St. John's Episcopal, Lynchburg Virginia...

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http://www2.newsadvance.com/news/2011/oct/19/st-johns-episcopals-new-pipe-organ-has-pitch-perfe-ar-1395577/

By: Casey Gillis
Published: October 19, 2011
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After more than a decade of work, St. John's Episcopal Church is unveiling its new organ.

Organist and choirmaster Peggy Haas Howell played its dedicatory recital Oct. 9, and this weekend will mark its first guest recital.

John Scott, director of music at St. Thomas Church in New York, will perform at 4 p.m. Sunday.

The 32-stop, three-manual mechanical action organ was built by Howell's husband, Richard, an Oxford-educated engineer who has been building organs since the early 1970s.

"It's a very classically designed organ, in a way," she says. "There's no plywood in there. It's all solid wood. And every piece of wood is designed so it can move."

"There's nothing standard in an organ," she adds. "He doesn't buy (the various pieces). He makes them. I've been around it my entire life, and I'm still amazed at what you have to know to be an organ builder."

It boasts a whopping 2,063 pipes, most of which you can't even see. Richard Howell makes the wooden pipes, but orders the metal ones from a company in Europe (one of the few pieces he doesn't make in-house). He could not be reached for an interview this week.

"He specifies everything about the pipes," Peggy Howell says. "He sent this book to them, (detailing) the content of the metal and the thickness. ... It's like having them custom-made."

The aesthetic design was inspired by a German organ: "We wanted something that would look right in the church," she says. "(It) fits really well with the neo-Gothic architecture."

It sits above the sanctuary in a balcony that was added during renovations to the church in the early 2000s.

St. John's search for a new organ began in 1996, not long after the Howells moved to Lynchburg. (They'd previously lived in Baltimore, where Richard started his own company in 1981; he now has a shop on Hollins Mill Road.)

"The old organ we had ... was an instrument that was built in 1946," says G. Howard Bryan, who was chair of the music committee at the time. "It was not a very good design. And then the roof leaked in the church and destroyed 40 percent of the instrument. Over time, it got worse."

They bought a pipe organ to use temporarily "so they wouldn't be rushed," says Peggy Howell. "They knew it would take time.

"An organ is a big investment for a church."

Even though Peggy Howell was the church's organist at the time, she says it was not a done deal that Richard would get the job.

The committee traveled to four states and listened to 18 different organs made by 14 builders.

In the end, they were most impressed by an organ Richard Howell built in Maryland, says Bryan.

"(It) was the best instrument we heard," he says. "The general tonal design and the fact that it was evenly voiced and it stayed in tune. We listened to some instruments where the voicing was extremely uneven. I make my living restoring harps, so I'm
really picky about sound."

"And the workmanship is superb, as it is with this instrument," he adds. "You're not going to find better craftsmanship. It is up there with the best."

At the time, Richard Howell had already signed a contract to build another organ for a church in Charlottesville, so the St. John's project was put on hold until he finished that one.

He began working on it full-time in 2003 or 2004 with anywhere between one and five employees working at any given time, Peggy Howell says.

"Technically, it's an amazing organ," she says. "The action is very, very responsive. Not too light, not too heavy.

"It's just a dream to have this instrument. It leads the singers really well. You sometimes can't separate the voices from the sound of the organ."

Eric
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