For the full First Anniversary concert of Piping Up!: • Piping Up! * FIRST Ann...
FIVE Organists Perform Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 3, Final Mvt. on Casavant Frères organ in the chapel of the Joseph Smith Memorial Building: • FIVE Organists Perform...
Piping Up! host Luke Howard, gets a tour of the Tabernacle Organ Chambers with Robert Poll, the Tabernacle Organ Technician on Temple Square. Poll has been working with the organs on Temple Square for 39 years.
In order to keep the organ in shape for performance, it's a continual process of maintenance and tuning. The process involves using a reference stop, or a rank of pipes, in a section and they tune everything in that section to that reference stop. To help do his job Poll uses a tuning knife. It's long, has a sharp edge and a lot of mass to it, and has a hook on one end. This hook can be used to pull up on a slide or knock down on a slide. It can be used various ways to make slight movements to the tuning collar, or tuning slide, in order to get the pipe in tune. Knocking it down will make it shorter, causing it to go sharper, while pulling it up will make it longer, causing it to go flat. The goal is to get them all to be relative to one another.
Often people say that organs have a personality to them. Clay Christiansen, emeritus Tabernacle Organist, used to say the organ had gremlins. Sometimes things are inexplicable. Robert Poll's job is to get the "gremlins" out.
The reed pipes are where Poll spends most of his time. They have a brass tongue, that beats against a brass tube, that has a flat surface and opening in it. The opening is similar to a clarinet's mouthpiece. Moving a portion of the pipe up and down changes the length of the reed beating. You can also move the scroll on the other end of the pipe up and down. The two have inverse relationships on the volume of the pipe. If the reed end goes sharp it goes soft, while if the scroll end goes sharp it goes loud. This means they have to be very careful in tuning to make sure the reed pipes are also tuned to each others relative loudness.
Piping Up! Organ Concerts at Temple Square, First Anniversary Concert, 2021.