Organ Projects

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

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

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.

Foley-Baker, Inc.,

Tolland, Connecticut

St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, 

Minneapolis, Minnesota

Foley-Baker, Inc.,

Tolland, Connecticut

St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral, 

Minneapolis, Minnesota

From the builder

The Welte name is mostly known for its roll-player mechanisms, the Mignon reproducing piano, and their Orchestrion. However, as builders of traditional pipe organs, Welte’s output was small; organs were but one in a family of Welte “products” typical of the era’s massive instrumental output. In 1912, Welte opened a factory in Poughkeepsie, New York, but their earliest organs were purchased from other builders and fitted with Welte players. Since Welte was of German ownership, the First World War threw things into disarray, and after the war, ownership changed hands. A larger reorganization in 1925 by former Kimball man Robert Pier Elliot had Welte building its own organs of fine quality and for any venue: residence, theater, or church. But the firm struggled to gain a strong financial footing. It suffered a setback in 1927, repurchase and relocation in 1929, and finally absorption by Kimball of Chicago in 1931. Today, there are few surviving examples of Welte organs, and, even after our 42 years in business, we had never worked on one. St. Mark’s Minneapolis would be a new experience. 

The cathedral’s consultant was David Engen of Maple Grove, Minnesota. His request for proposal offered a general description of the organ’s overall condition. Our assumption was that we would see huge diapasons, pencil-scale strings, and tibia-like flutes, all on a massive chassis. In fact, the St. Mark’s Welte had been tonally and mechanically modified on two different occasions by M.P. Möller. Much of the Welte material was long gone, although the organ remained capable of producing an impressive volume of sound.

But it was clear the various rebuilds had compromised the instrument. The chamber was packed with non-Welte chests, flexible wind lines, dangling wires, and a chamber entrance door that barely opened, due to added ranks and equipment. There were reservoirs everywhere, fully 17 in the main organ. Tuning access was bad enough, while actual service work required unnecessarily heroic effort. One reason the organ continued to generate an impressive sound was the chamber’s placement and hard walls. More than projecting sound, the chamber almost seemed to amplify it. The cathedral’s impressive acoustics certainly helped as well. 

The organ was on its third console and had a dated relay system spread throughout four different areas of the building. In the basement, the large Spencer blower’s motor needed all new bearings. Adding insult to injury, HVAC ducts installed in the 1950s had seen the removal of the organ’s important static reservoirs, further compromising the wind supply.

At Foley-Baker, we love to save old organs. However, it was clear that at St. Mark’s, there wasn’t an old organ to save, just parts of one. Trying to determine what was possible and affordable would take both positive and practical thinking. If the organ were to be rebuilt, the results had to be worth the investment. 

We spent days measuring pipe scales and gathering details. There were interesting finds, such as high in the tower, where the Möller crew had stored some of the 1928 Welte pipework. There was much damage; some ranks were incomplete, while others were beyond repair. Our tonal director Milovan Popovic laid out rank after twisted rank on the large tower room floor. Out of this survey we found three Welte stops to reclaim: the Swell 4′ Clarion, Great 8′ Second Open Diapason, and the large-scale Swell 8′ Vox Humana. All three became valuable additions. 

As our familiarity with the cathedral’s music program and organ grew, so did our concepts for the renewed instrument. Tonally, we had 1920s Welte mixed with 1980s Möller. In 2012 it is perhaps too easy to criticize Möller’s radical changes as heavy-handed; they were in the spirit of the time, and had introduced a variety of useful colors, including mutations, large-scale strings, and solo reeds. In time, we decided just where and what reused ranks would work and what new ones had to be added to create a bold, cohesive American sound to fill the cathedral’s large nave.

The chamber size and shape dictated the same stacked layout as had existed from the beginning. For us, multi-level organs raise red flags for service accessibility. Without careful design, the new and larger instrument had the potential for being another service nightmare. Our solution was to start from scratch, using a new chassis designed and built at Organ Supply Industries. The elegant simplicity of their slider chests promised minimal maintenance and assurance of accessibility. Their built-in schwimmer-regulators greatly simplified the winding, adding space for more stops and wider passage boards.

