In this month’s blog, our friend Kevin Vogt — lecturer in organ and church music at the University of Kansas and director of worship and sacred arts at St. Michael the Archangel Parish in Leawood, Kansas—shares his insights into the Benedictine tradition of pipe organ building and why Saint John’s Abbey is a logical place to continue this storied tradition.

The planned organ studio at Saint John’s Abbey will be a fully-functioning organ shop, building pipe organs from raw materials of wood and metal, using traditional methods employed in building the greatest historical organs and those of the finest contemporary organ builders. Benedictine monks have been building pipe organs since at least the early 9th Century. The evangelization of Europe was in no small measure the result of monks practicing and teaching not only literary arts and chanting, but bronze-casting, paint-mixing, glass-making, silver-chasing, ivory-carving, wood-working . . . and organ-building. As it is in the current Abbey Woodworking shop, these arts and crafts were often the collaboration of monastic and lay artisans, teaching and learning together in the daily round of work and prayer. This passing-on of accumulated learning and skill gave rise to the medieval guild system with its ranks of apprentices, journeymen and masters. As a “school” for artisan organ builders, Saint John’s Abbey will not only employ master and journeyman organ builders, but will actively cultivate apprentices to ensure the continuation of the art, and the care of cultural treasures at home and across North America.

A Benedictine Tradition

While there are gaps in the Benedictine organ building tradition, particularly during the periods of the Cluniac and Cistercian reforms, there is early evidence of robust Benedictine organ building first in England, and then in the German speaking regions around Lake Constance—in Bavaria, Switzerland, and Austria—where Benedictine houses flourished for centuries. The apex of this tradition occurred in the later days of the Grand siècle before the French Revolution, centered in Upper Swabia and further North in France. South German masters Joseph Gabler (1700- 1771), Karl Joseph Riepp (1710-1775), and Johann Nepomuk Holzhey (1741- 1809) all enjoyed associations with several Benedictine abbeys. Riepp himself learned the art of organ building from Christoph Vogt, O.S.B., a monk of Ottobeuren Abbey. The most famous Benedictine organ builder was Dom Bédos De Celles, O.S.B. (1709-1779), a monk of the Benedictine Congregation of Saint Maur. His renown is primarily due to his monumental treatise, The Art of Organ Building (1766-78), which influenced subsequent generations of organ builders throughout Europe and remains the most important compendium of traditional organ building methods today.

Saint John’s Abbey has participated in this venerable tradition in several notable ways, among them the commissioning of a landmark instrument by organ-building pioneer Walter Holtcamp, Sr., installed in the new Abbey Church in 1961. An actual Abbey organ building venture has been prefigured under the influence of Br. Hubert Schneider, O.S.B., of Abbey woodworking, and by local organ builder and SJU alumnus K.C. Marrin who has built many fine tracker organs in a traditional manner. Marrin’s organs grace several churches in the area, including St. Mary’s Cathedral in nearby St. Cloud, Minnesota.

Continuing the Tradition

Saint John’s Abbey Woodworking made a formal foray into the art of organ building when it collaborated with world renown organ builder Martin Pasi in making the largest wooden bass pipes for Pasi’s monumental expansion of the Abbey’s organ in 2019. The new additions to the organ both fulfill the original vision for the organ and elevate its artistic aspirations through the maturation over six decades of the ideals proposed by Walter Holtkamp in his original abbey organ. The work of Martin Pasi and his peers represents the full flowering of the values espoused by Holtkamp and other leaders of the 20th-century “organ reform,” tying even more perfectly the organ culture surrounding Saint John’s Abbey to a Benedictine tradition of organ art that reaches back in time more than a millennium.

Martin Pasi is a native of Austria and a citizen of the United States. He builds world-class pipe organs in an oldworld style—one at a time, every part by hand—in his small shop of artisans in the shadow of Mt. Rainier just outside of Tacoma, Washington. Martin fell in love with the sound of the organ as a young altar boy in his hometown of Bregenz on the eastern shore of Lake Constance, in a region full of Benedictine abbeys and historic organs. He learned the many crafts that make up the art of organ building at Rieger Orgelbau, a well-known Austrian organ-building firm, as well as at the organ-building school in Ludwigsburg, Germany. He traveled all over the world “voicing” Rieger organs before settling in North America, where he gained renown as an expert pipe maker and voicer. He has earned the esteem of the best of his peers and the admiration of organists worldwide. Young organ builders have come from all over the world through the years to learn from him in the traditional way, working alongside the master. Since completing his landmark cathedral organ in Omaha in 2003, Martin Pasi has received several important commissions from Catholic institutions, including Houston’s Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart (2010), St. John’s Abbey (2020), and The Athenaeum of Ohio/Mount Saint Mary’s Seminary in Cincinnati (2022). At the apex of his career and the height of his creative powers, and with frequent inquiries for potential contracts still coming, Martin Pasi is thinking about the future, about how to hand on the legacy he has received and serenely cultivated over the course of a career that has really been a vocation.

Dying and Rising to New Life

Inspired by the witness and life of the Abbey community, and its conservation of the “arts of the making” and its stewardship of natural resources, Martin Pasi proposes to lay to peaceful rest the work of his firm, Pasi Organ Builders, and to give over his creativity and professional reputation to the mission of Saint John’s Abbey. He wishes to incorporate the tools and machinery of his well-appointed shop with the resources of the Abbey workshops. “My tools are used to working together,” he says, “and they should stay together.” As founding artistic director, he will devote the rest of his career to seeing that the organ building work as well as the apprenticeship of future organ builders is set on a solid footing for the future. Organ building at Saint John’s Abbey looks forward to a deep relationship with the monastic community, and synergistic collaborations with local and regional churches, and especially with the various schools and academic programs associated with the Abbey, reforming the created world to resound the praise of God

Postscript - Projects in the shop this winter have ranged from the steady building of bookcases for the new dormitories on campus (which are replacing the Seton Apartment earth homes), to repairing the bakery countertop (it kneaded to be done) and completing additional cabinets to hold Heritage Editions of the Saint John’s Bible. Master Craftsman Rob Lillard recently completed a commission for several fold-down tables inspired by those used in discovery expeditions during 18th century America.

Why Build Organs in Collegeville?