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From Heritage New Zealand, Autumn 2008

Organ minders

by Paul Little

A municipality not noted for its cultural enthusiasms is spending millions on some old pipes

Workers in the last stages of dismantling the Auckland Town Hall organ for shipping across the globe. Photo: Stephen Tilley

The rear of a large organ is almost big enough to be registered as an historic place in its own right. Most people would not know – because most people would have little reason even to think about – what lies behind the façade of such an instrument: rows of bellows and pipes inside which people can clamber and climb, that’s what. It takes a lot of pipes to produce the sound of which an organ is capable. Unfortunately, Auckland Town Hall’s organ, thanks to an unsympathetic restoration, is not capable of making such a sound.

Over summer, a small army of people from Timaru, Germany and points between worked inside the Town Hall to dismantle its 1911 instrument for a restoration project that will not see it back in working order until its centenary, three years from now. Cost: $3.5 million.

The pipes are meticulously arranged for transportation. Photo: Stephen Tilley

The auditorium’s seats had been removed and the floors covered with pipes – pipes arranged in size order, pipes neatly packed in boxes with their destinations clearly marked on them, pipes waiting to be sorted. It looked like moving day at the Phantom of the Opera’s place.

The organ was a grand Edwardian instrument, just right for
overpowering the fiddlers in some Elgar or Saint Saens’ organ
symphony. But it was extensively renovated in the 1970s, theoretically to give it a more baroque sound. The current project aims to restore it to something near its original state.
Key personnel involved in this project are Stephen Hamilton,
of the Auckland Town Hall Organ Trust, John Hargreaves, of the Timaru-based South Island Organ Company, and Stefan Hilgendorf, of German organ builder and primary contractor Orgelbau Klais.

The hall will not see or hear its organ again until the instrument's centenary in 2011. Photo: Stephen Tilley

After the 1970s restoration, pipes that had been removed went
all over. “Inside these five boxes,” says Hamilton, pointing to a pile, “are some original pipes from 1911 that were removed in 1970, and have now found their way back. They’ve been in different organs or in people’s basements or sitting in the loft of a dusty church with the possibility of being added to other organs but didn’t make it.”

Responsible for tracking them down is Hargreaves, who seems to have a mental note of where every pipe from every organ in the country is at any point in time.
“That’s part of my job, to keep track of the heritage of New Zealand organs,” says Hargreaves. “I found out where these were as much as possible. When I thought they might be available, I approached [their holders] and negotiated.”

On this afternoon, Hargreaves has just retrieved some pipes from a couple of blocks away: “From St Matthews. I got the clarinet.”

There was no record kept of the pipes’ whereabouts after they were first removed. “I just did it by detective work,” says Hargreaves. “We look after 90 per cent of the country’s organs, so I know the network of people who might have them. I’m always on the lookout for pipes that don’t belong in organs where they are. Especially, for years, I’ve been on the lookout for pipes from this organ.”

To everyone’s surprise, during the current process, more 1911
pipes have been found than were known to exist. Whether or not they will be reconditioned and put back in the organ is an open question.

“It does put a new thing into the mix that may have to be considered separately,” says Hargreaves. “At the very least, the information from them will be used in the new organ. As to whether or not they are, that is to be determined.”
Pipes that won’t be returning to this organ will be going into
Hargreaves’ stock. “They may stay in stock for years. We’ll wait till an appropriate project comes along. There’s nothing wrong with these pipes quality-wise; it’s just that the style of them is not suitable for this space.”

Most of the organ’s pipes were replaced in the 1970s – only about 10 per cent of the originals remain. “There was a more complete replacement of pipes than with many such projects,” says Stephen Hamilton. “It retained the appearance of the original but changed its character substantially. In the same regard, this is an unusual job we’re embarking on to effectively put it back to something like it was in the original.”

The story of what happened to the organ is itself a reflection of changing attitudes to heritage.

The 1970s restorers thought they were doing organ music a favour by attempting to create an instrument that more nearly
approximated a baroque sound, so music from that period would be played more “authentically”. Current thinking is that this was a doomed endeavour.

For a start, baroque music wasn’t written for halls of this size or acoustic, nor would any baroque organ be able to make itself heard over a full symphony orchestra and choir. So, even an 18th century organ transplanted here wouldn’t have sounded right.

