blog.sinden.org

In part 1 of this essay I introduced the three constituent elements of beauty according to Thomas Aquinas: integritas, consonantia, and claritas. And we examined the first element, integritas, or integrity, as it relates to electronic organs.

Do Thomas's two other aspects of beauty have something to tell us about the nature of electronic organs?

Consonantia - consonance or proportion.

Proportionality is a common problem with electronic organs, and I think a big strike against many of them. One of the reasons that a parish might be attracted to an electronic organ is because of their ability to acquire a "larger" instrument than the realities of a pipe organ would allow. The perceived advantage of an electronic instrument is that it has greater versatility than a similarly priced pipe organ. There would be more variety of tone color, perhaps even an additional manual, and more "toys" for the organist. But in reality, the tonal scheme is too "big" for the space it is trying to fill.

Too often we see these extra elements in the electronic organ blown way out of proportion. The gimmicks and flexibility allow it to sound like an English "cathedral" organ one minute, and a North-German-style instrument in a historic temperament the next. This is just disingenuous. Just because you've decided against a traditional pipe organ doesn't mean that the congregation should be sonically disoriented by hearing many hundreds of stops, and several different style organs in the same space. This is a bridge too far, as is the MIDI harpsichord that comes standard. The increasing technicization of the electronic organ makes this kind of variety a selling point, but it destroys the consonantia of the instrument.

(Really, who would have any reason to use a harpsichord coming through those same loudspeakers? Absurd!)

Is it possible to build a real pipe organ out of proportion with its space? Absolutely! But it's much easier to do this with an electronic installation.

Claritas - "the power of a thing to reveal itself to the mind"

Pipe organs are very physical installations. The placement of pipes in some kind of chamber in relationship to the placement of the choir (or other instruments) and to the rest of the worship space (or hall) is all navigated with great care. The resulting layout also has implications for how the organ looks from the "outside".

In electronic instruments there is no need for any substantial physical or visual design. On the contrary, most electronic organ installations go to great lengths to hide their loudspeakers from view. And because loudspeakers are more easily placed than ranks of pipes, these sounds can be generated from locations that would be unrealistic for pipes. This is a principle that creates great cognitive dissonance and works against the element of claritas. ("That sounds like a room full of pipes!" "It's not, it's just a couple loudspeakers.")

In the very worst cases, claritas is confused by placing loudspeakers behind a facade of fake organ pipes. (I'm still thinking about the purely electronic organ here, but I think that a hairsplitting discussion of "hybrid" organs is also probably worth our time.)

Pipe organs, with few exceptions, have their pipes on display to some degree. The Werkprinzip of North German organ design meant that the claritas of an instrument was fully visual as well as auditory: the divisions of the organ could be fairly easily seen and understood.

An Americanized version of the Werkprinzip occurred with many 1950s and 1960s organs by Holtkamp, and I have a real soft spot for these instruments. Though others may find them too angular and passé, I find them distinctively beautiful. They make my heart skip a beat. Two that I would single out for particular praise are the organ at Setnor Auditorium, Crouse College, Syracuse Univeristy and Battell Chapel, Yale Univeristy.

Different styles of organ facades have been in use throughout different periods of organ building. But in every period of organbuilding, the organ's facade has remained a facet of pipe organ construction. Unenclosed pipes of polished metal usually adorn the case of the organ and serve as a visual cue to the location and size of the instrument. (The Fisk at Benaroya Hall, Seattle is a late-twentieth century organ that also uses wood pipes in the facade.)

This is an important element in this discussion because organs are truly inspiring instruments. And, after hearing fine organ music, one of the first ways that young organists are inspired to study the instrument is by seeing one.

With the electronic organ, however, there are no pipes of any type to see. And if there are pipes on display it just furthers instrument's inherent dishonesty.

There is no claritas in the electronic organ.

The emperor has no clothes, and he is not beautiful.

Labels: electronic organs, Fisk, Holtkamp, organs, Thomas Aquinas

For too long we have let the electronic organ manufacturers set the tone and substance of this conversation ("It's less expensive!" "It sounds just as good!" "Not even organists can tell the difference!" "The technology will amaze you!"). The substance of the conversation really revolves around a sales pitch rather than theological considerations.

But I think there has to be something more to this, especially when it comes to acquiring an instrument for a church. What about theology? What is our theology of art, architecture, and beauty in the church? Are electronic organs truly beautiful?

