Renovating a Steer & Turner: A Grandall & Engen tonal and electrical renovation of an altered 1875 pipe organ

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this article was published in the August 2018 issue of The Diapason, pages 16–20.

 

The casework in pictures

The entire casework of Opus 161 is executed in solid black walnut, and in the author’s opinion is among the best of Johnson’s cases with its elegant proportions and understated Gothic ornamentation. The window above the entrance of Eastside Presbyterian Church, its original home, displayed similar, restrained Gothic form and ornamentation. Elsworth’s book illustrates a great many of Johnson’s organs, among them Opus 134, built in 1862 for St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Lanesborough, Massachusetts.¹⁷ Opus 134 has nearly identical stiles and ornamentation, but its proportions do not soar in the elegant manner of Opus 161, perhaps the result of limitations in height. It is ironic that one of Johnson’s best aesthetic creations has languished in anonymity for decades. Many American churches built in the early nineteenth century did not have a provision for a pipe organ, and as a consequence Elsworth noted that most of Johnson’s earlier organs were furnished with sides to the cases of the free-standing organs produced for such churches.¹⁸ As previously noted, Opus 161 originally had such side panels to its casework, and these were found crudely sawn and nailed behind the façade. The Piru church elected to place the façade casework flush with the wall of the church, necessitating the removal of the side panels.

As was typical of nearly all nineteenth century organs, the façade contains no smaller pipes. The side flats contain pipes of the Open Diapason with considerable overlengths. This is the only architectural flaw in this otherwise stunningly designed case. The use of pipes of very different lengths is an important architectural device—it gives a sense of scale, making the larger pipes appear more imposing in contrast. But façades with pipes of extremely different size are more complex and more expensive to make. Compared to the vast majority of nineteenth-century façades, Opus 161 is one of the finest aesthetic designs.

 

The keydesk in pictures

The reader should refer to Part 1 of this series for photographs of the keydesk and stop jambs (August 2018, pages 17–18). Elsworth described the keydesks of Johnson organs from the period of Opus 43, 1855, to Opus 268, 1868:

 

The manual compass was invariably fifty-six notes, from CC to G3. The stop knobs were disposed in vertical rows on each side of the manual keyboards, and always had square shanks with round knobs that had flat faces. Into these faces were set the ivory labels with the stop names. The labels were always engraved in Spencerian script with no pitch indication. The nameplates up to about 1867 or 1868 were of silver, engraved “Wm. A. Johnson, Westfield, Mass.”¹⁹

 

This description provides some evidence that the organ was modified during its installation at Piru. The stop action does indeed have square shanks leading to the bellcranks, but the shafts connecting to the square shanks and leading through the stop jambs are round. The author had initially believed that the stop jambs were original, observing well-worn and professionally installed felt bushings in the openings of the stop jambs. But a more likely explanation is that the round shafts and extant jambs were added at a later date, and this goes a long way to explain the disappearance of the split bass stops, all of which were screwed together to make continuous stops with no splits. And this nicely explains the current specification with 20 controls instead of the 22 controls indicated in the opus list of the Johnson factory.

The organ was initially supplied with a hook-down Swell shoe, normal fare for Johnson’s work of this time. This feature was deleted, and a balanced Swell shoe was installed by crudely re-routing the action of the Great to Pedal coupler rollerboard. Note the added Swell pedal in Figure 7, the missing hook-down pedal in Figure 8, and the damage to the action in Figure 9 and Figure 10. All of this damage was repaired in the 1976 restoration and the original hook-down mechanism refabricated. The figures show the condition of the console prior to the restoration.

 

The key action in pictures

The basic layout of the key action can be seen in Figure 6 in Part 1 of this series (August 2018, page 20). With the exception of the repositioning of the Swell chest and the addition of the balanced Swell pedal, the key and stop action of Opus 161 was well worn but virtually unaltered in 1976. The damage to the trackers on the Pedal couplers from the installation of the balanced Swell pedal was repaired in 1976 with new trackers, wires, felts, and buttons, and basic repairs to the stickers on the Swell to Great coupler were made, but this was a stopgap solution. At this time the console was in need of a complete disassembly and refurbishment of the leather on the couplers, the felts, and the leather buttons. The action was well designed, had served for a period of more than a hundred years, and had survived a move from Stockton to Piru. But the leather facings of the key tails where the coupler stickers made contact and the felts and leather buttons were showing their age. There were no funds for such work in 1976. 

In Johnson’s action we see similarities to Samuel Green. Bicknell writes: 

 

Green introduced or developed numerous refinements to the mechanism. He often arranged pipes from f# up in chromatic order on the soundboards, even in large organs. This reduced the extent to which rollerboards were required. . . . To make the key action readily adjustable the ends of the trackers were fitted with tapped wires and leather buttons. The appearance of Green’s consoles was enhanced by the use of ivory inserts screwed into the heads of the stop knobs, engraved with the name of the stop. . . . Green also usually made keyboards with white naturals and black sharps. . . .²⁰

 

All of these features are found on Opus 161. The photographs of the action were all taken in 1976 prior to the restoration work.

 

The stop action in pictures

The stop action of Opus 161 is conventional, with metal squares and square wooden shanks. The stop action to the Pedal 16′ Double Open Diapason is a ventil valve to the three windchests of that stop, which are placed at the sides (largest pipes, diatonic) and the treble pipes at the back (chromatic). The photographs show the details of the stop action construction.

A description of the stops and general notes on the scaling and voicing

This section provides a detailed description of the stops; two of the Swell stops were not measured (16′ Bourdon and 8′ Stopped Diapason). For the stops which were measured, a table of data in millimeters is shown. The photographs show some details of the construction, although the poor resolution of the camera is regrettable.

As earlier noted, there is a close resemblance between the organs of Samuel Green in late eighteenth century England and the organs of William A. Johnson in nineteenth-century America. Bicknell writes:

 

On the tonal side Green seems to have adopted the trend towards delicacy and developed it still further. . . . Green’s first line of development in securing the effect he desired was to experiment . . . with the scales of the chorus . . . . in 1778 the Open Diapason is larger than the rest of the chorus. . . . The appearance of extra pipes in some ranks, definitely by Green and contemporary with the instruments themselves, together with re-marking of the pipes, suggests that Green took spare pipes with him to the site and rescaled stops during the tonal finishing in the building. This is considerably removed from the standardised scaling and voicing adopted by, for example, Snetzler. The reasons for this become clearer when one understands that Green’s voicing broke new ground in other aspects as well. Delicacy was achieved partly by reduction of the size of the pipe foot and by increasing the amount of nicking. The loss of grandeur in the chorus was made up for by increasing the scales of the extreme basses. . . .²¹

As we will see in the graphical analysis of the data, all of the features mentioned by Bicknell about Samuel Green would apply equally well to Johnson’s Opus 161. Bicknell observes, “Where Snetzler provided a chorus of startling boldness and with all the open metal ranks of equal power, Green introduced refinement and delicacy and modified the power of the off-unison ranks to secure a new kind of blend.”²²

As earlier noted by Elsworth, Johnson’s wind pressure during the period of 1855 to 1868 “was generally between 21⁄2 and 23⁄4 inches (63 and 70 mm), and in rare examples, nearly 3 inches.”²³ The lower wind pressures, narrower scales of the upperwork, and reduced toes produced a sound with restrained brilliance. 

Referring to his conversations with Edwin B. Hedges (1872–1967), a voicer for Johnson organs, Elsworth made some telling observations. In the process of making the pipework, “ . . . the languids were carefully soldered in place, and the flues were properly adjusted.”²⁴ This is a very important comment, because today the flueway is considered a variable for adjusting power in some voicing styles, especially North Germanic voicing. Johnson’s flueways are very open, often the maximum that would produce good speech, even with Johnson’s bold nicking. Power balances, for Johnson as well as Green, were designed into the scales and further adjusted by the voicer at the toe. “The voicing of flue pipes, such as Diapason, Dulcianas, and strings, consists of nicking the languid, cutting up the upper lips to the proper mouth height, and adjusting the positions of the languid and the upper and lower lips. The amount of wind entering the pipe foot must be carefully adjusted by opening or closing the orifice in the pipe toe.”²⁵ There is no direct evidence that William A. Johnson had first-hand knowledge of the 1792 Samuel Green organ delivered to Boston, but the legacy of Green is obvious in Johnson’s work.

A few comments are in order on the nicking and languid treatment. The languids contain a counterface with a negative angle; the more usual angle is vertical, or 90 degrees. The Isnards made a positive-angled counterface at about 75 degrees with a normal bevel at about 45 to 55 degrees. The negative counterface of the Johnson languid is unusual. This languid is nicked at an angle with a knife, cutting a fine nick as deep as halfway into the languid bevel. Long knife cuts were also in evidence inside the lower lip. As a general rule there are the same number of nicks on a languid, regardless of pitch. These languids work well and produce fast speech even when the lower, negative languid bevel shows above the top edge of the lower lip; the upper lip is not pulled out to compensate for this languid position. Ears are generally found up to 1′ in pitch in the principal chorus, but they are very narrow, not extending far in front of the mouth.

Many of the pipes were found in 1976 to be crudely pinched at the top, part of an effort to reduce the pitch to the modern standard. All of this damage was repaired on mandrels, and tuning slides were fitted.

 

Great division

 

8′ Open Diapason 

This is the first stop on the front of the Great windchest. It has zinc resonators from low C to tenor B and planed common metal feet from about tenor E. All pipes from middle C are planed common metal (30% tin, 70% lead). Zinc wind conductors to the façade pipes supply copious wind; the conductor diameters are 38 mm at low C and 25 mm at tenor C. If memory serves, at least one or two of the pipes in the side flats were dummy pipes, implying that the speaking façade pipes extended to tenor D. The façade pipes were tuned with scrolls at the back, which were entirely rolled up as a consequence of the drop in pitch to 440 Hz, where the original pitch was probably closer to 450 Hz. See the earlier notes on the pitch and wind pressure. As with all of the stops in the principal chorus, the ears are very narrow. 

The author feels obligated to point out a grave error he made in the restoration by removing the heavy nicking on the languids of the Open Diapason, and only on this stop. To make the record clear, David Sedlak advised against doing this, and the author regrets that he did not take Sedlak’s advice. These nicks should be renewed in the manner used by Johnson.

8′ Keraulophon

The second stop on the chest, the Keraulophon pipes were found badly pinched at the top along with crudely reduced toe bores in an effort to reduce the pitch. All of the pipes were straightened on mandrels and tuning slides added. Toes that were not damaged were used as a guide for readjusting damaged toes. This stop is voiced with tuning slots and ears, but no beards of any kind. The bass octave is common with the Clarabella, five pipes from tenor C to E have zinc resonators, and the rest have planed common metal resonators. The nicking is bold and often crossed to keep the speech stable. Flueways were often more closed on one side. This is a bolder string than a Dulciana. 

 

8′ Clarabella

This is the third stop on the chest. Bass pipes C to tenor E are stopped wood; the remainder are open wood with lead plates covering the tops for tuning. These lead plates are somewhat closed down to accommodate the lowered pitch. The internal blocks forming the languids are lower than the front plates by 2.0 mm at tenor E, and 1.5 mm at tenor F. The bevel of the upper lip is internal for the open pipes and external for the stopped pipes. The stopped pipes have narrow, slanted strips at the sides of the mouth to form narrow ears; the open pipes have no extra strips functioning as ears. The nicking is deeper and heavier than the pipes of the principal chorus. The scales and voicing of this stop place its power on the same level as the principal chorus foundations. The only concession to power is a greatly reduced mouth width in the bass octave, a concession to its function as a common bass to the Keraulophon. 

