The 1737 Baumeister Organ at Maihingen Cloister | Organ Stop Demonstration | Bálint Karosi Please support me on Patreon www.patreon.com/user?u=243796... More info about the Organ: de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kloster...
This organ is a real historic artefact. The temperament gives it such an unique sound, and created a chill along my spine from the first stop demonstrated. The organ should remain in this state apart from necessary repairs to keep it working and prevent downfall, no modern equal interval temperament should be ever allowed to touch this organ.
This organ is really unbelievable, when you play it, it tells its very own story to each melody.I am overwhelmed by the beauty of this sound and thank you from the bottom of my heart for this great organ performance.
I see some comments about whether the organ is in or out of tune. According to the German Wikipedia page, the organ is tuned to a slightly modified mean tone temperament. In contrast to modern equal temperament, where in fact ALL of the thirds are out of tune -- i.e not pure -- mean tone has many thirds which are very close to pure. The downside is that as you modulate away from C major, many thirds that are less pure than equal temperament creep in, giving the destinctive "spicy" sound that many people notice. This limits the keys that you can play in quite a bit. A little rule of thumb: in equal temperament, all keys are equally OUT of tune, in baroque unequal temperaments, some keys are more in tune than equal, some less in tune, with mean tone having keys (those with large numbers of sharps or flats) that are so out of tune as to be unusable.
Louis Couperin wrote a Pavane in F-sharp min, so the dominant is C-sharp maj, with seven sharps. Which means that the notes tuned as F and B-flat are used for E-sharp and A-sharp. The effect of the piece is quite extraordinary, as the various chords employed sound more or less in tune. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-aku3fRK4rfU.html
@@TheGloryofMusic The subject of temperament is far more complex than can be easily discussed in RU-vid comments, of course. What is important is that composers of the day exploited the tuning system as part of their musical rhetoric. Playing Louis Couperin on an equally tempered instrument is like serving Mexican food without chili peppers. Some people don't like chili peppers, but it wouldn't be Mexican food, would it!
@@AML2000 Agreed. A while ago I heard on the radio LC's Pavane played on the piano. I wrote to the station to explain how meantone temperament was critical to the piece's aesthetic. (And I like spicy food).
What a wonderful organ! True baroque sound, nothing to do with the misguided excesses of the overrated Orgelbewegung. (Note the abundance of foundation stops, too!)
...das ist natürlich schon ein sehr interessantes und äußerst wertvolles Instrument. Die doch recht starke Windstößigkeit in Kombination mit der modifiziert-mitteltönigen Stimmung verleihen der Orgel (im positiven Sinne) einen sehr urtümlichen und mystischen Charakter. Zudem beweisen die beiden Streicher im Hauptwerk eindrucksvoll, dass man auch im 18. Jahrhundert nicht überall mit Kernstichen gearbeitet hat... ;-) Danke für die gewohnt schöne und ausführliche Präsentation dieser Orgel!
Thank you sir, for another informative and revealing organ adventure. Your improvised phrases are really nothing less than quality miniature chorale tunes, unhurried and long enough to portray a comprehensive picture of the organ. It is fortunate that the instrument was closed up and untampered with for so long, leaving us with a historical treasure.
i do wonder if all that imperfections on quintatön or gambe are made on purpose. you often read on the internet that baumeister wasn´t a great organ builder, because e.g. he "forgot" to put a maintenance door on the organ and tuned the organ in meantone, which by that time was already outdated. but for me all the imperfections (wind, voicing of the strings) make this organ unique and wonderful sounding. this organ for me is the most beautiful sounding one.
Very interesting video ... quite an amazing old instrument. I was interested to see that it has what appears to be quite a small pedalboard and I was wondering what that reflects about organ repertoire at the time the organ was built. Thanks for all of your wonderful organ tours.
That wind does indeed become very unstable on that demo of the full organ towards the end; it reminds me very much of the Casavant in the Benedictine monastery where I live, you could pull full organ and the wind would work but pulling the two bass flute stops in the pedal would cause the wind variation. In spite of all the imperfections of this particular organ, from the tuning to the temperament to the finicky action of this organ it still has some charm to it.
Very interesting to hear a pipe organ unaltered since 1737, and hear first hand what their instruments were like that folks at that time listened too. As always, I continue to appreciate your stop by stop demonstration , where we get to hear the individual tones that make up the instrument, and then the instrument in it's complete state. Thanks
As everyone else says, what a great demonstration of a lovely organ in a gorgeous setting! I see the instrument has the short octave/split key keyboards, typical of the era. Perhaps in one of your demos you could illustrate this and the purpose.
