Practical Organ-Building

I was able to spend most of this past Saturday tuning the Great and Pedal divisions of our parish pipe organ. It had been covered with plastic for the week while the church floor was refinished, to reduce the accumulation of dust, and parts of it had been knocked out of tune sufficiently to render the instrument unplayable. After that, I tuned one of our rarely-used pianos on Sunday afternoon, in anticipation of Choral Evensong in the little upstairs chapel where the piano resides.

"Out of discord, harmony." Organ tuning is a delight; so is piano tuning. I cannot normally justify devoting much time to this work, not when the duties of choirmaster and organist are more pressing -- but at times such as this weekend, all else must be laid aside.

Having spent much of my weekend in this manner, it seems appropriate to post the following review of an Old Book. I wrote this many months ago, and never got around to posting it here:

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Practical Organ-Building

For many, the conjunction of “Practical” and “Organ-Building” in the same phrase may appear illogical. Nonetheless, I have before me a book by that title: Practical Organ-Building, by W. E. Dickson. It is a reprint by Positiv Press of a book originally published in 1881, with second and third editions later in the 1880's. The book is available for free download, as well.

It is a fine little treatise of 182 pages. Within that compass, the author covers a surprising array of topics, with the intent of guiding an industrious craftsman through the process of building a pipe organ for one's home. Having poked around inside old pipe organs myself, I do believe that a person with good woodworking skills could complete such a project from this book, given a sufficient quantity of money for materials (about £ 80 by the author's estimate; it would be many thousands of dollars today), good hand planes and other woodworking tools, a spacious workshop, very large amounts of time and patience, and a large room with old-fashioned high ceilings for the finished instrument.

For those interested in such work, here is a website that offers a photographic account of the process, resulting in an instrument much like the one described by Dickson. Close study of this website would be a good supplement to Dickson. I have read a number of descriptions of the inner workings of the pipe organ. But Dickson's account of its construction clarifies many aspects, even if one is strictly an Organist or Friend of the Organ with no intention of delving into the construction and repair of the instrument.

The descriptions of Dickson's book closely match the construction details of the 1913 Pilcher pipe organ in our parish. It is thus a treatise of great value for times when the instrument needs repairs. Our little instrument was built with respect for the materials and the traditions of the organbuilder's craft that shine through the pages of Dickson's book. Those traditions began to fail not much later in the twentieth century, as cheap effect became more highly valued than plain honest workmanship. Our parish suffered from this trend: at one time it had a fine 1894 instrument by A. B. Felgemaker of two manuals, fifteen ranks. In the 1950's it was replaced by an inferior electropneumatic instrument which (through duplexing) had a much larger array of stops for the organist, and was thoroughly modern. As one would expect, this instrument soon proved unsuitable. The parish would have been better off to have kept the Felgemaker and given it a loving restoration – but that was not the way people thought in the 1950's.