14th International Organ Festival will take place in Switzerland September 21-25

Bill Halsey was born in Seattle, where he studied piano and composition from an early age. He fell in love with the organ after hearing a Corrette suite played on the Montreal Beckerath, and began organ lessons in his teens. While a student at the Sorbonne, he had the good fortune to gain access to the two-manual unmodified tracker-action Cavaillé-Coll organ at Saint Bernard de la Chapelle, in a northern arrondissement of Paris. This fueled his interest in historic organs, and after spending fifteen years serving in organist positions at St. John Cantius, St. Peter Claver, Church of the Assumption, and the Basilica of Our Lady of Perpetual Help, all in Brooklyn, New York, he took a permanent leave of absence to explore historic organs, first in France, and later in Italy.

The 14th Toulouse International Organ Festival (known as Toulouse les orgues) took place October 8–18, 2009 in Toulouse, France and the Midi-Pyrénées region. Concerts honored the anniversaries of Handel, Haydn, and Louis Braille (1809–1852). Performers included Elisabeth Amalric, Stéphane Bois, Gilbert Vergé-Borderolle, Yasuko-Uyama Bouvard, Anne-Gaëlle Chanon, Pieter-Jelle De Boer, Matthieu De Miguel, Tania Dovgal, Jean-Baptiste Dupont, Pierre Farago, Bernard Foccroulle, Jan Willem Jansen, Maïko Kato, Adam Kecskès, Rudolf Kelber, Eric Lebrun, Mathias Lecomte, Philippe Lefèbvre, Marie-Ange Leurent, François Marchal, Jean-Baptiste Monnot, Yves Rechsteiner, Benjamin Righetti, Juan de la Rubia Romero, William Whitehead, and others. The festival is also presenting concerts covering the entire canon of Bach’s organ works, on Sundays at 4 pm at the Musée des Augustins in Toulouse. The series began on September 13 and continues through June 2010. (For information:
www.toulouse-les-orgues.org.)
I had spent time visiting the historic organs of Italy, and felt the need to reconnect with my first love, French organs, both Classic (that is, pre-Revolution) and Romantic, and the annual organ festival of Toulouse-les-orgues seemed a good place to do it. Two years ago, my wife and I went to part of the festival and then spent the rest of October going from one French town to another throughout south central France, visiting different organs and being inspired by the quality of the instruments and the hospitality of the organists.

About Toulouse
Toulouse seemed both more beautiful and more foreign than I remembered, with its monumental rose-colored brick buildings spread out on the banks of the Garonne. After living in Italy, I found French formality strange but charming, almost quaint.
There is something different about the churches in Toulouse—they have been described as church fortresses, with the explanation that one of the first Crusades was against the Cathar heresy, in some ways a precursor of Calvinism, which was centered in the southwest of France, Toulouse and Albi especially. These immense and stark Gothic edifices contain a number of fine Romantic organs, their dark walnut cases and dull metal pipes looming from either the choir loft in back or sometimes above and to one side of the altar. Many were built by two nineteenth-century firms from the region, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, from Gaillac, a half-hour train ride outside of Toulouse, and the Pugets, who continued the family business into the modern era, in Toulouse itself.
There are also churches from the classical period, and in one of these, St. Pierre-les-Chartreux, is a fine Micot organ, from the end of the 18th century, barely pre-Revolutionary. One of the most impressive sites in Toulouse, oddly enough, doesn’t even have an organ—the Gothic church Les Jacobins, where St. Thomas Aquinas is buried.

