Cover Feature: American Institute of Organbuilders celebrates 50 years

Franklin Ashdown

Franklin Ashdown, physician, organist, and composer, died January 30 in El Paso, Texas. Born May 2, 1942, in Logan, Utah, he started playing the piano at an early age and was called to be the organist for his ward of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints at age 13. After his family moved to Lubbock, Texas, he began organ studies with Judson Maynard. He completed his undergraduate work at Texas Tech University in Lubbock, where he sang in the concert choir. Pursuing his passion for medicine, he attended Southwestern Medical School of the University of Texas in Dallas. He was in Parkland Memorial Hospital in Dallas when President John F. Kennedy was shot and brought into the emergency room, where Ashdown was recruited to be a liaison between reporters and doctors.

Ashdown spent his medical residency in Salt Lake City, and he spoke later of the great influence Tabernacle Organist Alexander Schreiner had on him. He felt that the signature sound of the Tabernacle organ and the sonorities Schreiner was able to exploit in his improvisations greatly affected his writing. Ashdown also studied organ in Utah with James Drake, who encouraged him to begin composing.  

This was also the time of the Vietnam War, and Ashdown was able to defer being drafted until he completed his medical training. In order to fulfill his military obligations, he was assigned as a doctor to Holloman Air Force Base in Alamogordo, New Mexico, in 1971. He started his own medical practice as an internist in 1973, serving as physician in Alamogordo until his retirement in 2008.

For many years Ashdown was organist and choir director at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Alamogordo. Even during his busy medical years, he was composing. Upon his retirement, he was able to focus his full-time attention on composing organ and choral works. His organ works include many hymn and folk tune arrangements and also numerous original concert works. Over his career he had published more than 250 pieces for solo organ, at least 30 collections of organ music, 15 works for organ with other instruments, and 50 choral works with Augsburg Fortress, Concordia Publishing House, Gentry Publications, GIA Publications, H. W. Gray, Wayne Leupold Editions, Lorenz, MorningStar Music Publishers, Neil Kjos Co., Oregon Catholic Press, The Organist’s Companion, Oxford University Press, Paraclete Press, Sacred Music Press, and Zimbel Press.  

His works were performed in venues such as Grace Cathedral, San Francisco; The Tabernacle at Temple Square, Salt Lake City; St. Paul’s Cathedral, London; and Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris. They have also been featured on American Public Radio’s Pipedreams, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered, and the Tabernacle Choir’s weekly broadcast Music and the Spoken Word.

Franklin Ashdown is survived by six siblings as well as 27 nieces and nephews and 101 great-nieces and nephews. Services were held February 4 at The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Alamogordo.

Margo Halsted

Margo Halsted died February 22. Born Margo Armbruster on April 24, 1938, in Bakersfield, California, she was first introduced to the carillon as an undergraduate student at Stanford University. From Stanford she earned a bachelor’s degree in music (1960) and a master’s degree in education (1965). In 1975 she earned a Master of Music degree from the University of California Riverside. Halsted passed the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America (GCNA) carillonneur examination at the 1967 congress in Ottawa, Canada, and earned a diploma from the Netherlands Carillon School, Amersfoort, in 1981. She was active within the GCNA over many years, serving as assistant secretary, a member of the board of directors, chair of several committees, and editor of the guild’s newsletter. Halsted was awarded honorary membership in the GCNA and twice received the GCNA’s Certificate for Exceptional Service. She was also awarded the University of California Berkeley Medal, Bell and Citation Awards from the World Carillon Federation, and was an honorary member of the Belgian Carillon School, Mechelen.

Over the course of her career, Halsted served as associate carillonneur for Stanford University, 1967–1977; lecturer, university organist, and carillonist for University of California Riverside, 1977–1987; assistant professor and later associate professor at the University of Michigan, 1987–2003; with additional service at Michigan State University and University of California Santa Barbara, teaching more than 200 students to play the carillon. At the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, she taught and performed on the university’s two carillons in the only master’s degree program for carillon in the United States. She was named Associate Professor Emerita in 2003.

Halsted concertized around the world, consulted for carillon projects in the United States and abroad, and lectured/presented at five World Carillon Federation conventions. She composed music for the carillon and published numerous articles about the instrument and served as contributing editor for the carillon for The Diapason from 1981 until 1991.

Margo Halsted was preceded in death by two weeks by her husband Peter LeSourd. Memorial gifts for may be made to the Armbruster Fund, an endowment that she started to benefit the University of Michigan’s carillon program (https://donate.umich.edu/XVjKB).

Jan Reagan Rowland

Jan Reagan Rowland died January 18 in Houston, Texas. He was born in Beaumont, Texas, in 1944, attended local schools there, and enrolled at Lamar University in Beaumont, where he studied electrical engineering and enrolled in German language classes. He completed two years of study before being called into the United States Army and serving from 1966 to 1968, where his expertise in speaking German earned him an assignment in Munich, Germany. It was there that he met his future wife, Hanne, and they were married in Berlin in 1969.

