Top Rung Tower Chime & Organ Service project

Let’s hoist a few.

On September 24, 2023, Alyson Krueger published an article in The New York Times under the headline, “My Running Club, My Everything,” telling of the culture of running clubs in New York City in which twenty-five or more people gather at a specified meeting place and run together for four or five miles. She described an outing of the Upper West Side Running Club that met at the American Museum of Natural History (Central Park West at Eighty-First Street) where members ran a loop around Central Park and wound up at the Gin Mill on Amsterdam Avenue at Eighty-First Street, one block west of the museum. I chuckled as I read because the Gin Mill is a favorite after hours haunt of the Organ Clearing House crew. I wonder how many of you reading this have sat there with our guys?

The Gin Mill has a happy hour routine with discounted drinks, and if you are anything like a regular and the bartender knows you, it seems as if you are charged by the hour. Your glass gets magically and repeatedly refilled, and the closing check is a nice surprise. I have spent quite a few evenings there, but our boots-on-the-ground crew has spent dozens. In 2010 the crew spent most of the summer hoisting organ parts into the chambers at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, followed by hoisting pints and other concoctions at the Gin Mill. Numerous subsequent projects have allowed reunions with the friendly staff there—friendly to good natured partyers, but hard on bad apples.

Since so many of our projects involve hoisting organ components in and out of balconies, towers, and high chambers, I spend a lot of time talking with scaffolding vendors around the country. I have first-name relationships with reps in a dozen cities, as well as with our personal representatives from national scaffolding vendors. We own several electric hoists, including one with a 100-foot reach purchased for that job at Saint John the Divine that can hoist a 2,000-pound load 100 feet in two minutes with a soft start and stop. A multiple-week job like that means that someone has held a finger on the up or down button for dozens of hours. We like to ship our own hoist across the country because specialized rental equipment like that can be hard to find and in poor condition. In a usual setup, the hoist is hung from a trolley that rolls on an I-beam so a heavy load like a four-manual console or ten-stop windchest can be lifted clear of a balcony rail, trolleyed out over the nave floor, and safely lowered. Safely for the console, safely for our crew.

The bells, the bells

Wendy and I left our apartment in Greenwich Village on the heels of the pandemic and moved early last year to bucolic Stockbridge in western Massachusetts, about five miles from the New York border. Our house is three doors up Church Street from Main Street where stands the granite Children’s Chime Tower on the Village Green that is shared by the First Congregational Church. After we moved in, we were delighted to learn that we can hear the largest bell ringing the hour, every hour, from the house—no more wondering what time it is in the middle of the night.

The tower was built in 1879, the gift of David Dudley Field II, son of David Dudley Field, pastor of the Congregational Church, and his wife, Submit (really). David II was a prominent New York politician and attorney who represented William Magear “Boss” Tweed in his Tammany Hall embezzlement trial. (Tweed died in prison.) David II dedicated the tower to his grandchildren, stipulating that the chimes should be played every day from “apple blossom time to first frost.” His grave is in the Stockbridge Cemetery, just across Main Street from the Chime Tower. My grandfather was rector of Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church in Stockbridge when I was a kid, and I remember sitting on that green with my grandmother at picnic suppers listening to recitals on the chimes. The music was simple as there are only eleven bells, but since it was more than fifty years ago, I remember it as grand. That tradition continued until recently when the timber frame supporting the chimes was deemed unsafe due to an infestation of carpenter ants.

The big bell continued to ring every hour until a storm caused a power failure last spring, stopping the clock at 2:16. The clock was not reset after the storm, leaving us wondering about the time during the night. At the last town meeting, the citizens approved rebuilding the chimes with a new steel frame, refurbishing the chimes’ playing action, replacing the roof, and re-pointing the stone work.

I was returning to Stockbridge last week from our place in Maine and saw a large crane set up next to the tower. I went home, unloaded the car, walked back to the green with Farley the Goldendoodle to see what was going on, and I found three men from the Verdin Company of Cincinnati, Ohio, preparing to hoist the bells back into the tower. They had removed them earlier in the week, placing them on a flat-bed trailer owned by the town so they could be driven to safety overnight at the public works yard a half-mile away. The new steel frame was in place, and they were hoisting the bells with their new striking mechanisms back into the tower.

In the twenty months since we moved to town, we had only heard the largest bell as it tolled the hours, but now, as the people from Verdin were putting things together and testing the new actions, I heard all the bells for the first time in more than fifty years. At least one of the technicians knew how to play a little so a few hymns and a couple children’s songs wafted up the street to our house. Before they left town, they set and started the clock, freeing it from 2:16 to cover all 720 minutes of the twelve-hour cycle. The morning after the first night of tolling the hour, I was walking Farley a few minutes before 7:00 and ran into our neighbor Marty with Brody the Labrador at the poop-bag kiosk across from the tower. When the bell tolled the hour and we were chatting about the return of the bells, Marty told me that Stewart across the street used to play the chimes and was looking forward to volunteering again when the rest of the work on the tower is complete and the chime goes back into service. I suppose I will, too.

Doing it the old-fashioned way

After Wendy and I visited Florence, Italy, in May 2023, I wrote about the hoisting equipment designed by Filippo Brunelleschi for the construction of the dome of the cathedral there. He had won the design competition in 1418, and construction started in 1420 on what is still the largest unsupported dome in the world. Brunelleschi’s hoisting gear was powered by oxen walking on a circular treadmill on the floor of the cathedral, a rig that was a lot messier and required more maintenance than what we use on our job sites. He made use of blocks and tackle, the same as used to handle the rigging of sailing ships. It is fun to picture workers hauling hay into the church to feed the oxen, and I suppose there was a poop-bag kiosk there also.

The real genius of Brunelleschi’s hoist was the crane at the top that could transfer stones weighing thousands of pounds laterally to every spot in the circumference of the dome. In the world of rigging, it is one thing to hoist a heavy load vertically; it is a very different challenge to move horizontally from under the hoisting point.

We marvel at ancient feats of lifting. Stonehenge in Wiltshire, England, is believed to be between four- and five-thousand years old. It includes some thirty stones, some as heavy as twenty-five tons. The stones came from a quarry sixteen miles away—simply bringing them to the site was effort enough. In most American states, the weight limits on tandem axles of commercial trucks are between 25,000 and 40,000 pounds. Rhode Island has the highest limit, 44,800 pounds, which is about the weight of one of the stones at Stonehenge. The Grove crane that was helping my friends from Verdin hoisting bells is a robust machine with a fifty-ton lifting capacity. The engineers and laborers at Stonehenge would have been pleased with help from Gary the crane operator.

We visit iconic churches in Europe built in centuries past and admire their seventeenth- and eighteenth-century organs. The monumental organ completed in 1738 by Christian Müller at the church of Saint Bavo in Haarlem, the Netherlands, has 32′ pipes in the pedal tower. As modern organbuilders, we know how much work it is to handle things like that. Those eighteenth-century craftsmen worked very hard.

I was twenty-one years old when my mentor John Leek and I helped a crew from Flentrop in Zaandam, the Netherlands, install the three-manual organ at Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Cleveland, Ohio. The organ has a beautiful twenty-five-foot mahogany case topped with a massive crown with heavy moldings that stands on a pedestal balcony something like fifteen feet above the floor. The balcony is shallower than the organ case so when you are up on top, you look straight down to the floor.

There is a polished 16′ Principal in the façade, and come to think of it, we installed that organ using technology and equipment similar to that used by Brunelleschi, lifting everything to the balcony and into the organ using a block-and-tackle with hemp rope. Looking back, it would have been a lot more pleasant had anyone thought of using nylon rigging rope like you find on a modern sailboat because that hairy, prickly hemp was hard on our hands. The heaviest piece of the organ was the impost frame with the huge moldings that form the bases of the case towers and the rigid structure that connects the lower and upper cases. I suppose it weighed around 1,500 pounds; so instead of oxen, there was me and a young guy from Flentrop pulling on the rope. We were much neater and easier to maintain than Brunelleschi’s oxen. My sixty-seven-year-old shoulders and back could no more do that kind of work now than fly me to the moon.

To lift the big shiny façade pipes up to the case, a co-worker picked up the top of the pipe and climbed a ladder from the nave floor to the balcony as others moved the toe end toward the ladder, bringing the pipe to vertical. I wore a leather harness around my waist as if I was carrying a flagpole in a parade, we placed the toe of the pipe in the cup, and I climbed the ladder, toe following top as the others above me balanced and guided it into place. Today I stand in a church gazing up at the organ, remembering doing that work, incredulous. I am not half the man I used to be.

I have been with the Organ Clearing House for nearly twenty-five years, watching my colleague Amory Atkins set up scaffolding and hoisting equipment on dozens, even hundreds of job sites. There is still plenty of hustle to the work, but the I-beams, trolley, and electric hoist all supported by steel scaffolding make for a much safer and less strenuous work site.

Making the impossible possible

When I was running the Bishop Organ Company in the Boston area in the 1980s, we had a releathering project in the large organ of one of Boston’s great churches. As usual, we started the job with a string of heavy days disconnecting organ components covered with decades of city grime and removing them from the organ for transportation to our workshop. After we had wrestled a particularly awkward and heavy part down the ladders and out of the building, one of my employees announced that now he thought he understood organbuilding. “It’s squeezing into tiny spaces to remove screws you can’t reach, to separate a part of the organ the size of a refrigerator that’s covered with mud and sharp pointy things and carrying it down a ladder next to a Tiffany window.”

He was right. A big manual windchest might weigh 800 or 1,000 pounds, more for a large console. If we are planning to dismantle or install a Skinner organ that has one of those wonderful electro-pneumatic harps, we might plan an entire day to handle that single specialty voice—they are big and heavy and include row after row of little prickly things that dig into your hands, arms, and shoulders. When I hear a harp in service playing, recital, or recording, my mind jumps instantly to the titanic struggles I have had moving them. They sound so ethereal in a lofty room, but they are pugnacious bulky brats to handle.

The thrilling rumbles of big 16′ and 32′ stops do not happen anywhere else in music, but again, my mind jumps to the herculean task of moving such things. The pipes, racks, and windchests of a 32′ Double Open Wood weigh many tons and will fill half of a semi-trailer. One of the marvels of the pipe organ is the idea that a single pipe might be approaching forty feet in length including pipe foot and tuning length, weigh close to a ton, and can produce only one musical tone at one pitch at one volume level. What a luxurious note.

When I meet people at social events, they are invariably surprised when they learn about my work. “A pipe organ builder. I didn’t know there were any of you left.” Another common comment is someone remembering the organ looming high in the back of the church and if they ever gave it any thought, they assumed that it was part of the building. Not so. Every organ in every building anywhere in the world was put there intentionally by craftsmen. They had to figure out how to mount and secure each heavy component. Think of the sprawling sixteenth-century organ case at the cathedral in Chartres. It gives the impression that it is somehow hanging from the stained-glass windows, but 500 years ago, those workers built scaffolding clear up to the clerestory windows and hoisted and lugged the heavy woodwork and huge pipes to their lofty spots.

Twenty years ago, we were delivering a three-manual organ to a church in suburban Richmond, Virginia. There was a big organ case with polished façade pipes, five large windchests, all the machinery and ductwork for the wind system, seventy or eighty eight-foot pipe trays full of nicely packed pipes, the console, and all the mysterious looking bits and pieces that make up a full-sized pipe organ. Parishioners volunteered on a Sunday afternoon to help unload the truck, and by day’s end the sanctuary was jam packed with carefully made, expensive looking stuff. I had worked with the church’s organ committee and governing board to create and negotiate the project and knew several of the people involved very well. After the dust had settled that evening, one of them came up to me and commented, “John, it wasn’t until this moment that I understood why organs cost so much money.”

