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One stop shopping

The age of the internet has brought us a new world of shopping. Tap an icon on your phone, type a few letters in a search window, click “buy now,” and Bob’s your uncle. If you are buying something easily recognizable or definable, you are not likely to be disappointed, and if you are disappointed, most online retailers are good at managing returns or substitutions. I am concerned about the environmental cost of all that shipping, delivery, and packing materials. I am dumbfounded by how much bubble-wrap and how many air pillows I take out of oversized boxes to find the little thing I ordered. On the other hand, I am embarrassed to remember how many times I have left a workshop or jobsite to drive to a hardware store because I needed ten of a certain size of screw.

It is no surprise that UPS and FedEx are the two largest trucking companies in the United States, and I am willing to bet that Amazon will pass one of them now that they are building their own fleet of trucks. They cater to our Amazon and eBay habits, rushing essentials to us a day or two after we place an order. In Maine, we have a half-mile driveway, as do many of the houses on our rural road, so Phil, our UPS driver, has to drive a mile on our private road to deliver to our house. He typically arrives around 6:00 p.m., and it takes him two hours to finish his route after he leaves us.

There are two kinds of birds . . .

. . . those you can eat, and those you cannot. I maintain the website for the Organ Clearing House, updating it every couple weeks as organs come and go, and I receive all the inquiries generated by the “Contact” page. There are two kinds of inquiries, those from people who know about pipe organs and those who do not. They ask when it could be delivered; some have asked if next-day delivery is available. As it happens, no. It is not like ordering shirts from L. L. Bean where you check a box for a monogram and another to state that it is a gift. Maybe I should add boxes on our website so you can check boxes to choose Kirnberger, Werckmeister, or equal temperaments.

I correspond with dozens (hundreds?) of people each year who are wondering how to acquire a pipe organ. Only a fraction get traction, and I can often tell from the first email or phone call if it is not going to lead anywhere. When I receive an inquiry from an organist and we correspond several times without anyone else being mentioned, I ask if we could have a conference call with some other people from the church. That winnows out those who are dreaming and have not mentioned the idea to anyone else.

I think the inquiry from someone who admits to not knowing much but sincerely wants to acquire an organ is a special responsibility. I try to respect their intention while at the same time describing the process clearly. In those instances, the first issue is almost always cost. During a preliminary conversation, I cannot be specific about the potential cost of an organ for a given church, but I can say that a modest-sized organ for a local church costs hundreds of thousands of dollars. Often enough, that is the end of a conversation, but if we get past that barrier, we can start to get creative.

Sometimes, initial inquiries refer to specific organs on our website, listing three or four instruments that have nothing in common. Once again, this is not like ordering shirts. We need to have a thoughtful conversation about what would constitute an ideal organ for a given church. We need to consider architecture and engineering. The organ should complement, even improve the interior of the church, and the building must safely sustain the weight of the organ. We need to consider the musical traditions and preferences of the parish. Is strong hymn singing the main goal? Complicated and sophisticated choral accompaniment? Recital literature? How might the placement of the organ enhance the church’s worship? What should the organ include to make it as useful as possible?

For many congregations, these are questions that are best answered with the help of an organ consultant, independent of the urge to promote a particular builder or type of organ. The most important role of the consultant is to educate a church’s organ committee or task force so they know what to ask when finally talking with potential organ builders.

Now we’re getting somewhere.

Most of the conversations that lead to the purchase of an organ involve my making a site visit, which is the only way for me to get an accurate sense of a building and its community. I charge a fee plus travel expenses—a church’s willingness to bear some expense clarifies their intent. During those visits, I have my eyes open for where an organ might be placed. The location of the existing or previous organ might not be the best place in a room for an organ. I think of this as harvesting space. Where could we place a blower and wind supply? Where should the console be placed so the organist can see the choir, the clergy at the altar, and the bride waiting at the back of the church? Where should the organ be placed so its sound projects well, so it is safe from roof failures, so it looks its best? How can we ensure that the organ will be surrounded and supplied by temperate air to promote stable tuning? Answers to all these questions inform me and the people of the church as to what would bring the best result.

Tracker or electric?

The Revised Standard Version of the Bible was published in 1952, and the New Testament was further revised in 1972. My father, rector of my home church, was introducing the new revision when a parishioner famously declared, “If the King James Version was good enough for Jesus, it’s good enough for me.” I supposed she did not realize that Jesus could hardly have been aware of a book published in 1611.

Many organists have strong opinions about what type of organ they prefer or prefer not to play. “If a tracker organ was good enough for Bach, it’s good enough for me.” Before about 1900, there was no choice. Every organ had mechanical action, and every organ was hand pumped. There are countless examples of ancient organs that were placed in the ubiquitous rear gallery, high up on the central axis of the room. I suppose many of them were built without anyone wondering where the organ would go.

The introduction of electric actions and electric blowers at the beginning of the twentieth century introduced a new world of possibility for organ placement. The keyboards no longer needed to be physically attached to the body of the organ; a console could even be placed hundreds of feet from the instrument. It became common in England and the United States to place an organ on either side of a church’s chancel, with the choir divided between the two sides, and the console placed on one side. With electric playing actions that plan became very common, and as I wrote in the March issue of this journal, when my home parish was facing the end of time for its 1905 “chancel plan” Skinner, they chose to install a mechanical-action organ by C. B. Fisk, Inc., in a new rear gallery. That is a room of Gothic style and proportions, so the classic placement in a rear gallery was very effective.

That church, the Parish of the Epiphany in Winchester, Massachusetts, has two classic locations that are ideal for organ placement. Perhaps the next organ there will be another chancel plan job. After all, the Fisk will be fifty years old next year. But it is more usual for a modern American church to have only one proper spot for an organ if there is space for a pipe organ at all.

Many church buildings cannot accommodate a mechanical-action pipe organ, no matter how much the organist might want one, but in those that could have either type, there is plenty of room for discussion. Well-built modern tracker-action organs are not clunky and awkward to play, and even very large organs with mechanical action allow ease of control and expression. They can have electric stop actions with complex combination actions, and some modern builders produce dual-registration systems with both mechanical and electric stop actions.

Electric and electro-pneumatic organs allow lots of versatility of registration and freedom of placement. You can have special effects like antiphonal or echo divisions, and you can “borrow” stops from one place to another using unit actions. Thousands of small unit organs with three or four ranks of pipes spread across multiple keyboards at many pitches have been built, and they are useful in many situations, but in larger electric-action organs, there are useful borrows, also called duplexes, made famous by Ernest Skinner and other innovative twentieth-century builders that do not compromise the integrity of the organ’s choruses. One of Mr. Skinner’s classic borrows is found in a Swell division with an 8′ Trumpet and maybe 4′ Clarion along with 8′ Oboe. The Oboe is extended to 16′ pitch and made to be playable independently in the Pedal at 16′ and 4′ pitches. That one rank forms the quiet solo voice on the Swell, the 16′ member of the Swell reed chorus, a gentle 16′ reed for the Pedal, especially useful as it is under expression, and a 4′ Pedal solo reed, ideal as the cantus firmus in a Baroque chorale prelude, with tremulant. That is a lot of bang for the buck. If there was space and budget for an independent 16′ reed, Mr. Skinner often included a Waldhorn 16′ that was duplexed to the Pedal.

Who’s going to build it?

Addressing all those issues and answering all those questions informs the organ committee as to which organbuilders should be asked for proposals. If the building could accommodate both tracker or electric-action organs, you would do well to have proposals for each. This is when your consultant can be most useful, guiding you through a list of possible companies considering their strengths and weaknesses.

Last summer, we replaced the roof and painted our house in Maine. Contractors visited to give us estimates, taking a few measurements, and scribbling on a pad taken from the dashboard of the pickup truck. There was no charge to us, and almost no cost to the contractor to provide those estimates.

It does not work like that when estimating the cost of a new organ or organ renovation. The builder will spend at least a day studying the building, several days if it is a large building and a potentially complex organ. Besides the time spent on the road, there are travel and lodging expenses. All that is followed by many days back at the workshop calculating, sketching, drawing, and writing. It is common for an organbuilder to invest $10,000 or more to develop a serious proposal for a large organ. Who should bear that expense? When soliciting proposals, some churches offer to reimburse travel expenses. Some organbuilders respond to invitations by asking for a fee.

How many proposals do you need? If an organ committee is well educated and can choose builders who are well suited for the project at hand, three should be enough. If the church feels the need to compare more than three proposals, they should be prepared to pay fully for all of them to avoid spending people’s time unnecessarily. As an organbuilder and organ contractor, I relish the opportunity to work with a thoughtful and well-prepared committee, even if I do not get the job, and I appreciate their respect for my time and effort.

Go Yuja.

A few months ago, I wrote about a concert Wendy and I attended at Tanglewood, when the scheduled piano soloist was replaced by the brilliant young Chinese pianist Yuja Wang playing a piano concerto by Liszt. I have been following Ms. Wang on social media for years; she has a formidable presence on Facebook where she (or someone working with her) posts videos of her performances, photos of her terrific (some say outlandish) performance costumes, and photos of her at leisure, always glamorous, always smiling.

On Saturday, January 28, Ms. Wang stunned the music world with her marathon performance of all four of Rachmaninoff’s piano concertos with the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin at Carnegie Hall. But wait, there’s more. She also played Rachmaninoff’s Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini. Five of the most monumental and difficult of all compositions written for piano and orchestra were presented in a single four-and-a-half-hour concert. 

In his review published on January 29, Zachary Woolfe of The New York Times wrote, “She didn’t seem to have broken a sweat—neither on her face nor in her music-making, which had been calmly dazzling all the way through the final flourish of the Third Concerto at the program’s end.” “Calmly dazzling.” How many of us would like to be described that way? You can read the entire review at https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/29/arts/music/yuja-wang-rachmaninoff-ca…;

Woolfe continued, “To these scores’ vast demands she brought both clarity and poetry. She played with heft but not bombast, sentiment but not schmalz. Her touch can certainly be firm, but not a single note was harsh or overly heavy; her prevailing style is sprightly, which is why the concert didn’t feel like eating five pieces of chocolate cake in a row.”

