Dirk Andries Flentrop, undoubtedly the best-known Dutch organ builder of the past century worldwide, died on 30 November 2003 at the age of 93. (For an obituary, see The Diapason, February 2004, "Nunc Dimittis," page 6.) Flentrop occupied a key position in the development of the post-World War II "modern" organ. International recognition was not long in coming: Flentrop built about 80 organs in the USA, restored organs as far away as Mexico City, and received honorary doctorates from two American universities. This interview first appeared in Dutch in Het Orgel in 1999, while the actual interviewing took place in April and May of that year.*
It has been already more than 25 years since he retired from organ building. Since then, Flentrop--born and bred in the Zaanstreek just north of Amsterdam--has lived in an apartment near Haarlem. His living room features an old Steinway piano and a small harpsichord.
Flentrop explains the move away from his hometown: "I really wanted to quit. I had sold my shares to the employees. As a consequence, I had to let go of the business. That's why I moved here, even though I really didn't want to leave Zaandam." Flentrop speaks quietly, deliberately, thoughtfully. He just turned 89 but is still full of vitality. He comes down in person to open the door of his apartment building and since his wife is not home, he makes a cup of tea for his visitor. No need for help; but would I be so kind to pour the hot water from the pot into the cup? "That way there's a higher chance that it doesn't land on the table," he says, smilingly.
He suggests that I sit down next to the window; that way I have the light in my face, which will make it easier for him to understand me. His eyes and ears are not what they used to be. "I use a big magnifying glass for reading, that just about works. My wife marks in the newspaper what I should be reading."
It isn't quite so easy to make an appointment for an interview, because Flentrop keeps busy. "I don't want to call myself the househusband, but because my wife teaches at the university, I do take care of small jobs and run errands," he says. In addition, Flentrop is a member of the Rotary and of a social club. He takes a scant interest in the organ world. "The organist of our church here in town plays in Schiedam this coming Saturday. I built that organ, so I look forward to going there. And on Friday, Jos van der Kooy plays a request program at the Westerkerk1 to raise money for the restoration of the small organ, which I have built. So yes, we will be going, but I don't think we'll be staying all night. The concert is supposed to be three times 45 minutes. That's a bit too much for me, honestly."
Flentrop finds it hard to understand that I have come to write an article about him. He hopes that it doesn't become some kind of glorification of his personality. I explain to him that the article will appear in a special issue on the Neo-Baroque; his wife has warned me in advance that he hates that word.
Why do you dislike that term so much?
"Because I have never tried to contribute to a neo-style. I have always tried to be myself," he says calmly but with involvement. After a brief silence, he continues: "I have never had the illusion that in the twentieth century, one could build an organ that equals an instrument from, say, 1700. I felt that (a) we weren't able to do that with our staff at the time, the technical know-how, etc., and (b) we live in 1950 and we have to make something that we think is beautiful at this point in time. Maybe I was wrong, but that's what I thought back then."
"I remember being flabbergasted when Reil presented their copy of a Schnitger organ.2 I myself had considered making a copy of the Oosthuizen organ,3 simply to learn from it. But I was convinced that nobody would want to buy an organ with a short octave and mean-tone temperament. The time was not yet ripe for it. Later I abandoned the idea of copying, hence my surprise when, ten years later, Reil came with the Schnitger copy."
Flentrop thinks that the 1950s--with the illustrious restoration of the Schnitger organ at Zwolle as trendsetter--were essential for the direction the firm was to take. But Zwolle was definitely not the starting point. What was?
Flentrop: "In the 1920s, I had spoken a few times with Mr. Mahrenholz, the big man of the Orgelbewegung. His book on organ scaling became invaluable to me later on, although in retrospect I have to admit that I got a few things totally wrong. Anyway, as a youngster, I was of course very much impressed with a man like Mahrenholz."
Then, there was that remarkable encounter with Albert Schweitzer.
Flentrop: "That was in 1927; I had just turned 17. My father4 had built a pneumatic organ in Koog aan de Zaan, with a purely ornamental, silent R?ºckpositiv. At the time, Schweitzer was traveling around the world in order to raise money for his hospital in Africa. He came to Zaandam and gave a lecture at the Mennonite Church." Flentrop smiles. "Looking back it is hard to believe that he came to get money from the Mennonites in Zaandam, but anyway. My dad and I went to the lecture and we were bold enough to ask Schweitzer whether he would come to hear our new organ. Sure enough, he agreed. We didn't have a car or anything, but there was a livery nearby, and off we went in a carriage to Koog."
