New Organs

David E. Wallace & Co. 

Opus 35/35a  (2003 & 2012)

Christ Chapel, Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church,

Atlanta, Georgia

In 1996, organist Mary Ann Dodd began a discussion with organ builder David E. Wallace about the possibility of a practice organ for her home in upstate New York. The project for a new organ was developed over a period of time and was ultimately completed as David E. Wallace & Co. Opus 35 and installed at Mrs. Dodd’s home in Sherburne, New York, in 2003. Sadly, Mrs. Dodd passed away unexpectedly a short time after the organ was installed. Wallace & Co. was asked to find a new home for the two-manual, 16-rank tracker pipe organ.

David Brensinger, organist and choirmaster at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church in Atlanta, Georgia, was considering the idea of a pipe organ for the new chapel that was being planned as part of an extensive addition to the Holy Innocents’ church buildings. Mr. Brensinger found the Dodd organ through the Wallace & Co. “For Sale” website page and considered the organ to be a good candidate for installation in the planned chapel. He was able to visit the Dodd home to try the organ, after which plans were made to purchase the organ for Holy Innocents’.

The organ was designed and built as a free-standing organ and fit under a 12-foot ceiling. In the new chapel at Holy Innocents’, most of the organ was to be located in a chamber and all of the organ’s key and stop action had to fit around two vertical structural steel columns that would be located just inside the organ façade. This required that the façade and keydesk portion of the organ be located on the outer side of the columns and the remainder of the organ take its place in the chamber behind the columns. 

The organ was disassembled and moved from the Dodd residence in the summer of 2012 back to the Wallace & Co. shop in Gorham, Maine. The modifications to the organ were made around a mock-up of the Christ Chapel chamber. The key and stop actions were extended and the wind system was enlarged and relocated to a different position in the chamber outside the main framework of the organ. The side panels for the casework were redesigned and the additional woodwork coverings for the chamber openings were designed and built. 

The organ is fully mechanical. The Trompette is shared between the Swell and Great but can only be played on one manual at a time. The Pedal is a mechanical unit slider windchest allowing the Bourdon to play at two pitches. The original façade design was by James Stillson of Dallas, Texas, and all of the modifications to the organ to allow it to fit into the organ chamber at Holy Innocents’ were designed and completed by Nick Wallace. The Wallace & Co. crew for the relocation of Opus 35 was David Wallace, Nicholas Wallace, Gwen Rowland, and Seth Doyle. 

The organ was delivered and installed at Holy Innocents’ Episcopal Church in October 2012 and completed in time for a community-wide open house for the new facilities. Organist David Brensinger provided a demonstration recital for the organ during the festivities.

—David Wallace

 

David E. Wallace & Co., LLC

147 County Road

Gorham, ME 04038-1916

207/839-7621

[email protected]

www.wallacepipeorgans.com

Viktoria Franken

 

In January 2015, Buzard Pipe Organ Builders dismantled a small practice instrument in an apartment in Minneapolis, Minnesota. (The organ was originally installed on the campus of St. Cloud State College, St. Cloud, Minnesota.) Although nothing seemed to be special up to this point, this instrument is one of several practice/home organs built by Lawrence Phelps & Associates.

The design of this two-manual and pedal instrument served the main idea of an instrument made just for practicing: that of experiencing the direct touch of the keyboards, and the little resistance before the pallet opens. It has a pure and honest “touch” experience for the player, with a simple and traditional design, providing clear music without anything that could take your eyes and ears away. The voicing of course was of its time—“open-toe baroque.” The disposition of the instrument was: Manual I, 8′ Gedeckt and a prepared-for stop; Manual II, 8′ Rohrflute, Octave 2′; Pedal, 8′ Bourdon.

 

The windchest and the trackers

Switching on the organ, still assembled at the former owner’s residence, we heard many ciphers, which could have been caused simply by infrequent use of the instrument. Opening the windchest at the shop, however, showed its real problems. The chest is divided in two manuals, separating each set of pallets with a board drilled out to provide wind-flow. The mechanical design fit a full set of pipes (61 notes) on a chest, but to be able to make the chest as small as possible, led to really tight spacing of the pallet slots. The pallets, made out of cedar, are drilled out to reduce their own weight, and they are pulled down in the middle guided by two pins on each end. They were covered with a thick felt and leather combination and held up to the pallet board with two spiral action springs. Having the pallet slots so close to each other caused the builder to cut the pallets very narrow and almost give them no space on the pallet board to seal. 

Also, the felt and leather had to be cut exactly along the pallet’s edges, because otherwise the pallets would interfere with each other. That caused ciphers and led the people who took care of the instrument to cut even more of the material away, so that some pallets were totally under-cut and not sealing against the pallet slots anymore. The plywood pallet board was uneven, and a lot of pallet guide pins were bent. Our shop stripped all the pallets and glued new felt and leather on, as well as cut them correctly, evened out the surface of the pallet board, and straightened the pins. 

In addition, the whole chest was flooded with glue to make sure there were no run-throughs after finding several cracks in the channel bars where the toeboards were directly attached to the chest. The last modification to make the instrument leak less and make it more silent was switching the old hard plastic seals for neoprene ones, as well as threading the action wire through a drilled-out bullet resting on a felt punching to seal the hole in the pallet box.

The action is historically inspired mechanical tracker, with cedar wood tracker parts, aluminum wires, and plastic nuts. Directly underneath the bottom board is a set of backfalls, directing the movement of the keys to the pallets. To transfer spacing from the keyboard to the pallets, the backfalls are oriented fan-like. It is a 1:1 proportion comparing the pallet travel to the key travel (11 mm). All the damaged cedar backfalls have been restored conserving as much of the original material as possible. The backfalls themselves are pivoted in (at that time popular) low-friction “Wienerkapsel” axle holders. [“Wienerkapsel” is a term for a certain design of axle holders.] The pedal chest, being larger, is located at the bottom of the organ and serves as a foundation for the rest of the instrument. It had fewer issues than the manual chest.  Nevertheless, all pallet surfaces were renewed to guarantee proper working since it is almost impossible to get to these once everything is assembled.

 

The coupling system

Although the organ was designed to be very small overall, Phelps made the console normal size, putting in two 61-note manuals and three couplers (I/P, II/P, II/I). The coupling action also looks to be a standard console with iron frames, iron bevels, levers, and pistons. It uses slotted one-armed backfalls in the frame to catch the aluminum and plastic-nut tracker wires. Unfortunately, calculating the travels of each coupler in combination with the travel of the key and the pallet was not compatible with the small organ design and the console dimensions. That caused a heavy impact upon the rollerboards as well as on the coupling mechanism. All rollerboard parts had to be re-glued because they literally got “kicked out” of place. After recalculating, adjusting and modifying travels, and relocating the bevel points for the backfalls, everything now works as well as it can. All the couplers are playable now, unlike before when notes pulled through or even did not play.

 

The wind system

The blower was sitting in a box on top of the reservoir and right underneath the toeboard for the low octaves of the 8′ Gedeckt and 8′ Rohrflute. There was no way to oil the blower or fix something on the reservoir. So after removing the blower box from the organ, the pedal and manual reservoirs received new leather, and the rhombus springs were adjusted to give them more space to be effective than before (they were so compressed they had no function at all). The blower was serviced and mounted in a new blower box, which sits right next to the case. (The new blower box was made to hold a larger blower, if the organ’s next owner wants to add a 16′ Bourdon to the Pedal.) That makes more space inside, and provides for better maintenance of the blower.

 

The stops

As mentioned earlier, the organ had an 8′ Gedeckt stop and a preparation on Manual I and an 8′ Rohrflute and 2′ Octave on Manual II. The prepared stop for future addition was covered by a board. We took the opportunity to add a 4′ Kleinflute, so that the organist will have more registration possibilities. Only the 4′ and 2′ are on sliders, because the 8′ toeboards are glued directly onto the chest and play all the time. We renewed the stop action parts completely, making new sliders and their actions as well as new seals underneath the 2′ and the newly made 4′ toeboards. Two new hand-turned drawknobs represent on the outside that things have changed. Originally the low octaves of the 8′ stops were tubed off the chest onto a toeboard above the blower box. At some point in the organ’s history, revoicing of the low octaves of the 8′ stops was attempted to make them louder. That caused all kinds of wind flow problems and resulting voicing instability. The only proper way to fix that problem (given the small amount of wind flow from the chest and the too high cut-ups of the pipes) was to build a pneumatic firing-chest, which gets the note impulse from the manual chest, but plays the pipes from wind produced by the pedal reservoir. The pneumatic firing-chest found a place underneath the low octave toeboard, in the former blower box space.

 

The pipework

Being a “child of its time,” the organ’s metal pipes are spotted metal, with open toes and narrow flues but surprisingly large scales, which is not typically baroque, but makes it possible to use the instrument as a house organ without having a screaming 2′ directly in your face. Fortunately there was not too much to do to the pipes, since they were in good condition. Except for some dents, which we removed, nothing really looked too bad. The temperament is equal and A=440 Hz. The Gedackt 8′ voicing was bad. In the attempt to revoice it, pipes were cut up really high to get more volume, not taking into account the lack of wind provided by the chest thanks to the long tubing. The Gedackt 8′ was turned into a 4′ by moving all the pipes down an octave, putting an addition of twelve treble pipes on top, and storing the low octave pipes in a basement, where they were luckily found while moving the instrument to the shop. By putting in the new firing chests, the voicing issues are fixed now; the pipes play on higher pressure than before, helping the high cut-up and therefore bringing the old 8′ back.

Now this instrument provides you with the basic practice conditions as originally intended, and with the new Kleinflute 4′ you have more possibilities for sound and registration variety. There is also the ability to add a 16′ Bourdon in the Pedal if desired.

