In the Wind . . .

They don’t make ’em like they used to.

We often come across consumer products that disappoint us. You buy it, get it home, and find that it’s not what you were expecting. Maybe it’s a pair of shoes whose soles come off too soon. Maybe it’s a toaster that won’t stay down. My parents lived in the house in which I grew up for more than 20 years, and the same two telephones were in the same two places with the same single phone number the whole time. I hate to admit how many phone numbers I’m paying for now (personal, business, and fax lines in two locations plus a mobile phone), but I seem to be buying new phones every few months. Those sturdy phones in my parents’ house had two functions—you could pick up the handset to make a call, or you pick up the handset to answer a call. And they had real analog bells in them that rang for incoming calls! The phones I buy now have speed-dial memories, hold buttons, caller ID, conferencing, multiple lines with distinguishable rings, volume controls, redial, busy redial, call forwarding, etc., etc. I appreciate and use all those features, but the phones don’t seem to last as long.

Is newer better?

Likewise, my car has hundreds of features that were unheard of twenty years ago. When I opened the hood of my first car, I could see an engine. My present car has a maze of sensors, hoses, filters, and electronic gadgets under the hood. All that technology means that the engine runs smoothly and reliably and requires very little maintenance. But a breakdown is likely to be caused by a seemingly mysterious failed sensor or a vacuum leak rather than a good old mechanical problem. And there must be hundreds of gadgets for comfort and convenience—electric this, heated that. I’ve had the car about eight months and I still find myself saying, “I didn’t know it did that.” I have to admit that I’d prefer not to give up all the snazzy features in favor of yesterday’s simplicity. I hope my next car will have a heater for the washer fluid!
A modern organbuilder faces this issue daily. We hope and intend that our work will last for generations, but we have to rely on materials that can be substandard. Look at the biggest pipes of the 16' Open Wood Diapason in an organ built by Ernest Skinner, each made of four knot-free boards 18" wide. The trees that yielded that lumber have all been turned into organ pipes. I maintain a Skinner organ in Reading, Massachusetts that was built in 1915 and still has its original reservoir and pouch leather. Ninety-one years! We have to work within a modern economic system that sometimes seems not to value quality. And we have to develop and create a specialized workforce. America’s educational system has no provision for training organbuilders. Each new worker has to be recruited, educated, trained, and sustained in a craft that typically builds very expensive products from rare and expensive materials using donated money.
But all that effort is worth it—pipe organ building is one facet of modern life where they do make ’em like they used to. It’s a privilege to be involved in a field in which excellence is the norm, in which personal craftsmanship is truly valued, in which the client or patron expects excellence. I especially value those conversations with my organbuilding colleagues in which we reflect on the high standards of our predecessors and how to emulate them in today’s world. That’s not an easy thing to achieve, and it does not happen without continual concentrated effort. A good organ is not an accident.
My work with the Organ Clearing House keeps me in regular contact with the best of older pipe organs, and I always marvel at the signs of yesterday’s craftsmanship. For example, there was something special about the way workers in E. & G. G. Hook’s factory sharpened their pencils. You can see this throughout their organs wherever a mortise was marked—those pencils were really sharp, and you know there were no fool-proof electric pencil sharpeners in sight, and you also know there were no plastic pencils with the lead out-of-center. Focusing on pencils may seem obsessive, but in order for a 19th-century pencil to be sharp, someone had to sharpen a knife by hand. Many modern craftspeople rely on factory-produced, laser-sharpened disposable blades for manual tasks such as cutting and skiving leather. And for less than ten dollars you can buy a pair of scissors that will cut just about anything. Achieving the “old days” levels of accuracy with hand-made, hand-sharpened tools is a reflection of a true craftsman.

They pretend to make them like they used to.

We rely on high-tech power equipment for processes that were once done by hand. With my family I once visited one of those reconstructed, restored historical villages that had been transformed into a modern museum. Staff people were walking about in historic dress demonstrating traditional crafts such as spinning, weaving, and candle-making. There was a reproduction of an old woodworking shop, and the docent proudly told us how the shop was producing the millwork being used for the restoration of buildings throughout the village. Next to a treadle-powered lathe there was an impressive pile of precisely turned poplar balustrades intended for a large curving staircase and balcony. I was suspicious. I stood up on a bench and peered over a low wall to see a state-of-the-art modern workshop with all the best power equipment. I imagined that the fellow in the leather apron at the foot-powered lathe had been spinning the same piece of wood for weeks.
When I was first working in organ shops we turned a lot of screws by hand (Popeye arms!), and we had Yankee® Screwdrivers—long-handled tools with a built in ratchet that you pumped up and down to drive a screw. Boy, did it make a mess of your wood when the bit jumped out of the slot in the screw-head! Then we cut off the end of a screwdriver and put it in the chuck of an electric drill. Then we had factory-made screwdriver bits that came in big sets. Then we had electric screwdrivers—a rig that looked like a drill but included an adjustable clutch to prevent you from stripping the thread in the wood. Now we have powerful rechargeable batteries that allow a wide variety of cordless power hand tools. (See Photo 1.) I’ve joked many times to younger workers that “when I was a kid we had wires hanging out of our screwdrivers.” When rechargeable batteries were first introduced the technology was inadequate. There was hardly enough power to turn a tough screw, and the charge didn’t last long enough to be practical. But now, with a quick-charger and a couple spare batteries you can work all day without interruption. I recently added to my bag of tricks a battery charger that plugs into my car’s twelve-volt outlets. (And by the way, this car has outlets all over the place.) When I leave a service call with a dead battery, it’s recharged before I get to the next stop.

