Organ recitals at St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, celebrate Bach’s 325th birthday

The Haarlem International Organ Festival (July 12–26, 2014) celebrated a milestone with its 50th Improvisation Competition this summer. The festival runs concurrently with the Haarlem Summer Organ Academy, which celebrated its 46th anniversary. At the academy, fifteen teachers taught eleven subjects, and it was attended by 110 students from 30 countries. In addition to these classes there were around forty public events: recitals, lectures, masterclasses, and excursions to other cities. These could easily have accounted for every minute of every day, and it would have been a challenge to justify missing any of them. The centerpiece of the festival is the famed 1738 Müller organ at St. Bavo’s (restored by Marcussen, revoiced by Flentrop, and played by Mozart), but organs all around Haarlem are used for classes and concerts, including the Cavaillé-Coll at the Philharmonie and instruments at the Nieuwe Kerk, the Waalse Kerk, and the Doopsgesinde Kerk. 

To celebrate the event the organizers released The Haarlem Essays, a marvelous 480-page book (noted in the October 2014 issue of The Diapason and available through the Organ Historical Society). It contains essays and interviews directly related to the festival, to its instruments, and to its important figures over the years, and is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history of this important festival. But it also includes essays on a variety of scholarly, historical, and aesthetic issues by noted scholars and performers, most of which are newly written, and which makes the volume of great interest beyond the subject of the festival itself. 

The Haarlem Essays comes with a compact disc of seven of the winning organ improvisations, dating back to Piet Kee’s in 1955, as well as all of the competition themes starting with the first one in 1951. The theme for the finals of this summer’s competition was by Dutch composer Louis Andriessen. It appeared about an hour before the competition and thus was too late to be included. The two top prizewinners were Lukas Grimm, from Germany, who received the audience prize, and David Cassan, from France, who won first prize. They treated the theme so differently that it seemed to me to represent two entirely contrasting conceptions of improvisation: Grimm’s was dazzling in its variety of styles and techniques and built to a thrilling conclusion, while Cassan’s was more of an integrated whole in four large sections, with thematic recurrences as well as a polyphonic elaboration of the theme. Both were remarkable and hard to compare.

At the academy there were four Bach teachers: Ton Koopman, Masaaki Suzuki, Michael Radulescu, and Jon Laukvik, and there were classes by Olivier Latry on Messiaen, Lorenzo Ghielmi on Italian-influenced North German music, Jon Laukvik on Vierne, Louis Robilliard on Franck, Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini on Italian repertory, Bernhard Haas on contemporary repertory, Leo van Doeselaar on Mozart and Bach’s sons, Jürgen Essl and Peter Planyavsky on advanced improvisation, and Jos van der Kooy on improvisation for beginners. 

After a week of two-hour masterclasses it would be foolhardy to try to describe a teacher’s approach in a sentence, but I will try to anyway for the classes I took: Suzuki’s Bach was physical and extrovert in its emotion, and he was both practical and dramatic in his teaching. At one point he had a student playing pleno forearm clusters on the Müller to encourage her to be more physically engaged. I was scared to look over the balcony to see how the tourists were taking it. Radulescu brought great scholarship to his Bach class and showed how understanding rhetorical terms and an awareness of formal and historical issues can illuminate performance. Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini first taught at Haarlem in 1959 (where he was known as a member of the “holy trinity” along with Marie-Claire Alain and Anton Heiller). He returned this summer after a long absence, and it was a privilege to experience the elegance and generosity of his teaching and playing. His admission that he’s still uncertain about whether to normalize accidentals was liberating. Ghielmi’s class, which focused on Buxtehude and Bruhns, showed how drama and imagined operatic scenes can bring this repertory to life (a subject that Jean-Claude Zehnder also treats in his article in The Haarlem Essays), and also how a teacher with a sense of theater can entertain as well as instruct. And Haas’s inspiring class on contemporary repertory brought a level of belief and insight into the modernist repertory that I haven’t encountered in this country in a while, whether he was discussing Cage and the Buddhist conception of silence (not absence of emotion but its foundation), Schoenberg, or Messiaen.

