Monthly docent tours of Atlantic City organ now available

Charles F. Swisher is a senior audio and acoustical consultant with wide experience in the design of systems for speech and music reinforcement, electronic architecture, video, recordings, and multi-media productions. He holds a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois. Prior to joining Jaffe Holden Acoustics of Norwalk, Connecticut, in 1968, he worked for Ampex Corporation and Vega Electronics Corporation. He is a Fellow of the Audio Engineering Society and an audio consultant specializing in church sound system design and recording projects. Since 1994 he has been executive director of the American Pipe Organ Museum, Inc., a non-profit foundation to establish a national home to showcase the history of American pipe organ design. He became vice-president of the Atlantic City Convention Hall Organ Society, Inc. in 1997. Carl Loeser is curator of the Boardwalk Hall pipe organs in Atlantic City, New Jersey. A New Jersey native, he has worked in the pipe organ field for 30 years. Following college, he pursued a career in electrical engineering and concurrently started a side business doing organ maintenance and tuning. In 1988, he switched to pipe organ work on a full time basis. He has assisted in the installation of new organs and provided service for Schantz, Casavant, Reuter, and Austin. He has also done extensive rebuilding and restoration work. Among these projects was the complete restoration of the Ethereal Division of the John Wanamaker organ.

Eleven years have passed since the Midmer-Losh organ in Atlantic City’s Boardwalk Hall was last heard, when the ACCHOS CD/01 was recorded on November 3–4, 1998. The Atlantic City Convention Hall was renamed Boardwalk Hall and was closed for four years (1999–2002) to undergo a $90 million renovation, which, sadly, did not include work on the organ. The hall is now considered one of the finest performing arts facilities of its kind in America.

Background
In the early 1920s, Atlantic City decided to build a massive Convention Hall; 30,000 people gathered for its dedication in June 1929. New Jersey State Senator Emerson L. Richards designed both the Midmer-Losh organ and the ballroom’s Kimball organ. The Midmer-Losh Organ Company of Merrick, Long Island, installed the organ from 1929–1932. The organ is housed in eight chambers in a surround-sound configuration in the hall. Two ceiling chambers house the Fanfare and Echo organs, and two gallery chambers are located in the left and right forward and center areas of the hall.
The main console has seven manuals (located in a kiosk at stage level), and a movable console is available with five manuals. The organ has some 33,112 pipes and was listed for decades in the Guinness Book of World Records as the largest pipe organ in the world.
In the 1980s and ’90s, both organs fell into disuse and were neglected by management. In 1997, following an e-mail plea by Stephen D. Smith in London, the Atlantic City Convention Hall Organ Society, Inc. was formed to foster the preservation and restoration of both organs in the hall.
As it was, a lot of damage to both organs occurred during hall renovation. The architect at the time had the Kimball relay removed to make way for a stairway, and the left stage chamber relay of the Midmer-Losh was removed as the old balconies were demolished.
The Society has published two books, Atlantic City’s Musical Masterpiece and The Atlantic City Convention Hall Organ—A Pictorial Essay about the World’s Largest Pipe Organ. Two CD recordings and a DVD have also been released. The ACCHOS website
(www.acchos.org) continues to attract countless thousands of visitors from 41 countries around the world.
Worldwide interest in the Midmer-Losh organ is greater than ever. On April 20, 2008, the entire organ class from the Royal Academy of Music in Denmark flew over to get a firsthand look at the organ, and they were delighted. Board member and tour leader Harry Bellangy said they were all like Charlie in the Chocolate Factory!

Current status
In 2007, Carl Loeser was appointed curator of organs, and in 2008, Stephen D. Smith, ACCHOS president and author, was named Honorary Curator of the Boardwalk Hall Organs in perpetuity. The restoration of the two instruments has begun, and the results thus far have been very promising. Here is a general summary of where things stand as of June 2009.
In 1930, the hall’s first general manager wanted a straightforward theatre organ for the ballroom, but Emerson Richards had in mind an orchestral instrument that included some proper organ choruses. The resulting scheme of 42 voices—19 straight and 23 extended—was heralded as a “pioneer” organ and included the first brass stop installed by Kimball. Three wind pressures are employed among the 55 ranks and 4,151 pipes.
The Kimball organ was intact and fully functional before the building renovation, and therefore its restoration is relatively straightforward. The original relay system and booster blower were removed during the renovation to accommodate a new stairway. The booster blower is being relocated and a new Peterson relay system is being installed in the organ to replace the original relay. Ken Crome is restoring the console at his shop in Reno, Nevada. The relay installation should be completed this summer, and the console returned by the end of the year. The main blower room and static reservoirs have been completely restored. The instrument should be playable once again by early next year.
Work on the Midmer-Losh organ will not be quite so straightforward. Most of the organ is in reasonable condition, with a few isolated areas of water damage and vandalism. It is a testimony to the diligence and concern of the staff at Boardwalk Hall that the organ survived the building renovation process relatively unscathed. Anyone who has worked in this trade, and been involved with protecting a pipe organ during construction work, will realize how difficult this must have been for an instrument of this size, spread out as it is throughout the building. In fact, the organ has suffered from benign neglect more than anything else.
Work has begun on the right stage chamber, since it was the only portion of the organ that was kept in operating condition for many years and will require the least amount of work to be put back into operation. As many will recall from the 1998 recording, there were many dead notes. Although much of the chestwork in this chamber had been releathered over the years, many of the chest magnets had failed. They are of a compound type that, in addition to an armature, have an internal pouch and primary valve. The leather had failed in many of the magnets, and the zinc castings had become brittle, making it difficult to rebuild them. They had not been produced in decades, and no spares remained. The original magnets were manufactured by Klann Organ Supply Co., and Klann has been assisting in developing a direct replacement. Several prototypes are currently being tested, and it is anticipated that production of new magnets will commence before the end of the summer.
Once on hand, the new magnets will be installed where needed in the right stage chamber, and that should bring a large number of pipes back to life and allow much of the Great, Solo, and Pedal divisions to be put back into playable condition. If all goes well, this should be completed by early next year.
As an interesting aside, several of the old magnets were sent to Klann for evaluation. Paul Klann, retired from the firm, was visiting the plant one day and was shown one of the magnets, with no explanation given about them. He recognized them immediately and then expressed interest as to who was presently taking care of the Convention Hall organ in Atlantic City.

