The All is NOT Right with the Reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden!!!!!! Pages at the Teri Noel Towe
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Communications that I have received recently from certain parties in Dresden who, to put it politely, are
antagonistic to my position and the sentiments that I have expressed here at The All is NOT Right wth
the Reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden!!!!!! Pages have insinuated that I am a "front" for
Christoph Wolff and Günter Blobel and that it is they, not I, who determine the contents of this Protest
Page.
These antagonists do not know me very well, do they? Me a "mouthpiece" for someone else?
Hippopotami will sooner sprout wings and fly!
Günter has been a particularly close friend for more than twenty years, and Christoph has been a
treasured friend and generous, thoughtful colleague for almost that long, but neither one of them has
had anything to do with either the decision to construct this page or the wording of the sentiments
expressed on this page.
Christoph and Günter know me well, and they will gladly confirm to anyone who asks that I am a
maverick and a "loose cannon" whose independence they cannot restrict and whose actions they
cannot control.
Although I would happily alter, or even completely remove, this page at their request, if Christoph and
Günter notified me that they had decided that such alteration or removal would benefit the campaign to
assure that a replica of the 1736 Gottfried Silbermann organ is installed in the Frauenkirche in Dresden,
I am not their puppet or straw man, and any allegation that such is the case is a vile canard and defames
both them and me!
Teri Noel Towe
March 27, 2002
This page was created several years ago simply as:
Rebuilding the Frauenkirche in Dresden
Now, alas, I am compelled to rename this page as
All is NOT Right with the
Reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in
Dresden!!!!!!!!
Please click on 
to read the original German text of the open letter of protest against the
construction of the 70 stop neo-romantic organ, derisively but appropriately nicknamed the Güttler
Abomination, from Dr. Günter Blobel, the 1999 Nobel Laureate in Medicine and Prof. Christoph Wolff,
the world's pre-eminent authority on the life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the author of the
magnificent new biography, Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician, and the Director of the
Bach Archiv in Leipzig, a letter endorsed and countersigned by some of the most eminent early music
performers and scholars in the world today.
I hope to have an authorized English translation "on line" within a few days.
T.N.T.
This Page devoted to the reconstruction of the Frauenkirche in Dresden still opens with the original
brochure that was sent out by Friends of Dresden, when this laudible project began, but, alas, all is
NOT right in Dresden!
The accuracy of the reconstruction of this magnificent architectural masterpiece is now being
compromised, and, if we do not act, if we do not sound the alarm, if we do not make our voices heard,
the perpetrators of a ghastly act of musico-historical vandalism will get away with it!
Please read this eloquent brochure as a reminder of what this project set out to be and set out to
accomplish, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page for the BAD NEWS!!!
The ruins of the Frauenkirche, 1945
Gottfried Silbermann Organ (1732-1736) Frauenkirche, Dresden (destroyed, 1945)
Altar, Frauenkiche, Dresden (destroyed, 1945)
The Frauenkirche, Dresden, ca. 1930
The Frauenkirche Time Line
At the top of the page, I wrote that all is NOT right in Dresden. After all of the effort to assure that the
reconstruction of this magnificent building, an effort made possible not only by an international,
communal effort, one that has secured contributions from an overwhelming majority of the countries on
the planet, an effort spurred on by the generous gift by Dr. Günter Blobel of the financial award that he
received in 1999 when he won the Nobel Prize for Medicine, an effort the accuracy of which is made
possible by the fortuitous existence and survival of scrupulous, "to scale", detailed architectural
drawings of the building and its interior that were made at the time of its restoration before World War
II, the accuracy of that reconstruction is now being compromised, no, besmirched and sullied in a way
that is insulting to this architectural masterpiece, insulting to its original architect Georg Bähr, insulting
to Johann Sebastian Bach and his admirers the world over, insulting to Gottfried Silbermann - one of
the greatest organ builders of all time - and his admirers, and an affront to every contributor of money
and gifts in kind to the reconstruction initiative.
