THE DIAPASON: The First Hundred Years

Jerome Butera

100 years and counting
One can only wonder if The Diapason’s founder, Siegfried E. Gruenstein, envisioned the day his magazine would turn 100. The fiftieth anniversary issue, December 1959, noted:

Siegfried E. Gruenstein, a rare combination of competent organist and professional newspaper man, founded The Diapason in 1909 against the advice of his elders among organists, builders and well-wishers. That it grew and prospered under his forty-eight years guidance was due wholly to his skill, his impartiality and his taste.
Mr. Gruenstein listened to all of the advice offered, and did not follow any of it. He persisted in going ahead, and the initial issue, all of eight pages, made its appearance. A few leaders in the organ profession offered encouragement (Clarence Eddy, William C. Carl, Peter Lutkin, and Harrison Wild). Others gave the paper three to six months to live. At the end of the first year, the record showed a net profit of $15, a paid circulation of 200, and accumulated assets of a desk, a file cabinet, a wastebasket, and much goodwill. We have reproduced the first issue as part of this 100th anniversary celebration (see pages 23–30).
When The Diapason was launched, electro-pneumatic action was new, and tubular-pneumatic and tracker-action organs were still being built. The electric fan blower was still new and water motors were being made, while the human blower was not extinct. The Diapason has documented the trends in organbuilding over the last hundred years, from the orchestral/symphonic organ to the American Classic organ, the clarified ensemble, the Organ Reform movement, historically informed organ building, historic replicas, and a rediscovery of Ernest Skinner, Cavaillé-Coll, and Henry Willis.
The Diapason has served as a mirror of the organ culture in this country, documenting the work of builders, players, teachers, and composers. To read through the issues of The Diapason from 1909 to the present is to read the history of organ building, performance, pedagogy and composition in the United States for the last century. What have we learned from the last 100 years? Perhaps that the organ can exist in many forms, can be beautiful and expressive in many different ways, and inspire and uplift us in its numerous incarnations.
Dare we imagine the world of the pipe organ 100 years from now? What will the next 50 years, the next 25 years, or even the next decade bring? If the past is any indication, the pipe organ will continue to be built, played, and enjoyed, perhaps in ways we cannot envision. There will always be a need and a market for the quality, beauty, and artistic expression that the organ represents. Keep reading as The Diapason embarks on its next hundred years.

A word of thanks
That The Diapason has not only survived but flourished over this first century is due to its many faithful subscribers and advertisers, especially during the current challenging times. The Diapason continues because of the generosity and dedication of its authors and reviewers. Among our many contributing editors who regularly provide columns and reviews, our harpsichord editor Larry Palmer is celebrating his 40th year of writing for The Diapason. James McCray has been writing his reviews of new choral music since 1976. Leon Nelson has written reviews of organ music and handbell music since 1982. Brian Swager has served as carillon editor since 1991. More recently, Gavin Black continues to write “On Teaching” and John Bishop presents “In the wind” every month. And many more writers provide reviews of books, recordings and organ music each month.
Here in Arlington Heights, Illinois, associate editor Joyce Robinson proofs and edits every item, in addition to compiling the calendar and organ recitals, managing classified ads, scanning all the images, and maintaining our website content and electronic newsletter. And I must honor the memory of Wesley Vos, who served as associate editor from 1967–2001 and was largely responsible for bringing me onboard and serving as my mentor.
It has been an honor to serve as editor and publisher for more than 25 years. Every day I feel fortunate to guide this magazine, blessed to work with authors, advertisers, and subscribers who love the The Diapason as I do. I hope you enjoy this 100th anniversary celebration. In addition to images of the past on the cover and the reproduction of volume one, number one, this issue includes reflections on The Diapason and the last hundred years.

Diapason history
December 1919 – founded by Siegfried E. Gruenstein (1877–1957), who served as editor and publisher through December 1957
1919 – official journal of the National Association of Organists
1929 – official journal of the Hymn Society of America
1933 – official journal of the Canadian College of Organists
1935 – official journal of the combined National Association of Organists and the American Guild of Organists
Frank Cunkle – editor, February 1958–September 1970
Robert Schuneman – editor, October 1970–August 1976
Arthur Lawrence – editor, September 1976– March 1982
David McCain – managing editor, April 1982–August 1983
Jerome Butera – editor and publisher, September 1983 to present

Longtime Diapason subscribers
As part of The Diapason’s 100th anniversary celebration, I have noted, in my “Editor’s Notebook” column, our longtime subscribers—those who have subscribed for more than 50 years. The longest subscription is that of Malcolm Benson: 70 years! We salute these subscribers for their many years of faithful support. Our most up-to-date list includes the following:

Fred Becker, Crystal Lake, Illinois, 1959
Bruce P. Bengtson, Wyomissing, Pennsylvania, 1958
Malcolm D. Benson, San Bernardino, California, 1939
Gordon Betenbaugh, Lynchburg, Virginia, 1957
Byron L. Blackmore, Sun City West, Arizona, 1958
Gene Boucher, Annandale, Virginia, 1957
George Bozeman, Deerfield, New Hampshire, 1951
John M. Bullard, Spartanburg, South Carolina, 1953
Merrill N. Davis III, Rochester, Minnesota, 1955
Douglas L. DeForeest, Santa Rosa, California, 1955
Harry J. Ebert, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1946
Joseph Elliffe, Spring Hill, Florida, 1956
Robert Finster, Canyon Lake, Texas, 1954
Henry Glass, St. Louis, Missouri, 1957
Antone Godding, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, 1952
Will Headlee, Syracuse, New York, 1944
Charles Huddleston Heaton, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1947
Victor E. Hill, Williamstown, Massachusetts, 1953
Harry H. Huber, Salina, Kansas, 1943
Lance Johnson, Fargo, North Dakota, 1959
Richard Kichline, Alliance, Ohio, 1953
Christopher King, Danbury, Connecticut, 1952
Bertram Y. Kinzey, Jr., Blacksburg, Virginia, 1945
Allen Langord, Poinciana, Florida, 1950
Arthur P. Lawrence, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 1953
Michael Loris, Barre, Vermont, 1956
William (Bill) Mollema, Scotts, Michigan, 1957
William H. Murray, Fort Smith, Arkansas, 1959
Mark Nemmers, Dubuque, Iowa, 1954
Barbara Owen, Newburyport, Massachusetts, 1951
David Peters, St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada, 1954
Patrick J. Rafferty, San Pedro, California, 1950
Thomas Schaettle, Springfield, Illinois, 1949
Robert A. Schilling, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1949
Ronald T. Severin, Orange, California, 1956
Richard A. Smid, Yaphank, New York, 1955
Francis M. Stone, Indianapolis, Indiana, 1953
Frederick Swann, Palm Springs, California, 1946
Rodney Trueblood, Elizabeth City, North Carolina, 1944
Charles J. Updegraph, South Orange, New Jersey, 1953
John Weaver, West Glover, Vermont, 1947
Robert Webber, Phoenix, Arizona, 1947
Harry Wells, Pullman, Washington, 1954
The Rev. Bruce McK. Williams, Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1946
Charles Woodward, Wilmington, North Carolina, 1953
—Jerome Butera
Editor and Publisher
The Diapason

John Bishop

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

The Centennial Sentinel
America’s heaviest president, William Howard Taft (cousin of Frank Taft, art director of the Aeolian Organ Company), was inaugurated on March 4, 1909. Apache Chief Geronimo died on February 17. Isaac Albéniz died on May 18, and organist Dudley Buck died on October 9. Giacomo Puccini was fifty-one years old, Claude Monet was sixty-nine, and Camille Saint-Saëns was seventy-four (he would live twelve more years).
Author Eudora Welty was born on April 13, and inventor of the electric guitar Leo Fender was born on August 10. George Gershwin, Louis Vierne, and Charles-Marie Widor still had twenty-eight years of life ahead of them—all three died in 1937. Gustav Mahler wrote Das Lied von der Erde, Richard Strauss wrote Elektra, and Will Hough and Frank Adams wrote I Wonder Who’s Kissing Her Now. The City of San Francisco banned the residential ownership of cows.1
And on December 1, 1909, the first edition of The Diapason took newsstands by storm. The lead article praised the new Casavant organ at Northwestern University: “Canada has shown that if it is in any way behind United States enterprise, it is not in the field of organbuilding. . . . Casavant Brothers claim the proud distinction of never having built an unsatisfactory instrument in the fifty years they been in business.” (Wow! I wonder what Ernest Skinner thought when he read that! “Dear Editor: Please cancel my subscription.”)
Twelve hundred issues. The October 2009 issue is on my desk. The masthead proclaims “One Hundredth Year: No. 10, Whole No. 1199.” The heritage of the pipe organ covered in the magazine’s early days is the stuff of today’s legends. On page twelve, I read snips from seventy-five years ago (1934) under the heading “Looking Back.” The death of Edwin Lemare is mentioned, as is the work of T. Tertius Noble, David McK. Williams, and Pietro Yon. I suppose one had to choose between Sunday Evensongs at St. Thomas’s, St. Bartholomew’s, and St. Patrick’s, those great New York churches where Noble, Williams, and Yon held forth.
After church you could have dinner at Alexandra (8 East 49th Street: serves a champagne cocktail with dinner; price $1.10 to $1.50), something a little fancier at The Tapestry Room (Ritz Tower, Park Avenue at 57th St.: a small, intimate, charming place to lunch or dine; dinner $2.50 to $3), or go whole hog at Iridium Room and Maisonette Russe (Hotel St. Regis, Fifth Ave. at 55th St.: home of “High-class entertainment”; dinner $3.50 to $4).2 Note the convenience of my travelogue—all three churches and all three restaurants are within five blocks of each other. In three weeks you could attend each service and eat at each restaurant. You’d be out less than ten dollars a head, not counting what you put in the offering plate.
What about the organbuilders? It seemed that all important American organbuilders had showrooms in midtown Manhattan. Leave St. Thomas Church and find the Skinner Organ Company showroom across the street (Fifth Avenue at 53rd Street). One block north was Welte-Mignon (Fifth and 54th, across from the Hotel St. Regis). The Aeolian Organ Company had three Fifth Avenue addresses (at 54th across from Welte, at 42nd, and at 34th), which allowed easy access to the famed Aeolian Music Library. Aeolian patrons could borrow rolls from the library—some organ contracts included extensive “complimentary” library rights. It made sense to have a showroom every twelve blocks.
The Estey showroom was at Fifth and 51st, and the Los Angeles Art Organ Company was at Fifth and 34th, the same intersection as the southernmost Aeolian showroom. M. P. Möller was a block east in the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel at 49th and Park, no coincidence as there was a Möller theatre organ in the hotel’s ballroom. Each of these showrooms had at least one organ.3 You could walk past all these addresses in half an hour.

A trusted companion
The Diapason has chronicled a very active century. Its history spans almost the entire lives of both E. Power Biggs (1906–1977) and Virgil Fox (1912–1980), who together personified the two sides of a great twentieth-century debate. It includes the last fifteen years of Hook & Hastings, almost all of Skinner and Aeolian-Skinner, the last eighty-three years of Möller, the entire history of the Organ Historical Society (founded 1956), and all but thirteen years of the American Guild of Organists (founded 1896).
In the last century, the American pipe organ industry has gone from building more than 2,000 new instruments a year to fewer than one hundred. Attendance at Christian churches has plummeted.
E. Power Biggs spoke of the time when more Americans attended performances of live classical music than professional sports events. Today the pressure for ice time has decimated youth choir programs, as it seems more important to many families (at least here in New England) that the kids be playing hockey at six on a Sunday morning rather than getting ready for choir practice. Non-profit organizations are struggling to survive. Countless technologies have been created and evolved to distract the public from the fine arts. And technologies have been created and evolved to supplant the pipe organ. It’s a pretty grim picture. So what’s to celebrate?

