Is the American organist’s 30 year war finally over

The slider chest is the oldest, most reliable form of pipe organ chest in the world, that is still in use today. Originally, windchests had only one style and that was a “blockwerk” chest. Simply put, all the ranks for any given note played all the time, as each note had its own ‘note channel’ upon which all the pipes sat. These instruments were excellent at creating ‘din’ for the church service, but weren’t much useful for anything else. By the 15th century, organists had a desire to ‘stop’ some of these sounds and thus the slider was invented. The slider is a thin board with holes that match the holes in the toeboard. When the organist wanted that particular rank of pipes to sound he would simply pull a drawknob, which through various mechanisms, would move the slider so that the holes lined up, allowing the air to pass through to the pipe.

These chests are very durable, lasting hundreds of years, as there are extant centuries-old organs in Europe and even in America with their original slider windchests still intact. The one disadvantage of mechanical action was the distance from the keyboard to the chest had to be relatively small due to the complexity of the action. In 19th century America, the other disadvantage was the lack of tonal palate in the pedal department due primarily to the expense of large pipes and the lack of room for sufficient independent pedal upper-work. As the Industrial Revolution changed the face of commerce and industry so it did with organ building. Organist wanted louder, bigger organs. By the mid–late 19th century, several builders started to add pneumatic assists to the actions so that they might employ higher wind pressures. The assists used were Barker-levers and eventually, tubular pneumatic actions that operated to pull-down the hinged pallets.

It is at this point that organbuilding takes a left turn from its roots and thanks to Ernest M. Skinner, we start to see the advent of windchests with individual pneumatics for each note. This was made possible chiefly through the introduction of electricity, which allowed the pneumatics to be ‘fired’ by magnetic armatures rather than by mechanical means. Allowing each pipe to have its own pneumatic has its advantages in the tonal aspect of borrowing, and the organs could be on higher pressures which couldn’t be achieved with mechanical action. This allowed organs at the beginning to the middle of the 20th century to become quite large on paper without having to increase the total number of actual ranks. Another major advantage of what Dr. Barnes termed as “the transference of stops” was that the Pedal Department could be augmented. This system allowed there to be 44 pipes required for 16′ and 8′ Bourdons in the pedal as opposed to the 64 pipes previously needed for two independent ranks. Ernest M. Skinner was a huge proponent of the “Augmented Pedal”.

One must understand, of course, that the pneumatic windchest, after 50-60 years, will need releathering. If the organ was a sizeable instrument, releathering could be an almost insurmountable project. It is the authors’ belief that this was possibly just one of the inciting forces for change. The Orgelbewegung or ‘organ revival’ had been around since the late 1920s as a reaction to the high pressures and a perceived over-abundance of 8′ orchestral tone. It finally gained traction in the late 1950s and early 1960s as organists desired to return to the more historic principals, and have an organ that was a musical tool with a direct link from the organists hand to the pipe, rather than what some had termed as an ‘over-engineered machine’. 40 years after the development of the electro-pneumatic organ, organists started to revive the mechanical action organ, and by the 1970s and ‘80s, even the largest builders, renowned for EP action, were building mechanical action organs. The many tonal and longevity advantages of having a slider chests were outweighed, for the time, with the disadvantages associated with mechanical action primarily, the inability to have the player at a distance from the pipes.

Heated discussion took place in the pages of the organ periodicals in the late 1950s and early 1960s in which organists and builders debated the pros and cons of pneumatic action vs. mechanical action with slider chests. This has been lovingly referred to by some as the American organist’s 30 years war. Such notables as Senator Richard Emerson, Ernest M. Skinner and Walter Holtkamp sparred over the issues surrounding EP or Slider. Sadly, they are all gone now and their argument may finally be put to rest, thanks to the genius of Lyle Blackinton, who has developed a slider windchest with a pneumatic vertical drop pallet.

It is the authors’ belief that we have come to a zenith in organ building, and a culmination of 1000 years of technical and theoretical design. Many American organ builders are now starting to construct instruments with “Blackinton” style electro-pneumatic slider chests, which ultimately have more of the benefits of both styles and less of the disadvantages.

The Blackinton style EP slider chest looks very similar to the ancient slider chest, with the only difference being that instead of wire ‘pull-downs’ under the pallet-box pulling a hinged pallet, you see a pneumatic primary rail that will fire a ‘vertical drop’ pneumatic pallet. And of course, the sliders are no longer moved by a direct mechanical linkage to the console, rather they are moved by a solenoid that is either pneumatic or a solid state magnet. The primary advantages to constructing an instrument with EP slider action are several:

1. The pipes speak from wind in a common note channel, and therefore have more of a blend with the other ranks on the same note channel, as they share the same breath.
2. The speech of pipes on a slider chest is more elegant than a pipe with a pallet that opens directly beneath it. Also the Blackinton style pallet opens with a vertical drop, as opposed to traditional slider chest hinged pallets which open on one side. The vertical drop pallet provides a quick steady flow of breath for the pipe and allows the note channels to be spaced closer.
3. When it is time to re-leather the chest, there are only 61 primary pneumatics and 61 note/pallet pneumatics per chest, as opposed to the hundreds or even thousands of pneumatics for a standard EP pitman chest. In addition, the pallets can be swapped out in a matter of hours, thus reducing the time needed for releathering.
4. Because the organ is electrical rather than mechanical, the pedal chests can be regular EP unit chests, which was the zenith of their development. This allows for the Pedal department to be augmented.
5. The console can still be placed anywhere, and can be augmented with MIDI, and other Solid State gadgets.

The only understanding that must be known of the Blackinton style EP slider chest is that the organ, at least in regards to the manual divisions, must be “straight” in tonal design, rather than utilizing borrowing to increase the tonal palate. This has an effect overall tonal scope of an instrument. Upon this subject we must remember good stewardship: Building an organ appropriate size with a moderate tonal pallet that will serve the congregation for many years, is better than burdening them with the choice of throwing out the instrument in 50 years because they might not be able to afford the cost of re-leathering thousands of individual pneumatics. Patrick J. Murphy & Associates, Inc. now builds high quality Blackinton style EP slider chests, and we can construct them for a new instrument or as an alternative replacement for failing E-P pitman chests, or Electro Mechanical chests. If you want to have more information or you wish to see a ‘cut-away’ model of the EP slider chest, please call us or email us.

By Jason Barnsley