Hendrik Niehoff

Hendrik Niehoff (also Heinrich; 1495 – c. 1561) was a Dutch pipe organ builder, who learned with noted builder, Jan van Covelen (c. 1470-1532). According to Liuwe Tamminga, Niehoff was born in Leeuwarden, the capital of Province Friesland. (Tamminga has been organist since the 1980s on the ancient organ {1471-75} of Lorenzo da Prato at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna and also was born in a nearby Friesland village.) Following Jan van Covelen's death in 1532, Hendrik Niehoff established his shop in 's-Hertogenbosch to continue building new and upgrading organs throughout the Netherlands and in major Hanseatic cities and, thus, can be considered the most significant organbuilder in northwestern Europe in the middle third of the 16th century due both to the fabulous visual architectural quality of the cases and the exquisite sounds these instruments make for the eye and ear.

The pipes in Niehoff's organs are remarkable in that they use an alloy of over 98% lead, with only about 1.3% tin and minimal amounts of antimony, copper and bismuth - the latter probably due to the not highly refined ores available to the builders of that time. (The use of lead plate to make organ pipes probably stems from its use to fabricate the roofs of European churches of the time.) Pipes made of this alloy are noted for producing sounds with the "vocale" characteristic of the organs of the high Renaissance/early Baroque period. To enhance their appearance, the façade pipes usually were covered with thin, bright tin foil that was held to the underlying lead pipe with a glue made of duck egg white.

American organbuilder John Brombaugh (b. 1937, retired 2005) used several surviving examples of pipes from the 1539 Schoonhoven Niehoff organ given to him in 1971 by Dr. Maarten A. Vente as models for many instruments his firm made after their first new examples were made and used in the organ at Central Lutheran Church, Eugene, Oregon, that was dedicated in 1976. (Respected Belgian organologist, Koos van der Linde, disputes Vente's assertion that Niehoff made Brombaugh's sample Dutch pipes; he contends they were made by the hand of Peter Janz. de Swart, who built the Leiden Hoogslandskerk organ ca. 1565. Could de Swart have been an apprentice with Niehoff when the Schoonhoven pipes were being made?) This instrument also uses vertical pallets in its Ruckpositive windchest, a method that was normal in Niehoff's organs but seldom found anytime since. It gives a remarkable light touch to the keys - like a harpsichord.