Bottrop/Aachen.
During the popular “Orgel Plus” excursion, 170 interested parties literally went looking for an organ in Aachen and the surrounding area. That happened.
At around twelve hours, the longest program at Orgel Plus is traditionally the popular excursion. This is once again one of the most popular events at the festival. A good 170 music and organ fans are drawn to the historic heartland of Central Europe when the weather is suitable for excursions. The old imperial city of Aachen literally breathes history – in addition to the still present Printen scent. And in the cathedral, the old palace chapel of Charlemagne, the incense is still hanging when the great requiem for the deceased Pope Benedict is finally over and even the less pious are admitted again.
The Bottrop faces can only be found occasionally. The first joint program point does not lead to the cathedral, but only much later to the neighboring Foillan church. So there is time for some interested people to search for a special feature that has become the focus of worldly interest in recent years: the tomb and shrine of Saint Corona.
The saint matching the plague can be found in Aachen
A coincidental identity with the epidemic, which is still not passé worldwide. But, according to the treasury there, the early Christian martyr should possibly also be responsible for epidemics. Her bones rested in the church for almost 1000 years – a tombstone shows this to this day. At the beginning of the 20th century, her (and other) relics were raised and shortly before the First World War a magnificent shrine was created, which has recently been slumbering invisibly in the treasury depot.
After all, the inconspicuous tombstone is just as interesting as the large shrines in the cathedral, the golden pulpit or the altar front, which is also golden. Later in St. Foillan (patron is a late antique Irish missionary, as festival director Gerd-Heinz Stevens knows) it’s all about the music. The Korean cantor Ahreum Jo presents “her” instrument, a romantic Klais organ from 1913, which ended up in this old church almost within earshot of the cathedral after wandering through various churches. Externally inconspicuous – the originally baroque prospectus remained in the old abbey Kornelimünster, the first location – the case was decorated with 1965 striking pictures, but the movement has it all.
Exciting Ahreum Jo’s rendition of baroque works by Bach and Dietrich Buxtehude on this fundamentally dark arranged organ, which today is the second oldest in Aachen and is a listed building. When Jo Mendelssohn intones, this seems to suit the instrument audibly more. As always, particularly interested participants are drawn up to the gallery.
Then the journey goes towards Kornelimünster. The former old imperial abbey is just as old as the Aachen monastery, today’s cathedral, the pretty little town is now a suburb of Aachen. One strives towards the church, a large building complex with a baroque abbot’s residence and beautiful gardens. The shock: closed. Damage from the flood has still not been completely eliminated.
Confusion about two abbeys in the same place
What obviously led to confusion: There is a second abbey in Kornelimünster, still inhabited by Benedictines. Modern, in the new development area. An odyssey on foot and by bus begins. At the end, Abbot Friedhelm welcomes the Bottrop activists of this final chord in the large, simple church, as Propst a. D. Paul Neumann (lyrics), Superintendent Steffen Riesenberg (singing solos), the long-standing co-organizer of the excursions Gerhard Kemena, who, like festival assistant Joel Keller, takes on a part on the monastery organ.
Sporty finale of an organ tour in the Voreifel – Applause at the end, as every year
In the end, nobody grumbles about the unexpected odyssey. The hikers take it sporty, the others drive the buses. In the evening they find their way to Bottrop almost by themselves.
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