In the wind...

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

The truth about holes
Almost thirty years ago my wife and I were expecting our first child. I was working for organbuilder John Leek in Oberlin, Ohio, and we were in the midst of building an organ for St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Annandale, Virginia. I was drilling the holes in rackboards—those horizontal boards mounted on windchests that support the pipes about six inches above the toeboards.
It wasn’t a large organ, only eleven stops on the manuals, so including the Mixture, there were about 760 holes to drill. That’s not quite 14 ranks times 56 notes, but some were in the façade, and some others were tubed off the main chests and mounted on the inside walls of the case.
You determine the sizes of the holes using a jig that is a mock-up of a toeboard-rackboard assembly with holes drilled in the rackboard to match all the appropriate drill sizes. You move each pipe among the holes in the jig until you find the right size, then write the drill size on the rackboard by the mark for the pipe hole. That being finished, I had laid out all the marked rackboards on a table near the drill-press and was going through all the boards with each change of the drill-bit. I start with the smallest holes in the remote chance that I might drill one extra hole of a given size. If you make a mistake, it’s easier to drill a hole bigger than smaller!
I suppose I would have been using around 30 different bits for this job, starting with something like 7/32″, graduating by 32nds to one inch, by eighths to two inches, and by quarters to three. I guess it took about a day-and-a-half, and all the while I was expecting that call from home. I was sure it wouldn’t be on Wednesday. It would have to be Thursday, because that would mean I’d have to cancel choir rehearsal, an ice storm was predicted, and the hospital was an hour away in Cleveland. Sure enough, Michael joined us on Thursday afternoon. A couple days later I went back to finish the rackboards. I have no specific recollection, but I bet there were a few mistakes.
If you’d like to know something about this organ, go to <A HREF="http://www.stalbansva.org/">www.stalbansva.org</A&gt;, click on “Ministries,” then click on “Music.” You’ll see photos of the organ and its stoplist.

On with the show
The same number of holes must be drilled in the toeboards, the sliders, and the windchest table in order for the notes to play. That makes about 3,200 holes. But wait, I almost forgot to mention that the toeboards were laminated with interior channeling because the spacing of the slider holes is closer together than that of the pipe holes—so add another 780 holes.
We drill holes in the ends of squares and roller arms to accommodate the tracker action. We drill holes in the keyboards for balance and guide pins. We drill thousands of screw holes to hold the whole thing together. In an electro-pneumatic organ there are rows of holes that serve as pouch wells, pitman wells, housings for primary and secondary valves, and miles of channeling drilled through various windchest components to connect the interior of the pouch wells to the atmosphere, allowing pneumatics to exhaust when actions are activated. Counting on my fingers, I guess that there would be something like 7,000 holes in a ten-stop pitman windchest. Really!
You might say that the art of organbuilding is knowing where to put the holes, and what size each should be.
Drill baby, drill!

Just a little bit
There are hundreds of drill-bits in any organbuilding workshop. There are multi-spur bits that have center points for drilling larger holes. There are Forstner bits that are guided by the outside edge rather than by a center point, handy if you need to “stretch” a hole by cutting another half-moon. There are twist drills with 60º bevels on the points for drilling smaller holes such as screw holes. These are also used to drill holes in metal. There are countersinks that chamfer a screw hole so the flat head of a flat-head screw is flush with the surface of the wood. There are airplane bits, which are twist drills 16 or 18 inches long. I don’t know why they’re called airplane bits. Drilling holes in airplanes wouldn’t require a very long bit.
Any organ shop will sport an impressive rack with rows of bits arranged in order of size. The smallest might be around one-hundredth of an inch, the largest would be something like three inches.

Twist-and-turn
You need a variety of machines to turn those bits. The workbench workhorse is now the rechargeable drill. I have had a long habit of calling the electric hand drill a “drill-motor” much to the annoyance of at least one of my co-workers. In my mind this distinguishes the machine from the bit. You use a drill-motor to turn a drill-bit. I think that if you just say “drill” you could be referring either to the motor or the bit. Let’s be specific. I know I got that habit from someone else, but I don’t remember who. Terence, I didn’t make it up.
We have electric hand drills with half-inch chucks that can handle the larger multi-spur bits, but there is a lot of torque involved in drilling large holes, and if you are bearing down on the thing with your shoulder to cut through the wood you run the risk of getting whacked in the chin by the handle of the drill motor when the bit gets caught in the wood. It’s never actually happened to me but I’ve read about it! (But notice I said “when,” not “if.”)
The workshop workhorse is the drill-press. It’s a stand-up machine with a motor at eye level that’s connected to the arbor with a series of belts. The belts are arranged on stacks of pulleys—you can move the belts to different-sized pulleys to change the speed of the drill. There’s a sheet metal hood over the pulleys to protect the worker. We use slower speeds for drilling through metal—the harder the metal, the slower the speed—and if you’re drilling through a piece of steel, it’s a good idea to have a can of oil with you to lubricate the hole every few seconds. But be careful not to get oil on the surface of any of your wood pieces, as that will foil your attempts to glue pieces of wood together, or to put nice finishes on the wood when the piece is complete.
There’s a spoked handle that you turn to drive the drill-bit into the piece of work. There’s a table which is normally square to the drill-bit, but that can be adjusted if you need to drill a hole at an angle. We stand at the drill press, one hand holding the work firmly against the table, the other working the handle to move the drill-bit into the wood. If you have long hair and you’re not careful, you can get it caught in the pulleys and lose a tuft. If you have loose clothing or, God forbid, a necktie, you can get reeled violently into the machine like a big dull catfish being reeled into a boat.

Careful of blowout
When you’re drilling holes with multi-spur bits, you have to drill from both sides of the wood, or the bit will tear the opposite surface as it goes through the board. It will also tear up the table of the drill-press. So the location of the hole is marked with a smaller bit, say one-eighth, that goes through the board. You drill in a little way with the big bit, then turn the board over and drill from the other side. Doesn’t that double the number of holes you’re drilling?

