THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, October 30, 1996 TAG: 9610300037
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By DIANE TENNANT, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 62 lines
A REPAIRED AND expanded pipe organ was delivered last week to Christ and St. Luke's Church, arriving from Canada in thousands of pieces that filled aisles and pews.
More than 4,000 of those pieces were pipes - the voice of the organ. One by one, over the course of two weeks, the pipes will be installed by six French-speaking workers from Quebec, as the instrument is rebuilt into what church organist Allen Shaffer says will be perhaps the largest in Hampton Roads.
``The organ will be about 10 percent larger than it was,'' he said. ``It will have a greater range of sounds available.''
But size is not the most important factor, stressed Shaffer, who is a professor of music at Norfolk State University and is active in many performing groups. The organ will be customized for the acoustics and size of the church, so its music will be the best for that space.
The organ cost $70,740 when it was purchased in 1962. To have bought a new one now would have cost nearly $1.25 million, Shaffer said. The cost of repairing and expanding the organ was only a third of that, he said.
``This instrument will be as good an instrument as it would be possible to have in this room,'' Shaffer said. ``Every organ of any size is essentially custom-built for the space in which it will play, so comparisons between them are meaningless.''
The organ was dismantled in June and shipped to the Letourneau factory near Montreal, Canada. The moving parts inside the console were replaced with wires and solid-state technology, Shaffer said, and the pipes were ``re-voiced'' to get away from the tone of the '60s.
``Organs of the '60s could be more edgy, what the layman would think of as shrill. Perhaps overly bright would be another way of saying it,'' Shaffer said. The new, improved organ will have more of an 18th century tone, he said.
Organs are based on the simple design of pan pipes, which are rows of pipes running from short to long, through which air is blown to produce a note. Organs are organized on similar principles, with rows (called ranks) of pipes, each with its own sound. The Christ and St. Luke's organ will have 79 ranks of pipes, 10 more than the original organ had.
The church decided to repair and expand the organ after little things began to fail on it, Shaffer said. ``We had a funeral where we had to use the piano; we had half of the organ die during church. There were a lot of problems. None of them were major, but it was just to the point where things needed to be done.''
The weight of the largest pipes had also caused their curved ends to flatten, changing the tone and increasing the length of time a note took to reach its full tone. In fast passages of music, Shaffer said, the note would be played and gone before it was fully sounded.
The church congregation will see little change in the instrument once it is installed. Most of the pipes are hidden in rooms above and to the sides. However, the sound will be different, Shaffer said.
The church plans to have the organ played for the first time in December, perhaps on Christmas Eve. It will be rededicated Feb. 2.
``This is a long-term investment,'' Shaffer said. ``I think it's going to be a remarkable instrument.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color Huy Nguyen photo/The Virginian-Pilot
Gyslain Laplante of Montreal is helping reassemble the organ of
Christ and St. Luke's Church in Norfolk. by CNB