Tech Lines

It's Time To Tell the Story

Introduction

My presentation, "The Economics of Pipe Organ Building: It's Time to Tell The Story," is the viewpoint of an economist, not a builder or a musician. It reflects my fervent conviction that organbuilders must be aware of the economic parameters which shape their business. I also strongly believe that builders must communicate the unique dimensions of their age-old craft to their constituents and clientele. This, in my judgment, will contribute to the support so essential for their well-being in the challenging years ahead. My goal was to present some facts and figures for the builders to think about, to discuss with their colleagues, and perhaps to use in presentations to prospective clients. As one builder has remarked: "Organbuilding is an anachronism in the American economy."1

Assumptions

We begin with certain assumptions which are critical to the discussion. First, we call attention to the fact that no two builders are alike. Each builder has his own vision of his enterprise, his product and his market. We also recognize that APOBA is a far more diverse group today that it was thirty years ago when it was comprised primarily of comparatively large firms building non-mechanical instruments.

Second, as an economist, I define organbuilding as an industry. By industry we mean a group of firms and suppliers engaged in building the instrument and its components on an ongoing basis. Organbuilding is categorized by the US Department of Commerce in the Standard Industrial Classification seven digit code 3931-211. In building a one-of-a-kind product, organbuilding differs radically from the traditional view of industry as comprised of a handful of relatively large firms manufacturing automobiles, appliances, pharmaceuticals and computers. Therefore, because of the unique highly individual and artistic nature of organbuilding as an age-old craft, some builders, perhaps particularly small shops, view organbuilding as no more an industry than sculpting, portrait painting, or even piano concertizing.

Third, organbuilding is a business. The firm is subject to business realities and must conduct its affairs in accordance with them. These include balance sheet and income statement guidelines and property and contract requirements. Unfortunately, some builders, perhaps those with what one prominent executive described as a "cavalier" attitude, sometimes don't pay careful attention to these realities. We also assert that organbuilding is subject to broad economic forces which include wage rates in local labor markets and overall market determined prices for materials and components. In addition, organbuilding is critically influenced by the general economic climate of depression and inflation as history so forcefully demonstrates.

Fourth, in economic parlance, the structure of the industry is a quixotic example of two types of competition. Organbuilding is and always has been a highly competitive industry. When measured by the number of firms and ease of entry it is similar to textbook examples of pure and perfect competition. In a survey I made for a paper years ago entitled "The Place of the Small Builder in the American Organ Industry," one builder, Fritz Noack, reported that his capital cost for entering the trade was $200.00.2 Theoretically, any builder can build the same stoplist, pipe scales and casework. In practice, however, sharp differences exist between builders and instruments. Therefore, in the nature of the product, a specification good in which no two instruments are alike, organbuilding is more like a product differentiated oligopoly. Competition reflects many factors: price, windchest action, level of workmanship, prior installations, reputation, endorsements and status seeking by the organist and the buyer.

Fifth, the concept of market segments is useful. Churches, educational institutions, theaters, private dwellings, lodge halls, and funeral homes have been identifiable markets for pipe organs over the years. Each of these markets has its own demand determinants. Membership and giving would be key determinants for the church market. For concert halls and art museums, major private gifts would be all important. The builder has no direct influence on these demand determinants which critically shape the outlook for his business.

Sixth, we acknowledge that some builders don't recognize themselves as part of an industry insofar as there are interests and concerns common to all participants. Macroeconomic demand determinants don't interest them. Nor is the idea of competition, in a broad sense, viewed as particularly relevant to their enterprise. Their clientele wants their instrument, not just an organ. In an analogy, people don't go to a piano recital, they go to hear Andre Watts. This builder's clientele is perhaps most often a individual, not a committee, and quite likely a prominent academic who will make the choice of builder. Most important, funding is taken for granted. It is presumed that the buyer is authorized to pay whatever price is required to obtain the chosen instrument.

This phenomenon reflects the close symbiotic relationship between the instrument, the performer, and his employer. The instrument is what accords status to the organist's church or school and himself, and is the way he obtains recognition among his peers. It is his ego alter. This has always been true and always will be. It was, no doubt, the case with the Hooks, certainly so with Roosevelt, Skinner, Aeolian Skinner and Holtkamp. The role of brand preference among competitively sensitive and socially conscious pipe organ buyers was supremely illustrated with WurliTzer in the theater market and Aeolian in the mansions of the wealthy. Those familiar with my articles in The Diapason know that I have developed and continue to reiterate the theme of invidious comparison and competitive emulation (Thorstein Veblen) as a very real phenomenon in the organ marketplace.

Economics

The salient factor in organbuilding and the one that distinguishes it as an industry from all others is the labor intensive nature of the product. This overriding factor largely explains the postwar history of the industry and will determine its future. We would argue that 80 percent of the value added in building a pipe organ is labor. Value added by manufacture is the difference between the cost of of inputs--raw materials, semifinished components and labor (including fringe benefits)--and the sale price. Industries with sixty percent or more value added by labor are considered labor intensive. Among them are products of the so-called "needle trades"--for example, robes and dressing gowns, 64 percent labor and curtains and draperies, 68 percent labor. For leather gloves and mittens the value added by labor is 84 percent. Aircraft and shipbuilding are other obvious examples of very high labor input.3

In contrast, capital intensive and technologically advanced industries, enjoy low labor costs even with high wages and benefits. Examples of low labor cost are: Primary Copper, 18 percent; Electronic Computers, 27 percent; and Household Appliances, 25 percent.4 The implication of high productivity, high wage industries for organbuilding is that they determine the wage structure of the national as well as the local economy. In a full-employment economy such as ours, organbuilders face enormous pressures to pay competitive wages or face high turnover with the resulting disruptions, delays and cost overruns. The high cost of organbuilding mirrors the labor input and wage rate; when wages go up, costs go up in lock step. The wage pressures of a full employment economy are a direct threat to cost containment in organbuilding.

The availability of low-wage labor explains why the Möller Company in Hagerstown, Maryland was able to operate for decades as America's largest builder. With 350-400 factory workers, Möller shipped at least one complete instrument every working day in the 1920s and again in the 1950s. Hagerstown, out on a shelf in western Maryland, was bypassed by prosperity and suffered for years from relatively high unemployment. Möller, therefore, could obtain all the workers it required at comparatively low wages. Conversely, no organbuilder could have operated in Detroit or Pittsburgh, because they could never have paid the union wages of auto workers and steel workers and remained competitive. 

Organbuilding is similar to the performing arts in the preponderance of labor cost to total cost and the absence of productivity increases. A widely-acclaimed study, Performing Arts: The Economic Dilemma, disclosed that the share of salaries of artistic personnel to total expenditures was 64% for major U.S. orchestras and 72% for the London Symphony Orchestra.5 The principal conclusion of this authoritative work, commissioned by the Twentieth Century Fund and written by Professors Baumol and Bowen of Princeton University, was that the arts operate within the framework of a complex economy. This coupled with the inability to achieve a sustained increase in productivity makes even higher costs an inevitable characteristic of live performance. So it is with organbuilding.

The predominant role of labor input in organbuilding is illustrated in Table 1 where we compare the number of man-hours necessary to fabricate representative components of a pipe organ with those required to manufacture an automobile. For pipe organs, four key components: an 8' Diapason, 61 pipes, voiced, an 8' Trumpet, 61 pipes voiced, a 16' Bourdon, 32 pipes, voiced, and a pitman action windchest of five stops are portrayed. The contrast is indeed striking.

