Happy ending for a historic organ...

[KB7DQH]

http://www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/columnists/staff/gilbert/happy-ending-for-a-historic-organ/article_8e46219c-b02f-5ec6-8f47-f7ad0487cb13.html

SWANZEY — The little pipe organ could have met its demise this year. And that would have been a shame.

The little pipe organ was born in 1868, built by renowned organ builder Henry Erben of New York City. Its original location is unknown, a 30-year mystery, according to the Organ Historical Society, which tracks such things.

The little pipe organ reemerged in Yonkers, N.Y., circa 1900, where it was probably rebuilt by William F. Smith, according to the historical society. It then became the music cornerstone at small churches in North Walpole, Hinsdale and the Federated Church in Putney, Vt., where its pipes had been pealing since 1959.

Organ restorer Larry Nevin, 64, of Dublin was born in East Hanover, N.J., about 30 miles west of the Lincoln Tunnel. His mother played the piano and was the church organist; his father was the church deacon. East Hanover was farmland back then, not a New York City suburb. Milk was still delivered in glass jars.

In high school, Nevin's class attended a young people's Aeolian-Skinner organ concert at the Philharmonic Music Hall in New York City. It featured the music of Leonard Bernstein and the talents of Virgil Fox, considered one of the world's greatest pipe organists of the 20th century.

The experience had a profound impact on Nevin. "It's just one of those things when you're young. It gets in your psyche and under your skin," Nevin said.

Shortly after high school he began an organ-building apprenticeship with Kenneth Smith Pipe Organ Service of Livingston, N.J. His mentor was a second-generation Italian organ restorer.

The little pipe organ had an almost 50-year run in Putney. It has a traditional-style console with hinged doors that enclose the keyboards. It has just one manual (keyboard) and a pedalboard. It has mechanical stop action and mechanical key action. Sound is produced by air passing through the pipes. It has 259 metal and stopped wood pipes.

For comparison's sake, most organs have at least two manuals and larger ones have thousands of pipes.

The Federated Church in Putney closed in 2008. It was taken over by the Sandglass Theater Co., which reconfigured the inside of the church. The little pipe organ remained, but was unwanted. Luckily, instead of putting it in the scrap heap, the puppet theater group put it up for sale.

Larry Nevin carved quite a career as an organ builder and restorer. He trained at the Aeolian Skinner Organ Co. in Randolph, Mass., and discovered voicing and tonal finishing was his niche. He uses his ears and specialized tools in seeking the perfect sound. That led to jobs installing and restoring organs in many historic churches throughout the country, including Trinity, Wall Street and St. Bartholomew churches in New York City.

But he was also drawn to the land. He helped found the Brattleboro Food Co-op, and was part of a sustainable healthy food project in southern Vermont. He bought a cabin in Guilford, Vt., in 1970, moved back to New Jersey for three years, then came here for good.

He opened his own organ restoration business in 1977, Lawrence D. Nevin and Associates in Brattleboro. The town was once an organ-building Mecca, home of the historic Estey Pipe Organ Co., which built more than 3,200 pipe organs before closing in 1960.

Nevin says today there are maybe three or four organ restorers in all of southern New Hampshire and Vermont; there's a larger concentration of restorers in Massachusetts, especially in the Cape Ann and Boston area.

Nevin and his wife, Meg, a hospice worker in Bedford, have three grown children in their blended family. They have lived in several Monadnock Region towns through the decades, and moved to Dublin two years ago.

The intersection of the little pipe organ and Larry Nevin came in spring 2011, thanks to Rev. Richard M. Sainsbury, pastor of the Westport United Methodist Church in Swanzey.

Sainsbury heard about the little pipe organ that needed a home and went to Putney to see it. His small church on Westport Village Road was a perfect fit.

"I've always been interested in organs since my youth," Sainsbury said. "I went three or four times to see it and every time I went I fell more and more in love with the organ."

That prompted him to call Nevin, and eventually the transaction was completed. Last spring Nevin took the little pipe organ apart and stored it — piece by piece, in a pickup truck on clear days — to W&W Tire Service in Keene. He examined all of its elements, rebuilding some of the tiny parts that had succumbed to time.

Nevin's toolbox is full of tools that resemble screwdrivers and pliers, but are actually intricate, handmade apparatuses, some more than 100 years old. He talks lovingly about their uses and the techniques — the patience — required to restore a 144-year-old organ.

"There's some very odd little tools in the organ world," he said. "There's a lot of screwdrivers, a lot of pliers. A lot of wood- and metal-working. But the real instrument is my ear."

Sainsbury, meanwhile, spent the summer restoring the little pipe organ's console, which was painted white. He took off several layers of finish and stained it a dark brown. "It came out darker than I wanted, but I had never done it before," Sainsbury said.

