In the wind...

John Bishop

Valve jobs, ring jobs, and protection

Most faucets and spigots have rubber washers that act as gaskets. When you turn off a faucet, the washer is compressed, sealing the opening to the pipe and stopping the flow of water. If you turn faucets too hard when shutting off the water, you compress the washer more than necessary—not too big a deal, except the washer will squish and wear out more quickly.

The smooth operation of your automobile’s engine is all about controlling leaks. Piston rings, which are metal washers that seal the pistons against the cylinder walls, isolate the combustion chamber above the pistons from the lubrication of the piston rods and crankshaft. When the rings fail, the oil from below splashes up into the combustion, and now you’re “burning oil.” That’s what’s going on when excessive black and stinky smoke is coming out of your tailpipe. You need a ring job.

Above that combustion chamber are the valves that open to allow the air/fuel mixture from the carburetor or injector in to be ignited by the spark plug, and those that open to allow the exhaust to escape after the cylinder fires. (I know, I know, you diesel guys are waving your arms in the air, saying “OO, OO, OO . . . ” We’ll talk about diesel combustion another day.)

The valves are operated by the camshaft, which is also lubricated by the engine oil. If the valves leak, fuel and exhaust can trade places, and the engine’s operation gets screwed up. You need a valve job.

Perhaps you’ve had car trouble caused by a worn timing belt. That belt turns the camshaft at just the right ratio to the engine’s revolutions, so that intake valves open, letting in the fuel before the spark plug ignites it, and exhaust valves open after the firing, letting the exhaust out. My car’s engine has eight cylinders, and at highway speed, runs at about 2,500 revolutions per minute, which is 41.6 revolutions a second. All eight cylinders fire with each revolution, so there are 332.8 valve openings (and closings) each second. That’s cutting things pretty close. But we sure expect that engine to start every time, and to run like a clock hour after hour. Say you’re driving three and a half hours from New York to Boston. To get you there, you’re asking for 4,193,280 precisely timed valve repetitions. It’s a wonder it works at all.

 

It’s all about the holes.

I like to describe the art of organ building as knowing where to put the holes. Organbuilding workshops include immense collections of drill bits. My set of multi-spurs goes from half-inch to three-inches. They graduate in 64ths up to one inch, 32nds up to one-and-a-half, 16ths to two-and-a-half, and 8ths up to three inches. I have two sets of “numbered” bits (1-60 and 1-80), one of twist drills from 1/16 to one-inch, graduated by 64ths, and one set of “lettered” bits (A–Z).

If you’re interested in knowing more about those sets, follow this link: www.engineersedge.com/drill_sizes.html. You’ll find a chart that shows the numbered, lettered, and fractional sizes compared to ten-thousands of an inch: #80 is .0135″, #1 is .228″, just under ¼″ (which is .250). If you have all three sets, and mine are all packed in one big drill index, you’re covered up to nearly half an inch in tiny graduations. 

Why so fussy? Say you’re building tracker action parts, and you’re going to use #10 (B&S Gauge) phosphor bronze wire (.1018) as a common axle. You want the axle to be tight enough so there’s minimal slop (no one likes a rattly action), but loose enough for reliable free movement. A #38 drill bit is .1015 B&S Gauge—too tight by 3/1000s. Next one bigger is #37, .1040″. That’s a margin of 22/1000s, the closest I can get with my sets of bits.

 

And there are lots of holes.

Lots of the holes in our organs allow the passage of wind pressure. In the Pitman windchests found in most electro-pneumatic organs, there are toe-holes that the pipes sit on and rackboard holes that support them upright. There are holes that serve as seats for primary and secondary valves. There are channels bored in the walls of the chests to allow the exhausting of pouches and there are exhaust ports in the magnets. All of those holes, except in the rackboards, have valves pressed against them to stop the flow of air. 

Let’s take that a step further. A fifty-stop organ has over 3,000 pipes. That’s 3,000 pipe valves. If that organ has seven manual windchests (two in the Great, two in the Swell, two in the Choir, and one in the Solo), that’s 427 primary valves, 427 secondary valves, and 427 magnet exhaust ports, in addition to the pipe valves. There’s one Pitman chest in the Pedal (Spitz Flute 8′, Gedackt 8′, Chorale Bass 4′, Rauschpfeife III) with 32 of each. And there are three independent unit chests in the Pedal with 56 of each. Oh, wait. I forgot the stop actions, 50 times 3. And the expression motors, eight stages each, 16 times 3. And two tremolos . . . That’s 9,162 valves. Not counting the expressions and tremolos, every one of those valves can cause a cipher (when a stop action ciphers, you can’t turn the stop off). 

How many notes do you play on a Sunday morning? The Doxology has 32 four-part chords. That’s 128 notes. If you play it using 25 stops, that’s 3,200 notes, just for the Doxology! Are you playing that Widor Toccata for the postlude? There are 126 notes in the first measure. Using 25 stops? That’s 3,150 notes in the first measure! There are 61 measures. At 3,150 notes per measure, that’s 192,150 to finish the piece. (I haven’t counted the pedal part, and while the last three measures have big loud notes, there aren’t that many.) Using this math, you might be playing four or five hundred thousand notes in a busy service. And remember, in those Pitman chests, four valves operate for each note (magnet, primary, secondary, pipe valve), which means it takes 12,800 valve openings to play the Doxology, and 768,600 for the Widor. Let’s take a guess. With four hymns, some service music, an anthem or two, plus prelude and postlude, you might play 1,750,000 valves on a Sunday. (Lots more if your organ still has the original electro-pneumatic switching machines.) No ciphers today? Organ did pretty good. It’s a wonder it works at all.

Next time the personnel committee sits you down for a performance review, be sure to point out that you play 500,000 notes each Sunday morning.

 

Dust devils

Pull a couch away from the wall and you’ll find a herd of dust bunnies. Messy, but innocent enough, unless someone in your household is allergic to dust. But dust is a real enemy of the pipe organ. Fire is bad, water is bad, vandalism is bad, but dust is the evil lurker that attacks when you least expect it. A fleck of sawdust coming loose inside a windchest, left from when the organ was built, finds its way onto a pipe valve, and you’ve got a cipher.

Imagine this ordinary day in the life of a church. The organist is practicing, and the custodian is cleaning up in the basement. Airborne dust is sucked through the intake of the organ blower, and millions of potential cipher-causing particles waft through the wind ducts, through the reservoirs, and into the windchests, there to lurk until the last measure of the Processional March of the wedding of the daughter of the Chair of the Board of Trustees—whose family gave the money for the new organ. One pesky fleck hops onto the armature of the magnet of “D” (#39) of the Trompette-en-Chamade, and the last of Jeremiah’s notes continues into oblivion. (Ciphers never happen in the Aeoline when no one is around!)

I’m thinking about valves—how they work, what they do, what are their tolerances, and how many times they repeat to accomplish what we expect—because I was recently asked to provide an estimate for the cost of covering and protection of a large pipe organ during a massive renovation of the interior of a church building. There are organ cases on either side of the huge west window, and another big organ chamber in the front of the church, forming the corner between transept and chancel. There are lots of mixtures, and plenty of reeds—and with something like 3,500 pipes, a slew of valves.

The stained-glass west window will be removed for restoration, and the general contractor will construct a weather-tight box to close the hole. That’ll be quite a disturbance for the organ, with its Trompette-en-Chamade and mixture choruses. The plaster walls will be sanded and painted. The wooden ceiling with its complex system of trusses and beams will be cleaned and refinished. The entire nave, transept, and chancel will be filled with scaffolding, complete with a “full deck” 40 feet up, which will serve as a platform for all that work on the ceiling.

To properly protect a pipe organ against all that, removing the pipes, taping over the toeholes, and covering the windchests with hardboard and plastic is an important precaution. That means that all those little valves cannot be exposed to the dust and disturbance around the organ. To do that, you have to vacuum the chest surfaces, and organbuilders know how to do that without shoveling dust directly into the pipe holes.

The pipes that are enclosed in an expression chamber can be left in place if you disconnect the shutters, and seal the shutters closed with gaffer’s tape and plastic. Even, then, all the reeds should be removed, packed, and safely stored. 

The blower is the best way for foreign stuff to get inside the guts of the organ. It’s essential to prepare the organ blower for the building renovation. Wrap the blower’s air intake securely with plastic and heavy tape. Those 42-gallon “contractor” trash bags are great for this. And cut the power to the blower motor by closing circuit breakers, to be sure that it cannot be inadvertently started. Before you put the blower back into service, give the room a good cleaning, and allow a day or two for the dust to settle before you run the blower. It’s a simple precaution, but really important.

 

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It’s a lot of work to do all this to a big pipe organ. And it’s a lot more work to put it all back together and tune it. For the same amount of money you could buy a brand-new Steinway Concert Grand piano if it’s a big organ. But if you fail to do this, the future reliability of the organ may be seriously compromised. 

A bit of dust gets into a toehole, and winds up sitting on the note valve. Even if the valve is held open a tiny slit, the resulting trickle of air is enough to make a pipe whimper. A fleck of dust gets caught in the armature of a magnet, and the note won’t stop sounding. And I’m telling you, you wouldn’t believe how tiny, almost invisible a fleck is enough to do that. Lots of organ reed pipes, especially trumpets, are shaped like funnels, and they aggressively collect as much dust as they can. A little speck jolted off the inside of a reed resonator falls through the block and gets caught between the tongue and shallot. No speech.

To the hard-hat wearing, cigar-chewing general contractor, the organbuilder seems like a ninny, fussing about specks of dust. To the member of the vestry that must vote in favor of a huge expenditure to do with flecks of dust, the organbuilder seems like a carpetbagger, trying to sneak an expensive job out of thin air. To the organbuilder, the idea of all that activity, all that disturbance, all that dirt, all those vibrations, and all those workers with hammers, coffee cups, and sandwich wrappings swarming about the organ brings visions of worship made mockery, week after week, by an organ whose lungs are full of everything unholy.

Think about Sunday morning with Widor, Old Hundredth, and all the other festivities, think about valves opening and closing by the millions, and don’t tell me that “a little dust” isn’t going to hurt anything.

 

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This lecture is about caring for an organ during building renovation. If your church is planning to sand and refinish the floor, paint the walls and ceiling, replace the carpets (hope not!), or install a new heating and air conditioning system, be sure that the people making the decisions know about protecting the organ from the beginning. Your organ technician can help with advice, and any good organbuilder will be available and equipped to accomplish this important work for you. Any good-quality pipe organ of moderate size has a replacement value of hundreds of thousands of dollars. If yours is a three-manual organ with fifty stops, big enough to have a 32-foot stop, it’s likely worth over a million. The congregation that owns it depends on its reliable operation. A simple oversight can be the end of the organ’s reliability.

When there is no building renovation planned, we can carry these thoughts into everyday life. Institutional hygiene is essential for the reliability of the organ. Remember the custodian sweeping in the basement while you’re practicing? Think of the staff member looking for a place to stow a bunch of folding chairs, finding a handy closet behind the sanctuary. That pile of chairs on the bellows of the organ raises the wind pressure and wrecks the tuning. Or those Christmas decorations leaning up against those strange-looking machines—the roof timbers of the crèche may be leaning against a primary valve. You turn on the organ, draw a stop, and a note is playing continually. Organ technicians usually charge for their travel time. It could be a $300 service call for the right person to realize that a broomstick needs to be moved!

 

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When I hear a great organ playing, I often think of those valves in motion. The organist plays a pedal point on the 32′ Bourdon while improvising during Communion, and in my mind’s eye, I can see a five-inch valve held open, with a hurricane of carefully regulated wind blowing into an organ pipe that weighs 800 pounds. A few minutes later, the organist gives the correct pause after the Benediction, swings into a blazing toccata, and thousands of valves open and close each second. Amazing, isn’t it?

