JULIAN RHODES' DREAM ORGANS
THE BLOCKWERK - AN HISTORICAL SKETCH
Part One: the Medieval Blockwerk
WHAT IS A BLOCKWERK?
'Blockwerk' is a German term which refers to the undivided chest of the medieval organ, possessing no stop-action for selecting individual ranks of pipes. Each key therefore played all the ranks provided; there could be as many as ninety in large cathedral organs, while small church organs contained about seven or eight.Sometimes the pipes displayed in the case - the Prestant - were playable separately as an individual register. If so, the pipes inside the instrument were known as the Hintersatz ('the rank behind').
THE EVOLUTION OF THE MEDIEVAL BLOCKWERK
A brief historical sketch will put the Blokwerk in its context.When the western Roman Empire collapsed in the sixth century, organs continued to be built and played in Byzantium and the Arab world. The organ was re-introduced from Byzantium into France in the mid 700s, and the craft of organ-building was slowly established itself throughout Europe. As most organ-builders were monks it was perhaps inevitable that these musical machines, the wonder of all who heard them, were introduced into the service of the church, albeit slowly and with much opposition. There is written evidence that by the 1200s the organ might be played during the serving of the Mass, and used for the accompaniment of chants, sequences and hymns. By the 1300s it had finally won acceptance as the God-intrument.
The organs of the classical world had possessed a recognisable keyboard and stop-mechanism. In medieval Europe these things had to be re-invented.
A player of the medieval organ was sometimes known as 'Pulsator Organorum' (striker of the organ) owing to the intractable nature of the key-mechanism. In some of the largest instruments it comprised a set of levers, each of which could be some 5in. wide and a foot long. Of necessity these key-levers were depressed with the fist or the whole hand. Even this was a marked improvement on the Winchester organ, c.950 (see below), where the keys were sliders which the player pushed in and out. By the 12th-century sprung keys, played with the finger rather than the hand, were introduced. This was to transform the art of organ-playing.
In the mid 12th-century a revolution in church architecture was underway. The solid and heavy Romanesque was being superseded by the spacious elegance of the Gothic 'pointed style'. Small 'portative' organs were no longer adequate for the great new cathedrals being built, and instruments became larger, more sonorous and more complex.
The organ at Amiens Cathedral had 2,500 pipes by 1429. At Rheims Cathedral the organ included pipes 27ft. long in 1487; the case was 54ft. high. A few years earlier, 39ft. long pipes had been used at Nürnberg. Pipes in the case-front might be made of tin; those inside the organ of lead or plain metal. Two-manual organs and couplers were known, as were quint, stopped flue and reed pipes. The keyboard might contain between 31 and 47 notes.
The characteristic Blokwerk chorus seems to have developed gradually, by the addition of more and more ranks to the unison. A small medieval organ might have contained two ranks an octave apart in pitch; the second rank could sound either higher or lower than the unison. A second unison could be introduced; or a complement of three ranks might sound - in modern terms - at 16ft.+8ft.+4ft. In the 1400s the Duke of Burgundy possessed a small organ which was used during the Mass; its disposition was 1.5.8.12, and there was no stop-action to shut off the individual ranks. (Stops are so-called because their function in the medieval organ was indeed to stop off some of the Blokwerk ranks, thereby producing selective combinations of tone.)
GREAT MEDIEVAL BLOCKWERK ORGANS
WINCHESTERIn about the year 950 a famous organ was built at Winchester Cathedral. A contemporary poem described it (click here to read it), and it was an outstanding example of an early, large Blokwerk organ. There were 26 bellows supplying wind to an undivided chest of 400 pipes; the keyboard (or keyboards) had a 40-note compass, and required two players, possibly owing to the clumsy nature of the playing technique (decribed above). Each key played ten ranks of pipes. It is likely that its disposition was something like the following:
1 8 8 12 12 15 15 19 19 22The poet wrote:
Like thunder the iron tones batter the ear,Even allowing for a degree of exaggeration, the bold, ringing tone of the Blokwerk was characteristic of late medieval organs. It can still be heard in surviving instruments such as those at Sion, Switzerland (c.1390), S. Petronio, Bologna (1474-83) and Oosthuizen, the Netherlands (1521).
Drowning out all other sound.
Such are its echoes, everywhere,
That hands cover ears
And no-one dares draw near to approach
This roaring mass of tone.
The noise rings out about the town,
And its fame throughout the land.
HALBERSTADT A late example of the Blokwerk organ was that at Halberstadt Cathedral, built by Nicholas Faber in 1361 and renovated by Gregory Kleng in 1495. Praetorius (1619) gave a thorough description of it.