Restoration plans
The Swell division will be the first non-playable portion of the organ to be restored. This will include rebuilding the windchests, cleaning and repair of the pipes, and some repairs to the blowers and winding system. The pipes and windchests are being removed, and rebuilding work on them has begun. Again, if all goes well, the Swell division should be back in operation by the end of next year. Following the Swell restoration, the remaining parts of the left stage chamber will be restored, including the ranks of the Swell-Choir, Unenclosed Choir, String I, and Pedal Left.
As funding permits, the gallery and ceiling chambers will be restored, although the specific order for this has not yet been determined. These include:
Right Forward chamber (Brass Chorus and String II)
Right Center chamber (Gallery I and Gallery II)
Right Upper chamber (Echo including the 16′ Bassoon made of paper mâché!)
Left Forward (Choir)
Left Center (Gallery III, Gallery IV, and the Chickering concert grand piano)
Left Upper chamber (Fanfare and String III)
The Fanfare division is one of the real highlights of the Midmer-Losh. Stephen Smith wrote:

The Fanfare organ, with its blaze of mixtures and reeds, is intended to be a ‘super’ department. Its stentorian diapasons, 18 ranks of mixtures, and barrage of reeds (four of them voiced on 50 inches of wind) provide a stunning and formidable antiphonal opponent to the Main organ in the Stage chambers. It was reputed to have been Emerson Richards’ favorite department, and one can well imagine the majesty of its sound pouring into the center of the Hall, filling the room.1

A new control system for the entire Midmer-Losh organ will be designed, and the entire organ will be rewired. It is interesting to note that the entire coupling system for the seven-manual console was contained in the key contact trays for each keyboard, a very compact system. Not so with the original combination action, a portion of which is shown in the photo. It took up two entire rooms in the basement and, unfortunately, had a relatively short life, being ruined when the basement areas flooded during a hurricane in 1944.
Once the Midmer-Losh can be heard again, there will be a very pleasant surprise for everyone. Prior to the renovation the reverberation time in the main hall was over 7–9 seconds. Following removal of the asbestos-laden ceiling, a new more porous material was substituted. A small group of us were present in 2002 when the right stage chamber was fired up briefly in its new acoustic setting. The results were exciting. The reverberation time had been reduced to 5–6 seconds. All present agreed that the organ spoke with more precision, improved clarity and diffusion in the great space. This chamber alone with its 132 ranks well tuned, including the 64′ Dulzian, will provide an impressive experience next year.

The Unenclosed Choir
One of the very special parts of the organ is the Unenclosed Choir in the left stage chamber. Stephen Smith says:

It may come as a surprise to learn that the entire rationale behind the “core” of the Convention Hall organ can be summed up by looking at the stoplist of just one of the instrument’s departments. Even more surprisingly, it’s one of the smallest departments and its stops are voiced on the organ’s lowest wind pressure.
The department in question is the Unenclosed Choir (Quintaton 16, Diapason 8, Holz Flute 8, Octave 4, Fifteenth 2, Rausch Quint 12-15 & 19-22). It is this tiny department that encapsulates the message Emerson Richards was trying to put across to the American organ world at the time. That message was about the need for tonal cohesion and harmonic structure—in a phrase, “proper choruses.” Richards said this Unenclosed Choir was to be a “little Great organ . . . similar to the Silbermann organ familiar to Bach.” Of course “proper choruses” were nothing new; they had been included in organs for decades. However, that was in the past, and Richards and a growing number of other organists considered that the organ had “gone off” its tonal tracks since then. “Proper choruses” were out of favor; while an ever-increasing variety of flutes, strings, and diminutive reeds—usually at 8-foot pitch—were the vogue.
The Convention Hall instrument was to be the world’s largest organ and it would probably be the most publicized too. What better place could there be to make such a statement? The problem was that there were so many statements and so many attractions, that the Unenclosed Choir’s message was all but lost! Despite this, that message did, finally, get through. However, it wasn’t because of the Unenclosed Choir alone, nor was it due solely to the efforts of Richards—although he undoubtedly took the lead role in changing opinion and, thereby, preparing the way for a return to “proper choruses.”2
There are a number of videos that have been posted on YouTube.com. Some are from ACCHOS, but a wide variety of other posts are there as well.
Monthly tours are now available on a regular basis. The tours last about two hours. Detailed information is on the website at www.acchos.org and reservations can be made by sending an e-mail to [email protected].

