The Pennsylvania Dutch School of Organ Builders
John L. Speller
Historians of the organ are used to distinguishing various regional schools of organ building during the baroque and classical periods - North and South German, English, French, Italian, Spanish, and so on. But few Europeans are aware that several distinctive schools of organ building existed in North America during the eighteenth century. Of these, the New England and Pennsylvania Dutch schools were the most important. The present article is intended as an introduction to the main characteristics of Pennsylvania Dutch organ building. "Dutch" in this context, incidentally, is used in its old English sense meaning Deutsch, German, and has nothing to do with the Netherlands.
There were several waves of German immigrants to Pennsylvania between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The immigrants came from widely disparate religious backgrounds. Some were main-stream Protestants belonging to the Lutheran and Reformed churches. Some were representative of pietistic groups like the Moravians and Schwenckfelders. Yet others were anabaptists like the Amish and Memmonites. They came for different reasons. Some, like the Moravians, came primarily to evangelize the Red Indians. Others, like the Amish, came to seek religious freedom in William Penn's "Quaker State". Others came simply to seek their fortunes in a land of opportunity. The Pennsylvania Dutch school of organ building originated primarily among a group of immigrants from Saxony in what is now East Germany, and who were members of the Moravian Church, but the traditions of this group rapidly spread throughout the rest of the Pennsylvania Dutch community.
The distinctive features of Pennsylvania Dutch organs, which set them apart from other North or South German instruments of the eighteenth century are as follows:
It may be helpful to pause here for a moment and attempt to find a Sitz im Leben for these distinctive features of Pennsylvania Dutch organs in terms of eighteenth-century German organbuilding practice. Characteristics (1) to (3) are found in many European instruments, though they may be considered old-fashioned, and their prevalence in Pennsylvania Dutch organs reflects the conservatism which is often found within immigrant groups. Almost all the other characteristics reflect "East German" practice, by which I mean the organ building traditions of Saxony, Thuringia and Silesia during the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. This is only to be expected since the Moravian originators of the Pennsylvania Dutch school of organ building came from Eastern Germany. Characteristic (4), the elimination of the Rückpositiv, was particularly characteristic of Saxony.2 Characteristic (5), concerning the design of the pedal organ, was particularly found in Silesia. David Tannenberg and other Pennsylvania Dutch organ builders founded the pedal primarily on an open wood Octav Bass 8' - a characteristic shared, for example, with Michael Engler of Breslau in Silesia.3
Characteristic (6), the use of many wooden flute stops, was another Silesian practice. Tannenberg included stopped wood Gedackt, open wood Flute and Flauto Amabile stops, and wooden Pedal Subbass and Octav Bass ranks in many of his instruments. Other Pennsylvania Dutch organ builders sometimes made wooden Nachthorn and Flauto Traverso stops (though Tannenberg seems to have made the latter stop of metal). Engler's organs also included a liberal selection of wooden flutes, such as Flaut Amabile, Flaut Major, Flaut Minor and Flaut Lieblich.4 Characteristic (7), pipe-metal containing a high proportion of tin, was fairly widespread in South and East Germany, and is found for instance in the instruments of Engler and Silbermann - in marked contrast with North German instruments like those of Schnitger, where tin was rarely used except for the front pipes. Characteristic (8), the use of narrowscaled string stops, was a local feature in Thuringia, particularly in the Leipzig area. J. S. Bach seems to have been very fond of narrow-scaled string stops, and added a Hauptwerk Viola da Gamba when he had the Mühlhausen organ rebuilt.5
Characteristic (9), the absence of more than one chorus in small- and moderate-sized instruments was also a feature of organs in Thuringia. 6 Apart from the fact that a very few of J. S. Bach's organ works (such as the Dorian Toccata) call for two choruses, the "East German" style of organ, with which Bach was familiar in his native Thuringia, is probably in some ways a more suitable medium for the performance of Bach's music than other German styles, such as Schnitger's North German instruments. The same would therefore be true of Pennsylvania Dutch instruments, which reflect "East German" practice, and this is one reason why West European organists ought to give careful attention to the Pennsylvania Dutch organ-building school, especially today when East Germany is somewhat inaccessible by virtue of being a communistic country.
As a typical example of the Hauptwerk of an eighteenth century East German organ, it is instructive to study the F. Volkland instrument of 1729 at Egstadt, near Erfurt, which is cited by Williams: 7
| Specification: Egstadt (1729 Volkland) | |||
|
Prinzipal Quintaton Gemshorn Viola da Gamba Oktave |
8 8 8 8 4 |
Quinte 2 2/3 Oktave Sesquialtera [Terz] 1 3/5 Mixture |
2 2/3 2 1 3/5 IV |
Apart from the absence of a 4' wooden flute, almost invariably found in Pennsylvania Dutch organs, this stop list almost exactly represents a typical Tannenberg specification of the second half of the eighteenth century.
