Basic Organ Recording Techniques: Part 1

Joseph Horning

Part I appeared in the February issue, pp. 16-18.

The "art" of sound recording consists of selecting the proper microphones for a given situation and placing them in the most advantageous position. We will look at three basic techniques--coincident, near coincident and spaced omnidirectional--and then discuss which might be more beneficial given the specifics of organ layout and room acoustics.

Coincident Microphone Placement

We've probably all been to a concert where a professional recording engineer has set up one very large and impressive microphone on an equally large and impressive stand with which to make a stereo recording. Within that large microphone were actually two directional microphones which the engineer, with an amazing amount of flexibility, can select, position and modify by remote control. Coincident means "to occupy the same area in space," and that's what a stereo microphone has: two mono mikes occupying the same space within the microphone housing. One of the characteristics of all coincident techniques is that the sound arrives at the left and right microphones completely "in phase."28

Figure 10 shows how you can position two cardioid (unidirectional) microphones in a coincident position. The strength of this technique is that it gives a fairly realistic stereo image when played back through speakers (i.e., the first violins seem to be on the left, and the double basses seem to be on the right). The weakness is that the stereo image seems to lack a "sense of space."29 Since cardioid microphones are directional, they accept sound from the source in front of them and reject sound, such as reverberation, coming from the room behind the microphones. This may be a plus in an extremely reverberant room.

Professionals may also choose to use two "figure of eight" directional microphones30 set in an "X" pattern at 90° to one another, each of which picks up not only sound from in front but some from behind as well. This coincident technique, invented by British scientist Alan Blumlein in the 1930s, can give very natural sound in some circumstances.

Another coincident technique favored by some professionals is the "M-S" system31, which requires a special processing network to resolve the recorded sound into left and right stereo signals. An advantage here is that it gives the mixing engineer greater control of the stereo image from the mixing desk than is available with any other technique.32

Near-Coincident Techniques

In a successful attempt to improve the stereo illusion, sound engineers began to separate the coincident microphones ever so slightly so the sound arrives at the microphones just slightly out of phase, thus contributing additional information which enhances the stereo image.33

We'll discuss two similar setups, the ORTF system from the French National Broadcasting Organization and the NOS system from Dutch Broadcasting. Both of these use cardioid (unidirectional) microphones. The ORTF system splays the microphones out at a 110° angle and separates the recording capsules by 17 cm (63/4"), whereas the NOS has the mikes at a 90° angle with a 30 cm (113/4") separation.34 These near-coincident techniques are superior to two strictly coincident cardioid microphones. Professional audio stores sell inexpensive adjustable rigs to hold two cardioid microphones on one mike stand in a near-coincident configuration similar to NOS (see Fig. 11). A near-coincident variation of the Blumlein technique places two figure of eight mikes at 90° to each other in an "X" configuration, but separated by about 7".

Spaced Omnidirectional Mikes

In many of the coincident or near-coincident configurations we just discussed, you are recording primarily the sound of the organ alone. With a spaced pair of omnidirectional microphones, however, you are recording not only the direct sound from the source, but also the room's response to the sound--reverberation--which is a big plus in organ recording. Under the best circumstances, the sound of spaced omnis can be very open and sensual indeed.35

How far apart should the microphones be spaced? The minimum is about 4'--that is, 2' on each side of the centerline drawn between the sound source and the microphones. Omni mikes are typically spaced 1/3 of the way in from the edges of the sound source. For example, if the organ is 18' wide the microphones could be placed 6' apart--3' on either side of the centerline (see Fig. 12).

If the sound source is very wide, however, two omnidirectional microphones may be spread so far apart that an aural "hole in the middle" becomes apparent. This is alleviated by placing a third omnidirectional microphone directly in the center, and then with a mixer adding just a bit of its sound to the left and right channels.26 If the volume of the center mike isn't kept quite soft compared to the left and right mikes, however, you will kill the stereo effect. A variation of this "center channel" technique provides a third mike to accent a soloist.

Spaced Pair of PZMs

Spaced PZM microphones behave very much like a spaced pair of omnidirectional mikes. The bass response of PZM mikes is enhanced when they are resting on a surface at least 4x4'--thus the floor is an excellent place for them. However, you don't want to bury them in the shadow of a pew or other obstructions, as this will modify their hemispherical pickup pattern. The author's favorite PZM setup uses two 4x4' pieces of masonite37 which are stored at the church and placed on top of the pews as needed. For flattest frequency response, place the PZM 1/3 of the way off center--8" off center on a 4x4' panel38 (see Fig. 13). For personal analysis recordings, you may be able to position the mikes on the console (see Fig. 14).

Which Is Better?

There is a spirited debate in the audio world between the proponents of coincident or near-coincident techniques versus the advocates of a spaced pair of omnidirectional mikes. The coincident techniques--which ensure that the left and right channels are in phase--used to solve problems that no longer exist today: the difficulties of cutting the master from which LP recordings (remember LPs?) were stamped, the difficulties of phono cartridges (remember them?) tracking low frequency sounds on LPs, and the problem of sound cancellation on mono radio stations (a rare breed) as out-of-phase stereo signals were summed to mono.

Further, as Edward Tatnall Canby observed in Audio, the bureaucracy at National Public Radio mandates coincident recording techniques (especially M-S) and gives them a hard sell in spite of the fact that many listeners find something important missing in the resulting recordings.39 Agreeing with Mr. Canby, Christopher Czeh, Technical Director of WNYC Public Radio in New York wrote:

The phase differences between spaced omnidirectional microphones help the listener in mentally recreating the spatial acoustics of the original performance. I have used spaced omnis for classical recordings for six years and have obtained excellent results. The major reason I prefer spaced omnis over coincident mikes is that they sound better in most circumstances.40

David Wilson of Wilson Audiophile Recordings, agrees and notes the crucial difference between the ears and microphones:

Microphones "hear" very differently than ears do. The microphone is very literal in what it picks up. There is no neurological ear-brain system that compensates for ambiance and perspective. For most recording, I prefer omnidirectional microphones because they are more natural sounding. That is, they more naturally integrate the sound of the instrument with room acoustics, and that's very important with pipe organs. In almost every organ recording I've made, however, I've experimented with a coincident pair of directional microphones, almost out of a sense of technical duty. After listening to the test results, I've almost always gone back to a spaced pair of omnis.

Frederick Hohman of Pro Organo has a different view:

My personal preference is for good directional microphones--not omnidirectional. A pair of these can be placed in any conventional pattern and configuration one desires. A single stereo mike could be the easiest way to do a quick setup, since this eliminates the factor of microphone spacing.

Jack Renner of Telarc, who has recorded Michael Murray in many diverse situations, looks at the broad picture:

The thing about coincident or near-coincident microphone techniques such as the ORTF configuration with directional mikes, or the crossed figure of eights, or the M-S systems, is that while they may not be everyone's cup of tea in terms of finished sound--I myself like the sound of a pair of spaced omnis--the coincident techniques will give you a perfectly acceptable recording and are a very safe way to approach a recording of anything.

How Far from the Organ?

How far the microphone(s) are placed from the sound-producing elements of the organ is one of the critical decisions in any recording setup, and it won't be the same for all circumstances. If an organist is making personal "analysis" recordings, a relatively close microphone position will give increased clarity, especially in a reverberant room. If the goal of the recording is to show the organ/room combination to its best advantage, a more distant position will increase the proportion of room (reflected) sound. Pipedreams' Michael Barone, who has probably listened to more organ recordings than anyone and who has made quite a few organ recordings as well, has some definite opinions:

A lot of people think that to get a sense of space they need to record from the back of the hall, and so many organ recordings are made miserable by this "gray tunnel" effect. But you don't want to put the microphones within two or three feet of the chamber either. You want to place the microphones where there is an obvious focus of the sound, but where the sound has begun to excite the room and participate in the acoustics of the space.

John Eargle of Delos agrees that most people tend to place the microphones too far from the organ, and describes how he decides where to place the microphones:

First I walk around the room while listening to the instrument. The best place for the mikes is within a zone where the direct sound of the organ and the reverberant sound coalesce. What you have at this magic point is a very natural blend of room sound, plus good articulation from the instrument.

David Wilson is a firm believer in recording some "tests" to determine the best place for the microphones:

Generally I will start testing with a very close placement, say perhaps 10 or 12', which is closer than I believe is ideal. We will record 30 seconds or so of music and move the microphones back--generally I move them back in 3' increments--and record another test. We repeat this procedure five times. I also vary the height, starting with a height which is less than ideal--I believe 8' or so is the minimum satisfactory height--and go up from there to perhaps 20' or higher. I also vary the spacing between microphones. I start with the microphones closer together than I think they should be, say 4', and separate them further. By listening to the playback of these tests, we discover the best distance from the organ, height and between-mike spacing.

Jack Renner also stresses listening:

In placing the microphones, a lot of it is experience and a lot is listening. I have the organist play with various combinations of stops and I walk around the room listening until I find a place that sounds focused and blended--a place where all the registers seem to come together and where the bass pipes especially sound good and solid. You will find a point where there is good balance between the direct sound from the pipes themselves and the reverberant sound of the room, where you have a pleasing mix and where you don't hear various voices "popping" in and out, which is one of the biggest pitfalls in organ recording.

Aesthetics and Mike Distance

Crucial factors in deciding how far the microphones should be placed from the organ may well be the type of organ, the type of room and the type of music to be recorded. You might expect one type of presence, articulation, clarity and room sound for an all-Bach program on a tracker organ in a moderate-sized church, and have completely different expectations for a program of Romantic music on a large Romantic organ in a reverberant cathedral. Personally, I think a good number of recordings of the latter type have been ruined because the engineer was striving for too much clarity. These misguided attempts often have harsh, close-up organ tone and inadequate reverberation from mike positions that were too close. In this context it is very educational to listen to the same organ played by various artists and recorded by different engineers.41 Despite what the "experts" say, only you can decide if you like cathedral music to wash over you in a sea of reverberation.42

More than two Mikes?

When the sound source is very wide, for example a symphony orchestra or an organ that is quite spread out from left to right, you may have to spread a pair of omnis so far apart that you begin to lose sound from the middle--giving rise to the expression "the hole in the middle." Some recording engineers solve this problem by placing a third omni mike directly on the center axis of the sound source and mixing it on site into the left and right channels at a much softer level. This is Telarc's standard three-mike setup for symphony orchestras, although for concertos they will use additional mikes if necessary to highlight the soloist. Telarc's standard organ setup is two spaced omnis. However, they used a three-mike setup to record the wide organ at Methuen Music Hall, with the mikes about 35-40' back from the organ. When John Eargle recorded Robert Noehren on the large Rieger which sits front and center in the chancel of the Pacific Union College Church in Angwin, California:

We used three spaced omni mikes, 15-18' from the organ case. This case, like most trackers, is fairly shallow--eight feet deep at most. If there is a magic zone for mike placement that seems to work with this type of instrument, it is in the 17-20' range.

Other recording engineers, David Wilson included, do not use this technique because they feel that mixing a centrally-positioned monophonic mike into the left and right channels dilutes the stereo effect.

Recording the Reverberation

In order to capture the way an organ really sounds in a room, it is sometimes necessary to add additional microphones to record the reverberation. Few American churches have an excess of reverberation, but many have more than would be captured by the setups we have described thus far--two or three microphones placed relatively close to the organ. So a pair of microphones at some distance from the organ, with a small amount of the output of the left "reverb" mike mixed into the left channel and vice versa, does the trick. One might think that a single mike placed at a distance with the output shared between the channels--a variation on the "hole in the middle" technique--would suffice, but this is not usually done:

Reverberation from a single [distant] source divided between the left and right channels is unsatisfactory because the resulting sound, which, to give a natural effect, should be distributed across the space between the two loudspeakers, appears in this case to emanate from a single point.43

When John Eargle recorded Robert Noehren playing the organ he had built in 1967 for The First Unitarian Church in San Francisco:

I wanted to accurately portray the physical layout of the organ--which is arranged left to right in the rear gallery--so the primary mikes were a pair of directional cardioids splayed in a near-coincident configuration. The room is not reverberant, but there is enough room sound to give a nice glow and enhance the music. So we used an additional coincident pair of directional mikes, aimed more or less at the side walls, to capture this glow.

When Michael Barone recorded the Fisk organ at House of Hope in St. Paul, Minnesota, he encountered a similar situation:

The organ, which has a Rückpositiv, is located in the rear gallery. It generates a lot of bass energy, but that is not apparent in all areas of the room and generally not along the center aisle as the bass energy tends to hug the walls. So we placed a single stereo mike in the center aisle on a stand tall enough to get it well above the Rückpositiv. We also placed a pair of omni mikes a little further back from the organ closer to the side aisles, and then mixed the four inputs together until it sounded good--it's a little like cooking!

John Eargle describes his technique recording the large encased Rosales tracker organ at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Portland, Oregon:

The organ is located at the back of a rather deep chancel. Two omnidirectional microphones were used for direct pickup of the instrument in the chancel area, while a coincident pair of directional mikes was placed out in the church for reverberant pickup.

Improving the Room

There are basically two things you can physically do to the room before recording: decrease the noise and increase the reverberation. Potential noise sources that you may be able to do something about include: ventilation and heating systems, buzzing fluorescent lights, open doors or windows, etc. You may have to work around other noise sources like vehicular and air traffic, school children, and even expansion sounds from the roof as the sun heats it up mid-morning and it cools down in the evening.

It will increase the reverberation in an empty church significantly if the pew cushions can be removed. This is John Eargle's standard practice and he gets a lot of benefit for a reasonable effort. If the church is large and storage of the cushions is a problem, try stacking the cushions from two pews on top of the third, etc., etc. This will expose two-thirds of the hard pew surfaces (see Fig. 15). Or if the church has theater-type chairs with plush cushions, flip all the bottoms upright to minimize the absorptive surfaces.

Some Typical Solutions

The following are some microphone selection and placement solutions for various types of rooms:

Excessive reverberation--Use a pair of cardioid (unidirectional) microphones in a near-coincident configuration such as ORTF or NOS.

Minimal or average reverberation in a large room--Start with a pair of spaced omnis or PZM mikes and then, if you have mixer capabilities,44 try an additional coincident pair of directional microphones further back in the room mixed very subtly into the main pair (left into left and right into right).

Very wide sound source--Use a pair of spaced omnis or PZMs 1/3 in from the edges of the sound source. If necessary, a third omni in the center can be very subtly mixed in if there is an audible "hole in the middle." Alternatively, experiment with a splayed pair of directional cardioid mikes in the ORTF or NOS configuration.

Divided organ on the left and right sides of chancel or gallery--Try a pair of spaced omnis or PZMs. At Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, David Wilson recorded the huge Aeolian-Skinner which is divided in left and right chambers in the chancel plus a Bombarde Division at the rear center of the chancel. He used just two omnis spaced 8' apart, on stands about 20' high placed in the nave about 15' from the organ.

Rear gallery placement or organ high in the chancel--Unless the rear gallery is very deep (potentially allowing microphone placement within the gallery), you will need stands that allow you to get the microphones well up in the air.

Gallery placement with a Rückpositiv--The mike stands must enable placing the mikes well above the Rückpositiv if the correct balance between divisions is to be recorded (review the section on mike stand safety).

Organ is in a chamber on one side of a large chancel--The "standard" placement of a pair of spaced omnis on either side of the center aisle or a pair of coincident mikes in the center aisle pointed toward the rear of the chancel will pick up too much sound in one channel and not enough in the other. If the chancel is big enough, you might try a pair of spaced omnis within the chancel, each of which is the same distance from the organ.45 Alternatively, you might try a pair of cardioid directional mikes in the ORTF or NOS configuration within the chancel placed opposite the organ chamber and pointing at it. A third possibility is a pair of PZM mikes taped to the chancel wall opposite the organ.  With these solutions, the reverberation component will likely be nil, calling for reverberation mikes further back in the nave.

Organ is in a chamber on one side of a small chancel--If the chancel is not that large, try to adapt either of the above alternatives through placement within the nave. For example, if the pipes are on the left of the chancel, place a near coincident pair of cardioids on the right side of the nave pointing towards the organ. Or if using a spaced pair of omnis, keep the left and right microphones approximately equidistant from the pipes. Always avoid placing an omni mike too close to a wall to prevent hard reflections.

