Jack Mitchener plays Litanies by Jehan Alain.

Jack Mitchener plays Franck's Choral No. 2 in B Minor.

The performance was part of a recital at Peachtree Road United Methodist Church in Atlanta.  The organ is by Mander (IV/106 stops; 135 ranks). 

More information is available at this link:  https://www.prumc.org/worship/instruments/

See Jack Mitchener's artist spotlight: https://www.thediapason.com/artists/jack-mitchener

Jack Mitchener is Professor of Organ, University Organist, Chairman of the Keyboard Department, and Director of the Townsend-McAfee Institute of Church Music in the Townsend School of Music at Mercer University in Macon, Georgia.  In addition, he is Organist and Artist-in-Residence at the Episcopal Cathedral of St. Philip in Atlanta.  

He is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC. www.concertartists.com 

Neal Campbell

Neal Campbell is the organist of Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach, Florida. He previously held full-time positions in Connecticut, Virginia (including ten years on the adjunct faculty of the University of Richmond), and New Jersey. He holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, including the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, for which he wrote his dissertation on the life and work of New York organist-composer Harold Friedell. He has studied, played, and recorded on many of the organs discussed in this article.

Editor’s note: the first part of this series appeared in the February 2022 issue of The Diapason, pages 12–17.

Introduction

Based on correspondence in Barbara Owen’s and Charles Callahan’s books, we learned in the previous issue that it was Alexander Schreiner who, as the Tabernacle organ was nearing completion, asked G. Donald Harrison to have his name appear on the console in addition to the standard company nameplate. Harrison obliged by providing an ivory plate with a facsimile of his signature along with the opus number and date. In the ensuing years until his death in 1956 Harrison continued the practice of signing some organs built by Aeolian-Skinner with which he was personally involved.

Before identifying and commenting on those signature organs, a list which continues this month, I showed the progression of Harrison’s tonal ideas in the years leading up to the Tabernacle organ, based on his own words in letters to various of his associates and friends contained in Callahan’s books. In particular, GDH related that the organ for the Groton School was a turning point in the development of his tonal theories, and he considered it the smaller companion to the Tabernacle design. Also cited are several examples of both Harrison’s and Schreiner’s assessments of the Tabernacle organ in the years immediately following its completion.

Following the list of signature organs in this issue, I also comment on some organs built prior to the Tabernacle organ containing GDH’s signature plate and, assuming the Tabernacle organ to be the first organ GDH signed, I offer details as to their relative importance in the company trajectory. There follows commentary about significant Aeolian-Skinner organs of the era that do not contain Harrison’s signature, and then some brief commentary on the organs built in the era of Joseph S. Whiteford and the company’s final years.

In enumerating and commenting on the signature organs, the list and details are complete and accurate so far as I know. I have played many of the organs, but not all. I imagine there are signature organs of which I am unaware. For example, since beginning work on this article I learned via a Facebook page devoted to G. Donald Harrison and the American Classic Organ that the organ in the Worcester Art Museum bears a GDH signature plate. There likely are others, and I would be glad to hear from those with knowledge of them, preferably with documentation, and from those with additional commentary to what I provide here. Communications may be sent through the editor. Who knows, there may be an addenda or part 3 in the future!

Opus 1149: New York Avenue Presbyterian Church, Washington, D.C., 1948.

The first organ for this congregation was built by Hutchings, Plaisted, & Co. in 1873 for the original church. This was later rebuilt by John Brown and later still by Ernest M. Skinner & Son of Methuen. In 1948, the church signed a contract with Aeolian-Skinner for additions to the existing instrument, and in 1951 another contract was signed as Opus 1149-A for a rebuilding and re-installation in the present church.²⁹

This organ, now gone, was a very beautiful example of Aeolian-Skinner’s sound, even though it was of modest content and pedigree. My teacher, William Watkins, was the organist of the church at the time each contract was completed, and he and Joseph S. Whiteford did the work together on a very modest budget. Whiteford was a native Washingtonian, and he and Watkins were good friends; this was at about the time Whiteford became Harrison’s assistant at Aeolian-Skinner.

At the time, the church was famous for the preaching ministry of the Reverend Dr. Peter Marshall, who was also the chaplain of the United States Senate. Watkins at that time was a prominent concert organist, and he provided a serious program of organ music at services. The church maintained a choir of 100 singers directed by Charles Dana Beaschler. Watkins told me that he simply asked Harrison to sign the organ when they moved into the new church. At the time Watkins was probably the best-known organist in the country aside from Virgil Fox, his teacher. The organ as it turned out was entirely worthy of the Aeolian-Skinner legacy, but GDH had nothing to do with it personally. He complied with the request solely on the strength of his associations with Whiteford and Watkins. So, if it happened here, it likely happened in other places—an important clue when considering criteria that may have influenced Harrison’s decision to sign an organ.

By the time I knew the organ as a substitute in the early 1970s the signature plate had disappeared, though the screw holes where it had been were clearly visible. When the church eventually obtained a new console and made some additions during the tenure of Wesley Parrott, a replacement signature plate was made and affixed to the new console.

Opus 1150: Annie Merner Chapel of MacMurray College, Jacksonville, Illinois, 1952.

Robert Glasgow taught here before he went to the University of Michigan, and the organ was installed early in his tenure. He praised the organ in his address to the American Classic Organ Symposium in 1988. The college closed in May 2020, and the fate of the organ is still being determined.

Opus 1173: First Presbyterian Church, Kilgore, Texas, 1949.

This organ was a rebuild of a 1935 M. P. Möller, and it retained much of the pipework and structure, as well as three complete stops from the previous Henry Pilcher’s Sons organ. Nevertheless, it became one of the company’s most successful and best-known organs.

It was used for examples supporting GDH’s narration in Volume I of King of Instruments, and in Volume II played by Roy Perry, the organist of the church for forty years and one of Aeolian-Skinner’s most successful representatives and finishers. Two tracks were also played by William Watkins on Volume II, although he was identified ignominiously as the “staff organist,” owing to union regulations at the time. Volume X featured Opus 1173 in a complete issue entitled “Music for the Church,” featuring works for choir and organ. The only organ piece on the album was Bruce Simonds’s Prelude on Iam sol recedit igneus played by Roy Perry, who also played all of the choral accompaniments.

The cover photo of the new Trompette-en-Chamade for Opus 1173 was used for the first time on Volume X and continued to be featured in company brochures and other volumes of the King of Instruments series, becoming something of an Aeolian-Skinner icon. The company claimed that the stop was the first such built in America.

Opus 1174: First Baptist Church, Longview, Texas, 1951.

This organ provides an interesting contrast to its slightly older sister organ in Kilgore in that it was a completely new organ designed by Harrison for the new church, has not been altered or added to, and was placed in a strikingly modern, large edifice designed with the organ’s success in mind at the outset. The nave of the church is 92 feet high at the peak of the ceiling, and it seats 1,700 persons. The church’s pastor, the Reverend Dr. W. Morris Ford, was the driving force in both the building of the new church and the organ, and for many years thereafter musical events of significant proportions were included in the church’s program. The leading organists of the day, including Virgil Fox and Catharine Crozier, played there. An article about this organ appeared in the June 1954 issue of The American Organist stating:

Catharine Crozier made tape-recordings during the 1952 Christmas holidays for two L.P. discs [on the Kendall label]; Harold Gleason says Longview beats anything he has heard in Europe.

Opus 150-A: Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine, New York City, 1953.

This organ is justly famous and needs little introduction, except to note that it used significant portions of the original instrument, one of Ernest Skinner’s early successes, especially structural components and orchestral stops. The organ has many unique attributes, and its success draws in large part from Harrison’s experience prior to his coming to the United States, when he worked closely with Willis on the organ in Liverpool Cathedral, a building approaching the size of St. John the Divine. For example, letters by GDH tell that in some stops the pipes for the individual notes are doubled, even tripled in the treble ranks, and that for the first time in many years Aeolian-Skinner built and voiced completely new Tuba stops for the organ.

An amusing story from the canon of oral tradition tells of Norman Coke-Jephcott, organist of the cathedral during the planning stages, and GDH visiting after dinner at Coke-Jephcott’s club in the presence of others, when Harrison asked “Cokie” if he had given any thought to what they might name the newly designed special trumpet stop at the west end of the cathedral. Cokie said that he really had not, so Harrison asked him how he planned to use it. Cokie said, “Well . . ., I suppose for state occasions.”

That is how this famous stop, voiced by Oscar Pearson on fifty inches of wind pressure, came to be called the State Trumpet. It was a major departure from the two previous horizontal reeds Aeolian-Skinner built for Opus 1173 and Opus 1208, which were essentially standard Trompette Harmonique designs voiced on moderate pressure, but mounted horizontally.

The cathedral organ is featured on Volume I of the King of Instruments in examples played by Joseph Whiteford to accompany Harrison’s narration. The instrument is again featured on Volume VI in a program played by Alec Wyton, who had recently been appointed organist of the cathedral, and on Volume VIII, played by his predecessor, Norman Coke-Jephcott.

Opus 825-A: St. Paul’s School, Concord, New Hampshire, 1953.

Opus 1196: Covenant Presbyterian Church, Charlotte, North Carolina, 1949.

This was a completely new four-manual organ for the new church building of this flagship congregation of the denomination. Richard Peek was the organist at the time, and he and his wife, Betty, directed the music here for over forty years.

Opus 1200: New England Conservatory, Boston, Massachusetts, 1949.

Originally displayed at the 1950 American Guild of Organists convention in Boston, this experimental organ saw many years of use in a studio at the conservatory. The console has three plates on it, and students recall that in addition to the company nameplate and the GDH signature plate, there was a plate identifying its use at the convention. The organ is now owned privately.

Opus 1201: St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Mount Kisco, New York, 1952.

A new three-manual organ of classic design was installed in casework designed by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, architect of the church, which contained the former instrument. The organ featured a divided Swell division, such as was first used in one of Ernest White’s studio organs at St. Mary the Virgin in New York City, and later at Christ Church, Bronxville, New York, Opus 1082. The Positiv division is suspended from the ceiling at the entrance to the side chapel, across the chancel from the main organ. Edgar Hilliar, organist of the church from 1948 until 1984, directed much of the design, and he recorded a complete program for Volume IV of the King of Instruments series.

Opus 1208: St. Philip’s Episcopal Church, New York City, 1951.

At the time the organ was installed, St. Philip’s was one of the largest Episcopal churches in the country and was a significant religious and political presence among the many churches in Harlem. The organ was a rebuild of the former 1943 Hillgreen-Lane organ of three manuals, reusing the console. It featured the company’s second Trompette-en-Chamade, which is similar in appearance to the one for Opus 1173 in Kilgore, Texas, except St. Philip’s is at the west end of the church.

Opus 1216: First Methodist Church, Tacoma, Washington, 1953.

Since relocated to First Baptist Church, Seattle, Washington.

Opus 1235: St. John Lutheran Church, Forest Park, Illinois, 1954. 

Photographs of the stopjambs of this organ were used as the cover of company brochures in the 1960s. The Positiv was prepared for at the time and later added by Berghaus Organ Company to a design somewhat different than the original.

Opus 968-B: Bruton Parish Church, Williamsburg, Virginia, 1955.

This was a large, four-manual organ of over 100 ranks with obvious Harrison attributes. The instrument also included an English organ from 1785 built by Samuel Green that had been donated to the church, made playable as a division of the organ. The unenclosed divisions were placed in a shallow gallery surrounding the Green organ over the altar, while the enclosed divisions were in attic chambers, including an Antiphonal division in the tower. The organ was an anachronism in the Colonial-era church, but it was very effective and saw much varied use in recitals several times a week for the many tourists who flocked to Williamsburg. The organ was replaced in 2019 by Dobson Pipe Organ Builders Opus 96.

Opus 1257: Winthrop College, Rock Hill, South Carolina, 1955.

Opus 1265: The Temple, Atlanta, Georgia, 1954.

Emilie Spivey, the organist of The Temple, commissioned Harrison to rebuild the 1931 Henry Pilcher’s Sons organ that had been installed in the new edifice. The new organ retained twenty-two ranks from the Pilcher. Virgil Fox was the consultant.

Opus 1275: Cathedral Church of All Saints, Albany, New York, 1953.

This is a rebuild of a 1904 Austin Organ Company instrument, retaining the console and some of the chests and pipework. There is a signature plate indicating that Harrison was responsible for the Great and Positiv divisions, and another indicating that Whiteford finished the Swell and Choir.

Opus 724-A: St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Chestnut Hill, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 1956.

Significant structural portions and the three-manual console were retained from the previous organ, but little of the previous pipework was used in this rebuild, which was in the factory simultaneous with Opus 205-A for St. Thomas Church in New York City. Inasmuch as Harrison died while finishing the organ in St. Thomas, this organ may justly be identified as the last organ personally finished by G. Donald Harrison. Designed and installed during the tenure of Thomas Dunn, certain aspects of the unusual design and stop nomenclature have been attributed to him. The original Aeolian-Skinner nameplate and GDH signature plate were stolen, and the present console contains replacements.

Over the years, during the long tenure of Richard Alexander, additions to the organ included a new four-manual console built by Austin and several vintage Skinner stops, which were placed in the large ceiling chamber toward the front of the nave where most of the original Skinner organ had been located. A new Grand Choeur division built by Schoenstein was also added.

Opus 205-A: St. Thomas Church, New York, New York, 1956.

Much has been written about this famous organ, and it has become the fodder of legend, beginning with the fact that G. Donald Harrison died on the evening of June 14, 1956, after spending a day of tonal finishing on the organ as it neared completion, working against the clock to have it ready for the American Guild of Organists national convention a few weeks later. There was a subway strike in New York at the time, and GDH could not get a taxi, so he walked several blocks in extreme heat to the apartment he and his wife maintained on Third Avenue. Upon arriving home he felt poorly, but after dinner he relaxed and felt better. As he was watching Victor Borge on the television, he threw his head back roaring in laughter—and died of a sudden heart attack.

Many alterations were made to the organ over the years beginning in the late 1960s when the organ was barely a decade old. Toward the end of Gerre Hancock’s tenure he retrofitted nameplates on the right stop jamb documenting the provenance of the organ: The Ernest M. Skinner Co., Boston; Aeolian-Skinner; and Gilbert Adams. He also placed a GDH signature plate under the bottom manual near the General Cancel button.

Marcel Dupré made two stereo recordings for the Mercury Living Presence series of LPs in 1958, which assured the organ of a place in the annals of Aeolian-Skinner history. Private recordings of rehearsals and concerts by Marie-Madeleine Duruflé, Alexander Boggs Ryan, and Garnell Copeland made on the organ before the long series of alterations have recently been remastered and made available as CDs, the latter two of which are found on the Aeolian-Skinner Legacy series of recordings obtainable through the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival.

Signature organs prior to Opus 1075

Several organs built prior to the Salt Lake Tabernacle Opus 1075 also have a Harrison signature plate affixed to the console. Assuming that the Tabernacle organ was the first that Harrison signed as Barbara Owen states (see endnote #1), the exact circumstances of the placements of signatures on these pre-existing organs are subjects of further conjecture and add another layer of mystique to a subject that is inherently somewhat esoteric and imprecise.

The trajectory of Harrison’s organs culminating in the Tabernacle organ design has already been traced. That some of these organs were later given Harrison’s signature is entirely logical, as they contain many design precedents found in the Tabernacle organ that led Alexander Schreiner to ask Harrison to sign it in the first place. In that Harrison and Aeolian-Skinner later made alterations to some of these organs, it is likely that GDH himself directed his signature plate to be affixed at that time. In others the provenance is less obvious, and the exact logistics regarding their placement may be details consigned to the ages. I have attempted only to document what I know to have been in place at the time of this writing or at some point in the past. It is not difficult to fabricate these signature plates, and in several instances where the original nameplates have been stolen or broken, replacement replicas have been made available with relative ease.

Nora Williams told the story of someone in the console engraving department who would routinely make keychain fobs out of Harrison signature plates to hand out to workers and friends! So, the mystique continues.

Opus 909-A: All Saints Episcopal Church, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1933, 1940–1949.

The organ was recorded for Volume XI of the King of Instruments series played by Henry Hokans, the organist of the church at the time.

Opus 910-A: Grace Episcopal Cathedral, San Francisco, California, 1933, 1952.

Richard Purvis played a program of his compositions for Volume V of King of Instruments, although he was identified simply as “staff organist.”

Opus 927: Trinity Church on the Green, New Haven, Connecticut, 1935, 1949.

Opus 932-A: Calvary Episcopal Church, Memphis, Tennessee, 1935, 1952.

Harrison’s professional correspondence mentions his traveling to Memphis to work on the organ. Adolf Steuterman was the long-time organist of Calvary Church, a respected musician in that city, and was friendly with GDH.

Opus 936: St. John’s Chapel, Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts, 1935, 1945–1962.

The organ was featured for Volume VII of King of Instruments, played by Marilyn Mason.

Opus 940: Episcopal Church of the Advent, Boston, Massachusetts, 1935, 1964.

Opus 1024: University of Texas at Austin, Recital Hall, Austin, Texas, 1941.

This was a large, four-manual organ for the recital hall in the new music building, containing the usual four manual divisions, plus a Positiv, Bombarde, and floating String organ. A new console was provided in 1965 as Opus 1024-A, which does not contain a Harrison signature plate. The organ has since been installed in a new church building for St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Amarillo, Texas, which has been widely documented on video, and a signature plate is not on it.

