2000 Pipes

Tonight, I saw the most amazing concert! A local church agreed to host a beautiful new organ for my school. This conservatory has an incredible organ program, and the community is quite supportive. This particular organ is a faithful reproduction of a Casparini Organ from 1776. The original, which is being restored, lives in Vilnius, Lithuania, so the professors, expert organ builders who specialize in this era, and other people from the local community traveled to Lithuania multiple times on research trips. They studied the 2000+ pipes of the original and had a master organ builder in Sweden recreate it for this church.

An organ from 1776 has bellows in the back which must be pumped. At least two people stand behind the organ and carefully step on the large levers to provide the air to the pipes. A third assistant is often required to operate the stops, the key-like appendages which I think open and close certain pipes. At tonight's concert, a live video feed was projected onto the screen you see in the picture above. The camera operators did a beautiful job filming the bellows and the stops as well as the feet of the organist. Most of the footage, of course, was of the organist playing the keyboards. A wonderful glimpse of how these magnificent instruments are played!

The music spanned the last few centuries. Most of the pieces were by Bach, who I think likely wrote for this type of organ. He died in 1750, so he may have composed for an earlier version of the instrument, but by and large, it seems like his music was designed for this kind of organ. Truly gorgeous waves of sound that filled the domed space in this church. It's not a cathedral kind of acoustic - that would imply too much resonance. Rather, it is a perfect space with ring that decays just right, allowing new sound to take its place.

We also heard a modern piece composed by a musician at this church. It involved the gradual addition of pipes (opening more stops) and seemed to me like daybreak rolling in. There was a bit of pitch bending, which I think they accomplished by very gradual opening of the stops. The piece also used the glockenspiel, a series of bells that are attached to the organ. It all sounded quite modern, and that seemed to be the intent. The goal was really to showcase this beautiful new instrument and all of its capabilities.

The final work was Mendelssohn's Sonata in F Minor, a virtuosic piece played by a wonderfully talented professor from my school. Like the other two organists who played tonight, he gestured to the organ when accepting his applause, much like a singer gestures to her accompanist or the actors onstage gesture to the pit. A very neat idea.

Sprinkled throughout were other multimedia endeavors to engage the audience. A few people spoke at the pulpit: the priest from the church, who expressed his joy in having an instrument that will bring students and others to the church, the head of a donor committee who thanked the donors, and the project head, a professor who used photographic slides and described the process of building this incredible instrument. There was also a dance troupe who performed modern dance with balletic elements to a Bach Adagio and Fugue. Finally, the camera work that was projected live onto the screens allowed us to see the musician's hands and the organ's inner workings up close. This was a practical blessing since the organ is located on a balcony above and behind the congregation.

I love being here! How amazing is it that I get to go see things like this? And that they're offered free to the community? Some of the best organists in the world playing one of the premier instruments in the world...all I can say is Wow. And I am very, very grateful.

~Hope