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A Brief History of the Rieger-Kloss Organ Through the gracious generosity of a special gift to the Saint John the Evangelist Parish Community, a magnificent new pipe organ was commissioned in the Spring of 2001 to coincide with the construction and completion of the Worship Center Renovation Project. Rieger-Kloss Varhany, Krnov, Czech Republic, established in 1873, one of the world's largest and most venerable pipe organ builders was awarded the commission to both design and construct a grand new instrument for the parish. After reviewing a number of available options, the firm of Rieger-Kloss was chosen on the basis of their instruments' beautiful tone quality, old-world European craftsmanship, and outstanding customer satisfaction. "Jeff" Merrill N. Davis III, artistic and marketing director for Euro Musik Corporation, Bloomingdale (Chicago), Illinois, exclusive North American Importers for Rieger-Kloss, and a long-time Rochester resident, outlined the basic tonal concepts for the Saint John instrument in consultation with the parish's organist and director of liturgy, Robert J. Hachmeister. In doing this, the two visited a number of Midwest organ installations by Rieger-Kloss and others. From these visits, several trips to Rieger-Kloss in Europe, and discussions, which followed - plans for a new Saint John organ were developed and realized. First and foremost, the creation of a truly practical and beautiful musical instrument for worship and celebration was carefully planned in close consultation with renovation project architects Royce Yeater and Richard Hennings, together with acoustical engineer Steven T. Link of Kvernstoen, Kehl, and Associates, Inc. of Minneapolis. The building's renovation included turning both the sanctuary and nave around 180 degrees! What is now the altar area was formerly the church's entrance; what is now the nave's main entrance was formerly the sanctuary. The wood case of the new Rieger-Kloss organ occupies what was formerly the southeast portion of the church balcony. The acoustical properties of the mid-1950's room were very living room like - in other words - not very lively: ceilling, floors, and walls tended to "eat" sound rather than reflect it. The new Saint John acoustical environment made it possible for organbuilder Rieger-Kloss to utilize natural pipe scales and unforced voicing techniques, which has resulted in the new instrument having a gentle vocal tonal quality. The Instrument's Tonal Design Because building height is somewhat limited (27' floor to ceiling) and organ loft height at even more of a premium (11'), the several open registers of 16' and 8' pitch needed to be "haskelled" - that is having an additional pipe resonator inserted back down through the pipe in order to produce a tone of true "acoustic" pitch length. This is a similar treatment to what we see in an orchestral tuba or French horn - where the horn resonator curves around itself (a horn stretched-out straight would measure nearly 8' in length). The pipes of the instrument's Great and Swell organ divisions are mounted on common channel slider chests - a type of organ wind chest utilized over several centuries by the world's most prominent builders. The advantage of this type of wind chest is that it is not built out of perishable materials and the fact that all pipes on a particular stop or rank of pipes feed from a common wind supply, which causes the pipes to "draw" together - subtly altering the pitch - thus "warming" the sound. The larger pipes found in the Pedal, Grand Resonance, and Solo organ divisions are on slightly higher wind pressure than those of the Great and Swell and play from unit electric wind chests. The tonal design of the Saint John Rieger-Kloss instrument is somewhat unusual in that it contains a keyboard division called GRAND CHOIR RESONANCE. In essence this division is an extension of the organ's pedal division voices. Most American organs have a pedal key compass of 32 notes and manuals of 61 notes. At Saint John, the pipe ranks assigned to the Pedal division were each extended upward by 29 notes making possible the creation of an entire manual division utilizing the hefty large-scaled voices found in the organ's bass division. The result of taking advantage of this historic 18th Century French practice - is being able to have what can truly be termed a monumental "cap" over the instrument's already grand ensemble! Another somewhat unusual feature of the new Rieger-Kloss is that the instrument has no what could be termed really large loud voices! Perhaps the flamed copper horizontally mounted trompette-en-chamade pipes or the five-rank Grand Cornet could qualify if utilized together in the ensemble, but all-in-all most of the organ's voices - even its mixture stops - speak with a quite voice. In playing the Saint John the Evangelist instrument, one notices immediately the wealth of accompanimental voices at unison pitch: even the Grand Resonance contains a beautifully gentle Violoncelle; the Swell has its vocal English Diapason, a wonderful Bourdon harmonique, and a breathtakingly serene Voix celestes built with three ranks of pipes (tuned flat, unison, and sharp); the Great (which like the Swell division is under expression) contains flutes of exquisite tone, together with its gentle, but very rich sounding, Principal Chorus. The organ's reed stops are all built with