Cover Feature

David Fienen

David Fienen is Emeritus Professor of Music at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota. At Gustavus, he was Cantor at Christ Chapel, taught organ, music theory, chaired the music department, and served as provost and dean of the college his last two years before retirement.

Sitting under a shade tree in his backyard last summer, sipping iced tea with Charles and Birgitta Hendrickson, I asked him about his philosophy of organ building. His immediate answer was, “If I can make them [the congregation] sing, I have succeeded.” To make them sing—what a fine goal!

 

First a physicist

Minnesota native Charles Hendrickson grew up in Willmar, Minnesota, where his father had a law practice. During Charles’s young years, his father, Roy, was also chair of the board of trustees at Gustavus Adolphus College (Roy’s alma mater) in St. Peter, Minnesota, from 1945–53. After Roy passed away in 1954, Charles’s mother, Frances, was hired as secretary to President Edgar Carlson at Gustavus from 1955–ca. 1967. Charles had already started his college career at Gustavus, and now the rest of his family moved to St. Peter. In 1957, Charles graduated from Gustavus with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and mathematics. It is interesting that he is not the only organbuilder with a physics background—Charles Fisk worked for Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project before he began building organs.

After college, Hendrickson started graduate studies at the University of Minnesota for one year, then taught physics at Superior State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin-Superior, Superior, Wisconsin) for a year. He earned his Master of Science degree in physics at the University of Arkansas while also teaching for a year at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee (and serving as head of the department!). He also taught at Northeast State University in Oklahoma before returning to Minnesota to teach physics at Mankato State College (now Minnesota State University Mankato) for a couple of years.

In 1964, Charles married Birgitta Gillberg at Gamla Uppsala Church in Sweden. Birgitta, a native of Sweden, was teaching Swedish at Gustavus at that time. She continued teaching at Gustavus until Eric was born in 1967. She then returned to her academic career in 1975, teaching Swedish and German at Minnesota State University Mankato for 30 years until her retirement.

 

Hendrickson Organ Company: Beginnings

Hendrickson’s interest in the pipe organ began early in his young life, in 1953, when he watched with fascination as the Möller organ was rebuilt and reinstalled at Bethel Lutheran Church in Willmar. Harry Iverson, who was the Möller representative, supervised the regulation and work at the church, and Hendrickson got involved as a “gopher.” Iverson had previously been the Kimball representative and had designed the Minneapolis Auditorium Kimball organ. During graduate school, Hendrickson followed up on this early interest by working on organs (servicing, repairing, moving, tuning) on a part-time basis.

In 1964, Charles Hendrickson was asked to rebuild and significantly enlarge the 1910 Hillgreen-Lane organ in First Lutheran Church in Winthrop, Minnesota, by the pastor of the church, who was a family friend. Pastor Lambert Engwall had talked his congregation into undertaking the project to enlarge the organ in the church, had raised the money for the project, and convinced Hendrickson to tackle this project. As it was already part way through spring semester, Hendrickson resigned his teaching position at Mankato State and thus committed himself to being an organbuilder.

Several interesting things about this instrument, Opus 1, produced by the nascent Hendrickson Organ Company, are worth noting:

• The Swell division consists of pipes from the previous instrument, with new Hauptwerk, Positief, and Pedal divisions. The casework was mostly new to house the new organ.

• The Positief division was housed in its own case cantilevered on the balcony rail—in Rückpositiv position. This was the first Rückpositiv built in Minnesota.

• Hendrickson rented space in the empty Green Giant canning plant in Winthrop to build the organ with three helpers. (This is reminiscent of how older organ builders like Schnitger operated—building on site or at least in the vicinity of the church.)

• The new pipes added to this organ came from Organ Supply.

• Composer David N. Johnson, then on the faculty of St. Olaf College, played the dedication recital in September 1965.

• In 1982, Hendrickson added two mutations and swapped out two flute ranks, bringing the instrument to 36 ranks.

At about the same time, Hendrickson was asked by his home congregation, First Lutheran Church in St. Peter, Minnesota, to build a “temporary” organ for their new sanctuary then under construction to replace the church that had been destroyed by lightning on Mother’s Day in 1962. He readily complied by assembling a two-manual, eight-rank instrument, partly from salvaged materials. The outstanding acoustics of the building helped this small instrument to be amazingly successful, and it also included a horizontal trumpet! This temporary instrument, Opus 2, installed in 1965, remained in the church longer than expected. It was not replaced until his Opus 45 was completed in 1979, a two-manual, 44-rank instrument with a third coupler keyboard.

Opus 3 was another enlargement project, this time resulting in a two-manual, 30-rank instrument at Grace Lutheran Church, Mankato, Minnesota, using some ranks, offset chests, blower, and console from the previous two-manual, nine-rank M. P. Möller organ built for Grace Lutheran’s previous building. This instrument was also subsequently expanded in 1992 by adding a new Great division, horizontal trumpet, new three-manual console, and other tonal and mechanical revisions (Opus 86, three manuals, 41 ranks).

From these beginnings of the Hendrickson Organ Company in 1964, there followed several new instruments, including Opus 6, of two manuals, eight ranks, at St. John Lutheran Church in Yankton, South Dakota, and Opus 9, of two manuals, 24 ranks, at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in La Crosse, Wisconsin, plus more revisions, enlargements, and rebuilds, leading up to Opus 10 in 1970. Interestingly, the Yankton instrument, a larger version of Opus 2, came about because Harold Spitznagel was the architect of both First Lutheran Church in St. Peter (which housed Hendrickson Opus 2) and of St. John Lutheran Church in Yankton (Opus 6). The Yankton instrument originally contained only eight ranks, later enlarged to 12 after a fire in the church in 2009.

It is worthwhile to look further at the early influences on Hendrickson. He is largely a self-taught organbuilder, learning by experience, by voracious reading, and from the influences of Russ Johnson (an acoustician) and Robert Noehren (an organbuilder, performer, and teacher himself). Around the time Hendrickson was starting to build his Opus 1 and Opus 2, he met Robert Noehren at the Central Lutheran Organ Symposium in Minneapolis. From Noehren he became convinced to use primarily all-electric action when building electric-action instruments. And from Noehren, he learned the concepts of judicious borrowing and duplexing to retain clarity in the resulting organ while realizing some economies of budget and space. His Opus 1 at Winthrop used electro-pneumatic chests for the Great and Swell, but all-electric for the Positief. Subsequently, he primarily (though not exclusively) used all-electric chests when building non-mechanical-action instruments.

 

The Hendrickson factory

The year 1970 saw a new chapter unfold. Hendrickson was contacted by William Kuhlman, professor of organ, to build a new organ for Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Most of his work prior to this time had been accomplished in his basement, garage, rented facilities, or on site. Now, in order to have a tall erecting room, he took the plunge, purchased land in the industrial park in St. Peter, and built the first part of his organ factory, including in the center a tall room where he could set up this two-story instrument. The organ for Luther College, Opus 10, of two manuals, 35 ranks, was his first mechanical-action instrument. 

This organ was intended as a teaching, practice, and performance instrument, and was built on a movable platform like a hovercraft so it could move to a neighboring room. Subsequently, it was relocated to a permanent teaching studio on the campus, the floating mechanism disabled, and an electric-action, unified trumpet rank on the Great was reinstalled as an 8′ horizontal reed, playable from the mechanical action. Due to heavy use, the keyboards have been replaced twice on this instrument.

The original factory consisted of a tall central erecting room, with the office in the back as an upstairs room, and two flanking rooms for wood work, pipe set up, and voicing. The equipment included the voicing machine originally built by Vogelpohl & Spaeth in New Ulm, Minnesota, in the late 19th century. Over the years, a sizeable building was added behind the original shop, including an assembly room and new voicing room, with the earlier flanking rooms repurposed. Later still, another former business building was moved to adjoin the addition, becoming the office, drafting studio, and library storage for the extensive collection of books and organ journals kept close at hand. (Hendrickson has every issue of The Diapason since 1913, and of The American Organist since 1929!) A large warehouse was added next door for much-needed storage and to house the spray booth. Interestingly, after a tornado struck in 1998, both this author and the Gustavus chaplain rented space in the warehouse to store all of our furniture while our houses were being rebuilt. More recently, a disastrous fire in November 2013 engulfed the original shop building. (Andreas Hendrickson, Charles’s younger son, designed a replacement shop building, which has been recently completed.) Fortunately, the added buildings were separated enough that they were not damaged, and no organs were destroyed except for some wood pipes, machinery, and some supplies. 

With Opus 10 for Luther College, Hendrickson began building mechanical-action instruments, either with mechanical stop action or electric stop action. A significant portion of the organs built by the firm feature mechanical action. When asked, Hendrickson expressed his preference for this type of action “just because I like it.” He also indicated he felt such instruments are “very satisfying” and provide the “best possible solution.” But Hendrickson indicated that throughout his career, he particularly wanted to “satisfy a need.” This is a most salient point—he set out to provide a good musical instrument for a wide variety of situations, large and small, and while his preference would be a tracker organ, sometimes placement, finances, or other considerations necessitated using electric action. If that were the case, he set out to make it the best it could be. Not infrequently, his project working with a church to improve their musical resources would also involve redesigning either the chancel or the balcony to facilitate placement of the new instrument and the location of the choir and/or the liturgical appointments.

During the half-century so far of the Hendrickson Organ Company, the firm has been involved in a wide variety of organ projects, building large and very small instruments, restoring, rebuilding, and expanding both historic instruments and some of their own, adding single divisions and/or replacing consoles—a variety of, as Charles said, “solving problems” for particular situations and congregations. To comment on each of the many projects (opus numbers) undertaken by the Hendrickson Organ Company would occupy far more space than is possible here; instead, a summary is presented, featuring a few interesting examples. 

