Today, we sound a note of beauty in a harsh land.
The University of Houston's College of Engineering
presents this series about the machines that make
our civilization run, and the people whose
ingenuity created them.
Traugott Wandke got off the
sailing ship Weser in Galveston. It
was May 4th, 1855. Wandke was 47 years old. He'd
spent two months crossing from Bremen, Germany. Now
he was tired, seasick, and ready to head inland to
begin a new life. That life would eventually settle
down in Round Top, Texas.
He brought considerable mechanical skill to this
primitive land. He went to work making church
furniture and repairing watches. He did carpentry,
tinsmithing, and locksmithing.
Wandke also had some modest ability as a musician.
He brought with him an obscure book of German
chorales. He could play most of them but not much
else. He sang in his church choir. Old-timers from
Round Top said he would walk through town singing a
single sustained high note. They said it was a high
G.
Then, in his mid-50s, Wandke began work on an organ
for the Bethlehem Lutheran church. There's no hard
evidence that he'd ever built an organ before. He
might have. But it was common for the people who
shaped life in our wilderness to do it without the
expertise you'd expect. And, in 1865, Round Top lay
on the very edge of the American frontier.
Before his death in 1870, Wandke built seven pipe
organs from scratch. It's amazing how well he did
at it. Three are around and the Bethlehem Church
organ is still in use. So let's look at these old
engines of Wandke's ingenuity.
The organs were beautifully made. They're
self-contained units in fine wood cabinets. Wandke
put them together with hand-turned wooden screws.
He made the pipes from hand-planed wood. His organs
are typically about ten feet high and six feet
wide. Most of the wood in them is local cedar. They
still perfume rooms with a delicate cedar smell.
The level of craftsmanship is remarkable. These are
no historical curiosities. They're nice, playable
instruments. They have a gentle, mellow sound. The
voicing is uniform and musical. The action is good.
Yet they're idiosyncratic. They're the work of a
man separated from the organ-building practice of
his day. One modern builder points out that the
design and the list of organ stops were 50 years
out of date, even in 1865.
So that's how the first organs were built in Texas.
This was a hard and barren land. The first order of
business was to bring some beauty into it -- to
make it bearable. That's what Wandke did. That's
what fired his technological genius. But then,
beauty has always been the first business of any
technology, in any age.
I'm John Lienhard, at the University of Houston,
where we're interested in the way inventive minds
work.
(Theme music)
Frank, G.D., The Life and Work of Johann
Traugott Wandke. Harrisville, NH, The Boston
Organ Club Chapter of the Organ Historical Society,
1990.
I am grateful to Pat Bozeman, Head of Special
Collections at the UH Library, for bringing the
Frank book to my attention and for her counsel on
this episode. I am also grateful to organist Larry
Hamm, who plays the Bethlehem Church organ, for
pointing out that Wandke was probably just trying
to remember the high G on the way from his workshop
to the church so he could tune the organ to it.
Photo by John Lienhard
Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Round Top, Texas
Photo by John Lienhard
First Organ Built in Texas by J. Traugott
Wandke
Photo by Judy Myers
Front Pipes of Wandke's Organ, Right-Hand Side
Photo by Judy Myers
The Stop Action Mechanisms for Wandke's Organ
Photo by Judy Myers
Interior of the Bethlehem lutheran Church
The Engines of Our Ingenuity is
Copyright © 1988-1997 by John H.
Lienhard.
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