Festivities celebrate the installation of the Tannenberg organ

Raymond J. Brunner founded R. J. Brunner & Co. in 1981. He is a graduate of Lehigh University and a member of the American Institute of Organbuilders and the Organ Historical Society.

Restoration of the 1770 Tannenberg  organ at Zion Moselem Lutheran Church, Moselem Springs, Pennsylvania, was completed in September 2011 by R. J. Brunner & Co. of Silver Spring, Pennsylvania. The earliest of the nine extant David Tannenberg organs, it predates the Revolutionary War and is perhaps the oldest surviving organ built in the American colonies. As such, it is of great historic importance, and its restoration allows us to learn more about 18th-century organbuilding as practiced by Tannenberg and other German immigrants to Pennsylvania.

Tannenberg was a Moravian and built many organs for Moravian congregations in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. He also supplied organs to Lutheran, German Reformed, and Catholic congregations. His instruments ranged in size from four-stop positive organs for Moravian use to a large three-manual, 34-stop organ for Zion Lutheran Church in Philadelphia. Tannenberg’s Moravian organs had a predominance of unison-pitch stops, since those organs were generally used in conjunction with other instruments. His Lutheran organs had more developed choruses that might include mutation and mixture stops, as well as reeds. The Moselem organ has eight stops on one manual, with a total of nine ranks. Built early in Tannenberg’s career, it provides an opportunity to learn more about the evolution of his organbuilding. It is the only surviving example of his organs with a walnut case.   

The Moselem organ was completed in 1770 and installed in the stone Zion Lutheran Church building, where it was located in a small gallery. This building was replaced by a new brick structure in 1894, at which time the organ was moved and rebuilt by Samuel Bohler of Reading, Pennsylvania. Bohler replaced the original bellows with an internal winding system and replaced the keydesk and keyboard. He altered the stop action and also removed the Terz and Mixtur stops, replacing them with lower-pitched unison stops. By then the walnut casework had been painted over. The casework was eventually painted white, imitating the appearance of other Tannenberg organs.  

In 2010, R. J. Brunner & Co. was chosen to undertake a historic restoration of the organ. Organbuilder Raymond Brunner was in charge of the project, and his previous research and restoration experience with several other Tannenberg organs was a valuable asset to determining how the work should be done. It was decided to restore the organ to its original form, including replacement of the two missing original stops and construction of an authentic winding system. Fortunately, the unaltered 8-stop Tannenberg organ at Hebron Lutheran Church in Madison, Virginia provided many of the answers. Although built 32 years later, it has an original pair of wedge bellows that could be copied for the restoration. Another fortunate event was that Brunner was able to obtain parts of two different period wedge bellows sets, once used on Pennsylvania German organs that are no longer extant. Using these historic fragments from other organs enabled the recreation of an authentic set of bellows like the original winding of the organ. An electric blower provides an alternate source of wind.

Twenty-five pipes of the Principal 8′ and ten pipes of the Principal Octav 4′ are in the façade. The Flaut Major 8′ and Flaut Minor 4′ are identical open wood ranks made primarily from pine and walnut. The rack board for the Terz shows that this rank did not contain a break. 

The restoration required making a new keydesk and stop action, as well as a new keyboard. The keyboard was copied from the Madison instrument, with the natural keys covered with ebony, while the walnut sharps are capped with reclaimed ivory from old keyboards. Removal of several layers of paint revealed the beauty of the walnut casework and the fine quality of this master organbuilder’s work. The façade pipes were restored to their original appearance by removal of ears that had been applied when Bohler rebuilt the organ. A metallurgical analysis of the pipe metal was done to determine the proportions of lead and tin, as well as the amount of impurities in the metal. New Terz and Mixtur pipes were made for the organ by the Paul Fritts shop in Tacoma, Washington. Restoration of the original pipes and voicing of the new pipes was done by Hans Herr in the Brunner shop.   

The organ was re-dedicated on October 2, 2011 with a concert played by Philip T. D. Cooper; it was hand pumped for the entire concert. Mr. Cooper also assisted in historical research for the restoration and was instrumental in encouraging the church to undertake the project. The fine sound of the organ delighted the large crowd in attendance, and Zion’s organist Nancy Keller has been using the organ on a regular basis. This instrument should serve the congregation of Zion Moselem Lutheran Church well for many more years, and the organ can be heard once again as David Tannenberg intended.

