UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI

Date:______

I, ______, hereby submit this work as part of the requirements for the degree of: in:

It is entitled:

This work and its defense approved by:

Chair: ______

Taylor & Boody Organbuilders:

An American Builder with a European Voice

A document submitted to the

Division of Research and Advanced Studies of the University of Cincinnati

in partial fulfillment of the

requirements for the degree of

DOCTOR OF MUSICAL ARTS

in the Keyboard Division

of the College-Conservatory of Music

2008

by

James Warren Walton

B.M., James Madison University, 1979

M.M., The Catholic University of America, 1987

Abstract

The primary focus of this document is an examination of the historically informed artisan organ builder Taylor & Boody. This document includes an abbreviated history of organ building, an examination of classic organ building techniques and a description of representative organs built by this firm. This paper concludes with a discussion of the influence of artisan builders on the large factory organ builders.

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CONTENTS

Chapter

I. INTRODUCTION ...... 1

II. A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ORGAN ...... 6

III. BIOGRAPHIES OF GEORGE TAYLOR AND JOHN BOODY ...... 12

IV. GEORGE TAYLOR AND JOHN BOODY AT

JOHN BROMBAUGH‘S SHOP ...... 17

V. HISTORY OF THE COMPANY: THE DIVERGENCE ...... 19

VI. THE TAYLOR & BOODY COMPANY IS ESTABLISHED ...... 23

VII. CHARACTERISTICS OF A TAYLOR & BOODY ORGAN ...... 27

VIII. REPRESENTATIVE ORGANS ...... 51

IX. THE AMERICAN PROBLEM ...... 78

BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 87

Appendix

Opus List...... 90

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Chapter I

Introduction

Taylor & Boody Organbuilders is a North American organbuilding company located in

Staunton, Virginia, and is a premier builder of mechanical action organs in an historically informed style. Taylor & Boody‘s aesthetic is primarily influenced by the design and construction techniques utilized by organ builders in Holland and North Germany from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. While artisan builders such as Taylor & Boody inspire the support of many advocates, detractors often attempt to discredit them as primitive and anachronistic. In this document I will defend historically informed organ building generally and the artisan builder Taylor & Boody specifically as a musically valuable current in twenty-first century organ building.

I have chosen Taylor & Boody because of their reliance on historically informed design and construction methods, and instruments among musicians. I first became acquainted with

Taylor & Boody‘s work in 1983 when they built an organ for Bethlehem Lutheran Church in

Richmond, Virginia. This was also my first exposure to the compelling sound of an historically informed organ, and marks the beginning of my interest in how this sound was created. The two following testimonials demonstrate the high regard for Taylor & Boody organs among musicians in Europe and North America. In an article for The Musical Times, John Hamilton listed Taylor

& Boody in the top five builders in 1984, based upon Worcester, Massachusetts.1 Boyd Jones wrote in an article for the American Organist:

1 John Hamilton, ―An Emerging US Organ-Building Movement-1,‖ The Musical Times 125 (June, 1984): 347. 1

The organs of Taylor and Boody cannot be equated with the neo-baroque instruments of earlier decades. They are at once more historically informed and more universally useful. Their historical approach is partially a result of considerable study of old organs. They have documented pipes from numerous European antiques, and had an opportunity to dismantle the Schnitger organ of the Aa-Kirk in Gronigen. In this country they have restored the 1802 David Tannenberg organ in Madison, Virginia, and have done restorative work on several smaller organs for museums.2 Harold Vogel described the American builders of which Taylor & Boody is a part:

Those who are building in historical styles have established a quality standard that approaches that of the antique organs, not only in terms of design, craftsmanship, and materials, but also in terms of sound and musicality. It is a renaissance in the truest sense, nourished by the mutual influence that has existed between the development of early music performance practice and instrument making that is a hallmark of the astonishing musical culture of the late twentieth century.3 Taylor & Boody belong to the specialized and conservative current of twentieth and twenty-first century organ building that draws its inspiration from the sixteenth through eighteenth century North European master builders. Lynn Edwards of the Westfield Center for

Early Keyboard Studies described the trend in this way:

In current American organbuilding it is possible to identify a distinct school of builders whose orientation is historical and based to a large extent on surviving North European Baroque organs. What they hold in common is their reliance on historical models in establishing the conservatories, and residences throughout the country—and now abroad as well—are a unique blend of the old and the new.4

2 Boyd Jones, ―Timeless Qualities: Boyd Jones visits Taylor & Boody in Staunton,Virginia,‖ Choir & Organ, 5 no. 3 (May-June 1997) : 31.

3 Gustav Fock, Hamburg’s Role in North European Organ Building. trans. Lynn Edwards and Edward C. Pepe. (Easthampton: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1997), ix.

4 Lynn Edwards, ed., The Historical Organ in America: A Documentary of Recent Organs Based on European and American Models, (Easthampton: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1992), i.

2

Pipe organ building styles in North America vary widely from scientifically exact copies of historical instruments to instruments with electric actions and combinations of pipes and electronic voices. These styles are driven by the complexity of constraints and the philosophies of the purchasers and builders, and by the manner in which the inevitable compromises are reached. The constraints imposed on organ building include space, cost, musical style, and acoustics. Any of these factors may lead a purchaser to select a particular builder or a builder to accept or reject a contract. Some purchasers will only consider a builder that will supply an electric combination action. Some builders will only build in an acoustically sympathetic room.

While the best criteria for judging the success of an instrument is its musicality, critics often judge an instrument based upon their individual preferences of era and national style.

In an article describing the organ for California State University in Chico, Munetaka

Yokota described the characteristics of a superior organ:

The beauty of the best historical organs is manifested in the dynamic balance that arises from complex yet perfectly integrated proportions. The performer and listener can relate to the organ through its appearance, feeling, and sound, as we can relate to God‘s creation. We see that historically the direction of organ building moved away from this dynamically balanced art. Struggling to regain this important principle, which lies within and across styles and which distinguishes superior art from mediocre, we have recently learned a great deal about the elements of the historical organs. The qualifying factors which may lead to this principle of integration, other that the basic requirements of mechanical and structural functions, can be summarized as follows: A. All pipes speak at their most natural point, creating stable pitch and a wide latitude of good speed of pressure increase or decrease.

B. acoustically; therefore, the entire organ cooperates fully and richly.5 Perhaps all artisan builders wouldn‘t state these criteria in the same language, but the

5Munetaka Yokota, ‖California State University, Chico,‖ in The Historical Organ in America: A Documentary of Recent Organs Based on European and American Models, ed. Lynn Edwards (Easthampton: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1992), 101.

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central philosophy is the same regardless of the particular national style or era they find appealing.

The principal characteristics of Taylor & Boody organs include tracker action, hammered lead alloy pipes, cut-to-length flues, soldered caps, flexible winding, unequal temperaments, slider chests with pipe groupings arranged by major thirds, and free-standing cases. This firm saws the lumber and smelts the metals for all components—the only part constructed elsewhere is the electric blower. This provides the utmost control over every aspect of organ construction and results in quality for which they are constantly praised. Taylor & Boody‘s stature as an artisan builder of the highest rank and significance in the arena of historically informed design and construction is supported in print, recordings, and national reputation. Their work is worthy of examination because of this stature.

I will demonstrate the value of these instruments by describing their importance within the art of organ building. I will begin by describing the education and training of George Taylor and John Boody, and how those experiences shaped the philosophy and methodology for organ design and construction. Both men benefited from working with John Brombaugh as partners until Brombaugh‘s move to Oregon, and both have come under the influence of Rudolph von

Beckerath. George Taylor apprenticed with him, and John Boody apprenticed under Fritz Noack, a former von Beckerath craftsman, now master builder on his own. In addition to these apprenticeships, both men have undertaken trips to Europe to take exhaustive measurements while examining important historical instruments. Taylor and Boody also participated in the project to dismantle the Schnitger organ in the Aa-Kerk in Gronigen, The Netherlands. These experiences have contributed to the wealth of knowledge and understanding these men possess of the design and construction of historic North European organ builders. This understanding has

4 informed their choice to follow historic models and methods in new organ design and construction.

I will defend Taylor & Boody on a musical and hand-crafted quality basis, relying on the evidence of highly regarded representative instruments. I propose that the historically informed techniques of employing hammered metal pipes, slider chests, flexible wind, free-standing organ cases and sophisticated unequal tuning can provide those musical qualities that are the properties of a successful instrument, and a respected and admired style and valuable influence on other philosophies of North American organ building.

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CHAPTER II

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE ORGAN

The work and worry that fell to my lot through the practical interest I took in

organ-building made me wish that I had never troubled myself about it, but if I

did not give it up the reason is that the struggle for the good organ is to me a part

of the struggle for the truth.

Albert Schweitzer, 19316

How did we arrive at this present age?

The North European organ as we know it, with one or more claviers for the hands and often including a pedal clavier for the feet, began its long road of development in the late Middle

Ages. Early examples would have sounded every pipe situated on its key channel when the associated key was depressed, as there was no stop mechanism to shut off the various rows

(ranks) of what we now call the blockwerk. One of the first developments was the stop, which opened or closed the individual rank by means of a slider which ran under the toeboard of the windchest. The earliest organs allowed the lowest pitches of this monolithic principal chorus, or blockwerk, to be controlled individually, and the highest pitches were controlled as a compound stop. The controlling action of the individual pitches was entirely mechanical, with a tracker connecting the key to the windchest via a rollerboard which distributed the action to either side of the chest. This allowed the organ builder to balance the chest for wind supply, to build the windchests more compactly, and to arrange the note layout of the chest to avoid the ―drawing‖

6 Stephen Bicknell, ―Organ Building Today,‖ in The Cambridge Companion to the Organ, ed. Nicholas Thistlethwaite and Geoffrey Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 82. 6 effect of adjacent semitones. The keydesk was built into the base of the case as an integral part of the frame, case, and action. Metal pipes were constructed from castings of lead sheets which were hammered to change the molecular structure of the metal and to provide an irregular interior surface. Both of these properties in conjunction with the weight of the lead helped to encourage a ―vocal‖ sound from the organ. The case was an integral part of the organ and served to blend, focus, and project the sound into the space, and to protect the internal workings of the organ from damage.

One major development of the fifteenth-century organ in Northern Europe was the pedal clavier. This invention allowed the feet to assist in playing a bass line utilizing a manual pull- down connection or independent pedal registers, or by contributing a distinct voice in playing polyphony or a cantus firmus.

Many improvements in the form of imitative voices were developed throughout the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and the discovery of scale—the relationship of the diameter of a pipe to its length—allowed for the expansion of the palette of colors from principals to flutes and strings. The blockwerk was gradually divided into more independent stops, though it usually included at least one compound mixture stop. The organ continued to be built by small shops of skilled craftsmen in this form until the mid-nineteenth century, allowing for variations in regional taste and function. Nicholas Thistlethwaite described pre-eighteenth-century organ building this way:

By 1700 a comparison of organs in leading European cities would reveal extraordinary contrast of scale, disposition, effect and function, and yet, despite unmistakable regional characteristics and local preferences (suspended key actions in France, separate Pedal cases in Hamburg, en chamade reeds in Spain and Portugal) the technology of the organ remained essentially that inherited from the late-mediaeval builders. Some innovations had been tried (couplers, ventils, tremulants, toy stops, transmission) and, of course, tonally, the organ of 1700 was radically different from that of 1500 in many respects, but the technology was essentially the same and provided a

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foundation upon which the leading builders of the late seventeenth century raised regional organ cultures of great refinement and distinction.7

The first major shift in organ action occurred in the 1840s when Aristide Cavaillé-Coll began to build a large organ for the church of St. Denis in Paris. The expressive control and dynamic range that he promised to the purchasers required increased wind pressures and rendered his instrument nearly unplayable with manuals coupled. Fortuitously, Charles Barker, an English inventor showed his pneumatic engine to Cavaillé-Coll and demonstrated that the

―Barker lever‖ could reduce the force required by the player using many stops and coupled keyboards to a movement similar to a piano, and Cavaillé-Coll immediately bought rights to use it, saving his instrument from ruin.8 This invention made possible the extremes of dynamic range that the musicians of the Romantic era wanted for the organ which in turn provided the origin of the French symphonic crescendo. It was also the first step in divorcing the keydesk from the body of the instrument, if only by a few feet, and the first step in separating the physical connection between the player and the pallet.

The second shift arrived when organ builders realized that the pneumatic engine could replace rather than merely assist the heavy mechanical action. Tubular pneumatic action used the same pneumatic engine principle, but replaced the mechanical linkages with lead tubes which conducted the controlling pressurized air from console to chest. From this point it was a small step to applying pneumatic engines to stop control, and for allowing even more remote placement of chests through the use of pneumatic relays. The action was often very slow and allowed only minimum control of the pallet by the performer.

7 Nicholas Thistlethwaite, ―Origins and Development of the Organ,‖ in The Cambridge Companion to the Organ, ed. Nicholas Thistlethwaite and Geoffrey Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 10-11.

8 Nicholas Thistlethwaite, ―Origins and Development of the Organ,‖ in The Cambridge Companion to the Organ, ed. Nicholas Thistlethwaite and Geoffrey Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 13. 8

The third shift occurred with the use of electricity and magnets to replace the lead tubing, and the transfer of the primary pneumatic engine into the chest. This type of action was experimental in the 1860s and was developed simultaneously by many builders into the twentieth century. This action was faster than tubular pneumatic, but the action was also more immediately opened and closed, and dependent entirely on the properties of the magnets and pneumatics, with no subtle control over the pallet‘s quality of movement by the performer. It allowed for an infinitely greater number of stops and higher wind pressures because the performer‘s ease at the console was no longer affected by the resistance of the pallets. It also allowed an even greater separation between the console and pipes, which led to the practice of abandoning the organ case and enclosing the divisions of the organ in chambers. This action is the most widely used in the

United States because of the capacity of most components to be mass-manufactured and the market dominance of the large organ manufacturers located in the United States. These practices were the result of organ builders‘ pursuit of expressiveness by providing a wide range of dynamic control and spatial effects. Frequently, the architecture of churches in the United States contributed to problems of organ placement and forced many compromises detrimental to the distribution of organ sound.

In the early years of the twentieth century, many builders took advantage of the latest technology to build massive orchestrally-inspired instruments, though most builders still employed mechanical action for smaller organs. At the same time, the first murmurings of the organ reform movement were being heard in Europe, especially after Albert Schweitzer‘s book

The Art of Organ Building and Organ Playing in Germany and France was published in 1906.

The first attempts to return to classical organ ideals were constructed by G. Donald Harrison of the Aeolian-Skinner company and by Walter Holtkamp of the Holtkamp Organ Company in the

9 late 1930s. These early efforts appeared to be more of a reaction to the heavy sounds of the symphonic organ—an anti-romantic position—than a true emulation of classic organ building.

The result was the self-stylized ―American Classic‖ organ, which claimed to be able to render the music of all major schools authentically. This type of organ was characterized by the absence of reeds on the Great and Positive, articulate voicing on these divisions, and often the Positive was exposed—not in an organ chamber. The swell division was supplied with Romantic-era strings and French reeds.

In the late 1950s, many people in the United States organ world were delighted with the recordings made by E. Power Biggs on the Flentrop organ imported from Holland for the Busch-

Reisinger Museum at Harvard University. The enthusiasm for this organ became the catalyst for a full decade of European imports for churches and universities across the country until a new generation of American artisan builders began to produce organs of outstanding merit. Charles

Fisk produced the first wave of American organs that attempted to return to classical organ design and construction after completing a thorough and scientific study of historic European instruments. Many builders of his generation and the next, notably Fritz Noack and John

Brombaugh, completed training or apprenticeships with European builders and proceeded to convey what they had learned to their colleagues and students. By the 1980s all organ building traditions extant in 2008 had been established. The major division of these traditions occurs over construction methods—those of the large manufacturer and those of the small shop or artisan builder. The large organ manufacturers primarily produced electric and electro-pneumatic action organs which attempted to emulate the sounds of a particular national style or era, or continued in the American Classic style or massive symphonic style. The artisan builder usually followed one era within an historically informed tradition of organ building-whether Dutch, North

10

German, Central German, French or American. Taylor & Boody sprang from this milieu of widely divergent organ building in 1977. The following chapters will describe the origins of their style, discuss the historical methods that inform their work, and their contributions to other styles of organ building.

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CHAPTER III

IN THE BEGINNING: BIOGRAPHIES OF GEORGE TAYLOR AND JOHN BOODY

Genuine beginnings begin within us, even when they are brought to our attention by external opportunities. William Bridges

George Keith Taylor was born in Richmond, Virginia to Richard Taylor and Virginia

White on April 26, 1942. He attended Woodberry Forest School and graduated with a degree in sociology at Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia in 1964. He was the assistant organist at Robert E. Lee Memorial Episcopal Church in Lexington during his college years.

Upon graduation he received a study grant from the Ford Foundation that provided support for three-and-a-half years as an apprentice with Rudolf von Beckerath in Hamburg, Germany, where he studied until 1968. When his apprenticeship was completed, he returned to Amelia,Virginia, and rebuilt an 1896 Moline which was formerly located in the old Porter Street Presbyterian

Church and moved it to Amelia Presbyterian Church. In 1970 he began work with John

Brombaugh & Company in Middletown, Ohio, and soon became a partner. He continued with

Brombaugh until 1977 when Brombaugh moved to Eugene, Oregon. He started Taylor

Organbuilders with John Boody in May of 1977. George Taylor married Carol Anne Harris from England in June, 1988.9

9 George Taylor, interview by author, Staunton, Va., 14 May 2007.

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Organ building was in his blood. In his own words:

It is a disease. Once you catch it, you're fairly caught. I've been really caught up with it since I was a youngster. I played the organ; I was interested in how the pipe organ worked as early as 1956 when I was in my early teens.10

When Taylor was a senior in high school he met Susanne Bunting, the university organist of the University of Richmond in Richmond, Virginia. The university was waiting for the new

German-built Rudolf von Beckerath organ to be installed at Canon Chapel. When the von

Beckerath organ arrived, he helped install it. The arrival of this instrument was the inspiration for

Taylor to decide on a career in organbuilding. He was fascinated by what he saw and believed that "this was by far above the best thing I had ever seen."11 It was during his time in Germany apprenticing with von Beckerath that he decided that mechanical action was superior to electric or electro-pneumatic actions.

