The Organ Reform Movement or Orgelbewegung (also called the Organ Revival Movement) was an early 20th century trend in pipe organ building, originating in Germany and already influential in the United States in the 1940s, waning only in the 1980's. It arose with early interest in historical performance and was strongly influenced by Albert Schweitzer's championing of historical instruments by Silbermann and others, as well as by his declaration that the criterion for judging an organ is its fitness to play the music of J. S. Bach. It ultimately went beyond the copying of old instruments to endorse a new philosophy of organbuilding, however.

The movement sought to turn away from many of the perceived excesses of Romantic or Orchestral organ building, in favor of organs understood to be more similar to those of the Baroque Era in Northern Germany. This took the form of a vertical style of registration in which ensembles were ideally built up with no pitch being duplicated in the same octave. The movement endorsed the so-called Werkprinzip, in which each division was based on a principal-scale rank of a different octave.

Organ voicers strove for an articulate speech characterized by chiff and avoided nicking, beards and other means of achieving 'smoothness'. Low wind pressures were revived. Casework was often eschewed in favor of open standing pipework and swellboxes became relatively rare.

Although one occasionally hears the term "Tracker-Backer" thrown around, the movement was more concerned with these tonal characteristics than with any specific action type and many electric action instruments were built; mechanical action had of course also been used in the romantic instruments being reacted against.

Some of the leading builders of the movement were G. Donald Harrison, Holtkamp, Schlicker, D.A. Flentrop and Beckerath.

[edit] See also

E. Power Biggs

[edit] References

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