For Bach—A Very Special Organ: St. Catherine’s Church, Hamburg

The Brick Gothic Phenomenon in Northern Germany

by Aldo J. Baggia

What strikes one immediately in the north of Germany is the uniformity of the style of architecture of the major churches. Throughout Schleswig-Holstein and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern the cathedral-size edifices have certain things in common. They are all massively-built gothic churches with high arching naves, some of which are well over a hundred feet in height, and they are made of brick. This last element creates a significant difference in feeling from the churches of the south of Germany or from the great French cathedrals whose soaring features have a more delicate nature about them. The use of bricks makes for a monumental effect that is striking from within and without. The Nikolaikirche in Wismar has a vaulting of 37 meters, which is the second highest in Germany after that of the Marienkirche in Lübeck, which rises to 40 meters. The steeples of the Marienkirche in Lübeck reach the height of 125 meters and are the center-pieces of the Lübeck skyline which emphasizes a row of seven church towers in the island core that is the city center. The Marienkirche of Stralsund in Ostvorpommern is 96 meters long with a vaulting of 32 meters, and the Baroque organ of 1659 is the last work of one of Lübeck's most famous organ builders, Friedrich Stellwagen. Not only is it his last work, but it is one of his largest organs (III/51) in a case that is absolutely spectacular, which rivals that of St. Bavo's in Haarlem, Holland. One cannot help but be inspired without even having heard a note from the instrument. This feeling is reproduced in the other brick gothic churches, where the combination of a formidable organ case blends so well with the aesthetic value of the architecture.

 

A common quote from a variety of sources is: "A Lutheran church must have a Bach organ." The implication would be that it must be a Baroque instrument with certain specifications and yet when one listens to Bach on a variety of organs, it would be difficult to make a definitive case for specifications, given the organs that are found in the typical North German Lutheran church, most of which are a far cry from what is labeled as a typical Baroque organ. I recall a recording by Nicholas Danby doing favorite works by Bach on the 1970 Marcussen organ (III/47) in the Cathedral of Lübeck. In the liner notes he wrote that he considered that particular instrument to be ideal for Bach's music because "of all the organs of our time, I find no other that matches its majesty and subtlety."1

One could add that the Cathedral's interior itself is quite majestic and subtle. I heard Peter Stenglein from Coburg play Bach's Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C, BWV 564, on that organ and was impressed with the colors produced, but the instrument was just as scintillating in the final movement of Vierne's First Symphony, a piece which requires brilliance and power. Conversely a small instrument can produce marvelous effects in Bach, depending on the virtuosity and articulation of the organist. I think of Simon Preston's recording on DGG of some of Bach's major works, including the Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, on the Kreuzbergkirche organ (II/24) in Bonn. There is a strength that easily matches the sound produced by much larger organs, but the style is a winning one.

It is clear that Bach appreciated larger instruments, including those that had features not normally associated with a Baroque organ. In the Oxford Composer Companions book on Bach (edited by Malcolm Boyd), it is stated that "The 18th century Thuringian organ is characterized by an increasingly generous number of 8' flue stops, including string stops of delicate but incisive timbre, with a slight purr or sizzle, and with a characteristic initial speech suggesting the bowstroke of a string instrument. The 8' flue stops, together with an ample number of 16' and 32' stops, provide gravity of tone."2 There tended to be relatively few reeds, but Silbermann was known for having powerful reeds, which he adopted after having studied with his brother, Andreas, in Strasbourg. His implementation of reed stops of power and brilliance had a considerable influence on organ building throughout Germany for generations.

Two instruments directly provide significant information on the question of a Bach organ because of the fact that Bach played and appreciated both of them. In the Schlosskirche in Altenburg, Thuringia, the Tobias Heinrich Gottfried Trost organ (II/36) was praised by Bach for its workmanship and the character of its individual stops. One can play his most ambitious works on it. Zacharias Hildebrandt built the organ of the Wenzelskirche (III/53) in Naumburg between 1743 and 1746. Both Bach and Silbermann examined the instrument and found it successful. This organ has many 8' stops, but also has a full array of 16' stops and mixtures. There is a full complement of high-pitch stops and even by today's standards would be considered a relatively large organ. The case is elaborately decorated and quite spectacular. The Totentanz organ (IV/56) in the Marienkirche in Lübeck is noted as a Bach organ and Ernst-Erich Stender, the church organist since 1972, has played the entire gamut of Bach's works on this organ with great success. If one examines this instrument, which was built by the Führer Orgelbau of Wilhelmshaven in 1985, one finds a broad base whose divisions have a diversity of stops, including a total of 13 reed stops which give the organ a shine and power that one usually associates with very large instruments. It does not have any 32' stops, but is abundant in 8' and 16' stops. This organ is capable of playing romantic and modern compositions with success, but is usually limited to Bach, Buxtehude and their contemporaries in concerts.

Romantic and modern compositions are usually played on the V/101 Kemper & Sohn organ that was installed in 1968. Interestingly enough, Ernst-Erich Stender played major pieces of practically all of the well-known composers for the organ in the summer of 1999 and this represented a considerable feat of virtuosity. Featured at different times were the works of Liszt, including Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, the Prelude and Fugue on BACH, Ad nos, ad salutarem undam, Reubke's 94th Psalm, Franck's Pièce héroïque, and Choral No. 3 in A-minor, plus works by Vierne, Widor, Langlais, Alain, Reger, Jongen and Messiaen. This is a daunting show of virtuosity on the part of the organist, and the instrument produces a sound that is significant in size, color and brilliance. The organ sits so high in the West Tower that one can barely make out the organist when he takes a bow after a concert. This has to be the highest loft in the world and just thinking of the 40 meter vaulting in the nave puts one in awe.

In pursuing the work of the three Friedrichs--Ladegast, Friese and Stellwagen--it is noteworthy to see how their organs dove-tail with the style and architecture of the churches for which they were built. The Ladegast organ in the Schweriner Dom was basically untouched by the Second World War and was restored in the late 80s by Schuke VEB of Potsdam. This organ, IV/84, has essentially the same specifications as the organs in the Cathedral of Merseburg and the Nikolaikirche in Leipzig and represents Ladegast at the height of his powers. We know that Franz Liszt's major pieces and Reubke's 94th Psalm were first performed on the Ladegast organ in Merseburg Cathedral, and this is interesting because the installation was early in his career. There is a similarity with Silbermann's experience in Saxony in that he was given the contract for the large organ of the Freiberger Dom after having had very little experience. A recent recording by Christoph Schoener on the Mitra label of Liszt's Ad nos, ad salutarem undam and Reubke's 94th Psalm on the organ in Schwerin gives ample testimony to the fact that it matches or surpasses the Merseburg organ in color, brilliance and power. And in comparing these performances with all the other recordings that I know of the pieces, I would say that they hold their own comfortably with the competition. In a concert in July 1999, Andreas Liebig, an organist from Oslo, played Liszt's Prelude and Fugue on BACH, and the organ responded brilliantly. The acoustics of the cathedral are very good,  and one senses a warmth as well as a monumental quality to the sound. The organ was dedicated in 1871, some sixteen years after the dedication of the Merseburg instrument, which brought Ladegast instant fame.

That organ was built with 81 stops on four manuals and pedal and with its 5686 pipes was the largest in Germany at the time. The Hauptwerk had 20 stops, the Oberwerk 16, the Brustwerk 14, the Rückpositiv 11 and the Pedal 20. Liszt was so impressed with reports of the organ that he immediately sought to hear it. The Leipzig music critic, Dr. Franz Brendel, a champion of the North German school, wrote on August 31st, 1855, in the "Neue Zeitschrift für Musik," of which he was the editor, "that this instrument opened a new phase in organ-building, in which things have been achieved here that had never been attained on any other organ."3 In his review of the dedication he wrote "it was the unanimous feeling that this is a musical instrument that establishes the organ-builder as an outstanding master. The character of this work is different from any other organ. Insofar as power and fullness (body and depth, using all the stops) it is clearly the best; however it is also unique in the softer and peaceful stops. There is a euphony and mellowness to it that we have not yet heard from other organs. The sound is, to describe the main point in a couple of words, poetic nature."4

The large organ has retained the Baroque case of 1716, but was rebuilt by Schuke of Potsdam in 1984. Most of the restoration work in the former East Germany has been done by two companies in the north, Schuke of Potsdam or Wilhelm Sauer Orgelbau of Frankfurt/Oder and two in the south, Eule Orgelbau of Bautzen and the Gebrüder Jehmlich Orgelbau of Dresden. Obviously there are other companies, but it is interesting to note how many times these four firms have been mentioned since the time of the Second World War with respect to building new organs or restoring historic ones.

Following Merseburg, Ladegast moved from strength to strength and in the large organs he showed what he had learned from other sources, having particularly profited from studies with Cavaillé-Coll in France. Clearly additions were made to his art in the construction of the Nikolaikirche organ in Leipzig (IV/84) in 1862. Here he introduced the Barker lever and divided the wind chests of three manuals into two compartments, which made the playing easier and made a difference in the wind pressures as well as bettering the air intake. Johann Gottlob Töpfer's book of 1855, Theorie und Praxis des Orgelbaus, laid down principles for the specifications of pipes, wind chests, bellows and wind trunks, and Walter Ladegast writes that this organ was the first large organ that put Töpfer's principles into practice.5 This organ has had rebuilds and additions by the Wilhelm Sauer Company of Frankfurt/Oder and now has 94 stops.

   The other major organs that Ladegast built and which still exist include

1. The Marienkirche in Weissenfels (III/41) in 1863. This is where he had his workshop.

2. The Schlosskirche in Wittenberg (III/39) in 1864. The organ was rebuilt and enlarged to IV/56 in 1993-1994 by Eule Orgelbau of Bautzen. Knobs in different colors indicate the origin of the stops--red for the original ones, light red for the rebuilt ones, two Sauer stops are brown and the new Schwellwerk is in black. As such, one can play the organ with only the original specifications if one wishes.

3. Stadt-und Kathedralkirche St. Jakob in Köthen (III/47) in 1872. This organ was restored in 1993-1994 by Christian Scheffler.

4. Kreuzkirche in Posen, now Posnan, Poland (III/43) in 1876. This organ has not been altered.

5. Stadtkirche St. Marien in Ronne-burg (III/32) in 1879. The organ was restored in 1992-1993 by Rösel & Hercher Orgelbau of Saalfeld.

6.  St. Johann's in Wernigerode (III/33) in 1885. This organ was an example of his using cone chests as opposed to the slider chests that he had used in his earlier organs. There was a full restoration by Schuke of Potsdam in 1989/1991 with a view to putting the organ back into its original condition.

7. The Kirche "Zu unserer lieben Frauen" in Mittweida (III/42) in 1888. In a rebuild in 1931 by the Jehmlich Brothers of Dresden, the case and pipes were used.

I did not mention the organ of the Grosser Saal der Gesellschaft der Musikfreunde (III/52) in Vienna, which was installed in 1872, because it was replaced by a Rieger (IV/71) in 1907, which was replaced by an even larger organ (IV/100) in 1968 by Walcker of Ludwigsburg.

  We have to look at the organ of the Schweriner Dom to see what would have to be considered his magnum opus because it is now the largest of those that are in as close to an original state as possible. This instrument of 5197 or 5235 pipes, depending on the source, has 84 stops divided over four manuals and pedal and sits high in the West Tower of the Cathedral. It is an impressive sight and the sound surrounds one in the nave and is characterized by brilliance in the reeds and tremendous power in the 32-foot pedal stops. The key action uses the Barker lever, and  a combination action allows crescendo/

decrescendo. The pipes are 97.8% original (according to the report that the Schuke Company had written at the time of the restoration) and the tin pipes were "built according to Silbermann's principles."6 This last quote has been mentioned in a number of sources and stresses the point that Ladegast used Silbermann as his model with respect to the fashioning of the pipes. This instrument is capable of playing the entire literature and is equally as effective in Bach as it is in the moderns. A number of recent recordings give ample testimony to this point.

Schwerin is the home base of Friedrich Friese, who is little known outside of the region. Friese built primarily smaller instruments, and the II/31 organ of the Paulskirche in Schwerin, whose restoration was completed by Kristian Wegscheider at the end of June, 1999, is a good example of a medium-sized organ which produces airy sound that has heft and which is comfortable in romantic as well as baroque music. The celebrations in the summer of 1999 included a series of six concerts in which one of the Mendelssohn sonatas was played as part of the program. There is brightness at the top and the strings sing. The Paulskirche is a large brick church whose acoustics rival those of the Cathedral.  A number of other churches in Mecklenburg have Friese organs and they tend to be two-manual instruments with 20 + stops. In Schwerin itself, there is also the organ (II/33) of the Nikolaikirche, better known as the Schelfkirche because of the section of the city in which it is located, which was restored within the last few years and which typifies the clear sound of a Friese organ.

Another notable one is in the Georgenkirche in the city of Parchim, which is not too far from Schwerin. Here we have an organ (II/25) that is in a case which is quite similar to that of the Paulskirche in Schwerin. The church is not as large as some of the others, but still has an air of power because of the brick element.

Lastly we come to Friedrich Stellwagen, who is known in North Germany for two organs in particular. The small organ (III/31) in the Jakobikirche in Lübeck, which dates from 1636-1637, was a renovation project that included a new Brustwerk and Rückpositiv. Fortunately this church was not destroyed during the Second World War, and the organ survives with restoration work done in 1978 by the brothers Hillebrand. His last and largest work (III/51) was installed between 1653-1659 in the Marienkirche in Stralsund. This instrument has been maintained by different sources over the years and underwent a restoration in 1959 by the firm of Alexander Schuke of Potsdam in order to reclaim the original scalings of 1659. Further work has been done on the organ since then, and currently the church is undertaking a major fund drive to do a definitive restoration of the organ. Martin Rost, the organist at the Marienkirche, expects this project to be a very costly one and indicates that world-wide help would be appreciated. The account for the project at the Deutsche Bank in Stralsund is: 5440144-01 (Stellwagen-Orgel Stralsund).

Needless to say, this is one of the great organs in the world, one whose sound matches the incredible decoration of the case. If majesty were an adjective that one would apply to an instrument, it would certainly fit here. The first track of a recording that is available at the church tells the whole story.7 Martin Rost plays Nicolaus Bruhns' Prelude in e minor and one is struck immediately by the extraordinary sound that emanates from the organ.

Stellwagen came from Halle and moved to North Germany in 1630 and was considered the best student of Gottfried Fritzsche. Gustav Fock thought that he was the most significant conduit to Arp Schnitger, who is generally considered the most famous German organ-builder of the seventeenth century.8 Stellwagen added new stops to those introduced in the north and, in particular, was known for his Trichterregal (a type of horn or trumpet) in the Rückpositiv. Fock mentions that it was a "Schalmey construction, with a longer, slightly conical resonator and wide conical top."9  This stop is also found in the Jakobikirche organ in Lübeck.

One could easily continue with descriptions of other organs of importance in the area such as those in Güstrow (the Cathedral and the Stadtkirche), Greifswald (the Cathedral) or in the Nikolaikirche in Wismar, whose Mende organ (II/30) has a striking case and stands out because of the extraordinary mass of the interior of the church.

In Stralsund there is also the Nikolaikirche which has an historic Buchholz organ (III/55) of 1841 as well as a new Baroque-style organ (II/22) of 1986 by Schuke of Potsdam. This church has the dimensions of  the Marienkirche and the organs stand out impressively. In Rostock the Marienkirche was one of the few buildings in the heart of the city that escaped the bombing of the Second World War, and the elaborate case of the Paul Schmidt organ (IV/62) of 1766-1770 still stands. The organ was rebuilt and enlarged to 85 stops in 1983 by the Sauer Orgelbau of Frankfurt/Oder. The architecture of the church is in keeping with that of most of the large churches of North Germany and mirrors the same visual effects.

Not so far from Lübeck is the island city of Ratzeburg, which features the fortress-like Cathedral that contains an organ (IV/76) that has been widely recorded. The original organ was built by Rieger in 1978 and was subsequently enlarged and revoiced in 1993-94 by Glatter-Götz Orgelbau of Owingen. The Cathedral contains two smaller organs of recent vintage--the Choir organ (II/20) by Rieger (1972) and Michael Becker (1996), and the Becker Paradies organ (II/15) of 1985.

Suffice it to say that North Germany is a region that contains organs that would interest any aficionado and which make a visit worth while.10              n

 

Notes

                  1.              CBS Masterworks recording, CD MDK 45807, Bach Organ Favorites by Nicholas Danby.

                  2.              Oxford Composers Companions, J. S. Bach (Malcolm Boyd, Editor), Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 339ff.