While at Washington & Lee restoration of the college chapel was begun with a grant from the Ford Foundation Fund. The restoration architect from Boston asked that New England organbuilder Charles Fisk perform the restoration. Barbara Owen came to Lexington to appraise the organ and suggested enlarging it to a two manual instrument, possibly by adding a

Rückpositiv. Instead, Taylor advised that Lawrence Walker from Richmond only restore and repair the organ to make it fully playable. Taylor believed that the organ, a one-manual Henry

Erben built in 1872, should be restored without out-of-character additions. This was the beginning of his interest in preserving the integrity of historical instruments.

After his apprenticeship, Taylor returned to the United States in 1968. His first project was to rebuild an old organ from Richmond, Virginia, built by the Moline Organ Co. He moved

10Jeffrey Hanna, "Stepping Forward into the Past," in W&L, The Alumni Magazine of Washington and Lee University 58, no. 5 (September 1983): 8-11.

11George Taylor, interview by author, Staunton, Va., 14 May 2007. 13 the instrument to his grandparents' home church, Amelia Presbyterian, which had never possessed an organ. This project was not performed according to his current standard, but used a philosophy and technique more in keeping with Alan Laufman and The Organ Clearing House- an organization that seeks to relocate serviceable organs in churches on a budget—often with a few ―improvements‖, which are not always performed with the best conservation method.

The revised organ had nine stops, eight in the Great and one in the Pedal. Taylor did not trust himself to voice the principals and asked von Beckerath to do it. Taylor recalled:

I invited Rudolf von Beckerath to help me voice it. Norman Ryan and some other people were with us. And he worked on the 8' Principal, the 8' Gedackt, the 4' Octave, and the Mixture. He completed those in a day and a half. He voiced the Mixture in one afternoon. I asked him; do not make it too loud. It was the first organ ever in that county. He had a wonderful time. I asked him for some guidelines to finish the organ. And he did a wonderful job on the organ He got more soul into the sound. We drank a lot, stayed up late, drank more and had a good time. He liked being with me. In his case that was always reflected in the work he was doing. If you kept the martinis flowing, you could expect a good organ. After that people said, well of course you are going to start a business. Oh no, I loved organ building and knew more than most people, but I wasn‘t so sure.12

12 George Taylor, interview by author, Staunton, Va., 14 May 2007. 14

John Hanson Boody was born in Melrose, Massachusetts, to Phillip Cutler Boody and

Esther Hanson Boody on March 1, 1946. He attended high school in Wakefield, Massachusetts and attended the University of Maine. He majored in forestry for one year then switched, graduating with a B.A. in music in 1968. He married Janet Reed from Moylen, Pennsylvania on

June 16, 1968. During vacations in the years 1966 through 1970 he worked with organ builder

Fritz Noack, except for thirteen months between 1968 and 1970 when he served with the U.S.

Army in Vietnam. He began work with John Brombaugh in 1971 and soon became a partner.

When Brombaugh decided to move his operation to Oregon, Boody joined George Taylor as a partner in Taylor Organbuilders in 1977, which became Taylor & Boody Organbuilders in

1979.13

Boody‘s interest in organs began in Wakefield at the First Baptist Church, where he sang in the choirs. The organ was an 1862 E. and G.G. Hook and Hastings tracker action organ of 25 stops, two manuals, and pedal. He acquired more experience with the organ in the Church of the

Transfiguration in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire. This church had a tracker organ, and Boody helped to get the organ ready for the summer by helping the organist tune and adjust the trackers.

His first foray into building musical instruments began while in college. He built a harpsichord and clavichord for the music department from early Zuckermann kits. Boody recalls: "They needed them, and I was the one interested in doing it."14

John Brombaugh was working for Charles Fisk at the time and introduced Boody to Fisk and Fritz Noack. On Brombaugh‘s recommendation, Noack accepted Boody as an intern for the summer of 1967 and continued during the winter, spring, and summer breaks of 1968. Most of his work with Noack involved relocating old Maine organs.

13 John Boody, interview by author, 14 May 2007.

14 Ibid. 15

Boody recalled his experiences with Noack:

I first started out leathering Subbass stoppers. But soon I started making wooden chests, wooden pipes and Posaune resonators. So, at the Noack shop I had some basic tool making and woodworking experiences. When I got out of college in the summer of 1968, we did a rebuild of an organ in Massachusetts, and made it from one-manual to a two-manual. Today we would be shocked if we did that kind of work on a historical organ. George Bozeman and I did that project, as he worked for Fritz Noack too. Already that second summer, Fritz let me free-ride. We changed the stops, changed the case, and, for my honeymoon, my wife and I installed the organ. We worked on quite a number of organs for Fritz. Then his shop moved from Andover to Georgetown [Massachusetts]. We built a house organ for Lee Hastings Bristol. I worked on the Worcester three-manual organ he built. I made a lot of windchests for that. We used a lot of plywood at that time. Fritz is a modern German-style builder. He learned from von Beckerath too. Von Beckerath was the world leader then, and Noack was an open kind of person; he took a lot of different people [into his shop]. And he had done a lot of important projects here in this country that, so we thought, had a link with history. But of course, what John Brombaugh was doing was to use the influence of Klaas Bolt and Harald Vogel and turn his organs into real historical-style organs.15

After graduation, Boody completed an independent project to restore a ten-stop Hook and

Hastings organ for the University of Maine. Brombaugh encouraged Boody to join him in Ohio, but Boody‘s military service and family issues delayed his joining Brombaugh until 1971.

15 John Boody, interview by author, 14 May 2007. 16

CHAPTER IV

TAYLOR AND BOODY WORK WITH JOHN BROMBAUGH

Craft: The irregular and intimate quality of things made entirely by the human hand.

Willa Cather

John Brombaugh's interest in organs began with the tracker organ in his boyhood church in southwestern Ohio. He studied electrical engineering at the University of Cincinnati and

Cornell University. While at college he listened to the new organ recordings of Helmuth Walcha and E. Power Biggs on old Dutch and North German mechanical action organs, which began his interest in replicating those sounds. He apprenticed with Charles Fisk and worked as a journeyman with Rudolf von Beckerath in Hamburg before establishing his shop in Middletown,

Ohio, in 1968.

John Boody‘s responsibilities in the Brombaugh shop were centered on building the components of the organs, and he quickly assumed the position of foreman. George Taylor was primarily an organ designer, but was directly involved in voicing pipes and helping Brombaugh define the sound of a Brombaugh organ.16 The alignment of these responsibilities later carried into the business practice of their own firm.

The organ building industry in Europe relies on the system of apprenticeship for its craftsmen, a system which is entered upon completing a course in a technical high school. Most

American builders have completed a university education prior to beginning the organ-building art. Taylor, in the dedication brochure of the organ for Yokohama, Opus 17, described the situation:

16 George Taylor, interview by author, Staunton, Va., 14 May 2007. 17

Many Japanese people are no doubt surprised that such a prestigious school as Ferris should buy an American organ. Indeed, American organ builders are popularly considered the stepchildren to the Europeans in this craft. But the judgment is not altogether fair. Over the past twenty-five years the art of organ building has flourished among a few firms in the United States. There the importance of emulating the European antique organs was understood sooner than it was in Europe where the steel grip of modernism still held sway. American builders were leaders in going beyond the limitations of the German neo-baroque style. Gradually a style emerged which gained respect beyond the borders of North America. This development was made possible partly because of the friendly cooperation among builders, and partly because Americans do not make the traditional distinction between uneducated craftsmen and academic experts. An American craftsman today frequently holds a degree from a university. Thus he or she is better equipped to understand the work in a cultural perspective, while at the same time keeping a hand on the materials and tools which express these ideas.17

This is not to say that the apprenticeship system is unknown in the United States; all artisan builders have benefited from a period of employment with a master builder. The difference is that the European system is very strictly defined, and the opportunities in U.S. companies are more diverse and fluid, allowing the interests of the apprentice to choose a course.

17George Taylor, Ferris University, Yokohama Dedication Booklet, December 4, 1989. 18

CHAPTER V

THE DIVERGENCE

But all endings are also beginnings. We just don't know it at the time. Mitch Albom.

On July 4, 1976, Brombaugh hosted Harald Vogel and Klaas Bolt in his shop for a celebration of the newly completed organ for Central Lutheran Church in Eugene, Oregon. This was the last day that the organ was playable in the shop. The next day it was dismantled, crated, and shipped to Eugene for installation and voicing. Brombaugh had planned on moving to the

West Coast, but he had hesitated, knowing that everybody might not follow him. When the organ was fully loaded, there was some space left in the truck. Boody went up to the office and told

Brombaugh:

Now here's your chance, you‘ve got half a truck; you have to pay for the whole truck to get it out there. Now do you want the pipe-shop materials or not? And he said: Put it on. And that's how that decision was made. So we shipped off the pipe-shop to the West coast, you see, all the shears and the heavy equipment. It is really interesting, those moments when things get decided.18

Taylor and Boody were not willing to move to the West Coast. Taylor recalled it in this way:

John Brombaugh decided to move, and Boody and I were both the sort of people who believed in what he was doing and wanted to help him do that. But we weren't particularly interested in moving to the West Coast, and he tried to tell us that that was the only thing worth doing. He loved it out there. But we were both East Coast people, and John Brombaugh was so determined that he forced us, wanted us so passionately to believe in it and didn't we agree. So we said: We weren't so sure. But perhaps if he hadn't forced us so strongly, like, eat this food and like it. There's something within me that

18 John Boody, interview by author, 14 May 2007.

19

says: I don't like it and maybe I don't have to like this. So, independently, both John Boody and I decided that we really didn't want to make that move.19

In the summer of 1976 while finishing the Central Lutheran organ, George Taylor was given permission by Brombaugh to pursue negotiations for a small organ for Westminster

Presbyterian Church in Charlottesville, Virginia, because Brombaugh was not very interested in building a small organ. A recommendation was needed, because the church was reluctant to engage a soon-to-be independent builder with little cash and no established reputation. He was fortunate to acquire a recommendation from Charles Fisk. Taylor recalled what happened:

And Charles [Fisk] told them: ―I can't build you the organ you want, but if you would like me to suggest another firm, I will.‖ They wrote him back and asked him, please do. So Charles Fisk wrote to me, and asked me, ―What I am to say?‖ I was on the West Coast and hadn't made up my mind, you see. And then, John Brombaugh made up my mind for me, so I wrote to Charles and said: ―Go ahead; tell them I want the job.‖ Charles then wrote them a priceless letter, which said: "If you can possibly persuade George Taylor to build an organ for you, you should search no further." This was just the kind of compliment I needed. I was thrilled with that job. But they didn't sign the contract for another year and a half.20

The first job that the new partners did together was the releathering of the schwimmers

(wind stabilizers) in the Rudolph von Beckerath organ of the Canon Chapel at the University of

Richmond in Virginia. Brombaugh then gave Taylor and Boody the partnership's contract to build an organ for the Presbyterian Church of Coshocton, Ohio.

Taylor and Boody traveled to Europe in 1977 and attended Harald Vogel's Nord-

Deutsche Orgel Akademie in Bunde. While they were in Groningen, they were asked to dismantle the world-famous Arp Schnitger organ of the Aa-Kerk. The church was being restored and the organ had to be removed for safekeeping. The contract was awarded by Cor Edskes, who entrusted the new partners with the work, most likely to avoid jealousies among Dutch

19 George Taylor, interview by author, Staunton, Va., 14 May 2007.

20 George Taylor, interview by author, Staunton, Va., 14 May 2007. 20 firms. They inspected, photographed, and measured pipes and mechanical parts of the historic organ. The organ contained Schnitger material from 1702 and older stops dating back to the 16th century. It was an invaluable experience of access to historic organ building.

George Taylor recalled the experience:

We did the Coshocton organ with a lot of ideas from that experience. And so, in a way, Edskes kind of used us to get us to do what he wanted to do, but at the same time he saw if he gave us some fresh ideas we would go back and make some good organs. Cor Edskes is funny; he has so much information and kind of keeps it to himself. But he liked us; we were the young organ builders, and we were not politically loaded, not part of a Dutch organ company. He did not want to be tied up with some Dutch organ company taking the stuff out. I think that he wanted to decide how the organ was going to be put back together all by himself. I don't know if he thought he was going to do it [all by] himself.21

The consultant for the new organ at Coshocton was Fenner Douglass, at that time professor of organ at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. He was able to convince the church that a tracker action instrument would be the best choice. In the dedication brochure, Douglass wrote an elaborate description of the pitfalls of the electric and pneumatic actions that had downgraded organs. About the new organ he wrote:

The new Taylor organ is a thing of beauty to behold. It is entirely made by hand and designed to fit into the restricted space available for it. It will, with proper care, survive the passage of fashion. What is most important is that it consists only of what is essential. There will be no need to remove it, sell it, or change it to satisfy the whim of a future generation. Rather, its design is so simple and its operation so clearly efficient that it will need nothing more than normal loving care and occasional tuning.22

The organ was dedicated on May 20, 1979, at the time of the rededication of the extensively refurbished church (acoustical improvements were made to the church, such as the installation of a new solid oak platform in the center of the church). Recitals were given by

Fenner Douglass on May 19 and 20.

21 George Taylor, interview by author, Staunton, Va., 14 May 2007.

22 Fenner Douglas, The Presbyterian Church of Coshocton, Ohio Dedication booklet, 1978. 21

Taylor reflected on this organ:

Coshocton had pipes from Stinkens. I will never forget the day that Harald came to see that organ. We made our own reeds. You should hear that organ sometime; it has the biggest, fattest trumpet you ever heard. Sounds like a tuba, a sackbut. And ugly in the middle. But it had something; it had warmth there. But those [Stinkens] pipes were not well-made, and it took Harald Vogel to explain to me how badly they had been made, because he listened to the organ and asked me: "What's wrong?" and he went up inside. And he has always been a good critic, to listen to our organs and say exactly what he thought. Sometimes he likes them better than others, and he is always fair in saying; you really need to work on this. We looked inside, and it was of course the pipes. When you have only built one organ, you expect it to be the best thing ever, and it is very hard to take criticism, especially from someone you respect. But he was right, absolutely right. And criticism is the only thing that is really interesting. You know, real, heartfelt, caring criticism. You have done a good job here, but you need to improve on this. We looked at those pipes, and there was no overbite on the upper lip. The pipes were made with the upper parts too far back. Furthermore, the windways were too narrow and there wasn't any way to change this arrangement, and thus, there was no way to make the pipes sing ideally. The pipes work all right, but it's not a great sound, and you could never get great intensity or power out of them.23

It took Brombaugh & Associates. Inc. another year to send out the following press release, dated March 28, 1978:

John Brombaugh & Co., formerly a partnership for building tracker organs near Middletown, Ohio, was reorganized in the summer of 1977. Former partner Herman Greunke is curator of organs and harpsichords at Oberlin Conservatory of Music. Partners George K. Taylor and John H. Boody have a new shop for tracker organbuilding at 7422 Elk Creek Road, Middletown, OH 45042 known as Taylor Organbuilders, and are presently constructing instruments going to Coshocton, Ohio, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Vincennes, Indiana. John Brombaugh & Associates, Inc., relocated to the Pacific Northwest with present shop in Springfield, Oregon (Mailing address: 2932 Wingate, Eugene, OR 97401). Although the former group is now in three locations, they remain as close friends collaborating on various research projects to advance the state of the art of building fine pipe organs.24

23 George Taylor, interview by author, Staunton, Va., 14 May 2007. 24 Newspaper clipping from the files of Taylor & Boody Organbuilders. 22

CHAPTER VI

THE TAYLOR & BOODY COMPANY IS ESTABLISHED

―You have brains in your head. You have feet in your shoes. You can steer yourself in any direction you choose. You're on your own. And you know what you know. You are the guy who'll decide where to go.‖ from Oh, the Places You'll Go! – Dr. Seuss.

After a year in Middletown, Ohio, Taylor & Boody relocated to Staunton, Virginia in a former schoolhouse after a successful appeal for a variance to local zoning regulations. The building required massive repair effort and was renovated to accommodate the diverse activities of organ building, including a metal casting room, voicing room, woodworking shop and a multi- story assembly room. With a permanent and well-fitted home for their organ building enterprise, the company was ready to accept ever larger contracts. The organ building philosophy of this young company was taking a more concrete form as the workshop took form. Here are Taylor's reflections about his company, after finishing an organ for Yokohama, Japan:

The design of the Ferris organ is not copied from any particular instrument. Like all of our work, it reflects our interpretation of those things we like in the work of our teachers and colleagues, past and present. In this sense it is eclectic. Our choices are personal and arbitrary, reflecting our interests, tastes and understanding at the time of the project. Years ago we learned that when we set out to copy someone else's work directly, the product is never convincingly exact. The experiment can be instructive but is nevertheless influenced by what we consider important and what we overlook in the original. Like it or not, the results are always our own. Thus, we do not purport to make copies.25

25 George Taylor, ‖Ferris Girl‘s School,‖ in The Historical Organ in America: A Documentary of Recent Organs Based on European and American Models, ed. Lynn Edwards (Easthampton: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1992), 128-129.