John Gouwens began his study of carillon at Indiana University with Linda Walker Pointer. He continued his carillon activity when he transferred to the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, where he graduated with a Bachelor of Music degree in organ. He earned his master’s degree in organ at the University of Kansas, though his main priority in that choice was to pursue carillon study with Albert Gerken.

He served for thirty-nine years as organist and carillonneur at Culver Academies, Culver, Indiana. His musical activities continue today as organist and choirmaster at Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church and as organist, choirmaster, and carillonneur at The Presbyterian Church, both in La Porte, Indiana. Throughout his career, he has been active as a performer in North America and in Europe, as well as being a composer of carillon music. His method book, Playing the Carillon: An Introductory Method, is in use throughout North America and abroad.

The idea for the carillon

The idea of having a carillon on the campus of Indiana University in Bloomington was the inspiration of Herman B. Wells (1902–2000). Wells was the eleventh president of Indiana University, serving from 1938 to 1962; thereafter, he became the first chancellor for the university, serving from 1962 until his death in 2000. During his presidency, the student body of the university nearly tripled in size. Among his many accomplishments were putting an end to segregation and racist practices at the university, staunchly defending academic freedom in research (including some highly controversial but groundbreaking studies), establishing a system of extension campuses of the university throughout the state, and building what became one of the foremost schools of music in the country.

Dr. Arthur R. Metz (1887–1963), Class of 1909, became a prominent surgeon in the Chicago area, serving as personal physician to Philip Wrigley (of the Wrigley Corporation) and team doctor to the Chicago Cubs baseball team. Dr. Metz was a generous donor to the university, establishing a foundation at Indiana University that created substantial scholarships for outstanding students. Well after Dr. Metz’s passing, Herman Wells, in his position on the board of the Metz Foundation, proposed that the time had come for a beautiful, tangible contribution to the campus that could be appreciated and enjoyed by all.

By this time, the Metz Foundation was secure in its ability to fund very generous scholarships. Over the years since, the investments have grown, and what was once a single scholarship now amounts to more than 40 scholarships, as well as funding a number of other programs and facilities on campus. Mr. Wells enthusiastically advocated for the foundation to donate a carillon as a memorial to Dr. Metz, and the foundation agreed.

A committee of select School of Music administrators traveled to Europe to visit several carillon installations and came away particularly impressed with the 61-bell carillon in Eindhoven, the Netherlands, built by Royal Eijsbouts Klokkengieterij, bell foundry of Asten, the Netherlands. The committee heard it demonstrated by the young Dutch carillonneur Arie Abbenes, who made a strong impression on them as well. They ordered essentially an identical carillon, 61 bells, starting from a low B-flat of 7,648 pounds and a diameter of 69.3 inches. The inclusion of a low B-flat, without a low B or low C-sharp, follows the European tendency to favor including the B-flat as an extra bass note, in the manner of the carillon of Saint Rombout’s Cathedral in Mechelen, Belgium, which to this day remains an important center for the carillon profession. The majority of “concert-sized” carillons have a range of four octaves, often still including the low B-flat: a 49-bell instrument, or 50 if a low C-sharp is also included. The fifth octave of bells is called for far less often. An unusual feature of the Metz Carillon is that every bell, even the smallest one (weighing 17.8 pounds), has an inscription with a quote from a noted philosopher, poet, or other prominent thinker.

The original tower

A freestanding 91-foot tower was built on the northeast side of the campus, overlooking it at the highest point in Bloomington (Picture 1). The tower of poured concrete reflected the “brutalist” style of architecture of the era, with large openings on all sides of the stairway. As part of that look, the imprints of the concrete molds and metal portions of the rebar used were visible throughout the tower. The carillon had a roof and corners, but otherwise was completely open to the elements. The arrangement of bells favored visual effect, rather than musical results.

There was a “façade” of six bells on each of its four sides, thus making up most of the bottom two octaves of the carillon. The transmission (mechanism) was situated toward the west side of the tower, and the remaining 37 bells were arranged in rows—essentially a “wall” of bells all in one plane—situated very close to the transmission. The upper bells therefore had a minimum of excess movement in the wires when they were played, but the lower bells, especially those situated on the east face of the tower, had horizontal wires up to ten feet in length. Playing one of the bells on that side often resulted in the wire oscillating up and down for more than 30 seconds after a note was played. This made the bells on that side unwieldy to play. Furthermore, the bells on each of the façades tended to “stick out” when heard from that side, and bells on the opposite side were, while not muffled outright, certainly not balanced in effect.

The frame was treated with a heavy galvanization that served well in the long run for preserving the structural beams, but it was not common practice at the time to use stainless steel (or otherwise rust-resistant) bolts to hold the structure together. As bolts deteriorated and as the pads between the bells and the framework compressed over time, moisture easily made its way into the crownstaples (clapper assemblies) and into the bolts holding up the bells as well as bolts holding the beams together. By the time the instrument was just ten years old, the threads on the tops of bolts had worn away to the point that one could no longer undo any bolts to replace isolation pads between the frame and the bells. With no screening to keep out birds, there were also issues with bird droppings, sometimes quite an accumulation of them on certain bells (Picture 2).

While the high placement of the tower made it visible over nearly all of the campus, it actually did not serve music well. Even when the air was calm on most of the campus, the area around the tower was subject to wind gusts, to the point that the effect on the action was noticeable to the player, and the listener on the ground had much interference with the dynamic effect of the instrument. The gusts often created Doppler effects, as the changes in wind direction distorted the perceived pitch of the bells. The only buildings close by were those devoted to married student housing and several fraternity and sorority houses. Such a location was too obscure to have much impact on life in the center of campus.

The Music Addition carillon

When the Metz Carillon was installed, Eijsbouts offered to provide a higher-pitched, smaller carillon at a very reasonable price. At that time, the Eijsbouts company had a practice of keeping a three-octave carillon of a standardized design in stock, with a layout that was particularly suited to being installed on a truck bed as a traveling carillon. This enabled them to fill requests for such instruments quickly and easily. To enable a considerably larger amount of repertoire to be playable on it, Eijsbouts offered to provide such a carillon, but with the range expanded from the standard 35 bells (three octaves with no low C-sharp or D-sharp) to 42 bells, 3-1⁄2 octaves. All of this was pitched a full octave above concert pitch.

This instrument was installed at the same time as the Metz Carillon, placed on the roof of what was then known as the Music Annex, a large addition (from 1962) to the main building of the Indiana University School of Music. Two practice consoles were also provided at the time, but they were so poorly constructed that in short order many notes would not play. Both teaching and practicing ended up happening live on the bells of the carillon of the Music Annex (now known as the Music Addition). The framework of this carillon did not have the galvanization treatment that had been applied to the Metz Carillon, and with no roof or protection of any kind it deteriorated severely over time. Over the years, this carillon, despite the decay that was happening, remained remarkably playable, mostly because it was played often enough to keep its transmission limber (and due in particular to considerable wear on the nylon bushings holding the roller bars in the carillon transmission). Because that carillon is situated near most of the university’s performance halls, it is to this day frequently played prior to operas and symphony concerts happening nearby. That instrument has also been recently enlarged and fitted with a new console, transmission, and clappers, but the details of that project fall outside of the scope of this article.

Dedication and ongoing activity

While the tower was completed in 1970, it was not until the following year that Arie Abbenes played the dedication recital for the completed carillon. The program included a four-movement work by Dutch carillonneur-composer Wim Franken, which had been written for the dedication of the Eindhoven carillon, thus using the fifth octave of bells actively. Mr. Abbenes was engaged to serve as university carillonneur for the school year 1971–1972, but returned to his positions over in the Netherlands (having been on leave of absence) the following year.

In the years that followed, there was sporadic activity. For a while, former students of Abbenes were paid a stipend to present weekly recitals on the carillon. In the school year 1976–1977, another of Abbenes’s former students, Linda Walker (now Pointer), returning from a scholarship for overseas study, resumed her doctoral studies in organ, and was hired as a graduate teaching assistant, with her assignment being to teach carillon students and continue presenting weekly recitals during the school year. In Europe, she studied at and graduated from the Royal Carillon School in Mechelen, Belgium. She continued to serve Indiana University as teacher and carillonneur from 1976 to 1983, thereafter moving to positions in Alabama and Florida, where she continued her activity as a carillonneur for several years.

Over the years, former students of Linda Walker Pointer were engaged as graduate assistants while pursuing graduate degrees in organ, first Tony Norris (1984–1985) and then Brian Swager (1987–1996). Like Pointer, Brian Swager was returning from European studies, graduating from the Royal Carillon School in Mechelen in 1986. He, too, was initially resuming doctoral studies in organ, completing that degree in 1994. He continued as carillonneur and teacher in what was elevated to a faculty position (lecturer).

Since Brian Swager’s departure, carillon activity at Indiana University has been intermittent. Starting in 2003, I was brought in occasionally, sometimes several times per year, chiefly to play on the Metz Carillon, but also to teach any students who were interested, and to play somewhat informally on the Music Addition carillon. On all of those visits, I carried out what might best be termed as “life support” maintenance on both carillons, keeping the action limber, regulating the touch on both instruments, and reshaping clappers as needed to address the harsh sound that comes from long-term wear.

Concerns about the integrity of the concrete in the Metz Carillon tower were raised in 2013, but on inspection, university architects raised greater concerns about the low railings and the openness of the stairway, which were not in compliance with Occupational Safety and Health Administration requirements, and activity at the Metz Carillon was brought to a halt until the facilities department of Jacobs School of Music (as the school was retitled in 2005 after a very large gift from the Jacobs family vastly expanded the school’s resources for scholarships, endowed staff positions, and overall programming) installed far better screening and railings to the stairway. Carillon recitals resumed in the fall of 2015.

A bright prospect at last

Indiana University was founded on January 20, 1820. By 2015, Michael McRobbie, eighteenth president of Indiana University, was formulating plans to celebrate in numerous noteworthy and tangible ways the impending bicentennial of the founding of the university. He had been familiar with the impressive carillon of Canberra, Australia, and was aware of the host of problems surrounding the Metz Carillon at that time. He envisioned placing the carillon in a new tower at a central location of campus, where it could be an integral part of daily life. This vision included expanding it to a “grand carillon.” (See below on that topic.)

The old IU stadium, dating from 1925, was in a central location on campus, but for football games was replaced in 1960 with a new stadium on the far north end of campus. The old stadium site, situated just west of the main library (now dubbed Wells Library), was relegated to lesser events, such as the “Little 500” annual bicycle race. That stadium deteriorated to the point that it was ultimately demolished. In the 1980s, work began on building a beautiful arboretum in its place. (The building devoted to health, physical education, and recreation, along with some playing fields, is still situated just west of the arboretum.) Since this mostly tranquil spot still has much foot traffic going from place to place on campus, it was an obvious location to put a carillon, at a considerable distance from automotive traffic but within hearing of a great deal of the university community.

Grand carillon?

While there is not a formal definition of the term “grand carillon,” a particularly impressive repertoire emerged, particularly in the 1950s and beyond, for carillons possessing bells extending to a low G of approximately five to six tons. To be a proper “grand carillon” for that repertoire, the instrument must be pitched in “concert C” or lower and must be chromatic down to that low G (with the possible exception of the low G-sharp), and from low C up must have at least four octaves. The grand carillon repertoire was created especially for the carillons at the University of Kansas, the Washington National Cathedral, the University of Chicago, and Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida, among a few others. The Canberra instrument was essentially a twin to the Kansas instrument, so indeed President McRobbie had heard just how impressive such an instrument can be. Worldwide, there are presently twenty-eight “grand carillons,” nineteen of which are in the United States. Heretofore, there were none in Indiana, although there are three in Michigan and four in Illinois. An additional octave of treble bells above the usual 53–54-bell grand carillon range is not essential to that repertoire, but it is worth noting that just under half of the above grand carillons (14) have a full octave or more of additional treble bells.

