André Isoir: An Eclectic French Organist

Carolyn Shuster Fournier

A French-American organist and musicologist, Carolyn Shuster was organist at the American Cathedral in Paris. In 1989, she was appointed titular of the Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at the Trinité Church and founded their weekly concert series. She has performed over 500 concerts in Europe and in the United States. She has also contributed articles to Revue de musicologie, La Flûte Harmonique, L’Orgue, Orgues Nouvelles, The American Organist, and The Diapason. Her recordings have been published by EMA, Ligia Digital, Schott, and Fugue State Films. In 2007, the French Cultural Minister awarded her the distinction of Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters.

On November 12, 2017, the liturgical and international concert organist Michel Chapuis died. Also an eminent professor, historian, and organ reformer impassioned by architecture, acoustics, and organbuilding, he immensely contributed to the renaissance, conservation, and restoration of early French organs. He delighted in supporting artistic beauty: his noble, graceful, and poetic interpretations vibrated with rhythmic pulsation, a natural flowing expression, and a spiritual elevation that was filled with mystery and joy.

 

His inspiration to become an
organist and initial training

Michel Chapuis was born January 15, 1930, in Dole, situated in the Burgundy-Franche-Comté region in eastern France. His father was a primary school teacher, and his mother worked as a telephone operator at the post office. In 1938, when his grandmother brought him to a Mass celebrating First Communion in Notre-Dame Collegiate Church,¹ he was overwhelmed by its historic organ by Karl Joseph Riepp (1754)/François Callinet (1788)/Joseph Stiehr (1830, 1855, 1858).² Its grandiose sonorities, which resonate beautifully in such marvelous acoustics, inspired him to become an organist. The organ possesses one of the finest examples of the French Grand Plein-Jeu. This characteristic combination of the Fourniture and Cymbale mixtures with the foundation stops is a full, brilliant, and noble sound that contains all its various inherent harmonics—with up to fifteen pipes that sound on a single note. For Michel Chapuis, this sonority symbolized God, eternity, and the entire color spectrum.

Noting their son was extremely talented, his parents purchased a piano for him at the music shop of Jacques Gardien, an ardent defender of the Dole organ.³ Michel Chapuis acquired a firm and supple piano technique with Miss Palluy, a disciple of Alfred Cortot. For six months, he took lessons with Father Barreau on the harmonium in the Collegiate Church and helped him accompany Masses there. He then began to study organ with Odette Vinard,⁴ who played at the Protestant Church in Dole, and continued with her professor, Émile Poillot,⁵ organist at the Dijon Cathedral.

In 1940, his family left Dole during the German occupation and went to Brive-Charensac, a village in the Haute-Loire, where he accompanied church services on the harmonium.⁶ When he returned to Dole in 1943, he accompanied vespers in the Dole Collegiate Church, even improvising verses between psalms. Delighted to discover a collection of Alexandre Guilmant’s Archives of Organ Masters in the personal library of the Marquis Bernard de Froissard⁷ in Azans, near Dole, he began to play the early French organ repertory, using registrations mentioned in these scores. His grandfather and the church janitor pumped the organ bellows for him! In 1945, he began to study organ with Jeanne Marguillard, organist at Saint-Louis Church in Monrapont, Besançon, where he accompanied two church services each Sunday for two years on a Jacquot-Lavergne organ.⁸

 

Musical training in Paris

After the Second World War, in 1946, Jeanne Marguillard came to Paris with Michel Chapuis, to introduce him to Édouard Souberbielle.⁹ At the age of sixteen, Chapuis began to study organ and improvisation with him at the César Franck School. This “true aristocrat of the organ” possessed a vast culture and an eminent spirituality that deeply influenced all his students. He encouraged them to expand their musical knowledge by listening to great classical works, and Chapuis appreciated his methodical spirit. This master enabled him to maintain a solid yet supple hand position and taught how to “touch” the organ by varying articulations, how to improvise fugues and trio sonatas, and used Marcel Dupré’s improvisation method books to prepare him to study at the Paris Conservatory. Michel Chapuis completed his solid musical formation there by taking piano lessons with Paule Piédelièvre,¹⁰ courses in harmony and counterpoint with Yves Margat,¹¹ and fugue with René Malherbe.¹² His fellow students there included Simone Michaud¹³ and her future husband, Jean-Albert Villard,¹⁴ Father Joseph Gelineau,¹⁵ and Denise Rouquette, who married Michel Chapuis in 1951.¹⁶ They lived on Clotaire Street, near the Panthéon.

To launch a career as an organist in France, it was indispensable to obtain a first prize organ in Marcel Dupré’s class at the Paris Conservatory. After auditioning with Dupré in 1950, playing J. S. Bach’s Sixth Trio Sonata and Louis Vierne’s Impromptu, thanks to his solid technique, Michel Chapuis enrolled in the Paris Conservatory the next October. Nine months later, in June 1951, he obtained his first prizes in organ and improvisation, as well as the Albert
Périlhou and Alexandre Guilmant prizes, awarded to the best student in the class.¹⁷ Gifted with mechanical ingenuity, he followed Gaston Litaize’s advice and apprenticed with the organbuilder Erwin Muller from 1952 to 1953, in Croisy, just west of Paris.¹⁸

 

First three church positions in Paris

From his youth, Michel Chapuis loved the ritual aspects of liturgical music. During his studies in Paris, he substituted for many organists. Highly respected for his fine accompaniments of congregational singing, his vast liturgical knowledge, and his repertory, he was appointed titular organist in several Parisian churches. From 1951 to 1953, he accompanied the liturgy on the Gutschenritter choir organ at Saint-Germain-des-Prés. From 1953 to 1954, he played the 1771 Clicquot/1864 Merklin organ at Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois Church, following in the footsteps of Alexandre Boëly.

In 1954, he succeeded Line Zilgien¹⁹  as titular of the 1777 Clicquot/1839 Daublaine & Callinet/1842 Ducroquet/1927 Gonzalez organ at Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs and kept his title there until 1970. Nicolas Gigault played there from 1652 to 1707 and Louis Braille, the inventor of the language for the blind, served at the church from 1834 to 1839. This church, located near Arts and Métiers, was reconstructed in a flamboyant Gothic style in the twelfth century and attained its present form in the seventeenth century. Its historic Clicquot organ was the key that opened the doors to Michel Chapuis’ comprehension of the early French organ. He also learned a great deal there from two organbuilders, Claude Hermelin²⁰ and Gabriel d’Alençon.²¹

In 1954, Michel Chapuis succeeded Jean Dattas as titular of the two-manual, seventeen-stop Merklin choir organ in Notre-Dame Cathedral, in the heart of Paris. There, he accompanied the
Maîtrise choir, directed by the quick-tempered Canon Louis Merret until 1959; then by a marvelous musician, Abbot Jean Revert, who allowed the congregation to sing during alternated verses at vespers. Michel Chapuis accompanied all the daily Masses and nearly all the canonical offices in Gregorian chant: prime (on feast days), tierce, the grand Mass, sext, none, vespers, and compline. One day, a priest sang too high and reproached Michel Chapuis for playing a pitch that was too high, when, in fact, he had mistaken a tourist boat whistle on the Seine for an organ note! In spite of the hordes of tourists that invaded this church, this position brought great joy to Chapuis for nine years: it enabled him to unite his capacities to resonate universal beauty in such a breath-taking setting, with its traditional liturgy and its fantastic acoustics that enhance any musical note. Michel Chapuis strongly believed that music ought to pacify, console, and comfort humanity. Above all, he hoped that his musical offerings would illuminate other people’s lives.²²

Michel Chapuis collaborated closely with the two titulars of the grand organ: Pierre Cochereau²³ and Pierre Moreau.²⁴ Each Sunday the two organs dialogued, continuing a tradition established in 1402, when Frédéric Schaubantz installed the grand organ in its present location. This dialogue, issued from the Gallican ritual, had remained intact, except during the Revolution, from 1790 to 1798. A 1963 Philips record documented Pierre Cochereau playing his own Paraphrase de la Dédicace and Louis Vierne’s Triumphant March, with Michel Chapuis accompanying Jean Revert’s choir singing works by André Campra and Pierre Desvignes. In September 1984, when Pierre Cochereau decorated Michel Chapuis with the Chevalier of the Legion of Honor, he recalled his improvisations at Notre-Dame and had wondered if J. S. Bach had composed a seventh trio sonata!

