The legendary Richards, Fowkes & Co. Opus X organ at Boston’s First Lutheran Church was installed 25 years ago. Dedicated on December 1, 2000, it has since served as the foundation for FLC’s unique music program and made its mark as the primary instrument in Boston for playing the music of Johann Sebastian Bach and his contemporaries, drawing organists of international repute.

In celebration of this anniversary, First Lutheran Church of Boston is holding a Festival Organ Vespers on Sunday, October 26. At 4:00pm, international concert artist Christiaan Teeuwsen will perform a free prelude organ recital featuring the music of Bruhns, Sweelinck, Scheidemann, Böhm, Buxtehude, and Bach. Vespers will begin at 5:00pm, featuring former FLC music director Kyle Haugen and the FLC Choir in music by Hassler, Praetorius, Weckmann, Charles Ore, and Lionel Rogg, as well as congregational hymns. A festive reception will follow Vespers.

Continuing the celebrations, on Friday, November 21^st at 7pm, Peter Westerbrink, organist of the Aa-kerk in Groningen and the Schnitger organ in Noordbroek, will present a recital of music by those who influenced JS Bach: Tunder, Hasse, Melchior Schildt, Weckmann, Buxtehude, as well as Bach himself. Admission to Westerbrink’s recital is $20/$10 at the door. More information on all the anniversary celebration events is available HERE.

A Baroque Organ for Boston

Before FLC’s organ was installed, Boston had no authentic vehicle on which to render the music of Johann Sebastian Bach (arguably the greatest and most important composer of organ music ever to live), and likewise lacked an historically-informed organ in a relatively small space to assist with Baroque chamber music. For a city that houses the greatest number of significant new and historical organs of any city in America, this simply could not remain the case. With the advent of “Boston’s Bach Organ,” as it is known, the possibility of performances in Boston of Baroque music featuring a genuine Baroque organ became a reality.

In 1995, under the direction of organ consultant William Porter and music director Mark Meyer, discussions began for a new mechanical action organ. The congregation sought to replace its aging pipe organ built by Wicks with a more suitable instrument that would render the music of the Lutheran tradition—congregational chorales, cantatas, and Baroque organ music—in a way with which the musicians and theologians of the 18^th century would have been familiar. Richards, Fowkes & Co. of Ooltewah, Tennesee was selected to build the organ, the company’s tenth instrument. Colloquially known as “Opus X” and “Boston’s Bach Organ,” it has since gained a reputation as one of the finest Baroque organs in New England, and it is the only organ in the Boston area that uncompromisingly renders the music of Bach and other north German Baroque composers in the way they would have heard it. As Porter put it in his remarks at the organ’s dedication, “this organ makes sounds that have never before been heard in Boston.”

Along with the 1971 C.B. Fisk op. 55 organ at Old West Church, FLC’s organ would become a primary teaching instrument for the organ department at the New England Conservatory of music, which boasted Porter and Yuko Hayashi as faculty. Though the school subsequently shuttered its organ department, Opus X would continue to serve as an occasional teaching instrument for students at Boston University and Wellesley College. The organ has also been the focus of masterclasses by significant international organists such as Harald Vogel and Martin Schmeding.

One of the primary drivers behind the organ’s construction was the congregation’s desire to create a music-based outreach program that targeted the greater Boston community. This has come to pass over the ensuing 25 years, most evidently in the Boston Bach Birthday, an annual celebration of Bach’s music held at First Lutheran that draws hundreds of listeners every year. Since 2018, the quadrennial Boston Bach International Organ Competition has brought dozens of outstanding young organists and their interpretations of Bach to Boston, and as of the upcoming 2026 competition it is now the premier Bach organ competition in the world. In 2009, the Boston Early Music Festival instituted a keyboard mini-festival at FLC that has since continued as a major part of the biannual festival. The organ has additionally been featured in two albums recorded by former music director Bálint Karosi.

FLC’s organ has set the tone for the parish’s unique music program. Because it is so uncompromisingly Baroque, the organ is most at home when playing music of the 17th and 18th centuries, and the music program therefore has followed suit. While other Boston-area churches with more eclectic organs routinely present music by Herbert Howells, Ralph Vaughan Williams, John Stainer, Everett Titcomb, and other stalwarts of the 19^th– and 20^th– century Anglican anthem tradition, FLC specializes in motets of the Renaissance and early Baroque, favoring German composers such as Heinrich Schütz, Michael Praetorius, Samuel Scheidt, and Bartholomäus Gesius. Cantatas by Bach and his contemporaries (Dieterich Buxtehude, Georg Philipp Telemann, Christoph Graupner, etc.) appear on the music list, most often featuring period instrumentation. Such music feels at place with in the liturgy and edifice of First Lutheran Church, and it brings an earlier age of music to life in the city of Boston in the most authentic way possible.

It is safe to say that none of this would be possible without Boston’s Bach Organ. It has made its mark on the city’s musical scene over the past twenty-five years, and God willing it will continue to do so.

Jonathan Wessler is Minister of Music at The First Lutheran Church of Boston and an organist who trained at Oberlin, Notre Dame, and Eastman. He concertizes throughout America and conducts research in historic Lutheran liturgy.