Creating a pipe organ: Artisans at work, Part 1

Steve Riskind

Steve Riskind is an independent photographer based in Ridgewood, New Jersey. He is best known for his portraits of classical musicians. In recent years he has concentrated on artisans and fine artists at work—capturing the relationship between these skilled creators and their materials. As a long time lover of pipe organ music, photographing organbuilders has been a wonderful addition to this project. Steve Riskind’s book “art | commerce: four artisan businesses grow in an old New Jersey city” has just been published.

Editor’s note: the first part of this series is found in the August 2020 issue, pages 12–13.

This is the second installment of a photographic essay comparing two very different organbuilders. As a photographer, my goal is to show artisans and visual artists transforming their materials into works of beauty. In the case of artisan businesses, this transformation of materials is constrained by the need to run a profitable operation. 

The first firm I photographed, Peragallo Pipe Organ Company, located near my home in New Jersey, recently celebrated its 100th anniversary and is an example of a firm that has been able to meet both economic and artistic goals. Members of the third and fourth generations of the Peragallo family now guide the company.

With the help of the staff of The Diapason, I was able to expand this essay and to find a second organbuilder who creates different kinds of pipe organs. A. David Moore has built and restored tracker-action instruments for many years in North Pomfret, Vermont. He describes his organbuilding aesthetic as late-nineteenth century. The instruments on which he works are always of mechanical action.

The founders of these two businesses learned organbuilding in their teens. John Peragallo, Sr., apprenticed with the E. M. Skinner Company. Seeking greater advancement, he took a job as head of the electrical wiring department with a Paterson, New Jersey, startup, American Master Organ Company.

After beginning work at the company’s factory in Paterson, John, Sr., was then assigned the job of installation foreman for a large theater organ in Butte, Montana. The instrument was successful, but unfortunately, the job, which had been bid very low, bankrupted the company.

Upon his return to Paterson, John Peragallo, Sr., was given the opportunity to take over the bankrupt firm’s logo and some of its factory equipment. The Peragallo Organ Company was born in the spring of 1918. Its owner was 22 years old.^{1, 2}

David Moore’s introduction to his craft was quite different. In high school, he and a friend learned organbuilding by restoring a circa 1850 Stevens tracker instrument from a then-closed church in Vermont.³ After a three-year apprenticeship with C. B. Fisk, Inc., he started his own firm in 1973. He continues today to work out of a large two-floor shop on his family farm in Vermont.

A David Moore, Inc., is basically a one-person company, though colleagues are brought in as needed on larger projects. Moore’s operation is highly vertically integrated. Keyboards, trackers, windchests, metal and wood pipes, and cases are all fabricated in his shop. Hardware is purchased from outside vendors, as are the components for electronic combination actions when needed for larger instruments. Still, it is fascinating how much of an instrument is made from local materials on-site. David Moore is quite capable of building an entire organ himself.

At Peragallo, with four family members and approximately a dozen employees, there is far greater specialization. The Peragallo company relies much more on outside vendors, and Peragallo’s instruments make substantially greater use of electronic components than do Moore’s. All of their instruments use electric stop action and incorporate electronic combination action. In some instruments they use digitally sampled ranks to augment the organ pipes.  

Photographing at each organbuilder’s shop, I have had much opportunity to think about the differences between these two businesses. Despite these differences, the joy of being at each of these places has been to watch skilled artisans transforming raw materials into pipe organs. Both of their approaches make it possible to create instruments of lasting beauty.

Notes

1. “History of the Peragallo Pipe Organ Company,” document provided by John Peragallo, IV, dated September 6, 2017.

2. “The American Master Organ Company Lives On,” by John Peragallo as told to Dave Schutt in 1974. This history of the company was posted on the University of Iowa PIPEORG-L listserv by Dave Schutt, April 13, 1998.

3. See “Organ in a Pomfret hay barn!,” Vermont Life, 1965, Summer, Volume XIX, No. 4, p. 31, for an account of David Moore and a fellow high school student’s adventure restoring a nineteenth century Stevens organ.

Photographs by Steve Riskind. Photo caption: Voicing: John Peragallo, III, at the console and Anthony Peragallo at the pipes. The instrument at Saint Stephen’s Episcopal Church, Armonk, New York, is a 1969 Casavant that was extensively rebuilt by the Peragallo company in 2016.

Author’s website: steveriskind.com

Peragallo Pipe Organ Company

Telephone: 973/684-3414

Email: [email protected]

A. David Moore, Inc.

Telephone: 802/457-3914

Email: [email protected]

Steve Riskind

Steve Riskind, an independent photographer based in Ridgewood, New Jersey, is best known for his portraits of classical musicians. In recent years he has concentrated on artisans and fine artists at work, capturing the relationship between skilled creators and materials. As a long time lover of pipe organ music, photographing organbuilders has been a wonderful addition to this project. Steve Riskind’s book “art | commerce: four artisan businesses grow in an old New Jersey city” has just been published. Visit: www.steveriskind.com.

Editor’s note: the first two parts of this series are found in the August 2020 issue of The Diapason, pages 12–13, and in the October 2020 issue, pages 16–17.

This is the final installment in a series of photographs of two pipe organ builders. Peragallo Pipe Organ Company in Paterson, New Jersey, was one of four firms I photographed for a series about small artisan businesses, and these images were later incorporated into my book, “art | commerce.” The second organbuilder, A. David Moore, Inc., of North Pomfret, Vermont, was suggested to me by the staff of The Diapason as a contrast because of their very different approach to creating a pipe organ.

My interest in photography has taken two directions. The first is looking at our industrial landscape. This interest grew naturally from my first photography studies in Chicago with Robert Donald Erickson, a brilliant and extremely creative photographer, graphic designer, and teacher. Erickson’s own work explored Chicago’s Loop, bridges, and the people who inhabited Chicago in the mid-twentieth century.¹ While Bob Erickson never encouraged us to photograph the subjects he chose, I am certain that he was responsible for my early love of high-contrast, structured, and often grainy black and white images. Growing up in Chicago, it was easy to love the urban landscape.

My second interest in photography is portraiture, a love that came later in my life. For many summers I photographed musicians at the Marlboro Chamber Music Festival in southern Vermont. These two interests—landscape photography and portraiture—fused in the exploration of small artisan businesses.

