Creating a pipe organ: Artisans at work, Part 3

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 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. Riskind’s work combines the aesthetic of black and white film photography with his love for the capabilities of digital photography.

This photographic essay explores the work of two pipe organ builders. One is a business with over a dozen employees; the other is an owner/organbuilder who works with associates when large projects dictate additional help. One firm has embraced technology, electric action and stops, augmented with solid-state electronics; the other builds tracker-action instruments where, on smaller instruments, the blower motor is the only electrical part. Both have extremely well-equipped woodworking shops.

For the last eight years, I have been photographing small artisan businesses in northern New Jersey. After taking pictures at a specialty textile mill and a jewelry maker housed in a former silk mill, I was looking for another artisan business. The Diapason’s annual Resource Directory provided the lead I needed to continue the project. Peragallo Pipe Organ Company is located in Paterson, near the other firms in my project. I contacted the Peragallos, they were interested, and thus began my third photo essay of an artisan business.

Peragallo recently celebrated its one-hundredth anniversary. The company founder, John Peragallo, Sr., apprenticed with the Skinner Organ Company. The elder Peragallo’s experience with Skinner instruments gave the company a direction it follows to this day, though they freely make use of technologies that have come along since their founder’s time.

More recently, and again with the help of the staff of The Diapason, I reached out to a second builder, A. David Moore of North Pomfret, Vermont. David Moore builds and maintains pipe organs that are very different from those made by Peragallo.

A. David Moore’s career as an organbuilder began with the restoration of a circa-1850 George Stevens tracker instrument from the then-closed Woodstock (Vermont) Christian Church.¹ After a three-year apprenticeship with C. B. Fisk, he started his own firm in 1973. He continues today to work out of a shop on his family farm in North Pomfret.

Over the years, I have learned much from The Diapason’s monthly feature in which an organbuilder discusses the process of creating a new or restored instrument. These articles deal with aesthetic, ecclesiastical, architectural, and a wide variety of human and financial issues. Peragallo Pipe Organ Company and A. David Moore, as successful organbuilders, deal with all of these. Underlying these kinds of meta-concerns, however, is a foundation of craftsmanship—how does the organbuilder create a physical instrument that will, for decades, meet the needs of a congregation?

These photographs show this craftsmanship as exhibited by two organbuilders. In the case of the Peragallo company, one sees their skill in designing and executing casework and consoles and their deep experience in digital and analog electronics. Peragallo’s heritage from Skinner is manifest in the wide range of tonal resources available in their instruments. A number of their organs employ a French tonal scheme and French-inspired curved terraced consoles.

A. David Moore, Inc., builds only tracker-action instruments. Moore and his associates cut lumber from trees, fabricate cases, consoles, and action, and they make wood and metal pipes for their instruments. (His largest instruments do include electric stop action alongside mechanical stop action, making it possible to have electronic combination action.) While Moore uses modern power woodworking tools, he describes his pipe organ aesthetic as mid-nineteenth century.

Different builders have different skill sets, but I would argue that, they all depend on skilled artisans. My photographs show the connection between these artisans and the materials with which they work­—the foundation for creating a pipe organ.

Notes

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

Photo:

A, David Moore carrying one of the 16′ Trombone pipes from wood shop to erecting room (photo credit: Steve Riskind). All photos may be viewed in the digital, PDF, or print editions.

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, voiced, and researched pipe organs since 1973. Stimulating work as a research engineer in magnetic recording paid the bills. He is working on his Opus 5, which explores how an understanding of the human sensitivity to the changes in sound can be used to increase emotional impact. Opus 5 includes double expression, a controllable wind dynamic, chorus phase shifting, and meantone tuning. Stay tuned.

Editor’s note: The Diapason offers here a feature at our digital edition—three sound clips. Any subscriber can access this by logging into our website (thediapason.com), click on Magazine, then this issue, View Digital Edition, scroll to this page, and click on each <soundclip> in the text.

Part 2 of this article is found here.

Deductive logic is tautological; there is no way to get a new truth out if it, and it manipulates false statements as readily as true ones. If you fail to remember this, it can trip you—with perfect logic. . . . Inductive logic is much more difficult—but can produce new truths.¹

The late Peter Williams, pipe organ scholar extraordinaire, occasionally remarked to John Brombaugh that he most favored the sound of Gottfried Silbermann. Brombaugh thought this was perhaps a contrarian view, a position Williams often took in their conversations.² Silbermann’s sound is indeed both deeply admired and controversial.

The sound of an organ is the sum of its scaling, voicing, temperament, windchest design, action, layout, wind system, wind pressure, position in the room, and room acoustics. Among these factors, only the art of voicing is perceived as the elite province of a select and gifted few, shrouded in mystery. But as Reiner Janke has so ably demonstrated, voicing can be understood by anyone willing to commit the effort.³

Pipe organ literature abounds with subjective opinions of organ sound and the received wisdom of voicing recipes. These often contain a kernel of truth, but they can sometimes lead us down perilous paths. We will use data and inductive logic to give us insight into Silbermann’s voicing. And in Part 2 of this article we will use those insights to gain a wider perspective on voicing in general by comparing Silbermann’s voicing with a wide range of other styles. In the process we will see what makes Gottfried Silbermann’s sound so interesting.

Fundamentals of scaling and voicing

A quick overview of the features of organ pipes, scaling, and voicing may help readers unfamiliar with these terms. Figure 1 shows the basic features of an organ pipe and the terms used in this article.

Scaling and wind pressure determine the maximum power of a pipe. Scaling includes the diameter of a pipe’s resonator and the width of its mouth. Wider resonators and wider mouths will produce more power, as will higher wind pressure. Scaling also affects the vowel sound, or timbre, of a pipe, ranging from the “ah” of wider scales to the “ee” of narrower scales. The “ah” consists of the fundamental that increases in power in wider resonators. Narrower resonators will emphasize the power of higher harmonics with a brighter timbre.

In Figure 1 we see that the flueway of a pipe is the slit formed by the lower lip and the languid, the horizontal plate soldered on top of the pipe’s foot. The wind from the chest enters through the toe hole into the pipe’s foot and exits through the flueway slit. The languid’s edge turns the sheet of wind formed by the flueway into a spinning vortex. The upper lip cuts the vortex, creating pulsations of pressure that will drive the resonator to sound if the conditions are right.

