On National Organ Day 2026, city organist Gerben Budding will perform music from the Spaanderman archive.
Since 2024, St. John’s has been home to a beautiful pressure-wind harmonium. One of the people involved with the instrument, restorer Arie Schüller, turned out to possess a significant portion of the sheet music collection belonging to former St. John’s organist J.H.B. Spaanderman (1864–1943). He has donated this collection to St. John’s so that the music can be archived and digitized.
The library contains many presentation copies of compositions by contemporaries of organist Spaanderman, such as the Dutch composers De Lange and Hendriks. It also includes a large collection of 19th-century German and French music, as well as English arrangements of orchestral music and operas, including works by Richard Wagner.
The sheet music, of course, includes stop listings for the organ at St. John’s Cathedral as it was at that time. This provides insight into how the organ was used back then. The presence of stop markings also serves as an indication of whether the music was actually performed.
On some books, we find both the name of Spaanderman and that of his successor, De Man. It is therefore possible that the sheet music was kept with the organ at St. John’s Cathedral for many years and was used primarily there.