When the mayor presents visiting dignitaries with a “key to the city,” it’s a souvenir that the honoree can treasure forever.

Or not, as the case may be.

Additional Photos

Municipal organist Ray Cornils plays the Kotzschmar Organ at Merrill Auditorium in the summer of 2009. Renovations are expected to cost $3 million, and the Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ say they will raise half that amount if the city will ask voters to approve a bond for the other half. 2009 Press Herald file

But Portland has some really important keys that cannot be given away, even though a lot of very prominent people are constantly coming here to put their fingers on them.

Those are the keys on the console of the Kotzschmar Organ, the mega-musical instrument that dominates the stage of City Hall’s Merrill Auditorium. And the dignitaries who can’t wait to get their hands on its keys are the prestigious artists who bring worldwide reputations with them as they make their regular pilgrimages here to play Portland’s world-famous instrument. Now, the Kotzschmar needs the city’s help, and it more than deserves to receive it.

The organ will celebrate its 100th birthday next year, and Friends of the Kotzschmar Organ, the private group that maintains it for the city, which owns it, is planning a big celebration.

Cyrus H.K. Curtis, a Philadelphia publisher who grew up in Maine, donated $30,000 for the organ, which has 6,862 pipes. Its parts, including a massive wind chest, extend six stories above the stage where its console (with 229 stop knobs, 32 foot keys, five foot pedals and an array of toe-stops) rests. Today, after a number of expansions, the organ’s replacement value is close to $4 million.

It was named in honor of Hermann Kotzschmar, who was the organist at Portland’s First Parish Church for almost 50 years, and it was the first organ in the country to be designated a municipal organ when it was installed in August 1912, which also makes it the nation’s oldest functioning municipal organ. However, like any complex and essentially fragile structure, the organ requires constant maintenance, and last received a major do-over when it was reinstalled in the auditorium after the venue was completely refurbished in the mid-1990s.

Renovations are expected to cost $3 million, and the Friends say they will raise half that amount if the city will ask voters to approve a bond for the other half. A council vote on that issue could come Aug. 1, in the month of the organ’s 99th anniversary, and ought to be approved. Portland voters should get the chance to decide if they will agree to pay their part of the cost.

If they do, that will make August 2012 really an anniversary to remember.

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