Organ wizard restoring Cathedral's grandiose instrument
Oct. 2—Thousands of parts ranging from minuscule to enormous comprise the workings of the resplendent pipe organ inside the Scottish Rite Cathedral, and Robert Copeland is meticulously cleaning, fixing and restoring every button, stop, peg, pipe, key and pedal of it.
Copeland, 75, an organ master and virtuoso who lives in Jeanette, Westmoreland County, has been commissioned by the Cathedral Foundation to refurbish its one-of-a-kind 1927 Moller player pipe organ.
The organ was built inside the cathedral auditorium in 1927 by M.P. Möller of Hagerstown, Maryland, and boasts 3,775 pipes, 62 ranks, seven divisions, four keyboards or manuals, 57 stops and 84 registers. The largest pipe stands 32 feet tall and is the lowest bass sound. The smallest is only a few inches long.
Its console elevates from below the main floor for playing and retracts back into the floor where it can be hidden. Its keyboards have genuine ivory and ebony keys.
The historic organ was dedicated in honor of its donor, George Greer, who with Charles Greer was a co-founder of New Castle's tin mill. It was one of two "player" types ever built, enabling it to switch from manual to paper rolls. It's now believed to be the only player pipe organ left in the world.
A blower with a motor built under a 1915 patent is housed in an upstairs room and when the organ is being played blows 3,500 cubic feet of air per minute while dividing the air flow to the pipes located behind two grills on both sides of the stage in the upper auditorium. The grills are decorated with rose Croix covers. The organ's volume is controlled by louvres.
Copeland as part of his restoration work climbs three flights of steps to the area where the four-story-tall pipe is flanked by other giant pipes in a row, descending in size. There are more tiny, intricate pipes and parts up there, and he knows every one of them. He climbs and squeezes between narrow walls and over dusty floors and ledges to access them. One can look out through the lattice on the grates housing it to see the vast auditorium below.
His ultimate goal is to repair the majestic instrument to where it will resonate its most premier and original full volume and sound, and he's well on his way.
In his second phase of work, the organ when at full volume even in its existing state of repairs floods the 2,800-seat auditorium and its two levels of balconies and vibrates the floor with a sound that would make anyone's heart swell.
A dinner concert staged in April to raise funds for the repairs drew about 125 attendees, who described the evening as one they would never forget. Copeland was one of two featured organists, along with virtuoso Michael Kearney of Monaca, Beaver County. The production was organized by James O. McKim Jr., a retired Mohawk music teacher and musical director who is heavily involved in The Cathedral's operations and has adopted the organ restoration and its fundraising as his passion.
Coming next is a Halloween event planned for Oct. 27 that will feature world-renowned pipe organ marvel David Wickerham playing the organ with a showing of the classic 1925 film, "Phantom of the Opera."
Some of the parts and areas under and inside of the organ console and upstairs in the room with the pipes have not been cleaned or restored since the organ was installed on site 98 years ago, Copeland said, but he is taking care of that with mops and scrub buckets and his sets of intricate cloths and tools.
"This work entails lots of leathering and lots of cleaning," he explained.
He has the console opened up, exposing the many inner parts that he explains while holding a flashlight. His knowledge of them and the way he delicately handles them and deftly cleans and replaces them demonstrate his wizardry.
"The console is what plays the organ," he said, pointing out, "This is all original."
Copeland's work also will include restoration of the player part of the organ, which has 48 paper rolls that have become brittle over time. That will be the third and upcoming phase of his work.
"When I started, you couldn't play it," he said. "It was squealing all over the place. There's been a lot of troubleshooting."
The first restoration phase started in 2022. He began in July that year, working until November, "getting rid of all of the squeals so I could play it." His work involved the key action, which called for a lot of re-leathering. He obtained the thin, fine leather hide for it from Suedeskin in Marietta, Pennsylvania and is continuing that work. He started the second phase in early August.
"An organ needs to be cleaned every eight years, but this organ has never been cleaned," he said, quipping, "If things go the way they should, I'll be here till they put me in my box."
He goes a few days a week to The Cathedral, where he can be found working for hours, as passionately and meticulously as a brain surgeon.
Copeland not only knows how to repair the historic instrument, he demonstrates his prowess and passion when he plays it in a grandiose, rich style as the sound reverberates through near-perfect acoustics throughout the concert hall.
"Do you want to hear a patriotic medley?" he asks. He sits down on the bench, his feet quickly and adeptly working the pedal notes as the sound of "Battle Hymn of the Republic," woven with "America" floods the vast room.
"He can't come here without playing it," commented McKim, who through his own musical background and connections discovered Copeland and the expertise he developed from a lifelong fascination with playing, repairing, tuning and restoring many grandiose pipe organs.
Copeland also has a pipe organ of his own at home — a 1927 3-manual Skinner console with five sets of pipes, which he said consumes a lot of room in his house.
Copeland was born in Charlottesville, Virginia, where his fire-in-the-belly passion for pipe organs was ignited.
"When I was between 9 and 11 years old, I knew I wanted to play the pipe organ," he said, having been enchanted by a Wurlitron Deluxe model pipe organ at a Methodist Church he was attending.
When he moved to Pittsburgh at a young age, he encountered Homer C. Wickline, a highly regarded composer, organist, pianist, teacher and accompanist who died in 1966. Copeland said Wickline told him, "I'll make an organist out of you."
He more than accomplished that mission.
Copeland became a self-employed organ master, having gained his knowledge of pipe organs through 10 years of apprenticeships, first under Pittsburgh Organ Services, then under a Moller installer, then an Austrian installer.
"I went out on my own in 1975. It's a wonderful art. I've had a vast variety to work on," he said, reciting the makes and models of various grandiose organs that far surpass most of the ones found in churches of today.
He has refurbished more than 1,500 pipe organs during his career, including the Aeolian organ at Central Baptist Church in Pittsburgh's Hill District, donated to the church by the Mellon family; the 1905 Möller organ at First Methodist Episcopal Church in Beaver Falls, purchased by Andrew Carnegie; and in 2008, the Skinner organ at Carnegie Music Hall in Oakland. He keeps a detailed scrapbook of his work on that piece.
Having lived in the city's East Liberty district, he remembers being awestruck by the organ at St. James AME Church, which had faces painted on the pipes.
Copeland is an organist for St. John's Harrold Reformed United Church of Christ in Greensburg, but he's had the honor of working on and playing many other palatial organs at churches in and around Pittsburgh.
He credits McKim for his conscientious upkeep of the Cathedral's organ and the desire to keep it operational and playable, commenting, "If you didn't have a person like Jim concerned for this, it wouldn't be here."
He also credits a higher power for landing him at the monumental Scottish Rite masonic building, providing him the opportunity to work his magic on such a magnificent instrument.
"The good Lord put me here," he said.