 

A pioneer in early French music
interpretation

Impassioned by early French Classical music, Michel Chapuis realized that most of the Parisian organs by such builders as Cavaillé-Coll, Merklin, and Gutschenritter were symphonic or neo-Classical in style, thus unsuitable for the early French repertory. While organists did regularly play the repertoire, however, they did not use notes inégales in their playing. For example, in 1956, when Michel Chapuis went to Marmoutier to meet the American Melville Smith, during his rehearsals for the first complete recording of Nicolas de Grigny’s Livre d’Orgue by Valois, he was surprised that he did not dare to use notes inégales there, even though he had been playing them for over thirty years, simply because he did not want to appear to be original (“Je ne veux pas paraître original”).²⁵ Chapuis concluded that he was a bit timid, probably since the great master organists in Paris at that time had not used them. Nonetheless, Melville Smith’s landmark recording highlighted Muhleisen and Alfred Kern’s 1955 restoration of this historic 1710 Silbermann and received the Grand Prix du Disque.

Curious by nature, Michel Chapuis carried out extensive research to understand the performance practice of notes inégales. His departure point was Eugène Borrel’s book on the interpretation of French music from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries [The Interpretation of French Music (from Lully to the Revolution)].²⁶ This book, well in advance of its time, remained the continual reference point that guided Chapuis’ interpretations. It emphasizes that to enchant auditors, one must play like a singer, with clear pronunciation, an appropriate emotion, expression, and character: serious, sad, happy, or
pleasant.

An organist in the seventeenth century knew how to bring out the main themes, such as plainchants, and could boldly improvise counterpoint on them. Like harpsichordists, they “touched” keyboards by holding their fingers as close to the keys as possible. They played vividly on the Positive Plein Jeu, interpreted Récits tenderly, and played Tierces en tailles with emotional melancholy. Their fingerings enabled them to play notes inégales naturally.

During his nine years at Notre-Dame, Michel Chapuis did not need much time to prepare his work there: this gave him lots of time to consult hundreds of early French organ and singing treatises and prefaces from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, beginning with Loys Bourgeois (1530), who had indicated that eighth notes should be sung in groups of two to render them more graceful. Thanks to his musical intuition, his solid supple technique, and his courageous spirit, he then incorporated notes inégales, appropriate ornaments, and registrations into his interpretations of early French music. Michel Chapuis acknowledged Jules Écorcheville’s research.²⁷ In 1958, Chapuis gave a conference with Antoine Geoffroy-Dechaume²⁸ at Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs Church, presenting musical illustrations of the application of notes inégales and dotted rhythms. The interpretation of the French national hymn, La Marseillaise, is an excellent example of the natural application of notes inégales: although notated with eighth notes, it is sung with dotted notes. Of course, when one uses early fingerings, one plays naturally with notes inégales. This landmark conference inspired organists such as Marie-Claire Alain²⁹ and marked the beginning of a new era in early French music interpretation.

Michel Chapuis brought early French repertory to life, expressing past rhetoric naturally, with nobleness, simplicity, and good taste. Guided continually by Eugène Borrel, his playing was “elegant, distinguished, and animated without excessiveness” [“élégant, distingué, chaleureux sans outrances”].³⁰ In fact, when he gave a concert on the Gonzalez organ at Saint-Merry Church in May 1963, interpreting works by Titelouze, D’Aquin, and Dandrieu Noëls, no one even noticed that he had played with notes inégales.³¹ Nicole Gravet’s book on registrations in French music from the sixteenth to the nineteenth centuries was a guide to him.³² His numerous recordings of early French music in the 1960s testify to his natural assimilation of notes inégales: Dandrieu, Guilain, and Raison on the Clicquot in Poitiers (by Lumen) and others by Harmonia Mundi: François Roberday at Manosque and Isle-sur-Sorgue, François Couperin’s two organ Masses on the Isnard at Saint-Maximin, François Couperin at Le Petit-Andely, Louis Marchand and Gaspard Corette on the Clicquot in Souvigny (Grand Prix), Nicolas Clérambault on the 1765 Bénigne Boillot at Saint-Jean de Losne, Gaspard Corette and D’Aquin in Marmoutier (the only restored organ),³³ and his improvisations on the 1746 J. A. Silbermann at Saint-Quirin Lettenbach.

 

Installation near Dole

During his military service at Mont-Valérien (near Paris) from 1954 to 1955, Michel Chapuis met many of his lifelong acquaintances, notably Jacques Béraza (the future organist at Dole, 1955–1998), Jean Saint-Arroman³⁴ (with whom he collaborated in future organ academies and publications of early French music), and the orchestra conductor Jean-Claude Malgloire. Shortly thereafter, he also met the ingenious organ visionary and voicer, Philippe Hartmann.³⁵ From 1955 to 1958, Hartmann lived with Pierre Cochereau’s family, on Boulevard Berthier in Paris. He babysat for his children, Jean-Marc and Marie-Pierre, and enlarged his house organ to seventy stops.³⁶ A few years later, when Michel Chapuis and Francis Chapelet came to visit Pierre Cochereau, they joyfully improvised a trio sonata on his organ, his Steinway piano, and his harpsichord, before savoring some champagne!³⁷

During this period, Chapuis visited Dole regularly. His appointment as organ professor at the Strasburg Conservatory in 1956 assured him a solid income. At Jacques Béraza’s advice, in 1958, he purchased a historic seventeenth-century home in Jouhe, a village near Dole, where he installed his pianos, harmoniums, and his personal library. During this same period, Philippe Hartmann moved to Rainans, a nearby village. Together, their overflowing energy, encyclopedic knowledge, and extraordinary imagination influenced an entire generation of organbuilders who apprenticed there from 1958 to 1969, notably Alain Anselm, Bernard Aubertin, Louis Benoist, Jean Bougarel, Didier Chanon, Jean Deloye, Barthélémy Formentelli, Gérald Guillemin, Claude Jaccard, Dominique Lalmand, Denis Londe, Marie Londe-Réveillac, Jean-François Muno, Pascal Quoirin, Alain Sals, and Pierre Sarelot.³⁸

 

