Johannus installation in Illinois

James B. Hartman is Associate Professor, Continuing Education Division, The University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Canada, where he is Senior Academic Editor for publications of the Distance Education Program. He is a frequent contributor of book reviews and articles to The Diapason.

Organ enthusiasts who wish to learn about organs far outside their immediate vicinity have at their disposal a number of search engines to survey the Internet, such as Alta Vista, Google, InfoSeek, Lycos, WebCrawler, and Yahoo; however, these are neither easy nor efficient for this purpose. A particularly effective source is offered by the Dutch magazine, het ORGEL (the ORGAN), a publication of Koninklijke Nederlandse Organistenvereniging (KNOV, i.e., Royal Dutch Organists Association); this is Europe’s oldest magazine on organ art: <www.hetorgel.nl&gt;.

The organ links of het ORGEL are in three categories: Countries, Related Instruments (Carillons, Barrel Organs, Harmoniums, Theater Organs, Harpsichords), and General Information (General, Composers, Liturgies, Music Software, Organists Societies, Organ Music).

There are links to organ sites in 65 countries throughout the world: Algeria, Argentina, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Belgium, Bolivia, Bosnia, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, China, Colombia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Ecuador, England, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Guatemala, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Ireland, Isle of Man, Israel, Italy, Jamaica, Japan, Korea, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Moldavia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Russia, Scotland, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Ukraine, Uruguay, U.S.A., and Zambia.

The relevant information in each country is classified under six headings: General, Organ Builders, Persons, Churches and Concert Rooms, Conservatories/Music Schools/Universities, and CDs/Books. The form of the entries in the different countries remains largely the same throughout but with local content appropriate to the particular country. Many sites include photographs of organ pipe façades and consoles.

An overview of the Web sites of several selected countries follows (some locations have more than one Web site).

U.S.A. The General category, with 147 entries, includes the Web sites of the chapters of the American Guild of Organists, along with a listing of other miscellaneous organizations, societies, topics, and publishers (including The Diapason). It also contains a Web site devoted to the largest pipe organs in the world, but this matter is not easily resolved due to some debatable technical distinctions.1

In the Organ Builders category there are 175 Web sites, including those of such well-known manufacturers as Aeolian-Skinner, Fisk, Holtkamp, Keates-Geisler, Möller, Reuter, Schlicker, and Wicks.

Under Persons the 187 Web sites include familiar names of many organists and concert artists: E. Power Biggs (1906-1977)2, Virgil Fox (1912-1980)3, Edwin H. Lemare (1865-1934)4, Rosalyn Tureck (1914-2003)5, and others. A typical site in this category includes a biography, a résumé, church appointments, compositions, repertoire, concerts, tours, recordings, a discography, testimonials, reviews, writings, links to related sources, and sometimes audio clips.

The Churches and Concert Rooms category consists of an alphabetical list of 614 locations throughout the country. New York City has 23 sites, including Alice Tully Hall in Lincoln Center, as well as Riverside, St. John the Divine, and St. Thomas churches, among many others.

There are 94 Universities and Music Schools, including Indiana University School of Music, New England Conservatory of Music, Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Peabody Conservatory, and schools at many state universities.

In the CDs and Notes category there are 98 Web sites of music publishers, bookstores, catalogs, record companies, and music societies.

A small category, Music Programs, consists of nine sites, including a software distributor and other sources.

Canada. The General category, with 33 entries, consists of the Web sites of 13 local chapters of the Royal Canadian College of Organists, two branches of the Royal School of Church Music, and the sites of other organizations, societies, publishers, festivals, and miscellaneous topics. A particularly ambitious Web site, Organs of the United States and Canada Database, is intended to provide a single, consistent, accessible, historical source of the organs constructed or installed in the United States and Canada since the arrival of the first imported instrument in the colonies; this listing of about 90,000 instruments and 1,800 builders is accessible only by inquiry to the site originator in Seattle, Washington.

In the Organ Builders category there are 26 sites, including Canada’s leading builder, Casavant (three sites), along with other prominent firms like Guilbault-Thérien, Keates-Geissler, Létourneau, Wilhelm, and Wolff.

Under Persons 29 organists have Web sites; there is a historic entry for the Lynnwood Farnam (1885-1930) Society. A separate listing of Organists in Québec is also provided.

The Churches and Music Rooms category includes information on 70 locations in major cities across the country. A relatively new organ is the Davis Concert Organ, four manuals, 96 stops, in the Francis Winspear Music Centre in Edmonton, Alberta, installed in 2002 by Orgues Létourneau, Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec.

