Thanks to Piotr Grabowski, the Hauptwerk community has marvelous samples of the Jacek Siedlar organ of St. John Cantius Church near Cracow, Poland. He has made this sample set available as "freeware" on his web site.

I have taken the Cracov sample set and extended it to create a new larger organ I call simply "Les' Cracov Extended Organ." I have enlarged this to fit my former Rodgers 945 organ console so I could use it as a practice instrument in my home.

This was one of my COVID-19 projects. Although I can perform my NASA management job very well from home, I found myself with a lot of free time – mostly because I had to cancel a great deal of traveling as well as organ concerts and other gigs on my other instruments. I did a lot of composing and arranging during this time too.

This was my first Hauptwerk project since upgrading to Hauptwerk V. However, this organ works just as well in Hauptwerk 4 and all version since. I have one computer at home that still has version 4 installed for testing purposes.

As was the case with Piotr’s Friesach samples, the Cracow samples are also excellent in clarity and brightness. The reverb is long - but it in no way impairs the speaking quality of the ranks.

This organ is "free" in that you can download the samples from Piotr's web site and use them as long as you adhere to the terms he has put forth.

Version 1.1 corrects a problem that stemmed from mixing source files from Hautwerk V and Hauptwerk 4.2. Version 1.1 has been tested in both editions of Hauptwerk and works fine.

The specification of my Cracov Extended Organ is as follows.

Here are the console, left jamb, and right jamb views. Click on each to see full size representations.

You can read about the original organ on Piotr’s web site. Here is what I did to extend the organ:

In the Pedal, I added several borrowed stops from other divisions to make things bit more independent. I also created an independent pedal mixture by using three instances of the Hauptwerk Prestant 4', revoiced and retuned. Since these are created as new independent ranks, there are no unification effects. Finally, I filled out the pedal by duplicating some of the existing ranks while repitching and revoicing them as needed.

I enlarged the old “Manual II” division, renaming it “Oberwerk”. I made it expressive to add flexibility. I added an independent Cymbal III. This is a bright mixture that breaks at every octave. I added some higher pitched flutes and also provided the Hauptwerk (previously called Manual 1) Trompette as a borrowed stop here for use as a solo reed.

The Hauptwerk is largley unchanged. I added the 16’ Trompette to give this division a deeper sound. I also added a 2 2/3’ diapason and 2’ flute.

I moved the interesting Clarinette to the Schwellwerk (previously called Manual 3). Although this was a flue rank in the original, it is more than reedy enough to hold its own with Schwellwerk reeds! I also added the 16’ Lieblich. I moved the two Manual 2 mutations stops here to create the Sesquiatera.

I have disabled the wind model - for historic reasons. Also, I have not incorporated any of the tracker, keyboard, expression, or stop noises from Piotr’s samples. In my own application, I like a clean organ without noises. I may add these later if I have more time since one can always disable them when loading the organ.

Finally, I added a full complement of couplers and a large combination action. I have not added a crescendo pedal - but you can use Hauptwerk's internal mechanism for one. There are also the standard reversable pistons and "bass" and "melody" functions - mostly because they are so easy to create in Hauptwerk.

If you want to try this organ, be sure you have Hauptwerk v4 or higher (this organ does not require a special license) and have already installed the Cracov organ from Piotr's web site.

Then download the following:

Cracov_ExtendedV1_2.CompPkg.Hauptwerk.rar

This is a Hauptwerk standard installation package in rar format. Save it to your disk, start Hauptwerk, and then use its install feature to read the rar file as per the manual.

I have included the source code for the Hauptwerk CODM file so you can see how I did all this and get ideas for your own projects. However, for this particular project I have eliminated some individual sampled pipes and done considerable voicing and tuning. The instructions for others to reconstruct all of this would be too complex. Hence, if you load the CODM file the organ will not sound as intended – so use this only to see how the organ was constructed.

This organ is a great value. You get ~80 ranks for free (I get nothing - but I have a great a day job). The reverb on the samples is ample, but the clarity of the samples still makes this a good insturment for practicing. I strongly suggest setting Hauptwerk V's internal reverb to zero for this organ.

Here will be some demo recordings I created for this instrument: