If you just followed the QR code to this site and are standing in Duke Chapel, you are probably hearing the tuning of the Kathleen Upton Byrns McClendon Pipe Organ (Aeolian Organ Company, 1932) located in the chancel. What follows are answers to questions you may have about the tuning process you are hearing.

Who is asking for quiet during organ tuning—and why?

I am John Santoianni and I am the Ethel Sieck Carrabina Curator of Organs and Harpsichords. I take care of the instruments here at the Chapel as well as in the Music Department and the Divinity School. When I am tuning, I need the Chapel to be as quiet as possible so I can better hear the pitches and overtones of the pipes I am tuning. Even quiet talking is distracting and gets in the way of my work. Yes, I can hear you! Other distractions I encounter are vacuum cleaners, planes, trains, helicopters, lawn mowers, heavy rain and wind, someone on a cell phone, slamming doors, and all the cheering from Cameron Indoor Stadium (a slight exaggeration for the last one). Whether the pipes are very loud or very soft, they all require very attentive listening to get the tuning just right.

A label from the original Aeolian Organ blueprints from 1932.
A label from the original Aeolian Organ blueprints from 1932.

Why do you need to tune?

Every acoustic instrument needs to be tuned from time to time. For pipe organs, the changing seasonal temperatures affects the internal temperature of the Chapel which causes the overall pitch of the organ to change—but not evenly, so the pipes become out of tune with one another. I will be tuning this one organ for at least a week.

Why does it take so long?

There are approximately 6,700 pipes in the Aeolian organ, and my goal is to tune just about all of them.

But I don’t see 6,700 pipes from where I stand!

If you are standing in front of the steps to the chancel, you can see 117 pipes in the four sections of the façade cases. There are two main cases facing each other in the chancel, and two “lancets” that face into the crossing. Of these 117 pipes, only 24 actually speak—the rest are there just for decoration (called “dummies”). You are only seeing less than .4% of all the speaking pipes of this organ.

Where are the rest?

Behind the beautifully carved oak facades are three large rooms called chambers. The largest chamber is about 25’ square.