In the Wind. . . .

Anne Beetem Acker

Unless you read the White House Blog daily, you no doubt missed a quiet but monumental announcement. On February 11, 2014, the White House issued an executive order essentially banning international trade in items containing ivory, as well as tightly controlling movement of personally owned items containing ivory. Two weeks later, on February 25, 2014, Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, released Director’s Order 210 giving the draconian details of implementation. The executive order and director’s order were immediately enforced, including being applied to CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species) import and export applications filed months earlier. Restrictions on intrastate and interstate sales and movement were announced on May 15, 2014, along with other revisions discussed below. The Executive Branch and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service have ignored federal requirements for publication of proposed regulations and public comment before enforcement.

You have perhaps learned, e.g., of violin bows belonging to members of touring European orchestras being confiscated upon entry to the United States, or of the refusal to give a CITES permit for the import of a significant harpsichord by a United States collector/performer. The new regulations are being enforced through immovable, irrational requirements that ignore personal property rights of owners of legally acquired items containing ivory. Further complicating the situation are diverse actions by individual states, in particular, New Jersey, New York, and California. These actions have far-reaching effects among musicians, collectors, musical instrument dealers and repair people, and everyday citizens.

According to President Obama, the United States needs to “lead by example” with tough restrictions on all trade and movement of ivory. It is unclear why any country—especially China, the primary and nearly sole market for illegal new ivory—would be influenced by restrictions in the United States. The U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service has acted, in their words, “to close the loopholes” of transportation and markets for illegal new ivory in the United States, theoretically reducing pressure on elephant populations.

The illogic of thinking a legally acquired musical instrument, or ivory-inlaid 17th- or 18th-century furniture, or ivory Torah pointers, or knives or canes containing antique or pre-Convention (1976) ivory would be conduits for new ivory seems apparent to us, but the new regulations are rigidly defended by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service staff. Director Dan Ashe also states that they cannot tell new from old ivory thus justifying their methods (guilty until proven innocent, yet worse), a statement that has experts and repair people familiar with antique ivory shaking their heads in strong disagreement. In truth, I think he is speaking more to the lack of expertise among inspectors. In the United States, there are few instances of trade in illegal new ivory, though a few notable episodes have helped fuel this maelstrom, one involving faked African antiques in Philadelphia, and another of faked Asian antique figurines in New York City. Both were caught by appropriate profiling of the merchants and thorough investigations. The nets are being cast far wider now, and being visible targets, musical instruments have been particularly persecuted.

So, why the urgency and drama? The story is that the African elephant is in dire danger of losing 1/5 of their population over the next twenty or thirty years and then extinction. Beware the numbers appearing in seemingly reputable publications, as incorrect, unsubstantiated figures are being propagated. In stark contrast, looking at CITES’ own recent reports,¹ there are currently about 500,000 African elephants in Africa, down from a probable 600,000 in 1989.² About 22,000 elephants have been killed in each of the last several years, an admittedly horrific number, but actually decreasing, not increasing as claimed. 

According to the CITES report referenced above, the poaching rate appears to have leveled off and further affirms that poaching is primarily due to “extreme poverty and lack of governance in the affected areas.” Local farmers and corrupt game wardens earn huge payments for leading poachers to their prey. In some countries elephants are already at risk, while in others they are over-populated, causing serious problems by destroying farmers’ crops and overgrazing their own protected preserves. In these countries, culling is necessary. Their governments want to sell their large ivory stores in a controlled fashion, to raise money for the local human and elephant populations. A regular source of legal ivory sales would dramatically bring down prices and deter the brutal and horrific practice of poaching.³

 

Prior and current rules 

(These are subject to change.)

Previously there were no domestic restrictions for sales or travel of items containing ivory and CITES permits could be acquired for import and export of legally acquired ivory by following instructions, paying a fee, and filling out paperwork, a somewhat onerous but do-able process. Exemptions were granted allowing import or export of items that could be demonstrated to be antique (over 100 years old), or pre-Convention (1989 for African elephant ivory). All of this changed in February. “Commercial” imports of ivory are forbidden. Period. No exceptions. Exports are limited, but the hoops to jump through have made permits virtually impossible to acquire. As of May 25, 2014, the details of the regulations were eased somewhat thanks to various musical instrument related organizations with lobbyists working tirelessly in Washington, D.C., but the limitations and requirements are still unreasonable and unclear and were expanded to severely restrict sales within states and across state lines.

The most up to date summary can be found at www.fws.gov/international/travel-and-trade/ivory-ban-questions-and-answ…. Remember while reading this web page and the explanations of it below, that qualifying for the CITES documents is extremely difficult. Here is the summary, with remarks about qualifying for the exemptions below.

 

Commercial imports

Forbidden. If you buy an instrument out of the country, you will not be able to get it into the United States. Note that the term “commercial” is being applied to any transaction that could be conceived of as resulting in a financial gain. For example, if you want to import an instrument and donate it to your favorite institution, they consider that commercial, since you may be applying for a tax deduction for the donation. Instruments bought overseas before the ban was announced, but awaiting their import permits, had their permits abruptly rejected. 

 

Personal imports 

You may import an item containing ivory as part of a household move or inheritance, or as part of your own musical instrument or as part of a traveling exhibition as long as the item contains “worked elephant ivory that was ‘legally acquired’ and removed from the wild prior to February 26, 1976 and has not been sold or otherwise been transferred for financial gain since February 25, 2014.” Thus you will not be able to bring in (or out) of the country any ivory-containing item that was purchased after February 25, 2014. (This is at least a significant improvement of the original specification of not being transferred for financial gain after 1976!) This freezes instrument ownership for touring musicians and amateurs as of the date of the Director’s Order. Additionally, the individual or group must qualify for a CITES musical instrument certificate and the musical instrument containing worked elephant ivory “must be accompanied by a valid CITES musical instrument certificate or equivalent CITES document.” The instructions do not specify what would qualify as an equivalent document. 

Commercial export 

While the rules state that pre-Convention and antique items containing worked ivory may be exported, in reality the new requirements to qualify for a CITES export certificate are extremely difficult-to-impossible to satisfy. Fortunately, in May they did eliminate two of the most ridiculous aspects of the February 25th Director’s Order, wherein 1) no domestically made items containing worked ivory could qualify, and 2) the exporter had to supply evidence that the item had entered through one of the “specified ports” for ivory import/export, despite the fact that these ports did not exist before 1982. If the ivory was repaired or modified after 1973, it will not qualify. If the item was originally imported after 1982, then it must demonstrably have been imported through one of the 13 ports of entry designated for antiques made of Endangered Species Act-listed species (Boston, Massachusetts; New York, New York; Baltimore, Maryland; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Miami, Florida; San Juan, Puerto Rico; New Orleans, Louisiana; Houston, Texas; Los Angeles, California; San Francisco, California; Anchorage, Alaska; Honolulu, Hawaii; and Chicago, Illinois).

To qualify under the antique exemption, the exporter must document the item’s age and identify the species used. Proof of age can be through scientific testing at an accredited laboratory or facility, a qualified appraisal, or provenance through other documentation, such as a detailed history of the item, family photos, ethnographic fieldwork, or other evidence that assigns the work to a known period of time. Fortunately, most musical instruments can be dated quite accurately. The species can be identified through DNA analysis (but this is unusable as the large quantities required would destroy that part of the musical instrument), or a qualified appraisal or other documentation that demonstrates the identification of the species through a detailed provenance. In practice, there have been difficulties with Fish & Wildlife permit examiners insisting on satisfying all of these dating and species methods and requiring a description of the “scientific method” used to make the species determination. Note that there are visual ways to identify the different types of ivory, except that Asian and African elephant cannot be visually distinguished. (See www.fws.gov/lab/ivory_id.php and www.fws.gov/policy/do210A1.pdf.)

Again, the ivory must not have been “repaired or modified.” U.S. Fish & Wildlife agents reviewing applications are insisting on full details of restorations, not just whether the ivory was repaired. This despite that in reality, restorers do not need to, want to, or use (expensive, illegal) new ivory. There are synthetics and ample supplies of surplus antique ivory, e.g., in the form of old piano key tops. Regardless, as the rules are written, if the ivory was repaired, they can refuse the application even if you just filled a crack with dental epoxy. Whether having glued a piece back on would result in denial is unclear.

The burden of proof has been laid heavily on the exporter in an “all are guilty until proven innocent” fashion. Fish & Wildlife agents reviewing applications since February have been virtually impossible to satisfy. Some insist appraisers are trained in biology or wildlife forensics. The director has told them they don’t have to believe any documentation and to “set a high bar.” This writer, who has been importing and exporting antique pianos for over ten years, was informed that the common knowledge, as well as published information, that piano key tops were made from African elephant ivory, was now insufficient. This was despite pointing out that I was initially told by a Fish & Wildlife official years ago that African elephant ivory (Loxodonta africana) was the correct species to specify for ivory key tops and all my other previous applications were all accepted stating this species.

 

The Musical Instrument Certificate or “Passport”

After being besieged by concerned touring musicians, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service and CITES created a new permit certificate for people traveling regularly with their instruments, called the Musical Instrument Certificate or “Passport.” The application is available on the Fish & Wildlife website (www.fws.gov/international/pdf/permit-application-form-3-200-88.pdf).

They require a signed appraisal or other documentation to demonstrate the age of the ivory-containing item, which must pre-date 1976. You must also include a signed statement (though it does not say signed by whom) that the item has not been repaired or modified on or after December 28, 1973, with any part of any species covered by the Endangered Species Act. That should suffice for antiques (over 100 years old), but for export of younger items, it additionally says the applicant must also state whether the item was bought, sold, or “offered for sale by you or anyone else” since December 28, 1973, in which case “there may be a need for additional information and the Division of Management Authority will contact you directly.”

Confusingly on the form, this last category is apparently not applicable if your instrument includes African elephant ivory. What is worrisome is that the wording opens the door to interpretation by the examining agent to not allow the export at all if the subject item contains elephant ivory. Additionally worrisome is the inclusion of a note that African elephant ivory removed from the wild after February 4, 1977, is not considered to be pre-Convention (for the purposes of this application, since it most certainly is in the rest of the world). Given the recent difficulty in establishing the species of elephant to the satisfaction of the USFWS agents, it will likely be difficult to get approval for any personal musical instrument containing ivory to travel.

Note that you need a different CITES form for each endangered species in your instrument, including rosewood and tortoiseshell. Also note that you and your instrument will need to exit and enter the country ONLY through one of the 13 designated ports for ivory: www.fws.gov/le/designated-ports.html.

If your instrument contains a listed endangered plant species, you are further restricted to exit and enter through a designated port for listed plant species: www.aphis.usda.gov/import_export/plants/manuals/ports/downloads/cites.p….

Obviously this makes travel arrangements even more complicated and there are no plans to expand on the number of designated ports.

A fee of $75 is due with the application, which can take 45–60 days or more for approval, processing, and return. The certificate is good for three years, but you must bring the instrument back into the issuing country before it expires, at which point you can apply for a new certificate.

For all forms applicable to musical instruments, see: www.fws.gov/international/permits/by-activity/musical-instruments.html.

 

Domestic: intrastate and 

interstate trade and movement

Beginning on June 26, 2014, domestic sellers of items containing worked African elephant ivory must demonstrate that any item offered for sale—whether across state lines or within a state—was lawfully imported prior to the CITES Appendix-I listing of the African elephant (January 1990) or under a CITES pre-Convention certificate. Appendix-I covers species around the world most at risk as a result of international trade. Non-commercial movement is still allowed. There has been no clarification of how commercial may be defined beyond sale or what documentation is needed for such things as household moves. Some fear that traveling over state lines to perform at a paid concert could be considered a commercial transaction. Emphasis seems to be on sales, but given the vagueness of the rules both to the populace and the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service agents, and recent aggressive enforcement, it is a concern. At least one piano transport truck has already been stopped and questioned with the result that the firm will no longer move pianos with ivory key tops. Another said they would just leave any questioned piano on the roadside and keep going. 