The saw, the hole-saw, and nothing but the saw
A hole-saw is a specialty tool that’s turned by a drill-motor or drill-press. It’s a circular saw blade with the teeth pointing downward, something like an aggressive cookie-cutter. There’s a smaller twist drill-bit mounted in the middle that guides the center of the hole. They come in sets graduated by the quarter-inch, nestled inside one another like those Russian Babushka dolls. Hole-saws are relatively easy to handle up to six inches in diameter. Bigger than that and they get to be rambunctious. Hole-saws are great for cutting wind holes in reservoirs and windchests. Take a look at this McMaster-Carr page: <http://www.mcmas ter.com/#hole-saw-sets/=9qqoqp>.

Circle cutters
If you need a hole larger than three inches, use a circle cutter (http://www.mcmaster.com/#adjustable-hole-cutters/=9qqq0f). It has a twist drill-bit to center the hole, and a cutter mounted on an adjustable arm. You can set these up to cut holes nearly eight inches in diameter. But be sure to set the drill-press on the slowest speed, and use clamps to hold your work piece to the drill-press table. These tools are pretty scary. They can jam in the track they cut, and the holes often burn during drilling. And if you don’t tighten the set-screw that fastens the adjustable arm, it can get flung across the shop by the motion of the machine.

Oops
What happens if you put a hole in the wrong place? (Never happened to me.) You can glue in a piece of dowel and cut it flush, but the grain will be running in the opposite direction. Better to use a plug-cutter. With this neat tool you can drill into the face of a piece of wood and produce a cross-grained dowel about an inch long. Drill out your mistake with the correct size bit, and glue in your plug. Sand it off and you’ll have a hard time finding it again: <http://www.mcmaster.com/#wood-plug-cutters/=9qqszb&gt;.

The twist
Twist drill bits come in many sizes. I have three basic indexes of twist drill-bits near my drill-press. One goes from one-eighth to one-half an inch, graduated by 64ths. One is an industrial wire-gauge numbered set—the numbers go from 1 (.228″, which is a little less than a quarter-inch) to 80 (.0135″, which is very tiny!). And the third is “letter-gauge” that goes from A (.234″, or .006″ larger than the number 1) to Z (.4130″, or a little smaller than 7/16″).
I have a chart hanging on the wall nearby that shows all three sets graduated by thousands-of-an-inch. If you’re going to drill axle holes in action parts you choose the material you’re going to use for the axle (let’s say it’s .0808″ phosphorous bronze wire), then choose a drill-bit that’s just a little larger. The 3/32″ bit is way too big at .0938″. The #45 bit is .082″ and the #44 bit is .086″. Here the choice would be between the #45 and the #44, so I’d drill one of each and try the wire in the hole. But wait! I have one more trick—a set of metric twist drill-bits graduated by tenths-of-a-millimeter. The 2.2-millimeter bit is .0866″. That’s .0006″ larger than the #44 but I bet it’s too large. The 2.1-millimeter bit is .0827″. That’s only .0019″ larger than the wire—would be a pretty close fit—probably too tight.
If you’d like a glimpse at what these sets of bits look like, go to <http://www.mcmaster.com/#catalog/116/2416/=9qg6xs&gt;. This is page 2416 of the catalogue of McMaster-Carr Industrial Supply Company, an absolute heaven for the serious hardware shopper. The “Combination Set” at the top of the page has the 64ths to 1/2″, numbers 1–60, and 1–13mm graduated by half-millimeters–—total of 114 bits for $286.54. But be reasonable—this is not the perfect Father’s Day gift for every home handyman. A simple set that goes from 1/8″ to 1/2″ graduated by 32nds to 1/4″ and 16ths to 1/2″ will be plenty, available for about twenty bucks from your Home Depot or Lowe’s store. (I prefer the
DeWalt sets.)

Why the fuss?
You might wonder why I would spend so much energy choosing the right drill-bit, and spending so much money to have at hand an appropriate variety of bits from which to choose. (I bet I have more than $5,000 worth of drill-bits.)
A pipe organ is a musical instrument. It’s a work of art. It’s a work of liturgical art. It’s a very special creation. But look inside an organ—any type of organ—and you see machinery. You see thousands of parts and pieces all hung together to make a whole. Some organs look downright industrial inside. That defines a conflict. How can a ten-ton pile of industrial equipment be considered artwork?
The answer is simple. If it’s built to exacting specifications so the sense of the machine melts into the magic of musical response to the fingers and feet of the musician, then it’s artwork. No question, there is such a thing as a pipe organ that’s little more than a machine, but that is not the ideal which our great artist-organbuilders strive to achieve.
If I spend an extra hour making sure that the axle-holes I drill in the set of squares I’m making are exactly the right size, then that keyboard action will feel good to the organists’ fingers, there will be no slop or wobble in the feel of the keys, and the machine I’m making will not impose itself between the musician and the music. (Squares are those bits of tracker action that allow the action to turn corners.)
And remember, if I’m making squares for an organ, I’m making enough of them for each note on the keyboard, and if it’s a larger organ with several keyboards and actions that turn several corners, I might be making 500 squares for the single instrument. While I’m doing that, as long as I think there will be another organ to build, I might as well make a bigger batch—let’s say I’ll spend a week making 2,500 squares. Each has an axle hole, and each has an action hole at the ends of its two arms. That’s 7,500 holes. And those holes are so small that I’ll produce only enough sawdust to fill a coffee can. (I don’t know why I say sawdust when I’m talking about drilling holes, but I’ve never heard anyone say drilldust, and neither has my spellchecker.)

§

The other day I was in a meeting with people from a church who are in the very early stages of dreaming about acquiring a pipe organ. One fellow was really surprised by the cost of organ building—“how can it possibly cost that much to build an organ? You’re going to have to convince me.” I answered him by talking about thousands of person-hours, tons of expensive materials, a workshop equipped with a wide variety of industrial machinery and tools, and collective lifetimes of careful learning and experience forming our staff.
I also told the group that the moment the doubters in a congregation finally really understand why organbuilding is so expensive is the day the new organ is delivered to the church, and the entire sanctuary is filled with exquisitely crafted parts. I’ve been present for the delivery of many new pipe organs, and I’ve often heard the comment, “Now I see why it cost so much.”
As I drove away from that church, my mind took me on this romp about fussing with drill-bits, a reflection on the care, thought, precision, and resourcefulness that I so admire amongst my colleague organbuilders. So I ran back to my hotel room and started to write. I can do the same with lots of other kinds of tools. Want to come see my saws? ■

The show must go on.