Photos by Harry Bellangy, Fred Hess & Son, Antoni Scott

Stephen D. Smith is the President and a founding member of the Atlantic City Convention Hall Organ Society, Inc. As an historian and archivist, he has researched the Midmer-Losh organ for more than 30 years and is the world’s leading authority on its history, construction, and tonal qualities. He has completed a comprehensive 500-page book, Atlantic City’s Musical Masterpiece, revealing a myriad of details about the design and construction of this remarkable pipe organ and is spearheading the effort to restore the instrument to its former glory. Charles F. Swisher is a senior audio and acoustical consultant with wide experience in the design of sophisticated systems for speech and music reinforcement, electronic architecture, video, recordings, and multi-media productions. He was educated at the University of Illinois, where he earned a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1956. He is Vice-President of the Atlantic City Convention Hall Organ Society, Inc.

The title of this article is taken from a letter written by Emerson Richards, designer of the Atlantic City Convention Hall’s organs, to Henry Willis III during construction of the Main Auditorium organ. In the same letter—dated October 27, 1930—he announced the first public airing of the world’s first 100-inch reed “for the football game tonight.”
That stop, the Tuba Maxima, available at 8′ and 4′ pitches, is one of four reeds on 100 inches. Two of those stops are still playable today—the Pedal’s Grand Ophicleide (16′ and 8′) and the Solo’s Tuba Imperial 8′.
The fact that these stops are still working is in no small part due to the efforts of the curator of the organs at the hall, Carl Loeser. The building, which is now known as Boardwalk Hall, was closed from 1999 to 2002 for a $90,000,000 refit, during which time no work whatsoever was undertaken on the Midmer-Losh or Kimball organs.
When Carl was appointed Curator in June 2007, the two instruments were both silent and unkempt. Almost nothing worked. In his first years, Carl spent time attempting to return the organs to their pre-1999 state, when the hall closed for restoration. A combination of patient repairs, frequent use, and plain tender loving care got things started. (See Charles Swisher and Carl Loeser, “Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall’s Midmer-Losh Organ: An Update,” The Diapason, vol. 100, no. 8, August 2009.)
Nevertheless, the main organ, the Midmer-Losh, continues to be unreliable. What works today may not work tomorrow, and vice versa! In order to progress and improve this situation, new magnets have been designed and tested. They are currently on order.
All work in recent decades had focused on keeping the Right Stage chamber’s departments playable, namely: Pedal Right, Great, Great-Solo, Solo—a total of almost 10,000 pipes belonging to 132 ranks and 96 voices. The chamber contains some of the instrument’s most famous stops, including two of the 100-inch voices and the 64′ Dulzian, which has Diaphone pipes for its lowest notes. Three of the 50-inch stops are to be found here, too. For this reason, former curator Denis McGurk used to refer to it as “the show chamber”.
Although Carl Loeser continues the tradition of paying attention to “the show chamber,” he also has his eye on bringing other sections of the instrument, in other locations, back to playing order. With this in mind, his attention recently turned to the Swell organ in the Left Stage chamber. This is the instrument’s second-largest department, having 36 voices, 55 ranks (four extended), and 4,456 pipes. Talk about going in at the deep end!
It was immediately obvious that nothing could be done with the department in situ, and the decision was therefore taken to remove the whole. The department is spread over five levels in a chamber that is 47 feet high. With invaluable assistance from a team of experienced volunteers, Carl removed the vast majority of the pipes and carefully stored them in trays, etc. in the hall’s organ shop and elsewhere. The largest pipes of the department’s Double Open Diapason rank had to be left in the chamber, because they would not make the turn out of the door. These pipes must, therefore, have been constructed in the chamber where they still stand—like so many of the instrument’s other largest pipes.
Next on the agenda was the removal of the Swell’s chests from the chamber. This was not a task that could be undertaken in-house, so bids were sought. Over a surprisingly short period (two days) everything was removed, with the aid of rigging, chains, and brute strength. The result is a huge void in the Left Stage chamber. “It’s like standing in a super-wide elevator shaft,” said one commentator. But how many elevator shafts have 40 feet of swell shades running from bottom to top!
Thoughts are now turning to the Swell-Choir department, which is adjacent to the Swell in the Left Stage chamber. With the Swell out of the way, it would be the logical time to give this ancillary section of all-extended stops some attention. Indeed, with the Swell removed, better access is provided to all of the chamber’s other departments—Unenclosed Choir (nine ranks), String I
(20 ranks), and Pedal Left (16 ranks). So, we are almost spoiled for choice about what to do, or where to go, next in that chamber.
Work will be carried out in-house by Carl Loeser and his team, and by outside contractors as funding is available.

