Bach and Buxtehude
In Ton Koopman's master class, one of the following four works, which are particularly close to his heart, will be the focus of the plenary session each day.

• D. Buxtehude: Praeludium, Fuga und Ciaccona in C (BuxWV 137)
• D. Buxtehude: Toccata in F (BuxWV 157)
• J. S. Bach: O Mensch, bewein dein Sünde groß (BWV 622)
• J. S. Bach: Vater Unser im Himmelreich (BWV 682)

Furthermore, all other works of the two composers may be brought for lessons.

Ton Koopman studied organ, harpsichord and musicology in Amsterdam. He focused his studies on Baroque music, with special attention to J. S. Bach, and soon became a leading figure in the "historical performance practice" movement. As an organist and harpsichordist, Ton Koopman performed in the world's most prestigious concert halls, playing Europe's finest period instruments. In 1979 he founded the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and in 1992 the Amsterdam Baroque Choir. Ton Koopman has been a guest at all the world's major concert halls and festivals. Ton Koopman is President of the International Dieterich Buxtehude Society and since 2012 Buxtehude Laureate of the Hanseatic City of Lübeck; Ton Koopman is Professor Emeritus of Leiden University, Honorary Member of the Royal Academy of Music in London, Artistic Director of the Festival Itinéraire Baroque and President of the Bach Archive Leipzig.

Prof. Dr. Vincent Bernhardt
From the court to the church:
French organ music between 1600 and 1789
This course will cover French music of the 17th and 18th centuries, distinguishing between the different sub-periods of French classical music. Special emphasis will be placed on ornamentation in accordance with historical source research, and other typical aspects of French Baroque music will also be covered: Inegality, registration, articulation, etc.

Vincent Bernhardt has taught organ at the HMDK Stuttgart since the winter semester 2022-23. Combining instrumental mastery with in-depth musicological research, he is a complete musician: an internationally renowned harpsichordist and organist, doctor in musicology, and ensemble director, while at the same time pedagogue and researcher. As a musicologist, he specializes in the interpretation of early 18th century instrumental music, particularly the work of Vivaldi.

Prof. Helmut Deutsch
Franz Liszt
Fantasy and Fugue on the chorale "Ad nos, ad salutarem undam”
Reflections on the possibilities of interpretation of a key work of the romantic organ literature. Edition required: Franz Liszt - Complete Organ Works Volume 1, Universal Edition UE 17 883 (please do not bring the Peters or Editio Musica Edition)

Helmut Deutsch, Professor of Organ at the HMDK Stuttgart, previously of the HfM in Freiburg. Liszt Prize Budapest; numerous concert tours. Juror at international Organ competitions, lecturer at interpretation courses. CD recordings, "Diapason d'or" for Liszt: Organ works. Author of organ transcriptions (Bärenreiter, Schott). Study of different instrumental and musical genres such as opera, piano, chamber music, and symphonic music as a source of inspiration and comparison for organ music is an important focus of his teaching.

Prof. Jürgen Essl
César Franck,
Trois Chorals - about freedom in playing, attempts in tempo, agogic and the moment of presence.
The participants have the opportunity to experiment with and discuss questions of rhythm and dynamic shaping. What could have been the liberty described by Tournemire in Franck’s playing and how can we approach this question today? The course repertoire is the Trois Chorals.

Jürgen Essl Professor of Organ at the HMDK since 2003, previously Professor in Lübeck and Kantor in Sigmaringen. He teaches a mixed class for repertoire and improvisation. He presents concerts and masterclasses internationally but also as a composer. His recordings from Mexico Cathedral have been internationally awarded, such as “CD of the year” by Klassik Heute. In 2003 he received the Kompositionspreis Kirchenmusik Baden-Württemberg.

Prof. Jörg Halubek
Johann Sebastian Bach and Stylus Fantasticus
In works from the Baroque era, tempo indications are rarely written down, for the most part only general specifications such as allegro or adagio. Had ritardando and accelerando not yet been invented? Did composers and listeners expect a tempo rubato in performance, and what was considered expressive playing? These questions will be discussed practically during the course from the perspective of historical sources. The pieces examined in the course are Bach’s works for organ with free passages, such as BWV 531, 532, 535, 542, 549, 551, 565, 566 and BWV 910-916.

