Cover feature

The genealogy of a restored instrument

Andrew Forrest began with Orgues Létourneau Limitée in February 1999 and in his current position as Artistic Director, oversees all of the company’s projects. He travels regularly to meet with clients, architects, and acousticians, as well as to supervise the company’s on-site tonal finishing. Mr. Forrest has a keen interest in the art of pipe scaling and has completed studies of the String division of Philadelphia’s Wanamaker Organ and the 1955 Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ at Winthrop University among others. He served on the local organizing committee for the joint AIO-ISO 2010 convention held in Montréal, and in October 2011, Forrest was elected to the American Institute of Organbuilders’ Board of Directors for a three-year term. He holds a bachelor of arts degree in political science and economics from Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario. An organist himself, Andrew Forrest has two children and lives in Mont-Saint-Hilaire, Québec.

The present pipe organ at St. James United Church is unique among Montréal’s many interesting organs because much of the organ’s pipework dates back to an 1889 instrument by E.D. Wadsworth & Brothers, Organ Builders. Edward Wadsworth opened his own organbuilding company in Manchester, England, in 1861 after apprenticing with Kirtland & Jardine; his family subsequently continued in the organbuilding trade under various forms of the Wadsworth name until 1946, when the company was absorbed by Jardine & Company of Manchester. Present-day British organbuilding colleagues have suggested that earlier Wadsworth organs with mechanical actions are superior to the later pneumatic examples, but it remains clear that the Wadsworth name never achieved the status of other British builders during the latter half of the 19th century, such as William Hill, “Father” Henry Willis, or T.C. Lewis.

Perhaps sensing new business opportunities, Edward Wadsworth moved to Montréal in 1887 to establish a branch office of the family company at 298 Craig Street (which today is called rue St-Antoine). The company built two instruments in Canada, the first being a small tracker organ of ten stops for Trivett Memorial Church in Exeter, Ontario, in 1888. The second project for St. James Methodist Church (as the church was originally known) was on a grander scale; the handwritten contract dated June of 1888 was for a grand pipe organ of 49 stops with “tractile” key action. The price for the new organ was established at $11,550, less $2,375 for the church’s old pipe organ. For reference, the signing of the Wadsworth contract took place at the same time as construction was ongoing in the workshops of Samuel and Claver Casavant of a 73-stop instrument for Montréal’s Basilique Notre-Dame; the price for the Casavant organ was some $24,800.

With a 32′ flue stop in the pedal division and two divisions on each of the three manuals, the Wadsworth organ was a novel and complex instrument. The two divisions per manual could be played separately, or coupled together by the touch of a thumb piston under each manual. In addition, each manual had its own drawknobs for appropriate pedal stops and a dedicated “pedalier” thumb piston to bring the selected registration into play as one moved from manual to manual. The middle manual controlled the Great and Back Great divisions, while the Solo—in its own swell box—was partnered on the lowest manual with the unenclosed Choir. The Swell and Echo divisions, playable from the third manual, were enclosed together.

A comparison of the 1888 contract to the instrument’s final specification shows that two optional stops—a 16′ Lieblich Gedackt for the Choir and a 16′ Contra Fagotto for the Solo—were added as the organ was being built. Stops were equally rearranged within the specification, presumably for a better musical result: The 16′ Contra Fagotto was moved to the Back Great division with the Great 8′ and 4′ reeds, permitting the reeds to be brought in or retired collectively in a ventil-like fashion via the thumb pistons under the Great manual. The 8′ Vox Humana likewise migrated from the Solo division to the Echo, while the 8′ Gamba and 8′ Voix Celeste stops came together in the Solo from their separated locations in the Swell and Echo divisions respectively.

Lynnwood Farnam served as organist for St. James Methodist Church from 1904 to 1905, and was well acquainted with the Wadsworth instrument. His notebook entry on the organ provides many details on the as-built stoplist and forms the basis for our understanding of the completed 1889–91 Wadsworth instrument. Though Farnham’s pages on the St. James organ are typically meticulous, it is unclear what kind of key action or key actions Wadsworth employed in his instrument; but it seems highly unlikely that the organ had purely mechanical key action. At the least, some form of pneumatic action would have been employed to manage the complexity of two divisions per manual. Farnam does list all couplers as operating pneumatically, with the console having the six usual unison couplers along with sub and octave couplers for the Swell manual, and a Swell to Great Sub coupler.

Unfortunately, the luster literally wore off the Wadsworth instrument at St. James Church within two years of its completion in 1889. The new organ was frequently crippled by problems arising from humidity and heating within the new church building. The church acknowledged this in an indenture document signed with Wadsworth in June  1891, wherein the complaint was also lodged that the organ’s “exterior has not preserved its absolutely fresh appearance.” The agreement offered Wadsworth an additional $1,000 to repair and otherwise complete his instrument, which, according to the document, had already been in place for two years.

The results of this remedial work were proclaimed satisfactory in a letter dated September 23, 1891, from the agreed-upon arbiter, Frederick Archer, to John Torrance, Secretary to the Trustees of St. James Methodist Church:

My dear Sir,

I have this day examined in detail the organ erected by Mr. E. Wadsworth in St. James Church, Montreal with the following results.

I find the wind supply is now ample for every possible purpose, its transmission to every junction of the instrument with uninterrupted “steadiness”. The wind trunks, sound boards, etc. are perfectly air tight and the whole of the mechanism is in thoroughly satisfactory condition.

The repairs have been carefully and substantially done in full accordance with the agreement entered into with him in June last, and with ordinary care and attention, the instrument will, to the best of my knowledge and belief, be now found entirely adequate to all legitimate demands made on it.

. . . I am pleased to be able to report so favourably, but as Mr. Wadsworth has evidently done his work of renovation in so conscientious and thorough a manner, it is but one to him that I could bear witness of the fact. 

Archer was a renowned English organist and choral conductor living in the United States, with a reputation as an expert on pipe organs that extended as far as Montréal; he played three dedicatory concerts on the Casavant organ at la Basilique Notre-Dame in May of 1891.

If the Wadsworth instrument was indeed playing as early as 1889, this raises questions about how such a large pipe organ was built within a year by an organ builder who had only arrived in Montréal a few years earlier. For example, from where did Wadsworth obtain his pipework for the new St. James organ? One distinct possibility is that he purchased pipes from another builder such as S.R. Warren & Sons or from a supply house. Similarly, Wadsworth may have ordered pipes from the family workshops in Manchester, England, and had them shipped to Canada. Having said that, Wadsworth was accused of using old pipework in the new organ for St. James Church, including the Pedal 16′ Trombone and the Echo 8′ Hautbois. Our survey of the organ’s present pipework suggests that some ranks pre-date 1889: the f#19 pipe of the Great 16′ Double Diapason, for example, is clearly scribed “1881”, some seven years before the organ’s contract was signed.

Considering the spatial volume of the sanctuary at St. James’ Church and the organ’s recessed location within the chancel, the scaling of the Wadsworth pipework is surprisingly modest in comparison with the large organs of, say, William Hill. The original Great 8′ Open Diapason approaches the Normalmensur (NM) standard around 4′ C and again in the 1′ octave but never exceeds it. The Great 4′ Principal is consistently two to three pipes smaller than the 8′, and it is only in their uppermost octaves that the Great 22⁄3′ Twelfth (a tapered rank) and 2′ Fifteenth ranks exceed NM. These statements are slightly complicated by Warren’s re-scaling and re-pitching of the original pipework in their later reconstruction, but it remains that the scalings of Wadsworth’s principals and choruses were unexpectedly reticent. The quality of the Wadsworth pipes is unremarkable when compared with the later Warren and Casavant pipes, and while most of Wadsworth’s metal pipes were made from spotted metal, the metal itself is quite thin. The Swell 8′ Viola Ætheria is an extreme example: the spotted metal in the bass octaves is so thin that lifting the pipe carelessly from the top can easily deform the pipe’s body. The effect produced by these moderately scaled pipes sounding on generous wind pressures and having been voiced to fill a large room is one of surprising brilliance and great clarity.

