August Gunzinger


   Under Mr. William E. Haskell many expert voicers were trained in the Estey organ shops, and they are serving today as his successors, carrying on the tradition that an Estey must be voiced more perfectly than any other organ.
   Mr. Haskell’s particular protégé was August Gunzinger, who is today the supervisor of the voicing
department at the Estey factory. The picture which serves as a frontispiece of this folio is an unretouched photograph of Mr. Gunzinger at his pipes.
   These few pipes, placed in the voicing apparatus, make no very impressive part of the picture—but this handful of pipes and their master represent one of the most vital processes in organ building.
   In a little journey to the Estey plant, where visitors re always welcome, Mr. Gunzinger may be found any working day either at the post at which he is here pictured or in lending his supervising ear to the other Estey voicers, practically all of whom are men of approximately 20 years’ experience.
   The skill and patience of a pipe voicer entitle him to be classed with the few remaining artisans in this age of machinery. With all the mechanical, pneumatic, and electrical developments that have made the modern organ the marvel that it is, there is one department—that of voicing—in which no machine can displace the human hand and ear.
    There are many men in the Estey plant who have seen life-long service there, but Mr. Gunzinger has the unique distinction of not only being “born to the trade,” but of literally being born in an organ factory. His father and mother were at the time living in the upstairs part of the Rinkenbach organshop in Colmar, Alsace-Loraine, where his father was employed as a pipe-maker—so that from his cradle days the infant Gunzinger became familiar with the language of the pipes.
   Born in a country which has been disputed territory of both the French and Germans, Mr. Gunzinger was subjected to both French and German influences in organ building as well as politics. He served apprenticeships in several large organ-building shops of Germany, France and Switzerland, and rounded out his European experience as a pupil of Cavaille-Coll in Paris.
   To the layman, the name carries slight significance, but to every organist and organ-builder the late Cavaille-Coll is known as one of the most renowned of all organ builders. It was under this master that Mr. Gunzinger served for seven years as pipe maker and voicer.
   When he came to America in 1905, Mr. Gunzinger sought a connection with the Estey plant and became a pupil and protégé of Mr. Haskell who introduced him to the American style of voicing, in which he readily became not only adept but expert.
   To many people “voicing” is supposed to be synonymous with “tuning” but it is not so, for tuning is merely adjusting for accurate pitch, while voicing is actually giving a practically mute pipe the power of speech.
   The thousands of pipes that may be seen stacked in the pipe-making department of the Estey plant seem to the casual eye to be ready to place in an assembled organ, but they have yet to be given a voice. It is only when they pass into the hands of Mr. Gunzinger and his assistants that the lips of these labial pipes, and the tongues of the lingual or reed pipes, are so manipulated at the mouth as to become the speaking unit of an organ. These pipes range all the way from a 16- or 32-foot diapason to the smallest metal pipes no bigger than a lead pencil—each of which must be manipulated in a manner to insure the most perfect tonal quality.
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   Indeed, the day this article was written, the writer found Mr. Gunzinger seated at the console of an organ which was being assembled for the Trinity Methodist Episcopal Church of Berkeley, California, to be installed next month.
   Playing a scale on the clarinet stop, Mr. Gunzinger interrupted the performance to call to one of the foremen, “That C is slow!” whereupon a workman climbed into the organ and adjusted the reed or tongue of the C pipe to the point that it finally satisfied Mr. Gurizinger’s keen ear.
   Thus is the voicing of the Estey organ “followed through” in the case of every pipe, and the assembled organ released only when Mr. Gunzinger is satisfied that all his pipes are voiced in. a manner that is pleasing to the purpose to which they will be put, the place where they will be located and every other consideration that can possibly be anticipated before the installation.
   The brilliance, the mellowness, roundness, relative strength and other qualities of Estey voicing have been the subject of special praise from men whose judgment is respected and recognized as authoritative on tonal quality.
   And after all, what is the object of organ. building but to produce agreeable tones? However majestic may be an instrument, however marvelous its mechanical contrivances, it falls short of competition with an Estey unless it can compare in tonal quality. This is the test of its usefulness.
   One of the several slogans of superiority which Estey voicers seek to justify is “An octave higher in quality than all others.”


August Gunzinger at the console for Trinity
Methodist Episcopal Church. Berkeley, CA

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