Monumental organs in monumental churches:

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.

A recent trip to Europe afforded my family and me an opportunity to hear, see, and in one instance, play organs ranging from the early Baroque to the present day. The first one we encountered was a one-manual Bazzani organ in the resort community of Cavallino, Italy, dating from 1891. Its builder, Giacomo Bazzani, was the youngest son of Pietro Bazzani, also an organ builder. Pietro learned organ building with the great Venetian organ builder Callido, who learned building organs from Nacchini, so the organ at the Church of Santa Maria Elisabetta represents a tradition dating back to the 17th century.

The specification is

Principale 8' Bassi (C - c#) 

Principale 8' Soprani (d - f3) 

Ottava 4' 

Decima Quinta 2' 

Decima Nona 11⁄3' 

Vigesima Seconda 1' 

Vigesima Sesta 2⁄3'

Vigesima Nona 1⁄2' 

Voce Umana 8' 

Viola 4' Soprani 

Flauta 4' Bassi 

Flauta 4' Soprani 

Ottavino 2'

The manual compass is C - f3. The pedal stops are

Tromboncini 4' 

Trombone 8' 

Contrabassi 16' con Ottave (8')

The compass of the pedals is 18 notes starting on low C. In the lower octave of both manual and pedal a short compass is used as follows: bottom white note sounds C; next white note plays F; first black note plays low D; next white note plays G; next black note plays E; next white note plays A; the next back note plays A#, and the next white note plays B. From there the sequence is normal. The pedal board is tilted upward from  front to back at an angle of about 25 degrees.

There are no mechanical aids except for the usual tiratutti, which brings on all the upper ripieno. This is done by means of a hitchdown pedal, so it is possible to draw on the 8' Principale treble and bass with perhaps the Flauta 4' treble and bass or Ottava 4' for a mezzo forte, and then bring on the whole ripieno quickly for a forte.

The church itself is not large, seating perhaps 200, but built with hard reflective surfaces so that the full ripieno with the pedal contrabassi 16' and 8' really fills the space admirably.

I had lots of time with this instrument since I was playing a recital, and of course the classic Italian literature suits it perfectly. The sections from Zipoli's Sonate d'intavolatura came off especially well on this instrument. The manual touch is very sensitive, much like that of a German Brustwerk.

The next organ was in the tiny Austrian village of Reutte, close to the German border, near King Ludwig the Second's castles of Schwangau, Neusch-wanstein and Linderhof. In our case we had planned a trip to Linderhof and then to the Monastery of Ettal just a few miles beyond. Renting a car from our hotel, the charming Hotel Maximillian, we set out for Linderhof, driving along the Plainsee, which was indeed awe-inspiring with its deep emerald color at the base of the German Alps.

We arrived just in time for the 11:00 English tour, which took only a half hour since Linderhof was Ludwig's smallest and most livable castle. In the first room we came to a gilded instrument that we assumed was a piano, but that we were told is a combination harmonium-piano which Ludwig commissioned in the hope that his hero Richard Wagner would visit him and perform his music on it. However, this never happened.

After the tour, those of us strong enough climbed a steep hill to reach the Venus Grotto, which is a representation of the Venusberg scene from Wagner's Tannhäuser. Appropriately, we were treated to a recording of the composer's "Hymn to the Evening Star" from Tannhäuser.

Driving on to the historic monastery of Ettal, we arrived just as a visiting organist was trying out the 1753 organ built by J.G. Hoerthrich with a beautiful  gilt casework by Simon Gartner dating from 1768. The sound of the instrument was indeed impressive as the organist pitted the divisions of the organ against each other with the full principal chorus in the pedal. As we left he or she was playing Mendelssohn's "O for the wings of a dove" on a particularly full and rich 8' flute.

When we returned to the hotel and went to the dining room, I noticed an organ console on the wall to the left of the dining room's front door. Set on top were six principal pipes of tin, with the mouths fairly deeply nicked. There were also several pictures of a man playing this console. After dinner I borrowed paper and pen to copy down the organ's specification. The hotel receptionist asked me if I was interested in organs, and I told her that I was an organist, whereupon she said her father had played this organ for fifty years and those were his pictures on the top of the console. She also said he would be happy to take me by their church. A day later that's exactly what we did.

About 9 pm we drove over to the Catholic Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, an imposing 500-year-old edifice that we had passed on the way to Linderhof. It is a Baroque church with excellent acoustics. Herr Koch  told me that since disposing of the 1817 organ, they had signed a contract for a new Vershuren instrument of 31 registers. He said, very proudly, that it was a 4-manual and that there would be six solo stops such as oboe, clarinet, etc. on one of the manuals.

They were using an electronic instrument in the meantime and he invited me to play it. After improvising briefly, I played a memorized piece and then invited him to play. He did so and I had a chance to listen to the ambience of the building. The touch of the Viscount instrument was very hard--so hard that it was difficult to play legato.

Readers may be interested in the specification of the old organ since it sheds light on early 19th-century instruments. The builder was Franz Reinisch of Steinach, Tirol, and it was his opus 158. The Hauptwerk includes

Bourdon 16' 

Prinzipal 8' 

Prinzipalino 8' 

Hohlflöte 8' 

Salizional 8' 

Oktav 4' 

Flöte 4' 

Quint 22⁄3' 

Superoktav 2' 

Mixtur 11⁄3' 

Trompete harmonic 8'

The Schwellwerk:

Geigen-Prinzipal 8' 

Gedeckt 8' 

Quintaton 8' 

Prästant 4' 

Rohrflöte 4' 

Waldflöte 2' 

Cornett 2' 

Zimbel 1'

There was a blank knob on the Schwell and I asked Herr Koch if there was an 8' Oboe on the division  but he said there wasn't. However, between his rudimentary English and my elementary German there was much room for misunderstanding, so we can only surmise what the blank represented. The pedal:

Violonbass 16'

Subbass 16'

Echobass 16'

Oktavbass 8'

Choralbass 4'

Posaune 16'

There are a number of mechanicals as well as a crescendo pedal and a Schwellwerk pedal.