Ballroom Kimball
Restoration of the Ballroom’s Kimball console has been completed and it is now back in Atlantic City. Work in the pipe chambers is almost complete. The Kimball should be operational in 2011.

Tours
The bi-monthly tours of the organ—led by ACCHOS board member Harry Bellangy—have been a great success, attracting many national and international visitors. In 2009, the entire organ class from the Royal Academy of Music in Denmark made a special trip to see the Midmer-Losh organ.
Sven-Ingvart Mikkelsen, organist at the Frederiksborg Castle in Denmark, spent a lot of time examining the organs, as did Florian Bischof from Dresden. Florian wrote a wonderful letter upon returning to Dresden, offering to volunteer months of restoration effort on an expenses-only basis.

Book
The first printing of Stephen Smith’s book about the Midmer-Losh organ has been exhausted and a new paperback edition has been released. This new edition has been amended and updated, and the photographs improved (made sharper and clearer). It is available on-line at <A HREF="http://www.acchos.org">www.acchos.org</A&gt; or from the Organ Historical Society at <A HREF="http://www.ohscatalog.org">www.ohscatalog.org</A&gt;.

Size matters

We’re fascinated by superlatives. We admire great engineering feats and geographical marvels, and we are skeptical of fallacious claims. When a family restaurant advertises “the world’s largest ice cream sundae,” we expect something big but we doubt whether the claim is true. I went to  and saw a video of someone named Higgenbotham jumping off an eight-meter platform into an 18-inch deep pool of water, setting a new record. Pretty silly, but he did it in front of a huge audience and stood right up waving his fists. He must have been very proud.
Hammacher-Schlemmer claims to be selling the World’s Largest Crossword Puzzle. According to their on-line catalogue, it “hangs on a full seven feet by seven feet of wall space and has 28,000 clues for over 91,000 squares . . . a 100-page clue book, with no repeats, provides the hints.” (“Comes with a storage box.”)
Until I started writing today, I thought that the Grand Canyon of the Colorado River was the largest canyon in the world. It’s as much as 8,799 feet deep (that’s 1.66 miles) and almost 275 miles long. But when I Googled® “world’s largest canyon” I learned about the Great Canyon of the Yarlung Tsangpo (Brahmaputra) River in the Himalayas of Tibet, which has a maximum depth of more than 17,500 feet (3.3 miles) and is more than 308 miles long. It’s located in a very remote area forbidden to foreign travelers, and has apparently been revealed only recently to the rest of the world.
The world’s largest city is Bombay where the population was 12,778,721 in 2005. That’s larger than the entire country of Zimbabwe (12,671,860). New York City is number eight with 8,143,197 residents in 2005.
The Nile is the longest river in the world with a total length of 4160 miles. While the Amazon is second longest (4049 miles), it’s the largest in volume, discharging something like seven million cubic feet of water into the ocean every second.
I looked up tallest buildings and found an argument about whether or not antennas should be counted (Sears Tower in Chicago if you don’t, Taipei 101 in Taipei if you do). What a time-sink is Guinness! (Get back to your writing.)
We brag about our pipe organs by citing statistics: “It has 20 reeds.” “It has three 32's.” “It has three 8' Opens on the Great.” But let’s be careful. In the organ world (or elsewhere in the world of the arts), bigger is not necessarily better. Most of us have generally known that the Midmer-Losh organ in the Convention Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, is the largest in the world, but we also know that it’s not playable, and when we read more carefully we find that some experts believe that the entire specification has never been playable at once. One legend says that the early staff of the organbuilding workshop at the Wanamaker Store in Philadelphia claimed that the Atlantic City organ was never finished.1 Small wonder that they would want to make such a claim—they were involved in building what they believed would be the world’s largest organ.
As with skyscrapers, it turns out that it depends how you count. Here is what seems to be current and definitive regarding the dimensions of the largest pipe organ in the world:

Atlantic City       Wanamaker’s
Ranks    452            469
Pipes   33,112       30,067
Weight (tons) 150    2872

It’s easy to guess why the Atlantic City organ has more pipes but fewer ranks—the bottom three of seven keyboards have 88 notes! Wanamaker’s has the edge by 17 ranks, but where did the extra 137 tons come from? (I imagine that the same person who figured out the weight of these organs also did the numbers for the cubic capacity of the Amazon.) (See Photo 1, The Grand Court.)

