When I Read That The Oldest Surviving Pipe

 organ had been  partly restored to playable condition,  I had to find a recording of it.   

It's disappointingly short but it was the longest continuous recording I've found yet.    It is something of a revelation as to how smoothly an organ with sliders instead of keys could be played and the sound of it,  I believe in Pythagorean tuning, is convincingly medieval.    This video shows the sliders being played

After 800 years of silence, a pipe organ that researchers say is the oldest in the Christian world roared back to life Sept. 9, its ancient sound echoing through a monastery in Jerusalem's Old City.

Composed of original pipes from the 11th century, the instrument emitted a full, hearty sound as musician David Catalunya played a liturgical chant called "Benedicamus Domino Flos Filius." The swell of music inside St. Saviour's Monastery mingled with church bells tolling in the distance.

Before unveiling the instrument Sept. 8, Catalunya told a news conference that attendees were witnessing a grand development in the history of music.

"This organ was buried with the hope that one day it would play again," he said. "And the day has arrived, nearly eight centuries later."

From now on, the organ will be housed at the Terra Sancta Museum in Jerusalem's Old City — just miles from the Bethlehem church where it originally sounded.

Researchers believe the Crusaders brought the organ to Bethlehem, the birthplace of Jesus, in the 11th century during their period of rule over Jerusalem. After a century of use, the Crusaders buried it to protect it from invading Muslim armies.

There it stayed until 1906, when workers building a Franciscan hospice for pilgrims in Bethlehem discovered it in an ancient cemetery.

Once full excavations were conducted, archaeologists had uncovered 222 bronze pipes, a set of bells and other objects hidden by the Crusaders.

I'm looking forward to hearing more of it in the future and imagine it will be copied in modern versions.   I would be curious to know more about the playing technique as people have practical experience on it.  I'm not aware of anyone else playing organs with sliders but, then, I haven't exactly kept up with current medieval performance practice.   It's largely a matter of informed guessing mixed with artistic sensibility,  it's not possible to really restore the mindset that those who created that music and heard it back then with any reliability but what we hear can be a genuine musical experience.