AGO POE Tech

Humble π

Archimedes (c. 287–c. 212 BC) lived in the ancient Greek capital of Syracuse, located on what is now Sicily. He was one of the great mathematicians, engineers, inventors, and astronomers of his time, even of all time. He imagined and recorded the origins of calculus and pioneered the concept of applying mathematics to physical motion, the applications of a screw, and the multiplication of pulleys and levers to allow the lifting of heavy objects. He is the source of the quote, “Give me a lever long enough and a place to stand, and I can move the earth.”

Among his many achievements was the realization of π (spelled pi), the mathematical constant that defines the properties of a circle and all shapes that are related to circles. ∏ is an irrational number—it cannot be expressed as an exact number. We round it off at 22/7 or 3.14, so we actually arrive at approximations of the exact number. It is a little like figuring a third of a dollar: $0.33 + $0.33 + $0.34 = $1.00. Because it cannot be expressed in an exact way, we use the symbol π to indicate the exact number. Around 600 AD, Chinese mathematicians calculated π to seven digits after the decimal, and with modern computing power it has been calculated to trillions of digits. It is infinite. Let’s stick with 3.14 to save time. ∏ is known as Archimedes’ Constant.

RELATED: Read "The Life of Pi" here

In the June 2021 issue of The Diapason, pages 12–13, I wrote about an encounter I had with a twenty-something kid in a local lumber yard as I was buying material to make a circular baffle to keep squirrels off one of our birdfeeders. I was planning to fasten aluminum flashing to the circumference of the circle, so I rattled off thirty inches (the diameter of my circle) times π to get a little under eight feet, so the ten-foot roll of flashing would be enough. The kid did not know about π (didn’t know about π?) so I gave him a primer. ∏ times the diameter of a circle (πd) is its circumference. ∏ times the radius squared (πr2) is its area. I suggested that we could compare the area of a twelve-inch pizza with that of a sixteen-inch pizza, and using the calculator in my phone, I rattled off the two areas, and he was impressed by how much difference that four inches made to the size of the pizza.

But when I recreated the exercise while writing the June column, I mixed up the formulas and used πd for the area rather than πr² (circumference rather than area) and triumphantly reported the difference between a twelve- and a sixteen-inch pie as about twelve and a half square inches. Had I used the correct formula, I would have found that the sixteen-inch pie is larger by about 88 square inches, or 44 two-inch bites, over six times more than my published result.

Two readers caught my mistake and wrote to me and to the editors of The Diapason. Nicholas Bullat is a retired organist and harpsichordist and former chair of the organ department and head of graduate studies at Chicago’s American Conservatory who also worked as a corporate and securities counsel. Nicholas carried the pizza story a step further using prices from a local pizzeria. Their $12.50 twelve-inch pie costs about $0.11 per square inch while the $18.00 sixteen-inch pie comes out at $0.09 per square inch. If I am right estimating a bite at two square inches, then those 44 extra $0.18 bites seem quite a bargain.

Glenn Gabanski, a retired high school math teacher in the Chicago area, also caught my mix up of pizza recipes, adding that the sixteen-inch pizza is 1.78 times larger than the twelve-inch. I will never buy a small pizza again. If the large one does not get finished, we will have leftovers for breakfast.

Achimedes’ mental model

Glenn found another significant error in what I wrote for the June 2021 issue. Remembering long-ago visits to Boston’s Museum of Science, I wrote:

When I was a kid on school field trips, I was interested in an exhibit at the Museum of Science in Boston that showed a perfect sphere and a perfect cone on a scale. Each shape had the same radius, and radius and height were equal. They balanced. My old-guy memory of my young-guy thinking had me wondering, “Who figured that out.” You can prove it by using π to calculate the volume of each shape.

The last time I was in that wonderful museum would actually have been when my sons were teenagers, more than twenty years ago, and I have since learned that the exhibit was installed around 1980, long after my field-trip days. I should hesitate to guess because I am apparently often wrong. Glenn pointed out that my memory of the cone and sphere could not be correct because the cone would have to be four times the radius of the sphere for the masses to be equal when the radii were equal. The volume of a sphere is V = 4/3 πr³. If r = 1, V = 4/3 π. The volume of a cone is V = πr²h/3. If r = 1, then V = π/3, ¼ the volume of the sphere. Using 1 for the radius made it easy to understand.

My foggy senior-citizen memory needed a boost, so I called the Museum of Science and was connected to Alana Parkes, an exhibit developer. When I described the volume-balancing exhibit she knew exactly what I meant and responded with a photograph reproduced here showing the balance beam with a cone and sphere on one side, and a cylinder on the other. If the radius of the sphere and the radii of the base of the cone and the cylinder are all equal, the volume of the cone plus the sphere equals that of the cylinder. I shared that with Glenn, and he whipped out his pencil and responded with a sketch, also reproduced here, a lovely piece of teaching with the reduction of the equations explaining the properties of the drawing. I am sorry the fellow in the lumber yard did not have Glenn as a teacher in high school.

I had engaging conversations with Nicholas and Glenn on Zoom, and I am grateful to them for reading carefully enough to catch my errors and respond. When I told Glenn that he was one of two who had written, he responded, “Only two?” And many thanks to Alana Parkes of the Museum of Science in Boston for her cheerful willingness to correct my faulty memory and provide this fine photograph.

Glenn mentioned that he had always been troubled by the moment at the end of The Wizard of Oz, when the Wizard confers a “ThD” degree on the Scarecrow, a Doctor of Thinkology, he explains. The Scarecrow instantly responds by misquoting the Pythagorean theorem. Humbug. (You can watch that scene here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxrlcLktcxU.) And remember that bird feeder baffle? The thirty-inch plywood circle with less than eight feet of flashing around it? It didn’t work. The squirrels “took the hill” within an hour.

A life’s work: remembering Fritz Noack

Forty hours a week times fifty weeks is 2,000 hours in a year. Maybe you took three weeks of vacation, but I bet you worked more than eight hours a lot of those days. At that rate, there are 100,000 working hours in a fifty-year career. Did you use them all wisely and productively? Professional accomplishments add up over a long career. I started writing this column in April of 2004 so this is the 208th issue at an average of 2,500 words, well over half a million words. When you visit, I will show you my pitchfork, um, I mean tuning fork. In twenty years, a church organist playing one service a week for fifty weeks each year plays at least 3,000 hymns, 1,000 preludes, 1,000 postludes, 1,000 anthems, and 1,000 dramatic lead-ups to the Doxology. Did you do that without repeats? Oh, right, you played a certain “Toccata” on twenty Easters.