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

Semantic antics and a few rhetorical questions

What does it mean to restore an organ?
If you start with a simple ordinary pipe organ in poor condition, releather windchests, add a few stops, revoice a few more, and install a fancy solid-state combination action, have you restored the organ? Many practitioners would say no. A strict literal interpretation of the word implies that you would use nothing that had not been part of the original organ. This interpretation implies that while you might be exactly faithful to the work of the original builder, you almost certainly leave behind an organ that cannot be played. You didn’t replace any worn leather, any broken trackers, or any missing ivories.
When a museum conservator prepares a newly acquired chair for exhibition, it’s possible and logical to use the literal approach. No one expects to be able to sit in a chair from Marie Antoinette’s boudoir so there’s no need for strengthening the frame or replacing the upholstery. It’s safely placed behind velvet ropes and as long as it can hold itself up, it’s fine. But, except in the rarest situations, when we restore an organ we certainly do intend to play it as if it were a new instrument.
It’s common therefore for organbuilders to take the word restore with a grain of salt. We restore the instrument to its original playable condition, replacing leather and other parts and materials. We make concessions so the bench won’t collapse and so we don’t have to hand-pump the organ every time it’s played. But again, we have a literal translation. If the original builder used sheepskin, we don’t use goatskin. We match the colors and composition of the felt, the hand-made metal hardware, the chemistry of the wood finish.
When you finish a true restoration, you’ve left nothing in the organ that came from a hardware store or a supply catalogue. Instead of paying thirty dollars for a gallon of stain, you’ve paid a chemist $250; instead of buying threaded wires from a catalogue for twenty dollars per hundred, you’ve paid a machine shop seventy-five plus a $200 set-up fee. And for each of those transactions you’ve spent fifteen hours researching who could do the work for you and making the necessary arrangements. You’re perilously close to the legends of military purchasing—the land of the $10,000 toilet seat. Or the cost of the fish you catch from a new boat—the first fish costs $10,000 or $20,000 a pound and it takes a long time and a lot of fish before it averages into anything reasonable! The cost of the authentic restoration is greater than the price of the comparable new organ.
Another loaded word in the conservator’s lexicon is preservation. In a project completed last year, Old Salem (the wonderful museum village at Winston-Salem, North Carolina) oversaw the restoration of a marvelous organ built by David Tannenberg in 1800. The organ had been dismantled a century earlier and stored in the attic of a church building. Taylor & Boody Organbuilders of Staunton, Virginia accomplished this exacting important work. The project was celebrated and discussed in great detail at a symposium held at Old Salem in March 2004. Historians, preservationists, and restorers gave papers discussing the theories of restoration from different points of view. One concept mentioned was that the purest way to handle the preservation of this important artifact of American heritage would be to catalogue the parts and preserve them intact—façade pipes left flat, keyboards missing, parts and pipes in a shambles.
That concept of preservation was compromised as Taylor & Boody, guided by officials at Old Salem (notably Paula Locklair), appropriately restored the organ to playable condition. They built new keyboards according to models from other surviving Tannenberg organs, they rounded out the façade pipes, they lengthened other pipes to make the pitch established by those façade pipes, and they used the tuning system described by Tannenberg. That description was in itself a masterpiece of preservation. Several years after the organ was built, the church asked Tannenberg to return to tune it. He refused, but instead sent a letter that described in careful detail how to set the temperament and tune the organ. The Moravian Archives at Old Salem has preserved the letter and it was on display during the symposium. What a treasure.
By restoring the organ to playable condition, Taylor & Boody and Old Salem have provided an unparalleled opportunity for us to understand the work of David Tannenberg. Without the handling and working of those precious organ parts, we would not know the sound, the essence of the instrument. In the interest of preservation, taking advantage of technology available to us, the artisans at Taylor & Boody documented everything by photograph and measurement.
Here’s a hypothetical twist: An organbuilder is engaged to restore an important organ. During the initial study of the instrument, the organbuilder comes across original parts of the organ that failed over time because they were not designed and built to take the mechanical strain they were subjected to. The restorer (in all humility) realizes the reason for the failure and can easily see how to redesign the offending part so it will not fail in the restored organ. But is that restoration? Technically no. It’s a modification to the intent and product of the original builder. In this case, you could say that a literal restoration would be a recipe for failure. Does that justify making the change, ensuring that the “restored” organ will last longer than the original?
And here’s another twist: Five years ago the Organ Clearing House “rescued” a beautiful organ built by William A. Johnson of Westfield, Massachusetts in 1883. It has two manuals and twenty-seven stops, a beautiful Victorian case, and its historic value is high because it had never been altered. It was in a church building in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn, New York that was scheduled to be razed. With the financial assistance of many members of the Organ Historical Society, we dismantled and packed the organ, and shipped it to our warehouse in New Hampshire. There it sits.
Many potential purchasers have expressed interest in the organ, but each described plans to add an electric stop action and combination action to the organ. I’d hate to see that organ altered. After all, much of the reason we put so much effort into the organ was that it is such a rich, unaltered example of an important era of American organbuilding. But what’s the point of preserving an organ if it’s going to languish in storage? We can walk around it in the warehouse, admiring it in pieces, and patting ourselves on the back for what a wonderful job we did (and pay another month’s rent on the space). And, as I did recently, we can drive past the site in Brooklyn and see that the organ’s original home is gone. But we can’t hear the organ.
This raises a question much discussed among organbuilders who restore, renovate, refurbish, rebuild, or otherwise rehash pipe organs—a question that is relevant when discussing organs of some historic importance and especially when discussing relocating an instrument when there is need to adapt it to fit the space: Are “reversible” modifications appropriate? Maybe the original specification does not include a pedal reed, or maybe there is a lack of upperwork on the secondary manual. It’s technically possible to add a pedal reed to an organ in such a way that it could be removed later leaving little or no trace for the sake of historic purity. Would that compromise the integrity of the instrument? Is it presumptuous of us to imply that we know better than the original builder?
Returning to my example of the stored Johnson organ, suppose we found a way to add electric slider-motors to the organ, to replace the keyslips with new ones equipped with piston buttons (of course, preserving the originals with all their hardware), and to install a solid-state combination action, all in such a way that the whole thing could be reversed, returning the organ to its original condition. We would have necessarily made some screw holes, and there would surely be holes in the frame of the keyboards to accommodate the pistons. But if that meant that the organ was taken from storage and put back into use, are the changes so bad?
In 1870, E. & G. G. Hook built a large three-manual organ for the First Unitarian Church of Woburn, Massachusetts. When the parish disbanded, the organ was sold to a church in what had been East Berlin, Germany. The organbuilding firm of Hermann Eule in Bautzen, Germany was selected to “restore” the organ and install it in the Church of the Holy Cross (Kirche zum heiligen Kreuz) in Berlin. By the way, Bautzen is a lovely picturesque town, about two hours’ drive east of Dresden, near the border of Czechoslovakia. In Woburn, the organ was installed in a chamber behind a proscenium arch. The opening of the arch was much smaller than the organ so the organ’s sound was confined. In Berlin, the organ was installed free-standing in a spacious balcony—the case was expanded and the façade redesigned.
In one sense, this organ was restored. Its stoplist and tonal personality are unchanged. But the organ is fundamentally different. In Woburn, the organ was hidden, and the acoustics of the room were terrible. In Berlin, the organ is in the open, and the acoustics are spectacular. In that sense, it couldn’t be more different. I have seen and played the organ in both locations and I much prefer it in Berlin. Some colleagues grumbled about the way the façade had been altered, but what was so special about the original façade? Sitting in the church in Berlin listening to the organ, a colleague leaned over to me and said, “now they have one of our organs, it’s our turn to import some of their churches!”
If we’re doing a large-scale project on an instrument, how much can we change it and still call it a restoration?
Can we justify changes in the interest of making an instrument more useful?
How do we choose which instruments should be truly restored? Does an organ have to be beautiful to be considered for restoration? And who decides what’s beautiful?
Can we justify making changes to an instrument to correct what we perceive to be defects in the original? Who are we to decide what is defective?
Some historic instruments have short pedal compasses and secondary manuals with many “treble-only” stops. Many modern players will see these as constraints, limiting the usefulness of the instrument. Is it good stewardship for the owner of the instrument to commit to an expensive restoration?
These are questions for the restorers and the owners of the instruments alike. It’s common for the owner to feel that the instrument is worthy of special attention while the organbuilder thinks it has little merit. And of course, the opposite is true—it’s just as common for an organbuilder to work hard to convince the owner of an instrument to commit to an expensive restorative or preservative project when the owner finds the expense hard to justify or the explanation hard to understand.
I’ve had conversations like this with many organbuilders and curators. I’m not offering answers, just framing questions. I welcome your comments at . We’ll take this up again sometime.

