My husband, Dominic Gwynn, who has died aged 70, was an organ-builder whose practical skills and pioneering research combined to make a huge impact on organ-building in Britain.
The firm he founded in 1980 with Martin Goetze carried out about 130 projects, one-third of them new organs based on historic models, and the rest restorations of instruments ranging from clockwork barrel organs to large three-manual organs.
These included the restored instruments at St Helen’s, Bishopsgate, St James’s, Bermondsey, and St Botolph’s, Aldgate, in London, and of Thaxted parish church in Essex. These and the many other historical instruments they worked on have provided musicians with unique access to traditional British organ music.
Throughout his career Dominic engaged with fellow builders and with many musicians and musicologists. He mentored apprentices and shared his immense knowledge with generosity, contributing in many ways to the work and development of the Institute of British Organ Building and the British Institute of Organ Studies.
The project of which Dominic was perhaps most proud was the reconstruction of three Tudor organs. The only evidence for these were original 16th-century soundboards found in Suffolk and it took his research to enable the creation of these instruments and to produce a sound not heard for hundreds of years. From the different sized holes in the soundboards, he could calculate the size and length of the original missing pipes (and therefore the range and scaling); with lots more research in France and Spain, he could then reconstruct the pipes, the bellows and the action. Dominic has been described as an acoustic archaeologist.
He was born in London, to Lies (nee Molenaar) and Ken Gwynn, a photographer. Dominic grew up in Ealing and attended Christ’s Hospital school, in Horsham, West Sussex, before going to St John’s College, Oxford, to study modern history. It was there, in the St John’s chapel choir, that he and I met, and singing remained a big part of our lives after we married in 1976.
At school Dominic had been on an “organ crawl” in the Netherlands organised by Nick Plumley, one of his teachers, and started to nourish the idea of becoming an organ-builder to bring the sound of classical organs back to the UK, where it had been lost in favour of the bigger sound of Victorian organs. After Oxford he was apprenticed to Hendrik ten Bruggencate in Northampton, before establishing Goetze and Gwynn in the town. We lived there for five years until he set up in the Harley workshops at Welbeck, near Worksop, in Nottinghamshire.
In March, already seriously ill with cancer, Dominic was proud to be awarded the Medal of the Royal College of Organists “in recognition of his distinguished achievement in organ-building and scholarship, and for his work on organ heritage in the UK” and to receive it at a ceremony at Southwark Cathedral.
He is survived by me, our daughters Pip and Lucy, grandchildren Daisy, Joe and Elizabeth and his sister, Kathryn.