If your life’s work was a billion bits on a hard drive or 250,000 emails, you cannot stand them in a field and review them, but when you walk into the workshop of the Noack Organ Company you see photos of 160 pipe organs on the wall leading up the stairs to the office. Fritz Noack founded the company in 1960 in Lawrence, Massachusetts, moved it to a larger workshop in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1965, and in 1970 purchased an old school building on Main Street in Georgetown, Massachusetts. A tall erecting room with a voicing balcony was added, and the Noack team has been producing marvelous organs there for over fifty years.

Fritz Noack passed away on June 2 at the age of 86. He leaves a vast legacy that stretches from the infancy of the “Tracker Revival,” the renaissance of American organ building, to the present day. He apprenticed with Rudolf von Beckerath, and worked for Klaus Becker, Ahrend & Brunzema, and Charles Fisk (at the Andover Organ Company) before starting his own firm.¹ The nascent company was home to a host of apprentices who have had important and influential careers in the business including John Brombaugh and John Boody.

An American renaissance

As a teenager in the Boston area in the 1970s, I was swept up in the excitement of that renaissance. My mentors took me to concerts, workshop open houses, and parties, and I soaked it all in. I remember a moment in the Würsthaus in Harvard Square, a long gone but much-beloved haunt for the organ community. We had come from a recital played by Fenner Douglass on the Fisk organ at Harvard Memorial Church and were gathered around a large round table. It must have been around 1973 or 1974, because I was thinking about applying to Oberlin and was excited to meet Fenner for the first time. Someone at the table noticed that there were nine people present who were organists for churches that had Fisk organs. The guest list would have included John Ferris, Yuko Hayashi, John Skelton, and Daniel Pinkham. (If anyone reading was there that night, please be in touch and fill in my erstwhile memory.) That has stood out for me as an indication of just how much was going on in the organ world there and then. C. B. Fisk, Inc., was founded in 1961, and barely a dozen years later there were nine Fisk organs in the Boston area alone.

There is quite a list of adventurous instrument builders who opened workshops in the 1960s and jump-started that renaissance, including Fisk and Noack, Karl Wilhelm, Hellmuth Wolff, and John Brombaugh. Fritz Noack’s career was the longest of all these. It is hard to think of any field of endeavor that was affected by a renaissance as profound as the pipe organ. Comparing the organs built by these firms in the 1960s with those built at the same time by the long established companies like Möller, Reuter, and Aeolian-Skinner is like comparing chalk with cheese. The combination of research and imagination that went into that was dazzling. People were traveling to Europe to study ancient instruments supported by Fulbright scholarships and Ford Foundation grants and experimenting with their findings after returning to their workshops.

During the 1980s and 1990s, I maintained over a hundred organs in New England, and I was familiar with many of the earliest organs of that renaissance. Some of them could truly be described as experimental organs, prototypes that combined newly formed interpretations of ancient techniques with the practicality of creating a complex machine with an experimental budget, and some could be honestly described as not very good. There was a lot of plywood, contrasting with the opulent hardwood European cases. There were primitive electric stop actions using automotive windshield-wiper motors to move the sliders. The noise of those motors was a noticeable part of the experience of hearing the Fisk organ at Harvard.

A common flaw of organs of that time was “wind-sickness.” American builders were not used to working with low wind pressures, and there was much to do to develop the ability to deliver sufficient volume of air pressure to larger bass pipes. Lifting a pipe of a 32′ rank in a Skinner organ and playing the note will blow off your topknot. Visiting the famous five-manual Beckerath organ at the Oratory of Saint Joseph in Montreal while Juget-Sinclair was renovating it, I was struck by the two-inch paper tubing used to supply wind to the massive 32′ façade pipes. That one-inch radius squared times π equals 3.14 square inches. The largest Skinner toehole is at least five inches in diameter. The two-and-a-half-inch radius squared times π is 19.625 square inches. I will take the large pizza, thanks.

In a nutshell

The Andover Organ Company and Otto Hoffman of Texas were among the earliest American builders of modern tracker-action organs. Hoffman was building organs in the late 1940s, but the activity centered around Boston was the biggest concentration of the start of the renaissance. Four significant Beckerath organs were installed in Montreal in the 1950s including the five-manual behemoth at the Oratory. That inspired the leadership of Casavant to quickly branch out into mechanical-action instruments to establish a foothold in their own country.

In 1964, Casavant installed a three-manual tracker organ with forty-six ranks (many of them 2′ and smaller) at Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Wellesley, Massachusetts, Opus 2791, and Karl Wilhelm and Hellmuth Wolff were among the Casavant employees present. Shortly thereafter, both established their own firms. (That organ has subsequently been moved through the Organ Clearing House to Holyoke, Massachusetts, and replaced with a new two-manual instrument by Juget-Sinclair.) That same year, Fisk built the thirty-eight-stop organ (Opus 44) for King’s Chapel in Boston where Daniel Pinkham was the organist, the first modern American three-manual tracker organ. The first modern American four-manual tracker was built by Fisk in 1967 for Harvard, Fisk’s forty-sixth organ in the company’s first eight years.

Fritz Noack’s first large organ was the three-manual instrument for Trinity Lutheran Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, built in 1969, the fortieth Noack organ in the company’s first nine years. Those two small workshops produced close to a hundred organs in a decade. By 1980 when both firms were twenty years old, they had produced a combined 170 organs including the ninety-seven-rank Fisk at House of Hope Presbyterian Church in Saint Paul, Minnesota. That’s what I mean when I mention the tremendous amount of activity in Boston in the 1960s and 1970s.

Today, sixty years into the renaissance, we have a raft of firms to choose from, many of which are led by people who started in the Noack shop. It is fun to trace the genealogy of the American pipe organ business to understand how the histories of the companies intertwine.

I know others will write Fritz Noack’s biography, telling of his personal history and family. I am happy to point out the significance of his diligence and imagination, the extraordinary number of excellent instruments he produced in a workshop that I am guessing never had more than twelve people working at a time, and how I valued him as a friend and mentor as I made my way through life. I maintained perhaps ten of his organs, including the big one in Worcester (there was a swell Mexican restaurant nearby), and we had lots of close encounters when problems arose that we solved together.

He had a positive outlook, charming smile, and a twinkle in his eye. He carried the wisdom of the ages, always remained an avid learner, and helped raise the art of organ building in America for all of us. He gave the art a further great gift, ensuring his company’s future by bringing Didier Grassin into the firm to continue its work. With Fritz’s support and encouragement, Didier has added his style of design and leadership and has produced two monumental organs in his first years after Fritz’s retirement, Opus 162 in Washington, D.C., and Opus 164 in Birmingham, Alabama.

I salute Fritz Noack for all he has added to the lives of organists around the world. I am grateful for his friendship and wish him Godspeed as he assumes his new job, tuning harps in the great beyond.

