Like any other birthday party, there was cake. But this one also featured compositions from Bach and Bruhns. SOU’s Dr. Margaret Evans, an adjunct professor of organ at SOU, played “Praeludium in G Major” and “Clair de Lune” among a series of other organ numbers.
“It’s worked very hard for many, many years,” Evans said. “And we’re lucky that it is still with us and still working well.”
SOU’s pipe organ was the wish of Dr. William Bushnell, who conducted SOU’s concert choir in the early 1970s, when the university was called Southern Oregon College. Evans said Bushnell liked to perform Messiah at Christmastime, and wanted organ accompaniment.
At the time, the college’s new music recital hall was being constructed.
“When they built the hall, they prepared the space for the organ, the pipes, and all the mechanisms behind the back of the stage,” Evans said. “But there was no money in the state.”
Agnes Flanagan of Medford privately began raising funds to build the organ, after being contacted by Bushnell. She had previously supported the construction of Lewis & Clark College’s organ and began reaching out to possible donors.
One was Worth Harvey, a banker in Cottage Grove and Eugene, and a 1906 Southern Oregon College graduate. Harvey agreed to pay $40,000 of the $67,000 needed to build the instrument. In 2024 dollars, the total costs would have been just over $500,000, with Harvey donating over $300,000.
With his help, Flanagan was successful in raising the funds. Harvey became the namesake of the new pipe organ because he had the largest donation. Other donors had their names engraved on the instrument’s 2,000 pipes.
Evans,a professor of organ, said students need to be able to practice on the real instrument.
“You can do some of the work on the piano, but the technique is different,” Evans said. “Organists tend to creep and crawl along the keyboard, whereas pianists have to have the weight of their arm to get dynamic difference.”
She said that you could drop a cement block on an organ key and it wouldn’t sound any different than putting it down with several feathers. The organ also has a different pedal technique and programming system that allows its player to control its sound.
Since being built, the organ has been used by professional organists, ensembles and university students in the music recital hall.
“It takes constant maintenance, upkeep and making sure that it’s treated nicely,” Evans said. “It’s a musical instrument with hundreds, probably hundreds of thousands of parts. But if it’s treated well and maintained, it should last for some time.”