In the category of Universities/Music Schools six are identified, all in eastern provinces.

Under CDs and Books there are seven publishers or distributors.

England. The General category, with 58 entries, includes the Web sites of organizations such as the Guild of Church Musicians, Royal College of Organists, Royal Society of British Organists, along with associations and societies in various cities, and other specialized organizations. Several magazines or other publications devoted to the organ or organists are also listed here.

In the Organ Builders category there are 39 names, including the Incorporated Society of Organ Builders, Harrison & Harrison, N. P. Mander, and Henry Willis & Sons.

Under Persons 68 organists are listed, including such notable players as David Briggs, Sir Peter Maxwell Davies, Christopher Herrick, John Stainer (1840-1901), Gillian Weir, Carol Williams, and Arthur Wills.

The Churches and Concert Rooms category consists of 290 locations in major centers throughout the country, some in universities such as Cambridge, and others in cathedrals such as Coventry, Durham, Exeter, Gloucester, Leicester, and Liverpool. Royal Festival Hall, St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle, and Westminster Abbey are also found here.

In the category of Music Schools there are 12 sites, including the Royal Academy of Music, Royal College of Music, Royal School of Church Music, and similar academies connected with educational institutions.

Under CDs and Books there are 43 Web sites of music publishers, bookstores, catalogs, record companies, and music societies.

France. The General category, with 79 entries, includes the Web sites of associations and societies--”Les Amis de l’Orgue”--in various cities, reports of organ festivals and seminars, and miscellaneous topics, such as French Organ Music and pages devoted to organ magazines.

In the Organ Builders category there are 49 sites, a few with historical significance: Jean-André [Johann-Andreas] Silbermann (1678-1734), Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-99), and Dom Bédos de Celles, L’Art du Facteur d’Orgues, in addition to present-day firms and the comprehensive Groupement Professionnel des Facteurs d’Orgues.

Under Persons 48 names are listed, including such familiar figures as Pierre Cochereau (1924-1984), Jean Guillou, Naji Hakim, Jean Langlais (1907-1991), André Marchal, Daniel Roth, and René Saorgin; there is a separate site for Parisian Organists that lists the organists who served at churches in Paris from the 13th to the 21st centuries.

The Churches category covers 414 establishments in the major cities. Paris includes Notre Dame, Sacré-Coeur, St. Eustache, St. Sulpice, St. Clotilde, St. Gervais, and Madeleine, all familiar on account of their associations with famous organists of the past; there is a separate site for organs of Paris. In the category of Schools, there are only three, led by the Conservatoire de Paris.

Under CDs, Books, and Sheet Music, there are 25 Web sites of music publishers, suppliers of music publications, and record companies.

Germany. In the Organ Builders category there are 234 names, some of which may be familiar to North Americans: von Beckerath, Gabler (1700-1771), Glatter-Götz, Klais, Laukhuff, Schnitger, Silbermann, and Walcker. Here, as in some other countries, there is a comprehensive Web site devoted to organ building; a number of entries are related to historic builders of the 18th and 19th centuries.

Entries in other categories--General, Persons, Churches, Conservatories, CDs and Books--are appropriate to Germany.

Australia. The General category has 10 Web sites that include several societies, including a branch of the Royal School of Church Music, England.

There are only two Organ Builders in the country; both are small firms that construct small organs and provide restoration and maintenance services.

In the Churches/Concert Halls category there are 51 Web sites. These reveal that several town halls have organs: Adelaide, Melbourne, Perth, and Sydney. The activity of external makers is evident in the case of Melbourne, where the five-manual Hill, Norman & Beard instrument, acquired in 1929, was rebuilt by Schantz, U.S.A., commencing in 1999. A special Web site, Second Wind, reports that elegant furniture was made from timbers taken from the Melbourne Town Hall organ when it was renovated in 2001. A monastery library in Arcadia also has an English organ by T. Atterton: two manuals, 11 stops, 1893, later restored in Melbourne.

In the Schools category there are six sites, one for the Sydney Conservatorium of Music, the others connected with the music faculties of the major universities.

South Africa. The General category has five Web sites, including one of the Johannesburg Organ Society, which promotes all aspects of the organ, including recitals, workshops, concerts, and visits to significant instruments.

There are only two firms listed in the Organ Builders category, specializing chiefly in the restoration, rebuilding, and maintenance of existing instruments.