Notes

1. noackorgan.com/history.

Leonard George “Len” Berghaus

Leonard George “Len” Berghaus died January 10, 2023, in Bloomingdale, Illinois. He was born July 16, 1938, in Cleveland, Ohio. Growing up, his interest in pipe organs began at his grandparents’ Lutheran church where he would stand by the console and listen to the organist play the postlude. He took piano lessons and then began organ lessons in high school, and additional clarinet study led him to involvement in a Bach cantata, introducing him to Trinity Lutheran Church in Cleveland. Built by Rudolf von Beckerath of Germany, Trinity’s organ piqued young Len’s interest in organ building, and he spent many hours watching the installation of the instrument, memorizing all the mechanics of the action.

Berghaus attended Concordia Teacher’s College (now Concordia University Chicago) in River Forest, Illinois, from 1957 until 1961, preparing to teach in Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod schools and minoring in music education. During this time, he discovered the 1888 Jackson Pipe Organ Company tracker organ at St. Matthew Lutheran Church, Chicago, and began a self-taught course of restoring the instrument to playing condition, unknowingly laying the groundwork for a career in organbuilding.

Between 1961 and 1967, Berghaus was a fifth- and sixth-grade teacher at Grace English Lutheran School and Jehovah Lutheran School in Chicago, all the while continuing his involvement with pipe organs. During this time, he also became a representative for Casavant Frères, Ltée., of Canada and serviced instruments between Fort Wayne, Indiana, and Des Moines, Iowa.

In 1967, Berghaus resigned from teaching and embarked on his organbuilding career full-time. He worked and apprenticed with Paul Jochum and Fred Lake early in his career. These craftspeople imparted their knowledge of slider chests, mechanical action designs, and tonal finishing on Berghaus and created the foundation for his career in the trade. Berghaus in turn imparted his knowledge to many a young organbuilder.

The first instrument Berghaus built was an electric-action organ for Christ Lutheran Church in Cleveland, Ohio (1969), but Opus 1 is considered to be the 1971 mechanical-action organ at O’Fallon United Church of Christ, O’Fallon, Illinois—still in use to this day by the congregation. In 1973, the company relocated from the Berghaus residential garage to Bellwood, Illinois, as Berghaus Organ Company, and again in 2000 to a larger facility. The firm was known in the early years for building neo-Baroque tracker instruments and evolved with changing tastes to build American Classic instruments and to become Berghaus Pipe Organ Builders. Highlights include rebuilding the Schlicker organ at Grace Lutheran Church in River Forest, Illinois, in 1986 as well as new instruments at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, in 2003 and Queen of All Saints Basilica in Chicago in 2005. Since 1967 the company has built or restored over 225 instruments from Arizona to Maryland, primarily in the Midwest. Berghaus was a member of the Chicago Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, the American Institute of Organbuilders, the Organ Historical Society, and the International Society of Organbuilders, and his company is a member firm of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America.

Berghaus retired from full-time organbuilding in 2005 and pursued his other interests more fully. A longtime member of Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest, he sang bass in the choir for many decades. His other pastimes included model train building and entertaining guests at the family’s Detroit Island house in Door County, Wisconsin.

Leonard Berghaus is survived by his wife of 58 years, Judy, and his children Debbie Conley, Todd (Margie), Brian (Collene), and Sue Hempen (Michael), as well as six grandchildren. A memorial service was held February 11 at Grace Lutheran Church, River Forest, Illinois. Memorial contributions may be made to Grace Lutheran Church (graceriverforest.org), The Bach Cantata Series at Grace (bachvespers.org), or Concordia University Chicago (cuchicago.edu).

Walter Hilse

Walter Hilse, organist and composer, died December 31, 2022. Born July 16, 1941, he grew up in Astoria, Queens, New York, and earned degrees in mathematics as well as in music from Columbia University, including a Ph.D. in musicology and an M.A. in composition. He studied organ with Nadia Boulanger, Maurice Duruflé, Vincent Persichetti, and Bronson Ragan.

As a solo performer he appeared throughout the United States, Europe, and the Far East, making tours of Sweden in 1990, 1994, and 1995. He presented five solo organ recitals at New York City’s Alice Tully Hall, as well as several complete performances of Bach’s The Art of Fugue. He was a Fellow of the American Guild of Organists and recently retired from the faculty of the Manhattan School of Music.

Hilse’s compositions include over 80 art songs, an a cappella Mass for SATB chorus, over 20 anthems and psalm settings, a setting of various Sabbath-morning texts, compositions for solo organ, a piano suite, and numerous works for instrumental ensemble. He was awarded the Joseph H. Bearns Prize of Columbia University (1966) and the Choral Composition Prize of the Boston Chapter A.G.O. (1974). As a musicologist, he specialized in the work of Paul Hindemith and Christoph Bernhard and was a regular contributor to The American Organist magazine. Hilse served as artist-in-residence at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church where he gave numerous recitals, associate organist at Congregation Rodeph Sholom, and organist for Redeemer Presbyterian Church, all of New York City, since 1996.

Walter Hilse is survived by his wife, Patricia (Pat). A memorial service was held January 20 at St. Malachy’s Church, The Actors’ Chapel, New York City.

The American Institute of Organbuilders Celebrates Fifty Years

Matthew M. Bellocchio is a charter member of the American Institute of Organbuilders and earned the Fellow Certificate in 1979. He chaired the AIO education committee (1997–2009), served two terms on the AIO board of directors (1993–1996; 2010–2012), and as AIO president (2012–2015). He is a senior manager and designer at Andover Organ Company in Lawrence, Massachusetts, which he joined in 2003. He is also president of the Methuen Memorial Music Hall, Inc., where he has served as a trustee since 2017.

September 2024 marks the fiftieth anniversary of the chartering of the American Institute of Organbuilders (AIO), a unique organization that has had a transformative effect on American organbuilding. Anniversaries invite us to reflect upon our past and contemplate how far we have come. Thus, this article will describe the history of the AIO, its programs, and its impact.

Beginnings

In 1970 David W. Cogswell and Jan R. Rowland of the Berkshire Organ Company in West Springfield, Massachusetts, attended their first biennial Congress of the International Society of Organbuilders (ISO) in Switzerland. Inspired by the collegial atmosphere and sharing of knowledge that he experienced, Cogswell conceived the idea of forming a similar organization for United States and Canadian organbuilders. He calculated that it would be economically viable to organize a meeting of organbuilding individuals if at least ninety persons paid and attended. Advertisements were placed in organ journals, and a printed program booklet was mailed to all known organbuilding and maintenance companies for the “First North American Organbuilders’ Convention,” which took place in Washington, D.C., September 2–5, 1973. Auspiciously, 110 people attended.

