In the Wind . . .

John Bishop

On the Hook

When I was a teenager, I had an unofficial job as assistant organist at the First Congregational Church of Woburn, Massachusetts. My mentor and friend George Bozeman was the organist there, and he brought me on to help when he was home and to take over the helm when he was away installing an organ. The organ is E. & G. G. Hook Opus 283 from 1860 with three manuals, thirty-one stops, and thirty-four ranks.¹ It was one of about five organs I had played by then. I knew it was mighty special and especially mighty, but fifty years later I know a lot more about how lucky I was to play such an instrument.

Opus 283 is one of the last surviving of a distinctive breed, the three-manual pre-Civil War American pipe organ. There were two such Hooks in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts, one of which (Opus 253, 1859) was destroyed by fire with the First Baptist Church in 2005.² “Mine” was one of three grand Hook organs in Woburn. E. & G. G. Hook Opus 553 (1870) was in the First Unitarian Church and is now in the Heilig Kreuz Kirche in Berlin, Germany, and commonly called Die Berliner Hook;³  and E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings Opus 646 (1872) is in Saint Charles Borromeo Catholic Church.⁴ In my first days as director of the Organ Clearing House, I was privileged to speak at a conference about the preservation and relocation of historic organs at the Heilig Kreuz Kirche in Berlin representing the work of the Organ Clearing House. As owner of the Bishop Organ Company, I maintained the organ at Saint Charles for thirty years. That one has two manuals and twenty-three ranks and sits high in the rear gallery of the lofty church with some of the best acoustics one will find in an American parish church. It is a bold, brilliant organ with amazing lungs. I releathered the huge double-rise reservoir in place twenty years ago.

I also maintained E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings Opus 635 (1872) in the First Baptist Church of Wakefield, Massachusetts.⁵ That was the home church of old friend and colleague John Boody of Taylor & Boody Organ builders—his grandfather had been pastor there. John and I shared a special bond because of that organ, which was sadly destroyed by fire on October 23, 2018.

I grew up in the Boston area, the home of the Hook brothers, and I have serviced, played, restored, and relocated many of their instruments. Admitting this personal bias and remembering that the grand organ in the First Congregational Church of Woburn was one of the first organs I knew, I have long felt that E. & G. G. Hook and its continuation as E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings to be among the very best organ builders in history. I once had the good fortune to hear Dame Gilliam Weir play a recital on the iconic Cavaillé-Coll organ at Saint-Sulpice in Paris and Peter Sykes in recital at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in Boston, otherwise known as the Jesuit Urban Center,⁶ within the same week. I was struck by the comparison of those two grand instruments. The Cavaillé-Coll had the edge with the power and romance of its reeds, but to my ears, the Hook & Hastings took the lead with its variety of principal and flute tone and clarity and beauty of individual voices. The Immaculate Conception organ was originally built in 1863 (and later expanded by Hook & Hastings in 1902), just three years after the Saint-Sulpice organ, and the two beauties have a lot in common.

Long dismantled and languishing in storage, the organ from the Jesuit Urban Center holds a special place in my heart, as my predecessor Alan Laufman’s memorial service was held there in the spring of 2001. There was a huge congregation of “organ people” present, and the congregational singing supported by that heroic organ was beyond belief.

Brothers and partners

Elias Hook (1805–1881) and George Greenleaf Hook (1807–1880) were sons of a cabinet maker in Salem, Massachusetts. In 1822 Elias apprenticed with the Boston organ builder William H. Goodrich, and it is supposed that George followed him. George built a one-manual organ in 1827, and the two brothers built an organ together in 1829 for the Unitarian Church of Danvers, Massachusetts. In the company’s first eighteen years, they built one hundred organs; Opus 100 was finished in 1856. The next hundred organs were built in seven years, and numbers 400 through 500 were built in just three years, between 1866 and 1869.

Frank Hastings (1836–1916) joined the company as a draftsman in 1855 and worked in every department of the factory building windchests, pipes, bellows, cabinets, and mechanical actions—all the thousands of components that make up a pipe organ. In 1870, when George was 63 and Elias was 65 years old, they made Frank Hastings a partner in the firm and changed the name to E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings. After 1881 when both brothers had died, Frank purchased their shares and moved the company from its longtime home in what is now Roxbury, Massachusetts, a neighborhood of Boston, to then farmland, now the suburb of Weston, ten miles west of the city.

The 1880s were a time of increasing labor unrest in the United States. There was a series of violent railroad strikes, and an anarchist exploded a bomb in Chicago’s Haymarket in 1886, the same year that the American Federation of Labor was formed. In 1892 there was a highly publicized, exceedingly violent strike at Andrew Carnegie’s Homestead Steel Mill near Pittsburgh, and there was a violent and costly strike at the Pullman Rail Car factory in Chicago in 1894 that spread to other localities. Aware of these events, Frank Hastings wanted to maintain a harmonious work environment.

Hastings purchased half of his family’s homestead in Weston in 1884. In 1886 he bought the remaining forty-five acres and an adjoining 150-acre farm, and the new factory was opened in 1889. In 1893 the company was reorganized and renamed the Hook & Hastings Company. Frank created a “community of labor,” building homes that he made available to workers with low-interest loans, a community hall, a theater, and a company school. By the end of 1893 the company had completed its Opus 1590.

We know little about Frank Hastings’s first wife. His son Francis Warren Hastings was an officer in the company, but because of failing health he moved to Bermuda in 1895, where he died of consumption in 1903 at the age of 41. After Warren died, Arthur Leslie Coburn (brother of Anna Coburn, the company schoolmistress) became president of the company. Frank Hastings married Anna Coburn in 1899 when he was 62 and she was 46 years old.

Frank Hastings died in 1916 at the age of 80. Arthur Coburn continued as president of the company, and long-time Hastings associates Norman Jacobsen and Alfred Pratt were the other officers. The legendary quality of Hook & Hastings organs continued, but the pace was diminishing. The company produced eighteen organs in 1916 and fifteen in 1917.

Then came the years of the Great Depression, Hollywood introduced “talkies,” and the radio and phonograph were becoming popular. Municipal music programs were dramatically diminished during the Depression. Perhaps more importantly, in those years Ernest Skinner was ensconced in Dorchester, Massachusetts, building organs by the hundred for an increasingly loyal patronage. All these factors contributed to the weakening and ultimate failure of the Hook & Hastings Company.

The company continued for several years after Coburn’s death in 1931, until Anna Hastings felt that the quality of the company’s products was declining sufficiently to close its doors in 1935. Remembering that her husband had always put quality before price, she felt that when organ builders started talking about price first, it was time to stop. A contract was signed with the Mystic Building Wrecking Company of Chelsea, the buildings were demolished, the lumber was salvaged, and the company was dissolved in April of 1937. The final tally was 2,614 organs in 110 years—a remarkable record of longevity, quality, and artistic achievement. Elias and George Hook built the company, and Frank Hastings carried their artistic vision into the twentieth century while creating a model for employee relations in a time of vicious labor disputes.

These details about the history of this great organ company come from the enormous and exhaustive book, Farm Town to Suburb: The History and Architecture of Weston, Massachusetts, by Pamela W. Fox, published by Peter E. Randall, Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Pages 196 through 217 include the historical details accompanied by numerous photographs. Pam gave a lecture on this subject at the 2000 convention of the Organ Historical Society in Boston. Later, I developed a lecture on the subject, and Pam welcomed me into her home and shared photos and historical details not included in the book. I admire and commend Pam for her exceptional work and am grateful for her generosity.

I have also relied on The Hook Opus List, compiled by William T. Van Pelt and published by the Organ Historical Society in 1991. The book’s preface written by my predecessor at the Organ Clearing House, Alan Laufman, is a concise history of the Hook companies.

A relocation tale

In 1995, I had a call from the chair of the organ committee at Follen Community Church (Unitarian Universalist Association) in Lexington, Massachusetts, about the church’s organ that had been assembled by a well-meaning parishioner using “parts-n-pieces” from various sources. The resulting hodge-podge was unmusical and unreliable, and the committee was considering options for its repair or replacement. I inspected the organ, and we began a conversation about how the situation could be improved without offending the faithful congregant who had “created” the organ. The process was accelerated when the 48-volt electrical system in the console shorted out and the congregation witnessed smoke emerging from within.

At the same time, the congregation of the First Unitarian Church of Stoneham, Massachusetts, disbanded, and the building was sold to a children’s day care center. A group of volunteers led by organ historian and consultant Barbara Owen dismantled the two-manual Hook organ (Opus 466, 1868)⁷ and placed it in storage. Barbara, working as an agent for the Unitarian Universalist Association of Boston, advertised the availability of the organ in a UUA newsletter, “Free to a good home.” The chair of the Follen Church committee saw the notice and called me wondering if this might be an option for them. A quick study showed that Follen would be an ideal home for the organ, the church received ownership, and the Bishop Organ Company was engaged to restore and install it.

Volunteers from the church helped with the heavy work of refinishing the case and setting up the organ. They came to my workshop to clean small components and wind new tracker ends while I restored the windchests and releathered the double-rise reservoir and its two feeder bellows. The organ was first played in its new home on Easter Sunday of 1996.

I spent about six months up close and personal with Opus 466, handling every part myself. I dismantled the windchests and decided that the original chest tables could be retained if I routed out a few cracks and filled them with shims. I put new leather on the pallets, cleaned the pipes, reconditioned the actions, and replaced the bushings in the keyboards. Milling a couple pipes from the salvaged 16′ Subbass of another Hook organ into a mile of tracker stock, I noticed that the “virgin” nineteenth-century pine lumber was white, not the rich deep brown we are used to seeing inside historic organs. Could it be that when the organ was new, its interior was bleached-blond-white wood?

I felt as though I got to know the people who built the organ in 1868. When they were working on that organ, Ulysses S. Grant was elected president of the United States. Arkansas, Louisiana, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Alabama were admitted back into the Union following the Civil War.
E. & G. G. Hook built thirty-six organs that year. I marveled at the precision of the woodworker’s measure markings and the elegant penmanship of their labeling—how did they get their pencils that sharp? I saw the marks of hand tools and milling machines on the thousands of parts. I wondered what a worker in that factory would bring for lunch and how many hours they worked each day. They must have taken pride in their work, or it would not have been so good. Each of the multitude of parts was crafted with exquisite care.

