Details

The organ has a full chromatic range, allowing it to play a large and varied repertoire very well. Indeed, Wagner's opera music sounds wonderful here, but the organ also plays Louis Armstrong, George Gershwin, tangos, shimmies, foxtrots, revues, and sentimental waltzes by Johann Sebastian Strauss, for example. Other well-known composers such as Luigi Denza (author of the famous Neapolitan love song 'Funiculi Funicula'), Willy Derby, Harry Warren, Nacio Herb Brown (composer of 'Singin' in the Rain') and Vincent Youmans (who wrote the musical from which the famous foxtrot 'Tea for Two' originated) are also represented in the available repertoire.

The organ is called 'the Double Ruth' because of the presence of the extra (double) case. For many years, the organ played at colourful fairs, until this entertainment was banned by the German occupiers in 1942. Out of necessity, everything was stored on the premises of the Hommerson firm, which was the owner of this organ at the time. A grenade attack later took place on these premises, which fortunately spared the organ, but severely damaged a chest of organ books. Immediately after the end of the war, to the delight of many people, the Double Ruth went back to the carnival. It also played in 1948 during the inauguration of Queen Juliana in Amsterdam. A book of patriotic songs was made especially for the organ at that time.