Digital Organ Choice

[FelixLowe]

19th century Easter hymn tune Ellacombe arranged for an organ prelude performed on the Moller: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ISm_ywHNMQY.

The day of Resurrection

The day of resurrection!
Earth, tell it out abroad;
the Passover of gladness,
the Passover of God.
From death to life eternal,
from earth unto the sky,
our Christ hath brought us over,
with hymns of victory.

Our hearts be pure from evil,
that we may see aright
the Lord in rays eternal
of resurrection light;
and listening to his accents,
may hear so calm and plain
his own "All hail!" and, hearing,
may raise the victor strain.

Now let the heavens be joyful!
Let earth her song begin!
The round world keep high triumph,
and all that is therein!
Let all things seen and unseen
their notes in gladness blend,
for Christ the Lord hath risen,
our joy that hath no end.

Words: John of Damascus (ca. 675-749), ca. 750;
trans. John Mason Neale (1818-1866), 1853
Source: http://www.oremus.org/hymnal/t/t111.html
MIDI: Ellacombe (Mainzer Gesangbuch, 1833) Meter: 76 76 D

 

[FelixLowe]

Salisbury Cathedral Father Willis organ built in 1877 demonstrates a number of pieces by Milan digital audio on this page: http://www.milandigitalaudio.com/salisbury-demos.htm. Initially I have previewed the BWV 552. No doubt in English organ building, Father Willis is almost the peak in quality in providing instruments suited to the English Baroque music in the later development into the Romantic era. It is definitely better sounding than the Conacher. But the style of Father Willis is clearly not purely Romantic, possibly ecclectic. Albeit softer than the North German Baroque school in tone and resembling the volumn and the relatively mellow tonal colours of the French classical organ, articulation-wise, the Father Willis organ is more suited to German Baroque and classical music. To me it resembles something reminiscent of some aspects of the Rodgers digital organs built in the United States, except that the Mixture seems more authentically and naturally depicted in Milan's soundfonts. But the Willis organ should have some Romantic stops on it if it was built in 1877. Overall, I guess it is like the Rodgers with a mix of Baroque stops and a number of Diapason stops from the classical and Romantic periods.

 

[Ntalikeris666]

Salisbury Cathedral Father Willis organ built in 1877 demonstrates a number of pieces by Milan digital audio on this page: http://www.milandigitalaudio.com/salisbury-demos.htm. Initially I have previewed the BWV 552. No doubt in English organ building, Father Willis is almost the peak in quality in providing instruments suited to the English Baroque music in the later development into the Romantic era. It is definitely better sounding than the Conacher. But the style of Father Willis is clearly not purely Romantic, possibly ecclectic. Albeit softer than the North German Baroque school in tone and resembling the volumn and the relatively mellow tonal colours of the French classical organ, articulation-wise, the Father Willis organ is more suited to German Baroque and classical music. To me it resembles something reminiscent of some aspects of the Rodgers digital organs built in the United States, except that the Mixture seems more authentically and naturally depicted in Milan's soundfonts. But the Willis organ should have some Romantic stops on it if it was built in 1877. Overall, I guess it is like the Rodgers with a mix of Baroque stops and a number of Diapason stops from the classical and Romantic periods.

By the way, I asked Content the thing about the price of individual samples and custom orders, and they told me that you can select stops from their Library, but Custom specifications tend to be expensive, because the stops you choose have to be adjusted to the amplification and voicing system of the organ.

 

[FelixLowe]

By the way, I asked Content the thing about the price of individual samples and custom orders, and they told me that you can select stops from their Library, but Custom specifications tend to be expensive, because the stops you choose have to be adjusted to the amplification and voicing system of the organ.

I would guess it might be the case. But I think perhaps "More is Less". Paying a bit more saves much -- to do away with many other stops that you wouldn't want on a big big organ that costs a fortune. There are certainly stops that you may want; others you may not. There is also the consideration on space. What is their threshold for the price of a custom organ then? Did you ask?