Given the scales and pressures, effective swell boxes would be essential. The original Welte shades were rebuilt and fitted to new boxes of 11⁄2-inch-thick medium density fiberboard. The combination of the two makes for a marvelous range of expression; massive ensembles can whisper or roar.

In addition to restoring the 1928 Spencer blower, we were able to find and install appropriate static reservoirs. Unlike 1928, however, this equipment now stands in separate rooms dedicated for the purpose. The result is that, despite wind pressures from five to 20 inches, an indicator light is necessary to know that the wind is on. As we have done elsewhere, we designed and installed an automatic, in-chassis humidity system that requires minimal service attention and combats Minnesota’s problematic humidity swings. 

The low-profile Schantz console dating from 1990 was reused, with modified stop jambs, new drawknobs, and burled mahogany jamb faces for a sharper appearance. (Schantz graciously provided and installed new, easy-to-read piston buttons.) We installed a new electronic relay that is easily accessed by simply raising the now-hinged console lid.

Years of change had seen many stops swapped between divisions. The Choir Diapason had been moved into the Solo as a 4′ Octave. We returned it to the Choir at 8′ with a new bass octave. The Welte Second Open found in the tower became our Great Diapason. Other stops were also returned to their original 1928 locations. The renewed instrument is a blend of remaining Welte pipework, selected Möller ranks, and important new registers. All retained ranks were cleaned, repaired, and revoiced, perhaps none more important than original large pedal basses and their Welte chests. These provided the weight and heft we envisioned as a foundation for the new instrument. 

The reed stops presented their own challenge, with ranks by five different builders and, in some cases, using scales and pressures dictated by available—or unavailable—space. Working with Chris Broome of Broome & Co. LLC, we examined the potential of each rank for our new scheme. In the end, we designed and had built an all-new Great reed chorus. Having found the original 1928 Welte 4′ Clarion, we were able to use it to recreate Welte’s original Swell reed chorus; industrial strength pipes with a just-right massive sound. A small-scale yet piercingly loud Möller Trumpet, which had been taking up valuable room in a corner of the Great, was revoiced into an ideally scaled Choir Trompette. Chorus reeds now serve to cap wonderful choruses, enriched by solo stops such as the Skinner Clarinet or Kimball Corno d’amour. 

The new organ’s sound ties together all the good qualities that go into creating it: the new specification, high pressures and large scales, the chamber’s ability to project sound and the swell shutters’ ability to contain it, and the new layout and chassis, which provided optimal placement for all stops. As the bottom photo on the front cover clearly displays, even 1928 pipes can look (and sound) like new. We were really thrilled to hear Canon Musician Ray Johnston play the “new” organ at the inaugural concert on May 18, an outstanding program that included brass and the cathedral’s choirs. To him and David Engen we owe thanks for supporting us in this challenging and rewarding project.

Upcoming concerts involving the rebuilt organ are posted on the cathedral’s website. All photos of the cathedral and reconditioned instrument are by Mark Manring (www.manring.net). All other photos are from Foley-Baker, Inc. files.

—Mike Foley

From the canon musician

St. Mark’s Cathedral has long been known for its various music programs and concerts. Built as a parish church in 1910 and designated a cathedral in 1941, it has during that time seen six directors of music as well as a number of rebuilds and additions to the original four-manual Welte installed in 1928. As musical tastes changed throughout the century, the tonal plan of the organ became distorted, becoming a combination of classical and romantic sounds, leading to a loss of identity for the instrument. 

The various additions also led to a chronic lack of space within the organ chamber, preventing access for tuning and repair to pipes bending over with metal fatigue. Equally worrying was the damage done to the winding as abundant leaks had resulted in pressure drops throughout the organ. 

In 2010 the cathedral launched a capital campaign, included in which was repair to the organ’s winding. However, on closer inspection it soon became apparent that problems ran very deep and fixing the leaks would in fact be a waste of money. Major action was required. The choice was stark—total reconditioning or a new instrument. This was an easy decision: much of the original Welte chorus was in good condition and had such quality and character that it could become the basis of a major overhaul. 

