John Walthausen sits in the organ loft at Unitarian Society of Germantown. The sanctuary below is still, barely insulated from a winter day in Northwest Philadelphia. He pushes his feet downward, sending a rush of cool air into the largest pipes in the room.
“The pedals have our bass pitches which really cause all the rumble beneath us,” says Walthausen as he demonstrates the functions of the church’s fully mechanical Rieger organ. “It was imported from Germany in the 1960s with the idea of playing Bach more authentically than early symphonic orchestras. The sound is very bright and lively, and the pipes speak directly to the room.”
All of J.S. Bach’s sacred music — church cantatas, motets, passions, chorales and oratorios — would most likely have been performed in the organ loft of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig (among others, including St Blasius Church in Mühlhausen and the New Church in Arnstadt).
Fingers now warmed and nimble, Walthausen plays a movement of BWV 596 D Minor Organ Concerto, a work Bach transcribed from a Vivaldi concerto grosso for two violins and cello. It is one of the Bach works, along with Cantata BWV 146, that Walthausen is programming for the first-ever Philadelphia Organ Festival, which begins today and runs through March 22.
The festival, presented by the Philly nonprofit Partners for Sacred Places, will showcase eight historic organs in as many days, from Chelsea Chen’s opening notes at Girard College chapel to the sold-out finale of Rachmaninoff and Franck at Longwood Gardens. Walthausen is the Artistic Director, and his curation will cast the instrument in new roles for silent films, contemporary sounds and adaptations of stalwart repertoire like Ravel’s Bolero and Holst’s The Planets.
Playing and Preserving Philadelphia’s Organs
Apart from the famous Wanamaker instrument, most organs in Philadelphia are walled within the city’s many churches and worship spaces. In many cases, these massive musical instruments impacted the design of the buildings they occupy. Since 2017, Partners for Sacred Places has inventoried the city’s many instruments to determine their status and condition.
“A lot of pipe organs are really endangered in sacred places,” says Joshua Castaño, the festival producer and former Director of Special Initiatives at Partners for Sacred Places. “Partly because tastes have changed, partly because organs are really complex and very large and very expensive to maintain. Congregations in the northeast are facing smaller numbers and fewer financial resources.”
Partners for Sacred Places shared survey information with the nearby Organ Historical Society in Villanova. Locations were mapped. Congregations assembled to gain additional resources and training, including a program to board organ builders so church groups could have more knowledge and capacity to make decisions and care for their instruments. Matching grants were distributed for necessary repairs to bring many into working order.
Bob Jaeger co-founded Partners for Sacred Places in 1989, and has made transitioning historic churches his life’s work. “These buildings say so much about our history and our identity and our culture,” he says. “The most important repositories of art and architecture are the local churches. They have always been places where people are served. And there’s no other building that can house such a wide range of activities. That’s one of the reasons congregations love these places — because they realize that they’re flexible and they can be shared in new ways.”
The Philadelphia Organ Festival is a natural outcome of this preservation process, and the most public facing part of the project. But according to Castaño, it isn’t a stretch. “It's just an empowerment,” he says. “A lot of these places are already great opportunities for music making. So I think for us, it's lifting up something that we know churches do, adding resources and bringing together a new level of collaboration from world class artists to highlight how great these places can be for arts and culture and community.”
Reaching Within and Beyond the Niche
There has always been a small and passionate community that cares about the organ. In many cases, these are organists and musicians who work in sacred and choral music. They are people like Walthausen, who serves as Director of Music Ministry at First Presbyterian Church of Germantown, one of the festival venues.
During the festival he’ll yield the organ bench there to Amanda Mole, who will perform contemporary works like Steve Reich’s minimalist Music for Mallet Instruments, Voices and Organ, as well as modern music from Nico Muhly and Arvo Pärt.
Another festival event at St. Luke’s Germantown will feature acclaimed organist Matthew Glandorf, who returns to Philadelphia to perform an improvised score for The Passion of Joan of Arc, Theodore Dreyer’s classic silent film from 1928.
Joshua Castaño at Partners for Sacred Places engaged Walthausen last summer to put together the festival program. “We want to expand the audiences,” he says, “so that people in the communities around these sacred places who maybe hadn’t thought about the organ before, or only thought about the organ in the context of sacred music, could see and hear it as a really exciting feature of music across genres, across centuries, across settings.”
Reaching new listeners beyond the regulars and core advocates is an ambitious goal. The effort to find, restore and play these instruments would not be possible without the passionate insiders who are deeply engaged with organ performance. Combined with the desire to protect sacred places, the partnership may have discovered just the right combination. “The average urban church has an economic impact of $1.7 million a year, much more than most people know,” says Jaeger. “So on the one hand, they do a lot. On the other hand, they can do so much more. If they do it well, it can help sustain them.”
The Philadelphia Organ Festival runs March 15 through 22 at venues throughout the city. WRTI's Meg Bragle will sing Bach's Cantata BWV 146 with John Walthauser and others on March 20. The March 22 performance at Longwood Gardens is sold out.