Releathering and repairing pneumatic windchests, I’ve made countless valves myself. I know just what they look like and what they feel like. I like to dust them with talcum powder to keep them from sticking years down the road, and I picture what they smell like—the smell of baby powder mingling with the hot-glue pot. Hundreds of times during service calls or renovation jobs, I’ve opened windchests and seen just how little it takes to make a note malfunction. I’ve seen organ blowers located in the filthiest, stinkiest, rodent-filled, dirt-floored, moldy sumps. I’ve seen the everyday detritus of church life—hymnals, vestments, decorations, rummage-sale signs, and boxes of canned goods piled on organ walkboards and bellows, even dumped on windchests loaded with pipes. Can’t understand why the organ sounds so bad. 

Earlier this week, I visited an organ in which the static reservoir and blower were in a common storage space. A penciled sign was taped to the reservoir at chest height: “Please do not place anything on this unit. Sensitive parts of pipe organ. If you have any questions, see Norma.” When we say, “do not place anything,” how can there be questions?

To the untrained eye, the pipe organ may appear as a brute of a machine. But inside, it’s delicate and fragile. If “cleanliness is next to Godliness” in the wide world, cleanliness is the heart of reliability for the pipe organ. Institutional hygiene. Remember that.

John Bishop

Where’s the fire?

Throughout my organbuilding career, I’ve owned and driven large vehicles. There was an interval when I tried a mini-van. It was a nice car with lots of space inside, but it was no truck. It only lasted 185,000 miles, by far the least of any car I’ve had. The transmission couldn’t take the loads.

The current job is a black Chevy Suburban—think presidential motorcades (Wendy thinks Tony Soprano!). It has a big V-8 engine and a 31-gallon gas tank. It’s a 5,800-pound carbon footprint. I know it’s environmentally irresponsible, but I justify it because of my work as an organbuilder. As often as not, the car is loaded with ranks of organ pipes, a reservoir or two, a windchest, or at least, five or six boxes and bags of tools and supplies. It’s also great for taking organ committees on field trips to visit our past projects. Three ranks of reeds or a six-member committee takes the GVW up to nearly 7,000 pounds!

Even though the car is big and heavy, that engine has power to spare. Trusting that there are not many state troopers reading The Diapason, I confess that I routinely drive close to 80 miles-per-hour. I know I’ve exceeded 90 going downhill and not paying attention, but I’ve never “maxed out” the speed. I’m pretty sure I could pass 95, maybe even 100—but I doubt I’ll
ever try.

 

How fast is too fast? 

When I joined the Organ Clearing House, I knew I was taking on a travel schedule that would preclude my work as a church musician, so after thirty years on the bench, I hung up my cassock. It’s been fifteen years since I played for worship. Of course I miss it, and I may go back to it someday. But in the meantime, it’s been fun to mix having free weekends (!) with hearing other people play for worship. 

The huge repertory of music for the organ is chock-full of fast passages, and any good organist is capable of sending salvos of notes across a room faster than a speeding bullet. And good bel canto singers can dazzle listeners with fast passages. But the ordinary person in the pew is comfortable at a slower pace. Though I’m not a trained singer, I think I do pretty well, and I’m certainly familiar with most of the hymns we sing, but still I find that sometimes I have trouble keeping up. And I’m uncomfortable when I’m not given enough time to breathe. It’s easy to tell if an organist is paying attention to the words, even singing them as he plays, because he needs time to breathe also.

How loud is too loud?

Several years ago, Wendy and I attended a recital by a visiting European organist played on the Kotzschmar Organ in Portland, Maine’s City Hall. He came out on the stage to the customary applause. When he got to the bench, the audience went silent and the lights dimmed. The first chord he played was so furiously loud that we jumped, and I set my teeth against liking the rest of the program, which predictably continued in bombastic style.

My Facebook page regularly lights up with posts from organists who indignantly report to the community that a parishioner had the audacity to complain that “the organ was too loud.” No doubt, some are meant in fun—one exchange included the quip, “if they don’t like it, they can sit in the hallway.” Surely, no organist would say something like that in earnest. Would they? But I often read similar comments that I know are heartfelt.

No other musical instrument can approach the dynamic range of the pipe organ. Organbuilders tell an old joke: 

 

The voicer, seated at the console, cups his hands to his mouth and yells to his assistant in the distant chamber, 

“Is the Aeoline playing?” 

Barely audible, from the distance, “Yes.” 

“Make it softer!”

 

The Aeoline in the Echo is barely audible; with the box closed it’s but a heavenly whisper. And the full organ is mighty roar—a hurricane of sound to be used with discretion.

Of the hundreds (thousands?) of pipe organs I’ve heard and played, I’ve experienced only one that was so much too loud that there was no single stop soft enough to accompany a solo singer. There are many organs that are infamous for their power, but even they can be used with discretion. As organists, we have become inured to the mighty tones of our instruments. We sit on the bench, alone in a dark church, challenging the muses to our hearts’ content, in the thrall of the power of the tone. For many congregants, not so much.

I have to admit that when sitting in the pews, I often feel that the organ is too loud. I wonder how many of you would simmer down your registrations if you had the chance to sing to someone else’s hymn playing a couple times a year. Besides, if you’re always playing “with the pedal to the metal,” you’re making organbuilders look bad. We’re supposed to provide instruments that can challenge the Gates of Hell once in a while, but thank heaven we’re not always facing the Gates of Hell.

 

What’s your job?

I often ride the train between Boston and New York. It’s a beautiful route along the Connecticut coast, passing tidal inlets loaded with osprey, egrets, and herons. There’s a wonderful sensation as those trains leave a station. I’m daydreaming, gazing out the window, and suddenly realize the train is moving. There’s no sound of locomotion, or clanking as links between cars take up slack. My imagination goes next to the expert bus driver and his ability to operate the vehicle smoothly. His foot on the brake pedal is feather-light, his speed through turns is just right, and his passengers are free to enjoy the ride, knowing that they’ll arrive safely and promptly at their destination.

I know, I know, that may be a fictional driver. The New York to Boston route is crowded with budget bus companies that have terrible safety records. That’s why I take the train. But I like the image and compare it to the “hymn driver” at church. He goes fast enough that the words make sense, but not so fast that the average congregant can’t keep up.

When an organist is really focused on the words of a hymn, both pace and registration follow. The other night, Wendy and I attended a service of Evensong, and the devil made an appearance in a middle verse. The organist led us to safety, acknowledging Satan’s presence with a growling registration for those few bars, and returning to something more soothing. There’s the majesty of the organ, painting pictures with tone color.

 

A happy little cloud

Bob Ross (1942–95) was a teacher of painting who famously hosted a series on PBS called The Joy of Painting. He had a goofy way of chattering as he painted that I think was intended to make aspiring painters feel at ease. Make a little mistake, a slip of the brush? No problem, make it into a bird. It’s a bird now! His brush strokes were quick and easy, and he often suggested dropping in “a happy little cloud.”

The pipe organ has a greater expressive range and wider variety of tone colors than any other musical instrument, and the expressive musician uses those characteristics like a brilliant painter with a lovely palette of colors. Think of the landscapes of Meindert Hobbema (1638–1709) with those magical patches of sunlight glowing through the trees. How did he do that? I think he always included trees just so he could do his sunlight trick. I love it when the organist gives me glimpses of sunlight through the trees, or happy little clouds. If you play through all the verses of a hymn on full registrations, loud, louder, loudest, you deprive the listener/singer of the beauty of it all.

You can use your palette like sunshine and clouds, and you can use it like an arsenal. The arsenal is fine with me at the right moment—that powerful Tuba giving the melody in the tenor is an awesome effect, but I don’t want to hear it in every hymn. 

Many of us are inclined to characterize the pipe organ as a keyboard instrument, as if it is common with the piano or harpsichord. In the matter of tone production, the organ has more in common with a trumpet or flute, the piano has more in common with a xylophone, and the harpsichord has more in common with a guitar. I consider the organ first to be a wind instrument. Making organ music happen is about managing air. This, simply, is why the organ is ideal for leadership of our singing—both the organ and the human voice are wind instruments. We circulate the same air molecules through the organ’s pipes and through our voices in sympathy. We’re all in it together.

 

You can’t play a tune on a Mixture.

Since the revival of classic organbuilding in the mid-twentieth century, many of us have had love affairs with Mixtures. They provide brilliance and clarity in polyphonic music, and their harmonic structures blend wonderfully with choruses of stops. I say this assuming that the Mixtures on your organ are well planned, well voiced, and balanced with the other voices. In my days as a student, I was organist at a church in Cleveland that had an aging Austin organ. Originally, there was no Mixture, and one had been added not long before I got there. But even in my brash youth, steeped in the ethic of Northern European classic organs, I couldn’t bear to use the thing. It was just too loud, and had nothing to do with the rest of the Great division.

Mixtures in pipe organs are harmonic tricks. The typical Great Mixture comprises four ranks, meaning four pipes are speaking on every note. My organbuilding colleagues know that I’m leaving out a lot of exceptions and variations as I describe Mixtures generally, but it’s enough to say here that those four pipes each speak a different harmonic, and the harmonics “break back” each octave. It’s formulaic. At low C, those four pipes typically speak at 11⁄3′–1′–2⁄3′–1⁄2′, which are logical additions to “Principals, 8-4-2”. At tenor C, they jump back a notch: 2′–11⁄3′ –1′–2⁄3′. The 22⁄3′ pitch enters at middle C; 4′ pitch enters at “soprano” C. In the top octave, some builders omit the scratchy 51⁄3′ and jump directly to 8′.

Follow me carefully. A 4′ pitch at soprano C is the same note as 1′ pitch at tenor C. A 11⁄3′ pitch at low C is the same note as 51⁄3′ pitch at middle C. Think this through, and you’ll realize that an ordinary Mixture has pipes at soprano C that speak the same, and even lower pitches than at tenor C. Sounds like a muddle, doesn’t it? Well friends, use it wrong, and it is a muddle. Just for fun, play the melody of a hymn on Mixture alone, especially a hymn whose tune passes out of the middle octave past soprano C. Doesn’t make much sense, does it?

Now play all four voices of the same hymn on Mixture alone. Wacky. Absolutely wacky. Imagine that as a tool for teaching a tune to someone for the first time. Now play the same hymn on 8′ Principal alone. That’s better. What’s my point? Be sure that every hymn registration includes enough fundamental tone that the tune is easily recognizable when playing four-part harmony.

If you’re playing on a large organ, you likely have more than one Mixture on each keyboard. Listen to each one carefully, octave by octave, and try to analyze what pitches are actually playing? Use that to inform how you use them. A Principal Chorus with Mixture(s) is ideal for playing a fugue, because the graduated harmonics of the Mixture help project inner and lower voices of the polyphony. Mixtures are great with Reed Choruses, because they emphasize the rich harmonics of the Reeds. But Mixtures are like icing on a cake—they enhance, even decorate, but substance is in the batter. All icing, and your teeth will hurt. Do I sound like the parishioner who says the organ is shrill? Maybe it is. The math says so.

 

It’s all in the numbers.

Here are some pipe organ facts for nothing. The reason reeds sound more brilliant than flutes or Principals is that reeds have richer development of overtones—those secondary pitches present in every musical tone. 

Pythagoras (571 BC–495 BC) was the first to understand overtones. He proved that they follow the simple formula of 1:2, 2:3, 3:4, 4:5, etc. That simple progression was later defined by Leonardo Bonacci (c. 1170–c. 1250) as the Fibonacci series. Google that, and you’ll find terrific articles that show how the Fibonacci series describes the shell of the Nautilus, pineapples, artichokes, pine cones, and magically, the Romanesco broccoli, which I think is one of the most beautiful and delectable vegetables.

 

Break a head of Romanesco apart into florets, toss them in olive oil and salt, and roast them at 400° for 40 minutes (or less if want to keep some “tooth”), maybe sprinkle a little lemon juice and parmesan.

 

What does all this have to do with playing hymns? Pythagoras’s overtones can be defined this way. Play low C on an 8-foot organ stop, and you’ll be producing the following pitches: 8′, 4′, 22⁄3′, 2′, 13⁄5′, 11⁄3′, 11⁄7′. Recognize those? It’s nothing but a list of the most common pipe organ pitches. Accident? I don’t think so. You may find these hard to hear, and as a practical matter, lots of them are inaudible, but they’re there. 