There were excursions between the two weeks of classes, to Utrecht, Amsterdam, and Leiden. At the Nikolaikerk in Utrecht, where festival leader Stephen Taylor was the organist for many years, Christoph Wolff gave a fascinating presentation on the work of the Bach Archive in Leipzig, including the newly discovered document that shows that Bach studied with Georg Böhm when Bach was a student in Lüneberg and may very well have lived in his house. 

Many of the faculty gave forty-five-minute public lectures on a variety of topics. I’ll just mention two of them: Jon Laukvik’s lecture on tempo rubato focused on an aspect of early performance that we tend to ignore but which is well documented. He noted that historical performance practice uses “a small slice of the cake.” Christoph Wolff and Ton Koopman gave a joint talk on Bach in which Koopman reiterated his belief that Bach never used heels (well, with the exception of perhaps six places, according to Koopman). It would have been fun to have had the entire Haarlem faculty in on that topic, as none of them seem to agree with him. Forty-five minutes isn’t enough to deal with the questions that any of these lectures raised, let alone the topic of heels in Bach. But what a great way to both observe the masterclass teachers in a lecture setting and to raise the intellectual level of the conference by at least starting important discussions.

Stephen Taylor, chairman of the artistic council, is the guiding spirit of this most remarkable festival and is a most genial and ubiquitous presence. His introductions to all of the events were models of brevity and wit, but if you engaged him in conversation on any seemingly trivial topic you would discover that he’s something of a polymath, and subjects like neo-Gothic architecture or the history of the Dutch canals are likely to come up. That’s another recommended way to spend your time, if you have any energy left over from the festival.

All photos by Martin Goldray except as noted.

During his career 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 resumed 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 a MM from Eastman School of Music.

Latest Bach manuscript discovery:
Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält, BWV 1128
The discovery of a Bach manuscript always raises curiosity and excites expectant interest. This latest work, an organ chorale fantasia just discovered in March, is a reminder that new revelations can come at any time from any source.
Bach’s copy of the Calov Bible was found in an attic in Frankenmuth, Michigan in 1934, but forgotten until after WWII, in 1962. More recently in 1999, after a 20-year detective hunt worthy of a spy mystery and with a tip from an East German librarian, Christian Wolff tracked down C.P.E. Bach’s estate, with 5,100 musical manuscripts, to Kiev. Originally in the Berlin State Library, the Russian army absconded with this treasure trove of manuscripts after the war. Included were works by Johann Sebastian, among which were his last work, a motet he apparently prepared for his own funeral.
In 2004 an aria by Bach was found in Weimar in a box of birthday cards among holdings of the Anna Amalia Library, just months before it was destroyed by fire. Two years later in 2006 from the same Weimar library, researchers also found Bach’s oldest manuscripts in his own hand: organ works by Buxtehude and Reinken he copied at the age of fifteen. Most recently in March of 2008, a newly discovered organ work was found in an estate sale in Leipzig, in a sense, right under the nose of the musicians at St. Thomas!
This is a double review. The first discusses the organ score and reveals a fascinating history of teacher-student transmission, estate sales, alert and not-so-alert librarians, savvy editors, guesswork and unanswered questions. Much like studies in genealogy, one can trace documented history back only so far and, in this case, only to the mid-nineteenth century, 100 years after Bach. The second review on the CD, featuring both the organ fantasia and the cantata based on the same chorale, was released on June 13, 2008 at the opening concert of the Leipzig Bachfest and shares Ullrich Böhme’s experience of studying and preparing a first performance of a Bach work. How many have had that opportunity!
Obviously this is not the end of the story. No doubt surprises and discoveries still await detection by sharp-sighted scholars and through pure serendipity.

Bach, Johann Sebastian, Choralfantasie für Orgel [2 Manuale und Pedal] über “Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält,” BWV 1128, First Edition, edited by Stephan Blaut and Michael Pacholke with a foreword by Hans-Joachim Schulze. 2008, Ortus Musikverlag, Kassel, 24 pp., €13.50; <www.ortus-musikverlag.de/&gt;.

