Gober Organs, Inc.,
Elora, Ontario, Canada
First Church in Oberlin,
United Church of Christ,
Oberlin, Ohio
The opportunity to build a new tracker organ for First Church in Oberlin, Ohio afforded us the opportunity to interpret traditional organbuilding principles in the light of the aesthetic and acoustical demands of this historic congregation’s 19th-century building, as well as the community’s culture.
The town of Oberlin was founded in 1834 by settlers coming to what was then the Western Reserve of the original States. From the outset, the community was marked by a religious fervor, even a certain similarity to utopian communities common in the United States at the time. For decades, the pastor of this congregation, as well as the president of Oberlin College, was Charles Grandison Finney, famed throughout the United States as an evangelistic leader. The town was a hotbed of socially progressive activity. Two focuses in that realm were the abolitionist movement opposing slavery, and the temperance movement, which sought to improve the quality of life among working families by expounding the moral and practical benefits of abstinence from alcohol use. The memory of abolitionism remains visible today in the form of local monuments and historic sites relating to Oberlin’s role as a station on the Underground Railroad. (The long-ended activities of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union had effects on liquor bylaws in the town until very recently.) The tradition of political positions espoused by groups and individuals in the community—both in the college, the dominant cultural force in town these days, and in the town at large including its churches—is a clear outgrowth of a heritage dating back to its beginnings.
The other obvious context our new organ finds itself in is that of the opulent array of organs found in the town’s churches and in the buildings of Oberlin College and its Conservatory of Music. One of these organs, a Barckhoff organ in Peace Community Church, was built in the 19th century. All the others relate more or less directly to another progressive wave, one that swept Oberlin in the 20th century: the organ reform movement. They range from the conservatory’s two one-manual Flentrop organs from the mid and late 1950s—one of which had been in the Busch-Reisinger Museum in Cambridge, Massachusetts, prior to the arrival of the 3-manual organ there—to the Cavaillé-Coll-style Fisk organ in Finney Chapel, completed in 2001. The whole assemblage numbers about 30 organs, including practice instruments and continuo organs, built by Brombaugh, Bedient, Noack, and Holtkamp, among others. My employees and I have taken care of most of these instruments for almost fifteen years, and can attest to the compelling nature of the collection both in terms of its overall quality and as an admonishment against hubris in planning and building fine pipe organs.
The sanctuary of First Church, known as the Meeting House, in the tradition of New England Congregational churches, is a spare, nearly square room with a flat ceiling, white walls, and lots of light pouring in through tall windows with small panes of streaky glass. The seating capacity is over 1000 in pews both on the ground level and a balcony, which surrounds the room and forms the choir loft at the front.
First Church has had various organs, the first one having been built by Hook & Hastings in the 19th century. Successive modifications of the Meeting House since then were accompanied by new organs, most recently an electropneumatic one built by Homer Blanchard in 1962. It was assembled from a variety of components old and new and housed in a handsome neo-classical case, a holdover from an earlier Estey organ. The Blanchard organ included some windchests, swell boxes, and ranks of pipes from E. M. Skinner Opus 230, originally built in 1914 for the no longer extant Second Church in Oberlin.
In replacing the still serviceable 1962 organ, the church’s goal was to have a mechanical-action instrument that would convincingly fill the Meeting House in spite of its rather dry acoustics, while drawing more on historical antecedents than its predecessor had. By the time I was approached for a proposal for an organ, it had become clear to the First Church organ committee that although the previous organ had had three manuals, it would be more rational to concentrate a new organ’s resources on two manuals.
This new organ was to become an instrument whose focus, apart from the accompaniment of the congregation singing traditional Protestant hymns—including many from the 19th century that remain a staple—would be the performance of organ literature, not least that of the post-1800 era. Its specification bears some resemblance to a Hook organ of similar size, but there are differences—the lack of an Aeoline, or echo string, and the inclusion of a large treble Cornet in the Great, for example, relating to the performance of literature that we view as canonical, and our relative lack of interest today in playing the transcriptions of orchestral and popular music that were de rigueur.
