Ralph J. Perk, Mayor, on behalf of the Citizens of Cleveland, invites you to attend the REDEDICATION CERE MONY of the Cleveland Municipal Organ in the Music Hall....
The Mayor, as it turned out, never made it to the big show, but I did. I wanted to hear that organ "live" be cause it is one of the few left intact of those grand E. M. Skinner Romantic-style organs which once were the ,pride of many an American city, not to mention such places as the Wanamaker department stores in New York and Philadelphia. Cleveland's huge instrument, with 150 stops, more than 10,000 pipes, made its debut in 1922 to an enormous audience. But, with changing styles, it was gradually forgotten and for years remained silent and decaying. Now, with the ardent help of Michael Murray, young Cleveland organist, plus the Kulas Foundation, the organ has been re stored to its authentic sound, and Murray is Cleveland's official Municipal Organist.
I had a further motive, as you will guess. I already knew the sound of Michael Murray's organ records on Advent, which have been reviewed in Audio's pages. Public radio wanted a tape of Murray's rededication performance; if the sound turned out OK, there might be an LP record, and I could be in on both aspects, live and recorded versions of the very same performance. Could be instructive.
MunicipalMusic Hall
So I went out to Cleveland and loved every minute of it, especially the Rededication concert itself, which surprisingly drew almost 4,000 people.
They sat, stood, and lounged in every available Music Hall space, a happy, cheering, whistling municipal mob (the concert was free), who managed to pry five encores out of Murray.
Heartening! Even for me, whose organ heart, I must whisper carefully, really belongs to the Baroque organ. I also thrill to the sound of the Mighty Wurlitzer when the occasion is right, like, say, a super hi-fi recording. And so I went all-out, along with the crowd, for the remarkable sound effects of this ultimate Romantic instrument. Even if the thing was enveloped in a disconcertingly muffled, deadish hall. More of that later.
The Cleveland organ was built in 1921-22. In those days, at the end of the Romantic age and pre-electronic glorification of mechanical ingenuity, the big pipe organ was still King of Instruments, the very embodiment of man's highest skills. Every American city had its Municipal Organ (and Organist), and the bigger the burg, the bigger the organ. Pipes in the thousands, stops in the many hundreds, a sound to bewilder with its variety and stun in its potency. On the very hot September day in 1922 when this organ was dedicated, more than 20,000 Clevelanders turned out--with no air conditioning--to hear Edwin Arthur Kraft put his big new machine through its paces. It was that kind of an age.
But this was only moments before radio, the talking film, and then TV. In a sadly short time, the huge organs were forgotten and fell slowly into decay. Who wanted big noises when little ones could be amplified? Cleveland's managed to hold out, barely, until after the War. But from the 1950s on, it was dead, silent, and unplayable. Luckily, the Music Hall remained intact (probably because of the much larger Public Auditorium in the same building) and so, unlike the other organs which were rebuilt or junked, this one was merely left to rot.
Just in time, it has been saved. If the precious tin required could now be gotten for its pipes, which is doubtful, a new duplicate might cost a half mil lion dollars.
Cosmopolitan Comraderie
After New York, that Rededication was so middle-American that I was enchanted. No ordinary concert audience, I guess that most of those people seldom (if ever) had been to a concert. Everybody got there early, and when I arrived, 10 minutes ahead of time, the place was mobbed, and such a roar of good-humored conversation you never heard. It's a big city, Cleveland, but also very much a small town; you'd think everyone knew everybody else. And such a cross-section, from blue jeans to blue blood, babyhood to old age. (I know of one segment of tape that won't appear on the LP. A small child let loose a series of loud wails right in the quietest place of all.) We began with The Star Spangled Banner after a series of dedicatory speeches and "please stand ups, to enthusiastic applause-such a booster town! Wayne Mack, local radio announcer, boomed a welcome through the PA, loud enough to knock the walls down. "GLAD TO SEE WE HAVE AN ABSOLUTELY FULL HOUSE!" (Cheers.) Dignitaries sounded off on behalf of the Mayor, and the Kulas Foundation and the Greater Cleveland Growth Assn. (more cheers)--"the little city that has EVERYTHING!" (shouts of joy)--"it might even be the Greatest City the World has Ever Seen" (more applause)-all as nice as applesauce and nobody minded the rhetoric. Good to hear that kind of sentiment again. We can use it.