Rising Cost

The second dominant characteristic of organbuilding is the persistent rise in cost over time. This is illustrated for the key components over the last twenty years in Table 2. More important, when we compare the rise in cost of organ components to the producer price index for the whole economy, the increase is greater for organbuilding as shown in Table 3. This argues that in the event inflation reappears in the US economy, the cost of organbuilding will increase at a higher rate than reflected in the producer price indexes.

What are the implications of rising costs for organbuilding? Fifty years ago, in 1948, you could buy a three-rank Möller Artiste for $2975. Today, you could scarcely buy one set of pipes below 4' pitch for this amount of money. Using the church market as a point of reference, will there be a pipe organ industry ten years from now, or twenty years down the road? To answer this question we hark back to our major premise that when church giving is rising in proportion (or greater) to the increase in income generated by a growing economy, the market scarcely blinks at rising pipe organ costs. This relationship underscores the ongoing fact that it isn't the price of an organ that is the primary determinant of demand, but income, i.e., having the funds to buy them.

In 1900 the price of a Hinners tracker organ was about $125 per stop. Recall that with a force of 90 workmen in Pekin, Illinois, Hinners was building three instruments a week. Remember also that per capita real income in agriculture between the Panics of 1897 and 1907 was the highest in history. Farmers paid less for what they bought and got more for what they sold. With their short-term living standard satisfied, they pumped rivers of cash and pledges into the churches who bought Hinners, Barckhoff, Felgemaker and Estey organs. These were four builders who, with standard specifications, capitalized on this huge rural market, what we have called the commodity segment of the market. By the end of the Hinners era, ostensibly the tracker era, this firm counted over three thousand instruments in more than 40 states and in several foreign countries.6

The Electronic Organ

The critical confluence of cost and revenue in the demand for pipe organs is illustrated in the recent history of the electronic organ. Another major premise in this discussion is that the electronic church organ is a substitute for the pipe organ. To verify this hypothesis we obtained the annual sales of the Allen Organ Company for the last twenty years and plotted them against the cost of our key pipe organ components as shown in Figure 1. The results are astounding! An almost perfect fit, a statistician's dream; you could scarcely ask for a closer correlation. The demand for the electronic church organ as a function of the price of a pipe organ illustrates the economist's concept of cross-elasticity of demand. The higher the price of a pipe organ the greater the demand for the electronic substitute. Furthermore, based upon these correlations, we could write a regression equation that says if this relationship holds, for every dollar increase in the price of a pipe organ there will be a certain increase in the demand for the electronic church instrument.

Church Giving

If we accept the premise that the electronic church instrument is a substitute for the pipe organ, we perhaps can argue that the real culprit is the failure of church giving to keep pace with pipe organ costs in recent decades unlike earlier periods. Statistics compiled by empty tomb inc. for 27 Protestant denominations for the period 1968-95 and published in "The State of Church Giving," reveal that church giving has "fallen" dramatically.7 To be sure, in a growing economy per capita personal disposable income has increased as have contributions for congregational finances. However, the percentage of income contributed has declined steadily and the increase in dollar giving is nowhere near the year to year increase in income. Whether measured by the percent of income given in 1968 or the yearly income increase, the amount given for congregational finances would have been $2.5 billion more in 1995 if these percentages had held. Two and a half billion dollars would buy a lot of pipe organs. If we view church giving within the household budget as a concept of market share, we see that the collection plate has taken a back seat to other expenditures: sporting goods, toys, pizza, and travel, among others. John and Sylvia Ronsvalle of empty tomb point out that in 1992, church giving was only 23 percent of total leisure spending. They attribute this to the pervasive hedonistic consumer-driven culture of our time.8

The implications for the church market from the giving levels we have just illustrated would appear to be ominous. If we assume costs will rise and we couple this with the diminishing rate of church giving, we will then reach a point at which, theoretically, the price per stop for a pipe organ will cause the demand to drop off sharply, if not virtually disappear. What is this point? We don't know, but we could be getting close to it. Can we say there is no demand at $30,000 per stop; perhaps not even at $25,000 or $20,000?

Not all builders believe the figures for church giving are relevant to the demand for pipe organs or that projected increases in price per stop will spell the end of the industry. They view the King of Instruments not as a utilitarian device to accompany church services but as an art form akin to a fine painting. Thus a "high end" market will continue to exist because sophisticated, discriminating--and wealthy--individuals will always select the instrument of the ages, in the same spirit in which they build their art collections--without regard to cost. These builders hold that the industry, now numbering many small shops in addition to the few larger builders, has adjusted and stabilized to this level of output, as evidenced by the demise of Möller, a builder for the commodity market which has now been almost totally preempted by the electronic instrument. A good illustration of this new paradigm is the firm of Taylor and Boody in Staunton, Virginia who by choice build only thirty to thirty-five stops per year.9

Pipe Organ Imports

Imported instruments have been a significant part of the American pipe organ scene since WWII. Large instruments by Rieger, Flentrop and Von Beckerath plus smaller ones from a host of other European builders were the cornerstone of the tracker revival in this country. They were often viewed as a status symbol by the organist profession who proclaimed "if it's foreign it's finer." The principal source of offshore instruments today is our northern neighbor Canada. The sensitive issue of Canadian imports, based primarily on the insurmountable cost advantage afforded the Canadian builder by the exchange rate, is not a new one. In February, 1931, Major Fred Oliver, veteran of the Canadian Expeditionary Force in WWI and husband of Marie Casavant, acknowledged before the US Tariff Commission that Canadian-built organs were less expensive than American instruments. He argued that clients bought them because they liked them better than the domestic product. Could they have liked them better because they were less expensive?

For many years organ imports, including those from Canada, were not a problem. American builders were busy with healthy backlogs and the Canadian share of the market was unobtrusive and not growing. Nonetheless the threat was lurking and today, in the author's judgment, it is a major one. Based upon the dollar value and the number of instruments imported from Canada in the past two decades, I, as an economist, view the Canadian competition as a significant threat to the American organ industry. I also feel strongly that the US buyer should be apprised of the implications of a decision to buy a Canadian-built organ.

Foreign trade statistics published by the Bureau of the Census, US Department of Commerce show that in the 1980s Canadian builders exported an average of 43 instruments per year to the US, their primary market, valued at $3.8 million per year and representing two-thirds of total imports. For the eight year period 1990-97, Canadian imports averaged 19 instruments per year valued at $4.2 million per year. In the most recent years the numbers are: 1995, 21 instruments, value $5.2 million, 76 percent of total imports; 1996, 24 instruments, $4.5 million value, 75 percent of all imports; and 1997, 22 instruments, $5.1 million total value representing 70 percent of total foreign-built organs. Table 4 portrays the value of Canadian imports in US dollars, as declared at the point of entry, for the years 1975-97 and the percent of dollar imports accounted for by Canada and Netherlands-Germany. The dollar figure is a better indicator of the import threat than the number of instruments for the same reason that the number of voiced stops is more representative that the number of instruments in that it more accurately reflects industry activity. One instrument of 100 stops is in terms of output larger than eight instruments of ten stops each. These figures understate the impact of Canadian imports which significantly influence the price structure of the organ market, making it difficult for domestic builders to compete, especially for the larger and more prestigious contracts.   

The Canadian import threat exists, primarily perhaps, for the larger firms in non-mechanical action and in situations where a price sensitive committee, as opposed to an individual, often makes the decision. Conversely, some builders, chiefly smaller firms with a guild versus business mentality, do not view Canadian competition as a threat. To them price advantage is not a pivotal factor in choice of builder in situations where the instrument and the builder are highly individualized in the unique and incomparable nature of their work.