In the Churches category there are eight entries. One of these, St. George’s Cathedral in Cape Town, has an organ that originally was in St. Margaret’s Church in London, England (next to Westminster Abbey). In 1909 a later four-manual, 61-stop organ was donated to St. George’s by a London businessman who had connections in South Africa. The largest organ in the country is in Feather Market Hall, Port Elizabeth, with 5,508 pipes.

The two Universities/Music Schools are University of South Africa, and University of Cape Town where the Baxter Concert Hall has a three-manual, 49-stop von Beckerath instrument, inaugurated in September 1977 (von Beckerath died on 20 November 1976 before the installation was completed).

This survey will conclude with a few miscellaneous items concerning organs in several selected countries.

In Denmark the Frobenius firm has completed slightly more than 1,000 organs since it was founded in 1909; of these, five are in England, two in U.S.A., and five in Japan.

Hong Kong, a special administrative region of China, has one organ in the Hong Kong Cultural Center.

In Ireland the Pipe Organ Site, in addition to providing information on organists, organ specifications, organ builders, and recordings, contains a section on organ jokes.6  

The Isle of Man Organists Association held an Organ Festival in 2002 that included recitals by Gillian Weir and others, workshops, and a gala dinner (£12 including wine!).

The independent state of Malta, consisting of three islands south of Sicily in the Mediterranean Sea, has seven organ builders and restorers; a recent project was the restoration of the ‘Platania’ organ, originally built in Sicily in 1726.

In The Netherlands two famous organ builders are found among the 42 firms listed: Schnitger (1648-1719) and Flentrop (since 1903). Stinkens, organ pipe makers (since 1914), is also active there.

The Philippines has two old organs, two organ builders, and two churches; it recently held its 29th International Bamboo Organ Festival.

In Zambia, an independent country (formerly called Northern Rhodesia) in east central Africa, the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Lusaka has a two-manual, 25-stop organ (builder not identified). In addition to containing information on the organ, the church’s Web page contains sermons, anniversaries, church news, prayer requests, and other information of interest to the parishioners.

The immense amount of organ information contained in the worldwide Web sites defies even a summary description. Given the diversity of languages among the different countries, not all of this information is easily available to English-only readers for that reason, although some sites provide an English version in addition to the language of the country of origin. On the other hand, it is possible to recognize the stop names of organs in most cases on account of their widespread similarity throughout the world. The curious reader can only speculate on the vast number of organs in these countries that do not have Web sites! Visiting the various Web sites, with their colorful and attractive home pages, also provides aesthetic experiences of diverse organ designs. The reader will discover that some Web sites are unavailable or have moved; many are church pages, where the organ is included but is secondary in importance.

KNOV’s assembly of Web sites provides a valuable cultural resource that will be useful for a variety of purposes: recreational exploration of the world of the organ on the Internet, comparative research on organ specifications and the historical backgrounds of the instruments, and perhaps for planning future journeys to the countries where existing organs can be found, inspected, and perhaps played.              

Alaska officials ponder
only road to Juneau

Juneau, Alaska, is currently accessible only by airplane or boat. The city of 31,000 is the capital of the state, but many Alaskans have never been there because of its remoteness. That could change a little if the state government’s plans for a 65-mile, $281 million highway survives in the federal transportation bill, The New York Times reported.

The highway would connect Juneau to the rest of the state’s highway system through Canada, but some residents vehemently oppose the idea. They like Juneau’s remoteness. If Alaskans wanted a more accessible capital, they could move it to Anchorage or another city, but several attempts over the past 40 years to do just that have failed. Even with the highway, the trip from Juneau to Anchorage would be 800 miles.

The planned highway is a proposal of Gov. Frank Murkowski and U.S. Rep. Don Young, who is influential in transportation policy as chairman of the House Transportation and Infrastructure Committee.

Critics say the road would cost too much and possibly take funding away from other needed infrastructure projects. They also say the proposed alignment would threaten bears and other animals in the Tongass National Forest and would be dangerous in winter because of avalanches.

A draft environmental study is scheduled to be released this month. If the highway is not built, Juneau will remain the only state capital that cannot be reached by car.

ARTBA grassroots program
wins Telly Award

The American Road & Transportation Builders Association (ARTBA) has won the 2004 Telly Award for the multimedia training program it produced this year to help construction-industry workers across the nation get involved in federal legislative advocacy in support of increasing federal transportation investment.

