I, the loud-mouth, have so far tried to stay away from the flame-wars as
much as possible; however, given the amount of heat and light going on this
subject, here is my farthing's worth:
1) Repertoire (as many schools as possible, especially relative to
large-scale works by Elgar, Reger, Messiaen, Howells as well as
somewhat-less demanding à la Bach, Buxtehude, Couperin + orchestral
transcriptions), with the wildly differing organs each of those composers
had in mind from whatever viewpoint, is what probably is the most important
of all. While it's practically impossible to get 1 organ to handle
absolutely everything 100% authentically, a reasonably large instrument of
about 100 stops on 4 manuals (with at least 2, preferably 3 out of the 4
manual divisions being under expression!) should be able to get to about (in
my honest opinion) around 80% authenticity using sounds that will be
entirely convincing in most or all the literature. An organ of 47 ranks, 3
manuals and 49 speaking stops (yes, yes a little unification and borrowing -
but most of it is straight!) on which I practice already does justice and
musical sense (even sound-wise: I can get most Franck and Elgar - not to
mention Buxtehude, Bach and even Frescobaldi - to sound far from being out
of place with the composers' registrations...) - and yet has categorically
no wastage. An ideal one I have in mind of 100 stops {ca. 130 ranks} as
mentioned above, while still seeming larger, nevertheless is still much more
lean than others might like to think...
2) A carefully well-thought-out, well-designed, well-voiced and regulated
concert-hall organ built with these needs in mind will also be a good church
organ as well as a good concert-hall organ (after all, anything properly
designed with English and French-Romantic needs included will almost
automatically therefore encompass ecclesiastical needs).
3) The room's acoustics as well as size - and the location of the
instrument! - are critical to what needs to be taken into mind: a giant
space like one of the European cathedrals will demand higher power
(especially if the space be dry!) than one of our regular North-American
churches. [I could see a 100-stop instrument fitting into a small space
amply well if scales, voicing and volume are kept light; whereas it's easy
to try to force 50 stops into screaming. However, it's not the same to have
a 60-piece orchestra playing at the strength of one of 120 members {which is
what you need ideally in most stuff written after 1850 - and Berlioz was by
1830 dreaming of one of 467!!!}: and the same analogy applies to organs.
Enjoy your battles! [Those who want to know more about the instruments I
care for are welcome to write me {please be careful about the spam-guards}.]
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