Jörg Halubek has been a professor of organ and harpsichord since 2012. In 2004, he won first prize at the International Johann Sebastian Bach Competition in Leipzig. In recent years he has most notably made appearances as conductor at venerable theaters and festivals, conducting more than 30 opera productions with directors such as Harry Kupfer and Calixto Bieito, including at the Komische Oper Berlin and the Innsbruck Festival of Early Music. His musical foundation remains organ playing; he is in the process of making a complete recording of Bach’s works for organ with the Berlin Classics record label.

Nathan Laube
New horizons in France in the 1890s - the late Symphonies of Charles-Marie Widor, Op. 70 & 73
The rapid changes in musical aesthetics, culture, church music, and politics in the 1890s did not leave the organ loft untouched.  Following César Franck’s death and Widor’s appointment to the Conservatoire of Paris in 1890, Widor’s Symphonie Gothique, Op. 70 and Symphonie Romane, Op. 73 set the stage for new tendencies in registration and musical textures, along with the integration of plainsong woven into a late-Romantic quasi-Wagnerian tapestry of sound. Let’s explore together these various threads and their long-lasting legacies in 20th-century French Organ music.
A-R Editions, edited by John R. Near (N019 & N020) - if possible. 

Nathan Laube is Professor of Organ at the Eastman School of Music (Rochester, New York) and International Consultant at the Royal Birmingham Conservatoire (UK); from 2020-2022 he was Professor of Organ at the HMDK in Stuttgart. As a prolific concert organist, he performs regularly at major venues around the world. He is a regular guest at organ academies (Göteborg, Smarano, etc.), and is often called to serve on competition juries (Messiaen, Groningen, Silbermann, etc.). Passionate about organ aesthetics, he has contributed articles on various subjects and served in reference groups as a consultant for new instruments and restorations in Europe and the United States.

Domorganist KMD Prof. Johannes Mayr
Improvisation with Modern Playing Techniques
In the course, possibilities are explored to elicit striking sound effects from the mechanical pipe organ and to create free-tonal harmonic sequences, sound surfaces, polyphonic patterns, percussion effects, using relatively simple technical means.

Johannes Mayr worked as deanery cantor in Bad Wurzach from 1990 to 2001, and from 2001 to 2011 in Stuttgart (St. Fidelis). He has taught organ with a focus on improvisation at various music schools: since 2004 at the Tübingen University of Sacred Music; since 2009 at the HMDK Stuttgart. In 2011 he was appointed Cathedral Organist of St. Eberhard in Stuttgart. He is a prize-winner in several improvisation competitions, including 1st Prizes at the international Organ Improvisation Contests in Schwäbisch Gmünd (1989), in Montbrison/France (1991) and in Dudelange/Luxemburg (2009).

Tobias Wittmann
impressionistic sound paintings
improvisation course
Color, light and shadow are among the essential parameters in the art of impressionism. This course revolves around the inspirational space of impressionist painting and music. Stylistic means of harmony, rhythm and instrumentation will be tested and means of painting will be transferred to improvisation,creating  atmospheric sound pictures and  fleeting snapshots.

Tobias Wittmann teaches organ improvisation and liturgical organ playing at the HMDK Stuttgart. He is regional cantor for the Kath. Stadtdekanat Stuttgart and directs KLANGRAUM st.fidelis. A main focus of his artistic conceptions is the cooperation and deepening of music and spirituality. He has won prizes in improvisation competitions, and was a finalist in the International Improvisation Competition in Haarlem.

KMD Prof. Jörg-Hannes Hahn
C. P. E. Bach – Müthel – Mozart
Carl-Philipp Emanuel Bach, Johann Gottfried Müthel and Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart are the most remarkable composers of organ-music between J. S. Bach and Mendelssohn. These three virtuosi developed an independent style in their compositions and created an œuvre which deserve a place in the concert-repertoire of an organist. Both are not representatives of the Galant style, but typical composers of the “Sturm und Drang”-style. Finding the depth in Mozart’s organ-works isa challenge for all organists and should constitute a part of this lecture.

Jörg-Hannes Hahn is the District Director of Music for the 4 Stuttgart Deaneries. Since 1996 he has taught organ, figured-bass, and pedagogy at the HMDK Stuttgart, where he became a professor in 2007. Invitations as soloist, visiting professor,  and conductor have brought him to most of the European countries, North and South America, Israel, Russia, and the Middle East. He is artistic director of the concert-series MUSIK AM 13. with guests such as Krzysztof Penderecki and Sofia Gubaidulina. He established this series as the most sophisticated church music series within southern Germany. His performances have been heard in productions for CD, TV and radio.