Leaving the colorful Tyrol landscape behind, we boarded the train for historic Nuremberg. There we headed for Pachelbel's church, St. Sebald. Again we were in luck. A student was practicing the large organ, which was placed to one side of the choir facing the altar. In addition to the main organ, there is a one-manual organ on wheels. It can be used anywhere in the large church: as a separate instrument, or connected to the main instrument to act as a rückpositiv. There is also a four-manual console on a cable connected to the main organ. The organ builder is Willi Peter of Cologne.

The organist was practicing the six Schübler Chorales as we were studying the various treasures of this historic edifice, so we had a chance to listen to the solo voices of the instrument. Just as we were about to leave, the organist began a composition wherein a subsidiary division plays imitative counterpoint mf, only to be interrupted at regular intervals by the full ensemble including a 32' reed and a 32' Prinzipal. The effect was electrifying and we sat down until this composition ran its course.

Before we take our leave of this great church we should remember that it house the oldest organ in Germany, the "Traxdorffsche" organ that was placed in a loft at the back of the church until its destruction in the bombing of Nuremberg in 1945.

On this somber note, we walked down to the Old Market to admire the "Schöner Brunner" (beautiful fountain), a 14th-century Gothic fountain which is a symbol of Nuremberg. Close by is the lovely Frauenkirche, a small church erected during the reign of Emperor Karl IV, that served as a court chapel from 1352 until 1361.

Noting that there would be a recital that evening, we resolved to return to hear the 3-manual Klais instrument. Our efforts were well-rewarded. The recitalist was Waclaw Golonka of Prague, winner of a number of organ contests including the Wettbewerb in Pretoria (1998). His program consisted of works by Couperin, Pachelbel, Bach, Segar, and Duruflé. He is an unassuming player, but every challenge was conquered with ease, and the music reached us with no idiosyncrasies to block its beauty. One could only hope that he will play often in the United States.

Our hotel was in the St. Lorenz district, so one morning I wandered into the impressive St. Lorenz Church. Like St. Sebald, this building is a reconstruction following the bombing of World War II, but it is well done and to the casual eye it certainly looks like a Gothic masterpiece.

The organist was practicing Liszt's Prelude and Fugue on BACH while I wandered through the medieval treasures of St. Lorenz. However, in consideration of our ears, he played mf, so I cannot comment on the present organ, but it is undoubtedly significant that the church is in the midst of a drive to raise funds for a new instrument, which is to be built by Klais.

Reluctantly leaving this interesting city, we headed east to another reconstructed city, Dresden. The star of the Dresden organ world is the Silbermann instrument in the Catholic Hofkirche. The organ was unfinished in 1750 when Gottfried Silbermann fell from a scaffold in the church and died shortly thereafter. However, his son Johann Andreas Silbermann and his former journeyman Zacharias Hildebrandt completed it in 1755. During World War II the pipes were removed for safekeeping and after the war the instrument was reconstructed by Messrs. Jehmlich, a Dresden firm.

Today the interior of the church shows no evidence of the damage done by the war and a fine Anton Mengs "Ascension" hangs over the high altar, balancing the restored façade of the organ in the rear gallery.

We were fortunate to be in Dresden on a Saturday when there was an organ vesper service at 4 pm at the Hofkirche. As we entered the large church we were surprised at the large audience. Organ recitals are well attended in Europe!

The attendees at the service were well served. Opening with a toccata by George Muffat, the recitalist, Andreus Meisner of Altenburg, continued with music by Bruhns, Bach and Rheinberger. There was no admission charge but donations were accepted at the door as we left.

The impression which this instrument made was one of brilliance and warmth--plenty of bright mixtures, but also warm and full 8' tone. In studying the specification, we were struck by the  presence of a Schwebung (celeste) on the Hauptwerk. Probably because of the generous supply of 8' stops, the Rheinberger sonata came off remarkably well. The 8' flutes had quite a bit of "chiff."

As we walked back to our hotel, we came upon another important church in the life of Dresden, the Kreuzkirche. Restored after the bombings of the Second World War, the exterior looks fine. The interior, however, has been only roughly plastered over.

In the rear gallery there is a large mechanical action organ by Jehmlich, and there is a small encased organ in the front. The church is the home of the Kreutzchor, a fine men and boys choir, and there is a very busy musical schedule at this church. Some weeks there are two or three musical activities programmed.

Our next stop was another musically active city, Lübeck. One can only be impressed by the imposing Holstentor towers as one enters the old town. With Buxtehude's towering Marienkirche and the equally historic Jacobikirche, Lübeck is a paradise for organists.

We came first to the Jacobikirche. With its two historic organs it is one of Germany's most treasured sites. In the back gallery is a large Arp Schnitger, famous from the many recordings that have been made upon it. We were delighted that an organist was playing this instrument as we soaked up the atmosphere of this edifice. After several Bach works, the player switched to Reger, which worked well on the instrument.

We were sorry not to hear the Stellwagen organ on the side of the church, equally as famous as the rear gallery organ, but we were able to find a recording of Buxtehude's organ music played on both instruments by Armin  Schoof (Motette CD-10831).

