best for their congregation’s worship and community life. However, before we could start to talk about organs, it was very important to have the bigger picture in perspective, namely the inferior acoustical properties of the room. The committee wisely considered the importance of good acoustics that benefit congregational prayer, singing, oratory, as well as but not limited to instrumental music. Scott Riedel provided acoustical consultation; the action taken on most of his recommendations yielded a vastly improved sacred space.
The pipe organ, while not the only possible instrument for worship, remains the best single instrument to lead corporate worship because of its ability to sustain tones from soft to loud and from every pitch level. A well-designed and constructed pipe organ should enable an organist to creatively and expressively accomplish this musical leadership, often interpreting music of many different styles. It was my recommendation that an organ of rich, warm tone and with ample variety of color from all pipe families (principal, flute, string, and reed) be considered. The great organbuilders of the past were not striving to build instruments after someone else’s style, but to create organs suited to the rooms in which they were installed and reflecting the cultural identity of their time and place. That Russell opus 47 resembles in some aspects organs of the early half of the 20th century is entirely irrelevant. The fact remains that it is not an E. M. Skinner organ, an Æolian-Skinner organ, a Kimball organ, or any other organ. Rather, I believe that this instrument transcends labeling of any kind. Opus 47 has richness of color, overall warmth, and clarity. In previous periods of organ building, rich fundamental tone and clarity were thought to be mutually exclusive attributes; one could not have both. The refined voicing and the mechanical perfection of the pitman windchest exemplify an organ that will allow for music of any style. Congratulations are due to the committee and congregation for investing in their future so well!
—John D. Schwandt

Russell & Co. Organ Builders, Opus 47
First Presbyterian Church, Ithaca, New York, May 2006

GREAT – II (Expressive)
16' Principal* 49 pipes, 1–12=Pedal
16' Gemshorn* 12
8' Montre* 61
8' Principal 61
8' Bourdon 61
8' Flûte Harmonique 49
8' Gemshorn 61
4' Octave 61
4' Rohrflöte 61
22⁄3' Nasard 61
2' Fifteenth 61
11⁄3' Fourniture IV–V 297
16' Double Trumpet 61
8' Trumpet 61
Chancel Great Off
MIDI on Great
*Unenclosed

SWELL – III (Expressive)
16' Lieblich Gedeckt 61
8' Diapason 61
8' Bourdon 61
8' Viola 61
8' Viola Celeste 61
8' Flauto Dolce 61
8' Flute Celeste 49
4' Octave 61
4' Nachthorn 61
2' Octave 61
2' Plein Jeu IV–V 296
16' Fagotto 61
8' French Trumpet 61
8' Oboe d’Amour 61
8' Vox Humana 61
4' Clarion 61
Tremulant
MIDI on Swell
Swell Sub
Chancel Swell Off
Swell Super

CHOIR – I (Expressive)
8' English Diapason 61
8' Hohlflöte 61
8' Quintadena 61
8' Erzahler 61
8' Erzahler Celeste 49
4' Octave 61
4' Koppelflöte 61
22⁄3' Nazard 61
2' Flute 61
13⁄5' Tierce 61
16' Corno di Bassetto 12
8' Waldhorn 61
8' Clarinet 61
Chimes Ant. Swell
Tremulant
Choir Sub
Choir Off
Choir Super
MIDI on Choir

POSITIV – I
8' Gedeckt 61
8' Spillflöete 61
4' Prestant 61
2' Principal 61
11⁄3' Quint 61
22⁄3' Sesquialtera II 122
1' Scharff III–IV 232
Tremulant
Zimbelstern
Positiv Off

SOLO – IV (Expressive)
16' Cello 12
8' Concert Flute 61
8' Cello 61
8' Cello Celeste 61
8' Gamba 61
8' Gamba Celeste 61
8' English Horn 61
8' Tuba Mirabilis 61
8' Silver Trumpet* 70, double trebles
Chimes Ant. Swell
Tremulant
Solo Sub
Solo Off
Solo Super
MIDI on Solo
*Unenclosed

ANTIPHONAL GREAT – II
8' Prestant 61
8' Stopped Flute 61
Antiphonal Great Off
Antiphonal Great Super

ANTIPHONAL SWELL – III
8' Gedeckt 61
8' Viole Aetheria 61
8' Vox Angelica 49
4' Flute d’Amour 61
8' Orchestral Oboe 61
8' Vox Humana 61
Chimes
Tremulant
Antiphonal Swell Sub
Antiphonal Swell Off
Antiphonal Swell Super

