Organ and Cincinnati Union

[daveklepper]

Note the news item on the Terminal requiring restoration measures to repair wear and damage.  The main concourse-rotunda, with its live acoustics - long revereration time is home to a restored Ernest M. Skinner organ, a project of the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and there are frequent organ recitals and choral concerts there.   

[NKP guy]

Thanks for mentioning Ernest M. Skinner!  I never expected to see his name on this forum.

Would you consider Skinner organs to be the Alco's or Baldwins of the locomotive builder's art?

[schlimm]

daveklepper

Note the news item on the Terminal requiring restoration measures to repair wear and damage.  The main concourse-rotunda, with its live acoustics - long revereration time is home to a restored Ernest M. Skinner organ, a project of the Cincinnati Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and there are frequent organ recitals and choral concerts there.   

I always liked one you should have heard many times, Dave.  The Flentrop organ over at Augie Busch Hall at Harvard (commissioned by E. Power Biggs), is a wonderful, modern (1957) example of the traditional Dutch and N. German organ.

[daveklepper]

Thanks, Schlimm.   I loved the Busch-Reisinger organ very much.  I visited the Flentrop factory in Zwolle, Holland, in the Spring, 1960, and hope to go back some day.   That was also the trip that introduced me to modern articulated streetcars, which were just be being introduced in their original grey and white paint in Amsterdam.  But I enjoyed the blue four-wheelers and six-wheelers (midle axle could slide off-center agianst springs) with their motor-and-trailer configuration as well.   Johh Mclure of Columbia and Peggy (Big Jim's wife) Biggs asked me how to eliminate street noise from the recording at BR, and I advised them to cover the windows, which would be closed, with two layers of Gypsumboard-Sheetrock, sealed tight with ducttape, which did the job.

Ernest M. Skinner organs were the K-4's of the organ world.   Esty organs were the USRA light Pacifics.  Moller organs were the heavy Pacifiis.   Schantz the NYC Hudsons. Holtkamp the E-6 Atlantic and its Milwaukee A-1 succesor..

Aeolian Skinners were the Niagras or N&W J's.

Flentrops were the AEM-7's.

And as for Fisk and Shoenstein, today, there is nothing in the locomotive world that matches their terrific qualtiy and their ability to fit to specific situations regarding the building and specific range of music.  Maybe in light rail like the Alstom Citidas line.   The worlds best pipe organs are being  built today!  And there are other USA builders also which fit that catagory.:   Dobson, Gluck, Bedient, Bigelow, Taylor & Boodey, Rosalis, Visser, and others, and in Canada Casavant is doing better than ever in is over 100-year history, and Letourneau is now giving them some competition. .