Johannus installation in the Philippines

Quezon City, Philippines, is the largest and most populated city in metropolitan Manila, with a population of over 2.5 million; at one time it was the capital of the country. In this city is the Central Complex of the Iglesia Ni Cristo (Church of Christ), registered in the Philippines in 1914 by Felix Manalo, and at present administered by the Executive Minister Eduardo V. Manalo. The church has grown to millions of members with congregations in over 100 countries. 

The INC Central Complex includes the central office for the church administration, Tabernacle Hall, College of Evangelical Ministry for future ministers, New Era General Hospital, New Era University, and prominent and rising towards the sky is the largest Iglesia Ni Cristo Temple in the world. Designed by Filipino architect Carlos A. Santos-Viola based on the conception of the then Executive Minister of the church, Eraño G. Manalo, the Central Temple is famous for its Gothic-Moorish architecture, intricate interiors, and its 7,000-seat capacity.  

Under the leadership of Executive Minister Manalo, the church administration set forth in 2012 to study, build, and install a special pipe organ at the INC Central Temple to coincide with the church centennial. The purpose was to further raise the level of worship services, and to praise God with a higher form of hymn singing. This is the first custom pipe organ built for the Iglesia Ni Cristo. We recognized the importance of such a commission and the care and reverence it accorded.

A project of this magnitude required a tremendous amount of planning and coordination. We were pleased to have had the help and assistance of the United States offices of the Iglesia Ni Cristo, coupled with the church administration in Quezon City. Through the course of planning this installation, there were numerous trips, e-mails, faxes, and phone calls that involved the offices in California and Quezon City, Philippines. 

During my first visits, I was able to attend worship services at the Temple. With the members of the congregation and choir in full song, I was able to gauge the acoustics and begin designing a specification that would support their worship. The hymns and music of this church are exclusive to Iglesia Ni Cristo. This is a congregation that worships with full voice; experiencing their services is to be enveloped in worship and praise.

For many years, the organ used by the church was a Hammond electronic organ with its sole flute-biased generator. As opposed to how the organ is typically played in gospel churches, the typical organ registrations emphasized unison pitch and the organ played in a “classical” style with use of the Leslie speakers and mutation drawbars for variation rather than reliance. The organ was used to gently undergird the church music. 

The Central Temple is a massive worship space by any standard. Its architecture is, in a word, stunning. Rich carvings, tracery, and filigree abound in this edifice. Underneath richly brocaded chandeliers, the center core of the Temple seats several thousand; two side chapels alone seat over 1,000 each. Large doors can be drawn closed to divide the Central Temple into three separate spaces. During services, male members of the church are seated on the left, with the women on the right side. The choir loft in the center of the building seats 170. Each of the side chapels contains smaller choir lofts that are utilized for each service and seat 50 choristers each. The organ console sits in the middle of the choir loft with the organist facing outward, without a choir director, during the services. The choirs and musicians are disciplined and well trained to work from music cues honed from rehearsal.

The acoustics of the room are very good due to the hard surfaces, though these are not cathedral acoustics with a long reverb time, but those of a space that is favorable for music and the spoken word. The previous electronic organ was providing enough support for the choir and congregation with two Leslie speakers in this large space. 

When we started to lay out the tonal design of the very first pipe organ for the Central Temple of the Iglesia Ni Cristo, several key points would determine the success of the organ. We needed the traditional resources and chorus structure of a pipe organ for religious use; it would be important to support the flute-biased sounds and dynamics that the church had always known; and most of the organ resources should be under expression for full dynamic control of sound. The organ would also need to play common literature with a main support of resources used for choir and congregational singing. Our task was to supply them with enough variety using the different families of principals, strings, flutes, reeds, and solo voices, and then to fill this large worship space with leading sound.

When the Central Temple was built it did not include a location for a pipe organ. We knew that this required major construction alterations within its building and infrastructure. There was a physical limit to the space that was available for organ chambers without adversely impacting the building’s architectural design. During our visit to the Temple, we completed studies of the sightlines and probable chamber elevations as they related to the organ placement to develop a plan for the organ chambers and the façade that would cover the chamber openings. Working with the architect and other members of the church, we formed a plan for the placement of the organ in the building, so that it would look like it had always been there. This task would need to visually complement the grandeur of the current worship space. 

We knew that if we did not support the two choirs and over 1,000 members in each of the side chapels, the organ would be a failure. We also had a situation where the main choir and central console were around the corner from the chapels. The congregants and the choir in the chapels would need to hear the same dynamics that were heard around the corner at the main console. To solve this problem, we chose a unique solution to the organ division placement. We placed the left and right organ chambers between the main hall and the side chapels. We designed large sets of expression louvers that open to the chapels and the main hall. The organ has 56 swell shade frames that hold 290 individual expression shades operated by multiple motors. These motors were addressed through a programmable expression shade software interface, which allowed an acoustic linear progression with the movement of the expression shoes that was balanced between the main hall and the side chapels. This allows a seamless level of expression. In addition to providing dynamic control of the organ stops, we designed the expression shades to direct the sound to various angles of incidence in the building and through refraction uniformly cover the huge space with sound. (The expression shades were regulated so that the registrations for the organ divisions are acoustically balanced between the Main choir loft and the
side chapels.) 

The unique position of the organ chambers in the room opened the possibility of using the left and right stop resources to provide independent instruments for the side chapels. Through careful stop placement and our scaling choices, we were able to provide a duality of voice for the stop registers. The chapel specifications differ from the main console and are designed to support these spaces when the doors are drawn closed and the chapels become independent worship spaces. When the chapel organs are turned on, the division shades for the main core of the Temple close and only express to the chapel. Both chapel organs can be played at the same time. The left chapel is used for weddings. The specification for this instrument is drawn from the resources of the Swell and String organs. The right chapel is used for practice and rehearsal and draws its resources from the Great and Pedal divisions. 

