Cinema Organ, Potsdam, Germany
N 52° 23.723 E 013° 03.405
33U E 367779 N 5806791
The Grand-mother of all synthesizers
Waymark Code: WMA9TJ
Location: Brandenburg, Germany
Date Posted: 12/09/2010
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Potsdam's Film-Museum is the oldest movie-museum in Germany. It documents the history of the world's oldest large-scale film studio and offers a number of remarkable exhibits. We were particularly impressed by this not so silent piece of silent movie history.
Theatre organs were used in the era of silent movies to accompany the movie and to imitate and replace an entire, costly orchestra.
This particular instrument was built in 1929 by Welte & Sons for a movie theatre in Chemnitz. It sustained water damage in 1954 and was removed from the theatre a year later to make room for a wide screen. After years of neglect, it was beautifully restored in 1992 by Jehmlich Orgelbau and is now not only the museums most prominent exhibit but is also used in showings of silent movies almost every weekend.
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The organ does not only provide all the sounds of a modern synthesizer (such as flute, violin, saxophone, oboe, clarinet, cello and bugle), together with a broad variety of percussion instruments, from castanets to a kettledrum; it also plays a wide variety of special sound effects. Peas drizzling into a metal funnel imitate rain and a vibrating thin metal sheet produces authentic thunder. Other possible sounds are storm, running water, cow bells, bird sounds, trains and a ship's siren.
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