Dear Vince,
I hope you have a great summer. Here in Northern Europe it´s been raining like nonstop.
I live in a town w/ two mediavel churces and organs.
I watched a programme on how they changed the sound of the organ from one timeperiod to another.
The sound of the organ had changed thruout the centuries, and they restored it to its original sound, baroque.
I must say it was one of the coolest thing, I ever saw.
They went thru each pipe in a very elaborate manner, almost like brain-surgery.
And the ear and musicality of the tuner was INCREDIBLE!
Is this what you do as well?
I attended a concert in remembrance of Buxtehude, and it just blew my mind!
Baroque.
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vince
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How right you are - The baroque style of tonal design was from that period when Bach was writing his music. 1630 to about 1800. It was developed in North Germany. These organs are dominated by Flute and Diapason (Principal) stops. They use Reeds to add to the power of the organ because Reed stops take about 25% as much wind as a flue stop of equal pitch. Wind was in short supply in those organs because they were pumped by man power - unlike the organs of today that use electric rotary blowers.
The sound was right for the music - or the music was right for the tonal design of the organ. COntrspuntal as represented by Bach and Buxtehuda and others of that period.
In those old churches that have seconds of reverberation, they sounded wonderful.
In the late 1800 about 1880 to sort of set a date, the style of tonal archecture changed. Because organs were the source of community entertainment, and orchestras were becoming popular, the "Transcriptions" of orchestral music played on organ were plentiful. The problem was that Baroque organs cannot play orchestral music with any reasonable tonality.
Under the influence of Cavialle-Coll of France, the orchestral organ style swept across Europe and into the US and England. Organs built after that time incorporated the new tonal style and the old organs were, unfortunately changed.
This has happened over many years up to today. The last great rape of organs came between 1960 and 1980 when literally thousands of really nice organs were either ripped out and replaced with these shreiking imitations of Baroque organs or, in the case of the really big one, hundreds of pipes were removed and replaced with thin sounding Principals and rank upon rank of high pitched Mixtures. The result was that the new pipes would not blend with the rest of the pipes and they could not play anything but Baroque music on the new pipes and everything else on what was left. Unsatisfactory from all directions.
There is nothing that has caused the destruction of many fine organs so much as the Fads in organ tone.
That is exactly what happened three times in the last 120 years.
People have now awakened to the fact that Baroque style organs are limited to performance of one style of music - Baroque. They are also unsuited for religious services of today except the traditional Lutheran service that still follows the format as in Bach's day.
To be succesful, an organ is designed from the beginning to have a certain sound created by specific stops the builder puts into them. These are also designed according to the acoustics of the building, size, seating and the purpose. A church organ is definitely different than a concert organ.
Glad you learned from the program. It is hard to do something like that in limited time but at least you got the idea.
The sound was right for the music - or the music was right for the tonal design of the organ. COntrspuntal as represented by Bach and Buxtehuda and others of that period.
In those old churches that have seconds of reverberation, they sounded wonderful.
In the late 1800 about 1880 to sort of set a date, the style of tonal archecture changed. Because organs were the source of community entertainment, and orchestras were becoming popular, the "Transcriptions" of orchestral music played on organ were plentiful. The problem was that Baroque organs cannot play orchestral music with any reasonable tonality.
Under the influence of Cavialle-Coll of France, the orchestral organ style swept across Europe and into the US and England. Organs built after that time incorporated the new tonal style and the old organs were, unfortunately changed.
This has happened over many years up to today. The last great rape of organs came between 1960 and 1980 when literally thousands of really nice organs were either ripped out and replaced with these shreiking imitations of Baroque organs or, in the case of the really big one, hundreds of pipes were removed and replaced with thin sounding Principals and rank upon rank of high pitched Mixtures. The result was that the new pipes would not blend with the rest of the pipes and they could not play anything but Baroque music on the new pipes and everything else on what was left. Unsatisfactory from all directions.
There is nothing that has caused the destruction of many fine organs so much as the Fads in organ tone.
That is exactly what happened three times in the last 120 years.
People have now awakened to the fact that Baroque style organs are limited to performance of one style of music - Baroque. They are also unsuited for religious services of today except the traditional Lutheran service that still follows the format as in Bach's day.
To be succesful, an organ is designed from the beginning to have a certain sound created by specific stops the builder puts into them. These are also designed according to the acoustics of the building, size, seating and the purpose. A church organ is definitely different than a concert organ.
Glad you learned from the program. It is hard to do something like that in limited time but at least you got the idea.
Vince
Road Manager
The Doors
Road Manager
The Doors