The vortex spins fastest at the languid edge and spins slower as it expands towards the upper lip. If the height, or “cutup,” of the mouth’s upper lip cuts the vortex where it pulsates at the same frequency that the resonator is tuned, the pipe will speak very quickly.⁴ Lower cutups create higher frequency pulsations where the vortex spins faster. The resonator has more difficulty with faster pulsations, and the speech is both slower to form and brighter with more powerful harmonics. Keep lowering the cutup, and at some point the resonator cannot “resonate” with the vortex at the fundamental, and an open pipe will overblow to the octave, its second harmonic. More pressure or more wind from a larger toe will make the vortex spin faster with more energy, and the cutup will have to rise.

Voicing begins by adjusting the flueway depth and/or the diameter of the toe to control the power (this is also known as “regulation”). More wind from larger toes and deeper flueways produces more power.

A voicer will raise the height of the cutup by degrees to adjust the timbre, making the sound continuously less bright and more like a flute as cutup is increased. Cutup is by far the most sensitive aspect of voicing—very small changes in cutup will make big changes in timbre. While toe areas, flueway areas, and wind pressure have proportional effects on a pipe’s power, its cutup has an exponential effect on its timbre; Ising showed that it is a cube function!

When we say that an organ is voiced in a Germanic or French style, what does this mean? Received wisdom relates that Germanic voicing leaves the toe wide open and closes the flueway to regulate power, while French voicing emphasizes a deeply open flueway and closes the toe to regulate power. Does this make a difference? Charles Fisk thought it made a great difference, and he wrote with passion about the musicality of deeper flueways in 1975.⁵ Subjective impressions suggest that deeper flueways result in a warmer fundamental with less percussive speech when power is regulated with closed toes. Physics tells us that the pressure in the foot and the velocity of air in the flueway will be lower as the toe area decreases and the flueway area increases, and the vortex will spin more slowly.

The musical range of flueway depths spans the very deep flueways of romantic voicing to the more closed flueways exemplified by the work of organ builders like D. A. Flentrop. The received wisdom of Germanic voicing often assumes the sole use of closed flueways to regulate power, but the reality is more complex. How do we know this?

The minimum required data

Typical organ documentation lists pipe diameters, mouth widths, and cutups, but ignores the crucial voicing data of flueway depths and toe diameters, and this unfortunately tells us little about the sound. For example, without the toe and flueway data we do not know if the cutup data imply a softer and smoother sound with more closed toes and flueways or a powerful, brighter sound with more open toes and flueways. As Ising has shown, cutups and the timbre they control are extremely sensitive to changes in pressure and the flow of wind in toes and flueways.

While voicing data of most organbuilders, including Arp Schnitger, are exceedingly rare, our knowledge of Gottfried Silbermann is made possible by the work of Frank-Harald Greß and his documentation of voicing for several of Silbermann’s organs.^{6, 7, 8} To make matters far worse in our quest to understand historic voicing, many organs have been revoiced, repitched, retuned in new temperaments, and their wind pressures raised or lowered during their restorations, often on multiple occasions. We will have great difficulty discovering the original sound of most older organs. We owe a great debt to F.-H. Greß, who has documented the changes made to each of Silbermann’s surviving organs.

Early influences

Gottfried Silbermann was born in 1683 in Kleinbobritzsch, Saxony, the son of a carpenter. His older brother, Andreas, “left home in great haste to avoid military conscription” and worked for Eugenio Casparini on the Görlitz organ before settling in Strasbourg, Alsace, as an independent organbuilder.⁹ Andreas spent the years 1704–1706 learning French organbuilding from François Thierry in Paris. Andreas was at first rebuffed in Paris, but found a willing mentor in Thierry, who would later build the organ we now see in Notre Dame de Paris. Little is known of Gottfried’s youth, but we know that he joined Andreas in Strasbourg in 1702, earned his title as a master organbuilder, and returned to Saxony with two journeymen and an apprentice. He built his first organ in Frauenstein in 1709 and 1710 and spent the rest of his life building nearly all of his organs in Saxony. Gottfried died late one night in August of 1753 while voicing the organ in the Dresden Hofkirche.¹⁰

Gottfried “was accustomed to throw his cane on the floor when he wanted to judge the acoustics in a church.”¹¹ This shrewd test creates a broad range of frequencies which will decay at different rates, informing Silbermann of the room’s different absorption of sound from bass to treble. This is very similar to what acousticians do today with a blank gunshot. He notoriously refused to build organs in churches whose acoustics were poor, and he would likely be appalled at the acoustics of most American churches.¹²

Scaling

Gottfried Silbermann’s scaling, voicing, and stoplists were extremely consistent. He had three sets of principal chorus scales, wider to narrower, which he used to differentiate the timbre of his different divisions. He also used one of the narrower scales for his mixtures.¹³ More wind pressure was employed to fill larger or less efficient acoustics. Unlike most other organbuilders, he never found the need to experiment with different sounds.

Silbermann’s layouts were well engineered and featured easy access, which probably has much to do with the longevity of his organs. He has been criticized for the regularity of his tonal schemes, but this regularity helps us understand how he achieved that sound by comparing his least modified surviving organs. Silbermann became relatively wealthy as an organbuilder, an impossible achievement for modern organbuilders who design their classically inspired organs as completely unique creations.

We will use graphs presented in Normal Scales to understand Silbermann’s sound. Tables of raw numbers do not convey the underlying intent of the organbuilder, and Normal Scales allow us to make easy visual comparisons. These Normal Scales were published in the author’s article, “1863 E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322: Church of the Immaculate Conception, Boston, Massachusetts, Part 1,” The Diapason, July 2017, page 18. Those who want actual measurements can use those tables to convert the Normal Scale data in this article into raw data.¹⁴

Diameter scales of the 1714 Freiberg Dom Hauptwerk principal chorus are shown in Figure 4. The mid-range scales are narrower, emphasizing less power and more harmonic brightness. In Figure 5 we see the mouth widths. Normal Scale mouth widths are based on mouths which are ¼ of the pipe circumference. Silbermann’s mouths are wider, a very unusual practice. The figure captions describe Silbermann’s scaling in more detail.

