Ernest Skinner (1866-1960) was born in Clarion, Pennsylvania and was destined to become one of the most influential organ builders in the United States. Mr. Skinner worked for the George S. Hutchings Organ Company from 1889 to 1901. In February of of 1898 he traveled abroad to England, France and Holland. While in England he met "Father" Willis and was greatly impressed by the Willis organ at St. George's  Hall.

 In 1901 he struck out on his own to realize a dream of making the pipe organ more expressive, like orchestral instruments, by exploiting all the benefits which the "new" electro-pneumatic action allowed. He developed and/or greatly refined entirely new families of stops for the pipe organ. Skinner was not a good businessman, frequently spending more money on his organs than they cost and was occasionally delivering them behind schedule. Nevertheless, his immaculate workmanship, clever innovations and beautiful tone consistently attracted new clients.

In 1919, he gained financial salvation when millionaire chemist and organ aficionado Arthur Hudson Marks (1874-1939) bought the controlling interest of the company and reorganized, streamlined and capitalized the company as the Skinner Organ Company. Mr. Skinner made a study trip in the mid 1920s to the factory of Henry Willis III in England to study new ideas in the tonal design of organs. Upon returning to America he incorporated many of the best ideas he saw into his own to synthesize something new. Henry Willis III had an outstanding employee, G. Donald Harrison (1889-1956) and in 1927, with Willis' blessing, Arthur Hudson Marks hired Mr. Harrison to help Mr. Skinner better the tonal design of the Skinner organ. Mr. Skinner welcomed G. Donald Harrison into the Skinner organization with open arms.

Mr. Marks brought Harrison to the United States as a potential successor to replace Mr. Skinner, though at that time Mr. Skinner had no idea of this plan. The good relationship between Mr. Skinner and Mr. Harrison did not last long. In 1930 tension had grown considerably between the two men. The stock market crash of 1929 exacerbated tensions at the firm as sales fell from a 1928 high of $1,427,897 to $603,949 by 1931. In 1930, Mr. Skinner had sold all of his stock in the Skinner Organ Company and planned to start a rival organ-building firm. Fearing the possible negative affect this might have, Mr. Marks and the board of directors offered Mr. Skinner $5000 per year for five years to do nothing but "keep his name connected and associated with the Skinner Organ Company." The final result was that in 1936 Mr. Skinner left the company and started his own company with his son.

Mr. Skinner and his son Richmond built a large organ for the National Cathedral in 1937 as well as several other new and many rebuilt organs. Around 1949 he completely retired from the organ business. The landscape of American organ building is constantly changing with new and different ideas about organ building. The unfortunate result of change was many of Skinner's masterpieces were replaced with more "fashionable" instruments of the period. This greatly upset Mr. Skinner until his death at an old age in 1960. Perhaps he would be happy to know that a new generation would deeply respect and treasure his few remaining and unchanged instruments.

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1930 was a year of considerable tension in the Boston factory of the Skinner Organ Company. After the arrival of G. Donald Harrison from England in 1927, Ernest Skinner had welcomed his new colleague, and together the two collaborated on a number of landmark organs, particularly those for Yale, Princeton and the Universities of Michigan and Chicago.

By late 1929, however, the light was beginning to dawn on Skinner: Harrison was not a collaborator but a successor, in order that Skinner might become, in the words of company president Arthur Hudson Marks, "the Grand Old Man" of the Skinner Organ Company. Skinner rebelled; at age 63, he was getting into his best stride and was not about to stand down.

Given the time, Skinner’s decision was born of more than pride: it was stubborn and defiant. The economic downturn caused by the stock market crashes of October 1929 only worsened in 1930. Though remaining optimistic in their advertising, the Skinner Company took in only half the work it had the previous year. And the prestige jobs were going mostly Harrison’s way, as more and more customers hoped that the younger Englishman might design and finish their instruments. Although the anti-orchestral, anti-romantic movement had yet to crystallize in any one direction, Harrison was clearly one of the new pack, and the younger generation saw him as the agent of reform.

Skinner was not blind to these developments, and after pondering his options, he laid plans for the future. In late 1929 he sold his stock in the Skinner company and used the proceeds to purchase the Serlo Organ Hall in Methuen, Massachusetts, which housed the famous Boston Music Hall Walcker organ of 1863 and featured an adjoining organ factory, formerly occupied by James Treat. After installing his son Richmond within the small organ shop, Skinner hoped to move up to Methuen and start a new business in competition with the one he had founded in 1901.

Upon learning of the stock sale, Marks was naturally livid, and set about quietly arranging the re-purchase of the stock. But at the end of 1930, when Skinner announced that he was leaving the Skinner Organ Company, Marks found himself in an unusual position. After all, Skinner was a terrible businessman and, especially given the financial climate, was unlikely to get too far on his own. Nevertheless, the public relations fallout from Skinner’s leaving his own company was a wild card on which Marks was unwilling to gamble. He offered Skinner $5,000 a year for five years to do nothing other than keep his name allied to the Skinner Organ Company. Skinner almost declined, but bowing to family pressure, signed the five-year binder in January of 1931.