As his tour of duty in the army was nearing its end, the United States representative for E. F. Walcker & Cie. of Ludwigsburg, Germany, suggested that Rowland take a job at Walcker so that he could become more useful as a skilled organ installer once he returned to the United States. Rowland worked at Walcker for 35 days in July and August of 1968, then returned to the United States, where two Walcker jobs awaited installation: one in Michigan, the other at Colby College, Waterville, Maine. While in Waterville, Rowland learned of another installation happening at the First Congregational Church in the same town and made a visit to the church, where he met David W. Cogswell, the owner/president of Berkshire Organ Company. Cogswell telephoned Rowland early in 1969 with an offer of a job as factory manager of Berkshire, which Rowland accepted, and within a couple of months he was named executive vice president.

Discussions between Rowland, Cogswell, and others about the costs of travel to Europe to meet with organbuilders germinated the idea of an organization of organ building individuals, not companies, and resulted in a convention with no title in Washington, D.C. That gathering in 1973 became the founding of the American Institute of Organbuilders. As an attendee of that convention, Rowland was considered a co-founder of the organization and was designated a charter member.

Later in 1973, concerned about the slow growth of the Berkshire Organ Company, Rowland decided to form his own company with Pieter Visser, who was hired by Berkshire only four months earlier. Houston, Texas, was chosen as the site for the new company, Visser-Rowland Associates.

The company grew as Houston expanded in the 1970s and 1980s, with oil companies creating more jobs and with more churches being built. For the next eleven years, Visser-Rowland built dozens of pipe organs for sites from Maine to California. One of the last instruments before Rowland’s retirement from the firm was built for Bates Recital Hall at the University of Texas at Austin. At the time, it was the largest mechanical-action organ pipe organ built by a United States firm, having 67 stops.

Rowland was accepted into membership of the International Society of Organ Builders in 1984, and he became a member of the editorial board of the society’s information trade journal, for which he wrote articles on various organbuilding techniques. He often translated articles and speeches of other organbuilders from German into English. He was invited to Europe over two dozen times to the annual International Society of Organbuilders congresses due to his expertise.

In 1984 Rowland started his own shop producing custom drawknobs for many organbuilders in America, Europe, and Japan. However, his real enjoyment came from designing and building special tools and machines for different organbuilders, tools and machines that could not be bought elsewhere.

Rowland was perhaps best known for his intelligence and ability to imagine, invent, and make things work better and more efficiently. He was internationally respected for his designing of a computerized lathe for completing tasks such as shaping drawknobs for pipe organs. This enabled pipe organ builders to cut costs enormously by reducing labor and time, making tens of thousands of hours of tedium and templates obsolete through his inventions. Rowland constructed some of these computerized systems for pipe organ companies in Europe, filling the cargo hold on a plane to ship the devices overseas.

Rowland enjoyed attending the American Institute of Organbuilders convention every year with his wife, Hanne. He was proud that the AIO stayed in business and attracted and taught organbuilders to help each other and keep organbuilding an interesting and unusual business.

Jan Reagan Rowland is survived by Hanne, his wife of 54 years, of Houston, and a sister Karen Rowland Richardson and her husband Ronnie of Beaumont, Texas. A military burial with full honors was held at the Houston National Cemetery on January 30.

—Hanne Rowland

Karen Rowland Richardson

Christopher Lavoie

Lost arts

The stone carvings in an ancient cathedral, the sparkles of light on Rembrandt’s tunic, the deep colors of a Tiffany lampshade, the intricacies of a Renaissance tapestry. These are all experiences available to us as we travel to ancient sites and visit museums. They are living testaments to the skills of artists and artisans, expressing their visions, observations, and thoughts in physical media. Did Rembrandt mix his paints from gathered materials as observed in artworks already old when he viewed them? Did he know that his paints would retain their colors and stay on the canvas for 350 years? Visit a modern artists’ supply store, and you will find rack upon rack of tubes of pre-mixed paints from different manufacturers. Do they expect that their products will last on canvas until the year 2352? Do the artists who buy and work with those paints trust that a glimmer of light on the nose of a subject will beguile viewers three centuries from now?

We play and listen to centuries-old organs, experiencing the same lively sounds that musicians and congregations heard over 600 years ago. We marvel at the monumental organ cases, knowing that they were built without the aid of electric milling machines. Perhaps some of us have tried to saw a board from a log by hand. I have. I can tell you it is hard work; it is tricky to produce a board that is anything like straight; and it takes a long time. We read that eighteenth-century organs took eight or ten years to build. Even so, Arp Schnitger (1648–1719) produced ninety-five new organs, forty-eight of which survive. Multiply that by the number of boards sawn by hand—case panels, toeboards, rackboards, keyboards, stop action traces, and hundreds of thousands of trackers. That many organs is a significant life’s work for a modern organ builder. And remember, delivering a pipe organ in those days involved oxcarts and rutted dirt (or mud) roads. Or did Mr. Schnitger set up a workshop in each church, casting metal and soldering pipes on site? That would simplify the logistics.

