Coisas de órgãos

I have been giving a great deal of thought to organ compositions and intonation. Most of our ideas about how an organ should sound like stem from Bach’s music. This is, of course, wrong because we do not exactly know what kind of organ Bach preferred. Even so, there are certain characteristics that an organ must have in order to accommodate Bach’s music. They are, I think, the following.

Wind. The organ must be loud, therefore it must have good wind reserves. In addition, the wind must be stable. This is necessary for fugues, for triosonatas and for preludes. Chorales are less demanding in that respect.

Color. Most sources suggest that Bach liked a great deal of coloring, but we do not know what specific colors Bach had in mind. Almost certainly these included flutes, salicionals and borduns at 8 foot. Flutes of 4, 3 and 2 are suggested by the Bad Berka design. And certainly the sexquialtera is a necessary stop.

Plenum. This is one of the very few things in which we are informed. Bach stated that “good lungs” were necessary and, for Mühlhausen, specifically requested that it should be possible to draw all the registers. We also know that Bach liked low sound. Therefore, a plenum of 16+32 is likely. The keyboards must, of course, be coupled.

Keyboards. Certain evidence suggests that the Central Germany tendency during Bach’s times was veering toward a concentration of stops in fewer manuals than before. This is, probably, the consequence of stronger wind, but Bach’s music suggests very few keyboard changes. Usually, a plenum keeps to the end of a piece, perhaps with the addition of reeds in the end (and this holds better to earlier works – the Passacaglia, the great a minor prelude and fugue – than to later ones, although the great e minor fugue perhaps suggests a change of manuals.

All this suggests a strong organ, capable of a strong plenum without wind instabilities and several more delicate stops for use in less heavy registrations.

This kind of organ feels natural when one plays Bach. The manual 16 foot seems mandatory for the intonation of many fugues and for many (most) preludes. A 32 foot foundation seems natural. All this means a strong, bright and solid sound.

When playing Buxtehude everything changes. Not only the color is quite different (reeds, aliquots) but the plenum is different: more distant, more cavernous. Playing Buxtehude on a Silbermann seems impossible to me.

French music naturally relies on French organ specifications, and the same is valid for Iberian and Italian music. The case of Iberian instruments being naturally closer to me than the others, I will analyze it.

Iberian organs. What strikes me with Iberian organs is their intense poetry. All seems to come from a cold mist. In part, this is because most pipes are open, but the voicing is the most important aspect. Iberian organs tend to have a very pronounced attack. It is not brutal, but it is almost always there. One can also modulate it when playing because of low wind pressures. It is perfectly possible to play a tento with the principal alone and achieve an extremely poetic effect.

The principals are so different from the German or French ones that one is almost tempted to use the Iberian word – flautado which means “fluted” – as it is more appropriate. The plenum is just a continuation of the flautado 12 (the principal 8). When one adds the octave, then the superoctave, and then the mixtures, one has a crescendo of brightness and “penetranz”, but never a crescendo of aggression. Mixtures, up to the end of the 17th Century are never too bright (besides, they usually have fewer ranks than most), although there may be many mixtures, ordered in sharpness. However, to my knowledge, the sharper mixtures only occur when the church is big enough to have a 16 foot manual (which is usually open).

Most organs do not have a 16 foot register in the manuals. This is natural, because the fluework is extremely polyphonic and a 16 muddles polyphony in most cases.

Wind is usually unstable, more or less as in all 17th Century organs. This furthers the delicacy of the principals which may be said to be almost fragile. The result is an extremely delicate sound that seems to ring in the air as waves of gold and green, gold and red, silver and blue and many other colors. There is nothing quite like it.

Wind instability, strong attacks and fluework delicacy serve polyphony. The fact that playing a musical pattern in the bass has an audible effect on the treble, contrary to what is often said, has an enhancing effect on polyphonic clarity.

There are usually few flutes. They may be conical, chimney and, sometimes, gedeckts. All are sweetly bright. They can perfectly well be mixed with the principals, although it usually is not necessary.

This kind of sound is impossible to achieve in an organ that can play Bach. The sheer strength of this kind of organ renders the intricate polyphony less audible (as I think also happens with Bach’s fugues) but, more important, make it impossible to capture the ethereal quality of most Iberian counterpoint (Cabanilles may be an exception, but I say this perhaps because I do not know Cabanilles’ music well).

One might say that the most important repertoire for the organ is Bach, so any organ must be able to play that, even if this implies a compromise on other repertoire. But I strongly disagree. Old polyphonic works are not less beautiful or less complex than Bach’s organ music.

In conclusion. Thinking of what I wrote, I see I said nothing new: old organs are beautiful, the repertoire must be played on suitable organs. And yet, I mean much more than that. I mean that Iberian organs are quite distinct from German organs and that they are perfectly their equal.

The problem is, one cannot build an eclectic Iberian instrument. For instance, it is just not possible to build a 3 manual organ in which the 3rd manual is “Iberian”. It would never mingle with the more robust, less colorful, sound of “German” or “French” sounds. What is more, adding a Pedal 16 foot reed seems not natural at all. Perhaps a delicate Fagott might do the trick, but it is so foreign to the Iberian sound that it would be almost ugly. Also, a sexquialter would sound out of place. I would venture to say that the very beautiful effect of a flute battery (8, 4, 3, 2), although foreign to the Iberian concept, might work. Also, thin and delicate voiced regals and reeds might mingle well (bear in mind that Iberian reeds are a relatively recent development and were not used in polyphonic music: they are usually strident and blasting in sound; that is why I think a softly but richly voiced regal would work well).

Would it be possible to “play Bach” on such an organ - I mean, the development of the Iberian organ, with pedals and a 'solo' keyboard I outlined above? I would say yes, at least fugues. We are used to the heavy pedals of German organs, but it must be stressed that a strong pedal does not usually enhance polyphonic clarity. In Bach’s music this is very evident, as in many cases the manual voices “climb up” during busy pedal melodies, obviously in an effort not to confuse what is already a rather muddled sound.

If we think on terms of abstract polyphony, in many cases, the simple addition of a strong 16 foot bordun to the manual pulldown is enough to make fugues sound well. In smaller churches it is even possible to use only 8 foot range in the pedals and keep the 16 foot for especially emphasis. As an example of this, playing the Art of Fugue with a different pedal combination usually makes polyphony much less clear than just using whatever was chosen for the manuals (it is true that there is much voice crossing, but the same is true for the upper voices).

Bach’s fugues are very expressive, but they do not rely on organ color. They sound beautiful in whatever combination of instruments one uses. In fact, Bach’s fugues may be registered almost anyway: the interest lays in the voice movement and the resulting harmonic and melodic effects. This is exactly the same as with the tentos of Iberia. The Iberian organ sound being what it is, music would shine through a very different light.