A mid-century renaissance
I have written frequently about the Revival of Classic Principles of Organbuilding (caps intended), which roughly parallels my lifetime. The year of my birth saw the founding of the Organ Historical Society and the death of G. Donald Harrison. The Flentrop organ in the museum formerly known as Busch-Reisinger at Harvard was installed in 1958. At the same time, Charles Fisk was working with Walter Holtkamp as Holtkamp installed an organ with a Rückpositif (on a pitman windchest) at the school formerly known as the Episcopal Theological School in Harvard Square. Since then C. B. Fisk, Inc. has completed more than 130 organs, many of them monumental in scale. Sounds like a lot for a half-century of work, but it pales in comparison to Möller producing five or six thousand organs in fifty years earlier in the twentieth century. (Fisk has built their organs with around twenty-five workers—Möller had hundreds.)
By the time I caught the pipe organ bug, the revival was in full swing. Growing up in Boston, I heard E. Power Biggs play many times, most often at the Busch-Reisinger Museum. I was surrounded by the new organs of Fisk, Noack, Bozeman, and Andover. There were new tracker organs by foreign builders such as Casavant, Flentrop, and Frobenius. And of course there was the nineteenth-century heritage of organs by Hook, Hutchings, and Johnson, among many others. I was mentored and encouraged by the people who built, played, and envisioned all those instruments. There was one fascinating restaurant dinner (at The Würsthaus, formerly in Harvard Square) at which it was noted that nine of the people present were organists at churches with new Fisk organs. My lessons and all my after-school practice were on Fisk organs, and my first real job as a church organist placed me at a three-manual Hook built in 1860.
Ironically, it wasn’t until I was a student at Oberlin that I played regularly on an organ with electro-pneumatic action (a Holtkamp practice organ and the Aeolian-Skinner in Finney Chapel, since replaced by Fisk). But at Oberlin I was exposed to the international movement of early performance practice that was breathing new life into the music of J. S. Bach and his seemingly countless predecessors. We practiced scales using the middle three fingers of each hand. We limited registration changes to follow the major architecture of the music. We didn’t think twice about the absence of expression shutters. And we played the masterworks of Romantic organ music on unequal temperaments.

May the force be with you
I’ve alluded to the “Organ Wars” of the twentieth century. Vitriol was commonplace in the pages of The Diapason and The American Organist (the magazine formerly known as Music/AGO—we all said Music-A-go-go). The battle could roughly be described as “Biggs vs. Fox,” or the light side versus the dark side—and your version of chiaroscuro depended on your point of view. On one side were those musicians devoted to the new wave of old styles (tracker actions, early fingerings, crystal-clear registrations); on the other, the “comfortable” world of electro-pneumatic organs (multiple expression boxes, sliding thumbs soloing internal melodies). What one called bright, clear, and cheerful, the other called shrill and screechy. What one called smooth and expressive, the other called mushy and lugubrious. Cross-the-aisle name-calling was commonplace and nasty.
But it was a true renaissance. The entire industry was being renewed. Every tenet and tenon, every principle and Principal was being examined and questioned. We worked hard to develop historic justification for everything we did. We relearned the value of craftsmanship over mass production. We programmed recitals for scholarship over musicianship. And we installed pipe organs for the sake of the music rather than the liturgy.
As a large tracker organ with a classic French specification was installed in an important Episcopal church, the organ committee wrote that their study convinced them that the Classic French organ was ideal for the leadership of Anglican worship. It reminds me of a parishioner in my home parish upset over the introduction of the Revised Standard Version of the Bible, who stated, “If the King James Version was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me!”4
As we passed from the 1980s into the ’90s and watched attendance at organ recitals dwindle, it seemed to me that organists and organbuilders were finding themselves in ivory towers. I believe it was by default rather than intention. Our pride in our newly acquired corporate knowledge blinded us to the pleasures of our audiences: “You will sit there and listen to this historically informed recital played correctly on this historically informed instrument. You will not applaud unless or until I say so. It is through my enlightenment that you will enjoy yourself. Y’all come back now . . .”
This idea developed in my mind over several years, and I knew I was treading on dangerous ice, or was it thin ground? In essence, I was criticizing three decades of the thought and work of every one of my colleagues, not to mention myself. With care I began expressing it. I would lob it in the air between sips of brandy at the end of a long lubricated dinner. I would share it with those I was sure would agree. I would share it with people I supposed I could sway. Each time I knew I was expressing something controversial. When I realized that no one was disagreeing with me I grew bolder, sharing my thoughts and watching eyebrows arch.
A performance is enhanced by the historical awareness of the performer, just as we understand more about a Renaissance painting valued at ten million dollars when we realize that the artist died penniless and destitute. But it’s the audience’s response that matters the most, as it is the audience’s response that creates the ten-million-dollar value of that old picture. We rely on a large and appreciative audience to inspire our expression, to ask us back to play again, to fund the frightfully expensive organs on which we rely, and yes, even to appreciate our unusual skills. Our audiences are thrilled when we give them music they know and love, and tunes they can whistle and sing as they make their way home, as well as music that will expand and inspire them.
Of close to 1,100 violins built by Antonio Stradivari, some 650 are still in use, inspiring modern players and thrilling modern audiences. But not one is in original condition. Each has been given a new stronger neck, each has modern strings, each has been boosted to sound forth in the cavernous rooms in which we listen to music, and not one plays at its original pitch. Why should organists and organbuilders limit themselves to sounds of the past, sounds that are curious to the ears of modern listeners, ears that are jaded by stadium roars, jet airplanes, steel wheels on steel rails, and honking horns on Fifth Avenue?5
I was encouraged to find support for this thought in an editorial letter published in The Diapason:

Dear Sir: After many years’ association with the trade, the writer is inclined to the belief that pipe organ manufacturers, as a class, err in taking themselves seriously.
To listen to the tales of our adventures in this field of labor one might easily be convinced that all the knowledge of the past ages had become focalized upon our respective intellects, and that upon our demise the building of organs would become one of the lost arts . . .
Now, it is because of this, and the unresponsive attitude naturally following, that the commercial status of the trade as a whole is not resting upon a higher level. We have managed badly in many respects. Each has assumed that he is the only person in the world who can build a perfectly good pipe organ. We have ‘knocked’ each other, and have at least permitted our representatives to educate the public in the gentle art of ‘knocking.’ [The public’s] reaction we refuse to recognize as our own . . .
Every organbuilder knows that, compared with other industries of like responsibilities and risks, this is about the least remunerative. Started in a monastery, a work of love and devotion, it has never risen above that level sufficiently to classify the owners of factories as ‘capitalists.’
We really desire a remedy, and to most of us the nature of the remedy is obvious, but up to this time not one of us has taken the initiative. . . . The other builder, whose work we decry, can build a good organ—he probably does—and he would gladly build a better one if the conditions imposed by committees whom you have helped educate to demand almost impossible things did not prevent.
The trade CAN unite to PERMIT clean, remunerative business. No one should desire a union for the enforcement of anything.
Let’s get together. Who will make the first move?

This sounds like a time when the organ world started to come to its senses. It sounds like about 1988, when the Organ Historical Society held its convention in San Francisco and featured electro-pneumatic organs by Murray Harris, Austin, and Skinner (but no cows). Thomas Hazleton played music of Tchaikovsky, Guilmant, Howells, and William Walton on the four-manual Skinner at Trinity Episcopal Church, and the OHS presented the church with a plaque honoring the historic organ. A cross-section diagram of a complex electro-pneumatic action was published on the front cover of the convention booklet, taking the place of the ubiquitous ten-stop tracker organ.
It sounds like about 1992, when the monumental Fisk organ was inaugurated at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, an instrument universally celebrated as a successful orchestral powerhouse in spite of its tracker action.
It sounds like about 2004, when the indescribable masterpiece of commercial public organs in the Wanamaker store in Philadelphia (now Macy’s) was regaining its deserved status as one of the great organs in the world, even though it has eleven expression pedals.
Wrong. This passionate plea for honesty and unanimity in the organ business was published on the front page of the seventh issue of The Diapason, June 1, 1910, the same issue that announced that the annual meeting of the American Guild of Organists elected Frank Wright as Warden, William C. Carl as Sub-Warden, and Clarence Dickinson as one of the councilors. In that issue, the AGO membership committee reported 1,000 members, and the treasurer reported a balance of $551.87.
The year The Diapason first published an editorial calling on organbuilders to lighten up was the year the Boy Scouts of America was founded, when the U.S. Senate granted former President Teddy Roosevelt a pension of $10,000, when the Union of South Africa was founded as a union within the British Empire, when German bacteriologist Paul Ehrlich announced a definitive cure for syphilis, and when Alva Fisher patented the first complete, self-contained electric washing machine.

Back toward the middle
Shortly after I graduated from Oberlin, I was involved in releathering a large organ by Aeolian-Skinner. I was intrigued by its expressive capabilities, but didn’t understand them and certainly didn’t know how to use them. And shortly after that graduation, I was involved in the installation of a large Flentrop organ—a glorious looking thing with polished façade, gilded pipe shades, and of course mechanical action. A shipping container (arriving in Cleveland on a Greek ship delightfully named Calliope) was delivered to the church. It was a full day’s work to unload the container, each piece of the organ being carried up the large stone stair from the street, and I’ll not forget the significance of noticing that the hundredth or so load I carried was a stack of Swell shutters. A few trips later, a box of pipes labeled Celeste.
Thirty years later, I’ve realized that the real reason we worked so hard not to use our thumbs when we played was that we’d need them to push pistons.
Let’s celebrate good organs. Good organs are machines that have wind supplies and beautifully voiced pipes. They have valves that allow musicians to run air through those beautifully voiced pipes. I don’t care if those valves are opened by levers, magnets, pneumatic motors, or sheer will power. What goes around comes around. Never throw out a necktie.
What will they write on the first page of issue 2400 of The Diapason, December 2109? If there are pipe organs to celebrate in 2109, it will be because we got it right today.

 

Paul Jordan

Parts 1 and 2 were published in the October and November 2007 issues of The Diapason, respectively.

Improvising and composing
Under the rubric of ‘Performing and Recording’ I sought to clarify Walcha’s concept of the relative places of the objective and subjective, the calculated and the spontaneous, the performance for the moment and the recording for the ages. As discussed, these categories pertained mainly to the role of the performer in interpreting and rendering the compositions of other musicians. In contrast, say, to a Paul Hindemith, Walcha’s primary role and, at least for many decades, the main basis of his reputation, was as an interpreter. This emphasis may have meanwhile shifted somewhat, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon worlds of sacred music, where the four volumes of his own Chorale-Preludes, as published by Peters Verlag, have become liturgical staples, recognized for their quality, originality and accessibility even by younger musicians who may never have heard Walcha’s performances as an organist, and in particular his interpretations of Bach, either live or in their recorded embodiments.
It is useful to understand that these compositions grew out of Walcha’s extensive liturgical praxis—for, of the hundreds if not thousands of worship services he played, virtually all included improvisations, and in particular of chorale-preludes in many diverse styles, idioms, textures, durations, and degrees of “modernity” and complexity. Indeed, these publications are the only form in which Walcha allowed his improvisational art to be preserved. At the same time, as he would be the first to concede, there is a clear line between the spontaneity of improvisation and the fixed and calculated structures of written compositions.
His wife Ursula—indispensable assistant in Walcha’s learning of new scores (she played each voice separately as dictation into his memory), in helping to evaluate his registrations (and, when necessary, pulling stops), and in his travels (these three roles cited from among her innumerable contributions to his welfare and success)—was wont to voice her view that her husband’s compositions, fine as they were, did not quite represent the full glory of his improvisations. Still, we are fortunate to have them for their intrinsic values and as a minimal record of this artist’s most personal—and often moving—manner of conveying the meanings of the tunes and texts of hymns, and of his considerable capacities as a musical thinker within as well as outside of the Bachian “box.”