Contents
Prologue by Schulze, musicologist and former director of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig. Critical report on Source A (Halle, Martin Luther University, University-State Library of Sachsen-Anhalt, with signature) and Source B (Leipzig, Bach-Archiv, no signature) with score variants noted. Chorale melody from Wittenberg (1533, perhaps 1529) and eight-verse text by Justus Jonas (1493–1555) based on Psalm 124. Facsimiles of cover page and first page of musical score. Critical edition, based on Source A: 85 bars, pp. 1–9.

History
How is it that an organ work by Bach was just discovered and authenticated March 15, 2008 after it had passed through so many hands, including collectors, musicians, editors and auction houses?
According to Schulze’s foreword, this is what is known to date. The first public record of this chorale fantasia is 1845, almost 100 years after Bach’s death, listed among organ pieces by “Sebastian Bach” in the estate auction for Johann Nicolaus Julius Kötschau (1788–1845), once organist at St. Mary’s in Halle/Salle. According to public record, he acquired the pieces in an 1814 auction along with the “Clavier-Büchlein of Wilhelm Friedemann” (1720), Bach’s son and once an organist in Halle, who had passed the scores on to his distant relative and student Johann Christian (1743–1814), known as the “Clavier-Bach.” Kötschau, who apparently was reluctant to share his prize collection, eventually relented, first loaning it to Mendelssohn (1840) and then Leipzig publishers C. F. Peters (1843). However, there is no evidence that anyone recognized the significance of what they saw.
In the 1845 auction of Kötschau’s estate, the manuscript, along with other Bach works, was acquired by Friedrich August Gotthold (1778–1858), a former member of the Sing-Akademie Berlin and then director of the Collegium in Königsberg, East Prussia. In 1852, in order to preserve his collection, he donated it to the Königsberg Library, but it only drew attention 25 years later when Joseph Müller, in spite of opposition from superiors, prepared a catalogue, which on p. 93 lists “24 books of organ compositions by J. S. Bach,” of which fascicle No. 5 lists “Fantasia Sopra il Corale ‘Wo Gott der Herr nicht bey uns hält’ pro Organo à 2 Clav. e Pedale.”
This got the attention of Wilhelm Rust (1822–1892), who had it sent on a library loan to Berlin, where he copied it. This transcription of September 8, 1877 has become “Source A” of this edition, and it is unknown whether Rust, as editor of 26 volumes of the 46-volume Bach-Gesamtausgabe, intended to include it. He resigned over conflicts, particularly with Philipp Spitta, but got even in 1878, in a sense, by sharing the composition with Spitta’s rival Carl Hermann Bittner, whose Vol. IV of his second edition of
“J. S. Bach” (Dresden 1880 / Berlin 1881) includes “141. Wo Gott der Herr nicht bey uns hält. Fantasia sopra il Chorale G-moll. (Königsberger Bibliothek.)” For whatever reason the chorale fantasia was not included in the Gesamtausgabe, so Wolfgang Schmieder in his Bach-Werke-Verzeichnis (Leipzig 1950) put a fragment of it in an appendix (BWV Anh. II 71).
After Rust’s death in 1892, a large part of his collection went to his student, Erich Prieger (1849–1913), who wrote an extensive essay in 1885 on “Wilhelm Rust and His Bach Edition.” Prieger’s collection in turn was put up for auction after WW I in three sections, one of which went in 1924 to the Cologne book dealer M. Lempertz and refers to many copies of “Bachiana” from the 18th and 19th centuries, including in Lot No. 157 with Rust’s collection of manuscripts.
In summary, the transmission was from Wilhelm Friedemann to Johann Christian to Kötschau, and then from Gotthold to the Königsberg Library to Rust to Prieger, and ultimately from Cologne to . . . .

