When you come to the end of a Perfect Day,
And you sit alone with your thought,
While the chimes ring out with a carol gay,
For the joy that the day has brought,
Do you think what the end of a Perfect Day
Can mean to a tired heart,
When the sun goes down with a flaming ray,
And the dear friends have to part?
Introduction
On Saturday evening, October 25, 2003, a gala banquet and recital for 250 guests in the Music Room of the Mission Inn in Riverside, California celebrated the rededication of the newly restored 1911 Kimball pipe organ. This majestic instrument, played daily by the staff organist and assistants in the early decades of the last century, was a defining characteristic of this world-famous resort hotel and a fond memory of the many guests who stayed there. Music at The Inn transcended the locality and reached the hearts of people everywhere when, in 1909, the noted song writer Carrie Jacobs-Bond (1862-1946) was inspired to write her most famous ballad "A Perfect Day" while visiting The Inn.1 This became the theme song of the programs and, appropriately, was the closing number of the recital which followed the banquet.
A milestone in the rich and colorful history of the pipe organ in America, the Kimball organ at the Mission Inn stands today as one of the few remaining hotel pipe organs in this country.2 As recitalist Dr. John Longhurst commented in his opening remarks: "its retention, renovation and recognition are a tribute to reverence for the past and a vision for the future." The project reflects the combined efforts of The Friends of the Mission Inn, a nonprofit support group, the generous bequest of the estate of Riverside historian Mrs. Esther Klotz, the enthusiastic support of hotel management and the untiring efforts of a local organbuilder who spent countless hours over two years bringing the instrument back to life.
The Mission Inn
The Mission Inn was built in 1903 as the Glenwood Mission Inn by Frank Augustus Miller (1857-1935) to the design of architect Arthur Burnett Benton, who championed the Mission Revival architectural style as an expression of California's Spanish Colonial heritage.3 Miller was responding to the growing demand by wealthy easterners for a warm winter climate and the luxurious features of a resort hotel. Here was an opportunity, with a signature facility, to compete with Pasadena and Redlands for this lucrative patronage. In 1910 the Cloister wing was added, one of several additions, and appointed with costly furnishings and objets d'art collected by Miller in his world travels. A focal point of the Cloister Room, located in the far right corner, is the three-manual Kimball pipe organ (see photo).
Over the ensuing decades, the Mission Inn, now listed on the National Register of Historic Places and California Historic Landmarks, played host to a star-spangled list of dignitaries. Presidents Harrison, McKinley, Theodore Roosevelt and Taft were guests. At the age of twenty-five John F. Kennedy attended a peace conference at The Inn. Richard and Pat Nixon were married in the Presidential Lounge, and Ronald and Nancy Reagan honeymooned there. Gerald Ford visited, as did George W. Bush in mid-October, 2003. Painted portraits of the presidents line the wall of the lobby adjacent to the lounge.4
The Kimball Organ
The Kimball pipe organ, with a commanding presence in the opulent Cloister Room, was dedicated on February 27, 1911 by John Jasper McClellan, a noted keyboard artist from The Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City (see program).5 The occasion was a conference called by hotel owner Miller, described as a "humanist, prohibitionist, and as a tireless worker for international peace,"6 to discuss peace proposals espoused by Andrew Carnegie, the well-known steel magnate and philanthropist. McClellan's program, chosen in consultation with Miller, was an example of a repertoire deemed appropriate for a hotel pipe organ. The Music Room, as the Cloister Room came to be known, became a frequent meeting place for local organizations and hotel guests--bankers and school principals among many others--and a popular wedding venue.