However, in a letter to Brock Downward for his dissertation about Harrison, E. William Doty, professor emeritus and long-time organ teacher at the university, wrote that:

After the College of Fine Arts had been in existence for two years, the Board of Regents authorized the construction of a music building plus an organ to go in the recital hall . . . . Its acoustics were designed by C. C. Potwin of Electrical Research Corporation. He was recommended by Paul Boner, UT Professor of Physics, who was one of several consultants on the building and the organ. Ned Gammons of Christ Church, Houston, now at Groton School was another consultant whose ideas on design were incorporated . . . . In my judgement [sic] G. Donald Harrison was the greatest artist tonal designer of the first half of this century and we are very proud that he signed the University of Texas organ because in his judgement it was one of his best.³⁰

So, the mystique continues, but there is no doubt that this organ in its new home is a success and probably far exceeds its effectiveness in its original location according to those who knew it then, including Gerre Hancock who studied on it with Doty when he was a student at the university.

Opus 1036: Worcester Art Museum, Worcester, Massachusetts, 1942.

Conclusions

Beginning with the Groton organ in 1935, which Harrison himself identified as a turning point in his design of the Classic organ, it is a fairly straightforward task to identify further similar designs throughout the 1930s and 1940s leading up to the Tabernacle organ in 1945—and from thence to others in a similar trajectory, which GDH himself then signed, up until his death in 1956. Even so, if one were listening to a variety of the company’s instruments during this period, whether signed or not, there is no foolproof, obvious, definite distinction. Similarly, from a technical standpoint there are no absolute defining attributes or “smoking gun” signals that separate an organ that GDH signed from one he did not. They each bear a family resemblance in sight and sound, and some may be said to be more effective than others for any number of tangible and intangible reasons. It is, however, a given assumption that these signature organs are considered to be the best of the best that the company built.

In addition to tonal and technical attributes, however, there is another intangible aspect to the signature question that, from a purely scientific standpoint, is difficult to precisely define. Given the uniform tonal success of each of the signature organs along GDH’s developing Classic designs, I feel certain that, when all is said and done, Harrison’s reason for signing an organ also represented some very personal, quiet tribute of his own bestowing—some personal affinity GDH had for the way a particular job turned out, occasioned by its design and outcome together with perhaps some pleasant personal association with the incumbent, such as clearly was the case with Opus 1149 in Washington. Or perhaps there was the sense of a successful achievement that involved working with a collaborator on the job that reminded Harrison of his association with Schreiner and the outcome of the Tabernacle organ. There may have been some personal affinity that prompted Harrison to pronounce his own benediction on the job. And Philip Steinhaus’s letter to William Self at the outset of part 1 of this article confirms that the signature organs represent jobs with which Harrison was “deeply and personally involved.”

There certainly are wide varieties of styles to the signature organs, located in places humble and impressive, sizes small and large. Most of them are complete organs of GDH’s sole design that echo his aspirations for the Tabernacle organ, although there are obvious exceptions that contain significant portions of other builders’ work. Some signature organs are rather straightforward manifestations placed in ideal locations, and some are very unusual schemes or are the result of challenging layouts and unusual engineering solutions, such as Opus 1201 in Mount Kisco.

Some scholars and historians have posited that signature organs contain only pipework designed and finished by G. Donald Harrison. However, there are several examples that clearly suggest otherwise, such as the Washington and Kilgore organs cited previously, but also Opus 1265 at the Temple in Atlanta, Opus 1275 for the Cathedral in Albany, Opus 1208 in Harlem, Opus 1134 for Symphony Hall in Boston, and the various rebuilds of original Skinner organs that are indicated by the suffix letter “A” following the original opus number.

It is also very interesting to consider some important Aeolian-Skinner organs that were not signed by Harrison, including two of the company’s most famous: The Mother Church in Boston (Opus 1203 in 1949, the largest single organ produced by the company) and The Riverside Church in New York (Opus 1118, 1947–1955). Each is a very large, beautiful organ, in a prominent church in a major city, containing many singular attributes associated with Harrison and the American Classic Organ movement. Each possesses a sound that is unmistakable as being from Aeolian-Skinner of the era. However, each of these landmark organs was designed under the significant influence of others—in this case Lawrence Phelps and Virgil Fox, respectively. That is, their design inception was just the opposite of Opus 1075 for the Salt Lake Tabernacle where GDH was given a free hand and charged at the outset to build the organ as he saw fit. So it seems likely that GDH may not have been moved to sign organs so closely associated with others, even though they were still built by Aeolian-Skinner.

In neither case, though, can it be said that Harrison or the company in any way denigrated these organs or regarded them with less favor than the signature organs. The organ in The Mother Church was featured twice in the King of Instruments series of recordings (Volumes IX and XIII) and in reissues. GDH was quick to praise the sounds that Virgil Fox got from the Riverside organ when writing to Willis about it. When Harrison died suddenly in 1956, Virgil Fox immediately offered to play for his funeral—though in the end the small service at St. Mary’s Church in Hampton Bays, Long Island, had no music whatsoever.

The large organ formerly in the Cathedral Church of St. Paul in Boston, Massachusetts, was not signed by Harrison, for the presumed same reason, that it was the result of the collaborative design of Ned Gammons of the Groton School and George Faxon, the organist of the church. Yet, the organ contains all of the hallmarks of the American Classic movement—lavishly so in fact, and it was featured in the first two volumes of King of Instruments. There appears to be no obvious hints of pettiness or retribution in Harrison’s decisions regarding jobs that he did not sign.

St. Mark’s Church in Philadelphia is yet another example of a large, prominent organ in a notable urban parish church with the same Harrison tonal attributes as contained in its contemporary sister organs in Advent in Boston and Groton, yet it was not signed by Harrison. We know that Harrison and/or Aeolian-Skinner later made significant alterations at both Advent and Groton, and it is easy to readily assume that GDH, or someone else, added the signature plates at that time. If that be the case, it is ironic that St. Mark’s, which has received no substantive alterations, does not bear Harrison’s signature, while the other two that have been altered do!

Harder to document are instances where there exists a beautiful example of Harrison’s work without the signature, and where it is known that GDH had difficult dealings in some aspect of the job with representatives of the church and/or the incumbent organist. I personally know of a couple of likely candidates for that scenario—but it is hard to substantiate, there is little to be gained by “outing” a church in this way, and in the end it is of little consequence, except that in the process these places are permanently deprived of the intangible benefit of Harrison’s privately bestowed, yet very obvious public stamp of approval for all to see as the years pass by.

For the researcher, and especially for the player, the presence of the Harrison signature plate on the console suggests an invitation to simply consider the organ on another level, to check the organ’s provenance and files, to try to see who was behind a given project, and attempt to discover the lines of continuity between Harrison and the project, further appreciating the music the organ produces in that light. In providing commentary on the signature organs, I have been able to dig deeper in some cases than others, and in no way do I present this monograph as the end of the story on this topic.

Aeolian-Skinner after Harrison

In the years after Harrison’s death, Joseph Whiteford continued the practice of placing his nameplate on many organs, but to my knowledge it was never in the form of his signature. Although I have not researched it carefully, it also appears that a larger percentage of the company’s total output during Whiteford’s tenure as tonal director received his nameplate. Of course, the total number of organs the company built continued to decrease as the 1960s led inexorably to the company’s sad denouement in 1972.

Much has been written, and even more spoken, about Aeolian-Skinner’s demise. Twenty-five years after the company closed, Michael Gariepy, who had been on the company’s technical staff, wrote:

There were four “coffin nails” which sealed the fate of Aeolian-Skinner—

1. The death of G. Donald Harrison;

2. The Southeast Expressway, which split the operation in two;

3. The departure of Joseph Whiteford from the company;

4. The move to Randolph; such were the disruptions caused by relocating the company that it took six months to return to “normal” operational efficiency.³¹

There is no doubt that Harrison’s prestige brought credit and contracts to the company, and his death is generally thought to have been the beginning of its end—and that may be so. But there is every indication, including Dun & Bradstreet reports, that Aeolian-Skinner was never in a favorable financial position following World War II and its attendant inflation. Joseph Whiteford clearly was not the typical career “organ man” that Harrison had been. There is no doubt that many of the old-timers in the company did not resonate to his patrician ways and may have lacked confidence in his leadership. But in the post-Harrison years Joseph Whiteford designed some impressive organs, including those for the symphony orchestras in New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Milwaukee, and the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City. And under his successor Donald Gillett’s direction, Aeolian-Skinner built the organ in the new Kennedy Center Concert Hall in Washington.

Many “Hail Mary” attempts were made to keep the company afloat in its closing days, and there were valiant attempts to adapt to the changing times and tastes, such as moving to a more economical and efficient factory outside of Boston and introducing tracker-action organs. Roy Perry told me that Martin Wick seriously pursued the idea of purchasing Aeolian-Skinner and moving it to Texas, with Roy as tonal director. Martin said he had no trouble building Chevrolets in one factory and Cadillacs in another! But his board did not go along with the idea. In the end it was all too little, too late.

Having played many organs designed by G. Donald Harrison, Joseph Whiteford, and Donald Gillett over my entire professional career, I feel that many of Aeolian-Skinner’s organs built since 1956 are very beautiful indeed and are landmarks easily on a par with some of those the company built under Harrison. It is prescient to read what Emerson Richards said about Joseph Whiteford when he wrote to Henry Willis shortly after Harrison’s death:

I think that he [Whiteford] has more ability than he is given credit for but he is impatient and for some reason does not inspire confidence—just why I cannot say.³²

In considering Aeolian-Skinner after Harrison’s death, Charles Callahan’s sage advice in the introductory material to his second book is still worthy of consideration:

The pendulum of taste and opinion is constantly in motion. Caught up in the enthusiasms of a particular moment in time, it is all too easy for anyone to belittle others’ achievements. Perhaps Joseph
Whiteford and his work are overdue for a fair assessment.³³

The author gratefully acknowledges the assistance of Charles Callahan, William Czelusniak, Allen Harris, Douglass Hunt, Allen Kinzey, and Larry Trupiano in the preparation of this article.

Notes

1. Barbara Owen, The Mormon Tabernacle Organ: An American Classic (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1990), 43.

29. Allen Kinsey and Sand Lawn, comp., E. M. Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner Opus List (Richmond, Virginia: Organ Historical Society, 1997), 152.

30. E. William Doty to Brock W. Downward, December 14, 1974. Downward diss., 97.

31. Michael Gariepy to Charles Callahan, February 9, 1996, Callahan, Aeolian-Skinner Remembered, 372.

32. Emerson Richards to Henry Willis III, July 12, 1956. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 433.

33. Callahan, Aeolian-Skinner Remembered, xvi.

Bibliography

Alexander, Richard. “A Survey of the Pipe Organs Designed by G. Donald Harrison.” Master’s thesis, Yale University, School of Music, 1970.

Barnes, William Harrison. The Contemporary American Organ. 8th ed. Glen Rock, NJ: J. Fisher & Bro., 1964.

Berry, Ray, Seth Bingham, Charles M. Courboin, Everett Titcomb, Ernest White, William Self, Alec Wyton, George Faxon, Robert Baker. “G. Donald Harrison, 1889–1956: A Tribute to a Great Man.” The American Organist, vol. 39, no. 7 (July 1956): 230–231.

Bethards, Jack. “The Tabernacle Letters: The Story of the Salt Lake Organ in the Words of G. Donald Harrison and Alexander Schreiner.” The Diapason, vol. 81, nos. 6–8 (June 1990: 14–17; July 1990: 8–9; August 1990: 10–11).

______ . “The 1988 Renovation—A Builder’s Perspective.” The American Organist, vol. 22, no. 12 (Dec. 1988): 71–78. [re: the renovation of the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ].

Blanton, Joseph Edwin. The Organ in Church Design. Albany, TX: Venture Press, 1957.

Buhrman, T. Scott. “Arthur Hudson Marks.” The American Organist, vol. 22 (June 1939).

Callahan, Charles. The American Classic Organ: A History in Letters. Richmond, VA: The Organ Historical Society, 1990.

______ . Aeolian-Skinner Remembered: A History in Letters. Minneapolis: Randall Egan, 1996.

Cundick, Robert. “The 1988 Renovation—An Organist’s Perspective.” The American Organist, vol. 22, no. 12 (Dec. 1988): 79–80.

Downward, Brock W. “G. Donald Harrison and the American Classic Organ.” D.M.A. diss., Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY, 1976.

Fesperman, John. Two Essays on Organ Design. Raleigh, NC: The Sunbury Press, 1975.

Harrison, G. Donald. “Organ,” in Harvard Dictionary of Music. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1944.

______ . “Slider Chests?” The Organ Institute Quarterly, 3 (Summer 1953).

______ , and Emerson L. Richards. “Chorus Reeds, French, English, and American.” The American Organist, vol. 24, nos. 4–7 (April 1941: 107–108; May 1941: 141–143; June 1941: 172–174; July 1941: 203–204).

Kehl, Roy. “The American Classic Symposium in Salt Lake City.” The Diapason, vol. 80, no. 5 (May 1989): 10–11.

King, John Hansen. “The King of Instruments.” The Diapason, vol. 94, no. 5, April 2003.

Kinsey, Allen, and Sand Lawn, comp. E. M. Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner Opus List. Richmond, VA: The Organ Historical Society, 1992, 1997.

Langord, Alan C. “Aeolian-Skinner: A Study in Artistic Leadership.” Bachelor’s thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1959.

Nies-Berger, Édouard. Albert Schweitzer As I Knew Him. Hillsdale, NY: Pendragon Press, 2003.

Owen, Barbara. The Mormon Tabernacle Organ: An American Classic. Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1990.

Richards, Emerson L. “Advent Organ in Boston.” The American Organist, vol. 19, no. 9 (September 1936): 304–307.

_______ . “An American Classic Organ Arrives.” The American Organist, vol. 26, no. 5 (May 1943): 104–108.

_______ . “Boston Symphony Hall’s Third Organ.” The American Organist, vol. 33, no. 1 (January 1950): 17–22.

_______ . “Curtis Institute’s New Organ.” The American Organist, vol. 25, no. 1 (January 1942): 10–14.

Schreiner, Alexander. “The Tabernacle Organ in Salt Lake City.” Organ Institute Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 1 (1957).

_______ . “100 Years of Organs in the Mormon Tabernacle.” The Diapason, vol. 58, no. 11 (November 1967): 19.

Zeuch, William E. “An Appreciation of the Work of G. Donald Harrison.” The American Organist, vol. 16, no. 9 (September 1933): 438–439.

About The American Organist magazine entries: for most of the twentieth century the official journal of the American Guild of Organists was The Diapason, independently owned, edited, and published in Chicago. Simultaneous with The Diapason was an organists’ journal titled The American Organist, published by T. Scott Buhrman in New York City. These two journals coexisted until 1967 when the AGO established its independent journal, initially titled MUSIC: The AGO/RCCO Magazine reflecting that it was the official journal of the American Guild of Organists and the Royal Canadian College of Organists. After Buhrman died in the 1960s his journal continued briefly, but it soon ceased operations. The AGO soon adopted the title The American Organist for their official magazine, but it is not in any way related to Buhrman’s magazine. In this bibliography the two 1988 entries referring to The American Organist refer to the magazine’s later iteration as the journal of the AGO.

Joyce Johnson Robinson

Joyce Johnson Robinson is a past editor of The Diapason.

More than a century and a half after his birth, Ernest Martin Skinner (born January 15, 1866; died November 27, 1960) is still acknowledged to be one of the most innovative of American organbuilders. Skinner created instruments that emphasized orchestral-imitative stops (such as the French Horn and English Horn), with consoles that were models of practical design. He created exquisite and colorful soft stops, including the Erzähler, the Orchestral Oboe, and the English Horn. His innovations also include the pitman windchest, and he perfected the electro-pneumatic motor for swell shutters.¹

Skinner began his career in 1886, working for George H. Ryder in Reading, Massachusetts, north of Boston. Skinner worked there for four years, and in 1890 after being fired by a new foreman, was subsequently hired by George S. Hutchings, for whom he worked for eleven years.

Skinner founded Ernest M. Skinner & Co.—the firm changed names several times before becoming known as the Skinner Organ Company in 1919—and his career lasted a good four decades, with 1910 to the early 1920s being its heyday. The Great Depression greatly reduced the market for Skinner’s instruments. Furthermore, staff changes in the company resulted in Skinner losing control of his own firm, and through a merger, a new entity emerged, the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, in 1932. The factory that Skinner opened in 1936 (when he was 70!) with his son Richmond, when the company was known as Ernest M. Skinner & Son Organ Company, was destroyed by fire on June 17, 1943. Changes in musical tastes also eventually led to a diminished market for Skinner’s instruments. By the time of Skinner’s death in 1960, his style of organbuilding had gone out of fashion, with orchestral color and tone being de-emphasized in favor of clarity and brightness.

From 1911 to 1961, news of the life and work of Ernest M. Skinner was reported in The Diapason. The announcements, advertisements, letters, and features that appeared in The Diapason illuminated the great scope of Skinner’s work and personality, along with the waxing and waning of his company and career, and the occasional glimpse into his personal life. Over the course of fifty years there were dozens of announcements and articles that documented the instruments in the Skinner opus list and traced the arrival of G. Donald Harrison in 1927, the 1932 merger with the pipe organ division of the Aeolian Company, Skinner’s establishment of his own factory and company in 1936, and his joining the staff of the Schantz Organ Company of Orrville, Ohio, in 1947.

