My foray into organbuilding was the result of a series of accidental discoveries and explorations. Entering the University of Nebraska, fall semester, 1962, I was an electrical engineering student, also taking a one-hour piano class lesson at the School of Music. Subsequently, I became a piano major with a minor in industrial arts.
Parsons Pipe Organ Builders, Canandaigua, New York; Saint Benedict Cathedral, Evansville, Indiana
Given the opportunity for a major instrument in a large Catholic cathedral with superb acoustics, most builders might be forgiven for playing to type. These acoustics and this liturgy implies something French in nature, no? We know the great legacy the French have given to music and Catholicism; surely one thing follows another. And yet our Opus 52 for Saint Benedict Cathedral in Evansville, Indiana, had a different genesis and, in the end, a result well apart from the above pattern.
