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.

Mazel tov to muscle tone

We have a close friend in Maine who has always taken pride in his self-sufficiency. He built his own house, and in the twenty-five years he and his wife have lived there, he has done all the maintenance and improvements himself. As it is a rural house, there is extra work involved, like plowing a half-mile driveway, clearing brush and trees, and mowing a large lawn. They are just across the river from us, so like us, they have waterfront chores like taking docks and moorings in and out of the water. He is a tough and stubborn guy in his early seventies, and last winter he had a stroke.

I visited him in the rehab center where he spent several very difficult months learning to walk with new limitations, straightening out his speech, and adjusting to his new circumstance in general. His right arm and hand are now pretty much useless, and he was lamenting the loss of his “chain saw arm.” He could not imagine how he was going to be able to get the snowplow off his pickup truck, and the dormers on their roof needed shingle repairs. During that visit, it was simply not crossing his mind that he would likely not be able to do those things again.

Wendy and I had dinner at their house last week and were brought up to date on all those issues. He hired someone to repair the shingles, a friend took the plow off his truck, and he decided they would not put the docks in the water this year. In fact, he put his boat on the market. And though his wife is energetic and sprightly, they are considering selling their house and moving into a condominium, or even, dare they admit, an assisted living facility. With all those changes imposed on their lives, my pal is grateful that his speech is fine, and that with some difficulty he is able to walk, but he is astonished at the uselessness of his arm. “It hangs off my shoulder; I know it’s there. It hurts and itches sometimes, but I can’t make it move.”

Since that dinner, I have been reflecting on the miracle that is the human body, and the incredible things people can learn to do. All of us who are born with bodies that are normal and complete start with roughly the same equipment. Some people have little dexterity. The private nickname we have for one friend is “Oops.” But then there is the fellow who can throw a ball ninety feet and reliably hit a target about one-foot square, and there is the woman who can jump, twirl, and somersault on a beam that is ten centimeters (3.9 inches) wide.

The world of music is full of incredible examples. The human hand is the same apparatus that handles the “neck end” of a violin or guitar, the keys of an oboe or piano, or the strings of the harp. Have you ever shaken hands with a harpist? What may seem to be the simplest instrument is perhaps the most miraculous—the human voice. Stop and think what an incredible feat it is to simply match a pitch with your voice. How do we know exactly the tension of the countless muscles involved that will create that A-flat out of thin air? A choir starting a piece, a cappella, with each member confident of the pitch, volume, and timbre, is a dramatic example of human muscle control.

No musician can play two identical performances of the same piece. We study, train, and practice, trying to make accurate plans for where our fingers will go, where we want to emphasize something, where we want to bring something forward. We write fingerings into our scores, intending to use the same sequence of fingers on each sequence of notes in the hope that we can eliminate confusion. But something always comes up in performance that was not part of the plan. Maybe we got distracted. Or maybe something wonderful happened that never did before. It’s a thrill when you surprise yourself in performance with a special lilt, a delicious ritardando, or a thrilling and dramatic crescendo.

It’s a control issue.

Let’s take that muscle thing a little further. My friend’s stroke did not spoil the muscles in his right arm; it interrupted the electrical gear that operates them. The human nervous system is the amazing wiring harness that transmits our thoughts into muscular impulses. Our bodies include several hundred “visceral” muscles, those that perform involuntarily, running such equipment as our hearts, eyelids, and diaphragms. There are something like 320 symmetrical pairs of skeletal muscles, those that we exercise control over. When I googled that, I was surprised to learn that there seems to be disagreement over the actual number, apparently because some muscles can be considered as part of more complex structures and not counted separately.

I am something of a mechanical geek, which has allowed me to notice that controls of a backhoe, the most common piece of excavation equipment, are roughly equivalent to the nerves that operate our arms and hands. Each lever has opposite motions—left and right, up and down, flex and open—and the operator uses levers in combinations to make fluid compound motions. The boom extends, the bucket opens, the machine swivels all at once.

Watch a virtuoso musician playing a brilliant passage and think of all nerves firing to make those hundreds of muscles do exactly the right thing, at the right time, with the right amount of force. That’s some data stream.

Many musical instruments, including winds and strings, require the musician to participate in the production of tone, and the volume of every musical instrument is controlled by the muscular impulses of the musician. That is, every instrument but one. An organ pipe is perhaps the simplest of musical instruments, and certainly the least versatile. Any organ pipe can produce just one pitch at one volume level and one timbre. Period. Big deal. It is for that reason that many orchestral conductors consider the pipe organ to be expressionless. Conversely, I claim that a pipe organ, especially a large organ with electric stop action, is the most expressive of musical instruments. The catch is that the musician operates it remotely. The mechanics of the instrument serve as an artificial nervous system, allowing the musician to control the instrument. While I know I am opening a path for cruel jokes (he plays that organ like a Mack Truck!), there is a real analogy with that excavator operator causing a twenty-ton machine to move with fluid, human-like motion.

The musician’s workstation

I am thinking about organ consoles these days because I am working on one in my personal shop at our house in Maine. It is a three-manual job of modest size, about fifty years old, and I am refitting it with a new nervous system, that fantastic array of solid-state controls concealed in a series of small black boxes that have brought such sophisticated levels of control to the modern organist. Those black boxes were provided by a supplier who incorporated the original specifications of the organ, plus a slew of features that I wanted to add. There is a small LED screen at the heart of the control panel, the controls that control the controls.

The keyboards have been recovered and polished to provide a lovely visible sheen, but more importantly, a smooth surface to meet the musician’s fingers. There are no sharp edges or snags that could divert attention, or worse, cause injury. (I once covered a keyboard with blood from a deep slit in my finger caused by the jagged edge of a broken ivory, admittedly buried in my score enough that I did not look down until the piece was over.) The best keyboards are works of art whose beauty helps to inspire the musician.

All the stopknobs and pistons need to feel alike. A squeaky knob or a piston that clicks will distract the player and interrupt the flow. While it is impossible for everything to be perfect, the goal of the organbuilder is to make the machine disappear, or at least to minimize the machine’s ability to intrude on the sacred space between the musician’s heart and the sound of the pipes. I am requiring the musicians to take care of the arms, hands, and fingers part of the system.

Besides the switches and buttons that actually control the functions of the organ, the surrounding cabinet needs to be an inspiring workstation. The wood should be beautiful, the finishes smooth, the geometry perfect. All of these factors add to the console’s status as an extension of the musician’s body.

Cleanliness is . . .

There is a terrific hardware store in Damariscotta, Maine, the town that adjoins our village of Newcastle, and I go there at least every few days. It has a large parking lot with head-in spaces in front of the store, and a row of spaces you can enter from behind, leaving your car facing across an open lane at the store. There is typically a row of tradesman’s pickup trucks and vans lined up there, and I always notice which trucks are kept neat inside, and which have their dashboards piled high with soda cans, coffee cups, receipts, sandwich wrappers, tools, and hardware samples. I have used those observations to inform who I hire to help with our house. If a painter’s truck is covered with slobbers of paint and filled with empty coffee cups, I don’t want him in my house.

Traveling around maintaining organs provides the same experience. Some organ consoles are always clean and free of clutter, and some are nasty depositories that could have come straight from the dashboard of a plumber’s pickup truck with the same coffee cups, candy and food wrappers, nail clippers (ick), and hairbrushes. One organist I worked for had long thick gray hair and the console looked like the couch in a house with ten cats. Her hair tangled up in the pedal contacts causing dead notes. We called it the “Hairball Church.”

Often, those dirty consoles are out in the open in the front of the church for everyone to see. It’s hard to imagine why a musician would choose to present such a front for the worshippers. And it’s hard to imagine how a sloven could produce beautiful music from such a sty. I understand the value of having pencils, note pads, “stick-ems,” and even paper clips handy (though paper clips falling into keyboards have necessitated many an emergency call!), but you should take your trash with you when you leave. The one that really gets me is the half-sucked lozenge sitting on the open wrapper. You didn’t finish that lozenge? Really? A few paragraphs ago, I referred to an organ console as an extension of the musician’s body, perhaps a little idealistic if the console is a mess.

