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A Conversation with Gabriel Kney: the Organbuilder turns 86

November 2, 2015
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Renowned organbuilder GabrielKney, who celebrates his 86th birthday in November, is well known across North America for the many instruments, large and small, which he has lovingly built for universities, homes, concert halls, and churches. His career spans more than 60 years in Canada (and several before that in his German homeland).

Gabriel Kney immigrated to Canada in 1951 to work as an organbuilder and voicer with the Keates Organ Company, based in Lucan, Ontario (which had just taken over the assets of the Woodstock Organ Co., formerly Karn-Warren). Kney went on to found his own company with John Bright in 1955, with the vision of building tracker-action organs. At first they worked out of John Bright’s basement with John generally doing the electrical work and dealing with correspondence and Gabriel building the organs.

To quote Uwe Pape from his book The Tracker Organ Revival in America (Berlin, Pape Verlag, 1977): “Gabriel Kney was the first organ builder who built mechanical organs in the course of the tracker organ revival in Canada.” But as Gabriel himself says, he was somewhat ahead of his time, so he reverted to building electro-pneumatic and electric action instruments for a number of years before the mechanical action trend took off in the United States. Opus 1 (1955) and some unnumbered positivs were all mechanical action, and then from Opus 55 (1971) onward all of the Gabriel Kney organs have been mechanical action.

The idea of mechanical-action organs came to life again in the United States, more so than in Canada, which explains why most Gabriel Kney organs are located in the United States. In the 1960s, the late George Black made a recording on Opus 1, which was put on a small, hand-cut 7-inch vinyl record. Gabriel advertised this for sale in The Diapason. A reply came from the late Harald Rohlig at Huntingdon College in Montgomery, Alabama, saying he wanted one of these recordings. Once Rohlig had listened to it, he told Gabriel that this was exactly the sound he was looking for, and so a contract was made to build four instruments for the college.

The first two of the four organs, Opus 23 (1962) and Opus 28 (1965), were electric action, but the next two were essentially Kney’s earliest trackers (Opus 41a and 41b). Opus 41a and 41b went to Huntingdon College in 1968, but it was not until the 1970s that Kney felt financially comfortable enough to build trackers exclusively. So that is how the story starts.

In 1967, Gabriel founded Gabriel Kney & Co. He and his own trained craftsmen, along with organbuilders from as far away as Hungary, Switzerland, England, and Germany (there were eventually seven), built more than 128 instruments. Gabriel Kney & Co. lasted until Gabriel’s “semi-retirement,” as he refers to it, in 1996. Kney’s last two instruments, Opus 129 and Opus 130 (completed in 2014), were built by Gabriel alone and are house organs for his London, Ontario, home and for the Michigan home of his wife, Dr. Mary Lou Nowicki.

In late 2013, Gabriel Kney sat down with Andrew Keegan Mackriell, director of music and cathedral organist of St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, Ontario, to talk about his life and work and the meaning music has to him. The conversation was continued in May 2015.

Andrew Keegan Mackriell: Gabriel, I think many know that you were born in Germany; could you tell me something about your family and how you arrived at a life in music?

Gabriel Kney: Yes. I was born in Speyer-am-Rhein on November 21, 1929. I was the oldest of seven children. Four sisters were born after me and then twin brothers. At about the time I was born, the worldwide Great Depression was afflicting Germany, and jobs were scarce. My father was a master cabinet maker, but he had difficulty finding work. He was fortunate to find employment as manager at a kind of hostel, rather like a YMCA, where my mother helped him and where we also lived. At the time I was born, he was a member of a political party (Deutsche Zentrumspartei) that opposed Hitler. As the National Socialist movemen t spread throughout Germany, members of this party were considered enemies, and the Brown Shirts came early one morning to the hostel and arrested him. He was incarcerated for a short period of time. After he was released from jail it was difficult for him to find work because he was blacklisted, and employers, afraid of the German authorities, would not hire him. 

As work became scarce during World War II, he was hired at an aircraft factory where Messerschmitts were repaired. Eventually he became head of the woodworking department there. As you can imagine, life during this period was difficult for our whole family. My father was professionally a cabinet maker, but he was also an amateur musician and played the bassoon. My mother was not musically educated, but she had a fine voice, and I often heard her sing as she went about her daily tasks. After the war my father and some of his friends would occasionally meet at our home to play chamber music such as Telemann, etc. So I grew up with both woodworking and music as an important part of my life.

 

Could you tell us something about your childhood, and what it was like growing up there?