Wadsworth’s wooden stops throughout the organ were unvarying, with stopped bass and tenor octaves that transition to open pipes with inverted mouths at c25, similar to a Melodia. The Solo 8′ Concert Flute and the Choir 8′ Lieblich Flute are traditional in the sense that the open pipe bodies are deeper than they are wide, but the proportions for the Great 8′ and 4′ flutes are notably wide and shallow. The present Choir 8′ Flute Celeste originally served as Wadsworth’s 8′ Echo Flute and also features this type of wide mouth construction. Like the metal pipes, the quality of construction is adequate but unexceptional; the thickness of the wood is consistently thinner than the later Warren pipes, and the quality of the joinery is slightly coarse and uneven.

Though E.D. Wadsworth & Bros. was still advertising in the Montréal area as late as 1902, it is unclear what happened to Edward Wadsworth after the completion of the St. James organ in 1891. Wadsworth did not achieve fame or fortune with the St. James’ organ: within days of Frederick Archer’s note pronouncing the organ complete in September 1891, Wadsworth sent the church trustees a handwritten note requesting an advance of $30 as he found himself “rather short.”

The Wadsworth organ served the church for eighteen years, a period that included Lynnwood Farnam’s tenure as organist. It was replaced in 1909 with a pipe organ by the Warren Church Organ Company, reusing a majority of the Wadsworth pipes, at a cost of $6,000. The Warren Church Organ Company was established in Woodstock, Ontario, in 1907 by Frank, Mansfield, and Russell Warren, and can be considered the last vestige of the once-proud Warren name in Canadian organbuilding.

The Warren organ added a number of new stops and redistributed most of the Wadsworth ranks throughout the instrument. A massively scaled 8′ Open Diapason was added to the Great, displacing Wadsworth’s original to secondary status. The Choir division was enhanced by a new 8′ Cor anglais with free reeds; this stop was likely purchased from a supplier, as its construction details are unlike anything else in the organ. A new Solo division was also provided on some 10′′ of wind and included new Stentorphone, Doppelflöte, German Gamba, and Tuba stops.

It appears Warren provided all-new wind chests rather than reusing the Wadsworth chests; this conclusion is based on Farnam’s description of the operation of the sub octave (G) and octave (A) couplers for the Great division and the general increase in the number of stops per division. The rearranging of the Choir to reside within the same expressive enclosure as the Swell, and likewise the Echo with the Solo, is further confirmation that the 1909 instrument represented substantial change behind the original Wadsworth façade.

The new Warren console of four manuals provided a new level of flexibility for organists, with each piston being adjustable by drawing the desired stop combination and then pulling the piston head out by a fraction of an inch. There were a total of four pistons operating on the entire organ and between three and five pistons operating on each division. The console also featured a pédale à bascule (a balanced pedal) providing a general crescendo and diminuendo effect.

Our examination of the pipework suggests that the pitch of the Wadsworth pipes was sharp of modern concert pitch (A=440Hz). To lower the pitch, Warren moved all of the Wadsworth stops up by one note and provided a new low C pipe for each stop; this served to increase the scale of each stop by one pipe in the process. The Warren company also filled out the gaps in Wadsworth’s numerous short-compass stops, such as the Great 16′ Contra Fagotto, Choir 8′ Clarionet, Echo 8′ Echo Flute, Choir 8′ Dulciana, and the Choir 8′ Voix Celeste.

Warren went beyond re-pitching the organ in some cases and rescaled several ranks, likely to achieve a fuller sound. It is equally possible that Wadsworth himself may have engaged in some re-scaling to suit his purposes, if one allows he recycled older pipework in his 1889 instrument. For instance, the Choir 4′ Flûte Octaviante and Great 4′ Principal ranks both have many pipes marked with three successive pitches, suggesting that the original scale was too small. In the same way, the Swell 8′ Open Diapason and 4′ Octave stops have been rescaled no less than three times by their fourth octave. As with adjusting the scales of various stops, there is no reason to think Warren would have hesitated to increase wind pressures and/or revoice the Wadsworth pipework as needed.

The Warren company was equally revisionist with the organ’s reed stops. The scales for Wadsworth’s original Great reed chorus were surprisingly thin—notably smaller than the Swell chorus—so Warren replaced the Great 8′ Trumpet with a new stop of larger scale. The original 8′ Trumpet was reworked into a 16′ Bassoon for the Swell division, with Warren providing twelve new half-length pipes for the bottom octave. Warren also added eighteen new full-length pipes to complete the missing bass of the Great 16′ Contra Fagotto. In fact, the only Wadsworth reed stops to emerge from the Warren workshops relatively untouched—beyond being shifted up one pipe as part of re-pitching the organ—were the Swell 8′ Cornopean, the Great and Swell 4′ Clarions and possibly the Swell 8′ Vox Humana (which disappeared in 1956). Most of Wadsworth’s color stops were replaced outright, though the 8′ Clarionet was rebuilt with new shallots, blocks, and boots, as well as equipped with new adjustable bells for tonal regulation. The 1889 organ had two oboe stops—the Solo 8′ Orchestral Oboe and the Echo 8′ Hautbois—though Farnam’s notes state that the Orchestral Oboe’s pipes had been “taken out” by the time of his visit. Neither stop survived; the pipes for both the present Swell 8′ Oboe and the Solo 8′ Orchestral Oboe are consistent in terms of construction and materials with Warren’s other work.

Farnam returned to St. James Methodist Church on February 15, 1910, to play the new Warren organ, and his notes again provide useful details about the changes that were wrought. Farnam did not seem entirely pleased with all of the changes made to the instrument, noting that the “32-foot has been quite ruined…” and all of the 2′ stops seemed very “spiky,” especially the 2′ Fifteenth in the Great. He praised the new electric key action, though went on to mention the Swell action was very noisy from inside the instrument.

After nearly thirty years of service from the Warren organ, St. James United Church—note the change in name—signed a contract with Casavant Frères in July 1938 for an organ that reused almost all of the old pipework on new windchests. As stipulated in the purchase agreement, the organ would be installed by December 18, 1938—some five months later—at a cost of $16,000. Wadsworth’s 16′ façade was to be preserved, though Casavant successfully lobbied to have the façade moved two feet towards the nave to accommodate the enlarged instrument. The short amount of time between the contract signing and the project’s anticipated completion may reflect the lingering effects of the Great Depression; it is likewise indicative that Casavant agreed to finance nearly half of the contract amount over a three-year period after the organ had been completed!

Casavant’s Opus 1608 incorporated their state-of-the-art electro-pneumatic windchests with pitman-type stop actions built into the pouchboards for instantaneous registration changes. The compasses of the manual divisions were increased from 61 notes to 68 notes, and the number of pedals increased from 30 to 32 notes. The organ’s wind system was comprehensively redesigned, reusing old wind reservoirs and their cone-valve regulators where practical. A new four-manual console was also provided, incorporating Casavant’s pneumatic combination action and trademark furnishings. Like Warren, Casavant consolidated the instrument’s specification from five manual divisions to four—eliminating the Echo division—and transferred several stops between divisions in the process. The Swell, Choir, and Solo divisions were furnished with independent expressive enclosures, each operated by Casavant’s 8-stage pneumatic motors.

