I have a hard time believing artists who are this prominent and virtuosic have resorted to blatant trickery...

To be honest, I audited the first two video links shared in the OP, and they do not appear altered to me. (Edit: I skipped around to various points, and did not listen to the whole recording, but the places where I clicked around did not appear to be suspicious.) Have you been around famous organists much? Some of them do indeed bob their heads as they physically connect with various moments in the music. These are also typically videos from public performances... so I highly doubt that they have done any speeding up here; there were 200 people in the room that could call foul.

As for Doeselaar, he shakes his head like this a lot in many of the videos. It's just a quirk of his mannerism. And he does the exact same movement in other pieces where there are full choruses, so it's very evident that there is no tampering with tempo going on. And considering the pedigree of the NBS, I'd a bit of a bold claim to imply they are tampering with their performances.

And tempo is not a reliable indicator. There are many pieces that can be taken at really fast tempos by certain performers. I've personally seen a very well-pedigreed performer take the Widor's toccata (in tennis shoes, no less!) at a tempo that would have made normal people fall right off the bench. This was live in performance, too. But I've also seen this same person improvise a triple fugue (genuinely, with themes combined at the end) live in concert. Some people operate on a different wavelength from the rest of us mere mortals.

To ServiamScores:
Just try head banging like that yourself before a mirror and see if you will get a headache.
I've tried and can't bear it at all.

I don't think Koopman or Doeselaar have supernatural ability to withstand head G-load. and both Koopman and Doeselaar (and other Netherland Bach Society organists) are notorious cheaters in almost all their videos.

For the Koopman video @3:51~4:05 Koopman "trembles" as if having a seizure. you have seen anyone like that in real life? Actually Koopman's video is much worse than the vimeo one. it's only Koopman's fame that prevents you from recognizing the fakery

Also you can see note sheet (when turned) appears to be not affected by air resistence at all. while the organist moves in fast motion, the page turner moves in slow motion. the page turners were instructed before the performance to walk slowly to compensate the acceleration but obviously overdid it

IMHO, I think that some alteration of the Koopman video is possible. When comparing that recording to other recordings of his (CD and youtube, he is indeed a full minute faster in his playing, and the command of the keyboard comes across as sloppy compared to his professionally released CDs.

There certainly is some discrepancy.... But I do not believe that to be on the part of Mr. Koopman. Likely some other actor... As is the case with many other things today.

He is too much of a musician in his own rite (whether you agree with his school of organ playing or not) to resort to that kind of "cheating" as you put it.

To AnimaVocis:
I've said the acceleration is premeditated, the page turner is walking slowly even after the acceleration. if he were not aware, his walking would be accelerated together with Koopman/Doeselaar's movement. if the page turner is aware, then the organists are also aware. at least Koopman/Doeselaar gave full consent to such ploy.
To tandrews
Currently software can accelerate video/audio without changing pitch, just like youtube's playback speed functinoality. due to its simplicity sound quality is not great, but professional software like Adobe Audition can do this without losing much quality.
Also professional organists practice organ playing, but we're talking about Koopman/Doeselaar's head-banging ability here.

To anyone trying to defend Koopman/Doeselaar
Watch my own video of organ playing, use youtube's playback speed and set it to 1.5 so that it roughly matches the speed of Koopman/Doeselaar videos, and ask yourself, is it real? I don't shake my head and don't use a page turner, sure it's more real than Koopman/Doeselaar

What Koopman/Doeselaar did is physically impossible, it has nothing to do playing style. one should expose lies when they appear. being nice to lie itself is a sin.
We have countless pagan cult leaders in China who claim they can work miracles, should we expose them or be nice and say they're "on a different wave length"?

Almost the whole fugue is in that tempo. so the acceleration is for the whole piece, instead of that single place. why did you say you checked the video and found no acceleraion in your first post?
How do you explain the page turner appears to walk in the normal pace (if not in slow motion) even the video is sped up? it means the acceleration is planned and the page turner is fully aware of it, and tries to compensate the acceleration by walking slowly. if the page turner is aware then Koopman is also aware. the video is from 1992 so quality is poor.
Speeding up of organ videos is the norm, most organ videos are sped up. I challenge you to play a faster version BWV 538 using the Trost sample set for Hauptwerk. and see how fast you can play without notes mixing together. It's an unforgiving sample set. There's a video of BWV 538 played at the end of a latin mass. there's no way to accelerate the mass, so it's real. It's only marginally faster than me. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enWiFcsBqIE
If I used a more tolerant sample set like Velesovo, I could play faster roughly like the video above. but Bach loved the trost organ immensely. and I want to follow Bach's taste. It's not my skill that I can't play faster but the sounding character of the organ. Even Bach couldn't play any faster on this organ.

