Our organ need your help! |
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Dear Ascension friends,
Our 35 year-old organ is suffering multiple failures that need urgent repair. In April, brittle contacts for keys began breaking off and have been glued or nailed on a bit of wood pushed into place, with no warranty possible. Additional contacts are brittle and poised to break at any time. The organ has 2 (61-note) manual keyboards, and it is costing around $350 per individual band-aid repair. If we repair each contact individually as they domino, we will spend over $42,000 for short lasting, seat-of-your-pants solutions.
At the 2018 Easter Vigil service, the middle C contact on the Great broke and the sound would not stop. Eventually, we were able to stop the sound so the remainder of the organ could be used on Easter morning. Fortunately, the brass quartet saved our Easter music by supplementing what the organ could not provide. It has been a surprise that the repairs are holding, as they clatter loudly and are barely secure. As these types of repair are piecemealed, the cost is constant. Items not repaired allow for more limited sounds available, as the only recourse is to pull out pipes to stop the errant sound. The combination action for the entire organ has been inconsistent, and as of July 25, the Swell Division action no longer works at all.
St. Dunstan Organworks has proposed a contract for $8256 (price valid through July 31, 2018) to replace both manual keyboards and the combination action, including cabling and labor. The agreement includes a 10-year warranty for this project.
I recommend this course of action be pursued immediately and would like the congregation to show their support of the music program by donating to this endeavor. If we do not address these issues, the organ will have increasingly smaller resources available for supporting hymns and will eventually be useless. You can donate using the donate button above or by specifying organ repair in the memo line of your check.
Suzanne Anderson
Organist/Choirmaster
If you want to learn more about how our organ works keep reading!
We expect our organ to produce a consistent tone every Sunday. Our pipe organ is an important element in our worship services. The console, where an organist sits, is really the command center or cockpit. The organ is actually all those pipes.
Pipe organs provide an excellent sound that supports singing. When a piano or guitar is played, the sound begins to decay immediately. Organ pitches last the whole time a key is depressed. Organs are wind instruments: they produce sound by sending pressurized air (‘wind’) to the different size pipes. Electricity allows a continuous flow of wind to support its tones. Before electricity, every organist needed a ‘calcant,’ who pumped air bellow the entire time the organ was played. In earlier times, students were often paired together, so each one would pump for the other while practicing. This certainly caused organists to be judicious with their time! Today, wood artisans craft the ‘boxes’ where some pipes are housed. Our Swell pipes are in a ‘Swell box’ which has louvered doors that can be opened and closed for volume changes.
Pipes are not ‘born’ singing. Pipe makers make each pipe by hand. Pipes can be made of wood, zinc, copper, brass, and alloys of tin and lead. Each pipe produces one pitch, so pipes come arranged in ‘ranks.’ A rank is a set of pipes producing the same exact sound (ex: a flute or a trumpet) for every note. Our organ has 24 ranks/sets of pipes and has ‘direct electric action.’ This means when a key is pressed down, electromagnetic solenoids collapse, open a valve, and send air through a pipe. We have a 24-rank organ, which means we have around 3696 pipes.
A Voicer cuts a bit of brass (a ‘tongue’) and places it into a slot on each pipe where wind will flow over it to produce the frequency needed for each pitch. Organ companies have skilled craftspeople who understand physics, engineering, acoustics, music, art, and music history. Once completed, a new organ will be put together in a shop to be tested. It is then disassembled, transported to its new home and reassembled with a voicing touchup for its final home. Many hands work long months to produce a single organ.
We can trace the earliest pipe organs to the first century. There is one in the old Roman town in Budapest, Hungary. It is an hydraulis, a water powered hand-held organ. The organ went from there to becoming the most complex man-made device until telephone exchanges were invented in the late 19th Century.
Ascension purchased our 24-rank Gress-Miles organ in 1983. It has a full 32-note pedalboard and 2 61-key manuals (keyboards for the hands, the Great and the Swell). The combination action includes 10 general pistons and 6 for each division (Great, Swell, or Pedal). These allow the organist to push one button for a combination of sounds to be available. An organist playing without this feature available would need assistants to be at the ready during all playing.
Our organ is showing its age. First, some pipes have dried leather and holes have developed causing cyphers. Cyphers are air pushing through these holes and causing a pipe to sound continuously, until either releathered or the pipe is pulled out. Once a pipe is pulled, that note no longer sounds until it is replaced. We have several pulled pipes laying around inside the organ.