A visual artist I was photographing once spoke of artists as “transforming their materials.” This description, I have since come to realize, defines what I am trying to capture when I photograph artisan businesses. Indeed, organbuilding is about skilled people transforming materials into musical instruments. In photographing each organbuilder, I was attempting to bring this transformative process to life.

As discussed in the two previous introductions, David Moore’s operation is very different from that of the Peragallo Pipe Organ Company. But for both organbuilders, the act of transformation is a critical part of their work. My goal in this series has been to show artisans in their work settings, in effect, the landscape, and to show the intensity of skilled people at work. This is not classic portraiture. The subject is not interacting with the camera (and ultimately the viewer), but rather with the task. Lighting, finding a background that is informative and not distracting, and managing the depth of field so that the most important part of the image is in focus, are key elements as I record my subjects at work. Viewing the photographs on the computer and then deciding how to improve the images taken on the next visit is critical. Out of the hundreds of pictures in a typical photo shoot, a good day is when ten percent of the images are “keepers.”

I learned so much more about organbuilding in my interactions with David Moore and the Peragallos. This project has been a joy—the opportunity to photograph intelligent and skilled people building pipe organs, an instrument I have loved since my high school days. It is a pleasure to share these photographs with readers of The Diapason.

Notes

1. See The Lens of the Total Designer, by Robert Donald Erickson and Diane Erickson, published by The Stephen Daiter Gallery, Chicago, Illinois, 2003.

All photographs by Steve Riskind.

Photo: Panorama of the A. David Moore main shop area

 

Peragallo Pipe Organ Company

Telephone: 973/684-3414

Email: [email protected]

 

A. David Moore, Inc.

Telephone: 802/457-3914

Email: [email protected]

Parsons Pipe Organ Builders, Canandaigua, New York, 100th Anniversary

This year, Parsons Pipe Organ Builders celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding and five generations of Parsons family members who have made pipe organs their vocation. Although the manufacturing workshop was established later, the family has been involved in the trade since the late nineteenth century. 

Gideon Levi Parsons apprenticed as a flue voicer with noted organbuilder John Wesley Steere and later married Steere’s niece, May Estelle Steere. Gideon continued his voicing career with John’s son, Frank, and later with Ernest M. Skinner, who purchased the Steere firm in 1921. The couple had two sons, Bryant Gideon (b. 1896) and Richard Levi (b. 1905). Both of Gideon’s sons apprenticed with the Steere firm, but only Bryant continued in organbuilding. Following in his father’s footsteps as a voicer was not an option for Bryant as tradesmen commonly held their skills closely for job security. Bryant worked in every department—from stacking lumber, shoveling sawdust, holding keys, and even began setting up organs on his own. However, when he returned to the factory, he was known as “the kid.” 

For a brief period prior to World War I, 16-year-old Bryant was hired by Professor Harry Jepson, head of the organ department at Yale University, to be curator of the renowned Newberry Memorial Organ, which he helped install. Originally built by the Hutchings-Votey firm in 1902, the organ was enlarged by J. W. Steere & Son in 1915. Bryant recalled that there was a secret button beneath the keys to activate the 32-foot reed so that only Professor Jepson could show the organ at its fullest.

Following time in the Navy during World War I, Bryant worked for the Bosch-Magneto Company in Springfield, Massachusetts, learning much about electricity (a concept quite new to organbuilding at the time). He then joined the Skinner firm, which by that time had purchased J. W. Steere & Son. Shortly afterward the factory burned, and Bryant moved with the firm to Westfield, where it took up shop in an old whip factory. Bryant was sent to Rochester, New York, to install the large organ at Kilbourn Hall at the Eastman School of Music along with the instrument in Professor Harold Gleason’s studio. While working in Rochester, Bryant met and married Ruth C. Blood, and they decided to settle there because he recognized the musical and cultural opportunities this community had to offer. Bryant’s Rochester career began with organbuilder Charles Topliff (himself a Steere alumnus), working with another Steere alumnus, Arthur Kohl. Bryant formed his own company in 1921 and continued to focus on service and restorations. To support his family during the Great Depression, Bryant sold vacuum cleaners door-to-door, among other things, while waiting for church work to revive.

While in Rochester, Bryant was curator of the four-manual, 129-rank Aeolian organ in George Eastman’s home—the largest residence organ ever built. Even those familiar with the founder of the Eastman Kodak Company are often unaware of Mr. Eastman’s fondness for organ music. His instrument had a Concertola Solo Music Roll Mechanism. Each Monday (even on Christmas Day), Bryant would arrive to check tuning and to set up the ten rolls for the week so that Mr. Eastman would be assured of music accompanying his breakfast. Each weekday, Mr. Gleason, who Mr. Eastman hired to head the organ department at the Eastman School of Music, would walk more than one mile down East Avenue from the school to play for Mr. Eastman’s breakfast promptly at 7:30 a.m. in the winter and 7:00 a.m. in the summer.

Bryant and Ruth had two children, Bryant Gideon, Jr., and Bina Ruth. Bryant, Jr., apprenticed with his father from an early age and later with the M. P. Möller Organ Company of Hagerstown, Maryland, installing many organs in the New York City area. Bryant returned to his father’s firm in Rochester following World War II where, in 1954, they incorporated as Bryant G. Parsons & Son, Inc. Bryant, Sr., retired in the early 1960s. The company grew and relocated to Penfield, New York, continuing with service and restoration work.

During the years in which father and son worked together in Western New York, Bryant, Jr.’s wife Esther Bills gave birth to five children. The two sons, Richard Bryant and Calvin Glenn, worked with their father from a very early age to learn the trade. Eventually, having been raised and trained as organbuilders, both sons were anxious to join the family firm in an official capacity and to establish their own credentials. Ric and Cal, as they prefer to be known, purchased the company from their father in 1979. In tandem with maintaining the company’s service responsibilities, the two set their sights on establishing a reputation for fine craftsmanship both through the restoration and rebuilding of existing organs and in the design and building of new organs bearing the Parsons name. Since that time, the company has completed a full portfolio of projects. As president and artistic director, Ric oversees the tonal and technical design departments. Ric has served on the board of the American Institute of Organbuilders in several capacities and as president of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America. As vice-president, Cal is responsible for managing the service department and for coordinating activities related to installations. In reality, Ric and Cal work as equal partners to ensure the company’s success.