Modifying Registrations

If the purpose of the recording is to hear the effect of a piece you're learning or to document a recital performance, then the registrations are chosen for the live performance and the recording is secondary. But if the primary purpose is to create a recording which shows the music, artist, organ and room off to best advantage, the question of modifying registrations to serve that end is legitimate. English recording engineer Michael Smythe offers this advice:

One must keep a keen ear open for stops that do not record well. What may sound fine in the church may come through the loudspeaker as an opaque noise, for example, the booming sound which 16' pipes quite often produce on certain notes. Therefore the organist has to rethink his registration for recording, which may be totally different from a recital. Sometimes one can do nothing about it, however, there being no suitable alternate stops.46

The late Michael Nemo of Towerhill, who made numerous recordings of John Rose on the huge Austin at St. Joseph Cathedral in Hartford, concurred:

From a technical point of view, there are some problem stops. For example, 32' flues like a Bourdon or Open Wood can be quite pleasing in person. As most stereo systems won't reproduce anything at all from the bottom range of a 32' stop, however, it doesn't mean much on a recording. And by virtue of strong, low-frequency fundamental, these stops often create enormous standing wave problems in the room. No two 32' stops are alike in the way they record, however--some can be quite delicious and others only cause problems.

Excessive Dynamic Range

In addition to eliminating problem stops, there is the question of the dynamic range of large, Romantic organs. Consider Dupré's Cortège et Litanie, which begins very quietly on a solitary Choir Dulciana (sans pedal) and ends fff with a page of crashing chords over an octave pedal point. While this enormous dynamic range can sound glorious in person, if the recording level is set as it should be for the fff climax, the pp sections on tape will recede into inaudibility. If you turn up the playback volume so you can actually hear some detail in the pp sections--which you certainly can in a live performance--when the piece gets to the ff and fff sections you will be blasted into the next county unless you turn the volume back down again.

In the analog days when recording was done on magnetic tape, you would have a good bit of tape hiss competing with the Dulciana and thus there was motivation to avoid excessively soft sounds. But now that professional recording is done on hiss-free DAT,47 many engineers--reveling in the huge dynamic range of DAT recordings released on CD--are creating recordings of large, Romantic organs that virtually force listeners to keep their fingers on the volume control, especially when using headphones.

There are two ways around this. One is for the organist to compress the dynamic range of the organ by, in the Cortège et Litanie, for example, leaving the sub and super couplers off48 for the climax and substituting the Geigen Diapason for the Dulciana at the beginning--at that volume level the Geigen will sound like a Dulciana and the climax will be good and loud nonetheless. Another option is for a recording engineer who reads music and can follow the score to increase the volume level of the very quiet parts at the mastering stage.49 The final recording should not simply enshrine the technical capabilities of the DAT/CD medium but should be a reasonable facsimile of the way the performer's artistry actually sounds in the room.

Conclusion

Making recordings can be a useful tool for self study, a means of communicating with potential employers and professional competitions, a satisfying hobby, a part-time career, or the means to artistic fulfillment. We have endeavored to explain the bare minimum required for an understanding of the process. We have given some "quick and easy" prescriptions for personal recording. And finally, we have explored professional recording techniques used by some of the top pros in the field, whom we sincerely thank for their time and generosity.               

An heretical view of acoustics

by Jack M. Bethards

 

In the world of music at large the organ is often considered an outcast, a curiosity, or at best an antique. One reason is that much of the organ world is thought to be more concerned with sound for its own sake than with music. This characterization may be unfair, but it is partly our own fault. Organ builders and organists are notorious for demanding acoustics with exceptionally long reverberation times. True, much choral and organ music (often that written for the church) sounds best in a resonant environment, but this fact has often clouded our thinking . . . and the music! A great deal of music played on the organ is not served well by overly long reverberation because clarity is lost. Too much reverberation can blur form, harmonic structure, rhythm, articulation, and dynamic contrasts. Although it is hard for organ devotees to admit it, a resonant acoustic that is excellent for orchestral and other music can also serve the organ well.

 

There are two reasons for the dogmatic insistence on long reverberation times. First, it is a natural reaction to the discouraging trend toward studio-like acoustics in modern church architecture. In order to gain any reverberation at all, we have become used to asking for the moon. Ask for five seconds and be happy with one and a half is the usual formula. Unfortunately, however, this strategy often backfires, leaving organ advocates with little credibility among architects, acousticians and those who pay for buildings.

The second reason is that organs in highly reverberant rooms make a spectacular sonic effect. It is said that any kind of noise sounds well in a stone cathedral. But what does this mean? Does it mean that the overall result is musical? Or does it mean only that the sound itself is exciting, dramatic, rich with color? All too often the latter is the answer. Likewise, amateur singing sounds fine in the shower as does student trumpeting in an empty gymnasium. But these, of course, are illusions. What is being perceived as music is often nothing more than exaggerated sound. More is required of an acoustical environment to make satisfying music.

What is a good acoustic for the pipe organ?

It is commonly believed that all organs are enhanced by a very long reverberation time. We must differentiate among general types of organs (and the music played on them) and their acoustical environments. First, consider the cathedral organ. Although no music is successful when all clarity is lost through excessive reverberation, certain branches of the organ and choral repertoire--particularly that written for grand churches--require a reverberation time that is greater than that required for other forms of music.

At the other extreme is the high pressure theater organ. This type of instrument is far more successful in a studio or heavily draped theater. Otherwise the detail is lost. Their unique ability to create accent and to carry complex rhythmic patterns is partially defeated if reverberation is too great. Special purpose venues for these two extremes of the spectrum are not our concern here. This article deals instead with acoustical requirements for organs in the middle ground that are required to perform an eclectic repertoire in typical American churches and in multi-purpose concert halls.

Amount of reverberation

Too much is just as bad as too little. The lower limit of reverberation is easy to determine. It is the point at which music sounds dry, dull, and lifeless. This lower limit is higher for organ than for other instruments primarily because organ pipes are simply on or off. There is little that can be done to shape their tone. Some organ builders strive to improve the flexibility and responsiveness of the pipe organ; however, it seems unlikely that this can be achieved to the degree it is found in other instruments or in the human voice. Therefore a reasonably resonant acoustic is necessary for the church or concert pipe organ.

It is more difficult to determine the upper limit of reverberation. When does reverberation stop adding warmth and grandeur and start adding confusion? There are five determinants:

* When there is so much overlap of sequential sounds that musical line and structure lose definition despite the most careful articulation by the player; in other words, when the player's ideas get lost in the process of transmission to the audience. At that point the performance becomes an impression of sounds rather than a projection of musical ideas. (Those satisfied only with impressions of sounds are much like the early Hi-Fi enthusiasts who favored recordings of locomotives!)

* When the player loses control of rhythm.

* When it becomes impossible to create accent, which on the organ is accomplished more through durations of silence and sound than it is by increase of loudness.

* When sudden changes of dynamic level are obscured.

* When sharp contrast in tone color is clouded.

All of these musical situations, and others, caused by excessive reverberation are not tolerated by most musicians. Unfortunately, however, they are sadly disregarded by many in the organ profession, much to the detriment of their credibility in musical circles. We are sometimes willing to sacrifice ten minutes of music to get five seconds of sound at the end of the last chord!

Quality of reverberation

Frequently, the total amount of reverberation time is the only consideration in specifying ideal organ acoustics. But we should be far more interested in the quality of reverberation than in its duration. There are three qualitative elements that seem most important to me as an organ designer:

* The intensity (power curve) must be as high as possible. I was first made aware of this in visiting some of the great churches of France. There was a quality of reverberation there quite different from even the best reverberant rooms in this country. Why this is so must be the subject of another enquiry; however, the nature of this quality is vitally important. What I found was that the intensity of sound stayed quite high throughout the reverberation period and then trailed off rather quickly. This produced a most satisfying, rich, warm sound. In other buildings with an equal duration of reverberation, but with quickly decreasing intensity, the result is a disturbing confusion. I attribute this to the changing nature of the sound during the reverberation period. My conclusion, based upon much observation, is that it is far better to have a short, intense reverberation period than to have a long, weak one. The charts below show this concept.

      A measurement which may be more valuable than reverberation time (RT) in expressing this quality of intensity is early decay time (EDT). This is the time it takes a sound to decay by 15 decibels, whereas RT measures the sound until it decays by 60 decibels. Obviously EDT is measuring the first and most intense part of the reverberation. A high sound level during the first seconds and a total reverberation period extending very little longer than the EDT describes my ideal reverberation characteristic in a more precise way. Exact numbers, of course, vary with each situation; however, the idea of a           ratio of EDT to RT is true in all cases.

* The decay of sound should be smooth. A series of fast echos (much like clapping one's hands at the top of a deep well) are called flutter echos. These often occur in buildings with parallel walls located close together or with domes and barrel vaults which have a focal point at a sound source. These are extremely deleterious to musical effect. They can be so serious as to confuse performers while irritating the listeners. Sometimes they can be sensed throughout the room, but often they are localized. This characteristic of reverberation, a yodeler's delight, is ruinous to music, or for that matter, clarity of speech. The quality of reverberation that we seek is a sound dying away, not a sound being reiterated.

* The room should sound the way it looks. The eye leads the ear to expect a certain amount of reverberation. When it is either more or less, even the amateur listener detects that something is wrong.

Frequency response

Reverberation time is such an issue that other related characteristics are sometimes overlooked in specifying acoustical design. Frequency response is one of the most important of these. I find it far easier to work in a building with a smooth frequency response than one where there are peaks and valleys along the spectrum. The amount of reverberation should progress evenly through each frequency range. The bass should have slightly more reverberation than the mid range and the treble should have slightly less. One of the great faults of most buildings is the inability to support the deep bass of the organ. The unfortunate tendency of many buildings to also exaggerate treble makes bass seem even weaker. Bass is, after all, one of the characteristics that makes the organ the king of instruments. However, if low frequency reverberation is overemphasized, the heavy, often slightly slow speaking bass of the pipe organ becomes ill-defined. Similarly, if there is an overbalance on the high end, it is difficult to avoid shrillness.

Dispersion

The sound producing area of a pipe organ is large. Sounds of different color and intensity emanate from various places within the organ case or chamber. If a room is shaped in such a way that sounds coming from different points are focused to particular listening areas, it is impossible to achieve good ensemble. The ideal acoustic disperses sound evenly throughout a room. Acousticians and architects can achieve this through the application of various shaped dispersion elements.

Distribution

Sound should be distributed evenly throughout the listening area. Organ builders encounter many rooms which have hot spots and dead spots. Some of these may involve loudness, others may emphasize certain frequencies. The first concern in good distribution is correct placement of the organ. Whether free-standing or in a chamber, an organ must have adequate communication with the listeners. Once that is achieved, the architect and acoustician can eliminate sound traps and provide proper reflective surfaces.

Presence

Reverberation that appears to be happening at a distance is not very satisfying. The listener should be immersed in the reverberant field, otherwise the effect is similar to listening to music coming from the next room. It is most often desirable for the organ to sound as though it is located in the same room as the listener, even if it is in a chamber. Many points of organ design are involved in this issue but acoustical factors are important as well. The chamber opening to the listening room should be as large as possible. The chamber should not be overly deep nor wider or taller at the back than it is at the front. Finally, the organ should occupy enough space so that the chamber does not possess its own reverberant field. If the sound being projected into the listening room comes with a built-in echo or hollowness, the result is more confusion. It must be noted that in some liturgical settings the opposite of presence, a sense of mystery, is valued. It is much easier to produce this quality in a chamber than in a free-standing case. Thus, a chamber can, in some circumstances, be advantageous. 

Background Noise

Because the organ is a "sostenuto" instrument lacking the percussive attack possibility of most other instruments, control of background noise is especially important since most background noise is also of a sustained nature. I refer especially to air handling equipment. Many types of organs have as one of their great virtues an extremely wide dynamic range. If background noise is not under control, the softer end of the organ's range is lost.

Loudness

Obviously, all of the qualities listed above which contribute to a warm, resonant sound require adequate loudness. This is a question of organ design. If an organ does not have the sonic energy to excite the reverberant field of the room, all of the efforts of acousticians and architects will be to no avail. The organ builder must design the instrument to fit the acoustical size of the listening room without being overbearing. All too often acoustical size is confused with the number of stops. Sound output has a great deal more to do with stop selection, layout, scaling, wind pressure, voicing, and finishing. In most cases, it is best to keep the organ as small as possible to achieve the musical and acoustical results desired.

Placement of the Organ

Placement of organ pipes is a critical element in acoustical design. If sound is not projected properly from its source, even the finest acoustic will not save the instrument. Proper placement and the tonal design of organs to fit various placement situations should be the subjects of a lengthy article, however a few summary comments are in order here. Although high, side organ chambers are often very successful in churches where the organ's role is primarily accompanimental, it is generally true that the best placement for an organ is directly behind and above the other performing forces. The organ should speak down the central, long axis of the room. This often poses a problem especially when inserting a pipe organ into an existing space. Usually, the difficulty is finding height for the organ. The lowest point of the sound opening should start one to two feet above the heads of the farthest "upstage" row of choristers when standing. This is often as much as 15¢ above floor level. The top of the tone opening should be a minimum of 18¢ above that. For some types of organs it should be more. If adequate height is not available, there arises the challenge of how to present the organ visually. Traditionally, organs are narrow and tall. Short, squat ones tend to look ridiculous. Since the organ is known as the king of instruments and produces a fittingly noble sound, a "Punch & Judy" pipe display is inappropriate. There are no easy solutions. If a compromise must be made, the musical result must always be favored over the visual one. Sometimes it is best not to show pipes at all and let the instrument speak through grilles.  A smaller instrument is often the best solution. It will open far more options for good placement than a larger one. A well placed organ is an acoustically efficient organ.

Summary

Over the years I have found it most comfortable to work in buildings with a moderate acoustic. It is depressing to face a totally dry environment where the organ's tone is given no help at all; however, it is equally frustrating to deal with an overly live building where all of one's efforts in careful tone regulation are lost in a musical muddle. Approximately two and one-half to three seconds of intense, smooth reverberation (when the room is occupied) combined with even frequency response, good dispersion, distribution, and presence, as well as limited background noise yields the ideal atmosphere. A few examples from my experience that come quickly to mind are Old South Church in Boston, First-Plymouth Congregational Church in Lincoln, Nebraska, the University of Arizona (Holsclaw Hall) in Tucson, Severance Hall in Cleveland, the Boston Symphony Hall, and many of the famous 19th-century town halls throughout England. In other words, this writer's ideal for organ sound is the same as that for a first class symphony hall of the more reverberant type. Such an environment provides warmth for organ tone combined with clarity of musical line.

 

Jack Bethards is president and tonal director of Schoenstein & Co., Organ Builders of San Francisco. This article is based on a paper he presented in a forum with acoustical engineer Paul Scarbrough at the 136th meeting of the Acoustical Society of America, Norfolk, Virginia, in October, 1998.

