Donald Gillett, 90, died April 3

Martha Novak Clinkscale, American musicologist and researcher in the history of the early piano, died in Dallas on April 24 from injuries sustained in an automobile accident. Born in Akron, Ohio (June 16, 1933), Dr. Clinkscale held piano performance degrees from the University of Louisville (Kentucky) and Yale University, and the PhD in musicology from the University of Minnesota. Her two-volume study Makers of the Piano 1700–1820 and Makers of the Piano 1820–1860 (both published by Oxford University Press) comprises nearly a thousand pages of carefully detailed information about extant instruments: an invaluable and oft-quoted source.
The introductory essays to these books immediately reveal both a mastery of vocabulary and the wide-ranging extent and geographical distribution of the many colleagues who contributed information about the instruments listed. Two short examples from the second volume: “Those musicians who preferred the caress of the clavichord’s tangent found in the early square pianoforte a felicitous addition to their musical experience” (p. ix); “[This book] is not intended to be a frivolous addition to its owners’ libraries. It seeks to inform . . .” (p. x).
Precise and carefully crafted prose as well as the avowed intent to maintain a consistency of style were also hallmarks of the author’s approach to life. John Watson, creator of the technical drawings accompanying the second volume and primary collaborator in a related online database Early Pianos 1720–1860, summed it up succinctly: “She was an elegant woman.”
Martha Clinkscale served the American musical community in many capacities, including as editor of the Journal of the American Musical Instrument Society (1993–6) and as treasurer of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society (2004–8). She taught at the University of California, Riverside (1979–96) and the Meadows School of the Arts at Southern Methodist University (1998–2004), where she was also a member of the organ department’s examining juries each semester of her years in Dallas.
Survivors include daughter Lise Loeffler-Welton and son Thor Loeffler, as well as professional colleagues and friends on both sides of the Atlantic Ocean.
—Larry Palmer

Anna G. Fiore-Smith died in Fall River, Rhode Island, on November 11, 2009, at the age of 81. She studied piano at the New England Conservatory and the Juilliard School, and studied organ with Homer Humphrey and later with George Faxon at the New England Conservatory; she also studied with Nadia Boulanger at Fontainebleau, France, winning first prizes in piano, organ, chamber music, and solfège. Fiore-Smith served as organist and choir director at St. Stephen’s Church, the Church of the Ascension, and Temple Beth El, all in Providence, R.I., and later at the Barrington Congregational Church; she also taught organ at Barrington College. A former dean of the Rhode Island AGO chapter, her name was given to a chapter award that is bestowed on a member organist who typifies her devotion to the organ. She was also active in the Greater Fall River Symphony Society, and was a member of its first executive board. Anna G. Fiore-Smith was preceded in death by her husband, Harold N. Smith; she is survived by her brother and sister-in-law, Faust D. and Susanne Fiore, and many nieces and nephews.

Martin Owen Gemoets died on February 3 in Galveston, Texas. He was 42. He earned a bachelor’s degree at the University of Houston, and a master’s degree in organ from the University of North Texas at Denton in 1996. A member of the Dallas and later Fort Worth AGO chapter, Gemoets held the AAGO and ChM certifications and promoted interest in the certification exams, writing articles on music history for the Fort Worth chapter’s newsletter. He was working toward his FAGO certification. He had recently relocated to Galveston. Martin Owen Gemoets was interred next to his father in Houston during a private graveside service.

Donald M. Gillett died April 3 in Hagerstown, Maryland, at the age of 90. He was the last president of the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company of Boston, Massachusetts, which closed in 1972. Born April 8, 1919, in Southwick, Massachusetts, he earned a degree in business administration from the University of Maryland. He served four years in the Army Air Corps, stationed in Midland, Texas, as a chaplain’s assistant.
Don’s musical interest started when he was four years old, his parents having taken him to a number of organ recitals at the Municipal Auditorium in Springfield, Massachusetts. He started piano lessons at age six with Dorothy Mulroney, the Municipal Auditorium organist. After moving to Washington, D.C., he studied piano and organ with Lewis Atwater, organist at All Souls Unitarian Church and also Washington Hebrew Congregation. Don’s interest in organbuilding also started with the study of the organ.
His first organbuilding job was with Lewis & Hitchcock in Washington, D.C. Four years later in 1951, with a desire to learn voicing and tonal finishing, he was hired at Aeolian-Skinner, working under G. Donald Harrison and reed voicer Herbert Pratt. In later years, Don became a vice president and head tonal finisher. Upon the retirement of Joseph Whiteford in 1968, Don was offered the opportunity to buy up controlling interest in Aeolian-Skinner, and then became president and tonal director.
In the early 1970s, Aeolian-Skinner was building its last three instruments: St. Bartholomew’s NYC, Trinity Wall Street, and the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. The company was in the final stages of Chapter 11 and eventual closing. Don’s last finishing for Aeolian-Skinner was the Kennedy Center.
In March 1972, Riley Daniels, president of the M. P. Möller Organ Company in Hagerstown, offered Don a job at Möller as head flue pipe voicer. After the death of John Hose, Möller’s tonal director, Don became tonal director, and eventually vice president. He retired from Möller in 1991.
Also an avid art collector, he served on the Board of Directors of the Washington County (Maryland) Museum of Fine Arts. Donald M. Gillett is survived by his companion of 40 years, Warren S. Goding of Hagerstown; sister-in-law, Jane Mace of Palm City, Florida; and cousin, Mary Davis of Fort Lee, New Jersey.
—Irv Lawless
Hagerstown, Maryland

Frances M. Heusinkveld, 83 years old, died February 22 in Forest City, Iowa. She attended Northwestern Junior College in Orange City, Iowa, and Central College in Pella, where she studied piano and began organ lessons. She pursued a master’s degree in piano at the University of Iowa and later eared a Ph.D. in organ literature there. Heusinkveld taught in various schools in Iowa, including Upper Iowa University and for 33 years at Buena Vista College in Storm Lake, where she taught theory, music appreciation, piano, and organ. She was also organist of the United Methodist Church in Storm Lake, where she helped the church install a Bedient organ in 2002. Heusinkveld earned the Service Playing, Colleague, and AAGO certifications, and served as dean of the Buena Vista AGO chapter; she also played the cello and was a member of the Cherokee Symphony Orchestra. She enjoyed the study of foreign languages and traveled extensively. Frances M. Heusinkveld is survived by two brothers and many nieces and nephews.

Richard Dunn Howell died January 26 in Dallas. He was 78. Born in Great Bend, Kansas, he began playing for church services at Grace Presbyterian Church in Wichita at the age of 13. He graduated from Wichita University in 1954 and Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University in 1957; he received a master of sacred music degree from Southern Methodist University in 1966. Howell taught elementary music in Richardson and Dallas, and played for many children’s, youth, and adult choirs. He also directed various handbell ensembles. In the course of his activities, he worked with Austin Lovelace and Lloyd Pfautsch. Richard Dunn Howell is survived by his wife of 52 years, Bradley Sue, three children, and three grandchildren.

Austin C. Lovelace, composer and church organist, and Minister of Music, Emeritus, at Wellshire Presbyterian Church in Denver, died April 25 at the age of 91. Born March 26, 1919, in Rutherfordton, North Carolina, he began serving as a church organist when he was 15 and went on to do workshops and recitals in 45 states and six countries. He earned his bachelor’s degree in music at High Point College in North Carolina in 1939 and his master’s (1941) and doctorate (1950) in sacred music from Union Theological Seminary in New York City.
Lovelace was a chaplain’s assistant in the Navy and served as minister of music at a number of churches, including First Baptist Church and First Methodist in High Point, North Carolina; Holy Trinity Episcopal, Lincoln, Nebraska; Myers Park Presbyterian Church and Myers Park Baptist, Charlotte, North Carolina; First Presbyterian Church, Greensboro; First Methodist, Evanston, Illinois; Christ Methodist, New York City; Lover’s Lane Methodist in Dallas, and Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church and Wellshire Presbyterian in Denver.
He was still filling in as organist at area churches when he was 87. He taught at several colleges, including Queen’s College and Davidson College in North Carolina, Union Theological Seminary, Iliff School of Theology in Denver, and Garrett Theological Seminary in Evanston, Illinois.
Lovelace was fond of jazz. Twice, he had Dave Brubeck and Duke Ellington, both with their bands, join the choir at Montview Boulevard Presbyterian Church for performances. Lovelace, known for his sense of humor, wrote five books, including “Hymns That Jesus Would Not Have Liked.” A prolific writer and composer, Lovelace has several hundred compositions in print, as well as numerous articles and books on church hymnody; he was involved with twenty denominations in the development of their hymnals. A past president and Fellow of the Hymn Society of America, Lovelace was also active in the American Guild of Organists, including serving as dean of the North Shore chapter. In 2009 he received the American Music Research Center’s Distinguished Achievement Award, and was honored by the Denver Chapter of the American Guild of Organists with a hymn festival.
Austin Lovelace is survived by his wife of 69 years, Pauline Palmer (“Polly”) Lovelace, daughter Barbara Lovelace Williams, and a grandson.

Neal Campbell grew up in Washington, D.C., and attended the University of Maryland. He holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, where he earned the DMA in 1996. He held church and synagogue positions in Washington, Virginia, Philadelphia, New Jersey, and New York, before assuming his present position at St. Luke’s Church, Darien, Connecticut, in 2006. He was for ten years on the adjunct faculty of the University of Richmond, and served three terms on the AGO National Council.

In preparing the outline for a volume of memoirs reflecting on Aeolian-Skinner organs I have known, it became clear that my involvement with the organ in Washington Cathedral was sufficient in recollection, scope, and primary sources to warrant a chapter all its own. That is what is presented here, along with enough commentary to place the topic in context.
A note about the cathedral’s name: its full ecclesiastical name is the Cathedral Church of St. Peter and St. Paul in the City and Diocese of Washington. In most of the cathedral’s publications today it is called the Washington National Cathedral. During the era I was familiar with it (ca. 1964–1976), the cathedral was called simply Washington Cathedral in its weekly orders of service and other publications, listings in the local newspapers, and on all Aeolian-Skinner correspondence, so for ease of continuity that is how I refer to it in this article.

The new organ in 1937
Much misinformation and technical ambiguity surrounds the Washington Cathedral organ. This is due to the fact that by the time the cathedral organ was built, Ernest Skinner had left the company he founded in 1901. Also, at some point in the early 1930s the Skinner Organ Company merged with the pipe organ division of the Aeolian Company, creating the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company. The entangling alliances of these dramas are beyond the scope of this article, but it is fascinating reading, and the reader is referred to Charles Callahan’s two books1 for the complete saga as told by the principals in their own words.
In 1932 Aeolian-Skinner built a small two-manual organ as its Opus 883 and lent it to Washington Cathedral while Ernest Skinner was still with the firm. Later in the decade, as the Great Choir was nearing completion, Ernest Skinner’s new company, the Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company, was contracted to build a large four-manual organ for the cathedral, and the small organ on loan was reinstalled by Aeolian-Skinner in Lasell Junior College in Newton, Massachusetts, retaining the 883 opus number. The organ no longer exists.2
By this time the cathedral worship space consisted of the Great Choir and two side chapels, a rather sizable and impressive edifice in itself, in spite of the fact that it represented but 20% of the finished cathedral church as planned. The new organ was built by the Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company of Methuen, Massachusetts, as their Opus 510. This was the company that Ernest Skinner and his son Richmond set up in a factory adjacent to Serlo Organ Hall in Methuen, now known as the Methuen Memorial Music Hall. Edward Searles, an eccentric organ aficionado living in Methuen, commissioned Henry Vaughan to build a new music hall, completed in 1909, to contain the old Boston Music Hall organ. In 1889, on a site adjacent to the hall, Searles had purchased an old textile mill and had Vaughan renovate it to function as an organ factory for James Treat. Treat had worked for Hutchings, Plaisted & Company in Boston, which is probably where Searles met him, as Searles had purchased an organ from Hutchings in 1880.3 From this factory they manufactured organs under the name of the Methuen Organ Company. Skinner purchased the factory and the hall during the Depression, and ran concerts in the hall and built several notable organs in the factory from about 1936 until the factory was destroyed by fire in 1943. Of the organs they built, the one for Washington Cathedral was by far the largest.4
Given the fierce loyalty in some circles to Skinner, and given his longevity (1866–1960), one wonders whether he might have been a stronger competitor had not the Methuen factory been destroyed by fire in 1943. For example, the Skinner organ for the new St. Thomas Church in 1913, Opus 205, was built in collaboration with T. Tertius Noble, and it remained one of Skinner’s favorites. Noble was likewise devoted to Skinner. From the Methuen factory Skinner electrified an old Johnson organ for Noble’s St. Thomas studio. The company also relocated and revised the organ in the Brick Church in New York when the church moved to its new and present location under Clarence Dickinson’s direction in 1940. Dickinson had also played the opening recital on Skinner’s Opus 150 at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in 1911. The records show that most of the work of the new Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company was limited to rebuilding and relocating some of Skinner’s former organs. Of the four-manual organs Skinner built in Methuen, only two survive: the organ in the chapel of Mt. Holyoke College (built in 1938 as his Opus 511, which was rebuilt from his previous organ in the chapel), and the organ in St. Martin’s Church in Harlem, a rebuilt Skinner from a previous location. He did build a completely new four-manual organ for St. John’s Lutheran Church in Allentown, Pennsylvania, but it has since been extensively modified. And a three-manual organ for St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church in New York is extant and unaltered, but unplayable.5
The committee to select a new organ for Washington Cathedral included Noble and Channing Lefebvre of Trinity Church in New York, each enthusiastic supporters of Ernest Skinner. So it is not hard to imagine the cathedral turning to this new company headed by Skinner to build its first organ, in spite of its somewhat shaky organization. According to Ernest Skinner, authentic Skinner organs were available only through the new company building out of Methuen—and this was arguably true. Advertisements in The Diapason and The American Organist about this time barely disguise Skinner’s contempt of the tonal philosophy of the continuing Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, and his letters to the editor are openly hostile to G. Donald Harrison. Harrison for his part never responded in kind, though his business correspondence shows that Skinner’s remarks disturbed him. He ultimately let his own instruments speak for themselves as growing numbers of younger organists, many of whom had studied in Europe during and after World War II, found favor with his classically inspired instruments. Paul Callaway, the cathedral’s new organist, also studied with Dupré in Paris and later served in the war as a bandmaster in the South Pacific.

An organ for the completed
cathedral emerges
The Ernest M. Skinner and Son Opus 510 organ served the cathedral well in essentially unaltered form—albeit with additions—until 1973, at which time the major renovation began, the result of which is the present organ. In 1957, with the projected completion of the nave in sight, the cathedral began a series of consultations with Aeolian-Skinner regarding what steps it should take in providing for the organ. Although G. Donald Harrison designed a small, two-manual organ for the cathedral’s Bethlehem Chapel6 in 1951, he had nothing to do with the design of the main organ, and I have not discovered any comments by him about it. By the late 1950s the crossing, transepts and first three bays of the nave were nearing completion. The big decision before the building committee at that time was whether to build the great central tower over the crossing and let the nave wait its turn, or complete the interior of the nave and build the tower later. There were persuasive arguments for both approaches, but it was decided to build the tower and let the nave wait.
With all of that in mind, it was decided to develop a master plan for the organ with a view to gradually altering and enlarging the organ to accommodate the full cathedral. Joseph S. Whiteford, the new president and tonal director of Aeolian-Skinner, developed this in consultation with the cathedral organ committee, which in reality amounted to Callaway and his associate Richard Wayne Dirksen, reporting to and receiving reactions from the Dean, the Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre, Jr. Whiteford’s scheme specified what might be called a post-Harrison American Classic concept—a standard four-manual layout, together with a large Positiv, independent choruses on manual and pedal divisions, along with a plethora of imitative voices (some new and some saved from the old organ) and softer sounds to accompany the choir. The correspondence shows Whiteford to be in total command of the subject, including convincing arguments surrounding the scientific properties of physics and acoustics involved in the emerging cathedral space.
Responding to a request from the organ committee of the cathedral in February 1957, he says:

The present enclosed volume of air, which has so much to do with the acoustics of both the organ and choir, is between 60 and 70% of the completed Cathedral. Furthermore, the surfaces normal, or adjacent to the organ and choir, are approximately 90% complete. These are the most important surfaces and the most important air volume, since they have the most to do with the projections of the sound to the listener. The air spaces and surfaces at the West end of the Cathedral, for instance, while important as a terminus, do not shape and control the sound in anywhere near the same capacity as the Great Choir and Crossing.
The present organ is truly magnificent in certain respects. It has a wealth of soft voices which create an extremely fine effect. These were the high points of the period in which the organ was built. Since that time tremendous strides have been made in making instruments of this character greatly more flexible with regard to the many periods of music . . . [which] demands primarily, highly focused and clear sound, rather than the nebulous, floating, ethereal sounds of many strings and flutes in which the present organ now abounds.7

