20-04-2025
'A divine blessing': New organ at Glendale church makes Easter debut, revitalizes worship
For centuries, Christians across the globe have gathered every Easter Sunday to commemorate the resurrection of Jesus Christ.
They believe his triumph over death signifies a story of renewal, an integral tenet of Christendom reiterated every year to signal the end of the Lenten season.
In present-day suburban Cincinnati, Christ Church Glendale is following suit and celebrating Christ's resurrection on Easter, just like it has for the past 156 years in the small village of just over 2,000 residents.
Quaint, elegant and historic in design, the Episcopal church is reflective of the village of Glendale itself, one that staff says has "proudly" made changes throughout its history "to accompany a growing and diverse church family,"
This Easter, however, the 400 or so members of Christ Church were met with one of its most monumental changes ever: the symbolic rebirth of a church cornerstone after its longtime pipe organ gave the staff quite the scare a few years back.
In spring 2022, music director and organist Tyler Robertson was preparing the church's organ to show the vestry how much the instrument had deteriorated over 140 or so years, as well as to make a pitch for a new replacement.
Robertson recalled how he climbed into the the narrow pipe chamber and lightly bumped into some of the facade pipes – prompting 25 of the organ's 2,000 or so pipes to topple down onto the sanctuary floor, narrowly missing him and the altar.
The Rev. David Pfaff, the church's rector since 2016, said he will never forget Robertson's facial expression when he peeked his head into his office and asked him to go check out the sanctuary after the accident happened.
"He was white as a sheet," Pfaff said.
Aside from the pipes themselves, no damage was done to the church, and remarkably, Robertson was left unscathed. The 42-year-old said that the harrowing experience worked in his favor, affirming the church was indeed due for a new organ.
"The next day when the vestry came in for my presentation, not only did I have a PowerPoint ready, I had 100-plus-year-old pipes that had collapsed and made a massive mess on the floor," Robertson said. "It was certainly unintentional but kind of added a little more 'Oh yeah, this is a problem, we need to take care of this.'"
The organ was built by the Roosevelt Organ Works company in the 1870s and was first used for concerts at New York's Chickering Hall, the church said. In 1902, the organ was purchased by Pennsylvania's Thiel College, where it was locked up in storage and never used until it was sold again, this time to Christ Church in 1911.
It was installed at the church by the M.P. Morgan company, which also added its own parts to the organ.
Even before the pipes fell three years ago, the organ had shown evidence of age-related issues, including deterioration of the wind chest's wood and leather, which Robertson said caused some notes to play by themselves, as well as some water encroachment.
Music resurrected: How we captured instrument's rebirth at Glendale church
Pipes and other parts of the organ were replaced over the years, and by the tail end of its life, the instrument ultimately became a "Frankenstein," as Robertson put it.
"Really, you have an instrument that at one point was cohesive in sound, but then, over the decades, you start removing little parts of that puzzle and sticking in puzzle pieces that don't really match," he said.
But despite all of the organ's wear and tear, Robertson, with 25 years of experience as a musician, was still able to play the instrument during services, all while simultaneously directing multiple choirs.
That was the case until the week after Easter 2023 when the organ's 113-year-old blower finally gave out – marking the end of its life, Robertson said. Since then, the church has used a temporary organ for its services.
Robertson and the church staff initially considered having the old organ rebuilt in hopes of resolving its issues. However, they consulted five prominent organ builders, each from a different part of the world, and they all said it would be best, and more cost effective, if the church built a new one from scratch.
The vestry ultimately approved the project for a brand-new organ, giving Christ Church the green light to sign a contract with renowned organ builder Casavant Frères of Quebec, Canada, in December of 2022.
"While it's a very large and physical project, and it's been an expensive project, it's one that we'll really need to think about as a project for the ages, in effect, and not just for our own time," Pfaff said, adding that the new organ should last until "our great, great, great, great grandchildren have to worry about it again."
The new organ cost roughly $1.5 million, paid by a grant from the Diocese of Southern Ohio's William Cooper Procter Memorial Fund. William Cooper Procter was the grandson of William Procter, the co-founder of Procter & Gamble, who moved to Glendale after living in downtown Cincinnati.
Procter and his family established deep roots in the village. His daughter, Olivia, even married Cleveland Benedict, who at one point became the rector of Christ Church, according to the Glendale Heritage Preservation's website.
More: Which churches in the Cincinnati area have classic organs?
Work began on the organ shortly after the contract was signed with Casavant Frères, a world-renowned organ builder company based in Quebec, Canada.
Since 1879, the company has helped keep alive the "ancestral techniques of organ building," handcrafting dozens of pipe organs for churches across the world, according to its website. This includes churches in countries like England, China, Australia and Mexico, as well as several in United States.
