New Organs

What a winter.

Our son Andy writes for a daily news service at the State House in Boston and gets to see his prose online and in print the next day. Writing for a monthly journal is a little different. You’re reading in May, and I can only hope that the giant gears that drive the universe continued to function properly and the weather is warm. 

I’m writing in March on the first day of spring. I’m in my office at our place in Newcastle, Maine, looking across the Damariscotta River, a dramatic and beautiful tidal river. We’re eight miles up from the Gulf of Maine and the Atlantic Ocean, and the tide chart says that we’ll have an eleven-foot high tide just before 11:00 this morning, a couple hours from now, so the ice floes are drifting north toward town with the tide. I can barely see the sea ice on the river, because my usual view is all but obscured by the piles of snow outside.

A couple weeks ago, the weatherman predicted a heavy snowfall, to be followed by rain. There were already several feet of snow on the roof, so we hired some local guys to shovel the roof, fearing that the added weight would be too much. Those piles added to the drifts already in place to leave six feet on the ground outside my windows.

We’ve spent a lot of time outside this week in eight-degree weather because we have a new puppy, and in spite of the cold, we’ve heard the calls of eastern phoebes and cardinals right on schedule. The wicked weather must be unsettling for these denizens of springtime in coastal Maine. Think of the poor ovenbirds, who get their name from the oven-shaped nests they build on the forest floor.

We’ve had about 90 inches of snow here this winter, which is plenty, but it’s a foot-and-a-half short of the all-time record of 108 inches set in Boston this year. Last weekend, friends and family there were rooting for the predicted snowfall to exceed the two inches needed to break the record—“if we’ve been through all this . . . .” I trust they’re happy with their bitter reward. 

Subways stopped running, roofs collapsed, and houses burned down because fire hydrants were buried deep beneath the snow. Local school officials are debating whether to bypass legislated minimum numbers of school days, because it’s simply not possible to make up all the days lost to cancellations through the winter. And the New York Times quoted the city’s guide to street defects, which defines a pothole as “a hole in the street with a circular or oval-like shape and a definable bottom.” An actionable pothole is one that’s at least a foot in diameter and three inches deep. I wonder what they call a hole that doesn’t have a definable bottom.

But baby, it’s cold outside.

It’s been a terrible season for pipe organs. Long stretches of unusually cold weather have caused furnaces to run overtime, wringing the last traces of moisture out of the air inside church buildings. Concerts have been postponed, and blizzards have sent furious drafts of cold air through old stained-glass windows, causing carefully regulated and maintained pitches to go haywire. One Saturday night, a colleague posted on Facebook that the pastor of his church called saying there would be “no church” tomorrow. The sewers had frozen and the town closed public buildings.

One organ we care for outside of Boston developed a sharp screech lasting a few seconds when the organ was turned on or off. After spending a half hour tracking it down, it was easy to correct by tightening a couple screws and eliminating a wind leak, but it had been a startling disruption on a Sunday morning. 

A church in New York City that is vacant because it merged with a neighboring congregation suffered terrible damage when an electric motor overheated, tripping a circuit breaker for the entire (poorly designed) hot-water heating system. Pipes froze and ruptured, the nave floor flooded ankle deep, and the building filled with opaque steam. A week later, when heat was restored, steam vented, and water drained and mopped up, the white-oak floorboards started expanding, buckling into eight-inch-high mounds, throwing pews on their backs, and threatening to topple the marble baptismal font.

My phone line and e-mail inbox have been crackling with calls about ciphers and dead notes, swell boxes sticking and squeaking, and sticking keys—all things that routinely happen to pipe organs during periods of unusual dryness. And I can predict the reverse later in the season—maybe just when you’re finally reading this—as weather moderates, humidity increases, heating systems are turned off, and organs swell up to their normal selves.

The floor squeaks, the door creaks . . . 

So sings the hapless Jud Fry in a dark moment in the classic Broadway musical, Oklahoma!. He’s lamenting his lot, pining after the girl, and asserting to himself that the smart-aleck cowhand who has her attention is not any better than he. The lyrics pop into my head as I notice the winter’s effects on the woodwork that surrounds me. We have a rock maple cutting board inserted in the tile countertop next to the kitchen sink. The grout lines around it are all broken because the wood has shrunk. The hardwood boards of the landings in our stairwells are laid so they’re free to expand and contract. Right now, there are 5/16′′ gaps between them—by the time you read this, the gaps will be closed tight. I need to time it right to vacuum the dust out of the cracks before they close. And the seasonal gaps between the ash floorboards of the living and dining rooms are wider than ever.

The teenager trying to sneak up the front stairs after curfew is stymied in winter, because the stair treads and risers have shrunk due to dryness, and the stairs squeak as the feet of the culprit cause the separate boards to move against each other.

The other day, working in my home office in New York, I heard a startling snap from my piano, as if someone had struck it with a hammer. I ran up the keyboard and found the note that had lost string tension. Plate tectonics. Good thing the tuner is coming next week. 

As I move around in quiet church buildings, I hear the constant cracking and popping of woodwork changing size. Ceiling beams, floorboards, and pews are all susceptible. But it’s inside the organ where things are most critical. The primary rail of a Pitman chest shrinks a little, opening a gap in the gasketed joint, and three adjacent notes go dead in the bass octave of the C-sharp side because the exhaust channels can no longer hold pressure. And there’s a chronic weather thing in Aeolian-Skinner organs: The ground connections to the chest magnets are only about a quarter-inch long, and near the screws that hold the magnet rails to the chest frames, where the wood moves with weather changes, the ground wires yank themselves free of their solder and cause dead notes.

Let’s talk about pitch.

Fact: Temperature affects the pitch of organ pipes. You might think this is because the metal of the pipes expands and contracts as temperature changes, and while that is technically true, the amount of motion is so slight as to have minimal effect. The real cause is changes in the density of the air surrounding and contained by the organ’s pipes. Warmer air is less dense. If a pipe is tuned at 70°, it will only be in tune at that temperature. If that pipe is played at 60°, the pitch will be lower; if it’s played at 80°, the pitch will be higher.

While it’s true that all the pipes involved in a temperature change will change pitch together (except the reeds), it’s almost never true that a temperature change will affect an entire organ in the same way. In a classic organ of Werkprinzip design, with divisions stacked one above another, a cold winter day might mean that the pipes at the top of the organ are super-heated (because warm air rises), while the pipes near floor level are cold. 

There are all kinds of problems inherent in the classic layout of a chancel organ with chambers on each side. If the walls of one chamber are outside walls of the building, while the walls of the other back up against classrooms and offices, a storm with cold winds will split the tuning of the organ. I know several organs like this where access is by trap doors in the chamber floor. Leaving the trap doors open allows cold air to “dump” into the stairwells, drawing warmer air in through the façade from the chancel. This helps balance temperature between two organ chambers.

One organ I care for has Swell and Great in the rear gallery on either side of a large leaky window. The pipes of the Swell are comfortably nestled inside a heavy expression enclosure, while the Great is out in the open, bared to the tempest. A windy storm was all it took to wreck the tuning of the organ as cold air tore through the window to freeze the Great. It only stayed that way for a few days, until the storm was over, the heating system got caught up, and the temperatures around the building returned to usual. Trouble was, the organ scholar played his graduate recital on one of those days, and there was precious little to do about it.

One of the most difficult times I’ve had as an organ tuner was more than twenty years ago, caring for a huge complicated organ in a big city. The church’s choir and organists were doing a series of recording sessions in July, preparing what turned out to be a blockbuster bestselling CD of Christmas music, on a schedule for release in time for the holiday shopping season. It was hot as the furnaces of hell outside, hotter still in the lofty reaches of the organ chambers, and the organ’s flue pipes went so high in pitch that the reeds could not be tuned to match. It was tempting to try, and goodness knows the organists were pressing for it, but I knew I was liable to cause permanent damage to the pipes if I did. It was a surreal experience, lying on a pew in the wee hours of the morning, wearing shorts and a tee-shirt, sweating to the strains of those famous arrangements by David Willcocks and John Rutter rendered on summertime tuning.

Mise en place

I started doing service calls maintaining pipe organs in 1975, when I was apprenticing with Jan Leek in Oberlin, Ohio. Jan was the organ and harpsichord technician for the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, and had an active maintenance business on the side. I worked with him three days a week when I was a student, and loved driving around the countryside and rolling from church to church. (Many of my peers were trapped on that rural campus by a college that didn’t allow students to own cars.) I suppose in those days we did fifty or sixty service calls each year, and as my career expanded, there were some periods during which I was caring for well over a hundred organs, visiting each at least twice a year. I suppose the annual average has been around sixty a year, or 2,400 since those naïve days in Ohio. 

Each organ has peculiarities, and each has its own environment of climate and acoustics. The tuner-technician has to learn about each organ and how it relates to the building, as well as learning the ropes of the building itself. Over the years you learn where to find a stepladder, how to get the keys to the blower room, and most important, where to find the best lunch in town.¹

And speaking of peculiarities, organists crown ’em all. A professional chef has his mise en place—his personal layout of ingredients, seasonings, and implements that he needs to suit his particular style of work and the dishes he’s preparing. It includes his set of knives (don’t even think of asking to borrow them!), quick-read meat thermometer, whisk, along with an array of seasonings, freshly chopped or minced garlic, parsley, basil, ground black and white peppercorns, sea salt, and several different cooking oils. 

Likewise, the organist, both professional and amateur, sets up his own mise en place—cluttering the organ console with hairbrushes, nail clippers, sticky-notes, paper clips, cough drops, bottled water, even boxes of cookies. Sometimes the scenes are surprisingly messy, and these are not limited to those consoles that only the organist can see. Next time you’re at the church, take a look at your mise en place. Does it look like the workplace of a professional? If you were a chef, would anyone seeing your workspace want to eat your food? 

Care for the space around the organ console. Ask your organ technician to use some furniture polish, and to vacuum under the pedalboard.² Keep your piles of music neat and orderly, or better yet, store them somewhere else. Remember that what you might consider to be your desk or workbench—the equivalent of the chef’s eight-burner Vulcan—is part of everyone’s worship space.

Everywhere you go, there you are.

