Cover feature

Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Opus 32, St. Mark’s Episcopal
Church, St. Louis, Missouri
Designed by the architectural firm of Nagel & Dunn and built in 1938, St. Mark’s Church in the City of St. Louis is famous as an outstanding example of the Moderne style, noteworthy for its Art Deco detailing, including a complete set of stained glass windows designed by Robert Harmon and executed by Emil Frei Studios. The building, seating around 200, is shaped like a shoebox on its side and—surprisingly for a building of its size—has a reverberation period of around four seconds. The original organ, an 8-stop G. Donald Harrison Æolian-Skinner, Op. 979 of 1939, consisted entirely of principals and flutes. Though the plenum was very impressive for its size—Emerson Richards described it as “the biggest little organ in the world”—it had no strings, reeds, or solo stops, and the balances between the manuals were very poor. By the early 2000s it was in urgent need of restoration.
In deciding what to do about the organ, the congregation found itself faced with a serious difficulty. The choir loft, the only practical position for a pipe organ in the building, is extremely shallow, and in order for the choir and organist to be able to get up the stairs into the gallery, the depth of the organ at the level of the gallery floor had to be restricted to a little over four feet. Furthermore, the west window is an extremely fine one, and it was unthinkable that the organ should obscure it. This meant that although there was some room for expanding the Great and Pedal divisions of the Æolian-Skinner to include reeds, strings, and solo stops, there was no way that the Swell could ever be enlarged, and this in turn meant that any enlargement would result in an even more poorly balanced instrument than before. While the vestry was wondering what to do about this, the church was most fortunate to receive a substantial legacy from the late Ruth E. Proehl, making possible the replacement of the organ by an entirely new one.
In 2005 the vestry appointed an organ committee composed of my wife, the Rev. Dr. Lydia Agnew Speller, rector; Robert S. Mullgardt, organist and choirmaster; and seven others. No fewer than five organists were members of this committee, including one who was also an architect and another, me, who was also an organ builder. Though unusual, having a committee composed of so many extremely well-informed and opinionated individuals is something of a two-edged sword, and the vestry wisely appointed Barbara Owen to be the organ consultant so as to keep order. In practice, no referee was needed since, perhaps surprisingly, we found ourselves in remarkable harmony and agreement throughout—but we were glad to have Barbara Owen on the team, since her very practical advice proved to be an invaluable resource at many points in the process of selecting our new organ.
The organ committee made the decision quite early on to look for a mechanical action organ, and for the next two-and-a-half years members of the committee visited dozens of tracker-action instruments throughout Missouri, Kansas, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Tennessee. Our final choice fell upon Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders of Montreal, whose organs at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, and Second Presbyterian Church, Nashville, Tennessee, had impressed us as standing head-and-shoulders above any other instrument we visited. Juget-Sinclair proved an especially happy choice since Denis Juget, Stephen Sinclair, and the other members of their team showed themselves to be an exceptionally charming and interesting group of people with whom to work.
Juget-Sinclair came up with a brilliant solution to the church’s space problems. Like the old Æolian-Skinner, the new Juget-Sinclair organ is placed against the west wall of the church. By contrast with the old organ, a rather squat caseless organ that ran all the way across the church, the new instrument is divided in two cases, framing and showcasing Robert Harmon’s striking west window, The Massacre of the Innocents. The church is extremely lofty, and the new organ makes full use of the available height. Although the two cases are necessarily shallow at floor level, they are cantilevered out at impost level to accommodate a two-manual-and-pedal organ of twenty stops, more than we had thought possible.
The Grand-orgue occupies the south case above the impost, with the bellows beneath, and the Récit expressif occupies the north case, with the Pédale, including a full-length 16′ reed—which required a little mitering—underneath. The detached and terraced drawknob console is at the front of the gallery in the same position as the old one, and the trackers run under a new oak gallery floor between the console and the organ cases. The casework is of oiled solid quarter-sawn oak, with polished tin façade pipes drawn from the G.O. 8′ Montre and Pédale 8′ Principal. Much of the interior of the organ is also solid oak, as is most of the console, though the music desk is of burr maple inlaid with mahogany. The detailing of the console and cases makes use of Art Deco motifs found elsewhere in the building.
The church signed a contract with Juget-Sinclair at the end of 2007, and the installation and tonal finishing of the instrument took place between September and November 2009. The members of the Juget-Sinclair firm responsible for building Opus 32 were Robin Côté, François Couture, Dean Eckmann, Jean-Dominique Felx, Denis Juget, Céline Richard, Stephen Sinclair, and Jerome Veenendaal. The dedication took place at the Sunday Eucharist on November 22, when there was special music, and no fewer than six organists—all members of St. Mark’s—played the new organ.
The instrument has surpassed our wildest expectations. The many who have played it have included a number of very distinguished organists, and everyone who plays it comments on the excellent feel of the tracker action—personally I think it is the most comfortable organ I have ever played—and on how remarkable this is for a tracker with a detached console. Everyone also comments on the versatility of the organ, which though designed primarily with French Romantic repertoire in mind, manages also to be an excellent medium both for accompanying the Anglican liturgy and for playing Classical and Baroque organ music.
St. Mark’s is the third largest organ that the Juget-Sinclair firm has built. In spite of the less than perfect acoustics of their buildings, the two larger Juget-Sinclair organs at Wellesley (Op. 24) and Nashville (Op. 26) are both remarkable instruments. At St. Mark’s, however, equally fine tonal design and voicing design is coupled with excellent acoustics, resulting in a stunning sound such as might be expected from an instrument two or three times its size.
One Sunday morning a week or two after the organ was completed, I walked into the church and heard the strains of Bob Mullgardt playing the Franck
A-minor Choral. I did a double take. Was this St. Mark’s or was I listening to St. Sulpice? To help them in planning future instruments, the organ builders asked us to give them any feedback of an unfavorable kind coming from organists who play the St. Mark’s organ. So far we have been unable to oblige, since all the comments have been favorable.
A concert series featuring the new instrument was inaugurated with a dedicatory recital of music by William H. Harris, César Franck, W. A. Mozart,
J. S. Bach, Guy Bovet, and Marcel Dupré, given by Clive Driskill-Smith of Christ Church, Oxford, England, on April 18, 2010. If anyone would like to visit the organ, the organist and choirmaster, Bob Mullgardt, is always happy to welcome organists and others who contact him beforehand through the church office (314/832-3588).
—John L. Speller

Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders,
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Opus 32, St. Mark’s Episcopal
Church, St. Louis, Missouri
20 stops, 23 ranks

Grand-orgue C–a3, 58 notes
8′ Montre
8′ Flûte à cheminée
4′ Prestant
4′ Flûte ouverte
2′ Doublette
11⁄3′ Fourniture IV
8′ Trompette

Récit expressif C–a3, 58 notes
8′ Bourdon
8′ Viole de gambe
8′ Voix céleste (TC)
4′ Principal
4′ Flûte douce
22⁄3′ Nazard
2′ Doublette
13⁄5′ Tierce
8′ Basson-Hautbois

Pédale C–-f1, 30 notes,
radiating and concave
16′ Soubasse
8′ Principal
4′ Octave
16′ Trombone

II/I I/P II/P
Tremblant Récit

Mechanical key action, electric stop action
1/9-syntonic comma temperament
Balanced swell pedal
Cuneiform bellows
3 inches wind pressure
10 General pistons, thumb and toe
6 thumb pistons to G.O.
6 thumb pistons to Récit
4 toe pistons to Pédale
Reversible pistons for the unison couplers, thumb and toe
Sequencer “forward” and “back” pistons, thumb and toe
General Cancel thumb piston
Combination Setter thumb piston
Solid-state combination action with 400 levels of memory
Photo credit: Stephen Sinclair

Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders,
Montréal, Québec, Canada
Hatsudai Catholic Church,
Tokyo, Japan
Installed in the loft at the back of the nave, the instrument is of 17 stops on two 58-note manual divisions (Grand Orgue and Récit expressif) and a 30-note Pédale division. Only the Grand Orgue is visible from the nave; the Récit expressif is behind the Grand Orgue and the Pédale is situated beneath the Récit on floor level. Some details of its composition and construction, with its oak casework and round towers, suggest a post-classical French inspiration, but our principal guide is really our own mechanical aesthetic. Pipe scales and construction methods are not based on specific historical examples, but are our own; they are a synthesis of our experience as organbuilders and an expression of ourselves.
Some aspects of the instrument, however, are more often associated with the romantic organ. In the treble range, stops were voiced with increasing power and—in the case of the Grand Orgue principals—wider scale. The disposition of both manual divisions on one level favors the blending of the 8' voices. In the Récit expressif, the Salicional 8' and the Principal 4' have tuning slots, which give a penetrating timbre and enough power to project from within the swell box. The Bourdon 8' has a second slider, called Bourdon Céleste, which de-tunes the pipes to create a celeste effect when drawn with the Salicional. The Cornet has been broken down into its component ranks for the sake of flexibility. Separately, the mutations offer a myriad of colors. Used together, they give the Cornet a meaty quality, rendered more acidic when the Principal 4' replaces the Flûte 4'. The Hautbois 8' is lyrical and blends well with the 8' flue stops. The limited size of the Pédale division places increased importance on the success of each stop. The Principal 8' speaks quickly throughout, punctuating the bass line. Due to the favorable acoustics of the church, the basses did not have to be forced, speaking naturally and gently enough for more subtle registrations and gaining power as more stops are drawn.
—Denis Juget, Stephen Sinclair

Grand Orgue
8' Montre
8' Flûte à cheminée
4' Prestant
4' Flûte
2' Doublette
Fourniture III
8' Trompette

Récit expressif
8' Salicional
8' Bourdon
8' Bourdon Céleste (from Bourdon 8')
4' Principal
4' Flûte 4
22'3' Nazard
2' Flûte
13'5' Tierce
8' Hautbois
Tremblant doux

Pédale
16' Soubasse
8' Principal

Couplers II/I, I/P, II/P
58-note keyboards with boxwood naturals and ebony sharps
30-note flat pedalboard with rosewood sharps
All pipe bodies are thinned at the tops
Suspended key action, self-adjusting on manuals and pedal with pneumatic tensioners
Mechanical stop-action
White oak casework, with mortise and tenon construction, hand-planed and oiled
Hand-carved pipe shades
One cuneiform bellows

Schoenstein & Co.,
Benicia, California
Schermerhorn Symphony Center,

Nashville, Tennessee

Music City’s New Symphony Hall Organ
In its February 1982 issue, The Diapason published an article that challenged conventional wisdom. (See reprint of the article on pages 27–28 of this issue.) In it, Calvin Hampton made a convincing argument that an organ designed to be an instrument of the symphony orchestra must be radically different in many respects from a church organ or even a concert organ intended for solo use. A “normal” organ, even a fine one, could not pass his audition for symphony hall use. This really caught my attention. Since my background had included playing in and managing symphony orchestras, I was keenly aware of the uneasy relationship between orchestras and pipe organs. To managements, the organ was a headache. It used up too much space and too much money. Stagehands didn’t like the extra hassle of set-ups and working out quiet time for maintenance. Musicians didn’t like tuning to the organ or listening to its quinty mixtures and other thin, shrill sounds. Conductors never seemed satisfied with either the tone color or volume produced. Comments heard over and over again were: “I like that tone, can it be louder?” “Good balance, but I’d like a fuller, darker tone.” “Please(!)—keep with my beat!” The organist’s answers usually provoked frustrated and sometimes colorful comments about the inflexibility of the organ. The poor organist had even more problems than these: scarce rehearsal time, balance problems if the console was attached to the organ, poor sightlines if the console was on stage but too large or placed off in a corner.
The biggest problem of all was disappointment for the audience. The power of a modern symphony orchestra is so immense that most concert hall organs could not add to the drama of a fortissimo tutti. Against the gravity of the full orchestra, an ordinary organ can sound pathetically thin and upside down in balance, with trebles screaming out over the top of the ensemble. I had wondered for a long time why no one had attempted to solve all of these problems with an innovative approach. Calvin Hampton’s article gave me hope that someone would. About ten years later the tide began to turn. The musical issues were being addressed and many of them quite successfully. However, as a former instrumentalist and symphony manager, I thought that a more radical approach was needed.

