ACTA ORGANOLOGICA 38 - Summaries

Thomas Bergner

Bernhard Kreutzbach (1843–1900) – The “lost” Kreutzbach

Bernhard Kreutzbach was the son of organ builder Urban Kreutzbach (1796–1868) and the brother of Richard Kreutzbach (1839–1903), with whom he continued the organ building company after his father’s death. By 1875, the brothers had built 14 new organs. Bernhard thereafter left the company. A few years later, he moved to Dippoldiswalde, where, known to be a merchant, Bernhard died in 1900. His marriage in 1885 remained childless.

[Acta Organologica 38, 2024, 135-138]

Lynn Edwards Butler

The Scheibe Organ for Zschortau – 1746

The organ in Zschortau, some 20 km north of Leipzig, is the only surviving instrument of the Leipzig organ builder Johann Scheibe (1680–1748). Most of its pipework is original and given that no Baroque organs survive in Leipzig’s city churches, Scheibe’s organ provides a crucial link with the past, an aural, visual, and tactile encounter with an organ played and examined by Johann Sebastian Bach. Scheibe was organ builder to Leipzig University, a position he assumed in 1717 after completing a major rebuild of the university’s organ at St. Paul’s. Active as an instrument maker in Leipzig for more than 40 years – and Bach’s colleague for 25 years –Scheibe either built or rebuilt the organs at St. Nicholas’s, St. Thomas’s, St. John’s, and the New Church.
In Zschortau Scheibe built a 13-stop organ – 10 stops in the Manual, 3 stops in the Pedal, three frame bellows, tremulant, bellows signal, and a Manual/Pedal coupler (Windkoppel). At his examination on 7 August 1746, Bach declared everything to be “skillfully, diligently and well built,” and identified four stops and the pedal coupler as having been built above the contract’s specifications. The Zschortau disposition is unusual for one-manual organs of the time; among other characteristics, it includes Quinta Thön 16' of wood, two divided stops, Viola de Gamba 8' and Hohl Floet 3', and Violon 8' in the Pedal. The organ is innovative and versatile, and held in high regard not only by its grateful players and listeners but by its restorer (Hermann Eule Orgelbau, 2000). As Konrad Dänhardt noted, the “fresh sound of the Principals,” together with registration possibilities “that tend toward the romantic” and the “high number of eight- and sixteen-foot stops,” as well as the mixture that still has a third in the treble that imparts “pleasant color to high tones,” this organ is unique among Baroque organs in the Leipzig area.

[Acta Organologica 38, 2024, 69-94]

Hans Huchzermeyer

Christian Wilhelm Möhling (1800-1863), organ builder in Rinteln
A contribution to the history of organ building in the counties of Lippe and Schaumburg in the first two thirds of the 19th century

Christian Wilhelm Möhling (1800–1863) was, starting in 1835 and until his death, an organ builder and organ inspector in Rinteln. Before that, he worked for 10 years for the organ builders Georg Quellhorst and Carl Naber in the Netherlands. In 1839 Möhling married Emilie Zeiss (* 1806) and after her death (1850) Möhling married Juliane Kirchner.
Through the influence of his father-in-law Adam Zeiss, pastor in Silixen, Möhling received patents from the consistories in Kassel, Rinteln and Detmold to carry out the supervision and updating of organs in the counties of Schaumburg and Schaumburg-Lippe as well as in the Principality of Lippe. With these patents, his effective networking in the Reformed Church and his contacts with experts, Möhling became the most important organ builder in this region during the second third of the 19th century.
The focus of Möhling ’s work was on repairs and conversions, especially on instruments located in rural communities. In his dispositions for instruments in Lage (not completed) and Valdorf (1844/45) he continued to use the traditional single-manual arrangement of the Lippe and Westphalian organs. However, in the newly built instruments in Möllenbeck (1842), Schötmar (1856), Rinteln (1860) and Eisbergen (1862) he followed the more modern trend, employing two manuals and pedal as well as stops typical of the period. After his death, Möhling ’s workshop continued to function for a short time under Wilhelm Meyer (1833–1870) from Herford.

[Acta Organologica 38, 2024, 95-134]

Max Reinhard Jaehn

The Mechanical Crescendo Mechanism of Friedrich Ladegast: An Interim Age of Organ Technology, 1870–1890

It was during the late 1860s that Friedrich Ladegast(1818–1905) developed the first mechanical, automatically running crescendo control mechanisms for large slider chest organs. He incorporated it for the first time into the cathedral organ in Schwerin in 1871. This instrument is the only one of the ten organs possessing this special feature that has been preserved in its original state. It is therefore possible to give a precise functional description of this complex pneumatic relay-based system. Ladegast later included this crescendo-decrescendo mechanism in his cone valve chest organs. However, it was the conversion to the use of tube-pneumatic action and transition to the more manageable console foot-operated roller control during the early 1890s which saw the end of Ladegast’s automatic crescendo mechanism use. Further, because of ongoing rebuilding of organs, new instrument construction and wartime destruction, all of Ladegast’s automatic crescendo mechanisms were eventually lost, except for the well preserved ensemble in Schwerin.

