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Resurrecting the Baroque Sound: A Majestic Old Timbre for New Instruments
| Article
# : |
14579 |
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Section : |
THE ARTS
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| Issue
Date : |
5 / 1988 |
2,073 Words |
| Author
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Adri de Groot
Adri de Groot, a culture editor at THE WORLD & I, has
published several articles on organs in Dutch and American
publications. |
When the Industrial Revolution eventually reached the centuries-old and virtually unchanged craft of organ building, something terrible happened. The majority of new organs created in industrially advanced European countries turned out to be basically little more than an assemblage of prefabricated parts. Organ builders had become organ assemblers. The individual attention once given to each new organ disappeared, and in time the beautiful organ cases that used to surround new instruments were to disappear as well.
In reaction to these new "assembled" instruments, an organ reform movement emerged immediately after World War I. Albert Schweitzer was one of this movement's most memorable advocates. The reform movement took hold only gradually, however, and was virtually halted during World War II. But in the 1950s the movement took off like a rocket, becoming very widespread in the 1960s and early 1970s. Its purpose was quite simple: to promote a return to the ancient craft of organ building as practiced before the introduction of electronic action and prefabricated elements. These elements had been intended to aid the organist, but the reformers felt the innovations had brought, in actual practice, a distancing of organ from player. They advocated a return to traditional mechanical action, and viewed organs of the Baroque period (broadly, the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries) as perfect examples of what was to be achieved.
Before long, many builders turned to making organs the old-fashioned way, that is, mostly by hand but aided by modern power tools. Since the reformers saw the Baroque period as providing the ideal tonal and mechanical approach, new organs they constructed during this period were labeled
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