City Hall Organ

City Hall Organ

Classification	Pipe organ
Playing range
CCCCC – g7
Musicians
Julio Kram (resident organist)
Builders
Hyperbola Organ Builders

The City Hall Organ is a pipe organ located in the Municipal Civic Assembly Hall, Kien-k'ang. It is one of the largest instruments in the world, with 23,230 pipes, and one of the few to have a full-length 64-foot stop. The organ was ordered in 1901 and completed in 1905, but substantial additions and restorations, especially following the Pan-Septentrion War, have occurred.

Construction and layout

In 1898, the municipal leadership of Kien-k'ang became interested in a large, enclosed public space to "give a stage for the commodious display of the city's people and products". As the space would host exhibitions, performances, political meetings, and other public events, it was judged necessary to provide music by means of a pipe organ. Like other aspects of the Assembly Hall, the pipe organ was calculatedto be displayed and reflect the city's waxing wealth and status during the Industrial Revolution.

The hall itself consists of a larger main chamber and a smaller antechamber, divided by a wall. The main chamber measures 230 ft (70 m) long by 120 ft (37 m) wide. The main seating space is located on the ground level, on whose perimeter is a 18-foot wide gallery supported on small posts. The top of the ceiling rises to 100 ft (30 m) tall. This chamber could sit 7,000 or more people with chairs filling both the ground and gallery levels.

Before work started on the building, the pipe organ was designed by renowned organists Messers. Anthony Brak and Patrick Mir, with directions from the Council to include "many species of sound that adequately express the city's interest in music". Though Brak and Mir took note of the city's demands and included some innovative voices, the instrument they designed was firmly grounded in traditions; historians note that their backgrounds led them to consider the usefulness of each planned stop. At the end, the instrument approved by the city consisted of 230 ranks and 13,310 pipes, one of the world's largest at completion.

The construction of the organ was aided by the ample space expressly reserved for the instrument, including the dome. Additional space later appropriated for the organ's enlargement included a loft in the antechamber, the space above its galleries, and a nook where a secondary façade is mounted. It is according to this layout that the various chambers of the instrument were named.

The City Hall Organ holds the distinction of having the largest standalone organ case in the world, which contained the original section of the organ. This 60-foot tall, 40-foot wide, and 20-foot deep case, dominating the hall's nave, is divided into six levels and has three façades; its bottom level projects outwards, and the console is located on the roof of the projection, which is level with the galleries. The choir façade covers the projection on the ground level, while the main façade, 40-foot tall, is level with the galleries. A smaller façade representing the Solo Organ sits on top of the main façade. The main façade displays the pipework of the Great Organ, with the 32-foot Sub Principal forming its left, right, and centre towers, whose CCCC pipe perched directly above the console.

The case of the organ is a free-standing structure built from timber and is placed in a large alcove meant for it, at the eastern end of the hall. Pipes of the 32-foot octave are positioned at the rear of the case, standing at ground level. In front of them are two storeys holding the 16-foot octaves. The rest of the case is divided into six storeys, containing the remaining pipe work.

Chamber	Divisions
Case 1F	Choir Unenclosed Choir Enclosed Pedal
Case 2F	Great Pedal
Case 3F	Great Pedal
Case 4F	Great Swell
Case 5F	Swell
Case 6F	Solo Bombarde
Left Gallery	Strings Woodwind
Right Gallery	Strings Brass Percussion
Dome	Echo (enclosed)
Undercroft	Pedal (Major Bass 64′)
Antechamber	Echo (unenclosed) Echo Pedal

Console

The City Hall Organ has two consoles, the main console on the stage and a secondary console located in the clerestory level overlooking the antechamber.