For Christ Church, all of the organ's parts and pieces were handcrafted in Canada and then transported over the border in two separate shipments in February. Three Cavavant employees − Fabien Tremblay, Mario Paradis and Sylvain Bourdage − then traveled to Glendale to assemble and install the organ, a tricky feat due to the church's narrow chamber.
Having carved out a 24-year career with the company building organs across the world, Tremblay was essentially the foreman of the Casavant group.
Because the church's designated chamber for the organ was so confined, he said he had to improvise at multiple points during this project, making modifications to the instrument's pieces, and to the chamber itself, to ensure everything fit properly.
"The most difficult (challenge) is it's a huge organ for a small organ loft. Everything is tight," he said. "Underneath the main chest ... there's a lot of mechanisms inside, all the wind systems and all the electrical parts, and it's very tight. It's like being under a car all the time."
The new organ is classified as a Casavant Opus 3956 and has three manuals and 42 ranks. It features more than 2,600 pipes, handmade of wood and metal, and about a third of those were salvaged from the old organ.
During the installation, thousands of the organ's pieces, as well as an intricate web of scaffolding, took up virtually every inch of space in the church's compact main chapel. With hardly any room to even walk, services had to be moved to the church's secondary chapel for those two months, Robertson said.
After the organ was completely installed, Casavant sent two voicers to calibrate the sound of each of the instrument's 2,600 pipes, a meticulous task that roughly took a month to accomplish.
Like most instruments, an organ needs to be tuned properly so that it produces the desired sound. A voicer is someone who makes minor, precise adjustments to the pipes, usually with a small hammer or punch tool, to achieve those desired tonal qualities.
The two voicers work in tandem, testing each pipe, one by one, and since there are over 2,000 of them, it's no wonder why this process takes quite a bit of time.
Since all of the organ's pipes, mechanisms and console were manufactured in Canada and then imported, the church was concerned whether President Donald Trump's proposed tariffs would impact the project in any sort of way.
On his first day in office, Trump said his administration would begin imposing across-the-board tariffs − up to 20% on imports from all countries, including a 25% tax on goods from Mexico and Canada – on Feb. 1. This date preceded the the church's scheduled delivery dates for the two shipments of the organ's materials.
Robertson said church officials didn't know exactly how the tariffs would impact the project. Based on the 25% figure, he said it was possible that another $400,000 would've been tacked on to the original $1.5 million price tag if the tariffs went into effect.
Those tariffs, however, were then delayed a month after the Trump administration agreed to deals with both Canada and Mexico. This gave the church a window – albeit a tight one − to bring all of the organ's materials across the northern border before the tariffs were set to go into effect in early March.
Both shipments were delivered to the Glendale church within about a two-week span in February, giving Casavant workers enough time to install and tune the organ by Easter Sunday.
Outside of a Major League Baseball game, the most common place you'll find or hear an organ is likely at your local church. The wind instrument's dramatic and reverberating sounds have bellowed throughout the naves of churches for more than 1,000 years.
The organ, itself, however, predates even Christianity, as the first organ-like instrument is believed to have been created in Alexandria, Greece, around 246 B.C. by Greek engineer and barber Ctesibius, according to an article by
It wasn't until over 1,000 years later, around 700 A.D., that churches started using modern organs for worship − with visible pipes played via a keyboard. From there on out, the organ evolved as technology advanced, and its popularity spread rapidly throughout Europe, especially in countries like France, Spain, England and Germany.
These days, rather than using a traditional pipe organ, Christian churches have leaned more heavily on contemporary music, which consists more of guitars and drums, according to Robertson.
"In the Episcopal church in particular, you find that there is a rich heritage of traditional music and there is still that desire to worship in that way as has been done for many hundreds of years," Robertson said. "A lot of the music we still use today comes from the 14th, 15th, 16th century, for example. So there's certainly an old heritage at this church."
All in all, it's difficult to imagine what religious worship would be without music. For hundreds of years, music has invoked feelings of faith and unity among churchgoers in ways that simple, spoken prayer cannot do.
"Music touches us in ways that words, and even thoughts, do not necessarily," Pfaff said. "As spiritual beings, music touches us on a plane that is really unique."
As the music director and organist, Robertson has been key in delivering that experience to the Christ Church community for four and a half years now.
"I feel a large bit of responsibility standing up there in front of the church and in front of the choir to help them connect," Robertson said. "Some churches choose to go without music, and I think that's to their detriment because music is such an uplifting thing and can really connect people."
Pfaff said that a moment like this in the church doesn't come around very often − 125 years or so is the expected lifespan of a classic pipe organ. He added that he's looking forward to Christ Church Glendale rekindling its reputation as a congregation that is known for its music, especially right on time for Easter this year.
"I'd like to think there's a little bit of a divine blessing in that," he said. "This is a very exciting time for the parish."
This article originally appeared on Cincinnati Enquirer: New organ makes debut at Christ Church Glendale on Easter Sunday