Stephen P. Kinsley was the head voicer in the Hook workshop. In each organ he voiced, he left his mark on the first pipe of the Open Diapason that sat on the Great windchest, a half-step up from the smallest façade pipe. It is a shield drawn in ink, inscribed “Wind, S.P.K. 25⁄8, 1868.”⁸ When I first picked up a pipe of this organ and blew in it, I was surprised by how much sound was produced with so little effort. Remember that in those days, all organs were hand pumped. Efficiency of tone production was essential to their success.

Mr. Kinsley is the only person I know by name who worked on that organ. Frank Hastings had been working for the Hook brothers for thirteen years and was thirty-two years old. In 1868, Frank was still working his way through all the departments of the company. As thirty-six organs were built there that year by over two-hundred craftsmen, he may or may not have put his hands on any piece of the instrument. Perhaps he admired it when it was complete on the shop floor ready for shipment.

Follow the money.

When Hook Opus 553 was sold by the Unitarian Church of Woburn, Massachusetts, to the church in Berlin, Charley Smith, a longtime church member, became steward of the proceeds of the sale. Since Woburn, Stoneham (the original home of Opus 466), and Lexington (home of the Follen Church, the new home of Opus 466) are all adjoining towns,⁹ Charley knew that the Stoneham Organ was being preserved by relocation. Since both organs were built within two years of each other, he recognized that they were sisters, and the Woburn organ fund was donated to the Follen Church to be dedicated to the care and use of the newly installed organ. Members of the former Woburn church were present at the dedication of Opus 466 in Lexington, closing the circle that started when their church was closed and their organ was sold overseas.

§

George and Elias Hook sure started something. George was an organist with a musical ear and led the company’s artistic development. Elias was a genius manager who established the strong financial base of the company and enabled the correspondence necessary for contracting, designing, building, and installing as many as fifty-five organs in a single year. Remembering the state of communication and transportation in the second half of the nineteenth century, that alone was a great accomplishment. The factory equipment was powered by a large stationary steam engine, and materials were delivered and finished organs were shipped on horse-drawn rail cars at night, using tracks that carried trollies by day.

E. & G. G. Hook, E & G. G. Hook & Hastings, the Hook & Hastings Company, and Hook-Hastings combine to form a great heritage of artistic development and musical excellence. I was fortunate to practice and perform on one of their masterpieces when I was a pup. Those beautiful tones informed my naïve ears, and I am thrilled anew whenever I encounter one of their organs.

Notes

1. pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/6083.

2. pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/5994.

3. pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/49571.

4. pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/6962.

5. pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/6950.

6. pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/5670.

7. pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/8579.

8. 2-5⁄8′′ was the original wind pressure. When we received the organ from storage there was a note saying the pressure had been measured as 3-1⁄8′′. When commissioning the wind system, we set the pressure according to Mr. Kinsley, and original voicing sang clear.

9. My hometown of Winchester, Massachusetts, adjoins Woburn, Stoneham, and Lexington.

John Bishop

Wandering

When I was born, my father was rector of the now-long-gone Saint Thomas Episcopal Church in Somerville, Massachusetts. It was on Washington Street near the Sullivan Square “T” Station; there is a Brazilian barbeque restaurant in that location now. It was a small parish, but I presume there was a pipe organ—all churches had pipe organs then. I was four months old when Dad was named the first priest for the new Episcopal mission of Saint John in Westwood, Massachusetts, just outside Route 128 (now I-95), which was the first circular perimeter commuter highway in the United States. We moved briefly to a rented house in Westwood, and in 1958, before I was two years old, we were ensconced in the brand-new rectory adjacent to the church building. 

There was a pipe organ at Saint John’s from the start, with a juicy tidbit of American organ history to boot. It was built in 1959 by the Andover Organ Company, then owned by the thirty-four-year-old Charles Fisk. It had one manual, six stops, and a two-manual detached, reversed console, all mounted on a platform—a strange little setup until you realize that it was intended as the Rückpositiv of a larger two-manual organ, the Great and Pedal to be built later in a free-standing case as the parish grew and funds became available.

The mission building was a simple frame structure with a linoleum floor, and the organ sat down front on the left. The building was also designed to be expanded to greater glory, and that happened starting in 1963 when two towers were added with stained glass faces (I got bagged when at seven years old, I climbed to the top of the scaffolding surrounding the seventy-foot tower only to see my parents’ car coming up the road), and a rear balcony was built. My earliest organbuilding memory was seeing that organ hanging outdoors from a crane. The roof had been opened in two places and the organ, pipes and all, was hoisted to its permanent home. I’m a professional. Don’t try this at home.

Dad was called to be rector at the Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester, Massachusetts, in 1966. That is where I had my first experience playing an organ. A new organ by C. B. Fisk was installed there in 1974. I took organ lessons at the Episcopal Theological School in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on a Holtkamp organ installed when Charlie Fisk was an apprentice with Holtkamp, just three years before the Saint John’s organ. I continued my lessons at the First Congregational Church in Winchester on the new three-manual Fisk organ, went to Oberlin to wallow in the renowned fleet of instruments there, and went out into the world as organist and organbuilder.

I have worked for four organ companies including my own, I have served two churches as organist for a total of thirty years, and I have been director of the Organ Clearing House for twenty, a position that has had me in direct contact with hundreds of organs. I have played hundreds (thousands?) of organs in the United States, Great Britain, Europe, even on a Cavaillé-Coll organ in Antananarivo, Madagascar. My wife and I have traveled extensively in Greece where there are very few organs, especially on sailing vacations in the Ionian and Aegean seas, but while I could not get access to it, I laid eyes on a tiny pipe organ in a high balcony in a Roman Catholic church on the Island of Siros. I am thinking that our Greek trips might be the only times since my birth that I have gone more than a week without playing, hearing, or seeing a pipe organ. Until now.

As the Covid-19 pandemic started to break out in early March, we left New York City with extended family for our place in Maine. A few days before that, I visited an E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings organ built in 1872 (Opus 668) that has been in storage for ten years. My colleagues and I were pulling it out of the container to measure key components to prepare for laying it out in a new location. It was the last instrument I saw. It has been 117 days since I laid eyes on an organ.

Remembering

In April 2016, Wendy and I spent a long week in Great Britain. We sure saw a lot of organs on that trip. I loved seeing the fifty-two-stop Willis organ (1891) in the library of Blenheim Palace. Following the tour path through the building, one first sees the organ partially through an archway at the end of the vast room. The organ was built in the height of the Victorian Era, and it looks it, bedecked with opulent swirls and swoops of carvings and elegant inlaid decorations across the keydesk. Beautifully made mechanical stop actions are visible from the sides, as well as miles of lead tube for the pneumatic keyboard actions. Next to the organ hangs a framed photo of Henry Willis sitting at the console, apparently working on tonal finishing. The case had not been installed yet, and lots of the organ’s innards are visible.

Our host was Andrew Patterson who serves as a volunteer curator of the organ and plays many of the regular recitals. He pointed out a dent in the largest façade pipe of the C-side tower, close to twenty feet off the floor. The story goes that the palace was temporarily home to a school for boys during the Second World War, and the dent was the result of an indoor ball game.

When I was in high school, I was assistant organist at the First Congregational Church in Woburn, Massachusetts, home of E. & G. G. Hook’s Opus 283 (1860). George Bozeman was the organist, and he figured out how to create a position for me so I could be his regular substitute when he traveled for organ installations. The parish has diminished quite a bit over the years, but the grand organ is still in place hoping for restoration. It was in good shape for my time there, and I learned a lot from it.

I had agreed to accompany a concert of the all-elementary school chorus in late June, not long before my graduation. I attended a couple rehearsals, and it promised to be a fine event. One beautiful June Sunday, a couple of my pals came to church in Woburn to hear me play, and we took off for the beach after church. I got home that evening to phone messages wondering where I was. You guessed it. I missed the concert. Carl Fudge, the organist of Epiphany in Winchester, was in attendance because his daughter was in the chorus. He volunteered from the audience to mount the stage and to accompany the concert. I wonder if any readers have a lifelong blush from a moment like that.

In the summer of 1976, I worked for Bozeman-Gibson for a few months. The shop was just completing a one-manual organ for the chapel on Squirrel Island, Southport, Maine. John Farmer, long-time organbuilder in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, was my senior in the shop, and we would take the organ to Maine for installation. But first, over the Independence Day holiday, we installed the organ temporarily in the crossing of Boston’s Cathedral of the Holy Cross for Barbara Bruns’s performance of Handel organ concertos with the orchestra of the Handel and Haydn Society for the convention of the American Guild of Organists, held in Boston that summer. We worked hard through a couple nights getting the organ set up. In those days, the Orange Line of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority (MBTA, aka “the subway”) ran on tracks elevated above Washington Street, and the trains roared past the dark cathedral all night. Other highlights of that convention included Farmer and me playing the appropriate parts in a piece for organist and two organbuilders by Martha Folts on and in the Fisk organ at King’s Chapel, and E. Power Biggs’s last public performance, Rheinberger with the Boston Pops Orchestra and Arthur Fiedler.

After the convention, we dismantled the organ and drove it to Maine, where we loaded it onto the Squirrel Island ferry, a small vessel a lot like a lobster boat—it took three trips to get the organ there. The only vehicle on the island was the superintendent’s ancient beat-up pickup truck, which took many trips up the dusty road from the dock to the chapel laden with organ parts. A cold beer never tasted so good.

The island was buzzing with news of a recent faux pas. The island is roughly equivalent to a condominium corporation where homeowners own shares of the island and contribute to its upkeep. They had recently banded together for the construction of a water tower that brought “city” water to the island for the first time, eliminating the reliance on quirky wells. With construction complete, the tank was left full of a cleaning solution, and it was the superintendent’s job to empty it at a specified time and fill it with water. So he did, forgetting to open a valve allowing air into the tank as the fluid drained, and the tank collapsed inward with a big bang.

