The 1750 Joseph Gabler organ at the Basilica in Weingarten - Excerpts from Johann Ludwig Krebs

Beatrice - Maria Weinberger, plays the 1750 Gabler organ at the Basilica in Weingarten
Joseph Gabler (1700-1771) was a German pipe organ builder. https://youtu.be/v_QPeot_rCM
Johann Ludwig Krebs (October 1713 – January 1780) was a Baroque musician and composer primarily for the pipe organ.Click `show more`
I think that this organ has the best Vox Humana pipes ever.

On 6 July 1737 the initial contract with Gabler was signed, however, before the completion of the organ it was revised on a number of occasions. In the meantime a fire in the monastery buildings and immense financial difficulties of the abbey made the organ designing and building a very lengthy and grueling process. To make matters worse, Gabler, while an excellent organ builder, was obviously an extremely poor businessman who had neither a sense of money nor had been able to meet deadlines, which meant that he was permanently ruined by this organ. The organ was finally consecrated on 24 June 1750.

The basic problem that Gabler had to solve (with a solution that was deemed downright ingenious), was to build on the west gallery of the church a monumental organ case, without blocking the existing six windows. The Weingarten model was later used by Johann Nepomuk Holzhay to solve an analogous problem in Neresheim in the same way.

The organ has some special characteristics: the principal pipes have generally a narrow scaling, which gives them a restrained dry tone. It has long been puzzling as to why Gabler found it acceptable to scale the pipes considerably narrower than could have been with such a great space to be filled. At times it was thought that Gabler was actually inept as an organ builder as the design had been called into question in his own lifetime, whereas his skills as a carpenter are unanimously considered superior ("... in which he is a paragon master ..."). Today, by contrast, it is assumed that Gabler's designs often favored aesthetics, while scaling of the ranks, he had wanted a more subdued, intimate and gentle sound. In order to give the organ a certain sonorous power and wealth despite the close scaling, Gabler populated the organ with many multi-rank voices, even in the foundation stops. In this way the multi-rank registers (as mixtures) received an unusually high number of pipes. Nevertheless, the organ known for its mild, chamber musical sound that maintains in its fullness a certain introversion.

Also noteworthy is the high number of foundations stops, including many of the string family. Gabler took on a South German Baroque style of organ building (an existing trend) and expanded it into something monumental.

Also worth mentioning is the abundant range of stops which include: Cuculus (cuckoo), Rossignol (nightingale song), timpani, two chimes and the 49-rank mixture "La Force" ("The Power"), although only played by the lowest C in the pedal. La Force was used to signal the beginning of the celebration. While the manual carillon is built into the console, the shell-bells for the pedal are artistically arranged into grape bunches, an appropriate connotation with the monastic name of the Basilica (Weingarten).

The organ is both pure and technically crafted, an absolute masterpiece. The free-standing console, one of the earliest of its kind ever, abounds with intricate inlays and has adorned stop knobs made of solid ivory. The extremely expensive routing of mechanical key and stop action is unmatched, but consequently is hard to play: the keys must be pressed hard to sound the organ due to all the long, heavy mechanisms that must be moved every time a key is pressed.

However Gabler failed at several points of perfecting his ultimately complex concept: the Kronwerk, suspended high up under the vault, was never adequately supplied with wind and was therefore realized only with a greatly reduced disposition. Similarly, Gabler obviously failed in the production of a 32' Bombarde, which was converted by him to a second 16' reed.

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