Next came the biggest challenge—persuading the vestry and the congregation that a lot of money needed to be spent to keep the organ in working order. To many, of course, the organ sounded just fine, as it always had. As is often the case, organists’ abilities to mask faults and ciphers go unnoticed by the majority. However, thanks to many organ tours and presentations by both committee and builder, and the fact that music and the pipe organ are such an integral part of worship at the cathedral, we were able to reach our target of $1.2 million.

In consultation with our selected firm, Foley-Baker Inc., a new specification was drawn up that necessitated replacing one-third of the pipework and relocating ranks from the gallery to the main organ. Of primary concern was an instrument to accompany the liturgy, from providing subtlety and color for the cathedral choir’s large repertoire to giving stimulating leadership to congregational hymnody. If the organ could do both those things well it would surely prove to be an admirable recital instrument also. 

While not a particularly large four-manual instrument, at least by American standards, it has exceeded all expectations as a concert instrument: almost endless color, a vast dynamic range, and a character that is totally suited to the building, all exquisitely voiced. It is unashamedly in the English romantic style, and, having played many of the great cathedral organs in the U.K., I am delighted that we now have such a fine instrument in that tradition, as well as an organ that is true to its original intention.

—Ray Johnston

From the committee chair

In May 2012, the refurbished St. Mark’s organ was inaugurated for concert audience and worshipers. Those were thrilling experiences, the result of meticulous planning and craftsmanship by Canon Musician Raymond Johnston and Foley-Baker, Inc.

I was privileged to chair the organ planning committee during the last phase of its pre-construction work. This was undertaken in the context of St. Mark’s “Opening Our Doors” capital campaign, which, by any standard, was a clear success, raising over $3 million. I was also privileged to co-chair the capital campaign with Inez Bergquist, Doug Eichten, and Courtney Ward-Reichard. The capital campaign had three highly visible purposes: restore the exterior of the 100-year-old building to stop leaks and deterioration; improve a long list of interior infrastructure items; and repair/restore the pipe organ. The first two of those purposes were easy for members and contributors to see and understand, especially when ice formed inside the church and fell on folks in procession during Sunday worship. The organ was a different matter.

Even though much of the organ was well beyond maintenance and some of it dead or ciphering, it still sounded pretty good much of the time. Most of this was attributable to Ray Johnston’s talents and the marvelous acoustic characteristics of the St. Mark’s Cathedral space. We conducted behind-the-walls tours of the chambers to show potential donors the points of failure and the grossly antiquated control mechanisms, leaking air handlers, and failing wiring. We were also careful to explain that much of the tuned pipework and blower could be restored and would be maintained.  At the end of the many days, the congregation did contribute and one very generous, anonymous donor provided most of the funds needed for the more than $1 million organ project.

While Foley-Baker did their work, the entire instrument was removed and a digital organ was rented and used with speakers around the cathedral. Many regular attendees commented that they could “hear the difference” and had come to understand why it was appropriate to rebuild a fine pipe organ. That was brought home once again to me on Sunday last, when Ray Johnston offered Samuel Sebastian Wesley’s Choral Song and Fugue as the service postlude. Most of the congregation stayed to hear it and to celebrate the glory of the rebuilt organ.  

—Fred Moore

A. E. Schlueter Pipe Organ Company, Lithonia, Georgia

Advent Lutheran Church, 

Melbourne, Florida

A. E. Schlueter Pipe Organ Company, Lithonia, Georgia

Advent Lutheran Church, 

Melbourne, Florida

Advent Lutheran Church in Melbourne, Florida is a relatively young church, founded in 1982; services were first held in a realtor’s office. From these simple beginnings, this vibrant ministry has continued to grow in an unbounded manner. When the present sanctuary was built in 2003, they could not fund a pipe organ, but importantly made future provision for an instrument in their new sanctuary; the space provided for the pipe organ and the chamber was sealed closed in the front rock wall of the church.

