Flashback: Duke Chapel makes plans for a new organ

Chronicle File Photo
Chronicle File Photo

Editor's note: This story is the fifth entry in a series called Flashback, which The Chronicle will be running online weekly through the end of the summer. We welcome readers' input about old stories they would like to see featured.

On this day 45 years ago, a Chronicle article described how the Duke Chapel received an organ donor. The musical kind, that is. 

An anonymous donor offered to give Duke up to $125,000 to cover half the cost of a Flentrop organ for the Chapel in 1969. The patron would foot half the bill, and the University would have to cover the other half as well as the cost of any necessary renovations. 

Monday, June 18, 1973, The Chronicle published an article that detailed the plan for the organ’s installation.

“A North German baroque organ, designed and built by master craftsman Dirk Flentrop of Holland, will be installed in the Duke Chapel in 1975 or 1976,” Linda Hudak wrote in the article. “Necessary acoustical preparation of the chapel interior consisting of coating the walls with a sealer, is now in progress and will be completed in early July.”

Dirk Flentrop was a renowned Dutch organ builder who built and restored many organs throughout the United States and Europe. 

Ben Smith, director of choral activities at the time, compared Flentrop to Michelangelo, describing him as “the finest organ builder in the world.” The Flentrop organ will produce “the most beautiful tonal quality in the country,” Smith added.

It would be the Chapel's second organ and would become known as the Benjamin N. Duke Memorial Organ, joining the Kathleen Upton Byrns McClendon Organ, an Aeolian 1932. Today, Flentrop's organ can be seen in the Chapel's arch that separates its narthex and nave, and visitors walk under it when they enter or leave the Chapel through the main doors.

At Flentrop’s request, the acoustics in the Chapel were improved to create an ideal environment for the organ. The Chapel walls were coated twice with a special sealer that increased the reverberation time from two seconds to about five seconds, Hudak wrote. After finishing, the reverberation time was tested electronically. 

However, when Flentrop came to Duke in the spring of 1972 to inspect the space, he “entered the Chapel, clapped his hands, and declared the reverberation time unsatisfactory,” Hudak added.

Upon inspecting the sealer, they discovered that Flentrop was in fact correct—air bubbles in the sealer had burst, which negatively affected the reverberation, Hudak explained. Consequently, the Chapel’s interior underwent another coat of sealer in the summer of 1973.

While the first sealing cost $34,500, the second would cost $44,000, according to James Ward, the University architect at the time. But, he noted that the first sealing was not a waste.

“We have to apply the coats one at a time,” Ward said. “The cost increases of the second sealing are due to inflation of the cost of labor and materials, and the cost of setting up the scaffolding a second time.”

The entire project, including the Flentrop organ and two sealings, was estimated to cost up to $195,000. Hudak asked Smith if there were “University projects of higher priority” that should have received funding before the organ, but he was adamant that the organ was worth the cost. 

“Music is not a day to day need like food, but is needed to feed the soul,” Smith replied. 

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