Registration ideas for the Krzeszow Engler

I'm curious what people's practices are with regards to registering music on the Sonus Paradisi Krzeszow organ. I've done a bit of searching around this forum but failed to find much information on this subject. The organ has an exceptionally beautiful tone and temperament, but the tonal scheme is a bit unusual (in my view anyway). A few things that I find confusing:

• All three manual divisions have similar tonal scheme, same foundation stops, and similar volume/strength. It seems more like 3 smaller one-manual organs welded together.
• The pedal division is amply supplied with 16-foot flues, but hardly any 8 and 4 foot stops, and yet there are no manual-to-pedal couplers (!)

My general tendency is to try to work within the limitations of the original instrument (otherwise why bother to sample a complete instrument instead of taking ranks from here and there to build a new virtual instrument). I have so far succumbed only to using the master couplers to get manual-to-pedal coupling. I'm specifically interested in ideas for how to register the following types of music:

• A trio: The pedal 8' principal is too soft and slow in speech to keep up with a fast counterpoint trio where the manuals parts are using the 8' principals. Similarly if using flutes, there is only the 8' flute on the pedal which is also quite soft.
• A chorale with the melody solo'd on one of the manuals. There does not seem to be any flute-based mutations, sesquialtera-like stops (not even an independent tierce that I can see), which as I understand it are bread-and-butter for this kind of thing.
• A chorale with cantus firmus played on the pedal. I suppose one could use the only 4' pedal stop for this.

I'm quite certain that I must be lacking in understanding, and would be very grateful for any insights folks might be able to offer. I've only just started exploring this instrument so I'm sure there is much I need to learn.

Chris

Drat... just realised I posted in the wrong forum. Could a moderator please move this thread to the Hauptwerk Instruments sub forum?

With regard to tierce stops: you can combine the Mixture and Octave 4' on the third manual and play an octave lower to get a cornet-like sound. You can enforce this by adding the Octave 2' and Quint 1 1/3'

Regarding the pedal, you have to rely heavily on (combinations) of 16' stops indeed. Dependent on the strength of the accompaniment, you can consider the overtone-rich Salicetbass, and combined with the Violonbass you will have quite a strong combination. The Gemshorn Quinta 6' adds a little "boom" to the sound, and for CF play the Trumpet 8' is not too heavy while the Mixture VI almost sounds like a Clarion 4'.

All three manual divisions have similar tonal scheme, same foundation stops, and similar volume/strength. It seems more like 3 smaller one-manual organs welded together.

This is correct, it is the "Werkprincip", which is very common in Baroque organs. The divisions differ in how direct they sound, dependent on their place in the organ. The lower manual (ruckpositiv) sounds most direct because it is situated closest to the church room.

In Krzeszow, each "Werk" (division) is based on a 8' principal (though it can be argued that the Hauptwerk is based on the three 16' stops). In many other organs of this size, the Hauptwerk would be based on a 16' principal and one of the other works on a 4' principal.

A document in German language...
http://www.walcker-stiftung.de/Downloads/Registrierungsanweisungen/Registrierung_Gruessau_1780ca.pdf

Both josq and JoeChip thanks for your useful contributions. I like the cornet-like suggestion. Still need to read the German text of approx 1780.

Ernst

[B. Milan]

Drat... just realised I posted in the wrong forum. Could a moderator please move this thread to the Hauptwerk Instruments sub forum?

Your original posting was in the Hauptwerk Instruments forum. We moved it here since it is more related to performance practice.

Thanks everyone for the responses. Pretty much what I had figured from more time spent on this instrument.

In Krzeszow, each "Werk" (division) is based on a 8' principal (though it can be argued that the Hauptwerk is based on the three 16' stops). In many other organs of this size, the Hauptwerk would be based on a 16' principal and one of the other works on a 4' principal.

That was the thing that I found odd... if anything the disposition (but not the tone) is closer to a romantic-era instrument. Still it does work extremely well for a lot of music from the period of Bach and before (particularly Bach's earlier stuff). The mixtures are particularly interesting to me, they sound more like huge medieval blokwerk than German baroque mixtures.