                  3.              Friedrich Ladegast-Der Orgelbauer von Weissenfels, by Walter Ladegast, Weiding Verlag, Stockach am Bodensee, 1998, p. 54.

                  4.              Ibid.

                  5.              Ibid, p. 64

                  6.              cf. Notes from Mitra Schallplatten,  CD16245, Christoph Schoener an der Ladegast Orgel im Dom zu Schwerin.

                  7.              Die Stellwagen-Orgel von 1659 in St. Marien zu Stralsund, Discus STW 95906, Martin Rost spielt norddeutsche Orgelmusik, 1995.

                  8.              cf. Gustav Fock, Hamburg's role in Northern European Organ Building (Translated and edited by Lynn Edwards and Edward C. Pepe), Westfield Center, Easthampton, Massachusetts 1997.

                  9.              Ibid, p. 71.

                  10.           Other sources of information. All translations with the exception of the Fock were done by the author.

Die Orgelbauten der Residenzstadt Schwerin, Julius Massmann, Wismar, 1875. Commentary and additions by Hermann J. Busch and Reinhard Jaehn, Merseburger, 1988.

Wiedereinweihung der Ladegast-Orgel im Dom zu Schwerin, Evangelischer Presserverband für Mecklenburg, e. V., 1995

Die Schweriner St. Paulskirche und Ihre Orgel, im Auftrag der St. Paulsgemeinde Schwerin (Christian Skobowsky), 1999.

Einweihung der rekonstruierten Friese-Orgel in der Schelfkirche zu Schwerin, Kirchgemeinderat der St. Nikolai (Schelf), 1994.

Die Stellwagen-Orgel von 1659 zu St. Marien, Stralsund, Gemeindekirchenrat St. Marien, Stralsund, Rügen-Druck, Putbus, 1995.

Die Orgel der St. Marien-Kirche zu Rostock, Stiftung St.-Marien-Kirche zu Rostock, e. V.

Die Restaurierung der Mende-Orgel von 1845, Kirchgemeinde St. Nikolai Wismar, 1995.

Ratzeburger Dommusiken 1999, Ratzeburger Domchor (KMD Dr. Neithard Bethke), 1999.

CD, Orgelkonzert im Schweriner Dom, Jan Ernst spielt an der Ladegast-Orgel von 1871, Domkantorei Schwerin, 1997.

CD, Orgelmusik in St. Nikolai zu Stralsund, Evangelischer Kirchengemeinde St. Nikolai, Stralsund, 1998.

CD, Ornament 11445, Johann Sebastian Bach, Grosse Orgelwerke, Ernst-Erich Stender an der Totentanzorgel in St. Marien zu Lübeck, 1991.

 

Aldo J. Baggia is Chairman of the Department of Modern Languages and Instructor in French, Spanish, German, and Italian at Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. He holds a Bachelor's degree from Iona College and the MA from Middlebury College, and has completed graduate work at Laval University and Duke University. He has pursued postgraduate studies in France, Germany, Austria, and Spain, and travelled extensively in Europe. He has written reviews for Quarterly Opera Review, Opera, Opera News, Orpheus, Monsalvat, and The Diapason.

 

St. Marien, Stralsund

HAUPTWERK

                  16'          Prinzipal

                  16'          Bordun

                  8'             Oktave

                  8'             Spitzflöte

                  51/3'     Hohlquinte

                  4'             Superoktave

                  4'             Hohlflöte

                  2'             Flachflöte

                                    Rauschpfeife II-IV

                                    Mixtur VI-X

                                    Scharff IV-VI

                  16'          Trompete

OBERPOSITIV

                  8'             Prinzipal

                  8'             Hohlflöte

                  4'             Oktave

                  4'             Blockflöte

                  4'             Kl. Quintadena

                  22/3'     Nasard

                  2'             Gemshorn

                                    Scharff IV-VII

RÜCKPOSITIV

                  16'          Gr. Quintadena

                  8'             Prinzipal

                  8'             Gedackt

                  8'             Quintadena

                  4'             Oktave

                  4'             Dulzflöte

                  2'             Feldpfeife

                  11/2'     Sifflöte

                                    Sesquialtera II

                                    Scharff VI-VIII

                                    Zimbel III

                  16'          Dulzian

                  8'             Trichterregal

                  4'             Regal

PEDAL

                  24'          Gr. Prinzipal

                  16'          Prinzipal

                  16'          Gedacktuntersatz

                  8'             Oktave

                  8'             Spitzflöte

                  4'             Superoktave

                  4'             Nachthorn

                  2'             Feldpfeife

                                    Mixtur IV

                  16'          Posaune

                  8'             Trompete

                  8'             Dulzian

                  4'             Schalmei

                  2'             Cornett

 

 

Carl Parks

Carl Parks, a freelance writer, is organist-choirmaster of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Holmes Beach, Florida, and a past dean of the Sarasota-Manatee Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Photographs are by the author.

Saxony’s Organs and Bachfest Leipzig 2004: A study tour of Bach, Luther & Silbermann

Every organist dreams of playing the Saxony region’s baroque organs that were designed, performed on, and approved by Johann Sebastian Bach. That, combined with the annual Bachfest Leipzig 2004, proved irresistible.

The annual Bach Festival in Leipzig, Germany--with day trips to hear and play over a dozen historic organs, many known to J. S. Bach--provided 27 of us an unforgettable study tour May 12 to 26. The tour included 16 festival concerts, lectures by Bach scholar Dr. Christoph Wolff of Harvard University, guided tours of the cities visited, and the opportunity for masterclasses with Thomaskirche organist Ulrich Böhme. It was Historic Organ Tour 50 led by the University of Michigan’s University Organist Dr. Marilyn Mason.

After a bus tour and night in Berlin, we proceeded on May 14 to Wittenberg. Our walking tour took us through the Luther House, which is the world’s largest museum of Reformation history, and the Schloßkirche, where Martin Luther presented his 95 theses and is now buried. After lunch next door in the Schloßkeller we arrived in Leipzig on time for the festival’s opening concert at the Thomaskirche, where Bach was Kantor for 27 years. Three settings of Psalm 98, by Bach (BWV 225 and 190) and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Opus 91) were given a world-class performance by the church’s boys’ choir, soloists, and the Gewandhaus orchestra conducted by Georg Christoph Biller. The Sinfonia in D from the Easter Oratorio (BWV 249) opened the concert.

Leipzig

Our walking tour of Leipzig the next morning showed a city coming to life again since the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and the reunification of Germany. Construction is everywhere. Historic buildings are being cleaned and restored, while the big, vacant housing projects and other Stalinist architecture are about to be torn down. One grim building about to be razed sits on the site of the University Church, which the Communists dynamited. The church will be rebuilt with an organ designed but never built by Gottfried Silbermann, the great master of organ building during the baroque era. Unfortunately, unemployment in Leipzig is around 20 percent, while in other eastern cities of the former DDR it is as high as 28 percent.

Leipzig is a city of music. Excellent street musicians play the classics everywhere within the ancient confines of this once-walled burg. Walks to the Bach Museum, Mendelssohn House, Musical Instrument Museum or a concert are always a treat. We often paused to hear a flautist, a xylophonist, even a full brass choir playing Henry Purcell’s Trumpet Tune in D.

Thomaskirche

The first of Saturday’s three festival concerts opened with Ulrich Böhme playing Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue on the Bach Organ in the north gallery of Thomaskirche. This 4-manual, 60-stop organ was built by Woehl in 2000 and replaces an earlier 3-manual instrument built in 1966 by Schuke. It duplicates the organ that Bach knew as a boy in Eisenach. While its location is certainly not what Bach would specify, the large-scale principals and overall tonal design provide the “gravitas” he found so necessary. And the organ sounds well throughout the church despite its location on the side. Jürgen Wolf playing all 30 Goldberg Variations on harpsichord at Nikolaikirche followed. The evening concert in the Gewandhaus featured fortepianos and orchestra in performances of Bach and Mendelssohn works.

Sunday’s services at Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche are like those in Bach’s day and always include the performance of a Bach cantata at the liturgy of the word. The afternoon festival concert, again on the Thomaskirche Bach Organ, was a reconstruction of Mendelssohn’s organ recital of August 6, 1840, performed by Michael Schönheit. His improvisation on the Passion Chorale in the style of Mendelssohn was similar in structure to the Sixth Sonata and brought a standing ovation, a much less common occurrence in Europe than the United States.

Among the many excellent concerts, Matthias Eisenberg’s Ascension Day performance of  Max Reger’s Fantasie and Fugue on B-A-C-H stands out in particular. The entire sell-out crowd remained through a long, standing ovation until he improvised an equally stunning encore on Thomaskirche’s west gallery organ. That instrument was built by Wilhelm Sauer in 1899, who then extended it to 88 stops in 1907. A fund to restore this big tubular pneumatic has so far raised 100,000 of the 300,000 euros being sought.

Nikolaikirche

A similar romantic organ is almost restored in the west gallery of Nikolaikirche, but was not ready for this year’s Bachfest. It was built by Friedrich Ladegast in 1862 and expanded to 84 stops by Sauer from 1902 to 1903. Near the apse, the church also has a 17-stop organ that was built by Eule in 2002 in the style of Italian organs of the baroque era. As Kantor of Thomaskirche, J. S. Bach was also was the city’s civic director of music, giving him duties at Nikolaikirche. Thus, it was here that many of his cantatas and other works were performed for the first time.

Rötha

A bus trip on May 17 took us to Rötha, a city with two Silbermann organs. Dedicated in 1721 by Johann Kuhnau, the Silbermann in St. George church was the model for the Marilyn Mason Organ built by Fisk for the University of Michigan. A smaller Silbermann at St. Mary’s church was dedicated in 1722. Some of our group joined a masterclass with Ulrich Böhme, while others went on to Weimar. The pedalboards on these old Silbermann organs take some getting used. Not only are they flat, but the spacing is different from modern pedalboards. They also lack a low C-sharp and other notes at the top end. As Marilyn Mason explained, heel and toe pedaling worked out for pieces learned on a modern pedalboard must be changed to a technique using mostly the toes.

European acoustics demand slower tempi and proper phrasing to a greater extent then the dry acoustics of most American churches. For speech reinforcement, Germans take an approach that differs from our boom-box public address systems. Stässer loudspeakers, measuring approximately 18 x 21/2 x 21/2 inches, are mounted on each of a church’s columns, with electronic reinforcement delayed to match the time sound takes to travel. This permits clarity of the spoken word without compromising the divine ambiance for which the music was composed.

Gottfried Silbermann

Gottfried Silbermann was born in 1683, the son of a craftsman-woodworker. From 1702 to 1707 he studied organ-building with his elder brother Andreas in Strasbourg and Thiery in Paris. A condition was that Gottfried would not work in his brother’s territory. So in 1710 Gottfried returned to his native Saxony and set up shop centrally in Freiberg. His first commission was for a small, one-manual and pedal, 15-stop organ for his hometown of Frauenstein. So well-received was this first instrument, completed in 1711, that in the same year Freiberg’s Dom St. Marien (Cathedral of St. Mary) invited the young builder, then only 28 years old, to construct a new organ of three manuals and pedal with 44 stops. This was completed in 1714. Thereafter Silbermann built some 45 instruments, 31 of which are still extant. All are located within or very close to the Saxon borders. 

Gottfried Silbermann was given the official title of Court Organbuilder by Frederick I, at that time King of Poland and Duke of Saxony. Similarly, J. S. Bach had the title of Court Composer. The two were great friends, and often discussed the techniques and acoustics of organ building. Silbermann was Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s godfather and a regular visitor to the Bach home in Leipzig. The two even worked together on the escapement mechanism for the world’s first fortepianos.

Silbermann believed that an organ should look as beautiful as it sounds, and his organ cases are truly beautiful. Also, in a play on words of his name, this “silver man” was known for the silver sound of his pipes. His organs typically have a Hauptwerk that is scaled for gravitas, a Brustwerk scaled to be delicate, an Oberwerk to be penetrating, and a Pedal scaled for a grandness of sound that produces foundation without necessarily using a lot of pipes. Compared to Arp Schnitger, the organs of Silbermann are more spacious with the pipes less densely arranged. 

Eisleben and Halle

Another bus trip took us to Eisleben. Here we visited the houses where Martin Luther was born and died, and the church where he was baptized. Further on in Halle, we stopped to play two organs in the Marktkirche, where Georg Friedrich Händel was baptized and learned to play the organ. That organ is a one-manual instrument of six stops built in 1664 by Reichel. It has all of its original pipes as well as meantone tuning. At the other end is a much larger organ in a baroque case. It is a three-manual, 40-stop instrument built by Schuke in 1984. Both had recently been restored, following extensive damage to the church from a broken city steam pipe. We then visited the Handel House, which has several chamber organs, and we took turns playing the newly restored organ built by Johann Gottlieb Mauer in 1770.

Altenburg, Störmthal and Pomßen

On May 21 we visited Altenburg. It is here that Heinrich Trost built an organ in the Schloßkirche from 1736 to 1739, the same year Bach played it. Eule restored it in the mid-1970s. After walking up well-worn stone steps in one of the castle’s circular stairwells, we found ourselves in the balcony opposite this magnificent instrument. Demonstrating was Dr. Felix Friedrich, a scholar of Johann Ludwig Krebs. Marilyn Mason, who was familiar with the instrument, pulled stops for those of us who played and offered suggestions. Among the more interesting stops is a viola that speaks with an attack and harmonic development nearly identical to that of a bowed string instrument, making it ideal for trio sonatas. 

Further on in the village church of Störmthal is the only Hildebrandt organ still in its original condition. Zacharias Hildebrandt was a student of Gottfried Silbermann. He built the two-manual instrument that was inspected and approved by his friend J. S. Bach in 1723. Kantor Thomas Orlovski demonstrated the instrument and registered it for those of us who played. 

The afternoon took us to Pomßen’s 750-year-old Wehrkirche. Originally built as a fortress, this Romanesque church is home to the oldest organ in Saxony. The instrument has one manual and pedals that play 12 stops, plus a Cimbelstern and Vogelgesang. Built in 1570, the organ was purchased second-hand to save money, and it was installed in 1690. It has been well maintained since its restoration in 1934 and was a thrill to play. 

Naumburg

Several of us had expressed an interest in playing the newly restored organ in Wenzelkirche, Naumburg, which was not on our tour. It is the largest instrument built by Zacharias Hildebrandt from 1743 to 1746, comprising 53 stops on three manuals and pedals. His old teacher Gottfried Silbermann examined the instrument and approved it, finding it to be as beautiful as his own but much larger. J. S. Bach had assisted with its design; and, when he played it, he found all the qualities he liked: thundering basses, strong mixtures, and beautiful solo stops. We convinced enough in our group to charter a bus and rent the organ the morning of May 22. 

Words can describe neither the baroque splendor nor the divine ambience of the vast St. Wenzel interior. There, Kantor Irene Greulich demonstrated the organ. Frau Greulich is a fine organist who has performed and given masterclasses at the University of Michigan. She and Marilyn Mason have a friendship that began before Germany’s reunification, when the organ had been playable from an electro-pneumatic console of the 1930s in the balcony below. They registered the organ for those of us who played, thus ensuring that nobody touched the original pen and ink inscriptions in the drawknobs.

A walk to the Dom SS. Peter and Paul revealed a handsome new organ under construction in a fenced-in area in the nave. No information was available, but among the pipes to be installed were wooden resonators, presumably for a Posaune. The building is late Romanesque and Gothic from the 13th century.

That evening we attended a very fine concert of The Creation by Joseph Haydn at the Hochschüle for Music and Theater. It was sung by soloists and choir from the school and the Leipzig Baroque Orchestra, Roland Borger conducting. We heard it as Die Schöpfung, Haydn’s own translation from English for German audiences.

The last day of Bachfest included breathtaking performances of the St. Matthew Passion, the Mass in B Minor, and pieces written for organ, four hands, played by Ulrich Böhme and his wife Martina at Thomaskirche. The Matthäus-Passion performance was a reconstruction of that given by Mendelssohn on April 4, 1841. Thus, orchestration made use of instruments that had replaced those of Bach’s time. A continuo organ was played with the orchestra. The chorales, however, made use of the Gewandhaus’ 89-stop instrument built in 1981 by the Schuke-Orgelbau of Potsdam. The festival closing concert of the B-minor Mass was in Thomaskirche, with 85-year-old Eric Ericson conducting.

Freiberg and Frauenstein

After we checked out of our hotel, our bus took us southeast to Freiberg. There, in the Freiberg Dom we played two fine Silbermann organs. The larger was built from 1711 to 1714 and has a particularly remarkable case with ornamentation by Johann Adam Georgi. It has 44 stops across three manuals and pedal. The small organ of 1719 has 14 stops on one manual and pedal. 