Lately I've really been enjoying a podcast called The Liturgy Guys, a podcast on liturgy from a Roman Catholic perspective from the Liturgical Institute in Mundelein, Illinois.

I went back to re-listen to Episode 25: "Beauty and the Feast, Part 1" because I thought it might be able to inform our thinking on electronic organs.

Beauty, according to Aquinas, has three constituent parts: integritas, consonantia, and claritas.

In part 1 of this essay I would like to address the first element: integritas

From the Liturgy Guys podcast:

A beautiful thing reveals what it is, and a thing can't reveal what it is if it doesn't have all the things it's supposed to have. I mean, imagine: it's the first time you've ever seen a car and there are no wheels on it. You haven't seen the fullness of "car" because wheels are a component element of "car".

…Anything without all of its stuff, all of its parts, is not revealing itself to you. That's what Thomas calls integritas or "integrity" – wholeness.

…A thing has to have everything it has to have in order to reveal what it is.

So, according to the Thomasian definition of integritas, are electronic organs beautiful? Do they have integritas?

An electronic organ cannot reveal what it is because it is pretending to be something that it's not.

In my essay about electronic organs last week I chose the word integrity to draw attention to what I see as the fundamental problem with these instruments; according to Aquinas's definition of integritas electronic organs are not whole.

Even though electronic organs attempt to mimic the sounds of pipes, they lack pipes themselves. An electronic organ doesn't "have all the things it's supposed to have". It doesn't have all of its parts. It cannot reveal what it is because it is pretending to be something that it's not.

Now, before you and Thomas Aquinas accuse me of being a Luddite, or aloof, or arrogant, or impractical (all accusations I probably deserve), let's acknowledge the reality that many churches already own and use electronic instruments in their worship. And others are considering purchasing them.

And furthermore, let me state unequivocally that this line of amateur theological inquiry is not meant to be a personal attack on those who preside over electronic organs. The instrument doesn't make the musician.

I believe we are all – together – seeking to "perfect the praises offered by your people on earth," as the famous prayer on page 819 of the BCP puts it.

God can be praised with whatever we have at hand.

But in spite of this, I think it is high time to take a bold, principled stand in defense of beauty in the liturgy, including the preference for real pipe organs.

In her recent essay on the topic of electronic organs Mary Davenport Davis asks,

"What if that's what God wants from us in this generation: to choose what is ugly and real over what is beautiful and fake? (I don't believe that's actually the choice, most of the time; I trust the ingenuity and wisdom of the church musicians in my life to create beauty from whatever God gives us.)"

Ultimately Mary comes down on the side of the real – but could something be "ugly and real"?

My mind flashes once again to that archetypal 1999 film of the Information Age, The Matrix. After taking the red pill and seeing the "real world", the cinematography and the costumes are drab, dull, gray, dirty. But the point here is that the "real world" is devoid of illusion. The illusion provided by "the Matrix" is certainly attractive, but part of its purpose is to mask the illusion itself (it is the "beautiful and fake"). And the arrival into that "real world" with all of its "realness" is something to be celebrated.

From the Liturgy Guys podcast again: "…Properly speaking, there's no such thing as ugly. There's beautiful and there's less beautiful. The only ugly thing is non-being."

When we choose the fantasy provided by the electronic organ, we choose just that: a fantasy. An illusion.

The electronic organ, then, cannot be ugly. We are talking about it, and it is, therefore it must be. And we have to admit that digital technology hooked up to loudspeakers does still deal with the laws of physics of this created sphere. But given that the electronic organ does not have integritas in the Thomasian sense it is lacking in beauty. It is something less beautiful.

When we choose the real, however, we choose the beautiful.

Labels: electronic organs, organs, Thomas Aquinas

Mary Davenport Davis, of Trinity, Boston, writes on the church's Vested Interest blog:

…On some level, this is fairly inside-baseball stuff. The heated debate between musicians who favor (or at least are resigned to) electronic organs and those who find them execrable can seem abstract and remote for those of us who don't know our Aeolian-Skinners from our Hook & Hastings. I happen to think it's terribly important, though, not just for musicians but for all Christians who care about the incarnation (Jesus as a concrete, living presence of God), our worship together, and especially the future of the church.

“we as a church must choose the real over the fake.”