Influence of French voicing

The roots of Gottfried Silbermann’s sound lie in French voicing, and an essential feature of classical French voicing is a deeply open flueway. Figure 2 shows an image taken by Reiner Janke of Andreas Silbermann’s voicing. We are looking down into the mouth of a tenor G pipe from the Hauptwerk 4′ Prestant in the 1709 organ at Marmoutier. Note the deep 0.7 mm flueway, the absence of ears, and the alternating deeper and shallower nicks on the languid edge. To put this flueway into perspective, Figure 3 shows an image of a modern, “neo-Baroque” pipe of a similar pitch with a low cutup, a flueway of 0.27 mm depth, and ears. The flueway in Figure 3 is the thin black line.

Divergence from French influence

Gottfried Silbermann designed his organs for exceptional power, even by modern standards. While the sound of Gottfried Silbermann is based on the deep flueways of French voicing, it differs from French voicing in specific ways to get that power.

French flueways tend to be very deep, pushing the maximum limits of musicality, and this might lead us to think that these pipes are very powerful. But classical French voicing uses more closed pipe toes to limit the wind for a more restrained power. We will see in Part 2 that Gottfried’s toes are more open than typical French voicing, and they feed wider mouths.

Mouth widths range from about 2⁄7 to 1⁄7 of the circumference of a pipe. Wider mouths on the same resonator will have more wind flow and proportionally more power. Very small mouths will have a delicate effect. Classical French scaling does not trend toward the maximum limits in mouth widths, but the scaling of Gottfried Silbermann’s principal chorus does exactly that. The combination of very wide mouths, deep flueways, and more open toes is the source of Silbermann’s power. To get a sense of his wind pressures, Andreas Silbermann’s 1709 organ at Marmoutier is voiced on 69 mm, Gottfried’s organ at the Rötha Georgenkirche is voiced on 76 mm, and Gottfried’s Freiberg Dom organ originally had pressures of 97 mm in the manuals and 109 mm in the pedal.¹⁵

Unusual pipe construction

Figure 6 shows the basic features of Gottfried Silbermann’s pipework as recreated by C. B. Fisk, Inc. The bottom image in Figure 6 shows a generous flueway and very fine nicking. The 2⁄7 mouth width is evident here, the maximum practical width. The image at top shows a vertical counterbevel (also called a “counterface”) on the languid and a very high position of the languid; you can see the bottom edge of the languid rising just above the top edge of the lower lip. Such a languid position will move the windsheet outwards, and to compensate for this, Fisk has moved the upper lip outwards by extending the side walls of the pipe. There are no added ears. These are the hallmarks of Gottfried Silbermann’s pipes. The pipe in Figure 2 by Andreas Silbermann shares the deep flueway, counterbevel, and nicking, but it does not have the extended upper lip, high languid, and wider mouth.

The sound

At the 1980 American Institute of Organbuilders convention Charles Fisk demonstrated the voicing of a pipe constructed in the style of Gottfried Silbermann. This pipe produced a sound with very prompt and articulate speech of great power and intensity, which I measured at 90 dB at a distance of one meter.¹⁶ The mouth of this pipe is shown in Figure 7.

In voicing this pipe Fisk first set the toe diameter and the flueway depth. He then raised the cutup by degrees and added nicks by degrees to reduce harmonic brightness, while adjusting the languid height for prompt speech. He set the languid high as a consequence of the outward extension of the side walls and upper lip.¹⁷ To hear the sound of this pipe, listen to a soundclip of Bach’s Duetto I in E Minor, BWV 802, on Silbermann’s nearly original Principal at the Rötha Georgenkirche. <soundclip 1>

Zacharias Hildebrandt apprenticed to Gottfried Silbermann in 1714. He and Silbermann soon became bitter rivals, but upon Silbermann’s death in 1753, Hildebrandt was given the task of finishing Silbermann’s last organ in the Dresden Hofkirche. The sound of Hildebrandt’s 1746 organ at Naumburg is reminiscent of Silbermann’s deep flueways, but I do not have data to confirm this. Like Silbermann, Hildebrandt used different scales of principals to give his divisions a different character. Here is a soundclip of the Naumburg principals, played in contrast to each other in Bach’s Concerto in D Minor after Vivaldi, BWV 596. <soundclip 2>

The voicing

Voicing data for the Freiberg Dom Hauptwerk are shown in Figure 8, Toe Constants, Figure 9, Flueway Depths, Figure 10, Mouth Heights (cutups), and Figure 11, Ratios of Toe Areas to Flueway Areas. See the figure captions for descriptions of these voicing parameters; their derivations can be found in the author’s book.¹⁸ In the simplest terms, toe and flueway areas control power, cutups control timbre, and the ratio of the toe area and flueway area affects speech articulation (also known as “chiff”). The crucial takeaway is that Silbermann’s toes and flueways were extremely regular and not treated as free variables. The free variable for Silbermann was cutup.

The regularity of Silbermann’s voicing is remarkable, and it suggests that he calculated his flueway depths and toe diameters prior to voicing. In Part 2 we will see that this regularity is consistent with other organs voiced on similar wind pressures and built at very different times. The regularity of his tonal designs, scaling, and voicing is evidence that he approached organ design from a set of inductively-derived design rules based on very early experimentation. As we will see in Part 2, the design rules for Silbermann’s toes and flueways were different for lower wind pressures.

Greß’s voicing data encompass several of Silbermann organs in acoustics ranging from smaller and more intimate to spacious and grand.¹⁹ Silbermann used higher wind pressure for more power, and at higher pressure a pipe is also brighter. Higher cutups will restore a pipe’s timbre at a higher power.²⁰ In Figure 12 we see mouth heights (cutups) plotted in Normal Scale halftones against pitch. The data in the orange line show the higher cutups of powerful principal pipes voiced on 90 mm pressure at Großhartmannsdorf; the data in the light blue line show the lower cutups of less powerful principal pipes voiced on 70 mm pressure at Reinhardtsgrimma; the timbres are similar.

Gottfried Silbermann used cutups to differentiate the timbre of his flutes and principals at the same pressure. In Figure 13 we see that Silbermann cut his 8′ Bordon pipes at the Freiberg Dom (data in the blue line) far higher than his principals (Figure 12 data in the orange line). This is why a Silbermann Bordon is extremely smooth and his principal has harmonic bite. It is also why they have similar power and can be played against each other. If the flueways had been closed to make the Bordon less bright, it would have had far less power than the principal. Listen to a soundclip at the Rötha Georgenkirche of Bach’s O Mensch, bewein’ dein Sünde Groß, BWV 622, where the Bordon holds its own against the powerful principal. <soundclip 3>

The striking feature of Silbermann’s voicing is that he used only cutup as a free variable during voicing to achieve his sound. The regularity of his toe diameters and flueway depths is virtually unique, and that regularity strongly implies that they were calculated.

