Easy to overlook, at the bottom of a small display case in the basement archives of the Church of the Brethren in Elgin, Illinois, is a faded inscription on a small piece of wood. This voice from the past bears witness that In the forenoon of September 23, 1698, I Johan Christoph Harttman, organ maker of Nürttingen, firmly closed this small wind chest. May God grant that many beautiful and spiritual psalms and songs be played and struck on this work to His name's honor.1
Only a few steps away, in an adjoining room, stands the three-rank instrument from which this fragment was taken. While the closing of a windchest is not the completion of an organ, it nevertheless seems right that September 23, 1998, be regarded as the three hundredth anniversary of this, one of the oldest organs now to be found in North America.
Hartmann is not a famous builder but there are some scraps of information regarding his career.2 Based at Nürtingen some twenty kilometers southeast of Stuttgart in the former duchy of Württemberg, he made an eight-stop organ for the Dominican church of St. Paul at nearby Esslingen in 1688, and did repair work at Gerlingen about 1700.3 Both towns are just outside Stuttgart. These two references, combined with the instrument at Elgin, give us a known career covering a scant dozen years and modest territory. From the region of Württemberg came not only the cabinet organ at Elgin but also the person who brought it to America.
Henry J. Kurtz was born at Binningheim on July 22, 1796, when the organ was nearing its first century mark. The Kurtz family was Lutheran, the father a schoolteacher.4 In 1817, the young Henry (and the organ5) arrived in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. He was first a schoolteacher and in 1819 became a Lutheran pastor, ultimately serving the congregation in Pittsburgh (1823-27). Influenced by the utopian communitarianism of Robert Owen and George Rapp, he worked toward the founding of a "German Christian Industrial Community," to be named Concordia, near New Philadelphia, Ohio. This effort failed, but he found something of the idealistic Christian community he was seeking among the German Baptists, who called themselves Brethren, and was baptized into their fellowship on April 6, 1828. Rising in prominence within his newly chosen faith, he entered into its ministry in 1830 and was ordained an Elder in 1844. Throughout this time and beyond, Kurtz was convinced of the need to reach people through the printed page. In the 1820s he published Die Kleine Leider Sammlung, a small-format hymnbook "for the convenience of travellers," and he entered the English market (especially for the Brethren west of the Appalachians) with A Choice Selection of Hymns in 1830.6 Aside from musical publishing, in 1851 he established the Gospel Visitor (forerunner of the modern Brethren magazine The Messenger) and completed The Brethren's Encyclopedia in 1867. He also advocated expanding the role of the institutional church in the form of Sunday schools, academies, and missions.
While historian Donald Durnbaugh has referred to Kurtz as "the most influential figure in nineteenth-century Brethrenism,"7 the Brethren of that time, suspicious of things worldly, were not only dubious of the need for denominational schools and periodicals, but also took a dim view of instrumental music in general and rejected its use in church. This put Kurtz, a former Lutheran with a pipe organ, in an awkward position.8 It was not in his best interest to play the organ conspicuously, and so it became a very private affair for him.
What little is known about his use of the instrument was noted by his intimates, and only after his death. These recollections do provide a glimpse of how a private chamber organ--certainly a rarity--might have been used in the nineteenth-century American midwest. Eliza A. Good, his granddaughter, recalled that "sometimes he played on the organ and enjoyed teaching me some little songs on Sunday afternoons after Sunday school."9 It was in a corner of the room Elder Kurtz used for his study, and it shared the space with plebian furnishings: dresser, table, rocking chair, bed, woodstove.10 Another memory was that of Henry Holsinger, a former printing apprentice to Kurtz.