After all that, her encore was “Dance of the Blessed Spirits” from Gluck’s Orfeo et Euridice, a simple, tender melody that floated from her huge piano like the smell of a flower garden on a gentle breeze. The last paragraph of Woolfe’s review is a lovely comment on the juxtaposition of unimaginable virtuosity and stunning concert attire. Go read it for yourself.

I do not know the name of the technician who prepared that piano for this incredible concert. Although Zachary Woolfe promises that Ms. Wang does not bang on the keys, she sure gives them a workout. The speed of repeated notes, the breathtaking passages in octaves, and the clarity of the instrument in tender moments would not be possible without a brilliant technician. And after four-and-a-half hours of the most vigorous playing, the tuning of the piano was still “concert fresh” for the sweet little Gluck encore. We know the stories about how Franz Liszt had a spare piano ready for the second half of the concert because he beat the daylights out of the first one. How he would have loved to play on Ms. Wang’s Steinway.¹

I comment frequently to friends and colleagues and in writing about how fortunate we are to have so many brilliant virtuosos playing the organ. Like Ms. Wang and her Rachmaninoff, those organists blaze through the most difficult works of Reger and Demessieux without breaking a sweat. It is exciting to have the intricacies and majesty of those seemingly unattainable works revealed to ordinary listeners. Let’s keep building organs for them to play.

Notes

1. In the February 2021 issue of The Diapason, I wrote about Nanette Streicher,  “who built Beethoven’s pianos.” She inherited a piano factory from her father at the time when artists like Beethoven were venturing out of private salons and into concert halls seating 800 or 1,000. Realizing that pianos of that time were not adequate for developing virtuoso playing or for projecting in larger halls, Streicher increased the scaling of strings in her pianos that made necessary heavier cases and stronger interior bracing and frames. Her innovations led to today’s powerful instruments.

Giants among favorites

I am often asked if I have a favorite organ, a single instrument that stands out among the multitude as the best, the most expressive, the most impressive, among the hundreds I have visited, played on, or worked on. I am never able to answer clearly by citing a single instrument. There are organs that have been important in my life, but great life experiences do not necessarily focus on superb organs. I am very proud of some of the projects I have done on simple organs that I was able to expand and improve so the congregations that own them were thrilled with the result.

I have heard some of our finest musicians play thrilling programs on magnificent instruments and come away from those experiences with gratitude for a life surrounded by great musicians and great organs. I have been moved by beautiful playing on exquisite smaller instruments and amazed by the relationships of beautiful organs with the acoustics and architecture of their buildings.

I have fond memories of the organs I knew when I was a teenager first learning to play, some of which I still see regularly, and memories of rich evenings with beloved colleagues—sitting with an organ, listening to its tones, experimenting with its mechanics, marveling at its design, historical importance, heritage—and then retiring to a restaurant for a great meal. I have visited many organs nearing completion in colleagues’ workshops and then heard them as finished instruments in their “forever homes.” And as director of the Organ Clearing House, I have learned that what seemed like a forever home for an organ can vanish, leaving the organ homeless. I am especially proud of some of those when we were able to find new homes for them and see them restored for a second century of use.

There are dozens, hundreds of organs I can think of that I love and respect as great technical, musical, artistic achievements, but there is not one that I can point to as the best or as my favorite. I will cite a few standouts.

Warner Concert Hall

I was an eighteen-year-old incoming freshman at Oberlin in November 1974, my third month as a grown-up organ major, when the grand Flentrop organ was dedicated in Warner Concert Hall. I was fortunate to have grown up in Boston where I heard many wonderful new mechanical-action organs, but the Flentrop dazzled me. Painted red and blue and wearing gold negligee, it looks fantastic in the mostly whitish room. I did the hard work of practice, lessons, studio classes, and required performances including my senior recital on that organ. After a long absence I had a chance to visit it again last summer, and as you read this, I will have attended the fiftieth anniversary celebration of that organ over the weekend of November 15, reuniting with dozens of friends, classmates, and colleagues.

Basilica of Saint Martin

I visited Stefan Stürzer at Glatter-Götz Orgelbau in Pfullendorf, Germany, in September of 2019. Manuel Rosales was there working on the earliest stages of the monumental organ they are building together for Trinity Church, Wall Street, in New York City. Stefan, Manuel, Glatter-Götz’s then-new employee Felix Müller, and I had a chance to visit the Josef Gabler organ (completed in 1750) in the Basilica of Saint Martin in Weingarten, Germany. The only time we could schedule our visit was during a Mass on a Friday afternoon, but since the organ gallery is very high in the rear of the building, we were able to walk around chatting. In between leading hymns, psalms, and incidental music, the organist opened panels to show us inner workings, and he made a point of demonstrating some of the unique sounds of that remarkable organ, especially the haunting Vox Humana in the Brüstungspositiv (Rückpositiv).

There is a fascinating legend regarding that Vox Humana that had Gabler struggling to recreate the human voice exactly, and one attempt after many others fell short. The devil offered a deal: consign your soul to the devil, meet in a prescribed lonely place in the forest, and you will receive the secret for the perfect human voice, which turned out to be a piece of metal to be used to build the rank. It is not clear how Gabler got out of that pickle, but the organ was successful enough that the abbot presented him with enough wine to fill the organ’s largest pipe. (If the pipe was twenty-four inches in diameter and thirty-two feet long, that would be around seven-hundred-fifty gallons.) The name of the city and abbey gives away the source of such a plentiful supply. I remember that as a remarkable encounter with a spectacular organ in the company of admired colleagues, pretty heady stuff. That night, Felix took the photo of me that shows every month at the top of the right-hand page of this column.

Saint-Sulpice

The Cavaillé-Coll organ at Saint-Sulpice in Paris, France, is widely regarded as one of the most important and influential organs in the world. Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré filled that organ bench for a hundred years as they taught generations of students. Imagine hearing Widor’s “Toccata” from the Fifth Symphony in that church for the first time. “Oh Maître, I hope you’ll play it again.” I attended a recital there played by Gillian Weir and could do nothing but weep. Putting my fingers on the keys played by Widor and Dupré for thousands of Masses and countless hours of practice was both humbling and thrilling.

Saint James

When I was working for John Leek in Oberlin, Ohio, around 1980, we renovated a large Wicks organ in Saint James Catholic Church in Lakewood, Ohio, with three manuals and twenty-eight ranks. It was located in an ample and high loft at the rear of the church with a small two-division sanctuary organ burrowed into the reredos, an unremarkable organ except that it was in a huge, resonant church and was a product of the period when Vincent Willis III of the great eponymous British firm was working at Wicks influencing their tonal schemes.

There was a lot of unification in the organ, so there was a lot of wiring to do, much of which I did alone in a Zen state, sorting and soldering row after row of wires while listening to a gaggle of women with an occasional added man reciting the Rosary for an hour after the end of the 8:00 a.m. Mass. By the time the project was finished, that sequence of prayers was forever etched in my brain, and when I hear it today, I can smell the soldering iron.

I mention this organ because it opened my twenty-something, tracker-action, early music eyes and ears to a new understanding of Romantic music. One afternoon I was playing the ubiquitous Widor “Toccata” (he sure did play it again, and so has almost every organist since), reveling in the effect of the piece in that vast rolling acoustic. I was used to playing it on smallish tracker organs that made it sound like pelting marbles on a metal roof. So that’s what it’s supposed to sound like. Maybe there is something to this music.

“The Busch”

E. Power Biggs lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he was neighbor to great thinkers like Arthur Schlesinger, John Kenneth Galbraith, and Julia Child. After working with G. Donald Harrison of Aeolian-Skinner to create an “experimental organ” in Harvard University’s Busch-Reisinger Museum (now known as Busch Hall), Biggs commissioned a three-manual, mechanical-action organ by Flentrop Orgelbouw of Zaandam, the Netherlands, which was installed in the gallery of the resonant hall in 1957. That instrument quickly became world-famous as Biggs recorded there his brilliant and influential series of LPs, E. Power Biggs: Bach Great Organ Favorites. I was deeply influenced by those recordings, and I have met countless other organists “of a certain age” whose life paths were set by those recordings. As a teenager I heard Biggs play several recitals there, memories that have stayed with me for over fifty years, and I have visited the organ several times since. It is impossible to overstate the impact of the Flentrop organ on American organ building at that time, as the renaissance that was the revival of the classic craft was gaining traction.

Trinity on Copley

I worked at Angerstein & Associates in Stoughton, Massachusetts, between 1984 and 1987 until Daniel Angerstein closed the workshop to become tonal director for M. P. Möller in Hagerstown, Maryland. Dan and I worked out that I would assume the many service clients that led to the founding of the Bishop Organ Company. Jason McKown was a legendary old organ technician in the Boston area who had worked directly and personally with Ernest Skinner and told endless stories about Mr. Skinner and many famous organists and organbuilders. He was over eighty years old and eager to retire as curator of the marvelous double organ at Trinity Church on Copley Square in Boston, where there is a four-manual instrument by the Skinner Organ Company in the rear gallery and a three-manual Aeolian-Skinner in a chancel chamber. Jason had been caring for the organ for over fifty years. The building is a heavy, dense, grand place with interior decoration by John La Farge, and the organs sound spectacular there. Brian Jones, the organist there and an old friend, introduced me to Jason, and I became curator of the organs.

Trinity Church has long been famous for noontime recitals every Friday, and I was there early every Friday morning for two hours of tuning. It was my habit to listen to Red Barber and Bob Edwards after the 7:30 a.m. headlines on National Public Radio in my car with a cup of coffee before going inside to tune.

