Decisions, decisions
We are rebuilding an organ. It’s about 90 years old. It has electro-pneumatic action. The main manual windchests have ventil stop action. It has three manuals and 33 ranks. It was built as the “downstairs” organ in a large Roman Catholic church—a common layout for the quintessential huge Catholic parish that allows Masses to be celebrated concurrently. In our work at the Organ Clearing House we’ve been involved in the relocation of quite of few “downstairs” organs as parish leaders find it attractive and useful to redevelop those huge spaces into reception rooms, classrooms, offices, rehearsal space, and of course to create spaces that can generate rental income.
The organ has been purchased by a church that has a strong liturgical tradition and an elaborate music program, located in a big city. Over the course of a year or so, the church’s organist and I developed a plan that includes adding six ranks of pipes and a couple 16′ extensions to existing ranks. Originally the Great and Swell divisions each had two windchests, one for lower pressure, one for higher. The high-pressure Great chest will become the Solo division playable independently on Manuals I and II. Because we will be able to incorporate some good-quality 16′ ranks left from the church’s previous organ, our 39-rank specification will include eight 16′ ranks including three open ranks, two reeds, and three stopped wood ranks. There will be seven ranks of reeds, two on high pressure. The only reed not under expression will be the Pedal Bombarde.
In the last few weeks I have been designing the technical specifications of the project, working with suppliers and our client to make decisions about which materials and which equipment will make up this organ. We have faced quite a few complicated technical choices, and the nature of this project means that there are some philosophical questions to answer.
Restore, rebuild, renovate
It’s easy to say we’re restoring an organ—but I think the word restore is overused. I prefer to use that word literally. When we restore an organ to its original condition we don’t add or subtract any pipes. We don’t introduce modern materials. We don’t even change the color of the felt around the drawknobs. It’s impossible to restore an organ if you’re using a solid-state combination action (unless the organ originally had an identical system!). Using this definition, I’d say there are very few real pipe organ restorations completed in the world today. The argument can be taken so far as to say that a restoration cannot include new trackers (even if the old ones are hopelessly broken)—in other words, literally restoring an organ can result in an instrument that cannot be played.
The word rebuild when used to describe an organ project is much more general and not very limiting—a “rebuild” of a pipe organ is a philosophical free-for-all. We buy or make materials and parts that will “do the job.” We want the organ to perform well, that all the notes work correctly and the tuning is stable. We want the job to be both economical for the client and profitable for the organbuilder, a seemingly oxymoronic goal. But we are not necessarily making an artistic statement.
I prefer the word renovate. It comes from the Latin root “nova” which simply means new. My dictionary gives the word novation as a legal term describing the substitution of a new obligation for an old one—I’m no attorney, but I presume that describes a contract that has been renegotiated or an agreement that has been cancelled and replaced by a new one. In organbuilding, I use the word renovation to describe a project that focuses philosophically on the work and intentions of the original organ builder. It allows for the addition of ranks, especially if the original specification was obviously limited by constraints of space or budget. It allows us to modify an instrument to better suit a new home. And it forces us to make myriad decisions with the ethic of the original instrument in the forefront of our minds.
Our current project is a long way from a restoration. We have chosen to replace large and important components. We are adding several ranks. We are including a sophisticated combination action. We expect that the result will be an instrument with plenty of pizzazz, extensive expressive capabilities, and a wide range of tone color. There will certainly be plenty of bass and fundamental tone. We intend for the console to be welcoming to the player, expecting that the organ will be played by some of our most accomplished organists.
In this and other professional publications, we are accustomed to reading descriptions of completed projects. As I work through this long list of decisions, I thought it would be fun (and useful to my process) to discuss them in broad terms as the project begins.
Adding ranks
If this instrument was originally a “downstairs” organ, I think it’s fair to say that it was a secondary instrument. In fact, the church it came from has a magnificent and much larger organ in the main sanctuary. Our instrument was not decked out with some of the fancy stops that are appropriate, even required for the sort of use it will get in its new home. The voices we’re adding include French Horn, Tuba, and Harmonic Flute. We’re adding a second chorus mixture (there was only one). We’re adding a second Celeste (there was only one). We’re adding 16′ extensions to a soft string and an Oboe, as well as a couple new independent sixteen-footers. Most of these additions are being planned based on the scaling of the rest of the organ. And a couple of the fancier additions will be based on the work of a different organbuilder whose specialty stops are especially prized.
