Anecdotes of Great Musicians/Anecdote 214
214.—RESTORING AN ORGAN.
Many of the pipe organs used in our churches are poor affairs. The church committee that is vested with purchasing power seems generally to be chosen, like jurymen, on account of entire absence of knowledge of the subject in hand,—in this case of music in general and organs in particular. The result is that they are at the mercy of the organ builder in matters of construction, though he is at their mercy in the matter of money; for in many cases the main consideration is to expend as little as possible and get in return not the best action, stop combinations, and material,—but the greatest possible quantity of external display.
Consequently we find organs having the tone quality poor, the key action hard and stiff, the stops requiring the muscle of a Sandow for manipulation, the swell slamming like a window blind, the tremulant rattling like a wheezy horse, and the balance of pedal and manual registers such as to make the word "balance" a misnomer, to say nothing of the pipes being generally out of tune.
True, these various ills may not often coexist in the same organ; but frequently we find several of them dwelling in—discord together.
The cause of this state of affairs is anxiety, when purchasing, to get quantity rather than quality, and afterward allowing the instrument to go for months and years without proper attention. An organ should be regulated, adjusted, and tuned at least once a year, by a competent man, and not by the "tramp" tuners that leave an instrument in worse condition than they found it.
It is poor economy to try and rebuild or restore an organ. After it reaches a certain age it is best to replace the instrument with a new one, having used in it as many of the old pipes as the builder sees fit. Improvements are constantly being made in mechanism, and the latest and best action should be secured rather than patch up an old one.
Snetzler, an English organ builder, but originally from Germany, once reported to a committee concerning the restoration of an old organ in these words:—
"Gentlemen, your organ be vort von hundert pound just now. Ven you spend von hundert pounds on him to fix him up he will den be vort fifty!"