Smecno - history of the organ (ca. 1587)

Smecno - a village about 50 km north from Prague. There is a splendid gothic church in the name of the Holy Trinity. It is quite moderately sized with tiny reverberation of approx. 1,5 s. But the reason Smecno is important for the history of organ music is that inside the church is hidden the oldest preserved instrument in the Czech republic. The instrument was built around the year 1587. The date of construction may be easily recognized by the heraldry of the donors depicted on the organ chest and from extant archive materials. The organ builder is unknown. It is known that the instrument was damaged during the thirty years war in 1631 when the soldiers of the Swedish army stole the Regal - the only reed stop. There has been one major rebuild during its history: in the late Baroque era, in 1775, a small Rückpositiv was added by Jan Rusch from Litomerice and some stops were changed.

The latest reconstruction of the organ was finished just couple of years ago by Dusan Doubek. They decided to restore the original Renaissance form of the instrument omitting the Baroque additions. Therefore, the Baroque Rückpositiv was removed and the instrument has again only one manual plus pedal. The keyboard, drawstops and pedal board are new. The original stop names were preserved on the stop jambs and also a large number of original pipes was found inside the organ. This allowed the reconstruction of the special Renaissance sound of the individual stops. You may admire the typical Renaissance timbre of the organ sound. The sound of the flutes (both Copulas and Quintadena) is rather rough and even "reedy" in case of Quintadena, the Salicinale resembles a Gamba more than it does a Salicional. The sound of the Principal plenum is very bright thanks to the high aliquots of Mixtura and Cimbale. On the other hand, the Principale and Octava principale are warm and sonorous.

The manual is built on two separate windchests. The first contains only the principal choir while the other the flutes. There are ventils allowing either of the windchests to be muted. They may be engaged by drawstops called in italian style "Choro primo" and "Choro secondo". This makes it possible to switch the sound of the organ quickly between the principal plenum and tiny flutes, thus imitating a two manual performance. The table shows how the stops are distributed on the windchests.

This is the original state of the 16th century organ and also the current reconstructed state. It is tuned to the historical quarter-comma meantone tuning.

The compass of the instrument: C1 - C5 in Hauptwerk terminology, short low octave.

The Baroque Rückpositiv (now removed) had this disposition according to the signed agreement with the organbuilder Jan Rusch (1775): Copol maior 8', Copol minor 4', Quintadena 4' (originally in the manual), Principal 2', Octava 1', and sixth stop is unknown, possibly a quint.