In 2010, a pipe organ committee was formed. Their study included not only engineering and cost factors, but also the ability to pay for the organ without impacting the operating budget. In 2011, a special congregational meeting was held to approve the purchase of a pipe organ from the A.E. Schlueter Pipe Organ Company, with installation to coincide with the 30th anniversary of the church’s founding.

When I first visited Advent Lutheran with our Florida representative, Herbert M. Ridgely Jr., I found we were blessed with a sanctuary where consideration had been given toward good acoustics and favorable placement for the organ. The front wall of the chancel is a solid concrete wall that lofts from floor to ceiling and is faced with native limestone. Beginning eleven feet off the floor was a 20′ x 20′ opening into the organ chamber. The floor for the organ was a solid poured-concrete slab capable of holding the tens of thousands of pounds of weight required for even a modest-sized instrument.

There are two choir lofts on the right and left sides of the sanctuary. The traditional choir is housed on the left side. The opposing niche on the right side is a space occupied by the accouterments needed for contemporary worship.

With the side locations of the choir lofts, and a sanctuary with more width than depth, our concern was that some choristers or congregants would be “around the corner” from the straight-on frontal exposure of the organ as it speaks into the sanctuary. We wanted to avoid an instrument that emphasized one division over another dependent upon where you were seated.

To provide more uniformity of speech, we planned the removal of the sidewall sections to the left and right of the organ chamber. Adjacent to the side openings were angled wall surfaces that we knew would reflect and refract the sound from the side alcoves behind the chancel wall into the room. These openings were finished with open, ornamental, oak grilles. In the chamber interior we placed the Great and Positiv windchests off-axis from the direct center, so they would be able to speak from the sides as well as the front exposure. The Swell division of the organ is laid out in a side-by-side configuration across the rear of the organ chamber. This minimizes the depth of the enclosed division and allows it to be spatially projected forward in an unimpeded manner to acoustically sit beside the pipework of the Great and Positiv. The result of the additional chamber openings and divisional placement is that the full resources of the organ are evenly heard throughout the room without any significant divisional bias. 

A constant challenge in organ building is having enough space in width, depth, and height. In this instance the internal chamber had “too much of a good thing” in terms of height. The loft inside the organ chamber went well over 25 feet above the top of the frontal opening, creating a significant tone trap that had to be addressed. The solution was to continue the Swell expression box roof over the Great and Positiv. The roof section was built with heavy timbers and made exceedingly thick, which provided an upper surface that was designed to be a refractory angle of incidence across a broad frequency spectrum to focus the organ resources out of the chamber. The end result is an even, coalesced diffusion of sound both inter- and intra-divisionally.

The organ case is built from hand-selected rift-sawn red oak, with a light-colored natural finish to match the church’s interior furnishings. The individual vertical segments of the façade and case are divided into multiple pipe flats that follow the radius of the front wall curvature. In this manner, the façade “bows” rearward from the cross to emphasize it as the central theme in the chancel.

The pipe shades at the top of the pedal towers are evocative of the concrete lace that holds the stained glass within the windows of the church. The polished surfaces of the organ façade pipes play on light in such a way that the façade takes on natural soft, even hues, melding with the church interior. The pipework in the organ façade contains the independent 16′ Principal, and bass registers of the 8′ Principal and the 4′ Choral Bass. 

We designed a terraced, drawknob console for this instrument. In addition to providing excellent sightlines for the organist to see both the choir and the congregation, its lowered profile makes it less dominant against the furnishings in the chancel. The console, including the built-in casters for mobility, is a diminutive 47½ inches tall. The console is built of red oak with a mahogany interior. The interior stop controls are turned of hardwoods with engraved inserts that were custom finished to match the bone and walnut keyboards. The keyboards are fitted with tracker touch.

Ever concerned with ease of registration and ergonomics, we were very careful in our design of the console interior. The drawknob and coupler controls are placed in the traditional locations with the Pedal and Swell stops on the left jambs, and the Great and Positiv on the right jambs. The stops are sequenced by pitch and family, with the primary division choruses aligned to be even to the manual into which they draw. The drawknobs feature oblique heads aligned on straight terraces, and angled inwards toward the performer, making the stops easy to see and draw because the stops on each terrace are within easy reach of the performer. 

