“If someone leaves a church with a slightly nobler soul, then it was all worth it,” says Attila Budavári, who has spent more than three decades building and restoring pipe organs around the world. We spoke with the Tüke Award-winning master organ builder about tradition and innovation, professional dedication, and the sacrifices that often lie behind a lifelong vocation. It is a story of perseverance, responsibility, and how a musical instrument can become both an engineering marvel and a source of spiritual elevation.
The Tüke Award is not only a professional recognition but also a reflection of a community’s appreciation. What does it truly mean to be a “tüke” to you, and was there a moment when you felt that responsibility particularly strongly?
Although we have been operating in Pécs for 34 years, I still regularly meet local residents who are surprised to discover that organ building is taking place in the city. On the one hand, this shows that our profession remains relatively unknown; on the other, it suggests that there is something special about it that continues to inspire wonder.
Our company was founded in September 1992, and ever since then we have lived with a constant need to grow. In the years following the political transition, I felt a particularly strong sense of responsibility as an employer: to make sure there were enough machines, enough work, enough people, adequate heating, and reliable working conditions. Whenever we took on more projects, we needed more employees—and this cycle was never only about the business itself. It was also about providing stable livelihoods for people in Pécs, often for those who had few other opportunities.
Perhaps the Tüke Award also recognized this commitment to the community. For us, it was an immense and deeply honouring distinction, one that came as a complete surprise. I cannot say that the past 34 years have been without difficulties. There were periods when one inevitably wondered whether it might be easier to give up. Yet in those moments, a certain sense of loyalty and inner resilience always emerged and carried us forward.
I feel that, in an unspoken way, this award recognizes and supports precisely that perseverance and dedication to our vocation.
The name József Angster remains legendary to this day. Do you see yourself primarily as carrying on a legacy or writing a new chapter? And how do you know when each is needed?
Whenever the Angster family comes up, a flood of memories and experiences comes back to me. One of the most important is that in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, my great-great-grandfather, who was living and working in Vienna, was invited to Pécs. He settled here and continued his work in the city. Several members of the family were still born in Vienna, but they learned and worked in the Angster factory.
For a long time, we knew of six organ builders in the family; by now, we have identified a seventh, who was born in Pécs but later lived and worked in Cologne. As for myself, I decided at the age of twelve that I wanted to become an organ builder, and I have been in contact with the Angster family since I was fourteen. I heard countless stories from them and from my own relatives. József Angster of the third generation, already an elderly man at the time, often shared memories of my great-great-grandfather and great-grandfather. These personal connections are all important links for me to the Angster legacy.
At the same time, it is important to make one thing clear: we are not the legal successor of the Angster company. We are the continuators of the organ-building tradition of Pécs—a tradition whose defining milestone was the Angster factory, which produced some 3,600 harmoniums and 1,300 organs for churches and institutions throughout historic Hungary and the Carpathian Basin.
Our market, our clients, and our responsibilities are entirely different today. We work in a completely different historical, social, and ecclesiastical environment. Yet in many respects we remain deeply committed to tradition. Whenever we restore or reconstruct an Angster organ—even if half the instrument has disappeared or woodworm has already done its damage—we return to the Angster heritage. We use methods and materials that they themselves would have used. For example, we repair damaged pipes using warm hide glue, and when replacement parts are needed, we use elm rather than oak, just as they would have done.
On the other hand, when we are commissioned to build a new organ today, we do not aim to reproduce the Angster sound. We create entirely new and innovative instruments because the world has moved forward, and we must write new chapters as well. Both directions are essential: creating new organs and respecting tradition. After all, our predecessors established an organ-building culture in Pécs that we must continue to be worthy of.
Organ building is both engineering precision and artistic expression. Do you consider yourself more of a creator or a problem-solver—and when was the last time you had to choose between the two?
Over the past 34 years, I have had to solve problems practically every fifteen minutes—and it has never been any different. In the beginning, I personally trained everyone in every stage of the work. Later, whenever I travelled to a job site, my phone would ring constantly with questions, situations, and decisions that needed attention.
For a while, I had a few mottos I kept repeating to my colleagues: “Nothing is impossible—only unwilling.” Later it became: “Don’t talk, fight.” And then: “Figure it out—you have grown-up parents.” These may sound harsh, but my goal was to help people become independent, to teach them how to make decisions and take responsibility.