Those Friday noon recitals meant I heard different organists play the organ every week. Some players were swallowed up by the complexity and sophistication of the big double organ with myriad controls and combinations. Others managed to tame the beast, and it sometimes seemed that the organ somehow knew when the person who slid onto the bench was going to give it a great ride. Over a period of about ten years, I heard more than 200 recitals there. Of course, there were many repeats, but hearing so many different approaches to a single organ was an important part of my learning.

A couple doozies

Once I was established at Trinity, Jason walked me the half mile up Huntington Avenue to The First Church of Christ, Scientist, known familiarly as the Mother Church, home to Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1203, built in 1952. He had been caring for the organ since it was installed, and what an organ it is with over 150 stops and 237 ranks. Jason recommended me to the church as his successor, and I had a rollicking ten years learning the mysteries of taking care of a truly massive organ.

Many of the world’s largest organs, say those with more than 200 ranks, were originally built as more modest instruments and evolved into their present glory under a string of opus numbers. One of the many remarkable things about Opus 1203 is that it was built all at once under one giant contract. Also remarkable is that it was built under the tonal direction of Lawrence Phelps, who was only thirty years old at the time. I know I thought I was quite something when I was thirty, but I am sure I could not have produced such a massive organ with such a sophisticated tonal scheme.

This amazing organ was at the center of my professional life for around ten years, and I had many important experiences and lessons there. I have written about it in these pages many times because pretty much any time I start writing about organs, it is there lurking—no, looming in the background.

I had a conversation the other day with Bryan Ashley, who has been the organist there since 2009. He revels in the organ’s majesty and subtlety and told me that it is the honor of his life to play it each week. The church has supported the organ with meticulous care since it was installed. Foley-Baker, Inc., of Tolland, Connecticut, has been working there since I left nearly thirty years ago, doing usual tuning and service calls as well as a comprehensive renovation under the direction of Phelps in the 1990s. The brilliant concert organist Stephen Tharp played a landmark recital on the Mother Church organ on June 28, 2014, the closing recital for the national convention of the American Guild of Organists. He premiered his transcription of Igor Stravinsky’s world-changing Rite of Spring in a riveting performance that I thought changed the world of organ recitals forever. His fierce rhythmic drive and dynamic, fiery registrations had the huge audience spellbound. In testament to the quality and condition of that massive organ built in 1952, Stephen told me that he practiced energetically for dozens of hours in preparation for his recital and never had to call on the technicians to correct anything.

The Mother Church organ came to mind, as it does frequently, when I was in Salt Lake City this past August for the convention of the American Institute of Organbuilders, where the famous Aeolian-Skinner organ in the Mormon Tabernacle was featured in several programs. The Tabernacle organ (Opus 1075) was built in 1945, just seven years and 128 opus numbers earlier than the Mother Church organ. It originally had 187 ranks and has been gradually expanded to today’s 206 ranks by Schoenstein & Company. It was built under the directorship of G. Donald Harrison who considered it his masterpiece, and rightly so. A quick look at the encyclopedic stoplist shows its vast variety of tone colors and combinations.

There is a fundamental difference between these two extraordinary organs. While both can be considered “American Classic” instruments, the Mother Church organ has lower wind pressures. The Positiv division is on less than two inches of wind; it is amazing that the eleven-stop pitman windchest can function on such low pressure. Along with lower wind pressures, the organ has what could be considered Baroque choruses with German nomenclature. Along with the Great, Swell, and Choir you would expect to find the Hauptwerk and Positiv with distinctly lighter tone.

Both organs are rich with multiple pairs of “celesting” stops, mutations at every pitch imaginable, and many mixtures of varying character. It is important to note that both organs are scrupulously maintained in terrific condition, reflecting the dedication of those two institutions.

Look it up.

I have been rattling from one organ to another, and I imagine some readers would be interested to see the stoplists. You are in luck. The Organ Historical Society has a broad and valuable database of organs across the United States. Visit pipeorgandatabase.com, click on “Instruments” in the upper left corner, then click on “View/Search Instruments.” That will open a form with blanks to fill in: Location (Church, Institution, etc.), City, State, Builder, Opus Number, etc. You usually only need to fill in a few blanks before the organ you are looking for pops up.

The database is a fantastic resource with photos and information about thousands of organs. The website is open on my browser whenever I am sitting at my desk, and I routinely search for information about dozens of organs. A little hint: if an organ has been rebuilt, it is likely you will find it under that company rather than the original builder. For example, you will find the Mother Church organ under Foley-Baker, not Aeolian-Skinner. Three cheers to the OHS for conceiving and continuing with that valuable project, essential to those who work with and research organs, and fascinating to all of us who are just plain interested.

If you visit the database and do not see an organ you play regularly or just know and love, go back to the original menu, click “Instruments,” and then click “Submit New Instrument Entry.” Your submission will be reviewed, someone may ask you a question or two, and then you will have contributed to a unique and valuable resource.

Next time we meet, ask me what’s my favorite organ. I’m thinking about that all the time; you may get a sassy answer.

Orgues Létourneau, St-Hyacinthe, Québec, Canada:

A new chapter begins

This isn’t the article we had intended to publish in this issue of The Diapason. As with so many other things this year, the completion of a pipe organ we had anticipated sharing here has been delayed by complications arising from the coronavirus pandemic. We will provide details about our 75-rank instrument for First United Methodist Church in Lubbock, Texas—the rendering of which is featured on the cover—in a later issue.

Nonetheless, we felt this is an opportunity to detail some of the recent changes at Orgues Létourneau. The news of Fernand Létourneau selling the company last November to Dr. Dudley Oakes was publicized widely but was necessarily brief. 2019 was Orgues Létourneau’s fortieth year of continuous operation. Over this time, the company has built over 140 new pipe organs around the world and has rebuilt or restored countless others.

The sale of an organbuilding enterprise is delicate, as is surely the case with any business providing personalized products that are evaluated subjectively. This sense of risk is heightened in our unique industry, thanks to some well-known collapses, even if they were decades ago. Then again, there are examples of well-planned and orderly ownership changes, including the recent transition at Dobson Pipe Organ Builders. Any success-fail probability equation would involve changes in the quality of the product post-sale, the circumstances of the sale, the actors involved, the overall economic climate, and broader trends in the pipe organ world. The role of simple luck can’t be overlooked either.

Despite the global uncertainty at present, we are thankful that our organ building team at Létourneau will be busy well into the future. The aforementioned instrument for First United Methodist Church, Lubbock, will be followed later this year by a 36-rank instrument for Alumni Chapel of Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan. The Aeolian-Skinner/M. P. Möller pipe organ from Market Square Presbyterian Church of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, is currently in our workshops where we are hard at work transforming it into our Opus 136 (IV/83). Létourneau’s Opus 127 from St. Mark’s School of Dallas, Texas, has also returned to our workshops; this 61-rank instrument suffered considerably last fall when a tornado tore through the school’s North Dallas neighborhood. We will be comprehensively rebuilding the organ, including a new case and console. There are a number of other exciting projects we look forward to sharing with you in due course, including a major concert hall instrument.

In the meantime, we trust you’ll enjoy the following conversation with Fernand Létourneau about his early days and an introduction to company’s revamped management team. We finish with a preview of what’s ahead from Létourneau’s new president, Dudley Oakes.

—Andrew Forrest

A conversation with Fernand Létourneau

Fernand Létourneau began his organbuilding career at Casavant Frères in 1965. He worked briefly in nearly every department, but his excellent ear—honed as a trumpeter in a local band—led him to the voicing department where he apprenticed under Paul Proulx. Proulx was known internally as Larry Phelps’s protégé, showing unusual finesse voicing flue pipes with open toes and unnicked languids. Fernand also learned reed voicing from his uncle, Jean-Paul Létourneau, who was regarded as the company’s finest reed voicer for much of the twentieth century. Having the benefit of two exceptional instructors, Fernand was soon a skilled voicer for both flue and reed pipes. This versatility kept him on the road as a tonal finisher, and by the end of the Phelps era he was the company’s top trouble-shooter.

Gerhard Brunzema came to Québec from Germany as Phelps’s successor in 1972. Fernand credits Brunzema for having taught him a great deal, especially in the area of mechanical key actions. Brunzema soon invited Fernand to serve as assistant tonal director, a role that drew Fernand into the company’s most prestigious projects and allowed him to continue as the company’s top problem solver.

Events over the next few years, however, caused Fernand to realize that further advancement at Casavant was unlikely. He pondered starting his own company, but more immediately, he planned a study trip to Europe with Brunzema’s tacit support. Fernand was successful in obtaining a grant from the Canadian Council of the Arts of $2,700 CAN in 1978 for the study trip, and consequently, Fernand resigned from Casavant. Soon after, he was on his way to Europe to study the voicing techniques in unaltered historic instruments.

While he mentions the Schnitger organ of Alkmaar and the Müller organ of the St-Bavo Church in Haarlem, Fernand singles out the 1790 Clicquot organ at the Cathedral in Poitiers as the one that perhaps impressed him the most. Here, he met Jean-Albert Villard, the titular organist, whom he remembers as being extremely kind. After introducing themselves, Fernand recalled the two men went into the instrument, and after a few minutes of Fernand looking closely at the pipework—but being extremely careful not to touch anything—Villard looked at him and exclaimed impatiently, “Well, come on then, pick up the pipes!” As Fernand recounts the story with a laugh, “Needless to say, he didn’t have to say it twice!” The two men stayed in touch, with Villard writing a letter to Fernand the following year with the question, “Aren’t you a little young to start out as an organbuilder?”

Tender age of 34 notwithstanding, Fernand Létourneau launched Orgues Létourneau in January of 1979 from his home in Ste-Rosalie, Québec. He continued to take on freelance voicing contracts but was soon invited to put forward a bid for a practice organ at the Conservatoire de musique du Québec à Hull (now Gatineau). It turned out to be the company’s very first instrument, with Fernand recalling the director, Monsieur Aimé Lainesse, asking him, “Have you ever built an organ?”

