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Kegg Pipe Organ Builders,

Hartville, Ohio

Bryn Athyn Cathedral

Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania

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From the organbuilder

The Bryn Athyn Cathedral organ has been one of the most fascinating and challenging instruments in the history of the Kegg firm. Oberlin graduate and active Philadelphia organist Fred Haas has always admired the work of Ernest Skinner. In the discussion of the new organ for the cathedral, all roads led to a recreation of Skinner’s work. We were asked to marry two modest E.M. Skinner organs, expand the combined instrument in Skinner style using new or vintage pipe work, add a dramatic fourth manual division that complements the theology of the congregation and the dramatic building architecture, all while creating new structure, winding, expression, electrical systems, console, and façade as a new instrument. The result is not a restored Skinner organ but a new instrument in his style with some unusual Kegg touches. 

It is interesting to note that the archives of the church revealed plans for a large Skinner organ when the church was being built in 1917. This organ was never built due to the conditions resulting from World War I, and a “temporary” small unit organ was installed that served for about 50 years. The design of the Skinner-Kegg organ was largely complete when the plans of the original large Skinner were discovered; the specifications of the two organs are remarkably similar. 

The main organ is a three-manual instrument with a specification typical of Ernest Skinner circa 1928. While this organ is indicative of the Skinner company, there are several stops and features that bear closer inspection. The Swell is complete with all that might be desired in such an instrument, including Skinner’s magical Flute Celeste and a reproduction Skinner 16 Waldhorn. The Mixture in this division is one of the first that Skinner built after his historic visit to Great Britain where he learned of the work of Henry Willis III. This Mixture, the only mixture in the organ, is bright and more aggressive than might be expected and has a most interesting texture. It retains its original voicing as does all the Skinner pipe work in the organ and is impressive. The Great has no mixture and tops out at 2, which is quite typical of these instruments at this time. 

The Choir division includes signature Skinner color reeds as well as a new Tuba, which is a lyrical stop, both bold and sweet. Its scale accelerates in the bass to provide the main Pedal 16 reed line. Enclosed in the Choir box, it can be tailored to suit almost any need. 

The Great is enclosed with the exception of the First Open Diapason and the 16-8 Violone-Gamba, the bass of which forms the façade. The Trumpet is a new stop and is designed to fill the coupled organ with fire and excitement in the same way that Skinner used his French Trumpet, which would normally be in the Swell along with the Cornopean. There was no room in the Swell for this additional stop so it found a home in the Great. Of course, no Skinner-style instrument can be without a French Horn, and a restored vintage example appears here also. 

The theology of Bryn Athyn Cathedral, the ecclesiastical center of a New Church denomination, includes levels of heaven, the innermost of which is called the Celestial, where meanings are the most clear and thoughts are the most innocent. When there was a suggestion of a division bearing this name placed high in the crossing tower and speaking down into the nave with both delicate and commanding voices, the church and donor readily agreed. This is the most unusual division in the organ. It contains four stops in Echo style along with solo Gambas on 10′′ wind pressure and a Flauto Mirabilis and Tuba Mirabilis, both on 20′′ pressure. The Tuba Mirabilis is done in Willis style, hooded, and commands attention with stately authority. The Flauto Mirabilis is a modified copy of the famous Wanamaker Clear Flute. This wood harmonic flute sings in the building as only a heroic flute of this size and wind pressure can. Flue pipe voicing on 20′′ wind pressure is most unusual, and it was actually a pleasure for me, one that was “enjoyed” by the entire shop as it had to be done not in the voicing room but out in the shop on the final chest. When heard at the intended distance, it is true magic. This division also contains a 14-note set of Deagan Tower Chimes installed inside the building in the Celestial chamber. These massive chimes were designed to be installed outside and to be heard throughout the community. Here we have what is believed to be one of only three installations of such chimes inside a building. The effect is one of grand and elegant dignity. 

The Pedal of this organ is modest but very much in keeping with Skinner models of its day. It enjoys a genuine, newly built 32 Bourdon. The fact that this sound is produced by real pipes is immediately apparent. 

The console of the organ is new and includes hand-carved details inspired by the pulpit of the church. Its bone and rosewood keys invite you to play, and all accessories are placed where they are most useful. The Virtuoso control system provides all the features expected of a first-class instrument today. The console is easily movable on internal casters for use in recital and oratory.

In keeping with the magical nature of the Celestial division we have incorporated what I believe is a first in the industry. The Celestial manual enjoys second touch keys. Found in theatre organs, the second touch usually brings out a second voice when the key is pressed into a strong spring at the bottom of the normal key travel. In this organ, it is used not for a voice, but to engage the tremolo. The tremolo can be engaged on each note at the desired time while instantly stopping as the organist moves from the key. When one stops on the next note of reasonable duration, the tremolo can be easily and intuitively added in the same manner as a wind or string instrumentalist. The result is much more musical than when engaged by a variable-speed device and it also leaves the foot free to shade the dynamic of the note at the same time. 