One important organ builder from East Germany does not quite fit into my "East German" scheme. This is Gottfried Silbermann, whose instruments may perhaps best be described as combining the best in eighteenth-century East German and Alsatian French practice - something which is not surprising in view of the fact that Silbermann came from Dresden and trained under his brother Andreas in Alsace. Silbermann's instruments differ from Pennsylvania Dutch instruments in the following respects:-
One of the earliest organ builders in America was Philip Feyring (1730-1767) who built a number of organs in Philadelphia, the cases of two of which, Christ Church and St. Peter's. still exist. The case of the Christ Church instrument is illustrated in Walter Haacke's Organs of the World. But otherwise almost nothing is known about Feyring or his instruments.
The main source of information about Klemm and his great pupil David Tannenberger (or Tanneberger as the name is sometimes spelt) is a book by William H. Armstrong, Organs for America: The Life and Work of David Tannenberg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1967). Although in need of revision to take account of new evidence which has come to light since 1967, and lacking in technical detail about pipescales, etc., Armstrong's book remains the standard book on the subject, and in so far as European historians of the organ are aware of Pennsylvania Dutch organ-building practices at all, it is probably through reading Armstrong's book. Apart from some biographical data, however, I have tried in the present article as far as possible to provide information which supplements rather than duplicates Armstrong's material.
Johann Gottlob Klemm, often called "Father" Klemm, seems to have been the founder of the Pennsylvania Dutch organbuilding school. This is not to say that no organs were built in Pennsylvania before his time, but Klemm is the first organ builder of whom other than the sketchiest information survives. He was born near Dresden in 1690, and was converted to Moravianism as a young man, though he lapsed for a time, during which he emigrated to America in 1733 in order to seek his fortune. On his arrival in the New World he resided at Philadelphia and constructed a number of organs, of which the most noteworthy was the three-manual instrument of 26 stops which he built for Trinity Episcopal Church in New York City in 1741. Few details of this instrument have survived, but it was probably the first three-manual organ manufactured entirely in North America. In 1757 Klemm became reconciled once more to the Moravian Church and went to live in the Moravian city of Bethlehem, Pa. A few months later David Tannenberg began working as his assistant. So far as is known none of Klemm's organs have survived (though there is a harpsichord signed "Johannes Clemm fecit Philadelphia 1739" in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York), but his importance lies primarily in the fact that he trained David Tannenberg, the greatest of the Pennsylvania Dutch organ builders, and a craftsman of the first rank who has sometimes been compared with Schnitger and the Silbermanns as one of the outstanding organ builders of all time. Klemm and Tannenberg moved from Bethlehem to nearby Nazareth, Pa. in 1759, but returned to Bethlehem once more about a year later, where Klemm died in 1762. 9
David Tannenberg, who took over the organ-building connection after Klemm's death, had been born at Berthelsdorf, Saxony, in 1728. A lifelong Moravian, he came to live in Bethlehem, Pa. in 1749. He had no organ-building experience before he began working for Klemm in 1758, and up to that time he had worked as a master carpenter and cabinet-maker. 10 After Klemm's death Tannenberg seems at first to have confined himself to maintenance work - perhaps as yet he was uncertain of his own abilities as an organ builder - but in 1764 he had a piece of good fortune. The organist of Lobenstein in Thuringia, East Germany, Georg Andreas Sorge (1703-1778), 11 sent to his "friends in Pennsylvania" a manuscript entitled "The Secret Art of the Measurement of Organ Pipes", which survives in the Moravian Church Archives in Bethlehem. From this document Tannenberg was apparently able to learn enough about making organ pipes to place him head and shoulders above his former teacher Klemm.
It will be noted that Sorge, like Klemm and Tannenberg, came from East Germany, and his manuscript reflected the same "East German" traditions of organ building that Tannenberg had learnt under Klemm. When the 1798 Tannenberg organ at Winston-Salem, North Carolina (another Moravian city) was examined during restoration in 1964, it was found that Tannenberg's pipescales appeared to agree with those recommended by Sorge. 12 Tannenberg moved from Bethlehem to the Moravian community of Lititz, Pa. in 1765 and set up a workshop there, remaining in Lititz building organs for the rest of his life. He built his first organ at the Moravian Church in Lancaster, Pa. in 1765. The new instrument was tried and admired by Betsy Ross, later to achieve fame as the designer of the American flag, the stars-and-stripes. Tannenberg received the contract to repair the house organ owned by Betsy and her husband George, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. Through the instrument in the Lancaster Moravian Church, Tannenberg was also enabled to obtain an important contract to build a sixteen-stop two-manual organ at the Reformed Church in Lancaster, and that in turn won him the contract for a twenty-stop two-manual instrument in the Lutheran Church.