To cover the large organ chamber openings, the choir loft is flanked with matching façade pipes from the 16′ Principal and 16′ Violone. The building is in a known earthquake area, and there was a concern to assure that the pipes would remain in the organ case. As a redundant safety measure, we designed decorative bands in the case design that retain the pipes in their vertical racks even if there were a failure of the retaining hardware. We built the façade pipes out of a polished metal. Their finish takes on the colors and hues of the lighting and architecture and has a softer look that would not have been possible with painted or poly-chromed pipes. The pipes were built with over-length bodies and toes to fill a 24′ height and sit on a 7′ ledge. The façade is fed with transmission tubes from action boxes located in the enclosed chambers. The construction crew completed all of the millwork and tracery. 

To scale an instrument, we generally bring pipe samples into the room to gauge the necessary scales, wind pressures, and pipe treatments that need to be employed. The planning for this instrument was no different. We took over several pipes that were voiced in the Temple, with several members of our staff gauging the carrying ability of these voices in the room. There was remarkably little acoustical fall-off of these voices, even into areas of the rear balcony. These pipes became the guide in our voicing room halfway around the world. This was an instance where your eyes did not want to believe what your ears would tell you about scaling due to the sheer size of the space. The sample pipes represented the reality of what we had to trust in our tonal design of the organ. Before our final week of voicing on site, 4,000 ministerial students and choir members were invited in so that we could get a crucial sound check. This enabled us to finalize voice strength and gauge the shade openings with a room full of people.

To accommodate the gender division in the Temple, the organ divisions are placed so that they provide the proper weight and color to support the men and women’s voices. The Great and Pedal are in the right chamber with the resources focused towards the men. The Swell and String organ in the left chamber focus their voices towards the women. The Choir/Solo chamber area is in the center behind the choir. The middle of this space contained a large LED screen, which is integral to worship here. The Choir/Solo division has three shade openings that open to the right, left, and above the screen. The expression shades in this division are horizontal, with the first points of reflection being the hard ceiling above the choir and organist. The ceiling acts as a diffuser so that sound envelops the choristers without subjecting them to the large dynamics of this division. This allows the organ and choir to uniformly blend their collective voices for support of worship.

We employed generous scales along with an 8′-weighted specification. Wind pressures range from 6′′ to 16′′, with the highest wind pressures in the Solo division, where the large scales and increased wind pressures allow robust voicing for the flue solo stops, such as the Stentorphone, to sing out over the full organ resources and yet be fully contained with closure of the expression shades. We determined that the woodwind-class reeds would be very important to texture the ensemble. The 8′ Clarinet and the 8′ Oboe add color without being aggressive or too tonally forward. All the organ’s reeds use English shallots, which, with their darker, rounder voices, are more appropriate in this acoustic. 

There was a desire for a large solo reed in our tonal design. The organ is tonally capped with the high-pressure 8′ Tromba Heroique. This stop is placed so that it speaks out into the Temple through the center Choir/Solo expression shades. This stop is extended full-length down to the pedal for the supreme 16′ cantus firmus voice.

To pay homage to the flute sounds that the church previously knew, we included a Wurlitzer-patterned Tibia in the Choir/Solo on 10′′ of wind pressure. The String organ has a Tibia Minor and the Great a Flauto Major. Ubiquitous to the sound of these large, stoppered flutes are the manners in which they are affected by tremolo. Unique to the instruments we have built previously, we provided the organ with dual speed tremolos that could independently be regulated for maximum effect with the flue and reed voices. Again, these stops’ style features their unification across multiple pitch registers, which we included in our specification design.

The String Organ was conceived as an extension of the Swell division that can separately be a floating division via couplers. Its multiple timbres range from the pungent Viole d’ Orchestra to the more neutral Violone with pitch registers from 16′ to 4′. Included in this division was an 8′ Flute Celeste II built in the form of a Ludwigtone. It provides the softest ethereal voice in the organ. The multiplicity of strings in this (the String Organ) division not only are of a singular beauty when massed together and colored with the 8′’ Vox Humana but importantly with their edge tones provide a harmonic bridge (without their celesting voices) between the flutes and principal stops. This allows a seamless buildup of the stop resources in this organ.

The organ windchests are a combination of pallet and slider windchests and unit electro-pneumatic windchests. There are a total of 45 windchests throughout the instrument, fed by 26 wind regulators. Dual-curtain ribbed and floating-lid reservoirs were used for the winding system. The wind is raised through four blowers that generate static wind pressure in excess of 22 water column inches.

The main four-manual organ console is mahogany with ebonized mahogany key cheeks and is in a fixed location in the choir loft. The two chapel consoles were built to be lower profile and are two-manual terrace drawknob consoles. These consoles include inbuilt casters and detachable plugs to allow the consoles to be moved and stored when their use is not required.

With an instrument that had three consoles, three separate specifications, differential expression shade control tables, two-speed tremolos, and a requirement for fiber optic data transmission, we turned to Dwight Jones and Integrated Organ Systems. They worked tirelessly to customize their Virtuoso control system to fulfill the specialized requirements of this instrument.

Preparing the organ for its safe transit required careful disassembly and packing. It was very important that the load centers of the packed shipping containers be carefully calculated. This required that every part of the organ be weighed and a packing plan developed for the shipping containers. There was a narrow window to pack each shipping container so that all of the organ materials would be in transit on the same ship. We built an outline of a shipping container in our factory and virtually “packed” each container within that footprint. This allowed us to rapidly pack each container as the four trucks showed up in order at our shipping dock. The “virtual” containers were purposely staged in the reverse order to facilitate quick loading of the four actual containers, which arrived in succession over a four-day period. The organ weighs 43,543 pounds and required almost 8,000 pounds of packing materials. In all there were 608 individual packages and crates ranging from 5 to 1,380 pounds. There are a total of 3,162 individual pipes in the instrument, which were packed into 87 trays and 39 crates. The organ was packed into four shipping containers to begin its route from the port of Savannah, Georgia, to Manila. Our staff, led by Art Schlueter, Jr., arrived just ahead of the shipment to receive it at the Temple. 

The first challenge to the installation was getting the organ parts into the Temple. The primary worship space is actually on the third story of the building. The stairwells and elevators were too constricted to allow the movement of large items such as the multiple consoles, the main chests, and the façade pipes. Early in our first visits it became clear that the only method for the movement of the mass of organ parts would be to open a large hole in the upper rampart of the building and bring in an overhead crane to hoist these materials. A large scaffold deck was built outside, to allow a landing area for the organ parts that were then manually placed in the building. 