The problem results from coupling the 80 percent labor cost of organbuilding with the Canadian dollar which has hovered around 70 cents in recent years and fell to 63.7 cents in August, 1998. If we assume that a representative wage in organbuilding in the US today is $12.00 per hour, for an American builder to compete with the 70 cent Canadian dollar his workers would have to take a pay cut to $8.40 per hour. When committees elect to purchase a Canadian-built organ this is precisely what they are asking the hapless American workers to do. Perhaps committees should ask themselves whether they would be willing to work for $12 an hour, let alone $8.40?  Furthermore, it is unethical and patently unfair for a committee to accept an offer from an American builder to spend hundreds of dollars flying them across the country to see installations, only to lose the contract to a Canadian builder solely on the basis of price.

Keep in mind also that the Canadian market is hermetically sealed against the American builder. Except for one project by Schoenstein, it has been impossible for an American builder to get work in Canada. This is attributed to the cultural protection issue. Canadians are paranoid about the "invasion" of their culture by American media and have taken steps to block American magazine sales and satellite TV programming in direct violation of the rules of the World Trade Organization. One government official hysterically compared stores selling satellite dishes to dope pushers.10 Perhaps if the Canadians are so touchy about their culture we should return the favor and talk about protecting our rich culture in pipe organ building; the legacy of Hilbourne Roosevelt, Ernest Skinner, Donald Harrison and Walter Holtkamp!

The author is not alone in his analysis of the present and future impact of Canadian competition on the outlook for American organbuilding. Erik Olbeter, project director of the prestigious Economic Strategy Institute in Washington, D. C. agrees that US firms cannot indefinitely absorb the exchange rate differential in the labor cost basis of organbuilding. He adds that since no US builders have been able to sell into the Canadian market, this is a powerful argument in support of the domestic firm.11

There are, of course, two sides to every question. Canadian builders enjoy a positive image, a distinguished history and can point to many fine instruments in this country. Therefore, if the client elects to recognize these factors in choosing a builder and to disregard the implications for American builders, that is their business. But at least they ought to be aware of what they are doing!

Predictions

In conclusion, let me turn to my crystal ball, cloudy though it is, and make some observations and predictions about pipe organ building in America in the coming years. Remember that economists can't resist the temptation to forecast; it's a congenital defect in the profession. You are free to disagree with me and I acknowledge that many of you will elect to do so.

First, pipe organs will always be built, and organbuilding activity, in its many forms, will continue indefinitely. The level of output and the composition of the industry is impossible to predict and I wouldn't hazard a guess. Long-established major builders have previous instruments to rebuild, update and relocate. Small tracker shops may build one instrument a year. Builders of all sizes may move into service work to maintain cash flow while awaiting an order for a new instrument or a rebuilding project. If the industry is defined by total employment this will include suppliers and service firms.

Second, it is clear to me as an economist that a reversal of the persistent decline in church giving is critical to the outlook for the industry. As the King of Instruments, the pipe organ must be recognized as a symbol of the broader dimensions of culture throughout the ages, bridging nations and generations, an essential component of religious symbolism vital to the experience of corporate worship, and the object of sacrificial devotion by churchgoers who stand in opposition to the hedonistic consumer-driven culture of our time. Forbes Magazine, highlighting the resurgence of popularity of mechanical watches over quartz watches pointed out: "An unscientific survey of several dozen watch experts produced one common thread: mechanical watches have soul, have workmanship, have intrinsic value that cannot be found in quartz timepieces. It is this fact, and not a Luddite, reactionary longing for the old days, that makes these watches so popular."12 So it is with the pipe organ. Like a diamond, the high cost of a pipe organ is what makes it so distinctive and so valuable.

Third, the perception of an organ today in the eyes of many churchgoers exacerbates the cost problem. The instrument has to be large and, therefore, expensive. A pipe organ must exert a commanding presence in the sanctuary as reflected in the console of a nonmechanical organ, one with three or more manuals and lots of drawknobs, and in the totality of a mechanical instrument. Above all, the sound must project power, majesty and grandeur, as evidenced by the popularity of the 32' pedal reed today.

Fourth, each builder faces a management challenge of how large an operation his market will sustain and the make-or-buy decision with every project. On an emotional level the builder must continually ask himself whether he is a businessman or an artist and how to balance these all too often conflicting interests. Above all, he must resist the temptation to cut prices to stay in business. This is the road to ruin. As they say in the ocean shipping business, those who live by the rate cut die by the rate cut.  Organbuilding must live in the real world of cost and revenue; there are no "sugar daddies" out there willing to put money into a failed pipe organ business because of the romance of it.

Fifth, supplemental electronic components are here to stay, primarily because they are the only way to keep costs down. The danger, and perhaps it is a real one, particularly for small instruments, is that the electronic organ comes to define the pipe organ whereas it must be the other way around. 

Sixth, the Canadian dollar will remain weak for many reasons. Canadian organ imports will perhaps grow and command a greater share of the market for new instruments. In the author's judgment, the current import levels already pose a serious threat to the future of the American industry.

Seventh, the greatest threat to organbuilding in the US, or anywhere, is inflation. I have already suggested that with current levels of church giving there is no market at $30,000 per stop. If our economy were to experience three to five years of double-digit inflation, organbuilding on a sustained basis would largely disappear. Church contributions would continue to erode as our aging populace struggled to make ends meet, the demand for social services by churches would rise, and the electronic organ would preempt the church market. Milton Friedman, the widely-quoted economist and celebrated Noble laureate told Forbes Magazine in December, 1997 that he expects a period of much higher inflation sometime in the next ten to twelve years. Let's hope Friedman is wrong.13

Notes

                        1.                  Telephone interview with George Taylor, March 15, 1998.

                        2.                  Coleberd, Robert E. Jr., "The Place of the Small Builder in the American Organ Industry," The Diapason,Vol. 57, No. 12, November, 1966, p. 45.

                        3.                  1995 annual survey of manufactures, US Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics, Bureau of the Census, Table 2, Statistics for Industry Groups and Industries: 1995 and 1994, pp. 1-10--1-27.

                        4.                  Ibid.

                        5.                  Baumol, William J. and William G. Bowen, Performing Arts--The Economic Dilemma, Copyright 1966, The Twentieth Century Fund, Inc., First M.I.T. Press Paperback Edition, August, 1968, Second Printing, December, 1977, p. 145.

                        6.                  Coleberd, Robert E. Jr., "Yesterday's Tracker--The Hinners Organ Story," The American Organist, Vol. 43, No. 9, September, 1960, pp. 11-14.

                        7.                  Ronsvalle, John L. and Sylvia Ronsvalle,The State of Church Giving through 1995, Champaign, Illinois, empty tomb inc., December, 1997, passim.

                        8.                  Table 18: "Combined Per Capita Purchase of Selected Items Compared to Composite Per Member Church Giving in Constant 1987 Dollars" in John L. Ronsvalle and Sylvia Ronsvalle, The State of Church Giving through 1994, p. 61.

                        9.                  Taylor, op. cit.

                        10.              Olbeter, Erik R. "Canada's Cultural Hangup," Journal of Commerce, April 3, 1997, p. 6-A. See Also "Cultural Struggle" The Journal of Commerce, July 2, 1997, p. 8-A. Craig Turner, "Canadian Culture? Whatever It Is, They Want To Preserve It," Los Angeles Times, March 30, 1997, Section D, p. 1, 12. Joseph Weber, "Does Canadian Culture Need This Much Protection?," Business Week, June 8, 1998, p. 37.

