On March 1 Leonardo Ciampa rededicated George H. Ryder’s Opus 180 (1895) at the Unitarian-Universalist Church in Westborough, Massachusetts. In his book All the Stops (New York, 2004), author Craig R. Whitney recalls this organ, which he played in his youth: “The church’s organ . . . held up well for more than half a century. But by the early 1960s, it was getting stiff and creaky in the joints, and the church decided that it needed to be replaced. Like so many other churches, it picked an electronic substitute . . . Speakers were mounted behind the . . . organ’s façade . . . [T]he oak cover closed over the Ryder keyboards for many decades . . . [B]ut basically the instrument is intact and whole—a sleeping beauty awaiting only an awakening kiss.”
The kiss finally arrived last August, when the church hired Alex Belair to bring the dormant instrument back to playable condition. The speakers were removed, the blower reconnected, and all the pipes were reinstalled and tuned.
The program included works of Bach, Mozart, Brahms, Widor, Vaughan Williams, and Tomlinson. Ciampa was assisted by soprano Maria Ferrante and a combined choir from four local churches sang the modern-day premiere of a hymn whose words and music were composed by George Ryder himself, “Oh, Hear the Savior’s Voice” (hymn #17 in the 1887 hymnal, Triumphant Songs).
(photo credit: Leonardo Ciampa)