What do organists really know about organbuilders?

David Lowry, DMA, HonRSCM, is Professor Emeritus of Music at Winthrop University, Rock Hill, South Carolina, and the Parish Musician of the Church of the Good Shepherd, Columbia, South Carolina. 

The American Institute of Organbuilders held its 40th annual convention October 6–9, 2013, in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The AIO is an educational organization dedicated to advancing the art of organ building “by discussion, inquiry, research, experiment, and other means.” AIO members are professional organbuilders, service technicians, and suppliers who subscribe to the institute’s objectives and its Code of Ethics. There are over 400 members. 

Begun in 1973, the AIO continues as a vital organization with a fine board of directors, a quarterly journal, and a consistent pattern of annual conventions. The AIO awards certificates for Service, for Colleague, and for Fellow, based on tests of knowledge and understanding of organ building, similar to the AGO certifications for organ playing. 

At this 40th convention, there were some 180 registrants, including 110 members. About 80 elected to stay for a post-convention trip to Durham and Raleigh. There were 21 exhibitors, five of whom were from outside the United States.

Many organists in church and/or education positions inevitably know a few pipe organ service people, some of whom are actually builders of pipe organs. Many become friends and are often of great value to organists, who must defend their instruments by educating their congregations and colleagues on why an organ has to be “fixed” and why it “costs so much.” 

A few organists actually become adept at making a quick and safe fix to a problem without calling the organbuilder or maintenance people. Some higher-education institutions actually offer a course in how to take care of that one trumpet pipe that is out of tune before an important liturgy, or how to pull a pipe safely if it is ciphering, among a host of other little maladies. At the same time, plenty of service people can tell you horror stories of organists mutilating pipes with duct tape or bending them hopelessly out of shape. 

