Newswise — A celebrated 18th-century baroque organ in Berlin – a masterpiece handmade by one of history’s greatest organ builders – was destroyed in World War II during an Allied bombing raid.
Today a reconstruction, based as accurately as possible on this organ’s unique tonal design is being painstakingly made at Cornell University’s Anabel Taylor Hall.
The Cornell Baroque Organ will bring back to sounding life the organ at the Charlottenburg-Schlosskapelle church in Berlin handmade by 17th- and 18th-century organ builder Arp Schnitger. The instrument’s visual design is based on Schnitger’s breathtaking organ case at Clausthal-Zellerfeld in central Germany. This organ will be ideal both for the glorious solo repertoire of centuries gone by, especially the music of J. S. Bach, and for the accompaniment of ensemble music for instruments and voices. The organ will be versatile enough for performance of music from the 16th to the 19th centuries and beyond.
This instrument will act as a magnet for top student organists, as well as be an inspiring tool for teaching, solo and group performance and new composition, says Annette Richards, Cornell professor of music, who leads the project. The Cornell Baroque Organ will complement the existing strengths of the Cornell music department in performance and research, especially in the music of the 17th to 19th centuries.
The project involves extensive research into the art of woodworking, metallurgy, organ construction and the crucial voicing of organ pipes in the early 18th century. As part of this process, Cornell’s new organ is being built using sophisticated handcraft techniques, replicating the construction techniques of its storied historical models.
When finished this organ will have 1,847 pipes, some as long as 16 feet and others as short as an inch. It sports 42 ranks, which are individual pipe rows, and 30 stops, each knob (arrayed to the right and left of the keyboards) controlling a distinctive sound, from the string-like violas, to graceful flutes, to the stentorian reeds. It will take about eight months to voice the pipes to ensure each has a perfect sound in the chapel, and responds correctly to the pressure and speed of the touch of the performer.
There will be two manual keyboards, each with 50 notes, ranging from C, D to d3, and one pedal with 26 notes, from C, D to d1. The organ will feature 4 wedge bellows, each weighing approximately 430 pounds and operated manually – by employing students to pump the bellows. The bellows are fastened together with cowhide and cowhide organic glue.
The lowest pitch is 30 Hz, a deep rumble that can be felt more easily than heard, and the highest at 8,000 Hz, a tiny brilliant sound almost too high for the ear to pick up.
The entire project cost about $2 million and the organ is projected to last several hundred years. The organ is housed in about 7 tons of quarter-sawn, fumed white oak. The cabinet is handcrafted and every surface hand-planed. There are no structural nails involved, as the case is held together by wooden pegs, dovetail joints, wedges, drawboard, and mortise and tenon.
In a landmark collaboration with local Ithaca talent, Cornell is engaged with Ithaca-based master woodworkers Christopher Lowe and Peter De Boer, who built the organ case, and with the Parsons Pipe Organ Builders, of Canandaigua, N.Y., owned by Richard Parsons, who built the instrument’s wind system.
Master organ-builder Munetaka Yokota is supervising the assembly of the organ at Cornell. He is the main researcher and designer of the instrument and the primary craftsman for the organ pipes. Yokota has brought his family to Ithaca to live for almost a year, while he installs and voices the pipes at Cornell.
The Göteborg Organ Art Center, University of Gothenburg, Sweden, was responsible for the overall design and project coordination, the production of the pipework, and the voicing of the pipes.
Says Richards: “This is not an exercise in reconstruction and museum-style curatorship but an effort to invigorate a constellation of skills and musical activities to help further energize both local culture and Cornell’s international standing. This project does not simply import a historic organ into Central New York, but seeks to transplant and nurture the skills required to make and maintain such an instrument, and of course to play and use it, drawing on the best of the past in pursuit of a rich future.”
The organ’s first scheduled concert is expected in November 2010.
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