This article offers a brief summary of Skinner’s life and history as revealed in the pages of The Diapason. By no means will it present every reference that can be found in the journal; it is intended to give a flavor of the life, times, and work of this important organbuilder.

Skinner instruments

We first read of Skinner in January 1911, when The Diapason reported on the near-completion of the new, “monster” Skinner organ at New York City’s Cathedral of St. John the Divine. The next month, the journal published a letter from Skinner in which he complains about inaccurate reporting in a letter discussing that organ; Skinner’s letter also touches on the question, “what makes an organ modern?”

To the Editor of The Diapason. Dear Sir:—One of the reasons why I usually decline to give information to newspaper reporters is the fact that they are not satisfied to take the facts as submitted, but have to enlarge upon them and indulge in flights of imagination, which makes a farce of most accounts of church organs.

I note an article in the January number relating to the organ being installed in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, in which it is stated: “The thirty-two foot pipe at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine gives the same tone because it has a sixty-four foot stop.” I do not know where the reporter got this information, nor am I able to comprehend its meaning. There is certainly no stop in this instrument of sixty-four foot pitch, nor have I heard of a stopped sixty-four in any other. The reporter is pleased to call this tone a “gusty rumble.” He vaults from this to the “shrill singing of a tea kettle just beginning to whisper to itself about boiling,” which makes a paragraph rich in metaphor, and is about as rational as the average article of this description.

I note a letter from James E. Dale, in which he says the organ for the Cathedral of St. John the Divine will not be the largest and most modern ever built. I was particular to state in such information as I gave the reporter that the organ was not the largest ever built. I wish Mr. Dale would inform me upon what he bases his conclusion that the Sydney organ, built twenty-one years ago, is more modern than the organ going into the Cathedral of St. John the Divine.

What makes an organ modern? Is it the character of its resources or the number of stops? Also, allow me to say that the Sydney organ is not the largest in the world. The organ built by Murray M. Harris of California for the St. Louis Exposition, and being installed in Wannamaker’s store in New York city [sic], has that distinction to the best of my knowledge and belief.

The organ in the Cathedral of St. John the Divine has three thirty-two foot pedal stops, an open, violone and reed, all of which are the full thirty-two feet in length at low C and are open pipes. The organ is guiltless of a sixty-four foot stop of any description.

Yours very truly,

ERNEST M. SKINNER

The June 1911 issue reported on Clarence Dickinson’s opening recital at the cathedral.

Other 1911 announcements mentioned new Skinner instruments and contracts: Asylum Hill Congregational Church, Hartford, Connecticut; Sts. Peter and Paul’s Cathedral (the National Cathedral), Washington, D.C.; and Church of the Holy Communion, New York City (April 1911); and the completion of a large four-manual organ in the Grand Avenue Methodist Church, Kansas City, Missouri (September 1911).

The October 1912 issue noted the contract and stoplist of a four-manual organ for Williams College, Williamstown, Massachusetts, along with the dedication of a three-manual instrument in the First Methodist Church of Muscatine, Iowa—played by Mrs. Wilhelm Middelschulte.²

In October 1917, it was noted that Gordon Balch Nevin (probably best known to us as the composer of Will o’ the Wisp) had joined the company (having left his position as organist of Second Presbyterian Church of Cleveland), to arrange musical scores for the “Orchestrator”—a player organ using rolls (“which Mr. Skinner has invented and perfected after twenty years’ work”). The Diapason reported that:

The new instrument contains many of Mr. Skinner’s inventions whereby the tones of the orchestral instruments are faithfully reproduced. In addition the instrument contains a full size concert grand piano, and it is possible to reproduce a concerto for piano with complete orchestral accompaniments.

The Ernest M. Skinner company is erecting a special laboratory building for this branch of the work, containing rooms for cutting work, a studio for the head of the department, and a fine concert hall—equipped with a large “Orchestrator.”

By the way, a player mechanism using perforated rolls was also to be part of the Skinner Organ Company’s organ for the auditorium in St. Paul, Minnesota, mentioned in the April 1920 issue (“City raises fund of $61,000”). This four-manual, 105-stop instrument (stoplist given in the article) would also include a concert grand piano that could be played from the organ keyboard, “as it is in the case of the Skinner organ in Carnegie Hall, Pittsburgh,” along with a new feature, a 16′ Heckelphone in the Solo division (“which will resemble an English horn, but six or seven times as powerful”), and a six-rank string division.

The Diapason’s office was located at that time in Chicago, Illinois; naturally, local instruments would certainly be noted. It was reported in March 1921 that St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in nearby Evanston would have a great organ, designed by Herbert Hyde and Joseph Bonnet:

The Chicago district is to have another notable organ—one which probably will be the largest in any church of the city or suburbs. The Skinner Organ Company has been awarded the contract for a four-manual instrument for St. Luke’s Episcopal Church of Evanston. It will have a total of 78 speaking stops. The instrument is to be completed early in 1922 and will be the crowning feature of the new edifice under construction. The present chapel organ is to be used as an echo division for the new organ. The specification is the work of Herbert E. Hyde, organist and choirmaster of St. Luke’s, in consultation with Joseph Bonnet.

The front page of the October 1921 issue of The Diapason was virtually dominated by Skinner. There was a notice of the dedication of St. Paul’s new municipal organ, with recitals by H. Chandler Goldthwaite, the city organist, who declared the Skinner instrument to be “the best in the country, bar none,” and that “visiting organists are going to discover that compositions may be played here that will be almost impossible” on other organs. The center of the page shows Skinner at the organ console, and Arthur Marks standing by the organ built for Marks’s country place in Westchester County. And the right-hand column provided details on the two “wonder organs” for the Eastman School—one an Austin, and the other a 4-manual Skinner, every division of which was enclosed, including the entire pedal, which possessed a 32′ Bombarde. This organ also featured a full Dulciana chorus (16′, 8′, 4′, 2′, and a Dulciana Cornet), and on the Great, a complete harmonic series, including a Septieme.

The Skinner Organ Company’s New York office, located at 677 Fifth Avenue in New York City, also had an organ studio. The December 1925 issue of The Diapason lists the 36 “noted men” who would play a series of “great artists” Friday evening recitals at the studio, to be broadcast on radio station WAHG. The list is worthy of a Who’s Who: Lynnwood Farnam, T. Tertius Noble, Albert William Snow, Hugh Porter, Edwin Arthur Kraft, Palmer Christian, Charles Heinroth, Harold Gleason, W. A. Goldsworthy, Maurice Garabrant, Marshall Bidwell, Louis Potter, Gordon Balch Nevin, Guy C. Filkins, Rollo Maitland, John Priest, Chandler Goldthwaite, Alexander McCurdy, George Rogers Pratt, Alfred Greenfield, Arnold Dann, Walter Hartley, Warren D. Allen, Allan Bacon, Walter P. Zimmerman, Herbert E. Hyde, G. H. Federlein, William E. Zeuch, Henry F. Seibert, Edward Rechlin, and Clarence Dickinson. A photo of six of the recitalists gathered around a Skinner console graces the top of the issue’s front page.

The lead news article on page 1 of the April 1931 issue of The Diapason was the signing of a contract by the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles for “a large four-manual Skinner organ.” William H. Barnes, the consultant, and Stanley W. Williams, Skinner’s Pacific coast representative, prepared the stoplist for the sixty-rank (plus Harp/Celesta and Chimes) instrument.

The April 1931 issue also mentions the dedication recital of the four-manual, eighty-nine-stop Skinner organ at Severance Hall in Cleveland, played by Palmer Christian, noting that, “In spite of the fact that the event was held on Friday—a rehearsal night for church choirs—many organists and other church musicians were present. It is presumed that a number of choir rehearsals in town were curtailed to enable interested members to attend.” The organ’s console had three terminals for the cable—one so that it could be in the center of the stage, a second so that it could be at the side, and a third so that it could be in the sunken pit. “The tone is characterized by great beauty of individual solo registers. The ensemble is of the English type, with great prominence of chorus reeds and brilliant mixtures. These features were sufficiently outstanding to cause comment from the musical critics, one calling it a present-day ‘fashion’ in organ design.” (The stoplist was published in the February 1930 issue.)

The front page of the January 1932 issue featured a large portrait of Arthur Hudson Marks, “head of new organ company,” which is to say the new Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, Inc., the combining of Skinner with the pipe organ division of the Aeolian Company. Marks was president, with W. H. Alfring, Aeolian president, and Ernest Skinner as vice-presidents, along with George Catlin of Skinner and Frank Taft of Aeolian. It was noted that 85% of Skinner’s business had been for churches, colleges, and institutions, and 15% for residences, while Aeolian’s was almost the reverse—80% residential and 20% institutional.

One early deal that resulted for Aeolian-Skinner was the 1933 order for a four-manual organ for the W. K. Kellogg Auditorium in Battle Creek, Michigan. The instrument and the auditorium were to be a gift to the Battle Creek public schools from Mr. Kellogg, “the breakfast food manufacturer whose products are known throughout the world.” The February 1933 issue’s front page gave the announcement and listed the specification, of sixty-five ranks plus Harp/Celesta and Chimes; an Echo organ was playable from the Solo manual. The specification included a 16′ Ophicleide (Great), 8′ Flugel Horn (Swell), 8′ Corno di Bassetto (Choir), and in the Solo division, 8′ Orchestral Oboe, French and English horns, and a heavy-pressure Tuba Mirabilis.

In February 1936 we read Skinner’s announcement that he established, with his son Richmond, his own organbuilding plant at Methuen, Massachusetts, under the name of Ernest M. Skinner & Son Company. The announcement is brief; Skinner “will engage in the designing and construction of instruments that are to embody his principles of tone and that are to be like the large organs in America on which his reputation is based.”

From this point on the number of new Aeolian-Skinner instruments far exceeded those of Skinner’s company. New organs were few and far between: First Church of Northampton, Massachusetts (three manuals, November 1936); First Baptist, Jackson, Mississippi (four manuals, 1940); St. John’s Lutheran, Allentown, Pennsylvania (April 1940); the reconstructed/enlarged organs at Brick Presbyterian (June 1940) and First Presbyterian, Englewood, New Jersey (three manuals, October 1946).

Skinner’s writings

Skinner’s own writings appeared throughout the years in The Diapason, from letters to the editor to feature articles. In 1919 Skinner was elected president of the Organ Builder’s Association of America. The September 1919 issue noted: “Ernest M. Skinner of Boston was elected president of the association, as the successor to John T. Austin, the first president. W. E. Pilcher of Louisville was made vice president; Farny R. Wurlitzer was re-elected treasurer and Adolph Wangerin was chosen again to be secretary.” At the organization’s first annual meeting, a motion for the association to declare itself in favor of the eight-hour day was voted down. In 1920, along with his report, Skinner gave an address on the importance of such an organization, noting how it could build respect and collegiality, in “a field that offers no one an easy road to success either artistically or financially.” The year 1920 looked rosy indeed. Note Skinner’s optimism (and mourn the passing of this era):

It looks to me as though from now on the organ builder were to become a decidedly necessary citizen. The organ is becoming immensely popular. The church no longer appears to have an exclusive ownership of the instrument. The auditorium, residence, motion picture theater and even the great municipal art museums are finding it worth while to give the king of instruments a place of honor in their activities. Let us make the most of our association for whatever it may do to insure the future for us.

At this meeting, the association drafted a uniform contract for purchase of new pipe organs, with a payment schedule set at 10% down, 55% at shipment, and the balance upon completion.

Also in 1920, in October, The Diapason printed Skinner’s lecture, “The Organ in the Home,” delivered before the National Association of Organists in New York. It offers an entertaining look at Skinner through his whimsical writing:

When the handle is turned on to let on the water for the morning tub, what is more fitting than Handel’s water music played on the unda maris? A little later we are led to the breakfast table and hear sweet discourse on a stop voiced smooth and round, to picturize a grapefruit, or a bald head.

But the essay focused on player organs:

. . . The present popularity of the residence pipe organ was brought about by the application of the perforated roll mechanism . . . . It satisfies an inherent craving for self-expression common to every living music lover.

Skinner was addressing organists, and he was discussing the organist who would be employed to play an organ in a wealthy home, noting that sometimes the performer would not be listened to:

The client and one or two friends carried on an animated conversion and paid no more attention to the organist than they would have paid to a yellow pup—in fact, I think the pup might have had the best of it. An artist will in this case be hammered into a mere mercenary . . . . The client knows there is, apart from the sound heard, more class to an actual organist than to a machine, and the organist undoubtedly wears this halo, whatever it amounts to.

The organ in the home necessarily has a much smaller public than elsewhere, but it certainly presents, particularly with the perforated roll adjunct, wonderful opportunities for an intimate acquaintance with whatever kind of music one is interested in . . . . The future for the organist looks wonderful to me . . . . But you can do more than anybody else to better the conditions of public music. A given plane is raised from a higher one, never from below.

The early 1920s were prosperous for the Skinner company. The April 1921 issue of The Diapason reports that the Skinner Organ Company would combine with the Steere Organ Company, to handle a large amount of new work. The Steere plant would operate as a unit of the Skinner organ company:

The two factories have been consolidated, but the plant of the Steere Company at Westfield, Mass., will be operated and the entire staff of that concern will be retained. The addition of the Steere forces to the facilities of the Boston plant of the Skinner Company will make it possible to take care of the large amount of new work, orders for which have been received by the Skinner Company. The deal therefore does not actually remove any factor from the organ business, but serves to make for better results through a combination of interests.

The announcement includes Skinner’s letter to the editor, detailing the consolidation, noting that George Kingsbury, Steere’s president, and Harry Van Wart, superintendent (who had previously worked for Skinner), supported “high standards of excellence.” Skinner had written that:

There has been a tremendous demand for Skinner products during the past year, which can be satisfied only by an organization expert in organ building and familiar with the technique and rigid inspection requirements of the Skinner Company. The Steere plant will operate at capacity as a unit of the Skinner Organ Company making standard Skinner parts under our standard specifications and inspection.

Skinner commented on whiffle-tree swell shade action in The Diapason Forum of the February 1922 issue. He explains his preference for it: “The whiffle-tree engine will move the shades about twice as fast as in the old mechanical action without slamming.” Skinner was responding to a previous letter that had criticized the whiffle-tree, and did not spare feelings in doing so: “Except for the fact that M. E. Hardy has overlooked everything of importance relating to the whiffle-tree swell shutter action, his article on the subject is very well expressed.”³

In a letter in May 1945, Skinner explained why organ pipes go sharp when temperature rises, what a temperament is, and what a “wolf” is. The first: As temperature rises, pipes contain less air than formerly, as some has left, due to expansion. Thus less air is excited by the same amount of force. The second: The wolf is the dissonance remaining in one interval of a perfectly tuned or untempered octave. Setting a temperament consists in tuning an octave so that the wolf is distributed equally throughout its twelve intervals.

Later that year, Skinner defined a “classical” organ: “Generally I have regarded it as the type represented by the French organs in Notre Dame and San [sic] Sulpice, and perhaps by the Roosevelt, Johnson and Hutchings organs in America . . . .” He felt that the “so-called romantic organ is the type developed here in the United States” and that its characteristics were “strings of warmth and prompt speech, the new orchestral voices, and unfortunately the Philomela, heavy claribel flutes and fat diapason.” He concluded by saying that since Webster defines classical as “a work of the highest class, of acknowledged excellence,” then the organs of Washington National Cathedral, Girard College, or Bruton Parish Church should be considered so.

In July 1949, Skinner complained about William H. Barnes’s Contemporary American Organ. Barnes claimed, based on letters he had received, that Skinner was not the inventor of certain stops. Skinner’s letter to the editor disputes this, demanding some proof: “Will Mr. Barnes please give in these columns a single instance where any one of these stops was placed by another organ builder, of a character authentic to an equal degree with those designed by the undersigned, and where they were placed, previous to the dates named?” The battle of letters continued, with Mr. Maclean of Toronto and Edwin D. Northrup joining in (September 1949). Skinner clarified that his contribution was the stop’s tone, not merely a stop name.

Please tell Mr. Maclean of Toronto that I did not refer to engraving the name English horn or cor anglais on a stopknob. I have seen many such, but the authentic English horn tone was not heard when the stop was drawn. I have been in England, France, Belgium, Holland and Germany several times, but never once heard the tone of an orchestral English horn, regardless of the name. Also in my sixty-five years as an organ builder I have seen organs of all makes in every state in the Union, but never once heard an authentic English horn, except my own.

. . . I invited Willis to America and gave him my French horn, personally, likewise men from Cavaille-Coll of Paris. I also gave many builders my pitman windchest and whiffletree swell engine; so now I suppose the logical thing to do is to try to do me out of their invention. I invented a contre bombarde and other stops. That doesn’t prevent others from designing other forms of the same name, does it?  . . . Cancel “inventions” to please Mr. Maclean, substitute “developments.” Moral: To avoid criticism, do nothing.

In 1951, when the organbuilder turned 85, the journal published “Ernest M. Skinner recalls the past” in the March issue. Later that year, Skinner’s wife Mabel died, and the grieving Skinner stayed with his daughter Eugenia in Reading, Massachusetts. In this article, Skinner summarized his life, beginning with a description of his limited education—“high school for a while”—and his on-the-job training, beginning with George H. Ryder, for whom Skinner swept the shop and wound trackers. He taught himself tuning (both piano and organ). He worked at George S. Hutchings in Boston, moving up to foreman, and then struck out on his own.