                        11.              Telephone interview with Erik Olbeter, Economic Strategy Institute, Washington, D.C., June 6, 1997.

                        12.              Powell, Dennis E., "A Glance At Some Of The Timepieces That Made History," Forbes FYI, November, 1997, p. 152.

                        13.              "Milton Friedman at 85," Forbes, December 29, 1997, pp. 52-55.

Herbert L. Huestis is a contributing editor of THE DIAPASON.

Making a crescendo with the least number of stops

Perhaps there is no more obvious a signature item on factory-built organs than the ubiquitous crescendo pedal. In most cases, it stands for nothing more than a fuzzy blob of sound, rising from the celeste and culminating in a tremulous mass of stops that does little more than tax the wind of the organ and test the thoroughness of the last tuning. Most artisan organ builders ignore the crescendo pedal, even when installing programmable sequencers and the like. It seems to remain an option that factories dare not leave out, for fear it might be the item that tips a contract toward another builder. The crescendo is almost never seriously discussed in any negotiations and once set is rarely revisited.

The worst episode of "crescendo abuse" I have encountered was during a performance of Handel's Messiah, where the accompanist set a few stops, including super couplers, then proceded to pump the crescendo for variation. The organ alternatively shrieked and wheezed, depending on the stops that were engaged with the super couplers.

During my career as an organ technician very few organists have ever asked about the crescendo pedal, much less entertained notions about how to use it effectively. I was taken aback when a brilliant organist asked me what I could do with not only one, but two crescendo pedals!

He had some ideas he wanted to explore, but first, there was a matter of technology. Ordinary crescendo rollers are not programmable. They are hard-wired--set up for the occasional adjustment, but not much more.

I asked this young organist if he was serious about pursuing such a thing. He assured me he was, and I contacted Scott Peterson of Peterson Electro-Musical Products, and Art Young of the Syndyne Corporation to find out what technical means might be available to program two crescendo pedals. Both firms had the capability to provide programmable functions, but neither could come up with a system that was cost effective. However, the idea was born and the project got underway.

Cost was an inevitable factor and a computerized system was ruled out almost immediately. The only option that remained was some sort of "switchboard" that would enable hard-wired roller contacts to be easily set in the order the organist envisioned. For a three-manual 60-stop organ, two lists were generated, using only 30 to 35 stops for the entire crescendo. The desired effect was suitable crescendi for oratorio accompaniment, so each pedal started with an ensemble, rather than a single stop. In the crescendo that proceeded from each small ensemble, there were various breaks, rather than a steady rise in volume. The musical plan was to build a series of stop changes one might find on a sequencer, rather than merely advancing from a whisper to a roar.

Since this is something of a technical note, I'd like to concentrate on two aspects of the project. As one can see from the photo, a board with about 80 contacts must be constructed to accept the input from each contact roller along with an array of 24 indicator lamps for each pedal. The inputs from these 2 contact rollers feed through mini-switchboards to a central feed to the console stop union. This method provides an inexpensive system that permits easy (and probably ongoing) adjustment of various stops, strategic location of "breaks" and wiring of small groups of stops in stages. With that technology in place, the ingenuity of the organist could prevail. By reducing the number of steps from over 60 to about 30, the musical effect he had envisioned was obtained.

This was far more useful than a factory pre-set system. As one might suspect, the Tutti controls on this same organ are preset in a similar manner. Rather than drawing on all stops with the "full organ" button, the loudest ensemble is provided with the least number of stops required; again, about thirty. The "less is more" theory really works!

Hearing a pipe organ tuned in a sympathetic temperament is
like discovering fine wine after a lifetime of roadhouse coffee. There is
simply no comparison between the delights of pure tuning and the frustration of
cadences that beat unmercifully, no matter what the key or modulation.

When the listener does not hear this woeful tuning,
psychologists call it habituation. In other words, the average person does not
hear the inharmonicity of equal tuning because they know nothing better, and
have come to accept the ragged chords that have echoed in their ears for so
long as normal everyday music. One may take a holiday from equal temperament by
listening to a barbershop quartet for a dose of close harmony. Or take in a
concert on an organ made by an artisan builder who regards tuning as an
integral part of the instrument, reflective of its true baroque heritage. This
journey is worth the expense of rethinking all that we have taken for granted
in years past.

Ironies abound in the world of musical bias and each new
discovery can be delicious. In the late 19th century, we find a reliable bearer
of tempered tuning in that most unassuming of instruments, the reed organ. Free
reeds can hang on to their original tuning at least as well as cone tuned
pipes--in fact, they suffer less from wear and tear. Pump them up, and they
continue to play with the same sweet harmonies that their original tuning gave
them.

There are some aspects of 19th-century tuning that are tantalizing
indeed. Victorian temperaments are nearly equal, which means that in the
tradition of well-tuning, they render harmonious chords in all keys, though not
without individual key color. They are subtle, providing tension and relaxation
behind the scenes, rather than by the blunt contrast of sheep and wolves, as in
baroque temperaments. Their intervals gently progress from calm to agitated,
depending on the complexity and remoteness of each key. Somehow, they walk a
fine line between purity and utility. It seems that their particular strength
is modulation, where the prime keys assert themselves like the sun appearing
through cloud or the calm after a storm.

Of late, Victorian models of tuning have become popular with
both piano technicians and organ builders. The late 19th century was no less
rich in its diversity of temperaments than the 17th and 18th centuries.
Although theorized very early on, equal temperament was a child of the
industrial revolution. Perhaps it was the factory production of musical
instruments that propelled it into nearly universal practice among tuners and
musicians. Studies of ethnomusicology have informed us that the practice of
equal tuning was unique to western civilization and that other cultures
simultaneously developed far more rich and complex modes of intonation.

As we reflect on the revitalization of early music and an
increased regard for performance practice, we take equal tuning less for
granted. The realization that tuning methods have varied tremendously according
to time and place has awakened our ears in such a way that we can now explore
the world of sound and imagination, unfettered by musical prejudice. Take the
challenge: play through the modulations of your favorite 19th-century composer
and see what a "less than equal" temperament does for the music!
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Three practical considerations

If one is going to change an organ from equal to
well-temperament, it should be an operation that is undertaken with
considerable planning. One should consider the nature of an appropriate
temperament and what music will be the primary repertoire. It is important to
look at the objectives of a major change and to evaluate the musical results,
insofar as possible, ahead of time.

The sound of an organ goes a long way to dictate temperament.
Compatibility of organ building style and repertoire are major issues. If equal
temperament is one frustration among many, the organist must decide if a change
to well temperament is going to help change musical values for the better. It
is comforting to know that even a spinet piano can be satisfying when tuned in
a historic temperament. By the same token, there are many organs that will
benefit immensely from the natural harmonicity and increased resonance of a
carefully chosen temperament.

Once the decision is made, one should not use the
"candy store" approach to the selection of a temperament! It is a
good idea to seek out a consultant who has the sounds of various tunings in his
ears. Experience can be most helpful! There are several practical matters that
should be considered when evaluating the pros and cons of various tunings:
balance of thirds, regular or irregular intervals, and shared tuning with equal
temperament.

Balance and width of thirds (in cents)

The reason for tuning in well-temperaments is to achieve key
color. As a composer calls for various keys with a lesser or greater number of
accidentals, the key color is expected to change from pure and restful chords
to vibrating and agitated harmonies. These shifting key colors are relatively
subtle, perhaps even obscure to the layperson, though quite obvious to most
musicians. As one evaluates diverse temperaments, the issues revolve around the
amount of key color desired and the achievement of an even balance that
increases the frequency of beating thirds in accordance with a greater number
of accidentals, both in sharp and flat keys.

