Custom built organ nearly installed at Christ Church lauded as one of world’s great organs
By Anne W. Semmes
Since early January two large containers that have traveled from England have arrived at Christ Church Greenwich, with a final third arriving at end of this month. They contain the parts of what’s being forecast as one of the world’s great organs that will fill the oldest Episcopal church in New England with new exuberant sound. “Everyone is going to be blown away by how different this organ is,” shares Jonathan “Jonny” Vaughn, the Church’s associate music director, who will be playing that organ, and who had a major part in its design.
“Jonny is one of the finest organ players in the United States,” tells George Belshaw, the director of Advancement and Engagement at Christ Church, who heads the Organ Committee that began its search for a new organ initially in 2013. Belshaw and his search team of Vaughn, music director Jamie Hitel, and Philip Moore, the noted British music director, would travel the U.S. UK, and Germany, before deciding on the British firm, Durham-based Harrison & Harrison that has to its credit the cathedral organs of Canterbury Cathedral, Westminster Abbey, King’s College Cambridge, and London’s Royal Festival Hall.
“The sound of that organ,” says Hitel, “will be revelatory in our church.” It was Hitel who arrived at the Church in 2008 charged with “basically rebuilding the music program,” now a world class RSCM-certified church music program. It includes six choirs – with the Men and Boys choir the very model of the Anglican choral tradition – and surely all will be enhanced by the new organ.
“Part of the Anglican accompanying tradition,” says Vaughn, “is about having orchestral colors on the organ. So, this instrument has over four and a half thousand pipes. The reason it’s got so many is not because you need that number, it’s to give variety…So, some of the colors that you’ll find in the new organ that were not in the old organ, are clarinet…oboes, more than one, and there’s going to be a French horn. There’s going to be a tuber. Lots of flutes.”
Vaughn will literally be “pulling out all the stops.” “A stop is a rank of pipes,” he explains, and “A stop is actually a color. A stop is how you control it.” In playing with all those stops, he tells, “I’m actually a conductor.”
All those stops and 4639 pipes now on their way in the third container, along with that hard-working six-man Harrison & Harrison crew with their 12-hour shifts come at a cost of $3,500,000. They are replacing a now repurposed Austin Organ that surprisingly had 1700 more pipes than the new one.
But it’s all about acoustics, and the sanctuary of Christ Church was missing that bass sound, so the new organ will have two chambers instead of one, as seen in the new structure on the right side of the chancel. Vaughn explains how the “big chancel arch really holds the sound getting through from the chancel into the nave. So, the new organ is designed in such a way that its sound can project either just into the chancel [where the choir is located] or just into the nave or both. So, when we’re accompanying the choir, we’ll play only projecting into the chancel. And when we’re playing for the nave (the congregation), we’ll project into the nave as well.”
Part of the marvel of the Harrison & Harrison organ construct is its having been built over the last two years in Durham, then disassembled -its casing structures, carved oak frames, and critical sounding boards for the two organ chambers – before delivering them in the containers. As if drawn by this marvel, dozens of parishioners, including major donors have been volunteering with unloading those containers.
“The importance of the project,” notes Belshaw, “is that we are really investing into the future of our music program. Because an instrument of this caliber allows us to train young choristers successfully, because this type of organ is designed to support voice, and not overpower voice. It’s designed to support young voices, and trained, exceptional singers. It also helps perpetuate the music program because it helps us to track extra musicians, music directors, organists. You need a good instrument to get a good successor.”
“After Easter is when the painstaking work of voicing begins,” tells Vaughn. “Harrisons’ head voicer Andrew Scott and his associate Andrew Fiddes will be listening to every pipe from the nave of the church and making fine adjustments to ensure that the instrument sounds at its absolute best in the acoustics of Christ Church. That’s their job from late April through to the start of July.”
“For Harrison &. Harrison,” Vaughn adds, “This is going to be their landmark American instrument. They’re going as far as they can to make sure this instrument is absolutely right.”
Vaughn entices, “The sound of the new organ is going to kind of cuddle you when you’re trying to sing with it. It’s going to make a really rich sound – it’s got a ton of bass.”
We step into the nave of the Church. Vaughn leads the way, pointing out the sites of the two new organ chambers, while the Harrison team on ladders is busily laying in the elegantly carved East Transept frame. He asks Harrison worker Rob what kind of wood the frame is made of. Oak is the reply. Rob is part of the same team that prebuilt the frame and now installing it.
“We’ve talked about this in the abstract,” says Vaughn. “And then you come in here, you can really see the progress being made.” Progress needing to be made before that final container arrives. “And that’s when the pipes come that Vaughn calls “the soul of the instrument.”
“It will be really exciting for me,” he ends, “because I’ve lived with just a list of stops for three years. And these things are going to arrive in a couple of weeks. I’m going to carry them in a tray – those different stops – and I’ll know what they are.”
A Dedicatory Organ Recital featuring the new Harrison & Harrison Organ is set for October 22, 2022.
