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Christ the King Catholic Church, Dallas, TX
Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders, Montreal, Quebec

By Stephen Sinclair

An organ project is, by its nature, a long process—it can be helpful for organbuilders to reflect on the beginning once we’ve reached the end. We might forget, for example, that the project at Christ the King in Dallas was, for all intents and purposes, dead in the water for more than a year, for lack of a solution to the conundrum of how to successfully build a mechanical-action instrument out-of-chambers, without placing any weight on the balcony itself, or reducing space for the choir.

It wasn’t an aha moment that led us to a solution. It was more a case of the elimination of doubt—as crazy as it seemed, we could see no downside to our proposal: a three-manual, French-Romantic-inspired instrument, with Grand-Orgue and most of the Pédale division against the back wall, supported entirely by two beams that traverse the gallery. Both Récit and Positif would be in swell boxes occupying the chambers to each side, but cantilevered and angled into the room to promote projection. The console would be detached, with trackers running above the existing concrete choir risers, but below new oak risers. Trackers to all divisions would scale the three walls of the choir loft, taking practically no room from the choir. Our previous experience told us that we could 
offer this solution happily—there would be no compromise in the success of the action, the projection of each division, choir seating, or access for maintenance. It just seemed so unusual that it required the methodical elimination of doubt for us to feel comfortable floating the proposal. If the instrument seems natural now, it didn’t then.

Christ the King organist Henry McDowell first contact­ed us about the project in 2006. Returning to his hometown of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, he had visited Jack Michener and played his two-stop Juget-Sinclair practice organ—and thus began his interest in our firm. (We’re tickled that our smallest instrument led to our largest!) Jesse Eschbach was brought on board as consultant, and his encyclopedic knowledge of 19th-century French organ stop­lists has proven invaluable. Henry and Jesse came to Montreal, perhaps for the McGill summer organ academy; an instrument set up in the shop provided a catalyst for discussions around the console, and the project was born.

Although the chambers provide ample space for pipes, much of it was not useful, as our mandate was to build an organ that wouldn’t sound like it was in chambers. Initially, we were unable to find room for the large instrument proposed, or at least room in a position that had a chance of projecting well into the nave—only the 32′ Pédale octaves were allowed deep in the chambers. The solution was to modify the specification to make the Positif expressive as well, which gave a symmetrical arrangement with Récit to the left, and Positif to the right, each cantilevered into the room, and with the swell shades arranged to reflect sound toward the nave. The experience points out a truth in organ design: when space is tight, space will strongly influence design. It will have its say, and needs its place at the table.

The proposed steel structure provided an interesting challenge: the beams would sag an estimated 5/8″ under the full weight of the instrument—how would the casework accommodate this? Mechanical engineer Nigel Brown provided the answer. Given weight estimates of every part of the instrument and a drawing showing where that weight would bear down on the structure, he was able to tell us how much each beam would deflect. When the steel structure was set up, cables were anchored in the balcony floor and to the steel, then tightened until the beams had deflected according to calculations. Once the full weight of the upper organ, including pipework, was installed on the beams, we released the tension on the cables. The casework did not move perceptibly! The process necessitated an unusual installation order: everything above the beams first—upper casework, windchest, pipework, and wind system; then, once the cables were released, everything below the beams—lower casework, trackers, and risers.

Included in the project was a three-stop continuo organ intended to accompany small groups of singers or instruments in the transept, both during services and for concerts. There had also been a request for an antiphonal division of just three stops, whose sole purpose was to accom­pany the cantor at the pulpit during services. We suggested that perhaps the two roles could be combined, and so we set out to make the continuo playable from the Positif keyboard of the main console, via two possible plug-in spots in front. The system is more flexible than we had anticipated, and the balance between the two is good; the continuo organ is used as a sort of antiphonal during services, often accompanying one verse of a hymn to good effect.

This instrument is inspired by the French-Romantic tradition, but is by no means a copy. It borrows from the aesthetic, but through the lens of North American musical and liturgical requirements, and the cultural and acoustical context at Christ the King. Reeds are fiery but not overpowering. There is a surprising variety of color, and with two Swell boxes, a wide range of tonal possibilities. Windchests are largely installed at one height, favoring tuning stability. The Récit and Positif are arranged chromatically, with trebles at the front near the swell shades, which naturally promotes ascendancy of voicing.

