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Electronic Baroque

Building a Historical Organ for the Present

Part of Inside Technology

Author Peter F. Peters
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Paperback
$60.00 US
The MIT Press
On sale Aug 26, 2025 | 352 Pages | 9780262553636
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A fascinating, real-time ethnography of the building of a unique musical instrument with both mechanical and electronic components.

Electronic Baroque tells the story of how a baroque pipe organ with both a mechanical and an electronic interface was built. The book also explores how, in musical practices, the new comes into being.

In 2013, the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, a concert venue dedicated to organists who want to give their instrument a new role in musical life, embarked on a project to make a unique instrument. This new baroque organ project combined principles and practices from historically informed organ building with the design and application of new computer hardware and software. Drawing on hermeneutic, pragmatist, and post-actor network theoretical approaches to history and music, Peter Peters describes and analyzes how the dual design of the organ, facing both past and present, reiterates the long history of these instruments.
Preface
Introduction
1 A New Baroque Organ
2 Travelling to the Organ Worlds of Bach
3 Designing an Archaic Technology
4 Making Things Fit Together
5 Crafting the Sound of Hildebrandt’s Pipes
6 Imagining an Organ We Do Not Know
7 Playing Bach
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index
Peter F. Peters is Associate Professor and Endowed Professor in the Innovation of Classical Music at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, and Director of the Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music (MCICM). He coedited Dialogues Between Artistic Research and Science and Technology Studies and Classical Music Futures.
Peter F. Peters View titles by Peter F. Peters

About

A fascinating, real-time ethnography of the building of a unique musical instrument with both mechanical and electronic components.

Electronic Baroque tells the story of how a baroque pipe organ with both a mechanical and an electronic interface was built. The book also explores how, in musical practices, the new comes into being.

In 2013, the Orgelpark in Amsterdam, a concert venue dedicated to organists who want to give their instrument a new role in musical life, embarked on a project to make a unique instrument. This new baroque organ project combined principles and practices from historically informed organ building with the design and application of new computer hardware and software. Drawing on hermeneutic, pragmatist, and post-actor network theoretical approaches to history and music, Peter Peters describes and analyzes how the dual design of the organ, facing both past and present, reiterates the long history of these instruments.

Table of Contents

Preface
Introduction
1 A New Baroque Organ
2 Travelling to the Organ Worlds of Bach
3 Designing an Archaic Technology
4 Making Things Fit Together
5 Crafting the Sound of Hildebrandt’s Pipes
6 Imagining an Organ We Do Not Know
7 Playing Bach
Conclusion
Notes
References
Index

Author

Peter F. Peters is Associate Professor and Endowed Professor in the Innovation of Classical Music at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Maastricht University, and Director of the Maastricht Centre for the Innovation of Classical Music (MCICM). He coedited Dialogues Between Artistic Research and Science and Technology Studies and Classical Music Futures.
Peter F. Peters View titles by Peter F. Peters

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