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The Johnson Tracker Organ
Music in our church during the 18th and early 19th century
was primarily choral, accompanied now and then by stringed
instruments. The first record of the church obtaining an
organ is 1830, when John Prentiss purchased one that his
wife played during service. Aaron Lawrence, a deacon and
man of means in town, helped to purchase a new organ for
$1000 from Hook Co. of Boston in 1864. A third organ was
purchased from G.H. Ryder of Boston in 1873 and used for
the first time in the centennial celebration of 1874. That
organ continued in use until replaced by the current Johnson
Tracker Organ that arrived in town in 1961 and was installed
in the church in January 1963.
William Johnson built the organ in 1871. Its design was
different from contemporary organs that tended to have
a heavy tone with pipes that “spoke without accent”. Those
earlier organs also had pneumatic or electric action that
required the player to be some distance from the pipes
and, some felt, unable to control them.
Johnson designed a “tracker” organ in which pressing the
keys causes a direct, mechanical action; opening valves
to admit wind to separate note channels below the pipes
and using a slider windchest to move thin strips of wood
that open and close the holes on which the pipes stand.
Some say the action mimics the human voice.
The booklet written by the Music Committee for the Organ
Dedication Service contains a very lyrical description
of this effect: “The very brief instant of time that is
required for the wind to fill this note channel makes it
possible to voice the pipes in a way which is quite different
from the voicing of pipes that must speak on an electro-pneumatic
windchests…. The first sound to come from a pipe in a tracker
organ is produced by a little less than the full pressure.
It is therefore possible, and musically desirable, to allow
the pipes to speak in a natural way, with a light burst
of wind, a slightly explosive attack, at the beginning
of each note, called a “chiff”. It is like a consonant
preceding a vowel.”
The Johnson Tracker Organ was first used by the First
Baptist Church in Brattleboro, Vermont and, eventually,
was owned by a Methodist Church in Melrose, New York, just
north of Albany. It was there that the Amherst church found
it, with the help of the Organ Historical Society. Robert
Reich, of Andover Organ Company, was hired to dismantle
and move the organ from New York to Amherst. But more help
was needed. Over four hot days in September, 1961, Joseph
Perkins of the Music Committee, along with Richard Smith,
G. Winthrop Brown, and Patrick McCreary wrestled the organ
onto a U-Haul trailer and made the long trip to Amherst,
with two breakdowns along the way. Because time was needed
to raise the $5000 it would cost to install the organ,
a large group of Amherst residents unloaded the organ and
stored it in Honora Spaulding’s barn.
The organ was installed under the direction of the minister,
Rev. Trudinger, himself an accomplished musician, and the
organist, Mrs. Willis. They also selected the voicing,
or tone, of the organ’s 1260 pipes. The organ had its first
performance providing music for selections from Handel’s
Messiah during Christmas of 1962. It was formerly dedicated
in January, 1963 and has provided background and accompainiement
for our congregation and choir since.
Gene Cronin – Church Historian (ret.)
essay originally published in The Spire, April,
2002
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