Rwolff

This organ was removed by an organ shop, they had it in storage, maybe still do, but the pews look like most were smashed and the beautiful 1880s era church was demolished

Here's a couple of samples, you really need good sound reproduction, headphones or as I have- a home stereo with wall speakers connected to the computer

Organist Frantisek Beer ( in Slovakia) has hundreds of videos up, all are very good quality taken from the choir loft of each church he plays at, he mainly records the hymns from the JKS hymnal, he has 638 videos in this playlist. There is a wikipedia page about him, he's not just some guy who plays the organ in these little churches! Many of the towns he plays in have small populations, 900 in one of them, but they have some very nice well kept up tracker organs in them! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCHrxi2J1yG7JLc-KxyQSdAuqleSFvyCN

This kid does a nice job demonstrating this ca 1900 6 rank organ in Brazil, I still can't get over how it's only 6 ranks and yet you can hear the power especially in the end of the video below and the reverberation in the church. The kid does speak English and Ive asked about the organ, they dont know who built it, but my questions brought out what I suspected- the organ was moved to this newer building as he said an older parishiner told him she remembered it being moved in long ago. I suspect it came from their older demolished church, it doesnt fit the style or size of the building so you know its not original. The kid said the churches there had moved towards bands, but he has been pushing the use of the organ and even putting together a little choir and working with them, now they are using more of the organ at this cathedral because of his efforts!

I used to play the postludes at a local church, well one day an older lady I knew named Betty- a real sweatheart! was seated near me and had to walk past my back to exit, let me tell you I was NOT prrepared at all for the two congratulatory hands firmly coming down together on my shoulders with a booming "GREAT JOB!!!" it totally threw me off, I lost my place in the music and things wend downhill from there LOL! at least it was just the postlude!

Glad you find it interesting S_L! Here is another "version" if you will of that JKS #48 hymn I mentioned I like a lot, the video earlier was played slow, in this one it is played quite fast and as such it has a very different "feel" to it, according to the video description the organ had mechanical problems that needed repairs, you also have to get past the out of tune organ- it was subsequently repaired/restored, but once the two men at the organ actually find the page in the book and start playing, it's very upbeat and uplifting sounding, it takes them about half a minute in to find the page haha. There is also some footage of the church interior which I always find very interesting! Organ is in Ivanka pri Dunaji, Slovakia, and it was built in 1911 by Vincze Mozsny Pozsony (Bratislava from 1918 before Prešpork Pressburg Pozsony) The public domain, free music score is here for anyone who would like to print it out and try it; https://drive.google.com/file/d/1KLjAUIWXXL-eutF0XpH63A603PUcBBcY/view See how this compares at the fast tempo and how you like this Christmas tune, I don't speak Slovak but the title Dnesny den sa radujme is pretty much pronounced the way it looks except "j" is pronounced as "y" is in the US, phonetically it is; "Neshny den-sa rahduymay" and it translates to; "Let's rejoice today" So with that title in mind, it actually should be played at this faster tempo, the first verse is Dnešný deň sa radujme a veselo spievajme Dnešný deň sa radujme a veselo spievajme Ježiškovi malému, v jasliach uloženému. Spi, spi, Ježišku, milý synáčku. In English from the imperfect google translate; Let us rejoice today and sing merryly Let us rejoice today and sing merryly To the little Jesus , laid in a manger. Sleep, sleep, Santa, dear son.

As I understand it, Rieger opened an organ building shop in Budapest around 1890, and at least one of the organs I saw the nameplate of had "Rieger Testiverek" I think there were a couple of sons too.