The trouble is, Custom specifications involve the design of the cabinet of one's own choice, and also the trouble or service on the part of the company of having to go through with the customer a myriads of samples from the stop library and loading them into the right stop knobs. Certainly the customers planning on purchase of a custom organ would not just make decisions by going by the names of the stops. They would want to hear different samples under the same name, for instance. A Bombarde 16', for example, is not just a Bombarde 16', but may he wants to hear a few samples on whether a Bombarde 16' or a Double Trumpet 16' suits the Principal Chorus better, etc. A worse case scenario is, when a customer approaches the company for a custom organ, he does not even have a stop list readily prepared. So the shop may have to spend much time interviewing the customer to get the design ideas by asking many questions, like what music he plays and what are the composers he likes in order to get an idea.

 

[Ntalikeris666]

I would guess it might be the case. But I think perhaps "More is Less". Paying a bit more saves much -- to do away with many other stops that you wouldn't want on a big big organ that costs a fortune. There are certainly stops that you may want; others you may not. There is also the consideration on space. What is their threshold for the price of a custom organ then? Did you ask?

The trouble is, Custom specifications involve the design of the cabinet of one's own choice, and also the trouble or service on the part of the company of having to go through with the customer a myriads of samples from the stop library and loading them into the right stop knobs. Certainly the customers planning on purchase of a custom organ would not just make decisions by going by the names of the stops. They would want to hear different samples under the same name, for instance. A Bombarde 16', for example, is not just a Bombarde 16', but may he wants to hear a few samples on whether a Bombarde 16' or a Double Trumpet 16' suits the Principal Chorus better, etc. A worse case scenario is, when a customer approaches the company for a custom organ, he does not even have a stop list readily prepared. So the shop may have to spend much time interviewing the customer to get the design ideas by asking many questions, like what music he plays and what are the composers he likes in order to get an idea.

Actually the exact reason why Custom stops are more expensive, is that a new Chip has to be made especially to calculate the harmonics and stuff like that of the new stops, which is something considerably expensive. Matching them with the equivalent draw stops is the easy part. The difficult one is voicing each of them so that the functions like Voice Pallet 1,2,3 (How romantic or Baroque-y your organ will sound) and all these parameters that adjust how exactly your organ will finally sound, have to be adjusted according to the selection of stops you have made.
There is no standard threshold. Since custom is custom , and it might include having pipes around your case custom cabinets, or special keyboards and console endblocks as well as lets say mechanical drawknobs, (of course with all the things that i have included above the cost of the stops would be much much less to consider in the total -think that one handmade custom manual costs arround 2500 each-)

Yes indeed that would be troubly. But still , that would happen in every Digi-organ company that that person would supposedly go!
But as they said to me, they only sell 7 or 8 custom organs annually.

 

[FelixLowe]

2010 marks the 20th anniversary of the Unification of Germany. At that time, in 1990, a special organ work was compiled to celebrate the occasion, when Germany left the Eastern Bloc to join with West Germany. The epochal event also marked the imminent end of the period known as the Cold War era, with the downfall of the Soviet Communism in 1991, after which some believe the times marked the beginning of the 21st century in the wake of the Soviet breakup.

The last item in the CD titled East German Revolution: Historic Organs of the German Organs in the German Democratic Republic produced is titled Ein fest burg, the famous title given to a hymn composed by Martin Luther at the time of German Reformation during which Germany attempted to rid itself out of the control of the Roman Catholic Church and established its own Protestant church known as Lutheranism. Basically the music of close to 13 minutes in length only rehashed the sentiments about the need to protect national security of the German people by inciting subversive feelings against the Old Church to transform them into hatred against the Eastern Bloc, as we witnessed East Berliners finally brought along sledgehammers to clear the Berlin Wall that separated them from their West German compatriots for half a century. This title, from this CD given to me by a good friend, can be said to be one of the few classical organ works that demonstratively preaches about "protection of national security". Some other similarly themed works are short organ preludes by Pachelbel, composed based on words about national security.

While this composition to mark the unification occasion was new at that time, the materials in the song are not. They are merely fragments drawn from German Reformation music, which were woven together skillfully by the composer. The prelude opens with full organ registration on the Joachim Wagner organ in a gardenesque manner with Brandenburg Concerto No.1, foretelling new breath of life into the ailing East German city of Brandernburg. The gardenesque effect is mainly brought forth through the exuberant Scharff mixture of the Wagner organ. While the opening is familiar to many, the song proceeds with variations on the concerto theme on the one-manual organ, until the Ein fest burg theme (A Mighty Fortress is our God) was heard interwoven into the music from the pedal Posaunebass. However, only a short phrase of it is played at this stage, as the composer seemed to intend to allow the audience only a glimpse with the throwaway at this stage to set the tone for the theme in the Fugue later in the piece.

