Orgel werks

Last Thursday I wandered in and out of the church while Peter Walker was installing pipes and various other parts of this incredibly complicated organ. The photos are in the order in which I took them.


Various pipes are resting in their travel boxes carefully laid out across the pews.


The piece that looks like an over-sized cribbage board is that which holds pipes in place. The PVC pipe is for the wind chests and blowers.


Here's a close-up. That is a lot of drilling holes!


These pipes are miniscule.


And these pipes are a bit larger.


View from the gallery looking to the chancel.


The master builder.


Looking through the antiphonal section to the front of the church.


This is a little blurry because they were moving as they set pipes into their frame and then held a level to make sure they truly were upright and perpendicular to the frame ('I don't want the pipes to be leaning forward').


Back up in the choir, Peter moves pipes out of the way for Sunday.


Here are the brains to the organ: all those little circuits and relays can be programmed differently to create different combinations of sound. It's a binary system and one that can be adjusted on site. (It is totally mind-boggling to me to put this all together let alone conceive it.) The PVC pipe is for one of the wind chests up above the choir.


Behind the louvred panels (the swell) is a chamber that is filled with metal and wood pipes, PVC pipe. One has to be relatively skinny to get through the little door to the left.


The strings, needless to say, are temporary to be replaced by black ribbon (albeit it thick).