27 December 2013

Conferences

THE ORGAN OF LARRAGA IN ITS HISTORICAL AND CULTURAL CONTEXT

The Baroque organ in Navarre: the particularities of the case of Larraga

D. Raúl del Toro.
Conservatory of Music of Navarra

On Friday 27 December 2013, the plenary hall of Larraga Town Hall hosted a lectureto positionby Raúl del Toro Sola, managerof the Chairorgan of the Conservatorio Superior de Música de Navarra, under the title degree scroll"El órgano barroco en Navarra. The particularities of the case of Larraga".

The talk opened with a summary exhibitionof the evolution of the organ throughout history, drawing attention to the characteristics of each of the great stages. The international character of the Renaissance was explained, with an organ subjectmore or less common to all countries, which in the Baroque period was divided into various national and regional organ schools, and which in Romanticism once again adopted a unitary form under the predominant influence of the French and German organ schools. In terms of sonority, both the Renaissance and the Baroque are distinguished by an abundance of high-pitched, brilliant sounds, whereas Romanticism aimed more at imitating the large orchestra by means of a low, pasty sonority.

Moving on to Baroque organ building, the photographs of three organs were shown, whose cases are paradigmatic of their respective styles: that of San Salvador de Sangüesa, the only Renaissance organ preserved in Navarre; that of Santa María de Los Arcos, with its exuberant Baroque style; and that of San Martín de Lesaca, with its eclectic style common in the Romantic style.

The lecturer then traced the evolutionary line of organ building in Navarre: the Age averagewith the presence of Flemish, French and Italian organ builders; the appearance from the middle of the 16th century of autochthonous organ builders under the powerful influence of the Frenchmen Guillaume and Gaudioso de Lupe established in Tarazona; the golden age of Navarrese Baroque organ building in the 17th and 18th centuries around the workshops of Lerín, Viana, Lesaca and Larraga; the first attempts to adapt to the ultra-Pyrenean styles by the Frenchmen Monturus and the Navarrese Gómez de Larraga; the last breaths of the autochthonous school of organ building, faithful to the Spanish Baroque organ model, which were produced in the second half of the 19th century mainly by another family of organ builders with surnameGómez, who came from Burgos and settled first in Tafalla and then in Pitillas; and finally the progressive configuration with the French Romantic organ led by Pedro Roqués and his descendants together with various members of the Amezua family from Guipuzcoa.

Once these general lines had been sketched out, the genealogical tree of the Navarrese organ-building workshops derived from the Lerín centre and its powerful ramifications in Castile and Aragon was presented and explained. This emergence of Navarrese organ building played a decisive role in the configuration of the Spanish Baroque organ, modelan instrument that would spread throughout the lands of the empire, from Spanish America to the Philippine Islands.
 

Larraga Organ
 

After describing the golden age of organ building in Navarre, the history of the Larraga organ was presented with its successive milestones: the first testimonies from the 16th century, the successive reforms carried out on the organ during the 17th and 18th centuries, the decisive intervention of Diego Gómez de Larraga in 1775, and the reconstruction of the instrument after the last Carlist war by the Inchaurbe-Puyó workshop.

The lectureended with listening to various sound examples from historic Navarrese organs.
 

Larraga Organ