In the wind . . .

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

Shiny side up
The work of the Organ Clearing House involves trucks. Lots of trucks. We rent trucks when we are working on projects small enough to fit into a single truck body. And we have a trucking company in Nevada that we call when we need a semi-trailer or a little fleet of semi-trailers. After many years of jumping around from one company to another, it was a relief to begin working consistently with a single firm that could meet most of our needs.
When we are dismantling an organ, loading day is heavy work. A crew runs in and out of a church building all day long carrying heavy parts down stairs and fitting them into a truck like a giant Tetris® game. When the truck is full there’s often a moment when the crew and truck driver “shoot the breeze” for a few minutes before the load hits the road. We’ve heard a few doozies. One driver mentioned that it was a good thing we weren’t sending him to Canada because he had been convicted for smuggling firearms and wasn’t allowed to drive there anymore. We had just loaded an Aeolian-Skinner organ into his trailer.
Sometimes it’s pearls of wisdom: “You can drive down that hill too slow as many times as you want. You can only drive down it too fast once.”
And the friendly greeting as he puts it in gear and lets out the clutch, “keep the shiny side up!” Good advice, especially with my organ in the back!

Skootch
In 1979 I was part of a crew installing a new European organ in Cleveland. (You historians can route out which organ that was . . .) The church’s sexton, a fifty-ish German man, was involved in setting up the scaffolding, and I as “the young guy” was up there with him. As we were putting up the last scaffold frame we ran into the pitch of the ceiling. “Hold this,” he said, handing me the scaffold frame. I was standing on a plank. He pushed against the ceiling with his hands, gave the scaffold tower a kick with both feet, and the whole thing jumped a couple inches toward the center of the room. We were up high enough to be able to put a bridge from the top of the tower across the top of the organ to another tower. It was a three-manual free-standing organ in a classic organ loft with a spiral stairway. Must have been 50 feet. After his kick the tower didn’t stop making noise for several seconds, and because I was holding that frame I couldn’t steady myself. Nothing bad happened, but as I reflect on that moment, especially watching our crews set up massive towers of scaffolding today, I can hardly believe the risk that guy exposed me to without asking. I would have said no.
In another Cleveland church my boss and I witnessed a near disaster. We walked through the nave heading for the rear gallery where we were finishing renovation of the antiphonal organ. The pews were divided into three sections across the room, so there were in effect two center aisles and no side aisles. The walls featured unusually large stained-glass windows. A couple guys from the church’s maintenance staff were changing light bulbs in the chandeliers, using the kind of scaffolding that’s made of two-inch aluminum tubes and has a two-by-six-foot footprint. They were four sections high, and had the outriggers (stabilizers) pointing up the aisles the “long way,” rather than between the pews. From inside the organ chamber we heard “that” noise and ran down the stairs to find the tower at a 45-degree angle, the bottom of the tower still in the aisle, and Mr. Lightbulb on top with his foot on the wall next to a window. A couple inches to the right and he would have gone through the glass and fallen a long way to the lawn. Telling him to hang on, we yanked the tower straight again, and I had to go up to help the guy down.
What kind of maintenance supervisor would let that happen? Oh yeah, in the first story he was the guy on top of the tower with the big feet.

Those little voices
That Cleveland area organbuilder I was working with is Jan Leek of Oberlin, Ohio. I was privileged to work in his shop part time when I was a student, and then full-time for about five years after I graduated. He had learned the trade in Holland in what could best be described as an old-world apprenticeship, and as he taught me how to handle tools and operate machinery, he had a way of saying, “listen for those little voices.” If the little voice in your head says, “you’re going to cut your finger with that chisel if you do that once more,” the little voice is right. It’s a great image, and I am sure that his description taught me to conjure up those voices. I can still hear them. “The paint is going to drip on the carpet.” “The keyboard is going to fall on the floor.” “Your finger will touch that saw blade.”
The apprentice doesn’t hear the voices. The journeyman hears them and doesn’t listen. The master hears them and does listen.
An open quart can of contact cement is sitting on the chancel carpet next to the organ console. Of course it’s going to get knocked over when you stand up. The price of the glue, $4.79. The price of the carpet, $47,500.
A row of tin façade pipes is standing against the workshop wall. A worker is using a five-pound hammer to break up the crates that the pipes came in. The head flies off the hammer and dents one of the pipes, and they all fall over, one at a time in slow motion like 15-foot-tall tin dominos and there’s nothing anyone can do.
Cheery, isn’t it?
This subject is on my mind for several reasons. One is that I’ve spent the last couple days negotiating the rental of a huge amount of scaffolding and rigging equipment for a large project we will start next week, so I’ve been talking with salesmen about weight and height limits and what accessories are necessary to ensure safety. Another reason is that a locally owned small manufacturing company near us suffered a catastrophic fire last week. And as we work with scaffolding companies in New York we hear stories about the construction industry, especially relating to recent serious accidents involving cranes used in the construction of high-rise buildings.
I love the image of the organbuilder at a wooden workbench, a window open next to him providing a gentle breeze, a sharp plane in his hands, and the sweet smell of fresh wood wafting off the workpiece as the shavings curl from the blade of the plane. Or that of the voicer sitting in seclusion with beautiful new pipes in front of him coming to life under his ministrations.
But think of that majestic organ case in the rear gallery with an ornate monumental crown on the top of the center tower, covered with moldings, carvings, and gilding, and pushed up against the ceiling. Uplifting, isn’t it? It might be eight feet long, six feet wide, and three feet tall. It might weigh 500 pounds, and someone had to put it there. Making it is one thing. Getting it 50 feet off the floor and placed on those 20-foot legs that hold it up is another thing altogether. Uplifting, all right.
Organbuilders have a variety of skills. We work with wood, metal, and leather. We work with electricity and solid-state circuitry. We have acute musical ears for discerning minute differences in pipe speech and for setting temperaments. And we must be material handlers—that specialization of moving heavy things around safely.
To put that tower crown in place you need scaffolding, hoisting equipment, and safety gear to keep you from falling. How high up do you need to be before you need that gear? Easy. Ask yourself how far you’re willing to fall. Twenty feet? Thirty feet? Four years ago the Organ Clearing House dismantled the huge Möller organ in the Philadelphia Civic Center. (That organ is now under renovation in the new workshop of the American Organ Institute at the University of Oklahoma.) The organ chamber was above the ceiling, 125 feet above the floor. The demolition company (the building was to be torn down) cut a hole in the floor of the blower room big enough for the organ parts to pass through. And we were left standing on the edge of an abyss. We used full-body harnesses and retractable life lines. If you fell you’d drop about six feet and the ratchet-action of the retractable would stop you, something like the seatbelts in your car. And there you are, hanging 120 feet up.

Away aloft
A sailor hollers “Away aloft” as the halyard hoists the sail up the mast. The rigger might do the same. He ties a line around the load, hooks it to the line from the winch, and up it goes. It’s important to choose the right type of line—you don’t want chanciness caused by a line that stretches, for example. But what really matters is the knots you use. Some knots are meant to slip. Some are meant to be permanent. A favorite is the bowline, which cannot untie, but also cannot pull so tight that it cannot be undone. It was developed by early sailors to tie a ship to a dock or mooring. Think of a large sailing vessel, bow tied to a mooring, bouncing on the waves and pulled by the wind for weeks. There’s a terrific amount of force on that knot. But you give the top of the knot a push sideways and it can be taken apart easily. Beginning sailors are taught how to tie the bowline both left- and right-handed, blindfolded. I once had to tie a bowline while diving under a boat in order to repair a centerboard control.
Different knots are intended for different purposes.
A half-hitch is a great knot for securing something temporarily, but it looks a lot like a slip knot. If you don’t know the difference you might tie a slip knot by mistake. How will that work when the weight of a windchest shifts while being hoisted into the organ?
If your skill set doesn’t include three or four good reliable knots, I recommend you learn them. There are neat books for this purpose, predictably available from boating-supply companies. Some come with little lengths of line so you can practice in the comfort of your home.
When hoisting heavy parts you can also use nylon webbing. It’s available in neat pre-cut lengths with loops on each end for easy tying. The webbing is easy on the corners of the piece you’re lifting, and it’s very strong. A one-inch wide web is rated for 2,000 pounds in vertical lift. But keep a good eye on its condition. Recently there was an eerie photo in the New York Times in the aftermath of the collapse of a construction crane. It showed a piece of torn webbing dangling from a hook. That photo prompted us to purchase new webbing for our next rigging job!
In the nineteenth century, the great Boston organbuilding firm of E. & G.G. Hook suffered two serious fires, both of which destroyed their workshops. I know of two North American organbuilders who have had bad fires in the last decade. Neither was caused by carelessness; in fact, one was caused by lightning. I thought about those two colleague firms working to rebuild their companies when we heard of a terrible fire at a boatyard near us. Washburn & Doughty is a family-owned company with about a hundred employees that builds heavy commercial vessels like tugboats, fireboats, and ferryboats. It’s quite a spectacle to see a hundred-foot tugboat under construction in a small village. And a mighty amount of steel goes into the building of such a boat. On Friday, July 11, sparks from a cutting torch ignited a fire that destroyed the building. It was routine work for a place like that, and newspaper stories told that the fire was officially accidental. They were able to save a hundred-foot tug that had been launched and was being completed at the dock—they cast it adrift! But two others that were still in the buildings were lost and 65 employees were laid off temporarily while the owners work out how to rebuild.
Ten years ago I was restoring an organ built by E. & G.G. Hook with lots of help from volunteers from the parish. We were refinishing the walnut case, and I mentioned the fire hazard of rags that were soaked with linseed oil. They must be spread out to dry. If they’re left in a heap they will spontaneously combust. One of the volunteers took a pile of the rags home and put them in a bucket in the middle of his backyard. He told us later that it had only taken about ten minutes before the bucket was full of fire!
This is a pretty gloomy subject. But I write encouraging my colleagues to look around their workplaces with a critical eye toward safety. Be sure you have the proper gear for lifting and moving the things you’re working on. Store your paints and finishes in a fire-proof cabinet. Eliminate the possibility of sparks finding a pile of sawdust and spread out those oily rags. Encourage your workers to use safety equipment. Safety glasses may look nerdy, but it’s not cool to lose an eye!
Get your hands on a good industrial supply catalogue—I have those from Grainger and McMaster-Carr on my desk. Go to the “safety” pages and leaf through. You’ll see lots of things that protect against stuff you haven’t imagined could happen! Organbuilders are precious. Let’s keep them all in good health.

