Uncovering an Unbelievable SECRET...Hidden in a Massive Church Organ

good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to a new church before we start off the furnace not telling you where we are I'm just going to introduce you briefly to this organ now at first glance you're going to just think but it looks like a normal three manual organ there are some stops on the left hand side sort of 50 something stops you think that's nothing special is it well there's one stop that belongs to this organ that isn't actually over there let me show you something the missing stop is of course the acoustic of the church itself the building we are in this is one of the largest acoustics I've actually ever come across in my organ playing life so far I think there's sort of about eight or nine seconds of reverberation once you've stopped playing here it's rather amazing now where are we where is this amazing place well we're in the German city of Wiesbaden which is the state capital of Hessen or ser I think it's actually called in English isn't it it was sort of sort of in the middle in the west of Germany if you like well near Frankfurt if that means anything to you okay and this is the largest or the main catholic church here in Wiesbaden and tonight we're going to have a look at this wonderful instrument now my new friend Gabriel death hour he's the organist here he has very kindly given us the keys to the organ and to the church and he's just said have some fun it's yours do what you want so yep that's exactly what we're going to do and there are some rather interesting features of this organ that we're going to look at and then because of this wonderful acoustic I'm going to I'm going to make up a piece of music based around the acoustic does that make sense yeah I think it does so let's get on with it welcome to Wiesbaden before I start making some noise at the organ I would quite like to show you something I've wanted to show you for quite a while and that's the mechanics of this organ now most of the organs we visited up to now have been either sort of with electrical connections between the keys and the pipes or electropneumatic connections and this one thankfully has a mechanical connection that means when I press a key here some mechanical things move and underneath the pipes and something is moved literally mechanically directly connected to this key here and let's the air into the pipe and it's here it's rather easy to see here in this church and if you come with me I can show you exactly what that looks like now here are three manuals okay and of course the fourth division being the pedals so we're going to try and find three different divisions of mechanical bits let's see what we can find so here in behind the console there's a sort of a rather cute little trapdoor and if I get down on one knee and open this trapdoor ah Gabrielle the organist showed me all of this before he left for the evening and said yeah you can have a look in here if you want and there you have the mechanics now those are those are wooden connections it's very thin but very stable wood is Redwood and those connections from the console to the pipes are controlled through these chaps here it's unbelievable really and then sort of displayed in a rather nice order rather nice pattern if you like though the two diagonals come up become a bit closer than they can maybe have a look here we have one diagonal section of connections in this area and that's the swell Division of the organ so if you follow the line from the console and the line that they're taking they are over there on the right hand side of the organ and then down underneath there you can see another diagonal and diagonal collection of of connections connect collection of connections that's quite difficult to say and that's heading off underneath me to the left side of the organ and that's the help divert that's the great division of the organ and then of course the ones that this goes straight across they are here for the middle and that's for the choir organ and then deep down in there you can't really see it on the on the picture itself which we tried this when we did the German version a minute or two ago and underneath it there are also the the pedal connections and it's it's quite difficult to see those but they're only thirty of them so yeah now that's part one of it so we could actually take the console apart so you can see how it's connected to the keys but that's a bit of a faff so we're not going to do that and but what I can do is open up the organ itself and show you what it looks like inside there let's do that here we are at the organ now as you can see it's not very far from the console the console is there and the pipes or the prospect of the path he's just here okay so you can you know you can get up real close you can touch the pipes which I'm not going to because people get annoyed with me when I start touching pipes they say that the oils and fit fats and my fingers are going to attack the pipes no they're not but nevermind and here we can actually see the pipes really rather well on the left side we have one half of the pedlar principle sixteen foot yeah so all the way up to there that's sixteen feet what's that five and a bit meters and on the other side over on the right side the same its chromatic remember there's the C side and there's the C sharp side C side oh I do like to be beside the seaside no never mind and then here in the middle you can see the pipes are a