23

John Brombaugh believes that there cannot be an all-purpose organ capable of playing the music of the various schools authentically. In his opinion, a builder should study one organ building style until he is comfortable, and design and build continuing in that style.26

Stephen Bicknell wrote about John Brombaugh‘s instruments:

A Brombaugh organ had all the virtues of purity, plus elaborately carved historical casework, luxurious details executed in precious timbers, and many exuberantly cranky touches in direct imitation of the eccentricities of the Renaissance and Early Baroque–amongst them unsteady or ‗free‘ wind and unequal temperament.27

In a similar vein, Taylor & Boody want to produce instruments encompassing the best of past principles and the best ideas their imaginations can muster, not copies of earlier organs.

They are trying to interpret historical models for modern-day use.28 The organ ideal that both

Taylor & Boody consider beautiful is represented by the historic organs of Northern Europe, initially acquired during their apprenticeships and expanded in the Brombaugh workshop. This ideal often places these men in the strictest current of historically informed organ building, though there are examples of more eclectic design in their work. Taylor & Boody is working for its customers, and the demands of particular instruments may cause the firm to consider broader approaches.

Taylor & Boody is following directly in Brombaugh‘s footsteps by adopting the philosophy of building in one historical tradition, though George Taylor had already embarked along that path during his apprenticeship with Rudolph von Beckerath, and indeed had been captivated by the von Beckerath organ in Canon Chapel, University of Richmond during its

26Marga Jeanne Morris Kienzle, The Life and Work of John Brombaugh, Organ Builder (DMA Diss., University of Cincinnati, 1984), 35.

27 Stephen Bicknell, 86.

28Joe Kennedy, "Putting the Art Back in the Organ," Tempo, Roanoke Times & World News, October 23, 1983.

24 installation. Taylor & Boody have assimilated seventeenth and eighteenth century methods of

North European organ building into its own distinctive style. The central core of its organ sound is firmly rooted in a principal chorus inspired by the Schnitger organs built for the protestant churches of North Germany, where the organ was required to lead congregational singing.

Consequently, the principal sound is warm and rich, and builds to a cheerful brightness with the addition of higher-pitched stops. While many of their instruments display the influence of the

Hamburger Prospekt of Schnitger-styled organ cases, they can incorporate more eclectic sounds borrowed from other European traditions, though they rarely cross the boundaries of traditional national schools.

John Boody described their philosophy:

Build a good organ, and people will listen to it no matter what. Build a responsive key action that works well and make the sounds provocative. Because the differences in regional building style are slight. We have never deviated from the basic Germanic style of voicing of the principals and the composition of the mixtures.29

The argument of some purists would be that the eclectic organ is just an amalgamation of stops without tonal coherence and integrity. John Boody countered this position. He claimed that the stoplist and character of the type of eclectic organ that Taylor & Boody has built resembles a

Hildebrandt organ, though a division might be enclosed in a swellbox. The Schnitger organ is the basic model, with some influence of three or four other historic organs without mixing national styles.

John Boody described their work in these words:

The importance of the artisan builder is related to the craftsmanship and in the total expression of all the details of the organ. Some builders have an idea about an organ, draw up the plans and order parts from an organ supply house. With Taylor & Boody, you are not only getting an organ, but also an American craft object with vast decorative detail. It is an intense way of working.30

29 John Boody, interview by author, 14 May 2007. 30 John Boody, interview by author, 14 May 2007. 25

The concept of the organ as a craft object is a defining principle of the artisan builders and is the key element that the large manufacturers often try to emulate. The large builders would like to acquire a share of this market, but have not been able thus far to incorporate all aspects of this ideal.

26

CHAPTER VII

CHARACTERISTICS OF A TAYLOR & BOODY ORGAN

The organ is nothing but a machine, whose machine-made sounds will always be

without interest unless they can appear to be coming from a living organism. The

organ has to seem to be alive.

Charles Fisk31

One of the first characteristics an organist notices after the initial visual impact of an instrument is the quality of the keyboard action. Absolutely essential to the shaping of music is an articulate and responsive key action. Most historic organs used a suspended action, where the tracker connection was suspended from the pallet to the midpoint of a long key hinged at the back. Taylor & Boody has always employed suspended actions of this type in the keyboards, even for Rückpositiv actions, with stickers positioned below the back ends of keys. After early attempts with some of the action constructed of aluminum, the action has since been fabricated entirely of wood. The trackers are usually constructed from old and stable wooden organ pipes.

In some instruments the rollerboards are slanted to simplify the action and provide easy access to the pallet box in the back of the windchest, an innovation learned at Brombaugh‘s shop.

Following the practice learned from John Brombaugh, the natural keys are covered with cow shinbone, which unlike ivory never yellows or becomes brittle. Cow bone lasts indefinitely and displays a pattern similar to woodgrain. The black keys are usually made of Gabon ebony.

31 Charles Fisk, ―The Organ‘s Breath of Life,‖ in The Tracker Organ Revival in America, ed. Uwe Pape (Berlin: Pape Verlag. 1985), 49.

27

After a trip to Europe where he had played the great historic organs, E. Power Biggs recounted:

The sound of these instruments was so enormously different and superior to what we were accustomed to. And the instruments, despite their age and the different playing dimensions of the console and pedal board, were much more responsive. Many things thus suddenly came into focus: the importance of tracker action, of articulate voicing, of the organ case, of the windchest and so on – and particularly the interaction of playing action and pipe sound.32

In his pamphlet Deutsche und französiche Orgelbaukunst und Orgelkunst published in

1906, Albert Schweitzer was already bemoaning the lack of connection between the player and the pallet, a result of employing pneumatic action which ―lacks the vital and elastic quality of the lever.‖ He recognized that the quality of the pallet movement was essential to the speech characteristics of the pipes.33 Taylor & Boody has always employed mechanical suspended action in their instruments, believing it to be the best engineering choice and the most musically satisfying.

Taylor & Boody has always built the classic flat pedal clavier. Pedal keyboards are made of solid oak with key guides made of Delrin, which wears well and mutes the playing action. In a proposal to Charlie Wallace, chaplain of Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, Boody explained his position:

For twenty years we have been building flat, 30-note pedal keyboards. We feel that they are superior to the A.G.O. style concave radiating pedals because: (1) They are more like the historic keyboards and thereby encourage the player to play with articulation as envisioned by the historic composers; (2) they are mechanically more durable and compatible with mechanical action; (3) as far as key spacing and centering of

32 E. Power Biggs, ―The Organs in the Germanic Museum of Cambridge, Massachusetts,‖ in The Tracker Organ Revival in America, ed. Uwe Pape (Berlin: Pape Verlag. 1985), 13.

33 Charles R. Joy, Music in the Life of Albert Schweitzer, (London, Adam and Charles Black Limited, 1953), 142.

28

the keyboard [are concerned] they are similar in playing characteristics to the A.G.O. keyboard. We would be reluctant to give up what we perceive to be distinct advantages.34

The compasses of the manual and pedal keyboards in Taylor & Boody organs demonstrate a flexible approach informed by the musical demands of the client. Perhaps the most demanding requirement is the ability to play in all keys within a meantone temperament; if so, then subsemitones must be included. The most common subsemitones are those of D# and G#, distinct from Eb and Ab. Most of the organs have the keyboard range of C-g3 and a pedal range of C-f1, with these exceptions: Steeles Tavern's organ manual range is from C-e3, and the pedal is from C, D to d1 (without CIS); Emory University's organ manuals are from C, D-g3, with a pedal from C, D-f1. Beaufort has a keyboard range of C-e3; its pedal goes only to f1. In York

Springs the keyboards are from C, D-d3 and the pedal goes from C, D to e1. The continuo organs reach to d3. The Marquand Chapel organ at Yale University is unique for its variable number of subsemitones between divisions and variations on the short octave, though the key compass is C- c3 for the manuals and C-d1 for the pedal.

The stop action in all cases is mechanical, where each stop knob is beautifully turned and set into the vertical surface of the case on either side of the keydesk. The stop labels are in handwritten ink on either a piece of leather or parchment and attached to the case below the stop knob.

The stop names are not consistently one national style. For example, the English name

Open Diapason is called Prestant, Praestant, or Principal. Many reeds stops have German names, like Trompet, Posaune, Krummhorn and Cornett. But the naming convention goes the other way also. The compound mixture stop is usually called by its English name, Mixture, not the German name, Mixtur. A 1-3/5' stop is often given the German name, Tertia, and sometimes the French

34 John Boody, Staunton, Virginia to Charles Wallace, Salem, Oregon, Taylor & Boody Company Archives, Staunton, Virginia. 29 name, Tierce (at Worcester, both Tierce and Tertia are used for two separate stops.) This lack of a consistent naming tradition likely came from their time with John Brombaugh and the influence of the North European organs that freely used Dutch and German names. The language of stop names might infer a national style, or it might just be the builder‘s whim. The naming of stops in English might suggest an English organ. For Taylor & Boody this would be true for the

Emory University, Keenan Chapel, and First Presbyterian, Knoxville organs, which were built in

English style with English names. It might seem reasonable that in the case of a closely followed model, as with the Marquand Chapel organ, that Taylor & Boody would have named stops as they are found on the Lüdingworth organ, but that is not the case. Perhaps the alternate spellings are an individual stamp on their instruments. Division name spellings are also not consistent; what is Rückpositiv in one location is Rückpositive in another, while Great is used as frequently as Hauptwerk. These spellings could reflect the culture of the instrument‘s community or relative adherence to historical models. An examination of the naming conventions of the historic builders also reveals no pattern of strict adherence to names or spellings. Spellings certainly were not standardized in any languages until after several cycles of lexicon publication in the eighteenth century; surely the organ builders of earlier periods cannot be held to a modern standard.

In the European tradition organ stops were named in the language known to the people in the community where the organ was located. In the early American era the stop names reflected the roots of the builder‘s tradition. Stop names among the New England builders of English origin or ancestry were predominantly in English; Pennsylvanian organ builders understandably labeled their stops with German names. Eventually, stop names in the United States became mixed, reflecting all the major organ schools of Europe.

30

31

Pipemaking in the Taylor & Boody Shop

One of the primary reasons that Taylor & Boody moved to Virginia was to secure a facility for making their own pipes. A fundamental philosophy of this new firm was that to make good organs, all parts must be constructed by the firm and not provided piecemeal from an organ supply house. One of the first tasks after arriving in Staunton was the fitting of a pipe-making shop under the direction of Louis Dolive, formerly a pipe maker at C.B. Fisk. Charles Fisk wrote at length about the various qualities of metal used in pipe making:

Tin has always been an expensive metal, and while it boasts a long history of use in organ building, the fact is that ―pure" lead—without any additions whatever— was the normal material for making organ pipes almost up to the time of Schnitger. (By ―pure‖ lead I mean the purest lead available at the time, i.e., a metal which analyses at around 97% lead and 3% trace metals which the refining process of the time could not remove.) Schnitger rebuilt a great many Gothic and Renaissance organs, and what a scavenger he was! He never threw aside any stop that in his eyes had virtue. We thus find in his organs stop after stop from earlier builders made of pure lead. His elegant organ at the Aa Kerk in Groningen retains many old stops, including de Mare's 16, 8 and 4 foot foundations for the Great chorus. These are of ―pure‖ lead and lend a surpassing dignity to Schnitger's instrument. Interestingly enough, Schnitger often saved the lead foundation stops but habitually threw out the lead mixtures he found in the Gothic and Renaissance organs, preferring the schneidend (cutting) quality of his own mixtures, which were usually made with about 20% of tin. What are the characteristic sounds of the old lead stops? First, a darkness, a hollowness, a sound as of deepest antiquity. Second, an astonishing agility, an ability to move as the music moves, to flit about like a freshly hatched insect. These two characteristics seem contradictory, and indeed, as I see it, the attractiveness of lead pipes seem to lie in the paradox that qualities of youth and great age can cohabit the same mysterious envelope. Another paradox relates to the strength of the sound. A lead pipe, when voiced in the old way, yields a tone with a softness about it, an unformed, amateurish kind of tone. Yet a chorus of lead pipes produces resultants of great carrying power. Lead is what gave the small Gothic organ the power to fill a vast cathedral. Recall the little organ at Oosthuizen and its ―brave sound,‖ as E. Power Biggs so aptly titles it. That bravura, that all-out quality, is the sound of lead.

What, alternatively, is the sound of tin? I think of it as the sound of refinement, the argentine sound of the French Plein Jeu, or at its very best, the blaze of

32

weightless color and light that Gottfried Silbermann knew so well how to achieve in his paper-thin, hammered tin choruses. Tin pipes love to produce overtones, and there is something about the metal that lends itself to the production of pleasing overtones, particularly when the voicing is done in the old way, with high cutups. This is how the ―silver‖ of Silbermann is achieved. In our own time, unfortunately, there has been a widespread tendency to make tin pipes with walls that are thick (a waste of material) and with cutups that are low (a French technique) and with toeholes that are wide open (a German idea). No wonder that upperwork made in this polyglot way is piercing beyond the bounds of music; no wonder that foundations so constructed are foundationless and characterless. Low cutups put the tin in a bad mood, so to speak, whence it cannot rise to its natural elegance. I believe the misapplication and abuse of tin will come to be seen historically as the great organ building mistake of the '50s, '60s, and '70s.35

One major question for the new firm was to decide upon the composition of the metal alloys to be used. In the 1970s, Maarten Albert Vente gave Brombaugh three sixteenth-century

Hendrik Niehoff pipes which were then analyzed by Herman Greunke. It was determined that the pipes were about 98 percent lead, with 2 percent trace elements, consisting of about 1.27 percent tin, about 0.2 percent copper, about 0.1 percent antimony, some bismuth, some iron, and some trace elements. In the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries it was not possible to make

100% pure lead.36

Brombaugh had experienced a great deal of trouble smelting his metal alloys following the metal analysis provided by Bernhardt H. Edskes in 1969, which was published in a report on the restoration of the 1698 Arp Schnitger organ in the Dutch Reformed Church of Nieuw-

Scheemda, The Netherlands. The report stated that Schnitger's pipes contained 82 percent lead,

17 percent tin, and the rest copper and antimony. Brombaugh used a similar alloy in pipes ordered from Stinkens in Zeist, The Netherlands for the organ in First Lutheran Church in

Lorain, Ohio. Brombaugh found that the lead alloy from the Niehoff pipes was far better, as it

35 Charles Fisk, ‖Some Thoughts on Pipe Metal,‖ in Charles Brenton Fisk: Organ Builder, vol. 2, ed. Barbara Owen (Easthampton: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1986), 123-24.

36 John Boody, interview by author, 14 May 2007.

33 did not sag. Brombaugh boasts that he was the first to use this alloy in this century, even before

North German organ builders Ahrend & Brunzema did so.37 John Brombaugh discussed his pipe making practice:

High quality pipework in an organ is its most valuable asset. With an unusually positive and congenial working relationship, a small group of world-class American organ-builders make their own pipes while sharing their ideas, research, and errors with each other. It is a phenomenon unheard of among European builders, even the best. We go to Europe, look at, listen to, and study the ancient instruments, and then work out ideas so we might get results similar to the old masters. The Europeans help, too, as when Maarten Albert Vente gave me several years ago several large Praestant pipes in 1971 made by Hendrik Niehoff's shop for the 1539 organ in Schoonhoven, Holland. Our shop analyzed them, let Charles Fisk and Gene Bedient (plus Paul Fritts, Manuel Rosales, and others later) study them, and finally started making our own pipes in 1975 for Opus 19 (at Central Lutheran in Eugene [Oregon]) utilizing the results of our studies. The alloy is primarily lead (over 98%) with only a bit more than 1% tin and small amounts of antimony, copper, and bismuth. These minor portions, however, are absolutely necessary to ensure structural stability to the alloy. A look at historic organs from the 1500s indicates it to be quite practical and stable as found, for example, in the ancient pipes from Niehoff of 1550 and Dirk Hoyer of 1580 in the Johanniskirche organ in Lüneburg. The alloy structure, however, is not the only important factor; the metal must be properly hammered to make good pipes. Unlike iron and brass, tin-lead alloys do not get harder when hammered; hammering stabilizes the metal's crystalline structure to improve the structural stability and the sound of the pipe. It was a must for organbuilders from the earliest times through Dom Bédos' period. Pipes made from a hammered high-lead alloy sing that special vocale sound so cherished in the ancient organs.

But hammered high-lead is not the answer to all musical requirements; higher tin alloys also have musical benefits for the upper registers in the principal plena, some reed resonators and, of course, string stops. Here, as in so many cases, it is a question of style, since, except possibly in the façades, one seldom finds anything but high-lead pipes in the Northwest European (especially Dutch) organs before the mid-1600s. We used only the high-lead alloy in Opus 19, but listening to its plenum in Bach's music indicated that something was missing that apparently wasn't essential to Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck's music. Besides the way in which they constituted their mixtures, the later masters differed from their predecessors in the composition of their principal choruses. In the time of Gottfried Fritzsche, Friedrich Stellwagen, and Arp Schnitger, one seldom finds less than 20% tin

37Marga Jeanne Morris Kienzle, The Life and Work of John Brombaugh, Organ Builder (DMA Diss., University of Cincinnati, 1984), 20.

34

alloys in their principal work, and, for reasons of prestige, front pipes von feinem Zinn, woll Aussgepolirt were always demanded when money was available.38

When using lead, Taylor & Boody use the same alloy, though for some ranks they use more tin, up to 28% tin for upperwork and up to 70% tin for string stops.

