Peragallo who could not go to a church service there or anywhere else without straining to hear if there was anything the least bit amiss with his patient, died on Sept. 12 in Wayne, N.J. He was 76 and lived Paterson, N.J.
John Peragallo Jr. of the Peragallo Pipe Organ Company in the mid- 1990s, when he restored St. Patrick’s Cathedral’s organ. The cause was cancer, his son John III said.
One of the country’s most highly regarded organ builders and restorers, Mr. Peragallo was at his death the president of his family business, the Peragallo Pipe Organ Company. His father founded the company in Paterson 90 years ago; it is now in its fourth generation.
In the 1990s, Mr. Peragallo oversaw a complete restoration of the organ at St. Patrick’s, a monumental instrument that actually comprises three separate organs. His other notable restorations in New York include the organ at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle on West 59th Street.
Since its founding in 1918, the Peragallo company has built nearly 700 organs; today, its work can be found in churches along the East Coast from New England to the Carolinas. Each year, the company makes 8 to 10 new organs, which cost from $100,000 to $1 million and are destined for churches, colleges and the rare private home. It also tunes and maintains the organs of almost 400 churches in the metropolitan area.
Maintaining an organ is like being the master of an unstable principality, where anything can go wrong at any time. Along with the clock, the organ is considered the most complex of all machines built before the Industrial Revolution. It is as temperamental as a diva, and a good deal larger.
Day or night, Mr. Peragallo might be called out at a moment’s notice to save a wedding or funeral from acoustical ruin. Seasonal changes of temperature or humidity can throw an organ pipe — and a single organ can have thousands of them — out of tune. A pipe can jam and play on seemingly forever, much like a stuck car horn and about as pleasant to listen to. Arriving at the scene, Mr. Peragallo would yank the offending pipe from its holder like a dentist pulling a tooth.