Graphs by Paul Scarbrough, Acoustical Engineer, Norwalk, CT

Anton Warde

It is amusing to trace the metamorphosis of what was to have been little more than a concert tour of Europe in the spring of 1954—one already fiendishly long and tightly scheduled—into a recording venture without precedent. As the itinerary took shape for his first serious European tour, Biggs looked forward to becoming acquainted with many notable organs along the way (although it also seems clear that he had not yet developed any really visceral interest in historic organs per se, perhaps because he had not yet experienced the right one).1 By the end of January 1954, however, the idea of getting to know historic organs in Europe seems to have advanced to “actively recruiting” them for an exciting but still vaguely conceived purpose: a recording project of some kind—someday, somehow—that might link composer, instrument, and landscape.
Barely back in Cambridge after a month of concerts in California, Biggs headed straight for New York in the first week of February to test his “boss’s” interest in such a project. It was surely in this conversation—probably when Biggs spoke of “scouting” instruments—that David Oppenheim, director of Columbia Masterworks, made the innocently momentous, and in Biggs lore now famous, suggestion: “Take with you a small tape recorder and let it run while you play.”2 Oppenheim then continued, “Be sure to record one [same] piece everywhere. This will make [possible] an immediate comparison of all the different instruments you play.”3 Recalling this conversation two decades later, Biggs wrote, We visualized, as I remember, some little miracle-box about the size of a portable typewriter. For advice, we turned to the engineering staff of Columbia. After they had a good chuckle, they explained to us some recording facts of life. And by the day of air embarkment for Lisbon, our little typewriter-sized recorder had blossomed into 500 pounds of Ampex equipment. Excess baggage charges to Lisbon alone were astronomical.4
At twenty years’ remove, Biggs’s memory seems to have confused (or perhaps intentionally conflated) the relatively modest—if by no means trivial—162 pounds of equipment carried in 1954 with the much heavier and more sophisticated hardware they brought with them on the Mozart tour, one year later.5 In any event, Vincent Liebler, director of recording operations at Columbia Records, the engineer who must have been chief among the chucklers that day, agreed to oversee the creation of custom recording equipment suitable for use in the field. Liebler would try to have it ready a month before the Biggses’ departure in mid-April.6

More than “snapshots” of sound

The broadcaster in Biggs had leapt at the idea of capturing some “snapshots” of sound from Europe to insert in his Sunday morning programs. And, of course, he knew he would always have the D-Minor Toccata up his sleeve (like Bach, he imagined) to serve as the common denominator for Oppenheim’s “one piece” assignment. On the train back to Boston, Biggs must have rejoiced at the prospect of the recording equipment that he and Oppenheim had just commissioned. We can imagine his excitement to have been greatest of all at Oppenheim’s suggestion, before their conversation had ended, that they consider trying to do some formal recording already that spring. Oppenheim had even proposed that they contact Philips of Holland, Columbia’s affiliate on the Continent in the 1950s, to solicit their suggestions for possible locations and their assistance, perhaps, in making such recordings.
Biggs spent the weekend putting together repertory for three LP’s worth of Buxtehude, Pachelbel, and Hindemith. And on Monday morning, February 8, he sent the plan to Oppenheim with these lines: “It was fine to see you last week, and I think things are working out in a very exciting way. . . . It’s possible that Philips may know of some particularly magnificent organ along our route, and if so, I’ll make plans to record anywhere that you or they suggest.” And then he added, “If this ‘formal recording’ does not take place, we could take all this material in our stride ourselves.” With this, we have the first indication that Biggs was prepared, with the help of his wife Peggy, and using the equipment that Columbia was compiling for him, to act as his own producer and recording engineer in Europe regardless of what Philips decided to do (which, as it turned out, would be little).
In the same outgoing mail that Monday, Biggs sent Liebler a copy of his itinerary and quickly received this acknowledgement:
We will start investigation of the power facilities in these various cities, and from that we can determine what type of power supply to incorporate in your new tape equipment. We will do everything possible to expedite this equipment so that you will have it around the middle of March. However, it is entirely in the hands of Colonel Ranger, who is building the equipment. . . . As for your coming down to go to school, this can only be done when the equipment is ready, and I believe the best place for this schooling will be in Colonel Ranger’s office in Newark, N.J. I will keep you informed of our progress during the next few weeks.7
Progress on the equipment went slowly, however. And it appears that “Colonel Ranger” may have turned the whole task back to Columbia’s engineers at some point with the advice that they simply purchase a standard Ampex 403 and modify it for battery operation. The equipment that Biggs had expected to pick up in mid-March would be barely ready by mid-April, uncomfortably close to his day of departure. In the meantime, the ever-alert audiophile in him had caught wind of a smaller Ampex that was supposed to be introduced before long.8 On April 5, however, Liebler wrote to dismiss that possibility and summon Biggs to New York for a lesson in using his new equipment:
We will be looking forward to seeing you early Monday morning, April 12th. We are doing everything possible to get the equipment in at that time. It seems that most of this equipment is not generally available across the counter, and it has become necessary to send out scouts to pick up the units that we want. . . . We can find nothing regarding a new light-weight Ampex portable being released around April 15th. The one we have settled for is the lightest two-unit Ampex available, and it should give you professional results. The power battery supply has been assembled especially for this Ampex. . . . I am looking forward to seeing you on Monday for lesson # 1.
With a long list of pre-departure errands still to be run in the few remaining days before the Biggses’ flight from Boston, lesson #1 in New York City probably remained the only lesson. But the electrical technician in Biggs—his original calling, after all—no doubt felt confident that no further schooling would be needed. As he and Peggy prepared to depart on Sunday, April 18, “the notes of his Easter morning CBS broadcast still echoing in his ears,” Biggs dashed off this quick note to Oppenheim: “Here we go! The equipment is certainly wonderful, and we are going to make every effort to make the most of it. Unfortunately, overweight payments to the airlines [for its 162 pounds] will come to about a thousand dollars, around the circuit, but there is just no alternative.”9 Oppenheim immediately cabled this (undated) reply to Biggs in Lisbon, his first station on the “circuit”:
SORRY ABOUT EXTRA TRANSPORTATION COSTS FOR EQUIPMENT WILL GLADLY PAY HALF OF COST OUTRIGHT AND OTHER HALF ADVANCED AGAINST ROYALTIES GREETINGS DAVID OPPENHEIM
Wonderful as Biggs judged the equipment to be, he nevertheless needed to cable New York for advice from time to time. Two weeks into the tour, S. E. Sorensen, one of the engineers at Columbia Records, responded to some of Biggs’s queries with this letter directed to him en route in London:
Dear Mr. Biggs: We are delighted to hear of your good progress. Keep it up. . . . Regarding the -1/2db level when playing the standard 1000 cycle tape, we feel that this is nothing much to be concerned about. Leave well enough alone. . . . Your difficulty with fuses may have been caused by starting the generator without its normal load. . . . We found it safer to leave the Ampex tape machine switch ‘ON’ and then starting the generator. In this way we are not subjected to a high voltage starting surge. . . . We are sending you five fuses immediately via this letter. Should you require more please advise. . . . We are all anxiously waiting to hear your recordings. We will report our comments at the first opportunity. . . . Best of luck from us all here in New York.10
And seventeen days later, he wrote this to Biggs in Copenhagen:
Dear Mr. Biggs: From your letter of May 17, we have concluded your principal trouble to be in your basic battery supply. Your entire success hinges on the use of good if not perfect batteries. For your future protection specify and order at least four (4) batteries connected in parallel for 12-volt operation. . . . Regarding your problem with the frequency meter, we can only confirm your suggestion of maintaining the 60 cycle reed at the 60 cycle point and by a very careful anticipating of the adjustment maintain it at its maximum excursion. Other than this we cannot advise you. . . . We have not yet listened to your recordings. We are looking forward to this experience. . . . Lots of luck.11
Between the laconic letters from Sorensen, however, came this upbeat and amusing note from the boss himself, dated May 13, mailed to Frankfurt, and addressed to both of the Biggses:
Dear Mr. and Mrs. Biggs: I just want you to know that I am delighted that you are making such progress and that we can offer you both contracts as recording engineers upon your return to the United States. I am certainly looking forward to hearing the results of your work, and I trust that there will be some tapes on the way within short. . . . Please try to do a little relaxing, at least three minutes a day, and think of us here in the United States, from time to time, glued to our television sets watching the great Washington circus, of which you no doubt are made more than aware. . . Excelsior! David [Oppenheim]
(Oppenheim’s “Washington circus” surely refers to the Army-McCarthy hearings, which Oppenheim and his wife, the actress Judy Holliday, must have followed with keen interest, given Holliday’s investigation by J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI, four years earlier.)

700 “takes” and counting

Recording at every opportunity “around the circuit” between 40 concerts and broadcasts in eleven countries, Biggs filled 65 reels of tape (of the 71 they carried) with more than 700 individual “takes.” Peggy Biggs quickly became her husband’s expert monitor of meters and keeper of recording logs—not to mention his chief assistant in hauling all the equipment. The hardware to be carried in and out of every recording venue included the 58-pound Ampex 403P (P for portable—in two units, luckily), to which Columbia’s engineers had added circuitry and accessories to regulate the potentially unsteady 110 volt AC power produced by the special motor-driven generator they had designed (a 64-pound device that would in turn receive its power from a minimum of two—but ideally four—full-sized, lead-acid automotive batteries to be rented on the ground at each stop along the way), a twelve-pound microphone, and finally a utility bag containing several pounds of tools and connecting cable. Upon his return, Biggs wrote to Liebler, “Very many thanks for all your interest and wonderful cooperation in the whole venture. We both acquired blisters on our hands from lugging the stuff around, but it was fun.”12 (See photo: “Recording engineer” Peggy Biggs, 1954, on page 22.)
Philips played only an indirect role in the 1954 project. Its home office in Baarn, Holland, served first as the receiving station for a shipment of blank 3M tape from New York (sent from there, presumably, because the Ampex had been calibrated for the characteristics of that tape alone) and later as the depot through which most of the completed reels were shipped back to New York. Philips did no recording with Biggs until the following year when (as we shall see) its white-smocked engineers recorded the Mozart sonatas in Salzburg Cathedral alongside Columbia’s two “engineers in mufti,” Georg Steinmeyer and Peggy Biggs.
For the previous six months, Biggs and Steinmeyer had corresponded about concert arrangements (set, finally, for Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Nuremberg, and Munich, in that order), as well as about recording possibilities, car rental, and organ itinerary. Three years had passed since Steinmeyer had last seen the Biggses. Home in Oettingen again by the end of 1951 (after completing his one-year apprenticeship at Aeolian-Skinner in Boston and an adventurous auto tour of the United States), Steinmeyer first worked on his father’s project to restore the large Steinmeyer instrument at Nuremberg’s St. Lorenz-Kirche following its wartime destruction. It was there that he made the acquaintance of the “light of his eyes”: a young Nürnbergerin named Hannelore. For better or for worse, the Biggses’ schedule would place them in Steinmeyer’s responsible hands a scant five days after his wedding on May 8; and the bride and groom would in effect “honeymoon with the Biggses.” Steinmeyer’s last letter to the Biggses before their arrival had included this poignantly couched request concerning his bride:
If Hanne can get a few days off because of our wedding, would you mind if I ask you if she can join us for a few days? Hanne speaks English fluently since she is a German language teacher at an American school and since she has a diploma as an interpreter for English. She also loves music—and I think, besides all that, she is a nice girl. But I don’t know how much luggage you have and if you like to travel with a stranger. You will have so many impressions and so much to do, to see, and to hear on your trip that I would understand if you like to travel alone with me. Please do not hesitate to write me what you think. It is rather arrogant to ask you such a question—but I hope you will forgive me and see it as a matter which happens when people are in love.13
The Biggses sent an enthusiastic affirmative of course; and at their first recording session (in Heidelberg) Biggs would even tape an interview with the newlyweds.

Bringing the Mercedes to its knees

Steinmeyer stood waiting at the gate in Frankfurt when the Biggses’ flight from Berlin landed, shortly after noon on Thursday, May 13. He had made the five-hour drive from Oettingen that morning in the Mercedes 180 that Biggs had agreed to rent for the week, and had brought with him the two heavy, 12 volt, 125 ampere-hour, automotive batteries that Biggs had asked him to rent along with the car, for powering the AC generator. Half an hour before landing, the Biggses had flown over Eisenach, the town of Bach’s birth, and a destination beyond easy reach by Westerners in the years of the Cold War. Steinmeyer thus became the first to be told, under hugs and over handshakes, the story that Biggs would retell again and again, and eventually include in the booklet that accompanied The Art of the Organ:
On our way to Heidelberg from Berlin, we flew to Frankfurt, passing over Eisenach and gaining an unforgettable picture of this city, with its red roofs clustered together and sheltered by the hills. At this moment we were just one mile from Bach’s birthplace, yet with no chance to visit this historic spot. For we were in the Russian controlled area of East Germany, and—fortunately—one mile up in the air. Flying down the “corridor,” following the concert in Berlin, the pilot had allowed us to go up to the cockpit to watch the historic city of Eisenach approach. As the little village appeared ahead and passed gradually beneath the plane, the pilot asked my wife, “Were you born there?” “No,” Peggy replied, “but a friend of ours was, almost three hundred years ago.” “Must be an old friend,” was the pilot’s comment.
As the travelers claimed their baggage—more a matter of freight—Steinmeyer discovered that he had not been wrong to worry about how much his guests would bring, for when the combined weight of the recording equipment, the passengers, and their normal bags had been added to that of the two huge batteries in the trunk, it was enough to bring the Mercedes to its knees. At this point, Biggs was still carrying 56 reels of tape in metal containers (15 of the original 71, imprinted with Purcell in England and Sweelinck in Holland, had already been shipped homeward). In letters to his European contacts before he came, Biggs had almost laughably minimized the size of the tape recorder he would bring, still calling it “our own little amateur machine” long after he knew it would amount to far more than that. His aim, no doubt, had been to minimize fears of disruption and to deflect in advance any fees that some authorities might have been tempted to levy for formal recording. As late as March 11, for example, only five weeks before his departure and even as Columbia’s engineers were adding yet more weight to the Ampex, Biggs had appended this seemingly casual postscript to one of his letters to Steinmeyer: “P.S. We hope to bring our own amateur tape machine (instead of a Leica), and we hope to take a few musical snapshots of some of the organs we play.” Of course, he may not have been completely disingenuous in minimizing the nature of the equipment at that point, for we know that he was still hoping for the sudden introduction of a new lightweight machine by Ampex.

Rural color at Amorbach

If the weight of the recording equipment had come as one surprise to Steinmeyer, nothing had prepared him, either, for the countless hours they would all spend using it. To him (and no doubt to Peggy—not to mention to Hanne), the number of takes in each recording session seemed endless. On the long Sunday afternoon at Amorbach alone, they recorded 45 takes, averaging five apiece for each of the nine variations in Pachelbel’s partita, Was Gott tut, das ist wohlgetan. It is not that Biggs would flub his playing, Steinmeyer explains; rather, he simply wanted the luxury of several options from which to assemble (like Glenn Gould) one best version of each piece. And given the nature of the instrument, of course, he liked to carry away more than one set of registrations to have at his disposal when the time came to edit. Yet to Steinmeyer it often seemed that each new take was as good as the last—provided that no one had slammed a door or dropped a broom or sneezed or buzzed past the church on a motorcycle. Biggs’s final directives penciled in the margins of the recording logs (kept during the sessions by Peggy in small spiral notebooks and later typed up with more generous space for Biggs to add his editing notes) show that he nearly always combined two or three takes to make the definitive one: usually the beginning of one take, the middle of a second, and the final bars of a third (the latter, often, for nothing more than a better-sounding die-away). As he edited the Pachelbel partita recorded at rural Amorbach (for The Art of the Organ) Biggs delighted in retaining the peal of the abbey’s bells at one point and the crow of a rooster before one of the variations.
When scheduling recitals, Biggs liked to have at least one full day to get to know each instrument. On the days between the concerts in Heidelberg’s Heiliggeist-Kirche on May 15, Frankfurt’s Gnaden-Kirche on May 17, Nuremberg’s St. Lorenz-Kirche on May 19, and Munich’s St. Markus-Kirche (the church of Karl Richter) on May 21, Steinmeyer drove the Biggses to various instruments of note in the same countryside that they would be exploring more thoroughly one year later—although none of them knew it then—with the “recorder set on Mozart.” For now, however, the focus was on recording Johann Pachelbel, Nuremberg’s native son, and on adding more Bach D-Minors to the growing collection. Biggs recorded in four south German locations on the 1954 trip: in Heidelberg on Friday, May 14, playing the Bach Toccata (5 takes) and various pieces by Pachelbel (14 takes) on the 1948 Steinmeyer organ in the Heiliggeist-Kirche; then in Amorbach on Sunday afternoon, May 16, playing the Pachelbel partita (with its total of 45 takes) on the 1782 Stumm organ in the Abbey Church there; next in Nuremberg on Tuesday, May 18, playing further pieces by Pachelbel (22 takes) on the large 1952 Steinmeyer organ in the St. Lorenz-Kirche; and finally in Weingarten on Thursday, May 20, playing another Bach D-Minor (5 takes) and more pieces by Pachelbel (15 takes) on the 1737 Gabler organ in the vast Benedictine Abbey that looms on a bluff above the town.