A new Nazard 22⁄3′ made up of stopped pipes was added to the Choir, while a 4′ Violina—made up largely from repurposed pipework—was added to the Solo division. The Pedal division was augmented through new extensions to the existing stops, though the Wadsworth 16′–8′ Violone rank appears to have been entirely replaced in 1938 with new pipes. The original Pedal 16′ Trombone with its wooden shallots was extended downward by twelve full-length pipes to create the 32′ Bombarde stop, with the entire rank sounding on 7′′ wind pressure. The Carillon (or Chimes) tubes were maintained from the 1909 instrument but provided with a new striker rail, and a new 61-note Harp was added. Finally, whatever was left of Wadsworth’s “ruined” 32′ Open Diapason was eliminated, and a new 32′ Acoustic Bass stop was provided with twelve independent pipes sounding at the fifth to create the 32′ effect.

The Wadsworth-Warren instrument would have been a comfortable fit with the tonal inclinations of Stephen Stoot, Casavant’s technical director in 1938. An Englishman, many of Stoot’s instruments drew from this heritage, and in this sense the Wadsworth and Warren materials would not have seemed particularly foreign—though there may have been some disappointment with their quality. As one example, the placement of reed choruses on separate windchests was a trend in English organbuilding during the late Victorian and Edwardian eras, enabling higher wind pressures for the reed stops for a smoother tone. At St. James, the Great and Swell reed choruses were indeed separated in this manner, but the similar wind pressures between flues and reeds ultimately made this something of a hollow gesture.

After 1938, the organ saw a few changes prior to the restoration undertaken in 2011–12. The 8′ Vox Humana in the Swell division was replaced during the mid-1950s with a stopped 22⁄3′ Nazard rank. In the 1980s, the original Great mixtures were replaced with two new stops that were poorly suited to the instrument’s aesthetic. Likewise, the Great and Swell reed choruses were modified to give a brighter tone, with the resonators being cut to length after the original regulating slots had been soldered shut. One other significant change relates to the instrument’s appearance: church photos show a heavy drape hung above and to the sides of the Wadsworth façade, serving to hide the windchests and pipes from the Great and Pedal divisions. This drape was in place until possibly the early 1980s but it is unclear when exactly it disappeared; Philip Crozier, Director of Music at St. James, relates the drape had been removed by the time he was hired in 1986. The drape’s disappearance would have surely had some effect on the sound of the organ, tilting the organ’s tonal balance towards an even more present and brilliant sound—though to what degree can only be guessed.

The restoration work undertaken by Orgues Létourneau Limitée over a twelve-month period included re-leathering all of the electro-pneumatic windchest actions; restoring all of the wind reservoirs and other wind system components; and documenting in detail the instrument’s pipework. Forty ranks from the original Wadsworth instrument have survived, though many ranks have been subsequently rescaled or rearranged as described above.

As part of the restoration effort, two new mixtures were built for the Great division to replace the unsuitable examples added in the 1980s. In the absence of information regarding their original compositions, the new mixtures’ breaks follow English examples contemporary to the Wadsworth instrument, while the scalings follow progressions established by the Great 2′ Fifteenth and the original Swell mixture. The mild Swell mixture (containing a tierce rank) was restored to its original specification, with the two breaks returning to their original places at c25 and f#31. Finally, a new slotted 8′ Vox Humana in the style of Father Willis was developed and installed in the Swell division.

After nearly 75 years of service, the four-manual console was thoroughly rebuilt to discreetly incorporate modern playing conveniences, including multiple memory levels, additional thumb pistons, and a general piston sequencer. The organ’s switching system and wiring—much of it dating back to 1938—was entirely replaced with a new state-of-the-art system. Beyond the Wadsworth pipework from 1889, some of the instrument’s more intriguing tonal features include the full-length 32′ Bombarde, the Solo 8′ Stentorphone with its leathered upper lips, the free-reed 8′ Cor Anglais, and the 61-note Harp stop in the Choir division.

The organ was tonally regulated within the church by a team of Létourneau voicers over the course of several weeks in early 2012. Shortly thereafter, the church’s offices and meeting spaces were heavily damaged in a fire, though the sanctuary and the organ were spared. The restored organ was first heard in concert during the church’s annual noon-hour series throughout the following summer, and as autumn approached, the organ served as the “home” instrument for the annual Orgues et Couleurs festival, with two major solo concerts performed by Johann Vexo and Philip Crozier. Since Mr. Crozier’s appointment as Director of Music, the organ has been heard in a continuous series of summer recitals over the past 26 years, with the single exception being the summer of 2011, when the instrument was being restored in the Létourneau workshops.

An instrument in the English Town Hall tradition, the pipe organ at St. James United Church has played an important role in Montréal’s organ scene and has hosted concerts by renowned organists such as Lynnwood Farnam, Fernando Germani, Raymond Daveluy, André Marchal, Bernard Lagacé, E. Power Biggs, Francis Jackson, and Simon Preston. More recently, the instrument has been heard in performances by Joseph Nolan and Sietze de Vries. All of us at Létourneau Pipe Organs remain honored to have been entrusted with this significant restoration project and are pleased to see this pipe organ reclaiming its rightful place as one of Montréal’s most noteworthy instruments.

The author would like to thank the following individuals for their assistance in preparing this article: John Mander, Mark Venning, David Wood, Karl Raudsepp, Bill Vineer (The Vineer Organ Library), Allen Fuller, Philip Crozier, Fernand Létourneau, and Dany Nault.

From the organbuilder

While our firm has been very prolific as a builder of new instruments since our founding in 1973, our company also has been very significant as a rebuilder and maintenance firm. So in 2011, when our firm was invited to Tallowood Baptist Church in Houston, Texas, we approached a situation that required all of our skill sets.

A four-manual, 84-rank instrument by another firm had been contracted years earlier and was installed in their new sanctuary between 2008 and 2011. The church was having numerous concerns about the organ after it had been installed. There were mechanical and performance issues, but even more than this, the organ simply did not support their worship. 

Under the direction of the Reverend Carlos Ichter, minister of music, a number of pipe organ builders and consultants were invited to provide an assessment of the organ. The “solutions” given by others ranged from accepting it as it was and trying to increase wind pressure to completely starting over. With the considerable cost, this was not a consideration the church could contemplate, and accepting it as it was would not be an option.

We were asked if we could look at the organ to determine if we could find a way to make the organ a success and what it would require. As we studied the organ and researched the church records, we found numerous contracts, changes, and alterations that had occurred in the design of the instrument from its inception up to when it was installed. Without belaboring the point, this told an interesting story and explained the footing the church took with negotiations going forward, where they had to question everything that they were told.

We started our formal study of the instrument by bringing a team of eight of our staff to the church for one week. We studied the stoplist and scaling of the organ, the chest actions, the winding system, the expression shades, the organ console, the electrical system and relays, and the organ chassis as a whole. We dissected the internal workings of the organ and to better know the pipework, took the time to tune the organ. Next, we voiced some samples of the existing pipework to explore the latitude available for change.

The placement of the organ was in organ chambers in the front of the chancel behind a façade of 32′ pipes, and in a rear antiphonal. The chancel organ chambers sit high in the sanctuary with relatively small tone openings. Portions of these chambers have significant tone traps. The layout and placement of the pipework and chassis acted as physical barriers to the tonal egress of other stops in the organ. There were multiple instances of bass pipes being placed directly in the front of the chambers and covering the tone openings to a very large degree. 

We started our tonal design with a needs study and development of a clearly written, cogent plan for the musical support role of the organ in the church. Our work was to be a change agent to the development of an eclectic instrument that could take part in all forms of music including choral and congregational accompaniment, its role with orchestra, and service playing.

Much of the flue pipework in the organ was of decent quality and well built. However, the organ had a number of individual symphonic, orchestral-oriented stops—which, while beautiful, had been allowed more influence on the overall specification at the expense of a solid foundational accompaniment core. We felt that through reallocation of the flue resources we could accomplish the artistic considerations of a revised specification, while preserving many of the resources in a fiscally conservative manner. 