Solving problems
Most of the behind-the-footlights practical problems can be solved by adopting an obvious, but, in some quarters, unpopular guideline: employ the fewest stops necessary to get the musical job done. This means an instrument that takes up less space, is less costly to purchase and more efficient to maintain. The case or chamber can be shallow for best tonal egress. Layout can be arranged for temperature—and thus tuning—stability; for example, all chorus work on one level, all reeds on one level. The console can be more compact, promoting sightlines and ease in setting and striking. The concept is easy enough to adopt, but what is that magic number of stops? What is the musical job to be done? How can we produce adequate power that will satisfy the audience?
First, it should be established that we are considering an instrument primarily for the Romantic and Modern repertoire. A properly equipped symphony hall should have one or two mechanical action stage organs to take care of the earlier repertoire. Previous experiments to include a “baroque” division with a small console as part of a large instrument have not been successful.
The primary use of the organ will be with orchestra. As a solo instrument, it might be used on occasion for choral accompaniment, silent movies as part of a pops series, and some special events. The solo organ recital has turned out to be a rarity in symphony halls. This is also true of other instrumental or vocal recitals. The reasons are simple: economics and scheduling.
If this musical job description is accurate, then an instrument in the size range proposed by Calvin Hampton (46 voices) would be ideal. Certainly any well-designed instrument of that size should also be able to render a very convincing recital program when needed. The key to a great performance is great tone, not great size.
If client and builder have the discipline to follow this Multum in Parvo plan rigorously, the question of tonal design becomes a matter of selecting stops that are absolutely essential and living without those that would be nice to have. Several classes of stops can be excluded with ease because they are duplicated in the symphony orchestra. Certainly there is no need for multiple strings and celestes or for orchestral reeds such as French Horn, English Horn, and Orchestral Oboe. The organ does not need items that would be considered necessities in a comprehensive church organ or in one specialized for some branch of the organ solo repertoire or for transcriptions.
What, then, are the elements that a symphony hall organ must have? Understanding what musical value the organ can add to the orchestra leads us to the answer. There are three characteristics of the organ that differentiate it very clearly from the orchestra. First, its frequency range is far greater. It can extend octaves below and above the orchestra. Extending the bass range has been the feature most appreciated by composers and orchestrators; however, increasing the treble range can be attractive, provided that it doesn’t get too loud! The second special characteristic of the organ is its unique tone—the diapason. This is a tone that cannot be produced by the orchestra and should, therefore, be the backbone of the organ when heard with the orchestra. The third element that should be most intriguing to composers is the organ’s ability to sustain indefinitely. This feature is most artistically displayed in connection with good expression boxes. A long, continuous diminuendo or crescendo can be most effective.

Four vital design points
Since there is a general understanding of basic organ tonal elements common to composers who write for orchestra as well as for the organ, a good symphony hall organ must include the minimum architecture of a normal three-manual traditional Romantic organ: diapason choruses and chorus reeds on each manual, representatives of stopped, open and harmonic flutes, a string with celeste, flute mutations, and the most common color reeds (Oboe, Clarinet, and Vox Humana). To make the organ capable of working in partnership with a modern symphony orchestra, the following tonal elements must be incorporated into this traditional scheme:
1. Profound Pedal. This is the most important element an organ can add to a symphony orchestra—bass one or two octaves below the double basses, bass tuba and contra bassoon. There must be at least one stop of such immense power that it will literally shake the floor. Stops of varying colors and dynamics with some under expressive control complete the Pedal.
2. Solo stops unique to the organ. These may be tones not found in the orchestra such as a diapason, stopped flute, and cornet or imitative stops that can be voiced at a power level not possible from their orchestral counterparts, such as solo harmonic flutes, strings, clarinets, and high pressure trumpets and trombas.
3. One soft stop capable of fading away to a whisper. Perhaps best in this role is a strongly tapered hybrid (or muted) stop.
4. An ensemble of exceptionally high power under expression. This cannot be raw power. It must be power with beauty, centered in the 8′ and 4′ range to give a sense of solidity and grandeur. Since symphony halls are generally drier acoustically than the typical organ and choral environment, it is even more important that this power be concentrated in the mid-frequency range and be of warm tonal character. The false sense of power created by excessive emphasis in high-pitched tones should be avoided. Orchestras don’t rely on a battery of piccolos for power, why should the organ? Piccolos can dominate an orchestra and so can mixtures, but that doesn’t make either effect beautiful. The kind of power needed comes from moderate to high wind pressures and stops voiced with rich harmonic content for good projection. Upperwork should be for tonal color rather than power. At least one diapason chorus should include a very high pitched mixture, a tone color unique to the organ, but it must not be loud. Eight-foot diapasons, chorus reeds, open flutes and strings should work together to create an ensemble capable of standing up to a full symphony orchestra. As someone who has sat in the midst of a symphonic brass section, I have a clear idea of the kind of power that is generated by trumpets, trombones and horns at fff. To compete without sounding shrill and forced requires high pressure diapasons and reeds, including a 32′ stop—all under expression to fit any situation.

Good tonal design must be supported by a mechanism that helps the organist solve all the performance problems mentioned above—an instrument that is as easy as possible to manage. The organ builder should employ every device at his command to give the organ musical flexibility so that it can take its place as an equal among the other instruments of the orchestra.

The Nashville project
We were given an opportunity to demonstrate the effectiveness of these ideas in our project for the Schermerhorn Symphony Center in Nashville. This was one of those projects that went smoothly from beginning to end, with everything falling into place and no road blocks in the way. Of the greatest importance to the success of this job was the client’s clear musical goal and realization that a really great organ can’t be all things to all people. We had a well-defined mission: to build an instrument that is a member of the orchestra. To this end we worked from the beginning with Andrew Risinger, organ curator and symphony organist and also organist/associate director of music at West End United Methodist Church in Nashville.
We were appointed, at the very beginning of the project, to the design team that included acoustician Paul Scarbrough of Akustiks in Norwalk, Connecticut and design architects David M. Schwarz, Architectural Services of Washington, D.C. I had worked with both as organ consultant for the Cleveland Orchestra in the renovation of Severance Hall and its E. M. Skinner organ. The design team, under the skillful management of Mercedes Jones, produced a hall that could not be more perfect from our point of view. Seating 1,872, it is beautiful in its traditional design, excellent proportions, and fine materials. It is of the traditional “shoebox” shape that everyone knows is perfect but that few architects are willing to employ. Since, under the direction of Paul Scarbrough, all of the traditional acoustical rules were followed, the result is, indeed, perfect.
Reverberation time is controlled by dampening material that may be added or subtracted at will. There is excellent balance, clarity, and pleasing resonance even in the lowest reverberation setting. With all dampening material lifted out of the way at the press of a button, the hall is ideal for most organ and choral repertoire. In addition, there is one very unusual and practical feature that has an added impact for the organ. The orchestra seating section can be converted to a flat open floor for pops concerts and special events. Most of the transformation is accomplished automatically through a labyrinth of gigantic machinery in the basement. The huge expanse of polished wood flooring adds significant reverberation. This feature also, interestingly enough, increases the usage of the organ. The hall is often rented for weddings. This is perhaps the only symphony hall organ in the world that has a reason to play the Mendelssohn and Wagner marches!
The organ is in an ideal position just above the choral risers at the rear of the stage. The casework was designed in close cooperation with the architectural team and Paul Fetzer whose company, Fetzer Architectural Woodwork of Salt Lake City, built the façade along with the other woodwork of the hall. It affords full tonal egress from the open front chamber behind it, which is shallow for accurate unforced projection. The organ is arrayed on three levels. Most flues are on the first level. Reeds, celestes, some flutes and offsets are on the second, and Pedal on the third, with the exception of the Trombone and Diaphone, which occupy a space extending all three levels. The bass octave of the 32′ Sub Bass is in a most unusual spot—located horizontally underneath the patron’s boxes to the left and right of the stage apron! These large scale pipes produce a soft 32′ tone that is felt as well as heard throughout the entire auditorium. The 32′ Trombone is in its own expression box, and the Swell includes our double-expression system, wherein the softest and most powerful voices are in a separate enclosure at the rear of the Swell with shades speaking into the Swell. The Vox Humana is in its own expression box inside the double expressive division of the Swell and so is, in effect, under triple expression. Accurate climate control has been provided, keeping the organ at constant humidity and temperature. The blower room in the basement has its own cooling system to neutralize the effects of blower heat build-up. Intake air is filtered.
The instrument employs our expansion cell windchests and electric-pneumatic action. This allows uniform, fast and silent action for all pipes no matter their pressure as well as easy console mobility and the borrowing of stops for maximum flexibility. Obviously borrowing is employed heavily in the Pedal, but it is also used on the Great, where the high pressure diapasons 8′ and 4′, string, stopped flute, Cornet and Solo reeds are all available independently. It also makes practical the extension of Pedal stops into the Solo and facilitates an interesting effect, the Tuben stop, which borrows the Swell reeds onto the Solo at unison pitch (Posaune up an octave at 8′ and Clarion down an octave at 8′ along with the 8′ Trumpet).
The console has the usual playing aids, but has been kept as simple and straightforward as possible to facilitate efficient rehearsals. There is a record-playback system—helpful for rehearsals and also for house tours; the playback mechanism can be remotely controlled by tour guides. With the press of a button they can start the blower and select a demonstration piece to be played for public tours, which are a popular attraction in Music City.

