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On 12. October, 1997, the Sun Organ was dedicated in the City Church of St. Peter and Paul in Görlitz. On this very day 300 years before, on 12. October,1697, the city of Görlitz signed a contract with the organ builder Eugenio Casparini to build a new organ for the church of St. Peter and Paul that soon became famous as the «Sun Organ.»
The church of St. Peter and Paul stands on the bank of the Neisse River, today’s border with Poland. That makes it the easternmost city church in Germany; it is also the largest house of worship as well as bishop’s seat in the Silesian Oberlausitz region.
The Casparini organ was consecrated on 19. August, 1703. It had 57 stops with three manuals and pedal, making it the largest organ of the time in Silesia. It is noteworthy that there was no longer a Rückpositiv, which in this region at the end of the seventeenth century was gradually disappearing due to the interaction of choir and musical instruments in the performance practice of the time.
The beholder of the ca. 45ft. high and ca. 32ft. wide organ front is at first impressed by the two huge pedal towers, festooned with larger-than-life angels, in which the longest pipe of ca. 24ft. is contained. Designed by the Görlitz sculptor Johann Conrad Büchau, this case displays 17 sun faces with organ pipes arranged as rays and is unique in Germany for its integration of German Baroque form with Italian Renaissance. It has withstood completely intact throughout the centuries. Except for the 12-rank Pedal Mixture in the suns from which the organ derives its name and the Onda Maris (ocean waves) nothing remains of the original Casparini instrument.
In 1926 the instrument, which was no longer playable, was removed and, with the exception of the elements mentioned above, destroyed. It was replaced by an electro-pneumatic instrument built by the Sauer Company of Frankfurt on Oder. This Sauer organ with 89 stops, four manuals and pedal was in service less than fifty years. In 1978 as renovation of the church began and which lasted from 1980 to 1992 the nearly unplayable Sauer instrument was completely removed except for a few wooden pipes.
Years were spent deciding how to recreate the Sun Organ. The music director of the church, Reinhard Seeliger, writes in the Festschrift published on the occasion of the organ consecration in 1997: “It was a long way from the first drafts to the final specification. So many questions had to be answered. Should the new organ be a copy of the Casparini organ? Should there be a modern instrument in an old wrapping? How large should the new organ be? What kind of music would be played on it?
"Only the case with the suns and angels as well as one single stop remained of the original Casparini organ. Appraisals of the instrument from the time ranged from high praise to crushing criticism. Not one of Eugenio Casparini’s organs still exists. The extant technical data is so conflicting that it appeared unfeasible to construct an authentic copy of the Casparini Organ. There was also no option to recapture the sound of his organs well enough to enable recreating the original sound of the former instrument.
“Th
