Back to Europe: The Silbermann Museum in Frauenstein

I return to the north European odyssey where I left off, following organ-builder Gottfried Silbermann in Saxony.

Gottfried Silbermann was born in Kleinbobritzsch, a hamlet not far from Frauenstein, where he had his first workshop in 1710-1711. On 30th May 2008 I drove the 20km from Freiberg to see the Silbermann museum, which is in the Schloss Frauenstein, an elegant old chateau in the village; the town's museum is housed in the same building. Frauenstein is a pretty little place with a large open square and a church in the centre. It is a bit of a Sleepy Hollow, as I found when I tried to get some coffee and cake -- most of the shops and cafès opened at about 11 to 12 o'clock, and there weren't many visitors around.

The museum attendant was thrilled to have a visitor from Zud Afrika, and couldn't do enough for me; she gave me a brochure and a lot of information, and allowed me to take photos with flash, which most museums don't allow. There are some fascinating models of organ-builders' workshops, and a toolkit. A scale model of an organ mechanism, made by a Dresden firm, shows the internal workings of a traditional organ. In one corner was a beautifully-crafted model organ with wooden pipes, made by a local hobbyist.

18th Century Organ Workshop

Wood model organ

There is a small original Silbermann organ in the museum, where regular recitals are given. As you can see, it has been lovingly restored and must be a joy to hear.

There are many original or restored Silbermann organs around this part of Saxony, every village church seems have one, and a couple of elegant ones in Castles or Schlosses that are carefully maintained. A set of seven CD's of Silbermann organ recordings are available from the Braruque Music website (http://www.baroquemusic.org/): look under the Baroque Music Club link, they are (or were) obtainable for $14.95 post-free. I can recommend the volume of Trio Sonatas for starters.

Silbermann left Frauenstein to work in Freiberg from 1711-1714; his studio, or workshop, was at Schossplatz 6 (Castle square), in a building which now houses a bank and the Gottfried-Sibermann-Gsellschaft e.V, or Gottfried Silbermann Registered Society.

At some stage he moved to Dresden, and was appointed "Honorary Court and State Organ Builder" by Elector Frederick Augustus of Saxony. In Dresden he concluded a contract for the organ of the Catholic Hofkirche (Court Church), assisted by one Hildebandt. During the years 1710-1753 forty-six organs were built in Silbermann's studio, along with harpsichords, fortepianos and clavichords*.

There were a lot of organ-builders around Saxony, centred on Dresden; some of them old family businesses dating from the 18th & 19th centuries. They were taken over by the state under the DDR communist regime, but sold back to the original families after reunification. The firm of Jehmlich Orgelbau is still extant.

*Reference: Gottfried Silbermann in Saxony ; Gottfried-Silbermann-Gesellschaft, Freiberg.

Digression: Construction of Big Dams

Not much time for blogs lately, preparing for a fairly long trip abroad, trying to get the gear together, change tickets at the last minute, and contact friends and relatives in about the new arrangements. Meantime I've digitized a set of colour slides for an engineer friend, concerning a paper he is presenting about the design and construction of large rockfill and earth dams. Interesting stuff like these pics: some of them may look like organised chaos, but this is heavy civil engineering, the end result is a high, stable impoundment of precious water.

And, behind the scenes, the all-important lab testing.

The day is dawning; I womder if the cold front has moved on yet? This extremely variable weather is hopefully known as Spring in this part of the world.

A Medieval City in Saxony

Freiberg, the Rathaus.

The site of Freiberg, Saxony, was established in about AD 1156, when a group of German settlers cleared the woods and estabished a settlement they named Christiansdorf. In 1180 a city was proclaimed by the Margrave Otto, and named Freiberg. The Margrave's statue stands in the Obermarkt upon an ornate fountain with four lions spouting water from their mouths.

