Words by Dr Saskia Murk Jansen

Preparatory work on the renovation of the organ had started in 2016 with a series of consultations with previous organ scholars and others in the organ world to establish the good and bad points of the Peterhouse organ and how best to commission a firm to work on it. As the instrument is privately owned and in a private chapel we did not have to follow the rules governing parish churches so we consulted widely to learn from the experience of others. Two clear pieces of advice emerged – delay the appointment of an organ consultant for as long as possible and appoint them on the basis of their skills set rather than their reputation or experience. We were also strongly recommended to visit any other instruments for which potential organ advisers had been responsible as it was highly likely that our instrument would end up being similar.

With the advice and encouragement of a wide range of consultees we drew up a list of possible organ builders and drafted a briefing document outlining the challenge we faced and the College’s requirements of the finished instrument. We were fortunate that this stage of the process coincided with an international conference of organ builders in London so most of those to whom we wrote were able to come and visit the College. As a result we had seven submissions from some of the best organ builders in the world. It was at this stage that we decided to appoint organ advisers to help us draw up a shortlist.

After further consultation, we decided to appoint two organ advisers with complementary skills sets and were delighted when Catherine Ennis (organist at St Lawrence Jewry in the City of London, renowned concert organist and teacher and previously President of the Royal College of Organists) and Ashley Grote (Master of Music at Norwich Cathedral with a strong background in the choral tradition of Anglican worship) accepted our invitation. With their help we analysed the submissions and drew up a short-list. We subsequently also engaged Nicholas Thistlethwaite to be our historical adviser.

An important factor for the College was that the restoration should proceed in the spirit of the original donor’s intention, namely that we should have an outstanding organ not merely a serviceable one – if possible recapturing the brilliance of tone that had prompted the original commission. The challenge would be to combine the respectful restoration of the Snetzler pipework and the recreation of his sound world with the need to have an instrument that would play with ease the 19th and 20th century English Romantic choral music that accompany our services. Unsurprisingly, the submissions we received tended to prioritise solving one half of the challenge over the other. It was Catherine Ennis who suggested bringing together two of the shortlisted companies to discuss the challenge in more detail to see whether we could come up with an idea of what the optimum solution might look like.

Accordingly we invited Philipp Klais of Orgelbau Klais and Erik Winkel of Flentrop Orgelbouw to a meeting in College. It was at that meeting that the idea of having two consoles – one playing only the Snetzler pipes the other with access to additional pipes – emerged. In the course of the discussions, the two organ builders expressed enthusiasm for collaborating on the project so we invited them to submit a joint bid, which we accepted. When it became clear that the Snetzler console would be restored to its original size Professor Calladine revealed that he had the original doors in his garage! When the console had been extended by Mander in the 1960s the doors were surplus to requirements so he had rescued them and stored them in his garage. Klais and Flentrop were delighted with the prospect of restoring them to their rightful place and condition.

Around this time Ashley Grote resigned because Norwich Cathedral was about to embark on a major restoration of their organ. His place was taken by Dr Simon Jackson, the organist of Little St Mary’s and recently appointed the College’s Director of Music.

In October 2019 the organ builders and the advisers undertook a research tour of other Snetzler instruments, including the chamber organ at Clare College and larger organs in parish churches in East Anglia. Then in January 2020, the organ was dismantled and taken to the Flentrop workshops just before the COVID pandemic struck Europe. Work on the organ was hampered as countries went into lockdown and borders were closed and our discussions had to take place on Zoom.

Our application for faculty to undertake the work included the provision that we would make changes if our research warranted it. Thus it was that shortly after the organ was dismantled our initial plan to have the bellows outside the organ and the second console on the north side had to be revisited. The sides of the lower organ case, which had been thought to be Victorian, turned out to be original Snetzler and the two slots for the manual handles to pump the bellows showed unambiguously that the bellows had originally been inside the case on the north side.

This discovery was important for the design of the instrument in a number of ways. The winding of an organ is integral to its character and the way it sounds. Having the bellows inside the case meant that the wind ducts were much shorter and this would have contributed to the immediacy of the sound and the playing experience. It was no longer possible to position the second console on the north side because the bellows and the pumping handles took up the available space. Nor, now we knew that the case was original, could we simply cut a hole in it to accommodate the tracker action of the second console.

Research had already confirmed that Snetzler had always used balanced key action rather than suspended key action. Balanced key action takes up significantly more space, so a resolution had to be found to enable both consoles to have the original action. It was at this critical stage of the process that we learned with great sadness of the death of Catherine Ennis who had steered the project hitherto with such vision and insight. Our decision to be led by research caused us to revisit the design on numerous occasions and we were most grateful to Andrew McIntyre (m. 1974) for taking over the chairmanship of the committee at this time and steering the project to a satisfactory conclusion.

The second console had to move to the south side of the instrument and it was agreed to raise the organ slightly to allow the tracker action to pass underneath the Snetzler case. To ensure that the organ would look the same from the floor of the Chapel, it had to be moved slightly to the west. As a result we were not able to open quite as much of the oculus as we had originally hoped. In addition, there was significantly less room on the south side of the organ for the second console so the route from one console to the other would now involve both sets of stairs. We alerted maintenance to the importance of eradicating all creaks!

