ST. JOSEPH, Mich. (AP) - Greg Zyjewski has been playing the organ for about 40 years.
But as he plays a hymn of praise on the new pipe organ at St. Joseph Catholic Church, his eyes light up like those of a kid in a candy store.
The Rev. James Morris, pastor, told The Herald-Palladium ( https://bit.ly/1HMpjw0 ) that his parishioners are equally excited.
“I get a lot of, ’Wow,’ responses,” Morris said.
The Lauck Organ Opus 65 will be blessed during a concert at the church in St. Joseph starting at 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Guest organist Christopher Dekker, director of music at Trinity United Methodist Church of Grand Rapids, will perform. An in-demand recitalist, he has performed at venues across the U.S. including St. Patrick’s Cathedral of New York City, the First Congregational Church of Los Angeles and Trinity Church of Boston.
The new organ was installed in stages and was completed in January. But the planning began years ago.
The builder, Jim Lauck of Lauck Pipe Organ Co. in Otsego, said he was thrilled when Zyjewski, St. Joseph Catholic’s music director, approached his company. Lauck said he grew up in St. Joseph Township in the mid-1960s and was familiar with the small pipe organ at the church. He described it as “soft and underwhelming” before another organ builder made some improvements to the Kilgen organ in 1982.
Lauck used some 450 pipes from the Kilgen organ for the new pipe organ, and added more than 1,000 pipes to create an organ with 1,576 pipes. The old organ had six ranks of pipes and the new one has 26, Zyjewski said. There are three keyboards instead of two. The more pipes, the more sounds the organ can make. The tallest pipe is at 16 feet and produces a low C.
“Here’s three different trumpets,” Zyjewski said, demonstrating. “Here’s a clarinet, here’s an oboe.”
Installation began July 1, 2014, and the last rank of pipes was added in January.
Zyjewski said even with 40 years’ organ playing experience, there is a learning curve to playing the new pipe organ.
“Kind of like if you drive your wife’s car. You know how to drive, but you have to learn where all the knobs are so you can drive and operate the heat at the same time,” he said.
The new organ cost about $230,000 and was part of a Worship Space Enhancement Project that included loft renovations at the downtown church and the refurbishing of St. Joseph South, the parish’s other church building.
Serena Spear, a member of the Worship Space Enhancement Committee and the Pipe Organ Committee, said the fundraising goal for the campaign was $600,000, and about $700,000 was raised.
“Several parishioners helped. We had captains who then found people to help them reach people face-to-face,” she said.
Zyjewski said the pipe organ is important to the Catholic Liturgy. He said that according to the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy, a Vatican II document written by Pope Paul VI, “In the Latin Church the pipe organ is to be held in high esteem, for it is the traditional musical instrument that adds a wonderful splendor to the Church’s ceremonies and powerfully lifts up the spirit to God and to higher things.”
And, Zyjewski said, according to “Sing to the Lord: Music in Divine Worship,” written by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, “Among all other instruments which are suitable for divine worship, the organ is ’accorded pride of place’ because of its capacity to sustain the singing of a large gathered assembly, due to both its size and its ability to give ’resonance to the fullness of human sentiments, from joy to sadness, from praise to lamentation.’ Likewise, ’the manifold possibilities of the organ in some way remind us of the immensity and the magnificence of God.’”
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Information from: The Herald-Palladium, https://www.heraldpalladium.com
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