A Brill Calendar: August 9

Few cities in Holland have underestimated their potential to attract visitors.

Among obvious historical reasons for near-by villagers to visit bustling and prosperous cities like Alkmaar, Haarlem, Leyden or Zwolle were activities like purchasing commercial goods not available in the country, bringing food to market, or visiting physicians, lawyers, and clerks. Attracting travellers from more distant regions and lands needed less pedestrian powers of attraction: a particularly popular and powerful one being a church-organ, regularly played by a talented town-organist. Actually, it was almost imperative for a great city in the Republic to have a great organ at disposal; a magnet of attraction and boon to pomp & circumstance.

Maintaining or even increasing a city’s reputation was a long-term effort, requiring vast sums of money. In this grand tradition, the city of Alkmaar stands out. When three Van Hagerbeer brothers from Leyden had completed there the Alkmaar organ for the 'Great' (or Saint) Lawrence Church in 1646, their new instrument replaced an earlier one; at the staggering cost of 52.095 guilders.

Almost eighty long years later, Frans Caspar Schnitger extended and renewed Alkmaar’s legendary prime source of civic pride; (in 2009 the city still prides itself in a rich array of such instruments). Schnitger’s extensions were officially tested and approved of by city officials on August 9, 1725. They caused a sensation amongst connoisseurs - without equal in the history of this most impressive of all musical instruments - and an invasion in Holland of foreign (mostly German) organ-builders.

The tradition of resistance against Spain starts at Alkmaar proverbially in the Dutch language; a new organ-building tradition also starts at Alkmaar; leading to the great age of the 18th century, when Johann Sebastian Bach’s art reached perfection in Europe.