Fugue State of the Art

The King of Instruments Takes Center Stage at Trinity Church

Trinity Church is debuting a magnificent new pipe organ, part of a decade-long project that has replaced the instruments not only in Trinity’s nave (the grand, three-story archway that spans Trinity’s Broadway entrance at Wall Street, directly beneath the bell tower), but also in the Chapel of All Saints (a 1913 addition to the main building), and at nearby St. Paul’s Chapel (Broadway at Fulton Street).

Manuel Rosales, a legendary organ builder who served as “tonal designer” on the project, says, “Trinity had a novel approach. Rather than the conventional method of forming a committee of parishioners, they convened a panel of elite musicians from around the country to recommend a plan and a team to carry it out. The institutional culture at Trinity respects expertise, which is not true of many institutions, where there is often skepticism and suspicion about experts.”

Mr. Rosales, who has been building organs for more than 50 years, was recruited for the team that would create the new main organ in Trinity, along with the German firm of Glatter-Götz Orgelbau and acoustic consultant Dana Kirkegaard. “One of our priorities was to make the new organ and all its pipes fit within the wooden casing of the original, 1846 organ,” he notes. (That case is Trinity’s oldest, original piece of “furniture.”) This was no small undertaking, because the new instrument has 113 stops (a control on the console that selects a particular sound) and 8,041 pipes, ranging from 32 feet long to the width of a pencil, all gilded in 23.5 karat gold leaf.

“We have special pipes that mimic the sounds of clarinets, English horns, French horns, trumpets, oboes, and three different kinds of tuba,” he says. “This organ also has a wider dynamic range between loud and soft than any instrument I’ve ever worked on.”

“That level of versatility was necessary for the things Trinity wants to accomplish musically,” he says, “ranging from Sunday services with choirs and congregational singing, to musical programs that feature full orchestras.”

To achieve this breadth of capability, Mr. Rosales not only designed thousands of unique pipes, but was also responsible for “voicing” them. “That means listening to every nuance and subtlety of sound from each pipe, and then cutting and altering those pipes to modify the wind flow, and get the tone exactly right,” he explains. “The biggest challenge was working in a space that’s never really silent – there is always something going on at Trinity, and New York itself is not a quiet place.”

Achieving the full effect he envisioned also meant modifying the acoustics of the church itself. “The orchestral mandate meant this couldn’t be a simple baroque organ,” he says. “It had to blend with the sound characteristics of the space around it, which we accomplished by installing a short wall behind the organ, in a place where it cannot be seen, but still changes the auditory signature of the whole setting.”

Mr. Rosales, who was born on the Upper West Side in the late 1940s, but moved to Los Angeles as a child, recalls, “when I was young, I was overwhelmed whenever I heard the music of a pipe organ. So I sought out people who could help me enter the craft and share secrets about how they achieved his magnificent sound. Because I was a kid, nobody was afraid of me competing with them. Some of the first mentors I apprenticed with had built theater organs in 1920s.”

After crafting his first organ independently at a California church in 1974, his reputation grew, achieving national prominence in the early 2000s when he was recruited to create the pipe organ for the Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles, which was being designed by architect Frank Gehry. “Disney gave me final say on every aspect of that organ,” he recalls, “which infuriated Gehry. But I think he’s happy with the outcome, because he now takes all credit for its success.”

“The creative demands of the Disney project didn’t begin to compare with the scale of Trinity’s ambition,” Mr. Rosales says. “Having all those pipes and stops give the organist much more freedom. Trinity could easily have made do with a smaller, simpler instrument. But instead, they have created a cultural gem, a gift that can be shared with the community.”

“This is the largest project I have ever worked on,” he says, “which is fitting because it is the last big organ I plan to be a part of.” Noting that he is approaching 80 years old, Mr. Rosales says, “I couldn’t be happier with the outcome, but the next goal is finding somebody to take care of this instrument.”

Trinity will introduce its new organ to the community on September 14, when it kicks off the performance series, “PIPES: A Season of Celebration,” at 3pm, with renowned British organist Anna Lapwood performing the world premiere of composer Eunike Tanzil’s “Nimbus,” along with works by Rachel Portman, Olivia Belli, Benjamin Britten, Alan Menken, John Williams, and Hans Zimmer. The PIPES series will continue through February. The new organ will also be showcased in the Bach at One series of Wednesday afternoon concerts, and in other programs. All performances are free.