You think that’s old?

My wife and I just got home from a vacation in Greece. We were fascinated by the culture, awed by the landscape, and charmed by the sunny atmosphere of the islands. But visiting the historic archeological sites was simply humbling. I routinely work with organs that are 150 years old. I live in New England where we are surrounded by buildings and artifacts from the establishment of the original colonies and the Revolutionary War. There are a few buildings around that are close to 400 years old. The history of the ancient city of Delphi is traced to the beginning of the 12th century B.C. when the Dorians arrived in Greece, and the surviving buildings date from around 500 B.C. There is a 5,000-seat theater built in the fourth century B.C.—simply stunning. (See Photo 2.) As a tourist, one can stand on the “stage” at the focus of that vast amphitheater and imagine an enthusiastic crowd cheering you as a favorite actor or musician. Or walk on the field enclosed by the 7,000-seat stadium and imagine an ancient athletic contest. (Several fellow tourists ran a high-energy race.) But what the guide books cannot prepare you for is the topography. These massive buildings are made of stone—huge pieces of stone—and the sites are almost all dramatic, steep, even scary mountainsides. The floor of one building is above the roof of the one next door. One walks from place to place exhausted by the combination of the brilliant Mediterranean sun and the weight of the camera bag, water bottles, and the wildly steep uneven steps. Add to that exertion the thought of carrying the rocks to build the buildings. No payloaders, no Bobcats®, no conveyor belts, no dynamite—just wheels, levers, and muscle.1
The ancient town at Mycenae was first settled around 1950 B.C., with major development or organization in about 1200 B.C. It includes Agamemnon’s citadel and royal palace, and features a sophisticated system of cisterns and aqueducts to supply drinking water through the site. The skill of the stone masons who built the many structures is especially notable. How they were able to achieve perfect joints between stones the size of small automobiles and then hoist them into place is hard to imagine. I couldn’t help thinking of the Organ Clearing House crew with towers of rented scaffolding and electric hoists to lower windchests out of an organ chamber. The adjoining museum displays a collection of bronze tools—hammers, adzes, drills, chisels—that the craftsmen made and used in their work. To use a hand-held adze to create a perfectly flat surface on a ten-ton stone—they certainly don’t make them like they used to! (See Photo 3.)
I was particularly interested in the methods and philosophies regarding preservation and restoration. Two years ago I attended an excellent symposium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on the occasion of the completion of the restoration by Taylor & Boody of an organ built in 1799–1800 by David Tannenberg. The instrument had been rediscovered in storage in a building that is part of Old Salem (another wonderful museum-village, not the site of the earlier mentioned balustrade caper!) and was returned to spectacular playing condition. The restoration was impeccably documented by Taylor & Boody, and they made fascinating presentations of the various tasks and challenges they faced. Some new parts had to be fabricated, but they went to extraordinary lengths to “re-round” literally flattened tin façade pipes, to reconstruct the geometry of the keyboards, and to establish the pitch of the organ. Moravian archives at Old Salem even contain a handwritten letter from Tannenberg to the church describing how to set the temperament and tune the organ.
But a side debate (exercised at length between friends and colleagues over dinner) included the suggestion that true preservation would not undertake to reconstruct the organ but to catalogue, measure, and display the array of parts. To presume to make new parts and to make assumptions about details like key travel would be to intrude on history.
In our work with historic organs we continually face similar questions. When we relocate an historic organ the intention is typically that the instrument should retain its historicity as much as possible, but also should be useful and reliable as a musical instrument, available for regular use by any organist. So can we justify adapting an instrument for modern use? Many modern organists are devoted to the use of combination actions—are we preserving an antique instrument if we adapt it to include an electric stop-action, or are we desecrating it?
Many of the monuments we visited in Greece are simply ruins today—mazes of stone foundations that allow us to surmise what life might have been like in an ancient village. Houses are supposed to have been occupied by merchants or by royalty. Local hierarchies are assumed based on the relative altitude of residences—the royalty lived at the top of the hill, laborers and merchants at the bottom—literally upper and lower classes.
But other sites are in the process of reconstruction. Perhaps the most dramatic of these is the Parthenon, situated on the Acropolis high above Athens. (See Photo 4.) Originally settled around 5000 B.C., the Acropolis is one of Greece’s earliest settlements. Throughout the ensuing centuries the site was fought over, developed and re-developed. Geologically it’s a large flat area, very high up, with very steep walls—a comfortable area to settle that’s difficult to reach and easy to defend. And the best part is there’s plenty of water—a feature common to all those barricaded hilltop cities. The Parthenon was built by Pericles around 450 B.C., made possible by the economic strength of the Delian Treasury that resulted from the formation of the Delian League of city-states. A thousand years later it was converted for Christian worship by the Emperor Justinian, and in the 17th century the Venetian army laid siege to the occupying Turks. In 1684, the Turks destroyed the Temple of Athena Nike (another of the grand structures on the Acropolis) to aid their defensive tactics, and in 1687 a Venetian bombardment exploded a Turkish magazine located within the Parthenon, blowing off its roof and reducing to rubble a 2,000-year-old monument. Today a massive restoration effort is underway, funded by the Greek government, the European Union, and “other contributions.”2
I was fascinated by the restoration site. (See Photo 5.) A huge construction crane is painted the same color as the Parthenon’s marble and housed at night crouching against the side of the building so as not to interfere with the skyline. The stone-workers’ workshops are housed in several low buildings, again designed with discreet profiles. Railroad tracks crisscross the site providing sturdy platforms for material handling. It’s a big effort when each piece of your project is weighed in tons rather than pounds. The rubble has been sorted into piles, individual pieces numbered and catalogued as to where in the building they originated. And fragments of stones have been returned to their original dimensions with new material (both marble and composite material) added. I was especially interested in the restoration with regard to what we learned about the Tannenberg organ in Winston-Salem. New material was added when necessary so the restoration would allow us to appreciate the monument in its original form. (See Photo 6.)
We visited the medieval Byzantine city of Mystra situated on another steep hill, this time on the outskirts of Sparta. There’s a castle at the very top (another steamer of a climb), several stunning churches and monasteries with breathtaking frescos, a royal palace, and the foundations of the houses and businesses that sheltered and supported a community of more than 20,000 inhabitants. The church of Ayia Sofia, built in 1350, features an elaborate floor made of polychrome marble. We were astonished that the public is allowed to walk on it! Like the Acropolis, this ancient city is illuminated at night, visible for many miles in every direction. There are halogen light fixtures mounted all around the hillside with conduit and wiring snaking through the ancient buildings. Nestled in a little neighborhood of the ruins of a dozen or so ancient houses I saw a large transformer shed, humming quietly in the wind.
How do we decide what modern concessions will enhance our ancient monuments?

