Kimmel Center Blog

Pipe organ aficionados, unite!

This could easily be the Kimmel Center’s rallying cry as we move ever closer to the debut of our magnificent pipe organ.
Yesterday evening, the media, members of the American Guild of Organists, the Kimmel Center’s dedicated organ committee, staff and volunteers got a preview of things to come as the Dobson Op. 76 organ was named in honor of the late Fred J. Cooper.

Mr. Cooper was a jeweler and organist in Philadelphia for many years. He passed on his love of music, and organ music in particular, to his daughter Chara Cooper Haas and to his grandson Frederick R. Haas, who happens to be the indefatigable chair of the Kimmel Organ Committee. In addition, Fred J. Cooper played the organ at the old Swedenborgian church at 22nd and Chestnut Streets. Major funding for The Fred J. Cooper Memorial Organ was provided by the Phoebe W. Haas Charitable Trusts and the Otto Haas Charitable Trust.

I have to confess upfront that I’m new to the whole pipe organ phenomenon, but I definitely agree with my colleague Paul Marotta that “you can only apply superlatives to this organ” – perhaps the largest concert hall organ in the country. It truly is “stupendous” (Paul, again) as technician and trained organist John Ourensma ably demonstrated as he took it through its paces during last night’s preview. Acclaimed organ designer and builder Lynn Dobson explained the progress of the construction. There’s more tuning and voicing to do and more pipes to be installed (we didn’t get to hear the highs and the lows yesterday), but come May 11th, it will be ready for its primetime debut, when the Philadelphia Orchestra will kick-off our two week organ festival.

We’re so knocked out about the dual action pipe organ Mr. Dobson has built that we created an entire public awareness campaign around it, Pipes for the People. Aficionados and novices alike are welcome to join the excitement, learn more about the pipe organ, purchase a pipe and become part of Philadelphia cultural history in the making. See you in May.

(P.S. The photo is by the KC's in-house photog: Evelyn Taylor.)

Wow is about all I can say. Not because I hadn't heard the instrument before this. But, having been so intimately involved in the process and having heard so much of it as it is being constructed, it was great for me to watch others hearing it for the first time.

The instrument speaks for itself. Even those who had no previous interest in all things organ, walked away extremely impressed at both the power and strength of the instrument, as well as it's extreme range and enormous variety of color and quality of sound.

Congratulations to Lynn Dobson and all his crew...May 11 should be a fantastic innaugural event...POA is playing both Poulenc and Saint Saens Organ Concertos with Notre Dame organist Olivier Latry led by Maestro Eschenbach!

I'm happy to see the organ being used in 2006-07. I am also happy to see that jazz people are using it as well. we had jazz players at the univ of Penn in the 1980s and it was great too! the more use the better i say!

The Kimmel Center Pipe Organ is here, let all the Earth Rejoice!

I am the Artistic Director of an emerging arts organization based in New York. The organization is called the Organ Renaissance Project.

The primary focus of the organization is to renew widespread interest in Classical Organs and their music by creating innovative, non-traditional performances with other areas of the performing arts. These perfromances would have at the center of them, an Organ. We are brand new, and will start small and hopefully grow large.

In order to understand why the Organ lost its high position in American Musical culture, people must understand that there was an actual movement led by Organists from around 1955 to 1980.

About The Organ Movement (aka Das OrgelBewegung--"orgal--bah--VAY---goong")
Headed by the late E. Power Biggs, this Neo-Baroque period was when many closed-minded principles were established in American Organ playing. For example, an Organ student in 1965 would have been repremanded for using the heels of their feet to play the organ's pedals, because that was not the way it had been done in the 1700's. Organists were discouraged from taking the liberty to interepret music with their own emotions. They were best off playing the notes on the scores with no feeling. Organs that were built during the early 1900's in the United States were considered to be bad examples of the "true" to the art of Organ Building. They felt that the only worthy Organs were those built to mimic organs played during the Baroque period of music.

These ideas were obscure to the masses of people that attended Organ Concerts regularly. The Organist they had gone to see was no longer playing with any emotion. They played with what was said to be "scholarly and correct". All of the beautiful pieces of Romantic and 20th Century music the audiences held dear to their hearts were no longer considered as valid additions to an Organists repertoire. Thus, the audiences declined in size. Consequently, most organists living today are products of The Organ Movement. Today is also when audiences at organ recitals are smaller than ever before. The lack of interest in the Organ and its music today among is the consequence of one movement started by one individual.

During the "Organ Movement" anyone who championed the Organ as a modern instrument were horribly chastized and frequently discredited. Of particular note is the late Organist Virgil Fox. Pianists had Liberace, Pop Music has Elton...the Organ had Virgil. Fox is often called the greatest American Organist that ever lived. He held close to his ideas of playing the organ in a modern fashion to appeal to the audiences of his time. His followers were often discredited because they were not "playing correctly" and were often on the receiving end of harsh criticism. Those following a more open-minded circle quickly started to refer to those following the Organ Movement as "Purists".

Today, when one mentions an Organ or its music to someone in the general public who is not a musician, the responses are almost always the same. They invision an elderly Caucasion individual that possesses poor musicianship, a negative attitude towards young people, and a closed-mind. This image is what has hurt organ music and caused the decline in its popularity. Sadly, because the effects of The Organ Movement are still present in those still living, it remains a very difficult task to restore the Organ's popularity using new and non-traditional performances. The organization I am director of will hopefully address this.

Imagine if a group of well-known singers with large audiences that specialized in singing music from the 1600's were to lead a movement to get all singers and opera companies to only perform music that was written in the 1600's and to perform it exactly as they did during the 1600's. That means no more Carmen, Tosca, La Boheme, or Aida.

Or, imagine is a famous symphony suddenly switched gears and started performing the symphonic music written during the Classical Period. That means no more Berlioz Fantastique, Stravinsky Firebird, or any other Romantic or Post Romantic pieces that people have grown to love.

What would happen? The patronage to those organizxations would quickly decline. And that folks, is what exactly happened to the Organ.

Even Leonard Raver, the former Organist for the New York Philharmonic was quoted in the NY Times in 1981 as saying "..The organ is facing a lot of problems rigth now...most of them have to do with Organists attitudes".

My best wished to the Kimmel Center in the Coming Weeks. Maybe I will bring my group there to do a rental performance.

D. Hines
Artistic Director
The Organ Renaissance Project

Indeed, for the pipe organ to survive, it must be played with emotion, like Grieg, Gershwin, or Chopin on the piano. But the best of the old technique is equally important, because one cannot get the "art" of great playing without the great agility of great technique. Hanon would look down approvingly.

It's also about time that the finest pipe organs of the concert/church genre be used for the "lighter" music of Leroy Anderson, Richard Rodgers, George Gershwin, Jerome Kern and the like.

Just wanted to share this preview of Cameron Carpenter's free organ concert at Trinity Church, Wall Street, NYC on July 5th. In this video he plays the theme from Raiders of the Lost Ark on Trinity's organ. Check it out at http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=trinitywallstreet (it's the first video listed) or at www.trinitywallstreet.org. Feel free to blog about it or link it to your own site!
Thanks!
Leah

I am looking for any information/data/articles on the renaissance of pipe organs to use in proposals for funding of a new organ we are installing in the new Chapel of our Christian liberal arts college.

Can anyone help?

Lori