We continued to the Silbermann Museum in Frauenstein, located in a medieval castle, and the only organ museum devoted to just one builder. There, Dr. Marilyn Mason played a short recital on the museum’s replica of a Silbermann organ. It is a copy by Wegscheider Organ Builders, Dresden, of an instrument Silbermann built in 1732 for Etzdorf, and is a working model demonstrating the basic principles of Baroque organ construction.

Part of the attraction of a Marilyn Mason tour is her ability to unlock the doors to organ lofts. She was the first woman to have played in Westminster Abbey, Egypt, and many other places around the world. She is also a very helpful coach in unlocking the secrets of performance for a broad array of organ literature. Dr. Mason offered our group many pointers on the performance of baroque music, and personally advised me on ways to practice the difficult passages and tricky rhythms of Jehan Alain’s Trois Danses, which she had worked out for her own brilliant performances.

Dresden

In Dresden, our excellent tour leader, Franz Mittermayr of Matterhorn Travel, treated us with a surprise visit to the Hofkirche (Roman Catholic cathedral). There we played the magnificent three-manual, 47-stop Silbermann of 1755 that had been hidden in the countryside during World War II. This cathedral was destroyed in the allied firebombing, but the organ was back among us in a newly restored building. For that we gave grateful thanks. Unfortunately, another fine Silbermann in the Frauenkirche was destroyed. A 3-million euro restoration of that church is nearing completion using original, numbered stones wherever possible. A new organ will replicate the destroyed Silbermann. 

It has been said that Germany has too many churches. This is because, like elsewhere, church attendance is down. In Germany approximately nine percent of the population is Protestant, while two percent is Roman Catholic. In the former DDR of Eastern Germany under the Communists, religion was discouraged, so attendance fell even further. Maintaining and restoring these ancient churches is beyond the reach of most congregations, so they survive through tourism and entrance fees. Many are considered museums and are given government funding. In Naumburg, for example, the city paid for the restoration of the Hildebrandt organ. On average, a group pays an entrance fee of 150 euros or about $185 U.S. for each church visited. In Leipzig, the group paid entrance fees on top of concert ticket prices. This was all included in the cost of our tour. An organist traveling alone to play benefit recitals will pay rental fees of similar amounts. 

For a first visit to the Saxony region, this tour provided the best way to play these instruments and learn about them. While our personal playing times were seldom more than five minutes each, the cost was spread over the entire group. An organ tour also makes all the preliminary arrangements to open doors that are otherwise locked. The University of Michigan is known for its excellent tours, and this one proved why. Matterhorn Travel provided us with a guide who had extensive knowledge of the area, numerous contacts, and the ability to run things so smoothly that we never encountered delays.

Joel H. Kuznik

Joel Kuznik has served as a college organist and professor, a church musician, a pastor, and as a business executive on Fifth Avenue, Wall Street, and at MetLife. After several years of retirement from business, he revived writing for professional journals, something he had done since his college days. After attending the Bachfest 2003 in Leipzig, he again began writing articles and reviews. With over 60 pieces in print ranging from reviews of concerts and festivals, travelogues, books on church music, concert hall organs, CDs and DVDs, he was recognized and named to the Music Critics Association of North America (MCANA) in May 2005. He is also a member of the American Bach Society and serves on the board of the Bach Vespers at Holy Trinity in New York City, where he has lived for 32 years. His organ teachers were Austin C. Lovelace, Frederick Swann, Ronald Arnatt, David Craighead, Jean Langlais, Marie-Madeleine Duruflé-Chevalier, and Anton Heiller. As a member of the AGO, he has served as dean of the Ft. Wayne chapter, on the executive board of the New York City chapter, and on the national financial board. He holds a BA summa cum laude from Concordia Sr. College (formerly at Ft. Wayne), a Min.Div and STM from Concordia Seminary, St. Louis, and an MM from the Eastman School of Music.

Mention Saxony to most organists, and they immediately think of the 18th century, Gottfried Silbermann and his catalogue of 31 extraordinary instruments, which are still being played.1 An amazing testimony! But today one hears more and more of Kristian Wegscheider, widely admired for his dynamic restorations of Silbermann organs as well as those of Hildebrandt, Schnitger and Ladegast—and whose reputation as a builder is so respected that he was considered for the new organs at St. Thomas, Leipzig and the Frauenkirche in Dresden.
Steven Dieck, president of C. B. Fisk, Inc., credits Wegscheider with being “very helpful in discovering the ‘secrets’ of Gottfried Silbermann and continues to be, not only for us, but also for any other organbuilder. There is no disputing that Kristian and his shop are the experts on the work of Gottfried Silbermann.”
Stefan Engels of Leipzig’s University of Music & Theatre notes that “Kristian Wegscheider is one of the leading organ builders of our time when it comes to the restoration of historic instruments from the 17th and 18th centuries. His knowledge of style, his talent for research, and his ability to relate to the distinct sounds of old organs is unique. It is a joy to experience this artist and his superb work.”
And, as Steve Dieck points out, Wegscheider has an international involvement and impact. “Once East Germany opened itself to the rest of the world, Kristian’s company became a member of the International Society of Organbuilders. Shortly after that, he helped to organize one of the ISO’s biennial congresses held in Dresden. He is currently second vice president of the ISO and again helped to organize the congress in September 2008, which began in Gdansk, Poland and worked its way by train and boat to Stralsund, Germany, where members of ISO visited significant organs.”2
“He continues to share his vast knowledge of the works of Gottfried Silbermann with his many organbuilding colleagues around the world. He has visited the U.S. many times, and was invited to collaborate with Fritz Noack in making a ‘Hildebrandt’ style organ for Christ the King Lutheran Church in Houston, Texas.”
And those who have been fortunate to hear Wegscheider’s restorations or new instruments would add, “This is a builder about whom Americans need to know more.”

Background
Kristian Wegscheider was born in 1954 in Ahrenshoop, a small resort town on the Baltic Coast of Northern Germany. After stints in the army and a year with a furniture-maker, he began his apprenticeship with the esteemed Jehmlich Dresden organbuilding firm, which dates back to 1808 and is associated with the restorations of the magnificent Silbermann cathedral organs in Dresden and Freiberg.
Kristian immediately took an immense interest in historic organs and worked on restorations in Berlin and Leipzig. He became head of Jehmlich’s restoration department and supervised restorations of the 1714 Silbermann in Freiberg’s Cathedral and the 1868 Lütkemüller organ at the Güstrower Cathedral.

Orgelwerkstatt Wegscheider Dresden
As Wegscheider writes for his firm’s website,3 the creation of his organ workshop in Dresden in 1989 coincided with the fall of the Wall and became possible with the parallel vehement political and social changes. These were indeed complicated times in the GDR, and the emergence of a new private company was no simple venture.
At the time it was not unusual in the GDR for restorations and even the repair of organs to be delayed up to 20 years. In 1987, that gave Wegscheider an idea, often treated perfunctorily and bureaucratically, to create his own workshop specializing in restorations and repair. He overcame numerous hurdles—among other things, getting a trade license and acquiring the space for engaging in a trade, and one couldn’t get one without the other.
In order to bridge the gap, Wegscheider worked for almost a year in the restoration workshop of the Museum of Musical Instruments at the University of Leipzig. With the assistance of friends and with some luck, however, the initial problems were overcome. That was all quickly forgotten, once work began in the spring of 1989 with the reconditioning of an old carpenter’s shop in Dresden’s Neustadt (“new city”).4 His first two coworkers were the organ builder and pipemaker Hartmut Schütz, who had also trained with Jehmlich, and his long-time friend and a carpenter, Matthias Weisbach. Requirements were completed in December of 1990, and Wegscheider was able to receive his certification as a master craftsman (“Meisterbrief”).
The workshop officially began operating June 1, 1989, and in September there was a big celebration with friends and colleagues. For this historic event, a narrow-gauge steam train was rented, and the area in front of the shop was transformed into an open-air theatre. When the borders opened that fall, a group of five made a week-long “discovery journey” into the “West” finally to hear and investigate for themselves organs they had often read and heard about, an adventure that just weeks before had seemed impossible.
During this week, the team was able to examine the old instruments of East Frisia (Ostfriesland, a costal region along the North Sea bordering the Netherlands to the west),5 which for them was like an “organbuilder’s paradise.” There they also inspected the shop of the famous Jürgen Ahrend, contacted the North German Organ Academy, and had discussions with organ experts, musicologists and organists. This all became invaluable in forming their own firm and served as the basis for artistic work. Additional “educational journeys” became a regular experience and took them to South Germany, Switzerland, Italy, and France. How exhilarating this must have been—the new freedom to explore and discover!

Wegscheider: first projects
The first project was a new instrument for the Allstedt Castle Chapel in Mansfeld. The small organ was to complement the Baroque room and conform to old established models of classical organbuilding. The shop was to do something that had never been done in East Germany before—to make an instrument completely from wood, tin, lead, leather and brass without using plywood, aluminum, nitrate lacquer, plastic and prefabricated mechanisms.
Also, this instrument would reflect Wegscheider’s long-held interest in providing two temperaments that can be played interchangeably: meantone for Renaissance music and well-tempered for Baroque. The idea originated in Charles Fisk’s dual-temperament organ at California’s Stanford University (1984),6 but this was to be the first such instrument in Europe, with Wegscheider working to improve the result both technically and musically.7
This new organ for Allstedt was followed by a number of restorations in the states of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Saxony-Anhalt, Brandenburg and Thuringia, while at the same there developed partnership work in Saxony. Much of the work, now with seven co-workers, involved restoring damaged organs, some long unplayable due to water damage or wood worms. Other builders had refused to work on them or recommended replacements, but to Wegscheider these instruments were too valuable to be discarded. Congregations, in turn, were grateful for the efforts of their municipalities to preserve these organs.
Expansion
By 1993 it was clear that the company needed new, larger facilities. The company had expanded to ten employees, with only 400 square meters of workspace and with insufficient height to assemble instruments. Finally a carpenter’s workshop was found in Dresden–Hellerau in the old village center of Rähnitz. During the move, the firm continued to work on a restoration of the Silbermann for the Bremen Cathedral (I/8, 1734)8 and an identical copy of it for the Silbermann Museum in Frauenstein, so that the dedication of the new workshop in July 1994 could take place in a concert using both organs with the Dresden Baroque Orchestra.
After all this excitement, work continued routinely, but always with interesting projects. One was the extensive renovation of the Schulze organ, with the reconstruction of a 32′ Posaune in Markneukirchen, a town in Saxony known as a center for making musical instruments as well as its Museum of Musical Instruments. Another instance was building a new 20-rank organ inside an historic case in Steinwedel near Hannover, which demonstrated what a builder like Wegscheider with experience in historical models could do.

Langhennersdorf, Nikolaikirche
But the high point of this period was completing the renovation of the organ at St. Nicholas Church in Langhennersdorf, a beautiful village near Freiberg. This Opus 1 by Silbermann’s apprentice Zacharias Hildebrandt (1722) as his Meisterstück (masterpiece) was built to certify him as an organbuilder. It is a revelation to hear—exciting, vibrant, present, colorful, and commanding.
But all this came after some blood, sweat and tears. Begun in 1989–90 during the turbulent reunification of Germany, this was Wegscheider’s first big contract and was threatened by obstacles beyond his control. However, he remained determined and continued working piece by piece as the church, which was committed to the challenge, raised funds. What exuberance there must have been at rededication on Reformation Day, 1996!

Langhennersdorf Nikolaikirche9
1722 Zacharias Hildebrandt (II+P/21)
1989–1996 Kristian Wegscheider

Hauptwerk
8′ Principal
8′ Rohrflöte
8′ Quintadena
4′ Praestant
4′ Spitzflöte
3′ Quinta
2′ Octava
III Mixtur
II Cymbeln
III Cornett (from c1)

Oberwerk
8′ Gedackt
4′ Rohrflöte
3′ Nasat
2′ Principal
2′ Waldflöte
1′ Sifflöte
11⁄3′ Quinte
II Cymbeln

Pedal
16′ Sub-Baß
16′ Posanenbaß
8′ Trompete

Tremulant
Shove coupler II/I
Pedal coupler I/P
Manual compass C, D–c3
Pedal compass C, D–c1

Choir pitch: a = 468 Hz
Modified meantone

Dresden-Loschwitz church
The lessons learned in Langhennersdorf would prove helpful in designing the 1997 organ for a church in the outlying regions of Dresden-Loschwitz. The organ was conceived as a large one-manual and pedal instrument that would combine the typical stops of Silbermann with other 18th-century Saxon builders in one division, but some stops are also playable on a second manual. The building, virtually destroyed in the 1945 Blitz by an errant bomb, has been restored with spectacular but simple beauty. The church—with its historic altar rescued and restored from the Sophienkirche, where Bach played two recitals (1825 and 1731), and where his son Wilhelm Friedemann was organist (1733–1746)—has its organ sitting center stage in the second gallery.
The impact of this small instrument is remarkable and a joy to hear. Just a day after playing and listening to the impressive Silbermann-Hildebrandt (III/47, 1755) at Dresden’s Hofkirche and the imposing new Kern at the Frauenkirche (IV/67, 2006), the sound of this little organ in the suburb of Dresden-Loschwitz moved 45 American organists last September to spontaneous smiles of delight and satisfaction. The stunning immediacy of the sound combined with the brilliance of the ensemble and the colors of individual stops was a joy to hear.
And then listening to Wegscheider himself—on how Silbermann swept into this part of Germany with the fresh bold sounds of France and dominated organbuilding, on the speech and design of his pipework, and clarifying differences of temperament in the area—was an informative revelation. The man has a large presence, an expansive expression of speech, and in his eyes the gleam of an inspired creator, all reflected in his restorations and new designs.

Dresden-Loschwitz:
Loschwitz Church10
1997 Wegscheider II+P/20

Manual I
16′ Bordun
8′ Principal
8′ Gedackt
8′ Flauto traverso
8′ Viola di Gamba
4′ Octave
4′ Rohrflöte
4′ Flauto amabile
3′ Nasat
2′ Octave
2′ Flöte
13⁄5′ Tertia
1′ Flageolet
III Cornett (from g)
III Mixtur

Manual II (stops from I)
16′ Bordun
8′ Gedackt
8′ Flauto traverso
8′ Viola di Gamba
4′ Rohrflöte
4′ Flauto amabile
3′ Nasat
2′ Flöte
13⁄5′ Tertia

Pedal
16′ Bordun
8′ Octavbaß
8′ Violonbaß
4′ Octavbaß
16′ Posaune

Tremulant
Manual shove coupler
Pedal couplers I/P, II/P

Manual compass C–e3
Pedal compass C–e
Pitch: a = 440 Hz
Tuning: modified Valotti
Wind pressure: 70 mm

Houston, Christ the King Lutheran Church
Wegscheider has been involved in several “Bach organs.” The first was in collaboration with the Noack Organ Company at Christ Lutheran Church in Houston, where he served as co-designer.

Christ the King Lutheran Church, Houston
Builder: Noack Organ Company, 1995
Co-designer: Kristian Wegscheider II+P/30

Hauptwerk
16′ Bordun
8′ Principal
8′ Viola di Gamba
8′ Rohrflöte
4′ Octava
4′ Spitzflöte
22⁄3′ Quinta
2′ Octava
III Mixtur
II Cimbel
IIII Cornet
8′ Trompete
8′ Vox Humana

Oberwerk
8′ Gedackt
8′ Quintadena
4′ Principal
4′ Rohrflöte
22⁄3′ Nasat
2′ Octava
2′ Waldflöte
13⁄5′ Terz
11⁄3′ Quinta
1′ Sifflet
8′ Krummhorn

Pedal
16′ Principal Bass
16′ Subbass
8′ Octaven Bass
4′ Octava
16′ Posaunen
8′ Trompete

The organ at Christ the King Church follows the example of Hildebrandt, thus adding a Bach organ of a new dimension on the North American continent.
Fritz Noack and the Noack Organ Company were selected to design and build the organ. Noack is an American builder born and trained in Germany and uniquely situated to bridge the Saxon past and the Texan present. Kristian Wegscheider of Dresden, restorer of important Silbermann organs, accepted appointment as a design consultant; Reinhard Schaebitz of Dresden, voicer in the restorations, assisted in the voicing; and most of the metal pipes were built near Dresden in the workshop of Günter Lau. The result is a wonderful instrument which not surprisingly, but quite remarkably, evokes the look, feel, and sound of an 18th-century Saxon organ. One can imagine Bach’s walking in, sitting down without missing a beat and, as was his custom, pulling all of the stops to see whether or not the instrument has “good lungs.”
This Bach Organ possesses attributes commonly found in organs built today in historical style—tracker action; mechanical stop action; keys suspended below the pipe chests; a flexible wind supply provided by bellows; flat rather than radiating pedalboard; narrower, shorter manual keys; no pistons or combinations; and tuning in a historic temperament. The Saxon style imposes a series of additional design characteristics. The entire organ is housed in one case, rather than in compartments for each division according to the Werkprinzip; the case design and beautifully executed carvings employ 18th-century Saxon conventions; and the case is built of pine and painted (blue-green, red, and gold leaf). The Oberwerk to Hauptwerk coupler is activated by shoving the Oberwerk manual forward, and the Oberwerk does not couple to the Pedal. The pipe scalings are taken from Hildebrandt’s, and the principal pipes have a high tin content rather than lead.11

Stuttgart, Musikhochschule
Another “Bach organ” was built by Wegscheider for the Musikhochschule in Stuttgart, which has a large collection of historic prototypes. One can see an overview at <http://www.mh-stuttgart.de/studium/orgel/ueberblick/&gt;.

