Instantly
Last week, A. Kulikauskas together with Šiauliai Cinema Art Club chairman Viktor Gundajev visited the culture house and did not find the unique electric organ installed around 1987.
It soon became clear that not only the instruments ordered and of which the director of the Šiauliai Production Training Combine of the Lithuanian Society of the Blind at the time, musician Juozas Dzidolikas, were no longer here, but also the stage, because the hall was rented out, and the repair work started before Easter.
“That’s right, in Šiauliai, everything that is incompatible with Eurorenovation continues to be destroyed – this is how many mosaics, panels and wall paintings have already fallen. And now the organ. And after all, the builders or the owner of the building could have informed the organ maker, there was an opportunity to move the instrument to a new place”, regretted museum curator V. Gundayevas.
“Everything is dismantled, nothing is left. The worker did not say where they disappeared. It fell through and that’s it. To this day, I can’t get over what I saw. Damage? Of course it’s moral. I understand that now an organ like mine is no longer needed, but it was still possible to do something – it was possible to restore it in order to play it at least a little. I still haven’t recovered,” said organ maker A. Kulikauskas.
Organ … disposed of
Aloyzas Vilimas, the head of the Northeast Center of the Lithuanian Blind and Visually Impaired Union, which is responsible for the assets of the aforementioned organization, assured that in 2000, the year of the reorganization of the Lithuanian Blind Society, there was no longer an organ in the hall of the cultural house, as if he had seen its broken remains somewhere.
According to the manager, all but the third floor of the administrative building of LASS Šiauliai city and district branch is rented. The hall of slightly more than 200 square meters and several rooms on the second floor were rented by athletes.
“When we took over, there was no organ or heating in the building. I am glad that the tenants are ready to invest in the building”, said A. Vilimas.
When “Šiaulių kraš” visited the hall of the former culture house, just as the repairmen were buzzing, Zigmas Skaringa, the head of the tennis club that will be located here, discussed the work with them.
Z. Skaringa, the manager of Šiaulių stalo tenisas, VšĮ, confirmed: the remains of a broken, destroyed organ were found in the premises. And what was found was utilized.
The beginning and the end
The history of the organ installed in the hall of the cultural house for the blind and partially sighted in Šiauliai has its beginning and its end. It was narrated by organ master A. Kulikauskas.
The beginning leads to the Music Department of the then Šiauliai Pedagogical Institute, where A. Kulikauskas worked at that time as an organ and grand piano tuning and repair master. The head of the Department of Music at the time, Eduardas Balčytis, came up with the idea of ordering a small organ.
“I saw that there was nothing to do with a small organ, so I started making bigger ones. And if at the beginning one pipe was 1.50 meters, then five meters appeared later.”
When the unique wooden organ was installed in the cathedral, Juozas Dzidolikas, the then director of the Šiauliai Combine of the Lithuanian Society of the Blind, who came to listen to them, wanted to build the same one in the hall of the cultural house of the Lithuanian Society of the Blind.
“When the transformation of 1990-1991 began, the hall was given to merchants. They destroyed that organ: nails were used to hang clothes, the engine was lost somewhere. The organ remained standing, but it was no longer working, says the master. – And the current tenants came up with the idea of renovating the hall based on their sketches… The organ was not hopeless, I would have repaired it, put the wires together.”
The Pedagogical, now Šiauliai Academy of Vilnius University, commissioned by E. Balčytis also no longer exists. It was decided to dismantle them and install them in another cathedral. The organ master tends to hesitate with such an idea – the organ was adapted only to the acoustics of the old Music Department, so he has almost no hope that it will be able to sound in other rooms.
A. Kulikauskas has another organ in the farm building of his homestead in Meškuičiai.
“I’m going to build them. They were intended for the Municipality. When the organ was being replaced in Šiauliai Cathedral, they gave me metal pipes. The municipality of Šiauliai allocated money to make an organ in the old meeting hall. I did them for a year. And a year later, the Municipality changed its mind, wrote off the money allocated for that purpose to other purposes, and charged me with a debt of one and a half thousand litas. I escaped only thanks to the then city mayor Vida Stasiūnaitė, who embarrassed the deputies. The finished organ remained lying in the corner. If only they would appear, who would need them,” said the interviewer.