The organ has evolved to be an ideal instrument for this unique parish. The grandeur of the building and grounds is a surprise to visitors when discovered. This organ, too, will surprise and, I hope, delight the organist who discovers it. 

We would like to thank donor Fred Haas and the Wyncote Foundation for their confidence in the Kegg firm. We must also lift a glass in heartfelt appreciation to Music Director Graham Bier and Principal Organist Terry Schnarr for their unfailing support, and the cathedral staff for raising the bar to an improbable height for hospitality to an organ-building staff. 

—Kegg Pipe Organ Builders

Charles Kegg, President and Artistic Director

Philip Brown

Michael Carden

William Catanesey

Randall Crawford

Joyce Harper

John Johnson

Philip Laakso

Sean O’Donnell

Nathaniel Riggle

Dwayne Short

With special help from Robin Bier and Robert Schmucker

 

From the Bryn Athyn Cathedral Music Department

In the spring of 2012, Fred Haas proposed a gift to the Bryn Athyn Church: a unique pipe organ for our historic cathedral. The donation was offered in memory of Mr. Haas’s mother Chara Aurora Cooper Haas, a beloved member of our congregation. Since the church accepted the gift, we have been overwhelmed by the expertise and quality workmanship of those involved in the project. Charles Kegg and employees of Kegg Pipe Organ Builders have taken meticulous care in refurbishing and constructing the instrument, while also graciously supporting our need to continue with church activities during the installation process. Stephen Hendricks of Historic Doors designed and constructed the beautiful woodwork of the façade. Advice on the project was sought from various organ experts, including Curt Mangel and Peter Conte, who respectively curate and play the Wanamaker Organ. Daniel Angerstein and J. Anthony Nichols have been voicing the organ under the direction of Mr. Kegg, working to involve us in the process, and even offering a little aural tour to a visiting class of music theory students. It has been a real pleasure to work with these artists, who are not only brilliant, but also personable and caring.

This project carries an historical significance that goes far beyond simply providing a suitable instrument to accompany worship services. Almost 100 years ago during the construction of the cathedral, donor and architect Raymond Pitcairn was involved in detailed communication with E. M. Skinner about the design of a pipe organ. Due to issues relating to the First World War, this dream was not realized at the time, and instead a temporary stock organ was installed. Despite intentions to return to the original project, the plans for a carefully designed Skinner organ never materialized—until now.

Our archives contain the original designs and correspondence between Pitcairn and Skinner. Kegg Pipe Organ Builders has taken components from two different 1920s Skinner organs and refurbished them, incorporating them into a new instrument that shows remarkable similarities to the earlier plans drawn up nearly a century ago. This 1920s/2014 Skinner-Kegg pipe organ combines many of the advances in organ design with an homage to the past that makes it particularly appropriate for the Bryn Athyn Cathedral.

As we approach the second century of the cathedral’s service to our community, we look forward to the rich orchestral colors and warm accompaniment that this new organ will provide. As the sounds of its pipes fill the church on Sundays and holidays, we will think of Pitcairn and other early congregants listening in from heaven and perhaps even singing along. At last, their vision has come full circle.

—Graham Bier, Director of Music

Terry Schnar, Principal Organist

 

Photos by Charles Kegg except as noted

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Eric D. Johnson
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In memory of Jane Slaughter Hardenbergh

Samford University began life as Howard College. For those interested in its history, a Google search will produce details of its fascinating history in a turbulent part of the country. When the Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ was purchased, it was still Howard College after 100+ years.

In 1958, Howard College contacted Aeolian-Skinner to build a three-manual instrument of 42 ranks to be installed in Reid Chapel. This organ was to be the primary teaching instrument and accompany the active life of the chapel. By the close of 1961, the pipe organ was installed. Depending upon one’s viewpoint, the pipe organ was fortunately, or unfortunately, designed during Joseph Whiteford’s tenure at Aeolian-Skinner. At this period of time in organbuilding, many organbuilders were trying to bring more “clarity” to their instruments. To achieve this clarity, eight-foot foundational tone was decreased, while four-foot tone and higher pitches were emphasized. At Reid Chapel, this was accomplished by tapering the pipes of the manual eight-foot open flues, along with a decrease in scale compared to the four-foot pipes above. In general, the principal chorus scaling is turned upside down from historical practice. The flute stops gained articulation—chiff—in the belief that this also helps clarity. The chorus reeds were among the smallest scales Aeolian-Skinner built, while the color reeds, at this point, were standard baroque reeds that had been built for many years already. Ironically, the strings had lost their edge and tended to blandness. In general, the cut-ups of the flue pipes were also very low, even when the wind pressure was taken into consideration.