Skinner cited his organs at City College in New York, the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, the Washington National Cathedral, Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, Girard College Chapel, and Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. He described operatic and symphonic inspiration for his French Horn (Strauss, Salome), Bassoon (Zarathustra), and Orchestral Oboe and English Horn (Wagner, Parsifal), noting that “every improvement I ever made in the organ was opposed by somebody.” He concluded noting that Hutchings turned down a half-interest in Alexander Graham Bell’s telephone—for $50.

In July 1952, Skinner’s “Principles of Tonal Design” was a feature article. Skinner began by explaining that the electrically driven fan made subsidiary wind pressures possible. He suggests five-inch pressure “satisfactory for general purposes, except on large organs.” The article presented the characteristics of different stop pipes, where to locate their ranks in the organ, and tuning.

Skinner advertisements

The Skinner company was a regular advertiser in The Diapason. Skinner’s advertisements provide a view of the progress of Skinner’s business, and also his philosophies. Those from the 1930s after his separation from the company that he founded decades earlier are particularly telling.

One of the earliest advertisements appeared in August 1917, simply stating that “It isn’t what you Pay; it what you Get for what you pay. Buy by the tone, not by the ton.” The advertiser is the Ernest M. Skinner Company, Church Organs, Boston, Massachusetts.

An advertisement in February 1936 announces that “Ernest M. Skinner is established at Methuen, Mass., where organ building, as exemplified by the instruments at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine, St. Thomas’ and St. Bartholomew’s churches, New York City, and similar examples elsewhere, will be continued. The traditional ensemble, enhanced by Mr. Skinner’s orchestral and tonal inventions . . . will ensure the character of these instruments. Their beautiful tone and uncompromising fidelity to quality are acknowledged by American and foreign artists alike.” This advertisement emphasizes what Skinner would be forever remembered for: orchestral and tonal inventions in the ensemble, with beautiful sound quality in a well-made instrument.

An April 1936 advertisement with the title “A Personal Word from Ernest M. Skinner” emphasizes that “Tone production, of distinction, is as individual and personal as handwriting, and even more difficult to copy. It is the product of personal musical experience, taste, research, technical skill and sense of hearing” and that Skinner’s company is the only one from which one can purchase instruments having “tonal characteristics of breadth and splendor.”

In another 1936 advertisement, this from May, Skinner writes that an organbuilder must have a musical imagination, so that the tone he creates would have “an artistic character, of poetic implication. . .”
and that “tonal charm is a fundamental requisite of every musical instrument.” In July, Skinner’s advertisement reaffirms that his work in Methuen, with his son Richmond, produces “beautiful orchestral voices, original and eloquent colors of the Erzahler type, the Trumpets, Diapasons and Mutations . . . all . . .
in just proportion.” Skinner explained in October the workings of his electro-pneumatic key action.

It consisted of a high resistance magnet, operating at a low voltage and controlling an armature of fixed movement. This armature commanded a pneumatic key action having a double motor—a primary and secondary—which operated at great speed, making it the most responsive and reliable of all organ mechanisms, which it remains to this day.

In December Skinner touted his ability to improve an existing instrument through “a few judicious touches:” “Skinner experience will find and eliminate the weak spots and for some of the present indifferent stops, the old organ may be improved to an unbelievable degree.”

In his 1937 advertisements, Skinner took to including testimonials. An ad that appeared in April and July quoted Louis Vierne, from a letter to an unidentified third party:

When you shall see Mr. Skinner tell him that I should be delighted if my opinion of his organs could be of any use to him. It is already ten years since my American tour, and . . . I still have, in my ears, the memory of those magnificent timbres and in my fingers that of the marvelous touch of the instruments of this very great builder. I have retained an unforgettable joy in them, and he can proclaim this publicly in reproducing this passage of my letter.

Vierne also was quoted remarking after hearing a Skinner organ, “If I had had an organ like that when I was a young man, it would have changed the whole character of my compositions.”

In September of that year, The Diapason published an advertisement that contained a letter from Virgil Fox to Skinner. The letter was dated July 21, and one wonders whether Skinner actively solicited the letter:

Dear Ernest, How proud you must feel about your organ we played Monday—the one just completed at Northhampton! Your action will take any tempo, however fast, and any phrasing. And, you’ve built pipes that sing! The ensemble is clarity personified.

Though only a three-manual organ, the real 32-ft tone in the pedal makes it a distinguished one.

Your new 4-ft Swell Flute deserves to stand with your other contributions to the pipe organ. Don’t ever doubt that the world is grateful to you for the beauty you have given thru your invention of the Flute Celeste, French Horn and those other well-known voices.

Congratulations on Northampton! Congratulations because you are even more interested in music than you are interested in organ.

Yours in all sincerity,

Virgil Fox

Letters in 1938 include an announcement that the temporary organ in the choir of Washington National Cathedral was for sale at “about half its cost.” The instrument was of nineteen ranks and included a 32′ Fagotto (optional). Other advertisements announced work booked, in progress, and on hand; others reprinted more letters, from satisfied customers or those who had just approved a contract. One charming advertisement from the August 1938 issue beckons travelers, in those pre-Disney World days, to consider Skinner’s workplace as a vacation destination.

The completion of the organ in Washington National Cathedral was a landmark in Skinner’s career, and he continually trumpeted it, calling it a “masterpiece” that “will stand as a supreme example of the art of organ building for the next century.” He quotes Robert Barrow, organist and choirmaster of the cathedral, who calls the new organ “the greatest instrument as yet produced in this country, and one of the really great organs of the world . . . an organ designed by a musician, for musicians.”

Another advertisement quotes the Washington Herald’s article reporting on the dedication recital. Three thousand attendees “heard one of the greatest instruments in the world today in so far as its capacities, ordinary and unusual, could be demonstrated in a program of less than an hour’s duration . . . .”

In January 1939 Skinner’s advertising quoted T. Tertius Noble, the organist of St. Thomas in New York City, who praises the “superb instrument” there and to the new Washington instrument, with its full and rich Diapasons, which “may be compared with the finest to be found in the great English cathedral organs,” the reeds—“rich in tone, brilliant where needed, and full of character,” and above all the voicing of the mixtures, “so full of sparkle and clarity, without the horrible harshness which seems to be so much the fashion today.” In the following year Skinner printed testimonials from Clarence Dickinson regarding the organ in the Brick Presbyterian Church.

Other advertisements in 1930 and 1940 mentioned new instruments that were being built, and what Skinner could do for an old organ—that is, a slider chest tracker organ, a Johnson, Hutchings, or Hook & Hastings: electrification, curing sticking slides, guaranteeing steady wind and pitch integrity, a silent and instantaneous stop action, a silent high speed key and pedal action. And “by substituting a few stops we can give a substantial factor of modern tonal beauty. All the above under control of a modern Skinner console, at something less than half the cost of a new organ.” (June 1939)

Some of Skinner’s advertisements were pithy, such as May 1940: “Faith without works is dead. A like condition attends theory without ears.” Or March 1940: “Stradivarius, Steinway, Skinner obviously have something in common. In all three, beauty of tone is the first objective.”

While some of the letters quoted in The Diapason give one a sense that they were actively solicited, a letter from Thomas H. Webber, Jr., writing from Idlewild Presbyterian Church in Memphis (January 1941), has a personal and friendly tone:

I am very sorry the rush of the Christmas time has kept me from writing you before this in regards to the beautiful organ you recently finished in the First Baptist Church of Jackson Mississippi. It was a joy and privilege to play the dedicatory recital on this magnificent instrument . . . .”

[The writer goes on to praise the responsive action, diapason chorus, and especially the 32′ Fagotto.]

I am delighted that there is another fine Ernest Skinner organ here in this section of the South. The Idlewild organ is a constant joy to me in every respect. . . . More than ever, I am convinced that people want beauty in tone as well as beauty in other things and you surely create that beauty in these fine organs.

It was very nice to see you and Richmond again. I think he did an excellent piece of work in the Jackson organ.

In March 1941 Skinner’s advertisement was headlined “The Original Skinner Quality Still in Demand!” as though he felt the need to convince the reader of such. The advertisement listed “recent installations and work in process”—16 instruments, of which one was a rebuild, a second received a new console and electrification, and a third new pipes. All were on the Eastern seaboard, except for one in Mississippi and one in Ohio.

The entry of the United States into World War II at the end of 1941 did not immediately affect organbuilding, but it was inevitable that the industry would see changes. The July 1942 issue of The Diapason reported on the order from the War Production Board, which required that the entire organbuilding industry be converted to defense work after July 31. This order forbade the manufacture of musical instruments containing more than ten percent by weight of “critical materials”—metals, cork, plastic, and rubber. The report explained that “the part assigned to the organ manufacturers is to produce blowers for link trainers used in ground training of pilots.”

In July 1943, The Diapason reported that the Skinner factory in Methuen, Massachusetts, was destroyed by fire on June 17.

The origin of the spectacular blaze has not been established. The three-story wooden structure was razed, only the frame front remaining. Serlo Hall, adjacent to the factory and nationally famous because it houses the great organ that originally stood in the Boston Music Hall, being later acquired by Ernest M. Skinner, was saved from the flames by a fire wall . . . . The factory was operated by Mr. Skinner and his son until organ manufacture was suspended and the property was under the control of a bank.

Following this event, Skinner was largely absent from mention in the pages of The Diapason.

About Skinner’s life

Skinner was of sufficient importance that he and his family were worthy of note. The September 1914 issue quotes an article that appeared in the Boston Post in August, of how eighteen-year-old Eugenia R. Skinner saved her “chum” from drowning, “nearly a mile” (!) off shore at the beach. The journal also reported on Skinner’s own health. A February 1915 announcement mentions that Skinner broke a rib in a collision of his automobile with a tree in Cambridge.

In March 1951, The Diapason published a piece in which Skinner reminisced, by the editor’s request; this was on the occasion of his 85th birthday. Skinner tells the story of his life, how as a twelve-year-old he attempted to build an organ of wooden pipes—they did not speak—and how he began working for George H. Ryder, sweeping the shop and winding trackers. He designed a machine that could wind the trackers better and faster than by hand. He next taught himself tuning and moved on to work with George S. Hutchings. Skinner eventually went out on his own. He mentions his landmark instruments, and cites operatic and symphonic works as the inspiration for his French Horn, Orchestral Oboe, and Contra Bassoon.

The May 1951 issue reported on page 1 of the death of Mrs. Ernest M. Skinner (nee Mabel Hastings) in her sleep on April 14. The Skinners had been married for 58 years. “Mrs. Skinner had not been ill and she enjoyed a chess game with her husband the evening before her death. She is survived by her husband, two daughters and a son.”

In January 1956, The Diapason reported that Skinner, “who still enjoys good health and takes a lively interest in musical matters,” would turn 90 on January 15. It also reported his home address, presumably so greetings could be sent. (How times have changed!) It noted that Skinner was “a household word in the organ world,” that Skinner “built many of the notable organs in this country,” and that “he is credited with inventions which have become standard equipment on modern instruments.” This notice was followed by a reprint of Skinner’s autobiography, first presented five years earlier.

Skinner fell in the spring of 1957, as reported in the June 1957 issue, tripping over a small podium in a church aisle, resulting in a broken right shoulder. He spent ten days in the hospital and then was moved to a nursing home, “where he will be staying for at least the next month.” On the front page of its January 1961 issue, The Diapason reported the death of Ernest M. Skinner, “America’s most widely known builder of pipe organs,” age 94, on November 27, 1960, in Duxbury, Massachusetts. The headlines called him a “renowned organ builder” and the “most influential designer of American instruments in first half of the century.” The journal reprinted Skinner’s reminiscence article of ten years prior, noting that “Though most of his best known organs have been rebuilt and greatly changed in the last two decades, many of them retain some of the stops which he originated and perfected and which were most characteristic of the great Skinner organs of a generation ago.”

Notes

1. For a fine summary of Skinner’s career, see Craig R. Whitney, All the Stops (New York: Public Affairs, 2003). For more on Skinner instruments, see Dorothy J. Holden, “The Tonal Evolution of the E. M. Skinner Organ,” The Diapason, July 1977, February 1978, June 1978, March 1979, January 1980.

2. Wilhelm Middelschulte married Annette Musser on June 29, 1896. Prior to their marriage she was a prominent organist, pianist, and teacher in Memphis, Tennessee. In Chicago, Illinois, where they resided, she served as organist at St. Paul’s Universalist Church. See www.wilhelm-middelschulte.de/biographie.htm (accessed August 22, 2017).

3. For a brief definition of the whiffle-tree and a photograph, see John Bishop, “In the wind . . .” in The Diapason, June 2008, page 14.

Damin Spritzer plays Marche Triomphale: Ite missa est, by René Louis Becker. This is from her recital at the Cathedral of St. Philip, Atlanta, Georgia, February 20, 2022.

Aeolian-Skinner Opus 1399, four manuals, 96 ranks. 
https://www.cathedralatl.org/worship/music/organs/cathedral/

Dr. Damin Spritzer is Area Chair and Associate Professor of Organ at the University of Oklahoma and Interim Director of Music and Organist for St. Thomas More University Parish in Norman. She continues to work with the Cathedral Church of Saint Matthew in Dallas as Artist-in-Residence for Cathedral Arts. Formerly Adjunct Professor at the University of North Texas teaching Organ Literature and Sacred Music, she is active in the Dallas and Oklahoma City Chapters of the American Guild of Organists and serves on committees for the Organ Historical Society, the Association of Anglican Musicians, and Organlive Media Foundation. She received her doctorate from the University of North Texas, her Master of Music from the Eastman School of Music, and her Bachelor of Music from the Oberlin Conservatory of Music.

See her artist spotlight at https://www.thediapason.com/artists/damin-spritzer-0

Damin Spritzer is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC. www.concertartists.com 

Neal Campbell

Neal Campbell is the organist of Trinity Episcopal Church in Vero Beach, Florida. He previously held full-time positions in Connecticut, Virginia (including ten years on the adjunct faculty of the University of Richmond), and New Jersey. He holds graduate and undergraduate degrees from the Manhattan School of Music, including the Doctor of Musical Arts degree, for which he wrote his dissertation on the life and work of New York organist-composer Harold Friedell. He has studied, played, and recorded on many of the organs discussed in this article.

Editor's Note: Part 2 is found in the March 2022 issue.

Introduction

During their seventy-plus-year history it was customary for organs built by the Skinner Organ Company and the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company to contain an ivory nameplate bearing the firm’s name on the console, usually on the keyslip, although there was a brief period in the early 1960s when the company name was stenciled in gold letters in a way similar to that on pianos. Astute aficionados can sometimes even determine the era in which the organ was built by carefully examining the subtle differences in type styles that were used over the years.

After World War II some jobs featured an additional ivory nameplate bearing the signature of G. Donald Harrison, Aeolian-Skinner’s president and tonal director, which also gave the opus number and date. There is no definitive information to suggest why some organs received this signature plate, what criteria were used in selecting them, or what purpose it served. Much conjecture and oral tradition among enthusiasts has been promulgated to the point where there is a resultant mystique surrounding these “signature organs.”

The only thing approaching documentation on the subject that I have found is in the form of three letters, the first two written approximately twenty years before the latter. Barbara Owen writes in her history of the organ in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, Utah, Aeolian-Skinner’s Opus 1075:¹

Shortly before the organ was completed, [Alexander] Schreiner wrote to Harrison, “I have long thought it would be a matter of pride to us, to have your name appear on the console name plate. Perhaps also the year, 1948. If that is possible, we should be very pleased.”² Harrison complied by providing a signature plate on the right of the nameboard [keyslip], complementing the company plate on the left. Thus originated a practice that later became customary with Aeolian-Skinner. But it is perhaps nowhere more appropriate than on the Tabernacle instrument, which Harrison himself in later years felt to have been his finest work.

Harrison replied to Schreiner:

I note what you have to say about the nameplate, and I will provide one, but I fear it will not be ready to go [be shipped] with the console. I would like to have my name in the form of my signature if I can get this engraved in Boston.³

Then in 1968 Philip Steinhaus, executive vice-president of Aeolian-Skinner, wrote to William Self, organist and master of the choristers of St. Thomas Church, New York City:

The officers of the Company would be greatly pleased if you would be good enough to help us continue to honor the work of the late G. Donald Harrison by removing his personal nametag [sic] from the console at St. Thomas Church. As you know, Mr. Harrison only agreed to using these tags [signed nameplates] on the jobs with whose finishing he was deeply and personally involved. We are in no way commenting on the present tonal characteristics of the St. Thomas organ, except in all honesty to say that its character is not recognizable as the work of Mr. Harrison, or the Aeolian-Skinner Company for that matter.⁴

From these letters we learn that: a) it was Schreiner who first brought up the idea in the form of a request; b) Harrison replied with the idea of using a facsimile of his signature for that purpose; and c) twenty years later Steinhaus summarizes that these signature plates were put on organs that were finished by GDH and with which he was personally involved. However, upon examining and analyzing existing signature organs and the documented commentary about them, certain patterns do emerge and logical conclusions can be drawn, some of which are tonal and technical, and some purely personal.

