June 2021

Even when measured by expansive Texan standards, First United Methodist Church in Lubbock is extraordinary in scale. The church’s Gothic bell tower is visible from just about anywhere in downtown Lubbock. The church campus sprawls over two city blocks and includes spacious wings for music, Christian education, youth, and even physical fitness. Completed in 1955, the sanctuary seats over 1,800 people, and its spectacular rose window is reportedly among the eight largest in the world.

Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Christ Church, Episcopal, Pelham, New York

The making of Opus 51

Editor’s note: many of the organs mentioned in this article can be found with stoplists and pictures at the website of the Twin Cities Chapter of the American Guild of Organists.

Much has been written about Johann Sebastian Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565, and it seems that everything has been said. The work is considered an outstanding example of stylus phantasticus, a style of composition that encourages rhythmic and harmonic freedom. Effects play a greater role than contrapuntal substance, and in this respect BWV 565 has always been admired.

The life of π

If you have maintained bird feeders, you know what squirrels can do. They are powerful, lithe acrobats, and they can outsmart almost any attempt to deter them. I recognize several individual male gray squirrels in our yard that are strong and agile enough to leap three or four feet from the ground on to the cone-shaped baffles. They shinny up the steel poles, over the tops of the feeders, hang upside down, and gorge themselves.