The 700-year-old St. Vitus Cathedral in Prague inaugurates a new organ

Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral has a new organ, giving the 700-year-old building a proper instrument for services and concerts

PRAGUE -- Prague’s St. Vitus Cathedral had its new organ inaugurated on Monday, giving the 700-year-old building, the largest in the Czech Republic, a proper instrument to accompany religious services and concerts.

Prague archbishop Stanislav Přibyl was set to bless the organ at a ceremony as part of a mass, with music played by the Czech Philharmonic and featuring “The Lužany Mass” by Antonín Dvořák and works by Georg Friedrich Händel, Camille Saint-Saëns and Joseph Haydn.

“St. Vitus Cathedral has gained a new voice,” Přibyl said in a statement. “A voice that will not speak with words but will still speak to the heart.”

A series of eight concerts to present the new instrument will follow in the days to come.

The instrument with four keyboards was build in the workshop of Gerhard Grenzing in El Papiol near the Spanish city of Barcelona.

The renowned German organ builder has constructed almost 140 organs and reconstructed more than 90 historical instruments in many countries.

Once completed in Spain, the new organ was disassembled and its parts were gradually transported to Prague on trucks.

It was reassembled at the cathedral a year ago, followed by the monthslong voicing and tuning of the pipes.

The organ contains some 6,000 pipes, ranging in length from 7 millimeters (0.28 inches) to over 7 meters (23 feet).

The previous organ was completed in the early 1930s, but turned out to be too small for its monumental space and frequently broke down. There was no interest in fixing the organ during World War II and more than 40 years of communist rule.

Efforts to build a new organ started some 14 years ago. A crowdfunding campaign launched in 2017 collected more than 135 million Czech koruna, or crowns, ($6.5 million) from thousands of donors.

The cathedral, a major tourist attraction, is linked to Czech statehood. It’s a place where the Czech kings were coronated and buried, and the Czech crown jewels are stored inside.

The funeral Mass for Václav Havel, the Czech Republic’s first president, was celebrated in the cathedral on Dec. 23, 2011.