PEDAL
32' Principal (GGGG#) 4
32' Contra Bourdon 12
16' Open

Russell & Co. Organ Builders,
Chester, Vermont
First Presbyterian Church, Ithaca, New York

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Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders, Denver, North Carolina

North Decatur Presbyterian Church, Decatur, Georgia

At the corner of Medlock Road and Scott Boulevard stands a unique structure prompting more than just a few passersby to take a second glance. The congregation of the church is also unique in many ways, yet with a story reminiscent of countless other congregations throughout the country.
When the present sanctuary was built, an electronic organ was purchased with the dream of installing a grand pipe organ in the not-too-distant future. In the same vein as a host of other congregations, money needed for a pipe organ was diverted to other, more pressing needs. When its fiftieth anniversary drew near, however, the members of North Decatur found the impetus they needed to fulfill their long-awaited dream for a pipe organ, thanks to a successful “Play Your Part” fund-raising campaign.

To replace the aging electronic organ, the church chose Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders of Denver, North Carolina to build and place an all-new pipe/digital organ in the rear gallery of their sanctuary. Placed high on the axis of the church and speaking directly down the nave, the organ enjoys prime placement. In preparation for the organ, the congregation removed all of the carpet in the balcony and much of the carpet in the nave and chancel. In place of the carpet, hard surface flooring was added, affording the organ even greater tonal egress. Heat buildup in the peak of the church, an unfortunate side effect of the unique architecture, was alleviated with a new exhaust system, drawing the hot air away from the organ.

Given the budget and space limitations of the church, Cornel Zimmer Organbuilders set about designing an organ that would serve many roles, including accompanying congregational singing, choral accompaniment, and use as a recital instrument. A three-manual specification was designed with foundation pipe ranks in the Swell, Great and Pedal.

The façade is taken from the Pedal 16' and 8' principals, with the Great division located above the swell box. The Great division includes a number of full-length 8¢ stops giving the organ a rich, singing foundation. The First Open Diapason is a broad scale, while the Second Open Diapason is of lesser scale and volume, yet it still provides the foundation necessary to be used with the upperwork of the principal chorus. Also on the Great is an 8' Flute Harmonique, playing dual roles as a foundation and a solo stop.

The Swell division contains a principal chorus as well as many other stops useful for accompanying the sizable choir that co-inhabits the rear gallery with the organ. The Choir division comprises digital stops and is at home with the main organ. The organist is also given the option of playing the Choir division antiphonally through an independent audio system in the front transept of the church. This option proves very useful for accompanying congregational singing, as well as allowing for a myriad of dialogue effects with the main organ. Given the importance of these tasks, the Choir division was designed to be a sizable, yet complete division incorporating a principal chorus with mixture, mutations, reeds and celestes.
Of special note are the many colorful reeds incorporated into all the divisions of this organ. Chorus reeds speaking 16' 8' and 4'' pitch are found in the Great, Swell and Pedal, complementing the flue choruses and numerous color reeds found in the Choir division. The diversity of reed stops available to the organist allows for a dramatic layering effect. Two solo reeds are also incorporated: the Tuba speaking from the main organ in the balcony and the Festival Trumpet speaking from high in the chancel archway. Two 32' reeds prove useful in both accompanying and solo works. The Contre Basson is enclosed with the Swell division, giving it greater flexibility.

The windchests of this organ utilize individual electro-pneumatic note actions, affording greater versatility in pipe layout as well as borrowing stops into the Pedal. In diatonic arrangements, the C and C# sides of adjacent stops can be reversed to promote greater tuning stability. Wooden windtrunks and ample reservoirs assure a steady wind supply even under the greatest demands.
This versatile organ is voiced to fill the room with rich sound, which envelops the congregation, allowing it to sing with complete freedom. Whether people are seated in the nave, gallery or chancel, the organ is never overpowering.

The organ incorporates all new pipework from Cornel Zimmer Organ Builders’ pipemaker, Tommy Linder, as well as pipework from A.R. Schopp’s Sons, Inc. in Alliance, Ohio and Luc Ladurantaye Tuyautier Inc. of Lac Saguay, Quebec, Canada. George Zong and David Caldwell built the console and casework, incorporating special accents found throughout the room, and Eric Molenaar oversaw the wiring of the organ. Marty Lemons matched the finish for the new organ precisely with the finish found on the existing woodwork in the room. Jim Twyne oversaw the tonal finishing of the organ with assistance from Mike Rathke and Nathan Bryson. Cornel and Anne Zimmer designed the organ and oversaw the management of the project. A special thanks is also in order to both David Bothwell and organist/choirmaster Jamie Shiell of North Decatur Presbyterian Church for their valuable input on this project.

