C. B. Fisk Op. 139...Carbon Fiber Trackers!!!

[KB7DQH]

Brookline —

Andrew Gingery was studying chemistry at Earlham College in Indiana when he stumbled on his first pipe organ, a 1914 Barckhoff model, forgotten and in disrepair.

"It was one of these things that seemed neglected by the administration," he said. [It] needed TLC."

Gingery, a Brookline resident, knew nothing about organs at the time, but the instrument transfixed him. He broke into the room it was in and began cleaning it up, doing his best to restore it to its former glory.

"I don't know that I did that much good for it, but it was fun to play with," he said.

He was hooked and it didn't take him long to change his major to fine arts. Almost three decades later, he's still working on pipe organs, but now he helps design and build them from scratch, installing the intricate instruments in concert halls and places of worship across the globe.

He doesn't need to break in anymore. These days he's got the keys.

"He's addicted to organs," said Steven Dieck, president of C.B. Fisk, the organ-building company that's employed Gingery for the past 22 years. "I couldn't dream of doing my job without him."

In his career, Gingery has worked on dozens of organs in places like Japan and Switzerland, but recently he's worked closer to home, building a new organ for Harvard University's Memorial Church in the center of Harvard Yard. The organ, named the Opus 139, is a wonder of human ingenuity and workmanship, two stories of wood and pipes rising from the back of a balcony in Appleton Chapel.

The outside of the organ is an intricately carved wood casing framing a row of enormous pipes coated in gold leaf. But it's in the bowels of the organ that the real magic occurs. Behind the gilded facade is a labyrinth of 3,110 pipes and carbon fiber trackers (like wires) spread over three levels that are connected by thin wooden ladders. It's a scene that wouldn't be out of place in a Jules Verne novel.

Most of the pipes are metal, a mix of lead and tin alloys the company casts and shapes itself in its Gloucester workshop. The pipes are designed to represent a myriad of instruments, from strings to flutes and trumpets. Some of the pipes are topped with small chimneys (the flutes), while others taper outwards like small funnels.



Other pipes are made of wood, boxes that emit a low rumble that resonates though your body when played. The longest metal pipes are 17 or 18 feet. Some of the wooden pipes measure up to 32 feet long.

When the organist presses a key it sets off a chain reaction, pulling the trackers, which in turn open a series of valves to release a sheet of pressurized air under some of the tubes. The air rushes inside the tubes, creating the organ's distinctive sound. Each key simultaneously plays dozens of pipes.

Standing within the organ, Gingery gets a boyish glint in his eyes as he explains how the organ works, pulling a pipe out of its casing and gently blowing in it to create a single breathy note.

"I'm not supposed to do that," he said, mischievously.

He seems at home in the organ, moving between pathways with ease and dexterously clambering up and the down ladders

"You can't be an organ builder if you have acrophobia," he jokes.

It makes sense he's comfortable here — after all, he and the company's other 24 employees have spent have spent the better part of a year working on the organ. The work began when the company sat down with officials from Harvard to define the organ's general size, shape and sound. From that, they created a scale model and hammered out the details.

That's where Gingery came in, figuring out how to craft an organ that balances form and function. One of Gingery's jobs as project manager was to help organize which pipes would go where, making sure each pipe fits perfectly into the overall instrument.

"Each pipe has to be beautiful by itself, but then it also has to work well with its neighbors," he said. "There are days I call my job 'organ Tetris'. You've got to put things together so that they fit."

The components of the organ were built in Gloucester, then delivered to Harvard and installed over the summer. From the outside, the organ might have looked nearly complete, but the hardest part was still to come.

For the past nine months or so, specialized "voicers," have spent countless hours individually adjusting each of the organ's pipes so they match the chapel's acoustics. They use special tools to make minute changes to the way the air flows through each pipe. It's a painstaking process.

They're almost done now, and when they play the organ, the chapel fills with incredible sound and power — music literally pulled from the air. The organ will be officially dedicated in April on Easter Sunday.

It's at that moment, when months of work come to fruition, that Gingery takes a step back and takes it all in.               

"It's remarkably satisfying, especially when we complete an organ for a client," he said. "Just to see that, or be there and hear music played."

Gingery didn't realize it when he fell for Earlham's organ, but he was on the way to joining a profession steeped in centuries of history. The first organ was built the third century by an Alexandrian Greek. They gained prominence around 900 CE, when churches began installing them. One of the organs Gingery worked on was installed in a Swedish church built in the 1200s.

"It's a great tradition, organ building," he said. "They're fascinating machines."

Eric
KB7DQH

[MusingMuso]

I'vbe actually been in the Harvard Memorial Church, and played the old Fisk organ they've just taken out to make way for the new one.

The instrument was fairly new at the time, but at least I am able to say that my lifespan has already exceeded that of a tracker-organ.

MM

[KB7DQH]

Somewhere I have read (and the article reposted on this forum... someplace... ::) :o ;)

the organ you mentioned is now in a church in Texas...   so it will live on.

But if one looks at http://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,289.0.html
andhttp://www.organmatters.com/index.php/topic,385.0.html

one realizes one need not have lived long to outlive a tracker-action pipe organ :'(

Eric
KB7DQH

[KB7DQH]

More about the new organ...

After five years, thirty-three thousand hours of manpower, and several million dollars, Memorial Church debuted its new pipe organ during an hour-long prelude before Easter service this Sunday.