I demonstrate this at the console using voices like Oboes or Clarinets. They have especially rich “second overtones,” which is the equivalent of 22⁄3′ pitch. Play and hold tenor C on the Clarinet. Then, on another keyboard, tap third G on an 8′ stop. (That’s the equivalent of 22⁄3′ pitch at tenor C.) That should enhance your ability to hear the 22⁄3′ pitch present in the Clarinet note. Move around to different notes, and you’ll likely hear that overtone a little better in some notes than others. Then, play and hold tenor C on the Clarinet, and on your second keyboard, tap fourth E of an 8′ stop. That’s the equivalent of 13⁄5′ pitch, and you should be able to hear the Tierce independently in the Clarinet note.

Have you ever wondered why a Nazard and a Tierce sound so good with a Clarinet or Cromorne? It’s because the Clarinet and Cromorne (those two stops are very similar in construction) both have prominent 22⁄3′ and 13⁄5′ overtones. That explains the origin of the French registrations Cornet (8′, 4′, 22⁄3′, 2′, 13⁄5′), and by extension, Grand Jeu (Trompette 8′, Octave 4′, Cornet). Accident? I don’t think so.

Because of this, it’s often easiest to tune high mutations to reeds, assuming that the reeds are trustworthy, because the harmonics of the reed pipes are so clear. Draw 4′ Principal and 13⁄5′ Tierce, and play up the top octaves of the keyboard. Substitute a Clarinet for the Principal, and do it again. I’ll bet a tuning fork that you hear the pitch of the Tierce more clearly with the Clarinet.

Why is a Rohrflute brighter than a Gedeckt? Because the hole in the cap with the little chimney emphasizes the second harmonic, which is 22⁄3′ pitch. 

What does all this have to do with playing hymns? It tells us that higher-pitched stops are secondary to fundamental pitch. What is fundamental pitch? Eight-foot tone. It’s that simple. If your hymn registrations favor higher pitches, you’re back at that exercise of playing a hymn on a Mixture alone. Awareness of all this is at the heart of good pipe organ registration.

You can’t play a tune on a Mixture. It’s confusing to the singer, especially if that singer doesn’t know the tune. Suggestion? Introduce the tune on a simpler registration, and bring in bigger sounds as appropriate. If you have a variety of lovely solo sounds, use them. Play one verse on Trumpets alone. Play another with Principals but no Mixtures. Just be sure they can hear the tune. And be sure that your choice of sounds supports the words. There’s more to hymn playing than a blur of harmonics.

Gentle on the accelerator and the brakes, paint beautiful colorful pictures, “ . . . and the wheels on the bus go round and round . . .”

John Bishop

Who you gonna call?

When I was an organ major at Oberlin in the mid-1970s, I had a part-time job working for Jan Leek, a first-generation Hollander who came to the United States to work for Walter Holtkamp and wound up as Oberlin’s organ and harpsichord technician. Traveling around the Ohio and Pennsylvania countryside with Jan making organ service calls, I learned to tune and learned the strengths and weaknesses of action systems of many different organbuilders. I moved back to Boston in 1984 with my wife and two young sons to join the workshop of Angerstein & Associates, where along with larger projects including the construction of new organs, I made hundreds of service calls. That workshop closed in 1987 when Daniel Angerstein was appointed tonal director for M. P. Möller, and I entered a decade during which I cared for as many as 125 organs each year as the Bishop Organ Company.

I’ve always been an advocate for diligent organ maintenance, but ironically, I’ve noticed in my work with the Organ Clearing House that century-old instruments that have never been maintained are sometimes the most valuable. The pipes are straight and true, the original voicing is intact, and there’s not a trace of duct tape anywhere. You remove a dense layer of grime (mostly carried out of the organ on your clothes) to reveal a pristine instrument. You might take that as an argument not to maintain an organ, but the truth is that I’ve found most of those organs in remote humble churches, where in many cases they haven’t been played for decades.

The challenge for the conscientious organ technician is not to leave a mark. If your tuning techniques damage pipes, you’re not doing it right. You should not leave scrape marks on the resonators with your tuning tools, and you shouldn’t tear open the slots of reed pipes. Cone-tuned pipes should stay cylindrical with their solder seams unviolated. Wiring harnesses should be neat and orderly, with no loopy add-ons. Floors and walkboards should be vacuumed and blower rooms should be kept clean.

There are legitimate excuses for fast-and-dirty repairs during service calls, especially if you’re correcting a nasty problem just before an important musical event. But if you do that, you owe it to the client to make it nice when you return.¹ And, when you do make a fast-and-dirty repair, you should adjust your toolkit to accommodate the next one. Did you use a scrap from a Sunday bulletin to refit the stopper of a Gedeckt pipe? Put some leather in your toolbox when you get home.

Many of the churches where I’ve maintained organs are now closed. Many others have diminished their programs and aren’t “doing music” anymore. Some tell me that they can’t find an organist, which is often because they’re not offering a proper salary, and some have “gone clappy.” In this climate, I think it’s increasingly important for organ technicians to be ready to help churches care properly and economically for their pipe organs.

Some churches charge their organists with curatorial responsibilities, purposely placing the care of the organ in the musician’s job description. Others do not, and it’s often a struggle to get boards and committees to grasp the concept of responsible care of their organs. It’s also important to note that while most churches once had full-time sextons or custodians, that position is often eliminated as budgets are cut. Lots of church buildings, especially larger ones, have sophisticated engineering plants that include HVAC, elevators, alarm systems, and sump pumps. The old-time church sexton knew to keep an eye on all that, and to be sure they were serviced and evaluated regularly. Hiring an outside vendor to clean the building does not replace the custodian. I think it makes sense for such a church to engage a mechanical engineer as consultant to visit the building a few times each year checking on machinery, and have volunteers clean the building.

A pipe organ is a machine like none other, a combination of liturgical art and industrial product. A layman might look inside an organ chamber and see a machine, but the musician sits on the bench facing a musical instrument. If you think that the governing bodies of your church don’t fully appreciate the value of their organ, I offer a few thoughts you might use to raise awareness.

 

“Cleanliness is next to Godliness”

It’s an old saw, but besides your personal hygiene, there’s likely nowhere in your life where it rings truer than in your pipe organ. After fire, flood, and vandalism, dirt is the worst enemy of the pipe organ. An organ technician knows that a fleck of dust getting trapped on the armature of a chest magnet or the surface of a pallet is enough to cause a cipher. The leg of a spider will wreck the speech of a trumpet pipe, most likely one of the first five notes of the D-major scale, ready to spoil almost every wedding voluntary.

But where did that dirt come from? When building windchests, windlines, bellows, and wind regulators, the organbuilder tries hard to ensure that there’s no sawdust left inside. I have an air compressor and powerful vacuum cleaner permanently mounted by my workbench so I hardly have to take a step to clean the interior of a project I’m finishing.

Assuming that the organbuilder delivered a clean organ, the first obvious place for an organ to pick up dirt is in the blower room. Many organ blowers are located in remote basement rooms, and in many cases, there’s no one changing the light bulbs in basement corridors, and there’s no one in the building who knows what that thing is. We routinely find blower rooms chock full of detritus—remnants of Christmas pageants, church fairs, flea markets, and youth group car washes. Organ blowers can have electric motors of five horsepower or more, and I often see 90 or 100-year-old motors that throw impressive displays of sparks when they start up. If the ventilation is obstructed, a fire hazard is created. That sign from the 1972 church fair isn’t that important. Throw it away.

To illustrate the importance of cleanliness, I share our protocol for cleaning a blower room:

• Seal the blower intake with plastic and tape.

• Close the circuit breaker that provides power to the blower so it can’t be started accidentally.

• Vacuum, sweep, wash walls, ceiling, floor, blower housing, wind regulators, and ductwork.

• Leave the room undisturbed for 48 hours to allow dust to settle before opening and starting the blower.

Likewise, if a church fails to cover and protect their organ while the floor of the nave is sanded and refinished, they can expect serious trouble in the future.

 

Identification

As organist, you might be the only person in the church who can identify the areas occupied by the organ. Designate organ areas as “off limits,” with access limited to the organ technician. Nothing good will happen if the organ chamber is used for storage of old hymnals or folding chairs. Nothing good will happen if teenagers find their way inside to create a secret hidey-hole.² Nothing good will happen if the altar guild puts a vase full of water on the organ console, and, by the way, nothing good will happen if you put your coffee cup there.

The organ’s tuning will almost certainly be disrupted if someone goes into the chamber out of curiosity. Most things inside pipe organs that are not steps lack the “no step” marking, like the touchy areas on an aircraft wing have.

 

Insurance

Maybe that 1927 Skinner organ in your church (lucky you) cost $9,500 to build. In the early 1970s, a new two-manual Fisk organ cost less than $40,000. I’m frequently called as consultant when a church is making a claim for damage to their organ, working either for the church or the insurance company, and I’ve been in plenty of meetings where bad news about the difference between loss and coverage is announced. It’s both possible and wise to have the replacement value of an organ assessed every five or ten years, with that value named on the church’s insurance policy.

If the organ at your church sustains $250,000 of damage because of a roof leak, and the replacement value of the organ is not specifically listed on the church’s insurance policy, a lot of discussion is likely to lead to a disappointment.

 

What makes good maintenance?

It’s not realistic to make a sweeping statement about how much it should cost to maintain an organ. Some instruments require weekly, even daily attention, especially if they’re large and complex, in deteriorating condition, and in use in sophisticated music programs. Some instruments require almost no maintenance. A newer organ of modest size with cone-tuning could go five years or more without needing attention.

I suggest that every organ should be visited by a professional organ technician at least once a year, even if no tuning is needed, even if every note plays perfectly, even if all the indicators and accessories are working. The lubrication of the blower should be checked, and the interior of the instrument should be inspected to guard against that one pipe in the Pedal Trombone that has started to keel over. If it’s not caught before it falls, it will take the pedal flue pipes with it. A four-hour annual visit would prevent that.

It’s usual for an organ to be serviced twice a year. While it’s traditional for those service visits to be before Easter and Christmas, at least where I live in the temperate Northeast, Christmas and Easter can both be winter holidays, so it makes more sense to tune for cold weather and hot weather, or for heat on, heat off.

Most organs do not need to be thoroughly tuned during every visit. In fact, starting over with a new “A” and fresh temperament every time can be counterproductive, unless it’s a very small organ. While the stability of tuning varies from organ to organ, most instruments hold their basic tuning well. I generally start a tuning by checking the pitch stops in octaves from the console, writing down a few that need tuning, and check the organ stop-by-stop for inaccuracies. I list a couple dozen notes that need tuning and a half-dozen stops that don’t need anything, and I list which reed notes (or stops) need to be tuned. In that way, I can build on the stability of tuning established over years, keeping the broad picture of tuning clear and concise.

Regular organ maintenance should include cleaning keyboards, vacuuming under pedalboards (the tuner keeps the pencils), checking blower lubrication, and noting larger things that will need attention in the future. Tuners, if you see cracks in a leather gusset on a wind regulator, make a note with your invoice that it will need to be releathered within several years. Your client doesn’t want to hear bad news, but they don’t want a sudden failure and emergency expense either.

 

When you should call

The better you know your organ, the easier to judge. I once received a panicky call from an organist saying the entire organ had gone haywire. He was abusive over the phone, and demanded that I come right away. I dropped everything and made the 90-minute drive to the church. Haughtily, he demonstrated the cause of his concern. It took me just a few seconds to isolate one pipe in the Pedal Clarion. If he had bothered to look, he could have played without the Clarion for weeks, but I couldn’t tell him that, and I’ve carried the memory of that unpleasant encounter for more than 30 years.

You should call your tuner/technician when:

• You hear a big bang from inside the organ. (Once it was a raccoon tripping a Havahart trap!)

• You hear unusual wind noise. (In some organs, a big air leak like a blown reservoir can lead to the blower overheating.) 

• You hear unusual mechanical noise, grinding, thumping, squeaking, etc.

• You find paint chips in organ areas. (Is the ceiling falling in?)

• The organ blower has been left on accidentally for a long time. It’s a long time for a blower to run between Sundays.