To begin our work, the pipework and console were removed to our workshop to be refurbished for the new specification. We remanufactured the drawknob jambs to include an entirely new string organ, replaced all of the drawknobs and engraving, replaced the tablet rail, and relocated the combination control panel to a central location so it could easily be seen by the organist. We also made changes to the console expression shoes and pedalboard to conform to AGO specifications, rewired the piston sequencer to function in a conventional manner, and added several pistons to the organ for performance features.

The specification contained a large number of slotted stops, including strings, harmonic pipes, and mixture compositions. The slotting exacerbated the fifth at the expense of the unison pitch and became unstable at a pressure that the pipe mouth cutups couldn’t handle. This third harmonic of the series was pervasive in all of the larger massed flue choruses. Through additions, stop exchange, reallocation of pipework, re-pitching and revoicing, we were able to reinforce the unison registers and improve treble ascendency.

The organ as it had been conceived included a partially enclosed Great. This had placed the flutes and reed of the Great division in the rearmost location of the entire organ where the dynamics were diminutive at best. We decided to abandon this location for a chamber next to the Swell and Great divisions that could speak directly into the sanctuary. This new unenclosed Great location allowed the diapason, flutes, and reed to speak unimpeded into the 2,200-seat room. This projected their full color and harmonics without a loss of dynamics. In the rightmost chamber location, we added to the independent resources of the Pedal division and extended the compass of two Pedal registers, so they could be drawn into the Great as secondary manual registers, balancing out the 8′ fundamental tone from both sides of the chancel.

Many of the strings throughout the organ were orchestral in nature, and small scaled. These thin string stops did not support choral and congregational accompaniment or blend well with the principal and flute chorus fonds. In our design, we decided to gather these romantic resources into an enclosed string division with the inclusion of an 8′ Tibia and 8′ Vox Humana. The movement of these stops from the Great, Swell, and Choir allowed room to add larger divisional strings and additional foundational flue resources. 

The Antiphonal division was enlarged with an independent 8′ Rohrflute. Included with this division are 16′, 8′, 8′ registers to the pedal. The result proved very useful for providing reinforcement and sculpture to the chancel Pedal in the room acoustics.

The organ reeds were generally of a darker color. Some of the organ reeds had been designed for another instrument and had been repurposed and modified for this organ. In addition to the sound of the organ reeds, which was not conducive to our tonal vision, there were a number of loose shallots, and tongue and wedge issues, and tongues that created voicing and tuning problems. Due to differing wind pressures, it was not possible to consider moving reed stops from division to division in support of the revised specification. At the completion of our work, all of the reeds had been rebuilt or replaced. 

The largest solo reed in this organ is the 8′ Tuba Mirabilis. Built of copper and installed as an “en Chamade,” it had been on 24′′ wind pressure, which was too commanding for the sanctuary. It was re-tongued and revoiced on 19′′ wind pressure. Even revoiced, the horizontal focus leaves it as a commanding reed but with greater blending use. We added an 8′ Tromba Heroique stop to the Solo division as a scalable dynamic registration option. With the Solo expression box open it can be a commanding solo stop, but closed can be used as a large ensemble chorus reed.

The Pedal did not have the gravitas that was required of it. The 32′, 16′ Violone unit and 16′ Principal in the façade were revoiced to better fit the room. The 16′ Major Bourdon was rescaled with higher arched cut-ups added to allow more foundational weight. In the Pedal, we added several additional 16′ registers, additional 8′ stops, and a large mixture. In the case of the 32′ reed registers, they had subdued speech and colors that were not cohesive with the final specification as we envisioned it. This became a moot point, as there was no room to relocate these stops. We replaced these extensions with digital voices, which, in this instance, was a better tonal choice. 

The internal layout of the pipework, windchests, winding system, expression shades, and chassis blocked sound. Additionally, there were portions of the organ where access for tuning and maintenance was very difficult. We found places in the organ where some individual pipes had been offset and other places where notes had been silenced rather than attempt repairs on individual chest actions. In conjunction with the redesigned specification we addressed serviceability, winding, and tonal egress.

The windchests were built with a proprietary form of electro-mechanical action in conjunction with an internally developed individual electro-pneumatic action. The reason for the blended actions seems to have been the very high wind pressures employed. The measured wind pressures on the organ ranged from 6¼′′ up to a high of 28′′. This is a realm where electro-mechanical action has rarely been used, with typical wind pressures between 3′′–5′′ being the historic norm for most instruments with this type of chest action. Unfortunately, the individual electro-pneumatic actions had very little travel and constricted the flow of wind into the pipe toes. The result was that a large number of bass pipes were starved of wind. As part of a test we stripped off the rubber cloth pouch on one of the actions and rebuilt it to allow greater depth of travel. The result of this test was immediate and noticeable. These valves were removed from the organ and rebuilt for a large number of the bass registers in the organ, including the 32′ Violone and the core 16′ and 8′ foundational registers. 

In our negotiations with the church the façade pipes and its structure were a specific exclusion. The pipes of the façade are from the 32′ Violone, 16′ Principal, and the 8′ Second Open Diapason, as well as a large number of dummy pipes. Our intent was to voice the pipes of the façade, not taking liability for their construction or racking. As the church had reasoned and we had concurred, it was brand new and should not have been an issue. This supposition changed when several pipes of the (horizontal) 8′ Tuba Mirabilis had hooks that had separated and the racking for these pipes had deflected downward. This set of pipes was in the façade hanging directly over the choir members’ heads and became a looming concern. The church asked us to scaffold up the front of the church and survey the condition of the entire façade and its racking. We found a number of problems that had the potential to be safety issues. Over a period of two weeks we scaffolded the front of the church, secured the toeboards, added vertical structure, installed custom steel supports, added secondary hooks on a number of pipes, and properly secured the pipe racks to the structure. 

The original horizontal expression shades were made with edges over half the thickness of the non-beveled part of the expression shades and opened toward the ceiling. This directed sound into tone traps and away from the choir and congregation. These shades had 4′′ of felt on the front and rear beveled surfaces for a total of 8′ of absorptive felt. The tonal result was a shade opening that acted nearly half-closed even when the shades were wide open. In addition to occlusion, the open shades presented a felted wall to the enclosed division and provided absorption for the non-enclosed stops in front of the shades. We replaced all of the expression shades in the chancel divisions. This allowed one-third more opening to the enclosed divisions and reduced the sound absorption of the open shades to a negligible factor.

To generate the high wind pressures called for in the original organ design, there were a large number of blowers feeding into each other to raise the wind pressures. This created internal turbulence, noise, and heat, as well as noticeable flutter in some of the reservoir tops. The leather on the reservoirs was not well adhered and was beginning to separate from the reservoir wood shells. We knew that for the organ to be successful, we would need to redesign the winding system. This was not a small consideration. In the end all of the reservoirs were rebuilt or replaced with new. We were able to reduce the total number of reservoirs from 49 to 31, and reduce the number of blowers from nine to five, total. We also replaced twelve tremolos.

Our full team of pipe voicers were brought to Tallowood where we located a voicing machine and several workbenches outside of the organ chambers in a stairwell. The voicing of this organ was a marathon of setting pipe samples in the chambers and then removing the pipes so that the large degree of work could be performed outside of the chamber. These pipes were then handed back into the organ chambers and tonally finished. In an instrument on multiple levels with eight separate chamber locations and 94 ranks that included 5,598 speaking pipes, this was no small undertaking. We were able to process the pipework in a seamless fashion, trading off table work with in-chamber finishing. Even with these efficiencies, this process still took months of work. We brought up the organ by division and encouraged the church to begin using it in worship services after approximately half of the instrument was completed. Attending services and rehearsals became a way to gauge and focus our efforts. It was exciting for our firm and for the church, as each week there were additional resources made available to be heard for the first time. In a final review of the project, there were numerous changes that we made to the instrument. My notes show 168 separate items, all of which had subsets. I was asked at one point about one of the smaller changes we were making. The question was, “how important will that one change be?” I answered that one change may in and of itself be small in stature; however, the multiplicity of small changes would couple to become a great change. In the end, the choices we made allowed for a successful outcome, where others had not seen this route to success—at least not at a reasonable cost given the degree of change required. A measure of this success, at the end of this project, was that the church’s faith had been restored in pipe organ builders. We would like to thank the congregation and leadership of the church for the faith that they personally placed in us. I also would be remiss if I did not take a moment to thank our staff for their dedicated efforts.