The day at Weingarten

The log of their day of recording at the Baroque basilica of Weingarten, the largest church of its kind north of the Alps, offers a typical glimpse of both the frustrations and the satisfactions Biggs encountered while taping in the field. Through Steinmeyer’s “connections” (since he himself had been a member of the team that had just completed a major renovation of the organ), he had been able to gain access for Biggs to the fabled instrument for most of that Thursday. Steinmeyer had booked rooms at a small hotel only a few hundred feet below the abbey’s pompous façade, and Biggs, who had long ago learned that the dress of an English gentleman caused doors to open more briskly before him than did lesser attire—especially in places like Weingarten—wore his best pin-striped suit that day, complete, as always, with vest-pocket handkerchief. No public performance had been scheduled for Weingarten, but he dressed for the day as if he were to give one. (See photo: Biggs at the console at Weingarten, May 20, 1954.)
By shortly before 11:00 a.m., the equipment had been set up in a sunlit gallery to the south of the organ, and Biggs had finished exploring the resources of the imposing but gently voiced instrument, the prospect of which may be the most famous in all the world. (See photo: Ready to record at Weingarten, May 20, 1954.)
Peggy had donned her earphones, and Steinmeyer had taken his post at the main entrance to urge silence from entering visitors. Biggs drew his registration for Pachelbel’s Toccata in D Minor, and barked, “Take one!” In Peggy’s log, we read: “Take 1—with one note clock struck 11.” Then, “pitch variation at end of this—but no indication on dials”; and further, “Take 2—with door crash and mob of people.” Nevertheless, the combination of these two takes, plus one “insert” to make a repair, became Band 1, Side 2 of The Art of the Organ. (See photo: Peggy Biggs records at Weingarten, May 20, 1954, page 24.)
Despite the hazards of trying to make a formal recording under informal circumstances, Biggs reveled in the luxury of spending the better part of a day with the fabulous instrument. As the afternoon wore on, Steinmeyer recalls, the sun streaming through the great west window at Biggs’s back grew uncomfortably warm, but he played on and on. “We recorded until ten minutes to six,” Biggs wrote in his album notes, “and had microphone and all equipment down by six for the Monks’ Evensong.” In an article he would soon write for High Fidelity Magazine, Biggs promised hi-fi buffs that they, like him, would marvel at “the rich carpet of sound that rolls from the Weingarten organ.”14 And in that essay his own early electrical training would give him an elegant metaphor to explain the character of that sound: Gabler would never voice a pipe to the upper reaches of its tonal capacity. To achieve full and yet mellow sonorities, he would instead make stops of double pipes—two pipes speaking, one might say, in parallel. This produces a rich “amperage” of sonority on an unforced “voltage.”15

Back to the lowlands

After the concert in Munich that ended their week with Steinmeyer, the Biggses and all their equipment—minus the batteries, of course—flew off to continue six more weeks of recitals, broadcasts, and recording sessions. They traveled to Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland, then southward again to Paris in anticipation of a recital at Notre Dame that had been scheduled for Sunday, June 13. Immediately upon their arrival, however, on June 10, they learned that the event would have to be cancelled because of the sudden death of cathedral organist Count St. Martin. In one respect, the cancellation in Paris proved fortuitous for Biggs. For it enabled him to add still more days to the free time that had already opened in his schedule when Vienna and Salzburg proved barren of opportunities to perform that year. Upon learning of the cancellation, he wasted not a moment before cabling the new friends he had made in Holland and northern Germany two weeks earlier, to let them know that he would return even sooner than anticipated to take advantage of their readiness to help him explore further—and further record—the organs that had beguiled his ears first: those of the Dutch and German north.16
We, too, can be grateful for that expanded week of “study time” for Biggs. For it was in those ten days between June 11 and June 22 that he deepened his appreciation of the organs that would determine more than any other the course of his own aesthetic development: the sparkling Schnitgers at Steinkirchen and Neuenfelde, the robust “Böhm” organ in Lüneburg (a note survives from the organist there authorizing him to record as long as he wished on the evening of June 15, provided he played any composer but Böhm!), the bright “Buxtehude” instrument in the Jakobikirche of Lübeck, the 1736 Moreau organ that so “splendidly disturbs,” as Biggs put it, the vast space enclosed by the cathedral at Gouda, and the modern Flentrop at Amstelveen. Given Biggs’s predilection for clarity and “Apollonian individuation” in every realm of aesthetics, we can easily understand that he would be “bowled over” (a favorite expression of his) by what he heard—and felt beneath his fingers—while playing these organs. To him, the music seemed to spring from the instruments as if from living organisms. In them, he had found at last “the welcome feeling of on-the-beat accuracy” at his fingertips for which he had been waiting a lifetime.
Near the end of their journey, during a week of appearances in Iceland, the Biggses received good news from Vincent Liebler:
Just a line to let you know that we finally cleared the first shipment of tapes containing reels numbered 1 thru 8. I checked them with Mr. Oppenheim and they appear to be well recorded. If all the rest of the places have been recorded as well, I am sure you have achieved an excellent batch of material.17
Buoyed by Liebler’s report, a gleeful EPB and Peggy amused themselves on the final leg of their Loftleidir flight to New York by estimating “the total weight of pipes, wind chests, consoles, and other music-making material” that the Ampex had recorded: “Our guess was that the equipment had gobbled up the sounds of some two or three million pounds of organ weight. No wonder we became enormously fond of the machine!”18 Most of what the tapes had captured, of course, would be deemed unusable for one reason or another; recording on the fly had guaranteed that take after take would be marred by some great crash or other non-musical blemish. But there would be enough wheat among the chaff to enable two albums in 1955, while leaving some of the choicest material for cuts on the “Eight Little Preludes and Fugues” LP that would be released one year later as a companion to the Mozart set of 1956.

“May we start urgent inquiries?”

Biggs had hoped to begin editing his miles of tape the moment he got home. A letter to David Oppenheim dated July 5, the Monday after his return, provides a wealth of insight into his view of the trip, his hopes for the projects, and his tally of recording-related costs—in 1954 dollars:
It was nice to chat with you by phone on our return to New York last week, and here’s the promised outline of the music done and the places in which we recorded. . . . First choice for release, undoubtedly, is the three-record set Sweelinck-Buxtehude-Pachelbel, which carries out the idea of European music recorded in the very places in which these chaps lived and worked. It also brings an impressive list of famous organs and other notable cities. . . . I feel quite sure we’ll be ahead of any competitors, both in the musical plan and choice of places, but I guess we do have to move fast, in order to be first in the record market with the idea. . . . All tapes—nos. 1 through 71 plus six small tapes—should be here by now. . . . If they have not arrived, may we start urgent inquiries? . . . I have to bring down the Ampex that we used. It runs, but evidently went out of adjustment in the last week of the trip. If it can be adjusted, perhaps I can bring it back here [to Cambridge] and do a lot of the preliminary editing right away. . . . I’d like to discuss the general financial arrangement for the whole project. Air excess ran to just over $1000.00. Direct costs of handling equipment—taxis, some long distance car trips, contributions to churches, battery rentals, and other inescapables (which I have all itemized) add up to another $1589.00. There are also bills on hand for $1730.00 from Columbia Records for cost of equipment, all incidentals, and for tape shipments.
But where were those tapes? They had not arrived, and an anxious Biggs typed this note to Liebler, on July 8:
Since everything hinges on getting the rest of the tapes safely over here, and as soon as possible, I thought you’d like these [attached] complete details of the shipments. . . . I’m coming down to see David Oppenheim next Tuesday, and I will bring the Ampex machine for examination. . . . If there’s a studio free, I could even start work on editing some of the tapes—before seeing Oppenheim at 3:00 p.m. . . . On the other hand, if the Ampex can be restored to condition, and if I may bring the tapes back here, we can do all the preliminary editing without taking up any more of your studio time. . . . Although we can make a start with what we have, we do need all the tapes in order to extract the musical sequence of compositions we’re after—so here’s hoping your cables produce speedy shipments!
Liebler’s cables did produce speedy shipments, but the frustration had only begun. Declaration papers incorrectly prepared by Philips caused the shipments to be held in customs for weeks. At the end of August, fully two months after his return to the U. S., Biggs was still struggling to get his tapes. On August 29, he wrote to Jay Goeller at Columbia Records to announce that he would make a special detour to New York City on his way home from Toronto within a few days, specifically to retrieve more of the tapes:
I’ll pick up the tapes you already have, Nos. 61 through 63, 71, and 6 small tapes, plus the bulk shipment of 15 through 44 which surely should be delivered by then. If it isn’t, we’ll just have to badger the customs people, for they have had the tapes for six weeks now and it is outrageous that they should be held up this way.
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It's Time To Tell the Story

by R. E. Coleberd

Introduction

My presentation, "The Economics of Pipe Organ Building: It's Time to Tell The Story," is the viewpoint of an economist, not a builder or a musician. It reflects my fervent conviction that organbuilders must be aware of the economic parameters which shape their business. I also strongly believe that builders must communicate the unique dimensions of their age-old craft to their constituents and clientele. This, in my judgment, will contribute to the support so essential for their well-being in the challenging years ahead. My goal was to present some facts and figures for the builders to think about, to discuss with their colleagues, and perhaps to use in presentations to prospective clients. As one builder has remarked: "Organbuilding is an anachronism in the American economy."1

Assumptions

We begin with certain assumptions which are critical to the discussion. First, we call attention to the fact that no two builders are alike. Each builder has his own vision of his enterprise, his product and his market. We also recognize that APOBA is a far more diverse group today that it was thirty years ago when it was comprised primarily of comparatively large firms building non-mechanical instruments.

Second, as an economist, I define organbuilding as an industry. By industry we mean a group of firms and suppliers engaged in building the instrument and its components on an ongoing basis. Organbuilding is categorized by the US Department of Commerce in the Standard Industrial Classification seven digit code 3931-211. In building a one-of-a-kind product, organbuilding differs radically from the traditional view of industry as comprised of a handful of relatively large firms manufacturing automobiles, appliances, pharmaceuticals and computers. Therefore, because of the unique highly individual and artistic nature of organbuilding as an age-old craft, some builders, perhaps particularly small shops, view organbuilding as no more an industry than sculpting, portrait painting, or even piano concertizing.

Third, organbuilding is a business. The firm is subject to business realities and must conduct its affairs in accordance with them. These include balance sheet and income statement guidelines and property and contract requirements. Unfortunately, some builders, perhaps those with what one prominent executive described as a "cavalier" attitude, sometimes don't pay careful attention to these realities. We also assert that organbuilding is subject to broad economic forces which include wage rates in local labor markets and overall market determined prices for materials and components. In addition, organbuilding is critically influenced by the general economic climate of depression and inflation as history so forcefully demonstrates.

Fourth, in economic parlance, the structure of the industry is a quixotic example of two types of competition. Organbuilding is and always has been a highly competitive industry. When measured by the number of firms and ease of entry it is similar to textbook examples of pure and perfect competition. In a survey I made for a paper years ago entitled "The Place of the Small Builder in the American Organ Industry," one builder, Fritz Noack, reported that his capital cost for entering the trade was $200.00.2 Theoretically, any builder can build the same stoplist, pipe scales and casework. In practice, however, sharp differences exist between builders and instruments. Therefore, in the nature of the product, a specification good in which no two instruments are alike, organbuilding is more like a product differentiated oligopoly. Competition reflects many factors: price, windchest action, level of workmanship, prior installations, reputation, endorsements and status seeking by the organist and the buyer.

Fifth, the concept of market segments is useful. Churches, educational institutions, theaters, private dwellings, lodge halls, and funeral homes have been identifiable markets for pipe organs over the years. Each of these markets has its own demand determinants. Membership and giving would be key determinants for the church market. For concert halls and art museums, major private gifts would be all important. The builder has no direct influence on these demand determinants which critically shape the outlook for his business.

Sixth, we acknowledge that some builders don't recognize themselves as part of an industry insofar as there are interests and concerns common to all participants. Macroeconomic demand determinants don't interest them. Nor is the idea of competition, in a broad sense, viewed as particularly relevant to their enterprise. Their clientele wants their instrument, not just an organ. In an analogy, people don't go to a piano recital, they go to hear Andre Watts. This builder's clientele is perhaps most often a individual, not a committee, and quite likely a prominent academic who will make the choice of builder. Most important, funding is taken for granted. It is presumed that the buyer is authorized to pay whatever price is required to obtain the chosen instrument.

This phenomenon reflects the close symbiotic relationship between the instrument, the performer, and his employer. The instrument is what accords status to the organist's church or school and himself, and is the way he obtains recognition among his peers. It is his ego alter. This has always been true and always will be. It was, no doubt, the case with the Hooks, certainly so with Roosevelt, Skinner, Aeolian Skinner and Holtkamp. The role of brand preference among competitively sensitive and socially conscious pipe organ buyers was supremely illustrated with WurliTzer in the theater market and Aeolian in the mansions of the wealthy. Those familiar with my articles in The Diapason know that I have developed and continue to reiterate the theme of invidious comparison and competitive emulation (Thorstein Veblen) as a very real phenomenon in the organ marketplace.

Economics

The salient factor in organbuilding and the one that distinguishes it as an industry from all others is the labor intensive nature of the product. This overriding factor largely explains the postwar history of the industry and will determine its future. We would argue that 80 percent of the value added in building a pipe organ is labor. Value added by manufacture is the difference between the cost of of inputs--raw materials, semifinished components and labor (including fringe benefits)--and the sale price. Industries with sixty percent or more value added by labor are considered labor intensive. Among them are products of the so-called "needle trades"--for example, robes and dressing gowns, 64 percent labor and curtains and draperies, 68 percent labor. For leather gloves and mittens the value added by labor is 84 percent. Aircraft and shipbuilding are other obvious examples of very high labor input.3

In contrast, capital intensive and technologically advanced industries, enjoy low labor costs even with high wages and benefits. Examples of low labor cost are: Primary Copper, 18 percent; Electronic Computers, 27 percent; and Household Appliances, 25 percent.4 The implication of high productivity, high wage industries for organbuilding is that they determine the wage structure of the national as well as the local economy. In a full-employment economy such as ours, organbuilders face enormous pressures to pay competitive wages or face high turnover with the resulting disruptions, delays and cost overruns. The high cost of organbuilding mirrors the labor input and wage rate; when wages go up, costs go up in lock step. The wage pressures of a full employment economy are a direct threat to cost containment in organbuilding.

The availability of low-wage labor explains why the Möller Company in Hagerstown, Maryland was able to operate for decades as America's largest builder. With 350-400 factory workers, Möller shipped at least one complete instrument every working day in the 1920s and again in the 1950s. Hagerstown, out on a shelf in western Maryland, was bypassed by prosperity and suffered for years from relatively high unemployment. Möller, therefore, could obtain all the workers it required at comparatively low wages. Conversely, no organbuilder could have operated in Detroit or Pittsburgh, because they could never have paid the union wages of auto workers and steel workers and remained competitive. 

Organbuilding is similar to the performing arts in the preponderance of labor cost to total cost and the absence of productivity increases. A widely-acclaimed study, Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma, disclosed that the share of salaries of artistic personnel to total expenditures was 64% for major U.S. orchestras and 72% for the London Symphony Orchestra.5 The principal conclusion of this authoritative work, commissioned by the Twentieth Century Fund and written by Professors Baumol and Bowen of Princeton University, was that the arts operate within the framework of a complex economy. This coupled with the inability to achieve a sustained increase in productivity makes even higher costs an inevitable characteristic of live performance. So it is with organbuilding.

The predominant role of labor input in organbuilding is illustrated in Table 1 where we compare the number of man-hours necessary to fabricate representative components of a pipe organ with those required to manufacture an automobile. For pipe organs, four key components: an 8' Diapason, 61 pipes, voiced, an 8' Trumpet, 61 pipes voiced, a 16' Bourdon, 32 pipes, voiced, and a pitman action windchest of five stops are portrayed. The contrast is indeed striking.

Rising Cost

The second dominant characteristic of organbuilding is the persistent rise in cost over time. This is illustrated for the key components over the last twenty years in Table 2. More important, when we compare the rise in cost of organ components to the producer price index for the whole economy, the increase is greater for organbuilding as shown in Table 3. This argues that in the event inflation reappears in the US economy, the cost of organbuilding will increase at a higher rate than reflected in the producer price indexes.

What are the implications of rising costs for organbuilding? Fifty years ago, in 1948, you could buy a three-rank Möller Artiste for $2975. Today, you could scarcely buy one set of pipes below 4' pitch for this amount of money. Using the church market as a point of reference, will there be a pipe organ industry ten years from now, or twenty years down the road? To answer this question we hark back to our major premise that when church giving is rising in proportion (or greater) to the increase in income generated by a growing economy, the market scarcely blinks at rising pipe organ costs. This relationship underscores the ongoing fact that it isn't the price of an organ that is the primary determinant of demand, but income, i.e., having the funds to buy them.