Defining the project

With President McRobbie’s backing, funding was arranged, and the planning of the project moved forward. The Eijsbouts bell foundry has over the years dramatically improved the design and durability of its instruments, and as the largest bell foundry, they were clearly in the best position to undertake a project of this scope. Naturally, they were also the bell foundry most able to add new bells compatible with the existing instrument.

The design of the tower and overall coordination of the project was entrusted to Browning Day Mullins Dierdorf Architects (now Browning Day) of Indianapolis, Indiana. Jonathan Hess, principal and chairman of the board of the company, has served as official architect for building projects at Indiana University for many years. Dave Long, senior project manager, took the lead on coordinating the design of the tower. Architect Susan T. Rodriguez of New York City also participated in the design team at President McRobbie’s request, particularly to provide innovative ideas for the tower and its setting. I was hired by Browning Day Mullins Dierdorf (BDMD) as consultant to the project to ensure that the tower itself would provide for an ideal facility for the carillon, and at the same time to work with the bell foundry to create an outstanding example of the bell founders’ art. The Eijsbouts team and I were overjoyed that we got to have much input into the design of the tower. Opportunities to provide such an ideal design and situation for a carillon are rare indeed, and we are all very glad it was possible!

Discussion of the range of the enlarged carillon was undertaken with the administration of the Jacobs School of Music. The resulting decision was to cast four new bells, providing the low C-sharp, B, A, and low G needed for the grand carillon repertoire. The only missing chromatic note in the range would be the low G-sharp, which indeed is very rarely used and would have added considerable expense to include. This brought the instrument to a total of 65 bells. The low G weighs 12,381 pounds and has a diameter of 82.8 inches. It was noted that the inscriptions on the original 61 bells were all quotations by men. The new bells are inscribed with quotations from Sappho, Hildegard of Bingen, Emily Dickinson, and Maya Angelou.

As recommended by Eijsbouts, we determined that the best results would be obtained by having all the bells of the existing instrument shipped back to the Eijsbouts bell foundry for the project. Doing so ensured that the tuning and character of the new bells would be an ideal match for the existing instrument. Also, this ensured that all clappers and fittings for hanging the bells would fit as anticipated. The opportunity was taken to clean and buff the bells at the foundry, so that the entire instrument would have a “like new” look when completed.

On September 23, 2017, I gave a farewell recital on the instrument in its original tower and setting. By this time, there were problems with chunks of concrete falling from the tower, and the tower was surrounded by a construction fence for the protection of the public; indeed, the concerns that had been raised about the integrity of the concrete proved to be well founded. In October 2017 Eijsbouts staff came to dismantle the instrument and ship the bells to Asten. With the bolts holding everything together so severely rusted (Picture 3), the efficient way to take the instrument down was to cut sections of beams and take the bells and the beams holding them down together. The tower itself was demolished in April 2018.

Design and mechanical considerations

For many years, it was common for carillon bells to be hung on straight, horizontal beams, often resulting in fairly long rows of bells (20 feet or more). When the transmission (mechanism of the instrument) is centered in the frame, it is possible to arrange the bells so that all but the largest few are close to the transmission, and the movement is transferred to the bells through roller bars. Roller bars (heavier duty, but otherwise similar to roller bars in tracker organs) provide a solid means of conveying movement. In contrast, when horizontal distances are handled with long wires, the wires tend to sag and to allow a considerable amount of excess movement. As installed in 1971, the upper 37 bells were less than two feet away from the roller bars. Since the transmission (along with the upper bells) was situated on the west side of the tower, there were some very long and quite problematic horizontal wires going to the larger bells that were hung on the north, south, and especially the east sides. Inevitably, roller bars add to the mass of the transmission to each note, considerably increasing the inertia the player must manage. An additional disadvantage is that roller bars can also bend and twist when their notes are played, though this is less of a problem for the player than long horizontal wires.

It is far more common today to build a carillon with few or no roller bars, relying instead on directed tumblers, placed just above the vertical wires. That solution does not work very well if the bells are still arranged in long, straight beams because the horizontal wires to the bells on the far ends must be excessively long, allowing much extraneous motion. When the bells are arranged in a radial (circular or hexagonal) configuration (Picture 4), so that all the bells are close to their tumblers, horizontal wire lengths and the overall mass of the transmission can be kept to a minimum, and the instrument is much more responsive to play.

In Picture 5, one can see how the directed tumbler is designed. The stalk to the right is inserted into the mounting block above it. The pivot (using in this case a sealed ball-bearing unit) is held out away from the stalk, so that the latter is directly in line with the vertical wire coming up from the console below. As the instrument is assembled, each tumbler can be easily turned so that it is directly pointing toward its bell. From the vertical arm of the tumbler, a horizontal wire connects to the tail of the clapper. Whichever way the tumbler is turned, the hole on the horizontal arm to which the vertical wire connects will be in the same place, centered below the mounting stalk. The five holes on the vertical arm allow some adjustment to the leverage, the second hole from the top being exactly equal in travel with the connection point on the horizontal arm.

Great care was taken in the design of this carillon to keep the horizontal wires as short as possible. The smallest bells are the ones most sensitive to any factors that might cause the clappers to dwell too long on the wall of the bells (potentially dampening the ring of the bells considerably), and in smaller bells (with lighter clappers) the added weight of long vertical wires considerably aggravates that problem. Therefore, it is best practice to place the smallest bells closest to the console, but it is important to have them high enough above the roof of the playing cabin (the room in which the player is seated at the console) so that the sound is not blocked from any direction. The ideal is to have a direct line of sight from every bell—especially from every small bell—to the listener below.

It is desirable to avoid having any of the bells at great vertical distances from the console, both for mechanical reasons and because it becomes challenging for the player to determine balance when some bells are significantly farther away. The engineer’s drawing (Picture 6) shows the arrangement of treble and midrange bells. Nineteen of the smallest trebles are hung below the floor level (open grating) on an elliptical frame, toward the east side of the console, since that is where the keys and transmission are for the smaller bells. Above that is a hexagonal frame with 34 midrange bells, arranged in three tiers, the largest being on the top tier.

Major revision to the tower design

The original plan was for the tower to reach a total height of 162 feet, with the 12 largest bells placed at the bottom of the instrument (78 feet above ground level), the playing cabin being above (at 96 feet), and the treble bells above that, starting 113 feet above ground level. Due largely to a change in tariff laws that impacted importing some of the building materials, contractors’ bids for building the tower came in considerably higher than expected, leading to major changes in the design and layout of the tower.

The architects kept the elegant proportions of the original design while making the tower shorter overall and engineering several changes to reduce costs. The expense of providing a stairway to the playing cabin was a significant consideration, and at the request of the architects, the design of the carillon was changed, placing the playing cabin at the bottom of the instrument. (All access above that level is by means of permanently installed straight ladders.)

Because it was critically important to keep the distances between the smallest bells and the console to a minimum, the design of the framework and transmission for bells 13 through 65 (counting from the bottom) was unchanged; therefore, the largest 12 bells then had to be placed higher in the tower than the rest of the instrument. With the larger, heavier clappers in those largest bells, the longer vertical wires are far less of a problem than they would have been with smaller bells, but it is definitely more difficult for the carillonneur to judge the balance when playing the bass bells than it would have been with those bells being just below the playing cabin.

On the positive side, this redesign placed the whole instrument close enough to the ground that very soft playing may be heard clearly, and fortissimo playing is indeed impressive, though never overbearing. The bells are situated from 68 feet to 103 feet above ground level, rather than 78 feet to 124 feet. Picture 7 shows the original plan, with the bass bells occupying a lower belfry level. Originally, the wires for the bass bells were either going to be run around the exterior of the playing cabin (somewhat visible in the middle of Picture 7) or through the floor of the playing cabin. The floor opening and the space in the center of the hexagonal frame in the hub above the playing cabin would easily accommodate the wires for the 34 bells placed on that frame. With the larger bells now going above that level, an additional set of roller bars was needed to bring the wires for the bass bells into that same space allocated for the wires and mechanism for the midrange. (That frame is visible as the multi-colored structure just above the playing cabin in Picture 8.)

In Picture 9, the frame of the tower is shown under construction. A relatively compact central spiral staircase runs from ground level to the first structural hub at 33 feet above ground. A wider, sweeping circular stairway connects from that hub to the level of the playing cabin at 51 feet. A smaller frame, not extending all the way to the exterior framework, is for the roof of the playing cabin (at 59 feet). The next hub, at 69 feet, is where 19 small bells are hung just below it and 34 midrange bells are arranged in a hexagonal frame atop that hub. In the revised design two more large bells are placed above the midrange frame, with the remaining ten large bells in a larger hexagonal arrangement above the hub at 87 feet. The second hub from the top (at 105 feet) holds the ceiling above the bells, with reflective panels above the bell frame itself and a membrane roof above the center. The space from that roof to the top hub (at 123 feet) is open. The tips of the six piers are 127 feet, 9 inches above ground.

Carillons are in general well served by being enclosed in louvers, which blend the sound of the bells, helping the bells on all sides to be heard in an even balance from any side of the tower. The combination of the new clappers and the acoustics of the tower produces a much richer, warmer sound than the carillon had previously. (In the 1971 installation, the sound of the carillon was notably “cold” and “glassy” in effect.) Louvers also reduce the amount of water that reaches the frame and the transmission. Furthermore, louvers help direct sound better toward good listening areas.

So successful is that aspect of the acoustics that the carillon may be clearly heard even when standing just two feet from the walls of the base of the tower, and there is no point on the surrounding lawn where any bell is either stifled or over prominent due to its position in the tower. The original plan for the tower was to make the louvers of strong glass, also mounting them so that they could be opened and closed electrically. When the tower plan was revised to reduce costs, that idea was abandoned in favor of fixed, aluminum louvers, at approximately a 45-degree angle.

Finding a better way to build a carillon

For all of us involved in the project, we were determined to seek out new and often innovative ways to build a carillon that reflected the best design, materials, and results possible. The Eijsbouts bell foundry is by far the largest bell founding company worldwide, and their staff includes six design engineers. For this project, I expressly requested to work with Matty Bergers. Matty had been the sole design engineer with Petit & Fritsen. When the Petit & Fritsen bell foundry in Aarle-Rixtel closed in 2014, Eijsbouts acquired the company, and Matty was one of several from Petit & Fritsen who then joined the Eijsbouts company in Asten. I was impressed by his practical, innovative designs, as well as his tenacious dedication to finding the best possible solution to the technical challenges of building a fine carillon. A project of this magnitude presented an opportunity to make many improvements to how a carillon is built, bringing together my lifelong study of best practice for carillon building, Matty’s ideas and meticulous work, and input from sales representative and engineer Henk van Blooijs as well as others on the Eijsbouts staff.

In recent years, Eijsbouts has made many improvements in the quality of their building. For a long time, Eijsbouts, and to a lesser extent Petit & Fritsen, tended to make their crownstaples with the pivot of the clapper being quite close to the (side) wall of the bell. In fact, at one point, one of those founders used to employ an adjustment to the position of that pivot as a means to reduce or increase the weight the player encountered when playing it. As a result, the clapper travel tended to “scrape” and reiterate as it contacted the bell, making for a dull, “thuddy” sound. That issue was aggravated by the fact that gravity exerted relatively little pull on the clapper to drop back away from the bell.

Ideally, having the clapper pivot more toward the center, and in some cases lowered a bit from the inside top of the bell, positions a clapper to contact the bell at a right angle, making a quick contact, then bouncing off the bell. At my request, we had the clappers designed so this would be the case. Pictures 10 and 11 show the contrast between the original installation and the new one. Also, the newer photo shows the return spring positioned just behind the clapper. The installation was designed so that with the entire instrument, it was possible to install either a return spring or a “helper” spring to every bell. The return springs are used mostly on smaller bells and are necessary to compensate for the weight of the transmission (often heavier than the smaller clappers), ensuring that the note (and key) will quickly return to a “ready” position. In the lower range, “helper” springs are placed near the transmission (in this case, tumblers), pulling in the same direction that the player is pulling, to make it easier to play bells with heavier clappers and particularly to overcome inertia to set the clappers in motion.