Another interesting twist at Reid Chapel is that the Choir division is, in reality, an enclosed Positiv. Needless to say, the wind pressure was but a mere breath. With that being said, for its period, it was a very successful instrument. The pipe organ was capable of playing a large part of the repertoire with reasonable accuracy. Mechanically, it was typical Aeolian-Skinner: first class. Visually, the pipe organ made a dramatic statement in the chapel. This is how the instrument remained when we first saw it.

In the year 2010, change was afoot. The instrument had been releathered several years before and was soldiering on. The change came in the way of Firmon Hardenbergh of Birmingham, Alabama. Hardenbergh’s wife, Jane (Slaughter), had passed away recently and he wanted to do something in her memory. Jane Slaughter was for many years the organist at Reid Chapel and was the person who chose Aeolian-Skinner those many years before. Hardenbergh decided that Reid Chapel would be an ideal expression as a memorial. He consulted with Barry Norris, also of Birmingham, who suggested Quimby Pipe Organs. Hardenbergh then called Nelson Barden for his thoughts, and Barden agreed that Quimby Pipe Organs was a good choice. Michael Quimby and I flew to Birmingham to meet with Firmon Hardenbergh and Dr. Ted Tibbs to investigate what would be a fitting memorial gift. After talking with Firmon and exploring the Aeolian-Skinner, it was thought that the most fitting tribute would be a general revoicing with the addition of color stops that earlier Aeolian-Skinners were known for. This would entail new stop jambs for the console, so the decision was also made to thoroughly modernize the switching system.

This brings us to today, and a description of what happened to Opus 1384. In early 2011, all of the pipework was removed, along with the pouch boards and bottom boards of two stops that were borrowed to the Pedal, but would become unit stops. Once the material was in our shop, all of the pipework was repaired and cleaned, and construction of the new windchests and pipes commenced. 

Quimby Pipe Organs has been blessed to have the Aeolian-Skinner pipe shop scale book and quite a few pipe patterns in our possession. This is a tremendous help to match appropriate scales when making additions to Aeolian-Skinners. We also possess the personal ledger books of G. L. Beaudry, who was the pipe shop foreman from 1930 to the early 1960s. The ledger books offer a fascinating evolution from E. M. Skinner, through G. Donald Harrison, and ending with Whiteford. Resources such as these allow us to scale new pipework as Aeolian-Skinner would have scaled them. Amazingly, only two stops changed position—the 4 Gemshorn, which was in the Swell division, and the 4 Principal, which was in the Choir division. The 4Gemshorn was in reality a Spitz Principal, so it made perfect sense for it to be in the Choir (Positiv, actually). When the pipework was ready for the voicing machine, some decisions had to be made. As a voicer, I am a firm believer in variable cut-ups as opposed to variable scaling. Far more good (and harm) can be done by cut-ups than variable scaling can account for, though variable scaling has its place. 

The Great 8 Principal received the most attention. The cut-ups were raised rather severely to achieve warmth in the bass, while the treble pipes of this stop were untouched. This turned out to be the general theme throughout the flue revoicing. Having large cut-ups in the bass allows the power to be maintained without resorting to beards or other means to achieve proper speech, while low cut-ups in the treble allow the clarity to be maintained. Nicking of the pipes was deepened in the bass and added to the treble pipes. The blower had ample reserve, so this was possible without changing the blower. Increasing cut-ups and adding nicking increase the wind requirements, so we had to be sure the blower had the capacity even though the wind pressures were not changed. This theme was carried throughout the flue work, to increase the warmth in the bass while maintaining the incisiveness of the trebles. Except for the Holz Gedeckt on the Great, the articulation (chiff) was removed. With the Holz Gedeckt we felt some articulation should remain, which lends a buoyancy to its tone. The Swell Violes were increased in power and re-bearded to put some edge into their tone. Since the Principals were no longer borderline Violes, the Violes should now become strings and not Geigen Principals.

Also notable are the Mixtures. Though the Mixtures were scaled correctly, they were voiced to dominate the ensemble. The quint ranks were as loud as the unison ranks, which added a reedy tone to the ensemble. Fortunately, the cut-ups were quite low, allowing the pipes to be softened. The quint ranks are now approximately 20% softer than the unison ranks, which brings the Mixture into proper balance. The Mixtures now cap the ensemble instead of dominating the ensemble.

