Bergen op Zoom, 1864 [Hauptwerk]

St. Gertrudis, Bergen op Zoom, Ibach (1864) - Verschueren (2011)

The church of St. Gertrude is a large Gothic structure from the second half of the 15th century. A new organ was built by Louis Del Haye from Antwerp in 1771. The organ served to the Protestant worship until recently, but on April 10th 1972, the Gertrudis church was once more destroyed by fire during restoration work and the Del Haye organ was completely lost.

The Ibach organ which is placed in the Gertrudis church nowadays was delivered in January 1864 for the church of the Virgin Mary at Heavenly Remembrance at the Grote Markt in Bergen op Zoom by the German organ builders Rudolf and Richard Ibach. On It was a large organ, with 41 sounding registers, divided over three manuals and a pedal and it had a mechanical tracker action. In 1915, the organ was transformed into a smaller pneumatic organ of 25 registers. Its two manuals and the pedal retained much of the old pipe work. Then, in 1988, the organ was transferred to the Gertrudis church, the restoration of which was just completed and handed over to the Catholic church.

In 2001, a restoration plan was made and the Verschueren Orgelbouw Heythuysen BV was commissioned to carry out the restoration. The organ was completed again and solemnly inaugurated on Thursday, March 17, 2011. It has 42 stops spread over 4 divisions (3 manuals and a pedal). The disposition is almost identical to the original Ibach stoplist, composed of 2.417 pipes in total.