How to Build a Pipe Organ: Visiting Taylor & Boody Organbuilders > PART 1 of 6
Since about the age of fourteen, I’ve been fascinated by the history of keyboard instruments, harpsichord, clavichord, organ, and piano. When I was fifteen, I assembled a harpsichord kit and without any special permission went after school to the workshop of George Wilson, who was working behind the scenes in Colonial Williamsburg in preparation to setting up the public Musical Instrument Maker’s shop. George was building a copy of a 1770's Kirckman single-manual harpsichord to be used in the Music Teachers shop. Just standing around watching Goerge work- whose work has been criticized as “too perfect” was a once in a lifetime education. It was in George;’s shop that I began to understand the essential connection between design and craft that shaped my architectural thinking and of course, to be able to distinguish levels of craftsmanship.
Over the years I’ve visited quite a few harpsichord and clavichord makers’ shops in the US, England, France, and Italy, but when a friend mentioned there would be an open house at the pipe organ builders who had made a pipe organ for his home, I jumped at the chance to peer into that world where a musical instrument is the size of a house, has several thousand precision mechanical, electrical, structural, acoustic, and decorative parts in wood, metal, leather: fabricated, cast, and finished. Think of building a small ship but with the precision of a watch. From the 11th until the 19th Century, pipe organs were the most complex precision machines made in any number.
Even more interesting to me, the pipe organ builders in question, Taylor & Boody Organbuilders, located in Staunton, Virginia, build pipe organs employing the traditional mechanical “tracker” action. Tracker action was used for the first 700-800 years of organ history until it was mostly supplanted by pneumatic and electrical action, which is far easier to connect to distant pipes.
I drove to Staunton on May 12th to meet him and finally see organ building in it’s native habitat. The occasion of the open house was the public presentation of a work in progress, Opus 74, a three-manual (keyboards) plus pedal, tracker for the St. Paul University Catholic Center in Madison, Wisconsin:
http://taylorandboody.com/opus_pages...o_gallery.html
Creating, controlling the air pressure, and delivering the air pressure by a mechanical linkage to the intended pipe(s) that may be at a considerable and complex x, y, and z distance from the player requires a complex system:
Tracker action diagram.jpg
The key lever is connected to a rod (tracker) that pulls a lever attached to a rod called a roller so that it rotates a series of transverse rod (rollers) that transfers the action longitudinally. That may operate another lever at 90 degrees to again transfer motion to a rod that operates vertically. An additional lever vertical rod then pull open the pallet, the valve that allows the air to pressurize the pipe so that it sounds. Of course, an air pressure system can not have leakage and This mechanical system of control, a “tracker action” “trackers” requires careful calculation / design of the force/leverage of the tracker action and the construction necessitates extremely low tolerance in the control system. If there is friction in the system and the leverage is not properly calculated, the action is heavy and has a sluggish response. Also, thishas to be durable to hundreds of thousands of operations: if this action becomes worn, it can become quite noisy.
Behind the keyboards of Taylor & Boody Opus 74 showing the complexity of this kind of action:
T&B_OP74_Trackers rollers KB sys_P1050639_5.12.18.jpg
Tracker action reached a level of very high refinement in the late 17th Century in German and Holland as did the acoustic refinement of pipes into categories of sounds that produce a particular effect and contribute to ensemble/combination sounds. It is a truism to state that the organ compositions of Buxtehude and J.S. Bach would not have possible if there were no instruments on which it was possible to play them
Silbermann organ 2.jpg
Gottfried Silbermann
Schnittger organ.jpg
Arp Schnittger
^ As Baroque as it gets!
There is a particular sensation to a tracker action as there is a direct mechanical feedback when the pallet opens the windchest air pressure to the pipe. This is not unlike the sensation of a harpsichord when the plectra plucks the string- the player knows by touch when the the note will sound. Likewise, if one presses a piano key very slowly, it’s possible to sense the escapement triggering. A tracker action has a sort of a very precise over-center feeling as if operating a very smooth lever-action latch and all the feedback through the direct mechanical linkage gives provides a sense of accurate control.
T&B_OP74_Tracker rollers DET_P1050635_5.12.18.jpg
I played a particular 18th C. organ quite a few times in England, and then when taking lessons on a large modern organ with 4 manuals and then 90+ ranks, now 105 (Aeolian Skinner), I enjoyed the extensive range of sounds, but the modern organ in my view, loses something with electric action- that sensation of precise control. Tracker action requires somewhat more effort, and a different hand position, but it was addictive once familiar with the particular instrument. I certainly never mastered the technique by any stretch, but it’s possible to quickly appreciate the potential artistic advantages. Once I’d spent time with a tracker action, modern electric action seemed a bit indistinct- mushy-not providing as much sense of when it would sound; there was a sense of control latency. In all the keyboard instruments I’ve played, harpsichord, clavichord, organ, piano, and synthesizer, an extreme lightness of touch- within reason, is not as desirable as a secure sense of control.
Fortunately, parallel with the 1960's trend of period harpsichord building evolved from straight copying to highly refined instruments that delved the historic makers’ and composers’ intentions as to the sound, playing characteristics, and design/style, with such makers as Martin Skowroneck, William Hyman, Frank Hubbard, and William Dowd coincided with a similar trend in organ building and the tracker was back on track with builders such as Fritz Noack, C.B. Fisk, and Casavant Frères.