Parsons’ reputation as a builder of fine liturgical pipe organs began to grow under Ric and Cal’s stewardship and with the addition of key staff members. Duane A. Prill, a gifted musician from Van Wert, Ohio, joined the firm in January 1991. Duane had just received a master’s degree in organ performance from the Eastman School of Music where he studied with Russell Saunders. Duane’s postgraduate studies at Eastman were under the direction of David Craighead. After joining Parsons, Duane worked with head voicer Gordon Dibble and quickly developed his own notable style of voicing and went on to become the company’s tonal director. Duane’s collaborative work with Manuel Rosales and Jonathan Ambrosino, combined with his ongoing commitment to study and visit organs throughout the United States and Europe, has helped raise the tonal designs of Parsons instruments to new heights. In addition, his service as principal organist at Asbury First United Methodist Church in Rochester has driven Parsons to build instruments that strive for high-quality execution of church repertoire.

Peter H. Geise, also a gifted musician, joined the firm in 2004. He received a master’s degree in organ performance from the Eastman School of Music where he studied with Hans Davidsson. After receiving his master’s, Peter embarked on a one-year training period at the Göteborg Organ Art Center in Sweden. Now Parsons’ technical design director, Peter is responsible for the design processes related to the mechanism and casework for each project. By necessity, Peter works in a hands-on fashion with Parsons construction and installation crews to ensure that what appears on the computer screen translates precisely to what is being built. In addition to his work at Parsons, Peter serves as the minister of music at Lima Presbyterian Church, Lima, New York, also home to Geise Opus 2, a two-manual, 25-rank electric-slider instrument built with church volunteers under Peter’s direction.

Ric’s two sons, Matthew and Timothy, have committed their efforts and skills to the company as well. Both Matt and Tim have accumulated years of experience and work closely with Ric and Cal to manage the company’s day-to-day operations. Matt currently serves as the dean of the Rochester chapter of the American Guild of Organists and vice president of the American Institute of Organbuilders. He is also responsible for the firm’s affiliation with the Eastman School of Music where Parsons serves as curator of organs. Tim has been heavily involved in Parsons’ recent entry into CNC technology, which has greatly enhanced the firm’s capabilities in terms of both process and production schedule. Tim is also involved in the firm’s manufacturing and installation processes and is responsible for the company’s graphics department.

Parsons Pipe Organ Builders strives to help clients find solutions that are tailored to their specific needs rather than limiting clients’ options to a particular style of building. Known for achieving superb results, Parsons maintains its own tonal goals. However, the company believes strongly in taking a collaborative approach with its clients to ensure that discussions cover a broad range of possibilities.

The Parsons project list is diverse with new organs of both tracker and electric actions, historic restorations, and even an unusual commission for an artist in Soho, New York City. Particularly challenging and interesting was Parsons’ participation in the research project for Cornell University, Ithaca, New York, working with the Göteborg Organ Art Center (GOArt), in Sweden. This two-manual, 40-rank, mechanical-action instrument is an historic copy based on the tonal design of the 1706 Arp Schnitger organ that was located in the Charlottenburg Castle Chapel in Berlin.

Parsons is currently under contract to build new organs for First Lutheran Church, Cedar Rapids, Iowa (three manuals, 52 ranks, mechanical action, Scott R. Riedel, consultant); St. James by-the-Sea Episcopal Church, La Jolla, California (four manuals, 79 ranks, electric-slider action, in collaboration with Manuel Rosales; Thomas Sheehan, consultant); and St. Benedict Catholic Cathedral, Evansville, Indiana (three manuals, 57 ranks, electric-slider action). Parsons was also recently chosen to complete the research, documentation, and restoration of the circa 1841 Jacob Hilbus organ for the Organ Historical Society (Bynum Petty, archivist and consultant; S. L. Huntington & Co., collaborating).

Much has transpired since the firm built the first two organs in the 1,400-square-foot workshop in Penfield, New York. In 1986, the firm relocated to the current workshop in Canandaigua, New York, which was expanded to 21,000 square feet in 2005. The introduction of 3D CAD arrived at the firm in 1986 when it was one of the first to provide computer generated images of a proposed organ design in the context of a client’s architectural setting. The year 2019 brought the addition of a CNC machine and with it a new level of efficiency and accuracy in construction.

Of course, the value of any business that relies on craftsmanship and personal commitment to achieve the highest quality work lies with every member of the Parsons organization. That number has grown over the years from four to eighteen, and we are grateful to acknowledge the work of Derek Bommelje, Joseph Borrelli, Brian Ebert, Aaron Feidner, Aaron Grabowski, Eric Kesler, David McCleary, Jay Slover, Chad Snyder, Dwight Symonds, Bernard Talty, and Travis Tones. Ric’s wife Ellen and Tim’s wife Kate currently manage the office. Ric often mentions that the company’s success has as much to do with divine intervention as it does with having a sound business plan! Parsons continues to be optimistic about its future contributions to the fine art of organbuilding for generations to come.

www.parsonsorgans.com

Photo: Bryant G. Parsons & Son, Inc. truck fleet, circa late 1950s

Cover photos:

2010 (top left): St. George’s Episcopal Church, Fredericksburg, VA, III/55 tracker

2020 (top center): First Lutheran Church, Cedar Rapids, IA, III/51 tracker

2005 (top right): St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church, Monona, WI, II/30 tracker (Rosales/Parsons)

1985 (left center): Westminster Presbyterian Church, Houston, TX, II/9 tracker

1989 (right center): Evangelical Lutheran Church of the Atonement, Rochester, NY, II/26 tracker

2019 (bottom left): Hope Lutheran Church, St. Louis, MO, II/27 electric slider

2015 (bottom right): United Church, Canandaigua, NY, III/40 electric slider

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

Stephen L. Pinel

Stephen L. Pinel holds two degrees from Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey, and did graduate study in historical musicology at New York University. A church musician for forty-five years, he retired from full-time work in the fall of 2017, but immediately accepted another appointment as organist and choirmaster at All Saints Church, Bay Head, New Jersey. He held a Langley Fellowship at New York University, is a member of Pi Kappa Lambda Music Honor Society, an honorary member of the Organ Historical Society, and a past chair of the St. Wilfrid Club of New York City. He is the author of several books and regularly contributes articles on organ history both here and abroad.