Main console

The main console has five manuals, which each encompass four octaves and a part of a fifth from CC to g′′′′, and 30-note pedalboard from CCC to F. It is located on the third level of the case and sits upon the roof of the Unenclosed Choir section; this is accessed from the galleries. This console is capable of playing the entire instrument, including the floating divisions and subsequent additions. Recent upgrades to the relay system has enabled floating divisions to be coupled to each manual, though formerly the gallery divisions could only be coupled to Choir or Swell. The designations are as follows:

1	Choir
2	Great
3	Swell
4	Solo
5	Echo

Secondary console

The secondary console has three manuals, with the same compass as the main console, and 32-note pedalboard. The Choir organ actually plays the Echo Choir, the Great the unenclosed Echo, and the Swell manual the enclosed Echo. This is because the Echo organ added in 1917 was desinged to be a self-contained instrument playing into the Antechamber, where events were also held and for which the organ located in the main hall would be unduly distant. The added divisions were capable of being played from the main console.

1	Choir
2	Great
3	Swell

Stops

Viewed as a single instrument, the organ's 459 ranks form 308 registers plus the Acoustic Bass 64′, resulting in 309 stops, not including percussions. Unlike unified instruments, which, enabled by electric action, were becoming common at that time, the City Hall Organ is almost "straight", having few stops which draw on ranks already forming other stops. This design commenced with the organ's initial designers, who believed that extensions and borrowings, popular techniques at that time, duplicated tonalities and impoverished the instrument's voice; instead, they ascribed to the more traditional, and perhaps at times rigid, idea that the identical tonalities should not re-appear in different pitches. The restricted use of extensions was respected by later managers of the instrument.

The overall design of the organ is, in other places, contrary to the fashionable practices of the day. In the last decade of the 19th and first of the 20th, many organ builders ceased to build treble stops for the Great organ or any number of other divisions and provided better horizontal extension, that is, more stops at unison (8-foot in the manuals and 16-foot in the pedal) pitch. Brak and Mir instead demanded an enlarged ensemble of treble stops and mixtures, giving that this would better serve the city's "tastes in music". The resulting instrument is not heavily emphasized in the unison pitch. Moreover, a larger number of treble voices would reduce material costs without compromising tonal diversity, an advantage that did not escape the designers' notice.

Some reviewers consider its full-organ voice "shrill, imperious, and antiquated" and "more appropriate of the church than the city hall", but others say that, owing to the scale of the instrument, "nothing was sacrificed amongst the unison and orchestral voices a performer could require, and then much more is provided". The organist Benjamin Keefer commented that "in some registrations, the principal chorus evokes of the medieval blockwerk and has Sylvan influences." This is in reference to the elaborate upperwork of the stop list; however, he freely admitted that "in full organ, the treble is more powerful than popular in the 1900s."

It being the preference of the organ designers, the entire organ was on ​3 ¹⁄₂ inches of wind; only the Solo reeds were on 5 inches. Even in 1899, organ building practices permitted higher pressures surpassing 10 inches, though their merits were controverted in many quarters. Those who opposed high pressures, including the City Hall Organ's designers, believed that such pressures distorted the natural voice of the instrument. This limited pressure translated into a very soft tone in the hall, obtaining by the desiners to place great emphasis on the number of treble voices which would "pierce the air" better than the unison and sub-unison ones. To counter-balance the prominence of the treble, the bass pipes were prominently displayed in the façade—thus speaking into the chamber without obstruction. The scale of the façade was "not an accidental decision but one intended to augment the soft sound of the instrument by way of its size."

64' Major Bass

The 64-foot Major Bass stop is a unique stop and one of the few examples of open 64-foot stops in the world. It was not initially planned by the organ's designers, who nevertheless specified 64' Acoustic Bass to provide the lower foundation of the pedal department; this stop consisted of an octave (the Double Open Wood II 32′) and an independent quint (Sub Quint Bass 21 ​²⁄₃′), tuned pure with the octave. By the middle of the 19th century, 64-foot resultant stops have been introduced by renowned builders to the largest instruments, underlying 32-foot stops, and one genuine stop, the 64-foot Contra Trombone in Tír Glas, has existed since 1898. The fundamental pitch at low C (CCCCC) is 8.18 Hz—beyond the typical lower limit of pitch perception by the human ear—but its upper harmonics enrich and re-inforce the other bass stops.

