A Dirge for the Organ? : Instrument Needs More Respect, Musicians Say

They had hoped to start an organ players’ convention Monday in Pasadena on an upbeat note. But instead it began with a downbeat message.

West Coast members of the American Guild of Organists were told that the organ is becoming the accordion of musical instruments--something that doesn’t get the respect that it used to.

Music instruction has been cut from most school curriculums and paid organists have been eliminated from many churches. Worst of all, the public’s musical tastes have changed.

Organists were urged to pipe up and pull out all the stops to fight an onslaught of rock ‘n’ roll-style keyboards, computer-programmed organs and other high-tech, synthesized gimmickry.

“We’re under siege, considered by some an extinct species,” the guild’s national executive director, Daniel N. Colburn II, said. “There’s a replacement waiting to take your job. She’s called Synthia.”

Professional organ players have felt the rumbles coming, according to David Fay, a former church organist from the La Canada-Altadena area who helped organize this week’s three-day convention.

“Most people think of it as something they hear in church and not as a broad musical instrument,” he shrugged. “There’s not a lot of young people majoring in organ in college. Organ recitals are few and far between, and poorly attended.”

Guild member Rebecca Evers Davy of Culver City said the church she plays in is leaning toward buying a relatively inexpensive electronic organ instead of a $250,000 pipe organ. And the 20 students who receive private music lessons from her are studying piano, not organ.

Davy was tapped to perform at one of several public recitals scheduled for today at Pasadena-area churches and schools. The performances show off the building-shaking sound of venerable pipe organs still in use at each of the sites, convention planners said.

Nationally known concert organist David Craighead was Monday’s featured performer. He played a selection of classical music and hymns on the Pasadena Presbyterian Church’s towering 5,978-pipe organ.

“I think we’re going through some rough times,” said Craighead, 67, who also teaches at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester in New York. “Some churches are getting boom boxes. Some are using electronic keyboards. It bothers me. . . . I don’t consider that a valid instrument.”

Others at the convention do, however. In fact, the inexpensive electronic synthesizers used by rock musicians and enjoyed by teen-agers may be the salvation of organ music, said Dale Jergenson, a Van Nuys music publisher who deals in electronic music equipment.

“We’re making church congregations more responsive by adding color to music,” Jergenson said, fingering a Macintosh computer keyboard that can be programmed to sound like an organ. “We’re not taking any jobs.

“This is the only thing that will bring young people to this music. You can’t do it with grandpa’s ways.”

And electronic equipment may soon be the only thing that brings music to churches, said organ company executive David Demers. He is demonstrating a $28,000 electronic “pipe organ” that sounds like a real pipe organ--some of which sell for up to $1 million.

“People only fear what they don’t understand,” Demers said, running his fingers across his organ’s keyboards.

From a loudspeaker in the corner, the floor shook in response.