Sounds like an oxymoron, right?

Today we played the Kartäuserkirche organ in Basel, which is a faithful copy of a 1694 Arp Schnitger organ in Grasberg, near Bremen. The copy is located in a former monastery, now a city orphanage. Because the original Grasberg organ underwent changes and was modified several times, it has been said that this is a newly-built, 300-year-old organ and is likely to be the only copy that matches the original.

I was itching to play Bach’s Komm heiliger Geist, a piece I played every Easter Vigil at the Easter proclamation, even though I remember a disastrous time I tried this in the San Jacobi church in Lübeck which has similar tuning. That is to say, it sounds a step high, “Chor ton”, which messes with my perfect pitch! In another words this piece in F major sounds like it is in G major!

But I just gritted my teeth and soldiered on, stopping only at the last page turn, even though I was surrounded by organists. Nobody turned the page so I had to stop and turn it myself. ☹️

At the next church, the Predigerkirche in Basel, I had the opposite problem. Instead of sounding high, the organ pitch was low with A=415 instead of A=440 on the historic 1769 Johann Andreas Silbermann. It had been unchanged until 1875 when it was moved from the rood screen to a newly constructed gallery. The organ was completely restored in 1979 by Orgelbau Metzler.

I played Bach’s “O Mensch bewein” from the Orgelbüchlein on a light reed solo with a montre accompaniment which was very satisfying.

There were actually two other pipe organs in the church, a new 1985 Sebastian Blank and Bernhardt Edskes instrument in the swallow’s nest which was a recreation of a 1517 Tugy organ. They made it difficult by making the organist scale a “chicken” ladder in order to climb into the organ, and Christophe Mantoux joked he wanted extra pay!

The other organ in the church was in the Italian style as you can easily see by the short pedalboard. However we did not hear it played.

Our last stop was at the Arlesheim Dom, painted in pastels in rococo style—Michael Molloy called it the colors of Necco wafers! It’s where we heard a 1761 Johann Andreas Silbermann organ, with warm principals, colorful mutations, gutsy reeds and mixtures, making for a powerful plenum.

I didn’t get a chance to play this organ, but took pictures of the console anyway.