From this point Whiteford’s letter continues in language reminiscent of Harrison and Emerson Richards a decade earlier. He posits that the best location for the organ would be the yet-to-be-built west gallery, but that idea never received serious consideration. He then takes the cathedral through a logical long-range plan to accomplish the task, beginning with the console, wiring, and relays (“the nervous system of the organ” he says), then adding the Brustwerk and Positiv divisions nearer the choir and in direct sight line to the congregation, continuing with the replacement and relocation of various portions of the remaining divisions. This letter remained the vision statement for the work on the organ that culminated in 1976, when the full length of the nave was finally completed some 19 years later.
A thorough study of Whiteford and an analysis of his extant organs has yet to be undertaken, but his contributions to Aeolian-Skinner in his own right are considerable and warrant such a study. In fact, Whiteford worked very closely with Harrison during the building of some of the company’s most successful organs, and it often fell to him to implement the details of the schemes Harrison wrought. At the time when Callaway and Whiteford were discussing the future of the cathedral’s organ in 1957–58, some of Whiteford’s own most successful organs were built. Opus 1308 for St. Mark’s Church (now Cathedral) in Shreveport, Louisiana, and Opus 1309 for the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (now called the Community of Christ), in Independence, Missouri, come to mind. These were large four-manual organs in new, highly visible venues—very different in concept, use, and outcome, but important manifestations of Aeolian-Skinner as it emerged following the death of G. Donald Harrison. The Shreveport organ in particular derived much of its distinction through the on-site alterations and finishing of Roy Perry and J. C. Williams8, noted Aeolian-Skinner representatives in that part of the country. Callaway particularly liked the Shreveport organ and measured plans for Washington Cathedral against its success.
It is true that Whiteford did not come to organ building through the traditional apprentice method, and there is no doubt that many of the Aeolian-Skinner craftsmen (several of whom were old enough to be his father) didn’t respond well to what some perceived as Whiteford’s Johnny-come-lately status. But from my experience with many of his organs, I tend to agree with Emerson Richards in his report to Henry Willis III in England when, after Harrison’s death, he wrote “I think that he [Whiteford] has more ability than he is given credit for but he is impatient and for some reason does not inspire confidence—just why I cannot say.”9
By this time Ernest Skinner’s star had set, his attempts failed to set up a shop after the Methuen fire, and even though he was on the scene and continued to offer his diatribes against what he considered the desecrations of his masterpieces, no one paid much attention to him. Still, it is still hard not to feel a bit sorry for the grand old man as he saw his early successes at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, then St. Thomas Church, and now Washington Cathedral fall prey to advancing ideas carried out by the company still bearing his name!
The first step in the lofty long-range plan was to provide a new four-manual console to control the completed organ. The new console was encased in elaborate Gothic panels designed for the previous console by cathedral architect Philip Hubert Frohman, which had pedalboard, swell shoes, and toe studs on a hydraulic elevator. Thus, while the bench height remained the same, the pedalboard could be raised or lowered. Presumably this was to accommodate the disparate heights of the cathedral’s organist and his associate—Paul Callaway, who was unusually short, and Richard Dirksen, who was unusually tall. This 1958 console was referred to by Aeolian-Skinner as Opus 883-A, picking up on the opus number of the small two-manual it lent the cathedral in 1932, even though the original #883 was in place in Newton, Massachusetts, and the Ernest M. Skinner and Son Opus 510 was the only organ in situ.10 Sparse in design by comparison with the digital age of multiple levels of memory, it was luxurious for the time. It had 18 generals, remote combination action, and the usual couplers and pistons to make for ease in playing. The nomenclature engraved on the knobs reflected the projected new organ and only approximately correlated to the actual stops of the 1937 organ it controlled. On the Great, for example, the Prinzipal, Spitz Prinzipal, and Salicional actually drew Diapasons I, II, and III respectively. It was a bit confusing to the traveling weekly recitalist, but it somehow made sense and had the psychological effect of projecting the vision of the new organ. The console functioned in this way until the overhaul began in 1973.
The next step was to add two unenclosed divisions in 1963 named Brustwerk and Positiv with matching pedal in the so-called musicians’ galleries11, lofts above the canopies of the stalls in the Great Choir, in the first bay on either side of the Choir, carrying the job number 883-B. In 1965 as Opus 883-C, the Trompette en Chamade was installed in the triforium over the high altar.12 This was the organ I knew growing up: the 4-manual Ernest M. Skinner and Son, Opus 510, plus the new console, Brustwerk and Positiv, and Trompette en Chamade. During high school and college years I attended weekly services and events at the cathedral, and I played a recital on the Sunday afternoon series in 1971 while I was a senior in high school and a student of William Watkins. Unfortunately, I was too young to have been considered for the extraordinary College of Church Musicians, the graduate-level school founded at the cathedral by Leo Sowerby, which had closed its doors by the time I was of college age. I did know several of the Fellows of the College, and heard all of them as they played their recitals following Evensong on Sunday afternoons. Sowerby himself was often in attendance, and recitals frequently included his music.
While attending the University of Maryland, I did study privately with Paul Callaway for a year and observed his rehearsals and services, and will always be grateful to his memory for his helpful mentorship as I began my trek into the intricacies of the Episcopal Church. Weekly attendance at Evensong and the organ recitals that followed left an indelible memory. The variety of the repertoire and sheer amount of it was remarkable. The choir sang the Responses, Psalms, anthem settings of the canticles, and an anthem at the offertory. On the last Sunday of the month there was a cantata or group of anthems in place of the sermon. At Evensong the Psalms were either sung either to Anglican chant or plainsong, and the service began in one of two ways: 1) a processional hymn, followed by the Responses with the choir in place, followed by the Psalms to Anglican chant; or 2) the Responses were sung where the choir gathered in the north transept, and the Psalms were sung to plainsong in processional accompanied by handbell changes.
In addition to the standard cathedral repertoire of the late 19th and early 20th century, Callaway offered large doses of early music and modern music. I recall one Evensong when all of the music was by Byrd. The movable cathedral chairs for the congregation were arranged facing the north transept with a portable altar, candles, and officiants’ chairs set up on the nave floor, while the choir sang from the gallery above, and the entire service was unaccompanied. New works were also frequently premiered; particularly memorable was the dedication of the central tower in 1964 when new works by Samuel Barber, Lee Hoiby, Stanley Hollingsworth, Roy Hamlin Johnson, John La Montaine, Milford Myhre, Ned Rorem, and Leo Sowerby were given first performances.
Callaway usually played the organ voluntaries himself. His repertoire was vast, and he listed preludes and postludes to each service. The now-familiar practice of the principal musician as conductor, with the assistant doing all the playing, was not then in vogue, and Callaway usually played anthem accompaniments as well. Typically, the assistant organist turned pages, and perhaps played the sermon hymn. In retrospect it is easy to suggest that the technical security of the choir suffered, as they were only able to see Callaway through a series of mirrors. But it was the way things were done at the time, and it offered a window of opportunity to hear this extraordinary organist in the roles of recitalist playing the repertoire, service player, and accompanist. Callaway excelled in each of these capacities following the examples of his mentors, T. Tertius Noble and particularly David McK. Williams.
Even though Callaway was a pupil of T. Tertius Noble at St. Thomas Church, he was great friends with David McK. Williams at St. Bartholomew’s and often spoke of how much he learned from him. Part of Callaway’s duties as Noble’s student was to play the services at St. Thomas Chapel (now All Saints’ Church on East 60th Street) where Evensong on Sunday evening was late enough that he usually turned pages for David McK. Williams at 4:00 Evensong at St. Bartholomew’s. Here he observed in close-up detail Williams’s absolute control from the console, where by all accounts his accompaniments and improvisations were extraordinary. Callaway often told me of the profound effect David’s playing had on him, even though he was careful to say that never studied with him formally. Callaway was approached about the position at St. Bartholomew’s when David McK. Williams was forced to resign in 1946, but having just returned to the cathedral following service in World War II, he declined, and Harold Friedell was appointed.
Callaway’s playing of large doses of Bach chorale preludes and trio sonatas using the Brustwerk and Positiv were models of accuracy, style, liturgical appropriateness, and performance practice not as a subject unto itself, but a natural vehicle for expressive playing. The contrapuntal textures were clear and focused, and the new Brustwerk and Positiv divisions were the ultimate in Joseph Whiteford’s development of the classic Aeolian-Skinner sound in the post-Harrison era. They were characterized by low wind pressures, articulate yet even voicing, pipes of high tin content, and a location within sight lines of the choir and congregation. The Brustwerk and Positiv could be used by themselves in Baroque music; added to the old organ they added immediacy and clarity. In combination with the main organ and Trompette en Chamade, the combined divisions were good vehicles for thrilling performances of Callaway’s hefty doses of romantic and modern organ music. The organ is fairly well documented in LP recordings accompanying the choir and in solo repertoire, including a multi-volume complete performance of the Bach Clavierübung, Callaway playing Part III on the cathedral organ, and Ralph Kirkpatrick playing the other parts on harpsichord. Just before the 1973–76 work began, Callaway recorded an album of music of Gigout, Franck, Tournemire, and Messiaen on the organ, the specific intent being to document the organ prior to the renovation. The plan was then to record the same repertoire on the new organ in 1976, which he did. To my knowledge these LPs have not been transferred to CD, but are fairly easy to find through the various search engines.

The new organ 1973–76
With America’s Bicentennial observances on the horizon, the cathedral in the early 1970s poured considerable energy into completing the nave and organ, and planned several special services that culminated in the “Dedication of the Nave for the Reconciliation of Peoples of Earth,” in the presence of President and Mrs. Ford, and Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip on July 8, 1976. I sang during the service as a member of the University of Maryland Chorus. All aspects of the cathedral’s bicentennial programs were well reported in the media. The actual bicentennial date, July 4, 1976, was a Sunday, and the front page of the Style section of The Washington Post featured a picture of Roy Perry in the organ blowing a pipe, and a lengthy article by Paul Hume saying:

When Queen Elizabeth walks down the aisle of Washington Cathedral Thursday morning, she will be hearing one of the greatest pipe organs in the world . . . Perry worked among the thousands of pipes with the precision and infinite care of a jeweler cutting a priceless diamond so that its facets would produce the greatest possible beauty. And like the diamond, the sounds of the Washington Cathedral’s organ pipes can be expected to last, with care, indefinitely . . . they now stand ready . . . to create new beauty in a newly completed setting. There are those who know no beauty in all of music that can surpass theirs.13

Aeolian-Skinner had just ceased operation when the cathedral began its work in 1973. Joseph Whiteford, even though he retired from Aeolian-Skinner before its denouement, continued to be the person with whom the cathedral (that is, Callaway) corresponded regarding the new work, and it was always assumed that he would oversee the work for Aeolian-Skinner, even though he was officially retired. Whiteford, the son of a prominent Washington attorney and a graduate of St. Alban’s School on the cathedral close, was a good friend of Callaway, and it was natural that these two would be the point persons in the cathedral’s ever-evolving planning of the organ. Reading the 1957 correspondence, we see that the cathedral’s estimated time line for the completion of the cathedral was optimistic by several years. In hindsight, it is providential that the cathedral’s work was delayed. Had the cathedral contracted to accomplish its ambitious scheme with Aeolian-Skinner during its final days, the results would likely have included artistic difficulties and financial disasters.14
Roy Perry’s role in the cathedral organ renovation was an afterthought. Many of the former Aeolian-Skinner men who weren’t retired were still in business as suppliers to the trade. It was decided to gather a consortium—the cathedral’s term—of workers to design, build, voice, and finish the necessary pipes and chests, all under the direction of Whiteford, following the plan of his 1957 design. The one catch was that Whiteford, who lived in California, did not fly and apparently did not want to relocate to Washington for the long periods of time the job required. Whiteford pitched the idea to Callaway that Perry, as one of Aeolian-Skinner’s most successful field representatives and finishers, be the on-site supervisor and finisher for the cathedral, working under his (Whiteford’s) direction from California via telephone and hard copy correspondence. It is poignant to read Perry’s negotiations with the cathedral regarding his compensation. At this time Perry was retired and drawing Social Security payments. He explained to Dirksen—who was the cathedral’s agent in business and logistical matters pertaining to the new organ—that if in any given month he earned more than $175 his Social Security would be knocked out for the month. He therefore suggested that for the duration of the project, he be paid “$175 per month as a salary, plus expenses, for a total of $5,875 for the period April 1973–December 1975,”15 and the cathedral agreed to this schedule of payments.
In short order the cathedral had letters of agreement with Aeolian-Skinner pipemaker Thomas Anderson and head flue voicer John Hendricksen to provide the necessary new pipes. The new chests were made by the Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company of East Kingston, New Hampshire, the continuing company Skinner started when he left Aeolian-Skinner. Anthony Bufano, another Aeolian-Skinner alumnus, who was by then curator of the organs in the Riverside Church in New York, re-covered many of the pouches with Perflex and facilitated the necessary console details. Other structural components were entrusted to Arthur Carr and the Durst Organ Supply Company of Erie, Pennsylvania. All local arrangements were coordinated through the Newcomer Organ Company and their outstandingly gifted foreman Robert Wyant, who had taken care of the cathedral organ for many years. Among these principals—the cathedral (usually via Dirksen), Newcomer in Washington, Whiteford in California, Perry in Texas, Anderson and Hendricksen in Massachusetts, Bufano in New York, and Carr in Erie—flowed frequent communications for three years: correspondence, pipe orders, voicing notes, shop talk of every kind, travel arrangements, and occasional items of humor or personal and family notes of interest. In spite of intense seriousness of purpose and high artistic standards, it is obvious that there was a sense of family about this consortium.
It was a laudable plan that attracted huge interest in the organ community in Washington and elsewhere as word spread. It called for several unusual features to be built, retaining a large portion of the existing Ernest M. Skinner and Son divisions, and the Aeolian-Skinner Brustwerk and Positiv divisions located in the musicians’ galleries. The Trompette en Chamade over the high altar was of course to remain.
The Great in the first bay north triforium was to consist largely of new pipework intended to complement the two Baroque divisions. The tonal relationships (and to a large degree the pipes as well) of the three enclosed divisions were to remain, because of their proven effectiveness in accompanying the choir. Seated at the console, these divisions were located directly above the organist’s line of sight. Directly above, behind the case in the second bay north triforium was the Swell, followed by the Choir and Solo, in the succeeding third and fourth bay triforium galleries. The Pedal, located throughout the south triforium, was to be a combination of new and existing pipes, including the four full-length 32′ stops.
A small division, a typical Ernest Skinner Echo, which was played with the Swell division, was located in the fifth bay south triforium, opposite the main organ near the high altar. This was the location of the original organ that Aeolian-Skinner lent to the cathedral in 1932. It consisted of an 8′–4′ five-rank Choeur des Violes, an 8′ Éoliènne Céleste, and an 8′ Voix Humaine.16 To this was added a unique stop Perry developed with the curious name Flûte d’Argent II. Perry told me that once he had found an interesting flute stop built by Estey called Zartflöte or Silver Flute, which was a tapered flute that was also harmonic. It had a cool, clear sound that Perry thought would sound good with a celeste added to it, so he ordered it in some of the organs he finished for Aeolian-Skinner.17 I was present the night Perry pitched the idea to Dirksen to add this unique stop to the organ. Wayne liked it and said he would find the money somehow; it wasn’t cheap! In Roy’s previous use of this stop he called it Harmonic Spitzflöte II, or simply Silver Flute. Whiteford was fanatical about nomenclature and insisted that stops in the Great be given German names, and those of the Swell, French. So, this new stop became in Whiteford’s nomenclature Flûte d’Argent—Silver Flute. In French, of course, argent has more than one meaning, and many a visiting organist has wondered if it was a joke that the cathedral organ contained a “Money Flute.” It was an expensive stop to build and voice, so the double meaning may indeed be appropriate.
One of the chief goals of the new organ was to provide more sound directly into the crossing and nave, so it was decided to build a new division of significant tonal properties in the first bay south triforium, directly opposite the Great. This enclosed division had swell shade openings into the chancel and south transept, and was built with funds solicited in memory of Leo Sowerby, so the division became known as the Sowerby Memorial Swell division, since it was also to be played via the Swell manual. In effect, if not in planning, it was a Bombarde or Grand Choeur division—small but telling, consisting of a principal chorus topped by two mixtures, a chorus of French reeds, and an exceptional string celeste of special construction that extended all the way to 16′ C in the unison and celeste ranks.
Therefore, the Swell manual played pipes located in three locations: 1) the main Swell directly in front of the organist behind the north case, 2) the Sowerby Swell, opposite the Great, and 3) the Echo Swell in the fifth bay south triforium. Roy Perry told me that the job ought to have had a five-manual console, and it is easy to understand the organizational logic in such a plan. The organ would have benefited from having the Bombarde (Sowerby division) and Echo occupying the fifth manual, but in the pre-digital, pre-solid state age, it would have been enormously expensive, if not impossible, and the big plan did call for retaining the 1958 console. This brings up the important point that consistently stands out in the project: no expense was spared on what was done, but nothing was done that was considered unnecessary, and console rearrangements fell into that category. As it was, the total cost of the new 1973–76 organ was projected to be $216,000,18 which would equal a 2007 value of between 1.3 and 1.8 million dollars.19
Other unusual features included extending the 32′ Bombarde into the 64′ range for three notes for pieces ending in B, B-flat, or A. I recall that these three notes were ineffective, being half-length metal pipes extended from a full-length wooden 32′ rank. There weren’t many miscalculations in the project, but in a job of this scope a few were inevitable—some humorous, others serious. Perry may be best remembered for his beautifully finished celestes, but he was equally adventurous in designing bold, complex mixtures.20 For the cathedral he and Whiteford designed the unusual VI–X Terzzymbel intended initially to flank the Trompette en Chamade over the high altar, but eventually placed with the Great. He also called for an unusual mixture in the Solo called None Kornett to replace Skinner’s full mixture, but (in his words) “it was a vast disappointment on the voicing machine, so you may prefer to abandon these two top boards and re-engrave the [draw] knob PERRY’S FOLLY.”21 On the other hand, the use of Perflex, which Dirksen insisted upon, stung the cathedral badly in ensuing years, as it did many other jobs of the era when everyone was desperate to find a substitute for chest leather. In the 1960s some New York churches found that leather lasted less than a decade. As it turned out, Perflex itself was indestructible, but there seemed to be no satisfactory way to glue it to the wooden chests, so in short order Perflex was deemed even less suitable than leather.
The 1973–76 organ in Washington Cathedral is really the final statement of Aeolian-Skinner’s concept of the American Classic Organ. Among the cathedral consortium it was informally referred to as Opus Posthumous. Perry went a step further and printed stationery in jest (I think!) with the title “Organbuilders Anonymous” in a shaded copperplate font, listing the names of those taking part: “Roy Perry, Most Anonymous; Tommy Anderson, Almost Anonymous; John Hendricksen, All But Anonymous; Bob Wyant, Nearly Anonymous; and Honorary Anonymouses: Joe Whiteford, Wayne Dirksen, Harold Newcomer, Kim Bolten [sic], Arthur Carr, Jim Williams, Tony Bufano, Carl Basset [sic], Adolph Zajic, Bon Smith.”22 It was Perry’s hope to actually build organs in his post-cathedral days with this consortium. He and Jim Williams had previously built a few organs independent of Aeolian-Skinner using the services of several of them. Humor aside, this is as complete a list of workers as may be found anywhere else in the documentation of the building of the organ. They are all persons associated either with Aeolian-Skinner or the cathedral, with the exception of Adolph Zajic, the well-known reed voicer still working at Möller at the time, and the independent Carr. The one piece of the puzzle missing in the original consortium of Aeolian-Skinner alumni was a reed voicer. Oscar Pearson, the famous voicer who created the State Trumpet at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine23 was still alive, but had retired and was deaf.24 Herb Stimson, Aeolian-Skinner’s last reed voicer, died just about the time Aeolian-Skinner went out of business. So, for the cathedral, Möller built and Zajic voiced the Great reeds.
Roy Perry was central to the tonal outcome of the cathedral organ. I would venture to say that his influence was greater than that of Whiteford, who never made the trip to Washington either during the work or after. The correspondence often shows Perry dutifully asking permission to make various alterations, some slight, others significant. Except for stop nomenclature, it appears that Whiteford never tried to second-guess him. Perry’s on-the-job adjustments, combined with his natural gifts as a finisher, resulted in the unique sound stamped with his genius.
I had nothing official to do with the cathedral or its organ project. I had met Roy Perry in the summer of 1972 when I was a finalist in the AGO National Organ Playing Competition at its national convention in Dallas. My teacher, William Watkins, knew Perry and had played and recorded at his church in Kilgore, the First Presbyterian Church—home of the well-known Aeolian-Skinner organ, which in the 1950s and 60s was prominently featured in company sales literature and on the “King of Instruments” series of recordings. Volume II has recordings of both Perry and Watkins on the Kilgore organ, and Volume X featured the Kilgore organ and choirs. It was through these recordings that Perry’s name became known outside of the Texas-Oklahoma-Louisiana territory he covered for Aeolian-Skinner. The English choral repertoire on Volume X is standard fare now, but was revelatory at the time. However, it was in the American music that Perry used the organ to greatest effect, notably in his accompaniment of David McK. Williams’s anthem In the year that King Uzziah died, and Bruce Simonds’s Prelude on Iam sol recedit igneus, which he introduced to the organ world through the recording.25 Watkins thought it important that I meet Perry and see the Kilgore organ, and that was the source of our association.
When I learned of Perry’s involvement in the cathedral project I, still a student living in Washington, offered to meet him at the airport, run errands for him, and in the course of events introduced him to my fellow organists and showed him around town. His trips were a whirlwind of activity and were red letter days on my calendar.
On the one hand I was fortunate to have been able to simply sit and watch him at work finishing the various stops as installments of new pipework arrived. He listened as I played the pieces I was working on and came to some of my church services. His musical insights from his perspective as an organbuilder were valuable, especially regarding registration.
His knowledge of the repertoire was vast and greatly belied his humble upbringing. In designing several stops for the cathedral he would have special pieces of music in mind, and would often request that I have such and such a piece ready when such and such a stop arrived. For the new strings in the Sowerby Swell, he wanted to hear Duruflé’s Veni creator Adagio. And he wanted to hear Bach’s chorale prelude Nun komm der Heiden Heiland, BWV 659, beginning with the accompaniment on the new celestes, especially the opening pedal notes on the new 16′ Violoncelle Celeste against the boldest cornet in the organ.26 As the project completion drew near toward Holy Week 1975, he was particularly looking forward to the full ensembles in Langlais’ Les Rameaux, which was on the program for Palm Sunday. And he was irritated when Wayne Dirksen (in fact a fine organist who was in the class of Virgil Fox at the Peabody Institute) on Good Friday played Bach’s O Mensch bewein with the cantus firmus, in his words, “played on a lard-butted clarinet, with four cornets in the organ to choose from!”—a curious admonition given his preferred registration for the Bach Nun komm! He did love the cornet combination for Bach ornamented chorales, and I think he perceived string celestes, as a family of tone in his design, as an equally viable and appropriate accompaniment as are flutes or principals, and—who knows—he may have a point. He was a wonderful teacher, vivid in imagination, yet grounded in a thorough knowledge of the repertoire. I still feel his influence when practicing and playing.
On the other hand, in social settings stories of the personalities he had known and worked with flowed in a heady ether wherever we went. Early in his career he had come to New York to study with Hugh McAmis, and it was then that he met David McK. Williams and struck up their lifelong friendship. He told of how his involvement with Aeolian-Skinner began by accident and lasted for 25 years, during which time his sales amounted to roughly 25% of Aeolian-Skinner’s business, and he was full of humorous anecdotes of Donald Harrison’s trips through the Southwest on various jobs.
Likewise, for his part, Harrison had great regard for Perry and enjoyed his trips to Texas, as he relates in a letter to Henry Willis in England:

