Organ Dedication Brochure
The Memorial Hillebrand/Moore Organ

On Sunday, September 26, 1999, the congregation of United Church on the Green celebrated the re-dedication of the Memorial Pipe organ, named in memory of Minna W. Smith and Justine Catlin Millspaugh and Frederick A. Catlin. The Minna W. Smith bequest financed the purchase of the organ in 1967 and the generosity of the Catlin Foundation has made the present renovation possible.

In 1997 the Board of Stewards formed an organ committee, chaired by Fred Walker, with members Barbara Comer, Daniel Rausch, John Sawyer, Anne Scheffler and Mark Brombaugh, ex officio. After careful study of the condition of the organ, and receiving proposals from several organ builders, the church contracted with A. David Moore, Inc. for major renovations. This project completes renovations begun in 1979, and is intended to enhance the capabilities of the original instrument and enable it to serve the congregation and the greater New Haven musical community with distinction for years to come.

The Memorial Pipe Organ was built by Hermann Hillebrand and Sons of Hannover, Germany, in 1967, the year the meetinghouse was restored. Designed by the builders in consultation with United's Director of Music, Paul Jordan, and German organ advisor Alfred Hoppe, it aimed to emulate the sound and esthetic of the great baroque organs of North Germany. It was the first of a number of European and American tracker organs to come to the New Haven area.

David Moore's charge was to provide the organ with a new console controlling a responsive and light key action, a more comprehensive stop combination action, provide all-new reed stops and eleven new or restored flue stops, and to furnish a new swellbox in an elevated position.

The new console, casework around it and bench are made of cherry. The manual natural keys are covered with cow bone, the pedal naturals are maple, the sharps for the manuals are Texas ebony and those for the pedals are rosewood, as are the stop knobs and key cheek cap moldings. The stop knobs are arranged in terraces to either side of the keyboards.

The key action is a "suspended" action, in which the keys are hinged at the rear and literally hang from the valves, or pallets, in the wind chests. This type of action was used in the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries, and along with the use of wood for most action parts and careful design to keep mass and friction to a minimum, results in a light and responsive key action. The new stop combination action is a solid-state system with sixty-four levels of memory.

The new swellbox was designed to allow the sound from that division to project easily into the room with unforced voicing. The windchest was raised thirty inches so that now these pipes can speak not only through the main case, but also above it. Since this division is extensively used in choral accompaniment, the swellbox has shutters facing the sides as well as the front of the case so that the choir can more easily hear these pipes.

The goal in scaling and voicing the new reed and flue stops was to provide voices well-suited to the acoustics of the room, and which would enhance the organ's role in leading congregational singing, accompanying the choir and playing the great organ literature.

Most of the new reed stops are inspired by those in the baroque organs of North Germany, especially those built by Arp Schnitger, who worked in the Hamburg area from about 1670-1720. The full and yet focussed sounds of the trumpet and posaune (trombone) stops are particularly representative of Schnitger's work.

Closer to home, the organs of the great nineteenth-century Boston builders Elias and George G. Hook were influential. In the late nineteenth century there were twelve Hook organs in New Haven, including organs in each of the churches on the green. For our organ two distinctive stops were studied, the clarabella, a colorful open wood flute stop, and the oboe. David Moore and Mark Brombaugh measured and photographed these stops in three circa-1860 Hook organs in the Boston area, and in the superb 1870 organ at the United Church in Stonington, Connecticut. Mr. Moore made a copy of the clarabella stops found in the Boston organs, and had the good fortune to find an oboe stop nearly identical to the one in Stonington made by the Hooks in 1871. These pipes were restored, with new resonators, for the swell organ.

Though the new stops might appear to be influenced by contrasting organ building styles, they are in fact carefully scaled and voiced to blend well with one another and with the remaining original Hillebrand stops. David Moore's skill in scaling and voicing the new stops has led to an organ of tonal integrity, which possesses both a wide sonic palette and great beauty in the individual stops.

All of the new pipes, metal and wood, flue and reed, were made entirely in the Moore shop, from the casting of the metal through to the completed pipes. The metal pipes are made of alloys of tin and lead, the sheets being hammered following casting. The pipes of the Hauptwerk Principal 8' and Swell Rohrflöte 4' are made of 98% lead, with trace impurities which help stiffen the metal. An alloy of 28% tin, 70% lead is used for the higher-pitched pipes of the Hauptwerk principal chorus. The wood reed resonators and the wood flutes are made variously of maple, pine and basswood.

The organ is tuned in the Kellner/Bach temperament, which favors the keys nearer C Major, and yet remains harmonious through all keys.

The art of organ building is being practiced at an astoundingly high level in the United States at the end of the twentieth century. It is remarkable that a large group of artisan builders at the pinnacle of the profession are very open to sharing their knowledge with one another. Thus David Moore was able to supplement his own deep knowledge of historic American and European organs with that of many colleagues, enhancing the success of this project. John Brombaugh, Paul Fritts, Herb Huestis, Scot Huntington, Martin Pasi, and George Taylor and John Boody all shared extensive pipe scaling and voicing information, as well details on console, key action and stop action design. Alan Laufman of the Organ Clearing House, and Ed Boadway assisted by locating and supplying some high-quality nineteenth-century pipework. Builders Robert Newton of Andover Organ Company and George Bozeman were helpful in arranging access to the Boston Hook organs. Organists Ellen McGuire and Steve Patchel in Boston and William Owen in Greenville, Delaware, graciously made the instruments at their churches available for study. Finally, musician colleagues David Dahl, Barbara Owen, William Porter, Stephen Rapp, and Peter Sykes shared valuable insights and knowledge. Without the interest and encouragement of these many people we would not be hearing the wonderful sounds we are today!

Mark A. Brombaugh, Director of Music

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