Organ of St. Andreas (Ostönnen)

Organ of St. Andreas (Ostönnen)
General
place	St. Andreas (Ostönnen)
Organ builder	unknown
Construction year	1425-1431
Last renovation / restoration	2000-2003 by Rowan West
epoch	Gothic
Organ landscape	Organ landscape Westphalia and Lippe
Illustrations
Technical specifications
Number of pipes	576
Number of registers	8th
Number of rows of pipes	12
Number of manuals	1

The Gothic-Baroque organ of St. Andreas in Ostönnen is a technical, art and cultural historical monument of the first order and, along with the instruments in Sion , Kiedrich , Rysum and Bologna, is one of the oldest playable organs in the world. It is probably the oldest of these and today has eight registers with 576 pipes, of which more than half (326) date from before 1500. The baroque exterior comes from Johann Patroclus Möller , who moved and rebuilt the organ in Ostönnen from 1721–1722.

Building history

Despite extensive research, the beginnings of the instrument are still in the dark, neither the builder nor the place for which it was originally built are known.

In 1586, the first datable sources document a repair carried out by a master Bartholdus. At that time, the organ was in the Alt St. Thomae church in Soest and, along with the repair, also got two new stops: the Gedackt, for which old pipes were reused, and a trumpet newly built by Bartholdus. The wood of the wind chests suggests that they were made between 1425 and 1431. The planks of the wind chest were cut in 1410 at the latest and usually stored to dry for around 15 years. The massive Gothic wind chest plank is glued together from three 60 mm thick solid oak planks. For the larger pipes, individual clay chambers were drilled from the long side through several foot holes next to each other and then closed with wooden stoppers. The openings for the valves were chiseled out at the bottom and a valve box was attached. From the top (again sometimes several) holes were drilled for the wind supply to the individual pipes, matching the holes in the register loops. The 48 clay valves are flat and wide with beveled edges. They seem to come from a single source, but have changed slightly over time. Of the hand-forged and filed brass valve springs (probably from the time of origin), 40 (of 48) are still present, and are therefore very rare. 326 of the pipes that have been preserved appear to be late Gothic, i.e. before 1500, and made of pure lead.

In 1720 the later famous and then only 21 years old Johann Patroclus Möller received the order to build a new organ in the Soester Thomaekirche, but had to accept the "old ruinous" instrument for 50 thalers in payment. From 1721–1722 he sold this instrument for 214 thalers in the Sankt-Andreas-Kirche in Ostönnen, on a gallery in the west of the nave that no longer exists today. Möller added the three missing tones Eb, F sharp, G sharp and redesigned the case according to baroque ideas, whereby the prospect pipes were retained and only individual irreparable pipes were replaced from the remaining pipe material. Around 1727 and 1739 bellows repairs were carried out and in 1741 the housing was repainted. In 1760 it was repaired by Johann Georg Fromme from Soest and in 1790 by Adolph Schöning from Münster.

In 1820, against his advice, but at the express request of the presbytery , Bernhard Dreymann moved the keyboards to the front of the organ. In line with contemporary tastes, he replaced the cymbal with a super octave 2 ′. In 1874 the organ was installed above the altar. In 1888 the action was overhauled and in 1892 the keyboard was renewed.

In 1963 Paul Ott carried out a major overhaul. The organ, which had been above the altar since 1874, was placed at ground level in the tower room. He replaced individual pipes with new ones, taking little account of the existing structure. All throats and tongues of the trumpet as well as the wooden heads from B were rebuilt by Ott. In 1973, Ott was commissioned again with the removal of faults that were occurring more and more frequently. In 1989 the organ was cleaned by Tzschöckel (Althütte-Fautspach) after lime dust had penetrated the instrument during construction work in the church. Since the historical value of the organ had already been guessed at at this point in time, no structural measures were taken.

In 2000 a comprehensive restoration began by the organ building company Rowan West in Altenahr . The value of the instrument has now been recognized. During this restoration, the maintenance of the organ as a sonic monument was given preference over its grown condition as a technical monument. Overall, the attempt was made to generally (if possible) return the pipework of the instrument to the condition of 1722, in accordance with the suggestion of the Dutch expert for Gothic pipes, Koos van de Linde. The quality of the work of Johann Patroclus Möller is so high that it was irresponsible to remove his pipes and without him the pipe inventory would only be incomplete today. The aim of the restoration was to use all the pipes from around 1500. The pipes manufactured by Ott were completely replaced by new ones built by Rowan West. According to historical findings, the prospect pipes were covered with tin foil, the labia were primed and gilded with gold leaf.

