Organ matters - Organs matter!

http://www.indianaeconomicdigest.net/main.asp?SectionID=31&SubSectionID=135&ArticleID=69607http://www.courierpress.com/news/2013/apr/24/cp/

QuoteJessie Higgins, Evansville Courier & Press County Government Reporter

EVANSVILLE— In a time long gone, crowds gathered in Evansville's Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Coliseum to hear the city's great organ play.

Soldiers home from the Great War took their sweethearts to shows. Choirs sang in harmony with the organ's 4,000 pipes. Orchestras drew pitch and rhythm from their melody. Performers acted within their chorus.

But all that was a long time ago. It's been five decades since the Tinker Memorial Organ roared to life. The old instrument no longer makes music. Decades of neglect have taken their toll.

"Gradually, the organ was used less and less and less, and nobody was taking responsibility for it," said University of Evansville organist Dr. Douglas Reed. "The organ needed repair, and nobody was taking responsibility for it. A big organ like that takes a lot of attention."

Today, most have forgotten — or never knew of — the organ. It's a remnant of a time, a town and a community long gone.

"An organ symbolizes community," said the Rev. Tammy Gieselman, University of Evansville chaplain, gazing at the once-thunderous pipes lining the walls of a backroom in the Coliseum.

"It can move a people, really," she said, without taking her eyes off the instrument. "When I look at this pipe organ in disrepair, I see someone lying in hospice."

Reed estimated it would cost Vanderburgh County, which owns the organ, up to $1.5 million to restore it inside the Coliseum. That's money the county doesn't have. So Reed and Gieselman have proposed another solution.

They have asked Vanderburgh County to give the organ to the university. With a little luck, a lot of work, and a great deal of community support, the two plan to restore the old instrument and have it rebuilt in the campus' Neu Chapel.

There, it will bring to life a part of Evansville's history, and continue the nearly 100-year-old memorial to Milton Z. Tinker.

A memorial

Milton Z. Tinker became the music supervisor for Evansville's public schools in 1868. He remained in the position until his death in 1914, and many at the time credited him with instilling in Evansville's community a sense of musical awareness and pride.

His impact on the community was so great that long before the city even had a place to house an organ, the community planned to buy one in his honor.

That opportunity came with the construction of the Coliseum. It was built in 1917 as a memorial to local soldiers who died in The Great War. Evansville dedicated the new building Easter Sunday that year. The next day, the community launched a weeklong fundraiser to buy a municipal pipe organ. They called it a Fanfaronade.

On April 9, 1917, The Evansville Courier wrote: The Fanfaronade "will afford those who attend, which is expected will include every person in the city and neighboring points, varied programs of high class entertainment every afternoon and evening of the ensuing week. At the same time it will enable them to contribute their mite toward the fund with which the Coliseum authorities intend to install in the main hall a pipe organ, equal to any in the country, this is to be a memorial to the late Prof. Z. M. Tinker, for years supervisor of music in the local public schools."

The Fanfaronade ended a success. And the Milton Z. Tinker Memorial Pipe Organ turned out to be more than equal to the average municipal pipe organ, Reed said. In fact, there are few like it in the world.

The Tinker Organ was built in Columbus, Ohio, to make music for the Methodist Church's 100th anniversary celebration. After the celebration ended, Evansville bought that organ, had it retrofitted and installed in the Coliseum in 1919.

50 years of music

"Remember, in 1919 you didn't have loud speakers," Reed said. "One of the only ways to get music into a loud space was to build a large pipe organ."

The organ comprises around 4,000 pipes housed in four different rooms around the edges of the Coliseum. The largest is 32 feet long, taller than the building. It is essentially a long wooden box that folds back and forth across itself. The smallest is little more than a whistle.

Each pipe can only make one sound. Some are booming, almost overpowering, others can barely be heard. It's only when played together they create symphony, Gieselman said.

"It's just like the complexities of a real orchestra," Gieselman said. "There are so many sounds, voices, coming out of the organ. It is just a grand instrument."

She gazed at a pipe-filled backroom in the Coliseum. Many of the pipes are still positioned as they were nearly a century ago. Others lay discarded on the floor.

It was uncommon such a grand — expensive — instrument be built in honor of a common man, Gieselman said. Most organs, if they were named for someone, were named for a rich person who donated the money to have it built.

"This was built and named for an ideal," Gieselman said. "So much money is being cut from the arts. This lifts up the arts."

Gieselman and Reed hope that the Evansville community will unite once again over the Tinker Memorial Organ, this time to save it.

The University's Neu Chapel has raised enough money to remove the organ — pipe by pipe — from the Coliseum to a safer storage facility. Then Reed and Gieselman will begin raising money for its restoration.

Eventually, they hope to install the grand instrument in a remodeled Neu Chapel, which Gieselman said will be rebuilt and expanded to welcome people of all faiths.

That project may be years from completion, but the two can already hear the music.

2013 The E.W. Scripps Co.

Eric
KB7DQH

Quote
Be advised this notice is for market research purposes only and does not constitute a Request for Quote or Request for Proposal.  The Government will not pay for any information or administrative costs incurred in response to this sources sought.  All costs associated with this sources sought will be solely at the expense of the respondents.  Additionally, all submissions become Government property and will not be returned.  No basis for claim against the Government shall arise as a result from a response to this sources sought.