The effective inside diameter of a wooden pipe is a calculation of its diagonal, a method proposed by Nolte.²⁶ The potential power of a round pipe is related to the amplitude of the standing wave in the pipe, which is in turn related to its diameter. Following this logic, Nolte has pointed out that the amplitude of a standing wave in a rectangular pipe is related to its widest point, i.e., its diagonal. We often see modern conversions of wood pipe scales by relating their rectangular areas to those of round metal pipes with equivalent areas, but this does not produce balanced power. The consequence is that conventional modern wisdom decrees that wood pipes should be scaled a few half tones narrower than round pipes of equivalent area. This disconnect disappears with Nolte’s observation of the relevance of the diagonal, not equivalent areas. This is not a new idea. Many older organs, e.g., J. A. Silbermann’s organ of 1746 at Marmoutier, show very disjointed scales between the rectangular wood bass of the 16′ Montre and its metal pipes when plotting by equivalent areas. Convert the Silbermann wood bass scales to diagonals and those scales merge seamlessly into the scales of the metal pipes. Diagonal computations of the effective diameters for the Johnson Clarabella can be found in the table, and those calculations are used in the graphical analysis. 

 

4′ Principal

The fourth stop on the chest, the Principal has five zinc resonators from C to E; the rest are all planed common metal. These pipes showed very little damage. The flueway depths are remarkably wide, especially in the treble, and demonstrate that Johnson regulated power entirely at the toe, not the flueway. Such flueway depths are often found in classical French voicing. This data set can be taken as reasonably accurate evidence of Johnson’s unmolested voicing.

 

4′ Flute И CheminОe

 The fifth stop on the chest from tenor C, this is a classically constructed flute in planed common metal with soldered domed tops, chimneys with no tuning mechanism, and very large ears for tuning. Those large ears had been pushed in far enough to virtually touch each other when found in 1976, another effort to reduce the pitch. The cutups were lightly arched. There was considerable handling damage to the flueways. The toes were reasonably intact. The reduction in pressure from 76 mm to 63 mm allowed these pipes to speak much more freely with the ears much more opened (but not completely straightened). The pipe construction becomes open at g#′′, i.e., the last twelve pipes, and they are noticeably wider across the break. The table above shows a calculation of the total resonator length, i.e., the body length plus the chimney, and the percentage of the chimney length to the total length. This gives an idea of the harmonics that Johnson was trying to emphasize with the chimney. At tenor C the chimney is 25% of the total length, emphasizing the fourth harmonic, while at middle C the chimney is 30% of the total length, roughly emphasizing the third harmonic. The chimney progresses to larger percentages of the total length as the pitch rises. The chimney is not a constant percentage of the total length.  The photograph shows the classical construction of this stop. 

 

22Џ3′ Twelfth

The sixth stop on the chest, this stop consists entirely of planed common metal pipes that had minimal damage.

 

2′ Fifteenth

The seventh and last flue stop on the chest, the 2′ Fifteenth continues the trend of extremely deep flueways and closed toes. The flueway depths of this stop are perhaps the largest the author has measured on any organ. Remarkably, this planed, common metal stop has no ears on any pipe, and its sound is exquisite. The toes are very restrained and represent the means of controlling power. The diameter and mouth width scales are considerably narrower than the Open Diapason, continuing the trend of narrower scaling with higher stop pitches, a characteristic introduced by Samuel Green. This progression can be clearly seen in the graphical analysis, in stark contrast to the Hook’s constant scaling of  the principal chorus. By this means Johnson and Green achieved a chorus with more refinement and less impact, but they compensated with very wide scaling of the extreme basses.

 

8′ Trumpet

The extant pipework of this eighth and last stop on the chest was constructed of planed common metal with zinc bottom sections from tenor C to tenor B. The Trumpet has an obscure history. In 1976 only two octaves of pipes were found from tenor C 13 to C 37. These were all in fairly good condition without obvious modifications; some crude slotting of the tops was repaired and the pipes spoke well on 63 mm wind. All of the original pipes were cut to exact length with no tuning slots or scrolls. The bass octave of the Trumpet was originally separated on the slider, but found screwed together in 1976. Interestingly, while the bass topboards were bored and chamfered to receive pipes, the chamfers were not burned in like all other borings on both windchests. With the repositioning of the Swell chest over the Great chest, it was now impossible to reconstruct a full-length bass set of pipes, and a half-length set was fabricated with limited tonal success (a few of the half-length pipes needed mitering to clear the Swell chest). The missing treble pipes were recreated by the firm of Stinkens to scales extrapolated from the original pipework. These were quite successful and a good tonal match. The high treble from c#′′′ to g′′′ were obviously flue pipes, and the rackboard borings provided guidance for their scales. All shallots are brass and are marked “H. T. Levi,” one of the reed voicers for William A. Johnson, according to both Barbara Owen²⁷ and Elsworth.²⁸ This stop bears a strong resemblance to the Trumpet heard in the recording of the Samuel Green organ at Armitage, Staffordshire, England (see the section on Recordings).

The Trumpet was carefully disassembled during the restoration and its measurements carefully tabulated; see the drawings and tables below. Measurements unfortunately omitted were the height of the block and the length and width at the top of the main taper on the tongues.

 

II Mixture

The author added a two-rank mixture in planed common metal to the Great during the 1976 restoration. While the merits of this can be debated, it was added in a manner that did not affect the other stops. A thick oak board was mounted at the back of the key channels, extending backwards and upwards, making this the ninth stop on the Great. The pipework was narrowly scaled in the manner of Johnson, roughly -7 half tones from 2⁄3′ pitch to 1⁄4′ pitch, then widening to about -3 half tones at 1⁄8′ pitch. A great many Johnson organs of this size had mixtures. It should be noted that Johnson mixtures of the time period during which Opus 161 was created were called Sesquialtera, and they included third-sounding ranks. Elsworth states, “ . . . these were composed of 17th, 19th, and 22nd ranks [i.e., 13⁄5′, 11⁄3′, and 1′, the same pitches observed in Samuel Green’s Sesquialteras] with two or three breaks.”²⁹ The mixture added by the author is more typical of later Johnson work in its composition without thirds.

The voicing of the cutups was a fortunate accident, where the pipes were mouth-voiced before realizing that they were left many half tones overlength by the pipemaker. When the cone-tuned pipes were cut to length, it was obvious that the cutups were very high. But this was fortuitous, because it taught the lesson that high cutups can have a superb blend, and this mixture provided a fine sparkling glitter in the plenum with no hint of harshness. There are no ears on any pipes. The toes are relatively more open than what Johnson would have done and the cutups are higher. The mixture composition is as follows:

 

C 2⁄3′ 1⁄2′

c 1′ 2⁄3′

c′ 11⁄3′ 1′

c′′ 2′ 11⁄3′

c′′′ 4′ 2′

 

Barbara Owen noted that William A. Johnson was hired to add a VII Cymbal to the Hook organ.³⁰ This mixture was installed in 1870, and no records indicate how this happened. The political implications invite much speculation, of course. The differences in scaling and voicing of the Johnson mixture relative to the Hook chorus illuminates the different approach to chorus design between Johnson and Hook. We will look at this in detail in the graphical analysis. The Johnson VII Cymbal provides a scintillating crown to the Hook chorus and contains a third-sounding rank. In 1871 William H. Johnson, the son of William A. Johnson, joined his father as a partner in the firm and the mixtures built from that time deleted the third-sounding rank.³¹ ν

Notes and Credits

All photos, drawings, tables, and illustrations are courtesy of the author’s collection if not otherwise noted. Most of the color photos were unfortunately taken by the author with an inferior camera in low resolution. David Sedlak used a high quality camera, lenses, and film to produce the high-resolution color photos of the church and its architectural details; these are all attributed to Sedlak.

17. The Johnson Organs, p. 50.

18. Ibid, p. 22.

19. Ibid, p. 23.

20. The History of the English Organ, p. 186.

21. The History of the English Organ, p. 185.

22. Ibid, p. 207.

23. The Johnson Organs, p. 25.

24. Ibid, p. 45.

25. Ibid, p. 47.

26. John M. Nolte, “Scaling Pipes in Wood,” ISO Journal, No. 36, December 2010, pp. 8–19.

27. Scot L. Huntington, Barbara Owen, Stephen L. Pinel, Martin R. Walsh. Johnson Organs 1844–1898, The Princeton Academy of the Arts, Culture, and Society, 2015, Cranbury, pp. 11, 13, 14, 16.

28. The Johnson Organs, p. 36.

29. Ibid, p. 48.

30. Johnson Organs 1844–1898, pp. 17-18.

31. The Johnson Organs, p. 48.

To be continued.

Viktoria Franken

 

In January 2015, Buzard Pipe Organ Builders dismantled a small practice instrument in an apartment in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (The organ was originally installed on the campus of St. Cloud State College, St. Cloud, Minnesota.) Although nothing seemed to be special up to this point, this instrument is one of several practice/home organs built by Lawrence Phelps & Associates.

The design of this two-manual and pedal instrument served the main idea of an instrument made just for practicing: that of experiencing the direct touch of the keyboards, and the little resistance before the pallet opens. It has a pure and honest “touch” experience for the player, with a simple and traditional design, providing clear music without anything that could take your eyes and ears away. The voicing of course was of its time—“open-toe baroque.” The disposition of the instrument was: Manual I, 8′ Gedeckt and a prepared-for stop; Manual II, 8′ Rohrflute, Octave 2′; Pedal, 8′ Bourdon.

 

The windchest and the trackers

Switching on the organ, still assembled at the former owner’s residence, we heard many ciphers, which could have been caused simply by infrequent use of the instrument. Opening the windchest at the shop, however, showed its real problems. The chest is divided in two manuals, separating each set of pallets with a board drilled out to provide wind-flow. The mechanical design fit a full set of pipes (61 notes) on a chest, but to be able to make the chest as small as possible, led to really tight spacing of the pallet slots. The pallets, made out of cedar, are drilled out to reduce their own weight, and they are pulled down in the middle guided by two pins on each end. They were covered with a thick felt and leather combination and held up to the pallet board with two spiral action springs. Having the pallet slots so close to each other caused the builder to cut the pallets very narrow and almost give them no space on the pallet board to seal. 

Also, the felt and leather had to be cut exactly along the pallet’s edges, because otherwise the pallets would interfere with each other. That caused ciphers and led the people who took care of the instrument to cut even more of the material away, so that some pallets were totally under-cut and not sealing against the pallet slots anymore. The plywood pallet board was uneven, and a lot of pallet guide pins were bent. Our shop stripped all the pallets and glued new felt and leather on, as well as cut them correctly, evened out the surface of the pallet board, and straightened the pins. 

In addition, the whole chest was flooded with glue to make sure there were no run-throughs after finding several cracks in the channel bars where the toeboards were directly attached to the chest. The last modification to make the instrument leak less and make it more silent was switching the old hard plastic seals for neoprene ones, as well as threading the action wire through a drilled-out bullet resting on a felt punching to seal the hole in the pallet box.

The action is historically inspired mechanical tracker, with cedar wood tracker parts, aluminum wires, and plastic nuts. Directly underneath the bottom board is a set of backfalls, directing the movement of the keys to the pallets. To transfer spacing from the keyboard to the pallets, the backfalls are oriented fan-like. It is a 1:1 proportion comparing the pallet travel to the key travel (11 mm). All the damaged cedar backfalls have been restored conserving as much of the original material as possible. The backfalls themselves are pivoted in (at that time popular) low-friction “Wienerkapsel” axle holders. [“Wienerkapsel” is a term for a certain design of axle holders.] The pedal chest, being larger, is located at the bottom of the organ and serves as a foundation for the rest of the instrument. It had fewer issues than the manual chest.  Nevertheless, all pallet surfaces were renewed to guarantee proper working since it is almost impossible to get to these once everything is assembled.