From Saint-SОverin to the Royal Chapel in Versailles

In 1963, at the suggestion of Father Lucien Aumont,³⁹ Michel Chapuis crossed the Seine River to the Latin Quarter to succeed Michel Lambert-Mouchague as titular of the grand organ at Saint-Séverin Church.⁴⁰ Among some of the past organists who maintained a great classical tradition there were: Michel Forqueray (1681–1757), Nicolas Séjan (1783–1791), Albert Périlhou, composer and director of the Niedermeyer School (1889–1914), Camille Saint-Saëns, honorary organist (1897–1921), and Marcel-Samuel Rousseau (1919–1921).⁴¹ After his arrival, Michel Chapuis reinstated the classical system of rotating organists that existed before the Revolution in Parisian churches. Over the years, he shared this post with Jacques Marichal (1963–c. 1972)⁴² and Francis Chapelet (1964–1984),⁴³ then with André Isoir (1967–1973), Jean Boyer (1975–1988), Michel Bouvard (1984–1994), François Espinasse (1988), Michel Alabau (1986–2016), Christophe Mantoux (1994); and two substitute organists: Jean-Louis Vieille-Girardet (1973–1994), and François-Henri Houbart (1974–1979). In 2002, Chapuis was named honorary organist and Nicolas Bucher succeeded him as titular until 2013, when he in turn was succeded by Véronique Le Guen.⁴⁴

In 1963, the 1748 Claude Ferrard/1825 Pierre-François Dallery/1889 John Abbey⁴⁵ organ was in poor shape. In 1963 and 1964, the Alsatian builder Alfred Kern reconstructed the organ according to the plans of Michel Chapuis and Philippe Hartmann,⁴⁶ who decided upon the use of mechanical action. This exemplary reconstruction as a four-manual neo-Classical German-French organ with fifty-nine stops marked a turning point in French organ construction. It used all of the Abbey windchests and existing pipes, including Claude Ferrard’s Positif Cromorne, the Récit Hautbois, and several mutation stops, along with twenty-two new stops. The disposition of its newly constructed Plein-Jeu stops, with its Cymbale-Tierce stop, allowed the interpretation of both early French and German literature for the first time in Paris and enabled Michel Chapuis to accompany the congregational singing with vitality and variety. The third keyboard, Récit-Resonance, enabled him to couple the other two keyboards to it. The natural keys were made of ebony, and the sharps of white cow bone. The Positif de dos was placed mid-height in the church, enabling the organ to resonate fully. Chapuis inaugurated the instrument on March 8, 1964, with two different programs: the first consisting of works by Couperin, Buxtehude, and Bach; and the second, works by de Grigny, Marchand, Sweelinck, Böhm, and Bach.⁴⁷ After initial work by Daniel Kern in 1982 and Dominique Lalmand in 1988, the organ was restored again in 2011 by Dominique Thomas, Quentin Blumenroeder, and Jean-Michel Tricoteaux, respecting Alfred Kern’s work.

Michel Chapuis had arrived at Saint-Séverin during the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965). This parish’s ecumenical approach mirrored that of the Community in Taizé. With that in mind, Michel Chapuis adapted Bach chorales to the Catholic liturgy with French texts. The organists collaborated with priests to prepare the liturgy in accordance with the texts and the different colors of the liturgical year. Instead of beginning the Mass with Asperges me and an appropriate Gregorian Introit, the chorale “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland” served as the opening hymn during the four Sundays in Advent. Before each Mass, Michel Chapuis softly accompanied a rehearsal of the liturgy. After improvising a prelude to the opening hymn on the Positif Plein-Jeu, he accompanied the congregation on the Grand Orgue Plein-Jeu. Father Alain Ponsard requested Michel Chapuis to compose a Sanctus, known as the Saint-Séverin Sanctus, sung throughout France. Later, his former student and substitute organist, François-Henri Houbart, composed a partita based on this Sanctus.⁴⁸

Two recordings by Cantoral⁴⁹ attest to Michel Chapuis’ fine accompaniments. Harmonia Mundi recorded his interpretations of Jehan Titelouze’s hymns and Magnificat at Saint-Séverin. His other recordings in the 1960s and 1970s echoed the repertory he played there: works by Louis Couperin (Deutsche Grammophon), Nicolas de Grigny (Astrée), French Noëls by Balbastre, Dandrieu, and D’Aquin, and the complete works of Nicolas Bruhns, Vincent Lübeck, J. S. Bach, and Dieterich Buxtehude (Valois).⁵⁰ Recording the complete organ works of Bach was extremely difficult: after learning all the scores, he recorded alone at night, set up the magnetic tapes, pushed the “record” button, and went up to the organ loft to play; if there was a noise or the slightest error, he started all over, until it was perfect.

In 1966, Édouard Souberbielle gave a concert at Saint-Séverin. In 1968 and 1969, Chapuis organized a concert series entitled “Renaissance of the Organ,” for the Association for the Protection of Early Organs, on the first Wednesday of each month at 9:00 p.m.: on October 9, Michel Chapuis opened this series with a Bach concert; on November 6, Marie-Claire Alain played Bach and early German masters; on December 4, Pierre Cochereau performed Bach, Mozart, Liszt, and improvised; on January 8, 1969, André Isoir gave an eclectic concert for the Christmas season; on February 5, Francis Chapelet played selections of Art of the Fugue and the Toccata in C Major by Bach; on March 5, Helmuth Walcha was scheduled to play Bach’s Clavierübung III, but, unable to perform, was replaced by Marie-Claire Alain; on May 7, Xavier Darasse performed Messiaen, Bach, and Ligeti; and on June 6, Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini performed Frescobaldi, Muffat, and Bach. In the fall of 1969, concerts were given by Michel Chapuis, Heinz Wunderlich, Anton Heiller, and Helmut Walcha. From October 1970 to June 1971, Michel Chapuis performed the complete works of J. S. Bach there.

In 1995, Michel Chapuis was appointed titular of the prestigious historic Robert Clicquot organ,⁵¹ rebuilt by Jean-Loup Boisseau and Bertrand Cattiaux, at the Royal Chapel in Versailles. On November 18 and 19, 1995, he inaugurated this organ and was named honorary organist there in 2010. This position was the crowning summit of his concert career.⁵² At this exquisite historic royal palace, he was truly an ambassador for French culture, receiving artists from the entire world.

 

A. F. S. O. A.: The Association for the Protection of Early Organs

On December 21, 1967, a group of organists, organ historians, and builders, as well as amateur organ admirers, joined forces to protest against abusive transformations of historic French organs and founded the Association for the Protection of Early Organs
[A. F. S. O. A., Association pour la sauvegarde de l’orgue ancien]. Their first general meeting took place on March 1, 1968. Jean Fonteneau, a substitute organist at Saint-Séverin, was president for the first year; the organ historian Pierre Hardouin, its primary editor; Michel Bernstein, editorial secretary; and Michel Chapuis, artistic advisor. Among its honorary members were Jean-Albert Villard and Helmut Winter. Other members included Father Lucien Aumont, Michel Bernstein, Bernard Baërd, Dominique Chailley, Jacques Chailley, Francis Chapelet, Pierre Chéron, Pierre Cochereau, René Delosme, Christian Dutheuil, Robert Gronier (a future president), André Isoir, Henri Legros, Émile Leipp, the architect Alain Lequeux, the astronomer James Lequeux, Charles-Walter Lindow, Pierre-Paul Lacas, Dominique Proust, Jean Saint-Arroman, Gino Sandri, Marc Schaefer, Jean-Christophe Tosi (a future president), and Jean Ver Hasselt. They struggled to renew interest in the unforgotten historic early French organ and its music. In 1969,
A. F. S. O. A. organized an international François Couperin competition for organ and harpsichord at Saint-Séverin and on the François-Henri Clicquot organ (1772), restored by Alfred Kern, at the Royal Chapel in Fontainebleau. It also organized visits to organs, such as the Clicquot at the Poitiers Cathedral, and organs in Alsace.

