Author Archives: agobost

King’s Chapel

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King's Chapel

King’s Chapel

King’s Chapel opened in 1689 as the first Anglican church in Boston, Peter Harrison’s larger granite building replacing the original wooden structure by 1754. The planned steeple remains a good intention. Firmly loyalist at the American Revolution, defections steadily reduced attendance until March 10, 1776, when Reverend Henry Caner packed up the church silver and headed for Halifax. James Freeman, lay reader at the re-opened church by 1782, embraced Unitarianism with a fervor that prompted the Episcopal bishop to refuse his ordination. Undaunted, pew owners ordained Freeman themselves, establishing the first Unitarian church in America. Prominent King’s Chapel musicians have included William Billings, William Selby, Virgil Thomson, and Daniel Pinkham. A bell cast by Paul Revere still peals out on Sunday mornings. Those accustomed to contemporary patterns of Unitarian-Universalist worship might not recognize the Sunday morning goings-on here, conforming as they do more to Anglican patterns.

 

The organs of King’s Chapel read like a nutshell history of American organ-building. The first instrument, the famous English-built “Brattle” organ, ended up at King’s after its first parish rejected the instrument on theological grounds. With the new building came a second instrument, in 1756, from London builder Richard Bridge. A century later, in 1860, it was time for a third organ, this time by Simmons & Willcox, who reused much Bridge material. John Henry Willcox favored innovation, best seen here in placing the sixteen-foot chorus reed in the Swell rather than the Great. The fourth organ, from Hook & Hastings in 1884, was a straightforward affair resembling dozens of its contemporaries.

 

Ernest Skinner’s 1909 instrument swept aside the old, introducing electric action, duplexing, thumb pistons, and orchestral pretensions, all clothed in an elegant Georgian Revival case-front. Aeolian-Skinner made revisions in 1946, a foretaste of the building’s sixth instrument, installed by Charles Fisk in 1963. The first three-manual tracker built in the United States in the twentieth century, it re-used several old ranks and Fisk designed a case that dared to look old but not slavishly so. Undaunted by the absence of any acoustical ambience, Fisk returned later to switch around a few stops and install reeds made in his own shop.

C.B. Fisk, Inc. Opus 44, 1964

C.B. Fisk, Inc. Opus 44, 1964

C.B. Fisk, Inc. Opus 44, 1964

Houghton Chapel, Wellesley College

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Houghton Chapel, Wellesley College

Houghton Chapel, Wellesley College

 

Wellesley College, an undergraduate liberal arts college for women founded in 1875, lies twelve miles west of Boston on five hundred acres of wooded hills and meadows surrounding Lake Waban. Laid out by Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. under supervising architect Ralph Adams Cram, the campus is celebrated for its idyllic beauty. A 182-foot tower dominating the academic quadrangle contains a carillon installed by Gillett & Johnston in 1931. Heins & La Farge, authors of the original plan for New York’s Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, designed Houghton Chapel in 1897 in a curiously squat neo-Gothic style. Noteworthy features include sculpture by Daniel Chester French and stained glass by John La Farge, Tiffany Studios, and Charles J. Connick. Next door, the façade of the College’s first music building bears an unmistakable resemblance to the organ case at Methuen Memorial Music Hall, both designed by Hammatt Billings.

 

George Hutchings installed his Opus 451 here in 1898, a three-manual organ. Its replacement, a sizeable 1936 Aeolian-Skinner, was meant to follow in the wake of G. Donald Harrison’s sweeping statements at Groton School and Church of the Advent, with an orthodox stoplist, low pressures, and concern for mild clarity. Unfortunately, Houghton Chapel lacked not only the unenclosed Positiv but also the good chambers and supportive acoustics of the other two situations, and the instrument never commanded a similar regard. In the 1960s, local builder Conrad Olson extensively re-voiced the manual flue choruses and revised the Swell mixtures.

 

The Fisk organ in the gallery, that firm’s Opus 72, is the last to have been finish-voiced by Charles Fisk himself. It continues to be among his most fascinating works. Expressly informed by early Dutch instruments, with certain stops modeled after the famous Compenius organ at Frederiksborg Castle, the Wellesley organ took shape slowly, with discussion beginning in 1972, research trips undertaken in 1974 and 1977, and the organ inaugurated in 1981. It was the first major American instrument tuned in meantone, which, coupled to the organ’s key action (with sub-semitones) and wind system (the organ can be foot-pumped), opened a new sound horizon for performing Dutch and German music of the pre-Bach era. The energy and vision of Owen Jander brought about the completion of aspects left prepared in 1981. The Pedal Posaune and carvings were installed in 1983 and the Brustpedalia in 1987, and the case oiled and gilded in 1992.