Seehttps://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=eba074126b7db3226f480b9020f88b5a&tab=core&_cview=0 for details...

Eric
KB7DQH

...................stained, blown glass pipework?  A recent post here got me to thinking, as I have had this concept rattling around in the back of my alleged mind for quite some time now... and I thought to finally present the "collaborative concept" which in many respects combines two of the art-forms commonly found within the "worship space" which normally would in some (many?) instances ordinarily present a practical and aesthetic conflict... for which after resolving some "technical difficulty" might instead present an intriguing opportunity? 

And it so happens that one of the premier, globally-recognized blown-glass artists (Dale Chihuly)  as well as two of this country's most respected organ builders (Paul Fritts and Martin Pasi)  happen to have their fabrication facilities located within the same county?

??? ??? ??? ???

Eric...
KB7DQH

http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,1000.0.html

I have heard local broadcasts of this instrument on the radio, and even pieces of music written specifically for this instrument on the occasion of its inauguration, which I have favorited on my Youtube channel ;D  In fact a couple days ago I randomly selected a program I recorded "off-air" of this very piece of music (3-3-33 by Stephen Kennedy) 

A great deal of effort has been put into the study of the "original" in Lithuania from which this "exact replica" was constructed, so restoration of the original should be no problem from a technical standpoint as the entire thing was duplicated elsewhere using original construction techniques.  Interestingly enough some of the local organ builders (Paul Fritts and Martin Pasi) were involved in the construction of the "Craighead-Saunders" organ, as part of this "Go-Art" project... 

Your observation that "its Principal chorus which resembles quite closely to what I heard in many places in Eastern Germany (Thuringia)" serves to validate the importance of the success of this project...  The organ students at the Eastman School of Music then have an opportunity to experience an "authentic" example...

Eric
KB7DQH

QuoteAn Edwardian pipe organ that fails "to make the noise you want" is to be restored in Essex thanks to a £416,000 grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund.

The organ, built for Colchester's Moot Hall, was first played publicly at the hall's official opening in May 1902.

A century later a campaign was launched to halt the instrument's deterioration.

Councillor Nigel Chapman said he was "delighted this important part of Colchester's heritage is set to be conserved".

He added: "You can get a sound out of it, but not the noise you want.

"Organists won't now play it because it just reflects badly on their skill. Some work was done on it about 50 years ago - but the leather and wood it's made from have just deteriorated.

"It's a significant part of the character of the Moot Hall and I am extremely excited at the prospect of hearing it played again."


The organ was built specifically for the Baroque inspired town hall by Norfolk-based organ makers Norman and Beard, who also created the Norwich Cathedral Organ.

Robyn Llewellyn, head of Heritage Lottery Fund East of England, said: "This fine historic instrument is an integral part of the hall and its deterioration has denied concert-goers the chance to hear it for many years.

"As a unique example of a pipe organ, our funding will not only fund restoration but help local people and schools understand how it was built and the traditional craftsmanship involved.

"Soon this will all be put right and the organ can be enjoyed by both music and history lovers alike."

Restoration of the organ is expected to take up to four years.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-essex-21910992

Eric
KB7DQH

QuoteHope it goes well on ebay. If you happen to be able to track down the listing, through this forum perhaps we might achieve a wider arena for its sale.

http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,1659.0.html ;) or...http://www.ebay.com/itm/M-P-M-ller-Pipe-Organ-Moderate-Sized-English-Romantic-Style-PSU-/370774045897?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5653daf4c9

Quote
You deserve a gold medal for the tireless addition of news reports to the forum and as a result you've succeeded in saving an organ!

:o :-[
I cannot in all honesty claim all the credit for "saving" this particular instrument.   A rather large number of folks have commented on the original news article and undoubtedly shared the article with others by various means (several threads regarding this instrument appeared on Facebook that I am aware of and for which I was only responsible for a handful  ;)  and a former member of this forum actually stirred some interest in this instrument as far away as Belgium :o   What I have succeeded in was helping spread the word ;)  and trust in Divine Providence for a positive outcome from my efforts.

Eric
KB7DQH

http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,1659.0.html

The "public outcry" expressed by your email above and on the comments associated with the original article have prevented this instrument from being "tossed into a skip" and it is now available for sale on Ebay...

Eric
KB7DQH

Here is a case where "public outcry" has prevented the dumping of a significant pipe instrument into a skip :o 8) ;)

http://onwardstate.com/2013/03/11/farewell-to-the-schwab-pipe-organ-part-2/

Quote

Farewell to the Schwab Pipe Organ, Part 2


About a month ago, we bid adieu to the Schwab Pipe Organ, the class gift of 1936 and certainly, in some small respect, a part of President Atherton's vision. The organ watched over decades worth of Penn State commencements and cultural events in the Schwab Auditorium and was the perfect tribute to the charitable Charles Schwab. Unfortunately, the organ became unplayable in 1977 and has been in storage ever since. Geoff Hallett, the Penn State assistant director of annual giving, announced that the organ would be destroyed due to the expensive nature of the repairs.

"The pipe organ is no longer in working order and repairs, salvage, and/or storage in an off-site location is cost-prohibitive," Hallett said at the time. "The Office of Annual Giving is currently investigating ways to appropriately recognize this portion of the 1936 Class Gift."