Then follows the dialogue which symbolises perhaps Moses and God. The opening of the trio is clearly Brandenburg Concerto No.2. However, the composer has made a clever use of the opening to create the dialogue which began with the flutes 8' and 4' to be answered by a voice which is believed to be a combination of the Sesquialtera II and the Krummhorn 8'. The two voices clearly alternate for a few minutes and was portrayed as a meditation for the audience until the diaologue closes to lead to the main theme about protection of national security.

The Fugue opens with a sparse but elegant, clear, transparent and triumphant melodic line on the manual on full organ, and the rumbling Posaunebass is then introduced early to mark the epochal setting of the time of the event, as can be told by the increasingly heavy texture about the subject it is treating. Subsequent progression leads to frequent and intermitent Cantus Firmus phrases taken from from Ein fest burg played with the pedal Posaunebass. The music is also peppered with a recognisable phrase in passing, taken from Buxtehude's organ prelude on Wie Schon Leuchtet der Morgenstern in an attempt to leverage on the support from Jesus. The occasional high pitches played elegantly on the manual indicates the composer's resorting to the emotive, sentimental treatment of the subject, with the sentimentality frequently broken through by short outbursts of unsupressable emotions gushing forth, as expressed by the rumbling of the pedal Posaune about the need to protect national security.

Overall, this organ work is a treasure as I don't think it can be found in any other albums. It is truly one-of-its-kind created to mark the times back then.

The official details about this title is:
Improvisation in drei Sätzen über Ein Feste Berg ist unser Gott (feat. organ: Michael Pohl an der Wagner-Orgel der Liebfrauenkirche zu Jüterborg/Brandenburg)/ Johann Sebastian Bach

 

[wljmrbill]

thanks for the attached file.. enjoyed the performance. crisp, clear, great registration.

 

[Organ Matters]

Hi!

So did Nigeria and Ghana ever get introduced to organs?

Best wishes

David P

 

[FelixLowe]

When I was reviewing a quite renowned Easter Hymn last year, I came across a residence organ in Germany, that has an extremely rare pedal stop on it called Grossrankett 16'. While this stop can be found on the Organ Stop Encyclopedia, which has not even cited any known example, so far I have come across only one example -- on this website: http://www.zimbelsternstenger.de/Hausorgel.htm, that plays the Tochter Zion tune which is married to the English hymn known as Thine be the Glory in the Anglophone world. There is a bit of interesting rattling in the pedal line that uses the Grossrankett 16'. It reminds one of the taste of the kind of "cicada doorbell" many households used in the 1970s, or a kind of alarm buzzer installed at the ferry pier alerting passengers to hurry for their boarding upon the imminent departure of the ferry as the gate is about to close.

 

[FelixLowe]

A video clip here demonstrates a Fanfare on Now Thank We All Our God: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Y4U1NquosM&feature=related. This organ, which I agree with one of the commentors, sounds typically a South German Baroque/ classical instrument. It is possibly an Austrian Rieger. But this recording really shows how a true pipe instrument can sound like -- rich delicate texture and capricious changes of warm and cooling sounds interwoven together in the chords, showing interesting contrasts in the tonal richness of the changing chords. The adding of the Fagotto 16' or Ranket 16' or a similar stop on the last verse clouds the whole playing with a subtle reediness. overall, it is the kind of subtleties in pipe organs, that are rarely heard from a digital instrument.

 

[Organ Matters]

The 201 is more baroque sounding than typical Ahlborn organs, especially the ones shipped to North America. However, there is a special specification out there called "Silbermann", which sounds more baroque, more beautiful, and is even better as a complete instrument. I have done a number of conversions of these, and the results always satisfied the end user.

Hi!

I am using four Ahlborn units as an extension to my instrument and they are SO useful. I'd be interested in buying more as I'm planning to build a portable instrument for concerts outside or in venues far removed from organs. . . .

If anyone has a Silbermann or Cavaille Coll chipset, or can convert a unit for me - WOW! It would be wonderful.

