Facsimile Organ

Greatest composer of organ music who ever lived was portly, quick-fingered 18th-Century Johann Sebastian Bach. His 30-odd organ fugues and numerous choral preludes and sonatas are still regarded as the organist's Bible. But if Bach walked into a present-day church while his music was being played, he would hardly recognize it.

Since Bach's time the organ has grown out of all knowledge. Modern organs, used in cinema palaces as well as in churches, can reproduce the sound of an entire orchestra, can imitate anything from a train whistle to cathedral chimes. By pulling and pushing little buttons, modern organists can produce tremulous vox humana, whooshing swell-effects, can make their gigantic instruments do everything but prance up & down the aisles. Some organists love to put a modern organ through its tricks; others sigh for the good old days when an organ was just an organ, point nostalgically to the fact that 18th-Century organs had purer tones, breathed gently instead of booming and gurgling.

Black-haired Organist E. Power Biggs, of Harvard's Germanic Museum, does not have to sigh for the good old days. In the museum's peaceful, arched Romanesque Hall is an organ, the only one of its kind in the U. S., built to the precise specifications of Bach's period.* Last week Organist Biggs, with his facsimile organ, started the second half of a cycle of concerts which will include all of Bach's organ works, played exactly as they might have sounded to Composer Bach himself.

Listeners and critics have acclaimed Biggs's playing on the Bach organ as a revelation. Its pipes, unlike those of the modern organ, are all out in the open, visible to the audience. (Pipes in modern organs are, as a rule, enclosed behind shutters; those visible to the audience are often dummy pipes good only to look at.) The Bach facsimile requires from one-third t01/20th the wind pressure demanded by a modern organ, and has a correspondingly limpid quality of tone. Unlike the modern organ it cannot increase or diminish the volume of tone. The "swell" mechanism of the modern organ was invented in England in 1712, was not used in continental Europe until long after Bach's death. Bach was such a master of musical architecture that he could create the illusion of swell without any mechanical aid.

Organist Biggs believes that the 18th-Century organs, few of which exist today, reached the same peak of perfection as the violins of Stradivarius, feels that organs made since, with their gadgets and kickshaws, have come a long way downhill.

* Only difference between the Germanic Museum's organ and the 18th-Century organ in Weimar Castle played by Bach is that the former has electrical action controlling wind pressure and stop mechanism.

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