Nathan Bryson, with input from Cornel Zimmer and Jim Twyne


GREAT (Unenclosed, Manual II)

16' Double Diapason (WTC)

8' Open Diapason (61 pipes)

8' Second Diapason (WTC)

8' Bourdon (61 pipes)

8' Harmonic Flute (61 pipes)

4' Octave (61 pipes)

4' Spitzflöte (WTC)

22/3' Twelfth (WTC)

2' Super Octave (61 pipes)

13/5' Seventeenth (WTC)

11/3' Mixture IV (244 pipes)

16' Bombarde (WTC)

8' Trumpet (WTC)

8' French Horn (Choir)

8' Festival Trumpet (WTC) (non-coupling)

8' Tuba Mirabilis (Choir)

4' Clarion (WTC)

Tremulant

Chimes (WTC)

SWELL (Expressive, Manual III)

16' Lieblich Gedeckt (WTC)

8' Diapason (61 pipes)

8' Rohrflöte (61 pipes)

8' Viole de Gambe (61 pipes)

8' Voix Celeste (WTC)

8' Flute Celeste II (WTC)

4' Prestant (61 pipes)

4' Triangle Flute (WTC)

2' Waldflöte (61 pipes)

2' Plein Jeu IV (WTC)

16' Double Trumpet (WTC)

8' Trompette (61 pipes)

8' Oboe (WTC)

8' Festival Trumpet (non-coupling)

8' Vox Humana (WTC)

4' Clairon (WTC)

Tremulant

Zimbelstern (WTC)

Swell to Swell 16'

Swell Unison Off

Swell to Swell 4'

CHOIR (Expressive, Manual I)

16' Gemshorn (WTC)

8' Principal (WTC)

8' Holzgedeckt (WTC)

8' Gemshorn (WTC)

8' Gemshorn Celeste (WTC)

8' Erzahler Celeste II (WTC)

4' Octave (WTC)

4' Koppelflöte (WTC)

22/3 ' Nazard (WTC)

2' Superoctave (WTC)

2' Piccolo (WTC)

13/5' Tierce (WTC)

1' Scharff III (WTC)

16' Basset Horn (WTC)

8' Petite Trompette (WTC)

8' English Horn (WTC)

8' French Horn (WTC)

8' Cromorne (WTC)

8' Festival Trumpet (non-coupling)

8' Tuba Mirabilis (WTC)

Harp (WTC)

Tremulant

Choir to Choir 16'

Choir Unison Off

Choir to Choir 4'

PEDAL (Unenclosed)

32' Contra Bourdon (WTC)

16' Principal (32 pipes)

16' Subbass (WTC)

16' Double Diapason (Great)

16' Lieblich Gedeckt (Swell)

16' Gemshorn (Choir)

8' Octave (32 pipes)

8' Bass Flute (WTC)

8' Lieblich Gedeckt (Swell)

4' Choral Bass (12 pipes)

4' Triangle Flute (Swell)

4' Harmonic Flute (Great)

22/3' Mixture IV (WTC)

32' Contre Bombarde (WTC)

32' Contre Basson (WTC)

16' Trombone (WTC)

16' Bombarde (Great)

16' Double Trumpet (Swell)

8' Trumpet (WTC)

4' Clarion (WTC)

4' Bassett Horn (Choir)

WTC = Walker Technical Co. digital voices

Total ranks: 73

Pipe ranks: 17

Digital ranks: 56

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Sebastian M. Glück,
New York, New York
The First Presbyterian Church
in the City of New York,
New York, New York

