One of the events co-sponsored by the History Center during
the 3 Rivers Festival is “Follow the Pipes”. This series of organ concerts
throughout the area is put together by the American Guild of Organists (AGO)
and features pipe organs at various churches and entities such as the Embassy
Theatre.
You can get details of the schedule in the Events section of
our website:
Patricia Sagester Arthur, who works hard each year to make “Follow
the Pipes” a success, authored a book in 2001 entitled “Making Joyful Noises: A
History of the Pipe Organs of Fort Wayne and Allen County, Indiana”. The book
is dedicated to the memory of the sixteen organists who founded the Fort Wayne
Chapter of AGO on March 25, 1946.
From the Introduction:
“On October 3, 1999 the strains of Johann Sebastian Bach’s ‘Fantasia
and Fugue in G Minor’ filled the magnificent sanctuary of the 127 year old St.
Peter’s Catholic Church in Fort Wayne, Indiana. In the hands of a talented
organist at the console of the newly restored Aeolian-Skinner organ, this
200-year-old Bach composition soared to new heights. The everlasting joy of the
music erased the gap of time so that everything that was old was new again.
“There are over seventy pipe organs in the Fort Wayne/Allen
County area, each one, like the one at St. Peter’s, an inanimate object, a
piece of furniture. They cannot speak, they do not move; they take up a lot of
space, and they cost a lot of money. But each of these instruments is dressed
in the history of the church in which it sits. Some have had more than one
home, like the one that now graces St. Peter’s Catholic Church; but each one is
an integral part of the religious and musical heritage of Fort Wayne and Allen
County.”
Join us on July 17-19 and “Follow the Pipes”.
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