Concert Hall Organs Made By Klais

 

Most recently, this subject was again discussed in another publication by Friedrich Jakob, Markus Leuthard, Alexander C. Voûte, and Anne Hocholi-Gysel: "The Roman Organ from Avenches/Aventicum", published by the Association pro Aventico, CH-1580 Avanches, in 2000.

 

This booklet again shows to which great extent organs used to fulfil secular tasks, being located and played in large rooms and theatres, but also in arenas, in the circus, and at home.

 

For about the last 1000 years, the organ has mainly served sacral purposes without completely sacrificing its secular role, however. So was it widely used for striking up a dance at court, for example.

 

In the 19th century, the British Empire was the first to revive the original tasks of the organ in large secular rooms: many Town Hall instruments, which were created throughout the British Empire during this period, are fascinating witnesses to this development. They are the latest ancestors of our modern concert hall organ. The British model was also appreciated in German-speaking areas: concert hall organs made by Voit, Ladegast, and Walcker - to name only a few - give proof of this tradition.

 

If you look at Walcker's workpiece index between 1890 and 1930, you may get the impression that Walcker was monopolist for concert hall organs. Unfortunately, only a few of these instruments have survived unchanged until today. Many of them were sacrified to the prevailing taste.

 

It's quite interesting that Walcker's early instruments of this period (until approx. 1915) only had a few reeds, while his specifications for church organs of similar size showed reed choruses with far more stops (in the Swell division even with Basson 16', Trompette harmonique 8', Hautbois 8', Clairon harmonique 4').

 

Organ builders of the 19th and 20th centuries did by no means simply translate church organs into secular rooms, they rather created a new organ genre, the concert hall organ.

 

The concert hall organ, unchained from its liturgical integration and function, is intended to fulfil the following tasks:

1. Blending with the orchestra – this role also involves the ability to stand "apart" from the orchestra.
2. Playing with large and small choirs – to accompany human voices.
3. Solo recital work – The organ as a solo instrument must be versatile enough to perform a wide range of the organ literature available (this task was certainly not that important for the Walcker organs of the late 19th/early 20th century).
4. Suitable for the training of organ students.
5. Suitable to perform modern organ music, ideally also suitable for future compositions.

Organ builders have been facing one major difficulty with many of these concert hall organ projects, however. Frequently, the organ must be planned, designed and manufactured before the concert hall has been completed. The work can only be based on the architect's blueprints and the acoustician's analyses and calculations. In contrast to many church projects, the organ builder has no chance to experience the room visually and acoustically. By the way, this issue was already reported for the Ladegast organ in the Vienna "Musikvereinssaal". The architect designed the organ case along with the concert hall, before the hall itself had been completed.

 

Some examples of concert hall organs built by our workshop are shown below. Constructive arguments and discussions between architect, acoustician and organ builder led to amazing synergy effects in many cases. When an organ builders develops an organ solution, he enters the "field of force" between architect and acoustician, the rulers of the concert hall: Without being an architect or an acoustician, he forces his way deep into both fields. His work – the organ – requires space, volume; it affects the hall's acoustics and has an architectural effect.

---

Organ and room are considerably interdependent; thus, it's absolutely necessary to integrate the organ design into the design process of the hall. Due to our experience, there are some major requirements which should be met in order to succeed:

1.       Sufficient Space

Our experience with concert halls has shown that the instrument should not be located in a chamber, in a corner or another separated room but in the concert hall itself, ideally on the face wall.

 

Sufficient space for proper scales and optimum space for proper articulation of each pipe are fundamental preconditions. Sites of sufficient height and width (with respect to mechanical actions we usually avoid organs of more than 12m width) and appropriate depth (according to our experience a depth of more than 5-6m is unfavourable for a concert hall organ) are ideal locations for concert hall organs.

2.       Surround Sound for Low Frequencies

The music instrument organ has an enormous frequency range (from 16Hz to auditory treshold) and a bottom-up tonal pattern. Low frequencies are of particular importance in this context. Architects and acousticians are asked to design rooms with a favourable infrastructure for these low frequencies. We desire solid walls and ceilings. We also ask for a longer reverberation time for the extremely low frequency range (16 to approx. 500Hz) to build up the organ sound out of a warm, full and rich foundation.

3.       Specifications With a Wide Range of Foundation Stops

Looking at the following specifications in chronological order you will realize an increasing number of foundation stops. We experienced that a wide range of foundation stops is one of the major preconditions in order to create a good concert hall organ: from the softest 8‘ narrator to high-pressure Flute 8‘ and Stentorgambe 8‘, from the lyrical Clarinet 8‘ over Corno di Bassetto to Tuba 8‘. And not to forget the flue stops in the 4' range! Sparse use of reed stops can be of advantage, however. All higher stops have to be selected carefully – and sparsely - with respect to their future role and the hall's acoustics. Even though it is our goal to create a very broad musical performance range, it is important to develop an instrument with its own distinct character and not to resort to the – sometimes well-meant - idea of a universal organ.

---

Conclusion:

These examples may have shown how much emphasis we put on a good cooperation between organ expert, acoustician, architect and organ builder.

In our opinion, there is no ideal standard solution for a concert hall organ. Each instrument must be planned, developed and designed individually in accordance with the musical, acoustic and architectural features of the room.

 

During many years of cooperation we came to value organ experts, acousticians and architects not only as experts in their field and engineers, but as artists, who individually contribute to the overall tonal concept.

From the organ builder's point of view, which may be somewhat limited, concert hall designs in shoe-box style with parallel side walls have turned out to be quite favourable. However, divergent solutions may lead to a convincing result as well.

 

A well-known architect, asked for his opinion about his cooperation with a well-known acoustician, let himself be carried away into making this remark: "He is a man with four ears but no eyes."

This interesting and exciting cooperation between the two of them led to one of the most fascinating concert halls of the world.

Any cooperation between organ expert, acoustician, architect and organs builder results in the fact that four artists with a total of 8 eyes and 8 ears struggle for the best possible solution. How these "physical attributes" may be actually distributed among the persons involved, cannot be determined, however.