In Part 2 we will take a much deeper dive into these voicing parameters and compare Silbermann’s voicing to the work of other organbuilders. Some of the data may challenge conventional assumptions and yield surprising and very useful insights.

To be continued.

Uncredited images reside in the collection of the author. Fr. Thomas Carroll, S.J., graciously suggested clarifications in the prose of this article.

Notes

1. Robert A. Heinlein, The Notebooks of Lazarus Long (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1973).

2. John Brombaugh. Personal communication, used by permission via telecommunication of June 2, 2021.

3. Reiner Janke, Copy and Intonation: The tacit knowledge of Reiner Janke, Universität Göttingen, 2018, Youtube video: youtube.com/watch?v=isEWba9rLRY&feature=youtu.be. Figure 2 image is at 9:47. In this video Janke skillfully demonstrates a recreation of the Andreas Silbermann pipe in Figure 2 and its exact voicing. You will not find a better tutorial on voicing. Here are Janke’s instructions to the pipemaker (translated from German), with my notes in brackets [ ]. Pitch: g° Prestant 4′. Wind pressure: 69 mm. Alloy of resonator: 85% tin. Alloy of foot and languid: 10% tin. Inside diameter: 36.5 mm [-2.5 HT]. Mouth width: 29 mm (¼ of circumference) inscribed straight and only lightly pressed [-2.5 HT]. Mouth height (cutup): 8–8.5 mm, upper lip not beveled [arched 0 to +1.5 HT]. Resonator wall thickness: 0.8 mm. Foot wall thickness: 0.9 mm. Foot length: 200 mm. Resonator length: 426 mm. Languid face: 50° with a small counter bevel, 90° to the languid underside. Toe hole: 6 mm [0.97 toe constant and 1.4 toe/flueway ratio]. Flueway depth: 3⁄4 metal thickness [0.68 mm]. Soft, intense, warm onset. Soft attack without harshness, set slightly fast. (“Weich, intensiv, warmer Strich. Weiche Ansprache ohne Härten, etwas zu schnell eingestellt.”)

4. Michael McNeil, The Sound of Pipe Organs (CC&A, amazon.com, 2014). When the pipe speaks most quickly, John Coltman would say that the impedances match and Hartmut Ising would say that I = 2; for more detailed descriptions see pages 64–67 and 77–80. Coltman dealt only with the fundamental harmonic, but Ising’s equation shows the crucial relationships between pressure, flueway depth, and cutup on timbre. For descriptions of toe diameters see pages 43–47. The toe constant equation: diameter of the toe = √(toe constant * 4 * mouth width fraction * pipe diameter). A full graphical analysis of the Isnard organ at Saint Maximin on pages 159–190 can be compared to the Silbermann data at Freiberg.

5. Charles B. Fisk, “Pipe Flueways,” Music: The AGO and RCCCO Magazine, December 1975, page 45. A reprint of the article can be found on the website of C. B. Fisk, Inc., www.cbfisk.com/writing/pipe-flueways/.

6. Heimo Reinitzer, Die Arp Schnitger-Orgel der Hauptkirche St. Jacobi in Hamburg (1995). This is one of only three publications known to the author to include complete data for understanding the sound of an organ, i.e., its pipework, windchests, wind system, temperament, action, and layout. The other examples can be found in the author’s “The 1755 John Snetzler Organ, Clare College, Cambridge, restored by William Drake, Ltd., Joost de Boer, Director,” The Diapason, September 2019, pages 17–21, and “The 1864 William A. Johnson Opus 161, Piru Community United Methodist Church, Piru, California,” The Diapason, August 2018, pages 16–20, September 2018, pages 20–25, October 2018, pages 26–28, and November 2018, pages 20–24.

7. Frank-Harald Greß, Die Klanggestalt der Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns (Wiesbaden: Breitkopf & Härtel, 1989). Regrettably, this crucially important book is not easy to find.

8. Frank-Harald Greß, Die Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns (Dresden: Sandstein Verlag, 2007), pages 36, 52. Greß carefully documents the modern changes to Silbermann’s organs, e.g., wind pressures, temperament, voicing, pitch, etc.

9. Poul-Gerhard Andersen, Organ Building and Design (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1969), page 192.

10. Ibid, pages 193, 200.

11. Ibid, page 26.

12. The architectural standard of -60dB for the measurement of reverberation length has a solid basis in physics, but it creates vast confusion and disappointment. At -60dB reverberation is 1/1000 or 0.1% of its original power, the lowest level of sound perceptible to (young) human ears. We do not even remotely hear such sounds in the context of music and singing. Reverberation that is audible during singing and organ performance will be louder than about -26dB, or 5% of its original level. The -60dB standard is not relevant to human perception in the context of music. Now you know why your architect will guarantee you three seconds of reverberation in your new church, but you are aghast when you first walk into the new room and find the reverberation barely audible. The residual of sound for reverberation length should be specified at no less than -26dB to architects and acousticians, a request that will make them quite aghast, too, but your music will come alive.

13. Greß, Die Klanggestalt der Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns.

14. An Excel analysis of diameters, mouth widths, mouth heights, toe diameters, and flueway depths of the Freiberg Dom Hauptwerk, Oberwerk, and Pedal can be obtained from the author by emailing [email protected]. Wind pressures on the Freiberg Dom organ have been lowered. The 85 mm pressure noted in Figures 4 and 5 is the current pressure; the original pressure according to Greß was 97 mm.

15. Greß, Die Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns, page 36.

16. Specifications of Fisk’s pipe: Inside diameter 24.5 mm [-2.5 HT]. Pitch 4′ middle e, about 659 Hz. Very thin and stiff 0.36 mm wall of 90% hammered tin. Mouth width 19.6 mm [-2 HT]. Toe 7.7 mm [2.35 toe constant] with 65 mm pressure. An upper lip extension approximately equal to the wall thickness. Cutup 6.6 mm [+5 HT]. Languid counterbevel 90 degrees with five fine nicks alternating with four extremely fine nicks. Flueway depth 0.8 mm [2.9 toe/flueway area ratio].