The organ was monument of the month in Westphalia-Lippe in August 2003 and was inaugurated again on November 8, 2003 in a ceremony.

The baroque prospectus

The case contains parts from all centuries of the organ's building history and has undergone many interventions and changes over the centuries, without all observations being clearly chronological. In this case, the restoration was limited to static securing and cleaning of all housing parts. The two gable-like Gothic crowns ( eyelashes ) as well as the swirl rosette built into the music stand are reused components, so-called Spolia, and also come from the Gothic period. Not easy to see at first glance, the simple substructure with the two Gothic eyelashes is just as high as the colored baroque superstructure. The baroque prospect , the front side of the organ with the striking round tower in the middle, deviates somewhat from the internal structure of the organ. A total of 45 pipes are distributed over 5 pipe fields, two pointed towers (7), two flat fields (11) and the central round tower (9), although the three outer ones of the pointed towers and the two outer ones of the round tower are wooden dummies that are in the design (shape of the labia) clearly differ from the preserved Gothic Praestant pipes. The 7 largest pipes of the organ are in the round tower, starting in the middle with the C and in thirds the pipes on the C side follow on the left and the pipes on the Cs side on the right. In the two flat fields, 4 of the original Praestant pipes are artistically chased, but not arranged symmetrically. The colorful carvings, which come more from the peasant baroque, and the partly fretwork-like foliage decorations on the veil boards, which, although the father Martin / Mertin Möller was widely known as a cabinet maker, are certainly due to the scarce funds of the community, are striking . The two baroque writing tablets under the two flat pipe fields, which were illegible during the restoration work in 2003 despite cleaning and infrared inspection, have now been deciphered and restored. On the left medallion it says: “Forstmann iunior non sibi sic struit organon illud coetus thomanus vendit et hic retovet” (meaning: “Forstmann the Younger did not build that instrument for himself; the Thomägemeinde sold it and has revived it here let ”) on the right side reads the Latin inscription:“ Gloria in excelsis deo et in terra pax vera cunctis hominibus bonae voluntatis ”(“ Glory to God in the highest and peace on earth faithful to all men of his grace ”) and under the central tower stands: "ioan brant gerd esgen collegehit umque fuerunt organon instructum Gloria lausque deo" ("Johann Brand and Gerd Esgen were colleagues here when they were preparing to build this organ for the glory and praise of God").

Remarks

Notes in the text

↑ The three 60 mm thick planks of the wind chest are 3294 mm long and together 530 mm wide. Originally, the stops for operating the loops were flat iron lying horizontally on the drawer. Seven pits (3 with the opening to the rear, 4 to the front) are chiselled out for these iron swords, which are axially aligned at one end. The original oak loops show corresponding elaborations for reinforcements, only the loop for the Gedackt has an elaboration on the top and no matching pit, which could indicate an operation from above. From this it can be concluded that the pipe sticks (on which the pipes stand) must be younger than the drawer itself, because these do not allow the loop to be operated from above.
↑ Before the restoration by Rowan West, the length of the valves was 237 mm. Ott had extended this at the back so that it could be placed on a guide pin. The assumption is that they were originally skipped. Due to the incline, an original length of 212 mm can be assumed. The valves are beveled at 45 ° and approx. 23 mm high, so that approx. 8 mm remain in full width. The valve widths start at 44 mm in the bass and narrow down to 27 mm at the treble.
↑ The late Gothic pipes are extremely thick-walled and made solid, from some enclosed clay particles it can be concluded that the plates were cast on a clay bed, which allows the liquid metal to cool down much more slowly and thus allows larger grains to form. The cast lead plates were then hammered. It is not possible to clearly determine whether the panels were also planed.
↑ As was customary at the time, part of the payment of 214 thalers was made in kind. The price for the "new" organ in Alt St. Thomae, completed in 1725, was 650 Reichstaler (the instrument is no longer preserved). For comparison: only a few years earlier, J. S. Bach was offered the position of organist at the Marktkirche in Halle / Saale for around 170 thalers a year; however, he stayed at the court in Weimar for 20 thalers more. G. F. Handel, the same age as Bach, but already a star at the time, was already receiving a salary of 1,000 thalers at the Hannoversche Hofe.
↑ 91 of the labial pipes can be clearly assigned to Möller. These are easy to recognize because, unlike the older pipes, they are made of a tin-lead alloy and, characteristic of Möller's pipes, still have the red, sometimes also a yellow-white solder color. (This is applied by the organ builder to protect sensitive areas and is usually washed off again after the pipe has been completely soldered together.) The Möller's pipes are also built slightly differently than the older pipes. The eight blind pipes in the prospectus (wooden dummies) look clearly different from the others. On the trumpet, most of the boots and the twisted wooden heads of the first ten notes (C, D to B) are still from Möller.
↑ 45 pipes corresponds exactly to the notes of CDEFGA-c ³ (a short octave in the bass) but does not quite match the arrangement of the pipes on the drawer. There, too, the pipes are in 5 fields but in the following arrangement: 5 16 7 15 5 = a total of 48, due to the 3 semitones of the bass octave inserted by Möller, it was of course necessary to also put 3 new tones in the old drawer.
↑ The pipes fs ¹ , g ¹ , gs ¹ are each third from the outside, but a ¹ is the second. This arrangement is possibly a consequence of Möller's moving the pipes up to include the missing notes Ds, Fs and Gs in the lowest octave.