 

In conclusion

We can honestly say every wire, every pallet, even every single little action nut and all the other smaller and bigger parts have been disassembled, checked for proper work, renewed, or restored. Every inch of the instrument has been worked on without changing what it is—a practice organ. All technical issues were improved as much as possible. We put a lot of passion in this little instrument to make it the practice organ it deserves to be, to show its character and personality. Almost 30 years after Mr. Phelps built it, it is now more ready than ever before to be played without losing the spirit Mr. Phelps designed it for. If you want a glimpse of its sound, visit our website www.buzardorgans.com/for-sale/. Now it is waiting for someone who will fall in love with it and take it home! ν

 

Charles Echols

Charles Echols has a doctor of musical arts degree from the University of Southern California. He is retired from St. Cloud State University (Minnesota), where he taught organ, piano, and music history. In 2016 he edited the first volume of Organ Music of James H. Rogers, published by Wayne Leupold Editions. Raven Records issued a compact disc of his performance of music of Rogers in 2016.

Organbuilder Kevin Christopher Marrin was born in Minneapolis, Minnesota, in 1949, the sixth of seven children. His family called him “Casey,” an Irish nickname drawn from his initials. He also incorporated his initials into his business name, the K. C. Marrin Company.

Marrin’s father was part owner of a small family brass and iron foundry (whose legacy includes 36 miles of ornate street lamps scattered throughout St. Paul, Minnesota). His mother was a naturally gifted vocalist, who before her marriage sang on the road for three years with the Bernie Cummins (big band) Orchestra.

During high school, K. C. boarded at St. John’s Preparatory School in Collegeville, Minnesota, as did his father a generation earlier, part of a long association and friendship with the central Minnesota Benedictine community. Marrin continued at St. John’s University and earned a double major in philosophy and music in 1971. While at St. John’s, he witnessed firsthand the construction of the renowned Abbey Church and other notable academic buildings designed by Marcel Breuer, the modernist Bauhaus architect. 

Marrin was greatly influenced by Brother Hubert Schneider, O.S.B., a member of the St. John’s Benedictine community who worked in the abbey’s woodworking shop for over 60 years. Br. Hubert was a gentle and gifted craftsman who taught as much through his manner of living as by his mastery of craft. Marrin wrote of Br. Hubert: 

 

He was the ideal of a monk who understood what balance in life is about. I asked him if I could help out in the shop and learn woodworking. . . . Brother Hubert had a Shaker-like work ethic—respect for materials, respect for tools, simplicity and honesty in design and execution—qualities that are at the heart of the Benedictine lifestyle as implied appropriately in their motto, Ora et Labora (Pray and Work).

 

Brother Hubert’s mentoring helped Marrin realize that aspiring to be a craftsman, as many of his uncles and aunts had been, could be a fulfilling path to pursue, one especially suitable to his aptitudes and interests.

After graduation, Marrin lived briefly in the rectory of nearby St. Joseph Church in St. Joseph while considering the possibility of becoming a permanent deacon in the Catholic Church. He took a summer job helping two local organbuilders (Eric Fiss, active in Fargo, North Dakota, and Arthur Kurtzman, then active in St. Cloud, Minnesota), who were moving and enlarging the St. Joseph Church’s Wicks organ from a rear balcony location to a cantilevered position behind the altar. This was his introduction into the world of organ building.¹

After work on the St. Joseph organ concluded, Marrin continued briefly with Kurtzman and Fiss, rebuilding local instruments and learning what organ building involved. He then went out on his own, doing service work and tuning. (Eric Fiss died shortly thereafter, but Marrin maintained a lifetime association with Art Kurtzman, who assisted with voicing on many of his instruments.) Marrin’s first project on his own was rebuilding a small Wicks organ in his home parish of St. Boniface, Cold Spring, Minnesota. Just prior to building the St. John’s studio organ, Opus 6, Marrin visited Europe in 1986. Kim Kasling, St. John’s professor of music, then on sabbatical studying with Harald Vogel, guided Marrin to important and interesting organs in Austria and Germany.

As Marrin began to build his own instruments, he endeavored to engage in all aspects of the work himself. Operating a one-man shop was not an ideal business model. This inevitably meant slow production and delivery schedules, as well as under-utilized workspace and equipment, but more importantly for him, allowed time to learn the trade and rediscover older ways of approaching technical problems and to develop hand skills at his workbench.

 

K. C. Marrin Company organs

Opus 1, St. Augustine Catholic Church, St. Cloud (1978)

St. Augustine Church took a chance on Marrin, giving him his first contract to build a new organ. It was completed in 1978, a two-manual, mechanical-action instrument of fifteen stops, balanced key action, and a freestanding oak case. Marrin built the case and winding system, but the pipework and chests came from German supply houses. In recognition of the German heritage of central Minnesota, an inscription was carved around the keydesk: “Zur grösseren Ehre Gottes” (For the greater glory of God).

 

Opus 2, St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud (1979)

Marrin built a one-manual portative organ, with three divided stops (8′ Gedeckt, 4′ Rohrflute, 2′ Principal) and a short octave (C, D, E, F) in the bass, for the music department at St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota. 

 

Opus 3, Sacred Heart Catholic Church, Sauk Rapids (1981)

Marrin built a two-manual, 11-stop organ with suspended-mechanical action and a freestanding white oak case for Sacred Heart Catholic Church. He made his first large windchest, continuing the process of learning to make components in-house. Originally located in a rear balcony, the organ has been moved to a new parish home a few miles away. Strikingly beautiful carvings distinguish the case—the art of the late Joseph O’Connell, regional sculptor and artist. This includes mahogany Brustwerk doors (with Fats Waller and a jazz band of angels surrounded by singing choirboys) and pipe shades (with angels and various musical instruments). A batik tapestry, now removed, created by area artist Judith Goetemann, added a splash of color to the upper case doors.

 

Opus 4, Cathedral of St. Mary, St. Cloud (1982)

The Catholic cathedral in St. Cloud features an excellent acoustic. Marrin’s 27-stop organ is installed in the apse behind the altar and cathedra (bishop’s chair), where it serves as a visual focus to the sanctuary. Positioning the organ high off the floor created a “balcony” for the pipes to speak, and with the help of the curved dome behind, the organ projects a majestic and unified sound efficiently into the nave. A simple timber frame structure carries the weight much like a medieval Blockwerk organ case, a reference to earlier design influences at St. John’s. The case is constructed from over 6,000 board feet of laminated rift-cut white oak (cut at an angle to minimize the grain that is visible). Structural beams were assembled with Br. Hubert’s assistance, and the traditional joinery was cut by hand. 

The organ design employs features new to Marrin’s thinking in 1982, which was in tune with a small group of American builders led by John Brombaugh, who sought to return to earlier organ design principles and building methods. The organ has a 16′ plenum, flexible winding (a single large wedge-shaped bellows supplies wind to the manual divisions), wooden ductwork (with a Great divided on separate bass and treble chests to help stabilize the wind), three “double-draw” stops, high lead-content pipework, Clicquot-style reeds (made by Roland Killinger in Germany), a five-rank mounted Cornet (all open pipes, beginning at tenor G), and unequal temperament (Werckmeister II). Over 200 Catholic bishops, archbishops, and cardinals, gathered for a meeting and retreat at St. John’s Abbey in June of 1982, attended the dedication of the organ.

 

Opus 5, Immaculate Conception Catholic Church, Columbia Heights (1985)

This installation is a 23-stop organ with a Positiv division located on the balcony rail and a partially enclosed Great. In 1987, the organ was joined electrically to an Allen digital organ by another builder. The Marrin organ retains much of its original layout and tonal design. 

 

Opus 6, St. John’s University, Collegeville (1988)

This 22-stop practice and teaching instrument is located in a dedicated room in the music department and has a three-tower case and a graceful ten-degree flare forward at impost level—just enough to distinguish the ornate but playful case design. It includes more of Joseph O’Connell’s work: dozens of wrought-iron figures of Benedictine monks peeking out of the case shadows into the room. Many of the figures resemble living and deceased members of the monastic community—purely coincidence, according to O’Connell. 

 

Opus 7, Gethsemane Lutheran Church, Dassel (1990)

The two-manual, 15-stop tracker organ is positioned on the balcony rail and is playable from the side of the case. The stop knobs connect directly to the ends of the sliders, a concept K. C. observed in a small rural church in northern Germany. Both manual divisions and pedal share a single divided chest. The case has neo-Gothic elements, connecting it to period decorations in this century-old country church.

Opus 8, St. Scholastica Monastery, Duluth (1992)

The organ was installed as part of a renovation project of the monastery chapel. The instrument is positioned in a reformatted library space in a most tasteful and workable way, with suitable height for the organ to develop tonally. It has the appearance of a one-manual organ, with hidden Swell and Pedal divisions in a wall opening behind the case and with the bellows and blower beneath the floor. It has proven to be a flexible liturgical organ that is suitable for the needs of the Benedictine community’s life of prayer and sacred song.

 

Opus 9, Good Shepherd Catholic Church, Golden Valley (1995)

The organ has a central balcony location with limited height, which required positioning the Great in front of the Swell. The mechanical pedal chest permits stops to be played both at unison and an octave above. There are 23 stops housed in a solid mahogany case.

 

Opus 10, St. Augustine Catholic Church, St. Cloud (2002)

Marrin returned to his Opus 1, expanding and relocating it behind the altar, adding a third manual (Swell of 12 stops) and four new Pedal stops (including a 32′ resultant) in towers to the right and left of the old case for a total of 35 stops. The stop action is electric and has a solid-state combination action. 