In 1984, William T. Van Pelt, then the executive director of the Organ Historical Society, wrote in The Tracker: Concomitant to the popularity of photography at the end of the nineteenth century was the blossoming of picture postcards that fortuitously embraced organs and church interiors among a wide range of subjects. Cards provide the examples we need to study architectonics and the visual evolution of organs, as well as traits of contemporary builders and their instruments. In some cases, a card represents the only remaining record of an organ’s existence.²

An accomplished photographer, Van Pelt had an uncanny awareness of the pipe organ as an entity of visual art. Like fine furniture, painting, sculpture, or any other form of high art, organ cases designed by organbuilders are distinctive and have identifiable characteristics. Cognizant of their usefulness for study, Van Pelt challenged the members of the OHS to search local antique and book stores for postcards showing vintage pipe organs. By the time his article was prepared for publication, ten society members had submitted more than a hundred cards. Sixteen were chosen to illustrate the article.³ In the thirty-five years since his article appeared, hundreds of organ postcards have surfaced, showing a wide variety of instruments by dozens of American organbuilders.

For context, some fundamentals of postcards may be informative. Cards are usually printed on thick paper or thin cardboard and measure approximately 3½ by 5½ inches. An image appears on the front, while the back is bifurcated—a message is written on the left with the address on the right. When mailed, postcards usually have a lesser rate than first-class postage, so they are slightly less expensive to send. Cards are often used to convey short messages, share memories of distinctive locations, or advertise events. Postcards differ from postal cards—the latter refers to those “special” cards issued by the postal service with the “stamp” already in place. Only the post office can issue postal cards. During the first four decades of the twentieth century, postcards cost a penny to mail, and were often called “penny postcards.”

While a few postcards were issued during the nineteenth century, it was not until the United States Congress passed the Private Mailing Card Act of May 19, 1898, that private individuals, companies, vacation destinations, and ecclesiastical organizations were permitted to print and distribute postcards. Previously, the United States Post Office held the monopoly. The heyday of the postcard was between 1900 and 1945, and one has only to type “postcard” into eBay.com to locate tens of thousands of cards, covering every imaginable topic the world over. Postcards are inexpensive, highly collectable, and an entire subculture has evolved around them at “swap meets” and shows of ephemera. The research value of old cards is that the subject matter may have changed or disappeared,⁴ and the images they display are often not found elsewhere. Stated directly, postcards are primary source documents.

There were several types of postcards. The earliest, published during the period 1900 to 1910, had a small black and white image on the front, surrounded by a white border. The address was written on the back, and if a message was included, it had to be written on the front of the card beside the image. In March 1907, the “divided back” was unveiled. This allowed for the message and the address to be written on the back, but freed the entire front of the card for the image. By 1910, postcards began to be published in color and were immediately mass-produced in huge quantities. About 1930, “linen” post cards first appeared. Those were printed on card stock with high-rag content, but the pressing of a machine gave the impression that the image was printed on linen. The most desirable cards dating from the first decades of the twentieth century were actual photographs, published on photographic paper. Those cards frequently carry high-quality images in keen focus and are eagerly sought by collectors. The final type, called the “chrome” postcard, came into circulation about 1950. They are published from a color photograph and have a shiny, glossy finish. Chrome cards are the type most often found today in souvenir shops.⁵

There are many ways to identify and date postcards. Some images are fully identified on the card itself. Other clues may be deduced from the postmark, since a card was often mailed from its place of origin and a date usually accompanies the postmark. Obviously, the card must pre-date the postmark. Moreover, the image may offer clues to identify the card. Many of the pipe organs pictured on postcards during the first decades of the twentieth century were new when the cards were issued. Organs were expensive, and some organ cards were produced immediately after a new instrument was installed. A few cards actually declare: “Our new pipe organ!” Finally, the style of the stamp may help to narrow the date if the postmark is either faint or incomplete. The post office redesigned stamps every few years. The older cards usually have a one-cent “Franklin,” while by the second decade of the twentieth century it was a one-cent “Washington.”

American organbuilders soon realized the reward of using postcards for promotion. The Estey Organ Co. in Brattleboro, Vermont, the Votteler-Hettche Organ Co. in Cleveland, Ohio, and the Wicks Organ Co. in Highland, Illinois (among others), distributed organ postcards. They were an inexpensive way to advertise recent installations and simultaneously impressed prospective customers. Estey was especially prolific with this method of marketing: several dozen organ cards issued by the firm have been gathered over the years. Sometimes those cards represent an important historical record because the organs they illustrate are now lost to history.

Some postcard organs are well known. This card (Illustration 1) was mailed from New York City to West Stockbridge, Massachusetts, on April 20, 1929, and shows the interior of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine at 110th Street in New York City. The organ, Ernest M. Skinner Company Opus 150, completed in 1910, is a huge, four-manual instrument of some 150 ranks⁶ and was dedicated by Clarence Dickinson (1873–1969) in April 1911. Since the card was issued, the organ has been renovated several times, notably under the direction of Ernest M. Skinner & Son in 1939, and by G. Donald Harrison (1889–1956) in 1953.⁷ The organ was restored in 2008 by Quimby Pipe Organs, Inc., of Warrensburg, Missouri.⁸ This spectacular vista, photographed from high in the cathedral, looks down at the chancel and choir. It shows the Skinner organ located on opposite sides of the chancel at the triforium level and provides a vivid impression of the enormity of the space.

Another famous postcard organ (Illustration 2) is the Newberry Memorial Organ in Woolsey Hall at Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. A large, four-manual instrument built by the Hutchings-Votey Organ Co. of Boston, the organ was opened on June 20, 1903, by a triumvirate of prominent organists: Henry Benjamin Jepson, Yale University; Wallace Goodrich, Trinity Episcopal Church, Boston; and Gaston M. Dethier, St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, New York City.⁹ The organ had an early type of electro-pneumatic action designed by Hutchings employee Harry F. Van Wart. The success of the instrument earned its maker, Geo. S. Hutchings (1835–1913), an honorary Master of Arts degree from the university. The card was mailed from New Haven to Springfield Gardens, Long Island, New York, on September 10, 1910, only seven years after the organ was built. In 1915, the organ was greatly enlarged and renovated by the J. W. Steere & Son Organ Co. of Springfield, Massachusetts,¹⁰ and again in 1928 by the Skinner Organ Company.¹¹ This circa 1908 postcard shows the original organ case before it was reworked in 1928.¹²

