O R G A N S T U D I E S
V R I J E U N I V E R S I T E I T A M S T E R D A M
p e o p l e , p r o j e c t s a n d m o r e : c l i c k h e r e
It adorns the world's most magificent cathedrals with spectacular facades and sounds – so one might expect the pipe organ to face a sunny future. Instead, the opposite seems to be true. In many churches, the organ plays a far less relevant role than a few decades ago. Since concert halls can only pay attention to the instrument once in a while, they cannot compensate the effect – which is that the number of organ builders and organists decreases. Their skills risk extinction.
The good news is that this is only half the story. As it has done already many times in its no less than 23 centuries spanning history, the organ happens to attract new supporters: ever more musicians and artists from other provenances than church and concert hall appear fascinated by its sounds, creating music and sound art quite beyond the conventional. Abandoned churches are being repurposed, often becoming cultural venues – some of them even actively reframing the organ as an instrument for the 21st century. Organ builders are succesfully engineering technologies that afford organs to sound much more dynamic than was possible so far: an innovation that not only meets the demands of the new organ musicians, but also invites traditionally trained organists to bring their re-creations of historical music to the next level, which opens perspectives to increase their audiences.
The Chair Organ Studies at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam aims to empower this transition by critically assessing it. It is sponsored by Foundation Het Orgelpark, and part of the University's Interfaculty Research Institute for Culture, Cognition, History and Heritage, CLUE+. Organ Studies operates interdisciplinarily, connecting the fields of Sound Studies, Music Studies, Philosophy, and Science & Technology Studies.
P I V O T A L : S O U N D
Pivotal to all acitivities the Chair Organ Studies undertakes is the insight that pipe organs have survived so long only because they kept providing sounds beyond the sonic horizons of any other instrument or means.
The ramifications are challenging, as each organ represents a set of thousands of separate instruments itself – its pipes – which are combinable in even more ways; as each organ is custom-made for the acoustics it sounds in, so that no organ sounds the same; and as, since organs can become very old, the world's organ collection gives access to no less than five centuries of sonic history, integrating sounds of cultures from the past in today's cultural fabrics.
The Chair hence assesses the organ's transition into a relevant 21st century instrument by developing new perspectives on what organ sound is and can be. Four such perspectives are elaborated shortly below. They are: sound is the material musicians work with; the future of the organ depends on musicians, sound artists, and organbuilders understanding organ sound concepts; it is their sound quality that determines the heritage value of organs; creating 'hyperorgans' is an effective way to interlace yesterday's and tomorrow's ways of making music;
© Orgelpark/VU Amsterdam
1 . S O U N D A S M A T E R I A L
Musicians make music by using sounds as their material, letting them manifest themselves in a specific order during a specific amount of time. Since organs are so diverse, they invite to let the qualities of their sounds inform the way music comes into existence – just as well as other means, such as scores. In turn, this invites reconsidering an ontology of music that has been alienated since the 19th century. Its core insight is that music exists when and where it sounds; that it, in fact, is not repeatable. A significant trace of this principle resonates in the improvisations organists have kept creating ever since the organ was invented: improvising is the ultimate way of letting the sonic identity of an instrument inform the music.
2 . S O U N D C O N C E P T S
Given that organs include thousands of pipes, and that they are each custom-built for a specific acoustic, every specimen has its very own sonic identity. Yet, these identities come in groups: when organ builders voice an organ, i.e. make sure that each pipe sounds the way they designed it to, they have a sound concept in mind, in order to be able to make sure that the pipes sound convincingly both individually and in all kinds of groups, thereby establishing that organ's sonic identity. Examples of famous organ sound concepts are the ones created by organ builders such as Arp Schnitger (Northern Europe, late 17th century), Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (France, late 19th century), and Ernest M. Skinner (United States, early 20th century).
3 . S O U N D H E R I T A G E
It is their sounds and the sound concepts they document that render historic organs relevant; the artefacts they are 'themselves' – be it an indeed spectacular facade or a revolutionary technology – are 'just' carriers of that sonic richness. The tendency in the fields of Musicology, Organology, and Heritage Studies so far has been to shy away from that insight, considering sound to be nearly unresearchable. Now that the field of Sound Studies has rendered such a position invalid, the question is what it means to understand sound as being heritage itself. In turn, addressing appropriation issues is essential when negotiating plans to restore a historical organ: would we, for example, not be colonizing the past if we would decide to adapt the sonic ideals the organ to be restored represents to our standards?
4 . H Y P E R O R G A N S
Hyperorgans are pipe organs equipped with digital technology affording them to sound significantly more dynamic than organs were able to so far. In order to optimally mine the literally countless sonic resources this new technology gives access to, hyperorgans afford adding, next to conventional sets of keyboards and knobs, all kinds of interfaces more familiar to musicians and artists not trained as keyboardists, rendering the threshold to actually get involved with organ sounds non-existent. At the same time, the hyperorgan also invites traditionally trained organists to reconsider what historically informed performance practices entail. For example, hyperorgan keyboards can be constructed in such a way that a soft touch renders a soft sound, and a fast touch a louder one, just like on the clavichord, the instrument Johann Sebastian Bach used to practice at home. This is particularly of interest on hyperorgans that have a historical sound concept – which quite many of them have.
T H E C H A I R ' S S T O R Y
The Chair Organ Studies was established as an Extraordinary Chair in 1987, when dr. Ewald Kooiman (1938-2009) was appointed professor. Kooiman contributed significantly to the standard of historically informed performance practices, by being both academically and artistically active: he edited the impressive series Incognita Organo, sharing 40 volumes of forgotten early organ music scores, and recorded no less than three times Johann Sebastian Bach's complete organ works.
After Kooiman's death, the Chair was re-established in 2010. It became quite soon an international knowledge centre regarding hyperorgans, accompanying the creation of the Utopa Baroque Organ by the Orgelpark. The instrument was inaugurated in 2018, and has been the primus inter pares among the international hyperorgan collection ever since.
In 2019, the Chair entered a new phase as an independent Chair. Three researchers have been appointed by the Vrije Universiteit: prof.dr. Hans Fidom occupies the Chair since 2010, dr. Jacob Lekkerkerker is in charge of artistic research activities since 2021, and since 2025 PhD-student Elisabeth Hubmann researches under what conditions organ art may flourish in the 21st century.
Foundation Het Orgelpark sponsors the Chair. In close cooperation with Orgelpark Research, the Chair organizes annual International Symposia, colloquia, and develops educational tracks, including the artistic research initiative Organ in Situ, a week for young international organ musicians to get familiar with hyperorgans and related new ways of understanding sound and music.
Check the links below for more information, or send prof.dr. Hans Fidom an e-mail.
P H D P R O J E C T S
PhD projects of course are an essential part of the Chair's activities. So far, three projects were completed successfully. They concerned An improvisatory approach to nineteenth-century music (Bert Mooiman, 2021, in cooperation with Leiden University), The organ in the 15th century: architecture and design (Wim S. Ros, 2019, in cooperation with Universiteit van Amsterdam), and Shaping of Sound and Dynamics (Klaas Hoek, 2019, in cooperation with Leuven University).
Jacob Lekkerkerker playing the hyperorgan at the Orgelpark in Amsterdam
© Orgelpark Amsterdam