On any Sunday morning, you’ll hear our organ do its routine job: support congregational singing, accompany the choir, and play some pieces before and after the service. You see some pipes, and you see Gabe Simerson’s (Director of Music Ministries) back. But do you know about the special piece of art and craftsmanship that is our organ?
Our organ is a “symphonic” organ, meaning its primary goal is to fit as many colors and sound types as possible into the space allotted, many of them imitating the sounds in an orchestra. The company that built our organ, Schoenstein and Co. of San Francisco, is a pioneer of this style, and occupies a special place in the hearts of organists.
When our parish was planning on a new organ by about 2003, Schoenstein had only recently arrived on the East Coast, with their landmark 1996 instrument at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church on K Street in Foggy Bottom, DC, a renowned Anglo-Catholic church with special and demanding musical needs. The Ivy group was tipped off to this instrument and went on a field trip, and their decision to order a Schoenstein for themselves was significant in that it proved a glorious symphonic organ wasn’t just for large rooms or special city churches – parishes with smaller spaces outside major urban areas could have them too.
And that variable of space is very important; with enough room to fill with pipes, anything is possible (the K Street organ has about 65 ranks, or sets, of pipes). But the less space there is available, the more creative an organbuilder has to be. The organ on K Street is a “chancel organ,” meaning the instrument is at the front of the church and is situated within the walls on either side of the chancel. In Ivy, there was no such luxury; the entire organ had to fit in the choir loft! Our space was limited, as it turns out, to about 18 ranks – less than a third the size of the instrument that inspired it.
But this is Schoenstein, and their modus operandi is fitting as much of an orchestra as possible into whatever space is available. That means that despite the organ’s footprint being limited to, quite literally, a small box, we were able to have all the tonal colors an organist wants: strings and celestes (the latter is a special stop tuned slightly sharp to its partner, resulting in a soft, undulating effect), flutes, reeds (like the trumpet-sounding stop you often hear introducing the melody of a hymn), and the foundational general-organ sounding stops (fittingly called “foundations”). There are also two “enclosed divisions”, which are sections of the organ built behind shutters than can muffle or completely expose the sound of the pipes. Most organs our size have one of these if they’re lucky! The result is a capacity to whisper quietly in a prelude or at communion, or to accompany 200 voices strongly enough that they feel confident in singing hymns, even at the other end of the room. It also means music from the Renaissance to the present day can be played with attention to style.
And you may be wondering about that small cabinet of pipes on the floor in the back of the church – why are those there, when there’s already a whole organ upstairs? The answer is this: when an organ is in a gallery, like ours, the sound is muffled by a ceiling for anyone sitting or standing under the loft, including the choir as they process. The rear pipes ensure that the choir can stay in time with the organ, and also that there’s proper support for hymn singing for people in the back of the church.
Curious about what all this actually means? The prelude from the Sixth Sunday after the Epiphany (February 16, 2025) is a fantastic example of how many sounds and colors can come from a little organ. Listen in this video!