The customer is always right

John Wanamaker was the personification of the classic American success story. He attended school through the age of 13 and opened his first store in Philadelphia at the age of 22. His stores grew progressively larger as he introduced retail policies that are central to the industry today. Wanamaker was among the first to offer guarantees, refunds, and fixed prices; he introduced the first restaurant in a store, and was a pioneer in the use of newspaper advertising for retailing, including the first full-page newspaper ad.3
The unprecedented opulence of the Wanamaker stores in both Philadelphia and New York allowed customers to express their personalities as they shopped. The very wealthy were catered to in special ways—those with more modest incomes were made to feel special, and had specialty goods of high quality made available to them as never before.
It was John Wanamaker’s appreciation of beauty that inspired him to include pipe organs in his stores from the very beginning. That appreciation was instilled in his son Rodman whose love of the organ began early in his life. Devout Presbyterians, John Wanamaker was a Sunday school teacher at Philadelphia’s Bethany Presbyterian Church, and young Rodman was the organist. The family’s country home Lindenhurst boasted an important personal art collection and a large two-manual Roosevelt pipe organ, all of which was destroyed in a catastrophic fire in 1907.4
Longtime Grand Court Organist Mary Vogt linked John Wanamaker’s original inspiration for the construction of a truly monumental organ in the Philadelphia store to this fire. He lavished attention on Rodman, his only surviving son, and knew how much the Lindenhurst organ meant to him. The Grand Court organ was therefore offered as consolation to Rodman, and once the project was underway, John Wanamaker deferred to Rodman’s exquisite artistic and musical taste for the fulfillment of the vision that has now provided the world with one of its most important musical instruments.5
The Grand Court of the Wanamaker Store in Philadelphia is an immense space, taller than it is long or wide. America’s major organbuilders were considered for the commissioning of a new organ, but John Wanamaker commented that it would take years to construct a new organ large enough to fill the space, and the financial climate of the time was unstable (the Panic of 1907 was just ending). Then a wonderful opportunity presented itself.
Organbuilder Murray Harris had been chosen to construct a huge concert organ for the St. Louis World’s Fair of 1904. It was planned that after the World’s Fair, the organ would be moved to a new convention hall in Kansas City, Missouri (the initials “KC” were carved in the console’s music rack). The scope of this contract necessitated the building of a larger factory and considerable expansion of the firm’s staff, and the company’s capital was stretched so thin that stockholders were assessed $10 a share to raise needed cash. Their outrage led to the end of Harris’s association with the firm, which was reorganized with company superintendent William Boone Fleming in charge.
The organ was a great success at the World’s Fair, attracting millions of visitors to hear recitals played by the world’s greatest organists, including a landmark series of 40 recitals by French master Alexandre Guilmant. But when the fair was over, both Murray Harris and the Los Angeles Art Organ Company were insolvent. While the organ was being built, in the confusion during the reorganization that resulted in the formation of the latter firm, the contract with officials in Kansas City had never been ratified. It was voided and the organ was placed in storage in St. Louis in default.6
The organ had been in storage for five years before John Wanamaker focused on acquiring it. Finding such an immense organ “ready-made” seemed an ideal solution for the grand space in the Philadelphia store.
Organbuilder George W. Till had worked with Odell in New York for many years. When he left that firm in 1905, he had heard that John Wanamaker was looking for an experienced organbuilder who could also repair and tune player pianos. By the time the Wanamakers were considering the purchase of the St. Louis organ, George Till was well ensconced as the house “organ-man.” Till was dispatched to inspect the organ in storage and was later charged with closing the purchase and arranging for the organ to be shipped to Philadelphia.
While most organbuilders are accustomed to being able to move their instruments in rented trucks, the St. Louis World’s Fair organ filled 11 railroad boxcars. The train left St. Louis on the evening of August 5, 1909. William Fleming was engaged to supervise the installation of the organ. George Till was to be the “tonal man.” From the first times the organ was heard in the store, it was evident that it was inadequate to fill the immense space of the Grand Court with sound. Shortly after its dedication on June 22, 1911, the Wanamaker Organ Shop under the direction of both Till and Fleming was established on the 12th floor of the store. Over the ensuing years the organ was expanded from its original specification of approximately 130 stops to its present gargantuan size.
My source for this historical background is the beautifully produced book Music in the Marketplace written by Ray Biswanger, president and one of the founders of the Friends of the Wanamaker organ. If you are interested in reading the history of this unique organ and the people who built it, funded it, and have played on it, visit  where you can order a copy. (And while you’re at it, join the Friends.) There are dozens of wonderful photographs of the organ, specifications of the Grand Court organ in several stages of its development, and photos of the Grand Court decorated for different festivals and celebrations. On the website, you can also see the schedule of regular performances, hear streamed radio broadcasts, and purchase recordings of the organ by several distinguished artists.

Just the facts, ma’am . . .

