Oberlin College

Fairchild Chapel

Fairchild Chapel is home to two different tracker organs—the two-manual 1981 John Brombaugh & Associates organ (Opus 25) in the rear gallery and a one-manual 1957 Flentrop organ in the chancel. The Flentrop was once installed in Adolphus Busch Hall in Cambridge, Massachusetts, prior to the arrival there of the landmark three-manual Flentrop. The design of the Brombaugh gallery organ is influenced by 17th-century North German instruments by Gottfried Fritzsche and Friedrich Stellwagen. The manuals are provided with split keys and 15 pipes per octave (as opposed to the usual twelve pipes) and tuned in quarter-comma mean-tone. The organ is refined in its voicing—the wooden Oak Principal being a favorite of this author. The Brombaugh organ is representative of the style of many of today’s specialized contemporary builders who have close association with the region, including John Brombaugh, Charles Ruggles, Bruce Schull, and George Taylor.