Houghton Chapel Wellesly College

C.B. Fisk, Inc. Opus 72, 1982

The Memorial Church, Harvard University

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The Memorial Church, Harvard University

The Memorial Church, Harvard University

Harvard had a distinct chapel as early as 1744, its location changing regularly until Appleton Chapel settled into the present site in 1858. Though long outgrown, it was not replaced until 1932, when Coolidge, Shepley, Bulfinch & Abbott, successors to H.H. Richardson, erected the present structure as a war memorial. The ponderous columns of the porch announce a prosperous, well-fed neo-Georgian style, a suitable counterweight to the bulk of Widener Library and Richardson’s masterful Sever Hall across the Yard.

 

Aeolian-Skinner’s Opus 886, designed and finished by G. Donald Harrison, had 120 ranks with seventeen more and a large gallery section prepared for. While meant to be a pace-setter of orthodoxy, with complete flue and reed choruses on all manuals and pedal, its English bent and smothering chambers yielded a tone more Beef Wellington than Dover Sole, not unlike the chaste-in-principle but plump-in-result architecture.

 

When Charles B. Fisk (Harvard ’49) turned his attention to The Memorial Church, he hoped to install an organ in the gallery. Overruled by no less than Harvard President Nathan Pusey, the new Fisk Opus 46 took root at the head of Appleton Chapel in front of the Palladian window, from where its tone hoped to claw its way past the heavy screen and into the main church. The first four-manual American tracker organ built in the twentieth century, its disposition reflected the conditions at hand: a strong-toned Great and Positive on top, softer Swell and Choir down low for daily use. Opus 46 won over its players perhaps more than audiences, however, and in time came to be seen as compromised as its predecessor.

 

The two organs now in The Memorial Church reflect lessons from the first two instruments. A recycled 1930 three-manual Skinner, re-engineered and reconditioned by Foley-Baker, Inc., was installed in the chapel chambers; what once contained 120 ranks now have forty-five. This instrument leads daily Morning Prayers (voluntary, hymn, choral selection) and is occasionally heard in recital. The 2012 gallery Fisk, housed in a case of nineteenth-century antecedent with brilliant gilt façade, has forty-three independent registers and a tonal scheme in that builder’s modern eclectic style. Ingeniously engineered into a limited space, the organ speaks directly into the church to lead Sunday worship, for which the choir joins it in the gallery.

 

 

 

 

Harvard SkinnerSkinner Organ Co., Opus 793, 1930

Foley-Baker, Inc. – 2012, restoration, re-engineering

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

C.B. Fisk Opus 139, 2012

C.B. Fisk Opus 139, 2012

 

C.B. Fisk Opus 139, 2012

Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church

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Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church

Harvard-Epworth United Methodist Church

The new-yet-old Richardsonian Romanesque style of Boston’s Trinity Church launched a tsunami of imitation in courthouses, post offices, prisons, libraries, department stores, and churches across the land. Architects Cutter and Bishop of Worcester understood what Richardson was about better than many, completing Harvard-Epworth in 1893. Its original amphitheater-style seating plan was shifted ninety degrees in the 1940s, when a suspended ceiling was also committed, the latter lingering until the 1990s. Much fine original woodwork remains to be admired.

Church of the Covenant

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Church of the Covenant

“We have one steeple in Boston that to my eyes seems absolutely perfect,” wrote Oliver Wendell Holmes of Church of the Covenant’s spire. Built between 1865 and 1867 as Central Congregational Church by architect Richard M. Upjohn (son of the Upjohn of Trinity Wall Street fame), the church merged with First Presbyterian Church in 1931. Louis Comfort Tiffany carried out an extensive remodeling of the sanctuary in 1894, incorporating an immense lantern exhibited at Chicago’s Columbian Exposition of 1893, its seven angels of the Apocalypse clasping orbs illuminated by the new technology of electricity. Forty-two windows demonstrate Tiffany’s mastery of the painterly effects made possible by opalescent glass. Islamic-inspired mosaics and motifs add to the overall impression of gloomy splendor.

 

Welte pipe organs are a rare species, the name being more associated with self-playing pianos and orchestrions. American-built Welte organs come from the short period 1925 to 1931, manufactured by firms unaffiliated with the original German firm. Boston’s Welte is distinguished by the involvement of Richard Whitelegg, a Willis-trained voicer who emigrated in 1925 and was associated with M.P. Möller from 1931 until his death, in 1944. Placed in two widely separated chambers, Great and Choir are on the right, Swell and Solo on the left, with Pedal voices in each chamber. Charles Courboin, organist at Wanamaker’s in Philadelphia and tonal adviser to Welte, dedicated this instrument in 1929.

