Britain has an extraordinary collection of pipe organs. They are everywhere. They lurk behind carved cases in parish churches, dominate the west ends of cathedrals, occupy substantial portions of town halls and sit rather magnificently in chapels belonging to schools, universities and institutions which sometimes appear slightly surprised to discover that they own one. Some are modest. Some are enormous. Some are historically important. Some are frankly ridiculous. And quite a lot of them present modern Britain with a rather awkward question: what exactly are we supposed to do with them?
This is not a problem our Victorian ancestors anticipated. They knew perfectly well what an organ was for. It was there to make an enormous noise, preferably on Sunday, preferably while several hundred people sang something by Charles Wesley, and ideally with enough sixteen-foot tone to rearrange the internal organs of anyone sitting in the front six pews. The Victorians loved pipe organs. More importantly, they believed in building things properly. If a town needed an organ, they didn’t order something roughly the size of a sideboard containing two loudspeakers and a button marked “Cathedral Reverb”. They commissioned an organ builder, raised a heroic amount of money and constructed an instrument containing several thousand pipes and enough timber, leather, lead and mechanical engineering to launch a modest industrial revolution.
The result is that Britain today possesses an extraordinary organ heritage. The problem is that the society which created it has largely disappeared.
When Every Important Building Needed an Organ
There was a time when installing a pipe organ was a statement. A substantial church needed one because music was central to worship. A town hall needed one because civic culture mattered. A school chapel needed one because generations of boys were apparently expected to sing Jerusalem before breakfast. Concert halls installed them because an orchestra without an organ was occasionally considered insufficiently noisy. Even private houses sometimes contained organs.
Imagine suggesting that today. “I’m having the kitchen extended.” “Lovely. Island?” “No. Three-manual Willis.” It would certainly make Grand Designs more interesting.
The organ belonged to a world in which people made music themselves. Before Spotify, television, radio and recorded music, if you wanted music to happen somebody actually had to produce it. This is an important distinction. Music wasn’t something that came out of the ceiling while you bought trousers. It was an activity. People sang. They played the piano. Children learned instruments. Churches maintained choirs. Towns had choral societies. Schools had orchestras. And sitting at the centre of a great deal of this musical activity was the organ.
The instrument had another advantage: it could impersonate practically everybody. Flutes, oboes, trumpets, strings and enormous quantities of bass could all be summoned by one person sitting at a console surrounded by stops carrying wonderfully optimistic labels. An organist could therefore produce something approaching the effect of an orchestra without having to employ seventy musicians. For churches, this was particularly convenient.
And Then Britain Changed
The organs remained. Britain didn’t.
Church attendance declined, congregations became smaller, choirs disappeared from many parish churches, music budgets shrank and organists became harder to find. Meanwhile, popular culture moved decisively away from the musical traditions in which the organ had flourished. None of this happened overnight. There wasn’t a particular Tuesday in 1973 when Britain collectively decided it had had enough of Great Mixtures. But gradually the ecosystem surrounding the pipe organ began to disappear.
And this matters because a pipe organ isn’t like a painting. You can hang a painting on a wall, control the humidity and leave it alone. An organ is a machine — a spectacularly complicated machine. It contains pipes, wind systems, bellows, reservoirs, actions, electrical components, leatherwork and mechanisms which require maintenance. Depending on the instrument, there may be thousands of individual pipes. And the slightly inconvenient characteristic of complicated machines is that they work best when people actually use them.
So we now find ourselves in the peculiar position of owning some magnificent instruments in buildings where hardly anyone knows how to play them.
The Organist Has Become an Endangered Species
When I started playing the organ, there was still a reasonably clear route into it. You learned the piano. At some point somebody showed you an organ. You discovered that there were pedals. You spent several months wondering why your left foot appeared to have no relationship whatsoever with your brain. Eventually things improved.
Schools, churches and teachers provided opportunities to learn. Young musicians encountered organs because they were physically present in the institutions where musical education happened. My own route included Cranleigh School and later Royal Holloway, where the organ was simply part of the musical landscape. That matters. Nobody wakes up aged fourteen and spontaneously thinks, “I wonder whether I might enjoy the works of Buxtehude.” Usually somebody introduces you to them.
The problem today isn’t necessarily that young people dislike the organ. Many have simply never encountered one. You cannot become interested in an instrument you’ve never heard properly. And by “properly”, I don’t mean hearing four verses of All Things Bright and Beautiful played on three stops while somebody searches for the collection plate.
A large pipe organ experienced in the building for which it was designed is one of the great musical experiences. There is nothing quite like it. The lowest pipes don’t merely produce sound. You feel them. The building becomes part of the instrument. Stone, timber, air and architecture combine in a way no loudspeaker can reproduce convincingly. But increasingly, the people capable of demonstrating this are disappearing.
We Also Made the Organ Slightly Frightening
Organists must accept some responsibility for this. For decades, the organ world has occasionally behaved as though attracting new listeners would be an unfortunate lowering of standards. We developed an impressive vocabulary involving mutations, mixtures, diapasons, chiff, voicing, wind pressure and whether an 1897 rebuild destroyed the tonal integrity of an 1843 specification. All fascinating. To about twelve people.
There is nothing wrong with specialist knowledge. Every serious subject has it. But sometimes the organ has been presented less as a musical instrument and more as an examination you haven’t revised for. People are told they should appreciate Bach before anyone has demonstrated that an organ can be thrilling. We sometimes forget that the easiest way to make someone interested in an organ is simply to play something they enjoy.