Disposition since 1820

Manual CD – c ³
Praestant	8th'
Dumped	8th'
Octav	4 ′
Quinta	3 ′
Super octave	2 ′
Sexquialtera II0
Mixture IV
Trumpet B / D	8th'

Pedal CD – g ⁰
attached

Details on the individual registers

Details on the individual registers

Praestant	8th'00	The pipes of the principal 8 ′ are from C – ds ⁰ and from g ⁰ –e ² in the prospectus. The prospect pipes were covered with tin foil apparently from the 19th century. An older layer was visible under the D pipe. There were still traces of gold leaf on the labia, so that all pipes were completely re-foiled during the restoration and the labia were gilded.
Dumped	8th'	The Gedackt was made in 1586 by Master Bartholdus mostly from old, shortened principal pipes and installed. Since then, the width of the register has been enlarged twice by rebuilding the largest pipes (C, D made of metal in the 17th century and C, D and Ds made of wood by Dreymann in 1820) and moving the others on the drawer. The register has received a total of five new pipes and its sound character has been significantly changed compared to the original. Dreymann's wooden pipes have been outsourced.
Octav	4 ′	The octave 4 ′ originates from the time before Möller, the 3 largest pipes (C, D and Ds) originally belonged to the principal / prospectus, as the scaling shows.
Quinta	3 ′	The fifth 3 'was revised by Möller and supplemented with new pipes. The number 3 ′ is the old name for 2 ² ⁄ ₃  ′.
Super octave	2 ′	The pipes of the Superoctav 2 'consist of the Gothic-Möller 2' series of the mixture. Dreymann's pipes were placed in the mixture. The original cymbal was not reconstructed.
Sexquialtera 0II00		The composition of Sexquialtera II was changed and several pipes by Ott were replaced, currently it is 1 ³ ⁄ ₅  ′ + 1 ′ throughout .
Mixture IV		The mixture in the composition of 1820 consists of two fifths and two octave choirs (C = 2 ′ + 1 ¹ ⁄ ₃  ′ + 1 ′ + ² ⁄ ₃ ′; cs ¹ = 4 ′ + 2 ² ⁄ ₃ ′ + 2 ′ + 1 ¹ ⁄ ₃ ′). Dreymann apparently reorganized the mixture in a very unsystematic way, by adding and rearranging many pipes, and thereby made the composition, especially in the treble, much deeper. From the pipes, which can be clearly assigned to the time before Dreymann, no historically verifiable result could be reconstructed, so it was omitted to replace a fantasy state with a new one.
Trumpet B / D	8th'	On the trumpet, some of the bells are still from Bartholdus, the turned wooden heads for notes C to B of the trumpet register are from Möller, the heads with brass rings from Ott were retained in order to avoid damage to the bells, the throats and tongues from Ott were not worked according to the sound character of the time of 1586, were replaced by new ones, based on the model in the organ of the Uttum church (East Friesland) from 1529. The pipes are very similar to those of Bartholdus.