Each month, The Diapason sports a flashy color photo of a pipe organ on the front cover. (So do the other guys.) These photos show the glamorous side of the trade—exciting new instruments and important renovation projects. The “centerfold” articles typically include statements by the organbuilder, the local musician, the pastor, and chair of the organ committee. Each is testament to a bold adventure in which a local church or educational institution commits a lot of effort and a ton of money to the commissioning and building, or rebuilding, of a musical instrument.

Once an organ is installed, and the celebration is past, it’s important to maintain it so it will always sound its best, and the owners’ investment is protected. I’ve just spent a week in Boston doing service calls, reflecting on how that work has changed over the years, and enjoying those long relationships with the instruments and their buildings.

Job one

Tuning, cleaning, and repairing of dead notes and ciphers make up the bulk of the routine of pipe organ maintenance, but I think the most important part of the job is being sure the organ is safe. Countless organs have been damaged or destroyed by fire, roof leaks, vandalism, and other forces. This past August, an early organ built by John Brombaugh was lost when the First Evangelical Lutheran Church of Lorain, Ohio, was destroyed by fire, and I have been corresponding with a church in North Carolina that lost a fine Schantz organ to fire early this year. I know that the parish in North Carolina had proper and adequate insurance coverage, so they will be able to rebuild and to replace their pipe organ. I hope the same for the people in Lorain, but Brombaugh’s Opus 4 is surely irreplaceable.

The careful organ technician should encourage the owner of a pipe organ to review their insurance policies to be sure that the organ is properly covered. It’s common for people to find that the organ is insured for its original purchase price—fine if the organ is a few years old, but you’re going to lose big if your four-manual E. M. Skinner organ is insured for the same $27,000 that bought it in 1928. It’s usual for an insurance company to require an assessment of the organ. This can be provided by your organ technician, the company that originally built the instrument, or by any knowledgeable and reputable organbuilder. The assessment report should include photographs of the organ, inside and out, to document its complexity, accurate specifications, the history of any rebuilding projects or major repairs, and mention of any prominent musicians who have performed on it. And the figure stated as “replacement value” should include consideration of quality of construction, description of the degree of ornamentation of an organ case, gold leaf, and any special voices included that are particularly expensive or difficult to obtain. For example, an original Skinner Harp is worth a truckload of Tierces!

The careful organ technician will also encourage the organ’s owner to inspect the roof and walls that surround the organ, and the condition of heating, ventilation, and plumbing equipment that may pass through the organ chambers. Recently, a lovely Aeolian-Skinner organ in my care suffered significant damage to the static reservoir and Spencer blower located in the basement of the church, caused by the rupture of a frozen water main. The lower level of the building was flooded—lots of flooring, carpeting, and furniture were destroyed, and the repairs to the organ were fully covered by the comprehensive scope of the insurance policy.

One bad shingle, one missing piece of flashing, and the right storm can wreck an organ.

Hygiene

In my home parish in the 1960s the sexton was an old gent from the back woods of Maine, complete with the authentic accent and the salty talk. My father, the rector, kept a running list of Don Wilkins’s colorful turns of phrase and when Don retired, published a pamphlet recalling them. Don organized the care of the building’s “systems,” kept the floors clean, and wearing an old white Oxford shirt with sleeves rolled up and a skinny dark tie, made and served the Sunday morning coffee. Forty and fifty years ago, the standing equipment in a building like that wasn’t as sophisticated or complicated as it is now, and Don knew how to keep the place humming and sparkling.

It’s common now for churches not to have sextons, but to hire cleaning contractors instead. The volunteers on the property committee look after the physical plant, and simply put, I’ve seen some pretty big mishaps resulting from well-meaning, volunteer oversight. 

My dictionary has two definitions for the word oversight:

1. An unintentional failure to notice or do something.

2. The action of overseeing something.

Definition 2 describes the well-meaning committee member. Definition 1 describes the inevitable result of uninformed supervision. 

It’s too bad when failing to change a filter leads to a mechanical disaster. Hiring professional cleaners while relying on volunteer mechanical maintenance is a false economy. It would be better to have volunteers cleaning, and hire a stationary engineer to look after the equipment. A two-hour visit each month would do it. He would create a schedule for maintenance of the HVAC and elevator motors, alarm systems, and other necessary equipment. He would recommend contractors and oversee their work.

Over years of writing reports for consultation clients, I’ve used the term Institutional Hygiene. I use it to describe the general condition of a building as it affects and influences the care of the equipment. Using mechanical areas for general storage is the perfect example. Decades-old Christmas decorations stacked around and against a furnace is the next thing to arson. In one client church, I have to pass through an attic to reach the organ chamber. During a tuning, I noticed a “Manger Hay Bale” piled with the artificial Christmas trees. There was vapor, some combination of steam and smoke, coming from the bale—composting for Christ. I schlepped it down the ladder and mentioned it to the administrator in the church office, then went to lunch. When I got back, the hay bale was back in the attic, smoking away. Bad hygiene.

There was the frantic call on a Saturday morning: the church is full, the bride has arrived, and the organ won’t play. “I turned on the blower switch and the lights came on, but no sound.” I raced to the church, arriving to the din of vamping bagpipes, to find a card table sucked up against the air intake for the organ blower. Bad hygiene.

And there was the call from the organist who said she couldn’t imagine what happened, but the organ suddenly sounds horrible. I found a stack of folding chairs on the reservoir, doubling the wind pressure. Bad hygiene.

And there was the call from the organist of the church with the card table, saying she couldn’t imagine what happened, but the organ suddenly sounds horrible. This one was out of their control. The Public Library across the street was being demolished, and they were using dynamite to move stone so the foundation for the new building could be deeper. Every capped pipe and every reed pipe had the daylights knocked out of it!

There’s another level of hygiene that’s a little more sensitive to discuss because it involves your personal habits. A cup of coffee (especially with sugar) or a can of soda is a terrible thing to introduce to your organ console. Maybe it’s sitting innocently on the stop jamb and seems pretty safe, but there have been two episodes in my career when such a quaff has fallen onto the keyboards. Felt bushings, silver contacts, even the glue that holds the ivories to the keys can be compromised and the repair can cost many thousands of dollars.