Provocateur for his times
(Walcha and Reger)
Regardless of whatever preoccupations we may nurture with matters of cosmic order, time (eternity) beyond human or even natural history, perennial philosophies and unalterable truths, we are also all children of our own time, embedded in its more or less chaotic history, and subject, with little recourse, to its shifting winds. For Germans the year 1945 marked the “zero hour,” as Hitler and his minions had severely ruptured the integrity of the nation’s spirit and the opposing Allies reduced a large portion of its “physical plant” to rubble—together also leaving virtually no survivors untouched by loss of friends and family. With World War II coming so close on the heels of—and even more destructive than—the earlier “war to end all wars,” the newly traumatized mood was less one of quick fermentations and liberations than of a need to reexamine the bases of one’s existence, to slough off all that was superfluous, and even to seek renewal in a return to long-lost but once well-tried and venerable traditions. This context may help provide the “logic” behind the postwar decisions of most German Protestant church authorities to remove most of the Victorian-era hymns from the books and—in a sense: artificially, by sheer act of will—to replace them with the sorts of older hymns which, e.g., had still been in common use when Bach included settings of them in his Orgelbüchlein (and elsewhere), but which had long since, by the “organic” processes of history and changes of taste, gone out of use (and out of the hymnals).
I describe these aspects of the broad existential and the related ecclesiastical situations also as the context in which Walcha, at the turn of the decade from the 1940s to the 1950s, committed a bold act, which was in some sense to haunt him for the rest of his life. As a responsible and already established artist in his own 40s, he felt self-confident and also—looking at the world around him—somehow impelled to publish an article, in a widely read sacred music journal, about the organ music of Max Reger (who had died, in the midst of the first world-conflagration, in 1916).
In it Walcha made several key points that I recall from my own reading—I had, a decade after its publication, to seek the article out in the library. He dared to express a less than positive evaluation of the pervasive chromaticism, grandiosity and hyper-expressivity of Reger’s idiom—in conversation, at least, I recall a comparison with the overbearing decadence of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal (Monument to the Battle of the Nations) in Leipzig. More importantly, he claimed that Reger’s organ music was not, in the truest sense, organ music! It wrote out explicitly, in mountains of notes, the very octaves and other overtones that the organ “produces by itself,” by virtue of its tonal structure, e.g., in the mixtures of the principal chorus, in the realization of much simpler, basic notations that indeed have been appropriately reduced, by real organ composers (e.g., Bach), to the bare contrapuntal and harmonic essences of the music. Not only the sound, but even the appearance of Reger’s music, Walcha implied, was overladen and pretentious and tended to hide the presence of ideas, which, once reduced to their essences, might prove to be relatively insignificant.
Not leaving it there, Walcha proceeded, in notational form, to reduce the opening strains of one of Reger’s grandest and most renowned organ opuses to such essences, to their “actual” musical meanings, expressed in plain four-part harmony. Having thus “unmasked” the reality, the professor—he had his naïve side—evidently expected dyed-in-the-wool Romanticists to close the book and go home, now cured of their Reger addiction. Or, he didn’t care . . . And he went on to unmask the late-Romantic master in yet another respect. He quoted lengthy samples of inner voices from fugues by Reger, voices which were, indeed, distinguished by being undistinguished, if not virtually shapeless. He implied that such voices can be retained only on a short-order basis—they lack the kind of identity that would enable them to penetrate to the deeper layers of musical apperception. This demonstrated, too—here, the coup de grâce—that Reger was writing fugues on paper only, fugues that had some visual “earmarks,” but lacked the substance of genuine polyphony. Again, the late gentleman is revealed to have been something of a four-flusher . . .
In a concession, Walcha acknowledged the likelihood that it was not merely ignorance that prompted Reger’s lavishly doubled and tripled notation: it was probably made necessary by the relative lack of overtones in the tonal structure of the organs with which Reger had contact, organs built, self-evidently, before the Orgelbewegung (the neoclassicist reform movement of the 1920s) had succeeded in bringing back the earlier type of instruments with their richer overtone resources. But this too becomes evidence against the continuing credibility—or viable use—of Reger’s organ compositions: designed for organs that required the use of so many fingers all at once, they will sound harsh, if not ridiculous, if applied to our current instruments that have all these overtones already—and properly so—built into their tonal structures! No, Reger—Walcha believed—would be found to have not much going for him in this newly “essential” world of 1950.
And then the consequence. In the light of the foregoing considerations, he said, “I have decided to strike Max Reger from the list of composers whose works students at the Frankfurt Hochschule are required to play.” One might ask: If students here in New Haven in 2007 are not required to play Reger, why should students in Frankfurt in 1950 have been required to? But those were different times, and in a different country. The article occasioned “storms” of professorial protest in endless letters of rebuttal in subsequent issues of the journal. Part of the trauma was due to a conflation of “not required to” with “forbidden to.” Another part was a nervous fear of a creeping return of the kind of authoritarianism and censorship that had characterized German cultural life during the “thousand year empire” from 1933 to 1945. Another element was no doubt simple envy of and dislike for Helmut Walcha, coupled with an outspoken rejection of his opinionated outspokenness. Another may have been a sense that as the duly appointed head of the Frankfurt school’s Church Music Institute, Walcha had the prerogative to make such decisions without enduring such a challenge—but did it have to be with that rationale, and that provocative publicity?!
If not already in that written context, Walcha did eventually offer the additional explanation that while in wartime he was memorizing the 48 W.T.C. Preludes and Fugues in the country retreat, he came to realize that there was not enough room in his mind to accommodate their highest-density substance and still hold on to the discursive Reger organ extravaganzas that he had learned and often played in his younger years; something had to give. A related question cannot be repressed: Is there anyone alive who knows and plays, or was there ever anyone who knew and played—during the same period of life—the entire Well-Tempered Clavier as well as a set of giant Reger organ works, both from memory?
In any case, the occasional determined Frankfurt student did propose Reger for study in the lessons over the ensuing decades and did not necessarily find Walcha unreceptive. There were two possibilities: if the work was to be one that Walcha himself had once played, he might well take it on, and—relearning it quickly from listening—would soon also even be able to demonstrate it again at the console . . . If it were a piece unfamiliar to Walcha, there were other, often quite willing teachers available at the school. [Disclosure: during my own Frankfurt time, Armin Schoof studied Reger’s great F-minor work with Walcha—though it is not specifically included in the Coppey-Kunz repertoire list—while I enjoyed learning the much smaller, but also tellingly “Regerian” Prelude in A Minor from Opus 69 with Prof. Hartmann at the cathedral downtown.]
In wrapping up this episode, which I have narrated in detail because I believe it to be of interest yet perhaps not readily accessible to other American organists, my own feelings are that, despite a number of inherent misunderstandings, it formed a characteristic, if marginal part of the process of cleaning up from the vestigial messiness of some Romanticism along with some forms of potential brutality, which that emotional/artistic nexus had left behind in the political and cultural sphere [the line, say, from Wagner’s to Hitler’s anti-Semitism], and that the controversy engendered by Walcha’s boldness was needed, or useful, in 1950, as a healthy means to help clarify both aesthetic and human rights positions in certain German musical circles—and this even if perhaps there is now no one left who could still agree in all specifics with either Walcha’s or some of his critics’ theses.

Lifestyle, discipline, personal time, hobbies
The Walchas’ personal lifestyle was characterized primarily by modesty and simplicity, an almost vegetarian diet, herbal teas, regular afternoon naps, an occasional glass of wine; after the international success of his recordings—his D Minor Toccata and Fugue recording alone, he once told me, financed his house organ—the couple could have lived in much greater opulence; but they chose not to do so. For one thing, such a change could have impinged on the accustomed quietude and focus requisite for his ongoing musical attainments. His discipline, structured by his sense of time, was extraordinary; on top of all the organ and harpsichord music, and the entire Lutheran hymnal—including the words of hymns with thirteen verses—he also had his datebook in his head. When I once gave him a long-playing album for his birthday in October and a few days later asked if he had heard it, he said, “Oh no, I won’t be able to listen to that until February—it’s scheduled for the 19th, after my afternoon nap.” When at my lesson on February 20th I remembered to inquire if he’d yet had a chance to listen to the album (the early Swingle Singers singing Bach), he responded immediately, “Oh yes, we listened to it yesterday, as planned, right after my nap . . .”
Helmut and Ursula (though I never used those words) made time for quiet social events with the students—often in their home—and with their friends. There was never an impression that they were rushed, under deadline pressures, or had not gotten enough sleep. In the summers they loved to take long walks in the Black Forest—and, after a few explanations, he had the layout of the landscape memorized (just as he knew, and could give you a guided taxi tour of the Frankfurt cityscape). They also managed to attend concerts, of his colleagues, or of students such as myself who might be performing in other media (e.g., he wanted to hear recorder, he wanted to hear counter-tenor; or, if I happened to play an organ concert near where they were vacationing, they might show up unexpectedly and socialize with us afterwards—other students have told similar stories . . .).
In retrospect, it is hard to imagine how all this was possible, especially inasmuch as he could read neither words nor music in Braille. They listened to some radio, and he alluded to their reading entire books (including novels) together, she reading to him regularly in the evenings. He was curious, and the questions he asked of people were meaningful and well formulated; it was a pleasure to try to answer to his satisfaction. His main hobby, I think—as well as a way to practice—was playing his house organ. In his retirement he did so purely for fun, telling me, for instance, how nice it felt to be freed from the compulsion of always playing for note perfection. Though his harpsichord playing seemed not as idiomatic, sensuous, mellifluous as, say, Gustav Leonhardt’s (or as his own organ playing), he did enjoy the East German cembalo he had at home.
In his retirement he turned also to other enjoyments—listening to Wagner (as he had in his youth)—or learning French(!), something he felt he’d missed out on throughout his music studies and professional life. Of course he had to approach this in his own systematic way, starting with the music: from his tutor he wanted first to find out how to pronounce all the nasal word endings, in, en, an, on, un (hard enough to distinguish in context . . . ). “Good luck, Helmut!,” I thought when he told me this. (But if anyone could do it . . . ) This did not of course mean that he was going to start learning to play some French music—there seemed to be an uncrossable line there; yet at least he wished to find out more about the language behind it . . .