 

Mechanical-action instruments

There are 27 mechanical-action organs on the Hendrickson opus list, ranging from a practice instrument with one 8′ flute for each of two manuals and pedal (Opus 33) to his largest instrument at Wayzata Community Church in Wayzata, Minnesota (Opus 92, four manuals, 70 ranks). The Wayzata instrument is unusual in that it incorporates a large Paul Granlund bronze sculpture in the middle of the façade.

Other sizable mechanical-action organs include Opus 47, a three-manual, 43-rank organ in St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church, New Prague, Minnesota, and Opus 35, a three-manual, 59-rank instrument at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Mankato, Minnesota. These large instruments have mechanical key and stop action. The New Prague instrument leans toward a French Classic style, though not exclusively. The later Opus 78, of three manuals, 62 ranks, at St. Joseph Cathedral in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, utilizes a multi-channel electric stop action. It was also an instrument of a more complex design because of its size and the necessity for a detached keydesk. Hendrickson also had to redesign the gallery choir risers to accommodate the new organ. All three of these instruments were placed in rear balconies, and the Mankato and New Prague installations feature Rückpositiv divisions.

While most of Hendrickson’s two-manual mechanical-action instruments contain between 12 and 29 ranks, the largest is Opus 45, a two-manual, 44-rank instrument completed in 1979 at Hendrickson’s own church, First Lutheran Church, St. Peter, Minnesota. This instrument finally replaced the “temporary” Opus 2 that he had built nearly 15 years earlier. The organ features a horizontal trumpet on the Great (as had Opus 2) but also includes a trumpet within the case for that division. For this instrument, Hendrickson used a chassis from Laukhuff, Pedal division façade pipes made of aluminum, and a third manual as a coupler manual. This instrument is housed in an excellent acoustical environment and is a particularly successful installation. Marie-Claire Alain examined the organ upon completion and played the dedication recital.

In addition to these full-size tracker organs, the company built five portative organs consisting of one manual (no pedal) with 8′ flute, 4′ flute, and 2′  principal stops. The first such instrument was built for the St. Olaf Choir (Opus 16) and was intended to be able to be transported in a regular coach bus (with a couple of seats removed). To fit that size, the instrument has a short octave in the bass (lacking C#, D#, F#, and G#) and the compass is an octave shorter in the treble than a normal 61-note compass. In addition, the keyboard folds down inside the case, thus fitting through a bus door (at least back in the early 1970s). The stops are divided between bass and treble. The blower is also enclosed in the case, which is mounted on casters and has handles for ease in lifting and moving it around. After a second version was ordered by the Rockford Kantorei in Rockford, Illinois (Opus 18), three more instruments were built—“for every board we cut, we cut three.” These instruments eventually found their way to the University of Wisconsin in River Falls, Wisconsin (Opus 30), Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota (Opus 81), and Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota (Opus 72a). The organs are principally used for continuo playing.

 

Electric-action instruments

The Hendrickson opus list includes nearly 60 electric-action instruments. Thirty of these projects involved organs with fewer than 20 ranks, most incorporating at least some borrowing or duplexing, using the ideas Hendrickson had acquired from Robert Noehren. Many of these instruments use all-electric chests, as mentioned above. However, for Opus 60, a two-manual, 19-rank organ built for First Lutheran Church in Glencoe, Minnesota, the builder used slider chests with electric pull-downs. The largest two-manual electric-action instrument is Opus 25, of two manuals, 38 ranks, installed in First Lutheran Church, St. James, Minnesota (another instrument with a horizontal trumpet).

A dozen three-manual instruments (and one four-manual) contain 30 to 54 ranks. Beginning with Opus 1 (three manuals, 34 ranks), the list includes many significant enlargements of instruments by Möller, Aeolian-Skinner, Austin, Hillgreen-Lane, and Schantz, the largest being the expansion of a 1961 Schlicker (three manuals, 32 ranks) as Hendrickson Opus 100 (three manuals, 54 ranks) for Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Two notable large all-new instruments are Opus 51 (three manuals, 46 ranks) at St. Mark Catholic Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Opus 34 (three manuals, 51 ranks) at St. John’s Lutheran in Owatonna, Minnesota (yet another organ with a dramatic horizontal trumpet). The Owatonna instrument also uses pallet and slider chests with electric pulldowns.

What is clear from all these instruments is that Charles Hendrickson and the many workers over the years in the shop were interested in creating or improving musical instruments that would “make them sing,” whether in the big city or the small country church. Hendrickson always endeavored to learn from the past, from his own experience, and from the lessons the industry had learned, whether from books or from his colleagues in the business. He was not interested in modeling after a particular style or a particular period, nor was he dogmatic about actions or particular stops, but was focused on a clear, singing tone and satisfying the particular needs of a group of people assembled in a specific congregation.

 

Rebuilds, restorations, and
renovations of 19th– and early 20th-century organs

The company website (www.hendricksonorgan.com) lists over 116 opus numbers. They include more than two dozen rebuilds, renovations, and restorations, notably:

• Rebuilding and enlarging the 1862 Marklove organ in the Cathedral of Our Merciful Savior in Faribault, Minnesota (Opus 70, two manuals, 34 ranks), using many of the original pipes—possibly the oldest pipes in Minnesota;

• Rebuilding two other late 19th-century organs, one by Hutchings, Plaisted & Co. (Opus 40, two manuals, 21 ranks), and the 1896 Kimball tubular pneumatic instrument located in the Union Sunday School in Clermont, Iowa (Opus 51a, two manuals, 27 ranks). The latter is the largest remaining tubular-pneumatic Kimball in original condition;

• Restoring, rebuilding, or revising several early 20th-century instruments by Hinners, Hillgreen-Lane, Kimball, Estey, and Vogelpohl & Spaeth (a late 19th/early 20th-century Minnesota builder);

• Maintaining, revising, and renovating the large four-manual, 52-rank Hillgreen-Lane organ in Christ Chapel at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, especially after the 1998 tornado severely damaged the entire campus and community. Organ repairs included cleaning all reeds, re-racking pipes, building a new Great chest, and replacing the keyboards;

• Rescuing Hendrickson Opus 53 (two manuals, 27 ranks) that was housed in St. Peter Catholic Church, which was destroyed by the same tornado. This mechanical-action organ was later used as part of the much larger instrument (Opus 99, three manuals, 40 ranks) designed by Andreas Hendrickson for the new church;

• Rebuilding and moving a much-altered 1931 Aeolian-Skinner (Opus 877) to a church in Arkansas in 1990 (Opus 88, three manuals, 30 ranks), then, after that church had closed, moving the instrument and reinstalling it at Celebration Lutheran Church in Sartell, Minnesota, in 2009 (Opus 115, three manuals, 35 ranks).

 

Hendrickson as author

From his beginnings in academe, Hendrickson never lost his inquisitive mind or his desire to share what he had learned. An active member of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America (APOBA) and the American Institute of Organbuilders, he served as president of APOBA for about 8 years. During that time, he arranged for the organization to commence sponsoring Pipedreams on American Public Media and oversaw the statement APOBA produced regarding “sampled voices” in pipe organs.

A large undertaking by Hendrickson was a long series of articles he wrote, mainly for The American Organist. These included articles on families of tone, divisions of the organ, tonal architecture, pipe materials, and a host of other relevant topics. The Hendrickson Organ Company website lists and links to 46 of these articles written between 1976 and 2003. [http://www.enchamade.com/hendricksonorgan/wb/pages/articles.php]

More recently, Hendrickson returned to his physics roots by collaborating on a research project with Dr. Tom Huber and some of his students at Gustavus Adolphus College. A summary of their study, “Vibrational Modes of an Organ Reed Pipe,” can be accessed at http://physics.gac.edu/~Huber/organs/vibrometer/ and an abstract of Huber’s Faculty Shop Talk about the project can be found at https://gustavus.edu/events/shoptalks/Shop0304.htm.

 

The future

Charles Hendrickson has retired from active involvement in the work of the Hendrickson Organ Company. The enterprise continues under the leadership of his two sons, Andreas and Eric. Andreas, who holds an architecture degree from the University of Minnesota, is in charge of design, while his older brother, Eric, is head of installations, tuning, and service. Andreas also called on his architecture background to design the rebuilding of the portion of the shop lost to the November 2013 fire. The company services many of their own instruments, plus numerous other instruments around Minnesota and neighboring states. The brothers grew up in the organ factory and learned many of their skills from their father. Thus a new generation is continuing the process of building, rebuilding, and repairing pipe organs in this small town in southern Minnesota. ν

 

References

Bies, Jessica. “PORTRAITS: Sons of St. Peter pipe organ maker continue Hendrickson legacy,” St. Peter Herald, March 27, 2014. www.southernminn.com/st_peter_herald/news/article_bb355bf8-3aea-55a2-b9…

Hendrickson Organ Company website: http://hendricksonorgan.com

Huber, Tom, Brian Collins, Charles Hendrickson, and Mario Pineda. “Vibrational Modes of an Organ Reed Pipe.” Presentation for Acoustical Society of America Meeting, November 2003. http://physics.gustavus.edu/~huber/organs/

Interviews with Charles Hendrickson in June and July, 2016, plus several phone conversations.

Organ Historical Society Pipe Organ Database: database.organsociety.org

TCAGO Pipe Organ List: http://www.pipeorganlist.com/OrganList/index.html

Vance, Daniel. “Hendrickson Organ Company.” Connect Business Magazine, July 1999, Mankato, Minnesota. http://connectbiz.com/1999/07/hendrickson-organ-company/

Charles Echols

Charles Echols has a doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Southern California. He is retired from St. Cloud State University (Minnesota), where he taught organ, piano, and music history. In 2016 he edited the first volume of Organ Music of James H. Rogers, published by Wayne Leupold Editions. Raven Records issued a compact disc of his performance of music of Rogers in 2016.

Organbuilder Kevin Christopher Marrin was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1949, the sixth of seven children. His family called him “Casey,” an Irish nickname drawn from his initials. He also incorporated his initials into his business name, the K. C. Marrin Company.