Day one
Our first event was a series of three student concerts at Saint-Pierre les Chartreux, Saint-Nicolas, and the Institut Catholique’s modern Bonfils organ. The best concert was the one at Saint-Nicolas, on a really interesting transitional 1844 Daublaine et Callinet, by Matthieu de Miguel, an organist with a bright future ahead of him. I especially liked his rendering of the Intermezzo from Widor’s Sixth Symphony.
That day, in addition to the memorial concert for the fall of the Berlin Wall, which we didn’t attend, there were two concerts on the recently restored Puget (1888) at Notre-Dame la Dalbade, with three manuals, 50 stops, and two expression pedals, this last very unusual for organs outside of Paris. In the afternoon was a choral concert by the Maîtrise du conservatoire de Toulouse, directed by Mark Opstad and accompanied by William Whitehead, and in the evening an organ recital by Philippe Lefèbvre.
The Maîtrise is a chorus of children, mostly girls, and their program consisted of four Misse Breves, by Delibes, Fauré, Caplet, and Leighton, done in chronological order. The Delibes (1875) was a revelation, full of dramatic, almost operatic, contrasts. The Fauré is a minor work, and the Caplet and Leighton had interesting moments but did not seem like very distinguished pieces. The children were very well trained, but although it was possible to admire their skill in the more contemporary pieces, they were really at their best in the Delibes, where the quasi-operatic nature of the vocal writing allowed their resonance to blossom. William Whitehead’s accompaniment was masterful—gently supportive for the kids and making exuberant full use of the organ on the codas.
The evening concert by Philippe Lefèbvre, one of the three titulaires of Notre Dame de Paris, was excellent. He started with Franck’s Trois Pièces pour le Grand Orgue, of which the best was the first, the Fantaisie en la, where he showed off the wonderful power of the organ’s monumental reeds. He then played the Choral from Vierne’s Symphony No. 2, Boëllmann’s Suite Gothique, and Duruflé’s Prélude et fugue sur le nom d’Alain, concluding with a vast improvisation. Lefèbvre made expert use of the organ’s tone colors and the (two) swell pedals, but I wish he had played more music, like Widor or Guilmant, that was really designed for such a grand instrument.

About the festival
Toulouse-les-orgues offers a wide variety of events, from formal evening concerts to more relaxed afternoon events and lunchtime concerts, two of which I attended. The first, on October 13, was by William Whitehead on the Cavaillé-Coll at Saint-Sernin entitled “Bayreuth Aftershock!” and the theme was Wagner’s influence on French organ music. Whitehead played two transcriptions by George Bennett of selections from Parsifal, a Scherzo by Edward Bairstow, and two pieces by César Franck. His playing was wonderful, but the Wagner seemed thin without the orchestra. Even a Cavaillé-Coll organ is no substitute for a Wagner orchestra!
The other noon concert I attended, also at Saint-Sernin on October 16, was all improvisations, played by Juan de la Rubia Romero: first, chorale variations in the style of Bach, then a fantasy in the style of Mahler, and finally chorale variations done in a modern style. These improvisations seemed weak, especially considering Romero had the leisure to plan them; they weren’t true improvisations in the Franz Liszt sense, where the artist is given a subject from the audience and has no time to prepare beforehand.
The Toulouse festival is also known for offbeat concerts that pair the organ with dancers, brass ensembles, spoken word, etc. I saw two of these on October 11: an organ suite with narration, written for children, entitled Parade of Animals, and inspired by Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, and a concert of works for organ and instruments, with many either Toulouse or world premières. The Parade of Animals, by Iain Farrington, played at Saint-Sernin by William Whitehead, with spoken verses about different animals, followed by musical portraits that drew on the organ’s vast tonal repertoire, was well done; the children present certainly seemed to eat it up. The other concert’s new pieces seemed a little dated—surely this type of modernist writing, the Nadia Boulanger plus a little Stravinsky and atonalism school, is passé by now?

