The following is taken from 'The Diapason', August 1 1933. E.M. Skinner writes about his background, his tonal ideals, and the conflict between classicism and romaticism in organ design.

Editor of THE DIAPASON:

When a young man decides he wants to become an organist, there are many conservatories or famous organists to whom he may turn to set him on the right track, and who will, if he has it in him, develop him into the artist he wishes to be.

Another young man decides he wants to become an organ builder. There is no school of organ building and no man to whom he may turn for definite instruction. There is no literature that may be studied that will give him anything substantial to build upon. The best he can do is to get a job in an organ factory and develop according to whatever combination of chance and capacity comes his way. So it may be stated that once in a while an individual with more or less ambition to run things himself, having, perhaps, no particular ability or background, appears as a new name and makes a bid for patronage.

There is no printed information of value as to the quality of a tone. A tone is not to be described. A competent judgment of tone is, therefore, the product of an inherent musical capacity trained by a sufficient experience in hearing tone as combined and used in the opera, the orchestra, choral works and the organ.

The prime requisite of the tone of any instrument is charm; failing in this requisite, any musical performance whatever must labor under a handicap. The tone or instrument that does not give pleasure to the hearer is a failure.

Now with regard to the development of the organist: Some become ministers of music, or missionaries; they are interested in the people in the pews - the public. And the term "public" does not imply the gum-chewing public. I mean the decent people who attend divine worship, the organ recital, the opera, oratorio and symphony concerts. They are not professional musicians, nor will they ever become so, as listeners. But they are people of refinement and culture to whom the minister may well give his best.

Now there is also developed in the music school what may be termed the scholarly type. He has absorbed and has been absorbed by the highly technical side of his art, the so-called academic music, counterpoint, the fugue etc. He is without the spirit of the missionary, which burns to give. He is not a minister of music. This lack of interest in the public is sometimes accompanied by more or less contempt or a feeling of superiority toward those who do not share his interest in the literate, dry, technical type of composition of which a large part of the organ repertoire is composed. The vox humana, the chimes, the flute celeste and the harp are not much included in organ specifications with which he has anything to do. Likewise the French horn is an undesirable voice. The traditional organ as made in France, England and Germany has none of the modern voices distinguishing the American organ except the French horn, which I gave to an English builder.

To go back a few years, your subscriber, as remarked earlier in this article, got a job in an organ shop, with a small builder in Reading, Mass., and after two or three years became a self-trained tuner with a great desire to become a voicer. After the fourth year with my first employer I went to Hutchings of Boston and after a few years as a bench hand and tuner I was given a position as draftsman, from which I graduated to the position of superintendent. I met the many clients and had a large share in the making of specifications in those days, and in a scheme for an organ for New Britain, Conn., I introduced for the first time both a vox celeste and an unda maris. Mr. Hutchings wanted to know why two undulating stops. The organ was very successful and made a great reputation for itself in the South Congregational Church, New Britain. It was about this time that a wealthy client of Boston sent me abroad to see what there was across the pond. It was on this trip that for the first time I heard the sound of the Willis reed, which I have never forgotten.

But even after the lapse of sixteen years since my beginning as an organ worker, I was still at arm's length from the thing I longed to become, a voicer. I finally became a voicer by virtue of the fact that I left the Hutchings business. I painted my name on another door and started in to do my own voicing.

As I look back on that time I do not seem to feel that I had much of a background. I knew the usual thing in a specification, but as to questions of theory, ensemble, etc., I had heard little. I knew the Willis reed and the conventional type of pipes and had a pretty good idea how to make them go, but I didn't know why, with every new organ, so much time had to be devoted to tinkering with defective pipes in the tuning and finishing of an organ when it was set up. I do remember there was a great prejudice against mixture-work at that time by everybody. I also remember that solo stops were limited to the oboe and flutes.

The point I now wish to make is that I started with a clean slate. I had no theories either of my own or of others, the most casual or non-existent tradition as a background and nothing to guide me but my ear and the love of a musical sound, which is with me to the present day. I had heard a vast amount of fine music and I will point out right here that I know of no better school in which to become a judge of good tone than to hear good tone.

