The Registration of Baroque Organ Music Quotes

“Much of the music of the north European Baroque is familiar to organists, but it is often played and registered in a static and lackluster manner. This music is exuberant; the big pieces were meant to be exciting and even startling, and the small pieces offer endless opportunities for color. Perhaps part of our problem lies in the familiar brittle-sounding “neo-Baroque” instruments of the 1950s and 1960s that we tend to associate with this music, with their thin, top-heavy sound and unyielding wind supply. While it is true that the organs of northern Europe ostensibly provided the inspiration for this style, it is more of the letter than the spirit. They look all right on paper, but lack the substance to deliver musically.
The instruments for which Buxtehude, Bruhns and Böhm wrote are red-blooded, warm, and colorful, with seeming faults–such as unequal temperament and wind systems of uncertain equilibrium–that turn to virtues when the right music is played on them.”
― Barbara Owen, The Registration of Baroque Organ Music