In the wind. . . .

Why it matters.

An hour ago, I finished my last “Christmas” tuning. It’s been a fun season involving lots of organs—some wonderful, and some a little less wonderful. I started tuning organs in Boston in 1984 when I joined Angerstein & Associates after returning from almost ten years in northern Ohio that included my years as a student at Oberlin, my first marriage, a long stint as director of music at a large Presbyterian church in Cleveland, and my terrific apprenticeship and friendship with Jan G. P. Leek. I still tune quite a few of the organs I first saw when working for Dan Angerstein in 1984—organs that were nearly new then and that have lots of miles on them now. In those churches I’ve outlasted as many as ten organists, five pastors, and who knows how many sextons.

It’s fun to return to these places several times each year, visiting the old friends who work in the buildings and monitoring the condition of the organs. Many of my tuning clients couple with a particular restaurant or sandwich shop. We were disappointed a couple weeks ago in Newburyport, Massachusetts, to see that the favorite sandwich shop near the church had been torn down. A sign indicates that they’ll reopen in a new building in the spring, but I think it will take twenty years to get the place seasoned so things taste right.

I’ve been fortunate over the years to be associated with some very special organs—special because of their size, their musical beauty, or their historical significance. It’s exciting to tune an organ that was played by Marcel Dupré, Lynnwood Farnam, or Pierre Cochereau. And I’ve had the thrill of preparing organs for concerts by such giants as Simon Preston, Madame Duruflé, Catharine Crozier, and Daniel Roth. You sit in the audience waiting for the artist to play that C# in the Swell Clarion you had so much trouble with two hours ago. Hold on, baby, hold on!

Of course, most of those experiences happen in big city churches with rich histories, fabulous artwork, heavy tourist traffic, and outstanding musicians. I’ve always felt it’s a special privilege to work behind the scenes in those monumental places, surrounded by all that heritage. But let’s not forget the importance of the small church with the seemingly inconsequential organ. 

Yesterday, I tuned one of the older Möller unit organs known as The Portable Organ. The opus list of M. P. Möller includes something like 13,500 organs, and while we know plenty of big distinguished instruments built by that firm, by far the most of them were these tiny workhorse organs with two, three, or four ranks. They built them by the thousand, and you find them everywhere. Maybe you’re familiar with the newer Artiste models that have a detached console, and one or two, or even three eight-by-eight-by-four foot cases stuffed full of pipes like a game of Tetris. The model I’m referring to predates that—they were popular in the 1940s, had attached keyboards, and usually three ranks, Spitz Principal (they called them Diapason Conique—oo-la-la), Gedeckt, and Salicional. The ranks were spread around through unit borrowing, each rank playing at multiple pitches, and there were compound stops such as “Quintadena” which combined the Gedeckt at 8′ and the Salicional at 22⁄3′.

The particular instrument I tuned yesterday was originally in a Lutheran church in Bronx, New York. As that parish dissolved a few years ago, the Organ Clearing House moved the organ to another Lutheran church in Queens. There was no budget for renovation, so we simply assembled it, coaxed all the notes to work, gave the case a treatment of lemon oil, and off we went. It had been a year since the last tuning, and it was fun to find that all the notes were working, the tuning had held nicely, and the organ sounded nice. I spent less than an hour tuning the three ranks, chatting with the pastor, and cleaning the keyboards.

When I got home this afternoon, I had a quick lunch and took a look at Facebook to be sure everyone out there was behaving. I was touched to see a post by colleague Michael Morris who works for Parkey OrganBuilders in the Atlanta area. He had just tuned another copy of the same Möller organ and wrote this:

It’s not always the quality of the instrument that makes a tuning job enjoyable. For some years now, my last regularly scheduled tuning has been in Georgia’s old capital of Milledgeville. It’s usually a pleasant drive through farm country to get to the antebellum Sacred Heart Church.

This was Flannery O’Connor’s parish, the center of her spiritual life and an influence in her writing. In 1945 Möller delivered a three-rank unit organ and placed it in the heart-pine gallery. It’s not a distinguished instrument, but it’s always easy to tune and I enjoy the thought that this instrument was part of the fabric of her life.

I’m always done just before the parishioners start the Rosary before noon Mass. I have lunch at a Mexican restaurant, then drive back to Atlanta knowing I have put another tuning season behind me.

Nice work, Michael. 

Flannery O’Connor (1925–64) was a devout Roman Catholic. After earning a master’s degree at the University of Iowa, she lived in Ridgefield, Connecticut, with classics translator Robert Fitzgerald and his wife, Sally. In 1952, O’Connor was diagnosed with lupus (from which her father died in 1941) and returned to her childhood home, Andalusia Farm in Milledgeville, Georgia. 

Her writing is spiritual, reflecting the theory that God is present throughout the created world, and including intense reflections on ethics and morality. The modest little organ in Sacred Heart Church in Milledgeville was present for her whenever she worshipped. On such a personal level, that three-rank organ is every bit as important as the mighty 240-rank Aeolian-Skinner at The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston or the iconic Cavaillé-Coll at Saint-Sulpice in Paris.

How did you get started?

After his ordination as an Episcopal priest, my father was rector of a small church in Somerville, Massachusetts. Subsequently, he was the first rector of a new parish in Westwood, Massachusetts, starting there when it was formed as a mission. I was two years old when we moved into the rectory next to the church building. The church building was designed as a very simple structure, sort of an A-frame with a linoleum floor. It was furnished with folding chairs, so the single room could be used for worship, dinners, and all sorts of other things. A few years later, the planned second phase was executed. An adjoining parish hall was built, and the original building was turned into a proper church with towers, stained glass, pews, and a rear gallery for organ and choir. The organ was also planned in stages. It was one of the first instruments built by Charles Fisk, back in the days when he was of the Andover Organ Company. It had six stops, mechanical action, and a detached-reversed console, all mounted on a six-inch-high platform down front. Get it? It was the console and Rückpositiv of an organ that could be expanded to include two manuals and pedal. When the second phase was under construction, there was a moment when the roof was off—and that’s the moment they moved the organ. They lifted the whole thing with a crane, pipes and all, and placed it in the new balcony. I would have a fit if someone did that with one of my organs today, but seeing that organ hanging from the hook of the crane is one of my earliest pipe organ memories. It was more than twenty years before the second case containing Great and Pedal was built.

When I was ten, we moved to Winchester, Massachusetts, where Dad became rector of the Parish of the Epiphany, home to an Ernest M. Skinner organ built in 1904 (Wow! That’s an early one.), during the time when Robert Hope-Jones was working with Mr. Skinner. I started taking organ lessons a couple years after we got there and was quickly aware that the organ was on its last legs. I didn’t play the Skinner organ much, because less than a year after I started taking lessons, I was playing for money at other churches. That organ was replaced by a twelve-stop Fisk in 1974, their Opus 65. Six additional stops that were “prepared for” were added in 1983. The on-site installation of those stops was under way when Charles Fisk passed away. A 16′ Open Wood was added in 2012.

My organ lessons continued a few blocks away at the First Congregational Church in Winchester, home to Fisk’s Opus 50.¹ During my high school years, I was assistant organist to George Bozeman at the First Congregational Church in neighboring Woburn, Massachusetts, where I played on the fabulous 1860 three-manual E. & G. G. Hook organ, which at 156 years old is still one of the very few remaining pre-Civil War three-manual Hooks. I didn’t know how lucky I was until I got to Oberlin a few years later and started hearing about the organs my classmates got started on.

All my college buddies were terrific organists, but I learned that some of them had never played a pipe organ before their audition at Oberlin. And while I had free access to those glorious organs by Fisk and Hook, some had only ever played on modest electro-pneumatic unit organs. The first time I played a tiny electro-pneumatic pipe organ was in a practice room at Oberlin! But thinking back and knowing that all of them were wonderful organists when they were in high school, I’m sure that thousands of parishioners in those few dozen churches were moved and excited to hear such young people play those organs so beautifully.

A matter of scale

Many composers and musicians consider the string quartet one of the purest forms of music-making. The composer working with four musicians and four independent parts is writing intimately and minimally. Each measure, each individual chord is specially voiced and tuned for the moment. There is no blurring of the edges; everything is exposed. Compare that to a symphony orchestra with twenty first violins. Conductors are fond of saying that an instrumental or choral ensemble is only as strong as its weakest member. I’ve always thought that was baloney. It’s a great cheerleading sentiment, but it seems to me that in a twenty-member violin section, the stronger players inspire and encourage their colleagues, helping them to achieve new heights. I’ve led volunteer church choirs whose collective ability far outshone the individual skills and musicianship of the weakest member.

We can draw an analogy with pipe organs. A tiny chamber organ with four or five stops is every bit as beautiful as a big-city monster with two hundred ranks. It’s almost unbelievable that both are called by the same name. When you’re playing a chamber organ, you listen to the speech of each individual pipe, but when you’re whipping through a big toccata with a hundred stops drawn, each four-part chord involves four hundred pipes. There might be an individual stinker in the Swell Clarion (remember, the pipe I was having trouble with), or a zinger in a Mixture that stands out in the crowd, but otherwise, you’re really not listening to individual pipes any more than you single out an individual violist in a Brahms symphony.

If we agree that a tiny chamber organ and a swashbuckling cathedral job are both beautiful organs, we should also agree that they serve different purposes and support different literature. I suppose we should allow that it’s likely to be more effective to play Sweelinck on a hundred stops than Widor on five. But we’re lucky that we still have organs that Sweelinck knew, so we can imagine and even reconstruct how his playing sounded. I don’t know if Widor had much opportunity to hear others play his music, but I bet he wouldn’t have liked hearing “that Toccata” on a small two-manual organ in a two-hundred-seat church.