Discovery
When on March 15, 2008 the Leipzig auction firm of Johannes Wend offered Lot No. 153 with “manuscripts from the estate of Wilhelm Rust. Mostly compositions of his own or arrangements of works by Bach . . . ,” no one could have anticipated that this included parts of Prieger’s collection and the chorale fantasia BWV Anh. II 71. The Rust items were acquired by the University-State Museum of Halle/Salle, and finally due to the fastidious work of two editors, Stephan Blaut and Michael Pacholke of Halle University, the chorale fantasia was authenticated and has become BWV 1128!
This edition is based on two 19th-century manuscripts: “Source A” by Rust and “Source B,” a copy made by Ernst Naumann sometime after 1890 in the collection of the Bach-Archiv Leipzig. Researchers, according to Schulze, are still hopeful that Kötschau’s copy survived WW II and is still to be found, perhaps in a Russian library.
On June 13, 2008, Ullrich Böhme, organist, St. Thomas, played the first Leipzig performance of BWV 1128 at the opening concert of the Bachfest, which included Bach’s Cantata 178 on the same chorale, sung by the St. Thomas Choir. The same day a CD by Rondeau Production with both compositions and works by Rust was released. The score by Ortus was published on June 10, showing how rapidly new works can be distributed worldwide.
The chorale still exists in German hymnals, but apparently has not survived in American Lutheran usage. The work, a large-scale fantasia believed to date from 1705–1710, is of moderate difficulty in four contrapuntal voices scored for Rückpositiv, Oberwerk and Pedal. After an introductory section, the ornamented chorale appears in the R.H. beginning with bar 12, proceeding verse by verse with interludes, chromaticism and echo sections. It concludes with a coda in a flurry typical of stylus phantasticus, all of which should make this “new work” very exciting indeed for Bach fans.

Bach, Johann Sebastian, Wo Gott der Herr nicht bei uns hält. The Newly Discovered Organ Work: Choralefantasia BWV 1128. Organ and choral works by Ammerbach, J. S. Bach, Rust, and Schein. Ullrich Böhme, organist, on the Bach Organ at Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church. St. Thomas Choir with the Gewandhaus Orchestra; Georg Christoph Biller, cantor and conductor. 2008, Rondeau Production ROP6023, 50 minutes, €15.95; brochure 39 pp.; <http://www.rondeau.de/&gt;.
Imagine being the organist of St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, picking up the newspaper on March 16, 2008 and reading the headline, “Undiscovered Organ Work by Johann Sebastian Bach Found in Halle.” So Ullrich Böhme begins his very personal essay, “From Mühlhausen to St. Thomas in Leipzig” (brochure, pp. 6–7). He was further intrigued when he learned the work had been found among scores belonging to a predecessor at St. Thomas, Wilhelm Rust (organist, then cantor 1878–1892), and purchased for 2,500 euros by two scholars from nearby University of Halle. The paper claimed they “snatched away a true sensation from Leipzig,” when in fact the chorale had a close connection to Halle. The melody of the chorale had been written by Justus Jonas, a friend of Luther and the reformer of Halle serving as pastor of St. Mary’s.
The Bach-Archiv did not have a copy of the piece, but by April 28 Böhme received the score from the publisher, Ortus. He spent the next day at home studying and practicing, and then on evening of April 30 he played the work on the Bach Organ at St. Thomas, experimenting with tempos and registrations. It is probable that Bach played this piece himself, but he also may have given it to one of his sons or students to play on July 30, 1724 as a prelude to the Cantata BWV 178 on the same chorale for the eighth Sunday after Trinity. Böhme believes this is confirmed because in Bach’s time the choir and orchestra performed in the lower “Kammerton,” whereas the organs at St. Thomas were tuned a step higher in “Chorton,” so the pitches g- and a-minor match.
The work, a chorale fantasia, reflects influence of the North German composers Buxtehude, Reinken, and Bruhns. Three other examples of this genre by Bach are heard on the CD: the familiar Ein feste Burg (BWV 720), Christ lag in Todesbanden (BWV 718), and Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern (BWV 739).
There is only one organ that Bach played (including those in Lübeck and Hanover) for which BWV 1128 could have been written because of the requirements for a Rückpositiv, Oberwerk, Pedal and the extent of the manual ranges. That is the Wender organ at St. Blasius in Mühlhausen, where Bach served between 1707 and 1708. The original organ has not survived, but a copy with the same specification was built in the late 1950s.
Additional compositions on the chorale, all by former St. Thomas organists or cantors, are a Tabulatur by Ammerbach (organist, 1550–1597); duet by St. Thomas Choir Boys from Opella nova by Johann Schein (cantor, 1616–1630); and Cantata BWV 178 by J. S. Bach (cantor, 1723–1750). Also included are two pieces by Wilhelm Rust (organist, 1878–80 and cantor, 1880–1892): Motet for Two Four-Voiced Choirs, op. 40, on “Aus der Tiefe ruf ich, Herr, zu dir” and an organ fantasia, op. 40/3 on “Herr Jesu Christ, dich zu uns wend.”
The handsome brochure is replete with photos and information in addition to Böhme’s personal account: fascinating program notes by Martin Petzoldt (Head of the Neue Bachgesellschaft and Professor of Systematic Theology at the University of Leipzig); cantata text for BWV 178; biographies for Böhme, Biller, Susanne Krumbiegel (alto), Martin Petzold (tenor), and Mathias Weichert (bass); background on the St. Thomas Choir and Gewandhaus Orchestra; and finally the specification and history of the 2000 Bach Organ by Gerald Woehl.
What is eminently apparent in these compositions and performances is a devotional consciousness of the text and the earnest intent to reflect its meaning. The performers are all steeped in the Bach milieu and tradition, performing Bach week after week, year after year in worship and concert. Böhme’s playing is equally elegant and eloquent, ever confident, yet always sensitive to the chorale text, realizing the Lutheran approach, which is never performance for its own sake, but music as a servant of theology and worship. While this CD largely features organ music and Böhme’s extraordinary playing, the other performers—St. Thomas Choir and Gewandhaus Orchestra under Cantor Georg Christoph Biller—are, as expected, exceptional. This CD and its brochure should certainly pique the interest, as Bach would say, of both “Kenner und Liebhaber” (professionals and music lovers).