The participants were enthusiastic about forming a permanent organization. A provisional board was established, a constitutional committee appointed, and a convention was scheduled for the following year. The second convention, held in September 1974 in Dayton, Ohio, adopted a constitution and bylaws, signed by thirty-eight charter members, and elected a board of directors.

There was some discussion about what to name the nascent group. Some had proposed, along the lines of the International Society of Organbuilders, the names American Society of Organbuilders or American Society of Organ Builders. Instead, the name American Institute of Organbuilders (AIO) was chosen by vote.

Objectives

The stated purpose of the American Institute of Organbuilders was and still is: “To advance the science and practice of pipe organbuilding by discussion, inquiry, research, experiment, and other means; to disseminate knowledge regarding pipe organbuilding by such means as lectures, publications, and exchange of information; to establish an organized training program for organbuilders, leading to examinations and certifications of degree of proficiency.” The AIO was registered in the state of Ohio under IRS tax laws as a non-profit 501(c)(6) business league.

The AIO has several important features that distinguish it from other organ-related groups. Unlike the International Society of Organbuilders (ISO) or the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America (APOBA), which are associations of organ companies, the AIO, in the tradition of American democracy, was founded as an organization of individuals. And unlike the Organ Historical Society (United States), The Organ Club (United Kingdom), or the Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde (Germany), which are open to any organ enthusiasts who wish to join, AIO membership is by nomination and limited to professional pipe organ builders, maintenance technicians, and those in allied professions supporting the pipe organ industry.

Membership

New members are nominated for one of three categories. Regular membership is open to full-time North American builders and maintenance technicians with at least five years’ experience. Associate membership is for full-time apprentices with less than five years in the profession. Affiliate membership is for those who are: 1) not full-time builders or maintenance technicians; 2) non-North American builders; or 3) persons in allied professions (e.g., organ consultants and church acousticians). All nominees must obtain the endorsement of a current Regular AIO member and provide a summary of their work history on the nomination form. Nominees for Regular membership must secure two additional Regular AIO members as references. Each reference is contacted and must vouch for the nominee’s work and business ethics. All nominees must agree in writing to abide by the Institute’s Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct.

Acceptance of a new member is granted by vote of the AIO board of directors after the nominee’s name has been published in the AIO Journal of American Organbuilding for the purpose of receiving comments from the membership. Only Regular members may vote or hold office. Associate members may apply for Regular membership after five years in the profession. Presently, the AIO has about 325 members, of which forty-one are non-voting Associate or Affiliate members.

Governance

The affairs and policies of the AIO are governed by a nine-member board of directors composed of the president, vice president, secretary, treasurer, and five directors-at-large. Board members serve three-year terms and are elected via online voting by the members, the results announced at the annual business meeting. The day-to-day business of the Institute is handled by the executive secretary, who is an employee of the Institute.

Conventions

Since its founding, AIO conventions have been held annually in cities throughout the United States and Canada. These conventions are structured around a full schedule of technical lectures, visits to local organ shops and instruments, product exhibitions, and business meetings. Because their purpose is educational, AIO conventions are open to non-AIO members, who pay a higher registration fee. A typical AIO convention runs three and one-half days. It starts on a Sunday afternoon with a recital or concert at a local church, followed by dinner and an exhibitors’ night at the hotel. The Monday schedule starts with the AIO annual business meeting, followed by a full day of lectures and educational presentations. Tuesday is usually spent traveling, visiting local organ shops and recent instruments by AIO members. Wednesday features more educational programs and ends with a banquet and awards presentations. There are also optional pre- and post-convention tours, which feature interesting local attractions and some organs.

A minimum of twelve hours of educational content is required at each convention. AIO technical lectures cover a variety of topics and range in format from individual to multiple presenters, depending upon the subject. Most conventions have a lecture about the organ building history of the region.

Occasionally, a panel format is used to good effect for comparative techniques of organbuilding. In such presentations, several organbuilders demonstrate their individual approaches to solving the same technical issue. Topics addressed in this manner have included scaling, designing wind systems, swell box design, voicing flue pipes, and business succession. This comparison technique has also been used for educational presentations by suppliers to explain and contrast the individual features of similar products, such as electric swell shade motors, combination actions, and electronic tuners.

Lecturers are drawn from both inside and outside the organbuilding industry. Outside experts have addressed topics such as woodworking machinery, obtaining performance bonds, and dealing with employees. Lecturers for organbuilding topics are chosen based upon their recognized expertise in a particular subject and their ability to communicate well with an audience.

In the AIO’s early days, it was common to invite European ISO organbuilders to give keynote convention lectures. Henry Willis IV and Josef von Glatter-Götz (Rieger Orgelbau) attended the first gathering in 1973, where they gave encouragement and technical knowledge to the fledgling organization. Others who followed in their footsteps include Joseph Schafer (Klais) in 1975; Roland Killinger and Maarten A. Vente (ISO secretary) in 1976; Dirk Flentrop and Hans Wolf Knaths (Giesecke) in 1978; Michael Gillingham (chairman, British Institute of Organ Studies) in 1979; Klaus Wilhelm Furtwängler (Giesecke) and Henry Willis IV in 1983 (tenth anniversary convention); Richard Rensch in 1989; Gerard Pels (ISO vice president and editor) in 1991; Henry Willis IV in 1993 (twentieth anniversary convention); Stephen Bicknell (ex Mander) in 1998; and Hans-Erich Laukhuff in 2000.

Visits to regional organ shops and instruments are a popular convention feature. One can learn as much from a small, well-organized shop as from a large factory! Organs visited during the convention are usually chosen to represent the recent work of AIO members. The builders are invited to provide technical information about the instruments. This can range from a simple listing of the pipe scales to an elaborately printed booklet with pictures and drawings. Occasionally, these organs will be the subjects of related convention lectures dealing with their design, action, construction, or room acoustics. Where possible, the organs are open for inspection. Historic organs and those by non-AIO builders are usually reserved for the post-convention organ tours.

In place of recitals, organs are heard in short demonstrations, utilizing improvisations or brief passages of literature to show what the instruments can do. Players are asked to showcase the sounds of the instruments—not the repertoire of the player. These programs end with the singing of a hymn, to show the organs’ accompaniment capabilities. Many organists are astonished at the volume of sound produced by a group of singing organbuilders!

Product exhibitions are another important convention feature. Suppliers display their latest products and meet with old and new customers. Recent conventions have had twelve to twenty exhibitors and now require considerable exhibition space.

Seminars

The AIO mid-year seminars have provided further professional education opportunities. These weekend seminars are held in organ shops throughout the country and are structured to provide hands-on training in a variety of small group settings.

