ORGAN
Music, like everything in life, evolves over time.
Styles change, along with the sonority, expressive and tonal capacity that is required by suitable instruments that have been properly developed in relation to those that preceded them.
Juan Sebastián Bach composed his extremely famous Toccata and Fugue in D minor,which sounded amazing on the Silbermann organs he had.
However, these organs had very different characteristics to those of the organs that were built a century later for new music.
BUILT BY JOSEPH MERKLIN
In 1854, when Joseph Merklin built the famous organ we see and hear in Murcia Cathedral at his workshops in Brussels, he was thinking about the musical repertoire that was being composed during the Romantic and post-Romantic period.
Musicians such as Lef’ebureWelly, Franz Liszt, Cesar Franck… Were the first to fall in love with the characteristics of these organs which, like ours, enabled them to achieve the sought-after artistic effects.
In the heart of the 19th century, Spain was still immersed in the construction of organs with a Baroque aesthetic.
A very sad event for Murcia was the indirect cause of that restrictive circle being broken, when its cathedral burned down and along with it, the two old organs it contained, which were also of a very high quality.
The bishop of the diocese, Manuel Barrios, turned to the musician Hilarión Eslava, organist, composer and then director of the Royal Chapel in Madrid, who advised him to commission the project for a new organ to J. Merklin, the famous organ maker and pioneer of new movements in the manufacturing of these large instruments with multiple possibilities that made them resemble modern orchestras, and end up overshadowing them.
It was unveiled in July 1857 and was an event of national and international importance. It consists of very complex mechanics which enable the 4000 pipes, distributed over four floors, to sound precise and clear, and from a console that has 63 stops, four keyboards with 56 notes and a pedal keyboard with 30.
At present it is a world renowned organ, and the masterpiece of Merklin, with which he consolidated his status among the most elite European organ builders.
In 2008, it was restored by the organ builder workshop of Jean Daldosso located in Gimont, near Tolouse, France.
Its use in Cathedral liturgy is alternated with concert series that are held throughout the year, thus powerfully uplifting souls in praise of God and, simultaneously, spreading the concert organ repertoire among the large audiences that attend.
Get to know the Cathedral in depth: history, architecture, organ and archive.
Access the Mass schedules and meet our Bishop and the Cathedral Chapter.
Everything you need to plan your visit to the Murcia Cathedral.
Six kilometers from the city of Murcia, you can visit the sanctuary of Our Lady of Fuensanta.