Letter from Ernest M. Skinner to William King Covell

Dear Mr. Covell,

My business is at an end for the duration. I am personally carrying on elsewhere (from my home) with a couple of men in service work, revoicing &c. but no new work. The big organ is still there but I think the bank has sold the building to a church which uses no organ. So the big organ will have to be taken down and stored or sold. I have written a church about it.

I think an organ without swells is better than one without diapasons. Harrison has placed a three-manual organ in the Brooks School North Andover, without diapasons. None whatever. I don’t know whether or not it has swells, perhaps not. Why the organ is selected to be so far as possible an instrument with warmth, color, expression and all poetic implication eliminated is beyond me. I have spent my life trying to make it otherwise. Somehow it has given me the most distinguished clientele any builder ever had in America, so I cannot have been altogether wrong.

I think Jamison’s last article was quite sound and have thought of writing a comment upon it. Haven’t had time yet. The orchestra of Bach’s time was in about the same condition as the organ. No symphonies, tone poems, conductors, fiddle bows more like our cello bows, no French Horns that could ever play chromatic scale, etc. Why was there not protest on improvement in orchestra? Never any protest on bettering the organ ’till I I came along.

Why did Bach supplement organ with orchestral instruments? What has more clarity than contrasting colors? All of which leaves the orchestra with a good ensemble, doesn’t it? Why eliminate all color in the interest of that which is used least? The ensemble? Now it’s your turn.

Yours sincerely,
Ernest M. Skinner