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CLASSIC CHAMBER ORGAN FROM 1776 GETS A TUNEUP RESTORED INSTRUMENT WILL BE ON PERMANENT DISPLAY AT THE WHITEFIELD HOUSE IN NAZARETH.

Morning Call - Allentown, Pa. Author: BRYAN HAY, The Morning Call

Copyright Morning Call Mar 14, 1997

A well-traveled chamber organ that entertained George Washington and later attracted a group of legendary jazzmen from Manhattan's 52nd Street has come home with a new lease on its musical life.

The rare single-manual instrument built in 1776 by Moravian organ builder David Tannenberg was re-assembled Thursday after a four-month restoration project by R.J. Brunner & Co., Silver Spring, Lancaster County.

It took only a few hours until the rebuilt organ could draw a fresh breath from its new bellows and windchest. Together with other antique musical instruments in the Moravian Historical Society's collection, the organ will be on permanent exhibit on the second floor of the Whitefield House, E. Center Street, Nazareth.

Guest organists will be invited to perform on the organ during a series of welcome-back concerts planned for later this year, said Susan Dreydoppel, the society's executive director. "Work such as this is always a challenge," said organ builder Raymond Brunner, who with his wife Ruth restored the Tannenberg and supervised its reconstruction. The organ was dismantled and sent to their shop in late November.

The couple reduced the instrument to its inert parts, releathering the bellows with sheepskin and installing new pine ribs. Ebony keys lost over time were replaced with stained walnut strips. Half of the yellowed ivory caps on the sharp keys were missing but Brunner recycled platings from an old piano to fill in the gaps on the four-octave keyboard.

Only two original Tannenberg keyboards survive, Brunner noted.

The Brunners also cleaned out the 192 pipes, some made from cedar and others a lead-tin alloy, and touched up the Chippendale-style case without spoiling its original appearance.

"We didn't try to make it look new," Raymond Brunner told Dreydoppel. "We just tried to get rid of the ugly scarring."

The white pine cabinet was originally covered with a pale gray paint, still visible on certain areas, and later received a false woodgrain using a painting technique common in the mid-19th century.

Brunner's work was inspired by various inscriptions and scratchings inside the instrument left by fellow organ technicians through the ages, including Tannenberg's own scripted notations on the rectangular cedar pipes.

In keeping with the harmonics of Tannenberg's day, the organ is tuned to A-430, lower than modern concert pitch, Brunner explained. That means someone with perfect pitch might think a chorale played on the organ has been transposed down a half-step.

Early Bethlehem Moravians first used the organ to support congregational hymn-singing. It was installed in the Single Brethren's House chapel, where Washington is said to have heard it in 1782, while enjoying cake and wine. From there, it wound up at the Young Men's Missionary Society in Bethlehem, which closed in 1922, and eventually moved on to Nazareth.

In 1949, a group of jazz greats, among them pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith, heard about the historic instrument and staged an impromptu jam session at the Whitefield House after attending a wedding in nearby Stockertown.

Despite its heavy use over the years, the society's Tannenberg survived in its original condition.

"Nine is a good survival rate for something that old," said Brunner, noting that Tannenberg (1728-1804) built more than 50 organs in his lifetime for Moravian, German Reformed, Lutheran and Roman Catholic churches.

"This is one of his earliest," Brunner added, "a treasure from colonial America's foremost organ builders."

Dreydoppel said the $12,000 restoration project was sponsored by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, Questers International, Pennsylvania Questers and Questers Whitefield Chapter 514. Questers is an international organization dedicated to preserving and restoring works of art and antiquities.

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