New Organs

St. Simons Island is a coastal community with roots that include coastal Indian tribes, the Spanish occupation, pre-Revolutionary War America as part of the original American colonies, and John and Charles Wesley preaching on this island under the majestic oak trees. In more recent years it has developed into a coastal retreat that is known colloquially as part of the Golden Isles. As a point of reference, this part of Georgia has been a place of retreat and reflection for the Schlueter family for years.

Vice, virtue, and flexibility

Music director’s perspective

Even when measured by expansive Texan standards, First United Methodist Church in Lubbock is extraordinary in scale. The church’s Gothic bell tower is visible from just about anywhere in downtown Lubbock. The church campus sprawls over two city blocks and includes spacious wings for music, Christian education, youth, and even physical fitness. Completed in 1955, the sanctuary seats over 1,800 people, and its spectacular rose window is reportedly among the eight largest in the world.

Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders, Montréal, Québec, Canada

Christ Church, Episcopal, Pelham, New York

The making of Opus 51

Background

Schoenstein & Co., Benicia, California

Jacuzzi Family Vineyards, Sonoma, California

Opus 47, completed November 2020

From the builder

The year 2020 was indeed an historic year for many reasons. As the calendar page turns to another year, it has become somewhat easier to see in retrospect that 2020 contained reasons for celebration even amidst a time of pandemic and stress. For Goulding & Wood Pipe Organ Builders of Indianapolis, 2020 marked forty years of operation and afforded a chance to look back at the arc of the company’s history. The capstone of this anniversary year was the completion of the firm’s Opus 52 organ for Saint John’s Episcopal Cathedral of Knoxville, Tennessee.

Fate, luck, and surprising interactions with others fascinated with the pipe organ were the impetus for the founding of Quimby Pipe Organs, Incorporated, in August 1970. The same scenarios have continued over the years until the company reached its fiftieth birthday this past August 2020.  

This year, Parsons Pipe Organ Builders celebrates the 100th anniversary of its founding and five generations of Parsons family members who have made pipe organs their vocation. Although the manufacturing workshop was established later, the family has been involved in the trade since the late nineteenth century. 

Scott Smith Pipe Organs, Lansing, Michigan

Grace Lutheran Church, Auburn, Michigan

Auburn is a modest-sized city of just over 2,000 in the Great Lakes Bay Region of Michigan, nearly equidistant from Midland to the west, Bay City to the east, and slightly farther from Saginaw to the south. As a result, the churches in this region draw members from a rather diverse culture, comprising everything from chemical engineering to manufacturing to agriculture.

A long time ago, a young John Peragallo, Sr., made his way up to Boston from what was then a much smaller New York City—a fraction of the size we know today. He served as an apprentice and installer with the notable Ernest M. Skinner Company and had been recommended by his superiors to go up to Boston to gain experience at the big plant.  

Flentrop Orgelbouw, Zaandam, Netherlands

Dypvåg kirke, Tvedestrand, Norway

The work of Arp Schnitger was the inspiration for the new Flentrop organ in Dypvåg kirke, best suited for seventeenth- and eighteenth-century music and with a warm and colorful sound. The organ has two windchests, positioned one behind the other—a seventeenth-century solution—to save space, two wedge bellows, a stable but flexible wind supply, and a small pedal division behind the main case. 

Where is the largest pipe organ?

David E. Wallace & Co., Pipe Organ Builders, LLC, Gorham, Maine

Canadian Reformed Church, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada

Early in 2011, members of the Canadian Reformed Church in Ancaster, Ontario, contacted David E. Wallace & Co. Pipe Organ Builders about providing an instrument ideally suited for their worship space. When the building was constructed the plan had been to acquire a pipe organ at some point in the future.

The Bales Organ Recital Hall and Hellmuth Wolff Opus 40

Organ study at the University of Kansas began in 1875. In 1898 the “Department of Organ Playing and Church Music” was founded. Since that time the organ and church music program at KU has grown to be one of the largest and most active programs in the country. It now boasts twenty-five organ and church music majors studying across a variety of different undergraduate and graduate programs.

This isn’t the article we had intended to publish in this issue of The Diapason. As with so many other things this year, the completion of a pipe organ we had anticipated sharing here has been delayed by complications arising from the coronavirus pandemic. We will provide details about our 75-rank instrument for First United Methodist Church in Lubbock, Texas—the rendering of which is featured on the cover—in a later issue.

Schoenstein & Co., Benicia, California; Basilica of the National Shrine of Mary, Queen of the Universe,  Orlando, Florida

Opus 45

“What have you done here!?,” asked Todd Wilson as he leapt off the organ bench to greet me the day before Opus 45’s dedication. Hoping this was a friendly question, I asked to what exactly he was referring. “This organ just about plays itself!” Yes, it was a very friendly question and a complimentary one—even better.

The saga of Aeolian-Skinner Opus 908