I’m lucky enough to have a vintage rosewood Steinway at home that came to me through generations of my family. We have a sign next to it that says, “Nothing on the piano, please.” I do not hesitate to speak up when a guest places a drink on my rosewood. It’s not about the wood—there’s an impervious finish on it. It’s about the sensitive, delicate, balanced action inside, made of wood, and bedecked with felt and various fine metals. It’s one instance when a martini is not a preservative.

Many organists don’t like to be called on this issue, so take this as a quiet and anonymous hint. The damage caused by such a spill is not worth the cost of a cup of coffee.

Second to a sugary drink, paperclips are the enemy of the organ’s keyboards. They can cause keys to jam together, and they can wind up on the contacts causing wild cross-ciphers.

And there was the call…

There are a lot of things an organist can do to help the tuner/technician, and many of them are based in common sense. It’s not always easy to tell where a problem is coming from, and mishaps like ciphers can be intermittent. If an organist calls to say there was a cipher on Sunday, but it went away, there’s nothing I can do. If in the heat of battle, you hear a cipher but can’t stop to locate it, there are a few clues that might help recreate it.

Maybe you’re sharp enough to tell me which note of which stop ciphered. If you were playing a trumpet tune as a wedding march, I bet a dollar that the cipher happened when you trilled between F# and G on the Great Trumpet. But if it was more elusive, you can give me a hint.

As soon as you finish the hymn, anthem, or response during which the cipher occurred, jump for your Organ Notebook (don’t tell me there’s no organ notebook on the console!), and write down the piece you were playing, and what registration or piston you were using. Leave the music on the console with a note saying on what page, on what line, in what measure the cipher occurred. If I play the same music with the same registration, the cipher might reappear. If I hear it, I’ll fix it. You can even narrow down the division. While you’re hearing the cipher, make up an excuse to use the Swell pedal. You’ll know right away if the cipher was in the Swell. That may not seem like much, but a clue is a clue. If I know you had a cipher in the Swell strings, I’ll stand in the Swell box while my assistant runs up and down the keyboard. Maybe I’ll hear a little whimper. If I hear it, I’ll fix it!

And there was the call from the organist who left a message on the answering machine saying, “The F-key sounds funny.” (True story.) Hmm. There are twenty-five stops on two keyboards, and eight stops in the pedals. That makes 274 “F-keys” in the organ. And maybe it’s not a single pipe that sounds funny. I’m not sure of which equation to use to compute the number of possible of combinations, but let’s say I square 274. That’s 75,076 possibilities. You can be specific (Great Melodia, #30, F above middle C, etc.), or you can help me find it (Hymn 242, third line, second measure, General 3). I’ll find it.

And there was the call from the cathedral organist. That organ has more than eighty stops on four manuals, and it’s more than an hour away. He called in a panic: “The organ is wildly out of tune.” I know very well that unless there has been some big event, like the dynamite at the library, a huge organ in a big stone church doesn’t just fly out of tune. But I jumped in the car, and raced to the cathedral. One pipe in the Pedal Clarion was out of tune. To be fair, it was way out of tune, but to this day, I can’t imagine why he didn’t poke around for a moment to identify it. Was it worth my losing a Saturday afternoon with my family? I think he would have been fine without the Pedal Clarion.

And there was the call from the organist of a church on Martha’s Vineyard. If you’re not familiar with “The Vineyard,” all you need to know is that it’s a quiet little sand-spit of an island offshore from Cape Cod in Massachusetts that morphs into an elite playground for the rich and famous during the summer. U.S. Presidents go there to play golf. Senators keep their lavish wooden yachts there. The summer social life on Martha’s Vineyard is transplanted directly from Embassy Row in Washington.

But this call was off-season. It was Maundy Thursday, and the organ was ciphering. Early the following morning, Good Friday, of course, I drove the hundred miles to the ferry slip, paid $90 for a round-trip ticket, enjoyed the hour-long passage to the island, drove to the church, fixed the cipher, and went home. The whole adventure took ten hours, and included two hundred miles of driving plus the cost of the ferry. I sent an invoice for nearly a thousand dollars. The organist was furious. “You were only in the church for ten minutes.” True enough, but I fixed your cipher on Good Friday, and it took all day. (By the way, I had my own service to play that night.) 

The tuner is coming this week.

There is a short list of things that you, the organist, can do to prepare for my visit. I’m sure my colleagues in this important work will have things to add, and I look forward to hearing from them.

1. Clean up around the console. The tools of your trade include hymnals, organ music, octavo scores, empty coffee cups (tsk!), paper clips (tsk!), cough drops, Kleenex (fresh and used), nail clippers and files, Post-Its, rolls of tape, hair brushes, etc. I can move them for you, but the meter is running, and I’ll never be able to put things back where they were. I’ve used my cell phone camera to document the piles of music, but it’s a nuisance. If you know I’m coming, take a half hour after the service to straighten things up.

2. Be sure the heat or air conditioning will be on. The rule is simple: We want to tune the organ in the same conditions for which it’s used in public. If the heat is turned up to 68˚ two hours before the service, turn the heat up to 68˚ two hours before the tuning. There was the time when after three or four visits to a certain church with the heat forgotten each time, the sexton announced to us joyfully, “I’ve got it good and hot in there for you this time.” That didn’t help!

3. Leave me a note. I trust that you’ve been writing things down in the notebook. (Don’t tell me there’s no notebook!) But take a minute to share your observations and concerns. You can call, text, e-mail, or leave an “analog” note on the console. If I don’t hear anything from you, I’ll do my best, but I may not stumble across what’s bothering you most.

4. Follow up. Please don’t call me ten weeks later saying, “Ever since you were here …” The organ changes character when the temperature changes, it’s affected by humidity—especially rain—or extreme dryness. If I missed something, or if something jumped out of tune, let me know that week.

If you don’t know the rules, let me clean the keyboards. A heavy spray of detergent and a lot of scrubbing will cause damage. 

Above all, it’s best if you and I know each other. We should have lunch together once in a while, or at least a good chat in the choir loft. I’d like to hear you play, to see how you sit at the keyboards. I can tell a lot by studying your piston settings, but the more I know about how you use the organ, the better. Feel free to ask me about the organ. The more you know about the organ, the better. Let’s keep that thing sounding good. 