Stuttgart: State University of Music and Performing Arts
2006 Wegscheider
II+P/21

Hauptwerk
8′ Principal
8′ Rohrflöte
8′ Viola di Gamba
8′ Quintadena
4′ Octave
3′ Quinte
2′ Octave
2′ Terz (from 2′) [listed as 2′ but actually 13⁄5′]
III Mixtur
8′ Trompete

Positiv
8′ Gedackt
4′ Spitzflöte
4′ Flauto dolce
2′ Gemshorn
II Cymbal
8′ Vox Humana

Pedal
16′ Subbass
8′ Principalbass
4′ Octave
16′ Posaunebass
8′ Trompettenbass
Manual compass: C, D–d3
Pedal compass: C, D–f
Pitch: a1 = 466 Hz
Tuning: Modified Pythagorean

In the winter 2005–06 issue of Spektrum, Prof. Jürgen Essl writes:

In the fall of 2006 organ music of Bach will ring out. Then the long-anticipated “Bach organ” will supplement the university’s instrument collection. The Dresden organ builder, Kristian Wegscheider, received the commission to build an organ of 21 stops on two manuals and pedal according to 18th-century Thuringian and Saxon models. It is intended to be the ideal instrument for presenting Bach’s organ music with its choice of stops, its style of construction, its keyboard range, its speech and intonation.
Kristian Wegscheider is an undisputed expert in this area, and it would be hard to find a more first-class organ. Naturally there is no absolute “Bach Organ.” Johann Sebastian Bach, as is well known, played on many organs and was frequently active as consultant and examiner. The composition of the organ is therefore also no copy of an existing historical instrument, but an approximation of the Bach sound world in a variety of ways. The new organ is based on Bach’s expert opinion of existing instruments of similar 18th-century size, e.g., (Gottfried) Silbermann and Trost, on the compositional characteristics of his organ music, the restoration experience of the organbuilder and last but not least on the size of the room.12

Essl added in an e-mail to the author, “Indeed there were a large number of special problems for which Kristian had a good solution and fought hard to get the right results.”

Freiberg, Petrikirche
Another recent collaboration, this time with Jehmlich, was the restoration of Silbermann’s largest two-manual organ, at the Petrikirche in Freiberg, completed and rededicated in July 2007.13 It is an instrument with pizazz, brilliance, and clarity, while individual stops retain character and color. It also happens that the best CD that effectively reflects Wegscheider’s work is a recent release of a recording at the Petrikirche on the Syrius label, Johann Sebastian Bach, Vol. 4, with works from the early Weimar period played with verve, imagination, and excitement by Helga Schauerte (Syrius 141433, €22.00; <[email protected]>; the Organ Historical Society carries other recordings by Schauerte).

Freiberg: Petrikirche
1735 Silbermann
1959, 1993/94 Jehmlich Brothers
2006–07 Wegscheider, together with Jehmlich Orgelbau
II+P/32

Hauptwerk
16′ Principal
8′ Octav Principal
8′ Viol di Gamba
8′ Rohr-Flöte
4′ Octava
4′ Spitz-Flöte
3′ Qvinta
2′ Octava
2′ Tertia (from 2′) [listed as 2′ but actually 13⁄5′]
IV Cornet (from c1)
IV Mixtur
III Cymbel
8′ Trompette
16′ Fachott

Oberwerk
16′ Qvinta dena
8′ Principal
8′ Gedackts
8′ Qvinta dena
4′ Octava
4′ Rohr-Flöte
3′ Nassat
2′ Octava
11⁄3′ Qvinta
1′ Sufflöt
Sechst Qvint Altra (4⁄5′, 13⁄5′ from c1)
III Mixtur
8′ Vox humana

Pedal
32′ Groß-Untersatz
16′ Principal Bass
8′ Octaven Bass
16′ Posaune
8′ Trompete
Tremulant
Manual compass: C, D–c3
Pedal compass: C, D–c1
Manual coupler II/I
Pedal coupler P/I
Tuning: 462.5 Hz
Temperament: Neidhardt II
(for a small city), 1732

In summary, restorations include organs by:
Gottfried Silbermann
Niederschöna, 1715/1993, I/14
Bremen Cathedral, 1734/1994, I/8
Jacobikirche, Freiberg, 1717/1995/2006, II/20
Reinhardtsgrimma, 1731/1997, II/20
Tiefenau, 1725/1997, I/9
Dresden Cathedral, 1755/2002, III/47, jointly with Jehmlich Orgelbau
Petrikirche, Freiberg, 1735/2007, II/32, jointly with Jehmlich Orgelbau

Zacharias Hildebrandt
Langhennersdorf, 1722/1996, II/21

Friedrich Ladegast
Biederitz, 1868/1997, II/12
Hohenmölsen, 1851/1998, II/24
Merseburg Cathedral, 1855/1866/2003, IV, 84, joint with Eule/Bautzen and Scheffler, Frankfurt/Oder
Pomssen Wehrkirche, 1671/2000/2007, 1/13

Wegscheider’s firm has built to date thirty new organs including:
Silbermann Museum, Frauenstein, copy of Bremen positive, 1994, I/8
Güstrow Cathedral, 1996, I/15 registers with bass drums, bells, cymbelstern, 2 cuckoos, drum, nightingale
Dresden–Loschwitz, 1996, II/20
Bremen Cathedral, 2002, I/8
Cologne–Michaelshoven, 2003, II/ 28 (in the style of Silbermann/Hildebrandt)
Stuttgart, Musikhochschule, 2006/2007, II/21, Bach Organ
Sacrow-Potsdam, Heilandskirche, 2008/ 2009, II/17 registers
Current work includes:
Fritzsche-Treutmann-Organ in Harbke (restoration in cooperation with Dutschke-Orgelbau), completed 12/07 and dedicated 5/08
Altarpositiv, Kreuzkirche in Dresden, dedicated 5/08
Stellwagen Organ in Stralsund St. Marien (1659).

 

by Gregory Crowell

Gregory Crowell is university organist of Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, where he also teaches harpsichord, music theory, and music history. He also serves as director of music at Trinity United Methodist Church in Grand Rapids and is secretary of the Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society. Crowell holds degrees from the New England Conservatory and the University of Cincinnati, and has studied with Yuko Hayashi, Bernard Lagacé, Mireille Lagacé, Harald Vogel, and Roberta Gary. He has performed as organist, harpsichordist and clavichordist in Europe, Japan, Canada, and the United States. In 1994 he was invited to speak on the music of Bach for the AGO national convention in Dallas, and in 2000 he was the only non-Japanese invited to lecture and perform at St. Luke’s Bach Week in Tokyo.

One defining characteristic of late twentieth- and early twenty-first century musical culture has certainly been a devotion to the reconstruction of the performance traditions of the past.1 Defunct instruments like the viola pomposa have been eagerly researched, and their historical playing technique scrupulously recreated.2 Everything from the proportions of Bach's fingers3 to the cost of his candles4 has been examined in an attempt to understand the atmosphere and circumstances in which his music was made. While many such pursuits have taught us much about the music's genesis and relevance, sometimes the result has been an enthusiasm-induced myopia that has kept us from seeing the true possibilities. For example, a generation of harpsichordists played Bach on their copies of late eighteenth-century French harpsichords before recognizing that the eighteenth-century German harpsichord was a different animal altogether--indeed, one that has yet to be fully revived. And it has only been in very recent years that the not unimportant role played by the early German piano in Bach's late life has come to be appreciated and explored. This state has largely been caused by a simple deflection: the mere recognition of a larger truth (e.g., Bach played the harpsichord and not the modern piano) has sometimes been sufficient distraction to urge us down a side-winding path toward the most convenient solutions.

 

The same can be said of the situation with Bach's keyboard continuo instruments. Early on in the revival of historical performance practices, it was recognized that a keyboard instrument was needed to reinforce the bass and fill out the harmony in Bach's music. Yet the full extent to which the chosen keyboard instrument can influence the total sonority of a work was given little attention. In fact the debate quickly degenerated into the essentially unimportant and uninteresting argument of whether to use organ or harpsichord in Bach's vocal works.5 Once the dust settled over this question however, few musicians felt compelled to look much further into the matter. Among the groups that are currently recording Bach under the umbrella of historically informed performance, not one can claim to be truly faithful to the total body of historical literature on the sonority of Bach's keyboard continuo.

The first question to ask, then, is: what instruments were being used for continuo playing in Bach's time? It might surprise many to learn that there is very little evidence of box-shaped portable organs6 resembling our continuo organs in use in Central Germany in the eighteenth century. Bach certainly knew very small organs. There was a four-stop organ as well as a regal at St. Michael's in Lüneburg, where Bach went to study in 1700.7 In Leipzig there was a harpsichord and a small organ in an auditorium adjacent to the Cantor's office in the Thomasschule,8 and Bach used a small organ built in 1628 and tuned to choir pitch at St. Paul's in Leipzig when he accompanied the eight-part motet Der Geist hilft unsre Schwachheit auf (BWV 226) in 1729.9

None of these organs still exists, but we do have some idea of what was considered an average small organ at the time.  Positiv organs were sometimes found in a private house or a palace chamber, but also in churches and church rehearsal rooms. Standing anywhere from seven to ten feet tall, and containing anywhere from four to eleven stops, these instruments were distinguished from larger organs by two outstanding features: they had only one manual, and they lacked a Pedal division. Such organs may or may not have had an 8' Principal.

A few organs of this size by Bach's friend Gottfried Silbermann still exist. The organ presently in the undercroft of the Cathedral in Bremen, Germany,  was originally conceived for a small church in Etzdorf bei Roßwein in 1745. (See Illustration page 20; the Pedal in the photograph is a later addition.) The instrument contains eight stops and numerous registration possibilities:

                  8'             Rohrflöte

                  4'             Principal

                  4'             Flöte

                  3'             Nasat (treble only)

                  2'             Octava

                  11/2'      Quinta

                  1'             Sifflöt

                                    Sesquialtera (treble only)

A positiv organ by Silbermann from 1728 still survives in Tiefenau. It contains nine stops, including an 8' Principal.

                  8'             Principal

                  8'             Gedackt

                  4'             Octav

                  4'             Rohrflöte

                  3'             Nasat

                  2'             Octav

                  11/3'      Quinte 

                  1'             Sifflöte

                                    Zimbel II

There is still one small organ in existence definitely used by Bach for continuo: the small Zacharias Hildebrandt organ in the village church of Störmthal.  On November 2, 1723 Bach dedicated this organ with a performance of his cantata Höchsterwünschtes Freudenfest (BWV 194). The original specification was:10

Manual

                  8'             Principal

                  8'             Gedackt

                  8'             Quintadena

                  4'             Praestant

                  4'             Rohrflöte

                  3'             Nasat

                  2'             Octave

                  13/5'      Terz 

                  11/2'      Quinte

                  1'             Sifflöte

                                    Mixtur III

                                    Cornet IV

Pedal

                  16'          Subbaß

                  16'          Posaune

For the most part, however, organ continuo accompaniments would have been played on a large instrument. During his time in Weimar, Bach had at his disposal an organ of twenty-four stops in a gallery high above the altar in the castle chapel. When desired, a sliding unit could be engaged to close off the gallery's opening into the main body of the chapel, thus creating a separate music rehearsal chamber containing (besides the organ) a harpsichord, a spinet, and other musical instruments. In St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, the organ Bach used would have been most likely the three-manual, thirty-six stop organ in the rear gallery, or, for special effects (such as in the St. Matthew Passion), the two-manual, twenty-one stop swallow's nest organ that was situated high above the crossing.

With all of these resources at the continuo player's fingertips"organs small, medium, and large"it is no surprise that continuo players were creative in their continuo realizations. Before delving into some of the more impressive registrations, it is would be worthwhile to consider the stop most commonly heard in continuo realizations today, the Gedackt 8'. It is true that the Gedackt 8' was often regarded as the basic continuo stop. Indeed, Bach's colleague in Leipzig, Johann Adolph Scheibe, specified that one should use a Gedackt 8' in soft arias and recitatives,11 and Bach himself asked for a Stillgedackt 8' for his organ in Mühlhausen for playing concerted music.12 Nevertheless, an 8' Gedackt on Bach's instruments in Weimar or Leipzig would have had a substantially more supportive voice than the very small-scaled stops found on the average trunk organ.

With all of this in mind"the size of the instruments used by Bach and the presence their larger-scaled stops must have made"it is surprising that virtually no modern conductors have ventured beyond the now-traditional use of the four-to-six-stop trunk organ. One Dutch musician who is currently traversing the Bach cantatas in the recording studio acknowledges that the effect of the trunk organ used in his performances is remarkably different than that of the organs used by Bach.13 Yet he justifies his decision by explaining that the trunk organ offers greater convenience in tuning and logistics"advantages, he says, that must outweigh the loss in sonority. What is bothersome about this argument is that it admits to purchasing convenience at the cost of musical effect. Indeed, where else does an historically conscientious approach to performance begin than with an attempt to use the right instrument?

The present preference for the trunk organ may be no more than a symptom of a lingering neo-baroque reticence to trust the evidence that has come down to us. A simple example will explain. In his proposal for the rebuilding of the organ in Mühlhausen in 1708 Bach proposed a manual Fagotto (Bassoon) 16' "that sounds delicate in concerted music."14 Ton Koopman confessed that he has tried using a 16-foot reed as a continuo support, but that it so seriously compromised the dynamic flexibility of the continuo group that he found it impractical. The truth is, however, that evidence of the use of a Bassoon 16' in continuo among Bach and his contemporaries is simply too great to ignore, no matter how puzzling it may seem, at least initially. For example, the organ builder Heinrich Gottfried Trost, whose organ in Altenburg Bach played and admired in 1739, stated that the Bassoon 16' "can be well used in concerted music."15 As with all historical registrations, however, the effectiveness of the use of a Bassoon 16' as a continuo stop will largely depend on the texture and character of the music in which it is used. Bach gives us no clue as to his intentions, but his contemporary Johann Friedrich Walther stipulated that the Bassoon 16' in a 1732 Joachim Wagner organ in Berlin was useful specifically for playing running basses in continuo.16 The experience of using such a stop in faster-moving basses might teach us a great deal about what sort of instrumental playing and ensemble that continuo stop supported. The result could well be revelatory, prompting a reevaluation of how we expect Bach's music to sound. This sort of evidence confronts us once again with the chicken-and-egg question that has been part of the performance practice argument from the very beginning: Were the tools at Bach's disposal an inspiration or a limitation?  A deeper look at the evidence will convince us to view these tools as not only an inspiration, but an invitation as well.

Let us examine some alternatives to the trunk organ's small-scaled 8-foot Gedackt. Jacob Adlung recommends accompanying a soft voice with a single flute, such as a Gedackt 8' or a Quintatön 8'. According to Adlung, one can also use a Principal 8' or a Gemshorn 8' for difficult recitatives, or if the singer is insecure. Running passages on the manuals, however, can be played with Violdigamba 8' with or without a Principal. Ideally, the organist should have one or two flute stops drawn on one manual, and a Principal on another manual, in order to facilitate quick dynamic changes.17 Unlike the trunk organ, which relies on upperwork for color, sources such as Adlung clearly called for great color flexibility at the eight-foot level.

Adlung then adds that the organ must play out in chorales, especially since chorales usually involve full choir and congregation. For chorales he recommends Principal 8', Oktave [4'?], or Quinte 3'.