Many thanks

David P

 

[FelixLowe]

About Phoenix organ

A recent perusal of Phoenix organ website brought me to the picture of one of their organs, built for a Mr Murray, that has a Geigenregal 4'. That is what got me interested in finding out more about their Baroquely voiced organs. Geigenregal 4' is unusual on digital organs. In pipe organs, they mostly appear in the North German Baroque tradition. It is a transparent, thin-voiced stringy tone of chewy character as found on some Danish instruments. This discovery got me interested in finding out more about how well their Baroque intruments are, and I eventually decided to obtain a copy of their organ demo CD.

It turns out that the first song they published, the BWV 547 prelude, is quite remarkable in terms of clarity and articulation. To me, that presentation just sounds like a North German instrument playing, with admirable mixtures. I would say it has some similarities with the Father Willis organ, whose builder was also originally inspired by the North German tradition. But because Father Willis built instruments in the Romantic era, most of his instruments already incorporated some stops from the classical French and English Romantic schools onto them.

In all honesty, this presentation did cause me to regain some confidence in their Baroque voicing after hearing their lack-luster presentation of the BWV 545 posted on their website, which had a sudden decline in tontal texture in the fugue due to the drawing of a few sombre sounding stops, rather than making use of the usual full organ texture commonly adopted for the BWV 545 fugue part. The BWV 545 performance seems like a wilful sabotage. The presentation of BWV 547, however, assures me BWV 545 performance was only the result of the the organist's subjective choice of stops, rather than the ability of the Phoenix to emit proper Baroque voicing of the North German School.

However, on a later track on the demo CD, when they demonstrated their Vox Humana, I am not sure if I was mishearing a stop. But certainly that Vox Humana is not the one I would be after. I guess they are featuring the thinly voiced English Romantic one, which is vastly different from the German Baroque one, which is often louder and more substantive. The reason I know it is English Romantic is because it was found on my earlier Romantic module of Alhborn, although on my Allen module, I had an overlapping one as well as the German Baroque one. But I would guess they they may have the German one in store because no doubts, if they can dish out a Geigenregal 4', I am pretty sure they have most of everything in common use in continental voicing.

But anyway, my rating of Content organ is still number one. If one enjoys the North German tradition, I think Content is the right choice. The attractiveness with Phoenix seems to be the four-in-one organ it and its customers often play up. This bundled thing seems to be formulaic for Phoenix. But why? Why force the customers to face up to something that they may not want?

Here is the music file provided by Phoenix Organs on a CD titled: The Hire Organ in The Church of Our Lady, Moneyglass. The song was performed by Stephen Hamill.

 

[FelixLowe]

When I reviewed the music files at Classical Organ Cornwall, which sells Content organs in the UK, and try to match the voicing to the stop names of their organs in their various Anglo versions, it occurs to me that Content does not alter its voicing much for their Anglo versions. There are obviously a few stops on their Anglo versions that are stops of British organs, such as, the Clarabella. But even the use of that name has no guarantee that it is specific stop set aside for their Anglo-version organs, for Clarabella is only another name for the Offenflote -- wooden cube pipes, which resemble the Holhflote. Overall, when I review their music files, I have found them to be largely of the same North German classical voicing. Here is the music there: http://classicalorganscornwall.co.uk/music.html.

 

[FelixLowe]

About the Geigenregal

Earlier I mentioned about the Geigenregal 4'. So far I have only come across one suspected example, which I cannot be 100 per cent sure, but I would suspect it is the Geigenregal. What can be confirmed is that the organ on which the piece was performed, the Raphaelis Organ in Roskilde Cathedral in Denmark, does have such a stop on it. It is found used on a track titled 3 Variations on "Gleichwie das Feuer", composed by Heinrich Scheidemann (c. 1592 - 1667), on a North German organ music CD. The stop occurs at the beginning section of the title -- suspected to be the delicate, gluey, transparent but brilliant voice blended into the chorus.

It has been said that Marcussen and Sons has taken part in restoring the instrument to its 17th century glory.

The file attached below is taken from North German Organ Music performed by Gustav Leonhardt, distributed by Sony Music.