“No, this will be my first,” replied Fernand with some trepidation.

“Oh yes? Well, if no one gives you a chance to build your first instrument, you will never build your second. Monsieur Létourneau, I will give you that chance, you will build your first instrument.”

The next three Létourneau instruments went “down under,” thanks to Fernand’s work on a Pogson pipe organ at the Sydney Conservatorium of Music prior to the construction of Opus 1. Fernand’s revoicing of this instrument won the acclaim of the late Australian organist David Rumsey, who then enthusiastically supported Fernand’s proposals for St. Alban’s Church in Epping (Opus 2), for the residence of Dr. Neil Cameron of Sydney (Opus 3), and for the Sydney Church of England Girls’ Grammar School in Darlinghurst (Opus 4).

Each of these instruments was built in Fernand’s basement with another former Casavant employee, the cabinetmaker Noël Bilodeau. Also assisting were Yvan Blouin and Sylvain Létourneau, both of whom are still with Létourneau today. Fernand smiles when describing the unremarkable tools they used in those days, though he notes that he allowed himself one new woodworking machine with each new contract.

Fernand also highlights the importance of a publicist and supporter, Maurice Roy, in those early years, who wanted Fernand to advertise his skills. Fernand was reluctant, telling Maurice advertising was expensive and it wasn’t worth it. Maurice ultimately carried the day, arguing, “Come on, Fernand! If you’re excellent but you’re the only one who knows it, that’s not worth five cents!” Indeed, Maurice Roy was unflagging as a publicist for the company and its work, from those early days through the late 1990s when his health began to fail.

While he had initially planned to build a workshop on the land behind his home, Fernand decided in 1983 to buy a building at a bargain price from the City of Saint-Hyacinthe. The building, the company’s headquarters to this day on rue Savoie, was a redundant water treatment facility. With its multiple levels and 18-inch-thick concrete walls, Fernand notes its transformation into a workshop for organbuilding cost over four times its purchase price.

As the conversation nears its close, Fernand looks back and acknowledges he had something to prove in starting his own company, that he wanted to create something remarkable. He remains surprised nonetheless at the extent of his success, “If someone had told me forty years ago that the company would be what it is today, I wouldn’t have believed them.” He also notes how far the team of organbuilders currently at Létourneau has come: “I am proud that many at Létourneau today are really specialists in their fields. Some of our people today are among the best I have ever worked with.”

Asked what advice he might offer his successor Dudley Oakes, his closing thoughts are in a similar vein: “I have great faith in Dudley and in the company going into the future. Dudley takes care of his customers, and I am delighted he wanted to step up and guide the company through its next chapter. I would tell Dudley to trust his team; you can’t do it all, and they want to keep you happy, they won’t let you down.”

The preceding text is an edited transcription of a conversation that took place in French between Fernand Létourneau and Andrew Forrest at the Létourneau home on July 20, 2020. 

A look ahead from the president

I have always been fascinated with the pipe organ. At the age of six, I begged my parents to allow me to play the organ but had to follow the usual course of studying piano all through elementary and secondary school. Eventually, the time came when I had sufficient piano background to have a seat at the organ console of Trinity United Methodist Church in Richmond, Virginia. I will never forget the sheer excitement; it was an electronic organ, but little did this kid care!

I later had the opportunity to visit Second Presbyterian Church in downtown Richmond, where a high school friend was a member. There I experienced a three-manual pipe organ that produced some of the most amazing sounds I had ever heard. I graduated from high school in 1973 able to play all of the Eight Little Preludes and Fugues by Bach (or whomever wrote them). Ignoring the objections of my business-oriented father, I proceeded to earn a Bachelor of Music degree from the University of Richmond and followed this immediately by immersing myself in the organ program of the University of Michigan.

At Michigan, it was magical. I was flooded with all the goodness imaginable by four competent, compelling, and selfless teachers for whom a student’s progress was their raison d’être. I learned about the organ, about music, and about life. I was primed for a lifetime ahead as a musician by the likes of Robert Clark, Marilyn Mason, James Kibbie, and Robert Glasgow. I also had the opportunity to compete for le Grand Prix de Chartres twice, and while I didn’t win, the value of those experiences far outweighs any disappointment.

My love for the organ has always gone beyond playing it; I am fascinated by the variety of sounds available and the manner in which sound is made. I have an innate love for objects of beauty and integrity that extends well beyond pipe organs. Such objects typically include gorgeous woods, beautiful metals, exquisite craftsmanship, a keen eye for detail, or are simply of the highest order because of their perfect execution. The pipe organ just happens to combine all these things to create a world that I adore.

I joined with Létourneau in 1987 when I had finished my Doctor of Musical Arts at the University of Michigan. Fernand Létourneau was looking for an organist to represent him in the United States; his staff at Létourneau at that time was technically superb but only a few were musicians. In my student days, I was one of sixty organ students divided between three studios, and while U of M was one of the bigger schools, there were others as well. Organists like me were being trained and educated across North America, so it seemed clear there would be a need for better instruments in time.

In those early days, I was doing church music ministry, teaching music at a college, and representing Fernand’s company. I was also the only native English speaker at Létourneau, so I inevitably worked on the company’s documents for English-speaking clients, whether it was my project or not! In this way, I found myself in the middle of projects with
H. M. The Tower of London, St. Andrew’s Anglican Cathedral (Sydney, Australia), and Pembroke College (The University of Oxford) among others. This was a great vantage point from which to learn about the instrument and the company’s approach to organbuilding.

The company’s profile in the United States grew quickly in the early 1990s, and I enjoyed my work; I loved telling people that I was the luckiest person alive. I was able to play the organ, to teach students, and to work in organbuilding almost every day. Really, who could ask for more? Over the past three decades with Létourneau, I have seen joy countless times on the faces of congregants when they hear their new instrument for the first time. I have heard stunning recitals on our pipe organs by renowned artists. I have heard the extraordinary choir in the chapel of Selwyn College at the University of Cambridge accompanied by our Opus 95. In many cases, I have performed concerts on these same instruments. The one constant through all these experiences has been that our lives are all immeasurably richer because of the beauty that these pipe organs provide.

One of the great successes I have observed within the Létourneau company over three decades is the talented and experienced group of artisans that work for the company today. This team is a tremendous source of encouragement to me. Fernand understood that a strong team would lead to repeated successes, so he set out to surround himself with talented and hard-working individuals. With the team I have inherited and some strategic additions coming in the future, we are poised to realize some thrilling organ projects in a climate that demands our best mechanically and musically. It is reassuring to receive inquiries from around the world and to know that Létourneau is truly equipped, as one of the finest shops in North America, to respond to a variety of challenges.

I can predict the next three years or so as much of that time is already committed to some exciting projects. We know we will be going “all out” to satisfy clients in Texas, Utah, Michigan, Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, Ontario, Tennessee, and Alabama. I am confident that other contracts will come forward as well, but I expect the needs of our clients will influence where we go and what we do over the medium term and beyond.

Why did I buy the Létourneau company? That’s easy; it was because I love what we do. Fernand built the company for forty years, but we’re also friends, I knew he wanted to retire. I have never known a harder working man, and he has earned the right to step back and enjoy his golden years. With my experience and knowledge of the company, it is an honor to step in and take the company in some exciting new directions. In fact, Fernand set a standard decades ago when he remarked that each Létourneau organ should somehow be better than the last one. It is a noble idea and one we will continue to follow as long as I own the company.

In terms of changes since I took over, we’re working hard to perfect what we already do, to keep making our instruments and our team better and better. Our relationships, from initial meetings through installation and tonal finishing through the organ’s dedication, are crucial to our success. Our instruments need to reflect our best work, whether that work comes from our hands, our minds, or our hearts. We love what we do and we want those who experience our instruments to feel that too.

More broadly, the pipe organ industry will endure ups and downs, but I am certain organbuilding will always have a place in the world. So long as there are people who play the organ musically, there will always be the need for our instruments.

In the end, superb pipe organs are our goal. One question I always ask when talking about our pipe organs has nothing to do with the number of pipes or ranks. Rather, what I want to know is, “Is it musical?” This renewed pursuit of musicality is, I feel, the best way to honor Fernand Létourneau’s legacy going forward.

—Dudley Oakes

Builder’s website: http://letourneauorgans.com/

Dudley Oakes has served as a liaison for over thirty years between the company and hundreds of clients throughout the United States. Having purchased the company in November 2019, Dr. Oakes is currently dividing his time between the company’s workshop in Saint-Hyacinthe, Québec, and his home in Winchester, Virginia. He received a Doctor of Musical Arts degree from the University of Michigan in 1987 and has subsequently held positions at several prestigious churches across the United States. A distinguished concert organist and teacher, Dr. Oakes has lectured and played recitals across North America as well as in Italy, France, Germany, England, and Russia.

Andrew Forrest began his organbuilding career with Létourneau in February 1999, was named Artistic Director in 2008, and was appointed Vice President of the company in 2019. He oversees the company with a focus on individual projects, including meeting with clients, preparing proposals, setting artistic benchmarks, and directing tonal finishing. An organist himself, Mr. Forrest’s interests include the art of pipe scaling, mixture compositions, reed shallots, and other details that go into tone production. He was elected President of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America (APOBA) in May 2020. Mr. Forrest holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from Carleton University.

Georges Trépanier holds diplomas in administration and international commerce from Montréal’s prestigious HEC business school. After overseeing the company’s accounting for over a decade, he was named General Manager in March 2015. In this role, Mr. Trépanier ably manages the company’s financial affairs as well as relations with the various levels of government. As a boy, he studied piano for seven years, which translated into his interest in organbuilding. Over the years, Mr. Trépanier has participated in several pipe organ installations across the United States and Australia.