As we arrived to install the organ, major portions of the building were still under renovation to be ready for the centennial celebration of the Iglesia Ni Cristo. Over 100 workers labored around the clock to complete all of the tasks at hand. The members of the Iglesia Ni Cristo administration worked with us to develop a plan where our work could be congruous with their work schedule and provided considerable assistance with the movement of materials from the containers to a marshaling area in the side chapels. Adding to the complexity of the work in the Temple, the scheduled services were ongoing, with only the side chapels taken out of service. We want to thank the Iglesia Ni Cristo for their considerable assistance to assure that we were able to complete our work with the ongoing construction and renovations in the edifice. Without coordination, communication, and support this project could not have been accomplished.

The work to install and voice the instrument was completed in multiple trips that spanned several months of time. The work was completed with two separate teams, with staff members in Georgia providing technical support. The members of the church construction crew assisted with the installation. This allowed us to teach how the organ was installed and how to adjust and regulate the organ parts and actions. Several members of this group showed a specific aptitude for the organ work and were further trained about the pipe organ and its systems. This team now serves in a support role for basic tuning and adjustments at the Temple. With each return tuning trip, our staff has worked to further their skills and abilities.

Members of our firm that traveled overseas to complete this project included Art Schlueter, Jr., Arthur Schlueter, III, Rob Black, John Tanner, Marc Conley, Pete Duys, Bud Taylor, Patrick Hodges, Jay Hodges, and Jeff Otwell. Considerable shop assistance to the completion of this project was provided by staff members Shan Dalton, Barbara Sedlacek, Bob Weaver, Ruth Lopez, Kelvin Cheatham, Mike DeSimone, Al Schroer, Dallas Wood, and Steve Bowen.

When we arrived onsite to begin the installation, members of the church told us that the administration had requested them to treat us like family. Nothing could have been truer. While we were away from family and friends, the Iglesia Ni Cristo worked tirelessly to support us as we worked to install the instrument in their Temple. 

Three weeks before the centennial of the Iglesia Ni Cristo, Executive Minister Eduardo V. Manalo officiated on Saturday, July 5, 2014, at a special worship service at the INC Central Temple In his homily the Executive Minister said, “The installation of the new pipe organ at the Central Temple is in line with the church’s desire to fulfill the biblical teaching that God should be praised and glorified.”

The organ was played by Dr. Genesis Rivera, who said it was a great blessing for him to be the first one to play the pipe organ in that special worship service. The church very generously hosted Art Schlueter, Jr., and Pete Duys to be in attendance. We would like to publicly thank the Iglesia Ni Cristo and its leadership for their beneficence. 

We are humbled to have been chosen for such a grand commission, to build a one of a kind instrument to the worship and praise of God, for the Central Temple of the Iglesia Ni Cristo. 

—Arthur E. Schlueter, III

Cover photo: Courtesy of Iglesia Ni Cristo 

P. J. Swartz, Inc.,
Eatonton, Georgia
St. Andrew’s, Sanford, Florida
The final home for this organ was reached after a long and unusual trip. Originally, this organ served a congregation in Jackson, Mississippi. When the church made the decision to move to a suburban location, the organ was removed and placed in storage for many years. When the time came for them to build a new worship center, they contacted me regarding the possibility of reinstalling the organ in the new space. After study, it was determined that reusing the organ would not be a suitable solution.
Several weeks later, the church contacted me again to inquire about finding another church that might possibly want the organ. As it happened, a large metropolitan church in Tennessee had experienced a fire that destroyed their church and Kimball organ. The church was contacted to determine their level of interest, and as a result, the organ was given to them.
After some time passed, the church in Tennessee needed to rethink their earlier decision. They were not in a position to store or install an organ. It was a difficult time for this congregation, and, ultimately, they decided that they were unable to accept the organ.
After several more months in storage, a deadline approached. The organ had to be removed from the storage facility. With a lack of space in our own shop for a 46-rank organ, we began to wonder if this organ would end up as salvage.
St. Andrew’s had engaged a consultant, Scott Riedel of Scott R. Riedel & Associates. By chance, Scott contacted me to see if I knew about a pre-owned organ that would be suitable for his client. Naturally I was excited by the possibility; however, we had less than thirty days to make a decision. As everyone knows, it is very difficult for a church committee to gather all of its members together to discuss an opportunity like this—especially in the summer months.
The St. Andrew’s congregation is very blessed. Their committee was made up of a group of progressive people who desired to do the right thing and moved forward quickly. They made arrangements to move the organ out of the storage facility and into our shop until final plans could be made.
Scott Riedel devised many good ideas for expanding the resources of this organ to make it suitable for use with the music program at St. Andrew’s. Knowing what was needed to bring the project to completion, it was my decision to partner with Organ Supply Industries. The entire firm was eager to help with every aspect of the project. Through each stage, they were available to provide help and suggestions. The assistance of Organ Supply expands the capabilities of small builders, making these types of projects an easy reach.
The outcome of this project has been rewarding to all involved. We extend special thanks to Dr. R. C. Sproul, senior pastor; Jim Pyrich, organ committee chair; and Dr. Terry Yount, organist at St. Andrew’s. Further recognition is given to Scott Riedel for the endless hours spent dealing with all of the glitches that occurred as we worked to refurbish and install an existing organ in a new building. We acknowledge Randy Wagner and Bob Rusczyk of Organ Supply who never said “no” to any request. And we thank Joe Clipp and Homer Lewis of Trivo who kept working until all details were totally resolved.
I also wish to thank my staff consisting of Nick Schroeder, Robert Gladden, Steve Rainsford, Adam Smith, and Erich Roeder. Their hard work and commitment to doing whatever was necessary in the final days to complete this project, made this beautiful instrument a reality.
—Phil Swartz
P. J. Swartz, Inc.

