Sometimes there is a need for a different type of organ donor.
The closure of many once-prominent churches around the country has meant that the parts needed by the Sanbornton Congregational Church, UCC, in its efforts to restore its aging pipe organ were available with a bit of searching. Still, the task took five years to complete.
The Sanbornton Congregational Church dates back to 1771, and has played a vital role in the community. Its Estey pipe organ was installed in 1968 and, although it had undergone a number of repairs and upgrades over the years, it was in failing health when when the church’s current organist, Laura Belanger, came on board in 2017.
“The existing organ was sort of operating,” Laura said, “but when I came here, it was warm weather. When the winter came, the organ began to really act up —and that’s not unusual for certain organs — [but] the organ really began to demonstrate some real problems.”
Instead of scrapping the organ in favor of a newer electronic organ, as many churches have done when faced with the expense of a major overhaul of an old pipe organ, Laurie and Dennis Akerman, minister of music at the church, contacted local organ-builder K. Robert Bengtson to discuss how they might go about restoring the instrument themselves.
Hiring an organ company to do the work would have cost “many hundreds of thousands of dollars,” while Bob Bengtson estimated that they could repair it for $60,000.
The 75-member congregation approved their plan and raised the money in less than two weeks.
They found that a Facebook page called “Pipe Organ Garage Sale” would be helpful in locating the organ parts they needed.
“Through that we were able to locate components pretty much all over the Northeast,” Laura said.
The discovery of an Austin console for sale in New Jersey was what Dennis called “a fork in the road” for them.
“We knew now that we had something to work with,” he said.
Genesis
Sanbornton Congregational Church’s original Estey Opus 1281 pipe organ had been purchased in Carlisle, Massachusetts, in 1968. In 1976, the church replaced the console, which holds the manuals (keyboards), pedals, and stop controls, with an electro-pneumatic Estey console, and added a wind chest and several ranks (rows of pipes).
In 1985, William A. Brys, an organ-builder from Charlestown, replaced the old chests and did a major reworking of the organ.
Other modifications to the organ continued through 2014, including replacement of the open diapason (organ stop) in 1995, and enclosing the swell division, which controls loudness, in a new swell box in 2003.
By 2017, however, it was apparent that many of the organ’s critical parts were worn out.
The discovery of the Austin console, which dated from 1975 and had light use in a church in upstate New York, was a major find for the group. Bob estimated that building such a console today would cost more than $100,000; they were able to acquire it for $500. They saved the clock from the old console and placed it on the new one in a nod to the past.
Moving on, they located a person in Pennsylvania who deals in used organ parts and could provide many of the pipes that needed to be replaced. Another source or organ parts was in Rhode Island.
One thing that many people do not realize is that there are many more pipes in an organ than the ones in front of the facade. In order to produce the sounds of the different types of instruments, each rank of pipes has its own characteristic sound, and those pipes take up a lot of space in the organ chamber behind that facade. If a keyboard of 61 notes controls a group of 10 ranks of pipes, its means 610 pipes are required.
The Austin console usually has 83 notes on a rank, Dennis said, and the organ at the Sanbornton Congregational Church has 1,464 pipes.
In restoring the organ, they were able to save five ranks of pipes from the old organ, but had to replace the rest, making sure that pipes from different sources matched up.
“The challenge in any organ design — and I’m not saying that we’re experts at it, but with Bob’s guidance, and he’s experienced in the organ industry — is assembling essentially all these parts that weren’t meant to be together,” Dennis said. “That was the challenge for us: auditioning all these pipes and saying, ‘Do they work together,’ and ‘is it really right?’ It may sound good by itself, but will it work with the organ? So we’re pretty proud of what we’ve done.”
Laura said that a big part of the expense in installing a pipe organ is adjusting the “voice” to achieve the correct tone.
Beyond The Pipes
In addition to sending wind through the pipes to create the notes, there are “swell buttons” that control a set of buffers that determine how loud the sound is. The swell pipes pivot to control the volume, and they are contained in a swell box.
Because of the number needed, the restoration effort included building a larger swell box.
As they rebuilt the organ, they also had to purchase a larger blower to handle the amount of air needed to reach all those pipes. They found the one they needed in Tennessee, at a church that was converting to an electronic organ, Laura said.
While Bob and Laura knew what they needed for the organ, it was Clif Mills, a member of the congregation, who had the electronics skills they needed to get it all working. Modern pipe organs have complex electronics with several large cables running from the console, each containing a number of thin wires that carry the signal to the heart of the system, where the wind chest and swell box send air to the selected pipes.
“There’s a lot of electronics and electrical stuff involved,” Laura said, “so Clif has just jumped in.”
“This really is a labor of love,” Dennis added. “Going the electronic route, that’s the easy thing to do, but some people really love the idea of a more traditional pipe work.”
Saying that both older and newer organs have their place, Laura said, “This to me is the epitome of a good church organ, which has to serve a lot of needs. It has to be able to accompany hymns for hymn-singing for the congregation, but it’s also worthy of doing recitals.”
To celebrate the completion of the restoration, Laura scheduled an organ recital at the church on October 23.
“Between the console and the all of the newer pipes that we have, we’re kind of keeping the legacy of other churches alive,” Laura commented. Many of the pipes came from what had been a thriving Episcopal church in Warwick, Rhode Island, before it closed. Now, “part of it stays alive.”
This story originally appeared in The Laker.