When organists gather in conventions, the focus is almost always on performances of music, plus workshops on everything from fingering to phrasing, or the intrepid pursuit of performance practice, or the history and analysis of music. 

How many organists know what organbuilders regard as important in their conventions? The difference in the two types of conventions—organists vs. organbuilders—is remarkable and encouraging. Despite feeling somewhat like a spy, this writer received a formal invitation to observe the 40th anniversary activities and report them to the organ-playing world. (I once enjoyed being an employee of an organ-building firm when I was a senior in high school. I learned to solder cable wires to junction boards, tune pipes, releather pouches, deal with Pilcher chests, and meet the famous consultant William Harrison Barnes! That did not make me an organ builder, but at least I understood some basics. All that was long before the computer chip.) The AIO may well be responsible for making “organbuilder” a single word. 

The 40th annual convention took advantage of some remarkable historic venues in central North Carolina, in addition to superb hotel accommodations with fine facilities for meetings, exhibits, and food. What is immediately obvious is that an AIO convention is not about organ playing. Little music is heard. When visiting organs, members listen to brief sounds of individual stops. They also sing a hymn during each organ inspection.

There were some pre-convention activities in Winston-Salem. On Saturday, some members visited the 1918 Æolian Company Opus 1404 in the Reynolda House; the organ’s restoration, by Norman Ryan and Richard Houghten, is in progress. On Sunday there was a visit to the organ shop of John Farmer, followed by choral Evensong at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church with its four-manual, 50-stop Skinner organ, Opus 712, 1928, restored by A. Thompson-Allen Company. In the chapel at St. Paul’s is the two-manual, 17-stop, 2004 C. B. Fisk Opus 131, built in collaboration with Schreiner Pipe Organs, Ltd., Opus 8. That visit included looking at Fisk’s borrow actions. The pedal department of this organ has just one pedal stop and five borrowed voices from the Great manual. 

On Monday and Wednesday there were a total of eight lectures in the hotel lecture room.

Scott R. Riedel & Associates

“Working with a Consultant”

Scott Riedel discussed issues in dealing with church committees—from the tensions of committees saying “too much money for music,” “fear of fundraising,” “most people go to the contemporary service and never hear the organ [not true, they go to weddings and funerals]”—to the matters of contacting builders and reviewing how to achieve the best builder for the situation. 

Schreiner Pipe Organs, Ltd. 

“Pedal Borrows on Mechanical Actions”

For those committed to mechanical action, John Schreiner supplied video details on how to design borrowing manual stops to be played in the pedals: “Either/Or” is one way; “And” is the other way. Those deeply engaged in mechanical-action organs found
Schreiner’s acumen most valuable.

Joseph Rotella

“Saving Green by Going Green”

Joe Rotella of Spencer Organ Company, Inc., has great interest in keeping green, thereby saving “green” money. He explored energy conservation including government subsidies, electricity, vehicles, energy audits, waste and toxicity reduction, as well as personal health, gardening, and thinking “local first.” His logo signifying “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” is a powerful consideration for all builders. 

Charles Kegg of Kegg Pipe Organ Builders, and C. Joseph Nichols of Nichols & Simpson, Inc.

“When the Client Asks . . .” 

In response to the question “How many here have employed electronic sounds in your organs?” numerous hands were in the air. (As the English language changes, the use of “digital” and “electronic” is still in flux.) One of the two panelists of the discussion agreed to use electronic sounds for the bottom 12 notes of a 32′ stop; the other agreed to be judicious about electronic stops, but “the organ needs to still be an organ when you pull the plug.” The discussion was unquestionably a sensitive one across the room, and it remained frank, polite, and quite ethical. 

A curious question sparked more commentary: for electronic sounds that are sampled, is there a warranty question about who owns the sound? The electronic-sound issue remains a very serious and sensitive question among organbuilders, for which there will be no immediate answer.

David Pillsbury

“Hearing Protection”

The guest lecturer was David Pillsbury, retired director of audiology and speech pathology, Wake Forest Baptist Hospital. Organ technicians must be able to hear critical things in the way an individual pipe sounds, and how they relate to each other within a rank—whether tuning or voicing. The discussion included video examples on how the ear is constructed, plus important cautions on protection, and information on the various products that provide protection. 

Bryan Timm and Randy Wagner, Organ Supply Industries

“Scales and Why We Use What We Do”

Timm and Wagner provided a scholarly paper on “Scales and Why We Use Them, or, Starting with Grandma’s Meatloaf,” a fine academic analysis of how the modern organ industry has come to use the measurements of pipes, or just as importantly, how we alter those measurements. They promised to continue in the future to present the obvious next chapter: how pipe mouth dimensions are measured and employed. 

John Dixon

“Portable Technology for Business”

John Dixon is a representative from ComputerTree, Inc. of Winston-Salem and Atlanta, a technology professional services corporation. He reviewed a surprising amount of information about the advantages of digital communication that lightens the load of toolboxes and contributes to meeting needs while on the job and/or maintaining the business aspects of organ technology. 

