Is it real?
Fifteen or twenty years ago there was an ad campaign for Memorex® cassette tapes in which various setups were created to compare “live” music with recorded music to see whether both would break a piece of fancy stemware. A popular singer would be featured offering a terrible, powerful high note, and inevitably the glass would shatter.
What did it prove?
I’ve heard some singers who could make me cringe, but how plausible is it that the actual, acoustic human voice would break a glass? Conversely, I wonder if any other recorded sound played back with enough wattage would break the glass—a hummingbird’s wings for example or a cat on a hot tin roof. I think the Memorex demonstration was at least a little bit disingenuous, and of course we heard the whole thing through whatever speakers came with our television set. Television advertisements for televisions imply that what you see on the screen may be better than real life, but again, your appreciation of the ad is limited by the quality of your present TV.
The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000) defines the word virtual: “1. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name . . . ” and “2. Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination.”
I introduce the word virtual in this context of what I might call the “unreality of reality.” In recent years we’ve been given the phrase virtual reality, defined in the same dictionary as “a computer simulation of a real or imaginary system that enables a user to perform operations on the simulated system and shows the effects in real time.”
An oxymoron is not a person addicted to painkillers, it’s a “rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined.” To my ears, virtual reality is an oxymoron.
Let’s be real.
We might imagine that Bach would have stopped at 175 cantatas if he had been subject to phone calls from the clergy, or Mozart’s 30th symphony would have been his last had he been distracted by television, or—God forbid—video games. But simple things like hot water in the house and electric lights are taken for granted, and more complicated things like computers have become something close to necessities. I’m in favor of technology. The other day I stumbled over a box of detritus stored in an organ chamber by a long-gone organist. I was amused to see a 56K compact disc. 56K? How Stone Age. There’s a half-used 100-pack of 700MB CDs on my desk. Big deal. I replaced my previous 2GB laptop with a 60GB job because of the number of photos I carry around. There’s a 2GB memory card in my camera. What’s next? Remember NASA engineers using slide rules during Apollo flights? (I know that’s true because I saw it in a movie.) With a $400 GPS we have more navigation ability in a 20-foot motorboat than the entire British Navy had during the Napoleonic wars. How much more computing speed or data-storage capacity do we need?
Apply that same question to cameras (mine has more mega-pixels than yours), automobiles (mine has more horsepower than yours), or cell phones (mine’s a camera, a calculator, a calendar, an alarm clock . . . ). How much more can they offer before they stop getting better?
Many of us in the organbuilding world are devoted to the pipe-organ-technology of the early 20th century—what Ernest Skinner considered adequate console equipment should be good enough for anyone. But let’s remember that hundreds of terrific Hook organs were replaced by Skinner’s new-fangled electric things where the organist was 40 feet away from the instrument. What makes the early electro-pneumatic pipe organ the ideal? How many organbuilders and organists disdained Skinner’s innovations as superfluous or unnecessary? “If God had intended us to push pistons we would have been all thumbs.” At what point in the development of any technology does one take a snapshot and declare the ideal, after which there’s no need for further development?
Electronics in the worship space
It’s more than 50 years since churches began purchasing electronic organs to replace pipe organs. I think many, even most of us will admit that the 30- and 40-year-old models that are still laboring along are pretty poor. While they have pipe organ names on their stop tablets, they never did sound like organs. They were cheaply made and not durable. A church I served as music director had a 20-year-old electronic in the chapel that wasn’t in tune, according to the technician couldn’t be tuned, and needed parts that weren’t available. Have you ever tried to get a three-year-old computer repaired?
While it’s always risky to generalize, it seems to me that the average church that was once proud of owning a modest pipe organ is inclined to buy an electronic console that emulates a 60- or 70-stop “real” organ. What sense does it make to have an “organ” with 32¢ sounds, batteries of reeds, and secondary and tertiary choruses in a sanctuary that seats fewer than 200 people? Is it so you can play music that was intended for buildings ten times the size? It’s a violation of scale, an anomaly, and artless expression. As I wrote a couple months ago, “the Widor” doesn’t work in every church.
