The world according to nuts
Years ago I read an essay by Andy Rooney in which he claimed he would always rely on a nut for a description about what the nut is nuts about. It’s inspiring to meet someone who is crazy about something—the church member who has been giving tours of the building at noon every Sunday for 30 years, the baseball fan who really understands the bunt, the fisherman who chooses self-tied flies depending on light and tide conditions, or the oenologist who can actually explain the difference between fruity and sassy! I recall a lovely encounter with a woman who lived next to the famed Concord Bridge in Concord, Massachusetts (By the rude bridge that arched the flood, Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled, Here once the embattled farmers stood, And fired the shot heard round the world.1), who considered it a privilege to live there and her responsibility to tell visitors all she could.
In this sense, the word nut is synonymous with buff. Ever meet an organ buff? Most of my colleagues are organ buffs, and come to think of it, most of them are also some other kind of buff. I know organ nuts who are gardening buffs, wooden-boat buffs, steam-railroad buffs, antique-car buffs, even beer buffs.
In this sense, the word buff is synonymous with the word aficionado. I know organ people who are aficionados of opera, baseball, silent movies, and jazz.
Nuts, buffs, and aficionados are interested in subjects that have deep histories and lots of technical facts to master. I’ve gone bleary-eyed on more than one occasion listening to a colleague recite and compare stoplists wondering whether, for the sake of a given conversation, it really matters if the 8¢ Flute on the Great was a Melodia or a Clarabella (yes Virginia, there is a difference!). Likewise, while participating in a sailboat race I met an old salt sitting on a dock bench who demanded that passers-by give him compass headings so he could show off by giving the recip-rocal course. We all know that South (180º) is the reciprocal of North (0º) but we have to stop and think before stating that the reciprocal of North-by-northeast-a-half-east (33.75º) is the reciprocal of South-by-southwest-a-half-west (213.75º). The guy on the bench had a good point. Any serious blue-water sailor should master that information—you must be able to steer a reciprocal course when someone falls overboard in the middle of the night. But the recitation did not make interesting conversation. I expect I would have learned more had Salty talked about hidden ledges or tidal currents in the local waters, or what to expect of the wind when the day heated up. And if I were a novice and he was hoping to win me over, he should have taken an entirely different tack.
I mentioned a hypothetical baseball fan. Any experienced fan can rattle off statistics. Sitting with my father in section 26 at Fenway Park in Boston (he’s had Sec. 26, Row 4, seats 13–14 since the 1970s), I’ve heard people recite Red Sox starting lineups from the 1950s. That’s a fun interchange between serious fans, but a terrible way to introduce someone to the game.
In spite of criticism of overpaid and chemically enhanced players, professional baseball seems to have a pretty strong foothold in popular culture. How does the strength of the organ’s foothold compare? Church membership is generally in decline, electronic substitutes have grown in convenience, availability, and popularity, and many churches with strong active memberships are focusing on contemporary worship formats that don’t involve stopknobs at all, whether controlling pipes or digital voices.
The Grammy Awards were announced last weekend, recognizing recordings in 108 categories. The first category to mention “classical” music (whatever that means) is number 94, Best Engineered Album, Classical. This comes after things like Best Pop Performance By A Duo Or Group With Vocal (the winner: My Humps, sung by The Black Eyed Peas), Best Hawaiian Music Album (the winner: Legends Of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar—Live From Maui, Various Artists, Daniel Ho, George Kahumoku, Jr., Paul Konwiser & Wayne Wong, producers), and Best Compilation Soundtrack Album For Motion Picture, Television Or Other Visual Media (the winner: Walk The Line, Joaquin Phoenix & Various Artists). This is not to mention Best Boxed Or Special Limited Edition Package or Best Surround Sound Album. (Don’t believe me? Look at
Yikes! If this is popular culture, what’s the future of the pipe organ? I note that there is not a single Grammy category that even mentions the organ. If the Grammies are so genre-specific, why isn’t there at least a category for Best Baroque Album (the winner, Four Seasons with the Red Priest, Various Artists)?
I am not suggesting that the pipe organ will ever compete with hip-hop, rap, ska, reggae, R&B, or soul. (Twenty years ago I was asked to play reggae at a wedding. I have to admit that was the first time I heard of it, but realizing now that was barely 20 years after the genre was invented I don’t feel so bad—I told them no.) I am suggesting—and not for the first time—that we must be paying attention to how we present the organ to our audiences. How do you popularize the music of Buxtehude in a world that celebrates dozens of musical genres that are less than a generation old? The other side of the question is what happens if you don’t? Or, how do we introduce a novice to the organ without boring them with details?
Join me in celebrating the organ as high culture in the modern age. Look for ways to make the organ, its history, and its music relevant and exciting to your listeners. Let’s aim for the day when Grammy category 109 is announced, Best Classical Performance On The Pipe Organ. Why not?
