"Do you know what the most wonderful thing in the world is . . . ?"
When I was a organ student at Lawrence in the late 1960s, there was an elderly gentleman who came to all the organ recitals. After each of them, he would grab the recitalist's hand and say in his tremulous voice: "Do you know what the most wonderful thing in the world is?" He would not wait for a response but would squeeze the hand tightly, gaze rapturously at the chapel stage, and say: "Playing the organ in the Lawrence Chapel!"
We would smile, politely nod in agreement, and then move on. We were not sure whether or not playing the organ in the Lawrence Chapel was the most wonderful thing in the world, but even as undergraduates, we knew that we were being well-trained and that we were part of a tradition of excellence dating back to the beginnings of the Conservatory of Music.
Lawrence Memorial Chapel, built in 1918, has seen five pipe organs, and each instrument has mirrored the many tumultuous changes in the 20th-century world of the organ. Here are brief descriptions of each [the descriptions will make the most sense if read in sequence]:
- The 1918 Steere Organ
- The 1934 Kimball Organ
- The 1965 Schantz Organ
- The 1995 Brombaugh Organ
- The 1999 (1906) Felgemaker Organ