"Schweitzer examined the organ and listened to it very carefully. Then he said to my dad: 'Flentrop, you could make a good organ, but you have to convert to become a craftsman.' That sounded puzzling. Our parts came from Laukhuff, and the pipes from a pipe factory. It was hard to believe that that should influence the quality of the organ. Yet, I somehow felt that Schweitzer's words rang true, and I told him that I wanted to know more about it and that I was looking for an apprenticeship to learn the trade. He told me to come and meet him the next day at the place where he was staying in Amsterdam--a gigantic villa opposite the Concertgebouw, as it turned out." Flentrop pauses; then continues: "I still can't understand that a man like Schweitzer took the question of a youngster of 17 one-hundred-percent seriously."
Schweitzer suggested that Flentrop take an apprenticeship in Alsace. The idea appealed to the 17-year-old, but the French government wouldn't give him a work permit, even though Flentrop was prepared to work for nothing. And so Dirk ended up working for a small builder in Germany, Faust, at Schwelm, in the Ruhr area. Flentrop: "They made everything themselves, except for the pipes. The same was true for that organ builder of Schweitzer's, Dalstein-Haerpfer."
After a period at home in Zaandam, Flentrop went abroad again, this time with Frobenius in Denmark. Flentrop: "They built organs with pneumatic cone-chests, but with a free-standing console, so that the organist was able to conduct the choir from the organ. The pneumatic machine stood in the organ case; the action from the console to the machine was purely mechanical. And that worked fine. That was really my first step to a fully-mechanical action."
In 1934, the then 24-year-old Flentrop presented a paper at the conference of the Dutch Society of Organists, about "Slider chest and R?ºckpositiv." He remembers the paper mainly as an argument for mechanical action, which is almost automatically connected with those two elements. "At the time, many churches installed hot-air heating, so that one windchest after another broke down. I was therefore somewhat cautious in mentioning the slider chest. The difference in tone quality was something I didn't quite understand at the time either."
But the die was cast and in 1939 the Flentrop firm built its first organ with full mechanical action for the New York World's Fair. One year later, Flentrop took over the business from his father. The way in which this took place reflects both the family relationship and the social circumstances of the time.
Flentrop: "I had to buy the business, of course. At a ridiculously low price, but I didn't have a penny. So I borrowed the money from my father. We agreed that every month I would pay off so much that my parents could get by. Thankfully, I always managed to do that. But in those first few years, very little else was left."
An important milestone was the organ that Flentrop built in 1950 at Loenen aan de Vecht. Flentrop: "The one-manual B?§tz organ on top of the soundboard over the pulpit had burned down. The Historic Buildings Council wanted a copy of the B?§tz fa?ßade, but the organist wanted a two-manual organ with independent pedal and an electric console downstairs in the church because of the contact with the congregation. I definitely did not want an electric console, but I liked the idea of a two-manual organ with a R?ºckpositiv. The architect was a man called Ferdinand B. Jantzen, whom I liked a lot. He could draw very well, a real virtuoso, and understood what I wanted. I went to see him one Saturday morning with the requirements: the organ had to be close enough to the old B?§tz organ for the Historic Buildings Council to accept it; it had to be a two-manual organ with a small pedal; and the organist had to sit in front of the main case for the contact with the congregation. Jantzen sketched the design in no time; we hardly deviated from it later on." Flentrop gets the sketch out of his files; it's clearly the work of a practically-thinking artist. He continues: "That the R?ºckpositiv was so compact was the only possibility given the limited space. But when the organ was finished, I thought: gee, that sounds pretty nice. That was due to the compactness. At Loenen we also made part of the pipes ourselves: a Regal--that's all we could manage back then. I still had Schweitzer's words about craftsmanship in the back of my mind. That was the direction I wanted to take."
Flentrop thinks that he has just been very, very lucky in his life. "I was always in the right place at the right time," he says. "Take that encounter with Schweitzer. Without him I might never have been put on that track. It's coincidence, but on the other hand, you can't really call it that. In my opinion, there has to be guidance in one way or another. Not necessarily in a Christian sense, but guidance--yes, absolutely."
Coincidence or guidance, a similar event was the basis of Flentrop's contact with America, which was to develop into an enormous export of Flentrop organs to the U.S. Flentrop: "When things got really moving, we made half our annual turnover in America." Not surprisingly, the Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf dedicated one installment of their 1971 series of articles on major Dutch export firms to Flentrop Orgelbouw, along with firms like Heineken and Philips.
It all started with a visit of American organ consultant Dr. Robert Baker to the Netherlands. Baker met Flentrop at the dedication of the Flentrop organ in Wageningen in 1955. Baker was mainly impressed by the fact that Flentrop made everything themselves. He invited him to read a paper at the conference of the American Guild of Organists in New York. Flentrop thinks that Baker must have regretted extending that invitation often enough: "He was not in favor of mechanical action at all. He found us interesting because we were different from the Americans."