This is a Juget-Sinclair organ, so the success of the tracker action is paramount. In order to provide ample wind without making the left hand too heavy, 8′ and 16′ flues are systematically winded electropneumatically. We came up with a design for pneumatic motors based on the 19th-century French “Schmoele et Mols” system, but using Reisner magnets. The motors are housed inside the pallet box, and are easily accessed, removed, and serviced. They open a secondary pallet beside the mechanical pallet, allowing wind into a secondary channel for basses. We decided that the signal for these motors would be electric rather than tubular because, for this instrument, electricity solved all our action challenges: the offset basses, the pedal 32′ extensions, and the remote continuo organ. One of the keys to making all this work quickly and reliably was to come up with a new design for pneumatic switches.

This instrument provided many “firsts” for our firm. It is our first three-manual instrument, our first instrument with electropneumatic offsets, and our first remote “division” (the continuo organ). It is the first instrument too large and unwieldy to set up in the shop, and the first one built on a steel structure. It is our first 16′ facade, and our first use of carbon fiber in a new instrument. But the most important milestone for us was that Robin Côté became a full one-third partner with Denis Juget and me during the course of this instrument, and his influence is felt throughout—from facade de­­sign through technical design, construction and voicing.

Building pipe organs at this point in history is a privilege, made possible by the confidence placed in us by musicians, organ committees, consultants, donors, and clergy. From the outset, it was clear that our relationship with Christ the King was primarily one of confidence. Msgr. Zimmerman, Henry McDowell, Jesse Eschbach, and the whole community at Christ the King are to be congratulated for seeing the project through, and we’re grateful for the confidence they placed in us.

Stephen Sinclair is an organbuilder in Montreal.

St. John’s Seminary, Brighton, MA
Andover Organ Company, Lawrence, MA

By Matthew M. Bellocchio

When renovating a historic building, it is often necessary to strike a balance between preserving the original fabric and updating it to suit modern needs. When renovating century-old American organs, similar choices must often be made. A conservative restoration is the logical decision for an exemplary work by an important builder or a small organ in a rural church with modest musical requirements. But an aging instrument with unreliable mechanisms and limited tonal resources, in an active church or institution with a professional music program, requires a careful assessment of each of its existing components. This was the case with the 1902 Hook & Hastings organ, Opus 1833, in the St. John’s Seminary chapel.

The seminary, founded in 1884 by Archbishop John Williams, is situated in a parklike setting in northwest Boston. The 1899 Romanesque Re­vival chapel, designed by Boston architects Maginnis, Walsh and Sullivan, was first used for services in 1901. Gonippo Raggi (1875-1959), an Italian artist who decorated many important Catholic churches and institutions in the United States, painted its elaborate murals. The vaulted ceiling, and the marble and oak wall paneling, create a reverberation time of four seconds when the 300-seat chapel is empty. Although the chapel is visually and acoustically magnificent, its organ was less so. On the cusp of the 20th century, Hook & Hastings was in transition. Its golden period was well behind it; the Hook brothers, Elias and George Greenleaf, were dead, and their chosen successor, Francis Hastings, was in his 60s. Wanting to preserve its good reputation, yet keep up with changes in organ technology, the company had one foot in each century. While its smaller organs still used mechanical action, larger instruments had traditional slid­er-pallet windchests fitted with experimental pneumatic actions.

After nearly a century of use and constant winter heating, the chapel organ’s windchests and actions developed serious problems, including numerous ciphers and dead notes. The Hook & Hastings console was replaced in 1946. When the replacement console failed in 2004, a one-manual 1850s Simmons tracker was put in its place to serve as a temporary instrument until the chapel organ could be rebuilt.

Our lengthy experience with Hook & Hastings organs has taught us that their early electro-pneumatic actions are cumbersome, slow, and difficult to repair. Therefore, we reused the pipes, windchests, and most of the original parts of Opus 1833 as the basis of an expanded instrument with a new electric action.