• And obviously, when something important doesn’t work.

 

When you should not call

Sudden changes in climate often cause trouble with the operation of a pipe organ. Several days of heavy rain will raise the humidity inside a building so Swell shutters squeak and stick, keyboards get clammy and gummy, and the console rolltop gets stuck. If you can manage, simply let the organ be for several days. When conditions return to normal, chances are that things will start working again. Likewise, excessive dryness can cause trouble.

A couple years ago, I was rear-ended in heavy traffic on the Hutchinson River Parkway in Westchester County, just north of New York City. I drive a full-size SUV and have a heavy-duty trailer hitch so while the Mercedes that hit me left a rainbow of fluids on the road under its crumpled radiator, the only damage to my car was that the back-up camera stopped working. As I’ve driven many hundreds of thousands of miles without one, I didn’t bother to get it fixed, and I’m still perfectly happy driving the car.

If there’s a dead note in the middle octave of the Swell to Great coupler, call me and I’ll fix it. It’s important to the normal use of the organ. If there’s a dead note in the top octave of the Swell to Choir 4′ coupler, and it’s spoiling a melody in a certain piece you’re playing, choose a different registration, or choose a different piece. One good way to head your church toward giving up on the pipe organ is to spend a lot of money on single repairs that don’t matter much to the music. Remember that your church pays me the same for mileage and travel time whether I’m doing a full service call with dozens of little repairs, or making a special trip for a single issue. A cipher is a bigger issue than a dead note.

It’s important to the long life of an organ not to “overtune.” Believe it or not, many churches in northern climes do not have air-conditioning, and it’s usual for temperatures to climb into the 90s inside the organ during the summer. If an organ was built, voiced, and tuned for A=440 at 70°, you’ll ruin the reeds—really ruin them—if you try to tune them to the Principals at 90°. It doesn’t make sense to wreck an organ’s reeds for one wedding, no matter who is the bride.

One of the most difficult tuning assignments I’ve had was at Trinity Church, Copley Square in Boston, in the early 1990s when Brian Jones, Ross Wood, and the Trinity Choir were making their spectacular and ever popular recording Candlelight Carols. It was surreal to sit in the pews in the wee hours of the morning, wearing shorts and a tee-shirt, sweltering in mid-July heat, listening to David Willcocks’s fanfare and descant for O come, all ye faithful. Everyone wanted the organ to be in perfect tune, but it was my job to be sure that the organ’s spectacular antique Skinner reeds would live to see another real Christmas. More than 200,000 copies of that recording have been sold, so lots of you have a record of that tuning!

§

Remember what I said about those dead notes that are a nuisance but not critical to the use of the instrument? The most important part of the organist’s role in organ maintenance is keeping a list. Maintain a notebook on the console, and write down what you notice. You might hear a cipher in the middle of a hymn that goes away. If you can pay attention enough to identify anything about it (what division, what stop, what pitch), write it down. If you think of a question, write it down. Maybe you noticed a tuning problem during a hymn. Write down the hymn number and what piston you were using. I’ll play the hymn and find the problem.

When I make repairs, I can check things off your list, write comments about the cause, make suggestions for future repairs or adjustments, and invite you for coffee the next time. The console notebook is the most important tool for maintaining an organ.

Notes

1. As I write, I’m thinking of the three clients where I owe follow-up. You know who you are.

2. I once found a little love nest inside an organ, complete with cushions, blankets, candles, and burnt matches. What could happen?

John Bishop

To be the very best

I often remind myself (and you) of my start in church music. Dad, the Episcopal priest, the organist/choirmaster who was a harpsichord maker in real life, singing in the choir, and taking organ lessons . . . The culture of the music department of that wonderful church, charged with the excitement of the burgeoning movement of historically informed performance, and the revival of classic organbuilding, so active in the Boston area in the 1960s. I was hooked. I spent most of my after-school hours in local churches, practicing. I had paying jobs playing the organ in church from the age of thirteen, and I set my sights on attending the Conservatory of Music at Oberlin.  

In my early teenage years I spent one summer washing dishes (saving up my earnings to buy a Zuckermann harpsichord kit), then two summers working for a landscape company on Cape Cod, pushing lawnmowers around the estates of the rich and famous. I played the organ for a summer parish in our town on the Cape and spent most evenings there, practicing and messing around with the organ.

Since those three summers, everything I’ve done has been with the pipe organ. My sons were troubled by this when they got old enough to be wondering what they might do with their lives—“if Dad knew when he was fourteen, what am I supposed to do?”

I know many other musicians who came through high school knowing exactly what they wanted to do with their lives. Those players who spend their adolescent years developing the techniques, embouchures, musculature (AKA chops) necessary for playing their instruments, hopefully nurtured by enlightened and caring teachers, have an incredible leg up. Just as it’s easiest to learn a second language as a toddler (my grandson Ben, at nearly two, has the advantage of parents speaking with him equally in English and Portuguese), the musician who reads music fluently and sets the foundation for a comfortable technique at a young age will have a big advantage later on.

Our system of higher education is set up that way. You’re not going to be accepted as an incoming student in a serious music school when you’re just out of high school unless you have some credible ability with your chosen instrument. I was pretty sure of my organ-playing prowess as an eighteen-year-old freshman entering Oberlin, and I learned a lot about that “big fish in a small pond” syndrome in my first days on campus. Everyone there had been a star in high school, and I was startled to learn that during those first days there was to be a “Freshman Orientation Concert” showcasing new students who had been singled out as exceptional. Funny, they didn’t ask me! The gauntlet was laid down that night.

In the first few days of classes, I learned a thing or two about teachers who expected a lot from their students. One stands out in my memory. Robert Melcher taught Music Theory, notably the cornerstone, two-semester course intended to ground freshmen in musical analysis and four-part harmony. And I mean ground freshmen. He ground up freshmen.

Melcher was a diminutive elderly man whose gait made his head arrive before the rest of him. My classmates reading this will snicker as they recall his tremulous little tenor voice singing symphonic melodies “on loo.” The opening cello melody of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony sticks out in my mind. Loooooo-Loo Loooooo-Loo Loo Loo Loo Looooooo-Loo Looooooo.

Robert Melcher sure did know music theory, and he was a relentless teacher. And he was as mean as a rooster with his tail on fire. Early on he set organists at ease, saying that we were “theory prone” because of the way we understood bass lines. Part of the curriculum included the notation of figured bass, right up our alley. Made us feel great, but must have been hard on the others. When he called on someone in class who couldn’t answer his question, he made them squirm. And he deliberately called on people when he knew they wouldn’t know the answer—and he gave them hell for not knowing.

In particular, he had it out for singers. He generalized, he profiled, and he terrorized them. It was horrible to watch. Today, fully forty years later, I’m grateful that he was my teacher. He gave me a firm foundation in that critical subject that I still value. But I’ll never forget him finishing one of those Loo-loo melodies and then whipping around to pounce on some unsuspecting daydreamer, humiliating them to the point of tears in front of their peers.

 

How do you get to Carnegie Hall?

That’s the lead to an old joke—the punch line is “Practice.” I had it in mind that it came from the old comedian Henny Youngman.* When I googled, I found that there is controversy, even a few squabbles about who first came up with it. Candidates include Jack Benny, Jascha Heifetz, and Arthur Rubenstein. The Carnegie Hall website states that it was violinist Mischa Elman, grumbling to a pedestrian as he left a frustrating rehearsal, the story as told by Elman’s wife.

How is it that the promising young talent finds his way to the right instrument and, knowingly or not, devotes his life to it while still a teenager? What does it mean to forsake at least part of whatever constitutes a normal childhood to strive to excel in a chosen field? And what is the responsibility of the teacher to acknowledge the student’s sacrifice, to encourage his ambition, and to challenge him in a way that honors his talent without affecting his emotional wellbeing?

The new movie Whiplash tackles this conundrum in the brutal story of Terence Fletcher (played by J. K. Simmons), a brilliant but abusive teacher in an exclusive jazz school. He notices the exceptional talent of a first-year student, a drummer named Andrew Neyman (as played by Miles Teller). Fletcher sees greatness in Neyman and uses intense verbal, physical, and emotional abuse to encourage it. He even abuses Neyman’s fellow students, especially other drummers, in his effort to bring out Neyman’s innate greatness.  

In the course of the film we learn that one of Fletcher’s former “great” students had died young—Fletcher told the students in the band that it was a car accident, but we learned that it was, in fact, suicide, encouraged by Fletcher’s brutal methods. We see Andrew make a shy and embarrassed attempt to have a first girlfriend, whom he later enrages when he breaks off the relationship, predicting that he will ultimately be bitter because she’s holding him back from greatness. In Andrew’s eyes, it’s Nicole’s bad luck to simply be a liberal arts student without having declared a major—incomprehensible to him who has been driven to be the world’s greatest drummer since he was a little boy, as we see in his home-movie clips.

Andrew puts tremendous pressure on himself, practicing until blood pours from his blistered hands and defending his drive to greatness in the eyes of his doubting family. Having been awarded “the part” as the school’s premier ensemble participates in an important competition, Andrew wriggles badly injured out of an overturned wrecked car and sprints to the concert hall where he plays his heart out until he collapses. Fletcher rewards his effort by expelling him from the school.

Wendy and I saw Whiplash a few days after it was released. While I never experienced anything like the brutality of Fletcher’s philosophy of teaching, I left the theater with memories of conductors who pummeled me, of friends who gave up their musical passion in despair, and of students being humiliated in front of each other. A week later, I invited a friend who is a great performer to see the movie with me. The second viewing was harder for me to watch because knowing what was coming next in each scene, I was cringing in advance.

Late in the film, Fletcher is brazen as he talks about his methods. He refuses to apologize, even though we know that his style had led directly to the suicide of a student. For much of the film, it’s hard to tell who is the main character. Fletcher is an “equal opportunity” abuser who thinks nothing of shredding the hopes of a promising student in front of his peers. And Andrew is a vulnerable young man with exceptional talent. Part way through the film, Andrew throws in the towel. But his burning, bleeding desire to be the best hurtles him back into the fray.

 

The lowest common denominator

After seeing Whiplash twice, I’m fascinated by the dilemma of how one finds the balance between Fletcher’s manic desire to spot and encourage greatness and the physical and emotional limits that must be imposed on how teachers relate to their students. Fletcher does things that would have him in jail in a heartbeat if he had been teaching in a public high school. But he’s the leader of the award-winning premier ensemble in the rarified world of the highest levels of education in a splinter-thin pursuit. It’s a cutthroat atmosphere, and Fletcher teaches us the origin of that phrase.

I had the inverse experience when working as director of music at a suburban Congregational church. In staff meetings, the associate pastor was outspoken about being sure that the church treated people equally. Fair enough, as we’re taught that we’re all equal in the eyes of God. But I think she took that too far when she suggested that I should not single out children in the Youth Choir by giving them solos. I should think about how that would make others feel less significant. I was dumbfounded, but I was not found dumb, at least in sense of at a loss for words.

I told her that when I was a kid singing in the Youth Choir, I was given solos to sing. When I was a middle school and high school student, I got all the gigs playing the piano to accompany choruses. That’s why today I’m the director of music. Other kids who sang in that 1960s Youth Choir are now doctors, attorneys, scientists, professors, even priests. I know this because I was reunited with many of them at my father’s memorial service last spring. Wouldn’t I have failed as a mentor if I hadn’t encouraged the children with special talents? And doesn’t it work out that someone who is passed over for the solo on Sunday gets handed the ball in a Little League game?

There are ordinary lawyers and star lawyers, ordinary doctors and star doctors. They might be equal in the eyes of God, but I’ve been treated a couple times by ordinary, even mediocre doctors, and I’ll choose the star any time.

 

Walking the line

There’s a balance in this conundrum, a line that separates teaching methods that are too harsh and abusive from those that treat all levels of talent equally. Star students should rise to the top. Their teachers should expect the best from them. And the best teachers have both methods and instincts to encourage the students to do their best.