 

The organ underwent various tonal changes typical of the 1960s, coming to fresh notice in the 1970s, when Nelson Barden linked up a Welte player to recreate historic roll performances. In 2000, Austin Organs, Inc. rebuilt the organ with Spencer Organ Company as principal subcontractor. While not a restoration, the project was undertaken in a sympathetic manner that preserved all existing Welte material, including Boston’s only diaphone.

 

Covenant OrganWelte-Tripp, Opus 287, 1929

Austin Organs, Inc. – 2000, rebuilding

Christ Church, Cambridge

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Christ Church, Cambridge

Established in 1759 by Cantabrigians weary of the long trek to King’s Chapel by carriage and ferry, Christ Church is also the work of noted colonial architect Peter Harrison. Loyal to the Crown, the church’s closure became inevitable by 1774. Martha Washington did her best, organizing a service at which prayers for the King’s enlightenment were offered, but a destructive riot during a re-opening for a single funeral in 1778 proved decisive. Not until 1829 did finances recover sufficiently to hire a rector. Lengthened by two bays, in 1857, and tricked out in Victorian garb, its Georgian sensibilities were restored by 1920, in time for E. Power Biggs’ arrival in 1932. An award-winning restoration began in 2011.

 

Since 1879, when Sunday school teacher Theodore Roosevelt was dismissed because he was not Episcopalian, Christ Church has evolved into a well-known center for ecumenism and social activism. It hosted Martin Luther King, Jr. and Benjamin Spock for a press conference to denounce the Vietnam War when neighboring Harvard University declined.

 

Like many Churches of England in the Colonial era, Christ Church started out with organs from England. The 1762 Snetzler met a quick fate when its pipes were melted down to make Revolutionary bullets. Not until 1845 did a new organ arrive, from George Stevens, though soon replaced in 1860 by a larger one from William B.D. Simmons. In 1877, this instrument was moved into a chamber at the front of the church, where it was found lacking, as was its 1883 successor from Hook & Hastings. In early 1941, Aeolian-Skinner completed a forty-eight-rank, three-manual organ in a new chamber; its four-manual console anticipated a never-built eighteen-rank, two-manual gallery section. The strong ideas of consultant Ernest White (of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin in New York, and later tonal director of M.P. Möller) were in evidence, from the paucity of wooden pipes, profusion of tapered registers, and twenty ranks of upperwork. But this light-toned, driven organ was no match for its thin-walled unhelpful chamber; not even an artificial reverberation system of 1959 helped.

 

The 2006 Schoenstein is the first pipe organ in this forbidding acoustic to put practicality and principle on an even footing. The organ’s high pressures and undaunted volume transcend a chamber now rebuilt with more density and mass. Near total enclosure (seven registers doubly so) and neo-orchestral ideals offer the player a broad palette of color. The console, initially located on the right, near the case, was moved to a central pit in  2013.

 

The rear-gallery organ, on long-term loan from Harvard University, was built in London by William Gray in 1805, and restored in 1998 by Wissinger Organs.

 

Christ Church Cambridge  Schoenstein & Co., Organ Builders, Opus 149, 2006

 

 

The Church of the Advent

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The Church of the Advent

The Church of the Advent

Founded in 1844 to bring the liturgical reforms of the eleven-year-old Oxford Movement to America’s shores, The Church of the Advent immediately garnered both converts and controversy for the cause of Anglo-Catholicism. On his first visit, the Bishop of Massachusetts was so offended by the presence of a cross and candlesticks on the altar that he vowed never to return unless they were removed (they were not, he did). John Sturgis designed a church perfectly attuned to High Church liturgy and music, derived from English models and blessed with a fine acoustic. Since its consecration in 1892, the parish has devoted considerable resources to a music program, including an eighteen-voice professional choir that performs some sixty Mass settings and 150 anthems and motets per year.

Since 1883, the Advent has known only two organs: its original and perhaps forgettable Hutchings-Plaisted, and its pacesetting and much-revered 1936 Aeolian-Skinner. Together with its sister Aeolian-Skinner at Groton School, the Advent organ was the first to encapsulate G. Donald Harrison’s fully mature concepts of tonal design and voicing: entirely straight stoplist, low pressures, unenclosed Positiv, and emphasis on flue choruses rather than on reed as the dominating tonal ingredient. (Its stoplist was such a break from the usual Anglo-American affair, few people noticed it contained neither harp nor chimes.) After minor changes in 1941 and 1950, the flue choruses were revoiced to be brighter, louder, and more articulate in 1964, with several flutes being rebuilt or replaced. Nelson Barden undertook much important mechanical restoration from 1978 to 2005; tonal restoration from 2005 forward, by Jonathan Ambrosino, has reversed the most obvious work of 1964. While created as much with organ literature as accompaniment in mind, the organ’s layered choruses and mixtures provide a subtle and sophisticated accompanimental partner to the professional choir, and more than anything its tutti recalls the multi-mixtured, nineteenth-century English organs of Willis, Lewis, and Hill.

