If I could choose, it would be a copy of the big H&H in Coventry Cathedral. I won't list the stops since they are available online. A link.
https://www.harrisonorgans.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Coventry-Cathedral-full-spec-2020.pdf

Nathan,

I'm somewhere near the bottom of the totem of organists on the forum, so take what I'm about to write with several buckets of salt if the betters here contradict it. If the ideas I present here are too obvious to need to be said, here, again, treat these as they deserve to be treated.

1) The organ and the building in which it sings should be compatible. A diamond in last week's potato peelings is (admittedly) still a diamond, but it will only shine properly when the detritus is removed.

2) The organ should have stops fitting for the repertoire played, so if the organist principally plays simple, short, quiet music, solo stops may be useful, but bombastic chamade trumpets not. If one is at Westminster Cathedral, on the other hand..... If the organist (for whatever reason) mostly accompanies hymns, the organ must have stops fitting for that purpose.

3) The organ should take into account where it is, in another sense: in the desert south-west of the United States, where wild swings in temperature and humidity are not common, the organ has a greater latitude of stops than, say, in my home town, where there are really 3 tuning seasons. (The problem isn't a limit on the quality of pipes, but their tendency to slip off pitch).

I would like to echo Chris’s sentiments regarding the connection between the instrument and the building - in my view the two are always connected, such that one cannot conceive of one without the other.

Within the parameters of the building (which should decide voicing, scaling and wind pressures), I would suggest that an outstanding and ideal instrument possesses the following qualities also:
1. A superb, sensitive playing action, making a lie of the notion that one is one’s own worst critic,
2. A coherent tonal structure, in which each stop has a genuine role, rather than existing for vanity’s sake, and
3. The capacity of the instrument to produce three basic textures, namely a plenum, trio and solo/accompaniment.

If an organ possesses these three qualities and is suitable for its building, I believe it will be an outstanding success, perhaps moving beyond the notion of ‘ideal’ and replicated organs from other locations.

Ultra-Trad Dream Organ

I/6 — Fully Enclosed

Manual:
Dolce Bourdon, 8’
Voix Timide (cel.), 8’
Pitch Pipe (Aeoline), 8’ [mounted behind high altar to give celebrant pitches in audibly to the congregation]
Irish Whistle, 4’
Festival Oboe Gamba, 8’
Tremblant I
Tremblant II
Man. Unison Off

Pedal
16’ Lieblich Baß
Man. to Ped.
Ped. Unison Off

Designed lovingly with years of “feedback” in mind.

If it were me, I'd just buy one of the Cavaille-Colles in Paris and have it shipped over.

Nihil, that made me laugh out loud.

What is a “suiavial”? Never heard of it.

The Pasi seems like a beautiful instrument, and what a change from the typical American fare!

Just be glad that ultra-trad dream organ is not a flailer and hooty

Actually, I wouldn't mind at all having an actual unaltered Skinner.

I agree that the duplexed charades are not quite true French in style. I chose to have them that way because I wanted it to be almost a floating solo, only it's a solo division of one stop. It kind of goes with what Chris said about the organ needing to be usable. If I am accompanying a hymn on "my organ," I would want to be able to do fanfares or solo a melody with it.

I also agree that you need a building which allows the organ to speak well. I would probably have included that when I listed other constraints as not being an issue.

I chose French because it is, I think, the most versatile style of voicing (I also like the sound of it the best). To give an example of versatility, I think Bach would sound better on a Cavaille Coll than Vierne, Widor, Dupre, etc would sound on a chiffy German instrument. I know that is a matter of personal opinion. When I said a French romantic organ, I should have been clearer. I would want the voicing on the pipes to be done in a French style. I love the French style of flues with very minimal if no chiff. I also love the strength of French reeds. Nothing matches a 16' Bombarde, or even a 32' Bombarde at the finale of postludes. I did include the 16' Basson borrowed from the Swell to the pedal if you need a lighter reed for use in Bach.

To give an example of versatility, I think Bach would sound better on a Cavaille Coll than Vierne, Widor, Dupre, etc would sound on a chiffy German instrument. I know that is a matter of personal opinion.

A true Cavaillé-Coll, yes - mainly because he would often recycle the existing Clicquot plein-jeu which does very well in contrapuntal music (with a handful of additional stops to strengthen the lower register)

What people stereotyped as Cavaillé-Colls after his death? Of course not.

To give an example of versatility, I think Bach would sound better on a Cavaille Coll than Vierne, Widor, Dupre, etc would sound on a chiffy German instrument. I know that is a matter of personal opinion.

No, it is the manner of composing that makes the specific organ suited to the piece. Bach is pure transparent counterpoint. After the Baroque everything went (downhill in my opinion) toward simulating an orchestra and more toward homophony. This is why I have so often expressed that the Classical era composers are boring to me.

anyway, you can split the hairs, but that was the general trend over the centuries.

BTW @schonbergian... I was not arguing for the 20th century version of baroque copycats... I am a fan of the true German instruments of old that show the true beauty of the Baroque era organs. Many people don't know the dif.

Many of the so-called neo Baroque organs are just bad organs that may do one or two things somewhat well, but have little versatility.

I teach on a gorgeous Taylor & Boody at Goshen College which is placed in an absolute gem of a concert hall (4 stories tall with thick concrete walls and a stone floor, which makes for very beautiful acoustics for the organ; these can be altered at will by heavy felt curtains that can be raised up to dampen the hall for other ensembles). I love the instrument dearly, and it is finely regulated and well-voiced. It is built in the North German Baroque style, however it eschews the excesses of the orgelbewegung movement.