Growth is always painful. We started with five people, then became ten, and within a year or two we were twenty. Every new employee had to be trained. We needed more workshops, more timber, more machinery, and more work. More people and machines required more contracts; more contracts required more people. Meanwhile there were construction projects, procurement, logistics, and a single company vehicle while work was underway at four different locations simultaneously.
It was one continuous process of problem-solving. At times, I felt as if I were living inside a chaotic television drama: a single camera angle, people rushing in and out, everyone shouting, everything urgent, everything needing immediate attention. From the outside, organ building appears to be a calm and centuries-old profession, but in reality it often felt like accelerated chaos.
That was our life for 34 years: there was always something that needed to be solved immediately—with no time, no money, and no space. Yet somehow, we always found a solution.
And that, in itself, is a form of creation. Many times we would say, “This simply cannot be done.” Then, when we succeeded anyway, came the joy of creation—the satisfaction of realizing that we had risen to the challenge.
The Hungarian saying that “the palm tree grows under pressure” is particularly true here. Engineering precision and artistic sensitivity are equally necessary. The engineering side matters because an organ must function reliably under extreme conditions: fluctuations in humidity, temperature changes, and countless environmental influences. That is why tolerances measured in hundredths of a millimetre matter. Components must neither bind nor wobble.
An organ consists of thousands of individual parts, most of them made of wood—a material far more sensitive than metal. We perform precision woodworking using calipers and engineering-level accuracy.
The artistic dimension begins when someone enters a church and looks up before hearing a single note. Do they see something beautiful? Something harmonious that belongs naturally within the space? That is no simple task either. Many churches evolved over centuries and contain a mixture of Baroque, Gothic, and modern elements. Before a single sound is heard, we must decide which architectural language the organ should speak.
That combination—engineering precision and the joy of creation—is the essence of our profession, and it has accompanied us throughout these 34 years.
An organ may be built to last for centuries. How do you make decisions today when you know you may never personally witness their long-term consequences?
A simple example is that many historic instruments are overcrowded and difficult to access. Two hundred years ago, builders were often forced by circumstances to fit an organ into a particular space at any cost, resulting in constructions that are almost impossible to service today. You cannot properly dismantle them, tune them, or access them from the front or back.
Many of these instruments are neglected and in poor condition, and for a modern organ builder it can be a nightmare to work inside them. Your hands cramp, you are forced into impossible positions, and you may spend hours balancing awkwardly while trying to reach a single component. These are simply poor designs—the compromises of their era.
Having learned from these mistakes, we now deliberately design instruments that are fully accessible. We create structures that can be maintained without destroying the technician’s back or neck. Serviceability has become a fundamental design principle. We hope that a hundred years from now, organ tuners will not curse our work the way we sometimes complain about certain constructions from two centuries ago.
Yet our decisions are guided not only by practicality but also by respect for tradition. We do not build only modern, innovative instruments tailored to contemporary needs. From time to time, we also recreate the sound and aesthetics of earlier eras.
Most recently, for example, we built what I like to call a “brand-new four-hundred-year-old organ”: a reconstruction of a Renaissance instrument whose original had been restored by an Italian colleague in Padua. We did not receive every detail of the original, so many elements had to be reimagined, but our goal was to recreate the sound and character of a Renaissance organ from the early 1600s.
Everything about it is different from a modern instrument: the tuning, the keyboard, the tonal palette. Hungary has virtually no surviving instruments of this type, either because historical examples were destroyed during wars or because our organ heritage was never as extensive as that of Western Europe. Yet in 2024, 2025, and 2026, the demand finally emerged for such a unique and irreplaceable instrument.
Years earlier, we built a French Baroque organ in Zamárdi that could easily hold its own in France, and another inspired by the Venetian school of organ building. I am convinced that these instruments—whether heard in concert or on a recording—can transport listeners directly into a French Baroque church or the atmosphere of Renaissance Italy. If they close their eyes, they can almost see the gondolas.
These instruments bring centuries-old worlds back to life while being born in the present day.
Our latest Renaissance organ is being installed in the Franciscan Church of Veszprém. It is already in place, although its dedication ceremony has yet to take place. Visually, it is extraordinary, with twisted pipes and a completely different appearance from a modern organ. I am certain it will offer a very different musical experience—and I am equally certain that not every organist will be able to play it immediately. It requires specialised preparation and a deep understanding of early music.
Was there an instrument or project that changed you personally as well as professionally? What was really happening behind the scenes?
