Materials for Church Organ Committees

A perennial resource, Dedicating An Organ gathers in one place everything necessary for planning the dedication service for a new organ. Interdenominational in breadth, this booklet contains sample services, invocations, litanies, prayers, and hymns. The final section, “The Organ in Prose and Poetry” provides verses by great poets and noted writers that are appropriate for inclusion in dedication programs. The service elements can be interchanged and condensed as necessary in order to customize the material for the occasion. Not just for dedications of organs, but most of the text can be incorporated into such diverse services as recognition of choir members (Choir Sunday), and other musicians, a new piano, and even handbells.

Years of experience as an acoustician and church musician are applied to a practical method of determining and achieving acoustical design for the worship space. Included are: placement of participants, instruments; building materials and furnishings; geometric arrangement of walls, surfaces and spaces; reverberation; and public address systems.

This book on the structure, design, maintenance, history, and function of the organ addresses construction of the organ, what the architect should know, how the pastor and congregation should plan, maintenance, service playing, a brief history, and notes for the organist. It provides a list of organ music, a bibliography, and a 14"-square fold-out of an organ’s internal mechanism. It is quite technical.

Especially useful to those who are trying to make sense of organ mechanisms, terms and jargon, such as "unification," "registration," "stops," "ranks." etc.