Sigma Alpha Iota

saI-natIOnal.ORg sPRIng 2014 PAN PIPES 21 musIc around the world Steinkirchen, a small church with exquisite furnishings. Playing on these early instruments involves dealing with earlier temperaments, short octaves, and shorter compasses. One plans ahead to choose repertoire that will be feasible and sound well. e instrument teaches one much about the repertoire and how to play it, as the music comes to life on instruments for which it was written. Works of Buxtehude, Böhm, Bruhns, and Scheidemann were oen heard. A superb recital of early music was given for us by Hans-Jakob Gerlings of Dorsten on the 1680-83 Herbst and Gercke organ in the Village Church of Basedow. A particularly outstanding 19th-century instrument is an organ of four manuals and eighty-four ranks from 1871 by Friedrich Ladegast in the Domkirche in Schwerin. An automatic register crescendo and decrescendo was quite an innovation at the time. e organ was heard to good advantage in Liszt's Fantasy on Fugue on "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam," as well as works by Max Reger and Karl Hoyer. e key action is mechanical, but there is a Barker pneumatic assist when coupling all the manuals together. Another Romantic instrument that was very instructive was the 1908 three manual, forty-one rank organ by E.F. Walcker & Company in the Heiligen-Geist Kirche in Rostock. is had pneumatic action and a crescendowalze, the latter a cylindrical roller which gradually adds the registers of the organ as one's foot rotates it toward the player. Works of Brahms and Rheinberger were heard, and our tour guide performed "Trauerode" by Reger. ree fine Romantic instruments by Johann Simon Buchholz and his son Carl August Buchholz were heard in Demmin, Barth, and Stralsund. How gratifying to experience the restored instrument at the Nikolaikirche in Stralsund, which was unplayable at the time of the 2002 tour! As Stralsund was the birthplace of the hymn tune "Lobe den Herren" (Praise to the Lord, the Almighty), the church's organist improvised on the tune, and we sang it in the city of its origin, an exhilarating moment to be sure. e tour concluded with a marvelous recital and highly informative master class given by Martin Rost on the 1653-59 Friedrich Stellwagen organ of three manuals and fiy-one ranks in the Marienkirche in Stralsund. is is one of the most important Baroque organs in the world and the largest by this builder. ough heard by us in 2002, it had now been fully restored. It has a beauty and delicacy unlike any other instrument I have heard. What a privilege to participate in the master class playing "Komm, heiliger Geist" of Friedrich Tunder. Visiting and playing organs of many different centuries, builders, and countries is indeed like a time-machine. One is transported, in sound and sight, to another time and place, which forms and informs in a way nothing else could do. Previous tours in which I have been privileged to participate have been to Sweden, Southern England and Wales, Burgundy, Saxony, Southern France, Alsace, and Paris and surroundings. anks to tour leaders Bruce Stevens and Bill van Pelt, who will again lead this year's tour to Belgium. Kappa initiate Rosalind Mohnsen is Director of Music and Organist at Immaculate Conception Church of Malden, MA. She received degrees from the University of Nebraska and Indiana University, and studied in Paris with Jean Langlais. She has performed in Latvia and Sweden and for twenty-one national conventions of the Organ Historical Society. She will perform this summer for the national convention of the American Guild of Organists in Boston, MA. She was initiated into Pi Kappa Lambda and is a member of the Boston Alumnae Chapter of Sigma Alpha Iota. Example of pipe designs in European churches.

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