Journal Article

Retrospective: Walter Holtleamp Sr

McCabe, Joseph

2020

Overview

Speculative conclusions could be drawn based on the relationship of Walter Holtkamp and Albert Schweitzer (whom he would not meet at the Museum until near the end of his career) or correspondence with organ enthusiast Rudolph Barków,3 as well as other influential organ people, events, and instruments that preceded the construction of the museum's Rückpositiv.4 At least partial credit can be given to the programming of Arthur W. Quimby, curator of music and organist of the Cleveland Museum of Art, as having some influence on Holtkamp's earliest work. The gap that exists in Weismann's construct from Holtkamp's 1930s work to the installation of the three-manual 1956 Rudolf von Beckerath organ at Trinity Evangelical Lutheran Church, Cleveland, is only partly addressed. Weismann disregards the vast number of Votteler-HoltkampSparling organs completed after 1933, and despite the war, Holtkamp continued to experiment with organbuilding technology, albeit without a return to simultaneous implementation of all the core mechanical-action organbuilding principles. An argument can even be made that slider-chest construction was never completely abandoned, since the 1913 two-manual Votteler-Hettche organ at Saint Procop Church in Cleveland and the 1916 two-manual Votteler-Holtkamp-Sparling at Lakewood Masonic Temple are just two of several extant organs built by the same firm (though under different names) to have \"Celestial\" stops, a note-to-note \"tunable\" mechanism that when selected, engages traditional sliders under secondary toe boards in order to \"starve\" the wind of unison stops to create a celeste.

• Publisher: Organ Historical Society, Incorporated
• Subject: Art galleries & museums / Schweitzer, Albert