For the combination system and relays, we used the new 8400 system from the Syndyne firm. All of the features that one comes to expect on a modern console control system are present—from multiple memories, to programmable crescendos, programmable sforzandos, blind checks, transposers, etc. The system allows centralized control for the combination system, playback/record, MIDI, and other functions, in a single integrated touch screen. One can save or import combination memories from and to an external USB drive, which provides infinite options to the performer. The screen and USB interface allows testing, configuration, and upgrades for the builder without the need for an external computer.

The organ chests are a combination of Blackinton-style electro-pneumatic slider chests and electro-pneumatic unit action chests for unit and duplex stops. 

The main manual chest winding system makes use of traditional spring-and-weight, ribbed regulators, and floating lid regulators that are fed from a large, central plenum. The enclosed reeds are provided with separate regulators to allow a pressure differential from the flue stops and permit independent tremulant control. All of the windchests are individually fitted with tunable concussion bellows for fine regulation. This allows stable winding that still maintains a presence of life.

Wind pressures on the organ are 3½′′ Great, 4′′ Swell flues, 5′′ Swell reeds, 2¾′′ Positiv, 3′′ Pedal and façade, and 8′′ for the Solo 8′ Festival Trumpet. The tremolos are electro-mechanical to provide a quiet, gentle, even undulation when the tremulants are engaged.

Prior to designing a stoplist, I find, as an organbuilder, it is incumbent to worship with the congregation. This cannot be a one-time event, as a church’s liturgy as it moves through the year is a rich pageant that cannot be conveyed, but has to be personally experienced to put the worship service in your own eyes, and more importantly your own ears. Personally, I find it illuminating to look into the eyes of the congregants who have asked me to build an organ for them. It instills me with the gravity of the task at hand and becomes a constant that I draw on throughout my working with the church. 

As I designed the stoplist, I envisioned an instrument where all of the resources could be considered for use in every service. I wanted a large enough specification to provide a rich palette of color and weight. It was important to avoid any sounds that were strident or overwhelming, as they didn’t have a place or use in this setting with this congregation. The ideal stop design would emphasize reliance on chorus massing to bring about larger stop dynamics which build upon one another. The goal was to design a specification that would allow gentle, sculpted voicing. 

Because of the German origins of the Lutheran church, I knew there would have to be an inclusion of the “Werkprinzip” in the specification. However, I also felt strongly that a single nationalistic focus would have been too limiting for this congregation. Ultimately the design of the instrument included many tonal facets that allow the organ to be a faithful purveyor of music from many periods, styles, and nationalities, in a cohesive, eclectic manner. Those who are familiar with our collective body of work will find present the balance of clarity and warmth that we seek in all of our instruments.

As we designed the principals, flutes, and strings in this instrument, we employed differing construction and materials in conjunction with careful scaling. The varied use of wood, metal, open, semi-open, stoppered, cylindrical, conical, and other variations, allow each flue stop its own unique voice and timbre. 

The organ is centered around the clean, robust principal chorus of the Great division. The 16′ Sub Principal of this division transitions from the façade into the slotted pipes of a Geigen Principal, which allows a thinner, defined register to ground the Great chorus. This stop is duplexed to provide an 8′ foundation for the Positiv principal chorus, and allows doubling of the 8′ line when coupled to the Great. The Great 8′ Bourdon and 4′ Nachthorn, in addition to being lovely solo voices, are valuable as thickening agents to the Great principal chorus, without overshadowing it. The enclosed Swell reeds are duplexed to the Great, which provides dynamic control of these stops by their enclosure.

The mixed media of wood, metal, stoppered, and open construction continues into the flutes of the Swell Cornet decomposé. These stops envelop one another and become almost svelte in their combined voice. The Swell Cornet is countered with a secondary principal-based Cornet in the Positiv division. In a departure from common practice, the individual Positiv mutations are placed on unit actions, which allow use of these stops at a variety of pitches and combinations. This becomes very useful for color and ornamentation and also facilitates the beginnings of building weightless mixture texture in the organ divisional ensembles by drawing these independent fifths.