Friends, successors
When it came time to think about his successors, at school and church, Walcha, as might be expected, thought judiciously. While there were several of his former students, on both sides of the Atlantic, who he believed would be qualified to succeed him in either or both positions, he also thought it wiser—at least in making suggestions to the school administration—to move outside of “the family.” The Geneva organist and recording artist Lionel Rogg and he admired each other’s playing and had exchanged views in letters; on balance, Rogg seemed a worthy candidate both to carry forth the pedagogical work within a congenial aesthetic tradition and to sustain the prestige of the church music division of the Hochschule. Coming from Geneva, however, Rogg was understandably less than enthusiastic about the contours and ambiance of post-war Frankfurt as a city; while the chance to preside over the Schuke across the river just might have been able to persuade him, Walcha was still yearning for a few more years of unencumbered work at his Dreikönigskirche. In the end, the successor at school was Edgar Krapp, who, it is said, convinced Walcha and the others with an especially cogent rendition of the C-minor Passacaglia and Fugue.
Later, at church, Walcha was succeeded by his recent student Renate Meierjürgen, who had already been directing the choir and was something of an expert on his Chorale-Preludes. This appointment kept matters at the church, literally, in the family for the rest of the Walchas’ lives, inasmuch as Frau Meierjürgen, a single woman, had also agreed to move in with the Walchas on Hasselhorstweg, where she became instrumental in helping both of them to cope with the difficulties of old age and now continues to reside. Her successor at the church became Andreas Köhs, a concert organist and choral-orchestral conductor as well as a music editor with a major publisher. Like most German organists today, given the slow attrition of the churches’ budgets under the continuing system of church financing via state-collected taxes, and with a dwindling congregation as almost everywhere, he faces an ongoing struggle to maintain, if not expand the program—meaning, in this case, to continue Dreikönigs’ traditional contributions to the city’s cultural life in a manner worthy of the memory of the relatively recent tenures, at this institution, of such stellar historical figures as (the conductor and, later, Thomas-Kantor) Kurt Thomas and Helmut Walcha.
The Walchas had several concentric circles of friends, relatives and associates. Among their closest friends in their later years, in addition to Frau Meierjürgen, were the late composer Kurt Hessenberg and his wife Gisela; harpsichordist Maria Jäger-Jung, who died this year; the organist Karl Köhler, formerly in charge of much of the liturgical organ program at the Hochschule and still residing in Frankfurt; the late Berlin painter Gerhard Rechenbach (who painted the portrait of Helmut Walcha that still adorns the living room on Hasselhorstweg), and the loyal Adolf Kirschner, still living in Frankfurt, with whom the friendship dated back to the year 1935. In addition it is clear that they enjoyed a close relationship with Christel North-Wittmann (the oldest daughter of Pastor Paulus North), who at one time directed the church’s choir, and her family, as also with Helmut Walcha’s former assistant Agathe Calvelli-Adorno (a niece of the late eminent philosopher) and her brilliant scientist-husband Rainer Jaenicke. Of course there were important friendships lost to death—I think of the late Erich Thienhaus, who on behalf of Deutsche Grammophon recorded many of Walcha’s early albums, and his companion—a couple to whom, in my recollection, the Walchas referred quite often. Helmut Walcha and many of his former students, on both sides of the ocean, kept in touch with each other, some in more rigorous, some in looser ways. But the affections from and for the Walchas were and are spread around the planet. Nowhere do his work and person continue to be more revered, for instance, than today in Japan.

The organ in the musical world
Our instrument is grandly self-contained and we are, with few exceptions, not required to interact with other musicians in order to enjoy it; in addition, it usually sits, not portable, in church buildings and liturgical contexts a good step or two removed from the venues and concerns of the larger—and secular—musical world. We congregate less with other musicians than among ourselves, and then with clergy and church people for whom music is often one of several means toward approaching religious goals but rarely an end in itself. In these circumstances it may not be surprising that some organists have, over the last seven or eight decades, been drawn to doctrines that advocate simplistic solutions to the problems of musical interpretation—cries of “everything legato except repeated notes!, everything detached!, everything portato except for occasional couplets!, no Romanticism!, no Classicism!, only Eclecticism is American!, organs without tremulants!, no thumbs!, never legato over the bar-line!, no cases!, no swells!, no electric bellows!, no combinations!, no more tracker-action!, choral accompaniment only on British organs!, never play from memory!, always play from memory!, historical temperaments only!, Spanish Renaissance organs to the rescue!”—etc.
Is there a reader who has not heard all of these cries? Is it a problem that none of them ever crossed the lips of Helmut Walcha? It is a problem, for us—I submit—that almost none of them ever crosses the lips of an oboist or a singer or a violinist or a composer or a pianist . . . For any of these people, to advocate such creeds would soon render them dysfunctional as musicians. For them the issue is, and has to be, the virtually endless variety of means available, and required!, for convincing, communicative interpretation of music. How and where have we, do we (through our isolation?), go wrong, become so narrow? Out there, also—scratched beneath the surface—even the Harnoncourts and Hogwoods, Herreweghes and Gardiners would admit that delving ever deeper into the cave of history, to retrieve from its dim light ever greater jewels of truth, of authentic instructions from the dead (instructions then to be enforced by a kind of Early Music Police, analogous to composers’ Avant-garde Music Police of the 1960s), is not actually the way, not the primary way, in which musical interpretation evolves (or “improves”)—among people living in a 21st century.
Helmut Walcha was no more opposed to good historical research than to subjectivity or spontaneity; indeed he knew that, as an intrinsic part of our lives and times, it contributed inevitably and often usefully—or usably, for it needs to be used and not worshipped—to change, via those endless hermeneutic cycles (no matter how often we like to believe an endpoint has been reached . . . ) of reconsiderations and revisions without which life and history are not possible. But the primary focus of his work and teaching was the artist’s obligation to deal responsibly—a path at least as challenging—with the immanent structure and character of each individual work, not by subjecting it to a patented solution, but by minute examination and analysis—of its specific language and being and discernible structure and expressive intentions—by the eyes and intellect and heart and (rather than by theories) via the inner ear informed by these three human faculties and supplemented by such intriguing general stylistic mandates or suggestions as are contemporaneously proffered through the insights or opinions of historians.
I have enjoyed listening to recordings and performances by some of the brilliant young organists entering church and concert life today. Much of their work conveys a fine visceral excitement—passion has not been lost! While the generations may be well advised to eschew directly “interfering” with each other, empathy and respect for the mysteries of new (or old) perceptions and of different internally driven emphases need perhaps not preclude some beneficial reciprocal stimulation and cross-fertilization (as another part, indeed, of the ineluctable historical hermeneutic). While I can—and have tried to—learn from attending to playing-styles informed by the most recent historiography, and even from such seductively looser and more “casual” kinds of musical gestures as seem favored among some of the younger artists, I confess that what I do find largely missing these days is a sense of the deep interpretative responsibility to the essence of each individual work, and the consequent specific and lucid internal organization of each musical rendition, which characterized and was so widely appreciated half a century ago in the work of Helmut Walcha. Perhaps, prompted by his centennial, a broad and detailed reconsideration of the sound recordings of this artist, in conjunction with his educational legacy, could facilitate a reformulation (resolidification?) of our interpretative priorities—within a new hermeneutical cycle of consciousness—and thereby also contribute, in analogy to his work’s earlier direct appeal beyond the confines of the organ world, to bringing our instrument and its repertoire yet a step closer—as most of us desire—toward the center of mainstream contemporary classical music culture.
It is my hope that, by way of encouraging such an undertaking or at least discussion, recollections by others who knew or felt strongly about Helmut Walcha—along with other relevant comments or critiques prompted by this article—will be forthcoming in the pages of The Diapason.■

by James B. Hartman

The Centennial Facsimile Edition of The Organ, Vols. I & II, May 1892-April 1894, Everett E. Truette, editor and publisher, Boston, was published in 1995 by The Boston Organ Club Chapter of the Organ Historical Society, P.O. Box 104, Harrisville, NH 03450-0104.  It was prepared from an original copy owned by the Spaulding Library, New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, under the direction of E.A. Boadway, Alan Miller Laufman, and Martin R. Walsh. (Available for $59.95 from The Boston Organ Club, P.O. Box 371, Brushton, NY 12916-0571.)

Everett Ellsworth Truette was among the leading figures on the musical scene in the United States around the turn of the century.1 Born in Rockland, Massachusetts, in 1861, at the age of seventeen he was already participating in recitals at the New England Conservatory of Music, where he was studying organ, piano, harmony, counterpoint, and theory. In 1883 he was among the earliest graduates to receive the Mus. Bac. degree from Boston University's College of Music, where he had served as organist at other graduation ceremonies. Subsequently he studied organ with Augustus Haupt in Germany, Alexandre Guilmant in France, and William T. Best in England, over a two-year period. In addition to teaching organ, piano, harmony, and theory at his large studio in Boston--it contained a three-manual, 19-stop, tracker pipe organ, in addition to a grand piano and a pedal piano--he was organist and choirmaster in a church in Newton, Massachusetts, and served as conductor of two large choral groups. He also maintained an active career as an organ recitalist, playing over 400 concerts and dedicatory programs throughout the country. His other accomplishments included the publication of over thirty organ compositions, collections of organ music, and anthems, issued by his own company, along with a successful book on organ registration, first launched in 1919. One of the founders of the American Guild of Organists in 1896, he was active in that association as its first Secretary and later as Dean. He was editor of the Organ Department of The Étude for seven years until 1907, and continued to write for that magazine until 1928. Seven months before his death in 1933 he played his last recital at the church where he had served as organist and choirmaster since 1897.

Early in the 1890s Truette conceived the idea that culminated in his most ambitious literary venture, the publication in May 1892 of the first issue of The Organ. In his inaugural editorial, Truette admitted the limited audience for such a publication, and described the magazine not as a partisan or trade journal, but as an educational enterprise for the discussion of topics of interest to music students, professional musicians, and lovers of organ music generally. His general aim was to broaden the familiarity of these people with the construction and uses of the organ through information about notable organs, technical and tonal matters, organ concerts, new organ music, and the sayings and doings of prominent persons associated with the instrument.

During its short existence only two volumes--twenty-four issues in all--of The Organ were published, and the categories of its contents varied hardly at all. There were biographical sketches of past and contemporary composers of organ music, contemporary recitalists, and organ builders; and descriptions of recent organ installations in the United States and historic organs in England and Europe. One article described the first organ in the United States, imported from England by a wealthy Boston merchant around 1700.2 Each issue included two or three organ pieces, some composed or arranged specially for the journal. Other recurrent contents included articles on organ construction and organ playing; specifications of new organs, programs of organ recitals, a question and answer column, correspondence in the form of reports and letters from near and far, a section of miscellaneous announcements about organists and their activities ("Mixtures"), and a column of humor ("Cipherings").

Although Truette's editorial at the end of the first year expressed satisfaction at the confidence shown by readers, subscribers, and advertisers, in the penultimate issue he announced that publication would be suspended. The reasons were primarily financial, related to a continued financial depression: many subscribers and advertisers were in arrears, and Truette was unable to meet payments to composers and writers for their published items. Reminding his readers that remittances for the balance of unexpired subscriptions would be forthcoming, and that back issues could be purchased at the regular rate of twenty-five cents each, Truette ended by saying, "we close the mucilage pot, hang up the scissors, and say au revoir."3

The highly informative and entertaining material contained in the twenty-four issues of The Organ is of great historical significance. Taken as a whole, its contents present a broad panorama of the state of the organ culture in the United States in the mid-1890s: organ building, organ playing, prominent recitalists, major events, and opinions on topics of interest to the musical community.

Organ Building

The organ builders of the Boston area--the focus of organ building in New England in the concluding decade of the nineteenth century--and in neighboring northeastern states were responsible for the installation of many large instruments in prestigious churches and other locations.4 Advertisements by the following organ builders ap-peared in almost every issue of The Organ.

The Roosevelt Organ works, managed by Frank Roosevelt (1865-1894) after the death in 1886 of his father who founded the company in 1872, was responsible for two of the largest organs in the world: a four-manual, 115-stop instrument in a Garden City cathedral in 1883, and a four-manual, 107-stop instrument in the Chicago Auditorium in 1889. When the company closed in 1893, various rights and patents relating to adjustable combination action, wind chests, and electro-pneumatic and tubular action were transferred to Farrand & Votey, a Detroit company.

The Farrand & Votey firm emerged from a buy-out of the Whitney Organ Company in the mid-1880s by the family of one of the partners, William Farrand (1854-1930). The company built a large four-manual instrument for the gigantic Chicago Exposition in 1893, and installed equally large instruments in the Carnegie Library in Pittsburgh, the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, and in various churches. The other partner, Edwin Votey (1856-1931), invented the self-playing Pianola in 1895, shortly after the company began building organs for the Aeolian Company, with which it eventually merged.

Although the Hook factory of organ building was well established by 1860, and Francis Hastings (1836-1916) became a partner in 1871, Hook & Hastings of Boston acquired its name upon the death of one of the founders, George Hook (1807-1880). The factory operated at its peak level of activity at that time, producing an average of 46 instruments a year, including larger instruments of up to 81 speaking stops, along with several models of small, ready-made, moderately priced stock instruments, available on short notice.

