The Early Interval

That ingenious business

Great Britain’s King George III (1738–1820), whose oppressive rule over the American colonies led to the American Revolutionary War, has resurfaced in public conversation as a character in Lin-Manuel Miranda’s brilliant musical, Hamilton. In the king’s featured song, “You’ll be back” (in the style of The Beatles), the crazy king addresses the colonists, singing,

Why so sad? Remember we made an arrangement when you went away? Now you’re making me mad. Remember, despite our estrangement, I’m your man. You’ll be back, soon you’ll see, you’ll remember you belong to me. . . . And when push comes to shove, I will send a fully armed battalion to remind you of my love. . . .

Wendy and I were fortunate to see Hamilton in the first months of its run on Broadway and were thrilled by the whirling, swirling singing and dancing from the first moments. Sitting to my right was a curmudgeonly man who looked like Winston Churchill (though thankfully not as large) who did not crack a smile until King George made his mincing appearance.

The American pipe organ industry started in the eighteenth century before the birth of “Mad King George.” Johann Gottlob Klemm (1690–1762) was born in Dresden, Germany, where he apparently apprenticed with the great organ builder Gottfried Silbermann (1683–1753). Silbermann was nearly an exact contemporary of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), who was a great champion of Silbermann’s organs, though a little skeptical of the pianofortes Silbermann built late in his life. Klemm built the first organ for the church now known as Trinity Church Wall Street, New York (in a previous building at the same location), and lived in New York City’s Moravian community until 1757, when he learned that the Moravians in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, needed an organ.¹

David Tannenberg (1728–1804) was born in Germany, moved to Zeist, the Netherlands, in 1748, and emigrated to Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, in 1749. He first worked as a joiner, and when Klemm arrived in Bethlehem in 1757, he became Klemm’s apprentice and assistant. After Klemm’s death in 1762 Tannenberg did no organ work for three years, but between 1765 and his death in 1804 he was involved in building more than forty organs.² As he grew older and became concerned that he had no apprentice who could carry on his work, Tannenberg obtained permission from the Moravian elders in Lititz, Pennsylvania, to write to elders in Herrnhut, Germany, asking them to send a suitable candidate. In response, Johann Philip Bachmann (1762–1837) arrived in Bethlehem on February 17, 1793. Two months later he married Tannenberg’s daughter, Anna Maria. Tannenberg and Bachmann worked together building organs until 1800 when tensions between them following Anna Maria’s suicide in 1799 led to their parting ways.³ While installing the organ in the Lutheran church in York, Pennsylvania, seventy-six-year-old David Tannenberg fell from a scaffolding on May 17, 1804, and died two days later.⁴

While most of David Tannenberg’s organs were built in Pennsylvania, he also built instruments for destinations in Albany, New York; Frederick, Maryland; and Salem, North Carolina. It is almost 500 miles from Bethlehem to Salem. I can drive that far in less than seven hours in air-conditioned comfort. It must have been a rough slog to transport an organ such a distance on eighteenth-century roads. There are only a few Tannenberg organs extant, notably the 1798 “Single Brothers’ House” organ restored by Taylor & Boody and installed in a new concert hall at the Museum of Early Southern and Decorative Arts in Old Salem, North Carolina.

Philip Bachmann built organs under his own name until 1821. An organ built by Bachmann in 1819 has been restored by Paul Fritts & Company in Tacoma, Washington, and is now available for installation in a suitable historic and architectural home. You can read the prospectus and see photos at the Fritts website: frittsorgan.com/opus_pages/galleries/bachmann_reconstruct/bachmann_prospectus.html.

Consider these dates. Klemm’s career in America started in the late 1730s—his organ at Trinity Church Wall Street was built in 1741, nine years before Bach’s death. Tannenberg’s career was in full swing in the 1770s, concurrent with the American Revolutionary War. Bachmann died in 1837 when Felix Mendelssohn was twenty-eight and Johannes Brahms was four years old. Klemm, Tannenberg, and Bachmann were all German-born American immigrants who built dozens of organs for the Moravian communities in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and North Carolina during America’s Colonial period. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart lived from 1756 to 1791; he was twenty years old at the start of the American Revolution.

Three important books

Orpha Ochse (born 1925) received a Master of Music degree from the Eastman School of Music in 1948 and a PhD in 1953. She is ninety-eight years old. The University of Indiana Press published her masterful The History of the Organ in the United States in 1975. The worn and be-scribbled hardcover copy on my desk in Maine is inscribed with my name and “Oberlin, 1975.” I purchased it from the Co-op Bookstore in Oberlin the year it was published. I was nineteen.

Ochse’s book includes the histories of hundreds of American organbuilders, both companies and individuals. She traces the connections between personalities telling us who worked and apprenticed for whom, who influenced whom, and who formed and dissolved partnerships. The book is organized by regions and eras (“Rural Society,” “Expanding Society,” “Industrial Society,” “the Twentieth Century”). The comprehensive index includes thousands of entries making it a necessary first tool for someone like me who spends each day in the office considering and discussing dozens of organs. Many of the biographical details I am including here came straight from Ochse’s book.

The History of the Organ in the United States was released in paperback in 1988 and is still available from the University of Indiana Press, Barnes & Noble, and other retailers. If there is an organist in your life who does not own a copy, here is a great gift suggestion. Tell them I sent you.

Organbuilder Raymond Brunner (1949–2020) lived and worked around Lititz and Lancaster, Pennsylvania, home of many organs built by David Tannenberg and the other Moravian-Pennsylvania Dutch organbuilders. He wrote the authoritative history of that era of American organbuilding under the title That Ingenious Business, published by the Pennsylvania German Society in 1991. It includes technical and mathematical information of interest to the sophisticated organbuilder and portrayal of daily life at the end of the eighteenth century, such as a drawing of a Sunday morning at Christ Lutheran Church in York, Pennsylvania, with main floor and balcony packed with worshippers, the Tannenberg organ, a preacher gesticulating from the pulpit, and an usher with a stick chasing a dog. ’Twas ever thus. I last saw Ray at breakfast in New York during early planning for the restoration of the organ at Old Saint Patrick’s Cathedral. I am sorry he did not live to see it.

Stephen L. Pinel’s The Work-list of Henry Erben, Organ Builder in Nineteenth-Century New York was published by the OHS Press, the Organ Historical Society, in 2021. It is a 624-page monster with appendices and indices that include many historical photographs, timelines, and detailed descriptions of most every Erben organ, alongside contemporary descriptions, reviews, often accompanied by newspaper articles. Its six pounds of minutia about one of America’s most influential organbuilders means that it is not a book for everyone, but a carefully researched, exhaustive tome of immense value.