 

The coupling system

Although the organ was designed to be very small overall, Phelps made the console normal size, putting in two 61-note manuals and three couplers (I/P, II/P, II/I). The coupling action also looks to be a standard console with iron frames, iron bevels, levers, and pistons. It uses slotted one-armed backfalls in the frame to catch the aluminum and plastic-nut tracker wires. Unfortunately, calculating the travels of each coupler in combination with the travel of the key and the pallet was not compatible with the small organ design and the console dimensions. That caused a heavy impact upon the rollerboards as well as on the coupling mechanism. All rollerboard parts had to be re-glued because they literally got “kicked out” of place. After recalculating, adjusting and modifying travels, and relocating the bevel points for the backfalls, everything now works as well as it can. All the couplers are playable now, unlike before when notes pulled through or even did not play.

 

The wind system

The blower was sitting in a box on top of the reservoir and right underneath the toeboard for the low octaves of the 8′ Gedeckt and 8′ Rohrflute. There was no way to oil the blower or fix something on the reservoir. So after removing the blower box from the organ, the pedal and manual reservoirs received new leather, and the rhombus springs were adjusted to give them more space to be effective than before (they were so compressed they had no function at all). The blower was serviced and mounted in a new blower box, which sits right next to the case. (The new blower box was made to hold a larger blower, if the organ’s next owner wants to add a 16′ Bourdon to the Pedal.) That makes more space inside, and provides for better maintenance of the blower.

 

The stops

As mentioned earlier, the organ had an 8′ Gedeckt stop and a preparation on Manual I and an 8′ Rohrflute and 2′ Octave on Manual II. The prepared stop for future addition was covered by a board. We took the opportunity to add a 4′ Kleinflute, so that the organist will have more registration possibilities. Only the 4′ and 2′ are on sliders, because the 8′ toeboards are glued directly onto the chest and play all the time. We renewed the stop action parts completely, making new sliders and their actions as well as new seals underneath the 2′ and the newly made 4′ toeboards. Two new hand-turned drawknobs represent on the outside that things have changed. Originally the low octaves of the 8′ stops were tubed off the chest onto a toeboard above the blower box. At some point in the organ’s history, revoicing of the low octaves of the 8′ stops was attempted to make them louder. That caused all kinds of wind flow problems and resulting voicing instability. The only proper way to fix that problem (given the small amount of wind flow from the chest and the too high cut-ups of the pipes) was to build a pneumatic firing-chest, which gets the note impulse from the manual chest, but plays the pipes from wind produced by the pedal reservoir. The pneumatic firing-chest found a place underneath the low octave toeboard, in the former blower box space.

 

The pipework

Being a “child of its time,” the organ’s metal pipes are spotted metal, with open toes and narrow flues but surprisingly large scales, which is not typically baroque, but makes it possible to use the instrument as a house organ without having a screaming 2′ directly in your face. Fortunately there was not too much to do to the pipes, since they were in good condition. Except for some dents, which we removed, nothing really looked too bad. The temperament is equal and A=440 Hz. The Gedackt 8′ voicing was bad. In the attempt to revoice it, pipes were cut up really high to get more volume, not taking into account the lack of wind provided by the chest thanks to the long tubing. The Gedackt 8′ was turned into a 4′ by moving all the pipes down an octave, putting an addition of twelve treble pipes on top, and storing the low octave pipes in a basement, where they were luckily found while moving the instrument to the shop. By putting in the new firing chests, the voicing issues are fixed now; the pipes play on higher pressure than before, helping the high cut-up and therefore bringing the old 8′ back.

Now this instrument provides you with the basic practice conditions as originally intended, and with the new Kleinflute 4′ you have more possibilities for sound and registration variety. There is also the ability to add a 16′ Bourdon in the Pedal if desired.

 

In conclusion

We can honestly say every wire, every pallet, even every single little action nut and all the other smaller and bigger parts have been disassembled, checked for proper work, renewed, or restored. Every inch of the instrument has been worked on without changing what it is—a practice organ. All technical issues were improved as much as possible. We put a lot of passion in this little instrument to make it the practice organ it deserves to be, to show its character and personality. Almost 30 years after Mr. Phelps built it, it is now more ready than ever before to be played without losing the spirit Mr. Phelps designed it for. If you want a glimpse of its sound, visit our website www.buzardorgans.com/for-sale/. Now it is waiting for someone who will fall in love with it and take it home! ν

 

David Fienen

David Fienen is Emeritus Professor of Music at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota. At Gustavus, he was Cantor at Christ Chapel, taught organ, music theory, chaired the music department, and served as provost and dean of the college his last two years before retirement.

Sitting under a shade tree in his backyard last summer, sipping iced tea with Charles and Birgitta Hendrickson, I asked him about his philosophy of organ building. His immediate answer was, “If I can make them [the congregation] sing, I have succeeded.” To make them sing—what a fine goal!

 

First a physicist

Minnesota native Charles Hendrickson grew up in Willmar, Minnesota, where his father had a law practice. During Charles’s young years, his father, Roy, was also chair of the board of trustees at Gustavus Adolphus College (Roy’s alma mater) in St. Peter, Minnesota, from 1945–53. After Roy passed away in 1954, Charles’s mother, Frances, was hired as secretary to President Edgar Carlson at Gustavus from 1955–ca. 1967. Charles had already started his college career at Gustavus, and now the rest of his family moved to St. Peter. In 1957, Charles graduated from Gustavus with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and mathematics. It is interesting that he is not the only organbuilder with a physics background—Charles Fisk worked for Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project before he began building organs.

After college, Hendrickson started graduate studies at the University of Minnesota for one year, then taught physics at Superior State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin-Superior, Superior, Wisconsin) for a year. He earned his Master of Science degree in physics at the University of Arkansas while also teaching for a year at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee (and serving as head of the department!). He also taught at Northeast State University in Oklahoma before returning to Minnesota to teach physics at Mankato State College (now Minnesota State University Mankato) for a couple of years.

In 1964, Charles married Birgitta Gillberg at Gamla Uppsala Church in Sweden. Birgitta, a native of Sweden, was teaching Swedish at Gustavus at that time. She continued teaching at Gustavus until Eric was born in 1967. She then returned to her academic career in 1975, teaching Swedish and German at Minnesota State University Mankato for 30 years until her retirement.

 

Hendrickson Organ Company: Beginnings

Hendrickson’s interest in the pipe organ began early in his young life, in 1953, when he watched with fascination as the Möller organ was rebuilt and reinstalled at Bethel Lutheran Church in Willmar. Harry Iverson, who was the Möller representative, supervised the regulation and work at the church, and Hendrickson got involved as a “gopher.” Iverson had previously been the Kimball representative and had designed the Minneapolis Auditorium Kimball organ. During graduate school, Hendrickson followed up on this early interest by working on organs (servicing, repairing, moving, tuning) on a part-time basis.

In 1964, Charles Hendrickson was asked to rebuild and significantly enlarge the 1910 Hillgreen-Lane organ in First Lutheran Church in Winthrop, Minnesota, by the pastor of the church, who was a family friend. Pastor Lambert Engwall had talked his congregation into undertaking the project to enlarge the organ in the church, had raised the money for the project, and convinced Hendrickson to tackle this project. As it was already part way through spring semester, Hendrickson resigned his teaching position at Mankato State and thus committed himself to being an organbuilder.

Several interesting things about this instrument, Opus 1, produced by the nascent Hendrickson Organ Company, are worth noting:

• The Swell division consists of pipes from the previous instrument, with new Hauptwerk, Positief, and Pedal divisions. The casework was mostly new to house the new organ.

• The Positief division was housed in its own case cantilevered on the balcony rail—in Rückpositiv position. This was the first Rückpositiv built in Minnesota.

• Hendrickson rented space in the empty Green Giant canning plant in Winthrop to build the organ with three helpers. (This is reminiscent of how older organ builders like Schnitger operated—building on site or at least in the vicinity of the church.)

• The new pipes added to this organ came from Organ Supply.

• Composer David N. Johnson, then on the faculty of St. Olaf College, played the dedication recital in September 1965.

• In 1982, Hendrickson added two mutations and swapped out two flute ranks, bringing the instrument to 36 ranks.

At about the same time, Hendrickson was asked by his home congregation, First Lutheran Church in St. Peter, Minnesota, to build a “temporary” organ for their new sanctuary then under construction to replace the church that had been destroyed by lightning on Mother’s Day in 1962. He readily complied by assembling a two-manual, eight-rank instrument, partly from salvaged materials. The outstanding acoustics of the building helped this small instrument to be amazingly successful, and it also included a horizontal trumpet! This temporary instrument, Opus 2, installed in 1965, remained in the church longer than expected. It was not replaced until his Opus 45 was completed in 1979, a two-manual, 44-rank instrument with a third coupler keyboard.

Opus 3 was another enlargement project, this time resulting in a two-manual, 30-rank instrument at Grace Lutheran Church, Mankato, Minnesota, using some ranks, offset chests, blower, and console from the previous two-manual, nine-rank M. P. Möller organ built for Grace Lutheran’s previous building. This instrument was also subsequently expanded in 1992 by adding a new Great division, horizontal trumpet, new three-manual console, and other tonal and mechanical revisions (Opus 86, three manuals, 41 ranks).

From these beginnings of the Hendrickson Organ Company in 1964, there followed several new instruments, including Opus 6, of two manuals, eight ranks, at St. John Lutheran Church in Yankton, South Dakota, and Opus 9, of two manuals, 24 ranks, at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in La Crosse, Wisconsin, plus more revisions, enlargements, and rebuilds, leading up to Opus 10 in 1970. Interestingly, the Yankton instrument, a larger version of Opus 2, came about because Harold Spitznagel was the architect of both First Lutheran Church in St. Peter (which housed Hendrickson Opus 2) and of St. John Lutheran Church in Yankton (Opus 6). The Yankton instrument originally contained only eight ranks, later enlarged to 12 after a fire in the church in 2009.

It is worthwhile to look further at the early influences on Hendrickson. He is largely a self-taught organbuilder, learning by experience, by voracious reading, and from the influences of Russ Johnson (an acoustician) and Robert Noehren (an organbuilder, performer, and teacher himself). Around the time Hendrickson was starting to build his Opus 1 and Opus 2, he met Robert Noehren at the Central Lutheran Organ Symposium in Minneapolis. From Noehren he became convinced to use primarily all-electric action when building electric-action instruments. And from Noehren, he learned the concepts of judicious borrowing and duplexing to retain clarity in the resulting organ while realizing some economies of budget and space. His Opus 1 at Winthrop used electro-pneumatic chests for the Great and Swell, but all-electric for the Positief. Subsequently, he primarily (though not exclusively) used all-electric chests when building non-mechanical-action instruments.

 

The Hendrickson factory

The year 1970 saw a new chapter unfold. Hendrickson was contacted by William Kuhlman, professor of organ, to build a new organ for Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Most of his work prior to this time had been accomplished in his basement, garage, rented facilities, or on site. Now, in order to have a tall erecting room, he took the plunge, purchased land in the industrial park in St. Peter, and built the first part of his organ factory, including in the center a tall room where he could set up this two-story instrument. The organ for Luther College, Opus 10, of two manuals, 35 ranks, was his first mechanical-action instrument. 

This organ was intended as a teaching, practice, and performance instrument, and was built on a movable platform like a hovercraft so it could move to a neighboring room. Subsequently, it was relocated to a permanent teaching studio on the campus, the floating mechanism disabled, and an electric-action, unified trumpet rank on the Great was reinstalled as an 8′ horizontal reed, playable from the mechanical action. Due to heavy use, the keyboards have been replaced twice on this instrument.

