Songs of a Cypress: Montepulciano's 18th Century Cypress Organ

The picturesque town of Montepulciano is one of the most beautiful destinations of Tuscany: its charming medieval centre, stunning landscape of rolling hills and world-renowned wines make Montepulciano very popular among tourists. Founded in the 5th century BC by the Etruscans, Montepulciano flourished in the Middle Ages and Renaissance. Many churches of the area date back to that period, such as Santa Maria delle Grazie Church, a place of pilgrimage for many centuries because of the miraculous fresco of the Madonna of blood tears. This very church keeps a unique musical treasure, an 18th century wooden pipe organ in original condition.

Wooden organs, organi di legno in Italian, were widely in use in Italy during the 16th and 17th centuries. The Medici family owned numerous wooden organs in Florence, which were often small or medium-small, with up to five stops. The composer Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643) indicated the use of a regal and two wooden organs in his opera L'Orfeo (1609), which would be most suitable to voice accompaniment with the soft sound of the wooden pipes. Wooden organs were mostly used as secular instruments, but were also sporadically in use in churches: such an instrument was documented from 1622 at Colle Val d'Elsa Cathedral but there are no further documentations of it after 1779.

The wooden organ at Santa Maria delle Grazie Church in Montepulciano was probably built by Antonio Buratti (?-ca.1717) who was a Dominican friar at the nearby Sant'Agnese Church in Montepulciano. Buratti was a self-taught organ builder and he focused his energies on building wooden organs in the Renaissance tradition. He most probably built this organ between 1714 and 1717 for Sant'Agnese Church: in 1832 the wooden organ was moved to Santa Maria delle Grazie Church to give space to a larger organ. The feature which makes this instrument unique is that it is entirely made of wooden pipes of cypress wood. It was restored in 1980-3 by Pier Paolo Donati and it is still today in very good playable condition.

The facade is divided in five fields (3/5/5/5/3) with the largest pipe (Principale 8 C) placed in the centre. The console has a 45-key keyboard with first short octave (C-c3) and a pull-down pedalboard (C-c). Two accessories: Grilli and Tremolo (placed at the ends of the keyboard).

Principale 8, Ottava 4, XV-XIX, XXII-XXIX, Flauto in VIII 4, Flauto in XII 2 2/3, Flauto in V 2.
Tracker action, 1/4-comma Meantone, A=415 Hz, 38mm.

Click on the link below to listen to the recordings on YouTube.

Thanks to the kind help of the priest of Montepulciano, don Domenico Zafarana, I have had the chance to visit Montepulciano's wooden organ in August 2023 and recorded some organ music to show the possibilities of this extraordinary instrument. A lot of early Italian repertoire works very well on this organ because of its structure and intonation, but considering it as an 18th century organ in the Sienese area, I decided to play 18th century organ repertoire from Siena. The program starts with six Soggetti (1727) by the knight Azzolino Bernardino della Ciaja (1671-1755), short pieces composed in rigorous counterpoint: first tone (Pr8, O4, XV-XIX, XXII-XXIX), third tone (Pr8), fifth tone (Pr8, XV-XIX), sixth tone (Pr8, FlXII), eight tone (Pr8, VIII, XXII-XXIX) and tenth tone (O4). The two concluding pieces were written by Francesco Ceracchini (1768-1824) who was active as a cathedral organist in Siena. The first piece, Post-Communio, is played on the Flauto in VIII alone, joined on the last entry of the rondò theme by the Grilli, the Cricket effect; the second piece, Offertorio, shows a Ripieno misto registration (Pr8, O4, XXII-XXIX, Flauto in XII), where the jumping octave basses sounds light and crispy.