John Bishop, executive director of the Organ Clearing House, graduated from the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music with a degree in Organ Performance. He has had a 30-year career as a church musician, most recently serving for 17 years as director of music at Centre Congregational Church in Lynnfield, Massachusetts. His activities as an organ builder started with summer jobs as a teenager with Bozeman & Associates, and include nine years with J.G.P. Leek of Oberlin, Ohio, three years with Angerstein & Associates of Stoughton, Massachusetts, and the last 14 years as President of the Bishop Organ Company, Inc. As an organ builder, he has purchased several organs through the Organ Clearing House, with the assistance of longtime director, the late Alan Laufman. He is active in the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society. For the past four years, Mr. Bishop was the author of the monthly column, “Miscellanea Organica,” in The American Organist.

The pipe organ gives us all a lot to talk about. We can trace its history back to the panflutes of the sixth century B.C. The hydraulis, the earliest real pipe organ we know of (complete with keyboard, a mechanical action controlling valves, pipes blown by air, and a regulated wind supply) was created by Tsebius of Alexandria in about 246 B.C. It’s depicted so accurately in an ancient mosaic that modern working reconstructions have been built using that image as a guide. We study the history of the instrument, comparing musical styles, voicing techniques, and mechanical innovations between regions and eras. We debate whether a certain organ is suitable for the performance of a particular piece. The organ is the subject of many scholarly books rife with numbers, charts, and appendices—comprehensible and interesting to organbuilders, but no more accessible to most organ lovers than celestial navigation or ancient Greek.

We need this minutia. Without it we would not be able to understand and appreciate the richness of the instrument. But beyond that, the instrument is a marvel, a source of joy and inspiration, in one sense un-understandable. I’ve worked in organbuilding since I was a teenager and I love those studies of numbers, history, and style. But it wasn’t the numbers that first attracted me to the organ. When you participate in a grand hymn in a great acoustic your spirit soars, not because of your awareness of the organbuilder’s proclivity with the numbers but because there is something magic about how all that sound comes from moving all that air.

It’s indescribable.

To be sure, it’s indescribable in part because we’ve done such a good job describing it—making it technically possible, but if the description overshadows the mystery we’ve lost a special something. It’s breathtaking because it’s founded on breath.

Takes your breath away

I’ve loved Vincent van Gogh’s Starry Night for as long as I can remember. An art history professor at Oberlin College helped me understand it a little better than I could have just by seeing it on T-shirts, mouse pads, or coffee mugs. But I’ll not forget the first time I saw the painting itself, exhibited in New York’s Museum of Modern Art. Rounding a corner into a gallery I was stunned, gasping, weeping. It did not take my breath away because I could say something erudite about brush strokes or color contrasts. It simply took my breath away.

I am excited to have this opportunity to share thoughts about our grand instrument with you. I feel honored to share these pages with the many scholars who help us better understand the instrument and its music. And I hope you will join me using that understanding as a tool for ever better communication between us inside the organ world and the public of lay people upon whom we depend as both consumers and patrons—those who appreciate our playing and our instruments, those who fund the purchase and maintenance of this most wildly expensive of instruments and upon whom we depend for its presence in future generations.

I’ve heard colleagues refer to that public as “the great unwashed.” Does this imply that we are somehow better, cleaner, than those who are not familiar with the intricacies of the organ, who think that Toccata and Fugue in D minor was written by Andrew Lloyd Webber, or who commit the unthinkable and unpardonable by applauding between the Prelude and the Fugue? Fully aware of our superiority we knowingly shake our heads, driving away a future organ lover with each successive wag. What’s wrong with a little misplaced enthusiasm?

A Möller’s impact

It should be our mission to share our enthusiasm with others. Last fall the Organ Clearing House was preparing to dismantle a monumental organ built by M. P. Möller in Philadelphia in the Civic Center, a truly mammoth building built in 1930 with 13,500 seats slated for demolition to make space for the expansion of the University of Pennsylvania Health System. The organ was housed in chambers above the ceiling of the auditorium, 120 feet high, and had not been played in public since a convention of the Organ Historical Society in 1996, before that, not since the American Theatre Organ Society convention in 1990. By the time we were there surveying the organ, the building was full of hard-hats working on asbestos abatement, salvage operations, and the myriad details that precede the demolition of such a place. Because we were to have the support of several of the contracting firms involved for rigging, scaffolding, building crates and the like, many of these workers were aware that something was up with the organ.

Of course, we had to try to make the organ play. With the help of Brant Duddy, the Philadelphia organ technician who had for many years worked on the maintenance and renovation of the organ, we got the blowers running and the rectifiers turned on. We spent a few minutes pulling pipes to stop ciphers (there was a doozy in the bass of the 16’ Diaphone that must have been audible in Scranton) and, son-of-a-gun, it played! The consoles were on the two-acre floor of the auditorium (the same floor on which Wilt Chamberlain and the Philadelphia 76ers had played) in front of the stage (the same stage on which Franklin Roosevelt accepted his nomination for a second term as President in front of the 1936 Democratic National Convention), below the tiers of thousands of seats (from which audiences had heard the likes of The Beatles, The Grateful Dead, Nelson Mandela, Pope John Paul II, and The Metropolitan Opera). As I played there came a procession of more than a hundred hard hats through the many doors into the auditorium and down the aisles toward the console as though I was accompanying some huge and bizarre Christmas pageant. It would have been perfect had they been carrying candles—we settled for flashlights and electric hand tools. They came to experience this acoustic-mechanical magic. I played the National Anthem and some measures of Widor. Someone asked for The Phantom of the Opera. I played Bach.

As our work progressed over the following weeks, many of these men and women visited us in the organ, expressing their amazement at the spectacle of all that material (16 semi-trailers full) adding up to a musical instrument. You don’t need to be in such an outlandish setting to make an impression. Show a good pipe organ to someone who has never been near one, and you’re sure to make a big impression.

What an organ.

It has 86 ranks of pipes. Twenty of them are reeds. Four of those are Tubas! Who ever heard of an organ with four independent Tubas? Three of the Tubas are in the Solo Division—Tuba Profunda, Tuba Sonora, and Tuba Mirabilis. Really! There’s a 32’ Double Open Wood Diapason that’s twenty-five inches square at CCCC and a 32’ Contra Bombarde that’s twenty-two inches in diameter—some of the largest (and heaviest) organ pipes I’ve ever seen. The lowest wind pressure is 10≤. There’s a windchest in the Great with 22⁄3’, 2’, 13⁄5’, 11⁄3’ 11⁄7’, and 1’—on ten inches of pressure! Tuners, how do you like that thought?

Did you catch the plural when I mentioned consoles? On the floor in front of the left-hand end of the stage was an elegant four-manual drawknob console. At the right-hand end, a four-manual theatre console with more than two hundred stop tablets in a variety of colors arranged on horseshoe-shaped stop rails. Because of the immense distance between consoles and pipes, and the unusual power of the organ, there is an independent tuning keyboard in each of the four chambers complete with stop controls. Added up, this is surely the only twelve-manual organ Möller ever built! (See photo: “A Twelve-Manual Organ.”)