Taylor & Boody follows in the footsteps of Brombaugh and historic North European organ builders by constructing entire principal ranks out of high-lead, especially the Octave 4' of the Great. Ample evidence of the effectiveness of 98% hammered lead was provided by

Brombaugh's discovery of the intense sound of the c. 1540 all-lead Octave 4' in the Arp

Schnitger organ of Steinkirchen, North Germany, and the high-lead Octave 4' of the organ in the

Der Aa-kerk in Groningen, the Netherlands, which is older than the sample in the Steinkirchen organ. The young builders had the opportunity to inspect and measure this stop during the removal of the instrument, which solidified their desire to follow this historic practice.

Brombaugh and Taylor & Boody believe that pipes with more lead sing with a vocal and strongly fundamental sound; pipes with more tin sound brighter and more instrumental. There was a requirement for the Yokohama organ to sound more instrumental for playing Bach, so more tin was employed in the pipe alloys, giving the organ a more silvery sound than the firm's normal hammered lead instruments.

After the metal is cast into sheets for making the pipes, they are stored to rest. This curing time is necessary for the molecules of the metal to stabilize. When the sheets are fully cured, they are hammered to compact the molecules, following the traditional practice of hammering lead plates as described by Dom Bédos in L'Art du facteur d'orgues. This practice eliminates the air bubbles created in the casting step and creates an uneven surface that many organ builders

38 John Brombaugh, ―Haga Church,‖ in Historical Organ in America: A Documentary of Recent Organs Based on European and American Models, ed. Lynn Edwards (Easthampton: Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1992), 27.

35 believe enhances the natural character of the sound. While planing, scoring the mouths, soldering, burnishing and lacquering all must be completed with hand tools, John Boody invented a hammering machine for the laborious process of hammering the lead sheets. The next step in preparing the pipe metal is scraping the plates, hand-planing them and thinning them gradually towards the top. Pipes with bodies that are too thin will not contain the wave energy they produce at their mouths. Too thin and the fundamental is ruined. Too thick and the harmonics are non-existent.

Here is a chart of metal thickness in millimeters from the Yokohama organ:

77% tin 28% tin 1.5% tin top bottom top bottom top bottom CC 0.90 1.44 1.17 3.00 C 0.66 1.05 0.77 1.25 0.90 1.60 c 0.49 0.75 0.60 0.93 0.70 1.10 c1 0.36 0.54 0.48 0.70 0.50 0.80 c2 0.29 0.39 0.38 0.53 0.45 0.60 c3 0.25 0.30 0.30 0.40 0.43 0.50 c4 0.25 0.30

Boody described the process this way:

Hammering the lead ―tightens‖ the metal. When the molten metal is poured on the casting table, tiny air bubbles are trapped in the metal, creating a texture somewhat like angel food cake. Hammering tightens the metal by eliminating those air bubbles. Some old pipes don‘t look hammered – they often planed it away on the outside surfaces, but if you look inside, you can see that the old masters hammered the metal rather consistently.39

The lower pitches of the principal chorus are usually constructed from hammered lead, but most of Taylor & Boody‘s pipes are constructed from Schnitger metal which is 28% tin and

71% lead. Others are built of higher percentage tin or spotted metal, which is composed of roughly equal parts tin and lead, causing the distinctive ―spotting‖ of the molecules. This metal is cast in the seventeenth-century method on a table covered in Kevlar cloth, by pouring the molten

39 John Boody, interview by author, 14 May 2007. 36 metal into a hopper and dragging it down the casting table. The original method was to cast on tightly woven linen. Organ builders discovered that the linen would last for more castings when the alloy contained greater concentrations of tin. Perhaps the lower melting point of tin contributed to its greater use. Some principal facades are constructed of 90% tin, of lead pipes applied with tin foil, or of burnished lead. These pipes are then lacquered to prevent oxidation and to protect against surface marring from the acid on human hands. During all handling, craftsmen wear latex gloves to prevent marring of surfaces. According to Boody the scaling and cutup of a pipe contributes more to its sound than the material, though he does build string stops with a higher concentration of tin because of some enhancement of harmonic development.

One of the things that we pride ourselves on at Taylor & Boody is making all of the parts of our organs in house. This includes, but is not limited to our metal pipes. We use three main alloys for our metal pipes, two of which we alloy ourselves in our foundry. They are "Herman's mix" (roughly 98% lead and 1% tin with trace elements), "28%" (roughly 71% lead and 28% tin), and a high tin alloy (90% tin, 9% lead and trace elements). The trace elements are mainly bismuth, antimony, copper, and silver among others. We have used different alloys in the past for certain projects, such as the restorations of two David Tannenberg organs. We had the alloys recreated to match the original pipe metal, but they are not part of our everyday pipemaking. 40

Reed pipes are made in the shop by hand with wooden boots and blocks. The shallots of the reeds in the pedal and the basses of the manual reeds are annealed with lead to stabilize the sound and limit the overtones which provide a sound with pronounced fundamental. The boots are screwed onto the toeboard. For the Worcester organ the Oberwerk trumpet was constructed in Renaissance style. The shallots, while cylindrical, are beak-shaped—like the bow of a scow— and are smaller at the lower end than at the open end where it goes into the block.

In their early years, the builders set the Brustwerk reeds in a Stevelblock, a solid piece of wood into which the boots are bored, which was a practice that Brombaugh had used. In more recent organs the builders have favored separate boots and blocks throughout their instruments.

40 John Boody, interview by author, February 11, 2008. 37

The voicers at Taylor & Boody apply slight nicking whenever necessary to make a pipe speak properly. Although builders before about 1800 generally did not nick their pipes, Taylor &

Boody, along with other builders in this country, believes that it is sometimes necessary, often due to the generally drier acoustical environments in the United States. If any nicking is done, it is applied in the final voicing on location. Charles Fisk wrote in an article about pipe flueways:

True, most organ pipes from Bach‘s time and before have little or no nicking, but the flues are almost never hairline. Moss seems to be growing on the languid; often there are tool marks roughly made in that tenderest of all places, the languid‘s lower leading edge. How can we produce sounds as beautiful as the oldest sounds? The answer is elusive, but it surely includes keeping flues open without using nicks – seemingly impossible in a newly made, undistressed organ pipe.41

While Taylor & Boody prefers to make most pipes out of metal, the pedal Subbass pipes are usually made of poplar. The stopped 8' and 4' ranks of Brustwerk divisions are usually made of native Virginia oak. Some other manual stops are made of wood, but they are usually placed at the back of the chest where their height and width will not cause a sound egress problem with smaller pipes. Both wood and metal pipes are mitered when necessary, as in the Indianapolis organ, where the lowest three Dulcian pipes of the Rückpositiv and the lowest four pipes of the

Pedal Posaune are mitered.

One major characteristic of Taylor & Boody, like that of their former partner John

Brombaugh, is the use of the historic wedge-shaped bellows in their organs. Reservoir bellows and regulator bellows were introduced in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, replacing wedge-shaped bellows which provided a very steady and powerful wind that could support many stops and pneumatic key and stop actions. A human-powered flexible wind is very important on organs suited to play music composed before 1800. In some organs Taylor & Boody has installed

41 Charles Fisk, ―Pipe Flueways,‖ in Charles Brenton Fisk: Organ Builder, vol. 2, ed. Barbara Owen (Easthampton: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1986), 121-22.

38 bellows that can be fed by human power by means of foot levers (in University of Iowa, Iowa

City, Holy Cross, Worcester, Ferris University, Yokohama, and Christ Church Cathedral,

Indianapolis). In the Worcester organ Taylor & Boody installed a system driven by electric motors controlled by a computer that mimics human pumping. The Yokohama organ has three large wedge-shaped bellows which can be pumped by foot or by blower. Each bellows measures

1,100 mm by 2,200 mm. They are located in an open frame behind the Hauptwerk walkboard and made of 50 mm thick poplar plates and 15 mm thick white pine ribs. The back check valves are made of cedar. The side ribs are pinched shut at the tail to add tension as the bellows open, which compensates for the decrease in pressure. Blower wind is regulated by butterfly valves and is permanently connected to the bellows by PVC pipe.

The windlines from the bellows to the organ are usually made of poplar, joined by leather gaskets. They are dimensioned in accordance with the wind pressure and size of the organ and bellows. The measurements of the Yokohama organ are given as an example. Their interior dimensions in millimeters are as follows:

Cross section Length Windline from bellows rack 220 x 220 2,700 Main bifurcation line 200 x 200 3,400 Hauptwerk feeder (x2) 140 x 100 800 Pedal feeder (x2) 100 x 100 2,500 Brustwerk feeder 80 x 80 1,100 Rückpositiv feeder 100 x 200 5,000

The result of using wedge-shaped bellows is a flexible, natural wind. The bellows should operate like a pair of lungs, allowing the organ to sing and breathe. This type of wind has a beneficial effect on pipe speech and informs registration choices. It eliminates the jitteriness of wind produced by a fan blower.

39

Charles Fisk described the many actions of positive and negative pulses resulting from opening and closing pallets. These pulses can be cancelled out when playing the organ with a smooth legato, yet contribute to the clarity of counterpoint when the player employs ordinary touch. Ordinary touch is the term applied to the usual articulation employed by organists for music composed before the fashion of seamless legato touch, characterized by almost imperceptible breaks between notes. He also described the helpful action of flexible wind in randomizing the small imperfections in tuning that become especially annoying with rock-steady wind.42 This subject occupied a great deal of his thought and practice in order to provide the optimum wind matrix for the pipes to speak in an articulate manner with a full yet unforced tone.

He described in the article The Organ’s Breath of Life and in a lecture Articulateness and the

Organ: A Problem for the Organ Builder how the bellows, wind trunks, pallet boxes, and tone channels all provide the necessary cushion of air to enhance the articulation of organ pipes.

Fritz Noack described the characteristics of flexible wind:

There should be a bit of life in the wind system: a note held in the right hand should gently acknowledge when a bass enters. Such little undulation in the wind should be of a pleasant, slow frequency, and gentle enough to be more or less a subconscious matter.43

The case was an important part of the organ as noted in Arnolt Schlick‘s 1511 publication, Spiegel der Orgelmacher, in which he advised that the case design also take into account the architecture of the building.44 Taylor & Boody believes that the historic builders demonstrated the blending and focusing power of the case and therefore do not build their instruments in chambers or freestanding in a space without a case.

42 Charles Fisk, ―The Organ‘s Breath of Life,‖ in The Tracker Organ Revival in America, ed. Uwe Pape (Berlin: Pape Verlag, 1985), 49.

43 Fritz Noack, ―New Trends in Organ Building,‖ Journal of Church Music 17, no. 4 (1975), 6.

44 Peter Williams, A New History of the Organ, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 74.

40

Stephen Bicknell described the value of the case:

The organ case has an effect on the sound of the organ, though this may be difficult to define. For the neo-classical builders of the mid-twentieth century the revival of the traditional organ case—with side walls, back and roof—was an important argument in the ideology of organ reform. The casework was believed to focus the sound, assist the blend of the various ranks of pipes and project the sound into the room (usually down the main axis of the building). There is still considerable debate as to whether the organ case is essentially a passive structure, like a loud-speaker cabinet, or whether it has an active role as a resonator, bringing it more into line with other musical instruments where the body or soundboard is vital in creating power and timbre.45

The case contributes to this difference in color at North Presbyterian Church in

Cincinnati, Ohio, where the Baarpÿp is constructed as a metal conical flute in the case, yet sounds like an Oak Principal in the room just ten feet away.

In a letter to Arthur Howes, Charles Fisk commented on the utility of organ cases:

We have been using solid wood where we can for some time in the belief that plywood is bad music wood. As to the chief function of the case, I do not know. It does focus the sound and its cavity resonances are very important, but I also think the vibration of the wood is important. Presumably, when the wood vibrates the ―Q‖ of the cavity resonances is much reduced, and this may be good, as cavity resonances discriminate unmercifully against certain pipes inside the case.46

Fisk also wrote describing the effect of organ cases on pipe speech:

The simplest rule to remember is this: If a building is live, and if you really want the listener to hear the consonants in music, or in speech for that matter, it is necessary to provide him with strong direct sound from the source so as to overcome the ―vowel predominance‖ of the reverberating building. This implies first that you establish the entire source of sound in the building so that is plainly visible to the listener (―line-of- sight transmission‖) since sound, like light, travels a straight path. Second, you can reinforce the direct sound by placing behind the source a close-fitting reflecting shell, like a band shell – indeed, the classical organ case was a kind of wooden band shell. Sound which the source emits toward the shell is bounced back toward the listener almost immediately; thus, if the explosive consonant ―t‖ is uttered, the ―t‖ which the listener hears coming directly from the source is followed almost immediately by the ―t‖ reflected

45 Stephen Bicknell, ―The Organ Case,‖ in The Cambridge Companion to the Organ, ed. Nicholas Thistlethwaite and Geoffrey Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 55.

46 Charles Fisk, ―Excerpts from Letters,‖ in Charles Brenton Fisk: Organ Builder, vol. 2, ed. Barbara Owen (Easthampton: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1986), 170.

41

off the shell, and for the listener the two sounds coalesce into a single consonant, the one sound reinforcing the other.47

Yet nowhere has Taylor & Boody‘s position on the organ case been stated more clearly than in the essay co-written by George Taylor and John Boody for Volume One of Charles

Brenton Fisk: Organ Builder. They described the architectural properties (of equal importance to altars and pulpits) and the original basic purpose of the case (protection of the pipe work and action), while proposing that the heart of organ design consisted of the arrangement of the front pipes – and by inference, the case design. This arrangement is selected using architectural principles of proportion, including the golden section, and by traditional placement of organ divisions, based upon a philosophy of matching the visual impact of the pipes and case with function. They contended that these principles of proportion were derived from the size and proportions of the human body, and thus demonstrated an organic quality which granted approachability to the viewer. As for musical value of the case, Taylor & Boody believes that the

―sound of the pipes is blended in the case and focused in the direction of the audience. The case is the organ‘s largest and most effective soundboard, which can reflect, absorb, or resonate with the energy of the music.‖48

One of the first steps in the design of a new organ is the layout of the windchests which will inform the design of the entire organ case and the arrangement of pipe towers. Taylor &

Boody designs its organ cases because the case is an integral part of the entire instrument and needs to be the design of the organ builder. Their design philosophy is known as Werkprinzip, or

"Work Principle," where each division of the organ that contains its own windchests and pipes is

47 Charles Fisk, ―The Architect as Organ Maker,‖ in Charles Brenton Fisk: Organ Builder, vol. 2, ed. Barbara Owen (Easthampton: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1986), 111.

48 George Taylor and John Boody, "The Classical Organ Case: Considerations in Design and Construction," in Charles Brenton Fisk, Organ Builder vol. 1 ed. Fenner Douglas et al. (Easthampton: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1986), 216.

42 reflected in the façade of the organ case. The ways in which the cases are joined together give the organ its unique appearance. Some of the possibilities include the main organ (Hauptwerk), the Oberwerk which is situated on top of the Hauptwerk, the Brustwerk which is a small division just above the music desk provided with doors to manually vary the volume, the Rückpositiv which is situated immediately at the organist‘s back and built into the gallery rail, and the Pedal.

This pedal division is either divided chromatically into two towers on either sides of the

Hauptwerk or is placed at the back of the main case. In smaller instruments some pedal stops are built as part of the Hauptwerk case. Organs built according to Werkprinzip principles are easier to expand; both stops and entire divisions have been prepared for in Taylor & Boody instruments which reflect historic organ building practice. The organ in the Jakobikirche, Hamburg is a prime example, where the builders Iversand, Hoyer, Hans Scherer I and II and Gottfried Fritzsche contributed to the instrument over a period of 130 years.49

Taylor & Boody organ cases are based on sixteenth through eighteenth-century examples from Northern Europe, which is a fertile field for a variety of design. Renaissance cases were built with flat façades without articulation. Some fanciful cases were inspired during organ enlargements by the necessity of cramming more pipes into a case than specified in the original instrument. As more notes were added to the compass of the organ, the various arrangements of larger and smaller pipes foreshadowed the development of articulation into flats and towers.

Renaissance-styled flat façades are found in First Christian Church, Vincennes, Mt. Carmel

Presbyterian Church, Steeles Tavern, and College of the Holy Cross, Worcester. Most organs, however, have forwardly protruding oblique or rounded pipe towers. In almost all cases the pipe flats that hold the small pipes are flat, though in Worcester's flat façade a few pipe flats are pointed to provide some interest. Round towers in organ cases are inspired by organs from the

49 Peter Williams, A New History of the Organ, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 99. 43 eighteenth century and later. Sharp articulations and polygonal mitered towers are derived from the practices of the sixteenth and seventeenth century, related to the Hamburger Prospekt.

According to Gustav Foch, Hans Scherer the Younger had established a standard of the

Hamburger Prospekt organ façade by the 1620s, which had been under development since the

1550s.

It consisted of Oberwerk (with or without Brustwerk), Rückpositiv, and side towers. The Hauptwerk, or Oberwerk, consists of a curved middle protruding tower, with two strongly projecting pointed towers on the outside, and two rectangular or trapezoidal fields on each side. The Rückpositiv has exactly the same form as the Hauptwerk, but reduced in scale. All this was then framed by two pedal towers, usually so that the bottom of the towers was level with the bottom of the Rückpositiv.50

Taylor & Boody has utilized casework influenced primarily by the North European models exemplified by the Hamburger Prospekt, though there have been a few cases influenced by eighteenth-century English styles, as at Kenan Chapel, Landfall. The organ case of the

Vincennes organ is based on the Totentanz organ of the Marienkirche in Lübeck, Germany, which, sadly, was destroyed by fire during an Allied bombing raid in 1942.51 The cases at Emory

University, Atlanta, First Presbyterian Church, Knoxville, and Keenan Chapel, Landfall, are patterned after the eighteenth-century English cabinet organs of John Snetzler. The case housing the Hauptwerk, Oberwerk ,and Brustwerk of Taylor & Boody‘s celebrated instrument at

Worcester is very much like the Niehoff case in the St. Johanniskirche in Lüneburg, Germany, on which the Worcester organ is strongly patterned, though it lacks the pedal towers of the St.

