Annie Lennox makes a point with her new song for the film 'A Private War'

Organic Yet Otherworldly

By Staff Report on May 4, 2018

organ at first congregation church in london

Pipe view of one of the Great Organs of First Church in Los Angeles.

Organs have had a storied role in Hollywood film scores,

“From Phantom of the Opera to The Tree of Life, the organ has a distinguished history in film, not only in musical scores but on the screen itself. Whatever its role, be it as a musical instrument or as a prop, its presence lends an extra dimension to a movie,” says composer and concert organist John Karl Hirten, author of a 50-minute presentation titled “Image is Everything: The Pipe Organ on Film.”

If you’re craving that organic sound, Los Angeles has some of the most outstanding instruments in the nation. The Great Organs of First Church, situated in the enormous vaulted Sanctuary of Los Angeles’ oldest Protestant Church, together constitute perhaps the largest musical instrument existing in any church in the world today. Now, with approximately 346 ranks, 265 stops, 233 voices, 18 divisions and more than 20,000 pipes, the Great Organs speak down the Nave and Chancel and from the South and North Transept Galleries with the music of the ages.

To give you an idea of the range these things have, you can peruse the stops for the Great Organs of First Church listed here. Originally built in 1931 by Skinner, Schlicker, Möller, David, Zeiler, Sawyers, the Great Organs of First Church have been augmented piecemeal. “All over the world you have these magnificent machines, You stand next to them and you car hear the giant that is breathing,” composer Hans Zimmer told one reporter.

For his film Interstellar, Zimmer tapped an international super star of the organ world, the 1926 four-manual Harrison & Harrison organ currently housed at the 12th-century Temple Church in London. For Interstellar, the instrument was played by Temple Church’s own director of music, Roger Sayer.As Zimmer told the Film Music Society, the organ was chosen for its significance to science: From the 17th century to the time of the telephone exchange, the pipe organ was known as the most complex man-made device ever invented. Its physical appearance reminded him of space ship afterburners. And the airiness of the sound slipping through pipes replicates the experience of suited astronauts, where every breath is precious (a usual preoccupation with sci-fi movies that is taken very literally in Zimmer’s music, which also features the exhalations of his human choir).

You can find the stops listed here.

The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels, also in Los Angeles, is another world-class specimen. Commissioned from Dobson Pipe Organ Builders, Ltd., of Lake City, Iowa, it has 105 stops and a total of six thousand nineteen pipes.

The massive organ, with one hundred and five stops and a total of six thousand nineteen pipes, includes vintage pipes from the organ in the Cathedral of St. Vibiana. The original organ was built in 1929 by the Wangerin Organ Company of Milwaukee and rebuilt by Austin Organs, Inc., in 1988.

By one count it is the 89th largest pipe organ in North America and the 143rd largest in the world. Read more about it here.

 

 

Comments are closed.

↑ MaxTheTrax
© 2017 MaxTheTrax - all rights reserved