There were 1192 pipes, the biggest of which was nearly 32ft. long; owing to the contemporary high pitch, it sounded the BB key (i.e. a semitone below 32ft. C). There were four keyboards, with a disposition as follows:
I UPPER MANUAL (played by the hands) The Blokwerk. Compass: BB-a1 (22 notes, 14 naturals and 8 accidentals). Composition of the Blokwerk: B to f: 16 16 (BB sounding the note below 32ft. C) 8 8 8 5 1/3 5 1/3 5 1/3 5 1/3 4 4 4 4 4 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 f# - c#1: 16 16 8 8 8 8 5 1/3 5 1/3 5 1/3 5 1/3 5 1/3 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 d1 - a1: 16 16 8 8 8 8 8 5 1/3 5 1/3 5 1/3 5 1/3 5 1/3 5 1/3 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2/3 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 II MIDDLE MANUAL (played by the hands) Prestant only. Compass B to a1 (as above). III LOWER MANUAL (levers played by the hands or knees) The bass of the Prestant (the pipes in the side-towers). Compass B to a1+b1 (12 notes) IV PEDAL (played by the feet) The Praestant and some of the Blokwerk. Compass B to a1+b1 (12 notes)The twelve largest Prestant pipes were placed in the two side towers. The continuation of the rank filled the space between the towers; the Hintersatz (the remaining pipes of the Blokwerk) stood behind.
Praetorius published illustrations of the Halberstadt keyboards. The upper two were to be played with the whole hand or fist. The lower two had longer, thin oblong key-levers. On the middle and lower keyboards, therefore, the Prestant could be played alone; a two-part work could be played with two fists, or fist and knee. A three-part composition could be played with two fists and the knees. According to Praetorius, this could sound "at full blast on the whole organ" by using the upper keyboard and pedalboard.
Praetorius said that at Halberstadt:
"All was one coarse jumble. This is clear from the size of the Prestant pipes, and from the small compass of their clavier which did not extend high enough for beauty but produced a deep, coarse roaring and a horrible growling; to which the mixture-pipes added an extremely blatant, loud noise, an atrocious screaming."Praetorius's favourite organ builder was Esaias Compenius; and in comparison with his refined timbres a large medieval Blokwerk would indeed have seemed coarse.
Halberstadt also demonstrates one of the ways in which the Blokwerk organ was to develop during the next hundred years: its partial subdivision, with the lower-pitched ranks of pipes able to be played alone. The other way forward was to add a smaller 'positive' organ, controlled initially from a keyboard behind the players back, and later, with the action extended to run underneath the player's seat, from a keyboard immediately below that of the Blockwerk.
From about 1500 the organs of the Renaissance developed a wide range of new flute and reed stops. But, as we shall see, the Blokwerk was to remain an important ingredient.
MUSICAL REPERTOIRE:
ADAM ILEBOROGH, MASTER MEDIEVAL ORGANIST
Very little idiomatic organ music has survived from the middle ages. The earliest is four secular works (including a famous 'Estampie') from the Robertsbridge Codex, dated c.1325. The pieces comprising the 'Fundamentum Organisandi' (1452) by Conrad Paumann (c.1410-1473) use popular tunes as their basis. This repertoire, then, is not representative of what would generally have been heard in church.Works by Schlick (c.1460-after 1521), Kotter (c.1485-1541) and Buchner (1483-1538) have been frequently published. In many ways they belong to the musical renaissance, rather than to the medieval world of the Blokwerks and Positives.
Fortunately we need look no further than the little-known composer Adam Ileborogh. In 1448, during his rectorship at Stendhal (near Berlin) he wrote down five of his compositions: four brief Praeambula and a set of variations on 'Frowe al myn hoffen an dyr lyed' (Lady, all my hope rests on thee). It is the latter which is of real interest; without a doubt it is the outstanding, and by far the most substantial, work of 15th-century keyboard music. For sheer rhetorical power I know of nothing else like it.
Ileborogh, the obscure organ-playing priest, took the four-square, solemn Dorian melody of the devotional song and made it the 'tenor' - the bass, in sustained notes - of each of the three variations. Above it he wove webs in sound, using all known keyboard techniques and taking them far beyond anything conceived by other composers. It must have tested contemporary performers - and organ actions - to their limit.
The first variation is in triple measure. Ileborogh's melody varies from the repetition of small, drum-like figures to wacky off-beat rhythms and free roulades at the end of each line of the song. The second variation is in brisk duple metre, full of gritty tone and semitone clashes between treble and bass; it ends in a sweeping cadenza. The third variation, in contrast, does not fall into any regular metrical pattern. It begins with improvisatory melodic flourishes rather like those of middle-eastern folk singers; these gradually give way to insistent triplet-figures, alternating with equally insistent quadruplets and clipped, off-beat appoggiaturas. The climax is reached when the right hand pounds out a driving melody in octaves (!), followed by quick-fire repeated notes. The work ends with a cadential flourish that, by degrees, sinks into the lowest register of the manual in an ending both emphatic and submissive.
Really, it is impossible to convey the effect of this medieval Liszt in words. It has been reprinted several times - though on occasion in editions which make rather too many metrical decisions for the player, and therefore restrict his interpretative freedom. In terms of performance, the best way to approach it is through recorded recreations of the improvisatory medieval traditions. Ileborogh certainly merits far greater recognition than has been granted him to date. Furthermore, this music is in all likelihood merely the tip of a vanished iceberg. It certainly makes the next generation of composers look positively staid.