To bring communities together through worship and music, and to celebrate creation through the medium of craftsmanship – is there any higher purpose in the world of organ building?
Stephen Bicknell
Choir & Organ Jan/Feb 2004

Trawling the Web one recent evening for anything amounting to a ‘philosophy of the organ’ ( which search turned up an earlier piece in this space – which I have now also rebutted – as well as ‘tonal philosophies’ from many builders of remote-control devices, though none from any maker of classical organs, who presumably feel their instruments can speak for themselves ), I came across the website of the Gorham Street Organ Co., of which one Steve Panizza is the proprietor. I don’t know anything about the man or his work, but some of his ideas – or, in some cases, simply some of his language – suggests an approach to the organ ( and the liturgy ) that stands apart from the mainstream in America today, and prompts important questions about the organ’s role in our society.

The organ as a place of engagement and invitation

¶ By definition, the chamber organ provides opportunities for engagement.

¶ ...the innate ability to invite a diverse set of musicians to participate in its use.

The small organ certainly has limitations ( and opportunities ) which invite complementation through collaboration; see below. But as a work of handicraft, with immensely attractive tactile and visual as well as aural qualities, it also has a distinct thingness which in itself invites exploration and creation.

This summer I had the opportunity to work with an Orgelkids kit. Here was the organ stripped down to its rudiments: two octaves, two ranks of pipes, with a rubbery action and a wind supply as excitable as the children ( and some adults ) tasked with managing it. It’s almost a toy – and people found it irresistible. Even I, the professional, immediately was prompted to wonder what I might do with it, what music I could make with it. In its immediacy, I found it more real, more musical, more satisfying than any electric-action device I have encountered: better a toy ( which invites play – the thing we do with a musical instrument, after all ) than a machine ( which condemns one to the drudgery of mere operation ).

Orgelkids may actually be too limited to make very much music with ( though see the profound artistry of Christophe Deslignes on the closely related organetto ), but some of the most interesting instruments I have heard in this country have been among the smallest. Each of those I have in mind has a compelling, natural, slightly rough-hewn voice ( and, I can say in the case of the one of these instruments I have played, an action ) that makes one want to make music with it – in both the sense of wanting to play it, and in the sense of wanting to play it in ensemble with others. Such instruments do engage and invite – and challenge both organist and organbuilder to maintain this sense of intimacy, directness, honesty as much as possible ( or at least not to abandon it too hastily ) when scaling up to larger circumstances.

The organ as a tool for making music

¶ I build a tool for music...

¶ ‘musician’s tool’

We usually call devices with which music is played ‘instruments’. Interestingly, while we think of musical instruments as expressive, elegant, even precious, means for creating art, the word ‘instrument’ in other contexts, though it may connote precision of manufacture and of result, most readily suggests a means of measurement or investigation rather than one of creation. Yet it’s by no means wrong – and is perhaps very right – to think of musical instruments in this way as well; for an instrument can and should indeed be a means of investigating, probing, experimenting with, music.

Conversely, we may think of ‘tools’ as being humbler than ‘instruments’ – but at the same time, tools are often used to create, or at least to improve, rather than simply to observe. Musical instruments, including organs, should likewise aid in the making of new art and craft, and in presenting existing work in the best light. Thinking of the organ as a tool might also helpfully remind us of the functional aspect of liturgical music and other arts:

A melodically developed chant melody... is ideally suited at delivering the actual sound and, through it, the cognitive meaning of any given liturgical text, which makes it an excellent tool for the all-important functions of prayer, doxology, education, edification, and evangelization in the course of liturgical worship.
Orthodox Arts Journal

Stephen Bicknell once called a particular lever swell mechanism ‘a real musician’s tool’ ( Choir & Organ Sep/Oct 2001 ). This suggests intimacy, neatness, simplicity, focus, real utility: the kind of device that, perhaps by long development and collective wisdom, has shed all extraneous elements and just works. Can we think of the organ in toto in this way?

Thinking ‘in terms of what it can do, not what it cannot do’

¶ What I’d like to see are those who understand [ the continuo organ ] as its own instrument.

¶ Please think of this...musician’s tool in terms of what it can do, not what it
cannot do.

¶ ...the organ as a unique and valid instrument

Many tools are fairly specialized, some more so than others. A good organ does certain things well; a different good organ might do slightly different things well; but an organ is not a piano, or an orchestra, or even a flute. A good organ has a palpable strength of personality, cognizant of strengths it need not boast of and weaknesses it does not apologize for. Others have made similar points, among them

The more specifically you build tracker organs, the better the chances for long-term success. If organists accept that not as a limitation but as a fact of artistic life, then this approach will succeed. Play the organ on its own terms.
     Gerhard Brunzema
     Gerhard Brunzema: His work and his influence

This [ in this case, meantone temperament and subsemitones, but one could substitute other particular features ] gives the instrument some very distinct possibilities – let us please not discuss ‘restrictions’... This is a very perfect and satisfying example of the modern organ builder’s art at its most refined and craftsmanlike. It is an effective and important example of a replica instrument used to identify an important moment in cultural history and bring it to light again.
     Stephen Bicknell
     reviewing the Grönlund replica of the c17 organ
     originally in the German Church, Stockholm
     Choir & Organ Jan/Feb 2006

Both the instrument and the music which has been composed for it have inherent limitations...These limitations, far from detracting, help to give identity and character.
     John Fesperman
     The organ as musical medium