The medieval city's heart has been well preserved; originally a walled city, the authorities have wisely built a ring road around the old city, and many buildings have been restored to their former glory. Within the old city, the narrow cobbled streets don't make for good traffic flow, though there is some traffic, and the big Markts, the Obermarkt and Untermarkt, are partly used as car parks. Inevitable, I suppose, but it rather detracts from the ambience of the old city. During the years of communist rule, parts of the city were neglected and fell into disrepair. Since the reunification of Germany in 1989, much restoration has been carried out, and on my 2008 visit there were several old houses and shops being renovated for housing.

My own link with Freiberg has followed an association of people and places, started when I first started using the Internet. I'd been interested in the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, and found the best website on the subject (listed below): it is a compendious site about Baroque music in general, and has links to many other sources. The link to Gottfried Silbermann, master organ-builder, interested me greatly, and I was determined to visit Bach's birthplace, Eisenach, and Freiberg, some day. In June 2007 I made the journey from Bonn, Beethoven's birthplace, through Eisenach (of wich more later), to Freiberg. J S Bach and Silbermann were contemporaries. but sources differ on whether they met: some say they collaborated on the "voicing" (tuning, I think) of organs, and that Bach tested some of Silbermann's fortepianos that he made in later life. Bach was a church organist and Kapellmeister all his life, and it is probable that he played on some Silbermann organ at some time.

The attraction at Freiberg is the big original 1715 Silbermann organ in the Dom St Marien, a three-manual intrument with 2674 pipes(I hope that's right!). There is a smaller Silbermann instrument -- the Kleiner --in the gallery. The Dom has a wonderful acoustic, on my 2008 visit I attended an Abendmusiek recital, a regular Thurday evening concert; the music was superb, plyed on both organs, and the huge nave of the Dom was filled with the great sound of it. The last piece, the Allegro maestoso e vivace, from the Sonate in B, Op.65 by Mendessohn, was really thrilling.

The great 1715 Organ, Dom SMarien

The Nave, Dom St Marien

(Freiberg Cathedral)

Small Silbermann instrument

Baroque decoration on the great organ

Keyboard of the great organ

There are Sibermann organs in the St Petrikirche and the St Jacobikirche in Freiberg, and many more in the surrounding districts. I attended a morning service in the St Petrikirche, a delightful family affair, with scads of kids, a really happy and friendly occasion. I managed to catch the attention of the organist, who very kindly took the time to show me the huge bellows at the back of the organ, and expained some of the functions on the keyboard. That organ ia a 2-manual (keyboards) instrument with about a thousand pipes. The Dom and St Petrikirche instruments are often used for recordings, as the acoustic in both churches is near-perfect (to my untutored ear anyway).

Silbermann Organ, St Petrikirche

Organist, St Petrikirche

Having heard these organs in their original settings, I've been more interestd in organ music; I bought some CD's from these churches, souvenirs of two memorable visits. It's no wonder they call the organ 'The King of Intruments'.

References: http://www.baroquemusic.org/

Freiberg: Discover a Region; Freiberger Fotofreunde, 2007.

Negatives, Positives and Pixels

Since about age eight I've been interested in photography, off and on; mainly,I must admit, as a holiday snapper. I was given a Kodak Brownie box camera, which were very popular: as basic as you could get, with a fixed focus lens and 120 roll film, just point-and-shoot. In good weather they gave excellent results, of which the following are some contact prints, made in the 1940's and 50's.The films used to be developed and printed by Thomas Knott, the chemist (ie pharmacist), at his old shop on the corner of Commercial Road and Loop Street in my home town. They were good sharp prints, and would stand up to some enlargement. I should think millions of families around the world used Kodak Brownies for their family and holiday pics. The founder of Kodak, George Eastman's slogan was "you press the button, we'll do the rest".

This little beach holiday snap dates from about 1954: apart from some dirty spots and colour cast in the top corners, it's in remarkably good shape.