A. F. S. O. A. ardently defended a respectable restoration of the 1748 Dom Bédos organ in Bordeaux and protested against Gonzalez’s restoration of the historic Couperin organ at Saint-Gervais Church in Paris.⁵⁴ In 1954, this firm, under Norbert Dufourcq’s direction, had already considerably transformed Jean de Joyeuse’s 1694 Baroque 16′ organ in Auch Cathedral: out of the 3,060 pipes there, 620 were considerably altered and 2,240 had disappeared, notably the Grand Plein-Jeu.⁵⁵ Michel Chapuis felt that Victor Gonzalez’s neo-classical Plein-Jeu, although pitched too high, was remarkably well-voiced and suitable for a small instrument installed in a studio or a home, but not for a large organ in a church. When Norbert Dufourcq went to visit the historic eighteenth century Jean-Baptiste Micot organ in Saint-Pons-des-Thomières (in the Hérault), the organist, Jean Ribot, hid the keys so that he could not enter the organ loft to look at the organ.⁵⁶

Michel Chapuis strongly supported research on the French Classical organ Plein-Jeu, notably by his friends Jean Fellot⁵⁷ and Léon Souberbielle.⁵⁸ Thankfully, in 1954, Pierre Chéron and Rochas saved the splendid Grand Plein-Jeu in the 1774 Isnard organ at Sainte Marie-Madeleine Basilica in Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume.⁵⁹ In 1957, Robert Boisseau voiced a Roethinger organ in the French Classic style that included a Plein-Jeu as described by Dom Bédos, in Saint Louis du Temple Benedictine Abbey in Limon-Vauhallan (in the Essonne south of Paris). It was designed by Édouard and Léon Souberbielle. On November 7, 1959, Claude Philbée made a private recording of Michel Chapuis improvising to demonstrate the organ’s stops.⁶⁰

In 1967, Michel Chapuis pleaded with André Malraux, the minister for cultural affairs since 1959, for new policies concerning the restoration of early organs. He explained that past massacres of historic organs had given a bad name to organbuilding in France. He estimated that around seventy historic organs remained intact in France: thirty large instruments and forty smaller instruments. He suggested that, as in Austria or the Netherlands, a group of experts be appointed to form a new national commission of historic organs in addition to regional commissions. Before dismantling each organ for restoration, it should be completely evaluated and inventoried, with precise measurements, photos, and recordings. However, advocating for drastic changes in the French administration was not an easy task!

As A. F. S. O. A. encouraged, restorations were carried out that respected the past. As a member of the Commission for Historical Monuments, Michel Chapuis travelled in his Citroën van to visit organs and photographed them with his Rolleflex box camera. Here are some of the organs beautifully restored between 1968 and 1998: Perthuis, Malaucène, Saint-Guilhem-le-Désert, Saint-Lizier, Forcalquier, and Sète by Alain Sals; Houdan by Robert and Jean-Loup Boisseau; three cuneiform bellows to activate the wind in the Clicquot in Souvigny by Philippe Hartmann;
Ebersmunster by Alfred Kern; Albi and Carcassonne by Barthélemy Formentelli;
Villiers-le-Bel, Juvigny, and the Dom Bédos in Bordeaux by Pascal Quoirin; Semur-en-Auxois by Jean Deloye with Philippe Hartmann; Seurre in Bourgogne, Saint-Martin-de-Boscherville in Normandy, and Saint-Antoine-L’Abbaye by Bernard Aubertin; the 1790
Clicquot in Poitiers by Boisseau-Cattiaux Society;⁶¹ Bolbec by Bertrand Cattiaux; and the reconstruction of the Jean de Joyeuse in Auch by Jean-François Muno. Between 1994 and 1997, the builders Claude Jaccard and Reinalt Klein built a replica of the Houdan organ (except the case) in the Kreuzekirche Church in Stapelmoor, Germany (in the North of Ostfriesland): Organeum Records recorded Michel Chapuis playing works by Böhm, Boyvin, Dandrieu, and Jullien on this organ on September 17, 1998.⁶²

In the 1980s, Michel Chapuis supported the Cavaillé-Coll Association, which advocated for quality restorations of Romantic organs. He kindly advised this author’s research on Aristide Cavaillé-Coll’s secular organs. Among the Cavaillé-Coll organs restored between 1985 and 1997: the grand organs in Sacré-Coeur Basilica and in Saint-Sulpice in Paris, by Jean Renaud; Charles-Marie Widor’s 1893 house organ in Selongey, Côte d’Or (1986), and Édouard André’s 1874 house organ in Decize, by Claude Jaccard; the grand organ in Poligny, by Dominique Lalmand and Claude Jaccard, the grand organ in Saint-Sernin Basilica in Toulouse, by Boisseau-Cattiaux.

 

Organ professor

An eminent professor, Michel Chapuis acknowledged that the best way to learn music is to teach it. He loved to transmit his musical heritage and his practical knowledge. His intuition and his astute sense of observation and analysis enabled him to transmit elements of interpretation that cannot always be explained. He taught organ at the Strasburg Conservatory from 1956 to 1979, at the Schola Cantorum in Paris from 1977 to 1979, at the Besançon Conservatory from 1979 to 1986, and then succeeded Rolande Falcinelli at the National Superior Conservatory of Music in Paris, from 1986 to 1995. He also gave masterclasses in numerous academies in France: early French music on the historic Isnard organ at Saint-Maximin-la-Sainte-Baume Academy, founded in 1962; German and French early music on the 1752 Riepp/1833 Callinet organ in Semur-en-Auxois (in the Côte-d’Or) in the mid-1970s;⁶³ in the Pierrefonds Academy (in the Oise) with Jean Saint-Arroman in the 1980s; and in Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges⁶⁴ (in the Haute-Garonne) from 1976 to 2008, notably with André Stricker and Jean Saint-Arroman. He also gave masterclasses in Stapelmoor, Germany (with André Stricker and Pierre Vidal), as well as in the United States and Japan.

At the Strasbourg Conservatory, Michel Chapuis taught in the Catholic organ class, alongside André Stricker,⁶⁵ who was in charge of the Protestant organ class. As the organ department grew, two more professors were added to balance the department: in 1962, Marc Schaefer,⁶⁶ a Protestant, and, in 1963, Pierre Vidal,⁶⁷  a Catholic. In June 1964, Helmut Walcha inaugurated the Kurt Schwenkedel organ (III/64) in the conservatory concert hall. Michel Chapuis helped to determine its stoplist, which he described as being both “classical and personal.”⁶⁸ Of note, the organ case included horizontal Montre pipes.

In 1986, when Michel Chapuis began to teach at the Paris Conservatory, it was still located on Madrid Street, before its transfer to la Villette in 1991. Instead of giving lessons on the dusty 1951 Jacquot-Lavergne organ there, he preferred to teach on beautiful church organs: at Saint-Séverin, in Dole, and in Poligny. Open-minded, he never imposed any particular interpretation on his students⁶⁹ but used his immense knowledge, his fantastic imagination, his humanistic approach, and his witty humor to guide them from the visible text to the invisible spirit of the music. He emphasized the importance of a calm, supple body, notably in hands and wrists, to give great lightness and liberty to fingers, which remain in contact with the keys. With his soft, sweet voice, he calmly encouraged students to go beyond the notes, to recreate the composer’s musical conception in a harmonious and sober manner. He abhorred inadequate and superficial ornaments and inappropriate expression. He enabled his students to understand the inherent marvels in each score, its underlying harmonies, rhythmic structures, and melodic expression, and helped them to incorporate these elements into their interpretations with an appropriate style, with spontaneity, good taste, and excellent registrations.

