The organ of San Bartolo Yautepec is a petite version of a larger 19th -century Oaxaca-style organ. It was built of cedar, impervious to woodworm, so the neoclassical decorative carvings are in excellent condition. The carved lambrequin below the keyboard is unusually fine. The stop action reveals slider tabs protruding from the sides of the case, more typical of a table than a stationary organ (although similar to Ocotepec). The key action is suspended with a very short roller board and trackers. An archive reference cites an organist in 1707 who would have played an earlier organ, perhaps dating from the 17th century. An inventory of church furnishings in 1803 cites a small (the current) organ, so it would have been built before that date. The organ’s original location was probably on the left side of the choir loft, indicated by a rectangular cut at the base of the chest for the wind trunk; the bellows would have been on a table to the left. It now stands in the right hand corner of the loft.  

Three sets of bellows piled up on a table next to the organ may help explain its history. The first set, two ribbed wedge bellows, were raised with handles attached to the top board and would have sat on a table behind a previous table organ. This organ would have been used during most of the 18th century and played by Domingo Flores either from the choir loft or the church below. The second set, leather wedge bellows, were operated by long levers and was positioned on the existing table or one similar beside the current organ. These bellows were probably used throughout the 19th century. The last bellows, of the feeder-reservoir type, would have been situated on the floor and used in the late 19th–early 20th century. Sometime later, one of the two reservoir bellows was detached and repositioned inside the case. A pedal protruded from a rectangular cut near the floor, which the organist could pump to operate it. The organ case was also cut above the central tower, so that a door controlled by a rope and pulley could be opened and shut to provide extra space for the tallest pipes.

The case of the original table organ must have deteriorated, because a new, larger case (that of the current organ) was built which incorporated the old windchest. This explains the stop action with slider tabs on the sides. The chest was moved from its previous position under the keyboard to above it. (The chest of the original Matatlán table organ was similarly repurposed for a new larger case, but was left in its original position below the keyboard.)  The Yautepec windchest reveals its 18th –century origin by the repetition of the previous octave of the highest register and its break at b/c’ rather than c’/c#’.  

In 2001 during our first inspection of the organ, we noticed a group of old band instruments pushed under a table next to the organ. They turned out to have been imported from France in the 19th century. The bellows were stacked on top of the table, while two wooden trunks sat on a second table next to it. Upon opening the trunks, we were amazed to find in one of them a treasure trove of early 18th century books of Gregorian chant.  Included among the books was the modest workbook of the musician Domingo Flores, native of Yautepec, who noted the polyphonic choral music he heard and possibly composed while working in the nearby evangelizing center of Santo Domingo Nejapa. The transcriptions of the music in his notebook, "El Cuaderno de Domingo Flores", by the musicologist Aurelio Tello, were published in 2023 by the Alfredo Harp Helú Oaxaca Foundation. Follow the link to read the description of the discovery (pp. 9-11) and the scores and texts of the pages transcribed from the Notebook. You may also hear selections of the music performed during the IOHIO Organ Festivals in 2009 and 2010. The community of San Bartolo Yautepec is one of the few in Oaxaca to have proof of its rich musical culture over the course of nearly three centuries.