I know that many readers of The Diapason were exceptional students as they forged their way through adolescence, and that many were lonely and outcast because of their devotion to an art form that requires intense discipline. I recommend strongly that you see Whiplash. The film is intense, fast moving, startling, and sometimes scary. It tells the story of the value and the trials of working hard on a specialized education. And it ultimately shows the reward of real devotion to a challenging art.

§

In March of 2012, I had a bad fall at work. I was tuning in a lovely old Hutchings organ in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the support for a ladder gave way. I came down from about six feet up and landed flat on my back. Made some kind of noise. My colleague Joshua, sitting at the keyboards, whispered, “What was that?” The wind was knocked out of my lungs, and I had to lie still for a few moments before I could draw breath. I had a cracked vertebra and later had a wicked bout with sciatic pain as that critical nerve has received quite a tweak.

I cringe when I think about what might have happened. I was lucky. I can walk. I know that my right leg and foot are not the same—that sciatic nerve is something like the strings of a marionette—it holds you, and you don’t know anything about it until it goes funky, but I got off easy.

Ironically, a couple years earlier I had participated in a panel discussion at a convention of the American Institute of Organbuilders about organ maintenance, and one of the panelists had spoken at length about workplace safety.

It’s the middle of November as I write, and across the country and around the world, organ technicians are stocking their tool-bags and sharpening their tools, putting fresh batteries in flashlights, and making a round of phone calls and e-mails to clients as they schedule seasonal cold-weather tunings (please be sure the heat is up). As we fan out to do battle against ciphers, remove moths from shallots, adjust contacts, and set temperaments, we remember the hazards of the trade. All of the ladders and walkways in a hundred-year-old organ are a hundred years old. The organ in which I fell was built in the 1880s, around 130 years old.  

We climb off the ladder onto the walkboard and feel it sag under our weight. The walkboard is covered with dust and feels slick underfoot. We reach out to the sky-rack of the façade pipes to stabilize ourselves, and it moves sickeningly, the pipes rattling in their loose hooks.

After I fell, I singled out a half-dozen churches whose organs presented special hazards to technicians. I wrote to each of them, telling of my accident, and proposing the installation of new ladders, handrails, supports, and stabilizers. They all responded positively, and that work is now complete. It’s a pleasure to walk out on that precipice, holding on to a sturdy new steel railing. Somehow, it makes me hear better.

I encourage my colleague organ techs to identify those situations that are unsafe and propose remedies to your clients. We can have a new professional organization, the Society for Prevention of Injuries to Tuners (SPIT).

This is on my mind as my Facebook page is alive with posts from fellow tuners hitting the road, offering prayers and salutations. And it’s on my mind because of a dramatic event in New York City. Last week, the Freedom Tower at One World Trade Center was formally opened. Among the first tenants is Condé Nast, publisher of the popular magazines, Vanity Fair and The New Yorker. Built on the iconic site, it has 104 stories, and is 1776 feet tall. Freedom Tower, get it? 1776?  

Around 8:00 am on Wednesday, November 12, two window washers climbed into their scaffold—a mechanized walkway hung from davits on the roof of the building that lowers the workers down the side of the building. Something went wrong with the system of pulleys and lines, and the rig wound up hanging vertically at the 69th floor, rather than the more comforting horizontal. The workers were securely tethered to the machine, as was all their equipment. News reports mentioned liquids falling from the platform, which would be bad enough for someone on the sidewalk, but no buckets, squeegees, brushes, or whatever other gear they might have had on board fell.

Within about an hour, a special team from New York Fire Department was inside the building at that floor, cutting through three layers of special tough glass to make an opening that would allow the stranded window guys to climb to safety inside.

That site is sacred to us all, especially to those New Yorkers who witnessed the original calamity there. And the NYPD gained a special spot in the national consciousness through their heroic response to the disaster.

As I watched the drama unfold on television, I was struck by the remarkable preparation involved. Thinking back on it, of course the NYPD would have teams specially trained and equipped to deal with high-rise emergencies. There are a lot of tall buildings in this city. But it was very moving to watch the firefighters handling those sheets of glass a thousand feet above the sidewalks, leaning through the opening and helping those guys inside.

NYPD Battalion Chief Joseph Jardin was quoted saying, “It was a fairly straightforward operation.” Some teacher saw the good in him and encouraged him to be the best. 

 

* I was right remembering a story connecting Henny Youngman to Carnegie, but it was the Carnegie Deli on 7th Avenue between 54th and 55th Streets in New York, around the corner from Carnegie Hall. It was a favorite “hangout” of Henny Youngman, and when owner/founder Leo Steiner died, Youngman eulogized him as the “deli lama.”

Steven Egler

*Moniker assigned to Fred Swann in the printed program for the AGO 2008 Distinguished Performer Award.

 

Frederick Swann is one of the most well-known organists of the 20th and early 21st centuries. In this conversation, which is really a mini-biography, he reveals much behind-the-scenes information about his numerous high-profile positions, his relationship with the Murtagh/McFarlane Artist Management, and his early musical experiences, along with observations about the organ and church music today. He is an extremely humble man who has met his many challenges and professional opportunities with modesty and dignity. 

Swann’s honors and achievements in recent years include: 2002, International Performer of the Year by the New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists; 2004, inaugural recital on the organ in the Walt Disney Concert Hall, Los Angeles; 2008, AGO Endowment Fund Distinguished Performer Award; 2009, Paul Creston Award by St. Malachy’s Chapel, New York City. In November 2014, he will be honored by the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival.

He has performed inaugural recitals on symphony-hall organs at Orchestra Hall (Chicago), Davies Hall (San Francisco), and Renée and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall (Costa Mesa).

Frederick Swann is currently the consultant for the Ruffatti organ restoration project at the renamed Christ Cathedral, formerly the Crystal Cathedral, where he was director of music and organist (1982–1998). Christ Cathedral is scheduled to reopen in 2016. (See The Diapason, June 2014, pp. 26–28.)

This interview was conducted on May 8, 2014, in Saginaw, Michigan, as Swann was preparing for his May 9 inaugural recital on Scott Smith and Company Opus 3, a project renovating Skinner Organ Company Opus 751. Thanks go to Kenneth Wuepper of Saginaw, Michigan, the recording technician for the interview; the First Congregational Church, Saginaw, Michigan; and to Fred Swann himself for allowing us to interview him, for his assistance with editing, and for providing the photos that accompany this piece.

 

Steven Egler: Please tell us about your early years and your family. 

Frederick Swann: I am the son of a minister, and there were six children—three boys and three girls. I was number five, and there was a big space between me and the four older ones. 

From the very beginning, I was fascinated by the piano, and I would frequently bang on it at age 3 or 4. My parents were not particularly happy about that, so they locked the piano. Of course, any three-year-old can figure out how to get into a piano if he really wants to, and I did! 

When I was five, they decided that I could have piano lessons from May Carper, the organist of a church near my father’s church in Winchester, Virginia. One day I arrived early for a lesson and couldn’t find her. But I heard the organ going, and finally I found her at the organ console. I was hypnotized watching things popping in and out, lights were flashing, her hands and feet were flying, and I thought, “Oh my! That looks like fun. I’ve got to do that!” 

I asked her if I could play, but my legs were so short they wouldn’t reach the pedals. I kept after her, so she bribed me: if I had a good piano lesson, she would let me “bang” on the organ for five minutes before I went home. Then when my legs got longer—when I was about eight—she started showing me things about the organ and that you had to play it differently—not like a piano. They were really not organ lessons, because I just was continuing on the piano, but she still told me a lot about the organ. It was very good that she did because the organist in my father’s church, Braddock Street Methodist Church, suddenly died, and I became the organist of the church—there was no one else to play. It must have been simply awful, but that’s how I got started at age ten, and I’ve just kept on. I was a lucky kid since I didn’t have to decide what I was going to do when I grew up: I just started playing and kept doing it. 

 

Can you recall what those early church services were like and being thrust onto the bench?

Mostly I just played the hymns. The choir director, Madeline Riley, was somewhat of an organist herself, but the console was not located where she could play and direct. I would play the hymns, and she would show me how to play simple accompaniments.

I would practice during the week, and then my Saturday routine was that I always went to the horse opera theater—cowboy Western—for ten cents. On my way home, I’d go by the church and make sure that I had everything ready for the next morning.

I don’t remember too much about the services, except that it was an old Möller organ and setting the pistons made a lot of noise. I would love to “play with” setting the pistons, and the choir director would always come around to slap my hands because they could hear the noise out in the church. 

My biggest excitement came one Easter morning. There were certain stops that I was not allowed to use, and one was a great big Open Diapason in the Great. The church, however, was full and they were really singing, so she came by and pulled out the Open Diapason. I was just thrilled to death! I thought, “This is heaven,” since I had not been allowed to make that much noise before. 

That went on for a couple years, and then we moved down valley to Staunton in 1943. There I started studying with the organist of Trinity Episcopal Church, Dr. Carl Broman, singing in the choir, and getting a lot of very good musical education at the same time. He was a very fine musician.

 

You mentioned moving as a PK (preacher’s kid). Was that frequent as a child?

Not so much. I left home to go to school when I wasn’t quite 16, and we had only lived in three places. I was born in Lewisburg, West Virginia, but only lived there six weeks. We then moved to Clifton Forge, Virginia, where my father, Theodore M. Swann, pastored the Methodist church. Six years later, we moved to Winchester and the Braddock Street Methodist Church for six years (1937–1943). Then we moved down the Shenandoah Valley to Staunton, where my father became a district superintendent and later a bishop. We didn’t have a home church as such because he was always traveling to other churches. This is the main reason I was allowed to attend Trinity Episcopal Church in Staunton where I was confirmed at age 13. I just loved it—the liturgy and the great music.

 

What attracted you to Northwestern University?

To tell you the truth, my childhood was not the happiest, and at that point in my life, the farthest place away that I had heard of was Chicago. With my Methodist background and it being a Methodist school, I won a scholarship and went there.

 

You studied with Thomas Matthews (1915–1999) who is known particularly for his choral anthems. How was he as a teacher? 

He was a fine teacher, and a very quiet but very fun man. He was inspiring as a teacher and was willing to let me try anything. He gave me very good ideas.

Most of my lessons were at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, Evanston, on the fantastic E.M. Skinner organ. By my senior year, I’d started to do a lot of accompanying. Matthews was also the director of the Chicago Bach Choir that, for some reason, met in Evanston at St. Luke’s Church.

In 1952, we did the second United States performance of the Duruflé Requiem. The first had been performed slightly earlier at Calvary Church in New York City. At last count, I’ve played that marvelous work 91 times during my career. I played it many years later at Riverside Church with Duruflé himself conducting. 

Tom [Matthews] was a great improviser, so I learned a lot about improvisation and colorful use of the organ, both in organ literature and in adapting piano/orchestral scores to the organ.

I also studied with John Christensen, who was the organist at the First Methodist Church in Evanston, and was his assistant organist during my four years in college. During my senior year, I also became organist and choir director at First Baptist Church upon the retirement of William Harrison Barnes (1892–1980). Dr. Barnes was the author of The Contemporary American Organ (1930) and well known as an organ consultant.

 

You said that the Barnes family “adopted” you?

When I arrived on the scene at Northwestern University, they heard me play and thought that I was advanced for my age. They also had recently lost a son, and for some reason, I reminded them of him and they decided to take me into the family. They were also responsible for my introduction to Virgil Fox (1912–1980) and took me on my first trip to New York City. On Sunday, they took me to the choir loft of St. Patrick’s Cathedral to meet the organist, their close friend Charles Courboin (1884–1973). During the sermon at the Mass, Dr. Courboin said to me, “Why don’t you play the postlude?” Of course, I had never played in a room like that or on an organ of that size, but I knew the Langlais Te Deum from memory, so I managed to get through it with the crescendo pedal and a general piston or two. Later, I became very good friends with Dr. Courboin, and, in fact, I studied the complete organ works of Franck with him. This was a great privilege, for he was widely regarded as an expert on the works of Franck. He was a very fun-loving and wonderful man. He and his wife were both so good to me, and he never charged me a penny for all of those lessons!

 

You attended Union Theological Seminary. With whom did you study?