He was now well on the way to success. 13 Tannenberg is thought to have built about forty new pipe organs in all, and to have repaired many others. He died on 19 May 1804 while completing the installation of his last organ at Christ Lutheran Church, York, Pa. The instrument was first used at Tannenberg's own funeral two days later. It survives, in somewhat altered form, in a museum at York, and is still played. 14
A typical small Tannenberg organ is the four-stop instrument which he built for the Moravian Church, Graceham, Maryland in 1793, and which is now one of two Tannenberg organs preserved in the Single Brethren's House at Lititz, Pa. It is remarkably unaltered and well preserved and has the following stops:
|
Specification: Moravian Church, Graceham (1793 Tannenberg) | |
|
Gedackt Gambe Floet Principal |
8 8 4 2 |
It has a charming case of three flats of pipes (5-11-5), surmounted by a broken pediment in Chippendale style.
A slightly larger Tannenberg organ, also well preserved, is at Hebron Evangelical Lutheran Church, Madison, Virginia, and was built in 1802. The original specification was: 15
|
Specification: Hebron Evangelical Lutheran Church (1802 Tannenberg) | |||
|
Dullcis Gedackt Principal Flute Quinta Fifteenth |
8 8 4 4 3 2 |
Terzian C-b: 1 3/5 c1-f3: 3 1/5 Mixture II C-b: 1 1/3, 1 c1-G3: 4, 2 2/3 |
1 3/5 3 1/5 1 1/3, 1 4, 2 2/3 |
The present specification differs only in that the Mixture has been rearranged and now has three ranks. It is instructive to compare this stop-list with that of the Egstadt organ.
In some of his later instruments, particularly in Moravian Churches with their liturgical requirement for an essentially accompanimental organ, Tannenberg tended to include a greater variety of unison stops at the expense of mixtures and mutations. Thus, in the Organ built for the Moravian Church at Lititz, Pa. in 1787 and now, in company with the Graceham, Md. instrument, in the Single Brethren's House at Lititz, we find the following stops:
| Specification: Moravian Church, Lititz (1787 Tannenberg) | |||
|
Manual: Principal Discant Viol del Gambe Flaut Amabile Quint: Dehn [sic] Principal Floth Sub Octav [sic] |
8 8 8 8 4 4 2 |
Pedal: Sub Bass Octav Bass Koppel |
16 8 |
This organ, built for Tannenberg's own church, but silent since 1910, was re-opened on 17 April 1983, after restoration to Tannenberg's original design by James McFarland and Company of Millersville, Pa., the acknowledged experts in the field of restoring Pennsylvania Dutch organs.
Tannenberg's magnum opus was the three-manual instrument which he built for Zion Lutheran Church, Philadelphia, Pa., completed in October 1790, and at that time the largest instrument in North America. George Washington heard it when it was first completed and was so impressed that he made a return visit to attend an organ recital on 8 January 1791. The instrument, alas, was short lived. On 25 December 1794 someone left hot ashes in a box in the vestry, and the resulting conflagration was seen many miles away. Tannenberg was consulted about a replacement but, probably owing to lack of funds, only a small replacement instrument was purchased, and then not until seven years after Tannenberg's death. Armstrong includes a stop list of the Zion Lutheran Church organ, taken from the opening programme. 16 There is another account, with some interesting variant spellings, in an early nineteenth-century periodical article, and I reproduce this version below. The organ case was twenty-seven feet high, twenty-four feet wide and eight feet deep. There were five towers and four intervening flats of pipes, all doublestoried apart from the two outer towers, so that it would appear to have been a larger version of the surviving Tannenberg case at Trinity Lutheran Church Lancaster, Pa. 17 The stop list of Tannenberg's Zion Lutheran Church instrument was as follows:
| Specification: Zion Lutheran Church (1790 Tannenberg) | |||
|
Great Manuel: Principal Quinta den Gamba Gemshorn Gedact Trumpet Octave Quinte Octave Flute Mixture Upper Manuel Principal, dulc. Quinta dena Vox humana Flute amab. Gedact Nacht horn Solicet Holflute Cimbel Fistel quint |
8 16 8 8 8 8 4 3 2 4 4 to 6 ranks 8 8 8 8 8 4 4 2 4 rks. 3 |
Echo to Tenor F Dulcian Flute Traver Roer Flute Hautbois Fistula Octav Nagt horn Echo Bass Pedal Princip Bass Subbass Trumpet Octave Bass Quinta Octave 2 Cimbel Stars Tremulant Sperr Ventil 2 couplings [?couplers] 5 large bellows18 |
8 8 8 8 4 4 8 16 16 16 8 6 4 |
From the fact that there was a Sperr Ventil (an aid to registration) and five bellows, it would seem that the Hauptwerk was on two chests, possibly on two different wind pressures. The names "Fistula Octav" and "Fistel quint" are something of a puzzle to me. The words "Fistula" and "Fistel" have a variety of meanings in both Latin and German, though all the meanings seem to be connected with the Syrinx or Pan Pipes. 21 The words can mean (a) soft (b) reedy or (c) descant or soprano. In all probability the Tannenberg stops were mild open flues of Gemshorn-like tone quality.