The original factory consisted of a tall central erecting room, with the office in the back as an upstairs room, and two flanking rooms for wood work, pipe set up, and voicing. The equipment included the voicing machine originally built by Vogelpohl & Spaeth in New Ulm, Minnesota, in the late 19th century. Over the years, a sizeable building was added behind the original shop, including an assembly room and new voicing room, with the earlier flanking rooms repurposed. Later still, another former business building was moved to adjoin the addition, becoming the office, drafting studio, and library storage for the extensive collection of books and organ journals kept close at hand. (Hendrickson has every issue of The Diapason since 1913, and of The American Organist since 1929!) A large warehouse was added next door for much-needed storage and to house the spray booth. Interestingly, after a tornado struck in 1998, both this author and the Gustavus chaplain rented space in the warehouse to store all of our furniture while our houses were being rebuilt. More recently, a disastrous fire in November 2013 engulfed the original shop building. (Andreas Hendrickson, Charles’s younger son, designed a replacement shop building, which has been recently completed.) Fortunately, the added buildings were separated enough that they were not damaged, and no organs were destroyed except for some wood pipes, machinery, and some supplies. 

With Opus 10 for Luther College, Hendrickson began building mechanical-action instruments, either with mechanical stop action or electric stop action. A significant portion of the organs built by the firm feature mechanical action. When asked, Hendrickson expressed his preference for this type of action “just because I like it.” He also indicated he felt such instruments are “very satisfying” and provide the “best possible solution.” But Hendrickson indicated that throughout his career, he particularly wanted to “satisfy a need.” This is a most salient point—he set out to provide a good musical instrument for a wide variety of situations, large and small, and while his preference would be a tracker organ, sometimes placement, finances, or other considerations necessitated using electric action. If that were the case, he set out to make it the best it could be. Not infrequently, his project working with a church to improve their musical resources would also involve redesigning either the chancel or the balcony to facilitate placement of the new instrument and the location of the choir and/or the liturgical appointments.

During the half-century so far of the Hendrickson Organ Company, the firm has been involved in a wide variety of organ projects, building large and very small instruments, restoring, rebuilding, and expanding both historic instruments and some of their own, adding single divisions and/or replacing consoles—a variety of, as Charles said, “solving problems” for particular situations and congregations. To comment on each of the many projects (opus numbers) undertaken by the Hendrickson Organ Company would occupy far more space than is possible here; instead, a summary is presented, featuring a few interesting examples. 

 

Mechanical-action instruments

There are 27 mechanical-action organs on the Hendrickson opus list, ranging from a practice instrument with one 8′ flute for each of two manuals and pedal (Opus 33) to his largest instrument at Wayzata Community Church in Wayzata, Minnesota (Opus 92, four manuals, 70 ranks). The Wayzata instrument is unusual in that it incorporates a large Paul Granlund bronze sculpture in the middle of the façade.

Other sizable mechanical-action organs include Opus 47, a three-manual, 43-rank organ in St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church, New Prague, Minnesota, and Opus 35, a three-manual, 59-rank instrument at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Mankato, Minnesota. These large instruments have mechanical key and stop action. The New Prague instrument leans toward a French Classic style, though not exclusively. The later Opus 78, of three manuals, 62 ranks, at St. Joseph Cathedral in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, utilizes a multi-channel electric stop action. It was also an instrument of a more complex design because of its size and the necessity for a detached keydesk. Hendrickson also had to redesign the gallery choir risers to accommodate the new organ. All three of these instruments were placed in rear balconies, and the Mankato and New Prague installations feature Rückpositiv divisions.

While most of Hendrickson’s two-manual mechanical-action instruments contain between 12 and 29 ranks, the largest is Opus 45, a two-manual, 44-rank instrument completed in 1979 at Hendrickson’s own church, First Lutheran Church, St. Peter, Minnesota. This instrument finally replaced the “temporary” Opus 2 that he had built nearly 15 years earlier. The organ features a horizontal trumpet on the Great (as had Opus 2) but also includes a trumpet within the case for that division. For this instrument, Hendrickson used a chassis from Laukhuff, Pedal division façade pipes made of aluminum, and a third manual as a coupler manual. This instrument is housed in an excellent acoustical environment and is a particularly successful installation. Marie-Claire Alain examined the organ upon completion and played the dedication recital.

In addition to these full-size tracker organs, the company built five portative organs consisting of one manual (no pedal) with 8′ flute, 4′ flute, and 2′  principal stops. The first such instrument was built for the St. Olaf Choir (Opus 16) and was intended to be able to be transported in a regular coach bus (with a couple of seats removed). To fit that size, the instrument has a short octave in the bass (lacking C#, D#, F#, and G#) and the compass is an octave shorter in the treble than a normal 61-note compass. In addition, the keyboard folds down inside the case, thus fitting through a bus door (at least back in the early 1970s). The stops are divided between bass and treble. The blower is also enclosed in the case, which is mounted on casters and has handles for ease in lifting and moving it around. After a second version was ordered by the Rockford Kantorei in Rockford, Illinois (Opus 18), three more instruments were built—“for every board we cut, we cut three.” These instruments eventually found their way to the University of Wisconsin in River Falls, Wisconsin (Opus 30), Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota (Opus 81), and Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota (Opus 72a). The organs are principally used for continuo playing.

 

Electric-action instruments

The Hendrickson opus list includes nearly 60 electric-action instruments. Thirty of these projects involved organs with fewer than 20 ranks, most incorporating at least some borrowing or duplexing, using the ideas Hendrickson had acquired from Robert Noehren. Many of these instruments use all-electric chests, as mentioned above. However, for Opus 60, a two-manual, 19-rank organ built for First Lutheran Church in Glencoe, Minnesota, the builder used slider chests with electric pull-downs. The largest two-manual electric-action instrument is Opus 25, of two manuals, 38 ranks, installed in First Lutheran Church, St. James, Minnesota (another instrument with a horizontal trumpet).

A dozen three-manual instruments (and one four-manual) contain 30 to 54 ranks. Beginning with Opus 1 (three manuals, 34 ranks), the list includes many significant enlargements of instruments by Möller, Aeolian-Skinner, Austin, Hillgreen-Lane, and Schantz, the largest being the expansion of a 1961 Schlicker (three manuals, 32 ranks) as Hendrickson Opus 100 (three manuals, 54 ranks) for Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Two notable large all-new instruments are Opus 51 (three manuals, 46 ranks) at St. Mark Catholic Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Opus 34 (three manuals, 51 ranks) at St. John’s Lutheran in Owatonna, Minnesota (yet another organ with a dramatic horizontal trumpet). The Owatonna instrument also uses pallet and slider chests with electric pulldowns.

What is clear from all these instruments is that Charles Hendrickson and the many workers over the years in the shop were interested in creating or improving musical instruments that would “make them sing,” whether in the big city or the small country church. Hendrickson always endeavored to learn from the past, from his own experience, and from the lessons the industry had learned, whether from books or from his colleagues in the business. He was not interested in modeling after a particular style or a particular period, nor was he dogmatic about actions or particular stops, but was focused on a clear, singing tone and satisfying the particular needs of a group of people assembled in a specific congregation.

 

Rebuilds, restorations, and
renovations of 19th– and early 20th-century organs

The company website (www.hendricksonorgan.com) lists over 116 opus numbers. They include more than two dozen rebuilds, renovations, and restorations, notably:

• Rebuilding and enlarging the 1862 Marklove organ in the Cathedral of Our Merciful Savior in Faribault, Minnesota (Opus 70, two manuals, 34 ranks), using many of the original pipes—possibly the oldest pipes in Minnesota;

• Rebuilding two other late 19th-century organs, one by Hutchings, Plaisted & Co. (Opus 40, two manuals, 21 ranks), and the 1896 Kimball tubular pneumatic instrument located in the Union Sunday School in Clermont, Iowa (Opus 51a, two manuals, 27 ranks). The latter is the largest remaining tubular-pneumatic Kimball in original condition;

• Restoring, rebuilding, or revising several early 20th-century instruments by Hinners, Hillgreen-Lane, Kimball, Estey, and Vogelpohl & Spaeth (a late 19th/early 20th-century Minnesota builder);

• Maintaining, revising, and renovating the large four-manual, 52-rank Hillgreen-Lane organ in Christ Chapel at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, especially after the 1998 tornado severely damaged the entire campus and community. Organ repairs included cleaning all reeds, re-racking pipes, building a new Great chest, and replacing the keyboards;

• Rescuing Hendrickson Opus 53 (two manuals, 27 ranks) that was housed in St. Peter Catholic Church, which was destroyed by the same tornado. This mechanical-action organ was later used as part of the much larger instrument (Opus 99, three manuals, 40 ranks) designed by Andreas Hendrickson for the new church;

• Rebuilding and moving a much-altered 1931 Aeolian-Skinner (Opus 877) to a church in Arkansas in 1990 (Opus 88, three manuals, 30 ranks), then, after that church had closed, moving the instrument and reinstalling it at Celebration Lutheran Church in Sartell, Minnesota, in 2009 (Opus 115, three manuals, 35 ranks).

 

Hendrickson as author

From his beginnings in academe, Hendrickson never lost his inquisitive mind or his desire to share what he had learned. An active member of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America (APOBA) and the American Institute of Organbuilders, he served as president of APOBA for about 8 years. During that time, he arranged for the organization to commence sponsoring Pipedreams on American Public Media and oversaw the statement APOBA produced regarding “sampled voices” in pipe organs.

A large undertaking by Hendrickson was a long series of articles he wrote, mainly for The American Organist. These included articles on families of tone, divisions of the organ, tonal architecture, pipe materials, and a host of other relevant topics. The Hendrickson Organ Company website lists and links to 46 of these articles written between 1976 and 2003. [http://www.enchamade.com/hendricksonorgan/wb/pages/articles.php]

More recently, Hendrickson returned to his physics roots by collaborating on a research project with Dr. Tom Huber and some of his students at Gustavus Adolphus College. A summary of their study, “Vibrational Modes of an Organ Reed Pipe,” can be accessed at http://physics.gac.edu/~Huber/organs/vibrometer/ and an abstract of Huber’s Faculty Shop Talk about the project can be found at https://gustavus.edu/events/shoptalks/Shop0304.htm.

 

The future

Charles Hendrickson has retired from active involvement in the work of the Hendrickson Organ Company. The enterprise continues under the leadership of his two sons, Andreas and Eric. Andreas, who holds an architecture degree from the University of Minnesota, is in charge of design, while his older brother, Eric, is head of installations, tuning, and service. Andreas also called on his architecture background to design the rebuilding of the portion of the shop lost to the November 2013 fire. The company services many of their own instruments, plus numerous other instruments around Minnesota and neighboring states. The brothers grew up in the organ factory and learned many of their skills from their father. Thus a new generation is continuing the process of building, rebuilding, and repairing pipe organs in this small town in southern Minnesota. ν

 

References

Bies, Jessica. “PORTRAITS: Sons of St. Peter pipe organ maker continue Hendrickson legacy,” St. Peter Herald, March 27, 2014. www.southernminn.com/st_peter_herald/news/article_bb355bf8-3aea-55a2-b9…

Hendrickson Organ Company website: http://hendricksonorgan.com

Huber, Tom, Brian Collins, Charles Hendrickson, and Mario Pineda. “Vibrational Modes of an Organ Reed Pipe.” Presentation for Acoustical Society of America Meeting, November 2003. http://physics.gustavus.edu/~huber/organs/

Interviews with Charles Hendrickson in June and July, 2016, plus several phone conversations.

Organ Historical Society Pipe Organ Database: database.organsociety.org

TCAGO Pipe Organ List: http://www.pipeorganlist.com/OrganList/index.html

Vance, Daniel. “Hendrickson Organ Company.” Connect Business Magazine, July 1999, Mankato, Minnesota. http://connectbiz.com/1999/07/hendrickson-organ-company/

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Preface

Good documentation of organs with enough pipe measurements to permit an analysis of both scaling and voicing is extremely rare. Pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights (cutups) may be sometimes found, but toe diameters and especially flueway depths are rare. Rarer still are wind system data, allowing a full analysis of wind flow and wind dynamics, parameters that have an enormous impact on the sound of an organ. The reader will find all of this in the following essay on William A. Johnson’s Opus 161.