Something like 2,500 “Hook” organs were built between 1827 and 1927 by E. & G. G. Hook, E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings, and Hook & Hastings. Organs were shipped from the workshops in Boston to churches below the Mason-Dixon Line before the Civil War, to California, and throughout the Midwest. By then, steam ferries and railroads were available to make shipments easier—the tracks ran right into the workshop. During the same period, builders like Henry Erben, George Hutchings, George Stevens, and George Jardine, among many others, combined to build thousands of organs across the United States. With the introduction of electricity to pipe organ keyboard and stop actions, Skinner, Möller, Austin, Schantz, Kimball, and others combined to build as many as 2,500 new pipe organs a year in American churches during the 1920s.

Here’s to the crabgrass, here’s to the mortgage . . . .

So sang Allen Sherman in his 1963 smash hit recording, My Son the Nut, the same album that included “Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh. . . .” The song was about the migration from cities to suburbs in the 1950s: “walk the dog and cut the grass, take the kids to dancing class, Jim’s little league got beat again.”1 During the 1950s and 1960s, suburban churches blossomed. The populations of towns surrounding Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago, New York, and countless other cities exploded. Twenty years ago, I served a church as music director in a suburb of Boston that never had more than 2,000 residents until the circumnavigating commuter highway Route 128 (now I-95) was built around 1960. Within ten years, there were 15,000 residents, and the little country Congregational church built an impressive new sanctuary with an extensive parish house and a three-manual organ.

Many if not most of those powerful suburban congregations commissioned new pipe organs. Where I grew up, the ubiquitous New England town square had two or three competing churches. One town near home had two three-manual Hook organs built in 1860 and 1870. Another had three Aeolian-Skinners. And by the time I graduated from high school, my hometown had two organs by Charles Fisk, one of which has its fiftieth anniversary this year.

A new wave

Through the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, hundreds of American churches committed to commissioning new organs built by “boutique” builders of tracker organs, many of which replaced impressive and valuable electro-pneumatic-action organs. Of course, many of those organs had in turn replaced impressive and important nineteenth-century organs. The Andover Organ Company, then led by Charles Fisk, was among the first of the new wave of organ companies. Charles Fisk spun off to start what became C. B. Fisk, Inc., along with the founding of, in no particular order, eponymous organ companies such as Noack, Roche, Brombaugh, Bozeman-Gibson, Bedient, Taylor & Boody, Dobson, Visser-Rowland, and Jaeckel. Casavant started building tracker organs and firms like Wilhelm, Wolff, and Létourneau spun off from there in the following years.

As some of the “older” new firms began “aging out,” a new wave of impressive companies came along such as Juget-Sinclair, Richards, Fowkes & Co., and Paul Fritts, and companies like Nichols & Simpson and the revitalized Schoenstein & Co. started building new electro-pneumatic-action organs of high quality inspired both by the electric-action masterpieces of the early twentieth century and by, I believe, the increasingly high standards of the boutique organ movement. Toward the end of the twentieth century, American organbuilding was a vital, if small industry producing beautiful instruments of all descriptions at a rapid rate.

American organbuilders gathered in Washington, DC, in September 1973 to discuss formation of a new professional organization that would take the name American Institute of Organbuilders. This purpose statement was published in the program book for that gathering:

• to be the first such convention in recent times in North America and to be a model for future conventions of this type to be held regularly;

• to promote the exchange of principles and ideas among established organbuilders to aid in the improvement of the instrument while lowering its costs and ensuring the security of our future;

• to educate ourselves in potential new technologies and construction procedures, some of which are being employed by other industries and arts but perhaps not yet fully realized and exploited by organbuilders;

• to provide the many suppliers of organ parts and materials, many of which are new to our field, with the opportunity to display and demonstrate their developments and ideas where many builders may jointly view and discuss these products;

• to study some general business problems of concern to the organ industry, and to propose courses of action that might be taken by organbuilders, both individually and collectively, to alleviate these concerns;

• to enable social exchanges between organbuilders and their families; to provide families of organbuilders with the opportunity to share in the appreciation of the greater glories of the profession through mutual enjoyment of a convention environment and its program of entertainment designed for all.

The last decades of the twentieth century were very productive for American organbuilding, and we must not forget the vast number of European organs imported to the United States. E. Power Biggs famously purchased an organ from Flentrop that was installed in the Busch-Reisinger Museum (now Busch Hall) at Harvard University in 1957. He made it instantly famous with his fabulously successful series of recordings, Bach: Great Organ Favorites. Many of my friends and colleagues, myself included, cite those recordings as influential to devoting a lifetime to organbuilding. That organ was followed by a flood of Flentrops crossing the Atlantic, a wave greatly advanced by Fenner Douglas, professor of organ at Oberlin in the 1960s and early 1970s, whose influence led to at least dozens of Flentrops installed in American churches and universities, notably those at Oberlin College and Duke University. Also in 1957, Trinity Lutheran Church in Cleveland, Ohio, installed a four-manual, sixty-five-rank Beckerath organ, three years before the monumental five-manual Beckerath organ was installed at Saint Joseph’s Oratory in Montreal.

