Turmorgel at the Dechanatstraße

Over a history of training church musicians that now counts more than 70 years, Bremen has acquired an excellent reputation in the national music scene, as well as internationally and is regarded as a leading location for educating cantors and organists. Professors and teachers of high renown such as Harald Vogel, Hans Davidsson, Hans-Ola Ericsson or Wolfgang Baumgratz have made major contributions to the high level of teaching organ playing in Bremen. Today, Dr. Edoardo Maria Bellotti is serving as the chair for Historical Organ at the HfK. Bremen has also certainly profited from being at the center of a uniquely rich landscape for the instrument where more than 200 organs built in every period since the late gothic era are extant. Northern Germany had also been the primary area of activities for Arp Schnitger, the preeminent organ builder of the Baroque era.

Lacking an instrument of our own, the HfK had long been obliged to call on the support of church parishes in Bremen (such as the Bremer Dom, Unser Lieben Frauen, St. Martini, St. Ansgarii, St. Remberti, Waller Kirche), who opened their doors and invited our students to their key desks. But as the churches had their own priorities due to activities of congregations, religious services and the demands of tourism, these naturally created certain limitations. Furthermore only hardy souls are willing and able to play an organ for hours in the bitter cold of an unheated church during winter time.

Following years of planning, effortful persuasion on many fronts, conversations and negotiations with organ builders and a persistent quest for funding possibilities, the University therefore decided to order a new organ for the Music Department at Dechanatstraße. Known as Altes Gymnasium, the building had been erected in 1872-1875 under direction of city architect A. Schröder in late classicist style as a magnificent complex of three wings and served as the elite high school for the upper middle and upper classes of Bremen. In 1991 the facility was dedicated to the education of music students. In 2010 the queen of instruments found her new home there. By putting the organ into service, an architectural jewel of the city was kissed awake that had been left alone during the renovation of the building from 2003 to 2006: The historical observatory of Bremen rising above the roofs of the Schnoorviertel in a eight cornered tower that then was renovated according to the specific, acoustic and statical needs of the new tenant. The bill for the organ ran to 360.000 Euros and was carried in equal shares by the University and the German Research Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft).

It is important to note that the instrument we are talking about does not fit the definition of a great concert organ. The tower would be too small to accommodate such a massive piece. Master organ builder Heiko Lorenz from Wilhelmshaven rather was tasked to construct a high level instrument for practising and teaching specifically organ repertoires from the romantic, late romantic and contemporary repertoires. The instrument still provides the sound, mechanical tools and range of registers of a great church organ such as the one built by Sauer at the Bremer Dom within the spatial and acoustic environment provided by the tower and stands ready for practical uses.

The tower organ comes with 739 pipes. A regular church organ only starts at 1000 pipes. As our former organ professor Harald Vogel explained to the “taz”: “For us, a new type of organ had to be developed: It combines the traditional built with modern technology. The organ pipes are up to 150 years old, the technical apparatus is digital. It contains the essential sound groups and envelopes the organist in its´ sound in such a comprehensive way that otherwise only happens in large spaces such as the Dom. It is therefore absolutely sufficient for practising.” The pipes were distributed into 20 registers—partly as transmission registers. The console contains three manuals and a pedal board and has been equipped with modern support systems that have become common, such as registration options supported by a computer. The most important registers are located at the main organ: Principal 8’, Violon 16’, Hohlflöte 8’, Gambe 8’, Holzflöte 4’, Flöte 2’. The swell contains Gedackt 8’, Salcional 8', Vox Celeste 8’, Praestant 4’ and Oboe 8’. The pedal board controls the large pipes of Subbass 16’, Violonbass 16’ and Violon 8’. All pipes have been housed in closed swell boxes. Owing to this technology, neighbours and other students in rooms for concerts and practise are hardly bothered when the organ is played.

Setting up an organ in the tower of the University building at Dechanatstraße had been conceptualized from the outset as a research project to provide the sound and the technology of support systems for operators dating from the late 19th and 20th centuries. At the same time a specific characteristic of this type of organ—namely the indirect connection between keys and sound vents via pneumatic (compressed air) or electrical impulses—had to be avoided. Owing to the mediation of Harald Vogel, the American organ builder John Brombaugh came to Bremen to conceive a sensitive mechanical action that facilitates a direct feel while playing. The tower organ therefore turned out as a modern organ with all of the necessary systems for operating the instrument (by electricity), a mechanical console that nimbly reacts to a players´ strokes and mostly historical pipe sets. As such, the instrument can be considered as unique in contemporary organ building.

From a finance point of view the project had been launched under the maxim “good and affordable.” While cutting costs by dispensing with optical-aesthetic enhancements such as a show case, the financial support by the Diocese Oldenburg became crucial for the realisation of the project. The Diocese had collected and archived pipe registers during alterations at organs standing in their churches over many years. Not least among them were romantic registers that had gradually fallen out of favour with the public taste in the postwar era. The Diocese provided registers suitable for the organ at the HfK from their collection and Martin Cladders (Badbergen) brought the pipes up to an operational quality. The only new pipes range from F to H in the principal 8’ and those for Violon and Oboe 8’.

Staircase and view into the former observatory above the organ room in the tower at Dechanatstraße with an open vista over the roofs of Bremen.