Good documentation is important for several reasons. We can make useful comparisons with other organs to learn how a specific sound is achieved. And perhaps most importantly, we can document the organ for posterity; while organs are consumed in wars and fires, they are most often replaced or modified with the changing tastes of time. They never survive restorations without changes. Comprehensive documentation may also serve to deter future interventions that intend to “modernize” an organ. Lastly, future restorations of important organs will be more historically accurate if they are based on good documentation.

The mid-nineteenth-century scaling and voicing of William A. Johnson is very similar to the late-eighteenth-century work of the English organbuilder Samuel Green, as evidenced by the data from Johnson’s Opus 16 and Opus 161. Stephen Bicknell provides us with detailed descriptions of Green’s work.¹ Johnson’s scaling is utterly unlike the work of E. & G. G. Hook, whose 1843 Opus 50 for the Methodist Church of Westfield, Massachusetts, set Johnson on a career in organbuilding when he helped the Hooks with its installation.² In this essay we will explore Johnson’s Opus 161 in detail and contrast it with the Opus 322 of the Hooks, both of which were constructed within a year of each other.³ While the Hooks used a Germanic constant scale in their pipe construction, Johnson significantly reduced the scale of his upperwork stops, much in the manner of Samuel Green and classical French builders.

The question arises as to whether Johnson came to his design theory by way of a process of convergent evolution (i.e., independently), or whether he was exposed to the organ Samuel Green shipped to the Battle Square Church in Boston in 1792, and which “was played virtually unaltered for a century,” according to Barbara Owen.⁴ The author suggested to Owen that the Green organ may have had a strong influence on Johnson, but she thought it unlikely that Johnson would have made the long trip from Westfield, far to the west of Boston. 

Travel would indeed have been much more difficult in 1843 when Johnson was exposed to the Hook organ at Westfield. But of some significance was the extension of the Western Railroad from Boston to Westfield in 1843. This new railroad may have been the means by which the Hook organ was shipped to Westfield. Elsworth (see endnote 2) clearly makes the case that Johnson was intoxicated by organbuilding with his exposure to the Hook organ. It is easy to imagine that he would have made a pilgrimage to Boston, at the time a mecca of American organbuilding, perhaps invited by the Hooks to accompany them after finishing their installation in Westfield.⁵

The author was engaged in 1976 by Mrs. Gene Davis, the organist of the Piru Community United Methodist Church, to evaluate the organ at that church. The identity of the organ was in question as no nameplate was in evidence on the console, the organ was barely playable, and its sound was greatly muted by the crude placement of panels in front of the Great division to make it expressive by forcing its sound through the shades of the Swell division above it. An inspection showed that nearly all of the pipework was intact, and a contract was signed to restore the organ to playable condition. The organ was cleaned, the pipes repaired, the few missing pipes replaced, and much of the action repaired by Michael McNeil and David Sedlak.

The church office files produced an undated, typed document that stated: 

 

The pipe organ in the Methodist Church of Piru was built by William Johnson, of Westfield, Mass., in the early 1860s, making it probably the oldest operating pipe organ in California. It was a second-hand organ when transported by sailing ship 17,000 miles around Cape Horn before 1900, and installed in a Roman Catholic Church in San Francisco. After the earthquake and fire of 1906, the organ was moved to another church and probably at this time parts damaged in the quake were replaced. After many more years of service it was retired and put into storage until, in 1935, Mr. Hugh Warring was persuaded to purchase it for the Piru church. It was purchased for the storage cost of $280.

Evidence of a different and more likely provenance was discovered during the removal of pipework and the cleaning of the organ. Three labels were found glued to the bottom of the reservoir (perhaps as patches for leaks). Two labels read: “Geo. Putnam ‘Janitor’ Stockton California July 1 ’99.” A third label read: “From the Periodical Department, Presbyterian Board of Publication, and Sabbath = Schoolwork, Witherspoon Bldg, 1319 Walnut St., Phila. PA.” At a much later time Reverend Thomas Carroll, SJ, noticed that the clues of Stockton, California, and the Presbyterian church correlated to an entry in the opus list of Johnson organs, compiled in Elsworth’s 1984 book, The Johnson Organs. Opus 161 was shipped in 1864 to the “Presbyterian Church, Stockton, Cal. The church is Eastside Presbyterian.” The organ was listed as having two manuals and 22 stops.⁶ At this time such features as couplers and tremulants were counted as “stops,” and this roughly fit the description of the Piru organ. The façade of the Piru organ is also consistent with the architecture of organs built by Johnson in the 1864 time frame. Elsworth’s illustrations include a console layout of Opus 200 (1866) virtually identical to the Piru organ layout; Opus 134 (1862) exhibits the impost, stiles, and Gothic ornamentation of the Piru organ; Opus 183 (1865) has similar pipe flats and also the console layout of the Piru organ.⁷ Many other details verified the Johnson pedigree, among them the inscription “H. T. Levi” on the reed pipes. Barbara Owen pointed out that Levi was Johnson’s reed voicer during the time of manufacture of Opus 161.⁸ The pieces of evidence fell together when Jim Lewis discovered a newspaper photo of Opus 161 in the Eastside Presbyterian Church of Stockton that matched the façade of the Piru organ. The most likely scenario is that Johnson shipped Opus 161 directly to that church. The Gothic architecture of the Johnson façade also reflects the architecture of the Eastside Presbyterian Church façade. A handwritten note on the Piru church document stated: “Pipe organ and art glass memorial windows dedication June 2, 1935 per Fillmore Herald May 31, 1935, a gift of Hugh Warring.”

It is possible that the organ went from the Presbyterian church into storage, and was later moved to its present location in the 1934–1935 time frame. Even so, we can say with nearly absolute certainty that this organ is William A. Johnson’s Opus 161.

 

Tonal design overview

It is obvious from even a casual glance at Elsworth’s study of Johnson organs that the Johnson tonal style was based on a classical principal chorus that included mixtures in all but the more modest instruments. But the voicing style is gentle and refined, and bears great similarity to the late-eighteenth-century English work of Samuel Green, whose meantone organ at Armitage in Staffordshire is an excellent surviving example.⁹ Tuned in meantone, Johnson Opus 161 would easily pass muster as the work of Green. The tonal contrast between Green and Hook is stark, and the Hook data serve as an excellent counterpoint to the data from the Johnson organ. Green was the organbuilder favored by the organizers of the Handel Commemoration Festival of 1784, who went so far as to have one of Green’s organs temporarily installed in Westminster Abbey for that occasion. King George III paid Samuel Green to build an organ for Saint George’s Chapel at Windsor.

Stephen Bicknell’s The History of the English Organ relates important details of Samuel Green’s work that we find in Johnson’s Opus 161. “. . . Green’s voicing broke new ground . . . . Delicacy was achieved partly by reducing the size of the pipe foot and by increasing the amount of nicking. The loss of grandeur in the chorus was made up for by increasing the scales of the extreme basses.”¹⁰ And “Where Snetzler provided a chorus of startling boldness and with all the open metal ranks of equal power, Green introduced refinement and delicacy and modified the power of the off-unison ranks to secure a new kind of blend.”¹¹ The Hooks, like Snetzler, used a constant scale where all of the pipes in the principal chorus at a given pitch had about the same scale and power.

The most basic data set for describing power balances and voicing must include, at a minimum, pipe diameters, widths of mouths, heights of mouths (“cutup”), diameters of foot toe holes, and depths of mouth flueways. The data in this essay are presented in normalized scales for inside pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights. Tables showing how raw data are converted into normalized scales may be found in the article on the E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322 published in The Diapason, July 2017. The full set of Johnson data and the Excel spreadsheet used to analyze them may be obtained at no charge by emailing the author.¹² Also available is the book The Sound of Pipe Organs, which describes in detail the theory and derivation of the models used in this essay.¹³

 

Pitch, wind pressure, and general notes

The current pitch of the Johnson and Hook organs is dissimilar and should be taken into consideration when observing the scaling charts. The Hook organ is now pitched at A=435.3 Hz at 74 degrees Fahrenheit, while the Johnson organ is now pitched at 440 Hz. The original pitch of the Hook organ was 450 Hz; new low C pipes were added when the pitch was changed to 435 Hz, and the original pipework was moved up a halftone, widening its scales by a halftone. The original pitch of the Johnson organ was approximately 450 Hz; the pipes were lengthened to achieve a lower pitch.¹⁴ The Hook and Johnson organs are both tuned in equal temperament. The wind pressure, water column, of the Hook is 76 mm (3 inches); the Johnson organ was measured at 76 mm static and 70 mm under full flow on the Great division. The pressure was reduced during the restoration to 63 mm static. This allowed the pitch of the pipes to drop, making the adjustment to 440 Hz with fewer changes to the pipe lengths; most of the pipes that were originally cut to length had been crudely pinched at the top to lower their pitch. With the reduction in pressure the ears of the 4′ Flute à Cheminée, with its soldered tops, achieved a more normal position. 

The Piru room acoustic was reasonably efficient, and while the Johnson voicing is very restrained, it was adequate to fill this room on the reduced pressure. The Piru church seats 109, has plastered walls, wood and carpet flooring, and a peaked ceiling about 30 feet high; the reverberation, empty, as heard with normal ears, is well under one second (this is not the measurement used by architects that erroneously reports much longer reverberation). Elsworth relates that “the wind pressure which Johnson used during this period was generally between 21⁄2 and 23⁄4 inches [63.5 and 70 mm], and, in rare examples, nearly 3 inches [76 mm].”¹⁵ The photograph of the original Eastside Presbyterian Church for which the Johnson was designed implies a larger acoustical space than that of the Piru church.

The compass of the Johnson organ is 56 notes in the manuals, C to g′′′, and 27 notes in the pedal, C to d′.

 

Stoplist

The Johnson console was found in poor condition, missing the builder’s nameplate and many of its stop knob faces. Correct stop names were derived from the markings on the pipes and the missing faces were replaced. The original stoplist is reconstructed as follows (Johnson did not use pitch designations):

GREAT

8′ Open Diapason

8′ Keraulophon

8′ Clarabella

4′ Principal

4′ Flute à Cheminée (TC)

22⁄3′ Twelfth

2′ Fifteenth

8′ Trumpet

SWELL

16′ Bourdon (TC)

8′ Open Diapason

8′ Stopped Diapason

8′ Viol d’Amour (TF)

4′ Principal

8′ Hautboy (TF)

Tremolo

PEDAL

16′ Double Open Diapason

 

Couplers

Great to Pedal

Swell to Pedal

Swell to Great

 

Blower signal

The above list adds up to 20 controls. The Johnson company opus list describes Opus 161 as having 22 “stops.” This may have reflected the original intention to supply the organ with stops having split basses, which are commonly found in Johnson specifications. The sliders for the Keraulophon and the Trumpet were found with separate bass sections from C to B, professionally screwed together with the sections from tenor C to d′′′. The two additional bass stops would account for a total of 22 “stops.” There are no extra holes in the stop jambs to indicate the deleted split bass stop actions. The extant stopjambs are apparently a later modification from the time of the installation at Piru or before. Elsworth noted that all Johnson organs of this period were constructed with square stop shanks.¹⁶ The current shanks are round where they pass through the stopjambs and are square where they connect to the stop action.

Several stop knobs were switched during the 1935 installation at Piru; e. g., the Viole d’Amour in the pre-restoration photo of the right jamb belongs in the position noted on the left jamb with the black plastic label “Bell Gamba,” which indeed is how this stop was constructed. The Swell Stopped Diapason was operated by a knob labeled “Principal” [sic]. The illustrations of the left stopjamb and right stopjamb diagrams provide the correct nomenclature as restored in the correct positions, with the incorrect 1935 nomenclature in parentheses ( ) and the correct pitches in brackets [ ].