Johanniskirche added by Matthias Dropa in 1714. It also reveals its Dutch roots in its main case double-storied tower flanked by two triple-storied flats. This scheme is repeated in the

Rückpositiv case, where the central tower is only one story tall, flanked by two double-storied

50 Foch, 56.

51 Peter Williams, The European Organ 1450-1850, (Nashua: The Organ Literature Foundation, 1966), 98. 44 flats. The Steeles Tavern organ is inspired by the sixteenth-century organ of the Dutch Reformed

Church in Oosthuizen, while the organ at York Springs, though lacking a Rückpositiv, was inspired by the old sixteenth-century organ in the Dutch Reformed Church of Brouwershaven, also in the Netherlands. Because Taylor & Boody has assimilated the style of the North

European organbuilders so completely, totally unique instruments have been built, as in the

Clifton Forge organ. Although not consciously patterned after a particular historical organ, this instrument displays the Dutch characteristics of a central tower flanked by double-storied flats.

In contradiction of the Werkprinzip, the main case displays what appears to be an Oberwerk division which actually does not exist, and most unusually, the pedal towers are placed on the floor and are located behind and flanking the main case.

For the majority of Taylor & Boody instruments, solid Virginia white oak is used for the organ cases; sometimes fumed with ammonia to darken the color and accelerate ageing and sometimes hand-rubbed with oil.52 Other woods include walnut, used for the organ in Trinity

Episcopal Church, Staunton, and York Springs, where the wood was supplied by each church.

The walnut for the case of the organ in Trinity Church, Staunton was fished from the

Shenandoah Middle River after having been felled by Hurricane Fran in September 1996. A local farmer pulled the trees out with a rope lasso hooked up to his tractor. Solid cherry was used for the organ at St. Joseph Female Ursuline Academy in Maple Mount, Kentucky, First

Presbyterian in Tallahassee, and in Christ Lutheran Church, Staunton; red oak was used for the case in Lynchburg. The lumber for these organs is chosen by John Boody, dried, and quartersawn–a technique that displays the fine grain of the wood across the flat plane of the board. Most of the frame and cabinetry work has been completed using the time-honored

52George Taylor and John Boody, "The Classical Organ Case: Considerations in Design and Construction," in Charles Brenton Fisk, Organ Builder, vol. 1, ed. Fenner Douglas et al. (Easthampton: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1986), 215-36. 45 techniques of mortise and tenon, rabbet and dovetailed joinery, though, like old builders, they have assembled the frames by bolting some elements together. The historic builders used a few wood screws and hand-forged nails—not many, because those organs were not built to be taken apart. The normal practice was to nail and glue the wood components together. A modern organ builder assembles in his workshop, while the seventeenth-century builder would have built the organ on site, erecting the instrument in its intended place. Taylor & Boody‘s concessions to modern organ building include the electric fan blower and modern woodworking machinery, and the design of all organs is created using computer-aided design software.

Taylor & Boody has followed the practice of the late Renaissance organbuilders by employing carved pipe shades at the tops of the pipes while leaving the feet without decoration, though the organs at Holy Cross, Worcester, St. Thomas, New York and Ferris University,

Yokohama all display modest pipe shades at the feet of some flats. Marquand Chapel at Yale

University displays the most elaborate pipe shades for both tops and feet of pipes to date. This organ is also remarkable for the elaborate detailed painting, marbleized fronts, and gilding.

The historic temperament of the Renaissance and Early Baroque organ was a meantone or modified meantone tuning. Because pipes have a tendency to ―draw,‖ or bend their frequencies to the pitches of adjacent sounding pipes, it was very important that the relationships of the pipes were honored in the layout of the chests. It is evident then, that tones and semitones are to be avoided when possible, and that an arrangement of adjacent major thirds would actually enhance the tuning. There was also the advantage that this grouping on the chest would make attractive towers and flats in the façades of the cases. There were often three to five pipes per large tower, with the largest pipes either in the middle or arranged on either side. Taylor &

Boody has followed this traditional and scientific chest layout scheme.

46

The windchests of Taylor & Boody organs are made of solid wood, never of any type of fabricated material. The sliders are usually made of mahogany. They initially employed plastic

Laukhuff slider seals to prevent sliders from leaking. These seals were attached on the bottom of the toeboard above the slider. Since then the builders have used simple felt rings above and below the slider. Although not historical, Taylor and Boody feel that this is very similar to the traditional method of leather above and below the slider.

In Iowa Taylor & Boody used traditional pulpeten to observe their effect. They are small leather pouches, located on the bottom board of the windchest at the point where the copper pull- down wire enters, which prevents wind from leaking to the atmosphere. It is the only Taylor &

Boody organ to have these pouches. In all other organs the builders have employed nylon bushings. The springs of the pallets are constructed of stainless steel, and since the Iowa organ the pallets have been covered with longer leather. This extra length is glued in place in the back to act as the hinge of the pallet. In the Vincennes, Richmond, and Worcester organs, the builders attached vertical pallet boxes to the back of the Rückpositiv windchests. The Yokohama and

Indianapolis organs have horizontally placed pallet boxes in their Rückpositiv divisions.

As a practice to save space and money, Taylor & Boody sometimes borrows certain pipes from the Great for use in the Pedal, either by transmission or by a system where one stop can be used in only one division at a time. Sometimes non-essential notes like CIS and more rarely DIS are omitted in the bottom octave. Plywood is never used except for pipe racks of center towers to hold large pipes in place.

An interesting experiment occurred in the 1960s when a few old organs in the

Netherlands were retuned to historic temperaments with great effect. Recordings of these organs were produced which had an overwhelming effect on organists around the world. The two most

47 influential tunings were of the fifteenth-sixteenth-century organ of the Dutch Reformed Church of Oosthuizen to meantone and the seventeenth-eighteenth-century organ of the Dutch Reformed

Church of Medemblik to Werckmeister III. The recording of Medemblik by Willem Retze

Talsma received the Edison award in Holland, (which Klaas Bolt quickly distributed to

Brombaugh and other American organists). American organ builders went to visit the

Oosthuizen organ and immediately recognized the relationship between the sound of the organ and the historic temperament. Brombaugh was one of the first Americans to introduce historical temperaments to his new organs, and built an organ tuned in meantone for Fairchild Chapel at

Oberlin College in 1981.

Brombaugh observed an interesting quality of unequal temperaments:

One is astonished to discover that if the major third is clean, the ear can accept a considerably out-of-tune fifth - a phenomenon with no logical explanation known to me. The deadening flaw in equal temperament is that all thirds are dirty, equally so; major thirds are cramped perceptibly too wide.53

The phenomenon of the acoustical binding of pure thirds in a meantone organ is similar to the effect of a well-trained a cappella choir, where the singers can tune the thirds unhindered by equal-tempered instruments. Vertical sonorities achieve an acoustical glow not possible when the major third is too wide.

As part of their philosophy of integrated organ building, Taylor & Boody has always tuned their organs in the temperaments espoused by the organ builders in Northern Europe during the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries. In their early years they employed

Kirnberger II, and later used Kellner for opus numbers 16-20 and 22. A modified Vogel V was the model for the small continuo organs. The organ at Clifton Forge was originally in Kirnberger

III, though later retuned to a modified Young I as a concession because the church musicians

53 Kienzle, 38. 48 wanted an "equal temperament." The organ in Marquand Chapel is one of only a few significant instruments in the United States to be tuned in one-quarter-comma meantone temperament.

Taylor & Boody maintains tuning stability in their organs by avoiding tuning slides. They cut many pipes and reed resonators to speaking length and solder the caps of stopped metal pipes.

During installation the final cutting of pipes is performed where necessary during the final voicing and fine-tuning on location. The open flues are cone-tuned, and capped pipes have ears at their mouths for fine-tuning as necessary.

Most organs have a beater-type tremulant constructed in Schnitger‘s style that affects the entire organ. Many organs possess an additional Tremblant Doux in Dom Bédos style on the

Rückpositiv.

John Boody related some general construction details:

Most of the joinery in the organs is accomplished with mortise and tenon and pinned using the traditional techniques. Modern bolt and nut hardware is used in some parts of the frame, especially in those places where the organ will be disassembled in the shop prior to moving to its new home. Working with lead is inherently suspicious. You must practice good industrial hygiene. Wash your hands. But we blow the pipes by mouth all the time, for years and years. But the worst hazard is from lead oxide, found in lead paint. We coat the pipe metal with gum arabic and whiting to protect the metal and limit the solder incursion during manufacture. Lead resonators for reed pipes are often overlaid with copper to give them strength at the base. There is a limit to the thickness of lead pipes. Only so thick before it cracks on the outside and compresses on the inside. Casework panels are constructed of variable thickness of wood, with thicker and stronger panels for larger rooms and thinner panels for small rooms. The folds of the bellows are made of calf leather and North African hair goat leather. 54

Taylor & Boody often supplies hand-pumping methods for raising wind for the organ. It is constructed with two or more wedge-shaped bellows lifted by a handle and driven down by gravity through the use of weights attached to the top surface of the bellows. This contributes to the flexible, life-like winding that many musicians want in performance. In these cases, the electric blower is used only for convenience while practicing.

54 John Boody, interview by author, 14 May 2007. 49

Taylor & Boody relies on suppliers for some manufactured items and raw materials.

Slider seals and wind blowers come from the German organ-supply firm of Laukhuff. Trackers are made in the shop from old wooden Austin pipes. Exotic woods, such as boxwood and ebony, come from Theodor Nagel, Hamburg. Bismuth (99.9%) comes from Belmont Metals Inc.,

Brooklyn, New York. Copperized lead comes from Cambridge Street Metal Co., Allston,

Massachusetts. Copper bars come from Copper and Brass Sales, Marietta, Georgia. Some minor parts come from Organ Supply Industries, Erie, Pennsylvania.55

This discussion of the characteristics of Taylor & Boody‘s instruments reveals the breadth of knowledge and skill that must be attained to be successful. Not only must the case be beautifully designed and executed, the organ must be a beautiful sounding instrument. To accomplish this the organ builder must be an expert in acoustics, metallurgy, pipe scaling, pipe making, pipe voicing, organ wind, mechanical engineering, tuning and setting temperaments, woodworking, and cabinetmaking.

55 John Boody, interview by author, 14 May 2007.

50

CHAPTER VIII

REPRESENTATIVE ORGANS

The following organs described in detail were chosen in collaboration with John Boody with an eye to providing examples of the wide range in size and contributing influences. The organ at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, was based upon the Niehoff organ in the St. Johanneskirche, Luneburg. The gallery organ in St. Thomas Church, Fifth

Avenue, New York, New York was based upon the Hochlansekirche organ in Leyden, The

Netherlands. The gallery organ in Trinity Episcopal Church, Staunton, Virginia was a completely original creation, though it does reveal its roots in the North European style. The west gallery organ in Christ Episcopal Cathedral, Indianapolis, Indiana was loosely organized on a

Hamburger Prospekt Schnitger. The organ in First Presbyterian Church, Knoxville,

Tennessee was influenced by some elements from the Sculthorpe Church organ built by John

Snetzler in 1756, but the pediment of the case was changed to be more American. The Marquand

Chapel organ at Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut was based upon the 1598 Antonius

Wilde-1682 Arp Schnitger organ in Lüdingworth, Germany. 56

Each of these instruments will be described in detail demonstrating the many ways in which historically informed methods and materials were used and the range of eclecticism that

Taylor & Boody has employed in its work.

56 John Boody, interview by author, 18 January 2008. 51

The College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts

Taylor & Boody was selected to build the new organ for St. Joseph's Chapel at the

College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts in 1980. James Christie explained the reasons why the Virginia builders were chosen:

I knew they were the right choice. I [originally] really wanted John Brombaugh [to build it] but he refused to submit a proposal, because he would not "compete" with Noack (he was hurting from the fact that he [once] lost a contract in his backyard to Fritz and didn't want to "lose" to him again—he claimed they had an "agreement" not to compete against one another ever again; Fritz claimed not to know about this "agreement." Oh well, it sounded like sour grapes to me and I decided Taylor & Boody was certainly more organ for the money and would probably do a first-class job. I had confidence in them from the beginning and never had a doubt for one-half second about the fact that Holy Cross would have a fine instrument. We received a very low price from Taylor & Boody because they wanted to build their reputation with this instrument and they did just that! Fisk and Noack both gave bids with their instruments being rather small three manual instruments (both used pipework from the Casavant organ and both were of an eclectic design —i.e., Swell, Great and Positif with only six stops in the Pedal). I didn't think either instrument would be ample for our building, [and] neither touched me as being something "special" or that they would fulfill Father Brooks's desire for the "finest organ in the U.S.A." The Noack organ was to have used the organ case which now houses a Rückpositif organ in the Wellesley Hills Congregational Church Chapel; this extraordinary case came from Switzerland and dates from circa 1680 and resembles the cases of the two organs at Muri. The carving is fabulous, and I would have loved to see this case in a room like Holy Cross. Taylor & Boody was the only company to submit a design using the height of the organ loft (it literally "sails" from the floor of the loft to the ceiling!). We also wanted an organ that would lead the congregation in hymn-singing (Father Brooks later invited me to become the College Organist and build the Department of Chapel Music; we now have a Schola of thirty-five voices and a concert series of seven concerts a year); I knew the Taylor & Boody would be the greatest organ in the U.S.A. for leading good sturdy chorales and hymns.57

The original proposal was for an instrument with three manuals and pedal, without a

Brustwerk. Christie convinced the president to add money for a Brustwerk because of the need to accompany the choir. After the organ was completed, Christie wrote to Adri di Groot, "Thank

58 God I did because the scalings are so generous on the other divisions!" ]

57James David Christie to Adri de Groot, October 26, 1991, Taylor and Boody Company archives. 58Ibid. 52

Changes were still allowed for while the builders were planning and building the organ, and no one really knew what the organ stop list was going to be until the organ was installed.

The dedication took place on March 21, 1985, with a concert by chapel organist James David

Christie on the 300th anniversary of J.S. Bach's birthday and was carried on National Public

Radio by delayed broadcast.

About 12,000 board feet of lumber were used. Most of the lumber came from an old- growth stand of timber near Sugar Tree Road in Highland County, Virginia. These two- to three- hundred-year-old logs were sawn and dried by W.S. Lyle of Staunton. It took about 35,000 hours to build the organ over a period of about 2 1/2 years. It contains more than 3,800 pipes. John

Boody revealed the following:

Brombaugh used metal in his frames, etc. But we said, not us; we make everything out of wood; we make it as old-fashioned as possible. We never used plywood; neither did John [Brombaugh]. John used slider seals, and we used them in the beginning as well, but now we do not use them anymore. We used them in Richmond and Holy Cross. We used Laukhuff seals, of plastic, on the toeboard, on the bottom of the toeboard, above the slider, attached to the toeboard. Now we use felt rings above and below the slider.59

The chapel's acoustics were improved following advice by R. Lawrence Kirkegaard and

Associates. The gilded cloth of the barrel-vault ceiling was removed. Panels of particle board were fastened and glued in place, and the gilded cloth was adhered directly to the particle board.

This operation added several seconds of reverberation to the room.

In an interview with Taylor, more was revealed about the Klingesdes Zimbel and about the organ in general:

You find that [stop] on some Schnitger organs. Some claim this was a Dutch invention, for you find it on the old Dutch organs, on the Bovenwerk, which had many colors, such as flutes, Trumpets, Vox Humanas, as well as this Klingendes Zimbel. It was not intended as a Mixture, such as the Blockwerk mixture. It had weird combinations,

59 John Boody, interview by author, May 17, 2007. 53

such as f-a-c on c, which was repeated on f, so half the octave was fourth and sixths, while the other half was thirds, on fifths. Thus, f-a-c on f. Same pipes, same pitch. You find this in Norden [1692 Arp Schnitger organ in the St. Ludgeri Kirche]. There is also one in Cappel. It is described in Praetorius. In the 1940s, at Steinkirchen [Arp Schnitger organ], von Beckerath apparently did not understand it, and remade this stop to contain all thirds and fifths. When Stade was restored [by Jürgen Ahrend], then they thought it appropriate to put the Klingesdes Zimbel back, as later in Norden, and also Lüneburg. We decided that such a stop belonged in an organ that looked like Lüneburg. And Cor Edskes, said: be careful now and make it of a big scale in order to make it work well. Almost a cornet scale. So we did this, but then nobody could ever make any sense of it. Too many organists would play it with the mixture. Americans would have no way to know what it was, and even Jim Christie couldn't figure out what to do with it, except for some solo use. And so, Jim kept complaining, and why on earth had we built it, and wasn't there anything to do about it: the pitches were wrong and it sounded an octave too low. I thought at first that I had built it right, but then it dawned to me, and I said to myself: darn Cor Edskes, you were wrong, we didn't get the scale right. And so we finally agreed, for a modest price, to replace it and we made a Terz-Zimbel instead, which consisted basically of the same high pitches, and repeats every half octave at c and f. It is designed after a Terz-Zimbel that Ott put in the Jacobikirche organ in Hamburg, and the thing repeats with thirds and fifths. As you know, the entire organ is somewhat large- scaled at Holy Cross, too wide for my taste now. And here is that narrowly scaled terzcimbel, with all its pins and needles, and we cut it up low. We used a different voicing technique than with the rest of the organ, and it is wonderful. It is silver. You can use it in the whole organ, as well as in the Pedal, through coupling. You, in a way, never really hear the third. The high pitch is like gold on top of the organ; it never calls attention to itself. You can use it with the mixtures; with anything. The scaling has a lot to do with it. And Cor may have been right about this. The original old ones may have been Cornet-scaled and they may have had their own way of using them, and use them differently, I don't know, but for the Holy Cross organ this was the best thing we could possibly have done. It was a subtle change that added another dimension. Because of the large scaling and lots of lead, the organ itself has a lot of flutey power. This was just the right thing to add. The Holy Cross organ taught us to keep the sparkle there. It was something we hated in neo-Baroque organs; those frying mixtures and hard sounds. So we worked for years for the organs to have soul, to have mellow fundamentals, and if you are not careful you go too far with that and then you need to correct it. And a large part of that correction comes through scaling.60

Taylor & Boody propose the possibility in every organ for human-powered pumping, because an ideal organ wind should imitate human breathing as it did in the historic organ. This effect is only possible when an organ is pumped without using a modern fan blower. Boody invented an electro-mechanical system for Holy Cross that would do the pumping instead. The

60 John Boody, interview by author, May 17, 2007. 54 four vertically stacked, wedge-shaped bellows were filled by four machines which would lift each bellows after it had descended and was almost empty, filling it with wind. The organ can still be pumped by foot levers situated at the opposite end of the bellows, requiring only 150 lbs. of pressure. Taylor commented: "The absence of the blower will eliminate the choppy, quavering sort of sound you sometimes get with that kind of device."