It would be a fairly straightforward enterprise to simply list the known signature organs from Opus 1075 in 1948 onward until Harrison’s death in 1956, and I have done just that later in this article. Beyond that, however, I want to set the scene and cite some examples that show the trajectory of Harrison’s tonal ideas leading up to Opus 1075, together with information about the Harrison signature organs.

Historical context

A bit of history sets the stage for the emergence of G. Donald Harrison in the Skinner organization and helps explain why Harrison’s personal involvement came to be sought after and highly prized. The complete story is best told in the letters of the principal players as contained in Charles Callahan’s first book.⁵ But the main thing to take away, as it relates to the topic of the signature organs, is that customers and the leading organists of the era began to prefer instruments that contained the classic elements Harrison gradually came to espouse, and increasingly customers specifically said so. Many of these younger organists had themselves traveled to and studied in Europe and knew some of these historic organs for themselves. They were drawn to Harrison’s concepts of classic design for the simple reason that much of the organ repertoire, especially contrapuntal music, sounded better on these instruments, as opposed to the older style of symphonic and Romantic organs. The era of the large symphonic organs, characterized by a preponderance of eight-foot tone, high wind pressures, and contrasting imitative stops, gradually morphed into organs that were eclectic and modern, which were inspired by historical precedence designed first and foremost to play repertoire written for the organ.

G. Donald Harrison came to America to work for Skinner in 1927, largely through the friendly exchanges between Ernest Skinner and Henry Willis III. Harrison worked for Willis, and it was Willis who sent GDH to Skinner, with the initial idea of his being an emissary to incorporate Willis tonal principles into the Skinner organ. It is hard to discern a precise point at which GDH’s influence began to be felt.

Among the earliest Skinner organs GDH worked on was Opus 656 for Princeton University Chapel, Princeton, New Jersey. Marcel Dupré played it while on tour in America, and he praised the organ. After the fact, Skinner wrote to Harrison:

Dear Don:

I felt some embarrassment when Marcel [Dupré] handed me that testimonial so personal to myself regarding the Princeton organ, and I can imagine you may not have been without some feeling of being left out of it, so I want to say right here that I hold your contribution to the quality of that great instrument to be such that my opinion of you as an artist, publicly and privately expressed, is more than justified.

Cordially, and with great admiration,

Ernest M. Skinner⁶

Other early organs showing Harrison’s influence include Opus 851 for Trinity College Chapel in Hartford, Connecticut, in 1931, where Clarence Watters, the college organist, was a leading disciple of Marcel Dupré in America. By the time of Opus 909 at All Saints Episcopal Church in Worcester, Massachusetts, and Opus 910 for Grace Episcopal Cathedral in San Francisco, California, each from 1933, Harrison’s influence was clearly present, even though each of these organs, in their initial scheme, showed no radical departure from the prevailing Skinner stoplist. It was during this time that Ernest Skinner left the company to set up a competing shop in Methuen, Massachusetts. Also, the firm acquired the organ division of the Aeolian Company to become the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company in 1932.⁷

By 1935 it is clear that GDH was forging a tonal path different from Skinner, and different from Willis, for that matter! Henry Willis in England writes to Emerson Richards:

Now quite privately to you, Don is not doing what he went to Skinners for, and that was to give Skinner Organs a Willis ensemble. Don is striking out on what might be termed an individual line, obviously influenced by you in the strongest possible way [original emphasis]. You will know that Don’s Continental European experience is limited to a few French organs—he has not to my knowledge been in any other European country and most certainly has not heard the various types of German organs Baroque or otherwise. On the other hand he can visualize them perfectly well, especially after hearing Steinmeyer’s Altoona job. [The Catholic Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament in Altoona, Pennsylvania.]

Now you know that I appreciate your personal standpoint and ideals, even if I can’t go all the way with you sometimes. I consider that you, far more than any other man, have rescued American organ building from the romantic morass it was in when I first visited America in 1924. I consider that my own influence has not been inconsiderable for I did get Skinner interested in a decent ensemble and “sold” him mixtures, although he could not learn how to use them properly. Also if it had not been for me, Don would not have gone to Skinners, for the purpose and object I named above.⁸

As Harrison’s star continued to rise, so Ernest Skinner’s waned. In Skinner’s exit scenario from the company, there was a period of five years when Skinner continued to draw a salary, but his personal involvement in the company was limited solely to activities where the customer had specifically requested his services. He was not allowed to call on customers, solicit new business, or incur any expense to the company, and was to come to the factory only if requested for business purposes.

Attributes and examples of the emerging American Classic style

Aeolian-Skinner produced some very interesting organs during this period, and they varied enough in style and specification so as to appear to be completely different products. It is relatively easy to ascertain which organs reflected GDH’s emerging classic principles and which did not. For example, consider Opus 985 from 1938 for St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, New York City, and Opus 964 from 1937 at Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn, New York: with a very slight nod to progressive design, such as two mixtures in the Great, Plymouth could be mistaken for a typical four-manual Skinner scheme by comparison. Whereas the Columbia University organ featured two unenclosed divisions in addition to the Great—Positiv and Brustwerk—and a fully developed independent Pedal organ, and was heralded as a new voice for a new day, installed on the campus of a major university in the country’s largest city. It was a significant achievement that attracted considerable notice. E. Power Biggs played and recorded extensively on the organ.

The theories that Harrison worked toward in these early years of the Great Depression may have been inspired by historic principles to some extent. He was gradually developing a new eclectic type of organ comprising existing mechanical components that were excellent, together with tonal properties that blended Romantic and Classical concepts, put together into a new, entirely American product on which early, Romantic, and contemporary music could be played with artistic conviction.

Technical attributes of these new organs included low to moderate wind pressures, gentle but clear articulation, chorus structure with an emphasis on the four-foot line, carefully worked out customized mixture compositions that were attentively finished as the ascending scale approached the breaks, and customized scaling and halving ratios in different parts of the compass—generally narrower scales in the bass and gradually broader in the treble to effect a subtle gradual singing quality in the treble register, and a focused line in the bass. Where it was practical, unenclosed divisions were placed in an open location within lines of sight to the audience.

Consoles in general were of the same style and design as Skinner had developed them, with a few customized touches to suit the customer as needed, such as smaller drawknob heads, dropped sills to effect a lower profile, occasional narrow swell shoes, varying degrees of console gadget assists, and, later, tracker-touch keyboards. Harrison was in favor of simplifying console controls, and he and Schreiner tended to agree on that as their discussions for the Tabernacle organ progressed. One need only compare the consoles for the Tabernacle with The Riverside Church, New York City, each of which contained five manuals and were in the factory at about the same time. Upon seeing pictures that GDH had sent to him, Henry Willis expressed his displeasure:

The new console at Riverside for Virgil Fox is, in my opinion, the ugliest, and unhandiest, large drawstop console to which my attention has been drawn.

I say nothing of the stop grouping in threes or two as fancy—it seems to be liked in the U.S.A.—nor of the apparent lack of added vertical space between departments. Nor the row of tablets over the fifth manual . . . . But as for the arrangement of the toe pistons—help!

The swell pedals look ridiculous to me—the wide space in between reminding me of the old console at Wanamaker’s, Philadelphia.

Of course, this is Virgil Fox’s design—not yours—and I suppose you took the line that he could have what he wanted.

But I think that no organist should be allowed to impose his own pet idiosyncrasies on an instrument over which he, temporarily, presides.⁹

Harrison replied a couple weeks later:

Your criticism of the Riverside console is well taken but you might modify some of your views if you actually examined it. When you are dealing entirely with detached consoles, if you use the English two rows per department arrangement you would have to build a skyscraper. I see no point to it . . . . The number of couplers is essential when you are dealing with Chancel and West End organs plus a 15-stop Echo all in one instrument. I have no use for the double organ idea.

Regarding the width of the Swell pedals with gaps. We have built one more extreme job than Riverside in this regard, Grace Church New York [Opus 707]. With narrow shoes plus clearance you can get five in where four would normally go with equal safety in clearance.

The Riverside console is normal in most respects, the added controls can be ignored by a visiting or future organist. You should hear the results that Virgil Fox can produce with this set up.¹⁰

Beginning in the early 1930s these new classic attributes increasingly appeared in prominent organs where Harrison was able to advance his theories. Keeping in mind that there were about 100 persons employed by the company, it is clear that GDH was continually aware of the need to secure contracts to provide for his workers. He may not have been able to be so creative on each job, but all organs that passed through the factory in one way or another began to manifest these tonal properties in varying ways and degrees. But there are some jobs that obviously stand out as icons of this new style, which came to be known via Emerson Richards as the “American Classic Organ.”

One thing is certain that as soon as the war is over and materials become available, there is going to be a big demand for either rebuilds or entirely new organs, and I am hoping that we will be able to push the Classic Organ. As you may have noted in the articles on the St. Mary’s job [Op. 819-A, St. Mary the Virgin, New York, 1942], I am endeavoring to give this the name of American Classic, although it is going to be awfully hard to dislodge the word Baroque. I did tag the name Romantic on the old ones, and that has stuck, even in England, but an expressive word for the new organ which is only quasi-Baroque in principle with some French, English and American practice, makes a new word imperative but difficult to find.¹¹

In addition to the aforementioned organs for Columbia University and St. Mary the Virgin in New York, a sampling of these organs includes Opus 940 for Church of the Advent in Boston, Massachusetts; Opus 945 for Calvary Church, New York City; Opus 948 at St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and Opus 951, the famous Busch-Reisinger Museum for Germanic Culture at Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, which company records simply refer to as “Germanic” or “Experimental.” This organ was entirely unenclosed and was on loan to the museum yet remained the property of the company.
E. Power Biggs made extensive use of it for demonstrations, recitals, and his famous regular Sunday morning radio broadcasts, and it did a lot to promulgate Harrison’s new classic concept.

As the decade progressed others included Opus 981 at Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey, for Carl Weinrich, his so-called “Praetorius” organ—a near twin to the Busch-Reisinger, which happily still exists in excellent condition, having been recently restored by Stephen Emery, a WCC alumnus; Opus 1007 for Christ Church in Cambridge, Massachusetts, which GDH used for musical examples in 1942 in an LP album titled Studies in Tone wherein he narrates some of his developing ideas on tonal design, complete with appropriate musical examples; another organ for Westminster Choir College, and a large five-manual organ for the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia, Opus 1022. Also, a significant summary of Harrison’s thinking during the development of the American Classic organ may be found in the article “Organ” in the 1944 edition of Harvard Dictionary of Music, an essay authored by Harrison. The article even contains a suggested stoplist for a three-manual organ that is easily recognizable as similar to some of these very organs.

However, among this pantheon the organs built in the 1930s and early 1940s leading up to his design for the Salt Lake Tabernacle, the organ in St. John’s Chapel of the Groton School, Groton, Massachusetts, Opus 936, stands out as a significant point of departure in the development of the American Classic Organ. Harrison often mentioned this organ in his correspondence in the ensuing years, particularly as he contemplated the design of the Tabernacle organ and in his reflections on it once it was finished. Writing to Alexander Schreiner, shortly after signing the contract for Opus 1075, he says:

With the location of the organ, and the magnificent acoustics of the Tabernacle I feel there is a real chance to build the most beautiful organ in the world to date, at least that is what I am going to try to do. I say this not in a boastful spirit, but rather in one of humility. I don’t suppose you have ever heard the organ built for Groton School in 1936. The next time you come East I think we will make a little pilgrimage to hear this organ. I have always felt it is perhaps the most successful organ we have built to date, and indeed it is praised alike by those who are for and aggressively against that type of a tonal scheme. This morning I was thinking about it, and it suddenly struck me that unconsciously I developed the scheme for Salt Lake as a kind of a big brother to the Groton organ. In other words, it seems to carry that tonal structure to its logical conclusion.¹²

Writing to Ralph Downes, the consultant for the new organ in Royal Festival Hall in London, in which Downes was contemplating elements of classical design, Harrison describes his experience:

In 1936 I visited Germany complete with drawing equipment. I soon gave up taking measurements and decided it was better to absorb the musical result and then reproduce them in a modern way and in a manner that would be acceptable to modern ears and in our buildings. Providing you obtain clarity in polyphonic music, what more can you ask, providing you add and blend in romantic and modern material.¹³

And, later, GDH writes to Willis, his old boss in England who had begun to question some of his ideals and goals:

I am not attempting in any way to imitate the Silbermann organ or any Baroque organ for that matter, but am merely reintroducing some of the features of the older organ which have been lost in the modern organs, and using, to some extent, the principles utilized by the older builders in the general chorus; the sole object, of course, being to make the instrument a more nearly ideal one for the playing of the best literature written for this particular medium.¹⁴

And Richards, who could always be counted on for his unvarnished opinion, says:

I agree that the Harrison work is merely based on the theories of the older organ work. Remember that Don has no first-hand acquaintance with German work whatsoever, unless we can consider the Steinmeyer at Altoona as such, and Henry [Willis] says that his knowledge of French organs is really not extensive, so that, in reality, he has been working on his own with only a hint from the older work. This is all for the best, since it results in creation, not imitation. [Emphasis mine]

In making the point that Groton is an American achievement I am not trying to overstate the facts as I see them. America has profoundly changed Harrison’s mental and artistic makeup. To some extent even Don realizes this. He knows that he now chooses to deliberately do things that he would not have dreamed of doing when he left England ten years ago. He has caught the mobility and restless drive that seems to be characteristic of America. Can’t you see this in the Groton organ? Its all-around flexibility, its readiness to take any part in the scheme of things from Scheidt to Ravel, its break with tradition, its vivacity, and its sense of driving power. Of course, it is saved from the less commendable American traits by Don’s sense of artistic restraint. It is not a Daily Mirror, but a New York Times.¹⁵

Plans emerge for a new organ for the Salt Lake Tabernacle

Beginning in the 1930s customers began to request that Harrison design and finish their organs. Even though Skinner was long out of the picture by the time GDH and Alexander Schreiner began discussions in 1945, the contract drawn up by the Tabernacle authorities still reiterated their desire that Harrison design the organ:

It is specifically agreed that a substantial and material part of the consideration for this agreement is the skill, knowledge, experience, and reputation of G. Donald Harrison in the design, construction, finishing, installation, and tuning of pipe organs; that the builder, therefore, enters into this agreement with the distinct and definite understanding that the Purchaser shall receive, without additional cost to it, the personal supervision and service of the said G. Donald Harrison in the performance of this contract and in particular in the designing, finishing, installing and tuning of said organ.¹⁶

Alexander Schreiner, chief organist of the Tabernacle, was born in Germany and had studied in France, and was one of the serious organists to emerge on the scene in the post-World War II era. He was an organist’s organist and was one of the most visible in America at the time, owing to his concert tours and weekly broadcasts of the Tabernacle choir and organ. He was the driving force in plans to rebuild the old Austin organ, even though he shared playing duties with Frank Asper, his elder colleague, who was himself a respected and popular organist in his own right. It does appear that Schreiner was the point person in all negotiations pertaining to details of the new organ and in the campaign for it, a campaign that began almost accidentally: Schreiner wrote Harrison asking his opinion about some minor improvements and additions. The idea of a completely new organ did not appear to be on either of their horizons at the outset.

Given the speculative nature of Schreiner’s request and the great distance involved, Harrison asked for a fee to visit and submit a report, not something he typically did for serious prospects. When the authorities granted his request, he had no choice but to make the trip, so he went and gave his candid opinion, which was that unless they decided to build a completely new organ, the company was not interested in undertaking makeshift alterations to the organ, which he felt was mediocre to begin with and which had already seen its share of rebuilds and additions to that point.

Schreiner’s desire for a new organ ultimately prevailed, apparently with little overt opposition. Once the contract was signed, he was effusive in his praise of Harrison as the chosen one to design the organ. In several instances he wrote for attribution that he felt that unless one person (that is, Harrison) was given the freedom to design the organ he would rather soldier on with the old organ, even with its faults. After the job was announced and as work progressed, inquiries for testimonial solicitations and advice began to arrive at Schreiner’s desk. Typical of his response is this reply to my predecessor at St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church in Richmond, Virginia, where Aeolian-Skinner ultimately installed its Opus 1110 in 1951:

The reason the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company was chosen for the new work in the Salt Lake Tabernacle was merely because this company does by all odds the finest work. That we have not been disappointed in the results achieved is clearly shown in the letter which I wrote to the company recently, signed by myself and fellow organists, and published in the recent Diapason.

I wish you well in your efforts to have your contract awarded to this company. In our case we did not even consider any competing bids. Also we did not ask for any reduction in the prices which were quoted. I would always prefer an Aeolian-Skinner organ to any other, even of twice the size.¹⁷

In the early stages of designing the Tabernacle organ there flows a great deal of correspondence between Harrison and Schreiner, and every detail was considered carefully. It was agreed that Schreiner would be the spokesperson in corresponding with GDH, although there is considerable documented input from Frank Asper, often on seemingly inconsequential matters such as “Will the strings be soft enough?,” what to do about harp and chimes, and whether to retain the old Vox Humana or build a new one. In the end they did both!

Through the correspondence it is clear that Schreiner had an above-average understanding of the principles of organbuilding, just as did Harrison of organ playing. Their discourse is thorough and often detail laden, but always courteous and respectful—and helpful in coordinating the many logistical details of the complex job, one of the most vexing of which was that part of the organ was to remain operational at all times for the weekly choir rehearsals and Sunday broadcasts. Phone calls appear to have been rare, and written correspondence was the main medium of communication.

