May 14, 2013, El Papiol, Spain | The entire group of forty American pipe organ enthusiasts arrived in Spain today for the start of the Pipe Dreams Tour. We settled into our hotel in downtown Barcelona and visited Gerhard Grenzing Organbuilder.

The company was founded by Gerhard Grenzing in 1972 in El Papiol Barcelona to restore historic organs in Spain. Today he has twenty professionals working in the company doing some of the best work in Europe. While I was in Paris visiting with Daniel Roth, Mr. Roth commented that Mr. Grenzing is one of the finest craftsmen the organ community has in Europe.

Mr. Grenzing gave us a talk on organ building in Spain and some of the heart wrenching conditions he has found some of the instruments in churches in this country. He talked about an organbuilder from the 18th century I knew little about Jordi Bosch. What is amazing about this organbuilder is he seemed to be years ahead of his time. He slotted his organ pipes, developed the relief pallet, swell boxes and less taxing ways to pump organ. It is odd that Cavaille-Coll must have known these organs – did the great Cavaille-Coll copy his ideas from Jordi Bosch? We may never know. There are only 2 pipe organs of Jordi Bosch left. We will hear both. On Thursday we fly to Majorca to hear one of the organ of Jordi Bosch in Santanyi.

The Grenzing Staff could not have been nicer to our group. We all had dinner near our hotel and have to be on the bus at 7:30am to get to the Basilica of Monterrat and we end the day with a late tour of the Basilica de la Sagrada Familia.

New Pipe Organ for Paris-Radio built by the Grezning Organbuilding firm in Spain from Joe Vitacco on Vimeo.

This is a new pipe organ for Radio France setup in the factory in Spain for testing before delivery.