October 2025

Bigelow & Co. Organ Builders, American Fork, Utah; The Church of the Blessed Sacrament, Seattle, Washington

Genesis of the Bigelow Opus 45

Prologue

The sounds of pipe organs are incredibly diverse, and organs that are intensely musical, both old and new, can transport us into new emotional dimensions. What are the sources of this emotional impact? The acoustician R. Murray Schafer shed some light on the essence of this quality with this counterintuitive insight:

A sound initiated before our birth, continued unabated and unchanging throughout our lifetime and extended beyond our death, would be perceived as—silence.¹

How old is old?

The harpsichord: an introduction, part 4

I begin by writing about the relationship between sets of strings on a harpsichord and the number of stops. There is often a one-to-one correspondence between the two: each stop available on a harpsichord is one set of strings being plucked at a particular place along the length of those strings, producing a particular sort of sound. This is analogous to the pipes of an organ stop. Understanding the relationships between sets of strings and stops or different sounds is crucial for playing and can avoid confusion, especially in getting to know a new instrument.

Bach at Home: Keyboard Pieces

Bach at Home: Keyboard Pieces, by Colin Booth, harpsichordist. Soundboard/Fugue State Records, $16.98. Available from ravencd.com and colinbooth.co.uk.