Tonal design
The two pillars of tone are diapasons and trumpets. The manual diapason choruses contrast in tonal color and power. The Swell chorus (Manual III) is based on a slotted 8′ Diapason of moderate power with a slightly tapered 4′ Principal and a 2′ Mixture, which is under double expression. The Great (Manual II) has a large scale 8′ Diapason with upperwork through 1⁄3′ Mixture and a slotted, smaller scale double. The Solo (Manual I) has the largest scale and most powerful chorus, all under expression and at 10″ pressure. Its mixture can be drawn with and without a tierce. The trumpets range from closed, tapered shallots on 10″ wind in the Swell to open parallel shallots on 5″ wind in the Great to open parallel shallots on 15″ wind in the Solo, where tromba-type tone is added by the Tubas and Trombone. Built around these pillars is an ensemble of stops with color, definition and sinew that project well to produce power in a manner similar to the orchestral instruments and centered at the orchestra’s pitch. Note that 64% of the stops are at 8′ and 4′ pitch. A most rewarding comment on this subject came after the opening concert in Nashville from the visiting executive director of one of the world’s leading orchestras, who remarked that he didn’t know that it was possible for an organ to be so powerful and at the same time so beautiful.
There are several special tonal features including a newly developed stop—the Diplophone. We wanted to include solo stops of heroic power from each family of tone. Our usual solo Gambas, Symphonic Flute (which employs five different types of pipe construction throughout its compass including double mouth and double harmonic pipes), Tibia Clausa, Corno di Bassetto and Tuba Magna represented the string, open flute, stopped flute, color reed, and chorus reed families, but we needed a solo diapason of equal power. We tested normal stentorphone pipes and then double-languid pipes without achieving the character of tone and power we were after. We then tried a double-mouth diapason. Mouths on either side of the pipe allow a greater mouth width than is possible with a single opening. This, combined with high pressure, produces tremendous power with smoothness and beauty. Finally, we included a powerful mounted Cornet (unusual for us) because it is a tone color completely outside the range of the orchestra and should offer interesting possibilities to contemporary composers.
For a stop that can fade away to nothing, we added our Cor Seraphique and Vox Angelique. These are very strongly tapered stops of the muted (or hybrid) variety. They are neither strings nor flutes and have a mysterious quality that is very attractive, with a harmonic structure that promotes projection when the Swell boxes are open, but is soft enough to disappear with both boxes closed. This stop is extended to 16′ to provide the same effect in the Pedal.
The Pedal includes all classes of tone at 16′ pitch: open wood, open metal, string, hybrid, stopped wood, and two different weights of chorus reed tone, both under expression. One of the most important 16′ voices is the Violone, which gives a prompt clear 16′ line to double and amplify the basses of the orchestra. The most unusual, and in some ways most important, stop of the organ is the 32′ Diaphone. Diaphones have a tone quality that ranges from a very dark, almost pure fundamental to a slightly reedy quality. Since this organ is equipped with a 32′ Trombone under expression, the Diaphone is voiced for pure fundamental tone of magnificent power. It produces more solid fundamental bass than a large open wood diapason and it speaks and releases promptly.
Our Pizzicato Bass stop, which gives a clean pointed bass line when added to other stops playing legato, is included because of its value in choral accompaniment. There is a special Sforzando coupler that is engaged only when the Sforzando lever, located above the swell shoes, is touched. It allows Solo stops to be momentarily added to the Great for accent. The Solo has a variable speed tremulant.

Installation and debut
The organ was installed in several phases, which went very smoothly due to the outstanding cooperation and support of the symphony staff, led by president and CEO Alan D. Valentine and general manager Mark F. Blakeman, as well as the excellent building contractors, American Constructors, Inc. The atmosphere was collegial and, yes, there is such a thing as southern hospitality. The casework, display pipes, blowers and large pedal pipes were installed in February–May 2006. We completed the mechanical installation of the organ during the summer of 2006. Tonal finishing was carried out during the summer of 2007. The leisurely and well-spaced schedule avoided the conflicts and last minute scrambles that usually cut tonal finishing time.
The organ was presented to the public at the opening night gala of the 2007–08 season with Leonard Slatkin, conductor, and Andrew Risinger, organist. The program included the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor, Duruflé Prelude and Fugue on the Name Alain, Barber Toccata Festiva, and the Saint-Saëns Symphony No. 3. It was recorded for broadcast on SymphonyCast. The exceptionally active Nashville chapter of the AGO has co-sponsored events starting with a lecture-demonstration evening and including the “International Year of the Organ Spectacular” recital featuring Vincent Dubois. The orchestra has presented several programs including a “Meet the Organ” demonstration for students, a “Day of Music” free to the community, a series of noontime recitals, and Thomas Trenney playing accompaniments to the silent films Phantom of the Opera at a Halloween program in 2007 and The Mark of Zorro in 2008. The organ has been used to accompany the symphony chorus in concert and also in several additional orchestra subscription concerts including works by Elgar and Respighi. The 2008–09 season has already presented Andrew Risinger in the Copland Symphony for Organ and Orchestra with new music director Giancarlo Guerrero conducting, the noon recital series continues, and more programs are on the way.
The instrument has been greeted with enthusiasm from the artistic staff of the orchestra and the musicians. The public has embraced it warmly and we look forward to the 2012 AGO convention, where it will be one of the featured instruments.
—Jack M. Bethards
President and Tonal Director
Schoenstein & Co.

On behalf of Louis Patterson, V.P. and Plant Superintendent; Robert Rhoads, V.P. and Technical Director (retired); Chuck Primich, Design Director; Mark Hotsenpiller, Head Voicer;
department heads Chet Spencer, Chris Hansford and Mark Harter;
and technicians David Beck, Filiberto Borbon, Peter Botto, Dan Fishbein, Oliver Jaggi, George Morten, Humberto Palma, Tom Roberts, Dan Schneringer, Patricia Schneringer, Donald Toney, William Vaughan and William Visscher.

Cover photo by Louis Patterson

Schoenstein & Co.

The Martin Foundation Organ
The Nashville Symphony Orchestra
Schermerhorn Symphony Center
Nashville, Tennessee
47 voices, 64 ranks
Electric-pneumatic action

GREAT – II (5″ wind)
16′ Double Open Diapason 61 pipes
8′ Diplophone (Solo)
8′ Grand Open Diapason (Solo)
8′ First Open Diapason 61 pipes
8′ Second Open Diapason 12 pipes
8′ Gamba (Solo)
8′ Tibia Clausa (Solo)
8′ Harmonic Flute 61 pipes
8′ Salicional (Swell)
8′ Bourdon (metal) 61 pipes
8′ Lieblich Gedeckt
(borrow with Bourdon bass)
8′ Cor Celeste II (Swell)
4′ Octave (Solo)
4′ Principal 61 pipes
4′ Lieblich Gedeckt 61 pipes
2′ Fifteenth 61 pipes
11⁄3′ Mixture IV 200 pipes
1⁄3′ Mixture III 146 pipes
8′ Trumpet 61 pipes
4′ Clarion 61 pipes
8′ Cornet V (Solo)
8′ Tuba Magna (Solo)
8′ Tuba (Solo)
8′ Corno di Bassetto (Solo)

SWELL – III (enclosed, 5″ wind)
16′ Lieblich Bourdon (wood) 12 pipes
8′ Open Diapason 61 pipes
8′ Stopped Diapason (wood) 61 pipes
8′ Echo Gamba 61 pipes
8′ Vox Celeste 61 pipes
8′ Salicional 49 pipes
(Stopped Diapason bass)
4′ Principal 61 pipes
4′ Harmonic Flute 61 pipes
22⁄3′ Nazard 61 pipes
2′ Harmonic Piccolo 61 pipes
13⁄5′ Tierce 54 pipes
8′ Oboe 61 pipes
Tremulant
Stops under Double Expression†
16′ Cor Seraphique 12 pipes
8′ Cor Seraphique 61 pipes
8′ Voix Angelique (TC) 49 pipes
2′ Mixture III–V 244 pipes
16′ Posaune 61 pipes
8′ Trumpet 61 pipes
4′ Clarion 61 pipes
8′ Vox Humana†† 61 pipes
†Flues and Vox 6″ wind; Reeds 11½″
††Separate Tremulant; separate expression box

SOLO – I (enclosed, 10″ wind)
8′ Grand Open Diapason 61 pipes
8′ Symphonic Flute† 61 pipes
8′ Gamba 61 pipes
8′ Gamba Celeste 61 pipes
4′ Octave 61 pipes
2′ Quint Mixture IV
2′ Tierce Mixture V 270 pipes
8′ Tuba† 61 pipes
8′ Harmonic Trumpet† 61 pipes
8′ Tuben III††
8′ Corno di Bassetto† 61 pipes
Tremulant
Tremulant (variable)
Unenclosed Stops
8′ Diplophone 29 pipes
(ext Pedal Open Wood)
8′ Tibia Clausa 29 pipes
(ext Pedal Sub Bass)
8′ Cornet V (TG, 5″ wind) 185 pipes
16′ Trombone 5 pipes
(ext Pedal Trombone)
8′ Tuba Magna† 61 pipes
†15″ wind
††Swell Posaune, Trumpet and Clarion at 8′ pitch

PEDAL (4½″, 5″, 7½″, 10″, 15″ wind)
32′ Diaphone 12 pipes
32′ Sub Bass 12 pipes
16′ Diaphone 32 pipes
16′ Open Wood 32 pipes
16′ Violone 32 pipes
16′ Diapason (Great)
16′ Cor Seraphique (Swell)
16′ Sub Bass 32 pipes
16′ Bourdon (Swell)
8′ Open Wood 12 pipes
8′ Open Diapason (Swell)
8′ Principal 32 pipes
8′ Violone 12 pipes
8′ Gamba (Solo)
8′ Flute (Great)
8′ Sub Bass 12 pipes
8′ Bourdon (Swell)
4′ Fifteenth 32 pipes
4′ Flute (Great)
8′ Pizzicato Bass†
32′ Trombone†† 12 pipes
16′ Trombone†† 32 pipes
16′ Posaune (Swell)
8′ Tuba Magna (Solo)
8′ Trombone†† 12 pipes
8′ Posaune (Swell)
4′ Trombone†† 12 pipes
4′ Corno di Bassetto (Solo)
†8′ Sub Bass with Pizzicato Relay
††Enclosed in its own expression box

Couplers
Intramanual
Swell 16, Unison Off, 4
Solo 16, Unison Off, 4

Intermanual
Great to Pedal 8
Swell to Pedal 8, 4
Solo to Pedal 8, 4
Swell to Great 16, 8, 4
Solo to Great 16, 8, 4
Swell to Solo 16, 8, 4
Solo to Swell 8