The English translation of that video description of the volunteers singing for Mr Beer's video says this, fairly accurate google translation, Veľké Chyndice by the way has a population of only 311 people! The history of the building is detailed in this translated page The church was built in the first half of the 13th century. It underwent a more serious reconstruction in the middle of the 18th century, but the original building has been preserved. https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=sk&tl=en&u=https://apsida.sk/c/3477/velke-chyndice

Glad you found it interesting! I have never heard of any of these books before last summer, it was by accident, I kept seeing in the video titles of the organist I follow "JKS" and a number and I asked him what "JKS" was, I had to ask what the others he used were too; "EE" "SKS" SZVU," I also asked about how this book was arranged, and Frantisek Beer kindly provided this "index" of the JKS book contents in English below. The entire book can be read/printed free here in this index by number and alphabetically; https://sites.google.com/site/preorgan/jednotný-katolícky-spevník Correct, the JKS book is Catholic, the SKS book inner page says; It is out of copyright too and on archive.org The JKS book is very nice, the EE (Eneklo Egyhaz) (Roman Catholic) book is different, it has a lot of very short pieces you might call anthems or accompanyment to sung passages whereas the JKS book has full page scores of hymns. The SzVU book from Hungary has a lot of short pieces, but a few full page scores too. Though there are a number of pages where only the melody line is provided and the organist is expected to improvise their own bass line! I have not really found much overlap between these books which is surprising, like out of 600 tunes in the JKS I recognized maybe up to 6, one was "Oh Sacred head" but it was not identical to the familiar one in the American books, the melody is there but it's written differently and that's true of the few others. The JKS book has a facebook page, they sent me the bunch of PDF files of scans before I bought the book, it's from 1937 so it's out of copyright or public domain. https://www.facebook.com/jednotnykatolickyspevnik/ Keep in mind that the author did not simply copy tunes over from other hymn books, he included 226 of his own songs in it- more than 1/3 of the book were compositions of his, and many seem to have origins from about 1600 and the Cantus Catholici. So it would make sense that most of these hymns are largely unknown outside of Slovakia! That's what is so cool about this book- it was all new to me, but one drawback was some of the pieces I could not find on youtube to listen to as an example to learn it, so I had to kind of guess a bit on some of them for how they should sound- especially true of the SzVU, SKS and EE books- very few sporatic videos from them, but Frantisek Beer the organist I mentioned has been doing a long term project, his goal is to record every sing from the JKS book to preserve the music and he records during service with congregation singing, in fact he has several videos up where he said he asked members to volunteer to stay after church specifically to record some of the more obscure hymns, and about half the people stayed, sitting in their winter coats in the pews singing with the organ for his videos! He actually had to coach them on singing some of the pieces they didn't know. Here's one of his videos of that, a short glimpse of the organ is in the first part, they were doing some renovation work on the church exterior which is why the lower walls inside are covered with canvas! Mikuláš Schneider-Trnavský (* May 24, 1881 , Trnava - † May 28, 1958 , Bratislava ) was a Slovak composer , conductor and music teacher . He was responsible for the establishment of the Academy of Music and Drama in Bratislava . Contractor of the Unified Catholic Songbook . He composed collections of artistic songs such as: Tiny flowers, Tears and smiles, From the heart, Songs about the mother, Nad kolískou, Slovak folk songs… On the occasion of the ordination of the first Slovak bishops (1921) he composed the vocal mass Missa stella matutina. At the request of the Association of St. Vojtech was compiled in Trnava by the United Catholic Songbook, which has no parallel in Central Europe. It contained more than 500 songs, 226 of which were original. In 1933, the composer was ordered to compose an occasional composition at Pribin's celebrations in Nitra, thus creating the symphonic poem Pribin's Promise.

