THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 29, 1996 TAG: 9605290038
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY LINDA McNATT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 116 lines
IN MEDIEVAL times, the rescue was left to a knight in shining armor.
But this is the 1990s, and the ladies have taken charge.
Armored with a passion for early music, their weapons are recorders, a viola da gamba and a borrowed harpsichord. These Fayre Laydes are waging battleto rescue and restore a centuries-old organ that, until recently, sat forgotten in an out-of-the-way church.
Fayre Laydes and Friends will present their ``musicke'' at 4 p.m. Sunday at Historic St. Luke's Church, built in Smithfield in 1632, to benefit an organ built in England at about the same time.
Music was at its richest then, said Fran Olsen, a member of the unusual musical group. ``And we are with an instrument that actually knew this music.''
The music is renaissance, or early, music - the kind you hear when you walk through the archway at Hastings in Busch Gardens. It's lilting, spirited and can be spiritual.
It filled old St. Luke's on a recent evening, and Olsen ``felt'' vibrations from the organ that has finally come into its own.
``It is like I hear the organ sighing,'' she said, her eyes shining as she glanced at the small organ in a corner near the altar. ``In my mind, I can hear it saying, `I know this music. I know this music.' ''
Olsen, who lives in Portsmouth and is director of activities therapy in behavioral medical services at Maryview Psychiatric Hospital. The other ``laydes'' are Deborah Ogan, a technical writer for Sentara Bayside, and Viola S. Berger, a philosophy teacher at Tidewater Community College.
The ``Friends'' joining Sunday's benefit performance are Mary Norris, who works with Financial Counselors of Virginia, and Dianne Jelle organist at St. Andrew Lutheran Church.
Ogan lives in Virginia Beach and Berger in Norfolk. Norris and Jelle are Portsmouth residents.
``It struck me, when we first played here, that the organ hasn't heard a viola da gamba in so long,'' Ogan said. ``John Jenkins composed many viola pieces, and he probably composed some of them on this very instrument. Just to sit next to it, to sit where Jenkins sat 350 years ago. Ahhh, it's a very good feeling. . . .''
The ornate instrument is set in a case of Flemish oak with two painted wings - Old Testament scenes that depict King David on one side and Jephthah's daughter on the other. The intricate artwork is carried across the wooden pipes in the center, giving the illusion of an archway in a cathedral.
Richard Austin, St. Luke's curator since 1981, said he was told that the organ could still be played when it first arrived in 1957, after the church was restored. However, the bellows has deteriorated, so it is no longer functional.
Funds to obtain the organ were given to St. Luke's, a national historic shrine, by Nancy Chapman Bangs Wallower, a Smithfield native who married a Wall Street millionaire. She is now deceased.
Experts in historic musical instruments agree that it is the oldest organ in America in America's oldest church of English foundation.
That organ's discovery can be likened to unearthing a long-lost work by Michelangelo, one expert said.
``Its importance can hardly be overestimated,'' George K. Taylor of Taylor & Boody Organbuilders in Staunton said in a letter to Austin.
For more than 300 years, the organ had been in the home of Nicholas LeStrange at Hunstanton Hall in Norfolk, England. It had been purchased by LeStrange around 1630, about the same time he hired the composer Jenkins to live in his home to teach music to his sons. Jenkins lived at Hunstanton from 1644 to 1660.
It is a chamber organ, said Barbara Owen, a consultant on historical musical instruments for museums nationwide. Even if it could be played, it probably could not be heard outside a building any larger than St. Luke's.
The organ was designed to be part of the ``basso continuo,'' to continue an ensemble of recorders and viola da gamba with a keyboard instrument.
``Renaissance music is the basis for modern day jazz,'' Owen said. ``When you hear the syncopation, you think, `Yeah, this is where jazz comes from.' ''
The first issue of The Wooden Pipe, a newsletter dedicated to the organ, was sent out last month by Olsen. News about the organ is also on the Internet.
The question now is whether to restore or preserve the organ.
``The pipes still play,'' Ogan said. ``If you stop up the end and blow very gently, it's the sweetest sound. . . . You can imagine what its music must sound like. Very high, sort of shivery. It would be so different from the organs we have now.''
The oak cabinet and the organworks, except for the bellows, are in an excellent state of preservation. But if the organ is restored, Olsen wants to know that it would be done right.
Austin is uncertain who will make the decision. The organ committee isn't talking. There is even some speculation that the decision could call for an organized debate among antiques and musical instrument experts worldwide.
And a new fear about the future of the little organ has risen.
Now that so many people know about it, some museums would like to claim it. ``I think St. Luke's is such a perfect place for that organ,'' John Shortridge said. ``I would hate to see it moved.'' The Fayre Laydes agree. MEMO: Tax-deductible donations may be made to the Historic St.
Luke's Organ Fund, 14477 Benn's Church Blvd., Smithfield, Va.
23430.Tax-deductible donations may be made to the Historic St. Luke's
Organ Fund, 14477 Benn's Church Blvd., Smithfield, Va. 23430.
For updates on ``America's Oldest Organ'' on the Internet:
http://www.classical.net/music/ inst/organ.html ILLUSTRATION: Color photo by John H, Sheally II\The Virginian-Pilot
From left, Deborah Ogan, Viola S. Berger, Fran Olsen, Mary Norris
and Diane Jelle at St. Luke's Church in Smithfield, where they will
give a benefit concert Sunday at 4 p.m.
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CONCERT FACTS
What: Fayre Laydes and Friends
When: Sunday at 4 p.m.
Where: Historic St. Luke's Church, Intersection of Virginia
Route 10 and U.S. Route 32/258, Smithfield
Admission: The concert is free and open to the public. by CNB