The reeds, what to do with the reeds? Our initial thoughts were to increase the scale of the chorus reeds to the next larger Aeolian-Skinner scale, since there was room on the chest to do this. The fly in the ointment was the Pedal reed, since it is so prominently displayed in the façade. Once the reeds were in the shop, I decided to try some samples with new tongues and the decision was made to keep the old resonators and to re-tongue the chorus reeds. Doing this, we were able to make the sound warmer yet still retain the “bite” that is distinctly Aeolian-Skinner. The Choir Cromorne was also re-tongued to be a cross between a Krummhorn, which it was, and a Clarinet. The Rohr Schalmei was rather nice to begin with, and therefore only the curve of the tongue was tweaked. The former Dulzian, on the other hand, saw the greatest change. As installed in the pipe organ, it was little more than a buzz-saw that would not stay in tune. As built, this stop was a half-length Fagotto with English Horn shallots. At the very beginning, the resonators from 8F-sharp up were removed, and full-length Fagotto resonators made and soldered on. Once this was done, I started to voice some samples, fully expecting that the shallots would need to be changed also. After some experimentation, the sound we wanted was there. The Fagotto now sounds like an Aeolian-Skinner Fagotto, with just a bit more brightness. The bottom 18 notes were obviously re-tongued to bring out the typical Fagotto tone.

This brings us to the additions. Since the Great Mixture lost its reedy quality, a Trumpet on the Great was needed. This Trumpet was built using the next larger Aeolian-Skinner scale than the Swell Trompette. Typical Aeolian-Skinner French shallots were also used. This produced a reed with a little more foundation than the Swell Trompette, yet still with some “bite”—a perfect complement to the Great Chorus. The Choir division received a Flauto Dolce and Celeste. These two stops are from E. M. Skinner Opus 404, and are exactly what one would expect from E. M. Skinner. Finally, the Choir is more than a Positiv. The Choir division also received a Harp, which is unenclosed beneath the Great. Dare I say it, this stop is actually a Wurlitzer Chrysoglott. In its buried position, it is quite delightful. Another new stop is the Great 8 Harmonic Flute. This stop from 4 C is part of the façade. It flanks both Great windchests and adds a bit more interest to the display. This stop is Aeolian-Skinner’s “Great Type” and is voiced with considerable treble ascendancy. It also has open pipes to low C. Chimes were also added. Now if we only had a Vox Humana, the Holy Trinity would be there: Chimes, Harp, and Vox (the three stops to put money in the offering plate, as the saying goes).

One final addition had special meaning for Firmon though. For many years, Firmon attended Independent Presbyterian Church in Birmingham. One of his favorite stops was the 4 Flute Triangulaire. As fate would have it, IPC was acquiring a new Dobson organ during this period and we purchased many of the old ranks that Dobson was not going to re-use. When Firmon heard of this, he asked about the Triangle Flute. We said we had it, and it was going to Reid Chapel. Except for adjusting to the change in wind pressure, it is as he heard it in IPC. When Firmon first heard this stop, it brought tears to his eyes, and made the whole project worthwhile.

The story does not end here though. This fall, two “prepared for” stops are being added. The first is an actual Bourdon stop to the Pedal, which, like St. John the Divine, New York City, was conspicuously lacking. The second is an extension of the 16 Bombarde to 32 pitch. This stop is partly full-length and half-length due to the fact that it will become a major part of the façade. Sometimes space and visual effect overcome idealism.

If you are ever in Birmingham, please visit Reid Chapel at Samford University. We think you will like what you hear. Also, do find Bogue’s Restaurant; you won’t be disappointed.

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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, 8registers 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 16registers, 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 8foundational 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

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Andover Organ Company, 

Lawrence, Massachusetts

Opus R-345, Christ Episcopal Church, Charlottesville, Virginia

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From the builder

In projects, journeys, and lives, there are milestone events that mark progress or achievements. The dedication of Andover Opus R-345 at Christ Episcopal Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, was such an event. It was a milestone for three long journeys: the completion of a seven-year project for Andover; the culmination of a decade-long sanctuary renovation process for Christ Church; and the latest chapter in the 143-year odyssey of a resilient New England organ.

With their simplicity and durability, it is not unusual for well-made old tracker organs to outlast the buildings or congregations for which they were originally made. Happily, they can often be relocated and repurposed to fit the musical needs and budget of a new owner. At Andover, we tune and maintain a large number of 19th-century instruments which are now in their second, third, or fourth homes.

The saga of the Christ Church organ certainly illustrates this! The core of the instrument is a three-manual, 29-stop organ built in 1869 by E. & G. G. Hook of Boston as their Opus 472 and originally installed in Grace Episcopal Church in Chicago, Illinois. In 1902, it was moved to another Grace Episcopal Church, in Oak Park, Illinois. In 1922, it was sold to the Third Congregational Church of Oak Park, where it was rebuilt and electrified by Nicholas Doerr of Chicago. The organ was next moved to St. Ludmilla’s Catholic Church in Chicago, probably in 1937 when the Third Congregational Church merged with another congregation. When St. Ludmilla’s closed in 1991, the organ was put into storage. Andover’s Robert C. Newton, a nationally recognized authority on Hook organs, learned of the organ’s availability and purchased it. Opus 472 then made the long journey back to Massachusetts, where it sat in storage, awaiting its fifth home.