From the consultant
The Riedel staff has been honored and privileged to serve the congregation of St. Andrew’s, Sanford, Florida. We have done so in the capacity of consultants in the areas of room acoustic design, organ preparation and selection, and sound and video system design. The project has throughout been a study in notable and remarkable contrasts—in nearly every aspect of the congregation’s ministry, functional needs and desires, and the architectural fabric of their worship space and campus. St. Andrew’s is a long-established and large congregation, but their former buildings were too small and uninspiring. Their project goal was to realize a large and commodious traditional and Gothic-styled worship space, outfitted with a full complement of modern technologies. A hallmark of St. Andrew’s ministry is their vast outreach program employing the latest in multi-media technologies; the message, however, is a formal and traditional program of biblical teaching and interpretation.
These contrasts continued throughout the design of the new building. The Gothic-inspired structure—having arches, columns, vaults, transepts, and clerestory windows—is entirely built of modern materials. The architects designed a steel superstructure, and clad it with pre-formed and composite newly developed materials. Our acoustical task was to create a very classic room for natural, non-electronically reinforced choral, organ, and instrumental music with a generous, even, and warm reverberation period. This was achieved by using primarily hard, dense, sound-reflective and reinforcing materials and treatments. Hard composite material finishes, multiple layers of dense wall components, sealed surface textures, and diffuse, multi-faceted surface forms and profiles were employed throughout the space. These were blended by the architects into their design vision. Hard tile, wood, and brick flooring, along with closely spaced structural framing, angled and diffusive wall and ceiling geometries, have all been employed into this classically styled new building. Further, the building is fully equipped with state of the art sound and video system components. The nave’s sound system delivers clear, intelligible speech to worshippers in every corner of the vast, live room. Complete sound and video recording, mixing, and broadcast technologies have been provided to facilitate the many media-based education and ministry programs of this dynamic congregation.
The building design was already in process at the time we were invited to be part of the project team. The overall size, shape, and style of the church were decided upon, and all had the potential to reveal a good acoustical space for traditional worship employing sermon, lessons, prayers, and organ and choral music. We enjoyed an excellent working relationship with the architectural design team. The necessary design detailing and treatments for acoustical success were all embraced and adopted into the fabric of the structure. A significant challenge was to design and prepare spaces for a pipe organ that was not yet selected. Three chamber spaces were adopted into the architectural design. The two primary organ spaces are at either side of the chancel, above and behind the choir singers’ riser plaza. These chambers, which orient the primary tonal projection not “across” the chancel, but instead down the length of the nave, are built to accommodate the Great, Swell, Choir, and Pedal divisions. Chamber tone openings were designed to be as large and non-obstructive as possible. Further, structural steel carriages were created to facilitate cases or cantilevers forward of the chamber tone openings. Chamber interior cladding includes concrete floors and multiple layers of sound-reflective gypsum board, glued and screwed together and to the building’s structure, to maximize tonal reflection and reinforcement. The third chamber, with details similar to the chancel chambers, is located at the rear of the nave for an Antiphonal organ division.
Another significant “contrast” in the organ project was that of a budget too small to fund a new instrument of the quality, size, and scope desired for the imposing new church. In fact, the client’s first request to us was to design the organ chamber spaces for a future pipe organ, but to make the spaces usable for interim digital organ speakers, since a digital organ was all that the budget could support. It was in this context that we began to search for a used pipe organ that might be able to be re-purposed into St. Andrew’s at an achievable price range.
In the course of searching for a potential organ, one of the resources contacted was P. J. Swartz, Inc. of Eatonton, Georgia. Here the remarkable contrasts and opportunities continued! Mr. Swartz knew of a congregation with a sizable instrument that was not going to fit into that congregation’s new building. The congregation, Parkway Baptist Church, Jackson, Mississippi, was willing to give their old Reuter organ away if it would go to a “good new home”. This generous gift allowed the St. Andrew’s funds available to be used to move, restore, augment, and install the instrument. Now the old organ has become new again! The budget, too small to purchase an all-new organ, was sufficient to support the re-purposed instrument. The old organ has a new electrical system, new layout, added stops, new digital features, and it all has been revoiced to fit the new space.
While the relocation of an old organ into a new space is not a new concept or practice under our consultation, we were indeed privileged to work with many contrasting new and old friends throughout this project. Our special thanks to:
• Organ and acoustic committee chair Jim Pyrich, for inviting us into the project, and for his tireless work and friendship throughout.
• Terry Yount, the new organist and artist in residence at St. Andrew’s, for his keen artistic eyes and ears.
• Philip J. Swartz, organbuilder, and his new apprentice, now become associate, Nicholas Schroeder, for finding and installing this notable instrument for St. Andrew’s.
• Organ Supply Industries principal Randy Wagner, for his excellent technical guidance in blending old and new together.
• Walker Technical Company, and their representative Robert Gladden, and the Peterson Electro-Musical Products Company, for their innovative products and technical support.
• Joe Clipp and Homer Lewis at Trivo Reeds, for bringing new tone and life to formerly tired pipes.
• The many church member volunteers at St. Andrew’s who supported and facilitated the project.
• Rev. R.C. Sproul, pastor of St. Andrew’s and visionary church leader.

Scott R. Riedel & Associates, Ltd., Milwaukee, Wisconsin
Project Team
Acoustic engineer, Eric Wolfram
Sound and video system designer, David Hosbach (DH Audio Visions)
Architectural assistant, Timothy Foley
Organ technician, David L. Beyer
Organ consultant, Scott R. Riedel

Photo credit: Nick Bichanich

For information:
P. J. Swartz, Inc.
706/347-2383
<A HREF="mailto:[email protected]">[email protected]</A>
Scott R. Riedel & Associates
414/771-8966
<A HREF="http://www.riedelassociates.com">www.riedelassociates.com</A&gt;
Organ Supply Industries, Inc.
814/835-2244
<A HREF="http://www.organsupply.com">www.organsupply.com</A&gt;

