Änderungen

This story has three leading characters, visionary and strong-willed men – the organbuilders Poul-Gerhard Andersen and Sybrand Zachariassen, and Finn Viderø, the organist. Together they created the Jægersborg organ in years of great transformations within art, architecture, churchmusic, building and organplaying.

Two chapters at first deal with organs of great importance of shaping the Jægersborg organ, followed by a guided tour through all of the technical details of the organ.

We follow the further development of the three key figures, other persons around the organ, and what later happened to the instrument.

The organ in Jægersborg Church was inspired by classical organbuilding, yet without being a real style-copy. The organbuilders during the war could not travel abroad to study historic instruments, and as only a few historic instruments in Denmark still exist, they had to rely on intuition. Because quite a long time passed by before work on the organ began, P.-G. Andersen and Finn Viderø changed a good many details on the way. Later both of them expressed that the Jægersborg organ was an amalgation of their ideas to a degree that now it was difficult to remember who had thought up what.<br>

The slim organ house had a clear werk structure with Hauptwerk, Pedal, Rückpositiv and Brustwerk. Zachariassen later says that ''By such a natural structure of the façade, the structure of the organ werks will become visible, too, and those that see or hear the organ through that will achieve a living contact with the instrument. How meaningless is on the other hand an organ stage set.''<br>

Copper pipes are known already from medieval manuscripts, and for instance the 220 12th century pipes in the Franciscan Museum, Jerusalem, are made of a copper-alloy. In recent times Christhard Mahrenholz and Hans Henny Jahnn have recommended copper as pipe material, and in a few instances it has been used for front pipes. But in Jægersborg P.-G. Andersen developed this praxis by having them decorated with goldleaf patterns, and this work was carried out by the painter Victor Steensgaard – two weeks before the inauguration.<br>

The elegant console has been executed with great care. The keys of the manuals are made of ivory and ebony, and the stop knobs of oak, teak and ivory. As a special detail the doors of the Brustwerk can only be opened and closed by using ones hands, and so ''the worst of misuse – the crescendo-effect – is excluded'' (P.-G. Andersen). Viderø got this idea from the Stellwagen organ.<br>