In the late 1990s, Eijsbouts began making clappers in which the shaft of the clapper is threaded and screwed into a socket in the crownstaple assembly. This design permits fine height adjustments to where the clapper contacts the bell on installation, but more importantly, when the clapper wears from use, it is possible to rotate it a few degrees to get a fresh strike spot. (The alternative is using a metal file to reshape the clapper in its fixed position. When done repeatedly, a flat area eventually becomes large enough that it is impossible to reshape enough to recover the original, mellower sound.) Various adjustable clapper designs have been used somewhat experimentally since the early 1950s, though the majority of bell founders active today incorporate this feature into their carillon clappers as a standard practice. The threads and the locknut are visible in Picture 11.

Starting in 2017, Eijsbouts began using heavier clappers, having observed that a clapper with more mass brings out a fuller, warmer sound from the instrument. To illustrate the difference, the original clapper for the largest bell in 1971 was 165 pounds. The same bell is now struck with a clapper where the weight of the clapper ball (not counting the weight of the shaft) is 238 pounds. Low G is struck with a clapper where the ball is 326 pounds. Eijsbouts also long ago stopped using the manganese alloy they used in their older clappers in favor of cast iron clappers, a more traditional material that has stood the test of time well. As late as 2003, Eijsbouts and Petit & Fritsen were both still using nylon as bushing material at many points where clapper pivots and wire connections were made. I actually had a role in changing that.

When the Petit & Fritsen carillon for the Presbyterian Church of La Porte, Indiana, was under construction (I was consultant), I asked Matty Bergers and Frank Fritsen why they were still using nylon rather than Delrin®, another DuPont self-lubricating plastic, as a bushing material throughout their instruments. I pointed out the way nylon bushing blocks on both IU carillons had cracked over time and shown a great deal of wear. Delrin® is less prone to absorbing water, is more resistant to temperature variations and sunlight, and tends to show far less wear, while still making for a smooth-running surface. (The durability of the material has certainly proven itself over many years as a material for harpsichord jacks and plectra.) The La Porte carillon was the first to have Delrin® used throughout. Eijsbouts followed suit, as Delrin® is now in use for all sorts of connections, including bushings on the coupling between pedals and manuals.

Some Dutch carillon consultants require that the horizontal wires for larger bells be nearly parallel to the floor, making an obtuse angle between the clapper tail and the wire. Throughout this instrument, we arranged for all wire connections to be at right angles—clappers at a right angle to the surface of the bell upon contact, and the levers on the tumblers at right angles to the wires halfway through the stroke, so the player has good, nuanced control over the behavior of the clapper throughout the stroke. In those details, the configuration of the transmission resembles the principles followed by the English bell founders Taylor and Gillett & Johnston, as well as the American companies Verdin, Meeks & Watson, and Sunderlin.

Not surprisingly, the larger clappers and the positions of clappers and tumblers considerably changed where the transition was made between return springs and helper springs. In a typical Eijsbouts installation, with the wire angles conforming to modern Dutch norms, helper springs are normally needed only up to the “middle C” bell (bell #13 in a C-compass carillon, bell #17 on the Metz Bicentennial Carillon). We ended up using helper springs all the way up to bell #30 (c-sharp more than an octave above “middle C”). Some extra-sturdy brackets had to be added to the pedals and the tumblers for the largest bells in the carillon, but even so, we also had to compromise a bit in the position of the clappers on the six largest bells, which are a bit closer to the bell wall than I consider ideal. That said, the clapper positioning, and even more, the clappers themselves and the sound they produce are greatly improved compared to the original configuration of 1971.

New developments introduced in this carillon

When bells are mounted on metal framework, it is necessary to pad them, both to allow the bells to vibrate more freely and to prevent highly undesirable extraneous vibrations that can happen when the bells directly touch metal framework. In recent decades, many bell founders including Eijsbouts have used neoprene padding for this purpose. Neoprene offers the desirable amount of softness while still being sufficiently firm to be effective, but the problem with that material is that in cold weather, it deteriorates quickly. That point was particularly driven home on a carillon I encountered in Pennsylvania about two years after a major renovation had been done on it—more than 20 of the neoprene washers used to isolate the bells from the heads of the bolts holding them had already split and dropped to the floor!

Needing to find a pliable but more durable material to pad the feet of the framework, where it rested on the floor, and to pad the heads of the bolts and crownstaples up inside the bells, we (Eijsbouts, the architects, and I) conducted some research and ultimately settled on my suggestion of using EPDM rubber. EPDM is a synthetic rubber, made mostly from ethylene and propylene, derived from oil and natural gas. EPDM rubber is used as gasket material in bridges, in liners for swimming pools, and for rubber roofing, where it has a life expectancy of 50 years, so it is made to endure moisture, sunlight, and wide variations in temperature. It turned out that when Eijsbouts ordered the rubber, it was no more expensive than the neoprene they had been using. Eijsbouts has continued to use EPDM rubber in all their carillon work since this project.

For padding between the bells and the framework above them, I had specified a time-honored, traditional solution of using wood pads; European oak was used for this purpose. Matty Bergers designed a special way of mounting the wood that would hold it in place effectively over the long run. Picture 12 shows the beam for holding one of the larger bells (shown upside down for easy viewing). The wood pad is drilled to accommodate the bell suspension bolts and crownstaple, mounted beneath a metal plate, with a metal rim around the outside. With that design, even if the wood at some later date splits, it is nevertheless held in place and still serves its function isolating the bell from the framework. As the wood pad is on the bottom (with only the bell below it), moisture can freely drain from below it. Picture 13 shows a similar beam (still upside down), demonstrating how the wood pad is contained. As can be seen in Picture 13, the rim around the oak pads is vented, so that water is not trapped on top of them, either. Further noteworthy in Picture 13, where the beam joins the plate (which is where sections of the hexagonal frame are fastened together) there is an open space in the beam to facilitate the process of galvanization of the frame. The metal easily flows around the interior as well as the exterior of each beam when it is dipped.

A special challenge with the 1971 treble bells is that for those high-pitched bells, the profile (shape) of each is unusually squat and thick walled, leaving almost no space for a crownstaple inside. (It bears mentioning that in newer Eijsbouts carillons, the bells for such high notes are more traditional, “campaniform” in shape.) In the 1971 installation, the six smallest bells were fitted with clappers that were not inside the bells at all, but rather, came up from below to strike the bells. Picture 14 shows that arrangement, and Picture 15 shows the drawing in which a special crownstaple was designed to fit in that tiny space, with the pivot and the clapper itself positioned lower, so that, unlike the original arrangement, the clappers of even this smallest bell would travel and operate normally. The tight space is noticeable in Picture 16, and Picture 17 shows the bell as installed in the tower. The wooden bell pad and the vented bracketing holding it are visible just above the bell.

While tradition and practice have both demonstrated that the best tonal results are obtained from iron clappers (heat treated, so that the clappers will wear from use without introducing such wear on the bells), I was aware that some bell founders (though not the Continental European ones) had made clappers using a spheroidal graphite (SG) iron. SG iron is more ductile (more elastic in shape), offering the advantage of being less brittle and less likely to deform from use. It was likely to hold its shape better than conventional “gray iron” without injuring the bell, since the clapper in fact would be absorbing the impact and returning to its original shape immediately. This theory had been tested in a project on the carillon at Culver Academies, Culver, Indiana, in 2016, where we replaced the original one-piece (non-adjustable) bass clappers with new, rotatable clappers of SG iron, heat treated to the desired level of softness. Remarkably, it had not been necessary, so far, to turn those clappers at all, so the field test had already proven that superior results were possible with that material. Eijsbouts studied this idea also and discovered that SG iron is also less prone to rusting, so they agreed to use it for this carillon. In fact, they indicated at the time that they might continue to use SG iron in future projects. (Whether that has actually happened, I do not know.)

The practice console

It is very important for a carillonneur—for a seasoned professional, but even more, for a student—to have a good practice console, making it possible to master notes of a composition without broadcasting the process of working out errors and repeating particularly difficult passages to the neighborhood. We ensured that a practice console was included with this project.

Bell founders and companies that specialize in building the hardware for carillons still offer traditional all-mechanical practice consoles with tone bars, but it is more common today to build practice consoles that play through computer-sampled sounds. Having seen well-made older practice consoles (mostly from English bell founders), I knew that a sturdy tone bar console, with occasional upkeep, could give reliable service 60 to 70 years or more after it was built. It is a significant understatement to say that no synthesizer or computer-operated instrument will come close to that life expectancy. Also, though no practice console will ever feel exactly like a carillon, the carillonneur is able to engage the mass of the keys and the hammer assembly in a way that no digital practice console, acting only on a contact (usually a pair of optical contacts), can do. A digital practice console, when built well, offers some dynamic sensitivity, but not in a way that reflects the technique the player is using to depress the key.

Having Eijsbouts build it to the standards they apply to their work now ensured that we would have a console where the keys, pedals, and position of everything would be an exact match for the console of the Metz Bicentennial Carillon. (The manual and pedal keyboards were designed according to standards proposed in the United States in 2000, subsequently adopted by the World Carillon Federation. Within those guidelines, there is still allowance for significant variation in key fall, height of sharp notes on pedals, and other details, and we needed all this to match.)

This was the largest tone bar practice console Eijsbouts had built in many years, and it incorporated a sturdy new action that is likely to give many long years of dependable service. Miguel Carvalho, the new campanologist at Eijsbouts, developed a new way to tune the tone bars so that they produce an overtone of a minor third. (In all honestly, that is really only noticeable in the lower range, but the idea is certainly an interesting one.) Matty Bergers was heavily involved in the design and construction of the practice console, the building of which received special attention by the entire Eijsbouts team. The back ends of the keys are made of metal stock (visible in the lower right of Picture 19) that is heavy enough to give some “mass” to the action, and the piano hammers used to strike the bars are sturdy and produce an agreeable sound. (Note also that some extra mass has been added to the hammers in the bass range.) Since many carillonneurs employ playing techniques that involve using momentum to complete many keystrokes (particularly in rapid playing at soft dynamic levels), this is a highly desirable though rare feature on a practice console. The special tuning cuts on the tone bars to produce the minor third overtones are visible at the bottom of Picture 19.

The clock chiming system

The automatic chiming system does not represent a new development, but it is interesting enough to warrant some explanation. In 2002, Paccard Bell Foundry of Annecy, France, developed an automatic playing system in which pneumatic pistons were fitted onto the console of the carillon, and the instrument was then played automatically using the keys, transmission, and clappers that the carillonneur would use to play manually. Naturally, other companies worked out their own variations on this system, including Eijsbouts.

The hardware for this system (clock computer, air compressor, circuitry, and the pistons) is all contained in the playing cabin, out of the elements. Picture 20 shows the pneumatic equipment placed just behind the music rack atop the console; Picture 21 shows the plungers (black pads with white tips, just right of center) that push down on the keys.

The purpose of the clock is to sound the time and occasionally to play melodies significant to the university, not to replace the carillonneur. Therefore, the chiming system is connected to just two octaves of bells.

