| 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. |
| During the years 1960-1964, after studying sacred music at Baylor on scholarship doing organ maintenance for the University, Robert entered into partnership with J. Rodney Yarbrough. In 1965 he continued under the name of Robert L. Sipe, Inc, and married his wife Susan in May of 1968. Susan at that time was an organ student at North Texas University, and after their marriage transferred to SMU as an organ student of Robert Anderson. Susan remains active in the organ business as well as being a Church organist. |
| After several years of building instruments on his own, he was asked to join Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company of Boston in 1968. Robert became vice president and a co-owner of the company in 1969 and expanded their work into the field of mechanical action instruments. He functioned as the technical and artistic director until 1972. One of the last instruments completed under Sipe's direction was the concert organ installed in the John F. Kennedy Center for Performing Arts in Washington D.C. 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. |
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Robert L. Sipe, Inc. has completed over 80 instruments in Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Kentucky, North Carolina, Massachusetts, Michigan, Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
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