There’s another aspect of visiting many different churches that troubles me more and more. As a profession, we worry about the decline of the church, and the parallel reduction in the number or percentage of active churches that include the pipe organ and what we might generally call “traditional” music. But as I travel from one organ loft to another, peruse Sunday bulletins and parish hall bulletin boards, I’m struck by how much sameness there is. What if suddenly you were forbidden to play these pieces:

• Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (you know the composer)

• Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (ibid.) 

• Nun danket alle Gott . . . (which of the two?)

• Sheep may safely graze

• Canon in D

• Hornpipe

• Etc., etc.

Each of these is a beautiful piece. There are good reasons why we all play all of them, and congregations love them. The same applies to choral music. We could get the sense that if we took away “ten greatest hits,” no organist could play for another wedding. Take away a different “ten greatest hits,” and no organist could play another ordinary Sunday worship service.

I know very well that when you’re planning wedding music, it’s difficult to get the bride (or especially, the bride’s mother) to consider interesting alternatives. And I know very well that when you play that famous Toccata, the faithful line up after the service to share the excitement. It would be a mistake to delete those pieces from your repertoire.

But if we seem content to play the same stuff over and over, why should we expect our thousands of churches to spend millions of dollars acquiring and maintaining the tools of our trade? Many people think that the organ is yesterday’s news, and I think it’s important for us to advocate that it’s the good news of today and tomorrow.

The grill cooks in any corner diner can sustain a business using the same menu year after year, but if the menu in the “chef restaurant” with white tablecloths and stemware never comes up with anything new, their days are numbered.

This summer, when many church activities go on vacation, learn a few new pieces to play on the organ. Find a couple new anthems to share with the choir in the fall. You might read the reviews of new music found each month in the journals, or make a point of attending reading sessions for new music hosted by a chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Here’s a real challenge for you—work out a program of preludes and postludes for the coming year without repeating any pieces. Can you rustle up a hundred different titles? You never know—you might find a new classic. Remember—every chestnut you play was once new music! ν

Notes

1. In the days when I was doing hundreds of tunings a year, I made a point to schedule tunings so as to ensure a proper variety of lunches. As much as you may like it, one doesn’t want sushi four days in a row! It was tempting to schedule extra tunings for some of the churches—there was this Mexican place next to First Lutheran . . . Wendy would say I have a lot to show for it. 

2. It’s traditional for the organ technician to keep all the pencils found under the pedalboard.

Grandall & Engen, 

Maple Grove, Minnesota

Schaefer organ, ca. 1910

St. Mary’s Ridge Catholic Church, St. Mary’s Ridge (Cashton), Wisconsin

The Schaefer Organ Company of Slinger (Schleisingerville), Wisconsin, was active from about 1880–1950, supplying tubular-pneumatic and electro-pneumatic action organs. Originally called the Wisconsin Pipe Organ Factory and owned by Bernard Schaefer, it was later renamed B. Schaefer and Sons, and finally the Schaefer Organ Company. The Organ Historical Society organ database lists some 45 organs by Schaefer, mostly in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. Two were installed in New York City.

The 11-rank tubular-pneumatic Schaefer at St. Mary’s Ridge, outside of Cashton, Wisconsin (south of Sparta), was installed sometime around 1910. Under the guidance of Fr. Michael Klos, the church has undergone an extensive and historically informed restoration. The restored building provides a view into traditional Roman Catholic architecture of the late nineteenth century, with three carved altars and polychrome paintings on the ceiling. While the organ was being removed in late 2013, the flooring in the chancel was replaced with solid maple and walnut repurposed from the nearby school prior to its demolition. The new floor sets off the painted altar pieces and further enhances the live acoustics.

The modest organ is in a natural oak Gothic case in the center of the balcony, where its sound reflects from the arched ceiling to fill the room. There is evidence behind the organ of an arch in the bell tower that was filled in when the organ was installed. The detached console required hundreds of feet of lead tubes to control the 11 ranks and the sub and super couplers in the original, and a hand-pumped feeder bellows filled an enormous reservoir in the base of the oak case. The hand pump was abandoned when a blower was placed in the unheated bell tower, where its roar was somewhat muffled by the heavy bricks of the tower.

The internal layout is very much like that of tracker organs built around 1900. The free-standing Swell box is at the back, with the Great immediately in front. The façade consists of bass pipes of both the 8′ Open Diapason and 4′ Octave, all painted. The 16′ Subbass stands at floor level along the sides of the case, with the open wood 8′ Bass Flute across the back behind the Swell box.

The Schaefer tubular mechanism was very cleverly designed and extremely modular. The organ should have been easy to service, but its rural location required lengthy travel time to reach. It was not the beneficiary of much work by technicians over the years. The little work it did receive consisted mostly of leather patching and sealing as the tubular action began to fail. There is also evidence of window screen material inserted in an attempt to keep mice away from the tender leather! When we took the organ out in late 2013, Fr. Klos, himself an organist, told us it had not been playable for at least 20 years.  

In order to hear a bit of the mute organ, we “hot-wired” it with screwdrivers to open valves with ruptured pouches. Very little would play. But we heard enough, both this way and by blowing on a few pipes, so that it was obvious this organ had a lot of potential. The live response in the room also seemed to be very promising.

The pipes were in excellent condition, although they were understandably dirty. Nobody had ever tried to “baroquify” this organ, so all pipes were in original condition. The three pedal chests held promise for rebuilding (later abandoned), but the manual chests were completely beyond reuse if we hoped to make the organ reliable and give it longevity.

We could have restored the tubular chests, but this action is known to have a fairly short lifespan in Wisconsin’s climate. Had we restored all of the leather in the hundreds of pouches, we would have condemned the organ once again to eventual failure. It is similar to tracker organs of the same era, so we opted for tone channel chests. What to do about the key and stop action? The organ never had tracker action, and with a detached console at the balcony rail, it would have been a tricky—but possible—undertaking to create a tracker action. The preponderance of 8′ stops would have required large pallets and a heavy action. The presence of sub and super couplers from its inception placed a tracker action out of the running. We opted instead for Blackinton-style tone channel chests, built by Organ Supply Industries, with new keyboards, a new nameboard by Peterson, and relay and combination action by Syndyne.

This rural location also indicated that we wanted the organ to be extremely reliable—especially in case of lightning strike. After all, St. Mary’s Ridge is a high point of land, and with a high steeple, we could assume the church has had its share of strikes. The local electrician, a member of the parish, was advised on how to double-ground the organ so it is grounded both when it is running and when it is shut off. Standard organ circuits on the 120-volt side do not regularly ground the organ when it is off, so this is a little unusual and required some special components.

The old blower in the tower was immediately ruled out for reuse. In addition to its noise, it drew in sub-zero air in the dead of winter from the unheated tower. We wanted the organ to be more stable, so a new Laukhuff blower was put into a double box for soundproofing, with both intake and output silencing baffles. It is truly silent. A 3′ x 4′ single-rise reservoir supplies air to the two slider chests, and a smaller reservoir supplies the two pedal stops. All is installed within the base.

After cleaning, we found that the pipes were in need of only minor regulating and voicing correction. The one exception was the large pipes of the façade. The toes had gradually closed under the weight of these pipes. After opening up the toes and correcting some low languids, the heroic nature of the typical 8′ Diapason of this era emerged to provide a solid foundation for the organ and to carry beautifully throughout the room.

The preponderance of 8′ stops was a puzzle until they were all playing again in the room. Concerned about the need for super couplers, we took the opportunity to add a 2′ stop to each manual—a Fifteenth to the Great and a Harmonic Piccolo to the Swell. While these additions are successful and add variety, we found that the 8′ stops are all different and each contributes in its own way. In particular, the Dulciana is not as soft as many such examples and has considerable body. The Aeoline, though almost inaudible in our shop, has a lovely edge and even with the swell box closed it can be heard everywhere in the church. The Violin Diapason is a perfect foundation for the Swell and contrasts with the Open Diapason of the Great. The Salicional is extremely bright and, in fact, almost fulfills the function of a mixture and reed by providing many high harmonics. The flutes are not exceptional, although they are all different. The 4′ Flute d’Amour pipes are wood, with pierced stoppers.

We are grateful to Fr. Klos for having the vision to renovate the Schaefer organ and the faith in his congregation to fund it. The “new” organ functions essentially the same as it had when built, although it now has the advantage of a multi-level combination action, a transposer, reversibles, and an “auto-bass” Pedal-to-Great coupler for those who don’t use their feet (a reality in this area). There is a crescendo pedal as it had before, and the swell linkage is still mechanical. The best stop, of course, is the wonderful acoustic of this room, and the organ’s location near the ceiling projects its tones throughout the room. Both building and organ are now ready for their next century.

Andrew Paul Fredel, music director at Gethsemane Episcopal Church in Minneapolis and a member of our staff, played a re-dedication concert to a large and appreciative crowd on Sunday, October 12, 2014. Much of the music was drawn in spirit from the early years of this organ. The organ is admittedly small, and much of its strength is in the wide variety of softer unison stops. The program sought to highlight these sounds and display, within its limits, the large range of musical options available.

There are many Schaefer organs in the Midwest. We found the Schaefer design to be rich tonally, and it is unfortunate that so many of their instruments were built with a key action doomed to early failure. This project proved conclusively that on top of new slider chests an old organ can be brought back to life and might even surpass what was originally built.

—David Engen and David Grandall Grandall & Engen LLC

Maple Grove, Minnesota

Grandall & Engen staff

David Grandall

David Engen

Luke Tegtmeier

Andrew Fredel

Paul Clasen

Zach Clasen

Lynn Thorson

Laura Potratz

Eric Hobbs

A saint of our own

Sometime in the middle of the second century Anno Domine, a young Christian woman who had made a faithful vow of virginity was married to a man named Valerian. During the wedding, she sat alone and sang to God professing her faith. The bride, Cecilia, substantiated her previous vow by appearing before Valerian with an angel protecting her. Around 180 AD, the young couple suffered martyrdom for their faith under the Emperor Marcus Aurelius. At the time of her death, Cecilia asked the pope to convert her home to a church.

In 1585, Pope Sixtus V released a papal bull founding the National Academy of St. Cecilia, naming her as the patron saint of music. We celebrate the Feast of St. Cecilia on November 22, which is today, as I write.