Roy Perry, or Perriola, as he is affectionately referred to in our organization, has supervised, with the aid of Jack Williams and his son, most of our important installations in Texas. He is an accomplished organist and has a wonderful ear. He is a top notch finisher and during my periodic visits to Texas I cannot remember a time when I have had to suggest that something might have been done a little differently. He just has that kind of organ sense.
I think you will also enjoy him as a personality. He knows some good southern stories and, by the way, he is an expert at southern hospitality. I always look forward to my trips down to his neck of the woods as we have a glorious time just waiting for sundown to start on a little nourishment.27

As the work was in the planning stages at the cathedral, I remember several of us being given a tour through the organ. Roy was explaining where the various stops and divisions were to be located or relocated. He was particularly proud of two sets of string celestes he was designing.28 These were to be of varying scales, very broad in tone, becoming narrower as the notes descended in the compass, and having 2/7 mouth construction, a mouth width usually found only on principal pipes. He said we would “smell the rosin” when we heard it. Being the eager and easily malleable students we were, we expressed appropriate awe, and he said rather matter of factly “well boys, the way I see it, if you can’t fill the house with string tone you’re just not sittin’ in the front of the bus.”
Roy was a character! He was part of that vanishing (vanished?) breed of larger than life extrovert, totally uninhibited Louisiana Cajun humorists, the likes of which Episcopal Washington had never seen. Though I was not part of it, he had a non-musical, non-organ-related social orbit involving the higher echelons of the cathedral hierarchy. Usually his trips, which brought him to Washington two or three times a year, sometimes for four or five weeks’ duration, included a big party where he cooked his famous Louisiana gumbo. These were the talk of the cathedral work force, and not just the music office. Accounts of these gatherings and recipes are also mentioned in the correspondence, taking their place along side voicing notes and complex cathedral schedules.
Roy made friends easily with all of the cathedral staff, especially the vergers and volunteer tour guides called Aides. He regaled us at dinner one night telling of a sight he swore he witnessed. A very tall “professional Texan” as he called him, complete with Stetson hat in hand, tooled leather cowboy boots, shirt with pearl buttons, and long, thick, white sideburns (think Jock Ewing in the nighttime soap opera “Dallas”) came up to Ginny Hammond, the Head Aide. He drew himself up as he took in the wide vistas of the transepts, the newly completed nave, then the high altar with the Trompette en Chamade atop, and said in his thickest Texan drawl, “Tell me, ma’m, is this yer MAIN SANC-tu-ar-y?”
At some point midway through the work, word got out that this former Aeolian-Skinner representative and finisher was nearby and consulting offers began to appear. He actually designed a rather interesting organ for All Saints’ Church in Chevy Chase, where I was assistant organist. The case was made that we could get a new organ in essentially the same way as the cathedral had via the consortium, but nothing came of the plan. I accompanied him to the Church of the Redeemer in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, which had sought his advice regarding their organ.29 He also did a thorough inspection and report for All Saints’ Church in Worcester, Massachusetts,30 and—in 1977 after the cathedral work was complete—made a visit and proposed additions at St. George’s-by-the-River, in Rumson, New Jersey.31 Also in 1977 he did what turned out to be his final work in some tonal refinishing to the organ in Church of the Epiphany in Washington, D.C.32 He died in May 1978.
I moved away from the city of my youth in 1976 just as the Bicentennial furor was dying down. I did return to play a Sunday afternoon recital at the cathedral in 1977 in a program of music I had coached with Roy. I have not played the organ since, although I have occasionally attended services at the cathedral when traveling, notably at the memorial service for Dirksen in July 2003, and have heard it on the telecasts of funerals and memorial services of national figures. The organ had its eccentricities and could easily be mismanaged by visiting recitalists lacking practice time. But the sound was still unmistakable as a creation imbued with Roy Perry’s magic and the Aeolian-Skinner aesthetic. The organ in its post-1976 state has been featured in several recordings, notably the series of live Sunday afternoon recitals on the JAV label, where the performances of Erik Wm. Suter, Gerre Hancock, Peter Richard Conte, Ann Elise Smoot, Todd Wilson, Daniel Roth, and John Scott display the great variety, contrast, and depth of this unique organ.
In reading the correspondence and technical data surrounding the creation of the cathedral organ, what impresses me most is the humility tinged with pride, innate talent, sense of history, exuberance, and exceeding devotion to the cathedral that this unique consortium exhibited. It is summed up best by Wayne Dirksen himself in a report as the work was nearing completion:

We began twenty-six months ago with the security of long planning (since 1957), the thorough experience and knowledge of two principal consultants, with confidence in our craftsmen and maintainers, and with ample time to correlate and coordinate a complex project toward the perfect result we believed possible.
Now the largest part is accomplished. During this Holy Week 1975, thousands will hear with their ears what we knew in our hearts: that an incomparably magnificent pipe organ will grace this cathedral for centuries to come, the result of extraordinary talents, devotion, and skills we have combined for its creation.33

The 1937 Ernest M. Skinner and Son Organ, Opus 510

GREAT
16′ Diapason 61
8′ First Diapason 61
8′ Second Diapason 61
8′ Third Diapason 61
Muted String Ensemble
8′ Principal Flute 61
8′ Clarabella 61
8′ Viola 61
8′ Erzähler 61
51⁄3′ Quint 61
4′ Octave 61
4′ Principal 61
4′ Harmonic Flute 61
22⁄3′ Twelfth 61
2′ Fifteenth 61
IV Harmonics 244
VII Plein Jeu 427
III Cymbale 183
16′ Posaune 61
8′ Tromba 61
8′ Trumpet 61
4′ Clarion 61

SWELL
16′ Bourdon 73
16′ Dulciana 73
8′ First Diapason 73
8′ Second Diapason 73
8′ Claribel Flute 73
8′ Gedackt 73
8′ Viol d’Orchestre 73
8′ Viol Celeste 73
8′ Salicional 73
8′ Voix Celeste 73
8′ Flauto Dolce 73
8′ Flute Celeste 61
Muted String Ensemble
8′ Aeoline 73
8′ Unda Maris 73
4′ Octave 73
4′ Harmonic Flute 61
4′ Gemshorn 73
4′ Violin 73
4′ Unda Maris II 122
22⁄3′ Twelfth 61
2′ Fifteenth 61
V Cornet 305
V Full Mixture 305
III Carillon 183
16′ Posaune 73
8′ Trumpet 73
(light wind)
8′ Cornopean 73
8′ Flügel Horn 73
8′ Vox Humana 73
4′ Clarion 61
Tremolo

CHOIR
16′ Gemshorn 73
8′ Diapason 73
8′ Concert Flute 73
8′ Gemshorn 73
8′ Viol d’Orchestre 73
8′ Viol Celeste 73
8′ Kleiner Erzähler II 134
4′ Harmonic Flute 73
4′ Gemshorn 73
4′ Violin 73
22⁄3′ Nazard 61
2′ Piccolo 61
13⁄5′ Tierce 61
11⁄7′ Septieme 61
III Carillon 183
16′ Orchestral Bassoon 61
8′ Trumpet 73
(small orchestral type)
8′ Clarinet 61
8′ Orchestral Oboe 61
Tremolo
Celesta 61
Celesta Sub 61

SOLO
8′ Flauto Mirabilis 73
8′ Gamba 73
8′ Gamba Celeste 73
4′ Orchestral Flute 61
VII Compensating Mixture 427
16′ Ophicleide 73
16′ Corno di Bassetto 12
8′ Tuba Mirabilis 73
8′ Trumpet 73
8′ French Horn 61
8′ Cor d’Amour 61
8′ English Horn 61
8′ Corno di Bassetto 61
4′ Clarion 73
Tremolo

PEDAL
32′ Diapason 12
32′ Violone 12
16′ Diapason 32
16′ Diapason (metal) 32
16′ Contra Bass 32
16′ Violone 32
16′ Bourdon 32
16′ Echo Lieblich Sw
16′ Gemshorn Ch
16′ Dulciana Sw
8′ Octave 12
8′ Principal (metal) 12
8′ Gedackt 12
8′ Still Gedeckt Sw
8′ Cello 12
8′ Gemshorn Ch
51⁄3′ Quinte Ch
4′ Super Octave 32
4′ Still Flute 32
4′ Still Gedeckt Sw
V Mixture 160
IV Harmonics 128
32′ Bombarde 12
32′ Fagotto 12
16′ Trombone 32
16′ Fagotto 32
8′ Tromba 12
8′ Fagotto 12
4′ Clarion 12
4′ Fagotto 12

Source: Aeolian-Skinner Archives <http://www.aeolian-skinner.110mb.com&gt; (accessed 16 September 2008). See also The Diapason, March 1937, pp. 1–2.

The New 1973–76 Organ
GREAT First bay, north triforium
16′ Diapason
16′ Violon (ext)
16′ Bourdon
8′ Prinzipal
8′ Spitz Prinzipal
8′ Waldflöte
8′ Holz Bordun
8′ Salicional
8′ Violon
8′ Erzähler
4′ Spitzoktav
4′ Koppel Flöte
22⁄3′ Quinte
2′ Super Oktav
2′ Blockflöte
II Sesquialtera
IV Klein Mixtur
IV–V Mixtur
IV Scharf
VI–X Terzzymbel
16′ Bombarde
8′ Posthorn
8′ Trompette
4′ Clairon
8′ Trompette en Chamade (Solo)
8′ Tuba Mirabilis (Solo)

CHOIR Third bay, north triforium
16′ Gemshorn
8′ Chimney Flute
8′ Viola Pomposa
8′ Viola Pomposa Celeste
8′–4′ Choeur des Violes V (Sw)
8′ Viole Céleste II
8′ Kleiner Erzähler II
4′ Principal
4′ Harmonic Flute
4′ Fugara
22⁄3′ Rohrnasat
2′ Hellflöte
13⁄5′ Terz
III–IV Mixture
II Glockenspiel
16′ Orchestral Bassoon
8′ Trumpet
8′ Cromorne
4′ Regal
8′ Tuba Mirabilis (Solo)
8′ Trompette en Chamade (Solo)
8′ Posthorn (Gt)
Harp
Celesta
Zimbelstern
Tremolo

SWELL
First bay, south triforium
(Sowerby Memorial)
16′ Violoncelle (ext)
8′ Montre
8′ Violoncelle Céleste II
4′ Prestant
V Plein Jeu
IV Cymbale
16′ Bombarde
8′ Trompette
4′ Clairon
Second bay, north triforium
16′ Flûte Courte
8′ Bourdon
8′ Flûte à Fuseau
8′ Viole de Gambe
8′ Viole Céleste
8′ Voix Céleste II
8′ Flute Celeste II
4′ Octave
4′ Flûte Traversière
22⁄3′ Nasard
2′ Octavin
13⁄5′ Tierce
IV Petit Jeu
16′ Posaune
8′ 2ème Trompette
8′ Hautbois
8′ Cor d’Amour
4′ 2ème Clairon
Tremolo
Fifth bay, south triforium
8′ Flûte d’Argent II
8′–4′ Choeur des Violes V
8′ Éoliènne Céleste II
8′ Voix Humaine
Tremolo

SOLO Fourth bay, north triforium
8′ Diapason
8′ Flauto Mirabilis II
8′ Gamba
8′ Gamba Celeste
4′ Orchestral Flute
VII Full Mixture
16′ Corno di Bassetto (ext)
8′ Trompette Harmonique
8′ French Horn
8′ Corno di Bassetto
8′ English Horn
8′ Flügel Horn
4′ Clairon Harmonique
8′ Trompette en Chamade
8′ Tuba Mirabilis
16′ Posthorn (Gt)
8′ Posthorn (Gt)
Tremolo

