Rare, Custom-Made Pipe Organ Installed at Yale

To inaugurate a new pipe organ with a 17th-century temperament in Yale’s Marquand Chapel, the University is holding a yearlong series of events featuring eminent musicians and scholars.

The events to inaugurate the new Taylor and Boody organ include recitals, services, concerts and lectures featuring some of Yale’s finest musicians and numerous distinguished guests. The beautiful new addition to Yale’s collection of musical instruments represents the culmination of nearly ten years of planning at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.

The first major pipe organ built at Yale in over 35 years, this new instrument in Marquand Chapel fits into the celebrated collection of existing organs on Yale’s campus, complementing without duplicating their strengths. It is tuned in meantone temperament, a tuning system prevalent in the 17th century. This tuning system allows certain harmonies to sound “sweeter” or more “pure” and others to sound more dissonant or “active.” In the new Taylor and Boody organ, Yale now has an instrument—one of only a very few in the world—ideally suited and with the acoustical resources for the performance of music of earlier periods in a manner that is historically authentic. The organ, however, is not limited to music of a particular historical period. The mission of the Institute is lived out in this organ in that it will also lead generations of worshippers in the singing of sacred song.

The yearlong series of free events—collectively titled “Fanfare!”—includes recitals by Harald Vogel, Martin Jean, Ja Kyung Oh and William Porter. Matthew Suttor’s “Syntagma,” commissioned by the Yale Institute of Sacred Music for the occasion, with the Yale Schola Cantorum, conducted by Simon Carrington, and guest ensemble Piffaro Renaissance Band, premiered on October 6. Vogel and Ross Duffin, the Fynette H. Kulas Professor of Music at Case Western Reserve University, will both offer lectures, and concerts by the mezzo-soprano Judith Malafronte and others performing music of the Italian Renaissance, will round out the season. Detailed information about the Fanfare! Series is at www.yale.edu/ism or 203-432-5180.