Events outside Toulouse
Toulouse les orgues festival also always has several “Journées-région,” excursions by bus to various sites near Toulouse. I joined one to the Frontonnais, with visits to Verdun-sur-Garonne (Lépine organ, 1767), Fronton (B. Feuga organ, 1852), Vallemur-sur-Tarn (Maurice Puget organ, 1960), and Moissac (Cavaillé-Coll, 1864). The most interesting was the Feuga—the only Feuga organ apparently still playable. It is in need of restoration, and there was a group from the community, the “friends of the organ,” who have been trying to raise money to restore the instrument and wanted to use the event to evaluate the state of the organ and get advice from Jan Willem Jansen, the festival director, whose baroque-style improvisations on an organ he had never seen were brilliant. The organ obviously did have major problems; one of the front pipes had even fallen out of the case—luckily, no one had been standing underneath at the time! But the core of it seemed very solid, with nice flutes, a stentorian trumpet, and an oboe full of plangency and character.
The Lépine organ seemed a little tinny. Benjamin Righetti played pieces by Du Mage and a sonata by Mozart. The Du Mage was nice enough if a little perfunctory; the Mozart worked fairly well. It’s always a challenge that devotees of the French Classic organs face, to prove that this instrument can do justice to other music besides French Classic music. The modern Puget just didn’t seem like a very good instrument. The Cavaillé-Coll in the Moissac monastery church was wonderful, powerful, and somber by turns, and the building itself—even in a region of wonderful churches—was amazing.
The concert, however, suffered from being entirely composed of lugubrious music and also from the numerous program changes announced by Jansen, who wasn’t audible past the first few rows of seats. The selections were organ solos and songs for mezzo-soprano and organ, including some of Mussorgsky’s Songs and Dances of Death. The organist was Matthieu de Miguel, and Marylin Revel was the vocal soloist. De Miguel, who had been so excellent at St. Nicolas, didn’t seem to have properly prepared the music. Everything sounded underrehearsed.
On the way to these events, we had a wine tasting with snacks at Chateau Caze, in Villaudric, followed by a recital of pieces for soprano, French horn and piano, and then an excellent lunch of regional specialties at Fronton. On the whole, the day was disappointing; too many of these concerts seemed less than well prepared, and the festival’s concerts of Romantic and modern repertoire contained too much music in minor keys that didn’t really seem to go anywhere.

Other notable concerts
Thursday I went to the all-Schütz concert of the Sacqueboutiers, a pioneering early music group. The second half of this concert was much more interesting than the first, especially Fili mi Absalon, sung ringingly by Renaud Delaigue to bring the house down, and then Schütz’s masterwork, Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, which was splendidly done.
On Friday, the grand finale was the third event of the day, an evening Ciné-concert, with Jean-Baptiste Dupont at Saint-Sernin accompanying Jacques Feyder’s Visages d’enfants, a silent film from 1923–25. The film was wonderful, with beautiful outdoor shots of the Swiss Alps and excellent child actors. Dupont’s work at the organ was adequate without being inspired.

