In the Wind. . .

John Bishop

J. G. P. Leek

When I was a student at Oberlin (Class of 1978), students were not allowed to own cars, ostensibly to limit traffic and parking congestion in the small town. I lived in an apartment off campus during my senior year, and since it came with a parking space, I flouted the rule and bought a 1969 Mercedes 230. I put a great sound system in it—those cassette tapes were just the thing—and I felt like the big man driving around. It was in pretty good shape, but it was a nine-year-old Ohio car, and there were little fringes of rust here and there.

At a time when my rent was $175 per month, I splurged and spent $200 on four new Michelin tires. The next morning, I drove to the organ shop where I was working and proudly showed off the new tires. My boss, John Leek, quipped, “It’s like putting alligator shoes on a wino.”

John Leek died in Sandusky, Ohio, on November 15, 2019, just short of the age of ninety. Until a couple years ago, I called him on his birthday. We stayed in touch now and again, especially after he read about himself in this column, but I had not seen him in more than fifteen years. I dropped everything to drive to Ohio for his memorial service, but I am sorry I did not drop everything a couple years ago to visit him. I am grateful to him, I miss him, and I want to tell you about him.

His name bears the Dutch pronunciation. A bank teller commented, “Your name should be pronounced ‘leak.’” His quick quip, “Then it should be pronounced ‘Bea-thoven.’”

The wino crack was one side of John. He was able to squeeze the greatest delight from the smallest joke, and when it was a big joke, we would laugh all day. He could also be stern. He had been brought up in the rigorous system of apprenticeships in the Netherlands, starting with a cabinetmaker at a very early age and moving to organ shops in his hometown. His teachers had been tough, and so was he. He was quick with compliments and encouragement and equally quick with a hard lesson. I was late to work once. He was in the workshop, the doors were locked, and he waved me away, telling me to come back tomorrow. I was late to work only once.

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Johannes Geratus Petrus Leek was born in 1929 in Alkmaar, the Netherlands, on the shortest day of the year, the youngest of eleven children. He apprenticed with Bernard Pels & Zonen in Alkmaar, and he continued his education in the workshops of Vermeulen, Wattell, and Verschueren. He served in the Dutch army shortly after the end of World War II. During his military service, John was seriously injured in a railroad accident. He recalled lying in the wrecked car realizing he was hurt, asking God for “twenty more years,” and then getting the creeps as the twentieth anniversary approached. I do not know the exact dates but suppose that accident happened in the early 1950s. He died last November about five weeks short of his ninetieth birthday—God granted that prayer.

After his time in the army, he returned to work in the organ shop of Verschueren. He and his wife Maria moved to the United States in 1961 as John went to work for the Holtkamp Organ Company under Walter Holtkamp, Sr. He was working on the installation of the organ in Warner Concert Hall at Oberlin when he saw a notice on a bulletin board that the school was looking for a new organ curator. “That’s the job for me.” He worked for the school from 1964 until 1976, all the while gathering organ maintenance clients “on the side,” and he left the school to start his own company in the workshop building behind his house on Route 58 (Main Street), just on the southern outskirts of town.

Just as John was starting out on his own, in the fall of my junior year, I began working with him three days a week and summers, and continued in his shop full time from my graduation until 1984, when my wife and two toddler sons moved to Boston. John was my important mentor in the craft of organbuilding. He taught me to tune, how to read and cut a piece of wood, how to glue pouches, how to build and leather a reservoir. I learned why you want wood to have standing grain for pallets in slider chests and flat grain in keyboards. (Wood warps only between the growth rings. You do not want pallets to warp so their surface does not meet the windchest grid, and you do not want keyboards to warp so the keys come into contact with each other.)

He helped me grow through the awkward end of youth when I was sure I knew everything into the awkward beginning of adulthood when I began realizing how little I knew. He never hesitated to let me know when I was full of it, and he never hesitated to confess when he was. While still an organ performance major, I was increasingly aware that organbuilding was my first love. I wondered aloud to John about quitting school so I could work with him full time. “If you quit school, you’re fired.”

Whenever my weak apprentice attempts resulted in a mangled job, John nailed it to the wall over my workbench. It turned really funny when I came back later to visit and they were still there, warning my successor apprentices to pay attention.

Road trip

Early in the summer of 1978, just after I graduated from Oberlin, we were completing construction of a harpsichord for a former student of the conservatory who lived in Oakland, California. She asked John to deliver the instrument to her, and he invited me to make the trip with him to share the driving. His offer was that I would not get paid, but he promised we would stay in the best hotels, eat the best meals, gamble in Reno, swim in the Pacific Ocean, and eat at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. John had a mustard-yellow Dodge van with a broad brown stripe (remember, those were the days of appliances in harvest gold and avocado colors), just the vehicle for such a caper, and off we went.

The trip is about 2,400 miles each way, and I suppose we drove between 400 and 500 miles each day because I remember it taking about a week in each direction. Anyone who has made a similar trip by land will appreciate our marveling at the rich agricultural heartlands, the prairies, the mountains, and the deserts. We drove all day through Iowa into Nebraska watching a huge weather system develop from the west all across the horizon, driving into light rain, and finally parking under a bridge for more than an hour waiting for the thunder, lightning, and hail to stop. We didn’t see a tornado, but that surely was on our minds.

When we stopped for gas just after entering Nevada, I put a dime in a truck-stop slot machine and won ten dollars. Bad. Very bad. We spent a night in Elko, Nevada, where we had a memorable meal in a Basque restaurant recommended by Howard Hanson, a member of Oberlin’s voice faculty. It is almost three hundred miles across flat arid land from Elko to Reno, and it seemed that we were staring at the distant mountains west of Reno all day, a visual effect that is hard to fathom the first time you see it. It was in a posh casino in Reno that I learned how it was bad that I had been sucked into the slot machine the day before. Inhibitions were loosened as the champagne was on the house, and I ran through all the quarters I could find (I think that may have been before there was such a thing as a dollar slot) while John got beaten up at a Blackjack table. It was interesting how often the dealer came up with twenty-one.

As we delivered the harpsichord, we spent two nights in the house with the customer and her physician husband, allowing us to visit San Francisco and fulfill a couple of John’s original promises. We were both smokers, and that was not allowed in the house. The second night, the good doctor brought home a preserved smoker’s lung in a jar and delivered a thoughtful lecture.

John burst randomly into song many times each day. The simple chanted Alleluia from the Roman Catholic Mass was a several-times-a-day regular. Another was a short clip from a bawdy little Dutch song asking a woman named Elena why the baby poops green. Maria and I joined elbows and sang that one for their grandchildren on the morning of the memorial service. There were many others, all brief excerpts. I do not believe John knew the complete songs, but he sure enjoyed the clips. Over and over.

John and Maria had been naturalized as citizens of the United States in 1968. He thundered the first four words of the refrain of “This is My Country” each time a new wonder was revealed on that wonderful trip. It was a punctuating anthem for a man of deep faith marveling at the process of his life that had brought him to live and work in such a huge country with such diverse landscapes.

The twinkle in his eye

John and his family were members of Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Oberlin, which was the site of his memorial service. When I worked for him, new carpet was being installed in the church, and the old had been given to a smaller church out in the countryside where the unworn sections would be enough to cover the floor. John volunteered the two of us to join a crew of parishioners removing the old carpet, which was loaded into his van and my pickup truck, where the huge roll hung over the back of my open tailgate. I was in the lead as we left on the delivery run, turning left from the church parking lot onto Lorain Street. I was stopped at the traffic light at the intersection of Main Street (Route 58) across from the art museum when I felt a strong push from behind. John had been careful to see that no traffic was coming, and, with a maniacal smile clearly visible in my mirror, was shoving me, carpet, truck, and all, through the red light into the middle of the highway.

In between organs, we built a screen porch on John’s house with a high peaked ceiling. Coming to the end of the project we were painting the floor. I was working my way out a corner with my back to John when I became aware of the quick whooshing of John’s brush flashing back and forth as he hurried to paint me into the corner.

Opus 1

In the fall of 1979, John signed a contract to build a new organ for St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in Annandale, Virginia. The organist there was Ben Dobey who had recently graduated from Oberlin as an organ major and was sure that while John had never built a pipe organ himself, he would be well able. Originally, the instrument was planned with twelve stops on two manuals, but the agreement was altered in December of 1980 to include the addition of an independent 8′ Octaafbass in the Pedal, which made necessary the construction of a separate case for the two pedal stops. You can see the specifications of the organ at https://pipeorgandatabase.org/OrganDetails.php?OrganID=8401.

The case is made of white oak with black walnut accents, drawknobs were made from a huge log of boxwood that John kept in the attic of the workshop, and the pipes were supplied by Jacques Stinkens of Zeist, the Netherlands. The slider windchests were made with sponsils, individual strips of wood fitted and glued between the ribs of the key channels to form the table surface, rather than the more usual plywood windchest table. With the experience of having built more than a dozen harpsichords, we made the keyboards in the shop. (That is when I learned about choosing slab grain.) In the first days of March 1982, I was standing at the drill press in the shop, drilling the holes in rackboards for the three windchests—start with the smallest holes so that if you make a mistake and drill an extra hole of a given size, it is easier to correct by making it bigger rather than smaller. (I have this memory exactly because those were the days of waiting for Pat to go into labor, and our first son Michael was born on March 4. I had quit smoking the previous New Year’s Eve.)

After the first week of the installation, the new organ case was standing in the church’s balcony with façade pipes in place. John and I sat proudly in the pews that Sunday as the congregation was gathering in the quiet church when a little girl near us took a look backwards and piped up clearly, “I like the old one better,” raising a polite Episcopal titter.

Patrick Summers, the current interim organist at Saint Alban’s, provided a great boost to my memory by forwarding the documents concerning the new organ from the church’s archives. As I read, John’s distinctive voice came alive. When petitioning the vestry to consider changing the schedule of payments from a list of completed components to one based on the calendar, John wrote (as Maria typed), “We would like to ask in a very polite manner from the Counsel to be paid each half year.”

John spoke English rapidly and fluently, but he never lost the grammar of his native Dutch. Coming into the shop in the morning, he would declare, “I feel myself good today,” typically followed by the ubiquitous Alleluia. (“Myself” was pronounced my-selliff, just as the name of his hometown was pronounced Allick-mar.) My primitive classroom German gives me, “Ich habe mich . . .” Although I had never been addressed by a nickname, in that workshop I was “Yonnyboy.”

Nunc dimittis

At John’s service I was reunited with his son James who runs the Leek Organ Company, his siblings Paula and Peter, their spouses and children, and his wife Maria. All of us bear the marks of the thirty-five years that have passed since my young family and I moved to Boston to start a new chapter, but the memories and stories flowed like it was yesterday. It was hilarious to hear the familiar stories as passed through the generations to John’s grandchildren, and it was fun to share some they had not heard.

John believed that there is a little voice in the head of a craftsman that pipes up when something is about to go wrong. “If you do that, you will stab yourself with that chisel.” I still hear that little voice and think of him. When I am tuning a chimney flute, I remember the moment he showed me how to hold the tool in the Congregational Church in Austinburg, Ohio, and I remember his teasing my beginner’s “yo-yo tuning” in the chapel at the College of Wooster. He insisted that I learn to tune with both hands and made me tune entire organs left-handed. There are some pipes you just cannot reach with your right hand.

John Leek was not a nationally known organbuilder, but he was widely known by generations of students at Oberlin that gave him an impressive reach. Many of my friends worked for him during their student years, and many other former students have commented in recent weeks about how generous he was with advice and goodwill. He built more than a dozen harpsichords and two pipe organs, renovated or restored dozens more, and performed thousands of service calls on hundreds of different organs. While I worked with him, we helped install four new Flentrop organs including the big three-manual instrument at Trinity Cathedral in Cleveland. I believe his greatest legacy was as a teacher, sharing his old-world experience, knowledge, and insight with young craftsmen.

John and I worked regularly on the big Aeolian-Skinner organ at the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland, releathering a division at a time and doing regular tuning visits. As we left the church one afternoon, a woman was contemplating a flat tire, and we offered to change it for her. When we finished, she thanked us profusely, declaring that there would be a special place in heaven for us. John replied, “Yes, tuning harps.”

John Bishop

Preservation by relocation

News of churches closing crosses my desk ever more frequently and shows up as rants on social media forums at the same pace. I read comments claiming that a closing is “criminal” or “unconscionable” as if reasonable and caring people did not spend years discussing how to manage an albatross of a building with the tithes of fewer and fewer congregants. In the early 1990s, I renovated a large three-manual organ at the First Baptist Church of Arlington, Massachusetts, and continued to maintain it until a couple years ago. There were 150 pledging families at the time of the organ project. By the time I retired from maintaining organs, there were fewer than fifty families struggling to maintain the huge stone building with a 1,000-seat sanctuary and monogrammed china service for 1,200.

