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Sauer, opus 2025 sample set forthcoming

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zurek

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Sauer, opus 2025 sample set forthcoming

PostSat Nov 05, 2022 10:31 am

This is an announcement about a forthcoming sample set of Sonus Paradisi. [Edit: The sample set has been released now.] It is the concert hall organ from Frankfurt (Oder). The organ was built by Sauer in 1975 as Opus 2025. The Sauer company is world famous for top-quality Romantic instruments (such as the Chemnitz organ modeled by Sonus Paradisi).

But few people know that the organ building at the company continued throughout the 20th century, and even today the company builds and services pipe organs. In the second half of the 20th century, the company built neo-baroque instruments. as was the current fashion. The Opus 2025 is an excellent representative of this movement. Unlike many instruments of the period, which often have lackluster voicing and a sound that borders on boring, this instrument stands out with its meticulous voicing, especially in the labial stops. For this reason, we have decided to include it in the Sonus Paradisi portfolio.

The details about the organ are on my web.
The sample set should be released within 2 weeks.
Last edited by zurek on Fri Nov 11, 2022 8:52 am, edited 1 time in total.
Jiri Zurek,
Prague
http://www.sonusparadisi.cz
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zurek

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Re: Sauer, opus 2025 sample set forthcoming

PostFri Nov 11, 2022 8:51 am

The Frankfurt (Oder) Sauer sample set has been released just now.
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JulianMoney-Kyrle

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Re: Sauer, opus 2025 sample set forthcoming

PostSun Nov 20, 2022 7:55 am

I installed this set yesterday and I have been playing around with it, though I haven't had time to test it properly. My first impression is that it is very nicely recorded and sounds realistic in my system. With the default settings there is enough reverb to give it a sense of presence without swamping the detail, though of course it is variable perspective and I haven't tried adjusting the acoustic yet. It is also a very beautiful organ, nicely voiced and with everything blending well together. There is none of the harshness, brashness or excessive brightness that seems to upset a lot of people when it comes to instruments of the Organ Reform Movement type. It is really quite unlike anything else that I have already, but I think I shall be playing it a lot.

In particular I have been trying out the aliquots, as the only other organ I have with these is the Berlin Steinmeyer from Organ Art Media, which is so wet that it rather puts me off playing it (I get the impression that OAM optimises their sample sets for headphones rather than speakers, which is a pity as they are otherwise excellent). I have managed to get some weird and wonderful effects which really don't sound like an organ at all, ranging from bell-like tones to something reminiscent of the output of a ring modulator (which is a standard component of a Moog synthesiser and is also used by the BBC to generate the voice of Dr Who's Daleks). However, I would be really interested to know how they are meant to be used in practice.

The closest stop on a more conventional organ, I suppose, is the sesquialtera, which can be very versatile. If you use it with an 8' flute then it gives a more piercing, more metallic solo voice than you might get from adding a nazard to 8' and 4' or 2' flutes. You can use it to colour reeds. You can add it to a full flute chorus, along with some combination of nazard and larigot, to get a cornet (I would also be interested if anybody could tell me how this differs from an actual cornet, though these seem to vary a lot, too). You can use it with the plenum as an additional mixture to give a different overall tone.

The quintan of this organ (12th plus 16th, i.e. adding a fifth and a ninth but an octave up) is quite loud, and seems to me to function more as a mixture than a colour stop for solo voices, whereas the septime is much quieter; curiously there is a cornet stop that simply pulls a group of other stops, and this is one of them.

There is also a Grand Sesquialtera on the pedal which sounds like adding a quiet 16' reed to whatever flues you already have drawn; I have come across this on other sample sets, and it is useful if you don't want the full power of the Posaune.

I suppose if you are going to reinforce harmonics then there is no reason why it should only be fifths and thirds, but I would love to know how to use aliquots effectively and musically, and whether there is any music that specifically calls for them.
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Re: Sauer, opus 2025 sample set forthcoming

PostSun Nov 20, 2022 2:01 pm

I don’t have much experience with this organ beside listening to some of the demos, but I think it is a good one, one of SP’s best. The stops have more baroque character than most neo-baroque organs, and the mixtures aren’t harsh, as you say. The reverb sounds like it is just right between not too wet and not too dry.

