The organ building corporation, Mathis Orgelbau in Näfels, Switzerland, is a family enterprise founded in 1960 by Manfred Mathis. At a time when it was still popular to build electric action organs with pipes in the open, Mathis Orgelbau soon became known for its return to the time-honored craft of organ building by employing closed cases with mechanical actions, a logical distribution of the different divisions and precisely measured wind pressure.
The expertise of Manfred Mathis has left its stamp on Mathis Orgelbau. He completed his apprenticeship in Geneva and subsequently specialized in the art of voicing especially French Romantic reeds, strings and flutes as a student of the French voicers Maurice Hurbain and Paul Beurtin from the renowned Parisian companies of Cavaillé-Coll/Mutin and Merklin.
After exploring the world of organ building by working for a number of well-established international companies Manfred Mathis set up his own business in 1960 and worked first in the style of the Silbermann organs of the Alsace region. Then he turned his interest to the Romantic period of organ building. Today, Mathis Orgelbau has its own philosophy of organ building which is continued to develop and refine.
The company now employs around 20 highly trained craftsmen, among them draftsmen, pipe makers, mechanics, joiners, carpenters, and electricians. This enables in-house production of all individual elements of the organ including cases and complete pipework with the exception of electronic components.
There are no plans to increase this staff of 20 full- and part-time employees. This constellation keeps the building process manageable and makes it possible for the staff members to work exclusively on one instrument at a time and therefore every new organ becomes perfectly unique.
Only solid wood is used. For a high quality organ the wood must be aged naturally from four to twelve years, depending on dimensions. For this reason Mathis Orgelbau has its own appropriate stocks of timber, which is one of the largest in European organ building. Per year approx. 1400 cubic feet (150 m3) of spruce and oak, 6 tons of tin and lead as well as other raw materials such as leather, iron, steel and brass are processed.
Not only is state-of-the-art manufacturing skill important for Mathis organs; they must excel in appearance and tone quality, too. An organ should complement and enhance the architecture of the space in which it is located but never dominate it. Organ cases ensue from a long and complex process of fastidious attention to the details of the space whose acoustics will ultimately determine how the organ will sound. The voicers of Mathis Orgelbau, who are also organists in their own right, strive to attain a sonorous, lyrical sound, rich in overtones avoiding harshness or stridency; the organist should be equipped with the flexible and dynamic potential to exploit the widest possible variety of registrations.
Mathis Orgelbau has built more than 330 new organs of all sizes throughout the world for churches, concert halls and private residences and also restored valuable historic organs of different epochs. Countless concert cycles, as well as ongoing radio, television and CD productions with renowned artists provide ample testimony of the advanced technology and superlative tone quality of Mathis Orgelbau organs.