 

The wind system

The wind system can be modeled from two viewpoints: the restriction of flow from the wind trunks, pallets, channels, and pipe toes; and the dynamics of the wind. Wind dynamics are fully explained in The Sound of Pipe Organs and are a very important aspect of an organ’s ability to sustain a fast tempo with stability or conversely to enhance the grand cadences of historic literature. The data set on the Johnson allows us to model all of these characteristics. Figure 1 shows the Johnson wind flow model.

In Figure 1 we see a table of the pipe toe diameters and their calculated areas; values in red font are calculations or interpolations from the data (e.g., wood pipe toes are difficult to measure when they have wooden wedges to restrict flow). These areas are measured for a single note in each octave of the compass.

A model for the total required wind flow of the full plenum of the organ assumes a maximum of ten pallets (a ten-fingered chord), as described in the table, and the flow is multiplied by the number of the pallets played for each octave in the compass. The sum of the toe areas of all ten manual pallets in the tutti is 5,057 mm². The total area of the manual wind trunks is 38,872 mm², and we see that the wind trunks afford 7.7 times more wind than the tutti requires, so much in fact that the trunks do not at all function as an effective resistance in the system.

Interestingly, the Isnard organ at St. Maximin, France, used the main wind trunk as a strong resistor to dampen Helmholtz resonances in the wind system, and that organ has ratios of wind trunk area to a plenum toe area of only 1.07 for the coupled principal chorus of the Grand-Orgue and Positif, but with no reeds, flutes, or mutations. Helmholtz resonances are the source of what is normally called wind shake, and we would expect some mild wind shake with the Johnson’s large wind ducts and low damping resistance. The author’s notes from 1976 state: “Very little sustained shake . . . a considerable fluctuation in pitch when playing moderately fast legato scales, which stabilizes very rapidly . . . this imparts a shimmer . . . .”

In Figure 1 we also see dimensions of the key channels, pallet openings, and the pallet pull length (estimated from the ratios in the action). These allow us to calculate the relative wind flow of the channels and pallets. We find that there are robust margins in wind flow from the channels to the pipe toes (244% at low C to 737% at high C on the Great). This accounts for the small drop in static pressure at 76 mm to a full flow pressure of 70 mm with all stops drawn. Pallet openings are less robust and flow about 100% of the channel area for the first three octaves and 190% in the high treble.

The underlying dynamics of a wind system are the result of the mass of its bellows plate and the volume of air in the system. These factors produce a natural resonance that can enhance the grand cadences of literature with a long surge in the wind, or it can produce a nervous shake if it is too fast. A grand surge in the wind is characterized by a resonant frequency of less than 2 Hz (cycles per second), and it is most often produced by a weighted bellows. A nervous shake results from a sprung bellows. We correct the latter condition with small concussion bellows in modern organs, but the Johnson organ does not have such devices; instead, it features only a large, weighted, double-rise bellows. 

We can model the dynamic response of an organ by using its wind pressure, the area of the bellows plates, and the combined internal volume of its bellows, wind trunks, and pallet boxes. The model in Figure 2 shows the dynamic response of the current Johnson wind system at a relaxed 1.61 Hz. This low resonant frequency drops further to 1.47 Hz when the pressure is raised to its original value of 76 mm. The author’s notes from 1976 state: “Light ‘give’ on full organ; relatively fast buildup to full flow.” That “light give” is the result of the low resonant frequency of the system. The resonant frequency of the Hook organ was modeled at 1.23 Hz, a value lower than the Johnson, and the Hook chorus does indeed exhibit a slower and grander surge on full organ. Figure 3 shows the modeled resonant frequency at the original pressure of 76 mm for the Johnson organ. The equation for modeling the resonant frequency of a wind system along with a worked example on the 1774 Isnard organ at St. Maximin may be found in The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 99–113.

 

The wind system in pictures

See the accompanying pictures: Notebook sketch 1, Great windchest, Toeboard, Notebook sketch 2, Notebook sketch 3, Notebook sketch 4, Great pallet box, Pallet springs, Notebook sketch 5.

 

The layout in pictures

“Green’s organs stand on an independent building frame with the case erected around it, rather than being supported by the structure of the case itself.”¹⁷ Bicknell’s description of a Samuel Green organ applies equally well to this Johnson organ. The casework is built entirely of black walnut, a wood mentioned by Elsworth in reference to Johnson cases. The organ is situated within the front wall of the church. The original black walnut side panels (typical of early Johnson organs) were found crudely cut up and nailed behind the façade in an effort to make the whole organ expressive through the Swell shades. This had the effect of making the Great division sound like a diminutive Echo division. The typical layout of a Johnson organ is well described by Elsworth: “The framework was arranged to carry the chests of the Great organ and the supporting framework for the Swell, which was usually above the Great organ and slightly to the rear.”¹⁸ Such layouts, shown in Figure 4, are common in nineteenth-century American organbuilding. The walkway behind the Great allowed access to the pipes and pallets placed at the rear of that chest, and the rollerboard to the Swell division was normally placed just behind this walkway, allowing access to the Swell pallets that were placed at the front of the Swell windchest. Opus 161 was installed in an opening in the Piru church that was far too shallow to allow the depth of a rearward placement of the Swell division. 

As a result, there is evidence that the Swell windchest may have been reversed, placing its pallets to the back of the windchest, and the chest brought forward over the Great division. Note the lack of clearance between the 4′ Principal pipe and the bottom of the Swell chest in Figure 5. The internal framework shows signs of crude saw cuts; the order of the notes on the Swell chest is the same as the Great, but it is reversed; the Swell rollerboard appears to have been likewise reversed and now faces toward the walkway where the action and rollers are exposed to damage. 

To say that the Piru layout was cramped would be an understatement; no one weighing over 150 pounds would gain access to the pipes for tuning or to the action for adjustment without damaging the pipework or the key action. The author weighed less (at the time) and was barely able to navigate inside the organ. The current layout is shown in Figure 6. 

It is also possible that the current layout reflects the original layout by Johnson, but that the Swell was simply lowered to fit the height of the Piru church and brought forward to fit the limited depth available, reducing the depth of the walkway.

Notes and credits

All photos, drawings, tables, and illustrations are courtesy of the author’s collection if not otherwise noted. Most of the color photos were unfortunately taken by the author with an inferior camera in low resolution. David Sedlak used a high quality camera, lenses, and film to produce the high-resolution color photos of the church and its architectural details; these are all attributed to Sedlak.

1. Stephen Bicknell, The History of the English Organ, Cambridge University Press, 1996, Cambridge, pp. 185–187, 190–191, 207.

2. John Van Varick Elsworth, The Johnson Organs, The Boston Organ Club, 1984, Harrisville, p. 18.

3. A detailed study of the E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322 may be found in The Diapason, July, August, and September issues, 2017.

4. Barbara Owen, The Organ in New England, The Sunbury Press, 1979, Raleigh, pp. 18–19.

5. see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_and_Albany_Railroad.

6. The Johnson Organs, p. 100.

7. Ibid, pp. 23, 50, 57, respectively.

8. The Organ in New England, p. 275.

9. 5 Organ Concertos, 1984, Archiv D 150066, Simon Preston, Trevor Pinnock, The English Concert.

10. The History of the English Organ, p. 185.

11. Ibid, p. 207.

12. McNeil, Michael. Johnson_161_170807, an Excel file containing all of the raw data and the models used to analyze the Johnson Opus 161, 2017, available by emailing the author at [email protected].

13. McNeil, Michael. The Sound of Pipe Organs, CC&A, Mead, 2012, 191 pp., Amazon.com.

14. The Organ in New England, p. 75.

15. The Johnson Organs, p. 25.

16. Ibid, p. 23.

17. The History of the English Organ, p. 187.

18. The Johnson Organs, p. 23.

 

To be continued.

John Bishop

Swing, style, and stops

The Museum of Science in Boston is a venerable institution housed in an imposing building at the head of the Charles River Lagoon. It spans the river between Boston and Cambridge and is easily recognizable from almost any angle because of the distinctive profile of the Hayden Planetarium near the Boston end. As you enter the museum’s main lobby, before you reach the admission desks, you encounter a simple and elegant exhibit offering an eloquent statement of a fundamental truth, the rotation of our planet, the Foucault Pendulum.

The first such eponymous pendulum was introduced by French physicist Léon Foucault in Paris in 1851, a heavy bob suspended by a long cable that swings back and forth over a circular field. A row of pins or markers is set up around the perimeter of the space. As the earth rotates under the pendulum, the markers are knocked over, demonstrating the motion. The length of time for completion of the circle varies depending on the latitude; there is a complex series of equations that define that phenomenon.

In Boston, the circular field is a mosaic representation of an Aztec calendar with the Sun God in the center, and the cable suspending the bob is five stories high. I haven’t visited the museum for many years, but as grade-school student, and later as the father of two children, I’ve been there many times and was always impressed by the grandeur of the motion. It takes more than ten seconds for the pendulum to complete each passage (one chimpanzee, two chimpanzee, three chimpanzee . . . ). It’s ominous, it’s majestic, it’s mesmerizing, and it’s inevitable. I loved it whenever I happened to be there within range of a peg being knocked over. Standing there for forty or fifty swings seemed like an eternity, and there was a little thrill when the pendulum bumped a peg enough to wobble it, and then returned to finish it off.

I find it strangely reassuring to have that visible proof of the earth’s rotation, as if the endless procession of sunsets and sunrises wasn’t enough.

§

It’s around fifty-five years since I first saw the Foucault Pendulum, and over that same period, I’ve witnessed and participated in a pendulum motion of even grander amplitude and period. The history of the pipe organ has swung back and forth in a repetitive arc. In rough terms and broad strokes, the introduction of electric and pneumatic actions in pipe organs in the beginning of the twentieth century led to the renaissance of the ancient, classical styles of organbuilding, which in turn led to the current reawakening of interest in symphonic, expressive instruments, and the styles of playing they engendered.

When I was a student at Oberlin in the mid-1970s, we celebrated the installation of a large new Flentrop organ. It’s still a gleaming centerpiece of the campus, painted lovely hues of red and blue, with generous gold enhanced elaborate moldings. It’s an ideal vehicle for the music of the Baroque era and before, and it was a privilege to have access to an instrument like that for lessons, practice, and study. As we celebrated that organ, the Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner organ in Finney Chapel was moving into its golden years. Freshmen used it for some lessons, and I played my freshman jury on it, but it was not a high priority for the conservatory, and its condition was deteriorating. It was replaced in 2001 by a new 75-rank instrument built by C. B. Fisk, Inc., following the tradition of Cavaillé-Coll.

During my time as a student, and for six years following, I worked for Jan G. P. Leek in Oberlin. He was the organ and harpsichord technician for the Conservatory of Music for the first few years of my time with him, and then left the school to establish his own firm on the outskirts of town. He’s a colorful guy, and a first-generation Hollander who came to the United States in the early 1960s to work for Walter Holtkamp. In the summer of 1977, following my junior year, he was engaged to assist a crew from Flentrop installing the new three-manual organ for Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio.  

That was a dream summer for a fledgling organbuilder. I was thrilled to be part of that project, working high on the scaffolding, hoisting magnificent case pieces to the ceiling of that great vaulted church. I was young and strong (oh, for a taste of those days!), and in the thrall of the art that would dominate my life.  

There was one grueling, stifling day when we hoisted the 16-foot tin façade pipes into the organ case. As we were leaving at the end of the afternoon, we turned to admire our handiwork, and I was moved to tears as the late afternoon sun poured through the rich stained glass windows, flooding the façade in blue and red light.