During the job, we took the ferry back to town for an evening or two and followed islanders’ recommendations to eat at Lobsterman’s Wharf in East Boothbay, Maine. My historically informed ongoing Oberlin education was enhanced by a local country-western band sharing such gems as I Just Kicked the Daylights Out of My CB Radio (Google™ didn’t turn it up for me, I wonder if it was an original?) and Drop Kick Me, Jesus, Through the Goalposts of Life, written and made famous by Bobby Bare and easily found on YouTube, which I later learned was Bill Clinton’s favorite country song. Forty-four years later, almost to the day, I am sitting at my desk in Newcastle, Maine, on the shore of the Damariscotta River, about six miles upriver from Lobsterman’s Wharf. We have often gone there by boat, tying up at their dock where I can hear the echoes of those two songs.

Adjacent to Lobsterman’s Wharf is the Washburn & Doughty Shipyard, famous for the construction of huge powerful tugboats that service the ports between Boston and New Jersey and move cargo, especially fuel, over the same waters. In July 2008, John Schwandt, then professor of organ at the University of Oklahoma, was staying with us while preparing for a concert on the Kotzschmar Organ in Portland. On July 11, John and I were sitting on a rock on the shore of the river when we noticed a vast plume of smoke to the south. Washburn & Doughty was on fire. The Boothbay Register reported that a 121-foot articulate tug barge and a 92-foot “Z-Drive” tugboat under construction at the time were towed to safety by the heroic efforts of lobstermen from East Boothbay and South Bristol across the river. The shipyard was rebuilt so quickly that local suspicion had it that plans and financing were in place for replacing the building before the fire started mysteriously.

Just a month before that riverside chat, I returned from my first trip to Madagascar. I had traveled on an invitation from Zina Andrianarivelo, ambassador from Madagascar to the United Nations, at the behest of Marc Ravalomanana, the Federal President. The president was also vice-president of the Protestant church there, and in preparation for an important upcoming anniversary, had asked the ambassador to “go back to America and find an organ for this church.” The cold call I received from Zina was the doozy of a lifetime, and I agreed to meet him in New York to discuss it. I was sure I was the only organbuilder at work at the United Nations that day.

I have written before about the travel plans that included no details about hotels or even a flight home. Once in the country, my name would be on a list for notification when there would be a flight back to Paris. Otherwise I had no itinerary whatsoever. Of course, I was treated handsomely. My flight arrived after midnight, I was met at the airport by snappily dressed presidential aides, treated to drinks in the VIP lounge, and whisked forty minutes to the capital where I checked into a room in a four-star, French-owned hotel reserved in the president’s name. As I ventured into the hotel restaurant for breakfast, a server informed me that my driver would be out front in an hour. Richard, the driver with a big government car, took me to the church where I met the ambassador, was given a cell phone, and was introduced to church officials who would show me the dozen or so churches the president wished to enhance with organs. 

I met Adolha Vonialitahina, a lovely young woman who had just graduated from Texas Christian University in a scholarship program instituted by the president. Adolha would be my translator and guide, so I had an entourage. The trip included many rich experiences, including a four-hour drive to Andasibe-Mantadia National Park where I saw lemurs in their natural habitat. We visited a church in Antananarivo (the capital city, colloquially known as Tanariv, or simply, Tana) where they showed me an organ in a non-descript plywood case. When I opened the fallboard I burst into tears. There was the familiar and distinctive gilded nameboard of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. I saw a lovely organ by Merklin in another church, reminding me that Madagascar was a French colony until 1963.

As I returned to JFK Airport, my wife Wendy was leaving for a trip to Jordan with a friend. We were in the airport at the same time. She saw my flight from Paris arrive, but we did not see each other in person, two ships passing in broad daylight.

Delivering an organ to a church in Arlington, Massachusetts, in about 1985, a co-worker slipped on a stairway. When he grabbed wildly to steady himself, he pulled a fire alarm and the city responded with vigor. We called him Sparky after that. And working in an organ loft in Manhattan, I forgot to turn off the smoke detector beam. When I walked in front of it, the horns started blaring. This time it was a big deal because there is a large and active day school in the building, and the FDNY knows to respond with intent. Fire apparatuses filled the cross street and blocked both Park and Lexington avenues. There must have been thousands of people affected, most singularly the rector who was in the shower in the sixth-floor rectory and came to the street with wet hair wearing a cassock. That memory is filed away next to the trip to the beach in 1974.

Twenty years ago, the Calgary International Organ Festival was my host for a project. The Calgary Stampede is held each year on the Fourth of July, a huge rodeo festival celebrating the end of the roundup and castration of the herd. When they asked what I liked to eat, I said since I am from New England, I would pass on Alberta seafood. One fellow rubbed his hands together and smiled, and off we went to Bottlescrew Bill’s Testicle Festival. They don’t taste like chicken.

Bottlescrew Bill’s, the 1976 American Guild of Organists Convention, my trip to Madagascar, the delivery of the organ to Squirrel Island, the tugboat fire, the fire alarm in Manhattan, and the missed concert in Winchester all happened within a week or so of the Fourth of July. Today is July 6th. I wonder when I will see an organ again.

Photo: Squirrel Island organ. Photo credit John Bishop.

John Bishop

On the road again

In the 1980 movie, Honeysuckle Rose, Willie Nelson played Buck Bonham, a country music singer looking for national fame. His life as a traveling music star is a strain on his marriage to Viv, played by Dyan Cannon; one thing leads to another, and not everyone winds up happy. The best thing that came out of that movie is the song, “On the Road Again,” which won a Grammy Award for Best Country Song and an American Music Award for Favorite Country Single.

In the 1980s I was working in an organ shop where some of us preferred classical music and some preferred rock and roll. In the days before earpods when music was played through speakers we had to compromise—ours was often country music. It was fun to make up words to go with the rhyming schemes, and some of the country songs of those days were simply hilarious. Bobby Bare’s “Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goalposts of Life,” Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias singing “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” and Dolly Parton’s “Better Keep Your Hands Off My Potential New Boyfriend” (really) gave us lots of material.

“On the Road Again” seems full of hope, opening with a major sixth (“My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. . .”), with lyrics about the pleasure of “making music with my friends.” There is a sort of choo-choo-train-like rhythm underneath, and some lithe, right-in-tune harmonica playing. “Like a band of gypsies, we go down the highway, We’re the best of friends, insisting that the world keep turning our way, and our way is on the road again.”

My daily office routine includes lots of correspondence with people wishing to buy and sell pipe organs, and I keep a list of places that might be productive to visit, sort of like pins on a map. Several times a year, when those pins meld into a circle that I might drive in a week or so, I set off in my Suburban. I make a point of visiting any organ workshops that might be along the route, and I am often able to include errands for us or for colleague companies, like delivering a blower here, a rank of pipes there, or picking up a pedalboard—it helps pay for the gas. When I leave home, sappy as it may be, I think of the indefatigable Willie Nelson and dial up that song, fixing myself up with an earworm that will easily last a week.

§

Last December, Willie cheered me on as I headed for Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. My first day out, I met with people at a church who are considering purchasing an organ and had dinner with my son in central Massachusetts. The following morning, I drove to New Holland, Pennsylvania, to visit New Holland Church Furniture, a company that builds miles of pews, thousands of chairs, hundreds of altars, and dozens of organ cases. The Organ Clearing House has helped with the installation of several large new organs with cases built by New Holland, and they have since engaged us to install a few other large pieces such as a cathedral reredos. I was given a lengthy tour of the facility and marveled at the production volume and values.

I was especially impressed by an extensive layout of curved pews in the shop for the floor and balconies of a large church under construction. It is one thing to build straight pews; all organ builders have equipment in their workshops for cutting wood straight. It is much more challenging to work with curves, especially because you would not necessarily use the same curved layouts in several different churches. The forms and patterns for gluing those long, curved boards are custom made for each location. And in this building, the balconies had layouts much different from the main floor, further complicating the job. Massive custom-built sanding machines finish those twenty-foot-long curves with the grain, as any good woodworker would.

Computer-driven machines were cutting out chair backs, pew ends, Gothic arches, and Stations of the Cross at dizzying rates. A procession of ten-foot-long pew seats, hanging from iron hooks like sides of beef, rode conveyors through a huge spray booth. Carts of chair frames rolled from gluing stations to assembly rooms. Engineers and designers stared at computer screens, moving pixilated lines around to create perfect drawings. Those drawings were fed into the machines that cut the wood. Semi-trailers were backed up to loading docks, ready to haul the finished products to their destinations. Seventy-five or eighty workers were toiling in the factory, combining artistry with automation, creating elegant furnishings for church buildings across the country.

New Holland is in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, and I was sharing the roads with Amish families in black carriages drawn by single horses and large flatbed trailers drawn by teams of three horses, all with reflective triangles on the back. Driving around them in a big comfortable car with the heat on gently and music playing, I reflected on the contrasting lifestyles. I saw those buggies parked in the driveways of prosperous-looking farmsteads where oxen were waiting patiently to be harnessed to plows and reapers. It is quite a feat to make a living as a farmer in these times without burning diesel fuel.

Pennsylvania and Ohio

I went from New Holland to Wooster, Ohio, home of Wooster College, where I helped maintain the large Holtkamp in the chapel and smaller practice organs when I was working with John Leek in the 1970s. I drove by those buildings nearly fifty years after I first worked in them, reliving John’s often humorous, sometimes stern teaching. I remembered standing on a ladder behind the Great windchest as a fledgling tuner, confronted for the first time by a Sesquialtera II, Mixture IV, and Scharff III, struggling to decipher the relationships between all those tiny pipes.

I drove past the First Presbyterian Church where in 1980 Leek and I attended the dedicatory recital of Karl Wilhelm’s Opus 76 played by my organ teacher, Haskell Thomson. Jack Russell, professor of organ at Wooster College and a former student of Haskell’s, was organist at that church. Jack is still a friend, now located in the Boston area. Opus 76 is a grand three-manual affair with thirty-six stops, free standing pedal towers, and beautiful carved pipe shades. What I remember most about that recital was a cipher that stopped Mr. Thomson in mid-sweep (his students will get an inward chuckle from that), bringing him to the balcony rail to ask for assistance, an organbuilder’s nightmare.

