Will the U of M organ fall silent?

University of Minnesota organist Dean Billmeyer was too well-mannered to roll his eyes when a reporter asked him to play Bach's Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, an organ piece so familiar that even musical know-nothings can appreciate it.

Billmeyer sat down at the scarred, wheezing console of Northrop Auditorium's 1932 Aeolian-Skinner pipe organ, pushed and pulled a few ceramic stops to control the sound and planted his fingers on one of the organ's keyboards.

Four stories above, some of the organ's nearly 7,000 pipes roared into action, flooding the darkened auditorium with majestic, forbidding chords that conjured up the image of Lon Chaney's startled, skeletal face in the silent film "The Phantom of the Opera."

Such is the power of Northrop's pipe organ, a monster of an instrument that has been alternately treasured and ignored by the U. Once featured at the center of university life and ceremony, the organ fell on hard times in the late 1960s and was virtually unplayable until a student began a guerrilla effort to restore it. Now the organ faces another turning point: What will happen to it when the U guts and renovates Northrop Auditorium?

U officials have indicated that they would like to keep the organ, but no official decisions have been made. In 1998, the cost of restoring the instrument was estimated at $1.5 million, a cost that has certainly gone up since then. Fundraising for the organ restoration, which had yielded about $560,000, has been suspended while decisions are made on Northrop's renovation.

Billmeyer said that without its organ, a renovated Northrop would be missing its heart. While it is not the biggest pipe organ in the Twin Cities -- a local church has a new organ that is bigger -- the U organ is unusual because it hasn't been rebuilt or changed since it was installed in the early 1930s. Parts of it have stopped working, and changes to the auditorium make it difficult to play: Sound is directed in such a way that organists in the orchestra pit hear a muted, delayed version of their playing.

But for members of the audience, the sound isn't dramatically different from what people heard before World War II.

"It's a truly wonderful organ in a very poor environment," Billmeyer said. "If Northrop is the iconic building at the university, this is the university's iconic instrument. ... I'm guessing it would cost $3 [million] to $4 million to replace."

'Rooms' of pipes

The public face of the organ is the console, the playable part of the instrument that rises on a platform out of the orchestra pit. With four keyboards and about 225 stops, pedals and buttons that can be used to manipulate the organ's sound, Billmeyer sometimes moves like a contortionist as he plays, feet sliding over pedals and pumps, hands changing keyboards and reaching out to press in or pull out a stop. He wears shoes with tapered toes, leather soles and a special type of heel to play the organ.

If the organ is restored, the worn-out console would need to be replaced at a cost of about $300,000, Billmeyer said. While the crackled ceramic heads on the stops are charming, some of the buttons that adjust the organ's sound don't work. Last week, an air leak produced a hissing sound from somewhere under the console.

But the real organ, its guts and power and sound, is hidden high on Northrop's fourth floor.

Narrow walkways cross the hot, dark and dusty space. Crude humidifiers that once kept the leather in the organ's bellows supple malfunctioned long ago and are turned off. Enormous square pipes made of yellow pine -- which produce the lowest of the low notes -- tower at one end, while at the other end phalanxes of metal pipes line the walls. Each plays a single note. In between, thousands of pipes are grouped in "rooms," shielded by felt-padded wooden shutters that can be opened and closed from below to control volume. Some of the metal pipes are as tiny as pens, while others look like smokestacks.

This is the part of the organ Billmeyer worries most about. The space can be cleaned, split leather replaced and broken pipes fixed where they are, he said. But removing and reinstalling the pipes likely would cost millions, he said, and raise the possibility that the organ would be gone forever.

Cloak-and-dagger repair

Gordon Schultz hopes that doesn't happen. He was the U student who snuck into Northrop in the early 1970s on nights and weekends to fix the organ, which had nearly stopped working. An accommodating friend with a key left certain doors open for him.

Schultz had apprenticed with a Minneapolis organ shop the summer between high school and college. More than three decades later, he runs Gould and Schultz Inc. and travels the Midwest repairing and building pipe organs.

"Back then it [the Northrop organ] was a pariah," he said. "Nobody wanted it when something went wrong."

He replaced cracked leather and tuned pipes, repeatedly running up and down 96 stairs from the auditorium floor to the fourth floor. "I was young," he said.

His friends pitched in, holding down notes on the console while he tuned pipes above.

Eventually Schultz's free work turned into paid work. He's helped to maintain the organ ever since.

"It's a fine instrument," he said. "It would be nice if it just stayed there and was restored."

Mary Jane Smetanka • 612-673-7380 • smetan@startribune.com