Les orgues de France
The organ in the church of Insming.
The organ in Insming
The largest rural organ in the world!
The strange Insming church organ brings about a lot of mysteries. It was built by brothers Pierre and Jean-François Rivinach, a family or organ builders from the Wurtemberg region. We do not know if the builders had enlarged an already existing organ -there was already an organ in the church of Insming in 1791- or if they built a totally new organ. According to the writings of Father Antoni, a priest of the parish, the organ built by the Rinvach brothers originally had about twenty stops, there is no way to say exactly how many. The organ console was placed on the "men’s side".
In 1892 somebody had probably thought that around twenty stops in such a large chest was something normal. So from that time a fatal enlargement began and organ builder Blesi of Château-Salins installed a console behind the back positve and increased the number of stops to 39. The local population was never satisfied with this work and the organ sounded worse than it did before. In 1967 a new console was placed in the nave, equipped with all the modern combinations allowed by electric action. The number of stops was increased to 51 and the organ was celebrated with some pretention as the largest rural organ in the world. Unfortunately, the sound is very disappointing first because of the poor quality of the work and then because it looks like the Insming organ case cannot tolerate just any kind of ambitious project. The Rivinach brothers moved to the United States of America in 1845. One of them, Pierre, came back to the Moselle region around 1856 and started to work in Metz. He restored several organs among which the organ in Ars-sur-Moselle in 1874. None of his other works were on the same scale as the one in Insming. Some research done in the U.S.A. about his brother who died in Benton in 1915 never led to any result. Among the modest production of the Rivinach brothers in the Moselle and Alsace regions, the organ in Insming appears as a unique fact to the point that one might wonder if a fabulous anonymous local wood carver may have participated with the Rinivachs in order to put up this extraordinary case on the Insming church loft.
Pierre Schontz
President of the organ diocesan committee.
Bibliography : "Les travaux du facteur dorgue Pierre Rivinach en Alsace" Meyer Siat cahiers 63/64 (1968) of the Archeological and Historical Society of Saverne.
