The Building of a Harrison Organ

THE BUILDING OF A HARRISON ORGAN

Principles | Workforce | Restorations | New Organs

Photo courtesy of the Northern Echo

Photo courtesy of IMASS

Harrison & Harrison's approach to organ building is nothing if not thorough:

Every organ is designed individually for its specific building, to fit both the acoustics and the architecture; and great care is taken to ensure that each organ has a logical and accessible internal layout. Harrisons use Computer Aided Design (CAD), which has the advantage of ease in producing full-scale working drawings, and in experimenting with a variety of layouts.

Harrisons make their own organs in their own workshop.

Nothing is mass produced: not a single tracker or power-motor is made without a particular organ in mind. There are no short cuts.

The firm has an unbroken tradition of slider chests, going back to 1861.

Harrisons cast their own pipe metal by traditional methods to the specification required for each stop.

The firm's own voicers control every aspect of the organ's musical development.

Each organ is first set up in Harrisons' workshop to ensure that every part is functioning correctly. It is then dismantled and packed for dispatch.

After it has been installed by Harrisons' own organ builders, the instrument is finished with the detailed voicing and tonal blending for which Harrisons are renowned.

Harrison organs have a reputation for longevity. A new organ is guaranteed for the first fifteen years; even after that it will require little attention. A busy city church could expect its H&H organ to run smoothly for 50 years before its first major maintenance work. A small country organ might last twice as long. Harrisons provide a prompt and efficient maintenance service.

Workforce

Such labour-intensive techniques require an unusual quality of craftsman. Typically, a Harrison man will join the firm at sixteen on a four-year apprenticeship - the firm is one of the few left in the country operating a traditional apprenticeship scheme. Harrisons' workshop has a family atmosphere and the presence of brothers, and sons, of previous organbuilders reinforces this. The overwhelming majority of the organ builders are recruited from the Durham area; most stay with H&H throughout their working lives. The ingenuity and tenacity of its workforce have been an inseparable part of the firm's success.

Prince Charles with organbuilder
Photographs courtesy of Newcastle Journal and Chronicle Ltd

Prince Charles with voicer

Restorations

In restoration work the aims of the original builder are of first importance. Harrisons' consistently high standards have made them a natural choice for a series of high-profile restorations. The re-established fiery sound of the 1922-32 Henry Willis organ in Westminster Cathedral, and work on the important 1897 Lewis instrument in Southwark Cathedral, have been widely praised. Dr Harry Bramma, who was Organist at the time of the restoration, describes the work on the Southwark organ, which included the re-instatement of the original wind-pressures, as "a remarkable success...So much of what was possible has been achieved". Harrisons are specialists in the unusual and highly complex art of pneumatic restoration, and recent examples include the organs of the Caird Hall, Dundee (1923 Harrison) the Albert Hall, Nottingham (J.J. Binns, 1909), the Usher Hall, Edinburgh (Norman & Beard, 1914) and the fine organ in St Bartholomew's Church, Armley (J F Schulze & Son, 1869).
Reading Town Hall organ Photo by C.R.A. Davies The famous Willis organ of 1864/1882 in Reading Town Hall restored by Harrisons in 1999

New Organs

Restoration work requires the ability to place the aims of the original builder first. But when H&H build new organs, whatever their size, they are always instantly recognisable as Harrison instruments, with Harrisons' characteristic colourful and exquisitely-blended voicing, closely associated with the English choral tradition. Since the mid-1980s the majority of new H&H organs have employed mechanical action, although the firm still willingly uses electro-pneumatic action where considerations of architecture or musical style make it the best choice. New organs range from the five-stop practice organ pictured below, or the 20-stop instrument for Twickenham Parish Church (which is based on an eighteenth-century Snetzler design), to the substantial 44-stop organ finished in 1999 for Hendersonville, North Carolina. Each new organ that leaves the Durham factory is installed and finished in every detail by our own organbuilders. Each is a work of art: a real musical instrument with its own aesthetic integrity.

Photo by C.R.A. Davies

The Harrison five-stop practice organ