A bipolar Möller

The drawknob console, known as the classic console, controls a very powerful and colorful straight organ with fully developed principal choruses, lots of strings and celestes, beautiful flutes, and a wide range of reed tone. Only one of the ranks of pipes in the complete roster is not included in the classic specification—an 8’ Kinura of seventy-three notes. (A Kinura is a reed stop something like a Trumpet without resonators that produces a characteristic bleating tone commonly found in theatre organs.) To get at that, you have to move to the theatre console where you also find all the toys and gadgets you could hope for, including but not limited to Song Birds I, Song Birds II, Sleigh Bells I, Sleigh Bells II, Auto Horn, Telephone Bell, Fire Gong, Steamboat Whistle, Locomotive Whistle, Siren, Factory Gong, Surf, Door Bell, Aeroplane, Chinese Gong, Persian Cymbal, Grand Crash, Glass Crash. There are a half-dozen different drums that can either tap or roll, and an array of percussions like castanets, tambourines, and Chinese Block (tap or roll). Top it off with four different tuned percussions (Harp, Celesta, Glockenspiel, Orchestral Bells) and a piano with a vacuum-powered player-piano style action, and you’ve got quite a sandbox to play in.

Before we dismantled this mighty organ I spent ten days studying it. If all goes well we will put it back together someday so we needed to learn as much as we could about it. We preserved the electro-pneumatic relays as a Rosetta stone for making the organ work again. Those automobile-sized machines that filled an entire room were the key to how the engineers at Möller made it possible for one organ to have two personalities. It’s enough of a trick for an organbuilder to conceive of a cohesive instrument—one in which choruses blend with themselves and with each other and in which reeds can both contrast and complement flues. It’s a much greater achievement to produce a single instrument that allows two styles of playing that are so radically different. I value highly the recording made by Tom Hazleton provided to me by Brant Duddy which juxtaposes Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique with Hazleton’s own Oklahoma Medley. Individually each sounds terrific—comparing the two seems nearly improbable. You can hardly imagine that both are played on the same organ.

The theatre console plays nineteen ranks of the organ--those ranks with unit actions. There are sixteen different tremolos that turn on singly or in combination. For example, a tablet on the theatre console marked Woodwinds Vibrato turns on 5 tremolos in four different chambers. The piano plays at various pitches on every keyboard. There are toe studs that control the piano’s damper and sostenuto pedals, and pistons, tablets and toe studs that play all the percussions and toys. There’s a piston (duplicated with toe stud) engraved “Change Title,” part of the razzmatazz of accompanying movies.

It took something like four hundred fifty person-days to dismantle, pack, and store this organ. Remember, every piece had to be lowered more than a hundred feet to the floor. This was all made possible by the University of Pennsylvania as part of their effort to preserve something of the heritage of this heroic building.

The organ is safely stored. The floor of the organ chamber was 120 feet above the floor of the auditorium. The organ did not speak directly into the hall, but toward the front of the hall away from the audience, above the stage, into a tone chute 100 feet wide, 17 feet deep, and 45 feet high. The organ’s sound came down that tone chute through grillework in the ceiling in front of the proscenium arch, projecting back under the organ, a change of direction of 180 degrees. From that disadvantage it filled the 400’ x 175’ x 120’ room. Eighty-six ranks make a good-size organ, but not a behemoth. This organ is a behemoth. It would be a rare church that could house it. It’s unbelievably loud. How about a baseball stadium?  I already know the National Anthem.

John Bishop is the executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

The seat of the Bishop
I’ve always been a sucker for construction equipment. The other day I was walking up Second Avenue in New York, where a new subway line is under construction, and although I was on a schedule moving between appointments I couldn’t help but stop for five minutes to watch an enormous crane lowering an electrical transformer the size of a UPS truck into a hole in the street. You can read about this massive project on the website of the Metropolitan Transit Authority at <A HREF="http://www.mta.info/cap
constr/sas/">www.mta.info/capconstr/sas/"</A>. (sas refers to Second Avenue Subway!) I’ve been involved in a consultation project in New York that has led me to learn something about the city’s utility system, and I’ve seen maps and photos that show an underground labyrinth of train, maintenance, and utility tunnels, and electrical, gas, and steam lines. It seems unlikely that there’s any dirt left under the streets of the city. Knowing something about that subterranean maze helps me understand just a little of how complicated it must be to create a new tunnel some four miles long, and sixteen new underground stations. And hundreds of thousands of cubic yards of dirt, stone, and rubble removed to create the tunnel has to be trucked across the city’s congested streets and river bridges to be dumped.
It’s a massive project that’s made possible by millions of dollars worth of heavy equipment, including my crane, tunnel-boring machines, payloaders, dump trucks, and heaven knows what else. Equipment like this has been improved immensely in the last 20 years by advances in hydraulic technology. The principal of hydraulics is that specially formulated oil (I know the root of hydraulic refers to water) is pressurized in cylinders, that pressure being great enough to lift heavy loads, turn rotary motors, or steer huge articulated equipment. Without these advances we wouldn’t have Bobcats, those snazzy little diggers with cabs like birdcages that can turn on a dime.
Sometime around the year 1250, the great cathedral in Chartres was completed. Nearly 800 years later it still stands as one of the great monuments to religious faith in the world. Tens of thousands of pilgrims and tourists visit there every year. The cathedral houses one of Christendom’s most revered relics, the Sancta Camisa, reputed to be the tunic worn by the Virgin Mary at the time of Christ’s birth. (Camisa and camisole come from the same root.) There is a labyrinth more than 40 feet in diameter laid in stone in the floor of the nave. The path of the labyrinth is about 13 inches wide and about 860 feet long (about a sixth of a mile), all twisted upon itself within the confines of the diameter. The towers are 300 and 350 feet tall, the ceiling of the nave is 121 feet off the floor, and the floor plan has an area of nearly 120,000 square feet, which is close to two-and-a-half acres.
Thousands and thousands of tons of stone lifted to great heights, and not a hydraulic cylinder in sight. The challenge and effort of building something like that with twelfth- and thirteenth-century technology is breathtaking. Most of us have been inside tall buildings, and most of us have been in airplanes, so we as a society are used to looking down on things. But imagine Guillaume, the thirteenth-century construction worker, coming home after a long day, flopping into a chair, taking a hearty pull from a mug of cider, and describing to his wife how that afternoon he had looked down on a bird in flight—the first man in town to be up that high!

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On December 27, 1892, the cornerstone was laid for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine on Amsterdam Avenue in New York City, one of only a few twentieth-century stone Gothic cathedrals. Celebrated as one of the largest Christian churches in world—the overall interior length of 601 feet is the longest interior measurement of any church building—it serves its modern congregation, hosts hundreds of thousands of visitors, and as the seat of the Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, it serves as a national centerpiece to the denomination.
While the full interior dimensions of the building have been completed, much of both the interior and exterior remain incomplete. The central tower, the transepts, much of the interior finish stonework, and the two west-end towers were never built, and the building carries the popular moniker, St. John the Unfinished. Given the staggering cost of this kind of construction, there are no plans for the completion of the building. Perhaps this stunning building stands as a metaphor for us who are all incomplete before God.
Two years ago the Organ Clearing House was privileged to work with the artisans of Quimby Pipe Organs installing the restored Aeolian-Skinner organ in the two chancel organ chambers, nearly 100 feet off the floor of the nave. We spent some three months in the building, working with humbling towers of scaffolding and an electric hoist that would have been the envy of those men in thirteenth-century Chartres. We had rare opportunities to see that grand building from angles not open to the general public—somehow a hundred feet seems higher indoors than out. And we witnessed some of the challenges of maintaining such a huge building. Fixing a roof leak is a big deal when you’re 150 feet up! That the cathedral’s administration can manage all this is hardly short of a miracle.
There’s a peculiar type of quiet present in such a building. The interior space is large enough that true quiet is probably impossible. When it’s very quiet inside, one is aware of the distant sounds of the city, and even of a kind of interior wind blowing. Sitting in the nave or the Great Choir in this special quiet, I imagine the hustle and bustle of construction: how workers managed 60-foot granite pillars that were quarried in Vinalhaven, Maine, transported to New York on barges, and hauled across the city by steam-powered tractors in 1903; how workers hoisted tons of precisely cut stones to form the fabric of the vaulted ceilings; how workers created stone spiral stairways inside the cathedral’s walls leading to such places as organ chambers; and how workers created the ornate spectacular 10-ton marble pulpit—festooned with such delicate carvings that during the installation of the organ we built a heavy plywood barricade around it so as not to damage it with a battering-ram in the form of a 32-foot organ pipe!
And let’s not forget what could be considered the real work—the evangelizing, preaching, persuading, and cajoling necessary to raise the money for all this, unfinished or not.