The Principal 8' seems to have been a valued continuo stop altogether. Among other sources close to Bach that mention the importance of the Principal 8' as a continuo stop are Walther,18 Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel,19 Christoph Gottlieb Schröter,20 and Johann Samuel Petri.21 Supported by a fuller-sounding continuo, even small ensembles will be encouraged to play with the sort of full-throated, forceful sound that we know so well from German Baroque organs like those of Arp Schnitger and Gottfried Silbermann.

With only a handful of stops, the skilled organist at an organ of some size then had the resources to play a wide variety of dynamics, at the same time making a substantial contribution to the overall color of the ensemble. For example, in 1738 Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel required the following stops for concerted music at the large two-manual Trost organ in Altenberg:

Principal choir with mixtures

Quintaden 16' and 8'

Bordun and Gedackt 8'

Gemshorn 4'

Nasat 22/3'

Subbaß, Violonbaß22

While Stölzel used a Principal chorus, the use of higher and more powerful Principal stops is not always sanctioned. Adlung notes the habit in village churches of accompanying the choir at the end of pieces with full organ, adding that one does not hear the singers or instrumentalists well.23 Petri warned against using reeds, mixtures, or mutations in continuo.24

Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel named the stops Subbaß and Violonbaß among his continuo stops, and this fact reminds us of an important function of the continuo, and one that is completely unfulfilled by the use of a trunk organ. The continuo player is not just to fill out the harmony, but should make a substantial contribution to the overall sonority of the bass line itself. A number of sources mention the use of 16-foot manual stops to strengthen the bass. These include:

1. Jacob Adlung, who recommends Quintatön 16' or Bordun 16', even strengthened by an Oktav and a quiet 8-foot, especially if one is playing staccato.25

2. Heinrich Gottfried Trost, who recommended Flute traverse 16' und Spitzflöte 8' (as found on the organ at Altenburg).26

3. Daniel Gottlob Türk, who stipulated that "one can still lend to the bass the needed depth and emphasis by means of one or two [!] 16-foot registers in the Hauptwerk. . . ."27

4. Johann Gottfried Walther, who stated that Gedackt 16, 8, 4 "are the most accommodating for the general bass."28

While many of these sixteen-foot stops are manual stops, clearly organists were called upon to double the bass line in the Pedal as well, another practice virtually ignored in modern performances. The number of contemporary sources that describe playing the bass line on the Pedal is simply overwhelming. Petri writes:

. . .Im Pedale ein 16füßiges [ziehen], oder wenn sie nicht stark sind, zwey: und höchstens noch ein 8füßiges Principal zum forte, und zum äußersten forte noch ein 4füßiges Principal, welches jedoch besser wegbleibt, es wäre denn, daß gar keine Violons, Violoncelli und Fagotts mitspielten, und der Organist den Baß allein machen müßte, wie auf dem Lande. . . .

. . .In the Pedal, [draw] a 16', or, if the [Pedal stops] are not strong, two, and at least an 8-foot Principal for the forte, and for extreme forte a 4-foot Principal as well, which is better left out if there are no violones, cellos, and bassoons playing along, and the organist must play the bass alone, as is done in the country. . . 29

Türk states the case clearly:

Daß aber die ganz tiefen Register, z. B. Posaune 32 und 16 Fuß im Pedale nicht einmal geschwind ansprechen, und noch überdies mehr ein Getöse machen, als einen deutlichen Ton angeben, lehrt die Erfahrung. Außerdem muß man freylich, ohne einen hinlänglichen Grund, das Pedal nicht weglassen. . .

Experience teaches that the very low stops such as Posaune 32' and 16' in the Pedal do not speak quickly, and furthermore [they] produce more of a racket than a clear tone. Otherwise one must certainly not leave the Pedal out without sufficient reason. . . . 30

Sufficient reasons to leave the Pedal out are explained in a footnote: when the violone (i.e., an instrument playing at sixteen-foot pitch) drops out, when there is a senza basso indication in the score, when a short passage is repeated an octave higher, and when the bass pauses in fugues. In these cases the bass should be played only on the manuals without a 16-foot stop.

Sources closer to Bach include Johann Friedrich Walther (Pedal Principal 16 "gravitaetisch," used in large ensembles; Pedal Violon 16 "sehr tief und kräftig"),31 Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel32, and Friedrich Eberhardt Niedt (who recommends Pedal 16', even a reed 16', to make the Pedal clearer).33

Indeed, many sources state that Pedal stops need not be restricted to Principals and Flutes. In 1719 E. Lindner ordered a reworking of the Pedal Posaune at the famous Silbermann organ in Freiberg to make it more suitable for use in concerted music.34 Just how such a stop could be used in continuo is difficult to imagine, at least until one considers a work like Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott (BWV 80). The manuscript of the Leipzig version (a copy by J. C. Altnickol from 1744) specifies a double continuo: Violoncello e cembalo for the first bass (i.e., 8-foot), and organ and violone for the cantus firmus bass (i.e., 16-foot).35 The manuscript specifies "Pedal Posaune 16 Fuß." What performers today would seek to find an instrumental, choral, and acoustical solution to justify such an overwhelming registration?

Perhaps all that has been discussed here can be summed up and amplified best by a remarkable source of information on continuo practice that is very little known in the English literature on the subject. That it is so little known is lamentable especially because it may well be the most telling witness to the continuo registrations practiced by Bach and his associates in Leipzig.

The registrations by Christoph Gottlieb Schröter (1699-1782)36 summarized at the end of this article provide a glimpse of the sort of continuo registrations used on Saxon organs in Bach's immediate circle. Schröter and Bach knew each other well. Like Bach, Schröter was a member of Lorenz Christoph Mizler's Society of Musical Science in Leipzig. When Bach's music came under attack 1749 by the critic Scheibe, Bach turned to Schröter, a friend of some thirty years,37 to muster a counterattack in the musical press. Undoubtedly, Schröter was intimately familiar with Bach's music as well as with Bach's performance style. Though these registrations were not published until the 1770s, they were recorded in the early 1750s, at which time Schröter was organist in Nordhausen,38 a city about halfway between Leipzig and Göttingen, where he played a sizable organ built in 1729 by Johann Georg Papenius.39

There are several extraordinary things to note about these registrations, including:

1. The frequent use of more than one 8-foot stop together.

2. The tendency to avoid stops higher than 4-foot for chordal, i.e., non-solo accompaniments.

3. The practice of combining quick-speaking stops (such as a Flute) with slow-speaking stops (such as a String).

4. Dynamic flexibility, largely achiev-ed by manual changes.

5. The general size of the registrations, including those suggested for recitatives and ariosi (with the left hand on the Hauptwerk).

6. Color extended even to recitatives, where four-foot stops are included.

7. Varied registrational color according to the obbligato instrument used (oboe, flutes, muted strings).

8. The simply fantastic registrations for organ obbligato.

There is still a lot to investigate in the matter of continuo sonority in Bach's music. For example, there is the question of pitch. While many organs were tuned to choir pitch (Chorton A = 460-490), many had certain stops tuned to the lower chamber pitch Kammerton A = 390-415)40, giving them a handful of stops suitable for accompanying instruments tuned to chamber pitch.41 Some organs even had entire keyboards tuned to different pitches, or a manual division that was playable at either Chor- or Kammerton.42 And then there is the entire question of harpsichord sonority, including the use of a 16-foot register in continuo accompaniment. And then there are fortepianos, Lautenwerke, Geigen-Claviere, keyed pantaleons, and any number of other instruments awaiting a willing and wondering ear to explore how rich and how varied the sonority of Bach's continuo realizations must have been.43

It has not been the intention of this article to vilify completely the use of trunk organs today; indeed, their usefulness and often their beauty are undeniable. Nor is there any desire to throw verbal cold water on the vital music making of great musicians like Ton Koopman, Philippe Herreweghe, Masaaki Suzuki, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, or Gustav Leonhardt. It is not the trunk organ's existence, but its pervasiveness that is so limiting, serving as an ever-present reminder of our anti-baroque insistence that the continuo must somehow live in the shadow of the real music. Perhaps it is time for us as continuo players to step forward from behind the little box and become a full voice in the total sonority of Bach's music.

After playing a prelude, the organist takes off all stops except the following:

Hauptwerk: Principal 8', Gemshorn 8', Viola di Gamba 8', Octava 4'

Rückpositiv: Quintadena 8', Gedackt 8', Flöte 4', Rohrflöte 4'

Brustpositiv: Gedackt 8', Gedackt 4', Violetto 4'

Pedal: Principal 16', Principal 8', Violon 16'

Couple Hauptwerk to Pedal

Accompany full chorus and orchestra on the Hauptwerk. For passages with orchestra alone, play with the right hand on the Rückpositiv.

For echo passages, leave out the Pedal and play with the right hand on the Rückpositiv.

For various kinds of recitatives:

1. Use the same registration above, removing the Pedal coupler and the Hauptwerk Octava 4'.

2. Use the registration above, playing on the Hauptwerk with the left hand, and on the Rückpositiv with the right hand.

Aria with oboe obbligato accompanied by violins:

Hauptwerk (left hand): Principal 8', Gemshorn 8', Viola di Gamba 8'

Rückpositiv (right hand): Quintadena 8', Gedackt 8', Rohrflöte 4'

Pedal: Principal 16', Violon 16', Hauptwerk to Pedal

Aria with one or two flutes and muted strings:

Hauptwerk (right hand): Flauto traverso [8'], Gemshorn 8'

Rückpositiv (left hand): Quintadena 8', Gedackt 8'

Pedal, uncoupled: Violon 16', Principal 8'

 

Mournful aria with a single solo instrument (e.g., oboe) and organo concertato, without other accompanying instruments:

Hauptwerk (left hand): Viola di Gamba 8', Gemshorn 8'

Rückpositiv (right hand): Vox humana 8', Quintadena 8'

Pedal, uncoupled: Violon 16', Principal 8'

Aria with more than one solo instrument, organo concertato, and other accompanying instruments:

Hauptwerk (left hand): Principal 8', Gemshorn 8', Viola di Gamba 8'

Rückpositiv (right hand): Quintadena 8', Gedackt 8', Rohrflöte 4', Principal 4', Octava 2'

Pedal, coupled: Principal 16', Violon 16', Principal 8'

Notes

                  1.              This article began as a lecture delivered at the Improvisation Symposium held at Eastern Michigan University in November 2000, and was sponsored by the Ann Arbor Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. I am grateful to Dr. Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, Professor of Organ at EMU, and the Ann Arbor Chapter of the AGO for affording me the opportunity to delve into these matters.

                  2.              Ulrich Drüner, "Violoncello piccolo und Viola pomposa bei Johann Sebastian Bach: Zu Fragen von Identität und Spielweise dieser Instrumente" Bach Jahrbuch (1987), pp. 85-112.

                  3.              Quentin Faulkner, J. S. Bach's Keyboard Technique: A Historical Approach (St. Louis: Concordia, 1984), p. 18.

                  4.              Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 540.

                  5.              These arguments were finally given a rest by Lawrence Dreyfus, Bach's Continuo Group: Players and Practices in His Vocal Works (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).

                  6.              Also referred to as trunk organs, positive organs, continuo organs, Kastenorgeln, or Truhenorgeln.

                  7.              Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach, p. 477.

                  8.              Ibid, p. 250.

                  9.              Ibid, p. 316.

                  10.           As the organ survives today, only the specification of the Pedal has been slightly altered.

                  11.           " . . .da man hingegen bey schwachen Arien und bey Recitativen allein des Gedackt acht Fuß gebrauchen darf." See J. A. Scheibe, Critischer Musicus (Leipzig: 1745), p. 415.

                  12.           "Stillgedockt 8f., so da vollkommen zur Music accordieret". See Frans Brouwer, Reinoud Egberts, Hans Jansen, Paul Peeters, Maurice Pirenne, editors, Bach's Orgelbüchlein in nieuw perspectief (Utrecht: Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, 1988), p. 172ff. The term Music as used in this context most certainly refers to concert music. Gott-fried Silbermann, in his proposal for the organ in Freiberg, described his Gedackt 8 as being gently voiced for concerted music ("Gedacktes 8 Fuß zur music liebl. intoniert"). See Frank Harald Greß, Die Klanggestalt der Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns (Frankfurt and Wiesbaden: Bochinsky and Breitkopf und Härtel, 1989), p. 132.

                  13.           Ton Koopman, "Aspekte der Aufführungspraxis" in Christoph Wolff and Ton Koopman, Die Welt der Bach Kantaten (Stuttgart and Weimar: Bärenreiter and Metzler, 1996), vol. 1, p. 222.

                  14.           ". . .in der music delicat klinget." See Brouwer, et. al., Bach's Orgelbüchlein, p. 172ff.

                  15.           Quoted in Ewald Kooiman, Gerhard Weinberger, and Hermann J. Busch, Zur Interpretation der Orgelmusik Johann Sebastian Bachs (Kassel: Merseburger, 1995), p. 163.

                 16.           See Brouwer, et. al., Bach's Orgelbüchlein, p. 181. The organ was in the Garnisonskirche. Jacob Adlung also mentions the Bassoon's usefulness as a continuo stop. See J. Adlung, Anleitung zur musikalischen Gelahrtheit, Erfurt, 1758, p. 386.

                  17.           Adlung, Gelahrtheit, p. 386ff.

                  18.           Principal 8 "unter dem Tutti einer Music." See Brouwer, et. al., Bach's Orgelbüchlein, pp. 181-82.

                  19.           Specifically on the Trost organ in Altenburg. See Greß, Klanggestalt, p. 132.

                  20.           Christoph Gottlieb Schröter, Deutliche Anweisung zum General-Baß, Halberstadt 1772, pp. 187-90.

                  21.           Johann Samuel Petri, Anleitung zur praktischen Musik, 2. Auflage (Leipzig, 1782), p. 169ff.

                  22.           Greß, Klanggestalt, pp. 132-33.

                  23.           Adlung, Musica mechanica organoedi (Berlin, 1768), p. 171ff.

                  24.           Petri, Anleitung, p. 169.

                  25.           Adlung, Anleitung, p. 386. Elsewhere Adlung even suggests using a Principal 16'. See Musica mechanica organoedi, p. 171ff. One assumes the staccato reference is because 16-foot stops alone generally do not speak quickly enough to perform staccato notes successfully.

                  26.           Kooiman et. al., Interpretation der Orgelmusik, p. 163.

                  27.           Daniel Gottlob Türk, Von den wichtigsten Pflichten, (Halle, 1787), p. 156.

                  28.           ". . .so zum G[eneral B[aß] am bequehmsten ist." See Johann Gottfried Walther Musikalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), p. 275.

                  29.           See Petri, Anleitung, p. 169ff.

                  30.           Türk, Pflichten, pp. 156-57.

                  31.           Brouwer, et. al., Orgelbüchlein, p. 183.

                  32.           Greß, Klanggestalt, pp. 132-33.

                  33.           Friedrich Eberhardt Niedt, Musikalische Handleitung (Hamburg: 1710-12).

                  34.           Greß, Klanggestalt, p. 132.

                  35.           Dreyfus, Bach's Contiuo Group, pp. 15-16.

                  36.           Christoph Gottlieb Schröter, Deutliche Anweisung zum General-Baß, Halberstadt 1772, pp. 187-90.

                  37.           Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach, p. 423.

                  38.           Julie Ann Sadie, Companion to Baroque Music, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, p. 192.

                  39.           See Johannes Schäfer, Nordhäuser Orgelchronik (Berlin: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1939), pp. 54-56.

                  40.           See Daniel R. Melamed and Michael Marissen, An Introduction to Bach Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 142-45, for an introduction to this thorny issue.

                  41.           Adlung stipulates just which stops are to be tuned to Kammerton: In the Pedal at least the Subbaß and in large churches an 8-foot and a 16-foot flute as well.  In the Positiv the Musikgedackt, in the Hauptmanuale "as much as is needed for an obligato bass" ("so viel, als ein obligater Baß nöthig hat"). He then goes on to say that the castle organ in Merseburg has the following stops in Kammerton: Gedackt 4', Principal 4', Grobgedackt 8', Pedal Subbaß 16' and Octav 8'. See Adlung, Gelahrtheit, p. 386. The Wagner organ in the Cathedral in Brandenburg had a Gedecktes 8 Fuß Cammer Thon in the Obermanual. See Andreas Kitschke, Die historische Wagner-Orgel im Dom zu Brandenburg/ Havel (Passau: Kunstverlag-Peda, 1998), p. 15.

                  42.           The Johann Michael Röder organ built 1722-1725 for St. Magdalena in Breslau had a Pedal Kammerbass 16' and Kammerbass 8' (tuned to Kammerton), and Chorbass 16', tuned to Chorton. The entire Unterclavier could be played in either Chorton or Kammerton.