[David Sinden's] post touches on the history of the pipe organ, argues passionately for the economics and aesthetics of the hand-built organ, and passionately articulates what is at stake for churches and church musicians in this choice. "This almost goes without saying, but electronic organs aren't real," he writes. "They're simply attempting to copy the sounds that a real organ would make....In the case of the Electronic Organ Simulator, the sounds that seem to be coming from pipes are made by speakers." Electronic organs, he writes, are Fake News. And we as a church must choose the real over the fake.

Read the whole thing: "The Closest Thing to Real". Vested Interest, 8 May 2017.

Read my original post here: organs - electronic

Labels: electronic organs, organs

Since writing this essay of initial reflections I have returned to the topic for Aquinas, Thomas - on electronic organs, part 1 and part 2.

All articles on this topic at the blog at Sinden.org can henceforth be found under the label: electronic organs.

I might be wrong.

(I think this might be the way to start a conversation about electronic organs.)

I'll say it again: I might be wrong. But the recent publication of an electronic organ on the cover of The American Organist (the journal of the American Guild of Organists) has me thinking about the electronic organ.

And before I go any further I want to address those who play electronic organs directly: this is not about you. And I don't question your character one way or the other. This is not about me, either. This conversation is bigger than all of us. It began before we were born, and it will continue after we're dead. This is about technological innovation, the economics of music and religion, wind, beauty, and integrity.

What I'm trying to do is zoom out for a moment to get the big picture. I want to figure out what led us to the point in May 2017 when our professional organization would seemingly validate a fully-electronic organ by allowing it on its cover of its journal.

The organ has been on the forefront of the technological advancement of humankind. And every step of the way surely there was someone crying "what are you doing!? organs aren't supposed to work that way!"

Surely objections were raised when

• in the mid-1400s, when someone figured out how to add "stops" to an organ so that the full blockwerk wouldn't all sound at once.
• the first reed stop was invented in…what, the 1500s?
• the first swell box was built in 1712.
• the first tubular-pneumatic action was built
• the first electro-pneumatic action was built.

Then in 1939 Jerome Markowitz, the founder of the Allen Organ Company, built the first fully electronic organ through the use of oscillator circuitry based on radio tubes. (thanks, Wikipedia!)

So, is the electronic organ (now really the "digital organ" or the "software organ") the way of the future? Is it simply the next technological advancement in a logical line of progress?

It's interesting to note the chasm between the academic study of organ performance and the practical realities organists will encounter in the real world. No reputable academic institution would suggest serious performance on an electronic substitute; they require lessons and recitals to be held on real instruments with pipes.

Churches, on the other hand, are often happy to acquire electronic substitutes for reasons of 1) low initial cost, 2) space limitations, and 3) and ease of maintenance.

Let's speak briefly to each of these reasons:

• 1) Cost: whether you get an electronic organ rather cheaply, or you throw a lot of money at a top of the line installation, nothing depreciates faster when you "drive it off the lot". The markup is rather high, and an electronic instrument doesn't retain its value the way a pipe organ does. Speakers wear out; pipes don't. (I know. I've played some from the 1400s.)
• 2) Space limitations: many organ builders are familiar with this challenge and know how to meet it.
• 3) Ease of maintenance: organs typically need to be tuned twice a year. Well-built organs I have known are virtually maintenance free outside of this. Others just need a capable technician when something goes wrong, just like your car does.

What is lost when a church decides to go the route of an electronic device rather than an instrument with pipes? Many things, including 1) wind, 2) beauty, and 3) integrity.

• 1) Wind: Why does should it matter if an organ works with pressurized air rather than electrical impulses? Because the Church uses the building blocks of creation in her worship: fire, water, stone, and the fruit of the earth itself. We don't use electric candles, we use real candles that we can light.

  In terms of organ building, we take wood and metal, combine them just right, and get wind.

  Wind is a particularly special part of the Christian Faith. Just pay close attention the next time you're at the Easter Vigil.

  It was the wind that moved over creation in the beginning. It was wind that passed over the earth when God remembered Noah in the ark. It was wind that divided the Red Sea so that the Israelites could pass through. When Ezekiel prophesies to the dry bones he says, "Come from the four winds, O breath, and breathe upon these slain, that they may live." In Zephaniah God exults with loud singing (what kind of breath would that take?!). The death of Jesus, his very last breath, is reported by the Synoptic Gospels as a loud cry. And finally, there is the rushing, violent wind of the Day of Pentecost, the birth of the church itself.

