AFTER the devastating fire of 2019, the organ of Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris was brought back to life in a moving ceremony of blessing and dedication in December 2024. The Archbishop of Paris called out to the instrument, and the titular organist Olivier Latry responded to each invocation with glorious improvisation. The revivified organ became a symbol of new life after devastation and gave voice to hope overcoming despair.
As a musician and liturgist, I have been fortunate to orchestrate similar liturgies for two iconic instruments in the UK: the grand organ of York Minster, which was dedicated on Easter Day 2021, and the Willis/Harrison organ of St John’s College, Cambridge, dedicated last month. In these liturgies, each instrument was commanded to “wake up” from its slumber and speak into the sacred space that it inhabited, as if with its own voice.
The York organ had undergone a once-in-a-century refurbishment. The liturgy for the awakening of the instrument incorporated elements from the same liturgy for the benediction of an organ as was used in Notre-Dame, alongside prayers from the dedication service of the previous incarnation of the Minster organ on its dedication in 1903.
There were various invocations calling on the organ to “sing itself” back into life. “Awake, O sacred instrument,” said the voice of a child. “Sing of Jesus, our Lord, dead and risen for us today.” The organist responded with an improvisation to each bidding. “Awake, O sacred instrument,” said another voice. “Bring the congregation of the faithful together in songs of thanksgiving and praise.”
As the instrument resumed its place at the heart of the church, its dedication and rebirth were articulating the human vocation to worship and praise. Here was an instrument embodying our ultimate purpose, as the Westminster Catechism states: “to glorify God and enjoy him forever”.
The last time that such a mammoth task had been undertaken was in 1903, when Edward VII was King, Arthur Balfour was Prime Minister, and Thomas Tertius Noble was the organist of York Minster. The first decade of the 20th century was a time of optimism and ambition. It was the decade of art nouveau, the internal combustion engine, and the height of the suffrage movement — the decade in which Einstein published his theory of relativity. The soundtrack of the age included Debussy, Mahler, Rachmaninov and Strauss, all pushing musical boundaries in different ways.
The 1903 organ stood through the 20th century’s world wars, global pandemics, economic depressions, and natural disasters. Day by day, it was used in performance of its duties and lived out its vocation as it accompanied the songs and prayers of the faithful.
Nordin CaticInside the organ
On Monday 6 August 1945, on the Feast of the Transfiguration, an atomic bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The Minster organist was playing Ireland in C, and the choir sang “I Sat Down Under His Shadow” by Bairstow at the eucharist. In 1984, lightning struck, and the organ coughed, spluttered, and absorbed too much smoke, as fire ravaged the south-transept roof. Thankfully, it survived.
In 2005, the grand organ produced fanfares alongside drumming by African drummers as Britain’s first black Archbishop was enthroned. And in 2015 it sang out as the first woman was ordained a bishop in the Church of England. What changes and chances would this new instrument observe as the decades rolled on? In 100 years from now, where might we be? What kind of church would it preside over in the 21st century?
ANDREW SCOTT is both a church musician and the managing director of Harrison & Harrison, the Durham organ builders who crafted the new instruments in both York Minster and at St John’s College, Cambridge. “As a church musician, I find that organ-building has always felt much more like a vocation than simply a profession,” he says. “It combines craftsmanship, music, architecture, engineering, and a deep sense of continuity. We are often working on instruments which have already served generations before us and with the hope that they will continue long after we are gone.
“With new instruments, we are creating something that, with continued love and care, in the form of tuning, maintenance, and restoration, should last for generations. This brings with it a considerable sense of responsibility and humility.”
The new organ at St John’s College, Cambridge, also spans centuries. “The present instrument looks back in history as well as forward,” the organ consultant for the project, William McVicker, says. “It incorporates pipework from an 1889 organ by ‘Father’ Henry Willis — a sister instrument to that built for Truro Cathedral.”
This is another instrument that will speak into the daily worshipping life of a Christian community, seeing generations of students journey through their education under its gaze. It is one of the constant soundscapes of college life.
“It’s easy to see why the organ, for purely practical reasons, has so often been the instrument of choice for churches seeking to lift their congregations’ prayers and praises,” the director of music, Christopher Gray, says, reflecting on the vocation of the organ as an instrument of Christian worship.
“The ‘king of instruments’ can lead a full house in carols at Christmas or in the great hymns of Easter. It can clothe and colour plainsong or responsorial psalms in Holy Week. It can accompany choirs singing music in any style or period.
“I love the organ for its sheer emotional scope. As our faith grows and anchors us throughout our lives, the organ paints on a canvas large enough to respond to the ups and downs, as well as being there on a daily or weekly basis to punctuate the church year and enhance our liturgies.”
For Mr Scott, “knowing that our work becomes woven into daily worship and significant moments in people’s lives” is the most rewarding aspect of the project in Cambridge. “Long after the scaffolding has gone and the site team is forgotten, the instrument continues quietly doing its work in the service of the Church.”
It would be easy to think of the organ as being a child of the Industrial Revolution, a modern musical machine as much a feat of engineering as the steam locomotive; but these instruments have their origins in the ancient world. Hydraulis, the Roman water organ, was the forbear, which was invented by Ctesibius of Alexandria in the third century before Christ’s birth.
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The organ eventually found itself at the heart of Christian worship and an enabler of the Church’s song, most probably through the monasteries and cathedrals of Western Europe. It has become an instrument, a tool, an organum of the Christian faith. It speaks of the numinous and transcendent, and within its palette can create a myriad of soundscapes, capturing the span of human emotions, from the joyful and exuberant to the delicate and sorrowful. Through the musicians who play them, these instruments journey with us through the liturgical year, singing of the incarnation, lamenting at the foot of the cross, and rejoicing with the sound of the resurrection.
Charles Tournemire, in an article on the art of improvisation in the BBC magazine The Listener in 1936, described the vocation of the organist as the builder of “sonic monuments”, whose winged paraphrases were collected by the hierarchy of the angels. The organ and its music, he said, was like the holy city coming down out of heaven. This instrument of the faith expanded the Christian imagination and opened doors to the heavenly realms.
Ben Morris, assistant director of music at York Minster, who played at the dedication service for the York instrument, reflects on how his own Christian faith is articulated through the organ, particularly when improvising in response to scripture or within a particular liturgy. “The church organ speaks as one with the sacred space within which it is situated,” he says. “As a liturgical organist, you respond to and shape worship through the organ, giving voice to the sacred space itself. It’s a great joy, privilege, and responsibility to articulate my own faith in this way and to contribute to worship as custodian of this ‘sacred voice’.”
Unlike other instruments, organs sit within our ecclesiastical architecture. They are symbiotic with the purpose of a church building and allow that building to sing, giving the church a voice. They are enlivened by the skill of those who build and maintain them, and the musicianship of those who play them and who, very often, combine their craft with a deeply committed Christian faith.
The organ is a mysterious and mythical instrument made sacred by its context and its calling. Embedded within the fabric of our churches, chapels, and cathedrals, these wondrous machines made of metal and wood (and increasingly fibreoptics and electronics) are feats of craftsmanship and engineering. Science and art combine to create an instrument that is able to “enlarge our prayer”, as W. H. Auden wrote in his poem dedicated to St Cecilia, the patron saint of organs and organists.
The Revd Dr Victoria Johnson is Dean of Chapel at St John’s College, Cambridge. She writes about organs in her book On Voice: Speech, song, silence, human and divine (DLT, 2024) (Books, 10 May 2024).