We anticipated having a clock chime tune on the quarter hours and an hour strike, with a school song playing after the hour strike at 6:00 p.m. Because using the manual playing clapper for striking the hour would have caused a great deal of wear on it, we did opt to use an external hammer on that one bell, which also makes it possible to get a more commanding low hour strike than would have been possible through the pneumatic system. The low G hour strike would naturally lead into a melody played in G, so the pneumatics were fitted to the dominant notes, from D1 to D3. Indiana University is one of many universities to use the 19th-century tune “Annie Lisle” as the music for its alma mater, “Hail to Old IU,” which was first used in 1893. (Cornell University’s use of that tune appears to be the first, in 1870.) The class of 1935 commissioned songwriter Hoagy Carmichael (IU Class of 1925) to write a song with the intention of presenting it to the university to use as an alma mater. Though the resulting song, “The Chimes of Indiana” (which refers to the small chime of bells in the Student Building on the west side of campus), was presented to the university in 1937, and did indeed become part of IU’s musical tradition, it wasn’t until 1978 that the Alumni Association officially adopted it as another alma mater. The lowest note in both songs is the dominant, and with the melody being played following an hour strike on low G, the range of the pneumatic system was fitted to play from D1 (D being the dominant note in the key of G) to D3. After the striking of 6:00 p.m., the clock today plays “The Chimes of Indiana” several days a week, with “Hail to Old IU” playing on other days. (Since late March, the mechanism has been playing the Ukrainian National Anthem in lieu of the alma mater songs.) For some special occasions, such as New Year’s Day, Martin Luther King Day, and Kwanzaa, other songs are played after the 6:00 p.m. hour strike instead. The clock is also set up to play either alma mater or the university’s fight songs at the push of a button. (This has been used on occasion when football touchdowns are scored, though the stadium is well out of earshot of the bells.)

Inaugural activities

For the official celebration of the university’s bicentennial on January 20, 2020, I was brought in to play both alma mater songs officially and to host a series of interested parties (including students and faculty from the organ department, university officials in charge of construction projects, and, of course, President McRobbie) who came up to see the instrument, and each took a turn sounding one of the four new bass bells. The Covid 19 pandemic put most other plans on hold, but Lynnli Wang began her time as associate instructor (graduate assistant) in carillon in the fall of 2020, performing, coordinating playing by others, and teaching many students.

The tower and carillon were officially accepted by the university on May 27, 2021, during an event including speeches, but also including a brief but elegant performance by Lynnli Wang. Belgian-American carillonneur Geert D’hollander, carillonneur of Bok Tower Gardens in Lake Wales, Florida, was brought in to play the first official public recital on October 3, 2021. That program included a piece that the university commissioned from me, Landscape for Carillon, opus 35, which D’hollander and I premiered as a duet. I played a second dedicatory recital on March 26, 2022.

Looking to the future

Whether the university continues to employ graduate teaching assistants to teach and play or eventually puts a permanent faculty position in place remains to be seen. The present graduate assistant, Lynnli Wang, has done an outstanding job of organizing an enthusiastic group of students and has offered a variety of special programs, formal and informal, that have attracted the interest of the campus community at large. The potential is great, with two fine instruments, both using very durable materials and construction methods, and a superb practice console. Students and concert artists now have the facilities to make great carillon music at Indiana University.

All mechanical drawings were produced by Matty Bergers at Royal Eijsbouts Klokkengieterij. All photographs were taken by John Gouwens.

String too short to save

After my freshman year at Oberlin Conservatory of Music, I spent the summer working with Bozeman-Gibson & Company in Lowell, Massachusetts. It was 1975, and on my first day working in an organ shop, I was set up in the parking lot with sawhorses, a set of painted façade pipes, a can of Zip-Strip®, and a hose. If that wasn’t enough to send me running, I guess I was hooked. They were working on the restoration of an 1848 Stevens organ in Belfast, Maine, completing a new organ in Castleton, Vermont, and installing a rebuilt historic tracker (I do not remember the builder) in a Salvation Army chapel in Providence, Rhode Island. A lot of the summer was spent driving around New England between those organs, my first glimpse into the life of a vagabond organ guy.

During my sophomore year I started working part time for John Leek, the organ and harpsichord technician for the Oberlin Conservatory of Music. I spent the next summer working with Bozeman during which the company moved to their permanent workshop in Deerfield, Massachusetts. There were a couple hours of “barn building” each day after the organ building. I continued part time with Leek as long as I was a student and switched to full time after I graduated. Counting the summers and part-time work, I have been at it for forty-six years.

After Christmas of 2019 I retired from working on organs on site and in my workshop. No more weeks spent wiring organs, no more service calls, no more console rebuilds—my favorite workshop job. I hasten to add that I continue to run the Organ Clearing House, managing the sale of vintage organs, and keeping the crew busy. I am still working as a consultant and still writing monthly columns. They will have to snatch the MacBook® from my cold dead hands. I have not yet imagined a time when I would not be doing some type of work with pipe organs.

With the outbreak of Covid, Wendy and I left New York City for our place in Maine, bringing the families of two of our kids with us. My private workshop, the three-car garage, became a staging space for groceries for our expanded household as we quarantined everything we brought into the house. When winter turned to spring, we added a refrigerator beside the garage freezer. The workshop has always been at least part boatyard. I have a couple shelves of boat parts, the expensive stainless-steel screws we use around salt water, and there are several lengths of surplus line hanging on a wall. You never know when you are going to need some more line. It is also a gardening shed and kitchen overflow storage for the bigger pots and pans. Lobster pots, roasting pans, and canning jars live on the shelves above the fridge.

This sounds like a lot of clutter, but I still have not mentioned the cabinets, shelves, and industrial drawers full of organ parts and hardware I have accumulated over the years. One year I restored an Aeolian residence organ with its paper roll player. It was playable in the shop for a summer, and we had a string of dinner parties during which we would suggest a break before dessert and leave the table for an organ demonstration. Some of Wendy’s publishing friends and colleagues needed that to understand just what I do for a living. “It was always mysterious to me!” I have rebuilt four or five consoles here, refinishing cabinets, rebushing keyboards, and retrofitting solid-state controls and electric drawknobs.

I know I will keep most of the general hardware as long as we live here. It is handy to have hundreds of sizes of screws arranged in drawers to support home repair projects. This summer, I cut up several lengths of half-inch threaded rod and collected the necessary washers, nuts, and lock washers for a tool hanger I built in the shed. Mending plates, corner braces, and hinges will always come in handy. I have felt and punches to make pads for the bottoms of chair legs; I have lubricants and finishes for pretty much any purpose and big, well-lit workbenches. It is my own private hardware store. Funny, I still go to the hardware store most weeks.

He polished up the handle of the big front door.

Along with his organ work, John Leek built harpsichords, and as we made those keyboards and brass levers to control “choirs” of jacks, I learned about polishing. I have a bench grinder that spins abrasive wheels, wire wheels, and cloth polishing wheels. There is a drawer full of bars of polishing compound, a rake for dressing the cloth wheels, and the nasty wheel with an iron handle for dressing the abrasive wheels. I rejuvenated a rusty cast-iron skillet using the wire wheel. Handy.

There is a case of Parson’s sudsy ammonia on a high shelf. I think there are ten bottles left in it. It is a terrific solution for use in my ultrasonic cleaner. I have used it to clean reed shallots and tongues, little brass console parts like screws and switches. I will hang onto all this because there are lots of things around the house that need polishing, and Wendy’s engagement ring looks great after an ultrasonic swim in sudsy ammonia.

Totally tubular

I have worked on all sorts of pneumatic actions from different organ builders, many of which incorporate some type of rigid or flexible tubing. Seventy-year-old rubber tubing is likely to be crumbling apart. Quarter-inch (interior diameter) tubing is common to many different types of organs, so I have hundreds of feet of that in a coil, destined to be cut into six-inch pieces. There is about forty feet of three-quarter-inch (ID) heavy plastic tubing with nylon webbing embedded. It is made for high-pressure hot water in small gasoline engines, and it was great for use as pneumatic tubing in a big expression motor. I have coils of copper tubing and some straight lengths of aluminum and brass tubing. You never know when you are going to need some.

Parts is parts.

Sometime ago I got the idea that it would be clever to have a supply of the waxed boxes used for Asian carry-out food for storing specific organ parts. I used them for a while, decided they were ridiculous, and discarded most of the minimum order of 1,000 boxes, but some are still around. One is labeled “Schlicker console parts.” I installed a Peterson system in a Schlicker console. Having serviced many Schlicker organs over the years, I know that the little pressed metal toggles in the “ka-chunk” combination actions can wear and break or simply fall out, and here were two or three hundred of them going to waste. I used four or five for a service call repair, and I still have the rest of them. Pretty sure I am not going to need them again.

I have boxes of Austin magnets, Austin note motors, Kimber Allen keyboard contacts, pedalboard contacts, Heuss nuts, leather nuts, compass springs (for the pallets in slider windchests), pouch springs, fiber discs (for making pouches and valves), many sizes and styles of felt and paper punchings for regulating keyboards, and even coils of wire for stringing harpsichords.

For a short while I repaired and rebuilt harmoniums, and I have a heavy box full of the brass reeds. They must have been salvaged from derelict instruments. I do not remember where I got them, but I doubt I did the salvaging because I would have kept them separated and labeled by voices. I may have used ten of them, and the rest are here if anyone wants them. A soak in sudsy ammonia would help. Another box is full of keyboard ivories. I “harvested” them from old pianos and organ keyboards, and having a miscellany of ivories really is useful as you can pick through them to match color and size. While I used many of them for service call repairs and refurbishing old keyboards, I am probably finished with them now.

On the high shelf near the tubing, there is a stack of boxes of various types of windchest magnets. Some have pipe valves that work either electrically or pneumatically, others are the standard “screw cap” chest magnets for pitman and offset chests. And for those times when you are changing wind pressure, there are boxes of magnet caps with one-quarter-inch and three-sixteenths-inch exhaust holes. None of these will have household use.

There are about twenty three-foot cardboard tubes in the rafters containing skins of leather and yards of felt, fabric, and cork. There is enough material to releather a ten-stop pitman chest and a half-dozen reservoirs. There is pouch leather, gusset leather, alum-tanned leather for reservoir belts, and several types and weights of pneumatic leather. I am not sure how much of it I will use, but as I recently gave Wendy a big piece of thin black felt for a sewing project, I will assume it is worth keeping. Since it is up high, it is not in anyone’s way.

Twenty or thirty years ago, industrial chemists developed spray cans of graphite lubricant, perfect for treating windchest tables, sliders, and toeboard bottoms so slider stop action would work smoothly. Before switching to that, I mixed flake graphite with denatured alcohol creating a paste that I scooped with latex-gloved hands and rubbed over all the surfaces. It was a messy process, but when the alcohol evaporated, a rich, even coat of graphite glistened on the wood. Heaven help you if you spilled any on the floor. I have most of a gallon can of graphite that I guess I do not need anymore. I also have half a case of that graphite spray. I can use it on snow shovels to keep snow from sticking to them.

Material handling

In industrial catalogues, material handling is the section that includes dollies, carts, pallet jacks, and all the tools and equipment used to move things around. You can buy a Drum Dolly, a two-wheeler designed specifically to handle 55-gallon drums or a refrigerator dolly—you can guess what that’s for. A refrigerator dolly is a two-wheeler with straps to hold the load in place, and rubber belts that move over wheels on the back so you can haul the fridge up stairs. I have used mine for hauling reservoirs upstairs to choir lofts. The upright freezer in the garage needs to be defrosted occasionally. That can be a nasty job, but it is pretty simple here, and we have been “eating it down” in preparation. Soon, I will move the last few things into the top of the Covid fridge, wheel the freezer through the overhead door, and stand it in the dooryard facing the sun with the door open. It takes a few hours, and there is no need to catch the water.

I have a come-along, a tool with a steel cable, hooks on both ends, and a long handle that pumps a ratchet. I bought it when we were installing an organ and realized it needed to be a few inches to the left. A half-dozen pumps of the handle was all it took to scootch the organ to its proper place. I have not used it on a job since, but we have a half-mile wooded driveway that trees fall on occasionally. I can often hitch a chain to loops on my car and drag a tree out of the way, but several times I have used the come-along tied to another tree to do the job when I cannot make the angle with the car. We also use it to pull the dock out of the water. I am keeping that.

