Research residency around the Ratingen hyperorgan, leading to the composition What Will Happen (2019–2020).
On this page
Briefly about the residency
The hyperorgan
Working in Ratingen
Material Extravaganza
oRgel 3.0 | The concert
Related links
Briefly about the residency
2019 September. Ansgar Wallenhorst plans a composition residency for the hyperorgan at the Saint Peter and Paul church in Ratingen (DE). With the advice of Jacob Lekkerkerker and Trevor Grahl, I am invited to be the composer in residence and the trip starts. A concert for September 2020 is scheduled by Ansgar, including a piece of mine for the hyperorgan, to be performed by Jacob. This piece is part od Ratingen’s Organ Book.
Ratingen, an old town next to Düsseldorf in Germany, is the birthplace of the Sinua hyperorgans. Benedikt Aufterbeck and Thomas Stöckl are behind the Sinua system, which was developed together with Ansgar throughout years of exploring new ways to control and play the organ.
I visited Ratingen numerous times in 2019-2020, travelling by train from Amsterdam and staying at Ratingen’s organ scholar’s apartment. Not being an organist myself, I decided to research the hyperorgan register by register and sound by sound. This led to a large amount of recorded material and a long list of ideas, which made it difficult to arrive at a 20′-long composition. On top of that, because of the nature of the instrument, I wasn’t able to really work remotely. I could only make decisions and actually compose when I was at the organ, playing it myself. Due to the corona restrictions, I had limited time with Jacob to work together on the instrument, while, on top of that, most of my ideas were still in my head and on my hands. We decided that I would play the piece, since there wasn’t really a finished score – not even by the concert date. I would rather describe the final material as a cloud of ideas.
The hyperorgan
Being a recently invented term, the “hyperorgan” describes emerging concepts of sound aesthetics and of organ building. By definition, the word hyper carries the meaning of something being over, above, beyond, exceeding, to excess. In some cases a hyperorgan comprises two (or more) different organs, built in different eras, each carrying its aesthetics of organ building and sound. With the help of innovative technology (mechanics, electronics, networks), Sinua has been developing a control system that offers new possibilities for how the organ produces sound. The actual result is acoustic – we are still listening to an “analogue synthesizer”. As of 2020, there are five Sinua hyperorgans in the world, all in Europe.
The hyperorgan in Ratingen comprises two separate organs. The main one, the church’s actual organ, is a large romantic organ built above the church’s entrance. The second organ is a newly built organ, placed behind the altar, named the “Choir”. The two organs face each other on the two opposite sides of the church.
In order to have access to the new controls on the organ, a touch screen functions as an interface, in combination with the organ’s conventional console. On each manual (I II III IV) and the pedal we can assign registers (or stops). Some registers are bound to a specific part of the organ and cannot be independently assigned to any manual (this depends on how the actual mechanics and wind paths are built), others can (these are built recently), giving more freedom.
On each manual we can add one or more layers. In each layer we can select registers of our choice, as well as parameters we want to work with for that specific layer. The basic parameters are:
Pulse = the frequency and width (how much we let the pipe’s mouth open)
Staccato = how short the note will be, no matter how long we press a key
Delay = how long after pressing a key the sound begins
Transposition (we can as well select the range of the keyboard we want to transpose)
Sostenuto = how long the note is sustained when pressing a key
Next to the manuals (the pedal keys and the four keyboards), there are three “car” pedals (or: balanced expression pedals). These can be assigned to control:
Boxes of parts of the organs (closing-opening to change the dynamics)
Amount of Wind supply for the Choir organ
Parameters in the touchscreen (hotwheel function)
Layers should be thought of as sound ideas that can be juxtaposed on a manual. Whatever we play on that manual will trigger all the layers added to it. For example, adding three layers with a different amount of delay for each one (e.g. L1=0ms, L2=80ms, L3=160ms) will result in the same note being heard three times, with the assigned delay. Adding three layers with different transpositions, will result in a chord (that we basically transpose when playing along the keyboard).
On the organ’s console and interface we can save registrations. They can be recalled anytime. Before a concert there has to be time booked for the necessary preparation, so that the saved registrations are organised in a way that helps the flow of the performance.
Of course the hyperorgan can be also be controlled by a computer. The assignment of this residency was a composition that can be performed by an organist on this and other hyperorgans.
Working in Ratingen
My residency started in November 2019. I arrived in Ratingen without a compositional plan or music ideas. I devoted the first four visits to get to know the hyperorgan’s sounds. I used two notebooks, one for writing down numbers, observations and other information, and one for music ideas. I used a Zoom H6 to record my explorations on the keyboard. After each visit I would listen back to my recordings and make a sound library of all ideas. These recordings included other kinds of sounds as well; church bells ringing, people walking around, talking, babies crying, staff moving things around. The Saint Peter and Paul church in Ratingen is quite alive. Sometimes people would sing along with what I was playing or complain about my bad sounds.
