After 40 years of silence, historic pipe organ at St. Mary’s finally sings

NORFOLK — He slid onto the worn bench, hesitant. Fingers reached for the ivories, yellowed with age.

It’s been nearly 40 years since St. Mary’s majestic pipe organ fell silent. Even longer since Brandon Spence played it.

And while he was young back then, this massive instrument was already rich with yesterdays.

Installed in 1858 — a mechanical wonder with 1,750 pipes — it faltered in 1981, just a few years after Spence left his post as the downtown church’s organist.

He went off to pursue his music studies, a road that led to faraway places and a long list of advanced degrees. The organ slumbered in its spot below the steeple, gathering dust and debris behind its ornate façade.

After decades away, Spence has circled back. And the organ is in the process of being revived, part of $6.7 million restoration and renovation at the historic church.

Earlier this month, Spence came to visit his old friend. Specialists had been working on the organ for a month, but only about a third of its voice had so far been recovered.

He tugged on some knobs and hovered over the keys, a little nervous.

“It’s been a long time,” Spence said quietly.

At his touch, the organ exhaled.

Notes seemed to rise from the belly of the church, swelling, entwining, flooding across arches and marble and stained glass, enveloping this sacred space in lush waves of harmony.

An image comes to mind: Group hug in heaven.

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At the Basilica of Saint Mary of the Immaculate Conception, the view from the pews is deceiving: a few dozen stately pipes thrusting up from the balcony in the rear. The organist’s console sits at the foot, featuring rows of draw knobs, pedals and three levels of keyboards known as “manuals.”

Most of the organ is out of sight. Tucked inside three levels of the steeple and reached through a small side door: a shadowy forest of metal and wood pipes. Some are round, others square, ranging from pencil-size to a foot in diameter and 16 feet in length. It’s all connected and controlled by an elaborate, delicate-looking maze of slender wooden rods and rollers, linkages and levers, valves and wind chambers.

Space is tight but there’s enough room for an adult to squeeze through sections and scale a steep ladder between levels.

Pipe organs, with ancient origins, reigned for centuries as the most complex devices developed by man, up until the Industrial Revolution.

“Think of a big box of whistles,” said Otto Pebworth, one of the experts hired to make St. Mary’s sing again. “And this one is just gorgeous. Really special.”

It’s not the biggest — the largest can have 30,000-plus pipes. And it’s certainly not the oldest still playable. That title is claimed by one in Switzerland, circa 1400.

But it’s considered “a nationally significant instrument” according to the church’s file at the National Register of Historic Places. It’s one of the few of its era and class that remain largely intact and still housed in its original location.

Or what’s thought to be its original location. St. Mary’s is full of mysteries. No surprise they extend to its organ. This is the same church that made headlines in the past year after a puzzling tunnel and forgotten graves were unearthed beneath its floor.

Small tombstones have even been found inside the organ, used as weights to hold various parts down or prop others up.

“I have no idea why or when they wound up in here,” Pebworth said, “but one of them is from 1840.”

Official records are in short supply. The organ’s backstory has its own questions.

Church lore says it was custom-ordered when St. Mary’s was new — a grand instrument befitting the vaulted, Gothic-inspired structure completed in 1859 after fire destroyed its predecessor. A review of the organ’s debut compared its tones to “the solemn roll of thunder.”

A small plaque on the console is engraved with a maker’s mark: Ferris & Stuart Builders 1858 New York.

Richard Ferris and his half-brother Levi Stuart were distinguished names in the industry, when pipe organs were powered by giant hand-pumped bellows. St. Mary’s was the last organ Ferris assembled before his death.

But legends took root. Odd details don’t line up. Measurements buried deep inside the organ appear to be metric. Strange for an American-made product of its period.

One rumor says the organ was a gift from the government of France, bestowed upon a St. Mary’s priest for ministering to dying French sailors during Norfolk’s yellow fever epidemic.

Another story, found in an old church booklet, says that same priest bought the organ in Philadelphia, where the French were proudly displaying it at the International Exposition of 1851. Ferris and Stuart were merely hired to transport and re-erect.

Researchers have largely decided that neither legend pans out. The priest’s only reward from France was apparently a gold watch. And there was no expo in Philly in 1851.

Whatever. Restoration bids attracted specialists from across the country, who emerged from their inspections amazed.

“They all said the same thing,” said Father Jim Curran, who leads today’s flock. “‘You have no idea what you have here. It’s an astonishing piece of equipment.’”

Sound Organ Design of Virginia Beach landed the roughly $200,000 job. Pebworth, a pipe organ pro from Staunton, was hired for the hands-on. Test blowers were lugged in to see if the organ would still hold together under pressurized wind.

“We were worried it might blow apart,” Pebworth said. “But she came to life, and we couldn’t believe what we were hearing.”

Father Curran got word at home and rushed back to the church.

“It was glorious,” he said. “I’d never heard it play and most of our parishioners haven’t either. It was a sound that went right through my heart.”

Permanent blowers have since been installed and hissing holes sealed. Cleaning, tightening and tuning are on-going.

Organ lovers everywhere are “watching and excited about this project,” Pebworth said.

“It’s actually a blessing that it’s been sitting in a state of suspension. No one tried to ‘update’ it — that could’ve altered the tone. The basic mechanical core is in incredible shape. And the craftsmanship is just wonderful.”

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Pipe organs, the largest instruments played by a single person, can be “a bear,” Spence said.

No one at St. Mary’s knows how, and Spence can’t resume his old role. He’s got a full-time gig as music director at St. John’s in Virginia Beach, in addition to playing organ and harpsichord for the West Michigan Symphony.

Father Curran says St. Mary’s now-predominantly African-American parish only intends to use the pipe organ for special occasions anyway.

“We’re a gospel-oriented community and it’s a traditional sound,” he said. “We couldn’t survive on a steady diet of it. But when we want to, we’ll bring someone in. There are people out there who would love an opportunity to play that organ.”

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Spence said he always felt fortunate.

“I knew I had to be one of the luckiest kids anywhere to have such an instrument. It did great things for my playing technique.”

His reunion with the old organ was brief. At 64, the master found himself worried his hands could no longer do her justice. It takes unusual strength to properly work the keys. Coupled together in a multitude of variations, say church archives, they’re capable of producing a “tonal variety of over half a million notes.”

“I used to train with weights and squeeze balls to stay prepared,” Spence said. “And the last time I played it was 1978.”

But as the last note ebbed, he sat in reverence.

That, he said, “felt like coming home.”

Joanne Kimberlin, 757-446-2338, joanne.kimberlin@pilotonline.com