From HARPER'S WEEKLY, DECEMBER 12, 1863, pages 795 & 796.
 
THE GREAT BOSTON ORGAN. 

WE publish on page 788 an illustration (taken from the photograph in the 
possession of the artists, Gustave Herter & Brother, of this city) of the great 
Boston organ, regarding which public curiosity has been so excited. 

Our space will not permit us to give more than extracts from the most reliable
authors, describing the instrument itself with its house and the different
parts; but these will be sufficient, with the illustration, to convey a just 
idea of the grand proportions of this truly wonderful achievement in mechanism 
and art. The originator of the great work has justly earned the first place in 
the history of the great organs. We extract from Professor Holmes's fine 
tribute to him: 

It is mainly to the persistent labors of a single individual that our community 
is indebted for the privilege it now enjoys in possessing an instrument of the 
supreme order such as make cities illustrious by their presence. That which is 
on the lips of all can wrong no personal susceptibilities to tell in print; and when we say that Boston owes the great organ chiefly to the personal efforts of 
Dr. J. Baxter Upham, the statement is only for the information of distant readers. 

The result of two voyages to Europe, undertaken by Dr. Upham expressly for the 
purpose of examining the most famous organs and organ-factories of Germany, 
Holland, France, Switzerland, and Great Britain, was the contract with 
Freidrich Walcker of Ludwigsberg, Kingdom of Wurtemberg (to whom Europe is 
indebted for the noblest specimens of these instruments), for building the 
great instrument that was so enthusiastically looked upon and listened to on 
the night of November 2. 

The following description will be read with interest: 

The great organ is a choir of nearly 6000 vocal throats. Its largest wind-pipes 
are 32 feet in length, and a man can crawl through them. Its finest tubes are 
too small for a baby's whistle. Eighty-nine stops produce the various changes 
and combinations of which its immense orchestra is capable, from the purest 
solo of a singing nun to the loudest chorus, in which all its groups of voices 
have their part in the full flow of its harmonies. Four manuals, or hand 
key-boards, and two pedals, or foot key-boards command these several 
systems—the solo organ, the choir organ, the swell organ, the great organ, and 
the piano-forte organ. Twelve pairs of bellows, moved by water-power derived 
from the Cochituate reservoir, furnish the breath which pours itself forth in 
music. Those beautiful effects, for which the organ is incomparable, the 
crescendo and diminuendo, the gradal rise of sound from the lowest murmur to 
the loudest blast, and the dying fall by which it steals gently back into 
silence, the dissolving views, so to speak, of harmony, are not only provided 
for in the swell organ, but may be obtained by special adjustments from the 
several systems of pipes and from the entire instrument. In absolute power and 
compass the Music Hall organ ranks among the three or four mightiest 
instruments ever built. In the perfection of all its parts, and in its whole 
arrangements, it challenges comparison with any the world can show. We take our 
stand, we will suppose, in the upper balcony, near the Apollo, and confront the 
organ. We see what we have been accustomed to hear called, in our familiarity 
with smaller instruments, the case of the organ. 

An instrument which in itself combines eighty or ninety instruments (stops, 
registers) though all their compass with nearly six thousand pipes or voices, 
with all the mechanism for reaching, breathing through, and sounding each or 
all of these at will, for blending them in chords, combining then in larger 
groups or choirs, contrasting them in pitch, etc., with all its curious 
contrivances for lightening the touch, swelling and diminishing the sound, 
rolling up a mountainous crescendo of stop upon stop, from a single softest one 
to the full force of them all; such an instrument is not to be put into a case, 
but, being built up in the grand proportions of a temple, it has its house 
built around it. In a noble instance like the present, where an artistic 
inspiration, a unity of idea, a sense of vital correspondence of the inward and 
outward presides over and pervades all, the house or outward temple seems 
rather to have grown up with that which it both hides and reveals, to have 
risen in its symmetry and grandeur to the music (heard by a fine inner sense) 
of the organ soul. Nor does the term house do sufficient justice to the 
beautiful design before us. It is in some sense the body of the organ, the 
outward visible embodiment of its interiors. Not, to be sure, like the animal 
or human body, itself composed of organs; but the body of the idea of the 
organ, the shadowing forth by correspondence of its co-working inner parts and 
uses, the typifying of all its history and prophecy, as music itself typifies 
the whole course and prophecy of life. 