As we completed that project, I got to know Eleanor Metcalf, an elderly church member who played the organ, practiced at the church, and substituted occasionally for the regular organist. She had grown up in the Baptist church in nearby Watertown, Massachusetts, where she studied with the organist as a teenager and loved to sit in a particular pew where she had a view of the organ’s pedalboard. She was a lifelong fan of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in D Major, BWV 532, which she said she could never play herself, but was thrilled to watch her teacher whip through those opening scales on the pedals. When she and her husband celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary, they engaged me to play a recital for their family and guests on the Watertown organ. Of course they sat in her favorite pew, and of course I played Bach’s D Major. A few years after that, the Watertown church closed, as the congregation had dwindled past sustainability. The building was subdivided into condominiums, and the organ, which was not of great distinction, was discarded.

Last week I received a call from a member of the Belmont-Watertown United Methodist Church, a congregation created ten years ago by the merging of the Belmont and Watertown churches, saying they were interested in selling one of their organs. (Belmont, Watertown, and Arlington, Massachusetts, are neighboring towns, about five miles west of Boston.) I had maintained the organ in the Belmont church for years, and as it too lacked distinction, I was glad to hear that they wished to sell the exceptional organ in the Watertown church.

As it happened, I was planning to drive between our homes in western Massachusetts and coastal Maine the next day so it would not be far out of my way to make a quick visit to Watertown. Wendy sealed the deal by reminding me that there is a spectacular Middle Eastern grocery store in Watertown. The congregant, Laurel, told me the story of their decision process that led to the merging of the congregations ten years ago. The Watertown church has a long history of outreach that led to dozens of weekly meetings of self-help and social organizations like Alcoholics Anonymous, Mothers Against Drunk Driving, and the like. The merged congregations had been worshiping in the Belmont church, renting the Watertown sanctuary to a Korean congregation, and continuing the outreach programs in the Watertown building.

They have recently decided to sell the property in Belmont and the large stone parish house that adjoins the Watertown church building, which will be converted to condominiums, and redevelop the church to accommodate the merged Methodist congregation and all the outreach activities. The church building includes a large sanctuary, an adjoining fellowship hall, and a large basement with classrooms and open space. The chancel, which contains the organ in side chambers, will be separated from the nave to create an additional large meeting room, which explains the idea of selling the organ in the interest of its preservation.

. . . and what an organ

While the organs in the Belmont Methodist and Watertown Baptist churches were unremarkable, the Watertown Methodist church has a spectacular instrument, Skinner Organ Company Opus 459 (1924), with four manuals and thirty-four ranks. Skinner produced many organs of this scale based on a scheme of expression and flexibility. This organ has four enclosed divisions (Swell, Great, Solo, Echo), three sets of Celestes (Gamba, Salicional, Flauto Dolce), three 8′ Open Diapasons, nine reeds, a two-stop Echo division (Chimney Flute and Vox Humana with Chimes), and a Harp/Celesta. It is full of lavish extras like celestes that start at low C and sixteen-stage expression motors. A creative organist can do anything with an instrument like this. As I write in mid-June, the organ will appear on the website of the Organ Clearing House in the next few days. I wonder if it will still be available as you read this in early August.¹

Laurel told me how the congregation loves that organ and respects its heritage, and though they are heartbroken at the thought of losing it, they know they would never be able to fund the necessary renovation. When I visited the other day, the organ had not been used for six years. When I started the blower, there were dozens of ciphers and only a few notes on a few stops that played. From that perspective, the organ seems like a wreck, but when I climbed around inside the two chambers I marveled at the “like new” condition. Scrolls on reed pipes were neat and tight, everything was standing straight, and there was none of the tuner’s detritus we often see laying on perch boards or in corners. I imagine that in the ninety-eight years since the organ was built, no inept service technician ever entered the organ chambers. I understand and respect the decisions made by the board of trustees of the merged congregation, and I am confident that another congregation will acquire and restore the marvelous organ for another century of inspiring use.

Another transplant

In the June issue of this magazine, I wrote about visiting the Organ Clearing House installation of an organ by Gabriel Kney at Saint Meinrad School of Theology in Saint Meinrad, Indiana.² That organ became available when the church that commissioned it in 1980 decided to divest itself of real estate and use the proceeds of the sale to create a fund forming the core of a church devoted entirely to public service. Once again, the decision was the result of years of reflection and discussion as they realized that it did not make sense for the ever-smaller congregation to try to sustain a complex physical plant. The people of that church were thoughtful, creative, and eager to continue serving the community as effectively as their resources would allow, and they are pleased to know that their organ is now being used daily in the chapel of a flourishing seminary.

From Passaic to Ingelheim

Around the year 2000, the First Presbyterian Church in Passaic, New Jersey, was experiencing decline in membership and was saddled with a large complex building it could no longer afford to maintain or operate, and it entered into an agreement with a neighboring growing congregation to swap buildings. I do not remember the details of the deal, but I know that the result was that each congregation wound up in a building of appropriate size. The swap was completed with the understanding that the Presbyterian church’s Skinner organ (Opus 823, 1930) remained their property, and that the organ could be removed when it was sold.³ In 2008 we organized the sale of the organ to the Evangelische Saalkirche in Ingelheim am Rhein, Germany.

The organist of the Saalkirche, Carsten Lenz, was enamored by Skinner organs and had long dreamed of importing one to Germany. He first visited me at the Organ Clearing House exhibition booth during the 2002 convention of the American Guild of Organists in Philadelphia. Later, we met in New York City and New Haven, Connecticut, to visit Skinner organs. It took several years for his church to raise the funds and negotiate the sale, but in 2008 we dismantled the instrument and shipped it to Klais Orgelbau, who renovated the organ and installed it in Ingelheim.

This was another example of the “smallish” four-manual organs by the Skinner Organ Company with thirty-nine ranks and thirty-six stops including four 8′ Open Diapasons, four celestes (Gamba, Salicional, Echo Viole, Dulciana), eleven reeds, three expression boxes, and a Harp/Celesta. Sorry, no two-stop Echo. Like the Watertown organ, this scheme developed by Mr. Skinner defines an exceptionally versatile and expressive instrument. I was excited to visit the organ in Ingelheim in 2019 and pleased that while Klais had made some modifications to the instrument, the Skinner organ was otherwise intact and recognizable in its new home. Carsten gave me an energetic demonstration and tour and told me that German organists have responded to it enthusiastically.

Worthy of preservation

I have mentioned two organs that I deemed unworthy of preservation. Both were useful, serviceable instruments that enhanced worship and brought pleasure to listeners. Remember Eleanor Metcalf worshiping in Watertown as a teenager in the 1930s in the thrall of that organ. You might think there must be some place for it. But the fact is, there are hundreds of organs available at any given time, and it is a good year when we place more than twenty. If I can offer a masterpiece like the Skinner in Watertown, it is hard to justify encouraging a church to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on an ordinary or even mediocre instrument. View it through a wider lens. There is a finite amount of money spent on pipe organs in the United States each year. Isn’t it our responsibility to see that most of it is spent on excellence?

There is an exception to this idea. The church that owns and loves a reliable, useful organ, one that might not merit the cost of preservation through relocation, should be encouraged to keep it in good condition, even if it needs an expensive renovation like releathering. I am not thinking of a wreck of a pipe organ that has been “improved” by unqualified technicians. Eleanor’s church in Watertown maintained their organ well until they realized that the entire campus was beyond their means.

Former glories

I mentioned 1,200 sets of monogrammed china to provoke the image of a parish hall set up for a huge dinner, backed up by a professional kitchen that could produce that volume of food, tuna casserole being the 1950s equivalent of loaves and fishes. There are photos of just such an event hanging in the parish hall of that church, the men wearing identical skinny ties and white shirts under their jackets and the women with updos. In the age of TV dinners and cars with tailfins, suburban Protestant churches around Boston were packed on Sundays, home to softball and bowling leagues, and the huge buildings they left to their descendants have become impossibly expensive to maintain.

Over twenty years with the Organ Clearing House, I have spent hundreds of hours in church buildings that have been closed. I have heard about how much a church meant to lifelong parishioners. They have shown me photos of their children’s baptisms and weddings and parents’ funerals, and now they are reduced to clearing decades of churchy stuff out of a building. What do you do with 500 pew Bibles, fifty choir robes, a hundred bottles of Elmer’s glue, or a library of choral music? In at least one church, the last-standing loyal parishioners were members of the “Disbursement Committee.” Without exception, these people are heartened to know that their organ will have new life, metaphorically carrying the life’s breath of their church to worship somewhere else. While it is always sad to see a church building breathing its last, it is a privilege to be able to preserve a good organ.

Some years ago, I visited a church building in New Jersey that had been purchased by a new congregation. It was a large, elegant structure in a prominent downtown location with hardwood paneling on the front of the wrap-around balcony and a big Austin organ down front. The original congregation had abandoned the building without any planning. It was during the last service that the people were informed that it was the last service. They simply closed the doors and put the building up for sale. The bulletins were in a dusty heap at the ushers’ station, the water glasses were on the pulpit, the altar flowers were long rotted, and that Sunday’s anthem was heaped on the choir room piano. It was the only church I have visited that was closed without years of careful, thoughtful planning. There must have been some angry people after church that day. I wonder if there was a coffee hour.

It is more usual for a closure to happen after years of deliberation. If two congregations are merging, which building is retained? There are likely to be conflicting sentimentalities competing with practicality. One building might be better suited for redevelopment for another purpose. It can be tricky to build condominium residences in a Gothic building. What do you do with thirty-foot stained-glass windows? In some cases, one building is chosen, but the better organ from the other building is moved. Each individual case is a sad story. Each involves personal and community loss. But this trend is undeniable, inevitable, and in most cases, unavoidable. It is not useful to rattle along on social media about criminal negligence, irresponsibility, or thoughtlessness. It just is.

I am impressed by the story I have learned about the churches in Belmont and Watertown. I think they are being creative with their heritage and their resources. I am sorry that the wonderful Skinner organ will have to leave town, but I know it is worthy of proper restoration, and I expect it will be easy to find it a new home.

Good old Mr. Skinner

When I was a student at Oberlin in the 1970s, we were all in the thrall of modern tracker organs built on classical models. I did not understand or appreciate Mr. Skinner’s ideals; in fact I admit I was disdainful of them. Of course, the trumpet and mixture should be on the Great. What sense does it make to bury them in the Swell? Wait. I get it. More of the “meat” of the organ is under expression. Couple the Swell to the Great and start the verse with the box closed. It is a great effect to put the wind at the back of the processing choir by opening the box slowly.

The Ernest M. Skinner Company built its first four-manual organ for Grace Church in New York City (now home of a smashing organ by Taylor & Boody) in 1902. The organ in Watertown, built in 1924, is the 103rd four-manual Skinner, most of which are modest in size with fewer than forty ranks. This scheme was a wonderful subset of Skinner’s prolific career with imaginative use of a relatively small number of voices combined with seemingly lavish excesses of construction.

I have listed some of the attributes of Opus 459. G. Donald Harrison joined the Skinner Organ Company in 1927, three years after the Watertown organ was installed. In 1936, the newly formed Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company installed the iconic organ at Church of the Advent in Boston (Opus 940),4 long recognized as a near perfect example of the American Classic organ with three fully developed principal choruses, a Positiv division, and several mutations. Under its two names, the company produced 481 organs between Watertown and Church of the Advent, a little over forty a year.

Ernest Skinner grew bitter in his old age as the style of organ he developed fell out of favor. Walter Holtkamp, Sr., rebuilt the Skinner organ at the Cleveland Museum of Art. While that project was underway, Holtkamp saw the elderly Ernest Skinner standing forlorn and alone at a function of the American Guild of Organists. He thought to himself, there is one of our greatest organ builders and no one wants to talk with him. He walked up to Skinner and introduced himself as Walter Holtkamp from Cleveland. Skinner, who was hard of hearing, snapped back, “Cleveland? One of my finest organs is in the art museum there, and some damn fool is trying to change it.”

 

Notes

1. pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/22899.

2. organclearinghouse.com/sold#/3085-gabriel-kney-dallas-tx.

3. pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/23629.

4. pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/7407.

John Bishop

On the road again

In April 2021, after a year of Covid isolation and after I received my second dose of the vaccine, I went on a “bust out” road trip driving south from our home in New York City as far as Atlanta, visiting three colleagues’ organ shops, the installation of an organ where the Organ Clearing House crew was working, and a few iconic instruments. It was my reintroduction to the excitement of being out and about, seeing friends and colleagues, and getting my nose back in the business after being sequestered at our place in Maine during the worst of the pandemic. I wrote about that trip under the title “On the road again” in the July 2021 issue of The Diapason (pages 10–11). It was fun to recreate and chronicle some of my experiences on the road, and here I am to do it again.