John Bishop takes on Facebook and wonders how it applies to organists

Facebooking the music

Fifty years ago when television was a fledgling technology, it was touted as a great educational tool. That has proven true to some extent, but I wonder how many of us think that education is the primary function of television. If you took away all the sports, movies, crime dramas, sitcoms, reality shows, and talk shows, you’d be left with the Home Shopping Network and children’s television. Children’s television, carefully filtered, is not far from the only programming that’s specifically intended as educational. Even PBS nature programming has evolved into “blood and guts” television. What used to be beautifully photographed documentaries about tree frogs has become action-terror shows about sharks, crocodiles, and volcanoes with that macho-tension-danger tone of narration. What if some future inter-stellar traveler used a week of television programming to sum up modern American civilization? He would miss the pipe organ altogether.

The origins of Facebook are pretty fuzzy, especially because there are ongoing disputes about who actually came up with the idea and who stole what from whom. But it’s clear enough that one of the early iterations called Facesmash included a trick where photos of two Harvard students showed on your screen and you would vote for which was more attractive. I think I read that Facesmash founder Mark Zuckerberg set this up because he was annoyed when a girl jilted him. This did not fly well at politically correct Harvard University and Zuckerberg was called up in front of the disciplinary board. 

All this implies that Facebook wasn’t founded on high moral principles, but it sure is a medium that is missing its potential by a wide margin. When Facebook started getting popular, I was aware that members of my family were making posts about having the sniffles, or changing brands of toothpaste, and I was easily able to stay clear. But once while I was out of town sharing a nice dinner with a colleague, he talked at some length about how much he enjoyed keeping in touch with what’s going on in the organ business by “Facebooking” with his friends. He showed me how friends were sharing ideas, posting photos of organ installations, and generally carrying on the kind of trade chatter that I love.

I joined. I made it clear to family members that I intended to keep my presence on Facebook professional, and now I have about eight hundred friends, most of whom are organ professionals. Even so, you’ll not be surprised to hear that plenty of my professional friends make unprofessional posts. One guy who posts frequently seems to have nothing to say other than, “Good morning. Got my coffee.” Another friend posts photos of his cats virtually every day. Nice cats, but I get it already. And really, friends, photos of fancy cocktails and beautiful restaurant meals have a way of looking alike. I wonder how long it will take Internet engineers to develop the ability to transmit smells?

Here’s a little lecture, for what it’s worth. When you post something on Facebook, remember that anyone can read it. So choir directors, never post yourself whining about volunteer choir members. Your success as a church musician depends on your ability to recruit, nurture, and maintain volunteer singers. Imagine how dear Mabel, who sings so loud and so flat, is going to feel if she reads you complaining about having to work with her. You’re being paid to do that work. She is giving of her discretionary time for the privilege of singing under your direction as part of her worship experience. Accept that as flattery and work it out.

And organbuilders, never post yourself whining about your clients. If you care at all about your professional future, remind yourself how precious is the client that chooses a pipe organ when so many alternatives are available. We used to take them granted—there would always be organs to build. That’s not the case anymore, and we must recruit, nurture, and maintain our clients. If you feel you have to complain, do it in private.

Why are we doing this, anyway?

Several of my (Facebook) friends stand out because their posts are so constructive, informative, and celebratory. Neal Campbell is director of music and organist at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Darien, Connecticut, and is editor of the newsletter of the New York City Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. He is a wonderful historian, especially regarding church music in New York. He posts frequently on Facebook, sharing photos and information about those organists whose names we all know, and about whom we know nothing. He also sets a standard for how to post about a volunteer choir—sharing his pleasure with the choristers he works with. Neal’s posts are thoughtful, charming, informative, and encouraging. If I were a parishioner at St. Luke’s, Neal’s tone on Facebook might just inspire me to join the choir. It’s obviously the place to be.

Walden Moore is another Connecticut Episcopal organist who uses Facebook wonderfully. He has served Trinity Church on the Green in New Haven for nearly thirty years. He has a long history of mentoring distinguished assistant organists and organ scholars (I suppose I would too if my neighbor were the Yale Institute of Sacred Music—quite a talent pool!), and he leads three wonderful choirs in a beautiful building with a marvelous organ. Walden is a regular on my Facebook page, and his posts reflect the joy of playing the organ, working with choirs, and working with a raft of brilliant musicians. Plenty of the photos he posts show restaurant tables, but it’s not primarily about the food. What stands out is that everyone in each photo is smiling or laughing. Now that’s church music!

Yesterday I saw this post from the mother of boys who sing under Walden’s direction: 

‘Believe in yourself. Believe in yourself as much as I believe in you.’—Mr. Moore to his choirboys at rehearsal tonight as they wrestled with a rhythmically thorny passage in a Distler piece. This is why my boys sing in choirs; would that every child could have this opportunity.

You go, Walden. More of that kind of thinking, and choir practice will take precedence over soccer. If everyone used Facebook like that, the world would be a better place.

It’s not just any wind

Recently, Walden posted photos of the two organ blowers in Marquand Chapel at Yale—one for the Skinner organ, the other for Taylor & Boody. Here’s what he said to accompany those photos:

Looking forward to the first class meeting of Liturgical Keyboard Skills tomorrow. Here are two almost never-seen views of the blowers for Marquand’s two equally fine and beautiful organs, built by Ernest M. Skinner and Taylor & Boody. The two blowers pictured, just like the organs, are as different as they could be, but the difference in the wind provided is not reflected by the impact of the two organs in the chapel space. Both lead in the way in which they were designed, and each is a fine representation of the builder’s art.

A tidbit like this is food for thought. Look at these two photos and note the differences between the two machines. One is modern, sleek, and compact, and ironically enough, provides the wind for a new organ based on ancient principles. The other is a “Spencer Orgoblo,” the workhorse of the twentieth-century electro-pneumatic organ. You can easily find the specifications of the two organs online. They are similar in size, at least in number of stops. The Taylor & Boody organ has more pipes, but I bet the Skinner weighs more!

One organ has sub-semitones on all three keyboards. One has two separate expression enclosures. One has lots of pistons, one has three big wedge-shaped reservoirs that can be pumped by foot power. One is in a chamber with curtains and a discreet façade, the other is in a free-standing case built of hardwood, opulently decorated with carvings and gold leaf. In tonal structure, philosophy, intent, and mechanical systems, the two instruments could hardly be more different, but they are both pipe organs, and they share the same air space. And that same air runs through the two blowers into the wildly different mechanical entities, producing as wide a variety of tone colors as you’ll ever hear on six keyboards. (Curt Mangel and Peter Conte, you stay out of it!)