Furthermore, this organ was an Edwardian one, and the attempt to turn it into one from another period was doomed. Equally significantly, even if it had produced a perfect baroque sound, it would not have been able to do justice to organ music from other periods. “That project was very much at the tail end of a period of new thinking about organ design and redesign, which was called the organ reform movement,” says Hamilton. “That movement began in Europe, moved into England and eventually found its way out here. It was probably greatest in the ’50s and ’60s, with us at the tail end.”

Many people at the time believed it was the right thing to do and proclaimed the “reformed” organ to be good. But there were also doubters and sceptics, people who remembered the grand sound of the previous organ and felt something had been lost. “For example, the very loud reed sounds, tromba and trumpet stops, very full rich sounds, had been replaced by more shrill, piercing sounds. That’s not what you expect to hear from an organ that looks like that.”

So how, in a time of municipal frugality, when Auckland is having difficulty harvesting sufficient coin to put on a decent Rugby World Cup, is it possible to justify spending three and a half million dollars – the three from the council, the half from the public, via an “organ donor” sponsorship programme – on one instrument?

“This is a heritage building, and considerable investment has been put into restoring it and putting it back in the style of the original Town Hall from 1911,” says Hamilton. That was an extremely popular restoration, which, he notes, “presumably, could have been done for less by not paying attention to detail. It’s the same with this project. It might have been cheaper to rip the organ out and say to Klais, ‘Build a new one and install it’.” But, says Hamilton, it was felt that the restoration of the organ should be treated with the same approach as the restoration of the hall itself.

Furthermore, “a pipe organ properly built with quality materials
and workmanship will last easily 100 years. If you amortise the cost over its life, it’s very reasonable.

“Thirdly, we thought that if the job was to be done – and there
was some debate over that – it should be done properly, by a world class company with a demonstrated track record. I’m not saying ‘done at any expense’. We had some tenders 30 to 50 per cent above what’s being paid. This price is the going rate for a job of this type.”

Finding someone to restore your organ isn’t an everyday task.
The German firm was chosen after expressions of interest, a tender process and rigorous analysis of their capabilities.
Although the organ will not be back in business until its centenary, the process itself will not take three years. “The constraint is the availability of the hall,” explains Campbell. “It’s a one- to two-year project: deconstructing the organ, shipping to Germany, evaluation, making new pipes, then shipping the new pipes back and installation in the hall, followed by an extensive period of tuning and finishing.”

Organs have to be tuned or “voiced” just like any other instrument, and that alone takes three months. “Every pipe has to be separately voiced, and Klais’ style and process is to do that here in the hall whereas some organ builders, and this is the general approach of English companies, would be to voice them in the factory and then ship them home. Klais’ approach is that it is the fitting of the sound to the room – and each room is completely unique, even if you measure it with acoustical equipment – it’s the sound and the finishing of that
sound in the room that is important.

“The objective is not to have a literal recreation or reconstruction. It is to get an original Edwardian sound.”

If you ever need to see backstage at an organ, John Hargreaves is the ideal tour guide.

“Nearly all the pipes are out now,” he says, standing in the middle of what looks like a set of brightly coloured coffins for short people but are in fact containers for the organ’s bellows. “Two floors below us there’s a blower that blows wind with bellows like this. It inflates up to here.

“This is all original I think,” he says, gesturing to the containers. “I don’t think they’ve been releathered. The wooden pieces protect the leather from light, rodents, insect damage.”

The bellows are powered by an electric fan, dating from the 1970s. The original ones were also electric.

“A Wellington one, which is five or six years older than this, by thesame company, also had electric ones from original,” says Hargreaves. “They were about the first electric ones and they’re still there. The motors were changed in the ’20s because the original ran on DC, which they got from the tram company.”

The new blower will have to be more powerful. “The one there at the moment is not remotely capable of blowing the organ as originally conceived. In the 1970s, they lowered all the wind pressures and introduced new pipes, which were much more efficient in their use of wind. And that’s why we haven’t been able to hear the organ.

“You want it to go from a whisper to a roar. There will be a lot more sonority in the total effect; the French call it gravitas. Or grunt.”

“Grunt – that’s the word,” says Campbell.