The prestigious award, founded in 1979, annually showcases the best work of the most respected advertising agencies, production companies, television stations, cable operators and corporate video departments in the world.

More than 10,000 entries from all 50 states and five continents are submitted annually. On average, only about 7% of those entries are selected as winners. The Telly Awards are affiliated with the Center for Creativity, an organization that was founded in 1963 to research and study advertising, design, production and journalism.

ARTBA developed “Mobilize! A Grassroots Legislative Action Program for Transportation Construction Firms,” which includes a 10-minute DVD, CD-ROM, PowerPoint presentation and instructional booklet. It is believed to be the first multimedia package developed by a national transportation association to facilitate grassroots training.

The program provides information about how decisions made by Congress and the White House affect the transportation construction market. It also offers employees tips on how to get involved in helping shape federal policies that will benefit their future livelihoods.

ARTBA engaged Washington, D.C.-based LAI Creative Media for the production work, and the DVD features innovative grassroots techniques that have been used successfully by Harrisburg, Pa.-headquartered Stabler Cos./PSI and by Oldcastle Materials Inc., which is located in Washington, D.C.

The association distributed nearly 1,500 kits to companies throughout the country with the goal of bolstering activities in support of a significant increase in federal transportation investment as part of the TEA-21 reauthorization.

Cement demand up in 1st quarter

Portland cement demand increased 14.8% in February, followed by a 23.8% increase in March, according to The Monitor, published monthly by the Portland Cement Association (PCA). On a seasonally adjusted annualized basis, March’s reading of 125.9 mmt is a single-month record. Year-to-date consumption is tracking 12% above last year.

Blended cement was rather flat in March at -0.3%. Year-to-date consumption is down 12.3%.

Masonry cement consumption increased 28.3%, following significant gains in January and February. Year-to-date consumption is 21.3% above 2003 levels.

Cement and clinker imports continued to grow at 7.9% in February and 11.5% in March. Year-to-date, imports are up 13.7% from the first three months of last year.

PCA’s statistics reflect the latest data from several government-issued reports.

Environmental streamlining
a success in marshland highway

Involving all the interested agencies early allowed the Federal Highway Administration and the Louisiana Department of Transportation and Development (LADOTD) to finish the environmental study of a replacement highway through a sensitive marsh area in just 44 months, according to a “Success Story” on the website of the American Association of State Highway & Transportation Officials.

The new Louisiana Rte. 1 will provide enhanced access to the vital oil, gas and fishing industries in the gulf area. It also will provide a more reliable evacuation route in case of a severe storm such as a hurricane while preserving the marshes that buffer the area from those gulf storms.

The new four-lane highway will replace an old two-lane structure. Instead of a lift bridge over Bayou Lafourche at Leeville, there will be a new fixed, high-rise bridge. The road will stretch 16 miles from Fourchon to Golden Meadow.

Ronald Ventola, chief of the Regulatory Branch of the New Orleans District of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, credited the FHWA and the LADOTD for understanding the sensitivity of the habitat and being willing to adjust the construction plan. He also gave the resource agencies credit for understanding the need for the highway and the lack of good alternatives.

One accommodation to the habitat was the decision to use “end-on” construction except for the high-rise bridge near Leeville. According to the end-on construction method, the heavy equipment working on Rte. 1 will sit on a platform on concrete piles instead of in the marsh. A crane on the platform will drive piles and place segments of the viaduct bridge then move to the next platform and repeat the process.

The FHWA and the LADOTD also undertook a study of the effect on the marsh grasses of the shade from the new structure.
The marshes are already threatened. In the past 50 years, 1,500 square miles of Louisiana’s gulf wetlands have disappeared through erosion and subsidence. In 2000, while FHWA and LADOTD were preparing the Environmental Impact Statement for Rte. 1, another 164 square miles of the salt marsh suffered a severe dieback of marsh grass. With the continuing erosion of the coastal marshes, the existing highway has become increasingly susceptible to flooding during storms.

The agencies that participated in the planning included the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the National Marine Fisheries Service, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and others.
Those involved in the process said the cooperation and mutual respect among the agencies proved the U.S. DOT could streamline the environmental review process with the least effect on the environment.

The new La. Rte. 1 will become part of the National Highway System in view of its intermodal link to the U.S. energy supply.

