What are the questions?
An old adage says that the more experience you have in a field, the more you realize how little you know. This thought lurks at the back of my mind, ready to spring forth without notice. You hear a teenager say, “that’s the best movie ever made,” and you wonder how someone so young can be so sure. Then, pain of pains, you are reminded of similar cocksure statements you made when you were young. I knew so much when I was 18, 20, 22 years old that it was hard to imagine there would be more to know. Thank goodness for the inexorable professors who really did know more than I, and for the mentors who encouraged me in what I did know and never failed to point out those that were still mysteries to me. Whispered aside: A colorful and I think underused word in the English language is moil. The American Heritage Dictionary (Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000) gives “intr.v. 1. To toil, slave. 2. To churn about continuously. n. 1. Toil, drudgery. 2. Confusion, turmoil. (Note that moil is part of turmoil—what do you suppose tur means?) With that definition in your minds: I’ve been toiling and moiling (churning, drudgery, confusion) in the organ business since my first lessons as a young teenager and my first experiences in a workshop. There are completed projects and past performances of which I am very proud, and at least as many (God help us there are not more) that I’d like to forget. But that brings us to another most valuable adage: we learn from our mistakes. So as much as we’d like to forget them, we owe it to ourselves to keep their memory fresh lest they be classified as wasted pain. As I work in my shop I hear little voices saying, “if you do that . . . ” When I fail to listen to those voices I cut my finger or break the piece I’m working on. My friends might chuckle and say, “of course he’s hearing little voices—we’ve known that for years.” But the fact is, I think those little voices are the younger me seeing the scar on my hand caused twenty years ago by exactly the same obtuse motion. Those little voices are not signs of going over the edge, but are pearls of wisdom—that elusive and unquantifiable commodity that comes only from experience. And aren’t some of our best learned lessons those that rise from the smoldering coals of our mistakes? The master watches the motions of the apprentice and reaches for the Band-Aids® minutes before they are needed. The parent wishes to be able to spare the child inevitable pain, realizes that advice will not be heard, and has the Kleenex® on the kitchen table an hour before the school bus arrives.
I started by noting that the more you know, the less you know. A cubist view of that statement says that experience in a field reveals more questions than answers. If you really understand the questions, then you are getting somewhere. Often as I write I suppose I’m giving answers, or at least relating my experiences and observations as actualities. This time, I thought I’d give some questions, try to put them in context, and invite you to cogitate and moil over them. As always, I invite your comments:
1. Which is better, tracker or electric action?
I grew up in the heart of the famed Revival, immersed in both new and antique pipe organs, believing tracker action to be the root of all that is good. As a young adult I had wonderful opportunities to work on massive electro-pneumatic instruments and was exposed to brilliant players doing magical things with them. I was startled when I realized that I was preferring the flexibility of fancy registration gizmos and the orchestral possibilities of these wonderful organs. Now I know I’m interested in good organs. As long as an instrument is well-conceived and well-built, it doesn’t make a whit of difference what kind of action it has. What do you think?
2. Why do some historical styles of organs have developed pedalboards and pedal divisions while others don’t?
The organs of 17th- and 18th-century France have simple and awkward pedalboards in comparison to those of northern Europe, and the music written for them reflects that. François Couperin le Grand (1668–1733) and J. S. Bach (1685–1750) were contemporaries—a quick glance shows the difference—most of Couperin’s music is notated on two staves. I’ve written before about the reproduced engraving that hangs over my desk (from l’Art du Facteur d’Orgues, Dom Bedos de Celles, 1766). It depicts a large 18th-century French organ shown in cross-section, with an organist playing. He is wearing a powdered wig (good thing it was tracker action, think of that powder clogging up the keyboard contacts), a heavy formal coat with long tails and buttoned cuffs, an equally heavy vest under the coat, and a sword whose tip was right next to his feet on that primitive pedalboard. A sword? No wonder they didn’t use the pedals. One fast flourish and your feet would be bleeding. Imagine the teacher saying, “Go ahead, take a stab at it.” And, to protect himself from injury he was wearing heavy boots. No Capezios here.
3. How do historical styles evolve?
It’s relatively easy to identify and study the differences between, for example, 18th-century French and German organs, but what caused the development of those differences? Was it the wine? Was it the spätzel?