Will it play in Milledgeville?

I’m sure my colleague Michael Morris did a lovely job tuning that little Möller organ. I assume, or I hope that some caring person will be playing lovely music and our favorite Christmas carols on the organ in the next few days. Maybe the congregation will sing “Silent Night” while holding candles, lighting that simple sanctuary with magical twinkling. Maybe that lovely effect will make people’s eyes go moist. Families will go home after Mass, whistling and humming those familiar tunes.

We know that Flannery O’Connor worshipped in that church during bleak moments in her life. There was that first Christmas after she was diagnosed with the disease that killed her father. There was that last Christmas before she died, when she must have been in terrible pain. But there was that organist doing that special thing that adds so much to worship at any time, and on any scale. And the organ was in tune.

One more thing . . . 

I’ve tuned around forty organs in the last month. Some days it seems that all I do is carry my tools back and forth to the car. I’ve seen a ton of Christmas decorations—some gorgeous, and some horribly tacky. The brightly colored life-sized inflatable plastic Nativity scene was the nadir. I expect there will be some snickering going on there on Christmas Eve.

The sacred spaces that are the most worshipful are almost always beautifully kept. There are no ragged stacks of last Sunday’s bulletin, no wastebaskets overflowing with Styrofoam coffee cups, and no inflatable Santas.

Wendy and I worship at Grace Church on lower Broadway in New York. It’s a beautiful Gothic-inspired building with magnificent stained-glass windows, elaborate carvings around the pulpit and choir stalls, a big, shiny brass eagle holding up the lectern, and a fabulous organ built recently by Taylor & Boody. John Boody has a degree in forestry and a special affinity for beautiful wood. I believe that Taylor & Boody is alone among American organbuilders in harvesting trees and milling and curing their own lumber. And the Grace Church organ sure looks it. Intricate enchanting grain patterns abound. The two facing organ cases and the massive freestanding console add their gleam to the place. It’s nice that I’ve never seen a stack of music on the console.

There are lots of organ consoles that look like the day after a fire at a Staples store. Everything from Post-it notes to rubber bands, from cough drops to hair brushes festoon the cabinet. The organ console is a worship space, especially when it’s visible from the pews. I know that the console at your church is your workspace. I know you have to view it and use it as a tool, a workbench—something like a cubicle. But you might think of creating a little bag that contains all your supplies, or installing a neat little hidden shelf to hold your hymnals. I bet your organbuilder would be happy to build you one. 

Please don’t let the state of your organ console intrude on someone’s worship. Every week you’re playing for people who are suffering, scared, sick, or worried. Be sure that everything you do is enhancing their experience of worship. That’s why we’re there. ν

Notes

1. On the Fisk website, this organ is referred to as Winchester Old and Opus 65 is Winchester New. Another similarly cute organ nickname belongs to the Bozeman-Gibson organ at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Brookline, Massachusetts—Orgel-brookline.

Follow the money

In August of 1974, Richard Nixon resigned as President of the United States, ending a long process of suspicion, investigation, and Senate hearings into allegations that the Committee to Re-elect the President (CREEP) used subterfuge and “dirty tricks” to sabotage the efforts of the Democratic Party leading up to the presidential election in 1972. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, reporters for the Washington Post, were central to that investigation, jumping on the story of the notorious break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic Party at the Watergate complex near the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in the Foggy Bottom neighborhood of Washington, D.C. They worked so closely together that they were known by their names melded as “Woodstein.” The story as they told it is widely regarded as the birth of modern investigative journalism.

Shortly after Nixon’s resignation, Woodward and Bernstein published All the President’s Men (Simon & Schuster, 1974), which was a precursor to the 1976 movie of the same name, starring Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. There’s a scene in the film where Bernstein (Dustin Hoffman) is interviewing an accountant who worked for CREEP, who revealed that there was a stash of money—a secret fund—that was used to bankroll those dirty tricks. As Bernstein questioned her, she said, “Follow the money.” I suppose that phrase had been used before, but it’s popularly understood that it originated in that movie.

Woodward and Bernstein followed the money, which led them to discovering how many White House officials and Nixon appointees were involved in the scandal, ultimately unraveling Nixon’s presidency. I’m writing this in mid-September, and I realize that you will likely be reading it a few days before Americans go to the polls to decide what must be one of the nastiest presidential campaigns in the nation’s history.

Don’t take it for granted.

When I was a kid, I had practice privileges in four different local churches. I came and went as I pleased and made plenty of noise while I was there. I even had keys to a couple of them. One was the church where I had my lessons. Looking back, I suppose my teacher had made the arrangements for me, but I don’t remember any of the details. If I remember right, I played for an occasional funeral—I guess that was in return for the right to practice. I’m pretty sure that money never changed hands, and I know I took it for granted. Wasn’t I lucky?

When I arrived at Oberlin as a student in the fall of 1974, I was flabbergasted by the number of organs. There were sixteen practice organs, four in teaching studios, a big Aeolian-Skinner in Finney Chapel, and the brand-new Flentrop in Warner Concert Hall. Organ majors had two weekly lessons—one in the studio and one in the concert hall. And of course, we needed practice time in the hall. That was the way things worked, and I never paid attention to how frustrating it must have been for students studying other instruments. If you wanted to rehearse a string quartet in Warner Hall, you had to sneak past all those organists.

Of course, Oberlin also had a lot of pianos—hundreds of them. There was a marble plaque on the wall near the dean’s office that read, “Steinway & Sons Commemorates Oberlin’s Century of Service to Music.”¹ I remember paraphrasing it: “Steinway & Sons Commemorates Oberlin’s Century of Service to Steinway & Sons.” There were close to two hundred Steinways in the practice building, Robertson Hall. There was a Steinway “B” in every teaching studio, and two Bs in every piano teacher’s studio. Two Bs, or not two Bs, there was no question that we had access to excellent instruments wherever we turned. I suppose there were close to three hundred pianos. I wonder what that cost? The pianos were there in support of all the students—flautists, singers, violinists—but the organists sure ate up most of the real estate. 

We all had our favorite instruments. I certainly knew which practice organs I preferred, but I also had a half-dozen favorite pianos. I knew them by room number and serial number. Wasn’t I lucky to have a half dozen favorites out of the multitude? I once had a dream that Oberlin was replacing all the pianos at once, and they were discarding all the old ones. To make the disposal easier in the wacky world of dreams, the pianos were placed on the curb in front of houses all over town for trash day, and we raced about, looking at serial numbers to claim our favorites. I found mine on the curb in front of Fenner Douglass’s house on Morgan Street—the one with the big organ pipe out front. Lucky guy.

WWFS? What would Freud say? That I took it for granted that lovely instruments would be provided for me wherever I went? That I felt it was somehow my right? That was the time when I was getting deep into organ building and started to realize how much money was involved.

I’ve heard colleagues say something like this: “I’ll accept that job, but I told them they’ll have to buy me a new organ.” Have you ever heard anything like that? Have you ever said anything like that?

A crazy business

Picture a parish church with 250 “pledging units.” The organ is a broken-down, tired relic, and someone gets the idea that it should be replaced. How do we get started? What’s it going to cost? However they get started, somewhere along the line they start receiving proposals from organbuilders. $650,000. $800,000. $1,200,000. Wow! I had no idea.

To pay for an $800,000 instrument, every family in that church would have to donate $3,200. To pay for $1.2M instrument, more like $4,800. Of course, it never works like that. More likely, one family gives a third of the cost, three other families split the second third, and the rest comes in small gifts from the other 246 families. The smallest gift comes from the First Grade Class of the Sunday School.

Let’s think about this. A small community of people ponies up an average of $3,200 a head to buy a musical instrument. Crazy. Are they doing that as a gift to the organist? I doubt it. They may be doing it in recognition and appreciation for the wonderful music. The organist’s artistry may have inspired them. And they may be doing it in part to be sure they’ll be able to attract the next good musician. Whatever the motivation, we shouldn’t fail to notice what a remarkable process that is.

One brick at a time

Last April, Wendy and I spent ten days in the UK. She was attending the London Book Fair, so I had a few days on my own to explore the big city. After the fair, we traveled to Durham, to York, and to Oxford, especially visiting big churches and their organs.

I wrote about that trip in the June and July 2016 issues of The Diapason and touched on how the British National Lottery provides funding for the restoration of the pipe organs and church buildings through a program called Heritage Lottery Fund, which is dedicated to preserving the nation’s heritage. Durham Cathedral was built between 1093 and 1133, and a major renovation project is underway now. Dubbed “Open Treasure,” the project is focused not only on the fabric of the building, but on programming involving the use of the spaces as well. You can read about the project on the website: www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/open-treasure. 

The Heritage Lottery Fund is supporting the project in large part, but Durham Cathedral is responsible for raising a huge amount of the money. And there’s a marvelous project as part of that campaign. In the gift shop, a large and ancient room that also houses a restaurant, there was a Lego™ model of the cathedral under construction. It’s more than 12½ feet long, 5½ feet tall, and includes more than 300,000 bricks. For a donation of £1 per brick, you could add to the model. We gave £20, and with the help of a cheerful volunteer wearing an “Open Treasure” sweatshirt, I followed architectural drawings to install my 20 bricks.

There’s a website describing that project: www.durhamcathedral.co.uk/visit/what-to-visit/durham-cathedral-lego-bui…. When I looked at it this morning, I learned that the project, which started in July of 2013, is now complete. That webpage includes a video in five parts that animates the history of the cathedral using Lego™ bricks, with terrific singing by the cathedral choir in the background.

