Pipe Organs!

[Jim Galli]

Just a musing as I sit and enjoy VINCENT YOUMANS "Tea for Two" played on a 1929 Skinner at Elm Court on PipeDreams program #0708.

Yes, my tastes aren't very sophisticated when it comes to the organ. I lean way in the direction of calliope.

I'm sitting here thinking of all the wonderful things we used to make in America. Pipe organs and antique cameras have many parallels. Concerns like Aeolian-Skinner and Deardorff were quintessential American quality. And they lasted until the one-off makers took over and the quality continues even today.

There are a small army of folks swarming over these old organs making it possible for the quality to continue even in our troubled times. Somehow that's hopeful. In my next life, I may be one of them. Trouble is God didn't give me the motor skills to look at a note on a page and get it to the correct finger. I "play a hell of a radio" though as my dad used to say.

[Dick Hilker]

I feel much as you do, Jim, having had the good fortune to have played a magnificent Aeolian-Skinner for a number of years. Our house in Hingham, MA just South of Boston was purchased from their sales manager who, in '64, was leaving to work for a firm in Baltimore. Much later, upon his retirement he returned and oversaw the installation of an Allen electronic organ in one of the country's oldest churches.

That new organ is a true marvel, reproducing note for note, stop for stop, the sound of an organ in a French cathedral. Sitting during a concert, I found it hard to believe it wasn't a real pipe organ, though it actually does use electronically-actuated pipes as well. A really cool feature is that performances can be recorded and re-played on the same instrument. Amazing!

And here's where we return to a parallel with photography, building on the old skills and the sounds they produced being not unlike the use of electronic sensors to replicate the visual experiences we long associated with film and traditional paper processes. I know that digital photography, like the electronic organ, has its virtues and, for the folks who've never known the olde ways, can provide a joyful experience. But what could ever replace the old pipe organ's propensity to malfunction at just the wrong time, requiring a hasty retreat to a small upright piano to continue the hymn-singing. Ah, for the good old days!

Maybe "playing a hell of a radio" has its counterpart in the point & shoot digital revolution for those who will never know the joys of chemical-stained fingers and hours spent by the intimate glow of a small safelight.

P.S. I love your website -- some wonderful images!

[Louie Powell]

Don't want to divert the theme of this thread, but I believe that Wisner started out as an organ builder, and eventually migrated over to cameras.

There are a number of small 'boutique' organ builders still around. Many years ago I was on the committee at our church that had to grapple with the issue of rebuild versus replace for an old pipe organ. We opted for rebuild, and selected a small firm in the area to do the work. It was interesting to watch how that effort progressed. There were many in the church who were good business people and who were really frustrated by the craft-like approach taken by the organ builder - in which the outcome could only be known after the job was completed. Not unlike custom camera making.

[Robert Hughes]

Of course nowadays they have digital organs. Who needs that old junk? Anybody wanna contribute on an organ <-> giclee interface?

[Jim Galli]

Well, not a terribly important thread in any case but hoping it doesn't digress into a digital / analog debate.

For digital folks the only thing that seems to matter is the end product which they will tauntingly say see, it's just as good and maybe better.

Why do visions of a mechanism being run by air blowing through holes in a paper roll built in 1929 intrigue me? I seem to be locked in the elecro-mechanical-pneumatic wonderment of 1929. Perhaps that's as far as my brain can get. I can follow that simple circuit of air traveling through a hole in paper, closing a switch that opens a valve and makes a sound in a pipe 60 feet away. I cannot however get my brain around how computers make things happen. I have that same parallel in photography.

We're phasing out the most magnificent cameras ever built. A mechanism that can let light through a lens strike a light sensitive emulsion making 360 Nikon quality frames a second. Digital will do it in the future. I can get my small brain around every bit of the analog cameras mechanism, and indeed, a lot can go wrong and I can still get the customer his product. The digital replacement is a mystery to my brain. All IP addresses with computers talking to computers. Get one little 1 or 0 in the wrong place and it's all lost.

I guess I'm just impressed that we could spend thousands of hours making a theatre organ in 1929. The craft and the accomplishment is for me, part of what I enjoy above and beyond the music.

[Struan Gray]

http://www.guardian.co.uk/slideshow/...002241,00.html

[Dick Hilker]

In that same vein, being seated at the console of a gigantic pipe organ and controlling the matrix of sound from hundreds of pipes ranked close by is a thrill that has to be felt to be understood. There are layers of sound that reinforce one another and the sheer physicality of a 16 ft. pipe is something the finest speakers can never reproduce fully.

That's not to say that the sound of a high-quality electronic organ isn't truly elegant, but there's a lack of intimacy with the instrument that's similar to the LF/P&S comparison. Both shake the air, but only one has the power to shake your soul.

[Jim Galli]

In that same vein, being seated at the console of a gigantic pipe organ and controlling the matrix of sound from hundreds of pipes ranked close by is a thrill that has to be felt to be understood. There are layers of sound that reinforce one another and the sheer physicality of a 16 ft. pipe is something the finest speakers can never reproduce fully.

That's not to say that the sound of a high-quality electronic organ isn't truly elegant, but there's a lack of intimacy with the instrument that's similar to the LF/P&S comparison. Both shake the air, but only one has the power to shake your soul.

That's what I'm talkin' bout.

[Alan Davenport]

I don't play, but I do claim to be a fan of pipe organs. The church I belong to (First Methodist, Salem, Oregon) has one of (I think) two Aeolian Skinners in Oregon. It was installed in the 1950's, at which time the congregation ran out of dough so the instrument was not completed. About 10 years ago, our World-class organist convinced the congregation to fund the completion of the organ, which included several ranks of wee teeny pipes and a 16' krumhorn. Awesome.

Not to be outdone, we are presently having a 32' reed stop added. It will be in by Easter. Life's good.

[Brian C. Miller]

I think that the pipe organ is one of the few instruments that can really fill the senses. I am a big fan of Bach's Tocatta and Fuge BWV 535, and there's only a few organists who play it the way I like it. I had to listen to just about all of the clips on Amazon to find a guy in Oregon who plays it well.