Clarence United Methodist Church

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Welcome to Clarence United!

The New Organ Pipes at Clarence United Methodist Church
Curtis F. Holmes, Organist

When the congregation entered the sanctuary a few weeks ago, they were greeted with the sight of 183 beautiful organ pipes on the right front side of the church. These pipes, in combination with the excellent digital sound of our Rodgers Trillium™ Digital Organ, have greatly enhanced the sound of the instrument.

Our Rodgers instrument was purchased from Denton Cottier and Daniels and installed in the sanctuary in 2002. It is an excellent digital instrument and was a great improvement over the old electronic instrument installed in 1975. Digital instruments, as the name implies, use digital electronic circuitry to create audio signals that are played through large speakers in the front and back of the church.

The Rodgers technology uses a technique called "Dimensional Sound Modeling®" to create authentic organ sounds. Indeed, almost all of the stops on our instrument sound remarkably like those of a pipe organ, with one exception. Even the modern digital organs have some difficulty mimicking the unique sound of the so-called principal, or "diapason" pipes. These are the standard flue pipes that produce the characteristic "churchy" sound of the organ. The sound is produced when air is blown into the lower, conical portion of the pipe and strikes a slot (called the "lip") at the bottom of the "straight" part of the pipe. This sets up an audio vibration that creates the sound of the pipe. The pitch of the sound is a function of the length and diameter of the pipe. Other sounds, such as flute stops, string stops, and reed stops, are well-produced by the Rodgers digital technology, but the diapason stops are still best produced by real pipes.

The Rodgers company recognized that churches might want the ability to have an organ that combined digital and pipe technology. Accordingly, they teamed with a very well known Italian company called Fratelli Ruffatti, (which means "Ruffatti Brothers"), in Padua, Italy, to make available a Rodgers instrument that consists of both pipes and digital sounds. Moreover, Rodgers made it possible to retrofit pipes into an existing digital instrument.

Ruffatti is one of the best known and most highly regarded of all organ builders. Founded in the early 20th century by Antonio Ruffatti and his brothers, it has installed organs all over the world. It is still a family business, now run by Piero and Francesco Ruffatti, sons of the founder. The Crystal Cathedral in California, Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church in Florida, Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, St. Patrick's Church in Sydney, and many churches and cathedrals in Europe are among their installations.

The pipes are made of an alloy called "spotted metal," a mixture of tin and lead. The pipes are made by melting the tin-lead combination in a large crucible, pouring the molten metal onto a flat bed, and smoothing the metal into a thin sheet. This sheet is then rolled around a wooden mandrel to form the long upper or cylindrical part of the pipe. The bottom part of the pipe is rolled around a conical mandrel. The two parts are joined, the lip is formed between them, and the pipe is soldered together. The interested reader is referred to the Ruffatti website, at www.ruffatti.com, for more information about the making of the pipes.

Our pipes were not usable for the first week or so, because they had not been tuned. The tuning is complete, but another process, called "voicing" will be done in early June. Voicing is a complicated process of adjusting the physical alignment of the critical parts (upper and lower lips, etc.) to get the desired sound. Once the voicing is completed, the instrument will sound even better than it has sounded the last two weeks. The pipes will need to be tuned about twice a year, a straightforward and relatively inexpensive process. Voicing is done only once, when the pipes are first installed.

Three ranks of pipes were installed (a "rank" is a full set of 61 pipes, one for each of the 61 keys on the organ manuals). Also installed was a blower to provide the wind pressure and a rectifier to provide the power. The three ranks are known as 8-foot, 4-foot, and 2-foot ranks, so named because the length of the pipe sounding the lowest note of each rank is 8, 4, or 2 feet long, measured from the lip of the pipe to the top. The 8-foot rank sounds the normal pitch, the 4-foot sounds one octave higher, and the 2-foot sounds 2 octaves higher. Together, the three ranks form what is called a "principal chorus" of three stops. Thus when all three ranks are activated, one hears three pitches - normal, one octave higher, and two octaves higher. The largest pipe is 9 feet 7 inches long, and the smallest is about the size of a pencil.

I believe we are very fortunate to have this excellent instrument, now augmented by the addition of real pipes in addition to the digital sounds produced by the Rodgers technology. It is my belief that this organ will enhance our worship and help us sing praises to the Lord for many, many years.