The Pennsylvania Dutch school of organ building did not cease upon the death of Tannerberg, but continued throughout the nineteenth-century, and indeed right down to the First World War. Tannenberg's own business was carried on by John Philip Bachmann (1762-1837), Tannenberg's son-in-law. Alexander Schlottmann of Oley, Pa., who built an organ for the First Reformed Church, Reading, Pa. in 1807, was also a former employee of Tannenberg.
Among the most prominent of the Pennsylvania Dutch organ builders were the Krauss and Dieffenbach families. John Krauss (1770-1819) and Andrew Krauss (1771-1841) were originally Schwenckfelders, though because organs were forbidden among Schwenckfelders they were only able to carry on their chosen profession at the expense of giving up their religion. They worked at Kraussdale, Pa. from the mid-1790s until 1812, after which the partnership was dissolved and Andrew Krauss continued alone. He was succeeded by two of his sons, Joel Krauss (1801-1852) and George Krauss (1803-1880), who were in turn succeeded by Edwin B. Krauss (1838-1929), who carried on the business down to World War 1. 19
John Jacob Dieffenbach built an organ at Epler's Church, Berks County, Pa. in 1800. The instrument survives in the museum of the Berks County Historical Society, and was restored by Brunner & Heller of Silver Spring, Pa. in 1984. Dieffenbach's son, Christian Dieffenbach, continued the business at Millersville, Pa. in the early nineteenth century, and he in turn was succeeded by Thomas Dieffenbach, and finally by Philip Leonard Dieffenbach (1827-1917), who ceased business in about 1900.
Daniel Bohler of Reading, Pa., who commenced building organs on his own account in around 1830, built up what eventually became the largest of the Pennsylvania Dutch organ connections. Samuel and John Bohler carried on the business until the early years of the present century.
There were other Pennsylvania Dutch organ builders who built instruments on a smaller scale. Gideon Jeffries was an offshoot of the Bohler firm, who was at work at the end of the nineteenth century. One of the most beautiful surviving instruments was built by Conrad Doll, of Lancaster, Pa. in 1807, and is situated in the Peace Church, Shiremanstown, Pa. It has a charming case of two round towers and a central flat (5-11-5), surmounted by a broken pediment.
John Zeigler of Skippackville, Pa., is the only known organ builder to have been a Mennonite; one of three extant organs by him, built in 1835, is now in the Landis Valley Museum, and presumably built for domestic use. Other Pennsylvania Dutch organ builders of the nineteenth century included Joel Kantner of Robesonia, Pa. (fl. ca. 1850-70), and Rudolph Ganteinbein of Reading, Pa. (fl. ca. 1875). This list is in no way intended to be exhaustive, and many other names could be mentioned. As time went on there was, of course, an increasing tendency towards instruments containing many unison stops and little in the way of upperwork, but apart from this most of the principles of Pennsylvania Dutch organ building, including the provision of reasonably elaborate cases, continued to the end.
In his well-known book The Organ, the late Dr. W. L. Sumner devoted eight-and-a-half lines to Pennsylvania Dutch organ builders, five-and-a-half of them to Robert Harttafel (about whom hardly anything is known), Christopher Witt and Gustav Hesselius (of whom it is not even certain that they were organ builders at all). 20 It is hoped that the present article will have done something towards placing the Pennsylvania Dutch school of organ building more in its proper perspective, and suggesting that, particularly in the case of the work of David Tannenberg, it is as deserving of consideration as the European schools of organ building during the same period.
In medical terminology a fistula is a hole or pathway between two parts of the body, and in pipe making terms this might have some relevance to a harmonic pipe, which has a hole half-way along its length. Dr. Speller suggests that if this be so the designations '4 ft' and '3 ft' might refer to the actual length of the pipes if they were harmonic pipes. In that case they might have pitch lengths of 2 ft and 1 1/3 ft, which would make sense within the context of the total scheme. If this be so, Tannenberg would seem to have been even more versatile in producing different kinds of pipes than has been thought.
(First published in Musical Opinion, November 1985)
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