A house for all people
Why do we go to all this trouble? This cathedral has been host to countless extraordinary events, held there because of the extraordinary scale and dignity of the place. Twelve-thousand-five-hundred people attended the funeral of Duke Ellington in 1974. (I wonder how much the cathedral organist had to do with that.) In 1986 Philippe Petit, the high-wire artist who had walked between the twin towers of the World Trade Center, performed his work Ascent inside the cathedral, accompanied by the music of the Paul Winter Consort. Petit is listed on every service bulletin as one of the cathedral’s artists-in-residence. In the documentary film about his twin-tower feat, <i>Man on Wire</i>, Petit wore a “Cathedral of St. John the Divine” t-shirt.
In 1986, Archbishop Desmond Tutu preached an anti-apartheid sermon. In 1990, Big Bird, Bert, Ernie, and the rest of the Muppets helped celebrate the life of their creator, Jim Henson. In 1997, South African President Nelson Mandela preached at a memorial service for anti-apartheid activist Archbishop Trevor Huddleston. And in 2000, New York Mayor John Lindsay’s funeral packed the place. My wife Wendy attended that service and came home raving about how cathedral organist Dorothy Papadakos had played the crowd out at the end of the service with Leonard Bernstein’s tune, <i>New York, New York, It’s a Wonderful Town</i> (immortalized by Frank Sinatra), complete with fanfares from the State Trumpet under the west end rose window—perfect.
We need special places like that for events like those.

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Wendy and I have been in New York for two months, living in an apartment in Greenwich Village we’ve borrowed from my parents’ next-door neighbors. While Wendy has been working with editors in publishing companies promoting the manuscripts produced by her clients, the Organ Clearing House has tuned a few organs, and dismantled a marvelous, pristine E. M. Skinner organ from a closed church building in the Bronx for relocation to the new worship space of an active Lutheran parish in Iowa, to be restored by Jeff Weiler & Associates of Chicago. Last year we renovated and relocated a 1916 Casavant organ to a church in Manhattan—the dedication recital is in a couple days, and we spent the last week tweaking and tuning it in preparation.
The Cathedral of St. John the Divine is on my mind because we attended Evensong there last Sunday evening. It was a beautiful service, loaded with music, prayer, scripture, and a moving sermon. We sat in the ornately carved oak pews of the Great Choir, surrounded by magnificent decoration and in the midst of a modest congregation. The choir’s singing was wonderful, the organ was played with true inspiration, and I was aware that we were participating in regular weekly worship in that place where so many of the world’s most powerful and revered figures have led and participated in worship. The sense that the place equipped to welcome thousands to a huge event is open and welcoming to us on an ordinary Sunday afternoon was moving to me. You don’t often sing hymns in the presence of an organ with 150 ranks.

A study in scale
Some months ago I brought a group of friends to see the cathedral. Organist Stephen Tharp was practicing in preparation for his presentation of the complete organ works of Jeanne Demessieux. As we listened, I told them a little about the size, resources, and complexity of the organ, and one asked me why you would need so many stops. I pointed out ornate decorations throughout the building—carved pews, filigreed lamps, Gothic arches and vaults, tiled stairways, wrought-iron gates, bronze medallions inlaid in the floor—and suggested that such a large organ complements a building with more than a dozen chapels and all this finery. We love the sound of a string celeste. It’s even better to have two celestes to choose from. But this organ has eight sets of celestes—unimaginable wealth, especially when you consider that all the celeste ranks except the Swell Unda Maris go all the way to low C! When an organist moves skillfully around this organ, the range of tone colors seems limitless—a kaleidoscope of tone color, with a range of volume from the roar of thunder to a barely audible whisper—exactly in scale with the size and decoration of the building itself.
And cathedral organist Bruce Neswick did just that in his improvised closing voluntary last Sunday—he morphed away from the tune of the recessional hymn into a harmonically and rhythmically sophisticated fantasy, gave a climactic fanfare on the State Trumpet, then melted seamlessly from the robust full organ to the whisper of that Unda Maris. You could hardly tell when the music stopped.
When the installation of the renovated organ was completed and the organ had been given a chance to “settle in,” the cathedral presented a series of dedicatory recitals by such distinguished artists as Daniel Roth, Olivier Latry, Gerre Hancock, Thierry Escaich, and Peter Conte. What a thrill to hear such programs on such an organ. But take it from me, Neswick shares that organ with the Sunday afternoon congregation as if the Queen was in attendance. Perhaps it’s his joy of sitting on the bench of such a distinguished and stunning instrument. Perhaps it’s his sense of the privilege of presenting music in worship in such a place. Certainly it made me feel like royalty to be so treated, the tariff being what I chose to drop in the basket during the offertory.

Party horn
Another example of the relationship between the scale of the building and the scale of the organ is the State Trumpet—a single eight-foot rank of trumpet pipes mounted horizontally under the rose window facing east down the length of the nave. This must be the most famous single organ stop in the world. It plays on wind pressure of 50 inches—something like the pressure of the air in a tractor tire, and nothing like the levels of pressure commonly used in organs. The pipes are shackled in place to prevent them from launching as missiles down the nave. And there’s an octave of dummy 16-foot bass pipes. They don’t speak—they’re there to make the rank of pipes look like something in that vast space. The thing is majestic. It’s almost 600 feet from the organ console—two football fields. It would take a little more than six seconds to cover that distance in a car traveling at 60 miles per hour. It seems as though you can draw the stop, play a note, and eat a sandwich before the sound reaches your ears. (No mayo on the keys, please.) The sound is broad and powerful, sonorous and thrilling. There can be no building better suited to enclose such a sound.
But here’s the problem. When the new State Trumpet was introduced in the cathedral as part of the 1954 expansion and rebuilding of the organ by Aeolian-Skinner, every ambitious organist wanted one. And too many organists got their wish. Today there are hundreds of modest parish churches cursed with the sound of a too-loud but not-too-good Trompette en Chamade, searing the airways six feet above the too-big hair of the bride and her attendants. The proud organist can’t get enough of it, but everyone else can. Just because St. John the Divine has one, the pretty church on the town square doesn’t need one.

It’s a matter of scale
All of us who have toiled in the vineyards of church music have experienced the “big productions” of our parishes—a Christmas pageant, the wedding of the pastor’s daughter, Easter Sunday with trumpets and timpani. Imagine the big production for the cathedral organist. The country’s president might be attending a memorial service. National television cameras are often present. And on a festive Sunday morning, 1,800 people might come to the altar to receive Communion. That’s a lot of noodling around with <i>Let Us Break Bread Together on Our Knees</i>.
Our two months in New York have brought lots of great experiences, dozens of subway rides, and the rich experience of getting familiar with all that a great city has to offer. I encourage and invite you to visit the city and to hear some of the great organs and great organists in some of the world’s great churches. Start with St. John the Divine, and work your way around town. The New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists has a fine website with a calendar of events.
And after Tuesday’s recital, I’m looking forward to going home next week where there really is dirt under the streets.

Photos of St. John the Divine courtesy Quimby Pipe Organs.

The wind comes sweeping o’er the plain . . .

We watch our car’s odometer approach 100,000 miles. It seems like an important milestone, but we’re distracted by traffic, go into a different train of thought, and miss the great event. It reads 100,002.3 and we never felt a thing.

Ten years ago we were anticipating the start of a new millennium. As the year 2000 approached we were told that the language of computer programming did not allow for calendar years above 1999—that we should expect computers all over the world to crash at midnight on January 1. Enough people nervously withdrew money from ATMs that the banking system published concern about the supply of cash. We didn’t even know how we would say what year it was. What would we say, two-oh-oh-one, aught-one, the aughts, the Ohs? Some people planned to be in an airplane at the stroke of twelve, others assured us that the computer-driven air-traffic-control system would collapse at that moment.
And what do you suppose happened? Nothing. My computer kept working as did my alarm clock and microwave oven. I have not met a single person who has any trouble saying what year it is. Planes kept flying and landed safely and the ATM still spat out stacks of twenties. The clock struck twelve, the mouse ran down, hickory-dickory-dock.

We tend to mark our progress in big blocks. If the Baroque era ended in 1750, what did Händel (1685–1759) do for the last nine years of his life? The boundaries are muddy. We do this with the history of the pipe organ. The beginning of the 20th century brought electric action and orchestral playing. The second half of the 20th century was The Revival when some of us got excited about historic performance practices and tracker-action organs, and others felt upset and disenfranchised. A hundred years from now, what will our successors say about the beginning of the 21st century? What would we like them to say? How can we influence that? How do we assess the present state of the art? And most importantly, how do we assure its health and growth so that later generations will have something significant from our body of work to study and assess?

Eighty years ago, more than 2,000 new pipe organs were completed by American organbuilders each year. Now it’s more like 40 or 50. I don’t know how many digital instruments are installed each year now, but I suspect the number balances with the century-old total of pipe organs. We’ve noted and discussed at length the decline of the number of serious students of the organ, and we have watched in horror as venerable educational institutions close their organ departments.

The true test of the state of things is the response of the public. How many laypeople—those who are not professional organists or organbuilders—make it a point to attend organ recitals? I have sat in many a grand church listening to a great musician play a marvelous organ—sharing the thrall with only 30 or 40 other music lovers. At the height of his career, E. Power Biggs noted that twice as many Americans attended concerts of classical music than professional sporting events. Do you think that’s the case today?

All these things are related. While most pipe organs are unique, I suppose that thousands of churches may have identical digital instruments—an organ committee might opt for “no pickles,” but otherwise the choice is pretty limited. I know that many people think this is a good thing—McDonald’s and Starbucks would not be successful otherwise—but I can’t believe that such institutional sameness contributes to the growth of this or any art.