 

Church of the AdventAeolian-Skinner Organ Co., Opus 940, 1936, 1964

Nelson Barden Associates, Inc. – 1978-2000, mechanical restoration
Jonathan Ambrosino – 2007, tonal restoration

 

 

First Lutheran Church of Boston

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First Lutheran Church of Boston

First Lutheran Church of Boston

Founded in 1839 as the German Lutheran Society, First Lutheran is affiliated with the Missouri Synod and is the oldest such congregation in New England. Outgrowing earlier buildings of 1847 and 1899 in Boston’s South End, the church experienced rapid growth when English replaced German in its services in the early twentieth century. The present Back Bay building was designed between 1954 and 1957 by Pietro Belluschi, dean of the MIT School of Architecture until 1965, known for his work on New York’s Pan Am building and Alice Tully Hall, and on the symphony halls of Baltimore and San Francisco. First Lutheran’s graceful roof floating over a red-brick coffer makes an elegant case for integrating a Modernist building into a staunchly Victorian neighborhood.

 

In the 1960s and ’70s, Boston-area churches commissioned so many instruments from first-generation tracker-revival builders (Fisk, Andover, Noack, Flentrop, Rieger) that later firms are less well-represented. Richards, Fowkes & Co.’s Opus 10, of 2000, was a welcome addition, a compact and uncompromising essay in a hybrid Dutch-North German style particularly suited to the music of Bach and his forebears. With suspended mechanical key action and Kellner temperament, the organ speaks with resonant authority into a buoyant acoustic. The historically modeled case is as confidently anachronistic in Belluschi’s mid-century church as the church itself is nestled alongside Marlborough Street’s row houses. Three stops prepared in 2000—Vox Humana, Schalmey, Cornet—were installed in 2010 to celebrate the organ’s tenth anniversary.

 

 Richards, Fowkes & Co., Opus 10, 2000

First Church, Cambridge

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First Church, Cambridge

The location of Harvard University was partially determined by the desire for proximity to the original First Church in Cambridge, its congregation gathered in 1636. The Massachusetts Constitution, the world’s oldest in continuous use, was drafted in the fourth meeting house in 1779. Tensions between liberals and conservatives resulted in a split between Unitarian and Congregationalist factions by 1830. The sixth and present red granite structure, by Abel Martin, was dedicated in 1872. Gaze atop the steeple for a glimpse of a gilded rooster weather vane carried from church to church since 1721.

 

When Frobenius installed a twelve-stop organ at Queens College, Oxford in 1962, its elegant case, spare voicing, and obvious craftsmanship inspired a generation of English builders—much as the 1958 Flentrop at the Busch-Reisinger Museum did for New England builders. When the Cambridge Frobenius arrived in 1972, its place in the continuum made it more of a follower than setter of trends. Its logic and polish were immediately evident, however. The multi-flatted case, like sails on a schooner, was by now then Frobenius trademark; the organ itself is meticulously engineered, with pipes planted on the windchests exactly as they appear in the façade. Frobenius returned in 1995 to furnish new stop and combination actions.

 

Th. Frobenius & Sønner, Opus 765, 1972 Th. Frobenius & Sønner, Opus 765, 1972

First Church in Boston

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First Church in Boston

First Church in Boston

Established in 1630 by the founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony, and expanding to Second Church in 1649, this was the church of the Mather family, John Winthrop, Paul Revere, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. The two congregations merged in 1970, commissioning Paul Rudolph’s Brutalist building of striated concrete in 1972 after fire destroyed most of an 1867 building by Ware and Van Brunt, architects of Harvard’s Memorial Hall. Outside, a vast copper roof cajoles unity from building elements old and new. A liturgical Cabinet of Dr. Caligari awaits inside, skylights illuminating dramatic angles of every description except right. In 2012, the congregation gave up on Rudolph’s deep outdoor amphitheater—even dead leaves seemed uncomfortable in it—entombing it under a welcome patch of sod. Former organists at First Church include composers Whitney Eugene Thayer and Arthur Foote, and the Chicago-born William E. Zeuch, who joined the Skinner Organ Company in 1917 and worked there until 1955.

 

Modern Movement in appearance and tone, the 1972 Casavant comes from that firm’s second decade of twentieth-century tracker organ construction. Though now under the leadership of Gerhard Brunzema, the stoplist follows a style established in the 1960s by Lawrence Phelps, while the case design recalls the asymmetrical, multi-front style popularized by Frobenius, as seen at First Church, Cambridge.

 

First Church in Boston  Casavant Frères, Opus 3140, 1972