 

[FelixLowe]

Great German Reformation pieces are found on this website: http://www.organartmedia.com/Waltershausen-Demos.html, set up to promote sales of the 1755 Trost organ soundfont by OrganArt Media. The interesting thing about this Trost organ is that authorities claim this is the most well-preserved organ of Bach's taste, with the brand given highest acclaim for another one of the same brand built in Alternburg. The website describes the 1755 Trost in this way:

'The Trost organ of Waltershausen, with its 47 stops and 6 transmissions, is the biggest baroque organ in Thuringia. It is largely preserved in its original state of 1730 (a good 70% of the pipe material was built by Trost) and therefore is an invaluable reference when performing organ music by J. S. Bach and his contemporaries. Today this organ is viewed as the most authentic "Bach organ". The organ was built in 1724-30 by Tobias Heinrich Gottfried Trost, but due to several specification changes and severe conflicts between Trost and the Waltershausen parish, it was not completed until around 1755, probably by the organ builder Johann Heinrich Ruppert. The instrument has survived without major changes, and was brought back to its 1730 state by Orgelbau Waltershausen during the years 1994-98.' The full history of the organ can be found here: http://www.organartmedia.com/Waltershausen-Intro.html.

If this is really Bach's ideal organ, then I would have thought that his ideal organ is more likened to the Arp Schnitger and the Goteburg project organ in Sweden than the Silbermanns perhaps. The North German organ is characterised by the pastel, rather than darker, tonal colours. The chiff is not excessively exaggerated as found in certain other North German organs. The mixture size is large compared to the modern organs mixtures limiting to III-IV stops In this case of the Trost organ, the Great mixture is of VI to VIII ranks This has the effect of sometimes slightly confusing the melodies played by the unison stop ranks. But as we have heard from the performance of the BWV 545 on the Silbermann in Freiburg, the large mixtures seem not restricted to brands; it seems to be simply the practice of those days to have large sizeable mixture stops.

 

[FelixLowe]

Hear this bow-tied German play a performance of BWV 552 prelude on the Trost organ at Walterhausen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fRCYSQCeSc&feature=related. The mixtures of the organ are admirable, and it may well be the enjoyment by itself to hear the mixtures of this organ. What I guess is they are made by thin lead sheets rolled into pipes with 20 per cent or so tin in them.

 

[FelixLowe]

If you want to learn about the sounds of individual stops of the Trost organ at Walterhausen, there is a stop table, of which all individual stops can be heard one by one: http://www.organartmedia.com/Waltershausen-Specs.html.

Pipes of the Trost organ at Walterhausen

 

[Ntalikeris666]

Hear this bow-tied German play a performance of BWV 552 prelude on the Trost organ at Walterhausen: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1fRCYSQCeSc&feature=related. The mixtures of the organ are admirable, and it may well be the enjoyment by itself to hear the mixtures of this organ. What I guess is they are made by thin lead sheets rolled into pipes with 20 per cent or so tin in them.

There are also many more performances on this organ which you can find on youtube.

 

[FelixLowe]

About Bamboo organs

Organ enthusaists should be quite au fait with the existence of an organ in the Phillipines, made almost entirely of Bamboo for its pipes -- the Las Piñas Bamboo Organ in the Parish Church of St Joseph in Las Piñas City, was built in a nineteenth-century. Only the trumpet stops are made from metal. Ironically, such a rarity is seldom portrayed in any freely available MP3 or the Youtube. On and off, I would do some searches on any performances played on such instrument, but would seldom come across a proper recording made on it. There was once a few years ago, where the search resulted in a performance of a trumpet voluntary which emphasised the metal stop rather than the bamboo flues. One wonder how such an organ would sound.

An underfunded Protestant church in a predominantly Catholic city of Roeselare approached a small business firm in Jakarta, Indonesia, namely the firm P.T. Prajawidya Instrumentalia, which has been building harpsichords and organs since 1991.

More history details of this organ is available here: http://www.hauptwerk.nl/historyroeselareen.php.

Initially, my impression on the sound of the instrument is that it is a sombre sounding instrument that lacks the brilliance of metal pipes. If I am correct, the Principal 8 is more like the Rohrflote, and the Octave 2' at best sounds like a Spitzflote 2'. The best seems to be the stringy Quintedena 8' which lives up to its name. For a limited budget this certain can fill in for a larger instrument. But the instrument would be better used as part of the flutey stops of a larger instruments with proper metal pipes used for its Principals.

Below is a music file provided by Hauptwerk.nl; more music can be listened to here: http://www.hauptwerk.nl/mp3roeselareen.php.

 

[wljmrbill]

Thanks for the link. I love the smooth fluety but with some brillance noted of these pipes.. never heard of bamboo pipes before. I guess in reality one could use any material to make a pipe with and each would yield its own unique sound.