Then-darkness, a sudden spot light, and the curtains rolled back to disclose the Great Console at the back of the stage, blindingly lit. Michael Murray, who is a bit over five feet tall, appeared dramatically in a white coat and black pants, followed by more spots as he climbed aboard.
You could see his feet under the organ bench, which was good-such agility! That had the audience fascinated, as did the great arrays of knobs, sliders, and pushbuttons on every side, as well as the five big, white key boards. Fortunately for Murray, the pedals of Skinner organs are laid out in a concave arc so that the end pedals aren't beyond the reach of short legs.
The shorter, the more agile, is all I can say in this case. This was indeed a Show, for the organ itself, however, highly bred, is definitely a show instrument for the virtuoso Romantic music which it projects best, by such 19th century masters as Cesar Franck, Widor, Vierne, Karg-Elart, Guilmant, and Murray's own teacher, the famed late Marcel Dupre. I liked this carnival atmosphere because it clearly put aside the too-familiar tradition that organ music means church. Church--yes, often enough. But that does not necessarily mean stuffiness, our common mistake. This reviving tradition of the Municipal Organ, you see, has much of the impact of that unchurchlike organ, the Mighty Wurlitzer, but at the same time it stems from an impeccably "classical" tradition going back a century, mostly in France, where the famous Cavaillé Coll originated the Romantic type of organ in the 1830s, an enlarged instrument to parallel and equal the sonic virtuosity of the new Romantic symphony orchestra. Bigness--of course, the theme of the 19th century! And inventive ingenuity. A new device called the Barker lever, for instance, made it possible to add stop on stop, simultaneously played from the organist's keyboard, without increasing the mechanical force needed at the keys, the touch. As the power of sound increased, the vital wind sup ply was built up too, so that the demands of thousands of pipes could be met at the finger's tips. All this, though, was before the age of electricity. The entire development of the Romantic organ was mechanical-and don't think that didn't apply to the wind supply.
Mechanical Monster
Today, we have electric air pumps.
But that imaginative picture that many musicians still cherish of mystical old César Franck playing alone, high up in his Paris organ console, hour after hour, improvising great paeans to the Lord, is fine and dandy if you under stand that it took five sweating men below, working bellows by hand and by leg, to produce those hours of heavenly sound. That was in the Nineties; the last French organ to convert the air supply to electricity was in Paris as late as the mid-Twenties. Electricity, electro-pneumatic action, the all-electric console, these refinements in truth came after the definitive high point of Romantic organ building, though electricity did bring a final ease and versatility to a type of organ which would and did get along with out it.
In fact, the Mighty Wurlitzer was the end-result and all-out extreme product in respect to electrical control; but that's another story. The pure traditional Romantic organ is all pipes, or nearly, and all wind. The Wurlitzers (thanks to electricity) went in for every imaginable and outlandish sound effect that could be operated from a keyboard, including drums, cymbals, chimes, piano, and Heaven alone knows what other delectable items. Classical organists do not approve; Wurlitzer fans definitely do, including myself.
Ancient PA
I must say, there was at least a hint of television showbiz in all this, what with the glad-handing introductions and Michael Murray's own informal remarks through a stage mike and a monster PA system, two huge early Voice of the Theater speakers halfway up each side of the proscenium arch.
But again, why not? Let two eras meet, a nostalgia show and a bit of the tube, all in one package. Which proves that organ music can be Fun, a message that is a very important one if we are to restore others of those now-silent monsters.