Installation inside the church began in August, and the project was finished in November. Nevin says matching the organ's sounds to the inside of a church is one of the most important, technical and rewarding parts of the job.

Unlike mass-produced products, every pipe organ has its own identity, its own personality, that has to be linked to "a whole new acoustical environment," Nevin said.

The little pipe organ is now good to go for at least another 100 years, he says.

As Sainsbury plays a few notes, the rich harmony of the little pipe organ engulfs the tiny church, its gold-painted pipes reaching almost to the ceiling. It will be formally dedicated this spring with Mark Polifrone, a music teacher at Monadnock Regional High School and well-known musician in the area, giving a concert on a date to be determined.

"This was a labor of love on Rev. Sainsbury's part and on my level as well," Nevin said of the little pipe organ.

"It's elegant in its simplicity."

Eric

KB7DQH

[diapason]

Like so many of the reports you post, this is a really moving story and shows how much an organ can get under your skin.  This little organ, like so many others, is a living, breathing being.  I hope that reading this encourages others to work to save the very many organs which are facing an uncertain futur  Thank you for posting this, Eric.

N

[KB7DQH]

Nigel, just to keep this going, I have yet another tale of an historic instrument rescued to add to the list...

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/01/29/a-rescued-organ-gets-a-new-life-in-manhattan/

and the story has even been picked up by the AP wire service and has appeared in about 3 or 4 other places on the 'net...

January 29, 2012, 2:30 pm
A Rescued Organ Gets a New Life in Manhattan
By JAMES BARRON
The new organ inside St. Malachy's Church in Manhattan came from a church in New Jersey that had a date with a wrecking ball.

This is about an organ transplant, but not the kind they write about in the science section.

The organ being transplanted is larger than a liver. It has more chambers than a heart. It pumps air, but at far greater pressure than most people's lungs.

The organ in question is an organ. A pipe organ. It spent more than 60 years in a Presbyterian church in Orange, N.J., that called in the wreckers after merging with another congregation. The organ was rescued and rebuilt, and is about to begin a new life in a new church, St. Malachy's — the Actors' Chapel, the Roman Catholic church in the theater district.

St. Malachy's says its worshipers have included Bob Hope and Spencer Tracy, as well as Chris Farley, Florence Henderson and Antonio Banderas. It is where Joan Crawford married Douglas Fairbanks Jr. in 1929. It was seen in the 1944 film "Going My Way," which starred Bing Crosby.

But the neo-Gothic sanctuary has not had a pipe organ for years.

It had an instrument with a distinguished lineage that fell into disrepair as the neighborhood deteriorated in the 1970s. Paul Creston, who is best known these days as a composer, was the organist at St. Malachy's for 33 years, from 1934 to 1967. Since the 1990s, though, the only organ at St. Malachy's has been an electronic one, said Mark Pacoe, the church's director of music and organist.

So why was a block and tackle hoisting organ parts into the choir loft last week? Why were organ pipes wrapped in newspapers lying in crates in the sanctuary? Why were workers squeezing into the tight spaces that will soon hold the elaborate wind chests of the pipe organ from New Jersey?

Because in mid-2007, Frank Peragallo's father got a call, and made a call.

Mr. Peragallo's father was John Peragallo Jr., the president of the family organ-building business in Paterson, N.J. (He died in 2008.)

The first call told him about the organ in Orange. The roof had leaked at the church. The organ console, the refrigerator-size nerve center with keys and pedals and stops, had been damaged. But the pipes were in good shape.

"My father said, 'What do you think? We can buy it and put it in storage,'" recalled Frank Peragallo, who now runs the company along with a brother and two children.

And the second call? "He said, 'I'll call my friend Father Baker at St. Malachy's,'" Frank Peragallo said, referring to the pastor, the Rev. Richard D. Baker.

In January 2008, the Peragallos submitted a proposal to install the organ at St. Malachy's. It turned out to have been an Aeolian-Skinner, designed by a legend in the world of pipe organs, G. Donald Harrison, who oversaw the organs designed for Symphony Hall in Boston and the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City, among many others. It had been installed in the New Jersey sanctuary in 1935, the same year Aeolian-Skinner installed organs at the Princeton Theological Seminary in New Jersey and the Groton School in Massachusetts.
The new organ being installed in St. Malachy's was designed by the same man who designed the organs for Symphony Hall in Boston and the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. 

It had nearly 2,400 pipes in 39 stops. It favored orchestral and classical organ stops and was less like the Baroque instruments Harrison experimented with in the 1930s. And, Mr. Peragallo said the other day at St. Malachy's, it was solid.