For the second month in a row I refer to the excellent article “Repertoire in American Organ Recitals 1995–2005” by Moo-Young Kim published in the October 2006 issue of The American Organist. Dr. Kim analyzed 249 recital programs totaling 1689 selections as published in TAO. Using statistics and pie-charts, he showed how limited in originality is our recital programming. Is this related to the disappointing attendance at so many organ recitals?

The performance of historic repertoire will always be central to the art of the pipe organ, and each serious player has ambitions about which pieces are next on the practice schedule. This is a good thing. But it’s the art of improvisation that distinguishes the organ. How thrilling for the first time concertgoer to hear the mighty instrument as the vehicle for the creation of new music, right here, right now. What a celebration of human genius! (I’m reminded of Gjon Mili’s time-lapse photograph of Picasso drawing a bull with a flashlight—a masterpiece of the moment—you can see it at .)

Everything’s up to date in Kansas City . . .

Ours is heralded as the age of communication. International news is instant, a CD or sweater ordered online today is in our hands tomorrow, and we have a fit if a Fed-Ex package is six hours late. We send what we think is an important e-mail and wonder why it hasn’t been answered four hours later. (Is it just possible that our correspondent wasn’t at home? What, no BlackBerry?) But if we limit our understanding of communication to these amazing technological advances, we will fail our art. You cannot communicate the art of the pipe organ by beaming between handhelds.

Here’s the good news. There may not now be many new pipe organs built each year, but most of them are glorious and unique works of art. And hundreds more projects are accomplished each year restoring older instruments to their full artistic potential. Some schools are closing organ departments, but others are revitalizing theirs. Young organists are still taught to base their playing on good scholarship, but as a foundation, not an end. After all, it is about the music. Playing the organ is not a parlor trick—it’s a thrilling vehicle for the expression of an artist and for an audience to experience and absorb.

There’s a bright golden haze on the meadow.

In what sometimes seems an atmosphere of gloom, I’ve always felt that the pipe organ has a significant future in our society, and my optimism is rewarded as I recently had the privilege to make association with what promises to become an important center of the study of the organ. The University of Oklahoma (OU) has a long tradition of excellence in organ teaching—that is where Mildred Andrews Boggess taught many of today’s finest organists during her 38-year tenure. Now a fresh wind is blowing in tornado country as John Schwandt has joined the faculty of the OU School of Music to lead an exciting new teaching program.

Brainchild of Dr. Schwandt and his long-time friend, theatre organ specialist Clark Wilson, the American Organ Institute has been founded to lift up and celebrate American contributions organbuilding and organ playing. The philosophy behind the institute is to unite the worlds of the classical and theatre pipe organ, advancing the art by emphasizing improvisation in all genres along with the performance of the classical repertoire. A fresh curriculum will include courses in arranging, computer notation, and multiple styles of composition—a return to the classic concept of the complete organist: one-third performance, one-third improvisation, one-third composition.

An integral part of the institute will be the establishment of a fully equipped and staffed pipe organ workshop on campus. This unique facility will be home to the restoration of an important instrument recently acquired by the university for the Paul F. Sharp Concert Hall at the School of Music and will allow students the opportunity for hands-on experiences with organbuilding, even to providing pipe organ maintenance services for the general area, an area not as yet saturated with experienced organbuilders. The next generation of organ students can be well-versed with knowledge of organ history and construction, and the next generation of organbuilders can be well-versed with knowledge of organ playing and composition.

There will be three degree tracks (Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, and Doctor of Musical Arts), each allowing flexible emphasis of applied studies to include classic and theatre organ playing as well as organbuilding. Significantly, the institute enjoys the enthusiastic support of University of Oklahoma President David Boren, Dean Eugene Enrico of the OU Weitzenhoffer Family College of Fine Arts, and Dr. Steven Curtis, director of the School of Music, who are working to build the foundation for this refreshing and innovative approach to the study of the organ.

The School of Music is housed in the Catlett Music Center on the north end of the campus, the entrance to which is a striking contemporary space of cathedral proportions. The Morris R. Pitman Recital Hall and the Paul F. Sharp Concert Hall both open off this grand space as does a corridor leading to the classrooms and teaching studios. This “lobby” is called the Grace B. Kerr Gothic Hall and is home to the Mildred Andrews Boggess Memorial Organ, C. B. Fisk’s Opus 111 (go to to see photos and specification). With three manuals and 45 ranks, it’s funny to think of this as a “lobby organ” but this is no ordinary lobby. The ceiling is very high with contemporary interpretations of gothic vaulting, the organ is placed in a high balcony at one end of the room, the reverberation period is 4.5 seconds, and both visual and aural effects are magnificent.

I’ve got a beautiful feeling . . .

Just a minute—that organ is already in place, and I referred to a “recently acquired organ” that will be installed in Sharp Hall. Ah, the other shoe drops. In the April 2005 and November 2006 issues of this column in The Diapason, I have written about M. P. Möller’s Opus 5819, the massive and singular instrument originally built for the Philadelphia Civic Center. Go to , scroll to the bottom and look for the two “specifications” links—you’ll get an eyeful. The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) became owner of this organ when they acquired the Philadelphia Civic Center with intention of using the site to build an important new research hospital as part of the University’s Health System. As the destruction of the 13,500-seat Art Deco hall was controversial, Penn preserved many artifacts from the building, including the organ. The Organ Clearing House was engaged to dismantle the organ, located in a 2500-square-foot, 25-foot-high chamber above the ceiling, 100 feet up.

The organ was stored next door in another large convention hall slated for demolition at a date that was suddenly and significantly accelerated by the needs of the hospital construction. This news was a shock—another demolition deadline—we were going to have to rescue the organ for a second time. In the November 2006 issue, I wrote wistfully about it sitting in storage, looking more like an industrial wasteland than a work of art. But—thanks be—I can say now that as I wrote I knew that a zephyr was over the horizon—a breath of amazing promise. John Schwandt had come over the bow looking for a significant concert organ around which to build the American Organ Institute. Oh boy—have we got the organ for you! (See photo: theatre console, classic console, automatic roll-player.)

It seemed too good to be true. Here’s a huge organ with two consoles, virtually the only large extant instrument expressly intended as both a classic concert organ and a theatre organ with “all the bells and whistles,” drums, cymbals, toys. And there’s a new venue for the teaching of organ playing of all styles.

Chicks and ducks and geese better scurry . . .

Meanwhile, the administrators at Penn were preparing to demolish their building, and engaged me in a complicated conversation about what to do with the organ. They were less than entranced with the idea of funding another moving project, but having gone to considerable—really considerable—expense to dismantle, pack, and store it, they were committed to its preservation. When Dr. Schwandt and OU came into view with the possibility of a new home for the organ where it would be properly restored and used as part of a significant educational program, there started a whirlwind of conversations between the two universities. We all have experience with large bureaucracies moving slowly, but picture this. In just four weeks, OU expressed interest in the organ, Penn agreed to make it a gift, and the myriad political and legal details were worked out. Two other important and usual hurdles were instantly checked off—funds were immediately available to move the organ, and first-class space was immediately available in which to store it. The Organ Clearing House lined up a fleet of five semi-trailers, and the 120,000-pound organ was moved to Oklahoma, two days ahead of Penn’s demolition schedule. Yikes! Go to to read an article about this stunning transaction.

While we were dismantling the organ a couple years ago, Brant Duddy (Philadelphia area organ technician who had tuned the Civic Center organ for many years) gave me a recording of the recital played on the Civic Center organ by Tom Hazleton for the 1992 convention of the American Theatre Organ Society. Along with several traditional barnburners (high on the list of favorites in Dr. Kim’s TAO article!) is Hazleton’s medley of tunes from Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Oklahoma. What a wonderful way to introduce a venerable organ to its new home. And a quiet aside: Once the organ was in storage, I was in touch with Mr. Hazleton to ask about his experience with it. He was enthusiastic about its preservation and promised to help find it a new home. I asked him for an interview thinking that would enhance a column someday, but before the scheduled date arrived I heard of his death.

Late one evening while the Organ Clearing House was in Norman delivering the organ, Dr. Schwandt played the Fisk organ for us, weaving a creative tapestry around Richard Rodgers’ place-appropriate theme. As the music reverberated in the darkness, I reflected on the magic of improvisation—how a mystery becomes reality, and how important that concept is to the history of organ music. Like Picasso’s bull it’s gone as soon as it’s over, perhaps to be recreated tomorrow but never to be repeated. Improvisation must be the best tool to convince the public that the pipe organ is not just a relic of an earlier age but a vital participant in today’s culture. A fresh vision, a fresh approach, and the rebirth of a renowned institution and a venerable instrument combine to bring new energy to the work of organists and organbuilders across the country.