Unfortunately for musicians and others involved with legally obtained pre-Convention ivory, public support for the ban is being fanned with false numbers, hysteria, dramatic photos, and endorsements by celebrities who apparently can’t do the simple research required to discover the truth. For example, the performer Billy Joel publicly requested people save elephants by not having their pianos made with ivory keys, apparently unaware that no pianos have been made with ivory key tops in the United States since 1956 and in Europe since the 1980s. It appears that there is massive funding for public “awareness” and high-level political influence by some large conservation groups.

 

California, New Jersey, and New York State

Individual states have begun a hodgepodge of their own restrictions. In spring of 2012 California began to enforce a law that has been on their books since 1970 by raiding an auction house in northern California and seizing approximately $150,000 worth of ivory objects. This law has no exemption for antique and pre-Convention ivory and criminalizes possession with intent to sell, with stiff penalties. Introduced on May 8, 2014, both houses of New Jersey’s legislature quickly and quietly passed a draconian bill signed by Governor Christie on August 1, 2014. This law includes elephant, hippo, mammoth (which has been legally used to substitute for elephant ivory in recent years), narwhal, walrus, and whale ivory. It is unlawful to import, sell, purchase, offer for sale, barter, or possess with intent to sell any item containing ivory. 

There are no exceptions for antiques or pre-Convention ivory. It is legal to convey ivory to the legal beneficiary of an estate after death or in anticipation of death. The penalties are stiff, and ivory products will be seized and transferred to the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection for “proper disposition.” The New York State legislature quickly followed with a ban on the sale of elephant and mammoth ivory and rhinoceros horn that Governor Cuomo supports. The New York Department of Environmental Conservation may issue permits for the sale of documented antiques over 100 years old and containing less than 20 percent ivory and musical instruments made prior to 1976 (this is bad luck for the New York owners of Bösendorfers and Hamburg Steinways made in the 1980s with ivory key tops). Fines are steep and felony charges possible. (See www.governor.ny.gov/sites/thediapason.com/files/GPB44-IVORY_BILL.pdf.)

In all these cases, vagueness of wording is a serious problem. Technically, federal laws take precedence, but until court battles ensue, those with non-antique but pre-Convention ivory or insufficient “proof of provenance” will not be able to sell their items intact.

 

Current and potential effects

Many antique and pre-Convention cultural artifacts contain ivory, including Torah pointers, George Washington’s false teeth, medical demonstration figures, scrimshaw art, and of course, musical instruments. Key tops, guitar nuts, saddles and tuning pins, wind instrument rings, stringed instrument bows, organ stop knobs, and more have been made from ivory for its workability, beauty, availability, density, durability, and tactile and acoustic properties. Many musical instruments remain in active use for generations and commonly travel with their owners.

Already, the international import ban has prevented collectors from importing important pieces for study, performance, and recording in the United States. Because of the abrupt announcement and enforcement, quite a few people buying or selling internationally have found themselves unable to get instruments to their new homes. Reduced to the domestic market alone, musical instrument values will necessarily drop. If domestic trade is further restricted this summer, the value of ivory-containing objects will be reduced to virtually nothing, nor will anyone be able to receive a tax deduction for donations of instruments to institutions since that is considered “financial gain,” a serious potential loss of donations to colleges, universities, museums, and other public institutions.

The restriction of musical instrument certificates to instruments that have not transferred ownership for any financial gain after February 25, 2014, prevents internationally traveling musicians from upgrading, or ever again purchasing any instruments or bows containing ivory that can travel with them. Given the expense and paperwork to obtain the musical instrument passports, along with the aggressive and suspicious stance of the customs officials, it is highly likely there will be less touring of musicians in and out of the United States. Again, musical instruments containing ivory will be significantly devalued. (See www.wqxr.org/#!/story/newark-officials-seize-budapest-orchestras-violin… and www.nytimes.com/aponline/2014/08/05/us/ap-us-travel-brief-bagpipes-at-t….)

Additionally, it will take a great deal of time, paperwork, and human power to administer and enforce all these new regulations. This will cost taxpayers dearly and consume considerable personal time for applicants, while not preventing the loss of one elephant to poaching.

 

Look-alike problem

It is very important to point out that customs agents are rarely skilled at identifying materials and may even presume, for example, that all instruments of a type are suspect. This has resulted in items containing “look-alike” materials and even with no ivory-like material being confiscated from their cases at border crossings with no explanations. It is highly advisable to have prepared and accompany your instrument with copies of an official appraisal or listing by the maker of the materials used in your musical instrument, whether it contains any suspect species or not. Also insist, as is your right, to be present when your instrument is inspected before shipping. Take photos of what is in the crate or case before shipping.

 

Late-summer developments

On July 14, 2014, two bills (H.R. 5052 in the House of Representatives, and S. 2587 in the Senate) were introduced; both would prohibit U.S. Fish & Wildlife from implementing any “new rule, order, or standard regarding the sale and trade in ivory that was not in place before February 25, 2014.” As of August 2, H.R. 5052 had 20 bi-partisan co-sponsors, an encouraging development. In addition, in early July, the House Appropriations Bill for the Department of the Interior included language that would prohibit U.S. Fish & Wildlife from spending any funds to enforce any rules, orders, or standard not in place before February 25, 2014. The appropriations bill has passed the Senate but faces a battle in the House of Representatives. The appropriations bill language is intended to put a moratorium on enforcement until a permanent method of undoing the disastrous actions of February 11 and 25, 2014, can be put in place. The appropriations bill includes other language against other more publicly controversial programs, but I am hopeful the ivory section will be kept as a trade-off against other concessions. The final hurdle is, of course, whether President Obama will sign or veto any of these bills.

 

What you can do to help

It is urgent that we eventually press for a permanent solution to protect cultural artifacts made before any species included in them was declared endangered. The current problems are regulations and enforcement rules, not laws, and can be changed with enough pressure. Lobbyists are working for groups such as the League of American Orchestras, National Association of Music Merchants, and some private individuals (e.g., through the important Podesta Group), and are kindly sharing information and guidance. Thanks to the efforts of many, we have the promising bills to be debated in Congress. Numbers count! It is critical for as many people as possible to write to their members of Congress, the President, the Secretary of the Interior, the Director of Fish & Wildlife Services, those on the Committee for Wildlife Trafficking (www.fws.gov/international/advisory-council-wildlife-trafficking/bios.ht…), Natural Resources, and the Congressional Committee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans and Insular Affairs. See https://www.govtrack.us/congress/committees/HSII/22.

Most useful is to try to get a personal or phone appointment with your senators and representatives and explain why these regulations are harmful and will not save any elephants. E-mails through their websites are also working for some. Ask them to support and co-sponsor H.R. 5052 and S. 2587. You can find your senators and representatives at www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup.

The important talking points are:

• We want to end the poaching of African elephants and illicit trade in new illegal ivory, but banning the domestic sale and trade of legal ivory in the United States and preventing import of antique and pre-Convention items containing ivory will not stop poaching, nor save one living elephant. 

• The July 2014 CITES meeting emphasized that the cause of poaching is extreme poverty, lack of governance, and corruption in the affected areas. Efforts need to help the affected communities and fund intelligence operations that locate poachers and dealers.

• The ban unnecessarily hurts owners of antiques and pre-Convention items containing ivory legally imported into this country by stripping their value, resulting in a taking of billions of dollars from law-abiding Americans. The domestic ban would devastate the current market in worked ivory items, causing legitimate business owners and everyday citizens tremendous economic harm. Note how the ban will hurt you personally. The analysis of the economic effect of this ban by U.S. Fish & Wildlife is grossly understated.

• The proposed ban would make the survival of cultural and historic artifacts much more unlikely, and keep them out of collections where they would be preserved. It is highly likely that the ban and regulations are against the National Historic Preservation Act of 1966. (See www.nps.gov/history/local-law/nhpa1966.htm.)

• Even the author of the African Elephant Conservation Act of 1989 testified at a congressional hearing on June 24, 2014, that this ban will not help to stop poaching and was never the intent of the AECA. (See www.fws.gov/international/laws/aeca_fv.html.)

• The current requirements for the antique exemption for export are still virtually impossible to meet for many legally obtained items due to a lack of documentation never previously required to stay with the instruments.

• Ideally, ivory regulations should revert to where they were on February 1, 2014, which did indeed stabilize elephant populations since their inception.

 

This is one of those times when we all need to stand up for what is right and fair. Somehow we need to get the powers in charge to understand that not one elephant will be saved by these absurd regulations, but our cultural, historical, and musical heritage will suffer, as will private individuals and owners of small businesses.

Here is contact information for the appropriate government officials:

 

Sally Jewel, Secretary of the Interior

Department of the Interior

1849 C Street, N.W. 

Washington, DC 20240

E-mail: [email protected]

Web: Feedback form

 

Daniel M. Ashe, Fish & Wildlife, Director of External Affairs

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

1849 C Street, NW

Washington, DC 20240

E-mail: www.fws.gov/duspit/contactus.htm

1‑800‑344‑WILD (9453)

 

Barack Obama, President of the United States

The White House

1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, NW

Washington, DC 20500

E-mail: www.whitehouse.gov/contact/submit-questions-and-comments

 

Representative Ed Royce

Chairman, Committee on Wildlife Trafficking

1380 S. Fullerton Road, Suite 205

Rowland Heights, CA 91748

 

To write your local senators and congressmen see: www.opencongress.org/people/zipcodelookup. 

For further reading: www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2014/02/11/fact-sheet-national-stra…. ν

 

Notes

1. www.cites.org/sites/thediapason.com/files/eng/com/sc/65/E-SC65-42-01_2… “Interpretation and implementation of the Convention: Species trade and conservation: Elephants: Elephant Conservation, Illegal Killing and the Ivory Trade,” Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Flora and Fauna, 65th Meeting of the Standing Committee, Geneva, Switzerland, July 7–11, 2014, especially pp. 10–11.

2. A. M. Lemieux and R. V. Clarke, “The International Ban on Ivory Sales and its Effects on Elephant Poaching in Africa,” The British Journal of Criminology (vol. 49, no. 4), 2009, pp. 451–471.

3. Testimony of Jack Fields, June 24, 2014, at Hearing of Subcommittee on Fisheries, Wildlife, Oceans, and Insular Affairs. http://docs.house.gov/
meetings/II/II22/20140624/102350/HHRG-113-II22-Wstate-FieldsJ-20140624.pdf.

John Bishop

The right tool for the right job

Parking a car in New York City is not for the faint of heart. I can reliably find a space in our neighborhood, as long as I remember to feed the meters ($3.50 per hour), and move the car, following street sweeping regulations, between 8:00 and 8:30 a.m. every day except Sunday. If I park at 7:00 p.m. on Saturday, I don’t have to do anything until the Monday morning sweepers. There’s an easy rhythm to weekday parking on East 9th Street. The entire street turns over for the sweepers, and like clockwork, at 8:30, the parking spaces fill with contractors’ trucks. There are six apartment buildings on our block, perhaps eight hundred apartments, and there are always a slew of home renovations going on. Co-op apartment buildings have rigorous rules stating the hours during which contractors can work,¹ so they all drive off between 4:30 and 5:00, and the whole street opens up.  

People in other neighborhoods enjoy “Alternate Side Parking” (ASP). There, parking is free, but cars must be moved at times designated on signs on every street, for example, 9:00 to 10:30 a.m., Monday and Thursday. At those times, car owners sit in their vehicles reading the newspaper, doing e-mail and crossword puzzles, and drinking coffee. An armada of police cars and tow trucks lurks at the end of the block until the appointed time, followed by the sweeper with lights flashing and horns blowing. No one doubts the sincerity of the enforcement of these regulations. The moment the posted time passes, motorists jockey to reclaim their spaces in a two-ton ballet that can get pretty comical.

