Barry Jordan
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Posts posted by Barry Jordan
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The pictures shown are of the main organ, whereas the "Totentanz"-Orgel was a transept instrument. The second of the links given by Jose
http://home.arcor.de/accra/kaisertag/luebe...rienkirche.html
shows, below the picture of the main organ and the nave, 2 parts of the frieze "Der Totentanz" by Noltke. The organ gained its name because of being in close proximity to this work.
The church has had a "Totentanz" organ again (the original, in its' Stellwagen form, was one of the instruments that initiated the organ reform movement and greatly impressed Hanns Henny Jahn, but was destroyed during WW II, like the Schulze organ which had been built into the gothic case) since about 1988, at any rate during my time as a student in Lübeck. It is a 4 manual instrument by Alfred Führer in eclectic style. But it is siruated in the choir and not in its historical position. The main organ is a really dreadful affair from the sixties, five manuals and about 100 stops, by Kemper. The most interesting thing about it is that you have to go out on to the roof to get to the console.
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In the cavernous spaces of St. Marien this is not really over the top at all. Huge mixtures ( although only the big HW mixture is really that big - and there are modern examples, for example Manuel Rosales XI rank mixture in Trinity Cathedral, Portland, Oregon, a much smaller room - which can easily compete ) were of course very common in the baroque period in North Germany. These were the last remnants of the "Blockwerk" style. Added to this, this was a 16' division with an otherwise relatively thinly present: Princ. 16', Oktave 8', Superoctave 4', Rauschquinte II. The mixture would hve had a lot of breaks and its general effect would have been grand rather than shrill. It would have been hopeless for polyphonic music, but that is not what would have been played on it, since the fugal episodes of north German music are played on consort registrations.
Remember that this was a very old organ, in effect dating back to 1516 (Hering), successively rebuilt by Scherer (1560), Burkhard (1596) and Stellwagen (1637 - 41). An idea of what the mixtures may have sounded like by the end may be derived from the smaller Stellwagen organ of Lübeck's St. Jakobikirche, or the other great Stellwagen organ in Stralsund St. Marien.
Incidentally, this organ did not have a Rückpositiv but rather an "Unterpositiv zu beiden Seiten".
And of course the supposition of 61 notes in the manuals is unjustified. A compass of four octaves with a short or broken octave in the bass, at any rate without low C sharp, is far more likely. That is, 45 to 48 notes. The pedal would probably have been C,D - d', 28 notes.
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One theory, which does seem plausible at least, is that French classical builders, who, as we know, had terrible taste in some things (like the "tremblant fort") liked the unsteadiness of the winding which comes from the long conveyances they often used. It does seem possible; that slight gurgling is not unpleasant, I find.
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Well, Leipzig ist not really a restoration. There is some reconstruction of lost Ladegast material, but the Sauer work is being retained as well as a lot of new pipe material being added, so the organ will attain a state which it historically never had - it will have 5 manuals and 109 (? - perhaps it's 104) stops. (Ladegast: IV/84). It will regain its Barkers (it had EP-action after the last rebuilds). But the console is very definitely Porsche!
Nobody could tell exactly when or by whom the Barker levers in Merseburg were added -"about the turn of the century", I was told, so since Ladegast died in 1905, it is certainly possible that he did the work himself. And of course he used Barkers in most of his later, large instruments.
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Personally I think nearly all builders except perhaps the French - once again excepting Kern - are experiencing a sort of identity crisis; nobody really knows what a "modern" organ is anymore, so the only thing to do is to take your pick from the huge buffet available. It's just sad when a new specification is drawn up and the comment is made "That's not right, C-C wouldn't have done that......"; that ought to be irrelevant.
Many scions of long-established organ building dynasties (most notably Philip Klais) are finding that possibly the most important thing is NOT doing what their fathers were doing. Klais definitely try to make their English organs a little more English than their German ones; whether they succeed is another matter - and yet another whether an English builder wouldn't be the obvios choice, is this is what one wants. But now that the dutch are more French than the French, it's possibly an open question.
