Johann Scheibe: Organ Builder in Leipzig at the Time of Bach

346 Pages·2022·2.681 MB·English

by  Lynn Edwards Butler

Johann Scheibe

Johann Scheibe
Organ Builder in Leipzig
at the Time of Bach
Lynn Edwards Butler
Publication of this book was supported by a grant from
the Henry and Edna Binkele Classical Music Fund and
a grant from the Claire and Barry Brook Fund of the
American Musicological Society, supported in part by
the National Endowment for the Humanities and the
Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
© 2022 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Butler, Lynn Edwards, author.
Title: Johann Scheibe: organ builder in Leipzig at the time
of Bach / Lynn Edwards Butler.
Description: Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2022. |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: lccn 2021050719 (print) | lccn 2021050720
(ebook) | isbn 9780252044311 (cloth) | isbn
9780252053306 (ebook)
Subjects: lcsh: Scheibe, Johann, 1680-1748. | Organ (Musical
instrument)—Construction—Germany—Leipzig—
History—18th century. | Organ builders—Germany—
Leipzig—Biography. | Bach, Johann Sebastian, 1685–1750
—Friends and associates.
Classification: lcc ml576.8.l45 b87 2022 (print) |
lcc ml576.8.l45 (ebook) | ddc 786.5/19432122—dc23
lc record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021050719
lc ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021050720
To Greg

Contents
Preface ix
Events in the Life of Johann Scheibe xiii
Abbreviations xvii
1. Bach’s 1717 Visit to Leipzig 1
2. The Life and Work of Johann Scheibe 9
3. The Organ for Zschortau 23
4. Building the Organ for St. Paul’s 49
5. Bach’s Examination of the St. Paul’s Organ 88
6. Disposition and Tonal Character of the St. Paul’s Organ 107
7. Construction Details of the St. Paul’s Organ 132
8. Renovations and Maintenance 150
9. An Innovative Organ for St. John’s 196
10. Small Projects and Proposals 215
11. Scheibe and Bach in Leipzig 231
Directory of Appendixes on the Companion Website 241
Notes 249
Bibliography 291
Index 303

Preface
Johann Scheibe, who was buried in Leipzig on 4 September 1748, was
one of Saxony’s most important baroque organ builders, and his work has long
merited investigation and evaluation. He worked in Leipzig, a major trade
center and home to one of Europe’s oldest universities, throughout a career
that spanned more than forty years, and he was a colleague of Thomaskantors
Johann Kuhnau and Johann Sebastian Bach. In Leipzig he maintained and either
newly built or rebuilt all of the city’s organs—all of them—demonstrating great
respect for what was old and valued while at the same time experimenting with
what was new. It is an odd twist of fate that, in spite of his close association
with Bach, one of the greatest performers and composers for organ who ever
lived, Scheibe’s organ-building activity has either been overlooked or unjustly
criticized. Attention has been directed instead toward Scheibe’s contemporaries
Gottfried Silbermann, Zacharias Hildebrandt, and Heinrich Gottfried Trost,
perhaps because more of their instruments have survived and are easily avail-
able, both to visit and to listen to via splendid recordings. But as Ulrich Dähnert
warned, in his magnificent study on Hildebrandt, “The late baroque period
was far too rich and artistically significant to be incapable of producing more
than just one first-rate master in the field of organ building.”1 Unfortunately,
only Scheibe’s small but charming organ in the village of Zschortau survives.
His magnum opus at Leipzig University, his organ at St. John’s, his rebuild at
the New Church, his renovations at St. Thomas’s and St. Nicholas’s, his small
organs for other village churches near Leipzig—all are lost. This monograph
offers an in-depth study of Johann Scheibe that is long overdue. A gifted and