Tunefully rising above tragedy: the Great Organ returns to St. John the Divine

MORNINGSIDE HEIGHTS, Manhattan (PIX11) – Silence for five-and-a-half years. 

That's what enveloped one of the most important aspects of the world's largest cathedral after tragedy struck. Now, that's changed in a tuneful way, just in time for holiday celebrations. 

The Great Organ of the Cathedral of St. John the Divine is making music once again after a tragic accident shut it off. 

The cathedral's dean, The Very Rev. Patrick Malloy, described what happened on Palm Sunday 2019. 

"A room where we store art somehow exploded into flames," he said, "and filled this room with really petroleum-infused smoke."

The room he described is the sanctuary of the largest cathedral in the world. It's so spacious that two football fields can fit inside, with room to spare. For a space that big to fill up with toxic smoke means that the air is full of impurities. They got into the organ's 8,500 pipes and pneumatic pumps, silencing them. 

It was temporarily replaced with an all-electronic organ while the cathedral negotiated with its insurance company over the cost of repairing the Great Organ.

After a long bargaining period, the cathedral could proceed with the multi-million dollar restoration project. It took nearly two years to clean every pipe, which ranged in size from three stories tall to just one inch in length. 

Kent Tritle, the cathedral's director of music, said the wait and the work were well worth it. 

"After being gone for five-and-a-half years, it was -- the sound," he said emphatically. "It's just the sound!"

That sound will centerpiece the Great Organ's formal return to the cathedral community. 

The cathedral's two organists, Tritle and associate music director Dan Ficarri, were practicing on the grand instrument on Thursday. Their rehearsal was in preparation for the Christmas Concert at St. John the Divine, which will officially celebrate the organ's refurbishment. 

The concert is on Saturday, December 14, at 4:00 p.m.