The organ’s cantilevered case originally had a simple facade of three tall fields of pipes among four Ionic columns. During extensive chapel renovations in 1946, Maginnis & Walsh added a large new top section, with three Romanesque arches, to transform the case to resemble an Italian Renaissance organ. But the pipes, with Victorian-style bandings and colors, were not repainted. The result was a Victorian-Italianate conglomeration.

To rectify this visual hodgepodge, we turned to our colleague Marylou Davis of Woodstock, Connecticut—an expert in the conservation and recreation of historic decorative finishes. We have collaborated with her on several organ facades, most notably our Opus 114 in Christ Lutheran Church, Baltimore (featured in January 2013 TAO). Don Olson, An­dover’s retired president and visual designer, worked with her to design a new decorative treatment for the seminary’s facade pipes that would harmonize with the Italian-Re­naissance-style case and chapel.

Marylou chose a palette of gray and neutral tones for the facade pipes to complement, rather than compete with, Gonippo Raggi’s murals. Spiraling acanthus leaves and optical tetrahedron patterns, which suggest embossed pipes, evoke a Renaissance style of ornament. The center pipes are highlighted in red ochre, with overlaid geometric forms that imitate the inlaid marble panels of the apse. The pipe mouths are gilded in rose-colored 23-karat gold leaf and glazed for a soft, aged appearance. As a crowning flourish, the cross surmounting the case is painted in faux lapis lazuli.

We built a new, solid-white-oak console in the style of the Hook & Hastings original. Its design, with a lyre music rack and elliptically curved stop terraces, is based on the console of Hook & Hastings’s Opus 2326, built in 1913 for the Church of St. Ignatius Loyola in New York City. In the 1950s, the St. Ignatius organ was moved to a Catholic church in Lawrence, Massachusetts, just two miles from our shop, where it still survives. To meet the demands of a 21st-century music program, this reproduction console has state-of-the-art components, including a Solid State Organ Systems recording module and Organist Palette, which permits organists to program the piston combinations and sequences remotely, with an iPad.

Most of the 1902 Hook & Hastings organ was located within the case, with Swell above Great and the wooden Pedal 16′ Open Diapason pipes at each side. At the upper level—behind the Swell, in a 15-foot-deep unfinished gallery—were the organ’s large reservoir and Pedal 16′ Bourdon. We moved the Pedal Open Diapason pipes from inside the case to the rear gallery, which now accommodates all the Pedal stops and reservoirs, as well as the new blower. There was sufficient space inside the case behind the Great chest to add a small unenclosed Choir division.

We completely rebuilt the Great and Swell slider chests and constructed a new one for the added Choir division. All three chests have marine-grade plywood cables and pallet boards, which will not shrink or crack from constant heating, and new electric pull-down magnets and slider motors. The 1902 Hook & Hastings organ was winded from a single, weighted 6′ x 9′ double-rise reservoir in the gallery behind the organ. Large wooden windtrunks at both sides conveyed ample wind to the chests. This traditional American style of wind system provides a solid, yet somewhat responsive, wind supply typical of earlier Hook organs. We retained this winding for the manual chests and added a separate reservoir for the enlarged Pedal division.

Hook & Hastings Opus 1833 was a modest two-manual, 18-rank instrument with a standard stoplist for the period. The Great had principals at 8′, 4′, 2′, plus 8′ Doppel Flute, Dulciana, and Trumpet. The Swell had flutes at 16′, 8′, 4 ‘, an 8′ Diapason and Salicional, a 4′ Violina, a three­-rank Dolce Cornet and an 8′ Oboe. The Pedal had just a 16′ Open Diapason and 16’ Bourdon. While this specification worked for accompanying chants and hymns, it lacked the choruses and colors needed for organ literature.

There were also some pipe scaling issues. The Great 4′ and 2′ principals were both six scales smaller than the very large scaled 8′ Open Diapason, resulting in a preponderance of 8′ tone in the chorus. We rescaled the Great 8′ Open Diapason and the 4′ Octave to make a more gradual transition in power between the 8′, 4′, and 2′. We crowned the chorus with a new Mixture and replaced the 8′ Dul­ciana with an 8′ Spitz Flute to provide a more useful ac­companimental stop in this division.

