Electronic organ music in Berlin: In the engine room of sound

When the Jehmlich organ is played in the concert hall, concerts by Mozart, Bach or Brahms, sometimes also by Arvo Pärt, are often heard, played by renowned soloists. At this year's Aggregate Festival, however, software controls the pipe organ and plays compositions by Laurie Spiegel, Seth Horvitz, Phillip Sollmann, Konrad Sprenger and the duo Gamut Inc, consisting of Marion Wörle and Maciej Sledziecki.

Wörle and Sledziecki are also the organizers of Berlin's annual festival for new music and computer-controlled pipe organ. For their five-year anniversary they have brought a special novelty. The concert hall's hundreds-of-year-old organ is getting an upgrade; it is being modernized and converted into a so-called hyperorgan. For the first time, it can be controlled completely independently and directly via a computer via a MIDI interface.

The whole thing seems to take some getting used to at first. The organ console is ready on the stage, but no one is using it. Instead, Gamut Inc sit opposite each other at two laptops, occasionally scrolling and bobbing their heads to the music. They brought the pieces “East River Dawn” and “Drums” from her album “The Expanding Universe” by the composer Laurie Spiegel and adapted them for the concert hall organ. But their specially made, wind-dynamic pipe organ “Black Square” is also used.

Spiegel's multi-layered sound tapestry expands as the first musical performance on the opening evening, the breathing of the pipe organ losing its typical character here and there; electronics are gaining the upper hand. Clocked triplet sequences repeatedly intertwine, reinvent themselves and find themselves again. Sometimes faster, sometimes slower, the harmonies push forward completely unstoppably.

Seth Horvitz, whose stage name is Rrose, takes over before the break with “studies for automated pipe organ,” his premiere. He sits at the gaming table in the first tier, but does not play it. His back is turned to the audience as the haunting chromaticism pours over the hall of the concert hall. The sounds climb higher and higher until it comes to an abrupt end. After the applause, the artist explains that the organ is not yet used to its new existence as an electronic musical instrument and sometimes does strange things and that it needs to be restarted.