As the twentieth century came to a close, a significant decline in church attendance was well underway. Churches continue to close at an increasing rate. And toward the end of the last century, there was a dip of interest in playing the organ. When I was a student at Oberlin in the 1970s, there were over fifty organ majors in four bustling studios. Fifteen years later, there were fewer than ten. Several colleges and universities closed their organ departments, churches with traditionally active music programs began having trouble filling empty jobs, and for a while things were looking pretty grim for the American pipe organ.

I am carving time into rough blocks for my own convenience, but as the twenty-first century got underway, a fresh wave of brilliant young organists appeared. Stephen Tharp and Ken Cowan, now in their late forties and early fifties, led the pack forging virtuosic concert careers. They were followed in no particular order by Paul Jacobs, Isabelle Demers, Nathan Laube, Katelyn Emerson, and many others, raising the art of organ playing to unprecedented heights. Concurrently, especially following economic lows following 9/11 and the near collapse of the American economy in 2008, noticeably fewer churches embarked on expensive organ renovation or new organ projects. Many of us in the organbuilding trade wondered silently and increasingly out loud if we were heading toward the end of the pipe organ industry.

Convention

The American Institute of Organbuilders held its annual convention in Atlantic City, New Jersey, October 8–12, 2022. More than 300 members gathered in a convention hotel there to be immersed in the work of the Historic Organ Restoration Committee that is more than halfway through the herculean task of restoring the legendary Boardwalk Hall organ with seven manuals and 449 ranks. Built by Midmer-Losh, Inc., between 1929 and 1932 (Opus 5550), the Boardwalk Hall organ is the largest in the world, not by ranks (The Wanamaker Organ has more), but with 33,112 pipes. Many of the ranks have eighty-five pipes or more. The committee is about eight years into the project and anticipates completion in 2030. I will bet we will have another convention there then. (See the cover feature for this organ in the November 2020 issue.)

A convention of the AIO typically includes a lot of time riding buses to see organs throughout an area. Because of the huge attraction at the center of this convention, we had just one day of bus travel to visit three marvelous organs in the Philadelphia area: C. B. Fisk, Inc., Opus 150 (2016) at Christ Church, Episcopal, Philadelphia; Aeolian-Skinner Opus 948 (1936) at St. Mark’s Church, Episcopal, Philadelphia; and the instrument by Kegg Pipe Organ Builders (2014) at Bryn Athyn Cathedral, Bryn Athyn, Pennsylvania. These are three very different and very distinguished organs, all beautifully demonstrated, and all terrific examples of the art of American organbuilding. At the convention hotel, perhaps the only large hotel in Atlantic City that does not boast a casino, we heard lectures about the history of the Boardwalk Hall organ, the economics of refurbishing rather than replacing damaged old organ pipes, and the art of structuring a contract to define an organ project, among others. Nathan Laube, the brilliant recitalist and teacher I mentioned earlier, lectured organbuilders about his ideal of the modern organ console—his conclusion, keep it simple.

In the past, I have written in detail about the organs we heard after attending a convention. This time, I want to celebrate the trade. I have related an off-the-cuff bird’s eye view of American organbuilding over the past century to put in context what I am observing now. In addition to our work aiding the sales of vintage pipe organs and dismantling those organs to be delivered to workshops for renovation, the Organ Clearing House is privileged to work with many of our admired companies, assisting with the shipping, hoisting, assembly, and installation of their new organs. This allows us intimate exposure to the methods and practices of a variety of firms and close associations with their largest organs.

While varying styles of worship and the proliferation of digital instruments has consumed much of the market for simple pipe organs, it is clear that we are in an age of monumental new instruments. Noack, Fritts, Fisk, Schoenstein, Richards, Fowkes, Létourneau, Buzard, and Parsons, among others, have built exceptional new organs in the last five years. All of them carry forth the 500-year tradition of organbuilding, many aided by Computer Numerical Control (CNC) routers. These expensive but efficient machines use computer programs to interpret an organbuilder’s drawings to produce repetitive parts automatically, to drill windchest tables, to make toeboards, rackboards, skyracks, and countless other organ parts with precise perfection. Ten years ago, only a few shops had them, now some have two that grind along in the corner of a shop while the organbuilders are free to do the interpretive work that a machine cannot do.

A couple important firms have recently closed. After a century of work and producing more than 2,500 organs, the Reuter Organ Company in Lawrence, Kansas, stopped most operations on December 1. While they remained profitable until the end, as the senior staff reached retirement age, other administrative staff chose not to step in to continue the business. The closure of August Laukhuff GmbH, a huge and important organ supply firm in Weikersheim, Germany, is having a profound effect on American companies. Many organbuilders have long relied on Laukhuff for organ blowers, electric parts like slider motors and pull-down magnets, keyboards, polished façade pipes, action chassis, and countless other widgets essential to the trade. Other firms are working to fill in the gaps, but this remains an important loss.