St. Cecilia is often depicted in statues, paintings, stained glass, and tapestries. Typically, she is carrying a small portative organ, and often, she’s depicted mishandling it. Assuming the Saint to be of average height, the organ is 18 or 24 inches high, with perhaps 20 notes. She’s looking off to one side, and the organ droops out of her hands, a few pipes slipping loose—I imagine that in a few seconds the pipes will clatter to the ground. I’ve asked around a little, but haven’t found anyone who has a good explanation or theory for why it’s okay for the good saint to be so careless! If anyone in the Organ Clearing House did that, they’d be on a bus home pretty quick.

Musicians throughout the Christian world celebrate St. Cecilia Day, honoring her memory for professing her faith through song. Henry Purcell, Marc-Antoine Charpentier, and George Frideric Handel are among the many who composed music dedicated to the saint. Benjamin Britten was born on the Feast of St. Cecilia in 1913 and aspired to write a piece in homage to the saint, but struggled to find an appropriate Latin text. W. H. Auden wrote the poem that Britten set to music in his Hymn to St. Cecilia.

November 22 is the date of a few auspicious musical events. In 1928, Ravel’s Boléro was premiered in Paris, and in 1968, The Beatles released their album, The Beatles, known by music lovers as “The White Album.”

Singer/songwriter Paul Simon wrote his own homage to St. Cecilia, released in 1970 in Simon & Garfunkel’s album, Bridge Over Troubled Waters. According to the website Genius.com, Simon has said that his lyrics are a reflection on St. Cecilia as an elusive muse, depicted as a troubling lover (“ . . . you’re breaking my heart, you’re shaking my confidence daily . . .”). I don’t know if Purcell or Handel had such struggles—both have much richer catalogues than Paul Simon—but we have heard from Benjamin Britten’s partner Peter Pears, that as W. H. Auden submitted his poem to Britten in installments, he included hints as to how Britten might become a better artist. Ouch!

Gathering horsefeathers

I was a freshman at Oberlin in the fall of 1974, and that year on November 22, the grand Flentrop organ in Warner Concert Hall was dedicated. E. Power Biggs, Charles Fisk, Harald Vogel, and Dirk Flentrop were among the luminaries who participated in roundtable discussions, and Marie-Claire Alain played the opening recital. I don’t remember the program, but I do remember the encore. She eschewed the usual fireworks and offered Ich ruf zu dir, Herr Jesu Christ from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein (#40). Mr. Biggs received an honorary doctorate of music.

The Flentrop organ was dedicated to the memory of George Whitfield Andrews, longtime professor of organ at Oberlin, and was funded by Oberlin alumnus Frank Chapman Van Cleef, whose wife had studied with Dr. Andrews, and whose family members had been students at Oberlin in every decade but two of the school’s existence from its founding in 1833 until the 1970s! After graduating from Oberlin in 1904, Van Cleef earned a degree in law at Columbia and later founded a financial management firm in New York. He retired in 1948 and returned to Oberlin. I recall meeting him during that week in November of 1974 in the hallway by Haskell Thomson’s teaching studio. We were introduced, and I thanked him for his gift. He was 94, I was 18.

Frank Van Cleef is not the first wealthy elderly patriarch to be encouraged to write a memoir. Gathering Horsefeathers is the third installment in a trilogy, a goofy history of his life with his family, replete with tales of designing houses, arguing about shrubbery, killing rattlesnakes (really?), and ultimately, rallying his family to donate the funds for the new organ. I was amused to note that early in his career, while he and his first wife were planning the construction of their first house, they lived on the twenty-second floor (looking south) of One Fifth Avenue in New York. That building is a few blocks from where we live in Greenwich Village—I can see it through my office window if I swivel my chair. Looking south provides an expansive view of Washington Square Park, and in 1928, there wasn’t much else that tall except the 57-story Woolworth Building (built in 1913) on Broadway, between Park and Barclay Streets, across from City Hall Plaza, one and a half miles away.

The story of the Flentrop organ fills the last pages of Van Cleef’s book, presumably placing the experience as a high point in his life. He tells how Oberlin president Robert Fuller (his next door neighbor) and professor of organ Fenner Douglas came to him (by appointment) one evening, inviting him to support the project. As he tells it, his son John (Oberlin ’31) was present, and later the family agreed that Frank, his four children, and their spouses would support the entire cost of the project.

My musty copy of this little book has been on the shelves of all the offices in which I’ve worked. I bought it that weekend in Oberlin because I had met the man, and I suppose I read it then. As I read today, I reflect on the dozens of people I’ve met who have given generously to fund the design and construction of new organs.

Horsefeathers? The jacket flaps explain. They’re the long hairs on a horse’s fetlocks, and they have no particular purpose. (I know that Mr. Van Cleef was a horseman because he was on horseback when he killed the rattlesnake!) In his words, horsefeathers are “something you do for the public good, something that has no use for you.”

Some old friends

Mr. Van Cleef’s gift provided a platform for the education of hundreds of organists. 1974 was the heart of the Orgelbewegung movement—the time when American organists and organbuilders were in the thrall of classic styles of organ building and playing, when so-called “factory built” organs lost favor among many. In retrospect, I think that the movement was less about the oft-repeated battle between tracker and electric actions, but the realization that the collapse of the economy in 1929 and especially the economic impact of World War II led to the diminution of artistic integrity of American organs.

The Aeolian-Skinner organ in Oberlin’s Finney Chapel was considered “second-class,” and the town was crawling with Flentrops. Including the organ in the Episcopal Church, practice and teaching organs, and the big red one in Warner Hall, there were more than a dozen Flentrops in town.

It’s a long time since I played on that organ, but I remember it vividly. It was a thrill to sit surrounded by the cases, those huge pedal pipes visible in the corner of your eye. Leaving behind all the conflicting philosophies and vitriol that gushed in those days, that organ simply sounded beautiful. Each knob you drew brought a new touch of magic. The sound was lively, the action immediate and personal. That organ was mighty important to my formation as an organist.

Harvard Square

When I was growing up in the Boston area, Harvard Square was just the place. In 1956, Walter Holtkamp, Sr. installed a three-manual organ in St. John’s Chapel of the Episcopal Theological School (now Episcopal Divinity School). Melville Smith, director of the Longy School of Music, was the organist of the chapel, the young Charles Fisk was Holtkamp’s apprentice, E. Power Biggs (who had taught at Longy) lived nearby, and Daniel Pinkham was Biggs’s young protégé. I’d love to have been a fly on the wall while that organ was being installed, with its (terribly) low wind pressures, exposed Great and Positiv chests, and open toe holes. Those musicians, at the core of the revival movement, must have had some fascinating conversations in that crowded loft.

My father taught homiletics at E.T.S, and when I was clamoring to have organ lessons, he took me to Alastair Cassels-Brown, the chapel organist. The Holtkamp was the second organ I ever played. The first, ironically, was the 1904 E. M. Skinner organ at the Parish of the Epiphany in nearby Winchester, Massachusetts, where Dad was rector, and I was about to “baritone” out of the youth choir to join the adults. The Skinner was in dreadful condition and was replaced in 1974 with a new organ by Fisk.

I was also excited to be allowed to practice on the big Aeolian-Skinner organ at Christ Church (Episcopal), Zero Garden Street, in Cambridge, the church famous for its Revolutionary War-era bullet hole and its “George Washington sat here” pew. Daniel Hathaway was the organist there and was very kind to me. Many years later, I was to maintain that organ, build a new console for it, and then arrange for its sale as the church purchased a new organ from Schoenstein in 2006. The Organ Clearing House dismantled the Aeolian-Skinner for shipment—it was rebuilt by Quimby Pipe Organs and installed in a church in Sugarland, Texas. 

The Busch

After having given weekly radio broadcasts for sixteen years on the Aeolian-Skinner organ in Harvard’s Busch-Reisinger Museum, in 1958 E. Power Biggs commissioned Flentrop to build a three-manual organ for the resonant but intimate room. Shortly after its installation, Biggs presented the Flentrop to the world through his record-breaking series of recordings on Columbia Masterworks, Bach Organ Favorites. (It’s still the best- selling series of solo classical recordings.) A few days ago, friend and colleague John Panning, of the Dobson Organ Company, posted photos of the organ on Facebook. His caption read: 

Yesterday I enjoyed the opportunity to play what I consider the most influential 20th-century organ in the United States. The 1958 Flentrop organ in the Busch-Reisinger Museum was not the first Organ Reform instrument in the country, but E. Power Biggs’ many recordings of it brought the gospel of the Orgelbewegung to an enormous audience, including me. Even today, jaded by subsequent developments, it still impresses as a tremendously beautiful organ.

I first heard that Flentrop as a young teenager when mentors took me to hear Biggs play several recitals. At the conclusion of one of those programs, chock full of Sweelinck, Buxtehude, and Bach, Mr. Biggs sidled out from behind the Rugwerk and told us that he’d be happy to play another piece, but that he’d “run out of baroque music” (yeah, right!), and gave us Charles Ives’s Variations on ‘America.’

Calliope

In Greek mythology, Calliope was one of the nine muses, representing eloquence and epic poetry. She defeated the daughters of the King of Thessaly in a singing competition, but instead of receiving a cash prize, professional concert management, and a recording contract, Calliope turned her opponents into magpies. Calliope was the name of the ship that left Rotterdam in the spring of 1977, crossed the Atlantic, and sailed up the St. Lawrence Seaway into Lake Erie to the Port of Cleveland where it delivered the Flentrop organ for Trinity Episcopal Cathedral.

I was working for Jan Leek, a native of the Netherlands, who had immigrated to the United States in 1961 to work for Walter Holtkamp. When they were installing the Holtkamp in Warner Hall at Oberlin, John noted that the school was looking for an organ technician, and knew that was the job for him. I worked for Jan part-time and summers when I was a student, and as he left the school to form his own company, I worked full time with him for four years after I graduated. Jan, as a true Dutchman, was friendly with the folks at Flentrop, and we were engaged to help with the installation of the big three-manual organ at Trinity Cathedral. 