An urban Erben

Henry Erben (1800–1884) was a premier organbuilder in New York City who built hundreds of organs for locations in New York, New England, and as far away as Texas and California. Imagine the logistics of moving an organ from New York to San Francisco in 1858. Calvary Church (Presbyterian) in San Francisco was formed in 1854 and commissioned an organ from Erben shortly after. The organ was completed in 1858 and loaded onto the clipper ship Caroline Tucker, which left New York on May 13, 1858, and carried the organ around Cape Horn “west about” to San Francisco.⁵

Erben’s father Peter (1771–1863) built organs and pianos and was organist at Trinity Church, New York (known now as Trinity Church Wall Street), into the 1840s. Thomas Hall (1791–c.1875) was an organbuilder who started working in Philadelphia around 1812. In that same year he installed an organ in Saint John’s Chapel in New York and was assisted by twelve-year-old Henry Erben. Hall moved to New York in 1817, and Henry became his apprentice. They formed the partnership Hall & Erben in 1821, which was dissolved in 1835.⁶ Between 1824 and his death in 1884, Henry Erben produced 1,333 organs, 250 of which were built between 1856 and 1860, the firm’s busiest five years.⁷ That’s more than an organ a week. In 1846 Erben built a new four-manual organ for Trinity Church Wall Street (replaced by Hook & Hastings Opus 2168 in 1907), where he quarreled publicly with the church’s organist, Dr. Edward Hodges, who had succeeded his father.

The Erben workshop was located on a corner of Canal and Centre Streets in lower Manhattan, in the neighborhood now known as Little Italy, one mile from Trinity Church. Erben’s largest intact extant organ was built in 1868 for what is now the Basilica of Saint Patrick’s Old Cathedral at Prince and Mulberry Streets in NoLIta (north of Little Italy), just six blocks north of the workshop. As I write, the Organ Clearing House is completing the dismantling of the organ at Old Saint Patrick’s and shipping it to Brunner & Company in Pennsylvania for restoration. I was in the city last week as the project started and walked between those two churches. It was fun to imagine running into Mr. Erben as he walked the streets between his workshop and two of his important clients. Maybe I would treat him to a fruit smoothie, ubiquitous in the neighborhood today. I wonder what would amaze him most about modern organbuilding? Perhaps electric blowers?

Another Erben afloat

In 2006 the Organ Clearing House sent an Erben organ halfway around the world when the Order of Saint Lazarus of Jerusalem in Wellington, New Zealand, purchased a one-manual, six-rank organ built in 1847 from Saint Dunstan’s Episcopal Church, Ellsworth, Maine. The Clearing House crew crated the organ and delivered it to the docks in Elizabeth, New Jersey, where it was loaded into a container for its 9,000-mile journey.

The organ’s specifications are 8′ Open Diapason (18–56), 8′ Stopped Diapason (18–56), 8′ Stopped Diapason Bass (1–17), 8′ Dulciana (18–56), 4′ Principal, 4′ Flute, and 2′ Fifteenth. There is a permanent coupler from the manual to the seventeen-note pedalboard.

That was the second time that organ traveled by boat. Ellsworth is a small coastal town with a population of about 8,400 located to the northeast of Penobscot Bay in a series of bays and waterways that defines Down East Maine. In the late 1840s there were about 4,000 people living in Ellsworth, and the town boasted nine sawmills, two gristmills, one tannery, eight brickyards, and thirteen shipbuilders, along with several other industries.⁸ There was plenty of work in Ellsworth. To drive there today, one winds along US Route 1, which crosses many bridges over water as it navigates Maine’s legendary rocky coast. It would have been an arduous trip by land in 1847, and traveling by sea was the most efficient and economical way to transport passengers and freight.

The Erben workshop was less than a mile from the docks in New York City, and the Episcopal church in Ellsworth is barely a block from the Union River. The Ellsworth organ traveled only slightly farther by land than the great organs at Old Saint Patrick’s and Trinity Church in New York, mere blocks from the workshop.

§

One of the highlights of visiting an organbuilder’s workshop is the fine woodworking that is such an integral part of the product. Hardwood frame-and-panel doors are as integral to a modern organ case as they were in centuries past, and many internal components sport dovetails and other classic joinery. We identify what variety of wood is being used by the smell in the milling room. There is no mistaking the difference in smell between sawing poplar or white oak.⁹

The same is true with boat building. Several of the coastal Maine towns with shipbuilding heritages are now home to small shops that build wooden pleasure boats by hand, and while organbuilders typically strive for perfectly square corners and straight lines, you hardly find any in a wooden boat. The bow comes to a point, midships swells to the maximum “beam” (width) and tapers back to a narrower stern. The hull often bulbs out a little from the top rails and tapers to a narrow keel below. Viewed from the side, the fairing line of the hull sweeps upward toward the bow. Every line and surface is a complex curve, which means the interior spaces are also full of curves and odd angles.

To start building a boat, the layout of the hull is drawn on the workshop floor looking something like a topographical map with increasing curved lines showing elevation. The keel is placed, and ribs are constructed according to the curves of the hull. The completed keel and ribs look something like a whale’s skeleton turned upside down. The outside of the hull is formed by “planking,” steaming and bending the planks, also called strakes, and fastening them to the ribs. The process reminds me of my years as an apprentice to John Leek in Oberlin, Ohio, when we steamed boards until they were flexible and clamped them to a frame to form the bentside of a harpsichord. We had built a box just big enough to enclose the piece of lumber with a goofy rig using tea kettles on hot plates to produce the steam and the flexible tubing we use in organs to conduct the steam to the box. It was one thing to fire up that cute contraption and handle a piping hot board six feet long, one foot wide, and three-quarters of an inch thick. It is quite another to steam and bend a twenty-footer that is two inches thick and bend that around the ribs of a boat.

I witnessed this process on a large scale at the Mystic Seaport Museum in Mystic, Connecticut, where the 110-foot whaling ship Charles W. Morgan was being restored in the museum’s shipyard. Watching the workers fastening those massive thick boards to the ribs with wood pegs and bronze spikes was a glimpse back into the time when all ships were made of wood and no ships had engines.