Here a few tidbits I single out from the specification that help define for me the scale of the Wanamaker Organ (See Photo 2, The String Division):
The 88-rank String Division includes 58 eight-foot strings, all of 73 notes, all ranks starting on low C. A quick glance shows 34 eight-foot Diapasons on the manuals. The Main Pedal Division has 54 ranks, and only five stops borrowed from the manuals.
Another quick glance shows 82 ranks of reeds. There are altogether seven different ranks at 32' pitch—one of them is a Bourdon with half-length resonators.
More than virtually any other large organ I know, the Wanamaker Organ is a “straight organ.” There is very little borrowing. A large percentage of the manual ranks have 73 notes. And true curiosities such as the two-rank Clarinet in the Swell, the nine-rank chorus of Vox Humanae (recently reconstructed as an independent division!), or the chorus of strings in the String/Orchestral Pedal Organ at 16', 102⁄3', 8', 51⁄3', 4', 22⁄3', 2', 13⁄5', 11⁄3', and 4⁄5' (this division includes two full-length 32's and a total of 19 ranks and 716 pipes) add up to separate the organ from any other in the world. You cannot say it’s the best or largest of its class, because it’s the only organ in its class! (See Photo 3, String/Orchestral Pedal Organ, 32¢ Contra Diaphone and 32' Contra Gamba.)
The six-manual console is as elegant in design and construction as any I’ve seen. There are 692 stop tablets in eleven rows. There are 167 pistons. And under each of the six manuals there are brass slides about three octaves long that operate the expression shutters. The woodworking is exquisite, the materials rich and colorful—a world-class single-class console for a world-class single-class organ. (See Photo 4, Wanamaker console, Peter Conte, organist.)
Maintaining an organ of this scale is a continuous process. It requires all of the usual organbuilding skills, of course, with the addition of extraordinary organizational skills and patience. And how do you go about playing such a thing? One of the things I love about my work is the number of different organs of all sizes, shapes, and descriptions that I get to play. But sitting in front of a console like this is bewildering. And what about funding? Simply and bluntly put, how much does it cost to keep an organ with 82 reeds in any kind of presentable good tune? Remember, this is an organ that is played in public 12 times every week.
The Wanamaker Organ by itself is special enough. It’s a marvel—it’s over the top—it’s indescribable. But in my opinion the real story is the group of people who are gathered around the organ—the organist and his associates, the curator and his colleagues, and the executives and officials of the corporation that now owns the grand store built by John Wanamaker, which has been handed down through several generations of ownership.
The May Company has recently taken control of the Philadelphia Wanamaker store. Their division of Annual and Special Events (think of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade) has assumed responsibility for the organ, by all accounts an exciting and constructive move. A new Wanamaker’s Organ Workshop has been established in the building, and ambitious plans for the further renovation, preservation, and presentation of the organ are in the works. (See announcement, page 3.) To put it simply, the organ is now owned by a corporation that understands its importance as a musical instrument, cares deeply about its place in America’s cultural life, and is committed to maintaining it in the best possible condition.
So consider this column as background, and join me here in the next edition of The Diapason so I can tell you about those wonderful, brilliant, welcoming people who are the modern-day stewards of the world’s grandest organ.

Notes

1. Biswanger, Ray, Music in the Marketplace, Friends of the Wanamaker Organ Press, 1999, p. 241.
2. Ibid.
3. Ibid., p. 35.
4. Ibid., p. 47.
5. Ibid., p. 49.
6. Ibid., p. 330.

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

Nashville, Tennessee

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cover photo by Louis Patterson

Schoenstein & Co.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Solo IV derived from Solo V, without tierce

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

†Includes Diaphone and Salicional

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

Unison
8′ 22 47%
4′ 8 17% 64%

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

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

Hometown loyalty
Local loyalty is legendary amongst native Mainers, those who have lived in Maine and nowhere else. There’s the story about the man from “away” who settled in a comfortable house with a backyard fence that separated his property from Eben’s (short for Ebenezer)—Eben had been born and grew up in that house. They were cordial neighbors for years, but our man was always aware that Eben continued to consider him an outsider. Forty years into their friendship, our man asked Eben, “We’ve been neighbors for forty years. Surely by now you must consider me part of the town.” Eben was quiet for a long moment, and then said quietly, “If the cat had kittens in the oven you wouldn’t call ’em biscuits.”
Some fifteen years ago I was renovating an organ in a small town in Maine. An elderly local organist was interested in the project and visited the church several times as I worked. He wanted me to see the organ in his church—an instrument built in the 1920s when his aunt was organist there. He had succeeded her some fifty years ago and was the proud steward of the little organ. I asked if he had lived there all his life. He replied, “not yet.”
I’ve lived in Boston all my life. Well, not really. I spent almost ten years in Ohio, first as an undergraduate and then as director of music at a church in Cleveland and working with organbuilder John Leek in Oberlin. Now although we vote in Boston, my wife and I divide our time between my hometown and mid-coast Maine, an area that I have grown to love. And I spend so much time away from home on Organ Clearing House projects (I’m coming to the end of five weeks in New York City) that I don’t seem to be at home for more than a few days at a time.
But I still consider myself a Bostonian. I’m proud of the city’s role in our country’s history. As a descendant of Paul Revere, I was brought up keenly aware of the sites of critical Revolutionary battles and the wealth of historic sites and buildings scattered throughout the area. We live a few hundred yards from the USS Constitution, familiarly known as Old Ironsides, the Navy’s frigate commissioned in 1797, now the oldest ship in the U.S. Navy. The Old North Church (“ . . . hang a lantern aloft in the North Church tower as a signal light; one if by land and two if by sea, I on the opposite shore will be ready to ride and spread the alarm through every Middlesex village and farm . . .”—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Paul Revere’s Ride) is in our neighborhood.
I have been an avid fan of the Boston Red Sox, where until about 1990 the team was made up largely of loyal “lifers.” Carl Yastrzemski played his entire 23-year career for the Red Sox. That seems a gentler era in professional sports when a hometown hero stayed home and was admired over the decades. Dwight Evans seemed headed for such a career until the Sox released him as a free agent in 1990 after eighteen years at Fenway Park. He retired after playing one season for the Baltimore Orioles and that apparent disloyalty on the part of the Sox was the beginning of the end of my unabashed fandom. That feeling was iced followed the thrill of the Red Sox’ long-awaited World Series victory in 2004. (They hadn’t won the World Series since 1918, the year they sold Babe Ruth to the New York Yankees for $100,000 so Red Sox owner and theater impresario Harry Frazee could fund the first performances of No, No, Nanette.) No sooner had the dust settled over Fenway after the 2004 Series, than Sox hero Johnny Damon was traded to the hated New York Yankees. Don’t tell me it’s just a game!