It was the summer before my senior year, and the first time I had participated in the installation of a large organ. We arrived at the cathedral to meet the truck bearing the overseas container. I carried a couple things up those stone stairs that were not featured in the Oberlin Flentrop—including a tied bundle of Swell shutters. What goes around, comes around! And there was Daniel Hathaway on the front steps of the cathedral, just arrived from Cambridge to start his magnificent tenure as director of music.Daniel and I played several duo-recitals using the cathedral’s two Flentrops (there’s a fifteen-stop job on a platform that rolls about the nave), treating audiences to Beethoven symphonies (3, 5, and 6), and Rossini overtures played in Werckmeister III.

Michael Jupin had been the associate rector of the Parish of the Epiphany when Dad was rector—he was now dean of Trinity Cathedral. Pat Quintin and I were married in that church in October of 1979 with my father officiating, assisted by his former assistant, my grandfather, uncle, and godfather (all priests). For the rest of his life, Dad loved to tell the story of how I shouted registration suggestions to Daniel Hathaway down the length of the nave during the wedding rehearsal the evening before. (Yup, I did that. . . .)

The organ’s main case is twenty-five feet tall, and the whole thing is perched on a high loft. There was scaffolding and lots of heavy lifting. I was outfitted with a rig of leather straps like the flagpole carrier in a parade, so I could put the toe of a big tin façade pipe in a little cup strapped to my waist, and climb a ladder using both hands while co-workers preceded me sixteen feet above, balancing the top. My knees are almost sixty years old now, and things are different.

All the façade pipes were in place, and as we left the cathedral, we turned and looked back at the organ. The late afternoon sun was flooding the organ with red and blue light, and I burst into tears. Organs still do that to me.

And on the other hand . . . 

Those Flentrop organs are terrific instruments, and they played a huge role in the history of the pipe organ in America in the twentieth century. But in those days, I also learned about the beauties of electro-pneumatic action, especially working with Jan Leek in the big Aeolian-Skinner at Church of the Covenant in Cleveland. And when I returned to Boston in 1984, I was lucky to get to care for the tremendous organs at Trinity Church, Copley Square. The regular Friday noontime recitals were an important part of my education, as each week I heard a different artist playing the same organ. Some were terrified of it, some would have rather played a tracker, and some made magic happen.

Now, more than forty years out of high school, I’ve worked with and played hundreds of instruments. Of course, some are unremarkable, but most of them bring to mind a story, a lesson learned, a mystery revealed, or simply a great place to have lunch nearby. I remember where I was the moment I grasped the concept of electro-pneumatic actions, the time the blower was running backwards, and the two times I’ve fallen. It’s fun to think back about those that stand out and how their histories are interwoven with my experience. I’ve had plenty of conversations with friends and colleagues about the organs that influenced them and played important roles in their careers, and I bet lots of readers are remembering their favorites right now. I’d love to hear your stories.

Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders, Montréal, Québec, Canada: 

St. Joseph’s Oratory, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders, Montréal, Québec, Canada

St. Joseph’s Oratory, Montréal, Québec, Canada

From the builder

The idea to fully restore the Beckerath organ at St. Joseph’s Oratory came from then Organist Titulaire Philippe Bélanger. We came up with different proposals, some involving changes to the instrument, some not, but for the moment we were firmly in the world of the hypothetical; no harm in talking about changes to the instrument—it was only a mental exercise then. Any thought that this might actually occur was accompanied by cold sweat and sleeplessness—after all, perhaps no other instrument has had a greater influence on organ building in Québec, and its influence has been worldwide.

Eventually, to our great relief, the authorities at St. Joseph’s Oratory wisely came to the conclusion that an outside expert and a proper bidding process were required. George Taylor was hired, deus ex machina, and three Québec companies were asked to bid on a very thorough RFP that specified no changes to the tonal specification. “No changes” may seem an obvious requirement, but it is not. Most musicians sitting at the console are soon surprised by what seems missing from the specification, despite its 78-stop, 5-manual footprint. But any thought of making changes leads straight to dilemma.

One example is instructive: the idea had naturally surfaced to add a trumpet to the Récit (yes, a 78-stop instrument with French pretensions and no Trompette on the Récit!). Now, how to add it—it could be added to the back of the chest grid; that way no one could complain about any stop being removed. Or, the Musette 4′ could be removed and replaced with a trumpet. The Musette could be racked mute on a wall in the swell box, for its own protection. I was amused by these two possibilities—the first pleases the musician at the console, who finds the original specification intact—plus, it provides the trumpet they always needed. The second pleases the restorer 50 years (or more!) from now, who finds a windchest that has not been denatured by holes bored through the frame to accommodate the extra toe board, and inevitably returns the Musette to its toe holes. 

This dilemma cannot be resolved and let us not pretend it can. Any restoration, no matter how respectful, will remove some original material. In a museum setting, an ancient clavichord may be copied rather than restored so that the original continues to exist, unmolested, as a document for future generations. The copies allow musicians to play instruments that are as close as possible to the originals and to be informed by the experience. This is clearly not an option for organs, and to add to the conundrum, they exist primarily to accompany a changing liturgy. Organs occupy a strange space somewhere between typewriter and violin—between pragmatism and art—actually both at once. 

But surely this is not of concern for an instrument of only 50 years? What made this project difficult to define in the early stages? In a way, it was an organ of conflict—wonderful to play, a beast to play; the specification is huge, but with huge holes; it is a historic monument, but only 50 years old. There are organbuilders the world over who consider themselves the spiritual sons of Rudolf von Beckerath, and the torchbearers of his tradition. The tension created by these issues  made the appointment of George Taylor, outside expert, a stroke of genius that perhaps made the project the success that we believe it is.

It was decided to make no changes to the musical qualities of the instrument, but to rebuild the key action completely. If a line can be drawn in an organ between the musical and the mechanical, it is surely at the pallet itself, and this became an important distinction. In this instrument, the pallet openings on all divisions are unnecessarily wide—up to 30 mm with only 5 mm of travel at the nose, a terribly inefficient design, if efficiency is what you are after. Naturally, the question arose whether or not to change the pallet design—to provide as much or perhaps more wind and reduce pluck at the same time. But inevitably, the nature of the pipe attack would be changed, even if the quantity of wind was not. It was decided that in order to preserve the musical integrity of the instrument, the pallet dimensions should not be altered. This made for an interesting case study—without reducing pluck, to what extent could the action be made more agreeable to play, with up to four manuals coupled? The action, as we found it, was slow to repeat, but the spring force felt at the keyboard was nearly right. By reducing mass in the action train, we would be able to improve repetition, but the pluck would not be greatly reduced. Would musicians find the action to be improved, and if so, by how much?

A complete rebuild of the action was undertaken, using the tools available to us: reduce mass, reduce friction, and ensure proper functioning of all the elements. New roller boards were built for the Grand-Orgue, Récit, Bombarde, and Positif divisions. This was perhaps responsible for the greatest reduction in action mass; the original design follows laws of physics that we apparently no longer have access to. The mass of the rollers was adding a lot of inertia to the action, but there was also friction and flexibility. All trackers were replaced with carbon fiber—1 mm rod for vertical runs and ½ x 3mm section for horizontal runs. This material, as well as being very light and strong, has the benefit of remaining straight, so alignment is easy. But we did notice a tendency for people to think that as long as carbon fiber was involved, success was ensured. In reality, it is a material, like any other, whose qualities need to be understood for success.

The organ was first stripped of its action, and the console was removed and taken to the shop. There was a feeling of revisiting 1960 at this stage. We found cheeks on the sides of the console that clearly had held a sling used to hoist the console up over the gallery rail. The hole in the ceiling was still there, at the perfect location, ready for us to run a heavy rope through, and the console was soon lowered to the floor of the nave and brought to the shop. Then, restoration continued with two teams, one at the shop restoring the console and building new action parts, the other on site restoring windchests and pipework.

Restoration of each division of the organ was undertaken one after another, starting at the top with the Récit. Pipes were removed and taken to be cleaned and straightened in the chapelle des familles. This soundproof room just below the organ loft is intended for crying babies and their parents during Mass—ideal for pipe restoration, and roomy enough for a fairly complete pipe shop. At the same time, the Récit windchests were turned over and restored in place. This top-to-bottom approach allowed us to break a large instrument into manageable chunks, and had the additional benefit of allowing any dust we created to settle below, to the next division scheduled for restoration.

Particular attention was paid to the console, as it had lost the stark Germanic austerity—apparently not held in much esteem in the intervening years—that now seems oddly exotic. The original plastic stopknobs had long ago been replaced, so new maple ones were made, copying examples from the other Montréal Beckeraths. A sequencer was added, as were divisional pistons, using the same unorthodox arrangement found on the 1963 Beckerath in Pittsburgh—with inter-manual divisionals placed at e-f and b-c, between the sharps. Holes had been cut into the stop jambs over the years to accommodate various versions of instantly obsolete combination action. These were filled and veneered with matching pear wood. The goal was to restore and update the console so that future additions to the combination action would not deface the console. To this end, Solid State Organ Systems provided touch screen functionality via a wireless iPad, so that future changes can be handled here.

The five largest pipes of the Grand-Orgue Montre 16′, visible in the large central pipe flat, had been repaired once and collapsed twice since 1960. It was decided that new pipes were needed, built with knowledge reacquired since 1960, of how to make pipes that will stand. The rest of the tin façade pipes were removed, cleaned, repaired, polished, and returned to their holes. The twelve façade pipes that make up the first octave of the Pédale Montre 32′ are of zinc, and were cleaned in place. The entire operation required full scaffolding in front of the façade, which provided a clear signal to the public that a major project was underway.

Winding to the Montre 16′ was originally provided pneumatically to the bottom five pipes of the stop, to reduce wind demand on the channel. We continued this practice through the rest of the first octave, as there was considerable robbing going on, starting from F. Surprisingly, we had never heard complaints about this, but we were sure that if it was not improved, we would. New pneumatic offset chests were constructed following the design of the old one, which functions perfectly.

Voicing was undertaken in a spirit of respect for the builder. Sunken languids were raised, speech problems were taken care of, and stops were equalized, but every effort was taken to stay true to the intent of the builder. After pipes were straightened and cleaned, voicing was checked on a voicing jack before returning the pipes to their chests. Racking and pipe stays were improved and solidified where needed, but in general this had been well done originally. Façade pipes in danger of recollapse were relieved of about half of their weight by hanging them from springs, and should be safe now.