Last week I drove as far west as Chicago from our new home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Two things inspired this trip. The Organ Clearing House was installing a relocated organ by Gabriel Kney (Opus 93 from Dallas, Texas) at the Saint Meinrad School of Theology in Saint Meinrad, Indiana, and I was promoting an exceptional organ built by M. P. Möller (Opus 5881 from Chicago, Illinois) that had been donated by organ historian and architect William H. Barnes and his brother and mother in honor of his father, Charles Osborne Barnes, who had been a longtime member and trustee of the church.

I was on the road for seven nights, stayed in five different hotels, and drove just over twenty-five-hundred miles. I love that kind of driving. My first experiences with long-distance driving were as a student at Oberlin when I drove back and forth between school and home in the Boston area, growing familiar with Interstate 90. During the summer of 1978, just after my graduation from Oberlin, my mentor John Leek and I drove to Oakland, California, to deliver a harpsichord we built. That trip was a great lesson about our country because while it is a one-day drive from Boston to Oberlin, it is a five or six-day drive from Oberlin to San Francisco. Just as I thought I was going west when I went away to school, a school friend who grew up in northern Wisconsin thought he was going south.

Kegg Organ Company

I left home on Saturday morning, spent that night outside Cleveland, met my friend Charles Kegg for breakfast on Sunday morning in Hartville, Ohio, and visited his workshop, which is in a 16,500-square-foot building, beautifully equipped for the specialized work of building pipe organs. The immense rooms are carefully planned and nicely maintained. There is a fleet of orderly stationary machines and workstations. Various components and structures of a large organ under construction occupied big areas of the abundant floor space. The company had just upgraded the HVAC system to include air filtering, heating, and air conditioning, replacing the noisy old hanging gas heaters of yesteryear.

I was especially interested to see one of Charles’s specialties and passions, the machine built by M. P. Möller to produce rolls for their automatic organs. It is a stately structure with an intricate mechanism that transfers musical notes into holes in the paper rolls. Möller rolls are big and heavy, a large-format version of the more familiar Aeolian rolls. Charles was working with the now-shuttered American Organ Institute at the University of Oklahoma to rejuvenate the machine and make new rolls to aid in the understanding of that brilliant technology developed early in the twentieth century. Along with his active interest in automatic musical instruments, Charles and his company are building beautiful new organs with electric-valve actions, versatile symphonic specifications, and exquisite consoles.

Saint Meinrad School of Theology

I left Hartville to drive across Ohio, through Cincinnati and past Louisville, Kentucky, to Saint Meinrad, Indiana, the town next to Santa Claus near the southern tip of the state. Saint Meinrad is a thriving Catholic seminary on a beautiful remote campus. There is a prominent archabbey with an organ by Goulding & Wood in the principal chapel, and the school operates industries that produce high-quality caskets and peanut butter.

In addition to the archabbey there is a chapel honoring Saint Thomas Aquinas, where the Organ Clearing House was installing an organ built in 1980 by Gabriel Kney (Opus 93) for the First Community Church of Dallas, Texas. Susan Ferré was the consultant for the design and construction of the project. Debra Dyko, the theological school’s organist, found the instrument listed on the OCH website and went to Dallas within a week to audition the organ. The sale was completed quickly, and less than a month later, the OCH crew was in Dallas dismantling the organ.

I arrived when the installation was well along. The case was up, windchests in place, action connected and functioning, and the wind system was complete. I was able to help connect the solid-state slider control and combination mechanisms including the installation of a new 24-volt DC power supply for the Heuss slider motors. I “retired” from working on-site with the crew at the end of 2019, and it was nice to have tools in my hands again for a few hours. This was a classic relocation project. The organ is well suited for the building visually and tonally. It is well built, so it went back together easily and will be a reliable instrument for decades of further use, and it was a great fit physically and visually—there were no alterations required. Fred Bahr of John-Paul Buzard Pipe Organ Builders accomplished tonal finishing of the organ in May.

. . . and speaking of Buzard . . .

I left Saint Meinrad on Tuesday morning to drive to Champaign, Illinois, to visit John-Paul Buzard Pipe Organ Builders. I had a nice lunch with John-Paul Buzard that included rich conversation about organbuilding philosophies, the history of his company, and conversations about past and future collaborations. The company, affectionately referred to as “Buzco” (as seen on the license plates of company vehicles), is in a former women’s residential hotel in downtown Champaign. It is a four-story building with rental apartments on the fourth floor (The Organ Loft Apartments) and three floors of offices, workshops, voicing studios, and erection space.

A large, four-manual organ for Saint George’s Episcopal Church in Nashville, Tennessee, is under construction, and I saw a big section of the framework and structure of the instrument in the erection space, windchests being assembled, wind system components being built, pipes in the voicing rooms, and the console partially assembled. The long corridors down the center of each floor serve as storage rooms and are wide enough to allow passage between stacks of organ components.

The Buzco service department has a separate workshop in a building across the street devoted to large-scale repairs of organs they maintain. There is a well-equipped woodworking shop, leathering station, stocks of wiring supplies, and lots of projects in progress on workbenches. Keeping renovation and repair work separate from the construction of new organs makes it easier to keep track of things.

I visited with the brilliant organist Katelyn Emerson at McKinley Presbyterian Church where she played for me on the 1994 Dobson Opus 63. We sat in a pew talking for an hour or two about the organ, its music, and her upcoming studies in Britain. Katelyn’s husband, David Brown, is a longtime member of the Buzard shop, a dear friend with whom I correspond regularly. I was delighted to sit between Dave and Katelyn at the rollicking dinner that evening hosted by John-Paul that included his wife and daughter along with several other members of the Buzco team.

Given by the master

William Harrison Barnes (1892–1980) was an authority on pipe organ construction and a consultant responsible for the design of some four hundred instruments. He grew up in the Chicago area and graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1910. In 2008, the high school celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the three-manual pipe organ that Dr. Barnes donated to the school. His home church was Epworth United Methodist Church of Chicago where his father, Charles Osborne Barnes, was a longtime member and trustee. A plaque on the wall of the church dedicates the 1931
M. P. Möller organ (Opus 5881) to the loving memory of Charles Osborne Barnes, naming the donors as Mrs. Charles O. Barnes and her two sons, William H. Barnes and Harold O. Barnes.

When Pastor Max Kuecker of Epworth Church contacted me about organizing the sale of the organ and shared its history with me, I imagined a scenario in the offices of M. P. Möller when staff members looked at each other and agreed that with the Barnes family involved, this had better be an exceptional instrument, and I was curious to see it. The church had waited until after the proverbial last minute to address the future of the organ as our first contact was after the sale of the building with real estate closing just weeks away. Since our company would be working in Saint Meinrad, I combined the two interests and planned my trip.

The people at Möller did deliver an exceptional organ. There are twenty-two ranks in three manual divisions with one independent pedal rank, 16′/8′ Bourdon, enclosed with the Swell. The Choir division is located across a stairway from the main organ chamber and has shutters facing two rooms. One set of shutters speaks into the stairwell and through a grille that opens into the choir loft, the other opens into the adjacent Sunday School chapel, and the Choir organ is playable as a separate instrument from a two-manual console in the chapel. Each console has a cut-out switch to close and disable the shutters that are not to be in use. An eight-octave rank of flue pipes that starts at 16′ (1–24 stopped, 25–37 open, 38–56 open harmonic, 57–97 metal) sits on a unit chest allowing it to be used as a pedal stop and at different pitches on the keyboards while the ranks of the main pitman chest are distributed between the two keyboards.

There are four 8′ diapasons on the organ, two in the Great and one each in the Swell and Choir, and the Great 8′ Second Diapason is extended as a pedal stop with a marvelous octave of 16′ Diaphone pipes. There is plenty of power, and the Choir 8′ Dulciana and Swell 8′ Muted Viol disappear as whispers when the boxes are closed. You can learn more about this organ here: pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/9216.

When I posted Opus 5881 for sale on our website and promoted it on Facebook, I was not surprised to have immediate responses from congregations interested in acquiring it, and as I planned my trip, I invited the organists of those churches to meet with me while I was visiting the church. I shared the organ with representatives of two churches, one of which was quick to act, and while as I write the transaction is not officially completed, it sure looks as though we will be dismantling that organ in July. I’ll let you know when the deal is complete.

The corner of Oak and Walnut

I left Chicago on Friday morning for the six-hour drive to Orrville, Ohio, where the Schantz Organ Company has been on that street corner for 121 years. Organ architect Eric Gastier greeted me and showed me through the storied workshop where nearly twenty-five-hundred organs have been built, an average of about twenty organs a year. We were joined by Jeffery Dexter, vice president and tonal director, for conversations about the history and operation of the company.

The deep heritage of the company is evident everywhere in the huge shop building. Heavily worn wood floors tell the history of the countless footsteps and cartwheels required to build one organ, not to mention twenty-five hundred. Jigs and patterns for dozens of specialty components hang on the walls, and personal workstations are decorated with family photos and mementos and lifetime tools. There is specialty equipment everywhere like a power-vented workstation for soldering metal windlines, mechanized rollers with crank handles for turning tiny tuning slides, tapered and straight mandrills for shaping organ pipes, and ancient carts for the storage and transportation of hundreds of clamps. There is a huge belt sander, wide enough to accept the largest windchest, and an elegant walnut-wainscoted conference room with raised panels that only an organ shop could build. My tour took us through a seemingly endless maze of rooms, both large and small, each dedicated to a specific facet of the art of making pipe organs.

There are very few workshops remaining in the world in which pipe organs have been built by the thousand. I have visited the shops of Austin, Reuter, and Casavant, but am hard-pressed to think of another North American shop with such a legacy. I think of the thousands of truckloads of organs that have rolled away from the loading dock and down the residential street to Main Street where you can drive across the railroad tracks and find a highway.

Whiling away the time

What do you do while you are driving twenty-five-hundred miles alone? My work with the Organ Clearing House has brought me close to the American trucking industry, as I wrote in the April 2022 issue of The Diapason (pages 10–11). Because we maintain DOT (Department of Transportation) and FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) numbers, to Wendy’s amusement I receive several trucking magazines. Glancing at them occasionally, I know that Walmart is America’s largest trucking company. My observation is that Amazon must be becoming a close second—their trucks are everywhere. Landstar, the company we use, has a solid presence on the country’s highways. Taking attendance is a mindless occupation as white lines stream past.

Highway warning signs can be amusing, like the one on I-90 in western New York that says, “Correctional facility ahead, don’t stop for hitchhikers,” or the huge tourist stop and museum in eastern Pennsylvania with a sign that reads, “Be prepared to see more than you expected.” For years I have loved listening to “books on tape” while driving, the concept updated now to Audible.com. As a devoted sailor, I listened to Joshua Slocum’s famous memoir, Sailing Around the World Alone, for the third time. I especially love the moment when he frightens away a pirate attack by scattering upholstery tacks on the deck of his oyster sloop, Spray. I wonder if the pirates got shoes after that.

A couple months ago, Wendy introduced me to a series of podcasts called Sticky Notes hosted by the conductor Joshua Weilerstein, artistic director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne in Switzerland. In each of the dozens of hour-long episodes, Weilerstein analyzes a different piece of music using many recorded examples, delivered in a rapid vocal cadence. During this trip I listened to his thoughts on the Bach cello suites and Goldberg Variations, Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. I didn’t agree with everything he said (the recording he used of Beethoven’s Eroica was too fast), but I found it engaging to argue with him while I was driving. As an enthusiastic young musician with an impressive career unfolding, Weilerstein has given much thought to the music he performs, and his insights are rewarding, informative, and reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein’s iconic Young People’s Concerts on television with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Download the Sticky Notes app, and you’ll see a big library of compelling lessons.

That Ingenious Business . . .

. . . is the title of an authoritative book about the Pennsylvania German organbuilders of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, written by the late organbuilder Raymond J. Brunner and published by the Pennsylvania German Society in 1990. It reflects a comment by a bystander, a contemporary of David Tannenberg, the greatest of that tribe of craftsmen. I am reminded of that phrase whenever I visit an organ shop. Each of the three shops I visited last week has a distinct personality, an aura that reflects the philosophy of its founder, whether living and active or gone for generations. Each building speaks of the passion behind this fascinating art, and each displays craftsmanship at its Old World finest combined with cutting-edge materials and equipment. My thanks to Charles Kegg, John-Paul Buzard, Eric Gastier, and Jeffrey Dexter for sharing their work with me. I am the richer for it, and I promise I won’t pick up any hitchhikers.

Neal Campbell

Neal Campbell is the organist of Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach, Florida. He previously held full-time positions in Connecticut, Virginia (including ten years on the adjunct faculty of the University of Richmond), and New Jersey. He holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, including the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, for which he wrote his dissertation on the life and work of New York organist-composer Harold Friedell. He has studied, played, and recorded on many of the organs discussed in this article.

Editor's Note: Part 2 is found in the March 2022 issue.

Introduction

During their seventy-plus-year history it was customary for organs built by the Skinner Organ Company and the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company to contain an ivory nameplate bearing the firm’s name on the console, usually on the keyslip, although there was a brief period in the early 1960s when the company name was stenciled in gold letters in a way similar to that on pianos. Astute aficionados can sometimes even determine the era in which the organ was built by carefully examining the subtle differences in type styles that were used over the years.

