Organ
The resident Longwood Organ is a 10,010 pipe instrument designed by Longwood organist-in-residence Firmin Swinnen, a Belgian musician who moved to the US in 1916 and became a prominent theater organist in New York City. The organ's pipes filled fourteen railway freight cars, and they needed a 72 horsepower (54 kW) blower motor to supply the wind pressure; the instrument was one of the largest pipe organs installed in a private residence. Pierre du Pont ordered a massive Aeolian organ in 1929 to replace the previous organ of 3,650 pipes, which he donated to the University of Delaware where it stayed until 1964. The four-manual organ plays into the Longwood ballroom and can be heard throughout the conservatory when adjoining window panels are opened. Its pipes may be viewed from the rear through glass panels in Longwood's organ museum. The Longwood Organ has recently undergone a restoration that began in 2004 and was completed in January 2011.
Read more about this topic: Longwood Gardens
Famous quotes containing the word organ:
“Nature is so perfect that the Trinity couldn’t have fashioned her any more perfect. She is an organ on which our Lord plays and the devil works the bellows.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“The only power deserving the name is that of masses, and of governments while they make themselves the organ of the tendencies and instincts of masses.”
—John Stuart Mill (1806–1873)
“And this mighty master of the organ of language, who knew its every stop and pipe, who could awaken at will the thin silver tones of its slenderest reeds or the solemn cadence of its deepest thunder, who could make it sing like a flute or roar like a cataract, he was born into a country without literature.”
—Willa Cather (1873–1947)