As it turns out, plans have changed.

Late last week, the Schwab Pipe Organ was listed on Penn State's eBay page, which is most frequently used to sell surplus items from the various academic departments. With a starting bid of $1,000, the historic organ, which includes over 2,000 pipes, will be salvaged.

"The organ has been a topic of discussion for decades since it has not worked since 1977," Hallett said. "The first discussions were to refurbish the organ, but in the 1970s the estimates were over $100,000. This cost was not funded at the time. Right now the organ program in the School of Music has three working, regularly maintained organs, which is more than what is needed based on student enrollment and programmatic demand."

The decision to move forward with a private sale instead of destruction, as was the original plan, is the result of "multiple interested parties in purchasing the organ," according to Hallett.

You can see by the comments on our original article that there was significant interest in saving the organ. Even though the artifact will no longer be in possession of Penn State, its history — and indeed, the Schwab Auditorium has seen its fair share of historical moments —  will live on

I will add, if the prospective buyer restores and installs the instrument.......

http://www.ebay.com/itm/M-P-M-ller-Pipe-Organ-Moderate-Sized-English-Romantic-Style-PSU-/370774045897?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item5653daf4c9

Eric
KB7DQH

This is likely the best article of its type to show up in the mainstream press, published on the WWW, and found by the Google webcrawler...

http://www.cleveland.com/science/index.ssf/2013/03/oberlin_college_researcher_hel.html

QuoteThe pipe organ is the most humanlike of musical instruments.

With a great whoosh of breath from the leathery lungs of its bellows (or, as technology has improved, from steam engines, and finally electric blowers), the organ fills its towering pipes with air. The sounds spilling from that choir of metallic throats can be anything from the pew-rattling thunderclap of a bass chord to a nightingale's high, delicate trill.

Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that these prodigious artists can develop life-threatening cases of throat cancer.

The pipes in some of the world's most historic organs are rotting. Aggressive corrosion is gnawing away at the centuries-old lead and tin larynxes that give the instruments their distinctive voices, causing the pipes to flake, fracture and eventually collapse. More-modern organs aren't immune, either.

Oberlin College chemistry professor and avid organist Catherine Oertel is part of an international research effort to confront the corrosion threat. Using sophisticated diagnostic tools, including X-rays and ion beams that probe the atomic structure of the decay, the small band of scientists has fingered an unexpected culprit for the damage. As in an autoimmune disease, the organs are attacking themselves.

"It's a very complex environment because of all the metal and wood," Oertel said, "and the interaction between the two is the problem."

The research, which is ongoing, is suggesting solutions that may spare further harm to these irreplaceable artifacts.

Funny-sounding pipes raise the alarm

In the early 1990s, the organist at 'St. Jakobi Church in Lubeck, Germany, began noticing problems with the parish's renowned organ.

"Some of the pipes started to sound funny," said Carl Johan Bergsten, a research engineer at Sweden's University of Gothenburg Organ Art Center who's also a church organist. "He could hear something going on because the pipes were out of tune."
Graphic.jpg View full size 

The oldest pipes in the organ were incorporated from an earlier, Gothic instrument constructed in 1467. The remainder were installed when master German organ-builder Friedrich Stellwagen enlarged the church's organ in 1636.

Inspection of the out-of-tune pipes revealed extensive, powdery white corrosion inside their lowest part, called the foot. The pipe feet rest in channels atop the organ's airtight wooden "wind chest." The pipes protrude from the chest like straws poking through a soft-drink top.

Normally, when the organist presses a key, air flows from the wind chest into a pipe, where it creates a musical tone either by passing over a whistlelike slot or vibrating a metal reed. But corrosion had riddled the Stellwagen organ's pipes with cracks and holes. Air leaks and the resultant pressure drop inside the pipes caused them to fall out of tune.

Europe's churches and concert halls are home to most of the world's oldest surviving pipe organs -- as many as 20,000, according to estimates. They date as far back as the Renaissance and Baroque periods, when organs consisting of hundreds or thousands of soaring pipes, encased in elaborately carved and gilded wooden cabinets, were constructed as awe-inspiring centerpieces of the continent's cathedrals. For their time, they were among the most complex machines to be built.

European composers such as Bach, Handel and Mozart wrote some of their most memorable pieces for pipe organ. The instruments remaining from that time are a cherished part of European cultural heritage. America's considerably younger historic organs replicate European design and craftsmanship.

(Ancient Greece claims the honor of inventing the instrument in the second century B.C. -- a water-driven device called the hydraulis that provided entertainment in palaces, coliseums and public festivals.)

Research project looks to determine cause

After the discovery of the Stellwagen corrosion, checks of other historic European organs showed similar damage. In some cases, the only option was to replace the pipes with modern ones, which altered the organ's sound, diminished its pedigree and reduced its links with the past. "All these incremental changes take away from what was heard and composed for by historic composers," Oertel said.
stellwagen.jpg View full size The historic Stellwagen organ in Lubeck, Germany's, St. Jakobi Church helped alert researchers to the problem of pipe corrosion. Courtesy of Catherine Oertel 

Facing an apparent corrosion epidemic, the governing European Commission in 2003 authorized a research project called COLLAPSE -- for Corrosion Of Lead and Lead-tin Alloys of organ PipeS in Europe -- to figure out what was going on. Bergsten, who'd spent much of his career at the Swedish automaker Volvo, coordinated the effort, which involved scientists from three Swedish and Italian universities, a Danish organ manufacturer and the St. Jakobi parish.

