St. Patrick's Triumph

Famed on two churchly accounts is the town of Ivrea in the foothills of the Italian Alps. In Ivrea St. Patrick stopped on his way from Rome to Ireland. In the mountains overlooking Ivrea is the birthplace and home of Pietro Yon, famed organist of Manhattan's St. Patrick's Cathedral.

Two summers ago in the quiet of his mountain lodge Organist Yon felt inspired to tell in music the story of the Irish Saint for whom his Cathedral was named. Back in New York he commissioned a libretto from Armando Romano, an editor of Il Progresso. Last week, thanks to Humbert Fugazy and Bart Manfredi, two devout Roman Catholic prizefight promoters who furnished the necessary backing, New York heard the world premiere of The Triumph of St. Patrick.

Benign in his little red skull cap His Eminence Patrick Cardinal Hayes, to whom Pietro Yon had dedicated his oratorio, sat in a box and listened raptly while Tenor Frederick Jagel, the Saint of the evening, sang first as a shepherd boy, then as the man whom God had appointed to defeat the heathenish Druids and convert all Ireland. Outstanding was the rich ecclesiastical background given by 60 Cathedral choristers. Sixty players from the Metropolitan Opera orchestra traced melodies so lush and curving that they might have come from a Puccini opera.

Throughout the performance the slender little composer sat almost hidden behind the organ console at the far right of the stage. Sometimes he used his great instrument to strengthen the choruses. More often it was only to blend with the orchestra or round out massive undertones worthy of his subject. Pietro Yon proved years ago that he is a musician before he is an organist. He had not written an oratorio to exhibit his own virtuosity, to show how his feet could travel the pedals, his fingers control the maze of stops.

Roman emperors liked the organ because it was the loudest wind instrument. They called it an hydraulus because air was fed into its pipes by a water contrivance. In the Seventh Century Pope Vitalian recommended an organ for churches with a view to improving the singing of congregations. The first keys were as big as the treadle of a knife-grinder's machine. Strength was the first requisite of a player, who struck at the great slabs with his fist, had the title of "organ-beater." Early in the 15th Century pedals were introduced because the bass keys were so stiff that it was easier to stand on them.

In the churches the organ remained while inventors experimented with hand bellows, gas and water motors, wood and metal pipes, stops to ape the tone quality of almost every known instrument. Wheezy and unreliable were the small irreverently named "God boxes" once pumped by Senator James Couzens, President Richard Whitney of the New York Stock Exchange, Frank D. Waterman (fountain pens) and Will H. Hays, now members of Funnyman Chester Werntz ("Chet") Shafer's Guild of Former Pipe Organ Pumpers. Electricity wrought the change whereby fan-blowers automatically deliver the wind pressure and stop levers are wired to a complicated switchboard exchange.

Players of the 20th Century organ are either detested or greatly admired by other musicians: detested when, like many a cinemansion player, they concentrate on showing off each echo and effect; admired when like Yon they have mastered the instrument as a wealthy means of musical expression. In the past decade master organists have set a high mark in the U. S. Outstanding musicians among them are T. Tertius Noble of Manhattan's St. Thomas' Church; Harold Vincent Milligan who plays privately for John Davison Rockefeller Jr. and publicly at his Riverside Church; Palmer Christian, a great concert organist with headquarters at the University of Michigan; Firmin Swinnen who plays for Pierre du Pont and at the University of Delaware; Leo Sowerby, the orchestral composer who plays at St. James's, Chicago; Arthur Poister, young and expert Bach interpreter, at the University of Redlands; Archie Gibson who is Charles M. Schwab's private organist; Harold Gleason of Rochester, N. Y., who used to play for the late George Eastman: and Alexander Russell of Princeton who supervises music for the Wanamaker stores where such famed Frenchmen as Charles-Marie Widor, Marcel Dupre and blind Louise Vierne have played.

In Wanamaker's Philadelphia store three times a day sounds music from the world's biggest active organ, an enlargement of the 10,040-pipe instrument which Art Organ Co. of Los Angeles exhibited at the St. Louis World's Fair in 1903. Atlantic City claims to have done a bigger job (32,882 pipes) for its Convention Hall. But the Atlantic City monster, though completed in December, 1932, has never been played publicly.

Of the leading organ manufacturers. Skinner and Kilgen have supplied most of the best church instruments. Skinner organs are in St. Thomas', Manhattan; in St. Bartholomew's where blond-mopped Leopold Stokowski played before he turned conductor; in Trinity Church, Boston; in the Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco. Kilgens are in St. Patrick's and Carnegie Hall, Manhattan; in St. Francis Xavier's Church in St. Louis, Mo.; in St. Paul's Methodist Church, Houston, Tex. Now building is a $55,000 organ for Father Coughlin's church in Royal Oak, Mich.

Aeolian, connected now with Skinner, has built many house organs. Aeolian-owners are William K. Vanderbilt, Edsel Ford, Andrew Mellon, the John D. Rockefellers, father and son, Felix M. Warburg and Pierre du Pont whose conservatory near Wilmington has a cubic content equal to three European cathedrals. Fast expanding Wurlitzer sells chiefly to theatres. At the Wurlitzer in the Manhattan Paramount, Jesse ("Poet of the Organ'') Crawford popularized the organ croon by slithering from one note to the next. Mrs. Jesse Crawford, who often accompanies her husband at a second console, wears her dress trimmings backwards for the benefit of audiences which rarely see her face front.

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