Meanwhile, Christ Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, had formed an organ committee to find a replacement for their failing 50-year-old electro-pneumatic organ. That organ had been cobbled together from a variety of used and new parts, and the builder had gone out of business before the organ was finished. Concurrently, plans were begun for a complete renovation of the sanctuary. After much study, the committee determined that the best location for the new instrument would be at the front of the church, to speak directly towards the congregation. This was confirmed by each builder that the committee interviewed during the selection process. 

Being responsible stewards of the church’s resources, the organ committee also researched the option of installing a rebuilt used organ. They determined that if the original organ was a well-made, quality instrument, the end result could be equal, or in some cases superior, to a new organ—yet at significantly less cost. John Whiteside, who became Christ Church’s music director in 2005, contacted us and learned of E. & G. G. Hook Opus 472. Built in 1869, the organ dated from the “golden period” (1850s–1870s) of the firm’s instruments. 

Because the organ had lost its original case, console, structure, action, and wind system during its travels, the surviving Hook pipes and windchests could easily be rearranged to fit the available space in Christ Church. The most essential parts of any organ are the pipes, which define its tonal signature, and the windchests, which influence how the pipes speak and blend.

The Hook firm was one of 19th-century America’s premier organ builders. Their instruments, highly regarded for their mechanical and tonal excellence, were designed and voiced to work well in the dry acoustics of American churches. Though we at Andover build modern instruments designed to serve the needs of today’s church musicians, we draw insight and inspiration from the surviving work of the brothers Elias (1805–1881) and George Greenleaf (1807–1880) Hook and their successor, Francis Hastings (1836–1916). We have been privileged to work on many of their important surviving instruments, including their monumental 101-rank 1875 masterpiece, Opus 801, at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, and the famous 1876 “Centennial Exposition” organ, Opus 828, now in St. Joseph Cathedral in Buffalo.

After careful deliberation, the committee recommended that Christ Church purchase and install Hook Opus 472—which would be completely renovated, rebuilt, and enlarged by Andover—at the front of the church surrounding the rose window. This proposal was approved by the church’s vestry, and in April 2005 a contract was signed. 

The rebuilding work started in 2007, with Ben Mague as project team leader. The Hook pipes were restored and the windchests rebuilt and enlarged to accommodate additional stops. New and vintage ranks, scaled and voiced to be compatible with the original Hook stops, were added to augment the organ’s tonal palette. Ben Mague and Michael Eaton engineered a new console, structure, action, and wind system to fit the renovated chancel area. The new casework was designed by Donald Olson. Noted church architect Terry Eason prepared the plans for the sanctuary renovation.

The organ is laid out with the Swell on the left, the unenclosed Choir in the center, and the Great on the right. The Pedal stops are divided among these three locations. The bass of the Pedal reed is behind the Swell, its treble and all of the 16 Subbass are behind the Choir, and the Double Open Diapasons are behind the Great. 

The organ’s white oak casework was built in our shop. We take great care to design the exterior of each instrument to complement the architecture of its surroundings. Thus, the blind Byzantine arches of the lower casework were patterned after the existing chancel side wall woodwork. The polished tin façade pipes comprise the lowest notes of the Great 8 Open Diapason and the Pedal 8 Violoncello. The detached oak console has walnut interior woodwork and a walnut swirl veneered music rack. The pau ferro drawknobs, with 19th-century-style oblique heads with inset engraved labels, are arranged in stepped terraces. The center-pivoted manual keys have bone-plated naturals and ebony sharps.

The manual key action is mechnical, as are all the couplers. To facilitate the positioning of the Pedal pipes in the most advantageous spaces, all of the Pedal stops are on electro-pneumatic unit chests that we designed and built. The stop action is electric. The Solid State Organ Systems combination action, with 100 memory levels and a piston sequencer, affords the player seamless control of the organ’s resources. 

While the rebuilding was underway, Christ Church’s rector departed for another parish. The church postponed the fund-raising for the sanctuary renovations and turned its attention to finding a new rector. Thankfully, during this period a parish donor continued to fund the organ’s rebuilding so the project would not lose momentum. 

The completed instrument was unveiled at an open house at our shop on November 6, 2010. Although the organ was ready, the church was not. Bids had not yet been received for the chancel renovations. It was discovered that part of a rock ledge beneath the chancel would have to be removed to permit excavation for a basement to house HVAC equipment and the organ blower. This increased the scope of the project.

The organ sat, playable, in our shop until May 2011 when, needing that space for other projects, we shipped it to Charlottesville and stored it in the church parish hall. The chancel renovations were finally begun in the fall of that year and nearly finished when we started the organ’s installation in January 2012. Parts of the organ were playable by Easter, when it was first used. The remaining flues and all the reeds were installed and regulated during the following months. On Friday evening, October 5, 2012, noted organ recitalist and recording artist Bruce Stevens played the dedicatory program to a large and excited congregation. It was a milestone event, the happy ending to a long road!