That project started when the organ was delivered to the sidewalk on Euclid Avenue in shipping containers on the back of semi-trailers. The shipment had come across the Atlantic from Rotterdam and up the St. Lawrence Seaway to the Port of Cleveland on a ship aptly named Calliope. We had a powerhouse of a day hauling the instrument, piece-by-piece and crate-by-crate, up the many steps from the sidewalk into the cathedral. I was a naïve organ guy at the time, twenty-one years old, bearing the weight of magisterial knowledge, but I knew enough to take notice of a box of pipes I was carrying marked “Celeste.” Hmmm. A little later, there were bundles of swell shutters. Again, hmmm. The pendulum was swinging. Never throw out a necktie.

 

Where’s the beef?

Except for the nine years I spent in Ohio, I’ve lived in Boston all my life, as my family has since before the American Revolution, so it was quite a step when Wendy and I moved to Greenwich Village in Manhattan four years ago. We’ve had a wonderful time building our new life in the city, and an important part of the excitement is our new membership at Grace Church, a grand Episcopal church on lower Broadway, kitty-corner from our building. I was first introduced to Grace Church in 2008 when I was asked to list the church’s 1961 Schlicker organ for sale through the Organ Clearing House. The Schlicker was a double organ: the main instrument was in the rear gallery with tall pedal towers reaching up on either side of the rose window, and the smaller chancel organ was in side chambers. The organ was playable from two identical three-manual consoles.

As I surveyed the organ, I realized it was something of a house of cards. Although the gallery case looked grand enough, it turned out that the organ actually crouched—cowered—near the floor of the gallery under the rose window. The Pedal towers each contained five large pipes, only those five pipes. There was a thin plywood panel immediately behind the pipes. It reminded me of the 1984 advertising campaign for Wendy’s™ hamburgers that had a little old lady squinting at a competitor’s burger, and barking “Where’s the beef?”

Though the organ was only 47 years old, many of its pipes had fallen in on themselves and lost their speech. The collapse of the largest façade pipes was so pronounced that we feared the supporting hooks were in danger of failure. In the interest of public safety, and because there was no other place to store them in the building, we turned the pipes upside down and lashed them to the racks with ropes. It sure was strange looking, but they didn’t fall!

The Schlicker organ was replaced in 2013 with a new organ of 87 ranks by Taylor & Boody, a joy to all who play and hear it, and a meaningful boost to the life of the congregation. It’s an extraordinary organ because it includes all the features of the finest classically inspired mechanical action organs, including brilliant, balanced choruses, colorful reeds, gorgeous casework, and a strong presence in the room. But it’s a big departure from Taylor & Boody’s usual vocabulary, as it has a detached console, organ cases on both sides of the chancel, Solo and Pedal divisions in the remote chamber near the chancel, high-pressure reeds, and even an antique 32′ Double Open Wood Diapason, a hangover from the earlier Ernest M. Skinner organ in the rear gallery. There’s a tunnel full of tracker action under the floor of the chancel connecting all those rooms, and a sophisticated electric stop action with solid-state combinations.

The Schlicker organ followed a succession of instruments by Skinner including a four-manual, 89-rank double organ (gallery and chancel) built in 1902, a four-manual, 84-rank chancel organ built in 1912, and a four-manual, 48-rank gallery organ built in 1928. The 1928 project included a spectacular new four-manual chancel console with 167 knobs, 70 tilting tablets in two rows, five expression pedals, and two crescendo pedals.

 

Passing batons

The Grace Church Skinner organ in its final form was one of the great masterpieces of a great master. By contemporary accounts, it was immensely colorful and powerful. Study the specifications (www.nycago.org/Organs/NYC/html/GraceEpis.html#Skinner707) and you can imagine the range of expression possible, not only because of the multiple expression enclosures, but the sensitive and creative array of stops. For example, there were twelve 16′ flue voices between the two Pedal divisions, many of them borrowed from manual stops that were under expression. What a wealth. The massive chancel organ had two choruses of Trombones in the Pedal, one borrowed from the expressive Solo, which included an exceedingly rare 102⁄3′ Trombone. Wow! The Chancel Swell had ten 8′ flues. There were a total of 32 ranks of reeds, and twelve 8′ Diapasons scattered about six manual divisions. That’ll do you. That’s just a quick list of highlights of the content of that monumental organ, but there’s another fact about its creation that piques my curiosity.

Ernest Mitchell (1890–1966) was the organist at Grace Church from 1922 until 1960. The final rebuild of the Skinner organ happened on his watch, and it’s fair to assume that he had plenty to do with its tonal design. Mitchell’s great and good friend was Lynnwood Farnam, the genius organist who was central to the creation and development of the “symphonic style” of organ playing. I imagine that Mitchell and Farnam spent many evenings together discussing the special features of that organ, especially the details of the console.

Years ago, I got to know another console that had been designed by Farnam, that of the massive double 1912 Casavant organ (Opus 700) at Emmanuel Church on Newbury Street, Boston, where Farnam served briefly as organist. I was studying the instrument in 2002, as it was being offered for sale, and was fascinated by the ornate and intricate console,¹ which was festooned with unique gadgets that could only have been requested by an organist of Farnam’s sophistication. Here are a few examples:

• Swell octave couplers to cut off 2′ stops

• other manual 2′ and 16′ stops not to be cut off by octave or sub couplers

• one piston “throwing off” all manual 16′ stops, as well as Quint 51⁄3′ and Tierce 31⁄5′

• one piston throwing off all sub couplers.

All this in 1912.

The 1928 console of the Grace Church Skinner is preserved in the church’s music office, and it’s easy to pick out a couple features that could well have come from Farnam’s fertile symphonic imagination. There are two crescendo pedals. Above that for the Gallery organ, there are two toe pistons marked “Regular” and “Orchestral.” But the Chancel crescendo was a real tour-de-force. Concealed in a drawer under the bottom manual, there’s a “User Interface” crescendo setter, a semi-circle of electrical plugs neatly labeled with the names of stops and couplers, and an array of wires bearing tags that identify the positions of the Crescendo pedal. The organist could create his own setting while seated at the console—in 1928! Sadly, the original “guts” of the console were removed, so there is no record of the content of those crescendo settings. Happily, the console was returned to Grace Church as a gift following the death of its subsequent owner.

Another feature that could well have come from Farnam is the expression selector switch to the right of the music rack that allows the organist to assign the various expression enclosures to specific expression pedals. That and the programmable crescendo are precursors to some of our most complex modern consoles.

From 1920 until his death in 1930, Lynnwood Farnam was organist at Church of the Holy Communion on 6th Avenue at 20th Street, just over a mile from Grace Church. His proximity with Ernest Mitchell surely enhanced that friendship. Farnam was also head of the new organ department at the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, where his influence spread quickly. His students included people like Ernest White, Carl Weinrich, and Alexander McCurdy.

Ernest White studied with Farnam  and went on to an illustrious career including a fruitful tenure at St. Mary the Virgin in New York City. He played over 1,000 recitals, was a champion of new music, and released the first recording of Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur. In addition to his career as an organist, he was also tonal director for M. P. Möller, designing and supervising the installation of many new organs.

Carl Weinrich was organist and choir director of the chapel at Princeton University for 30 years. He also taught at Westminster Choir College and Columbia University. He championed contemporary music by playing premieres or early performances of works such as Vierne’s Symphony VI, Samuel Barber’s Prelude and Fugue in B Minor, and Arnold Schoenberg’s Variations on a Recitative. And in the 1950s and 1960s, he was at the vanguard of the rebirth of the classic organ, recording the organ music of Bach on Holtkamp organs.

Alexander McCurdy was one of the first graduates of Lynnwood Farnam’s organ class at Curtis, graduating in 1931, just after Farnam’s death, and was head of the Curtis organ department from 1935 until 1972, and concurrently at Westminster Choir College. McCurdy passed his devotion to the symphonic organ on to his students, many of whom later participated in the 20th-century renewal of interest in the classical organ. His incredible roster of students included Richard Purvis, David Johnson, David Craighead, James Litton, John Weaver, Keith Chapman, Gordon Turk, and Joan Lippincott, who joined the faculty at Westminster at McCurdy’s invitation. Lippincott will soon be honored by the American Guild of Organists for her lifetime of service to the organ and its music. That’s a big chunk of the history of the 20th-century American pipe organ in a nutshell.

§

Ernest Mitchell’s tenure at Grace Church ended in 1960, and the Schlicker organ was installed there in 1961. I haven’t dug into that history yet—when I do, I’ll come back to report. But I can only imagine that it would have broken Mitchell’s heart to see that magnificent instrument replaced. The irony is increased by the temporary nature of the Schlicker. Grace Church’s architecture is Gothic in style, but the walls and vaulted ceiling are made of plaster, which is less advantageous acoustically than stone. With low wind pressure and an emphasis on upperwork rather than fundamental tone, the new organ never had the power for real presence in the room.

The swing of the pendulum is clear in the history of the three most recent organs at Grace Church. The mighty, innovative, symphonic masterpiece by Skinner was replaced by a neo-Baroque instrument, so much the style of day in the early 1960s. The present instrument by Taylor & Boody is the modern statement of a heroic pipe organ in that venerable sanctuary. It includes the best features of both previous organs, with the clarity and presence for playing Baroque literature, and the lungs and flexibility to play the most complex Romantic literature.

Renovating Skinner Opus 707 would have been a huge undertaking in 1960, both technically and financially. Many similar organs, notably the Skinner in Finney Chapel at Oberlin, were renovated by Aeolian-Skinner, which converted them in the neo-Baroque style. It was not stylish to restore a symphonic masterpiece in 1960. If the Skinner had not been replaced, we wouldn’t have the Taylor & Boody, which is a magnificent statement of 21st-century organ building. But the inner me would sure love to take that Skinner for a spin. . . .

 

Notes

1. The Emmanuel Church Casavant organ was sold to a musical museum in China. More than 15 years after it was shipped to China, it’s now being prepared for renovation and installation by Rieger.

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this article was published in the July issue of The Diapason, pages 17–19. Part 2 was published in the August issue, pages 18–21.

 

Re-pitching of the Pedal 

In Figure 23 we see the C side of the Pedal 16′ Trombone in the front row, and the Pedal 16′ Open Diapason in the back row. Both stops have their pipes in the original position. Note the crude addition of boards to the top of the Trombone pipes as the means of lowering the pitch from A450 to A435 Hz. Relative to its original voicing, this stop is choked off in power and brilliance. Also note the more professional lengthening of the resonators of the Pedal 16′ Open Diapason pipes.

 

Impact of the Solo division 

The Solo division was added in 1902 as Opus 1959 of E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings, placing the windchest over the C# side of the Pedal and Great divisions. Figure 24 is a view from below up into the bottom of the Solo chest. The Pedal wood Trombone pipe in the center is speaking directly into the bottom of the Solo chest, muffling its tone. The Trombone pipe on the left has been mitered to clear the Solo chest.

In Figure 25 one can see that the low C# pipe of the Great 16′ Trumpet speaks directly into the bottom of the Solo chest. In an effort to restore the tuning and power to the pipe, the entire scroll has been crudely forced open. In Figure 26 one can see the more normal scroll of the unobstructed low C pipe of the Great 16′ Trumpet. The diatonic differences heard in the voicing of many bass pipes are entirely due to the unfortunate placement of the Solo division. The craftsmanship and engineering skills of 1902 were clearly inferior to those of 1863.

The change of pitch

The organ was originally pitched at A=450 Hz. Sometime before 1902 the organ was repitched to A=435 Hz.⁶ The current pitch of the organ, 435.3 Hz at 74 degrees F, was measured in June 2000 with a Widener electronic tuner using the 4′ Octave of the Great as the reference pitch, while confirming that this stop was in good tune with itself and the rest of the chorus. The tuning of the organ is quite stable as a result of the use of scrolls in the bass pipes, cone tuning for the trebles, and generous pipe flueways, which do not easily become choked with dust. 