If you think this is “just another big Möller organ,” take my word for it: There is no other organ like it. It’s simply spectacular—an American monument of artistry in concept and craftsmanship in execution. I hope you’ll join me in Norman when it’s first played there. It’s fun to imagine that future music historians will notice Opus 5819’s rebirth as a significant event. You young students of the organ, here’s the website of the Office of Admission at the OU School of Music: ''". You’ll be glad you looked.

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

A show of hands

It’s the middle of March and here in the frigid Northeast we had a little tease last week when the temperature outside went up into the fifties for a day or so. But while this is a beautiful sunny morning, it’s around twenty degrees outside, and the wind is blowing hard from the northwest. It’s bone-chilling cold and so dry that joints in floor boards are wide open, and my hands feel like baskets full of fall leaves. The almond scent of Jergens™ fills the room to no avail. 

In the last few days I’ve been working with the old-fashioned hot glue that organbuilders favor. I start with crystals of dry glue the consistency of fancy rough-grain raw cane sugar (funny how much extra we’re willing to pay for something that isn’t highly processed!) and cook them with water in my temperature-controlled glue pot. It’s a versatile glue because I can make it as thick or thin as I want. It bonds leather and other materials to wood beautifully, and fifty years later when it’s time to replace the leather again, it can be removed from the wood with hot water.

I’ve been gluing the hinges, belts, and gussets on an Aeolian-Skinner wind regulator (bellows). I spread glue on the wood and the material I’m applying, put it in place, and rub it down with a hot damp rag, squeezing excess glue out of the joint so the chemical bond is between two pieces of material, not a layer of thick glue.

I have a big double-boiler—the kind of thing from which you ladle soup in a cafeteria—to keep that rag nice and hot. It holds two gallons of water (or soup) and keeps it as hot as I can stand. I put my hands in the water, then wring the rag as dry as I can. No wonder my hands are uncomfortably dry. It has led to one of those painful splits at the corner of my right thumbnail.

But wait, there’s more. The other day I was installing a new rectifier in that same Aeolian-Skinner organ because the old one was soaked in the flood that wrecked the regulator. The wires that carry the direct current power from the basement to the console and organ chambers three floors up are about the thickness of my little finger. When I was stripping the insulation from the wires, I took a teeny sliver of copper through the skin of that same thumb. Now as I write, every time I touch the spacebar my thumb throbs. I’m a big guy and I think of myself as pretty tough, but those two little injuries are nearly all I can think about just now.

Hanging by a thread

According to USA Today, there were five major league pitchers with annual salaries above $20,000,000 in 2012. These are the cream of the crop of prime starting pitchers, so they would be starting about every fourth game. Each team plays 162 games each year, so without injury, those pitchers would start about forty games. Let’s say for argument that they pitch six innings each time they start a game, face five batters each inning, and throw five pitches to each batter. That’s 6,000 pitches in a season or $3,333.33 per pitch. Do the same math another way and it comes to roughly $500,000 per game. One of those guys gets a hangnail and each time he throws the ball he’s in agony. His accuracy suffers, and the manager puts him on the bench. Okay for him because he’s on salary. But his employers lose the benefit of $500,000 worth of his effort for each day of the hangnail.

Me, I just go back to the glue pot and put my hands in the hot water. Walk it off. You’ll be fine.

The panda’s thumb

Our hands define us. They define us as a species, they define us as individuals, and they define us as musicians. We join some of the primates including the great apes, a few rodents, and to a lesser extent, the panda, in being blessed with an opposable thumb. While the primates use their thumbs to climb trees, and make primitive tools from sticks, our thumbs have allowed us to achieve extraordinary dexterity. We use that dexterity for practical tasks and for expression.

There are twenty-seven bones in each of our hands and a complex network of muscles and nerves. It was the physical therapy I had following a bout of “Carpenters’ Elbow” (I don’t play tennis) that taught me how the tendons and muscles in our forearms are related to the bones in our hands like the strings of a marionette. Put your left hand on the beefy part of your right forearm and wiggle your right fingers, and you’ll feel those little strings moving around like manual trackers. Come to think of it, they are like manual trackers.

Keyboard musicians are defined and define themselves by their hands. I have to admit I’m amused by publicity headshots of colleagues that include their hands. The photographer has struggled to find natural looking poses to include the hands in a close-up of an organist’s face, when most of the reasons we bring our hands to our faces shouldn’t be photographed. I chuckle as I remember my grandmother chiding me and my siblings to “get your hands away from your face.”

Wave it like it is.

Wendy has been actively involved at her alma mater, Brown University, as long as I’ve known her. She served on the Board of Fellows (she was a jolly good fellow!) for most of twenty years, as an officer of the Corporation for much of that time, and now serves as co-chair of the committee planning the observation and celebration of the university’s semiquincentennial (250th) anniversary. Last weekend we were on campus for the grand kickoff of more than a year of anniversary events including a President’s Colloquium on the Virtues of Liberal Education. One of the panel discussions that day brought four sitting state governors together with a professor of political science as moderator for a wide-ranging discussion about modern American politics. 

Two of the participants, Governor Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire and Governor Peter Shumlin of Vermont, had hands that were unusually large and expressive. They were seated in plush armchairs (brown, of course) onstage in a large lecture hall, and I was struck as I listened and watched at how much their beautiful hands added to the effectiveness of their delivery. The other two governors had good things to say, but they seemed less eloquent.

In March of 2011, Wendy accompanied her client, former United States Poet Laureate Donald Hall, to the White House as he was awarded the National Medal of Arts. Among the tales with which she came home was the lengthy conversation she had with another honoree, Van Cliburn, the storied pianist who won the Tchaikovsky Piano Competition in Moscow in 1958. Along with comments on his legendary grace and regal carriage, Wendy spoke of his enormous, expressive hands.

I googled Van Cliburn and watched a few performances on YouTube. I saw the obligatory tours de force of Rachmaninoff and Tchaikovsky, but was singularly impressed by his presentation of the National Anthem at the start of the 1994 opening day game of Major League Baseball’s Texas Rangers in the newly completed Rangers Ballpark in Arlington, Texas. We’ve all seen the worst of so-called musicianship in such venues, not to be confused with soprano Renée Fleming’s marvelous offering at this year’s Super Bowl, but watching the sixty-year-old Van Cliburn stride on to the playing field dressed in white tie and tails, waving to the crowd, and seating himself at the piano was to witness a classy man bringing his classy act to a venue otherwise not known for my present definition of class.

And those hands. They were big as all outdoors. I marveled as I saw that left hand playing three- and four-part chords at the spread of a tenth in rolling eighth-note passages. It looked as though there was about eighteen inches between the piano’s fallboard and Van Cliburn’s wrists.

You can read about this performance and see the video at http://tinyurl.com/p6faslj. I bet you’ll agree, the Fort Worth Symphony didn’t add much to the experience, except that it was fun to see Van Cliburn stand for the second verse, place a huge hand over his huge heart, and sing. Isn’t America a great country? 

Last night, Wendy and I attended an all-Beethoven concert of the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Christoph von Dohnanyi. They opened with a lackluster performance of Leonora Overture Number 3, and then were joined by pianist Yefim Bronfman for the First and Second Piano Concertos. That’s pretty good work for a pianist, especially when you consider that he plays the remaining three concertos and the Triple Concerto with the same band in the next two weeks. Wow, what a lot of notes.

Mr. Bronfman does not cut a dashing figure as he crosses the stage toward the piano. But I don’t have to risk my relationship with him by describing any further because I can rely on novelist Philip Roth to do it for me. In his novel, The Human Stain (Houghton Mifflin, 2000), the narrator observes the main character, the disgraced Coleman Silk, having his somewhat creepy and typically Rothian way with the fragile woman on whom he is preying during a live rehearsal at Tanglewood:

Then Bronfman appears. Bronfman the Brontosaur! . . . He is conspicuously massive through the upper torso . . . someone who has strolled into the music shed out of a circus where he is the strongman . . . Yefim Bronfman looks less like the person who is going to play the piano than the guy who is going to move it . . . this sturdy little barrel of an unshaven Russian Jew.

Philip Roth can say what he likes, because Mr. Bronfman is more than just a pretty face. He can rely on his hands to speak for him. I often marvel at how a great pianist can project the illusion of fluidity when in fact, the tone of the piano is generated by percussion. The musician’s hands allow a control that produces the image of a waterfall rather than a hammer hitting an anvil. And Yefim Bronfman sprinkled that magic all over Symphony Hall. It’s impressive that he played two concertos—I wonder how many hundreds of thousands of notes there were, and not one out of place. As I sat listening with my thumb throbbing, I marveled at the understated assurance of his hands—those amazing structures of joints, muscles, and sinews—and how they could project such torrents of expression and emotion. 

We’ve got to hand it to you.

The business of learning to play a keyboard instrument involves training the hands to perform specialized tasks. We develop those muscles in unusual ways, refining the accuracy of aim and attack, and learning to simultaneously apply different amounts of pressure so as to emphasize notes of a melody. The muscles in our hands develop their own memories for the patterns of fingering in scales and passages in the pieces we learn. Our hands grasp the unique patterns of each of the twelve major and minor keys as easily as a doorknob. It is that tactile memory that allows us to play without looking at our fingers.