Circle of fifths: regular or irregular intervals

This consideration is often overlooked until one makes music
with orchestral and chamber players. Regular intervals ensure the best tuning
of obbligato instruments because the transition from various intervals within
the temperament is predictable and intuitively correct. Some well tunings have
a fine balance of key color, but present such irregular intervals that out of
tune playing by ancillary instruments is unavoidable. It is not a reflection
upon the players--actually, the more experienced and intuitive the players are,
the more likely they are to have difficulty with irregular temperaments. It is
precisely the "anticipatory" nature of "tuning on the fly"
that causes the problem.

Certainly, the best chamber players always tune with the
continuo for each open string or major interval, usually in a circle of fifths.
If that circle of fifths is predictable, things go well. If each successive
fifth is a bit wide or narrow, almost at random, how is an instrumentalist
going to remember the exact tuning? "Regular" temperaments solve this
problem by the use of predictable intervals for the circle of fifths.

Convertible or shared tunings

This is a special consideration where a well temperament
will actually share part of the circle of fifths with equal tuning, usually the
notes A-E-B-F#-C#. These five notes may be tuned exactly the same in both
temperaments! In an equal temperament, the remaining seven notes are tuned in
the same ratio as the first five. However, in a convertible or shared
temperament, the remaining seven notes are altered to the new temperament. The
benefits of a shared tuning are considerable, particularly if the instrument is
to be tuned back and forth between well and equal tuning. This is often the
case with a continuo organ which is featured in various temperaments and often
at various pitches from one concert to another.

Graphs

It is very helpful to see these relationships in a graph, as
well as text and numbers. It has become very common to express numeric
relationships among various temperaments in terms of deviation in cents from
equal temperament. This is not because equal temperament is best or right, but
because each interval is a mathematical division. Thus, a rendering of equal
temperament is not given as a "norm," but as a mathematical point of
reference.

Using an electronic tuning device vs. tuning by ear

It is ironic that tuning in equal temperament became
standard practice about the same time as electronic tuning devices became
commonplace professional tools. At this time, it may be said that most tuning
of musical instruments is done with an electronic reference. That is not to say
that "tuning by ear" is no longer practiced, but aural tuning has a
new perspective, to "test" temperament rather than set it. Before the
reader jumps to any conclusion, it should be emphasized that the "art of
tuning" is still very much intact, and fine piano and organ tuning has not
suffered at all. The very finest tuners still use their ears, and the machines
are just another tool in the box.

Paradoxically, the resurgence of well temperament coincides
with the widespread use of electronic tuning devices and computerized tuning
programs. Virtually every device available offers a synthesis of historic
temperaments that are available at the touch of a button. One might argue that
this enables those without sufficient ear training to "tune" various
instruments--it also enables quick and precise tuning by professional
technicians who have more than enough ear training to do the entire job without
an electronic tuner. It is very advantageous to move from theoretical considerations
to practical application  so easily
and effortlessly. It is a conundrum, but a happy one. Without electronic
assistance, historic tunings would be sufficiently tedious that they might well
be left undone.

Tuning by ear remains indispensable. The name of the game in
tuning is to reduce error--especially cumulative error. "Tests" are
the most important aspect of any tuning. They keep the tuner on the straight
and narrow, and prevent compound or cumulative errors that seriously degrade an
artistic tuning.

Recommended computer programs

Two fine computerized tuning programs are Robert Scott's
TuneLab program, available from Real Time Specialties, 6384 Crane Road,
Ypsilanti, MI 48197 ([email protected]) and Dean Reyburn's CyberTuner,
available from Reyburn Piano Service, 2695 Indian Lakes Road, NE, Cedar
Springs, MI 49319.

These are devices for tuning both historic and equal
temperament. Cost varies from less than $100 to about $900, depending on the
range of software desired. The best feature of these programs is that each
historic temperament file may be edited with a word processor. Other electronic
tuning devices are available, usually with pre-programmed historic
temperaments. The author suggests that they be compared on the basis of
accuracy (up to 1/10 cent) and the ease of programming various temperaments.
After that, there are issues of cost, portability and so forth.

As an aside, one may also consider style of tuning. The
author prefers the use of not one, but two electronic tuning devices--a
portable one to use inside the organ and a fixed unit at the console to monitor
tuning as the job progresses. This keeps the tuner's helper quite busy at both
organ and computer keyboards and reduces cumulative error by a considerable
amount. 

Historic tuning on the Internet

Bicknell, Stephen. A beginner's guide to temperament.

www.users.dircon.co.uk/~oneskull/3.6.04.htm

Bremmer, William. The true meaning of well-tempered tuning.

www.billbremmer.com/WellTemp.html

Foote, Edward. Six degrees of tonality; The well-tempered
piano.

www.uk-piano.org/edfoote/well_te mpered_piano.html

Gann, Kyle. An introduction to historical tunings.

http://home.earthlink.net/~kgann/his tune.html

Greenberg, Bernard S. What does "well-tempered"
mean?

www.bachfaq.org/welltemp.html

Kellner, Herbert Anton. Instructions for tuning a
harpsichord "wohltemperirt." 

ha.kellner.bei.t-online.de/

Palmer, Frederic. Meantone tuning.

home.pacbell.net/jeanannc/mpro/art icles/MeanTone.htm

Rubenstein, Michael. Well vs. equal temperament.

www.ma.utexas.edu/users/miker/tun ing/tuning.html

Taylor, Nigel. Tuning, temperaments and bells; The
ill-tempered piano.

