A New Organ for St. Michael
After many years of prayerful discernment, research, and planning by committees of parishioners and pastoral staff, we are commissioning the design and building of a new pipe organ for our parish church. The generosity of parishioners has allowed us to initiate this process, awarding a contract to one of the world’s premier organ builders.
For Everyone to Know
· A custom pipe organ has been part of the plan for our church since before it was built and dedicated in 2009.
· For over 1,000 years, the organ has been given “pride of place” among musical instruments, a tradition affirmed by the Second Vatican Council.
· All who desire to support the Church’s liturgical mission and legacy of sacred music will have an opportunity to participate in funding this project.
FAQ
Q: Why do we need a new organ? What’s wrong with the one we have?
A: Our current organ is a very good organ, made in 1970 by one of the great American organ builders, John Brombaugh, for a small Episcopal church (not much larger than our choir loft) in Columbus, Ohio. It was always intended as a temporary instrument at St. Michael to help develop our parish music program during the first decade in our new church. We acquired it with funds saved from deferring the finishing and furnishing of the choir loft. While it sounds wonderful, it is far too small to fill our enormous church with deep, rich sound. It also lacks the variety of sounds needed to render the wide range of music desired in a church like ours, and the very quiet sounds needed to accompany small ensembles of singers and the gentle voices of our children’s choirs and amateur cantors. As the organ is now over 50 years old, we would need to make significant investments in its repair and maintenance over the next few years, after which it still wouldn’t meet our long-term need.
Q: How much will the new organ cost?
A: Today, a high-quality organ appropriate for the scale of our church would cost about $2 million. However, the cost of our new organ will be $1.68 million, paid in increments over the next two years. For reference, a general rule of thumb is that the cost of an organ will be 10% of the cost of construction of the building housing it.
Q: Aren’t there better ways to spend the money?
A: The disciples had a similar question about the woman at Bethany who anointed Jesus’ feet with precious oil (Matthew 26:9). To answer this question we must understand the
A: organ in terms of value and values, not just cost. A fine artisanal organ is built by hand out of raw materials, one at a time, and uniquely wed to the physical and acoustical properties of the place in which it resides. It is by far the most valuable and economical thing one can imagine making today, costing less than $50 per hour to build—parts and highly-skilled labor—resulting in an artifact that can be expected to serve 300-400 years with minimal maintenance and only occasional restoration. It is hard to imagine anything so economical or ecological.
While the organ has several uses in the liturgy, its main reason for being is simply to glorify God—to reflect God’s beauty, and to express the Divine Logos, the Word of God, who creates and holds all things together in harmony. In the West, it is considered a sacred instrument that has spawned an artistic patrimony that the Church deems to be “of inestimable value.”
The only money we should be spending is for the missionary activity of the Church, for which the sacred liturgy is the “source and summit.” Our parish is very intentional and diligent about gathering and ordering the gifts of God to engage the fullness of our ecclesial mission—the worship of God, the proclamation of the Gospel, and the building up God’s Kingdom. The organ continues to participate in this mission of worship and evangelization as it has for over 1,000 years.
Q: Who is going to build the organ?
A: The contract for the St. Michael Organ has been awarded to Saint John’s Abbey Organ Builders of Collegeville, Minnesota, a new firm under the leadership of world-renown Austrian-American organ builder Martin Pasi. Mr. Pasi’s largest and most famous instruments are found at Omaha’s Saint Cecilia Cathedral and the Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston, Texas.
The pipe organ as we know it is largely the result of technological development over the last 1,000 years by Benedictine monks, but the St. Michael organ will be the first example of organ building by Benedictine monks since the French Revolution.
Q: When will the organ be installed?
A: The organ will take about two years to build, and is slated for delivery and installation in spring of 2025. Design work has already begun and raw materials are being gathered during this time, all funded by the down payment. The construction process will begin in Fall of 2023, at which time incremental payments will be made until the organ is installed and formally accepted. Installation and onsite “voicing” of the organ will take at least three months.
Q: Who is going to play the organ?
A: We currently have two professional organists on parish staff, Dr. Kevin Vogt and Mr. Thomas Zachacz. We also have several parishioners who play the organ, and an increasing number of children and youth who are taking organ lessons. Benedictine College currently has 14 new organ students, and the University of Kansas has one of the largest graduate programs in organ and church music in the United States. Dr. Vogt serves on faculty at KU, and our parish has been served by several of its organ students over the years.
Unlike any other instrument, a pipe organ most often belongs to a community, and is tailored visually and sonically to fit the architectural space in which it permanently resides. It is made by a community, owned by a community, supportive of the singing of a community, and is available without cost to be enjoyed by everyone in the community. The organ is the egalitarian instrument par excellence, surpassed in this respect only by a choir of voices.
Q: Is an organ really necessary?
A: The only musical instrument necessary for the new worship in Christ is the human voice, or rather the company of human voices. The Church teaches that one of the ways Christ is truly present in the Church is in the assembly of the faithful “when it prays and sings.” While other instruments may be admitted into worship (“provided they can be made apt,”), it is the pipe organ that takes pride of place in the Latin Church. In fact, it is considered a “sacred instrument” precisely because of the way it supports and symbolizes the Church and its choral praise. Like the Church, the organ is a collection of earthly bodies inspired and given voice by a common breath, contained in a resonating house that congeals and amplifies the collective sound as one voice, a song of praise on behalf of the whole creation.
The Church holds music to be the highest form of art in the liturgy because of its ability to wed itself to sacred words and actions. Music, however, is an ephemeral, temporal art; it exists only when it is sounding in space and time. Passing on the faith from one generation to the next through music depends on a sustained practice that spans generations. The pipe organ is thus an architectural commitment to tradition—not a clinging to the past, but a vibrant expression of the present in light of what has been handed down to us.
Like our beautiful church itself, the new organ will be our gift to future generations.