The Noack Organ Company is a pipe organ manufacturer based out of Georgetown, Massachusetts. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5]
Fritz Noack began the company in 1960 in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Prior to that he had worked with a number of organ builders in Europe and the United States. He would later move his firm to Andover before moving to Georgetown in 1970.
The company has produced a number of organs throughout the United States, as well building organs in Japan and Iceland.
Essex County is a county in the northeastern part of the U.S. state of Massachusetts. As of the 2010 census, the total population was 743,159, making it the third-most populous county in the state. It is part of the Greater Boston area. The largest city in Essex County is Lynn. The county was named after the English county of Essex.
The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ranks, each of which has a common timbre and volume throughout the keyboard compass. Most organs have many ranks of pipes of differing timbre, pitch, and volume that the player can employ singly or in combination through the use of controls called stops.
Andover is a town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. It was settled in 1642 and incorporated in 1646. As of the 2010 census, the population was 33,201. It is part of the Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, Massachusetts-New Hampshire metropolitan statistical area. Part of the town comprises the census-designated place of Andover. It is twinned with its namesake: Andover, Hampshire, England.
Ernest Martin Skinner was one of the most successful American pipe organ builders of the early 20th century. His electro-pneumatic switching systems advanced the technology of organ building in the first part of the 20th century.
Mathias Peter Møller, commonly known as M.P. Möller or Moeller, was a prolific pipe-organ builder and businessman. A native of the Danish island of Bornholm, he emigrated to the United States in 1872 and founded the M.P. Moller Pipe Organ Company in Greencastle, Pennsylvania, in 1875. The city of Hagerstown, Maryland, took notice of Möller's early successes and induced him to move his business there in 1881 to help make it a viable business center in Western Maryland. The company remained in business until 1992, with hundreds of employees at its peak and a lifetime production of over 12,000 instruments.
Thomas Tertius Noble was an English-born organist and composer, resident in the United States for the latter part of his career.
John Burlin Brombaugh is an American pipe organ builder known for his historically oriented tracker action pipe organs.
Henry Willis & Sons is a British firm of pipe organ builders founded in 1845. Although most of their installations have been in the UK, examples can be found in other countries.
Peter Collins was an English pipe organ builder based in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire. He specialised in tracker action organs. Collins was an advocate of computer-aided design, using it to produce compact instruments and to control material costs.
William Drake (1943–2014) was the founder of the firm of William Drake, Organ Builder that manufactures pipe organs in Buckfastleigh, Devon, England. He held a Royal Warrant as organ builder to HM Queen Elizabeth.
Massachusetts's 6th congressional district is located in northeastern Massachusetts. It contains most of Essex County, including the North Shore and Cape Ann, as well as part of Middlesex County. It is represented by Seth Moulton, who has represented the district since January 2015. The shape of the district went through minor changes effective from the elections of 2012 after Massachusetts congressional redistricting to reflect the 2010 census. The towns of Tewksbury and Billerica were added, along with a small portion of the town of Andover.
Paul Fritts is an American organ builder based in Tacoma, Washington who, following historical models, has created over thirty mechanical action instruments that have contributed to the revival of historically informed organ music. The Murdy organ at Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Notre Dame, Indiana is his largest Fritts instrument to date, with four manuals (keyboards) and 70 stops. Other recent Fritts instruments of note are located at the University of Notre Dame, Princeton Theological Seminary, and Pacific Lutheran University. The organ at PLU was the largest Fritts organ built before the organ in Columbus.
Josiah Leavitt (1744–1804) was an early Massachusetts physician and inventor. Possessed of an early love for mechanical movements and for music, Dr. Leavitt eventually gave up his medical practice and moved to Boston, where he became one of the earliest manufacturers of pipe organs in the United States.
The Merrimack Valley is a bi-state region along the Merrimack River in the U.S. states of New Hampshire and Massachusetts. The Merrimack is one of the larger waterways in the New England region and has helped define the livelihood and culture of those living along it since native times.
Kilgen was a prominent American builder of organs which was in business from the mid-19th to the mid-20th century.
Richards, Fowkes & Co. is an American organ-builder. They make historical-style mechanical-action pipe organs. The firm is located in rural Ooltewah, Tennessee, just outside Chattanooga and was founded in 1988 by Bruce Fowkes and Ralph Richards.
Manuel J. Rosales, Jr., is an American organ builder whose instruments display a strong synthesis of romantic and contemporary styles. His workshop has built over 30 pipe organs with his notable output including collaborations on the instruments at Walt Disney Concert Hall and Rice University.
Hinners Organ Company was an American manufacturer of reed and pipe organs located in Pekin, Illinois. Established in 1879 by German-American John Hinners, the firm grew through several partners, becoming Hinners & Fink in 1881, Hinners & Albertsen in 1886, and Hinners Organ Company in 1902. In the 1920s Hinners established a subsidiary, the Illinois Organ Supply Company, which mass-produced parts for Hinners and other firms. Business declined in the 1930s due to the Great Depression, changing technology, and increasing competition. Hinners became a service company in 1936 and closed in 1942.
Farrand & Votey Organ Company was a nineteenth-century manufacturer of pianos, reed and pipe organs, and player pianos located in Detroit, Michigan. It evolved from William R. Farrand and Edwin S. Votey, hence the name of Farrand & Votey. The company is the development of the old Detroit Reed Organ Company that was originally bought out in 1881. The Farrand & Votey Organ Company produced 7,200 instruments a year by 1889. The company made huge organs on special order contracts. In 1891 the company built a monumental 2,700 pipe organ for the Detroit's First Presbyterian Church. In 1893 it built a huge organ for the Chicago World's Fair, where it was played in recitals by world-renowned organists. In 1897 it built the nation's largest pipe organ. The company dissolved in 1897 and split up into two separate companies of the owners, each making their own style of organs.
By 1970 it was clear that three were pre-eminent--Fisk, Noack, and Andover.
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