The First Presbyterian Church took root as a dissenting group of Scots and Irish Protestants who worshipped in a private home in 1706 and organized a congregation a decade later. By 1719, their first church building opened for worship, leading to a long and continuing history of controversial views regarding man’s relationship to religion, scripture, science, and politics. “The Church of the Patriots” survived revolution, fire, and urban expansion, dedicating the present church in 1849.
Among those on Old First’s roster of notable preachers was Harry Emerson Fosdick, who in 1922 declared from the pulpit that The New Knowledge, as postulated by Charles Darwin, was not inconsistent with Christianity. The uproar spread like wildfire; even the Presbytery of Philadelphia met in the home of John Wanamaker to discuss the matter. An unrelenting three-year campaign by notorious fundamentalist William Jennings Bryan led Fosdick to resign (without changing his views). Fosdick, a longstanding friend of the Rockefeller family, subsequently served as pastor of The Riverside Church for nearly half a century.
Only months before the demolition of the World Trade Center, Dr. Jon M. Walton became the Senior Pastor of First Presbyterian Church. He would soon inherit a stunned city and a congregation numbed by the murder of their members and the orphans left behind. Beginning their fourth century, the congregation and their pastor continue to rebuild—spiritually, physically, and emotionally. Out of tragedy, the church has strengthened, grown steadily in membership, and commissioned pipe organs for both the chapel and the sanctuary.

The Guilmant Organ School
During French composer and organist Alexandre Guilmant’s 1898 American tour, he and Dr. William C. Carl, organist and choirmaster of First Church, decided to open the United States’ first school for organ and church music, with instruction based upon the master’s method of teaching. The Guilmant Organ School’s first class was held on October 9, 1899 and offered instruction to church musicians until the early 1970s. The Guilmant Organ Recital Series continues in modern times, as part of the church’s rich music program that includes oratorio performances by the church’s respected choir and orchestra.

Previous instruments
Initially, conservative worship at First Presbyterian did not permit musical instruments or concert literature; unaccompanied psalmody was provided by a vocal quartet. They were permitted to sing the works of Palestrina, Victoria and Orlando di Lasso in the chapel, but only as entertainments and never at worship services.
In 1888 Roosevelt’s III/52 Opus 368 was built for the east tower gallery. When the elaborately carved chancel was added in 1920, the organ was replaced by Skinner Organ Company’s Opus 293, a IV/72 in the north chancel chamber. Its Echo division was given residence in the bell tower, speaking through an impossibly small grille in the ceiling. The doomed division was installed in a giant meat refrigerator with shutters, Skinner’s attempt to defeat the elements.
By the 1960s, the heating system had “baked the Skinner to death,” according to the late Dr. Robert S. Baker (1916–2005), then organist and choirmaster of the church. Tonal tastes had changed, and Austin Organs, Inc. installed their IV/85 Opus 2048, dedicated in 1965. The planned revamped Echo division never came to be, but the meat locker remains.
Upon Dr. Baker’s retirement in 1988, he was succeeded by his student, William F. Entriken. During Dr. Entriken’s ongoing tenure the church commissioned two pipe organs, both of which were designed and built by Sebastian M. Glück. In 2004, the Rees Jones Memorial Organ, a Georgian-inspired instrument tuned in Werckmeister III, was installed in Alexander Chapel. A recording of Opus 8 is available from the Organ Historical Society. The large sanctuary organ, Opus 12, was completed this year, funded by both First Church and the generosity of donors who gave individual stops or entire choruses of pipework in memory or honor of special people in their lives.
—Benito Orso

From the tonal director
There are advantages to not being “the first man at bat” when it comes to designing a pipe organ for a particular room. One benefits from the lessons of the past: what did or did not work tonally, what physical or environmental conditions helped or hindered the making of music, and what resources musicians may have used most often or what they felt was wanting.
Prevailing scaling and voicing practices of the 1960s (small scales, even smaller scales for the reeds, underlength resonators, low cut-ups, minimal languid treatment), coupled with an acoustic that “eats bass” and a chambered installation, conspired to keep the organ’s sound from reaching the listener.
Another characteristic of organs of the era (even very large ones) was the frustrating disposition of stops, often found at the wrong pitches in the wrong divisions for the accurate registration of the established literature. With enough stops drawn, the liturgy, hymnody, and anthem work were adequately accompanied, but registrational authenticity, saturated color, energetic drive, and cohesive clarity remained elusive.