—Arthur E. Schlueter III

Artistic and Tonal Direction

A. E. Schlueter Pipe Organ Company

From the minister of music

The journey to the completion of our pipe organ was not an easy one. When we came to the full realization that our original instrument was riddled with problems, we sought the council of numerous organists and organ builders in order to find a viable solution. The A.E. Schlueter Pipe Organ Company offered us the most attractive option for completion of our instrument. We spent nearly three years addressing numerous concerns, including listening to disenchanted church members and allowing for difficult conversations in committee meetings. Ultimately, the church approved the proposal from Schlueter, and we now have a beautiful, completed instrument. We are grateful for the Schlueter team and the Tallowood members for the completion of this magnificent instrument for the glory of God.

—Carlos Ichter

Cover photo credit: Mark Johanson

Goulding & Wood Organ Builders, Inc., Indianapolis, Indiana

Opus 50

The Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Lexington, Kentucky

From the organbuilder

“Worship the LORD in the beauty of holiness” could well serve as the motto for the organ project at the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd in Lexington, Kentucky. The Gothic revival building holds a wealth of architectural and design detail, culminating in an extravagance of carved furnishings in the chancel. Wainscot paneling in the sanctuary depicts scenes from the life of Christ, and the reredos displays a large tableau of the Last Supper. 

Liturgical worship in the parish matches the opulence of the setting, with an unusually well-developed choral program encompassing all ages. Over the past twelve years, organist and choirmaster John Linker has built a music department known throughout the area for excellence. The Good Shepherd choirs have held residencies in English cathedrals and this summer made their first concert tour of continental Europe.

Throughout this period of musical expansion, the congregation has been served by a 1970s neo-Baroque organ of modest resources. Although the instrument was a fine example of its aesthetic approach and served the parish well for forty years, the organ was inadequate for the scope of the music program as it has evolved. It contained only one manual reed and no celeste rank. In short, the organ struggled to keep up with the demands of accompanying Anglican chant psalmody and the choral music of Stanford and Howells. 

Conversation about replacing the organ began nearly a decade ago, yet while the need was never in dispute, external forces seemed to derail the discussion at every turn. Building on the foundation laid by Fr. Robert Sessum, interim rector Fr. Ron Pogue seized the opportunity during the time of transition in leadership to force the issue. The committee moved quickly under the focused leadership of chair Joseph Jones, and a contract was signed after a brief flurry of activity.

The organ is thus designed primarily as a handmaiden for musical liturgy in the Anglican tradition as it has been received by the American church. The instrument’s resources are uniquely tailored to the setting it serves in every regard. Recognizing the value of a wide tonal palette, the chancel instrument is double the size of the previous organ, gaining variety in tone rather than increase in volume. A new chamber was created by renovating a second-story storage room, allowing organ on both sides of the chancel for the first time. The existing chamber, formerly housing the Swell, now holds the Choir in intimate proximity to the voices it accompanies. The Swell resides within the new chamber, high in the chancel where its robust voice can speak freely into the room. The Great is divided in twin cantilevered cases facing each other, with the plenum stops on the cantoris side and color stops on the decani. Maximizing the versatility of this arrangement, the two halves of the Great can be silenced through individual Unison Off controls and coupled to the fourth manual separately. This allows, for instance, the Great principal cornet to dialogue with the Great Trumpet.

Early on, the committee determined that having a division in the back of the room would be a top priority. For all the storied choir-centric nature of the Anglican tradition, worship in America resoundingly seeks to involve the assembly in song. With the acoustically compromising arrangement of chancel chambers off the central axis of the room, an Antiphonal organ on the back wall would help unify music-making throughout the church. Whenever the issue of funding was raised, the Antiphonal division was widely recognized as the most palatable sacrifice, yet it remained a strong desire among the committee. Thanks to the efficacy of the fund-raising campaign and the generosity of the Miller and Wrigley families, the committee was able to avoid any limitations. Twin cases frame the majestic western lancet window, and the polished display pipes reflect the colorful light from the stained glass. The polished brass Festival Trumpet completes the visual effect with a regal touch.

Any student of organ design will recognize the predictable nature of stop lists from instrument to instrument across styles of organ building. The distinctive quality of tonal design lies in the careful specification of scales, mouth widths, and voicing techniques. All of these details are meticulously overseen by our head voicer, Brandon Woods, who works with each stop through design to final regulation in the room. In this he is ably assisted by David Sims, who contributes to each step of the process. This instrument features a weight in tone and variety in color consistent with the demands of accompanying voices in a sensitive, supportive manner. Each division includes an 8′ principal stop, each of varying volume and personality. The plenum choruses complement each other in combination as well as stand individually with integrity. As with many of our recent instruments, mouth widths below 1′ C on principal pipes are kept fairly narrow, allowing the upper lips of mouths to rise. This imparts a tone with generous fundamental development. With diapason chorus stops, this yields 8′ and 4′ stops with compelling and distinctive personalities. Higher-pitched stops and mixtures step back in scaling and broaden in mouth width to permit more upper partial development. Volume and speech are reserved in these stops, preventing them from dominating the texture. The result is a chorus with sheen but whose power comes from the fundamental.

The reed stops of the organ traverse a wide spectrum of musical effect. The Great Trumpet has lead resonators of generous scale and shallots with sharply tapered openings. These combine for a sound rich and heavy, blending into the principal chorus seamlessly. The Swell reed chorus features parallel openings on the shallots for a full-throated brilliance that pours from its chamber. The Choir’s Clarinet is gentle and voluptuous in the style of E. M. Skinner stops. The instrument is crowned by two solo reeds, the Choir Tuba and the Antiphonal Festival Trumpet. The Tuba is a typical high-pressure reed, in the style of Willis, with a broad, enveloping tone. The Festival Trumpet is commanding, speaking from its dramatic position, yet mild enough to use (sparingly) in chords.

Celeste ranks are of particular note in this organ. In addition to the ubiquitous strings in the Swell and Dulciana in the Choir, the Antiphonal contains a Diapason Celeste. Both unison and celeste ranks use slotted pipes to encourage the undulation, and the keen tone that derives from the slots makes for a distinctive sound. The timbre is unapologetically diapason in quality, and the vigorous sound of the two ranks together fills the room in a luxuriant wash of sound.

Windchests throughout the organ feature our unique electro-pneumatic slider and pallet design. The combination of tone channels running across stops and wholly pneumatic action enables the pipework to speak incisively yet without any harshness in attack. Further, the stops meld together as they draw wind from a common source. Arranging the mechanics and structure proved to be an extremely challenging task, particularly as the new Swell chamber’s dimensions continued to be a moving target throughout design and even construction of the organ. Staff design engineer Kurt Ryll and shop manager Mark Goulding nonetheless arrived at a layout that, if not commodious, certainly supports maintenance access to every component. Moving about the organ for routine tuning is remarkably simple, belying the complexity of the design necessary to achieve this.

The cabinetry of the organ and console was executed by Robert Duffy and Robert Heighway, culling elements from the room, such as the Tudor roses that adorn the rood screen and ornamental bosses featured in the reredos. The console uses marquetry to separate the divisions within the stop jambs and to frame the burled central panel of the music desk. Throughout the organ, both internal and visible details are finished with an attention to detail consistent with the quality of woodworking in the church.

