{"id":909,"date":"2007-06-15T04:18:41","date_gmt":"2007-06-15T10:18:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php\/index.php\/2007\/06\/12\/organic\/"},"modified":"2007-06-12T13:27:47","modified_gmt":"2007-06-12T19:27:47","slug":"organic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=909","title":{"rendered":"Organic"},"content":{"rendered":"

One of my peeviest peeves is the reliance of too many churches on “contemporary” Christian music.\u00a0 While one may worship God with guitars or bongos or kazoos for all I care, there is something about the sound of a huge pipe organ that is <\/em>the sound of worship, of faith, of the glory of the whole thing.\u00a0 Combine this with the genius of the great sacred song writers – Bach, Brahms, Handel, and so on – and then compare it with the wobbly, puerile, pale bilge that passes for “contemporary worship music” these days, and you can see why so many churches are in freefall.\u00a0<\/p>\n

So I’m gratified to see that the traditional pipe organ is coming back<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Even as many churches ..are opting for contemporary guitars and bongo drums for their worship services, they’re also investing in one of the world’s oldest instruments. The resurgence has convinced national organ expert Michael Barone that “a new golden age for the organ” is here.<\/p>\n

Augustana Lutheran Church in West St. Paul and Mount Olivet Lutheran Church in Minneapolis are among some nearby parishes to purchase new organs. And across the country, churches are installing some of the most impressive organs, which could be compared to the majestic instruments of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, Barone said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Spiritual aspects aside,\u00a0it’s fun to see this purely as a music geek.\u00a0 I got to poke around\u00a0in the works of a classic old pipe organ in college (as part of a keyboard tuning and repair class I took [*], and they are just fun<\/em>:\u00a0<\/p>\n

A Fritts organ built for St. Joseph Cathedral in Columbus, Ohio, fits that bill, said Barone, host of the nationally syndicated public radio show “Pipedreams.”<\/p>\n

“The quality of the building, certainly here in the U.S., is as good as it has ever been,” Barone said. “A lot of research has gone into how the old guys were able to create the magic they did in pre-industrial times.”<\/p>\n

Nativity’s organ, made by Cassavant Freres in Quebec, might be more modest but is nonetheless an incredible gift for the church. It cost more than $1 million to purchase and install the instrument. Parishioners Eugene and Faye Sitzmann, of St. Paul, funded the project in late 2004.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So cool.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of my peeviest peeves is the reliance of too many churches on “contemporary” Christian music.\u00a0 While one may worship God with guitars or bongos or kazoos for all I care, there is something about the sound of a huge pipe organ that is the sound of worship, of faith, of the glory of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26,14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-909","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faiths-and-their-followers","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=909"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/909\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=909"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=909"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=909"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}