While in Wooster, I visited the newly formed Greenleaf Organ Company founded by Samantha Koch and her husband Daniel Hancock. They are working on the renovation of a 1916 Hook & Hastings organ purchased through the Organ Clearing House by a church in Kansas. The organ had been in storage for years in Newcastle, Maine, where I live, and it was fun to see “my baby” getting a new lease of life. The folks at Greenleaf are smart and skillful, and I look forward to seeing lots of great projects come from that shop.

I drove from Wooster to Oberlin, Ohio, where I went to school forty-five years ago. My timing was bad as I arrived a few days after the holiday break started, so there were not many people around. I had breakfast with Randy Wagner, longtime executive at Organ Supply Industries (OSI) in Erie, Pennsylvania. OSI has been for decades the largest company supplying to the organbuilding trade in the United States.

I met Randy in the 1970s when I was working for John Leek, and Leek and I traveled back and forth from OSI to deliver and pick up parts for our projects. Our relationship continued through my days with Angerstein & Associates, the Bishop Organ Company, and the Organ Clearing House. It is one of my longest collegial friendships. Randy retired to Oberlin where he cut his teeth working with Homer Blanchard in the 1950s. He shares with Barbara Owen the distinction of being one of two surviving participants in the founding meeting of the Organ Historical Society, held in the choir room at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York City in 1956.1

From Oberlin, I drove to Hartville, Ohio, for a quick visit with Charles Kegg of Kegg Pipe Organ Builders. Charles’s shop has a luxurious amount of space for his staff, with a snazzy collection of machines and equipment. His interest in automated musical instruments means that there are collections of paper rolls for player devices and a very rare machine that punches those paper rolls. Charles and I are collaborating on a project in New York City, and it was a nice opportunity to compare notes and questions.

And back to Pennsylvania

Organ Supply Industries in Erie, Pennsylvania, is one of the largest pipe organ companies in the United States and serves as a supplier to most of the independent organ companies around the country. My pal Bryan Timm, OSI vice president, gave me the “family rate” tour followed by a nice lunch. Their vast factory building is a wonderland where everything is on a huge scale, where forklifts stack organ parts sky high, and where the multiplicity of organ stuff boggles the mind. Eight pedalboards are lined up, in the early stages of their construction. A couple dozen keyboards are making their way through production. Thousands of the little dividers between coupler tablets roll off saws into boxes—the blanks that they are cut from look like houses and hotels from “Monopoly.” It takes hundreds of clamps to glue up things like the huge wood organ pipes from 16′ and 32′ open wood diapasons, and those clamps are stacked on carts, ready for the next project. Organ pipes of all sizes are under construction, and the countless forms and jigs needed to make pipes in an infinity of shapes and sizes are neatly organized in racks and shelves. Ranks of wooden pipes whip through their production department and wind up in crates labeled for shipment to organ companies all over the country. Huge woodworking machines seem to be everywhere, all connected with the metal ducts of the dust collection system that gathers tons of sawdust and plane shavings into hoppers, powered by immense vacuum motors.

OSI is something of a nerve-central for the American pipe organ industry. The bustle of activity through the various departments reassures us that pipe organs are being built across the country, and that talented and dedicated people are pouring their hearts into them.

I left Erie to visit an interesting vintage mechanical-action organ in a recently closed church in Canaseraga, a village of about 500 people in rural central New York, about sixty-five miles south of Rochester. Garret House (1810–1900) was the most prominent organbuilder in Buffalo, New York, of his time. He built a nine-rank, one-manual organ for Trinity Episcopal Church in Canaseraga, and my circle of pins included a snowy drive on long lonely country roads to meet with a small group of parishioners of the now-closed church. They were a cheerful band of lifelong residents, families who have been friends and neighbors for generations, and they are hoping we can find a new home for the lovely organ. Since I joined the Organ Clearing House, I have met with many such groups, sorry to have lost their church and eager for the organ to carry life’s breath to another congregation. Having gathered specifications, dimensions, and photographs, I was put in touch with the officer of the diocese who manages property. I hope we can offer the organ soon. Keep your eye on our website.

Saying goodbye

One of the sure effects of celebrating people I have known for forty or fifty years is the passing of treasured colleagues, mentors, and friends. Thomas H. Anderson was all of these. He was born in 1937 in Belfast, Ireland, and started as an apprentice in an organ pipe making shop when he was fourteen. He emigrated to the United States at age nineteen to take a job with the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company. That was 1956, when Aeolian-Skinner built nearly twenty organs, including the beauty at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York (see footnote). Not long after that (not sure when), he started his own firm, the Thomas H. Anderson Organ Pipe Company. He purchased a home in Easton, Massachusetts, not far from Dorchester and Randolph, Massachusetts, where the Aeolian-Skinner facilities were located. His property included a handsome barn attached to the house that he converted to a workshop, and a long, low “chicken coop” where he stored large pipes and materials.

I first met Tommy around 1984 when I went to work for Daniel Angerstein & Associates in Stoughton, Massachusetts, less than ten miles from Tommy’s shop. What a convenience to have a pipe maker so close by; we frequently drove up and down Bay Road between the two shops. Daniel Angerstein closed his shop when he was appointed tonal director at M. P. Möller, and I started the Bishop Organ Company by assuming Dan’s maintenance business. At the same time, I assumed the care of the large Aeolian-Skinner organs at Trinity Church and The First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church), both in Boston, and I quickly had a list of rebuilding and restoration projects, most of which required Tommy’s help.

Tommy and his wife Susan grew up on the same street in Belfast. Once he was established in the United States, he went back to Belfast to marry her and bring her to join him in Easton. I imagine there were many letters between them in the interim, planning a life together in a new country. What a courageous decision it was for Susan to join Tommy here. They raised four children, six grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, all supported by Tommy, also known as Granda, hammering away in that workshop.

There are few craftsmen whose intuitive grasp of π can outstrip an organ pipe maker. When I was working in a shop every day, I could easily eye the difference between eighteen and twenty millimeters, or between an inch and an inch-and-a-sixteenth. Tommy could hold a pipe in his hand and sense the width of the rectangle to cut to form an identical tube. Circles are the province of the pipe maker. It’s uncanny.

Susan passed away on December 31, 1996. Tommy passed away on December 30, 2023. His funeral service was held in Easton, just a mile from his house, on January 6, 2024. I was there with nine other organbuilders to meet his family and share stories of our work with him. One of his daughters remembered the chore of loading crates of newly made organ pipes into their van and delivering them to the Consolidated Freightways Terminal in nearby Canton, Massachusetts.

We were a group of old-timers, most of us had known Tommy for decades, and each of us know many organbuilders out there on the grapevine. None of us could remember hearing anything but lovely words about Tommy. He was kind, humorous, caring, diligent, and skillful—a valued and admired colleague. He made organ pipes. Tens of thousands of organ pipes. His work will sing on in dozens of churches around the country. He was a valued friend. He was a gentleman.

Notes

1. Pierre Cochereau, organist at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, France, was scheduled to open the 1956 American Guild of Organists national convention with a recital on the new Aeolian-Skinner organ at Saint Thomas Church in New York City. During the months preceding that convention, G. Donald Harrison was racing to complete the organ. It was fiercely hot, and there was a taxi strike going on, so after a long workday on June 14, Harrison had to walk several long blocks to his apartment on Third Avenue. After dinner with his wife Helen, he sat down to watch Victor Borge on television and died of a heart attack. It is interesting to note that John Scott, future organist at Saint Thomas Church, was born on June 18, 1956, just four days after Harrison’s death.

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.

John Bishop

Fire in the steeple

Writing for a monthly journal is no place to be commenting on today’s news. A momentous story will develop during the six weeks between submission and publication leaving the telling of the event, which seems so fresh and urgent at the moment of writing, little more than a heap of yesterday’s news.

Today is April 17, 2019. Two days ago, the world watched in horror as Notre-Dame de Paris burned. Dramatic photos in the hundreds were provided by still photographers, television cameras, helicopters, and fire department drones. We all speculated as to the extent of the damage. One aerial photo convinced me that the great Cavaillé-Coll organ at the west end of the cathedral was ablaze.

Yesterday we learned with relief that most of the stone fabric of the great church remained intact and that many priceless artifacts had been whisked out of the building by heroic firefighters forming a bucket brigade. And to the joy and relief of the world’s community of organists, both organs remained intact. As of today, it seems that the Choir Organ suffered significant water damage but can be restored. But miraculously, the Great Organ stood above the fray. It is nestled between the two towers like a brute in a too-tight sport jacket, and it is under a pitched roof that is lower than the main roof that was destroyed. The heat of the fire, which we might have expected would reduce the brilliant instrument to a puddle of molten lead, dissipated into the night air far above the organ.

By the time you read this, we may know the cause of the fire and the actual condition of the building and its contents. I hope the blame does not get pinned on one person. Perhaps the organ and rose windows will have already been removed to safe storage, and committees of engineers, historians, and artisans with impressive credentials will have been formed to plan how to spend the billions of euros that have accrued. While I am tempted to write lots of detail of what I know or think I know from the safety of New York City, I think I will sit back and wait with the rest of you to know the situation as of the first of June.

Many of the stories I have read and heard have spoken of the integrity of the 850-year-old building. The medieval architects and craftsmen who built it had such foresight and skill. Could they have imagined that their work would be robust enough to sustain such an event so far in the future?

In 1973, David Macaulay published Cathedral (Houghton Mifflin), a delightful romp through the construction of a fictional medieval cathedral told in prose and dozens of intricate pen-and-ink drawings. It is technically a children’s book—it won the Caldecott Medal that celebrates illustrated books for children—but any adult will enjoy and learn from this spirited book. The author introduces you to the workers who built the cathedral, the tools they used, how they gathered the vast bulk of materials, and the methods of construction. He describes and draws the huge wheel, similar to what you would find in a gerbil’s cage but large enough for two men to walk inside in an endless loop, coiling the rope that lifts fabulously heavy stones hundreds of feet.