The sum of all these disparate parts is an instrument that truly speaks forth, carrying the people’s song and supporting the choir in their leadership. While our intention was for it to be specifically suited to the worship of this congregation, we made no attempt to embody shallow or derivative notions of English organ building. This is an American instrument embracing the gamut of organ literature, hymnody, and choral music employed by the congregation. In realizing this goal we gratefully acknowledge the contributions of organist and choirmaster John Linker and committee chair Joseph Jones. We also recognize the steady leadership of the rector, Fr. Brian Cole, who inherited a project already underway and oversaw the completion with a dedication and enthusiasm as if it were his own. We look forward to sharing with the congregation in the upkeep of the organ, watching as it enlivens the worship at Church of the Good Shepherd and enriches the musical life of Lexington.

—Jason Overall

Goulding & Wood, Inc.

Indianapolis, Indiana

Robert Duffy, casework, cabinetry, and wood carvings

John Goulding, reed racking

Mark Goulding, shop foreman, general shop construction

Chris Gray, general shop construction

Robert Heighway, console cabinetry, casework cabinetry, and slider chests

Jerin Kelly, wind chests, general shop construction

Phil Lehman, office manager

Tyler MacDonald, wind chests

Jason Overall, office support and tonal design

Kurt Ryll, case design and engineering

David Sims, system wiring, tonal finishing

Michael Vores, structure, expression boxes, general shop construction

Brandon Woods, tonal design, voicing, and finishing.

From the organist & choirmaster

Goulding & Wood Opus 50 (named “The Miller and Wrigley Organ”) is the physical manifestation of many years of consideration, consultation, site visits, fundraising, and, of course, prayer. On my appointment to the Church of the Good Shepherd in 2001, it was immediately apparent that the previous neo-Baroque instrument had limited resources for accompanying the Anglican liturgy. As more and more electro-magnets and memory capture components failed, it was decided to replace the instrument with an organ more suitable to the fine Gothic architecture of Good Shepherd, and having a more diverse tonal palette, rather than to restore the previous instrument.

Upon his retirement in 2009, former rector Fr. Robert Sessum suggested to the congregation that the next project in the immediate future of Good Shepherd should be to replace the organ. The congregation heeded the advice of Fr. Sessum, and over the next two years an organ committee and organ capital campaign committee were formed under the guidance of the interim rector, Fr. Ron Pogue. Our new rector, Fr. Brian Cole, oversaw installation of the new instrument. It is a privilege to have worked with these three clergymen in seeing the dream of a new instrument for Good Shepherd come true.

In selecting a builder, the committee had their work cut out for them. My personal preference favors mechanical action, as I have found tracker instruments to be superior tools of artistic expression. Early on in the process, however, our committee had to dismiss this as an option due to Good Shepherd’s architecture and our desire to have symmetrically balanced cases on both sides of the chancel, as well as an Antiphonal division at the west end to better support hymn singing. After reviewing numerous designs, specifications, and participating in site visits, the committee unanimously chose Goulding & Wood.

Over many months we worked closely with Goulding & Wood president Jason Overall and head voicer Brandon Woods on a specification that would meet Good Shepherd’s liturgical needs and be unique. We agreed to reuse some of the finest pipework from the old instrument in the new organ. The former Great 8′ Principal and 4′ Octave were revoiced and now reside in the Choir as 8′ Open Diapason and the 4′ Principal. The former 16′ Subbass (which was, in fact, from the parish’s Pilcher organ from the 1920s) was revoiced and at home again in Good Shepherd. The Pedal 4′ Schalmey as well as the Zimbelstern were also worthy of recycling.  

As its primary function is to accompany the Anglican liturgy, a complete and powerful Swell division is a must. The new Swell boasts a complete principal chorus, luscious strings, and harmonic flutes at 4′ and 2′ pitches, as well as a full complement of 16′ through 4′ reeds. While the Swell, Choir, and Pedal divisions appear fairly standard in specification, it is the Great and Antiphonal divisions that have the most innovative design and function. The Great is divided on both sides of the quire, and as such, each side can be coupled separately to the fourth manual to solo out melodies of hymns or other innovative uses. In addition to having a complete principal chorus, the Antiphonal also boasts a “Diapason Celeste.” While a Voce Umana or a Fiffaro might be common in Italian organs, a stop such as this is rarely found on English-inspired American organs. Furthermore, this stop is indeed an open, full-bodied, English-style Diapason. Though its use in repertoire is extremely rare (it is likely not the sound Frescobaldi had in mind!), it is incredibly useful in improvisations. The sound of this celeste is rich and embodying. Indeed, the entire instrument draws a new level of musicality and creativity from those fortunate to play it, and it is the prayerful congregant who receives the greatest benefit.

The people of Good Shepherd take great pride in our choir program, which has attained a high degree of international recognition over the past decade. Attention to and participation in congregational hymn singing is now at an all-time high for this parish. Now that this glorious instrument is in place, matching the beauty of the choir, the architectural environment, and the mighty singing of the congregation, we eagerly anticipate reaching new heights in our spiritual and musical journeys, and discovering new ways in which we are all able to see glimpses of heaven right here on earth.

—John Linker

From the organ committee

The organ committee consisted of a cross-section of the congregation, Dr. Schuyler W. Robinson, professor of organ at the University of Kentucky, and our church organist/choirmaster. The committee’s charge was to determine the type, size, and placement of the future instrument, and to set the budget. Its most important task was to find the perfect fit between the church and the company selected to build the instrument. The committee hired a consultant to help it identify the best North American organ builders, and we invited five of them to Lexington to present preliminary designs and cost estimates for the project. The committee then sent our two organists to play instruments representative of each builder. 

After careful deliberation, we chose Goulding & Wood of Indianapolis. Their plan was exciting and seemed to fit our needs perfectly. When the instrument was ready for installation, Goulding & Wood issued an invitation to the congregation to come to their workshop in Indianapolis to hear the organ before their team dismantled it and began to transfer it to Lexington. A few weeks later, the first pipes arrived and were paraded into the nave of the church, led by our bagpiper, and were blessed during a short service. The new and exciting musical voice of the Church of the Good Shepherd is a dream come true.

—J. R. Jones

Organ Committee Chair

From the rector

One of the real gifts of the Episcopal/Anglican tradition is the ability to keep a healthy tension between tradition and change. At Good Shepherd, the arrival of Goulding & Wood Opus 50 (the “Miller and Wrigley Organ”) is a fine example of that gift. 

The builders from Goulding & Wood were very sensitive to the change that takes place when an instrument like this is placed in an historic space. Throughout the weeks of building on site, we welcomed parishioners and community members to visit our church during construction. Numerous photographs and videos, both formal and informal, were taken to record the work. Even though the builders were guests to our space, they served as good hosts, as long-time members and newcomers asked questions while the installation process unfolded. 

Now that it is in place, the organ appears to have always been in our liturgical space. The antiphonal division now frames the glorious Abbott Window in the rear of the church and accentuates the colors of the stained glass. The new organ has also already been a catalyst for more vigorous congregational singing. The old organ console has been refashioned to make a smaller altar for our Sunday evening Eucharist. 

We are all blessed to be a part of Good Shepherd’s story at this time. The Miller and Wrigley Organ, while new, affirms the great strengths of traditional Anglican worship. Because of its incredible versatility, this instrument will serve as an anchor as we expand the musical life of the parish in arts offerings to the Lexington community. 

—The Rev’d Brian Cole

Randall Dyer & Associates, Inc.,

Jefferson, Tennessee

Cathedral of Christ the King,

Lexington, Kentucky 

Our new organ for the Cathedral of Christ the King closely follows the concept we have recently espoused for ideal three-manual design in an organ of moderate size, affordable for many situations. The concept includes: 

• Two expressive divisions 

• 16′ Open plenum on the Great with English Trumpet 

• 16′ Closed Flute/8′ Principal plenum on the Swell with Cornet, broadly scaled strings with extended-range Celeste, and French reeds 

• 8′ Open plenum on the Choir with bright, but relatively low-pitched mixture and broad, blending color reed

• 8′ Harmonic Flute as one of four 8′ flue stops on the Great 

• 8′ Solo Trumpet 

• 32′ pitch line in the Pedal. 

