Piping UP

LITTLE ROCK — A big church organ, especially a pipe organ, is a living individual to those who play or maintain it.

“They have a life of their own,” said Gary Coleman, who has been caring for the Wicks pipe organ at First United Methodist Church in Benton for around 20 years and sings below the pipes every Sunday as a member of the church choir. “This one breathes and has changed over time and reacts to the weather.”

He also said that sometimes he feels the 40-year-old organ doesn’t like him.

The instrument that inhabits the church sanctuary has been enhanced with new voices, as a new electronic console has been added. Those new voices coming from speakers set in the organ loft and among pipes are voices from around the world, according to Walt Strony, a concert organist and digital organ consultant with Allen Organ, the maker of the new console.

“Every country made organs that sounded different,” he said Friday while working on the organ. “English organs may have one type of sound, and a French organ will have another. Seven organs from around the world were selected to be added to this organ with sampled digital sounds from them all programmed into the organ.”

Strony demonstrated some of the lower notes of the organ, played by using the foot pedals.

“This is the English organ from Oxford,” he said as the organ reproduced the sounds of a 16-foot-long organ pipe.

It was a low but clear tone. He then played the same note but using a stop that reproduced the sound of a famous organ in France. It had just as low a sound but had a rumbling quality.

“The French has more harmonics and is softer,” Strony said.

The digital samples will add about 12 notes to the lower range of the organ, Strony said. In all, he said, he would be adding 40 new stops to the organ, adding new pipe and electronic combinations that will give the instrument a wider range for different music and moods.

Coleman said he tunes the organ about three times a year by adjusting metal sleeves on the top of the pipes or with what he called “stoppers” placed in the pipes.

“This organ can be too loud. There are 14 ranks of pipes, and all but one of them are voiced loud,” he said. “The new Allen console is bringing in softer and intermediate voices.”

Coleman, who has been a member of the church for 12 years and lives in Benton, said the music ministry at First United Methodist Church is “good and active” and needs an entire range of sounds.

Strony said the church’s pipe organ had a good “American” sound, as he demonstrated by playing a hymn. He said he was also including elements from a theater organ. Afterpulling a few stops, he broke into a gospel melody with a full, complex sound with plenty of spirit.

Strony ended his tour of the church organ with stops that sampled a 17th-century organ from Germany. He said Johann Sebastian Bach, perhaps the world’s most famous organist and church music composer, had not only played the organ being sampled in the Benton church, but that he had actually worked on it while applying for a job.

“The organ was so well loved that during World War II, it was dismantled and placed in storage during the war,” Strony said as he played.“The church was destroyed in the bombings, and after the war when the church was rebuilt, the organ was retrieved and reinstalled.”

While the consultant spent a lot of time at the church organ’s multi-manual keyboard, Strony added the sounds from a table positioned between the front pews and the altar rail.

“The organist is always in one of the worst positions to hear the organ because he can’t be in front of everybody,” he said. “This table is in the sweetspot so I can hear what’s happening.”

Strony works from a computer and a short keyboard with a range of just more than an octave. However, he demonstrated that it could be changed to play through the entire range of the organ’s pipes and digital sounds.

Coleman said he often finds himself listening to the organ from his spot in the choir, seeking out-of-tune pipes and other problems.

“Sometimes one of the hearing aids being worn by some of the church’s older members will start to make a small squealing sound, and I’ll be searching for a problemwith the organ,” he said. “The air-conditioner fan also makes a noise when it comes on, and I had to get used to that.”

A Los Angeles native, Coleman has always worked on organs, starting as a young apprentice in California. He said that when the organ was first installed in First Methodist on Market Street, it cost around $50,000. Today the price would be much greater to create an instrument like the pipe organ in Benton.

“Most of the major American organ builders are closed,” Coleman said. “They aren’t built like they once were here.”

The new digital sounds being programed into the organ cost around $160,000, said Bruce Wallace, minister of music at the church.

“This has always been a marvelous organ for this space,” Wallace said. “With this new console, we can do even more.”

The new enhanced organ was first heard by the congregation Sunday morning.

“It was the first time they had heard all that the organ could do,” Wallace said. “The organist played things that used the organ’s new dynamic range and a very wide variety of voices.”

Strony, along with being the consultant who installed the organ’s digital upgrade, is a concert organist known for both theater organ and classical church performances, so following the service Sunday, he gave a concert.

“Walt made the concert a lecture demonstration and played examples of what the organ can do now,” Wallace said.

Strony will hold another concert Sunday at the church to highlight the new capabilities of the organ. He called it a “Schuertiade,” a recital celebrating the music of Franz Schubert.

The music will also feature the organ playing with piano, violin and cello; and with voice and clarinet. For more information about the 4 p.m. concert in the sanctuary, contact First United Methodist Church in Benton at (501) 778-3601.

Staff writer Wayne Bryan can be reached at (501) 244-4460 or wbryan@arkansasonline.com.