Oberlin's Oertel wasn't a formal COLLAPSE partner but collaborated with some of its Swedish researchers, as well as conducting her own studies funded by the National Science Foundation while a postdoctoral student at Cornell University and later as an Oberlin faculty member.

Oertel had played piano as a child and took up the organ while majoring in chemistry at Oberlin. The highly regarded liberal-arts college is well-stocked with pipe organs, including three large ones used for performances and about a dozen more for practice sessions. (They're all corrosion-free.)

Oberlin's science faculty often does music-related research. Studying organ pipe corrosion was "a really exciting way to merge these two interests of mine," Oertel said.

Need for frequent repairs dates to the 16th century

Finding the corrosion's cause was the scientists' first priority; that would dictate the strategies to preserve the decaying organ pipes. The COLLAPSE researchers launched comparison studies of affected and corrosion-free organs in Italy, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. They collected and analyzed bits of corroded pipe, sampled the air in and around the instruments, and tracked temperature and humidity readings for a year.

At first, the researchers suspected some relatively recent, modern phenomenon -- maybe industrial or agricultural air pollutants, or upgraded church ventilation systems -- was to blame for the corrosion. After all, the pipes had seemed fine for hundreds of years, only to be felled lately.
stellwagen interior.jpg View full size An interior view of the Stellwagen organ shows the variety of the instrument's pipes. The base of each pipe rests atop a wood wind chest, potentially allowing acidic funes from the wood to enter the pipes and cause corrosion. Courtesy of Catherine Oertel 

But a check of old literature found accounts of frequent organ pipe repairs, especially in Germany, as far back as the 16th and 17th centuries, Bergsten said. (Apparently, there was less concern at the time about altering what were not yet historic instruments.) German texts called the damage "bleifras," which translated as "lead-eaten."

The corrosion's location turned out to be an important clue. It began at the bottom of the vertical pipes. And, significantly, it started on the inside, not the exterior. If the corrosion's origin was external, as an enveloping cloud of pollution would be, the decay should first appear on the pipes' skin, progress inward and extend all along the pipes' length.

"We quite soon realized the source of this problem is coming from inside the organ," Bergsten said.
SEM corrosion.JPG View full size Under extreme magnification using a scanning electron microscope, the components of corrosion forming on a sample of lead-tin alloy look like a forest of treetops. Courtesy of Catherine Oertel 

What's inside an organ? Wood, mainly. And wood, especially oak and walnut, is known to be corrosive to lead. The gradual breakdown of wood's cell walls releases tiny wisps of acetic acid. Curators at the British Museum had seen historic lead coins and seals begin to crumble while stored in wooden cases.

Constructed of oak and airtight by necessity, pipe organs' wind chests are an ideal place for acetic acid to build up. The pipes' feet are constantly in contact with the acid vapors. Firing up the organ's blower and pressing its keys to play inadvertently injects acid fumes higher into the pipes. Eventually, the metal rots.

Some pipes have managed to withstand centuries of exposure unharmed, for reasons that aren't clear. Over time, as the organ wood ages, its acid output should diminish. But when organ builders refurbish an instrument with a new wind chest, the fresh wood revives the emission process.

Worse, the white glue that's been used since the 1960s to strengthen joints and seal wind boxes also emits acetic acid. That combination of new wood and glue may help explain the recent wave of pipe failures in ancient organs, as well as corrosion in modern ones. "We have a quite strong correlation between these problems and restoration and repairs 10, 20, 30 years ago, where new wood was introduced into the organ," Bergsten said.

Lead-tin samples prompt discovery

Renaissance-era organ builders didn't have many options when it came to pipe material. Gold and silver were too expensive. Iron was too hard to allow the hand-rolling and incremental re-adjustments that produce the proper pitch and timbre. Copper and brass produced too resonant a sound.

Lead, and alloys of lead and tin, struck the right combination of malleability and tone.

The COLLAPSE project focused on pure lead organ pipes, which clearly were highly vulnerable to corrosion. But some researchers believed that lead pipes containing tin additives gained some protection. Oertel set out to test the tin concept, working with fellow scientists at Cornell and Sweden's Chalmers University of Technology.
chamber1.jpg View full size Inside a sealed laboratory chamber, researchers expose samples of the metal used in organ pipes to acid vapor under varying environmental conditions. Courtesy of Catherine Oertel 

In glass canisters, the researchers placed stamp-size samples of lead alloyed with as much as 15 percent tin. They pumped in acetic acid fumes and let the samples sit as long as a month. The humidity in some of the canisters was set at a comfortable 60 percent, comparable to a modern, climate-controlled church. Other canisters were a tropical 95 percent.

At low humidity, the lead-tin samples showed dramatically less corrosion than pure lead ones, confirming that tin had some protective influence. But the lead-tin squares exposed to high humidity were covered with cauliflowerlike crusts of corrosion.