A note to readers: I hope you open the links I publish with this column. And Google “Durham Cathedral Lego.” You’ll find lots of newspaper coverage of this unique project.

In the July issue, I shared the tenth-century story of St. Cuthbert and the missing cow, part of the legend of the founding of the cathedral. There’s a commemorative statue of a cow high on the exterior of the cathedral, and there’s a Lego™ cow in the model, along with a representation of the famous poly-chromed façade of the cathedral organ, notable because it sports two 16′ Open Wood Diapasons, one which extends to 32′! Now we’re talking.

Buy a pipe.

The idea of buying bricks is not new. There are a couple bricks with our names on them in the path leading to the Skidompha² Library in Damariscotta, Maine (population 2,218). And my grandparents donated stones in honor of me, my three siblings, and ten first cousins for the construction of the Washington National Cathedral in Washington, D.C. I have no idea where those stones are located, but whenever I’m there, I look up and think about it.

A common gimmick for raising money for an organ project is “Buy a Pipe,” or “Adopt a Pipe.” The organbuilder and organ committee team up to create a catalogue of prices. You could list anything from a 13/5′ Tierce ($800) to a 32′ Bombarde ($75,000); a keyboard ($3,500) to a blower ($5,000). Donors could mark boxes on a form, and send in their checks. I’ve seen organ benches, carved pipe shades, and swell boxes listed as family gifts in dedication booklets. I’ve even seen an antiphonal Trompette-en-Chamade with the knob engraved Trompette Boyd, in memory of the son who died in the war.

This exercise is always a little mythical—it’s hard to make a list that accurately covers the entire cost of an organ. Windlines, schwimmers, ladders, and walkboards don’t make appealing memorials. Maybe you inflate the value of a music rack to cover a tuner’s perch. But it certainly is meaningful to donors to know they supported something specific. I often quip that raising money to build an organ is easier if there will be lots of space on the case for a plaque.

Place a big organ pipe, at least an 8-footer, in the narthex. Mark it with increments of $100,000, and fit it with a gold tuning sleeve. As gifts come in, move the sleeve up the pipe. Nice visual.

§

There are lots of reasons for a church to purchase a new organ. The old one is worn out, or the old one was never any good. A new instrument would help revitalize the place. We care deeply about the meaning and role of music in our worship.

And there are reasons not to. A couple years ago I worked with a church, helping them to sell a large tracker organ. It was less than twenty years old, and very fancy, with carvings and moldings, shiny façade pipes, and turned rosewood drawknobs. But a significant number of members had been bitterly opposed to the acquisition. Many of those people left the church, and the opposition that remained carried on the battle. The installation of the new organ could be traced directly to the failure of the church and the disbanding of the congregation. Soli Deo Gloria. 

Wendy and I recently joined a church that installed a new organ a few years earlier. It was named the Bicentennial Organ, commemorating the bicentennial of the parish, and it was paid for by the wide membership of the parish and surrounding community. As a new member, I’ve enjoyed meeting people there. When they learn that I’m involved with pipe organs, they light up and speak eloquently about the church’s new instrument. They’re well informed about it. They not only know it’s a good and important organ, but they know why. They’re proud of it, and its presence in the building means a lot to them.

Care for the money.

The people who paid for the organ are entrusting it to you. Be sure that it’s always well cared for. That means tuning and mechanical issues, but there are some bigger, less obvious reasons. There’s someone on the property committee, the finance committee, or the board of trustees who is responsible for the church’s insurance policies. You are the advocate for the care of the organ. Take a moment to ask if the organ is properly insured. The organ should be specified on the policy, with a letter of assessment attached. If the organ is damaged by fire, by a roof leak, or by vandalism, they’ll find out very quickly how much it will cost to repair. If the organ was purchased for $200,000 thirty years ago, it may have a replacement value of over $1,000,000—$200,000 wouldn’t even cover the Rückpositiv. It’s remarkable how many organs are not adequately insured.

When the parish is planning renovation in the sanctuary, you are the advocate for the care of the organ. Be sure the organ is properly covered. If it’s going to be really dusty, the reeds should be removed to storage. New carpets, sanding the floors, painting, and carpentry are all enemies of the organ. I once saw a painter standing on top of the swell box in an antique organ, working over his head, a drop cloth and roller pan at his feet. Paint was dripping onto the Great pipes, and the guy had no idea how little structure there was under him. He could have fallen though and wrecked the organ. Might have gotten hurt, too.

Make sure that your music is well chosen and beautifully played—an inspiration to everyone in the pews. Use the organ to nurture and lead the congregation, not to aggrandize yourself. Use the organ as if it’s a privilege to play it. The people who paid for it are entrusting it to you. It’s there to provide beautiful music, but more fundamentally, it’s there as an expression of the congregation’s faith.

The new organ is a gift to future generations of worshipers. Your gift to those future generations is the inspiration you’ve provided—the magic, mystery, and majesty you’ve added to worship—that has encouraged the congregation to express their faith by supporting that new organ. Aren’t we lucky? ν

Notes

1. While writing this, I learned that Steinway provided a second plaque celebrating 150 years, honoring Oberlin as an “All-Steinway School.”

2. “Skidompha” is an acronym using the first initials of the names of the members of the club that founded the library. First Lady Laura Bush awarded the National Medal for Museum and Library Services to the Skidompha Library in 2008.

Living documents

Purist: A person who insists on absolute adherence to traditional rules or structures.

During the second half of the twentieth century, organists and organbuilders learned a lot about purists. As we delved into the evolving world of historically informed performance (we used to call it “early performance practice”), we could be disdainful of any elements added to the original—the original score, the original instrument, the original anything. We sought urtext editions and refused to alter the notes in any way. “Couperin didn’t place an ornament over that note, and I’m not ornamenting that note.” If some wayward organ guy had added a stop to an antique organ, we called forth the wrath of God—pox on his house. Funny, we didn’t seem to mind cutting down those lovely strings to make mutations . . . 

The ultimate purist preservation of an instrument is to retain the maximum amount of original material possible, including decomposed felt and leather, which likely means that the instrument would be unplayable, but it sure
is preserved.

If you’re curator of an exhibit of historically important furniture (Marie Antoinette sat here), you surround it with red velvet ropes and signs saying “Do Not Sit.” Most of the important historic organs I know are in regular use. What would be the point of preserving Widor and Dupré’s magnificent organ at St. Sulpice in Paris or the stupendous organ built by Christian Müller in the Grote Kerk in Haarlem, Holland, if we couldn’t play and hear them? The glory of those antique masterpieces is that their sounds are just as vital today as they were when they were new. We have to invade them to preserve them. Mozart played the Haarlem organ in 1766 when he was ten years old, and the organ, completed in 1738, was twenty-eight years old. That’s comparable to the current age of the famous Fisk organ at the Meyerson Symphony Center in Dallas, completed in 1992—twenty-four years old now. The Haarlem organ has seen changes, but we can be pretty confident that it sounds a lot like it did the day young Wolfie played it.

An evolving document

Wendy and I have just returned from an eight-day trip to the United Kingdom. As she is a literary agent, the trip was planned to coincide with the London Book Fair, an exhibition for the publishing world that attracted more than 25,000 participants from 134 countries this year. While she was meeting with clients and colleagues, I slummed around London visiting churches and organs, and I stoked my love of the fictional British Navy Captains Aubrey and Hornblower along with my love of sailing by visiting the National Maritime Museum and the Royal Observatory in Greenwich. Together, we toured and heard Evensong at Westminster Abbey and St. Paul’s Cathedral.

After the fair, we went north to Durham, where I spent an afternoon visiting the workshops of the great British organ company, Harrison & Harrison (I’ll write about that visit soon), and we shared experiences at Durham Cathedral. We spent twenty-four hours in York where we heard Evensong (by far the best singing we heard all week) and toured the great cathedral familiarly known as York Minster. By the way, yes, it is a cathedral—the official name is The Cathedral and Metropolitan Church of St. Peter in York.

And we spent two days in Oxford where we had meals with family members and clients and visited the new Dobson organ at Merton College, the venerable Willis organ at Blenheim Palace, the Ashmolean Museum, and the Bodleian Library, where three of the surviving four copies of the original 1217 Charter of the Magna Carta are held. Careful of those overdue fees.

As we walked through the grand and ancient church buildings, I was struck by how at their best, and at their worst, they are all evolving documents. The original forms are largely preserved, and important elements that define and enhance each building have been added over the centuries.

People are dying to get in.

Westminster Abbey is home to countless graves and memorials. Some are simple engraved paving stones, others are monumental Victorian splashes with larger-than-life heroes on horses engaged in swirling battles, capes a-fluttering and swords a-flying. The verger who was our tour guide quipped, “the larger the monument, the lesser the hero.” Nearly every royal coronation since 1066 (William the Conqueror) has happened at the Abbey, and through the ages, officials have struggled to maximize the seating capacity. The abbey normally seats about 2,000 people, but for the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953, temporary galleries were installed to squeeze in 8,200. I bet they could add a thousand seats if they took out all the flashy monuments.

The installation of graves and memorials is a terrific example of how Westminster Abbey has been used as a living and evolving document. Geoffrey Chaucer (died 1400), Georg Frideric Handel (d. 1759), Isaac Newton (d. 1727, same year as Beethoven), and Charles Dickens (d. 1870) are all buried there. The most recent is a memorial to David Frost (d. 2013), the comedian and journalist who famously interviewed Richard Nixon following his resignation as President of the United States. I’m not sure what you have to do to secure a spot there. Perhaps you can download an application.