Well, post-war the question arose as to what I was going to do. By the time World War II was over, there was no school system. I had to decide whether I was going to learn a trade or wait until school restarted. I kind of fell into organbuilding because, as it happened, my family lived next to the workshop of a master organ- builder. His name was Paul Sattel. Before the war Sattel had started building an organ for the Dom [cathedral] in Speyer. Naturally his work was interrupted by the war, but afterwards he continued his work there, and I became an apprentice to him at the time he completed the Dom organ. At the same time, I had the great opportunity to become an assistant to Franz Nagel, a very famous organ voicer for Steinmeyer Organs before the war, who had joined the Sattel firm. Franz had been injured in the war, lamed, and as a result he could not use the right side of his body. I literally became his “right-hand man.” At the time of my apprenticeship with Sattel, the Catholic Diocese of Speyer supported a diocesan school of church music, founded by an influential church musician named Erhard Quack. It met on weekends, and I was thrilled to be able to attend because I was so interested in music. We studied harmony, Gregorian chant, counterpoint, and composition. I also sang in the Dom choir so I had a very condensed education in the field of church music. 

Did you think about a career as a church musician?

It came to the point when I had to decide whether or not I was going to be a church musician. At the diocesan school I also studied organ. The school had acquired two organs, one built by Paul Ott, who later on became quite well-known in Germany. I had piano lessons as a child so I already had some keyboard skills. Well, I then had to decide whether to continue on and be a church musician or become an organbuilder. It was on the advice of my father, who was more practical in nature, that I decided to stay in organbuilding.

 

A practical suggestion to stay where there might be an income?

Exactly. So this is why I continued and finished my apprenticeship with master organbuilder Paul Sattel. My apprenticeship coincided with what we call the time of the Orgelbewegung [Organ Reform/Revival Movement], the movement of going back to building mechanical organs after the period of building Romantic-type organs. I was fortunate to encounter both Romantic and 18th-century instruments.

 

This was the time when the Werkprinzip was coming back into fashion, championed by Albert Schweitzer and looking to the Baroque organs of Silbermann and Schnitger?

At that time, yes, it came back into fashion, although in retrospect I think the pendulum had swung too far. Some of the organs we built at that time—which we considered wonderful, based on the Werkprinzip—sounded sometimes more like bacon frying! So it had to settle down from one extreme to the other. By the time I finished my apprenticeship, after four years, things had sort of found a middle point. My experience of old instruments in Southern Germany included such organs as those built by the firm of Stumm, considered the Silbermanns of the South. I had exposure to maintaining and rebuilding and restoring old instruments of the Stumm period.

I suspect people might not know much about Stumm. Can you say more?

The difference between Stumm and Silbermann—in North Germany where you find Silbermanns, the façade pipes are, for example, 80% tin, whereas in the South the façade pipes consist of a much higher lead content, which was a lot cheaper. Of course, they didn’t last as long and certainly began to deteriorate after many decades. The reason for the difference in the metal content was more a matter of the economy than of the sound. People in the South were poorer than the people in the North.

 

This is really interesting because it puts a clear distinction between North and South—between the bright-sounding and kind of glitzy Silbermann, and the slightly more rather job-oriented, cheaper, less flashy Stumm. Did this affect the music do you think?

Yes, exactly. And it also reflected on the personality of the musicians, too. I didn’t realize that until later, after I had expanded my knowledge in organ-building design and studied pipe scales and how all this translates into real music. For example, as I studied more organ literature, it became apparent that the melodic movement of the voices requires changes in the sound colors of certain organ stops between treble and bass. Some may need more brightness in the bass and more weight in the treble, and this would be achieved by variable-ratio pipe scales.

 

So that brings us to aspects of the design process in an instrument. I noticed that on your website [gabrielkney.com] you have a diagram of a pipe scale; it shows an unusual curve as opposed to a steady, straight line. Do you have a particular repertoire in mind when you are working on the tonal design of an instrument?

The diagram shown depicts the variable scales of the Principal chorus of the Great on the organ in Grace and Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral in Kansas City, Missouri. Different countries use different methods of pipe scaling. In my case, you know, I am very familiar with the music for which I am building instruments. This is what is important; it helps me envision how a sound should be. Naturally this changes from one organbuilder to another. Each has different ideas about the music. And this is what distinguishes one organ- builder’s sound from another. It is not a question of being better or worse; it is just different. But one has to live with the music in order to create a certain kind of instrument, and without knowing the music I would find it very difficult to do this.

 

Do you listen to a lot of music? Is it central to everything you do and are?

Yes, of course; it really forms my whole being.

The interest in the organ has never really been consistent, certainly in my experience, and, as a client of an organbuilder, one is talking in terms of quite a large financial commitment for an instrument in a church, or school, or house. And it’s not a steady flow of interest. So when there were difficult times what was the motivation to keep going as a builder?

It’s really all about the music. It certainly wasn’t the financial thing because I don’t know any organbuilders who became rich. I know some rich organbuilders, but they didn’t become rich from building organs. I found it a constant effort to build sounds that would accommodate the music, which, in a way, I found mind-boggling. And to do justice to that, this is what kept me going.

 

I’m just fascinated with the concept that music is your life and in the context of building an instrument, do you put an instrument into a church, or a university, or a home with a particular hope that it’s going to achieve something?

Well, yes, not that it necessarily does. But I hope it will do justice to the music played on it or the way in which it will be used. It’s not always the case, I must say, but there are some good examples I know of where this has indeed taken place. Some churches use their organ well, and it is used in the way I hoped it would be. I know that especially some of my smaller church instruments have contributed to raising higher standards of music and have been influential in not just attracting but requiring good musicians to play them.