There must be a better way.

Reflect on all the fancy sophisticated tools used by modern organbuilders. Power everything, laser levels, sophisticated hydraulics, digital measuring. There are no cars allowed on the Greek island of Idra in the Aegean Sea. On a Monday morning we sat at a waterfront café waiting for the ferry that would take us back to the mainland watching a construction crew loading bricks and bags of sand and cement onto donkeys. (See Photo 7.) How do you like this guy leading his brick-laden donkeys while making a call on his cell phone!

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House

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

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

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

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

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

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

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

The hands of an artist
Wendy and I are just back from a vacation in Greece. Our daughter Meg has lived in Athens for three years, and we’ve visited several times. With her help, we’ve had a wonderful introduction to Greek history and culture. There are plenty of difficulties associated with living in Greece—the current economic crisis there is fueling labor strikes and deadly protests, and plenty of that was going on during our visit, just a few blocks from Meg’s apartment. But the deep history of the country is fascinating and moving. As you walk or drive around Athens you constantly rediscover the Parthenon perched high on the Acropolis. It seems there are hundreds of tiny streets that provide distant views of the majestic temple, and you can easily identify which rooftop terraces provide those views.
As you walk, you stumble across countless archeological sites hidden in quiet neighborhoods away from the bustle of the Acropolis. The city’s streets are lined with orange and lemon trees—sounds romantic and smells wonderful, until the fruit ripens and the sidewalks are littered with rotting lemons and oranges.
Greece is not a pipe organ country. There is a large organ by Klais in the Friends of Music Hall in Athens, but the dominance of the Greek Orthodox Church, which does not use musical instruments, means that there are very few organs there. Our vacation was a tour of the Cycladic Islands in the Aegean Sea, which form a political state whose capital is Spathi on the island of Serifos. The population of Greece is about eleven million—ten thousand are Roman Catholics, and most of them live on Serifos. There are dueling cathedrals (Orthodox and Catholic) on hilltops above the city, and sure enough, there’s a small pipe organ in the Catholic cathedral. We climbed hundreds of stairs from the port to the hilltop, and unbelievably we were not able to get into the organ loft.
It’s common in American churches to see a plaque honoring the succession of pastors. A few congregations around us in New England trace that history to the seventeenth century. Organists revere the plaque in the organ loft of the Church of St. Sulpice in Paris where organists are traced back to Nicolas Pescheur in 1601. (This has been easy to maintain as there have been only five organists there since 1863.)1 The plaque honoring clergy in the Cathedral of Serifos goes back to 343 AD. No kidding!
The island of Aegina is a touristy place near Athens, a good stopping point for boats traveling to the more distant Cycladies. It’s a major producer of pistachio nuts (we brought home a couple kilos) and home to some extraordinary archeological sites. The museum in Aegina Town includes decorated pottery from 2500 BC and shows a model of a bronze casting facility from about 1000 BC that was discovered nearby. I was captivated by the idea that such sophisticated techniques were developed so long ago (4500-year-old pottery kilns?), and as the Cycladic islands are volcanic, including a couple that are still active, I wondered what role volcanoes might have had in the development of crafts that depend on intense heat.
One of the most gifted Greek sculptors was Praxiteles. He lived from 400–330 BC, not all that old. But his work was far ahead of his time. As far as we know, he was the first to sculpt life-size female nudes from marble. There’s a legend that he had a romantic relationship with his primary model, Phryne, who came from Thespiae (origin of the term thespian) and was known as one of the most beautiful women of her time. She was the model for Praxiteles’ famous Aphrodite of Credos. Their relationship was explored by Camille Saint-Saëns in his comic opera Phryne. (How did he ever stumble on that subject?)
Praxiteles worked in Athens. His model came from Thespiae, about 150 kilometers away. He worked with marble from the Cycladic Island of Paros, more than 200 kilometers away by water. Think of the logistics of transporting a six-foot block of marble from Paros to Athens just to carve a statue of a pretty woman. It would be difficult enough now with power equipment and hydraulics. Praxiteles produced artworks of staggering beauty and unprecedented liveliness. I suppose his love for the beautiful Phryne brought out the best in him.

