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CONSTELLATIONCENTER, PHILLIPS FOUNDATION, AND TAYLOR & BOODY ORGANBUILDERS FINALIZE ORGAN CONTRACT

On September 15, 2007 members of the ConstellationCenter team and The Ellis L. Phillips Foundation gathered at the Constellation offices to sign the contract with Taylor & Boody Oganbuilders of Virginia. For more information on the ConstellationCenter organs, see “Unique Features” under the Project Book.

The building of a significant new performing arts space in the Boston area provides a unique opportunity to build a world-class organ in a community already recognized as a focal point for America’s organ culture. This is an opportunity that comes along only infrequently: to create a musical instrument of such spectacular quality that even those who know nothing about the organ or who have never heard an organ before will be both captivated and moved by its beauty.

Some instruments in Boston can already inspire in this way: the Fisk organs at Old West Church and at Wellesley College’s Houghton Chapel, to name a few. But such organs, because of their location in churches, are not likely to be heard by a large segment of the concert-going public, and churches that possess such instruments often have to struggle with financial constraints in their efforts to present their organs through a viable concert series. The faithful devotee of organ music, however, can hear in the churches of Boston and environs some of the most remarkable organs that have been built in America over the past two centuries.

Yet with all this richness, there are still some important traditions of organ building that have been slow to come to the greater Boston area. For instance, until recently there was no instrument upon which the great north-European repertoire of the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries could be adequately performed. Now the new organ by Richards, Fowkes, and Company at Boston’s First Lutheran Church fills that gap.

It is ironic that in such an organ-rich environment, there still exists no instrument specifically designed to play the major organ works of Johann Sebastian Bach, the most important composer ever to have written for the organ. Until now, no one has attempted to build a “Bach organ” in our area; this is understandable, in view of the development of organ building in recent years. While playing the music of Bach has been an important consideration in the design of organs for a long time, the relative inaccessibility of surviving instruments in Thuringia and Saxony during the East German period had prevented the research necessary for musicians and organ builders from the West to gain a thorough understanding of the traditions that Bach knew.

Now this situation has changed. Study of these instruments by builders and players has been taking place for a number of years and some of the most important Thuringian and Saxon organs have recently had fine restorations. Because of recent and ongoing research in connection with the restoration process, it is now possible to have a much clearer understanding of the sounds that Bach worked with and how they were produced.

It is also clear that there is no one organ type that can accurately be called “The Bach Organ,” but rather that Bach’s experience in central Germany encompassed several related but different organ building traditions, all of which have legitimate claim to relevance for Bach’s music, and none of which are yet represented in the greater Boston area.

The Taylor and Boody organ at ConstellationCenter will fill this gap with a well-researched, fine instrument.