The American Guild of Organists

Cover feature

May 1998

From the Builders

The long association between Goulding & Wood and the Benedictine Archabbey of Saint Meinrad has heightened our awareness of the dialogue between historical precedents and the present use of the organ in liturgy.  The Swiss Benedictine Abbey if Einsiedeln, the Mother Abbey of Saint Meinrad, has a rich and significant place in the evolution of liturgical music.  Saint Benedict instituted hymn in the Gregorian repertoire, and Einsiedeln houses the earliest known manuscript of Veni redemptor gentium.  Further, many early plainchant forms are collected in the tenth-century collection Codex 121.  Around this same time, the organ reappeared in Western Europe, and the Benedictine abbeys of Einsiedeln and Bath evidently pioneered the use of the organ in liturgy.

It is no wonder that the tradition of fine worship has flourished at Saint Meinrad.  Shortly after the Abbey Church was built, the Benedictine community commissioned the Estey Organ Company to install instruments in both transept galleries.  By 1960, these organs were mechanically unreliable and in need of major restoration.  Fr. Eugene Ward, then a member of the community, combined the instruments and expanded the tonal resources.  The adoption of new liturgical formats reflecting Vatican II required further additions to the pipework along with other mechanical repairs.  Within the plans for the 1996 church renovation, the community elected to build a new instrument.

The three requirements for the new organ were: (1) to provide a placement close to the worshiping community for clarity and intimacy in the accompaniment of plainsong and metrical hymns; (2) to provide entirely new mechanical systems; and (3) to provide a tonal spectrum fitting first and foremost the needs of the daily worship, but also able to perform the great organ repertoire of various styles and periods.

To maximize the magnificent acoustical environment, the freestanding case needed to stand just forward of the apse, across the front of the nave.  It then fell to us to design a casework that would prevent the organ from dominating the room despite its prominence.  The case blends the voices and the instrument acoustically and visually through the use of the same wood and design utilized for the choir stalls.  The facade pipes, consisting of the Pedal 16' Principal and Great 8' Principal, are of flamed copper, reinforcing the warmth of the room.  The center section is two-tiered, establishing a vertical line connecting the altar, the ambo, and the Abbots' chair with the Christus Rex painted on the apse.  Seats for the liturgical ministers, similar to those for the choir, line the lower case.  The pedestal shape allows passage on either side to the Blessed Sacrament Chapel located behind the organ, with the rear of the case serving as the reredos.  Within these visual confines, we engineered the mechanical structure with logical chest layout and accessibility for maintenance as prime considerations.

The organ contains 3,844 pipes in 70 ranks forming 55 stops.  Of these, 30 stops were retained from the existing organ, and one, the Pedal 16' Subbass, dates from the original Estey instrument.  The three 32' stops are digitally sampled.  The main windchests are Goulding & Wood's exclusive design of electro-pneumatic slider chests.  The switching system is a software driven, multiplex system using a simple data line from the console to the wind chests.  This system allows MIDI for connection with synthesizer and sequencer modules.

Designing the tonal resources to proved intimate and clean sonorities for chant and metrical hymn accompaniment, as well as exciting and practical resources for literature, proved to be challenging, given the close proximity of the choir stalls and the six-second reverberation time.  To our surprise, the vaulted ceilings of the transepts and the first nave bay pick up the acoustic energy almost immediately and distribute the sound evenly throughout the church.  At twenty feet from the case, organ directionality is undetectable.  To complement the increased use of metrical hymns at the Archabbey, the Swell division emulates the English/American-Classic tradition.  It contains the secondary plenum and large chorus reeds, while the Choir provides the tertiary chorus.  The large number of 8' voices accommodates unobtrusive chant accompaniment, with the tapered and semi-stopped ranks backing the cantor, and the larger, open stops complementing the community.  The accompanimental role of the organ also led us to voice the instrument somewhat softly, producing rich sonorities, while tonal finishing allowed us to increase the volume, filling out the plenums.

For solo literature, 18th-century North European plenum structures provide the base of the design, while the French shallot reeds in the Swell and the other color stops take advantage of the acoustic proclivity for Romantic repertoire.  The organ contains decomposed cornets of principals and flutes, and the latter can be extended to form the Tierce en taille.  The Choir Bombarde is a floating solo reed which can play at 16' and 8' on the Choir manual for soloing out melodies in the English tradition.

This broad synthesis of schools constitutes an instrument flexible enough to cover literature comprehensively, while maintaining integrity within any one tradition.  The placement and appearance of the case integrate it into the liturgy and the room, serving the community rather than dominating it.  The mechanical and electronic resources, including MIDI, ensure the organ's viability well into the next century.  The organ, then, fulfills the requirements stated and will serve the community in all of its activities.

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