Simon Yovino and 29 other teens are pulling out all the stops this summer, immersing themselves in the study of a musical instrument invented two centuries before the birth of Christ.
Sponsored by the Delaware Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, Pipe Organ Encounter (POE) brings together 30 students age 13-18 from across the United States.
Delaware Public Media producer Ben Szmidt visits the Pipe Organ Encounter at Christ Church in Wilmington.
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It is the first time Simon and many of the other budding musicians have ever met another young person who plays the pipe organ.
“I am hoping to meet other kids that I can stay in touch with,” says the 15-year-old North Wilmington youth. “When you play the pipe organ there aren’t a lot of people you can have a meaningful discussion with.”
Indeed. The ranks of organists have been dwindling for years, as fewer churches can afford full-time music directors. At the same time, fewer young people are committing to studying a complex instrument that requires controlling keyboards, pedals and stops.
“We want to be able to pick up our iPhone and say ‘teach me to play the pipe organ,’” says Charles Grove of Schaefferstown, Pa., the organist at Washington Memorial Chapel in Valley Forge, Pa.
POE was a revelation for Grove, who began taking lessons at the age of 11 and was barely 12 when he attended his first event.
“It’s a big nerd fest, a summer camp for organists,” he says. “I loved every minute of it.”
Grove, now 23, attended a Pipe Organ Encounter somewhere in the U.S. every year after that until he went to Lebanon Valley College, where he majored in organ. He is a chaperone at this summer’s event, the second one Delaware has hosted.
He understands how these young musicians became smitten with the pipe organ while other kids were playing video games and practicing soccer.
“It’s capable of producing sounds that no other instrument in the world can do,” Grove says. “It’s the most beautiful and humbling experience, ever.”
One of his POE teachers was David Schelat, director of music at First and Central Presbyterian Church in Wilmington, who remains a friend and mentor. Schelat is co-director of the Delaware POE with Neil Harmon, music director of Grace United Methodist Church, also in Wilmington.
“David was so helpful, very knowledgeable,” Grove recalls. “He is relaxed but subtly demanding.”
Teachers and students of this complex instrument speak the same language, the highly specialized vocabulary of the pipe organ.
They talk about principals, the main voice of the organ. Principals are the pipes that are unique to the organ and not voiced to mimic other instruments, as are flute pipes and string pipes. Bombard is a full reed, very loud.
“We would say, ‘wow, what about that bombard in the pedal section?’” Grove recalls.
Pipe organs have multiple keyboards—that’s “manuals” in organ-speak—compared to one on a piano. The Zimbelstern—German for “cymbal star”— is a wheel of rotating bells.
A mid-size organ has three manuals, 32 pedals and 34 stops, the tabs the organist pulls out to adjust the volume. The grandest organs are much larger. The pipe organ built in 1930 for Convention Hall in Atlantic City boasts five manuals and 33,112 pipes. The Wanamaker organ in Philadelphia weighs 287 tons and is equipped with six manuals and 28,500 pipes.
When the organist “pulls out all the stops” the volume is revved to the max.
“When I was a kid at Pipe Organ Encounter we all wanted to hear full organ,” Grove says.
These days, he is rhapsodic when he contemplates the cornet (pronounced cor-NAY) of a Johann Sebastian Bach chorale.
“It makes my heart race, just thinking about it,” he says. “It’s a bright sound, a little aggressive.”
Simon also loves Bach—the Baroque composer was himself an organist— and listens to various interpretations on YouTube. He recently took on the challenge of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor.
“It has taken me a while, five or six months, to learn because a fugue is very difficult,” he says. “I learned the prelude but got stuck at the fugue because it has a melody in the pedals and I didn’t have the articulation quite right.”
In addition to daily lessons, students attend master classes led by such celebrated musicians as Nathan Laube, the 26-year-old wunderkind who is a rock star in pipe organ circles. At John Dickinson High School in suburban Wilmington, students will listen to a Kimball Theatre organ accompanying a silent film and take a “crawl” through the inner workings of the instrument.
“The students will be able to go inside the chamber where the pipes are located and be able to see the mechanism that makes the sound,” Schelat says.
Field trips also include a recital at Christ Church in Greenville, an organ shop in Baltimore and visits to the region’s most cherished organs, including the 10,010-pipe organ and carillon at Longwood Gardens, where Laube will perform.
“The Longwood Gardens organ is very cool, more than 100 stops,” Simon says. “To actually be close to it is very exciting.”
Edward Moore, an organist in Pittsburgh and a POE instructor, enjoys watching students make a beeline for the organ console and begin taking pictures.
“When I was young, I was all alone in studying the organ,” says Moore, 45. “These students are so enthused and can share that experience with other kids their age.”
The pipe organ traces its origins to ancient Greece, where water pressure was used to propel wind through pipes. By the 6th century, leather bellows were used to pump air. The first permanent organ, installed in Halberstat, Germany, in 1361, boasted 20 bellows operated by 20 brawny men.
In the 16th century, 6-year-old Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart stood on the pedal board to play because he was too small to reach the pedals from the bench. As an adult, he was so moved by the majesty of the organ that he proclaimed it “the King of Instruments.”
Simon also was inspired as a young boy, listening to the pipe organ at Emmanuel Presbyterian Church in North Wilmington.
He started taking piano lessons at 9. When he was 13, he branched out to the organ at the encouragement of his teacher, Lori Bostrum of Newark.
“On a scale of 1 to 10, the piano is a 3 or a 4 and the organ is a 6 or a 7,” he says. “On the piano, you control the sound by how you press the key. When you stop pressing the key on the organ, the valve closes and the note is gone.”
Like the other teens at POE, he relies on the church to provide practice space because nobody has a pipe organ at home. He enjoys practicing, devoting an hour and a half to the organ three or four times a week.
So far, Simon has played the prelude and the offertory at Emmanuel. He looks forward to playing hymns.
Grove says the pipe organ offers teens an opportunity to learn and grow throughout their lives.
“If you are a soccer player, you might not always have your knees,” he says. “If you are a musician, you should always have your hands—and if you’re an organist, you should always have your hands and feet.”
This piece is made possible, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Division of the Arts, a state agency dedicated to nurturing and supporting the arts in Delaware, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts.