mechanical actions.

The instrument was built as a “swallows nest” on the north choir wall. For reasons of symmetry a mute identical case was built on the south choir wall. For centuries the name of the builder was unknown but recently it has been determined that the organ was built by Victor Ferdinand Bossart (1699-1772), a member the of the most famous dynasty of Swiss organ builders.

At the beginning of the 20th century the instrument was in deplorable condition. In 1937 it would have been renovated and electrically connected to the console of the main organ, but for lack of funds it remained in its isolated, unplayable state.

In the course of installing a heating system in the church much of the substance of the organ was lost including the lower case with the keyboard and the pull-down pedals, the entire key action, the stop action with the wrought iron stop levers, and the wedge bellows. All of these parts were reconstructed true to the original by Mathis Orgelbau under the oversight of Rudolf Bruhin, consultant to the Federal Heritage Body. The historic choir organ in the convent church in Muri, and the choir organ built by Victor Ferdinand Bossart and restored in 1985 by Mathis Orgelbau in the monastery church of Einsiedeln served as models.

While dismounting the Choir Organ and cataloguing the remaining components it appeared that the entire interior pipework had been lost. The missing four stops, however, were found in the attic of the parsonage. Each of the sometimes badly damaged pipes was painstakingly restored and installed behind the original front stop on the restored wind chest where they had originally been located. Of the 315 pipes 276 originals were repaired and 39 reconstructed. The fortuitous discovery of the missing pipes made it possible to determine not only the original specification of the historic organ but also the former temperament. The instrument therefore received not only the appearance but also the sound with which its creator had endowed it in 1760.

Rudolf Bruhin

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