Oertel and her colleagues used a tightly focused ion beam to cross-section the corrosion layer without destroying it, as a normal cutting tool would. A powerful scanning electron microscope and X-ray analysis identified the corrosion's components. The presence of tin particles in the debris showed that its protective ability was swamped in high-moisture conditions.
Copy of DSCN0140.JPG View full size Catherine Oertel, center, and Oberlin College organ perfornance majors Nick Capozzoli and Katelyn Emerson stand in front of the pipe organ at Peace Community Church. Oberlin students practice on the organ, which was built in 1984 in the style of 18th Century the German organ builder Gottfried Silbermann. John Mangels, The Plain Dealer 

That's important to know, since organ caretakers sometimes use humidifiers to keep the instrument's wood from drying and cracking, Oertel said. Without careful monitoring, the heightened humidity could spur aggressive corrosion, even in pipes that were thought to be immune.

Other protective strategies include avoiding the use of oak and white glue when doing refurbishment and installing ventilation fans -- as has been done with the Stellwagen organ in Lubeck -- that can prevent the buildup of acid fumes in organs' wind chests.

Some of the Swedish and Italian researchers are experimenting with coatings made of tiny nano-particles that can be applied to the wood in an organ to neutralize acid before it can reach the pipes. Bergsten and his colleagues are developing sensors that can be installed in organ pipes to detect acid emissions and other harmful conditions.

Oertel is continuing her corrosion research, looking at other combinations of metals that are at risk. "There are pipes that have 90 to almost 100 percent tin, and some of those are suffering from corrosion," she said. The pipes in a historic French organ in Bordeaux, for example, are "virtually pure tin, and you can see they're suffering from some holes. So there's a lot more of the composition [questions] for us to explore."

Last summer, the Ohio scientist was in Germany and had a chance to play the ancient Stellwagen organ. "That was a really special experience," she said. "It's an instrument that's been part of the life of the church for so long, and it's been played by people who are contemporaries of [German composer Dieterich] Buxtehude and Bach.

"In Germany in the 1600s and 1700s, there would have been hundreds of organs like this," in almost every church and village, Oertel said. Now, "these organs are the endangered species of the musical world." Helping save them "is a deeply satisfying project."

8)
Eric
KB7DQH

Stolen from a redundant, closed church...

http://pittsburgh.cbslocal.com/2013/03/01/pipe-organ-stolen-from-recently-closed-mt-washington-church/

Quote   

Ralph Iannotti   

Reporting Ralph Iannotti
Filed under
Local, News, Syndicated Local   
Related tags
Boggs Avenue, Fr. Manuel Osiqwe, Mount Washington, Mt. Washington, Musical Instrument, Pipe Organ, Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese, Ralph Iannotti, St. Justin Roman Catholic Church, Stolen   

PITTSBURGH (KDKA) — Less than a month ago, St. Justin Roman Catholic Church on Boggs Avenue on Mount Washington, celebrated its final mass before merging with St. Mary of the Mount.

Now, Pittsburgh Police and the Pittsburgh Catholic Diocese confirm that the church's pipe organ has been stolen from the second-floor balcony.

Denise Chappel, who was baptized at St. Justin, and made her first communion there, said: "I can't believe someone would do that to the church. [Whoever stole it] would have had to come down the stairs with it, I don't think it could have come down in one piece."

Dolly D'Alessio, 90, was one of the hundreds of worshipers who attended the final Mass at the church on Feb. 10.

"I can't believe it, how could they do something like this?" said D'Alessio. "It's impossible."

A priest who celebrated Mass at St. Justine regularly, Fr. Manuel Osiqwe, said he was shocked that such a large musical instrument could be stolen.

But he quickly added he was confident that police would work hard to recover it because he said "that organ was used for the glory of God."

and recovered by police... from... the former organist of the closed church :o :o :o

http://www.post-gazette.com/stories/ae/art-architecture/missing-pipe-organ-recovered-from-former-st-justin-musician-677859/

QuoteMissing pipe organ recovered from former St. Justin musician
March 4, 2013 2:44 pm

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

Pittsburgh police have recovered a pipe organ worth an estimated $200,000 that was taken from St. Justin Catholic Church.

Police said they received a call Sunday and learned that the church's former organist removed it Feb. 22 for safekeeping. The church in Mount Washington closed two weeks ago after it merged with St. Mary of the Mount Parish.

Detectives said the organist, whose name was not released, had a key to the church and was worried that the organ would be damaged in the cold of winter and the heat of summer if left unattended.

Extreme temperatures cause the leather on the organ bellows to become brittle and crack.

The organist, who will not be charged, according to police, told investigators that he talked with a church officials about his desire to maintain the organ.

But police said the man had not received permission to remove it.

Police said in a news release that the man told detectives he was "thinking with his heart and not with his head" when he removed the organ.

In its own written statement, church representatives said not pursuing charges was the right thing to do.

"In this Lenten season of repentance and transforming mercy, one Pittsburgh church now has an opportunity to show the healing power of God's love and forgiveness in action," according to the statement.

The church's pastor, Father Michael Stumpf, said the organist promised to return the organ in the same condition it had been when installed.

"In our estimation, this was an imprudent and terrible mistake but not fully criminal," the pastor said in the statement. "There was no intention to sell, and there seemed to have been no malicious intent meant toward the parish community."

;)Eric
KB7DQH

http://www.newsleader.com/article/20130301/NEWS01/303020002/Supercomputer-organ-versus-old-school-pipes?nclick_check=1

QuoteVERONA — It's the battle between old and new.