Central to the structure of any Gothic cathedral, whether ancient and modern, is the system of flying buttresses (repeatedly called “trusses” by a CNN commentator) and vaulted stone ceilings that counteract each other to hold the whole thing up in an exquisite demonstration of engineered balance. That balance is essential to allowing the high walls to be perforated by enormous windows. The combination of the soaring fluted columns and the windows letting sunlight in through acres of stained glass gives an impression of weightlessness to a structure that weighs thousands of tons. Anyone who has wandered into a great cathedral and had their gaze drawn upward deserves a read through this vivid description of how in the world such a thing could be accomplished when the only available industrial power was supplied by mammals.

David Macaulay’s Cathedral is available through your favorite independent bookstore, or if you must, amazon.com.

Medieval cathedrals, old and new

Three years ago, Wendy and I had a wonderful trip to Great Britain. She attended the London Book Fair for a few days while I explored London’s ecclesiastical buildings and their organs. I also found a gobsmacking whole hog roast at Borough Market adjacent to Southwark Cathedral and had a life-altering sandwich. “Do you want crispies on that, mate?” We took the train to Durham, where I had invited myself for a visit at the workshops of Harrison and Harrison and where we stayed in a rickety bed and breakfast above an ancient pub called the Victoria Inn. I picked up a rental car the next morning (shifting gears with my left hand) and mentioned where we had stayed to the clerk. “Oh, the Old Vic. You take your life in your hands when you go in there.”

A friend from the Harrison & Harrison workshop gave us a splendid visit to the organ at Durham Cathedral (why have one 16′ Double Open Wood when you can have two, one on each side of the choir, one of which goes all the way down to 32′ low CCCC?), and we drove to York. This time we stayed at a very swank inn with views of York Minster from our room, and after a ponderous “Full English Breakfast,” we toured the Minster. Durham Cathedral is really old as medieval cathedrals go, built between 1093 and 1133, and its stone fabric is dense and heavy. I have not done a lot of research, but I assume that it was built before flying buttresses were invented, because instead of that lacy weight-defying tracery, Durham Cathedral is built with some of the thickest stonewalls in Christendom. Even the windows seem load bearing. It holds itself up by sheer bulk. By contrast York Minster, started in 1220 and completed in the full glory of the high Gothic, sports huge windows, a magnificent vaulted ceiling, and the elaborate system of buttresses that help such massive buildings seem weightless.

What a terrific place. York is one of the really big ones, a hundred feet longer inside than Durham Cathedral and twenty-five feet higher. Although the sky was overcast during our visit, the building seemed light and airy inside. The organ sits high on the screen that separates the choir from the nave, commanding both the east and west views, and its 32′ Diapason, metal this time, stands in full-length splendor in the ambulatory. It is disguised with circular ridges of some kind of putty and painted to resemble the lofty stone columns. Incredible.

There was no sign, no informational kiosk, and no trace of the fire that ravaged York Minster in July of 1984. The wood structure of the roof burned in similar fashion to this week’s fire in Paris. Firefighters contained the blaze to the transept by intentionally collapsing the roof with tens of thousands of gallons of water. The investigation that followed suggested that the fire was likely caused by a lightning strike, but there was at least some chance it was caused either by arson or an electrical fault. Conservative Anglicans supposed that the fire was God’s response to the recent consecration of David Jenkins as Bishop of Durham, with whose policies and philosophies they vehemently disagreed. ’Twas ever thus . . . .

The good news is that the damage was fully repaired. That triumph of recovery has been cited as a potent example proving the possibility and feasibility of returning Notre-Dame de Paris to its original condition.

A modern historic organ

John Brombaugh installed his Opus 4 in the First Evangelical Lutheran Church in Lorain, Ohio, in 1970. Professor of organ at Oberlin David Boe, then in his twenties, was organist at the church and had much to do with the creation of that remarkable instrument. As one of the first modern instruments built in the United States using ancient European principles and given its proximity to the teeming community of budding organists at Oberlin, that organ caused quite a sensation and was revered by countless musicians as a milestone of the art. The Organ Historical Society awarded the instrument a historic citation, one of the few occasions when the OHS has honored a modern instrument for its historical importance.

On August 28, 2014, the church building and its contents were destroyed by an arsonist. A new building was completed in 2017, and a new organ by Paul Fritts & Company will be installed later this year.

A couple weeks ago, my colleague Amory Atkins and I were in Seattle installing an organ at the School of Music of the University of Washington, and we took the opportunity of proximity to take a field trip to Tacoma to visit Paul Fritts’s workshop. It was Amory’s birthday, and it was fun to have a reunion with friends there as we had all worked together on a large project, a couple years earlier, and Bruce Shull (who works there) and his wife Shari were my pals at Oberlin in the 1970s. We saw the beautiful new instrument for First Lutheran in Lorain, pretty much complete and playable in the workshop. It was poignant to note how far the concept of the modern American tracker-action organ has come in the past fifty years.

Organs built by Paul Fritts are elegant, expressive, and impressive, and the craftsmanship is impeccable. Complex joints and multifaceted moldings are brilliantly accomplished. Embossed polished façade pipes gleamed in the late afternoon sun.

The Fritts workshop sports a tantalizing juxtaposition of modern and ancient techniques. A sophisticated CNC (Computer Numeric Control) router the size of a small bus lurked in a separate building, exiled along with its specialist operator from the peace and tranquility of the rest of the workshop. It is capable of converting digital drawings into finished wood projects from windlines with complex miters to reed boots with compound tapers. Another room houses the centuries-old technology of a melting pot and casting table, where metal becomes liquid and is cast into sheets from which the parts of organ pipes are cut. Paul shared that casting sheets on sand rather than cloth or marble produces metal with a crystalline structure that springs to life under the hands of the voicer like none other. Once the sheets are cast, they are hammered to increase their density and planed smooth. While the casting table is the same technology shown in eighteenth-century prints like those by the good monk Dom Bédos, the metal hammer and drum plane are monster industrial products of the modern age.

First Lutheran in Lorain has built a new building on a new plot of land. Visit their website, www.firstlutheranlorain.org, to see photos of the new building, photos, specs, and history of the Brombaugh organ, and photos of the new Fritts organ. It is a great example of the phoenix, rising from the ashes.

The death of an old friend

In 1984, I went to work for Angerstein & Associates in Stoughton, Massachusetts, where one of my responsibilities was to participate in the firm’s active organ maintenance business. One of the organs I visited regularly from the beginning was the twenty-rank instrument built in 1872 by E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings (Opus 635) for the First Baptist Church of Wakefield, Massachusetts. Three years after I joined Angerstein & Associates, the owner Dan Angerstein closed the business to accept the position of tonal director at M. P. Möller. That turned out to be a short-term appointment as Möller closed its doors a few years later, but it was a great opportunity for me to take on Dan’s maintenance contracts and start my own company.

About three years after that, I moved the Bishop Organ Company into a sunny building in an industrial neighborhood in Wakefield, just blocks from the Baptist Church. There is a two-mile-long lake right in the center of town, and one of my employees had grown up in the little sailing club on its western shore. It did not take long for me to get involved there, to buy a boat from him, and start my sailing career in earnest. I helped start a junior sailing program, teaching children how to sail; my son Michael became an earnest competitor in the club’s weekly races, and I was elected commodore. Michael and I share the passion for sailing today thanks to our years in Wakefield.

I enjoyed the proximity of the workshop to the Baptist Church and occasionally went there to practice, just for the pleasure of playing on that beautiful historic organ. Along the way, the leather gussets and canvas hinges on the huge double-rise reservoir failed, and my crew and I removed the wildly heavy assembly to the workshop, including two feeder bellows, stripped off all the old material, and restored it to original reliable working condition.

The First Baptist Church fit the stereotype of the quintessential New England Protestant church. Its soaring spire dominated the landscape of the town, and its grand 800-seat sanctuary was as large a room as one might imagine being built with a wood frame and no supporting columns inside. The way the structure of the building worked was that the ceiling and walls were suspended by the steeply pitched superstructure that supported the roof, another ingenious approach to building large structures that defy their own weight.

There was a second pipe organ in the chapel downstairs, a one-manual tracker built in the 1970s by the Andover Organ Company, just like the instrument that had been owned by Daniel Pinkham and used in his famous recording of Antonio Soler’s concertos for two organs. The other organist on that recording was the brilliant E. Power Biggs playing “his” Flentrop organ in Harvard University’s Busch Hall, formerly known as the Busch-Reisinger Museum. The chapel was decorated with ornate oak carvings including pews, chancel furnishings, and an elaborate screen, all relocated from a downstairs worship space at Boston University’s Marsh Chapel.

For more than thirty years I made maintenance visits to the organ, knowing all along that it was the home church of my colleague and friend John Boody, principal at Taylor & Boody Organbuilders. John’s grandfather had been pastor of the church. Often during one of those visits, I would send John a photo of the organ just to say hello, and we talked fondly about it whenever we met. The church’s pastor (it was the same guy for more than thirty years) had a big candy habit, and we knew we could expect him to provide little baskets or bags fit for the season. Once I went there to tune during Holy Week and found the pastor sporting a Crucifixion necktie, complete with images of three crosses with an “Elvis on black velvet style” sunset. Hope I never see another like it.

In the evening of Tuesday, October 23, 2018, the spire was struck by lightning, and the building burned. A portion of the front wall facing the street was all that remained. The church’s safe, jam-packed with 150 years of historic documents, fell through four stories of burning floors into six feet of water. Both organs were incinerated. The E. & G. G. Hook & Hastings organ, built by some of history’s finest organbuilders, inspiration for one of the finest of twentieth-century American organbuilders, present for more than 7,500 Sunday mornings and countless weddings and funerals, 146-years-old and still going strong . . . gone.

Photo caption: First Baptist Church, Wakefield, Massachusetts, 1872 E & G. G. Hook Opus 635 (photo credit: John Bishop)

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: the first part of this series appeared in the February 2022 issue of The Diapason, pages 12–17.

Introduction

Based on correspondence in Barbara Owen’s and Charles Callahan’s books, we learned in the previous issue that it was Alexander Schreiner who, as the Tabernacle organ was nearing completion, asked G. Donald Harrison to have his name appear on the console in addition to the standard company nameplate. Harrison obliged by providing an ivory plate with a facsimile of his signature along with the opus number and date. In the ensuing years until his death in 1956 Harrison continued the practice of signing some organs built by Aeolian-Skinner with which he was personally involved.