bit darker that's not a that's not something with the light those actually has a completely different material those pipes that's the four foot principle of the choir organ but the reason I'm here is this this strange key that Gabriel gave me and with that I can open this door we can see with those wooden connections end up and if you would care to join me up here I'll show you this in a little more detail so remember the wooden struts we saw that came across from the console well they end down there way down in the floor and there's a sort of a sort of a lever mechanism if you like that transfers that horizontal movement into this vertical movement so here are the same number of wooden connections up to here and then these vertical connections here are then with another lever as it were transformed into another horizontal movement over to where the pipes are on the chests now to get then to the individual pipes those obviously the pipes aren't this close together these are individual nodes yeah and obviously an individual the individual pipes aren't that close together so they have to be spaced out so there are sort of rollers if you like with wooden connections on either end then take that vertical motion up underneath the pipe pull on that little valve and let the air into the pipe so if you take that camera with switch the light on on the camera so we can actually see in there and if you go right up in there there are you girl you can see those sort of rollers yeah that's rather beautiful actually the way it's laid out and if you look even higher I don't know can you see any pipes if you go all the way up if you go all the way up can you see any pipes can you see any pipes mmm the pipes are hidden above us but basically those are the connections right up to the pipes in there now we could wander into the organ and have a look at some other bits of pieces in there we might do that in a minute but we have some other things to show you in this organ it's a rather another special instrument actually we actually decided to have a wander into the organ before we before we started playing some tunes and there are some rather curious things to see here and one of them I've heard about and I'm not sure we can find it but we'll see look organ pipes yeah these pipes belong to the pedal Division and this is one half of the pedal Division it's I thought it was a C sharp or C side I think it's the C sharp side over here and you can see the rather tall ones that go all the way up practically to the ceiling that's the 16-foot pizanno and here at the back we have the stopped bass pipes the SU bus I think it's called and so on and so on and so on and but if we dig deeper into the organ and climb a few ladders we're gonna find some some more interesting curiosities come this way when you're digging about inside an organ and it's quite good this works there's a lot of space in here you will eventually come across ladder and when you come across a ladder the most natural thing you do is climb it and let's do that let's see what we find when we climb this ladder to get some drama in our films I've sent my wife up to the ladder first so she can film me climbing up the ladder and well because she's always wearing the most suitable shoes for this job she decided to leave them down there for now I don't know why she insist on wearing these high hear things but yeah she's climbed up and now it's my turn to climb up so what have we got up here so here up at the top of the organ the top of a mystery ladder we've discovered these chaps the Shimada pipes the Spanish trumpets if you like the French Chama out of pipes and remember it was a video from a while back where I was in close to marine stat the abbey of marine start here in Germany and you could see the pipes directly above the head of the organist they were right above my head Spanish trumpets and here that hidden inside the organ but nonetheless there they are the horizontal fanfare trumpets if you like that shoot their sound straighter into the church quite well hidden here but they've got a rather punchy sound which we're going to hear in just a minute or two but I don't know if you saw that in the last video beside the Shimada pipes there's this ladder and being a sort of inquisitive person that I am and not being terribly afraid of heights I thought I might as well go up the ladder and have a look and this was a very dark room up here so I'm gonna grab the camera and see what I can find in here now this is something I've never seen in an organ before and I think this is probably some organist would dream about something like this to have their own bed inside the organ now I can't really show you this any better than this because I'm filming it myself because I'm all the way I don't know if you can see that but I'm right at the top of the organ basically right at the top of the church and hidden up another ladder organist as installed this own little private bedroom I always said organist were crazy people and here's the proof back at the console and in 30 odd years I've been crawling around inside organs I think that's the first time I've ever seen a bed inside an organ so yeah Organists are crazy people and you we now have proof it's up back to the console and I'm gonna start showing you a few stops here but before we do that I want you introduce to the wonderful want to introduce you to the wonderful world of hybrid organs now everyone these days are talking about hybrid cars but back in the 