17. I attended the featured voicing demonstration by Charles Fisk. Our conversation afterward turned to the dynamics of the wind system, and with a common analytical approach to such problems, we became deeply engaged in this subject. Fisk started looking for a place where we could have a conversation without interruption. He found a janitor’s closet with folding metal chairs and shut the door. He gave me the pipe in Figure 7 and offered me the chance to work for a few months in his shop, and to this day I regret not taking him up on that offer; he died three years later.

18. McNeil, The Sound of Pipe Organs.

19. Greß, Die Klanggestalt der Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns.

20. McNeil, The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 64–80.

Soundclips

1. [00:18] Johann Sebastian Bach, Duetto I in E Minor, BWV 802 (Clavierübung III), Gottfried Silbermann, St. Georgenkirche 1718, Rötha, Johannes Unger, GEMA VKJK 0111 (2001), © Verlag Klaus-Jürgen Kamprad 2001.

2. [00:27] Johann Sebastian Bach, “Grave,” Concerto in D Minor after Vivaldi, BWV 596, Zacharias Hildebrandt, Wenzelskirche, 1746, Naumburg, Robert Clark, Calcante CAL CD041, © Calcante Recordings, Ltd. 2001.

3. [00:35] Johann Sebastian Bach, O Mensch, bewein’ dein Sünde Groß, BWV 622, Gottfried Silbermann, St. Georgenkirche 1718, Rötha, Johannes Unger, GEMA VKJK 0111 (2001), © Verlag Klaus-Jürgen Kamprad 2001.

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)

I remember when . . .

Leading up to Christmas of 2019, I decided to stop maintaining organs so I could concentrate more on the administration of the Organ Clearing House, especially the management of organ sales. I met with several colleagues asking if they would be able to take on more maintenance customers, and I wrote to my clients recommending those technicians for the care of the organs I thought they would be best suited for.

As the winter started winding down in early 2020, I was looking forward to missing the first holiday tuning season since I was a teenager, only to find that leading up to Easter of 2020, no one was tuning organs. Like pretty much everything else in our world, the whole business shut down as covid spread virulently around the world. 

No one has pronounced that the pandemic is over, and we are still hearing about spooky outbreaks, especially in big cities. But with a few reservations, life seems to have returned to something like normal. This past March, the organ tuners were out and about like never before, documenting each lapsed thermostat, each shallot-encased moth carcass, and each insistent vacuum cleaner on social media. I especially enjoy the posts of Richard Pelland, the prolific organ technician based in New Hampshire, who at my recommendation took on many of my former maintenance clients. His habit of posting videos of his assistant playing freshly tuned organs brings back memories of my mad dashes around the countryside, of the many lovely organs (and a few not so lovely), and of the satisfaction of completing a good tuning.

Would the average parishioner identify that great tuning as integral to the celebrations during Holy Week and Easter? Not likely. But they would go home after church with a tune in their head, and I always knew I was part of that. I believe that a well-tuned organ brings a smile or a raised eyebrow that sour notes cannot.

The body of Christ

Carolyn Manning of the Red River Organ Company in Norman, Oklahoma, posted a photo taken during an Easter tuning from high in the rear of the lofty sanctuary of the First United Methodist Church of Corpus Christi, Texas. The longest resonators of the Trompette-en-Chamade were visible in Carolyn’s photo, as was the console I helped build around 1986. I was working for Angerstein & Associates in Stoughton, Massachusetts, and we rebuilt and expanded the four-manual Reuter organ there. Dan Angerstein, a terrific voicer, was in the thrall of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, and Lawrence, Kansas, became something close to Paris on Shoreline Boulevard in Corpus Christi, across the street from the Gulf of Mexico.

We did our best to reconstruct the classic shape of Cavaillé-Coll’s grand consoles. My shopmate, pal, and wicked wag Jack Carr built the cabinet, and I built the curved and terraced stop jambs and the four keyboards. I do not remember the exact dates, but I sure remember that the installation trip was in the heart of summer, a big deal for this life-long northerner. The church’s vacation bible school was going on while we were there, and I have a hilarious memory of the church’s organist, wearing a “coat of many colors,” having been put in charge of a live camel. This had not been his first choice, and he was not mincing words.

A local electrician was on the job with us, ostensibly helping identify the many cables running from the two organ chambers in the front of the church to the Antiphonal organ and the Trompette-en-Chamade. He was using live current to “ring out” the different cables. It turned out that there were speaker wires from the PA system in the same conduit that looked just like organ cables, and when he touched those with his hot wire, we heard such a sound. I am pretty sure that was the end of those speakers. The big reed had been given in memory of a young parishioner who was killed in Vietnam. The drawknob is engraved “Trompette Boyd.”

Our flight from Boston to Houston at the beginning of that installation was my first trip in first class. My coach seat had been double-booked with a guy who was refusing to move. I was rewarded for my ambivalence, and I took full advantage of the perks of first class even though it was a morning flight.

It was fun to see Carolyn’s post, reminding me of that job from so long ago. It’s nice to know that the organ is still being used and cared for.

§

I do not have a tally of how many organs I have maintained, but I know it is in the hundreds. My tuning career started in Oberlin, Ohio, when I was working for John Leek. John was the organ and harpsichord technician for Oberlin’s Conservatory of Music and had a healthy side business of maintaining instruments in that general area. I worked with John part time and summers while I was student and shifted to full time after I graduated. During my junior year, John left the school to concentrate on his business. Altogether, I worked with John for about seven years, during which time we built several new harpsichords and two organs together. We renovated and releathered a small fleet of organs and went on hundreds of service calls together. We took care of organs in big city churches and in tiny hamlets far out in farm country. We covered an area from Toledo and Cincinnati to the west, to Erie and Pittsburgh to the east.

The biggest trip I took with John was to deliver a harpsichord we built for a woman in Oakland, California—she had been a student at Oberlin and admired John’s instruments. It was the summer after I graduated, and John proposed the trip to me saying it would take two weeks. I would not get paid (I suppose he was not getting paid either), but we would stay in nice hotels and eat in good restaurants. We would gamble in Reno, see the Golden Gate Bridge, and swim in the Pacific Ocean. Of course I’d go.