PEDAL
First through fourth bays, south triforium
32′ Subbass (ext)
32′ Kontra Violon (ext)
16′ Contre Basse
16′ Principal
16′ Diapason (Gt)
16′ Bourdon
16′ Violon (Gt)
16′ Violoncelle (Sw)
16′ Gemshorn (Ch)
16′ Flûte Courte (Sw)
102⁄3′ Quinte (from Gross Kornett)
8′ Octave
8′ Diapason (Gt)
8′ Spitzflöte
8′ Gedackt
8′ Violoncelle Céleste II (Sw)
8′ Flûte Courte (Sw)
51⁄3′ Quinte
4′ Choralbass
4′ Cor de Nuit
2′ Fife
II Rauschquint
IV Fourniture
III Acuta
IV Gross Kornett
64′ Bombarde Basse (ext)
32′ Contra Bombarde
32′ Contra Fagotto (ext)
16′ Ophicleide
16′ Bombarde (Sw)
16′ Fagotto
8′ Trompette
8′ Bombarde (Sw)
8′ Posthorn (Gt)
8′ Tuba Mirabilis (So)
8′ Trompette en Chamade (So)
4′ Clairon
2′ Zink

BRUSTWERK
First bay, north gallery
8′ Spitz Prinzipal
4′ Praestant
22⁄3′ Koppel Nasat
2′ Lieblich Prinzipal
IV–VI Mixtur
8′ Rankett

POSITIV First bay, south gallery
8′ Nason Gedackt
4′ Rohrflöte
2′ Nachthorn
13⁄5′ Terz
11⁄3′ Larigot
1′ Sifflöte
IV Zymbel
4′ Rankett (Brustwerk)
Tremulant

GALLERY PEDAL
First bays, north and south galleries
16′ Gedacktbass (ext)
8′ Oktav
8′ Nason Gedackt (Positiv)
4′ Superoktav (ext)
4′ Rohrflöte (Positiv)
16′ Rankett (Brustwerk)
4′ Rankett (Brustwerk)

Source: Washington Cathedral website <http://www.nationalcathedral/org&gt; (accessed 16 September 2008)

Annotated bibliography and sources
Callahan, Charles. The American Classic Organ: A History in Letters. Richmond: Organ Historical Society, 1990.
______________. AEolian-Skinner Remembered: A History in Letters. Minneapolis: Randall Egan, 1996.
Two volumes of letters, commentary, shop notes, and photographs, which chronicle the history of the Skinner and Aeolian-Skinner Organ Companies. Aeolian-Skinner Remembered also has essays and reminiscences by G. Donald Harrison’s son and other former Aeolian-Skinner employees.
Diapason, The. Arlington Heights, IL, Scranton Gillette Communications, Inc.
Feller, Richard T., and Fishwick, Marshall W. For Thy Great Glory. Culpeper, VA: the Community Press of Culpeper, 1965, 1979.
A history of the construction of the cathedral.
Workman, William G., and Dirksen, Wayne, comp. The Gloria in excelsis Tower Dedication Book. Washington Cathedral, 1964. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: R64-1214, with recording.
Contains the complete orders of service for the dedication of the central tower on Ascension Day, 1964, together with the music commissioned for the occasion.
“Guide to Washington Cathedral, A.” The National Cathedral Association, 1965. Library of Congress Catalogue Number 25-2355.
Contains much information and photographs about the cathedral’s music and organs, including a stoplist of the organ at that time. Also contains information about the College of Church Musicians.
“Guide to Washington Cathedral, A.” The National Cathedral Association, 1953.
Contains a photograph of the original Ernest M. Skinner and Son console, and other information on the organ also available in the 1940 edition.
Kinzey, Allen, and Lawn, Sand, comp., E. M. Skinner / Aeolian-Skinner Opus List. Richmond: Organ Historical Society, 1997.
Opus list and notes on the Skinner Organ Company, Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, Ernest M. Skinner and Son Organ Company, and organs built by Carl Bassett, Skinner’s foreman.
Morgan, William. The Almighty Wall: The Architecture of Henry Vaughan. New York: The Architectural History Foundation, 1983.
Biography and analysis of the work of the noted architect, who was the first architect of Washington Cathedral and architect of Serlo Organ Hall, now known as Methuen Memorial Music Hall. Includes an entire chapter on the patronage of Edward Searles in Methuen.
“View Book of Washington Cathedral, A.” The National Cathedral Association, 1940.
Contains information about and photographs of the new organ.
Roy Perry Papers.
Files pertaining to the building of the cathedral organ 1973–76, consisting of correspondence and technical data. In the possession of the author.
Liner notes on recordings of the cathedral organ 1964–1976.

Web sites
Aeolian-Skinner Archives
<http://aeolian-skinner.110mb.com&gt;
Opus lists, notes, and photographs of organs built by the Skinner Organ Company, Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, and Ernest M. Skinner and Son Company. Based on material in the Kinsey-Lawn OHS book of opus lists.
Vermont Organ Academy
<http://www.vermontorganacademy.com&gt;
Writings and photographs of Roy Perry from the archives of First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas. “Aeolian-Skinner Legacy” series of recordings.
Washington National Cathedral
<http://www.nationalcathedral.org&gt;
Music pages include information on the cathedral organs.

R. E. Coleberd, an economist and retired petroleum industry executive, is a contributing editor of The Diapason. He is a director of The Reuter Organ Company.

Introduction

In the following narrative, the interaction of an organist and an organbuilder in the design of a new instrument and selection of a builder is described in some detail by each of them. The organist, Jerome Meachen, an Oberlin and Union graduate, was organist/choirmaster of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1957 St. John’s, upon the recommendation of Meachen, acquired a 70-rank, three-manual McManis organ. It was followed, when he changed positions, by a 67-rank, three-manual at Redeemer Episcopal Church in Sarasota, Florida (completed in 1966), and in 1973, by a 49-rank, three-manual for Manatee Community College, Bradenton, Florida. The builder, Charles McManis, a trained organist who had apprenticed briefly with Walter Holtkamp before World War II, operated a small shop in Kansas City, Kansas. His skill in flue voicing would become widely recognized and acclaimed in a sixty-year career, which counted more than 125 new instruments and rebuilds.

The discussion highlights the steps in the evolution of their tonal philosophy. It was a process of listening, comparing and choosing sounds and stops in the quest for authenticity in the revolutionary epoch that characterized American organbuilding in the decades following World War II. Before their first meeting, Meachen had acquired a preference for non-legato playing while McManis had been taught the legato style. Despite this difference, the two men found common ground in their admiration and profound respect for the tonal work of William A. Johnson, a legendary nineteenth-century New England tracker builder, and his successors.

Background

The choice of a relatively unknown independent builder in 1956 was decidedly the exception for this era. In the 1950s, pipe organ building in America was the province of the integrated major builders who had controlled the market for new instruments since the turn of the century. M. P. Möller of Hagerstown, Maryland, the “General Motors” of the industry, with a force of more than 400 workers, delivered 365 instruments in 1928 and in the decade 1950-60, with perhaps 200 employees, built 125 organs per year.1 Other builders, those who had survived the drastic shakeout during the Great Depression of the 1930s, were likewise busy, with comparatively large work forces and lengthy backlogs.

In retrospect we might safely say the 1950s, though a vibrant decade, marked the beginning of the end of what could be termed the “commercial” era of organbuilding in America that extended back to the 1920s and perhaps even earlier. Builders, including such highly successful businessmen as Mathias Peter Möller, concentrated almost exclusively on production to meet the enormous market demand in all venues. Company executives, sons of the founder, not musicians, were largely unfamiliar with the great literature for the organ. Sadly, they scarcely comprehended the interface between Bach, Buxtehude and other composers and the subtleties and nuances of fine voicing and finishing in building the King of Instruments. Their instruments were often quite successful in the context of a “production organ,” with uniform and consistent voicing, thanks to the skills of talented shop voicers, but, in retrospect, they were perhaps lacking in artistic statement, which can come only from meticulous tonal finishing. On small organs there was virtually no concept of tonal finishing once the instrument was installed and tuned. Only with the large “signature” instruments was time scheduled for tonal finishing, for example by John Schleigh of Möller and Herb Pratt of Aeolian-Skinner.2

Yet the organ reform movement was underway and gaining momentum, beginning with the pathfinding efforts in the 1930s of E. Power Biggs, Melville Smith, King Covell and others. The major themes are well known: lower wind pressures, smaller scales and higher pitches in flue work and the introduction of chorus in place of solo reeds. A “vertical” tonal palette emerged, featuring a full range of pitches in place of the former “horizontal” palette, dominated by stops of 8-foot pitch. These elements combined in the cohesive blending of individual voices, and the emphasis on ensemble in the building of primary and secondary choruses as reflected in the work of Walter Holtkamp and G. Donald Harrison in the North German and American Classic paradigms.

Leaders in the organist profession, highly educated, widely traveled and well-read, people like Robert Noehren and Parvin Titus, were captivated by the new sounds and ensembles which awakened them to the instrument’s rich music from antiquity. They began paying close attention to European instruments, through travel and recordings, as well as 19th-century work of notable American builders (Hook, Erben, Johnson and others). They wisely looked beyond the stoplist and listened carefully to the sound. The reintroduction of the tracker instrument, first by European builders, followed by an emerging U.S. industry of small shops, reinforced the historic and intrinsic artistic value of the King of Instruments. Steady improvement in the tone quality of the electronic instruments soon spelled the end of the commodity segment of the pipe organ market rooted in the image of an organ as a utilitarian device in support of corporate worship.3

By the end of the century it was recognized that the heart and soul of a pipe organ, a work of art, is the tonal edifice, which begins with a vision and continues through design, voicing and tonal finishing of the instrument. These requirements were most often found in the combined talents of the tonal architect and skilled, dedicated artisans in his shop, seldom in one individual. Harrison, Holtkamp and Fisk, for example, were superb designers but were not voicers. Schopp, Pearson and Zajic were supremely talented reed voicers. But once in a while one individual comprised them all. George Michel of Kimball perhaps came close and, in the author’s judgment, Charles McManis fits this image.

In any revolutionary epoch, change in an established industry comes slowly and sometimes from the outside. American organbuilders, badly shaken by the lean years of the Great Depression and World War II, were to some degree insular, isolated and ingrown. On balance they were reluctant to abandon existing practices and slow to adopt new and untried techniques with unknown consequences. Voicers, trained in-house on high-pressure, wide-scale stops of 8-foot pitch, scarcely comprehended the new generation of flues and reeds. They and their superiors had been disinterested in historic instruments, American and European, which they viewed as antiquated and obsolete. But they could not ignore the revolutionary changes around them, and some firms wisely brought in outsiders--men like Richard Piper at Austin and Franklin Mitchell at Reuter--who were listening and eager to apply their ideas to new stoplists.

At the close of World War II, the demand for organ work far exceeded the supply of qualified people. Factories enjoyed lengthy backlogs and were hard pressed to meet production schedules. Service firms comprised primarily older men, former employees of firms who had failed in the Great Depression--for example, Syl Kohler in Louisville (Pilcher) and Ben Sperbeck and Milton Stannke in Rock Island (Bennett). Honest and hard working, they can best be described as mechanics; few had either voicing experience or any concept of a modern chorus or ensemble. This afforded an opportunity for a newcomer, a young man who had listened carefully, had a firm conviction of what pipe sound should be, and had acquired the voicing skills to bring the sound of a pipe to the tone quality he desired.

Jerome Meachen writes:

A native of Oklahoma City, I studied organ with Dana Lewis Griffin, a student of David McK. Williams at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church on Park Avenue in New York City, and then enrolled at Oberlin College where my teachers were Leo Holden and Grigg Fountain. Holden was a 19th-century organ teacher--Rheinberger, romantic, and very happy with the E. M. Skinner organ in the chapel. His whole approach to organ playing was: “write down the fingering I give you and the registration I want you to use.” It was a very dry--and I felt antiquated--approach. In contrast, Fountain said: “select your own registration from what you hear, we will discuss it and you defend it.” This was essential to broadening my understanding of organ music and what I wanted to develop in my own touch on the instrument. While at Oberlin I practiced on the Johnson organ at Christ Episcopal Church in Oberlin courtesy of Arnold Blackburn, also on the Oberlin organ faculty. This awakened me to the beautiful voicing of this builder. Of course northeast Ohio was Holtkamp country. When I began studying with Fountain, my last two years, he had just obtained a Holtkamp at St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in Cleveland. While I was fascinated with the sounds of this instrument, I found it ear-shattering. I well remember one Saturday afternoon when I was practicing at St. Paul’s. Walter Holtkamp came in, climbed up on the Swell box and said play full organ. He just reveled in the volume, but I found that sort of sound excruciating.

A milestone in my career was a recital at Oberlin by Ernest White. I was fascinated by his approach, non-legato, in contrast to legato, which was the basic style at Oberlin. Legato evolved because of the acoustics organists had to deal with in American churches. Nothing happened after you took your finger off the note so you had to pull everything together.

After graduating from Oberlin I enrolled in the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary in New York City, where I arranged to study with Ernest White, then an adjunct faculty member. We shared a common interest in repertoire and liturgy. White had me listen to orchestral recordings of Mozart and commented: remember, “Bach was a violinist as well as an organist.” Bob Clark, another graduate student, and I found White way ahead of his time in non-legato sound, which broadens your understanding of the organ. This is the sound one finds in Europe and what we were striving for in America. Working with White was working with the literature and developing the capacity to do his particular style of non-legato in terms of liturgy, the Anglican approach and plainsong. This was very enlightening to me. I was fascinated by White’s approach to playing the studio organ at St. Mary the Virgin, the second studio instrument, this one by Möller. His technique was a detached sound, like the ringing of bells. Unfortunately, the voicing was so loud it was difficult to listen to. This alerted me to the distinction between intensity and decibels, a key distinction in my thinking. I was also intrigued by the design of the organ, which had a 32’ Cornet using individual stops and two Swell boxes providing two ensembles. This inspired the use of separate swell boxes and couplers for flues and reeds at St. John’s. My admiration for Johnson continued when I practiced on their instrument at the Mott Haven Dutch Reformed Church in the Bronx while at Union.4

Charles McManis writes:

As a pre-teenager in Kansas City in the 1920s, with my parents I often rode the streetcar to Independence Boulevard Christian Church to hear Sunday afternoon recitals by the legendary Hans Feil on the four-manual, 1910 Austin organ. In the 1930s while I was a student at the University of Kansas, I spent summers and holidays working with Peter E. Nielsen, a local serviceman, tuning and rebuilding pipe organs. Two of these instruments were Johnson trackers from the 1880s.5 They were especially impressive and were to influence fundamentally my concept of voicing.

Enrolling as a liberal arts major at the University of Kansas in Lawrence I became a student of University Organist Laurel Everette Anderson, an Oberlin master’s graduate who then studied for three years in Paris with Joseph Bonnet. He taught the legato method, and emphasized proper turning of phrases and making real music out of notes. He greatly expanded my knowledge of the pipe organ and emphasized nuances of color and singing quality in organ voices. Following graduation with an A.B. degree in 1936 and having already set my sights on becoming an organbuilder, I obtained a Mus.B. at KU in 1937, which required my playing an hour-long recital from memory. The thought occurred to me that I might be the first organbuilder who could play more than “Yankee Doodle” on what he had built.

I began my organbuilding career with a shop in the basement of my parents’ home. I rebuilt three organs and built one new instrument. My Opus 2, 1939--electrifying and adding nine ranks to a 1910 tubular-pneumatic Kilgen--is still playing in the Central Christian Church in Kansas City, Kansas. Then, having learned of his growing prominence in the organ reform movement, I apprenticed with Walter Holtkamp in Cleveland for a few months, eager to learn from him. I assisted with the installation of a three-manual Holtkamp organ at Olivet College in Michigan. It had Great and Positiv slider chests, but the Swell had ventil stop-action for want of sufficient space for a slider chest. When I compared the sounds of slider chest pipes and those on the ventil chest I was surprised to find that I could hear no difference. Walter’s instruments were visually well designed and beautiful to look at but, frankly, I was disappointed with his ensemble sound and tone quality. The voicing lacked a certain richness of tone. In checking Holtkamp pipes I noticed that he nicked only on the languids and not on the lower lips. As a result, pipes occasionally tended to emit an abnormal squeaking sound. He was not interested in building a truly classic organ as much as building a distinctive Holtkamp organ. In retrospect I find that I employed very few of Holtkamp’s ideas in my later work. Based on my background in music, I wasn’t hearing in his organs the sounds I wished to hear in my own instruments.

Following the attack on Pearl Harbor and the U.S. entry in World War II, I enlisted in the Army. Prior to shipment overseas my outfit was stationed at Camp Kilmer, New Jersey, for a few days. I went on pass to New York City to hear G. Donald Harrison’s new Aeolian-Skinner in the main sanctuary of St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church. This was my first acquaintance with mixtures and upperwork, which Laurel Anderson had talked about at KU, but which were conspicuously absent in the Austin organ in Hoch Auditorium there. Then, as a chaplain’s assistant, I was stationed in Europe where I took every opportunity to play and inspect European instruments. I remember, in particular, the famous Cavaillé-Coll instrument in the church of St. Ouen at Rouen, which inspired Guilmant’s Eighth Organ Symphony. This was the first time I had seen a five-rank mounted cornet and reeds with sunken blocks in the boots.6 After the war I returned to Kansas City, Kansas and set up shop again. On one occasion, being in New York City, I attended a recital given by Ernest White on his new Möller studio organ at the Church of St. Mary the Virgin. I left at intermission because the organ was painfully loud. In my voicing I try to make a rank of pipes only as loud as needed to ping the tone off the walls, blowing only hard enough to fill the room at the desired volume.7

Jerome: Following graduation from Union, I was appointed organist/choirmaster at St. John’s Episcopal Church in Waterbury, Connecticut. When we went looking for a new instrument to replace the 1869 Hook & Hastings, I wasn’t enamored with the sounds of Holtkamp, Möller, Schlicker and Austin, and mentioned my dilemma to my good friend Bob Clark, whose judgment I valued. He was organist at the Peddie Memorial Baptist Church in Newark, New Jersey, where my wife was soloist, having the best-paying solo position in the area, while I was at Union. He said, “Why don’t you check with Charles McManis, who builds organs that sing and don’t shout.” When I learned he was in Danbury, Connecticut, I went down to get acquainted, and we hit it off immediately.