The powers that be in Dresden have decided that the "new" organ in the Frauenkirche will NOT be
a scrupulous reconstruction of the magnificent instrument that Gottfried Silbermann built for the
Frauenkirche between 1732 and 1736. The Frauenkirche, therefore, will NOT be a building in which
it will be possible to recreate the sound and sensation of the famous organ recital that Bach gave there
on December 2, 1736, to formally "open" this legendary instrument! This tragedy MUST be
prevented!
WE MUST TAKE ACTION AT
ONCE,
BEFORE THE DECISION IS
IRREVOCABLE!!!!
Instead of a carefully constructed replica of the magnificnet three manual and pedal, 45 stop organ that
Gottfried Silbermann built for the church over a four year period, beginning in 1732, an instrument that
I am told can be duplicated accurately and exactly because we have all of the scales for the pipework,
the church is to be "grafittoed" with a 70 stop, "contemporary" organ, which will be deceptively
described as "in the spirit of Gottfried Silbermann".
What kind of spirit?
Tank car wine?
Turpentine?
Peach schnapps?
Bathtub gin?
Spirit of Ipecac?
The Ghost of Christmas Yet To Come?
And who is the malefactor responsible for conceiving this musico-historical travesty, who is the
iconoclast who will be reviled by posterity as the perpetrator of this abomination, if we allow it to take
place?
Sad to say, it is none other than Ludwig Güttler!!!
Yes, Ludwig Güttler!!! The very man to whom the world is indebted for having done so much to
publicize this project in the first place! Because his name, as a trumpet virtuoso, was so well known, he
did much to "jumpstart" and provide invaluable assistance in realizing the seemingly impossible goal
that Pfarrer Hoch, the retired rector of the Auferstehungskirche in Plauen, and a small group of
sympathetic Dresden citizens who had cherished the dream of replicating the Frauenkirche since the
nightmare of its destruction in 1945, and resurrecting it from the rubble as if it had come through wars
and tribulation unscathed.
His behavior is utterly incomprehensible, until one remembers that Ludwig Güttler, the Maurice André
of his generation, has built a successful career on musicological compromise, all the while trying to
cover up the compromise with "documentation" and "reserarch" that purportedly supports the
compromise.
Güttler is the eminence grise who inflicted that appalling pseudo-authentic "non-instrument", the corno
da caccia, a bogus concept if there ever was one, on the innocent and unsuspecting Baroque music
loving public. If you have ever had, as I have had, the misfortune to squirm through a peformance of
the "Quoniam tu solus sanctus" from the Bach Mass in B Minor, BWV 232, with the horn part played
on this squalling and indescribably ugly "lust child" of a French horn and a "piccolo trumpet", you
know exactly what I mean.
Bach surely would have thrown his wig in fury at this miscreant!
What are Philip Sidney's words?
"If with one thou wilt whore, thou wilt with a thousand more.
Ice once cracked, it cracks the more."
Fair is fair, and, while many of the recordings that Ludwig Güttler has made with his modern instrument
ensemble, Virtuosi Saxoniae, are rife with precisely the kind of oleaginous and murky performances that
make the HIP-ocrites (To learn who the HIP-ocrites are, and what they are all about, please visit The
HIP-ocrisy Home Page.) turn beet red with ire and "go postal", Güttler, a trumpet virtuoso of the
highest order, has recorded, and therefore promoted and publicized, some fine, interesting, and
shamefully neglected musical masterpieces, including, among other things, the wonderful Johann Adolf
Hasse Missa in G Minor.
But, alas, in this alarming situation, that avails Güttler naught, and certainly provides neither justification
nor excuse for the act of musico-historical vandalism that he is hellbent and determine to see
committed!
If he can inflict the the corno da caccia, upon us, this proponent of "faux Baroque", surely has no
qualms about going the extra kilometer to try to besmirch the rebuilt Frauenkirche with an anachronistic,
totally inappropriate, "non-Silbermann" organ. If this apostate gets away with the act of vandalism that
he is railroading through as I write these words, the world will be saddled with a "Goddamned kist of
whistles", to borrow Sir Christopher Wren's superb epithet, that will be the source of both
disappointment and revilement!
And, it makes no sense whatever to do anything other than provide the Frauenkirche with a replica of
the Gottfried Silbermann that was the raison d'être for the anecdote about Bach's dedicatory recital that
is the only reason that many had ever heard of the Frauenkirche, much less cared about its
reconstruction.