Reaction to the restoration has been very positive, to our great pleasure and even relief, but it has also been instructive. Musicians tend to feel that the voice of the organ has changed—not for the worse—but we are quick to stress that every effort was taken not to change the voicing one iota. But we’ve seen this before—the simple act of removing dust from an instrument changes its timbre. And we wonder if something else isn’t at work: the action is so changed that one’s approach to playing the instrument is different, and it does sound different—it can be more virile, and it sounds more precise, because it can be played more precisely.

In our work building new organs, Juget-Sinclair started with small instruments and has slowly grown, taking on larger and larger work. This restoration has given us the opportunity to take on a major instrument with new challenges of design and infrastructure. The success of this project fills us with confidence for the future, and we feel validates our approach of maintaining a small shop that builds as much as possible in-house. The variety of skills that we are able to foster through this approach serves us particularly well in restoration, where one never knows what challenges will arise. And we hope, in an ever-shrinking new organ market, that this is a model that will keep us occupied for some time.

The following participated in the restoration, which amounted to over 8,000 hours of work: Jocelyn Bélair, Robin Côté, François Couture, Dean Eckmann, Jean-Dominique Felx, Denis Juget, Céline Richard, Stephen Sinclair, Raymond Batroussy, Arnaud Duchenaux, Richard Houghten, and Vladimir Vaculik.

—Stephen Sinclair

A musician’s perspective

In spite of widespread secularization in Québec during the quiet revolution of the sixties, the attendance of about 50,000 Québecers at the celebration of the canonization of Brother André Bessette in Montréal’s Olympic Stadium on October 30, 2010 underscored the extent to which he is still very much this city’s beloved son. Shortly after making profession as a monk with the Congregation of the Holy Cross in Montréal in 1874, Brother André became a doorman at the College of Notre Dame. In the ensuing years, healings attributed to his prayer and intercession quickly gained for him a reputation as a faith healer. Increasing numbers of congregants drawn by the “Miracle Man of Montréal” quickly outgrew the small chapel he had erected in 1904 on the north slope of Mont Royal. The building of the current basilica commenced in 1924 and was completed in 1967. Today, St. Joseph’s Oratory stands as a towering testament to the life of this humble brother and is a prominent destination for pilgrims, tourists, and music lovers alike.

Given the oratory’s importance in the life of Montréal from its earliest days, the organ that was to be built here was going to have great civic importance from the outset. And given the immense grandeur of this sanctuary, the instrument would be of monumental proportion. After bids were considered, the fathers of the Congregation of the Holy Cross sent a letter on February 25, 1958 to Rudolf von Beckerath that he had been awarded the contract for the construction of the basilica organ. The contract was signed on June 23 of the same year and the builder was committed to deliver an organ within thirty months. Shortly thereafter, Beckerath submitted a design and several sketches. Among the various requests, Raymond Daveluy, titular organist, requested alterations to the stoplist that would allow the playing of a Récit de tierce, and the architects requested that the case embody more vertical lines. In early 1960, 167 crates arrived by sea, and installation commenced. The inaugural recital was given by Parisian organist André Marchal on November 13, 1960. The opening piece, Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in D Major, was played by Raymond Daveluy. Marchal followed with a program featuring the works of Louis and François Couperin, Clérambault, Daquin, and Tournemire. He also played de Grigny’s Tierce en taille, Franck’s Choral No. 3, Bach’s Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor, Langlais’ Te Deum, and ended the program with an improvisation.

That the building of the oratory organ would be entrusted to a German firm and not to Casavant Frères was a shock to the nationalist sensibilities of many. Coming only thirteen years after the war in which Québecers were conscripted to fight against Germany, this decision unleashed quite a firestorm in the Québec media of the day. However, there was a growing sense among many North American organists and musicians in the 1950s that the organ reform—as it was manifest in the work of Harrison, Holtkamp, and also Casavant Frères during the postwar period—did not go far enough in restoring principles of organ construction from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Many of these young organists became familiar with organ reform in Holland and Germany on their European journeys. 

Then in 1957, Rudolf von Beckerath installed a 44-stop, four-manual instrument in Trinity Lutheran Church in Cleveland, Ohio. The instrument featured a freestanding case designed according to the werkprinzip, mechanical key and stop action, lower wind pressure, and classical voicing inspired by the instruments of Arp Schnitger. While in North America, Beckerath paid a visit to Montréal in 1957 in response to an invitation from a group of local organists—Kenneth Gilbert, Raymond Daveluy, and Gaston and Lucienne Arel. In the aftermath of that meeting, the respective church administrations of these organists signed contracts with Beckerath. The instruments were delivered and inaugurated at Queen Mary Road United Church in 1959, at St. Joseph’s Oratory in 1960, and at Église Immaculée Conception in 1961. 

These three Montréal Beckerath organs succeeded in bringing the current wave of organ reform, not only to Montréal and to Canada, but to North America as a whole. Indeed, along with the Beckerath at Trinity Lutheran and the Flentrop organ installed in the Busch-Reisinger Museum of Harvard University in 1958, these instruments took North American organ reform to an entirely new level. Beckerath’s renown was spreading quickly, and many young North American organbuilders went to apprentice with him—including George Taylor, Fritz Noack, and John Brombaugh. 

Meanwhile, back at home, Casavant Frères realized that changing conceptions of organbuilding and design required a new paradigm and decided to embrace the organ reform. Casavant’s Charles Perrault and tonal and artistic director Lawrence Phelps brought to North America Karl Wilhelm in 1960 and Hellmuth Wolff in 1963 to run a mechanical organ department; since then, very few mechanical action organs have been imported into Québec. Each of these directors, in turn, went on to start their own workshops and shortly became major players, not only in Canada, but in the organbuilding world internationally. Going even further, Casavant recruited Gerhard Brunzema—already an authority in the organ world—as tonal and artistic director of Casavant Frères in 1972. Thus, the Beckerath instrument at St. Joseph’s Oratory had profound impact locally, but was also a key part of that influential wavefront of reform that was both international and historic in scope. 

Though quite young as organs go, the oratory instrument had developed several problems requiring attention. During its 1960 installation, construction of the basilica was still underway. The stone floor had yet to be installed and many interior modifications were still being made in the sanctuary and in the organ loft. This resulted in a premature internal accumulation of dust in the instrument such that, in that same decade, the instrument was already in need of cleaning and some internal components had to be replaced. By the turn of the century, the organ was again in need of a thorough cleaning and many pipes were in danger of collapse. The first initiatives toward restoration were taken in 2005 by Philippe Bélanger, who was organist at the time. Following a grant from the Québec Ministry of Culture overseen by the Conseil du patrimoine religieux du Québec, the project was underway. George Taylor—having apprenticed with Rudolf von Beckerath and having restored the 1963 Beckerath organ at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Pittsburgh in 2009—was named consultant for the project. The firms of Casavant Frères, Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders, and Orgues Létourneau were asked to submit bids; Juget-Sinclair was selected to undertake the restoration.

From the organist’s point of view, the changes to the instrument are subtle, but striking. Though playing with manuals coupled on any instrument of this size is not exactly light, the touch is considerably lighter and even more responsive than before. The action used to have a certain sponginess—releases were a little sluggish and manual couplers had a mildly sodden heaviness. These have been significantly improved—the touch is lighter, there is increased precision of attack, crispness in release, and there seems to be a better calibration of attack and release between divisions when the couplers are engaged. Also, there is a remarkable clarity and brilliance to the sound. The crystalline shimmer of the plenum is especially arresting. Not least, the combination action now avails the player with all current conveniences—there are copious general pistons, multiple levels of memory, and a sequencer.

The renovated instrument was celebrated in two inaugural concerts in October 2012. On October 7, Frédéric Champion, laureate of the first Canadian International Organ Competition, played a concert to a capacity audience. The recital featured works by Bruhns, Florentz, Cabanilles, Robin, and Bach, as well as Champion’s own transcriptions of Debussy, Liszt, and Saint-Saëns. The following week, there was a second inaugural concert presented by Les Petits Chanteurs du Mont-Royal under the direction of Gilbert Patenaude. The first half of the concert featured a cappella choral works, while the second half featured Louis Vierne’s Messe solennelle en ut dièse, op. 16. The choir, situated around the altar, was accompanied by the father-son team, Jacques and Vincent Boucher, with the father playing the choir organ, and son playing the Beckerath. It was a stunning performance with impeccable coordination between organ loft and chancel. With over 4,000 in attendance, this was truly a celebration worthy of this grand instrument.

—David Szanto

Beckerath, 1960/restored by Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders, 2012

St. Joseph’s Oratory, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Matthew M. Bellocchio, a Project Manager and designer at Andover Organ since 2003, is a Fellow and past President of the American Institute of Organbuilders.

Andover Organ Company marks seventy years

by Matthew M. Bellocchio

Anniversaries invite us to reflect upon our past and contemplate how far we have come. As 2018 marks Andover Organ Company’s seventieth anniversary, this article will highlight its long and rich history, from its humble beginnings to its recent achievements.

Andover was founded in 1948 as a result of an Organ Institute organized by Arthur Howes, head of the organ department at the Peabody Conservatory, and held each summer on the campus of Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. Howes had traveled extensively in Europe and observed the developing Organ Reform Movement there. Originating in Germany in the 1930s from Albert Schweitzer’s writings, the movement sparked an interest in early music and performance practices, as well as the building of new organs that could authentically render early music, especially that of Bach. Howes started the Organ Institute to help spread the Organ Reform Movement in America. The faculty included such notable organists as Carl Weinrich (Princeton University), Ernest White (St. Mary the Virgin, New York City), and E. Power Biggs.

Tom Byers, a former Henry Pilcher’s Sons Organ Company employee who lived in nearby Lawrence, Massachusetts, attended the annual institute with his wife. He was inspired to start an organ company that would follow the institute’s philosophy. He chose the name “Andover” for its prestigious association with the Organ Institute and because of the advantages, in the pre-internet days of telephone directories, of appearing near the top of the alphabetical company listings. 