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A modern solid-state organ console is loaded with creative functions that allow the musician ever higher levels of control over the instrument. Multiple levels of memory and piston sequencers are two concepts that were really not possible before the introduction of solid-state equipment. Like the old codger who starts a conversation with a grandchild with the words, “When I was your
age . . . ,” I like to share that it was a big deal when my high school purchased four four-function calculators (add, subtract, multiply, divide). But it was only a few years later, when as an apprentice, I participated in installing one of the earliest solid-state combination machines. A lot of smoke came out.

As incredible as these machines can seem, organ consoles built a century ago featured sophisticated functions requested by the pioneers of symphonic organ playing. Lynnwood Farnam was organist at Emmanuel Church in Boston when Casavant’s Opus 700 was installed there in 1917. That console featured such controls as:

• Piston “throwing off” all manual 16′ stops, also Quint 51⁄3′ and Tierce 31⁄5′

• Piston “throwing off” all subcouplers

• Swell octave couplers to cut off Swell 2′ stops

• Other manual 16′ and 2′ stops not to be cut off by octave or sub couplers.

What was he thinking? That was barely the time when you could expect a new organ to include an electric blower. (After sitting in storage for more than ten years, that organ has recently been renovated by Rieger and installed in a concert hall on an island in China.)

Mr. Farnam was involved in the design of another console that I have written about before, that of the new Skinner Opus 707 built in 1928 for Grace Church, New York City. Farnam’s dear friend George Mitchell was organist there, and together they dreamed up a behemoth console that could seemingly do anything. The console controlled a double organ, Chancel and Gallery, with a total of 167 stops and 133 ranks. There was a separate crescendo for each organ. Above the Gallery Crescendo pedal there were two toe studs, marked “Regular” and “Orchestral.” The Chancel Crescendo pedal could be programmed from the console, using a wire-and-plug system located in a drawer under the bottom keyboard. A programmable crescendo in 1928! Besides the two crescendo pedals, there were five expression pedals, with a sliding control switch that allowed the organist to assign any expressive division to any pedal.

It is amazing to think of that level of electrical control in a contraption built in 1928. It was the product of some of the world’s most creative musical minds expanding the expressive possibilities of the most complex and least personal of all musical instruments. It is as if a puppeteer added 320 symmetrical pairs of strings to the marionette, mimicking the repertory of human skeletal muscles.

Because of that heritage of creativity, combined with the added dimensions made possible with solid-state controls, the supposed least expressive of musical instruments eclipses the expressive capabilities of the symphony orchestra. It can be softer than the softest, louder than the loudest, and with a few flicks of fingers, create dramatic crescendos between extremes.

When Wendy and I lived in Boston, we had series tickets for the Boston Symphony Orchestra, with seats near the curve just above the stage. During the first performance using the newly renovated organ, with Simon Preston playing the obligatory Organ Symphony by Saint-Saëns, we marveled at the facial expressions and communication between orchestra members as the super low notes came from the organ during the slow movement. No orchestral instrument can go as low as the organ, and it is partly because of the limitless supply of air that the organ can blow whistles that big.

Are you surprised when I suggest that the organ is the least personal of musical instruments? I don’t feel that way when I play, rather I feel at one with the instrument, excited by the range of things I can make it do, excited by the way its sound rings in a huge room, excited by the way my musical impulses can make a whole room ring. It feels very personal to me, but as an organbuilder, I cannot separate all that from the fact that the organ is a machine operated by remote control. Like a pantograph that magnifies the size of a drawing using proportional levers, so the machine that is the organ magnifies the vision of the musician. But please, take your trash with you.

Winds across the prairie

Andy Rooney, long-time curmudgeonly commentator on CBS’s 60 Minutes, once said that he considered the best cities to be those that could only be entered by crossing a bridge or tunnel. He thought the effort of building the bridges proved the value. I live in Manhattan, where you have to cross a river to get in; Google Maps shows twenty bridges and tunnels. Must be a great place. We call our apartment there our island home.

When I visit cities in other regions where geographical borders do not limit the area, I marvel at the space available for things like highway interchanges and church parking lots. In New York, the quickest way to get around is walking or taking the subway. In an expansive city like Dallas, you drive for miles to get places, and there are free parking spaces when you get there. While Manhattan squeezes 1.6 million people into about 30 square miles (53,300 per square mile), Dallas scatters 1.2 million across 386 square miles (3,100 per square mile).

The American Guild of Organists held its national convention in Dallas in 1994. I was both conventioneer and exhibitor, splitting my time between attending concerts and seminars and promoting my Bishop Organ Company in the exhibition hall. The convention was based in the Loews Anatole Hotel (now Hilton). According to the convention-planning article in the January 1994 edition of The American Organist, the hotel boasted more than 1,600 guest rooms, seven restaurants, six tennis courts, eight racquetball courts, a basketball court, two theaters, and a 1,000-seat auditorium. There were 2,000 employees, even the elevators were manned, and 2,000 “complimentary” parking spaces. No hotel in New York City has 2,000 parking spaces. TAO reported that the convention rate for a single room was $85.

The World Cup of soccer was being hosted by the United States that summer, and Dallas’s Cotton Bowl was one of nine venues across the country hosting games. Along with AGO conventioneers, the Brazilian soccer team and legions of their fans were staying at the Anatole. Brazil won the World Cup that summer, and the enthusiastic nationalistic displays in the hotel after the games were worthy of the country that is home to Carnival.

The magnificent organ by C. B. Fisk, Inc., in the Meyerson Symphony Center was just two years old. Most of us were hearing it for the first time, and I remember being dazzled by Bruce Neswick’s playing in the opening convocation and by Jean Guillou’s fiery performance of Joseph Jongen’s Symphonie Concertante with the Dallas Symphony. The Meyerson organ was the first of the thrilling succession of imaginative, powerful, and fiery modern concert-hall organs, and it formed a majestic centerpiece to the convention.

The convention exhibition hall was in a huge ballroom with a grand entrance doorway, guarded by two life-sized statues of elephants. Between the elephants, the Schlicker Organ Company had installed a modest two-manual organ as their convention exhibit. I can’t remember the stoplist, but it had something like ten or twelve ranks and a swell box. Giddy and well-oiled conventioneers sat on the bench in their multitudes, boiling down the wealth of organ literature to two flourishes and two rolled chords from Bach’s Toccata in D Minor and eight measures of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. It was as if those were the only choices.

My friends in neighboring booths and I rolled our eyes at each smashed mordent and each flubbed pedal note, until one fiery moment when the simple little organ emitted a righteous roar. Maniacal flourishes ripped across the paisley carpeting, echoing off the drywall. Thunderclaps and lightning bolts shot across the room, and draperies blew through windows. Jaws dropped and heads turned. I raced from my booth to see who it was, and there was Jean Guillou, tousled mane flying, eyes looking skyward, astride a carousel pony of an organ that had suddenly become a furious stallion. It was a remarkable moment, showing how a great artist can transmit energy through an instrument. I remember it vividly twenty-two years later, although I may be making up the image of smoke pouring from the organ as Guillou dismounted. 

That week in Dallas ended with a comical note. As 2,500 organists were leaving the hotel at the close of the convention, a pink-hued mob of Mary Kay representatives were arriving for theirs. When I got on the elevator I commented on the spectacle. The operator rolled his eyes and quipped, “you can’t find an ironing board in this hotel.”

Everybody gets a chance.

I cared for the wonderful Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner organs at Trinity Church, Copley Square in Boston, for about twelve years during the 1980s and 1990s. That was a wonderful era for choral music in that church. During that time, the renowned Trinity Choir, directed by Brian Jones and accompanied by Ross Wood, recorded and released Candlelight Carols, which has sold well over 100,000 copies, and is still featured on Amazon with 4½ stars some thirty years later.

Between Brian and Ross, I heard lots of wonderful organ playing at Trinity, but the recital series, Fridays at Trinity, was an especially important learning experience for me. During the program year, the church hosted a noontime organ recital every Friday. Each week I’d arrive at 8:00 to tune the organ, and the récitaliste du jour would arrive at 10:00 to warm up. It was usual for a rowdy group to retire to House of Siam, a nearby Thai restaurant, for lunch after the recital.