The city maintains a website/app/phone service called 311 where they publish announcements such as snow-related school closings, and the blessed suspension of ASP for such reasons as religious holidays. When ASP is suspended, parkers get the relief of a few extra days of not having to move their vehicles. Funny when you think of it though—why have a vehicle if you have to go out of your way not to move it?

I have two secret weapons when I need to park my car for more than a couple days. One is a space in a commercial lot at 125th Street in Harlem, frequented by moving companies, bookmobiles, and bloodmobiles. It’s a thirty-minute ride on the subway, but it’s inexpensive and handy. The other came when we finished the installation of an organ in suburban New Jersey a couple years ago, and the pastor generously offered me parking privileges in their lot. It takes me almost an hour to get there by train, but if I’m not going to need the car for more than ten days, it’s worth the ride.

 

City slicker

Throughout my career, I’ve kept a fleet of tool bags, work lights, and vacuum cleaners in my car, taking for granted that I would always be able to park easily close to the job site and carry my tools inside. But when Wendy and I moved to New York City a couple years ago, I realized that I should create a “City Bag” that would stow enough tools for typical service calls and be light enough to be carried on the subway. Simple idea—but it turned out to be a tricky challenge. We work on organs with electric, pneumatic, and mechanical actions, which means I need to have several layers of specialized tools with me. Electrical testing equipment, soldering iron, tuning cones, voicing tools, pallet spring pliers are added to a collection of ordinary hand tools. You don’t need a wind-pressure gauge at every service call, but when you need one, you really need one, and Ace Hardware doesn’t carry them. And a good tool kit includes at least a dozen screwdrivers of different shapes and sizes—there’s always one ornery screw hidden behind a windchest leg that calls for an impossible angle. 

Besides tools, the conscientious organ technician carries an assortment of five or six different types of leather and felt for pneumatic repairs. He has little packages of replacement chest magnets and magnet armatures, leather and Heuss nuts for tracker action (and the special nut driver for the Heuss nuts), felt punchings for keyboards, screws, nails and brads, doodads and widgets. He has wood glue, contact cement, epoxy, and super glue, and he carries a tube of silicone adhesive (tub caulk), but he won’t admit to it. He has silicone lubricant, graphite, WD-40, a styrene candle stub (for lubricating screws), and oil and grease for blower motors. He has a couple flashlights and a fluorescent worklight with extension cord.

The terrific advances in battery technology means that cordless drill/screwdrivers are really useful, and there are some compact models that are surprisingly powerful. With a charger and one spare battery, you can work all day. Add that to your kit, along with a couple indexes of screwdriver and drill bits. I add a Tupperware container full of unusual bits. This includes bits I’ve filed fine and/or narrow for special applications, some extra long ones, and a messy heap of screws, just in case.

When I set out to assemble a City Bag, I found a neat, briefcase-shaped bag with lots of pockets, zippered compartments, a padded shoulder strap, and a little plastic tray with dividers to hold assortments of doodads. I stuffed it with hundreds of tools, bottles, vials, sandpaper, lens cleaners for my glasses, earplugs, band-aids, and all the scraps and paraphernalia I could think of. I included an electric meter, soldering iron, test light, and a wind-pressure gauge. Great, but it weighed a ton. 

I lumbered onto the 6 train to go to the Upper East Side for a service call and was exhausted by the time I arrived. And I was missing tools from the first moment. Over the next several sessions I kept a list of things to add, and tried again. During this period, my piano tuner came to our apartment twice, and I envied the backpack-shaped thing he carries. It seemed to include everything he needed, but of course, he just doesn’t need as much as I do to service pipe organs.

In the months before Easter I visited dozens of churches, some in New York where I lugged the City Bag on and off the subways, and some in suburbs and in Boston where I could use my car and the larger, more comprehensive sets of tools. But even then I was often missing things, or at least having to trudge back to the car for something. It was time to start over and get it right. I figured that after more than 40 years in the business, I should at least have a proper tool kit.

We spent a week at our place in Maine where I have a nice workshop. I dumped out both of my tool kits in separate piles and spread them out on a clean workbench. Now it was easy to compare the two, take an inventory, and complete them both by routing through drawers of old tools and buying a few new things. I decided not to worry about some details—it’s okay if diagonal wire cutters in the two kits have different colored handles.

I compared and combined the lists of stuff besides tools—leather, parts, lubricants, adhesives, solvents, and the like. Because the City Bag is necessarily smaller than the Car Bag, I had to make some tough choices, but I did save some space by switching to small containers of things. (I don’t need the 11-ounce WD-40, or the 8-ounce Titebond glue in the City Bag.)

I had grown to dislike my Car Bag. It was made of heavy nylon fabric, but it was square and bulky with hard corners, so it banged against my knees as I carried it. I found a new beauty with 60 pockets and a big center compartment. I added a second larger kit with wheels and collapsible handle that holds the cordless drill and lots of the other heavier stuff. And I got a couple of bungees so I could strap the Car Bag to the top of the Roller Board. Terrific. 

I stuck with the same briefcase style thing for the City Bag, but added a Big-Mouth satchel for the bulkier stuff and a totally cool collapsible two-wheel dolly, again with bungees. It’s heavy on the subway stairs, but rolls like a dream on the sidewalks—and when I go to a church and open my bags, those tools gleam and fairly jump into my hands.

 

It’s a tool thing.

People who work with tools have a thing about tools. My Facebook page is loaded with colleagues’ photos of new tools. One colleague posted a video he took aboard his new tractor while rototilling his voluptuous garden. “No texting while tilling!” Another friend shared photos of his stroke sander—a cool rig with very long belt of sandpaper that passes “360 feet of abrasive over the wood per second.” Several organ shops have recently acquired CNC routers, those pickup-truck-sized magical computer-guided rigs that take much of the hand labor out of building just about anything from wood.

Near our place in Maine, there’s an old-timer who runs a boatyard. He’s also the town’s harbormaster. The centerpiece of the place is an ancient truck-tractor (the front part of a semi-trailer truck) moored to the ground and fitted with a huge winch. A forty- or fifty-foot wooden sailboat is floated up to a huge car mounted on rails, balanced and secured on stands, and the powerful old diesel engine roars and belches as it draws the 80,000-pound boat out of the water. That machine is just as much a tool as the knife in his pocket.

A couple months ago, the Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum in New York City (5th Avenue at 91st Street) hosted an exhibition of tools. It included a remarkable variety of things from tiny pocket kits of gentlemen’s grooming tools, to a scale model of a 4,500-ton Tunnel Boring Machine (TBM) with a cutting diameter of more than 50 feet. The centerpiece of the exhibit was a spectacular sculpture comprising thousands of hand tools suspended mobile-style, arranged with pass-through aisles. But the one that really got me was the “Tonometer” designed and built in 1876 by Rudolph Koenig (French, born in Germany, 1832–1901). It comprises 670 tuning forks that span the 49 semi-tones of four octaves (that’s almost 14 forks per semi-tone), which “afforded a perfect means for tuning any musical instrument.”² I wonder what Monsieur Koenig would have thought of the $9.95 Cleartune app I have in my iPhone.

 

Chimps do it.

Jane Goodall started studying chimpanzees in the Gombe Stream Chimpanzee Reserve in Tanganyika in 1960. I expect that most of us have seen films produced by the National Geographic Society that document her work. In November of 1960, she watched a chimp she had named David Graybeard poking pieces of grass into a termite mound, then raising the grass to his mouth. She didn’t understand what he was doing, so after he left, she tried it herself and found that the termites gripped on to the blade of grass. She realized that David was using the grass as a tool to feed himself by fishing the insects out of their otherwise inaccessible habitat. 

It’s funny to think that there is not much of a leap from a chimpanzee fishing for termites to a French scientist machining 670 tuning forks or to a modern crane or hydraulic machine. Of course our tools have gotten increasingly sophisticated and complex, but every tool shares the same conceptual origin—the adaptation of something to help us do work. Tomorrow, I’m joining a couple of my colleagues from the Organ Clearing House in Pittsburgh to dismantle an organ. Can’t wait to wheel those new kits into the building.

 

Government regulation

When I lived in rural Ohio, I had a neighbor who was a truck driver for a well-known chemical company. You might guess that his job was delivery of product. But no. They filled his truck with frightful waste, cracked the spigot at the back of the trailer, and sent him driving across the country, dribbling poison on the highways. It’s reasonable for the government to contain that sort of activity. 

In 2006, the pipe organ trade was involved in an example of government regulatory hooey when the European Parliament passed the Restriction of Hazardous Substances Directive, which restricts the use of six substances in electrical equipment. It was aimed at the careless disposal of millions of cell phones and other personal electronics. Fair enough. I agree that we shouldn’t poison our rivers and lakes with lead, mercury, cadmium, hexavalent chromium, polybrominated biphenyls, or polybrominated diphenyl ether. Each one sounds nastier than the last. (You can read more about this at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Restriction_of_Hazardous_Substances_Direct….)

But wait: Pipe organs are electrical equipment, and it’s hard to hide that they have significant lead content. The European Parliament was talking about parts-per-million, while we measure our lead by the ton. Nevertheless, the restriction stood. The organ from a British cathedral was dismantled for restoration, and the new restriction would mean it couldn’t be put back together. The short story is that the international pipe organ community flung petitions back and forth across the Atlantic, and a loophole was created to separate pipe organs from
this restriction. 

The September 2014 issue of The Diapason included an excellent and troubling article by Anne Beetem Acker titled “The 2014 Ivory Trade and Movement Restrictions.” On February 11, 2014, President Obama issued an executive order effectively banning the trade and transportation of ivory, period. Ms. Acker describes the loophole: 

 

You may import an item containing ivory as part of a household move or inheritance, or as part of your own musical instrument or as part of a traveling exhibition as long as the item contains “worked elephant ivory that was ‘legally acquired’ and removed from the wild prior to February 26, 1976, and has not been sold or otherwise been transferred for financial gain since February 25, 2014.”³

 

That’s it. Until February 11, 2014, we at the Organ Clearing House considered ivory keyboards to be an asset. A simple organ built by Schantz or Reuter in the 1940s would have ivory keyboards, and because ivory is such a durable material, they would often be in perfect condition. I choose not to share my political views in this public forum. That’s not the point of this magazine or my regular column. But I sure wish my president had thought this one through a little better. To the best of my knowledge, Harry Truman and Richard Nixon are the most recent presidents who played the piano. I don’t know if Bill Clinton’s saxophone has any ivory on it.

I’ve had the thrill of an hour-long ride through the Thai jungle on a huge and gentle elephant. I am horrified by photos of majestic animals slaughtered for their tusks. I may be shortsighted and politically incorrect, so help me here. How in the name of tarnation will selling and moving a sixty-year-old pipe organ contribute to the slaughter of elephants?

I work with keyboard instruments every day. I talk regularly with dozens of colleagues across Europe and the United States. And I read the publications from our professional organizations like the Organ Historical Society, the American Institute of Organbuilders, and the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America. Excepting a few private conversations, Ms. Acker’s article is my first exposure to the severity of this order.

Some of my colleagues only build new organs, so are not affected by President Obama’s executive order. But the market for new instruments has been shrinking steadily for years, and many of us in the world of organbuilding find much, if not most of our revenue in the renovation and restoration of historic organs. 

On February 10, 2014, it was perfectly legal to dismantle an organ with ivory keyboards, load it in a truck, take it across state lines to your workshop, restore it, return it to the church, and be paid for your effort. Now it’s not. The fact that Obama’s language includes “trade and movement” implies that we couldn’t even do it for free. 

What do you think? ν

 

Notes

1. This is good for the quality of life as it limits noise to certain hours of the day, but surely adds to the cost of renovations.

2. Cooper Hewitt Design Museum, legend at tool exhibit.

3. Anne Beetem Acker, “The 2014 Ivory Trade and Movement Restrictions: New regulations and their effects,” The Diapason, September 2014, 28.