Byers chose the opening line of Psalm 98, “Cantate Domino Canticum Novum” (Sing to the Lord a New Song), as the company motto, which still appears on Andover’s letterhead. This underscored his philosophy of creating a new style of organ, one that looked and sounded differently from what most American organ companies were producing.

Despite its name, the company has never been located in Andover! It started out in the home of Tom Byers in Lawrence, just north of Andover, and later moved to a two-story wooden building in nearby Methuen. In 1979 the company purchased a three-story brick building in a former mill complex at 560 Broadway in Lawrence, where it has been ever since.

Leadership and people

Rather than having a single leader dictate the company’s course, Andover’s many talented employees have each contributed to the company’s development. The company has always been owned and run by its principal employees who, serving as its shareholders and board of directors, make decisions collegially.

Charles Fisk joined the company in 1955 as Tom Byers’s junior partner. Robert J. Reich, a Yale-trained electrical engineer, was hired in 1956, and Leo Constantineau, a woodworking teacher and professional draftsman, in 1957. In 1958, Byers left the company, and Fisk became the owner. Walter Hawkes, who had worked for Holtkamp, was hired as shop foreman. Later that year, Andover signed a new organ contract with Redeemer Lutheran Church in Lawrence, Massachusetts. The contract did not specify the type of action. But the result, premiered on Palm Sunday 1959, was the first new mechanical-action organ built by an American firm in the postwar era. That instrument, Opus 28, is still in use.

The following year, Opus 35, a 33-stop tracker designed by Leo Constantineau and voiced by Charles Fisk, was built for Mount Calvary Episcopal Church in Baltimore, where Arthur Howes was organist. Fisk left Andover in 1961 to start his own company,
C. B. Fisk, in Gloucester, Massachusetts. Andover was reincorporated with Robert J. Reich and Leo Constantineau as the new owners. Reich, who became the Tonal Director, revised Andover’s pipe scales to provide more foundation tone. Constantineau’s case designs gave the company’s new instruments a distinctive visual flair. 

Andover has been blessed with several dedicated individuals who each worked over fifty years at the company. Reich, who joined Andover in 1956, served as President and Tonal Director 1961–1997; he then worked part-time until retiring in 2009. Donald Olson joined the company in 1962 and became Andover’s general manager and visual designer in 1968. His elegant case designs were the hallmark of Andover’s new instruments for nearly four decades. He succeeded Robert Reich as President in 1997, stepped down in 2012 and then worked part-time until fully retiring in 2015. Robert C. Newton, who started at Andover in 1963 and headed the Old Organ Department for many years, retired in 2016.

Andover’s current President, Benjamin Mague, joined Andover in 1975. He holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in music from Colby College and a Master of Music degree in organ from the University of Wisconsin. He served as Andover’s mechanical designer and later as shop foreman before becoming President in 2012. 

John Morlock, Andover’s Tonal Director since 1999, joined the company in 1976, working principally in the Old Organ Department. Don Glover, Andover’s in-house reed voicer, came to Andover in 2004 from the Reuter Organ Company.

Michael Eaton, Andover’s visual designer, joined the company in 1991. He also heads a maintenance team and serves as Treasurer and Clerk for Andover’s board of directors.

Andover’s present team of dedicated and talented people collectively possess over 350 years of organbuilding experience. Other current employees are Ryan Bartosiewicz, Matthew Bellocchio, Eric Dolch, Anne Doré, Andrew Hagberg, Lisa Lucius, Kevin Mathieu, Fay Morlock, Jonathan Ross, Craig Seaman, and David Zarges. Appropriately, more than half of Andover’s employees are church musicians or organists.

Andover has been the parent for many other New England tracker organ companies, having employed over its seventy years many talented individuals who later founded their own companies. These include Philip Beaudry, Timothy Fink, Charles Fisk, Timothy Hawkes, Richard Hedgebeth, Fritz Noack, Bradley Rule, J. C. Taylor, and David Wallace.  

Tonal style

Tonally, the early Andover organs were inspired by the Organ Reform Movement. At the time of Andover’s founding, few American companies were repairing old tracker organs; most just electrified or replaced them. Andover was the first to deliberately retain and renovate nineteenth-century trackers. But, adhering to the Organ Reform philosophy, Byers and his early successors often “improved” those organs tonally. It was not unusual for them to evict the string stops and replace them with mixtures and mutations. Andover’s new instruments came to be characterized by strong Principal choruses with bright mixtures, colorful neo-Baroque style flutes and mutations, and reeds that emphasized chorus over color. 

In the 1980s, as Andover began more frequently to work on significant nineteenth-century American organs, a gradual transition occurred. This was solidified in 1999 when John Morlock, who had started in Andover’s Old Organ Department, succeeded Robert Reich as Tonal Director.

Today, Andover’s tonal style may best be described as “American” and is grounded primarily in the best practices of the nineteenth-century New England builders, in particular the Boston firm of E. & G. G. Hook. Their organs, especially those from the firm’s “golden period” (1850s to 1870s), are admired for their remarkably successful blend of warmth and brilliance. Their pipe scales and voicing techniques worked extremely well in the dry acoustics of many American churches. 

When designing a new organ or reworking an existing instrument, we basically use the same scaling proportions between the various stops of the chorus that the Hooks used. We have found that doing so results in a principal chorus that is nicely balanced between fundamental weight and harmonic development.

Within this framework, adjustments are made to reflect or, in some cases, compensate for the acoustical properties found in each room. Each instrument needs to work and sound well in its “home” and be able to perform its tasks capably and effectively. Andover organs are designed to lead and support congregational hymn singing, as well as interpret a wide range of organ literature.

Maintenance

From the very beginning, organ maintenance was an important part of the company’s work. It created name recognition, established relationships with churches and organists, and provided a consistent revenue stream. Today, Andover maintains over 300 organs annually throughout the Northeast, Mid-Atlantic, and Southeast—from northern Maine to South Carolina, from western New York to the islands off eastern Massachusetts. These instruments range in size from small one-manual trackers in country churches to the world-famous Great Organ (IV/116) in the Methuen Memorial Music Hall; and range in age from a few years to a historic 1762 Snetzler organ. 

We service all types of organ mechanisms—from traditional tracker action to modern solid-state relays and combination actions. Each spring and fall, we schedule extended maintenance tours to visit multiple instruments in a geographical area. This enables our customers to share the travel expenses. 

Many customers treat us like old friends. Occasionally, a church secretary or organist will call us and merely say, “This is so-and-so at First Parish Church,” not realizing that we have over three dozen tuning customers with that name!

Andover Organ firsts

As the leader in the mid-twentieth century tracker organ revival in America, Andover pioneered many innovations that are now standard in the industry. Opus 25, a two-manual built in 1958 for the Rice Institute (now University) in Houston, was an electro-pneumatic instrument utilizing slider chests with pneumatic pallets, one of the first examples of this pallet type. This was decades before the adoption of the “Blackinton-style” pneumatic pallet.

In 1961, Andover carried out the first historically sympathetic restoration of a nineteenth-century American organ: the 1-manual, 1865 E. & G. G. Hook Opus 358 at the Congregational Church in Orwell, Vermont (Andover Opus R-1.)  

Other significant Andover (AOC) restorations include: 

• First Presbyterian Church, Newburyport, Massachusetts (1866 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 1974); 

• First Parish Church, Bridgewater, Massachusetts (1852 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 1977); 

• South Parish Congregational Church, Augusta, Maine (1866 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 1982); 

• Church on the Hill, Lenox, Massachusetts (1869 William A. Johnson/AOC 2001); 

• Old Whaling Church, Edgartown, Massachusetts (1850 Simmons & Fisher/AOC 2004); 

• Centre Street Methodist Church, Nantucket, Massachusetts (1831 Thomas Appleton/AOC 2008); 

• St. Peter’s Catholic Church, Haverstraw, New York (1898 Geo. Jardine & Son/AOC 2011); 

• St. Anna’s Chapel, Newburyport, Massachusetts (1863 William Stevens/AOC 2013).

Utilizing its expertise gained from restoring old tracker organs and building new ones, in 1963 Andover was the first company in the world to re-trackerize an old tracker organ that had been electrified. The instrument was the 1898 James Treat Opus 3 at St. George’s Primitive Methodist Church (now Bethesda Missionary Church) in Methuen, Massachusetts.

Other notable re-trackerizations: 

• First Presbyterian Church, Waynesboro, Virginia (1893 Woodberry & Harris/AOC 1986); 

• St. John’s Episcopal Cathedral, Providence, Rhode Island (1851 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 1989); 

• Westminster Preservation Trust, Baltimore, Maryland (1882 Johnson & Son/AOC 1991); 

• Sage Chapel, Northfield, Massachusetts (1898 Hook & Hastings/AOC 1996); 

• Unitarian Society, Peterboro, New Hampshire (1867 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 2003); 

• Christ Episcopal Church, Charlottesville, Virginia (1869 E. & G. G. Hook/AOC 2012).  

The slider and pallet windchests used in most nineteenth-century organs were generally trouble free for many years. However, when heating systems were introduced into churches in the early twentieth century, problems developed. The solid wood chest tops (tables), just below the sliders, were made from a thin, wide plank of air-dried lumber. With constant heating the wooden tables dried out and cracked, allowing air to leak from one pipe hole to the next, resulting in “runs.” 

Andover was the first American company to replace a cracked, solid-wood table with a marine-grade plywood one. The routed bleed channels between the table’s wind holes were then carefully replicated and the entire table graphited, like the original. This type of table replacement is now standard in the industry. The first organ to receive this treatment, in 1965, was the 1897 George W. Reed, at the Baptist Church in Winchendon, Massachusetts. Sadly, the organ burned with the building in 1985. 

One of Andover’s most significant recent projects was the 2016 restoration of the wind system and key action in the 1892 Woodberry & Harris Opus 100 at St. Mary–St. Catherine of Sienna Parish in Charlestown, Massachusetts. With three manuals, 36 stops, and 41 ranks, it is the largest and most significant nineteenth-century organ remaining in original unaltered condition in the greater Boston area. 