Before identifying and commenting on those signature organs, a list which continues this month, I showed the progression of Harrison’s tonal ideas in the years leading up to the Tabernacle organ, based on his own words in letters to various of his associates and friends contained in Callahan’s books. In particular, GDH related that the organ for the Groton School was a turning point in the development of his tonal theories, and he considered it the smaller companion to the Tabernacle design. Also cited are several examples of both Harrison’s and Schreiner’s assessments of the Tabernacle organ in the years immediately following its completion.

Following the list of signature organs in this issue, I also comment on some organs built prior to the Tabernacle organ containing GDH’s signature plate and, assuming the Tabernacle organ to be the first organ GDH signed, I offer details as to their relative importance in the company trajectory. There follows commentary about significant Aeolian-Skinner organs of the era that do not contain Harrison’s signature, and then some brief commentary on the organs built in the era of Joseph S. Whiteford and the company’s final years.

In enumerating and commenting on the signature organs, the list and details are complete and accurate so far as I know. I have played many of the organs, but not all. I imagine there are signature organs of which I am unaware. For example, since beginning work on this article I learned via a Facebook page devoted to G. Donald Harrison and the American Classic Organ that the organ in the Worcester Art Museum bears a GDH signature plate. There likely are others, and I would be glad to hear from those with knowledge of them, preferably with documentation, and from those with additional commentary to what I provide here. Communications may be sent through the editor. Who knows, there may be an addenda or part 3 in the future!

Opus 1149: New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., 1948.

The first organ for this congregation was built by Hutchings, Plaisted, & Co. in 1873 for the original church. This was later rebuilt by John Brown and later still by Ernest M. Skinner & Son of Methuen. In 1948, the church signed a contract with Aeolian-Skinner for additions to the existing instrument, and in 1951 another contract was signed as Opus 1149-A for a rebuilding and re-installation in the present church.²⁹

This organ, now gone, was a very beautiful example of Aeolian-Skinner’s sound, even though it was of modest content and pedigree. My teacher, William Watkins, was the organist of the church at the time each contract was completed, and he and Joseph S. Whiteford did the work together on a very modest budget. Whiteford was a native Washingtonian, and he and Watkins were good friends; this was at about the time Whiteford became Harrison’s assistant at Aeolian-Skinner.

At the time, the church was famous for the preaching ministry of the Reverend Dr. Peter Marshall, who was also the chaplain of the United States Senate. Watkins at that time was a prominent concert organist, and he provided a serious program of organ music at services. The church maintained a choir of 100 singers directed by Charles Dana Beaschler. Watkins told me that he simply asked Harrison to sign the organ when they moved into the new church. At the time Watkins was probably the best-known organist in the country aside from Virgil Fox, his teacher. The organ as it turned out was entirely worthy of the Aeolian-Skinner legacy, but GDH had nothing to do with it personally. He complied with the request solely on the strength of his associations with Whiteford and Watkins. So, if it happened here, it likely happened in other places—an important clue when considering criteria that may have influenced Harrison’s decision to sign an organ.

By the time I knew the organ as a substitute in the early 1970s the signature plate had disappeared, though the screw holes where it had been were clearly visible. When the church eventually obtained a new console and made some additions during the tenure of Wesley Parrott, a replacement signature plate was made and affixed to the new console.

Opus 1150: Annie Merner Chapel of MacMurray College, Jacksonville, Illinois, 1952.

Robert Glasgow taught here before he went to the University of Michigan, and the organ was installed early in his tenure. He praised the organ in his address to the American Classic Organ Symposium in 1988. The college closed in May 2020, and the fate of the organ is still being determined.

Opus 1173: First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas, 1949.

This organ was a rebuild of a 1935 M. P. Möller, and it retained much of the pipework and structure, as well as three complete stops from the previous Henry Pilcher’s Sons organ. Nevertheless, it became one of the company’s most successful and best-known organs.

It was used for examples supporting GDH’s narration in Volume I of King of Instruments, and in Volume II played by Roy Perry, the organist of the church for forty years and one of Aeolian-Skinner’s most successful representatives and finishers. Two tracks were also played by William Watkins on Volume II, although he was identified ignominiously as the “staff organist,” owing to union regulations at the time. Volume X featured Opus 1173 in a complete issue entitled “Music for the Church,” featuring works for choir and organ. The only organ piece on the album was Bruce Simonds’s Prelude on Iam sol recedit igneus played by Roy Perry, who also played all of the choral accompaniments.

The cover photo of the new Trompette-en-Chamade for Opus 1173 was used for the first time on Volume X and continued to be featured in company brochures and other volumes of the King of Instruments series, becoming something of an Aeolian-Skinner icon. The company claimed that the stop was the first such built in America.

Opus 1174: First Baptist Church, Longview, Texas, 1951.

This organ provides an interesting contrast to its slightly older sister organ in Kilgore in that it was a completely new organ designed by Harrison for the new church, has not been altered or added to, and was placed in a strikingly modern, large edifice designed with the organ’s success in mind at the outset. The nave of the church is 92 feet high at the peak of the ceiling, and it seats 1,700 persons. The church’s pastor, the Reverend Dr. W. Morris Ford, was the driving force in both the building of the new church and the organ, and for many years thereafter musical events of significant proportions were included in the church’s program. The leading organists of the day, including Virgil Fox and Catharine Crozier, played there. An article about this organ appeared in the June 1954 issue of The American Organist stating:

Catharine Crozier made tape-recordings during the 1952 Christmas holidays for two L.P. discs [on the Kendall label]; Harold Gleason says Longview beats anything he has heard in Europe.

Opus 150-A: Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York City, 1953.

This organ is justly famous and needs little introduction, except to note that it used significant portions of the original instrument, one of Ernest Skinner’s early successes, especially structural components and orchestral stops. The organ has many unique attributes, and its success draws in large part from Harrison’s experience prior to his coming to the United States, when he worked closely with Willis on the organ in Liverpool Cathedral, a building approaching the size of St. John the Divine. For example, letters by GDH tell that in some stops the pipes for the individual notes are doubled, even tripled in the treble ranks, and that for the first time in many years Aeolian-Skinner built and voiced completely new Tuba stops for the organ.

An amusing story from the canon of oral tradition tells of Norman Coke-Jephcott, organist of the cathedral during the planning stages, and GDH visiting after dinner at Coke-Jephcott’s club in the presence of others, when Harrison asked “Cokie” if he had given any thought to what they might name the newly designed special trumpet stop at the west end of the cathedral. Cokie said that he really had not, so Harrison asked him how he planned to use it. Cokie said, “Well . . ., I suppose for state occasions.”

That is how this famous stop, voiced by Oscar Pearson on fifty inches of wind pressure, came to be called the State Trumpet. It was a major departure from the two previous horizontal reeds Aeolian-Skinner built for Opus 1173 and Opus 1208, which were essentially standard Trompette Harmonique designs voiced on moderate pressure, but mounted horizontally.

The cathedral organ is featured on Volume I of the King of Instruments in examples played by Joseph Whiteford to accompany Harrison’s narration. The instrument is again featured on Volume VI in a program played by Alec Wyton, who had recently been appointed organist of the cathedral, and on Volume VIII, played by his predecessor, Norman Coke-Jephcott.

Opus 825-A: St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire, 1953.

Opus 1196: Covenant Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1949.

This was a completely new four-manual organ for the new church building of this flagship congregation of the denomination. Richard Peek was the organist at the time, and he and his wife, Betty, directed the music here for over forty years.

Opus 1200: New England Conservatory, Boston, Massachusetts, 1949.

Originally displayed at the 1950 American Guild of Organists convention in Boston, this experimental organ saw many years of use in a studio at the conservatory. The console has three plates on it, and students recall that in addition to the company nameplate and the GDH signature plate, there was a plate identifying its use at the convention. The organ is now owned privately.

Opus 1201: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Mount Kisco, New York, 1952.

A new three-manual organ of classic design was installed in casework designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, architect of the church, which contained the former instrument. The organ featured a divided Swell division, such as was first used in one of Ernest White’s studio organs at St. Mary the Virgin in New York City, and later at Christ Church, Bronxville, New York, Opus 1082. The Positiv division is suspended from the ceiling at the entrance to the side chapel, across the chancel from the main organ. Edgar Hilliar, organist of the church from 1948 until 1984, directed much of the design, and he recorded a complete program for Volume IV of the King of Instruments series.

Opus 1208: St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, New York City, 1951.

At the time the organ was installed, St. Philip’s was one of the largest Episcopal churches in the country and was a significant religious and political presence among the many churches in Harlem. The organ was a rebuild of the former 1943 Hillgreen-Lane organ of three manuals, reusing the console. It featured the company’s second Trompette-en-Chamade, which is similar in appearance to the one for Opus 1173 in Kilgore, Texas, except St. Philip’s is at the west end of the church.

Opus 1216: First Methodist Church, Tacoma, Washington, 1953.

Since relocated to First Baptist Church, Seattle, Washington.

Opus 1235: St. John Lutheran Church, Forest Park, Illinois, 1954. 

Photographs of the stopjambs of this organ were used as the cover of company brochures in the 1960s. The Positiv was prepared for at the time and later added by Berghaus Organ Company to a design somewhat different than the original.

Opus 968-B: Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1955.

This was a large, four-manual organ of over 100 ranks with obvious Harrison attributes. The instrument also included an English organ from 1785 built by Samuel Green that had been donated to the church, made playable as a division of the organ. The unenclosed divisions were placed in a shallow gallery surrounding the Green organ over the altar, while the enclosed divisions were in attic chambers, including an Antiphonal division in the tower. The organ was an anachronism in the Colonial-era church, but it was very effective and saw much varied use in recitals several times a week for the many tourists who flocked to Williamsburg. The organ was replaced in 2019 by Dobson Pipe Organ Builders Opus 96.

Opus 1257: Winthrop College, Rock Hill, South Carolina, 1955.

Opus 1265: The Temple, Atlanta, Georgia, 1954.