A few postcard organs (Illustration 3) had grandiose cases! This elegant example was mailed from Richmond, Virginia, to Lena, Indiana, on November 7, 1909, and shows a major, three-manual organ in the Catholic Cathedral of the Sacred Heart. It was built by John Brown (1851–1912) of Wilmington, Delaware, who opened his organ shop in 1887.¹³ Brown, an Englishman by birth, was in business for some twenty-five years and built many organs for congregations in the middle-Atlantic and southern United States. Located in the cathedral’s gallery with an opulent fan of radiating trumpet pipes, the case is reminiscent of the 1869 Geo. Jardine & Son organ at St. George’s Episcopal Church, Stuyvesant Square, New York City. Completed in August 1906, the Brown organ is described in detail in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, but its tubular-pneumatic playing action proved problematic.¹⁴ Only six years later, the organ was rebuilt by M. P. Möller as their Opus 1334, 1912, and the action was converted to electro-pneumatic. Later still, the organ was rebuilt again by the Tellers Organ Co. of Erie, Pennsylvania, and today, almost nothing of the original 1906 organ remains except for the front pipes. Noted historian Donald R. Traser wrote in 2002 that the organ was considered by Mr. Brown to be his masterpiece!¹⁵ 

Some postcards show organs installed decades before. This card (Illustration 4), sent from South Hadley to Charlemont, both in Massachusetts, was mailed on October 6, 1910. It shows the interior of the Old South Church in Boston. Visible in the gallery is an 1822, two-manual organ by Thomas Elliot (1759?–1832), built in London. Henry Corrie (1786–1858), an English organbuilder, accompanied the instrument “across the pond” to superintend its installation.¹⁶ Following its opening on November 22, 1822, Corrie remained in Boston. After working briefly for Thomas Appleton (1785–1872), he settled in Philadelphia and became the leading maker of organs in that city between 1826 and 1850.¹⁷ The Old South organ was rebuilt by E. & G. G. Hook as their Opus 246, 1859, and the projecting keydesk, shown in the card, is the product of their renovation.¹⁸ An organ from the 1820s would have had a recessed keydesk with stopknobs arranged in vertical columns at the sides. The “new” Old South Church on Boylston Street had a three-manual organ by Hutchings, Plaisted & Co., Opus 58, 1875, and later still, a four-manual organ by Ernest M. Skinner Company, Opus 231, 1915. In 1876, the 1822 Elliot organ was moved second-hand to St. Mary’s Catholic Church in Milford, Massachusetts, where it survived until it was broken up for parts about 1955.¹⁹

A circa 1910 card shows a handsome 1872 instrument (Illustration 5) in the front of the Washington Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Petersburg, Virginia.²⁰ The maker of the organ is unconfirmed, yet it appears to be the work of Geo. Stevens (1803–1894) of East Cambridge, Massachusetts. The case bears astonishing resemblance to the 1871 Stevens organ in the First Congregational Church, Rindge, New Hampshire.²¹ Stevens had worked for William Goodrich (1777–1833) and following the latter’s death, set up shop in partnership with William Gayetty (d. 1839). Stevens’s organs were characterized by fine workmanship and stately cases. Stevens built another organ for a Virginia client in 1861: a two-manual instrument for the Broad Street Methodist Episcopal Church in Richmond, installed just as the Civil War began.²² The Petersburg organ remained until it was replaced with a two-manual organ by the Estey Organ Co., Opus 1205, 1913, of Brattleboro, Vermont.

Yet another card shows the sumptuous interior of Trinity Church, Episcopal, in Watertown, New York, with its elaborate Gothic tracery. The organ (Illustration 6) is Johnson & Son Opus 856, 1898, a three-manual organ with thirty registers built in Westfield, Massachusetts.²³ Visible in the image is a reversed console with the organ installed in a right-hand chamber beside the chancel. The installation was completed on March 29 and the organ was first used on Easter Day, 1898. It was later replaced by Skinner Organ Company Opus 457, 1924, and was moved second-hand to the Adirondack Community Church in Lake Placid, New York, where it was installed by Buhl & Blashfield, a Utica, New York, firm.²⁴ Johnson & Son organs were of superb quality and were among the finer organs built in nineteenth-century America.

Three postcard organs were promotional materials issued by well-known American firms. The first (Illustration 7) was built by the Wicks Organ Co., Opus 8, 1909, for the German Ev. St. Petri Church, Okawville, Illinois. The second (Illustration 8) was the work of Votteler-Hettche of Cleveland, Ohio, and was installed in the First Methodist Episcopal Church, Petoskey, Michigan. The third instrument (Illustration 9) was built by the Estey Organ Co., Opus 505, 1907, a two-manual organ for the First Congregational Church, Chelsea, Massachusetts.

University organs are also occasionally represented. This card shows the interior of the auditorium at Valparaiso University in Valparaiso, Indiana. The organ (Illustration 10), built in 1907 by W. W. Kimball of Chicago, Illinois, was a gift of the alumni and was a large two-manual instrument with tubular-pneumatic action. The card was mailed from Valparaiso to Bridgeport, Connecticut, on October 5, 1911, and the message reads in part: “We attend chapel exercises in this place at 8:30 every morning. I have only missed two mornings as yet. We are nicely settled and like it very much.” The large piano on the stage looks like the work of Steinway & Sons! The Kimball organ was rebuilt by Hillgreen-Lane & Co. of Alliance, Ohio, in 1947 and was unfortunately destroyed with the building by fire on November 27, 1956.²⁵

Occasionally, a postcard showing an organ was distributed for parochial purposes. This handsome card (Illustration 11) from the First Reformed Church in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, reminded recipients that a “Sunday School Rally Service” was to be held on Sunday, October 7, 1906, at 2 p.m. The organ in the image was dedicated by the noted blind organist, David D. Wood of Philadelphia, on Thursday evening, October 22, 1891.²⁶ It was built by John W. Otto (1846–1892) of Baltimore, had two manuals and pedals, and cost $1,600.27. Otto was the brother of Louise Pomplitz (1836–1924), and at one time worked for the better-known firm, the Pomplitz Church Organ Co.