 

Opus 11, St. Boniface Catholic Church, Cold Spring (2013)

Marrin’s magnum opus is found in his home church, only a half-block from his shop. Forty-four stops are divided between three manuals and pedal, with suspended mechanical key action and electric stop action. Eleven of the stops came from the Eric Fiss organ at St. Mark’s Catholic Church in Shakopee, Minnesota, which Marrin had helped install in 1974. The organ was partially destroyed by fire in 2005.

Opus 11 faces three directions on three chest levels and speaks from a rear-corner of the room. A single-wedge bellows supplies wind to the manual divisions. The 32′ Bourdon extension, located behind the children’s “cry room,” has been known to quiet young children and infants. A 16′ Openbass (wood, in the Pedal), a 16′ Trombone (wood, modeled from a 19th-century Pfeffer organ in Iowa), an 8′ oak Doppelfloete (two mouths), and an independent 11⁄7′ on the Positiv add to the eclectic tonal design. The organ’s tonal spectrum is suitable for most of the standard organ literature. Key cheeks are inlaid with polished granite taken from the Cold Spring quarry. The music rack has a hand-lettered text attributed to St. Teresa of Avila: “Yours are the feet with which He goes about doing good. Yours are the hands with which He blesses us now.”

 

This opus list does not contain other projects and restorations that have filled the time between construction of Marrin’s new instruments. Among these projects are restorations of Jardine (1864) and Joseph Lorenz (1887) organs. For over 40 years Marrin has kept busy in a small shop behind his house, advertising only by word-of-mouth, working as a craftsman, designing, building, and engaging in auxiliary woodworking activities that have kept him active and productive. “Working at home has saved me from three years of commuting on the interstate. No snow days. No excuses for not showing up for work. But time for family, a garden, and Ora et Labora. I have been blessed all around.”

 

Notes

1. Marrin also became engaged that year, and later married Carol Eiynck from nearby Albany, Minnesota. They made their home in Cold Spring, Minnesota, about 12 miles from St. John’s University. Marrin and Carol had two children, Matthew and Annie. Carol died of cancer in 2011. Marrin recently married Anne Studer, a high school and college friend of both Marrin and Carol, adding six more children and seven grandchildren to his family circle.

 

Firsts for Marrin Organs

Opus 1: Mechanical action and slider chests; Embossed display pipe

Opus 2: Short octave; divided keyboard

Opus 3: Hauptwerk (Great) the upper manual, Brustwerk the lower manual; Use of suspended key action; Decorative carvings; Case shutters decorated with batik tapestry

Opus 4: Single large wedge-shaped bellows which supplies wind to the manual divisions; flexible winding; 16′ plenum; 16′ Principal on Great; separate winding for pedal division; first Swell division; use of “double-draw” stop knobs; unequal temperament (Werckmeister II modified); mounted five-rank Cornet beginning at Tenor G; Clicquot-style reeds

Opus 5: Positiv division; partially enclosed Great; Marpurg temperament 

Opus 6: Transmissions from manuals to Pedal; Dom Bedos style tremulant; decorative figures of singing monks cast in wrought iron; Rosignol; Kirnberger III temperament

Opus 7: Key desk on the side of the case; stop knobs attached to the end of sliders

Opus 8: Bellows and blower beneath the floor; full-length resonators for 16′ Trombone

Opus 9: Windchests of Great and Swell at the same level; mechanical Pedal chest permits stops to be played at both the unison and the octave above

Opus 10: First organ with three manuals; first 32′ resultant; first electric stop action and computer-controlled combination action; Crescendo pedal; programmable tremulant; Zimbelstern

Opus 11: Speaks in three directions; electric Swell shutter control; use of salvaged pipes (from St. Mark’s Church, Shakopee, Minnesota); Glockenspiel of 30 cast bells; 32′ Bourdon; stops modeled after successful historical Midwest examples

Michael McNeil

Michael McNeil has designed, constructed, and researched pipe organs since 1973. He was also a research engineer in the disk drive industry with 27 patents. He has authored four hardbound books, among them The Sound of Pipe Organs, several e-publications, and many journal articles.

Preface

Good documentation of organs with enough pipe measurements to permit an analysis of both scaling and voicing is extremely rare. Pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights (cutups) may be sometimes found, but toe diameters and especially flueway depths are rare. Rarer still are wind system data, allowing a full analysis of wind flow and wind dynamics, parameters that have an enormous impact on the sound of an organ. The reader will find all of this in the following essay on William A. Johnson’s Opus 161.

Good documentation is important for several reasons. We can make useful comparisons with other organs to learn how a specific sound is achieved. And perhaps most importantly, we can document the organ for posterity; while organs are consumed in wars and fires, they are most often replaced or modified with the changing tastes of time. They never survive restorations without changes. Comprehensive documentation may also serve to deter future interventions that intend to “modernize” an organ. Lastly, future restorations of important organs will be more historically accurate if they are based on good documentation.

The mid-nineteenth-century scaling and voicing of William A. Johnson is very similar to the late-eighteenth-century work of the English organbuilder Samuel Green, as evidenced by the data from Johnson’s Opus 16 and Opus 161. Stephen Bicknell provides us with detailed descriptions of Green’s work.¹ Johnson’s scaling is utterly unlike the work of E. & G. G. Hook, whose 1843 Opus 50 for the Methodist Church of Westfield, Massachusetts, set Johnson on a career in organbuilding when he helped the Hooks with its installation.² In this essay we will explore Johnson’s Opus 161 in detail and contrast it with the Opus 322 of the Hooks, both of which were constructed within a year of each other.³ While the Hooks used a Germanic constant scale in their pipe construction, Johnson significantly reduced the scale of his upperwork stops, much in the manner of Samuel Green and classical French builders.

The question arises as to whether Johnson came to his design theory by way of a process of convergent evolution (i.e., independently), or whether he was exposed to the organ Samuel Green shipped to the Battle Square Church in Boston in 1792, and which “was played virtually unaltered for a century,” according to Barbara Owen.⁴ The author suggested to Owen that the Green organ may have had a strong influence on Johnson, but she thought it unlikely that Johnson would have made the long trip from Westfield, far to the west of Boston. 

Travel would indeed have been much more difficult in 1843 when Johnson was exposed to the Hook organ at Westfield. But of some significance was the extension of the Western Railroad from Boston to Westfield in 1843. This new railroad may have been the means by which the Hook organ was shipped to Westfield. Elsworth (see endnote 2) clearly makes the case that Johnson was intoxicated by organbuilding with his exposure to the Hook organ. It is easy to imagine that he would have made a pilgrimage to Boston, at the time a mecca of American organbuilding, perhaps invited by the Hooks to accompany them after finishing their installation in Westfield.⁵

The author was engaged in 1976 by Mrs. Gene Davis, the organist of the Piru Community United Methodist Church, to evaluate the organ at that church. The identity of the organ was in question as no nameplate was in evidence on the console, the organ was barely playable, and its sound was greatly muted by the crude placement of panels in front of the Great division to make it expressive by forcing its sound through the shades of the Swell division above it. An inspection showed that nearly all of the pipework was intact, and a contract was signed to restore the organ to playable condition. The organ was cleaned, the pipes repaired, the few missing pipes replaced, and much of the action repaired by Michael McNeil and David Sedlak.

The church office files produced an undated, typed document that stated: 

 

The pipe organ in the Methodist Church of Piru was built by William Johnson, of Westfield, Mass., in the early 1860s, making it probably the oldest operating pipe organ in California. It was a second-hand organ when transported by sailing ship 17,000 miles around Cape Horn before 1900, and installed in a Roman Catholic Church in San Francisco. After the earthquake and fire of 1906, the organ was moved to another church and probably at this time parts damaged in the quake were replaced. After many more years of service it was retired and put into storage until, in 1935, Mr. Hugh Warring was persuaded to purchase it for the Piru church. It was purchased for the storage cost of $280.

Evidence of a different and more likely provenance was discovered during the removal of pipework and the cleaning of the organ. Three labels were found glued to the bottom of the reservoir (perhaps as patches for leaks). Two labels read: “Geo. Putnam ‘Janitor’ Stockton California July 1 ’99.” A third label read: “From the Periodical Department, Presbyterian Board of Publication, and Sabbath = Schoolwork, Witherspoon Bldg, 1319 Walnut St., Phila. PA.” At a much later time Reverend Thomas Carroll, SJ, noticed that the clues of Stockton, California, and the Presbyterian church correlated to an entry in the opus list of Johnson organs, compiled in Elsworth’s 1984 book, The Johnson Organs. Opus 161 was shipped in 1864 to the “Presbyterian Church, Stockton, Cal. The church is Eastside Presbyterian.” The organ was listed as having two manuals and 22 stops.⁶ At this time such features as couplers and tremulants were counted as “stops,” and this roughly fit the description of the Piru organ. The façade of the Piru organ is also consistent with the architecture of organs built by Johnson in the 1864 time frame. Elsworth’s illustrations include a console layout of Opus 200 (1866) virtually identical to the Piru organ layout; Opus 134 (1862) exhibits the impost, stiles, and Gothic ornamentation of the Piru organ; Opus 183 (1865) has similar pipe flats and also the console layout of the Piru organ.⁷ Many other details verified the Johnson pedigree, among them the inscription “H. T. Levi” on the reed pipes. Barbara Owen pointed out that Levi was Johnson’s reed voicer during the time of manufacture of Opus 161.⁸ The pieces of evidence fell together when Jim Lewis discovered a newspaper photo of Opus 161 in the Eastside Presbyterian Church of Stockton that matched the façade of the Piru organ. The most likely scenario is that Johnson shipped Opus 161 directly to that church. The Gothic architecture of the Johnson façade also reflects the architecture of the Eastside Presbyterian Church façade. A handwritten note on the Piru church document stated: “Pipe organ and art glass memorial windows dedication June 2, 1935 per Fillmore Herald May 31, 1935, a gift of Hugh Warring.”