Marrin’s father was part owner of a small family brass and iron foundry (whose legacy includes 36 miles of ornate street lamps scattered throughout St. Paul, Minnesota). His mother was a naturally gifted vocalist, who before her marriage sang on the road for three years with the Bernie Cummins (big band) Orchestra.

During high school, K. C. boarded at St. John’s Preparatory School in Collegeville, Minnesota, as did his father a generation earlier, part of a long association and friendship with the central Minnesota Benedictine community. Marrin continued at St. John’s University and earned a double major in philosophy and music in 1971. While at St. John’s, he witnessed firsthand the construction of the renowned Abbey Church and other notable academic buildings designed by Marcel Breuer, the modernist Bauhaus architect. 

Marrin was greatly influenced by Brother Hubert Schneider, O.S.B., a member of the St. John’s Benedictine community who worked in the abbey’s woodworking shop for over 60 years. Br. Hubert was a gentle and gifted craftsman who taught as much through his manner of living as by his mastery of craft. Marrin wrote of Br. Hubert: 

 

He was the ideal of a monk who understood what balance in life is about. I asked him if I could help out in the shop and learn woodworking. . . . Brother Hubert had a Shaker-like work ethic—respect for materials, respect for tools, simplicity and honesty in design and execution—qualities that are at the heart of the Benedictine lifestyle as implied appropriately in their motto, Ora et Labora (Pray and Work).

 

Brother Hubert’s mentoring helped Marrin realize that aspiring to be a craftsman, as many of his uncles and aunts had been, could be a fulfilling path to pursue, one especially suitable to his aptitudes and interests.

After graduation, Marrin lived briefly in the rectory of nearby St. Joseph Church in St. Joseph while considering the possibility of becoming a permanent deacon in the Catholic Church. He took a summer job helping two local organbuilders (Eric Fiss, active in Fargo, North Dakota, and Arthur Kurtzman, then active in St. Cloud, Minnesota), who were moving and enlarging the St. Joseph Church’s Wicks organ from a rear balcony location to a cantilevered position behind the altar. This was his introduction into the world of organ building.¹

After work on the St. Joseph organ concluded, Marrin continued briefly with Kurtzman and Fiss, rebuilding local instruments and learning what organ building involved. He then went out on his own, doing service work and tuning. (Eric Fiss died shortly thereafter, but Marrin maintained a lifetime association with Art Kurtzman, who assisted with voicing on many of his instruments.) Marrin’s first project on his own was rebuilding a small Wicks organ in his home parish of St. Boniface, Cold Spring, Minnesota. Just prior to building the St. John’s studio organ, Opus 6, Marrin visited Europe in 1986. Kim Kasling, St. John’s professor of music, then on sabbatical studying with Harald Vogel, guided Marrin to important and interesting organs in Austria and Germany.

As Marrin began to build his own instruments, he endeavored to engage in all aspects of the work himself. Operating a one-man shop was not an ideal business model. This inevitably meant slow production and delivery schedules, as well as under-utilized workspace and equipment, but more importantly for him, allowed time to learn the trade and rediscover older ways of approaching technical problems and to develop hand skills at his workbench.

 

K. C. Marrin Company organs

Opus 1, St. Augustine Catholic Church, St. Cloud (1978)

St. Augustine Church took a chance on Marrin, giving him his first contract to build a new organ. It was completed in 1978, a two-manual, mechanical-action instrument of fifteen stops, balanced key action, and a freestanding oak case. Marrin built the case and winding system, but the pipework and chests came from German supply houses. In recognition of the German heritage of central Minnesota, an inscription was carved around the keydesk: “Zur grösseren Ehre Gottes” (For the greater glory of God).

 

Opus 2, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud (1979)

Marrin built a one-manual portative organ, with three divided stops (8′ Gedeckt, 4′ Rohrflute, 2′ Principal) and a short octave (C, D, E, F) in the bass, for the music department at St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota. 

 

Opus 3, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Sauk Rapids (1981)

Marrin built a two-manual, 11-stop organ with suspended-mechanical action and a freestanding white oak case for Sacred Heart Catholic Church. He made his first large windchest, continuing the process of learning to make components in-house. Originally located in a rear balcony, the organ has been moved to a new parish home a few miles away. Strikingly beautiful carvings distinguish the case—the art of the late Joseph O’Connell, regional sculptor and artist. This includes mahogany Brustwerk doors (with Fats Waller and a jazz band of angels surrounded by singing choirboys) and pipe shades (with angels and various musical instruments). A batik tapestry, now removed, created by area artist Judith Goetemann, added a splash of color to the upper case doors.

 

Opus 4, Cathedral of St. Mary, St. Cloud (1982)

The Catholic cathedral in St. Cloud features an excellent acoustic. Marrin’s 27-stop organ is installed in the apse behind the altar and cathedra (bishop’s chair), where it serves as a visual focus to the sanctuary. Positioning the organ high off the floor created a “balcony” for the pipes to speak, and with the help of the curved dome behind, the organ projects a majestic and unified sound efficiently into the nave. A simple timber frame structure carries the weight much like a medieval Blockwerk organ case, a reference to earlier design influences at St. John’s. The case is constructed from over 6,000 board feet of laminated rift-cut white oak (cut at an angle to minimize the grain that is visible). Structural beams were assembled with Br. Hubert’s assistance, and the traditional joinery was cut by hand. 

The organ design employs features new to Marrin’s thinking in 1982, which was in tune with a small group of American builders led by John Brombaugh, who sought to return to earlier organ design principles and building methods. The organ has a 16′ plenum, flexible winding (a single large wedge-shaped bellows supplies wind to the manual divisions), wooden ductwork (with a Great divided on separate bass and treble chests to help stabilize the wind), three “double-draw” stops, high lead-content pipework, Clicquot-style reeds (made by Roland Killinger in Germany), a five-rank mounted Cornet (all open pipes, beginning at tenor G), and unequal temperament (Werckmeister II). Over 200 Catholic bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, gathered for a meeting and retreat at St. John’s Abbey in June of 1982, attended the dedication of the organ.

 

Opus 5, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Columbia Heights (1985)

This installation is a 23-stop organ with a Positiv division located on the balcony rail and a partially enclosed Great. In 1987, the organ was joined electrically to an Allen digital organ by another builder. The Marrin organ retains much of its original layout and tonal design. 

 

Opus 6, St. John’s University, Collegeville (1988)

This 22-stop practice and teaching instrument is located in a dedicated room in the music department and has a three-tower case and a graceful ten-degree flare forward at impost level—just enough to distinguish the ornate but playful case design. It includes more of Joseph O’Connell’s work: dozens of wrought-iron figures of Benedictine monks peeking out of the case shadows into the room. Many of the figures resemble living and deceased members of the monastic community—purely coincidence, according to O’Connell. 

 

Opus 7, Gethsemane Lutheran Church, Dassel (1990)

The two-manual, 15-stop tracker organ is positioned on the balcony rail and is playable from the side of the case. The stop knobs connect directly to the ends of the sliders, a concept K. C. observed in a small rural church in northern Germany. Both manual divisions and pedal share a single divided chest. The case has neo-Gothic elements, connecting it to period decorations in this century-old country church.

Opus 8, St. Scholastica Monastery, Duluth (1992)

The organ was installed as part of a renovation project of the monastery chapel. The instrument is positioned in a reformatted library space in a most tasteful and workable way, with suitable height for the organ to develop tonally. It has the appearance of a one-manual organ, with hidden Swell and Pedal divisions in a wall opening behind the case and with the bellows and blower beneath the floor. It has proven to be a flexible liturgical organ that is suitable for the needs of the Benedictine community’s life of prayer and sacred song.

 

Opus 9, Good Shepherd Catholic Church, Golden Valley (1995)

The organ has a central balcony location with limited height, which required positioning the Great in front of the Swell. The mechanical pedal chest permits stops to be played both at unison and an octave above. There are 23 stops housed in a solid mahogany case.

 

Opus 10, St. Augustine Catholic Church, St. Cloud (2002)

Marrin returned to his Opus 1, expanding and relocating it behind the altar, adding a third manual (Swell of 12 stops) and four new Pedal stops (including a 32′ resultant) in towers to the right and left of the old case for a total of 35 stops. The stop action is electric and has a solid-state combination action. 

 

Opus 11, St. Boniface Catholic Church, Cold Spring (2013)

Marrin’s magnum opus is found in his home church, only a half-block from his shop. Forty-four stops are divided between three manuals and pedal, with suspended mechanical key action and electric stop action. Eleven of the stops came from the Eric Fiss organ at St. Mark’s Catholic Church in Shakopee, Minnesota, which Marrin had helped install in 1974. The organ was partially destroyed by fire in 2005.

Opus 11 faces three directions on three chest levels and speaks from a rear-corner of the room. A single-wedge bellows supplies wind to the manual divisions. The 32′ Bourdon extension, located behind the children’s “cry room,” has been known to quiet young children and infants. A 16′ Openbass (wood, in the Pedal), a 16′ Trombone (wood, modeled from a 19th-century Pfeffer organ in Iowa), an 8′ oak Doppelfloete (two mouths), and an independent 11⁄7′ on the Positiv add to the eclectic tonal design. The organ’s tonal spectrum is suitable for most of the standard organ literature. Key cheeks are inlaid with polished granite taken from the Cold Spring quarry. The music rack has a hand-lettered text attributed to St. Teresa of Avila: “Yours are the feet with which He goes about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He blesses us now.”

 

This opus list does not contain other projects and restorations that have filled the time between construction of Marrin’s new instruments. Among these projects are restorations of Jardine (1864) and Joseph Lorenz (1887) organs. For over 40 years Marrin has kept busy in a small shop behind his house, advertising only by word-of-mouth, working as a craftsman, designing, building, and engaging in auxiliary woodworking activities that have kept him active and productive. “Working at home has saved me from three years of commuting on the interstate. No snow days. No excuses for not showing up for work. But time for family, a garden, and Ora et Labora. I have been blessed all around.”