Seminar topics have included voicing (reeds, flue pipes, strings), wood pipe construction, organ façade decoration, casework construction, electrical wiring, slider chest construction, and electro-pneumatic windchest re-leathering. In contrast to the conventions, seminars are limited to AIO members and employees of AIO and ISO firms. Several seminars have been joint AIO/ISO events, with European builders serving on the team of instructors (Wolfgang Eisenbarth, string voicing, 2001; Mads Kiersgaard, wood pipe voicing 2005).

Examinations and certificates

In addition to the educational programs at conventions and seminars, the AIO holds examinations and awards certificates of proficiency. Currently three certifications are awarded: Fellow, Colleague, and Service Technician. Successful candidates must pass written and oral exams.

The Fellow and Colleague examinations include over 200 questions. The topics covered include history, mechanical engineering, electrical, winding, mechanical key actions, electric actions, tonal engineering, windchest layouts, pipe construction, console standards, wood properties, joinery, tuning and maintenance, acoustics and architecture, structural engineering, business practices, and tuning (including setting an equal temperament by ear). To make the process less daunting, the questions are grouped into three separate historical, mechanical, and tonal focused exams that may be taken at separate times. Four hours are allotted for each written exam.

The Colleague certificate requires 65 percent correct answers on the exam. The Fellow certificate requires 85 percent correct on the written portion of the exams, plus oral questions, and the design (under mentorship) of a theoretical organ for a given location or situation. Additionally, the examiners must have inspected personally, or by a representative, an example of organbuilding work done by the Fellow candidate. The Service Technician exam is less inclusive and requires 75 percent correct to pass.

Exams and exam review sessions are held prior to each annual convention. They are conducted by a committee of three examiners, who all hold Fellow certificates. Each examiner is appointed by the board of directors for a three-year term.

Publications

All AIO members receive the quarterly Journal of American Organbuilding, whose issues have included technical articles, product and book reviews, and a forum for the exchange of building and service information and techniques. It first appeared as a newsletter in March 1986. By vote of the membership at that year’s convention in Chicago, it was officially named the Journal of American Organbuilding. Through the years its content and appearance evolved. The September 1989 issue was the first with a pictorial cover. In March 2010, the twenty-fifth year of the Journal’s publication, the first color cover appeared.

Prior to each convention the annual Convention Handbook is printed and mailed to all AIO members. In addition to convention information, it includes specifications and pictures of the convention organs and advertisements from exhibitors and suppliers.

Since 1992 the AIO has occasionally produced an annual Photographic Survey, with pictures of members’ recent work. Originally part of the annual convention handbook, the Survey is now printed separately for distribution at conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the National Association of Pastoral Musicians.

In 1980 the late AIO charter member David Cogswell published the Organbuilder’s Reference Handbook, with formulas and reference tables for organbuilders. In 2007 the AIO published a sixteen-page revised edition, edited by AIO Fellow member Robert Vaughan, including formulas for spreadsheet calculations.

Since 1990 all annual convention lectures (and some mid-year seminars) have been recorded. Videos of selected lectures are available for members to view on the members’ section of the AIO website.

Website and online technical resources

The AIO website (www.pipeorgan.org) has detailed information about the AIO, its activities, and a directory of its members for the public to view. There is also a members’ section, accessible by password, which contains PDF files of back issues of the Journal, the Organbuilder’s Reference Handbook, and the Online Technical Resource.

The Online Technical Resource section contains a wealth of practical articles and helpful tips written by members to help their colleagues solve problems encountered both in the shop and in the field. It covers a wide range of topics and includes technical service manuals of past and present electronic systems suppliers. Here is a sampling of article titles: “Techniques of Cone Tuning;” “Mitering Metal Pipes;” “Zinc Dust in Reed Boots;” “Voicing, Nicking and Regulating Flue Pipes;” “Repairing Reuter Ventil and Pitman Windchests;” “Rebuilding an Estey Tubular Pneumatic Primary;” “Electro-Pneumatic Action and the Slider Chest;” “Easing Heavy Tracker Actions;” and “Wiring for Electric Motors.”

Investing in the future

Believing that the pipe organ has a future as well as a past, the AIO invests in outreach to attract and educate the next generation of American organbuilders and organists. Each year, convention scholarships are awarded to young aspiring organbuilders to encourage them to grow into the profession and the AIO.

A “35-and-under” meeting, over lunch or dinner, was introduced as an annual convention event in 2013. Attended by the president or another board member, it provides younger convention attendees an opportunity to meet, network, and ask questions about the AIO. In recent years it has been very well attended.

The AIO contributes $500 to every local American Guild of Organists chapter that is presenting a Pipe Organ Encounter. This program, held annually in multiple cities throughout the United States, seeks to recruit new organists by exposing young keyboard students to the pipe organ. The AIO has also made material and financial contributions to the American Organ Archives of the Organ Historical Society, the largest repository of organ research materials in the world.

Impact

When the AIO was founded in 1974, the American organbuilding landscape was very different. The industry was dominated by large factory firms, which built electro-pneumatic instruments. There were only a few small tracker firms. Educational opportunities for young organbuilders were primarily provided by the factory firms, where one only learned a firm’s specific construction style. A lucky few obtained European apprenticeships. Tracker organs were the exception, and churches that wanted large tracker organs generally imported them from Europe. There was very little opportunity for contact among organbuilders, and as a result, there was ignorance and mistrust of each other’s work.

The AIO changed all of this, and by dedicating itself to the education of individual organbuilders, turned American organbuilding upside down. Today, most American firms are small to medium sized companies, and most of the old factory firms, if not gone, are considerably smaller. Thanks to the AIO’s educational programs, apprentices can learn a variety of organbuilding techniques from a variety of expert teachers. Today, the quality and reliability of “New World” organs equals those of the “Old World.” The importation of tracker organs is now rare.

Thanks to AIO conventions, American organbuilders are now on a first name basis and are happy to meet and discuss ideas. Many long-term friendships have been formed. It is not uncommon for a builder with a technical problem to consult a fellow AIO member for advice.

The remarkable strength and influence of the AIO stems from its being an organization founded, supported, and directed by individual organbuilders, not firms. In essence, it embodies the American national motto, E pluribus unum (out of many, one). The AIO helped this writer’s generation become the American organbuilders of today, and it continues to educate the organbuilders of tomorrow. Here’s to another fifty years of advancing the science and practice of pipe organbuilding!

John Allen Ditto

John Allen Ditto died March 9. He was born February 12, 1945, in Kansas City, Missouri. At the age three he showed great interest in the piano and was taught by Pauline Chaney and Lucille Hoover of Plattsburg. Beginning at age nine and continuing through high school years, he studied piano at the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music, with organ lessons beginning in 1961.

