For more than a thousand years, a colorful procession of both saints and sinners have labored at the unique craft of organ building. The saints have included learned monks and at least one reformation-age martyr, and the sinners have engaged in almost every known sin.

Many of the gifted craftsmen who labored to rear the musical monuments which still grace many of Europe's cathedrals were anonymous. Yet the names of the great master builders of the organ's golden age--affectionately called the "Old Guys"--are known and revered among those who still practice their trade: Arp Schnitger, the 17th-century North German master whose bones lie ...