We loaded his butterscotch-colored Dodge van and headed west. It is about 2,500 miles from Oberlin to Oakland, and we drove 500 or 600 miles each day. We marveled at the open spaces, hunkered down under bridges to sit out thunderstorms, and drove all day from Salt Lake City with the mountains of Nevada dead ahead that never seemed to get closer until we reached them. When we stopped for gas after crossing into Nevada, I put a dime in a slot machine, received a little cascade in return, and was all ready for Reno. We stayed overnight in Elko, Nevada, and ate dinner in a Basque restaurant recommended by Oberlin voice professor Howard Hatton. And we got creamed in Reno. My meager cash supply disappeared, and John played a few hands of blackjack—it was remarkable how often the dealer got twenty-one.

Arriving in Oakland, we carried the harpsichord into the house, and unpacked and set it up. John tuned it and fiddled with the voicing. We went outside for a cigarette and were admonished by the client’s physician husband about the dangers of smoking. The next evening, he brought home a cancerous lung in a jar for our viewing pleasure.¹ That jaunt with John was the first of many cross-country trips I have made carting about instruments.

One summer, John and his wife Maria wanted to add a large screened porch to their house, and he flung the resources of his company at the job. He made a nice drawing of a post-and-beam structure, and off we went. There would be a lofty pitched ceiling, stained and varnished plywood wainscoting, and a floor of wide pine planks. We cut mortises and tenons on the machines in the workshop and assembled the frame and shingled the roof. We made screened frames to fill the window openings, and we painted everything. Painting the floor, I had my back to John, but heard a big increase in his industry. I turned to find him rushing to paint me into a corner.

John Leek passed away in the fall of 2019, and I drove to Oberlin for his funeral. It was wonderful to see Maria and their children Paula, James, and Peter. A week later, Maria wrote me a note thanking me for coming, which inspired another flood of nostalgia—her handwriting had been on my paychecks for seven years.

§

Dan Angerstein had a large stable of service clients, and when he closed his business in 1987 to become tonal director at M. P. Möller, I assumed most of those accounts—that was the foundation of the Bishop Organ Company located in North Reading and then Wakefield, Massachusetts. When I joined the Organ Clearing House in 2000, I continued the care of most of those organs as the BOC morphed into the OCH. By the time I stopped doing service work in early 2020, there were still seven organs I had been caring for since 1984—thirty-five years. There were six instruments built in the late 1980s whose care I assumed when they were new. I was the only technician to work on them for the first thirty-plus years.

Shortly after I started the Bishop Organ Company, I became curator of the huge Aeolian-Skinner organ (four manuals, 237 ranks) at The First Church of Christ, Scientist (the Mother Church) in Boston, and of the double Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner organs at Trinity Church on Copley Square. Jason McKown had cared for the Mother Church organ since its installation in 1952 and had worked for Trinity for over fifty years. He was in his mid-eighties when I met him, and he introduced me to many of his clients as he was finally ready to retire. Jason’s tenure at the Mother Church was extended so he would overlap with me for six months to show me the ropes of caring for such a large organ. We tuned there every Wednesday, and Jason’s countless stories were an important part of my education.

As a young man, Jason had worked personally with Ernest Skinner installing his Opus 692 at the West Medford Congregational Church in Medford, Massachusetts, in 1928 and had maintained it ever since. I worked there until 2009 when the church closed and the building was sold.2 Between us, Jason and I maintained that organ for eighty-one years.

Less is more.

When I mention Skinner Organ Company Opus 692 (1928) in West Medford, Massachusetts, I remember the pristine interior of the instrument. It was still playing on its original leather and had never been altered. This reminds me of another Skinner organ less than ten miles away that I have written about recently, Opus 459 (1924), which was sold through the Organ Clearing House to Galilee Church in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Both organs had been regularly maintained and well used, and neither show the familiar wear-and-tear damage of stretched tuning scrolls, out-of-round pipes, cotton balls left in mixture pipes, or spare wires looping about.

The only other century-old organs I have known in like-new condition are those in small remote churches that had never seen organ technicians. The organs might be full of spider webs and coal dust from obsolete heating systems, but the pipes and interior components could be straight from the factory. Ironically, organs that have never been maintained are the best candidates
for restoration.

I offer a challenge to all my colleague organ tuners and technicians. Leave each organ looking as though no one has been inside. Do not harm the organ in the interest of forcing it into tune. Do not leave little piles of your rubble. Do not leave obvious evidence of quick-and-dirty repairs. I know this is a tall order. I know that many churches are struggling financially and are unable to fund proper repairs. I am sure you will often have to take my admonition with a grain of salt, but I encourage you to respect the instruments you work on and the people who built them.

Those of you on social media, please keep sharing your experiences with the organs in your care. 

Retirement project

Retired organbuilder Gene Bedient has set about building a new two-manual tracker organ for his home and has documented the process intricately and intimately on Facebook. Starting with making open 8′ bass pipes from wood and progressing through building windchests, keyboards, actions, bench, and lately moving the completed base of the organ into the house with the help of neighbors, he has posted hundreds of photos with colorful descriptions of each step in the process. Every now and then, he posts a photo of the drawings so we have an idea of what the finished organ will look like. I recommend you follow Gene’s page and scroll through the last couple years of his documentation. This is a much more creative use of Facebook than photos of your cats or your savory breakfast.

Gene discusses the materials he is using, shows photos of complex gluing setups, and acknowledges the occasional need to “split the difference” to make something line up perfectly. His workshop is in the garage that adjoins the house, and while it is a tiny space and this is not the tiniest of residence organs, Gene’s photography provides a fascinating educational experience for anyone interested in how a pipe organ is built. I am eager to follow the continuation and culmination of this project.

As I write, I have been corresponding with Gene about his project, and he offers this statement about “Bedient Opus # Undecided”:

This home organ is for practice purposes and has only two stops—the lower manual, Principal 8, and the upper manual, Flute 4. Each manual couples to the Pedal. No manual to manual coupler. The lower manual is suspended action. The upper manual keyboard pivots in the center and pushes the top-of-grid pallets up to play, like the French Positif and Echo actions. It is the hope that two beautiful stops and two contrasting but light and responsive key actions will make the organ a pleasure to play.

Thank you, Gene, for sharing your exciting project so generously.