Protection Tip of the Month

Many eye injuries on construction sites result from flying wood dust and other debris like paint chips, dirt and concrete particles. Solvents, paints and adhesives used in construction can be toxic to the eyes and skin. Eyewashes and drench showers should be in place to mitigate such hazards at heavy construction sites. Equipment ranging from bottle eyewashes through portable stations to plumbed fixtures is available to meet the unique needs of your work site. And an updated American National Standard for emergency eyewash and shower equipment includes minimum performance requirements and installation, maintenance and training specifications. ANSI Z358.1-2004 may be ordered by contacting ISEA, 1901 N. Moore St., Suite 808, Arlington, VA 22209 or 703/525-1695 or visit www.safetyequipment.org.

HIGHWAY NAMES
IN THE NEWS

Association news >>>>

JCB Inc., Savannah, Ga., has restructured its North American sales and marketing: Bob Wright will head dealer development, remarketing, governmental sales and business planning; Bruce Narveson has been named vice president of sales for the Northeast region; Jan Nielsen is now general manager for the Central region; David Hahn has been named general manager of the Western region; Ron Fulmer is now general manager for Canada; and Gordon Henderson will continue as vice president of sales for the Southeast region.

Meris Gebhardt has joined the sales staff at Tracker Software Corp., Snowmass Village, Colo.

PBM Concrete, Rochelle, Ill., has merged into J.W. Peters, Burlington, Wis.

JLG Industries Inc., McConnellsburg, Pa., has made a binding offer to purchase Delta Manlift, a Tonneins, France, subsidiary of the Manitowoc Co. Inc. JLG also will acquire certain intellectual property and related assets that will allow it to relaunch selected models of Manitowoc’s recently discontinued Liftlux aerial work platforms at a later date. Scott Brower has been named vice president of marketing and market development at JLG.

Anthony E. Fiorato, president and CEO of Construction Technology Laboratories, Skokie, Ill., has been elected president of the American Concrete Institute, Farmington Hills, Mich.

The American Society of Safety Engineers, Des Plaines, Ill., has been named secretariat of the American National Standards Institute’s A10 Accredited Standards Committee on Safety Requirements for Construction and Demolition Operations, which aims at protecting workers and the public.

Vernon Wehrung, president of Modern Precast Concrete, Ottsville, Pa., has been elected chairman of the board of the National Precast Concrete Association, Indianapolis.

Tim Gillespie of Sika Corp., Lyndhurst, N.J., has been voted a fellow of the International Concrete Repair Institute.

Engineering news >>>>

C. Diane Matt has joined Women in Engineering Programs & Advocates Network as the first executive director.

Arthelius “Trip” Phaup, P.E., is relocating to Ralph Whitehead Associates’ Atlanta office to assume the duties of Transportation Group leader.

James Rowan has been named area manager for the Philadelphia office of Parsons Brinckerhoff Quade & Douglas Inc. Parsons Brinckerhoff has appointed Mary Clayton North Carolina area manager.

HNTB Corp., Kansas City, Mo., has appointed Mary Axetell senior vice president. The firm also has appointed four vice presidents: Uri Avin, Rhett Leary, Jim Riley and Mark Urban.

Ben Berra of Skelly and Loy Inc., Harrisburg, Pa., has been designated by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and the Pennsylvania Fish and Boat Commission as a qualified bog turtle surveyor in Pennsylvania.

Raymond F. Messer, P.E., has been named by Texas A&M University’s Department of Civil Engineering as the recipient of the Friend of the Department 2004 Award. Messer is president and chairman of the board of Walter P. Moore.

Horner & Shifrin Inc., St. Louis, Mo., has named Jamie McVicker, P.E., transportation/civil project manager, as an associate of the firm. Lisa E. Fennewald, P.E., also has been named associate and promoted to assistant project manager.

KS Engineers, Newark, N.J., has added Eugene W. Little and Eileen Della Volle as vice president of business development.
URS Corp., Seattle, has named Dave Alford manager of the company’s Pacific Northwest region.

Michael D. Spitz, P.E., has joined McMahon Associates Inc. as a senior project engineer in the firm’s Cape Coral, Fla., office.
At Carter & Burgess Inc., Kenneth Carper, P.E., CPSWQ, has joined as a vice president and unit manager of the Raleigh, N.C., Transportation Programs Unit, and James “Woody” Woodruff, P.E., has joined as a senior project manager in the Salt Lake City office.