After graduating from Plattsburg High School in 1963, Ditto went on to earn a Bachelor of Music degree in organ and church music from Drake University, Des Moines, Iowa. In 1969 he earned his Master of Music degree in organ and sacred music from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. From 1969 until 1972 he was director of music for First Presbyterian Church, Evansville, Indiana. In 1972 he began his Doctoral of Musical Arts degree studies at Eastman School of Music, Rochester, New York. 

After completing his doctorate, he returned to Missouri as assistant professor of organ, piano, and music history at Central Methodist University, Fayette, and organist at Linn Memorial United Methodist Church on campus from 1975 to 1982. He then began teaching at the University of Missouri Kansas City Conservatory of Music, a position he held until his retirement in 2015. During this time Ditto served as organist/music director at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Kansas City. He was a member of St. Paul’s Church and continued to be involved after his retirement.

Throughout his career Ditto played numerous recitals throughout the country and was an artist with Phyllis Stringham Concert Management. He was an active member of the Kansas City chapter of the American Guild of Organists, attending and performing at conventions and pedagogy conferences. During summer months, Ditto spent time on Lopez Island, Washington, where he was organist at Grace Episcopal Church. 

Upon retirement Ditto volunteered at the Kansas City Free Health Clinic and St. Luke’s Hospital. He also served as chairman of the program committee on the UMKC Retirees Association Board. He was a lector and chalice bearer at Bishop Spencer Place, where he resided the final year of his life.

John Allen Ditto is survived by his sister Mary Alice (Larry) Roberts, nephew Zach (Ashley) Nelson, and his great-nieces, Lilly and Sylvie Nelson, all of Plattsburg, Missouri. Services were held April 16 at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Kansas City. Former students Shelly Moorman-Stahlman and Robert L. Bozeman played prelude and postlude, all pieces learned as students with Ditto. St. Paul’s Choir sang movements from Durufle’s Requiem at the Holy Eucharist service. Memorial contributions may be made to St. Paul’s Episcopal Church for the music program (stpaulskcmo.org), to the American Guild of Organists, New Organist Scholarship Fund in memory of John Ditto (agohq.org), or to John A. Ditto Memorial Music Scholarship, P. O. Box 136, Plattsburg, Missouri 64477.

—Robert L. Bozeman and Shelly Moorman-Stahlman

Paul S. Hesselink

Paul S. Hesselink, 82, died May 1. Born June 6, 1940, in Mitchell, South Dakota, he had been a resident of Las Vegas, Nevada, since 1993. He had previously lived in Iowa, Nebraska, Washington, Michigan, Ohio, Colorado, and Virginia.

Hesselink was a graduate of Lynden (Washington) High School and earned his Bachelor of Arts degree in music in 1962 from Hope College, Holland, Michigan, where he majored in organ. He studied musicology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, under a Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship; earned a Master of Arts degree in organ pedagogy from Ohio State University, Columbus; and received his Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance from University of Colorado, Boulder. His organ teachers included Roger J. Rietberg, Wilbur C. Held, Arthur Poister, Everett J. Hilty, and Don A. Vollstedt. He studied harpsichord in Paris, France, with Davitt Moroney.

In 1966 Hesselink joined the faculty at Longwood College (now University), Farmville, Virginia, where for twenty-six years he taught organ, harpsichord, music theory, music form and analysis, church music, handbells, and music appreciation. He was named a recipient of the college’s Maria Bristow Starke Award for Excellence in Teaching, and he chaired the Longwood department of music for three years. During the 1978–1979 academic year he was a guest faculty member at the University of Colorado in the department of organ and church music. Upon early retirement from Longwood, he was named Professor Emeritus. He relocated to Las Vegas, Nevada, to become dean and chief executive officer at Nevada School of the Arts, a private, non-profit community arts school, holding that position for twelve years. He also taught organ as adjunct faculty at University of Nevada, Las Vegas, beginning in 1993.

As a church musician, Hesselink served as the director of music (organ, choir, and handbells) at Farmville Presbyterian Church, Virginia, for twelve years and as organist at Christ Church Episcopal in Las Vegas for six years. He was an active member of the Southern Nevada Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and he served as program chair of the AGO Region IX Midwinter Conclave, hosted by the Southern Nevada Chapter in January 2006. From 2005 to 2019 he managed the chapter’s organ recital series bringing nationally and internationally known organists to perform in Las Vegas. Upon his retirement from that responsibility, the chapter honored him by naming the recital series the Paul S. Hesselink Organ Recital Series. Hesselink also held memberships in the Organ Historical Society, the College Music Society, the American Musicological Society, and the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society.

Active during his entire professional life as an organ and harpsichord recitalist, lecturer, and workshop leader, he also performed as a duo-piano team member with Longwood colleague Frieda Myers. He was harpsichordist-in-residence with the Roxbury Chamber Players of New York for “Music in Historic Places” during the summers of 1984 and 1985. In 1996 he was harpsichord soloist for the world premiere performance of the Nevett Bartow Concerto for Harpsichord with the Nevada Chamber Orchestra; he later recorded the work with the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra in Bratislava for the MMC Recordings label. Hesselink was the recipient of two National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar awards—at Yale University and later at the Arnold Schoenberg Institute at the University of Southern California. The seminars resulted in a ten-year research project regarding the commissioning, composition, and publication of Schoenberg’s only work for organ, Variations on a Recitative, opus 40. At the end of the second summer seminar, he was invited to publish his research in the Journal of the Arnold Schoenberg Institute. On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the composition of the Schoenberg organ work, his article, “Variations on a Recitative for Organ, Op. 40: Correspondence from the Schoenberg Legacy,” was republished in The American Organist (October and December 1991).

Hesselink was a force in the acquisition of the Maurine Jackson Smith Memorial Organ installed in 2004 in Dr. Rando-Grillot Recital Hall, Beam Music Center, University of Nevada, Las Vegas. This instrument, which was designed, fabricated, and installed by Rudolf von Beckerath Orgelbau, Hamburg, Germany, is the largest mechanical-action organ in Nevada. In 2013 he published “As I Recall: A History of the Maurine Jackson Smith Organ at UNLV.”

Paul S. Hesselink is survived by a brother, Philip Hesselink of Omaha, Nebraska; two sisters, Elaine Helmus of Jefferson, Iowa, and Ardys Hansum of Omaha. Also surviving is his former student, longtime friend, and partner of more than fifty years, Linda Parker. His ashes were interred in the family plot in the Gibbsville, Wisconsin, cemetery. Memorial contributions may be made to the American Guild of Organists, the Southern Nevada Chapter of the AGO, or the Organ Historical Society.