I believe that many additions are made to pipe organs based on nomenclature instead of tone color. If the last organ you played regularly had a Clarion in the Swell, the next one needs one too. I think it’s important to plan additions with your ears rather than your drawknob-pulling fingers. Some specialty stops stand out—an organ with a good French Horn can do some things that other organs can’t. But describing an organ by reciting its stoplist does not tell me what the organ sounds like. An organ without a Clarion 4′ can still be a wonderful organ.
The additions we’ve chosen come from many long conversations concerning what we hope the organ will be able to do. And these additions are intended to transform the instrument from its original secondary character to one suited for all phases of high liturgy and the performance of the organ repertory.
Windchests
Ventil stop action is one in which each rank is mounted over a discrete stop channel. When the stop is off, the organ’s air pressure is not present in the channel. The stop knob controls a large pneumatic valve that allows air pressure to rush in to fill the channel. This is one of the earliest types of pneumatic stop action, invented to allow for the transition away from the slider chests of the nineteenth century. Both electro-pneumatic and tubular-pneumatic organs were equipped with ventil windchests. When they are in perfect condition and perfectly adjusted, they operate quickly and efficiently, but there are some inherent problems.
The nature of the large valve (ventil is the word for a pneumatic valve) means that there’s a limit to how fast the air pressure can enter the stop channel when the stop is turned on, and a limit to how fast the air pressure can exhaust, or leave the channel when the stop is turned off. To put it simply, sometimes a ventil stop action is slow. It’s especially noticeable when you turn off a stop while holding a note or a chord—you can clearly hear the tone sag as the air leaves the channel. Pitman chests introduced the first electro-pneumatic stop action in which the stops are controlled at the scale of the individual note. Turn on a stop, air pressure enters a channel in the Pitman rail, the row of 61 Pitman valves move, and each note is turned on individually and instantly.
Another disadvantage of ventil stop action comes from the fact that electro-pneumatic actions work by exhausting. A note pouch at rest (not being played) has organ air pressure both inside and out. Play the note and the interior of the pouch is exposed to atmosphere. The air pressure surrounding the pouch collapses it, carrying the valve away from the toe hole. In a Pitman chest, a hole in a pouch means a dead note, annoying but not disruptive. In a ventil chest, a hole in a pouch means a cipher, annoying and disruptive. The cause of the cipher is air pressure exhausting from the interior of pouches of stops that are on into the stop channels of stops that are off—the exhausting happens through the holes in pouch leather of stops that are off. It’s easy to diagnose because the cipher will go away when you turn on the stop. In other words, a hole in a pouch in the Octave 4′ will allow the pouches of the other stops to exhaust through it into its empty stop channel. Turn on the Octave 4′ and the Principal 8′ can no longer exhaust that way so the cipher goes away—but the note in the Octave is dead!
With the revival of interest in Romantic music, cathedral-style accompanying, and symphonic organ playing, instant stop action is critical. We have decided to convert the stop action in our instrument from ventil to Pitman.
Console
The console is the place where we’ve faced the most choices. In the early twentieth century, the great heyday of organbuilding, each builder had specific and unique console designs. Each manufactured their own drawknob mechanisms, their own keyboards, their own piston buttons. Each had a particular way of laying out stopjambs. An experienced organist could be led blindfolded to a console and would be able to identify the organbuilder in a few seconds.
Most of those organs were built by companies with dozens or even hundreds of workers. A factory would house independent departments for consoles, windchests, wood pipes, metal pipes, casework, structures, and wind systems. Components were built all around the factory and brought together in an erecting room where the organ was assembled and tested before it was shipped. Today, most organ workshops employ only a few people. There are hundreds of shops with two or three workers, a small number of dozens of shops with between ten and twenty workers, and a very few with more than twenty.
