Pels & van Leeuwen
Opus 934, 2025

From the 'Organ' page of the Parish website: Details of the Organ. Our pipe organ, Opus 934, was built by Pels & Van Leeuwen in 1993. This organ was initially designed and scaled to be installed in a larger room, but was purchased by the Municipal Music School in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. To make it usable in the school’s classroom, they built a completely closed case of solid oak. The sound could only enter the room through the openings between the largest facade pipe fields to the left and right of the console. This allowed the organ to produce a powerful sound while maintaining a comfortable environment for teaching and practicing in a small study room for extended periods of time.

Our organ consultant connected us with an organ shop in the Netherlands, Pels & Van Leewen, which was selling this organ, hoping it would go to a church in the United States. Not only was it appropriately sized for our space, but it was readily available and priced at a significant discount! This organ shop, Pels & Van Leeuwen, was eager to send another one of their organs from Holland, the Netherlands, to Holland, Michigan. This family-owned business had also previously built the organ in Dimnent Chapel at Hope College.

Some modifications have been made to the organ to make it suitable for our Sanctuary. The organ builders built a new hood for the organ with sound-permeable sides. They moved the swell shutters to the top of the organ, allowing for greater dynamic control of the swell pipes. The facade pipes (visible, front pipes) were raised, and new decorative wood molding was added to the top of the case. Pels & Van Leeuwen are very excited to have this instrument installed in a Church, as that was their original intention. While this is a Dutch instrument, it is built in a French style, meaning that many of its stops are designed to mimic those of a French organ. However, it still maintains its Dutch character and is therefore a very eclectic instrument that can play a wide repertoire of music.

Updated through online information from David Hendersen [May 23, 2026]: The stoplist published for the inaugural recital on May 22, 2026 lists the divisions as Great, Swell, and Pedal. However, the nomenclature by the coupler controls and the ventil controls is French. Presumably, when built and first installed in the Netherlands in 1973, the divisions were called Grand Orgue, Récit, and Pedalé.

Although the recital program stoplist indicates the Tremolo with the Récit division, there is no such indication on the hitch-down foot level to actuate the tremolo. I suspect it may in fact affect the whole organ, but that is only a guess.

Editor -JS [June 2, 2026]: The Pedalé has no independent registers. All four stops are mechanical duplexes from the Grand Orgue.

This entry represents the installation of a used organ. Identified through online information from David Hendricksen [May 19, 2026]: I added this instrument after seeing it described on the church's website. It was first installed at the Municipal Music School at Eindhoven, The Netherlands.