Pumped Up

"Organ builders were the top scientists of their day when there was a lot of research going on into the production of sound. They were really complicated, marvelous machines." Quite simply, he adds, in its time, the pipe organ was the equivalent of today's Industrial Light and Magic, the movie special effects house created by George Lucas of "Star Wars" fame.

"There's no sonic equivalent to hearing the organ and the orchestra playing together and in dialogue," Sherman says. The sheer physical impact of the two is what Sherman calls the sort of transcendent experience people have always sought in art. The experience people get from big, noisy movies is what earlier generations sought in the organ.

"This is one of the human being's favorite things to do, be swept away, taken to another world," he says. As part of an effort to educate the public about the history of the organ, the Westfield Center has assembled a touring exhibit, "Festival Organ: King of Instruments." Interactive displays offer the opportunity to produce those deep, wall-shaking bass notes.

Participants in the Seattle installation suggest that the organ's return to prominence is directly related to this primal need to be elevated from the everyday, a need that is not being satisfied in this technological age.

The primacy of the organ in musical history is yet another reason for its comeback, says Seattle Symphony music director, Gerard Schwarz. Many of the greatest composers, such as Bach, wrote for the organ.

"The repertoire is large and important," he says, "and it needs to be played with great acoustics - and that means the [concert] hall, not the church."

While the organ may be associated primarily with church music, Schwarz says that much of the great organ music was not written for spaces with such large reverberation. "The big churches have reverberation times of five to six seconds," he says. "There's tremendous impact created by this king of instruments [in church], but not a lot of clarity."

Every organ is a unique creation, designed around the particularities of the space. This means a goodly amount of work for builders, at least these days.

Dieck says that his firm has six years worth of organ construction lined up - up threefold from just five years ago. Fisk has constructed an organ in Japan and has plans to install another in a large Swiss cathedral.

Back inside the vast interior of Seattle's new organ, it's easy to see that this instrument is unique, being built from spruce wood native to the area and custom cut for the stage specifications. But there is one area in which Dieck refuses to compromise - electronics. All the sound is created by air passing through pipes - no artificial electronic sound "samples" will be heard.

Electronic controls are OK, though. They "give the performer instant or limitless number of combinations of tone and colors, but they are only for manipulation, not the production of sound," Dieck says.

Says Seattle guest organist Joseph Adam, "These organs going back into the concert hall are putting the organ back in the mainstream," he says.

"It's been on the fringe for a long time. But the very presence of this instrument here shows that's beginning to change."

(c) Copyright 2000. The Christian Science Publishing Society

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