Orgelbau Th. Kuhn AG, 1984
Restoration
www.orgelbau.ch/ope=800650
II/P/20
Switzerland, Glarus
Ref. Kirche
A typical transverse church
The church of Linthal, newly built in 1782 is a so-called «transverse church», as favoured in eastern Switzerland primarily in the 18th and 19th centuries. Through building a church in this form it was intended that every member of the congregation, wherever seated, had a good view of the pulpit, which was of great importance for the practised form of service with sermon. The symmetrical layout of the room allowed only two possible positions for the organ, this being in the centre of one of the side walls along the length of the church. This meant that the organ would either stand on the gallery constructed along the church's length, or be in a type of choir area set into the opposite wall on which the pulpit also stood.
In Linthal the second option was decided upon. For the construction of the organ in 1882 the already existing choir area was considerably deepened. When the church was restored in 1984 the question was therefore raised of whether this choir area should be returned to its original dimensions and the organ placed in a different location. Due to the considerable depth of the instrument (570 cm), moving it to the gallery was not possible, so it was decided that the organ should remain in its existing position. Only the adjoining sections between the case and wall were removed so that the case was made free-standing, extended at the sides and back and enclosed.
As far as the stoplist is concerned, only one past modification could be determined: the original Spitzflöte 4 ' had at some point been removed and replaced by a Voix céleste 8 '. The original Gemshorn 4 ' was, at the same time, renamed as a Spitzflöte 4 '. These modifications were not reversed during the restoration work since the 8 ' beating stop in the Swell was also stylistically fitting to the period in which the instrument was built and achieves more musical diversity than two 4 ' stops.
A special type of construction for the resonator of the Trompete is also worth noting. The pipe tops are attractively flared out and therefore their length cannot be altered. In order to adjust the length of the resonators there is a built-in adjustable cylindrical sleeve at their lower end.
Friedrich Jakob, 2006
Translation: SJR