Bohemian Rhapsody - The 107 year old Kunkels Concertorgan!

`Bohemian Rhapsody` • Paris To Rome Gallop -...
click "Show More" • The Kunkels Organ Draa...
The Kunkels organ was built in 1909 by the Marenghi company in Paris and has played in the ballroom "Keizershof" in Antwerp. Around 1930, Carl Frei in Breda was commissioned by the showman Kunkels in Roermond to completely renovate the organ and provide a new front in Art Deco style. This front is 9 meters long and nearly 6 meters high. when completed the organ played in the dance tent of the Kunkels family.
During the 2nd World War the organ sustained considerable damage and subsequently was kept in a leaky barn standing in a pasture near Roermond. The state of the organ came to the attention of a group of Haarlem organ enthusiasts and in 1958 took the initiative to restore the organ.
Since 1969, the organ is exhibited in our museum.
The Kunkels organ has 112 keys, 14 registers and 800 pipes, making it the largest concert organ in Europe.
In 2001, the organ was completely overhauled musically and in 2004, the Art Deco front was restored.
In 2007, the magnificent organ and its original music repertoire was designated by the Ministry of Education as a protected object within the meaning of Article 2 of the Law on Cultural Heritage Preservation.
www.draaiorgelm....
Draaiorgelmuseum / Foundation - The Kunkels organ
Kuppersweg 3-2031 EA Haarlem,The Netherlands. Tel: [phone].
Opening hours
(Almost) every Sunday from 12:00 to 18:00.Admission FREE.
Some times special days, see website calendar for these days.
It may also be opened for pre booked groups during other times, when an entrance fee will be asked. For your navigation tap the postal code 2031 EA number 3
www.google.co.... vimeo.com/2636...
Is this the real life, is this just fantasy?
Caught in a landslide no escape from reality
Open your eyes look up to the skies and see
I'm just a poor boy, I need no sympathy
Because I'm easy come, easy go
A little high, little low
Anyway the wind blows
Doesn't really matter to me, to me
Mama, just killed a man
Put a gun against his head
Pulled my trigger, now he's dead
Mama, life had just begun
But now I've gone and thrown it all away
Mama, ooh, ooh
Didn't mean to make you cry
If I'm not back again this time tomorrow
Carry on, carry on as if nothing really matters
Too late, my time has come
Sends shivers down my spine
Body's aching all the time
Goodbye everybody, I've got to go
Gotta leave you all behind and face the truth
Mama, ooh (anyway the wind blows) I don't want to die
I sometimes wish I'd never been born at all
I see a little silhouette of a man
Scaramouch, scaramouch will you do the fandango
Thunderbolt and lightning, very, very frightening me
Gallileo, Gallileo, Gallileo, Gallileo,
Gallileo Figaro magnifico
But I'm just a poor boy and nobody loves me
He's just a poor boy from a poor family
Spare him his life from this monstrosity
Easy come easy go will you let me go
Bismillah, no we will not let you go, let him go
Bismillah, we will not let you go, let him go
Bismillah, we will not let you go, let me go
Will not let you go, let me go (never)
Never let you go, let me go
Never let me go, ooh
No, no, no, no, no, no, no
Oh mama mia, mama mia, mama mia let me go
Beelzebub has a devil put aside for me
For me, for me
So you think you can stone me and spit in my eye
So you think you can love me and leave me to die
Oh baby, can't do this to me baby
Just gotta get out, just gotta get right outta here
Ooh yeah, ooh yeah nothing really matters
Anyone can see nothing really matters
Nothing really matters to me
Anyway the wind blows
Songwriters: FREDDIE MERCURY
© Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC
For non-commercial use only.

[@artbygingerb]

This organ is a huge piece of musical and cultural history. I love covers of Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody, and this has to be one of my favorite renditions! Love it and sharing!

[@TomGavioli]

@red27tx. Thanks for your kind comment, Tom.

[@Christopher-h4z]

red27tx I thought it was interesting to see how it faired, considering the instrument being much older than the song!

[@silasmcgee3647]

Mattias Schöning well..this thing has had a hard life So to see it come back with such strength and redemption it’s certainly deserves credit

[@dominikscheidecker4983]

Dominik

[@freespirit842]

Totally great concept, And such a great tune, anyway!

[@patrickos]

Wat een machtig mooi geluid en voor 107 jaar oud prachtig.

[@TheVicarstownSentinel]

This deserves way more views honestly. It's a bit sad that one rendition on another old organ has way more views when this one is just as gorgeous.

[@mombiethezombie7536]

It’d be wonderful to have an actual video of it while it is playing. Part of the fun with these is seeing all of the parts moving to create the music. 😊

[@DrChaad]

One of the better mechanized transcriptions out there.