In 1900 the price of a Hinners tracker organ was about $125 per stop. Recall that with a force of 90 workmen in Pekin, Illinois, Hinners was building three instruments a week. Remember also that per capita real income in agriculture between the Panics of 1897 and 1907 was the highest in history. Farmers paid less for what they bought and got more for what they sold. With their short-term living standard satisfied, they pumped rivers of cash and pledges into the churches who bought Hinners, Barckhoff, Felgemaker and Estey organs. These were four builders who, with standard specifications, capitalized on this huge rural market, what we have called the commodity segment of the market. By the end of the Hinners era, ostensibly the tracker era, this firm counted over three thousand instruments in more than 40 states and in several foreign countries.6

The Electronic Organ

The critical confluence of cost and revenue in the demand for pipe organs is illustrated in the recent history of the electronic organ. Another major premise in this discussion is that the electronic church organ is a substitute for the pipe organ. To verify this hypothesis we obtained the annual sales of the Allen Organ Company for the last twenty years and plotted them against the cost of our key pipe organ components as shown in Figure 1. The results are astounding! An almost perfect fit, a statistician's dream; you could scarcely ask for a closer correlation. The demand for the electronic church organ as a function of the price of a pipe organ illustrates the economist's concept of cross-elasticity of demand. The higher the price of a pipe organ the greater the demand for the electronic substitute. Furthermore, based upon these correlations, we could write a regression equation that says if this relationship holds, for every dollar increase in the price of a pipe organ there will be a certain increase in the demand for the electronic church instrument.

Church Giving

If we accept the premise that the electronic church instrument is a substitute for the pipe organ, we perhaps can argue that the real culprit is the failure of church giving to keep pace with pipe organ costs in recent decades unlike earlier periods. Statistics compiled by empty tomb inc. for 27 Protestant denominations for the period 1968-95 and published in "The State of Church Giving," reveal that church giving has "fallen" dramatically.7 To be sure, in a growing economy per capita personal disposable income has increased as have contributions for congregational finances. However, the percentage of income contributed has declined steadily and the increase in dollar giving is nowhere near the year to year increase in income. Whether measured by the percent of income given in 1968 or the yearly income increase, the amount given for congregational finances would have been $2.5 billion more in 1995 if these percentages had held. Two and a half billion dollars would buy a lot of pipe organs. If we view church giving within the household budget as a concept of market share, we see that the collection plate has taken a back seat to other expenditures: sporting goods, toys, pizza, and travel, among others. John and Sylvia Ronsvalle of empty tomb point out that in 1992, church giving was only 23 percent of total leisure spending. They attribute this to the pervasive hedonistic consumer-driven culture of our time.8

The implications for the church market from the giving levels we have just illustrated would appear to be ominous. If we assume costs will rise and we couple this with the diminishing rate of church giving, we will then reach a point at which, theoretically, the price per stop for a pipe organ will cause the demand to drop off sharply, if not virtually disappear. What is this point? We don't know, but we could be getting close to it. Can we say there is no demand at $30,000 per stop; perhaps not even at $25,000 or $20,000?

Not all builders believe the figures for church giving are relevant to the demand for pipe organs or that projected increases in price per stop will spell the end of the industry. They view the King of Instruments not as a utilitarian device to accompany church services but as an art form akin to a fine painting. Thus a "high end" market will continue to exist because sophisticated, discriminating--and wealthy--individuals will always select the instrument of the ages, in the same spirit in which they build their art collections--without regard to cost. These builders hold that the industry, now numbering many small shops in addition to the few larger builders, has adjusted and stabilized to this level of output, as evidenced by the demise of Möller, a builder for the commodity market which has now been almost totally preempted by the electronic instrument. A good illustration of this new paradigm is the firm of Taylor and Boody in Staunton, Virginia who by choice build only thirty to thirty-five stops per year.9

Pipe Organ Imports

Imported instruments have been a significant part of the American pipe organ scene since WWII. Large instruments by Rieger, Flentrop and Von Beckerath plus smaller ones from a host of other European builders were the cornerstone of the tracker revival in this country. They were often viewed as a status symbol by the organist profession who proclaimed "if it's foreign it's finer." The principal source of offshore instruments today is our northern neighbor Canada. The sensitive issue of Canadian imports, based primarily on the insurmountable cost advantage afforded the Canadian builder by the exchange rate, is not a new one. In February, 1931, Major Fred Oliver, veteran of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in WWI and husband of Marie Casavant, acknowledged before the US Tariff Commission that Canadian-built organs were less expensive than American instruments. He argued that clients bought them because they liked them better than the domestic product. Could they have liked them better because they were less expensive?

For many years organ imports, including those from Canada, were not a problem. American builders were busy with healthy backlogs and the Canadian share of the market was unobtrusive and not growing. Nonetheless the threat was lurking and today, in the author's judgment, it is a major one. Based upon the dollar value and the number of instruments imported from Canada in the past two decades, I, as an economist, view the Canadian competition as a significant threat to the American organ industry. I also feel strongly that the US buyer should be apprised of the implications of a decision to buy a Canadian-built organ.

Foreign trade statistics published by the Bureau of the Census, US Department of Commerce show that in the 1980s Canadian builders exported an average of 43 instruments per year to the US, their primary market, valued at $3.8 million per year and representing two-thirds of total imports. For the eight year period 1990-97, Canadian imports averaged 19 instruments per year valued at $4.2 million per year. In the most recent years the numbers are: 1995, 21 instruments, value $5.2 million, 76 percent of total imports; 1996, 24 instruments, $4.5 million value, 75 percent of all imports; and 1997, 22 instruments, $5.1 million total value representing 70 percent of total foreign-built organs. Table 4 portrays the value of Canadian imports in US dollars, as declared at the point of entry, for the years 1975-97 and the percent of dollar imports accounted for by Canada and Netherlands-Germany. The dollar figure is a better indicator of the import threat than the number of instruments for the same reason that the number of voiced stops is more representative that the number of instruments in that it more accurately reflects industry activity. One instrument of 100 stops is in terms of output larger than eight instruments of ten stops each. These figures understate the impact of Canadian imports which significantly influence the price structure of the organ market, making it difficult for domestic builders to compete, especially for the larger and more prestigious contracts.   

The Canadian import threat exists, primarily perhaps, for the larger firms in non-mechanical action and in situations where a price sensitive committee, as opposed to an individual, often makes the decision. Conversely, some builders, chiefly smaller firms with a guild versus business mentality, do not view Canadian competition as a threat. To them price advantage is not a pivotal factor in choice of builder in situations where the instrument and the builder are highly individualized in the unique and incomparable nature of their work.

The problem results from coupling the 80 percent labor cost of organbuilding with the Canadian dollar which has hovered around 70 cents in recent years and fell to 63.7 cents in August, 1998. If we assume that a representative wage in organbuilding in the US today is $12.00 per hour, for an American builder to compete with the 70 cent Canadian dollar his workers would have to take a pay cut to $8.40 per hour. When committees elect to purchase a Canadian-built organ this is precisely what they are asking the hapless American workers to do. Perhaps committees should ask themselves whether they would be willing to work for $12 an hour, let alone $8.40?  Furthermore, it is unethical and patently unfair for a committee to accept an offer from an American builder to spend hundreds of dollars flying them across the country to see installations, only to lose the contract to a Canadian builder solely on the basis of price.

Keep in mind also that the Canadian market is hermetically sealed against the American builder. Except for one project by Schoenstein, it has been impossible for an American builder to get work in Canada. This is attributed to the cultural protection issue. Canadians are paranoid about the "invasion" of their culture by American media and have taken steps to block American magazine sales and satellite TV programming in direct violation of the rules of the World Trade Organization. One government official hysterically compared stores selling satellite dishes to dope pushers.10 Perhaps if the Canadians are so touchy about their culture we should return the favor and talk about protecting our rich culture in pipe organ building; the legacy of Hilbourne Roosevelt, Ernest Skinner, Donald Harrison and Walter Holtkamp!

The author is not alone in his analysis of the present and future impact of Canadian competition on the outlook for American organbuilding. Erik Olbeter, project director of the prestigious Economic Strategy Institute in Washington, D. C. agrees that US firms cannot indefinitely absorb the exchange rate differential in the labor cost basis of organbuilding. He adds that since no US builders have been able to sell into the Canadian market, this is a powerful argument in support of the domestic firm.11

There are, of course, two sides to every question. Canadian builders enjoy a positive image, a distinguished history and can point to many fine instruments in this country. Therefore, if the client elects to recognize these factors in choosing a builder and to disregard the implications for American builders, that is their business. But at least they ought to be aware of what they are doing!

Predictions

In conclusion, let me turn to my crystal ball, cloudy though it is, and make some observations and predictions about pipe organ building in America in the coming years. Remember that economists can't resist the temptation to forecast; it's a congenital defect in the profession. You are free to disagree with me and I acknowledge that many of you will elect to do so.

First, pipe organs will always be built, and organbuilding activity, in its many forms, will continue indefinitely. The level of output and the composition of the industry is impossible to predict and I wouldn't hazard a guess. Long-established major builders have previous instruments to rebuild, update and relocate. Small tracker shops may build one instrument a year. Builders of all sizes may move into service work to maintain cash flow while awaiting an order for a new instrument or a rebuilding project. If the industry is defined by total employment this will include suppliers and service firms.

Second, it is clear to me as an economist that a reversal of the persistent decline in church giving is critical to the outlook for the industry. As the King of Instruments, the pipe organ must be recognized as a symbol of the broader dimensions of culture throughout the ages, bridging nations and generations, an essential component of religious symbolism vital to the experience of corporate worship, and the object of sacrificial devotion by churchgoers who stand in opposition to the hedonistic consumer-driven culture of our time. Forbes Magazine, highlighting the resurgence of popularity of mechanical watches over quartz watches pointed out: "An unscientific survey of several dozen watch experts produced one common thread: mechanical watches have soul, have workmanship, have intrinsic value that cannot be found in quartz timepieces. It is this fact, and not a Luddite, reactionary longing for the old days, that makes these watches so popular."12 So it is with the pipe organ. Like a diamond, the high cost of a pipe organ is what makes it so distinctive and so valuable.

Third, the perception of an organ today in the eyes of many churchgoers exacerbates the cost problem. The instrument has to be large and, therefore, expensive. A pipe organ must exert a commanding presence in the sanctuary as reflected in the console of a nonmechanical organ, one with three or more manuals and lots of drawknobs, and in the totality of a mechanical instrument. Above all, the sound must project power, majesty and grandeur, as evidenced by the popularity of the 32' pedal reed today.

Fourth, each builder faces a management challenge of how large an operation his market will sustain and the make-or-buy decision with every project. On an emotional level the builder must continually ask himself whether he is a businessman or an artist and how to balance these all too often conflicting interests. Above all, he must resist the temptation to cut prices to stay in business. This is the road to ruin. As they say in the ocean shipping business, those who live by the rate cut die by the rate cut.  Organbuilding must live in the real world of cost and revenue; there are no "sugar daddies" out there willing to put money into a failed pipe organ business because of the romance of it.

Fifth, supplemental electronic components are here to stay, primarily because they are the only way to keep costs down. The danger, and perhaps it is a real one, particularly for small instruments, is that the electronic organ comes to define the pipe organ whereas it must be the other way around. 

Sixth, the Canadian dollar will remain weak for many reasons. Canadian organ imports will perhaps grow and command a greater share of the market for new instruments. In the author's judgment, the current import levels already pose a serious threat to the future of the American industry.

Seventh, the greatest threat to organbuilding in the US, or anywhere, is inflation. I have already suggested that with current levels of church giving there is no market at $30,000 per stop. If our economy were to experience three to five years of double-digit inflation, organbuilding on a sustained basis would largely disappear. Church contributions would continue to erode as our aging populace struggled to make ends meet, the demand for social services by churches would rise, and the electronic organ would preempt the church market. Milton Friedman, the widely-quoted economist and celebrated Noble laureate told Forbes Magazine in December, 1997 that he expects a period of much higher inflation sometime in the next ten to twelve years. Let's hope Friedman is wrong.13

Notes

                        1.                  Telephone interview with George Taylor, March 15, 1998.

                        2.                  Coleberd, Robert E. Jr., "The Place of the Small Builder in the American Organ Industry," The Diapason,Vol. 57, No. 12, November, 1966, p. 45.

                        3.                  1995 annual survey of manufactures, US Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics, Bureau of the Census, Table 2, Statistics for Industry Groups and Industries: 1995 and 1994, pp. 1-10--1-27.

                        4.                  Ibid.

                        5.                  Baumol, William J. and William G. Bowen, Performing Arts--The Economic Dilemma, Copyright 1966, The Twentieth Century Fund, Inc., First M.I.T. Press Paperback Edition, August, 1968, Second Printing, December, 1977, p. 145.

                        6.                  Coleberd, Robert E. Jr., "Yesterday's Tracker--The Hinners Organ Story," The American Organist, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1960, pp. 11-14.

                        7.                  Ronsvalle, John L. and Sylvia Ronsvalle,The State of Church Giving through 1995, Champaign, Illinois, empty tomb inc., December, 1997, passim.

                        8.                  Table 18: "Combined Per Capita Purchase of Selected Items Compared to Composite Per Member Church Giving in Constant 1987 Dollars" in John L. Ronsvalle and Sylvia Ronsvalle, The State of Church Giving through 1994, p. 61.

                        9.                  Taylor, op. cit.

                        10.              Olbeter, Erik R. "Canada's Cultural Hangup," Journal of Commerce, April 3, 1997, p. 6-A. See Also "Cultural Struggle" The Journal of Commerce, July 2, 1997, p. 8-A. Craig Turner, "Canadian Culture? Whatever It Is, They Want To Preserve It," Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1997, Section D, p. 1, 12. Joseph Weber, "Does Canadian Culture Need This Much Protection?," Business Week, June 8, 1998, p. 37.

                        11.              Telephone interview with Erik Olbeter, Economic Strategy Institute, Washington, D.C., June 6, 1997.

                        12.              Powell, Dennis E., "A Glance At Some Of The Timepieces That Made History," Forbes FYI, November, 1997, p. 152.

                        13.              "Milton Friedman at 85," Forbes, December 29, 1997, pp. 52-55.

The Isle of Man

From Peter Jones, the Offshore Organbuilder

This article is coming to you from the Isle of Man, an island some 30 miles long by about 14 miles wide, and sitting midway between Ireland and England. Its longest river--the Sulby--stretches for a full 10 miles or more, and Snaefell--the highest mountain--reaches a height of over 2,000 feet. Anyone with a world atlas and a magnifying glass to hand will have no trouble in locating the "Island," as those who live here often term it, off the west coast of England, facing Liverpool.

 

 

The Isle of Man may be little known in the wider world (or even on the "adjacent island" of England--we don't say "mainland," of course!) but like most places it does have its peculiar features which mark it out for those with special interests. It is an off-shore finance center, for example, with relatively low rates of tax. It is known for its motorcycle races (the "TT Races") which take place on the public roads--one of the largest (and arguably most dangerous) circuits of its kind in the world. For those who like unspoiled countryside to look at or walk over, and a quiet and relatively unhurried way of life, the Isle of Man is the place to be. It is an island of Fairies, one of the largest water-wheels you are ever likely to see, Celtic stone crosses and much more. Most important to me, and I hope of interest to readers, its small area is home to a surprising variety of some 50 or so pipe organs, and I am more than happy to have been the resident organ builder here for over 20 years.

For those of us with a fascination for the King of Instruments, there is much to be said about life here--too much for one article such as this--and rather than describe the organs as a whole in greater or lesser detail, I thought it might be better to describe some of the incidents which make the life of "the organ man" anything but tedious.

Looking back over the work undertaken in the recent past, I see one job which will be of interest to the great majority of organ players, from the professional recitalist to the home enthusiast who plays only for his own enjoyment. I refer to an ambition which attracts so many organists, and which eludes all but a few--the luxury of a real pipe organ in one's own home.