Artis Wodehouse

Pianist and harmoniumist Artis Wodehouse has a BM from the Manhattan School of Music, an MM from Yale, and a DMA from Stanford. A National Endowment for the Humanities grant led to her producing CDs and publishing transcriptions of recorded performances and piano rolls made by George Gershwin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Zez Confrey. In 2000, Wodehouse began performing on antique reed organs and harmoniums that she had painstakingly restored and brought to concert condition. She founded the chamber group MELODEON in 2010 to present little-known but valuable music from 19th- and early 20th-century America, using her antique instrument collection as the basis for repertoire choice. 

During its prime in the nineteenth-century, the reed organ was the preferred instrument in American homes and also deemed a fit substitute for the more expensive pipe organ. Large reed organs became common in civic gathering halls and smaller churches. Despite the popularity of reed organs in America,¹ music for them consisted primarily of simplified arrangements of European art music, easy-to-play popular and sentimental ditties, polkas, marches, and waltzes, or hymns and other service music associated with worship or civic gatherings.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century it became apparent that design variation from company to company and from organ to organ, even within a given company’s fleet of models, was preventing composers from writing idiomatic original music for the American reed organ. The limited market for music crafted for one or another of the competing designs was too small to sustain widespread printing and marketing of scores.²

Without its own literature, such as had been created during the nineteenth century for its European counterpart, the harmonium, the American reed organ had an uncertain future. It would continue to be regarded at best as “a sort of weak substitute for the church organ.”³ Then, in the mid-1890s, at essentially the beginning of the end of the reed organ era, Mason & Hamlin⁴ began to address the problem by introducing an action design⁵ whose capabilities would “insure the greatest advantages to the composers, at the same time enable the manufacturer to place his instruments on the market at as low a price as possible.” The new action design was called the “Normal-Harmonium.” This was the action design for which the American composer Arthur Bird (1856–1923) wrote his compelling body of reed organ music. Figure 1 shows the Mason & Hamlin American reed organ, with Normal-Harmonium action design. Two knee levers are above the foot pedals. The right lever controls the internal swell shades; the left lever activates the Grand Jeu.

Mason & Hamlin’s Normal-Harmonium action design and Arthur Bird’s creation of a substantial, idiomatic music for the American reed organ came too late. Piano sales that had roared ahead after the Civil War rapidly displaced the reed organ. In the 1880s, reed organ sales slipped below that of pianos. By World War I, the glory days of the reed organ were over.⁶

 

Two competing
19th-century instruments: 

The American reed organ
and the European harmonium 

In the 1840s, United States inventors and businessmen founded companies that offered distinctive fleets of reed organ models. Reed organs were built in a bewildering variety of brands, sizes, and stoplist configurations. They ranged from diminutive four-octave home models that traveled to the West in covered wagons, to large, expensive instruments with powerful tone, full pedalboards, and many stops. 

The American reed organ used one or more sets of brass “free reeds” in order to generate tone. The performer’s foot pumping activated suction bellows that generated a stream of moving air, much like a vacuum cleaner. When the performer depressed a key, this moving air passed through a small chamber in which the reed was affixed at one end, but free to vibrate on the other end (hence the designation, “free reed”). The reeds varied in length, and the longer the reed, the lower the tone. Air rushing through the chamber caused the reed to vibrate, and tone to be produced. When a reed organ had more than one set of reeds, a set could be brought into play or silenced by allowing or blocking the moving air via stop pulls. As with the pipe organ, a set of shutters or swell shades located within the action facilitated dynamic contrasts. The performer opened or shut them on a gradient via a knee paddle. 

The largest and most prominent reed organ companies were Mason & Hamlin in Boston and Estey in Brattleboro, Vermont, but scores of others proved successful. As the nineteenth century progressed, American reed organs became increasingly complex. Inventors developed voicing techniques that produced a broad range of distinctive and contrasting timbres, named using terms derived from pipe organ nomenclature.⁷ Instruments built with multiple sets of differently voiced reeds featured multiple stops and a divided keyboard⁸ so that the player could choose contrasting timbres in the treble and bass of a single keyboard. Large reed organs were sometimes built with multiple keyboards, like pipe organs. The more reeds in an instrument, the more expensive it would be. 

Another keyboard instrument employing differently voiced sets of free reeds in airtight chambers arose in Europe during the nineteenth century. A Frenchman, Alexandre Debain, patented this instrument in 1842, naming it a “harmonium.” (See Figure 2.) 

Like the American reed organ, the European harmonium came to offer a broad range of distinctive and contrasting timbres controlled by stop pulls, and a divided keyboard that enabled the choice of different timbres in the treble and bass. (See Figure 3.)

Despite some similarity in design to the American reed organ, the European harmonium did not employ the American-style bellows system (suction) that pulled moving air in and through the reed chamber. Instead, in the European system, air was pushed through and out via pressure, producing sound like a trumpet or an oboe. The different airflow systems require different technical skills of the performer and produce distinctly different tonal characteristics. (See Figure 4.)

Foot pumping on the harmonium manages two important functions because of the way harmonium bellows were designed to work: the performer maintains constant airflow while simultaneously adjusting the relative airflow speed responsible for dynamic contrasts.⁹ Manipulating airflow velocity to effect dynamic changes was called “expression,” and this function had its own specially assigned stop pull. An additional European innovation for facilitating dynamic contrast was the invention of the so-called “double expression.” It was installed in the more costly European harmoniums. Double expression, a capability arising no doubt from a desire to mimic the piano’s ability to balance melody and accompaniment, allowed the performer to control not only the overall loudness but also the relative volume of the treble and bass on a gradient. Double expression is controlled by two knee levers installed under the keyboard and above the two foot-pump pedals. The skill required to play smoothly and expressively on the harmonium demands much practice.  

Late-speaking reeds, i.e., those with a time lag between the act of depressing a key and the sounding of its corresponding tone, hampered performers on both the American reed organ and the European harmonium.¹⁰ Although quick airflow delivery to the reeds was a design priority for both reed organ and harmonium builders, the Americans felt that beyond a certain point, slight lags were an acceptable characteristic of the instrument for which the performer was expected to make appropriate adjustments. The Europeans, however, took a different approach. To mitigate the problem of late speech (and to provide an additional tonal effect) they positioned small felt-covered hammers next to each of the reeds of the set most frequently used in performance. These little hammers were controlled by a stop pull, referred to as “percussion.” When the percussion stop is pulled and a key is depressed, the little hammers simultaneously strike the sounding reed, causing it to speak more quickly and incisively, like a crisp piano attack. The harmonium’s percussion makes performance of rapid passagework more predictable when compared to the American reed organ.

The most far-reaching advantage the harmonium held over the American reed organ was the standardization of stops generally agreed upon by the European companies. Standardization had two benefits: it made it possible to print in music scores commonly understood registration that could be used across instruments built by different companies. Secondly, performers could move from one harmonium to another with a minimum of adjustment.¹¹

It should be noted that the terms “harmonium” and “reed organ” were and continue to be used interchangeably. Lack of a clear and consistent terminology must be laid at the door of the overlapping and competing terms originally used. In their heyday, American reed organs were most frequently referred to as simply “organs,” but other names were used as well. These included Organ-Harmonium and Cabinet Organ, two different terms used by the same company, Mason & Hamlin. There were also fanciful names such as Phonorium, used by Estey.¹²

 

Harmonium and American reed organ repertoire

The capabilities of the European harmonium and the move towards standardization¹³ attracted several important nineteenth-century European composers. Elgar, Strauss, Schoenberg, Webern, Mahler, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Rossini made good use of the harmonium in some of their orchestral and/or choral works. Berlioz, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Guilmant, Widor, and many others wrote high quality solo and chamber music for it. Finally, the German composer Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877–1933) made it his mission to develop a body of repertoire that would exploit the unique sonic and expressive capabilities of the Art Harmonium. During the early twentieth century Karg-Elert wrote what has proved to be the single most significant body of solo and chamber music for the instrument. The popularity of the European harmonium peaked about 1900, slightly later than the American reed organ’s peak of popularity.

Relatively few harmoniums made it across the Atlantic during the nineteenth century. On the other hand, American reed organs were exported and sold in fair numbers throughout Europe, particularly those built by Mason & Hamlin.¹⁴ Also, several European manufacturers such as Lindholm, Mannborg, and Shiedmayer adopted the American suction bellows system for their instruments.¹⁵ Nevertheless, despite significant cross-Atlantic distribution of the American reed organ and the availability of native European instruments with some shared characteristics, the American reed organ never established an artistic foothold through a representative body of high-quality music comparable to that written for the harmonium. This cannot be fully explained by the technical differences between the two as outlined above. Although the American instrument may have lacked the harmonium’s more refined control of dynamics and its useful percussion stop, the best American instruments, such as the Mason & Hamlin Liszt Organ, have a distinctive tonal beauty and a multiplicity of sounds equal to those of their European counterparts. 

The promotional prominence and enlarged, relatively standardized capabilities of Mason & Hamlin’s flagship Liszt Organ may therefore have been the impetus behind Boston-based American publisher Arthur Schmidt to print a few works for it during the 1890s. Schmidt’s publications for the Liszt Organ included both original compositions as well as arrangements of famous European works for organ solo, duets with piano, and chamber pieces. But apart from Eugene Gigout’s excellent Romanza for the Liszt Organ, unfortunately none of the rest rose to a similarly high quality.

 

Arthur Bird, American expatriate composer (1856–1923) 

Around 1896, Mason & Hamlin likely encouraged and may have actually commissioned the American composer Arthur Bird to write idiomatic art music for the standardized action they introduced during the 1890s, called the Normal-Harmonium. 

No documentation has yet surfaced indicating payment to Bird for his work by the firm. Nevertheless, key musical and personal circumstances link Arthur Bird to the most significant people associated with the Mason & Hamlin Company. Central to the connection between Arthur Bird and Mason & Hamlin was Franz Liszt. A canny seer, Liszt bet correctly on the ability of eager young American pianists and composers to hold high the torch of pianism and to carry forward the music of the future. Liszt welcomed them, offering his inspired pedagogy and worldly professional connections free of charge. Liszt’s generosity forged a well-documented bond among his pupils. Liszt’s first American student was the pianist William Mason (1829–1908). Mason studied with Liszt beginning in 1849, and brought back to the United States Liszt’s pedagogic principles through an extensive career of teaching, performing, and publishing. William Mason also happened to be the brother of Henry Mason, who in 1854 co-founded the Mason & Hamlin Company. Henry and William Mason were in turn sons of Lowell Mason, an important American hymn composer and musical educator during the first half of the nineteenth century. 

Liszt owned and wrote music for numerous keyboard instruments provided for him by both European and American companies.¹⁶ Among such instruments in his sizable collection was a Mason & Hamlin cabinet organ that he acquired in the 1870s. Later, Mason & Hamlin’s flagship high-end model came to be named the “Liszt Organ,” a likely outcome of the close connection between Liszt, his pupil William Mason, and the Mason & Hamlin Company.¹⁷ The Mason & Hamlin Liszt Organ was introduced about 1880. Complex, colorful, powerful, and versatile, the Liszt Organ was designed to compete with the best European harmoniums. While the Liszt Organ shared many tonal and functional features with the Normal-Harmonium design, it had a different tessitura (five octaves, C to C, versus the Normal-Harmonium’s F to F) and a different split point (E–F versus B–C for the Normal-Harmonium).

Arthur Bird was also one of Liszt’s American pupils, coming to him during Liszt’s later years.¹⁸ Bird’s musical and personal background strikingly resembled that of William Mason. Born in Belmont, Massachusetts in 1856, Bird’s early musical training came from his father and uncle, who were born-and-bred American church musicians. Arthur’s father, Horace Bird, and his uncle, Joseph Bird, were active in the New England of the 1840s and 1850s as voice teachers, composers of hymns and songs, and editors of singing books written to develop score-reading literacy. Upon the advice of William Mason’s father, Lowell Mason, young Arthur Bird was sent in 1875 to study in Germany at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. Returning to North America two years later, he took a church music position in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he began to compose. He returned to Berlin in 1881 to study composition and orchestration. It was during this time that Bird came into the Liszt orbit.  