Please forgive the conversational grammar and syntax that follows:
You mean to tell me that you are going scrupulously reconstruct this building, a
"holy place" for all who revere Bach, and you are not going to install in the
replica of the original organ case an exact replica of the Gottfried Silbermann
organ on which he gave one of the two or three most famous recitals of his
career?
Are you nuts?
Have you gone around the bend?
Are you playing with a full deck?
In case it has not occurred to you, for some of us a compelling reason, if not
the compelling reason, to support the campaign to reconstruct the
Frauenkirche was, is, and will always be that it would contain a replica of
the Gottfried Silbermann organ on which Bach gave that legendary recital
on December 2, 1736.
Furthermore, there are several ironies in all of this:
A scrupulous replica of the 1736 Silbermann would certainly cost no more than
the unauthentic abomination that it now appears inevitably is to be installed,
and an authentic replica certainly would be less expensive to maintain. Tracker
mechanisms are significantly less likely to cause problems than electric or other
actions, and that certainly is the case with the newfangled "spielhilfen"!
Had any significant portion of the original instrument survived WW2, it would
have been meticulously returned to its authentic 1736 state, like the Trost organ
in Altenburg, for instance, has been.
Before WW2, a call for a scrupulous restoration of the organ was made by no
less an authority than Günter Ramin, who was extremely unhappy about the
state of the instrument after its last "renovation", the one of which the sound is
documented in those thrilling recordings by Hanns-Ander Donath that have
been used, and used frequently, to promote the reconstruction project.
You can be certain that, within 50 years of its completion, the "Güttlerian
Compromise" abomination will be removed and a scrupulous replica installed. It
will be not unlike what has happened recently in the Thomaskirche in Leipzig.
And don't let anyone tell you that it is too late for the powers that be to back out
of the contract. I am sure that there are plenty of other large churches which are
not historical restorations that would gladly take over the instrument.
From the beginning, this project, at least as I understood the goal, was
billed as a scrupulously accurate reconstruction, right down to the
Silbermann. Things certainly have changed, haven't they?
For me, the project is like a pregnancy, in the sense that it is "all or
nothing". There is no such thing as being a "teeny tiny bit" authentic. This
is not a game of horseshoes in which "almosts" count!
Let us all let Ludwig Güttler know how we feel. He has his own website - www.Guettler.com. Please
pay that site a visit! Please find the icon that says "Kontakt", and give him a piece of your mindl! And,
please, do not mince words! Tell him bluntly and loudly that those of us who revere the architectural
invention of Georg Bähr, the organ-building genius of Gottfried Silbermann, and the genius of Johann
Sebastian Bach protest and oppose the very idea of defacing the Frauenkirche with the 70 stop Güttler
Abomination.
This desecration of the Frauenkirche, this betrayal of the
goals of this magnificent reconstruction, this insult to Georg
Bähr, to Gottfried Silbermann, and to Johann Sebastian Bach
MUST BE STOPPED!
And please don't limit the expression of your outrage to writing to Maestro Güttler.
Let your feelings be known to the powers that be at the official and semi-official Frauenkirche websites.
Visit the Links Page at Freunde der Dresdner Frauenkirche in München. There you will find links to
all of the important official and related sites. Click on those links, find the e-mail icon at the website in
question, catapult your salvo of protest, and ignite your firestorm of disgust!
Let me give you just a couple of examples.
Let the politicos and bureaucrats at the Landeshauptstadt Dresden know just how you feel about it.
Besiege the local and national newspapers, beginning with the Dresdner Neueste Nachrichten, with
letters of protest.
If you are in the U. K., write to The Dresden Trust and give them a piece of your mind.
If you are in the United States, write to The American Friends of Dresden (whose website URL is
down at the moment, which is why there is no hot link!), and let its founder and guiding spirit, my
treasured friend of more than two decades, Dr. Günter Blobel, the 1999 Nobel Laureate in Medicine,
know precisely how you feel.
God bless Günter Blobel!
Günter gave the entire cash award that he received with the Nobel Prize to advance the reconstruction
of the City of Dresden, the bombing of which he witnessed as a teenager.