 

Do you ask a client, when you’re building for them, what they want to use it for?

No. Well, I will know what kind of music they probably want to use it for, but in my mind I will envision the kind of music in which it will likely be used. You have to have a picture in your mind when you voice an organ. It may be a small instrument, maybe 12 or 15 stops, and right from the outset I envision that instrument will be especially suitable in a certain style, whether it’s Classic French or North European, or Spanish for that matter.

 

So this is tonal design.

You set out to design a distinct picture of what you hope to achieve, for example, the design of the pipe scales, as mentioned earlier. But you have to have a musical picture in your mind first. And then, of course, once that is established, my pipe makers can build exactly to my specifications. I send all the information to them: variable ratio scales, constant ratio scales; here are the Cs, and here are other points. It takes years to establish this kind of cooperation and understanding between pipe maker and builder. Over time it worked well for me, and I must say I was always happy when it worked as planned. So this is how it goes, and if it works out that the organ indeed will be used in the way I had envisioned, of course it is very satisfying. It’s not always the case, of course, but . . .

 

Is there a particular difference in approach between the house instrument, the school instrument, the church instrument, and the concert hall? Or is it the same, the same general approach?

Well, in the concert hall, of course, you have to consider that it will be used in many, many different ways. And so you have to make an effort to build an instrument that will do the best it can. With a smaller instrument you can be more specific.

 

How do you feel about your earlier instruments? Do you still enjoy the ones from earlier in your career?

As one gets older, as the years go by, you have a different vision. For example, if I go back to organs that I built, say, in the 1960s and I listen to recordings I still have, I have to say to myself, gosh, you know, I wouldn’t do this anymore like that, but at the time I thought this was ideal. So as one changes and hears things differently and you learn more about the music, you say, well, it was good at the time, but I wouldn’t do it again like that. It’s sort of an always-developing system. Life is not stationary. One does change.

 

I think our soundscape changes as well. And as your soundscape changes and the environment you live in changes, what one might need for and from an instrument changes. We haven’t talked about the Roy Thomson Hall instrument and acoustic design.

Of course acoustics have been a lifelong concern. In my case, the most vivid example probably would be Roy Thomson Hall in Toronto. Right before even the first spade dug a hole in the ground, we talked about acoustics. The discussions weren’t always fruitful, but acoustics were always a concern. Working with acousticians can be challenging. The results can be disappointing as well as wonderful.

 

Yes. Your favorite instrument?

Picking favorites is a bit like picking your favorite child. Nevertheless, one of my favorites is certainly at St. Thomas University in St. Paul, Minnesota. I worked with Robert Mahoney, an acoustician located in Boulder, Colorado. We had a wonderful cooperation, and that is why the acoustics at St. Thomas turned out so well. And not just for the organ. The choir sounds wonderful, and congregational singing—well, it’s just great! I think part of this is due to the fact that the acoustician is himself a musician, a horn player and a graduate of Juilliard. That is so helpful. An acoustician with a music background is different from one who knows how to install loudspeakers. The instrument at St. Thomas is the one I keep going back to because everything gels. If the acoustics are not part of the instrument it is very difficult to bring it off well.

 

If you could have done anything else, what would that have been?

I don’t know; I never thought about it. I know for sure I would make a lousy teacher. More than anything else it was my teachers who influenced me most. Apart from Erhard Quack there were other influential persons, one of whom was a composer who taught at the diocesan school. His name was Wilhelm Waldbroel. He wrote wonderful music. His compositions were by and large in polyphonic style for choir, sometimes choir and brass. In my mind these people were giants, not just as musicians, but as teachers and human beings and people who really influenced my life and music. They provided energy, and this is why I decided on organbuilding. These people provided the information and connections. I consider them my mentors. 

Of course, I think back to my father, too, and those Sunday afternoons when he and his friends—and I was included too, along with a few of my friends who played instruments—would get together and play chamber music. We didn’t have the distraction of TV, you know, and this was one thing we could do as a family and as a group. We enjoyed doing it.

 

One last comment. I see over the door to your music room a little sign that says “Schreinermeister—Gabriel Kney.” 

That is my father. His name was Gabriel Heinrich Kney. Schreinermeister means master cabinet maker. He carved this sign, and it hung on the wall by the front gate of our home for many years. If you look carefully at the picture of my family taken by that front gate you will see this little sign to the right. My father sent it to me for my 40th birthday. And with it he sent a letter, the only letter I ever received from him. I have attached it to the back of the sign.

 

Gabriel, this has been a fascinating conversation, and I feel privileged to have been able to play and enjoy a number of your organs. Thank you so much for your time, and for giving the world these 130 wonderful instruments—I’m sure, wherever they are, that they are loved and cherished and have many stories to tell!

Special thanks to Katharine Kney Timmins for transcribing the original interview and to John Allen, Mark MacBain, and Roland Schubert for photographic assistance.

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