Only Official Site
BUY TICKETS
IN THIS SECTION:
The Organ
The Organ: Recent History
The Great Choir Organs of the Cathedral of Seville, placed under the toral arches that flank the choir stalls, have constituted since the beginning of the 20th century the largest organ in the Cathedral of Seville, XX a single instrument; which sounds in both cases (Antigua side and San Francisco side), consists of a hundred sets distributed in four manual keyboards and a pedal board, and is operated from a single console; thanks to the electrical connection between both pieces of furniture, which the Basque organ builder D. Aquilino Amezua, constructor of this instrument, applied for the first time in Spain (1901).
This organ has been preceded by six other instruments in the 500 years of existence of our Cathedral; those built by Fray Juan (1479), D. Francisco Ortiguez (1733) and D. Valentín Verdalonga (1831) on the Gospel side; and those of Maese Jors (1579), D. Diego de Orío (1725) and D. Jordi Bosch (1779) on the Epistle side.
And it has already known six principal organists: D. Buenaventura Íñiguez (1865-1902), D. Bernardino Salas (1903-1912), D. Juan Bautista Elustiza (1912-1919), D. Norberto Almandoz (1919-1939), D. Ángel Urcelay (1939-1961) and D. José Enrique Ayarra Jarne (1961-2018). The electrical system of connection between keys and tubes, outdated and located in a wooden cabinet with serious risk of fire, required an absolute modernization, which would be carried out in 1973 by the Organería Española of D. Ramón González Amezua, thanks to the generosity of D. Florentino Pérez Embid, then Director General of Fine Arts.
Twenty-three years later, in 1996, with the sponsorship of the Real Maestranza de Caballería de Sevilla, the German organ builder Gerhard Grenzing would undertake a very important reform, applying the most modern technologies to the instrument and laying the foundations for an ambitious project, consisting of returning to the multi-secular tradition of two large independent organs: one baroque (Antigua side) with its own console and mechanical system, and another romantic-symphonic; which, however, can be operated jointly from the current electrical console, already prepared for it.
This is undoubtedly an ambitious undertaking, which will constitute one of the most important instrumental complexes in Europe. But the cathedral organ, converted by its own merits, by its size and the quality of its services, into an omnipresent and irreplaceable instrument in any ceremony or event of certain importance, deserves to be at the height that corresponds to the great and impartial Cathedral of Seville.
Pipe organ
The organ, that imposing and majestic instrument, which we find in so many Christian temples; and which, like the human body has a brain (the console with its keyboards and handles), which governs and governs all its elements; a nervous system, through which the brain sends its orders to the rest of the organism; lungs (the air reservoirs, fed today by a motor); and a respiratory system, which, through arteries and veins (the ducts), carries the air from the lungs to the last of its cells (the sound tubes); it only needs a breath of the soul of an organist to receive life; and it can, tuning with it, speak, sing, cry, laugh, console, encourage ….. and pray.
Hence, the Second Vatican Council, in its “Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy”, asks that “the pipe organ should be held in high esteem…the sound of which can bring a remarkable splendor to ecclesiastical ceremonies and powerfully lift souls to God and to heavenly realities” (no. 120).