I expect that some conservative Christians would be surprised to see the grave of Charles Darwin near that of Isaac Newton in a house of worship. But as the Bishop of Carlisle, Harvey Goodwin, preached in the days following Darwin’s death, “It would have been unfortunate if anything had occurred to give weight and currency to the foolish notion which some have diligently propagated, but for which Mr. Darwin was not responsible, that there is a necessary conflict between a knowledge of Nature and a belief in God.” Now there’s an argument that’s been going on for a long time. How’s that for a living document?

If you buy it, we’ll hang it.

Along with a few exceptionally flamboyant memorials, there are two newer additions to the furnishings of Westminster Abbey that I think are incongruous. In 1966, the Guinness family (of stout fame) donated sixteen immense Waterford Crystal chandeliers to commemorate the 900th anniversary of the abbey. Each is more than ten feet tall and comprises hundreds of pieces of cut glass. They’re sumptuous and glorious, but their design has no more to do with the high gothic than a Ford Thunderbird. In my opinion, they’re ostentatious and out of place.

And in the glorious Lady Chapel, beyond the high altar, with one of the most beautiful pendant fan vaulted ceilings anywhere, there are two huge windows installed in 2013, depicting symbols associated with the Virgin Mary. They replaced windows that were destroyed during World War II, were designed by the British artist Hughie O’Donoghue, executed by Helen Whittaker of the Barley Studios in York, and are the gift of Lord and Lady Harris of Peckham commemorating the 60th anniversary of the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II. Lord Harris (born 1942) is a member of Parliament who made his fortune in the carpet business. The vivid blue hue of the windows, while appropriate to the Virgin Mary, is oddly out of place in the chapel, as are the unflattering portraits of Lord and Lady Harris in the lower right corner of one of the windows.

Space for an organ

Finding space for the installation of a pipe organ is a conundrum often faced in modern church buildings. Likewise, while medieval cathedrals are monumental in size, they were not designed with pipe organs in mind. And a monumental building demands a monumental organ. Installing organs in buildings like those is quite a trick, as made clear by some of the interesting solutions we saw during our trip. 

In the cathedrals of York and Exeter, and the chapel of Kings College, Cambridge, the organ cases are placed high on the screens that separate the nave from the quire. But the organs burst the confines of their cases, and the overflow is dispersed around the higher reaches of the buildings. At Kings College, much of the organ is contained within the screen below the level of the console. At Westminster Abbey, the console is on the screen high above the quire, and the large body of the organ that is not contained by the ornate facing cases above the screen is housed stories higher in the triforium.

At York, an immense 32-foot Metal Open Diapason stands against the wall of the ambulatory, and is disguised as stone columns. At Durham Cathedral, huge Open Wood Diapasons (one at 32-foot, the other at 16-foot) are installed in the ambulatory on either side of the quire.

For those of us in the organ community, it’s hard to imagine all those buildings without organs, but I was struck by how those huge instruments are imposed on the ancient sites, and what an intrusion it was to install them. Do you cut big holes in 900-year-old floors to run windlines from a basement blower room to the organ case? Do you power-drill holes and place bolts in pockets of epoxy in 900-year-old columns to fasten the organ’s structure to the fabric of the building like we do in modern masonry buildings? And how much can you trust the integrity of the ancient material to bear the weight, stress, and vibrations of a pipe organ? We learned about several critical “stabilizing” projects that have limited the possibility of collapses. When you roll a windchest on a dolly across the floor of the quire, do you crack or shatter the ancient paving stones? What a responsibility it is to care for these world-famous and venerable buildings.

Our tour guide at Durham Cathedral told how they took up the stone floor of the quire to install the pipes for radiant heating. They had archeologists on hand in case they turned up unknown graves (they did), and the artisans had to catalogue everything so each stone was returned to its original location.

Oil and water

The other day, I visited an organ being offered for sale. It’s a three-manual American Classic beauty built just after World War II that suffers because it was placed in remote chambers out of earshot of the congregation. A Trompette en Chamade was added in 1970. It has high wind pressure, narrow scale, and a horribly prominent location. I suppose the hope was it would help define the sound of the instrument, as well as provide for festive voluntaries for weddings and such. The trouble is that it has nothing to do with the rest of the organ. Its self-righteous snarl violates the beautiful space of the nave. On the plus side, there’s no need for blend since it overpowers the rest of the organ.

Years ago, an organist asked me to add a 1-foot stop to the organ at his church, a nineteenth-century tracker with eight stops, none above 4-foot. He had been inspired by such a stop on an organ he had played recently, one that I know has more than a hundred stops. What’s the use of a 1-foot as the ninth stop on an organ?

I’m not opposed to adding stops to organs. I know plenty of instances where a pedal reed, a mixture, even an entire division has been added to an organ with great effect. But to be successful, such additions need to be thoughtful extensions of the whole. You may have salvaged a rank of Trumpet pipes and stored it in your garage, but just because it fits in the holes, there’s no guarantee it will sound good. Think about pipe scales, metal thickness, wind pressure, and halving ratios. Think about the original intent of the organbuilder. What’s the next stop he would have added to the organ? If you’re working with a decent organ, you’re working with a work of art. Please don’t tart it up with something that doesn’t belong.

A Royal Festival of Reger

Our trip to the U.K. was planned long before I knew that Stephen Tharp would be playing a recital on the organ at Church of the Resurrection in New York, where the Organ Clearing House installed a renovated and enlarged Casavant organ, relocated from a church in Maine. I admire Stephen’s dazzling and daring musicianship, and I was disappointed to learn that I’d miss such an occasion. Our consolation prize was Isabelle Demers playing a recital of the music of Max Reger at London’s Royal Festival Hall. What a treat! I snapped up tickets online before we left home.

Isabelle’s concert was part of the “Pull Out All the Stops International Organ Series,” presented in celebration of the recent restoration of the huge Harrison & Harrison organ at RFH, and there was a huge audience. Amazingly, it was recorded by the BBC for broadcast online, but unfortunately, the stream expires before this publication date.

The program included Reger’s Chorale Fantasy on Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme and closed with his monumental Introduction, Passacaglia, and Fugue in E Minor (op. 127). In keeping with today’s theme of messing with the original, Isabelle opened the program with Reger’s transcription of Bach’s Chromatic Fantasia and Fugue in D Minor, and four of his transcriptions of Bach’s Two-Part Inventions. Those were new ones for me. Most of us have played those “Two-Parters” in early keyboard lessons, perhaps returning to them as mature musicians to try to make music of them. But Reger turned them into fiendish etudes with impossible pedal lines, and at least three independent parts. If I had tried to play them, it would have sounded like falling down stairs, but Isabelle tossed them off with aplomb. It’s a good thing Reger didn’t try the same with the Three-Part Inventions.

Heads will roll.

Britain’s King Henry VIII was a tough character, dealing with dissent by beheading people. Ironically, shortly after he ensconced his mistress Jane Seymour in the palace, he accused his wife Anne Boleyn of infidelity. Anne was executed on May 19, 1536, the day before Henry became engaged to Jane. It’s hard to imagine how secure that made Jane feel, and Anne was not the last of Henry’s wives to be executed for infidelity.

Henry VIII famously fell out with the pope, who had refused to grant an annulment of Henry’s first marriage, and he set out to separate the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. In 1540, the king ordered the destruction of shrines to saints, took possession of the assets of monasteries, and created havoc across the land. Everywhere we went in England, we saw empty niches where statues of saints had been removed, and where the saints remained in place, many were headless.

One of the more poignant new artistic expressions we saw was a collection of twelve modern headless statues called the Semaphore Saints placed across the west wall of York Minster, under the great window, six on each side of the main entrance. Created by sculptor Terry Hamill who donated them to the cathedral, each holds a halo in each hand and is posed as a letter of the semaphore alphabet. Collectively, they spell “Christ Is Here,” symbolic of the power of icons, heralding the strength of the message of the church, even if the saints’ heads have been removed.

§

I’ve gone out on several limbs here. I’ve pooh-poohed wildly expensive artworks that have been given to important and venerable institutions, and I’ve boiled centuries of history into a few glib paragraphs. In all expressions of art, from tiny paintings to huge cathedrals, we each have to decide what is complete and should be left in original form, and what deserves to be alive and evolving. If you add a pipe organ to an ancient building, or Art Deco chandeliers in a Gothic space, would you add a mustache or a dog to a painting by Rembrandt, or an extra act or character to a play by Shakespeare? How do you decide what’s acceptable and what’s abomination?

Perhaps it’s less intrusive to alter a piece of music or other performance art. After all, once an “enhanced” performance is over, you can always do it again the “right” way.

Mulling all this over, I guess the additions I like the best are those that make eloquent statements while honoring the original fabric of the place. The Space Window in the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., the Firefighters Memorial at St. John the Divine in New York, and York Minster’s Semaphore Saints are all contemporary expressions, and they all speak eloquently to me. 

I can only celebrate the wonderful organs we saw. The buildings were all more than 600 years old before the organs were added, but they bring the life of moving breath into the living documents which are the buildings they populate, and have served as catalysts for a powerful movement of sacred music I can’t imagine living without. Change, by all means. But the past becomes and is becoming to the future.

