The world-renowned Tabernacle organ is an engineering marvel and an artistic masterpiece. The Organ Historical Society recognized it as “an instrument of exceptional historic merit,” and it has an exceptional history.
Pioneer organ builder Joseph Ridges grew up in England, across the street from an organ factory. Fascinated by the mechanics of such marvelous instruments, Ridges became an organ builder. He worked night and day on the first organ he built while living in Australia. Not long after it was completed, he disassembled it, packaged the parts in soldered tin shipping cases, and sailed with it to California.
In the spring of 1857, 12 wagons pulled by 14 mule teams carried the organ to the Salt Lake Valley to an old adobe tabernacle. Then, as the new Tabernacle was being built, Brigham Young asked Ridges to build a larger organ to accompany the Choir. Three hundred miles from Salt Lake City, Ridges and his crew found straight, knot-free pinewood, without pitch or gum, to use for the pipes. To make wood glue, they boiled cowhides in kettles they set up on the city streets, and they used calf skins to create the bellows. For the other items they needed, they traveled to Boston with $900—all the money the Church could spare.1
Since 1867, when the Tabernacle first opened its doors, this beloved organ has touched the hearts of millions of people around the world. The organ has been rebuilt and enlarged over the years, but it retains Ridges’s original case and 32-foot golden pipes. These pipes, shaped from laminated wedges fit together to form a cylinder, have become a hallmark of the Choir and are the only round wooden pipes of this size in the world.2 The organ stands today as a reminder of pioneer ingenuity and resourcefulness. It sings of sacrifice, devotion, and love for music.
Program #4051
1 See Heidi S. Swinton, America’s Choir: A Commemorative Portrait of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir (2004), 54–55.
2 See Charles Jeffrey Calman, The Mormon Tabernacle Choir (1979), 33