Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Burns, Brandon Lee

Titel

From Gentle to Giant: Signs of a Continuing Tradition of Organ Building in Central and Southern Germany 1750–1850

Ort / Verlag

ProQuest Dissertations Publishing

Erscheinungsjahr

2019

Link zum Volltext

• ProQuest

Quelle

ProQuest Dissertations & Theses A&I

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• When one thinks of the great German Romantic organs of Ladegast, Walcker, Schulze, and Sauer, visions of the large colossus organs of the cathedrals of Merseburg, Schwerin, and Berlin come to mind. These instruments were rich in power but also in timbre and dynamic contrasts, able to crescendo from barely audible to thundering and back. On the other hand, their eighteenth-century predecessors in the Southern and Central German regions of Baden-Württemburg, Bavaria, Thuringia, and Saxony showed a softer side characterized by few reeds and mixtures, generally small size, and gentle voicing and winding. However, many of the traits found in these earlier instruments, including an abundance of 8’ registers, a focus on color rather than contrapuntal clarity, tierce mixtures, and a relatively low proportion of mixtures and reeds to foundation stops are carried over to the early Romantic organs. Especially interesting are the transitional instruments around the turn of the nineteenth century. The end of the eighteenth century and beginning of the nineteenth, the time between the death of J. S. Bach in 1750 and E. F. Walcker’s construction of the Paulskirche organ in Frankfurt in 1833, often appears as a sort of “Dark Ages” for the organ in which little happened to advance the organ into the new century. Modern scholarship has largely overlooked these instruments. However, the Central and Southern German states were among the few areas that saw a continuation of organ building through the economic and political disaster resulting from the Napoleonic Wars, the secularization of many institutions including the grand abbeys of Swabia, and a rapid change in musical aesthetic toward the symphonic and the virtuosic. In this document, I examine organs of the Southern and Central German territories of Baden-Württemberg, Bavaria, Thuringia, and Saxony. I focus on organs that show development from the late Baroque to the early Romantic Period, culminating in the organs of Eberhard Friedrich Walcker in Baden-Württemberg and Friedrich Ladegast in Thuringia. These little-known transition instruments provide intriguing insight into the genesis of the famous German Romantic organs, giants in stature and sound.