How fortunate I was to study with Michel Chapuis and Jean Saint-Arroman at the Academy in Pierrefonds in 1983 and 1984. Eugène Borrel’s book on the interpretation of early French music was truly indispensable to interpreting early French music expression in a well-balanced harmonious manner, with natural fluidity and ease. We accompanied singers to understand the underlying nature of a musical text, its pronunciation, its appropriate expression and style, its inherent harmonies. We studied the early French organ and its music: figured basses, dance rhythms, registrations, tempi, temperaments, ornamentations, and learned how to appropriately express and embellish the musical line. Its sweet, gentle expression⁷⁰ finds its summit in the Tierce taille and numerous Récits.

We presented recitals at Saint-Séverin and Saint-Gervais churches. While studying on early historic instruments does not guarantee a beautiful performance, it enables an interpreter to play ornaments, registrations, phrasing, etc., with greater ease. As Jean Saint-Arroman pointed out, it is impossible for early music to be heard as in former centuries because “life and sensibility have changed too much, and, at least for the listeners, the music which was ‘modern’ has become ‘ancient’” [“la vie et la sensibilité ont trop chargé, et, au moins pour les auditeurs, la musique qui était ‘moderne’ est devenue ‘ancienne’”].⁷¹

Michel Chapuis inspired an entire generation of organists, among them: Scott Ross (at Saint-Maximin); Robert Pfrimmer, Étienne Baillot, Antoine Bender, Lucien Braun, Henri Delorme, Alain Langré, François-Henri Houbart, Jean-Louis Vieille-Girardet, Hélène Hébrard, Chieko Mayazaki and Henri Paget (at Strasbourg Conservatory); Régis Allard, Michel Bouvard,⁷² Yasuko Uyama-Bouvard, Makiko Hayashima, Hisaé Hosokawa (at the Schola Cantorum); Marc Baumann, Sylvain Ciaravolo, Pierre Gerthoffer, Luc Bocquet, Éric Brottier, Bernard Coudurier, Roland Servais, Véronique Rougier, Vinciane Rouvroy, Marie-Christine Vermorel (at the Besançon Conservatory); Valéry Aubertin, Valérie Aujard-Catot, Franck Barbut, Philippe Brandeis, Yves
Castagnet, Slava Chevliakov, Denis Comtet, Françoise Dornier, Thierry Escaich, Pierre Farago, Jean-François Frémont, Mathieu Freyburger, Christophe Henry, Emmanuel Hocdé, Jean-Marc Leblanc, Marie-Ange Laurent-Lebrun, Éric Lebrun, Véronique Le Guen, Erwan Le Prado, Gabriel Marghieri, Pierre Mea, Nicolas Reboul-Salze, Marina Tchébourkina,⁷³ Vincent Warnier (at the National Superior Conservatory of Music), and Frédéric Munoz (in numerous academies).

 

International concert artist

Michel Chapuis was a great artist who consecrated his entire life to enriching other people’s lives with beautiful music. Although he often said that he never took vacations, in all truth, he worked too much, giving generously to others: as a teacher, as a member of the national organ commission for cultural affairs, as a church musician, and as a concert artist. He delighted in sharing his passions with others: photography, tramways, historic books, and architecture, among others. Fascinated with movement, he often invited visitors to his home to take a ride in his old train wagons, which he pushed on the train tracks he had installed in his yard: an unexpected experience! His listeners sensed such sparkling joy when listening to his captivating interpretations, from its kindling intense, fiery warmth to its gentle gracious sweetness. Conscious of the acoustical resonance of each room, he knew how to let silences speak fully, thus clarifying the musical narration and providing it with spiritual depth and elevation.

When I met Michel Chapuis in Saint-Séverin in 1984, I admired his noble yet gentle manner of playing. Although his hands were robust and gnarled, as if he had labored as an eighteenth-century tanner along the canals in Dole, once he began to play, they floated just above the keyboards, but his fingers were deeply enrooted in the keys,⁷⁴ like those of J. S. Bach! His vivid imagination and fantasy excelled in the interpretation of
Dieterich Buxtehude’s works. I remember the numerous interesting discussions in the church reception hall after Mass with artists from all over the world.

Michel Chapuis considered himself to be Catholic in the universal sense of the term.⁷⁵ On May 7–8, 1979, during the inauguration of Alfred Kern’s restoration of the 1741 Jean-André Silbermann organ at Saint-Thomas Lutheran Church in Strasburg, he illustrated the mission of the organ in the church by improvising in the French Classical style on themes from the old Parisian Ritual. Like the great humanist Albert Schweitzer, who had preached in this church, he believed that when music is felt deeply, either sacred or secular, it resonates in spiritual spheres where art and religion may meet.

Michel Chapuis played concerts in Europe, the United States, Russia, and Japan. He came to the United States at least on three occasions. On November 26 and 27, 1968, he gave a recital and masterclass at Northwestern University School of Music, Evanston, Illinois, and returned to play at Rockefeller Memorial Chapel, University of Chicago, in 1978. During this same year, he inaugurated the Yves Koenig organ at Saint-Sulpice Church in Pierrefonds, performing Nicolas de Grigny’s entire Organ Mass. In Japan, he gave his first organ recital in the NKH Hall in Tokyo in 1976. He inaugurated three Aubertin organs there: his opus 48 (III/48), in the French Classical style at Shirane-Cho/Minami-Alps in 1993, where he returned at least ten times to give academies, concerts, and masterclasses, recorded by Plenum Vox in 1999; opus 13 (II/13) in the Lutheran Church in Tokyo in 1999; and opus 22 (II/22) in a home in Karuizawa in 2003. He gave concerts and masterclasses many times in Russia, notably on the Charles Mutin organ at the Tchaikovky Conservatory in Moscow beginning in 1993.

Throughout his entire career, Michel Chapuis collaborated with singers, choirs, and orchestras, as illustrated in several recordings: the 1967 Harmonia Mundi record of François Couperin’s Leçons de Ténèbres with Alfred
Deller, countertenor; Philip Todd, tenor; and Raphael Perulli, viola da gamba, at Augustins Chapel in Brignolles
(Var); in 1997: Quantin CD of four Handel concertos, opus 4, with the Marais Chamber Orchestra directed by Pascal Vigneron; and an Astrée CD of Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Port Royal Mass in Houdan, directed by Emmanuel Mandrin; a 1998 CD of his inauguration of Laurent Plet’s restoration of the 1847 Callinet organ at Saint-Pierre Church in Liverdun captured his accompaniments of three local choirs, with works by Scheidt, Rinck, Boëly, Mendelssohn, Ritter, Herbeck, and Berthier.⁷⁶ In 1999, Glossa Records recorded his improvised verses in Marc-Antoine Charpentier’s Messe de Monsieur de Mauroy at Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache with Hervé Niquet’s Le Concert spirituel. In 2000, Plenum Vox recorded his inauguration of Bernard Hurvy’s twenty-six-stop early nineteenth century transitional-style organ in Charbonnières-les-Bains (near Lyon), with the Saint-Roch Choir directed by J. M. Blanchon, with works by Bach, Buxtehude, Mendelssohn, Guilmant, Bruckner, and improvisations on Salve Regina. Ekaterina Fedorova, soprano, the founder of Plenum Vox Records, gave many concerts and recorded with him: Magnificats by Guilain, Dandrieu, Beauvarlet-Charpentier, and improvisations on the Dom Bédos organ at Saint-Croix Abbey Church in Bordeaux in 2002, and Burgundian Christmas carols, vocal works by Clérambault, and improvisations on the 1768 Bénigne Boillot organ in Saint-Jean-de-Losne in 2003.