Is it real?
Fifteen or twenty years ago there was an ad campaign for Memorex® cassette tapes in which various setups were created to compare “live” music with recorded music to see whether both would break a piece of fancy stemware. A popular singer would be featured offering a terrible, powerful high note, and inevitably the glass would shatter.
What did it prove?
I’ve heard some singers who could make me cringe, but how plausible is it that the actual, acoustic human voice would break a glass? Conversely, I wonder if any other recorded sound played back with enough wattage would break the glass—a hummingbird’s wings for example or a cat on a hot tin roof. I think the Memorex demonstration was at least a little bit disingenuous, and of course we heard the whole thing through whatever speakers came with our television set. Television advertisements for televisions imply that what you see on the screen may be better than real life, but again, your appreciation of the ad is limited by the quality of your present TV.
The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000) defines the word virtual: “1. Existing or resulting in essence or effect though not in actual fact, form, or name . . . ” and “2. Existing in the mind, especially as a product of the imagination.”
I introduce the word virtual in this context of what I might call the “unreality of reality.” In recent years we’ve been given the phrase virtual reality, defined in the same dictionary as “a computer simulation of a real or imaginary system that enables a user to perform operations on the simulated system and shows the effects in real time.”
An oxymoron is not a person addicted to painkillers, it’s a “rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are combined.” To my ears, virtual reality is an oxymoron.

Let’s be real.
We might imagine that Bach would have stopped at 175 cantatas if he had been subject to phone calls from the clergy, or Mozart’s 30th symphony would have been his last had he been distracted by television, or—God forbid—video games. But simple things like hot water in the house and electric lights are taken for granted, and more complicated things like computers have become something close to necessities. I’m in favor of technology. The other day I stumbled over a box of detritus stored in an organ chamber by a long-gone organist. I was amused to see a 56K compact disc. 56K? How Stone Age. There’s a half-used 100-pack of 700MB CDs on my desk. Big deal. I replaced my previous 2GB laptop with a 60GB job because of the number of photos I carry around. There’s a 2GB memory card in my camera. What’s next? Remember NASA engineers using slide rules during Apollo flights? (I know that’s true because I saw it in a movie.) With a $400 GPS we have more navigation ability in a 20-foot motorboat than the entire British Navy had during the Napoleonic wars. How much more computing speed or data-storage capacity do we need?
Apply that same question to cameras (mine has more mega-pixels than yours), automobiles (mine has more horsepower than yours), or cell phones (mine’s a camera, a calculator, a calendar, an alarm clock . . . ). How much more can they offer before they stop getting better?
Many of us in the organbuilding world are devoted to the pipe-organ-technology of the early 20th century—what Ernest Skinner considered adequate console equipment should be good enough for anyone. But let’s remember that hundreds of terrific Hook organs were replaced by Skinner’s new-fangled electric things where the organist was 40 feet away from the instrument. What makes the early electro-pneumatic pipe organ the ideal? How many organbuilders and organists disdained Skinner’s innovations as superfluous or unnecessary? “If God had intended us to push pistons we would have been all thumbs.” At what point in the development of any technology does one take a snapshot and declare the ideal, after which there’s no need for further development?

Electronics in the worship space
It’s more than 50 years since churches began purchasing electronic organs to replace pipe organs. I think many, even most of us will admit that the 30- and 40-year-old models that are still laboring along are pretty poor. While they have pipe organ names on their stop tablets, they never did sound like organs. They were cheaply made and not durable. A church I served as music director had a 20-year-old electronic in the chapel that wasn’t in tune, according to the technician couldn’t be tuned, and needed parts that weren’t available. Have you ever tried to get a three-year-old computer repaired?
While it’s always risky to generalize, it seems to me that the average church that was once proud of owning a modest pipe organ is inclined to buy an electronic console that emulates a 60- or 70-stop “real” organ. What sense does it make to have an “organ” with 32¢ sounds, batteries of reeds, and secondary and tertiary choruses in a sanctuary that seats fewer than 200 people? Is it so you can play music that was intended for buildings ten times the size? It’s a violation of scale, an anomaly, and artless expression. As I wrote a couple months ago, “the Widor” doesn’t work in every church.