Servicing the awe-inspiring buildings in which we work requires that we avoid taking unnecessary risks

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House

Sacred spaces

Several years ago the Organ Clearing House was assisting a colleague firm installing a large renovated organ in one of our country’s great cathedrals. Halfway through the project we encountered a logistical issue requiring a hastily arranged conversation with the cathedral administration. We set up a dozen folding chairs encircling a large bronze medallion inlaid in the chancel floor, and sat there with legal pads on our laps working through the issue of the day. It was an intense and complicated conversation, but as colleagues and clients worked the problem, I was struck by the majesty of the place. The vaulted ceiling soared 120 feet above our heads. Surrounded by opulent carvings and priceless artworks, we were sitting in one of the grandest interior spaces ever built. A staccato comment, a laugh, even a cough reverberated almost endlessly. What a wonderful place for a meeting.

With the problem solved, we had a round of handshakes, a few quips, and we went back on the job with new marching orders. I was left with a strong sense of the privilege of working in such a place—sharing responsibility for the stewardship of the magnificent organ and all the other liturgical art that combines to make such a great space so special, so sacred.

When my kids were growing up, they teased me for navigating by steeples. I cared for dozens of organs in the Boston area, so if we ever lost our way in a strange neighborhood, I would catch sight of a distant steeple and head for it, knowing I’d soon be back on familiar turf. I still do that.  

A lifetime of working in and around pipe organs has meant a lifetime of working in church buildings. They’re not all as grand as that great cathedral, but most of them are wonderful in some way. Some are beautiful little antique buildings out in the country, some are big broad-shouldered affairs with Romanesque arches, some are stately, and while we can’t deny that some are dowdy or even tacky, there’s something special about sacred spaces.

Creepy corners

Once you’ve taken in the grandeur of the sanctuary, you’re likely to find little shops of horrors when you go behind the scenes. Last week we were working in a large stone building with a heavily decorated interior. To the right of the classic Protestant Platform there’s a door that leads to a little corridor that connects an outside door, sacristy, and restroom (complete with bible and hymnal!) to an awkward stairway that leads to the choir loft and a strange upstairs office. I imagine that the architect didn’t bother to draw in the stairs—he just provided a space with specified floor levels and expected the carpenter to fill in the blanks. It’s as treacherous a passage as you’d care to find—a couple angled half-stairs filling in the odd spaces, and there’s virtually no lighting. I imagine that plenty of choir members have stumbled there in the dark. It would never pass the scrutiny of a modern building inspector.

In older buildings we find hundred-year-old knob-and-tube electrical wiring still in use, hulking ancient carbon-smelling furnaces that have been converted from coal to gas, and thousand-pound bells hung in rickety wood frames directly above the pipe organ. One organ I cared for, now long replaced, was knocked out of tune every time they rang the bell. Another is plagued by the rainwater that comes down the bell rope.

Go inside the organ chamber and you find old gas light fixtures that predate Thomas Edison, even nineteenth-century batteries piled in a corner, left over from the days before Intelli-power, Astron, and Org-Electra rectifiers, even before belt-driven DC generators.

As Boston is America’s earliest center of serious organbuilding, many instruments dating from before the Civil War are still in use in rural churches around New England. I’ve seen hundred-fifty-year-old candles snugged in the tops of wood pipes, secured to the stoppers by the drip method, left from tuners of bygone eras. Imagine spending your time tuning by candlelight inside organs. How easy it would be to be distracted by a cell phone call or text message, and let the candle burn down, starting a fire in the chamber. Gives me the willies!

Many commercial and industrial buildings have purposeful departments that employ stationary engineers who plan and supervise the care of the machinery. When you have equipment such as elevators, furnaces, air conditioners, lighting controls, pumps, and pressure vessels, it makes sense to provide a maintenance budget and staff to ensure safe and reliable operation.

We find this style of operation in large and prosperous urban churches, but it’s more usual to find that a church building and its operating equipment are maintained by a volunteer property committee. If a church member who lives down the street buys a new snow-blower, he’ll be on the property committee before he can put down his gas can. It’s wonderful to see the dedication of church members who volunteer to help run the place, but there is a time and a place for specific expertise, and the scale of the equipment found in a large church building is often greater than the skills of those who are responsible.

How many times has an organ tuner encountered a local custodian who simply doesn’t understand how to operate the mighty boiler in the basement? Last week, in that church with the funky stairway, I asked the custodian to have the heat up for the two days I planned to spend tuning. He said it would be no problem—he’d just set the timer. When I showed up in the morning it was chilly in the sanctuary, so I tracked down the custodian. He scurried to the boiler room, emerging a few minutes later mumbling something about “daylight saving time.” No question about it—he had no idea what he was doing. I know that because I’ve been tuning there for almost 30 years and he’s been messing up the heat for longer than that.

The high-wire act

A large pipe organ is a magnificent structure. A beautiful architectural organ case often serves the function of a steeple—it carries one’s eyes heavenward. There’s a special sense of grandeur and spaciousness when you change keyboards between a Rückpositiv that stands on the floor of the balcony and the lofty Swell, or Oberwerk, 30 feet above. Walk around behind the organ and you’ll find a spindly series of ladders and walkways worthy of the Flying Wallendas.

Fifteen years ago, I was curator of the Aeolian-Skinner organ in the First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church) in Boston—one of the world’s great instruments. It has more than 12,000 pipes, about 240 ranks, including 41 reeds. It’s three stories high—there’s a full-length 32-foot stop in the Swell box. When walking across the top floor of the organ from Bombarde to Hauptwerk to Great, one is treated to a magnificent view of the auditorium that seats more than 3,000 people. As organs go, the structure is pretty sturdy, but there are some places where you have to step across some big holes.  

There’s a place on the top floor of the glorious Newberry Memorial organ in Woolsey Hall at Yale University where you have to hold your breath and leap through thin air. Across the top of that heroic façade you’re actually looking down on the chandeliers! It reminds me of the scene in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, when Indiana is forced to lead the evil Donovan and Elsa across the abyss to the chamber that houses the Holy Grail. Led by the clues in his father’s (Sean Connery) notebook, Indiana comes to a huge open space, closes his eyes, and trusting the notebook, leans forward to be miraculously supported by a bridge that appears as an optical illusion. Once he has drunk from the carpenter’s cup, poured Holy Water on his father’s gunshot wound, and failed to save Elsa who falls as the temple collapses because she won’t surrender the cup, he can go ahead and tune the Solo Trumpet, Trumpet Harmonique, and the Tuba Mirabilis on 25-inch wind. Next . . . next . . . next . . . 

More than 30 years ago, I was working with my mentor on a renovation of a large organ in Cleveland. The access to the top of the organ was a tall vertical ladder nestled in sort of a four-sided chute formed by the ladder, two pipes of the 16-foot Open Wood Diapason, and the wall of the chamber—narrow enough to allow the trick of climbing down the ladder with my hands full, sliding my rump against the wall. But once, late on a Friday and eager to get on the road, I jumped onto the ladder with my hands full, missed my footing and shot straight down, landing hard on my feet.  

I was young then. There was a jolt when I landed, but I gathered my senses, loaded the car, and drove home. My teeth stopped rattling a couple days later.

Safety in the workplace

In the summer of 2010, the International Society of Organbuilders and the American Institute of Organbuilders held a joint convention in Montreal. It was a treat to participate in such a large gathering of colleagues from around the world. We heard some spectacular organs and marvelous artists, and I was especially pleased to finally have a chance to visit the workshops of Casavant Frères in Saint-Hyacinthe, Quebec, where so many wonderful organs have been built across the turns of two centuries. It’s another sort of hallowed space.  

In one of the daily programs that took place in the hotel meeting rooms, I sat on a panel with several colleagues discussing pipe organ maintenance. Each of us had chosen a particular subject to address, with the moderator blending our presentations into an open discussion.

Mark Venning, then managing director of Harrison & Harrison of Durham, England, sat next to me on the panel. Harrison & Harrison has an impressive tour of organ maintenance that includes the care of their organs in Westminster Abbey in London, and King’s College, Cambridge—to name a couple high points! (So they tuned for Will and Kate’s wedding—remember the verger’s cartwheel?) Mark chose to discuss safety inside pipe organs. He spoke about how the ladders and walkways that allow access to the interiors of many organs are often rickety and dangerous. He encouraged his fellow organbuilders to avoid taking unnecessary risks, even if it means insisting that your clients provide budgets for the construction of new and safer access.

Throughout the twentieth century, the modern labor movement has taken great strides emphasizing safety in the workplace. The first step was limiting the length of the workday so people in reasonably good health can still be alert and focused in the later hours of the day. We have safety guards on machines, safety glasses, hearing protection, fire and smoke alarms, eyewash stations, steel-toed boots, and rubber floor mats to limit fatigue in feet, legs, and back. In fact, sometimes all the safety equipment gets in the way. If I had a nickel for each time my safety glasses have fogged up while running the table saw I’d have a lot of nickels.

Most modern organbuilders take great care to construct safe access to all areas and components of their instruments. Sturdy ladders hang from steel hooks so they cannot slip. Walkboards have handrails. But a century ago, no such standards were in place. If a candle was all you had for lighting, your attitude toward fire protection would be looser than what we’re used to today. A simple ladder might lean against the large wood pipes at the back of the organ for access to an upper-level Swell box, providing that you could clamber off the top of the ladder and climb up the pipes as if they were stairs. That all might have been okay when the organ was new, but add 140 years to the story and things might have gotten a little rickety.