By his early 30s (in the mid-1880s), Bird had become well established as an organist and pianist. His compositions were published and performed widely in Europe. Bird spent most of his life abroad, mainly in Berlin, where he married a wealthy German widow and apparently lived lavishly. In 1897 Bird returned for some time to the United States in what proved to be a failed attempt to have his comic operetta, Daphne, performed in America. Reading between the lines of William Loring’s biographical work on Arthur Bird, is it possible that Bird wished to forge a closer connection to his native country? Certainly a major production of an opera by a United States-born composer within the United States would be an excellent vehicle for that scenario. During the late 1890s, when the quest for “genuine” American composers was in full swing, Bird may have sensed an opportunity. In any event, in that same year (1897), the first of Bird’s pieces for the Mason & Hamlin “American Harmonium” (op. 37) were published by Breitkopf and Härtel, an important German firm still operating that publishes high-art European music.¹⁹

 

Characteristics of Arthur Bird’s “American Harmonium”

The historic trajectory mating Arthur Bird with the Normal-Harmonium came just at the point when the piano had overtaken reed organ sales. Mason & Hamlin realized that in order to survive in the long term, the reed organ needed some good original music. The publication of Arthur Bird’s music for the “American Harmonium” came at a historic crossroad for the American reed organ, largely due to the rise of the American piano. From the 1850s, pianos, and particularly American pianos, started to benefit from standardization and mechanical manufacturing methods of the industrial revolution. Prior to this time, pianos were mainly handcrafted items. Likewise around 1850, the design of the piano, particularly the American piano, moved rapidly toward increased durability and a greater dynamic and pitch range. Piano types coalesced into three categories: square, grand, and finally, upright. Each of these types served a clear purpose. As a result, consumers began to turn to the piano as a viable keyboard alternative to the reed organ, particularly in the home market, where the reed organ had ruled uncontested.²⁰ Sales of pianos grew steadily through the nineteenth century.

In contrast to the piano industry, American reed organ manufacturers from the 1850s to the 1900s offered consumers instruments of a wide variety of sizes, competing capabilities, nomenclature, and above all, case styles.²¹ After the Civil War, American manufacturers also developed complex instruments of considerable beauty, sophistication, and expense. These large instruments with enhanced performance capabilities were aimed at a smaller “niche” market, for placement in the homes of the wealthy, civic or religious meeting halls, and small churches. But after a sustained growth period lasting about 40 years, sales of the American reed organ began to decline in the 1880s.

The Normal-Harmonium action design of the 1890s for which Bird wrote was conceived to meet these market challenges. Mason & Hamlin worked with and adopted the Normal-Harmonium design in collaboration with two entities associated with the company: their German representative Paul Koeppen and the Bender firm in Leiden, Holland.²² Mason & Hamlin’s goal was to provide a standardized instrument that could compete with the piano and its plentiful repertoire. Their instrument had to be sophisticated enough to attract composers to write good music for it and be of a reasonable cost. 

Mason & Hamlin met both of its goals. First, the cost of an instrument with Normal-Harmonium specifications was indeed lower by half or more than that of the top of the Mason & Hamlin line, the Liszt Organ. The price of the Liszt came in at $700, but instruments with Normal-Harmonium capabilities could be had between $260 and $300.²³ Second, the Normal-Harmonium action provided attractive and useful performance capabilities. These included a pitch range of five octaves from F to F and multiple sets of reeds offering an elaborate stoplist. American reed organs with the Normal-Harmonium action design began to be manufactured in the 1890s and continued to be built until the company ceased reed organ production in the early 1920s.

As mentioned previously, inconsistent nomenclature and lack of a simple explanation for actual performance capability plagued the field. Although Mason & Hamlin offered a standardized action design in the Normal-Harmonium, Bird’s music itself was identified on the score as being intended for the “American Harmonium” and/or the “Normal-Harmonium.” Nomenclature had still not jelled. Therefore it must be stressed that the terms “American Harmonium” and Mason & Hamlin “Normal-Harmonium” do not refer to any one specific instrument, but rather to an action design embodying certain specific capabilities. 

Figure 5 shows the overhead view of interior of the Mason & Hamlin American organ with Normal-Harmonium specs. To the upper right is the paddle that is activated to rotate by the Vox Humana stop. The upper left box houses the very large Sub Bass reeds. The specific capabilities of the Normal-Harmonium are as follows. 

 

Stoplist:

Diapason Dolce 8′—the Diapason, mechanically softened. 

Sub Bass 16′—consists of 13 notes, the chromatic octave upward from low C. This stop uses the largest, longest reeds, producing a deep, rich, and powerful sound.

Eolian Harp 2′—two detuned sets of reeds producing a shimmering, ethereal vibrato.

Diapason 8′—pure, organ-like tone. 

Viola 4′—resembles the sound of the orchestral instrument for which it is named.

Viola Dolce 4′—the Viola, mechanically softened.

Vox Humana—adds a vibrato or tremolo. Can be used in combination with any of the other drawn stops in the treble. Activated by the turning of a windmill-like paddle located inside the action.

Seraphone 8′—differs from the Diapason in timbre. Focused and slightly nasal.

Flute 4′—resembles the sound of the orchestral instrument for which it is named.

Melodia 8′—continuation in the treble of the Diapason reeds.

Vox Celeste 8′—another stop combining two sets of detuned reeds that creates a vibrato effect. 

Octave Coupler—when pulled, mechanically connects a note to that of one an octave higher.

Melodia Dolce 8′—mechanically softened Melodia. 

 

The split point on the keyboard is between B and middle C. Stops from Seraphone 8′ up activate the treble, the stops from Viola Dolce, down, the bass.

 

Mechanical devices:

Grand Jeu—activated by a knee paddle located under the keys above the left foot pump pedal. The Grand Jeu causes all the reeds to sound at once, producing the instrument’s fullest and loudest sound.

Swell—activated by a knee paddle located under the keys above the right foot pump pedal. This device controls the internal shutters responsible for dynamic contrasts. (See Figure 6.)

 

Arthur Bird as composer

During his lifetime, Arthur Bird was recognized as an active, widely published, and well-received composer of some stature, particularly in Europe. Incidentally, his successful European career was launched in no small part because of the positive public and private endorsements Bird received from the influential Franz Liszt. 

Bird’s oeuvre is extensive, including opera and theatre works, orchestral music, songs, piano materials, chamber works (particularly those for wind instruments, for which he is best-remembered today), organ, and many other forms. Bird wrote a sizeable number of short solo piano pieces in well-established standard dance forms and topical styles—march, waltz, minuet, gavotte, lullaby, and mazurka. His extensive experience composing in this genre prepared Bird well to write for the American reed organ. Bird’s music is available in score at the Library of Congress through the generous donation of his widow and has been amply documented through the International Music Score Library Project.²⁴

Relatively little of Bird’s music has been recorded.²⁵ What is available tends to confirm the critical reception his work received during his lifetime. Reviewing a performance of [Bird’s] Serenade for Wind Instruments, op. 40, the Berliner Borsen Courier said: “It is distinguished for the freshness and spontaneity of its invention, as well as the clever craftsmanship and the clear and compact disposition of its different parts . . .” Another critic comments: “Characteristically his music is pleasing and melodious in composition. It is coherent and well developed in form. It lies easily within the range of the instruments, and displays no little knowledge of their resources.” Of him, [Arthur] Farwell wrote: “Arthur Bird is known as the possessor of a fertile and truly musical imagination and a thorough technique . . .
Bird is a musician of German training and French sympathies and calls himself a conditional modernist.” Mentioning that Bird composed in almost all forms, [Louis] Elson says of him: “He is an excellent contrapuntist, yet uses his skill in this direction as a means rather than as an end, seldom making a display of his knowledge. It is a pleasure to find an American composer who is not anxious to out-Wagner and who goes along the peaceful tenor of recognized and classical ways.”26 Bird was even described as “the most promising American composer of the middle and late Eighties” by no less than the important conductor,
Arthur Nikisch.²⁷ 

The amount and dating of Bird’s production seem to confirm Loring’s supposition²⁸ that after 1900, Bird’s work dwindled, though his reed organ works of 1905 (op. 45) maintain his previously held high standard. On the other hand, his simplified arrangements, American Melodies Specially Adapted and Arranged for Normal-Harmonium of 1907, appear to have been written simply for profit and lack the artistic value of his earlier work for the American Harmonium.

 

Arthur Bird’s music for the American Harmonium

Those who either possessed or might  have considered purchasing an instrument with the Normal-Harmonium action design would likely be individuals of some performance ability and/or a level of musical sophistication high enough to appreciate the artistic features of the instrument. They would also likely appreciate piano music of the better salon variety, up to and including Schumann’s, Chopin’s, or Grieg’s short works for solo piano. Finally, they would most likely be of the social class that would appreciate hearing this music, most likely in the home setting. 

Bird’s conservatism—informed by fine craftsmanship, deft handling of instrumental color, and fluency in miniature forms—may not have been enough to place him into the compositional pantheon of his trailblazing European contemporaries (Mahler, Debussy, etc.), but his abilities ideally suited him for writing salon-oriented character pieces of the type popularized by Mason & Hamlin’s Normal-Harmonium. An already accomplished American composer, Bird’s impeccable, media-worthy credentials and network of connections to Mason & Hamlin were a further plus. Bird was a perfect fit.

Bird published six opus numbers for the Normal-Harmonium.²⁹ All contain interesting and beautiful music, but the best of these was his first, the ten pieces of op. 37.³⁰ In the first printing, the op. 37 pieces were identified directly on the score’s front pages as being intended for the “American Harmonium”³¹ or for the Mason & Hamlin “Normal-Harmonium.” A page is devoted to an explanation of the stops required and their manner of notation in the score. Bird used circled letters derived from the stop name. For instance, Diapason is D; Viola, V; Voix Celeste, VC; and so forth. Later print runs of op. 37 contain the same explanatory page, but also indicate standard stop numbers, i.e., 1 for Diapason, 3 for Viola, 5 for Eolian Harp, etc., that would correspond to numbers appearing on European suction instruments of equivalent capability.³²

While no piece in the op. 37 set lasts more than three minutes, each exhibits a mastery of craft: beautifully spun-out melodies, masterful counterpoint, subtly personalized inflections of nineteenth-century harmonic practice, and traditional formal structures handled with deft assurance. Bird’s forms are not unusual (ABA, sonata, rondo). But because the Normal-Harmonium’s unique instrumental colors are an integral component of Bird’s structural designs, the listener experiences an additional dimension of thematic transformation. In his music for Normal-Harmonium, Bird’s assimilation of instrumental color as a component of structural rhetoric relates his music to that of the nascent French impressionists at the turn-of-the-century. The following briefly describes salient features of each of the pieces in Bird’s op. 37:

1. Meditation—a sarabande. In this mini-Wagnerian contrapuntal ramble, Bird employs kaleidoscopic stop changes that underscore the evolving melodic twists and turns.

2. Preludium—brooding and dramatic four-part writing in an ABA structure. Registration is simple, but Bird uses the octave coupler at the recapitulation, reinforcing and underscoring the harmonic excursions introduced as the piece moves toward an impassioned final cadence.

3. Adagio—elegiac four-part mini-sonata. Development section comprises a series of recitative-like meandering arpeggios over sustained chords. Recapitulation re-registers the opening material over low pedal points. With more recitative-like arpeggios at the coda, the piece concludes with a simple fadeout on the ethereal Eolian Harp stop.

