Ján Princzkel

Rieger · opus 1614 · 1910

The organ – Rieger, opus 1614

One manual and pedal, six speaking stops from four ranks and pneumatic action, built by Rieger in 1910. The console plate reads “Opus 1614 Rieger Ottó Budapest”.

This text was generated by AI from curated notes and may contain errors. Corrections welcome

The church on Google Maps (opens in a new tab)

Builder and date

The Magyar Katolikus Lexikon describes the organ in one line of its entry on Biatorbágy: org-ját (1/6 m/r, op. 1614.) 1910: a Rieger gyár építette. That is: built by the Rieger factory in 1910 as opus 1614, with one manual and six stops. The console plate reads “Opus 1614 Rieger Ottó Budapest”.

According to Ferenc Solymosi's Rieger opus list, the organ is I/6/4: six speaking stops from four ranks, with pneumatic action (“p”) and cone chests (“k”). The church organist also confirms the pneumatic action; I have not seen the chests myself yet.

The 2008 building-history study calls the Rieger an organ of 11 változat, eleven stops. The console has eleven tabs, but only six of them are speaking stops; the other five are couplers and combinations. That is probably why the counts differ.

The console

The organ is played from a separate console with a row of stop tabs above the single manual, a pedalboard and a music desk. Six of the eleven tabs are speaking stops: Principal 8', Födött 8' (Gedackt), Salicionál 8', Octava 4' and Dolce 4' on the manual, and Subbass 16' in the pedal. The other five are the pedal coupler Pedálcopula, the super-octave coupler Oktávkopula, the fixed combinations Mezzoforte and Forte, and Kiváltó, the cancel.

The Hauptwerk console of the St. Anna organ: a row of eleven stop tabs from Pedálcopula to Kiváltó, the manual and the pedal, pictures of the organ front and the console, and three switches for digital aids (larger photo)
My Hauptwerk console for the organ follows the real one: the eleven tabs in the same order, the manual of 54 keys (C–f³) and the pedal of 27 keys (C–d¹). “Pedal to Great”, “Bass coupler” and “Motor”, bottom right, are digital aids that the real organ does not have; the crest and the two pictures are decoration made with generative image editing.

Six stops from four ranks

StopPipes
Manual C–f³, 54 notes
Principal 8'Its own rank
Födött 8'Its own rank
Salicionál 8'Its own rank
Octava 4'The Principal 8' rank an octave higher, plus 12 treble pipes of its own
Dolce 4'The Salicionál 8' rank an octave higher, plus 12 treble pipes of its own
Pedal C–d¹, 27 notes
Subbass 16'Its own rank

I tested the borrowing of the two 4' stops myself and recorded their 12 extra treble pipes in 2026.

Couplers
Pedálcopula (manual to pedal) and Oktávkopula (manual super-octave coupler).
Fixed combinations
Mezzoforte draws Subbass 16', Principal 8', Octava 4' and Pedálcopula; Forte draws all six stops and both couplers. Kiváltó cancels them, and the registration from before sounds again.
Action
Pneumatic, confirmed by the church organist.
Chests
Cone chests, according to the opus list; not yet seen by me.

Pipes, compass and tuning

Behind the case stand metal flue pipes, capped metal pipes and large square wooden stopped pipes. Because I recorded every key, I know the compass: the manual runs from C to f³ (54 notes), the pedal from C to d¹ (27 notes).

According to my recording, the four ranks have 66 (Principal), 54 (Födött), 66 (Salicionál) and 27 (Subbass) pipes, about 213 in all. This is not a pipe-by-pipe inventory.

The organ is not tuned to equal temperament at A = 440 Hz. The lowest Subbass C, for example, measured about 32.2 Hz instead of the nominal 32.7 Hz.

From a six-stop organ to Rieger opus 1614

  1. 1805

    A canonical visitation records a six-stop organ in the chapel.

  2. 1909–10

    The patron has the choir gallery enlarged; its two stone columns are replaced by cast-iron ones.

  3. 1910

    The six-stop organ, “as old as the church”, is replaced by a one-manual Rieger organ, opus 1614. It is still in use on the gallery and has not been altered since.

  4. 1948

    The organ is repaired.

The building inventory of the 2008 study lists an “old (18th–19th century) organ case” on the gallery. So the 1910 Rieger probably stands in the case of the earlier organ, although the study does not say so in so many words.

The episcopal archive in Székesfehérvár (SzPL No. 227, Bia) holds files from 1910 (458/1910 and 625/1910) and 1948 (1824/1948) that are cited for these events. They may contain the contract or a description of the organ.

October 2026

What I observed

Noticed during the recording and my own tests. These are observations, not diagnoses.

  1. A silent Salicionál pipeOne pipe of the Salicionál 8' rank, the a², does not speak. The Dolce 4' note that uses the same pipe is silent too; the other stops sound at that key.
  2. A key that does not repeatOne manual key does not repeat when it is struck rapidly, with every stop. After a longer pause it plays again.
  3. The top pedal noteThe top pedal note, d¹, does not sound from the Subbass 16' rank alone. The same pedal key does play the manual through Pedálcopula.

Because of the first and the third, two samples of my set are reconstructed from neighbouring pipes: see the sample set.

Organs with the same or a similar stoplist

Rieger built other organs with this stoplist or one very like it: Principal 8', a stopped 8', Salicionál 8', Octava 4' and Dolce 4' borrowed from the 8' ranks, and Subbass 16'. I have checked two of them. The other six are the same or very similar according to the Slovak organ catalogue alone; I have not checked them against other sources yet. The catalogue is offline at the moment, so the links lead to copies saved by the Internet Archive.

Open questions

  • Are the chests really cone chests, as the opus list says? I have not looked inside the case yet.
  • The Rieger archive in Schwarzach may hold the original drawings; I have not asked yet.

The instrument in pictures

Sources