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Trinity News managing editor Nathan Brockman reflects on the parish’s decision to install a state-of-the-art electronic organ to temporarily replace the pipe organ damaged on Sept. 11, 2001.

After suffering damage when the dust, ash, and smoke of the destroyed World Trade Center buildings coated it inside and out, the Trinity Church pipe organ is being replaced.

The new instrument is a digital superpower, comprised of consoles, computer code, garrisons of hefty amplifiers -- and a disclaimer in the hearts and minds of its creators and hosts: this is not a pipe organ. Many would expect a church as old and (let’s face it) as wealthy as Trinity Wall Street to have a proper pipe organ, and so the decision to go digital inside Trinity excites a host of cultural associations: Dylan’s electric turn, Deep Blue check-mating Kasparov -- moments that symbolize the rough brush of technology altering what we consider sacred.

Purists may protest this September 11, when the organ is given its formal debut by choirmaster Owen Burdick and Dean Billmeyer at a free evening concert : the conveyance may be criticized regardless of the effectiveness of the performance, as fundamentalists attend to all forms of human expression.

Parish officials say that the new organ is but another “interim” organ – albeit a long-term one of at least five years, but its arrival is being heralded as though it were permanent: not only is its debut set for September 11, when international attention is focused on the parish for its proximity to ground zero, but a year-long concert series featuring the organ is also planned.

Pipe organs have been sophisticated since Bach’s heyday, but the new Trinity organ may signal a shift in the quality of digital organs, which began to proliferate in the 1970s.

While always helping churches and universities save on some of the jaw-dropping costs of organ building, practical experience has suggested that rectors and deans get the acceptable, but not outstanding, mimics they pay for. Digitals have not impressed the ears of critics as have pipe organs, which, ancient, massive and relatively rare, are the blue whales of musical instruments.

Yet Burdick stresses that, because the new organ is drawing on an extraordinary wealth of “sheer computing power,” in terms of “sonic realism,” this digital organ is unlike any other.

Its major components are a chancel organ console, a gallery organ console, a tone generation system, an audio system, and a proprietary software license. The tone generator is housed on a rack of computers that weighs 2,000 pounds.

The tone generation system is software based, and it was developed for Trinity by Marshall & Ogletree. It links a number of personal computers running Linux, a non-proprietary computer programming code. Like your home computer, the organ is protected from harm caused by power outages and surges.

For amplification, the organ comes with 74 audio channels and speakers with 150 to 500 watts of power available. The lowest tone frequencies are handled by large amplifiers in even larger housings guaranteed to minimize distortion.

Burdick and his assistant organist, Sean Jackson, have had a wonderful time recently “experimenting” with the 20 percent of the new organ that has already been installed in the church.

Jackson, trained at Juilliard, says that the first time he played the organ, he had to stop as quickly as he started, as he was shocked by the organ’s verisimilitude. Both organists defy even the most sensitive of ears to discern between a classic pipe organ and Trinity’s new creation.

I recently caught up with Jackson, who gave me and ten or so lucky tourists in the nave an impromptu audio tour that compared the interim organ with the new Marshall & Ogletree. But just before that, while Jackson was enjoying his lunch, I asked him how he found the new organ.

“I like it,” he said. I found his response puzzling. Perhaps he was already used to it, I thought, or perhaps he was given to understatement.

We went downstairs to the church, unhooking a series of velvet ropes. Jackson sat at the existing console bench and casually explained that the difference between the new organ and old would prove to be “in the sampling.”

A standard digital organ reproduces a pipe organ’s sound through recordings of individual notes from pipe organs, he said. Normally, one pitch sample is taken and altered to produce three or four notes. The array of samples on a typical digital organ may be quite limited, lasting around 3 minutes. The Trinity organ has 33 hours of samples, some of which are long in duration to reproduce the oscillation of sound waves over time with fealty. What you’re actually hearing in the new Trinity organ is a composite of about 30 organs from up and down the east coast, from which technicians took recordings.

Jackson played a few chords on the previous interim, and it sounded perfectly nice. Sound spilled from two small, elevated speakers behind the organ facing the pews. It was a warm and harmless sound, reminding me, at a bit of a stretch, of the timbre of a calliope.

Then he touched some bass notes with his feet, among the lowest of notes the organ can produce, and these barely sounded musical. Then Jackson flicked a switch on a sound processor to his left, and played those same low notes powered by the new machine: it was likely the last time something that overwhelming had sounded in the church was when the south tower of the trade center was coming down. Only obfuscated at the bottom of a pile of grand chords, would I ever want to hear those notes in performance, but the point was made: something that could sound that powerfully awful could also sound awe-inspiringly beautiful.

“Now I’m going to play a piece that builds in intensity,” said Jackson.

He played the Toccata in B-minor by Gigout. The piece began prettily in the upper registers -- a cascade of spiraling sound as notes splashed from their pedal points. Jackson’s hands flashed over the keys, and as his fingers ascended the tiers of the console, the piece grew in volume and intricacy to become simultaneously manic and controlled. What was a cascade became an immense wall of sound.

When he was done, Jackson turned, smiling ear to ear.

“You see? And this is only 20 percent,” he said. “When the rest of it comes, it’s going to be rocking in here.”