Another prominent Massachusetts builder was George S. Hutchings (1835-1913), who entered the organ factory of Elias and George Hook at the age of twenty-two, leaving in 1869 to form a new association with several other Hook employees. In 1884 he began building organs under his own name, some of considerable size featuring patented changeable combination pistons. He constructed more than 600 instruments during his lifetime, including a three-manual tracker organ installed in Everette Truette's Boston studio in 1897.5

James E. Treat (1837-1915) had been working with various organ building firms for over twenty-five years before he connected with a wealthy interior decorator, Edward F. Searles, who commissioned Treat in 1886 to build an organ for his opulent mansion in Great Barrington, Massachusetts (Everett Truette was one of two organists who gave the opening program). Searles later subsidized the establishment of a factory for Treat, which became the Methuen Organ Company. In this enterprise cost was no object, the best materials were used, and the most competent workmen were hired. Treat's advertisements in The Organ warned "No specifications for competition--Prices not the lowest." For a time Treat was treasurer of the United States Tubular Bell Company, Methuen, Massachusetts, another Searles' business that advertised its products for churches, turret clocks, and public buildings in The Organ ("Ding-Dongs, 2 bells; Peals, 4 bells; Chimes, 8, 13 and 15 bells"). Among Treat's other installations was the Searles Memorial Organ in Grace Church, San Francisco, in 1894 (in memory of Searles' wife who died in 1891); Everett Truette played a demonstration program at Treat's factory before the organ was delivered. The organ and the church were destroyed in the disastrous earthquake and fire that devastated San Francisco in 1906. One of the pallbearers at Treat's funeral was Everett Truette.

George Jardine & Son, New York, was the concluding incarnation of a family enterprise that flourished in the last four decades of the nineteenth century. For most of that time, the firm was led by the son, Edward, who was a church organist and frequent recitalist in inaugural programs for Jardine organs. The firm's largest "Grand Organs" included several four-manual instruments in churches in and around New York, and one in a Pittsburgh cathedral; three-manual in-struments were placed in churches as far away as San Francisco and New Orleans.

Samuel Pierce (1819-1895) learned pipemaking in the Hook factory, but moved to Reading, Massachusetts, in 1847 to open his own shop, from which he supplied many organ builders in Boston and elsewhere with pipes, pipe organ materials, and other accessories. His advertisement in The Organ boasted, "Front Pipes Decorated in the Highest Style of the Art"; Pierce had a special department in a separate building re-served for this facet of his operations.

Although the Mason & Hamlin Organ & Piano Company built a few stock-model pipe organs in the 1890s, they were noted for their elaborate reed organs, with two manuals and pedals, and decorative dummy pipe facades; these instruments were powered by the strong arms of boys or young men who worked a handle on the side of the case. The company's advertisement in The Organ featured the "Liszt Church Organ," described as "the most perfect instrument of its class, superior to small pipe organs."  These claims were accompanied by a letter from Alexandre Guilmant, who testified that the organ "is of beautiful tone and will be very useful to persons wishing to learn to play the Great Organ."

Other organ builders whose advertisements appeared in The Organ included Carl Barkhoff, John H. Sole, Johnson & Son, William King & Son, Morey & Barnes, M.P. Möller, Cole & Woodberry, Woodberry & Harris, Geo. H. Ryder, Henry F. Miller, and J.G. Marklove. In addition, the Henry F. Miller & Sons Piano Company, Boston, offered "The Pedal Piano--Indispensable to Organists."

Organ Recital Repertoire

The content of organ recital programs in the mid-1890s was determined by a variety of factors: the performers' backgrounds, training, musical interests, and technical abilities; reverence for musical tradition and the attraction of the new; the perceived musical preferences of audiences; and the tonal resources of the organs.6 During the two years of its publication, The Organ printed the programs of 136 organ recitals, consisting of 956 selections in all. Of these, 264 (28 percent) were transcriptions of works by major composers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, such as symphonic or instrumental movements, operatic overtures, and marches. The most frequently performed arrangements were from Wagner's operas Lohengrin and Tannhäuser, and pieces from Handel's Samson and Occasional Oratorio, along with his ever-popular Largo. Audiences heard interpretations of marches by Chopin (Funeral March), Gounod (Funeral March), Mendelssohn (Wedding March), Meyerbeer (Le Prophète, Schiller Festival March, and others), Schubert (Marche militaire); and operatic overtures by Flotow (Stradella, Martha), Rossini (William Tell), and Weber (Oberon). The frequency of performance of organ transcriptions of works by these and other composers is given in this table:

                  Number                Percent

Wagner                 36            14

Handel 27            10

Mendelssohn    19            7

Gounod                 14            5

Rossini 11            4

Schubert               10            4

Weber  9               3

Beethoven          8               3

Chopin 8               3

Meyerbeer          7               3

Haydn  7               3

Flotow 7               3              

The inclusion of transcriptions and arrangements in organ recitals was also widespread in Canada and England, and the practice attracted much criticism, even though it served the valuable function of providing the general public with opportunities to hear works that otherwise would remain unknown. In its second issue, The Organ reprinted a letter from a London magazine by the English organist William T. Best (1826-1897), perhaps the greatest concert organist of the nineteenth century, on the topic of organ arrangements.7 Best was responding to an article by Walter Parratt, Organist to the Queen, who was hostile to the practice of arrangements, calling them "examples of misapplied skill" that were having "a disastrous influence over organ music, as in the majority of such programmes two-thirds at least are arrangements of orchestral and choral works." Best retorted by pointing to "the father of all arrangers," Bach, and other musicians whose integrity would not allow them to select music unsuitable for the organ; even Guilmant, he pointed out, had recently engaged in the practice. Furthermore, he added, "in endeavoring to raise the musical taste of the humbler classes, the municipal authorities of our large towns did not intend their concert organs to be restricted to the performance of preludes, and fugues, and somewhat dry sonatas." Best argued that a well-arranged slow movement of an instrumental work was preferable to a dull specimen of original organ music. Even so, he thought that the higher forms of musical composition should only be introduced warily and gradually. Best had a very large repertoire, and his concert programs always included several arrangements. A sketch of his career included this assessment of his abilities:

Mr. Best's skill in handling the organ is something marvellous. When playing, his two hands perform feats of registration which would require three hands for most any other performer; and those who consider the organ a "cold instrument" have but to listen to his playing to become convinced that one who is so thoroughly skilled in manipulating the resources of the organ can produce effects of expression and tone-coloring which they never thought were possible.8

As for original works, Alexandre Guilmant's organ compositions were the most frequently performed, led by his Marche funèbre et chant séraphique and several of his Sonatas. Bach's Preludes and Fugues were played often, particularly the dramatic Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, but there was only a single performance of a Chorale Prelude. Handel was represented by his Organ Concertos, and Mendelssohn by his Sonatas, and Preludes and Fugues. Works by composers of the day included favorites by Batiste (Communion in G, Offertoires), Buck (Variations on The Last Rose of Summer), Dubois (March of the Magi Kings, Toccata in G), Lemmens (Storm Fantasia), Salomé (miscellaneous works), and Spinney (Harvest Home, Vesper Bells). Some short pieces by George E. Whiting, a member of the organ department of The New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, were played as frequently as Widor's Symphonies. Rheinberger's Sonatas also were played from time to time. The frequency of performance of original works for organ by these composers is given in this table:

                  Number                Percent

Guilmant              78            11

Bach      55            8

Salomé 38            6

Dubois 35            5

Handel 34            5

Batiste  31            5

Buck     28            4

Mendelssohn    24            3

Lemmens            21            3

Rheinberger       21            3

Spinney                 20            3

Whiting                 19            3

Widor   19            3

Frequent Performers

Of the 136 organ recitals reported in The Organ during its brief existence, many were played by organists who were unknown outside their own immediate neighborhoods; only two such recitals involved women organists. These concerts were not always stand-alone events, but were shared with assisting artists: violinists, instrumental ensembles, vocal soloists, and choirs. Nevertheless, about half of the recitals were played by only six performers, several of whom toured extensively. The most active players were Harrison M. Wild, Chicago (14 percent of reported recitals), whose 128th recital was reported in 1893; Clarence Eddy, Chicago (10 percent), J. Warren Andrews, Minneapolis (7 percent), and William C. Carl, New York (7 percent).

  Clarence Eddy was the subject of a biography that described him as the most widely-known organist in the country.9 Eddy, who showed musical ability at the age of five, studied organ with Dudley Buck before becoming a church organist at the age of seventeen. Later he received instruction in Germany from Augustus Haupt, who characterized him as "undoubtedly a peer of the greatest living organists." Soon after his appointment at the First Congregational Church in Chicago, Eddy began his recital career. After joining the Hershey School of Musical Art in 1876 as general director, he gave a remarkable series of one hundred weekly organ recitals without repeating a number; the concluding program in 1879 contained music composed specially for the occasion. Eddy dedicated more organs than any other organist of his day, including the great Auditorium organ in Chicago, and he gave recitals at the Paris Exposition, the Philadelphia Centennial Exposition, and the Vienna World's Fair, in addition to concert tours in the United States and visits to Canada. Eddy's other activities included his appointment as one of the judges for two organ music competitions sponsored by The Organ, his efforts in organizing the 1893 North American tour of Alexandre Guilmant, and his series of fifteen concluding recitals on the Festival Hall organ at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893, where a total of 62 recitals were played by various organists. A review of one of Eddy's dedication recitals testified to his gifts as a player, as well as exhibiting the laudatory style of music reviews typical of the time:

His programme of last evening was carefully arranged, and was carried out in the most masterly and artistic style. The most difficult subjects were brought out clearly and distinctly, while the intricate part of his work was interpreted with a sweet and sympathetic touch. There is an individuality about Mr. Eddy's playing that distinguishes him from the less skilful performer. With him the organ is not the noisy instrument it often appears when in the hands of unskilled players, but under his touch the great pipes breathe forth the most eloquent notes, and those who were strangers to the wonderful melody that can be obtained from so large an instrument were astonished at the ease with which he was able to control its wonderful resources. The hearers manifested the warmth of their appreciation by long and frequent applause. The programme was chosen with great care and embraced masterful compositions from Händel, Wagner, Flotow, Gounod, that were selected with the view of testing the instrument. . . . The Storm Fantasie of Lemmens, a descriptive piece, was superbly rendered. . . . 'The Old Folks at Home,' with variations, went to the hearts of the hearers, and elicited prolonged applause.10

Eddy also contributed letters to The Organ, including a long discourse on organ pedaling, in which he concluded that "an absolutely free and independent use of the heel in pedal playing . . . is as important as a skilful employment of the thumb upon the manuals,"11 and another on playing the organ from memory, in which he maintained (referring to the most noted organists of his time, such as W.T. Best, Alexandre Guilmant, Eugene Gigout, Charles Widor, and others) that "organists are heard at their best when they are unhampered by the mental strain attendant upon committing to memory the compositions they play."12   

The only visiting recitalist reported in The Organ was France's distinguished organist and composer, Alexandre Guilmant. He was the subject of a biographical article that commented on his youthful demonstrations of musical ability as an organist and composer, his period of study with Jacques Lemmens in Belgium, his frequent inauguration of or-gans and concert performances throughout Europe, and the compositional style of several of his organ pieces.13 The journal devoted considerable attention to Guilmant's North American tour in the fall of 1893, arranged by Clarence Eddy, in which the virtuoso played thirty concerts in less than eight weeks, including four at the Chicago World's Fair. The Chicago correspondent offered qualified praise for the master's performances:

At present everything with us is Guilmant. . . .

Though we cannot rave over this master's technique, we are carried away by the wonderfully clean and neat treatment of all his numbers. The breadth and truly marvellous conception of whatever he undertakes are indeed wonderful.

In his improvisations we expected more dash than was given; but a tone-poet, like a word-poet, is not always inspired. . . .

