Mabel Tainter Memorial Theatre
Menomonie, Wisconsin 

Observations on Mabel Tainter organ in Menomonie, WI

First off, Agnes Armstrong sure was right about the difficulties hearing it. It speaks way over your 
head into a stunningly gorgeous room which is, however, riddled with drapes and soft surfaces. I was 
absolutely stunned by the appearance of the room, which was just restored in the past year. I have 
never seen anything like it--gorgeous stencilling on the walls, boxes, beautiful Victorian drapes. . .

The organ, however, was a difficult installation from what I was told, because space had not been made 
for it originally, and it sounds *really* quiet. There is a Salicional and an Aeoline on the Swell 
that I did not use simply because you could not hear them, especially the Aeoline! The Salicional was 
about as quiet or a little more so than any other Aeoline I have heard, and I could not hear the 
Aeoline without really straining. Perhaps in the old days when there was much less noise and the organ 
was pumped with a water motor you could hear them, I don't know.

Speaking of the water motor, it's still there! So are the old bellows. Very interesting! I spent some 
time talking with the guy who maintains the instrument and he told me the organ was always underwinded, 
and I'd say judging from the appearance of the bellows which are still there, that had to be true. 
There are actually TWO blowers now because the first one was not large enough. Not that it's extra 
large, but there's not very much space to squeeze anything inside! It's pretty much crammed into a 
very small space.

At any rate, I have to say that the pedalboard did not give any trouble. Actually, I found it very 
comfortable. It's a straight, flat-ish pedalboard. I say flat-ish because it looks very slightly 
concave, but perhaps it's just the middle pedals are worn? It's not something that's obvious--you 
have to look to see it. The sharps are longer at the extremes and this made it very comfortable to 
play. I used the Stainer "hunt and peck" method at first but for a very short time. Something about 
the way it's placed makes it very comfortable to me, and I was even able to make lavish use of heels 
on it, even at the extremes. I wish I had had more time to look it over and analyze, but I had so much 
music to prepare I just did not take the time for stuff like that.

It was the MANUAL action that got me. I believe, perhaps, it is a bit (or a lot) uneven because of 
problems from the restoration of the room--the reason my recital was postponed last year was because 
the air conditioner was off during the restoration and the humidity caused all kinds of issues that 
had to be addressed. Perhaps the action was difficult before that, I don't know--perhaps Agnes would 
remember. But I will say that it was stiff to the extreme--more so than Round Lake, and DEEP to the 
point that I had to rework every piece on the program because I was misjudging intervals all over the 
place. I even had to refinger parts of the Rheinberger. If you've played his music, you know how wide 
the reaches can be, and in this case they were even wider because of the depth. It took days to adjust. 
I hope sometime they can get some major work done on the instrument and get that all taken care of. 
However, I do have to reiterate that I LOVED the pedalboard! I can't see why one could not play just 
about ANY late literature with toe-heel technique on that pedalboard. Perhaps not something like the 
Persichetti piece for pedals only, but then again, the pedalboard at Mabel Tainter is only 27 notes, 
so you wouldn't do it there anyhow. But I'm pretty sure Widor would not be a problem, and after all, 
he had a flat pedalboard.

All in all, the Mabel Tainter theater is a gorgeous, to me stunning, room definately worth visiting 
especially now after the refurbishment. The organ needs some TLC and will always suffer from issues 
it probably had from the very beginning because of the installation, and yet it did well in its way 
(it's just very mild and quiet) and my opinion would be that it should not be changed, but restored. 
If you like ghosts, all I can say is there's more stuff going on in that place than I've ever 
experienced anywhere before. It was a fascinating place to be, I'd love to play another instrument 
with a pedalboard like that, and I LOVED the people out there! (Including the ghosts. . .)

[Posted to PIPORG-L October 23, 2008.]