During World War II organ companies were severely limited in their ability to undertake new construction, and basically no new organs came from the Aeolian-Skinner factory during this time. In addition to rebuild and service work, Harrison spent the war years developing new sounds inspired by classic antecedents, and stops such as the Rohr Schalmei, Cromorne, and Buccine were born. Some of these began to be incorporated into schemes for new organs once production resumed after the war, including for the Tabernacle. Harrison proposes one such:

One other thing that has worried me a little bit is the absence of any reed on the Positiv, and I remember being considerably intrigued by the 16′ Rankett as made by Steinmeyer during my visit to Germany. I have never made one to date, and as it is good in an organ of this size to have some novelties, I have taken the liberty of adding a 16′ Rankett to the Positiv.¹⁸

Once the contract was signed, Harrison began to share the news with his friends and colleagues, in each case describing the unique circumstances of Aeolian-Skinner’s selection being without competition and commenting on the remarkable acoustical properties of the Tabernacle. His report to Henry Willis is the most complete account:

In my last letter to you I hinted that I was on the track of a very interesting and important deal. It has now been signed, and is for a completely new organ for the Salt Lake City Tabernacle. The present organ is a typical Austin which has been gingered up from time to time, the last work being carried out in 1940 when Jamison put in some Chorus Mixtures, which by the way are exceedingly poor.

Last spring I was invited to go out there and look over the situation to see what could be done to further improve the organ, but being skeptical about the whole thing I demanded [an] $800.00 fee, which I thought would probably close the matter as far as we were concerned. To my great surprise they accepted the proposition, so I had to make the trip. I gave a written report which, to put it shortly, condemned the present instrument, and told the authorities that we would not touch the job unless a completely new organ was built, with the exception that we were willing to include three original wood stops which were placed in the Tabernacle when it was built. These pipes were made on the spot by Bridges, who was an English organ builder who had been out to Australia, and had become converted to the Mormon faith, and finally wound up in Utah. I think he was trained with the Hill outfit. These pipes are the lower 12 notes of the 32′ Wood Open, which by the way, has an inverted mouth, and the famous wood front pipes which look exactly like a 32′ Metal Open. They are built up in strips triangular in cross section all glued together, and they appear to be as good as the day they were installed. Even the foot is built up in this way, and the tone is surprisingly good. The other stop we are incorporating is a wooden Gedeckt, which is also excellent. What happened to the original metal pipes in the organ is a mystery. Nobody seems to be able to account for the fact that there are none of them in the present instrument. All of the metal stops that are there now are Kimball 1900 vintage and Austin 1915–1940 . . . .  With these magnificent acoustics and the super location of the organ in the open it gives a real chance that one rarely gets. I was given a free hand with the specification after being told of the requirements that the organ must meet, so that I was able to work out something which more or less carries the ideas on which I have been working to their logical conclusion.¹⁹

Giving Harrison this degree of independence was really an extraordinary gesture on Schreiner’s part, especially when compared to the very intense, hands-on requirements that clients and their consultants place on organbuilders today. I can think of several instances where the builder was so obligated to accommodate that the builder’s own identity is hardly discernible in the finished product. Here was Schreiner, one of the finest, best-known organists of the day who was not only comfortable with but insisted upon totally giving over to Harrison the design of this highly visible organ, and in the end acknowledging Harrison’s work by asking him to sign the organ.

In this case the results are as unique as the circumstances surrounding its inception, but it was by no means unique for clients to place this sort of complete trust in Harrison. Writing to Brock Downward for his dissertation about Harrison and the American Classic Organ, Alexander McCurdy said:

At the Curtis Institute of Music in Philadelphia [Opus 1022 in 1941], when the rebuilding processes were going on (we had three of them during the tenure of Mr. Harrison with Aeolian-Skinner) I spent much time with him. I made it a point to discuss with Mr. Harrison the particular needs of the organ department at the Curtis Institute of Music, then went off to California and let him BUILD the organ—I did not devil him! During the year in the period when the instrument was built, I spent a little time checking a few details in the factory in Boston, but for the most part I let him alone. During some of the discussions he loved to talk about some of the organs we both liked such as the Father Willis organ in Salisbury Cathedral—he seemed sure that another one couldn’t be built quite as fine as that one but he certainly did indeed try in Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. He always made much of the fact that his ideal in building an organ was to have it so that MUSIC could be played on it, not just one period but the complete organ literature.²⁰

The completed Tabernacle organ

In Opus 1075 for the Salt Lake Tabernacle we have then an example of a very complete, large organ in a prominent and famous location that was completely Harrison’s design without a lot of outside interference. It certainly has stood the test of time. We know from several letters that he felt this was his greatest work, and it is worth taking the time to consider his own descriptions and reflections on his work once it was complete:

The enclosed photographs are of the console of the new Tabernacle organ at Salt Lake City. I have just returned after spending a couple of weeks on the job and I am returning after Christmas to see the finish. It is by far the finest organ in the United States. It has the advantage of a perfect location and ideal acoustics.

You will be interested to note that there are no coupler tablets. The fact that there are comparatively few couplers for so large an organ and that the intramanual couplers are with their own departments, it was decided to use drawknobs for all of them. The pedal couplers form the inner group on the left jamb and the intermanual occupy a similar position in the right jamb. There are 20 general pistons. The fifth manual plays the Antiphonal organ only.

The console case is of solid walnut and was designed and built in our shop. The motifs follow those found in the organ case. It is unnecessarily large [as] the couplers and combinations are remote. They wanted an imposing appearance, hence the size and fifth manual! Believe it or not, but a million visitors pass through the Tabernacle each year and must be suitably impressed. The organ contains Great, Swell, Choir, Positiv, Bombarde, Solo and Pedal divisions, plus a small Antiphonal. The Great, Positiv, Bombarde and Pedal are all unenclosed. There are about 190 independent ranks counting a four-rank mixture as four.²¹

Another to the workers back in the factory:

It has proved my theory that the complex sound composed of many elements, all mild but different, build up to a sound of indescribable grandeur . . . .

The strings are good but not so soul stirring as I had hoped for; a trick of the acoustics, I feel, because all are modified.

Please tell the voicers of the great success of their efforts. There is not one regret in the job.

I don’t believe anyone will say the job is too loud. It excites the nervous system without permanent injury.²²

A summary to Henry Willis:

A descriptive folder is being prepared and I will forward a copy shortly. It carries my tonal ideas which started in 1935 in the Groton School instrument, to their logical conclusions. I was given my own way in everything and had to contend solely with two sympathetic organists. The organ does really sound superb, and I have never heard anything quite like it. Of course, it is of its own particular type. Although the full organ is tremendous, it is very easy on the ears, and you can play it for long periods of time without fatigue. This is due, I think, to the fact that there are no very loud stops, the effect being obtained by the 188 ranks, all of which add one to another. The large-scale Mixtures give quite a powerful resultant effect, which in the resonant hall gives quite a lot of body to the tone, but it is a kind of transparent body, as you can well imagine. No, I wouldn’t say that the organ sounds anything like a Cavaillé-Coll. It is less reedy than a French ensemble as the balance between full flues and reeds is entirely different.²³

A similar summary to Ralph Downes in London, who was working on his own project for Royal Festival Hall, which was to reflect some classic elements in its design, stated:

Nice to hear from you, interested to hear of your project. I am in Salt Lake putting the finishing touches to the “giant,” see specification enclosed. It is somewhat larger than yours but along the same lines.

Musically speaking it is the most beautiful organ I have ever heard partly due to be sure to the superb location and acoustics. What you are proposing to do I have been experimenting with since 1936 at Groton School. That is a modern organ in which the old (classical) and new are so modified so as to blend into one whole so that any worthwhile organ music can be played properly. Salt Lake Tabernacle represents the fruit of all my labors rolled into one organ. I can assure you it does something to the nervous system!

Salt Lake has proved to me a theory I have had for a long time, namely that the finished ensemble is produced by many ranks none of which are loud in themselves. Final result by these means is terrific and yet does not hurt the sensitive ear.²⁴

And, finally, an account by Alexander Schreiner himself after having played the Tabernacle organ for almost a decade stated:

No one stop, though it be of dominating quality, is allowed to blot out the whole sections of weaker voices, so that when the last Tuba is added, the sound is still that of a large organ and not that of one stop accompanied by all the rest. Naturally, there are delicate flue and reed stops which cannot be heard in the full ensemble, but the foundation stops, mixtures, and reeds, which are the backbone of the organ, are so well balanced that each contributes to a “democratic” ensemble of sound.²⁵

With this in mind, I think the Tabernacle organ is a good benchmark to consider in understanding what Jack Bethards means when he says that the Tabernacle organ has a “signature sound,”²⁶ the sounds Donald Harrison had in mind for this, the closest thing to his ideal organ, and of the organs to which he similarly affixed his signature plate.

Organs containing G. Donald Harrison’s signature plates

Opus 1075: The Mormon Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, Utah, 1948.

Opus 1082: Christ Episcopal Church, Bronxville, New York, 1949.

Shortly after this organ was built it was featured prominently in the company’s new King of Instruments series of recordings, appearing on Volume II in selections played by Robert Owen, the organist of the church for over forty years and a well-known recitalist at the time. It was again featured in a full program on Volume III, again played by Robert Owen. Owen also made recordings on the organ for the RCA label. The instrument was later altered by Aeolian-Skinner and again by Gress-Miles. It was replaced entirely in 2009 by a new Casavant organ. At that time the history of the church’s organs was memorialized in a plaque placed near the console, which includes Robert Owen’s own signature facsimile.

Opus 1100: St. Joseph’s Catholic Church, Newport, Rhode Island, 1950.

This is a three-manual design in a large, reverberant church, with obvious French inspirations in nomenclature and voicing that is very bold. The Great manual is placed on the bottom of three.

Opus 1103: Methuen Memorial Music Hall, Methuen, Massachusetts, 1947.

Much has been written about this unique organ, the design of which was entirely driven by the desire to keep the original slider chests that were built by James Treat to accommodate the organ when it was moved from the old Boston Music Hall and installed in this new hall in Methuen, designed by Henry Vaughan in 1899 specifically to house the organ. After almost a half century it was rebuilt by Aeolian-Skinner. It was nearing completion when work commenced on the Tabernacle organ, and GDH makes reference to it in his correspondence with Schreiner, almost to the point where it was used as a laboratory to experiment with possibilities for the Tabernacle.

Harrison makes this interesting comment about the Methuen organ:

Finally I would like to tell you that I greatly enjoyed doing this job as I was able to renew my acquaintanceship in a big way with slide [sic] chests. They have one advantage in regard to the initial speech for it is possible to voice with a higher position of the languid when a slide chest is used . . . . On the other hand, there are so many disadvantages with this type of chest that I have felt no temptation to return to the sliders. There is no doubt in my mind that the modern chest we use gives an attack and cutoff which enables much finer degrees of phrasing to be accurately performed . . . so that the result in the long run is more musical, which after all is the real test.²⁷

Opus 1134: Symphony Hall, Boston, Massachusetts, 1950.

Essentially a new organ but using some existing Hutchings pipework, it was built on a very tight budget. For example, the combination action was via a setter board in the back of the console. Albert Schweitzer signed the console frame of this organ when he visited the factory in 1949 on a trip organized by Édouard Nies-Berger.²⁸

The organ was used for examples to complement GDH’s narration in Volume I of King of Instruments and for pieces played by Thomas Dunn in Volume II, though he was identified only as the “staff organist,” and for a recital on Volume XII played by Pierre Cochereau. Virgil Fox also recorded a series of LPs on it for the Command label in the 1960s, and Berj Zamkochian played it in a memorable recording of the Saint-Saëns’ “Organ” Symphony with the Boston Symphony Orchestra conducted by Charles Munch.

Opus 1136: Chapel of Westminster Presbyterian Church, Buffalo, New York, 1951.

This is a two-manual organ with the Positiv division on the back wall. A photograph of it was used prominently in Aeolian-Skinner brochures, even following Harrison’s death. The organist of the church at the time was Hans Vigeland, and Harrison’s business correspondence corroborates his respect for him and his playing.

To be continued.

Notes

1. Barbara Owen, The Mormon Tabernacle Organ: An American Classic (Salt Lake City: The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, 1990), 43.

2. Alexander Schreiner to G. Donald Harrison, August 29, 1948. Owen, 43.

3. G. Donald Harrison to Alexander Schreiner, September 1, 1948. Jack Bethards, “The Tabernacle Letters, Part 3,” The Diapason, 81, 8 (August 1990), 10.

4. Philip Steinhaus to William Self, March 21, 1968. Charles Callahan, Aeolian-Skinner Remembered: A History in Letters (Minneapolis: Randall Egan, 1996), 355.

5. Charles Callahan, The American Classic Organ: A History in Letters (Richmond, Virginia: The Organ Historical Society, 1990).

6. Ernest Skinner to GDH, November 23, 1929. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 44.

7. In an email message to me dated April 14, 2012, Allen Kinzey tells the exact transaction:

On January 2, 1932, the Aeolian Company and the Skinner Organ Company formed a new, third company called the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company. Aeolian owned 40% of the stock in Aeolian-Skinner, and the Skinner Organ Company owned 60%.

Aeolian closed its operations in Garwood, New Jersey, and sent uncompleted contracts, the glue press, some material, and one employee (Frances Brown, who was a young lady then, and she worked for A-S to the end, or almost the end) to Aeolian-Skinner. The Skinner Organ Company deeded its property and turned over contracts, employees, materials, machinery, etc., to Aeolian-Skinner.

8. Henry Willis III to Emerson Richards, July 8, 1938. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 132.

9. Henry Willis III to GDH, December 31, 1948. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 269.

10. GDH to Henry Willis III, January 16, 1949. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 278.

11. Emerson Richards to Wm. King Covell, November 29, 1943. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 194.

12. GDH to Alexander Schreiner, December 10, 1945. Bethards, “The Tabernacle Letters, Part 1,” The Diapason, 81, 6 (June 1990), 16.

13. GDH to Ralph Downes, January 14, 1949. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 277.

14. GDH to Henry Willis III, August 21, 1935. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 144.

15. Emerson Richards to Wm. King Covell, November 26, 1935. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 151.

16. Contract in church archives. Owen, p. 38.

17. Alexander Schreiner to Granville Munson, April 26, 1949. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 299.

18. GDH to Schreiner, November 29, 1945. Bethards, “The Tabernacle Letters, Part I,” The Diapason, 81, 6 (June 1990), 16.

19. GDH to Henry Willis III, December 19, 1945. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 222.

20. Alexander McCurdy to Brock W. Downward, September 18, 1974. Brock W. Downward, “G. Donald Harrison and the American Classic Organ,” D.M.A. diss., Eastman School of Music, Rochester, NY, 1976, 97.

21. GDH to Henry Willis III, December 21, 1948. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 167.

22. GDH to Joseph S. Whiteford, December 1948. Owen, 43.

23. GDH to Henry Willis III, March 18, 1949. Bethards, “The Tabernacle Letters, Part 3,” The Diapason, 81, 8 (August 1990), 11.

24. GDH to Ralph Downes, January 14, 1949. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 276–277.

25. Alexander Schreiner, “The Tabernacle Organ in Salt Lake City,” Organ Institute Quarterly, vol. 7, no. 1 (1957). Owen, 43.

26. Owen, 47.

27. GDH to Wm. King Covell, June 25, 1947. Callahan, The American Classic Organ, 253–254.

28. Nies-Berger, Schweitzer As I Knew Him (Hillsdale, New York, Pendragon Press, 2003), 10.

The Clavier-Übung Third Part

Michael Radulescu

Michael Radulescu, born in Bucharest, Romania, studied organ and conducting in Vienna at the Academy (now University) of Music and Performing Arts where he taught as professor of organ from 1968 to 2008. His career encompasses work as a composer, organist, and conductor. Since his debut in 1959 he has presented concerts throughout Europe, North America, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. He regularly gives guest lectures and masterclasses in Europe and overseas, focusing mainly on the interpretation and elucidation of Bach’s organ and major choral works.

As a composer, Radulescu has written sacred music, works for organ, voice and organ, choral and chamber music, and orchestral works. He is also in demand as a jury member in international organ and composition competitions and as an editor of early and ancient organ music. Radulescu conducts international vocal and instrumental ensembles in performances of major vocal works. As an organist, he has recorded among other things Bach’s complete works for organ, without any technical manipulation.

For his musical and pedagogical contributions Radulescu was awarded the Goldene Verdienstzeichen des Landes Wien in 2005. In 2007 he received Würdigungspreis für Musik from the Austrian Ministry of Education and Art. In December 2013 Michael Radulescu’s book on J. S. Bach’s spiritual musical language, Bey einer andächtig Musiq . . .,
focusing on the two Passions and the B Minor Mass was published.

When approaching Baroque music in general and spiritual music in particular, it is of greatest importance to take into consideration the fundamental difference between the function and the aims of music in the Roman Catholic rite and the Lutheran conception of music. While Roman Catholic music mainly embellishes and adorns the liturgy, Lutheran music wants to preach, to impress, to move, to convince every single listener. Whereas the mystery of the Canon is at the center of the Roman Catholic Mass, the announcing and the elucidation of the Word of God, spoken by the minister and sung or performed by the church musician, stand at the core of the Lutheran Divine Service.

From this dichotomy results the overwhelming importance of rhetoric, of the musical speech (Klangrede) in Lutheran music. Both the ancient rules of rhetoric and the use of the rhetorical-musical figures determine respectively the overall formal concept of a work as well as the invention of characteristic “speaking motifs.”

