Cathedral to purchase new organ

By RENEE WEBB, Globe editor
May 6, 2004

Father Paul-Louis Arts, rector of the Cathedral of the Epiphany, recently announced the third phase of the cathedral's renovation project - replacement of the current organ and minor modifications to the balcony in order to accommodate the new instrument.

He pointed out that Phase 1 consisted of remodeling Cathedral hall and Phase 2 was the renovation of the main church body.

"When I first came here, we had sizeable funds from the estate of Msgr. Dean Walker for the purpose of replacing the instrument, but as soon as I was here I knew the funds we had were not nearly enough for what we were going to need," said Matthew Geerlings, director of music and liturgy at the Cathedral of the Epiphany.

About two years ago Geerlings began to contact organ builders and the parish formed an organ committee made up of individuals from both the parish and diocesan worship community.

Since that time, they also received a generous gift from the late Margaret Ann Everist.

Father Arts said that upon receiving the Everist gift, the parish opted to proceed with this project with the blessing of Bishop Daniel N. DiNardo and the Diocesan College of Consultors.

"That really gave us the jump start to begin researching getting proposals in to meet the criteria that we had set," noted Geerlings.

He explained that the organ committee came up with criteria that they wanted the new pipe organ to be able to meet at a parish level, diocesan level and for the greater Siouxland community as the Cathedral serves as a center for the arts.

One of the main criteria was a desire for the new organ to have mechanical key action versus electric key action as with the present organ. The mechanical key action allows for the organist to better control the speech of the instrument. These organs also offer greater longevity and require less maintenance.

Not many organ builders have the capability to make these organs. In the end, proposals were submitted by three organ builders - one from Iowa, one from the Boston-area and one from Toronto, Canada.

"All three proposals came in quite a bit more than we had figured. We were thinking about down-sizing the organ considerably," said Geerlings. The proposals ranged from $800,000 to over $1 million.

As it happened, he had been visiting an Omaha church over Easter of 2003 when he was introduced to an organ builder who was working on the installation of that church's new organ. The man asked Geerlings if he could visit the Cathedral.

"I told him we already had the three proposals, but if he wanted to then go ahead. Within a month we had drawings and a budget. It was perfect for everything we needed," said Geerlings. "It was a good time in his career to do this project as well, so I will call it divine intervention that we met and were able to work together."

Cathedral has entered into contract with Orgelbau Wech, a German builder of pipe organs. He has 20 years of experience building organs and started his own company about three years ago. Presently, he is restoring a 17th Century Italian organ and once completed, he will begin Cathedral's organ.

"We are very excited about this because it will be a wonderful asset not only to the parish but to the community and the diocese for the enhancement of the liturgy and the arts," said Father Arts.

He pointed out that after receiving the two major gifts, they would need about another $200,000 to pay for the project.

"We are inviting the Cathedral parishioners to be a part of this, but we will also seek major gifts," said the rector.

A new organ would add the final touch to the newly remodeled Cathedral.

Geerlings mentioned that the present organ was installed in 1980 and at that time, the fate of the Cathedral was in question so they didn't want to spend a lot of money on the instrument. Its design was intended to fit the church's environment prior to the late 1990s remodeling project. This was a used instrument in the first place that has needed several costly repairs and with anticipated repairs.

"We wanted to get something that worked better visually and tonally for us," he said.

The case design, made of solid oak, will match the architecture of the building.

"Visually the window and the organ will work together," said Geerlings. "Technically, it will be three times the size of the current instrument as far as the number of pipes and stops but it will fit in the same amount of space."

The new organ will weigh eight tons. The majority of the pipes will be an alloy of tin and lead with a few wooden pipes.

Plans are for the new organ to be delivered in late fall or early winter of 2006.

"The organ will be built and completely assembled in the organ builder's shop. It is then tested. It is then disassembled, packed, crated, shipped and then reassembled here," said Geerlings.

It will be shipped by sea and then two semi's will deliver it to Iowa. It will take three to four weeks for the organ to be pieced together and another three months for the fine tuning, called voicing, to complete the process.