Taming the Wabash Monster: The Tale of a Pipe Organ
“The piano is a kitten; you stroke it and it purrs. The organ is a monster; you strike it wrong and it strikes back.”
Professor of religion Dr. David Blix ’70 recalls these words from his high school organ instructor. Such a characterization often seems very apt for an instrument capable of such awe-inspiring and majestic sounds. And, as Dr. Blix knows well, having served during two of his undergraduate years as the Wabash College organist, the pipe organ is quite unforgiving to the organist who hits a wrong note. But the pipe organ is more than an imposing monster. In the same piece that reaches the fortissimos of the 32’ Resultant that shake the very ground of the Pioneer Chapel, an organist can coax a soft string melody out of the 8’ Unda Maris. But beyond that, the college’s pipe organ is an instrument whose history and engineering are as enthralling as the sounds of the pipes themselves.
Of the instruments that dominate the classical music of the Western World, the pipe organ is unique. Without discounting that the craft of instrument-making allows room for varying degrees of artistry and perfection, the fact remains that a violin is a violin, a trumpet is a trumpet, and a piano is a piano. Such is not the case for the pipe organ. Each pipe organ is unique in its construction and character, so each organ is unique in its history, and each organ deserves a chance to have its story heard. The history of the pipe organ that sits in the Pioneer Chapel is one that is quite interesting and closely connected to the larger history of the college.
For a college with Presbyterian roots and a deep respect for tradition, Wabash’s pipe organ holds an important place in the school’s history. Prior to the construction of the Pioneer Chapel in the late 1920s, the college made heavy use of what is now the Wabash Avenue Presbyterian Church for events such as commencement and for religious functions. The church had housed its own organ since 1903. Thus, having been quite used to having an organ, it might have seemed obvious that once the new chapel was built, it too would need an organ. In 1935, about six years after the dedication of the Pioneer Chapel, Wabash did commission Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company, which built the instrument as its opus 935 (i.e. the 935th organ built by the company). President Louis Bertram Hopkins signed the college’s contract with Aeolian-Skinner on April 1, 1935, and the $12,000 construction of the organ was funded through a donation by James W. Milligan, Class of 1885, in memory of his wife Sara Lawson Milligan and in honor of his father Rev. Thomas Stuart Milligan, Class of 1839. The organ has three manuals, 31 stops, and 28 ranks, for a total of 1,866 pipes, according to the Aeolian-Skinner archives. The organ is electric action, which means that the valves that bring air to the pipes are opened by means of electromagnets that respond to the organist’s striking the keys. Electric action organs are not to be confused with electronic organs, which are in concept much closer to synthesizers than pipe organs.
The organ was dedicated on Tuesday, October 29, 1935, with a religious service in which Paul R. Matthews, Class of 1913, accompanied two hymns on the organ: the Hymn of St. Margaret and the Doxology. Following the religious service, William R. Zeuch, Vice President of Aeolian-Skinner, played the dedicatory recital.
The organ console and the west chamber.
There exists in the college’s archives a strange letter concerning the accompanist Paul Matthews. The letter seems to be part of an internal correspondence between Aeolian-Skinner employees G.L. Catlin and W.D. Hardy shortly after the contract with Wabash College was signed. It is unclear how the letter found its way into the college’s archives. It reveals that a 5% commission was to be paid to Mr. Matthews, who “is very particular about nothing ever being known about this part of the deal and asks that we pay him in cash.” Hardy goes on in what seems to be an attempt to justify this questionable situation, writing, “It is one commission that is earned as we would never have heard of the deal except for him[,] and his constant advice as to what was going on made it possible for me to do the right thing all the time.” How exactly he helped and if he was indeed deserving of a secret commission is a mystery, but it is an intriguing one, regardless of the intentions of either Paul Matthews or W.D. Hardy.
Not too long after the dedication of the organ, in the August of 1936, the Swell 8’ Vox Humana rank of pipes was replaced under warrantee. After that, the next major improvement didn’t come until July 1951 with the installation of new felted caps in several of the ranks.
The assertion that the organ has played a somewhat important role in the history of the college may seem strange today, but there have been times in the college’s past in which the organ was a much more prominent part of the college culture than it is now. For years, there was even an assigned post for a Wabash student who was given a generous scholarship in order to serve as the college’s organist for various weekly functions and special events. The first college organist, as reported by the March 1, 1936 issue of an organ publication known as The Diapason, was Robert Stofer ’41. Dr. Blix was the second to last college organist. He served during his junior and senior years from the fall term of 1968 until he graduated in the spring term of 1970. He kindly agreed to recall some of his memories as college organist for The Phoenix.
Until the early 1970s, the college required all students to attend mandatory chapel talks every Monday and Thursday. Additionally, the college hosted Wednesday and Sunday religious services in Pioneer Chapel. (The religious chapel service that now meets regularly on Wednesdays during the school year in Tuttle Chapel on the second floor of Center Hall is a direct descendent of this practice.) The college organist was expected to provide prelude and postlude music for each of these weekly occurrences, as well as hymns for the religious services. The college organist, therefore, was quite an involved position, as he was required to prepare for and play four services a week. However, such a job did not come without its rewards. In addition to the invaluable experience and the prestige of the position, the college organist was compensated with a full-tuition scholarship. “My mother later used to joke,” Dr. Blix recalls, “that all that money and time and driving to Indianapolis for piano lessons paid off!”