Notes

1. I stopped smoking two years later, on New Year’s Eve, 1981, when my first wife Pat was pregnant with our first child. Michael was born the following March into a smoke-free home.

2. I was in touch with the new owners of the building asking if they had plans for the organ. They replied that they did not plan to use it but did not want to remove anything original from the church building. I check in every now and again.

Momentous mementos

In the 2016 movie Sully, Tom Hanks plays Chesley Sullenberger, the US Airways pilot who secured a spot in popular and aviation history by safely landing Flight 1549 on the Hudson River in January 2009. In the film and especially in the cockpit voice recordings of the actual flight, Sully was the epitome of cool. As air traffic controllers were frantically suggesting alternative emergency landings at LaGuardia and Teterboro airports, Sully simply said, “We’re gonna be on the Hudson.” All 155 people on board the plane survived, and the episode quickly became known as “The Miracle on the Hudson.” We live in lower Manhattan, and every time I drive on the Henry Hudson Parkway I think of that grand river as Sully’s landing strip.

The movie dramatizes the incident from taxi to take off to splash down, then moves into the chaotic aftermath of the crash. The action shifts back to the hour or so before the flight, and we are introduced to several of the passengers. An aging father and his two sons race to catch the flight they almost missed. A young mother apologizes for her infant son to the friendly man sitting next to her. “He likes to throw everything.” “That’s okay, I like to catch everything.” An elderly woman in a wheelchair and her middle-aged daughter argue in a gift shop. She wants to buy a souvenir for a family member, and paws over the kitschy New York knick-knacks. “Mom, you were never this generous to us when we were kids.” “How ’bout a snow-globe?” “Mom, here’s one.” “Okay, I’ll buy you a [much smaller] snow-globe, too.”

I have a snow-globe. It is my talisman, bringing inspiration and good luck to my superstitious mind. It contains the statue of Pythagoras that stands at the end of the breakwater at the entrance to the harbor of the town of Samos on the Island of Samos in the Greek Aegean Sea. It shows Pythagoras standing erect with index finger pointed skyward forming the long side of a right triangle with a leaning beam forming the hypotenuse (a² + b² = c²). The majesty diminishes when you see the great man’s finger is pointing at a compact fluorescent bulb. We sailed into that harbor in 2014, and I was thrilled to see my hero welcoming us, the grandfather of music who discovered and defined the overtone series, and whose observations are the root of the tuning of western music. There is a 4,700-foot mountain on Samos that rarely receives snow, and never mind that it never snows on the plain or near the coast of the island, I brought that snow-globe home.

Many of us have mementos on our desks, bureaus, mantles. A shell from a beach in Florida, a pocketknife that was a gift from a friend who died too young, a lucky silver dollar, a ticket stub from a World Series game. In the winter, I sometimes grab a shackle from a box of miscellaneous sailboat parts and keep it in my pocket, just to reassure myself that winter will end sometime, and that we will be back on the water.

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

Donald Hall (1928–2018) was a prolific writer of both poetry and prose. In his late forties, he married his former student, the poet Jane Kenyon, and moved to the house in rural New Hampshire where his grandmother had been born. The family called it Eagle Pond. Hall had spent summers there as a kid, helping his grandfather with farming chores, an experience that fostered and nurtured his life-long fascination with the concept of work. He had given up the security of a tenured position at the University of Michigan to settle in New Hampshire with nothing to do but write. There he felt freedom in his work, though his method of writing poetry often involved as many as four hundred drafts.

Wendy is his literary executor, and it was with trepidation that we drove to the ancient house in New Hampshire for his estate sale. One of Hall’s books bears the title, String Too Short to be Saved. That could have been the motto of the sale. At first glance, it seemed there were thousands of glass ashtrays. There were cups from the New York World’s Fair, loose gears from a bicycle, rental car receipts from trips forty years ago, at least four empty bottles labeled “Paine’s Celery Compound,”¹ and oh yes, the autograph score of Three Donald Hall Songs by William Bolcom. It was as if no one threw anything away for five generations. The ten-year-old daughter of an English teacher from a neighboring private prep school was dying of boredom while her father searched the house hoping to find the box of short pieces of string.

A wood block plane, a hammer, and a carpenter’s ruler told of the industrious rural farmer keeping things working. A pitchfork, a wood wheelbarrow with spoke wheels, a shovel, a rake all hint at the back-breaking work of farming when the most powerful machine was a horse. New Hampshire is known as the Granite State,² and any farmland is reclaimed from wild forest. It is legend that the easiest crop to grow there is rocks.

And there was an Estey reed organ, a dilapidated mess that once must have filled the parlor with the strains of hymns played by Donald’s grandmother. It is just under seventy miles from Eagle Pond to the Estey factories in Brattleboro, Vermont, and Google Maps™ tells me that it would take around twenty-three hours to walk. I suppose that is about the speed of the horse or ox-drawn cart that carried it to Eagle Pond. When it stopped working, or the last family member who could play it passed away, it was granted a spot in the shed where it could waste away.

We are given a touching look into Hall’s life-long connection with the farm at Eagle Pond in his book Life Work (Beacon Press 1993), where he chronicles how the family’s needs were met through the daily, weekly, seasonal, and annual repetition of essential chores. He tells of spending summers helping his grandfather with those chores, cutting and raking hay by hand, hauling it to the barn on a horse-drawn cart, and pitching up overhead to the loft. When he moved to Eagle Pond, he practiced his life’s work in the shadow of the example set by the generations that preceded him surrounded by the artifacts of the working farm.

The selfie generation

Do you remember when photography was expensive? We would come home from a vacation or study trip with thirty or forty rolls of film to drop off at the drug store. Six days and fifty bucks later, you would have a bundle of snapshots, your mementos from the trip. Today, we snap away at our heart’s delight. Doesn’t cost a dime, unless you consider that in any airplane, any coffee shop, any movie theater, or any concert hall, every single person has a thousand-dollar phone in his pocket.

In Praise of Painting: Dutch Masterpieces at the Met is a current exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It closes on October 4, 2020, so you have plenty of time to get there. It features sumptuous iridescent portraits by the likes of Jan Steen, Vermeer, and Rembrandt, portraits carefully crafted in the seventeenth century. Rather than stepping into a drug store photo booth, a Burgomaster posed by a table for days so his image could be immortalized, a memento of his impression of his own grandeur. A Young Man and Woman in an Inn, their cheeks boozy rosy, are gazing sloppily at something that is amusing them, but while it shows a moment in time, the image took days, weeks, maybe months to complete—a moment set in four-hundred-year-old paint that is so vivid you imagine you can smell their horrible breath. You can tell by the color of their teeth.