 

Notes

1. Marrin also became engaged that year, and later married Carol Eiynck from nearby Albany, Minnesota. They made their home in Cold Spring, Minnesota, about 12 miles from St. John’s University. Marrin and Carol had two children, Matthew and Annie. Carol died of cancer in 2011. Marrin recently married Anne Studer, a high school and college friend of both Marrin and Carol, adding six more children and seven grandchildren to his family circle.

 

Firsts for Marrin Organs

Opus 1: Mechanical action and slider chests; Embossed display pipe

Opus 2: Short octave; divided keyboard

Opus 3: Hauptwerk (Great) the upper manual, Brustwerk the lower manual; Use of suspended key action; Decorative carvings; Case shutters decorated with batik tapestry

Opus 4: Single large wedge-shaped bellows which supplies wind to the manual divisions; flexible winding; 16′ plenum; 16′ Principal on Great; separate winding for pedal division; first Swell division; use of “double-draw” stop knobs; unequal temperament (Werckmeister II modified); mounted five-rank Cornet beginning at Tenor G; Clicquot-style reeds

Opus 5: Positiv division; partially enclosed Great; Marpurg temperament 

Opus 6: Transmissions from manuals to Pedal; Dom Bedos style tremulant; decorative figures of singing monks cast in wrought iron; Rosignol; Kirnberger III temperament

Opus 7: Key desk on the side of the case; stop knobs attached to the end of sliders

Opus 8: Bellows and blower beneath the floor; full-length resonators for 16′ Trombone

Opus 9: Windchests of Great and Swell at the same level; mechanical Pedal chest permits stops to be played at both the unison and the octave above

Opus 10: First organ with three manuals; first 32′ resultant; first electric stop action and computer-controlled combination action; Crescendo pedal; programmable tremulant; Zimbelstern

Opus 11: Speaks in three directions; electric Swell shutter control; use of salvaged pipes (from St. Mark’s Church, Shakopee, Minnesota); Glockenspiel of 30 cast bells; 32′ Bourdon; stops modeled after successful historical Midwest examples

Ortloff Organ Company, LLC, Brookline, Massachusetts

Opus 1 – 2016

In collaboration with Russell & Company Organ Builders

St. Joseph’s Catholic Church,

Penfield, New York

 

From the builder

Organbuilders will likely say how their first contract was the hardest, or certainly one of the hardest, to procure. And why not? Spending a great deal of money on a product built by somebody with no previous track record is, in a word, insanity. But churches are necessarily in the faith business, and it was certainly an act of faith by St. Joseph’s Church to entrust my company to build this instrument, our Opus 1.

The road to Opus 1 began long before St. Joseph’s contacted me, long before I could even reach the pedals the first time I played a pipe organ at age four—a single chord on the 1933 Kimball at Trinity Episcopal Church in Plattsburgh, New York, after midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. That one chord began a fascination with the pipe organ that led to the decision in my teenage years, while working for Stephen Russell, to devote my life to this craft. Nine years of training at Russell & Company, further work for C. B. Fisk, Inc., and Spencer Organ Company, and six years at the Eastman School of Music and University of Rochester provided a broad range of experience that has informed how I play and how I wish to build. By 2014, I saw an opportunity to fulfill a dream of running my own shop and founded Ortloff Organ Company, LLC. Within just a few weeks, I was surveying St. Joseph’s Church in Penfield, preparing to draft my first proposal for a new pipe organ.

In 2013, St. Joseph’s received a generous bequest specifically to enrich the musical life of the parish. This happy event led to a decision to commission a new pipe organ, which would replace a failing 30-year-old electronic. Nathan Davy, the director of music and a fellow Eastman alum, approached me about the project, and from there he championed my firm, expressing faith in my ability to produce a high-quality instrument of distinction.

This abundance of faith was, however, fully sighted, and St. Joseph’s requested that the contract be co-signed by an established organbuilder to provide a level of security in the project’s success. It was only logical that I should collaborate with my mentor Steve Russell, to which Steve enthusiastically agreed, and we began discussing the instrument’s mechanical and tonal design shortly after my initial visit. This particular show of faith was perhaps the most important. Knowing my training and ability better than anyone, Steve’s tacit “You can do this. You’re ready. It’s time,” propelled me forward with confidence and excitement.

Distilling many musical requirements into 18 stops, particularly within a fixed budget and limited space, is naturally a challenge. Moreover, working in the shadow of our alma mater, Nathan and I were all too aware of the scrutiny the organ would receive, adding pressure to how the stoplist, scaling, and tonal approach were developed. But a suburban Catholic parish is not the academy, and my vision for the instrument was that it need make no apology for serving its liturgical requirements first and last. In the broad picture, the organ should subscribe to certain guiding principles. As much as possible, slider chests are used, for simplicity of mechanism, the benefits of tone-channel chests, and the honesty they enforce in design. Chorus work should be silvery and bright but not shrill, made of a high-lead alloy, and supported by amply scaled, warm 8′ tone. Reeds are ideally placed on higher pressure for improved speech, better tuning stability, and noble power. Applying these principles to St. Joseph’s, seating about 600, we strove to create an ensemble that would have plenty of energy and clarity without being unduly powerful. It should lead without overwhelming, not only a largely volunteer choir, but also occasionally reluctant congregational singing. The color palette should tend unapologetically toward the romantic, but be based firmly in sparkling classical choruses.

While organs of this size are often treated essentially as giant one-manuals spread over two keyboards, the architecture of St. Joseph’s necessitated the two manual divisions being too physically divided for that kind of approach. Furthermore, the ultimate design felt more honest; a few Swell stops are duplexed to the Great for accompanimental variety, but otherwise each division is independent, with its own chorus. While the organ’s original design included an independent Swell 8′ Diapason, a funding shortfall necessitated its elimination, as well as independent Pedal registers, a Clarinet on the Great, and mutation bass octaves. In turn, we modified the design of the Chimney Flute and Viola, and repitched the Swell mixture lower, introducing 8′ tone by treble C.

In these and many other details throughout the design process, Nathan, Steve, and I found ourselves largely on the same page. Thus it was a jolt when, shortly after signing the contract in November 2014, Nathan accepted the position of assistant organist at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D. C. Happily, Nathan’s successor, Jacob Fuhrman, picked right up where Nathan left off and has proven to be just as collaborative as his predecessor.

Built in 1967, St. Joseph’s wasn’t designed with a pipe organ in mind. Its low ceilings, quirky acoustics, and lack of obvious location for an instrument all contributed to the challenge of layout and visual design. Fortunately, the church was amenable to placing the organ front and center, giving it the best possible advantage. My older brother, Buffalo architect Chris Ortloff, Jr. developed a striking multi-tiered design of flamed and polished copper, with gentle curves and multiple layers. The façade also creates a useful arcade between sacristy and church, integrating into the room in an organic way. Great care was taken to maintain focus on the altar and to complement, not compete with, the gold mosaic surrounding the crucifix.

Behind the façade, the organ proper is arranged on a new, single-level, 37′-wide platform. The wind system lives in the center, with Great and Pedal to the congregation’s left and Swell on the right. Two fields of shutters direct tone both down the nave and into the south transept, where the choir sits. Electric-slider chests form the basis of the chassis, with electric and electro-pneumatic chests serving bass pipes and unit registers.

Of the organ’s 18 voices, six are vintage ranks, including reeds, wood flutes, and strings. All have been restored and revoiced. New flue pipes, built in the Russell & Co. shop, are made from a 94% lead alloy to promote warm, singing tone. Reed renovation and voicing was carried out by the Trivo Company, who also built a new 16′ Trombone of generous scale. A somewhat higher pressure is employed for the reeds, allowing a warm, rich voicing style.

Construction began in August 2015, with a deadline to have at least part of the new organ playing by Easter 2016. To ensure an installation process as free as possible from complication, everything was pre-erected and tested in our shop. On a twenty-below-zero Valentine’s Day, 2016, a truck left Waltham, Massachusetts, bound for Penfield with the Great and Pedal. Amory Atkins, Terence Atkin, and Dean Conry brought their signature steam-shovel efficiency to the installation, accomplishing in 10 days what I thought would take three weeks. By Holy Week, five stops of the Great and the Pedal divisions were playing, and much of the Swell mechanism was in place. Over the next few months, the remainder came together in the shop, with final installation in May and tonal finishing completed by early August. Much beloved by his former parish, Nathan Davy returned to dedicate the organ on September 9. His careful thinking about repertoire demands during the design phase paid off in a colorful, varied program that made the instrument seem far larger than its actual size.

This project brought together both the seasoned and the newcomer. Bart Dahlstrom, Ortloff Organ Company’s first employee, flunked retirement at age 62 when he decided to join his woodworking skills to his organ-playing talents and become an organbuilder. His steady hand, impeccable work, and unfailing cheer have been a blessing throughout the project. Andrew Gray, a precocious 16-year-old son of an organist and a singer, had expressed interest in organbuilding for a few years; he came on as a summer employee in 2015. His meticulous wiring and pipe racking speak to his quiet diligence. Kade Phillips, an MIT student, lent help when not busy studying computer science 80 hours a week. Robert Poovey, organist-choirmaster at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Rochester, and someone with not a little of the organbuilding bug himself, provided generous local assistance for installation and some of the tonal finishing. And Jonathan Ambrosino helped in scratch-tuning the organ on Labor Day, four days before its dedication.

Finally, the support from Steve Russell’s shop has been vital, principally in the construction of the console and 971 of the organ’s 1,390 pipes—each meticulously handcrafted. An organ’s soul lies in its pipes, and these are gorgeous indeed. Steve himself provided the sober foundation of over 40 years’ experience in all aspects of design and construction and was invaluable in helping me to shape the instrument’s final sound, both in shop and site voicing.

