(b Clarion, PA, 15 Jan 1866; d Duxbury, MA, 27 Oct 1961). American organ builder. At the age of twenty he was apprenticed to George H. Ryder of Reading, Massachusetts, where he worked for four years before going to the larger George S. Hutchings firm in Boston. He remained there for eleven years, working as a tuner, mechanic, draftsman and eventually factory superintendent. In 1893 he married Mabel Hastings, an artistically-talented woman who remained his companion until her death in 1951.
While at Hutchings's factory, Skinner was encouraged to experiment with action improvements. In 1892 he received his first patent (for a swell pedal action) and in 1893 devised the first electro-pneumatic action to be used in a Hutchings organ; by 1896 an improved version had been successfully employed in several instruments. By 1898 he had developed the first ‘pitman’ type individual-valve wind-chest. In the same year he visited England and France, where he became acquainted with the work of Willis and Cavaillé-Coll, and upon his return made some high-pressure reed stops based on Willis models which were utilized by Hutchings in his organ for Boston's Symphony Hall.
In 1901 Skinner left Hutchings to begin his own company in Boston. He completed a modest two-manual instrument in the following year, by which time he had obtained several more contracts and had entered into a brief partnership with James Cole. Robert Hope-Jones was briefly associated with Skinner in 1905–6, and shortly thereafter Skinner signed the contract for the first of his many prestigious church instruments, completed in 1910 for the Cathedral of St John the Divine in New York. His ‘symphonic’ tonal ideal was also coalescing in this early period, during which he developed such ‘trademark’ stops as the Erzähler (a soft string), Flügel Horn, and French Horn. In 1917 he published a book outlining his philosophies, and also introduced a player organ called the ‘Orchestrator’. In 1919 the industrialist Arthur Hudson Marks (1874–1939) purchased a controlling interest in the company and became president, and in 1920 the firm expanded by acquiring the assets of the Steere Organ Co. in Springfield, Massachusetts. G. Donald Harrison (1889–1956), formerly with Willis, entered the firm in 1927, and soon was sharing sales and design responsibilities with Skinner.
In 1931 the organ operation of the Aeolian Co. of New Jersey was acquired, and the firm name changed to Aeolian-Skinner. Under Marks's control, Harrison began to assume greater responsibility, while Skinner's activities were increasingly curtailed. With his son Richmond he purchased the old Methuen Organ Co. factory in Methuen, Massachusetts in 1932 and commenced production in 1933 under the name of Ernest M. Skinner & Son. Much of the work done there was of a minor nature, the most impressive project being the rebuilding of the Washington Cathedral organ in 1938. Without significant financial backing, Skinner was frequently in debt; he went bankrupt in 1942, and a year later the Methuen factory burnt down. Skinner set up shop again in Reading, Massachusetts, and engaged in some minor repair and rebuilding work assisted by Carl Bassett, to whom he sold his name and a few assets in 1949. Bassett continued to work under the Skinner name until 1970, when it was sold to a small company building ‘pitman’ chests in New Hampshire.
In its heyday Skinner's original firm was an innovative leader in American organ building, counting among its notable organs those in City College, New York (1906), the Eastman School of Music (1921), the Municipal Auditorium, St Paul (1921), Trinity Church, Boston (1926) and Woolsey Hall, New Haven (1929).
E.M. Skinner: The Modern Organ (New York, 1917)
R.F. Kehl: Ernest M. Skinner and the American Romantic Organ (thesis, Ohio State University, 1960)
D.J. Holden: The Life and Work of Ernest M. Skinner (Richmond, VA, 1985)
J. Ambrosino: ‘A History of the Skinner Company’, American Organist, xxiv/5 (1990), 261–8
A. Kinzey and S. Lawn: The E.M. Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner Opus List (Richmond, VA, 1992, 2/1997)
BARBARA OWEN