Thursday, September 13th

Artisten – 13:00
Opening & Lunch Concert – Joel Speerstra will be playing works by Georg Böhm on the clavichord, harpsichord and the Bjurum organ at Artisten. Free admission.

Örgryte New Church – 20:30
Organ Concert – Bine Katrine Bryndorf will be playing works by Heinrich Scheidemann, Dieterich Buxtehude and Nicolaus Bruhns on the North German Baroque Organ. Admission to this concert is 120 SEK for adults and 80 SEK for students and already included in your ticket if you have day pass for this day, or a full academy pass. 

Friday, September 14th

Haga Church – 13:30
Lunch Concert – Ulrike Heider will be playing works by Franz Tunder, Dieterich Buxtehude and Heinrich Scheidemann. Free admission.

Örgryte New Church – 18:00
Lüneburg Vespers – Under the direction of Magnus Kjellson, Göteborg Baroque will be performing Lüneburg Vespers aided by pastor Stefan Hiller with music selection and preparation done by Frederick K. Gable. Free admission.

Örgryte New Church – 21:00
Organ Concert – Pieter Dirksen

Saturday, September 15th

Örgryte New Church – 13:30
Lunch Concert – Karin Nelson. Free admission.

Örgryte New Church – 21:00
Georg Böhm & Choreography – Hans Davidsson playing select organ works by Georg Böhm together with choreography acted by dancers Stayce Camparo and Jonathan Davidsson.

We hope to see you at one or more of the concerts during the academy!

This music is part of Hans’ CD recording of the complete organ works of Buxtehude, made in Örgryte New Chruch.

Score Editions: http://www.organacademy.se/score-editions/
Fantasias: http://www.organacademy.se/north-german-chorale-fantasias/

You can register by going to the registration page here on the website and follow the steps.

If you have already noted down the schedule in your calendar, make sure you have a look at the updated programme so that you don’t miss anything.

The North German Baroque Organ in Örgryte New Church with its four manuals and pedal, subsemi-keys and meantone temperament is the ideal instrument to explore the world of the North German chorale fantasias. The academy offers you a long weekend, where you can experience a substantial number of the choral fantasias: either in concerts, lecture/demonstrations or in Hans Davidsson’s master class.

A keynote lecture by Pieter Dirksen, who is preparing a book about the genre, will provide you with an overview of this important compositional form and update you on the latest research. Bine Katrine Bryndorf will present a lecture/demonstration with some case studies from the perspective of composing music at the keyboard, and Karin Nelson will lecture about Scheidemann’s Magnificat fantasias and compositional techniques. Aspects of performance practice regarding Scheidemann’s choral fantasias will be discussed in Pieter Dirksen’s lecture/demonstration and Joel Speerstra will look at performance practice of chorale fantasias from the rhetorical perspective of acting at the keyboard.

Georg Böhm’s organ music has often remained in the shadow of other North German composers, even though it is very original in its style, of high quality and shows a very rich and diverse palette of forms. An extra opportunity that we can offer is the exploration of Böhm’s compositions in meantone temperament, provided by the Brombaugh organ at Haga Church and the North German Baroque Organ in Örgryte.

Hans Davidsson, who is presently working on a large project focusing on the organ works of Böhm, will teach a master class and in his keynote lecture present an overview of Böhm’s organ compositions (sources, editions, analytical survey). Koos van de Linde will give a lecture about the latest research on Böhm’s organ in Lüneburg, and Ibo Ortgies will talk about the organ as continuo instrument c. 1700 in Northern Germany.

A vespers following the Lüneburg model and with repertoire from Böhm’s time will be performed and Fred Gable will lecture about his findings on the topic. “Georg Böhm at home” will be explored in a concert by Joel Speerstra on clavichord, harpsichord and the 1650-Manderscheidt positive at Artisten: The academy will be concluded with a concert by Hans Davidsson, with (mostly) music by Böhm, as well as poetry and dance, joined by classical dancers Stayce Camparo and Jonathan Davidsson.

During the academy, you will be able to hear the most major north german choral fantasias as well as learn about the latest research in these fantasias. Among these are the fantasias of Georg Böhm whose work, especially the chorals are of great interest to church musicians.

At the moment, we are currently finalizing the programme and the faculty for the academy, all of which will be available soon.

A special jury was appointed to judge the musical instruments and one of its members was Hector Berlioz, the famous composer who stated that organ mixtures were left overs from the middle ages. He detested mutations and compound stops. Amongst the members we also find organist and composer George Smart, Sigismund Ritter von Neukomm (an organist and composer as well) and Dr. Karl Emil von Schafhäutl, Abbé Voglers first biographer.