• 2) Beauty: real organs are built by skilled craftsmen who have different areas of specialty and spend decades learning and perfecting their craft. A working organ shop is a thing to behold. This is the kind of beauty that we seek to bring into our worship in everything we do: architecture, vestments, liturgy, ceremonial, words, music, preaching. We strive to bring our best to everything in our worship.

  Electronic organs can only emulate and imitate. They have nothing of their own to contribute and are not truly beautiful.

  And lighted stop knobs are hideously tacky.

• 3) Integrity: this almost goes without saying, but electronic organs aren't real. They're simply attempting to copy the sounds that a real organ would make.

  And don't get me wrong, the technology has come a long way since 1939. The results are more and more impressive, but no matter how good they get they will never actually be real.

  And unlike Pinocchio, there is no magical transformation that awaits them.

  What is it that prevents electronic organs from being real?

  The first time I came home from college I noticed the electronic instrument I knew in high school sounded completely different to me: it was flat, fake. But the tone quality these machines produce is better and better all the time. The systems are programmed to simulate a certain "out of tune-ness" and subtle variations in pipe speech that real organs have. They try to emulate the huff and puff of the whole winding system of a real organ. (Cameron Carpenter is so impressed with all of this he has jumped in with both feet.) Surely the ability to generate and replicate pipe sounds electronically will continue to improve even more.

  So what is it that keeps them from being real?

  Well, it has to be what's moving the air that makes the sound. In the case of the Pipe Organ, the sounds that seem to be coming from pipes are made by pipes. In the case of the Electronic Organ Simulator, the sounds that seem to be coming from pipes are made by speakers.

  There's just something fundamentally dishonest about this. Even if you had a big enough budget to get a really obscene number of speakers for this installation (let's say you go so far as to have one speaker for every "pipe" in the organ simulator), you still have the fundamental problem of integrity. You are trying to make something sound like pipes that are not pipes.

Do Electronic Organ Simulators have their place? Sure! How about your spare bedroom, or your basement! It's great fun to have one of these things and to simulate the sounds from lots of different organs around the world. But let's call it what it is, a simulator, and not hold it up as a paragon of excellence.

Kerala Snyder has a marvelous book about the development of the North European organ called The Organ as a Mirror of Our Time.

Can we look at the instrument on the cover of The American Organist as a mirror of our time? What would it tell us if we did?

The first Allen Organ was made in the Industrial Age; the latest Allen Organ to roll off the assembly line is a product of the Information Age.

Our knowledge-obsessed society prizes high-tech achievements over craftsmanship.

No longer concerned with wind, beauty, or integrity, or even with how well-built an organ is, many are content to gaze upon the latest technological achievements in the Organ Simulator and admire how impressively it manages so much Information.

But the Information Age is still brand new. We are still discovering what it means to live in such a time as this. The new Information Economy can give rise to the promise of the Information Superhighway one day and the Junkyard of Fake News the next.

When we hold up this organ as a mirror of our own time we first notice it's not even a pipe organ at all. It's a pale imitation of the real pipe organ at best. But many are content to pretend that it's just as good as the real thing. And if you repeat this lie long enough, doesn't it start to seem true?

The electronic organ is fake news.

“The organ is like a mad idea…like an island in itself. And you have to live inside of this island, to make IT live also.” –Jean Guillou

The organ truly is a mad idea. An audacious one. Mozart famously dubbed it "the King of Instruments." And occupying the instrument to make it live is a shared desire among organists that I know.

When we disagree about the philosophy behind instruments it's due to this: our differing ideas about how to "live inside" the instrument and to make the organ and it's repertoire come alive.

So where would you rather live? To borrow the terminology of a great science fiction movie of the Information Age: would you rather live inside the matrix (a simulated reality) or live in the real world?

"What is truth?" asks Pilate.

Will we take the red pill or the blue pill?

I'm going to reach for the red.

But I might be wrong.

Labels: AGO, electronic organs, organs, TAO

. . . an immersive multi-sensory performance from Johnnie Walker, featuring flame-throwers, 10,000 year-old ice, and Jude Law -- not all at the same time.

But the star attraction is a bespoke organ that reportedly employed around a quarter of the world's specialist craftsmen for the instrument during a building process that took three years and 10,000 man hours. This is the 'Flavour Conductor,' a landmark for synesthetic experiment that combines cutting edge science with a devotion to enhanced pleasure.