The Swell division had good bones but needed fleshing out. Since the Dolce Cornet’s pipes were missing, we replaced it with a new Mixture to cap the chorus. We added a bright 8′ Trumpet for a chorus reed and extended the 8′ Oboe to provide the richness of a 16′ Bassoon. We also added a 19th-century-style 2′ Flautino, useful with either flutes or principals, and a Voix céleste to complement the Salicional.

The new Choir division provides some softer accompaniment and color stops, as well as a Cornet decomposé. The 8′ Dulciana, moved from the Great, provides a quiet string tone. The 8′ Cremona, a narrow scaled clarinet reminiscent of early Hook examples, is useful for both chorus and solos.

To the Pedal 16′ Open Diapason and Bourdon we added a metal 8′-4′ Principal and a Trombone that plays at 32′, 16′, 8′. The Swell 16′ Bourdon and 16′ Bassoon were also borrowed down to provide softer Pedal voices. The end result of these tonal changes and additions is an instrument of 40 stops, 34 ranks, and 1,994 pipes that is more versatile and appropriate for its expanded role. It still sounds very much like a Hook & Hastings organ, but one from an earlier and better period of the firm’s output.

Andover Organ Company has worked on numerous Hook & Hastings instruments—including the monumental 101-rank 1875 masterpiece, Opus 801, at the Cathedral of the Holy Cross in Boston, and the famous 1876 “Centennial Exposition” organ, Opus 828, now in St. Joseph Cathedral in Buffalo, New York. We feel honored to have been selected to rebuild St. John’s Seminary’s 1902 Hook & Hastings instrument that, coincidentally, is the 500th organ our company has rebuilt or restored. We are grateful to Msgr. James Moroney, rector; Janet Hunt, music director; and the rest of the seminary staff and volunteers for their support and assistance throughout this project.

Andover is blessed to have a team of 19 dedicated peo­ple, who collectively possess more than 400 years of organ­building experience. Benjamin Mague, Andover’s presi­dent, was the project team leader, and Michael Eaton was the design engineer. Others who worked on Opus R-500 were Ryan Bartosiewicz, Matthew Bellocchio, Milo Brandt, Anne Dore, Donald Glover, Andrew Hagberg, Al­bert Hosman, Lisa Lucius, Tony Miscio, Fay Morlock, John Morlock, Donald Olson, Jon Ross, Craig Seaman, Cody West, and David Zarges.

* * *

Andover Opus R-500 will be premiered in a “Choir and Organ Commemoration of the Faithful Departed” on November 1, 2015, at 3:00 P.M. Special guests David Woodcock, conductor, and Jan Coxwell, soprano, will join organist Janet Hunt and a festival choir in a concert including works by Howells, Brahms, Dvofdk, and Durufli in honor of All Souls Month.

Matthew M. Bellocchio is a project manager and designer at Andover Organ, which he joined in 2003. A fellow of the American Institute of Organbuilders, he has chaired the AIO Education Committee and served twice on its board of directors, most recently as AIO president.

First Presbyterian Church, Asheville, NC
Holtkamp Organ Company, Cleveland, OH

By Richard Parsons

The Land of the Blue Smoke. That is the name the Cherokee Indians gave to the high plateau in western North Carolina. Lying at an altitude of roughly 3,000 feet, it is surrounded by six peaks, all of which have altitudes greater than 6,000 feet. The highest is Mount Mitchell, which at 6,683 feet is the highest peak in the eastern United States. The plateau itself covers nearly 1,000 square miles. At its center is the confluence of the Swannanoa and French Broad rivers. Near this confluence is Asheville, North Carolina.

The first European settlers in the area arrived in 1784. First Presbyterian Church, founded in 1794, was known as the “church at the mouth of the Swannanoa River” and was incorporated in 1797. Its first worship space was a small wood structure. The second was a brick church, built in 1841, that seated 175 people. As Asheville grew, the church prospered. Its many expansions over the years included changing the axis of the church; lengthening the church; adding transepts, a balcony, and a Gothic-style chancel area; and redesigning the interior to be Gothic in character.