The Marienkirche, Buxtehude's church, was almost completely destroyed by an air raid in 1942. Both organs were lost. Rebuilding was begun in 1947 and completed in 1980. The two new organs occupy the same spots in the church as they did in the original church, namely a large mechanical organ in the rear gallery and a smaller one, the "Danse Macabre" organ, on the side of the church above the "Danse Macabre" chapel. The rear gallery instrument is by Kemper & Sohn from Lübeck. The "Danse Macabre" organ is by Wilhelm Fuhrer of Wilhelmshaven and dates from 1986. The large organ in the rear gallery has five manuals with 101 sounding voices.

We did briefly hear the side organ after a noonday service, and purchased two CDs of the organs. Both are played by the organist of the church, Ernst-Erich Stender. The one on the Kemper instrument is "Max Reger, the organworks," Vol. I (Ornament 11447). The second, on the "Danse Macabre" instrument, is "Great Organ Works" by J.S. Bach (Ornament 11445). Herr Stender plays 30 to 40 recitals a year on these two instruments with different programs!

In the "Briefkapelle," the most im-portant of the side chapels, there is an organ which came from East Prussia. Built in 1723, it has been in Lübeck since 1933.

There is another church near the Marienkirche which was also destroyed in 1942 and which has been rebuilt. However, it is no longer used for worship, but for musical programs and art exhibits. At the St. Petrikirche one can climb its towers to get a panoramic view of this ancient free city. There is a small  encased organ in what used to be the sanctuary.

The other large church in downtown Lübeck is the Dom. While not as large as the Marienkirche, it is impressive in its own right. An enlargement of the chancel in the Gothic style in the 14th century transformed this Romanesque church.

A side placement of the large 3-manual Marcussen organ focuses the tone toward the congregation. While we were not able to hear the organ, we found an interesting CD of it played by Hartmut Rohmeyer, entitled "Johann Sebastian Bach--Orgelwerke I, Der Junge Bach" (ambitus amb 97 863).

There are other things to see in Lübeck besides organs and churches, of course, such as the interesting Dutch architecture and the "Buddenbrooks" house associated with Thomas and Heinrich Mann, and we heartily recommend Lübeck as a stop for the discerning tourist. Everything is within walking distance.

 Leaving this picturesque city, we headed for our last stop, Eisenach. Eisenach is, of course, the birthplace of J.S. Bach and we headed straight for the Bachhaus. After an individually guided tour of the house (they give you a sheet in your own language to help), we gathered in a small recital hall to hear some of Bach's music. A young man talked briefly of the significance of Bach's music and then played examples of it, on two small organs dating from Bach's era. The first was a Swiss instrument of three stops dating from 1750, in which the air was pumped by the foot of the performer. The second was a German instrument of four stops dating from 1722. In this instance he called upon a member of the audience to hand pump the bellows. He then played examples of Bach's clavier music upon a clavichord and a harpsichord from the 18th century. Interspersed with the keyboard works were taped examples of Bach's orchestral and choral works. After this, we walked down the street to the Lutherhaus where we listened to examples of Luther's chorales in 16th-century and modern settings, and saw where Luther studied Latin.

A block away we came upon the impressive parish church of St. George where Bach was baptized and where Luther preached in 1521, even though he had been banned from the Holy Roman Empire for his beliefs.

On the left wall a plaque traced the history of the Bach family members who had served as organists of this church. Even though they were not immediate members of Bach's family (they were cousins from the Erfurt branch of the Bach family), it served to remind us of the importance of the Bachs in the sacred and secular music of the 17th and 18th centuries in central Germany.

As we left Eisenach to head for Frankfurt and home, we felt that in this musical pilgrimage we had come a lot closer to the life and times of such giants as Johann Pachelbel, Dietrich Buxtehude and J.S. Bach.                 

Richard Peek is a graduate of Michigan State University and the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary. He served Covenant Presbyterian Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, as Minister of Music for 47 years and is now Minister of Music Emeritus. He has written articles for The Diapason, The American Organist, The Tracker, and Reformed Liturgy and Music, and has written numerous organ and choral works.

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).

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.

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.

Our guide book on Saxony in Germany indicated that no. 2 in Kleinbobritzsch was the house where the celebrated organ builder, Gottfried Silbermann, was born. I thought it was interesting that the town was so small that this address was sufficient to find the house, and indeed it is. Kleinbobritzsch, in effect, has one street and is in a line of small villages a few kilometers from Frauenstein where his family moved two years after his birth in 1683. One goes through Niederbobritzsch and Oberbobritzsch and therefore we have a "Lower," "Upper," and "Small" Bobritzsch but no town of Bobritzsch itself. Silbermann left Saxony for a short time to study the trade of organ building with his brother Andreas in Strasbourg and after a few years in France he returned to Saxony in 1710 and built his first organ for the Stadtkirche in Frauenstein in 1711. That organ was destroyed in a city fire in 1728.

It is amazing that, with such little experience, he was given the contract to build the large 3-manual organ for the Cathedral in Freiberg in 1711. He relocated to a house at the current Schloßplatz in Freiberg, which is only twenty kilometers from Frauenstein, and this became his living quarters and workshop until his death in 1753. He remained dedicated to Saxony during his entire life and was quoted at the time of building his first organ for the church in Frauenstein that he was doing it for his "country, the honor of God and the love of the church."

