The Eule Organ of Magdalen College Oxford
Alexander Pott
I feel very lucky to have been Assistant Organist and Tutor to the Choristers at Magdalen College for nearly eight years, especially for the chance to see a significant new organ in Oxford take shape. I arrived in January 2017, at the same time as a new Informator Choristarum (the Latin title of the Director of Music), Mark Williams. It was his first priority to replace the disintegrating instrument with a new organ suitable for the needs of a twenty-first-century chapel.
Over the next few years I saw, from the inside, the incredibly complex process of commissioning, designing, building, and voicing the new organ from Hermann Eule Orgelbau of Bautzen, Germany. That, of course, was only really the beginning of it – then I had to work out how best to accompany the choir in daily services using its vast array of colours, and how best to celebrate the arrival of this new musical instrument. In the two years after it was finished, we had an inaugural recital series, three recordings with the choir, and educational events. I performed the complete organ works of J. S. Bach, improvised to a silent film screening, and recorded the first disc of solo organ music on the instrument. Oxford terms may only be eight weeks long, but a great deal is packed into them!
Having seen the process right through, I will try here to give a sense of what it was like on the inside: the challenges posed; the creative solutions in its design; what it was like to play it daily; and how I went about making the first solo recording on it.
