Julie Hemmings
DISTINCTIVE music for special occasions and public celebration could be silenced if European bureaucrats get their way.
Musicians and music lovers are going on the offensive to save the pipe organ – known by Mozart as "the king of instruments" – from new safety legislation.
A new EU law which comes into force this summer relating to lead – a key ingredient, along with tin, in organ pipes – has been condemned as "gobbledegook" by leading musicians.
The regulations are intended to cut the amount of hazardous materials dumped when items such as electronic circuit boards and mobile telephones are discarded.
But the directive was drafted in such a way that it appears to include pipe organs, many of which have electrical components and all of which use pipes made from lead alloy.
Organ builder Geoffrey Coffin said pipe makers he worked with, such as at Booth and Son in Leeds, enjoyed robust health and long working lives.
He employs a handful of people at Principal Pipe Organs in York, and recently restored the organ at Giggleswick Parish Church in the Dales.
His biggest project was the restoration of York Minster's organ in the early 1990s and he receives commissions from all over the country.
"People have been experimenting for many years to find an alternative to lead but nothing else has been found to produce the sort of sound from the instrument," Mr Coffin said.
"Brussels has had its say but everybody takes precautions. Lead is not hazardous in the same way as asbestos and lead pipes, including water pipes, have been around for years.
"Restoration is done very much with traditional materials – the oldest organ still working, in Switzerland, dates from 1429 and as an organ ages it gets a richer tone.
"There is no way anyone is going to allow the destruction of these splendid instruments."
Mr Coffin maintains the organ at St Mary's Church in Thirsk – where vet and James Herriot author Alf Wight was married.
St Mary's is trying to raise £100,000 for essential maintenance for the Victorian organ, which may be among those affected if challenges to the new EU law fail.
With implications for every church and cathedral in the country – and some of the region's finest public buildings, such as Leeds Town Hall – organists and music lovers are rushing to sign an online petition started by the Institute of British Organ Building (IBO).
The IBO is seeking clarification from Europe on the effects of the directive but in the meantime is urging as many people as possible to protest. Thousands used to work in organ building but the industry's employees now number only in the hundreds.
Simon Lindley, organist at Leeds Parish Church and Leeds Town Hall, said he had been deluged with emails from worried musicians and urged everyone concerned to write to their MP.
"If they carry on without making some kind of exemption it will have disastrous consequences," said Dr Lindley, secretary of the Church Music Society and a former president of the Royal College of Organists.
"It would kill the sound if you alter the pipes. Reason has to prevail. If not, the implications don't bear thinking about.
"Organ building is a very old-established craft which works wonderfully well. It's a case of 'if it ain't broke, don't fix it'."
Eminent musician and conductor Simon Wright, who was organist at Ampleforth Abbey for 34 years until last summer, described the EU directive as "gobbledegook".
He said: "If this is enforced an organ's sound is not going to be as we know it.
"It's bad enough at the moment – the cost of building an organ is enormous and it's very specialised work. I've not heard of lead problems in organ building and they do recycle it – they don't get rid of it."
Mr Wright said the make-up of the metal pipes was a reason for an organ's special resonance and it was the power and variety of sound from the instrument which attracted him to it at an early age.
julie.hemmings@ypn.co.uk
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