After World War II some jobs featured an additional ivory nameplate bearing the signature of G. Donald Harrison, Aeolian-Skinner’s president and tonal director, which also gave the opus number and date. There is no definitive information to suggest why some organs received this signature plate, what criteria were used in selecting them, or what purpose it served. Much conjecture and oral tradition among enthusiasts has been promulgated to the point where there is a resultant mystique surrounding these “signature organs.”

The only thing approaching documentation on the subject that I have found is in the form of three letters, the first two written approximately twenty years before the latter. Barbara Owen writes in her history of the organ in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah, Aeolian-Skinner’s Opus 1075:¹

Shortly before the organ was completed, [Alexander] Schreiner wrote to Harrison, “I have long thought it would be a matter of pride to us, to have your name appear on the console name plate. Perhaps also the year, 1948. If that is possible, we should be very pleased.”² Harrison complied by providing a signature plate on the right of the nameboard [keyslip], complementing the company plate on the left. Thus originated a practice that later became customary with Aeolian-Skinner. But it is perhaps nowhere more appropriate than on the Tabernacle instrument, which Harrison himself in later years felt to have been his finest work.

Harrison replied to Schreiner:

I note what you have to say about the nameplate, and I will provide one, but I fear it will not be ready to go [be shipped] with the console. I would like to have my name in the form of my signature if I can get this engraved in Boston.³

Then in 1968 Philip Steinhaus, executive vice-president of Aeolian-Skinner, wrote to William Self, organist and master of the choristers of St. Thomas Church, New York City:

The officers of the Company would be greatly pleased if you would be good enough to help us continue to honor the work of the late G. Donald Harrison by removing his personal nametag [sic] from the console at St. Thomas Church. As you know, Mr. Harrison only agreed to using these tags [signed nameplates] on the jobs with whose finishing he was deeply and personally involved. We are in no way commenting on the present tonal characteristics of the St. Thomas organ, except in all honesty to say that its character is not recognizable as the work of Mr. Harrison, or the Aeolian-Skinner Company for that matter.⁴

From these letters we learn that: a) it was Schreiner who first brought up the idea in the form of a request; b) Harrison replied with the idea of using a facsimile of his signature for that purpose; and c) twenty years later Steinhaus summarizes that these signature plates were put on organs that were finished by GDH and with which he was personally involved. However, upon examining and analyzing existing signature organs and the documented commentary about them, certain patterns do emerge and logical conclusions can be drawn, some of which are tonal and technical, and some purely personal.

It would be a fairly straightforward enterprise to simply list the known signature organs from Opus 1075 in 1948 onward until Harrison’s death in 1956, and I have done just that later in this article. Beyond that, however, I want to set the scene and cite some examples that show the trajectory of Harrison’s tonal ideas leading up to Opus 1075, together with information about the Harrison signature organs.

Historical context

A bit of history sets the stage for the emergence of G. Donald Harrison in the Skinner organization and helps explain why Harrison’s personal involvement came to be sought after and highly prized. The complete story is best told in the letters of the principal players as contained in Charles Callahan’s first book.⁵ But the main thing to take away, as it relates to the topic of the signature organs, is that customers and the leading organists of the era began to prefer instruments that contained the classic elements Harrison gradually came to espouse, and increasingly customers specifically said so. Many of these younger organists had themselves traveled to and studied in Europe and knew some of these historic organs for themselves. They were drawn to Harrison’s concepts of classic design for the simple reason that much of the organ repertoire, especially contrapuntal music, sounded better on these instruments, as opposed to the older style of symphonic and Romantic organs. The era of the large symphonic organs, characterized by a preponderance of eight-foot tone, high wind pressures, and contrasting imitative stops, gradually morphed into organs that were eclectic and modern, which were inspired by historical precedence designed first and foremost to play repertoire written for the organ.

G. Donald Harrison came to America to work for Skinner in 1927, largely through the friendly exchanges between Ernest Skinner and Henry Willis III. Harrison worked for Willis, and it was Willis who sent GDH to Skinner, with the initial idea of his being an emissary to incorporate Willis tonal principles into the Skinner organ. It is hard to discern a precise point at which GDH’s influence began to be felt.

Among the earliest Skinner organs GDH worked on was Opus 656 for Princeton University Chapel, Princeton, New Jersey. Marcel Dupré played it while on tour in America, and he praised the organ. After the fact, Skinner wrote to Harrison:

Dear Don:

I felt some embarrassment when Marcel [Dupré] handed me that testimonial so personal to myself regarding the Princeton organ, and I can imagine you may not have been without some feeling of being left out of it, so I want to say right here that I hold your contribution to the quality of that great instrument to be such that my opinion of you as an artist, publicly and privately expressed, is more than justified.

Cordially, and with great admiration,

Ernest M. Skinner⁶

Other early organs showing Harrison’s influence include Opus 851 for Trinity College Chapel in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1931, where Clarence Watters, the college organist, was a leading disciple of Marcel Dupré in America. By the time of Opus 909 at All Saints Episcopal Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Opus 910 for Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco, California, each from 1933, Harrison’s influence was clearly present, even though each of these organs, in their initial scheme, showed no radical departure from the prevailing Skinner stoplist. It was during this time that Ernest Skinner left the company to set up a competing shop in Methuen, Massachusetts. Also, the firm acquired the organ division of the Aeolian Company to become the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company in 1932.⁷

By 1935 it is clear that GDH was forging a tonal path different from Skinner, and different from Willis, for that matter! Henry Willis in England writes to Emerson Richards:

Now quite privately to you, Don is not doing what he went to Skinners for, and that was to give Skinner Organs a Willis ensemble. Don is striking out on what might be termed an individual line, obviously influenced by you in the strongest possible way [original emphasis]. You will know that Don’s Continental European experience is limited to a few French organs—he has not to my knowledge been in any other European country and most certainly has not heard the various types of German organs Baroque or otherwise. On the other hand he can visualize them perfectly well, especially after hearing Steinmeyer’s Altoona job. [The Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Altoona, Pennsylvania.]

Now you know that I appreciate your personal standpoint and ideals, even if I can’t go all the way with you sometimes. I consider that you, far more than any other man, have rescued American organ building from the romantic morass it was in when I first visited America in 1924. I consider that my own influence has not been inconsiderable for I did get Skinner interested in a decent ensemble and “sold” him mixtures, although he could not learn how to use them properly. Also if it had not been for me, Don would not have gone to Skinners, for the purpose and object I named above.⁸

As Harrison’s star continued to rise, so Ernest Skinner’s waned. In Skinner’s exit scenario from the company, there was a period of five years when Skinner continued to draw a salary, but his personal involvement in the company was limited solely to activities where the customer had specifically requested his services. He was not allowed to call on customers, solicit new business, or incur any expense to the company, and was to come to the factory only if requested for business purposes.

Attributes and examples of the emerging American Classic style

Aeolian-Skinner produced some very interesting organs during this period, and they varied enough in style and specification so as to appear to be completely different products. It is relatively easy to ascertain which organs reflected GDH’s emerging classic principles and which did not. For example, consider Opus 985 from 1938 for St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, New York City, and Opus 964 from 1937 at Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, New York: with a very slight nod to progressive design, such as two mixtures in the Great, Plymouth could be mistaken for a typical four-manual Skinner scheme by comparison. Whereas the Columbia University organ featured two unenclosed divisions in addition to the Great—Positiv and Brustwerk—and a fully developed independent Pedal organ, and was heralded as a new voice for a new day, installed on the campus of a major university in the country’s largest city. It was a significant achievement that attracted considerable notice. E. Power Biggs played and recorded extensively on the organ.

The theories that Harrison worked toward in these early years of the Great Depression may have been inspired by historic principles to some extent. He was gradually developing a new eclectic type of organ comprising existing mechanical components that were excellent, together with tonal properties that blended Romantic and Classical concepts, put together into a new, entirely American product on which early, Romantic, and contemporary music could be played with artistic conviction.

Technical attributes of these new organs included low to moderate wind pressures, gentle but clear articulation, chorus structure with an emphasis on the four-foot line, carefully worked out customized mixture compositions that were attentively finished as the ascending scale approached the breaks, and customized scaling and halving ratios in different parts of the compass—generally narrower scales in the bass and gradually broader in the treble to effect a subtle gradual singing quality in the treble register, and a focused line in the bass. Where it was practical, unenclosed divisions were placed in an open location within lines of sight to the audience.

Consoles in general were of the same style and design as Skinner had developed them, with a few customized touches to suit the customer as needed, such as smaller drawknob heads, dropped sills to effect a lower profile, occasional narrow swell shoes, varying degrees of console gadget assists, and, later, tracker-touch keyboards. Harrison was in favor of simplifying console controls, and he and Schreiner tended to agree on that as their discussions for the Tabernacle organ progressed. One need only compare the consoles for the Tabernacle with The Riverside Church, New York City, each of which contained five manuals and were in the factory at about the same time. Upon seeing pictures that GDH had sent to him, Henry Willis expressed his displeasure:

The new console at Riverside for Virgil Fox is, in my opinion, the ugliest, and unhandiest, large drawstop console to which my attention has been drawn.

I say nothing of the stop grouping in threes or two as fancy—it seems to be liked in the U.S.A.—nor of the apparent lack of added vertical space between departments. Nor the row of tablets over the fifth manual . . . . But as for the arrangement of the toe pistons—help!

The swell pedals look ridiculous to me—the wide space in between reminding me of the old console at Wanamaker’s, Philadelphia.

Of course, this is Virgil Fox’s design—not yours—and I suppose you took the line that he could have what he wanted.

But I think that no organist should be allowed to impose his own pet idiosyncrasies on an instrument over which he, temporarily, presides.⁹

Harrison replied a couple weeks later:

Your criticism of the Riverside console is well taken but you might modify some of your views if you actually examined it. When you are dealing entirely with detached consoles, if you use the English two rows per department arrangement you would have to build a skyscraper. I see no point to it . . . . The number of couplers is essential when you are dealing with Chancel and West End organs plus a 15-stop Echo all in one instrument. I have no use for the double organ idea.

Regarding the width of the Swell pedals with gaps. We have built one more extreme job than Riverside in this regard, Grace Church New York [Opus 707]. With narrow shoes plus clearance you can get five in where four would normally go with equal safety in clearance.

The Riverside console is normal in most respects, the added controls can be ignored by a visiting or future organist. You should hear the results that Virgil Fox can produce with this set up.¹⁰

Beginning in the early 1930s these new classic attributes increasingly appeared in prominent organs where Harrison was able to advance his theories. Keeping in mind that there were about 100 persons employed by the company, it is clear that GDH was continually aware of the need to secure contracts to provide for his workers. He may not have been able to be so creative on each job, but all organs that passed through the factory in one way or another began to manifest these tonal properties in varying ways and degrees. But there are some jobs that obviously stand out as icons of this new style, which came to be known via Emerson Richards as the “American Classic Organ.”

One thing is certain that as soon as the war is over and materials become available, there is going to be a big demand for either rebuilds or entirely new organs, and I am hoping that we will be able to push the Classic Organ. As you may have noted in the articles on the St. Mary’s job [Op. 819-A, St. Mary the Virgin, New York, 1942], I am endeavoring to give this the name of American Classic, although it is going to be awfully hard to dislodge the word Baroque. I did tag the name Romantic on the old ones, and that has stuck, even in England, but an expressive word for the new organ which is only quasi-Baroque in principle with some French, English and American practice, makes a new word imperative but difficult to find.¹¹

In addition to the aforementioned organs for Columbia University and St. Mary the Virgin in New York, a sampling of these organs includes Opus 940 for Church of the Advent in Boston, Massachusetts; Opus 945 for Calvary Church, New York City; Opus 948 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Opus 951, the famous Busch-Reisinger Museum for Germanic Culture at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, which company records simply refer to as “Germanic” or “Experimental.” This organ was entirely unenclosed and was on loan to the museum yet remained the property of the company.
E. Power Biggs made extensive use of it for demonstrations, recitals, and his famous regular Sunday morning radio broadcasts, and it did a lot to promulgate Harrison’s new classic concept.

As the decade progressed others included Opus 981 at Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey, for Carl Weinrich, his so-called “Praetorius” organ—a near twin to the Busch-Reisinger, which happily still exists in excellent condition, having been recently restored by Stephen Emery, a WCC alumnus; Opus 1007 for Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which GDH used for musical examples in 1942 in an LP album titled Studies in Tone wherein he narrates some of his developing ideas on tonal design, complete with appropriate musical examples; another organ for Westminster Choir College, and a large five-manual organ for the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Opus 1022. Also, a significant summary of Harrison’s thinking during the development of the American Classic organ may be found in the article “Organ” in the 1944 edition of Harvard Dictionary of Music, an essay authored by Harrison. The article even contains a suggested stoplist for a three-manual organ that is easily recognizable as similar to some of these very organs.

