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.■