 

Resonator lengths of the reeds

How did this change of pitch affect the timbre of the reed chorus? Raising the pitch of a reed pipe by pushing down on its tuning wire will eventually force it to overblow to its octave. As an overblowing reed pipe’s tuning wire is slowly raised and the pitch flattened, the pipe will at some point flip back to its fundamental pitch. This is called the “flip point,” and it represents the pitch with the warmest fundamental power. As the wire is raised further, tuning to yet lower pitches, the fundamental will weaken and the harmonics will strengthen in power. The same effect will occur if the resonator is shortened at the flip point. Most reed pipe resonators are adjusted to a length where the flip point is just slightly sharp of the desired pitch—the speech is faster and the harmonic balances are more pleasing with good fundamental warmth and some fire in the harmonics. A good resonator length is not so close to the flip point that it “flips” to the octave when it is tuned on the wire to the flue pipes on the hottest summer days, but it is close to that condition.

With this in mind, the author saw an opportunity to explore the flip points of the Hook chorus reeds. With the exception of the low C pipe, which was added when the organ was repitched to 435 Hz, the resonators of the 4′ Clarion were cut dead length with no scrolls and no evidence of having been shortened. This afforded the opportunity to explore the timbre of these stops relative to what they might have been in 1863. 

The reeds were tested for flip points at 70 degrees Fahrenheit when the tuning of the 4′ Octave was 434 Hz. The pipes were tuned on the wire sharp to their overblowing octaves, then tuned down carefully to their flip points, and the pitch of the pipe relative to A was measured on a Widener electronic tuner. The table below (Figure 27) shows the flip point frequencies for the Great reed chorus and Pedal Trombone.

 

16′ 8′ 4′ 2′ 1′

Gt 16′ 434.2 441.4 434.3 434.5 445.2

Gt 8′ 435 444.2 435.8 434.5

Gt 4′ 444.1 439.2 449

Pd 16′ 437 434.6 432.6

Pitch @ 70° 434 434 434 434 434

Figure 27

 

When looking at this table we need to bear in mind that the flip point frequencies need to be higher than the relative pitch of A to which we want to tune the chorus, i.e., these flip points should be significantly higher than 434 Hz. What we find are values ranging from 432.6 Hz to 449 Hz. The direct inference, assuming that the pipes have not been otherwise modified, is that the original chorus was significantly brighter than what we now hear. The dead length reed resonators were apparently not shortened and their tuning wires were used to achieve A=435 Hz, pushing many of the pipes very close to, or even beyond, their flip points. This is a significant offset in the flip point from the original voicing. It is clear that as beautiful and inspiring as it is, we hear a darker approximation of the original 1863 reed chorus in the present organ.

 

The magnitude of the deficit

The issue of pitch is complicated. Figure 28 shows a graphic depiction of the problem. The shift in pitch at middle A from 450 to 435 Hz is a change of 15 Hz. The distance between a half step at this pitch is about 25 Hz, and when the pipes were moved up a half step, middle A was then repitched to about 425 Hz. The 10 Hz deficit between 425 and 435 Hz was corrected by retuning the pipes. In the case of the dead length reeds, the tuning wires were simply pushed down to raise the pitch, so we know that the original Hook pipes in the table in Figure 27 would have “flipped” at frequencies about 10 Hz higher (at middle A) than what we measured in the table. To bring the pipes back to their original timbre at the current 435 Hz, the resonators would need to be shortened on all reed pipes by an amount that would produce about a 10 Hz increase in pitch at middle A. This may be inadvisable as it would reduce the scale of the resonators.

The Pedal Trombone was not moved up a half step, but large flaps of wood were added to drop its pitch from 450 to 435 Hz, covering the tops of its resonators and reducing its power and brilliance (Figure 23). The correction would entail the removal of the flaps and a lengthening of the resonators, which may be also inadvisable, as it would increase the scale of the pipes, an effect opposite to the correction needed for the reed chorus pipes of the Great division. 

The flue pipes suffered a similar fate and were retuned 10 Hz higher by one or both of two methods: making the pipes shorter and/or opening their toes. Of the two methods, the opening of the toes had a major effect on the timbre and power of the pipes. The impact of such changes is described in the notes on the 16′ Open Diapason and the 8′ Open Diapason Forte, with the result that the current balances deviate markedly from the original intentions of the Hooks. The correction would entail a reduction of the toes where they were opened, and a further shortening of the pipes. Since nearly all façade pipes have had their scrolls rolled down to the maximum extent, or even removed, the correction would require deeper cutouts and new scrolls on all pipes, not a simple or necessarily desirable proposition.

Raising the pitch from 435 to 440 Hz would push some reeds beyond the flip point, further darkening the sound, and it would increase the tuning deficit to 15 Hz. Such an increase in pitch would require further deepening of the façade pipe scroll openings, most of which are already at their limit. Further opening of the toes of the façade pipes would make their timbre and power even more imbalanced than their current state. All of these reasons suggest why the organ was never repitched to 440 Hz. 

  

Reflections

The Hook organ was put back into regular service use during the tenure of Fr. Thomas Carroll, SJ, as the director of the Jesuit Urban Center at the Church of the Immaculate Conception. Many notable organists at that time visited the church and played the instrument in concerts that were warmly and appreciatively received. 

It is hoped that the research presented in this study will inform those who restore this organ at a future date. Virtually all of the tonal modifications made to this organ resulted from the change to its pitch and the addition of the Solo division; the rest is vintage and very well preserved E. & G. G. Hook. 

Serious consideration should be given to the relocation of the Solo division in a manner that does not encroach upon the tuning of the original Hook pipes or limit the sound egress of the original Hook layout. The raw data indicate that the 1902 installation of the Solo division had a major impact on both counts. If the decision is made to remove the 1902 Solo division from the organ, and that conclusion should not be reached lightly, it should be carefully crated and stored, not discarded. It is a part of the Romantic tapestry and history of this organ.

Three possibilities now suggest themselves: 

1) Leave the organ at 435 Hz and reposition the Solo division to allow sufficient clearance to the Great and Pedal bass pipes. This preserves the current sound but corrects for the tonal and mechanical damage inflicted by the Solo division installation. It does not address the darker character of the reed chorus or the tonal imbalances of the 16′ and 8′ Open Diapasons.

2) Same as Option 1, but shorten the manual reed resonators to their original flip points, i.e., about 10 Hz shorter at middle A. Lengthen the wooden resonators of the Pedal Trombone and remove the obstructing boards. Restore the toes of the Diapasons to their original values and further deepen the tuning slots of all façade pipes. This involves significant expense in pipework restoration, it comes closer to the original Hook sound and power balances, but it permanently and perhaps inadvisedly changes the diameter scales of the many reeds that are cut to length.

Note that most of the scrolls on the reed pipes in Figure 29 (see page 22) are excessively rolled down in an effort to achieve 435 Hz; restoring the original pitch would correct this, so . . .

3) Repitch the organ to its original 450 Hz and move the pipes back to their original positions and voicing, restore the toes of the two Diapasons back to their original values, and restore the tuning scrolls of all pipes back to their original positions. This restores the original sound of the Hook. Repositioning of the Solo division is still essential.

Option 3 would not be the exact sound familiar to those of us who have heard the organ at Immaculate Conception, but it would be faithful to the original intent of the Hooks. The reed chorus would come alive. The author strongly recommends Options 1 or 3 over Option 2. Repitched to 450 Hz, the organ will not be compatible with orchestral instruments tuned to 440 Hz, but neither is the present organ compatible at 435 Hz, and the pipework will clearly not support 440 Hz. The argument can be made that we have a great many organs tuned to 440 Hz in our concert halls, while we have very few large Hook organs in their original state designed for superb acoustics like those of Immaculate Conception. Hook Opus 322 presents us with a unique challenge: it has been passed down to us in superb condition by the careful attention of the Lahaise family, and it may be the best opportunity we have to hear a large, well-preserved Hook chorus of Civil War vintage designed for a stunning acoustic.

The importance of the choice we make of the restoration options pales in comparison to the decision of the site of the organ’s new home. Much of this organ’s fame was the result of its placement in the stunning acoustics of the Church of the Immaculate Conception. When selecting or building a new acoustic for this organ it is important to realize that architects are not accustomed to the requirements of pipe organs. Be especially aware that definitions of reverberation by architects will not even remotely correlate with your musical perception of those acoustics. See The Sound of Pipe Organs, p. 32, for a detailed discussion of this ubiquitous problem. If the Church of the Immaculate Conception still exists in its original acoustical form, an unlikely event, take the architects there and make the accurate replication of those acoustics a requirement. If that acoustic doesn’t exist, take the architects to the Duke University Chapel in Durham, North Carolina. Architects will know how to measure it, but they will be stunned by the request to replicate it. The fame of the Hook organ and its original acoustical environment are inseparable. As any organbuilder will tell you, the best stop in any organ is the room in which it is placed, or to put it more bluntly, a wonderful organ placed in a mediocre room will sound­—mediocre.

Professor Thomas Murray, Yale University organist, has been deeply involved with this Hook organ, has made recordings of it (listed in the discography), and possesses a deep knowledge of the Romantic literature. Future restorers of this organ could benefit from his advice. 

We are incredibly fortunate to have at least some detailed data on the Hook organ, and we owe the Jesuit community and especially Fr. Thomas Carroll, SJ, a great debt for the opportunity to acquire it. Fr. Carroll now resides at the Collegio Bellarmino in Rome, Italy, a home to a community of more than 70 Jesuits representing more than 35 countries. He is the spiritual director for many of the Jesuits pursuing advanced theological degrees, conversing with about half in English and half in Italian. He provides guidance for young Jesuit scholars in the preparation of theses written in English, and for whom English may be a second, third, or fourth language.

 

Notes and Credits

All photographs, tables, graphs, and data are by the author except as noted.

1. Owen, Barbara. “A Landmark within a Landmark: The 1863 Hook Organ,” undated typescript.

2. Excel files with all raw data taken on the Hook and the spreadsheets that produced the graphs and tables may be obtained at no charge by e-mailing the author at: [email protected].

3. McNeil, Michael. The Sound of Pipe Organs, CC&A, Mead, 2012, 191 pp., Amazon.com.

4. Huntington, Scot L., Barbara Owen, Stephen L. Pinel, Martin R. Walsh, Johnson Organs 1844–1898, OHS Press, Richmond, Virginia, pp. 17–18.

5. Elsworth, John Van Varick. The Johnson Organs, The Boston Organ Club Chapter of the Organ Historical Society, Harrisville, New Hampshire, 1984, p. 45.

6. Noack, Fritz. Preliminary Report about the Pipework of the 1863 E. & G. G. Hook Organ, July 9, 1999.

Discography

Murray, Thomas. The E. & G. G. Hook Organ, Immaculate Conception Church, Boston, Sheffield Town Hall Records, Album S-11 (ACM149STA-B), Santa Barbara, CA.

Murray, Thomas. An American Masterpiece, CD, AFKA SK-507.

 

Useful References

Cabourdin, Yves, and Pierre Chéron. L’Orgue de Jean-Esprit et Joseph Isnard dans la Basilique de la Madeleine à Saint-Maximin, ARCAM, Nice, France, 1991, 208 pp.

Huntington, Scot L., Barbara Owen, Stephen L. Pinel, Martin R. Walsh, Johnson Organs 1844–1898, The Princeton Academy of the Arts, Culture, and Society, Cranbury, New Jersey, 2015, 239 pp.

McNeil, Michael. The Sound of Pipe Organs, CC&A, Mead, 2012, 191pp, Amazon.com.

Owen, Barbara. The Organ in New England, The Sunbury Press, Raleigh, North Carolina, 1979, 629 pp.