School organ progress

The pipe organ in the school music room is now standing on its legs.

See You at the Concert

The Five Priests Concert
Sunday, September 18, 3 p.m.


Five priests of the Diocese of Columbus who are also fine musicians will open the 2011-2012 Cathedral Concerts series. Msgr. Stephan Moloney of Immaculate Conception Church, Columbus, Fr. Kevin Lutz of Holy Family Church, Fr. Thomas Buffer of Saint Stephen the Martyr Church, and Fr. Ty Tomson of Saint Andrew Church will play a program to include works of J. S. Bach, Cesar Franck and others. The Cathedral's musicians will also perform a work composed by Fr. David Poliafico.

Time to Start Practicing

have been asked to participate in an organ concert on Sunday September 18 or this year at St. Joseph Cathedral in Columbus. I will play just one piece: the Franck Chorale in A Minor. I have begun practicing it at the piano to get it back under my fingers. I first learned the piece almost thirty years ago but you would never know it to hear me practice. It's going to take a while to get it up to speed. In the meanwhile, here is an excerpt from the piece, as played by a real organist.

Tantantara! Tzing, boom!

Several months ago (April 2009) I posted a photo of the bass drum and cymbal action of the Kilgen theatre organ spread out on the dining room table. Those pieces have slowly found their way back together (ankle bone to shin bone) and now those dry bones live:

Trapped

The Kilgen theatre organ has begun to come back to life. The video shows a test of the percussions. Note that the indian drum is not yet mounted, and that there is a lot of background noise from the blower, which is not yet enclosed. The percussions being tested are, in order from right to left: snare drum roll, sleigh bells, bird whistle, indian drum, tambourine, castanets, siren.

Artiste repairs continue

Before I could install the bass pipes in the Moller Artiste, I had to repair one of the pieces of wood that forms a support rack for these larger pipes. The split occurred, of course, right where a wood screw passed through the piece.







This involved laminating a piece of pine onto the existing upright
and filling in some gaps with water putty, just to make it pretty









(one of my favorite materials).









the finished product installed in the organ

Getting Organ-ized

It's been a long while since I last posted on the restoration of my Moller Artiste pipe organ. Last year I had the pouchboards releathered but time to work on this has been scarce. I eventually got the pouchboards installed and have been chasing down bugs as time permitted. Sometimes two weeks went by without one single thing being done to the organ. The work demands the kind of patience I don't always have when tired. I am happy to report that all the dead notes and ciphers (notes that play by themselves) have been eliminated, and I have begun to re-install the pipes. It seems a fitting way to begin Daylight Savings Time.

Bang the Drum Slowly

Here, like a patient etherized on a table and chopped into tiny bits, lie the disjecta membra of one component of a theatre pipe organ made by the Kilgen Organ Company of St. Louis, MO, for the Alberston Theatre in Kane, PA, in 1928. All wooden pieces have been cleaned and given a new coat of shellac. Worn out leather and rubber cloth has been replaced with new material. Now let's see if I can put it back together. When complete, this mechanism will operate the bass drum and crash cymbal. Check back in a couple of years.

Temperamental Artistes

Like most of you, I have always wanted a pipe organ in my house. And now I have one. It was sitting in the barn for a couple of years while I settled into the parish and now it is in my house. There's just one thing. One solitary note (tenor "A' of the 8" Gedeckt) would not play. I diagnosed a failed pouch (leather disk that opens and closes the valve beneath the pipe). Getting at the peccant part required much dismantling. To fix the one pouch I ended up releathering 30 of them. Due to the demands of my real job, the pouchboard repair had to be accomplished in fits and starts during snippets of borrowed time. I think I started two weeks ago. The photos show the finished pouchboard and the current appearance of the organ, which seems to bear a resentful expression. After testing, the pouchboard will be reinstalled and the pipes put back in the organ. Before I close I ought to mention that the organ was manufactured by the M.P. Möller company of Hagerstown, Maryland, around 1939. That firm called it the "Möller Portable Pipe Organ"; those who have had to move one will smile at this designation. Everyone else calls it an "Artiste" model. This organ has lived in different places including St. Jean Baptiste Church in New York City (I believe it was a practice or choir accompaniment instrument).
P.S. The alert reader will have understood why this message was posted today.