Charles: In the early 1950s I became acquainted with Robert Noehren through our writings in The Diapason and The American Organist magazines. I worked for him on the Hill Auditorium Skinner in Ann Arbor, and built a new organ for Frankenmuth, Michigan, where he was the consultant. When he was named consultant on the Johnson at Emmanuel Lutheran Church in Danbury, Connecticut, whose organist had been his student at Michigan, I was called in. My strong feelings concerning Johnson flue pipe voicing began during my apprenticeship days in Kansas City. I discovered that diapason pipes mouth-blown very gently, then increased to full volume, had scarcely any change in pitch. Volume was regulated at the toe hole, not by opening the flue. In contrast, classical open toe voicing regulated volume at the mouth, which I found totally inadequate. I revoiced the 8-foot Principal, increasing its richness of tone, primarily by opening the toes and, to a lesser degree adjusting the mouths. Jerry and I connected as musicians, no doubt in part because I too had a degree in organ. We both agreed on what we didn’t like. I obtained the contract for the St. John’s, Waterbury, organ (see photo and stoplist) in part because Parvin Titus was the consultant. The St. John’s rector, Rev. John Youngblood, had been a curate in Cincinnati, knew Mr. Titus and trusted his judgment. Also, I had built the new instrument for the Second Church of Christ, Scientist in Dayton, where Titus also had been the consultant.

Jerome: The Johnson sound was already in my head, not only from Oberlin, but from the fine Johnson in Mott Haven Dutch Reformed Church in the Bronx, where I first practiced when I went to New York. I explained that we were looking for intensity not decibels in organ sound, colors and ensembles that sing. Charles showed me what he was doing. It was soon obvious this was just the ticket for us. These initial impressions were confirmed when my wife and I visited St. Paul’s Episcopal Church in Kansas City, Kansas, and heard for the first time a complete McManis instrument. All the voices were exquisite; the 8-foot principal was a well-supported, big baritone sound. Having worked in training choirs at an early age, striving to blend individual voices, I found in the lovely individual voices of this organ an exquisite ensemble and chorus.

Charles: When Jerry came to Kansas City, the mixtures and ensemble sounds on the Great and Swell at St. Paul’s were what really got to him. The voices together on each manual resulted in contrasting sounds but very much related. We talked at length about voicing and drew up a specification for a three-manual instrument for St. John’s. (See specification.) I also discussed what I had done in reworking old pipes and changing pitch. This was very important because in the 1869 Hook & Hastings at St. John’s a number of old ranks were reworked.

I first saw Waterbury after Meachen returned from Kansas City, and was dismayed to find dry acoustics and such terribly large scales in the Hook & Hastings. The only principal stop I could use was the 16-foot on the Great, which would work well in the Pedal division. We were able to cut down and revoice a number of 8-foot stops; for example, the 4-foot principal on the Swell had been an 8-foot violin diapason. If the scale and mouth treatment were correct, the desired sound would follow.

Let me quote from my forthcoming autobiography to explain the tonal philosophy of this instrument: “The classic Werkprinzip theory of terraced manual pitches had not yet hit the AGO cocktail hour conversation when Jerry and I drew up the design for Opus 35 (St. John’s Church Waterbury, CT) on that Sunday afternoon. Submitted to organ consultant Parvin Titus, he heartily approved of the design, but suggested inclusion of the rather outstanding Oboe from the 1869 H&H. But back to the Werkprinzip! While numerous other stops are needed in each division, the backbone is the Principal chorus, as shown below:

I:              Great     8’ Principal       11/3’      Mixture

II:            Swell    4’ Principal        2/3’       Scharf

III:          Brustwerk           2’ Principal        1/3’       Cymbel

Pedal     8’ Principal       11/3’     Mixture

For purposes of contrapuntal clarity, the Pedal chorus should be the same pitch as the Great, plus suitable 16’ underpinning. Polyphony does better without the growl of a sub-octave mixture cluster.”

After the tornado hit downtown Waterbury in July, 1989, heavily damaging the St. John’s organ, I replaced 35 ranks of pipes including replacement of the Brustwerk Singend Regal with a brass Krummhorn and substitution of a Swell 4’ Clarion for the earlier 4’ Krummhorn. Also, the 32’ extension of the Pedal reed was linked to the Posaune instead of the Contrafagotto.

Jerome: Another factor which impressed me about the McManis was its compatibility with what I call a theatre sound by which I mean, it had to dance. In the theatre organ you had a detached pedal and a strong emphasis on the melodic line when you are thinking bass line and melody. This is why I was very comfortable doing figured bases. It was non-legato; it was instrumental. When you were featuring the posthorn, you were quite willing to detach it. My father loved theatre organ, so from the time I started playing, I developed something of a theatre style. Searle Wright, the well-known organist at St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, also did a great theatre style.

Charles inspired my definition of intensity because he viewed the entire instrument as a whole. In a three-manual you could draw the principal and mixture on each division, couple them together and you had a basic ensemble evoking a very intense, rich but not very loud sound because you didn’t have to fill in and thus did not have an awful lot of stops working. Thus the concept of full organ was very discriminating; the full organ piston didn’t bring on everything. You are dealing with colors and when you put everything on you end up with brown or gray. And with a tremolo on each division if you wanted to cantus firmus you could do it anywhere in the instrument.

This instrument fulfills my belief in the theological aspect of an organ. With my developing interest in liturgy I was very much aware of the person in the pew. I hold that the organ must be people-friendly, in support of congregational singing whether it be chant or hymnody. Surrounding rather than hitting the congregation with sound--making a joyful noise, not just a noise. Charles spoke of attending a recital on the Möller practice organ at St. Mary the Virgin in New York and finding it so loud he left after the first half of the program. I agree. White offered me a chance to practice on that organ but I told him I would be using only one or two stops so I might as well practice on the chapel organ. The sound was so high in decibels I couldn’t hear it.

Redeemer and Manatee

This paper has focused on the St. John’s organ. Those at Redeemer Episcopal Church and Manatee Community College continued the fundamental practices in the philosophy of McManis and Meachen. They also reflected modifications and forward thinking in their approach, as did the rebuilding and restoration of St. John’s in 1989.

At Redeemer in Florida, the former ten-rank Möller, with its subsequent addition of nineteen Aeolian-Skinner ranks, was skillfully integrated into the 67-rank new instrument. In place of the 16’ Quintaton on the Great, they chose a 16’ Gemshorn mounted on the chancel wall, extended to an 8’ Gemshorn and a 4’ tapered flute in a seamless tonal progression. The Great and Positiv exposed chests were equipped with toeboard expansion chambers to increase richness of tone.

The 49-rank Manatee Community College organ was installed in Neel Auditorium at the point of a pie-shaped building on a 35-foot shelf at the back of the stage. In an obviously “werkprinzip” layout (see photo, page 20), in a variety of shapes, it was enclosed in a mahogany case. The 16’ Pedal Principal exposed at the center hid the movement of Swell shutters behind. To its left were the lower notes of the 16’ Subbass and 16’ Posaune; to the right, the pipes of the Hooded Trumpet and more Subbass metal pipes. To the far left in the left façade was the Great 8’ Principal, and to the far right the 4’ Positiv Principal in the façade. Roofs of the façades differed but all were related to the focal point mentioned above.

The Manatee Great included a 16’ Gemshorn, all the usual 8’ and 4’ stops, plus a normal 11/3’ Mixture, a 2/3’ Acuta, and an 8’ Trumpet. The Swell mixture was a 1’ Scharf and the Positiv had a 1/3’ Cymbel. The thoroughly adequate Pedal division included a 32’ Dulzian and the usual 8’ and 4’ ranks. As would be expected, the Pedal mixture lowest pitch was 11/3’, but pipe scales were larger than those of the Great Mixture.

Summary

The above dialogue illustrates the way in which the concept of organ sound in the mind of an organist and soon-to-be builder begins with formal study of the instrument and is heavily influenced by the instructor and his experience. With this background, they are then prepared to compare and contrast a wide variety of sound in determining their own definition of it: for Meachen and McManis, a singing sound. It also argues that the ultimate test of the voicer’s art, be it Johnson or McManis, is the 8’ Diapason found on the Great, a belief shared by organists and builders for many years.

In an article in The Diapason, based upon his lecture to the AIO Convention in Pittsburgh in 1977, McManis explains the details of flue voicing and the practices of Tannenberg, Gratian, Kilgen, Hook & Hastings, Johnson, Wurlitzer, Estey (William E. Haskell), Cavaillé-Coll, and Kimball.8 This paper, now considered a classic, together with the recognition of his peers in his selection as instructor in flue voicing at a seminar of the American Institute of Organbuilders, established him, in the author’s judgment, as one of the finest flue voicers of the twentieth century.9

Charles passed away, at age 91, on December 3, 2004 in South Burlington, Vermont. Providentially, he and his wife Judith had just completed his autobiography. It contains vivid recollections of personalities and detailed descriptions of his instruments in a sixty-year career that spanned the arc of the postwar history of organbuilding in America. This priceless volume is scheduled to be published by the Organ Historical Society in 2005. It will find a prominent place on the shelf of every organist, organbuilder and organ enthusiast.

For research assistance and critical comments on drafts of this paper, the author gratefully acknowledges: Gene Bedient, Jerry Dawson, Charles Eames, Donald Gillette, Albert Neutel, Barbara Owen, Michael Quimby, Elizabeth Schmidt, Jack Sievert and R. E. Wagner.

Wally Behnke died June 2 at the age of 91 in Alpena, Michigan. He was a contributor to the early development of
electronic organs for home and institutional use during the 1950s through the 1970s. Born March 16, 1920 in Alpena, Michigan, he received his teaching certificate from Alpena County Normal School and then continued his education at Eastern Michigan University until the interruption of
World War II, when he served in the U.S. Navy in the Samoan Islands. He then attended the University of Michigan, where he earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music. Shortly after graduation, he was hired by the organ division of Conn Musical Instrument Co., Elkhart, Indiana, as music director and head of sales. 

During his tenure at Conn, he published many collections of arrangements of popular tunes. Among the published collections are Mills Popular Favorites for Conn Organs (1954), Mills Popular Standards for Conn Organs (1955), and Harms Hits through the Years for Conn Organs (1958). He also published several instructional books for specific Conn models. He was involved with the design of the Conn “Sound Reproducing System” of pipe speakers.

Behnke retired from Conn in 1978 and returned to his hometown, Alpena, Michigan. In retirement
he worked for Deadman Music Store, the area Conn organ dealer, teaching organ and piano. He was active at Trinity Episcopal Church, and in 2005 participated in the rebuilding of the church’s Aeolian-Skinner organ with Allen digital augmentation. Wally Behnke is survived by his sister, Marvis Woloszyk, and several cousins, nieces and nephews. 

Peter Möller Daniels of Chambers-burg, Pennsylvania, died January 30, at age 72. Born March 25, 1938, in Hagerstown, Maryland, to Martha Möller and Wilson Riley Daniels II, he was a graduate of Mercersburg Academy and attended Washington and Lee University. He had worked for M.P. Möller Pipe Organ Co. in Hagerstown, serving in production and sales and ending as the president of the company before moving to the West Coast in 1986. Daniels was treasurer of the Washington County Museum of Fine Arts in Hagerstown, and was a life member of the American Guild of Organists and the American Institute of Organ Builders. For many years, he was involved with many civic organizations in both Chambersburg and Hagers-town. He was recently a member of the Franklin/Fulton County Drug and Alcohol Advisory Board, and a member of the board of directors for mental health of Franklin and Fulton Counties.

Richard Malcolm (Dick) Geddes died February 10, 2011, in Springdale, Arkansas. He was born on July 19, 1916, in Pleasant Valley, Connecticut, the son of William and Bertha Geddes. After many years of retirement in East Texas and Arkansas with his wife Gladys, Dick resided in Fayetteville, Arkansas for the past few years in the loving care of his daughter Sylvia Geddes.

Dick was a WWII veteran, serving in the Pacific aboard the USS Northampton as a machinist mate First Class. After the war, Dick and his wife built a house in Colebrook, Connecticut, where they raised four children: Richard, Jr., Pallas, Sylvia, and Michael. Dick was employed as a machinist with Gilbert Clock Company in Winsted, Connecticut. An avid musician, he expanded his piano and organ education in the late 1940s and ’50s, and was organist and choir director in many Connecticut churches. After working as a pipe voicer for Austin Organs in Hartford, Dick founded his own company, Richard M. Geddes Pipe Organs, in Winsted, Connecticut, in 1958. As of result of his artisanship and skill as a voicer, many churches in New England still reverberate with pipe organs Dick built, rebuilt, or kept in excellent repair.

After selling his business in Connecticut, he retired to East Texas, where he found that his pipe organ building and service talents were in demand, and came out of retirement for a few years to help many churches and service pipe organs in that area.

In addition, Dick was a talented and self-taught photographer, skilled woodworker and wood turner, avid reader, and loved to travel. Dick and Gladys were early members of the Experiment in International Living, and hosted young people from many different countries in their homes.

His wife of 58 years Gladys Schoonmaker Geddes and his daughter Pallas Ann Braun preceded Dick in death. He is survived by his son Richard Geddes, Jr. and his life partner Alfred Alvarez of Pahoa, Hawaii; son Michael Geddes and wife Carla of McGaheysville, Virginia; and daughter Sylvia Geddes of Fayetteville, Arkansas.

—Richard Geddes, Jr.

Lorenz Maycher has recently been appointed director of music at First-Trinity Presbyterian Church, Laurel, Mississippi, and is producer of the compact disc series, “The Aeolian-Skinner Legacy,” found at . His interviews with Thomas Richner, William Teague, and Nora Williams have been published in The Diapason.

Among his many admiring colleagues, Albert Russell is considered not only a prince of the organists’ realm, but as a gentleman’s gentleman. These attributes are rare enough in this day, but they are uniquely combined with great humility, affability and graciousness.
Those of us who have been fortunate enough to know him for years know also of his dry wit and wonderful good taste. His recently released Aeolian-Skinner Legacy recording [See p. 20–Ed.] enables his outstanding musicianship to be shared with a new following of fans, all of whom will be delighted that he has generously given this fascinating interview.
—Charles Callahan
Orwell, Vermont
July 2007

Lorenz Maycher: Tell me about your early years, and how you got interested in the organ.
Albert Russell: I was born in Marlin, Texas, which is near Waco. Later, we moved to Stamford, near Abilene, out in the Panhandle. I was interested in the organ from early childhood and used to go to choir practice with my mother and drive the organist crazy, reaching up and playing the keys while they rehearsed. I started piano lessons at the age of six, and organ at twelve, taking lessons on a two-manual Estey at the Methodist Church, where the highest pitch was 4′. My teacher would put on the sub-coupler and say she was “searching for depth.” She gave me mostly transcriptions. Rachmaninoff Prelude in G Minor, Caprice Viennois of Fritz Kreisler, and Dreams of Hugh McAmis were some of my pieces. I went to my first lesson wearing tennis shoes, but she got rid of those. Her students were not allowed to use the tremolo while we were practicing, because she was afraid it would break and she wouldn’t be able to use it on Sunday. She kept a clothespin on the tremolo stop so we wouldn’t use it. There was a ceiling fan above the console in the choir loft where birds would build nests that would fall into the choir loft. Dick Bouchett was one of her students, and later we were good friends.
I left Stamford when I graduated high school and went to study with Robert Markham at Baylor, where I had a full scholarship. Baylor had a good music department, and Markham had built the organ in the main auditorium there; it was installed beneath the stage and had some theatre organ stops in it. He was organist at First Baptist in Waco, where he played a large Pilcher. He was very good to me and brought me back after I had left Baylor to accompany Messiah. I was also chapel organist at Baylor, and was organist at First Lutheran Church in Waco, and, later, First Methodist Church in Marlin.
Then I was in the Air Force, stationed in Bryan, Texas, and was fortunate to get to play in the civilian churches. I would play the chapel service using a field pump organ at first and then we got a Hammond, which made me feel like I was playing a five-manual Skinner. After the service I would then go into town and play at First Presbyterian. When I got out of the Air Force, I went to the University of Texas in Austin, and auditioned for and got the job at University Methodist Church, which was a nice position. Archie Jones, who taught in the music department at the university, was the choir director. It was great fun to try to play the organ loudly enough to support a congregation of 1200 Methodists singing “the good ole hymns!” I would have been an organ major, had we not been required to play from memory. I can memorize, but have never felt I played as well from memory. I don’t make music as well—too busy worrying about the notes. Gerre Hancock, Joyce Jones, and Kathleen Thomerson were some of my classmates at UT. Gerre played at University Baptist Church. The organ at UT was the first Aeolian-Skinner I had any contact with, and it was such an eye opener. I studied organ with John Boe and Earl Copes and learned from both of them. Earl Copes now lives in Sarasota, Florida and is still playing recitals. We are still in contact.
The summer of 1953, I came to Washington, D.C. I had heard William Watkins play a recital at Baylor and vowed then that I’d like to study with him. And sure enough, I did in the summer of 1953. He was so wonderful to me, and got me jobs playing the organ all over town. When I got to Washington, I had $50 in my pocket, so had to get a job in a hurry.