The new approach
Two main divisions share the second manual: the superordinate Werck, inspired (in concept) by the late 16th-century Hamburg school, and the Great, a more familiar-looking Anglo-French amalgam with both 18th and 19th century ingredients.
The previous organ had no Great reeds, a Harrisonian trend that inevitably created balance problems. The provision of the Great Cornet, Trumpet, and Clarion in the new organ enables the rest of the organ’s reeds to fulfill their duties without compromise, and makes the 18th-century repertoire of several cultures come alive.
Both of these divisions can move about the organ via the coupling system, and if the Werck is used as the main division in early Northern literature, the Great can serve as the Oberwerk, the natural foil, distinguished by character more than brute strength.
This permits the Choir division to serve as its namesake, a secondary Swell rather than a penumbral “toy Positiv” of compromised and disjointed identity. Far less bold yet more colorful than the Solo department, the Choir still retains the essential classical elements within its accompanimental palette and cluster of instrumental pastels. A coherent collection of stops duplexed from the Great is available on this manual as well.
Large American Swell divisions have taken on a somewhat inelastic grundriss, the legacy of multicompetent sovereignty bestowed upon them by the English and thriving here through the Skinner school. And so it should be, a sensate plenipotentiary, home to a chorus of diapasons, a choir of flutes, two sets of undulants, the ubiquitous oboe and regal, and a molten battery of harmonic trumpets. Large scales and shallots with parallel walls (brilliance) and flat bottoms (fundamental) conspire to create a controllable, caged beast. My stratagem was not to reinvent the wheel, but rather to strip the execution of the formula of all shyness and vagaries.
Because we retained the cantilevered windchests from the previous organ (what was so bizarrely called “functional display” half a century ago), it was necessary to execute some compensatory tonal maneuvers for the enclosed divisions. Chambered organs of the period added to the disadvantage by drastically underscaling the expressive sections already in a sequestered relationship to the Great.
The Solo division is home to the usual suspects for an organ of this size and style. The soviet of harmonic bombardes is more brilliant yet less richly dense than the Swell battery. The three orchestral reeds, like all the color reeds in the organ, are made of common metal, rather than spotted. The French Horn and flat-top English Horn are legacy ranks from the Skinner, but alas, were so drastically altered in the 1960s (lowered pressures, revised resonating lengths, new tongues, new wedges) that they are merely historic metal, and we cannot claim lineage. Like the Choir Flügel Horn, they were rebuilt for this installation and are successful and convincing.
The Grand Chorus VIII is “the third Great,” the only mixture in the organ to embrace the 16′ harmonic series, voiced on 8″ wind and mounted in a commanding position in front of the Solo enclosure. It is made of spotted metal, although the 16′ rank is almost pure lead and the tenebrous 51⁄3′ contraquint is subdued. This lends gravitas and avoids murkiness.
The Pedal department takes advantage of the instrument’s electro-pneumatic action, supplementing its own structure with stops from the manual divisions. Some excoriate this centuries-old practice, but obdurate modern practitioners and their clients welcome the opportunity to mix mezzo-forte hues for the sake of nuance.
The full-length 32′ Helicon is not overly noisy, but rather a gentle tympani roll beneath the ensemble. The Harmonics of 32′ changes composition as it ascends the scale, maintaining clarity and immediacy of pitch identification in its reedy rumble. The recombinant effect of the two stops makes itself known without the vulgarity of a “loud for the sake of loud” voice that can be more ruinous than dramatic.
America’s half-century love affair with horizontal blatancy seems to have reached its dénouement as musicians and builders realize that a more solid and focused formant may be a wiser choice for a herald stop. The key to success is to avoid the objectionable ends of the bell curve (splatter and honk), and work toward a brilliant, focused, pure tone, devoid of grittiness and fringe harmonics. Here the Tuba projects a definite “aw” vowel, not a nasal, short “a.” After the stop’s inauguration, I returned to revoice it on 12″ rather than the original 10″ pressure. The result is that it speaks with greater authority and majesty, with no loss of focus or nobility.
Are 93 ranks sufficient? Certainly, although in context I do not believe that there is any wasted metal in the organ. Nonetheless, part of First Presbyterian’s liturgical and musical tradition involves the choir singing from the narthex and the east tower gallery as well as the chancel. This is a church that fills its pews with energetic singers. The vision of a Tower division, within the church, encased where the Roosevelt once stood, is the reason for preparing for it in the console. Keeping it within the church itself, at the same level as the main organ, away from bells, frost, and pigeons, should assure a happier fate than “echoes of the past.”
Both the new north balcony façade with its Zimbelstern and the console were designed to match the existing architecture of the room. The console cabinetry is oak, carved to match the window tracery found in the building. The interior is walnut, as are the manual accidentals and Skinner-style key cheeks. Pedal accidentals are rosewood, and the drawknobs are pao ferro. The three medallions that grace the music rack are jade.
The extensive combination action is a modern expectation, especially for a church with such a highly developed music program. We advise our clients that the combination action is likely the first item to need technical attention in a pipe organ, and we do keep more “precious” gadgetry to a minimum. Less-seen features are a separate set of pistons for the couplers, the Pedal on Choir coupler, and varying species of wood used for the toe studs, allocated by category. The divisional tags above each drawknob field, when pushed, cancel the knobs of their respective divisions.
The two organbuilders most responsible for the technical and structural realization of this installation were Robert Rast and Albert Jensen-Moulton, general manager of the firm. During onsite voicing and tonal finishing I was assisted by Mr. Jensen-Moulton at the console, whose ears and judgment I trust to achieve the firm’s tonal signature.
I firmly believe that it is the small organ that challenges the creativity and ingenuity of both the builder and the musician. But an instrument of broad scope does not relieve the designer of the obligation to apply all that history has taught us, especially regarding the literature. The “concert” literature was written by church organists for the instruments they played for worship. The scores are the recipe books, and the surviving instruments the resulting cuisine. The large, eclectic organ is not a cultural grab-bag of incompatible material, but a conceptual coalition that must result in stylistic unity, bearing the sound and personality of the builder.
—Sebastian M. Glück