Many happy returns (or Canned Nuts)
I’ve seen lots of creative strategies for raising funds for organ projects, but here’s one for the books. The Episcopal Church of St. Mary of the Harbor in Provincetown, Massachusetts, needed an organ, and an elderly couple was determined to make it happen. Ernie and Bob collected return cans and bottles until there was enough to purchase a three-rank organ built by Bedient Pipe Organ Company. I don’t know what the exact price of the organ was, but I know that a beer can returned is worth five cents in Massachusetts—it takes 200,000 cans to equal $10,000. Those nuts must have collected at least 500,000 cans to pay for the organ. I think I did pretty well earlier with the mathematics of reciprocal courses so let’s try for the cubic volume of 500,000 cans. I have an empty can on my desk (cranberry-lime seltzer as it’s about one in the afternoon), and I have my handy-dandy organ-pipe-scaling ruler from Organ Supply Industries. The can is roughly 21⁄2" in diameter and 43⁄4" tall. Using π = 3.14, the volume of the can is 23.3 cubic inches. 500,000 cans take up 11,650,000 cubic inches or 6742 cubic feet—the equivalent of a 30' x 30' room with a 71⁄2' ceiling full of cans.
Sibling rivalry for more than peanuts
As I have been working with the relocation and renovation of an Aeolian residence organ, I’ve enjoyed getting to know something about the history of that company and its illustrious clients. Fabulously wealthy music-lovers spent crazy amounts of money installing opulent instruments in their luxurious and enormous homes.
Brothers John (1864–1920) and Horace Dodge (1868–1920) were inseparable from early childhood, sharing common employment throughout their careers. Early on they both worked for a manufacturer of marine boilers in Detroit, Michigan. Later, on the strength of an improved ball bearing patented by Horace, they built a successful business manufacturing bicycles. The mammoth Dodge Motor Company was the result of logical progression. John was the more volatile of the two, Horace was a passionate music lover (he was an early and important patron of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra).2 Horace built a tremendous house at 17800 Jefferson Avenue in Detroit, and like many music-loving industrialists contracted with the Aeolian Organ Company for their Opus 1175 (II/15), which was installed in 1911.
He “upgraded” in 1916, ordering #1319b (IV/80). John responded by installing #1444 (III/76) in his home in Grosse Pointe, Michigan—perhaps justifying the smaller specification by recognizing that, after all, Horace was the music lover. Horace ended the debate by ordering a more modest instrument (#1478, II/16) for a grand location without fixed address—his 258-foot steam yacht, The Delphine. The rivalry ended somewhat unrequited as Horace’s death meant that #1319b was never installed. Although his death also preceded Delphine’s launching, his widow Anna (along with her second husband, the actor Hugh Dillman) was left to enjoy that grand vessel launched in 1921. Delphine burned and sank at New York City’s 95th Street Pier on September 21, 1926, and Anna ordered it to be refloated and refitted, including Aeolian #1639 with specification identical to its predecessor except for the addition of a Duo-Art Player.3
Amazingly, the age of such sea-going luxury is not over. Built by Hodgdon Yachts of East Boothbay, Maine, and launched in 1999, the 126-foot sloop Antonisa features a five-rank, one-manual, tracker-action pipe organ in its main salon. Built by Stefan Maier of Athol, Massachusetts, enhanced with carvings in scallop-shell motifs, and epoxied into its home, the organ undoubtedly relies on the constant high humidity of its location to counteract the effects of the open fireplace in the same cabin! (Somehow the fireplace on the boat seems nuttier than the organ.) You can see photographs and read specifications and articles about the organ and the boat at
Another floating nut
New York City is home to dozens, even hundreds of performance venues, none more unusual than Bargemusic, a floating recital hall tied up at the Fulton Ferry Pier at the Brooklyn end of the Brooklyn Bridge. Cross the gangway onto the barge, step inside to take one of about 150 seats. Behind the stage is a wall of large plate-glass windows through which you see the skyline of lower Manhattan. The acoustics are bright and clear, there’s a fine Steinway piano, and a fireplace crackles on the port side. Our Bargemusic experience involved performances by the DaPonte String Quartet, an excellent permanent ensemble that lives and works in our neighborhood in mid-coast Maine.
The nut behind all this is Olga Bloom, founder and chairman of Bargemusic. Olga is elderly and slight, a gracious hostess, and a true music lover. She is stationed right inside the door greeting the audience as they come and go. It’s fun to imagine her moving up and down the New York waterfront shopping for a barge—she told us that the barge was purchased for $800. Her vision was the origin of this unique place. The website
Our present cargo in this small floating room is sound: potent, ephemeral and magical. We respond to it like a bird, which, suddenly released from restraining hands, flutters in upward flight towards reality. Next time you’re in New York, plan to visit Bargemusic. An extensive calendar of concerts is published on the website. The views from the site, both inside and outside, are spectacular. There are excellent restaurants nearby along with a specialty ice cream store. You’ll love it.
At the close of the concert, a member of the audience collapsed. He had been sitting in the front row so he fell onto the stage. Dozens of cell phones dialed 911, the EMTs arrived. Turned out the fellow was overcome by the warmth and closeness but was otherwise okay. Lying on his back on the stage floor surrounded by the New York Fire Department, he turned to the quartet’s cellist and said, “It was a knock-out performance.”