The Virtual Pipe Organ
Trinity Church (Episcopal), Wall Street, New York, is a prominent, beautiful, historically significant edifice that houses a large and vibrant parish with an extraordinary music program. According to the church’s website , the parish was founded “by charter of King William III of England in 1697.” The present Gothic Revival building, designed by Richard Upjohn, was consecrated on May 1, 1846. The website includes an Historical Timeline that tells us that some of the church’s vestrymen were members of the Continental Congresses, that the parishioners were divided politically as the Revolutionary War progressed, but that the clergy sided with the crown. An American patriot, the Rev. Dr. Samuel Provoost, was appointed rector in 1784, and the New York State Legislature “ratifie[d] the charter of Trinity Church,” deleting the provision that asserted its loyalty to the King of England.
In 1770, just 28 years after Georg Frederick Handel’s Messiah was premiered in Dublin, Ireland, it received its American premiere at Trinity Church. Today’s spectacular and highly regarded Trinity Choir is heard on many recordings. Their annual performances of Messiah are legendary throughout the city. Bernard Holland of the New York Times wrote, “All the ‘Messiah’ outings to come in the next two weeks will have to work hard to match this one.” And in 2005, the Times called Trinity’s performance of the great oratorio, “the ‘Messiah’ to beat.” (Now there’s an image!) What a wonderful heritage.
On September 11, 2001, Trinity Church assumed an essential national role by chance of place. Located adjacent to the World Trade Center, the church and its people were thrust into the center of that tragic story. St. Paul’s Chapel, part of Trinity’s “campus” and located a couple blocks away, became an inspiring comfort station for firefighters and other emergency workers. Through the ensuing months, as the rubble was unraveled, the chapel was staffed by the people of the church who provided food, refreshment, and a resting place for the rescue workers. The response of the clergy, staff, and parishioners to that national catastrophe was as inspirational as it was essential.
At the moment of the attack, a service was in progress in Trinity Church, the organ blower was running, and the great cloud of dust that filled the entire neighborhood found its way into the organ. It was later determined that the organ could not be used without extensive cleaning and renovation. A temporary solution was offered. Douglas Marshall and David Ogletree, dealers of Rodgers organs in New England, had been developing the “Virtual Pipe Organ,” using a technology they named PipeSourced® voices. A large instrument using this technology was installed at Trinity Church as a temporary solution while the church researched the condition of the Aeolian-Skinner.
A year or so after the Virtual Pipe Organ was installed, I attended a service to hear the instrument and was impressed by the volume and intensity of the sound. The massive building was filled with the sound of an organ. There was no distortion. People were singing, and I’m willing to bet that many of them were well satisfied, even thrilled by the sound. I had not expected to be convinced that the Virtual Organ would really sound like a pipe organ. In fact I’m not sure how I could eliminate the bias of a lifetime as an “acoustic organ guy.” As full and intense as the sound of the Virtual Organ was, it was not the sound of a pipe organ. It lacked the essential majesty of presence, the special physicality, the particular “realness” of the sound of a great pipe organ.
The experience of listening to the Virtual Organ might be compared to listening to a recording of a great pipe organ, as the sound of both comes from speakers. I understand that sampling technology is not the same as recordings, and I expect that proponents of the virtual organ will object to my analogy, but it’s those speakers that make the essential difference. Sound coming from a speaker will always be distinguishable from sound coming from organ pipes.
I can recall the depth of my impressions when as a young teenager I first heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra playing in Symphony Hall. I think I expected the huge volume of sound and the intensity of the differences of the timbres, but I had no way of anticipating the presence, the majesty, the physicality of all that acoustic sound as enhanced by the magnificent room. Oh, those double basses!
There are few musical presentations more expensive than a symphony orchestra (except opera and ballet in which the symphony orchestra is combined with the theater). A hundred serious musicians on stage in a 300-million-dollar concert hall require important organization to sustain, but we don’t hear a move to replace that experience with digital sampling. We want to hear the real thing. The symphony orchestra and the pipe organ are special in our culture because they’re so expensive. I don’t mean that the money itself is impressive—but that the money represents how majestic the expression is.
In conversations with church members I frequently hear people say that the sound of a digital instrument is “good enough” for the untrained ear. One might respond, unless your fiancée is a jeweler, why bother with a real diamond? She’ll never know the difference.
I don’t want to eat a chemically produced substitute for lobster. I want the real lobster, and for goodness sake, don’t mess with the butter!
I read on Marshall & Ogletree’s website (www.marshallogletree.com) that they sample complete pipe organs: “PipeSourced® sounds, which are skillful note-by-note, stop-by-stop recordings of famous pipe organs (90% of them vintage Aeolian-Skinners), contribute unprecedented virtual reality to Marshall & Ogletree instruments, as well as to its combination organs and custom additions for new and existing pipe organs.” That’s a long, long way from the previous generation of sampling techniques, and proverbial light-years from the early rounds of tone-generators on which the development of the electronic instrument was founded.
There have been a number of articles written in praise of the Virtual Pipe Organ, including Allen Kozinn’s review of a recital played by Cameron Carpenter published in the New York Times on July 7, 2007, with the headline: “A ‘Virtual’ Organ Wins New Converts at a Recital.” And Dr. Burdick has written an apologia defending the church’s decision to sell the dismantled Aeolian-Skinner, retain the Marshall & Ogletree Virtual Organ, and to commission another virtual instrument for St. Paul’s Chapel, which concludes,
Trinity Church is proud of its role in developing the “virtual pipe organ,” which could only exist in this new century because of the continuing exponential growth of computer speed and memory. Without the brilliance of Douglas Marshall and David Ogletree, whose research began in 1997 to develop an entirely new approach to the digital organ, we could never have achieved an instrument such as this. Furthermore, without Trinity Church having taken advantage of its historic opportunity by daring to consider such an interim instrument, the music world would not now have this dramatic new 21st century success: like an automobile with horsepower but no horses, a virtual pipe organ with musical potentials beyond anyone’s imagination.