Greg Williams

“Wood Finishing Techniques” 

Greg Williams, a private consultant to the wood finishing and refinishing industry, presented a two-hour lecture on waterborne (not water-based) wood finishing products and detailed procedures in wood products, for organs that include pipes, cases, façades, and consoles. The discussion included the production of new wood parts as well as the frequent need for touch-up techniques when rebuilding or restoring organs. 

A visit to Old Salem

On Tuesday, a short bus trip to Old Salem began in the Old Salem Visitors’ Center, a pleasant 2003 building in which an auditorium houses the 1800 David Tannenberg organ, restored by Taylor & Boody in 2003. John Boody, making use of excellent videos, talked about the restoration. Boody was most articulate and engaging in this fascinating project. 

He was followed by Lou Carol Fix, who read from her publication, “The Organ in Moravian Church Music,” outlining the significant influence the Moravians had in helping establish the use of the organ in Moravian worship. Following was a Singstunde (a Moravian Song Service), for which Fix played the 1800 Tannenberg as AIO registrants sang several hymns. 

Free time walking around Old Salem allowed the AIO into the Single Brothers’ House, where Scott Carpenter demonstrated the David Tannenberg 1789 one-manual and pedal, five-stop organ, restored by Taylor & Boody in 2007. Then in the Single Sisters’ House, Susan Bates demonstrated the Henry Erben 1830 one-manual, five-stop organ, restored by Taylor & Boody in 2008. 

Finally, we visited Home Moravian Church, where the 1800 Tannenberg was once housed, to hear the 3-manual, 43-stop, 1959 Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1340, with commentary by John Farmer. 

Some readers of this report who know Old Salem are aware there is a fine 1965 Flentrop organ in Salem College. The convention could not book the space because the Flentrop firm was contracted to be revoicing the instrument. As it happened, the work had been completed just before the convention, but the schedules could not be changed for the AIO to hear it. 

St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church

Our fascinating visit to this fine modern building with a remarkably warm, resonant acoustic found the restored 1898 Hook & Hastings Opus 1801 (three manuals, 34 stops) being installed in the west gallery by John Farmer of J. Allen Farmer, Inc. The late director of the Organ Clearing House, Alan Laufman, brought this organ to the attention of Farmer, a member of St. Timothy’s Episcopal Church. Farmer removed it from a church in Massachusetts where it had been dormant for decades and was about to be destroyed along with the building. Farmer stored the organ in his home. Progress was slow—another decade—before the church embraced the concept of restoring the organ in St. Timothy’s. Despite not hearing an organ, the AIO sang a hymn anyway to enjoy the wonderful acoustic. This promises to be a remarkable installation, with completion perhaps by Easter 2014.

University of North Carolina School of the Arts

An optional jaunt over to the School of the Arts drew only a few registrants to hear the 1977 C. B. Fisk Opus 75 in a concert by four students and their professor, Timothy Olsen. The students came back early from their fall break to play on this notably aggressive Fisk. It was striking to think of the positive future of the organ world with such well-prepared talent. Performers were: high school junior Raymond Hawkins, undergraduates Pat Crowe and Christopher Engel, and graduate student Daniel Johnson. 

Post-convention trip to Durham and Raleigh

On Thursday, the first stop, an hour-and-a-half away, was on Chapel Drive at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, where the Duke Chapel remains one of our nation’s most thrilling architectural sights. There were four organs to inspect—count them—four. 

First was the recent organ by Richards, Fowkes & Co. Bruce Fowkes talked about the instrument and the space it is in, the Goodson Chapel of the Duke Divinity School, a remarkably fine room with a superb acoustic. Also on hand for the demonstration of the four organs were no less than Andrew Pester and Dongho Lee (they are husband and wife), who provided excellent contributions from the four consoles. 

Next was the two-manual, 21-stop, 1997 John Brombaugh Opus 34 in the small chapel, entered from the north transept of the chapel. The bottom manual is of Renaissance Italian design, and the second manual is Germanic, all in meantone temperament. 

The third demonstration was on the famous four-manual, 66-stop, 1976 organ by Flentrop Orgelbouw standing proudly in the gallery at the west end of the chapel. The chapel itself was built with the infamous Guastavino sound-absorbing tile that, at Flentrop’s suggestion, was sealed with a silicone sealant. Thanks to that, the chapel indeed sounds the way it looks: idyllic. 

The fourth event was the long-awaited hearing of the 1932 Æolian Company organ, Opus 1785, restored in 2008 by Foley-Baker, Inc. (See “Cover feature,” The Diapason, April 2012, pp. 25–27.) The organ has a new four-manual console to control the 6,600 pipes in five divisions, all in the chapel’s east end chancel. Once the demonstration of the stops was complete, Dongho Lee put the Dupré Prelude in B Major on the rack and thrilled the heck out of everyone. 