I would not describe these experiences as negative. Rather, they were situations after which one simply says, “We got through it, and we stood our ground.”
There were hardships: cold churches, months spent working hundreds of kilometres away from home. Things that seemed worthwhile and rewarding at the time sometimes later appeared as losses. And sometimes the opposite happened: what once felt like a burden later revealed itself as one of the defining moments of perseverance and commitment.
I remember when our first child was born. I spent eight months away from home, returning only on Sundays. With our second child, it was “only” six months. As more children arrived, the situation gradually improved. But I can barely remember the early years of our first two children.
At the time, I believed that deadlines had to be met, work could not wait, and the children would “still be there.” Work always came first.
Looking back, this is one of the realizations that fundamentally changed my perspective—only far too late. That time can never be recovered.
Meanwhile, we worked extensively abroad. We delivered components to China, the United States, Finland, and Switzerland. We worked throughout the territories of historic Hungary—in Košice, Oradea, Subotica, and many other places. We restored, repaired, and built instruments.
That represents hundreds of thousands, perhaps even millions, of kilometres travelled and thousands of nights spent in unfamiliar beds.
Had I known all of this in advance, I would probably have done things differently. But at the time, I did not see it that way.
Even so, these experiences shaped us into who we are today. The hardships, the distance, the cold churches, the deadlines, and the perseverance all contributed to the way we work, think, and take responsibility now.
The Pécs Organ Building Manufactory represents a profession deeply rooted in tradition. Where do you draw the line between tradition and innovation?
As I mentioned earlier, when we restore a historic instrument, we must remain as faithful as possible to the original. If a component is missing, it has to be recreated using the same material, the same dimensions, and the same style as the original master would have used. This often involves detective work. We may have to study other organs in the region to determine the dimensions of a missing church bench, the shape of a pedal keyboard or wooden pipes, or the style of a metal pipe.
There have been instruments whose reconstruction required us to piece together evidence from three or four different sources in order to understand what the original builder’s lost organ might have looked like. This kind of work is, in my view, one of the most beautiful expressions of respect for tradition.
Innovation, however, is an entirely different field. There, it is actually beneficial to let our imagination run wild.
I can give several examples. One comes from a Hungarian village near Košice in present-day Slovakia, where the church was designed by a student of Imre Makovecz. The mayor gave us complete creative freedom. He simply said: “Make the organ however you think it should be.”
The result was a deliberately provocative, award-winning instrument. If I showed it to someone, they might not even recognize it as an organ at first glance. But that was precisely the point.
Tourists enter the church, and the mayor casually says, “Take a look behind you—we have an organ as well.” They turn around, and the first reaction is often one of complete astonishment. The pipes spread out like enormous angel wings, with vertical and horizontal lines suggesting the sound of the Last Judgment’s trumpet. No one imposed limits on our imagination, and that freedom was incredibly liberating.
A similarly unusual challenge came when we were approached from Taiwan. We were asked to build an organ for a railway station.
At first, it sounded rather strange. In Buddhist culture, the organ is not part of religious life, and many people have never encountered the instrument before. But that was exactly what made the project exciting.
An architect came to visit us. He had seen organs before but knew very little about how they worked. What they wanted was something that would make people stop, reflect, or simply admire its beauty.
The result was a completely modern instrument: computer-controlled, digitally operated, yet still speaking through traditional organ pipes. It included lighting effects, flashing lights, and even a bird-deterrent system to prevent birds from nesting inside despite the twenty to thirty trains passing through the station every day.
The organ itself was designed to resemble a giant sheng, the traditional Chinese and Taiwanese mouth organ. It can play automatically, but it can also be performed from a keyboard. We painted it gold, engineered it to withstand earthquakes, and incorporated features that almost evoke the atmosphere of a theatrical spectacle.
As the architect realized how willing we were to experiment, his enthusiasm grew.
“Could we add this as well?” he would ask.
“Of course—let’s take it one step further.”
That is how a work of art emerged—one that both he and we are immensely proud of. It received awards, and I genuinely believe it is world-class.
You can play anything on it, from classic Hungarian pop songs to the music of Star Wars. A flutist or singer can perform alongside it, but if necessary, the menu can be programmed so that every fifteen minutes it sounds a locomotive whistle and every half hour it plays church bells.
This organ steps beyond the walls of the church. It is not limited to sacred music; it offers world music, experience, surprise, and delight to the fifty to sixty thousand people who pass by it every day.
