6-18-03
SMITH CHAPEL ORGAN IS COMPLETED
Master organ builder Martin Ott was in Erie during May and June to complete the installation and tuning of the pipe organ he designed and built for the Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College. The Smiths commissioned the organ for the chapel in honor of their daughter, Colleen, and their son, Kevin.
Following a brief morning demonstration recital by Erie organist Karen Keene, Ott thanked the Smiths for the opportunity to design and build Opus 100, his hundredth work.
"Adding this organ brings the Smith Chapel to a glorious completion," said Ott, who owns the Martin Ott Pipe Organ Company in St. Louis, Missouri. "The beautifully designed building, the forty-eight bells of the carillon, and the organ make this a wonderful and inspiring place for worship."
Opus 100 was designed specifically for the acoustics of the worship space in the Smith Chapel, making it unique architecturally and tonally. The organ is encased in oak and stands twenty-five feet high. It has twenty-three ranks made up of more than 1,200 pipes and has twenty-one stops. The stops are used to emulate and combine sounds from all of the tone families: principals, flutes, strings, and reeds. As an organist plays, he or she will continually adjust the stops to change the timbre and color of the sound. The organist can also use all the stops at once, hence the saying "pulling out all the stops."
The organ's two manual keyboards have fifty-six keys. The natural keys are grenadil wood, and the sharp keys are grenadil covered by cow bone. The pedal keyboards have 30 notes and are made of oak. The organ has mechanical key action, so that when a key is pressed, the corresponding pipe valve opens and wind in the air chamber passes through the pipe, producing sound.
Opus 100 includes a computer to assist the organ's stop action. For example, organists can program their stops to open and close at the press of a button, and organists can set their stops to remain in memory when another organist is playing the instrument.
Ott designed Opus 100 an eclectic selection of stops, one that can play musical literature from the baroque through the romantic periods.
Martin Ott was born and raised in Göttingen, Germany and comes from a family of distinguished pipe organ builders. He began his apprenticeship in 1960 with his uncle, Paul Ott, and continued into his journeyman years. Following formal study in Ludwigsburg, Baden-Württemburg, he completed his master organ builder examination.
He established the Martin Ott Pipe Organ Company in St. Louis in 1971, and his instruments are found in the United States from coast to coast. In 1995 he received the Music Industry Award from the National Association of Pastoral Musicians for his contributions as an organ builder, and in 1998 he received the Avis Blewett award from the American Guild of Organists in recognition of his professional achievement.
The Larry and Kathryn Smith Chapel and the Floyd and Juanita Smith Carillon were dedicated in 2001. The Smith Chapel organ will be dedicated in the fall after Penn State Behrend students return to campus.
Contact: Loretta Brandon 814-898-6063 (O) e-mail: lzb6@psu.edu