Schorndorf - Bornefeld Organ 1962 [Hauptwerk]

The 1959/60 renovation of the town church had the task of restoring the room to its original axial orientation and stripping it of the Art Nouveau elements of 1909. It was clear that the organ had to return to its original place in the west gallery. A reuse of the 1909 organ was out of the question because this instrument was completely outdated, not only architecturally but also technically and tonally. The parish of Schorndorf was therefore faced with the major task of initiating the construction of a new main organ that would meet the architectural and musical requirements of the space and the church music requirements of today.

Since the nave of the Schorndorf town church has a volume of approx. 9000 cbm and the choir of 3000 cbm, the usual formulas would have resulted in an organ size of 60-70 stops, which would have been both financially and technically impossible. If the organ had to be rebuilt, then it was clear that it could only have slider chests with mechanical action and that it had to be made of high-quality materials. In view of the excellent acoustics, the organ was given 45 stops in the hope that with a favorable arrangement, scaling and voicing, it would be possible to control the considerable volume of the room.

The idea of a “giant organ” with 70, 80 or more stops comes from a time (irrevocably past) when people only listened to the mass of sound and also believed that they could “do anything” with the help of electric action. Today, however, musical sound quality is once again more important to us than the martial “roar” of the organ, and we are therefore not inclined to forego the indisputable sound advantages of mechanically played slider chests in favor of “size”. It has been proven that even large and very large rooms can be managed with mechanical slider-chest organs, even if they have to conform to the technical limits which are about 50 stops for three manuals and about 65 stops for four keyboards.

The main problem of any organ planning is the “objectively correct” position of the instrument. In the case of Schorndorf, there would have been a rare opportunity for an ideal layout; unfortunately, it could not be fully utilized because the west window, which is not part of the organ, had to be retained - contrary to all the arguments of organ building technology. Despite its elevation, this window pushes the organ too much into the width, which naturally has an unfavorable effect (with mechanical action). Experience will show whether this solution represents a satisfactory compromise between space, window and action in the long term. At least the fundamentally important aspects could be preserved: Hauptwerk, Brustwerk (in the Swell) and Rückpositiv are on one axis; the Pedal is symmetrically distributed on the C and C sharp sides, whereby the Pedal Sololade is one and a half meters above the main chest for reasons of perfect cantus firmus performance. The console is positioned next to the Rückpositiv (for both tonal and performance reasons).