Charles Brenton Fisk (February 7, 1925 – December 16, 1983) was an American pipe organ builder who was one of the first to reintroduce mechanical tracker actions in modern organ building over electro-pneumatic actions.
Born in Washington D. C., he developed an early fascination with organs and electronics. After graduating high school, he was drafted into World War II as a technician. He was later transferred to Los Alamos Laboratory, where he unknowingly contributed to the Manhattan Project and subsequently the atomic bomb Fat Man. Afterwards, Fisk initially pursued a career in atomic physics, earning a degree from Harvard University. However, he soon decided to abandon physics and dedicate himself to organbuilding.
He took apprenticeship under John Swinford and Walter Holtkamp and made frequent trips to Europe to study European organs. Often associated with the Organ Reform Movement, he often incorporated historical features into his organs. Afterward he became a partner of the Andover Organ Company, which he renamed to C.B. Fisk, Inc. after the departure of its owner, Thomas A. Byrk. Under Fisk, the firm produced many significant organs, such as those at Memorial Church of Harvard, Old West Church in Boston, and King's Chapel on Tremont Street. The firm continues to manufacture organs today.
Life and career
Early life Fisk was born in Washington, DC, United States, on February 7, 1925, to Brenton Kern Fisk, a lawyer, and Amelia Worthington Fisk, a social worker and suffragette. In the early 1930s, the Fisk family moved to the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts. As a soprano, he joined the choir of the Christ Church of the Cambridge Common, at which E. Power Biggs was the choirmaster and organist. At this point in life, Fisk reflected that his interest in organs had not matured yet, describing organs as simple "moaning in the background". In addition to singing, he played trumpets and organs.
On Fisk's 13th birthday, he was gifted a reed organ, on which he made minor repairs. According to one of Fisk's friends, Fisk fiddled with electromechanical devices and built his own amplifiers when he was 14 years old. After playing his sister's Bach recordings on his amplifiers, he started to develop a fondness for the sound of organs. He was well-versed in creating tube amplifiers, and acquaintances of Fisk's parents often asked for him to make one for them.
Fisk studied at The Cambridge School of Weston from 1938, and graduated in 1942. In 1943, at age 17, he secured a job in the University of Chicago's Metallurgical Laboratory with the help of his physicist uncle, Joyce Stearns, who also worked there. Stearns had suggested to Fisk's parents that Fisk work with him to avoid being conscripted into the battlefields of World War II.
Military service
Soon after graduating high school, Fisk was drafted to Army Air Corps, where he worked as a Link Trainer mechanic. A year later, he was transferred to the Los Alamos Laboratory in July 1944.
While at Los Alamos, Fisk was assigned as an electronics technician and a lab helper in the Bomb Physics division. He worked under Darol Froman with twenty other people. As a member of the 9812th Special Engineer Detachment, Fisk was part of a unit that collected knowledgeable people to conduct research.
His job included soldering pre-amps for electronic sensors. These sensors were used for detecting the presence of a spherical implosion during bomb testing, which is needed for plutonium bombs to function. Those designs were eventually implemented into the Fat Man atomic bomb, which was dropped onto Nagasaki in 1945. It can be said Fisk worked as a part of the Manhattan Project, but he was unaware of his involvement until some weeks before the bomb was dropped.
Education and career change After the conclusion of the war, Fisk studied at Harvard University. Continuing his interest in music, he joined a glee club at the university's Memorial Church. He graduated from Harvard with an undergraduate degree in physics in 1949. After graduating, Fisk desired to stay in New Mexico and was offered a position as an assistant in Los Alamos. However, due to his father's declining health and his commitment to his would-be future spouse Ann Lindenmuth, he rejected the offer. For a year and a half, Fisk studied cosmic rays at the Brookhaven National Laboratory. From 1950 to 1951, he lived in California and attended Stanford University, intending on receiving a PhD in physics. At Stanford, Fisk also studied under the American organist Herbert Nanney and became an apprentice of the organ builder John Swinford. He left Stanford's physics curriculum after only completing one six-week semester, and ended up switching to a music curriculum.
The Boston Globe and The Diapason attributed Fisk's decision to leave physics to the unease he felt for contributing to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. However, The Georgia Review argues this is an oversimplification. In a letter Fisk sent to his parents on August 12, 1945, he wrote:
and
In October 1950, Fisk wrote to his parents that he was switching to a career in music. Fisk continued working part-time as an apprentice under John Swinford in Redwood City, California, while studying under music professors Putnam Aldrich and George Houle. One of Fisk's earliest experiences with organs came when he assisted Swinford in building the organ for Santa Barbara's Trinity Episcopal Church. Fellow organbuilder Walter Holtkamp offered Fisk a position in 1952, and in 1954, Fisk, at Swinford's urging, became his apprentice in Cleveland, Ohio. Fisk learned various aspects of shop technique under Holtkamp, which was something that his apprenticeship with Swinford had lacked. His work with Holtkamp included installing the organ of St. John's Chapel of the Episcopal Theological School in 1956. Eventually, he dropped out of his music degree program to focus on organ building.
