However, the greatest south German instruments offer even greater variety of stops, especially reeds. The most notable document of the early Baroque south German organ building is the monumental Johann Georg Freundt (1590-1667) instrument built for the Klosterneuburg abbey near Wien (finished in 1642). 3-manual instrument built for solistic organ playing on high feasts, while retaining most of the characteristics mentioned above including short bottom octaves and very limited pedal, offers reeds of all kinds: full-, half- and short-resonators. We were examining the Klosterneuburg organ and we wanted to record it for Hauptwerk. The organ itself is in perfect shape. It was restored in an exemplary manner by Kuhn (Männedorf, Switzerland) in 1990. However, the blower noise was extreme (I honestly think that it was the loudest blower noise I ever heard) so we gave up. Nevertheless, we at least took the inspiration how a south German reeds should sound and then we decided to add these timbres to the virtual model of our Prague organ model. Therefore, there is the extended version of the Prague Baroque sample set enriched with these Klosterneuburg-like reeds. Therefore, our virtual model cannot be said to imitate one specific organ, rather it tries to imitate the typical south German sound color.
When recorded in February, its pitch was a=434.2Hz at 3C. That equals to about a=444Hz at 22C. The virtual organ can be played at the Original Organ Tuning in Hauptwerk, which is the temperament found on the organ while recording. Additional temperament charts are ready for the Hauptwerk software, they install with the full version of the sample set.
Hauptwerk - Prague Baroque Organ (48 16 Version)
"Prague baroque after Theobald" temperament chart is the temperament proposed by dr. Theobald when preparing the restoration of the organ. While seldom used keys as Fis-dur, Cis-dur, As-dur and similar are well in tune, more often used keys as A-dur, E-dur, Es-dur are rather out of tune.
In 1979, a committee was created to design the new instrument with the cooperation of Ferenc Gergely, István Koloss, István Baróti and titulaire organist Bertalan Hock. They designed a symphonic organ that uses the valuable pipes and the action of the old instrument that could be saved and combined romantic and baroque style ranks of pipes. 2ff7e9595c
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