Too many cooks
I wonder if there was anyone looking over Praxiteles’ shoulder saying, “Take a little more off the top,” or, “You’ve got the left earlobe too fat.”
We know that happened to Michelangelo as he released David from a huge block of Carrara marble. He was commissioned by the Overseers of the Office of Works of the Cathedral in Florence, and was in fact the third artist to receive the commission. The overseers were very concerned that the huge and wildly expensive block of marble (already named David) was neglected for twenty-five years, lying on its side exposed to the elements. The committee got its act back together, had the stone set upright so artists could see its potential, and went looking for someone to realize the project after the first two attempts failed. Leonardo da Vinci was interviewed, but the twenty-six-year-old Michelangelo got the gig.
Not only was he hired by a committee to produce the piece, but another committee including Leonardo and his colleague/competitor Botticelli was formed to choose the location. There is record of disagreement among the members of the committee before the site by the entrance to the Palazzo Vecchio on Piazza della Signoria was chosen. Apparently Leonardo didn’t get his way.2
So much for the image of the artist toiling in his studio, free to express his deepest emotions through an unlikely medium that he understands better than anyone. It’s a romantic image to be sure, but especially when there’s a lot of money involved and the artwork is for a public place, there are likely to be a lot of spoons in the soup.

I know that guy
Each month I receive several journals with photos of pipe organs on the front cover and I always try to guess the builder before I look inside. I’m often wrong, but there are a half-dozen North American organbuilders whose styles are so clearly recognizable to me that I get them right every time. As most organs are commissioned by committee, I admire those builders who can create and maintain recognizable styles.
I like to think of a pipe organ as an expression of the sensibilities of the builder. I love the process of organ design, when the concept of an instrument gets put on paper. When several companies are invited to submit proposals to a church for a new instrument, it’s interesting to see the various drawings—how each firm would meet the particular challenges of the building. And sometimes we get to see several different concepts by a single builder for a particular instrument.
Organbuilder Lynn Dobson has produced many wonderful pipe organ designs, and as his firm celebrates its thirty-fifth anniversary they have created an online exhibition of many of his drawings, including designs of many organs that were never built. When you scroll through this rich display, you can see projects in various stages of design, from simple back-of-a-napkin pencil sketches to elaborate scale models. Take a look at the designs for the important organ they built for the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia (Opus 76) and you’ll see a drawing and a model (two different designs) that are radically different from the organ that was actually built. You can find this exhibit at www.dobsonorgan.com/dwg/home.html.
Dobson’s exhibition reflects his exceptional talent for design, and it implies thousands of hours of committee work as each design was presented, discussed, criticized, and altered. From first-hand experience I know well the feelings that accompany the rejection of a design by a committee member. One such meeting was held in a newly decorated church parlor, and I wondered if anyone who was speaking up against my design had been involved in creating the cacophony of clash and kitsch, which was that room.
Maybe I flatter Lynn by mentioning him in the same breath with Michelangelo, and to be honest I think Michelangelo is the larger talent, but the idea that a great artwork can be both the expression of its creator and of those who pay for and “consume” it, is one of the most interesting facets of the organbuilder’s trade. And that a personal style can transcend the whims and pressures of dozens of committees reflects both artistic integrity and conviction.

Stop, look, and listen
Visual design is only part of the job. A pipe organ is both an architectural element and a musical instrument. Ideally, there’s some relationship between an organ’s appearance and its musical content—but sometimes a building’s architecture doesn’t allow it. It’s easy to picture the stark contemporary building owned by a congregation that would be best served by an organ of classic style. Sometimes an ornate classic case looks good in such building—it’s possible to make a case for the organ to serve as the only beautiful thing in the place! But organbuilders often place organs with classic influence in contemporary buildings.
As we’re talking about Dobson, take a look at their instrument for the Church of St. Peter Claver in West Hartford, Connecticut: www.dobsonorgan.com/html/instruments/op85_westhart ford.html. The stoplist is classical, even predictable, but the case is pure contemporary. And by the way, in this design Dobson has dealt with one of the most common problems. Pipe organs are about height, and contemporary American church buildings often have low ceilings. The organ in West Hartford implies a struggle between the organ and the ceiling.
We often hear of a pipe organ that was designed by the local organist, a source of pride for a congregation. This usually means that the organist wrote up the stoplist, likely subject to discussion with the builder. If an organbuilder has a recognizable visual style, he would certainly have a signature tonal style. So how does it work if the Request for Proposal from a church includes a stoplist? What if the organbuilder doesn’t agree with the concept implied by that stoplist?
One good reason for including a stoplist in an RFP is to solicit proposals that are easy to compare. Once several proposals are studied and a builder is chosen, then it’s time to work on final specifications. So it’s back to the committee. I know of one large organ built several years ago whose stoplist was the product of many hours of conversation in a small bar across the street from the church.

Who brought the camel?
So what good comes from artworks designed by committee? You know the old saying, “A camel is a horse that was designed by a committee.” If too many people, especially those who know little or nothing about organs, are involved in planning an organ, whose art is it? Or is it even art? An organbuilder can withdraw a proposal if he’s not happy with the concept the client insists on, but you can’t eat a withdrawn proposal. How many of us have produced projects we disagree with? If you have a story, send me a message at john@organclearing house.com.
Our current project was greatly influenced by the church’s organist, whose insight into what an organ console can be was an education for me. Adding a half-dozen clever and unusual controls increased the organ’s flexibility exponentially. The time we spent together planning the project before any screws were turned or leather was cut was a collegial creative process that I think enlightened us both.
We often think of the artist as independent. Of course, art of a personal scale is usually the purview of the artist. But I wonder if the celebrated portrait artist John Singer Sargent was ever told, “Just don’t make me look fat.” I bet he was, and more than once.
Monumental art, including pipe organs, is almost always a community effort. There is usually a central creative force, but when there is a committee involved to raise and spend money responsibly, they usually insist on a role in the planning. If organbuilders are competing for a project, they must decide how much they want the job and how much they are willing to compromise their vision of the ideal instrument.
It’s rare for a builder to be given a blank check and a free hand. It would be a special opportunity for a creative person—but also what a huge responsibility. Organbuilders, if this ever happens to you, make sure you build something the church can use. 