Our boat, a Marshall catboat, had a reliable diesel engine in a spacious hold below the deck that I was happy to use when approaching a dock or mooring. I remember once watching a single-handed sailor leave a crowded mooring field in a large two-masted schooner under full sail. He let go of the mooring line, walked some forty feet back to the wheel, and away he went, weaving through the fleet as if he was rowing a skiff, harking back to the days when diesel engines were not an option, so seamen had to have real skill. Shortly after we bought our boat, I wrote an essay for Catboat Journal about the adventures Wendy and I had sailing her from the boatyard in Padanaram, Massachusetts (near New Bedford), to our house on the Damariscotta River in Maine, 250 miles in six days and five nights. I received an email from a fellow in California who would be teaching a course on handling catboats at the Wooden Boat School in Brooklin, Maine, not far from Ellsworth, saying if we happened to be near Brooklin he’d love to have us address the class. We “happened” to be near Brooklin at the stated date because we arranged our summer around it and had a week-long cruise that took us there.

He invited another catboat sailor to share stories with the class, a veteran single-hander who sailed an older version of the same model boat. The important difference was his boat didn’t have an engine. Fogged in, sit and read. Bad weather coming, sit and read. Need to get ashore for emergency or otherwise, but no wind? Sit and read. We were having dinner at a pub after the class, chatting about our boats, and I told Bill how much I admired his career of sailing single-handed without an engine. His response, “Where do you keep the wine?”

Notes

1. Orpha Ochse, The History of the Organ in the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), page 15.

2. Ibid, page 52.

3. Ibid, page 62.

4. Ibid, page 53.

5. Stephen L. Pinel, The Work-list of Henry Erben, Organ Builder in Nineteenth-Century New York (Villanova, Pennsylvania: OHS Press, the Organ Historical Society, 2021), page 165.

6. Ochse, page 151.

7. Pinel, page 18.

8. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellsworth,_Maine.

9. The smell of sawing ivory or cow bone reminds me of the worst day at the dentist.

In 2019 there are several composers whose anniversaries can be commemorated, albeit some of the precise birth and death dates are not known for certain. Several names below need no introduction, but there are also quite a few lesser-known names listed here whose compositions are well worth exploring. No claim is made for completeness, and there is no guarantee that every edition is readily available and in print­—there may well also be editions by other publishers. Publishers’ websites have been given where known. Details of a few composers whose preserved output consists of only one or two pieces have been omitted.

An increasing number of pieces, ranging from complete, original publications or manuscripts (which present the usual problems of multiple clefs as well as original printer’s errors) to modern versions of complete or individual works, are to be found on various free download sites, most noticeably IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library (http://imslp.org); however, the accuracy of some modern typesetting is highly questionable, and all should be treated with caution before use.

Aurelio Bonelli (1569–ca.1620) was born in Bologna. He succeeded Adriano Banchieri as organist of Boscom and was listed as organist in Bologna in 1620. His collection Il primo Libro di Ricercari, et canzoni a quattro voci con die Toccate e doi dialoghi a otto was published in Venice in 1602. The ricercars have been edited by Candida Felice for Armelin, Padua, as Fiori Musicali (FM 002). This edition also includes the intabulated versions found in the Torino Fiori Musicalimanuscripts. The canzoni, toccate, and dialoghi have been edited by Federico del Sordo, also for Armelin (AMM 299). Eight canzonas, the final two of which are also set at a fifth and a fourth lower respectively, are for solo keyboard instrument. A toccata in eight parts is arranged for two keyboards, as is a Dialoghi. A further piece in eight parts is for two choirs.

Jakob Hassler (1569–1622), a brother of Hans Leo Hassler, was organist to the Fuggers in Augsburg, and later organist to the imperial court of Rudolf II in Prague. In addition to some madrigals and choral music, seven pieces for keyboard including three ricercars, a canzona, a fantasia, a fuga, and a toccata have survived in the Torino manuscripts. These have been edited by Hartmut Krones for Verlag Doblinger as DM570 in the Diletto Musicale series.

Anthoni van Noordt (ca. 1619–1675) lived in Amsterdam where he became organist of Nieuwezijdskapel in 1652 and of the Nieuwe Kerk in 1664. His Tablatuur-Boeck van Psalmen en Fantasyen of 1659 contains ten psalm settings with from one to eight verses and six fugal fantasias. The notation shows the pedal part in German organ tablature. The complete book has been edited by Jan van Biezen for Vereniging voor Nederlandse Muziekgeschiedenis, Amsterdam as MMN11.

André Raison (ca. 1648–1719) became organist of the abbey of Sainte-Genevieve, Paris, in 1665. His Livre d’Orgue of 1688 contains five Masses in the first, second, third, sixth, and eighth Tones with five versets for Kyrie, nine for Gloria, three for Sanctus, one Elevation, two Agnus Dei versets, and a Deo Gratias, along with an Offertoire in the 5th Tone. Edited by Alexandre Guilmant and André Pirro in Archives des Maîtres de l’Orgue des XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles, volume II for B. Schotts Söhne and by Norbert Dufourq for Éditions Musicales de la Schola Cantorum et de la Procure Générale de musique (SCOL105). It has also been edited by Nicolas Gorenstein in three volumes for Editions Chanvrelin. A facsimile from Fuzeau is out of print but may be available from second hand sites.

The second Livre d’orgue sur les Acclamations de la Paix tant désirée (1714) commemorates the Treaty of Utrecht and contains preludes and fugues, an offertoire, ouverture, allemande grave, and some eighteen noëls. It has been edited by Jean Bonfils for Éditions Musicales de la Schola Cantorum et de la Procure Générale de musique (SCOLQ109). It has also been edited by Nicolas Gorenstein in one volume for Editions Chanvrelin. Further pieces are in the Livre d’Orgue de Limoges, which also contains pieces by G. Julien and G. Corrette; this has been edited by Jolando Scarpa for Musica Restituta, Music Reprints, and also by Nicolas Gorenstein in two volumes for Editions Chanvrelin. A facsimile is available from Fuzeau (Ref 2632).

Giovanni Maria Casini (1652–1719), organist of the cathedral in Florence and to Grand Duke Cosimo III in Tuscany, published a set of twelve Pensieri per l’organo in Partitura in two volumes in 1714. Most of these elaborately contrapuntal pieces are in two or three movements, these being variations in a different rhythm, frequently dance based, of the opening movement. The complete set has been edited in one volume by Milton Sutter for Ricordi (133218) and in two volumes by Jörg Jacobi for Edition Baroque, Bremen (eba 4013 and 4014).