Cleaning, and tweaking the colour a little produces this image, not bad after 50+ years

Later on came the Kodak Instamatic, a more compact fixed focus camera, loaded with a prepared cassette of 35mm film, which was easy for novices to use. The negatives printed in a square format; this one was taken in 1962. The colour has been very slightly enhanced, otherwise this 40-year-old print is good, considering the simplicity of the equipment.

The Instamatic black and white prints were not really sharp enough for "action" pics, but quite effective. This is a digitized image that has been slightly sharpened using digital software.

The date would be in the 1960's, and the photo also gives a good impression of angling along the Indian Ocean coast of Natal.

Having spent some busy years studying engineering full-time, I could take up my pastime again and I bought a secondhand Zeiss Ikon camera for R70. It was a neat little rangefinder model, robust and easy to operate. In those days I favoured using colour positive film to make slides: The slower films, Kodachrome 2 and Agfachrome, made very sharp pics with the excellent Zeiss lens that I had. This slide of the River Ness in Scotland has been digitized and slightly enhanced.

In 2005 I got my first digital camera, a Fujifilm S3500.

This picture from Germany is unretouched.

And the PIXELS? Well, I tried my best to blow up a small piece of digital image to illustrate how digital photos differ from the old prints, but the software stubbornly refuses to show it! To see "pixelation", crop a small piece out of a digital image, and use the Zoom button (ie magnifying glass) to magnify it a few times, you will eventually see it open up into a grid of little squares; each square carries a bit of the digital information that, put together, makes up the whole image. The old analogue image of silver halide and/or dyes, is made into computer-speak, just as the old analogue LP records are now converted into a digital form, it's a rather similar process. However, I'm no camera or computer fundi, this is really a Beginner's Blog!

So as not to break the continuity of the Ian's Place pages, this photo discussion may continue on another page, as I continue my self-tutorship.......

"For when the Profit with the Pain doth meet,

Though the gate be hard, the Gain is sweet"

(Ben Jonson; from memory!)

On to Regensburg, Bavaria: a heritage city

From Zurich I took a train to Regensburg, an old city on the banks of the Danube. The Romans established an outpost there in AD179, naming it Ratisbona; some of the ancient fort is still extant. The invading germans pushed them back, and the medieval city grew upon the ruins. The city has been well preserved, and has gained the status of a Unesco World Heritage City. It is compact enough to walk to all the historic places, and I also took a city tour on a "Tourist train". Regensburg is dominated by the french gothic style Dom (cathedral), and I found there were about eleven other well-preserved churches, displaying some of the most remarkable rococo interior decoration I've seen. My thoughts at the time are contained in e-mails:

E-mail dated 28 May 2008:

Guten Tag, jeder,
Hallo everybody,

Regensburg, Bavaria, Tuesday,

Yesterday I travelled up from Zurich via München; Deutsche Bahn managed to lose my ticket, it was supposed to go to the P___s' address, R____ phoned them for me, the woman in Hamburg knew nothing about it, so we had to go to the Bahhof in Zug & book another. DB say they will refund if I claim against the old ticket, meantime I'm more than CHF100 out of pocket. The trains were slow "Interegio", so only got here about 3pm. Turned out the hotel is only a short walk from the station (good planning?), in the Fröhlicher-Turken-Strasse: I'd have to look that up, but think it means "Street of the Happy Turks". It's in the old part of the city, and I must say I was a little alarmed at how seedy the street looked. The hotel did not look great, and I had to sit in the park until 4pm when the office opened; however, all turned out OK, it's quite a popular hotel, as it is cheap, but the room is fine, clean & with shower & toilet. You have to go outside to re-enter the "Frühstuck-kamer" (breakfast room). Parts of this "Alt-stadt" are a jig-saw of little lanes and courtyards. The city is on the Danube, on summer evenings the quayside seemed to be the 'in' place to have have a picnic supper.

