St. Elizabeth, Wroclaw | Historical reconstruction

[DaveHarries]

Greetings all.

Back in 2009 I made a post ("Interesting Organ Project in Poland - https://mander-organs-forum.invisionzone.com/topic/2384-interesting-organ-project-in-poland/ ) where I referred to the destruction by fire on 9th June 1979 of the organ (1752-61) by Michael Engler in the church of St. Elizabeth, Wroclaw, Poland. At the time I made that post there was a fundraising effort in progress with the aim of building a direct replica of Engler's organ for the church in question. I thought I would post here, for the benefit of anyone interested, an update which I noticed online this afternoon.

In December 2017 a tender was issued for the work - http://www.opusorgani.pl/more.php?ch=3&subch=3&article=9 - in which photos are included showing that work to reconstruct the organ balcony (which was also lost in the fire of June 1979 along with the organ). In May 2018 it was announced by Fundacji Opus Organi - http://www.opusorgani.pl/more.php?ch=3&subch=3&article=10 - that a contract for the work on the organ has been won by a consortium. The consortium doing the work will be lead by Orgelbau Klais (Bonn, Germany) and the partners in the consortium will be Manufacture d'Orgues Thomas (Stevelot, Belgium) and Zych Zaklady Organowe (Wolomin, Poland). The contract was signed on 24-Apr-2018 and is effective until 28-Feb-2022 with the price being PLN15,996,120.00 (net) but, with VAT, that becomes PLN19,675,227.60 (around £4,000,000).

I should think, and hope, that with a consortium like that, the long process of the work will result in what should be a first-class reconstruction of the lost Engler organ which, among other things, will no doubt include pipes built with metal specifications similar to other Engler instruments. It should be well worth hearing and I look forward to seeing the outcome.

Hope this has been of interest.

Dave

 

[innate]

That’s a lot of money! But I suppose a reconstruction, with all the research involved and not being able to use many of the standard procedures of the current builders, might be double the cost of a normal new instrument, and it does have a very large number of 16' stops (6 on the manuals and 5 on the pedal) and 3 32' stops on the pedal.

[DaveHarries]

Indeed that is a lot of money but there will be research such as analyzing existing Engler pipework in other instruments of his to get the right metal alloys. The case of the original Engler organ was well decorated - see image below - so the work on that case will cost quite a bit in itself. This image below is, I believe, an idea of how the reconstruction is intended to look. Pictures elsewhere in a book I purchased in Wroclaw suggest that this is how the organ looked after Engler finished it in 1761.

 

Dave

[DHM]

Without ploughing through all the Polish-language documents, is there a stoplist anywhere online for this?

How might it compare with this other Engler organ? http://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/organs/germany/krzeszow-poland.html

[DaveHarries]

3 hours ago, DHM said:

Without ploughing through all the Polish-language documents, is there a stoplist anywhere online for this?

How might it compare with this other Engler organ? http://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/organs/germany/krzeszow-poland.html

Engler signed the contract for his organ on 21st September 1750 but there were two years of preparatory work before construction could commence. The contract, from what I can tell in my book about the project (which is written in German and Polish) specified an organ of 54 stops but the resulting instrument had 3 manuals, 56 speaking stops and 3077 pipes with the following specification:

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HAUPTMANUAL: Principal 16 (lowest octave made of wooden pipes), Bourdon 16, Salicet 16, Rohr Flute 8, Octave 8, Salicet 8, Viola da Gamba 8, Doppel Quinte 6, Octave 4, Nasat 3, Super Octav 2, Sesquialtera (2rks), Mixture (8rks), Trompette 16, Trompette 8, Waldhorn 4

OBER-CLAVIER: Principal 8, Gemshorn 8, Unda Maris 8, Hohl Flute 16, Vox Humana (Rhorwerk) 8, Spitzflute 4, Salicet 4, Octava 4, Quinte 3, Super Octava 2, Sedecima 1, Hautbois 8, Theorbe 4*, Zimbel (5rks). (NOTE: * = never heard of these)

RUCK-POSITIV: Principal 8, Flauttrav 8 (wooden), Quintadena 8, Rhor Flaute 16 (tin pipes), Quintadena 4, Octava 4, Nachthorn 2, Flauto amabile 4 (metal pipes), Tertian (2rks), Chalumeau 8, Scharff (4rks, "aus 2 fuß")

PEDAL: Principal 16 (tin pipes)**, Principal 8 (tin pipes)**, Major Baß 32, Salicet 32 (starting at lowest F), Dulcian 16,  "Open" Violon Baß 16, Gemshorn (Baß "von neuer Art") 16, Flaute 8 (wood), Gemshorn Quint 6 (Metal pipes), Clarinet 4, Mixture (10rks!) Posaune 32, Posaune 16, Trompa 8, Shallmey 4 (NOTES: * = trans. "of a new type". ** = given as being "ins Gesichte" so presumably display pipes)

In addition to the speaking stops there was a Tremulant, Bells, Couplers (one for coupling all 3 manuals together, one for coupling only 2 manuals together) and also 2 "Sperr-Ventile" (not sure what they are) for each of the manual divisions and the pedal division.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

With this being an attempt to recreate Engler's original 1752-61 instrument I guess the intended stoplist will be something similar. The book I got the above stoplist from gives the manual compass as, in German, "C, D, Dis bis c3" making 48 keys.

I find the idea of a 10 rank pedal mixture an interesting one which, on that division, should be interesting to try and recreate: surely it must have been one of the largest mixtures in Europe (if not THE largest) at the time. The church is a fairly big one rather than being an ordinary run-of-the-mill parish church: for anyone who has never been to Wroclaw the church of St. Elizabeth is right in the city centre next to one of the main squares.

Hope this is of interest,

Dave

[DHM]

Thanks, Dave. Yes, that is indeed very interesting.
This one was about 20+ years later and 6 stops larger than Krzeszow (formerly Grüßau in German), but has lots of similarities.