The sound is broad, full, rich, and enveloping—an exciting sound that totally belies the size of the instrument. With no attempt at clever manipulation of stoplists, we believe that an instrument of any given size requires that certain stops always be present in a prescribed order to effectively maximize that instrument’s ability to accompany congregational and choral song, play the incidental music of the service, and the literature at large. If a more generous budget is available, there are certain other stops that should be added, and again, in a prescribed order. We hold similar beliefs about effective design of smaller organs.

The agreement with the church called for the use of some pipes from the church’s previous organ, an undersized and lightly winded instrument installed when the building was new in 1967. As the construction of the new organ drew near, closer examination of those pipes revealed that while they were well made, the original open-toe voicing treatment would require extensive alteration to make them useful in the new organ. Concurrently, we were fortunate to be made aware that an organ we had built in 1980 for a small college in eastern Kentucky had become available due to a change in the school’s music program. 

That organ had utilized all-new pipes on the chassis of an existing instrument, and a thorough reading of the documentation in our files revealed that those pipes would be an excellent match for the Lexington organ. In the end, only four ranks from the cathedral’s former organ were retained. New pipework, voiced in our shop, occupies the important positions in the major choruses, as well as the reeds and color stops, but all existing pipes also received the same shop-voicing treatment as the new pipes.

After the previous organ was removed from the cathedral, a contractor stripped the chamber down to a bare shadow box, totally open across the front, and shallow in depth. Tightly fitting the new organ, with its free-standing expression boxes on each end, and the Great in the middle, the tone is blended and focused forward, much in the same manner as an encased instrument, to authoritatively fill the large room with a warm and supportive sound. Pipes of the Great and Pedal Principals, in 70% tin and polished aluminum, form the simple but elegant façade, which blends well with other visual elements in the room.

As in all of our instruments, the mechanical parts were completely built in our shop, and include our standard Blackinton-style electro-pneumatic slider-and-pallet chests, with electro-pneumatic unit chests for stops that appear at more than one location or pitch. The organ is controlled from a movable three-manual drawknob console, connected to the organ by a single fiber-optic strand. As is standard on virtually all the consoles we build, the manual keys are covered with genuine (and legal) elephant ivory for the naturals and rosewood for sharps.

The Great includes standard Principal ranks of 70% tin at 8′ through Mixture, undergirded with an open 16′ sound and augmented with 8′ and 4′ Flute stops. The Rohrflote is scaled and voiced in a manner that allows it to be a secondary voice under the Principal upperwork, when the full body of sound provided by the broadly scaled 8′ Principal is not desired.

We consider the Violone, Flute Harmonique, and (English) Trumpet stops, while shown as derivations from the Choir, to be part of the Great. The fact that they are enclosed gives them an added measure of usefulness, and allows the Violone to serve as the tertiary 8′ Principal when pulled on the Choir.

The Swell has a complete secondary principal ensemble, with closed 16′ flute basis. The Cornet is composed of broadly scaled flutes that are increasingly open as the pitch of the ranks ascend, resulting in a very tightly cohesive sound that changes character with each addition, and because of correct pipe shapes, locks into pitch. The strings, both warm and keen, are from the original instrument, and speak decisively better on our slider chest than they did on their former all-electric action. Swell reeds are French in character, and the 16′ Oboe is bold in its support under the Trompette, all the way to the bottom.

The Choir is a complete division, of lighter and brighter character than the other two. Quite capable of its standard position in the literature, it is also useful with the very active children’s choirs, which perform frequently in both daily school and weekend Masses. The ability to use the enclosed stops from the Great broadens the texture and usefulness of the Choir, which is completed with its own indigenous reed, a broadly scaled Cromorne. The Grand Trumpet stop, voiced on 9 inches of wind pressure, is also enclosed in this division. That all the reeds are expressive, including the real pipes of the 32′ Trombone, provides extra versatility in registration, particularly at dramatic climaxes.

Sales, design, and mechanical layout were handled by Randall Dyer. Bradley Jones supervised production and voiced all the pipework in the shop. He was assisted in the tonal finishing process at the church by David Beck. James Greene, Jane Lowe, Colin McGlothlin, and Jack Wolfe built, finished, assembled, wired, and installed the various parts of the organ. Matthew and Linzi Dyer assisted with unloading and setting of heavy parts at the church. David Bottom assisted with installation and built the large wind lines. Lou Anna Dyer provided administrative assistance. Pipework, custom-scaled and voiced in our shop, was provided by Jacques Stinkens BV, Matters, Inc., and Oyster Pipe Works, Ltd.

We are indebted to Brian Hunt, organist, and Robert Whitaker, director of music, not only for their choice of our firm to build the organ for their church, but for their support throughout the project. Their very fine music program at the cathedral will make good use of the new instrument.

—Randall Dyer

Randall Dyer & Associates, Inc., is a member firm of APOBA, the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America.

From the organbuilder

In their search for an organbuilder, Memorial Presbyterian Church identified an ability to lead hymn singing as a priority for their new instrument. The accompaniment of the church’s choir and the needs of the organ repertoire were important but less significant considerations; this pipe organ’s raison d’être was to support a large congregation in song. As a result, our Opus 122 was designed to offer the perceptive player a wide array of colors and textures for leading hymns and word painting.

Given in memory by her brother Charles, the Bertha E.R. Strosacker Memorial Presbyterian Church was thet work of New York City architect Aymar Embury II (1880–1966), who regarded the church as one of his finest designs. The building was opened in 1953 and displays Embury’s unique style that defies easy categorization as classical or Georgian. The exterior of the building is handsome in a way that belies its size; the 172-foot-tall tower can, however, be seen from nearly anywhere in Midland. Inside, the long church sanctuary is similarly understated, with natural light playing a striking role through large floor-to-ceiling windows and crisp white surfaces. 

Prior to beginning the organ project, the church was acoustically unremarkable; the apse-like chancel area, the chancel arch and the rectilinear surfaces of the nave presented challenges for the proper transmission of sound without confusing reflections and echoes. The church wisely engaged in the services of acoustician Scott Riedel, who recommended adding visually subtle diffusers to various surfaces throughout the sanctuary; these improvements were realized before the new organ’s installation.

The original organ chambers were on both sides of the chancel arch, with each chamber having tone openings to the chancel and nave. Their most commented-upon feature was the four grilles that fronted each opening and displayed favorite hymn tunes on treble and bass staves. As the new organ is considerably larger than its predecessor, the existing chambers were expanded laterally to sweep around the chancel’s semi-circular back wall. While the old chambers’ tone openings and grilles were maintained, the new chambers display speaking pipes from the Great diapasons, the Pedal 8′ Principal, and the second octave of the Pedal 16′ Open Diapason; the relatively unadorned arrangement of the pipes and their restrained finish were intended to quietly complement the chancel without drawing undue attention.

With openings to the nave and the chancel, the original chambers allowed us to design the organ such that organists have a choice with respect to the amount of sound projected to the nave. To restrict tone to the chancel for accompanying, the Swell and Choir nave shades can be closed via drawknobs. Used judiciously, these shades can also be kept closed for climactic moments as the instrument presents a markedly broader sound field in the nave when the nave shutters are open.