The AIO has a relatively new tradition of having a special dinner for members under thirty years old. Since the conventions in 2020 and 2021 were postponed because of covid, this year’s dinner included all members under forty, and there were more than thirty in attendance. I was thrilled to realize that in a trade heavily populated by older people, more than ten percent of those attending this convention were under forty. I had wonderful conversations with many of them and was heartened by their excitement and commitment to continuing the art.

This year’s AIO Convention was particularly high-spirited with enthusiasm for our trade abounding. Nathan Bryson, convention chair and curator of the Boardwalk Hall organ, was an enthusiastic and welcoming host. His excitement for his job is evident in the attitudes of the members of the Historic Organs Restoration Committee, both staff and volunteers. My many conversations with our younger colleagues were highpoints of the week for me. I was happy to hear their enthusiasm about their work. Some newcomers to the trade expressed to me their amazement at the rich history of the organ and the complexities of building, restoring, and repairing them. A couple of the younger participants were in the process of starting new workshops, and their excitement was infectious. Many of the younger members are women, bringing lively diversity to our gathering.

Whenever I am with colleague organbuilders, I hear stories of how they got interested in the organ when they were kids, how the first years of learning piqued their interest enough to devote their lives to the trade. I love comparing notes about solving problems. I love hearing about new materials, methods, machinery, and tools that save time and money, and I love the comeradery of spending time with like-minded people.

Above all, I celebrate what seems to be a bright future for American organbuilding. Churches are investing in large expensive projects, and many of our colleague firms have years of contracted work spreading ahead of them. Perhaps most important, I believe that American organ playing is the best it has ever been. As long as there are brilliant, compelling musicians to play on the instruments we build, there will always be new organs to build. Keep working hard, my friends. ν

Notes

1. In fact, the couple singing that song winds up fleeing the suburbs to return to the city: “Back to the crush there, hurry let us rush there, back to the rat race, don’t forget your briefcase, back to the groove there, say, why don’t we move there, away from all this sweet simplicity.”

September 2024 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the chartering of the American Institute of Organbuilders (AIO), a unique organization that has had a transformative effect on American organbuilding.

The “First North American Organbuilders’ Convention” took place in Washington, D.C., September 2–5, 1973. 110 people attended. The second convention, held in September 1974 in Dayton, Ohio, adopted a constitution and bylaws, signed by thirty-eight charter members, and elected a board of directors.

The stated purpose of the American Institute of Organbuilders was and still is: “To advance the science and practice of pipe organbuilding by discussion, inquiry, research, experiment, and other means; to disseminate knowledge regarding pipe organbuilding by such means as lectures, publications, and exchange of information; to establish an organized training program for organbuilders, leading to examinations and certifications of degree of proficiency.”

The AIO website (www.pipeorgan.org) has detailed information about the AIO, its activities, and a directory of its members for the public to view. There is also a members’ section, accessible by password, which contains PDF files of back issues of the Journal, the Organbuilder’s Reference Handbook, and the Online Technical Resource.

The AIO invests in outreach to attract and educate the next generation of American organbuilders and organists. Each year, convention scholarships are awarded to young aspiring organbuilders to encourage them to grow into the profession and the AIO.

The American Institute of Organbuilders anniversary celebration is featured in the September 2024 issue of The Diapason: 
https://www.thediapason.com/content/cover-feature-american-institute-organbuilders-celebrates-50-years

For information: www.pipeorgan.org

A. E. Schlueter Pipe Organ Company, Lithonia, Georgia; 50th Anniversary

We are privileged to be celebrating our 50th anniversary and are thankful for the organ work that has been entrusted to the company. This past December we held our Christmas luncheon with many of our staff, supporters, and friends, and offered a prayer of thanksgiving for our success and all who have sustained us. It is humbling to be celebrating this milestone in work that supports worship.

The A. E. Schlueter Pipe Organ Company was founded by Arthur (“Art”) E. Schlueter, Jr. In his youth Art met an English organ builder who befriended him and introduced him to church organs, theatre organs, and taught him how to rebuild the bellows on a pump organ at his church. He later took Art on as a part-time employee during his high school years, where he continued learning pipe organ maintenance and tuning.

After his high school graduation Art pursued a college education by obtaining degrees in education and education administration. He later moved to Atlanta, Georgia, to work in accreditation for the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). Art continued organ tuning and repairs on the side (once an organ man, always an organ man). Having recognized that pipe organs were his real passion and required his full attention, Art changed his role at SACS to part-time consulting and eventually left SACS to work in the pipe organ field full time.

Founding of the company

Our company history began in 1973 when Art applied for an official business license as an organbuilder. The motto of the company was established as “Soli Deo Gloria” and incorporated into the company logo. This admonition has continued to remind us of the importance of our work and is engraved on all of our consoles.

In the early years of the firm, in addition to our tuning and maintenance work, we provided representation and installation services for a major pipe organ manufacturer. Our company quickly grew to maintain organs for more than 100 clients. Pivotally, during this early period, the firm started to undertake rebuilding and expansion of extant instruments under its own name. Being a rebuilder and maintenance company had the importance of exposing the firm to organbuilding across a broad spectrum of styles­—tonally, mechanically, and temporally. It could truthfully be said that the greatest impact on who we became as an organbuilder was the foundation provided by those who came before us. With great pride we consider that such renowned firms as Skinner Organ Company, Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, M. P. Möller, Hook & Hastings, Geo. Kilgen & Son, and Henry Pilcher’s Sons were, and are, our teachers.