My primary teacher was Hugh Porter (1897–1960), who was the director of the School of Sacred Music at the seminary. The best thing, however, particularly at that time, was just being in New York. Those days were often referred to as the “glory days” because of the great names in church music who were at the other churches in town. On Sunday afternoons, you could hear Evensong at St. Thomas or St. Bartholomew’s. Plus, there were many choral programs and other concerts all of the time, so you learned as much being exposed to music itself in New York as you did with actual classroom or lesson study. 

 

What advice do you have for young people these days who see themselves being organists as their primary calling, attend university, and expect to be prepared for the big, wide world?

I usually remind my students that they really have to love playing the organ and really have to love what they are doing. 

As far as becoming a concert organist, one has to realize that the field is very full. There are dozens and dozens of organists under management, many of whom play very few recitals because there are so many organists available. 

If you think that you want to be a church organist, if this is something you feel you just have to do, go ahead and do it. But realize that there are not that many full-time church jobs where you are going to be able to make a living. So, learn the organ, play it as well as you can, find a church to play in, but be aware that you may also need other sources of income, maybe teaching or perhaps even something in the business world.

One of my current university students at Redlands is also studying to become a dentist, and he is one of the most talented students I’ve ever had. I believe that he could have a career in the concert field and in church work, but he’s preparing to have some other source of income. 

It’s not that there aren’t jobs available: they’re just not jobs at which you can make a living.

 

I’d like to discuss the sizes of the various organs you have played. One source cites First Congregational Church, Christ Cathedral (formerly Crystal Cathedral), and Riverside Church respectively as the third, fifth, and fifteenth largest organs in the world. You have presided over each one of these instruments. 

Theoretically, the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles, where I was for three years after I retired from the Crystal Cathedral, contains the world’s largest church organ. There’s very little difference in the size of First Congregational and the organ at the Cathedral of St. Stephen in Passau, Germany, but interestingly, in a book that I picked up the last time I played there, it lists the largest organs in the world; they even put First Congregational’s organ before theirs! 

Actually, the Wanamaker organ (now Macy’s) in Philadelphia is the world’s largest operating organ. (The Atlantic City, New Jersey, Boardwalk Hall—formerly the Atlantic City Convention Center—organ is bigger, but most of it doesn’t play at this point.) 

Many people are obsessed with size, yet size is not everything. I have played many small and modest-sized instruments that were extremely beautiful and satisfying.

 

Please tell us about New York and the various pre-Riverside positions that you held. 

When I was in school at Union, I had a fieldwork position, the West Center Church in Bronxville, New York, but at that time I had already agreed to substitute for Virgil Fox whenever he was away, which was quite a bit.

My job in Bronxville was with the understanding that I had to be at Riverside when necessary. I was the official substitute organist (at Riverside) for a couple of years. When I graduated, Clarence Dickinson (1873–1969), whom I knew very well, had a heart attack—he was the organist and choirmaster at the Brick Church—and they asked me if I would fill in for him for nearly two years. At the same time, I became Harold Friedell’s (1905–1958) assistant at St. Bartholomew’s Church. I’d play in the morning at the Brick Church at 92nd Street and run down Park Avenue to play 4 o’clock Evensong at St. Bartholomew’s. There was a church in between called Park Avenue Christian Church, and they performed their oratorios at 2 o’clock on Sunday afternoon. Sometimes I would stop there and accompany an oratorio between playing services at Brick Church and St. Bart’s. 

Some Sundays, I also played Riverside! I would finish at St. Bart’s, jump off the bench (Harold [Friedell] would finish the service), run downstairs and out the door where there was a car waiting to whisk me to Riverside. Somebody else would have played the opening hymn, and I’d jump on the bench and play the oratorio. It was crazy and I don’t how I did it, except that when you’re young, you do all kinds of foolish things and don’t think anything about it.

 

Of course, I assume that you knew the organs and had rehearsed with the choirs.

Yes, plus the enormous amount of preparation for all the other music involved. 

 

And those were with just organ accompaniments and no orchestra?

Yes. Fortunately, the organs were all big, beautiful instruments with every color in the world, and it was a wonderful experience. After a while, I played almost every oratorio in the standard repertory. At Riverside we even did the United States premieres of a couple of works—Stabat Mater (1925–1926) of Szymanowsky (1882–1937) and the Hodie (1954) of Vaughan Williams (1872–1958). It was a wonderful experience, both to learn the music and also to learn how to adapt the scores quickly to the organ.

 

Were you ever overwhelmed playing those large instruments?

No, but there were many challenges and satisfaction in being able to find solutions. 

I can remember Maurice and Marie-Madeleine Chevalier-Duruflé, who were very good friends, when they played their first recital in America at the Riverside Church. They had come for the 1964 AGO national convention in Philadelphia the week before, but Maurice had hurt his back and couldn’t perform, so Marie-Madeleine played the recital. 

I’m telling you this because I’m thinking about big organs and how they affect people. When the Duruflés entered the Riverside chancel and saw the console, Maurice put his hand on his head and said, “Oh, mon Dieu!” Marie-Madeleine said, “Ooooooo,” rubbing her hands. She just couldn’t wait to get at it. I don’t think that I ever said “Ooooo” and rubbed my hands, but I was always so thrilled by the color possibilities of an organ such as the Riverside organ.

When I first played at Riverside in 1952, the organ was not the Aeolian-Skinner. It was the original 1931 Hook & Hastings controlled by the Aeolian-Skinner console that had been recently installed. When they began putting in the new organ in 1953, they had to keep the organ going every Sunday for services, oratorios, and everything else. I can remember one time when there were two Greats—the old Great was on one side of the chancel, and the new Great was on the other. I had to flip a switch depending on which Great I was using. It was a real headache and I didn’t get that much time at the organ, but here again when you’re young, you think, “Oh well. I’ll work it out.” It was a challenge.

 

You mention color and large instruments. I’ve heard you play many times, both in person and on recordings, and I can say that you are an organ symphonist in how you approach your music-making. Obviously, all of these instruments that you have experienced have been an incredible influence upon you.

Absolutely. On any instrument, I explore every stop in the organ, and of course, with a large organ, it is important to find orchestral colors for the oratorio accompaniments. I always feel that if there’s a stop there, it’s supposed be used and you can usually find a way to do it. 

 

Please tell us about your time at Riverside Church in New York City. 

In the fall of 1952, I started substituting for Virgil Fox, and in 1957 the staff at the church changed quite a bit. Virgil’s career began to blossom, and thus, he was there very rarely, so they decided they would hire an organist. I was hired as organist, not as assistant organist, at the church. From then until his association with the church dissolved completely in 1965, he very rarely played—probably a handful of times a year, but his name was kept because he was famous. 

I was actually in the Army when I was appointed organist. I was not going to be released for another six months, so Richard Peek, who was studying in New York at the time, filled in for me as organist for the next several months. Then in January 1958, I started playing full-time.

 

Did you ever work directly with Virgil Fox? 

Maybe a few times, but very rarely. He was a real character in addition, of course, to being an incredible musician and technician. Amazing! 

 

So William H. Barnes introduced you to Virgil Fox. Was he responsible for getting you in the door at Riverside? 

Absolutely. Virgil was born in Illinois and got his career start in Illinois—that’s where he met the Barneses. As a result, I knew Virgil before that first trip to New York. 

 

Please tell us about the choir program at Riverside, which was well known and directed by Richard Weagley (1909–1989). 

He was a great musician and wonderful to work with. He retired in 1967, when the program had been reduced from an oratorio every Sunday to just eight or nine a season. There was less work, so they asked me if I would be director of music and organist, which meant that I was the primary organist but was responsible mainly for the choir. Then I was given an assistant organist, and I had some great ones: Marilyn Keiser, John Walker, and Robert MacDonald, to name a few. They were wonderful people, and we’ve remained lifelong friends. I had the whole show, basically, until I left January 1, 1983, to move to California.

 

One of the first recordings I heard of you was with the marvelous soprano Louise Natale (1918–1992). 

Louise was a fabulous soprano. She had sung with Robert Shaw and was one of his main soloists for many years, and we were so fortunate to have her at Riverside. I encouraged her to sing [Jaromir] Weinberger’s (1896–1967) cantata, The Way to Emmaus (1940), and she did it magnificently with that organ to accompany her. 

We started doing it on Easter afternoon, and we did it for 25 consecutive Easters! After all of the loud music and the “Alleluias” all morning and then to come at 5 o’clock with the sun streaming across the Hudson through the beautiful windows and to end the Easter Day quietly was a very moving experience for a lot of people, and eventually the church was filled. 

 

Did you position the console so that you were able to conduct the choir from the console? 

The console was not movable and worked just fine as far as services were concerned, but for the oratorios I would have to go out front and conduct while one of my assistants played. I think the only time I played and had somebody else conduct was when we performed Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius. The accompaniment was so complicated and so wonderful that I wanted to hear it using all of that organ. So we engaged as conductor Dr. Harvey Smith from Arizona (now deceased). Of course, I had trained the choir before he arrived.

 

Could you explain why there was overlapping time before you left Riverside and when you began your position at the Crystal Cathedral? 

When the Crystal Cathedral had just been built and the organ installed, there were many festivities to open the organ. Pierre Cochereau came to play with orchestra, and a week later I played the first solo recital on the organ. Additionally, they asked me, as long I was there, to play the Sunday morning service. I played the morning service, and afterwards, Dr. and Mrs. Schuller wanted to meet with me. They asked me if I would become the organist of the church. I told them that they had a very fine organist, Richard Unfried, who was a friend of mine, and that the job did not exist. I said that I knew they were without a director of music and asked them if they’d like to discuss that. They said, “No,” that they only wanted me to play the organ. I indicated that I was not interested, since they already had a fine organist. 

So I went home to New York, and four days later, there at my office door at Riverside Church stood Robert Schuller. He said, “I just want you to know that Arvella and I have come light years since our discussion last Sunday, and we’d like to offer you the position of director of music and organist. Would you please fly out to meet with us next Monday to make arrangements.” He then turned around and left! 

I flew out to California with no intention whatsoever of moving, but I had already fallen under the magic spell of that fantastic cathedral and the organ, and as is sometimes said, “They made me an offer that I couldn’t refuse.” 

The arrangement that we finally made was that I would spend one week a month in California—working with the choir, etc.—and the other three weeks a month in New York. That’s what I did the first six months and then moved full-time to California in January 1983. 

I played the last service at Riverside at midnight, December 31, 1982, and then January 2, 1983, I flew to Toronto to play a recital in Roy Thomson Hall, and then flew immediately to California to meet the moving van, set up housekeeping, and get started with the new position. 

People would always ask me if I missed New York, and I’d tell them that I didn’t have time to miss New York! The music program was very large (at the Crystal Cathedral) with several hundred people in the program. I had to learn the organ and get the choir going, so I didn’t have time to think—to miss New York.

 

What was it like working with Robert Schuller (b. 1926)? 

It was wonderful. What you see on television with him is what you get. Both he and Mrs. Schuller, Arvella de Haan (1929–2014), treated me beautifully all the years that I was there, and we became very good friends. 

Dr. Schuller wasn’t around that much since he was always out speaking and raising money. Mrs. Schuller was in charge of worship and the music.

It took us a while to learn which buttons to push with each other, but we eventually became very good friends. She was an organist herself and told me I could do Palestrina and Hubert Parry’s I was glad anytime that I wanted, but I would have to do “the other things that we do,” too. But they wanted me specifically to bring that type of music—the “big Eastern church music.” They wanted me to provide music they felt would be commensurate with the new cathedral building, a great organ, and a fine choir. Thus, I was able to stretch them in doing a lot of that music, but they also stretched me into various other forms of music. 

There was an enormous variety of music. We could have a country-Western singer, a Metropolitan Opera star, an English cathedral anthem, and a Bach prelude and fugue, all of these and more in one service, but the best thing was that whatever we did was done with the best taste, and to the best of everyone’s ability.

Johnnie Carl, a fantastic musician, was in charge of the instrumental program and contemporary music. It was a learning experience for all of us, and I thoroughly enjoyed my 16-plus years there. The people made it: the choir especially. 