At the end of each concert, Michel Chapuis improvised in a style that valorized the organ with a wide variety of registrations. In 2004, when he improvised at the end of his concert on Jean-François Muno’s exemplary reconstruction (1992–1998) of the 1694 Jean de Joyeuse organ at Auch Cathedral, he received a standing ovation that lasted for over ten minutes! During the last ten years of his life, even as his vision deteriorated, his luminous and graceful improvisations continued to enlighten his audiences. Many of them were recorded live by Plenum Vox: a 2003 DVD in the Royal Chapel in Versailles and in Souvigny, a 2004 CD in the Romantic style on the Cavaillé-Coll organs at Saint-Ouen and Poligny, and a 2005 DVD in the German Baroque style on Bernard Aubertin’s organ at Saint-Louis-en-l’Île Church in Paris. He had assimilated the early French repertory so well that he was capable of improvising in the style of each composer and each period. He knew how to discern the tonalities that resonated well on each organ: for example, C Major and D Major in Dole, and G Major at Saint-Séverin.

Michel Chapuis’ 2001 Plenum Vox recordings in Dole remind us that this organ remained the star that inspired him throughout his entire career. These three CDs illustrate his eclectic repertory on this versatile instrument with three faces: the German face (Buxtehude, Kellner, Rinck, with improvisations), the French face (Boyvin, Tapray, d’Aquin, Balbastre and improvisations on Ave Maris Stella), and the Romantic face (Mendelssohn, Czerny, Guilmant, Brosig, Boëllmann, and Franck).

In addition to being a pioneer who revolutionized the French organ world in the second half of the twentieth century, this great concert and liturgical organist and professor generously shared his time, knowledge, and documents with his colleagues, students, and friends. His conception of French good taste goes beyond time and space: it encourages us to memorialize the past, far beyond an idea of comfort and superficial rapidity, by embracing beauty with simplicity, constant research, meditation, and spiritual depth. In addition to his beautiful music, his humanistic and fraternal approach to life, his conviviality, his humble simplicity, as well as his liberty of spirit, will continue to inspire us.

 

A French-American organist and musicologist, Carolyn Shuster was organist at the American Cathedral in Paris. In 1989, she was appointed titular of the Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at the Trinité Church and founded their weekly concert series. She has performed over 500 concerts in Europe and in the United States. She has also contributed articles to Revue de musicologie, La Flûte Harmonique, L’Orgue, Orgues Nouvelles, The American Organist, and The Diapason. Her recordings have been published by EMA, Ligia Digital, Schott, and Fugue State Films. In 2007, the French Cultural Minister awarded her the distinction of Knight in the Order of Arts and Letters. 

 

Notes

1. Cf. Marc Baumann, “Interview with Michel Chapuis in Marienthal,” transcribed by Hubert Heller, February, 2003, and in www.union-sainte-cecile.org.

2. Cf. Pierre M. Guéritey, Karl Joseph
Riepp et l’Orgue de Dole, 2 vol. (Lyon, FERREOL, 1985).

3. Cf. Jacques Gardien, “Les Grandes Orgues de la Collégiale de Dole,” L’Orgue, no. 25, March 1936, pp. 6–14.

4. Odette Goulon, her married name, was appointed organist at Temple du Luxembourg in Paris in 1991. The dates of organists in this article are mostly those found in Pierre Guillot, Dictionnaire des organistes français des XIX^e et XX^e siècles, Sprimont, Belgium, 2003.

5. Émile Poillot (1886–1948) was organist of Saint-Bénigne Cathedral, Dijon, 1912–1948.

6. Cf. Claude Duchesneau, Plein Jeu, Interviews with Michel Chapuis (Vendôme: Le Centurion, 1979), p. 34. The Germans occupied Dole from June 17, 1940, to September 9, 1944.

7. Marquis Bernard de Froissard (1884–1962) was an administrator of Société Cavaillé-Coll, Mutin, Convers, & Cie. 

8. Jeanne Marguillard was organist at Sainte-Madeleine Church, Besançon, 1947–1993.

9. Édouard Souberbielle (1899–1989) also taught at Schola Cantorum and at Institut Grégorien.

10. Paule Piédelièvre (1902–1964) studied piano with Blanche Selva and was organist at Étrangers Church.

11. Yves Margat contributed articles to Guide du Concert. 

12. René Malherbe (1898–1969) was organist and choir director at Saint-Pierre-du-Gros-Caillou Church.

13. Simone Villard (b. 1927) was appointed organist at Sainte-Radegonde Church in Poitiers in 1952.

14. Jean-Albert Villard (1920–2000) was organist at Poitiers Cathedral, 1949–2000.

15. Joseph Gélineau, SJ (1920–2000), was a Jesuit priest, composer, and French liturgist. 

16. Denise Chapuis (b. 1928). They had seven children: Jean-Marie (†), Claude (†), Bruno, Laurent (who worked with the harpsichord builder Anselm and the organbuilder Alain Sals), François, Claire (†) Christophe, ten grandchildren, and two great-grandchildren.

17. Cf. Claude Duchesneau, op. cit., p. 58.

18. Jean-Marc Cicchero, Hommage à une Passion, Éd. O. V., 2018, p. 126. Erwin Muller had apprenticed with Schwenkedel, then as a voicer with Gonzalez. His shop was active in Croissy from 1950–1986.

19. Line Zilgien (1906–1954), organist there from 1940–1954, was close to Claire Delbos, Olivier Messiaen’s wife.

20. Claude Hermelin (1901–1986), began to study voicing in 1923 with Charles Mutin (cf. J.-M. Cicchero, op. cit., p. 64) and wrote articles under the alias Jean Mas.

21. Gabriel d’Alençon (1881–1956) restored the 17th-century organ in Rozay-en-Brie and was interested in temperaments. From 1936 to 1939, Claude Hermelin collaborated with him in Sotteville-lès-Rouen, and they gave courses in organbuilding at Schola Cantorum, Paris.

22. Cf. Claude Duchesneau, op. cit., pp. 212–213.

23. Pierre Cochereau (1924–1984) was titular of the grand organ at Notre-Dame Cathedral, 1955–1984.

24. Pierre Moreau (1907–1991) played there, 1946–1986. Michel Chapuis wrote the preface to his Livre d’Orgue (Europart Music, 1990).

25. Claude Duchesneau, op. cit., p. 96.

26. Eugène Borrel (1876–1962), violinist and musicologist, L’Interprétation de la musique française (de Lully à la Révolution), Paris, Librairie Félix Alcan, 1934, p. 150.

27. Jules Écorcheville (1872–1915), musicologist, wrote De Lulli à Rameau—L’esthétique musicale (Paris, 1906). 

28. Antoine Geoffroy-Dechaume (1905–2000), Les secrets de la musique ancienne, recherches sur l’interprétation (Fasquelle, 1964).

29. Cf. Jesse Eschbach, “Marie-Claire Alain, pédagogue internationale,” Marie-Claire Alain, L’Orgue, Cahiers et Mémoires, no. 56, 1996—II, p. 59. She mentions that this concert took place in 1958, but this date needs to be verified.

