NEW MUSIC BUILDING TO FEATURE
CUSTOM-BUILT, 2,000-PIPE ORGAN
By Brian Long
Above: A crew from Andover Organ Co. assembles the
skeleton of the pipe organ in the organ recital hall in the new School of
Music building. Below: The organ takes shape. Bottom: The installation is
complete. (Photos: Bob Cavin & Bert VanderVeen)
GREENSBORO -- Robert Burns King will have the largest, if
not the most dramatic, teaching tool on campus when a new music building
opens this summer at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
King, an organ instructor in the UNCG School of Music, will be
using an organ with nearly 2,000 pipes. A crew from Andover Organ Co.,
the Massachusetts-based firm that built the instrument, recently
installed it in the building's 120-seat organ recital hall.
"It's just elegant to look at," King said of the organ, which
measures about 28 feet in height from floor to the tallest pipe crown.
It has 35 ranks, or sets of pipes.
"It certainly dominates the organ hall," said Dr. Arthur
Tollefson, dean of the School of Music. "You can't miss it, and it
looks beautiful."
The organ is made of ash and oak and has three keyboards and
pedals. Its pipes are tin, and the pipe shades are copper and steel,
said Fay Morlock, an Andover crew member who was in charge of caring
for the pipes during the installation. The pipes range in size from 11
feet to 2 inches, she said.
The organ is a mechanical, tracker-action instrument. Trackers
are wood devices that connect the keys to the pipes. "It's the most
old-fashioned kind, and we think it's the best," Morlock said.
Though the organ is hand-activated, an electric fan inside it
blows air into the instrument's wind chest. Pushing a key on one of
the organ's keyboards allows air into the pipes, producing sound.
Andover employees spent 10 months building the organ in their
Lawrence, Mass., shop, then took it apart and hauled it to UNCG in a
moving van. They spent nearly three weeks putting it back together in
the new music building, located at the corner of West Market and
McIver streets on UNCG's campus.
Once construction on the 130,000-square-foot building is
completed in June, another Andover crew will come to campus to do the
tonal finish, a process that adjusts the organ's sounds, said King,
the UNCG organ instructor.
The organ cost $400,000, with about half of the funding coming
from the equipment portion of state bond money used to construct the
new $26 million building. The rest of the money came from private
gifts to the University's organ fund, which was established in the
late 1960s, Tollefson said.
"The need for a fine organ on campus has been here for 30
years," Tollefson said.
Andover, which celebrated its 50th anniversary last year, has
built organs for churches and colleges across the country. Meredith
College in Raleigh is among its clients. Each organ is unique, said
designer Jay Zoller. "There isn't one that looks like another one," he
said.
The organ will be as flexible as it is unique, Tollefson said.
"We've designed it to be an excellent performing and teaching organ.
... It will accommodate a wide variety of the organ styles that are
performed here, from Bach to 20th century French music," he said.
The recital hall was designed to take full advantage of the
organ's range of sounds. The elliptical-shaped hall has brick walls
and a hardwood floor, which will allow sound to reverberate, or linger
in the air, for two seconds. The reverberation rate is adjustable with
banners that can be lowered from the ceiling.
Above: A crew from Andover Organ Co. assembles the
skeleton of the pipe organ in the organ recital hall in the new School of
Music building. Below: The organ takes shape. Bottom: The installation is
complete. (Photos: Bob Cavin & Bert VanderVeen)