Organists are calling it the "David and Goliath" event, or the "Tale of Two Organs."

The matchup on March 11 pits Verona United Methodist Church's Viscount organ against the pipe organ at the historic Church of the Epiphany in Washington, D.C. It's a showdown that's been designed for entertainment by some world-class organists and that involves Verona due to the type of instrument they have.

The concert is meant to match the old-world technology of Epiphany's 64-rank Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ versus new-world technology from Viscount Organ Company, know as Physis.

It's a real wind instrument on one side, and a software-driven algorithmic machine on the other.

Aeolian-Skinner versus Viscount. The 3,467 finely crafted real windblown pipes compared to the 4,000 watts of the digital organ on the other.

Bring it on.

"This (kind of competition) used to be a very big thing when the organ was an instrument that people would come to see," said Josh Dove, owner of Whitesel Music in Harrisonburg. "They would do these big concerts like this and make a big show out of it."

Dove's music company is the one who supplied Verona's UMC with the new Viscount Organ — and the only organ provider in the area to have the new technology, Dove said.

Last year, Verona UMC replaced an aging instrument with a state-of-the-art, custom three-manual Viscount Organ with Physis technology — making it the first electronic organ to apply physical modeling to pipe organ sound.

Bob Weeks, the pastor at Verona UMC, said it's an honor to have the church's organ used, not only for him but also the congregation.

"The clash of technology — old and new. It doesn't just replicate the old sounds, but it brings something new to it," Weeks said of the church's Viscount.

It's not so much pride or the attention, Weeks said, it's more of an affirmation of choosing the new technological instrument.

"This electronic organ, which makes this one different from all the rest, uses nothing but software. It uses a technology called physical modeling. It recreates the sound through computer code," Dove explained. "There's no real wind-blown pipes, the sound comes out of speakers."

Quote
"What's incredible about it is every last aspect of the pipe organ comes through the speakers. You can literally hear the valves opening and closing as you push down the key on the organ," he added. "You can hear the wind blowing through the pipes as you're playing. You can feel changes in air pressure happening. All of these things are happening but there is not a single pipe on the whole thing."

A pipe organ uses real pipes. With just a push of a key, it releases a valve and allows air to pass through the pipe producing sound.

According to Dove, the thing that makes Verona's church's organ so different is up until now, all of the electronic organs have worked on a technology that's 20 years old called sample sound technology. "In the electronic organ, when you push down a key it's like hitting play on a tape player. It's just copying the sound," Dove said.

With Verona's organ, the computer creates the sound from scratch at a speed so fast that that the human mind doesn't even know there has been a delay at all, Dove explained.

"This series of organ processes at a speed of up to 21 billion pieces of information per second," he said.

The idea of the battle brewed up between Dove and Jeremy Filsell — the artist-in-residence of the Washington National Cathedral and music director of the Historic Church of the Epiphany in downtown Washington, D.C.

Filsell personally requested Verona UMC's organ and will be playing it March 11, while Neil Weston, an international organist, will be performing the pipe organ.

But why a battle?

"What we intend to show is that this technology is that this technology from Viscount is something that is a legitimate alternative to a church that can't afford a real pipe organ," Dove said. The Viscount can cost much less than a real pipe organ — which can range in the seven figures, Dove said.

Verona paid about $65,000 for their Viscount, after a donation from the company. It retails for about $100,000, Weeks said.

By no means does Dove mean this to become a fight over replacing pipe organs with the new Physis technology.

One upside with the Viscount, Dove said, is it can be updated with just a push of the button.

Updates can be made on this new organ like one would update software on an iPhone — it's free, too. The older types of electronic organ would stay the way they came. If an update was needed, somebody from the organ's company would have to come out and install updates.

Filsell and Weston, along with Dove, are presenting a "Battle of the Organs" Concert starting at 7 p.m. March 11 at The Church of the Epiphany at 1317 G St.in Washington, D.C.

Eric
KB7DQH

QuoteBuried as it is among ads for motorcycles, sports jerseys and jewellery, a classified listing on websites Kijiji and Craigslist for "Pipe Organ Casavant Freres Opus 1034, Circa 1924" has attracted relatively few page views.

Developers who are converting a church in Toronto's west end into condos are desperately seeking a new home for the pipe organ. They're having a tough time – go figure.

QuoteThe carefully crafted instrument, which was manufactured by Quebec's Casavant Frères Ltee roughly 90 years ago, has 849 pipes that will have to be dismantled just to remove it, a process that will take weeks and cost more than $15,000. Reassembling and cleaning will be an additional $40,000 or so. And the current asking price is $20,000.

Still, there has been some interest. The condo developers, the Windmill Development Group, received a phone call from a music producer who thought about putting it in his studio. But he didn't call back after learning that the pipes, which range from four to 16 feet in height, stretch as high as 25 feet once the façade and casing is included.

Indeed, the organ officially became homeless when the blossoming Seventh Day Adventist congregation that had made its home on Perth Avenue sold the site to move into a bigger space – with lower ceilings.

There was another call from an amateur historian who keeps random artifacts at his farm. And a company that didn't know why the instrument was being put up for sale tried its luck to see if it could interest the developers in replacing the pipe organ with a more modern (and easy to relocate) digital one. But the most promising call thus far has come from a church organization that offered to disassemble and store the instrument until a church needed it.