In the case of J. S. Bach’s music, however, there also seems to be a more subtle, profound, and hidden means of communicating a message, an interpretation of a text. This happens through the ample use of symbols such as allegories, certain characteristic motifs and specific numerical ratios between different sections of the overall formal concept of a piece, and also, most controversial of all, as numerological entities. The latter aspect has been both heartily emphasized and strongly questioned and even ruled out by scholars and practical performers in recent decades. Nevertheless, a surprising hint at the possibility of Bach’s interest in the use of the “numeric alphabet” seems to be, among others, the theoretical work called Cabbalologia by Johannes Henningius (Johann Henning), published in Leipzig in 1683. This publication is said to have been found also in the famous private library of Bach’s neighbor and colleague Johann Heinrich Ernesti, former rector of Saint Thomas Church in Leipzig.

I

Bach published the Third Part of his Clavier-Übung for the feast of Saint Michael at the end of September 1739 on the occasion of the bicentenary of the Lutheran Reformation in Leipzig. This collection of keyboard compositions is generally known under the titles “The Organ Mass” or “The Dogma Chorales,” neither of which can suggest the complex meaning and the message of the entire opus.

It should be remembered that when Luther introduced his Reformation in Leipzig in 1539 he preached on Pentecost Monday in the Leipzig Pleissenburg Castle on two most crucial themes: the Mystery of the Trinity in the Lutheran Mass and the Lutheran Catechism. Most significantly, Bach takes both these theological categories into consideration and, obviously referring to Luther’s sermon of 1539, treats them consistently in his Third Part of the Clavier-Übung. Of the total of twenty-one chorale settings in the collection, the first nine deal with the Lutheran Missa brevis (which includes only the “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie” and the “Gloria”), while the remaining twelve chorales follow exactly, chapter by chapter, Luther’s Catechism of 1529.

Seen as a whole, the entire Clavier-Übung III seems to suggest a most striking resemblance to Bach’s own organ improvisations as described by his first biographer, J. N. Forkel, in 1802:

a) a great prelude and fugue in Organo Pleno as an opening;

b) a long series of different kinds of chorale settings with a varying number of parts;

c) a great fugue in Organo Pleno at the end.

In Bach’s Clavier-Übung III, these correspond to the following sections:

a) the E-flat Preludium in Organo Pleno also containing the two fugal sections;

b) the 21 chorale settings in 3, 4, 5, or 6 parts, as well as four duettos;

c) the E-flat Fugue in Organo Pleno.

Two further allusions to the Trinity are most interesting in the overall plan of the entire collection. These are manifest already in the title, “Third Part of the Clavier-Übung,” and also in the use of the majestic key of E-flat major, with its three flats in the signature, for both the opening Prelude and the closing Fugue. Also striking is the fact that both the Prelude and the Fugue appear to be determined by the number 3 (three main musical ideas in the prelude and three themes in the triple fugue).

Another obvious hint at the Trinity is the fact that the first 9 chorales dealing with the Lutheran Mass are organized in 3 groups of 3 each: 3 “great” settings for Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie, 3 “small” alio modo settings for the same cantus firmi Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie, and 3 settings for the German Gloria, “Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr.”

The remaining 12 chorales, which follow Luther’s Catechism, are arranged by 3 + 3 groups of 2 each, the first group dealing with the 3 main chapters of the Catechism (The Law of the Lord = The Ten Commandments, The Creed, and The Prayer of the Lord = The “Our Father”), and the second with the 3 chapters concerning the Sacraments and the Penitence respectively (Baptism, Penitence as continual renewal of Baptism, and the Communion). Each of these cantus firmi is treated twice, in a “great” version with pedal and in a “small” version without pedal, mostly in another key.

It has often been suggested that these two contrasting versions may allude to Luther’s “Great Catechism” versus its reduced form, the “Small Catechism” for younger and “more modest people.” This double treatment of the “catechism settings,” however, seems also to allude to the double form of liturgy: as the great, official one “in churches,” versus its “small,” intimate, personal form “at home,” within each Christian family. Interestingly enough, this dualism appears also in the original subtitle of the Clavier-Übung III dedicated to both amateurs (Liebhaber) and connoisseurs (Kenner).

II

The opening Praeludium pro Organo pleno, Bach’s largest organ prelude, suggests, in spite of the original slurring of the dotted rhythms of its beginning, the pattern of a French overture:

a) majestic homophonic section with dotted rhythm, measures 1 to 70;

b) Fugato section, measures 71 to 97;

c) majestic homophonic section with dotted rhythm, measures 98 to 129;

d) Fugato section, measures 130 to 173;

e) majestic homophonic section with dotted rhythm, measures 174 to the end.

The three different musical ideas used by Bach seem to illustrate in a marvelous way the three Persons of the Trinity:

1. majestic five-part homophonic section for God the Father (Example 1);

2. transition passage with staccato notes suggesting drops of tears (as in the Passions and in several cantatas) and a plaintive theme in the right hand, full of suspensions and chromaticisms and going to the “extreme” keys B-flat minor and E-flat minor, respectively (musical-rhetorical figure of parrhesia), suggesting the human sufferings, the Passion and Death of God, the Son (Examples 2 and 3);

3. The fugal sections using the most spiritual writing, the fugue, and a theme which by its shape (musical-rhetorical figure of hypotyposis) suggests the movement and the shape of the flames, the fire of God, the Holy Spirit (Example 4).

III

Considering the 9 chorale settings of the Missa brevis, the great “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie,” the small “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie,” and the 3 “Allein Gott” settings, one notes the following characteristics:

• The first three settings of the great “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie” are written in the ancient vocal, a cappella style, the stylus gravis, using the so called white notation (breves, whole notes, half notes, quarter and, more rarely, eighth notes as note values). According to Bach’s cousin
J. G. Walther the stylus gravis is “majestic, serious . . . and best appropriate to elevate the human soul to God.”

• The respective cantus firmus descends within this first triad from the soprano in Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit (highest part ~ God Father as the Highest) into the tenor in Christe aller Welt Trost (middle part ~ God the Son as the Mediator) and finally into the pedal-bass in Kyrie, Gott, heiliger Geist (bass part ~ God, the Holy Spirit as the universal Basis). This katabasis, i.e., “descending movement,” suggests the descending of God’s mercy upon us and depicts the “eleison” (“have mercy”).

• The tenor cantus firmus in Christe aller Welt Trost stresses the idea of Christ as the Mediator between God and Man, as strongly emphasized by Luther.

• The bass cantus firmus in Kyrie, Gott, heiliger Geist, on the other hand, represents the fundamental Lutheran idea of Justification through the power of Faith; the text of the chorale also prays for “the reinforcement of our Faith.” The final section of this setting, “eleison,” is excruciatingly dissonant, once again stressing human misery awaiting God’s mercy.

• The total number of measures of all three large chorale-settings is a primary, indivisible number:

Kyrie (42 measures) + Christe (61 measures) + Kyrie (60 measures) = 163 ~ indivisibility of the Holy Trinity!

• The three small settings of “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie” strongly contrast with the preceding three works. The cantus firmus is only hinted at by quotation of its first phrase. Their writing is manualiter, without pedal, and in a soft “cantabile clavier style.” This might suggest love and the soft breath of the Holy Spirit by its “cantability.”

• All three small settings end modally on an E-major chord.

• The time signatures of all these 3 chorales also allude to the Trinity, being “progressions” of the number 3: 3/4; 6/8; 9/8 (= 1 x 3/4; 2 x 3/8; 3 x 3/8).

• The three Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr settings fulfill a wonderful anabasis (ascending movement) by the sequence of their keys: following the small “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie” settings ending all on E major, they rise up to F major, G major, and finally to A major, thus obviously alluding to Gloria in excelsis (Allein Gott in der Höh’/“Glory to the Lord in the Highest”).

• All three settings are trios and written in an “instrumental keyboard style,” the first and the last in a brilliant, light style, the second à 2 Claviers et Pedale imitating violins or flutes accompanied by a basso continuo in the pedal.

• The G-major trio on “Allein Gott” seems to stress Jesus’s role as Lamb of God, alluding to the third stanza of the chorale, “Lamb of God, holy Lord and God, accept the prayer of our misery,” by citing these two verses in canon, a most simple symbol for “one part following another part:” first between the right hand and pedal in measures 78 to 83, and in measures 87 to 92 between the left hand and pedal, and thus alluding to the Gospel of John, 1:29–30: “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. / This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me” (Example 5).

IV

The density and complexity of Bach’s dealing with the theological message through music is most impressively revealed in the settings of chorales treating the main chapters of Luther’s Catechism: the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer.

The large setting of Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot is written in five parts distributed on two manuals and pedal. The cantus firmus is carried out as a canon between the two tenor parts played by the left hand while the right hand plays the two free upper parts. Surprisingly, these free parts never imitate or cite the cantus firmus.

Most interesting is the fact that in Bach’s treatments of this cantus firmus (Orgelbüchlein, the cantata BWV 77 Du sollst Gott, deinen Herrn, lieben, and the two settings in the Clavier-Übung), he uses the same key, Mixolydian on G, the “pure” key without accidentals in its signature. Never does this cantus firmus appear transposed: this obviously suggests the “immutability of the Divine Law.” Most consistently, the treatment of the cantus firmus as a canon also evokes the “severity of God’s Law.”

A further symbolic meaning of the musical texture is the setting of the canonic cantus firmus in the two middle parts, which clearly refers to Luther’s commentary in his Catechism, regarding the way to keep the Divine Law through “Christ’s the Mediator’s Intercession.”

The beginning of the chorale is most serene, diatonic, and calm, and takes place over an organ point in the pedal. After four measures of “complete harmony” the character changes in the fifth measure: the alto plays a “harsh” descending chromatic figure (the figure of parrhaesia) while the soprano plays three times a “sighing figure” consisting of a sixteenth rest followed by three sixteenth notes, and followed by two groups of stepwise descending eighth notes (Example 6).

This seems to be a strong allusion to the Book of Genesis describing the Garden of Eden (= full harmony~4 measures) and Adam’s Fall in the fifth measure (Adam in Hebrew meaning man and being symbolized, according to Andreas Werckmeister, by the number 5 for man’s 5 senses, 5 fingers and toes, and also hinting at Jesus’s 5 wounds on the Cross).

Interestingly enough, this “sighing” figura suspirans is played by the two upper parts during the whole piece exactly 33 times, reminding of the 33 years of Jesus’s earthly life.

From measure 6 on this figure appears also “transformed” into another figure called kyklosis or circulatio and suggesting a “turning around,” an “insecurity” or, as in our case, a great joy.

This “transformation” of suffering (“sighing figure”) into joy (“turning around in joy”) perfectly matches Luther’s commentary about the Commandments, stressing that those who keep the Law apparently suffer in this earthly world, but that through Christ they shall live in joy.

Luther also considers the First Commandment as being the most important of the Decalogue. It is this very commandment that is cited in the second stanza of the cantus firmus, the stanza to which the great chorale setting seems to allude the most: “I alone am your God and Lord. Thou shalt not have other gods; thou shalt love me from the bottom of your heart. Kyrieleis.”

It is when the cantus firmus expounds the phrase “Thou shalt not have other gods” that the pedal plays a “huge” and “exaggerated” interval of two octaves,
C – c′ (the figure of hyperbole = exaggeration) and obviously referring to God’s immensity (Example 7).

Astonishing is the fact that the motif of measures 47 and 48 appears altered in measures 51 and 52, transformed insofar as it is now divided between the two upper parts: one part continuing the other, and thus suggesting the idea of “two parts becoming one” (the figure called heterolepsis = meaning this continuity, the unification of two parts, i.e., love, as described by J. G. Walther). It is striking to note how often Bach makes use of this figure when alluding to love, to unification in and through love. Not surprisingly, this figure appears in our chorale setting only two times, exactly where each of the two canonic cantus firmus parts play the notes for lieben mich (love me); as one can easily see in the “transformed” version, the motive is played by two “unified” parts according to the text line “Thou shall love me” (Example 8).

If we take a look at the pedal part we note that it is divided into several sections either by rests or by the recurring long organ point on A in measure 29. A most intriguing and striking speculation presents itself in this context when considering the number of notes of each of these sections:

a) measure 1 to 10 = 37 notes

b) measure 10 to 20 = 60 notes

c) measure 21 to 28 = 47 notes

d) measure 29 to 55 = 147 notes

e) measure 56 = 5 notes

f) measure 57 = 5 notes

g) measure 58 to 60 = 14 notes

 

a) Could 37 represent the monogram JCHR for Jesus Christ? (the number alphabet with the correspondence between the letters of the alphabet and the natural numerical order: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, . . ., Z = 24, with I = J and U = V as in old Latin: J (9) + C (3) + H (8) + R (17) = 37);

b) Could 60 allude to the Old Testament, to the 6 Days of God’s Creation, and also to the 10 Commandments = 60?

NB! Bach occasionally uses the number 6 as allegory for the Creation, for the Entire World (also Orgelbüchlein: Christum wir sollen loben schon, measure 6, where the whole range of the organ is encompassed by the lowest C in the pedal and the highest C in the treble part).

NB! Luther always sees and treats the Old Testament considering the New Testament and vice versa.

c) Could 47 recall the 47th Psalm, mentioned by Luther in his Great Catechism: “O, clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph. / For the Lord most high is terrible; He is a great King over all the earth”?

NB! This third section of the pedal starts in measure 21 where the cantus firmus plays the phrase “Thou shalt not have other gods.” Also, it is here where the pedal plays the enormous, exaggerated interval of the double octave, which also perfectly matches the second verse of Psalm 47.

d) Could 147 recall the 11th verse of the 147th Psalm: “The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy”?

NB! Luther himself quotes Ps. 147, 11 in his Catechism, in the chapter dedicated to the Ten Commandments. This could make the assumption mentioned above quite plausible!

e) & f) Could the number 5 possibly allude in this context to mankind (five senses; the five wounds on Jesus’s crucified body) as “the Old” vs. “the New Man”?

g) 14 might well suggest Bach’s own name (B [2] + A [1] + C [3] + H [8] = 14) as his personal commitment as a believer, as the pro me (= “for me”), a central point in Luther’s theology.

Another interesting symbolic connotation is suggested by the general form of the chorale setting. The total of 60 measures is clearly divided into two unequal sections considering the sort of “recapitulation” of the beginning, in measure 29:

28 measures (= 7 x 4) + 32 measures (= 8 x 4) = 60 measures, or 28 : 32 = 7 : 8.

Could 7 allude to the seven days of the week, of the 6 + 1 days of the Creation of the earthly world and 8 to the eighth day (the day of Messiah)? Could this overall form and its “articulation” transmit the message of Redemption?

The “small,” manualiter version of Dies sind die heiligen zehn Gebot seems to have a more obvious, more straightforward approach to the text. It is a fughetta using the theme in both normal and inverted position. The gigue-like theme is characterized by the strongly repeated notes at its beginning and by strong leaps followed by stepwise passages. It is most interesting to note some aspects of this piece:

1) the title in the original print from 1739 is Dies sind die heiligen zehen Gebot consisting of exactly 10 syllables (Ten Commandments?)

2) the repeated G in the theme appears 14 times (BACH’s commitment? See above).

3) the theme appears 4 times in normal, 4 times in inverted, and again 2 times in its normal forms, i.e., 4 + 4 + 2 = 10 times (see above).

4) there is quite a long interlude without the theme between measures 18 and 31, lasting 14 measures (see above).

V

The large chorale setting dealing with the Creed, Wir gläuben all’an einen Gott (Schöpfer) is striking because of its dynamism, abundant syncopations, “modern” 2/4 time signature, constant movement in sixteenth notes, and lack of organ points in the pedal, by the six times of the pedal ostinato, and the flamboyant movement of the manual parts. The theme treated in the manual is rooted in the first phrase of the cantus firmus, and it is this very phrase that appears literally quoted in the tenor in the last 12 measures of the piece. The overall flamboyant, dynamic character of this setting might be surprising, but it seems in perfect coherence with Luther’s idea of a willful, powerful, and passionate personal commitment of each believer aiming to attain personal justification.

Some characteristics of this composition might elucidate its possible further message:

a) the total of exactly 100 measures of the piece might suggest the idea of the totality of the Creation (Gott Schöpfer = God, the Creator);

b) the 6-fold appearance of the pedal ostinato might hint at the 6 “working” days of God’s Creation (see above);

c) the quotation of the first cantus firmus phrase in the tenor, starting in measure 89 might allude to Christ as the Mediator;

d) the last pedal entry is longer than its other entries and has exactly 43 notes; this may well mean: (C [3] + R [17] + E [5] + D [4] + O [14] = 43: CREDO) “I believe.”

NB! Interestingly enough, the score of the first Credo chorus in the B Minor Mass shows the word “Credo” written 43 times and heard 41 times, i.e., J-S-B-A-C-H’s creed.

The small version of the same chorale is written as a short manualiter fughetta in the style of a brilliant French overture. This surprising setting can be seen as an introduction to the large version of The Lord’s Prayer, Vater unser im Himmelreich, written in the same key of E Dorian. More likely, however, it also seems to have the function of dividing the whole set of 21 chorales into 12 + 9. One should remember that, on the other hand, the 21 chorales are also divided into 9, dealing with the Lutheran Mass, and 12, treating Luther’s Catechism and the Sacraments. A very beautiful parallel, indeed!

