Gene Bedient: Helping Keep the Music Glorious
A volunteer organ builder applies Band-Aids to the Cathedral’s 19th century masterpiece.
by Mark Carroll
Published in Trinité Magazine, Spring 2013
There are all sorts of reasons people go to church, and not all of them are pretty. On the nobler end are the searches for spiritual growth and guidance, and the commitment to the mission and the work of the church. On the baser end there’s free babysitting.
Last year, Gallup research reinforced previous studies showing that American who attend church frequently have a higher sense of wellbeing than those who don’t, and that on Sundays they enjoy an extra boost to their mood. The poll leaves unanswered the question of why churchgoers get this boost, but it’s logical, if unscientific, to posit that on Sunday mornings they’re spending time with people they love and who love them, in an environment that emanates fellowship and caring and, above all, God’s love.
At the American Cathedral, the Sunday morning mood enhancer includes a first-class music program When the parish conducted a discernment workshop in 2011 to prepare for the search for the Cathedral’s next dean, the music was consistently cited as among the most important reasons that today’s parishioners were first attracted to the Cathedral.
And no wonder. The Cathedral adult choir is among the best in Paris. The children’s choir—strengthened by a “feeder” program based on Orff Schulwerk that gives children ages 5-7 a solid grounding in creating music—is so good that one Sunday a month they provide all of the music for the 11 a.m. service.
And then there’s the organ.
Built in 1887 by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, considered the most distinguished organ builder of the 19th century, the Cathedral organ has been rebuilt and adjusted numerous times over the years, leaving us today with an instrument that is by turns magnificent and, especially for the organists, frustrating. Parishioners might at times be startled during a particularly solemn moment in the service by a renegade note known as a "cipher." A pipe sounds spontaneously, with no intent or intervention from the organist. Or they may be distracted by the wheezing from the bellows beneath the pipes. But the talented finders and feet of the Cathedral organists, the manuals and pedals bring forth glorious sound that belies the hard work needed to keep the sound glorious.
Luckily, the organists are no longer dealing with the problems on their own. In the autumn of 2012, Gene Bedient arrived in Paris, the trailing spouse of Gwen, a State Department employee newly assigned to the U.S. Mission at the OECD. They came from Algiers, where they had been living during Gwen’s first overseas posting.
This was a later-life career move for Gwen. With a newly retired husband, and the last child graduated from college, she decided to apply for a job with the Foreign Service. In January 2010 she was accepted, and by March she was on her way to Washington, where orientation and training included French language classes. Living outside the Continental U.S. had always been a dream for both Gwen and Gene, so they were excited to learn that her first assignment would start the following September at the American Embassy in Algiers.
Always interested in music, Gene soon found an outlet in Algiers. In addition to playing the organ for Lessons & Carols at Holy Trinity Anglican Church and an Easter service at the Roman Catholic Cathedral of Notre Dame d’Afrique, he soon organized an a cappella choir, drawing on choral conducting experience he gained as a university student. Comprising eight or nine people, the group gave a number of concerts of the music of Palestrina, Brahms, Victoria—classical pieces that he could find on the internet at the Choral Public Domain Library. (While Gene loves close harmony, the group never did any barbershop.)
In July 2011, Gwen bid for her second posting with the Foreign Service and soon learned that she had gotten her first choice: Paris! The tour started in September 2012. In Paris, as in Algiers, Gwen looked for an English-speaking Christian congregation and soon found the American Cathedral. Attending a service with her one Sunday morning, Gene was struck by “the beauty of the music at the Cathedral,’ a feeling reinforced when he heard the Paris Choral Society perform the Brahms German Requiem.
Gene has high praise for Director of Music Zachary Ullery (“he does an amazing job with the choir”) and Organist Andrew Dewar (“a fantastic talent”). His interest wasn’t just as a parishioner with a love of good music. Gene, it turned out, was a professional organ builder, recently retired, who over a 40-year period built more than 80 pipe organs for churches, universities, concert halls and homes all over the United States. Born and raised in Hemingford, in rural western Nebraska, Gene began studying piano at age 11. His music education wasn’t all classical—he used to listen to 78 rpm records on his family’s crank-type phonograph, songs from the 1920s and 1930s, including the famous Frank Silver-Irving Cohn song, “Yes! We Have No Bananas.”
He started college at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln as an electrical engineering major. At the same time, he was singing in a church choir, where the director introduced him to the pipe organ. Gene was fascinated. “It became apparent that someone had to make them, and I was very interested in technical things, and so I pursued it right away, both from the standpoint of learning how to play the organ and also learning what went into making them.”
At UNL, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in music education and a master’s in music, he could study playing the organ, but there were no classes on how to build them. So he worked summers with the Charles W. McManis Company, a Kansas City organ builder of the era—and came to France to study old organs and their sounds.
