Matthew Dirst - Bach Perspectives, Volume 10: Bach and the Organ

A Reassessment

Lynn Edwards Butler

O n Thursday, December 16, 1717, Johann Sebastian Bach, court Capellmeister in Cthen, diligently examined the organ partly newly built and partly renovated by Johann Scheibe for St. Paul's Church at Leipzig University. At the examination, the university was represented by the then-current rector Carl Otto Rechenberg, former rector Johann Burkhard Mencke, and professors Johann Cyprian and Johann Wolfgang Trier. Johann Kuhnau was cantor at the Thomas School and City Music Director at the time; Daniel Vetter, organist at St. Nicholas Church, had overseen the seven-year project.

Contemporary sources are unanimous in describing the examination as successful. Scheibe himself said the organ was found [to be] free of even the smallest major defect,

While positive judgments continued for many years, a negative tone was set when Gottfried Silbermann's early twentieth-century biographer Ernst Fladeperhaps not the most objective voice as concerns Scheibeclaimed the university had received a decidedly mediocre instrument when Silbermann would have built a masterpiece. Flade's views marked a turning point, and they seem to have influenced subsequent writers, who, without commenting on the positive aspects of Bach's report, instead

Fortunately, however, in assessing the success of the St. Paul's organ project we are not limited to the opinions of Scheibe's contemporaries, to the views of later writers, to sentiments ascribed to Bach, or even to Bach's report itself. Documents from the Leipzig University Archives, many of them written by Scheibe, make it possible to expand considerably on and to reassess the bird's-eye view that Bach's report gives us of the project and allow us to view it in a new context. They reveal the university's ambivalent and tight-fisted attitude toward the organ and its builder as well as Scheibe's heroic efforts to complete the project in a manner of which he could be proud. They allow us to understand more fully the problems enumerated in Bach's report, both those immediately fixable and those he believed likely to be encountered in the future, and they provide background for Bach's insistence that Scheibe be judged fairly and compensated fully.

In the first and fifth points of his report, Bach dealt with problems resulting from the too tightly confined case. Expectations regarding roominess changed in the eighteenth century. Andreas Werckmeister's well-known guide to testing an organ never explicitly mentions the need for a roomy case, although he does say that the key action should not be too crowded, that pallets need to be easily accessible, and that problems may arise if pipes are mounted too close together. and, further, that the university had refused his request for the additional space that would have allowed him to build more capaciously.

When it was decided in 1710 to dismantle the large organ and move it to the west gallery, it was agreed that a new case would be built for the organ, for which Scheibe provided an initial drawing. In his earliest estimate, dated September 6, 1710, Scheibe agreed to supervise the joiner and to instruct him how one thing or another should be made according to my [Scheibe's] drawing and formulations.hands were tied; he had had to accommodate the internal layout to the restrictions of the allowable space as best he could.

In the report's second point, Bach confirmed that all essential parts of the organ had been well and carefully built. There was nothing the university needed to be made aware of, except that there were occasional surges in the wind that needed to be minimized and that Scheibe had affixed the rollers to rollerboards, as was his practice, rather than mounting them on a frame. Vetter had described the old organ as lacking strong wind, and he wanted the renovation to provide larger bellows valves and wind trunks with adequate dimensions.

That the occasional wind surges were not considered a major fault is a point that needs emphasis, especially because Scheibe is often criticized for having built an organ with wind problems.

Surprisingly, Bach's obvious preference for a frame rather than a rollerboard has rarely drawn attention from modern writers. Here Bach and Jacob Adlung seem to be in agreement. According to Adlung, it was sometimes more convenient or satisfactory to mount rollers in oak frames, a practice that had apparently become customary by the 1750s.

Bach's positive evaluationthe main parts of the organ had been well and carefully builtmust have been very welcome to Scheibe. Early in the project Scheibe's skill had been disparaged by Vetter and cantor Johann Kuhnau, who told the university that the task of moving and repairing the large organ required no special ability and that they could recommend Scheibe as honest, reasonable, and hardworking (redlich, billig, und fleiig).

In point three, Bach confirmed that Scheibe had provided the stops listed in the disposition as well as everything included in the contracts. Bach used the plural here: contracts. Contrary to what various writers have claimedthat proposals were received from Scheibe, Gottfried Silbermann, and Christoph Donat II, and that Scheibe's proposal was preferred by the university because he asked for less money and was a local builder besidesScheibe did not compete for this job in the modern sense of this word. There is no rebuilding proposal from Scheibe, there is no proposal for a new organ, nor is there a disposition for a 3-manual, 54-stop organ associated with any of the contracts that have survived. Since none of the surviving contracts includes the organ's disposition, it is impossible to know exactly what Bach had in hand during the examination. Bach mentioned