Did you say millions?
It’s like making sausages. You might enjoy the finished product but you don’t want to know what went into it. Each month I sit to write, often after the official deadline has passed. If I’m lucky, I start with an idea that I’ve been chewing on for the past couple days. I’ve written a few notes on the index cards I keep in my briefcase and car, maybe I’ve even recorded a couple audio notes on my cell phone as I walk the trails in the park next door. The paragraphs are flowing before I get to my desk.
More usually, I sit down and stare at a blank screen waiting for inspiration. I play a recording of organ music, trusting that I’ll agree or disagree with something I hear or that the music will bring up a thought that I can spin into an essay. I type the usual heading, and there I sit. It’s like staring at your closet wondering what to wear to dinner. If only that shirt was clean I’d be all set. I fidget. I clean my glasses, I clean the screen of my laptop, I organize the piles of paper on the desk, allowing myself to be distracted by details I’d better get done first. I change the recording and try again. (Some of you have gotten e-mails from me commenting on your recordings—e-mails written as I get traction on my subject du jour (I don’t know the French word for month!)
When I have finished writing a column, re-read it several times, and shared it with my editor-wife for her observations and input, I attach the Word.doc to an e-mail addressed to my friend Jerome Butera, tireless editor of this journal, and press <send>. Often I hear from Jerome within minutes—there’s never any waiting before I know his reaction.
E.B. White was a celebrated writer for The New Yorker magazine and award-winning writer of children’s books (Stuart Little, Charlotte’s Web). Shortly after his second marriage to Katherine Sergeant Angell in 1929 (an editor at The New Yorker) he moved his family from Manhattan to a farmstead in rural Maine and continued his weekly writing for the magazine. Let me be quick to say I draw no personal comparisons to Mr. White, whose writing I admire and enjoy enough to justify periodic re-reading. But I can imagine the anguish and insecurity he felt waiting the days and weeks it took for the 1929-style U.S. postal service to get his manuscripts to New York and his editor’s responses back to Brooklin, Maine. (I know he had those feelings because he wrote about them—thank you, Jerome, for your dependable quick responses.)
Once a piece is in the hands of the editor, a new set of anxieties crops up. You know the thing about a tree falling in the forest—if there’s no one around to hear it, does it make a sound? Of course, we know it does—a sound wave is a physical thing that results from a transmission of energy, whether it’s a tree falling or air blowing through an organ pipe. You can’t stop physics. But it works as a rhetorical question: if no one reads what I’ve written, there’s no exchange of information. So once I’ve pressed <send> I wonder where my thoughts will wind up.

§

In mid-April this year when I wrote for the June issue of The Diapason, Wendy and I were fresh from Easter services at St. Thomas’ Church in New York. I was the one in the congregation scribbling notes on the bulletin and I knew exactly what I wanted to write. I could hardly wait to get home—but wait I did, because after a Midtown lunch we had matinee tickets for a play at the Manhattan Theater Club on East 55th Street in which the son of good friends was a cast member.
It wasn’t until the next morning that I wrote about the majesty and beauty of festival worship in that great church, about the brilliance of John Scott, St. Thomas’ organist and director of music, and about the public appeal from rector and organist for funding to support the commissioning of a (very costly) new organ. I wrote about how organs are likely to be replaced as styles change, even as organists succeed one another, and how the other artwork (reredos, windows, etc.) in places like St. Thomas’ Church is seldom changed.
This is one time that the tree made noise when it fell. Even before I received my mailed copy of the June issue, I had received e-mails and phone calls from friends commenting on what I had written, and in the next weeks Jerome forwarded two thoughtful letters he received from readers of The Diapason. Several important points were raised, and I thought it would be worthwhile to respond directly by way of continuing the conversation.
First, your assignment: re-read this column in the June 2011 issue of The Diapason.
Arthur LaMirande, concert organist from New York City, wrote:

It is with interest that I have read “In the wind . . . ” by John Bishop (The Diapason, June 2011). In particular: his remarks with regard to the Arents Memorial organ at St. Thomas Church, New York City.
Opines he: “We scarcely bat an eye before proposing the replacement of a pipe organ.”
Is he serious? He goes on to say: “Across the country, thousands of churches originally equipped with perfectly good pipe organs have discarded and replaced them with instruments more in tune with current trends, more in sync with the style and preferences [italics mine] of current musicians…”
He continues: “Over the decades of service that is the life of a great organ . . . ” [italics mine].
Now, Mr. Bishop surely must be aware that there are hundreds of organs in Europe that are fully functioning and that have been in existence and in use for centuries! (Never mind mere decades!) Even the organ at Notre Dame, Paris, which has been rebuilt several times, contains pipes that go back to the 18th century.

I don’t think I was opining, rather simply reporting. Plenty of perfectly good pipe organs have been replaced at the urging of a newly hired organist or because the church across the green got a new and larger instrument. It’s true, Europe is rich with hundreds of venerable instruments, and we can celebrate that their artistic content and historic value is recognized, allowing them to stay in situ and in service. And there are many wonderful historic instruments in this country that have survived the ravages of innovation and fad. Equally, I know many churches where early organs by E. & G.G. Hook were replaced by new-fangled Skinners in the 1920s that were in turn replaced by “revivalist” tracker-action organs in the 1970s—a new organ every fifty years whether you need it or not. When I was starting my career, an older colleague gave me this sage advice: never build an organ for a wealthy church. You’ll put your heart into your magnum opus and they’ll replace it during your lifetime.
States Mr. LaMirande:

On May 1st this year, I gave a recital on the Arents Memorial organ at St. Thomas Church. The major work on that program was the rarely performed Chaconne by Franz Schmidt . . . For an organ that “is on the verge of catastrophic collapse” [from the brochure passed out at St. Thomas Church to which Mr. Bishop makes allusion], it seemed to work extraordinarily well for me. With the exception of one cipher on a (non-essential) stop during rehearsal, I had no problems whatever with this organ. It succeeded in doing everything that I demanded of it. And that for a massive work calling for numerous changes of registration!

We might take exception to the phrase catastrophic collapse as used by St. Thomas’ Church. After all, assuming the organ hasn’t collapsed physically into the chancel wiping out the altos in the choir, what’s the big deal if an organ ciphers? (Organists: sorry to say, but there is no such thing as an organ that will never cipher.) Mr. LaMirande experienced a cipher while practicing for his recital, usual enough for any instrument. And if an organ ciphers during worship in a suburban parish church, we might shrug and chuckle, climb the ladder to pull the pipe, and go on with the show.