It is possible that the organ went from the Presbyterian church into storage, and was later moved to its present location in the 1934–1935 time frame. Even so, we can say with nearly absolute certainty that this organ is William A. Johnson’s Opus 161.

 

Tonal design overview

It is obvious from even a casual glance at Elsworth’s study of Johnson organs that the Johnson tonal style was based on a classical principal chorus that included mixtures in all but the more modest instruments. But the voicing style is gentle and refined, and bears great similarity to the late-eighteenth-century English work of Samuel Green, whose meantone organ at Armitage in Staffordshire is an excellent surviving example.⁹ Tuned in meantone, Johnson Opus 161 would easily pass muster as the work of Green. The tonal contrast between Green and Hook is stark, and the Hook data serve as an excellent counterpoint to the data from the Johnson organ. Green was the organbuilder favored by the organizers of the Handel Commemoration Festival of 1784, who went so far as to have one of Green’s organs temporarily installed in Westminster Abbey for that occasion. King George III paid Samuel Green to build an organ for Saint George’s Chapel at Windsor.

Stephen Bicknell’s The History of the English Organ relates important details of Samuel Green’s work that we find in Johnson’s Opus 161. “. . . Green’s voicing broke new ground . . . . Delicacy was achieved partly by reducing the size of the pipe foot and by increasing the amount of nicking. The loss of grandeur in the chorus was made up for by increasing the scales of the extreme basses.”¹⁰ And “Where Snetzler provided a chorus of startling boldness and with all the open metal ranks of equal power, Green introduced refinement and delicacy and modified the power of the off-unison ranks to secure a new kind of blend.”¹¹ The Hooks, like Snetzler, used a constant scale where all of the pipes in the principal chorus at a given pitch had about the same scale and power.

The most basic data set for describing power balances and voicing must include, at a minimum, pipe diameters, widths of mouths, heights of mouths (“cutup”), diameters of foot toe holes, and depths of mouth flueways. The data in this essay are presented in normalized scales for inside pipe diameters, mouth widths, and mouth heights. Tables showing how raw data are converted into normalized scales may be found in the article on the E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322 published in The Diapason, July 2017. The full set of Johnson data and the Excel spreadsheet used to analyze them may be obtained at no charge by emailing the author.¹² Also available is the book The Sound of Pipe Organs, which describes in detail the theory and derivation of the models used in this essay.¹³

 

Pitch, wind pressure, and general notes

The current pitch of the Johnson and Hook organs is dissimilar and should be taken into consideration when observing the scaling charts. The Hook organ is now pitched at A=435.3 Hz at 74 degrees Fahrenheit, while the Johnson organ is now pitched at 440 Hz. The original pitch of the Hook organ was 450 Hz; new low C pipes were added when the pitch was changed to 435 Hz, and the original pipework was moved up a halftone, widening its scales by a halftone. The original pitch of the Johnson organ was approximately 450 Hz; the pipes were lengthened to achieve a lower pitch.¹⁴ The Hook and Johnson organs are both tuned in equal temperament. The wind pressure, water column, of the Hook is 76 mm (3 inches); the Johnson organ was measured at 76 mm static and 70 mm under full flow on the Great division. The pressure was reduced during the restoration to 63 mm static. This allowed the pitch of the pipes to drop, making the adjustment to 440 Hz with fewer changes to the pipe lengths; most of the pipes that were originally cut to length had been crudely pinched at the top to lower their pitch. With the reduction in pressure the ears of the 4′ Flute à Cheminée, with its soldered tops, achieved a more normal position. 

The Piru room acoustic was reasonably efficient, and while the Johnson voicing is very restrained, it was adequate to fill this room on the reduced pressure. The Piru church seats 109, has plastered walls, wood and carpet flooring, and a peaked ceiling about 30 feet high; the reverberation, empty, as heard with normal ears, is well under one second (this is not the measurement used by architects that erroneously reports much longer reverberation). Elsworth relates that “the wind pressure which Johnson used during this period was generally between 21⁄2 and 23⁄4 inches [63.5 and 70 mm], and, in rare examples, nearly 3 inches [76 mm].”¹⁵ The photograph of the original Eastside Presbyterian Church for which the Johnson was designed implies a larger acoustical space than that of the Piru church.

The compass of the Johnson organ is 56 notes in the manuals, C to g′′′, and 27 notes in the pedal, C to d′.

 

Stoplist

The Johnson console was found in poor condition, missing the builder’s nameplate and many of its stop knob faces. Correct stop names were derived from the markings on the pipes and the missing faces were replaced. The original stoplist is reconstructed as follows (Johnson did not use pitch designations):

GREAT

8′ Open Diapason

8′ Keraulophon

8′ Clarabella

4′ Principal

4′ Flute à Cheminée (TC)

22⁄3′ Twelfth

2′ Fifteenth

8′ Trumpet

SWELL

16′ Bourdon (TC)

8′ Open Diapason

8′ Stopped Diapason

8′ Viol d’Amour (TF)

4′ Principal

8′ Hautboy (TF)

Tremolo

PEDAL

16′ Double Open Diapason

 

Couplers

Great to Pedal

Swell to Pedal

Swell to Great

 

Blower signal

The above list adds up to 20 controls. The Johnson company opus list describes Opus 161 as having 22 “stops.” This may have reflected the original intention to supply the organ with stops having split basses, which are commonly found in Johnson specifications. The sliders for the Keraulophon and the Trumpet were found with separate bass sections from C to B, professionally screwed together with the sections from tenor C to d′′′. The two additional bass stops would account for a total of 22 “stops.” There are no extra holes in the stop jambs to indicate the deleted split bass stop actions. The extant stopjambs are apparently a later modification from the time of the installation at Piru or before. Elsworth noted that all Johnson organs of this period were constructed with square stop shanks.¹⁶ The current shanks are round where they pass through the stopjambs and are square where they connect to the stop action.

Several stop knobs were switched during the 1935 installation at Piru; e. g., the Viole d’Amour in the pre-restoration photo of the right jamb belongs in the position noted on the left jamb with the black plastic label “Bell Gamba,” which indeed is how this stop was constructed. The Swell Stopped Diapason was operated by a knob labeled “Principal” [sic]. The illustrations of the left stopjamb and right stopjamb diagrams provide the correct nomenclature as restored in the correct positions, with the incorrect 1935 nomenclature in parentheses ( ) and the correct pitches in brackets [ ].

 

The wind system

The wind system can be modeled from two viewpoints: the restriction of flow from the wind trunks, pallets, channels, and pipe toes; and the dynamics of the wind. Wind dynamics are fully explained in The Sound of Pipe Organs and are a very important aspect of an organ’s ability to sustain a fast tempo with stability or conversely to enhance the grand cadences of historic literature. The data set on the Johnson allows us to model all of these characteristics. Figure 1 shows the Johnson wind flow model.

In Figure 1 we see a table of the pipe toe diameters and their calculated areas; values in red font are calculations or interpolations from the data (e.g., wood pipe toes are difficult to measure when they have wooden wedges to restrict flow). These areas are measured for a single note in each octave of the compass.

A model for the total required wind flow of the full plenum of the organ assumes a maximum of ten pallets (a ten-fingered chord), as described in the table, and the flow is multiplied by the number of the pallets played for each octave in the compass. The sum of the toe areas of all ten manual pallets in the tutti is 5,057 mm². The total area of the manual wind trunks is 38,872 mm², and we see that the wind trunks afford 7.7 times more wind than the tutti requires, so much in fact that the trunks do not at all function as an effective resistance in the system.

Interestingly, the Isnard organ at St. Maximin, France, used the main wind trunk as a strong resistor to dampen Helmholtz resonances in the wind system, and that organ has ratios of wind trunk area to a plenum toe area of only 1.07 for the coupled principal chorus of the Grand-Orgue and Positif, but with no reeds, flutes, or mutations. Helmholtz resonances are the source of what is normally called wind shake, and we would expect some mild wind shake with the Johnson’s large wind ducts and low damping resistance. The author’s notes from 1976 state: “Very little sustained shake . . . a considerable fluctuation in pitch when playing moderately fast legato scales, which stabilizes very rapidly . . . this imparts a shimmer . . . .”

In Figure 1 we also see dimensions of the key channels, pallet openings, and the pallet pull length (estimated from the ratios in the action). These allow us to calculate the relative wind flow of the channels and pallets. We find that there are robust margins in wind flow from the channels to the pipe toes (244% at low C to 737% at high C on the Great). This accounts for the small drop in static pressure at 76 mm to a full flow pressure of 70 mm with all stops drawn. Pallet openings are less robust and flow about 100% of the channel area for the first three octaves and 190% in the high treble.

The underlying dynamics of a wind system are the result of the mass of its bellows plate and the volume of air in the system. These factors produce a natural resonance that can enhance the grand cadences of literature with a long surge in the wind, or it can produce a nervous shake if it is too fast. A grand surge in the wind is characterized by a resonant frequency of less than 2 Hz (cycles per second), and it is most often produced by a weighted bellows. A nervous shake results from a sprung bellows. We correct the latter condition with small concussion bellows in modern organs, but the Johnson organ does not have such devices; instead, it features only a large, weighted, double-rise bellows. 