Special
Pedal Tutti to Solo
Solo to Great Sforzando
All Swells to Swell
Manual I/II transfer piston with indicator

Mechanicals
Peterson ICS-4000 system with:
256 memory levels
62 pistons and toe studs
programmable piston range for each memory level
Piston Sequencer
10 reversible controls including Full Organ
Four balanced pedals with selector for expression and Crescendo
Record/Playback system with remote control
Adjustable bench

Mixture Compositions
Great IV
C1 A10 D15 A#35 G#45
19 15 12
22 19 15 12
26 22 19 15 12
29 26 22 19 15

Great III
C1 A10 D15 C25 A#35 G#45 B48 F#55
33 29 26
36 33 29 26 22 19 15 12
40 36 33 29 26 22 19 15

Swell III–V
C1 C#14 B24 A#47 D#52
15 8 8
19 15 12 8
22 19 15 12 8
22 19 15 12
22 19 15

Solo V
C1 A46 C#50 F#55
12
15 12
17 15 12
19 17 15 12
22 19 17 15

Solo IV derived from Solo V, without tierce

Tonal Families
Diapason† 17 36%
Open Flutes 7 15%
Stopped Flutes 4 9%
Strings 5 11%
Hybrids 2 4%
Chorus Reeds 9 19%
Color Reeds 3 6%
47 100%

†Includes Diaphone and Salicional

Pitch Summary
Sub
32′ 3 6%
16′ 6 13% 19%

Unison
8′ 22 47%
4′ 8 17% 64%

Super
22⁄3′ 1 2%
2′ 4 9%
Above 3 6% 17%
47 100% 100%

Burkhart Goethe, church music director and organ-architect in Schwäbisch Hall (South Germany), was born in 1948. After an apprenticeship for six years (carpenter and organbuilder) with Alfred Führer, Wilhelmshaven, he traveled in Europe working on the restoration of North German instruments. Since 1982 he has been organ advisor of the Protestant church of Württemberg and teacher at the Freiburg National Academy of Music. He is the architect of more than 80 organ cases since 1978. Constanze Geiss is a journeyman organbuilder for Mühleisen Orgelbau in Leonberg, Germany, where she works both in management of the business and in organbuilding areas. She studied at the organbuilding college in Ludwigsburg and completed her apprenticeship with Mühleisen. She worked at the Brombaugh shop in Eugene, Oregon during 1999–2000. Ms. Geiss was assisted in editing the translation by David Petty, organbuilder in Eugene, Oregon. He and Ms. Geiss were colleagues at the Brombaugh shop during her time in the U.S.

In 2003 the Arcadom company requested 13 European companies to design an instrument for the new Béla Bartók National Concert Hall in Budapest, Hungary. Six companies then were looked at more closely; three of them were from Germany. After a series of journeys in order to gain as much knowledge about the companies as possible, the committee (five concert organists) decided to ask the joint venture of the Mühleisen company (Germany) and the organ manufacturer Pécs (Hungary) to build the organ. The two companies were known to each other because of various projects they had encountered with the Fraunhofer Institute, Stuttgart. Prof. Judith Angster, a descendant of the organ-builder family Angster in Hungary, is an acknowledged specialist on physical questions related to the technical parts of organs. She strongly supported the joint venture and was a big help in organizational matters.
The concert hall itself was designed by Gabór Zoboki and was finished in 2005. The fascinating oval building has the dimensions of a large cathedral: it is 25 meters tall and 52 meters long. The building’s interior is covered with wooden panels, creating a warm atmosphere. In order to guarantee an outstanding acoustic, the internationally known American advisor Russell Johnson worked on the design. The principal element is a huge detailed platform in the center of the room that can be lowered completely or in parts, which helps to create a suitable acoustic for special solo concerts. Along the sides of the room, 84 large chambers provide the reverberation needed for organ concerts. Since they can be evenly adjusted, the conditions for the organ builders were ideal.
Finding a musically suitable concept turned out to be more difficult. Two organ advisors with opposing ideas, István Baroti and László Fassang, were a challenge for the organ builders. On the one side, there was the idea of a large Hungarian organ in the style of the 1950s Orgelbewegung; on the other side there was the idea of a modern symphonic concert instrument. More journeys and concerts on various instruments and long discussions were necessary to finally agree on the disposition of a concert instrument.
During the years 2004–2006 the instrument was built by both companies, Pécs in Hungary and Mühleisen in Germany. The case, chests, wind system, frames and structural parts were made in Hungary, as well as all of the wooden and some of the metal pipes. All the design work, construction of coupler systems and details, electric and mechanical stop action, keydesk, reeds, and complete scaling was done in Germany. The Mühleisen Company also was in charge of the entire voicing process, working closely with both advisors. Since the concert hall was heavily used during the daytime, most of the installation and the voicing had to be done after 11 pm.

Façade
As seems to be typical during the last decades, the façade essentially was designed by the architect of the concert hall. Gábor Zoboki at first offered a post-Art-Nouveau-style façade, which would have worked well in the room and also resembled downtown Budapest with its Art Deco style. Unfortunately, the buyers were not convinced and had the Mühleisen company work on an idea of an open façade. The divisions in the back are of course all contained in their cases made of solid wood. The biggest façade pipes are the Majorbass 32? (starting at E) and the Principalbass 16? and Montre 16?, both starting from bottom C, all made of a high tin alloy. On the top (slightly shifted to the back), the Octavbass 8? and the Solo Principale 8? can be seen. The lower middle part (above the mechanical console) contains the horizontal reeds (Chamade 16?–4?). Therefore, the organ builders need not fear that the organ will be covered with curtains as is the case in various concert halls nowadays. The organ stays visible at all times.
The case is made of solid cherry and, in order to break with the strong vertical lines of the whole façade, the pipes of the inside corners of the main groups are slightly tilted towards the center of the organ. This subtle feature is often only seen with a second look.

Technical design
Twelve meters above the orchestra stage, the organ is installed on a large balcony. Its overall height is 15.6 meters, width 13 meters, and depth 4.4 meters. Inside the instrument, a good “infrastructure” made up of large stairs and wide walkboards guarantees good access to every part of the chests and pipes for maintenance. Every detail was planned; no big surprises were left for the people who worked on site.
Chests
The 18 mechanical slider windchests and some 29 single and support chests are positioned on top of large wooden construction beams, along the action lines. Behind the façade of the first story, one can find the Grande orgue. Separated by a large walkboard, the Récit expressif is positioned directly behind it. The Solo and the Positif expressif are located symmetrically on the second story. This whole complex is lined by the Pedal stops on the left and right sides, whereas the largest pipes of the 32? needed to be lowered into the “basement” of the organ.

Wind system
The wind system is divided into two divisions. The Grande orgue, Récit expressif, and Pedal are supplied by two large blowers and six large parallel double wedge bellows, which are built into the base of the instrument. Another blower and bellows on top of the swell box of the Récit provide the wind for the Positif expressif and Solo divisions. A high-pressure blower for the Tuba Mirabilis 8? with 450mm wind pressure is also located there. In all manuals, the wind pressure varies from the bass to the treble. The three 32? stops have their own extra wind supply. The whole system consists of four blowers and about 105 meters of wind trunks made of solid wood.

Action
The new organ in the Béla Bartók Hall has two different action systems. The main (attached) console with its ten couplers is played mechanically. The only exceptions are the Chamades and the 32? stops. The key action is balanced and is supported inside the chests with little pivot-rail bellows. They are also suspended. The fourteen octave couplers and the five Chamade couplers work electrically; the ten mechanical couplers can also be switched to electric usage. The second, detached concert console is exclusively electric; so is all the stop action. Solenoids work the sliders; the preset combination system and the couplers are run by a BUS system.
When the organ was shown to the press, the detached console was not available to be seen. Therefore the author could only feel and play the action of the main console. It is easy and light and allows good articulation on all four manuals. Even when using all mechanical couplers and playing tutti, the pluck stays elegant and precise, due to good coupler construction and well-adjusted balancier support.

Consoles
The main console combines the neat, clean look of a well-designed keydesk with ergonomic standards. The 139 stop knobs are designed as pull knobs. The detached console is a work of art in itself. It is made of solid cherry and shows many round, Art Nouveau-like lines. The pluck of the keys is simulated electrically in order to provide the best articulation possible.

Swell boxes
All walls and the shutters of the swell boxes are made of a special five-layered wall system approximately six cm thick. This was especially developed by the Stuttgarter Fraunhofer Institute. Both swell boxes work remarkably well.

“Hanging” façade pipes
Organ builders are often confronted with the following problem: large pipes are stressed by their own weight, especially around the mouth opening. Therefore inlays, hooks and supports are soldered to hold everything in place. Nevertheless, they often have the tendency to bend or collapse. The ideas of the creative Swabians help to prevent those matters. Already their large instrument in Stuttgart (Stiftskirche 2004 IV/84) was protected by a large contraption to take weight off the foot of the pipe. In three places the pipe is hooked to the top of the room, where it is held by counterweights. That lowers the static weight of the pipe, preventing collapse, and also enables one single person to lift the pipe in its rack.