I have fond memories of many conversations at those lunches, both raucous and thoughtful, but the best of it was hearing the same organ played by so many different people. I worked there for about twelve years, I suppose there were 40 recitals a year, and maybe I heard two out of three, over 300 recitals. Of course, there were repeats, but let’s say I heard a hundred different people play the same organ.

There are actually two organs in Trinity Church: a larger Skinner, much modified, with four manual divisions in the rear gallery, and a three-manual Aeolian-Skinner in the chancel. There are about 150 stops in total, and both organs are played from a three-manual console in the chancel. It’s an unusually complicated organ with cutout switches for each organ and couplers every which way, and practice time was rigidly limited for each récitaliste du jour because of the church’s busy schedule. For many of the Friday recitalists, it was the chance of a lifetime—the biggest organ in the biggest church they’d ever played in. For others used to “big city” venues, it was more like home, but a few of those got tripped up by the extra complications of playing two large organs, one with four manuals, on a three-manual console.

That collective experience was an important part of my education in the pipe organ. I knew the organ intimately through thousands of hours of tuning and repairs, both major and minor. I learned how to dissect registrations by listening, and could often anticipate what a player might do after the next page turn. I heard some players make the organ come alive, and I heard some players get eaten alive by the thing. I was constantly amazed at how different the organ sounded under different hands.

You could tell who had never played an organ with a Trompette-en-Chamade, as they couldn’t keep their hands off it. People used to big organs with powerful stops could play a whole recital without touching it; it wasn’t the right tone color for lots of Romantic music. (Warning signs were posted on the doors to the gallery on those Sundays when the “en Chamade” would be used.)

The speed of sound is 768 miles per hour. After a little arithmetic, I round it off at 1,125 feet per second. I guess the distance between the console and gallery organ at Trinity Church is around 150 feet, so the time lag for the organist would be about .13 seconds. (Mathematicians are invited to correct me!) That’s a lot less than some guesses I heard, but it sure was enough to trip up some players.

Sometimes the organ had its own issues. Better run back after Chicken Yellow Curry and get that squeak in the Chancel Choir shutters. The acoustics varied with the weather. And tuning was challenging because the organ was scattered about the building in different locations and different altitudes. The recording sessions for Candlelight Carols were in July—I remember the surreal feeling of lying on my back in the pews in the wee hours of the morning, listening to that glorious choir singing familiar carols accompanied by an organ in “summertime tuning.”

Seasonal and short-term foibles aside, it was the same organ each week, the same pile of windchests, reservoirs, and shutters. Every time you drew Principal 8′, the same set of pipes would play. But the character of the organ depended on who was at the helm. Sometimes it was a lumbering monster, careening around a laboratory full of bubbling beakers. Sometimes it was a stubborn horse, obstinately pawing the ground, waiting for its rider to inspire motion. And sometimes it was a massive symphony orchestra, swooping through swashbuckling literature with thrilling stereophonic expressive effects.

It’s all about air.

Orchestral musicians have personal and intimate relationships with their instruments. Arnold Steinhardt, longtime violinist with the Guarneri Quartet, wrote of how he holds his violin between his thinking brain and his beating heart, wrapping his fingers lovingly around its neck. A clarinetist wraps both hands around the instrument, and holds one end of it in his mouth. A cynic might say that playing on the keyboards of a monumental organ is more like using a remote to open a garage door. 

Many orchestral conductors consider the pipe organ to be unexpressive, because an individual organ pipe can play only one pitch at one volume level. A violinist, a trumpeter, or a flautist can emphasize a note with a little burst and can create crescendos and decrescendos on a single sustained note. The organist is an illusionist, creating musical expression by remotely operating a machine. Every console control is a switch. Throw a few switches and the shutters open. It’s no accident that the contacts for swell shutters are arranged in a continuous row so they can be operated ad seriatum by a motion of the ankle.

We speak about the organ in metaphors of life and breath. The organ inhales and exhales the same air we use to sing. When you’re inside an organ with the blower off, it’s a heap of industrial equipment. Turn on the blower, and it comes alive, every sinew quivering, ready to speak on command. I still love being inside an organ when the blower is turned on and that transition happens. The organist is as much a conductor as instrumentalist, turning musical thought and impulses into tangible sounds, sounds that are perceived physically as much as aurally. 

It’s normal to think of the organ as a keyboard instrument, but the organ is really a wind instrument. The keyboard is just user interface, and playing the organ is about managing wind. You learn that right away playing on a large and sensitive tracker organ. I remember my introduction to that concept at the keys of the three-manual Flentrop organ in Warner Hall in Oberlin. Release a pedal note with a big combination of stops while sustaining a chord on the manuals, and those big pedal valves would slap the air and jiggle the treble notes. Managing the wind meant releasing a chord from the top down, so the pedal note was released last.

Knowing about that phenomenon, organbuilders like Ernest Skinner devoted huge thought and effort to creating wind systems you could use with impunity. Low CCCC is on a remote windchest, along with the other eleven notes of that octave, with its own isolated wind supply. No way does early release jiggle the Great.

There are relatively few of us who have actually experienced how much wind is involved. Lift CCCC of a 32′ Open Wood Diapason off its hole (the pipe probably weighs 1,500 pounds) and play the note. It’s like a hurricane. (I’m a professional: don’t try this at home.) Your glasses blow off your head, clouds of dust burst about, there’s so much wind you can’t stop it with your hands. That’s the energy you release when you play that low C, delivered to the windchest by the blower and the reservoirs, ready for your use. And the cool thing is that you can sustain that note as long as you like. There’s no decay of tone as the amplitude of a vibrating string decreases, and there’s no limit imposed by the capacity of the human lung. As long as you can hold your foot down, and as long as the electric bill is paid, that note will keep playing. Take that, Mr. Orchestra Conductor.

When installing a windchest in an organ, whether you’re releathering, or it’s a new organ, it’s usual, actually necessary, practice to “blow it out.” Each crumb of sawdust trapped inside the windchest is a potential cipher. After the action and the windlines are connected, before the rackboards get put on, and before the pipes are placed, each note of the chest is played to be sure that every little loose piece of dust is blown free. You do it note by note with a vacuum cleaner held over each hole, and you do it in big fistfuls of notes to let the air really blow through. Once again, the organbuilder witnesses the amount of air moving when playing a big piece, just how much wind energy a windchest can deliver. I’d love for every organist to experience that in person. 

Whenever I’m listening to an organ, I’m aware of all those valves in motion, all the air blowing into the pipes, and how the pipes transfer the wind into music. You can think of it as a hurricane, as Guillou surely did when he coaxed that magic from the unsuspecting little instrument. Or you can think of it as a gentle zephyr, wafting off the water on a sunny afternoon, riffling your hair as you sip a drink on the deck. You get to decide what to do with that air. The organ provides you with limitless energy. If you as a musician can generate your own energy in addition to the waiting gale, then you have something.

§

In Dallas in 1994, I heard Jean Guillou make a modest simple organ roar. I also heard him pass the same energy through his fingers into the monumental, seemingly limitless Fisk organ in the Meyerson Center. Guillou playing Jongen’s triumphant music on that heroic organ along with the mighty sounds of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra was an experience of a lifetime. I feel a little smug thinking back on it, because I was among a relative few in the hall who knew how the wind blows.

As you play the organ, don’t focus on fingers on the keys. Focus on the flow of air from blower to reservoir, from reservoir to windchest, from valve to pipe. Pay attention to that magic when pressurized air is converted into music. Show the organ how to breathe. It’s all about the air.

Berghaus Pipe Organ Builders,
Bellwood, Illinois, was established as Berghaus Organ
Company in 1967 in Melrose Park, Illinois.  

Cover photos, top: La Casa de Cristo Lutheran Church, Scottsdale, Arizona (2008); middle: O’Fallon United Church of Christ, O’Fallon, Illinois (1973); Sacred Heart School of Theology, Hales Corners, Wisconsin (1990); First United Methodist Church, South Bend, Indiana (1988); bottom: St. Benedict’s Parish, Chesapeake, Virginia (2015).

From the Founder

A native of Cleveland, Ohio, I was encouraged to leave home to seek my education at Concordia Teachers College (now Concordia University Chicago) in River Forest, Illinois. After graduation, I married and worked for several years as a parochial school teacher and church organist/choir director. My unexpected decision to enter the organ-building trade was chiefly influenced by two instruments and two men.