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

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

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

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

Hometown loyalty
Local loyalty is legendary amongst native Mainers, those who have lived in Maine and nowhere else. There’s the story about the man from “away” who settled in a comfortable house with a backyard fence that separated his property from Eben’s (short for Ebenezer)—Eben had been born and grew up in that house. They were cordial neighbors for years, but our man was always aware that Eben continued to consider him an outsider. Forty years into their friendship, our man asked Eben, “We’ve been neighbors for forty years. Surely by now you must consider me part of the town.” Eben was quiet for a long moment, and then said quietly, “If the cat had kittens in the oven you wouldn’t call ’em biscuits.”
Some fifteen years ago I was renovating an organ in a small town in Maine. An elderly local organist was interested in the project and visited the church several times as I worked. He wanted me to see the organ in his church—an instrument built in the 1920s when his aunt was organist there. He had succeeded her some fifty years ago and was the proud steward of the little organ. I asked if he had lived there all his life. He replied, “not yet.”
I’ve lived in Boston all my life. Well, not really. I spent almost ten years in Ohio, first as an undergraduate and then as director of music at a church in Cleveland and working with organbuilder John Leek in Oberlin. Now although we vote in Boston, my wife and I divide our time between my hometown and mid-coast Maine, an area that I have grown to love. And I spend so much time away from home on Organ Clearing House projects (I’m coming to the end of five weeks in New York City) that I don’t seem to be at home for more than a few days at a time.
But I still consider myself a Bostonian. I’m proud of the city’s role in our country’s history. As a descendant of Paul Revere, I was brought up keenly aware of the sites of critical Revolutionary battles and the wealth of historic sites and buildings scattered throughout the area. We live a few hundred yards from the USS Constitution, familiarly known as Old Ironsides, the Navy’s frigate commissioned in 1797, now the oldest ship in the U.S. Navy. The Old North Church (“ . . . hang a lantern aloft in the North Church tower as a signal light; one if by land and two if by sea, I on the opposite shore will be ready to ride and spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm . . .”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Paul Revere’s Ride) is in our neighborhood.
I have been an avid fan of the Boston Red Sox, where until about 1990 the team was made up largely of loyal “lifers.” Carl Yastrzemski played his entire 23-year career for the Red Sox. That seems a gentler era in professional sports when a hometown hero stayed home and was admired over the decades. Dwight Evans seemed headed for such a career until the Sox released him as a free agent in 1990 after eighteen years at Fenway Park. He retired after playing one season for the Baltimore Orioles and that apparent disloyalty on the part of the Sox was the beginning of the end of my unabashed fandom. That feeling was iced followed the thrill of the Red Sox’ long-awaited World Series victory in 2004. (They hadn’t won the World Series since 1918, the year they sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000 so Red Sox owner and theater impresario Harry Frazee could fund the first performances of No, No, Nanette.) No sooner had the dust settled over Fenway after the 2004 Series, than Sox hero Johnny Damon was traded to the hated New York Yankees. Don’t tell me it’s just a game!

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Boston has always been an organ town. It was right around 1800 when the Puritans gave in to the evils of church music, and a small pipe organ was installed at King’s Chapel on Tremont Street in Boston. Within a few years, William
Goodrich and Thomas Appleton were building organs in Boston. In 1827, two young cabinetmakers from Salem, Massachusetts (the town famous for the witch trials of 1692) finished their apprenticeship with William Goodrich and opened their own organbuilding shop in Boston. Elias and George Hook started slowly, building fewer than ten organs a year for the first few years, but forty years later they were rocketing along at a fifty-five-per-year clip.
I love to think of the spectacle of a nineteenth-century workshop building that many organs. The instruments were shipped all over the country—how did they manage the correspondence for that many instruments without telephones and self-stick stamps, let alone fax machines and (God forbid) e-mail? How did they organize the flow of materials to their workshop? It takes tons of lumber, metal, and countless other materials to build an organ. The in-street trolley tracks that carried human passengers around Boston during the day were the routes of horse-drawn rail cars that brought rough materials to the workshop. The same carts transported the completed organs to barges, steamships, and railroads. Rural northern New England is pretty difficult to navigate today. There are few large roads, many hills and mountains, and lots of narrow bridges that cross treacherous rivers. It’s hard to imagine hauling a large pipe organ to northern New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine when teams of horses or oxen were the engines of the day.
And picture the rural church receiving its new Hook organ. A couple workers travel from the factory with the organ. The trip takes weeks. They enlist the help of locals for the heavy lifting and complete all facets of the installation. Since the trip took so long, they must have stayed on the job until they were sure the organ was perfect. There would be no relying on a routine two-month check-up to correct anything that went wrong with the new organ.
I suppose that before the workers left the completed installation, they would visit all the other churches nearby, offering the company’s services for more new instruments. There are Hook organs built in the 1860s and 1870s all around the country, including the Deep South. Was it awkward for the Yankees from the Hook factory to cross the Mason-Dixon Line with their organ shipments in the years following the Civil War? I imagine their wives spent sleepless nights worrying for their safety. And how did the southern organists and church committees get in touch with the sales department at Hook? Did Hook advertise in newspapers all across the country? We have copies and reproductions of the Hook catalogue and sales brochures (you can purchase them online from the Organ Historical Society).

