Recent Organ Design Innovations and the 21st-century - Stichting ...

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pipe design; and outreach to composers, performers, and audiences. Within two years, two prototypes were completed. Following the completion of Prototype II in 2001, composers began to create works taking full advantage of the instrument’s unique expressive and acoustic properties. In 2003 the research group received expansive funding from the Swiss National Science Foundation’s DORE initiative leading to the four-year “INNOV-ORGANUM” research project. Building upon the results of innovations in the first two prototypes, a more substantial Prototype III was completed in 2004 and installed in the Great Concert Hall of the Bern University of the Arts before being moved to Biel parish church. Performances on Prototypes II and III have included new works by composers Juhee Chung, Hans Eugen Frischknecht, Jürg Lindenberg, and Hansheinz Schneeberger. 23 At the time of my meeting with Peter Kraul in August 2009, all the prototypes had been moved to Bern Münster, with plans for a more practical full-scale organ to be installed in Biel parish church incorporating many, but not all, of the elements of the first prototypes. Perhaps the greatest challenge set forth by Daniel Glaus in the early stages of the research group was to pursue a wind system and action that would allow expressive dynamic and pitch flexibility at the organ keyboard similar to effects obtained on the clavichord. Glaus’s vision was intended not only as an attempt to better realize the aims of past builders, but also to build an organ more amenable to contemporary compositional tastes. Through discussions with composers, Glaus came to the conclusion that the primary reason for the organ’s persistent rejection lies in its lack of dynamic, pitch and timbre flexibility. As early as 1906 Arnold Schönberg declared his disdain for contemporary organs, saying, 23 Glaus, “From Wish to Reality,” 81. 19
“Man hat Recht, die Orgel die Königin der Instrumente zu nennen, von ihrer Majestät zu sprechen, und sie zu beherrschen ist wirklich ein aristokratisches Vergnügen.” 24 “Man is right to call the organ the queen of instruments and speak of its majesty, for she is the master of aristocratic pleasure.” By “aristocratic pleasure” Schönberg clearly intends to relegate the organ to a past aesthetic, unsuitable for his musical vision. However, in a letter to Werner David in 1949, Schönberg discussed what he believed to be the ideal organ for his musical aesthetic. It should have permit dynamic variation of each and every tone independently over a range of seven or eight octaves and contain only a few registers, each of which should be capable of the widest dynamic expression 25 . Throughout the 20th and into the 21st centuries, composers have been interested in instruments capable of micro control over the broadest range of musical parameters, be it in search of spectral flexibility or total serialization. As discussed earlier, instrument builders including Stein and De Lorenzi found various solutions to allow dynamic control by the finger on the keyboard. Fortunately, Peter Kraul had a similar interest in direct expressive control and had developed a radical new design involving a double wind chest with differing actions and wind pressures. The first concrete realization of the flexible wind ideas of Kraul and the reference group came to life in Prototype I. A laboratory device with three keys and five stops, Prototype I contains an impressive variety of strictly mechanical design innovations, the most salient of which is the double pallet box. Two pallets can be found at the head of each of the three wind channels: a traditional tail-pallet in the chest below, and a specially designed cone-pallet in a chest above the wind channel (example 3). The cone-pallet features a disc-and-cone design that when lifted gradually increases the cross section of the aperture, essentially eliminating pluck and allowing sensitive control of 24 Arnold Schönberg, “Die Zukunft der Orgel” (unpublished essay, Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna, Austria, 1906/07), quoted in Matthias Giesen, “Arnold Schönberg und die Orgel,” Österreichisches Orgelforum 7 (June 2005): 14. 25 Eidenbenz, “Swell Shudders, Wind Swells,” 91. 20
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