Monks, Kieron. "Magical organ gives 'musical taste' a new meaning". CNN. 19 September 2014.

Speaking of 10,000-year-old ice: we are big fans of the television programme Going Deep with David Rees, especially the first episode: How to Make an Ice Cube

Labels: flame-throwers, food and drink, ice, Jude Law, organ music, organs

I play a Rosales organ. Part of the fun of this is that I get to tell people a little bit about how unique (and how very good!) our organ is.

It's one of two on the East Coast, I'll say. (The other one is in St. Bart's, Atlanta).

Or I'll say, "Rosales also built the organ for Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles".

When I mentioned Disney Hall recently, someone asked me, "does the organ get used there?"

I'm happy to say that the answer is yes. And not only that, people what to hear it.

Do you think organ music is still relevant today?

There are always more people wanting to hear than can fit in the concert hall, so I think that's pretty telling.

Ferguson, Dana. "Walt Disney Concert Hall's organ conservator pulls out all the stops". Los Angeles Times, 20 September 2013.

Labels: organs, Rosales, Walt Disney Concert Hall

We at St. Paul's, Richmond (and miraculously, by the grace of God, the good folks at St. James's just up the street and St. Stephen's on the West End) are preparing for a large-scale collaborative performance of The Crucifixion: A Meditation on the Sacred Passion of the Holy Redeemer. Our concert is Friday, February 24 at 7:30 p.m. at St. Paul's.

And until then, it's time to study up on this much-maligned work, underestimated composer, and the musical milieu that surrounded it all.

In particular, I found myself wondering: what were victorian hymn registrations like?

And so, down the rabbit hole we go.

One resource that emerged fairly quickly was Ian Bradley's Abide With Me: The World of Victorian Hymns, and while I haven't yet digested the entire book, I don't think it's going to give specific registration instructions.

But Bradley has clearly done a lot of thinking about the era, and he helps set the scene. Hymn singing in the Church of England, he reminds us, was a new phenomenon, being first sanctioned only in the 1820s, and taking many years to make a dent in the stranglehold that the Old Version (Sternhold & Hopkins) or the New Version (Tate & Brady) of the Psalter had on congregational music in Anglican worship. Hymns Ancient and Modern, the quintessential Victorian hymnbook was first published in 1861.

And while congregations were familiar with singing metrical psalms, these were "lined out" by the parish clerk (congregation listening first to the clerk, then repeating a phrase at a time), not accompanied by an organ. And then there was that amusing "West Gallery music" phenomenon in parish churches. It also took many years for the organ and choir arrangement that we now take for granted to trickle down from cathedrals to parish churches.

So Stainer's five hymns contained in The Crucifixion, written in 1887, are fascinating in light of this dynamic period of hymn proliferation in the church, and the brand new organ and choir arrangement encouraged by the Oxford Movement.

So how to register them? Well, one resource doesn't give precise answers to that question, but we certainly get reminders that things were a little different back then.

Stainer, who was organist at St. Paul's Cathedral, London, had a great colleague in J. Frederick Bridge, Organist of Westminster Abbey. His Organ Accompaniment of the Choral Service was written in 1885, just two years before the premiere of Stainer's Crucifixion.

And Bridge's work is edited by none other than "Dr. Stainer" himself.

Bridge gives his thoughts on nearly every aspect of service playing, including some stern rebukes on what must have been prevailing customs of some other church musicians (rolling chords before beginning hymns, word-painting).

Also notable, he recommends a specific number of beats between stanzas of a hymn "to preserve the rhythm" -- believing that the meter and major metrical accents should be preserved over the breath.

Another interesting comment:

Except in special cases––as, for instance, at the words, "Now above the sky He's King," in the well-known Easter hymn, "Jesus Christ is risen to-day," where a moderate rallentando is very effective––no rallentando should be made in playing the verses of a hymn, other than that naturally called for at the last verse just before the "Amen."

p. 20

I direct you to the beginning of the discussion of hymns on page 18,

Labels: Bridge, hymns, organs, Stainer

I read with great interest the recent "Anglicans should throw out dry tradition" by Theo Hobson in The Guardian earlier this week.

There were some parts I really liked, and parts that spoke to my experience of all that liturgy and church can be.