Summing up
Overall, I enjoyed the festival without thinking it really lived up to its promise. There were a number of problems, some small and some big, with the way the festival is run, the level of preparation of the artists, and probably also with the way they are selected. One minor quibble I have is the lack of information in the programs about the organs themselves, such as the builder and date of construction. This information, including complete stoplists, is fortunately available on their website, <toulouse-les-orgues.org>, under the rubric “patrimoine,” but concert programs still should include a minimal description of the organ, along with information about the music and the performers.
A bigger issue is the lack of commitment to the French Romantic organ repertoire. They do include, obviously, many works from the nineteenth- and twentieth-century organ tradition, but without much sense of context, of purpose, or of exploration. This year, the festival was severely curtailed because of their Bach cycle. But even so, it seems a shame, given that most of Toulouse’s historic instruments are from the nineteenth century, that there weren’t at least one or two concerts devoted to an in-depth look at one of that period’s composers. After all, even with the attention paid to Bach, they still managed to devote an entire concert to Schütz.
Widor and Guilmant, in particular, are fundamental to the French organ repertoire. The sonatas of Guilmant would make a fascinating cycle. They show an evolution from his early neo-classical work to the impressionism of the final sonatas, and as the hinge between early and late sonatas there is the monumental Fifth Sonata with its searing Romanticism, the skillful but never academic fugues, and the final explosion of the chorale, fugue and variations on “Ein Feste Burg.”
A real presentation of French organ romanticism—something the festival should aim for each and every year—would also include the precursors and the earlier nineteenth century, namely Rossini, Donizetti, and Meyerbeer. These three opera composers made Paris their home in the 1830s and ’40s, and created works that are essentially French. They, along with Franz Liszt, who lived in Paris and wrote his “Ad nos” based on Meyerbeer’s theme for Le Prophète, and the native French composers active at around the same time, such as Daniel François Esprit Auber and Adolphe Adam, established the foundation for the French musical culture that evolved toward the end of the century.
The Toulouse organ festival’s new-music programming also seems not as interesting as it could be. Even if a work is a première, that doesn’t by itself make it interesting and important; the new pieces programmed this year seemed already dated. One of the best “new music” events at the festival was one that, probably, the festival took least seriously—the Parade of Animals. Some of the pieces were really special, like low hums on the organ to evoke the blue whale. That piece sticks in my mind, which is really the fundamental test of new music—would you ever want to hear it again?
The quality of the concerts was also very uneven. Too many of them were obviously underrehearsed and slapdash, and this was especially true for the Romantic repertoire. In short, this festival, which has the potential to be a wonderful celebration of the history of French music, seems to almost shy away from the core of the repertoire. People don’t come to Toulouse-les-orgues for Bach cycles or the type of Baroque or Renaissance concert you can hear—often done better—in New York or Boston. They come for the core French Romantic and modern repertoire—and this includes all the wonderful works written in France by foreigners, like Rossini’s Masses and his other liturgical music—done in spaces and on instruments that really are hardly to be found outside of France. 

A 19th-century Swiss organ gazetteer

Aldo Baggia is retired Chairman of the Department of Modern Languages at Phillips Exeter Academy, Exeter, New Hampshire. He holds a bachelor's degree from Iona College, an M.A. from Middlebury College, and has completed graduate work at Laval and Duke universities. He has pursued postgraduate studies in France, Germany, Austria and Spain, and has traveled extensively in Europe. He has written numerous opera reviews for Opera Review, Opera, Opera News, Orpheus, and Monsalavat, and has written articles and reviews for The Diapason.

George Sand, one of the most prolific French writers in the 19th century, toured Switzerland in the company of Franz Liszt in 1836. She described their visit to the Cathedral in Fribourg in her "Lettres d'un Voyageur."1 Sand begins by writing that they had entered in order to hear the "most beautiful organ that had been built up to that point."2 She describes the magical impression that this instrument had on Liszt. Aloys Mooser, the builder, was apparently there when she and Liszt entered, and yet he kept his distance and observed everything with a somber and distrusting look. The organist of the Cathedral, who is not mentioned by name but who undoubtedly must have been Jacques Vogt, titulaire at the time, gave an example of what in French is referred to as the orage or storm. Sand describes his using his feet and hands, his elbow, his fist and she believed even his knees to give the impression of a complete storm: i.e., rain, wind, hail, distant shouts, dogs in distress, the pleading of a traveler, disaster in the chalet, the whimpering of frightened children, the ringing of the bells of lost cows, the roar of lightning, the buckling of the pine trees and finally the devastation of potatoes.3

She goes on to indicate the marvelous feeling she had when the great Liszt put his hands on the manuals and played a fragment of Mozart's "Dies Irae." It was at this point that they understood the superiority of this organ to all the others they had heard. They had earlier gone to Bulle, a town between Fribourg and Gruyere, to hear the organ of St. Pierre-aux-Liens, an instrument also built by Mooser. They were charmed by its sounds, but found the organ at Fribourg to be an improvement and to have unique qualities. Sand had the feeling that Liszt was transfixed in some sort of mystical and religious sadness that made the words "quantus tremor" stand out.4

