New edition of the Bosch-Schnitger Vollenhove

Hello all,

work is in progress for the new edition of the Bosch-Schnitger organ, Vollenhove, NL

Following features will be implemented:

- Reconstruction of lost ranks of the 1720 state:
Vox Humana 8
Rohrfluit 8

Both ranks are taken from the Schnitger organ Duurswoude and virtually put into the Vollenhove room acoustic

- Reconstruction of the Bourdon 16 rank of 1808 (Freytag)
The Bourdon 16' was 1808 installed by Freytag (organ builder of the Schnitger-Hinsz school) by shifting the Bourdon 8 rank one octave down and complementing the lower octave.
This rank was set back to the original state by the 1977 restoration.

A lot of people still would like to have the Bourdon 16 in the Vollenhove organ. So we decided to try a virtual reconstruction to test, which impact it had on the sound.
The Bourdon 16, although having small volume, changes the sound characteristic significantly, especially with the Plenum sound. The Vollenhove church acoustic is very well suited for a 16' based organ sound, of course (check the Reger demo)

From a today's point of view, I think we could understand both decisions, the 1808 modification as well as the removal by the 1977 restoration.

Therefore we decided, to support both states by having the chance, to switch between Bourdon 16 and Bourdon 8 on the control page.

Implementing three release sample levels:
Due to memory considerations, the first edition realized two release levels for the flue ranks and three levels for most reed ranks.
Because three release samples already were taken during the 2006 recordings, we decided, to implement three levels for all ranks except a few ranks, being able to load the organ within a 4 GByte address space.
This extension still improves the sound presence and clarity

First demos of the new ranks can be found:

http://www.organartmedia.com/Vollenhove-Demos.html

This update will be available by end of 2007.

Quite, quite charming!!! Thank you for your work here.

This organ has rapidly become one of my favourite sample sets. It is an instrument I feel very comfortable playing - I can loose myself for hours just improvising into the night. The addition of the vox to the HW opens up a host of new possibilities - playing this more gentle reed against the baroque sounding RP which has more sparkle that the older sounding HW.

The new rohrfluit fits better than the current bourdon 8 to my ear, and although perhaps not truly authentic, the option to switch to a 16 Bourdon is very welcome musically.

Just the combination action left to add :-) (I know the Prof is not a fan)

I await with anticipation the details of how to order!!

This project shows how useful Hauptwerk can be in reconstructing historical situations.

In 1808 the organ did not have a Pedal. The bass problem was partially solved by F.C. Schnitger in 1720 when he added three new reeds, all of which become louder the lower they go. Freytag added 12 new pipes to the bass of the Bosch Bourdon-8. Fretyag and F.C. Schnitger junior ran an organbuilding firm together. In 1977 the organ restorers decided to go back to the 1686 situation on the Hoofdwerk as much as possible. The Vox Humana had been removed somewhere in the middle of the 19th century. The Bourdon was shoved up an octave again. The bass problem had already been solved with the 1860 free Pedal. The lowest 12 Freytag pipes are currently in use as a Pedal Bourdon-16 for a small organ in Saaksum. The Roerfluit was also removed (I have never been able to find out why) and placed in the Hinsz/van Gruisen/Van Vulpen organ in the Broederkerk in Kampen.

For the reconstruction Prof. Maier wisely chose the Roerfluit from Duurswoude instead of the original Vollenhove Roerfluit in Kampen which had been adapted to the new Van Vulpen (using many old ranks) organ. One must remember that the Duurswoude organ was originally intended for a much larger church, likely similar in size to the church in Vollenhove.

For me, this has been an exciting project, personally having played the Vollenhove, Duurswoude and Kampen organs and now being able to hear it all back where it should be.

Congratulations! Apparently, I wasn't the only one to suggest for a 16' in the Hoofdwerk; and I am very happy it is coming, along with the wonderful Vox Humana and the Roerfluit 8'. The organ is quite complete now. The only thing one could still wish for is a 4' reed in the pedal, but I know that's not part of the organ's history.

A new demo is available, especially featuring the reconstructed Bourdon 16' of Freytag 1808:

Bach: Fantasia g BVW542

Registration please check the demo web site.

Couldn't believe personally, which impact the 1973 removed 16' had!

Enjoy!

Fantastic ! ! ! !

Perhaps interesting to know:

The demo was made "on the fly" on a single 3 GHz processor with XP32, 3 GByte RAM incl. OS,
16 bit, all loops, 3 release levels!