“In die Orgel blasen”

The connection between North German organ music and the organs of Arp Schnitger may now seem self-evident. A closer look at the careers of the great North German masters – Heinrich Scheidemann, Jacob Prätorius Jr., Matthias Weckmann, Johann Adam Reincken, and Dieterich Buxtehude – shows, however, that they played instruments that had developed organically and whose origins went back to around 1500. These organs were repeatedly modernised and enlarged in line with contemporary taste. Arp Schnitger played no part in these earlier enlargements; his independent activity did not begin until the late 1670s, when Reincken and Buxtehude were already active. By then, however, their organs were no longer undergoing substantial alteration. The registrations discussed in this article were therefore originally conceived for an older type of organ.
The close ties between the Hanseatic city of Hamburg and the Netherlands are reflected in both the training of organists and the history of organ building. At the beginning of the seventeenth century, Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck trained an entire generation of Hamburg organists; some sixty years earlier, Henrick Niehoff had built two influential organs, one in Hamburg (St Petri) and the other in Lüneburg (St Johannes).
Dutch organ builders also worked on the organ of St Katharinen in Hamburg. In 1542/1543 Gregorius Vogel carried out work on the instrument, and in 1551 further consultations followed with Henrick Niehoff and Jasper Johansen. The Dutch firm Flentrop Orgelbouw completed the reconstruction of this instrument in 2013 after its destruction during the Second World War.