This masterpiece of organ building is still to be found in the Cathedral of Saint-Nicolas in the city of Fribourg. This organ (IV/61), built over the span of ten years (1824-34), made Aloys Mooser (1770-1839) internationally famous. In effect, his reputation is based primarily on the attributes of this one instrument, even though he produced others in Switzerland that have had a great deal of success. Mooser is recognized in the field as one of the great European organ builders of the nineteenth century, and yet seasoned organ aficionados might not recognize his status because he never profited from publicity, as did other great organ builders such as Arp Schnitger, Gott-fried Silbermann, Friedrich Ladegast and Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.

The identification of this organ with the concept of storm (orage or Orgelgewitter in German), is quite fascinating.  One gets the sense of this by listening to the recording that the current titulaire, François Seydoux, made in 1991.5 The last piece on the recording is Jacques Vogt's "Scène champêtre--Orage" in a version by Paul Haas. It develops in a fashion that shows the fire and power of the orage and lasts some thirteen minutes. Vogt's version represented some fragments, and Haas was able to put everything together to form a total piece. Sand had the impression that, insofar as Mooser was concerned, "the storm, it would seem, is his ideal"(l'orage est, à ce qu'il paraît, son idéal).6 She further went on to write that with respect to special ideas, "the good fellow has his bit of madness" (le brave homme a son grain de folie).7

One has to question why the storm would be more associated with the organ in Fribourg, as though that instrument had a particular stop called "Orage." It is noteworthy that there were those who actually believed that the organ had a stop marked "Foudre" (lightning).8 Vogt felt that any organist could produce the same illusion because such a stop did not exist, but "these are effects that an organist can produce on any organ with a 32' or even a 16' stop" (ce sont des effets qu'un organiste peut produire sur chaque orgue de 32 ou même de 16).9 The general description of the organ, by countless visitors in the nineteenth century, was that it was a most "beautiful" instrument.10 Jane Miriam Crane compared the organ at Fribourg to that of the Hofkirche of St. Leodegar in Lucerne, which had also produced the storm effect. She wrote:

But, to go back to the organ [of Fribourg; yes, it was thrilling and singular in effect. A fugue of Bach's [!], and then that delicious minuet in Handel's Samson was succeeded by the "The Invocation." In this the "vox humana" seems to accompany in most human tones. I never heard anything that so gave me the idea of ceaseless, pitying intercession, pleading with depth of love that would not be denied. Ah! one hardly fathoms that Jesus is ever living, is ever interceding. The "Tempest" was very curious, but not quite so delusive as at Lucerne, where I involuntarily said, "it really is raining!" and we both preferred the distant chords and voices singing a hymn tune after the lightning and thunder. But both the organ and organist at Fribourg seemed infinitely superior to those at Lucerne.11

It is clear that the beauty of the configuration and the sounds produced in a cathedral of warm and spacious acoustics really tell the story of the organ at Fribourg and what Mooser represented as an organ builder.

Seydoux points out in the liner notes of his CD that among Mooser's most famous organs are those of St. Pierre-aux-Liens of Bulle (Canton of Fribourg), the Heiliggeistkirche of Bern, and the Collégiale of Estavayer-le-Lac. The last, a picturesque medieval town in the Canton of Fribourg, stands on the perimeter of the canton, directly on the southern shore of the Lac de Neuch?¢tel. While the organ at Fribourg has been considered Mooser's magnum opus, it is interesting to note that Mooser worked in these cities which are in close proximity to one another. Fribourg (Freiburg in German) is the capital of the Canton of Fribourg and is known for its Catholic University. Although primarily a French-speaking area, it is, in fact, bilingual; German is used freely in the city as well as for many masses at the Cathedral.