Technical specifications

8 stops, 576 pipes including 326 from around 1500
Action :
- Tone action: mechanical (1722, later changed)
  - Keyboard : lower keys ebony, upper keys bone
- Stop action : mechanical ( slider box , a single log box, 15th century)
  - Register slides: raked boxwood
Wedge Bellows (2003)
Tuning pitch: a ¹ = 482 Hz (at 18 ° C)
Temperature: mid-tone
Dimensions:
- Width lower case: 2267 mm
- Lower case height: 2170 mm
- Width upper case: 3595 mm
- Upper case height: 2170 mm
- Central tower height: 3480 mm
- Case depth: 940 mm

literature

Rudolf Reuter: Organs in Westphalia. Kassel 1963.
Ulrich Wulfhorst: The Westphalian organ builder Johann Patroclus Möller. Part I: Life and Work. Kassel 1967.
Helmut Fleinghaus: Ev.-luth. St. Andrew's Church, Ostönnen. Schnell & Steiner, Regensburg 2004, ISBN 3-7954-6523-0 .
Hannalore Reuter: Historical organs in Soest. Münster 2009, ISBN 978-3-87023-299-3 .
Wolf Kalipp : The Gothic organ of the Protestant St. Andreas Church Soest-Ostönnen, Westphalia. In: Music and Worship. 66th year, 2012, pp. 175–178. ( online (PDF file; 252 kB), accessed on February 17, 2015).

Web links

Commons : St. Andreas (Ostönnen) - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Homepage of the parish with a detailed restoration report by Prof. Helmut Fleinghaus (2003)
Organ Atlas Ostwestfalen-Lippe (Hans-Werner Coordes)
Description on organ database
The Gothic Sound , Documentation, D 2016.

51.548277777778 8.0009722222222Coordinates: 51 ° 33 ' N , 8 ° 0' E

[1] The three 60 mm thick planks of the wind chest are 3294 mm long and together 530 mm wide. Originally, the stops for operating the loops were flat iron lying horizontally on the drawer. Seven pits (3 with the opening to the rear, 4 to the front) are chiselled out for these iron swords, which are axially aligned at one end. The original oak loops show corresponding elaborations for reinforcements, only the loop for the Gedackt has an elaboration on the top and no matching pit, which could indicate an operation from above. From this it can be concluded that the pipe sticks (on which the pipes stand) must be younger than the drawer itself, because these do not allow the loop to be operated from above.

[2] Before the restoration by Rowan West, the length of the valves was 237 mm. Ott had extended this at the back so that it could be placed on a guide pin. The assumption is that they were originally skipped. Due to the incline, an original length of 212 mm can be assumed. The valves are beveled at 45 ° and approx. 23 mm high, so that approx. 8 mm remain in full width. The valve widths start at 44 mm in the bass and narrow down to 27 mm at the treble.

[3] The late Gothic pipes are extremely thick-walled and made solid, from some enclosed clay particles it can be concluded that the plates were cast on a clay bed, which allows the liquid metal to cool down much more slowly and thus allows larger grains to form. The cast lead plates were then hammered. It is not possible to clearly determine whether the panels were also planed.

[4] As was customary at the time, part of the payment of 214 thalers was made in kind. The price for the "new" organ in Alt St. Thomae, completed in 1725, was 650 Reichstaler (the instrument is no longer preserved). For comparison: only a few years earlier, J. S. Bach was offered the position of organist at the Marktkirche in Halle / Saale for around 170 thalers a year; however, he stayed at the court in Weimar for 20 thalers more. G. F. Handel, the same age as Bach, but already a star at the time, was already receiving a salary of 1,000 thalers at the Hannoversche Hofe.

[5] 91 of the labial pipes can be clearly assigned to Möller. These are easy to recognize because, unlike the older pipes, they are made of a tin-lead alloy and, characteristic of Möller's pipes, still have the red, sometimes also a yellow-white solder color. (This is applied by the organ builder to protect sensitive areas and is usually washed off again after the pipe has been completely soldered together.) The Möller's pipes are also built slightly differently than the older pipes. The eight blind pipes in the prospectus (wooden dummies) look clearly different from the others. On the trumpet, most of the boots and the twisted wooden heads of the first ten notes (C, D to B) are still from Möller.

[6] 45 pipes corresponds exactly to the notes of CDEFGA-c ³ (a short octave in the bass) but does not quite match the arrangement of the pipes on the drawer. There, too, the pipes are in 5 fields but in the following arrangement: 5 16 7 15 5 = a total of 48, due to the 3 semitones of the bass octave inserted by Möller, it was of course necessary to also put 3 new tones in the old drawer.

[7] The pipes fs ¹ , g ¹ , gs ¹ are each third from the outside, but a ¹ is the second. This arrangement is possibly a consequence of Möller's moving the pipes up to include the missing notes Ds, Fs and Gs in the lowest octave.