Miguel López (1669–1723), a Benedictine friar who studied theology, was also maestro de capella and organist in Marid, Valladolid, and Montserrat. He composed sacred and secular vocal music, orchestral music, and organ music, of which three Llenos, an Exercici d’ecos i contraecos, a Partit de mà dreta (i.e., a piece for divided keyboard with the solo in right hand), three sets of Versos on the eight Tones, and a set of eight Versos on the first Tone have been edited by David Pujol in Mestres de L’Escolania de Monserrat, Vol. IV, which also contains sixteen Pasos for keyboard by Narciso Casanoves. A further six settings of Pange Lingua and two settings of Sacris Solemnis have been edited by Gregorio Estrada in pages 181–198 in volume VI of the same series, the great majority of the volume containing vocal settings of the Mass.

Louis Marchand (1669–1732) was organist of several churches in Paris and also to the French King. Twelve of his organ works were published posthumously, and some forty-two survive in manuscript, which have been edited by Alexandre Guilmant in Archives des Maîtres de l’Orgue des XVIe, XVIIe, et XVIIIe siècles, volumes III (the print) and V (manuscript pieces) for B. Schotts Söhne. Jean Bonfils has edited the organ works in three volumes for Alphonse Leduc (ALHE32989-91); volume 1 contains the twelve pieces, volumes 2 and 3 contain manuscript works. A facsimile of Pièces choisies pour l’orgue 1740 has been published by Fuzeau (Ref 2665). Also available in facsimile from Fuzeau is Pièces d’orgues manuscrites (Ref 3172), which includes autograph manuscripts with the composer’s corrections, now in the Municipal Library of Versailles.

Marianus Königsperger (1708–1769) was organist and choirmaster of Prüfening Abbey. He published a large amount of church music in Latin as well as chamber music and keyboard pieces. Modern editions of the latter include Praeambulum cum fuga primi toni facili methodi elaboratum (prelude and fugue on each of the eight Tones) originally published in three volumes between 1752 and 1756, edited by Laura Cerutti for Armelin (AMM151)—the fugue on the eighth Tone is missing—Der wohl-unterwiesene Clavier-schüler . . . VIII Praeambula, XXIV Versette, und VIII Arien (i.e., eight sets of preludes, 24 versets, and 8 arias on each of the eight Tones) of 1755 edited by Laura Cerutti for Armelin (AMM030). A Praeambulum in C minor and a Fuga in C major from Fingerstreit oder Klavierübung of 1760, together with three of the preludes and fugues and two arias, has been edited by Eberhard Kraus for Otto Heinrich Noetzel Verlag, Wilhemshaven, in Cantantibus Organis, volume 5 (ref 3465). This volume also contains three preludes and fugues by Placidus Metsch along with three fugues and two sets of Versetten by Georg Pasterwitz.

William Felton (1715–1769) was vicar choral at the cathedral of Hereford and an amateur composer. He left thirty-two concerti for organ or harpsichord based on Handel’s, in five sets of six, opp. 1, 2, 4, 5, and 7 (the latter set was reissued with eight concerti), and two sets of Eight Lessons for the harpsichord, opp. 3 and 6. The keyboard part for the six concerti in opus 1 has been edited by Greg Lewin and is self-published (OM131).

William Walond (1719–1768), assistant organist of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, left two sets of works. Organ Voluntaries, opus 1, is a set of six two-movement voluntaries (ca. 1752)—three are for Cornet, one is for Cornet and Flute, one is without registration indication, but clearly for Cornet or Flute, and the final one is a prelude and fugue—and has been edited by Greg Lewin and self-published (OM102; a facsimile is available as OM102A). Also there is Ten Voluntaries, opus 2, printed in 1758, with a much wider range of pieces comprising three single-movement fugues, a single-movement piece alternating between Sesquialtera in the left hand and the Swell, and six two-movement pieces including one prelude and fugue, one Voluntary for Cornet and Flute, one for Trumpet, its Echo and Flute, one Voluntary for the two Diapasons, Principal, and Fifteenth, one for the full swell and Vox Humana or Bassoon, and one for Flute, edited by Greg Lewin (OM110).

Friedrich Christian Mohrheim (1719–1780) attended the Thomasschule in Leipzig from 1733 to 1736 and acted as J. S. Bach’s copyist, later becoming Kapellmeister in Danzig. He left seven trios for organ, three of which are on chorale melodies, and six chorale preludes. The complete pieces have been edited by Maciej Babnis for Organon in three volumes (ORG0007–9), and the trios have been edited by Maurizio Machella for Armelin (AMM 223).

Joaquín de Ojinaga (1719–1789), born in Bilbao, became organist of the Chapel Royal, Madrid, and then of the cathedral of Toledo. Eleven pieces comprising five Fugas, a Paso, an Intento, two sonatas, and two minuetos have been edited José López-Calo for Eusko Ikaskuntza Sociedad de Estudios Vascos as Cuadernos de música 2. It can be downloaded free of charge from http://hedatuz.euskomedia.org/8679/1/obras_musicales.pdf.

Nicolas Séjan (1745–1819), an organist in Paris, left a set of six sonatas for harpsichord with violin accompaniment as his opus 1, and a Recueil de pièces (13) for the harpsichord as his opus 2, as well as a posthumously published print, Trois Fugues et plusieurs Noëls pour l’Orgue, which has been edited by Nicolas Gorenstein for Editions Chanvrelin.

Pierre Nicolas Verheyen (ca. 1750–1819) was an organist in Gent. Seven pieces in a manuscript (two andantes, four one-movement sonatas, and a Nouvelle Marche) have been edited by Armando Carideo for Ut Orpheus (ES14).

Carlo Gervasoni (1762–1819), born in Milan, became maestro di cappella at Borotaro in 1789. His three-part treatise La Scuola della Musica of 1800 contains much useful information about organs and performance practice as well as some Lezioni d’organo, which have been edited by Maurizio Machella for Armelin (OIO 109).

Giulio Maria Delfrate-Alvazzi (1772–1819), organist in Varzo and Cattagna, left a handful of pieces in manuscripts, of which three single-movement sonatas, an Elevazione Bellissima, a Presto, an Andante, and seven versetti have been edited by Luca Lovisolo as volume II of the Flores Organi Cisalpini series, Edizione Carrara (4158).

Gene Bedient founded the Bedient Organ Company in 1969 and was the director until his retirement in 2010. Since retirement, he has traveled with his spouse, Gwen, who is an employee of the United States Department of State. They have lived in Algeria, Paris, Zimbabwe, Morocco, and currently, Brussels. He has carried out occasional tuning, service, and repair work on organs at these various locations. He spends his retirement time traveling, cooking, practicing the harpsichord, studying French, reading, and fixing things that are not in working order. When Gwen retires in 2021, they will be living in their California home in the Sacramento area.