In a later interview by Keith Yocum, Fisk, aged 54, commented:
C.B. Fisk, Inc.
In 1955, Fisk returned to Pigeon Cove, Massachusetts near his family's summer home. That same year, he became a partner in the Andover Organ Company in Methuen, Massachusetts, a firm founded in 1948 by Thomas W. Byers. Like Fisk, Byers was an organ builder who preferred manual organs over electric ones. In 1958, Fisk bought out Byers' ownership interest and became sole owner of the firm.
In 1960, Fisk changed the firm's name to C.B. Fisk, Inc. He was the firm's president and tonal designer, responsible for voicing the pipes. In 1961, the firm relocated to more spacious premises at 105 Maplewood Avenue, Gloucester, Massachusetts a former factory that once manufactured rope and fishing nets. Some employees chose to remain in Methuen and established a new company under the original name, the Andover Organ Company. After Fisk's death, C. B. Fisk, Inc. became an employee-owned company, and continues to manufacture organs to the present day. It is now located at 21 Kondelin Road.
C. B. Fisk, Inc. and Andover Organ Company employed notable organists Barbara Owen, Fritz Noack, and John Brombaugh. Some of these organists have moved on from C. B. Fisk and created their own organ-building companies, with Noack establishing the Noack Organ Company and Brombaugh establishing John Brombaugh & Associates. The 46th mayor of Gloucester, Joseph F. Grace, was also an employee.
Membership Fisk was a member of the American Pipe Organ Association, the International Society of Organ Builders, the American Institute of Organ Builders, the Organ Historical Society, and the American Guild of Organists.
Marriages Fisk married Ann Warren Lindenmuth in 1950, with whom he had a son and a daughter.
His second marriage was to Virginia Lee Crist, who was from Gloucester. He and Crist married at Rockport, Massachusetts. They had two daughters and a son.
Death Fisk died on December 16, 1983, aged 58 years, due to a liver autoimmune condition, at Philips House, Massachusetts General Hospital. Fisk had lived with sclerosing cholangitis for nearly three decades, but it was only diagnosed a few years before his death. Fisk's funeral was held on December 20, 1983, at St. John's Episcopal Church, Gloucester. A memorial service was held in the Memorial Church of Harvard University on January 21, 1984. Dedicated organ performances were made throughout January.
Fisk Organs
Organ building
In contrast to the tracker-action organs of the baroque period, the use of electro-pneumatic action mechanisms was the mainstream practice in early 20th-century organ building. Fisk was among the first builders to break with this practice: he adopted the tracker action and stop-action mechanisms of historical European and American organs, making him one of the first modern American organ builders to do so. The revitalization of tracker action was a part of the Organ Reform Movement, of which Fisk was cited as a major participant by The American Organist.
In tracker-action organs, the movement of the keys or pedals is mechanically linked to the valves, enabling air to flow through the organ pipes. In electro-pneumatic action, valves and keys are connected electrically, without the use of mechanical trackers. An organ manual is a set of keys that are played with the hands, similar to the keyboard on a piano. However, unlike a piano, an organ can have multiple manuals, which are arranged in tiers.
To further his understanding of traditional organs, Fisk studied features of historical European organs. Trips to Europe were common, with the first one being in 1959, where he traveled with Arthur Howes. Fisk was particularly interested in the organ located in the Jakobikirche church, and he made three journeys to Germany to study the organ. He then tried to emulate them in his own designs.
In addition to building new organs, Fisk restored various historical organs. Barbara Owen, a former collaborator, wrote that his works were influenced by German and French organs. His organs were described as having an eclectic nature, as he never stuck to a singular style of organ building.
Opus numbers Fisk gave his organs opus numbers. However, some were never built due to cancellations. Some were merely restorations or additions to existing organs. Opus 1 through 24 were not built by Fisk. This was because he continued the preexisting opus numbers of the Andover Organ Company, meaning those organs were built by Byers.
Opus 24 through 27 were built when Byers and Fisk co-owned Andover, and opus 28 through 35 were built before the rebranding to C. B. Fisk, Inc. Opus 35 through 85 were built by C. B. Fisk, Inc., when Fisk was still alive, and the rest were built after his death.
Philosophy Jones Boyds, an organist at Stetson University, wrote that Fisk had mixed views on the organ being used in an orchestral setting, citing Fisk's remarks: "[T]he fortunes of the organ and of the orchestra are to an extent mutually exclusive and my personal view is that the one instrument takes the place of the other [...] There is a human craving, musically speaking, for a towering musical effect. The organ satisfied this craving for hundreds of years before the 19th century orchestra took it over". Still, Fisk continued to study concert-hall organs since 1976.
Jonathan Ambrosino, an organ historian, wrote that although Fisk was inspired by older organs, he added his own personal touches rather than exactly replicating historical organs.