Murray made one interesting mis take, from the audio viewpoint. He introduced the piece de resistance (applause), the Bach Toccata and Fugue in D minor, and forgot to turn off his stage mike. Such a caterwauling of sound, and Murray, stage-rear out of the speaker's range, didn't hear a thing. The right hand speaker was straight in front of me, maybe 40 feet away, and the most hideous squawks of overload blasted forth from that unlovely source, completely drowning out the organ. My fingers were in my ears in a moment, and if the noise had continued, I would have walked straight out--I cannot endure loud distortion. But a chorus of uninhibited shouts broke in at the end--"TURN OFF THE MIKE! CUT THE PA!" Murray heard and did the deed. I'm wondering whether that PA system also dates from Nostalgia Days. In any case, it is from the time when PA was accomplished via a few large and loud speakers, up-front, instead of the distributed sources and natural low levels we use in the best newer installations, today.
Muffled Music
Muffled? Deadish? Yes, and thereby hangs an interesting tale. As one slightly waspish lady music critic wrote the next day, "Soupy, mushy, and muffled! Oh, that organ!" Technically, she had something. I heard it too. The big organ just did not project its full power and color into the Music Hall. The sound was surprisingly dead, as we heard it. But the reason for this is part and parcel of the very era in which the organ was built, along with the Hall itself.
First, as was the style, the Public Auditorium and Music Hall was one big building of marble, the two halls sharing a doublet stage in the middle, the Music Hall in the small end, and the much vaster Auditorium the other end. Separating the two halls are fire curtains which can be rolled back to expose both to the in-between stage.
The organ had to be mounted on one side, above the big stage area, so that it could be used to play into either hall. Thus, no fancy frontal towers and pinnacles of pipes, and an indirect, 90-degree sound entangled in too many curtains and fly spaces. On the stage itself, the sound is gorgeous.
Out in the Music Hall, most especially on the floor, it is underpowered and muffled.
But there is something else. The authorities assured me that the acoustics would soon be improved; the hall, it seems, boasts a large installation of what was the latest miracle of the 1920s, soundproofing, carefully disguised to look like stone, though it sure isn't. This material will not be re placed by more suitable reflective surfaces, to bring out the natural liveness of a well-shaped hall. Ahh--but should it be? A neat question! For you must understand that this deadened hall sound is just as authentic to its own time, 1922, as is the organ itself. Dead sonics were a great new discovery. At last, the blur and confusion that had hampered us for centuries in public halls and churches could be eliminated. Now, we had crystal clarity, both for music and for voices! You could hear every last detail. All the new churches and auditoriums of that day got the modern sound treatment, though it was always disguised as stone or wood work.
"Stone" Soundproofing
Well, the fake-stone soundproofing is architecturally authentic. And we in audio know that, in truth, the preferred sonics of many early electrical recordings now seem to us remark ably dead. It was the style-remember Toscanini's famed studio 8H at NBC? As nearly an anechoic chamber as any large studio has ever been and absolutely lethal for music! However, in 1937, they didn't think so. They even contrived to make Carnegie Hall and Symphony Hall in Boston sound much deader than on our present recordings in the same places.
On the other hand, the Cleveland organ itself is the culmination of a great school of organ building, the late American arm of a European tradition which took for granted the acoustic delay systems of the old world cathedrals and buildings. The organs themselves and the music composed for them assumed a large reverberation as normal.
From this viewpoint, you see, the 1922 Cleveland soundproofing was a momentary aberration from traditions that go back centuries. Therefore-go ahead and rip out the stuff, so that the sonic truth may be heard! After all, in architecture it's looks that count, not sound. (Now, I suppose, the stone work will be reflective plastic.) P.S. I got to hear the stereo tape of that concert the very next day. Superb! Astonishingly, there was all that vast sonic power and the spacious reverberation which was missing in the live performance. How come? Recording versatility! The stereo mikes were placed up on the stage opposite the sidewise organ. Within that stage area, plenty big in itself, there is a remarkably fine reverb. And all the sonic power the organ can produce was picked up.
So, fittingly enough, it was the recorded sound of the organ which in the end gave me a true idea of what E. M. Skinner's fine instrument could do. How's that for a commentary on our art? Keep an eye and an ear out for the record, maybe some time next year.
(Source: Audio magazine )
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