[Acta Organologica 38, 2024, 139-178]

Alfred Reichling / Matthias Reichling

Organs in German Masonic Lodges

The first Masonic lodge in Germany was founded in Hamburg in 1737. During the years thereafter, the number of lodges grew to several hundred. However, starting in 1933, some lodges were, of their own accord, disbanded; those which remained were subsequently banned in 1935. The organs owned by the lodges were often sold well below their actual value and many were destroyed during the Second World War.
From the earliest days of the organization, music (especially singing) played a major role for the Freemasons. The piano, organ or harmonium (physharmonica) were used primarily to provide accompaniment, but were also employed musical support during ceremonies or for interludes. During around 1800, the glass harmonica is also mentioned several times in this regard.
Many organ builders were Freemasons, including Wilhelm Furtwängler, Friedrich Ladegast, Wilhelm Sauer and Oscar Walcker.
The earliest mention of organs located in German Masonic lodges can be found at the beginning of the 19th century. These were small organs usually having three or four gentle (soft) stops. However, even in larger instruments, the four-foot rank was usually not exceeded. It was usually the case that the organ was not seen, located in an adjacent room; sometimes it was completely swellable. However, it was for the larger lodges that organs possessing as many as 30 stops were constructed and designed to be seen.
While most organs destined for Masonic lodges were built by major companies, including Walcker, Sauer and Furtwängler & Hammer, some smaller companies provided these instruments as well. A unique example could be found in the lodge in Meiningen (1932). It was a so-called “Oskalyd”, an instrument with extensions and borrowed stops with four rows of pipes, some of which were permutable; that is, the timbre changed over the length of the keyboard. Such instruments were otherwise most often to be found in cinemas.

[Acta Organologica 38, 2024, 367-442]

Jiří Sehnal

The influence of musical practice on the sound and construction of organs in Moravia from the 17th to the early 20th century

The most important tasks of organists in Moravia during the 17th and 18th centuries were, on the one hand, free improvisation and, on the other hand, accompanying figured (polyphonic) music according to the rules of the basso continuo. It was during the last decade of the 17th century that hymn books with figured bass first appeared, thereby requiring that organists accompany congregational singing. In 1755, Empress Maria Theresa ordered the introduction of the singing of sacred hymns in places where there was no “music” (i.e., no figural music). Her son Joseph II strictly forbade the use of figural music in monasteries, which, up until that time, was where this musical form could primarily be heard. In other churches, the use of figural music was tolerated if the parish possessed the necessary musical resources. When this was not possible, parishioners were then required to sing only approved (‘normal’) hymns with organ accompaniment at Mass. By the time during the 19th century that figural music was again permitted to become part of worship, congregational singing in the vernacular had already long since been inculcated into the liturgy.
With regard to how the changes in church music influenced organ building, it can be said that in playing figural music which, prior to the Josephinian reforms was usually modestly scored, the wooden Copula major 8' and Copula minor 4' were the principle stops employed for playing the basso continuo. For this reason, for double keyboard instruments, these were located in both the main organ and positive, and for the positive, five or six stops were sufficient.
After 1860, it became apparent that organs created according to Baroque strictures were too weak to lead and accompany congregational singing. The new ‘ideal’ sound therefore favored the eight-foot and string stops while concurrently decreasing the higher Aliquot voices. This was not just the result of romantic sentimentality and orchestral thinking, but also of the more practical requirement for a stronger sound in the eight-foot range.
Older organs (i.e., those built up to approximately 1750) were played either from behind the instrument or positioned so that the organist sat with his back to the high altar, the result being that the organist (along with the choir and orchestra) was unable to see the celebrant directly. It was thereafter during the second half of the 19th century that the ‘free-standing’ consoles were so-positioned such that the organist had a direct, unobstructed view of the high altar.

[Acta Organologica 38, 2024, 9-68]

Franz-Josef Vogt (†) / Gabriel Isenberg

The Cologne Organ Builder Ernst Seifert and his Catalogue of Works

Ernst Hubert Seifert was born on May 9, 1855 in Sülzdorf in the Thuringian district of Hildburghausen. After completing his training as an organ builder, Seifert held the position as a foreman for Franz Wilhelm Sonreck in Cologne and for Clemens Schneider in Mudersbach. It was during this period that Seifert developed his first purely pneumatic wind chest system (“communication chest”), which was later patented. At the beginning of 1885, Seifert  established his own organ building company in Cologne-Mannsfeld. By all accounts it was quite successful as his order books were quickly filled. While the sound quality of his instruments undoubtedly adhered to the ‘spirit of the times’ at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries, it is remarkable how certain Ernst Seifert must have been of the function of his pneumatic system, which he used exclusively from the start.
One of the most important instruments from Ernst Seifert’s workshop is the large, recently restored organ in the St. Mary’s Basilica in Kevelaer. Built in 1907, this instrument remains one of the most important examples of late-romantic period organ building in Germany and was the basis for which Seifert opened a branch of this company in Kevelaer.
Only a small number of the instruments from the company founder’s time have survived to this day, which is not only due to the changing of the organ movement tastes (expectations) in sound quality, but also to the widespread destruction wrought during the second World War. Indeed, the region where Ernst Seifert carried out his work included (not insignificantly) the heavily targeted metropolitan areas around Cologne and the industrial regions of the Ruhr area. It is therefore critical to care for the few remaining Seifert organs from this era that have been preserved unchanged, including the small organ (restored in 2022) located in Seifert‘s birthplace of Sülzdorf.
The handwritten catalogue of works compiled by Ernst Seifert lists a total of 209 instruments that were delivered between 1885 and 1914. In this article, the information in the catalogue is transcribed and commented on in detail. Important findings pertaining to the prehistory of Seifert organs has also been added, and details on the subsequent development of the instruments have been compiled. Such detailed information provides insights into the construction and disposition of Seifert’s instruments. At the same time, this creates a comprehensive portrait of Ernst Seifert’s organ-building tradition, which was developed in different ways by his three sons Romanus, Walter and Ernst II in each of their own branches of the company. The firth generation of the Romanus Seifert family branch of the company still exists today in Kevelaer.

[Acta Organologica 38, 2024, 179-366]