The regal sound of the Aristide Cavaille-Coll organ reverberated off the walls and filled the worship space with heavenly music.
Normally, the only way to hear the organ was to travel to St. Etienne Abbey in Normandy, France, where the instrument has been housed since 1907.
But instead, each note was coaxed out of a console and keyboard inside the sanctuary of Greenwood United Methodist Church.
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“Normally, it’s in this great big stone abbey, not an A-frame wooden church from the 1960s in Indiana. But with this instrument, I can make it fit this space,” said Drew Worthen, music director at the church.
Worthen is the mastermind behind this uncommon organ. After three years of painstaking building and design, as well as many more years of research, he has constructed a digital organ that can virtually reconstruct the sounds of instruments from all over the world.
The device allows users to play some of the most famous organs in history, toggling between instruments, musical eras and styles simply by pushing a few buttons.
To showcase the dynamic nature of the instrument, Greenwood United Methodist Church will be hosting a free community concert at 4 p.m. Saturday, featuring four of the area’s finest artists performing music covering 400 years of organs and their music.
“No two pipe organs, anywhere in the world, are the same, even by the same builder. They’re made to fit a certain space, voiced to fit a particular building. They’re going to have their unique colors,” Worthen said.
The instrument’s versatility was evident on a recent weeknight at the church. Just minutes after Worthen was practicing using the deep, robust sound of the Cavaille-Coll organ, another musician used the instrument to play something from a completely different spectrum of music.
Justin Nimmo, an Indianapolis-based expert in organ restoration with Carlton Smith, sat down and loaded the sounds of the Paramount 341 Theater Organ. The music was jauntier and more colorful, more fitting for the movie theaters where the instrument was used than grandiose houses of worship.
The music was the type that locals might remember from the Paramount Music Palace in Indianapolis, a famed landmark open in the ‘80s and early ‘90s.
The digital organ is a project that Worthen has been working on for years. The endeavor stemmed from Greenwood United Methodist Church’s need for a new organ. The church’s existing electronic organ was more than 50 years old, so it was in need of replacement.
Pipe organs can be very expensive — around $250,000 or more — and did not seem like a wise investment for the church.
“As much as I would love to have one here, it seemed a bit unnecessary,” Worthen said.
Another option was to buy another electric or digital organ. But Worthen had a third idea. In addition to his role as music director, he works for a Sensory Technologies, which specializes in the realm of interactive and immersive technology.
Projects are custom designed to fit a wide array of needs for customers. So Worthen had the expertise to figure out a technological solution to the church’s organ problem.
“I’m around this technology every day, and I have my master’s degree in music from Butler. At some point, it dawned on me that I could take the two worlds and make something out of those two aspects,” he said.
The first step was research to see if a virtual pipe organ was even possible. Worthen learned that others had done it using specific software, though most of them were organists who wanted to practice in their own homes.
The idea of putting it in a church was something that really had not been done. Worthen started playing around with the software, creating a prototype and bringing it to Greenwood United Methodist Church to see if it would sound right.
“I wanted to see what the potential was and capacity was for this in a particular space, not just in someone’s living room,” he said. “I dragged what I called my ‘Franken-organ,’ just a whole bunch of stuff that I put together, and entertained some people from the congregation here to wake people up to the potential of what could be done. Everyone jumped on board.”
Worthen started building a legitimate digital organ that could be housed in the church. He used a custom American Guild of Organists four-keyboard console that he purchased from Olive Branch Christian Church in Indianapolis, which was rebuilt and redesigned to suit the project. Adding touchscreens on either side of the console allowed users to change tones, styles and individual instruments.
The organ uses a 56-channel audio system, as well as two custom-designed subwoofers capable of producing the lowest frequencies needed in pipe organ music. The goal was to ensure the organ sounded just like the famed pipe organs of Europe, only coming from a digital platform, Worthen said.
“The whole idea was to do it on a very financially responsible scale, but make it as authentic as humanly possible,” he said.
For the software to make the organ work, Worthen turned to existing program, the Hauptwerk Virtual Pipe Organ. The software allows for the ability to play historic organs from all over.
Sounds recorded pipe-by-pipe at these instruments have been loaded into the software, so that every note that can be played in churches in Germany or abbeys in France comes through.
“You can have thousands of different audio samples, just for that one instrument. That’s where all of the realism comes from,” Worthen said. “I have the ability to play a French organ or a Baroque German organ. I can play the instrument of the piece that I want to play.”
In addition to the Cavaille-Coll and Paramount theater organs, Greenwood United Methodist Church can access the sounds of the Gottfried Silbermann organ built in 1735 and located in St. Peter’s Church in Freiberg, Germany. Users can play the 1882 Aristide Cavaille-Coll from the St. Etienne Abbey in France, or the “Father” Henry Willis housed in Salisbury Cathedral in England.
Modern-built organs from Washington, Austria and Italy can also be loaded on the organ.
“You can play a digital recreation of that very instrument,” Worthen said. “What you’re playing is not a mass conglomeration, a gigantic organ of many different styles. You’re playing one specific organ. When you’re done with that, you can load another organ.”
From what Worthen can tell, the organ is the only one of its kind in Indiana, and maybe even in the entire region.
“The congregation trusted me to do this. I think they understand that this is for everyone’s mutual benefit, mine as well. I want an instrument that I want to come play and have fun on, but everybody else should get just as much satisfaction from this,” he said.
At the concert Saturday, the church has invited a quartet of organ specialists to perform. In addition to Nimmo, the concert will feature Marko Petricic, a music professor and organist with Northminster Presbyterian Church; John Allegar, organists from Second Presbyterian Church in Indianapolis, and Greg Gyllsdorff, organist from Trinity Episcopal Church in Chicago.
“Since I’ve been here, I’ve had this desire to have some musical culture roll through here. So we’re really opened the place up as best we can to different ensembles and other groups,” Worthen said. “We’re really excited about this concert.”
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Organ dedication concert
What: An organ program covering more than 400 years of organs and their music
When: 4 p.m. Saturday
Where: Greenwood United Methodist Church, 525 N. Madison Ave., Greenwood
Who: Marko Petricic, University of Indianapolis music professor and organist at Northminster Presbyterian Church, Indianapolis; John Allegar, organist at Second Presbyterian Church, Indianapolis; Greg Gyllsdorff, organist at Trinity Episcopal Church, Chicago; and Justin Nimmo, theater organist and expert in organ restoration.
Cost: Free and open to the public
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