Organ Music: Pulling Out All the Stops

By Renee Montagne,

Miles Hoffman

Published June 5, 2006 at 6:37 PM EDT

The organ has been described, along with the clock, as the most complex of all mechanical instruments developed before the Industrial Revolution. Mozart called it the king of instruments.

The largest concert-hall organ in the United States — all 32 tons of it — recently made its debut at Philadelphia's Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts.

"Millions of people hear the organ every weekend ... in church, but how the thing works does remain kind of mysterious," music commentator Miles Hoffman says.

Renee Montagne

Renee Montagne, one of the best-known names in public radio, is a special correspondent and host for NPR News.

See stories by Renee Montagne

Miles Hoffman

Morning Edition music commentator Miles Hoffman is the author of The NPR Classical Music Companion, now in its tenth printing from the Houghton Mifflin Company. Before joining Morning Edition in 2002, Hoffman entertained and enlightened the nationwide audience of NPR's Performance Today every week for 13 years with his musical commentary, "Coming to Terms," a listener-friendly tour through the many foreign words and technical terms peculiar to the world of classical music.

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