Maybe the "future of organ building is its past". Against that you have to set "Where there is no vision, the people perish" - that doesn't mean organ builders have to think up crazy new ideas (like Bornefeldt or Bosch) or invent new pipe forms - but if they want to, they should be able to, without others asking "What's it for? You don't need that for Franck". We are just too narrow! Cavaillé-Coll was not the only organ builder in France at the time, and his competitors had their own ideas about organs, as did Schulze or Ladegast, or Walcker or Steinmayer or Sauer or Rühlmann - they are all different!
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I found Klais's Händel-Halle organ in Halle/Saale very difficult (and the combination system was a nightmare) - partly perhaps because of the G-compass pedal, unusual in Germany, coupled with the paralell pedalboard. Once I'd got used to it, I made a pig's ear of the next day's service on my own instrument. You can get used to anything.
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Remember this : Schulze organs, Cavaillé-Coll organs were also "disasters". There is no one Schulze organ left in Germany !
This is not quite true, the Schulze in Markneukirchen was restored by Wegscheider a few years ago. But of course the prestige instruments are all long gone (Lübeck, Bremen).
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I saw most of this organ in Caspar Glatter-Götz's shop. Those wooden front front pipes are so sensuous you want to stroke them.
The interior of the organ is however quite conventional. Manuel Rosales' scales are enormous, helping him, he thinks, produce massive tone even in acoustically unfavourable environments. He cuts his pipes up fairly high and gives them lots of wind at moderate pressures. His voicing style is, in his own words "assertive", you couldn't really call his organs soft, although his celestes are magical.
Unfortunately I haven't heard this one yet. In spite of the nomenclature of the "Llamaradas", it is a fairly conventional organ - but, says Joseph Adam, who played a part of the opening recital, it "sets new standards for concert hall organs in America".
The facade is only fairly loosely integrated in the organ's desigh and was, as is well known, designed by the hall's architect Frank Gehry, who wanted to make a kind of sculpture out of it. Actually he wanted the curved pipes of metal, until he could be convinced that there might well be problems associated with that......
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This organ was built by Gebrudern Link (Giengen) at Andernach (Mayen-Koblenz) in 1914.
A "Progressiv harmonica" ("Progression harmonique", F; "Harmonic progression"; E) should have no breaks at all, only additions of ranks.
Best wishes,
Pete.
Here the term is used (sometimes) for a mixture in which one rank proceeds throughout without a break.
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In principle I think all are right - especially when there is a system of control of any sort in place, whether it's the old non-adjustable pneumatic pistons (i remember well the Hill of Cape Town Cathedral in this respect - a marvellously easy instrument to control really flexibly!) or Cavaille_Coll's elegnat system of Ventils. But I am to play a recital on the famous Ladegast of Maerseburg cathedral tomorrow, the restoration of which was completed just a month ago. In the course of this the Barker levers which were at some stage considered to be necessary have been removed and there have been no modernisations of the stop action. We know that the first performances of the big Liszt pieces there required four registrants (there are exactly 100 stop knobs), and that the first perfaormance of "Ad nos" lasted three quarters of an hour. I can sympathise....... there are "Sperrventile", but only one to a manual, meaning that one can not use them in the french manner; there are three to the pedal, which helps quite a lot. I can not press the keys of the Hauptwerk down at all with more than one coupler, and even the pedals with HW coupled are really hard going.
Might this not have been a case for slight deviation from the principle? The sound is........glorious!
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Could you tell us where it is and who built it?
Recently I had to inspect an 1895 instrument after restoration and found a mixture of the "progressiv" variety in which the last few notes before the breaks had been made harmonic - quite a difference from the Sauer style in which the breaks tended to be made as inaudible as possible.
Barry Jordan
Multiple Ranks
in Nuts and bolts
Posted
"But my source only gives the Totentanz chapel organ as having been destroyed in 1942. I don't know why."
See my post above, where I wrote
....the original, in its' Stellwagen form, was one of the instruments that initiated the organ reform movement and greatly impressed Hanns Henny Jahn, but was destroyed during WW II......
Stellwagen was the builder who worked on the instrument in 1621.
Cheers