90s Gavriel decided let's have a hybrid organ what does that mean well most of the sounds of this organ are of course made by pipes that's true but there are some electronically created sounds in this organism back in the 90s or maybe earlier I don't know there was a film I think it was a German film it was called the earthquake dust I had a burn of Dodge and they needed some rather fancy speakers to recreate the feeling of an earthquake now why the feeling of an earthquake well we're talking about subsonic sounds here things going way down below 20 Hertz yeah so the sounds you can basically only feel the air is moving so slowly you can feel it yeah and this is one of those speakers and there are three of them here in the church and they are responsible for three rather big big boomy sorry Basie pedal effects on the organ now that's not what you were thinking you were probably thinking hybrid sounds are gonna be things like xylophones and pianos like we saw in Bonn recently nope these are organ sounds created with these rather wonderful incredibly solid loudspeakers then we're going to have a look at some of the stops like I told you and the organs that have been played around with over the years not just by the addition of electronic sound but I started out in the 1950s and then it was added to in the 80s it was sort of changed to a mechanical action in the 80s and 90s I think then a couple of stops were added to it the electronic stops were added to it and after the church was refurbished the organ was re revised as it were and the organ build a firm that did that firm Maya they were called or they are called they're still around and the guy who did the voicing of the order was actually Scottish and he asked Gabrielle he said would you like a Scottish organ and whatever a Scottish organ is I'm not really very sure but then that's apparently what we have here we have a Scottish sounding organ so there you go Scottish organist Scottish sounding organ in Germany how international well have a quick dig through some of the wonderful sounds we have on the organ we've got three manuals so the third manual is this well second manual is the choir or the positive and then the great or helped work here at the bottom and there are two swellable divisions we have the swell division obviously at the top and also the choir organ is swellable so we have these two swell petals here and what's rather cool about these petals is they're also mechanical so there's this rather large huge mechanical heavy weighted connection between the petals and the swell box itself you're actually really pushing the swell box open and that makes these petals very heavy and I know there are some organizations to be very light and easy to move I actually think this is rather wonderful because it gives you proper control of how fast and how far you're opening this well box I like it other people don't anyway a quick run through some of the stops we have the usual stringy stringy celeste sound here in as well [Music] and of course the wonderful acoustic carrying it on four seven eight nine seconds rather wonderful each division has its own sort of eight four and two principal division which is rather cute that was only the Swale principle yeah so we've got the same thing here in the choir organ I don't know if you can pick that up in the record with its much more much more direct sound because the pipes are right in front of the organist face so that's a very very very direct sound and then of course you have the main principle division on the how Clerk [Music] which of course has that big fat sound now there are rather a lot of reed sounds in this organ starting with some very French sounding reeds up in the swell and if I close the swell box we get that wonderful snarly effect that I love so much [Music] in the choir organ there's a lovely oboe which arrived at the time where the Scottish guy was doing his voicing work so theoretically it's a Scottish oboe [Music] which is a rather lovely solo stop on its own down in the great organ of course we have 16 8 and 4 foot reads big fanfare sir [Music] and of course when that's not enough you've got your shmurda trumpets your fanfare trumpets and they are very bombastic [Music] for the clever organist amongst you you would have thought there hold on a minute that sounds like there's a 16-foot shammed well no there isn't there's only eight and four but there's a rather clever trick here you can couple them down an octave to make them sound fatter if I take that away then we do have shammed eight hamartia [Music] because they send their son directly into the church you really get the full effect of that acoustic that is really rather amazing I think Gabriel can I come and play here regularly please let's have a look at the pedal division this is an organ of first we just discovered the bed up there but I think this is the only organ I've ever come across where there are more pedal stops than in any other division what do I mean by that well there are 1717 stops here in the pedal and if we take away the two Shimada because they're sort of floating we take them away there are 15 stops in the pedal alone now that's more than any other division of this organ why on earth there are 15 pedal stops who knows why not an organ can't be basic enough but here are those 15-month not true here are 12 of those pedal stops just the pipes [Music] that's a pretty good sound and it's so big we've actually set off the ambulances outside on the