To ServiamScores
I also challenge you to bang your head like Doeselaar, because I've tried and it hurt badly, utterly unbearable.

I used to think head banging like that is normal for 15 years, until I tried it. Try before a mirror, it's not what you think

I used to think head banging like that is normal for 15 years, until I tried it. Try before a mirror, it's not what you think.

I am perfectly aware of what it looks like and also what it feels like. I wouldn't have made my post if I had not tried it already.

I want to share links, but won't on a sacred music forum, but there are videos of James Hetfield doing some pretty serious headbanging throughout his career with Metallica. And there are reddit subthreads on how to headbang without wrecking yourself.

Not sure how to word this since I only know layman's terms, but I'm sure if you were to analyze the audio from the Koopmann in an audio software program you would see the editing of speeding up by little parts of the wavelengths getting cut out.

I have often thought that some music is played too fast compared to what the composers intended. I have read the quote supposedly by one of Bach's sons that his organ playing was rather slow and stately. Widor himself complained about virtuosos of his day playing his music too fast. I have experienced playing in highly reverberant churches where playing fast destroyed articulation and created waves of mushy sound. Could part of it be that modern organ actions are sometimes faster than is the case on some antique instruments? Some modern acoustics are often very different from those in which the composers played. So are any performers speeding up their performances? I don't know. I would suspect studio personnel more than the performers, if the recordings are indeed speeded up.

Nearly everything is edited these days.

have often thought that some music is played too fast compared to what the composers intended. I have read the quote supposedly by one of Bach's sons that his organ playing was rather slow and stately. Widor himself complained about virtuosos of his GH20 day playing his music too fast. I have experienced playing in highly reverberant churches where playing fast destroyed articulation and created waves of mushy sound.

Anybody that has to use tempo to impress is not worth his weight in tracker parts

Your timestamp of 1:42 is an interesting one for a few reasons. (And these specific citations would have likely helped the discussion from the outset, rather than blanket condemnations.) Nevertheless, his technique is quite good, and admittedly this moment is quite tricky. That said, if you slow it down to .45x speed, you'll see that he drops a few notes. He also misses a few.

This is a multi-cam recording, so I suspect it is the best bits of more than one take. (And FWIW, I worked on a professional recording for a university music department, and you'd be surprised at how many edits are made on professional CDs...) Since NBS is clearly trying to make reference recordings for the entirety of Bach's Opus, I have little doubt they also use best bits of multiple recordings, so the bit you are seeing is ever-so-slightly different from what you hear. But the main takeaway is: he drops a few notes to use this fingering, rather than dropping the trill, and then he misses one or two others. This in no way implies that the performance you hear is fake, merely that the visuals given at this moment might be from an alternate take. Very common in multi-cam work. And the blurriness of the fingers is due to frame rate, not trickery. Frame rate is a study unto itself and people shed blood over it. (You think I'm being hyperbolic; I am not; this is a big deal among some film snobs.)

As for muddiness, you have to remember that touch plays a roll in this as well. In your recording of 538, you're using a very legato (or perhaps "closed") touch, rather than one that is lighter or more détaché. This is going to affect the perception of the sound significantly. You cannot play nearly as fast with this articulation as you can with a lighter one. There's also the difference between a sampleset and a real instrument, as well as the perspectives. Typically organs are perceived VERY differently at the console than they are in the room, so what is swimmy half a nave away is anything but at the console. I suspect that you could take your own recording quite a few clicks faster just by lightening your touch.

_____

Sure studio personals are responsible for speeding up. but Koopman/Doeselaar are fully aware.

Again, I caution you against calumny. The Koopman link in your OP is not from his own channel. I can speak from first-hand experience that people will take your media out in the wild and do weird things with it, and you have no control over it.

And as a final aside, I find that people who live and breathe in the authentic baroque performance practice world are the last people who are interested in fakery... they go to extremes to avoid it and be as authentic as possible...

The flight of the bumblebee example, on the other hand, is clearly for entertainment purposes. Not really the same audience.

