The Vox Humana in Lithuanian Baroque Pipe Organs

Abstract

Manifestation of the Vox humana reed stop in Lithuanian Baroque organs was mostly grounded by the East Prussian tradition of organ building. In the second half of the eighteenth century, organ building in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania saw the art flourish, and this continued until the early nineteenth century. Foreign masters’ expertise and work style was adapted to local traditions, developed and preserved by local professionals, and finally evolved into the independent and authentic Vilnius organ building school of the late Baroque. Stoplists of the Vilnius school organs include stops that were traditionally employed in instruments of various sizes and represented the fusion with neighboring schools of different historic periods. Several stops were used extremely frequently (like the Jula, Unda maris, Flet travers, Sedecima, and Salcinal), and their names were recorded in a rare form, most probably borrowed from the Gdańsk and Königsberg organ makers. Among the representative sound of Lithuanian organs, I would distinguish the Trompete and Vox humana reeds, which are particularly often found in the large Baroque organs built by Vilnius organ makers. Only a few single-manual organs attributed to the Vilnius organ building school had these reed stops listed on their original stoplists. This chapter comments on some archival records and a reconstruction of hypothetical stoplists that display the presence of the Vox humana in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as well as the presentation of authentic cases of the Vox humana pipes extant to the present day in the work by representatives of the Vilnius school, like in the churches in Žemalė; Tytuvėnai; Troškūnai; Kurtuvėnai; Vilnius; and Budslau, Belarus, a town in the former territory of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.