Quote:
Originally Posted by freebeard
That's awesome.
Know your history.  |
I've seen that very car, in 2012 at the LeMay Museum!
Quote:
edit:
I know Eric Dollard, for one, claims the true art of organ building is lost to time. Maybe you can be the first to try cryogenic tempering to tighten grain structure.
|
Well, that all depends on how you define "true." Many builders are quite happy to integrate digital voices into an organ, go full electric action (whether slider chest or otherwise), make weird case designs, use closed-toe voicing on high wind pressures, and otherwise act as if Schnitger is a dirty word. But a handful of American builders--Taylor and Boody in Staunton, VA; Ralph Richards and Bruce Fowkes in Chattanooga, TN; Martin Pasi in Yelm, WA; and especially Paul Fritts in Tacoma--have studied old organs extensively, and use historic casting techniques (Paul is the only builder right now using sand casting, but I expect the others will follow), mechanical action slider chests (albeit with carbon fiber trackers now, since you can't get good, straight sugar pine anymore), traditional case designs, proportions, and ornamentation, low wind pressures, open-toe voicing with little to no nicking, etc. Then, you have organizations like GOArt in Gothenburg, Sweden, which was created solely to study historic organs and try to recreate them. Their first instrument was a recreation of the now-destroyed Schnitger at the Jakobikirche in Luebeck, based on the specification of the Jakobikirche Hamburg.
This was an attempt at a perfect recreation, down to the $1.50 handmade nails, and after playing it, it does sound and feel remarkably like a 17th-century organ. But, there will always be differences. We can add impurities to the tin and lead alloys used for the pipes (something the builders I listed earlier do, but most modern builders don't), but you can't, for instance, make modern trees grow with a tighter, straighter grain when the climate doesn't allow it and all the old-growth oak forests are gone (partially to make...historic organs).
Then, you have the issue of most organs being situated in churches or used for teaching, and a perfect replica of a historic organ is limited to a certain repertoire that may or may not fit with its expected use in the institution. When the Craighead-Saunders organ at Eastman, a replica based on a 1776 Casparini organ in Vilnius, was being planned, the advisory committee had long discussions about what exactly to do. The actual Casparini organ has nicked pipes, but no one knows if those nicks are original or added in the 19th century; the replica, they eventually decided, would have none. The actual Casparini has a pedalboard with a range C-c1, which means it is impossible to play most of Bach's organ music on it; the replica, they decided, would have a pedalboard C-d1.
So, I would argue there is no "true" art of organ building; there are builders who work toward an older sound ideal. I could say they come pretty close, but in reality they're creating new instruments, like this one at the Basilica at Notre Dame, built by Paul Fritts and completed last year.
Its case design is based on the 1743 Hinsz organ at the Bovenkerk in Kampen, the Netherlands.
But its specification is quite different. Its pipes are built using old alloys and old voicing techniques, but it incorporates things like Spanish reeds and strings that you won't find on a Hinsz. It has mechanical key and stop action, but the trackers are carbon fiber and there are electric servomotors inline in the stop mechanism to allow the use of electronic registration aids.
Later this spring, the Vox Humana Journal, an online journal I sit on the editorial board of, will be publishing my interview with Paul Fritts from last December, where he talks a little about these and other issues.
The organ world is pretty small, and I know most of the people in it, but I've never run into an Eric Dollard. Does he teach somewhere?