  In all his numbers Mr. Guilmant was encored and re-encored, and in some instances had to get off the organ bench twice, and even three times, before he was allowed to proceed.14

During his tour Guilmant played other recitals in various cities in the United States and Canada. In Boston, 5,000 people attempted to secure the 2,200 available tickets for Guilmant's two concerts. An enthusiastic reviewer stated:

Mons. Guilmant has raised organ playing to a point of virtuosity equal to the work of the celebrated pianists, and with him there is no chance to grumble at the "impossibilities of the organ." His playing of the above programme [works by Bach, Salomé, Lemmens, Schumann, Tombelle, Dubois, Best, Chauvet, Martini, Mendelssohn, and six of Guilmant's own compositions] was magnificent.

Guilmant's advent in this country is proving to sceptics that the organ is a concert instrument, and that organ recitals will draw as large and enthusiastic audiences as the best orchestras. . . .15

On his tour through Eastern Canada, Guilmant found a copy of Mendelssohn's Elijah on a hotel piano in Niagara Falls, and he impressed the guests with his playing of several selections and an extemporized fugue from the score, along with a few of his own compositions. He was met by a former Parisian organist in Hamilton, Ontario, visited the Mason & Risch piano factory in Toronto, and played for an audience of 5,000--many standing--at the inauguration of a new organ in a Montréal cathedral. Guilmant felt quite at home on the Casavant instrument because all the stop names were in French.16

Occasionally The Organ ventured onto the international scene by publishing the recital programs of several English organists; in particular, William T. Best, who performed not only in England but also in Australia, where he played a series of twelve inaugural recitals on the new organ in Centennial Hall, Sydney, in 1890.17 The programs of Auguste Wiegand, the Belgian organist who became City Organist in Sydney, Australia, were also reported, along with those of several other performers in that country.

Timely Topics: Organ Design and Construction

Of all the preoccupations of organists in the last decade of the nineteenth century, as reflected in the columns of The Organ, some were unique to that period, while others still are matters of interest today to experienced players and students of the organ alike. Most of the issues related to organ construction have long since been settled, but they were matters of intense interest at the time.

It should be recalled that organ building at the time was in a state of flux, and there was no universal agreement on many aspects of organ layout and construction. An article in the inaugural issue, "The Evolution of the Swell-box,"18 which touched upon both design aspects and their implications for performance, stimulated a debate that continued unabated for about six months. Responding to the author's claim that "the excess of Swell" was incompatible with the highest principles of organ construction, some writers advocated the "multiple swell" governing all divisions of the organ as a means of greater expression and control, while others opposed the idea as more mechanical gadgetry that smothered the organ's tone.19

The position on the console of the balanced swell pedal was also a matter of spirited debate. Truette himself initiated the topic and published the opinions of his fellow organists on various builders' practices that ranged from center to extreme right, high or low above the pedals. Some favored having the pedal sunk into the case directly over upper B or C of the pedal keyboard, while others (including William C. Carl) preferred it midway so that either foot could be used. Harrison M. Wild, the Chicago organist, facetiously suggested that "For many organists (?) the best position would be to the left of the pedal-board, just out of reach."20

In the concluding decades of the nineteenth century, organ builders in the United States and Europe were constructing instruments of enormous size for installation in large buildings world-wide. This issue was raised in an article on "Monster Organs,"21 which inquired whether organs having more than a hundred or more speaking stops were compatible with the highest grade of concert performances. On the issue of quality over quantity, William T. Best was quoted as stating that no organ needed more than fifty stops, and that "the varieties of organ tone are few, and the repetitions of the organ-builders are simply a nuisance to the player, though very useful to the builder from the white elephant point of view after erection." Although one correspondent demurred from Best's prescription, appending a specification of an ideal instrument of eighty registers, another agreed with Best in principle, but deplored the reckless distribution of colorless stops in many organs, and advocated a more scientific system of tonal design in organ construction. Later in the debate one correspondent despaired of defining the "ideal organ," while another submitted a specification for a three-manual, 54-stop, practical organ, claimed to be suitable in every way for any purpose. The journal later published a list of twenty of the world's largest organs that included these having 100 or more speaking stops:22

Town Hall, Sydney, Australia, 5/128 [126], Hill & Son, 1889;

Cathedral, Riga, Russia [Latvia], 4/124, Walcker, 1883;

Cathedral, Garden City, 4/115, Roosevelt, 1883;

Albert Hall, London, 4/111, Willis [1872];      

Auditorium, Chicago, 4/100, Roosevelt, 1889;

St. Sulpice, Paris, 5/100, Cavaillé-Coll, 1862 (reconstructed);

Cathedral, Ulm, Germany, 3/100, Walcker, 1856;

St. George's Hall, Liverpool, 4/100, Willis, 1867.

                 

At the other extreme, the W.W. Kimball Company, Chicago, developed a two-manual, eight-stop portable pipe organ, with pneumatic action throughout and a new system of feeders; the two pedal stops were vibrating free reeds exhausting into qualifying tubes. This space-saving instrument (all enclosed in a swell box), with its dimensions of six feet wide, three feet, six inches deep, and seven feet high, was designed with a detachable pedal board so that it could be taken down, boxed, and set up by anyone.23

An alleged decline in organ building generally was attributed to unhealthy competition among manufacturers committed to various "hurry-up" methods, low-grade materials, and "a maximum of claptrap mechanism, overblown stops, and cheap construction." At the same time, the author hoped that an "ebb of the swell-box flood, which . . . threatens the inundation of the entire instrument" would restore fine voicing and preserve the distinctive character of each manual.24

The business side of organ building was addressed in a discussion of organ builders' rights, common points of mutual interest, safeguards against delays in construction, redress for losses, and the negotiation of contracts with church organ committees. It was recommended that a convention of organ builders be held in Boston for the consideration of these matters.25

A series articles on "The Hope-Jones System of Electrical Organ Control,"26 described the technical details of the English inventor's new system of connecting a moveable console to the organ mechanism by a flexible cable, the second- or double-touch keyboard for bringing into action another rank of pipes, the replacement of stop drawknobs by stop keys, and a rapid sforzando pedal. It was claimed that these innovations in construction would also bring about a revolution in organ playing through the instantaneous attack made possible by the elimination of cumbersome mechanisms.27

The possibilities of the introduction of electricity into organ construction inspired a visionary speculation on "The Future of the Organ."28 The author imagined a new process of musical composition, in which the notation--perhaps as elaborate as that of an orchestral score--would be instantly translated into sound through electrically-sensitive ink. In this whimsical system, notes would be perfectly executed, along with appropriate registration and expression, as if emanating directly from the mind of the composer. Although instruments would still have manuals and pedals for those unable to compose in this fashion, present organs would someday seem tame and unwieldy relics of the past!

Timely Topics: Organ Playing

As part of its declared educational mission, The Organ offered miscellaneous advice on performance, either in the form of short articles or in a question and answer section. For beginners in particular, an article in an early issue advocated a mastery of manual parts on the piano, followed by slow practice on the organ using the soft stops, to achieve accuracy and clarity.29 A later article on pedal playing covered the proper seating position on the bench, locating the relative position of the notes, exercises in intervals, and playing hymn tunes.30 A discourse on registration touched on classes of organ tone, and offered general guidelines for combining stops for different contexts, such as chords, arpeggios, solos, accompaniment, and special effects.31 A uniquely practical piece consisted of a measure-by-measure discussion of the registration of the Adagio from Mendelssohn's First Organ Sonata, which was published in the same issue.32

For organ students and experienced players alike, there were two collections of "Don'ts."33 These assorted proscriptions denounced sliding about on the seat when playing pedal passages, swaying back and forth anytime, using the tremulant when accompanying singers, improvising every prelude and postlude ("How can your congregation stand your music all the time?"), keeping the right foot on the swell pedal, changing combinations before the end of a phrase, grumbling when the pastor announces different hymns on Sunday from the ones provided on Saturday, and forgetting to turn off the water motor, among other things.

The perennial problem of how to get an adequate amount of organ practice time in cold churches during winter months was addressed by a recommendation submitted by an ingenious organist: construct a tent over the console, heated by a kerosene lamp to raise the temperature of the miniature studio to room temperature in ten minutes.34

For players at all levels of accomplishment, the issue of whether one person can be both a good organist and a good pianist, and whether practice on one instrument is injurious to performance on the other, was discussed in terms of differences between piano and organ keyboard touch, finger position, legato playing, overlapping tones, and fortissimo playing.35 The discouraging conclusion was that it would be impossible for any one person to achieve the artistic heights of both Guilmant and Paderewski, for example; the required hours of practice would be prohibitive in an already too-short life. Nevertheless, among the advantages a country piano teacher might expect by becoming an organist included greater opportunities for being heard on both instruments, and the career advantage of working in the "elevated atmosphere" of a church. Piano students, on the other hand, were said to regard their art solely from the "Bohemian side."36

The early issues of The Organ announced that eight pages of organ music would be found in every number, a large part of which would be composed or arranged specially for the journal, the rest selected from the best writers for the instrument. This project was carried out consistently throughout the period of publication: a total of 45 selections by 26 composers were printed. These consisted mainly of short andantes, marches, and other melodies designed for players of modest technical abilities. Only two transcriptions were among them: Wagner's Wedding Processional from Lohengrin, and a Serenade by Gounod arranged by Everett Truette. Liszt, Mendelssohn, and Widor were among the composers of original works, along with Batiste, Dubois, Merkel, Salomé, and others whose pieces were often heard in organ recitals of the time. Truette published five of his own short pieces.

The center of formal instruction in organ playing in the 1890s was The New England Conservatory of Music, Boston, whose organ department had been established about twenty years before its advertisements appeared in The Organ; a brief history of the institution was published in a later issue of the journal.37 In 1894, two three-manual pipe organs, two two-manual pipe organs, and ten two-manual reed organs manufactured by the Estey Company specially for the needs of Conservatory students, were available for instruction and practice. In addition to the regular courses in organ playing, there were other classes in choir accompaniment, improvisation, and organ construction and tuning (a special nine-stop, two-manual, uncased organ was erected specially for the use of this class). The student tuition for a ten-week term in classes of four was $20.00; organ practice was 10 cents per hour and upwards. The board of instruction consisted of George E. Whiting, Henry M. Dunham, and Allen W. Swan, all of whom were frequent recitalists in Boston and surrounding areas. Thousands of organ students received their training at the Conservatory, and many of them later filled important positions throughout the United States and in Canada.

MORE POWER NEEDED

Minister.              "I think we should have congregational singing."

Organist.              "Then we must have a new organ."

"Why so?"

"This instrument isn't powerful enough to drown 'em out."

--Topeka Capital.38

Notes

                  1.              This biographical information is derived from an introductory essay on Everett E. Truette by E.A. Boadway, preceding the facsimile reproduction of The Organ, hereafter TO.

                  2.              Edwin A. Tilton, "The Brattle Organ," TO, I (December 1892): 173-75.

                  3.              TO, II (April 1894): 275.

                  4.              The following details of the lives and activities of these builders are derived from Orpha Ochse, The History of the Organ in the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), and Barbara Owen, The Organ in New England (Raleigh: The Sunbury Press, 1979).

                  5.              Photograph in Owen, Plate XIV-25, 604.

                  6.              For a brief discussion of the organ literature of the late nineteenth century, see Owen, 269-71.

                  7.              "Organ Arrangements,"  TO, I (June 1892): 31, 41.

                  8.              "W.T. Best." TO, I (July 1892): 53-54.

                  9.              TO, I (October 1892): 125.

                  10.           TO, I (January 1893): 211.

                  11.           TO, I (September 1892): 114-15.

                  12.           TO, II (May 1893): 7, 17.

                  13.           "Alexandre Guilmant,"  TO, I (April 1893): 269-70.

                  14.           TO, II (October 1893): 137.

                  15.           "Alexandre Guilmant in Boston," TO, II (October 1893): 139.

                  16.           William George Pearce, "Through Canada with Alex. Guilmant," TO, II (January 1894): 211-12.              17.           "Organ Concerts," TO, I (July 1892): 65-6. Of the total of 83 pieces he played there, 29 were transcriptions; Best included one of his own compositions in every program.