I love wind. I’ve written about it frequently in these pages. I chose the title of this column because of the organ’s dependency on wind, and because, as Bob Dylan told us in his 1962 song, “The answer is blowing in the wind” is an enigmatic phrase that means either the answer is so obvious that you’re a fool if you don’t get it, or it’s as free-flowing and omni-directional as the wind. “In the wind” is the equivalent of “the grapevine”—a vehicle for the exchange of ideas and/or the proliferation of gossip.

By the way, “Blowin’ in the Wind” is number 14, and “Heard It through the Grapevine” is number 80 in Rolling Stone magazine’s list of 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Funny, I looked up the list and didn’t find a single one of Schubert’s 600. Surely “Der Erlkönig” should have made it. And what about “I Got Rhythm?” All time greatest? How are we defining a song? Dylan gets all the way through his song singing only eight different notes. And I could name that tune in one note.

I think of wind in two different ways. There is the wind I know I cannot control, and the wind I think I can control. We live on a tidal shore and the “sea breeze” is a favorite of mine. This is not just a wind that blows by the sea. It’s a specific phenomenon caused by the warm afternoon sun heating up the land mass faster than the ocean’s surface. The warm air rises off the land, and the cooler air rushes in off the ocean to take its place. It blows up the river and right through our house, and it’s the most refreshing atmosphere ever. The only way I can control that wind is by opening and closing certain doors, causing it to turn at the end of the back hall and blow into the garage, which is my workshop. Wonderful.

In that workshop, I do all kinds of things that make me think I can control wind. I build windlines, releather windchests, and replace gaskets. I releather reservoirs—those ingenious devices that receive and store air pressure generated by the organ blower, regulate it to a specific intentional level of pressure, and then distribute it to the organ’s pipes as the player demands air by playing notes that open valves. I can claim to be in control of that wind, but it’s pretty crafty, always trying to escape and rejoin the rest of its free-spinning family. We call that “wind leaks.”

Here’s a tiny organ blower that’s been on a shelf in my workshop for several years. In the trade, we call this a “pancake” blower because of its horizontal orientation. It’s what you might find in a portable continuo organ, and it would be adequate for a gentle Positiv organ of six stops or less. But it would not provide enough pressure and volume of air for even one Skinner Diapason.

And here is the huge blowing plant for the mighty organ at Woolsey Hall at Yale University, training ground for all those organ scholars at Trinity Church on the Green. These beautiful specialized machines provide all the wind pressure for nearly two hundred ranks of heavy-duty Skinner pipes, including a fleet of thirty-twos. These two machines are redundant—if one quits, the other takes up the charge. They are each 20-horsepower motors that run on 440 volts of direct current. They have two pressure outputs regulated to 12 inches and 27 inches of wind pressure. Joe Dzeda, one of the curators of this wonderful organ, tells me that they run at 900 rpm, were built in 1915 and 1916, and are among the oldest electric motors in the State of Connecticut. Anyone who has been around the students at Yale knows this is a workhorse organ—the blowers are running between 40 and 50 hours each week!

The look of the sound

Look across a modern symphony orchestra and see how many different ways moving pressurized air can be turned into musical tone. The trumpet and the bass tuba are similar in tone production even though their physical sizes are so different. Because the tone is produced by physical “mechanical” vibration (the players’ bi-labial fricative), they are roughly analogous to the reed voices in a pipe organ. The double reeds (oboe, bassoon, English horn) all act the same way, as do the single reeds (clarinet, basset horn, and saxophone). In the orchestra, the only wind instruments that do not have a physical moving part to create the tone are the flutes and piccolos. There, the player directs a carefully produced and aimed column of air across a tiny hole.

Over centuries of experimentation and development, organ builders have created a wide range of tonal colors by manipulating wind through vessels of different sizes, shapes, and construction. Assume an open organ pipe two feet long, which is middle C of an eight-foot stop. It might be the diameter of my thumb (a narrow-scale string like Viole d’Orchestre) or the diameter of a thistle-seed birdfeeder (a broad diapason). It might be made of wood or metal. It might have a narrow mouth (2/9 of the circumference)—imagine the embouchure of the flautist—or it might have a wide mouth. Years ago, a mentor gave me the clear image of air as fuel. In your car, stepping on the throttle (gas pedal) sends more fuel to the engine’s cylinders. In an organ, a wider mouth, a deeper windway, a larger toe-hole all send more fuel to the pipe’s “engine”—the upper lip of the mouth that splits the windsheet creating the vibration that generates the tone. Choosing which of these functions should send more air is at the discretion of the tonal designer or the voicer.

An organ pipe can be tapered, wider at the mouth, narrow at the top (Spitz Flute, Gemshorn) or tapered the other way, wider at the top (Dolcan—an unusual stop). And then—put a stopper in the pipe, cut its length in half, and you have the wide world of Gedeckts, Stopped Diapasons, and Bourdons. In these, a one-foot pipe gives you middle C of that eight-foot stop, and they can be either metal or wood. Drill a hole in the cap of a metal Gedeckt, solder a little tube to it and you have a Chimney Flute or Rohrflöte. I like to think that drilling that hole sets the quint free (22⁄3′ harmonic)—that’s what gives the lyrical brightness to a Chimney Flute.

I think an important test of the tonal content of an organ is to compare eight-foot flutes. A big organ might have five or six of them. Sort out which are stopped flutes and which are open, and play the same passage on each. If they are all different, individual voices, the tonal designer and voicer have done their jobs. It’s surprising how all the flutes sound alike in some large, and otherwise good organs. The wonderful Hook & Hastings organ at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston, now dismantled and stored because the church closed, stood out for me as an instrument with a wide—even wild—variety of flute tone.

Let’s go back to those two blowers at Marquand Chapel. Any organbuilder would be able to tell which blower belongs to which organ by listening to a couple measures played on each instrument, or simply by looking at photos of the organs and the blowers. The type and style of the blower is analogous to the type and style of the organ. And any organbuilder could compare photos of ranks of pipes with their sounds. If you look at a Gedeckt pipe and choose the sound of a Diapason, you’re
no organbuilder!

