Swiss get US Organ Transplant

What's a Gloucester company fishing for in Lake Geneva? C. B. Fisk's Massachusetts hometown is known for seafood, but the company is cooking up angel-food at Lausanne's 13th-century cathedral: a new $2.4 million organ.

When the aging (Swiss) organ at Lausanne's cathedral needed replacement, locals expected that one of the famous makers from Europe, the birthplace of the organ, would get the job. When the contract was won by American company C. B. Fisk, local tongues wagged at the confluence of two European aversions – American cultural and corporate intrusions. One newspaper even predicted that the US organ would sound like "a hamburger sizzling on the grill," as recounted in a recent article in the New York Times (Nov. 28, 2003).

The neutral Swiss might have sputtered even further if they knew that founder Charles B. Fisk, an MIT physicist, had worked on the atomic-bomb Manhattan Project before starting his quest to create America's first fine mechanical organ of its own.

In business since around 1960, Fisk's company has become widely-known only recently, especially for its organ at Dallas' new Meyerson Symphony Center (which the Lausanne organist played before selecting Fisk).

Building an organ is always a customized engineering masterpiece – Fisk refers to the Lausanne project as "Opus 120" – but a medieval structure presents many special challenges, even before considering local sensibilities. The cathedral's builders just didn't anticipate the space and structural support needs of a massive, 6,735-piped instrument that would arrive centuries later. And in the context of cathedral splendor – looks count!

At the instrument's December inauguration, the organist's choice of music was clear. "We've got to show people that the instrument can play Bach," said Lausanne's organist. So far, the Swiss are singing praises.

Visit the shop of organ builder C. B. Fisk and see a picture of "Opus 120"

Listen to the Lausanne organ and learn more details [in French] at the cathedral site

Read the New York Times article [fee required]