"This is the way they used to build organs when there was no such thing as not enough manpower," Mr. Peragallo said after one of five 1,000-pound wind chests had been hoisted into place.

"I tied a steel cable around a beam in the attic for our block and tackle," he said. "We had more than 10 guys here and still needed the pulley."

The church began raising money for the $600,000 project in 2009. For $300, someone could adopt a single "chimney flute" pipe high in the organ's superstructure. For $100, a donor could adopt a single key on one of the console's three manuals. Adopting a stop knob was cheaper: That cost only $50. Adopting a pedal key, which would take a pounding from the organist's feet, was the least expensive: Only $25.

So what will it sound like in a few weeks when the console has been moved into place, the air lines have been connected and the pipes have been tuned and voiced? Will it sound as good as it did in the church in New Jersey?

"I never heard it," Mr. Peragallo said. "When we got there, they had already chopped the cables with an ax."

No word yet on the fate of the toaster replaced by the pipe organ :o ;)

Eric
KB7DQH

[Barrie Davis]

Hi

There really is some encouraging news from the USA about pipeorgans being saved and finding new homes where they are appreciated. It is good to see that some "toasters" are being replaced by real organs, perhaps people are realising how limited their time span is. I read somewhere 25 years is the average life of a "toaster".
Best wishes

Barrie

[revtonynewnham]

Hi

It's difficult to find reliable figures for the life of electronic organs.  The only one I've seen used to be published by the IBO in their annual review of work - the average age of electronic organs replaced by pipes was around 15 years.

Obviously, there are exceptions - Hammonds and Compton electrostatic jobs tend to have a very long life span, and some early electronics are pretty easy to repair using standard parts.  From the 1970's or thereabouts, custom IC's came on the scene, and many of the specific organ ones are now obsolescent and difficult to find - or sometimes just not avaialabe at all, making repair an expensive proposition.  Time will tell regarding the current crop of computer-based technology - but we all know how quickly computer technology moves on!

Every Blessing

Tony

[David Drinkell]

In 1979 there was a very early Hammond in the Hall of Homerton College, Cambridge.  I think it dated back to the thirties.  It still worked, but had a tendency to smoke (as did many of us in those days).

[AnOrganCornucopia]

Mid-30s Aeolian-Skinners seem to be the finest vintage of the lot. Girard College, Philadelphia is of that era and - largely unaltered - sounds amazing (on CD). The church have made a very wise investment! The mark of a good organ - and this is certainly good! - is said to be where its value is remembered long after the price is forgotten. This instrument will be a wonderful asset, reliable and well-built too, to be cherished for a very long time to come!

As for Compton electrostatics, I know nothing of their electrones but the Melotone units seem to be very long-lasting (though I struggle to think of any part of a vintage Compton that isn't!). Hammond organs seem to be long-lived too: there was a 1930-or-so-vintage one in Stoke d'Abernon PC until 1975 when the famous Frobenius was installed, which now lives in a museum somewhere and, I am told, continues to give much enjoyment there. Hammonds can be worth a lot, too, principally thanks to the continued popularity of 60s/70s prog rock bands like (most prominently) Deep Purple.

One specific example of a modern electronic near me is SS Mary & Nicholas, Leatherhead: it has a 1989-vintage Allen, which replaced a previous Allen which self-combusted. The fire caused the dismantling of the pipe organ behind: it was found to contain soundboards and pipework by Thomas Parker, dated to 1766. This formed the basis, in 2009, of a Goetze & Gwynn reconstruction of the original Parker organ (brought from Watford P.C. in the 1840s). However, with its lack of pedals and meantone temperament, it is rarely used liturgically, so the Allen soldiers on (although the organist, Graham Davies, is seeking to install a second pipe organ to replace it). Amusingly, just after the Parker's installation, there was a powercut at the beginning of the main Sunday service which silenced the Allen, so out came the blowing lever, a burly member of the congregation was enlisted to blow and the Parker/G&G's sweet tones pealed out in hymnody...

[KB7DQH]

Speaking of "letting the smoke out"... If repairing vintage electronic organs was this simple...

http://www3.telus.net/bc_triumph_registry/smoke.htm (And thanks Richard for bringing this to our attention some time ago-- I figured this was as good a place as any to resurrect the link  ;) ;) ;)

And one never sees the toaster salesmen demonstrating the hand-operated generator set ???
as they generally are not so equipped :o :o :o

Eric
KB7DQH

[AnOrganCornucopia]

Oh yeah, I'd forgotten about the Lucas wiring smoke! Must mention that to an organist friend of mine who's owned a number of cars with electrics by Joseph Lucas, the original Prince of Darkness...