VI

The large version of Vater unser im Himmelreich is possibly Bach’s most difficult and intricate organ work. It is written in 5 parts distributed once again among the two manuals and the pedal, with the cantus firmus in canon. Unlike the Ten Commandments however, each hand here plays a free voice and a canonic cantus firmus part.

Some characteristics may help understand and elucidate the enormous complexity of this composition:

a) the slow, majestic tempo in the 3/4 time signature suggests the austere character of a slow sarabande;

b) the pedal is treated as a basso continuo without quoting the cantus firmus;

c) the cantus firmus is treated in canon suggesting our intimately repeating the prayer spoken by Jesus according to Saint Mark and Saint Matthew;

d) the alternating order of the canonic parts at each new entry seems to suggest a still dialogue between the believer and Jesus;

e) the free manual parts are based on a theme quoting the richly embellished first phrase of the cantus firmus (Example 9);

f) each hand expounds this theme 3 times, alluding probably once more to the Trinity;

g) the two free manual parts display an enormous rhythmical richness with frequent use of the “plaintive” Lombard rhythms and the staccato triplets (Example 10);

h) this “plaintive” Lombardian rhythm and the overall rhythmical complexity seem to depict Luther’s comment on The Lord’s Prayer expressing the “multitude of human miseries;”

i) the staccato triplets obviously describe Saint Matthew 7:7: “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” As a matter of fact, this very verse appears quoted in practically all older Lutheran hymn books on the page where the chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich is printed. The staccato triplets may also allude to drops of tears;

j) there is only one spot where the pedal quotes the “plaintive” Lombardian rhythm and this happens in measure 41 (J [9] + S [18] + B [2] + A [1] + C [3] + H [8] = J. S. BACH), alluding to the composer’s personal commitment.

After this extraordinary piece, the alio modo manualiter version of the same cantus firmus is a simple, quiet meditation on the Prayer, devoid of all further speculative symbols.

VII

Following Luther’s Large Catechism exactly, Bach now treats the Sacraments of Baptism in Christ, unser Herr zum Jordan kam, Penitence in Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, the latter considered by Luther as the continuation and constant renewal of baptism, and finally the Sacrament of Communion in Jesus Christus, unser Heiland.

The large version of Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam treats Jesus’s baptism as described in Saint John, Chapter 1. The piece is set for two manuals and pedal with the cantus firmus in the latter, the bass in the left hand and the two upper parts in the right hand. This setting is quite full of important symbolic meanings:

a) the tenor cantus firmus in the pedal suggests, as the middle part of the setting, Christ’s role as Mediator between God Father and mankind;

b) the almost constant movement in sixteenth notes in the left hand bass part seems to allude to the flow of the waters of the Jordan River;

c) the two upper parts of the right hand can be seen as a symbol for the Holy Spirit floating above the scene of Christ’s Baptism by Saint John the Baptist. The beginning four notes in each of the two upper parts seem to depict, as a hypotyposis, a cross motif. Also, the most intricate imitations between the small motives of the two upper parts can be seen as a hint to the Holy Spirit proceeding from the consubstantiality of God Father and God Son, as mentioned in the Nicene Creed (Example 11).

d) NB: the final note of the fifth chorale phrase in the pedal d° seems to generate a “wrong” 6/4-chord d° - g° - b′: This is to be seen as a hint to avoid the wrong harmony by the use of a 4′ reed in the pedal if the left hand were based on 8′, or a 16′ basis for the left hand, should the pedal be played only on an 8′ basis!

e) The total number of measures, 81, equals 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 as a most impressive symbol for the Trinity.

The small manualiter version of the same chorale is quite a short fughetta based on the first phrase of the chorale, combined with an “obbligato” counter-subject, both treated in normal and inverted position. Could the theme itself represent Christ and its inverted form Christ’s descent on Earth? Could the countersubject stand for Saint John the Baptist? Interesting enough is the fact that this fughetta consists of 27 measures (3 x 3 x 3) with exactly 81 quarter notes (see above).

The large version of Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, the German version of Psalm 130, “De profundis,” is an exceptional work, as it is written in the old, solemn, majestic vocal stylus gravis or motet style, which, according to Johann Gottfried Walther’s Musicalisches Lexicon of 1732, is able to “elevate the soul to God.” This setting marks a pinnacle in Bach’s entire organ music insofar as it is written in six parts, four in the manual and two in the pedal, with the augmented cantus firmus of Luther’s chorale melody in the right foot’s part. This obviously seems to be an allusion to the significance of the upper bass part as the voice of the Old Testament psalmist. Most impressive is also the fact that at the beginning of the last verse of the chorale Wer kann, Herr, vor dir bleiben? (Who can, Lord, stand before Thee?) in the seventh to last measure, the upper bass part playing the cantus firmus is the highest part in the whole texture (Example 12).

• The registration should be the Organo pleno, i.e., an 8′ based Plenum  in the (coupled) manual(s) and 16′ Plenum in the pedal, without mixtures but with reeds 16′, 8′, and 4′.

• This setting is obviously inspired by the great pleno settings in five parts, with double pedal, in Matthias Weckmann’s great chorale settings with the cantus firmus in the upper pedal part.

NB! In one of the Lüneburg tablatures containing Weckmann’s majestic hymn on O lux, beata Trinitas the opening first movement in five parts with double pedal and the cantus firmus in the upper bass bears the indication that the cantus firmus of the upper bass could be played in the pedal by the right foot, or on the manual by the left hand, or also by both the pedal and the left hand together. This comment seems to confirm the registration mentioned above, with the result that the left foot bass is playing in the reeds-pleno, the manual parts in the mixture-pleno and the cantus firmus in both the reeds- and the mixture-pleno, and thus strengthening the cantus firmus.

The following alio modo manualiter version of the same chorale is written in four parts. Learned contrapuntal imitations in the three lower parts—in normal and inverted form—of each phrase of the chorale, anticipate each phrase of the augmented cantus firmus expounded each time by the treble part.

• Each section of the piece begins with five contrapuntal measures in intricate counterpoint between the three lower parts, followed by eight bars expounding the respective phrase of the chorale in the treble and one supplementary bar concluding each section.

• The overall organization of the piece is quite extraordinary:

Sections a), b), c) & d): 5 + 8 + 1 bars; section e): 5 + 8 + 5

• But 5 + 8 + 1 = 14  [= B-A-C-H = 2 + 1 + 3 + 8] and 8 : 5 stands for the golden ratio.

The large version of Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, der von uns den Zorn Gottes wandt is a trio for the two manuals and pedal with the cantus firmus in the latter. It seems quite interesting that the pedal oscillates between playing the tenor and bass parts. Could this hint at Jesus’s double nature, as God and Man?

• The two manual parts seem to actually symbolize the “Wrath of God” by their extremely virtuosic, agitated, and aggressive movements in sixteenth notes and eighth notes.

• The main theme in the manuals starting with big and then diminishing intervals (tenth-octave-sixth) could possibly hint at Man’s approach to God, whereas, on the other hand, these leaps sometimes occur also in the opposite direction, from smaller to larger (sixth-octave-tenth). The message of these patterns seems to be the “struggle” between God and sinful mankind expecting redemption through communion, Luther’s second sacrament.

The following alio modo version of the same chorale is a very complex fugue in F minor, using as a main theme the first phrase of the cantus firmus. The extremely rich counterpoint and the surprisingly daring new motives seem to recall the big, learned fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II.

• The augmented entry of the main-theme in the tenor part in measure 57 might be another symbol for the praise of Christ the Lord, as the mediator between God and Man.

• NB! In order to emphasize this augmented theme in the tenor it should be helpful to use a registration of foundations (principals) 8′ and 4′ and a trumpet 8′.

VIII

Most intriguing and surprising part of the work are the following four duettos preceding the final Fugue in E-flat Major. Some speculations might help justify their presence:

a) Luther adds a “Short Admonition of Confession” after the chapter about Communion. In this short appendix he quotes the various ways of confessing: 1. to the priest/pastor; 2. as an open and common confession in front of the congregation; 3. to the neighbor; and 4. to God;

b) in the first part of his Large Catechism Luther quotes the four elements of the world: 1. Fire; 2. Air; 3. Water; 4. Earth;

c) in his Neu vermehrtes Hamburgisches Gesangbuch (New Hymn Book) from 1739, Vopelius inserts after the Catechism Hymns other hymns for: 1. the morning; 2. the evening; 3. before meals; 4. after meals;

d) taking into consideration the Baroque Theory of Affects one can easily imagine a certain parallel with the four temperaments: 1. choleric; 2. sanguine; 3. phlegmatic; and 4. melancholic temperament;

e) the duettos form a tight unity: their tonal progression ascending from E to F, to G, and finally to A corresponds strikingly to the sequence of keys in the “Trinity chorales” 4 to 9, and thus leading to the first note, B-flat, starting the following fugue;

f) two of the duettos are in a major (II and III) and two in a minor key (I and IV);

g) two are in a ternary (I: 3/8 and III: 12/8) and two in a binary (II: 2/4 and IV: 2/2) time signature.

h) two start with the right hand (I and II) and two with the left hand (II and IV).

It also seems quite remarkable how well the duettos match—by their astonishing variety and by their individual character—both the conception of the four elements (mentioned by Luther in his Great Catechism) and that of the four temperaments and even maybe of the four archangels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel) as well as the four Evangelists (?).

Duetto I: E-minor key; 3/8 time signature; right hand starts, left hand follows; 73 measures; perfectly symmetrical form based upon the golden ratio (28 measures + 17 measures + 28 measures = 73 measures // 28:17 = ~ 1.64; 45 (= 28 + 17) : 28 = ~ 1.7; 73 (= 28 + 17 + 28) : 45 = ~ 1.62); flamboyant themes and countersubjects suggesting flames of fire; Archangel Michael (with attributes: fire, sword, perfect balance); choleric temperament (?); element Fire (?).

Duetto II: F-major key; 2/4 time signature; right hand starts, left hand follows; 149 measures; perfectly symmetrical form of: 37 + 31 + 13 + 31 + 37 measures. NB! 37 could stand for Christ’s monogram in the Greek alphabet [ChRistos]: X ~ CH (= 20) + P ~ R (= 17); 31 may stand for the Latin “In Nomine Jesu” (In Jesus’s Name): [I (= 9) + N (= 13) + I (= 9) = 31]; 13 could allude to Jesus and his Twelve Apostles at the Last Supper. NB! This section of 13 measures from measures 69 to 78 is the center, the middle of the whole piece in which the measures 74 to 78 are the exact “inversion” of measures 69 to 73; could that maybe hint to Jesus’s death?; element Air (?) (Example 13).

The overall form of the piece is quite complex, insofar as the first section and its da capo recapitulation (both 37 measures) are in major and in a serene, joyous mood, whereas the second and penultimate sections (both 31 measures) are in minor and written as canons; might this “discrepancy” remind one of the sanguine temperament (?); Air; could the three references to Jesus Christ (see above) suggest a link to the Archangel Gabriel, Jesus’s messenger (with the attributes: lily and fish); could the perfect formal symmetry represent the symmetrical beauty of a lily?; could the inversion, the crossing of the parts in measures 69–78 hint at a symbol for Christ’s Cross and Death?

Duetto III: G-major key; 12/8 time signature; left hand starts, right hand follows; 39 measures:

15 + 8 + 15 + 1 = 39 measures; 15 (= 3 x 5) + 24 (= 3 x 8) = 39 (= 3 x 13) = golden ratio (cf. Fibonacci); melancholic temperament (?); could the very serene character of the piece remind of the Archangel Raphael (with attribute: fish)? element Water?

Duetto IV: A-minor key; 2/2 (Alla breve) time signature; left hand starts, right hand follows; two themes are used (a and b); 108 measures arranged as 8 (a) + 8 (a) + 16 (b) + 8 (a) + 8 (a) + 8 (b) + 13 (b) + 8 (a) + 8 (b) + 10 (b) + 13(a); NB! The grouping of measures and themes reveals the scheme of: 9 x 8 (= 72 measures) + 2 x 13 (= 26 measures) + 2 x 5 (= 10 measures), an order once more based upon the progression 5, 8, and 13 as quantities of the Fibonacci progression hinting at the “golden ratio;” the quite robust character of the music seems to allude to the strong phlegmatic temperament, while the very intricate formal scheme of the piece might possibly be a hint to the archangel Uriel (with attribute: fire); element Earth?

IX

The concluding Fuga à 5 Pro Organo pleno in E-flat major perfectly continues the ascending keys movement of the duettos (E-F-G-A) by its starting with a B-flat in the tenor.

The main theme suggests by its shape the form of a cross: connecting on paper the first note with the fourth and the second with the third, respectively the second with the fifth and the third with the fourth, respectively the third with the sixth and the fourth with the fifth, respectively the fourth with the seventh and the fifth with the sixth, one obtains three times (Trinity again!) the Greek letter X = Chi used as a symbol of the Cross, for crossing: cf. also Bach’s original title Da Jesus an dem X stund’ and the English No X-ing or Merry X-mas (Example 14).

This majestic theme dominates the whole first section of the fugue written in the ancient stylus gravis (see above, chorales 1 to 3). The second section of the fugue is in 6/4 meter and based on a strongly contrasting theme characterized by its constant movement representing a lengthy kyklosis (“turning around-figure”), with the main notes E-flat—F—G and thus quoting the first phrase of the first large chorale Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit (Example 15).

Exactly in the middle of this second section, the majestic first theme reappears, rhythmically strengthened by its syncopations, and dividing the whole fugue into two equal parts of 36 + 22½ : 22½ + 36 (Example 16).

Finally, the third and last section of the fugue written in 12/8 time signature, expounds a third theme that will later be combined with the first and with a varied form of the second theme. This third theme seems to use a bass cadence formula of C–F, and B-flat–E-flat (Example 17).

Most impressive is the perfect formal symmetry of the whole fugue organized in: (20 + 16 =) 36 measures + (22½ + 22½ =) 45 measures + (16 + 20 =) 36 measures.

Considering the fugue as a whole and the most natural tempo relationship of its three time signatures (half note = dotted half note = dotted quarter note), one can conclude the following:

a) the first and the third sections of the fugue are equal in length lasting 36 measures each, divided into 20 + 16, respectively, into 16 + 20;

b) applying the tempo relationship “half note = dotted half note = dotted quarter note” and taking as a common unity of measurement the smaller quantity, i.e., the measure length of the second fugue (which has only two beats per measure vs. the four beats of the first and the third sections respectively), one obtains the following measurements for the three sections:

72 (= 36 x 2) half-measures; 45 measures and again 72 (= 36 x 2) half-measures

c) all these numbers being multiples of 9, these ratios can be reduced to:

72 (= 8 x 9); 45 (= 5 x 9); 72 (= 8 x 9), or just 8 + 5 (= 13) + 8 = 21

d) this series of numbers 8, 5, 13, 21 belongs to the famous “Fibonacci progression” starting by 1:1:2:3:5:8:13:21 and reaching the golden ratio or divine proportion (= “proportio divina”) in the infinite.

e) NB! according to the Italian Renaissance mathematician Luca Pacioli the golden ratio might symbolize the Holy Trinity:

A (the greater quantity/God Father) : B (the smaller quantity/God the consubstantial Son) = (A + B) : A, or, theologically speaking:

A (God Father) engenders B (the consubstantial Son) and, out of these two, proceeds A + B (the Holy Spirit);

f) could this majestic, astonishingly built fugue thus represent once more the ultimate Symbol of the Holy Trinity?

g) its perfectly symmetrical construction is most impressive:

First section (40 half measures—cadence—32 half measures),

Second section (22½—22½ measures)

Third section (32 half measures—cadence—40 half measures), or, more simply:

40 – 32 – 22½ – 22½ – 32 – 40 measure lengths of the second section.

X

Taking a more attentive, new look at the Third Part of Bach’s Clavier-Übung, one discovers some interesting facts concerning the overall compositional plan, a plan corresponding also to Bach’s work, the B Minor Mass:

a) both cycles contain a total of 27 movements each.

b) these 27 movements are divided into two groups of: 6 “free” works without a cantus firmus (prelude in E-flat, the four Duettos, and the final fugue) and the 21 chorales; NB! the “Missa” and the “Symbolum Nicenum” in the
B Minor Mass have together 12 + 9 = 21 movements and the last section of the B Minor Mass (“Sanctus,” “Osanna,” “Benedictus,” “Osanna,” “Agnus Dei,” and “Dona nobis pacem”) also contains 6 movements.

c) the 21 chorales in the Clavier-Übung are divided twice into: 9 for the Lutheran Mass (“Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie – Gloria:” Trinity) and 12 dealing with Luther’s Catechism plus Sacraments.

d) The 21 chorales are also divided (“musically”) into 12 and 9 chorales by the 13th chorale written as a French overture and thus opening the rest of 9 chorales.

[NB! All these numbers are multiples of 3 (Trinity again!).]

e) could the total number of 27 pieces possibly recall in both the Clavier-Übung and the B Minor Mass the 27 books of the New Testament?

f) could the number of 21 pieces allude to the “Teaching Books” of the New Testament, the 21 Epistles, and the 6 “free works” to the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the prophetic Apocalypse of John?

g) could one not consider the overall architecture of Bach’s most impressive cycles, Clavier-Übung III and the B Minor Mass, as huge symbols for the New Testament and thereby also for Martin Luther’s Theology?