Of course, I notice bridges, and this one across the Danube was at one time the only crossing, built long ago, 15 arched stone spans & still going strong. The upper Danube is now linked by a canal to the Mainz (and hence the Rhine), so you can now navigate from the Black Sea to the North Sea, it is an important trade route, a lot of goods are transported by barge across and into Europe. This city merits a book on its own: I strolled around this morning and then took a 45-minute bus tour, which loaded my old brain with so much history I can't digest it all. The first settlement was a Roman Fort, set up by order of Marcus Aurelius in 179 AD, and that was followed by layer upon layer of kings and emperors, and a rich Italian family whose descendants still live here. The architecture seems vary from the Roman ruins to a French Gothic cathedral, to German merchants and thence to some modern buildings, but all in keeping with the tradition of a UNESCO World Heritage City. It would take about 3 weeks or a month to study it all ! Meantime I'm just resting [in an internet cafè], but was very peeved when I returned to the hotel after lunch for a snooze, and they close the door from 11am - 4pm! I was so thirsty and tired I sat quite a while in the PO, where you can get coffee & cold water; my temper hasn't improved since I found the toilets at the Bahnhof (ie station) are not too hygienic.

Rococo decoration, I think in the cathedral.

Generation after generation.

Some Swiss pictures, and the Eisheiligen

"The world is so full of wonderful things,

I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings"

(R L Stevenson)

The great banqueting hall of Castle Chillon

Looking down on the Lower City, Fribourg, from the Upper!

Route-sign, I think in Fribourg

This was at one of the monasteries near Zug, the Frauenthal or Abbey Muri.

As you've noticed, it was constantly overcast during the three days of our Jura tour: it was also exremely cold! One roadside bulletin board read 10°C, and on the Col des Mosses, at 1445m, I got quite chilled, and had to get into the car pretty quickly. Remembering June 2007, I'd taken summer clothes, and had to put on all the layers of clothing I could find in my suitcase, but it's all part of touring.

Traditional Swiss farmers' folklore has it that a sudden cold snap in mid-May is brought by the Eisheiligen, the "Icy Saints". My friend, who is well-versed in alpine weather conditions, said that there is, in fact some meteorological evidence to back this up; I suppose that it's a random event, but in May 2008 the Icy Saints certainly got their freezing winds into this man!

Some more news from Switzerland

Email from Regensburg, Bavaria (catching up), dated 28th May:

But to flash back: I stopped last time in the Jura, where we followed the central valley between the ridges of the Jura, the Val de Traversa. Further down the valley got very narrow, and the river D'Areuse goes into a deep gorge. There we had a curious incident: because of the dense forest there were no opportunities for good photo views, so R_____ stopped at a lay-by; this turned out to be a side road to the Gorges D'Areuse, so he went a short way to look for somewhere to turn: the road got narrower and steepened to 12%, there was rather a comical discussion as to whether to go on, which was unknown territory, or turn back, which of course was by now impossible! We must have dropped a couple of hundred metres on the narrow winding road, until at last we came to the river, where there was (typically Swiss!) a small hotel/restaurant! We stopped a while and explored a short way down the river, I saw a trout in the clear water, and a big grey heron was fishing, he flew off as we passed. Now came the inevitable amicable discussion - go back up the awful road, or continue along a forest track that seemed to go down the gorge towards Neuchâtel: of course the intrepid tourists took the risky unknown, which turned out to hbe a felicitous choice. Although badly pot-holed, it was tarred, and went through the narrowest, most spectacular, part of the gorge D'Areuse. Suddenly we popped out of the forest at a vilge called Boudry, from where it was a few minutes to Neuchâtel.

Although it was afternoon, and we still had to get back to Zug by 8pm, R___ parked there and we had a walk around - nice traffic-free streets, and some fine old buildings. I bought a book & some cards, and we had tea and apple tart (inside, as it was still cold), and then we set off for Zug. R____ took the motorway via Luzern, I thought we might be delayed till midnight, but incredidbly we did it in 2 hours, there were no traffic jams, which is unusual in Switerland.