4. Reverie—features a long-breathed, haunting, and tentative treble melody on the flute stop set against slithering countermelodies registered on the atmospheric Eolian Harp stop. In ABA form, the melody’s return is entirely recast in a fuller texture with the foundation 8′ and 4′ stops. In partnership with a walking bass line, the melody’s tentative first appearance is thereby transformed into an affirmative point of arrival. The coda brings the listener back to the ethereal Eeolian Harp, rounding the piece off as it began.³³

5. Postlude—hearkens back to Bird’s American past, a spirited march that suggests a full wind band.³⁴ Bird’s registration indicates that the piece must be played in its entirety using only one setting, the circled G indicating “Grand Jeu.” Because Grand Jeu causes all the stops to sound at once, finger strength and vigorous foot pumping are required throughout. 

6. Improvisato—a fierce, somewhat virtuosic piece. Registration involving the basic 8′ and 4′ stops is augmented at the recapitulation by use of the Grand Jeu. Rapid, conjunct passagework in the wild coda comes off surprisingly well, despite the lack of a percussion stop. Bird was a hands-on composer and knew what the Mason & Hamlin organ could do.³⁵ 

7. Offertoire—This piece would be suitable for use in a church setting. It is an atmospheric sweet/sour composition with change of mode. 

8. Scherzo—This is the most technically demanding of the set, an extended rondo. Rapid sixteenth notes scattered throughout the piece when the octave-coupler is drawn or the Grand Jeu is activated require finger strength and precise articulation. Not only the performer’s skill is tested: Bird takes the instrument itself to the edge of its mechanical ability to sound quick notes on the fly. Registration is extraordinarily full and rich, suggesting an orchestra. 

9. Auf dem Lande—a melancholy, minor “folksong” melody is transformed to a grand, affirmative conclusion in major mode.

10. Pastoral—perhaps the most inventive and idiomatic of the entire set. Bird’s motivic ideas have a symbiotic relationship with the instrumental colors he brings to bear. Set above continuously sustained low pedal points, a flowing conjunct melody in the treble twines about an ostinato pattern in the mid range. In order to keep the pedal points depressed while so much action is occurring that requires two hands, lead weights must be used to hold down the pedal-point notes.

 

The American reed organ, Arthur Bird, and the future

The composition of high-quality, original repertoire for the European harmonium during the nineteenth century has proved to have far-reaching consequences. Once thought lost to history, beginning in the 1980s the harmonium has been going through a steady revival, centering in the Netherlands. It seems likely the harmonium will continue to reestablish the place it once held in the classical repertoire. While there continues to be a small but passionate interest in the American reed organ,³⁶ a revival similar in scope and momentum has not yet begun.

As the rise and fall of the American reed organ demonstrates, the key to an instrument’s survival is not its mechanical capabilities, but rather the repertoire written for it. Not just any music will do. What is needed is music that will continue to offer listeners an aesthetic experience independent from the era in which it was created.

In the case of the European harmonium, the point where form and function met occurred when distribution was growing and the instrument’s capability achieved sufficient standardization. This favorable environment attracted a fair number of composers to write significant music for it. Unfortunately for the American reed organ, standardization arrived at the very point when distribution was falling. 

Nevertheless, we are grateful that one composer, Arthur Bird, stepped in during a brief moment of opportunity in the history of the American reed organ. With his ideal combination of skills, commitment, and inspiration, he provided us with music that stands poised to move into the future. ν

 

Special thanks to Carson Cooman and Whitney Slaten

 

Notes

1. American publishers also churned out a deluge of reed organ method books intended for the large market of rank amateurs in the United States. 

2. Paul Hassenstein, “The Normal Harmonium And Its Literature,” The Music Trade Review 41:3, July 1905, 87. 

3. Ibid., 87.

4. Mason & Hamlin began as a reed organ manufacturer, but in 1883 started making pianos as well. About 1920 the company ceased making reed organs, but continued their piano line. 

5. “Action design” refers to a specific set of performance capabilities contained within the mechanism of an instrument. Action design was independent of case style. The same action could be enclosed in a variety of cases.

6. Robert F. Gellerman, The American Reed Organ (Vestal, New York: Vestal Press, 1973), 18.

7. Ibid., 97–99. Gellerman’s list of stop names gives some indication of the diversity and lack of standardization among the American reed organ manufacturers.

8. The point of division between bass and treble was called the “split point.”

9. The harmonium did not employ the swell shade of the American system for dynamic contrast because the pressure system made possible quick changes in air speed. Quick control of air speed permits the execution of sharper accents and faster dynamic changes than is typically possible on the American instrument. Simply put, the American instrument is easier to learn how to play, but lacks the degree of potential interpretive refinement offered by the harmonium.

10. The phenomenon is due to inertia. Lowest reeds speak quite slowly: they are the largest reeds, sometimes several inches in length.

11. Gellerman, American Reed Organ, 107.

12. I have consistently used “American Reed Organ” or simply “reed organ” to refer to the suction bellows action design, and “harmonium” to describe the European pressure instrument.

13. Standardized pitch range, split point, sets of stop pulls, shared nomenclature. Nevertheless, as the 19th century progressed, European harmonium manufacturers (like their American counterparts) succumbed to the lure of increased capability that culminated with the celebrated “Art Harmonium.” The Art Harmonium offered a whole new range of attractive colors and capabilities. Music written for the Art Harmonium could not be played on more basic harmonium models.

14. Casey Pratt, e-mail to the author, July 30, 2013. Casey Pratt is a United States reed organ restorer who specializes in the Mason & Hamlin. Exact numbers are not known to date.

15. Ibid. 

16. For instance, Liszt owned a piano-harmonium specially designed for him by Erard and Alexandre and a Chickering grand that was used in his piano master classes. He also collected then “antique” pianos that belonged to Mozart and Beethoven.

17. The Liszt Organ has a set of uniquely voiced, so-called “Liszt” reeds of great tonal beauty. 

18. The main biographical information to date regarding Arthur Bird was amassed by Dr. William Cushing Loring (1914–2002). Loring was a Harvard graduate and an urban sociologist. After retirement, he focused on American art and music, working with Scarecrow Press to develop a series of more than twenty books on various North American composers. 

19. Available at the International Music Score Library Project website: http://imslp.org.

20. Another likely reason piano sales surged ahead of the reed organ resulted from the installment purchase plans offered by piano companies. Once a luxury item of the upper classes, the piano then became affordable to the burgeoning middle class.

21. The flamboyant case styles of American reed organs clearly indicate a function beyond that of simply a musical instrument. In addition to ornate carvings, some reed organ cases featured a façade of non-functional organ “pipes,” mirrors, candle holders, and the like.

22. This information was communicated by Frans Vandergrijn, a Netherlands-based authority on reed organs and harmoniums in a posting on Yahoo’s Reed Organ Restoration newsgroup, August 9, 2013. 

23. Pratt, e-mail to the author, August 10, 2013. To put these prices in perspective, average United States yearly income in 1900 was $438.

24. http://imslp.org/wiki/10_Pieces_for_Harmonium,_Op.37_(Bird,_Arthur_H.)

25. Modern recordings include music for piano 4-hands, op. 23, Vladimir and Nadia Zaitsev, pianists; Introduction and Fugue, op. 16, Tony and Mary Ann Lenti, pianists; Serenade for Wind Instruments, op. 40, Suite for Double Wind Quintet, op. 29 (Naxos), and Carnival Scenes for Orchestra, op. 5 (Albany).

26. William C. Loring, Jr., “Arthur Bird, American,” The Musical Quarterly 29:1, January 1943, 87. 

27. Ibid., 88.

28. Ibid., 86.

29. Op. 37, 1897; op. 38, 1901; op. 39, 1903; op. 41, 1906; op. 42, 1905; op. 44, 1903; op. 45, 1905. All are available at the Library of Congress.

30. Not all of the op. 37 pieces scanned and available in IMSLP come from the original 1897 printing, several being from later editions. The only difference is that additional equivalent registration intended for European suction instruments was added. 

31. My supposition is that Breitkopf titled them for the “American Harmonium” in order to alert purchasers that the intended instrument would be one of American design. European suction instruments could have been more or less acceptable alternatives, but only the Mason & Hamlin Normal-Harmonium would have had the subtle specificity of timbres and tonal balances characteristic of the Mason & Hamlin sound.

32. On IMSLP: http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/2/2d/IMSLP65232-PMLP1327…

33. See performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIC9EwIjmks

34. And Percy Grainger’s later work for the reed organ.

35. See performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi6yjMzjKe.

36. The American Reed Organ Society has been in existence since 1981.

 

References

Archival Sources

Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. Music of Arthur Bird. Includes all his published music for reed organ, plus some manuscript scores.

 

Books and Articles

Brown, Andrea Elizabeth. “A Descriptive Analysis of Arthur Bird’s Suite in D.” DMA diss., University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2010.

Elson, Louis C. American Music. New York, NY: MacMillan Co., 1904.

Gellerman, Robert F. The American Reed Organ. Vestal, NY: The Vestal Press, 1973.

———. The American Reed Organ and the Harmonium. Vestal, NY: The Vestal Press, 1996.

Good, Edwin M. Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Hendron, Michael, ed. Manufacturers Music Album Reed Organ Society Anthology Series. Palmer, Massachusetts: The Reed Organ Society Publications Office, 2001.

Hiles, John. A Catechism for the Harmonium. London: Brewer and Company, 1877.

Loring, William C., Jr. “Arthur Bird, American.” Musical Quarterly 29, no. 1 (1943): 78–91.

———. Arthur Bird: His Life and Music. Newton Centre, MA: n.p., 1941.

———. The Music of Arthur Bird: An Explanation of American Composers of the Eighties and Nineties for Bicentenial Americana Programming. Atlanta: n.p., 1974.

Milne, H. F. The Reed Organ: Its Design and Construction. Chancery Lane, England: Office of Musical Opinion, 1930.

 

Recordings

Bird, Arthur. Suite in D. On Bird Songs: Romantic Chamber Music of Arthur Bird, North Texas Chamber Players. Eugene Corporon, conductor. CD (digital disc). Klavier, KCD-11071, 1995.

———. Suite in D. On Collage: A Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Peabody Institute, 1857–2007. Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble. Harlan Parker, conductor. CD (digital disc). Naxos, 8.570403, 2008.

———. Suite in D. University of Cincinnati Chamber Players. Rodney Winther, conductor. CD (digital disc). Mark Records, 7212, 2007.

———. Amerikanische Weisen, op. 23, Three Characteristic Marches, op. 11,  American Souvenirs Piano Music for Four Hands, Nadia and Vladimir Zaitsev, pianists, CD (digital disc), Gleur De Son-Qualiton/The Orchard, 57928, 2004.

Bird, Arthur; Dussek, Jan Ladislav; Liszt, Franz; Grieg, Edvard; and Onslow, George; Forgotten Piano Duets, Vol. 2, Tony and Mary Ann Lenti, pianists, CD (digital  disc), ACA Digital Recording, B004QEZC2, 2011.

John Bishop

What a winter.

Our son Andy writes for a daily news service at the State House in Boston and gets to see his prose online and in print the next day. Writing for a monthly journal is a little different. You’re reading in May, and I can only hope that the giant gears that drive the universe continued to function properly and the weather is warm. 

I’m writing in March on the first day of spring. I’m in my office at our place in Newcastle, Maine, looking across the Damariscotta River, a dramatic and beautiful tidal river. We’re eight miles up from the Gulf of Maine and the Atlantic Ocean, and the tide chart says that we’ll have an eleven-foot high tide just before 11:00 this morning, a couple hours from now, so the ice floes are drifting north toward town with the tide. I can barely see the sea ice on the river, because my usual view is all but obscured by the piles of snow outside.

A couple weeks ago, the weatherman predicted a heavy snowfall, to be followed by rain. There were already several feet of snow on the roof, so we hired some local guys to shovel the roof, fearing that the added weight would be too much. Those piles added to the drifts already in place to leave six feet on the ground outside my windows.

We’ve spent a lot of time outside this week in eight-degree weather because we have a new puppy, and in spite of the cold, we’ve heard the calls of eastern phoebes and cardinals right on schedule. The wicked weather must be unsettling for these denizens of springtime in coastal Maine. Think of the poor ovenbirds, who get their name from the oven-shaped nests they build on the forest floor.

