Mozart called the organ the "king of instruments." As with all things royal, quality matters. For the organ, that means using the most resonant wood to create the most memorable sounds.
Organ pipes are made of both metal and wood. Different woods have different tonal characteristics. Pine creates bright, clear sounds. Cherry, used in smaller pipes, offers warm, sweet tones.
When an organist presses a key or foot peddle, pressurized air is driven through those pipes.
One of the best-known church organs in the United States is the Salt Lake Tabernacle organ, with over 11,000 pipes. It has supported the Tabernacle Choir on Temple Square — formerly the Mormon Tabernacle Choir — for a hundred seventy years.
The original organ, built in 1866, was first powered by hand-pumped bellows. Its pipes came from Ponderosa pine trees in Parawan and Pine Valley, a straight-grained timber that was free from knots. Before they could be made into organ pipes, the pines had to be sawn into 30-foot pieces and hauled 300 miles by ox team to Salt Lake City.
Today, it's powered by electricity, but some of those original pine pipes remain in use.
Each week, this organ accompanies the choir on its international radio broadcast. It accompanies public performances and church holiday concerts. So, though it is not the world's largest organ, it’s probably heard by more people around the world than any other, listeners who enjoy the tones emerging from those pine pipes from Utah’s forests.