The second resident organist, Mr. Grya, advocated for the stop's addition, to the city's approval in 1917. It has been speculated that the uniqueness of the stop attracted the support of Themiclesian organists, who would then have the opportunity to experiment with its registration at guest recitals. The pipes were constructed of White Pine (Pinus strobus) obtained for $8,000 (more than $100,000 in 2020 dollars) from the royal timber yards, which had a supply of giant logs for the maintenance of wooden buildings in the palaces. Part of the auditorium's floor was removed that the planks could be lowered into the undercroft, where they were assembled by Hyperbola Organ Builders.

Even though the organ operated on limited pressure, the giant pipes required a prodigious quantity of wind to attain prompt speech and desirable tonality. The three lowest pipes received individual blowers and wind-chests, and the next six pipes shared one blower per two notes. The three remaining notes of the bottom octave were on the same blower and chest. Even with these extreme measures, a consistent pressure of ​3 ¹⁄₂ inches could not be obtained; it was thus lowered to ​2 ⁵⁄₈ in 1919.

As the instrument was the only one in the world to have both a genuine and resultant stop at 64-foot, both being properly tuned, organists and music enthusiasts have compared their respective tonalities. The stop was not without its critics, many of whom doubted the utility of any 64-foot stop. McKinley chastises the voice of such stops to be "entirely unable to combine with other musical voices and therefore must be considered noise." Hastings, however, says that the stop sounds has a string-like quality in the 32-foot octave, which "is not lost in the 64-foot and provides lovely and gentle power in the foundation, combining well with most registrations and shining especially in long notes."

32-foot stops

The original, 1901 organ was originally specified with three stops at 32-foot–the Sub Principal in the Great, and the Double Open Wood and Contra Trombone in the Pedal. The 64-foot Acoustic Bass VII drew from an independent octave, plus six other ranks representing the 64-foot harmonic series. That the resultant effect be optimized, this stop was tuned quite soft. The 64-foot Major Bass stop necessarily contained a 32-foot octave, but it is not independently available. The Antiphonal Organ possesses a 32-foot Sub Bourdon in its pedal department. Across the entire instrument, there are three genuine stops and five ranks at 32-foot.

The designers of the original organ believed that three genuine stops at 32-foot pitch, including one on the manual, were already "an abundance verging on extravagance"; in their log, they noted that "instruments require but two stops at such a grave pitch, that is, a principal and a reed" because "the human ear cannot distinguish colour at this pitch, and anything more than one will beat disagreeably against each other..."

Hintersatz XXXV-LV

The stop Hintersatz XXXV-LV is an unusual stop that received much musicological attention when the organ was first planned. The term hintersatz has been used to describe pipework behind the façade on medieval blockwerk organs, which characteristically had no stop controls and thus played every rank at all times. In the 14th century, the façade pipes became separately playable on more innovative instruments, but the pipes behind the façade remained indivisble; this was not achieved by stop controls but separate claviers for the façade and hintersatz pipes. Eventually, in many places, stop controls enabled each rank to become separately playable.

In its implementation on the City Hall instrument, the Hintersatz mixture consists of multiple ranks of pipes from 16-foot and above, tuned to octaves and pure fifths: 16′, 16′, ​10 ²⁄₃′, ​10 ²⁄₃′, 8′, 8′, 8′, ​5 ¹⁄₃′, ​5 ¹⁄₃′, ​5 ¹⁄₃′, 4′, 4′, 4′, 4′, 4′, ​2 ²⁄₃′, ​2 ²⁄₃′, ​2 ²⁄₃′, ​2 ²⁄₃′, ​2 ²⁄₃′, 2′, 2′, 2′, 2′, 2′, ​1 ¹⁄₃′, ​1 ¹⁄₃′, ​1 ¹⁄₃′, ​1 ¹⁄₃′ ​1 ¹⁄₃′, ​1 ¹⁄₃′, 1′, 1′, 1′, 1′, 1′, 1′, 1′, ​¹⁄₂′, ​¹⁄₂′, ​¹⁄₂′, ​¹⁄₂′, ​¹⁄₂′, ​¹⁄₃′, ​¹⁄₃′, ​¹⁄₃′, ​¹⁄₃′, ​¹⁄₄′, ​¹⁄₄′, ​¹⁄₄′, ​¹⁄₄′, ​¹⁄₆′, ​¹⁄₆′, ​¹⁄₈′, and ​¹⁄₈′. More ranks are added towards the top end of the compass, because the treble pipes produce less volume with their smaller mouths and require duplicate pipes to augment them. This is distinct from the principal chorus, where only octaves are pure and fifths, tempered.