Before I left Ohio, Trinity Lutheran Church in Cleveland began installing a four-manual and pedal mechanical-action organ from the Beckerath company of Hamburg, Germany, which was completed in 1956. The church was near my house, and my curiosity, for some unknown reason, led me to make frequent visits during its installation and voicing. I had no earthly idea that this organ would lay the groundwork for my organbuilding philosophy! 

While still enrolled at Concordia, my informal apprenticeship for organbuilding began as I started to repair the slider chests on an 1888 Jackson Organ Company (Chester, Illinois) tracker at St. Matthew Lutheran Church on the south side of Chicago. Slowly, the organ came back to life as I repaired badly damaged pipes, broken trackers, and cracked rollerboards. We found a second-hand pedalboard to replace the original and installed key extensions to accept mechanical connections to the pedal chests and couplers. By repairing an ancient blower and wind system, a somewhat compromised new life to the organ was born. By 1961 the organ was again used for services. Subsequently, the congregation authorized Berghaus Organ Company to extensively rebuild the organ with new slider chests, pipework, action, and wind system. Since 1972 the organ remains as rebuilt.

Why devote time to these two churches and their organs? These were my mind and eye openers! I had a gnawing curiosity to tear into the old Jackson organ, find out what went wrong, and fix it! In the Beckerath, I had a “new” organ for comparison.

Sometime in 1967 while a fifth and sixth grade teacher, I was approached by John F. Shawhan, the Midwest service and sales representative of Casavant Frères of Canada, to take over a dozen or so contracts to provide semiannual service and maintenance for new Casavants located from Des Moines to Fort Wayne. I still had no plans on becoming an organbuilder, but November 1967 was my final month as a teacher. John paired me up with his assistant, Paul Jochum, who spent time in the Beckerath shop as a general apprentice. When I first met Paul, I assumed that I would be the tuner and he would be the key holder. But that is not how he had it planned! He insisted that he tune and I sit at the console. And that was the arrangement for all the years we worked together. His disciplined tuning was impeccable and went so far as to check the tuning of higher-pitched mixtures by listening through the entire stop without the tuning stop on! 

As the service and tuning business grew, the opportunity came along to build an instrument. The O’Fallon United Church of Christ in southern Illinois was planning an extensive renovation of its church. The original Kilgen tracker was entombed behind the altar and was in serious need of repair. Casavant turned down the project and asked Berghaus to consider it. I, too, turned down the opportunity to renovate the old Kilgen.

They asked, “Who do you recommend to do the renovation?” I said that I would build a new mechanical-action organ for them instead. What did I have to show? Nothing! But they chose Berghaus despite our lack of experience. The contract was signed and construction took place in a 24′ by 27′ garage with an extremely limited number of tools and space. Today, this organ stands as built in 1973. A few years ago, we thoroughly cleaned it and set it back on course for another 40-plus years of faithful service.

After O’Fallon, four contracts were negotiated in fairly rapid succession for 2-manual and pedal mechanical-action organs. As these were being built, a noticeable change in design requests followed: namely, to retain the mechanical key action, but to abandon the mechanical stop action and utilize a more user-friendly stop control system. This was an acceptable alternative to me, as it did not affect the key action or the windchest design. I was firmly convinced that slider windchests were the best chests in the world! The most striking change came with the detached, moveable console, requiring the separation of the direct key action from the windchests, which we accommodated by installing electric pull-down magnets outside the pallet box. 

Our stay in a house basement and two-car garage lasted a very short time. By 1973 we moved to Bellwood into a facility of approximately 4,000 square feet and a ceiling height of only 13 feet. A number of organs exceeding that height were built in this low-ceiling room. In 1984, a two-story erecting room and design and fabrication spaces were added to facilitate construction of larger instruments.  

Time passed so fast that it became unnoticeable. My wife, Judy, worked many years as the office manager. Both of our sons, Todd and Brian, served us well in service projects, organ construction, and installations. It would be Brian whom I would entrust with continuing my work by taking the leadership of the company into the second generation. Along the way, he would build a team around him.

­—Leonard G. Berghaus

From the Tonal Director

When I joined Berghaus in 2006, the company was in a period of transition. While the hallmarks of slider chests, open-toe voicing, and Werkprinzip were still present in many instruments, a few others were examples of a more eclectic approach to tonal design. The 2003 four-manual instrument created for St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, combined new resources with many ranks from the Aeolian-Skinner organ built in the 1950s. The result was decidedly more American Classic in sound, and it has enjoyed great success in live performance as well as several recordings. Subsequent years saw the installation of more eclectic organs at St. John’s Lutheran Church, Bloomington, Illinois (3 manuals, 46 ranks), and Queen of All Saints Basilica, Chicago, Illinois (3 manuals, 60 ranks).  

My own background in pipe organs began at the age of 13, when I first took organ lessons and began playing church services some months later. I had always been fascinated with the pipe organ; I used to spend many hours listening to recordings of instruments from all over the world, conjuring up stoplists, and occasionally attempting to design casework and façades. Little did I know then that this would ultimately become my career! I completed organ studies at Valparaiso University and The Juilliard School; these institutions educated me with a solid foundation of organ performance in both concert and church settings. My many opportunities to perform around the country allowed me first-hand experience with the great wealth of pipe organs in this nation, and I began to formulate my thoughts of what my own personal tonal signature would be. 

In 2007, the Berghaus-built organ for St. John’s Episcopal Church, Chevy Chase, Maryland, would be my first opportunity to make my mark. With a stoplist that leans more into the French Romantic realm (complete with a sumptuous Cavaillé-Coll-style drawknob console), this instrument of 3 manuals and 63 ranks began a new era for our company. The organ, both in its stoplist and tonal approach, is a synthesis of classical and romantic styles. As a result, it emphasizes a clear and singing sound in the individual stops, while at the same time providing warmth and depth when stops are used in combination. Each division contains a complete principal chorus, characteristic flute stops, and reeds both fiery and more subdued. Decidedly different from previous instruments is the treatment of string and reed tone. The Grand-Orgue and Récit contain Salicionals with more harmonic prominence, which aid in carrying accompaniment lines found in homophonic music. While our past instruments accentuated the build-up of the Tutti through upperwork and mixtures, this organ places reed tone in the several Trompette and Bombarde ranks at the fore, paying homage to the symphonic style.

These principles were also carried out in the instruments of 2007–08: St. Jerome Catholic Church in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin (3 manuals, 53 ranks), built in collaboration with Scott R. Riedel & Associates as the organ consultant/acoustician, and First Lutheran Church, Manitowoc, Wisconsin (3 manuals, 41 ranks). 

2008 brought an extraordinary opportunity to construct our magnum opus for La Casa de Cristo Lutheran Church in Scottsdale, Arizona. Taking cues from the American Classic and Romantic traditions, our tonal approach was to design an eclectic instrument that would handle a wide range of repertoire, capable of a vast amount of both dynamic and tonal expression. To that end, there are no less than five manual 8′ Principals, ten different 8′ and 4′ flutes, and strings and hybrid (tapered) stops, which are of varying tone and construction. The versatility of this instrument is the result of our ability to finish every stop as its own beautifully unique voice and also as a worthy contributor in combination.

Given the challenge of designing a 92-rank organ with only one division under expression, it became clear from the beginning that great care would need to be taken in the tonal finishing process to ensure the success of a seamless crescendo and equally balanced manual divisions. The ranks of the Positiv division are designed and voiced so as to provide a remarkable degree of expressiveness for an unenclosed division. The overall effect in the crescendo is that of a continuous transition from ppp to fff without any staggering dynamic or color steps.

