Origin
A short history of the origin of N.V. Standaart’s Orgelfabrieken. Founded around 1904 as a continuation of the organ builders “Kam en Van der Meulen”, the activities centred around church organs. Standaart built up a good reputation, the business did well, more staff were taken on and the workshop moved from Rotterdam to Schiedam. In 1923 there were apparently 40 emplyees and later on this increased to 60. Quite a sizeable player in the industry!
The first theatre organ
In 1921 the newly opened Tuschinski theatre in Amsterdam had the first real theatre organ in the Netherlands. It was a small Wurlitzer (with 4 ranks and a piano console).
This was an eye-opener for many of the Dutch organ builders, including Standaart, who had already built several instruments with a more orchestral character. Standaart wanted to follow the new developments and started to show an interest in concert and theatre organs alongside church organs.
In the brochure that they published entitled “The Standaart cinema organ as the modern Dutch Standaart organ”, we read that the first real Standaart theatre organ was built in 1923 for the Warner Bros. theatre in Rotterdam. This was probably not an instrument that they had entirely developed themselves. What had transpired was this: the Limburg firm of Franssen, originally church organ builders, advertised a theatre organ in 1922. In that same year the company went bankrupt and Standaart bought up parts of their stock, including the theatre organ that they had developed. This probably formed the basis for the organ that Standaart installed in 1923 in Rotterdam. The brochure states: “Countless trials were made at our factory and our first product, the result of one and a half years of searching, working.......and discovering, was delivered to the W.B. theatre in Rotterdam, managed by dhr. K. Weisbard.” A nice turn of phrase!
This organ, like the Tuschinski organ, had a piano console. The basis was an ordinary piano, complete with hammers and strings and a full piano keyboard. Above that was a second (organ) keyboard with 61 keys. The piano could only be played from the lower keyboard but the organ was playable from both keyboards and pedals. A great advantage to this, according to Standaart, was that should the electricity supply fail, the instrument would still be playable via the piano. The show must go on — and the organist suddenly becomes a pianist.....
The specification was “straight”, that is to say not a unit system in which the ranks are playable on all manuals. A clever touch was that the piano keyboard divided into two organ sections that could have different registrations. You could also say that this was in fact a 3-manual organ.
In the next few years both the Cinema Palace in Haarlem and Cinema Royal in Amsterdam were supplied with similar instruments. Leonie Wisse’s thesis contains a story about the Cinema Royal instrument, that had 744 pipes. Presumably these organs had ten ranks: a Diapason, Rohr Flute, Oboe, Viola, Orchestral Flute, Vox Humana, Voix Céleste and a ‘Seraphin’.
The latter was a so-called ‘free reed’ stop designed by Standaart. Whether it was a resounding success is doubtful, for although there was glowing praise at first for the stop, it subsequently disappeared from the stop lists of later instruments.
The organ also had the usual percussion and the ‘General Crescendo’ pedal which visibly added stops as the pedal was depressed (very handy).
This type of organ was generally supplied from 1923-1927 although the organs were not all identical. The organ made for the Luxor, Arnhem in 1926 had only 470 pipes, roughly 6 ranks. The last organ with a piano console was supplied in 1927 to the Rembrandt theatre in Amsterdam. It replaced the Oskalyd organ there, and had three manuals, of which the lowest was of course the piano keyboard. The main organ chamber was situated in the orchestra pit at the front of the stage. Up in the top of the auditorium at the back was an echo chamber. Sadly, none of these piano consoles have been preserved.
Right at the start of the 1920’s Standaart was given charge of the maintenance for both Tuschinski Wurlitzers (Tuschinski also had theatres in Rotterdam), which was rather fortuitous. By all accounts, the staff put a tremendous amount of time into the maintenance: everything was painstakingly taken apart, examined and measured.........
As the years progressed more and more Wurlitzer-type design could be seen in the Standaart organs.
Source: NOFiteiten 2006 nr. 1
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