[@Kumahachi8]

Sounds absolutely fantastic. Can't believe I didn't notice this sooner. Thanks for uploading. :)

[@TomGavioli]

Thanks for your comment Sarah, have a nice Christmas, Tom.

[@Kumahachi8]

***** Merry Christmas, yourself. :)

[@dieselbeema4255]

A superb machine and an excellent book - the best arrangement I have heard.

[@glibbis]

Awesome song on an awesome instrument. Thanks for sharing!

[@antares____]

Simply Beautiful. Thank you so much Tom.

[@eltoro6688]

THANK YOU for sharing your love of these MAGNIFICENT Musical Monstrosities! I'm glad to know there are others that have the interest that I have in Carousel, Fairground and Concertorgans. Got any Christmas music?

[@TomGavioli]

Thanks for your comment, Christmas music soon keep looking in, Tom.

[@barrykirke]

Brilliant. Thanks for posting Tom

[@TomGavioli]

Thanks for your comment Barry, Tom.

[@shaun49]

Fabulous a superb sound brought up to date.

[@Nigelrathbone1]

these grand instruments came into being at the height of fine swiss watch & clock making

[@cupqak8msp143]

This gave me chills! this is amazing I want one

[@warriorsoffical1132]

Day 26 of Quarantine: I have descended into madness and the thing keeping the last strings of my humanity in place is old fair organs and instruments playing modern/classic/meme songs.

[@melanieortiz712]

This just made my list of songs to play at my funeral. What better way to leave then with queen on massive organ?😘

[@TomGavioli]

☛Melanie. 110% agree with you😇. Tom.

[@mynewyork165]

@@TomGavioli Me too! I love it!

[@mynewyork165]

I love this!!! In the beginning it just gives you such an eerie feeling. Then the rest of the orchestra kicks in. Brilliant! Simply brilliant!

[@SynchroScore]

When my former boss died, his church service closed with "All Of My Love" by Led Zeppelin on a Schantz Organ.

[@melanieortiz712]

@@SynchroScore cool

[@rupe53]

Would be nice to see the inner working parts of this beast.

[@suspiciousdoge9yand104]

It sounds terribly good. But I wouldn't want to sleep, or even stand beside this thing. I just don't know why. Gives me the creeps

[@andrewbarrett1537]

Kevin James Stevens That's funny, that's how I feel about automata and robots, but not mechanical musical instruments (as long as they don't have animated figures). I think they're totally cool.

[@nicolewoodard9101]

I would

[@sablatnic8030]

I'm thinking Fritz Lang's Metropolis - stuff for nightmares!

[@hellothere9848]

People say that about my clock collection, and before I was really into clocks and clock repair, I felt the same way. Whenever I show somebody my oldest clock, they always think it looks and sounds so creepy.

[@sarailivesey958]

Antwerp! Flying on the CURRENT OF YOUR DREEEEAAAAAAAAMS

[@sarailivesey958]

For reals though, this was great. I admit to singing along.

[@samhayes-astrion]

The thing's a little creepy. A bit uncanny valley, in the feeling it gives off. It's like I'm listening to an instrument not meant for human ears, or am listening to something I really shouldn't be listening to... like a carnival trapped in a faded old photograph. Yet for some reason it also feels nostalgic, as it plays classic rock regarding a subject way beyond the time of this... 'concertorgan'. And to top it off, it escalates slowly from 'ghastly organ trying to be with the times' to 'Italian kazoo' to 'Pokémon Emerald Soundfont'. It's a remarkable recreation, despite the ethereal, forbidden aura it exudes. It feels like this organ should have sank with the Titanic but missed the memo that it's way past its prime, and here the old fellow is churning out classic rock... I wonder if one would experience the same feeling by going ghost hunting and for some reason, a ghost from a person that died two hundred years ago tries to be hip and trendy by suddenly throwing a meme at you. It's 2AM and I can't sleep because a spider crawled on my pillow, and now I'm trying to mill the time away. Pardon my word wall, but I felt compelled to write this. It might lean a touch on the insane side, but again. 2AM and no sleep. EDIT: I decided to mash this up with the original song. And holy hell, I believe I've reached nirvana.