Stoplist

GREAT		CHOIR		SWELL		SOLO		ANTIPHONAL		PEDAL
Principal	32	Double Diapason	16	Contrabass	16	Double Diapason	16	Double Diapason	16	Major Bass	64
Octave	16	Diapason	8	Bourdon	16	Major Diapason	8	Bourdon	16	Open Wood	32
Gedackt	16	Viola da Gamba	8	Diapason	8	Stentorphone	8	Gross Quint	10 2/3	Gross Quint	21 1/3
Quint	10 2/3	Bourdon	8	Dulciana	8	Tibia	8	Major Diapason	8	Octave	16
15th	8	Gross Quint	5 1/3	Flute	8	Octave	4	Violone	8	Octave Wood	16
Dulciana	8	Octave	4	Stopped Diapason	8	Major Flute	4	Spire Flute	8	Violone	16
Violone	8	Quintadena	4	Sub Quint	5 1/3	Stentorphone	4	Night Horn	8	Spire Flute	16
Tierce	6 2/5	Viol	4	Octave	4	Tibia Mirabilis	4	Flute	8	Bourdon	16
Octave Quint	5 1/3	Salicional	4	Viol	4	Stopped Flute	4	Octave	4	Gross Tierce	12 4/5
Septieme	4 4/7	Stopped Flute	4	Melodia	4	Quint	2 2/3	Viol	4	Quint	10 2/3
22nd	4	Quint	2 2/3	Melodia Celeste II	4	15th	2	Harmonic Flute	4	Quint Bourdon	10 2/3
Gamba	4	15th	2	Harmonic Flute	4	Principal	2	Unda Maris II	4	Gross Septieme	9 1/7
Viol	4	Gambette	2	Flute Celeste II	4	Tierce	1 3/5	Spire Flute	4	15th	8
Dulciana	4	Flute	2	Spire Flute	4	22nd	1	Quint	2 2/3	Viola da Gamba	8
None	3 5/9	Blockflöte	2	Rohr Flute	4	Fourniture VII		Viol Quint	2 2/3	Flute	8
Octave Tierce	3 1/5	Pan Flute	2	Bourdon	4	Major Mixture IX		15th	2	Gross None	7 1/9
25th	2 10/11	Tierce	1 3/5	Quint	2 2/3	Ophecleide	16	Violette	2	Tierce	6 2/5
26th	2 2/3	Septieme	1 1/7	15th	2	Ophecleide	8	Spire Flute	2	Quint	5 1/3
Octave Septieme	2 2/7	22nd	1	Night Horn	2	Trombone	8	Rohr Flute	2	Quint Viol	5 1/3
29th	2	Piccolo	1	Quintaton	2	Tuba	8	Stopped Flute	2	Septieme	4 4/7
Principal	2	Flute	1	Hohl Flute	2	Post Horn	4	Tierce	1 3/5	15th	4
Blockflöte	2	Fourniture VII		Gambette	2	Cor	4	Septieme	1 1/7	Tibia	4
Viol	2	Cymbal VII		Wald Flute	2	Trumpet	4	22nd	1	Night Horn	4
Rohr Flute	2	Horn	8	Gemshorn	2	Ophecleide	4	Sifflet	1	None	3 5/9