We can model the dynamic response of an organ by using its wind pressure, the area of the bellows plates, and the combined internal volume of its bellows, wind trunks, and pallet boxes. The model in Figure 2 shows the dynamic response of the current Johnson wind system at a relaxed 1.61 Hz. This low resonant frequency drops further to 1.47 Hz when the pressure is raised to its original value of 76 mm. The author’s notes from 1976 state: “Light ‘give’ on full organ; relatively fast buildup to full flow.” That “light give” is the result of the low resonant frequency of the system. The resonant frequency of the Hook organ was modeled at 1.23 Hz, a value lower than the Johnson, and the Hook chorus does indeed exhibit a slower and grander surge on full organ. Figure 3 shows the modeled resonant frequency at the original pressure of 76 mm for the Johnson organ. The equation for modeling the resonant frequency of a wind system along with a worked example on the 1774 Isnard organ at St. Maximin may be found in The Sound of Pipe Organs, pages 99–113.

 

The wind system in pictures

See the accompanying pictures: Notebook sketch 1, Great windchest, Toeboard, Notebook sketch 2, Notebook sketch 3, Notebook sketch 4, Great pallet box, Pallet springs, Notebook sketch 5.

 

The layout in pictures

“Green’s organs stand on an independent building frame with the case erected around it, rather than being supported by the structure of the case itself.”¹⁷ Bicknell’s description of a Samuel Green organ applies equally well to this Johnson organ. The casework is built entirely of black walnut, a wood mentioned by Elsworth in reference to Johnson cases. The organ is situated within the front wall of the church. The original black walnut side panels (typical of early Johnson organs) were found crudely cut up and nailed behind the façade in an effort to make the whole organ expressive through the Swell shades. This had the effect of making the Great division sound like a diminutive Echo division. The typical layout of a Johnson organ is well described by Elsworth: “The framework was arranged to carry the chests of the Great organ and the supporting framework for the Swell, which was usually above the Great organ and slightly to the rear.”¹⁸ Such layouts, shown in Figure 4, are common in nineteenth-century American organbuilding. The walkway behind the Great allowed access to the pipes and pallets placed at the rear of that chest, and the rollerboard to the Swell division was normally placed just behind this walkway, allowing access to the Swell pallets that were placed at the front of the Swell windchest. Opus 161 was installed in an opening in the Piru church that was far too shallow to allow the depth of a rearward placement of the Swell division. 

As a result, there is evidence that the Swell windchest may have been reversed, placing its pallets to the back of the windchest, and the chest brought forward over the Great division. Note the lack of clearance between the 4′ Principal pipe and the bottom of the Swell chest in Figure 5. The internal framework shows signs of crude saw cuts; the order of the notes on the Swell chest is the same as the Great, but it is reversed; the Swell rollerboard appears to have been likewise reversed and now faces toward the walkway where the action and rollers are exposed to damage. 

To say that the Piru layout was cramped would be an understatement; no one weighing over 150 pounds would gain access to the pipes for tuning or to the action for adjustment without damaging the pipework or the key action. The author weighed less (at the time) and was barely able to navigate inside the organ. The current layout is shown in Figure 6. 

It is also possible that the current layout reflects the original layout by Johnson, but that the Swell was simply lowered to fit the height of the Piru church and brought forward to fit the limited depth available, reducing the depth of the walkway.

Notes and credits

All photos, drawings, tables, and illustrations are courtesy of the author’s collection if not otherwise noted. Most of the color photos were unfortunately taken by the author with an inferior camera in low resolution. David Sedlak used a high quality camera, lenses, and film to produce the high-resolution color photos of the church and its architectural details; these are all attributed to Sedlak.

1. Stephen Bicknell, The History of the English Organ, Cambridge University Press, 1996, Cambridge, pp. 185–187, 190–191, 207.

2. John Van Varick Elsworth, The Johnson Organs, The Boston Organ Club, 1984, Harrisville, p. 18.

3. A detailed study of the E. & G. G. Hook Opus 322 may be found in The Diapason, July, August, and September issues, 2017.

4. Barbara Owen, The Organ in New England, The Sunbury Press, 1979, Raleigh, pp. 18–19.

5. see: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_and_Albany_Railroad.

6. The Johnson Organs, p. 100.

7. Ibid, pp. 23, 50, 57, respectively.

8. The Organ in New England, p. 275.

9. 5 Organ Concertos, 1984, Archiv D 150066, Simon Preston, Trevor Pinnock, The English Concert.

10. The History of the English Organ, p. 185.

11. Ibid, p. 207.

12. McNeil, Michael. Johnson_161_170807, an Excel file containing all of the raw data and the models used to analyze the Johnson Opus 161, 2017, available by emailing the author at [email protected].

13. McNeil, Michael. The Sound of Pipe Organs, CC&A, Mead, 2012, 191 pp., Amazon.com.

14. The Organ in New England, p. 75.

15. The Johnson Organs, p. 25.

16. Ibid, p. 23.

17. The History of the English Organ, p. 187.

18. The Johnson Organs, p. 23.

 

To be continued.

David Engen

David Engen holds degrees in organ from St. Olaf College and the University of Iowa, and a master’s degree in software engineering from the University of St. Thomas. He has been in the organ business since 1970. He is currently president of Grandall & Engen LLC in Minneapolis where he shares duties with vice-president David Grandall.

We first saw the much-altered 1875 Steer & Turner organ at First Baptist Church in downtown St. Paul, Minnesota, in 2003. There were dead notes, some pipes were leaning and about to fall over, the pedal wiring included a number of jumper cables as well as dead notes, and the stoplist was somewhat bewildering. The combination action was slow and made a lot of noise. We began researching the organ’s history; it was full of twists and turns driven by technology, resulting in an organ significantly smaller and less versatile than its original design. Steer & Turner had originally built a tracker-action organ in Springfield, Massachusetts, yet here was an organ on electric pitman chests, with a Möller console, behind the original 16′ façade. (Regarding spelling: Steer added the final “e” to his name around 1880–90, thus becoming Steere.)

Most bewildering was the presence of the bottom half of a splendid 16′ Open Wood Diapason, which did not play. It was looming in the shadows, difficult to see. The entire top octave and a half was missing. In the Great we found a three-rank mixture on a four-rank toeboard. The Swell mixture was missing entirely. The Choir was based on an 8′ Koppelflute, which was obviously not part of the original 1875 design, and it was paired unsuccessfully with a wood harmonic Melodia as a celeste.

As we dug further we located documentation that outlined the gradual shrinkage that took place over time. The original 41-rank organ, dedicated by Clarence Eddy to a full house on May 26 and 27, 1875, had shrunk to 31 ranks by 2003. The treble half of the 16′ Open Wood, along with its windchest, was found in the basement near the blower. Next to the pile of pipes was a waterlogged box containing much of the original Great Mixture IV, with many spurious pipes that clearly were not part of the original. Some treble harmonic flutes (tapered) in the Swell had been cut in half at the hole; the Swell 4′ Principal had been moved to 2′ and played from the 4′ drawknob; the bottom five pipes of the Celeste were missing. The Dulciana and Unda Maris had been switched at tenor C. We found Great Diapasons in the Swell and Swell Diapasons in the Great! There was an octave of 4′ diapason pipes nested and lying on the floor under the Great, along with a rat’s nest of unit pedal wiring that included several clip leads. 

What had happened here? Did someone try to turn this organ into something it was never designed to be? And why did it shrink? The entire original mechanism was gone. Besides the original stoplist, how could we tell what Steer & Turner had originally built?

 

A “sister” organ

Just 100 miles away, in the motherhouse chapel of the School Sisters of Notre Dame in Mankato, Minnesota, is the 54-rank William Johnson organ built in Westfield, Massachusetts, in 1877. John Wesley Steer(e) (1824–1900) was a protégé of William A. Johnson. It would be reasonable to suspect that these two organs share some amount of common DNA, just a few miles apart. Indeed, the Clarinets in each organ are both flared, and there are other similarities in pipe construction and stoplist. 

The Johnson was originally installed at St. Mary of the Sacred Heart Catholic Church in Boston. It was a tracker-action organ, but W. W. Laws added electro-pneumatic pull-downs in 1922, supplying a detached console. In 1975 the organ was moved from Boston to Mankato, and in 1995 Dobson Pipe Organ Builders of Lake City, Iowa, did extensive restorative work. They took it back to the 1922 state by removing non-original ranks, restoring the wind system with two large weighted reservoirs, and adding a new console that references an earlier style. The Johnson has undergone fewer changes than has the Steer & Turner, so the Johnson can inform us about the original layout of the First Baptist organ. The Johnson Great is immediately behind the 16′ Great Diapason façade, with the unenclosed Solo behind the Great. The huge Swell is above, with the diatonic pedal split on each side. It remains on its original slider windchests from 1877. The 16′ façade consists of zinc pipes for the Great. There is a large 16′ Open Wood Diapason against the back wall, along with a 16′ wood string.

 

A history of shrinkage

Like the Johnson, the Steer was electrified, but not until 1939. Arthur Fellows added pull-downs on the tracker chests along with a new Reisner electric console. This of course retained the original slider windchests and the original specification, but with electric action it must have been much easier to play. Just 19 years later, in 1958, the entire mechanism of the original organ was discarded. New chambers were built behind the façade with walls made of 2x4s, some sheetrock, and a great deal of ¼″ Masonite. New Durst pitman windchests replaced the originals, and the entire layout was changed. Reservoirs were added for each division. Work was done by J. R. Gould of St. Paul. All divisions were enclosed, with Great and Choir (changed from a presumably unenclosed “Solo”) side by side behind the façade impost, with the Swell above. The Pedal became a unit affair, with its pipes spread on both sides. It was at this time that the original stenciling was most likely painted over with gold. The sound of the original organ was modified to adhere to the ideals of the late 1950s. The dedication was played November 1, 1959, by Frank Steinhauser, organist of the church.