We care for an instrument in Boston that was built in the early 1970s, with a snazzy contemporary case that gives a modern interpretation of the classic Werkprinzip concept. The lowest keyboard plays the Rückpositiv, located on the edge of the balcony behind the organist. The top keyboard plays the Swell, which is behind shutters just above the keydesk. And the middle keyboard plays the Great, located above the Swell. The Pedal is in a separate free-standing case. When you walk behind the main case, you see a ladder fastened to a concrete wall on which you can climb to two walkboards. The first, about five feet up, allows access to doors that open to expose the tracker action and pallet boxes of the Great. Climb up another story to the walkboard from which you tune the Great. Let’s guess it’s twelve feet up, about the height of a usual balcony rail. When you first get on, it seems wide enough—maybe two feet. But, there’s no railing. Move around up there, opening and closing the wide access doors, sitting for hours tuning the Mixture that’s buried behind two reeds, and you realize that it would be mighty easy to miss concentration and step off the edge.  

And—the entire case is coated with gray semi-gloss paint with a fine surface. The dust that collects on that painted walkboard feels like ball bearings under your feet. Are you risking your life to tune a Trumpet?

I started this ramble thinking of the awe-inspiring buildings in which we work, and it follows that sometimes we are working up against priceless fixtures. In that same great cathedral, we build a studs-and-plywood house around the ten-ton, 40-saint marble pulpit so there would be no chance of dinging a carved nose with a Violone pipe. Years ago, my first wife Pat was working on our crew as we dismantled a large organ for releathering. Suddenly she announced that she finally understood organbuilding: “Organbuilding is carrying long, heavy, dirty, unbalanced things with lots of sharp stuff poking out of them, down rickety ladders, past Tiffany windows!”

A little rule that’s common among organbuilders says that you pay attention to each step you take, especially if you’re not familiar with the organ, and especially if the organ is old. You really can’t assume that the guy who hung that ladder in 1897 was thinking about you in 2013, or that he really knew what he was doing in the first place. He had never heard of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Friday morning, my colleague Joshua Wood and I went to do a service call on a 130-year-old organ near home. The organist had noted that there was a cipher in the bass octave of the Great, so I took a couple tools and climbed to the walkboard. Josh poked around the notes and we found that several were ciphering. Because they were chromatic neighbors I guessed that it might be the adjustment of the big action rail that was causing the cipher. I retraced my steps to the ladder and stepped out on the two-by-four-ish beam on which it was leaning. I heard a loud crack, a series of rattles, and a heavy thump. The thump was me, landing flat on my back after a six-foot drop. I was Galileo’s cannonball.

I am no longer young. If it’s middle age, I guess I’ll live past 110. (The next day was my birthday.) Breath came back slowly, but pain was prompt.

I lay on the walkboard that covers the pedal tracker action—thank goodness that held—for twenty minutes or so. Before trying to stand, I wondered if we’d need to call for help, but strangely, I thought of the organ. We’ve all seen the teams of firefighters and EMTs arriving at a scene, big swarthy guys in steel-toed boots with 40 pounds of tools hanging off their belts. No way should they come pounding into that sweet antique organ. So with Josh’s support, and perhaps foolishly, I found my feet, left the organ, and lay on the floor of the choir risers until the friendly crew arrived. Funny, turned out that two of them had grown up in that church.

Wendy joined me in the emergency room for a lengthy day of poking, waiting, prodding, waiting, wondering. I got off with a titanium brace, a cracked vertebra, bruises, strained muscles, and a potent prescription. As I write now, I’m waiting for the clinic to call to give me an appointment for follow-up with the spine guy. I’m hurt, but I got off easy.

The auto mechanic two beds over? Not so much. He caught his hoodie in the turning driveshaft of a car he was working on, was flown by helicopter from Cape Cod to Boston, and was being rushed into surgery to correct his broken neck. Woof. I’ll be fine.

Note

1. The Skinner Organ Company instrument in West Medford, Massachusetts (Opus 692) was installed in 1928 by a team from the factory in Dorchester that included a 24-year-old Jason McKown. I met Jason in 1984 (he was eighty!) when I succeeded him as curator of the organs at Trinity Church, Copley Square and the First Church of Christ, Scientist (the Mother Church). Jason had cared for the Trinity Church organ for 50 years, and the Mother Church organ since it was installed in 1952. He subsequently introduced me to many other churches, including that in West Medford. He told me that Mr. Skinner had personally worked on the installation of that organ. I took over its maintenance in 1984—there have been only two technicians caring for that organ for over 85 years.

Human gestures

The 2007 documentary film Note by Note: The Making of Steinway L1037, provides a rare glimpse into the art of building pianos. The cameras travel through the factory from one work area to another, interviewing the craftsmen and women, and showing each step of the process. It’s fascinating to see a team of men making the laminated body of an instrument by running the twenty-foot-long layers through a machine that applies glue, bending them around a heavy form, and tightening dozens of powerful clamps to hold the thing together. We see the fitting of the iron plates, the forming of soundboard and bridge, painting, stringing, and tuning. Individual workers explain what they’re doing and share their pleasure in participating in the art, and a roster of well-known pianists, from Lang Lang to Hank Jones, and Hélène Grimaud to Harry Connick, Jr., discuss their relationships with the instrument—how an individual piano affects their art, and their playing serves as background to many of the factory scenes.

It’s easy to find the film online (I bought it from Amazon), and I recommend that anyone interested in the art of musical performance and instrument building should see it. Steinway’s emphasis on hand craftsmanship is central to the film including the fitting of the iron plate, the making and fitting of the soundboard and bridge, stringing, and Steinway’s insistence that all tuning, from the first “chipping in” to the final fine tunings, be done by ear.

French pianist Pierre-Laurent Aimard is featured throughout, working with Steinway concert technicians as he compares and selects pianos for particular concerts and recording projects, and he comments on the differences between instruments and how different artists approach their instrument. When commenting on hand craftsmanship, he stresses the importance of the “human gesture.”

I’ve watched the movie several times, both alone and with friends, and each time I’m moved by Aimard’s use of that phrase. It’s a reflection on his sensitivity as an artist, and his understanding of the importance of art to the human condition.

A stroke of the pen

One of organ building’s lovely traditions is the ceremony of signing a contract for a new instrument. The organbuilder and the appropriate officer of the purchasing institution sit at a table, surrounded by friends, colleagues, and often donors. Copies of the document are spread out in front of them, and photos are taken as ink and champagne flow.

The light-speed pace of technological developments has given us the widespread acceptance of “electronic signatures.” We can sign contracts, insurance documents, even birthday cards by following instructions on our screens. We click a box to accept the terms, and the deed is done. You don’t have to show up at the attorney’s office, but the personal touch is gone. The way the nib of the pen indents a piece of paper—the human gesture—somehow makes the agreement more official.

Stand close to a painting by Rembrandt or Monet, and look across the surface from different angles (remember that the gallery guard has his eyes on you), and you can see the ridges and valleys, the start and stop of each stroke, even the motion of the bristles as the artist twists the brush between his fingers to create a special texture. You can almost smell the linseed oil as the master moves his brush—the human gesture. Tiziano Vicelli (Titian) died in 1576 at the age of 99. I wonder if he knew that the paint he was mixing would still be vivid 440 years later? It’s nice to have a print of a wonderful painting, but it’s the three-dimensionality of the original piece that makes a personal encounter so special. 

Beethoven’s autograph manuscripts are rife with notes, riffs, and passages that have been scribbled out. You can feel his irascibility from the vigor of the strokes. What a thrill to be allowed a peek at the creative process of that innovative genius. To touch a piece of paper that was touched by Bach or Leonardo da Vince is to bridge centuries.

I’ve had the privilege several times of playing the first performance of a piece of music from a hand-written manuscript, and the immediate presence of the composer is unmistakable. I admit that can be tricky. Poor penmanship is not limited to words on paper, and a couple times I’ve had to ask the composer what note was what. But while music notation programs like Finale or Sibelius produce precisely legible scores, the human gesture is missing.

Twenty years ago, I restored an organ built in 1868 by E. & G. G. Hook. At that time, the organ was 138 years old, and as I passed its bits and pieces across my workbench, I admired the pencil marks of the craftsmen who built it. I guessed that their pencil leads were harder than what I’m used to because the marks were so precise, and their techniques for the simple task of sharpening a pencil outstrip any machine you can buy at Staples. Those marks gave me the feeling that the craftsmen in Boston so long ago were my colleagues and mentors. By comparison, the pencils around my workbench seem like crayons that had been left in the sun.

Live and in person

Where we live in lower Manhattan, there are several movie theaters, lots of small performance venues, and a great theater company within a few blocks, and Wendy and I take advantage of the easy accessibility as often as we can. Cinema is dazzling. Beautiful photography and high-tech projection and sound systems drive the action right through you. A crystal-clear close-up of a human face might be twenty feet tall on the screen, showing every pore and blemish as if through a microscope. The storytelling is often as spectacular as the visual effects.

But there’s something about the live theater, where living, breathing humans are before you portraying a story, a thought, a series of emotions. You hear the stomp and shuffle of their feet, the rustling of clothing as they embrace, and the urgency in their voices as spittle flies. Sadness is sadder, happiness is happier, and jokes are funnier when delivered in real time through human gestures.

§

I recently celebrated a birthday that ends with zero, and one of the gifts I received was an afternoon at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with our son-in-law, taking a culinary tour of various artworks.  I’ve always supported my love of eating with an equal love of cooking and the lore and history of cuisine (Wendy says I have a lot to show for it), so this was a welcome and thoughtful gift. (It turned out also to be Wendy’s ruse to get me out of the house as family and friends gathered for a stupendous surprise party!) The tour guide was charismatic, entertaining, and full of wonderful information, and he provided a well-prepared, fascinating tour of a wide variety of art based on and inspired by food. 