That said, it is a bit of a one-trick pony and makes for a frustrating teaching instrument in some regards. There are no registrational aids, there's no swell box, no celest, etc. It is beautiful for what it is. I may be able to wax poetic about finessing articulation on the very sensitive tracker action, but I cannot teach kids now to work a swell box. I cannot discuss the manner in which you can register hymns and make rapid registrational changes to tonally paint the verses. My students can only work up very basic registrational changes for their juries since they don't have registrants. etc.

I have a student now who is quite advanced and is working on the Franck Prelude, Fugue, & Variation. There is no swell box to manipulate; no hautbois... only a german trumpet on the Hauptwerk and a (again, lovely for what it is) cromorne on the Oberwerk... hardly appropriate substitutes for the hautbois in a box.

Don't misread me: I'm more than pleased to teach on such a fine instrument, and I remind my students regularly what a privilege it is to have unfettered access to a million dollar organ... but then we also have plenty of discussions about the limitations of the instrument and what that means for us, and the clever ways that we can try to adapt things. (Learning to adapt rep. to an instrument is an essential skill, so it's not all for naught...) but when it comes to presenting a wider array of repertoire... it just can't swing it. It speaks with too thick an accent, and the actual mechanics of the console make it difficult. (Again, no registrational aids and flat, non-radiating pedalboard [which I don't mind], for starters)

This is why I always try to think of the people who may come after me at a job. I might love a farty muzette or rankette more than anything, but I wouldn't install one at the expense of a much more useful Oboe, and I would even forego a whole rank of pipes to afford modern playing aids, which I personally consider essential to provide maximum flexibility with an instrument. I also think swell boxes are a must... you can always leave them wide open when you want to do an "authentic" interpretation of historical repertoire... but you can never go back and make an organ softer without them.

We are a hole-in-the-wall tiny school, and while the music department is surprisingly robust, I don’t have any majors, and some semesters it’s a studio of 1. Hard to drum up someone who knows what they are doing when there’s only one student taking lessons and they are the one playing. Just is what it is.

Charles -

Your assessment reminds me of the time I left the large Lutheran church I served for fifteen years. I was playing my last service in what I thought was a normal manner in what I had thought was a normal service. My successor was in the congregation that day and was overheard telling this person and that that he was 'of course, just a church organist, not a recitalist'. What a sad and all too often encountered attitude to both worship of the Lord and those who offer the worship.

Charles, I'm weird in that I love Bach's music, but I hate the German style of organ building. The chiff (even milder chiff) gets really annoying to me after a while.

I did try to make my organ fairly versatile. It has everything pretty much where you would expect it. The Oboe is on the Swell, the Clarinette is on the Choir, the solo Cornet is on the Swell and a secondary one is on the choir, the Great has the biggest mixture. I tried to make it so that you could play solo literature how it was written to be played with the stops the composer would ask for. My organ could also definitely be used liturgically too. If I compare my stoplist to that of the 3 manual Rodgers I play for mass, I have pretty much everything that is on the Rodgers plus some things that I would like to have on the Rodgers. My organ shown above is definitely what I would want to be playing, but I don't think it is weird that someone else couldn't sit down at it and play it well.

Edit: Correct a typo.

While he was influenced by North Germans, he seemed rather eclectic in using German, French, and Italian musical influences. He wasn't Catholic, but no one is perfect.

This is one of the reasons I advocate for a Silbermann as the instrument par excellence for interpreting the works of Bach.

I am a retired librarian/music teacher/IT teacher/organist who still works part-time for the government agency I retired from. I find fugues too structured and they seem like formula music. I freely admit to being a Romantic but do also like French Baroque. All, including Bach, far better than what you are likely to hear at a local Catholic parish on Sunday morning.

Guilmant is seriously underrated by the Baroque fanatics. I have found his music to be quite useful liturgically.

Fugues? I guess you either like them or you don't. I tend to lose interest in them half-way through.

Barn burners are good! Audiences love them, too.

There is no such thing as a single ‘ideal’ Bach organ. Bach’s earlier organ works use Buxtehude as a model; Buxtehude composed in the North German (Schnitger) tradition. Other works are more suited to instruments further south.

I am amused at how often the North German tradition is disparaged in favour of the so-called Silbermann aesthetic. A few points here:
1. We have no definitive sources on the correct wind pressures for Silbermann’s instruments,
2. None of Silbermann’s original mixtures have survived (which should tell you something about how organists of the period rated them), and
3. Silberman invariably ripped out whatever the church happened to have at the time and installed his new organs; Schnitger always retained the best of the past and incorporated it into his new organs. As such, Schnitger organs contain pipework that dates back centuries before the man himself and are a bridge to a more ancient past.

I think a moral is that organists and organ builders love to tinker and "improve" on what predecessors have done.

I generally wonder on boasts by builders of retaining pipework from an older instrument. That's no guarantee you will hear what the original builder intended. That old work could be so revoiced and altered it has become nothing like the original.

On the other hand, I have seen additions by a famous American builder who will remain nameless. Those additions sit side by side with the old pipework and no attempt was ever made to blend them together. In effect, you have two instruments for any practical purposes.

Pick your brand of crazy. You will find it all in the organ world.