How many have investigated this possibility, only to find that the cost (and sometimes the space) involved ensures that the pipe dream remains just that? True, there is the electronic substitute--smaller and cheaper, with a great variety of Golden Tones of one kind or another--and then again the organ in church is usually available to the serious player--albeit not so attractive in the winter, nor so convenient for that odd 30 minutes practice at the end of the day. But for those badly infected by the organ bug, the unfortunates with an acute case of "organitis," there can never be any hope of a cure until they can see for themselves those gleaming ranks of metal and wooden pipes and the console with its several keyboards, waiting in the music room for their sole use!

So it was with The Reverend Alec Smith. His love of the organ had actually led him to start an apprenticeship in organ building as a young man, but he quickly saw the light, heard the call, and became an ordained priest in the Church of England. At that time, he assembled a worthy (if somewhat ungainly) collection of pipes, old keyboards, bits of mechanism, etc., into a Frankenstein creation which crouched in the corner of one of the large rooms of the vicarage in his country parish in England. This creation was a credit to its owner, but more than a little ponderous for anything other than a large house (preferably not your own) with plenty of spare rooms. When, in the fullness of time, Alec became an army chaplain, and he and his wife Jean were inevitably posted abroad, the organ was dispersed, almost all of it never to be seen again.

On retirement from the army, Alec settled in the Isle of Man and became Organ Advisor to the Diocese. It was now that the organ-building bug, which had lain dormant for so many years, was re-awakened, and the idea of a house organ was again proposed. There were, of course, several problems. The usual ones--centered around lack of space and finances--were, quite rightly, pointed out by Jean, and in any case there was a seemingly adequate 2-manual electronic, with its equally large speaker cabinet, already taking up far too much room in their small cottage in the Manx countryside. Jean correctly pointed out that it was more room they needed, not a pipe organ!

In a attempt to save some space, and acting on the advice of the local music shop, new and much smaller speakers were fitted to the electronic by an "expert" from Douglas, the Island's capital. After a day spent fitting the new speakers into the ceiling (with the novel use of a screwdriver to create some suitable holes in the plaster), the expert switched on, at which point there was an impressive bang followed by an ominous burning smell. It seemed, on later examination, that the amplifiers (intended to power two large speaker banks in a church setting) had seen the modern speakers as a virtual short circuit in electrical terms, with the inevitable result. The expert withdrew, promising to "work something out." I believe he left the Island, and, in any case, was never seen again. The electronic was no longer adequate. It was dead.

At this point, a further discussion took place on the subject of a new pipe organ, and Jean was persuaded, but only agreed on one seemingly-impossible condition: aside from the console, the new organ must not project into the room any further than the line of the first ceiling beam (some 14≤ from the end wall). Since there was no possibility of siting anything behind the walls (three of them being external, and the fourth taken up with the fireplace) the situation appeared hopeless, and it was at this point that Alec called me in.

Impossible situations regarding space are a challenge to the organ builder. More than one has succumbed to the temptation to push too-large an organ into too-small a space, with disastrous results, and I have seen the consequences of several of these unhappy situations. In one such case, an instrument was built in which the Great and Choir (mounted one above the other and in front of the Pedal pipework) "speak" into a solid masonry wall some 3 feet thick. Tuning/maintenance of such an organ is difficult if not impossible, and a warning to any organ designer. Alec's requirement was for the cheapest possible instrument, with a fair selection of stops over two manuals and pedals, all within a depth of 14≤. It had to fit into one small room of a cottage which has only three rooms on the ground floor (the other two being the kitchen and porch) and it must not be a monster from the tuning/maintenance standpoint.

There was space for only two or three sets of pipes, but Alec stated from the outset that, "I want more than three wheels on my car," so we were obviously looking to something other than mechanical action with two or three stops. This need to make the most of the available pipework suggested an "extension organ" of some sort. This, and the restrictions of the site, dictated electric action, and financial considerations suggested the simple mechanism as shown in the sketch. The question of electric versus mechanical action is one of those subjects likely to provoke strong opinions both for and against. In my view, each system has its merits and I am happy to work with either, but when a client requests more stops than the room or budget will allow, the obvious way forward is for a stoplist extended from a small number of ranks, and this means an electric mechanism. The design shown, if correctly made, is reliable, very quick (giving good repetition) and quiet. Incorrectly handled, it is none of these things, and has thereby acquired a poor reputation in some circles. With sufficient funds, and more space, an electro-pneumatic action would have been more sophisticated, but with enough care taken in its design and construction, direct electric action (as shown) is almost as good.

Some readers may be unfamiliar with the idea of an "extension" organ. This is an instrument in which a set, or "rank," of pipes is available to be played at more than one pitch. For example, a set of flute pipes could be played at 8' pitch (via a console stop labeled, say, Stopt Diapason 8') and the same set could also be available at 4' pitch (via a console stop labeled Flute 4') or at 16'  pitch (in which case the console stop might be labeled Bourdon 16') and so on. Clearly, the idea has its uses and abuses, as in the case of the 2-manual and pedal organ in which every console stop was actually taken from a single rank of Dulciana pipes!

The final stoplist is one which I have used successfully on various occasions. It is based on three ranks representing the three main tone-colors of the organ:  Diapason, Flute and String. Each of the three ranks consists of 73 pipes, and are listed below as:

Rank A/ Open Diapason, running from C13,

Rank B/ Stopt Diapason, running from C1, and

Rank C/ Salicional, running from C13.

In addition there are 12 stopped Quint pipes (shown below as "Q") running from G8 (at 8' pitch) for the pedal 16' stop (see later).

(Reed tone was not included, as it is difficult to have conventional reeds sufficiently quiet for such a small setting. In any case, there was no space available.)

Note that the Open Diapason is of small scale, and this made it much more suitable, for our purpose, than the more usual scaling of such a stop. When selecting second-hand pipes for a home extension organ, a Principal would be the first choice  to provide the Open Diapason--Principal--Fifteenth "stops," as they appear on the console, and I have even known a Gamba to make a very acceptable open metal extension rank, once it had been re-scaled and re-voiced. Ideally, where finances are not a limiting factor, new pipes should be made for all ranks, so that their scaling can be suited to the room and stoplist.

If an "extension" scheme is to work, musically, it is important to avoid the temptation of too many stops from too few pipes. I know of one organ with the stops simply repeated on each keyboard, and though this gives maximum flexibility, it is very confusing from the player's point of view, and the instrument as a whole is strangely bland and characterless. The three sets of pipes for Alec's organ were made available at different pitches, under the guise of different stop names, to make registration more straightforward from the player's point of view. In this way, some 15 speaking stops are available to the organist, instead of three which would result from the use of mechanical action.

The specification shown has only one stop (the Stopt Diapason) actually repeated on each manual. This is because it is so frequently used, and blends with the other two ranks at 8' pitch.  None of the other manual stops are repeats, and they have been arranged so as to discourage the use of the same rank at only one octave apart. (E.g.,  the Open Diapason 8' is intended to be used with the Salicet 4', or the Flute 4', not the Principal 4', as you might expect.) Using the stops of an extension organ in this way reduces or (more usually) eliminates the well-known "missing note" problem, which occurs when one strand of the music runs across another, and both need a pipe from the same rank, albeit from different extended "stops." If, for instance, the Stopt Diapason 8' and Flute 4' are drawn on the same manual and key C25 is held down, the pipes heard, as counted from the flute rank, will be C25 and C37. Now add manual key C13, which will sound pipes C13 and C25 (which is already playing from key C25). In this example a pipe at the pitch of C25 should appear twice, but actually appears only once. The missing note will be most obvious if either of the two manual keys is held down while the other is repeated.

One of the most important criticisms to be levelled at an extension scheme is this problem of missing notes, which can lead to a lack of clarity. For all practical purposes, this drawback can be completely overcome by a combination of the organ builder (in preparing a modest stoplist) and the player (in thoughtful use of the instrument, so that the smallest number of stops is drawn at any one time, preferably from different ranks, or at least from ranks separated by more than one octave). In actual practice, this kind of stop selection becomes automatic to the organist who realizes the limitations of the instrument.

Another important factor in the success of this type of organ is the regulation of volume and tone quality of the pipes within a stop, and also the regulation of the stops in relation to each other. Each stop is regulated with a very gradual crescendo from bass to treble. This requires subtle handling, but when correctly carried out results in a clear ensemble in which the treble parts can be heard above the tenor and bass.

The ranks themselves are regulated with much less distinction in power than would usually be the case, so that equivalent pipes of the Stopt Diapason are similar in volume to those of the Open Diapason, and the Salicional, while quieter, is not far behind. This results in much less contrast in power among the 8' stops and this is a compromise, of course, though you still have variety of tone. The blend between ranks played at different pitches is much better than if they are regulated in a conventional manner, with the Open Diapason much louder than the Stopt Diapason and Salicional distinctly quieter. In an instrument such as this, contrast in power is created more by contrasting combinations of stops than between the ranks themselves. Regulating the ranks as if they were separate stops (a mistake often found in both church and house extension organs) results in the Open Diapason and Principal obliterating everything else, while the Fifteenth screams. 

I have used the specification shown several times, including my own house organ, and find it to behave very much as a 'straight' instrument would. I seldom use the couplers, though there are occasions when they become necessary. While it requires thoughtful registration to get the best from an extension organ, a scheme such as this, with a small number of stops, arranged so as to discourage the use of the same rank in two stops separated by only one octave, is very successful.

To cut down costs, Alec agreed to the use of his old electronic as a console, and also to the use of any other second-hand parts which could be obtained. He was also interested and able to lend a hand in the actual construction, when his earlier experiences in organ building were a great asset. The need to keep within 14≤ maximum depth was easily dealt with, by taking up the entire width of the room, side-to-side.

Knowing the number and range of the ranks and the space available, the first step, in a job such as this, is to measure the pipework, in order to see how best to arrange the pipes, and, indeed, if they will fit in at all!

Metal pipes need to be measured in height and in diameter, wooden ones in height only (including any stoppers). In practice, nearly all metal pipes run to a standard scaling (i.e., the rate at which the diameters reduce from note C1 through to the top pipe). Wooden pipes vary considerably, both in scaling (the internal width and depth) and in the thickness of the wood used, which in turn decides the external width and depth. There is also the question of the foot, which, in second-hand wooden pipes (and some new ones) can be bored well off-center. For these reasons it is best to make a paper template of the bottom of each wooden pipe, as described later.

I already had a small scale (i.e., relatively small diameter) Open Diapason rank, and a Salicional, both running form C13 (so the longest pipe in both sets was about 4' speaking length) and Alec located, from a friendly organ builder on the mainland, the Stopped Diapason pipes (running from C1) and a bundle of miscellaneous stoppered wooden pipes for the pedal Quint.

The necessary measurements were taken and noted down in the form of a table. I find it convenient to have a sheet of paper with the 12 notes C through to B in a column down the left-hand edge, followed by vertical columns headed "1--12" then "13--24" then "25--36" and so on, up to "73--84," placed from left to right across the page. This forms a table which will cover an 84-note rank, the biggest usually needed. (Note C85 is only necessary in the case of a rank which runs from 8' pitch to 2' pitch, where the organ has a manual key compass of 61 notes. This C85 pipe needs an additional square to itself.) Every square represents a pipe, and in each one can be written the length and diameter (if metal), together with other details such as size of a rackboard hole, and toe hole etc., which are also measured at this time.

Notice that only the Stopped Diapason rank has its bottom octave (in organ building terms, a "Stopped Bass") the largest pipe of which is, like the other two ranks, something over four feet long. The Salicional and Open Diapason share this bottom octave, as does the 16' pedal stop (the "Harmonic Bass") which produces an acceptable 16' substitute, in the first 12 notes of the pedalboard, by playing the Stopped Bass pipes with the appropriate Quint pipe (from a separate and therefore very soft, 12-note rank of wooden pipes). The resultant note (actually a low hum) which is created from a combination of any stop of 8' pitch and its quint is at 16' pitch. Admittedly, this is much softer than the two pipes actually sounding. The pedals from C13 up play the Stopped Bass again, and then the rest of the Stopt Diapason, thereby sounding at true 16' pitch. These compromises are necessary to reduce the size of the organ, and, if carefully carried out, are soon accepted by the player and listener, especially in a small room.

While there is no substitue for the soft, heavy, warm tone of a full-length Bourdon bass, I have asked many players (including several professionals) their opinion on this "resultant" 16' pedal stop. So far, no one has realized what he was playing until it was pointed out. They all accepted it as a pedal 16'  stop, like any other. The least convincing notes in the bottom octave are, predictably, the smallest three or four. If there is room for full-length pipes down to, say, F#7, so much the better.

It is worth noting that a quinted 16'  effect which uses the pipes of the Stopt Diapason rank only is almost always a failure, because the quint will be too loud. If you have no room for the extra Quint pipes, it is better to use the 8' octave of the Stopt Bass on its own (from pedal keys C1 to B12) before completing the pedal compass by repeating the Stopt Bass followed by the rest of the Stopt Diapason. Another possibility worth considering is a 16' bottom octave in free reeds.

Full-size card or paper templates are needed to represent the metal pipes, as seen from above. It is not normally necessary to make these for every pipe, as different stops usually reduce in diameter, note for note, to a more or less standard pattern. If this pattern is known, the set of templates need cover only the range of diameters from the fattest metal pipe in the organ (in this case C13 of the Open Diapason) down to the minimum spacing dictated by the pipe-valve mechanism. (As direct electric action was being used and the smallest magnets were 3/4≤ wide, with pipes placed directly above the valves, minimum pipe spacing = 3/4≤ + 1/8≤ clearance [= 7/8≤] no matter how small the pipes.)

Like most organ builders, I have a set of these circular templates for general use, so templates for the metal pipes were already at hand, but the wooden pipes had to have paper templates individually made to show their exact shape and the center of the pipe feet. Such a template is made by taking an over-sized piece of paper, drawing on it a circle which equals the diameter of the pipe foot, cutting this out, and sliding the paper up under the pipe and creasing around the four sides. Once the paper is removed and trimmed to size, the original circle can be taped back into place, resulting in an accurate template.

Alec's wooden Stopt Diapason (reputedly by the well-known Victorian organ builder, William Hill) was over 100 years old, and may have been in more than one organ during its lifetime. Its mouths were rather high, which made the tone breathy, and some of the pipes had been mitred, or were cut too short, possibly where they had been in a crowded swell box. But it was basically sound and we went on the basis that it could be made acceptable by repairs, lowering the mouths and re-voicing. The Salicional and Open Diapason ranks were also Victorian, from a local Methodist church. Again, they were not perfectly scaled or voiced for a house  organ, but were basically well-made and capable of re-voicing. All the pipes were measured, and with the tables of measurements and templates to hand, and a given space into which to fit the pipes and action, the process of "setting out" could begin.

An instrument with direct electric action enables the builder to arrange pipework in almost any pattern, within the limits of the room and the physical space taken up by the pipes themselves (or, in the case of the tiny treble notes, the size of their magnets and valves). My preferred system of setting out is slightly unusual, in that I like to place the taller pipes behind the smaller pipes, regardless of their rank. Most other builders would plant pipes in rows, each row being made up from pipes of the same rank.

Secondly, and in common with many of my colleagues, I prefer to plant pipes in "sides," i.e., pipe C1 on the extreme left of the organ, and C#2 on the right, working down to the treble pipes in the middle. In this way, all the pipes of the "C side" (C, D, E, F#, G#, A#) will be on the left, and those of the "C# side" (C#, D#, F, G, A, B) will be on the right.

These two underlying principles result in a pipe set-out which is visually attractive, compact, and which offers the greatest accessibility for tuning and maintenance. Admittedly, it does lead to some complications in the cabling patterns between the console and the magnets, but this is not an insurmountable problem. (In fact, the many cables for this organ were made up, wire by wire, by my school-boy workshop assistant, with no errors at all.)

Alec and I set out our templates on strips of white paper, as wide as Jean would permit, (the 14≤ maximum) and as long as the space available (i.e., the width of the room: 157≤ or just over 13 feet). After a day or two of pushing the templates around, and, bearing in mind the many details such as how the pipes could be best faced away from each other, the space to be allowed for rack pillars, cable registers, assembly screws and many other essentials beyond the scope of this account, we decided upon the ideal arrangement, with the pipes set out on three chests. The chests were placed one above the console, for the treble pipes, and one on each side at a lower level, for the bass pipes. The central chest was just under 13≤ from front to back, and the two other chests were only 9≤ wide. The whole organ would stand in the maximum ceiling height of 91≤ (barely over 71/2 feet). The actual planting pattern was so tight that every possible space has been used, given the limited width and length available. Even so, no pipes are crowded, and all of them have been accommodated. The fronts of the three chests were made from oak-veneered ply salvaged from the old speaker cabinet and console back of the electronic. Consequently, they matched the finish of the console exactly.