                  18.           TO, I (May 1892): 6-7, 17.

                  19.           The unusually large swell-box of the Gray & Davidson organ under construction in 1858 in the Town Hall, Leeds, England, was the site for a merry celebratory dinner where the designers, builders, and others feasted on choice entrées, salmon, and venison, all washed down with a dozen bottles of sparkling and six of '34 port wine, in the novel environment gayly decorated with flags and banners. "Dinner in a Swell-box," TO, I (September 1892): 113-14.

                  20.           "The Location of the Balanced Swell-pedal," TO, I (January 1893): 197-98.

                  21.           TO, I (July 1892): 55, 65.

                  22.           "Comparative Table of the Largest Organs of the World," TO, II (December 1893): 175.

                  23.           W.S.B. Mathews, "Portable Pipe Organ," TO, II (August 1893): 90-91, reprinted from Music.

                  24.           "The Decline of Church Organ-building in the United States," TO, I (February 1893): 234.

                  25.           "For the Protection of Organ Builders," TO, II (October 1893): 126-27.

                  26            Commencing in TO, I (March 1893): 246.

                  27.           The blind English organist, Alfred Hollins, quoted William T. Best's opinion on "Hopeless Jones," who "plays his organs at the end of a long rope which ought to be around his neck." A Blind Musician Looks Back (Edinburgh and London: William Blackwood & Sons, 1936), 167.

                  28.           TO, II (March 1894): 248.

                  29.           Thomas Ely, "The Art of Practising on the Organ," TO, I (August 1892): 78-79, reprinted from the London Musical Herald.

                  30.           Horatio Clarke, "For Beginners in Pedal Playing," TO, II (January 1894): 199.

                  31.           "Registration for Beginners," TO, II (February 1894): 223-24.

                  32.           "A Few Hints on Registration," TO, I (October 1892): 127, 137.

                  33.           "A Chapter of Don'ts," TO, I (October 1892): 139; "A Second Chapter of Don'ts," TO, I (November 1892): 162.

                  34.           TO, II (January 1894): 197.

                  35.           "An Organist and a Pianist," TO, II (January 1894): 197-98.

                  36.           Albert W. Borst, "Should a Music Teacher Be an Organist as Well as a Pianist?" TO, II (October 1893): 127-28, reprinted from The Étude.

                  37.           "Organs and Organ Teaching at the New England Conservatory of Music," TO, II (March 1894): 247-48.

                  38.           "Cipherings," TO, I (April 1893): 287.

by John Bishop

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

It’s the very Dickens.
Last week the American Institute of Organbuilders (AIO) and the International Society of Organbuilders (ISO) held concurrent conventions in Montreal. The convention was based in a large hotel adjacent to a suburban shopping mall. Montreal is a beautiful city, rich in history and cultural institutions, but the ubiquitous shopping mall is the same the world over. The hotel was efficient and comfortable enough, but I thought it was ironic for a group of people like organbuilders who are widely experienced with beautiful architecture and design to be trapped in a place like that. This is the kind of place where the patterns on the carpets are intended to mask accidents.
I wrote recently in these pages about the decline of the church and how it has affected the pipe organ. You can be sure that much of what we heard officially and discussed privately was related to that decline. Greeting an old friend, I would ask how things are going. The response was typically something like, “we’re busy, but we could be busier,” which I took as code that means, “I have no idea what’s going to happen next.” Several colleagues told me that while they were busy now they didn’t have much on the books for next year.
On the other hand, as I heard about the current and recent projects of many of my friends, I reflected that the quality of organbuilding is as good as ever, in fact perhaps better than ever. Reflecting on all this during my six-hour drive home brought to mind the opening words of the Charles Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities:

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness; it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity; it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness; it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us; we were all going directly to Heaven, we were all going the other way.

While we might easily understand “the worst of times,” the other phrase seems more elusive. But the convention reminded me of how much skill and creativity there is in those two organizations. Some of the most brilliant practitioners were there. In fact, one wag suggested that should some disaster strike the hotel, organbuilding as we know it would end. Renewing friendships and making new acquaintances, I was reminded of some of the fabulous instruments produced by the firms represented.
And for me, the high point of the convention was a recital that certainly suggested the best of times. You must hear Isabelle Demers make music. This brilliant young artist is a musician’s musician. There can be no assembly more critical of organ playing than a convention of organbuilders, but the ovation that followed her performance was powerful and sincere. There was a remarkable level of energy and enthusiasm in the buses heading back to the hotel as conventioneers expressed their delight and amazement. It was said more than once that if there will be artists like Ms. Demers around to play organs, then we had better keep building beautiful instruments.

The age of wisdom
American and European organbuilding was revolutionized during the twentieth century. On both continents Victorian symphonic instruments gave way to industrialization, and by mid-century organbuilders on both continents had started a period of intense self-examination leading to the return to earlier styles of organbuilding, dramatically increasing the artistic content of the industry’s output. Today’s organbuilders are deeply immersed in the study of organ history and technology, and in the magical, mystical art of blending organ pipes with the wonderful heritage of music written for the instrument. The European Orgelbewegung and the American Revival of Classic Organbuilding have led the trade to an apex of knowledge and understanding.

The age of foolishness
While all the collective learning of the past half-century has brought us to new understanding of the art, it has also introduced a foolish aspect. When the so-called tracker revival was gaining traction in the 1960s and 1970s, the general public was drawn into the debate. The layperson who listened to organ music for the love of it found it necessary to declare preference. It didn’t seem possible to remain neutral. At first glance this might seem like an advantage—all that attention from non-professionals interested in understanding. But in fact I believe the tenor of the debate was harmful. Any potential new appreciator of the organ got dragged into the fray, and I fear that many were frightened off. Could be they would have preferred simply enjoying the music.
Also, while this movement was a true renaissance, there was no need to wait a couple centuries for historians to deduce that something interesting was going on. We all knew it at the time. We talked and wrote about it ceaselessly. And when you know you’re part of a renaissance it’s easy to let it go to your head. We presented instruments and performances that were artistically sophisticated and erudite, assuming that the public would appreciate without question. But that was a time when the public had more and more available to it. Transportation and communication was advancing, so the world was growing ever smaller. As a society, we learned to think little of teenagers traveling the world on exchange programs or sending photographs instantly through the ether. Remember when you used to have to get film developed? And we were deluged with myriad gadgets and entertainments till then unheard of. Organ recitals were among the most popular public entertainment in the 1920s. Now it seems a big deal when an audience breaks a hundred.

It was the epoch of belief.
I believe that the industries of organ building and playing have the opportunity for a fresh start along with the twenty-first century. We’re far enough into the millennium to be comfortable saying the date. I remember that during the nineties we wondered what we could call a year. Would it be two-thousand-four, aught-four, oh-four? We’re over that now. Although technology still advances with staggering determination, we’re used to that, too. We believe that the Internet is an effective tool for communication and the dissemination of information. We’re used to air conditioning, sophisticated automobiles, and high-definition television. We expect rapid innovation but I don’t think we need to be distracted by it anymore.
The organbuilding revivals have progressed through the vitriolic stage to that in which good organs of any type are generally appreciated. There are few of us left who insist on hearing or playing only tracker action. It’s a good time for another organ renaissance in which we shift our emphasis to communication with the audience; so instead of assuming that the public will automatically adore us for the fruits of our half-century of collective research, we set out with purpose to reintroduce them to the glory of the instrument, to the wide range of expression possible from a good organ, to the fun and excitement of hearing the world’s greatest music presented on the King of Instruments.

It was the epoch of incredulity.
It’s incredible that the pipe organ exists at all. I’m not saying I’m surprised it has survived this far, but that it ever developed in the first place. As we go through the extreme effort of building monumental organs, we reflect how unlikely, how incredible, how downright ridiculous it is to produce a 20- or 30-foot-tall whistle for the purpose of playing one note of one tone color at one volume. We might think that organs are priced by the rank, but an octave of 32-foot Principal pipes might cost $100,000—that’s $8,300 per note!
As we work in a church, a visitor comes in, curious about what’s going on. A ten-minute tour of the organ and its parts leaves him speechless, except to say, “I had no idea people still did this kind of work.” The pipe organ is one place in our modern world where “analog” is impressive. To create a machine driven by huge electric blowers with pressurized air passing through hundreds of feet of conductors, with thousands of hand-crafted specialized whistles, with miles of wire or tracker material, all to allow a single musician to command the acoustics of a vast room is incredible.
It’s incredible but we can do it.

It was the season of Light.
I’m not going to address the issue of organ cases covering windows. I’m thinking about Light (Dickens capitalized it) in reference to faith and inspiration. The pipe organ is the original instrument of the church. It has been central to our expressions of faith in public worship for hundreds of years. Let’s not forget that 500-year-old organs are still in service in Europe. I wonder if we (and I use the word “we” collectively to describe organists and organbuilders) have gotten so involved in the craft, history, and art of the instrument that we’ve overlooked the visceral reaction of the people in the pew when the organ sings out. I’m enough of a sap that I often find it difficult to sing hymns because I’m choked up by the effect of the organ.
We are well aware of the physics, the math, the nuts and bolts that comprise the organ, but we should put first the emotional impact of the instrument. Everyone in the room should be choked up.

It was the season of Darkness.
(Dickens’ cap again.) I visit a church to inspect an organ that’s being put on the market, and notice first the drum sets, amps, and microphone stands in the choir loft. “We want to get rid of the organ so we have more space for our musicians.” Through my work with the Organ Clearing House I may be the guy who hears the most reasons for “getting rid” of a pipe organ:
• Our new pastor introduced a new style of worship.
• The last guy to tune the organ said it needs a $100,000 repair.
• We may be closing the parish and putting the building up for sale.
• We can’t afford an organist. Or,
• We can’t find anyone who knows how to play it.
• It seems so old fashioned.
The list goes on.
There may not be much we can do about these things. But one thing we can do is to help our clients control the cost of owning and caring for an organ. As I’ve traveled around the organ world, I’ve had many conversations with colleagues about “what the organ needs.” We revere the instruments and know that they function best when every part is in the best condition. But we may be shooting ourselves in the foot if we insist on too much.
It’s not necessary to tune all the pipes every time you visit. In fact, it’s often better to pick out the lulus and leave the rest alone. A good tuner can keep a simple organ in tune with an hour or two of tuning each year. We and our clients have gotten used to thinking that an organ should be tuned for Christmas and Easter. It goes on the list with sending greeting cards and dyeing eggs. But where I live, that means the organ is getting tuned twice during winter weather, sometimes less than three months apart. Do we always need both tunings?
It’s nice to keep an organ clean, but it’s not necessary to remove the pipes for cleaning every generation. And while it can be profitable to replace an organ’s console or blower, I think that many churches have been convinced to pay for such projects unnecessarily. It is the duty of the modern organ technician to avoid suggesting work that is not necessary for the continued use of the organ. It’s essential to be sure that organ blowers are lubricated and in safe operating condition. It’s important to be sure that the organ doesn’t embarrass the player or the tuner. And it’s important that the organ be in good enough condition to sound well to the ear of the layperson. But the fact is, when a church’s music committee sees a bill for piano tuning for a hundred dollars and a thousand-dollar bill for organ tuning, the reaction is now frequently to stop tuning the organ.

It was the spring of hope.
This one is easy. I hope that the economy improves, making available funding for more interesting projects. I hope that our collective work continues to improve and to thrill congregations and audiences. I hope that pipe organs are still a valued part of our worship and cultural lives 50 years from now.

It was the winter of Despair.
I won’t say I despair. I’ll stay optimistic. But I have a growing sense that the future of the instrument is up to us. There was a time when organbuilders could assume that people would always be buying organs. The responsibility of the sales department was to be sure their firm got the job instead of the competition. Today it is the responsibility of the sales department to help sustain the future of the instrument itself. If we forget that, we’re doomed.