One of the artifacts was a four-by-six scrap of papyrus dating from the third century A.D., on which the Greek philosopher Heraclides of Pontus had written a letter that included a shopping list to his brother who was about to visit. No doubt the poultry, bread, chickpeas, kidney beans, and fenugreek would be transformed into a wonderful welcoming meal. And our guide showed us a photograph of another grocery list, this one written by Michelangelo. The great artist had lovely penmanship, so assuming you can read Italian, the list is easy to read—two loaves of bread, herring, two servings of fennel soup, anchovies, and red wine. Beside the written list, Michelangelo provided a drawing of each item because his assistant was illiterate—such an elegant and caring human gesture.

More than 450 years after his death, we celebrate and revere Michelangelo’s art—the depth of expression of the five-and-a-half ton marble David, the tragic Pietà, and the rollicking frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. But witnessing his workingman’s lunch adds the human gesture to our awe, reminding us that whatever the reach of his genius, Michelangelo was a living person who passed through daily life just like the rest of us. I wonder if the cost of the meal was billed to the Pope or the Medicis—whoever was the patron of the moment—or if he was responsible for expenses as part of a contract price. Science tells us that the earth is supplied with a finite amount of air and water. That must mean that we all ingest and inspire molecules that passed through Michelangelo’s body. Doesn’t that make you feel clever? Give me a chisel and a hunk of marble. You haven’t seen anything yet.

You can see images of both these lists at the website traveltoeat.com:

https://traveltoeat.com/michelangelos-shopping-list-and-origins-of-writ….

And what a gesture

The organ—its heritage and history, its repertoire and repartee, its majesty and monumentality—is an integral part of the world of arts and humanities. Because it was the most complex machine assembled by humans hundreds of years before the invention of most mechanical devices, I’ve always regarded the organ as one of the greatest human gestures, and I believe that connecting my love of the organ to the wide world of human gestures is essential.

Imagine yourself as a German churchgoer in 1457, showing up on a Sunday and hearing the new organ play. There’s an organ in the village church in Rysum built in that year. Take a look at this video clip to see and hear the instrument in action—Gwendolyn Toth playing Scheidemann: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46b25dTcdjg.

This video proves to us that 559 years ago, people—human gestures—built pipe organs that are relevant to us today. You don’t have to have arcane training, you can simply sit down to play. Michelangelo was born eighteen years after that organ was built. What does village life at that time look like in your mind’s eye? What was the public water supply like? How about sanitation? I think it’s a miracle that a musical instrument so intricate, so refined, so sprightly, and so current was built that long ago.

In our undergraduate music history courses, we learned to trace the easy route from Scheidemann to Buxtehude to Bruhns to Bach. We understand the growth of the particular style of organs and organ music in eighteenth-century France, when lots of Couperins worked for lots of Louis’s. We know of Father Willis, patriarch of the great British firm, who was central to the quintessential sound of English Cathedral music. We revere the amazing innovations of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, whose brilliant organs engendered the great mass of romantic French music, and we admire Ernest Skinner who transformed the American pipe organ.

In the second half of the twentieth century, the great renaissance of American organ building gave us the rebirth of mechanical-action instruments—reclaiming the human gesture in the building of pipe organs. Today, we celebrate the result of that debate—fabulous new organs of every description being built by American organbuilders.

With a heritage of five and a half centuries, you’d think that the organ’s place in the world is safe, but there are forces that can threaten the very core of the instrument we all love. There was a dramatic drop in the size of college and university organ departments in the 1980s. Important organ departments such as those at the New England Conservatory and Northwestern University have closed—departments that produced generations of brilliant musicians. Thankfully, the population of serious students of the organ is reviving, but we need to take note of that ominous dip.

The Christian Church has been at the heart of the development and sustenance of the pipe organ, from ancient instruments like that at Rysum, to the glorious French symphonic instruments, to the hundreds of organs built by the Hook Brothers, to our modern builders. And the Christian Church has been changing. Where I live in the northeastern United States, many congregations are struggling to maintain buildings and pipe organs built generations ago, when parish membership was ten times what it is today. I maintain a 60-stop organ for a church in suburban Boston with a congregation of about seventy-five. The building seats nearly a thousand, and there is embossed china service for 800 stored in glass-front cabinets in the pantry next to the kitchen.

The fact that hundreds of wonderful pipe organs are for sale today is a reflection on the state of the church, upon which the organ depends so heavily.

The electronic organ was developed fifty years ago, and has burgeoned to occupy a huge share of the church organ market. While the fancy sparkly consoles are beguiling, and many organists in smaller churches love sitting at monster three and four manual consoles, the tone of the digital organ, no matter how advanced the technology, is nothing like the real thing. But they’re easy to acquire, and relatively inexpensive on the short term. Someone on the Board of Trustees says, “It’s good enough for us.”

What’s next?

When the twentieth century renaissance was in full swing, we organists knew we were in the middle of something great. Hundreds of new instruments were being built, and it was common for church lay leaders to be swayed by their musicians to move with the times. Of course much of that was good and we have a lot to show for it, but at the same time, plenty of wonderful organs were sacrificed in favor of the tracker-action craze. We should be selective about when organs are replaced and when they are renovated. An organ should not be replaced because a local organist thinks it lacks a few voices.

The other day I had an inquiry from an organist who was seeking a proposal for the expansion of the organ in his church. He told me that many critical stops are missing, there is no space for additional pipes, and there is little money, so the additions would be digital voices. The existing stoplist shows a complete three-manual instrument. Given the size of the building, the 32-footers, solo Tuba, and Trumpet-en-chamade he wants to add would be superfluous, unnecessary, even intrusive. It’s a modest building and a fine organ. What’s the point of adding artifice to overblow the place?

The same goes for fully digital organs. A church that seats 200 people should have an organ matched to the cubic space and acoustics. “But I need to play Widor.” Big city music belongs in big city buildings. I don’t want to hear Widor or Vierne with blazing artificial 32-footers in a little country church. I just don’t. It’s like eating a two-pound T-bone as a snack.

In Richard Torrence’s “irreverent biography” of Virgil Fox, The Dish, Ted Alan Worth is quoted as saying, “The organ world is the worst world in the world.” A herd of historians, a lobby of librarians, or an eccentricity of engineers may love to talk shop, but there’s something about organists that takes the bell away. It’s as if there was nothing else.

Because the pipe organ is so expensive, because commissioning and creating an instrument is such a complex undertaking, we need to be sure that we’re connected to the real world. We need to communicate our love for our instrument effectively and joyfully. We need to be known outside our professional circles as creative, cooperative, stimulating colleagues. We need to create atmospheres in our work places that encourage others to appreciate the deep heritage of our instrument so that we don’t lose the pipe organ to expediency. We need the entire collection of human gestures to enrich our musicality and
our souls.

On the road again . . .

What do you get when you play a country song backwards?

—You get your dog back, you get your truck back, you get your wife back . . .

I worked in the shop of Angerstein & Associates in Stoughton, Massachusetts, between 1984 and 1987 with an assortment of coworkers. There was a minister from an obscure sect who spent lunch and coffee breaks reading the King James Bible, a motorcycle mechanic who had run the service department of a Honda dealership, a carpenter who had worked on large construction projects, two conservatory organ major graduates, Dan Angerstein, and his sister, Linda, both educated and cultured people.

There were frequent discussions about what would play on the radio. I preferred solid classical music, a couple co-workers were rock-n-roll devotees, and the minister had cassettes of treacly inspirational music. Country-Western music was a frequent compromise. Jack, the motorcycle guy, was exceptionally quick witted. Hardly a day passed without some hilarious quip floating across from his workstation, and I was deep in the thrall of puns, a habit that my family still shouts about, but I believe secretly envies.¹ We had a blast making up new lyrics to songs like All the Girls I’ve Loved Before (Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesia), Better Keep Your Hands Off My Potential New Boyfriend (Dolly Parton), and Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life (Bobby Bare). Oh boy, those were the days.

Willie Nelson provided another favorite: “On the road again. Just can’t wait to get on the road again. The life I love is making music with my friends, and I can’t wait to get on the road again.” That one really resonated for me, because since my first days in an organ shop in the summer of 1975, I’ve loved the part of organ building that takes you out of town, loading an organ into trucks and setting off for adventure, camaraderie, mishaps, and triumphs.  

There was the delivery of an organ to the chapel of an exclusive island summer community that required three trips on the little ferry to transport the organ across the water.

There was the installation in the chapel of Salvation Army headquarters in Providence, Rhode Island, where the client was providing meals for us. Breakfast and lunch in the headquarters’ dining room with the chapter officers, served by ex-con chef Vinnie were fine, but dinner in the line at the Men’s Service Center was a lot more colorful.

There was the trip from Oberlin, Ohio, to Oakland, California, to deliver a new harpsichord, where the client’s surgeon husband lectured us about smoking and brought home a smoker’s lung in a glass jar to make his point.²

I’ve driven dozens of rental trucks across the country, one of which wound up on its side. I’ve been with hundreds of people experiencing the excitement of the delivery of their new organ, squealing with delight as the blower went on for the first time and the first pipes sounded. I’ve sat in the pews on the first Sunday after the organ case was erected, watching the reactions of the parishioners as they saw it for the first time. One little girl announced at the top of her voice, “I liked the old one better.” I’ve attended the weddings of the daughters of members of the organ committee, and I’ve ridden an elephant in a jungle in Thailand.

But my trips to Madagascar were as good as adventure gets for an organ guy. In these pages last month, I shared the history of the Hook & Hastings Company, the venerable Boston firm that produced more than 2,600 organs under several different names over a span of a hundred years, and started the tale of my trips to the land of the lemurs. Take a look back at the June issue of The Diapason and reread the last eight (or so) paragraphs.