Last year I became interested in following a Slovakian organist who does very good videos for his youtube channel, since I never heard any of the music he played in the services he recorded, I decided to find the books he was using. There was another channel I followed of a Hungarian boy which further expanded my interest to the book he was using that likewise I had never heard the music before, and it was also different from the Slovakian books. After a lot of work I found which specific books they were, and located the organist editions which was even more of a challenge, especially trying to navigate foreign web sites, resorting to google translate in one window and the stores' site in another to figure out what links were for ordering etc etc. Here's what I found; The 1936 Slovak book "JKS" "Jednotny Katholicky Spevnik" (translated roughly to English it is the "Uniform Catholic songbook" ) by Spolok Vojtecha, 565 pages. "SKS" the 1918 book "Slovensky Kalvinsky Spevnik" free scan download, https://archive.org/details/slovenskykalvi00slov/page/n6/mode/1up unable to find print version "SZVU" the Hungarian book (Szent vagy, urami! ) ISBN# 963-360-361-7 Harmat Artur and Sik Sandor, Budapest Purchased used from Antikvarius books in Hungary "EE" the book "Eneklo Egyhaz", purchased new from a bookstore in Budapest Hungary The JKS book was very high quality, a beautiful book with bright clean music and pages, almost all on one page or two with few page turns needed, out of the approx 600 hymns in it I only recognized maybe less than 5 or 6, so it was all new material to me to practice with as were the others. One of my favorites from the JKS book is #48 which has a melody that both hints at "Twinkle twinkle little star" and part of the pedal line in Pachelbel's Canon, about 3/4 of the music was composed by the author/ Here is JKS #48 as an example; Parish Church of St. Bartholomew (Myslava) One-manual with pedals and a mechanical action of 10 registers, Rieger Testverek, Budapest, Opus 846. Another favorite I like is this one, on a different organ; Builder's plate; "Tattinger Ferene organ and harmonium epito vallalate Ersekujvar" 2 manual Console view https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dlv0kCnbYKc I have been unable to find much out about these organs, and this organist plays at least 7 or 8 different ones regularly, what I did learn was most seem to date to ca 1900 or earlier, they retain their tracker actions and haven't been "messed with" One in Hungary has a single manual and the smallest console I ever saw, and its from about 1872 by Franz Stramer

Very true,and anything electronic tends to fail at the worst point. I have been watching some organ videos from Brazil where the kid who plays the organ has assembled 1-4 amateurs for a little choir, you can see they are almost always reading the music off iphones or ipads instead of paper, it's sad because you can tell they don't know the music or words which is why they are using the devices to read off of, not to just glance at for reference points, so if one of them drops the device, the battery or something suddenly dies they would be totally lost mid sentence with no fallback

Well it looks like this forum is dead, guess I'll move on.

This is the organ in the Cathedral in Brazil; Demo of the organ and inside, small scale pipes but it has a lot of power to fill this building; Played with a solo voice, the last chords with full organ; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sp7kvgMKcCY

Thanks for the add! Last year I started following an organist on youtube (Frantisek Beer) who plays various organs in Slovakia, and a kid age 11 who lives in Gyomore Hungary who jumped in and took over the organ playing for services when their organist was deposed and they had no one else! I've been trying to find out about the organs with little success, what I have found is; Parish Church of St. Bartholomew (Myslava) one-manual with pedals and a mechanical action of 10 registers, Rieger Testverek, Budapest, Opus 846. Košice, Dominican Church 2 m Rieger Testeverek Vráble, kostol Preblahoslavenej Panny Márie 2m, Tattinger Ferene organ and harmonium epito vallalate Ersekujvar. St Elizabeth, Košice has a 3m whose name escapes me Gyomore Hungary- Franz Stramer, single manual, about 6 stops, ca 1870, in a church built in 1772 Mr Beer speaks English and does respond to comments when he has time, I've learned the organs still retain their tracker actions and it seems that except for the 3m in St Elizabeth- the rest date to pre 1900. Since following Mr Beers videos which are always high quality, I located the specific books I saw being used, which had music I never heard before, so after some difficulty I was able to purchase them from books stores in Slovakia and Hungary- the JKS book, (Jednotny Katholicky Spevnik) the EE book (Eneklo Egyhaz) and the SzVU book (Szent vagy, urami!) to explore on my Moller residence organ, so naturally I am interested in finding more out about the organs I'm hearing in the videos. There is another organ I found in Brazil in a cathedral that obvious to me was much older than the building and looked out of place and small in the loft, the kid who plays it is trying to interest the congregation in the organ and has been working with people trying to get a small choir going! He said they know nothing about the organ, after some research I figured out it was moved there, maybe from their previus church and that was partially confirmed. It looks like it dates to the 1890s and sounds great, it's only about 5 ranks and the kid did a tour video of the inside and demo of the stops.