This by now must be quite long, but the internet cafè charges per EURO at a time so I've just had to take another hour, but so what, it's happy holidays. Quickly through Thurs-Sun, Thursday was an easy day, we went to a remarkable private park/nursery/botanical garden called Seleger Moor - the most fantastic collection of rhododendrons, azaleas, water-lilies etc. I thought KZN had good azaleas, but the colours here are amazing, I think gardeners would give a lot to get their hands on them! Friday R____ had to go back to work, so as his spouse had a day off, she took me to the Stanserhorn, a peak just to the south of Luzern. Very organised, one ticket includes the return train fare, and the fare for the cableway to the top. Terrific views from the top, after lunch I told C____ I would make it a "challenge" to reach the summit beacon, and I made it: slowly!

Saturday was an ordinary shopping day, I went with R____, who shops for groceries every Saturday, and bought some warm clothes and a bright red Swiss football T-shirt (I wonder if I have the nerve to wear that in Hayfields!), and then we went up the cableway to the Zugerberg. It was a much clearer day, the view was great, lakes and mountains - but sorry, I left the camera behind, the views are all in my memory!

Time to go back to the hotel, which they've now kindly opened(!), this Internet cafè has been in lieu of my nap. I must say it's very convenient, 5 min from hotel, it's cool and a kind lady brings me peppermint tea. The toilet also is clean & smells nice.Hope you are all well, thank for messages, there are sundry postcards on the way (not necessarily in the right order), I'm here tomorrow then on to Freiberg.

wishing you all that's good,

Aufwiedersehn (hope right spelling!).

pics of Neuchâtel:

News emails from Europe, 2008: Switzerland

Visiting Switzerland and Germany in May/June 2008, I sent news emails to my circle of friends and relatives. This is an edited version, . Others will follow,more or less in chronological order, in the next week or so (or when I can bestir myself to do it!), so that it doesn't get to be one great long and boring post.

From Zug; email dated 18th May 2008.


Hi everybody,

The Main News from me is that it`s very cold and wet here! Only 14 deg and raining, wondering if I should have brought more warm clothes. I`m here two weeks earlier than last year and Spring is late. However, the drive down from the airport yesterday was a sight for sore eyes: all the trees in the first green leaf, the grass long, and the farmers already cutting hay; the countryside is beautiful. I had a rather emotional moment when we came round the corner into Zug again, with the view of the lake, and the mist-shrouded mountains beyond. The two nearby peaks, the Rigi Kulm & Mt Pilatus, still have some snow on the higher slopes. We had a brief glimpse of the sun this am, but it poured with rain in the pm.

Today was a pleasant, if tiring start, went to a rowing regatta at Cham, also on Lake of Zug, where M__, the P___s` younger daughter, was taking part. She`s good, rows "single sculls" & "double sculls", the latter with a girl she hasn`t been out with for long. I think they did well yesterday, and today we watched the doubles race, although as it`s 2000metres and starts at the far side, you have to try and find your team with binoculars! They had a real disappointment, as they had to return the 2nd place medal and repeat the race, as the referee deemed that two boats had touched, so the race was disallowed. The poor oarswomen had to row 2km back to the start, and row a 2km race, within 15 minutes. M___ is understandably upset, as they only made 4th place on the re-row. There were some very posh boats there, and competitors from clubs all over Switzerland. A jolly occasion. The afternoon we spent visiting two historic monastery churches in the district, at Frauenthal & Muri, and had tea at Bremgarten (photo above), a place I`d heard of, but turned out nice, what you could see of it through the rain. The cobbled narrow streets of the old town are now closed to traffic and you have to walk across an old wooden bridge over the strongly-flowing Reuss River to see the town.All this within a short drive from Zug.

As I write, the rain has stopped but the clouds are heavy, it`s dusk and the lights are twinkling across the lake.
Such a lovely view; to use an overworked clichè: I can think of worse places to live!

Rowing Regatta

[Please excuse any typo's!]

Of Botanical Gardens and Sheep.

