A Tale of Two Organs

Schneider Organs presents:

Includes 18th & 19th Century German Romantic Organ music, played on two instruments by Richard Schneider

Organist Frederick Hohman is the First Prize Winner of the 1984 Eighth National Organ-Playing Competition, sponsored by the Mader Memorial Fund in Pasadena, California, and the First Prize Winner of the 1984 Arthur Poister Memorial Organ- Playing Competition, sponsored by the American Guild of Organist in Syracuse, New York.

Hohman was born into a family of musicians in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1955. In 1974, he entered the University of Rochester's Eastman School of Music in the organ class of David Craighead. He remained at the Eastman School for his entire academic career. He was awarded Eastman's Performer's Certificate, and holds Eastman's Mus.B., M.M. and D.M.A. degrees.

Today, Hohman tours throughout the year, primarily in America. His Fall 1988 U.S. tour was one of the busiest for any American organist in recent memory. He has several commercial recordings to his credit on the Pro Organo label. His Compact Disc, "Lemare Affair" (Pro Organo CD 7007) was cited by "The Absolute Sound" magazine as "the best CD of an American organ". In addition to his activity as a recording artist, Hohman has acted as record producer for a number of talented young organists.

This recording was produced by Schneider Pipe Organs, Inc., with the cooperation of Pro Organo Compact Discs.

About the Organs:

Ours is the first pipe organ installed in this 1 960 building. The original Saint Peter Church in downtown Quincy was destroyed by a tornado in 1945. Their original pipe organ was removed and sold. The new Saint Peter church was relocated and their present sanctuary, with an interior consisting of marble, brick and non-porous tile, provides excellent acoustics for music and a reverberation time of about two seconds. Quincy native Father Roy Bauer, an accomplished organist and Saint Peter's pastor since 1985, personally accepted and swiftly completed the task of raising the funds for the pipe organ project. After much consultation, it was decided to locate the organ in twin "mirror-image" cases in otherwise unused spaces between the side altars and the Apse. This proved an ideal vantage-point from which to fill the modern, unusually-shaped sanctuary, even in spite of the separation between the two cases. The instrument's placement also proves ideal for choir accompaniment.

Saint Peter's console employs a solid-state, microprocessor-based computer combination action of 8 General Pistons on 36 levels of memory. The Sforzando and Crescendo are both programmable, built "in-house" by David P. Moore of Quincy. Since there are no stop action magnets or solenoids, the system is absolutely silent in operation.

The stoplist was developed by Richard Schneider in collaboration with Father Bauer. Only two ranks in the specification are "new", those being the 16' Fagott and the Spitz Fl”te Coelestes (both by Giesecke). Additionally, the facades (24 pipes each) were fashioned of aluminum by the Justin Matters shop of Rapid City, South Dakota. All other pipes were from older stops, re-scaled and re-built at the Schneider shop. In this organ, as with the organ at Farmer City, the aim was to have a specification which allowed satisfactory performance of a wide cross-section of organ literature, but one which would also effectively lead congregational singing. The needs of the Catholic Liturgy were considered. The two celestes in the specification, unusual in an instrument of only 1 7 ranks, work well for late 19th-century Romantic literature. In both the Quincy and Farmer City organs, closed-toe voicing in the basses graduated to open-toe voicing in the trebles.

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This instrument is based largely on the church's 16-rank 1905 Hinners organ (Opus 643). It was unaltered from its original location and design for 82 years, except for the change of the blower from water to electrical power. The use of a stock model casework in the "Akron-Plan" sanctuary caused Hinners to position the interior 90 degrees from a normal configuration. This layout made routine maintenance very difficult as the majority of the organ was inaccessible. The aging action, coupled with high wind pressure eventually made the organ impossible to play.

In renovating the organ, we were able to re-position the layout of the interior in order to allow easy access for maintenance. A modern, space-saving winding system replaced the aging and bulky original reservoir. The original mechanical action was changed from balanced key lever action to a self-adjusting, suspended action with aluminum tracker squares and pulldown wires. The pedal was converted to electric action and augmented to five stops. New keyboards, with Ebony naturals and Boxwood accidentals was imported from West Germany. The stop-action remains in its original mechanical form, although the electrified pedal and facade pipes utilize electrified drawknobs which visually match the mechanical ones. With pedal and facade pipes coverted to electro-pneumatic action, hundreds of feet of cardboard wind conductor were eliminated. The rear interior of the instrument was re-configured in multi-story fashion to conserve yet more space.

The original Hinners stoplist reflected the original builder's conservatism. It was possible to improve the stoplist to allow more effective leadership in congregational singing and to allow the performance of a healthy cross-section of organ literature.

It was decided that the stenciling, discovered on the facade pipes as they were stripped for repair work, should be restored to its original 1905 appearance. The effect of the stenciling is stunning, and lends a sense of belonging to the organ, as other artwork in the sanctuary reflects similar color schemes.