KMD Thomas Haller
About mixtures and cymbals
Starting with the medieval organ, in this lecture Thomas Haller will describe the development of mixtures in the plenum from the time of the first division of the medieval Blockwerk to the 21st century. The various regional lines of development will be traced and construction methods typical of the time presented, among them the different mixture concepts of the instruments of the 18th century in the north and south of Germany, Italy, and France. Reminiscences of the “Mixturenstreit” in the 19th century and the resulting expectations on the tonal composition of mixtures in the 20th century will also be discussion topics.

Thomas Haller (*1966) is church music director in Aalen and organ consultant of the Protestant Church in Württemberg, as well as an instructor for organ building in Freiburg, Stuttgart and Ludwigsburg. He studied church music in Hannover and Stuttgart. As a church music networker in East Württemberg, he is currently also researching 550 years of organ building in his home region.

KMD Tobias Horn
Roaring Twenties
or: Whereto with Romanticism?
The lifetimes of Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) and Johann Nepomuk David (1895-1977) are almost congruent. The one, who grew up in the tradition of French Romanticism, sometimes has the image of being scholastic and humorless. Is that a correct portrait? The other, personally in contact with Webern and Schoenberg and active for many years at the HMDK Stuttgart (where he lived and died), that of the brittle. And yet, with him, the spirit of Max Reger, whose perhaps uncomfortable jubilee is in 2023, is still palpable. Tobias Horn presents biographical aspects of Dupre and David alongside Dupré's 2nd Symphony (1929) and David's Chaconne (1927), two key works of organ music of the 1920s - now almost 100 years old.

Tobias Horn, born 1970, studied church music A and in the organ soloist class in Stuttgart under the tutelage of Ludger Lohmann, and pursued further studies in  Lyon and Rotterdam/Den Haag under Jean Boyer and Ben van Oosten. Laureate of several international organ competitions, Horn is district cantor of the Evang. Landeskirche in Württemberg since 2000, and since 2018 he is the church music director. He has given masterclasses and courses in Germany and abroad (including Moscow Conservatory and Krakow Music Academy), performed internationally in concert, on radio, and in CD recordings. He has taught an organ class at the HMDK Stuttgart since 2016.

Arianna Radaelli
Stylus fantasticus
in the toccatas of Michelangelo Rossi and Johann Jakob Froberger
Michelangelo Rossi and Johann Jakob Froberger were proponents of of the Italian toccata style, which Frescobaldi had already revolutionized. The one concentrated in his compositions an alternating fragmentation of thematic materials, between declamatory and imitative style, and the extreme use of chromaticism. The other intensified the lyrical and rhapsodic element, as well as the use of bold and unexpected harmonic sequences. Balanced with logical and linear imitative sections, all components are embedded in a formal structure reminiscent of the Venetian late Renaissance style. 

Arianna Radaelli, italian harpsichordist and pianist, studied at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis with Francesco Corti and Andrea Marcon. She is a prizewinner of international competitions and performs at many early music festivals in Europe as a soloist, in her duo “Alter Ego”, as a member of ensembles (Zefiro, Café Zimmermann, Abchordis Ensemble, etc.), or as assistant director for opera productions. She has has been a lecturer of basso continuo and accompaniment at the University Mozarteum Salzburg since 2021, instructor of harpsichord and basso continuo at the HMDK Stuttgart since 2023.

KMD Dr. Markus Uhl
A question of authenticity
Pipe organ vs. digital organ – organists vs. orgamat – live music vs. music recordings
Can digital organs replace pipe organs? – Can orgamats replace organists? – Can music recordings replace live music in the service?
Three questions that are at the center of the presentation by KMD Dr Markus Uhl (Heidelberg), who is looking for answers as to why technical and pragmatic solutions cannot be used without further ado, at least in the context of church services. The lecture is about questions of authenticity and substitutes, about the subjects of the service which have to be present and about music that has to be played live by people in a specific place at a specific time in order for it to become church music.

KMD Dr Markus Uhl (*1978) studied church music, organ/organ improvisation, musicology and philosophy in Freiburg, Weimar, Heidelberg and Essen. Since 2007 he has been District Cantor of the Archdiocese of Freiburg at the Jesuit Church in Heidelberg (choirs, organ playing, education, etc.). As a lecturer, he teaches organ improvisation, Gregorian chant and other academic subjects at universities in Stuttgart, Heidelberg and Weimar. In his lessons at the HMDK Stuttgart, he combines artistic and scientific standards with his extensive practical experience as a full-time church musician, which he passes on to the students.