Q&A: Andrew Scott

The Abbey organ has just under 7,000 pipes and it’s spread around the building. The general regime for tuning the organ is one full-day visit every fortnight. The tuner arrives to coincide with the end of the morning Eucharist to start work on the organ at 8:30am.

The first thing they do is check if there are any mechanical issues that have crept in since the last visit. The Abbey being a public building and people paying to come in, we try to curtail the noise during a tuning visit. But it’s a job that needs to be done.

What are some of the technical aspects of the job?

One person, who isn’t an organ builder usually, acts as a note holder. Then the other person is inside the organ and they communicate through a set of headphones. 

You’re tuning one set of pipes to another, so you can hear the discrepancy in tuning between the two pipes and you have to pull one in line with another. You might start at the bottom of the keyboard. Each stop on the keyboard has 61 pipes, so it might take you anywhere from five to 15 minutes to tune. 

Temperature and humidity play a big part. The seasons affect how the sun moves around the building during the day, and you’ve got to be mindful of that because the pitch is connected to temperature. The pitch of the bombarde – part of the organ in the south triforium – rises when the sun’s shining directly on it, so you have to pick your moment to tune it. If you do it in the height of that sunshine, the rest of the day it’ll be out of tune. 

One of the quirks of the triforium sections of the organ is that they live in a slightly different climate because they’re higher up than the parts on the screen. So, you’ve got stratospheric and atmospheric changes between the screen and the triforium. 

Are there any misconceptions people have about organ tuning? 

People might see organ tuners as: ‘Oh, not you lot again making all that noise.’ But we’re there to do a service for the Abbey so that there is exceptional music. People often forget that while it’s noisy for them down on the floor… the tuner’s standing right next to it! 

What’s unique about working in the Abbey? 

Lots of things! But there’s nothing better than walking into the Abbey first thing in the morning when there’s nobody there other than those attending the morning service and the vergers. Or even working into the evening when you’re the only person in the building. 

That’s quite an amazing privilege… to have the Abbey to yourself. It’s such a special space and steeped in history. That never gets tiring, even now after I’ve been coming to the Abbey for nearly 30 years.

Interview by Maddy Fry. With thanks to Harrison & Harrison. Photography by Duncan Lomax.