Even before these dramatic events, Skinner and Harrison had begun a quiet struggle over control of the important jobs. Harrison had been slow to introduce reforms, probably in the hopes of easing Skinner very gradually into new ways of doing things: slightly brighter chorus reeds, spotted metal and wider mouths for unison diapasons, bearded instead of unbearded pedal open woods. By 1930, however, this collection of details had coalesced into a style with which Skinner was no longer comfortable. On jobs where he was in supervisory control, Skinner began a quiet rebellion, and in so doing established a distinctive style of his last work.

Opus 820 for Holy Rosary Cathedral in Toledo, contracted in 1930, voiced in February and March of 1931, and completed by June of that year, is the finest remaining unaltered example of Skinner’s late mature style. First of all, in an era and tonal style that demanded size for a sense of completion, Opus 820 is a large organ, its sixty independent stops, seventy-six ranks and two 32-foot stops permitting a thorough exploration of Skinner’s ideals. In some respects the organ is yet to resemble the more fully reactionary organs at Girard College, Philadelphia, United Parish in Brookline, or Kellogg Auditorium in Battle Creek, Michigan. Instead of being rejected outright, ideas of G. Donald Harrison are merged alongside certain reactionary tendencies to form a still-distinctive Skinner style.

For example, the Swell Diapason is of lead, not spotted metal, and the Swell chorus reeds, while of the Willis-based "English" variety, have resonators mostly of zinc. The Pedal open wood is unbearded, relying instead upon the Great Diapason and Pedal Dulciana for definition. Furthermore, Skinner inserts a stop that has long intrigued him since his days at Hutchings: a 16-foot Melodia as the Swell double in place of the standard Bourdon.

But most interestingly, Skinner reverts to a cardinal idea about chorus design, showing that he might have been one step ahead of the otherwise more progressive Harrison. Prior to Harrison’s arrival, Skinner had experimented with bolder mixtures from 1924 to 1927, upon the advice of Henry Willis III. In this period Skinner’s fascination was essentially for unison-and-quint—type mixtures.

Upon Harrison’s arrival, the concept was revised to feature a Harmonics as the Great mixture of first choice. Probably patterned after the customary Great mixture of the English Harrison & Harrison organ, these Harmonics mixtures included tierce and septième ranks in addition to unisons and quints. The sharp, vinegary effect was perhaps viewed more as a binding agent to the reeds than any top to the diapason chorus. Larger organs usually included a second, unison-and-quint mixture in addition to the Harmonics.

The Rosary Great is just such a division, but the precise treatment may give a clue to where Skinner’s thinking is headed. In giving decided prominence to the Chorus Mixture, and in selecting an especially high-pitched composition for it, Skinner is possibly reasserting his desire for strong, unison-and-quint mixtures in both Great and Swell. Moreover, by this point Skinner is avoiding the overt treble ascendancy that Harrison has introduced on larger organs (Woolsey Hall at Yale being an excellent example) in favor of a gentler, more gradually melodic treble. The results is a chorus whose goals are surprisingly similar to what Harrison would pursue five years later, although the effect is essentially different.

This instrument is Skinner at his finest. With the positive input from Harrison, but his own refined sensibilities, Skinner is on confident ground where he is beyond the need to prove points in an obvious way. In his return to a dominating Great with a fine traditional flue chorus, he has made peace with the need for a clearer and more melodically-oriented organ, while losing nothing of the lush Skinner quality nor the suggestive immensity that implies true romantic roar.

In this endeavor Skinner was blessed by a fine, shallow chamber and superb acoustics. Holy Rosary Cathedral sounds as dramatic as it looks; the gracious acoustic prevents the need for any forcing of tone or power for power’s sake. (The fact that the Tuba Mirabilis is no louder than the Great Tromba indicates Skinner’s unwillingness to concede to stylistic norms in this instance.) Indeed, the Skinner organ ultimately thrills more by texture and grandeur of ensemble. The manner in which the choruses merge, and the tutti is reached, conceives a climax in which the intensity and largeness are greater than the actual power produced. It is a manifestly artistic result.

Although several more great organs were in Skinner’s future with the Boston company, he grew increasingly unhappy and, in his tonal outlook, somewhat recalcitrant. Girard College was the one organ that grew out of the Rosary job, building up a similar ensemble but this time crowned with a choir of Solo Tubas, underpinned by four full-length 32-foot stops, and matched to a blazing Tuba Mirabilis with French-style Bertouneche shallots. Other jobs grew darker in tone, perhaps in a parallel to Skinner’s increasingly grumpy mood.

In this light, it is a great gift that Opus 820 is almost precisely as the Skinner Company left it. Between 1990 and 1993, the organ was restored by the late Samuel Koontz, then-Curator of Organs at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor. Changes were extremely minor: apart from fitting the Tuba Mirabilis with longer sockets and loudening the Great Harmonics somewhat, the organ was restored in a manner consistent with its construction. Upon Mr. Koontz’s death, several loose ends were taken care of by his successors, David Hufford and Elgin Clingaman, who continue to maintaining the organ.

Unlike many modern rebuilding efforts which claim the term "restoration" instead of aspiring to its tenets, at Rosary the original electrical and console equipment–machinery that Skinner wrote about passionately and often–were wisely retained. This will be one of the very, very few Skinner organs handed down to succeeding generations that the builder himself would recognize in its entirety.

© Jonathan Ambrosino
Reprinted with permission