Dany Nault began his organbuilding career at Létourneau casting pipe metal at the age of 18. He rose quickly to the position of chief pipe maker and oversaw the production of hundreds of ranks of pipes over a twelve-year period. Mr. Nault decided in 2013 to study industrial engineering on a full-time basis, and upon completing the program, he worked as a technician and later manager in the manufacturing sector. In February 2020, Mr. Nault returned to Létourneau as Director of Production. His responsibilities in this role include overseeing production schedules, enhancing productivity, developing departmental quality improvement plans, and raising safety standards.

Létourneau’s goal with visual proposals is to offer a realistic sense of how an instrument will look once installed. As Artistic Designer, Claude Demers is the creative mind behind each instrument’s visual concept, designing each organ case in AutoCAD and overseeing its transformation into a three-dimensional illustration. He holds a diploma in architecture as well as a certificate in electronics. Mr. Demers is an accomplished wood carver, having sculpted the wood carvings on many of the company’s instruments over the years. He has been with the company since 1988.

François Carrier began at Létourneau in 1989 after training as a cabinetmaker. Over the years, he gained experience throughout the company working as a cabinetmaker, wood finisher, voicing assistant, installer, and windchest builder, serving as head of this last department for a decade. His interest in design led him to complete several intensive courses in architectural drafting and AutoCAD; he was promoted to the position of Technical Designer in 2008. Working closely with Mr. Demers and Mr. Forrest, Mr. Carrier translates the initial designs for each instrument into completed production drawings to enable construction in our workshops.

Photo: Fernand Létourneau and Dudley Oakes sign paperwork marking the sale of Orgues Létourneau in the company’s 40th year (photo credit: Orgues Létourneau)

If a tree fell in the forest and there was no one there to hear it . . .

Suppose that we are sharing Christmas dinner. We are sitting with family and friends at a “groaning board” festooned with Granny’s stemware and china, ironed linen napkins, and the best silver, freshly polished. Red juices flow from the beef tenderloin as slices fall from the knife. Please pass the potatoes.

Over the clinking of silverware I happen to mention, “By the way, did you hear that all the churches will be closed for Easter?” Silence. “And not just Easter, Palm Sunday, and all of Holy Week.”

Shazam! I was right! To be truthful, I did not foresee it. No one did. According to Science Daily (April 9, 2020), by Christmas 2019, COVID-19 was more than a glimmer in the eye of a Chinese bat, but no one imagined that it would be spreading across the globe like wildfire a few months later. When my family and I left New York City for our house in Maine on March 14, there were fewer than 500 cases reported in the city. Three weeks later there were more than 20,000. Today, just one month later, there are over 110,000 confirmed cases with over 10,000 deaths in New York City alone. With the deadline for submissions to The Diapason six weeks before publication, writing these essays is no way to report the news. I am writing in mid-April, and you are reading in early June—plenty will have happened in the meantime. I hope some of it was good.

March 14 was the day Pope Francis announced that Saint Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City would be closed to the public and Easter Masses would be celebrated with no congregation. Thousands of churches around the world shared the example. The internet was rich with video clips of worship being led by two or three people in an empty church or by individuals participating in orders of worship individually from their homes, iPhone videos spliced together for broadcast on Sunday morning. Thousands of brass players and singers lost income. Hundreds of thousands of volunteer choir members missed the high point of the season. And thousands of preachers delivered Resurrection messages via their laptop screens.

The New York Chautauqua Assembly was an adult education, entertainment, and social movement founded by 1874 for the purpose of bringing cultural experiences to rural communities. Started as a summer camp on the shore of Lake Chautauqua in western New York, it grew to have chapters across the country. President Theodore Roosevelt commented that the Chautauqua Assembly was the most American thing in America. In the June 1883 issue of the journal, The Chautauquan, the question was posed, “If a tree fell on an island where there were no human beings, would there be any sound?” The essay went on to say, “No. Sound is the sensation excited in the ear when the air or other medium is set in motion.” I am not smart enough to second guess such an august source of philosophy, but my crude understanding of the science of noise is that sound is created by the vibration of air stimulated by some physical source and exists as sound waves that travel whether or not there is a receptor. That rhetorical question is reminiscent of Neils Bohr challenging Albert Einstein to prove there is a moon without looking at it.

Because of the widespread shutdown in response to COVID-19, we are learning a lot about working empty rooms. Late-night television hosts are trying to get big laughs while sitting in their living rooms. Symphony orchestras are presenting live broadcast concerts in empty halls. And we hear the peace and word of the Lord by way of a MacBook Pro, a church’s organist leading Zoom worship from his piano at home. All performing artists know that audience reaction is palpable. When you are playing before an enthusiastic crowd, you can feel the excitement, even if you are sitting with your back to them, buried behind a massive Rückpositiv case. Many of my performing friends have identified this as a challenge during recording sessions. Does your performance sound, feel, and project differently when the audience is absent? How do you get that fire in your belly when playing for a few recording engineers and a roomful of microphones? Part of the magic of public worship is sharing the experience with the people around you, both old friends and strangers.

I love the notion that congregational singing led by a pipe organ is a physiological phenomenon in which all the producers of tone are using the same body of air as fuel. What the singers exhale goes into the blower intake, and a great circle is established. That is not happening on Zoom.

Alternative worship

This phrase brings fear into the hearts of many organists, conjuring up images of guitars, drum sets, and songs with four notes, four chords, four lines, four stanzas, and four tuned strings. Several years ago, I was assembling the restored tracker action of a nineteenth-century organ, working toward an Easter deadline. The church’s contemporary ensemble needed to practice, and I needed the time, so we agreed that I would just keep working quietly inside the organ while they rehearsed. One thing was certain: they needed to practice. Another thing was certain: it didn’t help. Their rehearsal technique was to barge through a song four or five times compounding the mistakes and slapping each other on the back as if they had just finished their set at Woodstock.

But alternative worship can mean many different things. A little over twenty years ago, I was working on a project on the campus of UCLA and staying in a twenty-room hotel on campus that was operated by students in the hotel management school. The icy phone calls during which my first wife and I were separated happened when I was in that room. It was not a fun time.

I was interested in hearing and seeing the mammoth organ at the First Congregational Church in Los Angeles and planned to attend worship there on Sunday, but I was on Eastern time and woke up at three in the morning. Organ preludes would start at 10:30 a.m., so I figured I had plenty of time for a drive up the coast, thinking that some wind off the ocean would ease the darkness I was feeling. I do not remember just where I wound up. A glance at a map suggests it must have been somewhere between Ventura and Santa Barbara where I noticed a group of at least fifty people gathered on a bluff staring at the ocean with binoculars. I was curious—what would bring so many people together so early in the morning—so I parked my car and walked toward the group.

Someone welcomed me in and explained what was going on. The Los Angeles Chapter of the American Cetacean Society was counting migrating whales. There were tables set up with coffee and pastries. The people with binoculars were shouting out numbers while people with clipboards were recording them. There was a strong sense of comradery driven by a common purpose, and I quickly abandoned my plan of going to church. Standing by the ocean with a group of friendly people watching the glory of creation swim by was worshipful enough for me that day, lifting my spirits and clearing the mess from between my ears.

That singular Easter has just passed. We are all learning new ways to worship. Facebook is often a wormhole of self-satisfaction. I am not interested in your haircut or your magnificent meal. But I sure am interested in the dozens of posts I have read from colleagues sharing what it was like to participate in virtual Easter. Some showed clips of people dressed casually, leading a hymn from the piano in their living room, shifting to a pastor sitting at a desk leaning earnestly toward the screen speaking of the Resurrection “in this unusual time.” Others showed elaborately vested social-distancing priests at a high altar festooned with lilies, beeswax candles afire, a group of singers standing six feet apart, and the organist raising the dead with blazing trumpets.

Our rector in New York City spoke of taking a walk in abandoned lower Manhattan and seeing a small fleet of refrigerated trucks serving as temporary morgues behind a neighboring hospital. Realizing what they were and struck by the tragic loneliness of the scene, he stopped and offered a blessing. How’s that for an Easter message?

Resiliency

In the relative safety and serenity of our place in Maine, we have had two dramatic weather events in the last few days. In the afternoon of Holy Thursday, the wind came up, heavy rain turned to far heavier snow, the power went out, the generator came on, and the storm whipped through the night. On Good Friday, we woke to six inches of white wet glop, nearly impossible to walk on. Lichen-encrusted branches had fallen everywhere, and walking a few dozen yards up the driveway with a dog was like running a gauntlet with snow and debris falling from trees every few steps. The driveway is a half-mile long. It was grocery day, and I was planning to go to town. I put a saw in the car and spent a couple hours moving stuff off the road into the ditches.

The power was out all day, through Friday night, through Saturday night, and into Sunday afternoon, coming back on just as hundreds of colleagues would be launching into “the Widor” across the country. The head of our driveway is four miles down a rural road from the village, and the power lines snake through a maze of branches. There was a heavy ice storm shortly after we moved in the winter of 2001, and the power was out for nearly a week. That was when we installed the generator, and it has been a trusted part of the household since.

On Easter Monday, the rain started again, and the wind whipped up to gale force. The temperature was mild so there was no snow, but that storm stood out for the velocity and ferocity of the wind. The trees along the shore at the bottom of the yard were whipping wildly back and forth. After dinner I sat on the deck in the lee of the storm watching the crazy motion in the darkness and listening to the roar of the wind when it stopped. It did not lessen and die down. It just stopped. The roar became silence. The next morning, we confirmed that nothing new had fallen in the yard or on the driveway. After all that whipping about, no trees had fallen. Such resilience. Such strength. Such stability. A metaphor for facing life today.

In the 1964 film Mary Poppins, George Banks (played by David Tomlinson) works for the Dawes Tomes Mously Grubbs Fidelity Fiduciary Bank. He is the father of Jane and Michael, husband of Winifred, and Mary Poppins’s employer. He is a man of rigid routine. Early in the film, arriving home from the office, he sings:

I feel a surge of deep satisfaction

Much as a king astride his noble steed.

When I return from daily strife to hearth and wife,

How pleasant is the life I lead . . . .