On the road again

In April 2021, after a year of Covid isolation and after I received my second dose of the vaccine, I went on a “bust out” road trip driving south from our home in New York City as far as Atlanta, visiting three colleagues’ organ shops, the installation of an organ where the Organ Clearing House crew was working, and a few iconic instruments. It was my reintroduction to the excitement of being out and about, seeing friends and colleagues, and getting my nose back in the business after being sequestered at our place in Maine during the worst of the pandemic. I wrote about that trip under the title “On the road again” in the July 2021 issue of The Diapason (pages 10–11). It was fun to recreate and chronicle some of my experiences on the road, and here I am to do it again.

Last week I drove as far west as Chicago from our new home in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Two things inspired this trip. The Organ Clearing House was installing a relocated organ by Gabriel Kney (Opus 93 from Dallas, Texas) at the Saint Meinrad School of Theology in Saint Meinrad, Indiana, and I was promoting an exceptional organ built by M. P. Möller (Opus 5881 from Chicago, Illinois) that had been donated by organ historian and architect William H. Barnes and his brother and mother in honor of his father, Charles Osborne Barnes, who had been a longtime member and trustee of the church.

I was on the road for seven nights, stayed in five different hotels, and drove just over twenty-five-hundred miles. I love that kind of driving. My first experiences with long-distance driving were as a student at Oberlin when I drove back and forth between school and home in the Boston area, growing familiar with Interstate 90. During the summer of 1978, just after my graduation from Oberlin, my mentor John Leek and I drove to Oakland, California, to deliver a harpsichord we built. That trip was a great lesson about our country because while it is a one-day drive from Boston to Oberlin, it is a five or six-day drive from Oberlin to San Francisco. Just as I thought I was going west when I went away to school, a school friend who grew up in northern Wisconsin thought he was going south.

Kegg Organ Company

I left home on Saturday morning, spent that night outside Cleveland, met my friend Charles Kegg for breakfast on Sunday morning in Hartville, Ohio, and visited his workshop, which is in a 16,500-square-foot building, beautifully equipped for the specialized work of building pipe organs. The immense rooms are carefully planned and nicely maintained. There is a fleet of orderly stationary machines and workstations. Various components and structures of a large organ under construction occupied big areas of the abundant floor space. The company had just upgraded the HVAC system to include air filtering, heating, and air conditioning, replacing the noisy old hanging gas heaters of yesteryear.

I was especially interested to see one of Charles’s specialties and passions, the machine built by M. P. Möller to produce rolls for their automatic organs. It is a stately structure with an intricate mechanism that transfers musical notes into holes in the paper rolls. Möller rolls are big and heavy, a large-format version of the more familiar Aeolian rolls. Charles was working with the now-shuttered American Organ Institute at the University of Oklahoma to rejuvenate the machine and make new rolls to aid in the understanding of that brilliant technology developed early in the twentieth century. Along with his active interest in automatic musical instruments, Charles and his company are building beautiful new organs with electric-valve actions, versatile symphonic specifications, and exquisite consoles.

Saint Meinrad School of Theology

I left Hartville to drive across Ohio, through Cincinnati and past Louisville, Kentucky, to Saint Meinrad, Indiana, the town next to Santa Claus near the southern tip of the state. Saint Meinrad is a thriving Catholic seminary on a beautiful remote campus. There is a prominent archabbey with an organ by Goulding & Wood in the principal chapel, and the school operates industries that produce high-quality caskets and peanut butter.

In addition to the archabbey there is a chapel honoring Saint Thomas Aquinas, where the Organ Clearing House was installing an organ built in 1980 by Gabriel Kney (Opus 93) for the First Community Church of Dallas, Texas. Susan Ferré was the consultant for the design and construction of the project. Debra Dyko, the theological school’s organist, found the instrument listed on the OCH website and went to Dallas within a week to audition the organ. The sale was completed quickly, and less than a month later, the OCH crew was in Dallas dismantling the organ.

I arrived when the installation was well along. The case was up, windchests in place, action connected and functioning, and the wind system was complete. I was able to help connect the solid-state slider control and combination mechanisms including the installation of a new 24-volt DC power supply for the Heuss slider motors. I “retired” from working on-site with the crew at the end of 2019, and it was nice to have tools in my hands again for a few hours. This was a classic relocation project. The organ is well suited for the building visually and tonally. It is well built, so it went back together easily and will be a reliable instrument for decades of further use, and it was a great fit physically and visually—there were no alterations required. Fred Bahr of John-Paul Buzard Pipe Organ Builders accomplished tonal finishing of the organ in May.

. . . and speaking of Buzard . . .

I left Saint Meinrad on Tuesday morning to drive to Champaign, Illinois, to visit John-Paul Buzard Pipe Organ Builders. I had a nice lunch with John-Paul Buzard that included rich conversation about organbuilding philosophies, the history of his company, and conversations about past and future collaborations. The company, affectionately referred to as “Buzco” (as seen on the license plates of company vehicles), is in a former women’s residential hotel in downtown Champaign. It is a four-story building with rental apartments on the fourth floor (The Organ Loft Apartments) and three floors of offices, workshops, voicing studios, and erection space.

A large, four-manual organ for Saint George’s Episcopal Church in Nashville, Tennessee, is under construction, and I saw a big section of the framework and structure of the instrument in the erection space, windchests being assembled, wind system components being built, pipes in the voicing rooms, and the console partially assembled. The long corridors down the center of each floor serve as storage rooms and are wide enough to allow passage between stacks of organ components.

The Buzco service department has a separate workshop in a building across the street devoted to large-scale repairs of organs they maintain. There is a well-equipped woodworking shop, leathering station, stocks of wiring supplies, and lots of projects in progress on workbenches. Keeping renovation and repair work separate from the construction of new organs makes it easier to keep track of things.

I visited with the brilliant organist Katelyn Emerson at McKinley Presbyterian Church where she played for me on the 1994 Dobson Opus 63. We sat in a pew talking for an hour or two about the organ, its music, and her upcoming studies in Britain. Katelyn’s husband, David Brown, is a longtime member of the Buzard shop, a dear friend with whom I correspond regularly. I was delighted to sit between Dave and Katelyn at the rollicking dinner that evening hosted by John-Paul that included his wife and daughter along with several other members of the Buzco team.

Given by the master

William Harrison Barnes (1892–1980) was an authority on pipe organ construction and a consultant responsible for the design of some four hundred instruments. He grew up in the Chicago area and graduated from Evanston Township High School in 1910. In 2008, the high school celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of the three-manual pipe organ that Dr. Barnes donated to the school. His home church was Epworth United Methodist Church of Chicago where his father, Charles Osborne Barnes, was a longtime member and trustee. A plaque on the wall of the church dedicates the 1931
M. P. Möller organ (Opus 5881) to the loving memory of Charles Osborne Barnes, naming the donors as Mrs. Charles O. Barnes and her two sons, William H. Barnes and Harold O. Barnes.