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When I was a teenager, I had my organ lessons on a new organ built by Fisk (First Congregational Church, Winchester, Massachusetts). I had organist duties at the First Congregational Church of neighboring Woburn, Massachusetts, which had a terrific organ by
E. & G. G. Hook, with around 30 stops on three manuals, built in 1860. My family had a summer home on Cape Cod in a town that was home to a small Hook & Hastings organ, and another by William H. Clark.
You may not have heard of William H. Clark. He had been organist of the First Congregational Church in Woburn, playing on the same terrific Hook organ as I. In the late 1860s he moved across the square to the Unitarian Church, where in 1870 he oversaw the installation of an even larger three-manual Hook organ. The Unitarian Hook is the instrument that was relocated to Kirche zum Heiligen Kreuz in Berlin, Germany, and so beautifully restored by Hermann Eule of Bautzen. Stephen Kinsley was the chief voicer at the Hook factory—today we would call him tonal director—and the great and good friend of William Clark—good enough that Clark was able to woo him away from Hook into an organbuilding partnership. William H. Clark Company was located in Indianapolis. They built about a dozen organs, including the one I knew so well on Cape Cod, another in Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Ohio—an instrument that I helped John Leek restore in the late 1970s.
Those were all wonderful organs, but I know I took them for granted. As an incoming freshman at Oberlin, I realized that my classmates had had no such luck. One guy played a pipe organ for the first time when he auditioned at Oberlin. All his high-school experience had been on electronic instruments. I was dazzled by the then brand-new Flentrop organ in Warner Concert Hall, but quite a few of the organs I played there were much less than what I had grown up with. Growing up in Boston, I had been fortunate to hear E. Power Biggs play recitals on “his” Flentrop organ at Busch Hall (then called the Busch-Reisinger Museum) at Harvard University. I heard the dedication concert of the Frobenius organ at First Church in Cambridge. Few people knew much about the Danish organbuilder Frobenius in the 1970s, and the organ was a knockout. I heard Fisk organs at Harvard, King’s Chapel and Old West Church in Boston, and another dozen or so in the suburbs.

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You may have noticed that all the organs I’ve mentioned so far are trackers. There is no American city where the revival (I like to say Renaissance) of the pipe organ was more active than in Boston. When I was in high school, companies like Fisk, Noack, Andover, and Bozeman were building exciting and fascinating new organs at a rapid rate. My several mentors took me to workshop open houses where I first experienced the ethic and mystery of the organbuilding shop. And skillful organists populated the area’s organ benches, playing recitals followed by receptions and parties that all helped me learn to appreciate the pipe organ, not only as a musical instrument but as a community and way of life.
It wasn’t until after I graduated from Oberlin that I had any meaningful experiences with electro-pneumatic instruments. I worked with John Leek replacing leathers in a large Aeolian-Skinner organ in Cleveland and in several other smaller instruments, notably one by E.M. Skinner in original condition. When I returned to Boston after my Ohio hiatus, I took on the care of the Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner organ at Trinity Church, Copley Square, and the Aeolian-Skinner (4 manuals, 237 ranks) at the First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church). Being around those organs exposed me to some of the finest musicians and helped open my eyes to the range of tone and expression for which those organs are famous.
And those Skinner organs are products of Boston. Traveling on the Southeast Expressway (Route I-93 south of Boston) you can still read “Aeolian-Skinner” written on the wall of a large brick building, directly across the highway from the headquarters of the Boston Globe. The large erecting room at the south end of the building was sacrificed for the construction of the highway, precipitating the company’s move to Randolph, Massachusetts, and signaling the beginning of the end of the company. But in the “glory days,” Ernest Skinner himself worked in that building, developing the rich orchestral voices for which he is still famous. (Or we might say, after the tracker-action blitz of the 1970s, voices for which he is again famous!)
Skinner was fascinated by the ergonomics of the organ console—though I suppose the word ergonomics was not part of our language until after his lifetime. He watched organists as they played and perfected the dimensions and geometry of the console. He worked hard to lessen the distance between keyboards—no small feat given the need for piston buttons large enough to use easily (piston buttons that easily conflict with the sharp keys of the keyboard below). The design of the Skinner keyboard included tracker-touch springs, lots of ranges of adjustment for travel, spring tension, and contact point. The stop knobs had distinctive over-sized ivory faces, with names engraved in a font (another word that Skinner didn’t know) that was both elegant and easily legible. He was proud of his combination actions, and with good reason, as he developed them in the first years of the twentieth century—among the first mechanical machines that functioned as programmable binary computers.
He invented the whiffletree expression engine, inspired by the rigs developed to hitch teams of horses to a carriage. The horse-teams would perform better if each individual had freedom of motion, and each individual’s relative strength could complement the others. By extension, Skinner’s expression machine has individual power pneumatics for each stage that are hitched together using the same geometry as the team. Good observing, Mr. Skinner.

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I’ve mentioned several organbuilders who contributed to the culture of Boston. Others include George Stevens, George Hutchings, S.S. Hamill, Robert Roche, Nelson Barden, and the Spencer Organ Company. Extending the area to northern New England, you can add the names of Robert Waters, Jeremy Cooper, Stephen Russell, and David Moore. Extend the area to central Massachusetts and you can add Stefan Maier and William A. Johnson (later Wm. Johnson & Sons). Add them all up, from Goodrich to Fisk, from 1800 to 2010, and you get a total of something like 8,500 pipe organs built in Boston and surrounding areas. It’s a terrific heritage—a rich variety of musical imagination and creation that includes some of the finest organs ever built. But in sheer numbers, it pales in comparison to the world’s largest organbuilder, M.P. Möller, a single company that produced 13,500 organs in less than 100 years, all in the same town.