In recent years, because of economic challenges, many churches have elected not to build entirely new instruments, but to retain as much as they could from their current organ or investigate viable options of transplanting a vintage instrument. One of our unique endeavors was creating an instrument for First Presbyterian Church, Johnson City, Tennessee, by combining resources from two organs in need of a new home: a 1930 Casavant from Our Lady of Grace, Chicago, and the Berghaus from Christ Lutheran Church, Cleveland, Ohio. On paper, these two disparate tonal concepts would not necessarily work well by merely placing stops together. To achieve good blend within and among the divisions, and to provide appropriate combinations for musical performance, we decided to keep the Great and Swell divisions of the Berghaus together, but reassign them and enhance the 8′ tone to be adequately scaled for the new space. The new Great and Pedal divisions would combine new pipework and vintage stops that were fully restored or changed to blend with the overall tonal concept. We have also successfully installed instruments of this type with the help of consultant Wayne Wagner at Zion Lutheran Church, Columbus, Wisconsin (2 manuals, 24 ranks) and in partnership with Edward Meyer at Luther Preparatory School, Watertown, Wisconsin (2 manuals, 35 ranks). 

2014 brought us an opportunity to work with organist and historical author Peggy Kelley Reinburg, who acted as consultant for St. Benedict’s Parish, Chesapeake, Virginia. Her insight into pipe organs and tonal design proved to be an invaluable resource. Together with her, we collaborated to present an instrument with a heart of simplicity and clarity, rooted in North German tradition but also possessing a distinctive voice. This instrument brings our company full circle to its early beginnings—confident in the creation of instruments in a classic style, while tailoring tonal schemes that serve the specific needs of our many different clients.

As Berghaus celebrates 50 years, we can applaud the first instruments of our founder, Leonard Berghaus, and his many successful contributions to organbuilding. Each instrument that has been produced since I started in 2006 is unique in its own right, and I am truly proud of them all. I look forward to what the next years will bring, both in challenges and opportunities.

—Jonathan Oblander

From the President

My apprenticeship at Berghaus began at a very young age. I have fond memories of being pulled out of class at Grace Lutheran School to help assist with organ repairs, or so they thought! Little did I know that this would set the stage for my life’s work. My high school summers were spent working for Berghaus in a variety of roles, and in 1988 I began my full-time position. My training and work experience was primarily in casework, structure, winding, and windchest construction. As time went on, I gradually moved into project management for several years before being appointed vice president in 1999. In 2004, I was named president of the firm.

During the mid-1990s, I began to look to the future of the company and realized that to grow and remain viable, we would have to employ a new business model of separating the new organs from the service side and executing multiple projects at once. A larger facility would be needed to accommodate the change. In 1999, after several years of exploring various options, including construction of a new facility, we located a building. Although it had been vacant for a number of years, the advantages far outweighed the drawbacks. Its location less than a mile from our previous facility meant that the remodeling process and relocation would have a minimum impact on our production schedule and the more than 200 clients for whom the company provided service and maintenance.  

The move in 2001 from a 6,700-square-foot building to a 30,000-square-foot plant afforded Berghaus the opportunity to design a more streamlined approach to our processes. A new set-up room with a ceiling height of 38 feet was constructed to accommodate larger instruments. The remodeled service area allowed for a clean and spacious environment to accomplish all aspects of organ service and maintenance. One of the depressed loading docks was filled in to create additional 26′ by 52′ space for managing multiple projects simultaneously. Four separate voicing rooms were created to allow our artisans to excel in their craft. A conference room and spacious office area completed the updated state-of-the-art facility. The building underwent other significant structural updates and improvements, including a new fire/burglar alarm system and surveillance for safety and the protection of our clients’ property.  

In addition, the new facility allowed us to install more efficient and larger equipment to the plant floor. A new spray booth, dust collection system, 54-inch-wide belt sander, and multiple TigerStops^TM significantly updated our production process. With four new vacuum press tables, we were able to press up to eight slider chests in one day, something that would have taken us four days to accomplish in the past. Recent additions to our technology include a 3-D printer and planning for the installation of a large CNC machine. 

With my father nearing retirement, there was no doubt in my mind that a different business model would be needed to propel the company forward and continue our commitment to excellence. His were big shoes to fill. It is sobering and gratifying when I think of the many former Berghaus employees who were mentored by my father and have prominent positions throughout the industry. Preserving his legacy and continuing his life’s work was a daunting task. To accomplish this, I created a new team approach made up of a variety of artisans with the same dedication to the art of organbuilding that my father instilled in me. The new methodology produced a positive, collaborative working environment and a superior instrument, resulting in a secure future for all.

Berghaus has a history of successfully building both mechanical action and electric slider chest instruments and has continually made improvements to its approach. At the turn of the century, the advances started accelerating as the new Berghaus team began incorporating wooden windlines, 1.75-inch tongue and groove solid hardwood enclosures, European racking, and fastidious wire management into the construction techniques. Today, three-dimensional modeling and design create a realistic representation for new instrument presentation drawings and aid in the efficiency of in-shop construction. The case and console designs are an organic part of the rooms in which they reside. Our tonal finishing is, quite simply, second to none. Along with the aforementioned construction changes, we have an overhauled marketing approach with a new corporate image, website, and brochure.

What did not change was our commitment to maintaining high standards for every task our clients hire us to do, from tuning and service to building new instruments. We take great pride in tuning throughout the Midwest and beyond. From emergency service seven days a week to releathering reservoirs or cleaning instruments, our service business is paramount to our success and we appreciate the trust our clients have in us.

Our company is still devoted to the time-honored tradition of slider chests, low to moderate wind pressures, and pure and natural voicing practices. Our later instruments retain these hallmarks while presenting new colors and possibilities for performance of many schools of organ composition. Celebrating our 50th anniversary gives me the opportunity to reflect on the past and contemplate the honor of leading Berghaus into the future. The tremendous pride and respect I have for my staff and their accomplishments cannot be expressed in words. 

—Brian D. Berghaus

Please mark your calendars to celebrate the Berghaus 50th Anniversary with a recital at Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest, Illinois, November 12, 4:00 p.m. A reception will follow in the fellowship hall.

Frank Hastings, of the Weston Hastings

For the past 25 years or so, I’ve been caring for a lovely little organ in a Lutheran church in Waltham, Massachusetts. It was built by the Hook & Hastings Company in 1927, their Opus 2542. Originally, there were three stops on the Great (Diapason, Dulciana, Trumpet), five on the Swell (Stopped Diapason, Salicional, Voix Celeste, 4′ Orchestral Flute, Oboe), and a Pedal 16′ Bourdon. The Bourdon has a dual-pressure stop action and two drawknobs. When you draw 16′ Bourdon you get the same 4-inch pressure as the Swell and Great; when you draw 16′ Lieblich Gedeckt, you get 3-inch pressure, and the pipes speak more softly. If you don’t know any better and draw them both, the organ is smart enough to simply use the standard pressure.

Three ranks were added to the Great in the 1950s—a 4′ Octave, and a Quint and Super Octave that draw on one knob as Mixture II. A set of chimes was added at the same time. The additions were not made with particular historic sensitivity: they’re a little brighter than the rest of the organ. It’s fun to play using just the original stops to understand best what the builder had in mind. There’s a Tremolo for the Swell, plenty of couplers and combination settings, and a handsome little drawknob console. The entire organ is enclosed in a single expression chamber.

Such a simple little organ, so why all the fuss?  

A grand tradition

Elias and George Greenleaf Hook founded their famous organbuilding firm in 1827 in Salem, Massachusetts. The first organ they built is preserved in the Peabody-Essex Museum in Salem. The company moved to Boston in 1831, occupying a site near the present North Station. It took about 18 years for the Hook brothers to produce their first 100 organs. In 1854, the firm moved again to Tremont Street to the neighborhood now occupied by Northeastern University. By that time, E. & G. G. Hook employed more than 200 workers and built 20 organs the year they moved. 

Francis (Frank) Hastings was born in 1836, apprenticed with a toolmaker, and joined the firm of E. & G. G. Hook as a draftsman at the age of 19. He quickly proved himself a valuable employee and gained experience in all departments of the factory.

In 1870, E. & G. G. Hook produced 54 organs. Nine of those were three-manual instruments, including the 45-rank organ built for the First Unitarian Church of Woburn, Massachusetts, now located in the Church of the Holy Cross in Berlin, Germany. In 1870, George Hook was 63, Elias was 65, and the brothers were planning their retirement. They took Frank Hastings into partnership and changed the name of the company to E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings. George and Elias Hook died in 1880 and 1881, respectively. Frank Hastings purchased their shares in the company, and the name was changed to Hook & Hastings.