The structure is of black walnut, and is covered with carved statues, busts, 
masks, and figures in the boldest relief. In the centre a richly ornamented 
arch contains the niche for the key-boards and stops. A colossal mask of a 
singing woman looks from over its summit. The pediment above is surmounted by 
the bust of Johann Sebastian Bach. Behind this rises the lofty central division 
containing pipes; and crowning it is a beautiful sitting statue of St. Cecilia, 
holding her lyre. On each side of her a griffin sits as a guardian. This centre 
is connected by harp-shaped compartments filled with pipes to the two great 
round towers, one on each side, and each containing three colossal pipes. These 
magnificent towers come boldly forward into the hall, being the most prominent 
as they are the highest and stateliest part of the facade. At the base of each, 
a gigantic half-caryatid, in the style of the ancient hermae, but finished to 
the waist, bends beneath the superincumbent weight, like Atlas under the globe. 
These figures are of wonderful force, the muscular development excessive, but 
in keeping with their superhuman task. At each side of the base, two 
lion-hermae share in the task of the giant. Over the base rises the round 
pillars which support the dome, and inclose the three great pipes already 
mentioned. Graceful as these look in their positions, half a dozen men might 
creep into one of them and be hidden. The three great pipes are crowned by a 
heavily sculptured, ribbed rounded dome; and this surmounted on each side by 
two cherubs, whose heads almost touch the lofty ceiling. This whole portion of 
the sculpture is of eminent beauty. All the reliefs that run around the lower 
portion of the dome are of singular richness. 

The whole base of the instrument, in the intervals of the figures described, is 
also covered with elaborate carvings. Groups of musical instruments, standing 
out almost detached from the back-ground, occupy the panels. Ancient and 
modern, clustered with careless grace and quaint variety, from the violin down 
to a string of sleigh-bells, they call up all the echoes of forgotten music, 
such as the thousand-tongued organ blends together in one grand harmony. As we 
return to the impression produced by the grand facade, we are more and more 
struck with the subtle art displayed in its adaptations and symbolisms. Never 
did any structure we have looked upon so fully justify Madame de Stael's 
definition of architecture—"frozen music." 

The outermost towers, their pillars and domes, are all square, their outlines 
thus passing without too sudden transition from the sharp square angles of the 
vaulted ceiling, and the rectangular lines of the walls of the Hall itself, 
into the more central parts of the instrument, where a smoother harmony of 
outline is predominant. For in the great towers, which step forward, as it 
were, to represent the meaning of the entire structure, the lines are all 
curved, as if the slight discords which give sharpness and variety to its less 
vital portions were all resolved as we approach its throbbing heart. And again, 
the half-fantastic repetition of musical forms in the principal outlines —the 
lyre-like shape of the bases of the great towers, the harp-like figure of the 
connecting wings, the clustering reeds of the columns—fill the mind with 
musical suggestions, and dispose the wondering spectator to become the 
entranced listener. Dr. Upham thus officially reports of the organ-house find 
its artist-builders: In regard to the architectural form and enshrinement of 
the instrument I have time to say but a word. This part of the work the 
directors approached with no little diffidence and doubt. 

No structure of the kind that could be found in Europe appeared to meet the 
somewhat anomalous position that was to be occupied. It was only after months 
and years of patient effort and trial that the present fitting habitation for 
so noble an instrument could be obtained. The germ of the structure is a design 
by Hammatt Billings. His were the outlines of general form and proportion. But 
in its present embodiment, if we except the cherubs on the tops of the high 
towers, the germ alone remains. The finally adopted plan, in all its artistic 
and elaborate beauty and grandeur, belongs to the brothers Gustave and 
Christian Herter, of New York, whose designs, when submitted to Mr. Billings, 
were pronounced by him, with characteristic frankness and unselfishness, to be 
superior to his own, and urged upon the acceptance of the committee. It is 
impossible to speak in terms of too high praise of the care, attention, and 
conscientious application on the part of Mr. Herter himself and all in his 
employ to the work during the two years and more of its construction.—Be it the 
artist (who in the person of Christian Herter is with us to-night), from whose 
brain leaped forth, Minerva-like, the finest forms of human and ideal things, 
or the sculptor by whose cunning these were stiffened into shape and fixed in 
the willing wood—the modelers in clay and plaster—the carvers, carpenters, and 
finishers—all labored with one mind toward the perfect result. 

The inauguration of the great organ was most imposing ceremonial.