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It’s a beautiful town. The Italian North End has scores of terrific small restaurants. The Freedom Trail (United States National Park) is an organized walking tour of two-and-a-half miles that covers sixteen important historical sites. The Museum of Fine Arts has impressive collections of ancient Roman and Egyptian art as well as the expected glories of high European Art. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum comprises the private collection of an individual, opened to the public following her death. The Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of James Levine is as good as a great orchestra can be, and the Aeolian-Skinner organ at Symphony Hall (right across the street from the Christian Science Mother Church) has recently been renovated.
There’s plenty to do on the water. Boston Harbor Cruises operates tours ranging from an evening hour or two to a full day whale-watch cruise. You can take a fast ferry to Provincetown and back in a day. And if you visit in the fall, you can add a couple days of coveted foliage-touring in New Hampshire and Vermont.
The website of the Boston Chapter of the American Guild of Organists
(bostonago.com) has a good listing of organ recitals and related events. Emmanuel Church (Episcopal) on Newbury Street is the only place in the United States where you can hear a complete Bach cantata with orchestra every Sunday presented as part of worship service. The music is presented by the resident ensemble Emmanuel Music, a highly respected and accomplished group of some of the city’s finest musicians. Visit www.emmanuelmusic.org to see their schedule of performances. As Newbury Street is the city’s high-end shopping district, you can count on finding an exquisite Sunday brunch to complement the wonderful music.
Come to Boston, the pipe organ capital of America.

What are the questions?

An old adage says that the more experience you have in a field, the more you realize how little you know. This thought lurks at the back of my mind, ready to spring forth without notice. You hear a teenager say, “that’s the best movie ever made,” and you wonder how someone so young can be so sure. Then, pain of pains, you are reminded of similar cocksure statements you made when you were young. I knew so much when I was 18, 20, 22 years old that it was hard to imagine there would be more to know. Thank goodness for the inexorable professors who really did know more than I, and for the mentors who encouraged me in what I did know and never failed to point out those that were still mysteries to me. Whispered aside: A colorful and I think underused word in the English language is moil. The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000) gives “intr.v. 1. To toil, slave. 2. To churn about continuously. n. 1. Toil, drudgery. 2. Confusion, turmoil. (Note that moil is part of turmoil—what do you suppose tur means?) With that definition in your minds: I’ve been toiling and moiling (churning, drudgery, confusion) in the organ business since my first lessons as a young teenager and my first experiences in a workshop. There are completed projects and past performances of which I am very proud, and at least as many (God help us there are not more) that I’d like to forget. But that brings us to another most valuable adage: we learn from our mistakes. So as much as we’d like to forget them, we owe it to ourselves to keep their memory fresh lest they be classified as wasted pain. As I work in my shop I hear little voices saying, “if you do that . . . ” When I fail to listen to those voices I cut my finger or break the piece I’m working on. My friends might chuckle and say, “of course he’s hearing little voices—we’ve known that for years.” But the fact is, I think those little voices are the younger me seeing the scar on my hand caused twenty years ago by exactly the same obtuse motion. Those little voices are not signs of going over the edge, but are pearls of wisdom—that elusive and unquantifiable commodity that comes only from experience. And aren’t some of our best learned lessons those that rise from the smoldering coals of our mistakes? The master watches the motions of the apprentice and reaches for the Band-Aids® minutes before they are needed. The parent wishes to be able to spare the child inevitable pain, realizes that advice will not be heard, and has the Kleenex® on the kitchen table an hour before the school bus arrives.
I started by noting that the more you know, the less you know. A cubist view of that statement says that experience in a field reveals more questions than answers. If you really understand the questions, then you are getting somewhere. Often as I write I suppose I’m giving answers, or at least relating my experiences and observations as actualities. This time, I thought I’d give some questions, try to put them in context, and invite you to cogitate and moil over them. As always, I invite your comments: .

1. Which is better, tracker or electric action?

I grew up in the heart of the famed Revival, immersed in both new and antique pipe organs, believing tracker action to be the root of all that is good. As a young adult I had wonderful opportunities to work on massive electro-pneumatic instruments and was exposed to brilliant players doing magical things with them. I was startled when I realized that I was preferring the flexibility of fancy registration gizmos and the orchestral possibilities of these wonderful organs. Now I know I’m interested in good organs. As long as an instrument is well-conceived and well-built, it doesn’t make a whit of difference what kind of action it has. What do you think?

2. Why do some historical styles of organs have developed pedalboards and pedal divisions while others don’t?

The organs of 17th- and 18th-century France have simple and awkward pedalboards in comparison to those of northern Europe, and the music written for them reflects that. François Couperin le Grand (1668–1733) and J. S. Bach (1685–1750) were contemporaries—a quick glance shows the difference—most of Couperin’s music is notated on two staves. I’ve written before about the reproduced engraving that hangs over my desk (from l’Art du Facteur d’Orgues, Dom Bedos de Celles, 1766). It depicts a large 18th-century French organ shown in cross-section, with an organist playing. He is wearing a powdered wig (good thing it was tracker action, think of that powder clogging up the keyboard contacts), a heavy formal coat with long tails and buttoned cuffs, an equally heavy vest under the coat, and a sword whose tip was right next to his feet on that primitive pedalboard. A sword? No wonder they didn’t use the pedals. One fast flourish and your feet would be bleeding. Imagine the teacher saying, “Go ahead, take a stab at it.” And, to protect himself from injury he was wearing heavy boots. No Capezios here.