www.kirnberger.fsnet.co.uk/   

How is it made?
We’re driving on a highway and a flat-bed truck with WIDE LOAD banners whips by in the other direction. The trailer is carrying a machine, big as a house and covered with a tarp that taunts as its corners flap in the wind. Aloud, I wonder what it’s for, and my wife smiles—or is it smirks? There’s a gap in the fence around a city construction site, and I stop to peer through to see what’s going on. Or I’m waiting in an airport (that’s what airports are for—I think they should call them waitports) amid hundreds of fellow waiters deep in laptop DVDs and MP3s. Important businessmen are having loud imaginary conversations on their iPhones, but I’m captivated by the panorama of activity outside. Each airplane is surrounded by a fleet of odd-looking trucks. By now, I think I know what each one is for, only because I’ve spent so much time watching them.
I’m fascinated by factories. I’ve seen steel, beer, automobiles, railroad cars, earth movers, and cigarettes being made. I’ve seen dollar bills, postage stamps, and newspapers fly through enormous printing presses at incomprehensible speeds. In the seventies, I rented a house from a guy who was a tool maker in an auto assembly plant. One December day, he invited me to a company Christmas party. We walked in to the din of the assembly line, and I quickly realized that the party was unofficial. Cars were being made by workers who were more focused on holiday cheer than the task at hand. I was secretly glad I was not planning to order a car that week.
Sesame Street was a staple in our house when our kids were young, and I loved the many segments of the show taking viewers on factory tours. Joe Raposo (brilliant composer of the show’s theme song, along with such classics as It’s not easy being green) wrote It takes a lot of little nuts to make a jar of peanut butter, a catchy tune that accompanied video shots of peanuts cascading down chutes into massive grinders and gooey paste blurping into jars as they shot along conveyor lines. Watching soda pop going into bottles at two or three a second, you might expect to hear the clanking of glass, but they shoot along obediently with only the whirr of the machines.
Organ builders spend much of their careers learning how to make little widgets one at a time, and figuring out how to make them better and more economically. I don’t say cheaper, because it’s a rare organbuilder who looks for cheap. Making a pipe organ part economically implies some kind of continuum that includes cost of material, time for manufacture, and artistic content. Just because you built a tremolo for less money doesn’t mean it’s going to “trem” musically. If you’ve developed a part that you know you’ll need by the thousand, you develop the ability for mass production. A tracker organ might need two or three hundred squares—if you’ve got a good design, why not spend a week making enough for the next ten organs? Or if someone else makes them in greater numbers for less money per piece, why not buy them and use them in your organs?
Another case in point is the huge parts that comprise a large organ. Building just one 32-foot wood pipe is a huge undertaking that takes hundreds of board feet of lumber, hundreds of clamps, and plenty of person-power. Just turning a pipe to wipe off the glue takes several people. At the Organ Clearing House, we know that a 32-foot wood stop automatically makes a second semi-trailer necessary. Think of the floor space you need to make something like that.
Wal-Mart tops the list of Fortune 500 companies with 1,800,000 employees. Compare that to the city of Philadelphia with 1,500,000 residents. Ford and General Motors both top 300,000. I do not have exact statistics at hand, but I’m pretty sure that no modern organ building company employs more than 150 people. Off the top of my head and counting on my fingers, I can think of fewer than ten American firms that employ more than twenty people. By far, most modern organ companies comprise two or three workers.
A big early twentieth-century firm like Austin, Hook & Hastings, Skinner, Möller, Reuter, or Schantz had dozens, in some cases hundreds of workers. The factories were divided into small shops that specialized in windchests, actions, consoles, or pipes. The woodworking shop built casework, made wood pipes, and provided milled pieces for the console and reservoir shops. A factory superintendent managed a production schedule that called for all the components of a given organ to arrive on the erecting floor where the instrument was assembled and tested before being shipped, and an installation team would meet the shipment and install the organ.
So a worker at Hook & Hastings might have spent his entire working life making keyboards. He wouldn’t be considered an organbuilder by modern standards. He might not have had any idea how a windchest works. But boy could he make keyboards. One of my colleagues talks about having tracked down one of the legendary, now very elderly women who glued pouches in the Skinner factory. While he was undoubtedly looking for hints about what machines and jigs and they used, she seemed to say that they just glued them. I doubt that she could tune an organ pipe, but boy could she glue a perfect pouch, and boy could she do it hundreds of times each day.
Which is the better organ? Is it the one that’s made from stem to stern by two or three dedicated “all-round” organbuilders, or is it the one that’s conceived by a salesman, designed by a team of engineers, endowed with standards and procedures established by the genius who founded the company, and built by a large group of people, each an expert and specialist in one facet of the trade? History has proven that both scenarios can produce wonderful organs.

Supply and demand
I’ve been thinking about organ shops large and small because I just returned from a delivery tour that included visits to two large companies that are important suppliers to the pipe organ industry. The Organ Clearing House is involved in two projects that involve renovation and installation of historic organs, and these companies are adding their vast resources to our work. A. R. Schopp’s Sons of Alliance, Ohio, is an important supplier of new organ pipes. They also produce windchests, wind regulators and reservoirs, casework, and swell shutters. Organ Supply Industries of Erie, Pennsylvania (known across the trade as OSI), does all of that. In addition, OSI fills an essential niche as suppliers of widgets and doo-dads—the countless catalogue numbers refer to chest magnets, leather nuts, voicing tools, organ blowers, leather, wiring supplies, specialty lubricants, valves, and the squares I mentioned earlier. It is the rare American organ builder who does not rely on OSI for something.
I drove a truck filled with large components from the two organs, loading in Deerfield, New Hampshire, and Melrose, Massachusetts, on a Tuesday morning, and driving (in accordance with Department of Transportation rules) through heavy rain as far as Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where I spent the night. What had been rain in Pennsylvania was ice in Ohio, so Thursday brought a drive through rural countryside festooned with beautifully crafted ice formations, and low-hanging tree limbs slapping the side of the truck body. I spent Thursday afternoon with the people of A. R. Schopp’s Sons, and drove on to Erie, where I spent the night before visiting OSI on Thursday morning. Early morning television revealed the wisdom (or luck) of the schedule—northeast Ohio was blanketed with heavy snow on Thursday, and I spent the rest of the trip leading the storm east. And here’s a comment on the cost of doing business: my 1,800-mile trip consumed nearly $700 worth of diesel fuel.
I had substantive conversations at both factories that gave me new insight into the importance of their role in our trade. The phrase “supply house” can stir up negative connotations. I’ve used it myself to imply cheapness: “They replaced it with a supply-house console . . . .” Plenty of organs have cheap replacement “after market” consoles, but that’s not a fair way to judge the contemporary work of such important companies.
Let’s talk about the electro-pneumatic chest magnet. A century ago, much of organ building was prototypical. Most organs were incorporating the new-fangled electro-pneumatic action. In fact, at that time, the application of electricity was new throughout the industrial world. So naturally, organbuilders developed their own versions of the electric chest magnet. Some had one-piece cast-metal housings, while some were assemblies that combined punched brass plates, drilled maple blocks, and wood screws and tacks. Over the ensuing decades, the best features of each style were slowly combined, until today, most new electro-pneumatic organs incorporate chest magnets from one source.
The modern small organbuilding shop is challenged by the struggle between artistic content and commercial reality. No client purchasing an organ will agree to a price “to be determined.” Any organbuilder is expected to state a price before work starts. It makes no sense for a small shop to mess around developing the ideal chest magnet to complement their artistic philosophy when a century of research and development provides a universal model with space-age specifications at mass-market prices with the help of FedEx.
But there is another side to this issue. You can go into a Crate & Barrel store in Texas and buy a half-dozen beautiful wine glasses, take them home and enjoy them as part of your home, and then with a pang of disappointment see the same glasses on the table of a friend in Seattle. Or notice that the books featured on the front table at Barnes & Noble on Union Square in New York are identical to those in a shopping mall in suburban Phoenix—as if tastes in reading would be the same in any two places. It’s a natural impulse for an organbuilder to make his products unique—you feel a little pang when you see the same stuff you use in an organ built by another firm.
Is the magnet the artistic core of the organ? How many other little parts could be uniform through a variety of organ companies before the instruments all blended into one? How do we define the parameters for performance of the pats in an organ? One way to judge the performance of an electric or pneumatic organ action is the repetition rate—how fast can the note repeat? (The real key to fast repetition is quick release, not fast attack.) A standard answer is sixty repetitions per second, a speed faster than an organist can go, faster than a pipe can speak—in short, fast enough so the magnet would never be the weak link. Would it be worth the time and expense to spend a couple months developing a new magnet that could do sixty-five? Would the player be able to tell?

While the two companies I visited last week have different priorities and personalities, in my judgment they share a common philosophy. Because they work in large volume, they can afford sophisticated modern automated equipment that is beyond the reach of a small shop. But what they really offer is service. An organbuilder can choose to purchase a mass-produced reservoir from a list of sizes in the catalogue, or order one that’s custom built to specifications for a particular organ. And a small organ shop can view a supplier as an annex capable of providing anything from a box of screws to a complete organ.
These venerable companies employ engineers who advise their customers about the use of their products. They can help with the design of custom parts and components. And they work very hard to be sure that the quality of their products is high enough to complement the quality of the work of their customers, the American organbuilders.
Last year the Organ Clearing House completed the renovation of a three-manual Casavant organ. Because the organ was being moved to a totally different architectural environment, we provided a new case with new façade pipes. The case was built by another supply company, QLF Pipe Organ Components of Rocky Mount, Virginia. OSI supplied the polished pipes. Before and after photos show what “supply house” really means. (See “Here & There,” The Diapason, April 2008, p. 10.) It’s the next best thing to running a company with a hundred cars in the parking lot and a roster of specialty departments.?