In 1917 the Mission Inn employed Newell Parker as staff organist. He was a pupil of the prominent Los Angeles organist-composer Ernest Douglas.7 Appearing at the console in a blue cape and serving until his retirement in 1968, Parker played noon concerts daily and the ever-popular Sunday evening hymn sings. In 1931 Parker reported that he had played six hundred weddings in the past eight years.8 The American Organist published a list of compositions he found suitable for a hotel program (see box).9 Among notable organists who played the instrument was Alec Wyton, onetime president of the American Guild of Organists.10
The 1911 Kimball organ was a three-manual instrument of 32 ranks (see stoplist, p. 18) that the local press termed a "Cathedral" instrument "because it has the large variety of tone color, in number of speaking stops, and the dignity of tone expected in a cathedral organ."11 This no doubt pleased the image-conscious Miller who must have seen it as a competitive advantage in the market for the resort trade. The third manual was described as an Echo Organ located 150 feet from the main instrument while in fact it was a Choir division in the chamber.12
An analysis of the mechanical features and tonal palette of the Kimball affords key insights into the character and complexion of the American pipe organ at this time and in contrast to succeeding eras. Steuart Goodwin, a nationally-known expert in voicing and tonal finishing, who did the tonal work on the restoration in the chamber assisted by Wendell Ballantyne at the console, commented in the local press that the original instrument "isn't much different, really, from organs that were in churches in 1910."13 In this respect it is unique--and significant--in the history of Kimball, a major builder in the first half of the last century, in that it contrasts sharply with the orchestral paradigm of Kimball organs in the 1920s, the image customarily associated with this company's instruments. There was, of course, no distinctly hotel instrument, in contrast to the radically different theater organ emerging during this era.
Goodwin observes that some of the characteristics of early twentieth-century church organs shared by the Mission Inn instrument include large-scaled, robust, eight-foot Diapasons and at least one open wood flute (generally called "Melodia"); also, stops with names like Salicional and Cornopean.
The Kimball has three open flutes: Clarabella, Concert Flute and Gross Flute, all similar in scale. The Concert Flute has harmonic trebles. The Kimball strings are high in tin content, low in mouth cut-up and well voiced, in keeping with the builder's reputation for fine strings. They are delicate and bright in contrast to the larger more foundational strings favored later by G. Donald Harrison. The Trumpet and Cornopean are surprisingly bright, very Willis sounding, while the Clarinet is a bit soft. The Vox Humana was the familiar "Vox in a Box," located behind the Swell division in its own enclosure with manually set Swell shades and a separate, comparatively rapid tremolo. Some of the Diapason pipework was slotted, to alter the harmonic content into the more horn-like sound favored by most builders after about 1875.14
The Kilgen Rebuild
By 1930 the original tubular pneumatic key and stop action in the windchests and the lead tubing linkage to the console were obsolete and failing. The Inn then contracted with George Kilgen and Sons to rebuild and update the instrument mechanically and tonally.15 This work, supervised by the West Coast representative of the St. Louis firm, comprised a new console, installing electro-pneumatic primary action in the wind-chests, and adding stops and pipes. A major trend of the times was the use of the 4' coupler on manual divisions to brighten the ensemble in the absence of mixtures and mutations. This required adding chests and pipes to increase the manual compass on the Swell and Choir from 61 to 73 notes. The Pedal was expanded from 30 to 32 pipes. A unit flute, a 16' Lieblich Gedeckt, was added to the Swell, and a large Diapason added to the Choir. The Clarinet on the Great manual was moved to the Choir and replaced with a new French Horn (see stoplist, p. 18). Unfortunately, this new work was poorly placed. For example, the unit flute was located sideways in an alcove outside the Swell enclosure with the sound having to pass through the enclosure and the shutters. It was never satisfactory. Elsewhere, the new material was jammed in so closely and access so difficult that maintenance and tuning were nearly impossible.16
This instrument was introduced at a luncheon on January 19, 1931 before a blue-chip audience of two hundred forty-five musical personalities and southern California newspaper editors personally invited by Frank Miller. House organist Parker began the program with compositions by well-known Los Angeles and Long Beach organists who were present: Prelude and Allegro Quasi Fantasia by Ernest Douglas and A Vesper Prayer by Roland Diggle. The featured performer was the legendary Alexander Schreiner, then organist at both The Mormon Tabernacle and UCLA. After Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor and Ernst Harberbier's Enchanted Bells he played The Flight of the Bumble Bee prompting "an irrepressible burst of laughter and complimentary applause which called for a repetition of the number."17
The Restoration
By the late 1960s the future of the Mission Inn was in grave doubt. Then, in a groundswell of civic pride, The Friends of the Mission Inn, a non-profit support group, was founded in 1969, dedicated to preserving this time-honored monument to their community. It was saved by the combined efforts of The Friends and the far-sighted new owner, Duane Roberts, who committed the funds necessary to secure its future. In 2001 a generous bequest from the estate of Esther Klotz made possible the estimated $140,000 budget for restoring the organ. Roberts enthusiastically endorsed the project. The Friends first approached Ron Kraft, a Lutheran minister and organist, who had serviced organs in the neighborhood for nearly thirty years. But nearing retirement, he declined to assume the task, recommending instead his friend, organbuilder Ed Ballantyne.
