Fredrick Bahr joins Buzard Pipe Organ Builders

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!

American Organ Institute, University of Oklahoma, Norman, Oklahoma

R. Jelani Eddington has been an international theatre organist and concert artist for over thirty years. During his career, he has performed in theatre organ venues throughout the world and has over forty albums to his credit. With degrees from Indiana University and Yale Law School, Jelani Eddington also practices law in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

A revolution in Norman: how a visionary idea is transforming the organ industry

Many in the organ community have likely heard about the American Organ Institute (AOI) at the University of Oklahoma in Norman. Fewer have had the opportunity to experience the institute first-hand. For many years, I have had the privilege of knowing the faculty and staff of the AOI personally and professionally and am grateful for the chance to share some thoughts about this visionary program.

In December 2017, I spent several days on campus at the AOI and conducted a series of interviews. While I have always held the people at the AOI in the highest of regard, I was nevertheless deeply touched by the fervent passion with which the goals of the institute were shared among all. From the director of the program to students just beginning their musical journey, there was a unanimity of purpose and an understanding that the AOI offers something truly exceptional: the opportunity to be part of a family that, by providing a far-reaching and all-inclusive educational experience to its students, is helping to transform the organ world.

At its core, the AOI is one of the largest and certainly most stylistically diverse organ music programs in the country. Although the institute was founded at the University of Oklahoma in 2006, its bedrock principles began to take shape many years earlier in the mind of Dr. John Schwandt. For too long, he had watched as the various traditions within the organ world operated largely independent of one another. Dr. Schwandt viewed this compartmentalization as tribalism that could threaten the very industry we all seek to promote.

In 2005, Dr. Schwandt, then comfortably ensconced in a faculty position at Indiana University, became aware of a unique opportunity at the University of Oklahoma. The university’s president, David Boren, circulated a letter soliciting applicants to develop an organ program within the school of music, and Dr. Schwandt seized the opportunity.

Among his most important purposes, Dr. Schwandt wanted to unite the often-disparate communities within the organ world. To achieve that goal, the institute would need to offer the rigorous discipline of a traditional organ program, but also offer students the ability to pursue the heretofore unconventional, including concert and symphonic organ playing, theatre organ styling and silent film accompaniment, and organ building and technology.

I asked Dr. Schwandt the obvious question: why was it so important to include all of these various disciplines within a single organ program? Beyond the academic answer, that “knowledge is power,” he had a more immediate and practical response, focusing on providing students a more complete skill set to meet the challenges of being an organist in the twenty-first century. A student who could play a Bach trio sonata flawlessly—but not a hymn—would be ill equipped to serve the liturgical needs of many churches. An organist without basic skills of improvisation would be challenged to segue seamlessly from one musical theme to another or to remedy a situation in which a prepared offertory was 45 seconds too short for the service. And, a student without basic training in the art of theatre organ would surely struggle if asked to accompany a praise band on a Sunday morning. Dr. Schwandt perceived an opportunity to offer a broader spectrum of skills to today’s students, and through the pioneering spirit that is so often associated with the state of Oklahoma, the American Organ Institute was born.

The plans were admittedly ambitious, but, in Dr. Schwandt’s words, “why not?” In 2007, shortly after the AOI opened its doors, the vision of integrating a fully functioning organ shop into the curriculum of the institute became a reality. Shop director John Riester describes the shop as an “education laboratory” with its primary purpose to provide students with projects and opportunities for broad understanding of the mechanical and technical aspects of a pipe organ. This includes work in the shop as well as regular opportunities to work in the surrounding community with service manager Nathan Rau.

The practical knowledge gained at the shop is important because it gives the student a basic understanding of what to do if an organ has a technical problem—whether during a worship service or during a concert or other public presentation. Mr. Riester also emphasized the importance of organists having that basic knowledge in order to be effective advocates on organ committees and to understand how to better understand organ proposals. Importantly, every student at the AOI, regardless of degree program, must spend a certain amount of time in the shop.

The initial funds designated by OU were originally intended to purchase an organ for Sharp Hall of Catlett Music Center. Instead, these funds were utilized over ten years to develop the shop, hire staff, as well as install an organ in Sharp Hall. One of the shop’s first projects was the creation of Mini Mo—the “miniature” core of M. P. Möller Opus 5819. It was procured almost by chance, before its imminent demolition. OU and University of Pennsylvania reached an agreement, and by February 2007 the Möller pipe organ began to arrive in Norman. Completed in 2009, a smaller version was created first so that a working hybrid concert/theatre organ could be used pending the restoration of the complete instrument. AOI students were involved in every aspect of the project, including rebuilding of chests, winding, and installation of the fourteen ranks that now serve as the concert organ for Sharp Hall.

Mini-Mo, an incredibly versatile instrument, complements the more classical C. B. Fisk, Inc., Opus 111, known as the Mildred Andrews Boggess Memorial Organ, in the cathedral-like Gothic Hall of Catlett. Thanks to the work of students and staff at the shop and tireless development efforts by associate director Jeremy Wance, the number of instruments available to students in the program has doubled. With these instruments in the talented hands of the students, a wide range of music is interpreted credibly and, most importantly, musically.

Work at the shop is complemented by degree and course offerings that range from sacred music and classical organ performance to organ technology and theatre organ. While throughout its long history the craft of organbuilding has been passed from generation to generation, often through apprenticeships, no other program exists that offers the credibility and indeed gravitas of a recognized formal degree. The number of organ companies currently in line to hire one of the organ technology graduates from the AOI—37 firms as of February 2019—speaks to the changing nature of the industry and the necessity of this program.