Tonal design
It is always difficult to describe the sound of an organ. One simply has to hear it. What one can say about this particular instrument is that the tonal design works very well in the given acoustic, which has a tendency to swallow bass frequency pitches and therefore needs good foundation stops. During the voicing process, the scale of various stops had to be enlarged to meet these needs.
The principals, which account for 26% of the whole instrument (with its eight mixtures), are formidable and can fill the hall, but can also show their vocal mild sides. The Montre 16? shows itself very subtly without losing its tonal force. An outstanding stop is the Principale 8? of the Solo manual with its changing scale. It works very nicely in combination with the Voce humana. The separate wind supply of the 32? and 16? Pedal stops gives them remarkable speech in the room.
The 23 reed stops of the organ account for 25% of the stoplist. Not only trumpets and clairons belong to that group, but also five almost lyrical voices and the Chamades and the high pressure Tuba. Producing a highly differentiated and distinct sound is taken very seriously in the Mühleisen company. Many trumpet ensembles and various solo stops such as the Cromorne, Voix humaine, Clarinette and Basson-Hautbois make it a challenge for any organist to exhaust all the color possibilities. The Chamaden division with its Chamades 16?–4? resembles an “ultima ratio” to the tutti. The Tuba mirabilis seems in the British manner, darker and softer but still strong enough to add to the fortissimo of all other divisions. Another outstanding sound of a different kind is created by the Cor anglais of the Solo division. Its silken clarity reminds one of Ernest Skinner’s Orchestral Oboe. It is hard to understand why those fine stops are built so rarely nowadays.
The instrument also includes 13 string stops; two of them are celestes. This is a moderate number (14% of the overall stops), but nevertheless they are very characteristic in sound and can be used in many combinations. The Gamba of the Grande orgue is strong and precise, the Salicional of the Positif expressif soft, the Violon 16?, Geigenprincipal 8?, Gamba 8?, Aeoline 8?, Voix céleste and Violine 4? of the Récit expressif are all very distinct in sound. In the Pedal, the Contrebasse, Violon and Cello make a good ensemble. The presence of the Violon is impressive, its sound very clear.
Flutes make up 18.5% of the stoplist. Those 17 different colors are open, stopped or over-blowing pipes that have a progression in their scaling, following the French tradition to be used as solo voices. Some are built in the German tradition in order to blend and add color. In combination with string stops (for example, the Salicional and the Fl. traversière on the Positif expressif or the Gamba and the Flûte octaviante of the Récit expressif) they sound remarkably good.
The great number of mutations allows building a “Cornet décomposé” in all divisions except the Grande orgue, which has its own large Cornet. Taking a close look inside the Pedal division, one is strongly reminded of Oskar Walcker’s “Grand Bourdon.” The Großquinte (102?3?), Tercsept II (62?5?) and the Zinck III (51?3?) are able to underline the 32? and 16? sounds and have a great presence in the room.
An interesting steel-like, synthetic sounding voice is the Septnon of the Positif expressif, combined with Piccolo 1? and Tierce. The Solo division again follows Cavaillé-Coll’s idea of the “Clavier Bombarde” because its mutations (the Septième 22?7? included) are based on the 16? range. The large room handles all of this easily.
It would take ages in order to try and find all different kinds of registrations. To listen, the best seats are located on the opposite side of the room, in the balcony. It is even possible to hear calm noises or whispering from the console! Bravo to the great acoustics.

Successful joint venture
A great compliment must be given to both companies that have worked to create this wonderful instrument: the Organmanufactura Pécs Ltd. of Hungary and the organ building company Mühleisen of Leonberg, Germany. Both contributed their best creativity and skills. The outstanding quality of the Hungarian craftsmanship, creativity and motivated work attitude strongly supported the design work, organization and the voicing process by the Germans. It is quite probable that in the future, large organ projects will be given to companies that are willing to cooperate. Good communication and well-balanced work attitudes and standards are needed for these kinds of projects. It is of great importance to make agreements and also to draw close lines that each group has to stick to, in order to make things a “snug fit.” Too much back and forth, communicating about the same things all over again, would be too time-consuming. Prevoiced test pipes are hard to e-mail throughout Europe.

Coda
The new instrument of the Béla Bartók Hall in Budapest is definitely worth seeing and hearing. As a “Swabian from the Danube” with its French lifestyle, the instrument suits the great architecture. The inaugural concert featured four organists: Zsuzana Elekes, István Baróti, László Fassang, and Xavér Varnus on May 22, 2006. In June 2006, many internationally known concert organists played many concerts on the organ. Most of them used the detached, electrical console on the stage. Obviously, the possibility of playing in front of the audience is of more importance than the sensitive touch of the mechanical main console. But this also happens in other places, due to the fact that organists like to listen directly to their registrations in advance.
This is one sad aspect about designing and creating an instrument in two ways: having to face the fact that all the extra work and preparations are not honored. One could question the reason for the double construction. Shouldn’t one build symphonic organs completely electrically in the future, since there have been so many inventions lately that provide an almost mechanical touch? This thought obviously would not be the taste of many organ advisors.
Undoubtedly, the mechanical slider chest is a very good solution for smaller and middle-sized instruments. Luckily for recent German organ building, Cavaillé-Coll consequently built these chests during his work life. The primary wish at many times had been symphonic instruments by all means (with Barker levers or electric couplers that are rarely talked about). In the meantime, we can see that there are quite a few good German symphonic instruments from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. There are great instruments with cone chests, membrane chests or various electro-pneumatic inventions that are not mechanical slider chest systems.
However, many large organ projects are requested to have slider chests (single-lever keys preferred), Romantic, symphonic layouts and everything that goes with it. This creates many problems for the organ builder who often also must deal with poor acoustics. Not all mechanical chests have been of outstanding quality throughout the decades. Why do they appear to be the one and only solution? There are many ways to get to Rome, also many detours probably.
In Budapest, they definitely found the right path! And, stranger, if you go and visit this great instrument and get the chance to play, try the main console. Even if your footwork cannot seen by the audience, it is worth it!

Five manuals and pedal, 92 registers

I. Grande orgue
16? Montre
8? Principal
8? Flûte harmonique
8? Bourdon
8? Gamba
4? Praestant
4? Rohrflöte
22?3? Quinte
2? Superoctave
8? Cornet II–V
22?3? Mixtur V–VII
11?3? Cimbel IV–V
16? Trompete
8? Trompete
4? Trompete

II. Positif expressif
16? Quintatön
8? Principal
8? Fl. traversière
8? Cor de nuit
8? Salicional
8? Unda maris
4? Praestant
4? Flûte conique
22?3? Quinte
2? Doublette
13?5? Tierce
11?3? Larigot
1? Piccolo
11?7? Septnon II
2? Mixtur IV–VI
16? Basson
16? Dulzian
8? Trompette
8? Cromorne
8? Clarinette
Tremolo

III. Récit expressif
16? Violon
16? Gedeckt
8? Geigenprincipal
8? Flûte harmonique
8? Bourdon à cheminée
8? Gamba
8? Aeoline
8? Voix céleste
4? Violine
4? Flûte octaviante
22?3? Nazard
2? Octavin
13?5? Tierce
2? Progressio II–IV
2?3? Cymbale IV
16? Bombarde
8? Trompette harm.
8? Basson-Hautbois
8? Voix humaine
4? Clairon harm.
Tremolo

IV. Solo
16? Rohrbourdon
8? Principale
8? Konzertflöte
8? Voce humana
51?3? Nazard
4? Octave
31?5? Tierce
22?7? Septième
22?3? Sesquialtera II
2? Flûte
22?3? Plein jeu III–V
8? Cor anglais
8? Tuba mirabilis
V. Chamaden
16? Chamade
8? Chamade
4? Chamade

Pedal
32? Majorbass
32? Soubasse
16? Principalbass
16? Contrebasse
16? Soubasse
16? Violon
102?3? Großquinte
8? Octavbass
8? Gedackt
8? Cello
4? Octave
4? Tibia
62?5? Tercsept II
51?3? Zinck III
22?3? Mixtur IV
22?3? Compensum VII
32? Bombarde
16? Bombarde
16? Basson
8? Trompete
4? Clairon

Mechanical couplers (also electrically activated):
I+II, I+III, I+IV, II+III, II+IV, III+IV,
P+I, P+II, P+III, P+IV.
Electric couplers:
I+V, II+V, III+V, IV+V, P+V,
I+II 4?, I+II 16?, I+III 4?, I+III 16?, I+IV 4?, I+IV 16?, II+III 4?, II+III 16?, III+III 4?, III+III 16?, IV+IV 4?, IV+IV 16?, P+III 4?, P+IV 4?

Manuals I–IV and pedal: mechanical action.
Manual V, the 32? stops and 16? stops in the façade: electric action.
Manual chests are divided bass/treble for different wind pressures.
Mechanical attached keydesk.
Second electric console on the stage.
Programmable crescendo pedal.
Pleno, Tutti, and reeds are selectable/programmable.
Reeds, mixtures, and couplers available on roller crescendo pedal.
Swell shutter coordination available on crescendo pedal.
Priority switching between crescendo pedals on both consoles when being played simultaneously.
Cancel button for every division.
Selectable dividing point in pedal division of second console.
Sostenuto in all divisions.
Combination action with 5000 possible combinations; memory stick connectivity.
Playback and recording possibilities on both keydesks.

Glück New York Organbuilders, New York, New York
Union Church of Pocantico Hills, Tarrytown, New York

From the pastor: Our latest chapter When Marc Chagall and Henri Matisse never miss a service, and a church is blessed with a warm, close, and giving congregation, special events in the life of a church somehow become even more special. The commissioning of the Laurance Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Pipe Organ was a remarkable milestone in our history, and a finishing touch to our beautiful sanctuary, 85 years after its cornerstone was laid. The instrument was funded by Mr. Rockefeller’s brother, David, his daughter, Dr. Lucy Rockefeller Waletzky, and other members of the family, supplemented by the generosity of their fellow congregants and friends.
Planning for the organ began several years ago and proceeded at a careful pace. Several organbuilders were consulted before selecting Sebastian M. Glück of New York City. An organist, organbuilder, and preservation architect, he was sensitive to all of our concerns, knowing that his creation could neither upstage our worship nor compete with the peerless stained glass that adorns our landmark church. The long process of on-site voicing and tonal finishing resulted in the “perfect fit” of this outstanding pipe organ. The congregation’s sense of the holy is lifted as the clear tones of the organ fill the space. Praising God in the sanctuary soars here to new heights!
—Rev. Dr. F. Paul DeHoff

From the consultant: Looking forward through the rear view mirror

Building an organ for a small space is a challenge for both design and execution, and these challenges have been creatively met in this installation. The builders have carefully engineered the instrument to fit the space, providing good tonal egress and ample accessibility for ease of tuning and maintenance. The instrument possesses character and a distinctive personality, and the magnificent windows by Matisse and Chagall made it seem fitting to emulate the orgue de chœur of the French tradition. Choral and congregational accompaniments are the important functions of this organ, and it contains surprising resources for playing a considerable variety of organ literature.
Essentially a two-manual instrument, a third manual division has been derived from the tonal scheme through studied extension and duplexing. This “found” Positif adds to the versatility of the organ in which each stop must pull its weight, individually and in ensemble. The success of this master plan is in its careful scaling and meticulous tonal finishing.
All of the ranks embody individual character, yet blend effectively in the total ensemble. Some of the ranks deserve special mention because of their creativity and success in this installation. The 16' Contrebasse gives clarity and definition to the pedal, and in combination with the stopped 16' Sous Basse provides a firm foundation. The Contrebasse can also be used beneath the Récit strings, which have a delightful, sizzling, French edge as well. This is a welcome relief from the ubiquitous 16' Gedeckt extensions found on most organs. As the bass to the principal chorus, the 16' Contrebasse undergirds with clarity. An interesting historical aspect of this stop is that it was typical of French Baroque churches to have a double bass playing with the orgue de chœur for additional sonority. On the manuals, this same rank (playing as the 8' Violoncelle) has a desirable incisive quality that is important for color and contrast in the family of foundation stops.
Another stop that serves multiple functions is the Clarinette. It provides gravity and weight as the 16' manual stop for the Récit reed chorus without competing with the Pédale 16' Bombarde. As an 8' solo stop it is more refined than a Cromorne, but has more color and personality that most other Clarinet stops. This is an effective solution for a small instrument.
The removal of the carpet from the chancel revealed an attractive hardwood floor that adds warmth to the music of the organ and the Union Church Choir.
This project was the outcome of a happy collaboration among organist, organbuilder, and consultant. The congregation and its pastor have been most helpful in making this a successful project with rewarding musical results. I am happy to be associated with this organ installation, from the initial discussions, through the building phase, to the dedication and inaugural recital.
—Dr. Gordon Turk