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Boston has always been an organ town. It was right around 1800 when the Puritans gave in to the evils of church music, and a small pipe organ was installed at King’s Chapel on Tremont Street in Boston. Within a few years, William
Goodrich and Thomas Appleton were building organs in Boston. In 1827, two young cabinetmakers from Salem, Massachusetts (the town famous for the witch trials of 1692) finished their apprenticeship with William Goodrich and opened their own organbuilding shop in Boston. Elias and George Hook started slowly, building fewer than ten organs a year for the first few years, but forty years later they were rocketing along at a fifty-five-per-year clip.
I love to think of the spectacle of a nineteenth-century workshop building that many organs. The instruments were shipped all over the country—how did they manage the correspondence for that many instruments without telephones and self-stick stamps, let alone fax machines and (God forbid) e-mail? How did they organize the flow of materials to their workshop? It takes tons of lumber, metal, and countless other materials to build an organ. The in-street trolley tracks that carried human passengers around Boston during the day were the routes of horse-drawn rail cars that brought rough materials to the workshop. The same carts transported the completed organs to barges, steamships, and railroads. Rural northern New England is pretty difficult to navigate today. There are few large roads, many hills and mountains, and lots of narrow bridges that cross treacherous rivers. It’s hard to imagine hauling a large pipe organ to northern New Hampshire, Vermont, or Maine when teams of horses or oxen were the engines of the day.
And picture the rural church receiving its new Hook organ. A couple workers travel from the factory with the organ. The trip takes weeks. They enlist the help of locals for the heavy lifting and complete all facets of the installation. Since the trip took so long, they must have stayed on the job until they were sure the organ was perfect. There would be no relying on a routine two-month check-up to correct anything that went wrong with the new organ.
I suppose that before the workers left the completed installation, they would visit all the other churches nearby, offering the company’s services for more new instruments. There are Hook organs built in the 1860s and 1870s all around the country, including the Deep South. Was it awkward for the Yankees from the Hook factory to cross the Mason-Dixon Line with their organ shipments in the years following the Civil War? I imagine their wives spent sleepless nights worrying for their safety. And how did the southern organists and church committees get in touch with the sales department at Hook? Did Hook advertise in newspapers all across the country? We have copies and reproductions of the Hook catalogue and sales brochures (you can purchase them online from the Organ Historical Society).

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When I was a teenager, I had my organ lessons on a new organ built by Fisk (First Congregational Church, Winchester, Massachusetts). I had organist duties at the First Congregational Church of neighboring Woburn, Massachusetts, which had a terrific organ by
E. & G. G. Hook, with around 30 stops on three manuals, built in 1860. My family had a summer home on Cape Cod in a town that was home to a small Hook & Hastings organ, and another by William H. Clark.
You may not have heard of William H. Clark. He had been organist of the First Congregational Church in Woburn, playing on the same terrific Hook organ as I. In the late 1860s he moved across the square to the Unitarian Church, where in 1870 he oversaw the installation of an even larger three-manual Hook organ. The Unitarian Hook is the instrument that was relocated to Kirche zum Heiligen Kreuz in Berlin, Germany, and so beautifully restored by Hermann Eule of Bautzen. Stephen Kinsley was the chief voicer at the Hook factory—today we would call him tonal director—and the great and good friend of William Clark—good enough that Clark was able to woo him away from Hook into an organbuilding partnership. William H. Clark Company was located in Indianapolis. They built about a dozen organs, including the one I knew so well on Cape Cod, another in Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Bethlehem, Ohio—an instrument that I helped John Leek restore in the late 1970s.
Those were all wonderful organs, but I know I took them for granted. As an incoming freshman at Oberlin, I realized that my classmates had had no such luck. One guy played a pipe organ for the first time when he auditioned at Oberlin. All his high-school experience had been on electronic instruments. I was dazzled by the then brand-new Flentrop organ in Warner Concert Hall, but quite a few of the organs I played there were much less than what I had grown up with. Growing up in Boston, I had been fortunate to hear E. Power Biggs play recitals on “his” Flentrop organ at Busch Hall (then called the Busch-Reisinger Museum) at Harvard University. I heard the dedication concert of the Frobenius organ at First Church in Cambridge. Few people knew much about the Danish organbuilder Frobenius in the 1970s, and the organ was a knockout. I heard Fisk organs at Harvard, King’s Chapel and Old West Church in Boston, and another dozen or so in the suburbs.