Admittedly, there was no room for any casework or building frame, and we had yet to solve the problem of space for the blower, wind pressure regulator, wind trunks, low voltage current supply and one or two other essentials, but these are minor obstacles to the true organ fanatic!

The actual construction of the instrument started with the chests--comprising the pipe ranks, toe boards, or top boards (on which the pipes stand) "wells"  (the sides and ends) and bottom boards. Details of each chest varied with the numbers of rows of pipes, but the sketches showing the basic mechanism will give a good idea of a typical chest in cross-section.

Strips of mdf (a sheet material available in 3/4≤ thickness) were cut for the top boards for each of the three chests, and the pipes centers were punched directly onto them, using the paper setouts, taped down, as a template. Based on these centers, the magnets, valves, pipe racks and the many other details of the mechanism can be marked out and fitted. Unfortunately, a detailed description of this procedure is beyond the scope of a general article such as this. While the basis of the mechanism is shown clearly in the sketch, there are a great many practical details which must be finalized in design and observed in manufacture, if this deceptively simple idea (drilling a hole, screwing a magnet and valve under it, and planting a pipe on top of it) is to be carried through to create a reliable musical instrument. Such a mass of information has not, to my knowledge, ever been written down, as it is essentially based on practical experience over the years. If any readers are interested in further practical details, it may be possible to describe some of the problems involved, and how they are overcome, in a future article, but only a practicing organbuilder can have all the necessary skills and knowledge to cope with every situation, and this makes it impossible to give a general "recipe" for building an organ.

The wind supply is provided by a small electric blower of course, but this one is unusual, in that it was passed on to Alec by an organ-building friend from the days of his original house organ. Indeed, it turned out to be the very same blower, which had returned to him, after an absence of 30 or more years! It proved to be an excellent machine, and very quiet when housed in a new silencing cabinet.

It was necessary to regulate the wind pressure to a value suitable for the pipes and their setting, and, of course, we had no space for traditional bellows. In a case such as this, I used my own design of wind pressure regulator (basically a hinged plate of 1/2≤ sheet material, "floating" over a rubbercloth diaphragm, and supporting some suitably-tensioned springs). Movement of the plate controls a valve which allows wind from the blower through to the chests. As the pipework makes a demand on the supply, the valve opens just far enough to maintain pressure to within 1/8≤ or less at peak demand. This is an acceptable degree of control, and only a very critical ear will notice the slight fall-off in power. Every builder has his favorite design for such a regulator (sometimes called a 'schwimmer' or, in my case, a 'compensator') and they all bear a strong family resemblance. Not all are equally effective, however, and some are prone, under adverse conditions, to fluttering (creating an effect like a very rapid Tremulant). Again, only experience of such devices can provide a way out of trouble, though there are some basic rules in compensator design.

The steady, regulated wind from the compensator is fed to the chest by a rather broad, but shallow, wind-trunk (made in mdf, like the blower box and compensator). This is fixed to the back wall, out of sight, behind the console.

With all the basic elements designed, there still remained the question of the 14≤ limit on width. Obviously, the blower box and compensator were too wide to keep within the limit, so it was decided to camouflage them, together with the circuit boards, transformer/rectifier unit, and other large components.

In the final design, the three chests were screwed to plates of 3/4≤ ply, previously fixed, in a true vertical position, to the rather uneven stone wall. The console was placed centrally, with the two outer chests (holding the bass pipes) low down on each side. The third chest (containing all the treble pipes) was fixed centrally on the wall, just behind and above the console's music desk. Two bookcases were made to fill completely the gap between the sides of the console and the side walls of the house. They were set rather further forward than would be usual, with a broad top which ran back to the wall behind, effectively disappearing under the side chests.

On the left of the console, the bookcase is a real one, with its top extending over the circuit boards and transformer/rectifier unit hidden behind. To the right of the console the seemingly identical bookcase is, in fact, a dummy. Its shelves and books are only about 11/4≤ deep. (One of the more bizarre scenes in the workshop was that of pushing large quantities of scrap books through the circular saw, leaving their spines and an inch or so of paper and cover. These truncated volumes look convincing when glued, side-by-side, onto the foreshortened bookcase back.) The space under the dummy bookcase top contains the blower box and compensator. The bookcases, blower box, compensator, etc., all sit on 3/4≤ ply panels which have been leveled onto the floor.

Once Alec had installed his real books and ornaments, the organ (while visually dominating such a small room, as it must) blended into its domestic setting beautifully, with a spectacular visual touch being provided by a trumpet-blowing angel, carved in oak, which had been salvaged from a local church altarpiece,

What of the finished product? Naturally, the instrument is a compromise--but then this is true of all but the largest organs. It is a pity, for instance, that there was no room for a swell box, or another rank, but it is a wise builder or player who knows when he has gone as far as space and finances will allow. The wooden Stopt Diapason rank had its top lips lowered, and was re-voiced to produce a charming, rather quaint sound, with none of the original's unattractive, breathy tone. The Open Diapason had to be softened to just short of dullness, and now adds considerable fullness and warmth. The Salicional has made an excellent quiet voice, and is also very useful in its other pitches, where it adds brightness without shrillness. This is most important in a small room, and it is worth noting that, the larger the room (up to cathedral proportions) the brighter and more cutting the treble pipework can, and must, be. But the opposite is true for a small space, where top notes can easily become uncomfortably piercing--hence the lack of Mixtures on small house organs with no swell boxes. Many visiting organists, both professional and amateur, have played Alec's instrument since its completion, and all have been pleasantly surprised by its resources and the fact it is possible to produce satisfying performances of both classical and romantic works, albeit with some ingenuity on the part of the player.

True, it would have been possible to install a "large" electronic with three or four manuals, a wide range of stops and artificial reverberation, and I can see the attraction of such an idea, especially for the player whose interest lies in large-scale, romantic works. But, I cannot imagine anything less convincing than the sound of pedal and manual reeds, with Diapasons and mixtures, echoing with a five-second reverberation, across a room some 16 feet long and 8 feet high. The sound of a small organ in a small room, with no reverberation at all, is an authentic one and has a special charm. Whether it be two or three ranks of pipes offered with mechanical action as two or three stops, or whether, as in this case, the ranks are extended to several "stops," the small domestic instrument has a sound and fascination all its own, and is capable of giving much pleasure, both visually and musically, over many years.

 

Peter Jones will be pleased to receive comments, either on this article, or relating to readers' own experiences, at: The Bungalow, Kennaa, St. John's, Isle of Man, 1M4 3LW, Via United Kingdom

 

Manual I

                  8'            Open Diapason A

                  8'            Stopt Diapason B

                  4'            Salicet C

                  4'            Flute B

                  22/3'    Twelfth C

                  2'            Fifteenth A

                                    Man II/Man I

Manual II

                  8'            Stopt Diapason B

                  8'            Salicional C

                  2'            Salicetina C

                  11/3'    Nineteenth C

Pedal

                  16'         Harmonic Bass B & Q

                  8'            Bass Flute B

                  4'            Fifteenth A

                  2'            Salamine C

                                    Man I/Ped

                                    Man II/Ped

Summary

                  A              Open Diapason 73 pipes

                  B              Stopt Diapason 73 pipes

                  C              Salicional 73 pipes

                  D              Quint 12 pipes

by Robert Huestis

Introduction

The modern "orgelbewegung" organ revival has cultivated as a norm the German neo-Baroque organ, using stopped or partly stopped flutes as foundations at 8' and 16' pitch in small instruments. This practice has been given such authority that many organists do not question it; but this type of organ is only one style among many. Neither it nor any other design ought to be raised to the level of dogmatic acceptance. The multiple foundation stops found in the best nineteenth-century organs  represent the continuation of a tradition which had been already established in the Baroque period. A perception of the history of the organ which does not ignore the nineteenth century should lead us to see that multiple foundation stops in the manuals are consistent with eighteenth-century practice and not the exception.

In this paper, the presence of such stops in important examples is noted and described. It is observed that some organs of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century have an extraordinarily cohesive blend of stops in various combinations. An acoustic theory is put forward to explain the reason for this blend or its absence. This theory states that stops are able to blend when harmonics are present in the unison tone which duplicate the fundamentals of the upper pitches. It is also observed that stopped pipes used as foundations cannot provide these harmonics.

A most important application of this point of view is that the pedal of a small organ may be based upon a 16' open subbass, not the traditional stopped bourdon. Several organs are cited which demonstrate this practice, from the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries. It is noted that in the manual divisions the Italian organs used 8' open pipes as foundations through their entire history; however, the Italian organ has generally been ignored as a model for small instruments. It is concluded that the exclusive use of stopped pipes as fundamentals in small organs should be reconsidered. The extensive use of stopped flutes represents a restricted, national style which ought not assume the role of a universal model. Open pipes blend better and make the tone more cohesive. We should question accepted norms of "organ design" and revise them in favor of those traditions which include the use of open pipes to provide the fundamental tone. This will allow organs in churches to be most effective at their primary role, to provide a foundation for congregational singing.

Historical Background

With the neo-Baroque organ revival, organ scholarship blossomed and has resulted in the construction of new instruments re-creating stop lists that belong to specific national or regional styles of organ building. These instruments reflect earlier times and their respective literatures. These trends were transmitted remarkably quickly to North America. This was accomplished primarily by North American scholars studying abroad and by European specialists teaching in North America. Some years later these same trends appeared in other English-speaking countries such as Australia. This organ revival filled a particularly heartfelt need resulting from a discontinuity of the traditions of organ building which was most evident in the "orchestral" and theatre organs of the 1920s.

It is not a simple matter to establish exactly why traditional concepts of organ building were abandoned, but if any one cause is to singled out, it must be that certain types of electric action made possible the use of the same pipes at two or more pitches (unification) or on two or more keyboards (duplexing)1. These purely technical devices of organ design, made in the interests of a certain type of economy, made it impossible to voice the organ so that its stops could blend. This break with the traditional concepts of organ voicing set the stage for rediscovery of older traditions, rather than allowing a normal evolution of organ design. When it became obvious that something had been lost through neglect, there had to be a "revival" so that whatever it was that had been lost could be reinstated.

Unification and duplexing destroyed the blending ensemble so thoroughly that, despite the effects of the organ revival movement, we have not yet recovered the consciousness that the stops of an organ must truly blend together. The result is a genuine anachronism: the separate stops of many modern organs refuse to blend, while there still exist a few forgotten nineteenth-century instruments, the best from their time, which preserve the ability of every one of their stops to blend with every other. While the "revival" organs do not have unification or duplexing, often they show an indifference to blend that can be traced to the disastrous lapse of sensitivity in voicing that unification and duplexing have left as their aftermath.

New Organs in North American and Australia

One result of the organ revival has been the crystallization of the neo-Baroque stoplist into a norm for the construction of new organs. But because a "revival" resurrects an older stratum of the culture which has already passed away, the organ revival reflects the specific requirements of a style of organ playing which is no longer in an active phase of development. The "revival" organ often reflects the general requirements of eighteenth-century organ playing and the specific demands of German Lutheran organ literature. It is now customarily imposed upon English-speaking regions of the world, regions which possess traditions and literatures vastly different from those of an eighteenth-century culture. This neo-eighteenth-century norm presents itself virtually as a doctrinal system, often assuming a degree of authority that is insisted upon in the same way that a theological principle may be insisted upon.

The North American adoption of the neo-Baroque organ design was a "marriage of convenience" to aid the recovery from the theatre organ debacle and its after-effects. It has persisted quite a bit too long. Now we are being called to take up once again the historical evolution of the instrument.

The objective of the author is to develop a theory of organ registration and specification that does not reflect the demands of any national or regional style. Instead, it is a theory of organ specification which proceeds from an acoustic basis. It is intended to fulfill the needs which we find in English-speaking churches at the end of the twentieth century. Like the ancient eclectic philosopher, we have selected such doctrines as please us from every school. Our music borrows freely from many sources, and is not exclusive to any one tradition.

The Nineteenth-Century Contribution

In Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the United States and Europe, there still exist nineteenth-century organs virtually untouched or relatively intact, preserving a tradition of organ building which has largely been lost in the major population centers. A number of these organs are being rehabilitated and it is no longer fashionable to take away their original characteristics. Restorations, not rebuilds, are becoming more common. An example is the organ formerly of St. Stephen's Roman Catholic Cathedral, Brisbane, built about 1880.2 This old instrument survived the rebuilders because of the happy circumstances of benign neglect. Fortunately, there was not enough money available to replace or "modernize" it.

This organ features tracker action, low wind pressure, bright reeds, and clear but not loud upper work. Everything rests upon a foundation of several unison stops and all reasonable combinations of two or more stops can be depended upon to combine into a blend of great cohesion. These factors suggest that this organ represents an evolution of the traditions of organ building which had been current during the century before. Though the sound is quite different from a Baroque organ, there is no radical departure from the eighteenth-century traditions, but rather a continuity with them. The result is that the music of both Bach and Brahms sounds very comfortable on this instrument.

The Great manual of this organ corresponds almost exactly to the Baroque ideal in the plan of the stops and their assignment at various pitches. The character of the stops has changed according to the styles of the period, but the essential design of the ensemble is preserved. As a model for comparison the specification of the Great manual is given from the Löfsta Bruk organ of 1728 by the Swedish builder Cahman,3

It is apparent from nineteenth-century examples (for instance, by E.&G.G. Hook and others in Canada and the United States), that tracker action, low wind pressure, bright reeds, upper work and mixtures were all elements of organ building that had been carried over into the nineteenth century from the eighteenth century. What about the multiple unison stops? Do these represent a "Romantic" tradition only, or are they an element that was being carried over from the Baroque period into the Romantic era? In both organs cited above, there is an open 8' to serve as the foundation for the ensemble, a wide-scaled flute to give it depth, and a third 8' stop to contribute the harmonics necessary to bind the ensemble together. In the eighteenth century, these harmonics were provided by the Quintadena, meant to act together with the Principal 8'. In the nineteenth century the Diapason had a wider scale than the eighteenth-century Principal. Therefore the third 8' stop, which must contribute the binding harmonics to the ensemble, is the Gamba, a string-toned stop of such wide scale in this organ that it is very much like a narrow-scaled Violin Diapason.

If we emphasize the similarity of the two stop lists rather than their differences, we can obtain a better view looking back at the eighteenth century and also looking forward to the twentieth century. It is possible to theorize on specifications which can accommodate not only the music of Buxtehude and Bach, but also the other portions of the literature, such as that by Dupré or the French symphonists, which have grown out of the traditions of the nineteenth century.

The Difference between "Registration" and "Specification"

Organ specification is not the same thing as organ registration. A specification is a list of the various stops of which a particular instrument is composed. Registration is the setting down of certain combinations of stops in order to produce a desired effect. In a given organ, there is a specification of stops which should combine together to give the instrument a distinctive musical formulation, which we call "ensemble", all the parts of which match together and harmonize. From this specification, an indeterminate number of registrations may be drawn, which express various facets of that distinctive musical ensemble. The full organ registration should be equivalent to the specification of the instrument less certain stops intended for special effects.

The specification of an organ should be built up, not to make combinations, but rather to provide for maximum blending of stops. Blending stops may be pursued in two directions--vertically (8', 4,' 22/3', 2' etc.) and horizontally (8' + 8', 4' + 4'). The 8' and 4' accompaniment stops, which are flutes, should blend horizontally with the principal chorus. How often have students been admonished not to combine stops of the same pitch, because of tuning problems! In nineteenth-century organs, the 4' flute was usually open or harmonic and combined naturally with a 4' principal, rather than beating against it. Both the Brisbane organ and the Löfsta Bruk organ present an open 4' flute capable of combining with a 4' principal. This is not a new characteristic making its first appearance in the nineteenth century.

The reed stops should blend horizontally with both flutes and principals. There ought to be maximum harmonic reinforcement between the reeds and flues--that is, there should be no sour off-harmonics in the reeds. Therefore, full-length reeds are to be preferred to half-length reeds, which have a peculiar harmonic series with flat ninths and so on.