The opposite of the come-along is a house jack that I have used often when releathering reservoirs. After the hinges are glued to the ribs, the pairs of ribs are glued to the body and top, and the belts are glued on all around, you have to open the thing fully before gluing on the gussets. You are stretching all the new material and glue, and it can be a heavy lift, especially on a large reservoir. I have done it with blocks and levers, but a hand-pumped hydraulic house jack is just the ticket. When our daughter wanted to convert a small shed into a pottery studio, our son-in-law and I jacked up the shed and repaired its structure. I will keep the jack.

Another tool I used when gluing reservoirs is the big double-boiler you see keeping soup warm in a cafeteria line. Having hot wet rags is essential when using hot glue, and I have a Sharpie mark on the front for the little volume knob, setting the temperature high enough to soften excess glue, but not so hot that I cannot put my hands in it. When I was gluing four or five reservoirs at once, the pot would be hot all day, and I would change the water every hour as it got dark with the glue. We like to give big parties, and a steaming pot of clam chowder would be just the thing for a chilly fall cookout, but I think this appliance has too many miles on it for use in food service. It is handy for soaking labels off jars.

My Rubbermaid® rolling table has ball-bearing casters and a load limit of 500 pounds. I know it can bear more than that. It is about the same height as my workbenches and the rear end of my Chevy Suburban, so I can wheel a windchest or reservoir from the back of the car to the workbench without lifting anything, and it is perfect for moving lumber between planer, table saw, and cut-off saw. I can also wheel groceries from the car to the Covid fridge, and I have even used it to wheel our eight-foot fiberglass dinghy to the car. Yes, you can put an eight-foot dinghy in a Suburban and close the door. I get fussy when other people in the family leave stuff on my rolling table because I like to keep it free for the next use. I’m keeping it.

One of our kids bought a couple big inflatable rubber swim toys. I especially like the Grandpa-sized pink inner tube with its five-foot dragon tail, lots of fun for swimming off the dock with our grandchildren, and it is convenient to have an air compressor with a big assortment of fittings. It saves fifteen minutes of huffing and puffing when you could be in the water. The fifty-foot air hose hangs on a steel column between garage bays, so it only takes a moment to set up to check the air of the tires on cars parked outside.

Perspective

There is almost no end to the list of tools, materials, supplies, and equipment in my garage workshop. I am still using most of the tools for projects around the house. This summer I built a neat set of drawers using quarter-sawn oak to match my library table desk. I am just starting a new “private drive” sign for the top of the road using birch lumber left over from a set of bookcases I made for Wendy’s office. I will use a pin-router to make the lettering. Wendy is a talented and productive weaver, and there is nothing like an organ builder as tech department for a house with two looms.

I hope this little tour is informative to organists who might not know much of what is behind the service technician who works on your organ or the organ company that built or rebuilt it. Mine is a light-duty shop, a delight for me to work in alone or with a colleague or two. It is especially nice in the summer with the overhead doors open. I keep thinking I will not do any more organ work there, but it is easy to imagine a time when our crew is working nearby and something needs to be releathered quickly. I might just bend the rule.

Shipping and handling included

Wendy and I live in a building with about two hundred households. We are mostly anonymous neighbors; just a few fellow residents are casual acquaintances. The people we chat with the most are the other dog owners, and we are more likely to know the dogs’ names than their owners’. Farley the goldendoodle is a cheerful and friendly guy so he attracts a lot of attention in the elevators and lobby.

Living in close proximity to that many people, we are constantly reminded of what a click-and-ship world we live in. Adjoining the building’s lobby is a large package room lined with shelves ten feet high where the doormen sort hundreds of parcels. Since Amazon started same day delivery in the city, as many as a half-dozen delivery trucks stop each day.

Twice a week, mountains of trash and recyclables are piled on the sidewalks including thousands of collapsed cardboard boxes tied with twine. Along with the boxes, we routinely throw away bales of bubble wrap, tons of Styrofoam peanuts, and miles of strips of air-cushion bladders. It can be a wicked nuisance dealing with a big carton of peanuts. It is especially annoying when they get charged with static electricity and I cannot get them off me. And for goodness sake, keep them away from the dog.

I am thinking about packaging today because I am just finishing an organ project in my little workshop in Maine, starting to take things apart and getting them ready for shipment. Yesterday, I went to a storage locker I rent nearby and loaded several empty pipe trays into my car. The standard size we make at the Organ Clearing House is eight-feet by two-feet by eight-inches deep. They are larger than those made by some other companies, and when they are full, they are heavy, but we think they are just right. Low EE of most 8′ stops fits in those eight-foot trays, so we also make some ten-footers to hold the biggest four pipes. We can get the biggest four of an 8′ Principal into one of those, or the biggest four of two 8′ strings.

My car is a Chevrolet Suburban, big enough to hold an eight-foot rowing dinghy with the doors closed. A guy at a local boatyard called it a Chevy “Subdivision.” When there is no boat inside, I can get four eight-foot trays in the car with the doors closed.

I took the pipes off the windchests and laid them out in order on a big work surface. I lined the bottom of each tray with a ¼-inch thick Styrofoam sheet (we buy it in 250-foot rolls, perforated every foot, three rolls come in a “tube”). I opened a carton of clean 24-inch x 36-inch newsprint, and started wrapping pipes. With experience, you get a sense of how many pipes should be in a package. I use several sheets of newsprint at a time to weave between six-foot pipes so they cannot bump against each other. Going up the scale, getting to around tenor F of an 8′ stop (a three-foot pipe), each pipe is wrapped individually. After middle C, two to a package, then three, then maybe as many as six or seven treble pipes. When I am putting several pipes in a package, I roll it each time so there is paper between each pipe, and I fold the ends over opposite sides to increase the padding. My favorite local butcher does the same thing with the marvelous sausages he makes. A piece of tape holds the package closed, and the bundles are lined up in the trays. If the pipes are not very heavy, I can put a couple layers in a tray separated with Styrofoam.

My personal shop is a three-car garage that adjoins our house, and this is a tiny organ. It started as an M. P. Möller Double Artiste, and we are adding a third three-rank division to make a total of nine unified ranks. The user interface is a large three-manual console, also by Möller but from a different organ, equipped with a fancy combination action. It is to be a practice organ for a school of music, providing students with a platform for working on the complex Romantic and symphonic registrations that are so popular these days. This will be a simple shipment, nowhere near a full truck. The only complication is that we will be driving it over the Rocky Mountains in mid-winter.

That load will include eleven trays, nine with pipes and two with odds and ends, bits and pieces (the stuff Alan Laufman called “chowder”), console, bench, three windchests, two “expressive” cases including shutters and shutter motors, three wind regulators with windlines, a blower, the biggest pipes of a nicely mitered 16′ Bourdon (too big for trays), and the rest of the flotsam and jetsam it takes to make an organ. I am guessing the load will weigh around 6,000 pounds including the trays and packing materials. We will also be carrying a new residence organ built by a colleague firm, as its new owner lives in the same western city. We are always happy to throw another organ on the back of the truck if there is space.

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When we estimate the cost for dismantling and packing an organ, we consider the number of person-days and crew expenses like travel, meals, and lodging. We decide whether we will need to rent scaffolding and set up hoisting equipment, and we figure how much we will need in the way of packing materials. An important variable is the tray count, which varies as much by the style of an organ as it does by number of ranks. If we are packing an organ with mechanical action built in the 1970s with low wind pressure and small scales, we can figure on two or three ranks per tray. (A usual four-rank mixture easily fits in a single tray. You just have to be sure you label the packages so you do not mix up the ranks.) If we are packing a heavy Romantic organ like something built by Skinner, it is more like two or three trays per rank. A big fat Skinner 8′ French Horn can fill four trays!

Based on long experience, we run down the printed stoplist of an organ and note how many trays we will need for each stop, and I enter the totals for eight-foot and ten-foot trays into a spreadsheet that spits out the lumber list. A four-by-eight sheet of 7⁄16-inch OSB (Oriented Strand Board) makes two tray bottoms, and it takes two ten-foot pine 1 x 8s to make the sides and ends. When we dismantled an eighty-rank Aeolian residence organ on Long Island (imagine that!), we figured we would need 160 eight-foot trays and 40 ten-footers, and I sent this list to City Lumber in Long Island City, New York:

120 4′ x 8′ sheets OSB

320 10′ 1′′ x 8′′

80 12′ 1′′ x 8′′

120 8′ 1′′ x 2′′ strapping (10 bundles) for battens on tray tops

1,680 feet ¼′′ x 2′-wide Styrofoam (7 rolls)

50 pounds 15⁄8′′ coarse thread drywall screws

The bill was $5,277.33, including delivery, and we gave the driver a $50 tip.

When we have finished dismantling an organ, the packed trays go on the truck first. A standard semi-trailer is 100-inches wide inside so we can stack four piles wide. If we make stacks of ten trays each, we can cap the stacks with sheets of plywood and put 16-foot metal bass pipes up top. The big metal pipes are wrapped individually in Styrofoam for protection. Interior height of the trailer is 110 inches. Four trays wide and ten high, that is forty trays for each eight feet of trailer. The trailer is 53-feet long—240 trays is a truck full. That is less than the tray count for the wonderful Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner organ at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York City.

When we are packing an organ that large, the trays are just the beginning. Think about the organ’s biggest pipes, like that 32′ Double Open Wood Diapason. The biggest pipe is more than 35-feet long, and about two-feet square. I guess that pipe weighs 1,500 pounds and by itself makes a big dent in an empty trailer. Three 32′ ranks (Diapason, Bourdon, and reed) and the windchests of that huge organ fill truck number two. Reservoirs, shutters, expression motors, tremulants, windlines, ladders, and walkboards fill truck number three. And number four brings the console, frames, expression box panels, blowers, and 8,000 pounds of chowder.

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Most of the trucks with box trailers that you see on the highway are carrying loads of goods that are all the same size, packed on pallets whose dimensions are calculated to exactly fill the trailer’s interior space. Paper towels, potato chips, mattresses, and tableware are packed in boxes whose dimensions exactly correspond with the pallets. A truck backs up to a loading dock, and a forklift runs in and out carrying pallets, two or three at a time. The trailer is nothing but a metal and fiberglass box. There are no hooks, cleats, or straps to fasten the load. There is no need, because the load assembles to the same dimensions of the trailer, and it takes fifteen minutes to pack.

We engage special commodity trucks, which come with lots of special equipment. There are highway bars that span the interior by clicking into vertical tracks on the trailer walls and support plywood floors, so we can build a second story that safely carries smaller components. There are ramps and hydraulic tailgates because we almost never have the luxury of a loading dock, and a standard complement of twenty-dozen quilted furniture pads. We specify that we will need six or eight hours to load the truck as they typically charge extra when it is more than two hours. The trays go into the truck fast and neat, and the rest of the organ is like a ten-ton game of Tetrus. Because no two parts of the organ are the same size, the pallet-and-forklift equation does not work at all. Each piece of the organ is wrapped with pads as it enters the truck. At the other end of the trip, it is a huge job just to fold all those heavy pads, and the drivers are always fussy about making neat piles.

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Most of the organs we move fit into “Bobtail” trucks, the standard single-body box trucks we can rent from Ryder or Penske. A usual two-manual organ fits in a single truck. Forty years ago, when I was first in the organ business, there was little in the way of regulation controlling the type of trucking we do. Today, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration makes us jump through regulatory hoops. If we are carrying an organ that we have owned and are selling to a client, there is no problem. But if we are carrying an organ that belongs to someone else, like a church or school, especially if we are crossing state lines, we have to be ready with our DOT and MC (Motor Carrier) numbers whenever we encounter a weigh station on the highway. That makes us an official trucking company, and I receive a lot of a gear-jamming junk mail that has nothing to do with organs.

