New Zealander Played World's Biggest

New Zealand Listener, Volume 6, Issue 132, 2 January 1942, Page 7

New Zealander Played World's Biggest

organ, claimed to be the biggest in the world, was until recently played by a New Zealander, Arthur Scott Brook, who was born at Lincoln, near Christchurch, 73 years ago. Recent correspondence in The Listener has sought to establish the whereabouts of the world’s biggest organ, and now Mrs. J. D. Colville, of Cashmere Hills, Christchurch, has given The Listener some details of her brother’s career, together with photographs of the organ console in the Senior High School Auditorium, Atlantic City, New Jersey. It has 32,706 pipes altogether, and weighs 120 tons. The ‘largest wooden pipe measures 59 feet 10 inches, and the largest metal pipe is 34 feet 8 inches long. Some 225,000 feet of timber were put into it, and the total length of the wire used would girdle the earth twice. Mrs. Colville says that the next largest CITY’S giant

organ is the one mentioned by a correspondent to The Listener, that in the Wanamaker store, Philadelphia, only 60 miles from Atlantic City, but this is not quite half the size of her brother’s former charge, she says. Mr. Brook’s earliest musical training was received in the choir of St. John’s Church, Latimer Square, Christchurch, when he was seven. He began to study the organ, and ten years later he was appointed organist at the Church of the Good Shepherd, Phillipstown, Christchurch, Two years later he received his first salary at the church where he had begun as a chorister, and since then he has travelled widely and held many important posts. He was organist and director of music at Leland Stanford University, California, organist in charge of the Festival Hall at the St. Louis World Fair, and .organist at Deems Memorial Church, New York, for nine years. In 1923 he became Municipal organist in Atlantic City, and in 1924 he directed the Atlantic City Chorus. He remained there until three years ago; when he retired, aged 70. e