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NEWSLETTER FOR FRIENDS AND DONORS
AUGUST 2009
PIPES AND ORGAN BUILDERS ARRIVE
The final stage of this huge project begins - the installation of around five thousand pipes and their tonal voicing and finishing.
Organ builder and project leader, Thomas Von Heymann, is back in Auckland for the third time, along with his assistant Lukas May and voicer Markus Linden.
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The containers bearing the pipes from Germany have just arrived and have been placed in a secure area near the Town Hall. Progressively, organ builders will unload them, carrying the pipes through a rear door and up to the organ loft.
As each rank (row) of pipes is unwrapped and placed in its allotted spot on its wind chest, Markus Linden will finely adjust the speech of each pipe. Markus is the pipe voicer Orgelbau Klais has chosen for this exacting task. He will give town hall organ its ‘voice’.
WHAT IS VOICING ?
Pipes are made in the organ factory from the raw materials of wood, lead, tin and zinc. Each pipe is handmade to the prescription given by the organ’s designer.
The raw, speechless pipe is then placed on the voicing machine, a device like a small organ, but without pipes. The voicer puts the raw pipe ‘on speech’ by adjusting its various parts, such as the mouth, wind-way, languid, foot, ears and reed (if it’s a trumpet-type pipe).
But, he goes only so far, leaving the final touches until the pipe is sounding in the building for which it is designed. There he must ensure it has the correct volume, matches and blends with its neighbours, and produces the kind of sound its designer intends.
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This exacting process in the Auckland town hall will take many weeks. Often it will be a case of working day and night around other activities in the building. The town hall is one of the busiest public halls in the country.
THIS MONTH’S PICTURES
1. The pipe voicing machine at Orgelbau Klais in Bonn. The retired head of the company , Hans Gerd Klais (father of current MD, Philipp Klais) with Ian Bell (right), consultant for the Auckland town hall organ restoration.
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2. Pipe voicer Markus Linden with some of the new pipes inside the town hall organ.
3. Project leader Thomas von Heymann crawls amongst the organ’s bellows adjusting the mechanism inside.
4. Organ builder Lukas May also works on one of the organ’s twenty three bellows.
SEPTEMBER - NEW ZEALAND ORGAN MONTH
To celebrate New Zealand Organ Month, Radio New Zealand Concert will devote its new recordings programme on September 6 to the ‘King of Instruments’. With the inauguration of the restored Auckland town hall organ in prospect the focus will be on significant new and restored organs around the world and the repertoire used to celebrate them. ‘Pressing On’ is broadcast at noon on Sundays and repeated the following Friday at 7pm.
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