Herbert L. Huestis, Ph.D., is Contributing Editor for The Diapason.

The RFP Sliding Scale

An "RFP" is shorthand for "Request for Proposal," a letter that most organ builders receive from prospective clients with regularity. On the one hand, some are exciting and invigorating. They represent a chance for the builder to do something special that enhances their expertise and experience. On the other hand, some are tragic in their shortsightedness. They are an invitation to add to the opus of indifferent or misinformed organ building that is so prevalent across the land.

I have coined the term "RFP Sliding Scale" to describe a downward trend that occurs when each successive phone call represents a stranger request than the time before. I can say from personal experience that this can happen. I am not making this up.

I would like to give a verbatim request, but privacy issues prevail, and examples must suffice. Here are some of the "truth is stranger than fiction"  RFPs.

Items that have been requested for a small unit organ

* Fit new "digital grade" contacts to each manual and pedal note. (Question: What is meant by "digital grade" ?)

* Fit new rocker tablets to accommodate a much-expanded stop list. (Why do folks want to obtain 33 "voices" from 3 ranks of pipes?)

* Install 12 new pistons and toe studs in the thumb-rails and pedalboard. (What's the organist going to use all those buttons for?)

* All pistons and reversibles are to be of the lighted type. (For candlelight services?)

* Install a chime relay in the Great and Swell. (You don't want to be far away from the chimes!)

* Connect the organ power supply to the building security system. (This one stumps me. I guess it has something to do with pews that "creak" in the night. Would the organ shut down when the building alarm was sounded?)

* Provide multiple memories, lockable with digital passwords. (That's it, you can use your ATM card to set combinations!)

* Provide a clock that "autocorrects" via a microprocessor for accuracy. (My VCR does that, but I have no idea how to hook up the organ to Channel 9.)

* Install a transposer with a warning indicator. (Perhaps the building alarm would do.)

* Set all console keys and switches to factory standards. (Problem: this is a Möller Artiste--no more factory.)

* Extend the Trumpet rank to give a 16-8-4 reed chorus on the Swell. (How to provide a Willis "full Swell" with one rank. This reminds me of the "one rank mixture.") [See White, "The One-rank Mixture; The Diapason, November, 1961, p. 25.]

* Add a Cymbale III. (That would double the size of the organ from 3 ranks to 6 ranks!)

* Here is a request that is a keeper: Engrave all stop tabs with preparations "masked with a semi-permanent,   non-staining, semi-opaque material." (Could this customer be asking for masking tape?)

These are honest-to-gosh examples that illustrate what I call the "RFP Sliding Scale." I am a believer in the adage that the customer is mostly right, and in these cases, I call back to inquire if we could stop by and have a look at the organ. I call attention to the fact that unit organs are "stand-alone" affairs that don't take too well to multiple additions and "improvements." This is my "Let sleeping dogs lie" approach. Nevertheless,  I have to learn to control my passive-aggressive impulses in these situations.

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House

Decisions, decisions
We are rebuilding an organ. It’s about 90 years old. It has electro-pneumatic action. The main manual windchests have ventil stop action. It has three manuals and 33 ranks. It was built as the “downstairs” organ in a large Roman Catholic church—a common layout for the quintessential huge Catholic parish that allows Masses to be celebrated concurrently. In our work at the Organ Clearing House we’ve been involved in the relocation of quite of few “downstairs” organs as parish leaders find it attractive and useful to redevelop those huge spaces into reception rooms, classrooms, offices, rehearsal space, and of course to create spaces that can generate rental income.
The organ has been purchased by a church that has a strong liturgical tradition and an elaborate music program, located in a big city. Over the course of a year or so, the church’s organist and I developed a plan that includes adding six ranks of pipes and a couple 16′ extensions to existing ranks. Originally the Great and Swell divisions each had two windchests, one for lower pressure, one for higher. The high-pressure Great chest will become the Solo division playable independently on Manuals I and II. Because we will be able to incorporate some good-quality 16′ ranks left from the church’s previous organ, our 39-rank specification will include eight 16′ ranks including three open ranks, two reeds, and three stopped wood ranks. There will be seven ranks of reeds, two on high pressure. The only reed not under expression will be the Pedal Bombarde.
In the last few weeks I have been designing the technical specifications of the project, working with suppliers and our client to make decisions about which materials and which equipment will make up this organ. We have faced quite a few complicated technical choices, and the nature of this project means that there are some philosophical questions to answer.

Restore, rebuild, renovate
It’s easy to say we’re restoring an organ—but I think the word restore is overused. I prefer to use that word literally. When we restore an organ to its original condition we don’t add or subtract any pipes. We don’t introduce modern materials. We don’t even change the color of the felt around the drawknobs. It’s impossible to restore an organ if you’re using a solid-state combination action (unless the organ originally had an identical system!). Using this definition, I’d say there are very few real pipe organ restorations completed in the world today. The argument can be taken so far as to say that a restoration cannot include new trackers (even if the old ones are hopelessly broken)—in other words, literally restoring an organ can result in an instrument that cannot be played.
The word rebuild when used to describe an organ project is much more general and not very limiting—a “rebuild” of a pipe organ is a philosophical free-for-all. We buy or make materials and parts that will “do the job.” We want the organ to perform well, that all the notes work correctly and the tuning is stable. We want the job to be both economical for the client and profitable for the organbuilder, a seemingly oxymoronic goal. But we are not necessarily making an artistic statement.
I prefer the word renovate. It comes from the Latin root “nova” which simply means new. My dictionary gives the word novation as a legal term describing the substitution of a new obligation for an old one—I’m no attorney, but I presume that describes a contract that has been renegotiated or an agreement that has been cancelled and replaced by a new one. In organbuilding, I use the word renovation to describe a project that focuses philosophically on the work and intentions of the original organ builder. It allows for the addition of ranks, especially if the original specification was obviously limited by constraints of space or budget. It allows us to modify an instrument to better suit a new home. And it forces us to make myriad decisions with the ethic of the original instrument in the forefront of our minds.
Our current project is a long way from a restoration. We have chosen to replace large and important components. We are adding several ranks. We are including a sophisticated combination action. We expect that the result will be an instrument with plenty of pizzazz, extensive expressive capabilities, and a wide range of tone color. There will certainly be plenty of bass and fundamental tone. We intend for the console to be welcoming to the player, expecting that the organ will be played by some of our most accomplished organists.
In this and other professional publications, we are accustomed to reading descriptions of completed projects. As I work through this long list of decisions, I thought it would be fun (and useful to my process) to discuss them in broad terms as the project begins.

Adding ranks
If this instrument was originally a “downstairs” organ, I think it’s fair to say that it was a secondary instrument. In fact, the church it came from has a magnificent and much larger organ in the main sanctuary. Our instrument was not decked out with some of the fancy stops that are appropriate, even required for the sort of use it will get in its new home. The voices we’re adding include French Horn, Tuba, and Harmonic Flute. We’re adding a second chorus mixture (there was only one). We’re adding a second Celeste (there was only one). We’re adding 16′ extensions to a soft string and an Oboe, as well as a couple new independent sixteen-footers. Most of these additions are being planned based on the scaling of the rest of the organ. And a couple of the fancier additions will be based on the work of a different organbuilder whose specialty stops are especially prized.
I believe that many additions are made to pipe organs based on nomenclature instead of tone color. If the last organ you played regularly had a Clarion in the Swell, the next one needs one too. I think it’s important to plan additions with your ears rather than your drawknob-pulling fingers. Some specialty stops stand out—an organ with a good French Horn can do some things that other organs can’t. But describing an organ by reciting its stoplist does not tell me what the organ sounds like. An organ without a Clarion 4′ can still be a wonderful organ.
The additions we’ve chosen come from many long conversations concerning what we hope the organ will be able to do. And these additions are intended to transform the instrument from its original secondary character to one suited for all phases of high liturgy and the performance of the organ repertory.

