Pipe Spectacular XIII, Sunday, October 21, 2012

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On Sunday, October 21, 2012, two events were celebrated at one time; St. John's Episcopal Church, Georgetown, DC dedicated the new Casavant Frères Organ, Opus 3895, and the TriChapter Committee presented Bruce Neswick performing as PipeSpectacular XIII. 

Here is the historic church building. An atrium now connects the original church to the Parish Hall. 

Nave facade of the organ. 

Chancel facade of the organ.

Console moved front and center for the program.

A close-up of the console, kept very low profile to facilitate conducting from the console.

The Trompette en Chamade in the rear gallery.

The large window on the right side of the chancel opposite the organ.

The altar and reredos. 

Bruce had to stop the first work, the Hymn and Organ Variations on "Come, Thous Holy Spirit, Come!" by Gerre Hancock, when we were not singing it properly.  He pointed out that he gets to play between each verse, so we went back and did it over, as the program was being recorded.

Here is the last verse sung by all.

Bruce taking a bow. He removed his coat, as it was getting warm with a full house.

After the intermission the National President of the American Guild of Organists, Eileen Guenther, addressed us. 

Then Bruce told us about the pieces he would play in the second part of the program. 

This is the end of the Toccata from the Suite, Opus 5 by Maurice Duruflé. 

The final work was to be an improvisation on a submitted theme.  The theme was The Funeral March of a Marionette by Charles Gounod.  He did a great job with this improvisation. 

It turned out that this was also Bruce's birthday, and at the reception we all sang Happy Birthday and then the blew out the candles on his cake. 

Here is the cake.

I returned to the church to go through the organ with Simon Coture of Casavant.  When I came into the church the first time I was more interested in the organ, but this time I noticed the mosaics in the floor, where you could walk from Bethlehem to Olivet to

Calvary, just like the J.H. Maunder Cantata. 

When I got up front I finally could see that one of the former windows was now a tone chute into the organ chamber. 

M. Coture explained that one of the things the church wanted was a path through the organ chamber to the sacristy, something they never had before.  So Casavant built screen panels for each side of the tunnel through the chamber, so that the sound of the bass Pedal pipes on the right side could pass through and come out the door into the chancel as well as the tone chute and the facade pipes.

View under the Great; the 16' Bourdon pipes are stacked on the floor, as there is no space for them to stand.

The Pedal 16' Trombone pipes stand on the floor, in front of the Swell shades. 

Here is the Pedal treble chest, in front of the Bombarde bass pipes, with the rest of the Bombarde, Subbass and Octave pipes.

The Great chest is right behind the chancel facade. The electric slider motors are on the end of the chest. The  nave facade pipes show how the pipes are cut out above the tuning scroll, so the over-length will not interfere with the tuning of the pipe.

Close-up view of the Great 16' Bourdon pipes; each has a butterfly valve to regulate the amount of wind coming in, which also regulates the volume of the pipe.

Left side of the relays under the Swell, showing a rectifier, volume control dial for the Chimes, and the trundle post of the Swell shade mechanism.

The right side shows the Swell motor that turns the trundle, another rectifier and more switching. The chest above has a Schwimmer regulator that takes the place of a traditional reservoir. 

The Schwimmer on the back chest also has the tremolo mechanism mounted on it, and it is tubed over to the front Schwimmer, so they can share the same tremolo impulse.

Behind the main blower are the bass pipes of the Swell 16' Bassoon, that stand on the floor of the chamber and speak out above at the same level as the rest of the pipework.

Back inside the paneled area stand the Pedal 16' Contrabass pipes 1-12 of open wood construction, and the bass pipes of the Pedal Subbass.

In the back of the console is this clever flap that can fold down to contain the cable when the console is back in the regular position and not out front. 

The cable terminates in a regular 110 volt plug and a CAT 5 plug, protected by a chair.  The mosaic reads "Suffer the Little Children to Come Unto Me", as this was the former location of the Font that now stands at the front door of the church.