ERNEST M. SKINNER

Organ builder, 1866 - 1960 and OUR PLACE IN HIS WORK

David Lawrence Morton, Verger

Ernest M. Skinner is a name that is engraved forever upon the organ world. Skinner was born in 1866 in Clarion, Pennsylvania. His most illustrious ancestor was John Alden from the "Courtship of Miles Standish" fame, and who was reportedly the first to step ashore from the "Mayflower" in 1620. Ernest Martin Skinner was an innovator, a risk-taker, a Romantic, a musician, a lover of new technologies and gadgets, and the one person who, in the first quarter of this century, single-handedly raised the organ to the status of   "king of instruments" in the United States.The following notes on Skinner include quotes and information derived from The Life and Work of Ernest M. Skinner by Dorothy J. Holden of Detroit, who, along with her husband, bought the Baptist Temple's 1925 Skinner in 1969. The Holdens have been prominent national leaders in the drive to give new life to existing Skinners and respect for Skinner's works.

Ernest Skinner began his love affair with the organ as a young boy when he was engaged as a bellows pumper for a number of organs in the New England area. On difficult musical works, and even at so young an age, he insisted that the organist give him a copy of the music so he could time his minimum and maximum pumping efforts to a fine point. Later, he apprenticed in organ building with George H. Ryder of Reading, Mass., then as a tuner with George S. Hutchings of Boston, Hutchings being one of the premier organ builders of his day. Skinner eventually became the factory superintendent for Hutchings.

Skinner's concept of the ideal organ had its roots in the Romantic Movement which began in Europe and England, and he became much interested in the orchestral ideal. Through experimentation, always trying something new to enhance his ideal, his ability to create new voices for the organ and a non-directional, "floating" quality of sound from his organs were characteristic of his work. Layers of strings, flutes, imitative orchestral voices, and bold diapasons colored the palette.

In 1898 Skinner made his first visit to England and his acquaintance with the famous English organ builders of the time, Henry "Father" Willis and his son, Henry, Jr. There is no question that after his meeting with the Willises his high pressure reeds of the trumpet family showed a great improvement and refinement. We now have two of those high pressure reeds: his Harmonic Tuba and his French Horn.

Skinner started his own company in 1900 in Boston, and his innovations in organ building spread quickly throughout the United States. Through his associations with other builders and partners, the company name changed often, from the Ernest M. Skinner Organ Co., to Skinner & Cole, to E.M. Skinner & Co. With his reputation on a firm foundation, from 1909 through 1913 saw contracts for such places as Cornell University; in New York City at the Cathedral of St. John The Divine, St. Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue Presbyterian. Succeeding years saw more and more cathedrals, churches and synagogues, theaters, civic auditoriums, and university chapels of great importance throughout the land acquire Skinner organs.

On the personal side, Skinner developed a reputation for having a forceful and argumentative personality. He was known to "speak like a Scot and with a certain pugnacity and joy in combat". There was no denying that Ernest Skinner could be absolutely maddening to those who opposed his viewpoints, but there were just as many who "admired his tenacity of purpose..." Skinner was one of those rare individuals who really stuck to his convictions, no matter what, right up to the very end of his life. But he was also a kind and sensitive man who knew all of his employees and their families, who cared for them and gave his employees a decent wage for the time, and with no union shop.

Skinner found himself in financial difficulty during World War I. Through the financial assistance of Arthur Hudson Marks, then head of the Goodyear Rubber Company, the business survived and prospered even more. Marks preferred not to return to the rubber company following the war, but took over the company by buying out Skinner. Marks was now the president and Ernest one of the two vice presidents. The company's new name was changed to the Skinner Organ Company (the company under which our St. John's organ, opus 679, was built). As a result of the amalgamation, a statement was issued in 1919 regarding the firm=s re-organization: "It is of special importance to the musical world in general, and to the lovers of organ music in particular, that under new arrangement, Mr. Skinner is enabled to devote practically his entire time to the development of the organ which he has made famous, without being handicapped with the details of business management."

A second trip to England in 1926 saw more new innovation to his organs. Our organ at St. John's of 1927, is modest in size, compared to a number of Skinner installations across the land, but it contains some of the English ideas that Skinner brought to his organs as a result of his work with Henry Willis III. As an example, our organ's 4' Flute Triangulaire, a singularly lovely, English, three-sided wood rank of pipes, is one of the early Flute Triangulaire stops in the U.S.

Thinking that he was doing the thing which would make the Skinner name grow even more prestigious, he brought G. Donald Harrison, an innovative organ builder, back from England with him to join the firm. Harrison , seeing that America was indeed a land of opportunity and he was not without his own abundance of ego, soon developed his own agenda after working with Skinnter. Over time the two became bitter enemies, whose points of view on organ-building were at complete odds.

Ernest's ideal was slowly but surely being destroyed by Harrison, with Harrison ushering in the continental European concept of organ-building in order to create what he called the "American Classic Organ", designed to play literature from all periods, most especially music of the Baroque era. (Ironically, even though Harrison's name and his pipe organs would become legend themselves in time, even his work began a rapid demise when mechanical/tracker action organs began to re-enter the American scene in the recent past decades, after their demise in the U. S. In the late 19th century). Over a number of years of cut-throat work against the other, and Harrison taking more and more control, Skinner removed himself from his contract with the company, the company he started in 1900, but which now styled itself as the Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company. Ernest's tenacity prevailed and he continued building organs of note by forming a new company with his son, the Ernest M. Skinner & Son Organ Company. But the tide had already turned in favor of the more "classic" organ, and to his deep despair he saw more and more of his grand earlier installations thrown out, and with fewer and fewer contracts for any new work for him to do.

Skinner's last mighty work was that of the Great Organ in Washington Cathedral, dedicated in 1938.

Although rebuilt by Aeolian-Skinner, with work by the late Texas organ genius, Roy Perry, and added to over the years, it still retains much important original Skinner work.

Ernest M. Skinner died in 1960, at a time when respect for Skinner organs was at its lowest by the organ world. Harrison died in 1957 a relatively young man, and when his organs were considered the finest in the world. Yet, once again, time passes and thoughts and styles change. Once again the organs built by Ernest Martin Skinner are no longer being looked upon as "old fashioned" but with a newly-found respect by a generation which has come to recognize the Skinner organ as being the finest designed and built organ of its time; and by a generation which realizes that there is not one type of organ that is the ultimate, and who no longer maintain a painfully narrow view of what organ literature really is. How delighted and proud Skinner would be if he were alive today to see the justifiable resurgence of interest in his work and the preservation of what organs of his still remain. Many of those that do remain have been rebuilt beyond original recognition, but, fortunately, a small number are still extant and unchanged. That was our good fortune at St. John's.

We are blessed today by the vision of those parishioners yesterday who chose to have a Skinner for St. John's Church and who signed a contract for Skinner Opus 679 in 1927. Not only are we one of the fortunate few still to have a Skinner organ is this region, one built at the peak of Skinner's career, but one virtually untouched and unaltered over the years by those who maintained it. Now, thanks to the beautiful and careful restoration work of the Columbia Organ Works, and the addition of four original Skinner voices to our organ, we have a newly restored and refurbished masterpiece.

We realize all too well that we are the care-takers of a legacy the likes of which the organ world will never see again. With that big responsibility are rewards and an admonition: we have a majestic instrument to enhance the beauty of our worship services in the next millennium, and one that will become more valuable historically, musically, and intrinsically with each increasing year. Therefore, to insure its multifold value, those who come after us must protect and cherish it and be vigilant guardians of this masterpiece. For indeed, St. John's Church has a rare treasure: an Ernest M. Skinner pipe organ.