The organ built by Gebrüder Oberlinger Orgelbau in 1997 for St. Martin in Cochem includes an innovative stop called Riesling 2fach. Pulling the stop opens a small cabinet holding two bottles of Riesling wine.
This according to “Neue Orgel in der Pfarrkirche ‘St. Martin’ zu Cochem/Mosel” by Wilhelm Basten (Die Auslese 42/2 [1999], pp. 22–23).
(Thanks to Tina Frühauf!)
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Filed under Architecture, Food, Instruments
Built at the behest of Richard Beauchamp, 13th Earl of Warwick (1382–1439), the Beauchamp Chapel at the Collegiate Church of St Mary, Warwick, is a remarkable survival of fifteenth-century architecture, sculpture, and—above all—stained glass. These windows are well known to organologists for their depictions of instruments and performance practice; they also provide useful information about chant and polyphony in fifteenth-century England by preserving fragments of neumatic notation.
Over the centuries craftspeople have restored damaged windows, and, lacking the requisite musical training, they often left replacement staves blank; but in two cases nonsense neumes were devised, supplying consistent-looking décor that most observers would never suspect was counterfeit.
This according to Alexandra Buckle’s “Fit for a king: Music and iconography in Richard Beauchamp’s chantry chapel” (Early music XXXVIII/1 (2010), pp. 3–20).
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Filed under Architecture, Curiosities, Middle Ages, Notation, Visual art
Published by the L’Associazione Culturale Giuseppe Serassi, Arte Organaria Italiana was launched in 2009 to provide a forum for research on organs in Italy.
Articles in the first issue include a discussion of pedaling in Frescobaldi’s organ works, a study of organs in the Cattedrale di Mantova during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and an exploration of nineteenth-century organ case aesthetics.
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With the 2009 publication of L’organo Luigi Montesanti 1813 della chiesa di San Tommaso in Acquanegra sul Chiese, the Associazione Culturale Giuseppe Serassi launched the series Antichi organi mantovani. Edited by Federico Lorenzani, the book includes articles by Maurizio Isabella, Silvio Micheli, Francesco Melli, and Lorenzani himself. Montesanti’s organ for the Basilica di Sant’Andrea di Mantova is shown above.
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