Johann Müller (organ builder)

Johann Müller (born October 1, 1817 in Bachem , † April 17, 1875 in Viersen ) was a German organ builder .

Life

Johann Müller was born as the first of seven children to the farmer Theodor Müller and his wife Katharina Theisen. He learned the profession of organ builder from Engelbert Maaß (1781–1850). From 1849 he appeared as an independent organ builder. On October 5, 1850, he married Luisa Huberta Berger, daughter of an innkeeper, the marriage remained childless. Throughout his life he suffered from breathing difficulties that often made his work impossible. He died of pulmonary tuberculosis .

Works

Müller's work included the Viersen, Mönchengladbach and Neuss area . One of his students was Franz Joseph Schorn (1834–1905), who set up his own workshop in his home town of Kuchenheim in 1868 .

The following organ buildings or repairs by Johann Müller are documented. The size of the instruments is indicated in the fifth column by the number of manuals and the number of sounding registers in the sixth column. A capital “P” stands for an independent pedal , a lowercase “p” for an attached pedal. Italicization indicates that the organ in question is no longer available or that only the brochure is from the workshop.

year	place	building	image	Manuals	register	Remarks
1849	Viersen- Helenabrunn	St. Helena		II / P	24	The work was replaced in 1912 by a new organ from the Klais company in Bonn.
1849	Mönchengladbach	St. Vitus Minster				Repairs and tuning of the organ
1850	Mönchengladbach- Rheindahlen	St. Helena		II / P		Expansion of the organ built by Johann Peter Fabritius in 1828 by a positive . The organ was installed in 1912 in the parish church of St. Antonius in Düsseldorf-Oberkassel , which had been built a year earlier , where a third manual was added. When the church was destroyed in World War II , the organ was destroyed.
1851	Mönchengladbach- Neuwerk	Monastery church		I / p	7th	Extension of a baroque instrument (7 stops, single manual). In 1873 there was a new building by Franz Wilhelm Sonreck , and in 1927 another new building by Georg Stahlhuth , Aachen.
1855	Mönchengladbach- Giesenkirchen	St. Gereon		II / P	23	New building. The organ was replaced in 1908 on the advice of Cologne Cathedral Kapellmeister and Cathedral Capitular Karl Cohen by a new work from the Klais company in Bonn.
1856	Bonn- Küdinghoven	St. Gallus		II / P	20th	New building. The instrument was given up in 1927 in favor of a Klais plant.
1856	Euskirchen	St. Martin		II / P	27	Enlargement of the baroque organ from 1717, modified by Engelbert Maaß in 1820, by a second manual and an independent pedal. The organ was restored in 1976 by the Weimbs company in Hellenthal and has largely been preserved in its original substance (registers from 1717, 1829, 1856 and later).
1860	Garzweiler	St. Pancras		II / P	20th	New building. The organ work gave way to a pneumatic organ from Seifert in Cologne in 1927, changing the neo-Gothic prospectus. In the meantime, the once again modified case with a work by the Opladen company Weyland-Orgelbau is in the church of Jüchen- Neu Garzweiler .
1861	Merbeck	St. Maternus				Repair or tuning of the organ built by the Müller brothers (Reifferscheid).
1861	Leverkusen- Lützenkirchen	St. Maurinus		II / P	21st	New building. The organ no longer exists today.
1862	Blatzheim	St. Pantaleon				Construction of an organ. In his extensive correspondence with Pastor Klein in Lützenkirchen, Müller mentions that he had to leave 300 thalers for the trade-in for the existing organ when building a new organ in Blatzheim and that he was therefore in a financially critical situation. When the church was rebuilt in 1923, Müller's instrument was traded in to the Klais company in Bonn, which delivered a new organ in 1928.
1864	Mönchengladbach- Hardt	St. Nicholas		II / P	28	New building. The factory was completely rebuilt in 1902 by the Klais company in Bonn and the housing was redesigned. After 70 years, this work was in such a bad condition that in 1978 a new slider chest organ was installed in the historic case by the Winfried Albiez company in Lindau, in which three registers from Müller could be found.
1867-1869	Neuss-Grefrath	St. Stephen		II / P	30th	The Grefrath organ is the largest work that Müller built, around 50% of its historic pipework has been preserved.
1870	Otzenrath	St. Simon and Jude Thaddaeus		II / P	18?	New building. There are no more documents available about the planning and rebuilding of the organ. In April 1871 it is reported that the organ built the year before had been overhauled by Toepler, music director from Brühl. The first records come from the 1930s, when the Mönchengladbach musicologist Karl Dreimüller recorded the disposition of the organ, which was changed in 1925 by the organ builder Köpp from Grevenbroich. After war damage, the Karl Bach company in Aachen built a new organ in 1960 using materials that were still usable and sold to Poland in 2006 before the church was demolished.
1870-1872	Hochneukirch			II / p	17th	before 1873: Neukirchen, St. Pantaleon: Reconstruction and expansion of the existing organ from Welchenberg Monastery . Müller largely took over the old stock of the baroque organ, even if the sound did not correspond to the taste of the time. Four registers were newly acquired, the other changes made from the inventory. The organ was replaced in 1929 by a work from the Klais company in Bonn.
1874	Geyen	St. Cornelius		I / p		since 1967 in Langendorf (Zülpich) , St. Cyriakus: new register. The organ was restored in 1970 by the Weimbs workshop in Hellenthal and expanded to include an independent pedal mechanism.

literature

• Eberhard Bons, Ulrich Bons: The Viersener organ builder Johann Müller 1817–1875. In: Acta Organologica . 20, 1988, pp. 292-318.
• Ulrich Bons: Johann Müller. In: Heinz Bremer (Hrsg.): Rheinischemusik 10 (= contributions to the Rheinische Musikgeschichte Volume 150). Kassel 1998, pp. 97f.
• Werner Büser, Franz-Josef Vogt: The organ builder Franz Josef Schorn. In: Acta Organologica. 15, 1981, pp. 126-167.
• Ulrich Bons: Johann Müller Viersen (1817–1875). A Rhenish organ builder between Baroque and Romanticism. In: Heimatbuch des Kreis Viersen 2012. Viersen 2011, pp. 13–28.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Volker Prinz: The Kuchenheimer organ builder Franz-Joseph Schorn (1834 to 1905). Retrieved February 5, 2019 . 
2. ^ Organ in Küdinghoven, St. Gallus , accessed on February 7, 2019.
3. ^ Organ in St. Pankratius, Jüchen-Garzweiler ( Memento from April 25, 2001 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ St. Stephanus in Neuss-Grefrath. Retrieved February 5, 2019 . 
5. ↑ Horst Hodick: Johannes Klais (1852-1925). A Rhenish organ builder and his work . tape 2 . Katzbichler, 2001, ISBN 3-87397-139-9 , pp. 436 .
6. ^ Organ in Langendorf , accessed on February 7, 2019.