A postcard mailed from Port Huron, Michigan, to Lancaster, Pennsylvania, on October 2, 1913, is a fine example of a photographic card. The organ (Illustration 12), built by Hillgreen, Lane & Co., Opus 24, 1901, is an early instrument from the firm. The company was the partnership of Alfred Hillgreen (1859–1923), a Swedish immigrant, and Charles Alva Lane (1854–1933). Ultimately, three generations of the Hillgreen family built organs in Alliance, Ohio, between 1898 and 1973. The case shown here is unusually elegant and looks splendid in this turn-of-the century edifice. Note, in addition to the Methodist communion rail, that the choir has seating for almost fifty singers. That is a luxury not many of us enjoy today. The organ had two manuals with “pneumatic couplers”²⁸ and was opened in recital by a Mr. N. Crawthorne and other artists on Friday evening, July 26, 1901.²⁹

Another photographic card shows an organ (Illustration 13) in the Presbyterian Church of Pawnee City, Nebraska. Built in 1908 by the Hinners Organ Co. of Pekin, Illinois, the Hinners list states that the organ had nine registers. The Hinners Co. was known for its catalog organs. A congregation could order an organ through the mail, and the purchase included a set of directions so a member of the congregation could set up the organ! Many Hinners organs were located in rural locations in the Northern Plains, particularly in Nebraska and the Dakotas.³⁰ 

A third photographic postcard mailed from King Ferry, New York, on November 24, 1916, shows an organ (Illustration 14) in the Presbyterian Church built by Clarence E. Morey (1872–1935) of Utica, New York. The small, two-manual organ, his Opus 247, 1907, is recessed into an alcove at the front of the room, behind a raised pulpit platform. Visible in the cleanly focused image are only six stopknobs. Morey worked in Utica until his death in 1935³¹ and built several hundred small organs for the rural churches of Upstate New York. His organs were well built, durable, and many still serve their congregations today after a century of use.³²

Plenty of postcard organs are unidentified. Three interesting cards (Illustrations 15, 16, and 17) were never mailed and have no postmark or stamp. There is no indentifying information. If any reader of The Diapason recognizes any of those organs, the editor would be pleased to receive a letter with the details. Currently the largest collection of organ postcards is held by the Library and Archives of the Organ Historical Society at Stoneleigh in Villanova, Pennsylvania. The archivist there, Dr. Bynum Petty, would be pleased to receive donations of new cards.

Modern scholars and historians have had a tendency to dismiss postcards as trivial, but they remain a significant—and largely untapped—source of information for the study of early twentieth-century American pipe organs. For the evolution of case designs, they are essential. It is only by placing these images side by side that perceptive historians can note the common traits and the progression of style. The next time you pass a shoebox of old postcards in an antique or book store, take a moment to thumb through them. You might find the unique image of an old American pipe organ that is long gone.

Notes

1. Deltiology is the formal word for the collecting and study of postcards. Its etymology is two Greek words: deltion, a small writing tablet, and logy, to hew or to study. The word was first recognized by Merriam-Webster about 1965.

2. William T. Van Pelt, “Post Card Organs,” The Tracker, vol. 28, no. 3 (1984): 21–26.

3. Ibid. 

4. Maurice Rickards, The Encyclopedia of Ephemera: A Guide to the Fragmentary Documents of Everyday Life for the Collector, Curator, and Historian, s.v. “Postcards” (New York: Routledge, [c. 2001]): 249–50.

5. Ibid.

6. “Notes About Town. The new organ of the cathedral . . .,” The New York Age, vol. 24, no. 15 (January 12, 1911): 4.

7. The Great Organ at The Cathedral of St. John the Divine—Description, History, Condition—A Plan for Restoration ([New York, New York:], Cathedral of St. John the Divine, [1992]). 

8. Michael Quimby, John L. Speller, Douglass Hunt, and Eric Johnson, “Cover Feature. Resurgence of a Landmark Instrument. The Restoration of the Great Organ in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, New York City,” The American Organist, vol. 43, no. 11 (November 2009): 40–43.

9. Edward W. Flint, The Newberry Memorial Organ at Yale University: A Study in the History of American Organ Building (New Haven: Yale University Press; and London: Oxford University Press, 1930), 19; hereafter, Flint; and Joseph F. Dzeda, “Cover Feature. Newberry Organ Restoration Nears Completion,” The Diapason, vol. 107, no. 11 (November 2016): 26–28.

10. “Firm Rebuilding Big Yale Organ,” The Springfield (Massachusetts) Union, vol. 52, no. 307 (November 6, 1915): 3.

11. “Skinner Organ for Woolsey Hall, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.,” Stop, Open and Reed, vol. 5, no. 1 (September 1929): 18–19.

12. Flint, frontispiece.

13. “A Busy Organ-Tuner,” Wilmington (Delaware) Daily Republican, vol. 18, no. 95 (April 9, 1887): 1.

14. “Organ Specially Designed,” The (Richmond, Virginia) Times-Dispatch, No. 17,361 (October 28, 1906): 6; and “View in New Cathedral Showing Great Organ,” TD, No. 17,545 (April 29, 1907): 8.

15. Donald R. Traser, The Organ in Richmond: A History of the Organs, Organists, and Organ Music in Richmond, Virginia, from 1816 to 2001 (Richmond, Virginia: Richmond Chapter, American Guild of Organists. 2001): 92–94.

16. Hamilton Andrews Hill, History of the Old South Church (Third Church) Boston, 1669–1884 (Boston and New York: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1890): 446–81.

17. Stephen L. Pinel, “Late from London: Henry Corrie, Organbuilder, and His Family,” The Tracker, vol. 40, no. 4 (1996): 11–23.

18. “Old South Church Organ,” Boston (Massachusetts) Evening Transcript, vol. 30, no. 8,839 (March 26, 1859): 1; and “New Organ at the Old South Church,” (Boston) Daily Evening Traveller [sic], vol. 3, no. 180 (May 2, 1859): 2.

19. “Letters to the Editor,” The Tracker, vol. 14, no. 2 (Winter 1970): 17. 

20. “New Organ Arrived,” The Petersburg (Virginia) Index, vol. 14, no. 31 (October 8, 1872): 5.

21. Organ Historical Society, Organ Handbook (1974): 44–45.

22. “Broad Street M. E. Church,” (Richmond, Virginia) Daily Dispatch, vol. 19, no. 57 (March 19, 1861): 2.

23. John Van Varick Elsworth, The Johnson Organs: The Story of One of Our Famous American Organ Builders (Harrisville, New Hampshire: The Boston Organ Club Chapter of the Organ Historical Society, 1984): 151.

24. Scot L. Huntington, Barbara Owen, Stephen L. Pinel, and Martin R. Walsh, Johnson Organs 1844–1898: A Documentary Issued on the 200th Anniversary of his Birth (Cranbury, New Jersey: The Princeton Academy of the Arts, Culture, and Society, 2015): 150.