You were the clog maker who came to tell the Americans how clogs were still being handmade in good old Holland.
Flentrop: "Exactly. But the result was totally different: the Americans were terribly enthusiastic."
Another even more important contact was E. Power Biggs. Flentrop: "He had a radio program in which he introduced unknown organ music. He was very clever in finding old works. For example, he came up with those pieces for two organs by Soler. He would organize a second organ and play them with a colleague. Anyway, Power Biggs came to Europe to visit historic organs. He had a contact at the embassy, but the Dutch sextons gave him a hard time. So in the end they called me. As it happened, I didn't have much to do that day, so I said, OK, I'll come to Amsterdam. He and his wife were waiting for me in the hotel lobby, so that was pretty obvious. But after our conversation I said: Excuse me--what was your name again? He was perplexed: that I had come down all the way to Amsterdam without knowing that he was the famous E. Power Biggs!"
Power Biggs became the promoter of Flentrop organs in America. Flentrop: "Three months after our meeting I got a letter from him. He had gotten Harvard University to get an organ from me. After the organ was finished, he made a record with twice the same piece. On the one side, he played on an American organ with a stuffy 8-foot stop--what he called 'a dull sound.' On the other side was the same piece on the Flentrop organ, with flutes 8 and 2, I guess. You don't want to know how many letters I got because of that little record. Would I please build an instrument like that for this-or-that church, would I please contact them when I was in the States again, and so on."
A third reason for the American Flentrop boom was the Fulbright scholarships. Senator Fulbright thought a system of scholarships was the ideal way of helping to get Europe going in the post-World War II years and to let Americans profit from the European knowledge and culture. Countless American organists came to Europe as Fulbright Scholars, most of them as students of Helmut Walcha. Flentrop knew Walcha because of his recordings at the Alkmaar Schnitger, which had been restored by Flentrop.
Flentrop: "Walcha said to his students: Go see Flentrop--he's a good guy. Later on, some American remarked that Mrs. Flentrop--my first wife--had done more for American students in the form of cups of coffee than any international organization whatsoever."
From the democratically-thinking American churches Flentrop learned to say what's important in a plain and simple way. Flentrop: "The whole congregation had to be consulted on the purchase of a new organ. Would I be so kind to come and tell them all about it? Of course, they weren't going to buy an organ just like that. That was kind of scary. But anyway, about the direct contact at a mechanical organ I would tell them: Look, here's a violinist playing. But his violin is thirty feet away. Is that musical? All in pretty mediocre English, you know. But perhaps that was why I was able to make things clear. I was altogether unable to use difficult words."
Were you a born businessman, like so many people from the Zaanstreek?
Decisively: "Definitely not. In my enthusiasm for building beautiful organs I have often enough made too low an estimate. In doing so, I have often financially burned my fingers and the company's. On the other hand, there were business advantages as well. Because a part of the income in dollars was tax-deductible at the time, we were able to do things that would have been impossible otherwise. I was not so un-businesslike that I'd overlook things like that."
When we meet again, two weeks later, Flentrop appears to have thought a lot about our first conversation. "I really think that we started too late," he starts off. "I mean, Schweitzer, OK--but it really all started with my father, even before I was around. My dad was organist of the Westzijderkerk at Zaandam. The church had a small Duyschot organ with about fourteen stops.5 When the church was restored, around 1900, the organ too was taken care of. As a matter of fact, Steenkuyl6 built a new pneumatic organ behind the Duyschot fa?ßade, using, I believe, four Duyschot stops. Just imagine: the organ case was expanded from three to fourteen feet deep. Steenkuyl was a decent builder, but he was a child of his time, of course. My father became very disappointed with the organ renovation in the end. At first, there probably was the euphoria about the beautiful new console, but within a few years the action got slower and slower. As long as I can remember I heard lamentations about the Steenkuyl organ--and hymns of praise about the old Duyschot. 'With that organ, I could at least accompany the congregation properly,' my dad used to say."
"I think that, after all, that was perhaps what most determined the direction I wanted to take in organ building. I have always hated those Cornet-Mixtures that were quite common back then: Cornet in the treble, Mixture in the bass. That Steenkuyl organ in particular was reason for my attempt to make a clear and intense sounding organ. Organs with guts."
"That there turned out to be similarities with the Baroque organ, fine. But I have never pretended to be able to make a Baroque organ today. I found, you live in this era and you try to make something good now. I have always tried to make the console as comfortable as possible for organists today. I did not want your knees to hit the board all the time, as is often the case with historic organs; I liked the keyboards to stick out comfortably. In America, we also made radial pedalboards."