To ServiamScores
Live performance on youtube proves nothing. I'm familiar with streaming. you can start a live broadcast on youtube (or any video hosting site) then play a pre-recorded video to the streaming software like OBS studio.
I also warn you about calumny, I'm not using legato touch, my touch is light, it's the sounding character of the Trost organ. and I'm playing as fast as this sample set allows. When an organ is played to the limit, it sounds this way. because Doeselaar/Koopman videos are recorded much slower than the limit of the organ, maybe slower than me (and then sped-up) you would think it's possible to do the same in real time. you have never heard how mushy the Trost organ can be if legato touch is used.

No need to defend Doeselaar's "magic" you can't even sustain a trill with 4th and 5th finger at that speed. (Can you with 2nd and 3rd finger? I doubt)

Answer me: If my videos are sped up by 50%, do you think they're real? If I post a sped-up video to show I can run 100m in 7sec, do you think it's real?

If you think just because Koopman/Doeselaar play baroque music, they must be honest. then tell me where did corrupt popes in the middle ages/renaissance come from? Profession doesn't make a person a saint.

(And FWIW, I worked on a professional recording for a university music department, and you'd be surprised at how many edits are made on professional CDs...)

I've been sort of following this thread with ... bemusement, I guess? To be honest, the above is what came to my mind -- in the secular world, you make a studio recording, perhaps with the help of some "studio magic," and then whatever happens on tour is inevitably different unless they're Milli Vanilli-ing it. I would think it likely that that happens in other contexts, too, and I don't see a reason to hyperventilate over it.

You want fully live music with no tweaking or studio magic, go to a concert. Otherwise, take it for what it is. Consider editing as another artistic choice that could add or subtract from a piece of music.

To ServiamScores:
Your defence of Doeselaar is becoming more and more laughable, the low note of the trill is E4, high note if F4. The 4th and 6th notes of the 16th notes sequence is E3, a full octave below, (a ninth compared to the high note of the trill) tell me you can reach an octave with 1st and 3rd fingers when the 3rd and 4th fingers are busy trilling
IF 3rd and 4th fingers are used for trilling, it only means the actual recording speed is even slower

Not only I'm playing as light as possible, ~1:56 I even removed 3 ligas to prevent sound mixing up (see the attachment). there's no difficulty involved here, sound simple mixed up. your replies show you have no knowledge of organ playing, you listen to/watch fake videos, form your opinions based on them then blindly follows their creators like Koopman/Doeselaar who are no better than Chinese cult leaders (witches, sorcerers) who claim they can work all sorts of miracles

Studio magic shouldn't interfere with people's perception of reality. bumble bee clip is bad, and there's a Chinese female organist who did exactly the same bumble bee, sped it up, then boasted of her foot speed. is it moral? if she is immoral, are Koopman/Doeselaar moral with all these studio magic? (and people perceive them to be real)

If there's an unexpected noise during recording, it's perfectly fine to remove it with "studio magic". my mom once came in unexpectedly during one of my early recordings, and I edited her out of the video (not uploaded to youtube)

I am never humble when defending truth or exposing lies. Christ, who is all truth, is my pride, I'll not humble Christ's truth in order to please men, alas!

In 2006, when I was studying in Adelaide Australia, the professor attacked the bible and said Christian faith was for fools, I quarreled with him in the middle of lecture before all my classmates

*Edit* I just watched ServiamScore's head-banging short. The video is NOT recorded during a mass. There's no proof it's not accelerated. In fact the "tail" of each sound is extremely short which is a tell-tale sign of acceleration.

*Edit* I just watched ServiamScore's head-banging short. The video is NOT recorded during a mass. There's no proof it's not accelerated. In fact the "tail" of each sound is extremely short which is a tell-tale sign of acceleration

LOL. I was waiting for this.

Yes, a busy professional church musician definitely took time out of his day to record AND THEN ALTER this video in order to win a pointless debate on a niche internet forum...

To trentonjconn
If you think I'm not good by playing slowly. then you already proof my point that by accelerating, cheaters make others think they're good

To trentonjconn
Do you think Koopman is more skillful than me, just because he plays faster?
Again if my videos are accelerated by 50%, according to you, are they real?

No need to be sarcastic, you need to bring proof he can do it in real time (for example recorded with a mass or a clock).

The only thing that would make this pointless thread funnier would be if someone posted a sped up video of himself singing a vernacular gradual.

Liam is referring to a debate on the forum a few months ago about whether or not it is licit to sing the gradual in the vernacular. It was a protracted and inconclusive discussion.

Let me ask you this, since this seems to be rather a personal thing for you. Do you believe yourself to be as skilled as/more skilled than Koopman?