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The Organ: Recent History
The Great Choir Organs of the Cathedral of Seville, placed under the toral arches flanking the choir stalls, have constituted since the beginning of the 20th century the largest organ in the Cathedral — a single instrument which, sounding in both cases (Antigua side and San Francisco side), consists of a hundred stops distributed across four manuals and a pedalboard, operated from a single console. This was made possible thanks to the electrical connection between both sections, applied for the first time in Spain (1901) by the Basque organ builder D. Aquilino Amezua, who constructed this instrument.
This organ was preceded by six other instruments during the Cathedral’s 500-year history: those built by Fray Juan (1479), D. Francisco Ortiguez (1733), and D. Valentín Verdalonga (1831) on the Gospel side; and those by Maese Jors (1579), D. Diego de Orío (1725), and D. Jordi Bosch (1779) on the Epistle side.
The Cathedral has also had 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 The electrical connection system between keys and pipes, now outdated and housed in a wooden cabinet with a serious fire risk, required complete modernisation, which was carried out in 1973 by the Organería Española of D. Ramón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 found in so many Christian temples-is, like the human body, composed of a brain (the console with its keyboards and stops) which governs all its elements; a nervous system, through which the brain sends orders to the rest of the instrument; lungs (the air reservoirs, now powered by a motor); and a respiratory system, which carries air from the lungs to every pipe via its ducts. All it needs is a breath from the soul of the organist to come to life, and in harmony with the musician, it can 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).