This doesn’t mean abandoning Bach. Bach doesn’t need rescuing. He’s doing perfectly well. But there is no reason a magnificent organ cannot play Bach, Elgar, Walton, film music, orchestral transcriptions and occasionally something which would cause a Victorian churchwarden to choke on his sherry. The instrument is extraordinarily versatile. We just don’t always advertise the fact.
The £500,000 Problem in the West Gallery
This brings us to money. Restoring a major pipe organ can cost an astonishing amount. Hundreds of thousands of pounds is entirely plausible, and for particularly significant instruments the costs can climb considerably higher.
Try explaining this at a parish finance meeting. “The roof leaks, the heating has failed and we’re down to thirty-seven regular worshippers.” “Quite.” “And the organ needs £400,000 spent on it.” There is usually a silence at this point. Possibly followed by prayer.
The problem is understandable. Churches have limited resources. Many are responsible for maintaining historic buildings whose running costs would terrify a commercial property manager. If choosing between repairing the roof and restoring the Swell division, the roof has an irritating tendency to win.
But allowing important instruments to deteriorate creates another problem. Once lost, they are extremely difficult to replace. The craftsmanship involved in building traditional pipe organs is highly specialised. Historic instruments also tell us something about how music sounded in previous generations. Destroying one because nobody currently knows what to do with it is rather like demolishing a Georgian house because nobody can find the television socket.
Town Hall Organs Have an Even Stranger Existence
Perhaps the oddest examples are Britain’s civic organs. During the nineteenth century, towns built magnificent halls and installed enormous instruments. These were not hidden away for Sunday worship. They were public instruments. People attended organ recitals as entertainment.
Imagine that. Hundreds of people voluntarily bought tickets to watch somebody play the organ without there being either a wedding or a funeral involved.
Some of these instruments survive and continue to be used successfully. Others sit in buildings whose modern purpose has drifted away from the reason the organ was installed. The result can be extraordinary. There may be an instrument capable of producing orchestral colours ranging from a whisper to something approaching Armageddon, while the building’s regular programme consists mainly of conferences and awards ceremonies. Somewhere behind the projection screen sits 30 tons of musical engineering wondering when somebody might require a Tuba Mirabilis.
So What Should We Actually Do With Them?
The answer cannot simply be preservation. An organ preserved but never played is missing the point. These instruments need to become part of musical life again. That means concerts, certainly, but not necessarily traditional organ recitals every time. Use them with orchestras. Use them with choirs. Use them with brass bands. Use them for film music. Introduce children to them. Let pianists try them. Allow people to see inside them. Explain how they work without immediately producing a diagram of the electro-pneumatic action.
And occasionally, play something people recognise.
One of the most effective ways of demonstrating an organ to somebody who thinks they aren’t interested in organs is to play music they already know. Suddenly the instrument stops being an ecclesiastical appliance and becomes an orchestra controlled by one person. Then show them Bach. Context is everything.
Churches Need to Decide Whether Their Organ Is an Asset
There is also a more uncomfortable point. Some churches treat their organ as though it is simultaneously priceless and not to be touched. This is an impressive achievement.
If you own a good instrument, use it. Invite musicians. Encourage students. Hold recitals. Include it in weddings. Tell people about it. Put information online. Make recordings. Allow the building to become somewhere people associate with music. A historic organ should be an asset to a church, not simply another entry on the quinquennial inspection.
And if a church genuinely has no possible use for an instrument, perhaps we need to become better at relocating worthwhile organs to places that do. Not every organ can or should be saved. But neglect through indecision seems the worst possible outcome.
Perhaps the Organ’s Greatest Problem Is Its Image
Mention the word “organist” and people still tend to imagine someone elderly disappearing behind a curtain shortly before a funeral. This seems unfair. Nobody hears “guitarist” and immediately imagines a man called Derek playing Stairway to Heaven in a crematorium.
The organ needs to escape its association with solemn occasions because fundamentally it is an outrageous instrument. It is enormous. It is mechanically absurd. It can contain thousands of pipes. The player uses both hands, both feet, several keyboards and an assortment of controls while attempting to read music containing more simultaneous information than seems entirely reasonable.
And when everything comes together, an organ can fill an enormous building without a single loudspeaker. There is nothing remotely dull about that.
A Magnificent Inheritance
Britain’s pipe organs are therefore both a gift and a problem. Previous generations left us instruments of extraordinary craftsmanship. Some were built for cathedrals. Some for tiny parish churches. Some for schools. Some for civic halls built by industrial towns determined to demonstrate that they had arrived. Together they form a remarkable musical inheritance.
But inheritance comes with responsibility. We cannot simply admire these instruments while allowing the skills required to play and maintain them to disappear. Nor can we expect the organ to survive purely through nostalgia. It has to be useful. It has to be heard. Most importantly, it has to be enjoyed.
Perhaps the future of the organ depends less on persuading people that they ought to appreciate it and more on reminding them why previous generations became obsessed with it in the first place. Find a good instrument. Find a good organist. Sit somewhere near the middle of the building. Then wait until the full organ arrives.
At that point, explanations become largely unnecessary.
And somewhere, several tons of Victorian plumbing will finally be doing what it was built to do.