The initial business location was in the basement of Art’s Atlanta home. From these humble beginnings, the business gradually outgrew successive temporary and rented buildings until 1988, when the current complex was begun. It has been expanded three times to its current 22,000 square feet of space. The facilities of our firm include a modern woodworking shop, a voicing room, a drafting and engineering room, and a spacious warehouse area that houses the computer numeric controlled (CNC) machine, storage, and erecting room.

As the company grew, all of Art’s five children had the opportunity to work in the business. From age five, the oldest of Art’s children, Arthur E. Schlueter III (“Arthur”), had been offered the opportunity to hold notes while tuning and go out on service calls. Arthur recalled: “As a family business, the pipe organ was part of our lives. Where most people had a formal dining room, this room housed a pipe organ. Where most people had a family room, we had a two-manual pipe organ console, and a basement with a pipe organ blower and relays.” Much as his father had worked on pipe organs during high school, so it was the same for Arthur. While Art’s other children went on to other vocations, Arthur considered this as his career, but it was important to him to leave the business for college and reinforce that it was the right decision. While pursuing a bachelor’s degree in marketing, he continued to keep a hand in music with organ and piano lessons and classes in music and music theory. As he states, after having been away from the company, “when I graduated in 1990 there was clarity that my place was at the family firm and that there was a very strong vocation not only to work on pipe organs but to build them under the family name.”

Building Schlueter pipe organs

This came to fruition when, not long after joining the firm, Art and Arthur made the decision to cease representation for others and to begin building pipe organs under the A. E. Schlueter name. It was important to decide who we were and how we would define our business. What developed was a philosophy to “build instruments that have warmth not at the expense of clarity, and clarity not at the expense of warmth, and to serve God in our efforts.” This philosophy encapsulated our tonal vision while reminding us who we serve in our work.

In addition to building new pipe organs, our business builds custom replacement organ consoles and has provided additions for a large number of extant pipe organs. The consoles built by our firm have included traditional drawknob, terraced drawknob, tablet, and horseshoe styles. This custom work ranged from one manual to five manuals in size.

As a major rebuilder, our firm has rebuilt numerous instruments built by companies long since passed and many by firms currently in business. The same quality and ethics we use in organbuilding are employed in organ rebuilding. Traditional materials and methods assure that the intent of the original builder is maintained. When tasked by our clients, our firm can be sensitive to preserving instruments as originally installed without any alteration. With discernment, we are also willing to consult on changes that can expand the tonal capabilities of the organ.

Some of our historically sympathetic rebuilding projects have included restoration of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century mechanical-action instruments. The ongoing restoration of the four-manual, 74-rank Möller/Holtkamp and three-manual, 36-rank Möller/Holtkamp organs at the United States Air Force Academy Protestant and Catholic chapels is being carefully documented, and both organs are being restored without any major changes or alterations.

The instruments built by our company will have a lifespan beyond our own, and this guides our emphasis on quality and long-term durability of our components and methods. In addition to the visual and aural beauty of the pipe organ, we maintain that there is beauty in the choices of joinery and the materials such as wood, metal, glues, screws, springs, and leather. Because we started as a service company, we have extensive experience in rebuilding and maintaining instruments from differing builders, periods, and building styles. This has given us the distinct advantage of knowing what materials and engineering used in organbuilding have worked well and what to avoid in our own organbuilding and rebuilding, which allows us to choose the best materials and methods.

To provide the highest quality, all of the major components and assemblies used in the building of instruments, organ additions, consoles, and organ cases are built in our facility. Our firm has invested in the future with the implementation of computer assisted design (CAD) and CNC machines. This technology allows the visualization of the instrument and its components prior to building, with accuracy measured in thousandths of an inch. The ability to maintain these tolerances is unparalleled in organbuilding history.

What is a Schlueter pipe organ?

First, we would say that each organ has its own identity. If you hear one of our instruments, it will be unique; we strongly believe it should be designed to serve the worship needs and the acoustic that it lives in. Every instrument needs not to be a rote expansion of the last instrument built, but an informed design based upon dialogue with our clients and personal experience of their worship. There are threads that are common to our work—while not a definitive blueprint, a good study example would be the three-manual, 51-rank instrument built for Bethel United Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina. This organ was very formative to all of the organs that have come after it and included the building blocks of the instruments that came before it. (The organ was featured on the cover of the April 2005 issue of The Diapason. To view the stoplist: https://pipe-organ.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Bethel-UMC-reprint-web.pdf)

As we started this commission, it began with multiple site visits and, importantly, attendance in their worship services. There are and always will be the subtle and not-so-subtle differences in churches’ worship styles and acoustics with buildings full of congregants. As a builder we feel that it is incumbent upon us to experience the worship with our own eyes and ears and then really listen to how our client will use the organ and its role in their worship. This is the only way to refine a stoplist and scale sheets into a cogent amalgam that will allow us to design, voice, and tonally finish an instrument that truly serves the vision of the church we are working for. We have always tried to remember that the ears we are given aren’t only for listening to pipes but also the needs, aspirations, and wishes of those who commission our work.