Frank Hastings had grown up in Weston, Massachusetts, now an affluent suburb to the west of Boston. But in the 1830s and 40s, Weston was rolling farmland with few trees and no hint of proximity to the city, excepting the Fitchburg (later Boston & Maine) Railroad that passed through town. Frank’s grandfather, Jonas, worked as a boot-maker and farmer; his father, Francis, had continued that work. Frank was born in the house Jonas had built on North Avenue in 1823. Frank may have loved living in the country, but he hated making boots and farming as much as he hated school, so he dropped out at the age of 14 and found work in Boston. Although he had worked in the city most of his life, he dreamed of moving the Hook & Hastings factory to Weston.  

This was more than a bucolic or nostalgic urge. The 1880s were the dawn of labor unrest, and many American companies were struggling to control their work forces. This led to the founding of the American Federation of Labor (AFL) in 1886, the same year that an anarchist exploded a bomb in Chicago’s Haymarket. In 1892, there was a highly publicized violent strike at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead steel mill near Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. And in 1895, striking workers at the Pullman railcar factory in Chicago were confronted by the Illinois National Guard—30 people were killed and 57 injured. 

Frank Hastings conceived that he might avoid such unrest within his company if he went out of his way to provide comfortable living and working conditions for his employees and their families. So in 1884, three years after the deaths of the Hook brothers, he purchased five acres of land from the family homestead, and built a gabled, Shingle-style house, directly across the road from his parents. In 1886, he purchased the remaining 45 acres of the family property, along with the 150-acre Warren farm on nearby Lexington Street. The new factory was completed in 1889, and the company was moved.

The new factory was located adjacent to Fitchburg Railroad tracks, and Mr. Hastings arranged for a whistle stop and later the small Hastings station, making it possible for his workers to commute easily from Boston. The Hastings stop is still active as a whistle stop in Boston’s commuter rail system. The proximity of the railroad allowed for efficient delivery of materials to the factory and shipment of completed organs to customers.

To accommodate his work force, Frank Hastings built cottages on his properties for workers to rent. He made inexpensive mortgages available so workers could build their own houses, stipulating that the houses must be worth at least $1,000, because if a house was too cheap, the owner wouldn’t maintain it faithfully. Hastings Hall was constructed to serve as a community center, theater, and recreation hall. Across from his house he built a caretaker’s cottage for the employee who oversaw the maintenance of gardens, lawns, and all the buildings.

In 1890, the population of Weston was around 1,600, and Hook & Hastings was by far its largest employer and industry. The Weston Historical Society has records of company parties that included dinners “under the tent,” “games and rambles,” badminton tournaments, speeches, and contests. Newspapers reported that a community of self-respecting mechanics sprang up around the factory. In 1890, the Boston Herald reported that “every man feels he has a friend in his employer. If there is any trouble coming, if there is sickness in the family, the one to whom they turn for help, for sympathy, for comfort, is the head of the concern. He knows personally every man in his employ.” Settled in the new factory, the company built 26 organs in 1890.

We know little about Frank Hastings’ first wife. Their son, Francis Warren Hastings, was an officer in the company; but his health deteriorated, and he moved to Bermuda in 1895. In 1897, Hastings hired Arthur Leslie Coburn (brother of the schoolteacher Anna Coburn, who taught at the nearby District School #4) as factory superintendent and secretary of the corporation. Frank’s first wife died during this period, and in 1899 Frank married Arthur’s sister, Anna. How’s that for a harmonious working situation?

Warren Hastings died of consumption in Bermuda in 1903, and Arthur Coburn became the president of the company. In 1904, the first full year of Coburn’s presidency, the Hook & Hastings Company built 39 organs.  

Frank Hastings died in 1916 at the age of 80, 61 years after he joined E. &
G. G. Hook, and 27 years after moving the company to Weston. Arthur Coburn had assimilated enough of Frank Hastings’ philosophy that the company continued to produce organs with exceptional artistic content for about fifteen more years. But the pace was diminishing. In 1916, the year of Frank’s death, the 89-year-old company produced only 19 organs. That same year, the 10-year-old Ernest M. Skinner Company built 23 instruments.

Ernest Skinner brought formidable competition to the marketplace. At the turn of the 20th century he was young, ambitious, and a brilliant mechanic and inventor with deep musical intuition. He had a knack for providing his organs with snazzy new mechanical accessories and innovative tonal resources. In the first years of the century, his fledgling company produced instruments that were admired by the best musicians, and he quickly developed an impressive roster of clients. The meteoric rise of the Skinner firm coincided with the decline of Hook & Hastings.

After Arthur Coburn’s death in 1931, the company continued for a few years, but the quality of the instruments declined dramatically, and the output dwindled to four instruments in 1934, and four more in 1935. Anna Hastings had retained ownership of the company after Frank’s death, and as she watched the decline, she said that her husband had always put quality before price, and when organbuilders started talking about price first, it was time to stop. A contract was signed with the Mystic Building Wrecking Company of Chelsea, Massachusetts, the company’s buildings were demolished, and the corporation was dissolved in April of 1937.

Under the names of E. & G. G. Hook, E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings, Hook & Hastings, and The Hook and Hastings Company, 2,614 pipe organs were built over a span of 110 years. They were located in 47 states and as far away as Quebec, London, Dresden, and Chihuahua, Mexico. Organs were installed in two churches in Honolulu, one in 1875, and another in 1893. Often, when I’m sitting at my desk talking on the phone, my correspondent and I exchange photos and documents by e-mail or text. It’s surreal to be talking with someone in Australia, and having a message arrive in a few seconds. In 1876, a railroad train crossed the continental United States in 83 hours, setting a new record. Those Honolulu organs must have left Weston by rail, traveling to San Francisco where they were transferred to ships for the 2,100-mile voyage to Hawaii. It would have taken weeks to send proposals and drawings back and forth, to exchange signed copies of contracts and receive funds. Did Hook & Hastings send a crew to install an organ, or were there locals available on the island?

Why the fuss?

Remember that neat little organ in Waltham I mentioned earlier? It’s The Hook & Hastings Company Opus 2542, and it’s located about two miles from the site of the Hook & Hastings factory in Weston. It was built in 1927, four years before Arthur Coburn passed away, one of 11 instruments built that year. That organ would have been delivered on a small truck, taking less than half an hour to travel from factory to church. Maybe Anna Hastings and her brother Arthur went to hear it since it was so close to home.

The factory building is long gone, but Frank Hastings’ house is still there. The homestead across the street where Frank was born is still there, as are about a dozen of the houses built by the factory workers using mortgages provided by the company. After tuning in Waltham, it’s fun to take a spin past all that. Just after you pass Frank’s house at 190 North Street, turn left onto Viles Street. The first right off Viles is Hastings Road. The railroad tracks that passed the factory are a few hundred feet further down Viles Street.

What a heritage. Today, Hastings is a leafy, upscale neighborhood, where the heaviest traffic is landscapers’ trucks. I pull off to the side of the road and imagine the bustle of a 280-foot-long wood factory with scores of skilled workers creating hundreds of beautiful pipe organs. In the early days of the factory, there would have been plenty of horse-and-dray traffic delivering materials, and hauling finished organs for local delivery. The company opus list shows nearly 600 organs delivered to churches in Massachusetts, more than 90 in Boston alone! In the 1890s, the factory shipped around 50 organs each year. Roughly once a week, an instrument would be loaded onto wagons or railroad cars. Thousands of ranks of pipes, millions of action parts, and tons and tons of windchests, reservoirs, blowers, consoles, casework, and building frames left Weston each year.

Hook & Hastings to the land of the lemurs

In 1915, one year before Frank Hastings died, the company built a one-manual organ (Opus 2369) with six ranks for the Church of the Sacred Heart in Greenville, New Hampshire. It was moved by the Organ Clearing House to St. John’s Episcopal Church in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1995, where it was installed for temporary use while George Bozeman & Company were preparing the installation of a larger organ. When that organ was installed in 1996, the Hook & Hastings was moved to an upstairs parish hall, where it sat, little used.  

