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Sound of pipe organ graces home on the range By TOM WHARTON for The Associated Press SALT LAKE CITY � While Hal Stoddard plays "Home on the Range" on the pipe organ inside a barn built for the mammoth instrument, his beef cattle perk up and saunter closer. The organ console once graced Avery Fisher Hall inside New York City�s Lincoln Center and later was part of Robert Schuller�s Crystal Cathedral in California. Now it resides in Hooper, a small town west of Ogden. A sign above the console reads: "It is better to look like a cowboy and play like an organist than to look like an organist and play like a cowboy." The 66-year-old Stoddard, a rancher and truck driver, certainly looks more like a cowboy as he works around the 60-by-24-foot, green-roofed barn that houses "the Hoopernacle Pipe Organ." In jeans and boots, he is humble about his ability to play the massive machine. He jokes that Richard Elliott, an organist for the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, once told him he played the famous Toccata and Fugue in "D Manure" instead of "D Minor." He usually practices for an hour each morning. "My fingers work better in the morning before they have been hauling hay and taking care of the cows," he said. When he begins playing, though, the barn becomes a cathedral and its owner is transported into another world. Even when the pews, collected from four different churches, are empty, Stoddard is happy. "Sometimes the most humble places produce the most joy to God," said the cowboy whose organ barn is decorated with many religious symbols. Stoddard began playing the organ in 1952 while in high school. He started building the pipe organ about 10 years ago. The idea was to put it inside the garage next to his home in a rural part of western Weber County. But the project just got bigger and bigger, to the point he needed to construct a new building. "Somebody fed it hormones," he said with a laugh. "My wife (Joyce) has not been happy with this project until recently. It bothers her because it costs more to heat this building in the winter than it does our home. If you are going to have a pipe organ, you need a broad-minded wife." The massive collection of pipes, computers, wires, boxes, knobs and pedals looks incredibly complex to the uninitiated. And Stoddard is the first to admit parts of it do not work. He takes instruction on what to do from Salt Lake City organ technician Merv Brown. Brown, who has worked on organs for 25 years, said Stoddard�s will be about the same size as the instrument in the Ogden Tabernacle when it is all working. "I have trouble finding time with my other work to go there," Brown said. "That is why I let him do most of it. I do the technical part. He cringes at the wiring." The organ�s pedigree is complex. It consists of parts of an old S.H. Kress store organ from New Orleans, instruments from churches in Mississippi and Michigan and even a harp from the Mormon Tabernacle in Salt Lake City. It is just as difficult to play. There are 35 ranks � a rank is a complete set or row of pipes, usually of the same type and producing the same timbre � and four keyboards. There are also a number of pedals and levers to master. By comparison, the Mormon Tabernacle organ has 206 ranks. Each pipe has a wooden chest associated with it. Magnets inside the chest respond to the keyboard. When a note on the keyboard is hit, it sends a signal to the magnet that opens the channel for the air to go through the pipe. On hot days, Stoddard tells visitors to sit on the west end of the barn where cool air blows out of the wooden chests. Stoddard enjoys performing a wide variety of music. He will play for an audience of one or for the groups that fill the pews to hear the half-dozen concerts he schedules before Christmas. He often begins and ends the session with traditional Mormon hymns. His repertoire includes Bach, some French classical organ music and old favorites such as "Danny Boy." "There is something about a pipe organ," Stoddard said. "French romantic music and Bach takes me out of this world." And while he looks like a cowboy, he plays like an organist. Mail Tribune Home | Ottaway Newspapers, Inc. | Dow Jones & Co., Inc. | Privacy | Contact Us Copyright � 2001 Mail Tribune, Inc.