Keep your pants on.
I’ve found a delightful video on YouTube showing a significant wedding faux pas in which the best man’s pants fall down just as the couple starts to exchange their vows. As you might expect, the groom found that to be pretty funny—hilarious, in fact. The bride joined in, and the church was full of real, honest laughter for quite a while. The minister was a trooper, acknowledging the humor of the situation. You can find the video at <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26a8JITwImQ&gt;. You’ll love it. It’s easy to say “things happen” and enjoy the moment. There’s a nice-looking pipe organ in the church. If any of you recognize it, let me know.
But we have a fresh international example of worship and religious festival in which one would not chuckle at the slightest glitch. On April 29 many (most?) of us watched Will and Kate’s wedding. Lovely couple, weren’t they? Her dress and hair were just right. He had a nice twinkle in his eye, and I enjoyed his little quips to his brother and his new father-in-law. Good thing Prince Harry’s pants didn’t fall down. The television coverage allowed us glimpses into the personal level of the occasion. But this was a big occasion. Heads of state were omitted from the guest list because of ongoing political and military circumstances. The dignity of the nation’s royal family was on display at a time when many Brits are wondering about its future. Heaven only knows how much money was spent. If you include all that was spent by the news media in the weeks leading up to the wedding, the total certainly surpassed the gross national product of many countries. As far as we can tell, it went without a hitch. And the pressure on the staff and officials of Westminster Abbey was made obvious in another wonderful moment immortalized on YouTube when a verger expressed his relief by turning cartwheels across the nave when the whole thing was over. I know I’m giving you a lot of research to do, but don’t miss this one either: <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81Obpxf_pd8&gt;.

Off with his head.
The four-manual Harrison & Harrison organ in Westminster Abbey has 84 stops and was installed in 1937 for the coronation of King George VI. How’s that for pressure on the organbuilder—miss that deadline and you’re in the dungeon. Had that organ ciphered during Will and Kate’s wedding, it would have been reported all over the world. Imagine that service grinding to a halt while some technician raced to the chamber. Seventy-five chefs at Buckingham Palace would have panicked. Think of the soufflés. The Queen’s lunch would be in ruins. I wonder what Katie Couric and Barbara Walters would have said. The pipe organ universal would have a big black eye. And it would not have been a non-essential stop. There can be no doubt that it would have been the 32-foot Double Ophicleide or the Tuba Mirabilis. Vox Angelicas don’t cipher when the pressure is on, and if it had during all that hoopla no one would have noticed. There’s an apocryphal story about a team of voicers (I think they worked for Skinner) finishing an organ. The man at the console shouted, “Is the Vox Angelica on?” From the chamber, “Yes!” “Make it softer.”
While it may be okay for an organ to cipher or a participant’s pants to fall down somewhere else, it is not okay at Westminster Abbey. And St. Thomas’ Church shoulders a similar responsibility for dignity, grandeur, eloquence, and perfection, inasmuch as perfection is humanly possible. The much-altered Aeolian-Skinner organ there is not the artistic equal of the famed and fabled St. Thomas’ Choir, and while the brilliant musicians who play on it don’t miss a beat, we can only imagine what it will be like to experience worship there when the new organ is complete. The musicians there can almost taste it. And the responsibility born by the leadership and membership of that church is heightened by the simple fact that in an age when a pipe organ of average size installed in a “usual” church can cost more than a million dollars, an instrument for such a place as St. Thomas’ absolutely costs many millions.
Samuel Baker of Alexandria, Virginia wrote:

In the June issue, John Bishop suggests that perfectly good pipe organs are discarded and replaced with instruments more in tune with current trends and more in sync with the style and preferences of current musicians because pipe organs are in motion, whereas windows and statues are not replaced because they are static; physically they stay still.
Despite Bishop’s claim that seldom if ever are original design elements integral to the style of the building itself subject to change because they are considered old fashioned, many examples are easily found in my neck of the woods of Federal-style churches being “Victorian-ized” or Victorian-style churches receiving neo-whatever treatments.
And certainly organs are replaced because styles of organbuilding and preferences of musicians change but, rather than ascribe the reason that windows and statues are safe but organs are not to the premise that one is in motion and the other isn’t, I would propose that many more pipe organs are replaced because they were poorly designed, built with sub-standard materials, received little or no voicing, and were wholly unsatisfactory installations in the first place. The same fate awaits stationary items of poor quality and artistic merit with equity.
I agree fully with everything Mr. Baker says here. I appreciate his interest in including these thoughts in this debate. I’ve been in and out of hundreds of church buildings (actually probably thousands, but that sounds specious) and I’ve seen countless examples of beautiful liturgical and architectural appointments that have been discarded in favor of newer, lesser “looks,” and I’ve seen less-than-thrilling original equipment replaced to great benefit. However, what I wrote (page 12, fourth column, second paragraph) is, “But seldom, if ever, do we hear of a place like St. Thomas’ Church replacing their windows or reredos.” The key word is “like.”
I wrote, “Just imagine the stunned silence in the vestry meeting when the rector proposes the replacement of the reredos.” The allusion is to the vestry and rector at St. Thomas’ Church, not the Second Congregational Church in Newcastle, Maine. On Easter Monday I was writing with tongue in cheek—but it’s fun to revisit the image. I don’t know any of them personally, and I haven’t been in their meeting rooms, but I imagine it would be an august group of accomplished, insightful, and influential people sitting at an elegant table in a grand room. And they would be stunned. Images of that reredos have been published on calendars, record jackets (remember those old black LPs?), CD jewel-cases, postcards, and publicity photos for generations. The choir, resplendent in scarlet and white, stands in the chancel with that heap of saints in the background. Replace the reredos? No, Father. It’s staying.
The Aeolian-Skinner organ was famously revised by G. Donald Harrison in 1956, converting the 1913 four-manual E. M. Skinner instrument (91 stops) from symphonic to neo-classical in style. Harrison was personally working on the project, hurrying toward completion in time for the AGO national convention that year. Taxi drivers were on strike and Harrison had to walk many blocks in city heat to get home. He died of a heart attack on the evening of June 14 (93 days after I was born) while watching Victor Borge on television. The organ has subsequently been revised several times. It’s 98 years since Ernest Skinner finished the organ, which has now been altered just about every generation with diminishing degrees of success.