However, among this pantheon the organs built in the 1930s and early 1940s leading up to his design for the Salt Lake Tabernacle, the organ in St. John’s Chapel of the Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts, Opus 936, stands out as a significant point of departure in the development of the American Classic Organ. Harrison often mentioned this organ in his correspondence in the ensuing years, particularly as he contemplated the design of the Tabernacle organ and in his reflections on it once it was finished. Writing to Alexander Schreiner, shortly after signing the contract for Opus 1075, he says:

With the location of the organ, and the magnificent acoustics of the Tabernacle I feel there is a real chance to build the most beautiful organ in the world to date, at least that is what I am going to try to do. I say this not in a boastful spirit, but rather in one of humility. I don’t suppose you have ever heard the organ built for Groton School in 1936. The next time you come East I think we will make a little pilgrimage to hear this organ. I have always felt it is perhaps the most successful organ we have built to date, and indeed it is praised alike by those who are for and aggressively against that type of a tonal scheme. This morning I was thinking about it, and it suddenly struck me that unconsciously I developed the scheme for Salt Lake as a kind of a big brother to the Groton organ. In other words, it seems to carry that tonal structure to its logical conclusion.¹²

Writing to Ralph Downes, the consultant for the new organ in Royal Festival Hall in London, in which Downes was contemplating elements of classical design, Harrison describes his experience:

In 1936 I visited Germany complete with drawing equipment. I soon gave up taking measurements and decided it was better to absorb the musical result and then reproduce them in a modern way and in a manner that would be acceptable to modern ears and in our buildings. Providing you obtain clarity in polyphonic music, what more can you ask, providing you add and blend in romantic and modern material.¹³

And, later, GDH writes to Willis, his old boss in England who had begun to question some of his ideals and goals:

I am not attempting in any way to imitate the Silbermann organ or any Baroque organ for that matter, but am merely reintroducing some of the features of the older organ which have been lost in the modern organs, and using, to some extent, the principles utilized by the older builders in the general chorus; the sole object, of course, being to make the instrument a more nearly ideal one for the playing of the best literature written for this particular medium.¹⁴

And Richards, who could always be counted on for his unvarnished opinion, says:

I agree that the Harrison work is merely based on the theories of the older organ work. Remember that Don has no first-hand acquaintance with German work whatsoever, unless we can consider the Steinmeyer at Altoona as such, and Henry [Willis] says that his knowledge of French organs is really not extensive, so that, in reality, he has been working on his own with only a hint from the older work. This is all for the best, since it results in creation, not imitation. [Emphasis mine]

In making the point that Groton is an American achievement I am not trying to overstate the facts as I see them. America has profoundly changed Harrison’s mental and artistic makeup. To some extent even Don realizes this. He knows that he now chooses to deliberately do things that he would not have dreamed of doing when he left England ten years ago. He has caught the mobility and restless drive that seems to be characteristic of America. Can’t you see this in the Groton organ? Its all-around flexibility, its readiness to take any part in the scheme of things from Scheidt to Ravel, its break with tradition, its vivacity, and its sense of driving power. Of course, it is saved from the less commendable American traits by Don’s sense of artistic restraint. It is not a Daily Mirror, but a New York Times.¹⁵

Plans emerge for a new organ for the Salt Lake Tabernacle

Beginning in the 1930s customers began to request that Harrison design and finish their organs. Even though Skinner was long out of the picture by the time GDH and Alexander Schreiner began discussions in 1945, the contract drawn up by the Tabernacle authorities still reiterated their desire that Harrison design the organ:

It is specifically agreed that a substantial and material part of the consideration for this agreement is the skill, knowledge, experience, and reputation of G. Donald Harrison in the design, construction, finishing, installation, and tuning of pipe organs; that the builder, therefore, enters into this agreement with the distinct and definite understanding that the Purchaser shall receive, without additional cost to it, the personal supervision and service of the said G. Donald Harrison in the performance of this contract and in particular in the designing, finishing, installing and tuning of said organ.¹⁶

Alexander Schreiner, chief organist of the Tabernacle, was born in Germany and had studied in France, and was one of the serious organists to emerge on the scene in the post-World War II era. He was an organist’s organist and was one of the most visible in America at the time, owing to his concert tours and weekly broadcasts of the Tabernacle choir and organ. He was the driving force in plans to rebuild the old Austin organ, even though he shared playing duties with Frank Asper, his elder colleague, who was himself a respected and popular organist in his own right. It does appear that Schreiner was the point person in all negotiations pertaining to details of the new organ and in the campaign for it, a campaign that began almost accidentally: Schreiner wrote Harrison asking his opinion about some minor improvements and additions. The idea of a completely new organ did not appear to be on either of their horizons at the outset.

Given the speculative nature of Schreiner’s request and the great distance involved, Harrison asked for a fee to visit and submit a report, not something he typically did for serious prospects. When the authorities granted his request, he had no choice but to make the trip, so he went and gave his candid opinion, which was that unless they decided to build a completely new organ, the company was not interested in undertaking makeshift alterations to the organ, which he felt was mediocre to begin with and which had already seen its share of rebuilds and additions to that point.

Schreiner’s desire for a new organ ultimately prevailed, apparently with little overt opposition. Once the contract was signed, he was effusive in his praise of Harrison as the chosen one to design the organ. In several instances he wrote for attribution that he felt that unless one person (that is, Harrison) was given the freedom to design the organ he would rather soldier on with the old organ, even with its faults. After the job was announced and as work progressed, inquiries for testimonial solicitations and advice began to arrive at Schreiner’s desk. Typical of his response is this reply to my predecessor at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, where Aeolian-Skinner ultimately installed its Opus 1110 in 1951:

The reason the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company was chosen for the new work in the Salt Lake Tabernacle was merely because this company does by all odds the finest work. That we have not been disappointed in the results achieved is clearly shown in the letter which I wrote to the company recently, signed by myself and fellow organists, and published in the recent Diapason.

I wish you well in your efforts to have your contract awarded to this company. In our case we did not even consider any competing bids. Also we did not ask for any reduction in the prices which were quoted. I would always prefer an Aeolian-Skinner organ to any other, even of twice the size.¹⁷

In the early stages of designing the Tabernacle organ there flows a great deal of correspondence between Harrison and Schreiner, and every detail was considered carefully. It was agreed that Schreiner would be the spokesperson in corresponding with GDH, although there is considerable documented input from Frank Asper, often on seemingly inconsequential matters such as “Will the strings be soft enough?,” what to do about harp and chimes, and whether to retain the old Vox Humana or build a new one. In the end they did both!

Through the correspondence it is clear that Schreiner had an above-average understanding of the principles of organbuilding, just as did Harrison of organ playing. Their discourse is thorough and often detail laden, but always courteous and respectful—and helpful in coordinating the many logistical details of the complex job, one of the most vexing of which was that part of the organ was to remain operational at all times for the weekly choir rehearsals and Sunday broadcasts. Phone calls appear to have been rare, and written correspondence was the main medium of communication.

During World War II organ companies were severely limited in their ability to undertake new construction, and basically no new organs came from the Aeolian-Skinner factory during this time. In addition to rebuild and service work, Harrison spent the war years developing new sounds inspired by classic antecedents, and stops such as the Rohr Schalmei, Cromorne, and Buccine were born. Some of these began to be incorporated into schemes for new organs once production resumed after the war, including for the Tabernacle. Harrison proposes one such:

One other thing that has worried me a little bit is the absence of any reed on the Positiv, and I remember being considerably intrigued by the 16′ Rankett as made by Steinmeyer during my visit to Germany. I have never made one to date, and as it is good in an organ of this size to have some novelties, I have taken the liberty of adding a 16′ Rankett to the Positiv.¹⁸

Once the contract was signed, Harrison began to share the news with his friends and colleagues, in each case describing the unique circumstances of Aeolian-Skinner’s selection being without competition and commenting on the remarkable acoustical properties of the Tabernacle. His report to Henry Willis is the most complete account:

In my last letter to you I hinted that I was on the track of a very interesting and important deal. It has now been signed, and is for a completely new organ for the Salt Lake City Tabernacle. The present organ is a typical Austin which has been gingered up from time to time, the last work being carried out in 1940 when Jamison put in some Chorus Mixtures, which by the way are exceedingly poor.

Last spring I was invited to go out there and look over the situation to see what could be done to further improve the organ, but being skeptical about the whole thing I demanded [an] $800.00 fee, which I thought would probably close the matter as far as we were concerned. To my great surprise they accepted the proposition, so I had to make the trip. I gave a written report which, to put it shortly, condemned the present instrument, and told the authorities that we would not touch the job unless a completely new organ was built, with the exception that we were willing to include three original wood stops which were placed in the Tabernacle when it was built. These pipes were made on the spot by Bridges, who was an English organ builder who had been out to Australia, and had become converted to the Mormon faith, and finally wound up in Utah. I think he was trained with the Hill outfit. These pipes are the lower 12 notes of the 32′ Wood Open, which by the way, has an inverted mouth, and the famous wood front pipes which look exactly like a 32′ Metal Open. They are built up in strips triangular in cross section all glued together, and they appear to be as good as the day they were installed. Even the foot is built up in this way, and the tone is surprisingly good. The other stop we are incorporating is a wooden Gedeckt, which is also excellent. What happened to the original metal pipes in the organ is a mystery. Nobody seems to be able to account for the fact that there are none of them in the present instrument. All of the metal stops that are there now are Kimball 1900 vintage and Austin 1915–1940 . . . .  With these magnificent acoustics and the super location of the organ in the open it gives a real chance that one rarely gets. I was given a free hand with the specification after being told of the requirements that the organ must meet, so that I was able to work out something which more or less carries the ideas on which I have been working to their logical conclusion.¹⁹

Giving Harrison this degree of independence was really an extraordinary gesture on Schreiner’s part, especially when compared to the very intense, hands-on requirements that clients and their consultants place on organbuilders today. I can think of several instances where the builder was so obligated to accommodate that the builder’s own identity is hardly discernible in the finished product. Here was Schreiner, one of the finest, best-known organists of the day who was not only comfortable with but insisted upon totally giving over to Harrison the design of this highly visible organ, and in the end acknowledging Harrison’s work by asking him to sign the organ.

In this case the results are as unique as the circumstances surrounding its inception, but it was by no means unique for clients to place this sort of complete trust in Harrison. Writing to Brock Downward for his dissertation about Harrison and the American Classic Organ, Alexander McCurdy said:

At the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia [Opus 1022 in 1941], when the rebuilding processes were going on (we had three of them during the tenure of Mr. Harrison with Aeolian-Skinner) I spent much time with him. I made it a point to discuss with Mr. Harrison the particular needs of the organ department at the Curtis Institute of Music, then went off to California and let him BUILD the organ—I did not devil him! During the year in the period when the instrument was built, I spent a little time checking a few details in the factory in Boston, but for the most part I let him alone. During some of the discussions he loved to talk about some of the organs we both liked such as the Father Willis organ in Salisbury Cathedral—he seemed sure that another one couldn’t be built quite as fine as that one but he certainly did indeed try in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. He always made much of the fact that his ideal in building an organ was to have it so that MUSIC could be played on it, not just one period but the complete organ literature.²⁰

The completed Tabernacle organ

In Opus 1075 for the Salt Lake Tabernacle we have then an example of a very complete, large organ in a prominent and famous location that was completely Harrison’s design without a lot of outside interference. It certainly has stood the test of time. We know from several letters that he felt this was his greatest work, and it is worth taking the time to consider his own descriptions and reflections on his work once it was complete:

The enclosed photographs are of the console of the new Tabernacle organ at Salt Lake City. I have just returned after spending a couple of weeks on the job and I am returning after Christmas to see the finish. It is by far the finest organ in the United States. It has the advantage of a perfect location and ideal acoustics.

You will be interested to note that there are no coupler tablets. The fact that there are comparatively few couplers for so large an organ and that the intramanual couplers are with their own departments, it was decided to use drawknobs for all of them. The pedal couplers form the inner group on the left jamb and the intermanual occupy a similar position in the right jamb. There are 20 general pistons. The fifth manual plays the Antiphonal organ only.

The console case is of solid walnut and was designed and built in our shop. The motifs follow those found in the organ case. It is unnecessarily large [as] the couplers and combinations are remote. They wanted an imposing appearance, hence the size and fifth manual! Believe it or not, but a million visitors pass through the Tabernacle each year and must be suitably impressed. The organ contains Great, Swell, Choir, Positiv, Bombarde, Solo and Pedal divisions, plus a small Antiphonal. The Great, Positiv, Bombarde and Pedal are all unenclosed. There are about 190 independent ranks counting a four-rank mixture as four.²¹

Another to the workers back in the factory:

It has proved my theory that the complex sound composed of many elements, all mild but different, build up to a sound of indescribable grandeur . . . .