“It was interesting to see how the metal was handled and certain techniques they used in deciding how they were actually going to make the pipe… When you delve into it at the point of building an organ yourself, you come to have a great sense of appreciation for techniques and ideas that earlier builders had.”
The metal used for the pipes was usually lead, which lends a rich, warm sound. For strength, the lead is alloyed with in, and by varying the percentages of each metal, and by adding trace amounts of other metals, organ builders can create their own signature sound, easily recognizable to organ aficionados.
At the time, Lincoln had no local business to maintain and tune pipe organs, so to support his graduate studies, Gene started his own company. He had contacts both from school and from church jobs, and found immediate success. Not long afterwards, a church asked him to bid on building a new organ. It had two manuals and pedals, and about 25 sets of pipes, and wasn’t, on Gene’s own admission, the best organ he ever built. It suffered from mechanical problems, which he later corrected by rebuilding the organ at his own expense.
Gene founded the Bedient Pipe Organ Company in 1969. Located in Roca, Nebraska, the company custom-designs and builds all parts of a pipe organ, using traditional techniques combined with modern technology, but always focusing on a sound that customers describe as warm and rich. “In a world filled with factories and assembly lines, the idea of a small group of craftspeople hunched over workbenches is difficult to grasp. But the fact is that pipe organs must be hand made.”
Although Gene retired from an active role at Bedient in 2011, he remains chairman of the board and continues to help out in an advisory capacity, content in the knowledge that the two long-time employees who took over operations remain true to the vision of the company.
For the past six months, Gene has been lending his expertise to the American Cathedral, donating his time and skills to help keep the organ going despite significant problems that cry out for a complete overhaul. Since Cavaillé-Coll built the instrument in 1887, it has gone through four rebuilds and modifications, but time has taken its toll. The organ isn’t easy to tune. Its placement, he notes, is “particularly bad,” which doesn’t just place it at an acoustical disadvantage, but also makes some of the really big pipes nearly inaccessible and their “tuning wires” difficult to reach. (The wires are used to adjust the vibrating length of the brass “tongue” and thus change the pitch.)
Worse, some of the reeds and the trumpets are dirty and in poor condition. The leather valves, which date from the 1930s, are deteriorating. Gene has spent hours replacing leather, which has allowed him to bring back into service pipes that have had to be disconnected because the valves didn’t work properly.
“A church like this,” says Gene, “deserves a good organ.” He recommends some serious study before making any decisions about a rebuild. The questions are daunting—as will be the price. Should the Cathedral attempt to reconstitute the original Cavaillé-Coll organ? Rebuild the existing instrument? Or completely replace it? (That’s an idea usually described as sacrilege.)
What are the costs? When the question of a rebuild was examined several years ago, the answer was upwards of a million euros. Gene’s number was €1.2 million to €1.3 million.
“There are some really good people today to rebuild or re-use or to build a new organ,” Gene says. But whatever the decision, it’s crucial to make sure there are adequate funds to pay for it.
In the meantime, Gene will continue to donate his time and skills to the efforts that help keep the music glorious and cipher-free at the American Cathedral.
Reducing ciphers to almost nothing
by Nancy Janin
Published in Trinité Magazine, Spring 2013
Thanks to Gene Bedient’s work, those who play the Cathedral organ—our organist, Andrew Dewar, and others—can now relax and concentrate on making beautiful music, whether for a service, a concert, or just for practice.
According to Andy, had become so temperamental he sometimes thought he might have to sprint to the piano to keep the music going during a service. While in some situation she could improvise to suit the organ’s whims, he needed to know he could count on each note to sound for concerts or when accompanying the choir and congregation—and that was not always the case.
The primary problem was the aging of the small pouch-like bellows under each pipe that protect the many valves that in turn control the emission of sounds. When these leathers wear out and become brittle, air escapes and the complex mechanism goes haywire.
The biggest worry to organists is notes that sound on their own, disconcerting during worship to say the least, and hard to stop from the keyboard. The only sure way to stop these ciphers is to climb up into the organ loft and disconnect the pipe—Andy reports he once counted 21 pipes lying on the floor of the loft, a veritable pipe graveyard.
But now, and for less than €200 expended on materials (funds donated by Les Arts George V) Gene has replaced many of the leathers—and thus put the pipes back in place and restored the notes. His work has also virtually eliminated the panic-inducing cipher phenomenon.
Andy says the nearly full-functioning of the organ has allowed the resumption of organ concerts before Evensong on Sundays, in addition to giving him and the other organists confidence and serenity that what they play on the keyboard will be what is heard.
Gene’s work is not done, however, and his continued attention to the instrument is expected to bring further improvements. But his work is only a stopgap. In the not-too-distant future it will be necessary to undertake more complicated, and costly, repairs. A major overhaul in 1992 addressed the problems that were urgent at that time; now, two decades later, other parts of the organ need attention. But with Gene’s expert efforts we have bought some time, and some peace of mind for our talented organists and for the spirituality of each service.