I especially liked this bit:

The climax of an Anglican service is communion, or eucharist, but normally it doesn't feel like much of a climax; one stays in one's pew as the vicar gets busy at the altar, and then one lines up to receive the bread and wine. Here it is different: we all come forward and stand in a circle round the altar. The liturgy is mostly said by the priest, but we join in with a few setpiece prayers together, one or two of which are sung with gusto, and it's at this point I get a strange sensation: we are not dutifully going through the motions, but performing a ritual that feels alive. It is a bit like participating in a play in a theatre-in-the-round. There is a sense of dramatic excitement. We pass the bread and wine round in a circle, announcing "The body of Christ, the bread of heaven", and "The blood of Christ, the cup of salvation". There is a palpable sense, that I have never really had in English churches, that this ritual is powerful. At the risk of sounding a bit pretentious, there's a sort of primal force to it, not unrelated to a primitive rain-dance. We are doing something strange, other, mysterious: group sign-making of the most basic kind.

But I think that this beautiful image of the gathered community physically centered on the Eucharist must be sensitive to place and culture and, yes, tradition -- the very tradition he calls dry and wants to throw out.

Hobson suggests taking out pews to help focus the liturgy on the Altar. Great! You can take out all the pews you want in a space like St. John the Divine in New York and you still won't achieve the focus and intimacy of St. Mark's in the Bowery (that Hobson attends) just a 40 minute subway ride away. But, of course, in a lot of churches this will work. It's a little shocking and will take some work to help people give up "their pew". And like anything, this way of doing church isn't perfect. Handled incorrectly this can ostracize the elderly or others who have trouble standing.

If we're talking about "dry" traditions, pews probably qualify as one. They're a lot more permanent a form of seating than churches have historically had. So I'm with him on that, but he loses me with this bit of description of St. Mark's:

There is no organ – both it and the pews were casualties of a fire some years ago – a godly fire in my view. I consider organ music too loud, too powerful – it alienates, cows. Instead, the liturgy is accompanied by a piano.

That statement "I consider organ music too loud" is a sweeping generalization that fails to realize that the organ is capable of the softest of whispers (yes, softer than a piano) to majestic roars (yes, louder than a piano freight train).

If we're serious about wanting to inject joy, color and variety into our worship, why wouldn't we want to use the organ to its fullest potential, both loud and soft? Why wouldn't we also want to use piano and all kinds of instruments to fully depict the content of what we're singing about?

If I may be permitted a sweeping generalization of my own: the organ is a much better instrument with which to accompany congregational singing. Its sounds are congruous with the sustained human voice unlike the sharp, unrelenting, colorless hammering of a piano trying to lead a room full of people. (Again, how successful is piano accompaniment for hymn singing at St. John the Divine?)

Let's also note that organ accompaniment that is continually too soft (or provided by an instrument incapable of speaking clearly due to poor placement or other difficulties) is also deadly. It produces singing that is flat, flaccid and uninviting.

I have never before realized how many people don't fully appreciate why it is exactly that organs are so prevalent in churches. In the right hands they are the quintessential instruments for accompanying congregational song and providing liturgical improvisation.

Perhaps God is calling me to be an organ evangelist in these types of conversations.

In my view the organ is not a "dry" tradition. Unlike pews, they have evolved dramatically over centuries and across continents, and some of us are really working hard at figuring out how to play them.

I think it's sad that St. Mark's in the Bowery's organ was lost in a fire and I for one wonder about why it wasn't replaced if it was appropriately insured. Though it sounds like they have made things work very well, an organ could certainly serve that congregation just as well as any other.

And while we're on the subject of tradition: the United States just celebrated the anniversary of its Independence, and a key feature of this tradition is fireworks. What if I said of this tradition "too loud, too powerful – it alienates, cows."

I'd probably be laughed at, regarded suspiciously and eventually arrested by (US) Homeland Security officers.

I for one am not willing to abandon hundreds of years of wet tradition that involves the organ and the likes of Bach, Brahms and Britten. This music is appropriate and, I think, needed in our worship. We are taken out of the present by the gifts us with the past (including our Book of Common Prayer) as we move forward in faith into the future.

Fireworks are loud. Deal with it.

The organ is loud too (sometimes). Deal with it.

O God, whom saints and angels delight to worship in heaven: Be ever present with your servants who seek through art and music to perfect the praises offered by your people on earth; and grant to them even now glimpses of your beauty, and make them worthy at length to behold it unveiled for evermore; through Jesus Christ our Lord. Amen.