WERCK (Manual II)
West Chancel Bay
32′ Quintadehn (Swell) [1]
16′ Præstandt [2] 61 pipes
8′ Octava 61 pipes
8′ Spitzflöte [3] 5 pipes
4′ Supra Octava 61 pipes
Mixtur IV 244 pipes
Zimbel III 183 pipes
16′ Fagott 61 pipes
Werck Silent

GREAT ORGAN (Manual II)
East Chancel Bay
16′ Bourdon (Swell)
8′ First Diapason 61 pipes
8′ Second Diapason [4] 12 pipes
8′ Chimney Flute 61 pipes
8′ Harmonic Flute (Solo)
8′ Erzähler 61 pipes
4′ Principal 61 pipes
4′ Octave [4] 12 pipes
4′ Night Horn 61 pipes
22⁄3′ Twelfth 61 pipes
2′ Fifteenth 61 pipes
2′ Koppelpfeife 61 pipes
Mixture IV 244 pipes
Cornet V [5] 185 pipes
8′ Clarinet (Choir)
8′ Trumpet 17 pipes
8′+4′ Grand Jeu [6] 12 pipes
Great Silent
Chimes (Solo)
Tremulant

SWELL ORGAN (Manual III)
Chamber Level I, West
16′ Bourdon 12 pipes
8′ Geigen Diapason 61 pipes
8′ Stopped Diapason 61 pipes
8′ Salicional 61 pipes
8′ Voix Céleste 61 pipes
8′ Flûte Conique 61 pipes
8′ Flûte Céleste 49 pipes
4′ Geigen Octave 61 pipes
4′ Chimney Flute 61 pipes
2′ Octavin 61 pipes
Full Mixture V 269 pipes
16′ Double Trumpet 61 pipes
8′ Harmonic Trumpet 61 pipes
8′ Hautboy 61 pipes
8′ Vox Humana 61 pipes
4′ Harmonic Clarion 61 pipes
Tremulant
16′ Swell to Swell
Swell Silent
4′ Swell to Swell

CHOIR ORGAN (Manual I)
Chamber Level I, East
16′ Double Gemshorn 12 pipes
8′ Principal 61 pipes
8′ Doppelflöte [7] 61 pipes
8′ Gemshorn 61 pipes
8′ Gemshorn Céleste 49 pipes
4′ Prestant 61 pipes
4′ Flute 61 pipes
22⁄3′ Nazard 61 pipes
2′ Recorder 61 pipes
13⁄5′ Tierce 61 pipes
11⁄3′ Larigot 61 pipes
Mixture III 183 pipes
16′ Bass Clarinet 12 pipes
8′ Trumpet Minor 61 pipes
8′ Flügel Horn 61 pipes
8′ Clarinet 61 pipes
Tremulant
16′ Choir to Choir
Choir Silent
4′ Choir to Choir
Great Stops on Choir
8′ First Diapason
8′ Chimney Flute
8′ Erzähler
4′ Principal
2′ Fifteenth
IV Mixture
Chimes (Solo)
Zimbelstern 8 bells