Regrettably, the machine did not work satisfactorily, and after six months, rather than trying to totally rebuild and reinvent the system, a blower was added for practicing and church services, though during concerts, the organ is often pumped by feet. Although the machine kept breaking down, the entire organ was voiced with the system working. Taylor commented:

The wind systems in our largest organs have been the most successful, in Holy Cross: thank heavens, for all the difficulties that organ costs us, the wind system, the musical qualities of the wind system worked from the very start. In Holy Cross you have to work pretty hard, because there are leaks in the system and they [the bellows' pump foot pedals] rise up too fast, and the bellows are not large enough. Holy Cross and Yokohama don't have the jitters. We are still studying how to make these systems better for all our organs, especially the smaller ones.61

The organ case of the St. Johanniskirche of Lüneburg, North Germany served as the inspiration for the Holy Cross organ. The organ was completed in 1552 by Hendrik Niehoff, with

Jaspar Johanson, and contained a Hauptwerk, Oberwerk, Rückpositiv, and a small solo Pedal division. Both cases include a two-story, rounded central tower flanked by three storied flats, which are in turn flanked by three storied flats in which the middle levels are articulated with oblique flats. The largest pipes are displayed in one story at the impost level and complete the outermost flats. The major differences include the absence of pedal towers in the Holy Cross organ and the more generous and balanced façade of the Rückpositiv in the Holy Cross organ.

And although the Holy Cross case and carvings are not copies, with all "the wonderful carvings

61 George Taylor, interview by author, Staunton, Va., September 8, 2007.

55 with the cherubim it is very much like Niehoff."62 The combination of the relatively flat main case and the articulated Rückpositiv case was common in the Netherlands and Hanseatic towns.63

In some cases it reflected the addition of a more modern Rückpositiv case to a pre-existing

Renaissance organ.

The disposition of divisions and stops in this organ was influenced by North European practice especially as demonstrated in the work of Arp Schnitger. All divisions are much more complete than Niehoff, and the organ includes both a Brustwerk and a substantial pedal division which are missing in the St. Johanneskirche instrument. In the stop list these influences from the sixteenth through the early eighteenth centuries include a Rauschende Zimbel, a Renaissance

Trompet, and other solo stops on the Oberwerk such as Quintadena and Vox Humana.

A Niehoff organ used spring chests but Taylor & Boody used a slider chest. A typical

Niehoff organ has a short manual compass of 50 notes on the Hauptwerk, from FF-.a2, with a pedal range from C-d1, an Oberwerk of 41 notes from C-a2, and a Rückpositiv of 38 notes from

F-a2. The Holy Cross organ has a modern compass: C-g3 for the manuals, C-f' for the pedal. In order to save both space and money, some of the largest non-essential pipes for early music have been omitted or shared from another stop.

Niehoff's organs were tuned in meantone while the Holy Cross organ is tuned in

Kirnberger III, an eighteenth-century tuning more suitable to music by Bach. Niehoff's facade pipes would commonly have been of hammered lead, though infrequently of pure tin or a mixture of tin and lead. The Holy Cross organ has a Rückpositiv with a tin façade, while the main case displays a lead façade foiled with tin–a process where tin foil is glued to the lead pipes with duck egg white.

62 John Boody, interview by author, Staunton, Va., September 8, 2007. 63 Peter Williams, The European Organ; 1450-1850, (Nashua: The Organ Literature Foundation, 1966), 102. 56

In the dedication brochure for this organ, Dr. Carkeek commented on the cultural perspective:

Contemplation of the fact that this organ, inspired by the North European school, is installed in a Roman Catholic setting, invites some historical musings. This tradition of organbuilding may be traced far back in history, to pre-Reformation times. Therefore, Roman Catholics may quite honestly lay some claim to what later became a Protestant tradition. Thus we have perhaps come full circle, with the installation in a Catholic church of an organ built in a style which, while thought of for many years as being overwhelmingly Protestant, has its roots in Pre-Reformation Catholicism.64

College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts Hauptwerk: C-g3 Principal 16' hammered lead, in the facade from E-e3 plus 23 dummy pipes, all covered with tin foil, fis3-g3 inside Octave 8' hammered lead, 54 pipes, C,D,E-g3 Spillpfeife 8' hammered lead, conical Quinte 5-1/3' treble, hammered lead, principal scaling Octave 4' hammered lead Tertia 3-1/5' treble, principal scaling Quinte 2-2/3' hammered lead Superoctave 2' hammered lead Mixture VII-IX hammered lead, 441 pipes Trompet 16' 25% tin resonators Trompet 8' 25% tin resonators

Oberwerk:

64Arthur Carkeek, "The Taylor and Boody Organ at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts," The American Organist 19, no. 3 (March 1985): 41.

57

C-g3 Principal 8' hammered lead, C,D-g single rank, from gis-g3 double ranks, 92 pipes Hohlflöte 8' hammered lead, chimneys E-g3 Quintadena 8' 25% tin, box beards Octave 4' hammered lead Spielflöte 4' hammered lead Nasat 2-2/3' hammered lead Gemshorn 2' hammered lead Tierce 1-3/5' hammered lead Mixture IV-V 17% tin, 249 pipes Rauschende Zimbel II 168 pipes, 28% tin Trompet 8' hammered lead, Renaissance-style shallots in treble Vox Humana 8' double cone and cylinder

Rückpositiv: C-g3 Principal 8' C,D,E of 25% tin, rest 85% tin. 54 plus 10 dummy facade pipes, fis2-g3 inside Gedackt 8' hammered lead Octave 4' 25% tin, no C-sharp Rohrflöte 4' hammered lead Octave 2' 25% tin Waldflöte 2' 25% tin Sifflet 1 1/3' 25% tin Sesquialter II 25% tin, 112 pipes Scharff V-VIII 25% tin, 394 pipes Dulcian 16' 25% tin

58

Schalmey 8' 25% tin, small trumpet Trichter Regal 8' 25% tin, funnel resonators with lids

Brustwerk: C-g3 Gedackt 8' oak Blockflöte 4' oak, C-B stopped, rest open Octave 2' 17% tin Terzian II 1-3/5', 1-1/3', 112 pipes Zimbel III prepared Regal 8' 25% tin, cone, and domed lid with hole

Pedal: C-f1 Gross Untersatz 32' pine, one octave of independent pipes, rest common with Subbass Principal 16' transmission from Hauptwerk Subbass 16' wood from C-f, rest hammered lead Octave 8' hammered lead Octave 4' 17% tin Nachthorn 2' 15% tin Rauschpfeife II 17% tin, 60 pipes Mixture V-VI 17% tin, 160 pipes Posaune 16' hammered lead Trompet 8' 25% tin Trompet 4' 25% tin Cornett 2' 85% tin

59

Other details: Tremulants: Tremulant I to Rückpositiv (Dom Bédos style; as a Tremblant Doux), Tremulant II to entire organ (Arp Schnitger style). Couplers: Rückpositiv/Hauptwerk, Pedal/Hauptwerk, Oberwerk/Hauptwerk, Hauptwerk/Pedal, and Rückpositiv/Pedal. Kirnberger III temperament. Zimbelstern. Voiced on 88-90 mm wind pressure. Solid white oak case, fumed with ammonia and oiled. Total number of pipes: 3,864. Four bellows, can be pumped by foot.

Hauptwerk, Mixture composition: C 1-1/3' 1' 1' 1' 2/3' 1/2' 1/2' G 2' 1-1/3' 1' 1' 2/3' 1/2' 1/2' c 2' 1-1/3' 1' 1' 2/3' 2/3' 1/2' 1/2' g 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3' 1-1/3' 1' 1' 2/3' 2/3' c1 4' 2-2/3' 2' 2' 1-1/3' 1-1/3' 1' 1' 2/3' g1 4' 2-2/3' 2-2/3' 2' 2' 1-1/3' 1-1/3' 1' 1' c2 4' 4' 2-2/3' 2-2/3' 2' 2' 1-1/3' 1-1/3' cis3' 8' 4' 4' 2-2/3' 2-2/3' 2' 2'

Oberwerk, Mixture composition: C 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' 1/2' c 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' c 2-2/3' 2' 2' 1-1/3' 1' c1 4' 2-2/3' 2' 2' 1-1/3'

60 cis3 4' 2-2/3' 2' 2'

Oberwerk, Rauschende Zimbel composition: Originally this stop was a Klingendes Zimbel with this composition: C: pitches f4, a4, and c5, going up in pitch as the keys progress through E, then, on F, we hear the same pitches again: f4, a4, and c5, going up in pitch until B, at which point it goes back to what it was on C, etc. The result is that at between C and E, the stop acts as a quart-sixth Zimbel, while between F and B it acts like as a third-fifth Zimbel.

The new Zimbel has the following composition: C-E, c-e, c1-e2, c2-e2, c3-e3: 1/6' 1/8' 1/10' F-B, f-b, f1-b1, f2-b2, f3-g3: 1/4' 1/5' 1/6'

Brustwerk, Terzian composition: C: 1-3/5' 1-1/3' no repetitions

Rückpositiv, Sesquialtera composition: C-B: 1-1/3' 4/5' c-g3: 2-2/3' 1-3/5'

61

Rückpositiv, Scharff composition: C 1' 2/3' 1/2' 1/3' 1/4' c 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' 2/3' 1/2' 1/3' g 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' 1/2' c 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' 1/2' g1 4' 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' c2 4' 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3' 1' g2 4' 4' 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3' cis3 4' 4' 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3'

Pedal, Mixture composition: C 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' c 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' g 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3'

Pedal, Rauschpfeife composition: C: 2-2/3' 2' no repetitions

62

The West Gallery Organ at St Thomas, New York

The Loening-Hancock Gallery Organ was built as Opus 27 of Taylor & Boody

Organbuilders, Inc. of Staunton, Virginia in 1996 to honor Dr. Gerre Hancock's 25 years of service to Saint Thomas Church. It replaced a mechanical action instrument built in 1969 by

Gilbert Adams in the French Classical style. Located in the gallery beneath the church's Rose

Window, this organ features a mechanical key and stop action, 2 manuals, 22 stops. This west gallery organ displays a dramatic case of fumed Virginia white oak with pipe shades gilded in

23-karat gold and case doors of cedar, painted brilliant blue on the interior surface. The façade design is sixteenth-century Dutch, with embossed pipes, inverted fields, and ornamental kiosks.

The key action is directly suspended and made of wood. The stop action is mechanical.

The two manual divisions each display the fundamental Principal stop in the façade: the

Hauptwerk 8' Principal and the Oberwerk 4' Principal. The 16' stops in the Pedal are mounted behind the organ. The chests are prepared for the addition of three manual stops, and space is available for a third manual division. The wind system has three large wedge bellows which can be operated by foot. A wind stabilizer is available to steady the wind for heavy-texture pieces.

The tuning is in Kellner temperament.65

65 The New York City Organ Project. ”St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue.” (20 March 2008). 63

Hauptwerk (Manual I) – 54 notes (C1-F54)

16 Bordun hammered lead 8 Principal hammered lead 8 Rohrflöte hammered lead 4 Octave hammered lead 4 Spielflöte 28% tin 2 2/3 Quinte preparation 2 2/3 Nasat 28% tin 2 Superoctave 28% tin Mixtur V-VI 2 8% tin 16 Trompet 8 Trompet

Oberwerk (Manual II) – 54 notes (C1-F54)

8 Gedackt hammered lead 8 Quintadena preparation 4 Principal hammered lead 4 Rohrflöte hammered lead 2 Octave preparation 2 Gemshorn 28% tin Sesquialtera II 28% tin Scharff IV-VI 28% tin 8 Dulcian

Pedal – 30 notes (C-F30)

16 Subbass poplar 8 Octave hammered lead, C1-F6 from HW 4 Octave 28% tin 16 Posaune 8 Trompet HW Spare slide

Couplers

Oberwerk/Hauptwerk Hauptwerk/Pedal Oberwerk/Pedal Tremulant (entire organ)

64

The West Gallery Organ at Trinity Episcopal Church, Staunton, Virginia

This organ is situated in the west gallery with the Rückpositive on the gallery rail. The case is constructed of native Virginia black walnut with carvings which include representations of a lamb and birds of the area, and features a choir division in the traditional Brustwerk position.

The pipes are constructed of hammered tin and lead alloys with gilded mouths in the façade.

Taylor & Boody has elected to use English names for the principal chorus stops on the Great, but they have not actually departed from their North European ideals for methods of construction or sound. The firm has built string stops, but this organ does however include the first celeste stop they have built so far in the Choir (Brustwerk) division and the only Scharff mixture named

―Scharp.‖

Great 16' Bourdon hammered lead 8' Principal hammered lead 8' Rohrflöte hammered lead, C- B Gedackt, Co-G3 Rohr (8' Viol da Gamba) 4' Octave hammered lead 4' Spielflöte 28% tin 3' Twelfth 28% tin 2' Fifteenth 28% tin (IV Cornet) IV-V Mixture 28% tin (16' Fagott) 8' Trompet

Rückpositive 8' Gedackt hammered lead 8' Quintadena 28% tin 4' Principal 28% tin 4' Rohrflöte 28% tin 3' Nasat 28% tin 2' Octave 28% tin 2' Gemshorn 28% tin II Sesquialtera 28% tin III-IV Scharp 28% tin 8' Dulcian

65

Choir 8' Gedackt white oak 8' Viol & celeste 77% tin 4' Principal 28% tin 4' Blockflöte 28% tin 2' Octave 28% tin 8' Trechterregal

Pedal 16' Principal hammered lead, C-G of wood 16' Subbass hammered lead, C-F of wood 8' Octave hammered lead, common with Great 4' Octave 28% tin (2' Nachthorn) V Mixture 28% tin 16' Posaune 8' Trompet (4' Trompet)

Couplers CH / GT RP / PD CH / PD RP / GT GT / PD Tremulant Cymbelstern

Mechanical key and stop action Compass: Manuals, C-g'''; Pedal, C-f' Case of black walnut 74 mm wind 1908 pipes 28 stops, 9 prepared

Great Mixture IV-V was constructed of 28% tin with simple mouths (underline signifies doubled pipe at that pitch)

C 1 1/3 1 2/3 1/2 Co 2 1 1/3 1 2/3 Fso 2 1 1/3 1 2/3 C1 4 2 2/3 2 1 1/3 1 Fs1 4 2 2/3 2 1 1/3 Cs3 4 2 2/3 2

66

Rückpositive III-IV Scharp was constructed of 28% tin with simple mouths

C 1 2/3 1/2 Co 1 1/3 1 2/3 C1 2 2/3 2 1 1/3 1 C2 4 2 2/3 2 1 1/3 Cs3 4 2 2/3 2

Pedal Mixture V C 2 1 1/3 1 2/3 1/2 Co 2 2/3 2 1 1/3 1 2/3

67

Christ Church Cathedral, Episcopal in Indianapolis, Indiana

Christ Church Cathedral had planned since 1986 to acquire two organs—one to be installed in the chancel to accompany the choir and one in the west gallery to support congregational singing and to perform early music. The first organ to be completed was Opus 32 built by Hellmuth Wolff & Associates of Laval, Canada, dedicated on January 14, 1990. This mechanical key and electric stop action organ is located in the choir of the church behind a rood screen, which because of its divided chancel has façades on the north and south sides in the

English cathedral style. The purpose of this organ is to accompany the choir and lead the service music in the traditional English and American cathedral style, but with a pronounced nod to the

French Symphonic and modern organbuilding style.