In March of 2008, I received a phone call from Zina Andrianarivelo, Madagascar’s ambassador to the United Nations. I thought, of course you’re the ambassador from Madagascar. What ensued was a lifetime adventure. The Protestant (Presbyterian) churches in the capital city, Antananarivo, were preparing for the 140th anniversary of three acts of martyrdom, when an evil pagan Malagash queen ordered the murder of Christian missionaries. Three church buildings were established on those sites. One of those churches, located on the edge of a dramatic cliff was named Ampamarinana, which translates as “the Church of the Hurling Cliff.”

The nation’s president, Marc Ravalomanana, was also the vice-president of the National Church. He had charged the ambassador with “going back to the United States and finding a pipe organ for this church.” Skepticism satisfied, I went to New York (I lived in Boston at the time) and met with Mr. Andrianarivelo—I figured that I was the only organbuilder working at the United Nations that day.

Zina (we were on first-name terms right away) told me a little about the history of the churches, and the president’s desire to import organs to several churches. The priority would be the main central church, Faravohitra, where the anniversary service was planned for early November. Could we start with that one? It’s a pretty tall order to move and install an organ internationally in five months, but I thought of the one-manual Hook & Hastings in Charlestown, and suggested that we could relocate it quickly for temporary installation. We could bring a larger organ later, and move Opus 2369 to another smaller church.

Zina arranged for my visa, I followed the advice of the State Department concerning vaccinations (they warned me to be sure of the source of water I drank, including ice cubes), and received my airline ticket—my one-way airline ticket. Madagascar was formerly a French colony, so it’s serviced by Air France. They schedule weekly flights from Paris to Antananarivo (which is colloquially shortened to Tanariv, or simply, Tana), but they don’t schedule return flights until there are enough passengers on a list to fill a plane. I’m a stickler about travel arrangements, always being sure I have reservation numbers, flight information, accommodations, and addresses. Zina assured me there would be nothing to worry about.

I flew from New York to Paris, and then to Tana on a flight that would arrive there after midnight. I didn’t know who would meet me. I didn’t know how I would get from the airport to the city, 20 kilometers away. I didn’t know where I’d be staying, or how I would get around the city. And I didn’t know when I’d be going home. But I got on the plane for the 12-hour flight. Zina said it would be OK.

In next month’s column, I’ll tell my Malagash tales.

I offer thanks to Pamela Fox of the Weston Historical Society for providing photographs and facts, and for reading an early draft of this essay. Her command of this history and cheerful contributions have added much to my telling of this tale.

David Engen holds degrees in organ from St. Olaf College and the University of Iowa, and a master’s degree in software engineering from the University of St. Thomas. He has been in the organ business since 1970. He is currently president of Grandall & Engen LLC in Minneapolis where he shares duties with vice-president David Grandall.

We first saw the much-altered 1875 Steer & Turner organ at First Baptist Church in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2003. There were dead notes, some pipes were leaning and about to fall over, the pedal wiring included a number of jumper cables as well as dead notes, and the stoplist was somewhat bewildering. The combination action was slow and made a lot of noise. We began researching the organ’s history; it was full of twists and turns driven by technology, resulting in an organ significantly smaller and less versatile than its original design. Steer & Turner had originally built a tracker-action organ in Springfield, Massachusetts, yet here was an organ on electric pitman chests, with a Möller console, behind the original 16′ façade. (Regarding spelling: Steer added the final “e” to his name around 1880–90, thus becoming Steere.)

Most bewildering was the presence of the bottom half of a splendid 16′ Open Wood Diapason, which did not play. It was looming in the shadows, difficult to see. The entire top octave and a half was missing. In the Great we found a three-rank mixture on a four-rank toeboard. The Swell mixture was missing entirely. The Choir was based on an 8′ Koppelflute, which was obviously not part of the original 1875 design, and it was paired unsuccessfully with a wood harmonic Melodia as a celeste.

As we dug further we located documentation that outlined the gradual shrinkage that took place over time. The original 41-rank organ, dedicated by Clarence Eddy to a full house on May 26 and 27, 1875, had shrunk to 31 ranks by 2003. The treble half of the 16′ Open Wood, along with its windchest, was found in the basement near the blower. Next to the pile of pipes was a waterlogged box containing much of the original Great Mixture IV, with many spurious pipes that clearly were not part of the original. Some treble harmonic flutes (tapered) in the Swell had been cut in half at the hole; the Swell 4′ Principal had been moved to 2′ and played from the 4′ drawknob; the bottom five pipes of the Celeste were missing. The Dulciana and Unda Maris had been switched at tenor C. We found Great Diapasons in the Swell and Swell Diapasons in the Great! There was an octave of 4′ diapason pipes nested and lying on the floor under the Great, along with a rat’s nest of unit pedal wiring that included several clip leads. 

What had happened here? Did someone try to turn this organ into something it was never designed to be? And why did it shrink? The entire original mechanism was gone. Besides the original stoplist, how could we tell what Steer & Turner had originally built?

A “sister” organ

Just 100 miles away, in the motherhouse chapel of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Mankato, Minnesota, is the 54-rank William Johnson organ built in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1877. John Wesley Steer(e) (1824–1900) was a protégé of William A. Johnson. It would be reasonable to suspect that these two organs share some amount of common DNA, just a few miles apart. Indeed, the Clarinets in each organ are both flared, and there are other similarities in pipe construction and stoplist. 

The Johnson was originally installed at St. Mary of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boston. It was a tracker-action organ, but W. W. Laws added electro-pneumatic pull-downs in 1922, supplying a detached console. In 1975 the organ was moved from Boston to Mankato, and in 1995 Dobson Pipe Organ Builders of Lake City, Iowa, did extensive restorative work. They took it back to the 1922 state by removing non-original ranks, restoring the wind system with two large weighted reservoirs, and adding a new console that references an earlier style. The Johnson has undergone fewer changes than has the Steer & Turner, so the Johnson can inform us about the original layout of the First Baptist organ. The Johnson Great is immediately behind the 16′ Great Diapason façade, with the unenclosed Solo behind the Great. The huge Swell is above, with the diatonic pedal split on each side. It remains on its original slider windchests from 1877. The 16′ façade consists of zinc pipes for the Great. There is a large 16′ Open Wood Diapason against the back wall, along with a 16′ wood string.

A history of shrinkage

Like the Johnson, the Steer was electrified, but not until 1939. Arthur Fellows added pull-downs on the tracker chests along with a new Reisner electric console. This of course retained the original slider windchests and the original specification, but with electric action it must have been much easier to play. Just 19 years later, in 1958, the entire mechanism of the original organ was discarded. New chambers were built behind the façade with walls made of 2x4s, some sheetrock, and a great deal of ¼″ Masonite. New Durst pitman windchests replaced the originals, and the entire layout was changed. Reservoirs were added for each division. Work was done by J. R. Gould of St. Paul. All divisions were enclosed, with Great and Choir (changed from a presumably unenclosed “Solo”) side by side behind the façade impost, with the Swell above. The Pedal became a unit affair, with its pipes spread on both sides. It was at this time that the original stenciling was most likely painted over with gold. The sound of the original organ was modified to adhere to the ideals of the late 1950s. The dedication was played November 1, 1959, by Frank Steinhauser, organist of the church.

In 1962, the 23-year old 1939 Reisner console was replaced with a large pneumatic Möller console made of walnut, funded through memorial gifts from the Brandenburg family. The Reisner console had been at the side of the loft, but the Möller console was placed at the middle of the loft, where it remains today. It had a full complement of 16′ and 4′ couplers, which, of course, had not been in the original instrument.

In 2000, Steve Lethert made further modifications. Perhaps of most benefit was new leather on some of the reservoirs and the addition of lighting throughout. The Mixture III was removed from the Swell, and its toeboard was converted into a walkboard to allow for tuning access, previously almost impossible. The Great Mixture IV was placed in a box in the basement, and the higher-pitched Swell Mixture was moved to the Great. The 16′ Open Wood was disconnected and its treble chest and pipes were moved to the basement where we found them. The organ continued to shrink.

The 8′ strings in the Swell had been rescaled. The original 8′ Salicional was rescaled by four notes, with extra pipes fitted in at tenor C. The bottom octave remains the original Steer & Turner scale. The Voix Celeste, which was evidently added in 1958 (the pipes are clearly not original), was enlarged by five notes, and the chest holes for tenor C through tenor E were plugged so the celeste started at tenor F. We found the original Choir Dulciana had been exchanged with the Choir Unda Maris (added in 1958?) from tenor C to the top. Again, the pipes of these two ranks date from different periods.