The instrument’s action is entirely mechanical and incredibly complex. The three-manual, reversed detached console sits in the center of the gallery, while the pipes and windchests are in cases at either side of a large stained-glass window. Four levels of trackers descend from the keys to squares beneath the floor, then under the console towards the rear window, then turn off at right angles towards the sides, then turn off again at right angles towards the rear, then to squares which send them up to the rollerboards below the chests. The organ’s four divisions have a total of 17 sets of wooden trackers, totaling nearly a mile in length! A Barker machine lightens the touch of the Great and the manuals coupled to it.

The two large reservoirs were stripped and releathered in place. All four layers of trackers were disassembled, labeled, and brought to the shop for replication. Because of the organ’s historic significance, all the new trackers were made of the same materials as the originals but using modern machinery. Andover customized a miniature CNC router to notch the cloth-wrapped tracker ends and built a spinning machine to whip the threaded wire ends with red linen thread, just like the originals. The Barker machine was carefully releathered. “Now she runs like a Bentley,” said one of the instrument’s many admirers.

Rebuilding for reliability

A conservative restoration is the logical decision for an exemplary work by an important builder or a small organ in a rural church with modest musical requirements. But sometimes it is necessary to strike a balance between preserving the original fabric and updating it to suit modern needs. An organ that has already endured several unsympathetic rebuilds, or an aging instrument with unreliable mechanisms and limited tonal resources, in an active church or institution with an ambitious music program might be better served by a sympathetic rebuilding. This was the case with two of Andover’s most significant rebuilds.

The 1876 E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings Opus 828 at St. Joseph Cathedral in Buffalo, New York, was built as a showpiece for the 1876 “Centennial Exposition” in Philadelphia and purchased afterwards by the cathedral. Major changes were made to the organ by Tellers-Kent Organ Company in 1925 and by Schlicker Organ Company in 1976. By 1996, the organ was virtually unplayable during the winter months and a decision of whether to replace it or rebuild it was imminent. In 1998, the cathedral decided that “the organ need not be replaced, but rather completely rehabilitated.” At the same time, the organ’s tonal palette needed expanding to better serve the musical needs of the cathedral and to enable it for use in concerts and recitals.

A team from Andover dismantled the organ in July 1999, loaded it into two moving vans, and transported it back to Lawrence, where eighteen employees labored for more than a year to clean, repair, and expand the instrument. In undertaking this immense job, Andover sought to retain and restore as much of the original as possible. The entire organ was cleaned, and the black walnut case stripped of coats of dark varnish and restored to its original finish. The façade pipes were stripped and repainted in their original designs with colors that harmonized with the cathedral’s interior.

All the original chests and pipework were rebuilt and repaired. The manuals were expanded to 61 notes and the pedals to 32. The two original reservoirs were releathered and two new ones constructed. The Choir is now unenclosed, as it originally was, the Swell box is back to its original size, and the Solo is restored to its original position.

Many of the missing original pipes were replaced with pipes salvaged from the Hook 1877 Cincinnati Music Hall organ, Opus 869. Other compatible Hook organs were visited to develop pipe scales appropriate for the additions to the cathedral organ, which were voiced in the Hook style. The organ is now far closer to its original sound than it has been since the 1923 electrification and rebuilding.

A new floating Celestial Division on a slider windchest was added. This division was based on contemporary E. & G. G. Hook solo divisions, as typified by the organs in the Cincinnati Music Hall and Mechanics Hall, Worcester. There is an 8′ Philomela copied from the 1863 Hook at Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston, an original Hook 4′ Hohlpfeife, a 2′ Harmonic Piccolo, a Cor Anglais, and a few more modern stops stops such as a French Horn, Dolcan Gamba with Gamba Céleste, Spitzflöte and Spitzflöte Céleste. 

Thomas Murray played the rededicatory recital on June 11, 2001. The St. Joseph Cathedral organ will be featured in a recital by Nathan Laube during the American Guild of Organists Northeast Regional Convention, July 1–4, 2019.

In contrast to the Buffalo cathedral organ, the 1902 Hook & Hastings Opus 1833 at St. John’s Seminary in Brighton, Massachusetts, was a modest two-manual, 18-rank instrument. After nearly a century of use and constant winter heating, the windchests and actions developed serious problems. The original console was replaced in 1946. When the replacement console failed in 2004, a one-manual tracker was put in its place to serve as a temporary instrument until the chapel organ could be rebuilt. 

Our lengthy experience with Hook & Hastings organs taught us that their early electro-pneumatic actions were cumbersome, slow, and difficult to repair. Therefore, in our 2014–2015 rebuilding of the organ, we reused the pipes, windchests, and most of the original parts as the basis of an expanded instrument with a new electric action.

We built a new, solid white oak console in the style of the Hook & Hastings original, with a lyre music rack and elliptically curved stop terraces. To meet the demands of a twenty-first century music program, this reproduction console has state-of-the-art components, including a record/playback module. The façade pipes were stripped and repainted with a new decorative treatment that harmonizes with the Italian Renaissance-style case and chapel. As a crowning flourish, the cross surmounting the case was painted in faux lapis lazuli.

Most of the organ was crammed within the small case, with Swell above Great and the wooden Pedal 16′ Open Diapason pipes at each side. Behind the Swell, in an unfinished gallery, were the organ’s large reservoir and Pedal 16′ Bourdon. We moved the Pedal Open Diapason pipes to the rear gallery and added a Pedal 32′-16′-8′ Trombone and 8′-4′ Principal there. Judicious additions to the Swell expanded its resources. There was sufficient space inside the case behind the Great chest to add a seven-stop unenclosed Choir division.

The end result of these tonal changes and additions is an instrument of 40 stops, 34 ranks, and 1,994 pipes that is more versatile and appropriate for its expanded role. It still sounds very much like a Hook & Hastings organ, but one from an earlier and better period of the firm’s output.

Façade firsts

The company’s work with historic organs gradually led to pipe façade restorations as well. In 1967, Andover was the first American company to make restorative paint repairs to a painted and stenciled pipe façade, at the First Congregational Church in Georgetown, Massachusetts (1874 Joel Butler). Thirteen years later, in 1979, during its rebuilding of the 1884 Geo. S. Hutchings Opus 135 at the Vermont College of Fine Arts in Montpelier, Vermont, Andover carefully stripped a coating of green paint from all the façade pipes, documented the original designs and colors underneath, and repainted the pipes in their original colors and stenciling—another first.

Andover’s Opus 102 (1992) at Trinity United Church of Christ in York, Pennsylvania, was the first new American organ in the modern era to feature painted façade pipes with nineteenth-century style colored bandings. The upper façade flats of this organ contained another first: “frosted tin” pipes, which feature the natural, unplaned finish of the cast tin sheets. This gives them the light color of tin, but with a dull, non-reflective finish.

In recent years, Andover has worked with historic painted decoration conservator Marylou Davis to create new painted-pipe decorations in historically inspired styles. The most notable example of this collaboration is the 82-rank Andover Opus 114 (2007) at Christ Lutheran Church in Baltimore. This was the first twenty-first century American organ façade to combine polychromed and monochrome texture-stenciled pipes, frosted tin pipes, and numerous hand-carved pipe shades, grilles, finials, and skirtings in the casework. 

Opus 114 is also Andover’s first dual-action, double organ. The 13-rank, electric-action gallery organ can be played from its own console or from the front organ’s three-manual mechanical-action console. Likewise, the entire front organ can be played from the two-manual gallery console through couplers and general pistons. The organ’s four matching cases (two in chancel, two in gallery) perfectly suit the church’s Gothic architecture and fool many people into thinking that they were reused from a 19th-century organ. 

Andover has never been afraid to fit an organ around a prominent window. This reflects our design philosophy that an organ should look as if it has always been part of its environment. And in most churches, the window was there long before the organ. Fighting the window can sometimes be a losing battle. Opus 115 (2007) at Church of the Nativity in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Opus 118 (2014) at First Parish Church in Wayland, Massachusetts, illustrate Andover’s creative approach in dealing with windows.

In Raleigh, the modern clear glass window was front and center, at the top of the space where the organ would go. We designed the organ case to frame the window’s central orb and cross. The polished tin façade pipes match the brightness from the window. The organ also serves as a reredos for the altar, which stands in front of it. Looking from top to bottom, one sees the window, the organ, and the altar—light, music, action. The church was very pleased with the result, as were we.

In the 1820 Federal Period meetinghouse in Wayland, there was an elegant Palladian window in the center of the back wall of the rear gallery. Because of the semi-elliptical curve of the gallery’s rear wall, the only apparent organ placement with such a floor plan was in the center. Thus, all the previous organs had blocked the window. Andover’s design put the detached console in the center, by the railing, and divided the organ into two cases that frame, rather than cover, the Palladian window. The choir members sit in the space between the console and cases and benefit from the natural backlighting provided by the window. Again, everyone was pleased with the results.

Seventy years after its humble beginnings, Andover has much to celebrate: 118 new organs and 533 rebuilds/restorations. Andover’s wide-ranging work in building, rebuilding, restoring, and maintaining pipe organs is well-recognized, and best summarized by its mission statement: “Preserving the Past; Enhancing the Present; Inspiring the Future.”

www.andoverorgan.com

Shifty and puffy

It is mid-September in mid-coast Maine, and the days are getting shorter. Sunset here is about sixteen minutes earlier than in New York City, as we are as far east as we are north of the Big Apple. There are four windows facing east in our bedroom that allow us to track the motion of the sun, which is rising further south than it did a month ago. When we are on the water, we notice that the afternoon sun is lower in the sky as the sunlit water sparkles differently than in the height of summer. And the wind changes dramatically with the change of season. In mid-summer, we cherish the warm sea breeze, predominant from the south or southwest, caused by the air rising as it crosses the sun-warmed shore. All that cooler air above the ocean rushes in to fill the void, and we can sail for miles without trimming the sails in the steady and sure wind.

We had our last sail of the season last weekend in lumpy, bumpy wind from the northwest, which is never as steady as the southwesterlies. It is shifty and puffy, and it can be a struggle to keep the boat going in a straight line. Just as you get going, you get “headed” by a burst of wind from straight ahead, or you get clobbered abeam by a twenty-five mile-per-hour gust. Oof.

