Playing the organ - how does it work?

In his inaugural lecture, Matthias Schneider spoke about the most important duties of an organist, based on a work by music teacher Daniel Gottlob Türk. Since then, these have been a major focus of his work. In addition to an encyclopaedia of church music, which explores music in the church in all its facets (14 volumes, Laaber 2011-2018), he has devoted himself intensively to the performance practice of the organ: How do I play organ music from different periods and regions - on which instruments, with which fingerings or ornaments, at what tempo ...? In his lecture, he provides insights into the diversity of organ music and its contemporary realization and updating.

Matthias Schneider has been Professor of Church Music at the University of Greifswald since 1994 and is in demand internationally as a performer and musicologist. His work focuses on music for keyboard instruments from the 16th to 18th centuries. In addition to his extensive concert activities as an organ soloist, he regularly works with early music ensembles (including 'I Cornetti Pomerani', 'Musica Baltica Rostock', 'Orchester für Alte Musik Vorpommern'). He studied church music, musicology, art and church history in Münster, Essen and Basel and received his doctorate with a thesis on Buxtehude's choral fantasias. He worked as a district cantor in Schopfheim (South Baden), as an academic assistant at the University of Basel and as a musicologist. Assistant at the University of Basel and as head of an organ class in Heidelberg, later as Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy (2006-2010) and as Director of the Institute for Church Music and Musicology (2016-2024). Further activities and offices as President of the International 'Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde e. V.', on the board of the International Dieterich Buxtehude Society and as a long-standing co-editor of the specialist journal 'Musik und Kirche', the 'Jahrbuch für Liturgik und Hymnologie' (since 2012) and the 'Buxtehude-Studien' (since 2015) round off his profile.

Moderation: Marcus Hoffmann M. A.