Thanks to Ullrich Böhme, Organist, St. Thomas Church, Leipzig, who provided invaluable information, including contacts for getting the score and the CD within ten days of its first performance in Leipzig on June 13 and providing the specification of the Wender organ in Mühlhausen.

Musical examples used with permission from the publisher ortus musikverlag.

"Out of Love for This Famous Place--Proposal for a New Organ for St. Paul's Church"

Ullrich Böhme was born in Saxony, and his interest in the organ was inspired by the baroque organ in his home church in the village of Rothenkirchen. He studied at the Church Music School in Dresden and later at the Leipzig College of Music. After passing his state exam, he served as cantor and organist in Chemnitz, but in 1985, the 300th anniversary year of Bach's birth, he was chosen from many applicants to become the organist at St. Thomas Church, Leipzig. He has toured through Europe, North America, and Japan, and he also serves as professor at the Felix Mendelssohn College of Music and Theater in Leipzig. In 2000 he made a recording on the New Bach Organ at St. Thomas, which is available through OHS.

Prelude:

When the City Council of Leipzig in 1723 named Johann
Sebastian Bach Cantor and Director of Music, he was given responsibility for
the music of four churches: St. Thomas, St. Nicholas, St. Peter, and the New
Church. St. Thomas was restored over a ten-year period and rededicated in 2000
on the 250th anniversary of Bach's death. St. Nicholas just finished a
renovation and will dedicate a restored and enlarged Ladegast organ in October.
St. Peter was torn down in 1886, and the New Church (later known as St. Matthew)
was destroyed in the bombing of World War II.

Bach also had responsibilities at St. Paul's or the
University Church during festival days and during fair periods with the
Collegium Musicum. St. Paul's was destroyed on May 30, 1968 by the GDR.
It was literally blown up to make way for the Karl Marx University, a hulking
concrete eyesore that sits at the edge of the Augustus Platz overlooking the
Gewandhaus and Opera House. Before and after pictures on the 25th anniversary
of this travesty appeared on the front page of the "Leipziger
Volkszeitung" in 2003 during the Bach Festival. The images were stunning
and disturbing. Now history is about to take a new course and so Ullrich
Böhme writes:

The decision to construct a new building for the University
of Leipzig is good news. The design by the Dutch architect, Erick van Egeraat,
should become a reality in the near future. Central to van Egeraat's
design for the building complex is St. Paul's Church. From the outside
the building will have a distinctively modern façade, but inside the
design will draw heavily on the configuration of the old hall churches with
their late Gothic webbed arches, very much like St. Thomas Church.

The university administration has decided that the church or
"aula" (auditorium) should have an organ. But how should one
envision this instrument?