LM: You came to Washington just to study with him?
AR: Yes. Studying with him that summer was such a great experience that I decided to come back to Washington in January 1954 to work with him some more at the Washington Musical Institute, where I completed my bachelor’s degree.
I had gone to a fortune-teller in San Antonio, and she had said I would find a job not related to music in Washington within three days of my arrival. Sure enough, the third day I was hired as a flunky in the office of Senator Prescott Bush, the grandfather of the current president. And again, thanks to Bill Watkins, I was busy playing in churches all over town. He opened up a whole new world for me and presented me in recitals at his own church, New York Avenue Presbyterian. I got to know many of the Washington musicians through him and vowed then that, if I were ever offered a job, I would move here. And, sure enough, here I am.
In the fall of ’54, I enrolled in the master’s program at Union Theological Seminary in New York, studying organ with Hugh Porter. He taught his lessons on the E. M. Skinner at the Academy of Arts and Letters. That first year I had a little church job in Cloister, New Jersey, and took the bus out there. The second year, I played at West End Collegiate Church on an old Roosevelt that had been redone by Austin. Donald McDonald had been there, and he turned over the reins to me. We had eight professionals for the choir. It was a fun job.
That year, I decided to study organ with Searle Wright just to get a different perspective on things. I got to play a number of noonday recitals at St. Paul’s Chapel at Columbia, where he taught his lessons. Searle’s accompaniments of oratorios at St. Paul’s were superb. He would always laugh and say if he didn’t have such good acoustics, he’d be fired. He didn’t have time to practice a lot, but he always played wonderfully.
I learned about being a good musician from Searle. He always taught such interesting repertoire, like Robert Russell Bennett’s Trio, where all three voices are in different keys. I chided him about that piece for years afterwards for giving me something so difficult. It is a good piece, but is disconcerting!

LM: Every time I run across a recital program of yours, the repertoire is completely different. How did you acquire such a large and varied repertoire, with so much new and challenging music?
AR: I am a fast reader, so can learn quickly. I’ve always had a craving to learn new music, and enjoyed going to Patelson’s to buy music that other organists did not know or weren’t playing. Searle was awfully good about introducing me to music that was not being played a lot.
I also studied composition with Searle. He was never a morning person, and that class was at 9:00 a.m. He was ALWAYS late and just did not want to be there at all! He said I always wrote music that sounded like Delius, which I took as a compliment.
Through Searle, I got to know John Huston quite well, and Robert Crandell, who was at First Presbyterian in Brooklyn. John Huston was at St. Ann’s in Brooklyn with that wonderful Skinner that Virgil’s teacher put in. Charlotte Garden loved that organ. Through the faculty at Union, I made many connections in New York City, and as a result, got to play one of the opening recitals on the new Aeolian-Skinner at St. Thomas in 1956. It was an absolutely thrilling organ. Ed Wallace was the assistant at that time. George Faxon, Henry Hokans, and Clarence Watters were three of the other recitalists on the inaugural series.
During my second year at Union, I was chapel organist and got to accompany the choir’s Christmas concert, with Ifor Jones conducting. I once made the mistake of giving him a pitch with the celestes on. Well, I never did that again!

LM: Was Ifor Jones just a terror?
AR: He could be very hard on people in choral conducting class, and some were reduced to tears. He would say, “You should be a butcher, rather than a musician.” But it certainly separated the men from the boys. He would never allow anyone to conduct a straight four-beat pattern, which he thought was square, but insisted on a flowing, musical pattern. I think I learned as much from him, musically, as anybody.
However, years later, George Faxon and I often combined choirs. Once, we were rehearsing the In Ecclesiis of Gabrieli at Trinity, Boston. I was conducting and George was at the organ. Roger Voisin, the first trumpet in the Boston Symphony, was also playing. He said, “George, I cannot follow Mr. Russell. Would you please conduct?” So, we traded places. It was not funny at the time, but is now that I look back on it. I had always used Ifor Jones’s flowing style of conducting and, of course, orchestral people never knew where I was.
At Union, I also learned an awful lot from Robert Shaw’s mentor, Julius Herford. We all laughed at him at the time for what we thought was his overly romantic interpretation of Bach. Actually, he was making music. We were too young to appreciate that.
Charlotte Garden taught oratorio accompaniment. She was a terrific teacher and organist—and was fun. She was so tiny that she looked like a peanut sitting at that huge Möller console at her church, Crescent Avenue Presbyterian Church in Plainfield, New Jersey. She and Virgil were always vying for who could play the large Reger works the fastest.
I studied improvisation with Harold Friedell, and got to play one of the Lenten recitals at St. Bartholomew’s. He was also good to me and had a wonderfully dry wit. He taught at the church, and I would think of what I was going to improvise on while on the subway on the way to the church. As you know, his music is very modal. He improvised in the same style and taught this style for improvisation in service playing. Thank goodness we did not have to improvise fugues or strict form, because I would not have been good at it. Friedell’s service playing was smooth, and he used the organ beautifully—including the dome organ and all those goodies up there.
I remember Virgil came to the Lenten recital I played at St. Bart’s. I did the “Sicilienne” from the Duruflé Suite, and used the dome Vox Humana—shouldn’t have been using it, but Virgil thought it was the highlight. Bobby Hebble and Ted Worth were there with Virgil—we were good friends. I had gotten to know Virgil through a friend of mine who was a tenor in the choir at Riverside. He thought I should play for Virgil once. So I did, and that is how I got started substituting for him whenever he was away, and playing oratorio accompaniments, which was a good experience for me. Dick Weagly conducted the choir and he was a good musician.

LM: When you played for Virgil Fox, what were his comments?
AR: He said, “I like the way you pull stops.” That’s all I remember. But, I learned so much from him just by observing. I had first heard him in recital at Highland Park Presbyterian Church in Dallas in 1948. It was electrifying. I also heard Marcel Dupré that same year at McFarlin Auditorium at Southern Methodist University. I’ll never forget Dupré’s recital. It was the first time I heard the Widor Toccata. The Hillgreen-Lane organ was in such poor condition that they had to work on it for a solid week to get it ready for the recital.

LM: Did Virgil Fox practice for hours on end?
AR: Yes, at night. I practiced at night, too. Also, at Riverside, I had to do anything I could to make money, so I ran the elevator, sang in the afternoon choir for oratorios, and ran the switchboard. I probably got $5 for singing, but did learn a lot of repertoire. Virgil loved ice cream, so a lot of the time after practice, we would get in his convertible and go downtown to Rumplemyers on Central Park South. He was not a drinker, so we would have ice cream instead.

LM: Was his playing always prepared?
AR: Sometimes he simply did not have the time to practice, and would come in fresh from a solo recital tour to accompany an oratorio. But his monumental talent always carried him through in great style. Dick Weagly would complain that the organ was too loud, and he and Virgil had many altercations about this. One thing I always admired about Virgil was he stood up for what he believed in, and never changed, whether others thought he was right or wrong. William Watkins was the same way. I got to travel with Virgil some and we had wonderful conversations. He had a lot of personal depth and was a very kind person to many people.

LM: You must have heard some great recitals at Riverside.
AR: Yes. Charlotte Garden, Claire Coci and Searle were some outstanding ones. I remember Claire Coci broke the crescendo pedal.
The summer of ’56, I played for Virgil while he was away. Then, after graduating from Union, I went to Hartford to be organist-choirmaster at Asylum Hill Congregational Church. Soon afterwards, I also got the jobs teaching at Hartt College and as university organist at Wesleyan University.

LM: What was Asylum Hill like when you arrived?
AR: It was very disappointing. I arrived there in August, and people did not go to church in the summer because they were at the shore. There was no air conditioning, so people would not go to church even if they were in town.
We had the services in the chapel, so I had my debut there on a concert Hammond with not many people present. They had gotten rid of the all-professional choir and only had four paid singers. So, in September I really had to start from scratch with volunteers. Later on, we went to eight paid people and started the oratorio choir, which got up to about sixty people. We did all the major works, which I conducted and played. People came from as far away as Boston, Worcester, and Springfield to sing in the choir.
The organ was an old E. M. Skinner, with a very beautiful case, up in the gallery. The Swell reeds were terribly loud, completely obliterating the choir. I was told when I went there to not even think about mentioning a new organ, as the E. M. had just been restored (they had taken out the Swell Mixture and replaced it with a flute celeste). It did have some nice sounds, but soon began ciphering, and finally ciphered on the Tuba on a Sunday morning, which got things going nicely for a new organ.
We formed an organ committee and took them to visit Symphony Hall, Boston, and several other good Aeolian-Skinners. We listened to other builders, but Aeolian-Skinner was by far the preference.

LM: Did Joseph Whiteford design the new organ?
AR: Yes. We drew up the stoplist together. I had met Joe through Virgil, and then later met Paul Callaway through Joe. Both were so good to me, and that started my association with Aeolian-Skinner.

LM: I know a lot of organists who look down their noses at Joseph Whiteford’s instruments, but don’t you think they were beautiful?
AR: Absolutely. Some of Joe’s organs from the early ’60s are among the best instruments Aeolian-Skinner ever built. Philharmonic Hall in New York, for example, was certainly one of the finest. I always enjoyed hearing Joe talk about organs, because he did it from a musician’s viewpoint. Joe had wonderful ears and good taste, but was also a good musician. For my money, that is the reason his organs turned out so well—because they were musical. We spent many hours together at the piano, talking about music and listening to singers. He was exposed to a lot of good musicians, too, and was friends with Samuel Barber, Gian Carlo Menotti, Thomas Schippers, and Earl Wild.
Donald Gillett was also a great artist, and I fully back his work. Both Joe and Gillett did use smaller scales and higher-pitched mixtures than Harrison, but it was beautiful work. You have to remember that we all grew up with organs that sounded like black smoke, where the highest pitch on the entire organ was a 4′ flute. Their organs were a reaction to those. They craved clarity and brilliance, and their organs were suave, beautiful creations.

LM: What were Joseph Whiteford’s goals when he designed the Asylum Hill organ?
AR: One thing he said was, “Let’s build an organ where you can use a lot of it all the time, and not have to save it for Easter Sunday.” It filled the church, but was not a bombastic instrument. I loved it and it played the literature beautifully. In the Ruckpositv, he took the old E. M. English Horn and made a Regal out of it, which was very effective. I used that in the slow movement of the Handel G Minor Suite in the Aeolian-Skinner “King of Instruments” series.
For the opening concert, we did a program for organ and orchestra with the Hartt College orchestra, and did the Seth Bingham Concerto for Organ and Brass, the Poulenc Concerto, and the Handel Sixth—no solo organ repertoire. For the second concert, we did the Duruflé Requiem and I played the Suite.

LM: You made two recordings on the Asylum Hill organ for Aeolian-Skinner.
AR: Yes, the organ solo LP at Asylum Hill included the Healey Willan Introduction, Passacaglia and Fugue. We sent the recording to Willan, and he liked some things, and some he didn’t. He thought the organ was too thin for this piece (not having three diapasons on the Great!). The recording also included the organ at Philharmonic Hall in New York City, which I believe was the first recording made on the new organ. Joe Whiteford had been talking to me for a while about recording those two organs, and then he mentioned having the choir do the Duruflé Requiem.
We did the Philharmonic Hall recording first. When we got there, I was supposed to have practice time, but there was something going on in the hall. I had played enough Aeolian-Skinners that I knew what to expect, so I just looked over the organ and set some pistons. When the hall finally emptied, I was able to try out my combinations. We could not start recording until the subway had stopped, which was around midnight, so, I had from 11:00 to midnight to set up the organ and practice. That was it. I practiced and recorded in the same night! When we finally got started recording, we went well into the night. I would stop every hour and take a shower. Joe was present for the session, and the recording engineer for the New York Philharmonic recorded it.
When we made the recordings in Hartford, John Kellner from Aeolian-Skinner did the recording. He was awfully good. We did the Duruflé in a separate session, and as far as I know, it was the first commercial recording of it made in the United States. We sent it to Duruflé, and like Willan, there were things he liked and things he did not like. I hear things now in the recording that I cannot stand—some things that are non-legato that should have been legato, and the choir did not do its best singing—completely my own fault. Ultimately, I did get to coach this with Duruflé when the Asylum Hill choir sang the Requiem at St Paul’s Chapel in New York in about 1964. Duruflé conducted and Madame Duruflé played.

LM: Did you enjoy life in Connecticut?
AR: Living in New York had prepared me for the rough winters. I had always been told that New Englanders were cold people. But I found them to be some of the most wonderful people I’ve ever met. From day one, it was a happy experience, and introduced me to many people who have become lifelong friends—Barry Wood, at First Baptist, Worcester; Hank Hokans, at All Saints, Worcester; Dick Westenberg. We all played in each other’s churches often. Dick was kind enough to invite the Asylum Hill choir to join his at Central Presbyterian in New York for a concert. George Faxon I got to know through Joe Whiteford, and that was a long, long collaboration. We combined choirs often at Trinity, Boston, and I played for his Evensongs when he was away. Later, when I moved to Washington, he had me come up and accompany the Brahms Requiem during Lent, and the next night I played a Lenten recital. That was a busy time, because I practiced there the week of, got back to Washington Saturday night to play for church Sunday morning, then went back to play the Brahms that night and the recital the next day. The organ at Trinity, Boston was splendid for accompanying. The whole front organ was enclosed, and the console was of George’s special design—low, so you could see over it. That was one of the happiest musical relationships and friendships, with George and Nancy Faxon, I have ever had. We had the best times together and I always stayed at their house. Many late night sessions were spent in their wonderful kitchen over glasses that always seemed empty.

LM: In Hartford, was Asylum Hill the only thriving music program in town?
AR: No. Sumter Brawley did wonderful things with orchestra and chorus, like the B Minor Mass. He was at Trinity Church right around the corner. Can you believe he has now retired and is living in this very building here in Washington? He still conducts marvelous concerts, having done one just recently at the Cosmos Club.

LM: Tell me something about your teaching career.
AR: Hartt College was my first teaching job. I had a lot of good students, and it was a learning experience for me, too. I did the organ and church music courses. Later the college joined the University of Hartford as the music department. We got an Austin in the concert hall. John Holtz, also on the faculty, took over the organ department when I moved to Washington. He was a marvelous teacher—brilliant—a much better teacher than I. He really lit a fire under his students. I was always better at coaching graduate students, rather than starting beginners, which just did not interest me.

LM: Did you start the contemporary organ series at Hartt?
AR: No. John Holtz did, and it really put Hartt on the map. John asked me to review the concerts one summer, and I was so unlikely to do it because I’ve never been a fan of extremely contemporary music. But I had to admit that after a week of listening, it was almost like hearing an old friend.
I was also university organist at Wesleyan. On Sunday nights, I’d go down there to play for chapel then teach the next day. There was a new Schlicker in the chapel. That was an interesting experience, again accompanying oratorios, although most of the time we used instruments with the organ. The Smith College choir would come down and join us. Iva Dee Hyatt was their conductor. She was fabulous.

LM: Were you working seven days a week?
AR: Yes, and I did up until my later years in Washington.

LM: Are you a workaholic?
AR: No. I simply needed the money, and, if I wasn’t teaching, needed to practice for recitals. Here in Washington, even on my day off, I would spend it practicing over at National Presbyterian, rather than going downtown.

LM: When did you come under management?
AR: I got to know Roberta Bailey very well at Riverside, when she was managing Virgil. He was her first client. Then she took on Karl Richter, Hank Hokans, Pierre Cochereau, and Anthony Newman. She and I were friends, and she knew I was already doing quite a bit of recital work, so she invited me to join her. She got me a lot of dates for which I was very grateful.

LM: When did you move to Washington?
AR: 1966. I had been in Hartford ten years. One day I received a letter from the rector at St. John’s, Lafayette Square, asking me if I would be interested in the job. Paul Callaway and George Faxon had recommended me to him. At the time, I had not been thinking of leaving Hartford. But I had always liked Washington a great deal, so was interested. On my way to play a recital in the Midwest, I stopped off here in the middle of a big snowstorm to audition. I was hired in the spring of 1966, and remember weeping bitterly my last Sunday at Asylum Hill, and I cried all the way to Washington. John Harper was the rector who hired me at St. John’s, and was there for my entire tenure as organist. He left me to do my work and was always totally supportive.
Coming here was one of the best things that ever happened to me. Phil Steinhaus was my predecessor. He had been here for two years before leaving to work in Boston at Aeolian-Skinner and the Advent. The organ at St. John’s was a late E. M. Skinner and Son, although Aeolian-Skinner had redone the Great. The choir was a small, professional group of 13, which I had always wanted. The organ was just a mess, and it didn’t take long to convince the rector we needed a new one, which we got in 1969.
I had become interested in Gress-Miles, and thought, in that situation, with the organ stuck in a hole, that an aggressive instrument was the best way to go. There was not enough room to enclose two divisions, which was unfortunate. We had wanted to put the organ in the gallery, but, because St. John’s is a historic structure, we were not allowed to change the room in any way. So, we had to plunk it back in the hole. I worked with Ed Gress on the design of the organ, and he was wonderful. He was a theatre organist, but also knew the classical literature very well and knew its demands. We both drew up individual stoplists, then collaborated on the final one.

