Hendrik Niehoff ( – December 1560) was a Dutch

pipe organ The pipe organ is a musical instrument that produces sound by driving pressurised air (called ''wind'') through the organ pipes selected from a Musical keyboard, keyboard. Because each pipe produces a single tone and pitch, the pipes are provide ...

builder.

Life

Niehoff was born in

Leeuwarden Leeuwarden (; ; ; ) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in Friesland, Netherlands, with a population of 127,073 (2023). It is the provincial capital and seat of the Provin ...

and served as an apprentice to pipe organ builder Jan van Covelen (). After Van Covelen's death, Niehoff established his shop in

's-Hertogenbosch s-Hertogenbosch (), colloquially known as Den Bosch (), is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and List of municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Netherlands with a population of 160,783. It is the capital of ...

to continue building new and upgrading organs throughout the Netherlands and in major

Hanseatic The Hanseatic League was a Middle Ages, medieval commercial and defensive network of merchant guilds and market towns in Central Europe, Central and Northern Europe, Northern Europe. Growing from a few Northern Germany, North German towns in the ...

cities and is considered one of the most significant organ builders in northwestern Europe in the middle third of the 16th century.

Craftsmanship

The pipes in Niehoff's organs use an

alloy An alloy is a mixture of chemical elements of which in most cases at least one is a metal, metallic element, although it is also sometimes used for mixtures of elements; herein only metallic alloys are described. Metallic alloys often have prop ...

of over 98%

lead Lead () is a chemical element; it has Chemical symbol, symbol Pb (from Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a Heavy metal (elements), heavy metal that is density, denser than most common materials. Lead is Mohs scale, soft and Ductility, malleabl ...

, with only about 1.3%

tin Tin is a chemical element; it has symbol Sn () and atomic number 50. A silvery-colored metal, tin is soft enough to be cut with little force, and a bar of tin can be bent by hand with little effort. When bent, a bar of tin makes a sound, the ...

and minimal amounts of

antimony Antimony is a chemical element; it has chemical symbol, symbol Sb () and atomic number 51. A lustrous grey metal or metalloid, it is found in nature mainly as the sulfide mineral stibnite (). Antimony compounds have been known since ancient t ...

copper Copper is a chemical element; it has symbol Cu (from Latin ) and atomic number 29. It is a soft, malleable, and ductile metal with very high thermal and electrical conductivity. A freshly exposed surface of pure copper has a pinkish-orang ...

and

bismuth Bismuth is a chemical element; it has symbol Bi and atomic number 83. It is a post-transition metal and one of the pnictogens, with chemical properties resembling its lighter group 15 siblings arsenic and antimony. Elemental bismuth occurs nat ...

. Pipes made of this alloy are noted for producing sounds with the "vocale" characteristic of the organs of the high Renaissance–early Baroque period. To enhance their appearance, the façade pipes usually were covered with thin, bright tin foil that was held to the underlying lead pipe with a glue made of duck egg white. American organbuilder

John Brombaugh John Burlin Brombaugh (born March 1, 1937) is an American pipe organ builder known for his historically oriented tracker action pipe organs. Personal life and early training Born in Dayton, Ohio, Brombaugh (related to the Brumbaugh families) f ...

has used several surviving examples of pipes from the 1539 Schoonhoven Niehoff organ as models for many instruments his firm made and used in the organ at Central Lutheran Church,

Eugene, Oregon Eugene ( ) is a city in and the county seat of Lane County, Oregon, United States. It is located at the southern end of the Willamette Valley, near the confluence of the McKenzie River (Oregon), McKenzie and Willamette River, Willamette rivers, ...

, that was dedicated in 1976. This instrument also uses vertical pallets in its ruckpositive windchest, a method that was normal in Niehoff's organs but seldom found anytime since.

Life

Craftsmanship

See also

References

Further reading