Pipe Organs of Malaysia

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St. MARK'S ANGLICAN CHURCH

SEREMBAN, NEGERI SEMBILAN

First organ:
Organ builder unknown (United Kingdom)
1919
2 manual and pedal
Action mechanical
Draw stops

Second organ:
Organ builder unknown (United Kingdom)
1928
2 manual and pedal
Action mechanical
Draw stops


St Andrew's Church Kuala Lumpur archives refer to other pipe organs in Malaysia which were either funded or supplied organists from their resources.

St Andrew's regularly donated to the cost of maintaining the pipe organ in St Mark's Anglican Church in Seremban (the Presbyterians were renting the church for their own services) but the church was burned down in 1969 and the pipe organ was never replaced.

The first pipe organ was imported from the United Kingdom in 1919 at the cost of $3,000 but it was soon apparent to everyone that it was rapidly becoming unplayable, probably because it had not been tropicalised. By 1925, the church made plans to obtain a replacement pipe organ and Rev. J. Butterworth noted in the Diocesan Magazine that an unnamed “young civil servant” had promised to donate a new tropicalised pipe organ for St Mark’s and it was in the process of being built under the personal supervision of the donor.

The second pipe organ was completed and installed in 1928 and was erected in the memory of Mathilde Parsons Harvey. Even with ‘tropicalisation’, by 1936 the organ needed extensive repairs and this was done by the well known James A. Riddell, organ builder from Kuala Lumpur.
A fire broke out in St. Mark’s at 9.30pm on Wednesday, 2 August 1969 while the congregation was having a church fund-raising supper 100 yards away. The 70-year-old church was completely destroyed including its pre-WW2 pipe organ. It was reported that the church organist for over 25 years, Mrs C. R. McCoy, wept as she watched her beloved organ burn. 

Specification of either of the organs is not known.


Information and history from Andrew Hwang, Kuala Lumpur, 20 March 2011, with referenece to
(1) The Singapore Free Press & Mercantile Advertiser of 7 October 1936 on page 6.
(2) Straits Times of 21 November 1925 on page 8.
(3) Straits Times of 4 August 1967 on page 11.
(4) Minutes of Board of Managers of St Andrew’s Presbyterian Church, Kuala Lumpur, 1963.

Repairs in 1936 were first thought to have been carried out by Mr Myram of Singapore, but it has been since discovered that he died in 1935.

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