At this point in the most recent previous version of this page, I wrote:
Galvanize Günter Blobel yet again. Persuade him to gird for battle yet again and prevent yet
another watering down of the ideal of restoring Dresden completely and accurately to its High
Baroque glory!
"Money talks; everybody walks", or so the saying goes, and the magnitude of Günter's contributions,
financial, emotional, spiritual, and physical, give him a clout that no one else has.
Please let Günter know that he MUST let Ludwig Güttler and his fellow advocates of an
unacceptable and anachornistic compromise know, and know in no uncertain terms, that he will not
have his dream polluted, his extraordinary, symbolic, profoundly moving, and deeply appreciated
gift to Dresden and the world sullied, and the Frauenkirche desecrated, by such an outrageous and
unforgivable act of musical, historical, and organological vandalism.
Now, on September 4, 2001, I am delighted to be able to report "officially" that my dear and treasured
friend Günter has been galvanized, that he has been galvanized for several weeks, and that he has been
galvanized in spades, as the saying goes!
And, I am equally delighted to report that Günter has enlisted the invaluable and enthusiastic aid of
Christoph Wolff, the world's pre-eminent authority on the life and music of Johann Sebastian Bach, the
author of the magnificent new biography, Johann Sebastian Bach, The Learned Musician, and the
Director of the Bach Archiv in Leipzig. Together they have authored an open letter decrying the Güttler
Abomination and forcefully stating the reasons why the 1736 Silbermann organ must be scrupulously
replicated in the reconstructed Frauenkirche.
So far, the open letter, which was published in Dresden just a couple of days ago, is available only in
German, but we hope to have an authorized English translation "on line" within a few days.
Please click on to read the original German text of Günter and Christoph's letter, which,
as you will discover, bears the endorsement of a number of other internationally renowned artists and
music historians, inlcuding Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Gustav Leonhardt, Wolfgang Rübsam, Masaaki
Suzuki, and Harald Vogel.
And please continue to make your individual voices heard, too, in every way that you can. Continue the
barrage of e-mail and snail mail protest!
Remind Güttler that no matter how much his public visibility may have helped the project to grow and
to succeed, his bogus brand of "pseudo musicology" and his "faux Baroque" stops with his own
recordings and that it stops at the doors of the concert halls in which he and his Virtuosi Saxoniae
perform. No matter how enjoyable the performances may be, they still represent a musicological
compromise that has little foundation in historical fact and that sometimes represent a distortion of the
historical fact.
The Güttlerian Compromise is one thing when an individual pays a few dollars for a ticket or a CD,
particularly if that investment proves to be enjoyable, but when the Güttlerian Compromise costs
millions and affects the hopes and enjoyment of millions and over a period, potentially, of decades and
perhaps centuries, it becomes something quite different.
Ludwig Güttler's musicological hypocrisies and deceptions are not welcome within the Frauenkirche or
anywhere else in the reconstruction of historic Dresden, for that matter.
This desecration of the Frauenkirche, this betrayal of the
goals of this magnificent reconstruction, this insult to Georg
Bähr, to Gottfried Silbermann, and to Johann Sebastian Bach
MUST BE STOPPED!
Let us not rest until a replica of the 1736 Gottfried
Silbermann organ on which Johann Sebastian Bach thrilled
his audiences fills the rich acoustics of the Frauenkirche with
its charismatic Silberklang!
Gottfried Silbermann Organ (1732-1736) Frauenkirche, Dresden (destroyed, 1945)
Special thanks to the indefatigable Dr. Rob Kruit for tipping me off to this outrageus prospect. And, by
all means visit his remarkable page on the Frauenkirche. It is a masterpiece that must be seen to be
believed! And, at his page, you will find links to all of the gory details about the outrage that we are so
in danger of having perpetrated!
Please visit http://frauenkirche-silbermann.de/html/start.htm for a complete dossier on this on-going
nightmare. It may be "auf Deutsch", but you'll figure it out! Many thanks to Ibo Ortgies for having
called this site to my attention.
Teri Noel Towe
Revised, September 4, 2001, and touched up a bit on March 27, 2002
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