Organ News

College of Music receives $1.5 million for new organ
Ardoin-Voertman concert organ to be built by Wolff and Associates

DENTON (UNT), Texas — A new $1.5 million Voertman-Ardoin Memorial Fund created by Denton philanthropist Paul Voertman will support the installation of a new concert organ at the University of North Texas College of Music.
The Richard Ardoin-Paul Voertman Concert Organ will be installed in Winspear Hall, at the Murchison Performing Arts Center, which was originally conceived with an organ when the building was constructed in 1999.
“The College of Music is very grateful that Mr. Voertman has made this significant commitment, which will enable us to complete such an important part of the facility,” said James Scott, dean of the College of Music. “Having an outstanding pipe organ in Winspear Hall will make it possible to perform the symphonic repertory that calls for organ, as well as the large oratorios and cantatas for chorus and orchestra, which the college currently cannot perform with an appropriate instrument. The organ will serve many periods of the solo organ repertory as well.”
Construction of the Ardoin-Voertman concert organ was recently approved by the UNT System Board of Regents and installation is scheduled for completion in 2008.
After extensive consideration of a number of potential builders, the college selected internationally renowned Wolff and Associates, who are located in Laval, in the Canadian Province of Quebec. Recent Wolff and Associates projects include a respected, major organ in Houston and an organ installation at the University of Kansas, which has received worldwide attention.
“Designing and building the future organ for Winspear Hall will be an exciting project for us and we trust the result will be rewarding for the university and the musical community of the area as well,” Hellmuth Wolff said. “The organ’s sound will be favored by exceptionally fine acoustics. The acoustical setting, adjusted to its most reverberant mode, will allow the organ to sing out and to let the audience hear the voices in polyphonic music clearly.”
“There are usually three things that ought to be combined to make an organ project worthwhile: the space, the acoustics and the people. It seems all the good qualities are united in this project,” he said.
Positioned behind the choral terrace in Winspear Hall, the organ will be a fairly large three manual instrument of 55 stops, offering a powerful plenum, plenty of quiet registrations as well as colorful flutes and reeds, according to Wolff.
“As with most of our instruments, we draw from sources of the Classic and Romantic period and from different national schools of organ building. This organ will also be inspired by the great organs of the past and by the best work of our colleagues of the Old and the New World, from whom we have learned quite a few things in our craft,” he said.
The organ’s case, which will be painted to blend with the hall, also features the geometric shapes and angles of the hall with its pentagonal window behind the organ loft.
Except for the Swell division, the facade pipes reflect their respective keyboard divisions with their pipes standing behind the facade in the case. The keydesk is attached to the organ to favor a most direct mechanical linkage between the keys and the valves directing the wind to the pipes. The stops are drawn electrically and the most up to date electronic assistance devices will help the players with their registrations.

Note to Editors: Images of the organ are available in the image gallery at web2.unt.edu/news/ or by request from Kelley Reese at (940) 565-3993.

On April 19, 2004, organ performance majors of Jesse Eschbach presented the Southwest premiere of the recently published organ works of Louis Couperin. The recently acquired Ottman organ, built by Gene Bedient, served as the perfect instrument for Couperin’s music. Intended to serve the needs and musical requirements of French repertoire from the 17th and 18th centuries, the organ clearly sounds most “at home” when playing this music. Students performed a wide-ranging recital, illustrating all of the various genres comprising the new Couperin publication, and Eschbach presented a lecture focusing on the evolving Parisian organ of the seventeenth century and Louis Couperin’s musical response to it, specifically adapting fugal textures to the new solo timbres available on mid century instruments.

Now available -- Dr. Eschbach's extensively researched book on Cavaillé-Coll! 

A Compendium of Known Stoplists by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll Paderborn:  Verlag Peter Ewers, 2003
by Dr. Jesse Eschbach, Chair
Division of Keyboard Studies
Available through organ literature foundation as well as various music dealers
http://store.yahoo.com/ohscatalog/

Also available -- Dr. Eschbach's newest CD!

Music from the Second Empire and Beyond
Recorded at the Cathédrale Saint-Jean, Perpignan, France 
Music of Lemmens, Fessy, Franck, Couturier, and Gigout 
Released on the Raven label
http://www.arkivmusic.com/classical/

 

 

UNT Organ Area acquires Bedient French Classical Organ

The newest and largest addition to the UNT organ collection, acquired through a generous gift from Robert and Shirley Ottman, is the Bedient IV/41 French Classical Organ, which was installed in the Main Auditorium in May 2003. It was built for St. Mark's Episcopal Church in Grand Rapids, MI, as a gift to the church and to the community from Sara H. Lowry and O. William Lowry by the Gene R. Bedient Co., Lincoln, NE, and dedicated in Grand Rapids September 14, 1986. The design was based on research of historic French organs at Souvigny, Houdan, Poitiers, Mitry-Mory, plus various written and other sources. It is built in the style of an 18th-century French organ, although not a copy of any particular instrument. Technological changes make exact replication impossible and financially unfeasible. The case is made of hand-planed white oak, stained and finished with a traditional rubbed shellac finish known as "French Polish." Special moulding cutters were ground in the Bedient shop to approximate the moulding profiles of the 1778 organ at Souvigny. The keyboards are of oak with naturals of cowbone and sharps of ebony. The traditional French type pedalboard is oak.

The simple suspended mechanical action system uses trackers of sugar pine and brass with rollerboards of steel, oak, brass and hickory. Positif and Echo backfalls are of oak. The stop action system is of steel with stop knobs of walnut and porcelain faces. Windchests are of mahogany, oak, sugarpine, with some brass, steel and leather used. The front pipes feature raised romanesque mouths, and are made of 88% tin burnished to appear shiny. All interior metal pipes have lead feet and languids, a common French practice. The reed resonators and bodies of the interior open pipes are of 88% tin, while the bodies of the metal stopped flutes are of lead. All tin and lead sheets were hammered before being made into pipes. Wooden pipes are of oak and mahogany. The wind system consists of an electric blower with large, multiple-fold bellows that deliver 100 mm of pressure through a series of oak windtrunks and through the Tremblant doux and to the chests.

NT Daily article features Daniel Stipe and Jin Park

The NT Daily ran an article and photo on April 5, 2002, about Daniel Stipe and Jin Park winning the Bill Hall Organ Competition in San Antonio. Link to the article at http://www.ntdaily.com/vnews/display.v/ART/2002/04/05/3cad2ed4bdcb0?in_archive=1

For information on organ studies contact:
Dr. Jesse Eschbach, Chair, Keyboard Division
Phone: 940-565-4094
jeschbac@music.unt.edu