David Arcus, who for some 30 years was Chapel Organist and Associate University Organist, left Duke University at the end of 2013. Dr. Arcus was not present for the AIO visit as he was playing a recital elsewhere.

The final part of the post-convention activity was a visit to three recent organs in nearby Raleigh. 

The first stop was the Church of the Nativity, where the 2007 Andover Organ Company, Opus 115, two manuals, twenty stops (eight prepared), was demonstrated in the small worship space. 

Our second stop was at St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, where Kevin Kerstetter proudly demonstrated the three-manual, 47-stop 2012 Nichols & Simpson, Inc. organ. 

The last visit was to the Hayes Barton United Methodist Church, where the 2010 three-manual, 43-stop Buzard Pipe Organ Builders Opus 39 is installed. The demonstration and singing of a hymn was led by no less than the builder’s son, Stephen Buzard, assistant organist of St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue in New York City. Following that, Stephen Buzard rendered a stunning performance of Edward Elgar’s Sonata in G Major, op. 28, featuring the organ’s symphonic character. 

That the AIO is 40 years old and clearly a valuable asset to the organ building industry calls for celebrating this milestone. Matthew Bellocchio of the Andover Organ Company and AIO President steered the banquet festivities with great sensitivity. His faith in convention chairman Stephen Spake, of the Lincoln Pipe Organ Company, was a mark of genius. Spake carefully and lovingly steered all the matters of keeping the convention on schedule, counting heads on buses, handling Q & A sessions with a portable microphone, and constantly remaining calm, contributing to a successfully run convention. He also played an important role in the planning committee. 

One might wish that the AIO would approach matters of the performance of organ literature more seriously, but then when one thinks what organists really want to know about pipe metals, leather, how pipes are measured, etc., the argument becomes nebulous. The two professions are individual art forms with totally different schools of knowledge required. The goal is for the two to meet in agreement of making sounds that convert souls and enhance the artistic excellence that humans are capable of creating. ν

Photo credit: Harry Martenas

They don’t make ’em like they used to.

We often come across consumer products that disappoint us. You buy it, get it home, and find that it’s not what you were expecting. Maybe it’s a pair of shoes whose soles come off too soon. Maybe it’s a toaster that won’t stay down. My parents lived in the house in which I grew up for more than 20 years, and the same two telephones were in the same two places with the same single phone number the whole time. I hate to admit how many phone numbers I’m paying for now (personal, business, and fax lines in two locations plus a mobile phone), but I seem to be buying new phones every few months. Those sturdy phones in my parents’ house had two functions—you could pick up the handset to make a call, or you pick up the handset to answer a call. And they had real analog bells in them that rang for incoming calls! The phones I buy now have speed-dial memories, hold buttons, caller ID, conferencing, multiple lines with distinguishable rings, volume controls, redial, busy redial, call forwarding, etc., etc. I appreciate and use all those features, but the phones don’t seem to last as long.

Is newer better?

Likewise, my car has hundreds of features that were unheard of twenty years ago. When I opened the hood of my first car, I could see an engine. My present car has a maze of sensors, hoses, filters, and electronic gadgets under the hood. All that technology means that the engine runs smoothly and reliably and requires very little maintenance. But a breakdown is likely to be caused by a seemingly mysterious failed sensor or a vacuum leak rather than a good old mechanical problem. And there must be hundreds of gadgets for comfort and convenience—electric this, heated that. I’ve had the car about eight months and I still find myself saying, “I didn’t know it did that.” I have to admit that I’d prefer not to give up all the snazzy features in favor of yesterday’s simplicity. I hope my next car will have a heater for the washer fluid!
A modern organbuilder faces this issue daily. We hope and intend that our work will last for generations, but we have to rely on materials that can be substandard. Look at the biggest pipes of the 16' Open Wood Diapason in an organ built by Ernest Skinner, each made of four knot-free boards 18" wide. The trees that yielded that lumber have all been turned into organ pipes. I maintain a Skinner organ in Reading, Massachusetts that was built in 1915 and still has its original reservoir and pouch leather. Ninety-one years! We have to work within a modern economic system that sometimes seems not to value quality. And we have to develop and create a specialized workforce. America’s educational system has no provision for training organbuilders. Each new worker has to be recruited, educated, trained, and sustained in a craft that typically builds very expensive products from rare and expensive materials using donated money.
But all that effort is worth it—pipe organ building is one facet of modern life where they do make ’em like they used to. It’s a privilege to be involved in a field in which excellence is the norm, in which personal craftsmanship is truly valued, in which the client or patron expects excellence. I especially value those conversations with my organbuilding colleagues in which we reflect on the high standards of our predecessors and how to emulate them in today’s world. That’s not an easy thing to achieve, and it does not happen without continual concentrated effort. A good organ is not an accident.
My work with the Organ Clearing House keeps me in regular contact with the best of older pipe organs, and I always marvel at the signs of yesterday’s craftsmanship. For example, there was something special about the way workers in E. & G. G. Hook’s factory sharpened their pencils. You can see this throughout their organs wherever a mortise was marked—those pencils were really sharp, and you know there were no fool-proof electric pencil sharpeners in sight, and you also know there were no plastic pencils with the lead out-of-center. Focusing on pencils may seem obsessive, but in order for a 19th-century pencil to be sharp, someone had to sharpen a knife by hand. Many modern craftspeople rely on factory-produced, laser-sharpened disposable blades for manual tasks such as cutting and skiving leather. And for less than ten dollars you can buy a pair of scissors that will cut just about anything. Achieving the “old days” levels of accuracy with hand-made, hand-sharpened tools is a reflection of a true craftsman.

