Pipe Organs

Trinity Church is in the middle of an exciting, extensive multi-year project bringing three new pipe organs to our community. 

Since the arrival of Trinity’s first organ in 1741, many instruments have helped lead our congregation’s worship services. Trinity’s current church building, designed by the architect Richard Upjohn in 1846, was originally furnished with an instrument from the master organ builder Henry Erben. The installation of an Opus 408 organ in 1923 marked the first time all organ forces were controlled by electric action from a single chancelconsole. It was eventually replaced by an organ from the Aeolian-Skinner company in 1970. From 2003 until 2017, Trinity used an experimental digital instrument, the Opus 1 from Marshall & Ogletree of Needham, Massachusetts.  

Trinity has more recently decided to bring three new pipe organs to our community—one in St. Paul’s Chapel, the second in a tiny chapel located inside Trinity Church, and the last in Trinity Church’s nave.  

St. Paul’s Chapel Organ  

The Noack Organ Company’s Opus 161, installed in St. Paul’s Chapel in 2017, is a reconstruction of an earlier Noack, Opus 111, which was placed in at Church of the Redeemer in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts in 1989. As Redeemer was in the process of selling the Noack and acquiring a new organ in 2015, the music team at Trinity, set in motion the process of bringing this instrument to New York. The team was convinced of the Noack’s suitability for St. Paul’s Chapel. 

In September 2015, Trinity Church commissioned Noack to undertake a study to explore how the Opus 111 could be re-engineered into the historic, although altered, organ case at St. Paul’s, installed by English organ builder George Pike England in 1802. This case had been altered three times. Side wings and a crowning, exposed swell box were added in 1870. A different swell box was installed 1928. In 1964, the swell box was removed the swell box and new façade pipes were installed. Noack’s president, Didier Grassin, deftly showed how subtle alterations could restore good proportions to the case, while permitting all of Opus 111’s 29 stops to be fitted comfortably inside. 

The revitalized organ arrived in New York in September 2017 and was ready for use that November. Its official debut in February 2018 included a full week of recitals, choral offerings, and concerts with NOVUS NY, Trinity Baroque Orchestra, The Choir of Trinity Church, and guest organists and soloists.  

Today, the instrument leads worship at St. Paul’s Chapel and is featured in weekly Pipes at One recitals, welcoming guest organists from around the world. Learn more about the Opus 161 organ’s specifications. 

The Chapel of All Saints Organ 

In August 2016, Trinity selected Richards, Fowkes & Co. of Ooltewah, Tennessee, to design a new organ, their Opus 26, for the Chapel of All Saints in Trinity Church. Following a three-year design period, Trinity signed on with the builders for a 19-stop, two manual and pedal organ with an unusual design. The new instrument’s chief feature is its quarter-comma meantone tuning, which creates an essential ingredient for the sound-world of western music’s earliest keyboard repertoire. 

The new instrument was installed in the Chapel of All Saints in 2023, with two keyboards and 27 foot pedals playing 1,148 pipes. Like most organs, the pipes themselves are formed of numerous shapes and sizes: metal pipes both cylindrical and tapered, wood pipes (some pyramidal in form), and still others with beating brass tongues in tones imitative of baroque trumpets and oboes. But unlike most organs, this instrument’s tuning system is intentionally ancient, with unequal intervals between each key. The instrument has 15 pipes per octave, with separate pipes for D#/Eb, G#/Ab, and A#/Bb. 

Most organs using this tuning system employ double-sharp keys, one piggybacking on the other, to permit access to each sub-semitone. In Opus 26, these pipes are selected by three mechanical levers, one for each pair of accidentals. As a result, some key signatures sound uncommonly pure, and others richly dissonant, following tuning systems used before the 19th century and particularly suited to Renaissance and early Baroque music. 

Housed in the same alcove as its 1912 Hook-Hastings and 1984 Bozeman predecessors, the organ retains the 1912 enclosure designed by the chapel’s architect Thomas Nash, which has been renewed, extended, and fitted with new pipes gilded in 23.5-carat gold leaf. To each side, new screens of wood and wrought iron conceal the larger pipes at the organ’s left side. The key desk is directly below the organ behind the parclose screen, where every connection from key, pedal, and knob to mechanism and pipe, is entirely mechanical, giving the most direct connection possibly between the fingers and the sound. 

Trinity Church Nave Organ 

In 2015, Glatter-Götz Orgelbau of Pfullendorf, Germany, with Manuel Rosales as tonal designer, were engaged to envision a new instrument for the nave of Trinity Church. 

The new organ is conceived along the lines of its predecessors, a united instrument of 113 independent stops between chancel and gallery sections. The chancel has 28 stops across Great, Swell, Positiv, Solo, and Pedal. The gallery’s 85 stops are apportioned among Great, Swell, Choir, Rückpositiv, Solo, and Pedal. 

The organ’s appearance will undergo subtle changes. In the chancel, the side portions of both cases have been rearranged to house pipes in traditional practice. On the south (left) side, a new four-stop Positiv will contain an eight-foot Principal in façade, with a flute chorus within. Opposite, the Great’s Diapason and Octave will live in the case, with the remainder of this department enclosed in the Swell. The doubly enclosed Solo will contain a chorus of powerful trumpets alongside ethereal voices. 

In the nave, Upjohn’s majestic 1846 case survives as the church’s oldest continuous piece of furniture. Minor alterations are envisioned to the upper pipe flats, to increase visual interest, and new façade pipes will be installed.  The gallery railing, which once housed the Erben organ’s Choir section, will now have a 10-stop Rückpositiv, with an intimate character on light wind pressure. Modifications to the gallery railing from 1970 will be reversed, and the new ‘Chaire’ case will be sensitively integrated. The interior departments are arranged in a traditional manner, with the Swell placed prominently, high up behind the crest point. 

The stoplist will be published after installation. Notable features include a duophonic 32-foot Open Wood, together with three other 32-foot voices, and a quartet of Tubas of differing characters on varying wind pressures. In keeping with precedents set by the original instruments, all façade pipes will be gold-leafed. A mobile console will allow leadership from the chancel and front section of the nave. Both consoles will control the entire instrument. This organ will be completed in 2024.