. . .  I run my home precisely on schedule.

At 6:01, I march through my door.

My slippers, sherry, and pipe are due at 6:02,

Consistent is the life I lead.

The trouble is that while he is singing, Winifred is trying to interrupt to tell him the children are missing.

I can hear Wendy snickering. Cocktails here are at six-oh-oh. Dinner at eight-oh-oh. The routine is regular enough that Farley the Goldendoodle can tell time. “Paws up” on the bed at 6:30 in the morning. (That is the only time he ever gets on furniture.) A couple minutes before cocktails, he is sitting watching me. He gets an ice cube or two when I am fixing drinks and a dental “chewy” when we sit down with them. He depends on that routine as much as I do. We have laughed about it many times. Sometimes wryly.

But consistent no more. Our daughter, son-in-law, and granddaughter who live in Brooklyn, New York, came to Maine with us—and their dog. Remembering those refrigerated trucks, we are glad we can offer them shelter from the ravages of the city. We are four adults, a toddler, and two dogs, and the quiet, comfortable routine of two empty nesters is on sabbatical, if not just gone. We are five weeks into it now, and I have had some tough moments adjusting. But think of our Brooklynites. At least we are at home. We have lived in this house for almost twenty years, the longest either of us have lived in one place. We have clothes in the closets, unread books on the nightstands, extra toothbrushes in the drawers in the bathroom. It is familiar. They have left their home behind, all their daily routines, and all their stuff. We are coming up with new common daily rhythms, and the great news is that we are getting more time with our granddaughter than we could have imagined.

The new normal

I wonder when things will go back to normal. I wonder what the “new normal” will be. We were living in an unusual time before the start of the pandemic. Yesterday, CBS News reported that this is the first March since 2002 without a school shooting in the United States. Why? Simple. Schools are closed. Every significant arts organization in the country is closed. Thousands of orchestral musicians, actors, stagehands, ushers, and administrators are out of work. When the Metropolitan Opera laid off its entire staff with pay ending on March 31, I wondered if that fantastic assembly of talented skilled people could ever be gathered together again? But it is not as if disgruntled, they would take other jobs. There are no other jobs.

I can imagine sitting down again with trusted friends for a drink or a meal, maybe not so long from now. I can imagine taking an unessential drive to a park for a picnic. I can even imagine booking a hotel room and working on a job away from home. But knowing how I feel when I have to walk past an unmasked stranger in a grocery aisle, I cannot imagine walking through a foyer into a crowded theater or concert hall, exposing myself and those I love to whatever foolish indiscretion a seatmate might have committed. I assume I will go to a concert again, but I cannot imagine it yet. A vaccination against COVID-19 must be the greatest brass ring for medical research since polio.

The community of the church choir has always been a source of recreation and spiritual enhancement. In a video interview produced by the publisher J. W. Pepper in 2015, composer and conductor John Rutter says, “. . . choral music is not one of life’s frills. It is something that goes to the very heart of our humanity, our sense of community, and our souls.”¹ I first sang in a children’s choir in 1966 when I was ten years old. I have vivid memories from a few years later of using my new grown-up voice as a member of the adult choir singing Bach’s Cantata 140. (Va-ha-ke-het auf, Va-ha-ke-het auf, Va-ha-ke-het auf—two, three, one—ruft die Stimme!) I trust that future generations will have similar thrills, knowing the joy of singing closely with others.

In this column in the May 2017 issue of The Diapason, I wrote under the title, “Music in terrible times.” Wendy and I had just heard the Boston Symphony Orchestra play Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. I started that essay with Leonard Bernstein’s famous quote from the Vietnam era: “This will be our response to violence: to make music more intensively, more beautifully, more devotedly than ever before.” I wrote of the siege of Leningrad in which more than a million people died, a battle that inspired Shostakovich’s masterpiece. I wrote of the bombing of Coventry, England, in 1940 from which came Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem. I wrote of Stalag VIIIA where Olivier Messiaen was a prisoner of war and a sympathetic guard provided him with pencil and paper, allowing him to create Quartet for the End of Time.

Those great masterpieces are all the expressions of creative geniuses responding to vast human crises. The people who lived those days must have wondered if it would ever end. And horrible as they were, they all did end. Many people suffered, many people died, families were destroyed, and dreams were shattered. I trust that we will see each other at the symphony again. We will go to the theater again. We will go to ball games again. We will go sailing again. For now, we have to stay strong, take care of the people we love, and nourish the creativity within.

Now go practice while you have a chance.

Notes

1. You can see the interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm-Pm1FYZ-U.

Photo: John Cantrell, choirmaster and organist, St. Michael’s Episcopal Church, New York, New York. John records rehearsal tracks for choir members, they practice and send in their videos, and he mixes them into a virtual choir, adds readings recorded by parishioners at home, sermon, and voilà! (Photo credit: Kathleen Cantrell)

Keep your distance.

In both the May and June issues of The Diapason, I wrote about watching the world react to the spread of the novel coronavirus. I have told you how my family and I left New York City for our place in Maine, leaving behind the horror of the spread of vicious contagion in a densely populated city. Individual boroughs of the city have higher death tolls than many countries, and our friends there tell of fear and loss. As I write in mid-May, there have been over 160,000 cases confirmed and over 13,500 deaths in New York City. There have been thirteen cases and no deaths confirmed in Lincoln County, Maine, where we live.

We left New York two days after Broadway, Lincoln Center, and all the museums of the city were closed, that great engine of culture, those vibrant theaters, those stately crowded buildings all going dark at once. By that time, virtually every college and university had closed or was closing. Social media pages became clamors of teachers comparing notes about how to teach from a distance and students facing unprecedented interruptions in their education. I am particularly well connected on Facebook where my community includes some three thousand organ professionals, and I have been impressed by the thoughtful interchange.

I wrote a post asking colleagues if they would be interested in talking about distance learning and, with a half dozen responses, spent more than ten hours last week on FaceTime, Zoom, and video chat (and on the phone when the internet got slow), conversing with friends and colleagues about how they were developing methods to cope with this untenable situation, keeping the wheels of learning turning.

Necessity is the mother of invention.

The common opener was that it is nobody’s first choice to close a campus and send students home, there is no precedent, and we had better figure this out. The biggest variable is whether students have access to organs, pianos, or even cheap keyboards during the closures. When away from campus, students live in a wide variety of circumstances. While some students go home to luxury, others return to poverty where shortage of food is an issue, never mind whether there is a piano, let alone an organ. Before being able to establish connections to continue teaching, some teachers have petitioned their schools to provide instruments, WiFi connections, and, in some cases, food.

Christa Rakich teaches organ performance at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, where students were informed a week before spring break that the school was closing and they needed to vacate their dorm rooms. There was a flurry of activity as clothes, books, and personal items were packed and parents came to help ferry stuff home. There must have been a shortage of cardboard boxes in town.

Because Zoom and other video conferencing platforms can be shaky and imprecise, Christa is using video recordings as a primary tool for private lessons. Students send recordings to her that she watches with scores and sends emails with comments referring to measure numbers. “It’s tedious progress, but it’s progress, and helpful for them to have my return email in hand for the next practice session.” 

Christa is also sending weekly “Improv Challenges” to her students by email. In an email before our conversation she wrote, “I submit this with an audio file. I record myself improvising, for example, a two-voice chorale prelude or a pedal cadenza or a fugal exposition in three voices with a cadence, something contained and short. The email includes instructions on how I did it or perhaps a written sample. Students are challenged to send me back an audio file using the same technique with a different tune.”

Early on, Christa experimented with live playing over Zoom for studio class, but found that the platform was unstable, so she and her students have spent productive time together planning future projects, working hard to keep a productive learning environment in place as much as possible. According to Christa, the administration of the school is encouraging students’ ideas for study projects and reading, supporting their creativity by giving credit—“everything you do counts as work.” 

Andrew Scanlon is assistant professor of sacred music and organ performance at East Carolina University and organist at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Greenville, North Carolina, where Andrew’s students are accustomed to having their lessons on the spectacular forty-five-stop C. B. Fisk, Inc., organ (Opus 126, 2005). The university has supplied the faculty with tutorial videos on distance learning helping Andrew to develop techniques for video teaching, and he has been able to find access to organs for all his students. He reports that the organ literature course he teaches has been easiest to transfer, mostly by giving lectures online. He is guiding students toward the AAGO exam and continuing their improvisation training.

Nicole Keller has been teaching organ and harpsichord students at Baldwin-Wallace Conservatory of Music, Berea, Ohio, for twenty years. During our conversation, she spoke of how the school’s administration has been sharing information openly with bi-weekly video town hall meetings for the faculty, and the school’s IT department is helping with information about available resources and helping to get students online. Nicole is facing this disruption, wondering how she can use the experience to become a better teacher. She is finding the exchange of recordings to be effective, and to a lesser extent, playing through Zoom. She added that external microphones for laptops make a big difference in the sound quality, especially when using Zoom, and mentioned that the conservatory has provided microphones for the students.

George Emblom teaches at the University of California at Berkeley and is director of music at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church in Berkeley. He started our conversation with the simple comment that this is unprecedented. No one expected this, and no one had planned for it. With the campus and church building closed, he has been able to secure access to instruments for his students, even in some cases through loans from members of the choir at Saint Mark’s where his students have their lessons on the Flentrop organ. 

We are all learning and developing the art of distance teaching simultaneously, and George believes that some of the new techniques will continue to be useful when we are able to return to teaching private students face-to-face. He particularly mentioned shared video recordings, commenting that he is spending a lot of time watching the pinwheel on his screen as videos are downloading. Students send videos to him through Google Drive, and he shares his screen with them, allowing student and teacher to watch together in real time. He has found that students benefit greatly from watching their performances, seeing their posture, hands and feet, and the motions of their bodies, both useful and unnecessary. “At measure 43, do you think you looked comfortable?” He intends to continue using this tool in the future.