They pretend to make them like they used to.

We rely on high-tech power equipment for processes that were once done by hand. With my family I once visited one of those reconstructed, restored historical villages that had been transformed into a modern museum. Staff people were walking about in historic dress demonstrating traditional crafts such as spinning, weaving, and candle-making. There was a reproduction of an old woodworking shop, and the docent proudly told us how the shop was producing the millwork being used for the restoration of buildings throughout the village. Next to a treadle-powered lathe there was an impressive pile of precisely turned poplar balustrades intended for a large curving staircase and balcony. I was suspicious. I stood up on a bench and peered over a low wall to see a state-of-the-art modern workshop with all the best power equipment. I imagined that the fellow in the leather apron at the foot-powered lathe had been spinning the same piece of wood for weeks.
When I was first working in organ shops we turned a lot of screws by hand (Popeye arms!), and we had Yankee® Screwdrivers—long-handled tools with a built in ratchet that you pumped up and down to drive a screw. Boy, did it make a mess of your wood when the bit jumped out of the slot in the screw-head! Then we cut off the end of a screwdriver and put it in the chuck of an electric drill. Then we had factory-made screwdriver bits that came in big sets. Then we had electric screwdrivers—a rig that looked like a drill but included an adjustable clutch to prevent you from stripping the thread in the wood. Now we have powerful rechargeable batteries that allow a wide variety of cordless power hand tools. (See Photo 1.) I’ve joked many times to younger workers that “when I was a kid we had wires hanging out of our screwdrivers.” When rechargeable batteries were first introduced the technology was inadequate. There was hardly enough power to turn a tough screw, and the charge didn’t last long enough to be practical. But now, with a quick-charger and a couple spare batteries you can work all day without interruption. I recently added to my bag of tricks a battery charger that plugs into my car’s twelve-volt outlets. (And by the way, this car has outlets all over the place.) When I leave a service call with a dead battery, it’s recharged before I get to the next stop.

You think that’s old?