During the next thirty years I produced nearly twenty-five new qualities of tone, most of which were born of a desire to fill some lack I felt to exist in the vocabulary of the organ. The flute celeste was the result of hearing the muted strings in the slow movement of the orchestral accompaniment of the B flat minor piano concerto of Tschaikowsky, which seemed to me to be the most heavenly sound I had ever heard. It was being played by Gabrilowitsch in rehearsal with the Thomas Orchestra in the Auditorium at Chicago.

The erzähler came first of the new stops and was the result of the peculiarity in the tone of a rebuilt stop I was working on and which I noted and developed later. The name is being copied quite freely, but the tone not so well.

Eight French horns in the Salome dance in Richard Strauss' opera of that name made it necessary to create a French horn for the organ which appeared for the first time in the organ at Williams College and which was specified by the organist, Sumner Salter. I make no apology for the French horn. It is a prophetic voice if there is ever to be one. Everybody had wanted it for years. Countless registers had been labelled "French horn" and the imagination leaned on heavily to complete the illusion left unconvincing by said label. The French horn was patented and promptly became available to all and sundry, but nobody ever got near enough to it to convince me I could win in a suit for infringement. There was one element lacking in the patent, not necessary to claim. The other element was the matter of the ear. You can make numberless qualities of tone out of the same pipe, but each one's ear is his own. It cannot be borrowed.

Now we come to diapasons. I developed a diapason having a very conspicuous octave harmonic, which makes them sing. They are warm, they glow, they blend perfectly with voices. They are churchy, devotional. They are musical in a high degree and speak with effortless ease. My ear and thirty years' approval of the best clientele in the world tell me they are right. The diapasons in St. Thomas' Church, New York, and St. Luke's Church, Evanston, Ill., are conspicuous examples.

Then came the orchestral oboe, which Audsley quoted as an impossibility; the gamba celeste, of which the first example is in the solo organ at St. John the Divine; the kleine erzähler, first example in the Fourth Presbyterian Church, Chicago, designed to carry out a desire complimentary to Mrs. Emmons Blaine; the dulcet, a twin string of delicate intensity; the English horn (how many years it took to produce a tone of the delicacy that was sound as to pitch!), and the celesta and harp based in principle on the orchestral instrument of that name (a twenty years' development required before I was satisfied as to its quality). There are many others, all wanted before they appeared, not a wildcat in the group, not a cheap tone or purpose in the entire family. And all produced apart from any question of tradition, with the single desire to give to the organ the lovely voices that I heard in the orchestra or in the Yosemite Valley or perhaps sometimes in the company of one or another of the wonderful people who have given me their friendship.

If I had been learned in tradition, perhaps I would have been like the ritualist, cold and indifferent to the public, satisfied as is the academic player to see the pews empty as the recital progresses.

The first things to be taken out of specifications by the classicist are the harp, chimes, flute celeste and French horn. There is no secret as to what has given the organ the great popularity it has enjoyed in America. I asked Karg-Elert how he happened to write such colorful music which could not well be performed on the organs of his country and he said: "I have for many years studied the specifications of American organs."

Senator Richards says we have had a debauch of flute celestes and French horns. Absurd! A debauch of roses and lilies-of-the-valley!

I am after the people in the pews. They do not like hard, brilliant, unsympathetic tone. It is no time to ignore the public when they are inclined to be indifferent to the church. A flute celeste will attract more listeners than a 3 1/5-ft. tierce. A harp or French horn will put more money in the contribution box than will an extra mixture or a 5 1/3-ft. quinte. I am more desirous of speaking to the pew holder as a minister of music than to the classicist who is "up stage" to the public who support him.

The organ as I first heard it, and as I occasionally see surviving examples, was a shrill, cold affair, inexpressive to the last degree - hardly a musical instrument. The organ of today is devotional, churchly, vital and filled with tonal charm.

Compositions are written calling for erzähler, celeste and most of the orchestral voices I have contributed. I may have been on the wrong track all these years, but I have been royally supported by the people I wanted to please, and that includes ministers of music who give to the public and make tradition, as represented by the finest churches in America.

I cannot see the wisdom of making a fetish of ensemble at the sacrifice of the charming voices so much loved by the public, especially when funds are sufficient for both. Instead of going back to the primitive we should go ahead and develop refinements that they never thought of. Why haunt the cemetery?

ERNEST M. SKINNER