From the director of music: An about-face in the right direction

My service at Union Church began in 1999 when our last organ had aged precisely 30 years. Replacing Wurlitzer’s 1922 Opus 548, it had been assembled by a local organ man utilizing pipes imported from Holland. Unfortunately, the electric valve action of this heavily unified instrument had not withstood the test of time, and Union Church faced the pressing need to replace its console, relays, and playing mechanisms, as well as address the obvious tonal imbalances. After much discussion, the church decided that a new instrument would be a better investment.
The thin, prismatic sound of the old organ, truly a product of its time, actually required amplification to reach our small sanctuary, and from the outset Sebastian Glück had suggested a completely different approach, based upon his ongoing fascination with the orgues de chœur and orgues de salon of fin-de-siècle France. I had the opportunity to play his Opus 10 at Our Lady of Loretto in Cold Spring, New York, a small new organ in this French Romantic style, and I became convinced of both the concept and the builder.
Our consultant agreed with my stipulation that the instrument should be a worthy vehicle for choral accompaniment. He also concurred that Mr. Glück’s focus on a French symphonic character would serve our worship better than yet another neoclassical design, as it could more effectively support our choir with its abundance of properly scaled unison ranks. We were hopeful that the sound generated in the right chancel chamber would somehow fill the entire room, a feat dependent upon Sebastian’s scaling and voicing, as no changes could be made to the historic building. Ironically, all of these ideals represented the opposite of the situation with which we started!
Mr. Glück and I pored over the smaller documented Cavaillé-Coll designs, and I shared his excitement when he returned from his close examination of the famous Merklin/Mutin organ at l’Église Réformée du Saint-Esprit on Paris’s Rue Roquépine as he prepared for his tonal work at Union Church. Although the prototype instruments by Cavaillé-Coll and Mutin usually found their way into highly reverberant rooms, he was correct in asserting that an organ of this character would bloom with a greater presence in our intimate setting than another neo-Baroque organ.
I am elated that the entire church family and the local organ community have expressed nothing but admiration and enthusiasm for this new musical instrument. Its frank sound and rich color activate every corner of the room without ever sounding “loud.” It is thrilling to launch a virile grand chœur in the context of our worship, and satisfying to employ the fonds d’huit without apology. These marvelous attributes do not preclude the performance of music from other schools of literature, as this organ embraces the components of a respectable plein jeu as well as solo stops and ensembles of great clarity.
I often ponder the fact that our new pipe organ continues to be a gift each and every time it is engaged in its sacred function. I wish to express my sincere gratitude to Dr. David Rockefeller, Dr. Lucy Waletzky, Dr. Paul DeHoff, Dr. Gordon Turk, Mr. Sebastian M. Glück, Mr. Albert Jensen-Moulton and the entire Glück staff, as well as all of the donors at the Union Church of Pocantico Hills who made this amazing instrument a reality.
—Thomas Zachacz

From the organbuilder: A French recipe from an American chef

The Laurance Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Pipe Organ is a 21st-century instrument inspired by the school of organbuilding that flourished late in the reign of Napoléon III and during the first 30 years of the Third Republic. The French Romantic organ is characterized by bold, warm, and rich colors. Despite their strong individuality, these organs’ diverse voices form a cooperative community akin to a superb ensemble of celebrated actors, in which the sum of the distinctive parts is exceeded by the exhilarating effect of the whole.
French pipe organs and music of the period exhibit the same passion and spiritual freedom as the painting, sculpture, architecture, and dance of the era, a phenomenon that has captivated the Rockefellers for generations. The family had commissioned the Aeolian company to build large organs for their homes, so in addition to growing up with historically pivotal visual arts, they appreciated the pipe organ in a secular, purely musical context, in addition to what they heard in church.
I made it clear from the start that this would not be an historical copy. The copyist develops solid technique, but does not always make artistic progress as he reproduces the flaws and limitations of his models along with their glories.
The Rockefeller family and Union Church have consistently managed to balance strong tradition with a keen eye for the new. Since my own mindset has always been on “the cutting edge of the passé,” I felt immediately comfortable with them. I could create something new that still took its cues from the past, and they would understand what I was doing. As Dr. Turk said at his dedicatory recital, the organ comes with its own character, but “it has a definite French accent.”

Historical antecedents of the design
Le Grand-Orgue

The structural blueprint of the Grand-Orgue was influenced by Cavaillé-Coll’s 1879 design for the same division in the II/18 instrument in Le Château du Compte de Liminghe, Gesves, Belgium, an orgue de salon for which Lemmens served as consultant. It struck me as a sensible and still-modern concept for the main division for nearly any school of composition. Such compact specifications usually bore either a 2' chorus member or a mixture, but rarely both. The inclusion of both, to the exclusion of yet another 4' flute, seemed to afford more options for the interpretation of a broader range of repertoire. The Fourniture II–IV begins as a Progression Harmonique, adding lower pitches without breaking, then moves to classical plagal breaks in the treble. With slightly smaller scales and higher cutups, the mixture is one that melds smoothly, adding brilliance and line without the harsh separation one might encounter from a “neo-classical” mixture.
Supplying the fonds d’huit would prove more difficult, simply because of space. While the 16' Bourdon was most often “duplexed” to the Pédale in such instruments, I reversed the procedure, extending the substantial 16' Sous Basse upward, making it available at 16' and 8' pitch. The 8' proved a bit too large for proper balance, so I provided a new treble with narrower scales and higher mouths. The 8' Violoncelle is large, warm, vibrant, and nearly reedy, furnishing the third member of the 8' quartet, but we had run out of room.' The 8' Flûte Harmonique was almost pulled out of thin air. I opted to transmit the Récit 4' Flûte Octaviante an octave lower, with one personal quirk. While traditionally one would build an open wood 8' octave (as opposed to the American practice of switching to non-matching stopped pipes), the compromise was to use the stopped poplar pipes of the Récit 8' Cor de Nuit for the first eleven notes, and then build a single low BB pipe of open spotted pewter to complete the octave. My reasoning? I cannot bear to hear the final left-hand note in Franck’s Prélude, Fugue, et Variation land on a stopped pipe, and I was determined that it not happen here. It is a smaller, less soaring sound than normal, being based upon the Récit scale, but provides an essential component that otherwise would be omitted.

Le Récit-Expressif

The Récit had to be an economically designed powerhouse, faithful to its French spirit without locking out other schools of music. Since the French Romantic tradition is one that specifies a string and its undulant under expression, the effect had to be authentic. There would be no washed out, noncommittal, characterless Violas here. Cutting, pungent, keen, energized strings of narrow scale and high tin content were the order of the day, emitting the tone color known and expected by composers and organists of the era.
Cavaillé-Coll would modify his choir of 8', 4', and 2' harmonic flutes in his small organs, and I did so as well. Still stylistically appropriate, the chimneyed 8' Cor de Nuit is a fine stop for continuo use and vocal accompaniment, and it combines beautifully with the Viole de Gambe and Voix Humaine. The 2' Flûte Conique adapts to all music, from Baroque trios to modern choir accompaniments. While unidiomatic to the size and genre of this organ, the 4' Prestant has proven itself to be indispensable, a tonal anchor for the secondary manual in northern literature, and a binding element for anthem accompaniment.
A shortage of space placed the burden of all reed tone upon the Récit. The “usual suspects” (Trompette, Basson et Hautbois, and Voix Humaine) had to be included, tailored to the intimate church and its non-reverberant acoustic. The first step was to acknowledge that a full-throttle blaze of French reeds would work against our goals, so a bright English trumpet with harmonic resonators fit the bill. Despite its modest scale this voice speaks with remarkable authority.
The 8' Basson et Hautbois is a variation of what I had observed in France. French practice called for single-taper resonators and closed, tapered shallots for the bass and tenor octaves, and stem-and-bell resonators and open, domed, parallel shallots for the remainder of the stop. Such a break would have been abrupt and evident in Union Church’s acoustic, so a structural compromise was struck: Bertounêche shallots throughout, with traditional, coned-in Hautbois resonators for the treble, and stem-and-bell resonators with lifting lids for the 8' and 4' Basson octaves.
The huge, woody 16' Clarinette-Basse is a rarity of great impact if properly scaled, built, and voiced. The inspiration for this stop was Cavaillé-Coll’s 1894 design for the III/46 instrument in the salle de concert in the hôtel particulier of the erudite Baron de l’Espée at 55 Avenue des Champs-Élysées. It was the only 16' manual reed in the organ, residing in one of two powerful Récits.
Half-length cylindrical reeds such as this effectively resonate the fundamental, whereas half-length inverted conical ones do not. It is for this reason that the half-length 16' Bassoon extensions so often built sound weak and thin. I opted for an enormous scale, a world away from the anæmic 16' Dulzians that plagued this nation’s Swell divisions in decades past. Its sound latches on to the 8' Trompette and gives the impression of a 16' Double Trumpet when accompanying English anthems and adds complex color to the ensemble.

Le Positif (perdu et trouvé)

When Union Church embarked on this journey, I maintained the position that I would build a smaller, finer instrument than the one they were using, and that a three-manual organ was not possible; I have seen grand dreams push organ projects to unsatisfactory results, and was ethically bound to protect the clients. As the two-manual design was in the process of refinement, Dr. Turk, Mr. Zachacz, and I collectively admitted that despite the sumptuousness of our little banquet, we still felt pangs of hunger. Could we have a third manual for dessert, even though our stomach was full?
While I could not add a third manual division, I could extract one from the material at hand. Cavaillé-Coll’s designs revealed that there were many ‘givens’, trends, and features within his œuvre, but there were no “standard” specifications, beyond the marketed stock models, which were so often customized for the client. A creative license had been granted.
The 8' extension of the 16' Clarinette-Basse, speaking from the Grand-Orgue in the two-manual design, was the first resident of the new Positif. The mezzo-forte fluework was duplexed to this manual, and two 4' extensions, exclusively in this department, provided it a distinctive timbre and center of gravity. Having lived with this organ since its completion, no one involved can imagine it as a two-manual instrument in light of the returns on this small investment.