In preparing the specification for Opus 122, we evaluated the pipework from the church’s previous Austin organ with an eye to reusing the best ranks as a measure of stewardship. Several partial ranks made the cut: the first 32 pipes of the Great 16′ Violonbass and another 32 pipes from the present Great 8′ Harmonic Flute were restored and revoiced in addition to the Swell 16′-8′-4′ reed chorus. In the Choir division, the bass octave of the 16′ Dulciana and all 54 pipes from the Solo 8′ Flute Celeste rank were also reused. Finally, the bass octave of the Pedal 16′ Open Diapason—comprising usefully slender open wood pipes—and 32 pipes from the Pedal 16′ Trombone were successfully reworked into the new instrument.

The Létourneau organ at Memorial Presbyterian Church is an excellent example of our tonal goals, with a wide array of elegant colors and clear chorus structures. The tonal design also follows certain other recent Létourneau instruments in which the Swell and Great divisions are almost evenly matched dynamically. Despite five 8′ flues and fifteen ranks in total, the full Great maintains a clean, placid nature that brings to mind some of the better American Classic examples from the early 1950s. The Swell is luxurious in its size and scope, with the full Swell properly driven by reed tone to color the Great division. The versatile Choir has a number of softer combinations but can also take on a substantial role in the build up to full organ as with a French Positif division. Duplication of tone between the Swell and Choir has been avoided through careful scaling and other pipe construction details; the Choir’s two-rank Sesquialtera is composed of principal-toned pipes to contrast with the Swell’s fluty cornet décomposé. Likewise, the Choir’s two reed stops—an 8′ Trumpet and an 8′ Cromorne—have an unambiguous French timbre that takes over where the Swell’s smoother reed chorus leaves off. The expressive Solo division offers a harmonic 8′ Concert Flute in wood, an otherworldly two-rank 8′ Flute Celeste and two orchestral-style reeds, plus a high-pressure 8′ Tuba with Willis-style shallots. With 32′ flue and reed ranks—plus a 16′ extension of the Solo Tuba sounding on 15 inches of wind—the full resources of the Pedal division are impressive to behold, yet an abundance of lesser sonorities to balance the manuals is available as well.

The handsome four-manual console resides on a rolling platform for mobility within the chancel and has a number of conveniences to help manage the instrument’s resources. In addition to the Nave Shutters Closed drawknobs within the Swell and Choir divisions, there is an All Swells to Swell feature, with all of these controls programmable on the General pistons as required. Other refinements include discreet thumb pistons for page-turners to operate the General piston sequencer and a manual transfer function, exchanging the Great and Choir manuals to ease the playing of French Romantic repertoire.

The timeline for this project—from initial contact to the dedicatory concerts—spanned over five years, and we remain grateful to Memorial Presbyterian Church for entrusting us to build this grand and complex musical instrument. Over the years, it was a particular privilege to work with Memorial’s Director of Music and the Arts, Guy Lynch, who ably supervised the project on the church’s behalf. Others who contributed greatly to the success of the Opus 122 include William Clisham (Memorial’s organ consultant), Dr. Adrienne Wiley (organist at Memorial), Ivan Wood (facilities manager at Memorial), and David Morrison (the organ project’s unofficial photographer).

—Andrew Forrest, Artistic Director

Fernand Létourneau, President

W. Dudley Oakes, Project Consultant

From the director of music

Opus 122 from Orgues Létourneau Limitée has, since its completion, delighted organists and congregations each week. While Memorial Presbyterian Church wanted a new pipe organ that worked well for choral accompaniment and for solo recitals, it primarily sought a stoplist and design that would unfailingly support congregational singing, providing worshippers with a sense of support and propulsion without being overwhelming.

New chambers surrounding the chancel were constructed for the Great and Pedal divisions, and in keeping with the architectural symmetry of the sanctuary, the design of the façade pipes in four bays allowed for two different Great 8′ diapason ranks. Each has its own color and strength, and either can sit equally well under the chorus; when combined, the effect is a substantial foundation, but not an overwhelming one. They offer a valuable clarity of speech that makes articulated passagework sound clean, yet the legato never seems to suffer. The Great principal chorus possesses the distinctive, clear character one would expect and supports congregational singing with great transparency, a word often used in our conversations with Létourneau.

Throughout the organ’s expressive divisions, the extraordinary thickness and density of the swell shades yield a usefully wide range of dynamics; some of the softer string and flute stops almost disappear completely when the shades close. The Swell and Choir divisions have shades on two sides of their boxes, opening towards both the chancel and to the nave, and organists can choose to leave the nave shades closed if accompanying a choir singing in the chancel, for example.

The Solo division’s six ranks are perhaps the instrument’s most distinctive. The strong 8′ Tuba can sit atop a very full accompanying registration with ease and balance. The flute stops are exquisite: the wooden 8′ Concert Flute has a delightfully realistic orchestral timbre, while the combination of the 8′ Dolce Flute and the 8′ Flute Celeste was described as “too sinful to be used during worship.” Throughout the remaining manual divisions, the instrument’s ability to create a sense of ensemble seems unfailingly consistent and even unconventional registrations can yield delicious results. Mutation stops on all the manuals are colorful and well balanced, with several unison and octave combinations in support.

The extensive Pedal division supplies the organist with useful choices: While the Pedal stops undergird manual registrations in a very satisfying way, they also speak clearly and quickly—the capable organist can keep even the sleepiest churchgoer up to tempo. The Pedal 16′ Open Diapason’s speech is particularly clean and most distinct.

Organists have found Opus 122’s console to be comfortable and easy to use; its toe pistons are accessible to even the shortest pair of legs. The music desk can slide toward the organist over the Solo manual, a useful feature when reading glasses have gone missing!

The congregation’s support of the organ project was remarkable in this writer’s experience, and their input was sought and nurtured throughout the proposal phase. Members and friends were encouraged to visit the organ committee’s information display to view Létourneau’s drawings and communications; the displays were changed almost each week. Once the organ project was approved by the church’s leadership, Létourneau supplied photographs that kept the congregation informed and enticed during the typical lull between contract signature and completion. Parishioners even lent quilts and blankets to cover the sanctuary’s pews for the organ’s delivery; some seventy volunteers unloaded the truck and transformed the sanctuary into a dauntingly large warehouse of pipework, chests, and windways.

Opus 122 was, to a wonderful degree, funded by dollars that came from community sources, and because the campaign to pay for the organ was so oversubscribed, Memorial Presbyterian Church used those extra dollars to provide financial support to important local and distant mission causes. The church is intentional about making the instrument accessible for community purposes and important improvements to the sanctuary’s acoustics have made the church even more attractive to community music makers. British organist David Baskeyfield performed two inaugural recitals on Opus 122 to comfortably large crowds made up from congregation and community members in September of 2012. The dedication committee worked with Mr. Baskeyfield to offer a program that included mainstays of the organ repertoire during the first half and an improvised accompaniment of the silent film The Phantom of the Opera to conclude. The result was a meaningful and delightful evening that attracted many who otherwise would have not attended the inaugural concerts.

The people at Létourneau—to the person—possess an unfaltering zeal for their art. The friendliness, attention to detail, flexibility, and stellar professionalism consistently shown to Memorial Presbyterian Church have been and continue to be a blessing.

—Guy A. Lynch 

Director of Music and the Arts

All photos courtesy of David Morrison Photography

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The New 1973–76 Organ
GREAT First bay, north triforium
16′ Diapason
16′ Violon (ext)
16′ Bourdon
8′ Prinzipal
8′ Spitz Prinzipal
8′ Waldflöte
8′ Holz Bordun
8′ Salicional
8′ Violon
8′ Erzähler
4′ Spitzoktav
4′ Koppel Flöte
22⁄3′ Quinte
2′ Super Oktav
2′ Blockflöte
II Sesquialtera
IV Klein Mixtur
IV–V Mixtur
IV Scharf
VI–X Terzzymbel
16′ Bombarde
8′ Posthorn
8′ Trompette
4′ Clairon
8′ Trompette en Chamade (Solo)
8′ Tuba Mirabilis (Solo)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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