Visit to Joris Potvlieghe, his copy of a Specken clavichord (1743) and some Pachelbel
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 21 ก.ย. 2024
- Last week, I payed Joris Potvlieghe a visit, as I do regularly with a focus on two very interesting organ projects, the building of two replica Contius organs, one for Leuven in collaboration with Flentrop in Holland, and one for Wondelgem, which is being build entirely by himself. For the first project I'm project manager, for the second, consultant, so it's part of my job to see if the famous clavichord builder keeps track of his promises as an organ builder. All jokes apart, collaborating with Joris is always a pleasure as he combines fine craftsman ship with a good organisation, two critical aspects in today's landscape of instrument building. The organ projects are worth a video once. They are both directly related to JSBach and his sons.
Anyway, seeing three clavichords in his small workshop here -the large workshop is around the corner, and might be a topic for a follow-up video, I thought we had to show you something of all these precious instruments. You'll see two of his so called house-style Saxionian instruments, and one, in the corner on which he was working, a smaller one. That nice little instrument is a copy of an instrument built by Specken in 1743, currently in Stockholm, unfretted with a compass of C-d'''. It could be seen as a small Bach instrument, allowing the player to perform the WTC completely, but not, for instance, the big partitas.
I only had my USB microphone with me in the car and a laptop, and one camera. The microphone is the one you see me often use in the spoken videos when I'm behind my computer. Not really suited for this job, but we did play anyway. The Cianona of Pachelbel sounded wonderful on that Swedish instrument and so let me share it with you.
If you like this kind of video, let me know, and we'll make more of that.
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Hello Wim, I admire your work and have followed your channel for some time, but somehow I only just now came across this video. Even though the recording setup might not have been ideal, your playing sounds simply beautiful here! Cheers.
More videos on clavichord making and restoration, please!
I'd love to, but... the builder must feel comfortable with that as well, but in a few months we will share things with the pianoforte (Joris promised me that yesterday)
Nicely chosen music. Love seeing you just play only. Great overlay of music while the camera person shows the insides of the clavichord. It's wonderful seeing Joris working at his craft.
Thank you for sharing.
Very interesting. I now finally start to understand how a clavichord works.
thanks for sharing the film, seams like a fantastic instrument.
it is, thanks for watching!
That was a wonderful and beautiful performance. Thanks again Wim.
How great... just discovered it now... we met often but this I didn’t know... ♥️
Beautiful playing, beautiful piece, lovely instrument!
More of everything please.
Amazing how you and the instrument getting 'to know each other' while playing and starting to feel comfortable with each other (I'm treating you and the instrument as being the same entities :) ) what started with a little bit of scattering, improved itself during your playing and ended so beautifully - like both of you became one. It reminded me of movies who show how to tame a horse for riding. Well, there is a bit of 'taming' in the process of putting your fingers as well as your heart and emotions on a new instrument. This is a really exciting process, isn't it? Thanks so much for sharing these precious moments with us and thank Joris for letting you do it. Bravi for both of you!
the construction of these instruments (and every other instrument of course) is deeply interesting, joris should have his own youtube cahnnel!
I think it would be great if Wim could do a post where he interviews Joris in his workshop instead of by Skype similar to how he interviewed Kostas.
We then first should have to explain to Joris a "few" things on social media, digital media, filming, ... he is proud on his excel sheets (which are impressive), and probably Excel is the furthest he'll go with computers !
That he promised me since long, and early September, when he is ready to show the present state of the pianoforte, we will do that. Having this video on TH-cam was already quite a step for him.
Tell him we all were impressed and welcome him with open arms into the "CyberWorld." We don't even bite!
After a long and tiring Saturday, sitting at the hot coals getting warmed up and cooking some steaks, and for my listening pleasure PACHELBEL! Thank you for the wonder video Mr. Winters, I was wondering have you done a video playing some of your most loved pieces, if you have could you please give me the link, and if you haven't, it's a great idea😁😁!
pachelbel is coming on CD and vinyl soon, working hard on that. My favorite pieces... that's the problem, I cannot choose. I do like however "my" Mozart Munich sonatas a lot, th-cam.com/video/eX-o2dnu148/w-d-xo.html, the partitas th-cam.com/video/gE-0Ux1PYiU/w-d-xo.html and perhaps also the Cramer etudes : th-cam.com/video/-TJJLAud8mc/w-d-xo.html I like the idea of a playlist with some suggestions!
Lovely! Thank you.
