Renovations and Maintenance

This chapter examines Johann Scheibe's renovations-some of them quite extensive-of the organs in Leipzig's principal churches of St. Thomas's, St. Nicholas's, the New Church, and St. Paul's. Leipzig's organs were regularly altered. Dispositions published in c. l700 and again some forty or fifty years later reveal tonal changes that can only have occurred during the interventions carried out by Scheibe in the period from c. 1720 to 1748. Other changes occurred as well—changes not visible in a list of stops but that nevertheless greatly affected the sound and character of the organs. Few contracts have survived, but by comparing stop lists and prying information from examination reports and the brief records in account books, this chapter paints a new picture of Leipzig's changing organ culture.