The Icelandic Canadian - 01.12.1946, Síða 19

THE ICELANDIC CANADIAN
17
tf-afun Bay BuildU Orujati
★
Stewart Kolbeinson at the organ
To enter the Steve Kolbein-
son farm house near Kindersley,
Sask., would put you in mind of
the stage at the intermission of
a symphony concert
Included in the line-up of
musical instruments is a pipe
organ which Stewart Kolbein-
son, a son, installed himself.
Among the other instruments
are, a bass viol, two guitars, a
small harp, a clarinet, no less
than seven violins and a grand
piano. One of the violins, pride
of Mr. Kolbeinson’s heart is a
Testore, made about 1737 and
valued at $1,300. That figure is
what Mr. Kolbeinson refused for
it recently. There are a couple
of radios and a phonograph at-
attachment with several vol-
umes of classical and semi-
classical recordings.
Steve Kolbeinson comes of
Icelandic stock and bought a farm here
in 1929 after homesteading in the Alsask
district in 1909. The family is quiet and
all the members are hard working, good
farmers with a genius for music, any
kind of music.
Organ Interest
But to get back to the organ. Stewart
can’t tell you just when or how his fancy
turned to organs and their construction.
“I guess I was always interested in
them”, he says. “From the time I was a
little fellow I loved their tone and used
to listen to them every chance I got.
Then I started to read about them in
books and magazines — there’s a lot of
material if you know where to look for
it, and want to badly enough. I got a lot
of preliminary information that way.”
In recent years he has put that infor-
mation to work, too. He spent a couple
of winters in Toronto working with Cas-
savant Freres, tuning organs in the
great churches of the east, and getting
a thorough grounding in their construc-
tion and installation. He made valuable
contacts with organ builders and masters
in various lines, and all this he has
found useful in his own unique enter-
prise. He keeps his organ tuned to con-
cert pitch.
In 1938 he decided to build an organ
of his own in the farm home. A long
music room was added to the south wall
of the building, both to accommodate the
console of the organ and to act as a
sounding room for its tone. Another
room, 10 feet square and 13 feet high,
was added to the east wall to house the
pipes themselves. Cyril Robbins, master
organ builder of Toronto, was consulted,
as was William F. Legg of Burford, Ont.,
and Mr. Legg stopped off for a couple of
weeks to help Stewart with the actual
installation.
Two Weeks' Job
It took just a couple of weeks to com-
plete the whole assembly. During that
time they installed the wind-chest,
specially built by Cyril Robbins in To-