Hauptwerk Sample Set - Marcussen Organ

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This page has listings both of freely distributed sample sets and also organ definition files (ODFs) to use commercially purchased Hauptwerk sample sets with GrandOrgue. Free or demo sample sets. These sample sets are supported by GrandOrgue under different license agreements. Please read the individual license agrements for details. This sample set is produced. The last major restoration was carried out in 1959-60 by the Danish firm Marcussen – the organ has retained its original concept with about 90% of the old pipework still intact. The Zaanse organ building company Flentrop, which currently maintains the organ, revoiced the organ several times in recent years.

Hauptwerk sample set - marcussen organ

This page shows the Hauptwerk virtual organs that can be used with version 4.0 or higher with the best sound quality for recording technique and sampling.

Hauptwerk free organs


The Project:

The project aims to introduce, in the Community Hauptwerk, a number of organs builtaccording to the Italian tradition, which developed from the Middle Ages up to the 1700s.Period in which almost all the churches in Italy were endowed with an organ. The old Italian organ, usually had only one keyboard with approximately 12 stops butwith high-quality featuressound, due to the low wind pressures. The double keyboard was not heard and when you began to realize it was resorted to stop broken. The most usedpedalboard wasin sixth or 'scavezza'withvery short, inclined pedalsso thatthe tip of the foot could be used and in general it was extended to nine pedals. The air pressure, distributed from cuneiform bellows, was extremely low and did not exceed 48 mm at the water column.

The Italian organ of this periodhad these features becauseit was primarily intended for liturgy and the accompaniment ofpeople singing in churchand the pedal was used at the end of musical phrases. The peculiarities that were found in the ancient Italian organs, were the fusion of sound and composition filled with stops of the same family.

The modern Italian organ was influenced, in the early 1900s,by the Cecilianchurch reform. However, it was only in 1930, when the most important Italian organists gathered in Trento under the guidance of Bishop Raffaele Manari, that the guidelines were defined for the organbuilders in the construction of these instruments, so as not to lose the successful Italian tradition.


Recording Audio Samples:

Sample

It is well known that one of the most difficult instruments to register is the pipe organ, both for its dimension, for its location in the church and in the large environment in which it is placed. The quality of a good audio sample originates from its recording and, for that reason, MidiPipeOrgan, with over twenty years experiencehas developed its ownrecording technique of audio samples in order to maintain presence and vitality without sacrificing the environmental features of of the church where the organ is placed. With this technique, samples are natural, without sounding too close or too distant, giving the listener the impression of being in the best possible place in the church where the organ is placed. Particular attention has been given to the tail of release of the sample. All the noises produced by the organ are recorded, including the mechanical noise of the keys and stops that are reproduced in Hauptwerk when the instrument is played. InHauptwerk software the characteristicsof wind pressure of the organ are reproduced. All samples have been recorded stereo with a sampling frequency of 96Khz 24 Bit.

Hauptwerk Sample Set - Marcussen Organ

Hauptwerk

Hauptwerk Sample Set - Marcussen Organization

This page is not intended to be exhaustive by any means, but rather to point you towards some of my favorite free sample sets, producers, and resources where you can find others. Some sets on this page do not come with GrandOrgue ODFs – Organ Builder can be easily and quickly used to produce functional, if basic, GrandOrgue ODFs to play these sets.

Hauptwerk Sample Set - Marcussen Organizer

  • Piotr Grabowski is one of the only active producers of free sample sets. He has released fifteen free sample sets to date of small to medium sized instruments (up to 44 stops as of this writing). The sets are of high quality and have well designed, attractive user interfaces similar to those found on commercial sets. Further, Piotr invests the time to release organ definition files for GrandOrgue as well as Hauptwerk. Try his sets and if you like them, please donate to help him continue his work – it takes a staggering amount of time to create quality sample sets, and he is kind enough to give them away. As of early 2020, Piotr has begun to release new, paid sample sets but he continues to offer his previous 15 sample sets for free and has indicated they will remain available at no charge.
  • Sonus Paradisi offers unrestricted demos of most of their sample sets; they choose to make a selection of stops available from a given instrument and make it available for free. Sometimes the selection of stops is large indeed – most notably, their Rotterdam Laurenskerk demo set is 24 sounding stops including a full principal chorus, reeds, mixtures, mutations, and even chamades! SP is very generous in their demo sets, and the Rotterdam demo is not an anomaly – the Doesburg demo offers 20 stops, the Brasov demo 18 stops, the Caen demo 16 stops, and so on. The MPS Orgelseite (note: site now offline) has GrandOrgue ODFs available for some of the SP demo sets.
    • I should also note the Kdousov instrument from Sonus Paradisi is offered as shareware: download for free, and pay if you like and want to use the instrument. So this set is not free, but you are able to try the entire set without restriction prior to payment.
    • The large amount of material available in Sonus Paradisi’s demo sets is not lost on the VPO community, and with Jiri’s encouragement, many “composite” sample sets have been released which combine stops from various demo sets. The ones most familiar to me are those by Augustine of Augustine’s Virtual Organs: Free Composite Sets
  • Augustine’s Virtual Organs offers some of their sample sets for free, though only Hauptwerk ODFs are provided.
  • Jeux d’orgues 2 : Stiehr-Mockers is a nice free sample set available for a Hauptwerk, GrandOrgue, and a vast array of other general purpose sampler software. If you like it, be sure to check out Jeux d’orgues 3 : Silbermann.
  • Three free sample sets from organs located in the Netherlands are available for download here, for both Hauptwerk and GrandOrgue: http://www.pbrd.nl/index.php/vo/downloads. Note, these sample sets were previously developed/hosted by Virtual-Organs.nl which has ceased operation and made their sets available free of charge under a Creative Commons license.
  • Lars Palo developed several free sample sets for GrandOrgue. Some of these sets are getting a bit old as of 2017 however, they are still nice, and the price is right. Lars also offers some GrandOrgue ODFs for demo sets of Sonus Paradisi: Other ODFs
  • Mark Bugeja is striving to sample every playable historic pipe organ in Malta/Gozo. His project is not funded and as such, some organs are available for free and some are available for a donation.
  • The GrandOrgue project maintains a list of free sample sets. Some of those listed I have already listed here as well.
  • PC Organ maintains a reasonably comprehensive list of free and paid sample sets. Many free sets listed are trial versions from commercial vendors such as SP.