The Virtual Pipe Organ
Trinity Church (Episcopal), Wall Street, New York, is a prominent, beautiful, historically significant edifice that houses a large and vibrant parish with an extraordinary music program. According to the church’s website , the parish was founded “by charter of King William III of England in 1697.” The present Gothic Revival building, designed by Richard Upjohn, was consecrated on May 1, 1846. The website includes an Historical Timeline that tells us that some of the church’s vestrymen were members of the Continental Congresses, that the parishioners were divided politically as the Revolutionary War progressed, but that the clergy sided with the crown. An American patriot, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Provoost, was appointed rector in 1784, and the New York State Legislature “ratifie[d] the charter of Trinity Church,” deleting the provision that asserted its loyalty to the King of England.
In 1770, just 28 years after Georg Frederick Handel’s Messiah was premiered in Dublin, Ireland, it received its American premiere at Trinity Church. Today’s spectacular and highly regarded Trinity Choir is heard on many recordings. Their annual performances of Messiah are legendary throughout the city. Bernard Holland of the New York Times wrote, “All the ‘Messiah’ outings to come in the next two weeks will have to work hard to match this one.” And in 2005, the Times called Trinity’s performance of the great oratorio, “the ‘Messiah’ to beat.” (Now there’s an image!) What a wonderful heritage.
On September 11, 2001, Trinity Church assumed an essential national role by chance of place. Located adjacent to the World Trade Center, the church and its people were thrust into the center of that tragic story. St. Paul’s Chapel, part of Trinity’s “campus” and located a couple blocks away, became an inspiring comfort station for firefighters and other emergency workers. Through the ensuing months, as the rubble was unraveled, the chapel was staffed by the people of the church who provided food, refreshment, and a resting place for the rescue workers. The response of the clergy, staff, and parishioners to that national catastrophe was as inspirational as it was essential.
At the moment of the attack, a service was in progress in Trinity Church, the organ blower was running, and the great cloud of dust that filled the entire neighborhood found its way into the organ. It was later determined that the organ could not be used without extensive cleaning and renovation. A temporary solution was offered. Douglas Marshall and David Ogletree, dealers of Rodgers organs in New England, had been developing the “Virtual Pipe Organ,” using a technology they named PipeSourced® voices. A large instrument using this technology was installed at Trinity Church as a temporary solution while the church researched the condition of the Aeolian-Skinner.
A year or so after the Virtual Pipe Organ was installed, I attended a service to hear the instrument and was impressed by the volume and intensity of the sound. The massive building was filled with the sound of an organ. There was no distortion. People were singing, and I’m willing to bet that many of them were well satisfied, even thrilled by the sound. I had not expected to be convinced that the Virtual Organ would really sound like a pipe organ. In fact I’m not sure how I could eliminate the bias of a lifetime as an “acoustic organ guy.” As full and intense as the sound of the Virtual Organ was, it was not the sound of a pipe organ. It lacked the essential majesty of presence, the special physicality, the particular “realness” of the sound of a great pipe organ.
The experience of listening to the Virtual Organ might be compared to listening to a recording of a great pipe organ, as the sound of both comes from speakers. I understand that sampling technology is not the same as recordings, and I expect that proponents of the virtual organ will object to my analogy, but it’s those speakers that make the essential difference. Sound coming from a speaker will always be distinguishable from sound coming from organ pipes.
I can recall the depth of my impressions when as a young teenager I first heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing in Symphony Hall. I think I expected the huge volume of sound and the intensity of the differences of the timbres, but I had no way of anticipating the presence, the majesty, the physicality of all that acoustic sound as enhanced by the magnificent room. Oh, those double basses!
There are few musical presentations more expensive than a symphony orchestra (except opera and ballet in which the symphony orchestra is combined with the theater). A hundred serious musicians on stage in a 300-million-dollar concert hall require important organization to sustain, but we don’t hear a move to replace that experience with digital sampling. We want to hear the real thing. The symphony orchestra and the pipe organ are special in our culture because they’re so expensive. I don’t mean that the money itself is impressive—but that the money represents how majestic the expression is.
In conversations with church members I frequently hear people say that the sound of a digital instrument is “good enough” for the untrained ear. One might respond, unless your fiancée is a jeweler, why bother with a real diamond? She’ll never know the difference.
I don’t want to eat a chemically produced substitute for lobster. I want the real lobster, and for goodness sake, don’t mess with the butter!
I read on Marshall & Ogletree’s website (www.marshallogletree.com) that they sample complete pipe organs: “PipeSourced® sounds, which are skillful note-by-note, stop-by-stop recordings of famous pipe organs (90% of them vintage Aeolian-Skinners), contribute unprecedented virtual reality to Marshall & Ogletree instruments, as well as to its combination organs and custom additions for new and existing pipe organs.” That’s a long, long way from the previous generation of sampling techniques, and proverbial light-years from the early rounds of tone-generators on which the development of the electronic instrument was founded.