George’s performance degrees are in piano. Remembering that there were always two pianos in a teacher’s studio so the teacher could demonstrate, he has been using the piano more extensively as a teaching tool and considers this another technique to be developed and used more in the future. He also reminded me that the concept of distance teaching for serious musicians is in its infancy. He is in conversation with colleagues around the country comparing and assessing techniques and imagines that new and more powerful platforms will be developed quickly.

Jonathan Moyer is assistant professor of organ and chair of the organ department at Oberlin and organist at the Church of the Covenant in Cleveland, Ohio. He is teaching some private lessons with students sending him recordings followed by video conferences, usually on Zoom. But he is really focused on finding new ways for students to learn. Organ literature classes are productive as he can provide listening lists on YouTube. Students “mute out” to listen, then return for discussion. He shares PowerPoint slides on Zoom and gives out reading assignments, some of which temporarily take the place of performance.

Oberlin is well known for its extraordinary collection of more thirty organs, and Jonathan feels that a big part of education there is being on campus with those instruments, sharing musical inspiration in person with students and teachers. He feels that most of his students have had enough of the “video thing.”

Katherine Johnson is a third-year student of Christa Rakich at Oberlin. She spoke of the shock of being told to vacate her dormitory just before spring break. She is working hard to make the most of it and is fortunate to have a Hauptwerk instrument in a relatively private space at home where she is working on the “self-taught” piece she has chosen for her jury, whenever that will be. In course work, she notes that her fellow students are in different time zones, which makes it difficult to schedule class meetings online, but she is generally impressed by how video platforms make distance learning possible.

§

I am grateful to the six people who spoke with me last week. Each spent an hour or more with me and shared not only how they are approaching the different acts of teaching and learning, but also about their concerns for each other. All five of the teachers echoed their concern for the well-being of their students, many of whom have been shuttled off campus into stressful situations of crowded houses full of distance learners and parents working from home. WiFi is everything, and housemates are having to negotiate for bandwidth. Students who are strongly self-motivated are finding rich new ways to learn, while others are struggling with the difficulties and uncertainties of their situations and the disruption of their education.

As of this writing, none of the schools involved has yet made announcements regarding the status of the fall semester. Jonathan Moyer mentioned that Oberlin would be deciding by mid-June whether to open the campus for the fall, perhaps without large ensembles and with limited class sizes. Different schools are considering having only single rooms in dormitories and somehow staggering the semesters, a scheme that falls apart in a hurry when you get to communal bathrooms.

All of the teachers spoke of the spirit of camaraderie and cooperation among students. Everyone I spoke with mentioned fatigue, especially screen fatigue. Even if you are used to spending hours in a practice room or teaching studio each day, you are still moving around between classrooms, offices, and dormitories. Likewise, there was a lot of talk about maintaining energy, keeping things lively and inspiring in online discussions. Teachers are spending lots of time just talking with their students, helping them redefine their dreams and ambitions while staying optimistic.

And what about church?

All but one of the teachers I spoke with also serve as church musicians, and each shared a little about how online worship is working. Very few church buildings are open, so most are either sorting and streaming recordings from years past, or recording preludes, postludes, and hymns on whatever instrument they have at home.

Last month we published a photo of John Cantrell, choirmaster and organist at Saint Michael’s Episcopal Church in Manhattan seated at the desk he has adapted for the production of the church’s video services. He described to me the challenge of creating an essence of worship for the congregation. He has always been interested in audio engineering, but “this video thing” is new, and he has been learning on the job. He and the clergy have been drawing on the example of Mr. Rogers and his legendary ability to communicate on television with children. How did Mr. Rogers draw children into the screen, suspending their disbelief, and can we emulate that in online worship?

At Saint Michael’s, the organ scholar records a prelude and postlude in the empty church with John as the videographer, allowing the congregants a rare glimpse of the organist who is normally hidden by the Rückpositiv of the great Beckerath organ. They also record at least two hymns, generally one verse for each, and show the text on the screen so “distance congregants” can sing along. John records a rehearsal track for an anthem that he sends to choir members who practice and record their part, and they send it back to John who stacks the tracks, tweaking the early or late notes as needed, and mixes the whole thing into a choir. This is far from perfect, and many people are unable to participate, especially elderly parishioners with no internet skills. We can suppose that powerful apps will be developed making all this possible without the need for each music director to reinvent the wheel.

A common concern is the future of choirs. On April 29, The Guardian reported that the German government had met with church leaders and agreed that when German churches open for worship in May, singing would be prohibited. The article noted that three quarters of the members of a church choir in Mount Vernon, Washington, fell ill and two died, and that fifty-nine of seventy-eight singers in the choir of Berlin’s Protestant cathedral contracted the virus. On March 8, the Amsterdam Gemengd Koor (mixed choir) gave a performance of J. S. Bach’s Saint John Passion in the Concertgebouw, the city’s famed concert hall. Of 130 singers, 102 contracted COVID-19 and four died. The American Choral Directors Association has issued an announcement to its membership stating that singers are “super spreaders” of the coronavirus because singers breathe more deeply than normal and expel breath at great velocity. A group of people singing may as well be sneezing on each other.

Andrew Scanlon said the reason the choir at Saint Paul’s in Greenville sings psalms so beautifully is that they do it all the time. It is in their blood. Will choirs have to wait years before being able to gather again? How much interest, proficiency, and experience will be lost?

Lemonade

We have no idea how long this will last. My family and I came to Maine thinking we would be here for a few weeks and have now been holding in place for over eight weeks. Given our usual lifestyle with two homes and a significant amount of business travel, this is the most consecutive nights I have spent in one place in nearly twenty years. The statistics of the epidemic as some states try opening selected businesses may indicate that we will be in this longer than we have yet imagined. From our seclusion, it is impossible to imagine when we might next enter a Broadway theater with twenty-inch wide seats and endless lines for the restrooms.

Most organists are employed by churches or universities. Although playing the organ seriously is a solitary venture, both types of institutions depend on people working in groups. Seminars, classrooms, staff meetings, faculty meetings, and especially choirs are important to the work of the organist. At the moment, the challenge of setting up distance learning and distance choral singing is taking more time for many people than the familiar weekday rehearsals and Sunday services. 

Once you have mastered and improved the techniques, will you have more time for personal projects? Is this your chance finally to learn those last eighteen pieces so you can say you have played all of Bach’s organ music? The Vierne symphonies? How about some of those pesky masterworks by Rachel Laurin or Jeanne Demessieux? Maybe it is time to finish and submit that article to The Diapason? Spend some more time with Beethoven’s piano music? Or admit it, you have always wanted to take the FAGO exam. Contact your chapter leadership and sign up. Maybe you were going to spend a week or two at conventions this summer. How often have you wished for a couple extra weeks to tackle something you have always wondered about? Guess what, kids, now’s the time.

When we meet on the other side, let me know how you did.

C. B. Fisk, Inc., Opus 116, Finney Chapel, Oberlin College, Oberlin, Ohio (photo courtesy: C. B. Fisk, Inc.)

On the road again

In the 1980 movie, Honeysuckle Rose, Willie Nelson played Buck Bonham, a country music singer looking for national fame. His life as a traveling music star is a strain on his marriage to Viv, played by Dyan Cannon; one thing leads to another, and not everyone winds up happy. The best thing that came out of that movie is the song, “On the Road Again,” which won a Grammy Award for Best Country Song and an American Music Award for Favorite Country Single.

In the 1980s I was working in an organ shop where some of us preferred classical music and some preferred rock and roll. In the days before earpods when music was played through speakers we had to compromise—ours was often country music. It was fun to make up words to go with the rhyming schemes, and some of the country songs of those days were simply hilarious. Bobby Bare’s “Drop Kick Me Jesus Through the Goalposts of Life,” Willie Nelson and Julio Iglesias singing “To All the Girls I’ve Loved Before,” and Dolly Parton’s “Better Keep Your Hands Off My Potential New Boyfriend” (really) gave us lots of material.

“On the Road Again” seems full of hope, opening with a major sixth (“My Bonnie Lies Over the Ocean. . .”), with lyrics about the pleasure of “making music with my friends.” There is a sort of choo-choo-train-like rhythm underneath, and some lithe, right-in-tune harmonica playing. “Like a band of gypsies, we go down the highway, We’re the best of friends, insisting that the world keep turning our way, and our way is on the road again.”

My daily office routine includes lots of correspondence with people wishing to buy and sell pipe organs, and I keep a list of places that might be productive to visit, sort of like pins on a map. Several times a year, when those pins meld into a circle that I might drive in a week or so, I set off in my Suburban. I make a point of visiting any organ workshops that might be along the route, and I am often able to include errands for us or for colleague companies, like delivering a blower here, a rank of pipes there, or picking up a pedalboard—it helps pay for the gas. When I leave home, sappy as it may be, I think of the indefatigable Willie Nelson and dial up that song, fixing myself up with an earworm that will easily last a week.

§

Last December, Willie cheered me on as I headed for Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. My first day out, I met with people at a church who are considering purchasing an organ and had dinner with my son in central Massachusetts. The following morning, I drove to New Holland, Pennsylvania, to visit New Holland Church Furniture, a company that builds miles of pews, thousands of chairs, hundreds of altars, and dozens of organ cases. The Organ Clearing House has helped with the installation of several large new organs with cases built by New Holland, and they have since engaged us to install a few other large pieces such as a cathedral reredos. I was given a lengthy tour of the facility and marveled at the production volume and values.

I was especially impressed by an extensive layout of curved pews in the shop for the floor and balconies of a large church under construction. It is one thing to build straight pews; all organ builders have equipment in their workshops for cutting wood straight. It is much more challenging to work with curves, especially because you would not necessarily use the same curved layouts in several different churches. The forms and patterns for gluing those long, curved boards are custom made for each location. And in this building, the balconies had layouts much different from the main floor, further complicating the job. Massive custom-built sanding machines finish those twenty-foot-long curves with the grain, as any good woodworker would.