Taylor & Boody Organbuilders is located west of Staunton, Virginia, which is west of Charlottesville, Virginia.
https://visitstaunton.com/
Staunton’s setting is in the Shenadoah Mountains, not far from the Skyline Drive scenic parkway. And for a town of 24,000, not too near a large city, it’s a pleasant surprise to learn that there is a Presidential Library - Woodrow Wilson was born there, there is Mary Baldwin University, and the American Shakespeare Center, performs Shakespeare six days a week, for fifty-one weeks per year. Small towns with universities always seem to strike a good balance of cultural opportunities and bit more worldliness. I saw a slightly eccentric, quasi-comic rendition of MacBeth and also had one of the best Indian meals I’ve had in a long while. Plus, having a maker of tracker action organs, requiring a rare combination of scholarship, engineering, aesthetic sense, craft and business skills, in my view is another good sign of civic health- a level of positive, creative, and artistic environment.
Taylor & Boody was founded in 1977 by George Taylor, who studied with Rudolph von Beckerath and John Boody,who had worked with Fritz Noack after a 1970-1977 collaboration with John Brombaugh in Middletown, OH. Both Rudolph von Beckerath in Hamburg, Germany and Fritz Noack in Georgetown, MA. were early exponents of the tracker organ revival.
Whereas harpsichord builders have started out in a garage-sized workshop with very few specialized tools, organizing an organ building firm is complex and needs from the to start as a fairly large-scale process. First, one needs the vast skill set to design, build, and implement large and complex individually crafted systems, requiring a long devotion to study and analysis of historic instruments, understanding the aesthetic decisions that shape the instruments to the intended musical use, craft skills as well as the business and social components, clients with the resources to buy the instruments, a very large workshop with the necessary space, a vast array of tools both hand and powered having a wide range in scale, to dimension fabricate and finish components in every category and scale from tiny and huge, simple to complex at high precision: in wood and metal both cast, fabricated, and machined, and then assembling and refining a wide scale on instruments from a positive organ that could go in a small chapel, chamber or continuo organ for concert use, to an instrument for a house as was done for my friend, to a house-sized cathedral organ, and including sculptural and or painted decoration. < That is the most succinct description of organ building I could manage, but is still skipping over the parts of the work that is fundamental and prerequisite to all to it,.
Taylor & Boody is properly housed and equipped off to the west of Staunton, Virginia a few miles and housed in a converted 1920's Colonial /Federal style school building. This setting in rolling hills with distant mountain views and in this very civilized building out in a farming country-side seems to be a perfect working environment. The only workshops I’ve visited as inspiring in space and light are the ones in Colonial Williamsburg.
This is a large rear gallery organ having some elements corresponding to the works of Arp Schnitger and perhaps moreso of Gottfried Silbermann, who was an almost exact contemporary of J.S. Bach. I might incur the wrath of more knowledgeable organ enthusiasts when I over-simplify the general characterization of Schnitgers as having a kind of clean, articulate power and Silbermann’s as more refined and singing having to a wider range of contrasting voice-types. Contrapuntal music has one set of requirements, but as musical lines became longer, more vertical- chords, and the music introduces more expressive qualities, the voices interact differently. A concert hall instrument will oten by “synphonic”, and include stops- sounds- that are 18th C. German .Dutch s That makes the Silbermann approach in general more versatile over a wider range of musical styles. There are organs that are grouped together as “romantic”, adapted to the needs of the highly textured music of the ate 19th century, particularly in France and “symphonic” instruments that attempt capability to play music from every period and of every scale, intimate to well, symphonic.
I find I’m very sympathetic to the Taylor & Boody approach to specification of every organ in the T&B catalog that I’ve seen. The specification of organ stops is an essential art that is akin to designing a new, highly versatile orchestra every time, but focusing on retaining a particular character, a personality and suiting the exact use and location. I’ve designed a lot of houses, that have in some ways similar design parameters, but these did not have to correspond to the needs of music from c.1500 to 2018, and be made as precisely as a chronograph watch, plus accomplish the voicing and tuning of thousands of parts voiced, and tuned to act as an ensemble.
Immediately entering into the main T&B assembly workshop- originally the basketball court of the school, the product becomes evident:
T&B_OP74_Facade_P1050668_5.12.18.jpg
Taylor & Boody Opus 74 in progress
If I mention that this photo of Opus 74 was made with a 24mm lens and I could only photograph about 2/3 of the width, that will make obvious the size of this instrument. The center section of the roof is raised to accommodate the height.
It must be clear already how difficult and complex organ design and construction is and if I show you the engine room of Opus 74, that will drive home the point:
T&B_OP74_Structure Bellows_Back_P1050611_5.12.18..jpg
The visitors standing nearby provide a sense of the scale.
At the lower left are the bellows, originally foot or arm lever-powered, and today by electric blowers. The wind supply of Opus 74 will be housed in a separate room to avoid noise. The windchests of some organs are referred to as “walk in” and the world’s largest organ Convention Hall, Atlantic city N.J, is said to have the wind supplied by eight blowers totaling 600HP.
Taylor and Boody use a well-thought out mixture of the traditional- the tracker action, pipe, and case design, and where it makes engineering and working efficiency sense: modern materials, tools, and components.
For example, the tracker rods, which are traditionally bars of wood are here carbon fiber- extremely rigid, amazingly lightweight, and immune to warping or swelling /shrinking. These characteristics will all contribute a light, precise, and stable action.
Also, the stop control- which moves sliding registers that expose the pallets- hinged flaps to the pressurized air so to enable a set to pipes to sound- are controlled by solenoids that can accomplish this very quickly and with low effort, In this mechanism, as opposed to the keyboard there is no usefulness in having a “feel” to the control- the critical factor is speed.
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