With shared worship and dialogue with the client, we developed an eclectic specification with roots in American Classicism and Romanticism. Of utmost concern in our tonal design was support for the choir and congregation. To this end, all divisions of the organ were designed around an 8-foot chorus structure. There are independent principal and flute choruses in each division that, while separate, are relatable and act as a foil one to another. The upperwork in the organ is designed to fold within and reinforce the chorus and not to sit above it. We very much wanted the chorus registration to be a hand-in-glove fit. This would be an instrument that would fully support the choral and congregational worship needs and also have the resources to support music from a wide breadth of periods and national styles.

The pipework makes use of varied scales, a mix of shapes (open, slotted, tapered, harmonic, stoppered, chimneyed), and materials to influence the color and weight differences in the organ flue stops. We were also careful in the placement of ranks in the chamber so that they had the best advantage for speech. The wind pressures on this instrument vary in range from four to eighteen inches.

As with most of the instruments we have built, we consider the strings and their companion celestes important for their sheer beauty and emotive quotient. (And yes, there should be more than one set!) This organ has sets of string ranks divided between the Swell and Choir divisions that can be compounded via couplers to build a string organ. Along with the color reeds, these stops support the romantic sound qualities that were designed into this instrument.

Along with the independent Pedal registers necessary to support a contrapuntal inner voice, we included a number of manual-to-pedal duplexes to bolster and weight the Pedal division.

In addition to the ensemble and woodwind class reeds in the Swell and Choir, there are a number of high-pressure solo reeds (8′ French Horn, 16′/8′ Tromba Heroique, and 8′ English Tuba). They are located in the Choir expression box to allow control of these powerful sounds. As it relates to the pipework, the expression fronts are carried the full width and height of the expression boxes and can fully open to ninety degrees. Our expression boxes are built extra thick and feature overlapping felted edges with forty stages of expression. This treatment allows a minimum of tonal occlusion of a division’s resources when fully open and full containment and taming of the resources when closed. Even the commanding solo reeds can be used as ensemble voices when the box is closed.

In studying the previous instrument, we found that through divisional shifting of resources, along with revoicing, repitching, and/or rescaling, some of the pipework could and should be retained. This is an important consideration that we give gravity to in all of our work. We considered the gifts that were required to build an instrument in this church in the first place. The generous people who gave these gifts should have every hope and wish that their gifts continue to be honored. We cannot say it enough, a consideration for stewardship is important in instrument building.

We have long believed that our work truly is a partnership between our company and the churches we work with. Over the years we have been gifted hundreds of ranks of pipework from churches that have merged, closed, or that have had changes in worship style. To attempt to exemplify “Soli Deo Gloria,” the Schlueter family has always added additional stops to every organ we have built, and many that we have rebuilt. As a way of thanks and in the form of a tithe, these additions have allowed the resources of our clients to be amplified and the organs to have a richer and more replete stoplist. We pray that in future years our gifts act as an endorsement of the importance of the organ in worship, and we hope that our instruments will plant the seeds of worship through music. In the case of the Bethel organ, these gifted additions included the 8′ French Horn, 16′ Double Diapason, 8′ Vox Humana, 4′ Orchestral Flute, and a secondary set of strings and celestes.

We build many different styles of consoles dependent upon our clients’ preferences and needs. The pipe organ at Bethel is controlled with a three-manual, English-style drawknob console with a full coupler and piston complement that adheres to American Guild of Organists standards. We are sensitive to the ergonomics in design to make the console comfortable for the performer.

As believers in the use of technology in the modern pipe organ, we designed this console with features such as multiple-level memory, transposer, Great/Choir manual transfer, piston sequencer, programmable crescendo and sforzando, record/playback capability, and MIDI.

The mark of quality for any pipe organ is found in the tonal finishing. With an organ project it is possible to be so close to your own work that you cannot judge it on its own merits. It becomes important to step back from your work before you can say it is time to “put down the brush.” This is particularly true of tonal finishing. The surety of vision and purpose that guides one’s work can also result in blinders preventing your best work from coming forward. To mitigate this, our firm completed the tonal finishing at Bethel over a period of time. Not only does it allow the ears to relax, but it also allows one to come back to a project more jaded and able to assess one’s work dispassionately. The tonal finishing on this organ occurred throughout the first year with multiple visits to the church as we traveled through the liturgical year and made different demands of the organ’s resources.

The completed organ has continued to serve the church well, as it has now reliably served in worship for several decades. Again, it is our measure of success that we have supported people’s faith as well as the outreach of the Piccolo Spoleto Music Festival.

The “fingerprints” of our commission to build the pipe organ at Bethel United Methodist Church are found in many of our recently completed projects as well as those currently under contract with our firm.

