Spreckels Organ Pavilion

Yesterday, CraftyAngie finally took me to hear a concert at the Spreckels Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park in San Diego, California. It’s a reasonably unique thing; I can think of only two other permanent outdoor pipe organs in the world (one in Germany and the other, a small one in Salzburg, Austria). Concerts are held weekly at 2pm on Sundays, free of charge, sponsored by the Spreckels Organ Society.

Facade Pipes

I had a few observations on it. First off, boy is it loud! It really surprised me. Being outdoors, with no building walls to enclose the sound and provide reverberation, it kind of has to be. Even so, this instrument creates what I can only call a “wall of sound”. The bass from the 32′ stops is almost punishing. (Which is all to say I liked it!) Still, it can be subtle. The “string” divisions had a wonderful shimmering sound to them, quiet, yet loud enough to be heard outside. Wonderful for Romantic repertoire.

Ornamentation

My second observation is how strange a pipe organ sounds without a big building to provide lots of echoes and reverberation. I have to say, it’s not flattering to the sound, overall. I’d say it requires extra Legato playing technique, since even the slightest of pauses felt really quiet, an effect exacerbated by the great volume of the instrument. I’m sure it presents an extra challenge to guest organists who have never played on the instrument, or one like it, before.

Our organist, Jackson Borges, played an interesting and varied concert program. He rounded it out with the first two movements from the Symphony No. 6 for Organ by the great French organist and composer Charles-Marie Widor. Hearing it played on such a great, brassy, powerful instrument re-affirmed my love for French Romantic organ music. He impressed the heck out of me by playing the first movement Allegro without sheet music. Wow!

I’m looking forward to attending concerts there in future visits to San Diego. And now, some photos of the organ’s interior, shown to the public after each performance:

A little bit of Googling later, I found two places that linked to my Flickr photo set of the Octobass, a very unusual/exotic stringed instrument made in France during the 19th Century. (In addition to the link above, check this one out. The link to my Flickr stream is at the bottom!) The Octobass is much larger than a double bass. Where a bass comes in around 6 feet tall, the Octobass is more like ten feet tall, maybe more. It requires TWO people to play it: one to use the bow, and another to use the levers and foot pedals to change the pitches. Despite it’s gigantic size, it’s lowest note is only an octave lower than a cello; a 16′ pitch C on a pipe organ. Very few were ever made.

I first read about this instrument when I was in middle school, when I first started playing the Bass. I dearly wanted to see one, but all of them are in Europe, and there was no Internet to find out more about it than my music encyclopedia mentioned in a single paragraph. Finally, in 2004 on my first trip to Paris, I got to see one at the amazing Musee de la Musique. It was awesome! I explained in French to the bemused curator/guard that I’d wanted to see this instrument for ages. “Crazy Americans,” she no doubt thought, but I was in heaven. I took many photos of it, wished I could play it, and finally moved on.

And so now, I am some sort of weird de-facto Internet resource for photos of the elusive Octobass. I love it!

It so happens that among all my other totally geeky interests, I really like pipe organs. (I even used to own one back in college.) And the Macy’s contains the Wanamaker Organ, claimed to be the world’s largest operational pipe organ. I took some pictures, which you see here. No concert today, but I like looking at it, and just knowing it’s there is nice.

Craftyangie wrapped up her shopping, and we started our long walk home. We decided to come home via Reading Terminal Market, and followed the abandoned Reading Railroad viaduct towards home, through the Loft District. Enter some more of my favorites: trains, architecture, photography and abandoned urban infrastructure (which is probably just a subset of architecture, in a sense). We stepped inside one building that promised some sort of art exhibition, but was apparently closed. Not all was lost, since I got to take some pictures inside.

The abandoned Reading Railroad viaduct just fascinates me. All the old equipment: signals, bridges, a station (at Spring Garden Street), tracks, electrical power stations, rust… all awesome. We took some photos with our Canon, and also with my fully manual Pentax K1000 35mm film SLR (which I will write more about soon; probably later this week after I get some film back from the developer).

Finally, on our way back, we stopped at Provenance, an architectural salvage company not too far from where we live. We’d been there once before, at least a year ago. Talk about your interesting stores! Most recently, they have been involved in the deconstruction (in advance of redevelopment) of the greate Divine Lorraine Hotel at Broad and Fairmount; and the careful deconstruction of the Varick Memorial AME Zion Church at S. 19th and Catherine streets.

I got to talk about their business with Bob, who coincidentally also has a garden plot in The Spring Gardens, and Brian. (Very interesting…) After he saw me showing Craftyangie some pipe organ parts (some linear pneumatic motors responsible for stop action, a wind chest and a pedalboard, in case you were curious), Brian showed me to a box full of metal pipe organ pipes. Awww yeaaahhh… Back to the pipe organs, second time today! These all happened to be from the Varick Memorial Church. Some were pretty incredibly beaten up, but I found four worth bringing home with us. From left to right, two small open flute pipes of some sort (maybe from the same rank, maybe not… I can’t tell); a Horn (reed) pipe; and two Tuba (reed) pipes (just one pictured). They’re all about a foot long, plus or minus, including the foot (bottom part).

I got to add these to my one wooden flute pipe I bought via eBay several years ago. Different kinds of organ pipes use different methods to tune and voice them. A wooden flue pipe, like my old flute pipe, might use a piece of lead, which can be rolled or unrolled to raise or lower the pitch. (See the right picture).

And then there’s my new reed pipes, the Horn and the Tuba. If you remove the feet from the pipes to reveal the reeds (like I did in the photo on the right), you can see how they are tuned. A little bit of wire sticks out of the bottom of the foot, which you can move up and down to adjust how long the reed is that vibrates. This allows you to change the pitch of the pipe– a lot more drastically than I’d originally thought. I suspect that maybe in practice, organ builders use the same reed, and reed foot, for a whole bunch of pipes in a single organ rank, just changing the size of the resonator (pipe) and adjusting the reed with the tuner for each pipe.

In these closeup photos, you can also see how very different the reeds are in the Tuba versus the Horn. The Tuba’s reed is long and wide, maybe three inches long and 3/4″ wide at its widest point. The Horn’s reed is under an inch long, much more narrow, and doesn’t flare out anywhere near as much as that of the Tuba. Also, the resonators (the obvious top part of the pipe) are totally different. The Horn flares out conically with that big gaping hole on the side, and the Tuba is just a short length of pipe, almost cylindrical. All of this contributes to their drastically different sounds.

Did I say sounds? Yes, I’m just maniacal enough to make recordings of each pipe for you to hear! I just blew through each of them to play them… enjoy… and let me know what you think in the comments!

Tuba Reed

Horn Reed

Low metal flute pipe

High metal flute pipe

Low wooden flute pipe