[@andrewbarrett1537]

The instrumentation of this organ, when updated in 1930, was meant to emulate a 'dance band' of the time (jazz age), and when playing period dance arrangements, one can hear the resemblance. The original 1909 instrumentation (most of it still there) was meant to emulate an earlier type of dance orchestra that played in ballrooms of the era "la belle epoque" (the beautiful era) i. e. pre-1914 or so. So this organ has elements of both, although by no means is it the only organ to have this (most 1920s-1950s dance organ instrumentation even for brand-new instruments, at least through the 1950s, has, for example, string pipes as a foundation tone, like the strings of an orchestra). Later-generation dance organs, such as new Decap organs built from the 1960s up through today, frequently based their ensemble not on many ranks of string pipes, but on early electronic organs of the day such as Hammond, Vox, etc as were heard in many typical nightclub 'combo' bands of the day (nowadays I think they have whatever is the latest and greatest for house music, for example... which would theoretically be a huge array of sounds, since anything can be sampled nowadays and used in dance music). Accordions were also fitted to dance organs starting in the 1930s, as the accordion was an extremely popular instrument in European popular music of the day. Also seen on these later generation (1930s onward) dance organs are saxophones, although in no case do those actually play (although the accordions, percussion etc all really do), the saxes just mime along to the saxophone part played (in the earlier organs) by a rank of pipes, or (in the later organs) by its own synthesizer. For some reason (probably tuning and maintenance) guitars don't seem to have been fitted in later dance organs, although at least one Frans Decap / Decap Herentals organ I've seen has a fake guitar on the front (although I doubt it has anything in the synthesizers etc to emulate a guitar, but I've never heard that particular organ and only have a single photo of it). This is a bit odd considering the preponderance of guitars in rock and pop music of the day, but I think around the 1960s-1970s, the dance organ in Belgium was transitioning from a 'current' instrument of the day, to a kind of 'nostalgia' instrument, whether the remaining original builders wanted it like this or not! So anyway, what I think you're trying to describe is the musical arranger's attempt at (or, in my opinion, success in) arranging this classic rock anthem for an instrument much older than the tune, which was not originally designed to play this type of music. This is the situation, by the way, which most automatic musical instrument arrangers today face... arranging music for an instrument originally designed in an earlier era of music. It can be done, and even done well, but you need to know what you're doing. I believe whoever did this (Sjoerd Caspers? Jan Kees de Ruijter? Tom Meijer?), certainly did!

[@Ponlets]

why are like and dislike disabled ... im pretty sure this would get more likes than dislikes

[@TomGavioli]

@ Ponlets. Thanks for your comment, they are now enabled, Tom.

[@Ponlets]

yay :)

[@voorhees512]

🥰

[@portermcsorley]

Does anybody else think it's weird that this organ is Art Deco styled, but Art Deco wasn't popular until the late 1920's and this was built in 1907. I think somebody got the date wrong.

[@TomGavioli]

☞ Porter McSorley. Read the information below the video, there you will see included in the info "Around 1930, Carl Frei in Breda was commissioned by the showman Kunkels in Roermond to completely renovate the organ and provide a new front in Art Deco style" !!

[@itsaguinness]

🎪🍭🍧🤹🏼‍♂️🎠I'm gonna ride the hell out of this shit!! Yeah!🎠🎠🎠

[@jooknookem3655]

Hey Tom, could you ad the lyrics in the captions to sing along to?

[@tanyahanna6523]

PBSKIDS! TV Europe!

[@crispitycrunchy]

And Wayne’s World on SNES could barely play the song

[@wholewheatowos6514]

Ayy where can i get one? 😂

[@vitameatavegamin4236]

Is the organ fed with a piano roll?

[@TomGavioli]

No, it is perforated cardboard book's or Midi controlled, thanks for looking in.

[@andrewbarrett1537]

It plays cardboard book music that is 112 keys in size (112 metal spring-loaded levers read the holes in the music and control various notes and functions on the organ such as pipe stop/register changes, percussion, etc). Usually the larger the key size in mechanical organs, the larger the organ, as more notes can be played, and also more registers and thus many more ranks of pipes etc. Very few automatic organs of over 101 keys were ever built by anyone due to the great size, weight and expense. The only 'common' dance organs over 100 keys were the 101 key Mortier organs which were very popular in the 1920s, and a few hundred were built. The next most 'common' would have been probably the 121-key Decap organs built in the 1930s-1940s of which I think about two dozen were built and most still survive (fortunately). But 100+ key organs by other makers are very rare. Marenghi themselves probably only made a couple dozen organs over 100 keys, with all the 800+ (I think, from serial numbers) organs they made. (The Gaudin brothers, who took over the Marenghi firm in Paris after Mr. Marenghi died in 1919, and continued it through the late 1920s, probably only made a few dozen more organs, including a few more over 100 keys). Of those colossal, very musically capable instruments, many went to Belgian dance halls, such as this one, and many others went to the British fairgrounds. Unfortunately, nearly all of those were destroyed, either during the war, after the war, or otherwise dismantled for parts, and so I can only think of about 3 surviving Marenghi organs over 100 keys today, of which this is one. That is of about maybe 60-100 known Marenghi organs of all sizes surviving?

[@thecolorpurple9844]

It looks like new pork city from M🌍THER 3

[@gavin169]

This is from 1909? Looks like it's from the 1920's based on the design

[@TomGavioli]

☞ Gavin Luhezz. Read the "show more" information and all is revealed about the facade!