Gedackt	2	Clarion	4	Tierce	1 3/5	Trumpet	2	Blockflöte	1	Tierce	3 1/5
Lieblichgedackt	2			Viol Tierce	1 3/5			29th	1/2	Flute Tierce	3 1/5
30th	1 7/9	BRASS		22nd	1	ECHO		33rd	1/3	Septieme	2 2/7
Tierce	1 3/5	Contrabass Tuba	16	Flageolet	1	Grossgedackt	16	Cymbale V		Viol Septieme	2 2/7
33rd	1 1/3	Contrabass Trombone	16	Fife	1	Gedackt	8	Fourniture IX		21st	2
Septieme	1 1/7	Tuba	8	Spire Flute	1	Principal	4	Trombone	16	Flute Ouvert	2
36th	1	Trombone	8	Piccolo	1	Dulciana	4	Trombone	8	Stopped Flute	2
Sifflet	1	Trumpet	8	29th	1/2	Aeoline	4	Vox Humana	8	None	1 7/9
Flageolet	1	Horn	8	Mixture IX		Flute	2	Clarion	4	29th	1
Piccolo	1	Saxophone	8	Cornet VII		Sifflet	1	Trompette	4	Acoustic Bass VII	32
Spire Flute	1	Cornet	8	Cymbale V		Mixture IV				Fourniture VII
Harmonic Flute	1	Muted Tuba	8	Double Trumpet	16	Fagot	4	ANTIPH. PEDAL		Cymbale VI
Bourdon	1	Trompette	4	Contrabass Fagot	16			Acoustic Bass IV	32	Contra Trombone	32
None	8/9	Alto Saxophone	4	Fagot	8	STRINGS		Sub Bourdon	32	Bombardon	16
43rd	1/2			Trombone	8	Contrabass	16	Diapason	16	Bombarde	16
47th	1/3	WOODWIND		Trumpet	8	Violonecello	16	Violone	16	Trombone	16
50th	1/4	Contrabass Flute	16	Clarinet	8	Violonecello	8	Bourdon	16	Trumpet	16
Hintersatz LV	16	Flute	8	Horn	8	Violin	8	Octave	8	Fagot	16
Fourniture XI		Clarinet	8	Clarion	4	Violin	8	Aeoline	8	Trombone	10 2/3
Cymbale IX		Muted Flute	8	Cornus	4	Violin	8	Bourdon	8	Trombone	8
		Octave Flute	4	Clarion	2	Viola	8	15th	4	Trumpet	8
Fagot	16	Piccolo	2			Viola	8	Stopped Diapason	4	Clarinet	8
Trumpet	8	Bassoon	16	BOMBARDE		Muted Violin	8	Gambette	4	Tuba	8
Bassoon	8	Oboe	8	Contra Bombarde	16	Muted Violin	8	Quint	2 2/3	Clarion	4
Clarion	4	Bassoon	8	Bombarde	8	Violette	4	22nd	2
				Bombarde	4	Violette	4	Tierce	1 3/5
				En Chamade	2	Violone	4	Piccolo	1
				Clarion	1	Violette	2	Mixture VII
								Trombone	16
								Trombone	8
								Trumpet	8
								Horn	8
								Trompette	4