 

And you just happened to be on television every week, too!

Yes, eventually I got over being nervous about cameras peering over my shoulder, and occasionally I’d look up and see a cameraman standing on top of the organ console getting ready to shoot something! It was all very enjoyable, and many stories can be told about that!

 

That’s almost a book.

Oh, easily! One of those stories is about Alicia the tiger that was born at the cathedral. Her mother was one of the 60 animals used in the “Glory of Easter” production. I knew her mother, and her mother’s trainer. After Alicia was about a week old I went to the animal compound and played with her mother a bit, and the trainer gradually moved Alicia closer. Her mother didn’t object, so I picked up Alicia (she weighed only 35 pounds) and scratched her stomach and played with her every day for two weeks after that. Tigers (tame ones, anyway) are somewhat like elephants—they can bond with you, remember you, and when you see them after being away for months they’ll come right over and nuzzle you like a kitten—with the trainer nearby, of course.

It used to scare my staff to death when she’d come to my office and come right over and want to play. She was from an animal training facility that provided animals for movies, and had a reputation for being the most-tame “cat” in the business. She’s retired now. Organists all over the world were fascinated, and wherever I traveled—Jean Guillou’s apartment in Paris, or one in Berlin—there was one of the photos framed.

 

After the Crystal Cathedral, you went to the First Congregational Church, Los Angeles, for three years (1998–2001).

Right. When the Crystal Cathedral organ went in, their nose went out of joint at First Congregational Church because, up to that point, they had the largest organ in the area, so they set about to make it bigger and better than the Crystal Cathedral organ. About the time that the organ was finished, their organist Lloyd Holtzgraf retired, and they said, “Okay, we’ve got the bigger organ. Now we want the big organist from the other place.”

As Rev. Schuller had done earlier, the Congregationalists made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. At the heart of it was simply the fact that I was really worn out from all that I’d had to do at the Crystal Cathedral. I was playing the organ less and less and doing administrative work and conducting more. So I thought it would be rewarding to play the organ for awhile. I went to First Congregational Church with the understanding that I would only stay three years and retire on my 70th birthday, which I did right to the day in 2001.

That was a wonderful time there, too. Thomas Somerville, a great Bach scholar, was the director of music, and we did wonderful music. The congregation just loved that organ and would remain motionless and utterly quiet during preludes and postludes. It was a great place to make music—a smart move, and I’m so glad that I did it.

 

And since 2001, you have been organ artist in residence at St. Margaret’s Episcopal Church in Palm Desert, California. 

When it came time to retire, I decided not to move back east—I’d already shoveled enough snow! I had many friends in Palm Springs and had visited there a lot and decided to retire there. I’d even purchased a home three years earlier and was able to rent it out until I needed it.

When I moved to Palm Springs, John Wright had come from Memphis to St. Margaret’s Church as organist and choirmaster. I had opened a new organ in his church in San Antonio, Texas, years before. He invited me to practice at St. Margaret’s whenever I wanted, as long as I played a recital during the year. I said, “Okay.” I was still out on the road finishing up several recitals that I had on the books. This went on for a couple years, and he said, “Why don’t you play for church once in a while.” I said, “Oh no. I’ve done that and I’m tired.” But he kept after me and I finally agreed. In recent years, I have been playing at least two Sundays a month and sometimes more often than that, plus all of the festival services. John is then able to concentrate on conducting the choir—a very good choir—and the organ is a large four-manual Quimby. Friends who visit are always amazed to find, out in the middle of the desert, a big choir, big church, big organ. I think they thought that we beat on bamboo! But, it’s been very enjoyable, and it is a wonderful congregation. I can walk in and play and walk out, and I don’t have to attend staff meetings. After a lifetime of doing that, I’m happy just to be able to play the organ.

 

That takes us to another leg of your journey: your performing career and association with the Murtagh and now Karen McFarlane artist management. As far back as I can I remember, I can see your smiling face on the back page of magazines (The Diapason and The American Organist). When did you start with the management?

Soon after I went to Riverside—I can’t remember the exact date. I was with the management for over 40 years.

Lilian Murtagh was the assistant to Bernard LaBerge, the famous manager of organists and other musicians in this country. After LaBerge’s death in 1952, she continued as head of the organ division (under what had become Colbert-LaBerge). She then purchased the organ division in 1962 and continued until her death in 1976 when Karen McFarlane became president. Murtagh was a dear, dear lady and so very good as a manager. 

It was great to get to know all of the famous organists who were with the management: it was a wonderful relationship. 

Lilian had gotten to know my secretary at Riverside, Karen McFarlane, and after Lilian became ill and realized that she didn’t have long to live, she asked Karen to consider taking over the management. Thus Karen McFarlane became the manager from 1976–2000.

 

So you and Karen McFarlane go way back.

We go way, way back! She had done some playing for me and was my secretary at Riverside. Then she became my concert manager. She’s like a sister and is a very dear friend.

When I retired I intended to finish recitals that I already had on the books, but I really didn’t intend to play anymore, so I asked them to please take my picture off the back page. I’ve curtailed my performing to maybe two or three concerts a year, mainly because the travel is becoming more difficult.

 

Do you have any more recordings in the works? 

No, I did my last one in 2010 (Gothic Records) on the magnificent Casavant organ, Opus 1230, in the Memorial Chapel at the University of Redlands. Recording is very nerve-wracking at my age. I can still play adequately as long as a microphone has not been turned on. When that happens, I become the Florence Foster Jenkins of the organ!

Going back to the LP days, I think that there’s a total of about 30 recordings. A lot are from Mirrosonic, Vista, Decca, and, of course, Gothic. It’s not an enormous number—many people record a lot more—and some of those are organ and some are with choir.

Some things I’ve recorded more than once, and I don’t really apologize for that. Marie-Claire Alain was once asked why she recorded three sets of the complete Bach works; she answered, “Because my ideas change or I learn.” It’s the same with all of us, and I would hate to think that we were not constantly changing.

 

Please tell us about your varied teaching experiences, the positions you’ve held, and your students. 

I’ve had a whole bunch. The first formal teaching that I did was at the Guilmant Organ School (1899–ca. 1970) in New York. It was established in the early 20th century by William Carl, who was the organist at First Presbyterian Church, New York City. He had been a student of Guilmant. I came to it late, actually just the last three years of its life, and I had about eight to ten students. Then I began teaching organ and accompanying the choir at Teachers College, Columbia University. I also did some private teaching at Union Seminary where I was also the fieldwork supervisor; I would go out to students’ churches, take notes, and make suggestions. 

In 1973, I became head of the organ department at the Manhattan School of Music. At that time, it was housed in the old Juilliard School buildings across the street from the Riverside Church, which was very convenient. I held that position for eight years during the 1970s until I left New York for California. 

When I first went to California, there was absolutely no time for teaching. But after I finally “retired,” playing almost no recitals and just playing at St. Margaret’s, in 2007 I became the university organist and artist teacher of organ for the University of Redlands, just an hour west toward Los Angeles. 

The Casavant organ there, originally installed in 1927, was completely restored in 2002 at the same time that the building was being retrofitted for earthquakes. It’s a marvelous organ, totally enclosed—even the three 32-foot stops. It’s a thrilling sound, even with the orchestra and choir and soloists. Just a short while ago, we were able to fill up all of the blank knobs on the console and add another 20 ranks.

I have very good students there. 

 

What about the composer in you?

Oh, I’m not a composer! 

 

You wrote a wonderful Trumpet Tune.

I don’t know how wonderful it is, but people seem to enjoy it. One man has even made a handbell arrangement of it that is published. There are a few other organ pieces, too.

The other compositions are mainly anthems, and they were all written when I was at the Crystal Cathedral, because I couldn’t find what I wanted to fit with the service of the day or they were not the right length. They all had to be written in major keys, had to be loud, and had to end with the sopranos on high C, so there isn’t a great deal of variety. But the publishers wanted them: because I was the organist at the Crystal Cathedral, and they thought they would sell! I don’t know if they ever did or not—a few of them did, I guess—but I make no claims to being a composer, whatsoever. 

There are several hymn arrangements and preludes that are also published. In particular, Toccata on “O God, Our Help, In Ages Past” is fun to watch— it made good television. It has lots of work jumping manuals, which idea I got from Petr Eben’s Moto Ostinato. I played it for him once and he burst out laughing. I said, “Well, it was your idea!”

 

Please reflect upon your time as President of the American Guild of Organists (2002–2008), which is when I first got to know you. 

I was amazed that I got elected, and I’m sure the only reason was because of television and concerts. A lot of people don’t know most of the people who are ever nominated for office, so they usually vote for the ones who are best known. I enjoyed it very much. We had a wonderful group of people on the National Council—you were there—everybody worked well together and with the administration of the Guild. It was a very happy time and I feel that we accomplished a lot of things. In addition to the POEs (Pipe Organ Encounters), there were many highlights of my years there. I will be forever grateful for the opportunity to serve the Guild in that way.

 

What do you see as the function, the purpose, and even the future of the AGO?

I think that the Guild is very much alive. It is still very influential—it’s the largest and oldest organization (founded in 1896) of its kind for musicians and for instruments in this country. 

The only other musical organization that is older is the Royal College of Organists in London, which in 2014 is celebrating its 150th anniversary. They used to wield an enormous amount of power, and even had a big office building. The organ and organist had been well thought of in halls and cathedrals, but a recent article in the New York Times said that they have fallen on bad times and there are not as many jobs. They are now focusing on reinventing themselves by reaching out more to the general public. I don’t how they will do it, but they are determined. 

Generally speaking, I believe that the Guild is on firmer ground now than it’s ever been. I’m very optimistic about the future of the AGO and about the organ in general. There are many naysayers who think that the organ is dying and that there are too few people interested in becoming organists. This is simply not true.

Some of the major organ builders no longer exist, but there still are organs being built—some of them very large and expensive—as well as smaller organs. Along with all of the recordings that exist, I feel very optimistic about future of the organ, and I don’t believe it’s going to die anytime soon.

 

What do you like to do in your free time?

I don’t have a lot of free time, although I try to walk one to two miles daily—I am not in shape to do any great physical activity, but I do enjoy walking. I live in a two-story condominium, just so I can have the exercise of going up and down steps many times a day. I like reading, going out to eat, and I love being with friends.

There are many retired organists where I live in Palm Springs, many of whom I have known for years. It’s fun having a very nice social life, too. 

 

Very little grass grows under your feet. 

No. I learned several years ago—and I practice it religiously—that when you get into your ninth decade, you do not want to sit and stare at the wall. The day may come when I have to do that, but until it does, I’ll keep as physically and mentally active as I possibly can. I do crossword puzzles and everything I can to stay active. 

 

Do you practice everyday? 

I’m embarrassed to say that I do not. I should, but I practiced a lot in recent weeks to prepare for the recital here. 

 

Here is where humility must be brushed aside for the sake of honesty. You have everything on your résumé: you are without a doubt the most well-known and most visible organist of our day . . . 

. . . fading fast, as there are some real barn-burners coming along nowadays who are really going to go right to the top and who are creating a lot of stir in the organ world. I’m thankful for them because we need to keep the organ world alive . . . 

 

What do you see being your important contribution(s) to our profession? 

Regardless of what some people might think, I’m really modest and somewhat shy. I have been given wonderful opportunities in my career, such as having been blessed to serve in church positions most organists can only dream about. I’ve played close to 3,000 recitals in various places around the world, including a lot of daily recitals in churches, as well as being on television for over 16 years.

With the combination of things like that and teaching, I feel that I’ve helped to contribute to keeping the organ alive. I don’t believe that I’ve done any one thing in particular that I could cite as being outstanding. Rather, I’m grateful to have been given so many opportunities. I’ve tried to make the most of those opportunities for the advancement of the organ and its music. I’m more embarrassed than pleased when people compliment me.

 

At this point in your life and career what occurs to you as the most pleasurable reward resulting from your more than 70-year career?