Assistant University Organist and Choirmaster and musician Christian M. Lane inaugurated the new organ, which was dedicated to the late Reverend Peter J. Gomes and Charles B. Fisk '49, a Harvard physicist who in his later years channeled his scientific genius into the construction of organs.

Over the last several years, organ builders painstakingly installed the new instrument on the balcony at the back of the Church, exposing the large Palladian window at the front of the chapel.

The majestic organ's gold pipes and dark wood panels now tower over the church's central nave.

Before the change, the old organ stood at the front of the chapel. The volume of the music was too loud for intimate services like morning prayers, and yet too soft to reach audiences in the main part of the church during large gatherings.

The new organ will supplement a smaller, existing organ disguised by elaborate panels against the walls of the small chapel at the front of the church.

According to Lane, the two organs will now allow musicians to preform for intimate audiences in the chapel using the small organ, and for larger audiences seated in the nave using the larger one.

Memorial Church's old organ has been given to a church in Texas.

The process of planning and building the new organ took at least five years, Lane said.

Lane noted that organ construction has not changed significantly since the Renaissance, when organs—along with clocks—were among the most complex machines built by man.

But despite the immense effort and expense, Lane said that musicians should resist the temptation to opt for cheaper, digital organs in the future.

The movement of air and breathing of an original pipe organ is "irreplaceable," he said.

He tested out the new organ's capabilities as congregants sat spellbound for an hour before the service, listening as cascading music filled church.

The church had commissioned a piece, entitled "Spring Bursts Today," to be played for the first time on the occasion.

Over the next few weeks, Memorial Church will host a series of concerts from famous organists to showcase the new Fisk organ.

—Staff writer Laura K. Reston can be reached at laurareston@college.harvard.edu.

Eric
KB7DQH

[AnOrganCornucopia]

Organ construction hasn't changed significantly since the Renaissance? Hmm, what about the invention of electric, pneumatic and electro-pneumatic actions, sliderless chests, higher wind pressures, strings and orchestral tones, not to mention extension and unification... the difference between even a late Classical organ and a symphonic organ of the inter-war era (let alone a theatre organ) is colossal.

Still, congratulations must go to the church for having the willpower, determination, inspiration and vision to start this project and bring it to full fruition.

[KB7DQH]

http://articles.boston.com/2012-08-19/magazine/33244188_1_charles-b-fisk-organ-builders-new-organ

"The good news is, we have all the money we need for a new organ," Gomes intones from the pulpit on the church's 75th anniversary. "The bad news is, it's still in your pockets!"

;) ;D ;D ;D ;D

Memorial Church's $6 million renovation and triple pipe-organ transplant

1967 Memorial Church installs a new organ from Charles B. Fisk, an alumnus who gave up working on the Manhattan Project to become a world-renowned organ maker in Gloucester. Fisk hopes to place his 11-ton Opus 46 upstairs in a gallery, but Harvard president Nathan Pusey won't give up seating. The organ is installed on the ground floor, where it blocks a large Palladian window.

1970 The Rev. Peter J. Gomes, an organist himself, starts 41 years of service to Memorial Church. In the decades ahead, he'll raise questions about the Opus 46: Did it really work with the church's notoriously challenging acoustics? And why would you want to block morning light streaming into a church?
Ads by Google

    Pelland Organ Co., LLCJohannus and Makin Digital Organs Pipe Organ Tuning and Rebuilding www.pellandorgan.com
    All Saints' ChurchAnglican/Episcopal A Center of Anglicanism www.allsaintsbelmont.org

2007 Working closely with Gund University Organist and Choirmaster Edward Elwyn Jones and consultant Jonathan Ambrosino, Gomes launches a $6 million restoration campaign that includes replacing the Opus 46 with a custom-made Fisk. "The good news is, we have all the money we need for a new organ," Gomes intones from the pulpit on the church's 75th anniversary. "The bad news is, it's still in your pockets!"

May 2010 C.B. Fisk Inc. finds a good home for the Opus 46 in Austin's Redeemer Presbyterian Church, which is now building a sanctuary for it. Fisk delicately extricates the instrument. And then there was light.

August 2010 Memorial Church still needs a second organ, one for its chapel. Ambrosino recalls a lovely antique Skinner he'd seen at a Christian Science church as a teen. Although the Connecticut congregation had relocated, he negotiates a sale with the help of the Yale University curators who had looked after its organ for 50 years. It is installed in Cambridge. 

June 2011 Choir members greet the truck delivering Fisk's new Opus 139, first with a hymn and then a work brigade. Services are canceled for the summer while Fisk technicians assemble the 16-ton instrument. Gomes, who died the previous February, never sees his dream completed.

September 2011 For the next seven months, Fisk experts work 10-hour days tuning more than 3,000 pipes. They range in length from a half inch to 32 feet. The front ones are sheathed in 22-karat gold leaf, per Gomes's insistence.

April 2012 The Charles B. Fisk and Peter J. Gomes Memorial Organ, Opus 139, debuts on Easter Sunday. Organist Christian Lane plays 14 pieces (including two composed for the occasion). We've "fulfilled what other organ builders tried to do over the decades," says Jones. "Having these two exquisite examples of American organ building really opens up how we make music in the church."

Kimberly French is a writer in Middleborough. Send comments to magazine@globe.com.

Eric
KB7DQH