The strings are good but not so soul stirring as I had hoped for; a trick of the acoustics, I feel, because all are modified.

Please tell the voicers of the great success of their efforts. There is not one regret in the job.

I don’t believe anyone will say the job is too loud. It excites the nervous system without permanent injury.²²

A summary to Henry Willis:

A descriptive folder is being prepared and I will forward a copy shortly. It carries my tonal ideas which started in 1935 in the Groton School instrument, to their logical conclusions. I was given my own way in everything and had to contend solely with two sympathetic organists. The organ does really sound superb, and I have never heard anything quite like it. Of course, it is of its own particular type. Although the full organ is tremendous, it is very easy on the ears, and you can play it for long periods of time without fatigue. This is due, I think, to the fact that there are no very loud stops, the effect being obtained by the 188 ranks, all of which add one to another. The large-scale Mixtures give quite a powerful resultant effect, which in the resonant hall gives quite a lot of body to the tone, but it is a kind of transparent body, as you can well imagine. No, I wouldn’t say that the organ sounds anything like a Cavaillé-Coll. It is less reedy than a French ensemble as the balance between full flues and reeds is entirely different.²³

A similar summary to Ralph Downes in London, who was working on his own project for Royal Festival Hall, which was to reflect some classic elements in its design, stated:

Nice to hear from you, interested to hear of your project. I am in Salt Lake putting the finishing touches to the “giant,” see specification enclosed. It is somewhat larger than yours but along the same lines.

Musically speaking it is the most beautiful organ I have ever heard partly due to be sure to the superb location and acoustics. What you are proposing to do I have been experimenting with since 1936 at Groton School. That is a modern organ in which the old (classical) and new are so modified so as to blend into one whole so that any worthwhile organ music can be played properly. Salt Lake Tabernacle represents the fruit of all my labors rolled into one organ. I can assure you it does something to the nervous system!

Salt Lake has proved to me a theory I have had for a long time, namely that the finished ensemble is produced by many ranks none of which are loud in themselves. Final result by these means is terrific and yet does not hurt the sensitive ear.²⁴

And, finally, an account by Alexander Schreiner himself after having played the Tabernacle organ for almost a decade stated:

No one stop, though it be of dominating quality, is allowed to blot out the whole sections of weaker voices, so that when the last Tuba is added, the sound is still that of a large organ and not that of one stop accompanied by all the rest. Naturally, there are delicate flue and reed stops which cannot be heard in the full ensemble, but the foundation stops, mixtures, and reeds, which are the backbone of the organ, are so well balanced that each contributes to a “democratic” ensemble of sound.²⁵

With this in mind, I think the Tabernacle organ is a good benchmark to consider in understanding what Jack Bethards means when he says that the Tabernacle organ has a “signature sound,”²⁶ the sounds Donald Harrison had in mind for this, the closest thing to his ideal organ, and of the organs to which he similarly affixed his signature plate.

Organs containing G. Donald Harrison’s signature plates

Opus 1075: The Mormon Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1948.

Opus 1082: Christ Episcopal Church, Bronxville, New York, 1949.

Shortly after this organ was built it was featured prominently in the company’s new King of Instruments series of recordings, appearing on Volume II in selections played by Robert Owen, the organist of the church for over forty years and a well-known recitalist at the time. It was again featured in a full program on Volume III, again played by Robert Owen. Owen also made recordings on the organ for the RCA label. The instrument was later altered by Aeolian-Skinner and again by Gress-Miles. It was replaced entirely in 2009 by a new Casavant organ. At that time the history of the church’s organs was memorialized in a plaque placed near the console, which includes Robert Owen’s own signature facsimile.

Opus 1100: St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Newport, Rhode Island, 1950.

This is a three-manual design in a large, reverberant church, with obvious French inspirations in nomenclature and voicing that is very bold. The Great manual is placed on the bottom of three.

Opus 1103: Methuen Memorial Music Hall, Methuen, Massachusetts, 1947.

Much has been written about this unique organ, the design of which was entirely driven by the desire to keep the original slider chests that were built by James Treat to accommodate the organ when it was moved from the old Boston Music Hall and installed in this new hall in Methuen, designed by Henry Vaughan in 1899 specifically to house the organ. After almost a half century it was rebuilt by Aeolian-Skinner. It was nearing completion when work commenced on the Tabernacle organ, and GDH makes reference to it in his correspondence with Schreiner, almost to the point where it was used as a laboratory to experiment with possibilities for the Tabernacle.

Harrison makes this interesting comment about the Methuen organ:

Finally I would like to tell you that I greatly enjoyed doing this job as I was able to renew my acquaintanceship in a big way with slide [sic] chests. They have one advantage in regard to the initial speech for it is possible to voice with a higher position of the languid when a slide chest is used . . . . On the other hand, there are so many disadvantages with this type of chest that I have felt no temptation to return to the sliders. There is no doubt in my mind that the modern chest we use gives an attack and cutoff which enables much finer degrees of phrasing to be accurately performed . . . so that the result in the long run is more musical, which after all is the real test.²⁷

Opus 1134: Symphony Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, 1950.

Essentially a new organ but using some existing Hutchings pipework, it was built on a very tight budget. For example, the combination action was via a setter board in the back of the console. Albert Schweitzer signed the console frame of this organ when he visited the factory in 1949 on a trip organized by Édouard Nies-Berger.²⁸

The organ was used for examples to complement GDH’s narration in Volume I of King of Instruments and for pieces played by Thomas Dunn in Volume II, though he was identified only as the “staff organist,” and for a recital on Volume XII played by Pierre Cochereau. Virgil Fox also recorded a series of LPs on it for the Command label in the 1960s, and Berj Zamkochian played it in a memorable recording of the Saint-Saëns’ “Organ” Symphony with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Munch.

Opus 1136: Chapel of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, New York, 1951.

This is a two-manual organ with the Positiv division on the back wall. A photograph of it was used prominently in Aeolian-Skinner brochures, even following Harrison’s death. The organist of the church at the time was Hans Vigeland, and Harrison’s business correspondence corroborates his respect for him and his playing.

To be continued.

Notes

1. Barbara Owen, The Mormon Tabernacle Organ: An American Classic (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1990), 43.

2. Alexander Schreiner to G. Donald Harrison, August 29, 1948. Owen, 43.

3. G. Donald Harrison to Alexander Schreiner, September 1, 1948. Jack Bethards, “The Tabernacle Letters, Part 3,” The Diapason, 81, 8 (August 1990), 10.

4. Philip Steinhaus to William Self, March 21, 1968. Charles Callahan, Aeolian-Skinner Remembered: A History in Letters (Minneapolis: Randall Egan, 1996), 355.

5. Charles Callahan, The American Classic Organ: A History in Letters (Richmond, Virginia: The Organ Historical Society, 1990).

6. Ernest Skinner to GDH, November 23, 1929. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 44.

7. In an email message to me dated April 14, 2012, Allen Kinzey tells the exact transaction:

On January 2, 1932, the Aeolian Company and the Skinner Organ Company formed a new, third company called the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company. Aeolian owned 40% of the stock in Aeolian-Skinner, and the Skinner Organ Company owned 60%.

Aeolian closed its operations in Garwood, New Jersey, and sent uncompleted contracts, the glue press, some material, and one employee (Frances Brown, who was a young lady then, and she worked for A-S to the end, or almost the end) to Aeolian-Skinner. The Skinner Organ Company deeded its property and turned over contracts, employees, materials, machinery, etc., to Aeolian-Skinner.

8. Henry Willis III to Emerson Richards, July 8, 1938. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 132.

9. Henry Willis III to GDH, December 31, 1948. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 269.

10. GDH to Henry Willis III, January 16, 1949. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 278.

11. Emerson Richards to Wm. King Covell, November 29, 1943. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 194.

12. GDH to Alexander Schreiner, December 10, 1945. Bethards, “The Tabernacle Letters, Part 1,” The Diapason, 81, 6 (June 1990), 16.

13. GDH to Ralph Downes, January 14, 1949. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 277.

14. GDH to Henry Willis III, August 21, 1935. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 144.

15. Emerson Richards to Wm. King Covell, November 26, 1935. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 151.

16. Contract in church archives. Owen, p. 38.

17. Alexander Schreiner to Granville Munson, April 26, 1949. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 299.

18. GDH to Schreiner, November 29, 1945. Bethards, “The Tabernacle Letters, Part I,” The Diapason, 81, 6 (June 1990), 16.

19. GDH to Henry Willis III, December 19, 1945. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 222.

20. Alexander McCurdy to Brock W. Downward, September 18, 1974. Brock W. Downward, “G. Donald Harrison and the American Classic Organ,” D.M.A. diss., Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY, 1976, 97.

21. GDH to Henry Willis III, December 21, 1948. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 167.

22. GDH to Joseph S. Whiteford, December 1948. Owen, 43.

23. GDH to Henry Willis III, March 18, 1949. Bethards, “The Tabernacle Letters, Part 3,” The Diapason, 81, 8 (August 1990), 11.

24. GDH to Ralph Downes, January 14, 1949. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 276–277.

25. Alexander Schreiner, “The Tabernacle Organ in Salt Lake City,” Organ Institute Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 1 (1957). Owen, 43.

26. Owen, 47.

27. GDH to Wm. King Covell, June 25, 1947. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 253–254.

28. Nies-Berger, Schweitzer As I Knew Him (Hillsdale, New York, Pendragon Press, 2003), 10.

Youthful fantasies

Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Westwood, Massachusetts, was founded as a mission in September 1953, and services were first held in the Deerfield Elementary School at the end of Deerfield Avenue. A new church building was dedicated next to the school in March 1955, and my father was appointed the first full-time rector in October 1956. I was seven months old. We lived in a rented house nearby while the rectory was built adjacent to the church. I know from personal memory and family lore that we were ensconced in the new rectory before I was two years old. My earliest memories of those days included the bulldozers that were grading the lawn and building the driveway. My wife and sons would quickly agree that must have been the genesis of my fascination with heavy equipment, admittedly alive and well today as my sixty-eighth 
birthday approaches.

The Convention of the Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts established Saint John’s as a parish in 1959, and that year the church acquired C. B. Fisk Opus 31 (then the Andover Organ Company), a one-manual, six-stop, mechanical-action organ mounted on a platform with a detached, reversed console. I learned later (!) that the organ was planned as the Rückpositiv of a larger two-manual instrument that could be completed if the new parish succeeded. At three years old, I did not yet know about detached consoles, but my child’s eyes remember where it was placed in the simple new A-frame building, itself designed to accept future enhancement.

Ten years after its founding, the parish mounted a campaign to build a parish hall and complete the church interior with formal decorations and furniture. Two towers and a rear gallery were added. A full-height stained-glass wall was installed behind the altar, a chancel with steps and altar rail was added, and hardwood pews were installed replacing the metal folding chairs.

Having spent a lifetime moving pipe organs, I am amused by the memory of my first organ relocation—that tiny Fisk organ hanging from a crane, pipes and all, being lifted from the front of the original sanctuary to its permanent home in the new rear gallery before the roof was closed. If I saw that happening today, I would run toward the crane operator, arms waving like a semaphore, shouting “Stop!,” but there it was, an organ hanging from a hook on a sunny day. I was seven. That same year, when my parents were not at home, I thought it would be fun to climb the scaffolding surrounding the seventy-foot tower under construction. It was a lovely view from the top, showing my parents’ car turning on to Deerfield Avenue, heading home. I got back down before they reached the driveway, but the guilt on my face was enough to spill the story.

Saint John’s organist’s name was Donald McFeely. He had the parish on the cusp of the tracker revolution, buying an organ from Charles Fisk and the Andover Organ Company before the founding of C. B. Fisk, Inc., in 1961. The Andover Organ Company completed the twenty-three-rank instrument in 1991, including the original six-stop organ as the Rückpositiv as planned by Charlie Fisk.

I remember several of the families of Saint John’s as friends of my parents, and as I write I realize what a heady time that was for them. It must have been thrilling to start with meetings to incorporate a mission, transforming it to a parish, and taking on two building programs in ten years. Through their commitment, effort, and money, they created a church that continues to thrive over seventy years later. My father was a young priest in his second appointment, and it must have been mind-boggling and life-altering for him to be at the helm of that rocket ship. Dad has been gone almost ten years, so I will never get to chat about that with him, but the notion adds to my admiration. By the way, I attended the Deerfield School, next door to our house, from first through third grades.

§

Since my first organ was a quasi-experimental dip into the early years of the Organ Reform Movement, it is ironic that the second organ in my life was built in 1905 by the Ernest M. Skinner Company at a time when Robert Hope-Jones (who grew into the genius behind theatre organs built by Wurlitzer) was working with Skinner. Dad was called as rector of the Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester, Massachusetts, in 1966, when I was ten years old. I was instantly pressed into the Junior Choir led by harpsichord builder Carl Fudge, the parish’s organist and choirmaster. As I think about it, the further irony is that Mr. Fudge as an early practitioner in the esoteric world of harpsichord building in the 1960s was saddled with an aging, wheezing, cadaver of an organ in such poor condition that my friends and I as ten-year-old choristers where well aware of its precarious state.

