You can't get there from here

One evening I was driving a car full of friends and students to an organ recital. We were discussing getting old and fat. I was waxing nostalgic over how skinny I used to be. One of my students said, “Dr. Bell, I can’t picture you skinny.” The whole car erupted into laughter, except the student, who was horrified at how that had sounded. I didn’t mind, because at that time, I did need to shed a few. And you know what? When I lost a few, I discovered that organ playing is much easier without so much weight to throw around on the bench! And it’s embarrassing when a large belly plays extra notes on the Positif.

Speaking of Positives, the pipes of the Positif on the organ on which I teach are virtually inaccessible to anyone with a waistline greater than about thirty inches. When I was a (skinny) student on this same organ, I was able to gain access to said Positif. I simply slid between the Récit shades behind the Positif and stepped out onto the walkboard, right next to that recalcitrant Cromorne that always needed touching up. Well, those days are long past, not only in terms of my size but also in terms of the necessity for anyone to access this Positif in that fashion at all. Since my student days, a trap door has been cut into the Positif walkboard to allow access from below, so long as the swell shades are closed to allow the trap door to open. The maximum allowable waist measurement for access in this dramatically new, improved fashion is now a whopping thirty-five inches, and one can count on activating a Positif primary or two with one’s belly or belt buckle in the process. Yeah, so it’s still not the greatest design for access. (On the other hand, one could lose a half-inch or so just by removing one’s belt.) But if you don’t go that way or through the swell shades, then you have to set up a really tall ladder and step over seven ranks of pedal pipes to get to the Positif walkboard. In other words, you can’t get there from here unless you’re skinny.

Accessing the Grand-Orgue is not quite as challenging but still no less annoying. One must climb a short ladder on one interior wall of the Récit, duck under the Tremblant and some dangling wires for the Clochettes, and shimmy along a board to the other side of the Récit, being careful neither to hit your head on the ceiling nor kick the Récit pipes under the shimmy board. Upon reaching the other side, you climb a few more ladder rungs through a trap door to the Grand-Orgue. The dramatic view of the concert hall from up there is spectacular, of course – always worth the climb. If only I could just stay up there for the next time.

Access to the Grand-Orgue primaries is tricky, too. It involves some gravity- and death-defying maneuvering over a Récit chest full of temperamental pipes that will change their pitch if you look at them wrong.

Access to any part of the organ requires a 20-some-foot climb up an extension ladder from the stage floor. There are no doors from behind into the organ, and even if there were, they would be blocked by air handlers and furnaces. So we’re stuck with the ladder method.

I can only imagine how organ technicians get to some parts of some organs. Someone could make a fortune designing short-haul, lightweight jetpacks. I have visited more than one organ whose incumbent player has informed me that the technician is so fat he just doesn’t bother with tuning or repairing some of it. (Although tragic for the organ and organist, does that earn a tuning discount?) Granted, many organs are crammed into spaces that are too small, but good access must be thought out in the design.

Three conclusions: 1) Don’t get fat; 2) Don’t hire fat organ technicians; 3) Encourage builders to build organs whose every division and components are actually accessible. (Imagine that.)