Pipe organ
  • wolffwolff
    Posts: 25
    I found this forum and thought I'd join, I have to run back to work, but I'm an organ builder for 23 years and have my own pipe organ in my residence built around a 1930 Moller I removed from a church on Long Island in 1996 and added to.
    I have a recent new interest in church music from Slovakia and Hungary after seeing some youtube videos done in churches there, I bought the two main hymn books from book stores in those countries as they were impossible to find in the states.
    The one from Slovakia is bbreviated JKS and the other is SzVU. I have never heard any of the music in either book before, it's all new to me!
    Here is one of my videos from the JKS book;

    Video
    Thanked by 3bhcordova CharlesW tomjaw
  • wolffwolff
    Posts: 25
    The 1936 Slovak book I mentioned earlier- "JKS" is: "Jednotny Katholicky Spevnik" (translated roughly to English it is the "Uniform Catholic songbook" ) by Spolok Vojtecha, 565 pages.
    There was a pew version and an organist version and the organist version was difficult to find searching foreign web results, but once I found the ISBN number it helped a lot.

    Titles with; "SZVU" are out of the Hungarian book (Szent vagy, urami!) English: "You are holy!"
    ISBN# 963-360-361-7 Harmat Artur and Sik Sandor, Budapest
    Purchased used from Antikvarius books in Hungary

    Titles with "EE" in them are from the book Eneklo Egyhaz, purchased new from a bookstore in Budapest Hungary Oct/2020 for about 76 Euros.

    Titles with "SKS" are from the 1918 book "Slovensky Kalvinsky Spevnik" I was not able to find a paper copy but archive.org surprisingly has a scan of the whole book;
    https://archive.org/details/slovenskykalvi00slov/page/n6/mode/1up

    So I have found 4 books and the music within that are probably almost virtually unknown in the states.
    From the "JKS" book, 1936 is this very pretty old world frontispiece drawing;
    Screen Shot 32.jpg
    589 x 825 - 174K
    Thanked by 1M. Jackson Osborn
  • davido
    Posts: 943
    Very interesting!
    In your video I noticed the 4K’ flute triangulare is from the Allison UM Carlisle organ. I sang with that instrument several times! They used to host an annual community Handel’s Messiah choir. Glad some of the instrument is still in use.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • wolffwolff
    Posts: 25
    Oh that interesting to read! yes, that was a fairly recent purchase from a used organ parts inventory at Taylor Miller organs. I saw that set of pipes and just had to have them because they are different and not easy to find except sometimes on large instruments, they were not cheap at $500 plus the freight.

    Unfortunately the whole organ was basically sold off for parts, I don't remember the whole back story but seem to remember two congregations were to merge and build a new building, the organ was carefully removed and stored to be installed in the new building which fell through, leaving the organ without a home. After trying to sell it with no takers it was sold off cheap to Taylor Miller who has been selling off parts and ranks from it ever since.
    At least it was saved, a lot of these situations happen and the organ winds up scrapped and the rest in the dumpster.

    I had 12 Stopped diapason pipes left over from another rank and I used them to extend the 4' flute triangulare down to 8'

    Way back in the video index is this video where I compared the flute triangulare with a Stopped diapason and a Melodia, they each sound different and unique.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • davido
    Posts: 943
    Yes, sad situation. The organ had just been completely restored and expanded with Walker digital stuff a handful of years before the merger. Dickinson College bought the Allison building and didn’t want the organ. A shame because the College doesn’t own an organ and “Allison Hall” is now is where our parish priests say the college campus outreach mass.
    The combined churches just finished their new building this year. They opted for a digital organ, leaving a 1930s/70s Moller for the developer to pitch when he converts the other historic church into apartment units.
    Thanked by 1tomjaw
  • wolffwolff
    Posts: 25

    What is laughable is the below quote from an article on this;

    "Houser hopes the organ, valued at $940,000 at its last appraisal, will..."

    I've been an organ builder since 1997 and I've never heared of an organ appraiser, also the Organ clearinghouse etc have dozens of organs removed from closed churches sitting in storage for years, they wound up throwing one away in 2013 that was 83 ranks and was stored for years with no takers wanting it.

    More interesting is this;


    Allison United Methodist Church’s organ disassembled for storage
    By Tammie Gitt, The Sentinel
    Jul 8, 2013 Updated Jul 9, 2013

    Four years ago, the congregation considered buying a new organ. A top organ company estimated the cost of a new one at $500,000, Houser said. That makes reassembling the old organ a budget-friendly choice.


    https://cumberlink.com/news/religion/allison-united-methodist-church-s-organ-disassembled-for-storage/article_5b9a78da-e82b-11e2-acff-001a4bcf887a.html


    It doesnt say what "top organ builder" estimated so ridiculous of a low
    cost for a NEW organ being only $500,000!!
    You can't touch a new, quality pipe organ today of any decent size for less than one million, either they were VERY optimistic on the amount or this "top builder" was anything BUT!

    We have 17 people in the shop, everyone works a 45 hour week, it takes well over a year to build an organ, this one was $1.5 million and it will be months before it's finished ye, this is a rendering;

    https://www.stchristopherschatham.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Page-1-image-only-reduced-from-St-Cs-Organ-Images-5-21-18-v1-white-pdf.jpg



    Thanked by 1tomjaw
Add a Comment