                  43.           See John Koster, "The Quest for Bach's Clavier: An Historiographical Interpretation," Early Keyboard Journal 14 (1996), pp. 65-84.

Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle Church, Paris, France

Carolyn Shuster Fournier

Carolyn Shuster Fournier is a French-American organist and musicologist living in Paris, France where she is titular of the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at La Trinité Church. An international concert organist, she wrote her doctoral thesis on Aristide Cavaillé-Coll’s secular organs. Her writings on French music and organs have appeared in numerous journals.

Choosing a builder

Situated next to the famous Isle de la Cité, the Isle Saint-Louis in Paris, France, is known for its quaint shops and delicious Berthillon ice cream. Upon entering its church, one is struck by the well-lit interior, a drastic contrast to the inner darkness of the nearby Notre-Dame Cathedral. Bernard Aubertin’s organ case shines brilliantly in the Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle Church. (See Photo 1.)
The original 1745 Lesclop organ had been melted down during the Revolution in 1789. In 1798, the church was sold as a national property. In 1817, the city of Paris purchased the church and cleaned it. In 1888, the parish priest, abbot Louis Bossuet, acquired a new organ case, which was placed at the end of the nave. Its first level later lodged a small 15-stop Merklin organ. In 1923, Charles Mutin installed a 34-stop organ in this vast organ case. According to the organist Marie-Thérèse Michaux, it was in such poor condition when she arrived in 1975 that she was obliged to play on the Gutschenritter choir organ.
In 1976, the city of Paris began to plan the purchase of a new organ for the Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle Church, one especially suited to the 17th- and 18th-century Germanic repertory, notably the music of Johann Sebastian Bach.1 In 1977, Georges Guillard2 was named as a second organist of the church. He launched a project for the new organ that proposed the German builder Jürgen Ahrend, well known authority on Baroque-style organs. An association was founded with Monsieur Henry Ecoutin as president. According to Jean-Louis Coignet, the technical advisor for historical organs of the city of Paris since 1979, at that time the rules for constructing an organ in Paris were not very strict, and the city had intended for Jürgen Ahrend to build this organ. Unfortunately, various disagreements between the builder and the administration, notably with the head architect who did not approve Ahrend’s proposed organ case, led to postponing the project on numerous occasions.
In the meantime, the legislation concerning public markets and transactions had become much more rigorous. In July 1997, it was therefore necessary to launch a competition to determine the builder of this new organ. Jean-Louis Coignet established a program of work for the invitation to tender, detailing the 41 stops to be included in this three-manual organ:3

RÜCKPOSITIV (56 n.)

8' Principal
8' Gedackt
8' Quintatön
4' Octave
4' Rohrflöte
2' Waldflöte
11?3' Sifflöte
II Sesquialtera
IV Scharf
8' Krümhorn

HAUPTWERK (56 n.)

16' Principal
16' Quintadena
8' Oktave
8' Salicional
8' Rohrflöte
4' Oktave
4' Spitzflöte
22?3' Nasat
2' Oktave
IV–VI Mixture
16' Dulzian
8' Trompete

OBERWERK (56 n.)

8' Gedackt
4' Principal
4' Rohrflöte
2' Oktave
13?5' Terz
11?3' Quint
III Zimbel
8' Vox Humana

PEDALWERK (30 n.)

16' Principal
16' Subbass
8' Oktave
4' Oktave
2' Nachthorn
IV Mixture
32' Dulzian
16' Posaune
8' Trompete
4' Trompete
2' Cornet

Accouplements: OW/HW, RP/HW, OW/PW, RP/PW
Tremblants: RP et OW

Around a dozen European organ builders submitted proposals. Unfortunately, Jürgen Ahrend committed an error during the tendering and, consequently, was disqualified. On January 28, 1999, the city chose the French builder Bernard Aubertin.

Bernard Aubertin, Organ Builder, Maître d’Art

Bernard Aubertin (see Photo 2) was born into a family of woodworkers going back to the Napoleon Bonaparte era, originally from Moselle. After studying in Strasbourg, he designed organ cases for various firms, notably for the Felsberg Orgelbau in Switzerland. In 1978, at the age of 25, he founded his own company to build mechanical-action organs with top quality materials in a traditional manner.4 He installed his shop in two large wings of a historic Romanesque priory dating from the mid-twelfth century in Courtefontaine, the region of eastern France known as the Franche-Comté, in the department of the Jura (between Dijon, Dole and Besançon). A fervent collector of 0.60 m gauge railway equipment, several narrow tracks on his property enable him to easily transfer heavy equipment and materials. He now employs up to 14 workers, including his wife Sonja, who is his secretary and accountant. In 1995, the French Cultural Minister named Bernard Aubertin Maître d’Art. On November 10, 2005 the city of Paris gave him the Médaille de Vermeil.
Aubertin organs are installed in the following locations in France, Portugal, Scotland and Japan: the Besançon Conservatory (1979 and 1981), the churches in Sarralbe (1987), Viry-Châtillon (1989), Saint-Vincent in Lyon (1994, with Richard Freytag), Saessolsheim (1995), Vertus (1996), Sainte-Catherine Church in Bitche (1997), Saint-Loup-sur-Thouet (1998), Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire (1999), Saint-Marceau in Orléans, the Nice Conservatory (2001), Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle in Paris (2005), a 24-stop house organ in Faro, Portugal (2003), the University in Aberdeen, Scotland (2004), and for concert halls in Japan: in Shirane-Cho (Yamanashi, 1993), Kobe (destroyed in the 1995 earthquake), Ichigaia, Karuizawa and Zushi.5 Bernard Aubertin has also restored historic organs with a strict adherence to their original nature in Pontarlier (1982), West-Cappel (1984), Arbois (1985), Orgelet (1987), Seurre (1991), Saint-Antoine-l’Abbaye (1992) and Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville (1984). In addition, he builds cabinet organs.6
Instead of constructing direct copies of 17th- and 18th-century historic organs from northern and central Europe as well as France, Aubertin uses them as inspiring models. The craft logo of the Aubertin organ firm sums up his production: it depicts an oak tree being blown by three forge bellows at its roots, with songbirds perched in its branches. (See Photo 3.)
His organs are made of natural materials: solid French oak for the organ cases, the windchests, the wind trunks, the sliders, the trackers, stickers, backfalls and for parts of the stop action; some of the bass pipes are made with chestnut, fruit tree or spruce wood. The sliders are made as wind-tight as possible with covers of soft leather; the stop action may be set between pads of felt, and the lower parts of the windchests are sealed with large cowhides. The metal pipework is made mainly of alloys with a low tin content (35% or less). Some narrow-scale stops, such as the Gambe, the reed stops, and the façade pipes may contain up to 75 to 96% tin. All of the metal pipes are varnished to protect them against handling and long-term oxidation.
Among the unusual stops found in Aubertin’s organs, the Quintinal is a Quintadena in the bass and more string-like in the treble. At his organ in Vichy, the 32' reed stop in the Pedal is labelled “Napoleon.” His use of imitative harmonic flute pipes, overblown without piercing, such as the 2' Traversine at the Saint-Marceau Church in Orléans, is a copy of a 17th-century stop in the Jacobikirche in Hamburg. For his three-manual, 27-stop organ at the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, he incorporated two little pipes that imitate the bagpipe drone. (See Photo 4.)
Several of Aubertin’s organs (Vertus, Orléans and Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle) are tuned in the mild 1800 Young temperament with six pure and six tempered fifths, suitable to a large part of the organ repertory. His organ at the Saint-Denys Church in Viry-Chatillon is tuned in the Kirnberger III temperament. The pitch is often set at A=440 Hz. The balanced, suspended key action is light and responsive. His standard wind pressure for the manual divisions is 95 mm (33?4 inches), and for the pedal generally 105–115 mm (43?8 inches). The 56-note keyboards are covered with boxwood, ebony or bone. The 30-note pedalboards are straight. The Positif keyboard is coupled to the primary manual à tiroir (in a drawer fashion).
Aubertin has a special talent for designing each of his organ cases to blend harmoniously with the building. He often incorporates particular decorative emblems (often various astronomical elements: stars, planets and flames of fire) into his sculptured elements. At the Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle Church, the Trinitarian symbol in the glory that is located in the apse is reproduced in the center panel of the organ case. Likewise, the mystical lamb that overhangs the Positif de Dos corresponds to the lamb on the altar. Another one of Aubertin’s characteristic hallmarks: the pipe mouths of his tower pipes are often decorated with dancing golden flames. In addition, he labels the names of the stopknobs in his own handwriting, in a dark blue (a Prussian blue) and red ink on paper or parchment.
The construction and installation of the new Aubertin organ at the Saint-Louis-en-L’Isle Church In accordance with Jean-Louis Coignet’s initial invitation to tender, Bernard Aubertin had the possibility of making a limited number of modifications in the stoplist, providing that the number of stops did not exceed 45. It was also possible to propose limited changes in the tonal plans, for example, an Unterwerk instead of an Oberwerk. On March 12, 1999, Aubertin submitted an estimate of a 41- or a 45-stop organ. The latter was accepted on August 20, the feast day of St. Bernard. The first order of service for this 45-stop organ was signed by Jean-Louis Coignet, the technical advisor for historical organs, on August 25 (the feast day of St. Louis and Aubertin’s birthday). The work officially began on the organ on September 27, with a delivery deadline of 30 months. Aubertin collaborated well with Jean-Louis Coignet and François Lagneau, the architect of the historical monuments. However, since the Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle Church is classified as a historical monument, the various architectural agreements and work concerning the restoration of the tribune, the staircases, the arches and the two stained-glass windows near the organ took a great deal of time, three years longer than anticipated. From March 2000 to September 2001, the work was interrupted because the Mutin organ had not been dismantled, rendering it impossible to measure the organ tribune, necessary to determine the exact layout of the new organ. The city decided to restore and reincorporate two statues of angels from the former organ case into the new one. Discussions began with Aubertin to add six more stops to the new organ. According to Aubertin, in spite of an obtained tacit agreement, the future May 2001 elections paralyzed any official document concerning these additional stops. From January to August 2002, the work was interrupted again to carry out the photogrammetrical measurements of the church. In August 2002, Aubertin visited several early historical German organs with the American organ builder Gene Bedient, notably the 1750–1755 Gottfried Silbermann at the Hofkirche in Dresden and the 1746 Zacharias Hildebrandt organ at the St. Wenceslas Church in Naumburg. These visits enabled him to choose the six new stops he wished to install in the Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle organ. From September 2003 to October 2004, other numerous delays occurred to allow the restoration of the tribune.
In the meantime, Aubertin constructed this organ with the six new additional stops: Allemande 4' in the Rückpositif, Cornet VI in the Hauptwerk, Sifflet 1' and Unda Maris 8' in the Unterwerk, and Bourdon 16', Bourdon 8' and a Tierce rank to the Mixture IV–V in the Pedal. He considers that these additions provide supplementary musical possibilities and augment the flexibility of the instrument for interpretation and improvisation. He explains them in the following manner:

The Rückpositif Flûte allemande is made of stopped pipes of triple length. Its sonority recalls the attacks and the strange sounds of the glass harmonica, whose moving glass containers are made to vibrate with the musician’s moistened fingers. This stop combines very well with the others, adding its characteristic attack.
The Hauptwerk Cornet, known as a maritime cornet because it is used along the coast from the English Channel to the Baltics, includes two 8' ranks in this six-rank stop: one 8' is open and the other one is stopped with very long chimneys. This solo stop fills out the upper range of the keyboard. Its average-size pipes provide a certain elegance. It can easily be combined with the two Hauptwerk reeds to form a sort of Grand Jeu.
In the Oberwerk, the Sifflet 1', found in numerous organs played by J. S. Bach, is the highest pitched stop in the organ and reaches the limit of audible sounds. Its use with other stops allows sonorities close to that of certain percussion instruments, metallophones (Stahlspiel) or small bells. The Unda Maris 8', an undulating Principal stop known since the sixteenth century, in Dresden and Naumburg, is used in fantasies and certain meditative pieces throughout the centuries. Its combination with the foundation stops is appropriate for romantic and contemporary music.
In the Pedal, the Bourdon 1' is a soft, deep stop that can fill out the others without adding heaviness to the entire sound. The large and soft Bourdon 8' with the Bourdon 16' allows a clear and light bass, it gives clarity without dominating the Violon 16' or the Principal 16' and gives the impression of a 32' when used with the Bourdon 16' and the Quinte 102/3'. The addition of the Tierce rank to the Pedal Mixture adds spice and definition to the sound of these pipes, located at the extremities of the organ case. This mixture can also serve as a cantus firmus when used with the Prestant 4'.

In addition, Aubertin added an Appel Anches Pedal at the console that allows the organist to prepare powerful pedal stops and then to add them by simply activating this pedal. This is extremely useful with sudden dynamic changes, often encountered in North German Baroque music. In addition, the Voix humaine stop on the Unterwerk is enclosed in a box whose cover can be opened by activating another pedal.
On November 11, 2004, the completed organ was inaugurated in the Aubertin workshop by Francis Jacob, organ professor at the Strasbourg Conservatory and an organ consultant for the Aubertin firm. In December, Michel Chapuis played it for a delegation from the city of Paris. Finally, in February 2005, the organ was transported to Paris. On March 2, the sub-director of the patrimony of the city of Paris authorized Aubertin to install the six previously approved stops, at his own personal risk. The city had spent all of their remaining funds for this construction on the considerable amount of work that had been carried out by the architects. The organ installation was completed on March 11. After the tuning and voicing of the instrument, the city acknowledged its reception of the 45 agreed-upon stops on March 18. After some final minor adjustments, the official reception of this organ took place on May 9.
Here is the stoplist of this 51-stop organ, with the six added stops in italics:

I. POSITIF DE DOS (RÜCKPOSITIF) (56 n.)

8' Montre
8' Bourdon
4' Quintaton
4' Prestant
4' Flûte à cheminée
4' Allemande (an overblown Bourdon)
2' Flageolet
11?3' Flûte
II Sexquialtera
IV Mixture
8' Dulciane

II. GRAND-ORGUE (HAUPTWERK) (56 n.)

16' Principal (façade pipes)
8' Octave
8' Gambe
8' Flûte
4' Prestant
4' Flûte cônique
22?3' Quinte
2' Octave
IV–VI Mixture
VI Cornet (Open 8', Chimney Flute 8', 4', 22/3', 2', 13/5')
16' Basson
8' Trompette

III. INTERIOR POSITIF (UNTERWERK) (56 n.)

8' Bourdon
8' Principal (beginning at F)
8' Traversière (overblown)
8' Unda Maris
4' Octave
4' Flûte
22/3' Nazard 2' Traversine
2' Octave
1' Sifflet
13/5' Terz
11/3' Quinte
III Mixture
8' Voix humaine
16' Fagott

PEDALE (30 n.)

16' Bourdon
16' Principal
16' Violon
102/3' Quinte
8' Bourdon
8' Octave
4' Prestant
2' Flûte 2
IV–VI Mixture (the Tierce rank was added)
32' Dulciane
16' Buzène
8' Trompette
4' Cornet

Keyboard couplers : I/II (à tiroir), III/II, II/III
Pedal coupler: Great to Pedal
Tremulant I et III et Tremulant II
Appel Anches Pedal
Expression for the Voix humaine

Inauguration

In May, two new organists were chosen to share this post with the organist Marie-Thérèse Michaux: Vincent Rigot7 and the 20-year-old Benjamin Alard.8 On June 19, the organ was blessed by an auxiliary bishop in Paris, Monseigneur Pierre d’Ornellas, and the parish priest, Father Gérard Pelletier. During this ceremony, the three church organists improvised and performed, and George Guillard premiered a commissioned piece by Jacques Castérède entitled L’Hommage à Saint Louis for organ and brass trio. On June 22, this organ was inaugurated by Benjamin Alard, Vincent Rigot, and Michel Chapuis. Alard performed Buxtehude’s Ciacona in C-minor, Rigot interpreted Alain’s Litanies, and Chapuis’ improvisations demonstrated the various tonal colors of the organ. He then played works by Buxtehude, Böhm, Bruhns, and Bach. A recording of J. S. Bach’s Clavierubüng III by Francis Jacob, a member of Bernard Aubertin’s team, was released for the inauguration of the organ.9
On September 18, 2005, a day consecrated to historical monuments in France, Aubertin gave a presentation with Régis Allard, and then Vincent Rigot improvised and gave a concert for a packed church. The organ association of the church,10 presided by Monsieur Robert Ranquet, organized five concerts for the first Europa Bach Festival in Paris and its region from September to December 2005. They were given by given by Pascal Rouet, Carolyn Shuster Fournier, Eric Ampeau, Frédéric Desenclos and Francis Jacob.

