HISTORY

Humble Beginnings in Leer – Two Organ Builders and an Attic Room

When Jürgen Ahrend and Gerhard Brunzema founded their own workshop in 1954, they did not lack ideas, only capital. Their first home was a disused agricultural-machinery workshop on Leer's Großstraße, where the two young entrepreneurs shared an attic room in which, in winter, the water in the washbasin would occasionally freeze. The only way was up – and it began in humble surroundings.

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They had met at Paul Ott's in Göttingen, where Jürgen Ahrend had begun his training in 1946. Born in 1930 into a musical family, he would gladly have gone to university, but after the war the means were lacking. His mother therefore recommended organ building to him as a solid and versatile craft in which artistic interests need not be neglected either.

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At Ott's he met Gerhard Brunzema from Emden, with whom he soon shared a keen interest in historic organs. Both wanted to understand how these instruments had been built and why they sounded so convincing. They complemented each other musically, too: while Brunzema played the organ, Ahrend devoted himself to the transverse flute and the recorder.

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On a motorcycle bought with their savings, they set out to get to know other workshops and instruments. When they turned up unannounced at Metzler in Switzerland, they agreed to meet that evening – and ended up talking until breakfast on the workshop roof. At Marcussen in Denmark, the ailing head of the firm received the two early risers even in his dressing gown, yet insisted on showing them his workshop.

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These journeys gave rise to connections that would reach far beyond their years of apprenticeship. Particularly important was their acquaintance with the Groningen organist and organ scholar Cornelius H. Edskes, with whom Ahrend and Brunzema shared an interest in a restoration philosophy that would do justice to the individual character of the old instruments.

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"There Are Enough Organ Builders Around Here."

The intention to open their own workshop was by no means met with approval everywhere. Some organists and experts considered a further firm simply superfluous, while others thought it presumptuous to leave a respected firm such as Paul Ott's.

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Ahrend and Brunzema were not deterred and deliberately chose Leer (even though Brunzema came from nearby Emden): the historic organs of East Frisia and the neighbouring Dutch province of Groningen offered ample opportunity for further study. At the same time, many of them were waiting for careful restoration.

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Besides sceptical advisers, there were fortunately also people who gave practical support. The organist and lawyer Gordon Jeffery, for instance, provided the young entrepreneurs with a VW on generous payment terms and gave them a piece of advice that would prove as useful as any craft skill: suppliers must always be paid, and with the bank, trust is the most important foundation.

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Among their first commissions were small new instruments and restorations in Larrelt and Uttum, where their thorough studies now proved their worth. "We tried to do everything right," Jürgen Ahrend later summed up the attitude of those days – "and the results soon attracted attention."

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Pipes in Their Own Hands

Setting up their own pipe workshop in 1955 was a decisive step. Anyone who wanted to shape the sound of an organ should also be able to make the sounding bodies themselves; the cramped rooms on Großstraße, however, were not big enough for that. Pipe making therefore moved first into a former vehicle-paint shop on Brummelburgstraße.

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Since both equipment and experience were lacking, the start was not without difficulties. The first attempts to cast metal on sand literally ran into the sand, which prompted Cor Edskes to remark: "That will do for a mixture pipe." Better results came from casting on cloth, and a planing machine bought cheaply from the firm of Rohlfing opened up further possibilities for working the pipe metal with precision.

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Making their own pipes became the breakthrough, for now the essential steps, from processing the material to shaping the tone, lay in the hands of the workshop – by no means a matter of course for a small firm.

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As orders grew, so did the workforce, so that soon more space was needed again. From 1958, in several building phases, the workshop took shape on Mühlenweg in Leer-Loga, where people worked in bright, level-floored rooms and Jürgen Ahrend set up his home next door.

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New organs for Scheveningen, Aurich and Bremen (St. Martini) made their work known far beyond the region and brought commissions from all over Germany, the Netherlands and Austria. When Ahrend & Brunzema received the Lower Saxony State Prize for Craftsmanship in 1962, it was a remarkable recognition for a workshop not yet ten years old.

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Early Music, New Paths

The development of the firm was closely tied to encounters in which musicians and organ builders sought new approaches to early music together. The Bremen harpsichord maker Martin Skowroneck brought Ahrend and Brunzema together with Nikolaus Harnoncourt, in whose Vienna apartment they restored a derelict organ. Through the Austrian organ expert Egon Krauss came further connections, from which important restoration commissions later arose, among them work on the Ebert organ in the Hofkirche in Innsbruck.

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Gustav Leonhardt, too, became an important musical counterpart. Such friendships linked the workshop with a performance practice that did not merely admire historic instruments but wanted to rediscover their musical possibilities.