For this instrument, we chose to employ strings of opposing qualities in the Positiv and Swell divisions. The Positiv 8′ Erzahler has a gentle broadness with a subdued edge-tone. It can support the most quiet and contemplative of moments in the service, and yet has enough body that, when coupled with the 8′ Holzgedeckt, provides the foundation for the Positiv principal chorus. In the Swell division, the gambas with their thinner scales, roller beards, and slotting have a keen and incisive, harmonically rich voice. These stops leave little doubt that they are strings and have a very distinctive edge-tone. The 8′ Gamba when drawn with the 8′ Rohr Gedeckt provides the foundational weight for the Swell principal chorus, and a compounded color that would be analogous to an independent 8′ Violin Diapason. 

With their large dynamic, the majority of the reeds were placed in the Swell enclosure. The 8′ Festival Trumpet is moderately scaled on relatively high wind pressure. With its thinner scaling and placed under expressive control, it can be registered into the full Great and Positiv choruses as a thinner ensemble reed when the expression box is closed. With the box open, it is an incisive, tightly drawn color that can bring a blaze to a solo line. The Swell reeds include a double tapered Oboe with lift lids and a large vowel cavity at 16′ and 8′ pitch, which balance against the éclat and fundamental of the large-scaled 8′ Trompette. 

The unenclosed manual reed on the organ is the 8′ Krummhorn in the Positiv division. It is built of brass with flared lift caps. By itself it is a very useful solo and/or ensemble stop, with the nose tone of a regal class of reed. It also effectively couples with the 8′ Holzgedeckt to provide a stop eerily reminiscent of the woody voice of a fine clarinet.

The Pedal division is grounded with three independent 16′ stops, including a large 16′ Posaune. It is a very complete pedal, with the gravitas to support the full forte of this instrument. The Pedal stops were given a forward position to eliminate shading and to allow gentler voicing. The result is a buoyant and harmonically rich pedal, where the inner voice is ever present. In addition to the independent registers, there are a number of manual-to-pedal duplexes, which broaden the available weight and color choices. 

The organ tonal finishing was accomplished by a team consisting of Arthur Schlueter III, Pete Duys, John Tanner, Bud Taylor, and Marc Conley. The organ was first used for worship in December 2012 and was dedicated on January 20, 2013 by organist Peter B. Beardsley. 

Every organ project has those individuals without which the project could not have been possible. In addition to thanking every single member of the congregation, the church council, and the organ committee, I personally want to single out senior pastor Reverend David Jahn, organist Lori Jahn, executive assistant to the pastor Carol Stanton, and organ committee co-chairs Pat Fuller and Jack Clark, for their very direct, hands-on work with our firm throughout this project.

Organ building is not the work of one person, but is a plurality or culmination of talents. We are very fortunate to have so many talented craftsmen and craftswomen at our firm. Our staff includes Arthur Schlueter Jr., Arthur Schlueter III, Shan Dalton, Marc Conley, Patty Conley, Bud Taylor, Robert Black, Dallas Wood, Al Schroer, John Tanner, Pete Duys, Barbara Sedlacek, Patrick Hodges, Jay Hodges, Kelvin Cheatham, Jim Sowell, Bob Weaver, Ruth Lopez, Michael DeSimone, Bill Zeiler, Chad Sartin, Steven Bowen, Jeff Moore, and Herbert M. Ridgely Jr. 

If you would like more information on this instrument and our firm, I invite you to visit the Schlueter Pipe Organ Company website at www.pipe-organ.com, write to me at A. E. Schlueter Pipe Organ Company, P.O. Box 838, Lithonia, GA 30058, or feel free to reach me at [email protected]. 

