Luogo e data di registrazione		-
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Recording Supervision		-
	Edizione LP		TELEFUNKEN - 6.41036 AP - (1 LP - durata 44' 31") - (p) 1961 - Analogico
	Originale LP		TELEFUNKEN - SAWT 9409-B - (1 LP - durata 44' 31") - (p) 1961 - Analogico
	Prima Edizione CD		-
	Note		-

The term ”small organ” covers those instruments which, as from about the 14th century, broke off as special forms from the construction of the church organ into the large organ permanently built in the church chancel area and incorporated into the architecture. They survived in their own rights in mode of construction and function until into the 18th century, and comprised the portative organ, the regal organ and the positive organ. - The portative organ, of which there is evidence going back to the 12th century (not represented in our recording), was the most primitive of these instruments. Its repertoire, like its technique, was limited; in the main it played monophonically in courtly and bourgeois ensemble music. It played hardly any role at all in solo music; furthermore, scarcely any original instruments of this kind have been preserved. The regal organ was in evidence as early as the middle of the 15th century and was first built in southern Germany; it remained in use at least as a thoroughbass instrument until into the 18th century. From the very outset it was a one manual, flat table instrument with very short labial pipes which produced a sharp and dry tone. The taste of the times was up in arms against the ”rattling tone” of this organ until the progressive 18th century, with Mattheson, threw it completely overboard as being ”highly repellent”. The regal was apparently significant as a solo instrument especially in the 16th century; the 17 th century saw its grand period as a thoroughbass instrument. The crown of the small organs is the positive, a little, one-manual organ from which probably in the 14th century the continually expanding large church music instrument was developed. The early positive had only flute voices; as from the 16th century labial registers were added, and more rarely also a pedal. The positive then developed into the most versatile, richly colourful keyboard instrument for the small orchestra, but especially for the court, the great bourgeois festive hall and the intimate bourgeois room. The 17th and 18th centuries, as the golden age of courtly and bourgois culture, was also the heyday of this instrument, which in the diverse modes of performance of the case, table and cabinet organs, became an artistically ornamented, representative and often extremely valuable piece of furniture.