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

“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24 Arnold Schönberg, “Die Zukunft der Orgel” (unpublished essay, Arnold Schönberg Center, Vienna, Austria,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.
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