In 1962, the 23-year old 1939 Reisner console was replaced with a large pneumatic Möller console made of walnut, funded through memorial gifts from the Brandenburg family. The Reisner console had been at the side of the loft, but the Möller console was placed at the middle of the loft, where it remains today. It had a full complement of 16′ and 4′ couplers, which, of course, had not been in the original instrument.

In 2000, Steve Lethert made further modifications. Perhaps of most benefit was new leather on some of the reservoirs and the addition of lighting throughout. The Mixture III was removed from the Swell, and its toeboard was converted into a walkboard to allow for tuning access, previously almost impossible. The Great Mixture IV was placed in a box in the basement, and the higher-pitched Swell Mixture was moved to the Great. The 16′ Open Wood was disconnected and its treble chest and pipes were moved to the basement where we found them. The organ continued to shrink.

The 8′ strings in the Swell had been rescaled. The original 8′ Salicional was rescaled by four notes, with extra pipes fitted in at tenor C. The bottom octave remains the original Steer & Turner scale. The Voix Celeste, which was evidently added in 1958 (the pipes are clearly not original), was enlarged by five notes, and the chest holes for tenor C through tenor E were plugged so the celeste started at tenor F. We found the original Choir Dulciana had been exchanged with the Choir Unda Maris (added in 1958?) from tenor C to the top. Again, the pipes of these two ranks date from different periods.

 

Historic preservation grant

In 2013–14 we undertook mechanical and tonal renovation, funded through a grant from the State of Minnesota for historic preservation. Our overriding philosophy was to attempt to return the organ as much as possible to its original specification within the restrictions of the 1958 electric windchests. The primary tasks were to (1) restore the 16′ Open Wood Diapason to the Pedal, (2) restore the Mixture IV to the Great, and (3) restore the Mixture III to the Swell. In addition, we returned pipes to their original locations, replaced missing pipes, and placed replicas where any pipes had been cut off or otherwise damaged. The 1875 organ had 58-note keyboards and a 27-note pedal. All original ranks thus have mongrel pipes to fill out the range to 61/32. Our unending thanks go to
A. R. Schopp’s Sons for making the needed pipes. We also did the mundane work of replacing packing leather on wood pipes, cleaning, adding tuning slides to damaged pipes, repairing and painting the plaster on the chamber back walls, and regulating all of the pipes.

When we opened the box of pipes for the Mixture IV we found a combination of original pipes along with other pipes with grossly mismatched scale and construction. It was impossible to reconstitute what was there without discarding the extra pipes and starting from scratch to define the original composition. This was difficult since all pipe labels were scribed by hand with a florid script that was very difficult to read. Through a process of elimination we figured out what was missing and needed to be reproduced. One curiosity in the original scaling is that all of the quint ranks are scaled much smaller than the unisons. In fact, each quint is approximately the same diameter as the next smaller unison on the same note. The resulting Mixture IV works perfectly with its chorus on the Great, giving rise to the question of why this stop was modified and then discarded. Steer & Turner clearly knew what they were doing!

In the Swell we found that the pipes of the 8′ Open Diapason from tenor C to the top were actually the pipes for the 4′ Octave on the Great, and the Great 4′ Octave formed the upper part of the Swell Diapason. The pipes on the floor under the Great windchests were found to be the bottom octave of the Swell 4′ Geigen Octave, which in turn had been moved to 2′ in the absence of the Mixture. We built a new three-stop chest for the Swell to hold the 8′ Vox Humana, the 2′ Flautino (which we moved here from the Choir), and the Mixture III, moved back to its original home from the Great. The 4′ Harmonic Flute has a stopped wood bottom octave, a few notes of open wood Melodia pipes, and then the pipes are tapered double-length lead. (These are original, yet the original stoplist describes them as wood.) The pipes for the top several octaves had been shortened from harmonic to natural length, so these were replicated by Schopp’s, and we now have the full harmonic flute running to the top. It is one of the most charming voices in the organ.

The top end of the wood 8′ Stopped Diapason had a few original tapered lead pipes mixed with a group of miscellaneous diapasons. Again, Schopp’s replicated the pipes so this rank is now contiguous. It has a progressive scale such that the treble wood pipes are of very narrow scale, giving the stop a bit of a Coke-bottle sound. The basses are of standard scale for a manual 16′.

The Choir also presented some challenges. Clearly the 8′ Koppelflute had to go since this was not a voice used in nineteenth-century American organs. Its tone was completely out of character with the rest of the organ. We acquired a Möller wood Stopped Diapason, which has proven to be the perfect foundation for the Choir. The Flute Celeste was marked 8′ Melodia (although it is not shown in any original stoplist), with harmonic wood trebles. This may have been the original 8′ Flauto Traverso, but there was no room for it at 8′ and the bottom octave was missing. We used it as the 2′ Flageolet with new harmonic metal trebles from Schopp’s.

The Dulciana and Unda Maris had been exchanged from tenor C to the top. We switched them back so the original Steer & Turner pipes can again be heard from bottom to top as a lovely Dulciana, with 1958 pipes as the Unda Maris. There are two tenor C stops on this chest—used for the Unda Maris and the Flute Celeste. With the Flute Celeste pipes moved to the 2′ position, we had a tenor C stop available. We do not know what this was in the 1958 rebuild, so we took the opportunity to add a Cornet II, which was not on the original organ but is a useful solo voice.

The original Great Trumpet, Swell Cornopean, and Pedal Fagotto are long gone, and there is no room on the Durst chests for them. We “restored” the Great Trumpet electrically by making the Swell Trumpet available on the Great. Should the church ever wish to restore this trumpet, there is room to add the pipes on a new chest; the stop knob can easily be rewired to play it. 

The console was gutted and new electric components replaced the pneumatic. It now has Syndyne draw knobs, relay, and a combination action with multiple memory levels and a transposer. Swell motors were replaced with new Peterson motors, and instead of 45 degrees the shutters now open a full 90 degrees.

In returning much of the organ back to the (almost) original tonal design, we also opted to restore the original stop names and remove the sub and super couplers that were never part of the original concept. The idea for the 102⁄3′ Quinte in the Pedal was borrowed from the Mankato Johnson.

 

Aftermath

This project took a long time. We attempted to keep the organ partially playable as we focused on each division. A number of components took longer to deliver than we’d anticipated, and holiday tuning season interrupted construction. With the Minnesota state grant, there was a 2014 completion requirement.

Returning the stoplist (mostly) to the original design has been a revelation. The organ today is vastly more versatile than it was before we started. The net increase of eight ranks played a large part. Restoration of the Great Mixture, at its lower pitch, has given the division more gravitas. In hindsight I wish we had removed the Masonite walls to give its chamber better reflection into the room. Removal of the swell shades improved egress, and nobody has missed them.

In the room, the organ is far from loud, although the sound is very full and robust. The ceiling is not covered with wood, but apparently with some sort of absorbent material, probably invented and added after the original construction to reduce reverberation.

Another question is wind pressure. Today the entire organ is on 4″, but we found a number of pipes coughing and belching, especially in the Pedal. This leads us to suspect that the original pressure was less than 4″. A higher pressure was probably a concession to the pitman chests and the new reservoirs in 1958. Were the pipes revoiced for a higher pressure? There is no evidence of cutup changes, but many toes were badly damaged. In some cases they barely sat in the chest holes. A few of the 8′ zinc pipes needed new lead toes. We may never know for sure what happened with the pressure.

The Choir now has a lovely minor chorus and some delightful flute colors. The Dulciana and Unda Maris combination, with shutters that now close and open completely, is appropriately ethereal. The Clarionet, with its flared resonators, is one of the best clarinet voices we’ve ever heard.

Whereas the Swell was overly heavy with 8′ stops in relation to upperwork before we started, restoration of the 4′s and the 2′ along with the Mixture has made this division bloom and given it great versatility. The 4′ Violina has the effect of a super coupler to the strings, but is more successful. The original Oboe/Bassoon is a lovely and dark voice without being too soft—a perfect foil to the Clarionet. The 1958 trumpet is out of character with the other voices. The restored 4′ Harmonic Flute, with its tapered pipes, is one of the most beautiful stops in the organ. The mixture sits nicely on top of the restored 8′ and 4′ diapasons.

The restored 16′ Open Wood Diapason needed to be regulated softer than it was when we “turned it on” again—the original pipes are cut fairly low, and they were coughing. At a softer level they produce a fairly dull purr with a power that you can hear through the walls and down the hallway. Likewise, the 16′ Bell Gamba was pushed too hard, and at a softer level it has a lovely, fast speech that imparts a slight stringiness in the bass. Though its pipes are zinc and have the compound conical shape of the bell gamba, in effect it is very much like the wood Violone on the Mankato Johnson. We lament the loss of the Pedal 8′ Fagotto in the 1958 rebuild, along with the Great Trumpet and the Swell Cornopean.

In many ways the final result has been surprising. The organ is far more versatile and holds some really lovely combinations and solo voices, yet the room does not help it very much. It is now evident that the introduction of current technology over its life degraded the organ tonally while making it physically easier to play. Even though First Baptist Church sits at the confluence of several freeways and the blower draws in polluted air, the 56-year old leather in the wind chests is still in good condition. The “resurrected” organ should serve this church and the Twin Cities community well for many decades to come.

David Fienen

David Fienen is Emeritus Professor of Music at Gustavus Adolphus College, St. Peter, Minnesota. At Gustavus, he was Cantor at Christ Chapel, taught organ, music theory, chaired the music department, and served as provost and dean of the college his last two years before retirement.

Sitting under a shade tree in his backyard last summer, sipping iced tea with Charles and Birgitta Hendrickson, I asked him about his philosophy of organ building. His immediate answer was, “If I can make them [the congregation] sing, I have succeeded.” To make them sing—what a fine goal!