As miraculous as the human hand on the keyboard might be, the basic position of our hands on the keys as we play is common to many other activities. Place your hands flat on your desk and you have a pretty good start for the hand position of a keyboard player. Contrast that to the left hand of the violinist or guitarist. I grab a handful of nuts from a bowl by turning my hand over and clasping my fingers in a position similar to what I might clumsily do on the neck of a violin, but if I move my fingers I drop the nuts. The position of the violinist’s hand as he selects notes by pressing the strings against the neck is pretty much opposite that of an organist. 

Take the violinist’s tactile control a step further. It’s difficult enough to learn to play the right notes on a piano keyboard. But let’s face it, we’re given a simple choice and a relatively wide margin. If you manage to play the key that is F-sharp without touching another key, you get whatever F-sharp the instrument has to offer. On the violin, some combination of seeing, hearing, and feeling must be achieved to allow the player to seemingly randomly select an accurate note. Listen for a few seconds to a beginning violinist and you’ll know what I mean. The first four measures of Twinkle, twinkle, little star is like looking at your reflection in a fun-house mirror.

Even the guitarist has it easy because his luthier has reduced care by adding frets. But as much as the frets ease some of the difficulty of playing the instrument, our guitarist relies on the strength and evenness of the nails on his plucking hand to create his tone. No bundle of horsehair for him. A cousin of mine who lives near Paris was married to a classical guitarist who asked me to help him purchase the 800-grit sandpaper he liked to use to preen his fingernails. Snag a nail pulling open a cardboard box and you’re on the bench, sitting next to the pitcher with a hangnail.

Practice and use has another effect on the fingers of a string player. Anyone else’s fingers would get pretty sore jumping around on those strings. I think mine would be bleeding in ten minutes. But witness a great violinist playing a complex concerto and you’ll know that thousands of hours of practicing is necessary to condition those little pads of flesh to endure that abuse. Adding to the physical punishment of playing the violin is the hickey they get from the neck rest.

§

Modern carpenters are armed with pneumatic nailing machines. Walking past a construction site you hear POW POW POW at march tempo as nails propelled by air pressure slam through wood. But a good carpenter still has the old-time rhythm of placing a nail with one hand and driving it home with three rhythmic strokes of a hammer in the other. Watching a beginner start a nail in a piece of wood is like listening to that infant violinist. Many of us know the special feeling when hammer strikes and thumbnail goes black.

A potter throws a lump of clay on a wheel, wets his hands, and coaxes it into center. Then with one hand open cupping the lump and the other closed with thumb pointing down, a cup or a bowl emerges by metamorphosis. Practice allows the creation of a set of plates similar enough in size to produce a set.

A surgeon uses forceps to tie complicated knots in monofilament thread to make leak-proof joints that can contain the pressure of blood as driven by the beating heart.

A tailor or seamstress puts the end of a thread through the eye of a needle, then bonds two pieces of fabric with microscopic stitches.

The massive boom of an excavating machine responds to the touch of the operator’s fingertips on the controls, combining multiple movements into fluid, nearly human motion. 

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As generations pass, our bodies adapt to our circumstances. We rely on clothing and central heating systems to keep us warm so we evolve toward hairlessness. The balding man takes comfort in the knowledge that he’s more advanced than his hairy friends.

Early humans had to rely on large vestigial molars to reduce plant tissue to digestible forms. Think of a cow chewing her cud. Today the plants we eat grow in convenient forms and we get a lot of our nutrition from meat that is cooked and cut into small pieces, so we have evolved smaller jaws than our ancient predecessors. But we still have those pesky vestigials, ironically called wisdom teeth, and as few of us have space on our jaws for them, out they come.

Like our hair and our teeth, our hands have evolved and adapted to operate the devices we’ve created. One quick handshake is enough to tell the difference between a carpenter and an office worker. Notice how many tiny motions we combine to button a shirt. And look across the symphony orchestra to see how many ways our hands can be used. 

What’s next? If our hair is getting thin and our jaws are getting smaller, think of our thumbs. Sit on a seat in the subway or a bench at the mall and watch the teenagers texting and playing hand-held games. Our thumbs will keep getting more nimble and I figure we’ll always need our fourth and fifth fingers to grasp hand-held devices. But it will take fewer than a hundred generations for our index and third fingers to wither away from disuse. So put down that phone and go practice! 