Mooser's native language was German and he was a native of the area, beginning his studies in the fields of cabinet making, organ and fortepiano building as a teen-ager with his father, Joseph Anton. At age eighteen he went to Strasbourg to study with one of the Silbermann brothers of the Andreas Silbermann wing of the family, and then continued his studies in Mannheim and Cologne in Germany. He studied piano building with the famous Anton Walter in Vienna before returning to Fribourg to make his mark locally. With his reputation assured, he was invited by the French piano builder, Erard, to join him in Paris to work with him, and Felix Mendelssohn himself had expressed great interest in his piano-building abilities. Erard was willing to offer Mooser a very good salary but on one condition:  all pianos from his factory would bear Erard's name and none would have Mooser's, even if he were the actual builder.12 This may explain why Mooser took up his task as an organ-builder in Fribourg instead and remained in the area until his death.

 Louis Veuillot, the author of Pélerinages de Suisse felt that Mooser did not have the good luck to have the right person with him who would be able to show off the great qualities of his instrument.13 One of the messages that comes through in reading about Mooser is that he was such a perfectionist that he was never truly satisfied with any of his work. He received offers to build organs in other countries, but like Gottfried Silbermann, he stayed close to home and about a third of his total of some thirty instruments are in Fribourg itself.

François Seydoux, the organist at the Cathedral since 1983, has written a monumental work on Mooser which earned him a doctorate from the University of Fribourg. It was written under the mentorship of Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini and presented in 1984, with the current edition having been published in 1996.  The first two volumes of text are massive, running to some 1600 pages, and give minute details on all of the organs that Mooser built as well as interesting information on his background and character. The third volume contains a very complete gallery of photographs, including close-ups of pipes, consoles, details of casework, complete casings, the interior of divisions, and windchests as well as some of the pianos that have been attributed to Mooser. The dissertation itself is a fitting reflection of this bilingual area in Switzerland, given the title, Der Orgelbauer Aloys Mooser (1770-1839), and the fact that most of it is written in German, with a good part of the text in French because of the documents presented.

In volume II of his book (Anmerkungsband), Seydoux quotes various visitors, including English and American writers, who have commented on the organ of St. Nicolas, all using similar terms of praise: "It is one of the finest organs in Europe;" "one of the best in Europe;" "one of the finest in Europe;" "one of the finest in the world;"  "said to be the finest-toned instrument in Europe," etc.14 French commentary was just as effusive. Again George Sand was quoted as writing, "Mooser is not happy with his work and he is wrong. I swear that if he has not yet achieved perfection, he has made something that represents the most perfect of its genre."  And Louis Veuillot (Pèlerinages de Suisse) wrote in 1839 that "It is an organ, the largest, the most beautiful that has probably been made in the entire world, and the strange thing about it, it is completely new."15 It was compared to the famous Christian Müler organ of St. Bavo's in Haarlem by several writers; Elizabeth Strutt wrote:  "It (the organ) is larger than that at Haarlem, and is said, by those who have heard both, fully to equal it in power and sweetness of tone."16

Mooser's work at Bulle, Bern, and Estavayer-le-Lac

Let us now look at more indications of the value of Mooser's work by looking at the organs at Bulle, Bern (Heiliggeistkirche) and Estavayer-le-Lac. Originally all of these organs were instruments of two manuals with about twenty stops, but much work was done, here and there, from the time of their original dates of installation. At some point, a decision was made to pay closer attention to Mooser's original ideas. This was in keeping with the spirit of the Organ Reform movement (Orgelbewegung) which took place in the first part of the twentieth century and which encouraged restorations of many organs that had undergone a variety of rebuilds and tonal changes over the years. Here we are talking about three early nineteenth-century organs that stressed paying attention to the original specifications and Mooser's ideas with respect to pipe making in order to preserve their initial tonal qualities.