Brother Kurtz was quite a musician, vocal and instrumental, and had an organ in the house, but rarely used it. I shall long remember one occasion on which I heard him perform and sing one of his favorites. I went to the house, where the editorial sanctum was, on business connected with the office. After entering the hall, I heard music, and, finding the door ajar, I stopped and listened till the hymn was completed, much delighted with the strains. When I complemented him on his success, he explained that he had been tired of reading and writing, and had sought recreation and solace in the music. I prevailed on him to play and sing another piece for my gratification, which is the only occasion I remember that I was with him when the inspiration was upon him.11
After Henry Kurtz' death in 1874, the instrument remained in the family. In the 1890s it was in his son Jacob's home, where Charles Ellis saw and heard it, declaring its music "scarce inferior to that of many modern instruments of greater pretensions."12 As the Brethren began to accept instrumental music in the twentieth century, this organ eventually made its way into Bethel Church at Poland, Ohio (near Youngstown), where Levi P. Good, a great-grandson of Kurtz, pumped it as a boy. The church was forced to relocate and the organ next went to the home of another granddaughter of Henry Kurtz, Mrs. Silas (Ella) Huffman, who in turn left it to her son Dur Huffman. After his death the organ became the property of Mr. Good, who had grown up to become a successful farm implements dealer. In 1952 Good built a new house which could not accommodate the organ, which was removed to his barn.13
This nadir, thankfully, was short-lived. Levi Good may not have been concerned with the history of organ-building, but the organ had been part of his childhood and he had a sense of the instrument's connection with his illustrious ancestor and thereby with the formative history of the Church of the Brethren in America. With the encouragement of Brethren historian Law-rence Shultz, he contacted the offices of its General Board, and arrangements were made for its relocation. On August 6, 1957, the organ, in pieces, arrived in Elgin.14
Having been moved from Germany to Pennsylvania to Ohio to Illinois, this organ was still not done with its westward migration. In 1958, it was displayed at the church's annual conference, in Des Moines, Iowa. It was far from playable, however, and church staff desired its repair. Arrangements were made with an Illinois organ builder in 1961,15 but a few years later the work was not done and he had relocated to California, taking the Hartmann organ with him. Inquiries from Elgin and promises from McFarland were exchanged for several years until finally, in late summer 1969, representatives of the Brethren collected the organ--still in pieces--and shipped it back to Illinois. While a few repairs had been made to the wood pipes and windchest using unauthentic materials and techniques, it is to the credit of the Brethren that they resisted the opportunity for modernization (such as an electric blower) and pursued a "restoration only" policy.
The return of the organ after an absence of eight years caused a ripple in the local media as the Elgin Daily Courier News carried a photo of the empty case with a hopeful caption "Young at 272; never too old for a face lift."16 This brave attitude, however, could not mask the disappointment at the General Board that after twelve years, virtually no progress had been made. In addition, the Brethren were now understandably wary about the choice of a restorer. Another problem was that the work would have to be outside the Board's operating budget; earmarked donations were sought in 1970, but with meager results.
This was the situation in May 1972 when I, then a student at the University of Kansas, visited Elgin, where my grandfather had once been pastor of the Church of the Brethren. I was introduced to Gwendolyn Bobb, Administrative Assistant to the General Board. She was particularly keen about the organ, and when she discovered my abiding interest in organ construction, she showed me the pieces and expressed her frustration with the status of the project. I suggested a few reputable names, including that of John Brombaugh, whose shop near Middletown, Ohio, I had visited the previous December. As a journeyman with Von Beckerath, he had worked on Schnitger organs, and although in 1972 he was still in his early years as a master builder in America, he had restored the Tannenberg in Madison, Virginia, as well as serviced the eighteenth-century cabinet organ in the Toledo art museum. At that time, he was certainly one of the most highly qualified craftsmen in America to whom the organ might be entrusted. As it happened, the Brethren annual conference was in Cincinnati that summer and Miss Bobb was able to visit the nearby Brombaugh shop. Having met him and his associates, she knew her search for a fine artisan was over. Unfortunately, the search for funds was not, and three more years were to pass until work could begin.
John Brombaugh first saw the instrument briefly in June 1975 and gave a preliminary estimate for restoration (which had to be revised upwards following a later, more detailed inspection). By the first week of November the instrument was in Middletown, and as it is a small organ, the work was complete in short order. An invoice details the work: releather bellows; design and build foot pump mechanism (to replace a lost original); repair casework, stain and wax same; replace back panel; mount principal in façade with appropriate cherry casework (new pipe stiles); design and make pipe shades; repair all pipes, gild façade pipes; revoice, tune all pipes (Kirnberger III); new tuners for flute 4'; refurbish action; restore wind chest. In January 1976 Brombaugh had been paid and the organ was back in Elgin, in a condition surely better than any time in over a century.