Silbermann was high on my list of interests in planning a trip to Saxony  this past summer. People are acquainted with his organ in the Cathedral of Freiberg (III/45), at least by reputation, but few have had the opportunity to see and hear a number of his other organs in the old province. Political considerations made trips to the former German Democratic Republic difficult, and it has only been in recent years that road conditions have been sufficiently upgraded in order to make travel in the former East Germany bearable. Four years ago I spent two months in Germany as part of a sabbatical year and drove through parts of the provinces of  Sachsen-Anhalt and Thüringen and found the roads to be in a deplorable state. That is no longer the case.

Werner Müller in his book Auf den Spuren von Gottfried Silbermann points out that Silbermann made forty-eight organs and that the last one attributed to him, the large 3-manual in the Katholische Hofkirche in Dresden (the Cathedral), was finished by his associates, one of whom was Zacharias Hildebrandt, who subsequently became quite well known for the organ in the Wenzelkirche in Naumburg (Thüringen).   The Dresdner Hofkirche organ was stored for safe keeping in 1944 and therefore survived the bombing of  the city  in February, 1945.   At the time the case was destroyed, and the present one is a copy of the original. The organ was restored by the Jehmlich Brothers of Dresden and re-dedicated in 1971.

Other Silbermann organs have also been  destroyed by fires, either in the Second World War or in other wars such as the Seven Years War in the eighteenth century. The famous organ in the Frauenkirche in Dresden (III/45) was destroyed in the bombing of 1945 as was the organ of the Sophienkirche (II/31). The large organ of the Johanniskirche in Zittau (III/44) was destroyed in the Seven Years War in 1757

Silbermann had the lofty title of  "Königlich-polnischer und kurfürstlich-sächsischer Hof- und Landorgelbauer," which translates as "Organ builder to the Courts of the King of Poland and the Elector of the State of Saxony." Saxony was his homeland and all of his organs with the exception of those in Burgk, Greiz, Lebusa and Großmehlen,  were built for churches there. Even those four towns were on Saxony's borders. Saxony is primarily Lutheran country and with the exception of the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Dresden, the churches with his organs are generally the Stadtkirche (the city church) or the Dorfkirche (the village church), both of which would be the local Lutheran church of a particular town.   The architecture of all of these churches tends to be similar and the differences that exist in their layout are primarily those of size. There would be a central tower of considerable mass in the larger ones such as the churches in Sayda, Großhartmannsdorf and Oederan and a narrower one as at St. Petri in Rochlitz and all would be topped with some variation of an onion bulb under a cross. The massive Cathedral in Freiberg is basically a gothic construction that has two imposing towers that are squared and shaved at the top. The original Lady Chapel is pure gothic and the nave with its high arches is typical of other churches in Saxony. The south chancel portal is the elaborately sculptured "Goldene Pforte" which is now protected from the elements by a wooden foyer which completely encloses it.  A life-size replica of it can be seen at the Busch-Reisinger Museum at Harvard University. It was moved from the western side of the Cathedral in 1487 and covered during the renovation work of 1827-36. The Annenkirche in Annaberg-Buchholz, St. Aegidien in Oschatz, the Cathedral in Zwickau and the Marienkirche in Pirna have similar interiors insofar as the nave and aisles are concerned. These four churches are among the largest in Saxony and are architectural gems that survived the Second World War, but while they deserve a visit, they were never associated with Silbermann.

Freiberg itself is a treasure chest for anyone interested in Silbermann's organs since four of those extant are located there. Besides the two in the Dom, there are the (II/32) of 1735 in St. Petri and the (II/20) of 1716 in the Jakobikirche, the latter having been transferred to the current church which was built in 1892. In both examples the cases are the original ones and the case of the Jakobikirche carries the State of Arms of Saxony at the top because it was built by the municipal carpenter of Freiberg, Elias Lindner, in 1718. The Petrikirche organ, which also carries the Arms of Saxony, is considered important because it points the way to Silbermann's later ideas on organ building while the Dom organ of 1711, which was his second organ, was the fruit of  his earlier ideas. The Petrikirche organ was built between 1733 and 1735 and achieves a majestic sound that fulfils the desires of the later baroque era. It was his first organ with a 16¢ Principal in the Hauptwerk and is particularly important from that point of view because the organs in the Frauenkirche in Dresden and the Johanniskirche in Zittau, which were both larger and  more developed, have not survived.

Most of Silbermann's organs were one- or two-manual instruments of 12 to 20 stops, and the one-manual organ of 14 stops from St. Johannis in Freiberg was moved to the north chancel of the Dom in 1939 and very recently restored. It was featured in the five concerts that I attended this summer in Freiberg and was a very good example of what one expects from a Silbermann organ, i.e., a clarity of sound, particularly in the flutes, and a variety of color that is very appropriate for expressive music. It also has a power that one would not expect from a one-manual organ. Obviously the superb acoustics of the Dom have a lot to do with the sound that is produced. The west tower organ has a brilliance and clarity that really stand out. The case of the large organ is magnificent by any standards and when Dr. Felix Friedrich from the Altenburger Schloßkirche launched into Bach's famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor in the concert of August 13th, the sound of the instrument, the beauty of the church, and the piece itself made it a truly magical experience.

I was interested in hearing the organ in more modern music to see what its range would be and how it would sound when compared to much larger symphonic instruments such as those of E.M. Skinner or Henry Willis III.  Some nineteenth- and twentieth-century pieces were programmed and there was no difficulty in producing the necessary sound mass that one would associate with such music. Kent Tritle from St. Ignatius in New York City played George Crumb's Pastoral Drone, Ned Rorem's Views from the Oldest House and Mendelssohn's Sonata in C Minor, op. 65. Dr. Friedrich from Altenburg played Eberhard Böttcher's Choralvorspiel und Fuge über Veni creator spiritus and Friedrich Metzler's 3 Choralvorspiele aus dem Choralkreis. Stephan Leuthold from Dresden, who was the winner of the Gottfried-Silbermann competition in 1997, finished up his concert with Gustav Merkel's Sonata in D, op. 118. In general the other works played by all of these organists were by Bach or his contemporaries.