 

First a physicist

Minnesota native Charles Hendrickson grew up in Willmar, Minnesota, where his father had a law practice. During Charles’s young years, his father, Roy, was also chair of the board of trustees at Gustavus Adolphus College (Roy’s alma mater) in St. Peter, Minnesota, from 1945–53. After Roy passed away in 1954, Charles’s mother, Frances, was hired as secretary to President Edgar Carlson at Gustavus from 1955–ca. 1967. Charles had already started his college career at Gustavus, and now the rest of his family moved to St. Peter. In 1957, Charles graduated from Gustavus with a Bachelor of Arts degree in physics and mathematics. It is interesting that he is not the only organbuilder with a physics background—Charles Fisk worked for Robert Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project before he began building organs.

After college, Hendrickson started graduate studies at the University of Minnesota for one year, then taught physics at Superior State Teachers College (now University of Wisconsin-Superior, Superior, Wisconsin) for a year. He earned his Master of Science degree in physics at the University of Arkansas while also teaching for a year at Union University in Jackson, Tennessee (and serving as head of the department!). He also taught at Northeast State University in Oklahoma before returning to Minnesota to teach physics at Mankato State College (now Minnesota State University Mankato) for a couple of years.

In 1964, Charles married Birgitta Gillberg at Gamla Uppsala Church in Sweden. Birgitta, a native of Sweden, was teaching Swedish at Gustavus at that time. She continued teaching at Gustavus until Eric was born in 1967. She then returned to her academic career in 1975, teaching Swedish and German at Minnesota State University Mankato for 30 years until her retirement.

 

Hendrickson Organ Company: Beginnings

Hendrickson’s interest in the pipe organ began early in his young life, in 1953, when he watched with fascination as the Möller organ was rebuilt and reinstalled at Bethel Lutheran Church in Willmar. Harry Iverson, who was the Möller representative, supervised the regulation and work at the church, and Hendrickson got involved as a “gopher.” Iverson had previously been the Kimball representative and had designed the Minneapolis Auditorium Kimball organ. During graduate school, Hendrickson followed up on this early interest by working on organs (servicing, repairing, moving, tuning) on a part-time basis.

In 1964, Charles Hendrickson was asked to rebuild and significantly enlarge the 1910 Hillgreen-Lane organ in First Lutheran Church in Winthrop, Minnesota, by the pastor of the church, who was a family friend. Pastor Lambert Engwall had talked his congregation into undertaking the project to enlarge the organ in the church, had raised the money for the project, and convinced Hendrickson to tackle this project. As it was already part way through spring semester, Hendrickson resigned his teaching position at Mankato State and thus committed himself to being an organbuilder.

Several interesting things about this instrument, Opus 1, produced by the nascent Hendrickson Organ Company, are worth noting:

• The Swell division consists of pipes from the previous instrument, with new Hauptwerk, Positief, and Pedal divisions. The casework was mostly new to house the new organ.

• The Positief division was housed in its own case cantilevered on the balcony rail—in Rückpositiv position. This was the first Rückpositiv built in Minnesota.

• Hendrickson rented space in the empty Green Giant canning plant in Winthrop to build the organ with three helpers. (This is reminiscent of how older organ builders like Schnitger operated—building on site or at least in the vicinity of the church.)

• The new pipes added to this organ came from Organ Supply.

• Composer David N. Johnson, then on the faculty of St. Olaf College, played the dedication recital in September 1965.

• In 1982, Hendrickson added two mutations and swapped out two flute ranks, bringing the instrument to 36 ranks.

At about the same time, Hendrickson was asked by his home congregation, First Lutheran Church in St. Peter, Minnesota, to build a “temporary” organ for their new sanctuary then under construction to replace the church that had been destroyed by lightning on Mother’s Day in 1962. He readily complied by assembling a two-manual, eight-rank instrument, partly from salvaged materials. The outstanding acoustics of the building helped this small instrument to be amazingly successful, and it also included a horizontal trumpet! This temporary instrument, Opus 2, installed in 1965, remained in the church longer than expected. It was not replaced until his Opus 45 was completed in 1979, a two-manual, 44-rank instrument with a third coupler keyboard.

Opus 3 was another enlargement project, this time resulting in a two-manual, 30-rank instrument at Grace Lutheran Church, Mankato, Minnesota, using some ranks, offset chests, blower, and console from the previous two-manual, nine-rank M. P. Möller organ built for Grace Lutheran’s previous building. This instrument was also subsequently expanded in 1992 by adding a new Great division, horizontal trumpet, new three-manual console, and other tonal and mechanical revisions (Opus 86, three manuals, 41 ranks).

From these beginnings of the Hendrickson Organ Company in 1964, there followed several new instruments, including Opus 6, of two manuals, eight ranks, at St. John Lutheran Church in Yankton, South Dakota, and Opus 9, of two manuals, 24 ranks, at Blessed Sacrament Catholic Church in La Crosse, Wisconsin, plus more revisions, enlargements, and rebuilds, leading up to Opus 10 in 1970. Interestingly, the Yankton instrument, a larger version of Opus 2, came about because Harold Spitznagel was the architect of both First Lutheran Church in St. Peter (which housed Hendrickson Opus 2) and of St. John Lutheran Church in Yankton (Opus 6). The Yankton instrument originally contained only eight ranks, later enlarged to 12 after a fire in the church in 2009.

It is worthwhile to look further at the early influences on Hendrickson. He is largely a self-taught organbuilder, learning by experience, by voracious reading, and from the influences of Russ Johnson (an acoustician) and Robert Noehren (an organbuilder, performer, and teacher himself). Around the time Hendrickson was starting to build his Opus 1 and Opus 2, he met Robert Noehren at the Central Lutheran Organ Symposium in Minneapolis. From Noehren he became convinced to use primarily all-electric action when building electric-action instruments. And from Noehren, he learned the concepts of judicious borrowing and duplexing to retain clarity in the resulting organ while realizing some economies of budget and space. His Opus 1 at Winthrop used electro-pneumatic chests for the Great and Swell, but all-electric for the Positief. Subsequently, he primarily (though not exclusively) used all-electric chests when building non-mechanical-action instruments.

 

The Hendrickson factory

The year 1970 saw a new chapter unfold. Hendrickson was contacted by William Kuhlman, professor of organ, to build a new organ for Luther College in Decorah, Iowa. Most of his work prior to this time had been accomplished in his basement, garage, rented facilities, or on site. Now, in order to have a tall erecting room, he took the plunge, purchased land in the industrial park in St. Peter, and built the first part of his organ factory, including in the center a tall room where he could set up this two-story instrument. The organ for Luther College, Opus 10, of two manuals, 35 ranks, was his first mechanical-action instrument. 

This organ was intended as a teaching, practice, and performance instrument, and was built on a movable platform like a hovercraft so it could move to a neighboring room. Subsequently, it was relocated to a permanent teaching studio on the campus, the floating mechanism disabled, and an electric-action, unified trumpet rank on the Great was reinstalled as an 8′ horizontal reed, playable from the mechanical action. Due to heavy use, the keyboards have been replaced twice on this instrument.

The original factory consisted of a tall central erecting room, with the office in the back as an upstairs room, and two flanking rooms for wood work, pipe set up, and voicing. The equipment included the voicing machine originally built by Vogelpohl & Spaeth in New Ulm, Minnesota, in the late 19th century. Over the years, a sizeable building was added behind the original shop, including an assembly room and new voicing room, with the earlier flanking rooms repurposed. Later still, another former business building was moved to adjoin the addition, becoming the office, drafting studio, and library storage for the extensive collection of books and organ journals kept close at hand. (Hendrickson has every issue of The Diapason since 1913, and of The American Organist since 1929!) A large warehouse was added next door for much-needed storage and to house the spray booth. Interestingly, after a tornado struck in 1998, both this author and the Gustavus chaplain rented space in the warehouse to store all of our furniture while our houses were being rebuilt. More recently, a disastrous fire in November 2013 engulfed the original shop building. (Andreas Hendrickson, Charles’s younger son, designed a replacement shop building, which has been recently completed.) Fortunately, the added buildings were separated enough that they were not damaged, and no organs were destroyed except for some wood pipes, machinery, and some supplies. 

With Opus 10 for Luther College, Hendrickson began building mechanical-action instruments, either with mechanical stop action or electric stop action. A significant portion of the organs built by the firm feature mechanical action. When asked, Hendrickson expressed his preference for this type of action “just because I like it.” He also indicated he felt such instruments are “very satisfying” and provide the “best possible solution.” But Hendrickson indicated that throughout his career, he particularly wanted to “satisfy a need.” This is a most salient point—he set out to provide a good musical instrument for a wide variety of situations, large and small, and while his preference would be a tracker organ, sometimes placement, finances, or other considerations necessitated using electric action. If that were the case, he set out to make it the best it could be. Not infrequently, his project working with a church to improve their musical resources would also involve redesigning either the chancel or the balcony to facilitate placement of the new instrument and the location of the choir and/or the liturgical appointments.

During the half-century so far of the Hendrickson Organ Company, the firm has been involved in a wide variety of organ projects, building large and very small instruments, restoring, rebuilding, and expanding both historic instruments and some of their own, adding single divisions and/or replacing consoles—a variety of, as Charles said, “solving problems” for particular situations and congregations. To comment on each of the many projects (opus numbers) undertaken by the Hendrickson Organ Company would occupy far more space than is possible here; instead, a summary is presented, featuring a few interesting examples. 