That, to me, is the essence of innovation: breaking away from convention and creating something entirely new.
What do you see as the biggest misconception the general public has about organs and organ building today?
– One of the strangest things, in my view, is that most people actually know very little about pipe organs. They often arrive as if they were walking into a piano showroom: “I’ll take the brown one… or perhaps the black one.” But an organ doesn’t work like that. There are no instruments sitting in stock, ready to be taken off a shelf.
A church organ must be designed individually. Structural engineers must be consulted because the instrument can weigh several tons. Adequate air supply and three-phase electrical power must be ensured. Voicing and tuning can take months, and the entire process requires tens of thousands of working hours. Many people are genuinely surprised when they realize that an organ does not come “from the warehouse” and certainly cannot be ordered three at a time.
If someone commissions an organ today, there is a good chance they will receive it two years from now, because we already have other projects in progress. This misunderstanding becomes particularly problematic when a client approaches us late but insists on meeting a nearby funding or accounting deadline. In such cases, we simply cannot build an organ out of sequence without jeopardizing commitments we have already made to other customers.
Another major misconception is that people use the same word for two fundamentally different instruments: the traditional pipe organ and the digital instrument that operates through loudspeakers. Both are called “organs,” yet the difference between them is enormous.
A pipe organ is part of a tradition that stretches back hundreds, even thousands, of years. Its value may range from fifty million to two hundred million forints or more. It contains expensive natural materials—copper, tin, lead, leather, oak, and even bone—and every component is handcrafted. Each instrument is unique, created with respect, humility, and extraordinary craftsmanship.
A digital instrument, by contrast, may be housed in an injection-molded plastic cabinet, filled with speakers, mass-produced, and sold in hundreds of identical units. Yet it is still called an “organ.” As a result, people sometimes compare our fifty-million-forint instrument to a four-million-forint digital device, even though the difference in artistic value may be fortyfold—or even two hundredfold.
For me, this is the greatest misunderstanding. One is an industrial product, much like a bearing or a plastic component. The other is a uniquely crafted, living musical instrument in which centuries of tradition, craftsmanship, and material culture come together. One is not truly an organ at all—it is simply called one. The other is the real thing: a genuine pipe organ.
To what extent is the organ of a church or concert hall a reflection of the community for which it is built? Do you consciously incorporate that character into the instrument?
– One of the most difficult aspects of organ building is finding balance among numerous expectations that often contradict one another.
There is a humorous but revealing picture hanging on the wall: an organ builder stands in a church gallery while seven or eight people pull him in different directions—by his moustache, his hat, and his coat. The priest says, “Don’t block the rose window.” One musician wants a Baroque sound, another prefers a Romantic one. The structural engineer warns, “It cannot weigh ten tons; the floor won’t support it.” Then the treasurer adds, “And make sure it’s inexpensive.”
In situations like these, the organ builder often ends up creating not the instrument he considers professionally ideal, but the one demanded by various musical or architectural “dictators.”
There have been churches where the designer envisioned something ambitious, but there was no money, no space, and in reality nobody wanted what eventually had to be built. In other cases, people simply declared: “An organ cannot be built here—or if it is, it must be exactly as we want it.”
Such circumstances have a tremendous impact on the final result.
Where people trust our expertise and recognize that we truly understand the instrument, they give us room to work. We do not want to be “more Catholic than the Pope,” nor do we presume to know better than a congregation what belongs in their church. But it is helpful when professional arguments are taken seriously.
There are also places where people insist they know better, and that can lead to serious conflicts. On more than one occasion, after a third meeting, I have had to say: “I’m sorry, but I don’t think we will be able to work together.”
When asked why, my answer was simple: “We are already facing so many restrictions and limitations that we cannot build the instrument we believe should be built. At the same time, you are demanding something that we believe does not belong here. If you feel you know better, then perhaps you should find someone else to do it.”
Sometimes those same people later returned and said: “All right, let’s start over.”
This is difficult territory. Just as people choose a car with a specific color or suspension system, many assume that every aspect of an organ can be freely customized as well. The reality is very different. Organ building is a far more complex, delicate, artistic, and engineering-driven endeavor.
Not every request can be fulfilled, and not every idea serves the interests of either the instrument or the building that will house it.
In organ building, the greatest challenge is often not the instrument itself—it is preserving professional integrity amid a multitude of competing expectations.