Taylor & Boody was selected to build the gallery organ, which was installed high on the west wall of the church. A stained glass window which could not be obstructed formed a major obstacle on the west wall. Two galleries were built–one for the organ above and one for the congregation below. Taylor explained the two galleries in the organ dedication brochure:

One below the organ for parishioners and occasional musicians, and one above for the organ and organist. This plan was devised for the cathedral because of the strong desire of the vestry to obscure as little as possible of the west window. The idea of the double gallery has a long history in central Europe, where organs were ideally placed near the ceiling, but is almost unknown in our own country. The lower gallery replaces the original 1884 gallery, on which an organ once stood. The bellows of the organ are housed in the third level of the bell tower behind the organ wall.66

The Taylor & Boody instrument was designed following the examples of Arp Schnitger in the North European tradition. The horizontal trumpet is not without precedent—it is interesting that an organ by Schnitger or his student Johann Heinrich Ulenkampf was installed in

66 George Taylor, Christ Church Cathedral, Indianapolis Organ Dedication Booklet, 1990.

68

Faro Cathedral in Portugal and later fitted with a horizontal trumpet on the impost by a local builder. The case is an excellent example of the Hamburger Prospekt and includes lanterns over the towers of the main case—decoration rarely used by Taylor & Boody. It was constructed of fumed and oiled Virginia White Oak.

Taylor explained in the dedication brochure:

Precisely because it is an anachronism in our time, it can open up for us a world of exquisite music composed in another age, music which we often find drab and uninteresting when played on organs built in later styles. The earliest congregational hymn-singing developed around instruments like this one. Indeed, the whole corpus of central European organ composition culminating in the work of Bach depends upon such organs for convincing interpretation. We trust that this instrument will take its place along with the chancel organ in opening new avenues of music to the people of Indianapolis.67

The placement of this organ suffers in the visual sense. The ceiling is supported by a trussed rafter framework of dark wood which obscures the elegant lines of this handsome case.

Cases such as this should be provided an unimpeded view from the floor of the nave.

The lower gallery woodwork was built by Karlin Warkentin from a design by Taylor &

Boody. Though not normally the concern of an organ builder, the organ has been rendered earthquake-proof by placing it on steel beams, thereby separating it from the church structure.

Peter Hurford performed the dedication recitals on September 20, 1992, with afternoon and evening concerts. Cathedral organist Frederick Burgomaster and Dr. Arthur Carkeek were consultants to the project.

67 Ibid. 69

Christ Church Cathedral

OPUS 19, 1992 Indianapolis, Indiana Three manuals and pedal, 37 stops

Hauptwerk: C-g3 Gedackt 16' hammered lead, ears, no beards Principal 8' hammered lead, planed, 79 pipes, CIS, DIS, gis2-g3 inside Rohrflöte 8' hammered lead, C-B gedackt Octave 4' hammered lead Spitzflöte 4' hammered lead Quinte 3' 28% tin Nasat 3' 28% tin, conical Superoctave 2' 28% tin Waldflöte 2' 28% tin, conical Mixture V-VI 28% tin, 311 pipes Cimbel III with Tierce rank Trompet 8' 28% tin Vox Humana 8' hammered lead Clarin 8' from c1-c3 horizontal, 25 pipes, 75% tin

Rückpositiv: C-g3 Gedackt 8' hammered lead Quintadena 8' 28% tin, box beards, and greased sliding caps Principal 4' planed and hammered lead, 79 pipes, fis2-g3 inside Rohrflöte 4' 28% tin, open from gis2-g3 Octave 2' 28% tin Quinte 1-1/3' 28% tin Sesquialtera II' 28% tin, 112 pipes, Scharff IV-V' 28% tin, 255 pipes Dulcian 8' 28% tin Cimbelstern rotating star at the top of the middle tower Brustwerk: C-g3 Gedackt 8' Hohlquinte 3' treble Regal 8'

Pedal: C-f1 Principal 16' hammered lead, 25 pipes, F-f1 Subbass 16' hammered lead, 30 pipes Octave 8' 20 pipes, C-A from Principal 16'

70

Gedackt 8' hammered lead, 26 pipes, E-f1, C-D from Subbass Octave 4' 28% tin Flöte 4' 28% tin, stopped Bauernflöte 1' 28% tin, open cylindrical Mixture V' 28% tin, 150 pipes Posaune 16' hammered lead Trompet 8' hammered lead Cornett 2' 75% tin

Other details: Beater type Tremulant in Schnitger style affecting the entire instrument by hitch pedal. Cimbelstern.

Total number of pipes: 2,500 pipes, including 46 facade dummies. Couplers: Hauptwerk/Pedal, Rückpositiv/Pedal, reversible Rückpositiv/Hauptwerk Pedal reeds off, hitch pedal. Temperament after Kellner especially suited for Bach. This organ can be pumped by foot.

Hauptwerk, Mixture composition: (underline signifies doubled pitches) C 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' 1/2' c 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' fis 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' c1 4 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3' 1' fis1 4 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3' cis3 4 2-2/3' 2'

Hauptwerk, Cimbel composition: The Cimbel has the same composition as at Worcester. Every octave is the same, as follows: C-E, c-e, c1-e2, c2-e2, c3-e3: 1/6' 1/8' 1/10' F-B, f-b, f1-b1, f2-b2, f3-g3: 1/4' 1/5' 1/6'

Rückpositiv, Scharff composition: (underline signifies doubled pitches) C 1' 2/3' 1/2' 1/3' c 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' 1/2' fis 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' 1/2' c1 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' c2 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3' 1' cis3 4 2-2/3' 2'

Rückpositiv, Sesquialtera composition: C 1-1/3' 4/5' C 2-2/3' 1-3/5'

71

Pedal, Mixture composition: C 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3' 1/2' c 2-2/3' 2' 1-1/3' 1' 2/3'

72

First Presbyterian Church, Knoxville,Tennessee

This organ is an excellent example of an instrument built outside Taylor & Boody‘s preferred style that shares a common heritage with the Emory University and the Kenan Chapel organs. The organ case is built of solid walnut inspired by the English cabinet organ style of John

Snetzler. It also resembles the chamber organ by Snetzler built in 1761 which now resides in the

Division of Musical Instruments at the Smithsonian Institution.68 Stops are divided and can be adjusted to split at c or cs. The 8' Stopt Diapason is common to both manuals. All metal pipes are constructed of hammered tin and lead alloy. Contrary to the usual practice of eighteenth- century English style, this organ has a pedal clavier and one 16' stop. It has mechanical key and stop action and is tuned in Kellner temperament. The case is constructed in the style of an

English cabinet organ, but the pipework is constructed in the North European style that Taylor &

Boody has adopted. It is voiced gently and nicked sparingly on the interior surface of the lips. A truly English style would display extensive nicking visible on the exterior surface of the mouths.69

Great Echo 8' Open Diapason 8' Stopt Diapason 8' Stopt Diapason 4' Recorder 4' Principal 2 2/3' Twelfth (c') Pedal 2' Fifteenth 16' Subbass 1 3/5' Tierce (c') Couplers Tremulant GT / PD EC / PD

68 John Fesperman, A Snetzler Chamber Organ of 1761, (Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1970), 4.

69 Ryan Albashian, head voicer at Taylor & Boody, interview by author, Staunton, Va., 11 February 2008.

73

Marquand Chapel, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut

This organ was inspired by the example of the 1598 Antonius Wilde-1682 Arp Schnitger organ in Lüdingworth, Germany. Taylor & Boody do not profess to build copies of historic instruments, but this new instrument was patterned very strongly on the Lüdingworth organ.

Because this was an important addition to the meantone organs built in the United States, I have quoted this extended section from the dedication booklet:

The proportions of the case, the unique arrangement of the façade pipes, the wide stiles, the painted carvings, and the marbleized details here at Yale are all inspired by the design of that wonderful organ. All the Lüdingworth stops are present with the exception of the Pedal Rauschquinte, the Oberwerk Zimbel and Rauschquinte and the Brustwerk Octave and Scharff. Added to the original specification is the 8‘ Gedackt on the Brustwerk for continuo use, the tapered wooden Holzfloet in the Oberwerk and the Rückpositiv Quintadena. The solid poplar case has mortise and tenon construction with oak pins in the joints. The traditional pallet and slider windchests are made in solid wood construction with white oak frames, eastern white pine tone channels, pine toeboards, and white oak pallet valves. The solid wood chest tables are western red cedar. The wind system is constructed in the old German manner with three wedge bellows which can be foot pumped with oak levers. The stop action is similar to Lüdingworth with large stop knobs of blackened cherry arranged in horizontal rows on stop jambs with hand painted stop names. The keyboards required a major part of the work for the new organ. Although there is a short octave in the bass omitting bottom C#, D#, F#, and G#, and the compass is limited to four octaves, the addition of the sub-semitones demanded special techniques and materials for manufacturing. Because the additional keys for the split sharps make for a very narrow and potentially fragile key, we decided to make the key levers out of oak, as in the original. This caused us considerable anxiety because we normally make the keys for our organs out of stable old pine. Since we have our own sawmill, we were able to select an oak log with very fine structure and straight grain and from it saw boards especially for the keys. The wood was then air dried for three years. We next prepared about five times as many key levers as we needed and stacked them inside our workshop near the heat. After some six months we culled the pieces that were not perfectly straight before beginning to make the keyboards. In traditional decorative style, we overlaid the keys and the oak frames with Turkish boxwood, and made sharps of Gabon ebony. All the black cherry trim around the keyboards and the top of the bench was treated with oven cleaner, which reacted with the wood rendering it a rich reddish brown. The playing action has wooden roller boards with pine rollers. The trackers are pine recycled from old organ pipes. The Rückpositiv keyboard can be coupled to the Oberwerk by means of little ram-shaped wooden fingers balanced between the two keyboards. While not a historical feature for an organ of this type, and one that will only rarely be needed, it represents something of a mechanical feat when one considers that the composition of the keys on

74

the two keyboards is not the same, the Rückpositiv having additional A# keys, as well as F# and G# in the bass octave, that the Oberwerk lacks. All the pipes were made in our workshop out of traditional lead-tin alloys. The front pipes are almost pure lead, hammered, then block planed and burnished to a high sheen on steel mandrels. They have been lacquered with the same material that is used to protect band instruments; otherwise they would soon turn black with oxidation. The flute stops are made of lead with the exception of the unusual Spitzfloet 4‘ which is 28% tin. The small principal pipes are 28% tin which allows them to stand up well to tuning. The pipes are cut to tuned length and tuned either by coning the top, or in the case of stopped pipes, by bending ears at the mouth of the pipes. There are three stops made of white oak: the Holzfloet 8‘ in the Oberwerk, and the two continuo stops on the Brustwerk, the Gedackt 8‘ and the Blockfloet 4‘. The reed stops were closely patterned after those in Lüdingworth. Especially interesting is the Dulcian 16‘ located in the very short Rückpositiv case. Of all the unique and wonderful features of this organ there are two which have caused us the most pleasure and surprise: the pitch and the temperament. The decisions to use the ¼ comma meantone tuning with its necessary split keys and to pitch the organ in the old Chorton or church pitch at ao = 465 Hertz were not taken lightly: there was a not unreasonable fear that the organ would sound too ―weird‖ for many listeners. Even we had to put little pieces of tape with the note names on all the odd keys at first, but now that we are used to the keyboards and accustomed to the wonderful purity of the tuning and intoxicating altitude of the pitch, the organ has become enchanting like none other we have experienced.70

This is an important instrument because of its ability to bring to the performer and the auditor the qualities of a meantone temperament in a sixteenth-century North European styled organ. The pedagogical value of this organ is enormous. The Marquand Chapel instrument joins the handful of organs by Brombaugh and Fisk which include subsemitones for the authentic historical performance of early music in a meantone system. In addition, the Lüdingworth organ contains the most complete sets of pipes from the Renaissance period in existence, though the

Rückpositiv and pedal towers were added by Schnitger. The opportunity afforded Taylor &

Boody to study, analyze, and imitate this instrument has resulted in the closest effort to a copy that the firm has ever attempted. The case is a dazzling display of ornamentation from the marbleized painting effects on flat panels to the elaborately carved pipe shades and gilding.

70 George Taylor and John Boody, Marquand Chapel Organ Dedication Booklet, 2007. 75

Space in the gallery at Marquand precluded the addition of pedal towers, and it is perhaps too greedy to have wished for the organ to have also included a Vogelsang as at Lüdingworth.

Oberwerk:

16' Quintadene hammered lead 8' Principal hammered lead, burnished 8' Rohrfloet hammered lead 8' Holzfloet oak 4' Octave hammered lead 4' Rohrfloet hammered lead 3' Quinte 28% tin 3' Nahsat 28% tin 2' Octave 28% tin V Mixtur 28% tin 8' Trommet 8' Vox Humana

Rückpositiv:

8' Gedackt hammered lead 8' Quintadene hammered lead 4' Principal hammered lead, burnished 4' Spitzfloet 28% tin 2' Octave 28% tin 2' Waldfloet 28% tin 1 1/3' Siffloet 28% tin II Sexquialtera 28% tin II Tertian 28% tin IV Scharff 28% tin 16' Dulcian

Brustwerk:

8' Gedackt oak 4' Blockfloet oak 3' Quintfloet 28% tin 8' Regal

Pedal:

16' Untersatz hammered lead 8' Octave hammered lead

76

4' Octave 28% tin 2' Nachthorn 28% tin V Mixtur 28% tin 16' Posaune 8' Trommet 2' Cornett Couplers RP/PD RP/OW

Mechanical stop and suspended playing action Three manual keyboards and pedal board Key compass: Rückpositiv (CDE-c 3) Oberwerk & Brustwerk (CDEFGA-c 3); Pedal (CD-d 1) Subsemitones in all manuals: ebo/d#o; g#o/abo; eb1/d#1; g#1/ab1; eb2/d#2 In Rückpositiv add: bbo/a#o; bb1/a#1; g#2/ab2 In Pedal add: ebo/d#o; g#o/abo Natural keys covered in boxwood, with ebony sharps Pipe Alloys 99% lead + trace elements, copper, bismuth, antimony 80% tin, rest lead plus trace elements as above 28% tin, rest lead plus trace elements as above Oak and poplar pipes Number of speaking pipes: 2184 (brochure says 2191) Case of solid wood following form represented in presentation drawings with appropriate carving, ornamentation, and gilding Tremulant to entire organ, beater type in Schnitger style Zimbelstern with two stars mounted in flats of Oberwerk case 1/4 syntonic comma meantone tuning

77

CHAPTER IX

THE AMERICAN PROBLEM

James Louder and Hellmuth Wolff described the American problem in this way:

A central problem of American Organbuilding is the remarkable eclecticism of the American organist. Bound by no national allegiance to a particular European style, our organists expect to cover a vast stylistic range and they demand that instruments of equal scope be available.71

The American organist of the eighteenth century usually played an instrument imported from England or Germany, though a few instruments were built locally, notably, the organs of

Johann Klemm and David Tannenberg. These organs were used primarily in church to accompany the singing or to play in concert with other instruments. They were built for a particular purpose, to be used in the prevailing culture of the community. The Anglicans in New

England were not concerned with the music of the Moravians in Pennsylvania or North Carolina, or of any other culture. The concept of an instrument that should play music from another culture was unheard of.

As American organ builders began to build instruments in the nineteenth century, the prevailing aesthetic was dominated by received British culture. There was rarely an independent pedal division, merely a few stops for bass support. Often a ―short swell‖ with stops terminating at tenor C was included in the design, though there was a growing tendency toward 56-note manual keyboards. Many stops were divided, especially those that could be used as a treble solo.

There were choruses on all manuals, and usually the Twelfth and Seventeenth on the Great, but these organs usually lacked a Mixture on the Great, the preference being for a small scaled

71 James Louder and Hellmuth Wolff, ―New Trends,‖ in The Tracker Organ Revival in America, ed. Uwe Pape (Berlin: Pape Verlag, 1985), 80.

78

Cornet on the Swell. All tonal decisions were based upon current trends in organ building in

Great Britain. These organs were designed to meet the demands of churches–primarily to accompany hymn singing, solos, and quartets. While English style still dominated the organ world in America toward the end of the century, the importation of the large Walcker organ for the Boston Music Hall was of considerable interest to organists and organ builders, and the importation of Cavaillé-Coll reeds by both Frank Roosevelt and E. & G.G. Hook in the 1870s created a flurry of imitation.72

The dominance by English taste in America was also accomplished by the great number of English organists in significant positions. Their close ties to English church music and organ design were immensely influential during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. But there were a few inroads into other traditions; American builders traveled abroad to observe the latest trends in European organ building. Many American organists capped their education with a term of study in Europe. The beginnings of scientific musicology awakened an interest in the music of the old masters, though it would be several decades before the interest in historic instruments would catch on. Perhaps the first awakening of this sentiment occurred with the writings of

Albert Schweitzer, who recognized the beauty inherent in the old organs of The Netherlands, a country of instruments virtually untouched by the rampage of modern factory replacements.73

Yet the broadening of interest in national and historic music began to influence the demands of organists for a more versatile instrument–one that could handle the requirements of Bach and

Handel, Widor, and Reger. It is in these developments that the central problem in American organ design had its beginnings.

72 Orpha Ochse, The History of the Organ in the United States, (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), 205.

73 Charles R. Joy, Music in the Life of Albert Schweitzer, (London: Adam and Charles Black Limited, 1953), 128. 79

George Bozeman, Jr. and Alan Laufman believe the two most important developments of nineteenth-century organ building were the application of non-human power for wind production and for the operation of the key action.74 The removal of all human elements relating to the organ can be traced from these two developments, where the winding became rock steady and lost the suppleness of a singer, and the intimate control of the pallet was lost to a machine.

