Taylor chapel pipe organ will feature historic design, tone

A new baroque organ taking shape in Anabel Taylor Chapel will re-create the sound and visual design of historic German instruments of 300 years ago.

The organ is the culmination of years of research and more than two years of work by 21st-century craftsmen, applying 17th- and early 18th-century methods to the assembly of thousands of parts into a thing of beauty, to be completed this fall. The assembly itself is nearing completion, with months of detail work and the voicing of nearly 2,000 pipes still ahead.

Commissioned by Cornell's Department of Music, the organ will be used for solo repertoire, such as the music of J.S. Bach, as well as vocal and instrumental ensemble accompaniment. It will also complement department strengths in performance and research in music of the 17th to 19th centuries, and will attract top organists and composers.

The finished organ is expected to last several hundred years, the result of a seven-year international organ studies research project undertaken by Cornell, the University of Gothenburg in Sweden, and the Eastman School of Music in Rochester, N.Y.

The instrument re-creates the tonal design of an organ at the castle chapel at Charlottenburg in Berlin, handmade in 1706 by master organ builder Arp Schnitger and destroyed by Allied bombers during WWII.

The project is not just a curatorial reconstruction, "but a wonderful way to inspire new skills, ideas and musical activities," said organist and music professor Annette Richards. "The organ was absolutely central to Western culture into the early 20th century. Learning from the past, we're transplanting and nurturing a whole new set of ways of making, maintaining and, of course, playing these gorgeous works of art."

The pipes were handcrafted in Sweden by Munetaka Yokota, lead researcher and designer on the $2 million project. A veteran of several major historic organ reconstructions, he is now supervising the installation in the chapel.

"The craft part cannot be ignored," Munetaka said. "It's not just a museum piece, of course, but the old materials have to be respected as much as possible."

The organ has 1,827 pipes in 42 rows; two 50-note keyboards and a 26-note pedal; 30 stops; and four large wood-and-cowhide bellows in a room above the chapel. The organ will produce pitches from 30 Hz to 8,000 Hz; the range of human hearing is 20 to 20,000 Hz.

The massive, intricately designed wooden case is quarter-sawn white oak, and based on a Schnitger organ at Clausthal-Zellerfeld, Germany. Each wooden surface of Cornell's organ was planed by hand, and the case is held together by hand-forged nails and hardware, wooden pegs, and dovetail and mortise and tenon joints.

The four bellows (each weighing more than 400 pounds) are designed to be operated manually. The only non-historic component is an electric motor to pump air into the bellows when a player cannot enlist friends to help, Munetaka said.

Organ research involved fluid dynamics, electro-acoustics and metallurgy, among other scientific disciplines, he said: "Many scientists worked with us in helping us to understand this early wind-bellows technology."

Case components were handcrafted and assembled in nearby Dryden, N.Y., by woodworkers Christopher Lowe and Peter De Boer from November 2007 to November 2008, and then dismantled and transported to Parsons Pipe Organ Builders in Canandaigua, N.Y., where the organ's wind system was built. The pipes and about seven tons of wooden components were delivered to campus by January, and the chapel interior is now a workshop and construction site.

"It seems like we spent about three or four months just carrying all of this in here," Lowe said.

The oak came from Pennsylvania -- the Ohio Valley is Lowe's guess -- and the 18-foot-tall pedal-tower sides from a sustainable forest in Germany.

"Every tree has its own place to be used," Munetaka said. "I think it's a beautiful thing to use everything in the most intelligent way. Materials used in the old way, the closest to the original conditions in nature, are best -- for the historic and the playing aspects."

Cornell's Office of General Construction and union trade shops have been an integral part of the organ installation, Richards said.

There will be an open house at the chapel on Saturday, April 24, and parts of the organ are expected to be playable by May or June. Once the voicing is finished this fall, the first concert is planned for Nov. 21, and an inaugural celebration will be held March 10-13, 2011.

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Joe Schwartz