Just as a great organ is the sum of its parts, a great organ company is the sum of its people. We are blessed to have a team of seventeen dedicated craftspeople who, collectively, have over 400 years of organbuilding experience. Those who worked on Opus R-345 were Ryan Bartosiewicz, Matthew Bellocchio, Anne Doré, Michael Eaton, Don Glover, Al Hosman, Lisa Lucius, Benjamin Mague, David Michaud, Tony Miscio, Fay Morlock, John Morlock, Robert Newton, Donald Olson, Casey Robertson, Jonathan Ross, Craig Seaman, and David Zarges.

—Matthew M. Bellocchio

Andover Organ Company

Photos © William T. Van Pelt

 

Testimonials

It really is a wonderful organ! I’m playing everything from Franck to Rheinberger to Bach . . . and all of these different-style pieces sound really very fine. I find the key action quite graceful to play. Because so many of the sounds are the golden-period Hook sounds we love, we’re thrilled to have such an organ in Virginia—at long last. Thanks for all that you have done to provide this special, magnificent instrument to a location in our state. The only big disappointment is that it’s not here in Richmond!

—Bruce Stevens

University of Richmond

 

Thanks for the good work . . . and for giving Virginia an E. & G. G. Hook organ. I believe it is the only organ in the state to have most of its tonal components arising from the brothers Hook during their control of the company.

—William T. Van Pelt

Retired Executive Director 

Organ Historical Society

Cover feature

Glück Pipe Organs,
New York, New York

St. John’s of Lattingtown Episcopal Church,
Locust Valley, New York

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An historic idyll

The hamlet of Lattingtown, a sub-enclave of Locust Valley on New York’s Long Island, is named for the locust trees that forest the terminal moraines left by receding glaciers. The land was purchased from the Algonquin-speaking tribe of the Lenape nation in 1667, and during the late nineteenth century, the region became known for its quiet serenity while enjoying proximity to New York City, where many of the area residents also kept city homes and offices for their business interests.

By the 1920s, society architects such as Delano and Aldrich; Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue; McKim, Mead, and White; Cass Gilbert; and Carrère and Hastings designed resplendent residences for privacy-seeking industrialists and financiers in the Glen Cove region, whose names may still be unfamiliar to most. The imposing estate houses were (and are) known by name rather than by street address, including attorney William Dameron Guthrie’s vast property, “Meudon,” named for Château de Meudon in the Parisian suburb where Marcel Dupré kept a house fitted up with a Mutin-Cavaillé-Coll organ.

In the bucolic Locust Valley–Glen Cove region, about a dozen houses in the “neighborhood” were furnished with pipe organs by the Aeolian Company, including the II/27 in Louis Comfort Tiffany’s “Laurelton Hall,” the IV/63 in Nicholas F. Brady’s “Inisfada,” and the colossal IV/107 in Frank W. Woolworth’s “Winfield Hall.” Yet it was the wife of sulfur baron Henry Devereux Whiton who is listed as the client for the II/13 Ernest M. Skinner organ of 1919 for their house “up the road” from St. John’s. It was this little organ, with roll-playing mechanism, which appears to have influenced the church’s choice of Skinner to build his Opus 447 when the church was reconfigured for its reopening in 1924. The church organ was a smaller affair of eleven ranks, built in Skinner’s Westfield shop. 

Neither of the small Skinner organs remains intact. Frieda Frasch Whiton divorced Henry in 1921, married Count David Augustus Constantini the following year, and upon the count’s death in 1937, married Baron Carl Gottlieb von Seidlitz, to whom she remained married until her death in 1951. The fate of the house organ appears lost to history.

 

The commission

Ten years ago, Eric Milnes, director of music, approached me about building a new organ for St. John’s, which I assumed would be a mechanical-action organ in historic style and temperament, as Mr. Milnes has earned an internationally celebrated reputation as a conductor and historical keyboard artist specializing in the historically informed performance of Baroque keyboard, instrumental, and choral music with period instruments. Yet to my delight, he envisioned a powerful, multifaceted, colorful adjunct to the Episcopal liturgy that could authentically interpret the concert repertoire. The use of electropneumatic action opened the door to a world of tonal possibilities in which the two of us could scratch our academic itches free from the strangulation of purist dogma. The challenge was not to acquiesce to bland “eclecticism,” but to devise an enchanting chameleon without spawning a generic creature devoid of character and personality.

 

The musical formula

The Latin multum in parvo, or “much in little,” often is used to assess the useful content-to-thickness ratio of short, highly informative books, whether technical or historical. It was co-opted by the speculative and operative arms of organbuilding to describe service-playing instruments of small scope and grand effect, most associated with English builders of the past 150 years, although the French have been parallel adepts. The criteria for this appellation remain nebulous, and the label has been adhered to organs of between 18 and 40 ranks, two or three manuals, French, English, or American, with mechanical or assisted action. 