The congregation’s desire to keep the existing organ case seemed obvious, both from a practical standpoint and from the wish to preserve the accrued history of the building. The case is large and located in the ideal position in the church, though not shaped at all like a typical mechanical organ, being 30' wide and 10' deep but only 18' high. Nonetheless, it was possible to fit our organ’s design into the logical matrix that defines a well-conceived tracker organ: the major third pipe layouts result in the compactness necessary for simple, short and optimally light action, while providing plenty of space for the pipes to speak and easy tuning accessibility. And the direct relationship between windchest layout and façade permits straightforward and efficient winding of speaking façade pipes.
The two manual divisions are located across the center half or so of the case, the Great in front and the Swell behind. The bass and tenor pipes of the Great Diapason 8' are in reverse chest order in the façade’s center opening. The Pedal windchests are at either end of the case, and their façade pipes are the tenor range of the Pedal Diapason 16', interspersed with those of the prepared-for Violoncello 16', following the major third layout of the chests. Ours is not a large organ in number of stops, but each stop is complete—each of the 8' foundation stops is present from low C, and, given the generous pipe scaling throughout, the organ fills the case completely.
The appearance of the organ exterior is little changed. The mouths of each group of façade pipes, of 70% tin, now form a garland-like curve mirroring the arched openings in which they stand. The new keydesk en fenêtre, in contrast to the white painted case, is of solid mortise-and-tenon, frame-and-panel black walnut with a natural oil finish. The stop names on the drawknobs were written in a style evocative of 19th-century American organs by Toronto calligrapher Diane Iannuziello and scanned and laser-engraved onto the faces.
In seeking antecedents for our organ, I considered the history of the congregation and its building in the perspective of their origins as a settlement of a New England Congregationalist group. The First Church sanctuary is a large, nearly square flat-ceilinged room surrounded on all sides by a balcony, which in the front of the room forms the choir loft. Although it is a solid 19th-century building, it is acoustically unsupportive, with its large windows, partly carpeted wooden floor, and cushions on many of the pews. The surface which, given the location of the organ high up in the room, should be most supportive of the organ’s tone, is the ceiling. But it consists only of a single thickness of drywall, the result of a renovation that saw the removal of the original plaster ceiling.
This is not unlike the situation for which many of Hook & Hastings’ organs were conceived. I visited several of their instruments seeking a better understanding of how they filled such rooms with music. Here I found foundation stops that are a world away from wispy neo-Baroque principals. The diameter of a typical Hook Great Principal is larger than the Pedal Principal of many a 20th-century tracker. Such pipes are capable of giving forth a strong fundamental tone without being “pushed” using ears or beards, and it was just such a broad, unforced foundation that First Church’s new organ would require.
By the same token, the most striking stop from Skinner Opus 230 that was still playing at First Church was the Pedal Open Wood Diapason 16¢, a stronger cousin of corresponding stops in Hook organs. The effect that extremely powerful stop had in First Church’s dry acoustic could be likened to that of a healthy Subbass in a resonant room. It was evident that those Skinner pipes needed to become part of our new organ, and that the scaling of the organ as a whole would have to be as generous as that of the Hook pipes I had examined. The higher-pitched elements in the principal choruses did not require the same kind of departure from our norm, but I also lavished attention on the scaling of the reed stops in order to obtain an effortless strength from the fundamental with no hint of harshness.
Besides the Wood Diapason, there were other stops from Skinner Opus 230 that I felt had a place in such a scheme—in spite of the seeming improbability of Skinner pipes in a tracker organ. These included, in addition to the Pedal Wood Diapason and Bourdon, the Swell Bourdons 16' and 8', the Viola da Gamba and Vox Coelestis, and two 4¢ traverse flutes, one of which became a 2' in our organ. What I was banking on with these manual stops was the potential for infusing them with new life by opening the toeholes to more than compensate for the somewhat lower wind pressure we used. For the strings, that was the sole voicing adjustment needed; in the case of the flutes, I further optimized the tone by adjusting the other major factors, the windway size and languid position, just as I do with new pipes. For all the stops, the effect was great—in spite of the heavily nicked languids, those stops speak with greater intensity than they did in the predecessor organ and are very much at home in this organ’s overall sound. The Skinner organ’s Clarinet will also take its place as a second reed in the Great when funds become available.