This is a typical baroque organ. But first you need to know, is that the organ is in the right (meantone-based) tune. But some Accords included a "Wolfsquinte". Those you can't play. Further you were not allowed to pull all equal stops at the same time, because the "Kalkanten" were not able to press so much air in the bellows. You needed to save resources.
Inspiring and informative demonstration! As a church musician I miss the great music of faith during covid isolation and closed churches (USA). Thanks for your very welcome musical offerings during these trying times. They are inspiring and mean a lot !!
To Gary Wait: check out Richard McVeigh's "Beauty in Sound" RU-vid channel for 2 hours of church hymns every Sunday, played on the "Hauptwerk" reproductions of great organs in Europe - it is really authentic and wonderful.
@@garywait3231 in the next Balint Karosi RU-vid video, "Exploring the 1733 Hinsz Organ in Leens", go to the comments section. There you will find a link to an mp3 of some great robust congregational singing of Psalm 56 in that church. You really should listen to that! It is great! - it's just like being in that ancient Dutch Church! AND - In the video there are many great views of the organ case - and they explain how it is quite similar to the one at Zwolle - with the statue of King David playing his harp in the center of the organ.. This is an outstanding organ video! An absolute "must-see"!
Temperament... Are some stops tuned differently than others? Of course you won't use them together with others. But one set tuned this way, one set another way... You can change moods... Nobody ever thought about that?
A lovely example of the mysterious South German organ-building school. Closest thing to "reed" to my ears would be the gamba? I guess this predates the French influence of Riepp in upper Swabia?
That registration around 14:00 reminds me somewhat of a French romantic “4 fonds” sound, except a hell of a lot spicier and more archaic-sounding with the spitzflöte and quintadena, as well as with the meantone temperament and chiffy voicing. It’s certainly not what I would’ve expected one to pull on a German baroque organ - it seems to me that usually people tend to go for “vertical” registrations with these types of instruments and repertoire.
Wonderful! I've seen and played many organs in Europe with my students from Australia. The smile on your face was theirs too - the look of joy and amazement at such beauty in sight and sound. Thank you again, Balint.
👍.....Another superb educational journey and excellent performance. Your posting of the voices being demonstrated is the best idea I have seen and help us identify the unique organ pipe sounds...Thanks so much...JRZ
E' difficile definire questo organo, a mio parere il restauro non è ben riuscito e non ha restituito la potenza originale, comunque somiglia al suono chiaro francese ed effettivamente alcuni registri richiamano anche l'organo italiano, sicuramente non è stato deturpato come gli altri organi tedeschi che producono suoni più che scuri, attufati, orrendi !!!
Non trovi nel suono di questo organo un qualcosa di Francese, confronta con questo strumento facendo le opportune distinzioni : ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FZepJyifoSM.html
This kind of reminds me of the Iberian positive organ on my parish church, even though that one is much smaller with only one keyboard, split half way with half stops for each side. Beautiful demonstration and it's truly amazing this organ survived through the centuries. Let's hope it remains this way.
Molto bello e interessante. Mixtur con la terza? Peccato che ci sia sempre qualche organista che non riesce e non attaccare gli adesivi con i numeri anche su questi capolavori ...
Bravo Balint! Now, the first question that comes up: why german organ builders, even the most historically informed, nowadays do not care about this fundamental evidence in pipe voicing?
I guess because it is Maihingen, a rural place that doesn’t rise up to the importance of the big musically significant cities such as Hamburg, Leipzig or Lübeck
I would imagine that the German - and other - organ builders are well aware of historical practices but are there to earn a living by providing what modern customers want, so anything shying too far from equal temperament would not be a good money earner.
@@peteacher52 Yes, you are right as far as the choice of the temperament is concerned, but I was referring especially to the "voicing", ie the tone or timbre and the pronunciation that organ builders pull out of the pipes
Colin Gantiglew you know, that in the world of piano tuning, there was still tuners working at Broadwood in Britain well into the 20th century who tuned variations on quarter comma meantone. Sadly we’ve been fed the “Bach and Beethoven envisioned and advocated the development of a purely equal temperament” myth so well that modern tuning is actually an entirely modern problem hindering intonation in musicians across the board who believe that a keyboard tuned in a manner only universally adopted post circa 1920, is a true representation of pitch and intervals. Most professional musicians nowadays are totally ignorant on a basic, basic, part of how tonal music functions.
Non mi sembra proprio la stessa cosa, fare il segno della cosa è professare la fede cattolica, togliere le scarpe (o coprire il capo) è un segno di rispetto.
Can we possibly get an English Translation on what the man was saying about the bellows? I find it very interesting the way these organs were powered pre-electricity.