Our 35 year-old organ is suffering multiple failures that need urgent repair. In April, brittle contacts for keys began breaking off and have been glued or nailed on a bit of wood pushed into place, with no warranty possible. Additional contacts are brittle and poised to break at any time. The organ has 2 (61-note) manual keyboards, and it is costing around $350 per individual band-aid repair. If we repair each contact individually as they domino, we will spend over $42,000 for short lasting, seat-of-your-pants solutions.
At the 2018 Easter Vigil service, the middle C contact on the Great broke and the sound would not stop. Eventually, we were able to stop the sound so the remainder of the organ could be used on Easter morning. Fortunately, the brass quartet saved our Easter music by supplementing what the organ could not provide. It has been a surprise that the repairs are holding, as they clatter loudly and are barely secure. As these types of repair are piecemealed, the cost is constant. Items not repaired allow for more limited sounds available, as the only recourse is to pull out pipes to stop the errant sound. The combination action for the entire organ has been inconsistent, and as of July 25, the Swell Division action no longer works at all.
St. Dunstan Organworks has proposed a contract for $8256 (price valid through July 31, 2018) to replace both manual keyboards and the combination action, including cabling and labor. The agreement includes a 10-year warranty for this project.
I recommend this course of action be pursued immediately and would like the congregation to show their support of the music program by donating to this endeavor. If we do not address these issues, the organ will have increasingly smaller resources available for supporting hymns and will eventually be useless. You can donate using the donate button above or by specifying organ repair in the memo line of your check.
Suzanne Anderson
Organist/Choirmaster
If you want to learn more about how our organ works keep reading!
We expect our organ to produce a consistent tone every Sunday. Our pipe organ is an important element in our worship services. The console, where an organist sits, is really the command center or cockpit. The organ is actually all those pipes.
Pipe organs provide an excellent sound that supports singing. When a piano or guitar is played, the sound begins to decay immediately. Organ pitches last the whole time a key is depressed. Organs are wind instruments: they produce sound by sending pressurized air (‘wind’) to the different size pipes. Electricity allows a continuous flow of wind to support its tones. Before electricity, every organist needed a ‘calcant,’ who pumped air bellow the entire time the organ was played. In earlier times, students were often paired together, so each one would pump for the other while practicing. This certainly caused organists to be judicious with their time! Today, wood artisans craft the ‘boxes’ where some pipes are housed. Our Swell pipes are in a ‘Swell box’ which has louvered doors that can be opened and closed for volume changes.
Pipes are not ‘born’ singing. Pipe makers make each pipe by hand. Pipes can be made of wood, zinc, copper, brass, and alloys of tin and lead. Each pipe produces one pitch, so pipes come arranged in ‘ranks.’ A rank is a set of pipes producing the same exact sound (ex: a flute or a trumpet) for every note. Our organ has 24 ranks/sets of pipes and has ‘direct electric action.’ This means when a key is pressed down, electromagnetic solenoids collapse, open a valve, and send air through a pipe. We have a 24-rank organ, which means we have around 3696 pipes.
A Voicer cuts a bit of brass (a ‘tongue’) and places it into a slot on each pipe where wind will flow over it to produce the frequency needed for each pitch. Organ companies have skilled craftspeople who understand physics, engineering, acoustics, music, art, and music history. Once completed, a new organ will be put together in a shop to be tested. It is then disassembled, transported to its new home and reassembled with a voicing touchup for its final home. Many hands work long months to produce a single organ.
We can trace the earliest pipe organs to the first century. There is one in the old Roman town in Budapest, Hungary. It is an hydraulis, a water powered hand-held organ. The organ went from there to becoming the most complex man-made device until telephone exchanges were invented in the late 19th Century.
Ascension purchased our 24-rank Gress-Miles organ in 1983. It has a full 32-note pedalboard and 2 61-key manuals (keyboards for the hands, the Great and the Swell). The combination action includes 10 general pistons and 6 for each division (Great, Swell, or Pedal). These allow the organist to push one button for a combination of sounds to be available. An organist playing without this feature available would need assistants to be at the ready during all playing.
Our organ is showing its age. First, some pipes have dried leather and holes have developed causing cyphers. Cyphers are air pushing through these holes and causing a pipe to sound continuously, until either releathered or the pipe is pulled out. Once a pipe is pulled, that note no longer sounds until it is replaced. We have several pulled pipes laying around inside the organ.