Historic preservation grant

In 2013–14 we undertook mechanical and tonal renovation, funded through a grant from the State of Minnesota for historic preservation. Our overriding philosophy was to attempt to return the organ as much as possible to its original specification within the restrictions of the 1958 electric windchests. The primary tasks were to (1) restore the 16′ Open Wood Diapason to the Pedal, (2) restore the Mixture IV to the Great, and (3) restore the Mixture III to the Swell. In addition, we returned pipes to their original locations, replaced missing pipes, and placed replicas where any pipes had been cut off or otherwise damaged. The 1875 organ had 58-note keyboards and a 27-note pedal. All original ranks thus have mongrel pipes to fill out the range to 61/32. Our unending thanks go to
A. R. Schopp’s Sons for making the needed pipes. We also did the mundane work of replacing packing leather on wood pipes, cleaning, adding tuning slides to damaged pipes, repairing and painting the plaster on the chamber back walls, and regulating all of the pipes.

When we opened the box of pipes for the Mixture IV we found a combination of original pipes along with other pipes with grossly mismatched scale and construction. It was impossible to reconstitute what was there without discarding the extra pipes and starting from scratch to define the original composition. This was difficult since all pipe labels were scribed by hand with a florid script that was very difficult to read. Through a process of elimination we figured out what was missing and needed to be reproduced. One curiosity in the original scaling is that all of the quint ranks are scaled much smaller than the unisons. In fact, each quint is approximately the same diameter as the next smaller unison on the same note. The resulting Mixture IV works perfectly with its chorus on the Great, giving rise to the question of why this stop was modified and then discarded. Steer & Turner clearly knew what they were doing!

In the Swell we found that the pipes of the 8′ Open Diapason from tenor C to the top were actually the pipes for the 4′ Octave on the Great, and the Great 4′ Octave formed the upper part of the Swell Diapason. The pipes on the floor under the Great windchests were found to be the bottom octave of the Swell 4′ Geigen Octave, which in turn had been moved to 2′ in the absence of the Mixture. We built a new three-stop chest for the Swell to hold the 8′ Vox Humana, the 2′ Flautino (which we moved here from the Choir), and the Mixture III, moved back to its original home from the Great. The 4′ Harmonic Flute has a stopped wood bottom octave, a few notes of open wood Melodia pipes, and then the pipes are tapered double-length lead. (These are original, yet the original stoplist describes them as wood.) The pipes for the top several octaves had been shortened from harmonic to natural length, so these were replicated by Schopp’s, and we now have the full harmonic flute running to the top. It is one of the most charming voices in the organ.

The top end of the wood 8′ Stopped Diapason had a few original tapered lead pipes mixed with a group of miscellaneous diapasons. Again, Schopp’s replicated the pipes so this rank is now contiguous. It has a progressive scale such that the treble wood pipes are of very narrow scale, giving the stop a bit of a Coke-bottle sound. The basses are of standard scale for a manual 16′.

The Choir also presented some challenges. Clearly the 8′ Koppelflute had to go since this was not a voice used in nineteenth-century American organs. Its tone was completely out of character with the rest of the organ. We acquired a Möller wood Stopped Diapason, which has proven to be the perfect foundation for the Choir. The Flute Celeste was marked 8′ Melodia (although it is not shown in any original stoplist), with harmonic wood trebles. This may have been the original 8′ Flauto Traverso, but there was no room for it at 8′ and the bottom octave was missing. We used it as the 2′ Flageolet with new harmonic metal trebles from Schopp’s.

The Dulciana and Unda Maris had been exchanged from tenor C to the top. We switched them back so the original Steer & Turner pipes can again be heard from bottom to top as a lovely Dulciana, with 1958 pipes as the Unda Maris. There are two tenor C stops on this chest—used for the Unda Maris and the Flute Celeste. With the Flute Celeste pipes moved to the 2′ position, we had a tenor C stop available. We do not know what this was in the 1958 rebuild, so we took the opportunity to add a Cornet II, which was not on the original organ but is a useful solo voice.

The original Great Trumpet, Swell Cornopean, and Pedal Fagotto are long gone, and there is no room on the Durst chests for them. We “restored” the Great Trumpet electrically by making the Swell Trumpet available on the Great. Should the church ever wish to restore this trumpet, there is room to add the pipes on a new chest; the stop knob can easily be rewired to play it. 

The console was gutted and new electric components replaced the pneumatic. It now has Syndyne draw knobs, relay, and a combination action with multiple memory levels and a transposer. Swell motors were replaced with new Peterson motors, and instead of 45 degrees the shutters now open a full 90 degrees.

In returning much of the organ back to the (almost) original tonal design, we also opted to restore the original stop names and remove the sub and super couplers that were never part of the original concept. The idea for the 102⁄3′ Quinte in the Pedal was borrowed from the Mankato Johnson.

Aftermath

This project took a long time. We attempted to keep the organ partially playable as we focused on each division. A number of components took longer to deliver than we’d anticipated, and holiday tuning season interrupted construction. With the Minnesota state grant, there was a 2014 completion requirement.

Returning the stoplist (mostly) to the original design has been a revelation. The organ today is vastly more versatile than it was before we started. The net increase of eight ranks played a large part. Restoration of the Great Mixture, at its lower pitch, has given the division more gravitas. In hindsight I wish we had removed the Masonite walls to give its chamber better reflection into the room. Removal of the swell shades improved egress, and nobody has missed them.

In the room, the organ is far from loud, although the sound is very full and robust. The ceiling is not covered with wood, but apparently with some sort of absorbent material, probably invented and added after the original construction to reduce reverberation.

Another question is wind pressure. Today the entire organ is on 4″, but we found a number of pipes coughing and belching, especially in the Pedal. This leads us to suspect that the original pressure was less than 4″. A higher pressure was probably a concession to the pitman chests and the new reservoirs in 1958. Were the pipes revoiced for a higher pressure? There is no evidence of cutup changes, but many toes were badly damaged. In some cases they barely sat in the chest holes. A few of the 8′ zinc pipes needed new lead toes. We may never know for sure what happened with the pressure.

The Choir now has a lovely minor chorus and some delightful flute colors. The Dulciana and Unda Maris combination, with shutters that now close and open completely, is appropriately ethereal. The Clarionet, with its flared resonators, is one of the best clarinet voices we’ve ever heard.

Whereas the Swell was overly heavy with 8′ stops in relation to upperwork before we started, restoration of the 4′s and the 2′ along with the Mixture has made this division bloom and given it great versatility. The 4′ Violina has the effect of a super coupler to the strings, but is more successful. The original Oboe/Bassoon is a lovely and dark voice without being too soft—a perfect foil to the Clarionet. The 1958 trumpet is out of character with the other voices. The restored 4′ Harmonic Flute, with its tapered pipes, is one of the most beautiful stops in the organ. The mixture sits nicely on top of the restored 8′ and 4′ diapasons.

The restored 16′ Open Wood Diapason needed to be regulated softer than it was when we “turned it on” again—the original pipes are cut fairly low, and they were coughing. At a softer level they produce a fairly dull purr with a power that you can hear through the walls and down the hallway. Likewise, the 16′ Bell Gamba was pushed too hard, and at a softer level it has a lovely, fast speech that imparts a slight stringiness in the bass. Though its pipes are zinc and have the compound conical shape of the bell gamba, in effect it is very much like the wood Violone on the Mankato Johnson. We lament the loss of the Pedal 8′ Fagotto in the 1958 rebuild, along with the Great Trumpet and the Swell Cornopean.

In many ways the final result has been surprising. The organ is far more versatile and holds some really lovely combinations and solo voices, yet the room does not help it very much. It is now evident that the introduction of current technology over its life degraded the organ tonally while making it physically easier to play. Even though First Baptist Church sits at the confluence of several freeways and the blower draws in polluted air, the 56-year old leather in the wind chests is still in good condition. The “resurrected” organ should serve this church and the Twin Cities community well for many decades to come.