He told that these bellows were completely original, they are big bellows, so three persons are needed to operate them. The only thing they were allowed to change was to add an electric motor, because they have no calcants to operate the original bellows.
At 2:34 Cythera 8' and Flauten 8' have a beautiful mellow tone and a pleasant chif. This organ has wonderful clarity, but I find the principle stops too bright for my taste. Does this have anything to do with the temperament?
Balint, re: your statement at 9:59, "One should be very careful with the release," did you mean that one should be precise in releasing all the notes at the same moment?
Beautiful pedal pipes on the façade! Are they made of wood but in a metal fashion, or are they actually coloured metal ones? [or maybe it's just rust?]
Very interesting. The Spitzflöte 8' and Copel 8' were especially beautiful. The Gamba 8' was very unusual, to say the least. No reed stops - hmmm.... 🤔 Btw: what sort of stop is the Cythara? Curious sound.... Was there a manual 8' Gedackt, or did I miss it? Many thanks for this fascinating demonstration. 👍
@@anonymmuss7090 Thanks very much. I'd never seen this stop-name before, and it wasn't mentioned in the Encyclopedia of Organ Stops. Also, thanks for mentioning the Copel stop, although it has been described in the literature as an open metal flue stop (sometimes even tapered, Gemshorn-like). Half-conical stops (Spillflöte, Spindelflöte, Koppelflöte, etc.) date back well into the early 1700s. (see The Encyclopedia of Organ Stops)
Because there is no "swell" which would commonly use the second manual. Here the lower manual is devoted to the RugPositiv, the section of the organ behind the player, sitting on the organ loft rail.
The wind shakes if you release too quickly. Especially on the pedalboard but also on the manuals with many stops on. It is really the art of playing old organs. I learned a lot about release playing the Brombaugh organ at Fairchild chapel at Oberlin, OH.
@@ReaganReese We have beautiful old-style organs although naturally "only" replica instruments. Some of the best ones are by John Brombaugh and Charles Fisk. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-GtATtZ1DUNw.html ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-uVRrCK_Hihk.html
What style of voicing and construction is this organ, within the spectrum of "Baroque German Organs"? Thuringian like those of Trost? Bavarian? Similar to those of Silbermann?
I would say a south german organ, not far from what they were doing in (modern day) Czechia. Trost and Gabler do come to mind and their styles are definitely related to the south german organ
I wonder if there is any way to know if the voicing has naturally changed over time (I know it hasn't deliberately changed)? The HW salicional and gamba have speech artifacts that aren't typically desired (chiffing, unstable overtones in the rank), and I'm wondering if that is because there hasn't been judicious and conservative regulation.
@@johnholmes912 There is something undesirable about chiffing, because if you notice you have a delicate or warm stop, an the chiff is ruining the asthetic, you wonder how to reduce the chiffing.
Being slightly out-of-tune seemed to make it more authentic: less polished, in a modern way. The woody sound was quite distinctive and warm. Of course, I had to compare it immediately to your video on the comparably sized organ in Arnstadt: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Ls8JbMHGu0s.html.
HI, CAN YOU HELPING ME? WHATS NAME THIS ORGAN MUSIC ???? PLEASE RU-vid VIDEO NAME >>>>> Traidor da Malei merece a morte e a alma perdida ????????? SOMEONE CAN TELL ME????
Kedves Bálint úr, Miért nem lehet a Németországban felvett orgonákat német nyelven kommentálni! Angolul förtelmes és borzalmas! Ugyan ez csinálta a zeneakadémia Voit orgonájánál is. A videó nagyon jók de ne angolul! Tessék szépen mindég az adott országban az adott nyelven kommentálni. Ha az amerikaiaknak szeretne kedveskedni akkor lehet feliratot készíteni vagy akár külön felvételt nekik! Tessék ezen változtatni, nagyon sok német orgonaművész haragját vonja magára.
Kedves Zoltán Úr! Köszönöm az észrevételt... Nekem azt még egy német orgonista sem jelezte hogy haragszik rám az Angol nyelv használata miatt, de biztos igaza van. Nekem inkább az a tapasztalatom hogy a legtöbb német is nagyon jól tud angolul, akik meg nem azok szeretnének jobban megtanulni. Az Angol nyelvet bárhol értik a világon és ezért csinálom a kommenteket angolul hogy minél több ember élvezhesse és tanulhasson ezekböl a "demok"-ból gond nélkül és feliratok nélkül. Elég sok országból nézik a videóimat, például Németországból is, de eddig még senki sem panaszkodott emiatt. Egyébként is mindig arra törekszem hogy a videóimban minimalizáljam a szöveget és a zene legyen a fö.