There was to be one more trip for this much-travelled little organ. The 1976 annual conference was to be held in Wichita, and the General Board wanted to feature its historic treasure. With Brombaugh's consent and advice, it was trucked to the distant convention center. Circumstances had conspired to elect me, by then working in the organ business in Kansas, to re-tune the organ for its presentation. I did this in the only quiet time available on the incongruously vast modern stage: after midnight. On the evening of July 29, played by Wilber Brumbaugh (a Brethren staff member and by curious coincidence a distant relative of John Brombaugh), the organ was dedicated with an oral presentation, solo literature, and singing, with approximately four thousand in attendance. Johann Christoph Hartmann of Nürtingen would have been astounded.
Returned to Elgin once more, the organ has enjoyed a relatively quiet retirement, but there have been moments of glory. The organ came to the attention of the Organ Historical Society17 and was featured in a program of the Chicago/Midwest chapter on September 13, 1981. Peter Crisafulli performed Stanley, Pachelbel, Bach, and Buxtehude. On August 21, 1984, the OHS national convention was in the Chicago area and Elizabeth Towne Schmitt played works by Naumann, Boëllmann, and Goemanne.18
The instrument has a cherry case which is presumed to be of American manufacture; the original German case was likely oak.19 It stands two meters high, 1.15 meters wide, and 55 centimeters deep excluding pump levers. Any original pipe shades were gone without a trace and budget restraints during restoration precluded carving. Illusionistically painted pipe shades were created by the Brombaugh staff with an eye to those of Arp Schnitger's 1685-88 Steinkirchen organ. The Elgin organ's compass is four octaves CC-c'', with the omission of CC# for a total of 48 pipes per rank. The ranks are an 8' stopped wood, 4' open wood, and 2' metal principal,20 the latter of which has notes 1-27 and 29 tubed off to the façade with the remaining 20 pipes (28 and 30-48) standing chromatically just behind the façade. The photograph reveals the use of diamond- and spiral-pattern embossing on selected façade pipes. It was common in the north European Baroque to alternate embossed and cylindrical pipes, but always in symmetrical patterns. This display could be rendered symmetrical if FF and BB were embossed. It is reasonable to suppose these pipes are not original since they break the design rhythm. Their construction, however, is consistent with the other pipes and therefore they may have been early replacements, perhaps in the organ's first century before being acquired by Kurtz. The principal is of a darkened high-tin alloy which contrasts with the mouth gilding applied in the 1975 restoration. This Principal is cut up 1:4 and moderately nicked. John Brombaugh recalls that the languids seemed to be set too high for prompt speech, but an experimental adjustment on a few pipes did not get good results and the voicing was thus left essentially unchanged during restoration. The sound of the principal is quite bold, especially in a small room. In Table 1, diameters are approximate due to out-of-round pipes, and the cone tuning forced the use of outside dimensions.
The organ is winded at 50 mm water column and the Brombaugh restoration provided both a hand pumping lever in back and an iron foot pumping lever in front. Key action is of the sticker type, with pallets directly beneath the keys. From there, wind is channelled to pipe holes in a pattern of considerable irregularity. There are a few short runs of chromatic sequence, but mostly in reverse to the keyboard (basses to right). It certainly does not resemble the logical appearance of chromatic, diatonic, or major-third layouts common today. Navigating these ranks when setting temperament and tuning is, to put it mildly, a challenge.
Sensibly enough, the 8' Gedackt basses are in back (although not entirely in chromatic order). Only CC is mitered. Because of various attempts at restoration before 1975, the wood pipes sport a variety of materials and techniques, but are reasonably original. The mouths are cut up very slightly under 1:3 and level. (See Table 2.)
The stops are not named, but the 4' open wood has been referred to as a Hohlpfeife. Its wooden construction imparts a flutiness, while its moderate scale and 1:4 cut-up give it somewhat a principal quality to bridge the gap between the stopped 8' and the metal 2'. Each pipe is tuned with a metal flap at the top, and pipes 1-4 are mitered. This rank is placed between the Gedackt and the façade, with basses clustered to the player's left. The pipes' sectional proportions are roughly 3:2 throughout. (See Table 3.)
Late seventeenth-century German working parts in an early nineteenth-century American case with late twentieth-century repairs do not add up to an instrument of pristine museum quality. And yet, its intact musical nature and high-quality restoration allow it to present music now as was originally heard in the Hartmann shop in the autumn of 1698. This, as well as its connections to an important figure in early American music publishing and religious life, place it, as it enters its fourth century, among the most significant historical organs in America.
