Playing the pipe organ is a dying craft, and P.E.I. churches are struggling to find organists

The pipe organ has been a part of the liturgical service at St. Peter's Cathedral pretty much since the church was built.

The 75-year-old instrument currently sitting in the cathedral's organ loft was built using parts of its original organ, installed just 17 years after the church was founded in 1869.

But this relic of the past serves no one without an organist.

"We have people who can play. But none of them wants that responsibility," said Father David Garrett, rector of the cathedral.

"We've been advertising, and we've had somebody — well, we've had several applications — and the one we thought best was to come for an interview in May of 2020. And, of course, that didn't work out because of COVID."

For 44 years the role of church organist and choirmaster at St. Peter's belonged to Alan Reesor, the long-time chair of UPEI's music department who passed away last March. Some of Reesor's former students have taken turns playing for the church, but no one has been in that role full time since he retired in 2015.

The organist originally selected for the cathedral will finally arrive from Toronto this summer. But local organists say that of the 20 or so churches in P.E.I. with pipe organs, St. Peter's is not the only one that's had trouble finding people to play the instrument.

"As far as us old-timers on the organist field, it's a dying field," said Leo Marchildon, organist at St. Dunstan's Bascilica and director of music for the Charlottetown diocese.

In fact, Marchildon said the problem stems from a widespread shortage of people in Canada who can play the instrument.

"Not so many people are going to the churches today that the children are not being exposed to this mighty king of instruments," he said. 

"Then you've got a domino effect, where the children have no idea that this whole other world exists. And then there's fewer and fewer people coming down the pipe to learn the craft."

Unlike the piano, a percussion instrument that produces sound when a hammer hits the strings, the organ is a woodwind. It generates sound by releasing pressurized air through valves and letting it to go through its large pipes.

Because notes can only be sustained by keeping the keys pressed, a pipe organ requires a different fingering technique. And its wide array of pipes allow for wild variations in sound.

"The piano is one-sound-fits-all basically: You hit the keys and that's what you get," Marchildon said.