double blocks and thus enjoy a marvelous stability of both tone and tuning. The reed resonators are extra length and the pipes were made from an alloy of 70% tin (except for the en-chamade, which has copper resonators). Both the Swell and Great reeds are copied from Dom Bedos III, the 18th Century French monk and organbuilder. The lower pipes of the 16' Bombarde contain 1/2 length large scale French-style resonators with English-style rounded shallots - as do the Trompettes-en-chamade. The organ's flue pipes are made from alloys of 30% to 75% tin and lead, together with a number of wood samples fashioned from pine (for pure fundamental sound) to maple and oak (which produce sound with more harmonic development). Metal pipes do not have tuning sleeves and are cut to tuning length, as is the European practice, and thus will seldom need to be touched by an organ tuner. Organ Reed Stops, on the contrary need regular tuning maintenance by an experienced expert. The Organ's Console and Control System The movable console is a low-profile four-manual and pedal Choirmaster model especially designed for an organist/conductor by Rieger-Kloss. The tracker-touch keyboard naturals are made of boxwood and the sharps of rosewood; the pedal-clavier is of a G. Donald Harrison Aeolian-Skinner design and has naturals of maple and sharps of ebony. The side jam stop tablets are fashioned from European hornbeam - one of the rarest and hardest woods in existence. The instrument's control is a software-based computerized system developed and engineered by the Robert Walker Technical Company of Zionsville, Pennsylvania. It is possible for the organist to preprogram thousands of stop combinations through the console memory system. The console also contains an instant organ playback system, which has disc storage for later playback. A piston sequencer allows the organist to preprogram all his/her stop combinations for any given piece of music with just the touch of a button (piston) or toe stud. The Saint John instrument has total MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) capability, which allows for any other musical instrument or computer with MIDI capability (synthesizers, keyboards, sound modules, drum machines, etc.) to operate through the Rieger-Kloss console and all its controls. It is possible to play a digital piano from the organ's console and combine its sound with that of the organ! Because of the building's limited height dimensions (discussed above), it was decided to augment the instrument's bass department with a number of highly effective pedal voices derived from state-of-the-art digital pipe organ sampling. These sounds were sampled, engineered, and voiced at Saint John by Robert Walker himself. There voices include: a Pedal 32' Contreviolon, 32' Untersatz, 16' Flute ouverte, 32' Contrebombarde, together with an astounding stop at 64' pitch - a Fagotto Profunda! The Swell harp and Voix humaine are also sampled voices. The Wicks Antiphonal Organ Even though the 1930's Wicks Organ, which was moved from Saint John's previous edifice to the new church in the early '50's had sustained more than its fair share of damage over the years (the latest from a somewhat recent leaky roof), and the fact that its console was not in very playable condition by the time the 2001 church renovation was under way - it was suggested that serious consideration should be given to utilizing the Wicks instrument as an Antiphonal Organ to the Rieger-Kloss Organ and have all its voices playable from the new Rieger-Kloss console. After seeing that indeed the Wicks could be restored and brought back into playable condition, a contract was signed with the Wicks firm to have the needed work completed. Building Rieger-Kloss Opus 3721 Negotiations and installation details for the Rieger-Kloss Organ for the Church of Saint John the Evangelist were handled by Matt Bechteler, President, Euro Musik Corporation; William E. Gray, Jr., Euro Musik Tonal/Sales Consultant; and Mr. Davis, together with the parish pastor, The Reverend Msgr. Gerald A. Mahon, Ms. Margaret Kelsey, the parish's director of ministry, and Mr. Hachmeister. It took the Rieger-Kloss workshop a year and a half to design, build, completely assemble the instrument in the company's montage hall, disassemble the organ, crate, ship to America, install, and voice each and every pipe of the instrument in its new Rochester home. The new organ arrived at Saint John the second week in August 2002 and was completed by mid-October. The same group of gentlemen who built the organ in Krnov, Czech Republic, traveled with the instrument to Rochester and reassembled it at the Church of Saint John the Evangelist. The architect of the instrument was the Rieger-Kloss firm's chief
engineer, Dr. Olda Hajek; case design was by Zdenek Kocenda; specifications
for the reed registers were under the guidance of Ing. Boris Micek;
mixture dispositions were executed by Josef Friedl, Jan Kostera, and
Zdenek Svetlik; Jan Rames was in charge of console layout; and Tomas
Fafilek and Frantisek Kutalek completed on-site voicing of the instrument;
Karel Uryga served as foreman of the Rochester installation and was
assisted in his work by Tomas Kusak, Zdenek Mican, Jaroslav Kristof,
and Rostislav Kohoutek. Jeffrey Daehn of Rochester has been appointed
by Euro Musik Corporation as official curator of the new organ.
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