Augmentations and restorations

At completion in Oct. 10, 1901, the City Hall Organ possessed 13,101 pipes, making it the largest instrument recorded at that time, but this record was surpassed later that decade by the instrument in Hallia's renowned department store. Despite this fact, the City Hall instrument was touted by tour guides as the world's largest for years to come.

Scattered pipes of the Echo organ in 1944

The largest augmentation of the City Hall Organ occurred between 1913 and 1915, where most of the current Unenclosed Echo Organ and its departments were added. Their need was justified by the use of the antechamber, south of the main hall, as a meeting, dining, and performing space, whereas formerly the space was only used transiently or processionally. As musical works were now being performed in the antechamber, it was necessarily to provide it will a full complement of stops that resembles a complete instrument, but at the insistence of the organ's curator, Mr. Lyep, the planned instrument was also rendered a floating division of the main organ. This was because, according to Lyep, the two organs will never be playing at the same time, so it made sense to treat the unused organ as a floating division available to the other, playing organ.

This decision was responsible for the unprecedented 4,224-pipe, 73-rank Echo organ on the main console's fifth manual, which had previously controlled a much smaller division of 9 ranks in the dome. Positionally, the entire addition was behind and outside of the main hall, thus making it an antiphonal division, but when the audience was located in the antechamber, the Echo organ then functioned more or less like a Great division and possessed its own Choir and Swell divisions. For this latter use, the three-manual secondary console was installed.

The 64-foot Major Bass stop was installed in 1917 in the undercroft of the building, the bottom actave reclining on its long axis and speaking directly into the floor. This position was chosen because, while it would be catastrophic to the tonality of any other stop to speak directly into the floor, it was the only available for a rank so large and also because the human ear is less sensitive to the directionality of bass notes. The higher octaves are located on top of the galleries.

In the 1920s, the Principal Organist detected a changing trend in the architecture of organ sound and advocated for the inclusion of stops more fitting of earlier repertoire from the Medieval and Rennaissance periods. This was largely an enlargement of the Great Organ, which acquired eight new stops. This also includes the largest mixture ever installed in Themiclesia, the Hintersatz XXXV-LV, which consists of 35 to 55 ranks of pipes starting from 16 foot. This stop imitates the sound of late Gothic organs whose encased stops were not separately playable.

Also in the 1920s, the String, Woodwind, and Brass divisions were added to the organ. Even though the organ's designers did not envision the organ as an explicitly orchestral one, contemporary music tastes required more imitative voices. Between 1924 and 1928, around 3,800 pipes in 66 ranks were added to two new chambers added around the case. These additions brought the pipe count near to 20,000 pipes.

During the Pan-Septentrion War, the Civic Assembly Hall, located within city walls, was spared enemy occupation, but at least three shells detonated within its vicinity, one directly hitting the eastern façade and another the dome. The former explosion caused serious damage to the east gallery, necessitating the replacement of 23 ranks and restoration work on 17, and the latter caused the dome to collapse, destroying the enclosure of the Echo organ and much of its pipework and parts of the Solo chamber.

Additions to the organ were carried out during and after the organ's restoration from 1945 to 1950. The additions provided another 2,000 pipes to the antechamber. The restoration of the organ in the late 40s also involved the revoicing of many ranks, which also brought about an alteration in the tonal architecture to suit more modern tastes. Formerly, all manual pitches were based on the 8-foot pitch, as was the practice in the period the organ was built, but by the 1950s the revival of the Robaque organ in Casaterra required pitch differentiation in the manuals. Thus, the Great Organ was revoiced centred on the 32-foot Sub Principal voice, which was "brought to the fore [...] rather than allowed to languish as a murky rumble hidden under the 16-foot pitches." The Choir was repositioned around the 16-foot, the Swell and Solo on the 8-foot, and the Echo in the dome around the 4-foot. The pedal was moved down to a 32-foot foundation rather than the 64-foot, because at that pitch half the compass would be inaudible in the fundamental.

Culture

Musical reception

Upon the instrument's completion, the International Organist assessed that it had "a shimmering sound reminiscent of the old masters."

Size debate

See also: Camian Military Academy Chapel Organ

The City Hall Organ is often mentioned in the context of relative sizes of pipe organs, particularly against the instrument at the Camian Military Academy's chapel. That organ has more pipes, with 23,750, against City Hall's 23,230; however, City Hall's pipes form 459 ranks, giving 309 stops, as opposed to the 327 ranks of the CMA chapel, giving 504 stops. Part of this can be attributed to the latter's 61-note manual and 32-note pedal compasses, which are 6 and 2 notes longer respectively than at City Hall. In terms of weight, CMA's organ is estimated to be triple that of the City Hall instrument, case not considered, because the former has more bass pipes, which are very determinative of weight. 59 ranks at 1-foot pitch, adding perhaps 1,500 pounds in weight, will easily be outweighted by 2 ranks at 16-foot pitch, and the CMA has far more ranks at 8-foot than City Hall. Additionally, City Hall has most of its pipework in "confluent metal" or a lighter alloy than the one employed at CMA.