There have been a number of articles written in praise of the Virtual Pipe Organ, including Allen Kozinn’s review of a recital played by Cameron Carpenter published in the New York Times on July 7, 2007, with the headline: “A ‘Virtual’ Organ Wins New Converts at a Recital.” And Dr. Burdick has written an apologia defending the church’s decision to sell the dismantled Aeolian-Skinner, retain the Marshall & Ogletree Virtual Organ, and to commission another virtual instrument for St. Paul’s Chapel, which concludes,
Trinity Church is proud of its role in developing the “virtual pipe organ,” which could only exist in this new century because of the continuing exponential growth of computer speed and memory. Without the brilliance of Douglas Marshall and David Ogletree, whose research began in 1997 to develop an entirely new approach to the digital organ, we could never have achieved an instrument such as this. Furthermore, without Trinity Church having taken advantage of its historic opportunity by daring to consider such an interim instrument, the music world would not now have this dramatic new 21st century success: like an automobile with horsepower but no horses, a virtual pipe organ with musical potentials beyond anyone’s imagination.
There’s little doubt that Trinity’s Aeolian-Skinner organ was not as distinguished as many other instruments produced by that firm. (It’s at least a little ironic that there’s agreement that Trinity’s Aeolian-Skinner organ was less than great, but it’s replaced by something based on sampling “vintage Aeolian-Skinners.”) There’s no doubt at all that the Virtual Pipe Organ represents but a fraction of the cost of commissioning a Real Organ. After all, we live in the age of the seven-figure organ. There’s no doubt that Trinity Church has realized a significant short-term economy by eliminating the immense maintenance budget required by a large pipe organ. In fact, Dr. Burdick reports that they had been spending $56,000 annually to care for the Aeolian-Skinner—a specious argument in that there are many much larger and much older organs that are maintained effectively for less money. The organ world rumor-mill, that most active of subcultures, has reported many different numbers representing the cost of the Virtual Organ. I don’t know what the actual price was, but it’s safe to guess that it was a significant number of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Is it true stewardship of a church’s resources to spend such a volume of money on artifice? For centuries, Christians have given their all trying to make their worship spaces approach their respect for their faith. Huge treasures were spent in 12th-century France building cathedrals that still inspire us. Fortunes have been spent on stained-glass that fills church interiors with magical, mystical light. Trinity Church Wall Street is a spectacular edifice with beautiful vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows, carved wood architectural elements and furniture. Hundreds of important preachers, humanitarians, and politicians have spoken there. To walk inside is to respect the care and vision with which the place was created. To walk inside is to find respite from a frenetic city and inspiration from all that has happened there. To walk inside is to worship. This is not a place for artifice.
As I’ve spoken about Trinity Church, I encourage you to read about St. Paul’s Chapel at www.saintpaulschapel. org/about_us/. Built in 1766, it’s the oldest public building in Manhattan that’s been in continuous use. Here’s an excerpt from that website:
George Washington worshiped here on Inauguration Day, April 30, 1789, and attended services at St. Paul’s during the two years New York City was the country’s capital. Above his pew is an 18th-century oil painting of the Great Seal of the United States, which was adopted in 1782.
Directly across the chapel is the Governor’s pew, which George Clinton, the first Governor of the State of New York, used when he visited St. Paul’s. The Arms of the State of New York are on the wall above the pew.
Among other notable historical figures who worshiped at St. Paul’s were Prince William, later King William IV of England; Lord Cornwallis, who is most famous in this country for surrendering at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781; Lord Howe, who commanded the British forces in New York, and Presidents Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and George H. W. Bush.
St. Paul’s Chapel stands as a shrine for all that happened in that neighborhood and to this country on September 11, 2001. This is also not a place for artifice.
In his Apologia, Dr. Burdick reports, “Because of insurance matters after 9/11, there was no question that we’d have to wait five to seven years for a decent replacement pipe organ, during which time I felt that we’d be starving for good organ sound.” Fair enough. That’s why the purchase of the Virtual Pipe Organ for temporary use was a good solution. But I am sorry that such a church in such a place with such a history would miss their opportunity to add not to the virtual world, but the real world of the pipe organ.
