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[ORGAN BELLOWING] MARY STUCKY: The sound of a low C blasting out of a 16-foot organ pipe. The air is forced through by enormous hand-pumped bellows. And this being the science museum, you can pump them yourself.

[ORGAN BELLOWING]

MICHAEL BARONE: Organ music is something that should move you. You should be able to feel it in your bones. It should shake you.

[ORGAN BELLOWING]

MARY STUCKY: That's Michael Barone, host of the Pipedreams program on MPR and one of the brains behind the festival.

MICHAEL BARONE: The organ is really a box of whistles. And so here we have a box of whistles with a variety of different pipes, just one each. Let's go down the line here.

[WIND INSTRUMENTS HONKING]

[INTERPOSING VOICES]

MARY STUCKY: You're hearing them [INAUDIBLE]. What am I hearing?

MICHAEL BARONE: Well, these are all different varieties of trumpets or crumhorns or clarinets. They are the reed family of the organ. These pipes play by the same principle as a clarinet. Some of these flare dramatically, cone-like. Some of them flare up and then have little tops on them.

Some of them are thin. Some of them are rather broad. And, of course, as you could hear, they all have a different tonality.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

MARY STUCKY: Actually, organs did not get their start in church. The earliest were used in gladiator events, even taken into battle. The organ's raucous sound meant to demoralize the enemy.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

And what's a carousel or a circus without an organ?

[MUSIC PLAYING]

KARL EILER: The interesting thing about having an exhibit like this here in the science museum is the combination of science and art.

MARY STUCKY: As an organ builder, Karl Eiler should know.

KARL EILER: It's all science and physics and math. And, of course, the reason a pipe has to be this long is that there are fundamental acoustical laws that say that for a pipe to play at a certain pitch, it has to be a certain length, because that's the wavelength.

MARY STUCKY: The physics part is why this exhibit is at the science museum. But, of course, the organ is much more than that. Each pipe organ is a unique instrument specifically made for its intended space.

KARL EILER: Art can be defined as the process of bridging the physical-spiritual gap. What you're doing is you're taking materials-- wood, metal, and so on and so forth-- and trying to turn them into something that touches people in a spiritual way. Ideally, if it's good enough, can grab a listener and shake them into the core of their soul.

People who say they hate organs probably are used to listening to bad organs and bad organists. There are a whole lot of them around. The reason there are so many bad organs around is because good ones are so expensive, probably $100,000 and up. But bad ones are useless.

MARY STUCKY: The Twin Cities festival organ event gets rolling this weekend, with free concerts, tours of Twin Cities organs, and talks about organ building and history. You can hear cinema Wurlitzers, jazz organs, and, of course, the grand church organs. For all their size and power, the organ seems to create an intensely personal relationship for those people it touches.

Dee Ann Crossley is the organist at Augustana Lutheran Church and a Schubert Club Board member. She remembers what it was like to play a church organ for the first time when she was just a teenager.

DEE ANN CROSSLEY: I fell in love with flutes and these funny pipes families mutations, which are nazards and tierces, which are color stops with a tremolo. I mean, what a 15-year-old girl would love a lovely flute sound with a tremolo and a little Mozart thrown in. It's a gorgeous sound. And then, of course, if it's a beautiful church and the lights are low and maybe a few candles lighted, and then there's a good organist beside.

MARY STUCKY: The Twin Cities festival organ events run through mid-June. For Minnesota Public Radio, this is Mary Stucky.