Pipe organ work is not a particularly visible profession these days. Maple Grove resident and organ restoration expert David Engen attributes this to the fact that nowadays, organ repair and restoration is done almost exclusively within churches and colleges and not in private homes. Another factor lies in the fact that many people who were previously in the business have retired or passed away.
There are fewer colleges that offer organ majors now. One exception is the University of Oklahoma, where a fairly new organ building school is attempting to invigorate and reinvent the time-honored study of pipe organ building, playing and improvisation.
Engen believes a new generation needs to be trained in organ restoration to keep the tradition of organ music going. “A lot of churches have been abandoning the organ for rock bands, but we also see signs of that pendulum swinging,” he explains. “It’s simply more practical to have one person capable of making a lot of sound compared with the work involved in putting together and rehearsing an ensemble that can perform every week.”
Some restoration issues or problems that Engen regularly sees include accumulated dirt, aging of the leather used in the instrument and effects of winter, such as low humidity. “The dry air causes damage and causes the organs to split,” he explains. Common repair practices may take four to six weeks to complete. Depending on the level of pollution and whether the organ is in an urban or rural area, leather usually begins to wear out after 50 or 60 years, but may sometimes last up to 80 or 90 years.
Engen has had a few strange encounters over the years including dead bats, bugs inside the working parts and a mouse’s nest inside the wind chest (where the organ valves are found). “The only way the mouse could have gotten in there was through the blade of the blower when it was off,” he says.
Engen was born in Minneapolis, but grew up in St. Louis Park and Hopkins. He attended St. Olaf College for a bachelor of music degree in organ and church music. He then went on to pursue two master’s degrees: in teaching and performance and in software design and development.
Engen began building and repairing organs when he was in college and found a summer job in the business. After college, he continued working for an organ builder for 14 more years while teaching part time at Gustavus Adolphus College. In 1984, Engen switched to using his other expertise and became a manager in software programming. He retired from Seagate Technology five years ago to build a business and resume repairing organs full-time.
Retirement didn’t allow for a lot of down time. “The next week [after he retired from Seagate] the business took off,” Engen says. At the time, he worked solo, restoring and repairing organs. Meanwhile, down in Rochester, David Grandall was also running a repair business. As Engen puts it, “He [Grandall] is 31 and I am 66 so I can retire and he can take over.” Thus Grandall & Engen was born.
Grandall & Engen mostly aim their sights at maintenance and enhancement for more than 100 clients in Minnesota and Wisconsin, unlike the 50 fairly small companies nationwide that concentrate on building or rebuilding organs. While the roster of organ experts continues to decline nationally, Maple Grove is fortunate to have two people who can keep the organs sounding glorious.