25. Organ Historical Society, Organ Handbook (2002): 101.

26. “Organ Recital,” Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Daily Herald, vol. 6, no. 29 (October 23, 1891): 1.

27. “The Organ Accepted,” Carlisle (Pennsylvania) Weekly Herald, vol. 91, no. 42 (October 15, 1891): 3. 

28. “The McCormick Memorial: Fine New Organ First Heard in a Recital Friday Evening,” Port Huron (Michigan) Daily Times, vol. 30 (July 27, 1901): 5.

29. “First Recital on the Organ: Affair at the Methodist Church Last Night was a Great Success,” The (Port Huron, Michigan) Daily Herald, No. 305 (July 27, 1901): 3.

30. Allison Alcorn-Oppedahl, “A History of the Hinners Organ Company of Pekin, Illinois,” The Tracker, vol. 44, no. 3 (2000): 13–25. 

31. “Death Claims C. E. Morey, 63, Organbuilder,” Utica (New York) Observer Dispatch, vol. 14, no. 51 (June 21, 1935): 23; and “C. E. Morey, 63, Succumbs Here,” Utica Daily Press, vol. 54, no. 87 (June 21, 1935): 4.

32. T. L. Finch, “Organ Building in Upstate New York in the Nineteenth Century,” The Bicentennial Tracker (1976): 68–69.

 

Photo: Illustration 1: the interior of the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York City, and Ernest M. Skinner Company Opus 150, completed in 1910 (All cards that accompany this article are from the author’s collection)

Goulding & Wood Pipe Organ Builders, Indianapolis, Indiana, Fortieth Anniversary; Saint John’s Episcopal Cathedral, Knoxville, Tennessee, Opus 52 

The year 2020 was indeed an historic year for many reasons. As the calendar page turns to another year, it has become somewhat easier to see in retrospect that 2020 contained reasons for celebration even amidst a time of pandemic and stress. For Goulding & Wood Pipe Organ Builders of Indianapolis, 2020 marked forty years of operation and afforded a chance to look back at the arc of the company’s history. The capstone of this anniversary year was the completion of the firm’s Opus 52 organ for Saint John’s Episcopal Cathedral of Knoxville, Tennessee. This project is built on a solid legacy of organ building from the Indianapolis workshop.

John Goulding and Thomas Wood joined forces in 1980, combining shared experiences at the E. H. Holloway Corporation and individual backgrounds with Gratian and Holtkamp organ companies on the part of Mr. Goulding and, for Mr. Wood, experience at Indiana University School of Music including participating in the creation of its first electronic music laboratory while also serving as curator of organs. While from very different backgrounds, both men shared a lifelong love of the organ, its music, and the ideals of corporate worship. They inherited a particular understanding of the organ reform movement, then in its full maturity, and Mr. Goulding’s mechanical innovations including a unique windchest design, tremolo action, and schwimmer wind regulators. These raw elements formed an impressively strong foundation for the new firm, and the company quickly built a reputation for excellence and sophistication. 

Within the first six years of operation and first ten projects, the firm had expanded to the Chicago and Washington, D.C., metro areas. Installations in Durham, North Carolina, and Atlanta, Georgia, soon followed, establishing a trend toward a significant presence in the Southeast. In the years that followed, Mr. Goulding and Mr. Wood built a strong team of like-minded organ builders who shared a solid commitment to building electro-pneumatic-action organs with the artistry and refinement usually associated only with mechanical-action builders. Musically, this achievement flows in large part from the firm’s exclusive windchest design. As an electro-pneumatic slider and pallet windchest, it marries the time-honored benefits of common key channels with the flexibility of remote key action providing for movable consoles and flexible coupling and control systems. The efficiency and simplicity inherent in this system have long been recognized for their contribution to the long-term viability of an instrument. Slider chests have few working parts to wear out, and when the time for major maintenance comes, access and scope of work are optimum for easy restoration. One of the specific design considerations for Mr. Goulding was ease of long-term renewal, so that an institution will not be saddled with exorbitant costs typical of many refurbishment projects.

As the organ reform movement began to shed some of its excesses and musical taste returned to more substantial ideas of tonal architecture, Goulding & Wood integrated the lessons learned about chorus structure with the aurally based craving for generous fundamental and variety of color. Already by 1989, this marriage is seen fully developed in the layout of the organ for the Church of Saint John the Evangelist located on the other side of Indianapolis’s downtown from the Goulding & Wood workshop. The stoplist of this two-manual organ comprises a wealth of 8′ stops, a wide variety of reed colors, and a carefully balanced scheme of principal choruses that allows organists to create plenums of several different levels of dynamic volume and tonal intensity. This organ was in some ways a working out of tonal ideas that laid the groundwork for the much larger instruments in the Cathedral of Christ the King in Atlanta and Christ Church Cathedral in New Orleans. Brandon Woods, the firm’s voicer beginning with Opus 6 (1984), grew in his understanding of tonal structure and mastery of unifying the voice of each organ specifically for the acoustical environment in which it is placed. An assiduous student of past voicers, Mr. Woods relished restoring old pipework, particularly in the renovation projects the company undertook on instruments from many different builders and eras. He brought the lessons he learned from observing other voicers’ work to bear on his own treatment of pipes, both flue and reed. As the sole voicer, Mr. Woods exerted a strong bearing on the company’s musical personality. 

John Goulding, who oversaw the design and construction of the organs, was joined by his son, Mark Goulding, in 1985. The younger Goulding began first as the head chest builder, laying out and fabricating the slider chests. In time, he began overseeing installation crews and general shop organization. As the company continued to build larger and more complex instruments, the workshop saw a growth in size and sophistication. The addition of Computer-Assisted-Design supported the increase in refinement of mechanical and visual designs notably present in the instruments in Saint Meinrad, Indiana, and Greenville, South Carolina.

By the beginning years of the present century, Goulding & Wood had attained a national reputation of excellence. The founders were ready to pass along creative control to a new generation with the assurance that the company would continue to expand and develop along the trajectory they had established. In 2003 John Goulding and Thomas Wood retired, making the unusual decision to turn ownership of the company completely over to active members of the organ building team. The first project completed following this transition was the sixty-nine-rank organ for Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church in Dallas, Texas, an instrument that boasts two 32′ stops, four independent full-length open 16′ flue ranks, and extensive carved casework in the Georgian neo-classical style.