Emilie Spivey, the organist of The Temple, commissioned Harrison to rebuild the 1931 Henry Pilcher’s Sons organ that had been installed in the new edifice. The new organ retained twenty-two ranks from the Pilcher. Virgil Fox was the consultant.

Opus 1275: Cathedral Church of All Saints, Albany, New York, 1953.

This is a rebuild of a 1904 Austin Organ Company instrument, retaining the console and some of the chests and pipework. There is a signature plate indicating that Harrison was responsible for the Great and Positiv divisions, and another indicating that Whiteford finished the Swell and Choir.

Opus 724-A: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1956.

Significant structural portions and the three-manual console were retained from the previous organ, but little of the previous pipework was used in this rebuild, which was in the factory simultaneous with Opus 205-A for St. Thomas Church in New York City. Inasmuch as Harrison died while finishing the organ in St. Thomas, this organ may justly be identified as the last organ personally finished by G. Donald Harrison. Designed and installed during the tenure of Thomas Dunn, certain aspects of the unusual design and stop nomenclature have been attributed to him. The original Aeolian-Skinner nameplate and GDH signature plate were stolen, and the present console contains replacements.

Over the years, during the long tenure of Richard Alexander, additions to the organ included a new four-manual console built by Austin and several vintage Skinner stops, which were placed in the large ceiling chamber toward the front of the nave where most of the original Skinner organ had been located. A new Grand Choeur division built by Schoenstein was also added.

Opus 205-A: St. Thomas Church, New York, New York, 1956.

Much has been written about this famous organ, and it has become the fodder of legend, beginning with the fact that G. Donald Harrison died on the evening of June 14, 1956, after spending a day of tonal finishing on the organ as it neared completion, working against the clock to have it ready for the American Guild of Organists national convention a few weeks later. There was a subway strike in New York at the time, and GDH could not get a taxi, so he walked several blocks in extreme heat to the apartment he and his wife maintained on Third Avenue. Upon arriving home he felt poorly, but after dinner he relaxed and felt better. As he was watching Victor Borge on the television, he threw his head back roaring in laughter—and died of a sudden heart attack.

Many alterations were made to the organ over the years beginning in the late 1960s when the organ was barely a decade old. Toward the end of Gerre Hancock’s tenure he retrofitted nameplates on the right stop jamb documenting the provenance of the organ: The Ernest M. Skinner Co., Boston; Aeolian-Skinner; and Gilbert Adams. He also placed a GDH signature plate under the bottom manual near the General Cancel button.

Marcel Dupré made two stereo recordings for the Mercury Living Presence series of LPs in 1958, which assured the organ of a place in the annals of Aeolian-Skinner history. Private recordings of rehearsals and concerts by Marie-Madeleine Duruflé, Alexander Boggs Ryan, and Garnell Copeland made on the organ before the long series of alterations have recently been remastered and made available as CDs, the latter two of which are found on the Aeolian-Skinner Legacy series of recordings obtainable through the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival.

Signature organs prior to Opus 1075

Several organs built prior to the Salt Lake Tabernacle Opus 1075 also have a Harrison signature plate affixed to the console. Assuming that the Tabernacle organ was the first that Harrison signed as Barbara Owen states (see endnote #1), the exact circumstances of the placements of signatures on these pre-existing organs are subjects of further conjecture and add another layer of mystique to a subject that is inherently somewhat esoteric and imprecise.

The trajectory of Harrison’s organs culminating in the Tabernacle organ design has already been traced. That some of these organs were later given Harrison’s signature is entirely logical, as they contain many design precedents found in the Tabernacle organ that led Alexander Schreiner to ask Harrison to sign it in the first place. In that Harrison and Aeolian-Skinner later made alterations to some of these organs, it is likely that GDH himself directed his signature plate to be affixed at that time. In others the provenance is less obvious, and the exact logistics regarding their placement may be details consigned to the ages. I have attempted only to document what I know to have been in place at the time of this writing or at some point in the past. It is not difficult to fabricate these signature plates, and in several instances where the original nameplates have been stolen or broken, replacement replicas have been made available with relative ease.

Nora Williams told the story of someone in the console engraving department who would routinely make keychain fobs out of Harrison signature plates to hand out to workers and friends! So, the mystique continues.

Opus 909-A: All Saints Episcopal Church, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1933, 1940–1949.

The organ was recorded for Volume XI of the King of Instruments series played by Henry Hokans, the organist of the church at the time.

Opus 910-A: Grace Episcopal Cathedral, San Francisco, California, 1933, 1952.

Richard Purvis played a program of his compositions for Volume V of King of Instruments, although he was identified simply as “staff organist.”

Opus 927: Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven, Connecticut, 1935, 1949.

Opus 932-A: Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis, Tennessee, 1935, 1952.

Harrison’s professional correspondence mentions his traveling to Memphis to work on the organ. Adolf Steuterman was the long-time organist of Calvary Church, a respected musician in that city, and was friendly with GDH.

Opus 936: St. John’s Chapel, Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts, 1935, 1945–1962.

The organ was featured for Volume VII of King of Instruments, played by Marilyn Mason.

Opus 940: Episcopal Church of the Advent, Boston, Massachusetts, 1935, 1964.

Opus 1024: University of Texas at Austin, Recital Hall, Austin, Texas, 1941.

This was a large, four-manual organ for the recital hall in the new music building, containing the usual four manual divisions, plus a Positiv, Bombarde, and floating String organ. A new console was provided in 1965 as Opus 1024-A, which does not contain a Harrison signature plate. The organ has since been installed in a new church building for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Amarillo, Texas, which has been widely documented on video, and a signature plate is not on it.

However, in a letter to Brock Downward for his dissertation about Harrison, E. William Doty, professor emeritus and long-time organ teacher at the university, wrote that:

After the College of Fine Arts had been in existence for two years, the Board of Regents authorized the construction of a music building plus an organ to go in the recital hall . . . . Its acoustics were designed by C. C. Potwin of Electrical Research Corporation. He was recommended by Paul Boner, UT Professor of Physics, who was one of several consultants on the building and the organ. Ned Gammons of Christ Church, Houston, now at Groton School was another consultant whose ideas on design were incorporated . . . . In my judgement [sic] G. Donald Harrison was the greatest artist tonal designer of the first half of this century and we are very proud that he signed the University of Texas organ because in his judgement it was one of his best.³⁰

So, the mystique continues, but there is no doubt that this organ in its new home is a success and probably far exceeds its effectiveness in its original location according to those who knew it then, including Gerre Hancock who studied on it with Doty when he was a student at the university.

Opus 1036: Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1942.

Conclusions

Beginning with the Groton organ in 1935, which Harrison himself identified as a turning point in his design of the Classic organ, it is a fairly straightforward task to identify further similar designs throughout the 1930s and 1940s leading up to the Tabernacle organ in 1945—and from thence to others in a similar trajectory, which GDH himself then signed, up until his death in 1956. Even so, if one were listening to a variety of the company’s instruments during this period, whether signed or not, there is no foolproof, obvious, definite distinction. Similarly, from a technical standpoint there are no absolute defining attributes or “smoking gun” signals that separate an organ that GDH signed from one he did not. They each bear a family resemblance in sight and sound, and some may be said to be more effective than others for any number of tangible and intangible reasons. It is, however, a given assumption that these signature organs are considered to be the best of the best that the company built.

In addition to tonal and technical attributes, however, there is another intangible aspect to the signature question that, from a purely scientific standpoint, is difficult to precisely define. Given the uniform tonal success of each of the signature organs along GDH’s developing Classic designs, I feel certain that, when all is said and done, Harrison’s reason for signing an organ also represented some very personal, quiet tribute of his own bestowing—some personal affinity GDH had for the way a particular job turned out, occasioned by its design and outcome together with perhaps some pleasant personal association with the incumbent, such as clearly was the case with Opus 1149 in Washington. Or perhaps there was the sense of a successful achievement that involved working with a collaborator on the job that reminded Harrison of his association with Schreiner and the outcome of the Tabernacle organ. There may have been some personal affinity that prompted Harrison to pronounce his own benediction on the job. And Philip Steinhaus’s letter to William Self at the outset of part 1 of this article confirms that the signature organs represent jobs with which Harrison was “deeply and personally involved.”

There certainly are wide varieties of styles to the signature organs, located in places humble and impressive, sizes small and large. Most of them are complete organs of GDH’s sole design that echo his aspirations for the Tabernacle organ, although there are obvious exceptions that contain significant portions of other builders’ work. Some signature organs are rather straightforward manifestations placed in ideal locations, and some are very unusual schemes or are the result of challenging layouts and unusual engineering solutions, such as Opus 1201 in Mount Kisco.

Some scholars and historians have posited that signature organs contain only pipework designed and finished by G. Donald Harrison. However, there are several examples that clearly suggest otherwise, such as the Washington and Kilgore organs cited previously, but also Opus 1265 at the Temple in Atlanta, Opus 1275 for the Cathedral in Albany, Opus 1208 in Harlem, Opus 1134 for Symphony Hall in Boston, and the various rebuilds of original Skinner organs that are indicated by the suffix letter “A” following the original opus number.

It is also very interesting to consider some important Aeolian-Skinner organs that were not signed by Harrison, including two of the company’s most famous: The Mother Church in Boston (Opus 1203 in 1949, the largest single organ produced by the company) and The Riverside Church in New York (Opus 1118, 1947–1955). Each is a very large, beautiful organ, in a prominent church in a major city, containing many singular attributes associated with Harrison and the American Classic Organ movement. Each possesses a sound that is unmistakable as being from Aeolian-Skinner of the era. However, each of these landmark organs was designed under the significant influence of others—in this case Lawrence Phelps and Virgil Fox, respectively. That is, their design inception was just the opposite of Opus 1075 for the Salt Lake Tabernacle where GDH was given a free hand and charged at the outset to build the organ as he saw fit. So it seems likely that GDH may not have been moved to sign organs so closely associated with others, even though they were still built by Aeolian-Skinner.

In neither case, though, can it be said that Harrison or the company in any way denigrated these organs or regarded them with less favor than the signature organs. The organ in The Mother Church was featured twice in the King of Instruments series of recordings (Volumes IX and XIII) and in reissues. GDH was quick to praise the sounds that Virgil Fox got from the Riverside organ when writing to Willis about it. When Harrison died suddenly in 1956, Virgil Fox immediately offered to play for his funeral—though in the end the small service at St. Mary’s Church in Hampton Bays, Long Island, had no music whatsoever.