It so happened that the organ (II/19) in the Dorfkirche in Nassau celebrated its 250th anniversary on August 2nd and there were a number of activities associated with its re-dedication during the course of the ensuing week. The Jehmlich Company of Dresden was hired to do the restoration and Stephan Leuthold was the organist for the final concert of the week on August 9th. He closed his program with Schumann's Fuge Nr. 1 über BACH, op. 60 and Rheinberger's Sonata in A, op. 98. These are pieces that require a flexibility of  registrations and a certain amount of power, and there was no difficulty in the organ's ability to sustain the sounds required. The serious drawback was the lack of good acoustics in the building which had practically no reverberation at all. It is a very small church with a low ceiling and the sound is deadened even though the interior is entirely made of wood. As such, the amplitude and majesty that one hears in the Dom or in the Petrikirche in Freiberg were completely absent. The restoration of this organ was financed by a retired teacher and organ aficionado, Hubert Hofer, who supported the restoration of the Silbermann organs in Frankenstein, Großmehlen, Glauchau and Zöblitz. He was quoted in an article in the Freiberg edition of the Freie Presse as saying: "I have spent my lifetime in a simple and frugal way and have developed my great love for the organ. Gottfried Silbermann's organs are close to my heart because they are, as I would say, unequalled in their sound and manner of construction."

The one two-manual that really stood out in my mind was the organ at Oederan, which is a small town about 14 kilometers west of Freiberg and on the road to Chemnitz. The Stadtkirche is very large and the (II/25) instrument has a very impressive sound of clarity and grandeur. The contract was written in 1724 and the dedication took place on May 25th, 1727. The organ was kept in its original state until the middle of the 19th century by Silbermann's successors. When the church was renovated in 1890-92, a neo-gothic case was built to go with the changes in the interior. At the same time the Jehmlich Company of Dresden did some re-building of the instrument and further work was done in 1968 by the Eule Orgelbau Firma of Bautzen. The Eule Company did a complete restoration of the organ in 1992-93 with the intention of putting it in its original condition, i.e., meeting the technical and acoustical levels that Silbermann had achieved. Although Silbermann's organs are generally associated with Bach, one should note that Silbermann had never followed the customs of other German builders with respect to his stoplist and tuning and his organs represent a combination of German and French principles. Unless the tuning were changed, one would, in theory, play Bach's music "imperfectly" on a Silbermann organ, even though Bach had a great interest in the French school of organ building.

In his book, Organ, Arthur Wills stresses the point that Silbermann's organ at Fraureuth represents a good example of the blending of the German and French elements in organ building.    On the Ars Vivendi label there is a fine recording of Bach's Toccata, Adagio und Fuge C-dur BWV 564 by Johannes-Ernst Köhler on the Fraureuth organ (11/20), which was built between 1739 and 1742. There is a great variety of color, and the tone is absolutely beautiful.

I attended a recital in Oederan on Thursday, July 23rd, and the only disappointment was that there were only four people in the church, including my wife and me.   The organist played some variations by Johann Gottfried Walther and the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor by Bach and the results were most impressive. The acoustics of the church are outstanding and the depths of expression that one heard were remarkable.     This is an organ that would easily stand side by side with larger instruments for its capacity to inspire, and its sound is truly unique.

About thirty of Silbermann's organs are still extant, and it is extraordinary to consider that these organs are more than 250 years old, even with the understanding that some rebuilding has been done on all of them. Silbermann's influence on other organ builders has continued to the present time, particularly with respect to the manufacturing of the pipes. Friedrich Ladegast had remarked when building the large organ for the Schloßkirche in Wittenberg in 1858 that the pipes should be fashioned "nach Silbermann'schen Methoden," the meaning of which is quite evident.

This was a wonderful discovery and one that is waiting for other friends of the organ.

Jeffrey K. Chase is a practicing attorney in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with a concentration in the area of estate planning. He is a member of the bar of the United States Supreme Court. Prior to becoming an attorney, he earned a bachelor’s degree in music literature and a master’s degree in musicology. He has been a published feature writer and music critic for The Michigan Daily and The Detroit Free Press and has also written for High Fidelity magazine. Currently he also reviews classical music compact discs for All Music Guide, an online music reference source.

What a special trip the Marilyn Mason University of Michigan Historic Organ Tour 54 this past July 9–22 was, tracing the cities and churches limning the lives and careers of J. S. Bach and Buxtehude and, among others, the organ builders Silbermann, Schnitger, Trost and Marcussen! Entitled “In the Footsteps of Bach and Buxtehude,” it included visits to historic organs in Mühlhausen, Weimar, Eisenach, Arnstadt, Altenburg, Frauenstein, Freiberg, Dresden, Leipzig, Wittenberg, Hamburg, Lübeck, Århus, Odense and Copenhagen. Much was learned and experienced by its fortunate participants.
After arriving in Frankfurt at approximately 7:30 a.m. and after having collected all of the participants flying in from various locations, we boarded a beautiful, very modern bus to commence our journey of exploration.