You have read this kind of thing from me before, thinking about sailboats when I should be writing about pipe organs, but because both are important parts of my life, and both involve the management of wind, I cannot escape it. And I am thinking about it a little more than usual because at the moment I am releathering three regulators for the organ I am working on. My method for assembling and gluing the ribs and frames of a wind regulator involves seven steps:

• Glue outside belts on the pairs of ribs.

• Glue inside canvas hinges on the pairs of ribs.

• Glue canvas hinges around regulator frames and bodies.

• Glue ribs to top frames.

• Glue ribs/top frames to body.

• Open regulator and glue gusset bodies.

• Close regulator and glue gusset tails.

It is still officially late summer as I write this, and my personal workshop is a three-car garage. Since we are on the shore, I love to have the overhead doors open to the breezes, though it is humid here. I am using the traditional flake hide glue (the stuff that is made when the old horse gets sent to the glue factory) that you cook in an electric pot with water, apply hot, and wipe clean with a hot-water rag that I keep just hot enough that I can put my hands in to wring the rag dry in the sort of double-boiler from which you scoop oatmeal at a cafeteria line. For the glue to set, the moisture must evaporate, and since the air is humid, I have to wait overnight between each step. Running fans all night keeps the humidity down and speeds the drying. In winter, when the air inside is dry, I can typically do two gluing steps in a day.

One of the regulators I am working on is thirty inches square. For that one I am using around twenty-five feet of one-inch-wide heavy canvas tape for the hinges and a comparable length of laminated rubber cloth for the outside belts. The gussets (flexible leather corner pieces) are cut from supple heavy goat skins that have a buttery texture and are impossible to tear. The key to finishing a wind regulator is finding a combination of materials that are all very flexible and strong, that are easy to cut, and that receive glue well enough to ensure a really permanent joint. If the structural integrity of a regulator is iffy, the wind will be shifty and puffy, and it will be a struggle to keep the music going in a straight line. Just as you get going, you get “headed” by a burst of wind that jiggles the music, or you get clobbered by a jolt from out of nowhere.

What’s in a name?

I am referring to these essential organ components as “regulators.” We also commonly call them “bellows” or “reservoirs.” All three terms are correct, but I think regulator is the most accurate description of the function of the thing. Taken literally, a bellows produces air. Air is drawn in when it is opened and pushed out when it is closed, like the simple bellows you have by the fireplace. The hole that lets the air in is closed by an internal flap when air is blown out.

A reservoir stores air. In an organ built before the invention of electric blowers, it was common for an organ to have a pair of “feeder bellows” operated by a rocking handle that blew air alternately into a large reservoir. The feeders had the same internal flaps as the fireplace bellows. The top of the reservoir was covered with weight (bricks, metal ingots, etc.) to create the air pressure, and the air flowed into the organ as the organ pipes consumed it. The bellows were only operated, and the reservoir was only filled when the organist was playing. Just try to get that kid to keep pumping through the sermon. . . .

With the introduction of the electric blower, it became usual to turn the blower on at the beginning of a concert or service and leave it running. That made it necessary to add a regulating valve between the blower and the reservoir. When the reservoir filled and its top rose, the valve closed, stopping the flow of air from the blower, so the system could idle with the blower turning and the reservoir full. When the organist played and therefore used air, the top of the reservoir would fall, the valve would open, and the air could flow again. Like before, there was weight or spring pressure applied to create the proper wind pressure. The addition of that valve added the function of pressure regulation to the bellows. In an organ with an electric blower, the bellows are storing and regulating the pressurized air. Calling it a regulator seems to cover everything.

The longer you go, the heavier you get.

Twice in my life, I have heard EMTs comment about my weight when lifting the stretcher, once after a traffic accident in the 1970s, and again after a fall in an organ seven years ago. But that is not what I am talking about here. We usually think of an inch as a unit to measure length or distance, so how can it refer to pressure, as in, “the Swell division is on six-inches of pressure?”

In industrial uses of pressurized air, more familiarly, in the tires or of your car, the unit of measure is pounds per square inch (PSI). I inflate the tires of my car to 35 PSI, and I use 80 or 100 PSI to operate pneumatic tools. But while my workshop air compressor gauges those high pressures, the actual flow is pretty small, something like two cubic feet per minute.

Organ wind pressure is much lower, and we measure it as “inches on a water column.” Picture a clear glass tube in the shape of a “U” that is twenty-inches high. Fill it halfway with water, and apply pressure to one side of the U. The water goes down on that side of the tube, and up on the other. Use a ruler to measure the difference, and voilà, inches on a water column, or centimeters, or feet. You can easily make one of these using plastic tubing. The little puff it takes to raise three inches of pressure is just the same little puff it takes to blow an organ pipe you are holding in your hand. Instead of the actual tube full of water, we use a manometer that measures the pressure on a gauge without spurting water onto the reeds.

Did you ever wonder how the conversion works? One PSI equals almost 28 inches on a water column. Five inches on a water column equals about .18 PSI. And how does that relate to the organs you know? In a typical organ, it is usual to find wind pressures of three or four inches. In general, smaller organs with tracker action might have pressures as low as forty millimeters, or less than two inches. In a three-manual Skinner organ, the Great might be on four inches, the Swell on six, and the Choir on five. In a big cathedral sized organ, solo reeds like French Horn and English Horn might be on fifteen inches, while the biggest Tubas are on twenty-five. The world-famous State Trumpet at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City is on fifty inches (incredible), and in the Boardwalk Hall organ in Atlantic City, New Jersey, the Grand Ophicleide, Tuba Imperial, Tuba Maxima, Trumpet Mirabilis are on one hundred inches of pressure, or 3.61 PSI! Stand back. Thar she blows!

Once you have determined pressure, you also have to consider volume. A twenty-rank organ at three inches of pressure might need 1,000 cubic feet per minute at that pressure to sustain a big chord at full organ. Some of the largest organ blowers I have seen are rated at 10,000 CFM at ten inches of pressure. And when you lift the biggest pipe of a 32′ Open Wood Diapason and play the note as an empty hole, you will blow your top knot off. It takes a hurricane coming through a four-inch toehole to blow one of those monster organ pipes.

All the air you could wish for

Before the introduction of the electric blower, most organs had at least two bellows. One would be in free fall, supplying pressure to the organ while the other was raised by the organ pumper. The system I described earlier with two feeders and a reservoir was a great innovation, because once the reservoir was full, the pumper could slack off a little if the organist was not demanding too much wind. The six-by-nine-foot double-rise reservoir in the heart of a fifteen-stop organ by E. & G. G. Hook or Henry Erben has huge capacity, and can blow a couple 8′ flutes for quite a while without pumping. Organs by Hook are great examples of efficiency, with pipes voiced in such a way as to produce lots of tone with very little air, and even large three-manual organs are pumped by just one person using the two-feeders-and-a-reservoir system.

The electric blower changed everything. Organbuilders and voicers could now work with a continuous flow of wind at higher pressures than were available before. New styles of voicing were invented, and along with the introduction of electric keyboard actions, organs could be spread around a building, creating stereophonic and antiphonal effects. When organs were first placed in chambers, and their sounds seemed remote, the builders raised the pressure and increased the flow of air through the pipes, driving the sound out into the room.

While modest organs with electric blowers usually have only one wind regulator, larger instruments can have dozens. In a big electro-pneumatic organ, it is common to have a separate regulator for each main windchest. That is how Ernest Skinner could have the various divisions of an organ on different wind pressures, as each individual regulator can be set up to deliver a specific pressure.

But what about wiggly?

When I mention factors that can add to the stability of an organ’s wind system, I raise the question about “wiggly wind,” or “shaky wind,” both somewhat derogatory terms that refer to the lively flexible wind supplies in smaller and mid-sized mechanical action organs with lower wind pressure. When wind pressure is low and an entire organ receives its air from a single regulator, the motion of the wind can be affected by the motion of the music. It is especially noticeable when larger bass pipes are played while smaller treble pipes are sustained. At its best, it is a delightful affect, akin to the natural flow of air through the human voice. At its worst, it is a distraction when the organ’s tone wobbles and bounces.

This phenomenon is part of the fierce twentieth-century debate concerning “stick” organs versus so-called “industrial-strength” electro-pneumatic organs. I have been servicing organs for more than forty years, and I have often thought that much of the criticism of the emerging tracker-action culture was because craftsmen were reinventing the wheel, learning the art of organbuilding from scratch. They may have measured the dimensions of an organ bellows accurately but failed to compensate for the fact that the ancient model did not have an electric blower. And let’s face it: a lot of flimsy plywood tracker organs were built in the 1960s and 1970s, enough to give that movement a bad name from the start.

The evolution of modern tracker organs toward the powerful, thrilling, reliable, sonorous instruments being built today has much to do with how much the craft has learned about the management of wind over the years. A little tracker organ built in 1962 might have key channels and pallets that did not have the capacity to blow their pipes. It might have flexible wind conductors to offset bass pipes that were too small and that jiggled when the notes were played, causing the tone to bounce. It might have bass pipes with feet that were too short, so air did not have a chance to spread into a dependable sheet before passing between the languid and the lower lip. All of these factors affect the speech of the pipes, giving the impression that the organ is gasping for air. And worse still, you might hear the pitch drop each time you added another stop. I have worked on organs where adding an 8′ Principal made the 4′ Octave sag. How do you tune a thing like that? I marvel now at how air pressure moves through the best new tracker organs, especially at the wonderful response of large bass pipes. Organs by builders like Silbermann do not lack in bass response. Once the revival movement was underway in the middle of the twentieth century, it took a few decades to really start getting it right.

§

The organ I am working on today is a simple little thing with two unit action windchests. Each has its own regulator, and there is a third “static” regulator that mounts next to the blower. The blower produces seven inches of pressure; the static regulator brings it down to five inches and distributes the wind to the other two regulators, which each measure out four inches. The biggest pipes in the organ are the 16′ Bourdon, and though there are only ten ranks, it is a unit organ, and a lot of pipes can be playing at once. It is destined to be a practice instrument for a university organ program, so I know that talented and ambitious young organists will be giving it a workout as they learn the blockbuster literature we all love so much. I hope that those students never have to worry about having enough air. And perhaps Maine’s salty breezes will travel with the organ, adding a little flavor to the mix.