In designing this 20-rank instrument for St. John’s, I chose to focus upon what the substantive literature demands of the organ. Thousands of American instruments have harbored lovely stops, but could never honor the wishes of the composers who wrote organ music. Since concert literature was written by church organists for the instruments they played in church, I always choose to work backwards from the score to create instruments with the required voices at the right pitches, properly grouped and usefully juxtaposed. Desirable elements in an organ of this limited size are an anchoring principal chorus, warmly and elegantly voiced with a clear, silvery mixture of sensible composition; a collection of flutes of diverse structure and material; a tierce combination for solo work; a pair of vibrant strings of authentically cutting, exceptional character; the three primary reed colors (Trumpet, Oboe, and Clarinet, the last of which must play in dialogue with the cornet); and a pedal division producing a very clean pitch line that can be heard moving clearly beneath and through the manual textures. No wasted space, no wasted metal.

By good fortune, the Skinner Salicional and Voix Céleste, as well as the Pedal 16 Bourdon, survived the onslaught of the Orgelbewegung, so some heritage pipework, renamed, lives on in the organ. The new metal pipes are built of a spotted alloy of 50% tin (including the hefty resonators of the Swell 16 Basset Horn). New timber pipes are poplar with walnut caps. Because this is a two-manual instrument, some solo stops are duplexed between the manuals, and some extension work is included. Of note are the variably scaled 16 Pedal extension of the Skinner string and the 24-pipe downward extension of the Great 2 Gemshorn as the Pedal 8 Spitzflöte and 4 Choral Bass. Although it is my policy to avoid unification of any manual rank at adjacent pitches, opting for a two-octave separation, the Chimney Flute appears twice in the Great department, charming at the unison, beguiling at the octave. The short-but-useful-compass 8 Herald Trumpet is voiced on the same pressure as the rest of the organ. Its distinction comes from its scaling, shallot style, and voicing, its tone warmer and rounder than its name implies.

 

Expression: upstairs, downstairs

The Great and some of the Pedal fluework are unenclosed above the impost, and the remainder of the organ’s resources are under expression, including the Herald Trumpet and four of the five 16 stops: the Violone, a downward extrapolation with a broadening scale of the 8 Viole de Gambe, with Haskell re-entrant tubes; the Bourdon, extended from the 8 Stopt Diapason; the Bombarde, an extension of the Trumpet; and the Basset Horn. This is accommodated by a two-story expression enclosure, with upper and lower banks of shutter blades. The knob engraved “Lower Shutters Off” disables and closes the shutters at the choir-loft level while permitting the entirety of the enclosed organ to speak through the controllable upper set behind the Great, using the nave’s ceiling as a sounding board. The Great 16 Double Diapason is also enclosed, yet has no pipes of its own, being derived from the Swell 4 Principal from C25 to G56, and the bass taken from the 16 Bourdon/8 Stopt Diapason unit. The addition to the ensemble is one of nobility and gravity without muddiness. The Pedal 16 Subbass provides significant punch, never shared by, or extended from, its manual brethren.

 

The organ case

The remarkable oak casework was carved by William and Alexander Clow of Edinburgh to the designs of Sir Robert Stodart Lorimer, and was the gift of Mr. and Mrs. John Pierpont Morgan. The Clow brothers had completed the carved figures in the Chapel of the Knights of the Order of the Thistle at St. Giles Cathedral, Edinburgh, in 1911 and were a perfect team to work on a small summer church of this stature. The organ case was part of a much larger decorative program by Sir Robert and financed by Morgan; the entirety of St. John’s is pavé with exuberant carving in this style. 

The case was altered to accommodate the Skinner instrument, and again in the 1970s. In the course of decades, carved panels were discarded, crockets cut down, and a brash horizontal trumpet stop installed. Carvings were desiccated and cracked, and the case had settled after structural elements were removed during the last campaign of alterations. Our mission was to structurally stabilize and restore the case to the spirit of the Skinner era, with new components respecting the aesthetic sensibility of Morgan’s gift. There could be no stylistic infelicities.

For the first time since the church was built, the organ chamber is thermally insulated, and the façade bears speaking pipes of the Great 8 Open Diapason. The original façade was composed of dumb pipes without winded toeboards, so the new façade pipes are given breath through the back of the foot via a tube of pipe metal.

 

The console

The elaborately inlaid and carved keydesk was inspired by the South German rococo work of Joseph Gabler from the second quarter of the 18th century. The morphology is his, but the console is dressed in Tudor clothing to match the exceptional work of the Clow brothers. Linenfold panels surround the entire console, including the back, and the astonishingly detailed corbels that support the key bed are just as intricately carved on their inside surfaces as they are where visible. As with all of our consoles, contrasting species of wood are used for everything from “skunktailing” the key cheeks to differentiating toe studs by function. Keyboard compasses are 56/30, accommodating the majority of the repertoire, anthem accompaniments, and robust hymnody. All measurements and relationships comply with AGO standards, and the organ is tuned in equal temperament.