LM: How was it for accompanying?
AR: It did as well as it could do under the circumstances, with only one enclosed division. But, if we had gotten a milder organ, it wouldn’t have been successful. The former Skinner there just didn’t get out at all. Paul Hume reviewed the opening recital of the Gress-Miles, and one of the first things he commented on was how much better the new organ got out. I played a solo recital for the opening, and Bob Noehren played another. He was a great mentor of mine. We had met through John Holtz in Hartford. We also did the Duruflé Requiem and the opus 5 Suite on a program. Paul Callaway played the other one—there were four inaugural concerts.

LM: Was the reverberation system in place at St. John’s when you arrived there?
AR: Yes. The church had one of Aeolian-Skinner’s reverberation systems, which allowed one to make music in that practice room situation. The system was very convincing, particularly in the middle of the nave. If you were by the speakers, under the balcony, it was less convincing, although it helped tremendously with hymn singing. There were fifteen speakers, each with delayed sound, and each with its own timing. It was a heck of a lot better than not having it. Christ Church, Cambridge was, I believe, their first one. Joe Whiteford set one up at Christ Church Cathedral, Houston for the 1958 AGO convention. I played the Mozart K. 608 Fantasy, first without, then with, reverberation, and Joe gave a lecture.
At St. John’s, we had several Sunday mornings a year that were all music, so we would do an oratorio. We had excellent singers in the choir, especially after the Kennedy Center opened, which attracted even better singers to town. One time we were doing the Mozart Requiem, and, soon after we began, the alto doing the quartets became ill and had to leave. So, I looked at one of the other altos. She nodded, and sang the quartets without a flaw. Another time we were doing Messiah, and I played the introduction to “And the Glory,” and when it was time for the altos to enter on the opening C-sharp not one alto peeped. So I played it again and, this time, it worked. Explain it.
We hosted several regional conventions in Washington, and the choir either sang programs or services for these. We had the AGO national convention in 1982. I was program chairman for that, and we did the Duruflé Requiem the opening night of the convention to a full house. I’ll never forget the choir processing in to Hyfrydol. Later, they told me, “We just stopped singing so we could hear that enormous, thrilling sound coming from all the organists in the congregation.” You couldn’t put on enough organ. I conducted and played the Requiem, and Donald Sutherland played the Widor Fifth Symphony before the service.

LM: Did you play for a lot of dignitaries at St. John’s?
AR: Yes. Before every presidential inauguration we had an early service. And, every president worshiped there. Once in a while the rector would say, “Let Helen play the last hymn, and you can come out and meet the president.” He was very nice about that. The only ones who were there regularly were the Fords. It sounds glamorous to say the president was there, but security was such an issue that it made life difficult. The Secret Service men would put dogs in the organ chambers. There was one Sunday where we had a bomb scare while the choir was practicing, so we had to finish the rehearsal out on the sidewalk, using a pitch pipe.

LM: You did quite a bit of teaching in Washington, too, didn’t you?
AR: Yes. I got Peabody at the same time as St. John’s, because Phil Steinhaus had been at both, and just turned the reins over to me. Arthur Howes was teaching there at the time. I taught all day on Mondays for $10 an hour. The concert hall had an Aeolian-Skinner, but I taught on a Walcker practice organ with a mixture that could be heard all the way to Washington. I needed my martinis after eight hours of that.
Leo Sowerby also asked me to teach at the College of Musicians. I taught people who came to the college just for organ lessons and who were not college students themselves (there were only eight college students, whom I did not teach). I called my students the “out-patient department,” and they had their lessons at St. John’s. In fact, I met my future assistant at St. John’s teaching her there—Helen Penn. I got to know Leo quite well and learned a great deal from him. I was particularly fortunate to coach Forsaken of Man with him when we did it at St. John’s. He lived on Wisconsin Avenue across from the National Cathedral. We watched the 1968 fires on 14th Street from his apartment. I remember a party where Leo sang “I can’t give you anything but love, baby,” accompanied by Garnell Copeland, organist at Church of The Epiphany. It was something. Speaking of Garnell, I judged the Ft. Wayne competition one year and thought I recognized Garnell Copeland’s style of playing, and sure enough, it was he. We flew back to DC together.
Preston Rockholt was my boss at the College of Musicians. He and Paul Callaway were the organ teachers there. Paul was so much fun. He was tiny, but was a musical giant. He always parked his big Buick convertible car by sound!
I also taught organ at American University and Catholic University. I never enjoyed teaching as much as playing recitals or doing church work. Perhaps I was a good teacher for some people, but I knew I wasn’t for others. Maybe all teachers feel that way. The lovely thing is, some of my former students keep in touch, and we have become good friends over the years.
In the early ’80s, I noticed I had a problem with my right hand. I thought it was carpal tunnel syndrome—something that could be fixed. I would warm up every morning by playing Hanon on the piano for 30 minutes before going to the organ, and noticed it there first. Then, at the organ, I noticed it on the Widor Toccata. One finger, on my right hand, would just lock. So, I went to every doctor in town and in Baltimore, and was not diagnosed. Leon Fleisher had had the same problem, and had been diagnosed at Mass. General, so that’s where I went, to the doctor who had diagnosed him. Sure enough, I had the same thing—focal dystonia—a neurological problem that cannot be cured. I decided to give up the church. I know St. John’s did not understand why I left, and why I have continued to play elsewhere since I left in 1985. But, I had to follow my conscience. I did not want tourists coming from all over the world to a church where the organist could not play major literature. Of course, people were asking right and left for the Widor Toccata for weddings, which was out of the question.

LM: Has your hand problem improved now, twenty years later?
AR: No. It is worse. I have tried everything and have had injections, but they did not work.

LM: Do you play at all now?
AR: Yes. I have done a lot of playing. I have just had to learn which pieces to stay away from—no Widor—and to use bizarre fingering. Fortunately, I have received a number of invitations to play the Duruflé Requiem, which I am still able to do because the most difficult part of the work is in the left hand. Also, I have switched the right hand part in the “Introit” to the left hand. I played it most recently at St. Paul’s, K Street, where I’ve played it several times for Jeffrey Smith, and at National Presbyterian Church. I was fortunate to get to perform it frequently early in my career, too. I also do little recitals for a group of people here in my building and am playing a program for them just this next week at National Presbyterian Church, where I am fortunate enough to practice each week. My good friend, Bill Neil, is the organist there and he is so kind to give me the time. These little demo recitals are very informal—we talk about the organ and I play for them. We just have a good time, like family.
I cannot imagine being more fortunate than I have been all through my school years, career, and now in retirement to have had the teachers, colleagues, friends and bosses who have given me an enormous amount of support and affection.What else is there that matters in life?

A consideration of the record series made by the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company

John A. Hansen, a native of Council Bluffs, Iowa, began his pipe organ career at the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company in Boston in May of 1961, working in the console shop. Most of his time at the firm was spent in the Engineering Department. Sensing trouble in the distance, he left the company in 1965, returning to the Omaha, Nebraska, area (of which Council Bluffs is a part) to become a tuning and service technician. In 1985 he became Regional Representative of Austin Organs, Inc., for Nebraska and Western Iowa.

The arrival of the post-World-War-II 331/3-r.p.m,
high-fidelity, long-playing recording was 
embraced by the legendary Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company of Boston as a
means of promoting its product. In the course of approximately twenty years,
thirty volumes of the series, entitled The King of Instruments, were released.
The series can be divided into three groups, (1) The Harrison Era, (2) The
Whiteford Era, and (3) The Post-Whiteford Era. The impetus for entering into
the venture came from Joseph S. Whiteford, who served as associate and
successor to the legendary English-born President and Tonal Director, G. Donald
Harrison.

The Harrison Era

Perhaps the most important recording of the entire series is
Volume 1, The American Classic Organ, a lecture-demonstration narrated by no
less than G. Donald Harrison. Many of the tonal examples were recorded at the
Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Boston, the organ there played by George Faxon.
Other organs used were those in Symphony Hall, Boston; First Presbyterian
Church, Kilgore, Texas; and New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine, played
by Thomas Dunn, Roy Perry, Norman Coke-Jephcott, and Mr. Whiteford.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  (The latter's efforts include the
improvised demonstration of the legendary St. John the Divine State Trumpet.)
The urbane, English verbiage of Mr. Harrison and the very persuasive musical
presentations are, even after almost fifty years, highly contagious. (Roy
Perry, however, did express to the writer regret that the examples of
string-tone stops were from Boston's Symphony Hall rather than those in the Kilgore
organ, which he felt were superior.)

Volume 2, Organ Literature: Bach to Langlais, features the
organs of Symphony Hall, Boston; the Cathedral Church of St. Paul, Boston; and
First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas. The playing of, respectively, the
Bach Trio Sonata No. 1 and the
Allegro  from the A Minor
Concerto of Vivaldi/Bach by George Faxon at
St. Paul's Cathedral may be the chief treasures of the disc, followed closely
by Roy Perry's unique rendition of Davies' A Solemn Melody
style='font-style:normal'>. Thomas Dunn is said to have played the three Bach Schübler
Chorales and the Alain Litanies
style='font-style:normal'> at Symphony Hall, listed as the "Staff
Organist," while William Watkins received a similar listing, very
effectively playing the Sowerby Carillon on the Kilgore organ. It might be argued that the use of three organs
to demonstrate the versatility of Aeolian-Skinner's work would have been better
served by a single instrument, but the recording is still very effective.

The next two issues, Volume 3, Organ Recital: Robert Owen
and Volume 4, Hilliar at St. Mark's, employed organs somewhat unique, in that
they both had divided Swell divisions. The first of these was recorded at
Christ Church, Bronxville, New York, and garnered perhaps the highest critical
praise of the early releases in this series, with the possible exception of
Volume 1. Owen's playing of the Walther Partita, Meinen Jesum lass ich nicht
style='font-style:normal'> and Messiaen's The Prayer of Christ
ascending to the Father may be the high
points of that recording. Edgar Hilliar was organist at St. Mark's Church, Mt.
Kisco, New York, and his playing of the Bach Trio Sonata No. IV in E
Minor is truly a marvel--a brilliant
example of how deft touch control can affect the pipe speech of a
non-mechanical action instrument. The Mt. Kisco acoustic is very dry; and,
perhaps somewhat unique in this series, no attempt was made to add artificial
reverberation to it. (The writer had the pleasure of hearing Mr. Hilliar in
recital at St. Mark's and will never forget his masterful playing of the Bach
"Little" Fugue in G Minor,
using but a single flute stop.)

The "dry" acoustic at Mt. Kisco is placed in sharp
contrast by Volume 5,  The Music of
Richard Purvis, recorded in the spacious confines of San Francisco's Grace
Cathedral. Despite the listing of the player as the "staff organist,"
the organist was, in fact, the composer of the music. (One can only assume that
the player's designation was designed to avoid conflict with his other
recordings.) The most notable piece is the Partita on
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Christ ist Erstanden
style='font-style:normal'>.

New York's Cathedral of St. John the Divine is the setting
of Volumes 6 and 8. The former, The Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New
York City, is played by Alec Wyton and is perhaps most notable for Sowerby's Prelude
on  Deus Tuorum Militum,
style='font-style:normal'> written for the Cathedral's justifiably famous State
Trumpet. The latter, Norman Coke-Jephcott at Saint John the Divine, features
Wyton's Cathedral predecessor. Whereas Volume 6 was somewhat closely
"miked" to deal with the lengthy reverberation, Volume 8 seems to
revel in the vastness of the space. Coke-Jephcott's Toccata on
"St. Anne" is very exciting, and
the four opening notes on the lower registers of the State Trumpet in his Bishops'
Promenade are truly awesome!

One of Harrison's landmark organs of the mid-thirties is
that in St. John's Chapel of the Groton (Massachusetts) School, and it was used
for the series' Volume 7, Marilyn Mason in Recital. In addition to a very
spritely performance of Bach's Prelude and Fugue in D Major
style='font-style:normal'>, the recording is also notable for the performance
of Robert Crandell's Carnival Suite for Organ
style='font-style:normal'>.

The largest organ built by Aeolian-Skinner was that in the
Mother Church, First Church of Christ, Scientist, Boston. Volume 9, The Mother
Church, Boston, features Ruth Barrett Phelps, for some years organist at the
Mother Church. Her playing of the Buxtehude Prelude and Fugue in G Minor
style='font-style:normal'> stands out in the writer's consideration, proving
that a large, electro-pneumatic-action organ can be a model of clarity. (The
writer once played the Buxtehude on this record for an organ-enthusiast friend
without telling him what the organ was, and asked him what sort of instrument
he assumed it might be--his response was that it must have been a North
European tracker!)

Volume 10, Music of the Church, was recorded at First
Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas, where Aeolian-Skinner's first horizontal
Trompette en Chamade was installed. Four anthems, with Roy Perry at the console
and the church's choir augmented by the choir of Austin College, make up the
bulk of the recording. A rousing performance of C. Hubert H. Parry's I was
glad--including the Coronation vivats
style='font-style:normal'>--begins the record. While the tempi, particularly in
the John Ireland Greater Love hath no man and David McK. Williams' In the Year that King Uzziah died
style='font-style:normal'> are sometimes unusually slow, the performances are
still quite beguiling, certainly helped by the removal of the church's
carpeting for the recording. (The Texans certainly sang with great zeal, and
the "quasi-tympani" effect of multiple notes played on the 32'
stops after the words, . . . and the house was filled with smoke, in the
Willams anthem is especially notable.) Perry's playing of the evocative,
impressionistic evensong Prelude on Iam Sol recedit igneus
style='font-style:normal'>, by Bruce Simonds, is a wonderfully quiet conclusion
to this, one of the series' most popular releases.

Henry Hokans at All Saints' is the title of Volume 11,
comprising pieces by Walond, Whitlock, Franck, and Dupré. The Worcester,
Massachusetts, organ was another of Harrison's "landmark" instruments
of the 1930s. As it evolved over a number of years, it was perhaps the most
"French" of his organs until his final one in St. Thomas' Church, New
York City. Mr. Hokans, successor to William Self at All Saints' Church, is one
of the most gifted players the writer has ever heard. His performance of
Dupré's Variations sur un Noël,
Opus 20, is absolutely electrifying!

Volume 12, Pierre Cochereau at Symphony Hall, contains, not
surprisingly, all French literature. Most significant is the player's Triptych
Symphony, in Four Movements, a splendid
example of the art of improvisation. Works of Fleury, Dupré, and Vierne
complete the release.

The Whiteford Era

The death of G. Donald Harrison in 1956, while he was
completing the great organ in St. Thomas Church, New York, although portending
a gloomy future for Aeolian-Skinner, did not, by any means, spell the end of
the company's record series. An alliance was forged with Washington Records,
the first release of which was Volume 13, Organ Music and Vocal Solos, recorded
in the Mother Church, Boston, featuring organist Ruth Barrett Phelps and the
church's then tenor soloist, Frederick Jagel, who had a long and distinguished
career on the opera stage. Of the organ works, the Franck Fantaisie in A
style='font-style:normal'> and the Buxtehude Ciacona in E Min
style='font-style:normal'>or are particularly memorable.

Volume 14, also on the Washington Records label, is entitled
New Dimensions in Organ Sound and features Catharine Crozier playing the large
organ in the Auditorium of the Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day
Saints in Independence, Missouri. The major work on this release is the
monumental Sonata on the Ninety-fourth Psalm of Julius Reubke, and the issue was the first to incorporate stereo
sound. The mystical atmosphere of Crozier's performance of Alain's Deuxième
Fantaisie is notable, as are the
reservoir-bottoming tone clusters! Joseph Whiteford, who seemed afraid of bold
sounds, felt that the tapes made at the Crozier recording sessions had too much
mid-range emphasis and instructed Mr. John Kellner, who had made the tapes, to
electronically lessen that emphasis while adding artificial reverberation from
the company's then-new reverberation system. Unhappily, the final tonal results
have a harsh, thin ambiance.

A number of the Harrison Era recordings were re-issued on
the Washington Records label.

The technical quality of the Washington Records releases was
a disappointment, and Volume 13, originally issued with monaural sound, was
re-released, under the previous arrangements for pressings, in stereo. (Interestingly,
it was found that the vibrato of Mr. Jagel--well past his prime when the
recording was made--was too slow; so the master tapes were speeded up, raising
the pitches of all pieces on the recording--vocal and organ--almost a
semitone.) At the same time, because of popular demand, Volumes 1 and 10 were
also re-issued. Since more pieces were recorded by Crozier than appeared on
Volume 14, two releases, Volumes 15 and 16, called, respectively, Catharine
Crozier, Program I and Catharine Crozier, Program II, were issued, with the
elegance of the Bach Trio Sonata No. 5 in C Major being perhaps the most particularly special addition.

The instrument used in Volume 17, Phillip Steinhaus, was
that in All Saints' Church, Pontiac, Michigan, a three-manual organ of more
modest proportions than most used in this series. Steinhaus, who would
ultimately serve a brief tenure as a company vice-president in the later 1960s,
recorded a diverse program ranging from Buxtehude to Langlais, with Paul de
Maleingreau's Tumult in the Praetorium
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  being perhaps the most unusual. Also
quite different is the rendition of Bach's Passacaglia and Fugue in C
Minor, which contains a cadenza, adapted
from the same composer's Prelude and Fugue in F Minor.

