Robert Heilbuth - eccentric pipe organ builder/composer

Robert Heilbuth built pipe organs in his San Francisco home, using salvaged pipes and parts he created from scratch. He composed original music for his organs. His music was played via paper rolls, similar to a player piano. He was a genius.


Here are some samples of his Heilbuth Band Organ:

Heilbuth Song 1

Heilbuth Song 2


Here is an article I wrote about him, while he was still alive:
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Robert Heilbuth is a German-born composer and band organ builder, now in his 90s, and he is the most cantankerous fellow I have ever met — the last of the great San Francisco eccentrics!

He has a hippie’s disdain for grooming and social climbing, mixed with a punk rocker’s energetic contempt for pretentiousness. He composes music especially for the “Heilbuth Band Organ” — music that is energetic, creative, catchy, astounding. He punches out the tunes by hand on piano rolls. Why is the composer Conlon Nancarrow the subject of so much attention, and Heilbuth isn’t?

Before he retired, Heilbuth worked as a piano tuner. He loves waltzes and polkas, especially those by (“Skater’s Waltz” composer) Emil Waldteufel. He has met members of the Waldteufel family.

Heilbuth’s band organs and tracker action pipe organs look like a pile of random bits and pieces, and they sound better than any band organ I’ve ever heard. There are some Wurlitzer bits in there, but he uses no tremolo — he HATES tremolo. Amazing recordings of Heilbuth’s compositions have been made by Wayne Schotten.

When I lived in San Francisco I repeatedly tried to convince Heilbuth to allow these recording to be put out as a record. He would have none of it! He would adamantly state that he didn’t care about becoming known to the general public, or the “Genital Pubic” as he would call them. Too bad, because those tapes have some fabulous stuff. The songs have great names like “Ass Kicking Polka.”

Heilbuth is infamous for being gruff, even petulant. The late Anton LaVey (another great San Francisco character who was an organ player and founder of the Church of Satan) loved to tell Heilbuth stories, like how he would determine the detail of pneumatic tubing by chewing on a piece of it. He said the different types had different tastes.

Or how he was called to do a last minute piano tuning for a San Francisco society matron, at the woman’s mansion, just as a fancy party was getting underway. The hostess at the party asked Heilbuth discreetly if he would mind putting on a suit jacket before he tuned the piano. Heilbuth replied, with his loud German accent: “Lady, I’m a piano tuner, not a Hollywood actor.”

The Heilbuth organs are made from scratch. As mentioned, some ranks are Wurlitzer, but some are one-of-a-kind creations such as the “Esophagophone” which — you guessed it — is named after the esophagus. The drums and cymbals in the Heilbuth Band Organ came from some old high school marching band.

With a good deal of patience I was able to convince Heilbuth to let me video tape him and his band organ in action. I did this on 03/19/94. He was fairly unfamiliar with videotape, and asked me when it was going to be developed. I explained that it recorded instantly, like audio cassettes. He actually answered four or five questions in a somewhat friendly and patient manner. He must have been a little under the weather that day!

One thing I was surprised about is that he had never heard of artist-magician-organ builder-automaton maker Cecil Nixon, since Heilbuth was living in San Francisco in the 1950’s and 60’s when Nixon was there living his last days. (Anton LaVey knew both of them.)
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In that article, I mention videotaping Heilbuth. Here is some of that footage:

In this video, the Heilbuth Band Organ plays Robert's arrangments of “Minuit Polka” Op.168 (Emil Waldteufel) and “Never On A Sunday” (Manos Hadjidakis, Billy Towne)

Here's is an obituary for Heilbuth, from the San Francisco Chronicle, Friday, June 28, 2002:

Robert Heilbuth of San Francisco — a German-born composer, piano tuner and organ builder — has died. He died May 25 of congestive heart failure while in hospice care at the UCSF Medical Center. He was 89.

Mr. Heilbuth was an extraordinary musician also known as an ingenious piano technician and tuner. A self-taught carpenter and metalworker, he built organs from scratch to rival the world’s top instruments. Over the years, he built five organs in his home in the Richmond District, including a baroque tracker action organ, three extensive player organs and a large carousel band organ.

He composed more than 100 pieces for these incomparable instruments but never copyrighted or recorded his music. He adamantly told friends he didn’t care about being known to the general public, or the “genital pubic,” as he was fond of saying. “He was a significant composer who never sought any limelight,” said friend Darryl Smith. “It was a very personal, in my house, kind of experience with him.”

Mr. Heilbuth was also one of San Francisco’s great eccentrics. An intellectual who spoke French and German fluently, he would not bathe for weeks at a time. He easily impressed major jazz musicians by sitting down to improvise at the piano, but he so hated to spend money that he asked grocery stores to give him their old vegetables for free.

He also liked to shock people. “He compulsively used the foulest language possible,” said friend Stephen Goldstine. “He tried to be as radically unprecious as you can be.”

Born in Hamburg, Germany on Oct. 14, 1912, Mr. Heilbuth was an only child whose parents owned one of Hamburg’s largest department stores. As a youth, he studied music at the Hamburg Conservatory, and he began composing and building his first organ when he was in his early teens.

Mr. Heilbuth, who was Jewish and gay, fled by boat to the United States in 1938. In 1939, he settled in San Francisco and never left. He was proud, friends say, that in his whole life he never flew on a plane.

A passionate cook and baker, Mr. Heilbuth delighted in befriending strangers and inviting them to his home, where he would cook an exotic dinner and play his music. While Mr. Heilbuth leaves behind no survivors, he regarded friends Darryl Smith, Laurie Lazer and their son Ian Yarrow Lazer-Smith, all of San Francisco, as his most immediate family.

A memorial service is being planned for October. Memorial contributions may be made to the Strybring Arboretum Society, Ninth Avenue and Lincoln Way, San Francisco CA 94122 in care of the Heilbuth Memorial.

Here is a foto of Heilbuth from 1993...

...He is visiting my San Francisco flat, and is tuning an instrument called a Marxophone. He has a dove on his shoulder.

I am a 'civilian'- I do not know much about the technical side of pipe organs. Here is a technical description of Heilbuth's organs:
http://organsociety.bsc.edu/stoplists/CA/CA.San%20Francisco.7537.TXT