The organ was dedicated and blessed during the morning service on September 7, and the inaugural recital performed by Eric Milnes on September 28.

The family of artisans at Glück Pipe Organs is grateful to have been invited to design and build this jewel in a jewel box. We appreciate the trust of the parish and their patience during the decade of study, design, construction, and finishing. Our longstanding accomplices in engineering and craftsmanship—OSI, A. R. Schopp’s Sons, Peterson Electro-Musical Products, and Harris Precision Products—continue to work with the dedicated members of the Glück team: General Manager Albert Jensen-Moulton, Joseph DiSalle, Dominic Inferrera, Peter Jensen-Moulton, Daniel Perina, and Robert Rast.

—Sebastian M. Glück

President and Artistic & Tonal Director

 

For more information about Glück pipe organs, video presentations, compact discs, workshops, and lectures, please visit gluckpipeorgans.com. 

Photo credit: All photos by Albert Jensen-Moulton

 

Regarding Sebastian Glück’s Opus 18

Upon my return from conducting Bach at the Tage für Alte Musik early music festival in Regensburg, Germany, I made the decision about a new organ for St. John’s, where I have been director of music and organist for 34 years. My career outside of the church has resided mainly in the period-instrument realm, conducting productions of Monteverdi through Mozart, and performing on historical 17th- and 18th-century keyboards and modern replicas. It was perhaps a paradoxical realization, when imagining a dream instrument for my church, that I longed for the more eclectic instruments of my youth, when I was a student of Gerre Hancock, John Weaver, and Vernon de Tar. What would make that dream a reality would be an electropneumatic instrument through which I could luxuriate in the French and German Romantic legacies, the great post-Victorian Anglican tradition, and the magnificent repertoire that has followed.

Sebastian Glück’s tonal and architectural insights and Albert Jensen-Moulton’s technical capabilities combined to fully divine my desire to return to those musical roots, and to conceive a plan that would ultimately satisfy completely. Their ability to express poetically, as well as in succinct and accessible technical terms the mysteries of concept, design, construction, and installation made the leap from imagination to implementation feel attainable. They equipped me well with the descriptive tools to guide a searching congregation through the process with assurance and anticipatory exhilaration. Their excitement about a freshly conceived instrument, their commitment to historical fealty and tonal integrity, and their respect for the mission of music in worship make for a wonderfully responsive and interactive collaboration with the church musician and the worshipers. We at St. John’s felt shepherded and fully participatory at all stages of the process as our musical dream became the longed-for voice of praise in our parish.

St. John’s chancel is a marvel of intricately embellished woodcarving in a heritage edifice preserving the extravagant preferences enjoyed by the privileged of the Gilded Age. The organ case in particular is a splendor to behold, and required the most loving care in its conservation and adaptation to a new instrument. Sebastian Glück’s distinction in the field of architectural restoration was of no small interest to the stewards of St. John’s legacy. His workshop’s treatment of the organ case, and his design of a complementary, luxurious console, have brought us transcendent joy. Albert Jensen-Moulton’s exquisite lighting plan has revealed to us the grandeur of the reimagined organ case, and we believe that the organ had not been fully illuminated since the Skinner organ was installed almost 100 years ago. Every craftsman member of the firm brought uncommon care to protect and restore the beauty for all to appreciate, present and future.

Having just celebrated the dedication and blessing of the new organ at St. John’s, the glorious sounds (first heard at this occasion) have filled us with inspiration and delight. We perceive the individual character of each exquisitely voiced rank, the kaleidoscope of a multitude of ensembles, blended, rich, warm, full, and thrilling in the unique acoustic of the sanctuary. A twenty-rank organ, conceived, built, and voiced by the caring (and compulsive!) hands of master builders, has been richly appointed to express the enormous range of a broad and diverse repertoire. Our church has received the gifts of exhilaration, inspiration, wonder, and mystery in support of praise and prayer.

Our deepest gratitude is expressed to Sebastian, Albert, and all the artisans of Glück Pipe Organs.

—Eric Milnes
Director of Music & Organist

Cover feature

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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

The organ at St. James United Church, Montréal

The genealogy of a restored instrument

Andrew Forrest

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.

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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 8and 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 8Gamba 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 223 Twelfth (a tapered rank) and 2Fifteenth 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 8Concert 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 8Dulciana, 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 4Flûte 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 8Trumpet 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 8Oboe 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 223 made up of stopped pipes was added to the Choir, while a 4Violina—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 32Acoustic 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 223Nazard 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.

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