Flentrop Organ of the Warner Hall in Oberlin Conservatory

The **Organ of the Warner Hall in Oberlin College and Conservatory** was built by Flentrop Orgelbouw in 1974 (Flentrop does not assign opus numbers). It replaced a Holtkamp organ that was installed ten years prior when the Warner Hall was built in 1963. This Holtkamp organ was generally unliked due to cost constraints requiring the recycling of ranks, notably from Holtkamp job number 1776, which itself was a rebuild of Skinner Opus 667 (1928) (This organ is now purchased by Texas Tech University, Lubbock, Texas).

## Description

The organ has a 30-note flat non-radiation pedal, and the manuals are 56-notes. The organ has four unenclosed divisions: Hoofdwerk (Hauptwerk) / Rugwerk (Rückpositive) / Bovenwerk, and Pedal. The Hoofdwerk and Bovenwerk each contain 12 stops, and the Pedal and Rugwerk each contain 10 stops. The Hoofdwerk and Pedal are based on the 16' Praestant, and the Bovenwerk and Rugwerk on the 8' Praestant (all of these pipes are in the facade).

The bottom five notes of the Hoofdwerk 16 Praestant and Rugwerk 8 Praestant are Quintadena pipes. The lowest note of the Hoofdwerk and Rugwerk facade–in the middle of the case–is F (the Pedal facade pipes on each side are full length to C and C#). The Bovenwerk Praestant 8 is doubled in the treble (Alto C).

The organ has Bovenwerk and Rugwerk couplers to the Hoofdwerk. However, the Bovenwerk is installed directly over the Hoofdwerk, so it frequently falls out of tune with the other divisions due to heating; but the other divisions stay in tune with each other.

In general, the divisions are not designed to be coupled together to gain the largest sound. The disposition of the Hoofdwerk Scherp IV and the Rugwerk Mixtuur IV-V are nearly identical, so that coupling the divisions together would not lead to a significant increase in volume (although a common registration used by students is to couple the manuals together while pushing in the Hoofdwerk Scherp). In addition to this, the Pedal division is powerful enough by itself to not require the manuals to be coupled to it. The Bazuin has strong bass and harmonics, so using the 16 Praestant is not necessary, and the disposition of the 6-rank Mixtur in the Pedal is similar to the disposition of the Hoofdwerk low and high mixtures combined, so a common combination to use in the pedal with a mixture plenum in the Hoofdwerk is 16 Bazuin, 8 and 4 Octave, and VI Mixtur.

## Alterations

From 1980-1990 the Principal ranks of the Flentrop organ were revoiced and the cutups were raised. This was done by Herman Gruenke and Halbert Gober, Organ Curators of Oberlin Conservatory. All of the reeds have been replaced except for the Rugwerk Kromhoorn. The Pedal reeds were replaced by Bruce Shull, of the Taylor & Boody organ company. The Bovenwerk reeds were replaced by Halbert Gober, and he lenghtened the resonators of the reeds in the Hoofdwerk. At the same time as these other alterations, a second bellow was added to the pedal. Previously, there was no seperate pedal blower. (Schnurr)

## Stoplist

The stoplist can be viewed here (the stoplist is the same despite the alterations).

## Citations

Schnurr, Stephen J.. Organs of Oberlin: The College Conservatory of Music and Its Pipe Organs. United States, Chauncey Park Press, 2013.

Flentrop Organ on Pipe Organ Database

Organ Specification on Flentrop website