When Pastor Max Kuecker of Epworth Church contacted me about organizing the sale of the organ and shared its history with me, I imagined a scenario in the offices of M. P. Möller when staff members looked at each other and agreed that with the Barnes family involved, this had better be an exceptional instrument, and I was curious to see it. The church had waited until after the proverbial last minute to address the future of the organ as our first contact was after the sale of the building with real estate closing just weeks away. Since our company would be working in Saint Meinrad, I combined the two interests and planned my trip.

The people at Möller did deliver an exceptional organ. There are twenty-two ranks in three manual divisions with one independent pedal rank, 16′/8′ Bourdon, enclosed with the Swell. The Choir division is located across a stairway from the main organ chamber and has shutters facing two rooms. One set of shutters speaks into the stairwell and through a grille that opens into the choir loft, the other opens into the adjacent Sunday School chapel, and the Choir organ is playable as a separate instrument from a two-manual console in the chapel. Each console has a cut-out switch to close and disable the shutters that are not to be in use. An eight-octave rank of flue pipes that starts at 16′ (1–24 stopped, 25–37 open, 38–56 open harmonic, 57–97 metal) sits on a unit chest allowing it to be used as a pedal stop and at different pitches on the keyboards while the ranks of the main pitman chest are distributed between the two keyboards.

There are four 8′ diapasons on the organ, two in the Great and one each in the Swell and Choir, and the Great 8′ Second Diapason is extended as a pedal stop with a marvelous octave of 16′ Diaphone pipes. There is plenty of power, and the Choir 8′ Dulciana and Swell 8′ Muted Viol disappear as whispers when the boxes are closed. You can learn more about this organ here: pipeorgandatabase.org/organ/9216.

When I posted Opus 5881 for sale on our website and promoted it on Facebook, I was not surprised to have immediate responses from congregations interested in acquiring it, and as I planned my trip, I invited the organists of those churches to meet with me while I was visiting the church. I shared the organ with representatives of two churches, one of which was quick to act, and while as I write the transaction is not officially completed, it sure looks as though we will be dismantling that organ in July. I’ll let you know when the deal is complete.

The corner of Oak and Walnut

I left Chicago on Friday morning for the six-hour drive to Orrville, Ohio, where the Schantz Organ Company has been on that street corner for 121 years. Organ architect Eric Gastier greeted me and showed me through the storied workshop where nearly twenty-five-hundred organs have been built, an average of about twenty organs a year. We were joined by Jeffery Dexter, vice president and tonal director, for conversations about the history and operation of the company.

The deep heritage of the company is evident everywhere in the huge shop building. Heavily worn wood floors tell the history of the countless footsteps and cartwheels required to build one organ, not to mention twenty-five hundred. Jigs and patterns for dozens of specialty components hang on the walls, and personal workstations are decorated with family photos and mementos and lifetime tools. There is specialty equipment everywhere like a power-vented workstation for soldering metal windlines, mechanized rollers with crank handles for turning tiny tuning slides, tapered and straight mandrills for shaping organ pipes, and ancient carts for the storage and transportation of hundreds of clamps. There is a huge belt sander, wide enough to accept the largest windchest, and an elegant walnut-wainscoted conference room with raised panels that only an organ shop could build. My tour took us through a seemingly endless maze of rooms, both large and small, each dedicated to a specific facet of the art of making pipe organs.

There are very few workshops remaining in the world in which pipe organs have been built by the thousand. I have visited the shops of Austin, Reuter, and Casavant, but am hard-pressed to think of another North American shop with such a legacy. I think of the thousands of truckloads of organs that have rolled away from the loading dock and down the residential street to Main Street where you can drive across the railroad tracks and find a highway.

Whiling away the time

What do you do while you are driving twenty-five-hundred miles alone? My work with the Organ Clearing House has brought me close to the American trucking industry, as I wrote in the April 2022 issue of The Diapason (pages 10–11). Because we maintain DOT (Department of Transportation) and FMCSA (Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration) numbers, to Wendy’s amusement I receive several trucking magazines. Glancing at them occasionally, I know that Walmart is America’s largest trucking company. My observation is that Amazon must be becoming a close second—their trucks are everywhere. Landstar, the company we use, has a solid presence on the country’s highways. Taking attendance is a mindless occupation as white lines stream past.

Highway warning signs can be amusing, like the one on I-90 in western New York that says, “Correctional facility ahead, don’t stop for hitchhikers,” or the huge tourist stop and museum in eastern Pennsylvania with a sign that reads, “Be prepared to see more than you expected.” For years I have loved listening to “books on tape” while driving, the concept updated now to Audible.com. As a devoted sailor, I listened to Joshua Slocum’s famous memoir, Sailing Around the World Alone, for the third time. I especially love the moment when he frightens away a pirate attack by scattering upholstery tacks on the deck of his oyster sloop, Spray. I wonder if the pirates got shoes after that.

A couple months ago, Wendy introduced me to a series of podcasts called Sticky Notes hosted by the conductor Joshua Weilerstein, artistic director of the Orchestre de Chambre de Lausanne in Switzerland. In each of the dozens of hour-long episodes, Weilerstein analyzes a different piece of music using many recorded examples, delivered in a rapid vocal cadence. During this trip I listened to his thoughts on the Bach cello suites and Goldberg Variations, Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony, Brahms’s Piano Concerto No. 2, Elgar’s Enigma Variations, and Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5. I didn’t agree with everything he said (the recording he used of Beethoven’s Eroica was too fast), but I found it engaging to argue with him while I was driving. As an enthusiastic young musician with an impressive career unfolding, Weilerstein has given much thought to the music he performs, and his insights are rewarding, informative, and reminiscent of Leonard Bernstein’s iconic Young People’s Concerts on television with the New York Philharmonic Orchestra. Download the Sticky Notes app, and you’ll see a big library of compelling lessons.

That Ingenious Business . . .

. . . is the title of an authoritative book about the Pennsylvania German organbuilders of the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, written by the late organbuilder Raymond J. Brunner and published by the Pennsylvania German Society in 1990. It reflects a comment by a bystander, a contemporary of David Tannenberg, the greatest of that tribe of craftsmen. I am reminded of that phrase whenever I visit an organ shop. Each of the three shops I visited last week has a distinct personality, an aura that reflects the philosophy of its founder, whether living and active or gone for generations. Each building speaks of the passion behind this fascinating art, and each displays craftsmanship at its Old World finest combined with cutting-edge materials and equipment. My thanks to Charles Kegg, John-Paul Buzard, Eric Gastier, and Jeffrey Dexter for sharing their work with me. I am the richer for it, and I promise I won’t pick up any hitchhikers.