street can you hear that and they're recording I don't know there are three pedal stops here I've just mentioned it you pointing the speaker's there you know there are three electronic stops here on the organ no obviously Gabriel didn't think the organ was fat enough in the base end so they added another 16-foot stop it's a 16 foot vo lon it's called and it sounds on its own it sounds like this [Music] which is okay yeah it's got a big sound but it's just sound like an electronic sound on its own but when you mix that with the other sixteen foot stops [Music] it sounds absolutely fine so it's got a nice big meaty sound to it now then there's a 32-foot stop and this is when these earthquake II speakers come into play let me play the same thing again but now with the 32 food on [Music] [Music] suddenly the whole organ loft starts shaking so it is just like an earthquake just like the speaker's promised yeah it's making our own little earthquake now there's a 32-foot Reed stop and electronic 32-foot Reed and it has it's very own speaker hidden in the organ it would be too powerful to have it here on the and on the organ loft here but too powerful so they've hidden it in the back here it is on its own [Music] sounds like a machine gun going crazy now if I pop on full organ and get rid of this you're mad and now this is full organ coupled down to pedals here okay and it's the most amazingly big fat effect listen to this now if you didn't know any better you would think this was all pipe work here but yeah the addition of those three electronic stops has really made something of this organ quite wonderful and don't forget the organ itself is good but add the room at the size of the church and it's a rather special instrument time to play a piece of music okay so I'm going to finish up with a piece of music and I'm actually gonna do something I haven't done yet at this organ because we haven't we haven't really had much time here when we arrived at the church tonight there was a service taking place and then the cleaners came in and sort of spent an hour cleaning and during that time I would have normally sat at the organ and sort of you know worked out what the organ can do tried through all the stops all that sort of thing and I didn't have that time today and because we need to get home at some point and I didn't do what I normally do now what I normally do is I start just playing around with the organ I start playing around with the stops start with some very soft stops and then build the organ up gradually so haha I know what the organ sounds like I know what I can do with the organ I know what the organ can do bla bla bla and like I said I didn't get the chance to do that today so the piece we're gonna play at the end of today's video is actually going to be me doing that okay now what I've done without playing a single note I've set the sequencer on the organ I've done if you can see all the stops moving there I've set up the organ as I think I'm I would normally set it up so starting off with some very soft stringy sound building up to full organ and then back down again and it's a very British way of doing things when you don't know one organ you just stop start waffling around in a key I'm gonna probably play in flat because I love a flat and I'll stop waffling around in the org and build it up to frog and take it back down again and that's sort of my procedure to get to know an organ and that's what we're gonna do today so thanks for watching thanks for sticking around I hope it was interesting today it's been great being here this is it's great being back out and about at a new organ again and thanks to your support with things like patreon and steady and PayPal which you'll find down there we were able to do this yeah because you know we've got normal jobs as well and these are things we have to do in our spare time and it's quite difficult finding the time and resources to travel around the country and play and record these organs so thank you for helping and assisting you are making this possible and yeah a big thanks of course to Gabriel death our the organist here there's also a link to him and his activities here and get Gabriel is a rather wonderful concert organist himself and he plays all over the world he's been in America a few times as well and he's also one of these organist who likes playing the sort of lighter side of music he doesn't just play the heavy stuff he plays some light stuff too which makes him a good chap in my book so thank you very much dick Gabriel for letting me come and sit and play at their organ for a few hours tonight I hope I'll be back here to play again sometime soon yeah let's close up with that piece of music like I said thanks for watching I hope to see you again next week with more new stuff about organs so yeah see you next time bye bye [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Fraser Gartshore

Views: 1,215,474

Keywords: music, orgelmusik, organ, kirchenorgel, orgel, fraser gartshore, fraser, gartshore, church, church music, organist, organ stops, swell organ, bach organ music, st bonifatius wiesbaden, wiesbaden, wiesbaden organ, fraser gartshore organ, church organ, hidden chamber, pipe organ, secret room, hidden room, huge organ, secret chamber, hidden chamber church, hidden secret church, gartshore gang, uncovering a secret, organ improvisation, organ tracker action, hidden organ chamber

Id: ywxFfTHLF_s

Length: 32min 38sec (1958 seconds)

Published: Fri May 17 2019