Organ Workshop in Rötha

Workshop with Prof. Pieter van Dijk (Alkmaar/Amsterdam, NL), Dr. Christine Blanken and Dr. Markus Zepf (Leipzig Bach Archive), Dr. Tomasz Górny (University of Warsaw):
 

Workshop for interested laypeople, part-time organists and students
- Active participation: € 98
(additional enrolment at: orgelworkshop@bach-leipzig.de) – 10 people max.
- Passive participation: € 78
Both include transport and meals.
Course languages: German/English
 

Active participants have 30 minutes on the instrument to work on one piece Pieter van Dijk. Please let us know which piece you have prepared by writing to orgelworkshop@bach-leipzig.de (contact persons: Christine Blanken and Markus Zepf)

About the programme
Even as a young man Bach was a master of the chorale, as the organ chorales he wrote while still in Arnstadt and Mühlhausen, and later the numerous pieces he produced in Weimar prove. First among these is the Orgel-Büchlein, or »Little Organ Book«, BWV 599–644, a highly ambitious project that was planned to consist of more than 164 chorale melodies, but with 46 organ chorales remained uncompleted. With its subtlety and diversity of expression through the means of musical rhetoric it never ceases to impress – not least because of the brevity of the pieces Bach selected.
Discovered in 1985 and now known as the Neumeister Chorales, this collection may have come about a few years earlier. It shows the young Bach as a creative organist, sounding out the chorale form on the organ and permitting himself audacities dared by no one before him. We will also be looking at the Prelude and Fugue in E minor, BWV 533, and the Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 549.
In the organ workshop, we will go more deeply into these compositional audacities, musicologically from the perspective of current Bach research and in their practical implementation on the two Gottfried Silbermann instruments. All standard music editions are suitable.

Subjects
- The young Bach as an organist: tasks, instruments, challenges
- The Orgel-Büchlein: genesis, purpose and musical rhetoric
- The Neumeister Chorales: dating, models, how they came down to us
- Early original organ compositions: Bach’s stylus phantasticus and his models
- Possibilities of expression through registration

About the organs
With its two-manual organ by Gottfried Silbermann(1721, II/23) in the church of St. George and its single-manual sister instrument in St. Mary’s (1724, I/11), Rötha is the ideal starting point for this repertoire. (For the specifications, see https://silbermann.org/orgel/roetha-marienkirche and https://silbermann.org/orgel/roetha-georgenkirche).

About the teachers
Prof. Pieter van Dijk has been Professor of Organ at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam since 1989 and in 1995 was appointed Professor of Organ, Liturgical Organ-playing and Methodology at the University of Music and Theatre in Hamburg. He is the town organist of Alkmaar and organist of Sint Laurenskerk there. During the last five years, he has recorded J. S. Bach’s complete organ works on historical organs (www.dmp-records.nl).

Dr. Christine Blanken has worked in the research department of the Leipzig Bach Archive since 2005. After completing the new index of Bach works, BWV3 (2022), one of the principal focuses of her work at present is the edition of the great organ chorales as part of the New Bach Edition – Revised: the first volume will be published by Bärenreiter in 2023. She also works part-time as organist of St. Laurentius’ in Leipzig-Leutzsch.

Dr. Tomasz Górny studied literature at Jagiellonian University in Kraków and organ at the Conservatorium van Amsterdam (under Jacques van Oortmerssen and Pieter van Dijk). Since 2016 he has been a research associate at the University of Warsaw (Institute of Musicology). He has had articles published in international musicology journals such as Early Music, Bach-Jahrbuch and Notes.

Dr. Markus Zepf has worked at the Leipzig Bach Archive since 2016. He is a part-time organist and qualified organ expert, and wrote his doctoral thesis on the organ. One main focus of his research work is instrument-building in the world of Johann Sebastian Bach. At the Leipzig Bach Archive he is responsible for the biannual Bach-Magazin and in 2021 published the Festschrift (commemorative publication) for the organ anniversary in Rötha