Recent projects

• Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, Louisville, Kentucky: the Aeolian-Skinner instrument representing two disparate time periods was recast as a new cohesive 115-rank organ in the American Eclectic style with an homage to its American Classic beginning.

• First Baptist Church, Hammond, Louisiana: new organ built after hurricane damage with some extant pipework.

• Druid Hills Presbyterian Church, Atlanta, Georgia: rebuilding of G. Donald Harrison Aeolian-Skinner organ with vintage Aeolian-Skinner additions to complete the original specification designed for the organ.

• First Baptist Church, Charleston, South Carolina: console rebuild with new relays, Positiv pipework, and other additions.

• Lucas Theatre, Savannah, Georgia: restoration and enlargement of Wurlitzer theater organ.

• Fox Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia: rebuild of four-manual “Mighty Mo” console and building of temporary console to be used during the rebuilding process.

• Episcopal Church of the Nativity, Dothan, Alabama: releathering and rebuilding of two-manual, 28-rank pipe organ by Angell Organ Company.

• Saint Jean Vianney Catholic Church, Baton Rouge, Louisiana: rebuilding and enlarging of Wicks organ.

Current projects

• All Saints Episcopal Church, Thomasville, Georgia: new three-manual console.

• First Baptist Church, Griffin, Georgia: new four-manual console.

• Holy Spirit Lutheran Church, Charleston, South Carolina: new three-manual console.

• United States Air Force Academy, Protestant Cadet Chapel, Colorado Springs, Colorado: rebuild of historic three-manual, 83-rank Möller/Holtkamp organ.

• United States Air Force Academy, Catholic Cadet Chapel, Colorado Springs, Colorado: rebuild of historic three-manual, 36-rank Möller/Holtkamp organ.

• North Point Methodist Church, Hong Kong: new organ division and façade.

• Peachtree Christian Church, Atlanta, Georgia: complete rebuilding with a new chassis of 1930 Henry Pilcher’s Sons organ installed in sanctuary chancel.

• Our Lady of the Assumption Catholic Church, Brookhaven, Georgia: new four-manual, 62-rank pipe organ.

• Most Holy Trinity Catholic Chapel, West Point Military Academy, West Point, New York: new three-manual, 24-rank pipe organ.

• Fox Theatre, Atlanta, Georgia: phased rebuilding of “Mighty Mo” Möller theater organ (console previously rebuilt).

Closing thoughts

Our work involves collaborating with people, their stewardship and faith. As a builder I have been privileged to attend many dedicatory concerts as well as morning church services. I must confess that as much as I have enjoyed the organ in recital, often I have taken far greater pleasure hearing the organ in a worship setting. This is not said to diminish the music brought forth by those who have played the organ in concerts, rather that hearing the organ taking its part in worship is a validation of the years of planning and work that go into such an instrument. Having been part of building an instrument that serves in worship is the greatest gift an organbuilder can have. It is a culmination of pride, passion, and a legacy that we are leaving behind to future generations.

The title “organbuilder” presumes long hours, travel, and a temporary suspension of personal lives. I am fortunate to have a skilled, dedicated staff who help sculpt the wood, zinc, lead, copper, and brass into poetry. Organbuilding is not the result of any single individual but of a team. A simple thank you is not enough for the colleagues I have the good fortune to work with.

We thank those congregations who have believed in us and treated us like extended family while we completed these instruments. They have buoyed us with their support and prayers and genuinely have become our friends and extended congregations.

I would be remiss if I did not single out my father and business partner, Art, for his work on behalf of the pipe organ industry and his role as mentor to me. In the late 1980s, there were changes in the governance and laws pertaining to National Electric Codes (NEC) and article 650, which regulates pipe organ wiring. Some of the existing code and many of the proposed changes would have been very problematic to American organbuilding. With support from the American Institute of Organ Building (AIO) and the American Pipe Organ Builders Association (APOBA), Art worked as a liaison between the NEC and the pipe organ industry for over twenty-seven years. He served on the code-making NEC panel for more than twenty-five years. This has resulted in a new set of appropriate electrical codes for the pipe organ industry that were accepted and adopted by the NEC and that we continue to work with to this current day.

I grew up in the firm and have watched it evolve and change over the years from a service company to a builder of instruments. The company has been dutifully led by my father. It is hard to imagine that post college, I have worked with Dad for over thirty-four years, during which time our roles have changed and evolved, with me moving toward a more forward management role over the last two decades. During our tenure together, I have been given a tremendous amount of freedom to grow the firm and to provide the artistic guidance to the visual and tonal direction of the firm. Without Art’s support (and patience), the company and my career may well have taken a very different trajectory. A very sincere debt of gratitude is owed to him, the founder of this firm.

We would welcome the opportunity to consult with you on your organ project; please let us know how we can help you. You are invited to visit our website www.pipe-organ.com to contact us and to view photos and information on the many instruments we have completed over the years.

—Arthur E. Schlueter III

Visual and Tonal Direction

A. E. Schlueter Pipe Organ Company