SOLO ORGAN (Manual IV)
Chamber Level II, West
8′ Spitzflöte (Pedal)
8′ Viola Major 61 pipes
8′ Viola Céleste 61 pipes
8′ Harmonic Flute 61 pipes
4′ Principal 61 pipes
4′ Orchestral Flute 12 pipes
Grand Chorus VIII [8] 370 pipes
8′ French Horn 61 pipes
8′ English Horn 61 pipes
8′ Corno di Bassetto 61 pipes
16′ Bombarde Harmonique 61 pipes
8′ Trompette Harmonique 61 pipes
4′ Clairon Harmonique 61 pipes
Tremulant
16′ Solo to Solo
Solo Silent
4′ Solo to Solo
Chimes 20 tubes

TUBA ORGAN (Floating)
North Gallery Arch
Cornet V (Great)
Grand Chorus VIII (Solo)
16′ Tuba Magna
8′ Tuba Major 61 pipes
4′ Tuba Clarion 12 pipes

TOWER ORGAN (Floating)
East Tower
8′ Principal drawknob only
8′ Holz Gedeckt drawknob only
8′ Viola Dolce drawknob only
8′ Unda Maris drawknob only
4′ Prestant drawknob only
2′ Doublette drawknob only
IV Fourniture drawknob only

PEDAL ORGAN
Chamber Level II, East

32′ Contra Sub Bass 12 pipes
16′ Open Diapason Wood 32 pipes
16′ Open Diapason Metal 32 pipes
16′ Sub Bass 32 pipes
16′ Præstandt (Werck)
16′ Double Gemshorn (Choir)
16′ Bourdon (Swell)
16′ Spitzbass 12 pipes
102⁄3′ Contra Quint 7 pipes
8′ Principal 32 pipes
8′ Stopped Flute 5 pipes
8′ Spitzflöte 32 pipes
8′ Præstandt (Werck)
8′ Stopped Diapason (Swell)
8′ Gemshorn (Choir)
51⁄3′ Quint 7 pipes
4′ Fifteenth 32 pipes
4′ Spitzflöte 5 pipes
2′ Choral Bass 12 pipes
Mixture III 96 pipes
32′ Harmonics of
32′ Helicon [9] 12 pipes
16′ Posaune 32 pipes
16′ Bombarde (Solo)
16′ Double Trumpet (Swell)
16′ Fagott (Werck)
16′ Bass Clarinet (Choir)
8′ Trumpet 12 pipes
8′ Fagott (Werck)
8′ Clarinet (Choir)
4′ Clarion 12 pipes
4′ Rohr Schalmei [10] 32 pipes
Chimes (Solo)
TOWER PEDAL ORGAN
16′ Tower Bass drawknob only

Couplers
Werck to Pedal 8′
Great to Pedal 8′
Swell to Pedal 8′, 4′
Choir to Pedal 8′, 4′
Solo to Pedal 8′, 4′

Swell to Great 16′, 8′, 4′
Choir to Great 16′, 8′, 4′
Solo to Great 16′, 8′, 4′

Choir to Swell 8′
Solo to Swell 8′

Pedal on Choir
Werck to Choir 8′
Great to Choir 8′
Swell to Choir 16′, 8′, 4′
Solo to Choir 16′, 8′, 4′

Werck to Solo 8′
Great to Solo 8′
Swell to Solo 8′

Transfers & Mechanicals
Tuba on each manual and pedal
Tower on each manual and pedal
Great/Choir Transfer
Mixtures Off
Reeds Off
Full Organ I
Full Organ II
Full Pedal
All Swells to Swell

Expression Pedals
Choir, Swell, Solo, Crescendo

Notes
[1] 1–12 resultant
[2] 1–12 wood
[3] Upward extension of Pedal stop
[4] Extension of Werck 16′ Præstandt
[5] G20–G56; mounted in East bay
[6] Extension; draws 8′ Trumpet as well
[7] Wood; two mouths per pipe
[8] Unenclosed
[9] Wooden boots; 8″ wind pressure
[10] Brass; mounted in West bay

Wind Pressures
Main organ: 4″
Solo organ: 8″
Tuba organ: 12″
Tower organ: 31⁄2″
Pedal 32′ Helicon: 8″

Cover photo by Len Levasseur
Interior photos by Albert Jensen-Moulton

Glück New York
170 Park Row, Suite 20A
New York, NY 10038-1156
212/608-5651
[email protected]
www.GluckNewYork.com

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