Elegy

A few summers ago, I began work on a CODM instrument meant to replicate the grand Skinner organs of the civic auditoriums. After much planning, I put together this composite taking inspiration from E. M. Skinner's masterpieces at Yale, UChicago, Harvard, the National Cathedral, Old South in Boston, and the Cleveland Civic Auditorium as well as the Wanamaker organ. The stoplist (attached via PDF) is not trying to recreate any of these organs, merely form an instrument of similar characteristics and versatility.

The result, the fruit of 3 years of iterations, is an instrument with as much color as I could pack into it, and a sample set that has an incredible dynamic range that can go from a whisper to a (probably overkill) roar (a result of its 4 tubas and two en Chamade reeds).

I wanted to share a few recordings I made on this sample set to see what people think of it. I don't currently have access to my Hauptwerk setup, so these are recorded from MIDI files.

For this first recording, I chose Thalben-Ball's wonderful Elegy which shows off the organs foundations, Tutti (excluding some of the high pressure reeds), and the Ethereal division. The MIDI file comes from user OrganistWPC.

I hope you enjoy it!