That’s easy! In addition to being grateful for all the music making I’ve been fortunate to do, it’s the satisfaction of knowing that I’ve been able to bring joy and encouragement to others. One thing that has surprised me in recent years, and keeps happening more and more, is hearing from colleagues in the profession that my service playing or a recital or teaching, often on a very specific occasion, was a life-changing event for them in their career path. I am so very grateful for these expressions! More important, it makes me aware that all of us should take time to consider the influence we may unconsciously be having on others. 

 

Good advice for all. Thank you, Fred. You are the gem of our ocean! 

John Bishop

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

The temperamental organ
Winter was coming to an end, and at Fenway Park, fabled home of the Boston Red Sox, and the facilities manager was working down his checklist of pre-season chores. This would be the second year of the new ballpark organ, and he figured it would need tuning. He called up Fred Opporknockity, the guy who had delivered the organ, and asked if he could come to tune the organ before Opening Day. Fred replied that the organ didn’t need to be tuned—he was sure it would be fine. Mr. Facilities suggested that the organ at his church was tuned for Christmas and Easter. “No,” said Fred, “don’t you know that
Opporknockity tunes but once?”
This joins a long list of so-called jokes like the one that ends, “Is that an almond daiquiri, Dick?” “No, it’s a hickory daiquiri, Doc.” Or the one that goes . . . But I digress. (How can I digress when I’m only 160 words into it?)
In fact, the Fenway Park organ didn’t need to be tuned. It’s electronic and was tuned at the factory. But the tuning of pipe organs is a subject without end or beginning, without right or wrong, without rhyme or reason—it just needs to be in tune!
Mr. Facilities’ recollection that the church organ needs to be tuned for Christmas and Easter (notice that I capitalized Opening Day as a High Holyday!) is only half right, in my opinion. For years I scheduled big tuning routes that occupied Advent and Lent, but where I live in New England, Christmas and Easter are almost always both winter holidays, and the August brides would walk down countless center aisles straining to the strains of sorry 8-foot trumpets that made her guests pucker as if they were biting into a lemon. It’s my experience that summertime tuning problems always involve either “soprano” D, F#, or A, ruining virtually every Trumpet-Tune processional. In one wedding I played, the fourth E went dead—the trill on beat three of Jeremiah Clarke’s ubiquitous tune made me laugh. I was only quick enough to go down a half-step, a safe enough transposition because you can keep playing the same printed notes with a different key signature. It was an awkward sounding transition, but at least it gave me back my “dee diddle-diddle-diddle da-da dum de dum dum” instead of “dee doh-doh-doh da-da dum de dum dum.”
Gradually I changed my plan to define seasonal tunings as “heat-on” and “heat-off”—around here that works out to be roughly November and May—and maybe it means I found myself a little extra work because there often seem to be Easter touch-ups as well.

§

Why do we schedule tunings according to seasons? Simply and authoritatively because the pitch produced by an organ pipe of a given length is subject to temperature. Say a pipe plays “440-A” and say it’s 70 degrees in the church. Raise the temperature a degree and now the same pipe plays 442 (roughly). And the catch is that the reeds don’t change with temperature and the wooden pipes (especially stopped pipes) are more affected by humidity than temperature. So when there’s a temperature swing the organ’s tuning flies into pieces. You cannot define organ pitch without reference to temperature. A contract for a new organ is likely to have a clause that defines the organ’s pitch as A=440 at 68 degrees.
And here’s the other catch. My little example said it was 70 degrees in the church. But it’s never 70 degrees everywhere in the church. It may be 70 at the console, 66 in the Swell, 61 in the Choir, and 82 in the Great. If these are the conditions when it’s cold outside and the thermostat is set to 68, you can bet that summertime conditions have it more like 75 or 80 degrees everywhere in the building except any high-up area where you find organ pipes—then it’s super hot and the reeds won’t tune that high.
Conditions outdoors can have a dramatic effect on organ tuning. Imagine an organ placed in two chambers on either side of a chancel, and imagine that the back wall of each organ chamber is an outside wall. The tuner comes on a rainy Friday and gets the organ nicely in tune. Sunday dawns bright and sunny, the south-facing wall gets heated up by the sun and that half of the organ goes sharp. During the sermon the organist “txts” the tuner to complain about how awful the organ sounds. (Wht wr u doing☹) The following Thursday the organist shows up for choir rehearsal and finds the tuner’s bill in his mailbox. What would you do? Was it the tuner’s fault that it rained? Any good organ tuner pays attention to weather conditions and forecasts as if he were the mother of the bride planning an outdoor wedding.
I care for a large tracker-action organ in Boston, housed in a free-standing case with polished tin Principal pipes in the façades of Great, Pedal, and Rückpositiv cases. It’s situated in a contemporary building designed by a famous architect, who gave the congregation the gift of light from the heavens coming through a long narrow window that runs along the ridge of the roof. In the winter as the sun moves across the sky, brilliant light moves across the front of the organ, heating the façade pipes as it goes. Instantly the Great 8-foot Principal goes 30 or 40 cents (hundreds of a semi-tone) sharp. Do the math—how many hundredths of a semitone are there in a quarter-tone? Guess what time of day this happens? Eleven AM. And guess what time the opening hymn is played on a Sunday morning? The first time I tuned that organ, I felt as though I were in a carnival fun-house with mirrors distorting the world around me as the organ’s pitch followed the sun across the room.

Temperature’s rising
In order to do a conscientious tuning, we ask the church office to be sure the heat is up for when we tune. When they ask what it should be set to, I reply that they should pretend that the tuning is a Sunday morning worship service. If the heat is turned up to 68 degrees five hours before the hour of worship, then set the heat at 68 five hours before the tuning. It’s not very scientific but it seems to get the point across.
I’ve arrived many times to start a tuning to find that there is no heat in the church. Sorry, can’t tune. I’ll come back tomorrow—and the time and mileage I spent today goes on your bill. Once I showed up at the church (made of blue brick and shaped like a whale—some architects have the strangest ideas) and the sexton proudly announced, “I got it good and warm in there for you this time.” It was 95 degrees in the church and the organ sounded terrible. Sorry, can’t tune. I’ll come back tomorrow. He must have run $400 of fuel oil through that furnace in addition to my bill for wasted time. And the haughty authoritative pastor of a big city Lutheran church once said to me from under an expensively-coiffed shock of theatrical white hair, “We heat the church for the people, not the organ.”
The eternal battle of the organ tuner and the thermostat is not because we don’t like working in cold rooms. It’s not because we want the organ to be warm. It’s physics. When you chill oxygen, the molecules get closer together and it thickens to the point at which it becomes a liquid. When air warms, the molecules get further apart. When the air molecules get further apart, the air gets less dense. When the air gets less dense, sound waves need less energy and they shorten. When the sound waves shorten, the pitch increases. It’s not a matter of comfort, it’s physical law—the laws of physics.
The same laws say that the organ will be in tune at the temperature at which it was tuned. Set the thermostat at 68 on Thursday for the organ tuning, turn it down to 55, then back up to 68 on Sunday. Voila! The organ is in tune—unless the weather changed. And it’s better for the organ not to be vigorously heated all the time. Ancient European organs have survived for centuries partly because their buildings are not superheated. American churches are often guilty of “organ baking”—keeping the heat up all winter, using the argument that it’s more cost-efficient than reheating a cold building several times a week.

It’s a Zen thing.
I’ve been asked if I have perfect pitch. No—and I’m glad I don’t. A roommate of mine at Oberlin had perfect pitch, and he identified that my turntable ran slow (remember turntables?). It didn’t bother me—but he couldn’t bear it. The organ tuner with perfect pitch has to compensate for the fact that you are not necessarily tuning at A=440. If the organ is a few cents sharp or flat when you arrive to tune, chances are you’re going to leave it that way. It takes several days to change the basic pitch of most organs. And for really big organs it can take weeks.
I’ve been asked how I can stand listening to “out of tune-ness” all day. I don’t like hearing it when I’m listening to organ music or attending worship, but when I’m tuning I love it because I can change it. There’s a satisfaction about working your way up a rank of pipes bringing notes into tune. You can feel them “click” into tune—in good voicing there’s a sort of latching that I sense when I give the pipe that last little tick with my tool.
An organ tuner is something of a contortionist—he has to be able to forget about physical discomfort in the often-awkward spaces inside an organ so he can concentrate on the sounds. He often hangs from a ladder or a swell-shutter for stability. (Key holders, please keep your dagnabbit feet off the Swell pedal!) He learns to tune out little mechanical noises and defects of speech. An organ pipe might have burps and bubbles in its speech that are clearly heard when you’re inside the organ and still sound perfect from the nave or the console.
He gets into a nice quiet state and a rhythm develops: “next,” tick-tick-tick, “next,” tick-tick-tick. A couple hours and ten ranks (610 pipes) into it and the sexton comes in with a vacuum cleaner. The flowers are delivered for Sunday. A lawn mower starts up at the house next door. The pastor brings in a soon-to-be married couple. They politely assure me, “Don’t worry, you’re not disturbing us.”
Once I showed up to tune the organ at a university chapel. A couple heavy trucks full of equipment were outside and a guy was loading tools into the bucket of a cherry picker. I went up to him saying I was there to tune the organ and wondered if they’d be making noise. “Not much,” he said, “just a little hammer-drilling.”

§

As I write, the Red Sox official website says that the Opening Day game at Fenway Park starts in twelve days, eight hours, thirteen minutes, and twenty-five, twenty-four, twenty-three seconds. It doesn’t really matter whether the organ is tune or not—they don’t use it as a ballpark organ any more. But there was a time when the organ music was an integral part of the ballpark experience. A common question in Boston sports trivia quizzes was, “Who’s the only person who played for the Red Sox, the Bruins (hockey), and the Celtics (basketball)?” Answer—John Keilly, the organist for Fenway Park and the Boston Garden.
My father and I have been to dozens (maybe hundreds?) of games at Fenway Park. He’s had the same seats (section 26, row 4, seats 13 and 14) since the early 1970s. When John Keilly was at the Hammond B-3, we joked about getting to the park early so we could hear the preludes. And he had an uncanny knack for playing the right tune at the right time. When Carlton Fisk hit his now legendary “walk-off” twelfth-inning homerun to win game six of the 1975 World Series, Keilly created a secondary sports legend when he played “Hallelujah”—though not according to historical performance practices.

§

Nancy Faust was organist for the Chicago White Sox from 1970 until her last game on Sunday, October 3, 2010. She missed five games in 1983 when her son was born—otherwise she played for more than 3,200 games without missing one. When she was hired, petitions were circulated by fans and sports officials offended that the White Sox had placed a woman on the team’s payroll. But she came into her own when Harry Caray became the radio commentator for the Sox. He gave her the moniker Pretty Nancy Faust, and started the tradition of leaning out the window of his announcer’s box to lead the singing of Take Me out to the Ballgame as Nancy played. She played by ear, and kept current with all the latest music through her four decades of playing so she was always ready with a current musical quip for the amusement of the fans. She was the originator of the ballpark use of the now ubiquitous 1969 Steam song Na Na Hey Hey (Kiss him goodbye), playing it when the pitcher of an opposing team was pulled out during the 1977 pennant race.
Nancy Faust was honored by the White Sox for her years of service to the team and its fans on September 18, 2010 in a pre-game ceremony. Ten thousand Pretty Nancy Faust bobblehead dolls were distributed to fans that day. My wife Wendy lived and worked in Chicago for about ten years, and as both a gifted organist and a baseball fan, she joined countless other Chicagoans celebrating Faust’s contribution to the game. We heard about her retirement on the NPR sports program “Only A Game” early one Saturday morning, and Wendy let me know how much she wanted one of those dolls. With thanks to Chicago organbuilding colleague and theatre organ guru Jeff Weiler, I found one complete with the ticket stub for the September 18 game, and it now has an honored place in our living room.
In the pages of this journal we often read about churches celebrating their retiring long-time organists. I’ve read plenty of stories about fancy concerts with reunions of dozens of past choir members, music committees commissioning commemorative anthems (bet you can’t say that three times fast!), cakes that look like pipe organs, bronze plaques, and surprise tickets for Caribbean cruises, but never bobblehead dolls. How cool is that?