Size matters, part two
First assignment: Please reread In the wind . . . in the May issue of The Diapason. Thank you.
Robin Hall is a very cool man. I met him in his office on West 34th Street in New York late on a February afternoon. A two-foot model of Sponge Bob Square Pants hangs from the ceiling. Kermit the Frog sits on the desk next to a DVD of Miracle on 34th Street. The walls are painted Wasabi Green. Kermit clashes with the walls—It isn’t easy being green. There’s a rack of file folders on a shelf under the window behind his desk—the folders are bright orange, obviously chosen to complement the walls. A snappy haircut, stylish eyeglass frames, and a breezy enthusiastic manner complete the picture.
Mr. Hall is a vice president for Macy’s department stores, and his office is in Macy’s flagship store on Herald Square. He heads the company’s department of Annual and Special Events. While I expect some department stores consider inventory to be the height of annual events, when you think of Macy’s you think of the Thanksgiving Day Parade. The department employs about 50 people who produce the parade, in-store flower shows, and public fireworks displays, to name a few activities. The hanging Sponge Bob is a sculptor’s model for a huge parade balloon. A few blocks away, there’s a parade studio with welders, woodworkers, and the cadre of artisans needed to build the floats and balloons for the parade, the artsy little bridges and gazebos that are installed in the store for flower shows, and all the other gizmos and gadgets that are the products of this unique division.
When I observed that he has a dream job, Robin pointed through the wall to the guy in the next office saying, “he’s the one with the great job.” He’s the one who interviews, reviews, auditions, and coordinates the high-school bands that travel to participate in the parade each Thanksgiving. You might think that job to be a nightmare of logistics, cancellations, and odd requests from hundreds of people, but Robin referred to the huge excitement of the many families traveling to New York so their kids could march in the great televised parade. Attitude matters.
Our conversation was about an hour long, ebullient, rocketing from one thing to another. At one point Robin said, “. . . more than in many other facets of modern life, passion is common in my world. I’m surrounded by passionate people doing the things they are passionate about.” (See Photo 1: a disinterested listener.)
Wouldn’t it be great if someone like this were in a position of responsibility for the care and promotion of a monumental public pipe organ?
A few years ago Macy’s merged with Federated Department Stores. The new company spun off Lord & Taylor. Lord & Taylor moved out, and Macy’s moved into a grand building on Market Street in Philadelphia, originally built by John Wanamaker to house his legendary department store, which included just that monumental public pipe organ. That’s right—the people who produce the Macy’s Parade are in charge of the Wanamaker Organ.
Last month I wrote about the history of that iconic instrument, hence the assignment for rereading. This month I share my reflections after spending 36 hours with the organ and the people around it. It was organ curator Curt Mangel who told me about Macy’s hearty support of the organ. Curt encouraged me to get in touch with Robin Hall; that referral led to my interview with him. Robin told me that when Macy’s acquired the Wanamaker properties, Melissa Ludwig, regional director of Macy’s Stores for the Philadelphia area, “sent an e-mail around” that described the relevance and reputation of the Wanamaker organ and in effect encouraged store management to be aware of the importance of the stewardship of the organ.
Robin Hall told me much about the importance of music in Macy’s heritage. He described an upcoming concert at Carnegie Hall, A Tribute to Macy’s, which would include newly commissioned songs. Each of the 80 versions of the Macy’s Parade has been a major musical event. For 40 years Macy’s has produced the July 4th fireworks on the New York waterfront in collaboration with the New York Pops Orchestra. Live music is considered an important part of any Macy’s event. Robin told me, for example, that the East Village Opera Company would be performing at upcoming corporate meetings. Special events are not a marketing tool, but central to the company’s mission. Attractions like the parade and flower shows are assets to retail activity and an opportunity for Macy’s to give back to the community. Simply put, Macy’s has always believed that music and theater are an essential part of the shopping experience. Special events enhance the brand. And emotionalism is “almost a religion.” How’s that for a corporate priority?
As Macy’s has long been devoted to musical and artistic extravaganzas, what better organization to have responsibility for the world’s greatest musical instrument? I was told how the Wanamaker Organ was a perfect fit into the portfolio of the Special Events Division, that it would “have a natural place in the Macy’s method.” Plans are under way to feature the organ in new types of programs and to enhance the listening experience in the Grand Court. And beyond mere enthusiasm is considerable tangible support. In its first years of stewardship of the organ, Macy’s has committed to the design and purchase of a new Peterson combination action (remember, there are 462 stop-tablets and 167 pistons!) and to the refinishing of the massive ornamented case of the six-manual console.
My hour in Robin Hall’s office was inspiring—how thrilling to hear of a major retail corporation wholeheartedly involved in arts and culture. It was fun—Robin is a compelling and engaging person. And it was encouraging—we live in a world dominated by bad news, in a culture that celebrates mediocrity, and my heart was warmed by the enthusiasm emanating from a corporate office in Manhattan in support of an organ in Philadelphia.
But the real thrill that day was to hear Robin talk about Peter Richard Conte, the Grand Court Organist, and L. Curt Mangel III, the curator of the organ. Robin spoke of how Peter understands the mission of the organ, that he is a serious, exceedingly skillful classical musician who knows how to balance high culture and popular populist selections, and who has a highly developed sense of fun. He spoke of Curt’s deep dedication to his work, his technical and organizational skills, his encyclopedic understanding of the instrument, and the work of keeping it in good condition. (See Photo 2: Peter Richard Conte [aka The conjurer].)
Peter Richard Conte has been Grand Court Organist at the Wanamaker Store since 1989. The hundreds of concerts he’s played at the store—along with his active touring schedule—make him one of America’s most experienced performers. In addition to what must be dozens of hours at the keyboard each week, Peter is both skilled and prolific at transcribing major orchestral repertory for his performances. His neat large-format manuscripts are peppered with colored dots indicating registration changes—the preparation time is obvious. I felt privileged to stand next to Peter while he played a noontime recital that included the “Immolation Scene” from Richard Wagner’s Götterdämmerung, César Franck’s Choral in A minor, and Robert Hebble’s intricate and sexy Danny Boy (melody in the pedal, accompaniment packed with the “ten dollar chords” described in Ted Alan Worth’s rambling, moderately literate, intensely personal recollections of Virgil Fox in The Dish). The console is bewildering. I’ve mentioned 462 stop-tablets, but you have to see it to appreciate it. There are eleven expression pedals and six keyboards. Peter’s hands are just like everyone else’s except they each have eight telescoping fingers and each finger has three knuckles that are not double but universally jointed. He flies through the most complicated passages with apparent ease, the observer having hardly a chance of comprehending the relationship between the printed score and what’s happening on the keyboards.
It sounds like a parlor trick, but it’s so much more. While the symphony orchestra comprises dozens of separate voices that are independently expressive, it’s usual for organists to think of expression as a one- or two-dimensional concept. Peter Conte playing the Wanamaker organ produces expressive effects that defy the commoner’s understanding of the pipe organ. Independent voices on three keyboards simultaneously, two pedal voices, one of which is a high-note melody, and inexplicably one voice in decrescendo with another climaxing—oh yes, remember those brass bars under the keyboards that operate the shutters, and look at those sneaky thumbs. (See Photo 3: Swell Shoes?) Amazing. A decrescendo into nothingness accomplished by running a thumb across a row of stop tablets like a line of falling dominoes. Breathtaking. A powerful burst from an array of colorful stentorian solo reeds. Thrilling. And all the while, commerce is going on. Macy’s customers are trying on shoes, sampling cosmetics, matching neckties to shirts, paying for their purchases. Peter’s abilities as an organist and performer are exceeded only by his understanding of the limitless instrument at which he sits.
The late Charles Fisk reportedly defined a “reed” as “an organ stop that needs two days of work.” This organ has 82 ranks of reeds. There are more than 30,000 pipes, each with a valve that’s a potential cipher. Heaven may or may not know how many electrical contacts there are, but Curt Mangel does. (See Photo 4: L. Curt Mangel III—The man behind the curtain.) Curt is a brisk energetic man whose gait announces his sense of purpose. He speaks with authority and precision, each sentence including an extra clause for explanation. It’s hard to ask him questions, because so much of what he says is answers. Curt has been curator of the Wanamaker Organ since March 2002. He guided me through the instrument, talking of history, challenges, dreams, and accomplishments. He told me how it’s possible, even usual, for two or three tuners to work in the organ at once, each with an assistant at a tuning keyboard, working in different divisions with shutters closed. His command of technical details reveals the diligence and intensity with which he has informed himself about the organ.
Curt showed me the newly commissioned organ workshop on the third floor of the store. Assistant curator Samuel Whitcraft and apprentice Scott Kip work with Curt to facilitate large-scale restoration projects and day-to-day maintenance. New equipment, large windows looking out at City Hall, spacious work areas, and historic photos combine to make a most agreeable working environment, space provided by Macy’s in the spirit of their positive attitude toward the future of the organ. (See Photo 5: The Wanamaker Organ Shop.)
Together and separately, Peter and Curt are enthusiastic advocates of this mammoth organ. They speak freely about their love of the instrument, their devotion to its heritage, history, and future, and of their mutual respect. They are working in a climate of collegiality and cooperation with the people at Macy’s—reveling in the opportunity to work with this special instrument with the support and encouragement of its owner. But it was not always like that. There have been long periods during which it was difficult to secure funding. There have been management teams that limited practice time because of the cost of after-hours security. There have been disputes over decibel levels during daytime performances. There have been periods during which the future of the organ was uncertain. Perhaps the greatest contribution to the organ by long-time curator Nelson Buechner was his dedication during what devotees to the Symphonic Organ might term the long dark days of the Revival of the Classic Organ.
And in the darkest of those appeared Ray Biswanger, founder and president of the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ. Ray has been instrumental and effective in the advocacy of the organ to its various owners. Working with Curt Mangel, the Friends have established the Symphonic Organ Symposium, an educational effort that organizes the gathering of ten or so volunteers, all professional organbuilders, for four or five days at a time, about four times a year. Curt lays out large repair projects, lays in the necessary materials, and lays on the marching orders. This confluence of talented professionals provides an unprecedented forum for the exchange of ideas, techniques, and experiences—hence the emphasis of the symposium’s educational value. This extraordinary effort is what allows us to experience the Wanamaker organ in such wonderful condition. The Friends of the Wanamaker Organ provide lodging and meals for symposium participants who volunteer their time and pay their own travel expenses.
Recently there was a special event to unveil the new organbuilding workshop. At the same time, the newly restored chorus of Vox Humanas was introduced. Originally part of the Orchestral Organ (currently under restoration), Manual 8' Vox Humanas I–VII (originally I–VI—they added one—you can’t have enough Voxes!), Manual 16' Vox Humana, and Pedal 16' Vox Humanas I–II (count ’em, ten ranks of Voxes in the same room) have been installed in their own division in a prominent location behind the shutters that were originally for the Orchestral Organ. As the ten ranks stand neatly in pairs on windchest divisions, there are five regulators and five tremulants to “complete the bleat.” Amazingly, but after all logically, Peter asked Curt to provide “Vox divisional pistons!” Sure enough, that extraordinary chorus has its own pistons allowing Vox crescendi and Vox decrescendi. And the proof is in the pudding—what a singular effect when that thumb runs down the buttons at the end of a phrase. (See Photo 6: You don’t see this every day.)
Free of the burden of all those Voxes, the restored Orchestral Organ will be installed in a new location to the right of the main organ at the same level as the String Organ. It is testament to the community’s regard and opinion of the organ that 380 new square feet of floor space are being provided for the organ. Think how many Speedos and bikinis they could sell in that amount of commercial space. The Orchestral Organ is scheduled for installation in the spring of 2008. After that, the restoration of the Great Chorus—a separate division of large solo Diapason, Flute, and String voices—will begin in the fall of 2008.
Philadelphia is a good vacation destination. Excellent restaurants and hotels abound, historic shrines and sites are everywhere. There are dramatic vistas that include photogenic bridges and waterfronts. And for the organ nut there is immense wealth. If you want to plan a trip, look into schedules of organ performances at the new Kimmel Center (home of the Philadelphia Orchestra and the new 125-rank Dobson organ) and Irvine Auditorium of the University of Pennsylvania (162-rank Austin). You might also try the Girard College Chapel where there’s a 102-rank E. M. Skinner organ. Four terrific organs, 851 ranks.
In the last few years, the Organ Clearing House crew has spent considerable time in Philadelphia dismantling, packing, and later shipping the massive Möller organ from the now-destroyed Philadelphia Civic Center (it’s now at the University of Oklahoma, where it will be restored as part of that school’s new American Organ Institute). That work, along with the 2002 AGO convention, and the fact that Philadelphia is “on the way” from Boston to lots of other places, have provided me with ample opportunities to visit the Wanamaker Store. And the longer that organ, Peter Conte, Curt Mangel, and the good people of Macy’s are working together under the same ornate roof, the more reason for all of us who love the pipe organ to visit Philadelphia.
Writing about statistics, stoplists, or histories cannot do real justice to the experience of hearing this organ. You must go. There are countless opportunities—go to www.wanamaker organ.com to see the schedule of concerts, to join the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ, to make a contribution to this amazing work, and to purchase a copy of Ray Biswanger’s thoughtful, balanced, and copiously illustrated book about the organ, Music in the Marketplace. Tell them I sent you. There is nothing else like the Wanamaker Organ, anywhere. Don’t take my word for it. And don’t miss the Brazilian steak house next door.