German visits Morristown to marvel at Skinner organ

Morristown is blessed with magnificent organs.

So many, in fact, that a national convention of organists will be held here next year.

But Carsten Lenz couldn’t wait that long.  With his wife Iris, and children Guliane, 5, and Stefan, 3, Carsten traveled from Germany to St. Peter’s Episcopal Church yesterday to hear its organ, built in 1930 by the legendary Ernest Skinner.

“It’s like driving a Rolls Royce as opposed to a Buick,” said Andrew Senn, a former organist at St. Peter’s who returned from his present church in Philadelphia to demonstrate the organ for Carsten. “You don’t have to do any conjuring tricks to make it sound nice.”

Carsten is organist at a 900-year-old church in the town of Ingelheim am Rhein. His church recently bought a smaller Skinner organ from a church in Passaic. When reassembled, he said,  it will be the first Skinner organ in Germany.

At $50,000, the instrument was a great buy, Carsten said. But it will take more than two years and about $1.2 million to install–parts now fill 200  boxes–and to expand its capabilities to match the sounds that the St. Peter’s organ can produce.

“We want to add more stops. Our goal is to sound like Morristown…to make it sound like an American organ,” said Carsten, who brought along sophisticated recording gear to capture the sonic texture of the organ at St. Peter’s. “We’ve got organs in Europe that were built 300 years ago, and you can do some very strange things on them.”

European organs are loud, he explained. But they cannot create the variety of orchestral sounds that parishioners hear every Sunday at St. Peter’s, where Brian Harlow is music director.

In this video, Andrew shows what makes a Skinner organ special. He concludes with Sonata in G by Edward Elgar, a piece that summons many of the instrument’s voices. (Video length: About 8 minutes.)   Note: St. Peter’s is a sponsor of MorristownGreen.com.