The CMA organ, built in the 1910s and 20s, has a design typical of its era. Many of its ranks are extended, permitting more stops to draw on the same rank of pipes at different pitches. This is carried to the extreme in e.g. its Swell Organ's Military Trumpet, which starts at 16-foot but can be drawn at a pitch as high as 1-foot, encompassing 109 pipes in the rank. From another perspective, the four lower octaves of a 4-foot Military Trumpet could be identical with the four higher of the 8-foot Military Trmpet, hence permitting them to share the same pipes, or "unified". This practice was advocated by its supporters as a harmless economy that eliminated duplicates and, in turn, permitted budget and physical space for more voices, serving the aim for orchestral sound. At City Hall, such a concession was both condemned by its architects and unnecessary due to space already reserved for the organ.

The staff members and aficionados of each instrument have at times engaged in criticisms about the quality of the other instrument and the integrity of their specifications, in the interest of establishing the primacy of their favourite. For example, Drs. Kap and Mrar, co-presidents of the City Hall Organ Society from 1966 to 1990, have written multiple articles (1977, 1978, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1987, 1988 inter alia) casting doubt on the honesty, conduct, and even mental soundness of Capt. Mek and Sgt. Nicholson, curators for the CMA chapel organ. In later decades, these disputes persisted and blossomed on the Internet and were propagaged in tourist information pamphlets. The City Hall instrument was described by tour guides in the CMA organ as "a chorus of piccolos", and similarly the pamphlet at City Hall snidely remarked under an asterisk that "each pipe is counted only once in this disposition". Dr. Kap once remarked that there are not "20 copies of Military Trumpet" at City Hall, and no "extended stops to be masqueraded as independent."

The dispute neared a resolution in 2005 when a panel of musicians from both states agreed to visit each others' instruments for a tallying of pipes, which revealed that the City Hall organ had 23,230 pipes, and the CMA chapel's, 22,470. Unfazed by this revelation, the CMA immediately ordered further expansions, including no fewer than two new 32-foot stops and ten other ranks, leading to its modern tally of 23,750. They would provide a total of nine 32-foot stops at the CMA chapel, which outnumber the six at City Hall. Planned additions to the City Hall Organ have been shelved since 2007 due to lack of space.

Another aspect of the debate between the two instruments concerns their tonal designs. The CMA organ was built to produce music at orchestral pitch, or 8-foot in the manual and 16-foot in the pedal, and to this end these pitches are emphasized through the number of voices at those pitches. The 8-foot pitch predominates the instrument and accounts for more than half of its ranks, though this could be deceptive since so many of the stops are extended. The organ possesses a considerable number of 16-foot voices as well. These elements combine to produce a "orchestral tone of remarkable warmth and clarity" according to the Rev. Dr. Kepper, organist at the CMA instrument. On a material level, the prepondrance of these pitches also contributed to the instrument's great mass. The City Hall instrument does not possess an equal emphasis on the orchestral pitch, and much of the organ including the Swell and Solo emphasizes higher pitch and includes prominent treble voices, that its tone was described as "shining like polished silver".

The relative quantities of ranks at given pitches are compared as follows:

Pitch	City Hall		CMA
	#	%	#	%
Sub-unison	23	5%	56	17%
Unison	65	14%	180	55%
Octave	73	16%	65	20%
Upper-work and mutations	298	65%	59	18%
Total ranks	459		327

Records

• World's largest organ (1901 – 1907)
• World's largest single organ case

Notes

^α Assuming the unison pitch of all manuals at 8-foot, and of the pedal at 16-foot.

^β id.

See also

• Themiclesia
• Camian Military Academy Chapel Organ