Labels: liturgy, organs, pews, singing

I received the following email yesterday. I didn't have time to read it so, naturally, I'm posting it here.

from Scb44484@cs.com
to g.vey@verizon.net
cc dsinden@gmail.com
date Wed, Jun 15, 2011 at 16:25
subject Fwd: pipe organ
hide details 16:25 (1 hour ago)
In a message dated 6/14/2011 3:15:52 PM Eastern Daylight Time, Scb44484@cs.com writes: 
pipe organ availability 

I am in a position to broker the following  consisting largely of several vintage organs:
1] a symphonic instrument from an academic institution
2] an ecclesiastical organ of 1920s and 1970s pipework from a now- defunct religious institution 
3] additionally stock pipes of high qulaity plus new pipe fill in the missing elements for a gran american symphonic organ with american classic elements for a magnificent ensemble of great power, dignity, authority and endless color and nuance
4] a complete pipe organ to suite ANY budget as LOW as $79,865 for TEN pre-owned unit ranks: 1 diapason; 3 strings, 3 flutes;3 reeds

all manual chests to be new
off-set chests to be preowned or new
an elegant vintage console with restored ivory keys and knobs and a new pedalboard with all new console solid-state controls

all this plus on-site tonal finishing by expert flue and reed voicers to assure a custom fit 

write for more info

thanx
s bournias
warren ohio



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Scb44484@cs.com
To: elktonchurch@bellsouth.net, glogan@lhbg.org, info@ImmanuelGlasgow.org, reachgbc@hotmail.com, office@midwaybc.net
Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2011 15:15:52 EDT
Subject: pipe organ
pipe organ availability 

I am in a position to broker the following  consisting largely of several vintage organs:
1] a symphonic instrument from an academic institution
2] an ecclesiastical organ of 1920s and 1970s pipework from a now- defunct religious institution 
3] additionally stock pipes of high qulaity plus new pipe fill in the missing elements for a gran american symphonic organ with american classic elements for a magnificent ensemble of great power, dignity, authority and endless color and nuance
4] a complete pipe organ to suite ANY budget as LOW as $79,865 for TEN pre-owned unit ranks: 1 diapason; 3 strings, 3 flutes;3 reeds

all manual chests to be new
off-set chests to be preowned or new
an elegant vintage console with restored ivory keys and knobs and a new pedalboard with all new console solid-state controls

all this plus on-site tonal finishing by expert flue and reed voicers to assure a custom fit 

write for more info

thanx
s bournias
warren ohio 

Labels: organs, spam

• God (and if He or She is not, then nothing else we're talking about here matters - if we worship a real God in the beauty of holiness, this worship would, by definition, demand our best, and our best comprises those things that are genuine, that are real)
• people (say what you will about snooty, limp-armed Anglicans)
• space (building, location, whatever)
• sound, words (spoken, sung)
• time (let's hope the service ends in time for luncheon)
• water
• fire
• air
• bread
• wine

Digital organs are acoustic plagiarism

There's no deception with the microphone on the lectern. We're familiar with the convention of the public address system. There's no deception with electric lighting. I think most people are familiar with this reality.

However, the digital organ seems to be a deliberate attempt to deceive. There's no evaluating it on its own merits. No one asks the question: "isn't this a great digital organ?" Rather, the question posed is "you can't tell this apart from a real organ, can you?".

These thoughts come as a result of reading this AP article by Jeff Martin. I continue to be surprised by Trinity's shift from calling the digital instrument an interim solution to a "long-term commitment". A quick-fix simply does not have long-term viability.

Labels: organs, Trinity (New York)

Dear The American Organist, periodical journal of the American Guild of Organists,

You and I have had our issues about graphic design before, but this time you've really crossed the line.

Upon retrieving my latest issue (April, 2011) from the mailbox, I was surprised to see this offensive image:

The cover of your periodical would be rather lovely this month if not for the fact that the image of the face of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ is fully obscured by the logo.

Congratulations on decapitating Jesus.

Given that the name of the church is Church of the Ascension, did you realize that the subject of the John La Farge painting you obscure is, in fact, Jesus Christ himself in the act of ascending into heaven?

How can you expect your readers to maintain artistic integrity in their fields, if your logo obscures the subject of one of the greatest murals in America?

