L‘Orgue de Jordi Bosch – Santanyi, Mallorca (1762)
The two manual organ with 40 divided ranks of Jordi Bosch is a real gem among the Mallorcan organs. Its monumental and splendidly decorated facade (by Fra Albert Borguny) resembles the imperial pomposity of the time and adds to the brilliant sound of its stops.
The organ of Santanyi is one of the best preserved works of Jordi Bosch. It has a rich “Trompeteria” composed of 9 ranks of horizontal trumpets, so typical for the Iberian organbuilding school. It spreads its sound to every corner of the church thanks to the fan-shaped (radial) spacing of the trumpets: Baixon faces the east, the Trompa magna the west. The Trompa reial occupies the central position of the Trompeteria. Above the head of the organist there are two ranks of horizontally positioned reed stops with short resonators: Regalies and Dolcaina. The Grand Orgue is built on a wide 16 feet Principal (Flautat maior) which gives sonorous and warm sound to the pleno. The organ preserves the largest existing mixture (Ple) in the world, composed of 25 ranks and 1.104 pipes! It is built on a separate windchest and each tone is fed by its own 2.5 m long wind conduit. One of the special features of the instrument is its great Cornet (10 ranks) which was built “elevated” on a special windchest to give a “better sound”. The organ positiv (Cadireta) hides a regal-like Saboiana, together with other typical stops like Nasards or Corneta, Flautat tapad (actually a RohrFloete) and some aliquotes – Dinovena and Siurell. There are some stops like the Bordo which were used for the first time in the Mallorcan organbuilding tradition.
The windchests of the instruments are divided to the bass and discant parts giving to the organist wide range of combination possibilities.
Characteristics:
- Hauptwerk v.3.30 and higher supported.
- A 2 manual organ of the Spanish type with the characteristic Trompeteria consisting of ranks of horizontal trumpets.
- The reverberation time is 4-5 s.
- The noise samples (tracker action, blower noise, stop action noise) are included but can be disabled by the user.
- Combination pistons (not originally present) were added digitally to facilitate the performance.
- The samples are available in 24 bit / 48kHz depth but may be loaded to Hauptwerk at 16 bit to save RAM.
- There are three levels of reverb tails – staccato, portato, long for optimal performance. The short releases courtesy of Al Morse.
- Initial chiff of pipes may be controlled via MIDI velocity sensitive keyboard.
- User adjustable per stop voicing available.
- Requires 1280×1024 px screen resolution. Single console, as well as dual stop jambs are available. The stops are positioned exactly as on the original console (including the various style drawknobs). However, the Pedal Contres drawstop was added for the ease of use of the Organ Model; originally this stop is always on without having a visible drawstop.
RAM Consumption:
- full organ at 20-bit, 48kHz … 4.8 GB
- full organ at 16-bit, 48kHz … 3.6 GB
Santanyi – Specification
- The organ has 2 manuals of 48 keys. The low C# is missing but was added digitally, so the Hauptwerk version has 4 full octaves – 49 keys.
- The pedal has 10 buttons, two of which are dedicated to “Terratremol” – a subtonic beating sound. These occupy the leftmost and the rightmost buttons. The 8 buttons in between these two extremems form the diatonic scale of the pedal keys, i.e. C – D – E – F – G – A – Bb – B. The adaptation to a modern pedalboard was solved by shifting the pedal compass to the middle pedal octave. Therefore, the low Teratremol is positioned on the lowest B key of the modern MIDI pedalboard (MIDI tone 047); the mid c key (MIDI 048) is the C key of the pedal compass etc.