"Hopefully, we just find someone who comes along and says, 'We're building a church and we'd love to have it,'" says Alex Speigel, who runs the Toronto office of Ottawa-based Windmill. "What do you do with an organ? It's huge! So we've been spending a lot of time trying to find a new home for it."

The company isn't required to find a home for the instrument, but is trying to find new uses for as many of the church fixtures as possible. They're hoping to house them all before construction begins, in roughly two months.

Mr. Speigel and his associates have put in calls to the company that built it, music professors, a number of organists and other musicians, most of whom politely said they'll spread the word.

"We get some crank calls and some great calls; it's a whole process," Mr. Speigel says. "We've even got a guy at the Discovery Channel who said, 'If you ever find a home for this, we want to do a special on just taking this whole thing apart.'"

Simon Couture, vice-president of Casavant Frères Ltee., says his firm has put a lot of effort into seeking a home for the instrument and is surprised one hasn't been found yet.

He likens his efforts to pair up buyers and sellers of the company's organs to being a matchmaker: "When the right instrument becomes available, you need to be ready."

"We have worked very hard to find a home for it," he said. "It doesn't mean it's not a good pipe organ, it's just a matter of what people are looking for at this stage."

He noted that the company is in the midst of reinstalling a 1960s organ from a decommissioned church in Montreal into a parish in Mississauga. That parish wanted a larger one than the one Windmill is selling, and also made its decision before Mr. Couture knew this one was for sale.

"We see it as our duty, our mission, to find new homes for these Casavant organs," he said. "It's really sad that we seem to be unable to find a new home for this one."

But Mr. Couture remains optimistic. And in the meantime, the instrument is getting some love – Mr. Speigel can occasionally be spotted putting his amateur piano techniques to use.

"It's really amazing because there are two levels of keyboards and then there are all these pedals on the floor," he says. "If nobody's listening I can have a lot of fun."

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/toronto/now-on-craiglist-a-pipe-organ-just-20000/article9214811/

Eric
KB7DQH

Quote
February 26, 2013 by Norman Lebrecht

The death has been announced of Marie-Claire Alain, one of the most influential organists of all time. She was 86.

Her father, Albert Alain (1880-1971), was an organ composer and builder. Her composer brother, Jehain Alain, died fighting the German in 1940, at the age of 29. Marie-Claire played his works all her life.

A second brother, Olivier Alain (1918-1994) was an organist and director of the conservatory in their birthplace, Saint-Germain-en-Laye.

Marie-Claire Alain recorded the complete organ works of J S Bach no fewer than three time

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2013/02/last-of-a-mighty-organ-line.html

:'(

Eric
KB7DQH

Quote Casavant Pipe Organ.
Beautiful working condition.

Opus 2776
Electro-pneumatic; 2 divisions, 3 ranks + 1 Bourdon 16'.
2 manuals (61 notes), 1 pedal (32 notes).
Built 1963
Excellent, maintained, and still played.
Specs available upon request., $20,000. Email: mkojanek@rogers.com

The "online classified ad" also has pictures...
http://classifieds.ottawacitizen.com/ottawa/for-sale/casavant-pipe-organ/63E09223052792E9DDgmQ4325109

Eric
KB7DQH

 Suite for organ, violin, and cello in C minor, by Joseph Rhineberger... This was played as a "teaser" for a local concert to be performed next Sunday at 4PM "Pacific" time, called "Romantic Organ Treats" ;)

Eric
KB7DQH

Right this second (streaming onwww.king.org Click on "listen live") is a rather pleasant piece for chamber instruments and pipe organ!!!  I currently have no idea what it is as I missed the announcement as I was reading other stuff online and had the volume on the HI-FI turned well down... Soooo... I have begun recording at a suitable break between movements, and will report back when I find out what this is ;)

Eric
KB7DQH

After seeing the following documentary on Public Television on more than one occasion

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B002I41LAY/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=earthnoworg-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B002I41LAY

a Web search turned up the following...

QuoteAn interview with Amit Goswami
by Craig Hamilton

nautilusBefore you read any further, stop and close your eyes for a moment. Now consider the following question: for the moment your eyes were closed, did the world still exist even though you weren't conscious of it? How do you know? If this sounds like the kind of unanswerable brain teaser your Philosophy 101 professor used to employ to stretch your philosophical imagination, you might be surprised to discover that there are actually physicists at reputable universities who believe they have answered this question—and their answer, believe it or not, is no.

Now consider something even more intriguing. Imagine for a moment the entire history of the universe. According to all the data scientists have been able to gather, it exploded into existence some fifteen billion years ago, setting the stage for a cosmic dance of energy and light that continues to this day. Now imagine the history of planet Earth. An amorphous cloud of dust emerging out of that primordial fireball, it slowly coalesced into a solid orb, found its way into gravitational orbit around the sun, and through a complex interaction of light and gases over billions of years, generated an atmosphere and a biosphere capable of not only giving birth to, but sustaining and proliferating, life.