The University of Leipzig numbers among the oldest German
universities and looks back on a 600-year history. Certainly no ordinary organ,
such as we too often find in many churches and concert halls, should be built
here. On the contrary, it should be a very special instrument that uniquely
relates to the tradition and history of this site.

Historically the old St. Paul's Church appears to have
had little luck with its organs. The earliest organ can be traced back to the
15th century, which after a renovation in 1528 had a specification of 15 stops
with its placement believed to have been on the south wall. In the 17th century
it is reported that there were many unsuccessful attempts to restore this
instrument by such famous organ builders as Heinrich and Esaias Compenius.

In the years 1711 to 1716 the Leipzig organ builder, Johann
Scheibe, built a 48-stop organ with three manuals and pedal using parts from
the old organ. The approval and recommendation to accept the organ was made by
J.S. Bach, who certified that the organ builder indeed had constructed the
organ "with good diligence." And, as Bach noted, the organ, except
for several limitations and problems, otherwise sounded fine. On the other
hand, already in 1741 Johann Andreas Silbermann (1712-1783) wrote a very
negative assessment of this organ.

The next instrument at St. Paul's was made by Johann
Gottlob Mende (1787-1850) and dates from 1844. Mende's preserved
instrument was recognized for its solid workmanship, and yet the highly
respected Prof. Heinrich Magirius, author and historical curator, wrote in 1995
that this organ at St. Paul's was "not much good."

In the 19th and 20th centuries the organ builders Friedrich
Ladegast, Julius and Johannes Jahn, and Hermann Eule worked on the organ at St.
Paul's. In the 1950s the instrument was provided with electric action,
but recordings from this period give the impression that the work was not of
high quality.

At the beginning of the 18th century a truly breathtaking
sensation took place in the organ history of the University of Leipzig.
Gottfried Silbermann (1683-1753), regarded by many to be the most
significant and famous organ builder of all time, created an organ proposal for
St. Paul's.

Beginning in 1702 Gottfried Silbermann learned the craft of
organ building from his older brother, Andreas, in Strasbourg, Alsace, and
built several organs there with him. In 1710 Gottfried Silbermann returned to
Saxony to establish his livelihood as an organ builder in Germany.

In the same year he became acquainted with the most
important musical personality of Leipzig at that time, Johannes Kuhnau
(1660-1722), who was Cantor at St. Thomas and the University Music
Director. Kuhnau apparently recognized the extraordinary talent of this young
organ builder, for in a letter he praised Silbermann's
"quintessential mathematical and mechanical knowledge of organ
building." He called Silbermann's attention to the planned project
at St. Paul's and recommended him to the university.

Silbermann was prepared for the meeting before the
Professors' Council on November 20, 1710 by the University Rector
himself, and, as a result of his presentation, Silbermann was given the
assignment to "examine" the old, defective organ at St.
Paul's and "to make a proposal for building a (new) organ."

The university archive has preserved two of
Silbermann's handwritten and signed documents, both dated on the 27th of
November, 1710. The first is addressed to the Magnificae Academiae Rector
("Magnificent Rector of the School") and contains a detailed
examination of the old organ. In this report Silbermann establishes in graphic
detail why he "regrets that the problems of the organ are such that
continuing repairs of the instrument could not produce results to the
satisfaction of the university."

Indeed he would discourage "patching up the old
work" and recommends to the university "providing a completely new
organ according to the enclosed specification of 43 stops, some of which have
not been known in Germany, but have enjoyed the greatest admiration in France
for their inherently charming sound."

The second document contains a detailed specification of a
large organ with 44 stops on three manuals and pedal (University of Leipzig
Archives, Signatur II / III No. 6 / Litt. B / Sect. II, Bl. 15, 16). (See box
page 25)

Unfortunately, the assignment for the organ was not given to
Gottfried Silbermann, but to Johann Scheibe instead. It was surely difficult
for those who were accountable to the university at the time to judge whether
the young organ builder from Freiberg was a genius or a braggart endowed with
exaggerated self-confidence. For in Germany he could not show a single completed
organ.