3. How do historical styles evolve?

It’s relatively easy to identify and study the differences between, for example, 18th-century French and German organs, but what caused the development of those differences? Was it the wine? Was it the spätzel?

4. Where did the different pitches of organ stops come from?

There is a simple answer—8' is the fundamental tone, 4' is first pitch of the overtone series, 22?3' is the second, and so on through 2', 13?5', 11?3', 11?7'. 102?3' is two octaves below 22?3' so 102?3' is the second overtone of 32' pitch—that series continues with 8', 62?5', 51?3'etc. The overtone series was perhaps first heard clearly in the tone of a big bell. The experienced listener can hear fifths and thirds clearly in the tone of such organ stops as an Oboe, Clarinet, Krummhorn, or Trumpet—in fact, those stops get their color from those strong overtones. That’s why you can hear the pitch of a Tierce so much more clearly against a reed than against warm and fuzzy Gedackt. (When I’m tuning those stops I have the habit of humming and singing parallel intervals and arpeggios inspired by the overtones —another example of the little voices in my head.) But the real question is how the perception of those overtones in the sound of an organ pipe led the early builders to experiment with creating individual stops that doubled overtones.

5. Is chiff a good thing?

During the aforementioned Revival many organbuilders experimented with “chiff, ” that characteristic chiffy consonant that starts the speech of an organ pipe. Every musical tone has some sort of attack that precedes the vowel of the note, and an organ pipe can be voiced to have lots of chiff or virtually no audible chiff. It’s a matter of personal preference, but if some people like it can it be all bad?

6. How does a modern church justify the cost of purchasing and maintaining a pipe organ?

Hardly an organ committee comes and goes without grappling with this one. A committee member asks, “with all the hunger and suffering in our community, why shouldn’t we use the money for a food pantry?” Our church buildings with their fancy windows, silver chalices, statuary, paintings, and pipe organs are expressions of our faith. Our culture is loaded with examples of historical expressions of faith through art—think of the liturgical music of Mozart and Bach, the sculptures of Michelangelo, the buildings designed by Bernini and Henry Vaughan. Are we better able to fund a soup kitchen from a building that makes obvious to our neighbors the strength of the bonds that tie us together as a community of faith?

7. How does a chestnut become a chestnut?

Given the production cycle of this publication, I am writing in mid-December, these few hours sequestered, escaping the tyranny of commercialized versions of our favorite Christmas carols.
Otherwise, I’m racing around the countryside tuning organs (plenty of opportunity to be humming arpeggios next to Krummhorns). Several of the churches I visit are presenting “Messiah Sings.” Handel’s masterpiece is a fantastic artwork. It’s easy to understand how it would filter down through generations as a perennial international favorite. But it’s very difficult music. The choir members in these churches have no idea how difficult it is. I’m sure they wouldn’t dream of tackling Handel’s Israel in Egypt, another masterwork that’s equally majestic and equally difficult to perform. Why is that?
Many parish organists will agree with my assertion that you could successfully plan and play a thousand weddings, fully pleasing all the families involved, with a repertory of ten pieces. We could all name the same list: Wagner, Mendelssohn, Schubert’s Ave, Jesu Joy, Clarke, Purcell, Stookey (“there is love . . . ”). You play through ten unfamiliar pieces for a bride and groom with no response, and they light up with the first six notes of Jesu Joy (boom-da-da dee-da-da . . . ). It doesn’t matter if you’re in Boston, Seattle, San Antonio, Milwaukee, or London. Why is that?
How many of us look forward to playing those wonderful sassy French noël variations—the ones with the non-existent pedal parts? I see volumes of Daquin and Balbastre on organ consoles all across New England. How many congregants recognize them as seasonal music? We erudite organists associate them with Christmas as readily as reindeer and O, Holy Night. Why is that?

8. Why did it take so long to develop equal temperament?

(Please do not interpret this as an indication of personal preference!)
Equal temperament is the most common system of tuning keyboard instruments and was not commonly used until at least the late nineteenth century. Pythagoras (6th century, BC) is credited with the development of the concept of tempering, of dividing the circle of fifths into the octave, a feat that is technically impossible. If you start on a single note and tune pure fifths around the circle of fifths, when you complete circle returning to C from F, you have nothing like a fifth. So over the centuries, various musicians, mathematicians, and theorists toiled and moiled developing systems that would divide that discrepancy over more and more of the intervals, allowing more of the twelve possible keys to be useful—or usable. The advent of Pythagorean tuning was natural, but I wonder why he or one of his contemporaries didn’t solve the problem by dividing the difference over all the intervals from the very beginning. That would have changed the development of music dramatically.
Some of these questions have real answers. Some of these questions have different answers, depending on whom you ask. I’ve given comments to introduce each of the questions that may lead a reader to deduce that I have an opinion. And those of you that know me personally may be able to read what you know to be my opinions, whether I know them or not. Why is that?
The questions frame the debate. If there’s a debate over a specific question, does it follow that there is no right or wrong answer?
Here’s an exercise that illustrates the elusiveness of correct answers. Take a well-known church building: St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York. Consider two well-known and successful organbuilders, respected for the toil and moil of their respective careers: Ernest Skinner and Taylor & Boody. Imagine what each would consider the ideal organ for the space. Now tell me, who’s right?