A Tale of Two Organs

FALL 2019

NEAR THE ALTAR RAIL OF THE BASILICA OF OLD ST. PATRICK'S CATHEDRAL in Lower Manhattan, a tour guide pauses in mid-sentence, waylaid by ethereal music. She lifts her head toward the choir loft, and the dozen men and women of her tour group follow suit. In the loft, organist Jared Lamenzo has begun playing a soft Bach partita, and its tones dance along the vaulted ceiling and down the Gothic columns, landing ineffably before the altar – a quiet gift for this small group in an otherwise empty church.

After half a minute, the guide turns back to her audience and resumes her talk about history and art, saints and symbolism, now accompanied by an ethereal counterpoint.

Three miles to the north, in the vast nave of St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue, the scene could hardly be more different. A couple of hundred tourists meander respectfully through the chapels and side aisles, while worshippers in the cordoned-off central pews attend to the liturgy of a memorial service echoing above the murmur of sightseers. When the majestic chords of the recessional hymn suddenly fill the space, everyone straightens up. No one is sure where to look, but eventually some of them locate the organ facade in the loft with its two-story-high ornamental pipes at the back of the nave. Tourists pause in their conversations to let the music – and the glory of God – wash over them.
 

A PIPE ORGAN IS A BIT LIKE A CRUISE SHIP or an airliner – a complex feat of engineering with thousands of moving parts, crafted to help us defy gravity and inertia, and travel to distant places. The organs of the two St. Patrick’s cathedrals, so different and yet so tied by history, offer an education in the instrument as well as a wonderful New York story. 

St. Patrick’s Cathedral on Fifth Avenue actually has two organs – the massive one housed in the gallery at the back of the nave and a smaller one behind the altar in the area known as the chancel. Both were designed and built by George Kilgen & Sons in the 1920s, but the chancel organ is considerably more modest than the mighty gallery organ, and it’s the big one that bears comparison to the instrument at the basilica in SoHo.

When it was dedicated in 1930, the gallery organ contained 7,855 pipes ranging in length from 32 feet to half an inch. In the years since, it has been upgraded to fully “electronic action,” which means that the work once accomplished through an intricate array of thousands of rods, cables, hinges and counterweights is now handled by an equally complex network of relays, switches and electric wiring. In addition, through the magic of fiber optics, both organs at Fifth Avenue can now be played from either console – the organist’s “cockpit,” each complete with five keyboards (called “manuals”), rows of stops (buttons that can be pulled out to adjust tone and volume by engaging particular pipe subgroups), and 32 pedals for playing the big bass pipes.

For all the modern technology, however, the sound that fills the cathedral is still the glorious result of air pumped through pipes under the masterly touch of a musical artist.
 

ST. PATRICK'S OLD CATHEDRAL was completed on a large lot at the corner of Mott and Prince streets in 1815. Its current organ was built in 1868 by Henry Erben, perhaps the greatest organ builder of his time. “Erben was a New York builder who made more organs than anybody in the world,” says Lamenzo, the organist and music director at the old cathedral. “He built all of the great cathedral organs in America – and all of them, except this one, were ripped out and replaced over the next century.” This one survived because it was left behind in 1879 when the archdiocese moved into its new cathedral uptown. As new technology came along, the original organs on Fifth Avenue were replaced, but not the Erben organ in SoHo.

The result today is a magnificent historic instrument in dire need of restoration. Most of the organ’s 2,500 pipes are signed – marked 1868 – by the artisans who made them. “It’s a completely mechanical action,” Lamenzo says. “And because of that, it’s very expressive. The only thing that’s electric is an electric blower added to the instrument in 1915. Prior to that, the organ’s bellows were cranked by hand.”

Summer is the best time of year to hear the Erben organ, says Lamenzo, “because it’s nice and humid, and the cracks get smaller. Come winter when the heat comes on, the cracks get bigger and I have to be very selective about which stops I use. It’s a process of deterioration. The only way to rectify it is to take out all the pipes and the wind-chests to fix the problems.”

Martin Scorsese, who was an altar server at Old St. Patrick’s, is the Honorary Chair of Friends of the Erben Organ, a non-profit dedicated to the organ’s restoration. “We’re about 12 percent of the way to our goal of $2 million,” Lamenzo says. For now, the Erben organ can be heard at Masses, concerts and during tours of the church. To book a tour or contribute to restoration efforts, visit erbenorgan.org.