There was the Sunday when I heard my first cipher in the middle of a service. Mr. Fudge left the bench, crossed the chancel, reverenced the altar, returned with a ladder, reverenced the altar again, set the ladder against the impost, climbed up and pulled a pipe. He repeated the process to return the ladder, reverencing the altar twice more, wearing a black cassock through the entire sequence. I expect that his pious performance as the service progressed was calculated to draw attention to the organ’s failings, and it was only five or six years later that my father was involved in purchasing another organ from Charles Fisk, Opus 65, which was completed in 1973.

When I was twelve, I had my first organ lessons on the gleaming ten-year-old, three-manual Holtkamp organ in Saint John’s Chapel of the Episcopal Theological School (ETS) in Harvard Square, later the Episcopal Divinity School (EDS), now defunct. Though it has electro-pneumatic action, that organ was in the vanguard of experimental design with low wind pressures, classical choruses, and a Rückpositiv division (on a pitman chest) along the gallery rail. But my first experiences playing the organ during worship were on that home Skinner when Mr. Fudge allowed me to “noodle” a bit while he left the bench to receive communion, and later to play an occasional prelude or postlude.

It was not long before I went out on my own, taking a six-week gig playing on a three-manual Estey (long gone) at the Baptist church in Winchester, and then after Vatican II at St. Eulalia Catholic Church in Winchester on a Conn Artist. (You can’t make these things up.) My last high-school church organist position was at the First Congregational Church of neighboring Woburn, Massachusetts, where I played a three-manual, thirty-three-stop E. & G. G. Hook organ built in 1860, a very grand organ with real large-organ stops like 16′ Double Open Wood and 16′ Trombone with wood resonators.

Nostalgia

I am wallowing in childhood memories today because Wendy and I recently moved from Greenwich Village to Stockbridge, Massachusetts, where my grandfather had been rector of Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church, just at the time when my family moved from Westwood to Winchester and I started to take organ lessons. It has been both fun and eerie to merge into life in Stockbridge, walking past the rectory on Main Street where my grandparents lived, counting the windows, and remembering the rooms that were so familiar when I was a teenager.

Saint Paul’s first building was a wood Gothic structure designed by Richard Upjohn and consecrated in 1844. The present stone building was designed by Charles McKim and consecrated in 1884. The organ was Hilborne Roosevelt’s Opus 127, also built in 1884, but it was drastically altered in the early-1960s, a project that included the addition of mixtures and mutations, the replacement of the original principal stops with ranks of tapered pipes, the addition of a pedal division and a couple unified reeds including a Krummhorn with electric action. I wonder if Hilborne Roosevelt ever heard a Krummhorn? Today I call it a scandalous treatment of a lovely venerable instrument, but when I was twelve and thirteen years old and allowed to practice on the organ, loud and shrill as it was, I thought it was the bees’ knees. I do not remember if I ever played a service there, but I know I played a recital or two—I’m sure my grandparents were very proud.

When I was a kid, we had family holidays in Stockbridge. Thanksgiving dinner in the rectory was a great treat, and my grandparents nurtured my nascent love of music by treating me to weekends at Tanglewood, just a few miles away. Those were my first solo trips away from home—my parents put me on buses and trains in Boston and grandparents picked me up in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, quite an adventure for a thirteen-year-old.

Since I retired as a church organist when I joined the Organ Clearing House in 2000, we have not attended church regularly, but when we first moved to Stockbridge, we were quick to show up at Saint Paul’s. We went to the early service at 8:00 a.m. and were part of a congregation of five or six people. It was fun to meet a woman whose wedding had been performed by my grandfather and who had wonderful memories of him, but it was a pretty quiet affair. Shortly after, we learned that the rector had just received a call to move elsewhere, and after our first visit we went dormant.

A new rector was installed at Saint Paul’s eight weeks ago, and Wendy and I went to church there last Sunday, attending the 10:00 a.m. service along with more than forty others. It was great to hear the organ being played, though it is in terrible condition, and we were pleased with the good vibes, the singing of the hymns, and the fact that there were some people present who were younger than us. Maybe we will go back this time.

Altered states

I imagine we are all familiar with organs that have been altered, receiving new identities for better or for worse. Some are great successes. There are many organs built by the Skinner Organ Company and later modified by Aeolian-Skinner under G. Donald Harrison’s direction. Ernest Skinner hated that, but Harrison was able in many cases to retain the gravitas of the original organ while adding well-balanced choruses and mutations.

I had a long relationship with a 1906 Hutchings-Votey organ rebuilt by Kinzey-Angerstein in 1973 at Saint Mary’s Catholic Church in Holliston, Massachusetts. I joined the reorganized workshop of Angerstein & Associates in 1984, and the organ at Saint Mary’s was one of the first I tuned after taking that job. The occasion was a recital by Daniel Roth, then titulaire of Saint-Sulpice in Paris, celebrating the appointment of Saint Mary’s longtime organist, Leo Abbott, as director of music for the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston and the end of his tenure at Saint Mary’s. The organ retained its original 8′ and 4′ principals, wood flutes, manual reeds, and pedal stops. Daniel Angerstein had added upperwork to the Great and Swell creating two fine choruses and a smashing 16′ Pedal Trombone. It is a grand organ with lots of pizzazz, and the new tonal scheme added wonderfully to the original foundation of the organ.

The Holliston organ was so successful because the new stops were scaled and voiced to complete choruses based on the original foundations. The added pipes were purposefully constructed to exacting specifications based on the scales of the original stops, so all voices blend as if the entire instrument had been built at once. Too often, organ technicians of lesser skill add voices to an organ based on the notion of an ideal stoplist without considering the scales, construction, or even wind pressures of the new pipes.

Earlier this year I visited an organ in Texas that has small-scale Baroque choruses added in the 1960s to a nineteenth-century organ with broad scales and heavy fundamental tone. The differences in harmonic structure between old and newer pipes is striking. The tonal effect is jarring, confusing, and difficult to sing with. The firm that added the high-pitched stops must not have made any effort to create a blend between old and new. The stoplist looks fine, but the organ sounds terrible.

When the revival of classic organbuilding was getting traction in the early 1960s, many of the new organs were focused on high-pitched voices as were the “Baroque-izations” of older organs. It is ironic because the great classical instruments of Europe on which our revival was based are typically not shrill instruments. Their stoplists show fully developed choruses crowned with multiple mixtures, but their foundation stops are rich and full with thrilling harmonic development to support all that upperwork. When twentieth-century organbuilders began building new mechanical-action organs with low wind pressure and open-toe voicing, the challenge they faced, whether they knew it or not, was to figure out to deliver lots of air, not pressure but volume, to the largest pipes in the organ, and to voice those pipes so they could really sing.

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It is fun to think about the first organs I knew, how my youthful impressions compared to my current thinking after playing, working on, and listening to hundreds of organs. As a thirteen-year-old, I was enthralled by the idea that I could play music on those keyboards and fill a church building with sound. I have been around organs with serious intent for about fifty-six years, and the evolution of my understanding of organ tone is still in process. I have learned slowly how scale (diameter) and wind pressure affect what an organ pipe can do. I have learned how the shape of a pipe’s resonator (the long part) affects the harmonic structure of its tone, so it stands to reason that two stops that emphasize the same harmonics will blend well together—that is a simple glimpse of the complex structure of a Cornet, especially when a reed stop is added to it. (Think d’Aquin noëls.)

I sat in a pew at Saint Paul’s last Sunday, delighted that the organ was being played, but critical of its collection of unrelated stops, however much I enjoyed playing it fifty-six years ago. (Oof!) The church has had some hard times over all those years, but it is fun to think that we might breathe some new life into it. Wendy and I live a fifteen-minute walk from Saint Paul’s. Maybe I could help?

There have been many organs in my life that were altered from their original state and transformed into something different. Some are marvelous successes, some are unmitigated disasters, and some (perhaps most) are the transformation of a fine instrument into one that is mediocre and uninteresting. A well-intentioned local organ technician may have terrific skills, but may not have the knowledge, wisdom, and experience to “out-Skinner Skinner.” If the organ you play most regularly does not have a trumpet, you probably could add one, but it should be as close as possible to the trumpet the original builder would have included if the organ was to be one stop larger. The added stop must be heard as part of the original organ and not as irrelevant braying. It is not the stoplist that makes an organ, it is the tonal structure.

I was at dinner recently with two beloved and admired colleagues who are collaborating on an important new organ. I asked them what they hoped to achieve with that organ. One replied, “I want to make an organ that sounds beautiful so lots of people will be happy to hear it.”

David Engen

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.

Editor’s note: many of the organs mentioned in this article can be found with stoplists and pictures at the website of the Twin Cities Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

Charles George Hendrickson, 85, died at his home in Saint Peter, Minnesota, on December 17, 2020. He was born June 10, 1935, in Willmar, Minnesota, to Roy and Frances (Eklund) Hendrickson. Roy Hendrickson was an attorney and member of the board of directors at Gustavus Adolphus College in Saint Peter, from which Charles graduated in 1957. His intent was to continue in nuclear physics, but he once admitted to me that during his time of graduate study at the University of Minnesota, aspects of nuclear physics were “beyond me.” He taught physics at the University of Wisconsin-Superior, Union University in Jackson, Tennessee, and Northeast State University, Tahlequah, Oklahoma.

I believe it was after his father’s death that his mother became secretary to the president of Gustavus Adolphus. It was she who introduced Charles to the woman he would marry, Birgitta Gillberg, a language teacher at Gustavus Adolphus and later at nearby Mankato State University. He taught physics at Mankato State, and he and Birgitta were married in Sweden in 1964. They had two sons: Eric and Andreas. Birgitta preceded him in death by two years.

In 1964 he started building his first organ in rented space in an old canning plant in Winthrop, an instrument for nearby First Lutheran Church. The three-manual organ of thirty-four ranks, which has since been enlarged, had the first Rückpositiv division in Minnesota. David N. Johnson, then of Saint Olaf College, played the dedication recital.

Philosophy

I first met Charles at about the time the Winthrop organ was completed in 1966. He was measuring pipes in the new Holtkamp organ (Job Number 1778) at my home church in Minneapolis, Westwood Lutheran Church, Saint Louis Park. He told me of the upcoming David Johnson recital at Winthrop, which I attended. I started working for him in 1970 and continued for much of the time until 1984.

Charles was a fan of the architect Mies van der Rohe and ascribed to his “less is more” philosophy (although in the shop we often changed it to “more is more”). Most of his designs with casework are simple boxes. He also much admired the work of the organbuilder Robert Noehren, whose unit organs on all-electric action were a big influence.

More than one hundred organs came from the Hendrickson shop, ranging in size from a one-stop, one-rank portable “organetto” (Opus 19) to his “magnum” Opus 92 of four manuals and seventy ranks for Wayzata Community Church in Wayzata, Minnesota. Most of his organs were built for churches, but many were built for colleges (both concert halls and practice rooms), and several were built for individuals. There was a series of three three-stop portativ organs built for touring groups, the first for the Saint Olaf Choir, designed to fit through the door of a Greyhound bus.

Many organs had mechanical action, and in general the smaller organs were unit organs on all-electric action. These followed the Noehren philosophy of unification, where octave unification was avoided if possible.

One of Charles’s notable innovations was the use of plywood Subbass pipes. Built in the shop, they were made of three-quarter-inch plywood. In the ravages of Minnesota’s wild seasonal humidity swings, almost every old organ we encountered had splits in the big pedal pipes. Plywood avoids this, and these pipes were used in virtually every organ. He also exclusively used aluminum for the façade pipes above 4′, made by Justin Matters of South Dakota.

Another unique feature of the small unit organs has to do with celeste and tierce stops. In a very small organ it is difficult to justify the expense of either of these. Both are typically the softest stops, and both can be either string or flute scale. We found that if the tierce is borrowed from the celeste (tuned flat instead of sharp), you can have both in a single stop by adding just a few more pipes. One tunes the tierce perfectly from middle C up, then tunes from there down for a pleasant flat celeste (beats tend to get too wild in that range if tuned to the perfect tierce). It is an inexpensive compromise that is of great benefit to a tiny organ.

Friends and collaborations

Some of the best organs to come from the shop during my time were designed in conjunction with friends who acted as consultants. Among those were Merrill N. (“Jeff”) Davis, III, of Rochester, Minnesota, and William B. Kuhlman of Luther College, Decorah, Iowa.

Both pushed Charles to some of his most inspired designs, visually and tonally. Opus 4 was a pair of positiv divisions added to a Wicks organ in memory of Jeff Davis’s first wife at the Congregational Church in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. In an acoustically dry room, these positivs pulled the sound of the enclosed Wicks into the church. This was but the first collaboration. Many other projects resulted in very unique and unusual instruments over the years.