When building small tracker-action organs, it’s not difficult to retain a philosophy of making everything in one workshop. Without distraction, two or three craftsmen can build a ten- or fifteen-stop organ in a year or so, making the keyboards, pipes, action, case—everything from “scratch” and by hand. When building large electro-pneumatic organs, that’s pretty much impossible. Too many of the components must be mass-produced using metal, too many expected functions of such an organ (like combination actions) are so complicated to build by hand, that it’s simply not economical to do it with a “build everything here” philosophy.
That means that a few organ-supply companies provide keyboards, drawknobs, combination actions, piston rails, and other console controls and appointments for the entire industry. It’s something of a homogenization of the trade—just like you buy the same books in a Barnes & Noble store in New York or in Topeka, and a McDonald’s hamburger tastes the same in Fairbanks as in Miami, so the drawknob action is identical in the consoles built by dozens of different firms.
The upside of this conundrum is that the companies that produce these specialized and rarified controls (you can’t go to Home Depot to buy a drawknob motor) have the time and ability to perfect their products. So while the drawknobs we will install in the console for this organ will be the same as those on many organs in that city, they are excellent units with a sturdy old-style toggle feel, beautifully engraved knob faces, and of course, compatibility with today’s sophisticated solid-state combination actions.
This week we placed the orders for new drawknobs identical to the original (we’re expanding from 33 to 60 knobs), drawknob motors and tilting tablets for couplers, new keyslips with many more pistons than the original layout, and engraved labels for indicator lights and the divisions of stops and pistons.
Combination action
It used to be “ka-chunk” or “ka-thump.” One of the factors of that blindfolded test would be pushing a piston. Compare in your mind’s ear the resulting sound in a Skinner console with that of an Austin. If you’re familiar with both builders you know exactly what I mean. The sounds are as distinctly different as are the diapasons of each builder. In many renovation projects, a solid-state combination action is installed to operate the original electro-pneumatic drawknobs—a nice way to preserve some of the original ethic of an organ. But when the specification of an organ is changed as part of a renovation project, it’s not easy to adapt the original knob mechanisms by adding knobs. In fact, it’s typical for there to be plenty of space in a chamber to add all kinds of new ranks, but no way to add the controls to the console without starting over. It’s no good to add a stop to the organ when you can’t include the knob in the combination action.
There are a half-dozen firms that produce excellent solid-state controls for pipe organs. They each have distinct methods, the equipment they produce is consistent, and each different brand or model combination action has myriad features unheard of a generation ago. Programmable crescendos, piston sequencers, manual transfers, expression couplers, melody couplers, pizzicato basses, the list seems endless. Multi-level systems have been with us for long enough that we’re no longer surprised by hundreds of levels of memory.
But when we’re renovating a console, we face the challenge of including lots of new controls for all those, dare I say, gimmicky functions. We build drawers under the keytables so the flashing and blinking lights and readouts are not part of our music-making, and the organists complain that they whack their knees when they get on the bench. We add “up and down” pistons to control memory levels and sequencers. We have bar-graph LED indicators for expression pedals. And we even install USB ports so software upgrades and MIDI sequencing can be accomplished easily. I suppose the next step will be to update a combination action by beaming from your iPhone. It’s easy to produce a console that looks like a science lab or an aerospace cockpit, and it’s just as easy to fall into thinking that the lights, buttons, and switches are more important than the sound of the organ.
It’s our choice to keep the “look” of the console as close as possible to its original design—it is a very handsome console. But keeping that in mind, you will want some modern gizmos close at hand.
There are lots more things to think about. Are we holding up bass pipes with soldered hooks or with twill-tape tied in knots? Are we making soldered galvanized windlines or using PVC pipe or flexible rubber hoses? It’s relatively easy to make a list of all the right choices for the renovation of a fine organ built by a great organbuilder. But the challenge is to retain the musical and artistic qualities of the organ, renovate an organ using the same level of craftsmanship as the original builder and produce an instrument that thrills all who make music and worship with it, while keeping in mind that the future of the pipe organ is ensured by the appropriate balance between artistry and expense. Thoughtful organbuilders face that question every time they pick up a tool.