My foray into organbuilding was the result of a series of accidental discoveries and explorations. Entering the University of Nebraska, fall semester, 1962, I was an electrical engineering student, also taking a one-hour piano class lesson at the School of Music. Subsequently, I became a piano major with a minor in industrial arts.

During my sophomore year, I was introduced to the first pipe organ of my life—a 1960 Reuter organ at Holy Trinity Episcopal Church, Lincoln, Nebraska. Having always loved machines, technical things, and music, it captivated my imagination in ways I would not have imagined!

I subsequently explored organbuilding as much as I could by way of the university library music section, which had a rather extensive organ collection thanks to professor of organ, Myron Roberts. Concurrently, I learned about the American Guild of Organists and The Diapason magazine. I was able to study organ performance as my instrumental minor.

The next major event was attending the 1965 AGO Region VI convention in Boulder, Colorado. A three-stop, mechanical-action organ had been brought to the convention by Charles McManis, organbuilder from Kansas City. I learned that actual persons made these captivating instruments! Charles was encouraging and based on my described woodworking skills and seeing a couple of wooden pipes I made, months later he wrote a letter offering a job for the following summer. 

Arriving in Kansas City, I worked in the shop for some weeks before we left on a trip to Florida, where we were to install a sizable instrument in Sarasota, at Church of the Redeemer. Enroute, we made an unforgettable stop at the 1966 AGO national convention in Atlanta. There, I heard both Virgil Fox and
E. Power Biggs give performances. Fox played on a Möller organ in a Baptist church, probably selected because the console was on a raised platform in the front, and the platform had the essential open spiral staircase to mount and descend! It was stiflingly hot and humid in the church. The sanctuary became hotter and even less pleasant when Fox asked the ushers to shut all of the windows mid-performance so we could “fully enjoy” the quietest sounds of the organ without distraction of outside street noise! At the end, those attending staggered out into the evening for breaths of fresh air!

Biggs played at Saint Anne’s Episcopal Church on a new Flentrop organ. He was well aged by then, and the program was not particularly engaging. For me, the excitement occurred when, right after the recital, a young John Weaver sat down to try the organ and played a dazzling Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, by Bach, from memory. As part of the trip, we visited the one-manual Tannenburg organ at the Single Brothers’ House in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. 

The organ installation was informative and educational, and I did my best to be as useful as possible. At the end of the summer, back at the shop in Kansas City, and I was determined to build my Opus 1, and Charles good-naturedly gave me from his salvage inventory an Aeolian-Skinner 4′ Harmonic Flute and a tenor C 8′ Dulciana by Möller. The latter I cut in half and made into a 2′ quasi-Principal.  

Armed with information from Die Kleine Orgel by Walter Supper, with assistance from an art department professor, and some #2 pine from the local lumber yard, I had already been engaged in making an 8′ Gedackt stop in the industrial arts shop at the university. Thus, Opus 1 had begun before I realized it had begun.

At the time I attended the regional convention in Boulder, I met Norman Lane of Meunier organ works in Denver and had a tour of their shop before returning to my western Nebraska home. The Meunier people had given me a keyboard from an old tracker organ. Thus, full of ideas, pipes, a keyboard, and a few completed Gedackt pipes, my Opus 1 began to take shape. It would have the disposition of 8′ Gedackt, 4′ Harmonic Flute, 2′ Principal (49 notes), one-manual.

I was very lucky to have many interested professors in various disciplines of the university, and I was able to do then what one probably could not do today—build an organ in a department of the university! As an industrial arts student, I was required to complete a project that would make use of the various disciplines that I had learned over the coursework of the program. For this project, I would receive one credit hour, and my project was to build a three-stop, mechanical-action pipe organ! I could not have accomplished this task without the support and encouragement of one professor in particular: Neil Munson, professor of industrial arts. As an old-world gentleman interested in all of the creative arts, he was not only fascinated that I would want to do this project, but was forever helpful.

As the project neared completion, I was in need of a wind supply. A small horizontal bellows with rubber cloth gussets had been constructed, but I needed a blower. I went to the local Sears, Roebuck and Company store downtown, bought a ½-horsepower motor, and made a blower! The impeller was contained in a plywood/sheet metal housing with the motor standing vertically on top. It produced plenty of wind and also the equivalent amount of noise of a 20-horsepower Spencer blower! 

With the organ complete prior to the end of my fifth undergraduate year, Neil Munson wanted to have an organ recital in the industrial arts shop, which he arranged and invited professors and friends from across campus for my performance of Bach, Froberger, Sweelinck, etc. He was so excited to see this event accomplished; I think it was one of the high points of his career! There were many small visits to the organ and demonstrations that followed as curiosity got the better of people.

What to do with the completed instrument? I was fortunate that C. Richard Morris—organist, mentor, and dear friend, the person who had introduced me to the Reuter organ years previously—arranged for my Opus 1 to be used at the chapel of First Plymouth Church in Lincoln, preceding the arrival of a Schlicker organ. The instrument was eventually disassembled, moved several times, and on the occasion of leaving my 18th and “L” shop in Lincoln after eleven years occupancy, most of the organ was discarded. The only parts that remain are the four stopknobs. Enamored by the photo in The Organ in Church Design by Joseph Blanton of the nineteenth-century keydesk at the Jakobikirche, Hamburg, with its impressive carved head stopknobs, my Opus 1 had to have them! One for each of the three stops and one for wind. They are what remain of my Opus 1!

Photo: carved head stopknobs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Notes

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

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

3. Ibid. 

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

5. Ibid.

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

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

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

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

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

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

12. Flint, frontispiece.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cicely Winter grew up in Michigan and studied piano and harpsichord at Smith College and the University of Michigan, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in music and a Master of Arts in European history; she later studied piano performance at Indiana University. Her principal teachers were Fritz Steinegger and Leonard Hokanson (piano), and Lory Wallfisch and Elisabeth Wright (harpsichord). Winter has lived in Oaxaca since 1972 and has presented numerous piano, harpsichord, and organ concerts over the years, many of which have benefitted community service projects in Oaxaca. In 2000, with the support of philanthropist Alfredo Harp Helú, she and organist Edward Pepe co-founded the Instituto de Órganos Históricos de Oaxaca A.C. (IOHIO), for which she serves as its director. Her professional performances have increasingly focused on historic organs, presenting a broad repertoire of classical, sacred, and folkloric music.

Each IOHIO (Instituto de Órganos Históricos de Oaxaca, A.C.) Festival builds on the success of its predecessors, making this one the best ever. It was also the most extensive, since the restored organ in Jalatlaco could be included in the concert programming.

• More than 120 people from eight countries and seven Mexican states participated in all or part of the scheduled activities. Of these, nearly a third were returnees.