The original pipe organ installed at First Presbyterian, in 1890, was a Roosevelt. It was placed in the front of the worship space, speaking directly down the central axis of the nave. No information exists regarding the specification of this instrument. In 1951, the church underwent a major expansion that included, among other things, a chancel area built onto the then-front wall of the church. With this addition, the Roosevelt organ was removed, and an Aeolian-Skinner installed in a large chamber on the left side of the chancel. This instrument, while colorful and expressive, was not adequate to lead the congregation in worship. In response to this need, the church engaged Casavant Freres to add an Antiphonal organ in 1984 and two stops to the Great in 1986.

Early in the 21st century, the church leadership recognized that there were aspects of the church infrastructure that were in need of repair and maintenance. Additionally, the leather in the Aeolian-Skinner was beginning to fail. These two concerns, along with a desire to provide a more inclusive worship experience and enhanced fellowship, gave rise eventually to a capital campaign that funded, among other things, the new pipe organ.

First Presbyterian began investigating the possibilities of organ restoration or replacement of the existing instrument in 2004. Early on, it was recognized that in order to effectively lead the congregation and project into the worship space with the true color and clarity of the pipework, the organ needed to be moved out of the side chamber and into the chancel area. This decision was followed by the formation of the Organ Search Committee in 2007. After hearing instruments from a number of different builders, the committee selected Holtkamp.

An examination of the organ found all pipework (Roosevelt, Aeolian-Skinner, and Casavant) to be in excellent condition. The instrument had been well cared for over the years, and represented a significant investment in both time and materials. It was in the best interest of the church to use each stop where appropriate in the new organ. “Where appropriate” could mean: using stops from the existing organ exactly “as is” in the new organ; rescaling the existing pipework, moderately or significantly; or not using an existing stop at all. With the First Presbyterian organ, all three approaches were employed, and a significant amount of new pipework was added.

The scaling of the organ is on the large side for the church’s worship space–for two reasons. First, the chancel arch functions as a partial impediment to the sound of the organ projecting directly to the congregation. Second, the transepts act as a sound trap, preventing the sound of the organ from projecting directly to the congregation. Because of these two conditions, all scales in the organ were planned one to four scales larger than warranted by the size of the space, and depending on their placement within the organ. The voicing in general is focused on creating well-integrated vertical ensembles. The overall effect of the instrument is one of elegance and simplicity, power and intimacy, balance and color. It is a wonderful marriage of acoustic and instrument, and is full and supportive without being overpowering.

The visual design was influenced by a number of factors, including the general Gothic style of the worship space. In addition, there is a beautiful and beloved rose window in the rear chancel wall. The first design requirement was to maintain the window’s visibility from all areas of the worship space. Also, as part of the drive to provide a more inclusive worship experience, the chancel area was completely redesigned and extended into the nave area. The new chancel platform, which  is centered beneath the transept crossing, is circular in plan. The side towers of the organ case were built at an angle of 17.5 degrees to the center of the case, reflecting the spirit of this circular design. The pipe shades were inspired by the vertical mullions on the side windows of the worship space. Lastly, the color of the pipe shade screens was derived from the rose window in the rear chancel wall.

Restore, Renew, Rejoice! This is the name of the capital campaign designed to fund the infrastructure repair and maintenance, chancel and worship space renovation, and pipe organ at First Presbyterian Church. It reflects the steadfast leadership and long-range vision that has made First Presbyterian a leader in Asheville since its founding in 1794. The new pipe organ is also a leader in the church and will provide spiritual restoration, renewal, and rejoicing to the many families and individuals who worship at the First Presbyterian, now and for generations to come.

F. Christian Holtkamp, president and artistic/tonal director of Holtkamp Organ Company, is the sixth generation of leadership at the company. He holds a master of music degree in organ performance and has studied voice in high school and as an undergraduate. He is a member of the AGO, Associated Pipe Organ Builders of America, American Institute of Organbuilders, and Organ Historical Society.