Many of these paintings, especially the portraits, were commissioned by the people seen in the images, people who were prepared to spend plenty of money to immortalize themselves. Others were the whim of the artist, capturing a bucolic scene, a frantic scene, or a way of life. Still Life with Lobster and Fruit gives us an idea of how food was prepared in a seventeenth-century kitchen. As far as I know, there is no actual record of what Moses looked like, but in Abraham Bloemaert’s painting, Moses Striking the Rock, the prophet points his scantily draped rear end to the viewer, pretty much concealing his miraculous production of water for the Israelites. I suppose that Bloemaert was being careful not to assume too much about what Moses was actually like as a person, because if I were asked to name the painting without knowing the intended subject, I would call it Barebreasted Muscle-Woman with Pitcher.

Now that I have your attention, you can view all these images at www.metmuseum.org. Click on “Exhibitions,” then “Current Exhibitions,” and scroll down to “In Praise of Painting.” Then choose “Exhibition Objects.” Each image is a memento of a moment, of a personality, or of an allegorical story.

The shorthand of emotion

Leo Tolstoy wrote, “Music is the shorthand of emotion.” Leopold Stokowski wrote, “A painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures on silence.”

When you are standing in a gallery viewing a painting or sculpture, you are seeing exactly what the artist left behind. The physical touch of a human being is present in the brush strokes. You marvel that Rembrandt himself, the very man with the bumpy nose, made that little squiggle four hundred years ago. You can tell something about the person or the person’s mood by the brush strokes. Look closely at a square inch of a painting to see how the paint was applied, how coarse were the bristles, whether the strokes were straight or not. Then step back and study that square inch in context to see how the texture catches the light, how it affects the square inches around it, and how it contributes to the complete work of art.

Claude Monet revolutionized painting by substituting little dabs of paint with broader brushstrokes, leaving an impression of a scene. Does that make him a dabbler? Between 1890 and 1891, Monet painted twenty-five scenes of stacks of hay in fields around his home in Giverny. Each Meules was a study in light at different times of day, in different weather. Each evokes the other senses, the whiff of drying hay, the whistling of wind across an open field. People must really love Monet’s dabbling. As I write, my iPhone chirps the news that one of those canvasses sold this afternoon for $110,700,000, a record high price for an impressionist painting. How’s that for making hay while the sun shines?

If a painting was like a musical composition, you would not see the image, but you would be schooled in reading the code, the language that unlocks the artwork. You would complete an equation and an artwork would appear. If the viewers of art were like musicians, each viewer would perceive a painting differently, according to the level of his skill. If you were a beginning viewer, you would see a fuzzy image with muddled colors, because you did not have the chops to see it properly.

The same concept can apply to preparing food. A beginning cook can read a recipe, assemble the ingredients, and produce a gooey or burned shadow of a favorite dish. An experienced cook has a starting sense of what happens when you apply heat to a piece of meat or a vegetable, and the skillful chef understands the chemistry and the artistry of making food sing.

Last weekend, on our way to the estate sale, Wendy and I stayed at a country inn whose website made it clear that they were very proud of their restaurant. Rightly so. The drinks were made with the best stuff, blended beautifully, and served in attractive glassware. The wine was nicely chosen and delicious. Each dish was made with the best ingredients, their flavors artfully combined. The servers were friendly and attentive to just the right degree, knowing not to interrupt the nicer moments of our conversations, but being sure we were having a nice time.

The beginning musician can make a weak stab at a monumental musical masterpiece. I have heard countless performances in which the players were not equal to the music. But when the players are up to it, magical things happen. They read the code and interpret the language to get the notes right, but there is so much more to it than that. Like the chef who adds a slurp of wine to a sauté at exactly the right moment and exactly the right temperature to make flames dance over the stove and the dish come alive, so the musician adds a dash of alchemy by blending tempo, intonation, inflection, and energy into a momentary creation that has life and produces energy.

“. . . Musicians paint their pictures on silence.” During a concert at Symphony Hall in Boston on May 5, 2019, the Handel and Haydn Society performed Mozart’s Masonic Funeral Music (K. 477). Conductor Harry Christophers brought the piece to a steady measured conclusion, the final chord especially alive with a crescendo followed by decrescendo and held his arms aloft to maintain the capture of the audience’s attention. Several rich seconds of tense silence passed, the kind of silence that makes me fight back tears, and clear as a bell, a young boy’s voice piped up an expressive “Wow!” With the innocence of a child, he spoke that single word that expressed the feelings of everyone present, and the audience broke into laughter and applause.

Boston’s classical radio station, WCRB, was broadcasting the concert so the moment was captured and immortalized. Executives of the Handel and Haydn Society spread the word that they wished to find the “Wow Child” to give him an opportunity to meet the conductor, and sure enough, the word spread to the family of nine-year-old Ronan Mattin whose grandfather Stephen had taken him to the concert. International news outlets quoted Ronan’s father saying that Ronan is on the autism scale and “expresses himself differently,” that he is a huge fan of good music, and that his parents and especially his grandfather take him regularly to high-end performances. David Snead, president of the Handel and Haydn Society, said that it was one of the most wonderful moments he had ever experienced in a concert hall.

You can hear this delightful moment yourself. Enter “Mozart wow child” in any search engine and you will find dozens of stories and the live recording. Ronan Mattin’s “wow” had inflections similar to the final chord that so moved him.

Remember the decoder rings that came as prizes in boxes of Cracker Jack™? When you play a piece of music you are deciphering a code. You have learned the language of the printed score, the recipe for the instant creation of an artwork. The composer has left that for you as a memento. You put on your secret ring, say the magic words, and poof. You have a work of art. When you finish, no one will ever hear the same work of art. You will never do it the same way, nor will anyone else.

Wow.

Notes

1. “A true nerve tonic, an active alterative, a reliable laxative and diuretic. It restores strength, renews vitality, purifies the blood, regulates the kidneys, liver, and bowels. Price $1.00.”

2. A popular bumper sticker says, “Don’t take New Hampshire for Granite.”