We’ve had about 90 inches of snow here this winter, which is plenty, but it’s a foot-and-a-half short of the all-time record of 108 inches set in Boston this year. Last weekend, friends and family there were rooting for the predicted snowfall to exceed the two inches needed to break the record—“if we’ve been through all this . . . .” I trust they’re happy with their bitter reward. 

Subways stopped running, roofs collapsed, and houses burned down because fire hydrants were buried deep beneath the snow. Local school officials are debating whether to bypass legislated minimum numbers of school days, because it’s simply not possible to make up all the days lost to cancellations through the winter. And the New York Times quoted the city’s guide to street defects, which defines a pothole as “a hole in the street with a circular or oval-like shape and a definable bottom.” An actionable pothole is one that’s at least a foot in diameter and three inches deep. I wonder what they call a hole that doesn’t have a definable bottom.

 

But baby, it’s cold outside.

It’s been a terrible season for pipe organs. Long stretches of unusually cold weather have caused furnaces to run overtime, wringing the last traces of moisture out of the air inside church buildings. Concerts have been postponed, and blizzards have sent furious drafts of cold air through old stained-glass windows, causing carefully regulated and maintained pitches to go haywire. One Saturday night, a colleague posted on Facebook that the pastor of his church called saying there would be “no church” tomorrow. The sewers had frozen and the town closed public buildings.

One organ we care for outside of Boston developed a sharp screech lasting a few seconds when the organ was turned on or off. After spending a half hour tracking it down, it was easy to correct by tightening a couple screws and eliminating a wind leak, but it had been a startling disruption on a Sunday morning. 

A church in New York City that is vacant because it merged with a neighboring congregation suffered terrible damage when an electric motor overheated, tripping a circuit breaker for the entire (poorly designed) hot-water heating system. Pipes froze and ruptured, the nave floor flooded ankle deep, and the building filled with opaque steam. A week later, when heat was restored, steam vented, and water drained and mopped up, the white-oak floorboards started expanding, buckling into eight-inch-high mounds, throwing pews on their backs, and threatening to topple the marble baptismal font.

My phone line and e-mail inbox have been crackling with calls about ciphers and dead notes, swell boxes sticking and squeaking, and sticking keys—all things that routinely happen to pipe organs during periods of unusual dryness. And I can predict the reverse later in the season—maybe just when you’re finally reading this—as weather moderates, humidity increases, heating systems are turned off, and organs swell up to their normal selves.

 

The floor squeaks, the door creaks . . . 

So sings the hapless Jud Fry in a dark moment in the classic Broadway musical, Oklahoma!. He’s lamenting his lot, pining after the girl, and asserting to himself that the smart-aleck cowhand who has her attention is not any better than he. The lyrics pop into my head as I notice the winter’s effects on the woodwork that surrounds me. We have a rock maple cutting board inserted in the tile countertop next to the kitchen sink. The grout lines around it are all broken because the wood has shrunk. The hardwood boards of the landings in our stairwells are laid so they’re free to expand and contract. Right now, there are 5/16′′ gaps between them—by the time you read this, the gaps will be closed tight. I need to time it right to vacuum the dust out of the cracks before they close. And the seasonal gaps between the ash floorboards of the living and dining rooms are wider than ever.

The teenager trying to sneak up the front stairs after curfew is stymied in winter, because the stair treads and risers have shrunk due to dryness, and the stairs squeak as the feet of the culprit cause the separate boards to move against each other.

The other day, working in my home office in New York, I heard a startling snap from my piano, as if someone had struck it with a hammer. I ran up the keyboard and found the note that had lost string tension. Plate tectonics. Good thing the tuner is coming next week. 

As I move around in quiet church buildings, I hear the constant cracking and popping of woodwork changing size. Ceiling beams, floorboards, and pews are all susceptible. But it’s inside the organ where things are most critical. The primary rail of a Pitman chest shrinks a little, opening a gap in the gasketed joint, and three adjacent notes go dead in the bass octave of the C-sharp side because the exhaust channels can no longer hold pressure. And there’s a chronic weather thing in Aeolian-Skinner organs: The ground connections to the chest magnets are only about a quarter-inch long, and near the screws that hold the magnet rails to the chest frames, where the wood moves with weather changes, the ground wires yank themselves free of their solder and cause dead notes.

 

Let’s talk about pitch.

Fact: Temperature affects the pitch of organ pipes. You might think this is because the metal of the pipes expands and contracts as temperature changes, and while that is technically true, the amount of motion is so slight as to have minimal effect. The real cause is changes in the density of the air surrounding and contained by the organ’s pipes. Warmer air is less dense. If a pipe is tuned at 70°, it will only be in tune at that temperature. If that pipe is played at 60°, the pitch will be lower; if it’s played at 80°, the pitch will be higher.

While it’s true that all the pipes involved in a temperature change will change pitch together (except the reeds), it’s almost never true that a temperature change will affect an entire organ in the same way. In a classic organ of Werkprinzip design, with divisions stacked one above another, a cold winter day might mean that the pipes at the top of the organ are super-heated (because warm air rises), while the pipes near floor level are cold. 

There are all kinds of problems inherent in the classic layout of a chancel organ with chambers on each side. If the walls of one chamber are outside walls of the building, while the walls of the other back up against classrooms and offices, a storm with cold winds will split the tuning of the organ. I know several organs like this where access is by trap doors in the chamber floor. Leaving the trap doors open allows cold air to “dump” into the stairwells, drawing warmer air in through the façade from the chancel. This helps balance temperature between two organ chambers.

One organ I care for has Swell and Great in the rear gallery on either side of a large leaky window. The pipes of the Swell are comfortably nestled inside a heavy expression enclosure, while the Great is out in the open, bared to the tempest. A windy storm was all it took to wreck the tuning of the organ as cold air tore through the window to freeze the Great. It only stayed that way for a few days, until the storm was over, the heating system got caught up, and the temperatures around the building returned to usual. Trouble was, the organ scholar played his graduate recital on one of those days, and there was precious little to do about it.

One of the most difficult times I’ve had as an organ tuner was more than twenty years ago, caring for a huge complicated organ in a big city. The church’s choir and organists were doing a series of recording sessions in July, preparing what turned out to be a blockbuster bestselling CD of Christmas music, on a schedule for release in time for the holiday shopping season. It was hot as the furnaces of hell outside, hotter still in the lofty reaches of the organ chambers, and the organ’s flue pipes went so high in pitch that the reeds could not be tuned to match. It was tempting to try, and goodness knows the organists were pressing for it, but I knew I was liable to cause permanent damage to the pipes if I did. It was a surreal experience, lying on a pew in the wee hours of the morning, wearing shorts and a tee-shirt, sweating to the strains of those famous arrangements by David Willcocks and John Rutter rendered on summertime tuning.

 

Mise en place

I started doing service calls maintaining pipe organs in 1975, when I was apprenticing with Jan Leek in Oberlin, Ohio. Jan was the organ and harpsichord technician for the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, and had an active maintenance business on the side. I worked with him three days a week when I was a student, and loved driving around the countryside and rolling from church to church. (Many of my peers were trapped on that rural campus by a college that didn’t allow students to own cars.) I suppose in those days we did fifty or sixty service calls each year, and as my career expanded, there were some periods during which I was caring for well over a hundred organs, visiting each at least twice a year. I suppose the annual average has been around sixty a year, or 2,400 since those naïve days in Ohio. 

Each organ has peculiarities, and each has its own environment of climate and acoustics. The tuner-technician has to learn about each organ and how it relates to the building, as well as learning the ropes of the building itself. Over the years you learn where to find a stepladder, how to get the keys to the blower room, and most important, where to find the best lunch in town.¹

And speaking of peculiarities, organists crown ’em all. A professional chef has his mise en place—his personal layout of ingredients, seasonings, and implements that he needs to suit his particular style of work and the dishes he’s preparing. It includes his set of knives (don’t even think of asking to borrow them!), quick-read meat thermometer, whisk, along with an array of seasonings, freshly chopped or minced garlic, parsley, basil, ground black and white peppercorns, sea salt, and several different cooking oils. 

Likewise, the organist, both professional and amateur, sets up his own mise en place—cluttering the organ console with hairbrushes, nail clippers, sticky-notes, paper clips, cough drops, bottled water, even boxes of cookies. Sometimes the scenes are surprisingly messy, and these are not limited to those consoles that only the organist can see. Next time you’re at the church, take a look at your mise en place. Does it look like the workplace of a professional? If you were a chef, would anyone seeing your workspace want to eat your food? 

Care for the space around the organ console. Ask your organ technician to use some furniture polish, and to vacuum under the pedalboard.² Keep your piles of music neat and orderly, or better yet, store them somewhere else. Remember that what you might consider to be your desk or workbench—the equivalent of the chef’s eight-burner Vulcan—is part of everyone’s worship space.

 

Everywhere you go, there you are.

There’s another aspect of visiting many different churches that troubles me more and more. As a profession, we worry about the decline of the church, and the parallel reduction in the number or percentage of active churches that include the pipe organ and what we might generally call “traditional” music. But as I travel from one organ loft to another, peruse Sunday bulletins and parish hall bulletin boards, I’m struck by how much sameness there is. What if suddenly you were forbidden to play these pieces:

• Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring (you know the composer)

• Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (ibid.) 

• Nun danket alle Gott . . . (which of the two?)

• Sheep may safely graze

• Canon in D

• Hornpipe

• Etc., etc.

 

Each of these is a beautiful piece. There are good reasons why we all play all of them, and congregations love them. The same applies to choral music. We could get the sense that if we took away “ten greatest hits,” no organist could play for another wedding. Take away a different “ten greatest hits,” and no organist could play another ordinary Sunday worship service.

I know very well that when you’re planning wedding music, it’s difficult to get the bride (or especially, the bride’s mother) to consider interesting alternatives. And I know very well that when you play that famous Toccata, the faithful line up after the service to share the excitement. It would be a mistake to delete those pieces from your repertoire.

But if we seem content to play the same stuff over and over, why should we expect our thousands of churches to spend millions of dollars acquiring and maintaining the tools of our trade? Many people think that the organ is yesterday’s news, and I think it’s important for us to advocate that it’s the good news of today and tomorrow.

The grill cooks in any corner diner can sustain a business using the same menu year after year, but if the menu in the “chef restaurant” with white tablecloths and stemware never comes up with anything new, their days are numbered.

This summer, when many church activities go on vacation, learn a few new pieces to play on the organ. Find a couple new anthems to share with the choir in the fall. You might read the reviews of new music found each month in the journals, or make a point of attending reading sessions for new music hosted by a chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Here’s a real challenge for you—work out a program of preludes and postludes for the coming year without repeating any pieces. Can you rustle up a hundred different titles? You never know—you might find a new classic. Remember—every chestnut you play was once new music! ν

 

Notes

1. In the days when I was doing hundreds of tunings a year, I made a point to schedule tunings so as to ensure a proper variety of lunches. As much as you may like it, one doesn’t want sushi four days in a row! It was tempting to schedule extra tunings for some of the churches—there was this Mexican place next to First Lutheran . . . Wendy would say I have a lot to show for it. 

2. It’s traditional for the organ technician to keep all the pencils found under the pedalboard.

Austin Organs, 

Hartford, Connecticut

Opus 2344 (1961 and 2014)

St. Mark’s Episcopal Church,

New Canaan, Connecticut

In New Canaan, Connecticut, just north of a town landmark known as “God’s Acre,” an imposing edifice rises from the staid landscape. St. Mark’s Church was erected in 1961. Approaching from the south, the church beckons your creative spirit as it heralds the artistry that pervades its sacred space. The entrance of the church, facing an elegant, grassy commons to the south, is easily accessed from the street. Entering the two large, intricately carved doors one finds oneself inside an impressive sanctuary that evokes the feeling of a Gothic cathedral. Triangular vaults rise up majestically from towering concrete columns. The altar is clearly the focal point of the room, but behind the altar stands an equally impressive reredos approximately 35 feet wide, standing some 40 feet in the air, displaying 184 intricately carved figures. It was designed by sculptor Clark Fitz-Gerald, whose works can be found in Columbia University, Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Carnegie Hall, and Coventry Cathedral in England. 