With the loss of Catherine Ennis we had lost the important voice of a top ranking teacher and concert performer in our deliberations so we were very pleased when David Graham, Professor in charge of Organ at the Royal College of Music, accepted our invitation to join the committee. He drew our attention to the three key aspects that determine the character of an organ – wind, pitch and temperament. If we wished the organ to return to something of the character of Snetzler’s original then these were the elements on which we should focus our attention. The decision to bring the bellows into the case and to reduce the wind pressure would bring us closer to the character of Snetzler’s organ – the question remained of the pitch and the temperament.

As the builders started work on the Snetzler pipes it had become clear that all the pipes had been shortened. However, other parameters that determine the sound such as the cut ups, the soldered caps of the chimney flutes and the windways had remarkably been preserved. That fact made a reconstruction of the Snetzler sound possible – by lengthening the pipes, keeping the voicing adjustments limited to pipes that did not sound well for whatever reason, and reconstructing the wind and the pipes’ position on the soundboards. Although the bodies of all the chimney pipes had remained unaltered, all the chimneys had been shortened – some to less than 25% of their original length! By gradually reducing the wind pressure the builders identified the sweet spot at which the unaltered chimney pipes sounded best – the pitch of A425. This happens also to be close to the pitch of a tuning fork reputed to have belonged to Handel, so almost contemporary with our organ.

In April of 2023 the organ had been partially built in the Flentrop workshop closest to the Chapel in size so we went over to listen to the pitch. A few ranks had been tuned to the modern pitch of A440Hz. A few others had been tuned to A425Hz. The voicers played both sets of pipes for us and it immediately became clear that the sound of the pipes at A425 had much more character and subtlety of tone than at A440. At that same meeting we agreed to a benign unequal temperament – Young or Valotti. In Easter Term Dr Simon Jackson experimented with the electronic organ we had been using in Chapel while the pipe organ was away and established that the choir had little difficulty adapting to either the lower pitch or the temperament. After some experimentation and further discussion, it was agreed to go with Valotti.

THE ORGAN LOFT

The new design for the organ would bring it closer to its original footprint and enable us to open up the oculus in the antechapel. Research established that the central panelling of the ceiling is no older than 1884 and parts of it could be 20th century. The oculus was presumably closed in by Hill when the organ was extended, making the antechapel very dark indeed. As already mentioned, we were not able to open the oculus as far as we had originally hoped, because of having to move the organ towards the west window but the opening has made a significant difference to the light in the antechapel and has further helped to reduce the gloom of the Chapel.

We took the opportunity of strengthening the organ loft to accommodate the organ on its return to undertake a thorough examination of the screen and the organ loft itself and to commission a dendrochronological study of the timbers in the hope of learning more about how and when the organ loft was built.

Research was able to confirm that the position of the antechapel screen has remained constant since its original construction. It also established that the corners of the west stalls and the canopy where they join the north and south stalls have remained undisturbed so that the screen defines the original layout of the chapel. The current stairs on both sides of the antechapel are Victorian, replacing an earlier stair that may have dated from the 1765 introduction of the Snetzler organ and the reordering of the gallery at that time or possibly earlier. The largely original panelling that forms the north and south antechapel walls was moved and adapted to accommodate the stairs at this time. It therefore appears that access to the upper gallery was originally from the doors to the adjacent buildings – the first cloisters were built in 1633 and were then rebuilt in 1709 (N) and 1711 (S).

The 1630s scheme for the gallery was comprehensively changed in 1765 to create more space for the Snetzler organ. In addition, there was further major work to the loft floor in the 19th century. The gallery balustrades are a jumble of 1630’s panelling and tracery with many 18th century additions. On the tracery the very neat undercutting and accurate planing of the back of the timber on the later work stands out clearly from the 17th century elements. The screws holding the ironwork that reinforces the balustrade largely date from around the Snetzler period. It was agreed to replace the central section of the tracery as part of the work before the return of the organ.

DENDROCHRONOLOGY

In 2020, timbers in the screen and organ loft were assessed with a variety of species being found. Many timbers had too few rings to be useful for dendrochronology, so samples were taken from just eight timbers. A pine beam at the front (east) of the loft was found to have come from a tree felled in Scandinavia between 1628–30, and a second pine beam on the south side of the loft floor was from a tree felled in the winter of 1626/7. Imported pine was usually used within a year or two of felling, so these almost certainly correspond to the original build of the chapel. Interestingly, this is amongst the earliest structural imported pine yet found in England.

A stud in the rear wall of the candle store was found to have come from an oak tree felled in the very early spring of 1581. It seems likely this was a piece of re-used or stock-piled timber. It was also determined that a large upper beam on the south side of the loft came from an oak felled in the period 1638–42. This strongly suggests that it is original to the loft floor, which may therefore have been constructed shortly after the completion of the main masonry structure of the Chapel.

CONCLUSION

With the rest of the work complete, in July 2023 the organ was returned to the College, bringing to a close this phase of the restoration of the Chapel. Other plans for the Chapel remain – to return the wood around the altar to its original colour and possibly enhancing the carving with gilding as shown in some of the early engravings.

Over the summer the instrument was voiced by a team of voicers from Flentrop and Klais. The organ was then played during Michaelmas while it settled into the climatic conditions of the Chapel and the organ builders continued to monitor and optimize the mechanics ahead of the inaugural concert in January 2024, followed by an organ recital series in Lent Term to showcase the delights of this restored instrument which we hope will continue to bring joy to generations of Petreans and guests yet to come.