The search for a patron

Now that the Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle organ is installed and inaugurated, will this organ continue to sound as the builder conceived it, remaining intact for present and future generations? If the funding does not arrive after one year, Bernard Aubertin has said that he might be obliged to remove the added stops from the organ, even though he considers them to be indispensable to the entire balance of this instrument. He hopes that a patron will eventually cover their expense, amounting to 170,000 euros. It took 23 years to choose a builder for the organ at the Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle Church and six years to construct and install this instrument. During those 29 years, from 1976–2005, the city of Paris financed the construction of other new organs at Sainte-Jeanne-de-Chantal Church (Alfred Kern, 1977), Saint-Jean-Baptiste-de-Grenelle Church (Théo Haepfer, 1988), the reconstruction of the monumental gallery organ at Saint-Eustache Church (Van den Heuvel, 1989), Notre-Dame-du-Travail Church (Théo Haepfer, 1990), Saint-Pierre-de-Chaillot Church (Daniel Birouste, 1994), Saint-Ferdinand-des-Ternes Church (Pascal Quoirin, 1995), the Conservatoire Supérieur de Paris-C.N.R. (Gerhard Grenzing, 1996) and at Notre-Dame-du-Perpétuel-Secours Church (Bernard Dargassies, 2004). In addition, the city of Paris financed numerous restorations and renovations.
This article renders homage to the various members of Aubertin’s team who worked on this organ at Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle: cabinetmakers Loïc Gaudefroy (Best Worker in France), Thomas Gaudefroy, and Thomas Guinchard; organ builders Michel Gaillard, Olivier Mondy, Jean-Marc Perrodin, Daniel Rey, and Anke Saeger-Blaison; pipemaker Jérome Stalter (Best Worker in France); organist Francis Jacob; apprentice Alexandre Aubertin; and administrator Sonja Aubertin; as well as craftsmen: Serge Bisson who did the wood carvings; Benoït Camozzi, the assistant sculptor; and Marie-Odile Valot-Degueurce, who applied the gilding to the decorations.
The author thanks Bernard Aubertin, Jean-Louis Coignet, and Robert Ranquet for providing her with information for this article.

The Aubertin organ of Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle, Paris

by Bernard Aubertin, Organbuilder, Maître d’Art, English translation by Carolyn Shuster Fournier

Introduction

The new 51-stop organ that I have built for the Saint-Louis-en-l’Isle Church in Paris is in the style of a 17th- to 18th-century German instrument. I designed it according to the most renowned works of J. S. Bach’s favorite organbuilder Zacharias Hildebrandt (1688–1757), a student of Gottfried Silbermann. The balance between the various families of stops, with its 16', 8', 4' stops and a 32' reed stop in the Pedal, is entirely in keeping with the cantor’s wishes: Majestät und Gravität.
This organ incorporates some of Hildebrandt’s innovative stops: the Violon 16' (in the Pedal) and the Gemshorn 4' (the Hauptwerk Flûte cônique) as well as some Nordic contributions: in the Rückpositiv, the Sexquialtera II is narrow-scaled, the Mixture IV is a high-pitched Scharf, the Flageolet 2' is a Waldflöte, the Dulciane 8' is an Oboe (Hoboe); in the Unterwerk, the Fagott 16' is a Dulcian, and in the Pedal, the Cornet 4' recalls the Cornet 2', as well as the Dulciane 32' reed stop in the Pedal, which Gottfried Silbermann never built. In addition, this new organ contains some colorful stops described in Praetorius’s Syntagma Musicum (1619), notably a Querpfeif (the Unterwerk Flûte Traversine 2') and the Schweitzerpfeif (the Hauptwerk Gambe 8').
The entire organ uses mechanical action and is constructed with noble materials, solid oak and chestnut woods. Knowledge of the practices of our predecessors is absolutely indispensable, especially since they were based on a sensibility that is completely different from our own.

Technical Description

The organ cases

While the organ case conforms more to the curved surface of the 1745 organ gallery than to that of a German organ, its internal structure was conceived in a spirit that respects the Werkprinzip: the Rückpositiv projects over the gallery rail, the Unterwerk is placed above the keyboards, surmounted by the Hauptwerk, with the large 16' pedal towers on the sides.

The windchests

The various windchests are laid out in the following manner:

The Rückpositiv is at the level of the organ gallery.
On the first floor of the gallery, the Pedal foundation stops are placed in the front part of a large double windchest with the reeds behind. The Dulciane 32' is placed against the wall with the Violon 16' on a similar chest underneath. In the center, two diatonic V-shaped windchests are used for the Unterwerk stops.
On the second floor, the Hauptwerk bass pipes are placed on three windchests in the center, followed by two diatonic windchests with the upper pipes located towards the center.

The mechanical key and stop actions

The mechanical key and stop actions are as simple and efficient as possible. The 56-note keyboards are covered with bone for the natural keys and ebony for the sharps. The 30-note flat pedalboard is made of oak.

The wind

Due to the shallowness of the organ gallery (and consequently the organ cases) and to the total lack of adjoining space, the wedge-shaped bellows were placed near each of the windchests. The blowers are suspended in two double isolated boxes placed on the floor of the organ gallery, underneath the large pedal towers. A ventil pedal, which cuts off the air in the pallet box, enables the organist to bring on or put off the prepared stops. The wind pressure is 95 mm for the keyboards and 115 mm for the pedal. This strong wind permits narrow note channels, trunks and conveyances leading to pipes that are tubed off. The windchest pipe valves are relatively thin, allowing a sensitive touch.

The pipework—the voicing

All of the pipework has been made by artisans. The following stops are made of 75% and 96% fine tin:
• on the Hauptwerk: Principal 16', Octave 8', Gambe 8', Basson 16' and Trompette 8';
• on the Unterwerk: Unda Maris 8', Voix humaine 8', Principal 8' and Octave 4';
• on the Rückpositiv: Montre 8' and Prestant 4'.
The rest is made of a tin-lead alloy with a high lead content or of hammered lead, the languids of the flue pipes with 3% lead. All of the capped pipes are soldered on. The wooden pipes are made either of oak or of chestnut. The bodies of the Buzène 16' and Violon 16' pipes are made of spruce from the Vosges. The principal stops have a clear sound in spite of their rather high mouths. All of the wooden pipes have metal lips, that is, the inner edge of the lower lip is planed down and garnished with a metal bar, thus providing:
• an immediate attack;
• a high development of harmonics, notably in the lower pipes, where the human ear can scarcely distinguish the precise pitch of the notes;
• finally, a considerable economy of wind, which is very important in the lower registers of the manual keyboards, limiting the key depressions and maintaining a light touch.
The metal pipework is voiced as naturally as possible with a minimum of nicking on the languids. The feet are slightly closed in the bass pipes.
The design consisted, more of less, of a quadruple plenum:
• the Hauptwerk plenum is deep, full and effective and can be reinforced by the Basson 16' reed stop;
• the Rückpositiv plenum has a much clearer attack, is very present and can be colored by the Sexquialtera II;
• the Unterwerk plenum is more restrained, but can be brightened by the Quinte 11/3', the Sifflet 1', the Terz 13/5' or deepened by the Fagott 16';
• finally, the Pedal plenum is deep, dark, and full, and can be spiced with the Mixture Tierce.
Each principal stop possesses its own characteristic sound, in accordance with the previously described divisions. When the 16', 8' and 4' principal stops are played together with the 16' and 8' Bourdons and the Quinte 102/3', they produce a deep, full and poetic sound.
In addition to these standard stops, there are colorful flute stops, harmonic, with or without holes, and a very narrow-scaled Gambe in the Hauptwerk with its characteristic attack. The Rückpositiv contains a third 4' stop named (Flûte) Allemande. This is, in fact, a harmonic Bourdon whose body length is triple that of an ordinary Bourdon. This stop recalls the Glasharmonika with its strange attacks and its succession of rich harmonies. The same applies to the Traversine 2' with its double length without a hole whose crystalline sonority is doubled by a supplementary pseudo-lower octave sound.' Some of these stops are unknown in France and yet they were used as early as 1560 in northern Europe. As for the Unda Maris on the third keyboard, it also appeared as early as the mid-16th century from Italy to Scandinavia under different names: Voce Umana, Biffera, Piffaro, Unda Maris, Schwebung. This stop allows sounds that are clearly less Baroque. Finally, a colorful Violon 16', with its precise attack, provides definition to the Pedal division.
The tuning of the organ is A=440 Hz at 20°C. The organ is well-tempered with six pure fifths and six tempered fifths according the system of Thomas Young (1800), based on the same principle as the Tartini-Vallotti system (Venice, 1740).

The reed stops

On the Hauptwerk, the conical Basson 16' (C–G half-length) is narrowly scaled, ranging from a deep to a brilliant sonority. In addition, a rather bright Trompette stop can be combined with the double Cornet 8' to form a sort of Grand Jeu. These reeds can be easily combined with the plenum.
On the Unterwerk, a Fagott 16' with a cylindrical body and leathered shallots can serve as a foundation to the plenum but can also be used for smaller combinations. A colorful Voix humaine 8' is installed in an individual expression box that tones down the upper harmonies of this Renaissance Régale. Combined with the 16', 8' and 4' foundations, this stop has the distinctive feature of swelling these foundation stops when one opens the box and thus offers possibilities that are not Baroque at all.
The Rückpositiv contains a well-rounded and colorful Dulciane 8' that can be combined with any stop. The Pedal is quite full, due to four of its stops. A Dulciane 32' (from the family of stops with cylindrical-shaped bodies) provides the indispensable Gravität so cherished by the Cantor from Leipzig in large ensembles. A Buzène 16' (neologism of the Latin Buccin) provides a foundation for the entire building. If one could only place one reed stop in the entire organ, this would be the one. The conical shallots are made of casted tin and leathered. The feet and the blocks are made of oak, the bodies of spruce. All of these various elements combine to produce a well-rounded and full sound whose fundamental clearly stands out from the harmonics (contrary to the French Bombarde). Therefore, the upper harmonies have been weakened. The Trompette 8' with its conical-shaped reeds sounds well-rounded and deep in the bass and progressively becomes brighter in the upper registers. This is reinforced by the Cornet 4' made of tin, which is a very narrow-scaled Clairon in the bass registers and wide in the upper registers (in fact, the size of these thirty notes does not really differ). Each stop played alone sounds gentle and calm but when combined, the 16', 8' and 4' stops produce a majestic sound.
This instrument is by no means a copy of an ancient organ. It is not the latest in fashion. It should be considered as a creation in a given spirit, a creation that would likely bring to life a tradition without nostalgically claiming to bring to life a particular period or any other alleged bygone golden age.

by Aldo J. Baggia

Sunday, July 30, 2000 was the 250th anniversary of the death of Johann Sebastian Bach, and throughout Thüringen there were major celebrations to honor the day.  In Arnstadt, where in 1703 a very young Bach took on the post of organist at the Neue Kirche (now known as the Bachkirche), there was a special religious service that featured the organ and Bach's choral music sung by invited choirs from other parts of Germany. Two days before, on the 28th of July, there had been a performance of the B-Minor Mass in the Bachkirche, which was the culmination of the "Orgel Sommer" festivities, a series of concerts of organ and choral music, starting at the end of June and continuing through all of July.  The "Orgel Sommer" started with a concert at the Bachkirche on June 24 and featured the restored Wender organ of 1703. Arnstadt is an interesting, old German city built around the large Marktplatz and, like many sites associated with Bach, features a statue in Bach's honor. The monument of a young, nonchalant Bach was erected in 1985 by Bernd Göbel during the time of the German Democratic Republic, and has raised controversy because of the lackadaisical nature of the pose. (See illustration.)

 

Following Bach's footsteps in the northwestern part of Thüringen proved to be an interesting experience, because it showed how attached he was to the area. The ancestors of his family lived in Wechmar, a very small village forty kilometers from Eisenach. Veit Bach, the great-great-grandfather of Johann Sebastian, established his home there in the sixteenth century after having left Hungary because of religious persecution. Along with his son, Hans, he owned a bakery and a mill; the ancestral home is a half-timbered house, now a museum, with ample cooking space suitable for a baker.  The house is in the heart of the village and is now its focal point as well.

Bach was born in Eisenach, where the large sixteenth-century house attests to the family's comfortable means. Johann Sebastian's parents died when he was ten and he was sent to study in nearby Ordruf for five years at the Latin grammar school. He lived with his brother Johann Christoph, who was his senior by fourteen years, and who was the organist at the Michaeliskirche. It was during these years that he learned to play the organ under the tutelage of his brother.

Afterwards, he was a student of music at the Michaeliskloster in Lüneburg for two years, and that is where he received the foundations of a theoretical background in music. In 1703 after the Lüneburg period, he took on the position of organist at Arnstadt for three years, an important responsibility for a young man. The position was pivotal for him in that he had three years to play the newly installed organ, of two manuals and pedal and 21 stops, built by Johann Friedrich Wender of Mühl-hausen in the Neue Kirche.

Before his appointment as organist, Bach, then eighteen years old, had been asked to evaluate the organ, which he found to his approval. This organ has been completely restored to the specifications of the time and gives a very good idea of what Bach had to deal with.  It is rich in 16', 8', and 4' stops and has the basic characteristics that are associated with a baroque organ. It had been combined with a large Steinmeyer organ in 1913, and the two formed an instrument of a completely different character.  What one sees today in the third gallery is the case of the restored Wender organ, richly decorated in white and gold. After the company of Ostheim/

Rhön had been given the contract to reconstruct the Wender organ and to restore the Steinmeyer in 1997, it was decided to add the third balcony where the Wender had been originally and to move the Steinmeyer to the first balcony. As such, we now have two separate organs, and the upper balcony has a copy of the original Wender organ, including the case, with two manuals and pedal, of which 320 of the 1252 pipes are original. With the excellent acoustics of the church, this organ has an astonishingly full and brilliant sound. 

During his career, Bach was known primarily as an organist and his innovative work was not always appreciated by the more conservative elements of the congregation. Bach had developed considerable skills as an organist and was known to improvise a great deal during a service. The parishioners did not necessarily relish what they were hearing, which contributed to his leaving Arnstadt. He left the Neue Kirche for a position at the Divi Blasii Kirche in Mühlhausen for one year in 1707. This was important because he wrote out the specifications for changes in the organ there during that year, and the repairs were done after he left. The following are the specifications that he submitted.

Disposition of the new repairs of the Organ at the Divi Blasii.

1. The lack of wind production should be resolved by putting in three good bellows so that the Oberwerk, Rückpositiv and the new Brustwerk would have a more sufficient air flow.

2. The four old bellows that exist should have stronger wind production for the new 32' Untersatz and should be adapted for the remaining bass voices.

3. The old bass wind chests should be removed and replaced with new ones that conduct the wind such that a stop can be played alone or all of the stops can be played without a drop in air pressure, which was not possible formerly, but which is very necessary.

4. Then comes the 32' Subbaß or the so-called Untersatz in wood, which will give the entire division the best gravitas. This should have its own wind chest.

5. The Posaune should have more capacity and the shallots should be differently set so that a better gravitas is provided.

6. That the new Glockenspiel, desired by the parishioners, in the pedal division have 26 chimes at 4'; these chimes should be paid for by the parishioners and the organ builder will take care of their installation.   As far as the Obermanual is concerned the Trumpet should be removed and replaced by a

7. Fagotto 16' tone, which is useful for all sorts of new inventiones (ideas) and sounds delicate in playing musical compositions. Further, instead of the Gemshorn (which should be removed) comes a

8. Viol di Gamba 8', that can mesh well with the existing Salicinal 4' of the Rückpositiv. And instead of the Quinta 3' (which should also be removed) there comes a

9. Nassat 3'. The remaining stops in the Upper Manual can stay, as well as the entire Rückpositiv, which should be re-voiced during the repairs.

10. What should be in the new Brustpositiv are the following voices:

three principals, namely:

1. Quinta 3' (from good 14-ounce tin)

2. Octava 2' (from good 14-ounce tin)

3. Schalemoy 8' (from good 14-ounce tin)

4. Mixtur 3 ranks

5. Tertia, with which one can have a beautiful Sesquialtera by pulling another stop.

6. Fleute douce 4' and finally a

7.  Stillgedacht 8', that would harmonize with the music, and that would be made from good wood, sounding much better than a metallic Gedacht.