My wife and I just got home from a vacation in Greece. We were fascinated by the culture, awed by the landscape, and charmed by the sunny atmosphere of the islands. But visiting the historic archeological sites was simply humbling. I routinely work with organs that are 150 years old. I live in New England where we are surrounded by buildings and artifacts from the establishment of the original colonies and the Revolutionary War. There are a few buildings around that are close to 400 years old. The history of the ancient city of Delphi is traced to the beginning of the 12th century B.C. when the Dorians arrived in Greece, and the surviving buildings date from around 500 B.C. There is a 5,000-seat theater built in the fourth century B.C.—simply stunning. (See Photo 2.) As a tourist, one can stand on the “stage” at the focus of that vast amphitheater and imagine an enthusiastic crowd cheering you as a favorite actor or musician. Or walk on the field enclosed by the 7,000-seat stadium and imagine an ancient athletic contest. (Several fellow tourists ran a high-energy race.) But what the guide books cannot prepare you for is the topography. These massive buildings are made of stone—huge pieces of stone—and the sites are almost all dramatic, steep, even scary mountainsides. The floor of one building is above the roof of the one next door. One walks from place to place exhausted by the combination of the brilliant Mediterranean sun and the weight of the camera bag, water bottles, and the wildly steep uneven steps. Add to that exertion the thought of carrying the rocks to build the buildings. No payloaders, no Bobcats®, no conveyor belts, no dynamite—just wheels, levers, and muscle.1
The ancient town at Mycenae was first settled around 1950 B.C., with major development or organization in about 1200 B.C. It includes Agamemnon’s citadel and royal palace, and features a sophisticated system of cisterns and aqueducts to supply drinking water through the site. The skill of the stone masons who built the many structures is especially notable. How they were able to achieve perfect joints between stones the size of small automobiles and then hoist them into place is hard to imagine. I couldn’t help thinking of the Organ Clearing House crew with towers of rented scaffolding and electric hoists to lower windchests out of an organ chamber. The adjoining museum displays a collection of bronze tools—hammers, adzes, drills, chisels—that the craftsmen made and used in their work. To use a hand-held adze to create a perfectly flat surface on a ten-ton stone—they certainly don’t make them like they used to! (See Photo 3.)
I was particularly interested in the methods and philosophies regarding preservation and restoration. Two years ago I attended an excellent symposium in Winston-Salem, North Carolina on the occasion of the completion of the restoration by Taylor & Boody of an organ built in 1799–1800 by David Tannenberg. The instrument had been rediscovered in storage in a building that is part of Old Salem (another wonderful museum-village, not the site of the earlier mentioned balustrade caper!) and was returned to spectacular playing condition. The restoration was impeccably documented by Taylor & Boody, and they made fascinating presentations of the various tasks and challenges they faced. Some new parts had to be fabricated, but they went to extraordinary lengths to “re-round” literally flattened tin façade pipes, to reconstruct the geometry of the keyboards, and to establish the pitch of the organ. Moravian archives at Old Salem even contain a handwritten letter from Tannenberg to the church describing how to set the temperament and tune the organ.
But a side debate (exercised at length between friends and colleagues over dinner) included the suggestion that true preservation would not undertake to reconstruct the organ but to catalogue, measure, and display the array of parts. To presume to make new parts and to make assumptions about details like key travel would be to intrude on history.
In our work with historic organs we continually face similar questions. When we relocate an historic organ the intention is typically that the instrument should retain its historicity as much as possible, but also should be useful and reliable as a musical instrument, available for regular use by any organist. So can we justify adapting an instrument for modern use? Many modern organists are devoted to the use of combination actions—are we preserving an antique instrument if we adapt it to include an electric stop-action, or are we desecrating it?
Many of the monuments we visited in Greece are simply ruins today—mazes of stone foundations that allow us to surmise what life might have been like in an ancient village. Houses are supposed to have been occupied by merchants or by royalty. Local hierarchies are assumed based on the relative altitude of residences—the royalty lived at the top of the hill, laborers and merchants at the bottom—literally upper and lower classes.
But other sites are in the process of reconstruction. Perhaps the most dramatic of these is the Parthenon, situated on the Acropolis high above Athens. (See Photo 4.) Originally settled around 5000 B.C., the Acropolis is one of Greece’s earliest settlements. Throughout the ensuing centuries the site was fought over, developed and re-developed. Geologically it’s a large flat area, very high up, with very steep walls—a comfortable area to settle that’s difficult to reach and easy to defend. And the best part is there’s plenty of water—a feature common to all those barricaded hilltop cities. The Parthenon was built by Pericles around 450 B.C., made possible by the economic strength of the Delian Treasury that resulted from the formation of the Delian League of city-states. A thousand years later it was converted for Christian worship by the Emperor Justinian, and in the 17th century the Venetian army laid siege to the occupying Turks. In 1684, the Turks destroyed the Temple of Athena Nike (another of the grand structures on the Acropolis) to aid their defensive tactics, and in 1687 a Venetian bombardment exploded a Turkish magazine located within the Parthenon, blowing off its roof and reducing to rubble a 2,000-year-old monument. Today a massive restoration effort is underway, funded by the Greek government, the European Union, and “other contributions.”2
I was fascinated by the restoration site. (See Photo 5.) A huge construction crane is painted the same color as the Parthenon’s marble and housed at night crouching against the side of the building so as not to interfere with the skyline. The stone-workers’ workshops are housed in several low buildings, again designed with discreet profiles. Railroad tracks crisscross the site providing sturdy platforms for material handling. It’s a big effort when each piece of your project is weighed in tons rather than pounds. The rubble has been sorted into piles, individual pieces numbered and catalogued as to where in the building they originated. And fragments of stones have been returned to their original dimensions with new material (both marble and composite material) added. I was especially interested in the restoration with regard to what we learned about the Tannenberg organ in Winston-Salem. New material was added when necessary so the restoration would allow us to appreciate the monument in its original form. (See Photo 6.)
We visited the medieval Byzantine city of Mystra situated on another steep hill, this time on the outskirts of Sparta. There’s a castle at the very top (another steamer of a climb), several stunning churches and monasteries with breathtaking frescos, a royal palace, and the foundations of the houses and businesses that sheltered and supported a community of more than 20,000 inhabitants. The church of Ayia Sofia, built in 1350, features an elaborate floor made of polychrome marble. We were astonished that the public is allowed to walk on it! Like the Acropolis, this ancient city is illuminated at night, visible for many miles in every direction. There are halogen light fixtures mounted all around the hillside with conduit and wiring snaking through the ancient buildings. Nestled in a little neighborhood of the ruins of a dozen or so ancient houses I saw a large transformer shed, humming quietly in the wind.
How do we decide what modern concessions will enhance our ancient monuments?

There must be a better way.

Reflect on all the fancy sophisticated tools used by modern organbuilders. Power everything, laser levels, sophisticated hydraulics, digital measuring. There are no cars allowed on the Greek island of Idra in the Aegean Sea. On a Monday morning we sat at a waterfront café waiting for the ferry that would take us back to the mainland watching a construction crew loading bricks and bags of sand and cement onto donkeys. (See Photo 7.) How do you like this guy leading his brick-laden donkeys while making a call on his cell phone!