domenica 24 ottobre 2010

NEWS ABOUT TWAIN

Photographs by Hiroko Masuike for The New York Times
First French-built pipe organ in New York City is installed at Church of the Ascension on Fifth Avenue between 10th and 11th Street in New York, Tuesday, October 12, 2010. French organ builders came from France to install the organ
FROM NY TIMES
October 24, 2010, 11:00 am
Importing an Impressive Machine of Sound
By JAMES BARRON

Dennis Keene has been learning some new French words lately. The forklift parked in the center aisle of the church where he is the music director is a “chariot electrique.” The hoist above the altar is a “palans electrique.”

And the packing boxes in the back corner of the sanctuary? They hold more than 5,000 “tuyaux,” the essential parts for what he described as the city’s first French-made pipe organ—“l’orgue à tuyaux.”

“We’ve got quite a mess going on,” he said, leading the way into the sanctuary at the Church of the Ascension, on Fifth Avenue at West 11th Street. (No French on the door: The sign warning that it was a construction site where hard hats were to be warn was in no-nonsense English.)

Organ installers were climbing where the pipes will soon go. A welder was working on scaffolding above where one of two new consoles will end up. A painter was working on columns behind the pulpit, which was covered in protective plywood, as was the famous mural of the ascension above the altar.

French organ builder Jean Francois Charrier.The church is spending $2 million on renovations to its building, Mr. Keene said. The organ was a gift from the Manton Foundation, set up by Sir Edwin A.G. Manton and Lady Manton, who were longtime members of the church. Sir Edwin was an executive of the insurance giant American International Group who died in 2005 at age 96.

Mr. Keene said the organ was typical of an instrument in the $3 million-to-$4 million range. He said the organ’s official inauguration would be in May.

The church itself dates to the 1840s, “when this was the upper suburbs” of a city that was crowded into Lower Manhattan. The church underwent a transformation in the 1880s at the hands of such well-known figures as the architects Stanford White and Charles Follen McKim and the artists Augustus Saint-Gaudens and John LaFarge. It was LaFarge who painted the mural over the altar.

Mr. Keene said Mark Twain had lived around the corner when he moved to New York at the beginning of the 20th century and would sit in the church, looking up at the mural. Someone asked what he was doing. Twain said, “I was trying to figure out how they did it.”

“What, the painting?” the person asked.

“No,” Twain said, “the ascension.’”

Mr. Keene said the organ would be the sixth in the sanctuary’s history. “The idea was to make an instrument that was as eclectic as possible,” he said. “I wanted an organ that could play early music really well, but could also play Messiaen.” The prolific 20th century composer Olivier Messiaen was, Mr. Keene said, “the most important organ composer after Bach.”

A teacher with whom Mr. Keene had studied in the 1970s advised him to look up Pascal Quoirin of St. Didier, France. Mr. Quoirin is known in organ circles for his restoration of a Dom Bédos organ in Bordeaux that is considered one of the two or three greatest 18th century French organs that still exist.

“I knew in two minutes he was the one,” Mr. Keene said. “I couldn’t have an American company build a French-style organ. The best American organs remind me of an overblown California cabernet. They have a huge tone, but it just isn’t balanced. This will be nuanced, but it will have fire. It will roar.”

Several dozen pipes have already been installed, among them an orange-yellow set that Mr. Keene said would produce “a really low trombone sound.”

The longest, and potentially the loudest, of that group is right against the rectory wall.

“I doubt I’ll be playing it late at night,” he said.

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