On behalf of the 14 people who had a hand in crafting this instrument, my thanks go to St. Joseph’s Church, and especially to its pastor, Fr. Jim Schwartz, for the vision not only to commission a pipe organ, but for putting faith in untried quarters. He and members of St. Joseph’s offered generous support and hospitality at every turn. It is my hope that the faith this parish demonstrated in all of us will be repaid by generations of faithful service from this instrument, our proud Opus 1.

—Jonathan Ortloff

 

Personnel

Ortloff Organ Company:

Bart Dahlstrom

Andrew Gray

Jonathan Ortloff

Kade Phillips

 

Russell & Company:

Mayu Hashigaya Allen

Paul Elliott

Erik Johansson

Carole Russell

Stephen Russell

 

From the former director of music

I remember the beginning of the organ project at St. Joseph’s very clearly. I was in the church office kitchen, making tea, when Father Jim Schwartz walked in and said, “We need a new pipe organ. You should go talk to some organ builders.” How often does it happen that the pastor approaches the organist about a new instrument?! Though not entirely without context—the church’s electronic instrument was old and ailing (a few months later it caught fire during a funeral)—I was still dreaming wistfully of a pipe organ and considering how to broach the issue persuasively.

Among those from whom we sought a proposal was Jonathan Ortloff. Jon and I had been at Eastman together, and I had been his assistant when he was one of the organ department’s staff technicians. I knew his work ethic, and I knew his preferences and values in organ sound. Upon receiving his proposal, we were taken with both the tonal and physical design. Each voice would be able both to stand on its own and to contribute uniquely to the united chorus. The façade would adorn the front of the church, catching the eye, but directing attention to the altar.

Now, Jon would be among the first to grant that to sign a contract with an unproven organ builder is not without a certain amount of risk. The parish was mindful of that risk, but two factors allayed our concern. The first was my above-mentioned firsthand knowledge of Jon and his work. The second was that Stephen Russell, with whom Jon had apprenticed, and whom I knew by reputation, had agreed to work alongside of Jon throughout the project. It was Jon and Steve’s combined presentation to the Parish Pastoral Council on a memorable night in the summer of 2014 that won over the hearts of the parish and persuaded us that we would be in good hands.

I could not have been more pleased with the completed instrument when I first played it in September. Never have I seen flamed copper so well integrated into a church’s interior architecture. The broad richness of the foundations fills the room, the mixtures add clarity and brilliance without stridency, and the reeds balance smoothness of tone with a prevailing warm effulgence. This is an instrument perfectly suited to congregational and choral accompaniment, but also fully capable of realizing a wide variety of organ repertoire in a thoroughly satisfying way. It is my sincere hope that it is the first of many.

—Nathan Davy

 

From the current director of music

Our organ’s arrival over the past six months has fulfilled my hopes and expectations of almost two years. When I began my work at St. Joseph’s in March 2015, the contract had already been signed, the stoplist was finalized, and design had begun. I am as fortunate as an organist can be, enjoying a world-class new organ without having had to do any of the groundwork—convincing committees, raising funds, and the like. 

It was exciting for me, as a relatively early-career musician, to work with an organbuilder who is at a similar point in his own career. The entire church staff enjoyed Jonathan’s sincere, energetic love for the organ. His combination of youth, expertise, and passion helped give St. Joseph’s parishioners confidence that our art has a future.

Those of our parishioners who were at the dedicatory recital had an epiphany singing a hymn with a large audience of organists and choristers—this organ really sings, and it supports full, vibrant congregational singing. The choruses are bright without ever losing gravity. The reeds are penetrating, yet admirably vocal. The console is extremely comfortable and manageable, and it is light enough that one person can move it easily in just a few minutes: I can play from the middle of the church whenever I want to, which helps tremendously for preparing performances. The physical design of the organ, with its outward-radiating flamed copper façade, draws the eye to the altar, complementing both the shape of the building and the color profile of its stained-glass windows. I couldn’t be more pleased with this instrument.

—Jacob Fuhrman

 

GREAT

16′ Bourdon (Pedal/Swell)

8′ Diapason (1–12 façade) 61 pipes 

8′ Harmonic Flute 61 pipes

8′ Viola (Swell)

8′ Chimney Flute (Swell)

4′ Octave 61 pipes

2′ Fifteenth  61 pipes

11⁄3′ Mixture III–IV 204 pipes

8′ Trumpet* 61 pipes

Great 16

Great Off

Great 4

Swell to Great 16

Swell to Great

Swell to Great 4

SWELL

16′ Bourdon (tc) (from 8′)

8′ Chimney Flute* 61 pipes

8′ Viola* 61 pipes

8′ Viola Celeste (tc) 49 pipes

4′ Principal 61 pipes

4′ Flute* 61 pipes

22⁄3′ Nazard (tc) 49 pipes

2′ Flute* (ext 4′) 12 pipes 

13⁄5′ Tierce (tc) 49 pipes

2′ Mixture IV 244 pipes

8′ Trumpet* 61 pipes

8′ Oboe* 61 pipes

Tremulant

Swell 16

Swell Off

Swell 4 

PEDAL

32′ Resultant (Bourdon)

16′ Principal (1–34 façade) 56 pipes

16′ Bourdon* 44 pipes

8′ Octave (ext 16′)

8′ Bourdon* (ext 16′)

8′ Chimney Flute (Swell)

4′ Choral Bass (ext 16′)

32′ Harmonics (Trombone/derived)

16′ Trombone* (ext Great) 12 pipes

8′ Trumpet (Great)

Great to Pedal

Great to Pedal 4

Swell to Pedal

Swell to Pedal 4

 

 

18 stops, 24 ranks, 1,390 pipes

 

3½″ wind pressure throughout

*5″ wind pressure

8 general pistons

8 divisional pistons per division

300 memory levels

David Engen

David Engen holds degrees in organ from St. Olaf College and the University of Iowa, and a master’s degree in software engineering from the University of St. Thomas. He has been in the organ business since 1970. He is currently president of Grandall & Engen LLC in Minneapolis where he shares duties with vice-president David Grandall.

We first saw the much-altered 1875 Steer & Turner organ at First Baptist Church in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2003. There were dead notes, some pipes were leaning and about to fall over, the pedal wiring included a number of jumper cables as well as dead notes, and the stoplist was somewhat bewildering. The combination action was slow and made a lot of noise. We began researching the organ’s history; it was full of twists and turns driven by technology, resulting in an organ significantly smaller and less versatile than its original design. Steer & Turner had originally built a tracker-action organ in Springfield, Massachusetts, yet here was an organ on electric pitman chests, with a Möller console, behind the original 16′ façade. (Regarding spelling: Steer added the final “e” to his name around 1880–90, thus becoming Steere.)

Most bewildering was the presence of the bottom half of a splendid 16′ Open Wood Diapason, which did not play. It was looming in the shadows, difficult to see. The entire top octave and a half was missing. In the Great we found a three-rank mixture on a four-rank toeboard. The Swell mixture was missing entirely. The Choir was based on an 8′ Koppelflute, which was obviously not part of the original 1875 design, and it was paired unsuccessfully with a wood harmonic Melodia as a celeste.

As we dug further we located documentation that outlined the gradual shrinkage that took place over time. The original 41-rank organ, dedicated by Clarence Eddy to a full house on May 26 and 27, 1875, had shrunk to 31 ranks by 2003. The treble half of the 16′ Open Wood, along with its windchest, was found in the basement near the blower. Next to the pile of pipes was a waterlogged box containing much of the original Great Mixture IV, with many spurious pipes that clearly were not part of the original. Some treble harmonic flutes (tapered) in the Swell had been cut in half at the hole; the Swell 4′ Principal had been moved to 2′ and played from the 4′ drawknob; the bottom five pipes of the Celeste were missing. The Dulciana and Unda Maris had been switched at tenor C. We found Great Diapasons in the Swell and Swell Diapasons in the Great! There was an octave of 4′ diapason pipes nested and lying on the floor under the Great, along with a rat’s nest of unit pedal wiring that included several clip leads. 

What had happened here? Did someone try to turn this organ into something it was never designed to be? And why did it shrink? The entire original mechanism was gone. Besides the original stoplist, how could we tell what Steer & Turner had originally built?

 

A “sister” organ

Just 100 miles away, in the motherhouse chapel of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Mankato, Minnesota, is the 54-rank William Johnson organ built in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1877. John Wesley Steer(e) (1824–1900) was a protégé of William A. Johnson. It would be reasonable to suspect that these two organs share some amount of common DNA, just a few miles apart. Indeed, the Clarinets in each organ are both flared, and there are other similarities in pipe construction and stoplist. 

The Johnson was originally installed at St. Mary of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boston. It was a tracker-action organ, but W. W. Laws added electro-pneumatic pull-downs in 1922, supplying a detached console. In 1975 the organ was moved from Boston to Mankato, and in 1995 Dobson Pipe Organ Builders of Lake City, Iowa, did extensive restorative work. They took it back to the 1922 state by removing non-original ranks, restoring the wind system with two large weighted reservoirs, and adding a new console that references an earlier style. The Johnson has undergone fewer changes than has the Steer & Turner, so the Johnson can inform us about the original layout of the First Baptist organ. The Johnson Great is immediately behind the 16′ Great Diapason façade, with the unenclosed Solo behind the Great. The huge Swell is above, with the diatonic pedal split on each side. It remains on its original slider windchests from 1877. The 16′ façade consists of zinc pipes for the Great. There is a large 16′ Open Wood Diapason against the back wall, along with a 16′ wood string.

 

A history of shrinkage

Like the Johnson, the Steer was electrified, but not until 1939. Arthur Fellows added pull-downs on the tracker chests along with a new Reisner electric console. This of course retained the original slider windchests and the original specification, but with electric action it must have been much easier to play. Just 19 years later, in 1958, the entire mechanism of the original organ was discarded. New chambers were built behind the façade with walls made of 2x4s, some sheetrock, and a great deal of ¼″ Masonite. New Durst pitman windchests replaced the originals, and the entire layout was changed. Reservoirs were added for each division. Work was done by J. R. Gould of St. Paul. All divisions were enclosed, with Great and Choir (changed from a presumably unenclosed “Solo”) side by side behind the façade impost, with the Swell above. The Pedal became a unit affair, with its pipes spread on both sides. It was at this time that the original stenciling was most likely painted over with gold. The sound of the original organ was modified to adhere to the ideals of the late 1950s. The dedication was played November 1, 1959, by Frank Steinhauser, organist of the church.