Another element from the 1914 Skinner instrument that we reused to great advantage is the swell frames from both the Swell and Choir boxes, with their priceless sugar pine shutters. They are on three sides of the large swell box. To maximize the damping effect of the closed Swell box, all of its other surfaces are double-walled with dead air spaces between. The resulting dynamic range exceeded our wildest expectations.
The organ is tuned in a new, slightly unequal temperament devised by Oberlin organ performance student Titus van den Heuvel. In contrast to other unequal temperaments, it favors keys in the flat and sharp directions from C major equally, a valuable feature in a church where many hymns are sung in the “many flat” realm.
The organ’s presence in the Meeting House was enhanced through acoustical improvements specified by acoustician Dana Kirkegaard. These amount to an unseen “bandshell” behind and above the organ. At the rear, hardboard was installed inside the church’s exterior brick and the void between filled with vermiculite, harnessing the solidity of the masonry and providing heat insulation. The very essential and particularly laborious ceiling reinforcement was undertaken with great vigor by a stalwart team of volunteers from the congregation. In the front third of the church, over the organ and choir, lightweight but highly rigid panels consisting of corrugated cardboard sandwiched between thicknesses of plywood were added above the ceiling. The installation of this material entailed trimming individual pieces to fit in the irregular spaces between the 19th-century ceiling joists, then bonding them securely to the top side of the drywall using gallons of adhesive—without this step, the presence of the panels would have had no effect.
The organ was dedicated as the Cauffiel Organ, honoring musician Jane Cauffiel Thomson, a long-time Oberlin resident and First Church member, whose visionary idea and generous gift towards the building of a new organ got this project started. An inaugural recital played jointly by Oberlin Conservatory professors David Boe and James David Christie took place in September 2004. Since then numerous other concerts have taken place, including a weekly noon series. It was organized by First Church organist Bálint Karosi, a conservatory graduate student who has been a Westfield Center Scholar and competed for the 2006 Grand Prix de Chartres. Other recitalists have included Jean Galard, organiste titulaire of Beauvais Cathedral and St. Medard in Paris, and László Fassang of Budapest and St. Sebastián, Spain. In February 2007, First Church was the scene of a Langlais Festival of the Oberlin Conservatory, which featured a recital and masterclass given by Marie-Louise Langlais. And in addition to its primary use in the weekly services of First Church, the organ is used by both Oberlin Conservatory professors as a teaching instrument two days a week under an arrangement between the conservatory and First Church.
A CD recorded on the organ by Bálint Karosi is forthcoming. It includes performances of works by Bach, Widor, Liszt, and Mr. Karosi himself, and will be available from Gober Organs, Inc., and First Church.
This is the first time in my work I have undertaken a synthesis like this, and it has been a challenge whose pleasures have at least equaled those of designing a new instrument from scratch. I am a firm believer in the principle that constraints foster good art. Some of the constraints here were given, others, like the effort to incorporate historical tonal material, were inspired by the cultural context of the instrument.
Among the people I owe thanks to are Prof. David Boe, who advised the First Church organ committee on this project, and Dr. Harold Slocum, its chair. First Church member David Clark spearheaded the implementation of the physical preparations for the organ’s installation and took care of the generous housing arrangements. Richard Houghten planned and installed the SSL electronic stop and combination action. And last but not least, Gober Organs employees Matthias Schmidt, Wendy McConnell, Burkhard Moeller, Mike Collins, Ian Hathaway, and Hendrik Oudshoorn.
—Halbert Gober
Photo credit: Halbert Gober
Gober Organs, Inc.
50 First Line Road
Elora, Ontario N0B 1S0
Canada
www.goberorgans.com
