Since my early teens in the 1950s, I have been fascinated by organs, and naturally, by organ music.
In those days, most organs were either pneumatically operated or were simply mechanically connected with rods and cables between the keyboard and the ranks of pipes. I loved studying the wind chests, how the pallets were withdrawn to let the air into the pipes.
In days gone by, the air supply was
replenished by choirboys (or so I liked to imagine), operating the bellows
which sustained the air supply.
This early passion didn’t really lead anywhere, I
didn’t learn to play a keyboard, much to my regret.
The first organ that really stimulated my interest was the organ in the Royal Festival Hall in London. The hall was opened in 1951 and linked to the Festival of Britain on the South Bank of the River Thames. I would be taken to concerts there (I would have been 10 or 11 by the time the organ was completed) and I was captivated by the beautiful pipes, some in wood, some in metal, normally on show and skilfully lit even when not in play. To see them was to see a work of art. Unfortunately, the sound is a far cry from the beautiful reverberant sound of a cathedral – the RFH had a notoriously dead acoustic. Simon Rattle once said that it sapped the will to live! When I worked in the BBC, speakers had been installed in the ceiling in an attempt to liven up the sound. As I worked up there adjusting microphones, one could hear them twittering away!
As an aside, I used to love the sound of the Hammond organ in the 1960s, when I would have been about 20, and starting my career with the BBC. This produced its sound by tone wheels, in other words, by an electromechanical method. It started out as a church organ in the USA but was quickly adopted by jazz and rock groups. Keith Emmerson played (and attempted to destroy!) an organ at a famous concert in the Fairfield Halls in Croydon in 1969. The Five Bridges Suite. The Hammond organ was usually paired with the Leslie speaker which produced a mesmerising sound on account of the loudspeakers actually rotating inside the cabinet. The company exists to this day but I doubt they use tone wheels now.
Another interesting diversion was the mellotron - a precursor to the Allen organ in a way because it used sound samples on magnetic tape which were drawn over the tape heads as a key was pressed. I remember well a version we had at Thames TV which had sound effects on the tape strips rather than organ notes. One could create footsteps with two alternate keys. Each time a key was released, the tape would spring back to its start position with a loud plop! Haha, digital is sooo boring!
There were synthesisers of course, which produced the sound entirely electronically and my keyboard hero Keith Emmerson had a huge Moog synthesiser which was carted around to various gigs. (My other keyboard hero is Tony Banks).
During the 60s as I worked in sound in television, my interest in pipe organs was revived. Partly due to being taught about acoustics and musical instruments in general, but also through my love of music.
In my church in Weybridge in the UK, we had a magnificent pipe organ but it required a huge amount of maintenance. I remember climbing around the pipes and wind chests in the loft in the hope of keeping it going. The organist at the time, Stephen Hicks, was a fan of “tracker” organs – mechanically linked – and when the time came to replace our wonderful pipe organ, it was replaced by a rather ordinary Collins tracker organ which clanked as different stops were selected. I was sad. I imagined a time when that would be obsolete and sound would be provided by loudspeakers. In 2026, partly true.
I love organ music, especially by the French organ composers such as Widor and Vierne. And of course, by Bach. Organs in the continent have a different sound quality to the “English” organ sound. I visited churches in Paris to study the organs, their history. I learnt about Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the great French organ designer. Many years later, when I was exhibiting my pro-audio products at the AES show in Paris, I attended an organ recital by Graham Blyth, the co-founder of Soundcraft (he used to give these recitals as a regular feature as he was also a skilled musician). Sadly, he died two years ago at only 76 years of age. As you may know, the organ is normally at the back of French churches – at the west end – and so, as the recital progressed, little by little, the audience (mostly sound professionals) turned their chairs around to face the back!
I was horrified as were most people by the fire in Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, but somewhat relieved to hear that the organ was not destroyed. Now it makes its sound again. A different sound, because it has been cleaned but of course, the cathedral serves as part of the instrument. And that has changed. The original design was by Cavaillé-Coll. I’m sure many of the original pipes are still in play although the action has changed.
I read an interesting discussion about the new choir organ which used to sit in the triforium (the gallery high above the nave) which resonated with me. There was a suggestion to put it up above the triforium where it would be better seen, but it ended up beneath the triforium as before because it would be better heard. “Bravo!” says this sound engineer!
Modern organs, apart from tracker organs, now tend to use electrical action, with the console often remote from the pipe ranks. And it’s partly thanks to another pro-audio company, Solid State Logic, that this technique was developed. Although known for its huge mixing desks and its early development of digital audio, SSL had a side-line in the design of serial data between the organ console and the pipes. Obviously, if this was done in a parallel fashion, one would be faced with an enormous bundle of cables, one for each pipe! There was a similar case in what I was doing in building management systems in the 70s, sending lots of data serially down a cable, rather than using parallel data by multiple cables.
They came headhunting for me in the 80s but soon discovered that I wasn’t really the right stuff and things went quiet very rapidly. One of the founders of SSL, Colin Sanders, sadly died in a helicopter accident in 1998. These icons of the pro-audio world were my heroes. I had a lot of success with my audio products for a while but I never came close to these titans, whose legacy continues to this day.
My favourite organ at the moment is in
Gloucester Cathedral. It is soon to be given life again after several years of
silence. I always remember attending a workshop and listening to the organ
close up. Of course, one doesn’t hear the natural reverberation of the building,
and it sounded rather like a fairground organ, one could hear it panting and
breathing.
The photo shows it from the choir side, so you can see the little choir organ too.
For the past few years, it has had an Allen organ as understudy (as was the case with the organ in St George’s Chapel, Windsor when it was being renovated). Maybe some people don’t hear the difference. After all, the Allen organ uses pipe organ samples, but the real thing will not be made obsolete any time soon. A pipe organ is so much more than making beautiful music. Many tell of a history, sometimes in centuries. You can’t replace that with a loudspeaker, however hi the fi!
This spring, Gloucester Cathedral is celebrating the instalation of the new organ, not only because this year it is hosting the Three Choirs Festival, but it has also organised a special festival.
Tracker organs are going to be around for a long time. Obviously, small chamber organs are mechanically linked but I was fascinated to see the organ in the Auditorio Nacional in Madrid partly, at least, has a mechanical action. It was built by Gerhard Grenzing. It gives an organist far more control over the expression of the sound. Otherwise, it is just on or off!
His factory is in El Papiol, to the south of Barcelona and I once visited an exhibition in the library given by the company.
Now, up to the present! I attend a church in Gran Canaria and we have an Allen AP2 organ (illustrated below). It has two manuals and two external loudspeakers which are installed high up in the chancel facing sideways. The organ was installed about 20 years ago and recently we paid quite a large sum of money to have a circuit board replaced. But, spread over 20 years, that’s not too bad. I tried valiantly to see if there was something simple that could be cured with a soldering iron, but it refused to obey and we had to call out an engineer from the UK. Shame! I would have been a hero if I could have fixed it. Allen Organs in the UK didn't advise on where the external speakers were placed when the organ was installed. They are designed to give a "stereo" effect, each has a different sound channel, so their current position is not ideal. I think that the larger organs in the range have more channels.