When there’s so much need in the world . . .
Mr. LaMirande’s letter ends:

Incidentally, I can’t resist pointing out that while St. Thomas Church is prepared to spend the extraordinary sum of $8 million the homeless and destitute are ensconced on the front steps of this church every night of the week! . . . How many homeless and destitute could be fed, clothed, and housed for that $8 million?

This is one of the most difficult questions we face as we propose, plan, and create pipe organs for our churches. Of course, it’s the mission of the church to care for homeless, destitute people—to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. It’s also the mission of the church to provide and present worship experiences at every level. The Royal Wedding was cause for national and international celebration, but Oliver Twist and his cronies still haunt the back streets of London. Without the church’s need for illustration of religious texts, tenets, and principles, we would not have the sculpture or painting of Michelangelo, the organ music of Bach, the choral music of Mozart and Haydn, or the Gothic cathedrals. If it had developed at all, without the influence and resources of the church, the pipe organ would be a wholly different entity. And the majesty of our great churches as they serve as figureheads and examples for all worshipful expression supports and inspires the work of the church at all levels and in all places. Those who toil in suburban and rural vineyards travel to the big city to experience “big city” worship in “big city” buildings, just as we marvel in the great museums, theaters, orchestras, and other institutions that can only be supported in a city like New York. I care a lot about the homeless and I try to do all I can to support them, but I don’t go to St. Thomas’ Church to hear a sub-standard organ any more than I want to see plastic flowers on the altar in front of that reredos.
All this talk about expensive art leads us to the world of philanthropy. Any church that plans to acquire a new pipe organ will rely on the availability of a few large gifts to make it happen. I’ve long assumed and often witnessed that those individuals who are capable of making a major gift in support of an organ project do so because of their personal interests. But I’ve been privileged to witness another level of philanthropy that has informed and affected me deeply. Wendy served on the board of a major university for nearly twenty years. During that tenure we became friends with a lovely couple of immense wealth. They are dedicated to philanthropy—she focuses on social and humanitarian projects and he supports the arts. Their names are at the top of donor lists for every show in town. Several years ago during dinner at our house, the husband told us how a repertory theater company had approached him asking for a significant grant to support the production of a controversial play that tackled some of our thorniest social issues. He disagreed with a lot of the content and was uncomfortable with most of it, but he thought it was his responsibility to make the gift anyway. He said something to the effect of, “I knew if I gave them the money I’d have to go see the play.”
I was impressed and moved by this story, and in the years since I’ve often reflected on the nature of philanthropy and how much we all benefit from it. Whether it’s a church organ, a statue in the park honoring a public servant, an academic building, or a shelter for the homeless, the world relies on philanthropy. The trick is to be sure that all the bases are covered. 

How is it made?
We’re driving on a highway and a flat-bed truck with WIDE LOAD banners whips by in the other direction. The trailer is carrying a machine, big as a house and covered with a tarp that taunts as its corners flap in the wind. Aloud, I wonder what it’s for, and my wife smiles—or is it smirks? There’s a gap in the fence around a city construction site, and I stop to peer through to see what’s going on. Or I’m waiting in an airport (that’s what airports are for—I think they should call them waitports) amid hundreds of fellow waiters deep in laptop DVDs and MP3s. Important businessmen are having loud imaginary conversations on their iPhones, but I’m captivated by the panorama of activity outside. Each airplane is surrounded by a fleet of odd-looking trucks. By now, I think I know what each one is for, only because I’ve spent so much time watching them.
I’m fascinated by factories. I’ve seen steel, beer, automobiles, railroad cars, earth movers, and cigarettes being made. I’ve seen dollar bills, postage stamps, and newspapers fly through enormous printing presses at incomprehensible speeds. In the seventies, I rented a house from a guy who was a tool maker in an auto assembly plant. One December day, he invited me to a company Christmas party. We walked in to the din of the assembly line, and I quickly realized that the party was unofficial. Cars were being made by workers who were more focused on holiday cheer than the task at hand. I was secretly glad I was not planning to order a car that week.
Sesame Street was a staple in our house when our kids were young, and I loved the many segments of the show taking viewers on factory tours. Joe Raposo (brilliant composer of the show’s theme song, along with such classics as It’s not easy being green) wrote It takes a lot of little nuts to make a jar of peanut butter, a catchy tune that accompanied video shots of peanuts cascading down chutes into massive grinders and gooey paste blurping into jars as they shot along conveyor lines. Watching soda pop going into bottles at two or three a second, you might expect to hear the clanking of glass, but they shoot along obediently with only the whirr of the machines.
Organ builders spend much of their careers learning how to make little widgets one at a time, and figuring out how to make them better and more economically. I don’t say cheaper, because it’s a rare organbuilder who looks for cheap. Making a pipe organ part economically implies some kind of continuum that includes cost of material, time for manufacture, and artistic content. Just because you built a tremolo for less money doesn’t mean it’s going to “trem” musically. If you’ve developed a part that you know you’ll need by the thousand, you develop the ability for mass production. A tracker organ might need two or three hundred squares—if you’ve got a good design, why not spend a week making enough for the next ten organs? Or if someone else makes them in greater numbers for less money per piece, why not buy them and use them in your organs?
Another case in point is the huge parts that comprise a large organ. Building just one 32-foot wood pipe is a huge undertaking that takes hundreds of board feet of lumber, hundreds of clamps, and plenty of person-power. Just turning a pipe to wipe off the glue takes several people. At the Organ Clearing House, we know that a 32-foot wood stop automatically makes a second semi-trailer necessary. Think of the floor space you need to make something like that.
Wal-Mart tops the list of Fortune 500 companies with 1,800,000 employees. Compare that to the city of Philadelphia with 1,500,000 residents. Ford and General Motors both top 300,000. I do not have exact statistics at hand, but I’m pretty sure that no modern organ building company employs more than 150 people. Off the top of my head and counting on my fingers, I can think of fewer than ten American firms that employ more than twenty people. By far, most modern organ companies comprise two or three workers.
A big early twentieth-century firm like Austin, Hook & Hastings, Skinner, Möller, Reuter, or Schantz had dozens, in some cases hundreds of workers. The factories were divided into small shops that specialized in windchests, actions, consoles, or pipes. The woodworking shop built casework, made wood pipes, and provided milled pieces for the console and reservoir shops. A factory superintendent managed a production schedule that called for all the components of a given organ to arrive on the erecting floor where the instrument was assembled and tested before being shipped, and an installation team would meet the shipment and install the organ.
So a worker at Hook & Hastings might have spent his entire working life making keyboards. He wouldn’t be considered an organbuilder by modern standards. He might not have had any idea how a windchest works. But boy could he make keyboards. One of my colleagues talks about having tracked down one of the legendary, now very elderly women who glued pouches in the Skinner factory. While he was undoubtedly looking for hints about what machines and jigs and they used, she seemed to say that they just glued them. I doubt that she could tune an organ pipe, but boy could she glue a perfect pouch, and boy could she do it hundreds of times each day.
Which is the better organ? Is it the one that’s made from stem to stern by two or three dedicated “all-round” organbuilders, or is it the one that’s conceived by a salesman, designed by a team of engineers, endowed with standards and procedures established by the genius who founded the company, and built by a large group of people, each an expert and specialist in one facet of the trade? History has proven that both scenarios can produce wonderful organs.