"That nice little instrument is a copy of an instrument built by Specken in 1743, currently in Stockholm, unfretted with a compass of C-d''' There's a AA in WTC Bk 2 in the A minor Fugue, an alternate version in a manuscript of the A major Fugue with AA in measure 16. The E major praembulum # 12 of W F Bach Clavier Buechlein of 1720 (E major invention) and Fantasia 12 (E maj. sinfonia) both contain BB. That would put J S Bach's accessible instruments with a larger compass as early as 1720. The A minor Suite (found in some manuscript collections of the French Suites, has a low AA. In Walter's version of WTC Bk 1 there is a high c# outside of the common 4 octave range of most clavichords of that time in Fugue no. 8, but would be inside the range of the Sprecken 1743 clavichord.
Equal time,
Joris just finished a prototype based on the Adlung description what very well could be the blueprint of Bach's clavichord. It is amazing to play on that instrument... hope to be able to make a video on it, probably he'll say yes (I hope...)
@@AuthenticSound (I hope so, too...) The earliest unfretted clavichord that to my knowledge which survives is 1723 in Stockholm. Johann Christoph Fleischer other unfretted clavichord 1729(?) 8'8' FF-f''' (original FF-d''') 4' FF-d unfretted Museum Schwedenspeicher, Stade. Fleischer adapted and extended his fretted models to make unfretted clavichords without changing the spacing of the key tails, a necessity in fretted clavichords but unnecessary in unfretted ones. (Two fretted clavichords (C-c’’’) are located in Trondheim and Stockholm). Fleischer worked in Hamburg, and influenced the Hass family instruments (the 4' strings in the bass that C P E Bach disliked).
very nice job
Great post, Wim, lots of fun to watch him adjusting key dip and lost motions to the key pins. The instrument had a tighter sound than yours but was a refreshing aural excursion (although I still like yours better!) Tell me, you mentioned your organ projects. Have you ever had the privilege of actually hearing the Contius at the Liepaja's Church of the Holy Trinity in person? I haven't but would love to know how it is. Having supposedly been voiced originally by Contius himself before being expanded ad nauseum, I wonder if it is a revelation or a mess?
I'm assuming Joris has only a small staff (if that) so it amazes me that he could have all the needed cauls and patterns needed for making organs. I know that it was a craft for organizations of similar size in Bach's day but Contius didn't need to make pipes to match Cavaillé-Coll et al. Today this is usually something requiring a company closer to a factory to build such organs. (I live within about 30 km of Organ Supply Industries; the largest organ builder left in the U.S. and do business with them on occasion. It's quite an impressive moment to see a low CCCC of a 32' wood diapason or even bourdon being built! And I thought my own 16' 1830 Wood Diapason was big!)
Thank you David! Yes, I have been in Liepaja many times and have quite some materials from there, played the organ, and heard the church shaking with his 115 stops. All of Contius (almost) is so well preserved there, that organ is one of the real 18th c treasures. I'll figure out how to make a video on that. Contius didn't need to make pipes in a quantity of CC, nor does Joris need to. He only focuses on clavichords and 17th/18th c organ building. Flentrop (in Holland) is a larger firm, where they do have the capacity to make, even larger romantic organs.
Even without making bigger pipes, I'm well aware of the processes of mixing and pouring spotted metal (I assume the favored medium for metal pipes of that era unlike modern zink and theater organ pure lead) and there are such a variety of scales for each stop that the number of caul sets needed to meet the need is immense. Of course, I've seen pipes made on just a couple mandrels with the maker "eyeballing" the shape and using calipers to check size but a good mandrel set can't be beat if you want a good scale. If you make even three sizes of each popular metal rank, you could need over 1200 mandrels just to get started. I think OSI possesses hundreds of thousands of them! Daunting.
Is Contius in any way related to the builder Cuntzius (whom Bach knew) who built the organ in the Marktkirche in Halle?
I would love to learn more about these new organ projects!
Thanks for your reaction! Yes, he was. Christoph Contius (or Cuntzius) was the builder of the famous organ in Halle that Bach inspected. His son, Heinrich Andreas Contius, is the one we are dealing with in these projects. His father died when he only was 13, so he took his training basically with Silbermann (few years), and many years with Wagner. I'll try to figure out how best to present some aspects of these projects to you, both are really special in the sense that the organ builders make replica without changes, which, for large instruments like these, is quite unique.
You mentioned a clavichord for the study of J S Bach, what is your opinion as to the keyboard's compass, (lowest note to highest)? Thank you for the interesting video. The Pachelbels's cianona soprano line reminds me of Christian Friedrich Witt's Passacaglia in D minor (which I believe isn't for organ, no organ that I have seen has notes below CC).
The compass of these big German bichord unfretted clavichords was equal to pianos right up to the Broadwoods at the end of the 18th. C.
Where would I go to have a clavichord built?