Mühlhausen, Weimar, Eisenach, and Arnstadt
Our first stop was at St. Blasiuskirche in Mühlhausen, where Bach had worked from 1707–1708 (this year being the 300th anniversary of Bach’s arrival there from Arnstadt). While there, Bach submitted plans for rebuilding the organ.This organ, however, was replaced in the 19th century with a new instrument. But turnabout is fair play, and from 1956–1958 the 19th-century organ was removed; the Alexander Schuke company built a new organ based upon Bach’s plans, but with the addition of five new registers to support the performance of modern organ literature. The casework of this Schuke organ exemplifies the industrial style of the former East German regime and its banal aesthetic.
Then on to Weimar where Bach spent ten years as a musician to the Grand Duke; where Bach was imprisoned in 1716 for requesting to resign from his position to take another; and where, in 1717, Bach was first mentioned in print, being called “the famous Weimar organist.” After checking into the outstanding Elephant Hotel, next door to the building in which Bach lived from 1708–1717 and where his sons Wilhelm Friedemann and Carl Philip Emmanuel were born, we took a short stroll in the rain to visit the Parish Church of Sts. Peter and Paul, where, beginning in 1707, Bach’s relative and colleague Johann Gottfried Walther was organist.
Early the next morning we boarded the bus and departed for Eisenach, where J. S. Bach was born on March 21, 1685. He was baptized at St. George’s Church, where Luther had sung in the choir and had also preached. That baptismal font, which has a pedestal carved like a wooden basket, is still in use today. At that church, located on the Market Square (that day it was market day), we were treated to an organ recital (well attended by the public) performed by the young Denny Philipp Wilke, an organist from Nürnberg, who studied with Latry and van Oosten. Wilke performed Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in D, the Scherzo from Vierne’s Organ Symphony No. 2 and the Franck A-minor Choral on the 1982 Schuke of Potsdam organ. This fall Wilke was scheduled to record a recently discovered transcription by Dupré of Liszt’s Ad nos, ad salutarem undam.
After lunch we visited the Bach Museum (Bach’s birth house), where we heard a talk describing and demonstrating two small period organs, a spinet, a clavicembalo and a clavichord, and in which a crystal drinking cup, the only item remaining from the Bach household, is displayed. One of the rooms is set up as Bach’s composition room in Leipzig presumed to have looked.
Then back in the air-conditioned bus for a drive to Arnstadt to visit St. Boniface Church, containing a 1703 Wender organ (reconstructed by Hoffmann in 1999) on the fourth level. It was to test this organ that Bach came to Arnstadt in 1703. He was so appreciated that he was hired as organist and remained employed here until 1707, when he took his 200-mile walk to Lübeck to hear and learn from Buxtehude, a trip that resulted in his dismissal and move to Mühlhausen. Marilyn Mason’s friend Gottfried Praller demonstrated this Wender/Hoffmann instrument with performances of Buxtehude’s Ciaconne in d and Bach’s Fugue in d. On the third level of this church, now referred to as the Bachkirche, is a 1913 Steinmeyer organ, also reconstructed by Hoffmann in 1999.
Our last stop in Arnstadt was the nearby New Bach Museum containing, inter alia, the console Bach played upon in St. Boniface and some historic holographic music manuscripts.

Altenburg, Frauenstein, and Dresden
The next day, after breakfast, we departed for Dresden, but with two intermediary stops. The first was in Altenburg to view and play the 1735–1739 Tobias Heinrich Trost (1673–1759) organ in the castle church (“One of the great organs of the world,” says Marilyn Mason). Bach played this organ in September 1738 or 1739 and again in October 1739, when Bach’s pupil Krebs was the organist, as he was for the last 25 years of his life. This fine organ was also played by Weber, Liszt, Agricola and Schütz. Today Felix Friedrich, who has edited and published several volumes of Krebs’s work, is the organist. Altenburg is known as the playing card capital of the world, because playing cards are made here, and the castle museum contains an interesting collection of both old and new cards.
The second stop was in Frauenstein, the birth city of the revered organ builder Gottfried Silbermann (1683–1753) and the site where Werner Mueller established the Gottfried Silbermann Museum, which contains, among other things, a reproduction of a one-manual, no-pedal organ in Bremen, and upon which we each shared playing a theme and variations by Pachelbel on Was Gott thut, das ist wohlgetan. While there, we learned that the property has recently been sold to developers, so most likely the museum will be removed to another building.
Now in Dresden, we visited the Dom or Hofkirche (the Dom was the main church in a town) containing a 1755 Silbermann organ, his largest and last, with three manuals and 47 registers, and which was last restored by Jehmlich in 1971. Then we walked past the porcelain mural of the kings of Saxony on the street leading to the Frauenkirche, which, however, we could not visit due to the late time of day. So on to a fine dinner at one of the outside restaurants.

Freiberg, Leipzig, Rötha, and Stürmthal
The next day we traveled to Leipzig via Freiberg to visit Silbermann’s Opus 2 (1714) with three manuals and 44 registers and last restored by Jehmlich in 1983. We also visited the Jakobikirche, just outside the old city wall, where we played a two-manual Silbermann. This church is an old, very plain building but with an active congregation. The priest, rather than an organist, let us in and explained that the congregation can’t afford an organist. Can you imagine: a church with an historic Silbermann organ and no organist! Any volunteers?
In Leipzig we lunched on the Nikolaistraße before entering the Nikolaikirche, whose congregation was a leader in the democratic movement before the fall of the Berlin Wall. This church has a very ornate interior decorated with sharp pointed simulated foliage. We played an 1862 five-manual Ladegast organ reworked over the years by Sauer and by Eule. Currently part of its electronic stop action is by Porsche, whose name is prominently displayed on the beautiful wood of its art deco-like console. From the Nikolaikirche it was a short walk to the legendary Thomaskirche, originally part of a 13th-century monastery and the other main city church, and the one at which J. S. Bach was cantor from 1723 until his death in 1750 and with which he is most closely associated. Because this church is such a tourist attraction, all we could do was look around; the organ here is not a relic of the days of Bach’s tenure, but an 1889 Wilhelm Sauer instrument last restored in 1993. It is here that Bach is buried.
No University of Michigan organ tour to this area would be complete without a stop in Rötha to view the 1721 G. Silbermann organ in the Georgenkirche, because this instrument was chosen by Charles Fisk and Marilyn Mason as the model for what is now known as the “Marilyn Mason Organ” in the University of Michigan School of Music, Theatre and Dance—Fisk and Mason thought it, of all known G. Silbermann organs, best suited to the U-M space.
Next, an unscheduled visit to Stürmthal to tour a country church, where a funeral was in progress. Zacharias Hildebrandt (1688–1757), a protégé of G. Silbermann, built this organ, a one-manual with pedal, but got into trouble with Silbermann because of Silbermann’s perceived competition. Hildebrandt invited Bach to play this bright, high-pitched instrument and Bach wrote Cantata 194 for Hildebrandt.