Nicolas Thistlethwaite described the nineteenth-century improvements:

Innovation equipped the builders of the nineteenth century with the technology they needed to pursue objectives (power, dramatic contrasts, orchestral registrations, proliferation of chests, detached keyboards, the physical separation of divisions of the organ) already to be identified in the most ambitious instruments of the previous century. Console gadgetry, novel soundboards (e.g. the German Kegellade, or cone chest), steam- powered, hydraulic or electric blowing machines, horizontal bellows to steady the wind ( widely used in England after 1800), dispersion of reservoirs throughout the organ, ventils (for admitting or denying wind to selected chests and fundamental to an understanding of the French nineteenth-century organ), pneumatic thumb pistons (patented by Henry Willis in 1851 and equally essential to an understanding of the English organ of the period), relief pallets to reduce the weight of touch, crescendo pedals (including the Rollschweller, implied in many of Reger‘s registrations), sforzando pedals–these, and a multitude of other ―improvements‖ provided the technological foundation upon which to erect a nineteenth-century organ aesthetic.75

Stephen Bicknell identified two factors that influenced modern trends in organ building.

The pressures of competition and the influence of modern design contributed to the growth of utilitarian manufacture and design. After World War II the economic boom and the fierce competition among organ builders in Europe left little room for artistic endeavors. Even the relatively small shops in West Germany could not afford to spend their resources in such a

74George Bozeman and Alan Laufman, ―Influences on Contemporary Mechanical-Action Organbuilding in America,‖ in The Tracker Organ Revival in America, ed. Uwe Pape (Berlin: Pape Verlag, 1985), 59.

75 Nicholas Thistlethwaite, ―Origins and Development of the Organ,‖ in The Cambridge Companion to the Organ, ed. Nicholas Thistlethwaite and Geoffrey Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 14-15.

80 manner, embracing instead the pervasive modern style in design, especially in the case of the

Germans, trained at the state organ building school in Ludwigsburg.76

The demands of organists for an eclectic instrument capable of playing all eras of all national styles created a powerful expectation from an organ builder. The technical advances of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries created an environment in which the proliferation of console control assistance was readily available and highly desirable. These two factors, eclecticism and the reliance on technology, have created the dominant stream in modern

American organ building.

The value of the artisan builder

The future survival of the artisan organ builder according to Louder and Wolff:

The organ builder must rely on the determination born of artistic integrity. Technology has yet to kill off any of our traditional art forms, because there have always been artists willing to sweat and starve their way through cultural transition and economic adversity, in order to do what they believed in. Thus, photography did not kill painting, the mass media have not killed literature, the cinema hasn‘t destroyed the theater, and the amplified rock band has not caused the demise of the symphony orchestra. Each of those arts has at some time forecast its own doom, yet all remain alive and well.77

Most artisan builders have rarely attempted to build copies of historical organs, but after extensive study and practice have adopted a particular style that informs their instruments.

Charles Fisk wrote:

Essentially, I believe that we should try to pick up where the classical builders left off and go forward from there—but in the same direction. I do not, however, feel that we qualify as antiquarians, for we do too many things differently from the way the old builders did them.78

76 Stephen Bicknell, ―Organ Building Today,‖ in The Cambridge Companion to the Organ, ed. Nicholas Thistlethwaite and Geoffrey Webber (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 84-85.

77James Louder and Hellmuth Wolff, ―New Trends,‖ in The Tracker Organ Revival in America, ed. Uwe Pape (Berlin: Pape Verlag,1985), 86.

78 Lynn Edwards, The Historical Organ in America, (Easthampton: The Westfield 81

The community of artisan builders is an extremely collegial association. Friendships developed early in the 1970s when many of the leading builders spent time as apprentices or journeymen with European and American builders. These friendships have contributed to an environment in which research, theory, and practice can blossom and be shared. It is likely the concept that if several builders were given the same detailed specification for constructing one rank of pipes, the results would be amazingly different. The variables are too numerous to control. 79 It is this level of collegiality that is missing in all relationships between the large factory builder and every other segment of organ building.

The influence of artisan builders on large builders

The powerful impact of the principles and ideas of tracker organbuilders began to be seen in the large organ manufacturers beginning in the 1970s. Holtkamp, M. P. Möller, Casavant,

Reuter, Wicks, and even Aeolian-Skinner built tracker organs in special departments or with

European collaboration.80

John Boody believes that the factory builders want to be considered equal to the artisan builder. Under the influence of artisan builders, many manufacturers have increased the number of pipes constructed from pipe metal, and many fewer pipes constructed of zinc. They have pursued a higher level of quality in construction and finish. They are very interested in the voicing techniques demonstrated by the artisan builders and seek to improve their own results through emulation, though they do stop short of participating in the collegial cooperation

Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1992), i.

79 Ryan Albashian, head voicer at Taylor & Boody, interview by author, Staunton, Va., 11 February 2008.

80 George Bozeman and Alan Laufman, ―Influences on Contemporary Mechanical-Action Organbuilding in America,‖ in The Tracker Organ Revival in America, ed. Uwe Pape (Berlin: Pape Verlag,1985), 69.

82 manifested among the artisan builders. Some companies such as Casavant have been building quality mechanical action organs since the 1960s, and often include slider chests in those instruments that rely on electro-pneumatic key action. Casavant has also constructed pipes from a high percentage of lead, but stop short of hammering and planing the metal in the traditional method. So while some techniques of traditional organ building have been appropriated by the large builders, they have missed the point that the artisan builder makes: that an organ must be built with integrity within the tradition that has been adopted. The early neo-baroque enthusiasts built organs by copying old stoplists, without regard to temperament, winding, scaling, or action, and the results were less than satisfactory, and not at all like any historical organ.

According to John Fesperman:

What had been missing from the work of such electric action builders as Harrison and Holtkamp, who had firmly rejected the ―orchestral‖ organ of the first third of the twentieth century, was the total assembling of the factors which made the organs of the 17th and 18th century artistic entities.81

The influence of the artisan builder can be seen in several ways in which the large commercial builder adopted characteristics of the classic organ. Casavant began building flutes with a high concentration of lead, though unhammered, in the mid 1970s, and often employed both slider chests and organ cases. By the late 1970s most large builders had abandoned free- standing chests with pipes in the open, and the unhistorical layout of chests with mixtures and the highest pitches in front. Couplers at non-unison pitches began to disappear, generally to be employed only to the pedal in order to facilitate solo voices. In 1967 Lawrence Phelps praised the Wicks Organ Company for voicing pipes on open toes and without nicks, although they were

81 John Fesperman, ―The Beginning of Mechanical Action Organ Building in the Eastern United States,‖ in The Tracker Organ Revival in America, ed. Uwe Pape (Berlin: Pape Verlag, 1985), 3.

83 not building mechanical-action organs.82 In the twenty-first century, the large organ builders have been influenced by recent scholarship into nineteenth-century organ building construction, tonal design, and casework.

Consider that the twenty-first century exhibits the widest variety of organ construction and design ever known, and the vast array of that eclecticism can be contained within one organ- building firm.

After a century of improvements in the industrial process of manufacturing organs by the large commercial builder, the artisan builder has returned the organ to its historic place as an instrument of handcrafted beauty.

A good definition on the subject of quality by George Bozeman, Jr.:

About the closest we can come to defining quality in a given organ on musical grounds is that it provides the greatest potential for the most satisfying performance of the music.83

John Brombaugh is credited by many for the reversing of the myths of neo-baroque organ building. His trips to Europe for the study of historic instruments led him on the path to build the most pure, historically informed instruments of his time.

A suspended action, properly built, provides a light and intimate touch, even on an instrument of considerable size; for owing to its extreme simplicity, both the mass of action and the number of points of friction are kept to a minimum. There is little to absorb the feel of the pallet‘s opening, little to inhibit good repetition.84

William Porter had this to say:

Just as the musical repertoire of our time is rich in diversity of style and includes the music of past ages to an unprecedented degree, so the last fifteen years have seen a corresponding flowering of instrument making in various molds. The fact that the resurgence of interest in the organ of history had made possible the revivification of

82 Lee Garret, ―American Organ Reform in Retrospect,‖ The American Organist, (June, 1997): 60.

83 George Bozeman, Jr., ―Ecology and the Organ,‖ The American Organist, (February, 1980): 56.

84 Uwe Pape ed., The Tracker Organ Revival In America, (Berlin: Pape Verlag, 1977), 75. 84

traditions once dominant makes the potential contribution of the organbuilder to contemporary musical culture an especially vital one.85

William Porter described the situation this way in a 1984 interview:

Having a meantone experience tells us something that before we could only guess at–something about the performer‘s role and causing Renaissance and early Baroque music to make sense to the listener. One of the challenges of performers who play music from all periods other than the present is how to sift out the sense of the right relationship between the role of the performer and the objective, like sound and tuning. As long as you have to play music from different periods, in order to do this responsibly, a diversity of instruments seems more necessary. We‘re also realizing that this stroke of consciousness is not only new but necessary for our time. This has opened up music from many different periods in a way that had not been successful before. There can be no monolithic instrument, and the diversity of styles is pulling toward a diversity of instruments. For example, meantone instruments are becoming more important because we‘re more aware of so much more of the music of the period. We need to come as close as we can to the music, even on other temperaments.86

These opinions reflect the attitudes of many organists who now believe that there cannot be one organ for all the literature of the various national styles and eras. Over the last forty years there has been a general trend towards the acceptance of this idea, and an appreciation for the rich variety of organs that can inform the performance of music suited to a particular instrument.

Significant organ departments in the United States have begun to preserve a collection of instruments, as at The Eastman School of the University of Rochester and the Yale Institute of

Sacred Music. This practice is echoed in Europe, especially at the Göteborg Organ Art Center in

Sweden, where organs by Henry Willis of 1871 and instruments by modern builders have supplied instruments in North European seventeenth-century style and of the nineteenth-century

French symphonic style, including a meantone organ built by John Brombaugh in Haga Church.

This philosophy has begun to take root, and will no doubt be reflected in many music schools

85 William Porter, ―Oberlin‘s Fairchild Chapel Organ, a Historical Perspective,‖ The American Organist, (December 1981): 37.

86 Marga Jeanne Morris Kienzle, The Life and Work of John Brombaugh, Organ Builder, (DMA diss. University of Cincinnati, 1984), 89. 85 across the country in the near future. It is the work of the historically informed artisan builders that have brought us to this new awareness, and their scholarship and integrity that have influenced all contemporary organ building.

86

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Boody, John and George Taylor. ―Cover Feature: The Organ Project at Goshen College.‖ The Diapason 96 no. 5 (May 2005): 22-23.

______. ―From Taylor & Boody Organbuilders,‖ The Tracker 48 no.3 (Summer 2004): 27-31.

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Bush, Douglas and Richard Kassel, ed. The Organ: An Encyclopedia. New York : Routledge, 2006.

Donahue, Thomas. The Modern Classical Organ: A Guide to Its Physical and Musical Structure and Performance Implications. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 1991.

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Edwards, Lynn, ed. The Historical Organ in America: A Documentary of Recent Organs Based on European & American Models. Westfield, MA: The Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1992.

Fesperman, John T. A Snetzler Chamber Organ of 1761, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1970.

______. Two Essays on Organ Design. Raleigh, NC: Sunbury Press, 1975.

______. Flentrop in America: An Account of the Work and Influence of the Dutch Organ Builder D. A. Flentrop in the United States, 1939-1977. Raleigh: The Sunbury Press. 1982.

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Fock, Gustav. Hamburg‘s Role in Northern European Organ Building. Translated by Lynn Edwards and Edward C. Pepe. Easthampton, MA: Westfield Center for Early Keyboard Studies, 1997.

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______. ―American Organ Reform in Retrospect, Part II.‖ The American Organist 31 no. 8, (August 1997): 72-78.

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APPENDIX

Opus List

Opus 1 Amelia Presbyterian Church, Amelia Court House, Virginia 1 manual & pedal, 9 stops Opus 2 The Presbyterian Church, Coshocton, Ohio 2 manuals, 18 stops Opus 3 Westminster Presbyterian Church, Charlottesville, Virginia 2 manuals & pedal, 18 stops Opus 4 First Christian Church, Vincennes, Indiana 2 manuals & pedal, 22 stops Opus 5 Restoration for the Governor's Palace, Williamsburg, Virginia 1 manual, 3 stops Opus 6 North Presbyterian Church, Cincinnati, Ohio 2 manuals & pedal, 21 stops Opus 7 Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Richmond, Virginia 2 manuals & pedal, 24 stops Opus 8 Mt. Carmel Presbyterian Church, Steeles Tavern, Virginia 1 manual & pedal, 8 stops Opus 9 College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts 4 manuals & pedal, 52 stops Opus 10 Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia 2 manuals & pedal, 9 stops Opus 11 St.Helena's Episcopal Church, Beaufort, South Carolina 2 manuals & pedal, 19 stops Opus 12 Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, York Springs, Pennsylvania 2 manuals & pedal, 13 stops Opus 13 School of Music-University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 2 manuals & pedal, 17 stops Opus 14 Clifton Forge Baptist Church, Clifton Forge, Virginia 2 manuals & pedal, 31 stops Opus 15 Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York 1 manual continuo, 2 stops Opus 16 Arthur Carkeek residence, Greencastle, Indiana 2 manual & pedal, 8 stops Opus 17 Ferris University, Yokohama, Japan 3 manuals & pedal, 44 stops Opus 18 Holy Trinity Lutheran Church, Lynchburg, Virginia 2 manuals & pedal, 19 stops Opus 19 Christ Episcopal Cathedral, Indianapolis, Indiana 3 manuals & pedal, 37 stops Opus 20 First Presbyterian Church, Tallahassee, Florida 2 manuals & pedal, 22 stops Opus 21 Louise Basbas, New York, New York 1 manual continuo, 2 stops Opus 22 St. Thomas' Episcopal Church, Christiansburg, Virginia 2 manuals & pedal, 8 stops Opus 23 St. John's Episcopal Church, Glyndon, Maryland 2 manuals & pedal, 17 stops Opus 24 Christ Evangelical Lutheran Church, Staunton, Virginia 2 manuals & pedal, 24 stops Opus 25 St. Joseph Female Ursuline Academy, Maple Mount, 2 manuals & pedal, 16 stops Kentucky Opus 26 International Christian University, Tokyo, Japan 1 manual continuo, 3 stops Opus 27 St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York, New York 2 manual & pedal, 22 stops Opus 28 Matsuyama Church, Matsuyama, Japan 2 manuals & pedal, 22 stops Opus 29 Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts 1 manual continuo, 3 stops Opus 30 St. Margaret's School, Tokyo, Japan 3 manuals & pedal, 43 stops Opus 31 Ferris University, Yokohama, Japan 1 manual continuo, 3 stops Opus 32 University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 1 manual continuo, 3 stops Opus 33 St. Andrew's Episcopal Church, Madison, Wisconsin 2 manual & pedal, 16 stops Opus 34 Trinity Episcopal Church, Staunton, Virginia 3 manuals & pedal, 32 stops Opus 35 Presbyterian Church of Danville, Danville, Kentucky 2 manuals & pedal, 30 stops Opus 36 Bower Chapel, Moorings Park, Inc., Naples, Florida 3 manuals & pedal, 32 stops Opus 37 St. Mark's Lutheran Church, San Francisco, California 2 manuals & pedal, 24 stops Opus 38 Trinity Presbyterian Church, Pensacola, Florida 2 manuals & pedal, 18 stops Opus 39 St. Thomas Episcopal Church, New York, New York 1 manual continuo, 4 stops Opus 40 Restoration of 1800 Home Moravian David Tannenberg Organ 2 manual & pedal, 14 stops Old Salem Visitor's Center, Winston-Salem, North Carolina Opus 41 Goshen College, Goshen, Indiana 2 manuals & pedal, 24 stops Opus 42 University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 1 manual continuo, 4 stops Opus 43 Kenan Chapel at Landfall, Wilmington, North Carolina 2 manual & pedal, 9 stops Opus 44 Keiji Kawasaki, Tokyo, Japan 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 45 Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 46 Hebron Presbyterian Church, Staunton, Virginia 2 manuals & pedal, 13 stops Opus 47 Restoration of 1798 Saal Organ Built by David Tannenberg 1 manual, 5 stops Single Brother's House, Old Salem, North Carolina

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Opus 48 Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 49 Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 50 under negotiation Opus 51 Christ Episcopal Church, Charlottesville, Virginia 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 52 First Presbyterian Church, Knoxville, Tennessee 2 manuals & pedal, 9 stops Opus 53 St. Clement Church, Chicago, Illinois 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 54 Karen Flint, Greenville, Delaware 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 55 Marquand Chapel, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut meantone organ with subsemitones 3 manuals & pedal, 35 stops Opus 56 Christ the King Lutheran Church, Houston, Texas 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 57 The First Presbyterian Church, Pittsford, New York 2 manuals and pedal, 22 stops Opus 58 Restoration of 1830 Henry Erben Organ for Single Sisters' House, Salem Academy and College, Winston-Salem, North Carolina 1 manual, 4 stops Opus 59 Calvary Episcopal Church, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 60 Central United Methodist Church, Phoenix, Arizona 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 61 Grace Church in New York, New York City, New York 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 62 1 manual continuo, 5 stops Opus 63 Maita Church, Yokohama, Japan 2 manuals and pedal, 8 stops Opus 64 St. Michael's Episcopal Church, Bon Air, Virginia 3 manuals & pedal, 36 stops

Other Projects Restoration 1802 David Tannenberg Organ, Hebron Lutheran Church, Madison, Virginia 1 manual, 8 stops Refurbishment 1961 Beckerath Organ, University of Richmond, Richmond, Virginia 2 manuals & pedal, 26 stops Refurbishment 1968 Beckerath Organ, Farmville Presbyterian Church, Farmville, Virginia 2 manuals & pedal, 16 stops Restoration 1872 Henry Erben Organ, Lee Chapel, Washington & Lee University, Lexington, Virginia 1 manual, 8 stops Restoration1891 Hook and Hastings organ for Louise Temple-Rosebrook Harrisonburg, Virginia 2 manuals & pedal, 8 stops

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