There’s little doubt that Trinity’s Aeolian-Skinner organ was not as distinguished as many other instruments produced by that firm. (It’s at least a little ironic that there’s agreement that Trinity’s Aeolian-Skinner organ was less than great, but it’s replaced by something based on sampling “vintage Aeolian-Skinners.”) There’s no doubt at all that the Virtual Pipe Organ represents but a fraction of the cost of commissioning a Real Organ. After all, we live in the age of the seven-figure organ. There’s no doubt that Trinity Church has realized a significant short-term economy by eliminating the immense maintenance budget required by a large pipe organ. In fact, Dr. Burdick reports that they had been spending $56,000 annually to care for the Aeolian-Skinner—a specious argument in that there are many much larger and much older organs that are maintained effectively for less money. The organ world rumor-mill, that most active of subcultures, has reported many different numbers representing the cost of the Virtual Organ. I don’t know what the actual price was, but it’s safe to guess that it was a significant number of hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Is it true stewardship of a church’s resources to spend such a volume of money on artifice? For centuries, Christians have given their all trying to make their worship spaces approach their respect for their faith. Huge treasures were spent in 12th-century France building cathedrals that still inspire us. Fortunes have been spent on stained-glass that fills church interiors with magical, mystical light. Trinity Church Wall Street is a spectacular edifice with beautiful vaulted ceilings, stained-glass windows, carved wood architectural elements and furniture. Hundreds of important preachers, humanitarians, and politicians have spoken there. To walk inside is to respect the care and vision with which the place was created. To walk inside is to find respite from a frenetic city and inspiration from all that has happened there. To walk inside is to worship. This is not a place for artifice.
As I’ve spoken about Trinity Church, I encourage you to read about St. Paul’s Chapel at www.saintpaulschapel. org/about_us/. Built in 1766, it’s the oldest public building in Manhattan that’s been in continuous use. Here’s an excerpt from that website:

George Washington worshiped here on Inauguration Day, April 30, 1789, and attended services at St. Paul’s during the two years New York City was the country’s capital. Above his pew is an 18th-century oil painting of the Great Seal of the United States, which was adopted in 1782.
Directly across the chapel is the Governor’s pew, which George Clinton, the first Governor of the State of New York, used when he visited St. Paul’s. The Arms of the State of New York are on the wall above the pew.
Among other notable historical figures who worshiped at St. Paul’s were Prince William, later King William IV of England; Lord Cornwallis, who is most famous in this country for surrendering at the Battle of Yorktown in 1781; Lord Howe, who commanded the British forces in New York, and Presidents Grover Cleveland, Benjamin Harrison, and George H. W. Bush.

St. Paul’s Chapel stands as a shrine for all that happened in that neighborhood and to this country on September 11, 2001. This is also not a place for artifice.
In his Apologia, Dr. Burdick reports, “Because of insurance matters after 9/11, there was no question that we’d have to wait five to seven years for a decent replacement pipe organ, during which time I felt that we’d be starving for good organ sound.” Fair enough. That’s why the purchase of the Virtual Pipe Organ for temporary use was a good solution. But I am sorry that such a church in such a place with such a history would miss their opportunity to add not to the virtual world, but the real world of the pipe organ.

John Bishop is executive director of the Organ Clearing House.

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

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

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

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

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

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