Zina Andrianarivelo, Madagascar’s ambassador to the United Nations, called me in the spring of 2008. Of course, I thought, you’re Madagascar’s ambassador to the United Nations. I get calls like this all the time. The ambassador attends the Fifth Avenue Presbyterian Church in New York, and the organist there told him about the Organ Clearing House. He asked if we could meet.  

Over a well-oiled lunch in an Italian restaurant near the United Nations headquarters, he told me that the Church of Jesus Christ of Madagascar, the FJKM (which is associated with the Presbyterian Church of the USA), was in the middle of an important anniversary celebration, and he had just been in Madagascar’s capital, Antananarivo, for the opening event. The church’s national Vice-President, Marc Ravalomanana, who also served as the President of the Federation of Madagascar, was delivering a sermon to a full congregation in the city’s central church. From the pulpit, he pointed to the ambassador and said, “Mr. Ambassador, I want you to go back to America and find an organ for this church.”

In the middle of the 19th century there was an evil Malagasy (pronounced Malagash) queen who was cured of a horrible disease by healers in her palace. In gratitude, she outlawed Christianity, and 150,000 Christians were put to death during her rule. Her successor invited Christian missionaries back into the country, and four stone churches were built in Antananarivo during the 1860s commemorating four early instances of Christian martyrdom. Each bears the name Tranovato, which means stone house. So for example, FJKM Tranovato Ambonin’ Ampararinina is the Stone Church of the Hurling Cliff. Tranovato Faravohitra commemorates a martyr who was burned alive. The two sites are a couple miles apart. Legend has it that on the days of the two martyrdoms, a rainbow connected the two sites.

President Ravolamanana grew up in the rural village of Imerinkasinana, about an hour drive from Antananarivo (colloquially contracted to Tananriv, or simply, Tana). As a teenager, he delivered yogurt by bicycle. As a young man, he made a fortune developing a system for delivering dairy products all around the country without refrigeration. And he used that fortune to build a conglomerate of construction companies, television stations, and newspapers; he was one of the wealthiest men in the country. The church had advocated his candidacy, and in turn, he was donating huge sums for the construction of new church buildings and the repair and renovation of older buildings, and he was interested in importing a fleet of organs.

The ambassador would be traveling to Madagascar in June to participate in an international conference arranged by the president to increase international trade, aimed at improving the life conditions and styles of the poorest Malagasy people. That would be an ideal time for me to visit the country. All arrangements would be taken care of. All I would have to do was get on an airplane.

I went to Madagascar’s mission at the United Nations to get a diplomatic visa. At the advice of the State Department, I went to a travel health clinic where I was vaccinated against seven nasty diseases. I was told not to eat raw vegetables if I didn’t know how they had been handled. I was given medicine to fight dysentery and to prevent malaria. And I was told not to drink tap water, including ice cubes.

Madgascar was a French colony until 1960, so Air France has scheduled departures from Paris to Tana, but they don’t schedule return flights until they could fill a plane. Mine would be a one-way ticket. I got on the plane knowing I’d arrive in Tana around 1:00 a.m., but I didn’t know who would meet me, I didn’t know where I’d be staying, and I didn’t know what I’d be doing once I got there. 

When we landed at Ivato International Airport, there were three snazzy young men in white shirts with presidential IDs; one was holding a card with my name. They showed me into a VIP lounge and offered me a drink (gin and tonic). It only took a couple minutes off the plane for me to have my first Malagasy ice cubes. They drove me to the Carlton Hotel in Antananarivo, where the president’s name was on my reservation. There was a gift basket and a bottle of wine in my room.

So far, so good. I woke early and went to the hotel dining room for breakfast, wondering what the day would bring. While I was eating, another guy with an ID tag came to my table to tell me that my driver was waiting outside. He took me to Tranovato Faravohitra and there was Zina to greet me, along with a group of church officials he had gathered. They had planned an itinerary that had me visiting 15 churches—some which needed organs, and some which had organs in need of repair. One of these people would be my guide, making the schedule and making contacts with the churches. Richard, who had picked me up at the hotel, would be my driver, and Adolha Vonialitahina would be my translator. I had an entourage.

That evening, Zina took me to the annual awards banquet of the Rotary Club, held in a rural country club, about an hour away from the city. Small talk continued as we found our assigned tables and were ushered to a buffet dinner loaded with things I didn’t recognize. Just as I picked up a plate and started surveying the choices, the lights went out.

In the course of a week, I visited 12 churches. One was under construction, the gift of the president, and there were chickens running around the site. One chicken wound up in a pot and became lunch for the workers—no refrigerator, no problem. Several of the churches had organs. One was a terrible junker with no nameplate, but I had to admire the organist who had figured out how to keep it working. I offered to do some tuning. The organist held notes, and it was fun to watch his face light up as each pipe came into tune. I gave Adolha a quick lesson for holding notes, and invited the organist up on the walkboard. I showed him how to use the tuning iron, and he got the knack of it right away.  

We arrived at another church where there was a simple organ façade. I opened the fallboard to reveal the classic Cavaillé-Coll logo and burst into tears. I had travelled 8,700 miles to find a Cavaillé-Coll organ in an East African island nation. It didn’t look like much, and there were a lot of dead notes, but it had that sound.

As I cavorted around town, Zina was working on getting an appointment for us to talk with President Ravolamanana. A couple times were set and changed, and finally Zina took me to the presidential palace. As I sat in a waiting room while Zina met alone with the president, I thought of Alan Laufman, the founder of the Organ Clearing House. “Alan would have loved this!”

It may have seemed surreal, but it was real. I sat with President Ravalomanana for about 45 minutes. I shared some highlights of my studies with him, and promised a report on all the churches I had visited. He asked if we could bring an organ for Tranovato Farovohitra in time for the anniversary celebration in November, and made it clear he would like to follow up with more projects later.  

Bringing a pipe organ from the United States to Madagascar with five months notice seemed like a tall order, but we had a four-rank Hook & Hastings organ³ in Boston that would be easy to move. We would consider it a temporary installation and move it to a smaller church later. The president’s office arranged for a shipping container. There would be plenty of extra space, so a clothing drive was organized, and I lined up donations of surplus pianos to be delivered to churches and an orphanage I had visited.

I rented a truck and gathered the pianos in Maine. Approaching the New Hampshire border, I had to stop in a weigh station. The trooper in the booth asked, “What are you carrying?” “Pianos.” “Where are you taking them?” I couldn’t resist. “Madagascar.” “Pull over.” The state police went over my truck and papers with a fine-tooth comb. Thankfully, Ryder had not omitted any of the required safety equipment.

A few months later, my colleague Amory Atkins and I flew to Tana. Because the streets of Tana are steep and narrow and festooned with thousands of low-hanging wires, the container could not be trucked directly to the church. Instead, it would be delivered to a presidential campus on the outskirts of the city. The Malagasy Army would provide a flat-bed truck and the manpower to transfer the load. An Army colonel would make the arrangements.

There was a snafu with the container. President Ravolamanana had recently implemented some new import restrictions. His container was in violation and was being held at the dock. The colonel hinted that the president “had to play by his own rules.” It took a couple days to sort that out. When the container finally arrived, we transferred it to the Army’s truck. Amory was brilliant as a platoon leader!  

When we arrived at the church, we learned that steel supports were being added to the structure of the balcony, so there would be further delay. The steel workers were barefooted (a couple were wearing flip-flops), and they were using rechargeable cutting tools. It was obviously going to take a long time. Amory and I tried to help; the cordless tools we had were better than theirs! Finally, we let the colonel know that we wouldn’t have time to install the organ before the anniversary service if we couldn’t start in 36 hours. A couple hours later, a team of real steel workers arrived, equipped with acetylene torches, welding gear, and steel-toed boots. Problem solved. (They were from one of the president’s construction companies.)

The church was full. The regular organist played on a Hammond. The congregation sang hymns. The president preached from the same pulpit where he directed the ambassador eight months earlier. During the sermon, he introduced me and asked me to play. When I finished, he thanked me and said, “It’s good—but we’re going to do better. We’re bringing a larger organ next year.” I thought having the president announce that in public was a great way to seal the next project.

But I was wrong. The following January, Zina and I planned to meet for lunch to discuss the next step. He called to cancel. He sounded panicky. He told me to visit the website, France 24 (International News Headlines). President Ravalomanana was being ousted in a coup d’etat led by high-ranking army officers (I’ve wondered if it was “my” colonel) and Andry Rajoelina, a 27 year-old former disc jockey who was mayor of Antananarivo. So that was that.

I’m sorry that we didn’t get to fulfill the grandiose plans. It would have been fun to help raise the standards of music in the Malagasy Church. I have no idea if the organ we brought is still working or being used. But we sure did have an adventure. The next time an ambassador calls, I’ll know what to do.

Notes

1. I was building tower crowns for a large organ case, which included a run of dental moldings, crenelations that ran between a couple rows of ogees. It was a trick to lay them out so the gaps were symmetrical across mitered joints. I stood staring at a joint I was prepared to cut, ruler and pencil in hand, when Dan walked by and asked what I was doing. I replied, “I’m in a trance of dental meditation.”

2. I quit smoking cigarettes on New Year’s Eve, 1981, three months before my son Michael was born.

3. Hook & Hastings #2369 (1915). One manual: 8′ Open Diapason, 8′ Gedeckt, 8′ Dolce, 4′ Flute Harmonic.