• Eighteen Oaxacan, Mexican, and foreign musicians collaborated in nine concerts on nine restored organs over the course of six days.

• Six young Mexican organ students and one organbuilder received scholarships to participate in the festival, and our own five organists and students were delighted to be their guides.

• The churches were always full for the concerts and hundreds of local people were able to hear the Oaxacan organs in all their glory.

February 14 (Wednesday)

Around twenty organists and organ students met in the San Matías Jalatlaco church for the first event of the festival, a talk by Andres Cea Galán, president of the “Instituto del Órgano Hispano,” entitled “Spanish music: Organs and organists during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.”

That evening Cicely Winter and Valentín Hernandez presented the first concert of the Festival of Oaxacan Folk Music with music transcribed for organ and percussion in the Basilica de la Soledad. This program always serves as an introduction for the events to come, and people sang along exuberantly to some of the best-known Oaxacan regional songs. Videos of this and all succeeding concerts were projected onto a screen in the church, so that the audience could have a better view of the artists and see the action in the choir loft, particularly how pulling the stops changed the organ’s sound. The magnificent decorated case of this monumental 8′ organ bears the earliest date of any Oaxacan organ: 1686. It was restored in 2000 and is played regularly at Mass.

February 15 (Thursday)

Registration took place throughout the day in the Oaxaca Philatelic Museum (MUFI), giving us a chance to finally meet the people we had been corresponding with and greet old friends from past festivals. The inauguration of the festival that afternoon began with a presentation by Cicely Winter, director of the IOHIO, about the activities and goals of the festival. Joel Vásquez, project coordinator of the IOHIO, spoke about our teaching project and our success in having organs played at Mass every Sunday in five Oaxacan churches by our students or by him. In addition, it is most gratifying that people increasingly request that their private Masses for baptisms, Quinceañeras, weddings, etc., be accompanied by the pipe organs rather than an electronic organ or keyboard. We were honored by the presence of Ignacio Toscano, Secretary of Culture for the State of Oaxaca, and Omar Vásquez, director of the Oaxaca Regional Center of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), who commented on the shared goals of their respective institutions and the IOHIO and offered their congratulations for the festival. Winter also expressed special appreciation to Alfredo Harp Helú for his indispensable support of seven organ restoration projects in Oaxaca over the past twenty years, including most recently the organs in Tlacolula and Jalatlaco.

After the welcoming reception, we walked a few blocks to the church of San Matías Jalatlaco. The second concert of the festival was presented by the Dutch organist Jan Willem Jansen. His program had a theme, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” and included father and son pairs: Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, and Johann Sebastian Bach and three of his sons. The last piece “Ah, vous dirai-je Maman,” familiar to everyone as the theme of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” elicited a chuckle of recognition from the audience. The mainly eighteenth-century repertoire was perfect for this organ built in 1866.

This year marked the festival debut of the Jalatlaco organ as a playable instrument. One of our regular attendees commented on the evolution of this organ during his last three visits: first as an unrestored instrument (2002–2014) when we discussed our hopes for its restoration, then as a restoration in process by the Gerhard Grenzing firm (2016), and finally as a concert instrument (2018). This elegantly proportioned 8′ organ was built by the Oaxacan organbuilder Pedro Nibra and has a 56-note chromatic keyboard and “almost equal” temperament, unlike the other organs heard during the festival with their 45-note keyboards, short octaves, and meantone tuning. It was painted blue around 1880 when Nibra oversaw various modifications to the organ.

Afterwards in the atrium of the church under a clear night sky, we enjoyed bread and chocolate offered by Chocolate Mayordomo and tamales de frijol prepared by Jalatlaco’s favorite tamalera.

February 16 (Friday)

The day started with a bilingual presentation by Cicely Winter in the Francisco de Burgoa Library within the Santo Domingo Cultural Center titled “The Historic Organs of Oaxaca and the Work of the IOHIO.” Although the title of the talk has not changed over the years, the content is updated every year to publicize the advances of our various projects: protection, conservation, restoration, concerts, archive and manuscript discoveries, recordings, teaching, and publications. This was followed by a tour of the splendid church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, seat of the Dominican order in the Valley of Oaxaca since the sixteenth century, and the Museum of the Cultures of Oaxaca in the former convent, led by guides Pablo Gonzalez and Gabriel Sanchez.

Our next stop has always been San Andrés Huayapam, located on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. This year the plan was complicated by the closing of the church after the tragic earthquakes in September 2017. Luckily it was not severely affected, but religious activities have been celebrated under a temporary roof beside the church until the roof can be repaired. We did not know if the INAH would grant us access, but fortunately the provisional permission came through just days before the visit.

We were received with a customary drink of tejate, traditionally served in colorful painted half gourds. A local specialty of pre-Hispanic origin, this delicious foamy drink is made with ground cacao, corn meal, the seed of the mamey fruit, and the flower of a tree (rosita de cacao), which grows only in or near Huayapam.

This charming church has one of the most beautiful Baroque altarpieces in Oaxaca, whose intricately carved golden columns are referred to as “gilded lace.” Also famous is the collection of antique ex-votos, petitions usually to the Virgin Mary that are painted on small tin plaques. The 4′ organ (1772), large for a table organ, is nearly intact with its original keyboard and pipes. It is simply carved, a style we refer to as a “country organ,” and was probably originally unpainted, then painted bright red, still seen backing the keyboard, and eventually repainted sober maroon in the twentieth century. In Huayapam we savored the first of many local meals, this time mole amarillo, in the atrium of the church.

During free time between the Huayapam comida and the evening concert, some went to see the famous tree in Santa María del Tule, while visiting organists and students had a chance to play a meantone tracker organ with divided registers in the Oaxaca Cathedral.

That night we proceeded to the Oaxaca Cathedral for the third concert of the festival, offered by the eminent Spanish organist and musicologist Andrés Cea Galán with the participation of the Mexican baritone Felipe Espinosa. This is our only concert with a modest admission fee, and the proceeds helped cover the expenses of the Mexican organ students. This monumental instrument was built in 1712 and reconstructed in 1996, having suffered alterations over the centuries that had completely erased its eighteenth-century character. It retains its opulently carved and gilded upper case, although its lower case has been rebuilt several times. Unfortunately no evidence remains of its original appearance, but we know from the contract for its construction that it was once one of the most lavishly decorated organs in Oaxaca.

