St. Peter's Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church of Toronto
EELK Toronto Peetri Kogudus
St. Peter's Church Organ
Built by:
E. F. Walcker & Cie., Ludwigsburg/Baier, 1955.
Register design:
Lembit Avesson
Installed by:
Knoch Organ Co., London/Ontario
Manual
Prinzipal 8'
Hohlflute 8'
Oktave 4'
Waldflute 2;
Terz 1 3/5'
Mixture IV
Swell
Gedeckt 8'
Salicional 8'
Rohrflute 4'
Nazard 2 2/3'
Principal 2'
Trompette 8'
Tremolo
Pedal
Subbass 16'
Zartbass 16'
Oktavbass 8'
Bassflute 8'
Choralbass 4'
Violin Diapason 2'
Technical details: Chests: Electro-pneumatic (EP); 19 Ranks; 3 Divisions; 2 Manuals; 18 Stops. Key Action: Electrical connection from key to chest. Stop Action: Electric connection between stop control and chest. Traditional roll top console. Balanced swell shoes/pedals. Concave radiating pedalboard. Organ Case: Chest standard). Total pipes: 1077. Price $13,500 Cdn. 1955.
Did you know, that it was Mozart who first declared the organ the “king of instruments”? Most likely he was influenced by the grandeur of an organ’s tones and by the tremendous variety of sounds that the instrument can produce.
Where is that beautiful music I hear at St. Peter’s coming from? If you are facing the altar, then please turn around and look upwards, toward the top of the balcony. Those tall pipes in front of the stained glass window is our pipe organ. A pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called wind) through the organ pipes as selected from a keyboard.
An organ is actually a hybrid of a wind instrument and a keyboard instrument. Air vibrates in the pipes producing different notes or pitches depending upon the length of pipe. The longer the pipe, the lower the pitch. An organist plays both a keyboard called a manual with their hands, and a pedal clavier, with their feet. Did you notice on the images above that our pipe organ has more than one keyboard? we have two! Keys and pedals are how an organist controls a system of valves that open and close pipes allowing forced air in or shutting it out. Unlike a piano whose sound starts to dissipate immediately after a key is pressed, an organ has a continuous supply of wind which allows it to sustain notes for as long as the organist presses the keys.
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St. Peter’s organ has pipes that are made of metal and wood. Have a peek between the large pipes when you are next on the balcony and note that some pipes are as small as pencils, while others are very tall and wide. Our organ, like most, has many ranks (rows) of pipes of differing pitch, timbre, and volume, that the organist can use alone, or in combination, using controls called stops. Stops are sets of pipe ranks - rows of pipes that all make the same kind of sound, but at different pitches. Register is another word used to describe a complete set of pipes. When an organist selects a stop that combines ten ranks of pipes, for example, then pressing any key on the keyboard will open ten pipes, all tuned to the same note, simultaneously. The names of stops sometimes reflect the kinds of pipes they are composed of or how they sound, “Flute” or “Trumpet” are examples. St. Peter's organ has 18 stops.
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The name “stop”, is also used to describe a knob that controls the flow of air to a set of pipes. Did you know that the expression “to pull out all the stops” comes from organ terminology?
An organ’s “registration” is the specific set of stops and stop combinations an organist uses to play a piece of music. There is a technique in choosing and combining stops in order to produce a particular sound.
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Small portable pipe organs may have only one or two dozen pipes and one manual; the largest may have over 33,000 pipes and seven manuals. St. Peter’s organ has two manuals and 1,077 pipes.
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So the next time you are in church and the organist begins to play, think of all that is going on to produce the beautiful sounds you are hearing.
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The Church Organ
The organ was always supposed to be at the back of the church on the balcony as it is now. At the time of construction, the City of Toronto would not give permits to place it there, explaining that they did not have experience with the load capacity of a hanging balcony. Bureauocrats at the time would not permit what the architect and engineers had originally envisioned. The original vision was rectified several years later with the organ being moved in 1975. The hanging balcony, by the way, is an architectural feat in itself, especially when built at the time.
Left: The organ at the front of the church - 1955.