Abbreviations in my notes:
R = ideas in the music notebook / “variate” when in a circled arrow
J / A = Jacob and Ansgar find those ideas interesting
SO = Solowerk box
SW = Schwellwerk box / SW = Schwellwerk registers
VW = Vox Winnie box
CW = Choir box
WD = Wind of the Choir organ
RP = Rückpositiv
HW = Hauptwerk
any = “free” registers that can be assigned independently to any manual
T = Tremolo
% = the pulse’s width
The Solowerk, Vox Winnie, Pedal and Choir registers can be independently assigned to any manual.
The registers of Hauptwerk, Rückpositiv and Schwellwerk are restricted in use.
MATERIAL EXTRAVAGANZA
2019 November 19-21
[ideas 1-53]
Amsterdam-Düsseldorf-Ratingen. Ansgar is a great host and so are Bene and Thomas. Besides giving me a tour of the church and the organ, they made sure I got to know the right places to eat. Actually, having lunch or dinner together proved to be an important activity in Ratingen. There I was, exploring the main organ, starting with the Pedal and how each register reacts to the various Sinua parameters.
2019 December 16-19
[ideas 54-116]
December was a retake on previous ideas and continuing to explore the main and the Choir organs. Jacob drove me to Ratingen by car, where we spent a couple of days on my November ideas. His feedback on register colours, sound balance in the church and ways to combine different ideas was a guide for how to continue. After he left I continued alone creating new ideas. Quite a cold winter in that church.
2020 January 7-10
[ideas 117-121]
The last registration ideas in the notebook tend to involve more layers and combinations of different parts of the hyperorgan. January was focused on understanding the sound balance in the church. The console is portable, however it demands too much effort to move it around the church, due to the different levels of the floor. It is primarily located at the altar, close to the Choir organ. However, what you listen to while playing is quite different from what the audience listens to, sitting at the other side of the church, under the main organ. A lo-fi solution was found; a midi keyboard in the middle of the church. I could set up this portable station within 10′ each day (tablet and keyboard had to be stored for safety).
2020 January 25-27
I put a lot of effort in not creating new ideas. The hyperorgan is like a magic box; you sit at the console and new things pour out. Sound balance was still something I needed to understand better in the church, while developing a selection of ideas. Of course the midi keyboard was a bit limiting; no “car” pedals and extra manuals.
Saving all these ideas in the console needed some re-organisation. Next to the touchscreen interface, the console has its own built-in system called the setzer. All presets are saved to your account. A common way to turn on the organ is by using a card that you touch over a reader, logging in to the card’s account number. I listened to all ideas in the sound library and grouped them together, trying to find a way to evaluate them and narrow them down by selecting the most interesting ones.
For this trip, Ansgar organised a short lecture for his organ students. He invited me to discuss with them the new possibilities of the Sinua system and play some of the material I was working on. Next to that, I managed to find some time and take the train to nearby Wuppertal to watch the performance Bluebeard. While Listening to a Tape Recording of Bela Bartok’s Opera “Duke Bluebeard’s Castle” by Pina Bausch and Tanztheater Wuppertal. Such a composition of movement in space and time; I felt very lucky I could be there and watch this piece live.
2020 June 7-10
The pandemic changed the residency’s timetable. I was supposed to finish the piece by March or April 2020. After my last visit in January, the next time I managed to travel to Ratingen was June. Ansgar extended the residency till September. We planned September’s concert; a piece by Trevor, Jacob and me.
I used June’s trip to refresh my memory and try to start narrowing down the material. However, by simply working on some of the ideas in my notebooks I ended up with new material. It was so hard not to play around with details and “accidents”, leading to new results.
I was asked to start thinking of a title. My first idea was for the piece to be a collection of fragments or short ideas. A sort of diary of the residency, creating a pluralistic sound journey. The sound of the people passing through the church in my recordings was inspiring. I wanted to incorporate this into the composition, creating soundscapes or sound events in the church in dialogue with the hyperorgan’s part. Maybe by placing a few speakers in space. Steps, shoes, doors, coins, newspapers, babies, church bells. Thoughts for my next trip.
2020 June 29 – July 2
Before heading back to Ratingen we met with Jacob at my place in Amsterdam (during a heatwave) to help with the latest selection of ideas. That would be Selection #4. We managed to narrow down our list to 25 ideas and he proposed which ones would be interesting to combine together (e.g. put them on different manuals so that we can play around with them simultaneously).
