MPR’s Mark Hesitad talks with organist Karl Eilers about playing the Mighty Wurlitzer at World Theater. Segment includes Eilers performing examples of music set to film.
Awarded:
1987 Minnesota AP Award, honorable mention in Creative Use of Audio category
SPEAKER 1: Tell me about this organ.
SPEAKER 2: Well, let's see, this is a genuine mighty MIDI Wurlitzer theater organ from the silent film days. And it started out its life in a theater in Texas and went through indescribable indignities before it finally passed through a number of hands and wound up here at the theater.
SPEAKER 1: What makes this a theater organ as opposed to some other kind of an organ?
SPEAKER 2: Oh, boy. Well, as from an organ builder standpoint, because it breaks all the rules of classical organ building as blatantly as possible.
SPEAKER 1: [CHUCKLES]
SPEAKER 2: But it's, uh-- the main thing is that it is designed to play on emotions. It originally functioned as the soundtrack of the silent film. And so, of course, it does the same thing that music and films does now, and that is it keys emotions and tells the audience, you know, now you should feel sorry for the hero and now you should feel exultant or whatever it is. That's its function. It's an emotion machine.
SPEAKER 1: Yeah. Give me some examples. Play a few things here.
SPEAKER 2: Well, the fun things actually are in these toe studs down at the feet because those are-- if you need a particular sound effect. If, for example, you have someone who's knocked out cold, you get the little birdies-- the little birdies or let's see what-- they're not labeled either. I got to memorize these before the show. Uh, let's see Chinese gong. That one is minuet. There are a few of these that are not functional at the moment. Oh, yes, train whistle.
[ORGAN WHISTLING]
Yeah. Train whistle is every organist's favorite cheap effect.
SPEAKER 1: [CHUCKLES]
SPEAKER 2: And then you see-- see, once you do that, then of course, you just lay down a whole bunch of stops and you take a whole handful of keys down at the bottom of the keyboard and you just--
[ORGAN BANGING]
It's just--
SPEAKER 1: OK, let's say the we've got a chase scene going on here. The maiden is in distress. What are you playing?
SPEAKER 2: Well, let's see, if she's in distress, actually, I'm going to be playing something-- you don't really key the action so much as you key the emotion of a scene. And so you know, you could be going--
[FRANTIC ORGAN MUSIC]
But when it comes to the maiden being in distress, you want it to really suggest something like--
[SUSPENSEFUL ORGAN MUSIC]
A little crying there.
SPEAKER 1: [CHUCKLES] You watch the film as you're accompanying it?
SPEAKER 2: I try to. I've had occasions where I have done a film never having seen it before, So I had to watch very closely. But the problem, of course, is that there's so much switching and jumping around to do on the console that you really can't watch all the time.
SPEAKER 1: Sure, sure. How did you get into this? I mean, this is an art form that I would have thought died out years ago. Damned if I know.
[BOTH CHUCKLING]
SPEAKER 2: I really-- I've kind of gravitated toward it. There certainly isn't a lot of call for it. It's not a marketable skill anymore and hasn't been for 50, 60 years. I don't know. I just liked the sound of the theater organ. I got into it more because of what the theater organ can do musically as a solo instrument and the film accompanying kind of followed suit.
SPEAKER 1: What are the sounds that this organ makes that you like the most?
SPEAKER 2: Well, there are a whole bunch of them. As I say, the organ has a very emotionally based center. And as a matter of fact, in contrast to the church organ where the principal chorus is the central thing, in the theater organ, it's this big fat flute that--
[ORGAN NOTES]
--oops, let me get the tremulant on here.
[EMOTIONAL ORGAN MUSIC]
That's really an emotional thing. And you can--
SPEAKER 1: Sounds like a soap opera.
SPEAKER 2: Oh, yeah. And then, you know-- then the villain comes--
[OMINOUS ORGAN MUSIC]
All sorts of things, you know?
SPEAKER 1: [CHUCKLES] What kind of a score have you got?
SPEAKER 2: Score? Did I hear you say score? Can I watch music in the middle of all of this thing as well?
SPEAKER 1: So you're making it up as you go or what?
SPEAKER 2: Yeah, you pretty much have to make it up as you go.
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