While other 8-year-old boys were falling in love with cap guns, flea-bitten mutts or freckle-faced girls with pigtails, John Brombaugh was smitten by the sounds of an old church organ. Sometimes it sounded like thunder, rumbling across the pews. Other times, the music rose like winged angels, singing praise.

John Brombaugh's "voicing" or tuning of each handmade organ pipe required concentration and great care. In the hands of one less experienced, a small error could spoil the sound the pipe produced. View slideshow of images

Photo/Brombaugh & Associates

The boy eyed the organ's carved wooden case, multiple keyboards and gleaming pipes, longing to know their secrets. By the time he learned, years later, he would become world-famous for building instruments whose beautiful voices -- like those of Europe's finest historic instruments -- will last for hundreds of years.

Churches, universities and concert halls in 22 U.S. states, Canada, Sweden and Japan proudly display Brombaugh's work today. His organ in Toyota City, Japan, boasts nearly 4,000 pipes and is similar to Cincinnati Music Hall's original 19th century organ, the master builder says.

Because Brombaugh, Eng '60, originally thought his future might be in electrically powered organs, he entered the University of Cincinnati's electrical engineering program. "Coming to the university was definitely one of the most important decisions I ever made," he confirms.

"My education at UC played a very important role in my work as a pipe organ builder, even though one doesn't see much electrical engineering in the type of old fashioned pipe organs I have been making for the past 37 years," he laughs. "But I learned so much common sense from professors Engelmann and Osterbrock and others on the EE staff."

While living on campus in French dorm, Brombaugh listened to recordings of organist E. Power Biggs playing European pipe organs built in the time of Johann Sebastian Bach. The sound seemed somehow familiar.

"The old instruments sounded so wonderful to me," he says, "a lot more musical than organs that are electrically powered. The historic European organs had the same type of internal mechanical action that  our old church organ did."

Even though he loved the sound of historic organ music, Brombaugh accepted a job with Cincinnati's Baldwin Piano after graduation. It wasn't his "dream job," but he had an amazing year, directing several research projects and winning seven patents. Then he headed off to graduate school with his bride, Christa Poppe Brombaugh, att. '61. His thesis research? "Organ-pipe sound."

Brombaugh finally decided to go for it: He would build modern pipe organs with traditional inner works. First, he apprenticed himself to master builders Noack and Fisk in Boston for three and a half years. Next, he and his family went to Hamburg, Germany, where he worked as a journeyman with master builder Rudolph von Beckerath.

"This was a wonderful experience," he says. "It forced me to learn German -- the language of most organ-building literature -- and it gave me an opportunity to visit historic organs I had heard years before on the Biggs recordings."

While still an apprentice, Brombaugh built a small pipe organ. It so impressed a professor from Oberlin Conservatory of Music that he asked the young craftsman to build one for his church in Lorain, Ohio. Brombaugh quickly agreed.

The family -- John, Christa and three children -- returned to Ohio where "John Brombaugh & Associates" opened in 1968. It thrived because his instruments were beautiful to hear and see. For example, the metal organ pipes were custom-made, according to Brombaugh's formula: 98 percent lead with 2 percent tin, bismuth, copper and antimony. The metal was cast as sheets, hammered for tone and soldered into cylinders.

"Perhaps the most important thing my work did was to recover a lot of the art of those ancient organs made in the time before Bach," the alumnus says. In late 2006, Brombaugh was honored by the Eastman School of Music, which presented a symposium on his work, as one of two prominent 20th century American organ builders.

Since turning 70, Brombaugh has given up building instruments, but plans to continue his research, writing and consulting about historic organs. Dutch, Italian and Polish restoration teams have already approached him for advice.

"It seems," he muses, "that I will always have something interesting to do."

 

Updated news

John Brombaugh's recent project is on one what he considers the "most significatn organ" in the world -- built in 1551 in Germany and used by Johann Sebastian  Bach's organ teacher.

Photo/Brombaugh & Associates

Since the interview for UC Magazine, John Brombaugh was chosen to design a new organ for the renowned German music conservatory, the Hochschule für Musik in Bremen. "It's the equivalent in north Germany to the College-Conservatory of Music, which has made Cincinnati and UC so famous," he writes.

"Beyond that, however, an even more important project was decided. I will be working with two European experts to do a thorough documentation of the organ built in 1551 for the Johanniskirche (St. Johannis Church) in Lüneburg, Germany. It's an organ I would consider the absolutely most significant organ that is still partially extant in northern Europe.

"I have been asked to help document the present condition of the Niehoff organ so it can be restored as much as possible to its premier condition following alterations of 1714. You could put this in a category similar to the recent 'improvements' made to restore the original appearance of Michelangelo's unbelievable frescoes in the Vatican's Sistine Chapel.

"This great organ, I dare say, is not exceeded in magnificence for its time in all of northern Europe, and this project is important to what great organs will be into the future.

"It is also important because Johann Sebastian Bach lived in Lüneburg for three of his teenage years between 1700 and 1703 and studied with the organist, Georg Böhm, who was the organist on the Lüneburg Johanniskirche organ. 

"Finally, just this morning I had a phone call from Austria to participate in the restoration of a historic instrument in Linz.

"I am happy that retirement is nothing but a joke and that I still get to work every day on the things my study at UC helped me do so well."

 

RELATED STORIES

Details of the work to be done in Lüneburg.

Story on Brombaugh in "The Lutheran"

LINKS

Brombaugh's work on an organ in Eugene, Ore.

Wikipedia entry on Brombaugh