There was one prerequisite for college organist, and that was that the student needed to be able to play “Old Wabash.” Dr. Blix describes the accompaniment of “Old Wabash” on the piano very simply: “It’s not too easy!” But, he says, “imagine trying to play that on the organ . . . It goes so fast, you have to be very careful that at one point you don’t get your hands and feet swinging in the same direction and go sliding off the organ, because there’s a real risk of that!” Nevertheless, he practiced and perfected, and he became the organist after the graduation of his predecessor Larry LeSeure ’68. After Dr. Blix, a man by the name of Charles Duncan ‘72 took over the post. Dr. Blix recalls, “He was organist for a year or two, and then they discontinued required chapel . . . Once that happened, there was no longer a need for a college organist, at least not one who would be paid full tuition.”
The expression pedals on the organ open and close shutters in the pipe chambers in order to manipulate the volume of the sound.
With the demise of mandatory chapel, it would appear from the sparse information available for several years following that the organ was no longer at the forefront of the consciousness of the college. But Diane Norton, the Circulation and Music Collection Coordinator at the Lilly Library, remembers otherwise. Her late husband, Fred Enenbach, was professor of music between 1969 until his passing in 1984. She recalls a college culture that bore a very appreciative attitude toward music, and she comments that organ and other musical performances were much better attended than they are now. She remembers that Professor Enenbach would collect the programs from all of these performances during his tenure at Wabash, but, unfortunately, that collection has been lost.
The next recorded improvement to the organ came in the late 1980s. In 1972, the Aeolian-Skinner company had closed, but Goulding & Wood Organ Company of Indianapolis renovated and computerized the console and took over as the company maintaining the organ in 1987. The computerization of the console allowed the changing of the stops and the manipulation of the organ’s presets to be controlled electronically.
However, the organ eventually fell into disrepair. Dr. Larry Bennett, who also agreed to share some of his memories with The Phoenix, recalls the sorry state of the organ when he came to Wabash to chair the music department in 1995. Many of the pipes were dead, some of the leather parts were “worn to a frazzle,” and there was the persistent question of whether the organ would work on a given Freshman Sunday or Baccalaureate service. Around this time, Dr. Roger Ide ’59, a nuclear chemist from Nevada who had also been college organist as a student, began contacting the school about what he could donate that would be of help. In 1998, the estate of Dr. Ide established the Roger H. Ide Performance and Care Fund. The fund was used to restore the organ once again, and it continues to be used to perform general maintenance on the organ. The fund also established an annual Roger H. Ide Organ Recital, of which there have been eleven. Marilyn Keiser of Indiana University gave the inaugural recital on November 1, 1998. Since then, the recital has alternated between featuring international organists and American organists. Last February, the recital featured Stefan Engels of the University of Music and Theatre “Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy” in Leipzig, Germany. During his visit, Engels was very complimentary of the state of the organ and the fact that, despite all of the renovations, the organ has remained true to its initial design and feel. The twelfth annual Roger H. Ide Organ Recital will be held on Sunday, January 23, 2011 at 3:00pm. Dr. Walter Hilse of the Manhattan School of Music will be the organist, and he plans on having a program that will honor the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt’s birth in 1811.
In 2006 and 2007, Dr. Bennett was contacted by Stephen Schnurr of the Organ Historical Society (OHS) about the possibility of including Wabash’s organ in a national tour. On July 17, 2007, a group that the Journal Review estimated at about 230 people listened to a concert played by Schnurr and Kankakee High School student Micah Raebel at the Wabash organ. Wabash was one of several Indiana organs featured that day for the OHS group, according to their website, including the organ at DePauw University. In addition to the recital, Mr. Schnurr also did some extensive research on the organ and published the results in an article in the June 2007 issue of The American Organist.
As for the recent history of the organ, the number and enthusiasm of students of the organ has been quite high the past couple years. On April 27, 2009, the music department hosted a noontime program called “Bach’s Lunch” that featured three organ students from the college studying under Cheryl Everett, adjunct instructor of piano and organ. On December 7, 2009, a second incarnation of “Bach’s Lunch” occurred, with the intention of maintaining the regular occurrence of the event as long as the college has interested organ students.
Beyond the imposing majesty and façade of the monster that certainly characterize the Wabash pipe organ, there is a softer side in its history. Once a centerpiece in the day-to-day culture of the college, the reputation of the instrument that is James Milligan’s legacy has in the past fallen from the pedestal on which it once stood. But through the enthusiasm of its students and the generosity of its benefactors, especially Dr. Roger Ide, Wabash’s organ remains today the fine instrument that it was at its dedication 75 years ago. Wabash is fortunate to have such a well-preserved piece of history and the alumni and students that keep it alive.
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Very special thanks go out to Larry Bennett, David Blix, and Diane Norton for sharing their firsthand knowledge on this subject and to Linda Petrie, Marilyn Smith, and Beth Swift for their research assistance. Also, all of the otherwise uncited historical information above can be found in the history of Wabash College by Stephen Schnurr published in the June 2007 issue of The American Organist.
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