"Later we had to change this to an extent. Klaas Bolt7 thought it better not to sit so comfortably at the organ. If one was not so comfortable, the correct pedal articulations happened of their own accord--that was his way of thinking. Of course there is a connection with the construction of the keyboards and the action. If the key comes too far forward, the action becomes less direct."
"But the fact remains that I was more or less forced by the consultants to build more and more in historic traditions. I remember Harald Vogel visiting us at the end of the 1960s. We had just built an organ in Osnabr?ºck, Germany, and the design of the organ matched the Gothic architecture of the church. Of course, the fa?ßade reflected the inner construction of the organ. Vogel harshly criticized the austere design of the organ. In his opinion, one had to copy seventeenth-century organs very carefully. To him, each little profile influenced the sound. That was too much for me, frankly."
Flentrop has also made himself a big name as restorer of historic instruments. One of his first restorations was the Van Hagerbeer/Schnitger organ at Alkmaar. Forty years later, the organ was again restored by Flentrop Orgelbouw, although this time much more thoroughly. Flentrop: "I am very happy about that. The second restoration was so successful mainly because we had been so cautious the first time." The restraint at the first restoration was mostly due to Flentrop's personal respect for the old builders. Flentrop: "Mr. Bouman,8 who had a finger in the pie almost everywhere, was consultant. In his opinion, the Hauptwerk needed a Gedeckt 8 and a Flute 4. All right. But how to make a Gedeckt and a Flute? You cut off the old Quint 6 and Quint 3, put a cap on, and there's your Gedeckt. What did I do? I made a new Gedeckt and a new Flute, and put the old Quint 6 and 3 in storage in the bellow house of the organ. I wouldn't consider the idea of cutting-and-pasting Schnitger pipes for a split second. So, at the last restoration, those old Quints returned in the organ."
Alkmaar is not the only organ where time has overtaken a previous restoration. At the van Dam organ in Enschede,9 restored and modernized by Flentrop in the early 1950s, the changes Flentrop made in the stoplist have meanwhile been undone.
What do you think of the changes you made in the specification back then?
Without hesitation: "I would do it again. With that kind of organ, yes. Schnitger, no. Van Dam and Witte,10 yes. I thought, if I can improve something in these organs, I'll do it."
In other words, you wouldn't cry for the loss of the large Witte organ in The Hague?
"They should be happy that they got rid of it."
You must have regretted that it was not a Flentrop organ that took its place.
"Yes, that was a tough moment. But I do think the Metzler is a magnificent instrument."
It comes as no surprise that in building new organs, Flentrop drew inspiration from recent restorations. Flentrop: "When you restore an organ, it grabs you, it becomes part of you. It is hard to tell how exactly that influence becomes part of a new organ. But I am sure that if somebody would make a study of it, he could exactly demonstrate how the experience with restorations made itself felt in our new organs."
Flentrop has mixed feelings about the development of Dutch organ building since his retirement. Flentrop: "There are very many good organ builders. The technical knowledge is enormous and the artistic level is high. So far one can only be optimistic about the future. Personally, I find it a pity that so many organs are built in the style of this or the other eighteenth- or nineteenth-century builder. I would have loved to see a development toward a style of one's own. Perhaps it's a lack of creative power. Or the fear that an organ in a style of one's own will necessarily be less good than the historic organs."
"I have always wanted to build organs that radiated a certain strength. 'Here I stand--treat me with respect.' The idea that one has to be able to play everything on an organ is to me sheer nonsense, although I have to admit that I have tried to make such an instrument once or twice in the past. On the other hand, it's often amazes me how much literature can be played convincingly on an historic organ."
Flentrop sees two roads for the future of organ building: "I await the advent of a purely mechanical organ in a style of one's own. Not necessarily different from 300 years ago, but made now, not a copy. Another road is that of electronics, with pipes as a basis, perhaps, but with microphones and amplifiers one can do all sorts of things. I think that it may be possible to produce a kind of music with that kind of instrument that may be worthwhile for some people--as long as I don't have to make it! I don't disapprove of it; it's just a world that's totally strange to me."
"I have always tried to make an organ that is a unity, a simple unity. Of course, an organ is a multiple by its very nature. But nevertheless, one has to try to fit everything together harmoniously, so that the instrument presents itself as a unity. And simplicity--keep things simple. That is often difficult, because organists--excuse me--have a tendency to want more than is possible. When presented with a specification for a new organ, they always ask, can't you add this or that stop? They'll never ask you to take something out."
Not too long ago, he has read that with some philosopher or another: that beauty can only exist if the particular object is a perfect unity. "I just think that the man who can make that possible has yet to be born."
* Het Orgel 95 (1999), no. 4: 25-28 (with English summary). No changes have been made to the article, with the exception of the addition of the opening paragraph and of the endnotes. Translation by the author; I am indebted to Ronald Stolk for his valuable comments.
