I will never forget the day that I first discovered a pipe organ builder in my lineage. I'd purchased Guy Bovet's recording of "The Oldest Playable Organ in the World" in the Basilique de Valere, in Sion, Switzerland, and like the geek I am, was reading the CD notes. Many historical facts about the organ in the fortress cathedral atop the hill were presented in the program notes.
The organ, builder unknown, first appears in the late 14th century or early 15th century. The date has long been c. 1390, but recently has been moved ahead to c. 1430, based on historical records in the church. This organ has only one keyboard of three octaves and the keys are each hand cut and carved of hardwood. It's original tracker-action mechanism and stop action remain largely intact, and reports of it's original pipework vary from as few as 12 to as many as 180 original pipes remain from the original installation. These pipes would have very high lead content and would likely be mostly in the treble range, in keeping with the practices of the time. Lower pitches, in the 8' range would not be added until much later.
The organ was originally hand-pumped to supply wind to the bellows. These mechanisms still remain.
The painted folding doors on the case were painted by the Freiburg artist Peter Maggenberg who provided frescoes for the cathedral. The so-called "swallow's nest" enclosure that sort of resembles a ship's hull around the organ was added in the 1630's.
Well, it was the first major rebuild of the organ, when it was already over 200 years old, that got my attention. I learned, while reading my program notes, that one Christoph Aebi, an organbuilder from Solothurn, Switzerland, was contracted to renovate and enlarge the old organ. Aebi enlarged the organ, adding four ranks of pipes, including principals at 8' and 4', a flute at 4' and a mutation. These additions would have made the organ much more versatile for the music of that epoch, although still with a limited compass.
Christoph Aebi (1642-1693) and his father Hans Jacob Aebi (1612-1688) were organ builders in Alsace near the Swiss border. They built many fine pipe organs together and restored a number of instruments during their career.
I knew, from extensive study of my genealogy, that the original spelling of my last name, EBIE was AEBI, and that upon arrival in the American colonies from Switzerland, my first ancestor Theodorus Aebi had his name misspelled EBY. It wasn't long and there were some nine different spellings of the orignal AEBI.
So here I was... an organist, an organ technician, and a person with an unending love of the pipe organ, and now I read that there was an organ builder in Switzerland--from where my family originated! It was life-changing for me. The short version is that Christoph was the uncle of my great, great, great, great, great, great, great, grandfather Theodorus.
In the coming weeks, I will continue to post more about the Aebi organ builders from Solothurn, their work, and my back story of finding a long-lost uncle (with a bunch of "Great's" in front)!