A few years ago I spent a year playing a three-rank unit ‘organ’ while a renovation was undertaken in the parish I serve. One could hardly call it a musical instrument, let alone a beautiful one, but I resolved to approach it as seriously as I could – and I found that, in the end, not once did I feel limited in terms of the organ or choral repertory we could tackle. The instrument possessed certain tonal qualities which made it succeed in a purely functional sense – and giving it an unequal temperament lent it a modicum of color and character it would not otherwise possess, as well as occasionally inviting a choice to be made – but approaching it on its own terms rather than with, say, a lot of ideas about historical ‘authenticity’ ( for solo or sung repertory of whatever time, place, or style ) took us through more music than I ever imagined possible. The experience has taught me to listen much more closely to the actual sounds of the instrument I’m playing, to look much more closely at the music I’m playing, and to try to match the two much more closely ( even by rewriting certain passages ) – and, on the other hand, to know when to reject unidiomatic music entirely, or to opt for the piano or another means of realizing a musical work. If this rather poor instrument could teach this much about making music, what could a really fine one do?

The organ as a means of creating community and collaboration

¶ I build a tool for music, that tool then gets put in the hands of gifted musicians, and something great comes from that collaborative effort.

¶ I want to see how others use the [ continuo organ ] to interpret music and build community.

We often think of the organ as the least directly collaborative instrument, because many organs are so large and are not conveniently located for other musicians to be nearby. The large and especially the late- and post-Romantic instrument has also fostered the one-man-band image of a remote and perhaps superhuman player commanding ( or serving? ) an even more remote and inscrutable machine.

But the truly classical instrument is collaborative by definition, as all but
the smallest organs historically required someone besides the player to pump the bellows, and the largest can require one or more assistants to draw stops. ( A document describing the Italian positive at Notre Dame specifically mentions the ‘intimate musical experience’ shared by player and calcant, a sentiment echoed by Jon Liinason treading the bellows for Sander Booij at Kantens; videos from the organ loft at Saint-Sulpice, Paris, always show a significant gathering of assistants and onlookers.) As noted at the outset, Panizza suggests the very limitations of especially a small organ invite collaboration with and from other musicians. And it is already, as he points out, a collaboration between builder and player.

‘Develop a music program that conforms to the organ’, said Gerhard Brunzema in the same source quoted above.* Many would find this statement backwards and off-puttingly limiting, but I think it means, embrace the constraint of the given ( especially if it is of high quality ), and build upon and around it, and rejoice in the unique thing that develops in that particular circumstance as quality attracts and begets excellence. Panizza does not use the word ‘catalyst’, but I think this is something close to what he means. A really fine organ ( stewarded – along with the community which it serves – with creativity, intelligence, and care ) can be this very thing.

‘...liturgical space where people come together to build community within the art and performance going on around them’

Now, the complete sentence reads, ‘And like [ a particular coffee house under discussion ], the ideal location [ for a small organ ] might be a multi-use performance, art, or liturgical space where people come together to build community within the art and performance going on around them.’ And I have significant reservations about the concept of a ‘multi-use liturgical space’, unless the uses are all different forms of liturgy or paraliturgy.

But these reservations aside, I still want to ask: Can we imagine and create ‘liturgical space where people come together to build community within the art...going on around them’ – whether we take ‘space’ to mean a literal, physical place, or a definable event, context, place of interaction, sphere of activity, etc.? For the liturgy is an art, made up of many component arts. It should and does constitute a recognizable and definable ‘space’ in the metaphorical senses just listed. And the people who gather for liturgy should and do constitute a specific community with specific aims. It is time to create or rediscover this liturgical space, sacred space, ceremonial space within our society as a normal part of human life interacting or overlaid with others, characterized, like the best physical liturgical spaces, by both definition and openness. The organ can be a part of this recovery, not least by virtue of the fact that it often helps establish liturgical space-time by its presence and location and its ceremonial sonic gestures.

In the second quarter of the twenty-first century, with many seeming certainties of the twentieth well behind us, it behooves us to think deeply about the organ’s cultural location. The eclectic organ has moved into the modern concert hall, but it does not always find good use in that expensive, often fraught and perhaps even tenuous and, to many, forbidding space. The hyperorgan is a phenomenon perhaps more talked about than realized, so far confined to the fringe and perhaps or perhaps not actually related to the classical instrument. The replica organ, though it can be a very stimulating prompt, is mostly found, in this country, within the rather inaccessible walls of the academy – an academy now under attack, to boot. Panizza, by contrast, wants to take the chamber organ into less monumental community art and performance spaces – though these too can be the province of a certain elite.

What of the church organ? It, along with anything that could remotely be called traditional church music, seems unlikely to survive apart from the liturgical traditions, which themselves have a tenuous place in society for too many reasons to list here; even within those traditions, the organ, and a praxis which can truly be called liturgical, are on disturbingly shaky ground. Liturgy, liturgical music, and the liturgical organ today require a deep dig for bedrock, a renewed search for fundamental identity, purposes, and practices. The organ and organ culture that evince the approach outlined in this article will be found suitable to take part in this crucial spiritual work.

* Brunzema goes on:

Select something that you and the congregation are comfortable with and try to develop the choral literature to its fullest potential. Some people in North America say, ‘Oh, we can't do that – we have a large, broad literature at our disposal, and we have to include everything.’ All-inclusive art is not art at all. It is a contradiction in terms. It is not possible. Art is selection. It is preference for something.

That is, it is about making a commitment.