The organ of St. Pierre-aux-Liens at Bulle is an interesting case of a very successful restoration which undid the rebuilding that enlarged the organ by Goll (III/48) in 1932 and the further modifications that were done by Ziegler of Geneva in 1946-48.17 At its installation in 1814 it was an instrument of 28 stops on two manuals, and Hans Füglister did a thorough restoration in 1976. Studies were done on the construction of the pipes of organs that Mooser had built at Montorge and Riedisheim (Alsace) in order to fashion the pipes at Bulle in Mooser's manner.18 Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini points out in his report on the restoration that the case and the fa?ßade are not mere decorative parts of the organ, but that they "express visually the architectural sound of the instrument; one can therefore 'read' the essential lines of the sonic composition desired by Mooser . . ." (expriment visuellement l'architecture sonore de l'instrument;  on peut donc y "lire" les lignes essentielles de la composition sonore voulue par Mooser . . .).19 At the end of his report, he adds that, in his opinion, Füglister's restoration not only was successfully done but that it makes the organ at Bulle one of the best in the entire canton, when one takes into consideration questions of artistic, musical and historical value.20

The organ at the Heiliggeistkirche in Bern has also undergone many rebuilds. Over fifty years after Mooser's work in 1806, a church committee--one that underwrote a report on the five city churches--reported that the organ had been cleaned and improved by the organ builder, Haas, in 1858 and, at that time, it was considered the second best, after that of the Cathedral in the city.21 The original placement in the back of the chancel was not the best, and this proved to be a problem during the history of the organ, even though there was an indication in what is referred to as the "Etrennes" of 1810 that the " . . . organ that he (Mooser) has made for the new temple in Bern is a chef-d'oeuvre. Merely describing it would be in vain; one needs to hear it to have an idea of what it is all about. One has to examine it personally piece by piece in order to recognize its merits."22 Goll had worked on the instrument in 1899 and Sarmenstorf from Aargau had done a rebuild in 1934, after which it was clear that little of Mooser's work remained, and naturally this remained true by the time the organ was replaced by Metzler of Zürich-Dietikon in 1980. It is still a very handsome-looking instrument and, thanks to it, choral music plays a major role in the work of the church.

The Collegiate Church of Saint-Laurent in Estavayer-le-Lac is a jewel of gothic architecture, the construction of which goes back to the 14th century.  The organ gallery was enlarged at the time of the installation of the Mooser organ in 1811, and the case was made to show the stained-glass window that is directly behind it, as indicated in the photograph of the organ, although the back wall is not the original one. Originally an organ of twenty-two stops, it has undergone numerous rebuilds and attempts at restoration, the last of which was done in 1992 by the firm of Ayer & Morel from Vauderens (Canton of Fribourg). Dr. Seydoux expressed some reservations about the total success of the restoration. Nine stops were added to a case that was built to hold twenty-two; also many of the original parts of the organ were not integrated into the work that was done.23 Nonetheless, it stands impressively in the gallery and is certainly worth a visit.

Organs near Fribourg

Switzerland has a history of some of the best known organ builders in the world and as a corollary to the information on Mooser's work, it is worthwhile to look at a few other substantial instruments in the immediate vicinity of Fribourg. The Cantons of Bern and Vaud have two of the most elaborately appointed organs of the last few years and both were produced by Orgelbau Kuhn of Männedorf. The organ of the Berner Münster had its beginnings in 1726 from the organ builder Leonhard Leu, and today's organ retains a great part of the main case, including the entire set of the original display pipes.24 Dr. Friedrich Jakob of the Kuhn company points out that the Organ Reform should not be ignored insofar as the action is concerned, but that modern technology can provide a specially developed pneumatic control that serves the purpose of the old Barker lever. The Rückpositif was part of the organ in 1930, but it was felt that it was not really necessary to have a separate division and that the traits of the Rückpositif could be incorporated into the other divisions. The imposing instrument, IV/71, is capable of playing the entire gamut of the repertoire, and a recording made in 2000 shows off the grand acoustics and the organ's resources. The Cathedral itself is a magnificent structure, towering over the center of the city, and adds much character to the old town.

