The Holtkamp Organ Company of

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

is one of

America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

's oldest builders of

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurized air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single pitch, the pipes are provided in sets called ''ranks ...

s. Founded in 1855 by G.F. Votteler, the company was passed on to the Holtkamps in 1931. Under the direction of Walter Holtkamp Sr., the company became famous as a pioneer of the

Organ Reform Movement The Organ Reform Movement or ''Orgelbewegung'' (also called the Organ Revival Movement) was a mid-20th-century trend in pipe organ building, originating in Germany. The movement was most influential in the United States in the 1930s through 1970s, ...

in the United States. Holtkamp organs typically make much use of exposed pipe-work to, in the words of Walter Holtkamp, allow the audience to see and hear the organ better. Holtkamp organs also typically have a non-traditional console, which looks something like a couple of keyboards and stops just placed on a desk. In the early 1940s Walter Holtkamp built his first and last organ console in the French style. It was for him a miserable failure. However, it had been designed with a low "French" profile because the organist for whom it was built was very short and had a difficult time looking over a typical organ music rack to his choir. Holtkamp, therefore, embarked on designing what became the Holtkamp console for reasons of clean sight lines outward from the player's desk. When in the United States for a lecture at the

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in 1949,

Albert Schweitzer Ludwig Philipp Albert Schweitzer (; 14 January 1875 – 4 September 1965) was an Alsatian-German/French polymath. He was a theologian, organist, musicologist, writer, humanitarian, philosopher, and physician. A Lutheran minister, Schwei ...

visited Cleveland to play the Holtkamp Rückpositiv at the

Cleveland Museum of Art The Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA) is an art museum in Cleveland, Ohio, located in the Wade Park District, in the University Circle neighborhood on the city's east side. Internationally renowned for its substantial holdings of Asian and Egyptian ...

, the only American instrument he requested play. "Bravo for the first Rückpositiv in America," Schweitzer had written to Walter Holtkamp from

Günsbach Gunsbach () is a village and commune in the Haut-Rhin department in Grand Est in north-eastern France. The first mention of Gunsbach is in 1285, when the land was given Lord Conrad Werner of Hattstatt. In 1434, Gunsbach was sold to the Ribeaup ...

Alsace Alsace (, ; ; Low Alemannic German/ gsw-FR, Elsàss ; german: Elsass ; la, Alsatia) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in eastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine next to Germany and Switzerland. In 2020, it had ...

, May 22, 1934. "I congratulate."Ferguson, p. 50.

References

External links

Holtkamp Organ Company
Manufacturing companies based in Cleveland Pipe organ building companies 1855 establishments in Ohio Musical instrument manufacturing companies of the United States {{musical-instrument-company-stub