Behind this acoustically transparent screen stands Austin Organs’ Opus 2344, dedicated by John Weaver in a concert on January 7, 1962. In 2014, Austin installed several new stops and completed an extensive tonal redesign of the instrument.

 

From the musician

In 2000, we started discussion about completing some major work on the organ. We thought it important to return to the company that gave birth to the instrument, so we called Austin Organs in Hartford for an evaluation and recommendations. Unfortunately the church was not ready to proceed with the project at that point, so the plan was placed on hold. When we revisited the project in 2008, I was surprised and pleased to reconnect with my former schoolmate from Westminster Choir College, Mike Fazio, who was now president and tonal director of the Austin company. 

As fate would have it, the company, now reborn under the auspices of the new owners, has revisited some of the original Austin organbuilding and voicing practices—their mindset moving beyond the so-common trend of “what’s happening now” and going back to some of the venerable earlier ideals. This philosophy is happily right in line with my own personal vision for this organ. I think that this key point in our collaboration helped lead to the successful rebirth of this instrument. Further, I believe that the combination of the talents of the outstanding Austin craftspeople, some who have been with the company for many years, along with the new administration, who respect the past but also embrace the future, to be a winning combination without equal. Working on this project, I was always confident in our conversations about the direction of the instrument, and I was pleased with the outcome, because we were consistently in sync. They always listened to my vision, and it felt like we were always on the same page with the ultimate goal.

When I arrived in 1998, it was already an organ to be proud of, and I was very happy to be playing this Austin, because it essentially worked well in this space. But today, with the tonal work and expansion, it has become much more versatile. While the organ certainly could have been defined as “American Classic,” I would now say that, while that character remains, we now have the impression of an “English Town Hall” instrument. The organ can handle a broader spectrum of literature, and I find that I can accompany the service in a much more exciting way. When I use the term “exciting,” I am not just talking about louder sounds, I am talking about the inclusion of some softer voices imparting more interesting nuance than there was previously. Utilizing the new timbres available in the pedal organ, the organ has developed a new undergirding that has truly helped its effectiveness in hymn accompaniment, among other things. The inventiveness of the Austin company in finding a creative way to add real pipes (installing a full-length 16′ reed in the Swell, and a full-length 32′ reed in the Pedal, and of course, the 32′/16′ Pedal Bourdon) was amazing! The 16′ Bourdon is also an excellent addition, as it helps support the lower voices in the choir and congregation. I am so proud to be able to boast that all of our additions are real pipes, real chimes, and a real harp, without having to resort to the digital versions. I am convinced that these real voices do add significant richness and quite amazing harmonic underpinning. I am therefore able to play the organ in a much fuller way than I could previously. This has improved both my musical creativity and the choir and congregation’s singing in response. 

—Brian-Paul Thomas

Organist and Choirmaster

From the builder

The organ has excellent tonal projection from its lofty position on the central axis of the church. Its tonal disposition is somewhat reminiscent of the late work of Austin’s most famous tonal designer, James Blaine Jamison (1882–1957). He began with the Austin Company in 1933, and his impact was rather dramatic. Early in his relationship with the company, he redefined the Austin Diapason scaling system and introduced his concepts for ensemble structure and voicing, which were quickly adopted and became common practice for a generation. Richard Piper (tonal director from 1952–1978,) continued the same trend, but imparted his own stamp on the company’s work. Piper had apprenticed for nearly a decade under Henry Willis III, working on many of England’s monumental instruments, his final work being the Dome Organ at St. Paul’s Cathedral, London. Coming to Austin, he was able to impart a bit of English nuance to the Austin version of the American Classic tonal ensemble, but that nuance did not seem to be present in this instrument. My predecessor at Austin Organs, Bruce Buchanan, visited the organ in September 2000. His impression was congruous with my own, in that he proclaimed, “St. Mark’s organ is a version of American Classic with North-European leanings. This means brightness has been preferred to brilliance, and clarity to body.” It was interesting to find his notes some months after I had submitted my own assessment to the church with similar findings.

The St. Mark’s organ had been an interesting platform for Richard Piper’s tonal experimentation. The Great and Positiv were voiced on low pressure (2¾′′ wind). It would appear that the Great Organ had the strongest North-German influence: light Prinzipal scaling, heavy mixture scaling, and the foundation apparently based on the 16′ Quintaton. Overall, the division exhibited bright ensemble tone and the Positiv was much like it. The Swell was designed with somewhat stronger English influence. It, like the Choir, was voiced on 4′′ of wind presure. It was built with colorful flutes, and lush string tone; it also had a full reed chorus, yet not a proper Oboe; there was a high-pitched Plein Jeu, yet the department lacked a full principal chorus. The Choir flue chorus is made up of flutes, independent cornet mutations, and a Gemshorn and Celeste. The Choir reeds included a rather thin Krummhorn (3/4′′ scale) and an 8′ Trumpet, voiced on 6′′ of wind pressure. In the style of many fine Austin instruments of the period, this organ’s Pedal division had nine independent ranks of pipes, beginning with a generous 16′ Open Wood Contra Bass, through a Pedal Mixture and reed chorus. At some point in history, an electronic 32′ Bourdon extension was added, but had failed and was disconnected several years ago.

Approaching the organ’s tonal redesign, we had some specific goals in mind: improve the Diapason chorus, revoice/replace some existing reeds, and supplement the Pedal department. Other enhancements became possible as the project developed. For example, while we would have liked to build a new, movable, drawknob console for the instrument, a decision was made for the present time to maintain the existing console. It was certainly showing its age, but we decided to add new stopkeys in situ for the new voices. This approach would allow us to use more available funds for tonal work as a first step. It would seem that God had other thoughts. Within a month of signing the contract for the tonal work, the church was hit by an electrical storm that disabled the console, along with the church’s sound system. We removed the console to the factory, and installed a new multiplexed console and organ control system, featuring a fiber-optic connection between the console and the organ’s Universal Air Chest. While back “home” in the factory, the manual and pedal claviers were refurbished, all new wiring and stop controls were installed, and the elegant black walnut casework finish was also restored. 

 

Tonal matters

The first matter to address was the wind pressure. To achieve the aural presence we collectively desired, we recognized that the pressure needed to be increased. To that end, we chose to increase the wind pressure to 4′′ water column for the entire instrument. Next, we needed to make a decision regarding the disposition of the Great Organ’s 16′ Quintaton, which had been partly replaced (from 8′ C) several years earlier with Bourdon pipes. The breakpoint from the 8′ to the 16′ octave was abominable, and the effect of the Quintaton in general was counterproductive to our desired ensemble. The Great Mixture was overwhelming and the rest of the chorus was anemic. Our sweeping decision was to remove the entire Quintaton from the specification, and to achieve a manual 16′ voice, install a new Austin Internal Borrow action in the chest that would play the Pedal 16′ Spitz Flute as a Great stop. Previously, this stop was only available in the manual at 8′ pitch, and 16′ in the Pedal. Austin’s voicer Dan Kingman revoiced these pipes to create an excellent Viole de Gamba. Being mildly conical (1/2 taper), we adjusted the nomenclature to reflect that construction, calling it a Spitz Viole. As a manual 16′ and 8′ borrow, it has proven to be extremely successful. While we were sweeping through the organ, we chose to “wash” the 1960s voicing out of the Great Bourdon, which resulted in a flute with more warmth and fundamental. The Diapason and Principal were rescaled, and the Spitz Fifteenth replaced with a new set of Principal pipes that work well with this new chorus. The existing Fourniture was also replaced with new pipes, scaled and voiced to fit perfectly with the new scheme. The final element was the inclusion of a new reed stop for the Great. After much discussion, the choice was made to install an English Horn. Rather than yet another Trumpet, or something from the Clarinet family, we concluded that an English Horn would serve equally well as either a gentle solo or ensemble voice. 

In the Swell, we regret that we were unable to add a new Diapason, as space would not allow it. However, the large scale Viola and Flute are rather successful, evoking “synthetic Diapason” tone, to quote the late G. Donald Harrison. A vintage 4′ Wald Flute was installed to replace the original, which was removed several years ago, having been replaced with the Koppelflute from the Positiv, where it was subsequently returned. The 8′ octave of the Rohrflute was moved off the main chest, and in its place we located the 12 lowest pipes of the 16′ Waldhorn (full-length). The rather pleasant 8′ (French) Trumpet was revoiced to blend well in the ensemble, and a new 8′ (English) Oboe was installed. As a compromise to allow the installation of the Oboe, we removed the 4′ Clarion, (which was rather thin) and extended the Waldhorn to 4′ pitch to complete the chorus. Also added to the organ was a vintage Austin Vox Humana. This particular type is affectionately known as a “Vox-in-a-Box,” as the pipes are entirely placed within an encased chest that hangs directly in front of the Swell expression shades and can be adjusted for dynamic by opening or closing the top cover of said box. The effect of the Vox Humana in this church is extremely successful—it shimmers like a “chorus of voices in the distance!” Finally, the high-pitched mixture was removed and replaced with a new IV–V Plein Jeu, starting at 22⁄3′ pitch. It provides a measure of gravitas to the ensemble, whether flues or reeds. 

In the Choir, we removed the thin, baroque Krummhorn, and replaced it with an 8′ Cremona, which is a hybrid stop that is constructed as a Clarinet in the lower registers, then it morphs into our Cromorne scale in the treble. This treatment delivers the color of a rich Clarinet in the tenor range and the brightness of a French Cromorne in the right hand. As a matter of course, the existing high-pressure Trumpet was reconstructed (new tuning inserts, etc.) and revoiced.

The changes to the Pedal division were rather dramatic. We were able to redesign the offset chests at the sides of the main organ to allow the installation of a 32′ and 16′ Bourdon. More dramatic yet, we chose to extend the Swell 16′ Waldhorn (a time-honored tradition) to become the 32′ Pedal reed. Organist Brian-Paul Thomas was very clear in his vision for this voice: he did not want a jackhammer or clatter, but smooth dark tone. Using this thought as a guideline, we scaled this stop moderately, and consequently, the 12 full-length resonators fit nicely in the space occupied by the former Quintaton, located in a split arrangement on either side of the Great chest.

The other two voices added to the organ were a set of Deagan Class A chimes, and a vintage Austin Harp. These two percussions also work very nicely in this space.

 

Conclusion

We find the new instrument is exciting, rich, and versatile. It has a delicious, smooth crescendo from pianissimo to fortissimo, never missing a step! These changes were made possible because of the amazing flexibility of the Austin Universal Airchest design. Having been at the helm of Austin since 2005, I am still constantly in awe of the versatility of the Austin system. 

In a future article, we would like to discuss the transformation of a few Austin organs. These instruments were built in the same time period (the mid-1960s). The tonal disposition of each organ was very similar, and they were stereotypical of the period, and desperate for change! The study of the resulting specifications will serve as empirical evidence for any church with an organ, especially an Austin, thinking that there is no hope for a rather bland tonal ensemble. The transformation of each organ was completed with remarkable success—each one unique. We are also embarking on a plan to make a collective recording of these instruments.

While history furnishes a wealth of motivation, we are confident that new avenues and designs are only just around the corner that may enhance earlier efforts. As surely as we are inspired by the triumphs of the past, we face the challenges of today by building organs that will continue to inspire interest beyond today, beyond tomorrow, and into the next generation. Art is only art when it represents the best efforts of the Creator, with both eyes open to even greater possibilities. We aim to create something significant for worship and the performance of great music, and in the greater sphere, to offer our own illumination of how music might be made.

—Michael B. Fazio

Austin Organs, Inc.

President and Tonal Director