—Arthur E. Schlueter III

Charles M. Ruggles, Conifer, Colorado

Henry Kilgen, 1884

St. Augustine’s Cultural Center, Austin, Nevada

Charles M. Ruggles of Conifer, Colorado, recently completed the restoration of the Henry Kilgen organ of 1884 in the former St. Augustine’s Catholic Church, Austin, Nevada, now St. Augustine’s Cultural Center. A one-manual, nine-rank instrument, it is the only known extant instrument by Henry that is mechanically, tonally, and visually intact. The Kilgen family of St. Louis, Missouri, were organbuilders; Henry worked independently of his more well-known father, George, from 1882 into the 1910s. The organ is of tracker action in a Victorian Gothic case in the rear gallery, now fitted with an electric blower for convenience in playing.

The church was closed and the parish disbanded in 1990 by the Diocese of Reno due to several factors, including declining population after the county seat was transferred from Austin to Battle Mountain in 1979. Austin, once a large silver mining community founded in 1862, with some 10,000 residents at its peak, was rivalled only by Virginia City, Nevada, home to numerous gold and silver strikes, primarily the Comstock Lode. The town gradually declined in population after the 1880s and today has about 350 residents.

The decaying building was purchased in 2003 by a group of local citizens, led by Jan Morrison, who created a non-profit organization to save and restore the former church. They spent the next ten years applying for and receiving preservation grants totalling some $1 million, resulting in a variety of substantial repairs, including a new roof, steeple and wall repairs, foundation stabilization, interior refurbishing, ADA accessibility, and the like. The organ had been unplayable since the 1960s and was damaged, but intact.

Ruggles was awarded the contract in May 2012 and completed the bulk of the restoration work in October 2013, when the organ was reinstalled. The last phase of the building repairs and refurbishing was not completed, however, due to the scarcity of contractor labor, until the summer of 2014. (Austin is about 170 miles east of Reno on U.S. 50, the so-called “Loneliest Highway in America,” and most construction work is necessarily “trucked in.”) Accordingly, he returned to finish regulating and tuning the organ when the structure was ready.

The center was dedicated in a gala ceremony on September 27, 2014, including an open house, historical lectures, panel discussions, musical presentations, “silent auction,” and an organ recital by Michael Friesen of Denver, Colorado. It is intended to be a place where everything from concerts to art classes and exhibitions, and meetings to a “writer’s oasis” could occur, among the quiet beauty of the historic town and the adjoining Toiyabe Mountains. Unlike many other small towns in the West in the nineteenth century, there was no “Opera House” in Austin, so the center actually serves a unique function for the community.

Austin had at one time three pipe organs, also including one of 1866 by Joseph Mayer of San Francisco in the Methodist Church (unfortunately destroyed) and another of 1878 by Alexander Mills of New York City in St. George’s Episcopal Church (extant). The Kilgen has been awarded recognition as a “National Heritage Pipe Organ” of historical importance by the Organ Historical Society. Being in a small town, both pipe organs are “accessible” to visitors and can be seen and played by organists who pass through, either by advance arrangement (preferable), or by asking a citizen or store proprietor along Main Street to help direct them to someone having a key.

—Michael Friesen

Henry Kilgen, St. Louis, Missouri, 1884

Restoration: Charles M. Ruggles, Conifer, Colorado, 2013

1 manual, 12 drawknobs, 9 speaking stops, 10 registers, 9 ranks, 491 pipes

Mechanical action throughout

Compasses: Manual, 61 notes, C to c4; Pedal, 27 notes, C to d1

Manual (enclosed, except faНade pipes and four unison basses)

[8′] Open Diapason 61 pipes

[8′] Unison Bass 12

[8′] Stop Diapason [tc] 49

[8′] Melodia [tc] 49

[8′] Dulciana [tc] 49

[4′] Principal 61

[4′] Flute Harmonic 61

[22⁄3′] Twelfth 61

[2′] Fifteenth 61

Pedal (unenclosed, at rear)

16′ Bourdon 27

Mechanicals

Pedal Coupler (drawknob)

Pedal Check (drawknob)

Piano Combination Pedal (foot lever, unlabeled)

Forte Combination Pedal (foot lever, unlabeled)

Expression Pedal

Note: The drawknobs for the manual stops do not give the pitches, but they are supplied here in conventional form for convenience.