By scanning these music ideas again and again already since January, I noticed a few similarities. All ideas could be generally grouped as:
[: L.H. :] + R.H. melody = a loop on the left hand + a melody on the right one
subcon counterpoint = improvised counterpoint of multiple voices moving independently
μ = microtonal, involving controlling the Choir’s wind amount
gestures = mostly referring to ascending broken chords
colour/timbre ideas = mostly involving quick pulse
Once again, I spent quite sometime re-organising the presets in the setzer. This was an investment of time in case of Jacob was able to visit Ratingen in the summer without me, playing around with the Selection #4.
Leaving Ratingen for my summer break, what would be a better early morning goodbye before catching my train than a warm breakfast at Ansgar’s. Not only has he been an inspiring coordinator of this residency, but a fantastic host too.
2020 August 31 – September 2
[idea 122]
Not having the piece finished yet, last decisions had to be made in order to have it ready for the concert. Unfortunately the pandemic and the planning changes didn’t help that much in working more closely with Jacob on the organ. I managed to narrow it down to seven clusters of ideas and make clearer musical notes.
We decided that I would be playing the piece myself, with Jacob and Ansgar being there to coach me. My next trip would be about figuring out the order of the seven clusters and practicing the music. Still, there were lots of decisions that had to be taken composition-wise. Part of the music wasn’t even written down. During re-organising the material and clearing it up, I couldn’t help it; once again I ended up with new material.
A title had to be decided on as soon as possible. During spring I came up with I can’t think of anything with R. Ansgar proposed an alphabet format, a collection of short ideas: the Ratingen Alphabet. During the summer I checked the subtitles I had given to some of the recordings. Hilarious Transcending became the piece’s working title. Discussing with Jacob and Trevor, What Will Happen was the final choice. The piece would have about seven movements.
2020 September 16-19
Travelling to Ratingen to meet the team and practice for the concert. The final decisions have been made, there is now a form for the piece; it consists of 10 parts and it lasts about 22 minutes . Jacob, Trevor and I are all sharing the available time in the church to practice our part of the concert each. We all try to keep distance and socialise outdoors. Sunny weather, but autumn starts kicking in with some nice chilly temperatures in the evenings.
More work on the setzer, to go through the final decisions and be able to jump from one preset to the other without stress. Meanwhile, I have created a mockup out of recordings from previous trips. Jacob, Ansgar, Trevor and Bene each pass by to play them the piece and give me their feedback. To our surprise, Thierry Tidrow, our friend from Canada with whom we studied together in Amsterdam and now lives in Germany, is in nearby Düsseldorf and drops by. The concert’s poster is at the church’s entrance; it’s promo week.
I [93 + 7]
112
II [36 + 114 + 119]
61
VIa 118
VIb 105
VIc 49++ [49 + 118 + 105]
61
VII [58 + 62 + 63 + 98 + 99]
122
oRgel 3.0 | The concert
The concert took place on September 18. Lots of people were around, including Hans Fidom (Orgelpark’s organ researcher in Amsterdam). Large church, lots of space for distancing and a good audience. I started the concert with What Will Happen, Jacob followed with his improvisation The Superabundance of Being, and Trevor closed the evening with Of Ancient Days. All pieces were performed on the hyperorgan.
What Will Happen
we know / I told you
lady walk
what will happen
I can’t think of anything with R
ascending laundry
ultimate popup
boring adult wisdom
I can’t think of anything with R
aujourd’hui c’est un beau jour
help me I’m stuck in a small orbit
We did not know how the audience would receive the concert, most of the repertoire in the church is either Mass-releated / religious or concert programs that tend to be more conventional. Although our pieces were exploring the possibilities of the hyperorgan, we didn’t go that much the “experimental” way. The audience found the concert challenging enough and fun to listen to, and we got quite a few positive comments.
What remains for the residency is to clear up the score for a publication that Ansgar has arranged. We are waiting for the recording’s final mix too. There is a chance that the concert will be repeated at another hyperorgan location, we are looking forward to it. The residency is practically over, but I need to go back to Ratingen, just because I want it. I already miss working on the hyperorgan and hanging out with the galactic Rrrratingen team. ~
Related links
orgelwelten-ratingen.de
sinua.de
souncloud.com/lekkerkerker
trevorgrahl.ca
→ Prayers of Incompetence (Orgelpark, 2020)
→ I/Orgel (Orgelpark, 2016)
→ Lovyrinths (Orgelpark, 2015)
→ Une prière (Conservatorium van Amsterdam, 2012)