La Pédale

Two-manual organs of this style often had pedal divisions borrowed entirely from the manuals. As I had no desire to fall back upon historic precedent as an excuse for absent majesty, I asked organbuilder and consultant Randall Wagner, a longtime friend, to help our firm engineer my desires into the available space.
In addition to the aforementioned 16' Sous Basse unit, there is a 16' Contrebasse, an extension of the 8' Violoncelle. It is built with Haskell re-entrant tubes to save space, and maintains bowing string tone all the way to 16' CCC. The 16' string extension is something I had used in Opus 5, Opus 8, and Opus 9, lending variety, pitch definition, and clarity in lieu of the dull “Echo Lieblich” so often found over the past century.
The 4' Quinzième is an independent principal stop essential to the pedal line. Experience confirms that a 4' pedal voice borrowed from a manual unit interferes with the inner voices of polyphony, contributing to “missing note syndrome” and never quite balancing correctly. When funds and space are rationed, such a measure saves the pedal line.
The 16' Bombarde, with full-length resonators, is an extension of the 8' Trompette. The combined result of all of these ideas results in a more effective pedal division.

The nuts and bolts

The organ’s playing action is electro-pneumatic, combining pitman windchests with individual-pouch unit chests for extensions and duplexed voices. The pipe ranks are planted in major third formation, a centuries-old arrangement that assures both easy access and stable tuning. A turbine located beneath the organ delivers wind at a pressure of four inches water column through single-rise reservoirs, providing a stable, unfailing wind supply, even when the tout ensemble is unleashed. The intake is routed from the church itself for added temperature stability, and the entire organ is built on the same level, with the exception of the 16' octaves.
The console is constructed of mahogany and white oak, bearing manual keyboards of cow bone and walnut. The drawknobs and toe studs are turned from pao ferro, and the pedal clavier is constructed of maple and rosewood. I carved the music desk with a medallion that adheres to this firm’s ideals of “opulent restraint.” It acknowledges 19th-century French harmonium grilles as well as the Art Nouveau botanical forms in Matisse’s rose window, his final work, the design for which he completed two days before his death.
While the console is patterned after the work of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, there are some concessions to make the contemporary American organist feel more at home, such as the inter-manual couplers front and center, controlled by Skinner-style dominos. The Grand-Orgue is normally played from the second manual keyboard, but the order of the two lowest manuals can be switched to conform to standard 19th-century French layouts. A 256-level combination action provides the freedom of kaleidoscopic registrational changes, so the ventils for the jeux de combinaisons have been foregone.

Where thanks is due

As I said at the service of dedication, my staff does everything, and I do the rest. They are all degreed musicians (oddly, all professional singers) with high standards and amazing work ethics. Albert Jensen-Moulton has kept every single project (and me) on track, and his uncanny attention to detail has enhanced each achievement this company has made since he joined the firm. Dominic Inferrera and Joseph DiSalle were the two principal organbuilding pillars supporting the success of this instrument, and their loyalty is deeply appreciated.
Thomas Zachacz maintains a modest front for somebody who knows as much as he does, and his love for this school of organbuilding and composition surfaces with every discussion. From the start, Tom “got it,” and the process of working for him was not just rewarding, it was fun.
The experience was enhanced by the guidance of a knowledgeable, worldly, and supportive consultant, Dr. Gordon Turk, and when he played the dedicatory recital, it was obvious to all that he understood the nuances of instrument he helped to create.
Pastor DeHoff, the Board of Trustees, and the congregation of Union Church form a rare group of cultured, inquisitive, progressive minds, and their willingness to embrace this project will always remain a notable feature of this period in our lives.
Without the donors, this road would not have been traveled. Without their trust and insight, the results might have been different. Buying a great painting is one thing. Commissioning one from an artist you admire is another. But trusting an unknown to build you a mysterious machine that some time in the future will produce sounds you have never heard takes a good deal of courage. Some of the donors I have met, others I have not, but it is for their trust and courage that I shall always be grateful.
—Sebastian M. Glück

The Laurance Spelman Rockefeller Memorial Pipe Organ
Union Church of Pocantico Hills,
Tarrytown, New York
Glück New York, Opus 11

GRAND-ORGUE (II)
16' Bourdon (from Pédale)
8' Montre (58 pipes, 50% tin)
8' Violoncelle (58 pipes, 50% tin)
8' Flûte Harmonique (1 pipe, 50% tin) (a)
8' Bourdon (38 pipes, pine, mahogany, & 50% tin) (b)
4' Prestant (58 pipes, 50% tin)
2' Doublette (58 pipes, 50% tin)
II–IV Fourniture (196 pipes, 50% tin)
C1 19.22
C13 15.19.22
C25 12.15.19.22
C37 08.12.15.19
C49 01.08.12.15
8' Trompette (from Récit Expressif)
Grand-Orgue Muet
RÉCIT-EXPRESSIF (III)
8' Viole de Gambe (58 pipes, 90% tin)
8' Voix Céleste (46 pipes, 90% tin)
8' Cor de Nuit (58 pipes, poplar, walnut, & 50% tin)
4' Prestant (58 pipes, 50% tin)
4' Flûte Octaviante (58 pipes, 50% tin)
2' Flûte Conique (58 pipes, 50% tin)
16' Clarinette-Basse (12 pipes, 50% tin) (c)
8' Trompette (58 pipes, 50% tin)
8' Basson et Hautbois (58 pipes, 50% tin)
8' Voix Humaine (58 pipes, 30% tin)
Tremblant (I et III)
16' Récit
Récit Muet
4' Récit
POSITIF-EXPRESSIF (I)
8' Violoncelle (Grand Orgue)
8' Flûte Harmonique (Grand Orgue)
8' Cor de Nuit (Récit-Expressif)
4' Viole d’Amour (12 pipes, 50% tin) (d)
4' Flûte Douce (12 pipes, 50% tin) (e)
8' Clarinette (58 pipes, 30% tin)
Cloches
16' Positif
Positif Muet
4' Positif
PÉDALE
16' Sous Basse (32 pipes, poplar & walnut)
102/3' Gros Nasard (from Sous Basse) (g)
8' Octave Basse (Grand-Orgue)
8' Violoncelle (Grand-Orgue)
8' Flûte (Grand-Orgue Bourdon)
4' Quinzième (32 pipes, 50% tin)
4' Flûte Ouverte (Récit-Expressif)
4' Flûte Bouchée (Grand-Orgue Bourdon)
16' Bombarde (12 pipes, zinc) (h)
16' Clarinette-Basse (Récit-Expressif)
8' Trompette (Récit-Expressif)
4' Clarinette (Récit-Expressif)
Cloches

(a) C1–A#11 from Récit Cor de Nuit;
C13–A58 from Récit Flûte Octaviante
(b) Extension of Pédale 16¢ Sous Basse
(c) Extension of Positif 8¢ Clarinette
(d) Extension of Grand Orgue 8¢ Violoncelle
(e) Extension of Récit 8¢ Cor de Nuit
(f) Extension of Grand Orgue 8¢ Violoncelle
(g) Becomes a 32¢ Contre Bourdon at C13
(h) Extension of Récit 8¢ Trompette
Tirasses, Accouplements et Échanges (dominos basculants)
* 8' Tirasse Grand Orgue
* 8' Tirasse Positif
* 8' Tirasse Récit
4' Tirasse Récit

16' Récit au Grand Orgue
* 8' Récit au Grand Orgue
4' Récit au Grand Orgue
16' Positif au Grand Orgue
* 8' Positif au Grand Orgue
4' Positif au Grand Orgue
8' Grand Orgue au Positif

16' Récit au Positif
* 8' Récit au Positif
4' Récit au Positif
Grand Orgue au lieu du Positif

* Piston et Cuillère
Combinaisons (256 levels)
6 adjustable thumb pistons acting upon each manual division
6 adjustable thumb pistons and toe studs acting upon the Pédale division
8 adjustable thumb pistons and toe studs acting upon the entire organ
Tutti thumb piston and cuillère
Annulateur piston
Set piston

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

Wind
I’m a nut for a good wind. We live by the ocean, and I never tire of the feeling of the wind coming off the water bringing fresh air and all the good tidal smells into the house. I love to open the sliding doors that face the water and a door at the other end of the house to create a wind tunnel. (It’s not always popular with other family members.)
Years ago I was active in a small inland sailing club on the shore of a lake in the center of a suburban town. The lake was less than two miles north-to-south, and less than one mile east-to-west, so you couldn’t go for very long without coming about (turning to take the wind on the other side of the boat).
Since ours was a single-class racing club, the size of the lake didn’t matter. Depending on the speed and direction of the wind, the race committee set a course using inflatable markers (yellow tetrahedrons) with anchors. The classic Olympic sailing course uses three marks labeled A, B, and C set in an equilateral triangle. A is directly upwind from the starting line, C is directly downwind, and B is to the left, so boats go clockwise around the upwind mark. The basic course is A-B-C-Finish, but you can add an extra lap or two, and we often modified it to read A-B-C-A-C-Finish. These patterns would expose all the sailors to all points of sail as they went around the course.
One drizzly afternoon I headed the race committee. The wind was northerly, so I set the upwind mark close to the northern shore. A few minutes after the start, I noticed that the entire fleet was heading in the wrong direction. These were pretty good sailors, and it would be unusual for the whole group to get the course wrong. They were following what looked like a yellow tetrahedron that was a little east of upwind—a fellow in a yellow slicker and a yellow kayak who was heading away from the mark! I flew the recall-signal flag and started the race again, but not until we had all had a good laugh.

Know your wind
To sail a small boat is to be intimate with the wind. You have telltale streamers on the sails so you can tell exactly where the “lift” is and you watch the surface of the water for the ruffles that indicate the presence of wind. When there’s an updraft on the shore, air rushes in off the water to fill the void—so hawks, ospreys, and eagles soaring can tell you something about the wind on the water. In fact, this is the cause of a “sea breeze.” When the sun heats up the land in the afternoon, air rises off the land and the cool air rushes in off the water to take its place. Where we live, you can have a quiet picnic in the boat around twelve-thirty and put your things away in time for the sea breeze to come in around two in the afternoon.
If you sail often in the same place, you get used to how the wind comes around a certain point, swirls in a cove, or rushes directly from the sea toward the land depending on the time of day. There was an old salt at that inland club who had figured out how to predict the local wind by observing which direction airplanes were traveling to and from Boston’s Logan Airport twenty miles away. During a race you’d notice him heading off alone to some corner of the lake only to pick up the strongest wind of the afternoon and shoot across to a mark ahead of the rest of the fleet. I never did figure out how that worked, but he sure won a lot of races.

