Sydney Town Hall Grand Organ

The Sydney Town Hall Grand Organ is the world's largest pipe organ that uses tubular pneumatic action, built by English firm William Hill & Son in 1890. It is located in the Centennial Hall of Sydney Town Hall in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia.
When it was installed in 1890, the Sydney Town Hall Grand Organ was the largest in the world, and it remained the largest concert organ built in the 19th century, boasting 5 manuals and 127 stops. It was described by Westminster Abbey's organist, Frederick Bridge, as "the finest organ ever built by an English organ builder". It remains the world's largest organ without any electric action components and is of international significance. Its Contra-Trombone is one of only two full-length 64' organ stops in the world.

History

When Sydney's City Council decided to commission the organ, they called on a small group of experts to formulate a process for achieving a transparent and defensible decision on supplier and installer. In this they received generous support and advice from the Melbourne City Council, who had been through a similar process.
As a result, Sydney assembled a committee to compile a set of specifications for a Great Organ, which for power and versatility would be the world's largest and finest, call for tenders for both manufacture and installation, and select the successful tenders. The committee consisted of:

Montague Younger, chairman. Younger was organist of St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney and arguably Sydney's finest exponent.
Alexander Rea, secretary. He had been closely involved in the preliminary negotiations.
Albert Bond, architect with pipe organ experience
William Davidson, organ builder
Charles James Jackson, organ builder
Harry C. Kent, Pitt Street architect
Martin Louis Layton, organ builder
Frederick Morley, organist of Bourke Street Wesleyan Church,
William Henry Nash, organist for Christ Church St Laurence; designed the organ for St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney.
Thomas Sharp MCO, organist of All Saints' Church, Woollahra

Submissions were received from twelve companies, which were assessed on their perceived capacity to fill the contract, personal experience of the companies' products, technical considerations in the submissions, and finally, price. The choice narrowed down to two: Gray and Davison and William Hill and Son. The ultimate selection of Hill and Son may have been a foregone conclusion despite their higher price, as they had supplied and installed instruments for the Town Halls of Adelaide and Melbourne, and also St Andrew's Cathedral, Sydney. Several modifications suggested by the company were approved, and a new requirement added: that the organist's console should be situated at ground level, despite the additional expense and complexity.
Sharp dissented from the majority decision on the grounds that the Hill organ was too large for the Centennial Hall, and that it would be difficult and expensive to find an organist capable of matching its complexity. He was never confident of the committee throughout its deliberations.
Negotiations with Hill and Son were conducted by Alexander Rea, who, as leader of a group of organists, drew up the specifications. Belgium's Auguste Wiegand, who would become Sydney's first City Organist, later blamed the group for certain shortcomings in its design, but was contradicted by Hill, who praised the "Corporation of Sydney,... they left all details in our hands."
Rea supervised installation of the instrument and tested the mechanism before the famous organist W. T. Best "opened" the organ in August 1890.
When Best returned to England, Rea gave a number of recitals at the Town Hall, and supervised access to the huge instrument until the appointment of Wiegand as City Organist in 1891.

20th century

In 1973, the Sydney Council authorized a major restoration program to address the mechanical problems that the organ had begun to experience. Managing the program was Roger H Pogson, whose employees worked for almost 10 years to restore the organ, close to its original form.
Previous to this restoration, the organ had fallen into a state of disrepair; however, tuner of the organ in the 1960s, Ken Martin, a Noad employee, insists that, despite problems, the organ was always playable in some way. There were calls in the preceding decades to either rebuild the organ in a neo-classical style or completely remove and replace it with a new instrument. The announcement that the Sydney Opera House being constructed would house a new, large, mechanical-action organ, greatly influenced the decision to restore the Hill and Son Organ.
Sydney Town Hall today holds free organ recitals throughout the year.

Specification

The Town Hall organ features 127 stops, distributed over 5 manuals and the pedalboard, as follows: