> Ibo wrote: Dear Claudio!
>> Ibo wrote ...  I actually don't see how that would be evidence for an
>> assumption of repertoire playing on an organ.
> Which sources? 
> If you have evidence, please, present it. I at least am eager to learn.

Dear Ibo. We have disagreed in the past on Bach-organ matters, for example
on temperament, where the absence of large intact Bach organs and their
documents do not allow to deduce anything. But IMHO just because evidence is
not there it does not mean that it was not done. On this fact you will
agree, there is lots of evidence! 

Some awful biases in Mattheson have been explained in a recent book, and if
some German organists would find "unprofessional" to play a simple keyboard
piece on an organ, perhaps JSBach did not mind if a student completed the
bass with a pedal (the only other alternative being that he meant the pedal
notes for a helper).

>>> Claudio wrote: >>> Even a few large scale organ works (such as the Fuga
on the Magnificat >>> BWV 733 and the Pastorale BWV 590) use this restricted
pedal range.
>> is too much of a fitting to be a coincidence. 
> We agree on the observation. 

Good!!!

> But for what exactly should it be coincidence? That there were different
types of organ pedals in Saxony and Thuringia? No. We know that the standard
pedal compass of large and small organs in Bach's area and time was
CDEFGA-c1 or CDE-c1. Seldom a chromatic compass ...

Maybe, you are the specialist (on extant organs but surely not on those
majority of Bach organs that have gone and we lack most of the info
thereof!).  But if the chromatic compass was so rare, then I fail to
understand why JSBach wrote so many Fantasias and Preludes and Fugues with
all those C# and Eb and F#. Obviously he had uncommon organs at his command,
and this explains both temperaments and ranges.

> And not one single case for Contra-B which is required three times in
Bach's "organ works".

Thanks for giving evidence for my way of looking at things, Ibo! The answer
is, IMHO, very simple: I find this compelling evidence that, among those
Bach-organs that are now lost and no info is available about their
pedalboard range (I got this info from you, remember!), possibly there was
just ONE with a Contra-B! 

Best 
Ibo


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