The wide variety of shapes and types of organ pipes means that one blower can draw air from its surroundings, blow it into the organ, and allow the organist to blend sounds like the old-master painter chose and blended colors. I suppose when you were starting out with organ lessons your teacher may have given you rules about how to choose stops. Here’s one I remember, don’t put a four-foot Flute above an eight-foot Principal. Almost fifty years later I ask, why not? If it sounds good to me, maybe the listeners will like it too.

Or will I read a Facebook whine that says, “I heard Bishop play last night and wouldn’t you know, he used a four-foot Flute above an eight-foot Principal.”

By the way, if you’re lurking about on Facebook, take a look at Andrew Gingery’s page. Andrew is a longtime member of the staff at C. B. Fisk, Inc. They’re installing a new blue organ in Japan. And while you’re at it, visit John Pike Mander of Mander Organs in the UK—he’s installing a new organ at the Anglican Cathedral in Kobe, Japan. Take their cues about what Facebook can be, and stop whining. Wonderful. 

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 . . .”

Photos of cats

Read recently on Facebook:

“We each have in our hands an instrument with nearly limitless computing power that gives me instant access to worlds of information, and we use it to publish photos of cats.”

My iPhone is sitting on my desk. It’s seldom more than a few feet away from me. It’s my link to the world. I get nervous when the battery is low. Imagine how awful it would be if the phone went dead while I was on the subway in the middle of a game of solitaire. I’d have to sit there and stare at a carload
of nutcases.

The iPhone (or any so-called “smart phone”) is a fantastic tool. It enables me to stay in touch with co-workers and clients when on the road. The ability to take a photo and send it away instantly is a fantastic aid when sorting out mechanical issues at projects. Need to send the specs of a blower motor to a repair shop? Take a photo of the engraved plate. Poof. I can make and change airplane, train, and hotel reservations. I keep my calendar and contacts organized. I can access bank accounts to transfer funds and pay bills. I can create and send invoices for service calls as I leave the church. You’d think that such a gizmo would have nothing but positive effects.

But there’s a hitch. They’ve turned us into a race of navel gazers. On any street corner you’ll see people standing still, staring into their phones. People stop suddenly while walking to go into their phones. The other day on the street, I was hit in the shoulder by a woman who was gesticulating while arguing with someone on the phone. And another tidbit from Facebook—a friend posted a photo of a woman dressed in yoga togs on the down escalator from New York’s Columbus Circle to the Whole Foods store, balancing a huge stroller laden with toddler with one hand, the other hand holding the phone to her ear. Sounds like child neglect and endangerment to me.

People talk on the phone at restaurant tables with friends, they talk on the phone at the cashier in a grocery store, they talk on the phone in the middle of a business meeting. Do those phones help us get more done, or do they keep us from getting anything done?

And worse, if we let them, our phones will affect the flow of human thought in generations to come. I did perfectly well without a smart phone until I was in my forties, but my kids have pretty much grown up with them. And our grandson Ben, at eighteen months old, is adept at managing touch screens—giggling as he swipes to change photos, touching icons, all the while staring intently at the thing. Thank goodness his parents read to him, and I hope he grows up learning conversational skills that seem to be eroding today. 

Innovation

The last century has been one of innovation. Many of the most important developments have come with significant downsides. The automobile has given us unlimited mobility, but it has torn up the landscape and poisoned the skies. The technological revolution has given us connectivity that we could not have imagined a generation ago, but it has compromised good old-fashioned face-to-face human contact. Image a guy breaking up with his girlfriend by text message. It happened in our family! Suck it up and face the woman, bucko.

Also, mass production and mass marketing has led to homogeneity. People in Boston and Tucson buy the same candlesticks at Crate and Barrel, as if there were no cultural differences between those regions.

These concepts apply to our world of pipe organs. In that world, the second half of the twentieth century was dominated by a debate about innovation. We argued in favor of the imagined purity of historic instruments and wondered exactly how they sounded when played by the artists of their day, or we argued in favor of the convenience of registration devices, the effect of expression enclosures, and the flexibity of organ placement made possible by electric actions. Both sides made cases about how unmusical were the instruments favored by the other camp. 

The result of the decades-long debate is generally a positive one. It’s true that many wonderful historic organs, especially early twentieth-century electro-pneumatic organs, were displaced and discarded by new tracker organs. But after all, that trend was a simple repeat of one sixty years earlier, when hundreds of grand nineteenth-century instruments were discarded in favor of the newfangled electro-pneumatic organs in the beginning of the twentieth century. 

Described in terms of the history of organbuilding in Boston, we threw out Hook organs in the 1910s and 1920s to install Skinners, and we threw out Skinners in the 1960s and 1970s to install Fisks and Noacks. What goes around, comes around.

Homogeneity

Until sometime in the second half of the twentieth century, each organbuilder’s work was unique. Any serious organist, blindfolded, could tell the difference between a Skinner console and an Austin console. The profile of the keycheeks, the weight and balance of the keyboards, the layout of the stop controls, the sound of the combination action, and the feel of the pedalboard were all separate and distinct.

I had a fascinating conversation with a colleague one night in a bar, during which we discussed the evolution in organbuilding toward homogeneity. Supply houses have become increasingly important to us, which means, for example, that our consoles have that “Crate and Barrel” syndrome. For example, there’s one brand of electric drawknob motors widely favored in the industry. They work beautifully and reliably, and they’re easy to install. So many firms building both electric and mechanical action organs use them on their consoles. They’re great, but they smudge the distinguishing lines between organbuilders.

There are several firms that supply keyboards to organbuilders. There is a hierarchy of quality, and builders can make choices about which organs should have what keyboards. If you’re renovating the console of an indistinct fifty-year-old organ, it doesn’t make much sense to install fancy keyboards at ten-thousand a pop, when a thousand-dollar keyboard will work perfectly well. But when comparing organs of high quality, we notice when different builders are using keyboards from the same sources. Again, the lines are smudged.

But here’s the thing. If a basic component of an organ is developed at high quality and reasonable cost by a specialist, the organbuilder can cross that off his list knowing that it will function perfectly and reliably, freeing him to put his effort into another part of the instrument. Ideally then, each hour saved by the purchase of ready-made parts can be put into voicing and tuning.

