Robert L Sipe

Robert L. Sipe of Dallas, Texas, has established a reputation as one of the foremost designers and voicers of pipe organs in America. His experience in organ building began while he was in high school, continued during his education at Baylor University, and was extended through subsequent study of historic and contemporary organs throughout Europe... . After studying sacred music at Baylor on scholarship doing organ maintenance for the University, Robert entered into partnership with J. Rodney Yarbrough for four years and then he continued under the name of Robert L. Sipe, Inc. After several years of building instruments on his own, he was asked to join Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company of Boston. Robert became vice president and a co-owner of the company and expanded their work into the field of mechanical action instruments. He functioned as the technical and artistic director for four years. When it was apparent the company would not survive hard times, he returned to Dallas to resume organ construction under his own company name. Sipe's organs reflect the contemporary movement for organ reform wherever the organ plays an important part in religious and cultural expression. This movement was influenced by missionary-physician-musician Albert Schweitzer's 1906 pamphlet advocating a return to 17th and 18th-century design concepts. Among these principles are low wind pressure, slider wind chests, mechanical key action, the integrity of each separate division housed in the main organ case, and the case itself "standing high and free...the sound can travel in every direction unhindered. Following this classical design appropriate to the traditional polyphonic literature for the organ, Sipe organs also incorporate certain modifications to meet requirements of many 19th and 20th-century compositions and the need for versatility in the leadership of modern worship. Robert L. Sipe, Inc. has completed over 90 instruments in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Kentucky, Kansas, Missouri, North Carolina, ...Read More