Sounds of Many Nations: The Organs of Charleston

The City of Charleston boasts an amazing wealth and variety of organs for its size, particularly in the downtown area known as the “Peninsula.”  Priceless historic instruments rub shoulders with historical reproductions and modern creations; a wide variety of national styles are represented, enabling many facets of the repertoire of organ music to be presented authentically.  L’Organo seeks every year to present the widest possible variety of instruments, national styles, and repertoire.

In an earlier post on our 2025 Free Organ Concert Series, we referred to the contrast between the English-style instrument at the landmark St. Michael’s at the Four Corners and the French-style organ just down Broad Street at the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist.  Let’s start our deeper dive with those two.

Differences in English and French Organs

As most people know, England and France have been “frenemies” for centuries; in fact, on my bookshelves is a lovely volume entitled “A Thousand Years of Annoying the French,” written of course, by an Englishman…. So it’s not surprising that there are quite different national characteristics between English and French organs. 

English Organ at St. Michael’s Church

At St. Michael’s, the reason behind the instrument’s English orientation is the organ case, one of the most handsome pieces of church furniture from that era in Charleston, preserved intact from the organ built for the church in London in 1764.  Thus, the case is of a piece with the ornate Christopher Wren-style church interior.

The original organ it housed was also built in London for the church by John Snetzler, a German immigrant.  Unfortunately, the innards of that instrument are long gone, and remarkably, no written record seems to have survived of its stop-list. 

However, we do know quite a bit about English organs in general from that period; so when Kenneth Jones of Ireland was commissioned by the church in 1994 to build a new instrument to replace the early twentieth century hodge-podge that it had become, he opted to do his best to build into that case a replica of what might have been there in the Snetzler instrument. 

Snetzler’s instrument would not have had pedals at that time; no English organs did,  The stops of the Great keyboard most likely would have been a diapason chorus, a trumpet stop, and a mounted cornet (a particular feature of English organs then, combining several overtones to give a brilliant solo sound), and the second manual would have been a Choir organ with a gentler, more sparkling sound, several flutes, and perhaps a Cremona imitating the sound of an early clarinet.  

If there were a third manual, it would have been just a rudimentary swell division, with a few solo voices like a French Horn and an oboe.  So this is what Mr. Jones built, with a refined, urbane 18th-century sound, to put in the historic case.  

But you need more than that to be able to play anything more than just English 18th-century “voluntaries”! –  such as today’s hymns and toccatas, and accompaniments.  So Mr. Jones, brilliantly, used the space behind the old case, a big room under the bell tower, to add a grand nineteenth-century style swell division, in the roast-beef style of the great English organ builder, Henry Willis, as well as a complete modern-style pedal division for French Toccatas, Bach Fugues, and everything else one needs for today’s eclectic repertoire.

So what’s so different about the instrument in St. John the Baptist?  Well, one very different thing is the acoustics of the room.  One of most “authentic” aspects at St. Michael’s is its very dry acoustic, like so many 18th century churches (such as King’s Chapel in Boston) – the most important thing then was to be able to hear the sermon (quite often quite long in those days!), and the music was very definitely a junior partner in the services.

French Organ at St. John the Baptist

At St. John the Baptist, as in so many of the great Gothic churches of France, there is, by contrast, a luxuriously long reverberation period.  Very often in large French churches and cathedrals, there are two organs – a small one somewhere in the front, for accompanying the choir, and a much larger one at the back, usually up quite high, for playing the solo organ music, preludes, postludes, interludes, and maybe hymns (although those are not originally part of the Catholic liturgy.  And the reed stops, in particular the trumpets, are loud and brassy, demanding attention, particularly the pedal reeds. 

On the other hand, the flutes and diapasons tend to be warm and blending.  A very characteristic French sound is the fonds d’orgue, or foundations of the organ – several lower-pitched sounds, all warm and blended, like warm chocolate to drink.  The solo reed stops, such as the Hautbois (Oboe) or the Clarinette, can be quite thin and plaintive.  And the undulating, shimmering sound of the Voix Célestes is a unique invention of the great nineteenth-century French builder Aristide Cavaille-Coll, sounding wonderful in this acoustic.

Composers like Cesar Franck also called for the vox humana (human voice), a nasal-sounding reed stop usually combined with the tremulant – though as one wag has observed, “if you ever stood on stage as a vocal soloist and made sounds like that, the public would ask for its money back!”  But this stop is available at St. John the Baptist – and combined with flutes and/or the voix célestes, can make a sound that (if you try hard) can sound like a parish choir heard at a great distance.  The French listening public seems to like it…

Also characteristic of French Romantic-period instruments is the system of stop controls called ventils.  While this does not make a difference to the actual sound, it makes a great difference to the organist’s ability to control the stops, since it’s all done with the feet – so without lifting one’s hands from the keyboard, it’s possible to add the reed and mixture stops without disturbing the rhythm.  And that too affects the experience for the player and listener.

The instrument at the Cathedral also has an interesting bit of history – it was originally built by the Bedient company of Lincoln, Nebraska, for an Anglican cathedral in St. Louis, MO.  That building has a very dry acoustic – and the aggressive, in-your-face sound of the organ in that situation was a complete mis-match.  But when it found a new home at St. John Baptist, enveloped in a rich, Gothic style acoustic, it was a match made in heaven!

Other Historical Church Organs 

A brief word on some of the other instruments heard this year.  We sometimes refer to the large organ at St. Matthew’s Lutheran as an American Classic; this was the style of organ-building initiated in the period 1930 – 1960 by the great G. Donald Harrison, an Englishman who migrated to the US; this style is still common today, combining French, English and German styles.  

The instrument at the Cathedral of St. Luke and St. Paul is a beautiful if quite small version of the German style, built by Gabriel Kney in Canada, with silvery choruses, thin but characterful reed stops, and beautiful mutation stops supplying overtones; it also has a lovely mechanical action, enabling the player to vary their articulation most elegantly.

To our regret, this year we are not offering a concert on Charleston’s most historic organ, the 1845 Erben organ in the French Huguenot church; we hope to hear its authentically antique voice another year.  

1845 Erben Organ at the French Huguenot Church in Charleston, SC

And long-time regulars will miss going to Grace Church Cathedral this year, but we look forward with eager anticipation to returning there on the completion of the fine new organ currently being built for them by Dobson, the wonderful American builder in Iowa.

So we welcome you to our cornucopia of fine organs here in Charleston, a treasured feature of Piccolo Spoleto’s much-loved L’Organo recital series.  We look forward to seeing you soon!