Dali's surreal organ finally to pipe from Catalan hilltop

VILAJUIGA, Spain, July 4 (AFP) - A giant wind-powered organ dreamt up by surreal Spaniard Salvador Dali is finally due to resonate down a Catalan hilltop one hundred years after the artist's birth.

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After extensive feasibility studies, engineers at the Ramon Llull University in Barcelona, northeastern Spain, have finally produced two prototypes. Wind-tunnel tests have proved positive.

"We're going to build the first-ever surrealist organ!" said Josep Puig, spokesman for the three local entrepreneurs who got one million euros (1.2 million dollars) together to breathe life into the 20-year-old project.

Dali, who died in 1989, first had the idea of a giant organ played by the wind at the end of the 1970s. He wanted the organ's music to be heard by the people of the region of Ampurdan when the fierce tramontane wind blows from the north. Locals say the wind can drive people mad.

"Dali was obsessed by the tramontane. But his original idea came up against technical problems, such as the wind's irregularity," Puig explained.

To get round this problem, a team of engineers perfected a revolutionary "wind accumulator": the wind blows into the organ via a huge funnel, after which it is channeled past a pressure regulator and blasted out of the instrument's 500 pipes.

As a result, the organist can play without worrying about the wind dropping as their crescendo approaches. The organ can also play itself at the whim of the tramontane, or use fans on calmer days. Either way, say the inventors, the sound is not going to be like any other organ you have heard.

Another challenge was finding somewhere to put the windy contraption, until the project's backers bought the ruined 10th-century castle of Quermanco in the village of Vilajuiga, near Dali's birthplace of Figueras.

When alive, the mustachioed surrealist had tried to buy this castle for his wife, Gala. His dream was to install a domesticated rhinoceros to guard the hilltop, with its serene views over the Mediterranean and the Pyrenees.

"Dali loved the castle because of the magnificent sunsets and because it is associated with legends of witches and hidden treasure," said Puig.

The hilltop is, of course, also rather windy.

The fort was used as an ammunition dump by Napoleon's troops, who blew it up in 1814. Restoration work is due to start there by September, with a cultural centre dedicated to the people of Ampurdan planned alongside the organ.

The open-air pipes will be built of robust materials to survive the weather and passing birds. It will be built by Albert Blancafort, a violin maker with a sideline in church music, who has already built the organs of the famous Catalan abbey of Montserrat.

German organist Wolfgang Seifen is currently working on specially composed scores for the tramontana device.

Seifen is set to play the inaugural concert on September 16, 2004, by which time those behind the scheme promise to have found the requisite domesticated rhinoceros.

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