Windchests
Ventil stop action is one in which each rank is mounted over a discrete stop channel. When the stop is off, the organ’s air pressure is not present in the channel. The stop knob controls a large pneumatic valve that allows air pressure to rush in to fill the channel. This is one of the earliest types of pneumatic stop action, invented to allow for the transition away from the slider chests of the nineteenth century. Both electro-pneumatic and tubular-pneumatic organs were equipped with ventil windchests. When they are in perfect condition and perfectly adjusted, they operate quickly and efficiently, but there are some inherent problems.
The nature of the large valve (ventil is the word for a pneumatic valve) means that there’s a limit to how fast the air pressure can enter the stop channel when the stop is turned on, and a limit to how fast the air pressure can exhaust, or leave the channel when the stop is turned off. To put it simply, sometimes a ventil stop action is slow. It’s especially noticeable when you turn off a stop while holding a note or a chord—you can clearly hear the tone sag as the air leaves the channel. Pitman chests introduced the first electro-pneumatic stop action in which the stops are controlled at the scale of the individual note. Turn on a stop, air pressure enters a channel in the Pitman rail, the row of 61 Pitman valves move, and each note is turned on individually and instantly.
Another disadvantage of ventil stop action comes from the fact that electro-pneumatic actions work by exhausting. A note pouch at rest (not being played) has organ air pressure both inside and out. Play the note and the interior of the pouch is exposed to atmosphere. The air pressure surrounding the pouch collapses it, carrying the valve away from the toe hole. In a Pitman chest, a hole in a pouch means a dead note, annoying but not disruptive. In a ventil chest, a hole in a pouch means a cipher, annoying and disruptive. The cause of the cipher is air pressure exhausting from the interior of pouches of stops that are on into the stop channels of stops that are off—the exhausting happens through the holes in pouch leather of stops that are off. It’s easy to diagnose because the cipher will go away when you turn on the stop. In other words, a hole in a pouch in the Octave 4′ will allow the pouches of the other stops to exhaust through it into its empty stop channel. Turn on the Octave 4′ and the Principal 8′ can no longer exhaust that way so the cipher goes away—but the note in the Octave is dead!
With the revival of interest in Romantic music, cathedral-style accompanying, and symphonic organ playing, instant stop action is critical. We have decided to convert the stop action in our instrument from ventil to Pitman.

Console
The console is the place where we’ve faced the most choices. In the early twentieth century, the great heyday of organbuilding, each builder had specific and unique console designs. Each manufactured their own drawknob mechanisms, their own keyboards, their own piston buttons. Each had a particular way of laying out stopjambs. An experienced organist could be led blindfolded to a console and would be able to identify the organbuilder in a few seconds.
Most of those organs were built by companies with dozens or even hundreds of workers. A factory would house independent departments for consoles, windchests, wood pipes, metal pipes, casework, structures, and wind systems. Components were built all around the factory and brought together in an erecting room where the organ was assembled and tested before it was shipped. Today, most organ workshops employ only a few people. There are hundreds of shops with two or three workers, a small number of dozens of shops with between ten and twenty workers, and a very few with more than twenty.
When building small tracker-action organs, it’s not difficult to retain a philosophy of making everything in one workshop. Without distraction, two or three craftsmen can build a ten- or fifteen-stop organ in a year or so, making the keyboards, pipes, action, case—everything from “scratch” and by hand. When building large electro-pneumatic organs, that’s pretty much impossible. Too many of the components must be mass-produced using metal, too many expected functions of such an organ (like combination actions) are so complicated to build by hand, that it’s simply not economical to do it with a “build everything here” philosophy.
That means that a few organ-supply companies provide keyboards, drawknobs, combination actions, piston rails, and other console controls and appointments for the entire industry. It’s something of a homogenization of the trade—just like you buy the same books in a Barnes & Noble store in New York or in Topeka, and a McDonald’s hamburger tastes the same in Fairbanks as in Miami, so the drawknob action is identical in the consoles built by dozens of different firms.
The upside of this conundrum is that the companies that produce these specialized and rarified controls (you can’t go to Home Depot to buy a drawknob motor) have the time and ability to perfect their products. So while the drawknobs we will install in the console for this organ will be the same as those on many organs in that city, they are excellent units with a sturdy old-style toggle feel, beautifully engraved knob faces, and of course, compatibility with today’s sophisticated solid-state combination actions.
This week we placed the orders for new drawknobs identical to the original (we’re expanding from 33 to 60 knobs), drawknob motors and tilting tablets for couplers, new keyslips with many more pistons than the original layout, and engraved labels for indicator lights and the divisions of stops and pistons.

Combination action
It used to be “ka-chunk” or “ka-thump.” One of the factors of that blindfolded test would be pushing a piston. Compare in your mind’s ear the resulting sound in a Skinner console with that of an Austin. If you’re familiar with both builders you know exactly what I mean. The sounds are as distinctly different as are the diapasons of each builder. In many renovation projects, a solid-state combination action is installed to operate the original electro-pneumatic drawknobs—a nice way to preserve some of the original ethic of an organ. But when the specification of an organ is changed as part of a renovation project, it’s not easy to adapt the original knob mechanisms by adding knobs. In fact, it’s typical for there to be plenty of space in a chamber to add all kinds of new ranks, but no way to add the controls to the console without starting over. It’s no good to add a stop to the organ when you can’t include the knob in the combination action.
There are a half-dozen firms that produce excellent solid-state controls for pipe organs. They each have distinct methods, the equipment they produce is consistent, and each different brand or model combination action has myriad features unheard of a generation ago. Programmable crescendos, piston sequencers, manual transfers, expression couplers, melody couplers, pizzicato basses, the list seems endless. Multi-level systems have been with us for long enough that we’re no longer surprised by hundreds of levels of memory.
But when we’re renovating a console, we face the challenge of including lots of new controls for all those, dare I say, gimmicky functions. We build drawers under the keytables so the flashing and blinking lights and readouts are not part of our music-making, and the organists complain that they whack their knees when they get on the bench. We add “up and down” pistons to control memory levels and sequencers. We have bar-graph LED indicators for expression pedals. And we even install USB ports so software upgrades and MIDI sequencing can be accomplished easily. I suppose the next step will be to update a combination action by beaming from your iPhone. It’s easy to produce a console that looks like a science lab or an aerospace cockpit, and it’s just as easy to fall into thinking that the lights, buttons, and switches are more important than the sound of the organ.
It’s our choice to keep the “look” of the console as close as possible to its original design—it is a very handsome console. But keeping that in mind, you will want some modern gizmos close at hand.
There are lots more things to think about. Are we holding up bass pipes with soldered hooks or with twill-tape tied in knots? Are we making soldered galvanized windlines or using PVC pipe or flexible rubber hoses? It’s relatively easy to make a list of all the right choices for the renovation of a fine organ built by a great organbuilder. But the challenge is to retain the musical and artistic qualities of the organ, renovate an organ using the same level of craftsmanship as the original builder and produce an instrument that thrills all who make music and worship with it, while keeping in mind that the future of the pipe organ is ensured by the appropriate balance between artistry and expense. Thoughtful organbuilders face that question every time they pick up a tool.