§

The steadiness, reliability, and predictability of wind is a huge part of playing and building pipe organs. We compare “wobbly” with “rock-steady” wind, debating their relative musical merits. One camp hates it when the organ’s wind wiggles at all (ironically, those are often the same people who love lots of tremolos!), the other claims that if the wind is free to move a little with the flow of the music, there’s an extra dimension of life. I think both sides are right. I love good organs with either basic wind characteristic, but because they are so different it seems awkward to try to make real comparisons. The instrument with gentle wind that makes the music of Sweelinck sing does not do well with the air-burning symphonies of Vierne or Widor.
As a student at Oberlin in the 1970s, I spent a lot of time with the marvelous three-manual Flentrop organ in the school’s Warner Concert Hall. The organ was brand new at the time (dedicated on St. Cecelia’s Day of my freshman year) and is still an excellent study of all the characteristics that defined the Classic Revival of organbuilding. It has a large and complete Rückpositiv division (Rugwerk in Dutch) and a classic-style case with towers. There are independent sixteen-foot principals on manual and pedal, and the whole thing was originally winded from a single wedge-shaped bellows behind the organ. End a piece with a large registration and make the mistake of releasing the pedal note first, and the wind slaps you in the back, giving a great hiccup to the grand conclusion.
As students, we worked hard to learn to control the organ’s wind, marking in our scores those treacherous spots where the wind would try to derail you. There were no hawks there to warn about the updrafts. A little attention to the lift of your fingers or a gentle approach to the pedal keys would make all the difference, and I remember well and am often reminded that such a sensitive wind system can be very rewarding musically.

Totally turbulent
It’s interesting to note that while the older European-style organs are more likely to have unstable wind supplies, organs like that were originally hand-pumped and had more natural wind that anything we are used to today. The greatest single source of turbulence in pipe organ wind is the electric blower. Because the wind is hurried on its way by a circular fan, the air is necessarily spinning when it leaves the blower. If the organbuilder fails to pay attention to this, the organ’s sound may be altered by little tornados blowing into the feet of the pipes.
I learned this lesson for keeps while renovating a twelve-stop tracker organ in rural Maine ten years ago. Before I first saw the organ, the organist said that the sound of the Great was fuzzy and strange, but the Swell was fine. Sure enough, she was exactly right, and I was surprised by the stark contrast between the two keyboards. Every pipe of the Great wobbled like the call of a wild turkey.
This was the ubiquitous nineteenth-century American organ, with an attached keydesk and a large double-rise parallel reservoir taking up the entire floor plan. There were wedge-shaped feeder bellows under the main body of the reservoir and a well at each end to provide space for the attachment of the square wooden wind trunks. In the 1920s an electric blower was installed in the basement some thirty feet below the organ, and a metal windline was built to bring the air to the organ through a crude hole cut in the walnut case (Oof!). The easiest place to cut into the organ’s wind system was the outside face of the Great windtrunk—piece of cake. But the effect was that the Great was winded directly from the violently turbulent blower output, while the wind had to pass through the calming reservoir before it found its way to the Swell. Every wiggle and burble of the wind could be heard in the sound of the pipes. Relocating that blower windline sure made a difference to the sound.
That lesson was enhanced as I restored a wonderful organ by E. & G. G. Hook in Lexington, Massachusetts. Part of that project was to restore the feeder bellows and hand-pumping mechanism so the instrument could be blown by hand or by an electric blower. Of course, it’s seldom pumped by hand, but there is an easily discernible difference in the sound of the organ when you do.
The introduction of electric blowers to pipe organs must have been a great thrill for the organists of the day. Marcel Dupré wrote in his memoir about the installation of the first electric blower for the Cavaillé-Coll organ at St. Sulpice in Paris, where Charles-Marie Widor was organist between 1870 and 1933. I have no idea just when the first blower was installed, but it was certainly during Widor’s tenure, and it must have been a great liberation. I suppose that for the first forty years of his tenure, Widor had to arrange for pumpers. That organ has a hundred stops (real stops!), and pumping it through one of Widor’s great organ symphonies must have consumed the calories of dozens of buttery croissants.
Since electric blowers became part of the trade, organbuilders have worked hard to learn how to create stable air supplies. A static reservoir in a remote blower room is the first defense against turbulence. We sometimes attach a baffle-box to the output of a blower—a wooden box with interior partitions, channels, and insulation to interrupt the rotary action of the air and quiet the noise of the large-volume flow.
Another source of turbulence in organ wind is sharp turns in windlines. The eddy caused by an abrupt ninety-degree angle in a windline can be avoided by a more gradual turn or by the geometry of how one piece of duct is connected to another.
Air pressure drops over distance. Run a ten-inch (diameter) windline above the chancel ceiling from Great to Swell chambers and you’ll find that four inches of pressure going in one end becomes three-and-a-half inches at the other. Drop the diameter of the windline a couple times along its length (first to nine, then to eight inches for example) and the pressure doesn’t drop. As pressurized air and pressurized water behave in similar ways, you can see this principle demonstrated in many large public rooms in the layout of a fire-suppressing sprinkler system. The water pipes might be four inches in diameter at the beginning of a long run and step down several times, so the last sprinkler head has only a three-quarter inch pipe. It’s a direct inversion of the sliding doors in our house. When four big doors are open facing the wind and one small one is open at the other side of the house, all that ocean air gets funneled into racing down the corridor past the kitchen and out the back door. If you don’t prop the door open, it slams with a mighty bang.
We measure air pressure in “inches of water.” The basic gauge (called a manometer) is a U-shaped tube filled halfway with water. Water under the effect of gravity is the perfect leveling medium—when the U-shaped tube is half filled with water, the water level is exactly the same on both sides of the tube. Blow into one end, and the water on that side of tube goes down while the other side goes up. Measure the difference of the two water levels and you have “inches of water”—we use the symbol WP.
Many of the ratio-based measurements we use are two-dimensional. When we refer to miles-per-hour for example, all we need is a statement of distance and one of time. To measure pipe organ air we consider three dimensions. The output of an organ blower is measured in cubic-feet-per-minute at a given pressure—so we are relating volume to time to pressure. Let’s take a given volume of air. There’s a suitcase on the floor near my desk that’s about 24″ x 18″ x 12″. I make it to be three cubic feet. We can push that amount of air through a one-inch pipe at high pressure or through an eight-inch pipe at low pressure. The smaller the pipe and the higher the pressure, the faster the air travels. It doesn’t take much of an imagination or understanding of physics to realize that those two circumstances would produce air that behaves in two different ways.
A mentor gave me a beautiful way to understand the wind in a pipe organ—simply, that air is the fuel we burn to make organ sound. Put more air through an organ pipe, you get more sound. To get more air through an organ pipe, you can make the mouth (and therefore the windway) wider. A pipe mouth that’s two-ninths the circumference can’t pass as much air as one that’s two-sevenths. You can also increase the size of the toe hole and raise the pressure.
I’m not doing actual calculations here, but I bet it takes the same number of air molecules to run an entire ten-stop Hook & Hastings organ (ca. 3″ WP) for five minutes as it takes to play one note of the State Trumpet at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in New York (ca. 50″ WP) for thirty seconds. Imagine trying to hand-pump that sucker. It was mentioned in passing that when that world-famous stop was being worked on in the organbuilder’s shop during the recent renovation of that magnificent organ, the neighboring motorcycle shop complained about the noise!
I’ve written a number of times in recent months about the project we’re working on in New York. Because it’s an organ with large pipe scales and relatively high wind pressures, we’re spending a lot of time thinking about proper sizes of windlines to feed various windchests. I use the term windsick to describe an organ or a portion of an organ that doesn’t get enough wind, as in, “to heal the windsick soul . . .”
This organ has a monster of a 16′ open wood Diapason that plays at both 16′ and 8′ pitches. The toe holes of the biggest pipes are four inches in diameter (about the size of a coffee can). If the rank is being played at two pitches and the organist plays two notes (say for big effect, lowest CCC and GGG), we have four of those huge toe holes gushing wind. If we might have as many as four of those big holes blowing at once, what size windline do we need going into that windchest? To allow for twice the flow of air do we need twice the diameter windline? Here’s pi in your eye. To double the airflow, we need twice the area of the circle, not the diameter. The area of a four-inch circle (πr2) is about 50.25 square inches. The area of a five-and-a-half inch circle is about 95 inches. The larger the circle, the bigger the difference. The area of a nine-inch circle is 254.5 square inches. Two nine-inch windlines equals 509 square inches. One twelve-inch circle is 452 square inches, almost twice the area of the nine-incher.
That Diapason plays on 5″ WP—a hurricane for each note.
You can use any liquid to make a manometer. We can buy neat rigs made of glass tubes joined at top and bottom by round fittings. A longer rubber tube is attached to a wooden pipe foot (such as from a Gedeckt). You take an organ pipe out of its hole, stick the foot of the gauge in the same hole, play the note, and measure the pressure. You can also buy a manometer with a round dial, which eliminates the possibility of spilling water into a windchest—heaven help us. Measuring to the nearest eighth-inch, or even to the nearest millimeter, is accurate enough for pipe organ wind pressure. But using a denser liquid allows for more accurate measurement.
A barometer is similar in function to a manometer, except that it measures atmospheres instead of air pressure. Because the difference between high- and low-pressure areas is so slight, mercury (the only metal and the only element that’s in liquid form in temperate conditions) is commonly used in barometers. The unit of measure is inches-of-mercury (inHg); 29.92 inHg is equal to one atmosphere. Right now, right here, the barometer reading is 29.76 inHg. According to my dictionary, the record high and low barometric readings range from 25.69 inHg to 32.31 inHg. I guess today we’re pretty close to normal.
Measuring and reading barometric pressure takes us back to my eagles and hawks. An updraft creates a low-pressure region, which is filled by air rushing in from areas of higher pressure. That’s how wind is made. Wind doesn’t blow, it’s just lots of air running from one place to another.
On July 4, 2002, Peter Richard Conte played Marcel Dupré’s Passion Symphony on the Grand Court Organ of Philadelphia’s Wanamaker (now Macy’s) Store as a special feature of that year’s convention of the American Guild of Organists. It was an evening performance, and the store’s display cases were moved aside to allow for concert seating. This was early in the great rebirth of that singular instrument, and organists and organbuilders were thrilled by its majesty. Dupré conceived this monumental work of music as an improvisation on the Wanamaker Organ in 1921. (You can purchase the live recording of Conte’s performance from Gothic Records at <http://www.gothic-catalog.com/The_Wanamaker_Legacy_Peter_Richard_Conte_…;.)
The last minutes of that piece comprise a barrage of vast chords, chords that only a monster pipe organ can possibly accomplish. When I hear an organ doing that, I picture thousands of valves of all sizes flying open and closed and the almost unimaginable torrent of air going through the instrument. I remember thinking (and later writing) that as Conte played the conclusion of the symphony, barometers all across New Jersey were falling. Must have been some eagles soaring above the store.