The large organ formerly in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston, Massachusetts, was not signed by Harrison, for the presumed same reason, that it was the result of the collaborative design of Ned Gammons of the Groton School and George Faxon, the organist of the church. Yet, the organ contains all of the hallmarks of the American Classic movement—lavishly so in fact, and it was featured in the first two volumes of King of Instruments. There appears to be no obvious hints of pettiness or retribution in Harrison’s decisions regarding jobs that he did not sign.

St. Mark’s Church in Philadelphia is yet another example of a large, prominent organ in a notable urban parish church with the same Harrison tonal attributes as contained in its contemporary sister organs in Advent in Boston and Groton, yet it was not signed by Harrison. We know that Harrison and/or Aeolian-Skinner later made significant alterations at both Advent and Groton, and it is easy to readily assume that GDH, or someone else, added the signature plates at that time. If that be the case, it is ironic that St. Mark’s, which has received no substantive alterations, does not bear Harrison’s signature, while the other two that have been altered do!

Harder to document are instances where there exists a beautiful example of Harrison’s work without the signature, and where it is known that GDH had difficult dealings in some aspect of the job with representatives of the church and/or the incumbent organist. I personally know of a couple of likely candidates for that scenario—but it is hard to substantiate, there is little to be gained by “outing” a church in this way, and in the end it is of little consequence, except that in the process these places are permanently deprived of the intangible benefit of Harrison’s privately bestowed, yet very obvious public stamp of approval for all to see as the years pass by.

For the researcher, and especially for the player, the presence of the Harrison signature plate on the console suggests an invitation to simply consider the organ on another level, to check the organ’s provenance and files, to try to see who was behind a given project, and attempt to discover the lines of continuity between Harrison and the project, further appreciating the music the organ produces in that light. In providing commentary on the signature organs, I have been able to dig deeper in some cases than others, and in no way do I present this monograph as the end of the story on this topic.

Aeolian-Skinner after Harrison

In the years after Harrison’s death, Joseph Whiteford continued the practice of placing his nameplate on many organs, but to my knowledge it was never in the form of his signature. Although I have not researched it carefully, it also appears that a larger percentage of the company’s total output during Whiteford’s tenure as tonal director received his nameplate. Of course, the total number of organs the company built continued to decrease as the 1960s led inexorably to the company’s sad denouement in 1972.

Much has been written, and even more spoken, about Aeolian-Skinner’s demise. Twenty-five years after the company closed, Michael Gariepy, who had been on the company’s technical staff, wrote:

There were four “coffin nails” which sealed the fate of Aeolian-Skinner—

1. The death of G. Donald Harrison;

2. The Southeast Expressway, which split the operation in two;

3. The departure of Joseph Whiteford from the company;

4. The move to Randolph; such were the disruptions caused by relocating the company that it took six months to return to “normal” operational efficiency.³¹

There is no doubt that Harrison’s prestige brought credit and contracts to the company, and his death is generally thought to have been the beginning of its end—and that may be so. But there is every indication, including Dun & Bradstreet reports, that Aeolian-Skinner was never in a favorable financial position following World War II and its attendant inflation. Joseph Whiteford clearly was not the typical career “organ man” that Harrison had been. There is no doubt that many of the old-timers in the company did not resonate to his patrician ways and may have lacked confidence in his leadership. But in the post-Harrison years Joseph Whiteford designed some impressive organs, including those for the symphony orchestras in New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. And under his successor Donald Gillett’s direction, Aeolian-Skinner built the organ in the new Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington.

Many “Hail Mary” attempts were made to keep the company afloat in its closing days, and there were valiant attempts to adapt to the changing times and tastes, such as moving to a more economical and efficient factory outside of Boston and introducing tracker-action organs. Roy Perry told me that Martin Wick seriously pursued the idea of purchasing Aeolian-Skinner and moving it to Texas, with Roy as tonal director. Martin said he had no trouble building Chevrolets in one factory and Cadillacs in another! But his board did not go along with the idea. In the end it was all too little, too late.

Having played many organs designed by G. Donald Harrison, Joseph Whiteford, and Donald Gillett over my entire professional career, I feel that many of Aeolian-Skinner’s organs built since 1956 are very beautiful indeed and are landmarks easily on a par with some of those the company built under Harrison. It is prescient to read what Emerson Richards said about Joseph Whiteford when he wrote to Henry Willis shortly after Harrison’s death:

I think that he [Whiteford] has more ability than he is given credit for but he is impatient and for some reason does not inspire confidence—just why I cannot say.³²

In considering Aeolian-Skinner after Harrison’s death, Charles Callahan’s sage advice in the introductory material to his second book is still worthy of consideration:

The pendulum of taste and opinion is constantly in motion. Caught up in the enthusiasms of a particular moment in time, it is all too easy for anyone to belittle others’ achievements. Perhaps Joseph
Whiteford and his work are overdue for a fair assessment.³³

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Charles Callahan, William Czelusniak, Allen Harris, Douglass Hunt, Allen Kinzey, and Larry Trupiano in the preparation of this article.

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.

29. Allen Kinsey and Sand Lawn, comp., E. M. Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner Opus List (Richmond, Virginia: Organ Historical Society, 1997), 152.

30. E. William Doty to Brock W. Downward, December 14, 1974. Downward diss., 97.

31. Michael Gariepy to Charles Callahan, February 9, 1996, Callahan, Aeolian-Skinner Remembered, 372.

32. Emerson Richards to Henry Willis III, July 12, 1956. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 433.

33. Callahan, Aeolian-Skinner Remembered, xvi.

Bibliography

Alexander, Richard. “A Survey of the Pipe Organs Designed by G. Donald Harrison.” Master’s thesis, Yale University, School of Music, 1970.

Barnes, William Harrison. The Contemporary American Organ. 8th ed. Glen Rock, NJ: J. Fisher & Bro., 1964.

Berry, Ray, Seth Bingham, Charles M. Courboin, Everett Titcomb, Ernest White, William Self, Alec Wyton, George Faxon, Robert Baker. “G. Donald Harrison, 1889–1956: A Tribute to a Great Man.” The American Organist, vol. 39, no. 7 (July 1956): 230–231.

Bethards, Jack. “The Tabernacle Letters: The Story of the Salt Lake Organ in the Words of G. Donald Harrison and Alexander Schreiner.” The Diapason, vol. 81, nos. 6–8 (June 1990: 14–17; July 1990: 8–9; August 1990: 10–11).

______ . “The 1988 Renovation—A Builder’s Perspective.” The American Organist, vol. 22, no. 12 (Dec. 1988): 71–78. [re: the renovation of the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ].

Blanton, Joseph Edwin. The Organ in Church Design. Albany, TX: Venture Press, 1957.

Buhrman, T. Scott. “Arthur Hudson Marks.” The American Organist, vol. 22 (June 1939).

Callahan, Charles. The American Classic Organ: A History in Letters. Richmond, VA: The Organ Historical Society, 1990.

______ . Aeolian-Skinner Remembered: A History in Letters. Minneapolis: Randall Egan, 1996.

Cundick, Robert. “The 1988 Renovation—An Organist’s Perspective.” The American Organist, vol. 22, no. 12 (Dec. 1988): 79–80.

Downward, Brock W. “G. Donald Harrison and the American Classic Organ.” D.M.A. diss., Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY, 1976.

Fesperman, John. Two Essays on Organ Design. Raleigh, NC: The Sunbury Press, 1975.

Harrison, G. Donald. “Organ,” in Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944.

______ . “Slider Chests?” The Organ Institute Quarterly, 3 (Summer 1953).

______ , and Emerson L. Richards. “Chorus Reeds, French, English, and American.” The American Organist, vol. 24, nos. 4–7 (April 1941: 107–108; May 1941: 141–143; June 1941: 172–174; July 1941: 203–204).

Kehl, Roy. “The American Classic Symposium in Salt Lake City.” The Diapason, vol. 80, no. 5 (May 1989): 10–11.

King, John Hansen. “The King of Instruments.” The Diapason, vol. 94, no. 5, April 2003.

Kinsey, Allen, and Sand Lawn, comp. E. M. Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner Opus List. Richmond, VA: The Organ Historical Society, 1992, 1997.

Langord, Alan C. “Aeolian-Skinner: A Study in Artistic Leadership.” Bachelor’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1959.

Nies-Berger, Édouard. Albert Schweitzer As I Knew Him. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2003.

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

Richards, Emerson L. “Advent Organ in Boston.” The American Organist, vol. 19, no. 9 (September 1936): 304–307.

_______ . “An American Classic Organ Arrives.” The American Organist, vol. 26, no. 5 (May 1943): 104–108.

_______ . “Boston Symphony Hall’s Third Organ.” The American Organist, vol. 33, no. 1 (January 1950): 17–22.

_______ . “Curtis Institute’s New Organ.” The American Organist, vol. 25, no. 1 (January 1942): 10–14.

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

_______ . “100 Years of Organs in the Mormon Tabernacle.” The Diapason, vol. 58, no. 11 (November 1967): 19.

Zeuch, William E. “An Appreciation of the Work of G. Donald Harrison.” The American Organist, vol. 16, no. 9 (September 1933): 438–439.

About The American Organist magazine entries: for most of the twentieth century the official journal of the American Guild of Organists was The Diapason, independently owned, edited, and published in Chicago. Simultaneous with The Diapason was an organists’ journal titled The American Organist, published by T. Scott Buhrman in New York City. These two journals coexisted until 1967 when the AGO established its independent journal, initially titled MUSIC: The AGO/RCCO Magazine reflecting that it was the official journal of the American Guild of Organists and the Royal Canadian College of Organists. After Buhrman died in the 1960s his journal continued briefly, but it soon ceased operations. The AGO soon adopted the title The American Organist for their official magazine, but it is not in any way related to Buhrman’s magazine. In this bibliography the two 1988 entries referring to The American Organist refer to the magazine’s later iteration as the journal of the AGO.