Gerard Pels, organ builder of Herselt, Belgium, died of an apparent heart attack April 13. He was 59. His funeral was held Good Friday, April 18, at the Cathedral of Our Lady in Antwerp, whose monumental 1891 Pierre Schyven organ the Pels firm had long maintained.
Pels’s lifelong mission was to bring all organbuilders together as colleagues, and it came naturally. His father, Bernard Pels, a scion of the Dutch family of organ builders, married Cecile D’Hondt, the daughter of that Belgian builder. Bernard eventually took over his father-in-law’s business. Gerard, the youngest of three children, was born if not precisely in an organ shop then almost on top of one: his parents occupied a small apartment next to the Pels erecting room. Gerard briefly studied art after high school before apprenticing with his father and with the pipemaker Tim Koelewijn. After further work with Ferdinand Stemmer in Switzerland and Orgelbau Rensch in Germany, Gerard succeeded his father as the proprietor of Pels-D’Hondt Orgelbouw of Herselt, a firm founded in 1892.
Though the organs built by Pels’s small team attest to his skill and artistry, it was in his involvement with the International Society of Organbuilders that Gerard became known worldwide. In 1990, he organized the Antwerp ISO Congress, and the 2007 Jubilee Congress in that same city to celebrate the ISO’s 50th anniversary. Appointed ISO Editor at the 1990 congress, Gerard radically changed its publications, setting aside the formality that characterized ISO Information in favor of the technical ISO Yearbook alongside the lighter and colorful thrice-yearly ISOnews. In collaboration with the European Centre for Conservation, Restoration, and Renovation, Gerard organized weeklong international courses for organbuilders at the historic Belgian castle of Alden Biesen. He represented the ISO in the presentation of a pipe organ to Pope John Paul II in Rome.
One could be forgiven for thinking that Gerard’s organbuilding business existed only to provide a platform for seemingly limitless other interests. Filmmaking in particular fascinated him. In 2004, he and Eberhard Rensch produced “Super-Oktav,” a film about an orphan who becomes an organbuilder. More recently, Gerard established the Antwerp Art Office, which has produced award-winning films and websites, as well as undertaking other new media projects.
Gerard was a classic right-brain person: intensely creative but also somewhat disorganized, and famously casual about schedules. As his Belgian organbuilding colleague Guido Schumacher said at the funeral, “You had the reputation of always being late, but today you arrived entirely too early.” In Gerard’s presence, the far-flung organ world became a little smaller, a little closer. We miss that, and him.
Gerard Pels is survived by his mother, Cecile D’Hondt, his brother, Toon Pels, and his sister, Mieke Pels.
—John Panning
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