New Towering Pipe Organ in Cathedral Hall Sounds Sublime

CONTACT: Lia Unrau
PHONE: (713) 831-4793

E-MAIL: unrau@rice.edu
ORGAN FACT SHEET

NEW TOWERING PIPE ORGAN IN CATHEDRAL HALL SOUNDS SUBLIME

Two decades of dreaming and planning and a year of
assembly will culminate next week in the inaugural performances of the Shepherd
School of Music’s latest featured performer: the Grand Organ in the Edythe Bates
Old Recital Hall.

The organ is roughly the size of the one in the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt
Lake City, Utah, and is capable of playing four centuries of music in an
accurate way. An advantage that Rice has is the acoustically ideal room, built
like a cathedral. Built specifically for the Grand Organ, the 78-foot tall,
narrow hall is acoustically designed to enhance the sound of the organ,
providing an ideal listening experience. Most halls are built with less
reverberate acoustics more favorable to orchestral instruments and piano.

At the keyboard for this historic occasion will be Rice organ professor Clyde
Holloway.

“I feel like this has been a 20-year pregnancy, and this past year has been a
yearlong labor,” Holloway says. “This is finally the realization of years of
work and dreaming.”

Public concerts scheduled for 8 p.m. April 7, 10, 13 and 16 have been sold
out. An additional concert on April 20 has been added. Among Holloway’s recital
selections, chosen to showcase the organ’s ability to perform a wide range of
music, are works by Nicolas de Grigny, J. S. Bach, Olivier Messiaen, César
Franck, Charles-Marie Widor and Julius Reubke.

“There is so much flexibility and versatility in this organ it will be a long
time in hearing all of it,” Holloway says.

After the recital performances next week, Holloway and the Shepherd School
will put the organ to its grand purpose: attracting musicians — students and
professionals — from around the world to the Rice campus. A generous gift from
the late Edythe Bates Old, an organist, music teacher and choir director in
Houston school and churches, as well as teacher of English and Greek literature,
made it possible to begin construction on the organ as well as complete the hall
which bears her name.

Holloway and organ builder Manuel Rosales of Los Angeles began the organ
design, and later, builder C.B. Fisk, Inc. of Gloucester, Mass., joined the
project. The Fisk-Rosales Opus 109/21 is the result of this collaboration and
vision.

The Grand Organ arrived at Rice in bits and pieces during January 1996. The
parts were reassembled in a matter of six weeks, and then tuning and voicing the
instrument commenced, a 12-month project.

With 75 stops that control 4,493 pipes, the instrument is commanding,
stretching 30 feet wide and 49.5 feet high. But the size is not to produce more
volume — rather the size is necessary for the flexibility needed to play the
various periods of organ music.

The Grand Organ has an ancient mechanical tracker action system, which
provides the most responsive touch to the keys and most control over the speech
of the pipes, coupled with state-of-the-art computerized stop action and memory
system, which allows hundreds of preset combinations of stops to be recalled at
the press of a button.

The three-manual, or keyboard, console has 94 ebony and cocobolo draw knobs.
The pipes, which are constructed from polished tin, hammered tin, spotted metal,
hammered lead, poplar, pine, basswood and cherry, are encased in Honduras
mahogany.

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Editors: For more information about the public concerts, call (713) 527-4933.

Rice University
News Office

FACT SHEET
THE EDYTHE BATES OLD GRAND ORGAN

• 3-manual, 1 pedal mechanical action pipe organ with 75 stops, 84 ranks

• 4,493 pipes, made of hammered tin, scraped tin, spotted metal, hammered
  lead, poplar, pine, basswood and cherry

• Organ dimensions: 12 feet deep, 30 feet wide, 49.5 feet high

• Total weight: estimated at 20 tons

• Case constructed from Honduras mahogany

• Manual keys covered with bone and ebony

• Computerized console to augment mechanical key action

• 94 drawknobs made of ebony and cocobolo on console

• Instrument pieces arrived at Rice on January 15, 1996

• 62 days to reconstruct organ at Rice

• Tuning and tonal finishing began March 1996, and was completed in March 1997

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