It's clear what you want the subject of this photo to be: the organ -- but not even the organ case is fully pictured on this cover.

I just don't get it!

And, are you aware that many Christians are celebrating the Feast of the Resurrection (also known as "Easter") this month (24 April), a celebration that centers on the figure of Jesus Christ?

Interestingly, many Americans are Christian (about 78.4% last I checked), and many American Organists (presumably the ones your publication is named for) work at Christian Churches. Just to bring it full circle for you, these same churches are celebrating Easter.

Could you be any more insensitive?

I mean, really, how are we supposed to take the stuff you say about clergy-organist relations seriously when you behead the Savior on the cover of your journal?

I really do look forward to reading why you did this in a future issue of your magazine.

Sincerely (with much more sincerity about the graphic design than any religious issues),

David Sinden
Proprietor, Sinden.org
The Jean Julius Christian Sibelius Chair of Musicology and Christian Polemics (Emeritus), University of Blogaria

Labels: AGO, Ascension, Church of the Ascension (New York), organs, TAO

A special bulletin in this All-Saints-tide:

Don't miss the BBC webcast of New College singing Herbert Howells's New College service at Evensong.

It is often said that Howells was influenced by the architecture of the different spaces for which he wrote his numerous evensong services. New College is an interesting building, and one of the drier acoustics he composed for, so it is interesting to take note of this service sung in the room and by the choir for which it was composed.

Their organ is fascinating. (Glass swell shutters!)

Labels: Evensong, Howells, New College (Oxford), organs

Here's a trailer forCarnival of Souls.

Filmed in Lawrence, Kansas, the film features the Reuter Pipe organ factory. It looks as though the whole thing might be available on YouTube now.

Labels: film, organs

On this date in 1938 (a Saturday), the organ in Norwich Cathedral caught fire whilst Heathcote Statham was playing it.

Ah, history.

Labels: Norwich Cathedral, organs, Statham

I found myself in All Souls Church on All Souls Day, but interestingly I was the only soul around.

I was at All Soul's Unitarian Church in Indianapolis. I see elsewhere on this blog a record of my intention to play this organ in the summer of aught five. It took me four years, but I am just now getting around to spending some time with this instrument.

I admittedly have a soft spot for these Holtkamp organs, having played a wonderful 1959 Walter Holtkamp, Sr. (designed with help from Fenner Douglass) at the Episcopal Parish of St. Peter's in Lakewood, Ohio. The Indianapolis instrument is four years younger, but shares many similar qualities.

The Indianapolis instrument does benefit tremendously from a complementary acoustic and is made more versatile with an enclosed swell division.

As a post-1974 graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, Holtkamp organs played a relatively minor part of my "official" education, but for earlier students things would have been quite different:

Labels: Holtkamp, Oberlin, organs

In honor of the start of baseball season, we thought we would refer you to the following baseball + church stories:

• Baseball or Good Friday or both? from Episcopal Cafe. Opening day in Detroit is on Good Friday, and this dilemma gets coverage in the newspaper.
• Philadelphia Church Organ's Baseball Link from NPR. The church is St. Malachy's Church in Philadelphia. They held a baseball "pep rally" and organ restoration fundraiser on Palm Sunday evening.

Previously: church - baseball's similarity to the

Labels: organs, sports

Just in time for the Messiaen centennial: a bird song organ from Japan.

Labels: organs

[W]e have this handcrafted pipe organ that was played at the local hardware store in the early 1950s. It may sound strange to have organ music at a hardware store, but it was the thing to do. Someone would go buy nails and be serenaded by the store's owner."

Buske, Jennifer. "A Future Filled With More of the Past." Washington Post 17 August 2008.

Labels: organs

The mammoth organ in the New Jersey's Ocean Grove Auditorium is turning 100.

"Ocean Grove's pipe organ, a Jersey Shore treasure, marks 100 years of sacred song" (Star Ledger)

The article references organbuilder Robert Hope-Jones's courteous suicide attempt (which I knew nothing about) and that one of his investors was Mark Twain (again, news to me).

See also: "Pulling Out All the Stops" (Asbury Park Press)

Labels: New Jersey, organs

The Oberlin Summer Organ Academy is underway this week.

With that in mind, I present

Don't worry, the pesky tremulant goes away

Need more from the organs at Oberlin? Don't miss "The Organ at Oberlin" on Pipedreams

Labels: Oberlin, organs