In 1962, the 23-year old 1939 Reisner console was replaced with a large pneumatic Möller console made of walnut, funded through memorial gifts from the Brandenburg family. The Reisner console had been at the side of the loft, but the Möller console was placed at the middle of the loft, where it remains today. It had a full complement of 16′ and 4′ couplers, which, of course, had not been in the original instrument.

In 2000, Steve Lethert made further modifications. Perhaps of most benefit was new leather on some of the reservoirs and the addition of lighting throughout. The Mixture III was removed from the Swell, and its toeboard was converted into a walkboard to allow for tuning access, previously almost impossible. The Great Mixture IV was placed in a box in the basement, and the higher-pitched Swell Mixture was moved to the Great. The 16′ Open Wood was disconnected and its treble chest and pipes were moved to the basement where we found them. The organ continued to shrink.

The 8′ strings in the Swell had been rescaled. The original 8′ Salicional was rescaled by four notes, with extra pipes fitted in at tenor C. The bottom octave remains the original Steer & Turner scale. The Voix Celeste, which was evidently added in 1958 (the pipes are clearly not original), was enlarged by five notes, and the chest holes for tenor C through tenor E were plugged so the celeste started at tenor F. We found the original Choir Dulciana had been exchanged with the Choir Unda Maris (added in 1958?) from tenor C to the top. Again, the pipes of these two ranks date from different periods.

 

Historic preservation grant

In 2013–14 we undertook mechanical and tonal renovation, funded through a grant from the State of Minnesota for historic preservation. Our overriding philosophy was to attempt to return the organ as much as possible to its original specification within the restrictions of the 1958 electric windchests. The primary tasks were to (1) restore the 16′ Open Wood Diapason to the Pedal, (2) restore the Mixture IV to the Great, and (3) restore the Mixture III to the Swell. In addition, we returned pipes to their original locations, replaced missing pipes, and placed replicas where any pipes had been cut off or otherwise damaged. The 1875 organ had 58-note keyboards and a 27-note pedal. All original ranks thus have mongrel pipes to fill out the range to 61/32. Our unending thanks go to
A. R. Schopp’s Sons for making the needed pipes. We also did the mundane work of replacing packing leather on wood pipes, cleaning, adding tuning slides to damaged pipes, repairing and painting the plaster on the chamber back walls, and regulating all of the pipes.

When we opened the box of pipes for the Mixture IV we found a combination of original pipes along with other pipes with grossly mismatched scale and construction. It was impossible to reconstitute what was there without discarding the extra pipes and starting from scratch to define the original composition. This was difficult since all pipe labels were scribed by hand with a florid script that was very difficult to read. Through a process of elimination we figured out what was missing and needed to be reproduced. One curiosity in the original scaling is that all of the quint ranks are scaled much smaller than the unisons. In fact, each quint is approximately the same diameter as the next smaller unison on the same note. The resulting Mixture IV works perfectly with its chorus on the Great, giving rise to the question of why this stop was modified and then discarded. Steer & Turner clearly knew what they were doing!

In the Swell we found that the pipes of the 8′ Open Diapason from tenor C to the top were actually the pipes for the 4′ Octave on the Great, and the Great 4′ Octave formed the upper part of the Swell Diapason. The pipes on the floor under the Great windchests were found to be the bottom octave of the Swell 4′ Geigen Octave, which in turn had been moved to 2′ in the absence of the Mixture. We built a new three-stop chest for the Swell to hold the 8′ Vox Humana, the 2′ Flautino (which we moved here from the Choir), and the Mixture III, moved back to its original home from the Great. The 4′ Harmonic Flute has a stopped wood bottom octave, a few notes of open wood Melodia pipes, and then the pipes are tapered double-length lead. (These are original, yet the original stoplist describes them as wood.) The pipes for the top several octaves had been shortened from harmonic to natural length, so these were replicated by Schopp’s, and we now have the full harmonic flute running to the top. It is one of the most charming voices in the organ.

The top end of the wood 8′ Stopped Diapason had a few original tapered lead pipes mixed with a group of miscellaneous diapasons. Again, Schopp’s replicated the pipes so this rank is now contiguous. It has a progressive scale such that the treble wood pipes are of very narrow scale, giving the stop a bit of a Coke-bottle sound. The basses are of standard scale for a manual 16′.

The Choir also presented some challenges. Clearly the 8′ Koppelflute had to go since this was not a voice used in nineteenth-century American organs. Its tone was completely out of character with the rest of the organ. We acquired a Möller wood Stopped Diapason, which has proven to be the perfect foundation for the Choir. The Flute Celeste was marked 8′ Melodia (although it is not shown in any original stoplist), with harmonic wood trebles. This may have been the original 8′ Flauto Traverso, but there was no room for it at 8′ and the bottom octave was missing. We used it as the 2′ Flageolet with new harmonic metal trebles from Schopp’s.

The Dulciana and Unda Maris had been exchanged from tenor C to the top. We switched them back so the original Steer & Turner pipes can again be heard from bottom to top as a lovely Dulciana, with 1958 pipes as the Unda Maris. There are two tenor C stops on this chest—used for the Unda Maris and the Flute Celeste. With the Flute Celeste pipes moved to the 2′ position, we had a tenor C stop available. We do not know what this was in the 1958 rebuild, so we took the opportunity to add a Cornet II, which was not on the original organ but is a useful solo voice.

The original Great Trumpet, Swell Cornopean, and Pedal Fagotto are long gone, and there is no room on the Durst chests for them. We “restored” the Great Trumpet electrically by making the Swell Trumpet available on the Great. Should the church ever wish to restore this trumpet, there is room to add the pipes on a new chest; the stop knob can easily be rewired to play it. 

The console was gutted and new electric components replaced the pneumatic. It now has Syndyne draw knobs, relay, and a combination action with multiple memory levels and a transposer. Swell motors were replaced with new Peterson motors, and instead of 45 degrees the shutters now open a full 90 degrees.

In returning much of the organ back to the (almost) original tonal design, we also opted to restore the original stop names and remove the sub and super couplers that were never part of the original concept. The idea for the 102⁄3′ Quinte in the Pedal was borrowed from the Mankato Johnson.

 

Aftermath

This project took a long time. We attempted to keep the organ partially playable as we focused on each division. A number of components took longer to deliver than we’d anticipated, and holiday tuning season interrupted construction. With the Minnesota state grant, there was a 2014 completion requirement.

Returning the stoplist (mostly) to the original design has been a revelation. The organ today is vastly more versatile than it was before we started. The net increase of eight ranks played a large part. Restoration of the Great Mixture, at its lower pitch, has given the division more gravitas. In hindsight I wish we had removed the Masonite walls to give its chamber better reflection into the room. Removal of the swell shades improved egress, and nobody has missed them.

In the room, the organ is far from loud, although the sound is very full and robust. The ceiling is not covered with wood, but apparently with some sort of absorbent material, probably invented and added after the original construction to reduce reverberation.

Another question is wind pressure. Today the entire organ is on 4″, but we found a number of pipes coughing and belching, especially in the Pedal. This leads us to suspect that the original pressure was less than 4″. A higher pressure was probably a concession to the pitman chests and the new reservoirs in 1958. Were the pipes revoiced for a higher pressure? There is no evidence of cutup changes, but many toes were badly damaged. In some cases they barely sat in the chest holes. A few of the 8′ zinc pipes needed new lead toes. We may never know for sure what happened with the pressure.

The Choir now has a lovely minor chorus and some delightful flute colors. The Dulciana and Unda Maris combination, with shutters that now close and open completely, is appropriately ethereal. The Clarionet, with its flared resonators, is one of the best clarinet voices we’ve ever heard.

Whereas the Swell was overly heavy with 8′ stops in relation to upperwork before we started, restoration of the 4′s and the 2′ along with the Mixture has made this division bloom and given it great versatility. The 4′ Violina has the effect of a super coupler to the strings, but is more successful. The original Oboe/Bassoon is a lovely and dark voice without being too soft—a perfect foil to the Clarionet. The 1958 trumpet is out of character with the other voices. The restored 4′ Harmonic Flute, with its tapered pipes, is one of the most beautiful stops in the organ. The mixture sits nicely on top of the restored 8′ and 4′ diapasons.

The restored 16′ Open Wood Diapason needed to be regulated softer than it was when we “turned it on” again—the original pipes are cut fairly low, and they were coughing. At a softer level they produce a fairly dull purr with a power that you can hear through the walls and down the hallway. Likewise, the 16′ Bell Gamba was pushed too hard, and at a softer level it has a lovely, fast speech that imparts a slight stringiness in the bass. Though its pipes are zinc and have the compound conical shape of the bell gamba, in effect it is very much like the wood Violone on the Mankato Johnson. We lament the loss of the Pedal 8′ Fagotto in the 1958 rebuild, along with the Great Trumpet and the Swell Cornopean.

In many ways the final result has been surprising. The organ is far more versatile and holds some really lovely combinations and solo voices, yet the room does not help it very much. It is now evident that the introduction of current technology over its life degraded the organ tonally while making it physically easier to play. Even though First Baptist Church sits at the confluence of several freeways and the blower draws in polluted air, the 56-year old leather in the wind chests is still in good condition. The “resurrected” organ should serve this church and the Twin Cities community well for many decades to come.

John Bishop

Why it matters.