Ballantyne (see photo, p. 17), who is also active in his family's marble and tile business, began his labor of love and then professional career in organbuilding in 1985 with the rebuilding and installation of an organ in his Mormon Church in Riverside followed by a similar project at the Ramona High School. Soon the Kimball challenge became a family affair with Ed enlisting the help of his younger brother Wendell and his son Ryan. Added to the team were Steuart Goodwin (q.v.) and Kraft. Of these men only Goodwin had been inside the Mission Inn organ and then many years earlier. When the team first entered the chamber, they encountered rain damage and a heavy layer of soot from the days when smudge pots were used to protect nearby citrus groves from cold weather. Ballantyne recalls: "We'd come out of there looking like coal miners."18
The goal of the two-year project was to return the instrument to its 1911 Kimball profile and update the specification within that paradigm as space and funds permitted (see stoplist). The Kimball windchest action was replaced with Peterson valves and the console rewired with Matters solid-state switching. The twelve-note extension chests on the Swell and Choir were discarded. Experience has shown that extension chests, connected with the main chest by tubing, result in unsteady wind and tuning problems. The Clarinet was returned to the Great division and the French Horn not reused. The Kilgen unit flute, never satisfactory, was eliminated as were the harp and chimes whose actions were defunct. The new individual valves on the windchests afforded unification options enabling Wendell Ballantyne, who figured importantly in the tonal work, to program the Second Diapason, Twelfth, and Mixture on the Great. The unit flutes in the Swell are now composed of pipes from the 16' Bourdon and the 4' Traverse Flute, both well-positioned for tonal egress. The new harp and chimes were sampled from MIDI. A major improvement was adding an independent 4' Octave and 2' Fifteenth to the Great, both unenclosed, adjacent to the 8' Open Diapason behind the façade, resulting in a more cohesive and vibrant ensemble.19
The Rededication
In keeping with the rich traditions of the Mission Inn, it was deemed appropriate that the recital on October 25 be performed by an organist from The Mormon Tabernacle, just as in 1911 and 1931. Drs. Clay Christiansen and John Longhurst, who currently share the position, welcomed the invitation. The music they chose (see program, p. 19) was designed to match the selections played on a pipe organ in 1911 with the restored instrument evoking the nostalgia of a bygone era. Longhurst commented that when they first heard the Kimball, they heard an instrument vastly different from what they were accustomed to: the Aeolian-Skinner in The Tabernacle and the Schoenstein in the Conference Center in Salt Lake City. "I wondered how we'd ever play Bach's Toccata, but decided that if they played it in 1911 we could too."20
Christiansen explained that in 1911 organ recitals featured transcriptions of orchestral pieces, often those linked to Edwin Lemare, "The Great Lemare," whose reputation was built on this music. This was a period when organ music reached the corners of American society that did not have recourse to symphony orchestras. The pipe organ, therefore, enjoyed a very prominent place in the musical landscape of our country. "We chose transcriptions of Waltz of the Flowers and Jesse Crawford's arrangement of Rhapsody in Blue as symbolic of this era. The many delicate stops on this organ--the Clarinet on the Great, for example--suggest a quieter, slower, more refined lifestyle in contrast to the rock concert, loudspeaker sound (and noise) of urban living today."21 By using four hands, he added, --as opposed to two hands--they could have three manual colors speaking at once in addition to the pedal, as well as frequent registration changes.
The program closed with "A Perfect Day." Indeed it was!
Well, this is the end of a Perfect Day,
Near the end of a Journey, too;
But it leaves a thought that is big and strong,
With a wish that is kind and true.
For the mem'ry had painted this Perfect Day
With colors that never fade,
And we find, at the end of a Perfect Day,
The soul of a friend we've made.
For research assistance and critical comments on earlier drafts of this paper the uthor gratefully acknowledges: Ed Ballantyne, Wendell Ballantyne, Clay Christiansen, Marene Foulger, Steuart Goodwin, Frances Larkin, Laurence Leonard, Jim Lewis, John Longhurst, Manuel Rosales, Rene Sturman and R. E. Wagner.