Ernest Skinner put lots of time and resources into the development of his famous Whiffle Tree expression motor. Today, there are three or four suppliers who manufacture electric expression motors with digital control systems. They use the motors developed for wheelchairs, and the controls allow the organbuilder to program the speed and distance of each stage. When shutters are opening, it’s great when the first step can be a tiny one, with the subsequent stages getting larger and larger. And even Mr. Skinner knew that it was an advantage when closing the shutters, for the last stage to be slower than the others to keep the shutters from slamming. He did it by making the exhaust valve smaller in the last stage so the power pneumatic wouldn’t work as fast. We do it by programming a slower speed.

When organbuilders get together, you hear chat about who uses which drawknobs, which expression motors, which solid-state relays and combination actions. We compare experiences about the performance of the machines, and the customer support of the companies that sell them.

Human resources

A fundamental difference between today’s organbuilding companies and those of a century ago is the size of the firms. Skinner, Möller, Kimball, Hook & Hastings, and others each employed hundreds of workers. The American church was powerful, and as congregations grew, new buildings were commissioned by the thousands. There were decades during which American organbuilders produced more than two thousand organs each year. And because the market was so strong, the price points were relatively higher than they were today. So when Mr. Skinner had a new idea, he could put a team of men on it for research
and development. 

Today there are a couple firms with more than fifty employees, but most organ companies have fewer than ten. A shop with twenty people in it is a big deal. In part, this is the result of the ethic of hand-craftsmanship championed during the twentieth-century revival. “Factory-built” organs had a negative stigma that implied that the quality of the artistic content was lower in such an instrument. And there can be little argument that in the mid-twentieth century, thousands of ordinary little work-horse organs were produced.

But the other factor driving the diminishing size and number of independent companies is the decline of the church. Congregations are merging and closing, and other parishes are finding new contemporary forms of musical expression. Electronic instruments now dominate the market of smaller churches. And it’s common to see congregations of fifty or sixty worshipping in sanctuaries that could seat many hundreds. Century-old coal-fired furnaces equipped with after-market oil burners gulp fuel by the truckload. And an organ that would have cost $50,000 in 1925 now costs $1,500,000. That’s a lot of zucchini bread at the bake sale.

I think these are compelling reasons in favor of the common use of basic components provided by central suppliers. Ours is a complicated field, and it’s unusual for a small group of people to combine every skill at the highest level. When I talk with someone who has done nothing but make organ pipes all his life, I marvel at his depth of understanding, the beauty of his drawn solder seams, and his innate sense of π, that mathematical magic that defines circles. He can look at a rectangle of metal and visualize the diameter of the tube it will make when rolled and soldered. The organ will turn out better if he doesn’t also have to make drawknobs.

The comfort of commonality

When Wendy and I travel for fun, we sometimes stay in quaint bed & breakfast inns, enjoying their unique qualities, and chuckling about the quirks and foibles of the innkeepers. But when I’m traveling for business, trying to maximize each day on the road, I prefer to stay in brand-name places. I want to check in, open my luggage, and know that the plumbing, the television, the WiFi, and the heating and air-conditioning will work properly. I want to find a functioning ice machine, and I expect a certain level of cleanliness. Besides, I like amassing rewards points.

Likewise, I’ve come to understand that traveling organists benefit from finding the same few brands of console equipment wherever they go. If you’re on a concert tour, taking a program of demanding music from church to church, you get a big head start when you come upon an organ with a solid-state combination system you’re familiar with. 

Peter Conte, Grand Court Organist of the Wanamaker Store in Philadelphia, played the dedicatory recital on the Casavant we installed at Church of the Resurrection in New York, and I took him to the church to introduce him to the organ. Seconds after he sat on the bench, he was delving through the depths of the menus of the Peterson combination system, setting things the way he wanted them. He knew much more than I about the capabilities and programmability of the organ.

Recently I was talking with a colleague who was telling me about the installation of a new console for the organ he has been playing for nearly forty years. He told me how he had to relearn the entire organ because while it had much the same tonal resources as before, he was able to access them in a completely new way. It was a succinct reminder of how sophisticated these systems have become, and how they broaden the possibilities for the imaginative organist.

So it turns out that for many, the homogeneity of finding the same combination systems on multiple organs allows organists a level of familiarity with how things work. It takes less time to prepare complex registrations, which is ultimately to the benefit and delight of the listener.

The top of the world

Many of us were privileged to hear Stephen Tharp play the massive and magical Aeolian-Skinner organ of The First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church) in Boston as the closing event of this year’s national convention of the American Guild of Organists. The majestic building was crammed with thousands of organists and enthusiasts. I suppose it’s the most important regularly recurring concert of the American pipe organ scene. And what a night it was. The apex, the apogee, the zenith —the best part—was his performance of his transcription of Igor Stravinski’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring). It’s a wildly complex score, but luckily, Stephen is a complex and wild performer! He didn’t play as though it were a transcription, he played as though it were an orchestra. He made 243 registration changes in the course of about thirty-three minutes. That’s roughly 7.4 changes a minute, which means thumping a piston every 8.1 seconds. Try that with two stop-pullers on a big tracker-action organ! For that matter, try that on a fancy electric console with all the bells and whistles. If there ever was an example of how a modern organist is liberated by the possibility of setting thousands of combinations for a single concert, we heard it that night.

Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty…

Last May, Daniel Roth, organist at the legendary church of St. Sulpice in Paris, played a recital on our Casavant organ in New York. Besides the thrill of hearing such a great artist play our instrument, a very deep part of that experience for me was a conversation with Mr. Roth about his research into the life and work of his predecessor, Charles-Marie Widor. It’s a lovely and oft-repeated bit of pipe organ trivia that Widor was appointed as temporary organist there in 1870, and retired in 1937 having never been given a permanent appointment. I don’t know when the first electric organ blower was installed there, but let’s assume it was sometime around 1900, thirty years into his tenure.

There are 1,560 Sundays in thirty years. So Widor played that organ for thousands of Masses, hundreds of recitals, and countless hours of practice and composition while relying on people to pump the organ’s bellows. I’ve seen many photographs of the august Widor, and I don’t think he shows a glimmer of a smile in any of them. He must have been a pretty serious dude. But I bet he smiled like a Cheshire Cat the first time he turned on that blower and sat down for an evening of practice by himself. ν

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House

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

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

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

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

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

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