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You may have noticed that all the organs I’ve mentioned so far are trackers. There is no American city where the revival (I like to say Renaissance) of the pipe organ was more active than in Boston. When I was in high school, companies like Fisk, Noack, Andover, and Bozeman were building exciting and fascinating new organs at a rapid rate. My several mentors took me to workshop open houses where I first experienced the ethic and mystery of the organbuilding shop. And skillful organists populated the area’s organ benches, playing recitals followed by receptions and parties that all helped me learn to appreciate the pipe organ, not only as a musical instrument but as a community and way of life.
It wasn’t until after I graduated from Oberlin that I had any meaningful experiences with electro-pneumatic instruments. I worked with John Leek replacing leathers in a large Aeolian-Skinner organ in Cleveland and in several other smaller instruments, notably one by E.M. Skinner in original condition. When I returned to Boston after my Ohio hiatus, I took on the care of the Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner organ at Trinity Church, Copley Square, and the Aeolian-Skinner (4 manuals, 237 ranks) at the First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church). Being around those organs exposed me to some of the finest musicians and helped open my eyes to the range of tone and expression for which those organs are famous.
And those Skinner organs are products of Boston. Traveling on the Southeast Expressway (Route I-93 south of Boston) you can still read “Aeolian-Skinner” written on the wall of a large brick building, directly across the highway from the headquarters of the Boston Globe. The large erecting room at the south end of the building was sacrificed for the construction of the highway, precipitating the company’s move to Randolph, Massachusetts, and signaling the beginning of the end of the company. But in the “glory days,” Ernest Skinner himself worked in that building, developing the rich orchestral voices for which he is still famous. (Or we might say, after the tracker-action blitz of the 1970s, voices for which he is again famous!)
Skinner was fascinated by the ergonomics of the organ console—though I suppose the word ergonomics was not part of our language until after his lifetime. He watched organists as they played and perfected the dimensions and geometry of the console. He worked hard to lessen the distance between keyboards—no small feat given the need for piston buttons large enough to use easily (piston buttons that easily conflict with the sharp keys of the keyboard below). The design of the Skinner keyboard included tracker-touch springs, lots of ranges of adjustment for travel, spring tension, and contact point. The stop knobs had distinctive over-sized ivory faces, with names engraved in a font (another word that Skinner didn’t know) that was both elegant and easily legible. He was proud of his combination actions, and with good reason, as he developed them in the first years of the twentieth century—among the first mechanical machines that functioned as programmable binary computers.
He invented the whiffletree expression engine, inspired by the rigs developed to hitch teams of horses to a carriage. The horse-teams would perform better if each individual had freedom of motion, and each individual’s relative strength could complement the others. By extension, Skinner’s expression machine has individual power pneumatics for each stage that are hitched together using the same geometry as the team. Good observing, Mr. Skinner.

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I’ve mentioned several organbuilders who contributed to the culture of Boston. Others include George Stevens, George Hutchings, S.S. Hamill, Robert Roche, Nelson Barden, and the Spencer Organ Company. Extending the area to northern New England, you can add the names of Robert Waters, Jeremy Cooper, Stephen Russell, and David Moore. Extend the area to central Massachusetts and you can add Stefan Maier and William A. Johnson (later Wm. Johnson & Sons). Add them all up, from Goodrich to Fisk, from 1800 to 2010, and you get a total of something like 8,500 pipe organs built in Boston and surrounding areas. It’s a terrific heritage—a rich variety of musical imagination and creation that includes some of the finest organs ever built. But in sheer numbers, it pales in comparison to the world’s largest organbuilder, M.P. Möller, a single company that produced 13,500 organs in less than 100 years, all in the same town.

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It’s a beautiful town. The Italian North End has scores of terrific small restaurants. The Freedom Trail (United States National Park) is an organized walking tour of two-and-a-half miles that covers sixteen important historical sites. The Museum of Fine Arts has impressive collections of ancient Roman and Egyptian art as well as the expected glories of high European Art. The Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum comprises the private collection of an individual, opened to the public following her death. The Boston Symphony Orchestra under the direction of James Levine is as good as a great orchestra can be, and the Aeolian-Skinner organ at Symphony Hall (right across the street from the Christian Science Mother Church) has recently been renovated.
There’s plenty to do on the water. Boston Harbor Cruises operates tours ranging from an evening hour or two to a full day whale-watch cruise. You can take a fast ferry to Provincetown and back in a day. And if you visit in the fall, you can add a couple days of coveted foliage-touring in New Hampshire and Vermont.
The website of the Boston Chapter of the American Guild of Organists
(bostonago.com) has a good listing of organ recitals and related events. Emmanuel Church (Episcopal) on Newbury Street is the only place in the United States where you can hear a complete Bach cantata with orchestra every Sunday presented as part of worship service. The music is presented by the resident ensemble Emmanuel Music, a highly respected and accomplished group of some of the city’s finest musicians. Visit www.emmanuelmusic.org to see their schedule of performances. As Newbury Street is the city’s high-end shopping district, you can count on finding an exquisite Sunday brunch to complement the wonderful music.
Come to Boston, the pipe organ capital of America.