Posted on 02/24/2006 6:00:12 PM PST by csvset
New organ gradually taking form
By Brenda Payton, Staff Writer
Inside Bay Area
LARRY MARIETTA, organist and music program director for First Congregational Church of Berkeley, had a confession to make.
"One night, a friend and I unpacked (the console), opened it up and looked at it. We tried to put the packing back, but it didn't look the same," he said, laughing. "I had to confess the next day."
Since the church's new organ, with 4,873 pipes, arrived last week, Marietta has been as antsy as a 6-year-old on Christmas Eve.
"The expectation is part of the exhilaration, especially when it arrives and you see the parts put together," Marietta said. "And the console arrives and you see what you will actually be playing. This one is particularly magnificent."
The console's exterior is dark oak; the interior, dark mahogany. It's built in the amphitheater style, with the draw knobs and switches arranged in terraces. The white keys are made from bone and the black keys from ebony.
"It's definitely different than playing plastic keys," Marietta said. "The bone allows you to move your finger on the key so there is a smoother line to the music moving from one note to the other."
The organ is still being assembled, a process that takes weeks.
It was built by Bynum Petty of Hopewell, N.J., who specified the dimensions, size and kind of pipes after visiting the church. It was then assembled in England by Pinels and Sharp, a world-renowned organ and high-end furniture maker. Several of their pieces are in palaces across Europe.
Once assembled, the organ was checked to ensure everything played and the electronics worked. And then it was taken apart.
"That's common with organ builders," Marietta explained. In pieces again, actually hundreds of thousandsof pieces that filled two shipping containers, it was shipped through the Panama Canal to Long Beach and trucked to Berkeley.
"The pipes range in size from the size of a pencil to 33.5 feet tall. A tree. Some pipes are so huge, a person can sit inside," Marietta said.
Wednesday, workers climbed scaffolding erected in the front of the sanctuary as they assembled the organ in the chamber. Pipes wrapped in sheets of white packing material were laid out on the seats of the pews or on the floor, marked with notations such as "16' ped pr" and "16 sub PR CCC."
Once the organ is assembled, the builder will adjust its "voice" by fine tuning the sounds of the pipes. Marietta said this builder is known for blending the unique sound quality of the pipes into a coherent ensemble tone.
If all goes according to plan, the Easter Sunday service will be the first time the organ is played for the public.
Already, organists from across the United States and Europe have inquired about making appointments to play the organ.
"It is unusual in this region," Marietta said. "Berkeley is the center for the baroque and neo-baroque organs. There is a huge collection at the university. They tend to emphasize the higher harmonics. Our organ will emphasize the lower."
The sound of the instrument depends on the kind of wood used, the thickness of the wood in the wood pipes and the blend and thickness of the metal in the metal pipes. Pine, ash, poplar maple and mahogany are used for the wood pipes. Tin, lead and zinc are the main three metals used.
"Each organ has a unique sound. No two are alike," Marietta said. "We were going for an American eclectic sound. France has a specific design. Germany has a specific one. Ours will have some German voicings, some French and some copies of early American builders. It is a mixture of the different schools of organ building in terms of the tonal sound."
The congregation started planning for the new organ almost 10 years ago, in 1997. The price tag came to more than $1 million.
"We don't want to keep it for ourselves. We want to share it with the community," Marietta said.
He hopes choruses that use organ accompaniment will use it. For the Fourth of July, he's planning a concert with a 40-piece brass band.
"That will be an awful lot of sound," he said.
He's also planning works for the organ and an orchestra. And anticipating the first time he plays it.
"It will be overwhelming to say the least."
First Congregational Church of Berkeley, 2345 Channing Way, will present its new organ Easter Sunday, April 16. The formal dedication recital, Dec. 3, will mark the church's 135th anniversary.
| D. ROSS CAMERON - Staff The pipes that will voice lower notes are obeche wood, from the mahogany family. The organ is scheduled for its debut Easter Sunday.
D. ROSS CAMERON - Staff
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D. ROSS CAMERON - Staff A worker wires one of the 27 wind chests that will power the organ, which will be the only one of its kind in the East Bay. |
That's a big organ.
I thought this was a evolution thread!
I thought is was a vanity post about someone else besides me hoping to get lucky on a Friday night.
Regards
alfa6 ;>}
I thought it was a dna sequence/genetic engineering/cloning thread...
While I appreciate the workmanship that is going into this project, I do believe they could have bought and fully restored an existing organ with the same bells and whistles for about 1/4 the cost. A lot of old churches have these magnificent old organs and cannot afford to restore them.
I don't know about that P-Marlowe. Some spaces for an organ are limited and require a custom (new) system.
My own church in the Washington DC area has been considering moving (we're busting at the seams) for a long time, but hasn't found a good spot to move to yet. In light of that we needed an organ that could be moved, once installed. Our original organ was falling apart. The new pipe organ too was something close to (or over?) 1 million...raised by seperate funding than the normal church tithe budget. It's a very wealthy church, but the fundraising for the organ took many years. I was opposed to such an expensive thing to begin with (as an electronic organ...with EXACT sounds of a real pipe organ would be a fraction of the cost of the real thing) but now that it's there, it really is magnificent. Our organist is one of the best on the East Coast too...play's complicated Bach fugues as if he's just playing around.
Anyway, nowadays I think it was worth it. Since our whole budget is several million a year anyway...and a huge portion of that is in missions--the organ didn't take away from our main mission, the gospel, rather has enhanced it.
You can duplicate the "sound" of a pipe organ, but you can never, no matter how good your speakers are, you can NEVER duplicate the "feel" of a pipe organ. A good pipe organ will vibrate your whole body with undertones and overtones that no speaker can duplicate, and that your ears will never hear.
BTW, what did you guys do with the old organ? I have this terrible feeling that you traded it in.
The cost of our organ was about $80,000.
All in all, it was a fascinating experience.
A neighbor of ours used to own a Hardware store and lumber yard in Stockton... with a Theater Pipe Organ in it. It had 6000 pipes up to 32 feet, drums, cymbals, glockenspiel, marimba, harp, Piano, and a host of other sound effects instruments. He used to play it for his hardware store customers on a regular basis.
Coincidentally with this article, his organ came out of a grand movie palace in Oakland!
After our neighbor retired and closed his lumberyard, he sold the organ to a fellow that opened a Pizza parlor and installed about half of the organ in his parlor. I am sorry to report that when the pizza parlor failed to return the profits he wanted, he had an "accidental" fire that destroyed the parlor and organ. The owner was caught in the arson... because he sent the employees home early after telling them wouldn't have jobs tomorrow. The fire started about 45 minutes later. I mourned the loss of that organ.
Another interesting pipe organ is in Scotty's Castle in Death Valley... it is a "player" organ that can play itself from paper tapes.
Do you know if Joan Kake is still playing organs in the Washington area? She moved there after getting our organ built when her lawyer husband took a job with the government. She was/is a fantastic organist.
Yes, if you want something adequate for congregational singing. If you want an instrument built for the room and plan on "concert evangalism" you need one custom built. Our church is in the process of having an organ built, and has donated the old one to another church. The old one was good enough for my ears, but the experts at church weren't happy with the sound.
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