Supply and demand
I’ve been thinking about organ shops large and small because I just returned from a delivery tour that included visits to two large companies that are important suppliers to the pipe organ industry. The Organ Clearing House is involved in two projects that involve renovation and installation of historic organs, and these companies are adding their vast resources to our work. A. R. Schopp’s Sons of Alliance, Ohio, is an important supplier of new organ pipes. They also produce windchests, wind regulators and reservoirs, casework, and swell shutters. Organ Supply Industries of Erie, Pennsylvania (known across the trade as OSI), does all of that. In addition, OSI fills an essential niche as suppliers of widgets and doo-dads—the countless catalogue numbers refer to chest magnets, leather nuts, voicing tools, organ blowers, leather, wiring supplies, specialty lubricants, valves, and the squares I mentioned earlier. It is the rare American organ builder who does not rely on OSI for something.
I drove a truck filled with large components from the two organs, loading in Deerfield, New Hampshire, and Melrose, Massachusetts, on a Tuesday morning, and driving (in accordance with Department of Transportation rules) through heavy rain as far as Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, where I spent the night. What had been rain in Pennsylvania was ice in Ohio, so Thursday brought a drive through rural countryside festooned with beautifully crafted ice formations, and low-hanging tree limbs slapping the side of the truck body. I spent Thursday afternoon with the people of A. R. Schopp’s Sons, and drove on to Erie, where I spent the night before visiting OSI on Thursday morning. Early morning television revealed the wisdom (or luck) of the schedule—northeast Ohio was blanketed with heavy snow on Thursday, and I spent the rest of the trip leading the storm east. And here’s a comment on the cost of doing business: my 1,800-mile trip consumed nearly $700 worth of diesel fuel.
I had substantive conversations at both factories that gave me new insight into the importance of their role in our trade. The phrase “supply house” can stir up negative connotations. I’ve used it myself to imply cheapness: “They replaced it with a supply-house console . . . .” Plenty of organs have cheap replacement “after market” consoles, but that’s not a fair way to judge the contemporary work of such important companies.
Let’s talk about the electro-pneumatic chest magnet. A century ago, much of organ building was prototypical. Most organs were incorporating the new-fangled electro-pneumatic action. In fact, at that time, the application of electricity was new throughout the industrial world. So naturally, organbuilders developed their own versions of the electric chest magnet. Some had one-piece cast-metal housings, while some were assemblies that combined punched brass plates, drilled maple blocks, and wood screws and tacks. Over the ensuing decades, the best features of each style were slowly combined, until today, most new electro-pneumatic organs incorporate chest magnets from one source.
The modern small organbuilding shop is challenged by the struggle between artistic content and commercial reality. No client purchasing an organ will agree to a price “to be determined.” Any organbuilder is expected to state a price before work starts. It makes no sense for a small shop to mess around developing the ideal chest magnet to complement their artistic philosophy when a century of research and development provides a universal model with space-age specifications at mass-market prices with the help of FedEx.
But there is another side to this issue. You can go into a Crate & Barrel store in Texas and buy a half-dozen beautiful wine glasses, take them home and enjoy them as part of your home, and then with a pang of disappointment see the same glasses on the table of a friend in Seattle. Or notice that the books featured on the front table at Barnes & Noble on Union Square in New York are identical to those in a shopping mall in suburban Phoenix—as if tastes in reading would be the same in any two places. It’s a natural impulse for an organbuilder to make his products unique—you feel a little pang when you see the same stuff you use in an organ built by another firm.
Is the magnet the artistic core of the organ? How many other little parts could be uniform through a variety of organ companies before the instruments all blended into one? How do we define the parameters for performance of the pats in an organ? One way to judge the performance of an electric or pneumatic organ action is the repetition rate—how fast can the note repeat? (The real key to fast repetition is quick release, not fast attack.) A standard answer is sixty repetitions per second, a speed faster than an organist can go, faster than a pipe can speak—in short, fast enough so the magnet would never be the weak link. Would it be worth the time and expense to spend a couple months developing a new magnet that could do sixty-five? Would the player be able to tell?

While the two companies I visited last week have different priorities and personalities, in my judgment they share a common philosophy. Because they work in large volume, they can afford sophisticated modern automated equipment that is beyond the reach of a small shop. But what they really offer is service. An organbuilder can choose to purchase a mass-produced reservoir from a list of sizes in the catalogue, or order one that’s custom built to specifications for a particular organ. And a small organ shop can view a supplier as an annex capable of providing anything from a box of screws to a complete organ.
These venerable companies employ engineers who advise their customers about the use of their products. They can help with the design of custom parts and components. And they work very hard to be sure that the quality of their products is high enough to complement the quality of the work of their customers, the American organbuilders.
Last year the Organ Clearing House completed the renovation of a three-manual Casavant organ. Because the organ was being moved to a totally different architectural environment, we provided a new case with new façade pipes. The case was built by another supply company, QLF Pipe Organ Components of Rocky Mount, Virginia. OSI supplied the polished pipes. Before and after photos show what “supply house” really means. (See “Here & There,” The Diapason, April 2008, p. 10.) It’s the next best thing to running a company with a hundred cars in the parking lot and a roster of specialty departments.?