February 17 (Saturday)

This year more than a hundred people participated in the all-day excursion to the Mixteca Alta. We crossed a river to arrive at the little stone church in Santa María Tinú, and it seemed as though the entire adult population of the town, now reduced to 152 people, was there to greet us. The authorities welcomed us with great ceremony at the entrance of the church, their canes (bastones) of office in hand. During our reconnaissance visit some weeks before, we had suggested that the local women display their handicrafts, which in the Mixteca region means palm weaving (hats, baskets, sleeping mats). But palm has given way to colorful raffia, and what a sight greeted us! Multi-colored woven baskets hung from the trees and lined up atop the walls of the atrium, while the stone cross in the atrium was decorated cucharillas, the white base of maguey leaves. Nearly everyone bought something from the women as we sipped sweet atole.

The Tinú church houses a disproportionately large organ. The date of construction, 1828, and the name of the organbuilder are written inside the case—such luck! Perhaps the organ was originally commissioned for a larger church, then sold to Tinú, or the community simply wanted something grand. The organ, which has not been fully playable in fifty years, is completely intact and still grunts and wheezes when one of the bellows located in the loft above is pumped. Unfortunately because of the reduced population and remote location of the town, a restoration would not be practical.

Our next stop was in the lovely Baroque church of San Andrés Sinaxtla. The case of the organ built in 1791 combines both Baroque and neo-Classic case design elements. The construction is idiosyncratic, since it is the only instrument of this size with direct suspended mechanical action, i.e., no rollerboard. Of particular interest is the inscription across the façade including the name of the donor, the date of construction, and the cost of the organ, but, as is typical, omitting the name of the organbuilder.

Just down the road from Sinaxtla sitting on a promontory overlooking the Yanhuitlán Valley is the church of San Mateo Yucucuí (population 142). This organ built in 1743 is the least altered of all the 8′ eighteenth-century Oaxacan organs and when last played (1930s?), it is said that its sound could be heard for miles around. The organ was never painted or gilded like its counterpart in Teotongo, probably not by choice during that opulent Baroque era, but rather because of the cost. It is richly carved and largely intact, and it is tempting to imagine the pipes and mechanism of the Yucucuí organ inserted into the stunning Teotongo case to make one amazing organ! The floor of the high balcony on which the organ sits is much deteriorated and access to the façade is dangerous, so our efforts to clean and document the organ have been restricted.

The fourth concert of the festival took place in Santo Domingo Yanhuitlán, the sixteenth-century Dominican stronghold in the Mixteca Alta region. With its soaring stone vault supported by lateral flying buttresses and its magnificent altarpieces, it is one of Mexico’s most majestic complexes of Baroque art. Organist David Soteno and clarinetist Lorenzo Meza, both from near Mexico City, thrilled the audience with a program that reverberated throughout the immense nave. This organ, located on a side balcony, was built around 1690–1700 and restored/rebuilt in France in 1998. Its case is one of the most elaborately decorated of all Mexican organs, with Dominican symbols and fantastic swirling imagery, similar to the Soledad organ case, and fierce faces on the façade pipes. Because of earthquake damage to the main altarpiece (retablo), we could sit only in the front half of the church.

The day culminated with the traditional pre-concert festivities in San Andrés Zautla. We were received in the atrium of the church by the local band with fireworks, plenty of mezcal, necklaces of bugambilia, dancing, and finally a delicious meal of estofado de pollo (chicken stewed in almond sauce) served in the municipal library across the street from the church. After dinner, we crowded into the church where many people from the community were already waiting for the fifth concert of the festival. This was the first of three collective concerts, whose goal has been to offer the opportunity to play the organs to as many organists and students as possible. Roberto Ramirez, André Lash, Andres Cea, Willem Jansen, Laura Carrasco, and Christoph Hammer presented wonderfully contrasting pieces to top off such a busy and exciting day. We were honored to have with us José Miguel Quintana from Mexico City whose association “Órganos Históricos de México” financed the restoration of the Zautla organ in 1996.

The case of this 4′ table organ (1726) is exquisitely carved, gilded, and painted with images of saints and angels. A blower was installed in 2017 by Oaxacan organbuilder David Antonio Reyes, and the organ was moved to the other side of the loft away from the stairway. No longer do we have to worry about those startling moments of silence when the bellows pumpers were distracted and lost their rhythm. The registers of table organs are controlled by tabs protruding from the sides of the case, and thanks to the screen projection the audience could appreciate the teamwork involved. Joel Vasquez and David Reyes had to make a detachable music rack to prevent the pages resting against the façade pipes from being blown away. Clearly the organists of past centuries played by memory or improvised, and the position of the keyboard indicates that they stood to play. Thanks to the ongoing support of the Federal Road and Bridge Commission (CAPUFE), a special entrance was opened from the superhighway, allowing us direct access to and from Zautla.

February 18 (Sunday)

In San Jerónimo, Tlacochahuaya, Jan Willem Jansen presented the sixth concert of the festival, “Four European Countries,” featuring repertoire from Italy, Holland, Germany, and Spain. In February 2017 the organ was cleaned, tuned, and voiced by the Grenzing firm and was in perfect condition until the September 7 earthquake jiggled the pipes. Luckily organbuilder Hal Gober was on hand to make the necessary adjustments. The church is one of the loveliest in Mexico with its exuberant interior floral decoration and splendid Baroque altarpieces, all restored in the past twenty years. The 4′ organ was built sometime before 1735 and restored in 1991. The case and pipes are decorated with floral motifs, and the organ harmonizes beautifully, both visually and acoustically, with the architecture of the church.

After a buffet lunch of Oaxacan specialties in the “Donají” Restaurant in Mitla, we ventured on to the small Baroque church with painted ceramic bowls embedded into the bell towers in San Miguel del Valle at the foothills of the Sierra Juarez. The 4′ table organ is unfortunately in poor condition, more typical than not of the unrestored instruments and not such a bad thing for our participants to see. The case is painted blue with neo-Classic decoration; it has only four registers and no accessory (toy) stops. It seems to date from around 1800, making it the last of the Oaxacan table organs. An added attraction of this Zapotec-speaking community is the elaborately embroidered aprons, and once again we were able to support women’s handicrafts with our purchases.

Our friends from “Chocolate Mayordomo” received us with bread and chocolate upon arrival in Santa María de la Asunción Tlacolula. We admired the little 2′ organ, which appears to date from around 1700 as indicated by the style of its remaining painted decoration. Originally located in the choir loft of the Baroque side chapel, it is the smallest Oaxacan organ and has only two registers. Those who needed a break from churches could roam around one of the most famous indigenous markets in Oaxaca and admire the women’s costumes and the stalls piled high with local produce.