How attractive is this profession to young people today? What makes someone remain an organ builder for the long term rather than simply trying it out?
– Organ building is not among the professions that young people would typically describe as attractive, and one of the main reasons is the amount of travel involved.
We often have to spend weeks or even months away from home, working elsewhere in Hungary or abroad. There were times when we spent four, six, or even seven weeks in Portugal, and several similarly long periods in China. In such situations, you cannot simply go home for the weekend. Whether it is Poland or any other destination, we usually work in minimum two-week cycles.
For many young people today, this lifestyle is difficult to accept. They want to be at home, with their friends, their hobbies, and their familiar routines.
Things were very different in the past. An elderly organ builder who later became a friend once told me that when he began his apprenticeship at the Angster factory in the 1950s, he left home in September and did not return until Christmas. They traveled from village to village, and going home simply was not practical. Back then, that was considered normal. If you became an organ builder, travel was simply part of the profession.
Today, however, many people would like to become organ builders without leaving home—which is understandable, but far removed from reality. This discourages many young people from entering the field.
Of course, it would be wonderful if everything could be manufactured locally and travel were unnecessary. But that is simply not the nature of this profession.
Over the past decades, more than two hundred carpenters and apprentices have passed through our workshop. For thirty years we continuously trained young professionals. Yet for the past three years, we have not had a single apprentice.
In the past, eight to ten woodworking students arrived each year from the local vocational school. Across two classes, there could easily be fifteen or sixteen students. Every three to five years, one aspiring organ builder would appear as well.
Some completed their examinations but never worked a single day in the profession afterward. Others lasted only one or two months before saying: “This is too demanding for me. It requires concentration all day long. It’s physically difficult and exhausting. It’s not for me.”
What is truly painful is when someone is talented, skilled, and earns excellent qualifications—yet still leaves. The work is difficult. The financial rewards are not always sufficient. The sacrifices can be considerable.
There are exceptions, of course. Over the past thirty years, at least ten apprentices have stayed with us. Our first and second apprentices, for example, have been working alongside us for thirty-three years.
But most recent graduates have simply tried the profession and then moved on to something easier and better paid.
And little by little, practical knowledge, craftsmanship, and skilled hands disappear.
If a layperson enters a space where your organ is playing, what feeling or thought would you most like to evoke in them?
One of the very first experiences related to the organ is always the wow effect. Even before the instrument sounds, just seeing its shape, colors, and rhythm already has an impact. Most people at that moment only see the 20–30, maybe 80–100 visible pipes on the façade. They would not even guess that behind them there may be several thousand pipes hidden. In the Esztergom Basilica, for example, about a hundred pipes are visible from the outside — but behind them there are nearly nine thousand pipes. The largest ones are five-meter-long wooden giants, while the smallest are as thin as knitting needles or pencils.
The organ in the Cathedral of Pécs has 6,100 pipes; other medium-sized instruments have more than 2,000–3,000 pipes. But even a smaller organ still contains 400–500 pipes that visitors never see. When an organ is taken apart and someone looks inside for the first time, that is when the real shock comes: “I never would have thought this.”
The other major experience comes when the instrument starts to play. At that moment, I wish for everyone to experience that goosebump-inducing, almost spiritual sense of purification that truly beautiful organ music can give. However, this is not solely the instrument’s merit. It also depends on the listener’s state of mind: whether they are open, whether they are having a good day, whether they are able to receive the music. And it also requires a musician who enchants the audience with their skill, style, registration choices, and improvisation.
That is why the simplistic idea is not true — that if the concert is good, it is thanks to the organ builder, but if it is bad, it is the musician’s fault. A truly cathartic organ experience requires many things to come together: a beautiful instrument, good acoustics, a well-prepared performer, and an audience that is mentally and emotionally open.
The same music can even feel unpleasant in a bad emotional state — while at other times it can uplift, cleanse, and deeply move someone. The organ is at once an engineering marvel and a spiritual experience. The sight is breathtaking, the sound is moving — but the real magic happens when everything is “present” at the same time.
As I said before, we wish for an organ to function like an elevator. When someone enters the church, it lifts them — either toward the heavens or at least to a higher place within themselves. They may not even be able to articulate what happened to them. They may simply feel that those few minutes felt good.
They may not have been able to pray, or put into words what was troubling them. But the music — the heard, experienced music — still moved something within them.
If a person leaves the church with a slightly nobler soul than when they entered, then the organ has already fulfilled its purpose.
