Litomysl [Back to Library]. Little is known about organs in the Church of the Holy Cross in those early. For some, this means I can now include multiple release samples, since these are now handled by Hauptwerk's Custom Organ Design Module (CODM). I have now include crescendo pedals on all of my organs. I have also done some graphics redesign as needed. All Hauptwerk v3 organs are still available.
Sonus Paradisi - The Forcalquier Organ Model V.2 (1627-2000) Hauptwerk WAV 5.53 GB The history of the organ in the church of Forcalquier is very turbulent and only a part of the material remained from the baroque period, from the original organ. Most of it comes from a 19th and 20th century restorations.
The cathedral in a small and picturesque French city called Forcalquier had a small organ with 9 stops built by Pierre Marchand in 1627. It is said that during the time of the Revolution, the church and the organ served for the embellishments of the feasts of the new regime. In 1803, the Christian worship was restored in the church. Half a century later, Prosper Antoine Moitessier rebuilt the organ completely, reusing also the ancient material.
The Grand orgue had now 22 stops, a Rcit expressif (enclosed in a swell-box) and Pedal with 4 stops. The organbuilders Cavaill-Coll – Mutin made further reconstruction in 1932.
They extended the pedal board range and changed the action to the pneumatic one. Recently, the organ was carefully restored and enlarged in two steps in 1981 and 2000 by Alain Sals. The action was changed back to the mechanical one, new Positif de dos was installed using the remaining old pipes, some new stops were added, so that now the organ has 36 speaking stops. The swell-box of the Rcit was most probably removed during this restoration.
The composition and the timbre of the organ is typically French, although rather sharp, 'chiffy', with a strong feeling of „ingalit“, i. There are numerous voicing breaks where suddenly the timbre of the stop changes. The most prominent one is the division of the Voix humaine of the Rcit, which is in fact composed of two different stops, one for the Bass part and the other for the Treble part of the keyboard compass.
The specification given below gives also the idea how old every stop is, so, whether it comes from Marchand (1627), Moitessier (1847) or Cavaill-Coll-Mutin (1932) or Sals (2000). Couplers: I / Ped. I / II - Positif to Grand Orgue III / I - Rcit to Positif, not original, added only virtually Tremulants: Positif tremulant, not original, added only virtually Rcit tremulant, not original, added only virtually Wedge Bellows: It is generally agreed by experts, that it is the wind behavior which makes the beauty of the organ sound. In early times, wedge bellows were used in organs which were pulled up by 'calcants'.
There were usually several sets of bellows to feed the organ so that the wind achieved some stability. Nevertheless, the procedure of pumping and also the changing torque of the falling moving board as the bellows were deflating, caused slight changes in pressure, slight oscilations which affected the pipe speech. Also, the wind stability was so delicate that playing on one manual with just one or two stops affected the speech of pipes played on a different manual. After the parallel rise bellows were invented, and after organ blowers invaded churches, these subtle wind behavior was lost to great deal.
With the help of Hauptwerk, we can now model the original situation of the hand pumped bellows. Together with carefully modelled response of pipes, it is completely new experience of the organ sound.
Note: read instruction.txt home page.
Litomysl Organ Model Litomysl is a lovely town in eastern Bohemia, practically at the border with Moravia. It is widely known as the birthplace of one of the most prominent Czech composers: Bedrich Smetana (1824-1884). Although he was celebrated as a pianist and a composer of opera as well as of orchestral music, he left some minor pieces for organ too (6 preludes, 1 fuge, 1 choral). Further back in history, it is recognized for its renaissance castle where the original baroque theatre is preserved and still in function. The summer festival takes place there every year under the name 'Smetanova Litomysl'. The Organ in the Church of the Holy Cross Little is known about organs in the Church of the Holy Cross in those early times. There was a late baroque instrument by Frantisek Pavel Horak (1723-1822) built in 1780. It had two manuals and a pedal with alltogether 22 stops.
![Organ Organ](https://img03.rl0.ru/ad38f8bb64444d12659aacaf8c83e683/c500x474/c1.staticflickr.com/3/2646/3891593513_0131376698.jpg)
Later it was rebuilt completely in 1902 by Josef Kobrle (1851-1919). The old organ purely baroque in style seemed not to meet the fasion of the early XXth century. The Kobrle's instrument beared signs of 'romantic' or symphonic organ which was desired at those times. It had also 2 manuals with 22 stops as the previous instrument but the brilliant aliquotes and high mixtures were replaced by lower sounding stops of many different colors: flutes, strings, reeds. Hundred years later, the ways of evaluating the organ qualities have changed again.
![Litomysl Litomysl](http://www.sonusparadisi.cz/media/catalog/galleryadd/large/18_18_Litomysl20032.jpg)
We now admire the brilliance of the baroque sound, we love the logic of the hierarchy of the WerkPrinzip but at the same time we do not want to loose the variety of romantic coloring stops. Hence, many organbuiders tend to favour large organs with great diversity of stops to satisfy the needs of all musical styles. Well, the purity of style is lost but the advantages of the 'universal' organ seem to prevail. Having this in mind, Vladimir Grygar (whose company is well known in many countries of the world for its craftsmenship) built completely new organ in the church of the Holy Cross.
The work has been finished only in 2001. The new instrument has 4 manuals and 51 sounding stops (not counting couplers and other helpers). Features and Screenshots.
Hauptwerk v.3.30 and higher supported. samples available in 24-bit/48kHz format. wind model support. realistic tremolo samples. realistic enclosure effects.
programmable crescendo pedal. user-adjustable voicing of individual ranks to enrich the timbre variability of the organ stops. user-adjustable detuning of the celeste ranks.
Multiple loops: Each sample has at least 3 loops (up to 7 loops in some samples) to ensure variable playback. blower noise and tracker noise support - user adjustable. photorealistic console. individual ranks may be used to form various subsets or to build different organs from the sample material of Litomysl. 30 fully programmable combinationpistons. Multiple releases - 3 levels for each stop (improved staccato behavior), courtesy of Al Morse.
New Trumpet imperial 32 feet in the bottom octave (was 16' before). Dual Touchscreen support. improved denoising - about 18 dB better noise floor. many voicing corrections to individual pipes. completely new ballancing of the divisions and stops.
redesigned Cornet on the Bombardwerk. redesigned swell box behavior. improved tremulant behavior, including completely new design of the tremulant LFO's. new crescendo design: the stops drawn manually are not switched off when the crescendo is increasing. Requirements:.
64-bit Windows system is necessary. Dual core processor or better.
screen resolution at least 1280x1024 pixels. RAM.
full sample set loaded in 16-bit: 5.66 GB. full sample set loaded in 20-bit: 7.53 GB. full sample set loaded in 16-bit, but the 16' + 8' + 4' stops in 20-bit for increased quality: 7.10 GB. This is the recommended way of loading the sample set if your computer has altogether 8 GB of RAM, so as enough room is left for the OS itself.