The seventh concert of the festival was presented by Andrés Cea Galán featuring sixteenth- and seventeenth-century repertoire that highlighted the beautiful sound of this organ. It was built in Oaxaca in 1792 by Manuel Neri y Carmona, restored by the Gerhard Grenzing firm, and inaugurated during the Tenth IOHIO Festival in 2014. The visual impression of the Baroque-style case, painted red and black and opulently gilded, is striking, and it has the most elaborately painted façade pipes in all of Mexico. Local people began to arrive for Mass following the concert, so by the end the church was packed. It is likely that many were hearing and viewing the organ (on the screen) for the first time, and they must have been amazed by the rich, full sound of the organ.

February 19 (Monday)

Our two-day excursion to the Mixteca Alta began with a stop in Santa María de la Natividad Tamazulapan where we heard the eighth concert of the festival. This second collective event was presented by organ students Greta Baltazar, Alejandro Lemus, Mario Moya, and Zeltzin Perez, who study in university programs in Mexico City, along with Joel Vasquez from the IOHIO. Arnoldo Perez, a young organbuilder apprentice, pumped the bellows. This church had been closed after the second September earthquake, which particularly affected the Mixteca region. Ongoing negotiations with the priest and the INAH allowed us access to the first half of the church and the organ balcony where fortunately no plaster had fallen from the ceiling.

The 2′ table organ dating from approximately 1720–1730 is situated in a high balcony overlooking the soaring nave of the church and is exquisitely decorated with images of saints and angel musicians. The case and bellows are original, but the pipes, keyboard, and interior components were reconstructed in 1996. The church has one of the most magnificent Baroque altarpieces in all Mexico and includes paintings by the renowned sixteenth-century Spanish painter Andrés de Concha. The second organ in this church, an imposing 8′ instrument, faces the small organ from the left balcony. Built in Oaxaca in 1840 by a member of the renowned Martinez Bonavides organbuilding family, it was once a magnificent instrument and is largely intact except for the loss of nearly all its pipes; only the five largest remain in the façade.

We then proceeded to the neighboring church of Santiago Teotongo, rich enough in eighteenth-century Baroque art to stand as a museum in its own right. The magnificent case of this 8′ organ, though empty, is integrated stylistically with the opulent altarpieces, and statues of angels once stood atop its towers, singing through their O-shaped mouths via pipes passing through their bodies. The organ was stripped of its pipes, keyboard, and more during the Mexican Revolution, and its date is unknown, but the organ’s profile closely resembles that of San Mateo Yucucuí (1743). An added attraction was the eighteenth-century painted armoire in the sacristy, decorated with period figures engaged in their daily activities.

The tour continued with a visit to the sixteenth-century church of Santiago Tejupan, which could also stand as a museum of colonial religious art in this culturally rich area of the Mixteca Alta. The luxuriously painted organ case (1776) was the last Oaxacan organ with religious imagery. Portraits of the donor and his wife being blessed by his patron saint, Saint Nicholas, are depicted on one side and Santiago on horseback on the other, both unfortunately obscured by layers of grime. Another special feature is the information painted on two decorative medallions on the façade, which include the name of the donor, the cost of the organ, and the date of construction, although as in Sinaxtla, omitting the name of the organbuilder. Afterward we were treated to a talk about the Mixtec ball game (pelota mixteca).

After lunch in our favorite restaurant “Eunice,” we walked over to the Dominican architectural complex of San Pedro y San Pablo Teposcolula with its church dwarfed by the enormous sixteenth-century open chapel and atrium. The 8′ organ (ca. 1730–1740) has a similar profile to that of Yanhuitlán. The case was painted white with light green touches sometime after the original construction and, with its delicate carvings, had a graceful look. However, now we refer to it as the King Midas organ, because in 2010 a well-connected architect took the liberty of gilding at great cost all the decorative carvings and moldings, even though it had only been minimally gilded historically, and, in fact, the organ’s overall manufacture is not of the highest quality.

We drove up through the pine forest to Santa María Tlaxiaco. The imposing “fortress church” was the Dominican outpost for this strategic area of the high sierra in the sixteenth century. For the final ninth concert of the festival, Ricardo Ramírez, Laura Carrasco Curintzita, Andrés Cea Galán, Michael Barone, Jan Willem Jansen, and David Furniss offered an eclectic program to close the concert cycle. This monumental 8′ instrument, built around 1800 and restored in 2000, is decorated with typical neo-Classic design elements, painted white and richly gilded; it synchronizes with the altarpieces of the church, all in homogeneous neo-Classic style. We spent the night in the Hotel del Portal on the main plaza and had a chance to wander around the market.

February 20 (Tuesday)

Participants divided into two groups. Many chose to visit the late pre-Classic and Classic (400 BC–800 AD) Mixtec archeological site and the community museum of San Martín Huamelulpan with Marcus Winter of the INAH. Most of the organists and students opted to stay behind to play the Tlaxiaco organ and had great fun trying out their pieces and helping each other with the registers.

Both groups met up in Huamelulpan, then proceeded to the village of San Pedro Mártir Yucuxaco where we were once again formally received by the municipal authorities. The organ here (1740) is complete and in excellent condition, missing only its bellows. It is the least altered of the Oaxacan 4′ table organs, parallel to Yucucui for the 8′ stationary group, and closely resembles the organ in Zautla, although without the painted decoration. The carved pipeshades show two faces in profile, a unique decorative detail, and the keyboard is exquisite.

Our final church and organ visit was in Santa María Tiltepec, for some the crowning visual experience of the field trips. Located in the Dominican sphere of Yanhuitlan and built atop a pre-Hispanic temple, this sixteenth-century church has long been appreciated by art historians for its richly carved asymmetrical façade and stone interior arches. The unrestored 4′ organ, situated on a side balcony, is one of Oaxaca’s oldest (1703) and often elicits a gasp of astonishment when seen for the first time. Unfortunately nothing is known about its history to explain its idiosyncrasies of construction and decoration, and if it did not have the characteristic Oaxacan hips on the sides of the case, we might wonder if it were imported.

We proceeded to the Hacienda Santa Marta in San Sebastian Etla on the outskirts of Oaxaca City for our farewell dinner. A scrumptious buffet awaited us with plenty of mezcal, and a guitar duo serenaded us with numerous Oaxacan folk songs. Toasts and sentimental reminiscences created a special connection with old and new friends who had shared this unique Oaxaca organ adventure.

February 21 (Wednesday)

Around thirty people made the trek up to the archeological site of Monte Albán to enjoy an optional guided three-hour tour with Marcus Winter from the Oaxaca Regional Office of the INAH.