Silent Night F. Gruber, Mark Andrews organ Trinity Church Camden NJ (78 rpm, 1924)

10 Inch 78 rpm, label Victor (HMV) No. 19464 with an acoustic recording made on 25 August 1924 from the British organist Mark Andrews (1875-1939). He plays ‘Silent Night’ from Franz Gruber (1787-1863) All recording at that time was by the acoustical method, electric recording was not possible. It was difficult to record (big) church organs because the pipes from the organ stays too far apart. To resolve that problem, small studio organs were built and then recorded. That did not change until Western Electric invented the electric dynamic microphone in 1925. The location of the recording is not mentioned on the label, but several websites (see sources below) tells me that it’s recorded on the Estey (Wurlitzer) organ, built in 1921 as opus 1850, from the Holy Trinity (Baptist) Church in Camden, New Jersey in the U.S. Victor purchased this Trinity Church in the early twenties for use as a recording studio. In 1926 (two years after this 78 rpm recording) the instrument was enlarged by Estey again. About 1935, Victor/RCA leaved this church studio. Sound recording there was impractical because resulting noise from the new Camden-Philadelphia subway, that was built and ran almost directly under the church. About 1947 the church (and organ?) was demolished. Sources: https://organhistoricalsociety.org/es... https://ricgrass.blogspot.com/2015/06... https://adp.library.ucsb.edu/index.ph... https://www.esteyorganmuseum.org/wp-c... https://www.discogs.com/release/76760... https://www.discogs.com/release/12526... https://www.discogs.com/label/2229562...