4. Where did the different pitches of organ stops come from?
There is a simple answer—8' is the fundamental tone, 4' is first pitch of the overtone series, 22?3' is the second, and so on through 2', 13?5', 11?3', 11?7'. 102?3' is two octaves below 22?3' so 102?3' is the second overtone of 32' pitch—that series continues with 8', 62?5', 51?3'etc. The overtone series was perhaps first heard clearly in the tone of a big bell. The experienced listener can hear fifths and thirds clearly in the tone of such organ stops as an Oboe, Clarinet, Krummhorn, or Trumpet—in fact, those stops get their color from those strong overtones. That’s why you can hear the pitch of a Tierce so much more clearly against a reed than against warm and fuzzy Gedackt. (When I’m tuning those stops I have the habit of humming and singing parallel intervals and arpeggios inspired by the overtones —another example of the little voices in my head.) But the real question is how the perception of those overtones in the sound of an organ pipe led the early builders to experiment with creating individual stops that doubled overtones.
5. Is chiff a good thing?
During the aforementioned Revival many organbuilders experimented with “chiff, ” that characteristic chiffy consonant that starts the speech of an organ pipe. Every musical tone has some sort of attack that precedes the vowel of the note, and an organ pipe can be voiced to have lots of chiff or virtually no audible chiff. It’s a matter of personal preference, but if some people like it can it be all bad?
6. How does a modern church justify the cost of purchasing and maintaining a pipe organ?
Hardly an organ committee comes and goes without grappling with this one. A committee member asks, “with all the hunger and suffering in our community, why shouldn’t we use the money for a food pantry?” Our church buildings with their fancy windows, silver chalices, statuary, paintings, and pipe organs are expressions of our faith. Our culture is loaded with examples of historical expressions of faith through art—think of the liturgical music of Mozart and Bach, the sculptures of Michelangelo, the buildings designed by Bernini and Henry Vaughan. Are we better able to fund a soup kitchen from a building that makes obvious to our neighbors the strength of the bonds that tie us together as a community of faith?
7. How does a chestnut become a chestnut?
Given the production cycle of this publication, I am writing in mid-December, these few hours sequestered, escaping the tyranny of commercialized versions of our favorite Christmas carols.
Otherwise, I’m racing around the countryside tuning organs (plenty of opportunity to be humming arpeggios next to Krummhorns). Several of the churches I visit are presenting “Messiah Sings.” Handel’s masterpiece is a fantastic artwork. It’s easy to understand how it would filter down through generations as a perennial international favorite. But it’s very difficult music. The choir members in these churches have no idea how difficult it is. I’m sure they wouldn’t dream of tackling Handel’s Israel in Egypt, another masterwork that’s equally majestic and equally difficult to perform. Why is that?
Many parish organists will agree with my assertion that you could successfully plan and play a thousand weddings, fully pleasing all the families involved, with a repertory of ten pieces. We could all name the same list: Wagner, Mendelssohn, Schubert’s Ave, Jesu Joy, Clarke, Purcell, Stookey (“there is love . . . ”). You play through ten unfamiliar pieces for a bride and groom with no response, and they light up with the first six notes of Jesu Joy (boom-da-da dee-da-da . . . ). It doesn’t matter if you’re in Boston, Seattle, San Antonio, Milwaukee, or London. Why is that?
How many of us look forward to playing those wonderful sassy French noël variations—the ones with the non-existent pedal parts? I see volumes of Daquin and Balbastre on organ consoles all across New England. How many congregants recognize them as seasonal music? We erudite organists associate them with Christmas as readily as reindeer and O, Holy Night. Why is that?
8. Why did it take so long to develop equal temperament?
(Please do not interpret this as an indication of personal preference!)
Equal temperament is the most common system of tuning keyboard instruments and was not commonly used until at least the late nineteenth century. Pythagoras (6th century, BC) is credited with the development of the concept of tempering, of dividing the circle of fifths into the octave, a feat that is technically impossible. If you start on a single note and tune pure fifths around the circle of fifths, when you complete circle returning to C from F, you have nothing like a fifth. So over the centuries, various musicians, mathematicians, and theorists toiled and moiled developing systems that would divide that discrepancy over more and more of the intervals, allowing more of the twelve possible keys to be useful—or usable. The advent of Pythagorean tuning was natural, but I wonder why he or one of his contemporaries didn’t solve the problem by dividing the difference over all the intervals from the very beginning. That would have changed the development of music dramatically.
Some of these questions have real answers. Some of these questions have different answers, depending on whom you ask. I’ve given comments to introduce each of the questions that may lead a reader to deduce that I have an opinion. And those of you that know me personally may be able to read what you know to be my opinions, whether I know them or not. Why is that?
The questions frame the debate. If there’s a debate over a specific question, does it follow that there is no right or wrong answer?
Here’s an exercise that illustrates the elusiveness of correct answers. Take a well-known church building: St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York. Consider two well-known and successful organbuilders, respected for the toil and moil of their respective careers: Ernest Skinner and Taylor & Boody. Imagine what each would consider the ideal organ for the space. Now tell me, who’s right?
