Chapel Organ
When the Henry Mansfield Cannon Memorial Chapel was completed in the fall of 1929, there was no organ and no individual donor came forward to help purchase one. In 1933, the sophomore class of Westhampton College sponsored the creation of an Organ Fund. The April 28, 1936, edition of the Collegian reported that a pipe organ suitable for the chapel would cost approximately $8,000. It was suggested that more class gifts be contributed to the Organ Fund. That same year, Mr. and Mrs. F. Flaxington Harker and the Walter D. Moses Company arranged for the loan of an instrument for a special Vespers service.By the autumn of 1936, the chapel was redecorated and a new organ and amplification system was installed. Most of the funds for the organ came from contributions from students and faculty. The Hammond electric organ was used until 1961, when the current Beckerath pipe organ was built.
The German organ builder, Rudolph von Beckerath, prepared the drawings and had the organ built in Hamburg, Germany. The pieces were then shipped to the United States in 36 crates. Three workers arrived from Hamburg to install the instrument over the course of nine weeks under the guidance of UR’s music director, Dr. John White, and UR’s organist, Suzanne Kidd Bunting. Von Beckerath later traveled to Richmond to supervise the final installation and to voice the pipes.
In 1961, the organ was valued at approximately $35,000. It was the third Beckerath organ in the United States. The organ has 1,200 pipes of tin, lead, and wood; the largest measures 16 feet, and the shortest is smaller and thinner than a soda straw. There are 40 ranks of pipes, and there is a direct connection between each key and each pipe that creates the sound. One of the installers, Cris Linde, was quoted as saying, “You can achieve much more precision with a mechanical organ than with an electrical one.” This instrument is particularly suited to performing music of 17th and 18th century Germany. The organ was dedicated on February 9, 1962 with a concert by Robert Noehren of the University of Michigan.