 

Mechanical-action instruments

There are 27 mechanical-action organs on the Hendrickson opus list, ranging from a practice instrument with one 8′ flute for each of two manuals and pedal (Opus 33) to his largest instrument at Wayzata Community Church in Wayzata, Minnesota (Opus 92, four manuals, 70 ranks). The Wayzata instrument is unusual in that it incorporates a large Paul Granlund bronze sculpture in the middle of the façade.

Other sizable mechanical-action organs include Opus 47, a three-manual, 43-rank organ in St. Wenceslaus Catholic Church, New Prague, Minnesota, and Opus 35, a three-manual, 59-rank instrument at Sts. Peter and Paul Catholic Church, Mankato, Minnesota. These large instruments have mechanical key and stop action. The New Prague instrument leans toward a French Classic style, though not exclusively. The later Opus 78, of three manuals, 62 ranks, at St. Joseph Cathedral in Sioux Falls, South Dakota, utilizes a multi-channel electric stop action. It was also an instrument of a more complex design because of its size and the necessity for a detached keydesk. Hendrickson also had to redesign the gallery choir risers to accommodate the new organ. All three of these instruments were placed in rear balconies, and the Mankato and New Prague installations feature Rückpositiv divisions.

While most of Hendrickson’s two-manual mechanical-action instruments contain between 12 and 29 ranks, the largest is Opus 45, a two-manual, 44-rank instrument completed in 1979 at Hendrickson’s own church, First Lutheran Church, St. Peter, Minnesota. This instrument finally replaced the “temporary” Opus 2 that he had built nearly 15 years earlier. The organ features a horizontal trumpet on the Great (as had Opus 2) but also includes a trumpet within the case for that division. For this instrument, Hendrickson used a chassis from Laukhuff, Pedal division façade pipes made of aluminum, and a third manual as a coupler manual. This instrument is housed in an excellent acoustical environment and is a particularly successful installation. Marie-Claire Alain examined the organ upon completion and played the dedication recital.

In addition to these full-size tracker organs, the company built five portative organs consisting of one manual (no pedal) with 8′ flute, 4′ flute, and 2′  principal stops. The first such instrument was built for the St. Olaf Choir (Opus 16) and was intended to be able to be transported in a regular coach bus (with a couple of seats removed). To fit that size, the instrument has a short octave in the bass (lacking C#, D#, F#, and G#) and the compass is an octave shorter in the treble than a normal 61-note compass. In addition, the keyboard folds down inside the case, thus fitting through a bus door (at least back in the early 1970s). The stops are divided between bass and treble. The blower is also enclosed in the case, which is mounted on casters and has handles for ease in lifting and moving it around. After a second version was ordered by the Rockford Kantorei in Rockford, Illinois (Opus 18), three more instruments were built—“for every board we cut, we cut three.” These instruments eventually found their way to the University of Wisconsin in River Falls, Wisconsin (Opus 30), Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota (Opus 81), and Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota (Opus 72a). The organs are principally used for continuo playing.

 

Electric-action instruments

The Hendrickson opus list includes nearly 60 electric-action instruments. Thirty of these projects involved organs with fewer than 20 ranks, most incorporating at least some borrowing or duplexing, using the ideas Hendrickson had acquired from Robert Noehren. Many of these instruments use all-electric chests, as mentioned above. However, for Opus 60, a two-manual, 19-rank organ built for First Lutheran Church in Glencoe, Minnesota, the builder used slider chests with electric pull-downs. The largest two-manual electric-action instrument is Opus 25, of two manuals, 38 ranks, installed in First Lutheran Church, St. James, Minnesota (another instrument with a horizontal trumpet).

A dozen three-manual instruments (and one four-manual) contain 30 to 54 ranks. Beginning with Opus 1 (three manuals, 34 ranks), the list includes many significant enlargements of instruments by Möller, Aeolian-Skinner, Austin, Hillgreen-Lane, and Schantz, the largest being the expansion of a 1961 Schlicker (three manuals, 32 ranks) as Hendrickson Opus 100 (three manuals, 54 ranks) for Our Savior’s Lutheran Church, Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Two notable large all-new instruments are Opus 51 (three manuals, 46 ranks) at St. Mark Catholic Church in St. Paul, Minnesota, and Opus 34 (three manuals, 51 ranks) at St. John’s Lutheran in Owatonna, Minnesota (yet another organ with a dramatic horizontal trumpet). The Owatonna instrument also uses pallet and slider chests with electric pulldowns.

What is clear from all these instruments is that Charles Hendrickson and the many workers over the years in the shop were interested in creating or improving musical instruments that would “make them sing,” whether in the big city or the small country church. Hendrickson always endeavored to learn from the past, from his own experience, and from the lessons the industry had learned, whether from books or from his colleagues in the business. He was not interested in modeling after a particular style or a particular period, nor was he dogmatic about actions or particular stops, but was focused on a clear, singing tone and satisfying the particular needs of a group of people assembled in a specific congregation.

 

Rebuilds, restorations, and
renovations of 19th– and early 20th-century organs

The company website (www.hendricksonorgan.com) lists over 116 opus numbers. They include more than two dozen rebuilds, renovations, and restorations, notably:

• Rebuilding and enlarging the 1862 Marklove organ in the Cathedral of Our Merciful Savior in Faribault, Minnesota (Opus 70, two manuals, 34 ranks), using many of the original pipes—possibly the oldest pipes in Minnesota;

• Rebuilding two other late 19th-century organs, one by Hutchings, Plaisted & Co. (Opus 40, two manuals, 21 ranks), and the 1896 Kimball tubular pneumatic instrument located in the Union Sunday School in Clermont, Iowa (Opus 51a, two manuals, 27 ranks). The latter is the largest remaining tubular-pneumatic Kimball in original condition;

• Restoring, rebuilding, or revising several early 20th-century instruments by Hinners, Hillgreen-Lane, Kimball, Estey, and Vogelpohl & Spaeth (a late 19th/early 20th-century Minnesota builder);

• Maintaining, revising, and renovating the large four-manual, 52-rank Hillgreen-Lane organ in Christ Chapel at Gustavus Adolphus College in St. Peter, Minnesota, especially after the 1998 tornado severely damaged the entire campus and community. Organ repairs included cleaning all reeds, re-racking pipes, building a new Great chest, and replacing the keyboards;

• Rescuing Hendrickson Opus 53 (two manuals, 27 ranks) that was housed in St. Peter Catholic Church, which was destroyed by the same tornado. This mechanical-action organ was later used as part of the much larger instrument (Opus 99, three manuals, 40 ranks) designed by Andreas Hendrickson for the new church;

• Rebuilding and moving a much-altered 1931 Aeolian-Skinner (Opus 877) to a church in Arkansas in 1990 (Opus 88, three manuals, 30 ranks), then, after that church had closed, moving the instrument and reinstalling it at Celebration Lutheran Church in Sartell, Minnesota, in 2009 (Opus 115, three manuals, 35 ranks).

 

Hendrickson as author

From his beginnings in academe, Hendrickson never lost his inquisitive mind or his desire to share what he had learned. An active member of the Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America (APOBA) and the American Institute of Organbuilders, he served as president of APOBA for about 8 years. During that time, he arranged for the organization to commence sponsoring Pipedreams on American Public Media and oversaw the statement APOBA produced regarding “sampled voices” in pipe organs.

A large undertaking by Hendrickson was a long series of articles he wrote, mainly for The American Organist. These included articles on families of tone, divisions of the organ, tonal architecture, pipe materials, and a host of other relevant topics. The Hendrickson Organ Company website lists and links to 46 of these articles written between 1976 and 2003. [http://www.enchamade.com/hendricksonorgan/wb/pages/articles.php]

More recently, Hendrickson returned to his physics roots by collaborating on a research project with Dr. Tom Huber and some of his students at Gustavus Adolphus College. A summary of their study, “Vibrational Modes of an Organ Reed Pipe,” can be accessed at http://physics.gac.edu/~Huber/organs/vibrometer/ and an abstract of Huber’s Faculty Shop Talk about the project can be found at https://gustavus.edu/events/shoptalks/Shop0304.htm.

 

The future

Charles Hendrickson has retired from active involvement in the work of the Hendrickson Organ Company. The enterprise continues under the leadership of his two sons, Andreas and Eric. Andreas, who holds an architecture degree from the University of Minnesota, is in charge of design, while his older brother, Eric, is head of installations, tuning, and service. Andreas also called on his architecture background to design the rebuilding of the portion of the shop lost to the November 2013 fire. The company services many of their own instruments, plus numerous other instruments around Minnesota and neighboring states. The brothers grew up in the organ factory and learned many of their skills from their father. Thus a new generation is continuing the process of building, rebuilding, and repairing pipe organs in this small town in southern Minnesota. ν

 

References

Bies, Jessica. “PORTRAITS: Sons of St. Peter pipe organ maker continue Hendrickson legacy,” St. Peter Herald, March 27, 2014. www.southernminn.com/st_peter_herald/news/article_bb355bf8-3aea-55a2-b9…

Hendrickson Organ Company website: http://hendricksonorgan.com

Huber, Tom, Brian Collins, Charles Hendrickson, and Mario Pineda. “Vibrational Modes of an Organ Reed Pipe.” Presentation for Acoustical Society of America Meeting, November 2003. http://physics.gustavus.edu/~huber/organs/

Interviews with Charles Hendrickson in June and July, 2016, plus several phone conversations.

Organ Historical Society Pipe Organ Database: database.organsociety.org

TCAGO Pipe Organ List: http://www.pipeorganlist.com/OrganList/index.html

Vance, Daniel. “Hendrickson Organ Company.” Connect Business Magazine, July 1999, Mankato, Minnesota. http://connectbiz.com/1999/07/hendrickson-organ-company/