Computer-driven machines were cutting out chair backs, pew ends, Gothic arches, and Stations of the Cross at dizzying rates. A procession of ten-foot-long pew seats, hanging from iron hooks like sides of beef, rode conveyors through a huge spray booth. Carts of chair frames rolled from gluing stations to assembly rooms. Engineers and designers stared at computer screens, moving pixilated lines around to create perfect drawings. Those drawings were fed into the machines that cut the wood. Semi-trailers were backed up to loading docks, ready to haul the finished products to their destinations. Seventy-five or eighty workers were toiling in the factory, combining artistry with automation, creating elegant furnishings for church buildings across the country.

New Holland is in the heart of Pennsylvania Dutch country, and I was sharing the roads with Amish families in black carriages drawn by single horses and large flatbed trailers drawn by teams of three horses, all with reflective triangles on the back. Driving around them in a big comfortable car with the heat on gently and music playing, I reflected on the contrasting lifestyles. I saw those buggies parked in the driveways of prosperous-looking farmsteads where oxen were waiting patiently to be harnessed to plows and reapers. It is quite a feat to make a living as a farmer in these times without burning diesel fuel.

Pennsylvania and Ohio

I went from New Holland to Wooster, Ohio, home of Wooster College, where I helped maintain the large Holtkamp in the chapel and smaller practice organs when I was working with John Leek in the 1970s. I drove by those buildings nearly fifty years after I first worked in them, reliving John’s often humorous, sometimes stern teaching. I remembered standing on a ladder behind the Great windchest as a fledgling tuner, confronted for the first time by a Sesquialtera II, Mixture IV, and Scharff III, struggling to decipher the relationships between all those tiny pipes.

I drove past the First Presbyterian Church where in 1980 Leek and I attended the dedicatory recital of Karl Wilhelm’s Opus 76 played by my organ teacher, Haskell Thomson. Jack Russell, professor of organ at Wooster College and a former student of Haskell’s, was organist at that church. Jack is still a friend, now located in the Boston area. Opus 76 is a grand three-manual affair with thirty-six stops, free standing pedal towers, and beautiful carved pipe shades. What I remember most about that recital was a cipher that stopped Mr. Thomson in mid-sweep (his students will get an inward chuckle from that), bringing him to the balcony rail to ask for assistance, an organbuilder’s nightmare.

While in Wooster, I visited the newly formed Greenleaf Organ Company founded by Samantha Koch and her husband Daniel Hancock. They are working on the renovation of a 1916 Hook & Hastings organ purchased through the Organ Clearing House by a church in Kansas. The organ had been in storage for years in Newcastle, Maine, where I live, and it was fun to see “my baby” getting a new lease of life. The folks at Greenleaf are smart and skillful, and I look forward to seeing lots of great projects come from that shop.

I drove from Wooster to Oberlin, Ohio, where I went to school forty-five years ago. My timing was bad as I arrived a few days after the holiday break started, so there were not many people around. I had breakfast with Randy Wagner, longtime executive at Organ Supply Industries (OSI) in Erie, Pennsylvania. OSI has been for decades the largest company supplying to the organbuilding trade in the United States.

I met Randy in the 1970s when I was working for John Leek, and Leek and I traveled back and forth from OSI to deliver and pick up parts for our projects. Our relationship continued through my days with Angerstein & Associates, the Bishop Organ Company, and the Organ Clearing House. It is one of my longest collegial friendships. Randy retired to Oberlin where he cut his teeth working with Homer Blanchard in the 1950s. He shares with Barbara Owen the distinction of being one of two surviving participants in the founding meeting of the Organ Historical Society, held in the choir room at St. Bartholomew’s Episcopal Church in New York City in 1956.1

From Oberlin, I drove to Hartville, Ohio, for a quick visit with Charles Kegg of Kegg Pipe Organ Builders. Charles’s shop has a luxurious amount of space for his staff, with a snazzy collection of machines and equipment. His interest in automated musical instruments means that there are collections of paper rolls for player devices and a very rare machine that punches those paper rolls. Charles and I are collaborating on a project in New York City, and it was a nice opportunity to compare notes and questions.

And back to Pennsylvania

Organ Supply Industries in Erie, Pennsylvania, is one of the largest pipe organ companies in the United States and serves as a supplier to most of the independent organ companies around the country. My pal Bryan Timm, OSI vice president, gave me the “family rate” tour followed by a nice lunch. Their vast factory building is a wonderland where everything is on a huge scale, where forklifts stack organ parts sky high, and where the multiplicity of organ stuff boggles the mind. Eight pedalboards are lined up, in the early stages of their construction. A couple dozen keyboards are making their way through production. Thousands of the little dividers between coupler tablets roll off saws into boxes—the blanks that they are cut from look like houses and hotels from “Monopoly.” It takes hundreds of clamps to glue up things like the huge wood organ pipes from 16′ and 32′ open wood diapasons, and those clamps are stacked on carts, ready for the next project. Organ pipes of all sizes are under construction, and the countless forms and jigs needed to make pipes in an infinity of shapes and sizes are neatly organized in racks and shelves. Ranks of wooden pipes whip through their production department and wind up in crates labeled for shipment to organ companies all over the country. Huge woodworking machines seem to be everywhere, all connected with the metal ducts of the dust collection system that gathers tons of sawdust and plane shavings into hoppers, powered by immense vacuum motors.

OSI is something of a nerve-central for the American pipe organ industry. The bustle of activity through the various departments reassures us that pipe organs are being built across the country, and that talented and dedicated people are pouring their hearts into them.

I left Erie to visit an interesting vintage mechanical-action organ in a recently closed church in Canaseraga, a village of about 500 people in rural central New York, about sixty-five miles south of Rochester. Garret House (1810–1900) was the most prominent organbuilder in Buffalo, New York, of his time. He built a nine-rank, one-manual organ for Trinity Episcopal Church in Canaseraga, and my circle of pins included a snowy drive on long lonely country roads to meet with a small group of parishioners of the now-closed church. They were a cheerful band of lifelong residents, families who have been friends and neighbors for generations, and they are hoping we can find a new home for the lovely organ. Since I joined the Organ Clearing House, I have met with many such groups, sorry to have lost their church and eager for the organ to carry life’s breath to another congregation. Having gathered specifications, dimensions, and photographs, I was put in touch with the officer of the diocese who manages property. I hope we can offer the organ soon. Keep your eye on our website.

Saying goodbye

One of the sure effects of celebrating people I have known for forty or fifty years is the passing of treasured colleagues, mentors, and friends. Thomas H. Anderson was all of these. He was born in 1937 in Belfast, Ireland, and started as an apprentice in an organ pipe making shop when he was fourteen. He emigrated to the United States at age nineteen to take a job with the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company. That was 1956, when Aeolian-Skinner built nearly twenty organs, including the beauty at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York (see footnote). Not long after that (not sure when), he started his own firm, the Thomas H. Anderson Organ Pipe Company. He purchased a home in Easton, Massachusetts, not far from Dorchester and Randolph, Massachusetts, where the Aeolian-Skinner facilities were located. His property included a handsome barn attached to the house that he converted to a workshop, and a long, low “chicken coop” where he stored large pipes and materials.

I first met Tommy around 1984 when I went to work for Daniel Angerstein & Associates in Stoughton, Massachusetts, less than ten miles from Tommy’s shop. What a convenience to have a pipe maker so close by; we frequently drove up and down Bay Road between the two shops. Daniel Angerstein closed his shop when he was appointed tonal director at M. P. Möller, and I started the Bishop Organ Company by assuming Dan’s maintenance business. At the same time, I assumed the care of the large Aeolian-Skinner organs at Trinity Church and The First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church), both in Boston, and I quickly had a list of rebuilding and restoration projects, most of which required Tommy’s help.

Tommy and his wife Susan grew up on the same street in Belfast. Once he was established in the United States, he went back to Belfast to marry her and bring her to join him in Easton. I imagine there were many letters between them in the interim, planning a life together in a new country. What a courageous decision it was for Susan to join Tommy here. They raised four children, six grandchildren, two step-grandchildren, and three great-grandchildren, all supported by Tommy, also known as Granda, hammering away in that workshop.

There are few craftsmen whose intuitive grasp of π can outstrip an organ pipe maker. When I was working in a shop every day, I could easily eye the difference between eighteen and twenty millimeters, or between an inch and an inch-and-a-sixteenth. Tommy could hold a pipe in his hand and sense the width of the rectangle to cut to form an identical tube. Circles are the province of the pipe maker. It’s uncanny.

Susan passed away on December 31, 1996. Tommy passed away on December 30, 2023. His funeral service was held in Easton, just a mile from his house, on January 6, 2024. I was there with nine other organbuilders to meet his family and share stories of our work with him. One of his daughters remembered the chore of loading crates of newly made organ pipes into their van and delivering them to the Consolidated Freightways Terminal in nearby Canton, Massachusetts.

We were a group of old-timers, most of us had known Tommy for decades, and each of us know many organbuilders out there on the grapevine. None of us could remember hearing anything but lovely words about Tommy. He was kind, humorous, caring, diligent, and skillful—a valued and admired colleague. He made organ pipes. Tens of thousands of organ pipes. His work will sing on in dozens of churches around the country. He was a valued friend. He was a gentleman.

Notes

1. Pierre Cochereau, organist at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Paris, France, was scheduled to open the 1956 American Guild of Organists national convention with a recital on the new Aeolian-Skinner organ at Saint Thomas Church in New York City. During the months preceding that convention, G. Donald Harrison was racing to complete the organ. It was fiercely hot, and there was a taxi strike going on, so after a long workday on June 14, Harrison had to walk several long blocks to his apartment on Third Avenue. After dinner with his wife Helen, he sat down to watch Victor Borge on television and died of a heart attack. It is interesting to note that John Scott, future organist at Saint Thomas Church, was born on June 18, 1956, just four days after Harrison’s death.