Now imagine that none of the above ever happened. Consider instead the possibility that the entire story only existed as an abstract potential—a cosmic dream among countless other cosmic dreams—until, in that dream, life somehow evolved to the point that a conscious, sentient being came into existence. At that moment, solely because of the conscious observation of that individual, the entire universe, including all of the history leading up to that point, suddenly came into being. Until that moment, nothing had actually ever happened. In that moment, fifteen billion years happened. If this sounds like nothing more than a complicated backdrop for a science fiction story or a secular version of one of the world's great creation myths, hold on to your hat. According to physicist Amit Goswami, the above description is a scientifically viable explanation of how the universe came into being.

Goswami is convinced, along with a number of others who subscribe to the same view, that the universe, in order to exist, requires a conscious sentient being to be aware of it. Without an observer, he claims, it only exists as a possibility. And as they say in the world of science, Goswami has done his math. Marshalling evidence from recent research in cognitive psychology, biology, parapsychology and quantum physics, and leaning heavily on the ancient mystical traditions of the world, Goswami is building a case for a new paradigm that he calls "monistic idealism," the view that consciousness, not matter, is the foundation of everything that is.

A professor of physics at the University of Oregon and a member of its Institute of Theoretical Science, Dr. Goswami is part of a growing body of renegade scientists who in recent years have ventured into the domain of the spiritual in an attempt both to interpret the seemingly inexplicable findings of their experiments and to validate their intuitions about the existence of a spiritual dimension of life. The culmination of Goswami's own work is his book The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World. Rooted in an interpretation of the experimental data of quantum physics (the physics of elementary particles), the book weaves together a myriad of findings and theories in fields from artificial intelligence to astronomy to Hindu mysticism in an attempt to show that the discoveries of modern science are in perfect accord with the deepest mystical truths.

Quantum physics, as well as a number of other modern sciences, he feels, is demonstrating that the essential unity underlying all of reality is a fact which can be experimentally verified. Because of the enormous implications he sees in this scientific confirmation of the spiritual, Goswami is ardently devoted to explaining his theory to as many people as possible in order to help bring about what he feels is a much needed paradigm shift. He feels that because science is now capable of validating mysticism, much that before required a leap of faith can now be empirically proven and, hence, the materialist paradigm which has dominated scientific and philosophical thought for over two hundred years can finally be called into question.

Interviewing Amit Goswami was a mind-bending and concept-challenging experience. Listening to him explain many ideas with which he seemed perfectly at home, required, for me, such a suspension of disbelief that I at times found myself having to stretch far beyond anything I had previously considered. (Goswami is also a great fan of science fiction whose first book, The Cosmic Dancers, was a look at science fiction through the eyes of a physicist.)

But whether or not one ultimately accepts some of his more esoteric theories, one has to respect the creativity and passion with which he is willing to inquire. Goswami is clearly willing to take risks with his ideas and is fervently dedicated to sharing his investigation with audiences around the world. He speaks widely at conferences and other forums about the exciting discoveries of the new science and their significance, not only for the way science is done, but for society as a whole. In India, the country of his birth, he is actively involved in a growing organized movement to bridge the gap between science and spirituality, through which he is helping to pioneer a graduate institute in "consciousness studies" based on the premise that consciousness is the ground of all being.

Goswami is considered by some to be a pioneer in his field. By attempting to bring material realism to its knees and to integrate all fields of knowledge in a single unified paradigm, he hopes to pave the way for a new holistic worldview in which spirit is put first. In fact, as far as we know, he is the only new paradigm scientist who is taking a clear stand against the relativism so popular among new age thinkers. At a time when the decay of human values and the erosion of any sense of meaning has reached epidemic scale, it is hard to imagine what could be more important than this.

And yet, for all the important and valuable work he seems to be doing, in the end we are left with serious reservations as to whether Goswami's approach will ultimately lead to the kind of transformation he hopes for. Thinkers such as Huston Smith and E. F. Schumacher have pointed to what they feel is an arrogance, or at least, a kind of naiveté, on the part of scientists who believe they can expand the reach of their discipline to somehow include or explain the spiritual dimension of life. Such critics suggest that the very attempt to scientifically validate the spiritual is itself a product of the same materialistic impulses it intends to uproot and, because of this, is ultimately only capable of reducing spirit, God and the transcendent to mere objects of scientific fascination.

Is science capable of proving the reality of the transcendent dimension of life? Or would science better serve the spiritual potential of the human race by acknowledging the inherent limits of its domain? The following interview confronts us with these questions.

Above is the introduction to the interview, which can be read in its entirety at the following link:

http://www.amitgoswami.org/scientific-proof-existence-god/#more-228

Eric
KB7DQH

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10200244103338845&set=a.4422711059499.160368.1640650045&type=1&ref=nf

QuoteCharles Kegg

Here is an interesting child's play slide seen at a McDonald's in San Antonio. You climb up the left and as you slide down on the right, your posterior triggers a descending scale of notes. Even though the pipes are not quite anatomically correct, they are clearly organ pipes. Riddle me this: If the pipe organ is "culturally irrelevant" as some say, how is it that it was used in a new toy designed for 5 year old children? How did this come to be? Clearly the pipe organ is not as far from the minds of lay people as some would have us believe.

Posted here in "Electronic organs" as the toy is clearly electronic...  The photo was posted onto Facebook by an American Pipe organ builder...

Eric
KB7DQH

I have read a description of an organ in a "Winchester Cathedral", which was "Audible at 7 miles, offensive at 5, deafening at 2, and required the effort of 70 men to pump the bellows... ;)

Eric
KB7DQH