The Complete Organ Works of Johann Nikolaus Hanff (1665-1711)

(BTW: this is my last upload for a while, as I'm disassembling my virtual organ set up today in preparation for a big, cross-country move next week. I hope things go well, and I'll be back to posting within a month's time or so.)

There are a number of uploads of these works here on CCH already, but as they are so beautiful, I couldn’t help myself from recording them too. I recently got the big brother to Distler’s “kleine Jakobikirche Stellwagen Orgel,” and these works are fantastic for getting used to the sound of the large Stralsund Stellwagen organ. Stralsund’s Stellwagen organ is tempered in mean tone, and Hanff makes unapologetic, and excellent, use of it in his chorale settings. I went ahead and kept even the harshest sounding chromatic pieces in the original organ temperament, as I think this was an intention of Hanff. I believe the dissonances add even more to the tone-painting with the original organ temperament than any of the later well-tempered ones ever could.

In order to set this presentation of Hanff’s chorale preludes apart from everyone else’s, I’m not going in order of their arrangement in the score, but rather I’ll offer them thematically, in a story-telling sort of way. I hope by doing so that the poetry of Hanff is showcased to a higher degree than would otherwise be the case. The chorales in the collection seem to be of two camps: either “have mercy on me” or “praise be to God.” I’ll purposefully alternate between them. I will also include English translations of the chorales here. These are taken from https://www.bach-cantatas.com/index.htm (except “A Mighty Fortress,” which comes from a typical Lutheran hymnal). Lastly, instead of getting information from Wikipedia, I’ll quote/summarize from Wili Apel’s “History of Keyboard Music to 1700” (see comments for further information).