30. Eugène Borrel, op cit., p. 150. 

31. Claude Duchesneau, op. cit., p. 98.

32. Nicole Gravet, L’orgue et l’art de la registration en France du XVI^e siècle au début du XIX^e siècle, originally published in 1960, it was reedited with a preface by Michel Chapuis, Chatenay Malabry, Ars Musicae, 1996.

33. In 1996, the European Organ Center in Marmoutier reedited Michel Chapuis’ interpretations of Böhm, Buxtehude, J. S. Bach, de Grigny, and Dandrieu on this organ.

34. Cf. his publications on French Classical music, 1661–1789: Dictionnaire d’interprétation (Initiation), (Honoré Champion, 1983) and L’Interprétation de la musique pour orgue (Honoré Champion, 1988); his early music facsimiles are edited by Anne Fuzeau. He teaches in the early music department at the National Superior Conservatory of Music in Paris.

35. Philippe Hartmann (1928–2014) had apprenticed with Gutschenritter, worked three months for Gonzalez, for Émile Bourdon in Dijon, eight years for Pierre Chéron, collaborated with Georges Lhôte, with Jean Deloye from 1969–1975, worked independently at Le Havre in 1982, and as a voicer for Haerpfer.

36. In 1993, Daniel Birouste incorporated it into the organ at the Saint-Vincent Church in Roquevaire (Bouches-du-Rhône).

37. Cf. Yvette Carbou, Pierre Cochereau Témoignages (Zurfluh, 1999), p. 38.

38. Cf. Jean-Marc Cicchero, op. cit., pp. 104–105.

39. Father Lucien Aumont (1920–2014) lived in a tower of Saint-Séverin Church. From 1947 until 1987, he recorded concerts there and broadcast them in programs at Radio-France-INA.

40. He had been organist there from 1921 until 1960.

41. Cf. Félix Raugel, Les Grandes Orgues des Églises de Paris et du Département de la Seine, Paris, Fischbacher, pp. 100–102.

42. Jacques Marichal (1934–1987) was also choir organist at Notre-Dame Cathedral from 1964 to 1987.

43. Francis Chapelet (1934), a well-known specialist in Spanish organ music, is honorary organist at Saint-Séverin. 

44. The three actual titulars at Saint-Séverin are François Espinasse, Christophe Mantoux, and Véronique Le Guen.

45. John Abbey II (1843–1930).

46. In 1966, Philippe Hartmann built a choir organ (I/7) for Saint-Séverin. Roger Chapelet, Francis Chapelet’s father, painted its organ case.

47. L’Orgue, no. 112, Oct.–Dec.1964, p. 110.

48. François-Henri Houbart, Partita sur un choral dit Sanctus de Saint-Séverin (Delatour France, 2010).

49. Cantoral: UD 30 1299 and 5, UD 30 1385.

50. For a complete list of Michel Chapuis’ recordings, cf. Alain Cartayrade, www.france-orgue.fr/disque.

51. Cf. M. Tchebourkina. L’orgue de la Chapelle royale de Versailles: À la recherche d’une composition perdue // L’Orgue. Lyon, 2007. 2007–IV no. 280. She was organist at the Royal Chapel in Versailles 1996–2010.

52. Plenum Vox (PV 004) recorded a CD of Nivers, Lebègue, Couperin, Dandrieu, Marchand, and Lully there in 1999 and a DVD in 2003.

53. Bärenreiter published the first eight issues of their periodical, Renaissance de L’Orgue, from 1968 to 1970, followed by Connoissance de l’orgue, until 2000. At the end of the 1960s, Jean Fonteneau taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While in the Boston area, he promoted A. F. S. O. A. by organizing concerts and lectures at Saint Thomas in New York City and at Harvard University.

54. In May and June 1967, several articles appeared in the French newspaper Le Monde and L’Art Sacré. This restoration by Gonzalez was highly supervised by the A. F. S. O. A.
55. Cf. Michel Chapuis, notes in the Plenum Vox CD of the complete works of Jacques Boyvin in Auch, PV 011, 2004.

56. XCP Montpellier, recorded Michel Chapuis’ concert there on September 5, 1993: cf. www.france-orgue.fr/disque.

57. Jean Fellot (1905–1967) wrote À la recherche de l’orgue classique (reedited by Édisud in 1993).

58. This book was written by hand and printed by the author at Montoire-sur-le-Loir in 1977.

59. Cf. Pierre Chéron’s inventory in L’Orgue de Jean-Esprit et Joseph Isnard à la Basilique de la Madeleine à Saint-Maximin, 1774, prefaced by Michel Chapuis (Réalisation Art et Culture des Alpes-Maritimes, Nice, 1991).

60. According to Sister Marie-Emmanuelle, this organ had 31 manual stops and its pedal stops were borrowed. Curiously, its action was electro-pneumatic. One can hear Michel Chapuis’ improvisations on https://youtu.be/5u-0eR3BYko. This organ was integrated into a new 42-stop neo-classical organ by Olivier Chevron, inaugurated in the Abbey at Celles-sur-Belle (Charente-Maritime) on May 5, 2018.

61. Cf. Cathédral de Poitiers, 1787 à 1790, L’Orgue de François-Henri Clicquot (Direction of Cultural Affaires in Poitou-Charentes, 1994).

62. This CD also includes Harald Vogel in the Georgskirche.

63. He taught in Semur-en-Auxois with Odile Bayeux (organ), Blandine Verlet (harpsichord), Alain Anselm (harpsichord building), Philippe Hartmann (organbuilding) and Jean Saint-Arroman (French performance practice).

64. This festival was founded by Pierre Lacroix in 1974 under the musical direction of Jean-Patrice Brosse.

65. André Stricker (1931–2003) taught there, 1954–1996. He had studied with Helmut Walcha.

66. Marc Schaefer (b. 1934), a former André Stricker student, taught there until 2000.

67. Pierre Vidal (1927–2010), composer and musicographer, remained there until 1991.

68. Cf. Jean-Louis Coignet, “L’Orgue du Conservatoire de Strasbourg,” L’Orgue, no. 117, January–March 1966, p. 39.

69. Cf. Éric Lebrun article blog SNAPE: www.snape.fr/index.php/2017/11/13.

70. Cf. Eugène Borrel, op. cit., p. 148. 

71. Jean Saint-Arroman, “Authenticity,” in Dictionnaire d’interprétation (Initiation), Paris, Honoré Champion, 1983, p. 13.

72. Michel Bouvard was an auditor and studied with Chapuis at Saint-Séverin.

73. In 1999, Natives recorded the organ works of Claude Balbastre interpreted by Michel Chapuis and his student Marina Tchebourkina on the historic grand organ at Saint-Roch Church, Paris.

74. Cf. Roland Servais, “Ses mains étaient comme des racines,” Chronique des Moniales, Abbaye Notre-Dame du Pesquié, March 2018, pp. 25–27.

75. Cf. Pastor Claude Rémy Muess, “L’église luthérienne Saint-Thomas de Strasbourg retrouve son orgue Silbermann,” L’Orgue, no. 173, January–March 1980, pp. 5–11. 

76. Available at: Association Amis de l’orgue de Liverdun, 1, place des Armes, 54460 Liverdun, France.

Carolyn Shuster Fournier

A French-American organist and musicologist, Carolyn Shuster Fournier is an international concert artist and titular of the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at La Trinité Church in Paris, France (cf. www.shusterfournier.com). Her latest CD, “An American in Paris” (Ligia Digital, distribution Harmonia Mundi), recorded at La Madeleine church, features French and American music. Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters, Dr. Shuster Fournier has written several articles for The Diapason.