We had everything before us, we had nothing before us.
It’s up to us.

We were all going to Heaven, we were all going the other way.
Again, it’s up to us. But I wonder if a lifetime tuning organs is rewarded by an eternity tuning harps. And if so, which way is that? ■

John Bishop

The wind comes sweeping o’er the plain . . .

We watch our car’s odometer approach 100,000 miles. It seems like an important milestone, but we’re distracted by traffic, go into a different train of thought, and miss the great event. It reads 100,002.3 and we never felt a thing.

Ten years ago we were anticipating the start of a new millennium. As the year 2000 approached we were told that the language of computer programming did not allow for calendar years above 1999—that we should expect computers all over the world to crash at midnight on January 1. Enough people nervously withdrew money from ATMs that the banking system published concern about the supply of cash. We didn’t even know how we would say what year it was. What would we say, two-oh-oh-one, aught-one, the aughts, the Ohs? Some people planned to be in an airplane at the stroke of twelve, others assured us that the computer-driven air-traffic-control system would collapse at that moment.
And what do you suppose happened? Nothing. My computer kept working as did my alarm clock and microwave oven. I have not met a single person who has any trouble saying what year it is. Planes kept flying and landed safely and the ATM still spat out stacks of twenties. The clock struck twelve, the mouse ran down, hickory-dickory-dock.

We tend to mark our progress in big blocks. If the Baroque era ended in 1750, what did Händel (1685–1759) do for the last nine years of his life? The boundaries are muddy. We do this with the history of the pipe organ. The beginning of the 20th century brought electric action and orchestral playing. The second half of the 20th century was The Revival when some of us got excited about historic performance practices and tracker-action organs, and others felt upset and disenfranchised. A hundred years from now, what will our successors say about the beginning of the 21st century? What would we like them to say? How can we influence that? How do we assess the present state of the art? And most importantly, how do we assure its health and growth so that later generations will have something significant from our body of work to study and assess?

Eighty years ago, more than 2,000 new pipe organs were completed by American organbuilders each year. Now it’s more like 40 or 50. I don’t know how many digital instruments are installed each year now, but I suspect the number balances with the century-old total of pipe organs. We’ve noted and discussed at length the decline of the number of serious students of the organ, and we have watched in horror as venerable educational institutions close their organ departments.

The true test of the state of things is the response of the public. How many laypeople—those who are not professional organists or organbuilders—make it a point to attend organ recitals? I have sat in many a grand church listening to a great musician play a marvelous organ—sharing the thrall with only 30 or 40 other music lovers. At the height of his career, E. Power Biggs noted that twice as many Americans attended concerts of classical music than professional sporting events. Do you think that’s the case today?

All these things are related. While most pipe organs are unique, I suppose that thousands of churches may have identical digital instruments—an organ committee might opt for “no pickles,” but otherwise the choice is pretty limited. I know that many people think this is a good thing—McDonald’s and Starbucks would not be successful otherwise—but I can’t believe that such institutional sameness contributes to the growth of this or any art.

For the second month in a row I refer to the excellent article “Repertoire in American Organ Recitals 1995–2005” by Moo-Young Kim published in the October 2006 issue of The American Organist. Dr. Kim analyzed 249 recital programs totaling 1689 selections as published in TAO. Using statistics and pie-charts, he showed how limited in originality is our recital programming. Is this related to the disappointing attendance at so many organ recitals?

The performance of historic repertoire will always be central to the art of the pipe organ, and each serious player has ambitions about which pieces are next on the practice schedule. This is a good thing. But it’s the art of improvisation that distinguishes the organ. How thrilling for the first time concertgoer to hear the mighty instrument as the vehicle for the creation of new music, right here, right now. What a celebration of human genius! (I’m reminded of Gjon Mili’s time-lapse photograph of Picasso drawing a bull with a flashlight—a masterpiece of the moment—you can see it at .)

Everything’s up to date in Kansas City . . .

Ours is heralded as the age of communication. International news is instant, a CD or sweater ordered online today is in our hands tomorrow, and we have a fit if a Fed-Ex package is six hours late. We send what we think is an important e-mail and wonder why it hasn’t been answered four hours later. (Is it just possible that our correspondent wasn’t at home? What, no BlackBerry?) But if we limit our understanding of communication to these amazing technological advances, we will fail our art. You cannot communicate the art of the pipe organ by beaming between handhelds.

Here’s the good news. There may not now be many new pipe organs built each year, but most of them are glorious and unique works of art. And hundreds more projects are accomplished each year restoring older instruments to their full artistic potential. Some schools are closing organ departments, but others are revitalizing theirs. Young organists are still taught to base their playing on good scholarship, but as a foundation, not an end. After all, it is about the music. Playing the organ is not a parlor trick—it’s a thrilling vehicle for the expression of an artist and for an audience to experience and absorb.

There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow.

In what sometimes seems an atmosphere of gloom, I’ve always felt that the pipe organ has a significant future in our society, and my optimism is rewarded as I recently had the privilege to make association with what promises to become an important center of the study of the organ. The University of Oklahoma (OU) has a long tradition of excellence in organ teaching—that is where Mildred Andrews Boggess taught many of today’s finest organists during her 38-year tenure. Now a fresh wind is blowing in tornado country as John Schwandt has joined the faculty of the OU School of Music to lead an exciting new teaching program.

Brainchild of Dr. Schwandt and his long-time friend, theatre organ specialist Clark Wilson, the American Organ Institute has been founded to lift up and celebrate American contributions organbuilding and organ playing. The philosophy behind the institute is to unite the worlds of the classical and theatre pipe organ, advancing the art by emphasizing improvisation in all genres along with the performance of the classical repertoire. A fresh curriculum will include courses in arranging, computer notation, and multiple styles of composition—a return to the classic concept of the complete organist: one-third performance, one-third improvisation, one-third composition.

An integral part of the institute will be the establishment of a fully equipped and staffed pipe organ workshop on campus. This unique facility will be home to the restoration of an important instrument recently acquired by the university for the Paul F. Sharp Concert Hall at the School of Music and will allow students the opportunity for hands-on experiences with organbuilding, even to providing pipe organ maintenance services for the general area, an area not as yet saturated with experienced organbuilders. The next generation of organ students can be well-versed with knowledge of organ history and construction, and the next generation of organbuilders can be well-versed with knowledge of organ playing and composition.

There will be three degree tracks (Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts), each allowing flexible emphasis of applied studies to include classic and theatre organ playing as well as organbuilding. Significantly, the institute enjoys the enthusiastic support of University of Oklahoma President David Boren, Dean Eugene Enrico of the OU Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts, and Dr. Steven Curtis, director of the School of Music, who are working to build the foundation for this refreshing and innovative approach to the study of the organ.

The School of Music is housed in the Catlett Music Center on the north end of the campus, the entrance to which is a striking contemporary space of cathedral proportions. The Morris R. Pitman Recital Hall and the Paul F. Sharp Concert Hall both open off this grand space as does a corridor leading to the classrooms and teaching studios. This “lobby” is called the Grace B. Kerr Gothic Hall and is home to the Mildred Andrews Boggess Memorial Organ, C. B. Fisk’s Opus 111 (go to to see photos and specification). With three manuals and 45 ranks, it’s funny to think of this as a “lobby organ” but this is no ordinary lobby. The ceiling is very high with contemporary interpretations of gothic vaulting, the organ is placed in a high balcony at one end of the room, the reverberation period is 4.5 seconds, and both visual and aural effects are magnificent.

I’ve got a beautiful feeling . . .

Just a minute—that organ is already in place, and I referred to a “recently acquired organ” that will be installed in Sharp Hall. Ah, the other shoe drops. In the April 2005 and November 2006 issues of this column in The Diapason, I have written about M. P. Möller’s Opus 5819, the massive and singular instrument originally built for the Philadelphia Civic Center. Go to , scroll to the bottom and look for the two “specifications” links—you’ll get an eyeful. The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) became owner of this organ when they acquired the Philadelphia Civic Center with intention of using the site to build an important new research hospital as part of the University’s Health System. As the destruction of the 13,500-seat Art Deco hall was controversial, Penn preserved many artifacts from the building, including the organ. The Organ Clearing House was engaged to dismantle the organ, located in a 2500-square-foot, 25-foot-high chamber above the ceiling, 100 feet up.

The organ was stored next door in another large convention hall slated for demolition at a date that was suddenly and significantly accelerated by the needs of the hospital construction. This news was a shock—another demolition deadline—we were going to have to rescue the organ for a second time. In the November 2006 issue, I wrote wistfully about it sitting in storage, looking more like an industrial wasteland than a work of art. But—thanks be—I can say now that as I wrote I knew that a zephyr was over the horizon—a breath of amazing promise. John Schwandt had come over the bow looking for a significant concert organ around which to build the American Organ Institute. Oh boy—have we got the organ for you! (See photo: theatre console, classic console, automatic roll-player.)

It seemed too good to be true. Here’s a huge organ with two consoles, virtually the only large extant instrument expressly intended as both a classic concert organ and a theatre organ with “all the bells and whistles,” drums, cymbals, toys. And there’s a new venue for the teaching of organ playing of all styles.

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry . . .

Meanwhile, the administrators at Penn were preparing to demolish their building, and engaged me in a complicated conversation about what to do with the organ. They were less than entranced with the idea of funding another moving project, but having gone to considerable—really considerable—expense to dismantle, pack, and store it, they were committed to its preservation. When Dr. Schwandt and OU came into view with the possibility of a new home for the organ where it would be properly restored and used as part of a significant educational program, there started a whirlwind of conversations between the two universities. We all have experience with large bureaucracies moving slowly, but picture this. In just four weeks, OU expressed interest in the organ, Penn agreed to make it a gift, and the myriad political and legal details were worked out. Two other important and usual hurdles were instantly checked off—funds were immediately available to move the organ, and first-class space was immediately available in which to store it. The Organ Clearing House lined up a fleet of five semi-trailers, and the 120,000-pound organ was moved to Oklahoma, two days ahead of Penn’s demolition schedule. Yikes! Go to to read an article about this stunning transaction.

While we were dismantling the organ a couple years ago, Brant Duddy (Philadelphia area organ technician who had tuned the Civic Center organ for many years) gave me a recording of the recital played on the Civic Center organ by Tom Hazleton for the 1992 convention of the American Theatre Organ Society. Along with several traditional barnburners (high on the list of favorites in Dr. Kim’s TAO article!) is Hazleton’s medley of tunes from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma. What a wonderful way to introduce a venerable organ to its new home. And a quiet aside: Once the organ was in storage, I was in touch with Mr. Hazleton to ask about his experience with it. He was enthusiastic about its preservation and promised to help find it a new home. I asked him for an interview thinking that would enhance a column someday, but before the scheduled date arrived I heard of his death.

Late one evening while the Organ Clearing House was in Norman delivering the organ, Dr. Schwandt played the Fisk organ for us, weaving a creative tapestry around Richard Rodgers’ place-appropriate theme. As the music reverberated in the darkness, I reflected on the magic of improvisation—how a mystery becomes reality, and how important that concept is to the history of organ music. Like Picasso’s bull it’s gone as soon as it’s over, perhaps to be recreated tomorrow but never to be repeated. Improvisation must be the best tool to convince the public that the pipe organ is not just a relic of an earlier age but a vital participant in today’s culture. A fresh vision, a fresh approach, and the rebirth of a renowned institution and a venerable instrument combine to bring new energy to the work of organists and organbuilders across the country.

If you think this is “just another big Möller organ,” take my word for it: There is no other organ like it. It’s simply spectacular—an American monument of artistry in concept and craftsmanship in execution. I hope you’ll join me in Norman when it’s first played there. It’s fun to imagine that future music historians will notice Opus 5819’s rebirth as a significant event. You young students of the organ, here’s the website of the Office of Admission at the OU School of Music: ''". You’ll be glad you looked.