Finally, at least one mixture stop may contain a tierce, in order to assist in the blend with the reeds. This characteristic occurs in both the Brisbane and the Löfsta Bruk organs. We can see from the above, that specification is the organ builder's art. Specifications should not be made up to encompass the most possible registrations. Rather, the various registrations should be derived from each organ's individual specification. The specification of a particular instrument should be set up to secure the maximum possible blend, both in the horizontal and vertical directions. From a specification may be derived two contrasting types of classes of registrations: blending registrations and non-blending registrations. These are defined and discussed below.

The Harmonic Overtones of Open and Stopped Pipes

It is well known that all organ pipes produce composite tones consisting of various harmonic partials.4 The partials of 8' open pipes which concern the present theory of registration are these:

First partial = Fundamental

Second partial = Octave = Fundamental of 4' stops

Third partial = Quint = Fundamental of 22/3' stop

Fourth partial = Double octave = Fundamental of 2' stop

Fifth partial = Tierce = Fundamental of 13/5' stop

The fundamentals of the 4', 22/3', 2' and 13/5' stops all reinforce harmonics already present in tone of the open 8' stops. Therefore the 4', 22/3', 2' or 13/5' stops will blend acoustically with the open 8' stops.

The stopped pipes, in contrast, behave very differently. They emphasize only the odd partials. Those partials of stopped pipes which characterize their tone are these:

First partial = Fundamental

Third partial = Quint = Fundamental of 22/3'stop

Fifth partial = Tierce = Fundamental of 13/5' stop

These stopped pipes form strong blends with mutation stops, but not with the octave-sounding registers of the principal chorus.

"Blending "and "Non-Blending" Registrations

"Blending" registrations are defined here as those registrations which consist of stops arranged in such a manner that the harmonic overtones of the lower stops duplicate the fundamental tones of the higher stops.

Examples:          Open 8' (Principal)        +              open or stopped 4'

                  Open or stopped 8' (Principal or Quintadena)                  +             22/3' Quint

"Non-blending" registrations may be defined as combinations of stops arranged in such a manner that the harmonic overtones of the lower stops do not duplicate the fundamentals of the higher stops.

Examples:          Stopped 8'         +               stopped 2' or open 2'

                  Stopped 8'         +              stopped 4' or open 4'

Blending registrations are used for music which demands the full chorus attribute of the organ. Non-blending registrations should be used where the music is to stress the maximum independence of line, such as in the typical bicinium type of chorale prelude.5

Some compositions may feasibly use either a chorus type of registration or a contrasting non-blending registration which stresses independence of line. Hence the dividing line between the two types is not clear. To express this ambiguity of intention, hybrid registrations are useful. Some of the stops blend with each other, while some do not.

Examples:           Open 8'                +              stopped 4'          +              open 2'

                  Stopped 8'         +              open 4'                 +              open 2'

In the first example, the open 8' combines with both the stopped 4' and open 2,' but the open 2' cannot combine with the stopped 4' because there is no 2' partial in the stopped 4'. In the second example, the stopped 8' can combine with the open 4', but not with the open 2'; also the open 4' and open 2' can combine with each other. For both examples, the character is not clearly either "blending" or "non-blending." Registrations with this property might be best used in music which has three or four voices where both the cohesion of the lines and their independence are to be stressed simultaneously.

These observations lead to the conclusion that successively higher pitches in a registration should be more open acoustically.

Example: Stopped 8' + partially open 4' (Koppelflute or Rohrflute) + open 2.

Single stops can also exhibit this hybrid characteristic. For example, the bottom octave may be stopped, the next octave partially stopped, and the treble fully open.

Composite Solo Registrations

The foundation 8' flutes should contain the 4,' 22/3', 2' and 13/5' partials, so that the mutation stops can join with them acoustically. The 4' flutes should contain prominent quint partials, if there is a Larigot or quint at 11/3' above. A conclusion which follows from this type of design is that the stop which determines the musical quality of a Cornet V is the 8' flute that supports it, rather than the mutations of which the Cornet itself is composed.

Solo registrations involving reed stops may be either blending or non-blending. It is interesting to contrast the combination Oboe 8' + flute 4' with the combination Clarinet 8' + flute 4'. The action of the flute in each case is different. There is, however, a little of every harmonic to be found even in the hollow-sounding reeds such as the Clarinet and the Krummhorn, because the reed itself produces a full series of partials.

If we contrast the registration Oboe 8' + quint 22/3' with Clarinet 8' + quint 22/3' we find that the adhesion of the quint to the Clarinet is stronger than the cohesion of the quint with the Oboe. This happens because the quint harmonic (22/3') is much stronger in the Clarinet than it is in the Oboe. A composite solo registration may be used with either a blending or a non-blending accompaniment registration, depending upon the character of the accompanying voices.

Conclusive Statement of Theory

This present theory of registration is easy to apply. If a stop at a lower pitch contains a harmonic that can bind with the fundamental of a stop at a higher pitch, then those two stops are capable of a good blend. If not, they will be limited in their capability of blending, or prevented from it altogether. An ensemble composed from a "non-blending" specification (such as is found in small neo-Baroque "revival" organs) comes out in layers, rather than producing a blended, cohesive, and "blooming" sound.

Specification of Foundation Stops at 8' and 16' Pitches

A practice which flows from the acoustic analysis of specification is the placement of open and partially stopped flutes at the 8' pitch in the manuals and at the 16' pitch in the pedal organ. This is much in contrast to the idea of placing them exclusively at the 4' pitch and higher in the manuals and only from the 8' pitch upward in the pedal. In the manual divisions, the economy of the organ and the space it requires are not greatly affected, since in most cases the bottom octave of open flutes at the 8' pitch is stopped and made of wood to assure quickness of speech. The provision of a narrow-scale open subbass in the pedal requires room overhead and this stop is expensive; but this expense should be more than offset by the fact that such a pedal division is more versatile and blends so much better than the alternative. The organ can be made a stop or two smaller than might otherwise be planned. The expense of the open 16' stop is more than recovered because a smaller pedal organ will actually sound better and more compelling.

When the pedal is based upon a 16' open flue, producing a relatively quiet tone--about the same intensity as a normally stopped Subbass 16'--there is an exquisite blend of harmonics. The upper partials of the soft open 16' are able to combine with the fundamental tone of the various members of the chorus above, particularly the 8' Principal.

This is the design of the pedal organ specification which is found in the Cahman organ of Löfsta Bruk.

Öppen Subbas 16'

Principal 8'

Gedackt 8'

Kvinta 51/3'

Oktava 4'

Rauschkvint II

Mixtur IV

Basun 16'

Trumpet 8'

Trumpet 4'

It is exceedingly rare. Cahman also did another interesting thing. The combination Gedackt 8' , Quintadena 8' and Quint 22/3' is repeated both in the Great and Positive organs. Are we to realize from this repetition that Cahman provided the Quintadena 8' in each case to secure an acoustical, harmonic "locking in" with the quint 22/3' above it? Most modern specifications would have omitted the Quintadena, probably on both manuals, and supplied a stopped 16' to the pedal, substituting for the Open Subbass 16' a louder Principal 16'. The particular quality which sets this Cahman organ apart as a gem among artistic instruments would be destroyed.

The Open Subbass of the Löfsta Bruk organ is made of wood and has a fairly narrow scale. In the published photographs of the organ, the end of the largest pipe can be seen behind the 8' Prestant of the pedal organ. The lowest pipe is approximately seven inches square. If this principle of specification and voicing is to be retained in an organ large enough to offer both an open and stopped 16' flue in the pedal, it is important that the open stop be of narrow scale and voiced quietly so as to support the chorus above. When 16' open flues are scaled and voiced loudly, so as to "add power", their harmonic development is much reduced and their ability to contribute to a unified chorus ensemble is lost. Therefore the 16' open flue stop should be planned to be no louder than any stopped 16' open flue which may accompany it in the pedal.

An Example of the 16' Open as the Only Pedal Foundation Stop in a Modern Organ

The Casavant organ at the Dordt College chapel at Sioux Center, IA, was built under the supervision of the late Gerhard Brunzema. It is a 37-stop instrument which contains only principals and reeds in the pedal according to this disposition.6

Praestant 16'

Octaaf 8'

Octaaf 4'

Mixtuur VI

Bazuin 32'

Bazuin 16'

Trompet 8'

Cornet 2'

Since there is only one 16' flue stop, this stop also has to be able to fulfill the role normally taken by a stopped 16'. Therefore it must not be loud. But if the 16' foundation cannot be loud, how is power to be built up? The Sioux Center organ relies on its reeds rather than its flue stops for power in the pedal organ. This also happens in the Löfsta Bruk organ.

The Use of Mutation Stops to Support a Pedal 16' Flue Stop

The Löfsta Bruk organ builds power for its 16' flue both through its reeds and through a 51/3' pedal quint. This method of building power and clarity without overvoicing the 16' flue stop was followed regularly by the late Nils Hammarberg, a modern Swedish organbuilder of Göteborg. A stopped 8' pipe acquires definition though the reinforcement of its third partial, the 22/3' Quint. The Quint's fundamental is the same as the third partial. Cahman specified a Quint 51/3' in the pedal organ to complete the same harmonic function that the 22/3' Quint fulfills in the manual divisions. The combination of a soft open 16' together with a quint supporting its third partial gives the pedal organ a firmer foundation than any loud, wide-scaled diapason could ever provide.

The mutation stop must be narrowly scaled and gently voiced, and a true principal rather than a flute. This is also a prominent characteristic of the 22/3' and 2' stops in the Great organ of the nineteenth-century Brisbane instrument in Australia. Blending tone is aided by conservative scaling and gentle voicing, both of the fundamental tone and its corroborating harmonic.

Hammarberg continued this tradition with the provision of a pedal stop called "Aliqvot," a name which simply means "harmonics." It can refer to any useful combination of supporting harmonic partials. In his most recent work it consisted of the following 16' partials:

51/3' quint = third partial

31/5' tierce = fifth partial

22/3' quint = sixth partial

2' fifteenth = eighth partial

Hammarberg developed this idea because in Sweden, organs are placed in the gallery at the western end of the church and there is no headroom for open 16' pipes. It substitutes for the open 16' sound a resultant:

                  Alikvot                  51/3' C                  96 Hz

                  Principal               8' C        64 Hz

                  difference                               32 Hz = 16' C

He also provided the 32' resultant in the same way:

                  Kvinta 102/3' C               48 Hz

                  Principal               16' C     32 Hz

                  difference                               16 Hz = 32' C

Sometimes the Alikvot mixture has less than four ranks and sometimes more; Hammarberg sometimes built it in the following way:

51/3' quint = third partial sounding G

31/5' tierce = fifth partial E

22/7' flat seventh = seventh partial flat A#

17/9' ninth = ninth partial D

A typical specification for such a pedal organ is:

1. Subbas (wood, stopped) 16'

2. Kvinta 102/3'

3. Principalbas 8'

4. Gedacktbas 8'

5. Alikvot 51/3' + 31/5' + 22/3' + 2'

6. Bombard 16'

7. Trumpet 8'

8. Rörskalmeja 4'

9. Koralbas 4'

Hammarberg built this plan in conditions where headroom was restricted, from about 1981, and used the Alikvot mixture as well as the 102/3' plus 16' resultant in various instruments dating from the 1960s and 1970s. Examples of this work may be found in Mora, Boras, Göteborg, Falkenberg and Grebbestad, all in Sweden. In all of these organs, the presence of the Alikvot stop relieves the 16' from any obligation to attempt to produce power through volume, with the attendant deterioration of its tone.

Hammarberg's plan of pedal specification works well with gently voiced open 16' flue pipes, to develop a pedal organ of considerable power, while allowing the open 16' flue to remain as the only 16' flue stop in the division. Hammarberg's ideas combine well with Brunzema's plan (above) to give the following:

1. Subbass 16' wood, open narrow scale, about 7≤ CCC as at Löfsta Bruk

2. Quint 102/3'

3. Principal 8'

4. Gedacktbass 8'

5. Quint 51/3'

6. Coralbass 4'

7. Alikvot, composition as appropriate

8. Basun 16'

9. Trumpet 8'

10. Rohrshalmey 4'

Summary

The modern organ reform movement has given strong support to the exclusive use of gedackts and other stopped pipes at 16' and 8' pitch in small organs. This type of specification is derived from a "Neo-Baroque" Germanic tradition of organ building. Although these stopped pipes sometimes have narrow chimneys as in the Rohrflute, they nevertheless act as stopped pipes in the ensemble. This practice of specification leads to a form of non-blending registrations.

It is curious that the Italian organ, in which one always finds open pipes for foundation tone, is hardly built today, while the typical "reform movement" type of instrument, with a high percentage of stopped pipes, is commonly built. This is not merely a result of economic considerations, but rather a question of style and fashion.

Derived from this background is the practice of specifying a stopped Subbass as the pedal foundation stop. It provides the fundamental pitch in an undefined sound that blends with difficulty; and when pushed to provide greater volume, its tone deteriorates very quickly. A stopped Subbass has little blending power because it has no harmonic at the octave. This defeats the purpose for which it is intended. A 16' pedal stop should do more than supply a fundamental pitch; it should provide a harmonic series to support the chorus above.

We have examined pedal organ designs by builders who have not frozen their thinking into traditionally accepted ideas. The contemporary organs of Brunzema and Hammarberg take much of their design from the organ reform ideals, but also demonstrate innovative ideas which reinforce the true acoustical nature of the instrument. Let us turn to models such as these, rather than the typical "organ reform" prototypes, in order to construct organs of moderate size that do not lose our public for want of a good foundation for singing.

If we emphasize gently voiced open pipes as the natural source of fundamental tone, and obtain the power of the organ by means of harmonic reinforcement, we will assure that its sound has that live-giving warmth which will appeal to the musical public.8                

Appendix

The Löfsta Bruk Organ

by John Hamilton7

The sumptuous Löfsta Bruk organ was built in 1728 by Johan Niclas Cahman, a North German builder who had emigrated to Sweden. Of twenty-eight registers (two manuals, pedal), it was conservatively conceived; it is today Scandinavia's finest example of the sort of instrument known to the Praetorius/Scheidemann/Scheidt/Buxtehude school. The lavishness of conception is indicated in, for instance, the pedal's two full-compass full-length sixteen-foot registers, a Principal and a Posaune--in a church seating barely three hundred. The organ has largely escaped the periodic "modernizations" which have plagued many important old instruments. When nineteenth-century tastes called for a different sort of churchly music-making, the Ryggpositiv windchest and pipes were carefully removed and stored in the church's attic; Romantic tastes were satisfied by the two-manual-and-pedal reed organ which replaced the Ryggpositiv. A restoration in the early 1960s, by a Danish firm, was in the tradition of the best obtaining taste of that decade; it was well carried out but, alas, today's wind-supply is the mercilessly steady nineteenth-century norm, today's temperament is nineteenth-century equal, today's reed tongues are modern (the restorer discarded the old tongues without making measurements or metal analysis), and today's key action possibly is overly spring-loaded. Plans are afoot to correct these modern intrusions.

Tone is big, noble, unforced, in the north European historic tradition. Plenums admirably support the ardent congregational singing known to have characterized the eighteenth century: today's listener readily envisions vigorous hymn singing from strong-lunged Walloon ironwrights, who sat together in the church's most prestigious area. Of particular interest are the organ's mixtures, all of which contain third-sounding pipes contributing strength and color to the plenums. Individual Principal registers are among the most gloriously singing known to this listener.

Today's organists at Löfsta Bruk are Birgitta Olsson, the excellent parish organist, and Göran Blomberg of Uppsala University, who with a background in musicology, organ performance, and classical archaeology, is a strong summer presence. Blomberg's personal involvement with the instrument coincides with the period of its modern international reputation starting around 1980; his tireless, knowledgeable commitment to its becoming known have resulted in the organ's having become widely recognized even earlier than was the village itself. He has recorded an excellent selection of material by Buxtehude and Bach on an LP released by Bluebell-of-Sweden and is preparing digital recordings. Birgitta Olsson and Blomberg have organized a succession of summer "Cahman Days" forming an annual framework for presentation of the instrument; these included an international festival in August 1987, during the Buxtehude anniversary. And Blomberg offers numerous demonstration recitals on the instrument for groups of both lay and professional visitors.