The best explanation of why it’s called the sesquialtera that I’ve heard is that it comes from the Latin “sesqui,” which means half, and “altera,” which means alternates, and that this describes how the 1 3/5 rank looks like it’s half the size of the 2 2/3 rank on the board. Before the Baroque period, they were usually full ranks, but by the Baroque period it was customary to include breaks, and I think I prefer them with breaks. They are a bit more interesting that way.

The cornet usually has 8’, 4’, 2 2/3’, 2’ and 1 3/5 ranks with no breaks, and traditionally doesn’t include the bottom two octaves. However, starting in the romantic period you get experimentation with the basic formula, including breaks and the addition of septieme’s.

The Septieme rank 1 1/7 is usually used to add quiet reedy character to another stop or another reed, starting in the romantic period.

The None 8/9 was used by the Italians to add interest/reedy character to a full plenum, but some German romantics and modern builders used it for this and to add power to loud reed combinations without making them too loud.

The pedal Sesquialtera is also characteristic of pedal mixture experiments done by German Romantics and moderns around the time of this Sauer. It strikes me as pretty conservative though. The most interesting one in my eyes is the Theorbe, for which a typical composition would be 6-2/5, 4-4/7, 3 5/9. I’ve never heard a real one, but I’ve experimented with the ranks in a CODM organ, and the result can be pretty wild! There are some Baroque Theorbes, but they are all unison sounding pedal reeds.

You can get some pretty cool sounds out of them, however the problem with a lot of these funky aliquote stops is that they don’t blend very well with other stops at different pitches. So they are usually used to add reedy character to other stops or to bolster an already loud reed combination or plenum combination without adding a lot of volume, but otherwise don’t have a lot of use. Because of that, they aren’t often used. I still think they are cool though!
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Re: Sauer, opus 2025 sample set forthcoming

PostSun Nov 20, 2022 5:15 pm

Thank-you. That is very interesting. I will re-read your reply and digest it, but this is the sort of thing I was interested in finding out.

The Latin prefix "sesqui-", by the way, means one-and-a-half, not half, as in the English words sequicentenary and sesquipedalian (the latter being one of those words that more-or-less defines itself, along with pentasyllabic and mispelt). I am still not sure how you get from that to sesquialtera. I imagined that the other root was from altus (high, deep, intense etc.) though alter also makes sense (altera being the feminine of alter).

I have just looked it up and as well as the name of a stop it is also a musical term referring to the ratio 3:2, which I didn't know. According to Wicktionary it comes from the Latin word sesquialter, meaning uncountable. I would imagine that any fraction is uncountable with the clumsy number system that the Romans used.
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Re: Sauer, opus 2025 sample set forthcoming

PostTue Nov 22, 2022 7:30 pm

Has anyone else noticed that the Oktävlein stop on the Swellwerk plays at 1-1/3’ pitch rather than the 1’ pitch on the stop tab? I had to compare it with the Quint 1-1/3’ stop on the Positiv to be sure.

As others have said, I’m really enjoying exploring this new sample set and loving all of its colors and beautiful voicing!
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Re: Sauer, opus 2025 sample set forthcoming

PostWed Nov 23, 2022 2:13 am

I'm also getting interested in this set myself. On the topic of reporting issues - in the demo I noticed that the "Untersatz 32" couples not only a quint/suboctave, but an octave above as well. Is this intended? It doesn't match the website description and the "octave coupler" only goes up to the middle F (where the pedal compass ends an octave above), so it sounds quite big and not entirely consistent across the range.
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Re: Sauer, opus 2025 sample set forthcoming

PostWed Nov 23, 2022 7:51 am

I published ODFs for all the sample set variants today, version 1.04, where the reported bugs were corrected:
https://www.sonusparadisi.cz/en/organs/ ... -2025.html

Regarding the Untersatz 32: the stop functions exactly as it is designed in Frankfurt, including the upper octave. The creators of the organ wanted it to be that way. Nevertheless, there is a Subbass 32 added to the sample set, which is a normal single rank 32' stop, which is probably better usable than the Untersatz.
Jiri Zurek,
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Re: Sauer, opus 2025 sample set forthcoming

PostThu Feb 23, 2023 12:58 am

I recently got this set myself and am also enjoying it so far; it has a very clear sound without being too direct or "upfront" like some other sets. One additional issue I noticed however is that the Swell Holzprincipal doesn't seem to be affected enough by the swell pedal; its volume doesn't reduce that much and it noticeably sticks out in combinations with the box closed. This doesn't seem to affect any other stop on the Swell.

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