Wittenberg, Lüneburg, Hamburg, and Neuenfelde
The next day, Saturday, began with a long drive to Hamburg with a first stop along the way in Wittenberg, birthplace of the Lutheran Reformation, to visit the revered Martin Luther sites. We did not play the organ in the castle church, another major tourist attraction and which now has Luther’s 95 statements immortalized in bronze on its doors (the doors upon which Luther nailed his 95 Theses on 31 October 1517 have long since been replaced).
The second stop on the Hamburg journey was in Lüneburg to visit the Michaeliskirche, where Bach had matriculated in the choir school. This triple-naved, Gothic, red-brick hall church with drastically leaning pillars contains an organ with a typical North German case and with pipes from many eras. This was originally the church for a Benedictine monastery, and thus the private church and sepulchral vaults for the reigning families of the Billungs and Guelphs. Tobias Gravenhorst is the current choirmaster. The organ here consists of an old case with new contents last reworked in 1999–2000 by Sauer, which used to be a large firm but now is only a small company. One might speculate whether Bach, as a young boy in the choir school gazing up at the organ case, got the idea of putting “Soli Deo Gloria” at the end of his compositions from the “Soli Deo Gloria” inscription at the top of the organ case. Sunday mornings are, of course, the time when churches are fulfilling their main function as houses of worship for their congregations, so for us Sunday morning is free time.
Sunday afternoon we visited the famous Jakobikirche in Hamburg, where we were hosted by a friendly female organist who knows English well. Reinken was on the city committee in 1693 when the organ was built by Arp Schnitger. Reinken didn’t want this church’s organ to have a 32′ stop because he wanted his church to be the only one in town to have a 32′ stop, but Schnitger foiled him by building two 32′s—a Principal and a Posaune. Bach applied for the organ post here in 1720, but he would have had to pay a fee to get the job. Instead a wealthy man with the money to pay (bribe!) was hired.
This was the organ whose pipes were removed to safe storage during WWII, thus saving this organ when the church and loft were subsequently destroyed. This Schnitger organ, which used to hang higher on the wall, was eventually restored by Jürgen Ahrend in 1950 and again in 1993. It was Schnitger’s habit to reuse pipes, so pipes from the 1500s were incorporated by Schnitger. (This in contrast to Silbermann, who used only new material.) Its temperament is between meantone and Werckmeister III (modified meantone). The faces of its donors are immortalized on the original stopknobs of the original console, which is displayed on a balcony but is not part of the currently functioning instrument. Albert Schweitzer has played this organ, and Marilyn Mason has proclaimed it one of the great organs of the world.
We also visited the Michaeliskirche in Hamburg, the main city church, a rococo room with curved balconies. The gallery organ was built from 1909–1912 by E. F. Walcker of Ludwigsburg. With its five manuals and 163 stops, for a time it was the largest organ in the world. We played music including French pieces that work well on it. The restored organ in the side gallery we did not play, nor did we play a small organ in the choir space. There were many visitors coming and going in this church.
St. Pankratius, a small church with a rural setting in Neuenfelde, is the burial place of Arp Schnitger (1648–1719) and was his home church for a number of years. He built this high baroque-style, two-manual, 34-stop organ for this church in 1688 and the bulletin board invites people to worship on Sunday to the accompaniment of the Schnitger organ.

Lübeck
On Monday, our last day in Germany, we journeyed to Lübeck, the first German city bombed in World War II (in response to the Germans’ bombing of Coventry, England), where we visited four important churches. The first was the Marienkirche, where Ernst-Erich Stender, organist, was our host. This is the church where Buxtehude had worked from 1668 to 1707. Its historic Schnitger organ and the Totentanz organ (named after a painting in the church) were destroyed by bombs in 1942.
The Domkirche, founded by Henry the Lion in 1173, today makes modern use of space. Its Romanesque towers survived the war, but its Gothic portions fell. Its contemporary (1960) stained glass window in the west end is especially beautiful. The 1699 Schnitger organ, originally built here but burned during the war, had been played by Handel, Mendelssohn and Mattheson. A 1970 Marcussen instrument now sits on the north wall. There are raised auditorium seats on the west end where the organ used to be and a small positiv organ is in the choir space. Here also is a charming Baggio di Rosa 1777 Italian one-manual portative organ with pull-down pedals and a bird stop, which has been restored by Ahrend in the Netherlands.
The design of the 13th-century Aegidiankirche is unusual because its pews face the preacher and not the altar. It has a choir screen from the Renaissance with eight panels depicting the life of Christ. Its original organ dated from 1629 and was built by Scherer of Hamburg. The case, not in baroque style, but with small, refined details suggestive of earlier times, was created by a famous Lübecker carver. This is one of the few organs built during the Thirty Years War, in which the independent northern German cities were not obliged to fight. Now, the old cabinetry with its intricate light and dark inlaid wood figures is more interesting than the 1992 Klais instrument it contains.
The Jakobikirche is where Hugo Distler—who had a good sense of history and resisted romantic modifications to the great organ, built by Joachim Richborn in 1673 and last restored by Schuke/Berlin in 1984—was the organist from 1931 to 1937. This organ contains pipes from a Blockwerk from the 1400s; Schuke added a Swell as part of his restoration in 1984. This organ is approximately 20% original and includes an 18th-century pedal division. Interestingly, there are two matching organ cases, north and west, both in swallow’s nest design. The main case is in Renaissance style and the Positiv case is in Baroque style.
The Jacobikirche three-manual, 31-register smaller organ by Stellwagen, built in 1637 and based upon an anonymous builder in 1515, was last restored by Brothers Hillebrand in 1978. With this organ being 70% original, today one hears what would have been the sounds of 1637 and of 1515. The Werckmeister temperament is tuned one step above A=440. Distler had this organ in mind when he composed Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland.