In 2008, we were engaged to bring an organ to an important church in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar, and we would include a dozen pianos in the shipment for a couple churches and orphanages I had visited. I found a moving company in Maine that had a barn full of surplus pianos, rented a truck, loaded them up, and started down the Maine Turnpike. As required, I stopped in the weigh station where the state trooper asked me, “What are you carrying?” “Pianos,” I answered. “Where are you taking them?” My sense of the ridiculous took control, and I answered, “Madagascar!” He directed me into a parking area where three troopers spent a half hour trying to find something wrong with my paperwork, with the truck, with its required emergency flares and reflectors, anything they could think of.

We have worked with many drivers over the years, mostly owner/operators who contract with central dispatchers. Richard Mowen was a special favorite, a wiry little man with a huge Peterbilt tractor. He had replaced the Caterpillar diesel engine after two million miles, and he traveled with a little dog in the cab. Many commercial drivers only come and go from big warehouses with loading docks, while our work in churches around the country is anything but predictable. It may be a narrow cross street in Manhattan or a winding dirt road in a rural village. Richard could put that rig anywhere. It is much more difficult to back a semi-trailer when you have to go backwards to the right, because that is the blind side. It was fun watching him figure his angle, nudging the tailgate right where we wanted it.

Richard loved carrying pipe organs. He moved many organs for us, and we recommended him to a number of colleague companies. He considered organs to be a specialty, and he was a treasure. Sadly, he had a heart attack that took him off the road, but he is still around. We miss his great work and thank him for his terrific service to our industry. Richard left us with one of the best driving tips ever. “I can drive down that hill too slow as many times as I want. I can do it too fast only once.” We will remember that next month when we are driving down the far side of the Rockies.

Then there is the guy who was dispatched to drive an organ from New Haven, Connecticut, to Reno, Nevada. With the truck loaded, we were chatting and joking on the sidewalk by the church when the driver mentioned that it was a good thing we were not shipping the organ to Canada, because he had been busted for transporting firearms illegally and was not allowed to drive there anymore. I called the dispatcher and requested a different driver.

Through all the shipments over the years, there was one that involved significant damage to the organ. We packed and loaded an organ in New York City and sent it off to Los Angeles. The shipment was to be received by a crew from the European company that built it, and they would install it in the church there. The truck arrived as scheduled, and when they opened the doors, they found a mess of broken woodwork and organ parts. There was a language barrier between the organbuilders and the insurance adjuster who viewed the damage. When they told the adjuster that they might have packed things differently, he interpreted that they were saying we had been negligent. Knowing that was not true, I got the adjuster to agree to reconsider if I went to Los Angeles to present a case.

That shipment had an unusual stipulation. We were required to remove the organ from the building in New York before a certain date, and the delivery could not happen until after a certain date, which meant that the organ would be in the truck several days longer than the actual travel time, and we had arranged to pay a daily standstill fee. Naively, I imagined that the truck would sit still in a parking lot. It did not take very much digging to learn that the driver had taken advantage of the situation and made a detour to visit family in the mountains of Tennessee. The trucking company admitted that there had been “an incident” on the road, and the insurance claim was paid.

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It is fun to think of the romance of building a fine organ, with dedicated craftsmen working together in a comfortable shop, cutting and milling wood, working leather and metal, building the thousands of individual pieces that combine to create an organ. The next time you are playing or listening to an organ, especially a really big one, give a thought to the physical challenge of taking all those pieces and parts from one place to another. The shipping industry calls it logistics or material handling. I think it is a great glimpse into yet another reason that pipe organs are so special. What other musician can measure the size of the instrument by the truckload?

When a load is complete, paperwork signed, doors locked, and the driver climbs into his cab, we give a classic truckers’ greeting, “Shiny side up!”

“Just can’t wait to get on the road again.”¹

For over fourteen months during the extraordinary time of Covid, Wendy and I stayed at our house in Maine, leaving our apartment in virus-rich New York City vacant. Until late in 2020, Lincoln County where we live in Maine was counting fewer than twenty new cases each week, and we figured we would stay there until vaccinated. Like so many people around the country, we altered our working lives using Zoom and FaceTime instead of meeting in person. We set up our offices as “Zoom Rooms,” sometimes wearing “go to office” tops over jeans or shorts.

I received my first vaccination shot on my sixty-fifth birthday in mid-March. Once I was on the schedule, I started planning a trip, and I hit the road sixteen days after my second shot. I visited three organ building workshops, a half-dozen organs that were coming on the market, a couple iconic organs (one can never see enough of them), and a church where my colleagues are helping install an important new organ. I drove south on a western route through Virginia and Tennessee to Birmingham, across to Atlanta, and north on an eastern route home through North Carolina and Virginia to meet Wendy for a few days on the Jersey Shore. It was my re-immersion in the craft I have been working in for more than forty-five years, and I came home refreshed and newly inspired.

Variety is the spice of life.

Pipe organs come in all sizes, shapes, and colors. We have organs that are large and small, electric and mechanical, freestanding in cases and enclosed in chambers. We have organs based on ancient European concepts and models, and organs that are purely American, and my trip spanned the far reaches of the organ world. I visited the workshops of Noack Organ Co. (Georgetown, Massachusetts), Taylor & Boody Organ Builders (Staunton, Virginia), and Richards, Fowkes & Co. (Ooltewah, Tennessee), each of which works with a small staff of dedicated artisans building hand-crafted organs in free-standing hardwood cases. Noack is currently working on an organ with sixty stops, and I was lucky to see it being loaded on a truck at the workshop followed by the beginning of its installation at the Catholic Cathedral of Saint Paul in Birmingham, Alabama. Taylor & Boody’s current project is a thirty-eight-stop job for Wheaton College in Illinois, and Richards, Fowkes & Co. is working on a thirty-one-stop organ for Saint Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Ann Arbor, Michigan.² Besides a tour and rich conversations in their workshop, Bruce Fowkes and Ralph Richards took me to see the spectacular four-manual organ by John Brombaugh at Southern Adventist University in Collegedale, Tennessee. I am heartened that during this uncertain time, these three outstanding firms are all building substantial instruments at the same time. You can see details about each organ on the builders’ websites.

These three builders are known for building tiny organs as well as instruments with sixty or more stops. Continuo or practice organs with three or four stops are the hummingbirds of pipe organs, and modest instruments with fewer than twenty stops are little gems with gorgeous, intimate voices and carefully balanced choruses, but the big bird of my trip was the behemoth all-American organ in Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey, an organ with single divisions that include more than thirty stops. (See the cover feature of the November 2020 issue of The Diapason.)

In the May 2021 issue of The Diapason, pages 12–13, I wrote about the efforts of curator Nathan Bryson and his staff of assistants and volunteers to protect the organ during the recent demolition by implosion of the adjacent Trump Hotel and Casino, so the organ was fresh on my mind when I started planning my trip, and I invited myself for a visit. Nathan was the consummate host for my day in the largest organ in the world.

The organs at Boardwalk Hall and the Wanamaker Store (now Macy’s) have each been considered the largest in the world. Now that I have visited both with their curators as my guides, I will take the plunge and explain how an organ earns such a title. At the moment, the Boardwalk Hall Organ is about 53% playable, so the Wanamaker Organ can safely claim to be the largest fully playable organ in the world. The Historic Organ Restoration Committee that oversees the organ in Boardwalk Hall has ambitious plans to bring the organ to fully functional condition. Stay tuned. I will report it when it happens.

The Wanamaker Organ has 464 ranks while Boardwalk Hall has a mere 449, a difference of fifteen ranks, the size of a modest organ, so it wins in the category of most ranks. The Wanamaker organ has 75 independent pedal ranks with 32 pipes (29 notes fewer than manual ranks), while many of the ranks in the Boardwalk Hall Organ have up to 85 notes, accounting for extensive unification and making use of the extended lower three keyboards which have 85, 85, and 75 notes, giving the organ a total of 33,112 pipes compared to the impressive 28,750 pipes in the Wanamaker Organ. That’s a difference of 4,362 pipes, or the equivalent of a seventy-rank organ!

An 85-note rank of pipes allows a continuous scale from low CC of 8′ to high c′′′′′′ of 2′, or as in the case of several ranks in Atlantic City, from low CCCC of 32′ to high c′′′′ of 8′. Unbelievably, there is a 64′ Dulzian Diaphone with 85 notes that goes all the way to the top of 16′. Scrolling down the endless stoplist, I count one 64′ rank (85 notes), eight 32′ ranks, and sixty 16′ ranks. A count like that makes a big organ. You can count for yourself. There are comprehensive lists of ranks, stops, console layout, and pistons and controls at www.boardwalkorgans.org. It would be difficult to calculate accurately, but it is my gut feeling that the Boardwalk Hall Organ weighs a lot more than the Wanamaker Organ.

Vulgar or beautiful?

I have had a number of encounters with the Wanamaker Organ over the past twenty years, both in intimate, personal, and comprehensive visits, and in swashbuckling public performances. This was my fourth visit to Boardwalk Hall, but the first time I heard the organ.³ I was aware of both organs when I was growing up, long before either had any meaningful restoration, but as I was in the thrall of the “Tracker Organ Revival,” dutifully learning early fingerings at Oberlin, I was not creative or open-minded enough to make space for them in my musical comprehension. I assumed that they existed to take part in the biggest-loudest-fastest competitions that lurk throughout our society. How could something with more than four hundred ranks be anything more than the pipe organ equivalent of a freight train? Artistic content? Musical sensitivity? Phooey. I was wrong.

I was fortunate to have experience renovating larger electro-pneumatic organs early in my career, and when I became curator of the organs at Trinity Church Copley Square and The First Church of Christ, Scientist (The Mother Church), both in Boston, I was immersed in the grandeur of super-sized organs. The Aeolian-Skinner organ at The Mother Church is huge (237 ranks and 13,500 pipes), but less than half the size of those in Boardwalk Hall or the Wanamaker Store. While the organ at Trinity Church (actually two instruments, Chancel and Gallery, playable from one console) was smaller in number of ranks, it was an important part of my understanding of large organs because of the weekly recital series there. Each Friday, I heard a different organist play the instrument. Some were bewildered, bamboozled, even defeated by its complexity, but those organists who could make it sing taught me how a large and varied organ with divisions in four separate locations could combine to produce expressive sweeps, from thundering fortissimos to shimmering echoes that melted away into the frescoed walls.

If a finely crafted organ with mechanical action brings the intimacy of chamber music to the fingers of the organist, the large romantic organ allows the musician to paint majestic landscapes. And the mega-monumental symphonic organ allows expression ranges unheard of otherwise. What do you do with an eighty-rank string division? Paint pictures.

In the arena

When I first arrived at Boardwalk Hall, Nathan “fired up” the organ using files made by Peter Richard Conte, the Grand Court Organist of the Wanamaker Organ, along with several other creative players, and stored in the playback system. Peter is unusual among organists because of his affinity for these exceptional organs. While most of us are used to registering a chorale prelude with a cornet for the solo line and a few soft flutes and a Subbass for accompaniment, Peter is a sonic wizard with thousands of stop tabs and hundreds of other controls that allow him to command the dozens of divisions scattered about in the vast room. Sometimes he throws on a big row of stop tablets as if he was playing a glissando on the keyboard, but more usually, he programs pistons with intricate combinations using stops by the hundreds.

Boardwalk Hall is 456 feet long and 310 feet wide with a barrel-vaulted ceiling that peaks at 137 feet. Its seating capacity is over 15,000, and it is regularly used for rodeos with bull-riding competitions (they truck in enough dirt to simulate a prairie), indoor auto racing, ice hockey, basketball, soccer, and even college football. It was the site of the first indoor helicopter flight, and it is home to the Miss America Pageant. It was surreal to stand alone on the empty floor of the semi-lit hall listening to the organ do its thing with the help of Peter’s bytes. The two main organ chambers are separated in space by the hundred-foot-wide stage. The chamber lights were on, and great swaths of expression shutters were in full view, swishing and fluttering like sensuous thirty-foot eyelashes. This was not “All Swells to Swell.” The many sets of shutters were moving in contrary motion, each responding to the rises and falls of individual voices in the complex arrangements. Waves of sound ebbed and flowed like the surf on the sandy beach on the other side of the iconic boardwalk, cascades of notes morphed into fanfares, melodies were “soloed out” as if by a platoon of trombones or by four dozen violinists playing pianissimo in unison. This is the very essence of the symphonic organ, its dazzling array of controls allowing the single musician to emulate the actual symphony orchestra.