Both Willis and Walker were present: Henry Willis had put up a 70-stop instrument, 3 manuals (56 keys) and a pedal with a compass of 32 keys. Joseph William Walker showed a small organ, “in a highly-ornamented gothic oak case, (…) 2¼ octaves of pedals, and nine stops, including pedal pipes. There are four composition pedals for changing the stops (…)” and a pedal coupler.

The exhibitions encouraged a strong focus on inventions and on new, technical devices, but this development went hand in hand with changes of the sound concept. Here is a small selection of spectacular novelties from the “Great Exhibition.”

Willis’s instrument included an improved pneumatic lever of his own design, thumb pistons underneath the manual keyboards which (through a pneumatic action) could activate fixed stop combinations, and a large Swell division with 22 stops and its bellows inside the swell box.

William Hill’s organ (II+P/16) included a “Tuba Mirabilis” 8 foot, voiced on 11 inches (about 280 mm) of wind pressure. This stop was invented by Hill and used for the first time in the Birmingham Town Hall organ (1840).

There was also an enharmonic organ, made by T.J.F. Robson, with a keyboard in three rows (42 keys per octave) and a set of exchangeable pipes. Although enharmonic keyboards in itself were not a novelty, this instrument was amongst the first organs equipped with an enharmonic keyboard and it had the largest numbers of keys per octave thus far.

Willis and Hill were awarded a Council Medal, Walker and Robson a Honourable Mention.

www.worldexhibition.org
www.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/helios/fachinfo/www/kunst/digilit/weltausstellungen.html

Literature

Jakob, Friedrich. Die Orgel und die Ausstellung. Männedorf: Th. Kuhn, 1991

Mactaggart, Peter and Ann (eds.).Musical Instruments in the 1851 Exhibition. A transcription of the entries of musical interest from the Official Illustrated Catalogue of the Great Exhibition of the Art and Industry of all Nations, with additional material from contemporary sources. Welwyn, Herts: Mac & Me, 1986

Pole, W. Musical Instruments in the Great Industrial Exhibition of 1851. London: [repr., with add., from Newton's London Journal of Arts], 1851

The “Great Exhibition” received more than 6 million visitors and its success inspired many cities that were eager to follow London’s example; here is the list from 1851-1900:

• 1851 London
• 1853 New York
• 1855 Paris
• 1860 Besançon
• 1861 Metz
• 1862 London
• 1864 Bayonne
• 1865 Dublin
• 1867 Paris
• 1871 London
• 1872 Lyon
• 1873 Vienna
• 1876 Philadelphia
• 1878 Paris
• 1879 Sydney
• 1880 Melbourne
• 1883 Amsterdam
• 1885 Antwerp
• 1889 Paris
• 1893 Chicago
• 1894 Antwerp
• 1895 Amsterdam
• 1897 Brussels
• 1900 Paris

If we rank the countries according to the number of expositions, we find France on top (9 out of 24), England, Belgium and the US (3 each), Australia and the Netherlands (2 each), Austria and Ireland (1 each). By 1889 the number of visitors had risen to more than 16 million and the centennial exhibition of 1900 saw as many as 50 million visitors.

Those were the days, when organs were exhibited amongst various kinds of power engines, locomotives, huge constructions in metal, etc. There is a famous 1867 engraving showing Joseph Merklin’s three-manual organ for the St. Epvre Church in Nancy, put on a balcony next to and above a huge locomotive. Quite understandable that the organ builder complained that the instrument could not be heard and in an official letter to the exhibition committee requested “hours of rest” to make it possible to listen to the exhibited organs.

Those were the days when organ research and technical developments were discussed during meetings of the scientific academies in Europe and Aristide Cavaillé-Coll stated: “Theory without practical experience is at least as blind as habitual routine. In my opinion, the most beautiful aspect of pure sciences is their application, and I believe that theory must be based on extensive practical foundations, in order to be sound. The theory of the organ and other musical instruments still leaves much to be desired.”

Those were the days when art, craft and technical development merged and when organs still were an important part of public musical life. Both instruments and the programmes performed on them attracted large audiences. After having heard Cavaillé-Coll’s Trocadéro organ in 1878, the Hungarian organ builder Josef Angster wrote in his diary: “It swept, sang, laughed, cried, prayed, lightened and thundered, all in the French manner.”

(to be continued in part 2)