Ulkebøl, Sønderborg, and Aabendraa
The Ulkebøl Lutheran Church was our first stop in Denmark. Although this church has housed an organ continuously since the beginning of the 16th century, its current organ is a Marcussen & Søn dated 1888 set in a Jürgen Hinrichsen angel façade dated 1790. From 1864 to 1920 this part of Denmark had been part of Germany, and during World War II this church’s bells were removed to Hamburg to be melted down for munitions manufacture, but were fortunately rescued just at the end of the war before being melted. Danish churches have ships suspended from the ceiling to as a symbol recalling that human life is sustained by God; the nave is called the church ship. The patron of this church was the Duke of Augustinborg.
From there we bussed to the Sønderborg Castle; however, when we arrived the streets were blocked. We soon learned that this was for the security of the visiting Queen Margrethe, who had arrived in her royal yacht to visit this coastal castle. However she left promptly at 2 pm, and we were granted entrance to hear a recital on this reconstructed Renaissance organ by its organist. Originally there was a 1570 Rottenstein-Pock instrument, which was enlarged to two manuals with nine and five stops, respectively, in 1626; each manual has a slightly different compass. The present instrument is a 1996 Mads Kjersgaard reconstruction set in the original 1570 façade; D-sharp and E-flat are separate pitches because of the (probably) meantone tuning.
From there we were treated to a Marcussen factory tour. Founded in 1806, this firm celebrated its 200th anniversary last year. Still in the ownership of Marcussen’s descendants, it has been in this location in Aabendraa since 1829. Our tour was conducted by a Marcussen relative. We concluded this day in Århus.

Århus, Odense, and Copenhagen
The first stop the next morning was at the Århus Domkirke, the largest church in Denmark. Originally containing a Schnitger organ, the current instrument is a 1928 Frobenius, which has been placed behind the 1730 Kastens console and is the organ on which Gillian Weir recorded the complete works of Franck, Messiaen and Duruflé. Its 8′ Voix humaine is modeled after that in Ste. Clotilde in Paris (César Franck’s church).
After lunch we left for Odense, the birth city of Hans Christian Andersen, and visited St. Canute’s Cathedral, located next to a beautiful city park. This cathedral contains three organs: the smallest and oldest is the Jens Gregersen instrument built c. 1843; the second oldest is the main organ built by Marcussen & Søn in 1965 and using the façade of its 1756 predecessor; and the newest, in the east end of the cathedral, was built by Carsten Lund in 1999. Then on to Copenhagen for a visit to the Church of the Holy Ghost with its 1986 Marcussen & Søn organ; the opulent Jesuskirken, built by the Carlsberg brewing family and containing in front one of the last Cavaillé-Coll organs (dated 1890) built and, in the rear, a 1993–1994 Jensen & Thomsen instrument; and a city tour.

Roskilde
On the penultimate day we visited the impressive Roskilde Cathedral containing a 1991 Marcussen & Søn three-manual, 33-rank organ. We were granted special access to the upper gallery from which to view this magnificent edifice, which is the burial place of many Danish kings and queens and with its wonderful trompe l’oeil paintings of heroic exploits on various side chapel walls.
From there we visited the environmentally friendly chapel organ, an 1882 A. H. Busch & Sønner rebuild at Ledreborg Castle. The resident organist (from Tennessee!) gave a demonstration of this unusual single-manual instrument to which the pedal is always coupled, which has not been electrified and requires an assistant to work the bellows. We returned to Copenhagen to give a public recital at St. Andreas Church.
On Saturday, our last day together, many spent the day shopping and enjoying the city, while others visited the Trinity Church with its three-manual, 53-rank, 1956 Marcussen & Søn organ rebuilt by P. G. Andersen in 1977 and the Garnisonkirche. Our communal dinner, at an historic local restaurant, was a bittersweet gathering, knowing that the camaraderie created by this tour’s participants was a unique organism and never to be duplicated.
Unlike any other instrument, no two organs are the same and, to be fully understood and appreciated, should be personally touched and experienced. Thus, one of the primary values of these tours is to acquaint oneself with the famous historic organs of the world to experience what it is about each that makes it so revered. And on this two-week, multi-city tour of northern and eastern Germany and Denmark, the participants “experienced” approximately 43 organs dating from the 16th through the 20th centuries. But it’s not just about the organs. It’s about the camaraderie with organ aficionados, too.■