LATEST HOBBY.

Taranaki Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 143670, 14 December 1911, Page 7

LATEST HOBBY.

MULTI-MILLIONAIRES AND -MUSIC. New York’s multi-millionaires (says a correspondent of the Standard) have adopted as their latest hobby the construction of enormous organs in their private residences, and they are engaged in friendly competition as to who shall secure the most superb of the cathedral instruments. The question ol cost is being disregarded, and organmakers are receiving carte blanche orders to build. There is so_ extensive a demand for private organists ot high capacity that the supply cannot keep up with it. Ex-Sonator Clark, ot Montana, the multi-millionaire mining king, lias just had installed in his new Fifth Avenue mansion, in New pork, the costliest ergan in the United States. Its price is said to have been £24,000. The- cheapest private organ owned by New York’s capitalists is a new one being put into one ot Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan’s country houses, at Greenwood Lake. Its cost will bo £4OOO. It is being constructed exclu-, sively for tho use of Homer Norris, Mr. Morgan’s organist, who is also organist of St. George’s Episcopal Church m New York, of which Mr. Morgan is an official. „ , ~ ~ Mr. Charles M. Schwabb, the ironmaster, has an organ m his Now lork residence which cost £9OOO. Mr. F. G. Bourne the capitalist, has one on ms estate at Oakdale, Long Island, for which £20,000 was paid. Jo in D. Rockefeller. William K. Vanderbilt, inn., Joseph 11. Choate Joseph Pulitzer. August Belmont, L. C. Tiflan}, and Andrew Carnegie arc a few others who are participating in the organ craze. The orcan-mnkers work hand in hand with the architects of the millionaires mansions in constructing their instruments. Tho organs are cleverly built into the houses, so that, besides presenting magnificent decorations, the pipes, by”boing scattered, seem to send forth their niusic from all over the house. There are many ingenious arrangements installed. For instance, Mr. Schwab’s oman, as well as Mr. Rockefeller’s can bo”played from different parts of tho house. The magnificent instruments are practicallv useless unless highly-skilled performers can he found to play them. There ore not many first-class organists in New York, and consequently they can command their own prices. They receive retainers at permanent yearly salaries, and then are paid largo sums for their performances. Of all the or-gan-owners, onlv Mr, Carnegie has gone to tho length of using his instrument daily During the part of the year he is in New York, Mr. Walter C. Gale, his organist, nlays the instrument in the Carnegie "Mansion, in Fifth Avenue, every morning .while Mr. Carnegie is dressing. At Bkibo Castle, in Scotland Mr. Carnegie has another superb organ, and it. too, is played daily, from 8 to half-past 8 a.m. The other organ-lovers do not go to this extreme. They give frequent private recitals for their friends, at which famous organists preside at the histmmente, and occasionally music-loving members of the households will ( ficiate. This is normally the extent to which tho keys arc put. Hie most famous of the organists who use tho handsome private instruments is H. R. She]lev, organist of the Fifth Avenue Baptist Church, formerly organist of Henry Ward Beecher's Brooklyn Church. Mr. Shelley is regularly retained by three millionaires—John D. Rockefeller, William K. Vanderbilt, jun,, and E. C. Converse, of the Steel Trust. Mr. Shelley is credited with being the most successful financially of Now York’s organists. Nearly every evening during the winter social season he plays at one or another private mansion, whore a musicalo is being given. There, are more than 200 of these elaborate private organs in New York, and the number is increasing so rapidly that the 300 mark will soon be passed. The craze has a permanence about it which lias been lacking_ in most previous fads of the multi-millionaires.