Two Great Organs is the title of Volume 18, which features
Albert Russell playing, respectively, the organs in Philharmonic Hall, Lincoln
Center, New York City, and in Asylum Hill Congregational Church, Hartford.
(Russell was organist/choir director at the Hartford church.) The sound of the
now former concert hall instrument, playing pieces by Dupré, Buxtehude,
Bach, and Langlais, is impressive, invoking sadness that it was not retained in
what is now called Avery Fisher Hall. The writer, while an employee of
Aeolian-Skinner in the early 1960s, served on the installation team of the
Hartford organ and considers it one of the best of the Whiteford organs. Roy
Perry, who began the tonal finishing, agonized to Mr. Whiteford that he could
not get what he desired out of the Great 8' Spitzprinzipal, which, with
its tapered configuration, reflected Whiteford's reluctance to create a bold
principal chorus. (Donald Gillett, chief tonal finisher and, briefly, company
president after Whiteford's departure, liked to refer to "Joe's
'string-quartet' Greats!") After promising a new set of pipes, the
replacements had even more taper than the originals, prompting a plea to Arthur
Birchall, Assistant Tonal Director, from Perry. The third--and final--set, sent
by Birchall, was not tapered and was quite satisfactory. A large, four-manual
Austin console, which had replaced that of the previous E.M. Skinner organ,
contains the pressure regulator of the Rückpositiv division, making it
perhaps the only Austin console in which there is pressurized wind. The major
work played on the recording at Asylum Hill Church is Healey Willan's massive
Introduction, Passacaglia, and Fugue; and, even though the composer expressed
reservations about Russell's performance, it is a splendid reading.

The Hartford organ was also used in Volume 19,
Duruflé: Requiem. The writer had
the pleasure of hearing Albert Russell conduct and accompany this glorious work
on two occasions, once at Asylum Hill Church and later at Trinity Church,
Boston. Unforgettable was the sight, at the latter venue, of Russell's
gyrations while directing from the console and delivering a beautifully
conceived and executed organ accompaniment. The recorded Hartford performance
is superb, with the unnamed mezzo soprano's singing of the haunting Pie Jesu
bringing one close to tears. The Requiem is preceded by Myron Robert's Prelude & Trumpetings
style='font-style:normal'>, in which the opening ascending notes in the lower
register of the Krummhorn are very effective.

While at Aeolian-Skinner, the writer had the very good
fortune of hearing John Weaver in recital on the famous Walcker/Aeolian-Skinner
organ in Methuen. His program concluded with an astounding performance of
Liszt's massive Fantasy and Fugue on Ad nos, ad salutarem undam.
style='font-style:normal'> As the final thunderous chord began to die away, one
could clearly sense the audience gasping! Fully equal to that transcending
performance is the one on Volume 20, John Weaver playing Liszt and Mozart,
recorded at the Lutheran Church of the Holy Trinity, New York, where Mr. Weaver
was organist and choirmaster at the time of the major rebuilding by
Aeolian-Skinner of the E.M. Skinner instrument in the mid-1960s. There would
doubtless be those who would express dismay at Weaver's use of shimmering
celestes at the beginning and closing of the Mozart Fantasy in F
Minor, K.594, but the performance is most
convincing even so. (It is sad to consider that an organ sounding so fine was
ultimately removed!)

Bob Whitley was organist/choirmaster at St. Luke's Episcopal
Church, San Francisco, where Volume 21, Music at St. Luke's, was recorded. Side
1 comprises pieces by Sidney Campbell, Leo Sowerby, Frederick Karam, Helmut
Walcha, and Jean Langlais, while Side 2 offers Searle Wright's fine cantata, The
Green Blade Riseth. The small choir, while
obviously well trained, did not have a good blend--too many wide vibratos.

Christ Church Cathedral, St. Louis, was the venue of Volume
22, Maurice and Marie-Madeleine Duruflé. Madame Duruflé is heard
on Side 1, the major work being her husband's Prelude, Adagio, and Choral
style='font-style:normal'> with Variations on Veni Creator
style='font-style:normal'>. While she was generally considered the virtuoso of
the pair, her husband's playing of his own Prelude from the Suite, Opus 5, and
of Tournemire's majestic Improvisation on the Te Deum
style='font-style:normal'> are perhaps the chief glories of this very
impressive recording. Before coming to St. Louis, the Duruflés expressed
reservations about the organ's specifications but became quite enthusiastic
about the instrument after playing it.

The St. Louis organ was also used for the final King of
Instruments recording of the Whiteford Era, Volume 23, Ronald Arnatt. Arnatt,
at the time of the recording, was organist/choirmaster at the Cathedral. The
writer was on hand for the recording sessions, contributing a last-minute
tuning of the hooded Trompette de Reredos, located at a dizzying height behind
the stone reredos, and by holding one of the narthex doors to prevent rattling,
in soft passages, caused by the very effective electronic 32' Bourdon. The
soft movement of Sowerby's Sonatina is a
highlight of this release, which also includes works of Brahms, Bach, and
Arnatt.

Some of the Whiteford Era releases were issued as
pre-recorded, reel-to-reel tapes by Ampex. The writer has three of these
(Volumes 15, 16, and 18). The acetate backing of the tapes has not held up
well.

The Post-Whiteford Era

In 1966, Joseph Whiteford moved to the desert southwest,
assuming the title, Vice Chairman of the Board. At that time, John J. Tyrrell,
who had been company President since 1960, became the Board Chairman. In 1968,
Tyrrell left Aeolian-Skinner, and Whiteford sold his controlling interest in
the firm to Donald M. Gillett, who became President and Tonal Director. Gillett
was soon joined by Phillip Steinhaus, the organist featured on Volume 17, who
became Executive Vice President. Within three years the company's financial
condition had deteriorated significantly, and the controlling interest was
purchased by E. David Knutson, of Oklahoma, in 1969. Knutson appointed Dallas
tracker organ builder Robert M. Sipe to the position of Vice President, and
Sipe quickly became in charge of Aeolian-Skinner's operations. The company's
record series was of interest to him and; even though two post-Whiteford
recording sessions had been carried out prior to Sipe's arrival, he saw to it
that the next issue would be Volume 24, Paul Van Veelen, with that Dutch
organist playing the 18-rank, 2-manual Sipe & Yarbrough mechanical action
organ at St. Stephen United Methodist Church, Mesquite, Texas, built in
1963--six years before Sipe's association with Aeolian-Skinner. The program
consists of shorter works, ranging from pre-Bach to Piet Kee; and the sound of
the little organ, while rather arresting, is far removed from the
"American Classic" sound that had been associated with the company's
work. It is obvious that Sipe was making a clear declaration that
Aeolian-Skinner was heading in a much different tonal--and
mechanical--direction.

The next record to be issued--Volume 25, Clyde Holloway--is
the first of the two pre-Sipe recordings referred to earlier. Mr. Holloway plays
the Liszt Prelude and Fugue on BACH;
Mozart's familiar Fantasy in F Minor,
K.608; and the Reubke Sonata.
(The latter work also appears on Volume 15.) The organ used is that in the
National Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C.

A pet project of Phillip Steinhaus was the organ for the
Cathedral Church of Christ the King, Kalamazoo, Michigan, which was used for
Volume 26, Alexander Boggs Ryan. Mr. Ryan played a varied program, with the
Franck Choral III in A Minor and the
Reger Fantasy on Wachet auf!
being perhaps the most notable. Aeolian-Skinner was very late in completing
this organ; and, because a dedication recitalist had been contracted for well
in advance, it was necessary to temporarily install the small organ that had
been in Steinhaus' residence and would ultimately find a home in Memphis.
(Organ builders would be well advised to include an iron-clad clause in
new-organ contracts prohibiting the scheduling of opening recitals until
installation has been completed!)

When Robert Sipe came to Aeolian-Skinner, he brought with
him a contract for a 3-manual, mechanical action organ for Zumbro Lutheran
Congregation, Rochester, Minnesota, components for which were already on order
from a German organ supply house. Robert Anderson, of Southern Methodist
University, Dallas, was engaged to play for three releases in The King of
Instruments series. The first of these, Volume 27, Robert Anderson in a Program
of 20th Century Organ Music, consisted of two LP discs; and some of the pieces played
are very much avant garde, such as Ton Bruynèl's Reliëf
style='font-style:normal'> (Organ and 4 Electronic Sound Tracks). While the
writer feels that the Zumbro organ is not ideal for the Alain Trois
Danses, Anderson's performances are very
convincing. Also included, among others, is Vincent Persichetti's Shimah
b'Koli, which was commissioned for the
opening concert on the company's short-lived organ in Philharmonic Hall,
Lincoln Center. Of the three players on that remarkable program, Virgil Fox
(the other recitalists being Catharine Crozier and E. Power Biggs) was given
the task of performing the premiere of the Persichetti twelve-tone
composition--hardly typical of the traditional Fox repertoire! (Joseph
Whiteford was, like Virgil, less than kindly disposed to the work.) The writer,
who was in attendance at the premiere, also heard the piece played by Anderson
in a recital on the superb Aeolian-Skinner in First Central Congregational
Church, Omaha, Nebraska; and, while he is not sure that such serial
compositions fully qualify as music, he feels that Anderson did a masterful job
of splashing tone colors around the church and made the listening experience a
compelling one!

Volume 28, Robert Anderson in a Program of 19th Century
Organ Music, includes music by Schumann (Six Fugues on the Name BACH),
Franck, Widor, and Ives. The familiar Variations on America by the latter
composer is perhaps this disc's greatest success. While quite a step away from
traditional Aeolian-Skinner sounds, those of this tracker organ prove that
romantic literature can be played successfully on such an instrument, although
not as effectively as on the organs used previously in this record series.

Volume 29, Robert Anderson in a Program of 18th Century
Organ Music, comprises works by Cabanilles, Seger, Zipoli, Greene, C.P.E. Bach,
Dandrieu, and J.S. Bach--literature, along with some of the pieces on Volume
27, better suited to this organ.

As Aeolian-Skinner was in its early-70s death throes, the
final King of Instruments record, Volume 30, was issued, interestingly using
the title of Volume 10, Music of the Church. Zumbro Lutheran Congregation,
Rochester, was the recording's venue. That church's choir, along with the
Parish Choir of Calvary Episcopal Church of the same city, was conducted by
composer Gerald Near, with Zumbro's organist at that time, Merrill N. Davis
III, at the console. Davis opens the program with a quite rousing performance
of Vierne's Maestoso in C-sharp Minor,
an organ solo arrangement by Alexander Schreiner of the Kyrie from the Messe
Solennelle. The well-trained choirs sing
works by Fetler, Near, Vaughan Williams, Scheidt, and Zimmerman, while mezzo
soprano Anne Suddendorf is very effective in Hovhaness' Out of the
Depths and Ives' Abide with Me
style='font-style:normal'>. Avant garde composition is also represented by
Felciano's God of the Expanding Universe, for organ and electronic tape.

Reverberation

One of the chief interests of Joseph S. Whiteford was the
acoustical properties of churches and concert halls. Correctly observing that a
majority of American churches, often because of lack of knowledge on the
subject and inept planning by architects, are acoustically hostile to organ and
choral music, he set about to design a synthetic reverberation system as a
cost-effective remedy to this situation. The result was a system consisting of
a specially modified tape recorder in which the tape would pass over one record
head, where the live sound would be planted on the tape, and then pass, in
turn, over eight playback heads, each sending its sound to its own series of
amplifiers and loudspeakers. (A patented randomizing circuit was also used to
smooth out the reverberation.) The most remarkable use of such a system was at
an outdoor concert, conducted by Thomas Schippers, concluding the 1960 Festival
in Spoleto, Italy. (A most fascinating description of this project, written by
John Kellner, company recordist [succeeding Mr. Robert Breed], reverberation
system builder, and the person who set up and ran the system in Spoleto,
appears in Charles Callahan's great 1996 book, Aeolian-Skinner Remembered--A
History in Letters [ISBN 0-9652850-0-6, published by Randall M. Egan].) With
the possible exception of Volume 21, all of The King of Instruments releases
from the Whiteford Era had artificial reverberation added, with Volumes 14, 15,
16, 17, 18 (Asylum Hill Church only), 19, 22, and 23 using the Aeolian-Skinner
system. For those volumes, the system set up in the company's electronics
department, on the fourth floor of its South Boston plant, was used; and it was
necessary for John Kellner to add the reverberation in the "wee hours of
the morning" in order to avoid noises generated by vehicular traffic,
aircraft, office personnel, the pipe shop, and the voicing rooms.
Interestingly, nothing on the record jacket notes indicates use of synthetic
reverberation.

Jacket Art

The jacket fronts of the original issues, Volumes 1 through
8, designed by John Tyrrell, are rather simple, having two sketches of classic
moldings, with a background of a large color panel (different colors on
successive issues) and a smaller white one. Pictures began to appear on the
jacket backs with Volume 6; and the front of Volume 9 has a large picture of
the Mother Church organ façade, with Mrs. Phelps, at the console,
pictured on the back. Volume 10 has a large picture of the Kilgore, Texas,
Trompette en Chamade, below a stained-glass window, on its cover; and the same
picture was used on the fronts of Volumes 13 (first release), 15, 16, 17, 18,
19, 20, 21, 22, and on the re-releases of Volumes 1 and 10. Volumes 11, 13
(second release), 23, 24, 25, 26, and 30 have front pictures of the respective
organs used. (On the jacket fronts of Washington Records' original release of
Volume 13 and on the re-releases of the earlier recordings, the ubiquitous
Kil-gore cover appeared with varying, much-less-than-flattering background
colors.) The cover of Volume 12, Pierre Cochereau at Symphony Hall, is a
departure from the norm, containing instead a sketch of Notre Dame, Paris,
drawn by Aeolian-Skinner Assistant Vice-President M. A. Gariepy, on the lower
left and a drawing of three manual keyboards on the upper right. (There are no
pictures of the artist or of the Symphony Hall organ on Volume 12.) The front
of Volume 14, from Washington Records, has a picture of the Independence,
Missouri, organ (arguably one of the finest examples of an uncased pipe
display, a marvelous testimony to the architectural artistry of John Tyrrell);
but, unfortunately, the pipes in the picture are gold in color, which is not
the case in actuality. ("Let's have some razzmatazz!!") Although the
Kilgore picture "graces" the front of Volume 18, Two Great Organs,
fairly large pictures of both of the organs used appear on the back; and there
is an insert with programs, stop-lists, and a picture of Albert Russell. The
Antiphonal division of the National Presbyterian Church instrument ap-pears in
a somewhat fantastical, kaleidoscopic manner on the front of Volume 25. The
jacket fronts of the three Robert Anderson releases are a major departure, each
containing its own original drawing by Jeanne Bastinier, who was a company
secretary during some of the firm's waning years. Because it contains two LP
records, the first Anderson issue has a folding jacket, with program notes and
the artist's picture on the insides of the folds. Volumes 28 and 29 have
inserts with those items. All three Anderson volumes have a large photograph of
the handsome Zumbro organ and its stoplist on the jacket backs.

In Conclusion

Aeolian-Skinner was not unique among organ companies in
issuing recordings of its instruments; but, to the writer's knowledge, no other
builder has ever come close to the sheer number of volumes that comprise The
King of Instruments series. Those, like the writer, fortunate enough to possess
the entire series doubtless realize what a treasure they have; and, if they
have access to a computer that can "burn" compact discs, they may
wish to follow the writer's example and copy the series to that format. (A tip:
both of the releases featuring the organ in the Cathedral of St. John the
Divine [Volumes 6 and 8] fit nicely on a single CD.)

To the writer's knowledge, three professionally issued
compact discs containing parts of the series are available. JAV Records has
issued their JAV-121, entitled Studies in Tone & King of Instruments,
containing both Volume 1 and an early-1940s 78 r.p.m. recording entitled
Studies in Tone. (John Kellner recollects of being told that Studies in Tone
was narrated by an English organist who sounded very much like G. Donald Harrison;
but, given the similarity of the verbiage to that of Volume 1 and the sound of
the narrators' (?) voices, the writer is hard-pressed to detect that different
persons narrated, respectively, the two recordings.) The William Watkins'
Kilgore, Texas, performance of the Sowerby Carillon, which is part of Volume 2,
Organ Literature: Bach to Langlais, is included on Raven OAR-310, Lorenz
Maycher plays Sowerby  (also
recorded at Kilgore). Pierre Cochereau's improvised, four-movement Triptych
Symphony at Boston's Symphony Hall is
included on a two-CD set, Cochereau Les Incunables, available from the Organ
Historical Society as SOCD-177/8.

Mr. William T. Van Pelt, of the Organ Historical Society,
relates that Mr. Knutson "bequeathed" a large number of tapes, possibly
including the masters of The King of Instruments series, to the Society. The
tapes are apparently in very poor condition.

Those interested in the fascinating history of
Aeolian-Skinner are urged to read the Charles Callahan book mentioned earlier
and also his 1990 masterpiece, The American Classic Organ--A History in
Letters (ISBN 0-913499-05-06, published by
The Organ Historical Society).

A sad testament to Aeolian-Skinner's demise in the early
1970s exists at the bottom right-hand corner of the back of the jacket of the
writer's copy of Volume 30--the final issue. A small box declares that the
record was "Produced for Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, Inc., by King of
Instruments Records," addressed at a post office box in Dallas. The name
of the supposed record company and its address are rather crudely blocked by an
office stamp giving the organ company's address as 29 Melcher Street, Boston.
The once-great firm had degenerated to a small office that would soon also be
only a memory.