Holy „Sněžná“ Mary Church
Jungman´s Square

August 2006 the picture the local organ player and me.

Holy „Sněžná“Mary Church in Prague The Holy „Sněžná“ Mary Church with the monastery was established on the 3rd September 1347 by Charles IV, the Czech king and Roman imperial. It should have been a memorial of his coronation as it should have exceeded all Prague churches by its height and extent. Charles IV gave it away to Carmelites. Charles’s son Václav IV allocated the church to the utraquists and it became the centre of eccentric Hussites. Jan Želivský was their leader. He was also killed and buried there. The destruction of the church was completed by falling down of the arch in 1566. The poor lived in the devastated monastery.  Franciscan friars came to Prague in 1603; they asked the church from the imperial Rudolf II. The construction of the building finished in autumn 1610. The height of the building from the floor to the arch is 39 metres. It is built in late Gothic style and the high altar (from the year 1925) equals to a three-storey house. It is a wooden Baroque monument, only one of this kind in the whole republic. A two-manual organ (made by the company Rieger) stands on the choir of the church. The instrument is situated in the console with the front side of the former baroque one-manual mechanical organ of Tomáš Schwarz of St Nicolas at Malá Strana. The console is extended on both sides in a pseudo baroque style. It seems to be an instrument from the thirties of the 20^th century; its numeric mark is opus 2438. I suppose, from the point of view of sound, it is a compromise type of an instrument. There is a whole range of colourful eight registers, but the whole disposition is obviously influenced by „Orgelbewegung“. In the 20th century, there have not been changes in the register disposition (only the register Oboe 8‘ on II. manual was in the nineties  exchanged for a new one).

 

The only bigger intervention was the electrification of the pneumatic mechanism at the beginning of the nineties which was done by the company Rieger-Kloss Krnov, a new table was situated into the left side of the choir (the old table used to stand in the middle of the choir in front of the organ console and after this reconstruction it disappeared). Unfortunately, the work on the pipe mechanism (cleaning, intonation, tuning) should have been done privately by the organist Karel Boundra (the former employee of the organ company „Igra Praha“). But the work was completed by Martin Poláček in 2003. In 2006 Jozef Brachtl, a tuner of an outstanding eminence tuned the Trompeta and repaired the big Mixtura.

 The disposition:

1st Manual:                                         2nd Manual:

Principal                    8‘                     Principal violin    8‘

Copula                       8‘                     Flute distant        8‘

Quintadena               8‘                     Copula                       8‘        

Gamba                       8‘                     Aeolina                       8‘                      

Salicionál                   8‘                     Vox coelestis              8‘ (just one row)

Octave                       4’                     Principal                    4‘

Copula                       4’                     Flute                         4‘

Kvinta            2 ^2/3‘                             Fugara                       4‘

Superoctave              2‘                     Flute Babbling                2‘

Mixtura                      2‘ (5x)             Mixtura                      1‘ (3x)

Trompeta                   8‘                     Oboe                        8‘    

Pedal:

Principalbas   16‘

Subbas                       16‘

Echobas                     16‘ (it has its own row of pipes)

Octavebas                   8‘        

Kvintbas                    5 ^1/3‘

Superoctavebas          4‘

Kvinta Šumivá          2 ^2/3’

Bombard                   16‘

Joints: II/I 8‘, II/I 16‘, II/I 4‘, I 4‘, II 4‘,II 16‘, P/I 8‘, P/II8‘, P/I 4‘,

P/II 4‘

Additional machanisms: VI free combinations, II adjustable pedal combinations, stiff combinations: „MF“, „Pleno“, „Tutti“, tremolo of the 2nd manual, jalousies for the second manual and cylindrical crescendo.

Worked out by Ján Přibyl.

You can download the above mentioned description here as a Word document.

 

         

            

   

I want to thank all who enabled me to play the organ, particularly brother Franciscan and organ-player Ján Přibyl for their patience.