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Within the workshop, differing views meanwhile developed. While Gerhard Brunzema wished to present traditional organ building in a more contemporary, sober guise, Jürgen Ahrend preferred, even for new instruments, the forms and design principles of the 17th and 18th centuries. In time it became clear that these differences went beyond the outward appearance of the instruments.

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In 1971 their professional paths finally parted. Brunzema went to Canada, where he worked first at Casavant and later in a workshop of his own, while Jürgen Ahrend continued the business in Leer with the existing workforce. How much the staff feared for the future of the shared work at that time is shown by a plea that Hermann Schmidt remembered later: "Mr. Ahrend, don't leave us in the lurch!"

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Learning from the Old Masters

Under Jürgen Ahrend's direction, the close study of historic organs became an even stronger foundation of the work. The knowledge gained was to be applied judiciously, for even the old masters had not found the best solution for every task.

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In the restoration of the Schnitger organ in the Martinikerk in Groningen, for example, it turned out that large historic pipes needed additional stabilisation. Respect for Schnitger was by no means at odds with such a measure; after all, even a famous name does not protect metal from buckling.

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The restorations in Groningen, in Hamburg's Jacobikirche and in Trondheim Cathedral established the workshop's international reputation, while at the same time new organs were built for clients far beyond Europe. When occasionally asked whether one could really do North German Baroque in Leer, the instruments themselves gave the most convincing answer.

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Characteristic of the firm remained its willingness to keep questioning its own approach and even to turn down a significant commission if the expectations attached to it could not be reconciled with its own convictions. For Jürgen Ahrend, responsibility towards an instrument weighed more heavily than the wish to be involved in every major project.

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"Chef sin Söhn" Goes His Own Way

That Hendrik Ahrend would one day take over the workshop was by no means a foregone conclusion. After finishing school (Abitur) in 1983, he first worked in his father's firm and then completed an organ-building apprenticeship with Johannes Rohlf, before taking a different direction with studies in American studies and sports science.

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The way out of the workshop finally led back into it, with a broader perspective. Historic preservation and voicing in particular increasingly occupied him, so that from the second half of the 1990s he took on demanding tasks, among them the voicing of the new organ for the Musikhochschule Stuttgart and of the flue pipes in Dornum.

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His master craftsman's examination in 2000 was followed by further work with Rohlf and the voicing of the organ in the Lutherkirche in Leer. Hendrik Ahrend understood the International Arp Schnitger Prize, with which he was honoured in 2004, above all as an encouragement to continue along the path he had taken.

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In February 2005 Jürgen Ahrend handed the workshop over to his son, who took on responsibility with his own view of the craft. He was shaped by his father's experience, but equally by other musical interests, among which folk music and the mandolin have long had their place. After all, culture needs subculture the way a full-grown organ needs its sub-bass.

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A Workshop That Keeps Asking Questions

Under Hendrik Ahrend, in-house pipe making remains at the core of the work, combined with a conscious look beyond the craft itself. Highly qualified staff who bring experience from other trades help to look anew at well-practised procedures – after all, blindness to one's own routines is no craftsman's virtue.

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In restorations, the preservation of historic substance goes hand in hand with the aim of keeping an instrument that sounds convincing and can be played reliably. Damage is therefore not casually declared to be a historic ideal of sound; the House of Ahrend has never been content with mere "ruins in the moonlight" (C. Edskes).

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An old organ may keep its peculiarities and limits, and even after restoration it will not sound like a new one – fortunately. Yet every task demands its own decisions, which can be derived neither from dates nor from famous models alone.

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This attitude links the generations of the workshop: look closely, listen attentively and examine supposed certainties. It is carried by staff whose experience has often grown over decades, as well as by exchange with musicians, experts and clients. Thus something new keeps emerging from the engagement with old instruments.

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The Third Generation

The future is already taking shape: with Paul Ahrend, Hendrik's son, the third generation of the family is ready to continue the workshop's story.

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After training at the Wegscheider organ workshop in Dresden and a subsequent stay with Karl Nelson in Sweden, he has returned to the family firm and is shortly to take his master craftsman's examination. At a time when the organ-building craft faces considerable change, the high standard of quality that has characterised the workshop's work since its foundation is to remain the measure. It is not only a matter of preserving a great tradition, but of continuing it with one's own experience and ideas.

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The generational change is being prepared with care, so that experience and knowledge can be passed on without losing openness to new insights. For in all change, one thing should remain self-evident in future: where it says Ahrend on the outside, there has to be Ahrend on the inside.