Bill Kuhlman was behind what was to become the first mechanical-action organ constructed in Minnesota in the late twentieth century. This was a thirty-six-rank teaching organ for Luther College (Opus 10) in Decorah, Iowa. As a successful teacher, Bill had many students study on that organ who went on to careers in music.

Other consultants included Robert Kendall and Robert Thompson of Saint Olaf College and Kim Kasling, then of Mankato State University.

Significant instruments

I had personal experience and/or input in almost all of the organs from Opus 1 through Opus 70, and it would be tempting to tell stories of each one. Except for the three portativs, no two were alike. (Fritz Noack once told me that when you mass-produce organs, you have an opportunity to replicate your mistakes!)

One overriding memory I have is that every time we built a mechanical-action organ, the shop looked forward to building electric action. When we were lost in the wiring of electric-action instruments, we would long to build another tracker.

Luther College, Decorah, Iowa, Opus 10, two manuals, 36 ranks

After the Winthrop organ had launched the company (we cleaned and added to it some years later after a Christmas Eve fire), all organs through Opus 9 were built in the Hendrickson garage and backyard. Starting with the Luther College organ (Opus 10) the operation moved to the current shop location at the north end of Saint Peter in an industrial park. The shop was built during the winter of 1970–1971. During the first rainstorm in 1971 the skylights leaked, and several of us frantically covered the Luther windchests in the middle of the night to prevent damage.

There was a lot of overcompensation in design. The pallets were large, we had complex bleed holes in the channels, and we used foam slider seals. Having a heavy coupled action, it had optional electric couplers. The horizontal trumpet was on electric action and played at 16′, 8′, and 4′ on the Great and at 8′, 4′, and 2′ on the Pedal to create maximum “blast.” There were prepared stops in each division. Perhaps the most unusual feature was that the whole organ could be moved around Koren Chapel at Luther with an air flotation system by one person! Gerald Near wrote his Second Fantasy for the dedication concert.

Jensen-Noble Hall of Music was opened in late 1982 on the Luther campus, so the Hendrickson company was engaged to move the organ into a teaching studio in the spring and summer prior to the opening. Being the only employee left who had helped build it, I wound up in charge of disassembly and reinstallation. We were able to take what we had learned from building about a dozen tracker organs in the intervening years and apply those lessons to what became a successful renovation. Since there was no need for the flotation system in a studio, we removed it and built a new and more reliable pedal action in that space. Pallet openings and pallets were reduced in size, resulting in a lighter action that no longer needed electric couplers. The blast from the horizontal trumpet at multiple pitches was not needed in the smaller space, so the trumpet was placed on mechanical action and lower wind pressure, speaking from the Great channels. Three of the five prepared stops were added. It continues to function, fifty years after construction, as a teaching and practice organ under Bill Kuhlman’s successor, Gregory Peterson.

Saint John Lutheran Church, Owatonna, Minnesota, Opus 34, three manuals, 51 ranks

Saint John Lutheran Church is a huge A-frame building, but the typical front transepts are in the back balcony. Floor to ceiling windows in the balcony provide wonderful light, but the acoustic issues for a gallery organ are significant since glass does not reflect bass. Charles’s solution was to cantilever the main organ as far into the room as possible and to provide a very large Rückpositiv as well as a prominent horizontal trumpet.

Since there was virtually no unification on the manuals, I talked Charles into building slider windchests. We opted to try the Holtkamp slider chest design with all-electric magnets on the channels rather than pallets with pull-downs. Forty-five years later the organ continues to serve the church—as does Shirley Erickson, who was organist when the organ was installed!

Saints Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Mankato, Minnesota, Opus 35, three manuals, 59 ranks

Following right behind the 51-rank Owatonna organ, we tackled what would briefly become the largest mechanical-action organ in Minnesota. (The Fisk organ at House of Hope Presbyterian Church, Saint Paul, followed very soon thereafter.) Kim Kasling was consultant, and Jim Dorn was organist. An original plan for a high, stacked organ in the right front of the nave eventually became a balcony installation. Again, a large Rückpositiv was in the design, but the ancient church balcony could not hold its weight if placed in the normal location on the rail. It sits instead on the floor, right behind the keydesk, with new steel beams under the floor to hold the weight.

A huge Great division with two mixtures sits above a relatively small Swell, with Pedal split and across the back inside the organ. There are many pipes from the previous organ spread throughout, as well as a 32′ Bourdon from the old Soul’s Harbor organ in Minneapolis and a 16′ open wood diapason discarded from the Sipe rebuild of the organ at Christ United Methodist Church in Rochester, Minnesota. The church interior has been tastefully remodeled since the organ went in, and there is now less carpet than there had been.

First Lutheran Church, Saint Peter, Minnesota, Opus 45, two manuals (with a third coupler manual), 44 ranks

First Lutheran Church in Saint Peter was the Hendrickson family church. Founded in 1857 by Swedish immigrants, 164 years later it retains its Swedish roots, although services have been held in English for 100 years. It has always been closely connected with Gustavus Adolphus College, which is just a mile away. On Mother’s Day, May 13, 1962, the old church was struck by lightning and burned to the ground. Charles was already involved in organ renovations, and there was an existing organ fund.

The firm of Harold Spitznagel and Associates of Sioux Falls, South Dakota, designed the new church to replace the old one on land purchased on the edge of town. The first service was held in the new edifice on September 5, 1965. The sanctuary was half a cube, 76 feet on each side and 40 feet high topped with clerestory windows. The congregation did not want to suffer another fire, so this building is made of concrete and brick. As a result, the sanctuary has incredible acoustics for music.

To avoid having a temporary electronic organ, Charles assembled parts he had on hand into an eight-rank exposed organ that he leased temporarily to the church. The four-second reverberation made this mongrel organ surprisingly successful. It was later rebuilt for another institution.

In 1975 plans began in earnest for a new organ. The original concept had four manuals with a Rückpositiv division. Fundraising and unrelated issues delayed the project, and in a period of high inflation the organ shrank by the month. We finally decided to start over and took the tonal design of the Luther College organ as a starting point. The entire Luther organ can be found within the specification of the First Lutheran organ. One major difference is inclusion of a coupler manual.

This became the flagship demonstration organ for the company, being located just a mile from the shop and in a room with incredible acoustics. What many do not realize is that the asymmetrical design of the organ case is inspired by the brick sculpture on the front wall of the church (the story of Creation). The pipe shades are inspired by the bird figures in that sculpture. The asymmetrical “Family of Man” and the birds are at the top.

Saint Wenceslaus Catholic Church, New Prague, Minnesota, Opus 47, three manuals, 43 ranks

Robert Thompson of nearby Saint Olaf College was consultant for this organ and gave the organ a decidedly French accent, although this is a congregation of Czech descendents. This was the only organ built during my time at the shop with supply house chests, ordered from Laukhuff. Robert Sperling always voiced in a Germanic style. Initially, the Recit 8′ flute sounded like a quintadena. After reworking it with higher cutups and nicks, it was the stop that elicited the most comments from visitors. Sperling thought he had ruined it. The whole time he was revoicing he grumbled that he was turning it into a 1920 Möller Melodia!

First Unitarian Church, Rochester, Minnesota, Opus 49, two manuals (with third coupler manual), 24 ranks

Merrill N. Davis, III, of Rochester was the consultant for this project. Fondly called “The Bell Organ,” the 2′ on the Ripieno division is a Glockenspiel; there is a wind-driven Zimbelstern; the Continuo mixture is a Glockenzimbel, which starts at 2⁄5′ pitch and includes a tierce on every note. The unison on the F above middle C is the F above high C of a 2′ and had to be voiced with a magnifying glass. Like First Lutheran Church, it has a third coupler manual. The casework is walnut, and the Continuo division in Rückpositiv position has no façade.

Saint John’s Lutheran Church, Kasson, Minnesota, Opus 57, two manuals, 29 ranks

Merrill N. Davis, III, was again consultant. Kasson is not far from Rochester. This organ was conceived with a big blockwerk on the Great based on a 16′ Principal with a big mixture. There are two cornets on the Great—a four-rank mounted cornet of flute scale, and a three-rank Sesquialtera of principal scale, along with a dark trumpet. Originally the Swell did not couple to either the Great or Pedal. These couplers have since been added. What started as an unsuccessful 1′ Principal on the Great was changed to 8⁄9′ to add spice to the ensemble and to the two cornets. The organ was originally tuned to Chaumont temperament.

Saint John’s Lutheran Church, Minneapolis, Minnesota, Opus 63, three manuals, 47 ranks

Saint John’s Lutheran Church in south Minneapolis is one of the biggest rebuild projects we undertook. Hillgreen-Lane had rebuilt the previous organ (perhaps a Hall) in 1959 at 32 ranks. Our 1983 rebuild significantly enlarged the organ and made access for tuning and servicing much easier than it had been in the Hillgreen-Lane organ. Many ranks were retained. Much of the Pedal is recycled from the Hillgreen-Lane. A string had been converted into an 8′ Gelind Gedackt by Hillgreen-Lane, but the scale was very small and the caps did not seal. We rescaled it again. We presume it had been Hillgreen-Lane that had soldered two diapasons together end-to-end to make a 16′ Salicional, which was retained. This organ had one of the early multiplex relay systems, this one donated by Dirk Moibroeck of Cincinnati (ICMI).

Union Presbyterian Church, Saint Peter, Minnesota, Opus 64, two manuals, 11 ranks

Though far from a significant organ, Union Presbyterian Church is an example of the smaller all-electric unit organs that were quite successful. Union Church’s acoustics were horribly dry when the organ was designed, but when the chancel was modified for the new organ we discovered a small space with a very warm acoustic. When the organ was first played the room amplified it too much! We dropped the pressure and revoiced everything. For many years this was the location of a well-attended hymn festival, and the organ has often been used with various instruments. A small-scale trumpet was added in later years, and the relay and combination action were recently replaced with current technology. The 4′ Octave, mixture, and trumpet are on the right side near the console. The Bourdon/Rohrflute and 8′ Principal trebles are on the left side behind the choir. The Swell is in the middle behind the grill, with the largest 16′ Subbass pipes (plywood) on its roof. Organist at the time, Charles Eggert, was consultant.

Saint Joseph’s Catholic Cathedral, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, Opus 78, three manuals, 62 ranks

The two largest organs were built after I left, and I have never seen the Sioux Falls organ. Nonetheless, it is a significant instrument in a large and very reverberant space.

Wayzata Community Church, Wayzata, Minnesota, Opus 92, four manuals, 70 ranks

The company’s magnum opus is in a suburb west of Minneapolis. C. Charles Jackson gave funds for it, and Charles Hendrickson’s long friendship with sculptor Paul Granlund at Gustavus Adolphus was the genesis of the sculpture (“Aeneous Aegis”) in the middle of the organ case. For many years this was home to an extensive organ concert series under staff organist, Diana Lee Lucker. Charles attended most of these concerts. Following Diana Lee’s retirement, this series ceased.

Trinity Episcopal Church, Excelsior, Minnesota, Opus 111, two manual, 29 ranks

Trinity Episcopal Church had been home to a five-rank Möller organ (Opus 8026). The new organ was impetus for a complete church remodel project, which is quite successful with movable chairs and hard surfaces. The Hendrickson organ includes pipes from the Möller as well as pipes from a practice organ (Opus 20) built for the University of Wisconsin in Eau Claire that was repurchased. Andreas Hendrickson designed the unusual façade.

Shop stories

The Luther College organ had a flotation system, which Charles developed the summer of 1971. Each iteration of his design resulted in the call to everyone in the shop to come and stand on a piece of plywood to see if it would float with the added weight. We eventually had a winner that was installed on the organ.

The Rochester Unitarian organ was playing in the shop when Jeff Davis came to see it. He did not like the relationship between the 4′ and 2′ of the Continuo division, so a new rank was ordered and the ranks affected were re-racked.

There was a fire at the shop on November 15, 2013, that originated in one of the light fixtures. Even though the majority of the building was left intact, insurance deemed the structure a loss, and a new building was put up in its place. Amazingly, only one wood pipe rank was in the shop at the time. The remainder of that particular project was stored down the hill in the nearby shop warehouse.

Children of the shop

Most organ shops have spinoffs, and Hendrickson’s shop was no exception. Notable among the “children” of the shop is Lynn Dobson, of Dobson Pipe Organ Builders, Ltd., of Lake City, Iowa, founded in 1974. I succeeded Robert Sperling as voicer in 1979 and remained until 1984. My company, Grandall and Engen, LLC, of Maple Grove, Minnesota, has been operating since 1984 and does tuning and enhancements for many clients in the Twin Cities area and western Wisconsin, including a number of universities. The third offshoot is Rob Hoppe, of Robert D. Hoppe & Associates of Algoma, Wisconsin, founded in 1986. He often builds new organs with digital enhancements. Charles’s two sons, Eric and Andreas, took over the business when Charles retired in 2015 and continue today.

 

Read more about Charles Hendrickson here.