THE ORGAN BOOK FROM ST. KATHARINENTAL - Fred G. Pisecki, virtual organ sampleset

Upper Swabian organ music around 1750 --------------------------------------- A short visit to the former monastery church of St. Katharinental (Diessenhofen, Switzerland) with bell ringing and organ music CONTENTS: 1) Intro with bells ringing 00:00 Extraits of the organ book from the former monastery church of St. Katharinental (c. 1750) 2) No.3 - Fuga ex C 01:22 3) No.7 - Aria ex F 03:26 4) No.8 - Aria ex B 05:59 5) No.12 - Andamento 08:48 6) No.20 - Allegro 12:29 Recorded by Fred G. Pisecki using the sample set of the Obervellach organ (Carinthia, Austria) 7) Bells ringing (Bell 1 in e-flat 2 "Rosenlecher 2") from the Katharinental Church 13:37 TOTAL PLAYING TIME: 14:44 -------------------------------------- The former Dominican convent of St. Katharinental was founded in the 13th century and is situated just below Diessenhofen (Switzerland) in an idyllic location directly on the left bank of the Rhine. The current baroque convent complex dates back to a new building from 1715-1718 by the Vorarlberg master builder Franz Beer (c.1660-1722). The church was built in 1732-1735 by his son Johann Michael Beer and is considered one of the most beautiful late baroque rooms in Switzerland. Magnificent altars, pictures and ceiling paintings as well as the richly decorated baroque organ by the Thurgau organ builder Johann Jakob Bommer from 1735/36, which is decorated with angels playing music, give the room its character. The monastery was closed in 1869 and converted into a retirement and nursing home by the canton of Thurgau. The "Katharinental organ book" from 1750 is a composite manuscript containing shorter and longer organ pieces, mostly by anonymous composers, for use in church services at the time. The volume consists of 45 bound and ruled sheets in landscape format and is now in the Frauenfeld Cantonal Library (Switzerland). The book contains a total of 48 individual pieces, which were arranged in a loose sequence and gradually collected and written down. Various scribes can be identified. The extensive sheet music provides a revealing picture of monastic music-making practice at the time and suggests that music was intensively cultivated in the monastery. The surviving music is mainly performance material for Catholic church music from the 18th and early 19th centuries. It is a very varied collection, in which both older forms of organ music (preludes and fugues) and pieces in the graceful style of the early classical period (arias, minuets etc.) are represented. The preludes are kept very short in accordance with southern German usage and were used for the priest's entrance into the service. The arias, some of which are quite lengthy, may have been used as offertories, where there was the most space for music-making in the mass of the time, while the fugues or even a march may have been used more for the excerpt. From the partial edition of this composite manuscript published in 1993, 5 selected pieces can be heard here. My Volume 97, “HÖRNLE”, features 9 more pieces from the Katharinental organ book.