Northshore magazine showcases the best that the North Shore of Boston, MA has to offer.
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114 organist plays, operators step on large trea- dles, which open the upper leaves of the bel- lows (like fireplace bellows, but bigger). is draws air into the organ's lungs, which is then exhaled through the pipes. Opus 72 is consid- ered one of the world's great pipe organs, and in the hands of a skilled player, it can recreate 17th-century German music as if the compos- ers were playing their own tunes. "It's the sort of organ that teaches you how to use your hands and feet in very intimate ways," says Margaret Angelini, carillon in- structor at Wellesley College. "at's partially because of the mechanical action and partially because of the wind, which is flexible like a singer's wind. You have to lis- ten deeply for the wind, and if you listen that way, the organ is phenom- enally expressive." Angelini is a Wellesley alumna who ma- triculated there in the fall of 1981, the same year Opus 72 was installed. She learned to play on the famed organ and later earned her master's degree in organ performance from the New England Conservatory of Music. But Houghton Chapel's organ was in the works long before Angelini arrived on campus. The late Wellesley professor of music Owen Jander joined Charles Fisk on a research trip to Europe in the mid-1970s. The result of their fieldwork is an instrument whose sound would be instantly recognized by 17th-centu- ry masters such as Dieterich Buxtehude and Heinrich Scheidemann. "A lot of that music is still being discovered on that organ in this chapel," says Angelini. "It's an amazing experience." Most C.B. Fisk clients request organs that Above, Memorial Church at Harvard University; right, Michael Kraft, C.B. Fisk's president and senior reed voicer.