The organ at Saint-François, Lausanne

Offering a bit of a contrast would be the organ of lÉglise de Saint-François in Lausanne (Canton of Vaud), which is larger and more oriented towards the romantic and French repertoire. This organ, originally installed by Samson Scherrer, a Swiss organ builder who had built organs in France for some fifteen years before undertaking this job, was a somewhat modest instrument of 22 stops. Nearly a century later, the organ was replaced by Walcker (1866) and later enlarged by the same builder in 1880. The Kuhn company began to make modifications in 1906, and when a major restoration of the church was done in 1990, the city of Lausanne had the foresight to have the entire instrument rebuilt, preserving as many pipes as possible from Scherrer, Walcker and Kuhn's earlier work. The Rückpositif had not been used for years, but the case and pipes were kept because of their beauty; this was authentically reactivated and added a great deal in giving back to the organ its original character, even though the first organ was much smaller. The organ that Kuhn installed in 1995, V/75, with some 5,346 pipes, represented the largest organ in the French-speaking part of Switzerland prior to the installation last year of the C. B. Fisk Opus 120 (V/100, 6,737 pipes) in the Cathedral of Lausanne. The Kuhn instrument certainly does justice to the major works of the romantic period. Olivier Vernet will be recording all of Liszt's works on this organ, and to hear the first volume is quite an experience. He does the usual big pieces, and the power and majesty of Ad nos, ad salutarem undam give a sound that one would expect from Cavaillé-Coll's work.  The Kuhn company's new form of pneumatic assistance is used to make the action less heavy, and the prominent case stands grandly in the gallery. It is quite a sight and the photograph gives a good sense of its grandeur.25

Organs at Romainmôtier and Neuchâtel

Nearby are two organs of great importance. The instrument at Romainmôtier, installed in 1972 by the builders Neidhart and Lhote, represented a major installation for the abbey church. The tiny town is dominated by the magnificent monastery church at the Abbey St. Pierre et St. Paul that was built in the 10th-11th centuries and reconstructed in the 12th-14th centuries. It is one of the oldest and most significant church buildings in the entire country.26 There have been a number of organs in the church over the years, but the present one, IV/35, with a wonderful acoustical atmosphere, presents a sound that is very satisfying. Joseph Neidhart and Georges Lhote located their workshop in Saint-Martin (canton of Neuchatel). It is interesting to note that the organ of the Collégiale of Neuchatel, IV/39, is listed as having been built by the Manufacture d'Orgues de Saint-Martin SA (NE). It was built in 1996 and has a splendid case which enhances its beauty. Dr. Seydoux indicated to me that, indeed, the current Manufacture d'Orgues de Saint-Martin SA (NE) is a continuation of the Neidhart and Lhote company of Saint-Martin. There is a difference of twenty-four years in the building of these organs, and yet it is fascinating to see how much they have in common insofar as their sound capabilities are concerned. Guy Bovet, who made a recording at Romainmôtier and is the current organist of the Collégiale, participated in a number of dedicatory concerts there in 1996.

The organ at Romainmôtier is capable of playing the entire repertoire and it goes without saying that it profits from the magnificent acoustics of the ancient abbey church. To hear music by Guilain, Bach, Brahms, and Mendelssohn (Sonata No. 2) proved to be a most positive experience and the town, with the abbey church in the center, is an absolute gem.  The organ of the Collégiale of Neuchâtel has similar specifications, except that the instrument is larger. The Collégiale, the size of a cathedral, stands at the very top of the city center and has a magnificent view of the Neuchâtel Lake.

The western part of Switzerland offers the visitor a great deal in terms of lake views and well preserved medieval towns; organ tourists, though, will find any trip enhanced when, like George Sand, they wander into St. Nicolas to hear the Mooser organ played or join the stream of summer guests listening to the series at Romainmôtier.