Prestigious projects followed, including installations at Ball State University in Indiana and Loyola University of Chicago. No less significant to the company’s development, organs in Germantown, Tennessee, Macon, Georgia, and Lexington, Kentucky, maintained the company’s evolution toward a tonal ideal that favors choruses based on rich fundamental tone, a wide palette of vibrant colors, and a seamless blend building to a thrilling tutti. Goulding & Wood continued to go from strength to strength, earning acclaim for each subsequent instrument. As a natural part of this evolution, the company attracted and trained young talent. Several woodworkers came from the Indiana University Herron School of Art and Design, and these young artists have discovered a newfound passion for the pipe organ. Organists also found their way into the shop, enriching the conversations about tonal design and musical goals for each project. The company suffered an unexpected and painful turn when Mr. Woods passed away in 2016 shortly after a cancer diagnosis. Fortunately, the voicing room was in good hands as tonal responsibilities passed to Jerin Kelly (a member of The Diapason’s 20 Under 30 Class of 2017), who had extensive background in woodworking and as a musician in his own right. Mr. Kelly has followed closely in the footsteps of Mr. Woods, excelling both at refurbishing pipework from other builders and placing his own stamp on new organs.

The Goulding & Wood team continues to pair veteran craftsmen, many with tenures at the firm of several decades in length, with a younger generation of artisans, eager to push the company further into the future. This combination of seasoned experience and fresh ideas continues to bear fruit in exciting ways. The results are manifest to an extraordinary degree in the organ for Saint John’s Episcopal Cathedral of Knoxville, Tennessee, the firm’s fifty-second opus-numbered project. A comprehensive tonal design that furnishes organists with abundant resources for service playing and faithful rendition of repertoire is housed within handsome cases adorning the church with a panoply of architectural detail. The ornate cabinetry, including a wealth of hand-carved detail, asserts a commanding presence that nevertheless complements the architecture rather than competes with it. Warm polished tin pipes with gilded mouths echo the brightness of the room, and bespoke features, such as the linen-fold panels, delight the eye. The beauty, in both sound and appearance, is built upon a mechanical layout that is as ingenious as it is elegant, ensuring not only uncompromised reliability but also access to every component. 

The Knoxville organ is in many ways a summation of the learning, growth, and hard work that the company has seen over its forty-year history, yet it would be erroneous to think of it as a magnum opus. The artists of Goulding & Wood are continually expanding their vision to achieve ever more refinement in all aspects of organ building. As they look forward to the next forty years, the team is eager to approach each project with enthusiasm, professionalism, and excellence.

—Goulding & Wood Pipe Organ Builders

 

GREAT (Manual II)

16′ Violone 61 pipes

8′ First Diapason 61 pipes

8′ Second Diapason 61 pipes

8′ Violone (ext 16′) 12 pipes

8′ Harmonic Flute (1–12 Bdn) 49 pipes

8′ Bourdon 61 pipes

4′ Octave 61 pipes

4′ Open Flute 61 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Twelfth 61 pipes

2′ Fifteenth 61 pipes

1-3⁄5′ Seventeenth 61 pipes

1-1⁄3′ Fourniture IV 244 pipes

8′ Trumpet 61 pipes

8′ Festival Trumpet 56 pipes

8′ Tuba (Ch)

Tremulant

Chimes (digital, 37 notes)

SWELL (Manual III, enclosed)

16′ Gedeckt 61 pipes

8′ Geigen Diapason 61 pipes

8′ Gedeckt (ext 16′) 12 pipes

8′ Viole de Gambe 61 pipes

8′ Voix celeste (GG) 54 pipes

4′ Octave Geigen 61 pipes

4′ Traverse Flute 61 pipes

2′ Octave 61 pipes

2′ Piccolo 61 pipes

2′ Mixture III–IV 223 pipes

16′ Bassoon-Oboe 61 pipes

8′ Trumpet 61 pipes

8′ Oboe (ext 16′) 12 pipes

8′ Vox Humana 61 pipes

4′ Clarion 61 pipes

8′ Festival Trumpet (Gt)

8′ Tuba (Ch)

Tremulant

CHOIR (Manual I, enclosed)

16′ Dulciana (ext 8′) 12 pipes

8′ Open Diapason 61 pipes

8′ Second Diapason (Gt)

8′ Chimney Flute 61 pipes

8′ Dulciana 61 pipes

8′ Unda Maris (TC) 49 pipes

4′ Principal 61 pipes

4′ Spindle Flute 61 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Nazard 61 pipes

2′ Octave 61 pipes

2′ Recorder 61 pipes

1-3⁄5′ Tierce 61 pipes

1-1⁄3′ Larigot 61 pipes

1′ Cymbale III 183 pipes

8′ Clarinet 61 pipes

8′ Tuba 61 pipes

8′ Festival Trumpet (Gt)

Tremulant

Cymbelstern (5 tuned bells)

Nightingale (2 pipes in water)

ANTIPHONAL

8′ Echo Diapason 61 pipes

8′ Diapason Celeste 61 pipes

8′ Stopped Diapason 61 pipes

4′ Octave 61 pipes

4′ Spire Flute 61 pipes

2′ Fifteenth 61 pipes

1-1⁄3′ Mixture II–III 171 pipes

PEDAL

32′ Violone (digital ext) 12 notes

32′ Bourdon (digital ext) 12 notes

16′ Principal 32 pipes

16′ Bourdon 32 pipes

16′ Violone (Gt)

16′ Gedeckt (Sw)

16′ Dulciana (Ch)

8′ Octave 32 pipes

8′ Stopped Flute 32 pipes

8′ Violone (Gt)

8′ Gedeckt (Sw)

4′ Fifteenth 32 pipes

4′ Cantus Flute 32 pipes

2-2⁄3′ Fourniture IV 128 pipes

32′ Contra Bassoon (digital ext) 12 notes

16′ Trombone 32 pipes

16′ Bassoon (Sw)

8′ Tromba 32 pipes

8′ Bassoon (Sw)

4′ Clarion 32 pipes

8′ Tuba (Ch)

Tremulant

ANTIPHONAL PEDAL

16′ Stopped Diapason (ext) 12 pipes

8′ Stopped Diapason (fr Ant 8′)

 

Normal complement of couplers

Three manuals, 70 ranks, 3,884 pipes

Photo caption: Saint John’s Episcopal Cathedral, Knoxville, Tennessee (photo credit: Ben Finch)

See the video of the Saint John’s Episcopal Cathedral, Knoxville, Tennessee, organ:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHVZxHGWpCQ&feature=youtu.be