An hour ago, I finished my last “Christmas” tuning. It’s been a fun season involving lots of organs—some wonderful, and some a little less wonderful. I started tuning organs in Boston in 1984 when I joined Angerstein & Associates after returning from almost ten years in northern Ohio that included my years as a student at Oberlin, my first marriage, a long stint as director of music at a large Presbyterian church in Cleveland, and my terrific apprenticeship and friendship with Jan G. P. Leek. I still tune quite a few of the organs I first saw when working for Dan Angerstein in 1984—organs that were nearly new then and that have lots of miles on them now. In those churches I’ve outlasted as many as ten organists, five pastors, and who knows how many sextons.

It’s fun to return to these places several times each year, visiting the old friends who work in the buildings and monitoring the condition of the organs. Many of my tuning clients couple with a particular restaurant or sandwich shop. We were disappointed a couple weeks ago in Newburyport, Massachusetts, to see that the favorite sandwich shop near the church had been torn down. A sign indicates that they’ll reopen in a new building in the spring, but I think it will take twenty years to get the place seasoned so things taste right.

I’ve been fortunate over the years to be associated with some very special organs—special because of their size, their musical beauty, or their historical significance. It’s exciting to tune an organ that was played by Marcel Dupré, Lynnwood Farnam, or Pierre Cochereau. And I’ve had the thrill of preparing organs for concerts by such giants as Simon Preston, Madame Duruflé, Catharine Crozier, and Daniel Roth. You sit in the audience waiting for the artist to play that C# in the Swell Clarion you had so much trouble with two hours ago. Hold on, baby, hold on!

Of course, most of those experiences happen in big city churches with rich histories, fabulous artwork, heavy tourist traffic, and outstanding musicians. I’ve always felt it’s a special privilege to work behind the scenes in those monumental places, surrounded by all that heritage. But let’s not forget the importance of the small church with the seemingly inconsequential organ. 

Yesterday, I tuned one of the older Möller unit organs known as The Portable Organ. The opus list of M. P. Möller includes something like 13,500 organs, and while we know plenty of big distinguished instruments built by that firm, by far the most of them were these tiny workhorse organs with two, three, or four ranks. They built them by the thousand, and you find them everywhere. Maybe you’re familiar with the newer Artiste models that have a detached console, and one or two, or even three eight-by-eight-by-four foot cases stuffed full of pipes like a game of Tetris. The model I’m referring to predates that—they were popular in the 1940s, had attached keyboards, and usually three ranks, Spitz Principal (they called them Diapason Conique—oo-la-la), Gedeckt, and Salicional. The ranks were spread around through unit borrowing, each rank playing at multiple pitches, and there were compound stops such as “Quintadena” which combined the Gedeckt at 8′ and the Salicional at 22⁄3′.

The particular instrument I tuned yesterday was originally in a Lutheran church in Bronx, New York. As that parish dissolved a few years ago, the Organ Clearing House moved the organ to another Lutheran church in Queens. There was no budget for renovation, so we simply assembled it, coaxed all the notes to work, gave the case a treatment of lemon oil, and off we went. It had been a year since the last tuning, and it was fun to find that all the notes were working, the tuning had held nicely, and the organ sounded nice. I spent less than an hour tuning the three ranks, chatting with the pastor, and cleaning the keyboards.

When I got home this afternoon, I had a quick lunch and took a look at Facebook to be sure everyone out there was behaving. I was touched to see a post by colleague Michael Morris who works for Parkey OrganBuilders in the Atlanta area. He had just tuned another copy of the same Möller organ and wrote this:

 

It’s not always the quality of the instrument that makes a tuning job enjoyable. For some years now, my last regularly scheduled tuning has been in Georgia’s old capital of Milledgeville. It’s usually a pleasant drive through farm country to get to the antebellum Sacred Heart Church.

This was Flannery O’Connor’s parish, the center of her spiritual life and an influence in her writing. In 1945 Möller delivered a three-rank unit organ and placed it in the heart-pine gallery. It’s not a distinguished instrument, but it’s always easy to tune and I enjoy the thought that this instrument was part of the fabric of her life.

I’m always done just before the parishioners start the Rosary before noon Mass. I have lunch at a Mexican restaurant, then drive back to Atlanta knowing I have put another tuning season behind me.

 

Nice work, Michael. 

Flannery O’Connor (1925–64) was a devout Roman Catholic. After earning a master’s degree at the University of Iowa, she lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, with classics translator Robert Fitzgerald and his wife, Sally. In 1952, O’Connor was diagnosed with lupus (from which her father died in 1941) and returned to her childhood home, Andalusia Farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. 

Her writing is spiritual, reflecting the theory that God is present throughout the created world, and including intense reflections on ethics and morality. The modest little organ in Sacred Heart Church in Milledgeville was present for her whenever she worshipped. On such a personal level, that three-rank organ is every bit as important as the mighty 240-rank Aeolian-Skinner at The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston or the iconic Cavaillé-Coll at Saint-Sulpice in Paris.

How did you get started?

After his ordination as an Episcopal priest, my father was rector of a small church in Somerville, Massachusetts. Subsequently, he was the first rector of a new parish in Westwood, Massachusetts, starting there when it was formed as a mission. I was two years old when we moved into the rectory next to the church building. The church building was designed as a very simple structure, sort of an A-frame with a linoleum floor. It was furnished with folding chairs, so the single room could be used for worship, dinners, and all sorts of other things. A few years later, the planned second phase was executed. An adjoining parish hall was built, and the original building was turned into a proper church with towers, stained glass, pews, and a rear gallery for organ and choir. The organ was also planned in stages. It was one of the first instruments built by Charles Fisk, back in the days when he was of the Andover Organ Company. It had six stops, mechanical action, and a detached-reversed console, all mounted on a six-inch-high platform down front. Get it? It was the console and Rückpositiv of an organ that could be expanded to include two manuals and pedal. When the second phase was under construction, there was a moment when the roof was off—and that’s the moment they moved the organ. They lifted the whole thing with a crane, pipes and all, and placed it in the new balcony. I would have a fit if someone did that with one of my organs today, but seeing that organ hanging from the hook of the crane is one of my earliest pipe organ memories. It was more than twenty years before the second case containing Great and Pedal was built.

When I was ten, we moved to Winchester, Massachusetts, where Dad became rector of the Parish of the Epiphany, home to an Ernest M. Skinner organ built in 1904 (Wow! That’s an early one.), during the time when Robert Hope-Jones was working with Mr. Skinner. I started taking organ lessons a couple years after we got there and was quickly aware that the organ was on its last legs. I didn’t play the Skinner organ much, because less than a year after I started taking lessons, I was playing for money at other churches. That organ was replaced by a twelve-stop Fisk in 1974, their Opus 65. Six additional stops that were “prepared for” were added in 1983. The on-site installation of those stops was under way when Charles Fisk passed away. A 16′ Open Wood was added in 2012.

My organ lessons continued a few blocks away at the First Congregational Church in Winchester, home to Fisk’s Opus 50.¹ During my high school years, I was assistant organist to George Bozeman at the First Congregational Church in neighboring Woburn, Massachusetts, where I played on the fabulous 1860 three-manual E. & G. G. Hook organ, which at 156 years old is still one of the very few remaining pre-Civil War three-manual Hooks. I didn’t know how lucky I was until I got to Oberlin a few years later and started hearing about the organs my classmates got started on.

All my college buddies were terrific organists, but I learned that some of them had never played a pipe organ before their audition at Oberlin. And while I had free access to those glorious organs by Fisk and Hook, some had only ever played on modest electro-pneumatic unit organs. The first time I played a tiny electro-pneumatic pipe organ was in a practice room at Oberlin! But thinking back and knowing that all of them were wonderful organists when they were in high school, I’m sure that thousands of parishioners in those few dozen churches were moved and excited to hear such young people play those organs so beautifully.

 

A matter of scale

Many composers and musicians consider the string quartet one of the purest forms of music-making. The composer working with four musicians and four independent parts is writing intimately and minimally. Each measure, each individual chord is specially voiced and tuned for the moment. There is no blurring of the edges; everything is exposed. Compare that to a symphony orchestra with twenty first violins. Conductors are fond of saying that an instrumental or choral ensemble is only as strong as its weakest member. I’ve always thought that was baloney. It’s a great cheerleading sentiment, but it seems to me that in a twenty-member violin section, the stronger players inspire and encourage their colleagues, helping them to achieve new heights. I’ve led volunteer church choirs whose collective ability far outshone the individual skills and musicianship of the weakest member.

We can draw an analogy with pipe organs. A tiny chamber organ with four or five stops is every bit as beautiful as a big-city monster with two hundred ranks. It’s almost unbelievable that both are called by the same name. When you’re playing a chamber organ, you listen to the speech of each individual pipe, but when you’re whipping through a big toccata with a hundred stops drawn, each four-part chord involves four hundred pipes. There might be an individual stinker in the Swell Clarion (remember, the pipe I was having trouble with), or a zinger in a Mixture that stands out in the crowd, but otherwise, you’re really not listening to individual pipes any more than you single out an individual violist in a Brahms symphony.

If we agree that a tiny chamber organ and a swashbuckling cathedral job are both beautiful organs, we should also agree that they serve different purposes and support different literature. I suppose we should allow that it’s likely to be more effective to play Sweelinck on a hundred stops than Widor on five. But we’re lucky that we still have organs that Sweelinck knew, so we can imagine and even reconstruct how his playing sounded. I don’t know if Widor had much opportunity to hear others play his music, but I bet he wouldn’t have liked hearing “that Toccata” on a small two-manual organ in a two-hundred-seat church.

 

Will it play in Milledgeville?

I’m sure my colleague Michael Morris did a lovely job tuning that little Möller organ. I assume, or I hope that some caring person will be playing lovely music and our favorite Christmas carols on the organ in the next few days. Maybe the congregation will sing “Silent Night” while holding candles, lighting that simple sanctuary with magical twinkling. Maybe that lovely effect will make people’s eyes go moist. Families will go home after Mass, whistling and humming those familiar tunes.