A few years later, however, it was clear that an error in
judgment had been made. Silbermann was to build about 45 organs in Middle
Germany, of which 32 are preserved to this day. His instruments stand in little
village churches with dry acoustics and in cathedrals with long reverberation.

Everywhere his organs sound wonderful and have an
indescribable effect on every hearer. Already in his own lifetime Silbermann
attained a legendary fame, which throughout the centuries to our own day has
lost none of its luster, even with all the changes in musical taste.

If, in fact, Silbermann had built the organ at St.
Paul's back then in 1710, then many things in Leipzig's history
would have turned out quite differently. To build what could have been one of
his greatest works he would have established an organ workshop in Leipzig.
Perhaps he would have remained in Leipzig, and the city and its surroundings
would have the number of Silbermann organs that we now find in Freiberg and
that region.

And--perhaps a Silbermann organ at St. Paul's
would have inspired Johann Sebastian Bach, who later became Thomascantor in
1723, to produce even more magnificent organ compositions than we now have.
Ultimately there is a high probability that the GDR authorities in 1968 would not
have dared to demolish a church which featured a great Silbermann organ.

All these considerations lead one to the idea that after 300
years we should now consider realizing Gottfried Silbermann's organ
proposal for St. Paul's Church/Aula. The construction of a new university
building therefore provides a unique opportunity. The new St. Paul's
could have a beautiful sounding instrument full of character, which would
attract organ lovers from all the over the world. Building such an organ now
creates an opportunity to realize the beautiful sound of a historic instrument,
that the Leipzig region would be enriched with heretofore unavailable colors.

The scientific discussion that would ensue with building an
18th-century instrument would be appropriate for a university organ project. It
would be similar to the impressive reconstruction of a North German Baroque
organ inspired by Arp Schnitger (1648-1719) undertaken by the University
of Göteborg's Organ Art Center (GOArt) and completed in 2000 in the
Örgryte New Church. Silbermann's organ in the 1714 Freiberg
Cathedral--many experts regard it his most beautiful work--provides
an original of the same period for a study course in the art of his organ
building.

Finally, the City of Leipzig could deliberately take a
different approach than the authorities of Dresden's Frauenkirche, who
have spent all these years and money restoring the church stone by stone, but
who have decided against the reconstruction of a Silbermann organ, a decision
deplored by numerous well-known organ experts.

The organ case of the Dresden Frauenkirche was designed by
the church's chief architect, George Bähr. Certainly an architect
such as Erick van Egeraat with his ingenuity and stature could create a truly
beautiful organ case, whether classical or modern, for a Silbermann organ in
Leipzig.

In reconstructing this 1710 Silbermann organ Leipzig and the
university would be expressing its history, realizing its destiny and
fulfilling a great promise for the future.

Postlude:

Ullrich Böhme's title "Out of Love for This
Famous Place" was inspired by Silbermann's words from the last
paragraph of his proposal.

You can see Erick van Egeraat's conception of the
University of Leipzig project for St. Paul's by going to their website,
<www.eea-architects.com&gt;. Click on Projects, then Public, and then
University of Leipzig. Note that Silbermann did not design or build his own
casework, but had this work done by local craftsmen.

Bach did have a relationship with Gottfried Silbermann. In
fact, he played recitals on two of Silbermann's instruments in
Dresden--at St. Sophia's (Sophienkirche) in 1731 where William
Friedemann later became organist and at the Frauenkirche in 1736 on a new
three-manual. Both organs were destroyed in the bombing of 1945, but the
Frauenkirche is now scheduled for rededication in 2006. In 1746 Bach and
Silbermann were the examiners of Zacharias Hildebrandt's organ at St.
Wenzel's Church in Naumburg.

Recordings have been made of all the Silbermann organs,
including the Freiberg Cathedral, and are available from the Organ Historical
Society at <www.ohscatalog.org&gt;. Take special note of Querstand's
eight-volume CD collection of all his organs. Go to "Search," enter
Silbermann and click.

For discussions on the decision by the Dresden Frauenkirche
not to reconstruct the Silbermann organ of 43 stops, but instead to install a
larger, modern organ of 65 stops by Daniel Kern of Strasbourg, do a Google
search for "Silbermann Frauenkirche Dresden" for websites and
possible translation of German texts.