Sweeping a beach

The Aeolian-Skinner at The Mother Church taught me what is involved in caring for a large organ. “Touching up the reeds” can take all day—there are forty-one of them. But that organ lives in a building with perfect climate control. When you have more than 450 ranks in a building that is also home to rodeos and auto racing, you have a hefty tuning responsibility. Curator Nathan Bryson manages a team of professionals and volunteers who are methodically moving through the organ rebuilding blowers, releathering windchests, refurbishing organ pipes, while maintaining the organ for daily recitals and many special events.

The Boardwalk Hall Organ was built by Midmer-Losh of Merrick, Long Island, New York, during the Great Depression at a cost of over $500,000 and was completed in December of 1932. It is housed in eight chambers: Left Stage, Right Stage, Left Forward, Right Forward, Left Center, Right Center, Left Ceiling, and Right Ceiling. You can see the layout in a photo accompanying this column in the May 2021 issue. Getting a handle on which stops and which divisions are located in which chamber is the first challenge of learning one’s way around the vast instrument. The two Stage Chambers comprise what I perceived to be the main organ. They are huge and jammed with some of the largest organ stops in the world. There are stops on wind pressure of 100 inches on a water column, an absolute hurricane of air.

When the organ blowers are turned on and the instrument fills with wind, windchests expand visibly, as if the doctor told you to “take a deep breath.” The fifteen-foot-long walls of the pressurized room that houses the organ’s main electro-pneumatic switching equipment move so dramatically that I squinted, wondering why the thing does not burst. During renovation, several of the windchests on 100-inch pressure were replaced using more robust engineering, informed by the difficulty of building a wooden vessel to contain such high pressure.

Tuning those gargantuan ranks is a three-person job, one at the console, one in the middle of the hall where it is possible to hear pitches and beats, and the third (with industrial hearing protection and audio headphones) manipulating the pipes. You could try using a starting pistol to signal “next,” but you wouldn’t be able to hear it.

Beyond the endless work of restoring, renovating, tuning, and maintaining this organ, perhaps the most difficult and important work has been reintroducing the city and state governments to the ongoing stewardship of the instrument. A vast auditorium with such an unmusical array of uses seems an unlikely home for a pipe organ, and the people who have been working with and on the organ have been effective ambassadors, sharing the unique qualities of the largest organ in the world. If you would like to help, visit that website and look for the “Donate Now” button.

Look to the future.

After fourteen months at home, it was a joy to be back on the road. My thanks to Didier Grassin of the Noack Organ Company, Ralph Richards, Bruce Fowkes, John Boody, and Nathan Bryson for sharing their work and philosophies with me, and above all, for sharing the joy and pleasure of “knocking around about pipe organs.” Three cheers for all the wonderful work underway on organs both old and new. If this is a taste of the new normal, I am ready to ride.

Notes

^1. Willie Nelson.

^2. By coincidence, one of Wendy’s cousins is on the organ committee at Saint Andrew’s.

^3. In 2010, the Organ Clearing House built the “Blower Room” set for the Saint Bartholomew funeral scene in the spy-thriller movie, Salt, starring Angelina Jolie and directed by Philip Noyce. All the sets including the barge, the presidential bunker, and the CIA offices were constructed in retired Grumman aircraft hangars in Bethpage, New Jersey, where the Lunar Excursion Module was built. Our set included a couple big Spencer blowers that we had in stock and a huge electro-pneumatic switching machine borrowed from the “other” organ at Boardwalk Hall (a four-manual Kimball in the adjacent theater). I transported the machine in both directions in rental trucks. The set decorator thought the rig was complicated enough that I should be present for filming. I stood around while Ms. Jolie jumped through walls dozens of times, until I heard over the PA system, “Organ guy to the crypt, organ guy to the crypt.” The leading lady greeted me with hand outstretched, “Hi, I’m Angie.” I described that she should shoot the regulating chain to make the bellows go haywire and cause the mass cipher that would disrupt the funeral. (We provided the hardware, and special effects provided the action.) She said, “I can’t shoot that.” I replied, “I’ve seen you shoot.” I watched the single take on Mr. Noyce’s monitor and had the honor of shouting “Action!” at his signal, my twelve seconds in Hollywood, another chapter from the life of an itinerant organ guy. Curious? You can stream it on Netflix. And the nice thing about building a movie set? They don’t require a warranty.

Photo caption: Seven keyboards and 1,235 stop tablets, as big as they get. Midmer-Losh organ, Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, New Jersey. (Manuals I and II have 85 notes, Manual III has 75 notes, and manuals IV, V, VI, and VII have the usual 61.) (photo credit: John Bishop)

Community Bell Advocates, LLC, advises Village of Niles, Illinois, on restoring the bells of the Leaning Tower

Kim Schafer, founder and partner of Community Bell Advocates, LLC, is a bell performer, researcher, and advocate. She has performed on the carillon since a college student in residence at universities across the country and in recital in the United States and Europe. She plays regularly for Sunday services at St. Chrysostom’s Episcopal Church, Chicago. She studied bell instruments as part of her musicological dissertation research, and she now serves as the editor-in-chief of the Bulletin, the journal of the Guild of Carillonneurs in North America. She advises institutions on the repair, installation, performance, and programming of tower bells and bell instruments in North America and coordinates events to promote them.

Photo: The Leaning Tower of Niles, Illinois (photo credit: Kimberly Schafer)

The village of Niles, Illinois, on the northwest border of Chicago, has invested in their Leaning Tower, especially in its bells, to renew its status as a central landmark for the village. Originally constructed to conceal water tanks for adjacent pools, this half-size replica of the Leaning Tower of Pisa was built in 1934 as part of Ilgair Park for employees of Robert Ilg’s Hot Air Electric Ventilating Company. The tower and surrounding land were donated by the Ilg family to the YMCA in 1960, and the tower declined in use and purpose as the area transitioned from a recreational park to commercial corridor.

In 1995 the village leased the tower from YMCA, renovating the building and improving the landscaping. Andrew Przybylo, the current mayor of Niles, has bigger plans for the tower and the entire area now that the village has purchased it from the YMCA. He intends to turn the extended site into a vibrant, walkable district for the village with the tower as the renewed icon. Towards this effort, the tower bells at the top of the Leaning Tower of Niles, which have been silent for decades, have been restored to ring out the time and melodies to build and project a sense of community below.

In early 2017, Steven Vinezeano, village manager, contacted Community Bell Advocates (CBA) for their help in researching and restoring the Leaning Tower of Niles bells. The village had five bells at the top of the tower, but they were no longer functioning, nor was their history known. CBA was hired to answer questions about their origins and provenance. Furthermore, CBA was to guide their many options in restoring the bells, including determining which bells could be rung, how they could be remounted, and whether new bells could be added.

By June 2017, CBA had researched and written a full historical report on the five tower bells. Using empirical and archival research and calling on experts in North America and Europe, CBA was able to uncover surprising information. The three largest bells date from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Furthermore, archival research revealed that these three bells, while from disparate sources, were all located in Saint Giles (Egidio) Church of Cavezzo, Italy, before they arrived in Niles. This same church in Cavezzo had desired new bells to replace theirs in the early 1930s. The Barigozzi foundry in Milan, hired to cast the new bells, had taken the old ones in exchange. Rather than melting them down for their bronze to cast the new bells, the foundry likely sold the bells to Robert Ilg or a middleman. The details of this transfer are unknown. The ecclesiastical and city archives of Cavezzo are still in disarray after the 2012 earthquake, which damaged the historic Saint Giles Church as well as many other buildings, and thus these important resources are inaccessible indefinitely.

The other two bells were cast in the nineteenth or twentieth centuries. The fourth bell has no identifiable markings on it save two simple bands at the top. The cast-in clapper staple suggests a casting date prior to 1900, but this mounting technology was so prevalent in the nineteenth century that it could have been cast nearly anywhere in North America or Europe. The fifth bell was cast by the Pacific Brass Foundry of San Francisco in 1912, as noted by the inscription at the very top of the bell. CBA was unable to determine if all five bells were bought as a set or if these two were acquired separately from the three Italian bells. The provenance of these two bells is unknown.

CBA worked with Niles leaders to envision a renewed set of functioning bells that would honor Niles’s historic past and serve its future. The original bells were rung manually via clocking, a method that the village decided to maintain for ceremonial purposes. The village also wanted the bells to be played automatically via computer control, so that they could be heard more frequently. To fill in two empty niches in the tower, create more melodic possibilities, and complement the set of their existing bells, the village decided to order two new bells. Two of the original bells were already known to have cracks, including the largest Italian bell, so the village wanted these repaired. To highlight the Italian provenance of the three bells and the inspiration behind the tower, the village desired to keep the Italian headstock design for the remounted bells

After considering proposals from four different domestic bell firms, B. A.
Sunderlin Bellfoundry in Virginia was chosen for the job in spring 2018. Sunderlin recommended changes to the initial plan that were adopted by the village. The damaged bell four—because of its unknown origins, discordance with the other bells, and difficulty of repair—was put on outdoor display near the Leaning Tower. Unfortunately, the small crack on the largest Italian bell wended through the bell’s interior, making its repair difficult and uncertain. A replica of the bell was cast for functional use, while the original was mounted on display in the tower’s indoor visitor area. All of the bells—of different profiles and founders—were re-tuned to better complement each other. Given the space availability for three new bells instead of only two, the melodic possibilities for the set increased. Sunderlin recommended that the composite set follow a major scale (absent the sixth scale degree), rather than forming a pentatonic scale as originally planned. In effect, Niles found a way to have their cake and eat it too—they were able to maintain the unique soundscape of their bells by keeping three original bells (plus a replica) in their tower, and they were also able to keep two original bells, one of them gorgeously decorated, on display for visitors to view from ground level. Visitors will experience the bells both visually and audibly.

CBA contributed to the project to further distinguish the bells as unique symbols of Niles. CBA arranged many recognizable tunes for use throughout the year, including patriotic tunes, pop tunes, and holiday favorites. In recognition of the village’s prominent Korean population and the desire to make the Leaning Tower of Niles a site of multicultural diversity, CBA arranged a popular Korean folk song, “Arirang,” for automatic play. CBA also composed melodies for their exclusive use, including two clock-chime melodies and a wedding peal for visiting newlyweds. CBA and Sunderlin worked together to design inscriptions and decorations on the three new bells that resembled those on the historic Italian bells, thus revering the history of the original bells while binding together the old and new.

The tower is nearly ready as a public landmark for visitors to explore up close. By January 2020, all seven bells were installed in the tower, and two display bells were installed onsite. Although fully functional, the bells will remain silent until the grand opening ceremony for the tower in spring 2020 (date yet to be determined; for updates, visit: www.vniles.com/883/Leaning-Tower-of-Niles). Other improvements to the tower have been completed: the outside railings have been upgraded to allow visitors to safely climb the tower and lighting is improved to illuminate the tower at night. CBA has provided a programming road map to integrate bell ringing into local events and community life, such as weddings, school science research, and memorial tributes. As a testament to the importance the village places on the tower, the village secured its listing in the National Register of Historic Places in 2019.

The village leaders aspire to transform the area surrounding the Leaning Tower of Niles into a community destination with the tower as the singular centerpiece. The village, CBA, and the Sunderlin Bellfoundry have collaborated to make the bells a critical aural dimension of this vision. Truly, Niles has embraced the historic function of the bell tower representing and projecting community for modern times. CBA was honored to help bring this vision to fruition, making tower bells relevant and dynamic fixtures for the community today.