We know that Flannery O’Connor worshipped in that church during bleak moments in her life. There was that first Christmas after she was diagnosed with the disease that killed her father. There was that last Christmas before she died, when she must have been in terrible pain. But there was that organist doing that special thing that adds so much to worship at any time, and on any scale. And the organ was in tune.

One more thing . . . 

I’ve tuned around forty organs in the last month. Some days it seems that all I do is carry my tools back and forth to the car. I’ve seen a ton of Christmas decorations—some gorgeous, and some horribly tacky. The brightly colored life-sized inflatable plastic Nativity scene was the nadir. I expect there will be some snickering going on there on Christmas Eve.

The sacred spaces that are the most worshipful are almost always beautifully kept. There are no ragged stacks of last Sunday’s bulletin, no wastebaskets overflowing with Styrofoam coffee cups, and no inflatable Santas.

Wendy and I worship at Grace Church on lower Broadway in New York. It’s a beautiful Gothic-inspired building with magnificent stained-glass windows, elaborate carvings around the pulpit and choir stalls, a big, shiny brass eagle holding up the lectern, and a fabulous organ built recently by Taylor & Boody. John Boody has a degree in forestry and a special affinity for beautiful wood. I believe that Taylor & Boody is alone among American organbuilders in harvesting trees and milling and curing their own lumber. And the Grace Church organ sure looks it. Intricate enchanting grain patterns abound. The two facing organ cases and the massive freestanding console add their gleam to the place. It’s nice that I’ve never seen a stack of music on the console.

There are lots of organ consoles that look like the day after a fire at a Staples store. Everything from Post-it notes to rubber bands, from cough drops to hair brushes festoon the cabinet. The organ console is a worship space, especially when it’s visible from the pews. I know that the console at your church is your workspace. I know you have to view it and use it as a tool, a workbench—something like a cubicle. But you might think of creating a little bag that contains all your supplies, or installing a neat little hidden shelf to hold your hymnals. I bet your organbuilder would be happy to build you one. 

Please don’t let the state of your organ console intrude on someone’s worship. Every week you’re playing for people who are suffering, scared, sick, or worried. Be sure that everything you do is enhancing their experience of worship. That’s why we’re there. ν

 

Notes

1. On the Fisk website, this organ is referred to as Winchester Old and Opus 65 is Winchester New. Another similarly cute organ nickname belongs to the Bozeman-Gibson organ at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline, Massachusetts—Orgel-brookline.

Viktoria Franken

 

In January 2015, Buzard Pipe Organ Builders dismantled a small practice instrument in an apartment in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (The organ was originally installed on the campus of St. Cloud State College, St. Cloud, Minnesota.) Although nothing seemed to be special up to this point, this instrument is one of several practice/home organs built by Lawrence Phelps & Associates.

The design of this two-manual and pedal instrument served the main idea of an instrument made just for practicing: that of experiencing the direct touch of the keyboards, and the little resistance before the pallet opens. It has a pure and honest “touch” experience for the player, with a simple and traditional design, providing clear music without anything that could take your eyes and ears away. The voicing of course was of its time—“open-toe baroque.” The disposition of the instrument was: Manual I, 8′ Gedeckt and a prepared-for stop; Manual II, 8′ Rohrflute, Octave 2′; Pedal, 8′ Bourdon.

 

The windchest and the trackers

Switching on the organ, still assembled at the former owner’s residence, we heard many ciphers, which could have been caused simply by infrequent use of the instrument. Opening the windchest at the shop, however, showed its real problems. The chest is divided in two manuals, separating each set of pallets with a board drilled out to provide wind-flow. The mechanical design fit a full set of pipes (61 notes) on a chest, but to be able to make the chest as small as possible, led to really tight spacing of the pallet slots. The pallets, made out of cedar, are drilled out to reduce their own weight, and they are pulled down in the middle guided by two pins on each end. They were covered with a thick felt and leather combination and held up to the pallet board with two spiral action springs. Having the pallet slots so close to each other caused the builder to cut the pallets very narrow and almost give them no space on the pallet board to seal. 

Also, the felt and leather had to be cut exactly along the pallet’s edges, because otherwise the pallets would interfere with each other. That caused ciphers and led the people who took care of the instrument to cut even more of the material away, so that some pallets were totally under-cut and not sealing against the pallet slots anymore. The plywood pallet board was uneven, and a lot of pallet guide pins were bent. Our shop stripped all the pallets and glued new felt and leather on, as well as cut them correctly, evened out the surface of the pallet board, and straightened the pins. 

In addition, the whole chest was flooded with glue to make sure there were no run-throughs after finding several cracks in the channel bars where the toeboards were directly attached to the chest. The last modification to make the instrument leak less and make it more silent was switching the old hard plastic seals for neoprene ones, as well as threading the action wire through a drilled-out bullet resting on a felt punching to seal the hole in the pallet box.

The action is historically inspired mechanical tracker, with cedar wood tracker parts, aluminum wires, and plastic nuts. Directly underneath the bottom board is a set of backfalls, directing the movement of the keys to the pallets. To transfer spacing from the keyboard to the pallets, the backfalls are oriented fan-like. It is a 1:1 proportion comparing the pallet travel to the key travel (11 mm). All the damaged cedar backfalls have been restored conserving as much of the original material as possible. The backfalls themselves are pivoted in (at that time popular) low-friction “Wienerkapsel” axle holders. [“Wienerkapsel” is a term for a certain design of axle holders.] The pedal chest, being larger, is located at the bottom of the organ and serves as a foundation for the rest of the instrument. It had fewer issues than the manual chest.  Nevertheless, all pallet surfaces were renewed to guarantee proper working since it is almost impossible to get to these once everything is assembled.

 

The coupling system

Although the organ was designed to be very small overall, Phelps made the console normal size, putting in two 61-note manuals and three couplers (I/P, II/P, II/I). The coupling action also looks to be a standard console with iron frames, iron bevels, levers, and pistons. It uses slotted one-armed backfalls in the frame to catch the aluminum and plastic-nut tracker wires. Unfortunately, calculating the travels of each coupler in combination with the travel of the key and the pallet was not compatible with the small organ design and the console dimensions. That caused a heavy impact upon the rollerboards as well as on the coupling mechanism. All rollerboard parts had to be re-glued because they literally got “kicked out” of place. After recalculating, adjusting and modifying travels, and relocating the bevel points for the backfalls, everything now works as well as it can. All the couplers are playable now, unlike before when notes pulled through or even did not play.

 

The wind system

The blower was sitting in a box on top of the reservoir and right underneath the toeboard for the low octaves of the 8′ Gedeckt and 8′ Rohrflute. There was no way to oil the blower or fix something on the reservoir. So after removing the blower box from the organ, the pedal and manual reservoirs received new leather, and the rhombus springs were adjusted to give them more space to be effective than before (they were so compressed they had no function at all). The blower was serviced and mounted in a new blower box, which sits right next to the case. (The new blower box was made to hold a larger blower, if the organ’s next owner wants to add a 16′ Bourdon to the Pedal.) That makes more space inside, and provides for better maintenance of the blower.

 

The stops

As mentioned earlier, the organ had an 8′ Gedeckt stop and a preparation on Manual I and an 8′ Rohrflute and 2′ Octave on Manual II. The prepared stop for future addition was covered by a board. We took the opportunity to add a 4′ Kleinflute, so that the organist will have more registration possibilities. Only the 4′ and 2′ are on sliders, because the 8′ toeboards are glued directly onto the chest and play all the time. We renewed the stop action parts completely, making new sliders and their actions as well as new seals underneath the 2′ and the newly made 4′ toeboards. Two new hand-turned drawknobs represent on the outside that things have changed. Originally the low octaves of the 8′ stops were tubed off the chest onto a toeboard above the blower box. At some point in the organ’s history, revoicing of the low octaves of the 8′ stops was attempted to make them louder. That caused all kinds of wind flow problems and resulting voicing instability. The only proper way to fix that problem (given the small amount of wind flow from the chest and the too high cut-ups of the pipes) was to build a pneumatic firing-chest, which gets the note impulse from the manual chest, but plays the pipes from wind produced by the pedal reservoir. The pneumatic firing-chest found a place underneath the low octave toeboard, in the former blower box space.

 

The pipework

Being a “child of its time,” the organ’s metal pipes are spotted metal, with open toes and narrow flues but surprisingly large scales, which is not typically baroque, but makes it possible to use the instrument as a house organ without having a screaming 2′ directly in your face. Fortunately there was not too much to do to the pipes, since they were in good condition. Except for some dents, which we removed, nothing really looked too bad. The temperament is equal and A=440 Hz. The Gedackt 8′ voicing was bad. In the attempt to revoice it, pipes were cut up really high to get more volume, not taking into account the lack of wind provided by the chest thanks to the long tubing. The Gedackt 8′ was turned into a 4′ by moving all the pipes down an octave, putting an addition of twelve treble pipes on top, and storing the low octave pipes in a basement, where they were luckily found while moving the instrument to the shop. By putting in the new firing chests, the voicing issues are fixed now; the pipes play on higher pressure than before, helping the high cut-up and therefore bringing the old 8′ back.

Now this instrument provides you with the basic practice conditions as originally intended, and with the new Kleinflute 4′ you have more possibilities for sound and registration variety. There is also the ability to add a 16′ Bourdon in the Pedal if desired.

 

In conclusion

We can honestly say every wire, every pallet, even every single little action nut and all the other smaller and bigger parts have been disassembled, checked for proper work, renewed, or restored. Every inch of the instrument has been worked on without changing what it is—a practice organ. All technical issues were improved as much as possible. We put a lot of passion in this little instrument to make it the practice organ it deserves to be, to show its character and personality. Almost 30 years after Mr. Phelps built it, it is now more ready than ever before to be played without losing the spirit Mr. Phelps designed it for. If you want a glimpse of its sound, visit our website www.buzardorgans.com/for-sale/. Now it is waiting for someone who will fall in love with it and take it home! ν