11. Between this Brustpositiv and the Oberwerk there has to be a coupler. And finally for the complete voicing of the entire organ, the tremulant must be put into its correct rate of flutter.1

 When the Schuke company of Potsdam built a new organ for the church in 1995 they followed the specifications that Bach had given at the time of his stay there. The hand-written document that he prepared at the time, translated above, is on view in the Town Hall. This does give a very good idea of Bach's thoughts insofar as organ specifications are concerned. The primary considerations as noted were the addition of a third manual, a Sesquialtera stop, and at least one wooden 32' Untersatz if not the Posaune in the Pedal division. He mentions adding a new Brustwerk to the Oberwerk and Rückpositiv, and that would represent the third manual that he desired. Today's organ has a Hauptwerk, which would have been Bach's Oberwerk, a Rückpositiv on the second manual, and a Brustwerk on the third.  There is a Sesquialtera II on both the Hauptwerk and the Rückpositiv, and the Pedal division has a 32' Untersatz, and a 16' Posaune.  

Mühlhausen is a most elegant city that is being beautifully restored. The Marienkirche stands high in the pedestrian zone from where the gothic arches are easily seen. It is the second largest church of Thüringen, next to the Mariendom of Erfurt, and is a stunning sight as one approaches it from the Ratsstraße. At the entrance of the Divi Blasii Kirche there is a plaque which indicates that Bach was the organist for the year 1707-1708. While at Mühl-hausen he had numerous difficulties because his virtuosity was not appreciated. The pastor, who was a Pietist, downplayed the use of music in the religious services, and Bach ended up developing a friendly relationship with the pastor of the Marienkirche on the other side of town. Even though he was there for only one year, the importance of that year is underscored by  the amount of attention given to his ideas on organ building.

In 1708 Bach married his cousin, Maria Barbara Bach, at the Dorfkirche of Dornheim, four kilometers to the east of Arnstadt. It is assumed that he chose that church because the minister, Lorenz Stauber, was a friend of his. After his marriage  he went to Weimar  in the capacity of court organist, and held the post of Concert Master to the Court from 1714 to 1717. During his nine years in Weimar he composed many pieces for organ and harpsichord and over thirty cantatas. He had the advantage of knowing and working with Johann Gottfried Walther, a cousin of his and a significant composer in his own right. He spent the next six years as Hofkapellmeister in Köthen, where he served at the will of Prince Leopold von Anhalt Köthen. The fact that the Prince had been musically trained was significant in fostering his occupation. He ended his career with the longest stay of all in Leipzig, which started in 1723 and lasted until his death on July 30, 1750.   

Even including the Leipzig phase, it is clear that Bach travelled very little in comparison with his contemporary, Händel. If one adds up the distances in the area of Eisenach, Ordruf, Arnstadt, Mühlhausen, and Weimar, all of which are in Thüringen, one would find that the distances hardly total a few hundred kilometers at most. As such, he was so unlike many other great composers who travelled throughout Germany as well as in other countries. It was rare for a composer not to travel and study in Italy because of the early development of lyrical music in that country. Monteverdi's great operas go back to the beginning of the seventeenth century,  and much was learned from the lyricism of Vivaldi. Mozart is a perfect example of one who learned in this fashion.

The wealth of Bach organs in Thüringen makes this a particularly attractive area to visit. As far as the individual organs are concerned, besides the instrument at the Divi Blasii Kirche in Mühlhausen, the other important ones include:

1. The Wender organ at the Bachkirche in Arnstadt, because it would represent what he had and liked at the time of his appointment. Bach had been asked to evaluate the new organ at the time of its installation in 1703.  Two new recordings which feature the resident Kantor, Gottfried Preller, give ample evidence of the quality of the instrument. The outstanding acoustics of the Bachkirche play a special role in the success of the performances of some of Bach's major pieces.

2. The Hildebrandt organ at the Wenzelskirche in Naumburg is one that Bach had inspected, along with Gott-fried Silbermann, at the time of its installation in 1746, and which he found to his liking. This is an organ of 51 stops on three manuals. Its restoration continued in the fall and a re-dedication of the organ took place in December, 2000.   A recording, that is available at the church, features the restored Rückpositiv. Irene Greulich plays a variety of pieces, but the Partita, Jesu meine Freude by Bach's cousin, Johann Gott-fried Walther (1684-1748), shows off this division to very good effect. What the recording demonstrates in particular are the excellent acoustics of the church.2

3. The Heinrich Gottfried Trost  organ of the Schlosskirche in Altenburg, which Bach knew and appreciated. This organ was installed in 1739. The Hauptwerk and Oberwerk are rich in 8' stops, and the Pedal division has six 16' stops and a 32' Posaune.

4. Another Trost organ at the Stadtkirche in Waltershausen, which was built in 1724-30 but not completed until 1755 by another builder, Johann Heinrich Ruppert, would seem to have the specifications that Bach would have ideally desired. Ewald Kooiman from Amsterdam wrote in the liner notes of his CD "Bach in Waltershausen" that this organ with its combination of gravitas and lovely tone would be the closest to the ideal organ sound that Johann Sebastian Bach was seeking, when compared to all other so-called "Bach Organs," whether from Schnitger or Silbermann.3 Of the 50 stops there are nineteen 8-foot stops in the Hauptwerk, Oberwerk, Brustwerk and Pedal, and three 16-foot stops in the Hauptwerk and four in the Pedal. Of the rest, twelve are 4-foot stops spread out throughout the divisions and these three pitches represent 38 stops of the organ. This is certainly in keeping with the concept of a baroque organ, plus it adds one 32-foot stop in the Pedal division to provide the necessary gravitas.

At Mühlhausen a 32-foot stop for the Pedal was one of the changes that Bach envisioned for the new organ.  The current organ at the Divi Blasii Kirche has 40 stops, rich in 8' and 4' stops in the Hauptwerk, Brustwerk and Rückpositiv, and has three 16' stops and one 32' Untersatz in the Pedal division. Most of the organs in all of Thüringen tend to be between 20+ to 30+ stops--only a few in the entire province are larger. In the city of Erfurt the Mariendom organ has 60 stops, and that of the Prediger-kirche has 56. Both of these organs were built by Schuke of Potsdam and represent installations that were done within the last thirty years.

5. The organ at the Stadtkirche in Bad Berka is important because it was built originally to the specifications that Bach had drawn up. Heinrich Nicolaus Trebs, court organ builder from Wei-mar, built the organ in 1742-43 with 26 stops on Hauptwerk, Oberwerk and Pedal, instead of the 28 stops that Bach had specified, and it is thought that this was done because of lack of space in the west tower. The organ had mainly 8' stops throughout the divisions, and when a new organ was installed in the original case in 1991 by the firm of Gerhard Böhm of Gotha, it pretty much retained the same specifications with the substitution of more 4' stops in the Hauptwerk. There had been alterations and rebuilds over the years for a variety of reasons, and the work in 1991 was intended to put the organ back into its original condition. It does not have a 32' pedal stop. A concert on August 9, 2000,  with the house organist, Bernd Müller, which included music from the seventeenth through the twentieth centuries, showed the versatility of the organ, and a recording on the Motette label by Weiland Meinhold confirmed its qualities by including music by Bach and Töpfer. The Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C Major, BWV 564, clearly shows how ideal this organ is for Bach's music.   The pedal solos and the clarity of articulation demonstrate the strength of the specifications of the instrument.4

6. The Lukaskirche organ in Mühl-berg, II/26, was originally built and installed in 1729 by Franciscus Volckland of Erfurt. The specifications are very similar to those of the Wender organ at the Bachkirche in Arnstadt, and the organ was fully restored in 1997 by the Fa. Orgelbau Waltershausen. The case is richly decorated in white, blue and gold, and the acoustics of the church are first-rate by any standards, with a sound that is clear and full. At a concert on July 23, Dan Lönnqvist from Finland was outstanding in showing off the qualities of this organ as a Bach instrument. He played the Pièce d'Orgue, BWV 572, and the Fantasy & Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542, and both were outstanding examples of pieces played on an organ of quality in superb acoustics.  The setting could not be better in this church with its magnificent interior of white and gold, including the organ gallery high up in the west tower. A recording available at the church has Jozef Sluys playing a Bach program which features four of the Preludes and Fugues.5

Bach was primarily known as an organ virtuoso and choirmaster during his lifetime and some of his Toccatas and Fugues were written during his early years in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen. There is some thought that he might not be the author of the famous Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, BWV 565.  In 1971 a music scholar first raised this issue, and an article in the Thüringer Allegemeine Zeitung on July 28 quoted the organist of the Bachkirche in Arnstadt, Gottfried Preller, as saying, "I am convinced that the Toccata was not written by Bach. It is not provable by looking at the hand-written notes, but the piece is absolutely untypical of Bach." Preller's thoughts on perceived shortcomings in meter and quality bring him more to the conclusion that the Toccata was written by Bach's student, Johann Peter Kellner, a choirmaster from Gräfenroda, a town not far from Arnstadt. "That the composition comes from Bach's influence is clear. But it does not have Bachian command," he says further. Preller thinks that it would be atypical for Bach to have written a fugue of the type in this composition. The Fugue takes up two thirds of the work, and, in his opinion, is not integrally structured and, in comparison to the dramatic Toccata, is conspicuously bland.6 Preller also said: "We should accept the idea that there will always be a few problematic pieces to deal with . . . as well as the fact that we will never be able to resolve all questions with respect to Bach."7

Similar questions have been raised with respect to the authenticity of a variety of works by recognized masters. This has always been the case and therefore it is hardly surprising that such questions would be raised about some of Bach's works. Nonetheless, there is still no proof that certain works were not his, and with respect to the Toccata & Fugue in D Minor, others would argue that it has everything that one would expect from the pen of a young composer. Karl Geiringer writes that "The theme seems to be inspired by the violinistic technique of playing in quick alternation on two neighboring strings, a device Bach was often to employ in his music for keyboard instruments. The toccata's torrents of sound and dazzling fireworks create a tone poem of passionate subjectivity; yet there is a masterly craftsmanship underlying all this outpouring of emotion. . . . In its intensity and exuberance this is clearly a product of Bach's youth, but there is no groping and uncertainty in it."8

Clearly, if the Toccata & Fugue does not come from the Arnstadt years, it cannot be far removed. There is enough to show that the late works have a consistency about them that really demonstrates the development in the artistic ability of the composer. The contradictory arguments dealing with his works are similar to the ones surrounding his ideas on the organ: it is known that Bach favored having a 32' pedal stop, and yet the specifications that he left for an organ in Bad Berka did not include a 32' stop. When he arrived in Arnstadt,  the newly installed Wender organ did not include a 32' stop, and even when the Steinmeyer was added to the Wender in 1913, the result was a relatively large organ which was rich in 8' and 16' stops but did not include a 32' pedal stop. This is like trying to define exactly what a baroque organ or baroque organ sound should be. A compromise would seem to indicate that the baroque organ should be a three-manual organ of some 30+ stops with a Pedal division that has a 32' Untersatz. The majority of the stops in the Hauptwerk and Oberwerk should be based on 8' and 16' pipes. Without dismissing the need for reed stops, it is clear that they are not prominent. However, one might ask if this is simply for lack of knowledge about them or for a conscious dislike of the reed sound. Did the liturgical needs of the instrument take the lead and therefore obviate the desire for reed stops? Peter Williams picks up this issue in an article in The IAO Millennium Book, which was recently published in England.9 He asserts that there is no concept of "Bach's ideal organ" and that it is incorrect to point to organs that had a direct connection with the composer to address the question.10 He writes "not only would no single organ have shown all of this music at its best but any great composer is likely to work to a platonic ideal that could never exist. In any case, there are problems with giving priority to any of these organs. The first is that Bach never presided over any of the great organs of the day, as his Obituary already reports him as frequently remarking. Furthermore, it is difficult to see how there could be one single ideal instrument, because the repertory itself, from the early chorales and praeludia to the late Leipzig works, spans almost half a century. Not only is this the very period when the organ underwent considerable development and changed as far as it could before nineteenth-century technologies laid out other paths for it, but no great composer is likely to keep the same ideals of sound for half a century."11 In effect Williams is saying that the more we know about the organs of Bach's time, the more questions we have rather than answers as to what the "ideal Bach organ" might be.

We should always remember that Bach's main tasks at Leipzig were to direct the Thomaner Choir School, teach at the school, including Latin, serve as Music Director of the Lutheran churches in Leipzig and to compose and conduct liturgical music on a weekly basis. This represented his job during the last twenty-seven years of his life. Most of the music he wrote was performed during the Sunday services at the Thomaskirche. It is generally assumed that he had the position of organist at the Thomaskirche, but this is simply not true. He was not the organist of either the Thomaskirche or the Nikolaikirche, the other large church in Leipzig, which today contains a restored Ladegast organ of over 90 stops, and he did not have a position specifically related to either one of those churches.

The trip to Thüringen last summer was rich in its discoveries of much of Bach's early surroundings, and underscores once again the quality of genius that one associates with German composers and organ builders over the centuries.

 

Notes

                  1.              A basically literal translation of the liner notes which gave Bach's original specifications in German from the CD Violet LC8900, Vol. 13, Orgellandschaft Thüringen, Die Schuke-Orgel in der Kirche Divi Blasii zu Mühlhausen, Felix Friedrich.  A slightly differently worded translation is given in The New Bach Reader - A life of Johann Sebastian Bach in letters and documents, ed. by Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel and revised and expanded by Christoph Wolff, W. W. Norton and Company, 1998, pp. 55 and 56.

                  2,              cf.  CD, LC8418 Tonträger Produktion,  Orgelpunkt Zwölf, Irene Greulich am Rückpositiv der Hildebrandt-Orgel zu St. Wenzel in Naumburg. 

                  3.              cf.  liner notes in the CD "Bach in Waltershausen" as mentioned in a flyer of the Stadtkirche, 3 Lutherstraße, 99880 Waltershausen.

                  4.              CD 11851 Motette, Weimarer Orgelmusik,  Wieland Meinhold an der Böhm-Orgel der Stadtkirche zu Bad Berka.

                  5.              cf. CD 87 148 René Gailly, Johann Sebastian Bach auf den Orgeln seiner Heimat (vol. 4), Jozef Sluys, Domorganist Brüssel spielt die Volckland-Hesse Orgel zu Mühlberg.

                  6.              cf. article by Frauke Adrians in the Thüringer Allgemeine Zeitung of July 28th, 2000, p. 3.

                  7.              Ibid.

                  8.              Karl Geiringer, Johann Sebastian Bach, The Culmination of an Era, Oxford University Press, New York, 1966, p. 218.

                  9.              Article by Peter Williams in The IAO Millennium Book, ed. by Paul Hale, Incorporated Associated Organists 2000, pp. 1-14.

                  10.           Ibid. p. 3

                  11.           Ibid.

Other sources of information.  All translations from the German were done by the author.

1.              Bachstätten--Ein Reiseführer zu Johann Sebastian Bach by Martin Petzoldt, Insel Verlag, Frankfurt-am-Main, 2000.

2.              Johann Sebastian Bach, the Learned Musician, by Christoph Wolff, W. W. Norton and Company, New York and London, 2000.

3.              The New Bach Reader - a life of Johann Sebastian Bach in letters and documents, ed. by Hans T. David and Arthur Mendel and revised and expanded by Christoph Wolff, W. W. Norton and Company,  New York and London, 1998.

4.              Oxford Composer Companions, J. S. Bach, ed. by Malcolm Boyd, Oxford University Press, 1999.

5.              Bach by Malcolm Boyd, in the Master Musicians Series, ed. by Stanley Sadie, Schirmer Books, New York 1997.

6.              The IAO Millennium Book, ed. by Paul Hale, Incorporated Association of Organists 2000.

7.              Festchrift zur Wiedereinweihung, Johann-Sebastian-Bach-Kirche zu Arnstadt, Herausgegeben zum Einweihungstag am 16. Januar 2000 vom Kuratorium Bachkirche Arnstadt 2000 und der Evang.-Luth. Kirchgemeinde Arnstadt.

8.              CD, Bach in Arnstadt, 4/2000 Evangelisch-Lutherische Kirchgemeinde Arnstadt, Gottfried Preller spielt an der Wender Orgel (1703) der J.-S.-Bach-Kirche.

9.              CD, Johann Sebastian Bach in Arnstadt,  2000 Orgelbau-Hoffman, Ostheim/Rhön, Gottfried Preller spielt an der Wender-Hoffman-Orgel Werke von Johann Sebastian Bach.

 

Aldo J. Baggia is Chairman of the Department of Modern Languages and Instructor in French, Spanish, German and Italian at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire. He holds a bachelor's degree from Iona College and the MA from Middlebury College, and has completed graduate work at Laval University and Duke University. He has pursued postgraduate studies in France, Germany, Austria and Spain, and has travelled extensively in Europe. He has written numerous opera reviews for Quarterly Opera Review, Opera, Opera News, Orpheus and Monsalvat. He has written articles and reviews for The Diapason.