It's August, fag-end of the winter in our part of the world; the Indian Ocean High Pressure which moves in over south-east Africa in the autumn, seems to be breaking up. It is the dry part of the year, we are in the summer rainfall zone, and don't expect much rain between about April and September: conventional wisdom has it that the rains can be expected on 15 th Sepotember; now the clear, crisp sunny days of winter are changing to unexpected cold dull days, warmer days, and the infamous "'Berg winds", hot winds that blow down from the 3000m Drakensberg escarpment; A very tyring time for farmers and timber growers: the fire-hazard warnings rise to Orange or Red Alert, a runaway fire will be disastrous.



Occasional billows of smoke on the horizon, fragments of grass ash blown over the city to settle on the washing on the line, the city dweller doesn't get much of a sight of the adrenalin rush of action around a veld-fire: squads of workers with hand beaters, fire-trucks called out at instant alerts, scrambling of the water-dropping planes and helicopters, the panic of the threat of having you house or livestock destroyed. Losses of grazing and timber can be ZAR millions, not to mention the tragic loss of lives of firefighters and livestock. Grassland farms are protected by carefully prepared firebreaks, burnt under control along the camp (ie paddock's) boundaries. That helps, but a really hot one with the 'Berg wind behind it, can jump roads and firebreaks, and wreak havoc.



Wednesday last I took a walk in the city's botanical gardens, one of the oldest in the country, a favourite picnic place with wide lawns and shady trees, and an area of natural bush retained for bird- and tree-watchers and pensive ramblers. I took the camera, to see if I could find anything colourful to snap. At this time of year, the gardens are dry, the lawns somewhat brown and arid, and the century-old avenue of magnificent plane tress leafless.

The planes were planted in 1908 by a past curator, and are almost an icon of our city, practically everyone has had the sheer delight of strolling down this archway of boughs, in autumn and winter the ground is covered with their fallen leaves, to the delight of generations of kids; in summer tne canopy of green, filtering the hot sun, is like a cool, green tunnel. The trees are enormous. their boles metres thick; some lean a bit perilously, and one wonders when one of the giants will finally topple in one of our fierce summer thunderstorms. It is a popular venue for outdoor weddings in spring and summer: temporary altars are set up in the cathedral-like avenue, and a very fine place it is to make your vows.

I did find a little colour to make some pictures, a flowering tree yielded some nice images, one of which is at the head of this post. I thought it might be Bauhinia, but I think that's a subtropical evergreen, this one was leafless. It looks nice none the less. Another was a Weeping Bottlebrush, with brilliant scarlet flowers drooping down. I think the bottlebrush trees in Australia came from here; on reflection, it may have been the other way. Yes, it was Merino Sheep that were sent from Cape Colony to the new colonies in east and west Australia. Merino seem to thrive in these similar semi-arid areas, to the benefit of the two countries' wool export trades. the intercontinental migration of plants and livestock during the era of exploration from James Cook , Darwin, Banks, to Himalayan explorers forms a whole subject on it's own, but I am no environmental scientist or botanist, and can't start the sort of debate here, but no doubt there are folk out there who share my curiosity about what are generally referred to as "invasive aliens" and so on.

Enough from the engineering profession! I bid you Good day.

For Starters, Introduction

This is the first time I've done a blog, I finally took the lead of two friends at opposite ends of the Earth. It seems strange to be writing here, where the whole world can read it, but I enjoy writing, and hope what I have to say will be interesting, or fun, or thought-provoking. Some of the posts will deal with memoirs and travel experiences (Oh, no, not another "travel bore"!), but I dare say thoughts and discussions will be generated from books that I and others read (prose and poetry or whatever): please feel free to comment, discuss, criticise (mildly & constructively!) or chat, as you see fit. I hope to post a good few photos, other pictures and the occasional cartoon/logo. I have a weakness (habit) for browsing through Dictionaries of Quotations, because I just enjoy the ways words can be put together, so I may just intersperse the train of thought with those.