This past weekend, Corpus Christi Church once again hosted a
variety of musical concerts during the annual Artscape Festival. This was in fact the 22nd year
that the church opened its doors to the Baltimore arts and music
community. Four of the concerts featured organ music by renowned organists Ruth Eldredge Thomas, Michael Britt,
Sean O’Connor, and Saunders Allan. They played the historic Odell organ from 1889.
Brothers John Henry and Caleb Sherwood Odell founded the
organ building firm of J.H. & C.S. Odell in 1859 on West 42
nd
Street in New York City. From the onset,
they distinguished themselves as builders of refined instruments. At one point, more than 200 Odell organs were
being played in New York City alone, including those at St. Patrick’s
Cathedral, St. Bartholomew’s, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian, Marble Collegiate, St.
Charles Borromeo and St. Michael's, 34th Street.
[i]
[ii]
It comes therefore as no surprise that Michael Jenkins and
his siblings enlisted the Odell Company to build the organ for Corpus
Christi-Jenkins Memorial Church. The
instrument was builtin 1889 and installed in the church in November 1890. Price paid was $4,200.
The Baltimore Sun of November 22, 1890 described it as
follows:
A
fine new organ has just been erected in Corpus Christi, or Jenkins Memorial
Church, Townsend street and Mt. Royal avenue, which will be used in public for
the first time on the occasion of the consecration of the church, on January
1. It is a two-manual organ, and
contains the following stops: On the great open diapason, 16 feet; stopped
diapason, 8; dropped flote, 8; gambi, 8; dolce, 8; octave, 4; flute d’amour, 4;
twelfth 2 2/3; fifteenth, 2; mixture, trumpet 8. On the swell – Bourdon, 16; open diapason, 8;
stopped diapason, 8; salicional, 8; vox celestia, 8; octave, 4; wald flute, 4;
flantina, 2; dolce cornet, oboe, 8. The
pedal stops are: Open diapason, 16; Bourdon, 16; violoncello, 8. There are eight patent combination pistons,
which make the organ practically equal to a three-manual instrument. It will be worked by a gas or electric motor,
as there is not sufficient water-power at command.
The
test the organ Mr. Edwin Aler gave an informal recital to Mr. Michael Jenkins,
Rev. W. E. Starr, pastor of the church, Rev. Wayland D. Ball, of the Associate
Reformed Church, and others. The tone of
the organ is full, but not forced, and the voicing is not brilliant, but
“churchy.” The organ compares favorably with others of its capacity here, and
is probably the best two-manual organ in the city.
The organ built by J.H. & C.S. Odell is a tracker organ,
i.e., an organ that is played with mechanical action. In a tracker organ, the organist presses keys
and pulls stops which control the organ's pipes and couplers through a complex
matrix of levers and valves. The levers
and valves admit air to the pipe in order to produce the sound, which is
directly controlled by the force of the organist's finger on the key. Some say that tracker organs are best suited
to earlier forms of classical music. The instruments are often tuned to older
scales of tuning in order to perform music as it was played in earlier ages. A
good tracker organ in the hands of a skilled organist, however, can play almost
any literature, including popular Broadway and Rock music songs of the late
Twentieth-century.
Corpus Christi’s organ is installed in a gallery-level case
at the rear of the church. It features a
traditional style console with a keyboard cover that can be lifted to form a
music rack, and has an attached keydesk.
It comes with two manuals, three divisions, 26 stops and 28 ranks. The drawknobs are placed in horizontal rows
on terraced jambs. The Great Division
utilizes double drawstop pneumatics to draw the stop sliders, allowing the
ingenious use of programmable mechanical combination pistons, as well as a
piston for reversible Swell to Great Coupler. All features were well ahead of
their time in 1889.
[iii]
Corpus Christi’s beautiful instrument courageously continues
to make music after 125 years despite its unrestored condition. In 1995 Bruce Stevens, director of Historic
Organ Study Tours and active recitalist in the United States and Europe,
recorded Joseph Rheinberger’s Sonata for organ No. 20 in F major, Op. 196 on
the Corpus Christi Organ. However, a
full restoration is the dream of many organ afficionados in the area. Ten years ago the latter was estimated to
cost $154,000. Today we may very well be
looking at a price of twice that much.
[i][i]
Wikipedia Contributors. "J. H. & C. S. Odell."
Wikipedia. Wikipedia, The Free
Encyclopedia, 25 Jan. 2-13. Web. 01 July 2015.
[ii] "History."
J.H. & C.S. Odell, Pipe Organ
Builders. N.p., n.d. Web. 01 July 2015.
[iii] Storey,
David. " J. H. & C. S. Odell & Co., Opus 277, 1889."
OHS Database. Organ Historical Society, n.d.
Web. 01 July 2015.
