Early music master Peter Sykes will join the Aston Magna Chamber Musician at the Hudson Hall on December 21st and St. James Square on December 22nd to play his own portatif organ, a portable The pipe organ, its ancient cousin can be tied to the player.

At an Aston Magna concert, the last thing you want to see is someone holding a strap-on organ, and in the two upcoming performances this month, you won’t watch it To this spectacle. But you will be very close, because multi-keyboard player and early music master Peter Sykes will join the Aston Magna Chamber Musician at the Hudson Hall on Tuesday, December 21, and in San Francisco on Wednesday, December 22. James Square, playing his own portatif organ, a portable pipe organ whose ancient cousin can be tied to the player, and the instrument is placed on the player’s lap.

Although Handel's work goes well with the winter solstice nature, some of us may be unprepared to hear "Messiah" for the millionth time. Therefore, Aston Magna Chamber Players will use Handel's quartet sonata in G major and his secular cantata "Un'alma innamorata" ("soul in love") to create the atmosphere. JS Bach’s F major sonata movement and solo cappella "Vergnügte Ruh" will follow, and the eternally sublime "Schafe können sicher weiden" ("Sheep can eat grass safely") ends the show.

Last week I spoke with Peter Sykes about the instruments he will play with Aston Magna on the 21st and 22nd. Our conversation has been compressed and edited.

What is a sliding door organ?

The accompaniment of baroque chamber music can be done by many different instruments. It can be done with harpsichord, pipe organ, theorbo, and lute. The genius of digital bass notation is that many different types of musicians can play the same score. They can play together.

This is what we call the open chart in the pop music world.

That's right. Therefore, the pipe organ is only one of many possible options, and it is well documented throughout the Baroque era. The pipe organ was used in this capacity whether in churches or in secular environments. In the Baroque era, the pipe organ was more or less something left in place. Of course, in the absence of electricity, the player or others must pump water to increase the wind pressure to make the pipe sound.

This particular type of instrument has many different and confusing names. Of course, a pipe organ without any qualifier is usually a church organ-a large pipe organ that is built in place and never moves. The portatif organ is now more commonly referred to as a medieval instrument. You can put it on your lap and play it with your right hand, and then operate the bellows with your left hand. And those are what we see-like Santa Cecilia playing in the photo. This is the portatif organ. On the other hand, the positif organ is a larger instrument that is played by both hands on the keyboard. The idea of ​​positif is that you can move it, but you cannot carry it like a body. You need a group of people to do this.

Other words used to describe it are either "continuous organs" that describe its function, or "box organs" that describe its shape.

The instruments I will play—and most of the instruments we use today are 20th century inventions to meet current needs. But these are not historical tools. Some aspects of them are historic, but many others are not. So there is an idea of ​​a more or less portable continuous pipe organ, you can put it in a truck, move it from one place to another, and then just plug it in so that the electric fan can add wind to the duct-all These are new things, and they are also placed in a separate box. All of these are inventions of the 20th century.

Is there a bundled portatif organ?

This is the kind on your lap. The whole point of the belt is that it will not fall on the floor.

Have you attached your own portatif organ?

No. These instruments are used for completely different repertoires. They are melody instruments. In general, they do not play chords. It is just another melody instrument used with violin, tape recorder and other instruments. This is a completely different function.

My musical instrument is my property, manufactured by Bennett & Giuttari in 1996 in Massachusetts. This is their Opus 6. Since they started, they have now produced nearly 100 musical instruments. As we know, organs have stoppers, you can turn them on and off to get different sounds. This organ has only two pitches, one eight feet high, one four feet high, and one octave high. Therefore, you either have the sound quality of the bass, or double it by an octave to produce a brighter, louder sound.

So your instrument contains an eight-foot tube?

Absolutely! Hmm...actually, no. Because if you put a plug on the end of the tube and seal it, the pitch will drop by an octave, because the sound wave reaches the top of the plug, hits it, and then doubles again. So an eight-foot pipe is actually only four feet long. In this special case, the pipe is mitered like a furnace pipe. It will rise, it will fall, and it will move around to fit the box. This is one of the modern compromises that must be made to make the instrument as portable as it is now. But on real organs, the pipes are usually not mitered at all.

Do you want to talk about your repertoire at the Hudson and St. James concerts?

Yes. One of the reasons we use this organ is that the Bach Cantata we play actually has an organ accompaniment part. Usually, the organ is just playing chords, which are achieved through improvisation to fill the texture of the ensemble. In this case, Bach wrote the melody for the organ. So the pipe organ has-you can say that it combines things from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance-although Bach wrote it for a large pipe organ, a church organ that can be left in place. And, more importantly, he wrote for a large organ with two keyboards. Of course, large organs usually have two, three, four, or five keyboards. He wrote for an organ with two keyboards. Since there is no portatif or positif continuo box organ with two keyboards (they only have one), we arranged this movement so that my right hand will play one part, and then Dan Stepner will play the other part of the violin. Therefore, this will be a pipe organ-violin duet, not a pipe organ solo with two sounds on two keyboards.

What else should we know about your "Winter Solstice" plan?

Well, it's just that it is diverse. There are a lot of very dense and complex music, but there are also a lot of relaxing things, we hope people will use it as a substitute for "Messiah" to enjoy their holiday concert experience.

Buy concert tickets on the Aston Magna website or call 888-492-1283: $40 in advance, $45 at the door, $15 for customers under 30, free for children and students. All seats are general admission. A mask and vaccination certificate are required.

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