While accredited degree programs existed for theatre organ in the 1920s during the original silent film era, the study of theatre organ has since that time been the nearly exclusive province of private instructors and oral history. In 2016, Clark Wilson joined the faculty to teach theatre organ as part of the curriculum of the AOI. Under his tutelage, students can learn the fundamentals of theatre organ history, playing, as well as silent film accompaniment. And, as with the focus on organ technology, this knowledge has important practical applications, given the growing interest within the larger musical world in theatre organ, orchestral music, and silent film accompaniment.

One of the unique aspects of the program is that it is home to its very own archives and library. In 2012, the AOI acquired the complete archival materials of the American Theatre Organ Society (ATOS), consisting of a treasure trove of materials such as scores, blueprints, stoplists, correspondence, photographs, and recordings. Currently, more than 350 cubic feet of those materials have been carefully preserved, with inventory lists available online.1 The large collection of glass slides from the silent film era has been a particularly fertile area for research.

In addition to the ATOS collection, the archive houses other significant materials that have been donated to the institute, including the Mildred Andrews Boggess collection, the papers of Dr. Larry Smith (including materials from his teachers Arthur Poister and Russell Saunders), and the complete collection of Möller master player rolls. In 2012, Bailey Hoffner became one of the first graduate assistants to work with the collections, and in October of 2016, she returned to serve as the full-time curator and archivist. She projects a discernible passion for outreach and encourages anyone with questions about the materials to contact the archives and library.2 In Ms. Hoffner’s words, “you don’t have to be a researcher” to take advantage of these special collections, and the wide range of research requests, from students in the program to organ enthusiasts from around the world, is testament to that.

Dr. Adam Pajan, instructor of organ and AOI shop technician, described the institute as the “Willy Wonka” of the organ world, offering the ability to explore virtually anything within the greater organ culture. And that very openness is what has attracted so many students to the institute.

In the years since the AOI welcomed its first students, there has been tremendous growth. Since 2006, the number of students has increased from five to twenty-six, with a current count of eighteen majors (four are doctoral candidates) and eight non-majors. Faculty and staff positions have grown to accommodate the students, with the addition of assistant professor of organ, Dr. Damin Spritzer, and three full-time shop staff. Along with that growth has blossomed a shared passion that the vision of the AOI is helping to ensure that future generations have a thriving organ industry within which to practice.

The AOI has its own goals for the future, and two to three times each year the faculty participate in retreats to revise the one-year and five-year strategic plans, always with the aim of ensuring that everything they do is for the betterment of the students. This includes continued expansion and evolution of the curriculum to address the needs of students in the broadest way possible. The AOI shop looks to continue to expand its education of students on the technology of the organ through apprenticeship programs and through pedagogically significant projects. The archive will continue to preserve, catalogue, and strategically digitize as many parts of the collection as possible, not only to protect the material but also to ensure access to those materials for generations to come.

“This industry is not dying,” observed shop manager and instructor of organ technology Fredrick Bahr. “People are coming along with the same passions that we had, and that generations before us had.” The key is to ensure that our educational institutions are equipped to give students the skills they need to thrive in today’s often-changing musical world. That is, indeed, the true vision of the AOI, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to experience that vision first-hand through the eyes of the students, faculty, and staff.

My visit left me both grateful and inspired. It was clear that the future of the organ industry was in capable hands, both with the talented faculty and staff and exceptional students. But I was also inspired by the talent, camaraderie, and supportive atmosphere that pervaded all aspects of the AOI experience.

In my discussions with the people of the AOI, one word kept coming up repeatedly—family. The students and faculty were passionate in their commitment to the inclusion of everyone within their extended family, and these were not just platitudes offered to an outside observer. To the contrary, the inclusivity, support, and caring was palpable among all of them.

I close by sharing the observations of Dr. Schwandt, whose vision, along with the help and dedication from so many, has created something truly special in Norman. In contemplating what he hopes the legacy of the institute will be, Dr. Schwandt candidly observed:

What I hope we can achieve is to train legions of students who learned how to play music in every way possible, and who learned that they can be greater than they thought. And, I hope that, in whatever way they can have an impact, they leave the world a better place than how they found it. Whether it’s working in an organ shop, playing in a church, teaching, or whatever they may do, I hope they always understand that diligent, hard work will produce excellence. And, excellence will always succeed.

The first squadrons have already left the doors of the AOI and are fulfilling its mission, and many more will follow over the coming years and decades. The diligent, hard work of those who have helped to create and develop the AOI has already paid dividends as seen in the lives and achievements of the students that have been part of the program, as well as the impact the students have had in the industry.

The words of Dr. Schwandt could not ring truer. Excellence will always succeed. It already has, and there is much more to come.

Website: www.ou.edu/aoi.

Interested individuals should contact [email protected] for more information on audition dates, visits, etc.

The author thanks the University of Oklahoma and the American Organ Institute, as well as the many people who gave of their time and shared of their experiences, including Dr. John Schwandt, Dr. Damin Spritzer, Dr. Adam Pajan, Clark Wilson, Jeremy Wance, John Riester, Fredrick Bahr, Nathan Rau, Bailey Hoffner, and Paul Watkins.

Notes

1. http://www.aoi.ou.edu/aoial (last visited February 10, 2019).

2. [email protected].

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.