Charles B. Fisk

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Charles Brenton Fisk (born February 7, 1925 in Washington, DC , † December 16, 1983 in Boston , Massachusetts ) was an American physicist and organ builder . In 1961 he founded the organ building company CB Fisk , Inc.

Life

Fisk was born in Washington, DC in 1925 and grew up in Cambridge , Massachusetts . In his youth he was a choirboy at Christ Church , an episcopal church in Cambridge. Its choirmaster was E. Power Biggs . He also played the trumpet and organ .

In February 1943, his uncle Joyce C. Stearns , physicist and laboratory manager, got him a job in the Metallurgical Laboratory of the University of Chicago in Illinois. There he worked as a laboratory assistant and technician . From July 1944 he was in Los Alamos, New Mexico, involved in the Manhattan Project , which was headed by the physicist Robert Oppenheimer . He was a member of the United States Army's Special Engineer Detachment and held the rank of Technician Fourth Grade . Specifically, he belonged to a group of around 20 men around Darol Froman .

From 1945 to 1949 he completed a physics degree at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. After graduating in 1949, he conducted research on cosmic rays at the United States Atomic Energy Commission's Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York . He originally wanted to do a doctorate in physics at Stanford University in California, but left the university after the first semester (1950/51).

He learned from Herbert Nanney and sought contact with the organ builders John Swinford in Redwood City, California and Walter Holtkamp, ​​Sr. in Cleveland, Ohio, who was considered a leader in this field in the USA in the 1950s. In 1955 he joined the Andover Organ Company , founded by Thomas W. Byers , of which he became sole owner in 1958.

From 1961 he built the (renamed) company CB Fisk, Inc. in Cape Ann, Massachusetts . He was one of the first US organ builders to break away from the electropneumatic action of the early 20th century and to switch to the mechanical action of earlier European and American instruments. In 1967 at Harvard University he was responsible for the largest American organ at the time with a fully mechanical action. In the 1970s he studied historical organs in France, the Netherlands, the FRG and the GDR, which should have an impact on his craft. In 1978 he retired.

Fisk was married and had two children. He died in 1983 in Boston, Massachusetts of an autoimmune disease .

literature

  • Barbara Owen: Fisk, Charles B (renton) . In: Douglas E. Bush, Richard Kassel (Eds.): The Organ: An Encyclopedia . Routledge, New York 2006, ISBN 0-415-94174-1 , pp. 199-201.
  • Don Michael Randel (ed.): The Harvard Biographical Dictionary of Music . Belknap Press (Harvard University Press), Cambridge 1996, ISBN 0-674-37299-9 , p. 271.
  • Laura Sewell Matter: Hell and Reason . In: The Georgia Review , March 9, 2017.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ MEMORIAL SERVICE AT HARVARD SET FOR CHARLES BRENTON FISK . In: The New York Times , Jan 10, 1984, p. 10.
personal data
SURNAME Fisk, Charles B.
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Fisk, Charles Brenton (full name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American physicist and organ builder
DATE OF BIRTH February 7, 1925
PLACE OF BIRTH Washington, DC
DATE OF DEATH December 16, 1983
Place of death Boston , Massachusetts