1. In the beginning
As soon as he was appointed choirmaster at the Sainte-Clotilde church in Paris, France, Franck had the ambition of becoming the titular of the Cavaillé-Coll under construction: one of his programs, a concert given on February 22, 1858 in Orléans, attested that “the piano will be played by M. César Franck, the choirmaster and the first organist at the Sainte-Clotilde parish in Paris.”1 During the official inauguration of the church on December 19, 1859, during which he played (as did Lefébure-Wély), the musical press presented him as the “organiste titulaire de Sainte-Clotilde.”2

In his biography of César Franck, Maurice Emmanuel justly reveals:

César Franck was choirmaster at Sainte-Clotilde (1858) where Théodore Dubois accompanied his choir. Imposed upon him by Abbot Hamelin, the parish priest, this choir could be compared to a loose-fitting overcoat whose sleeves hampered him from conducting. Franck was also organist in this same church, where he possessed one of the most beautiful instruments ever constructed by Cavaillé-Coll and whose admirable voices gradually aroused his genius as an improviser.3

Franck generously allowed Théodore Dubois to play this instrument occasionally when he conducted the choir, as on April 2, 1861, for the first performance of his three-voice Mass in A Major, op. 12 (1860) with orchestra.4 As Dubois has confirmed in his Souvenirs, it was only in 1863 that Franck was finally named titular of this most poetic instrument.5
Although Dubois left Sainte-Clotilde to begin his functions as choirmaster at La Madeleine beginning on November 27, 1868, he remained César Franck’s close friend. He strongly supported his nomination in 1871 as organ professor at the Paris Conservatory. He recalled this moment in his short speech given during the inauguration of the monument in César Franck’s memory, by Alfred Lenoir, in the square located in front of the Sainte-Clotilde Basilica on October 22, 1904:

When the position as organ professor became vacant following Benoist’s death, I went right away to see my master Ambroise Thomas, then director, and I said to him, “There is only one man truly dignified to now occupy this post: it is César Franck”; he responded to me: “This is true.” And he named him to this post.6

Dubois dedicated to Franck his Prélude, the first piece in his Twelve Pieces for Organ or Piano Pédalier (Paris, Leduc, 1886).
Among the liturgical works written for ceremonies at Sainte-Clotilde, Franck composed several choral works during the first decade of his service as choirmaster: in addition to his three-voice Mass, op. 12, a dozen offertories, motets and several hymns, his oratorio The Seven Last Words of Christ on the Cross, finished on August 14, 1859, and notably his Dextera Domini, Offertory for Easter, op. 11, dedicated to the Abbot Pierre Ambroise Hamelin (priest from 1857–1883).7 In 1867, Théodore Dubois composed, at Hamelin’s request, his version of the Seven Last Words of Christ for Good Friday. This work was then traditionally performed each Good Friday at the Madeleine church. Samuel Rousseau, a musician who served this parish between 1870 and 1904, also composed religious music with harmonies openly inspired by Franck, which was used for the ceremonies at Sainte-Clotilde: two collections of his music even indicate this in their titles: Répertoire de Ste-Clotilde (Le Beau, 1887; reissued by Pérégally & Parvy, 1893–94) and Hymne à Sainte-Clotilde (1897, Pérégally & Parvy), with the text by Abbot Le Droz, which was dedicated to Abbot Gardey, General Vicar of Paris, the main priest at Sainte-Clotilde from 1883–1914.

2. The heritage
The Sainte-Clotilde musical tradition remains unique because it produced a group of musicians whose line of transmission from the professors to their students remains unbroken. The line of students of the titulars at Sainte-Clotilde who belonged to this tradition, listed below, is the most complete one to this day, without however pretending to be exhaustive:

César Franck (his organ students at the Conservatory)8
Samuel Rousseau (Nov. 1871; 2nd acc. 1872; 1st acc. 1875 ; 1st prize, 1877)
Guillaume Couture (Canadian) (1873 to 1875)
Charles Bordes (ca. 1880)
Georges MacMaster (ca. 1880), also a student of Théodore Dubois
Gabriel Pierné (Dec. 1880; 2nd prize, 1881; 1st prize, 1882)
Dynam-Victor Fumet (Dec. 1885)
Charles Tournemire (Dec. 1889; 1st acc., 1890)

Théodore Dubois (his students in harmony at the Conservatory)
Guillaume Couture (1873–1875)
Maurice Emmanuel (1st acc. 1883)
Léon Cazajus (2nd prize 1887)
Jules Meunier (ca. 1895)

Charles Tournemire (private organ and improvisation students)
Ermend Bonnal (beginning in 1904)
Maurice Duruflé (beginning in 1920)
Daniel-Lesur (ca. 1927)
Henriette Puig-Roger (ca. 1930)
Jean Langlais (1931)
Bernard Piché (1938–1939)

Jean Langlais (private organ students or those enrolled at the Schola Cantorum)
Pierre Denis (beginning in 1932)
Pierre Cogen (beginning in 1950)
Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais (beginning in 1966)
Jacques Taddei (1980).

The example of Théodore Dubois to Maurice Emmanuel
An example of faithful support of a professor to his students, that of Théodore Dubois to Maurice Emmanuel alone illustrates the quality of their relationship. At the time of Emmanuel’s nomination as choirmaster, on October 20, 1904, Dubois wrote him the following letter:

My dear friend,
I am delighted that you have accepted the functions of choirmaster at Ste-Clotilde. You have plenty of ideas, a cultivated spirit; you know how to manage, in these particularly difficult circumstances when we have imposed the “Motu proprio,” the departure of some good and of some bad. You will scarcely be the sectarian and uncompromising man from the “Schola Cantorum,” and you will neither glide to the side of worldly music, so-called more or less religious or rather more or less poorly written. You must be firm and active. You will have all of that, and in addition you are young. Please accept therefore my congratulations and my most sincere wishes, and you know that I am always affectionately devoted to you.
Théodore Dubois9

Two years later, on July 1, 1906, Dubois congratulated him for his actions within this parish:

My dear friend, I would like to express my complete satisfaction with the beautiful performance of my Mass in the Palestrinian style this morning at Ste-Clotilde. I congratulate and heartily thank you for your fine artistic interpretation. It is difficult to acquire the necessary suppleness in such a style. You must then encourage the singers of your choir and give them the compliments they deserve.
Congratulations also for the Plain-Chant [sic], which, thus sung and phrased, loses all of the cavernous severity that one is in the habit of giving to it, and which too often renders it disagreeable.
Beautiful organ pieces, well-played.
All my respects to Mrs. Emmanuel and affectionately to you,
Th. Dubois10

One year later, after Maurice Emmanuel resigned from his position as choirmaster at Sainte-Clotilde, Théodore Dubois wrote to him on April 2, 1907:

My dear Emmanuel,
That which you have told me does not surprise me! My long personal experience in this field where I worked for so many years of my life, has not hardly left me any illusions neither on the goodness, nor on the piety nor on the intelligence of those whom you know!
I was just going to write to you to say that I just learned about your resignation from Mr. Meunier, without a doubt the one whom you refer to with a M.— He just came to visit me, telling me this: “Mr. Emmanuel resigned from Ste-Clotilde, I am most certain; I am not less certain that my candidacy has a chance; I would be grateful if you would support me with a recommendation to the priest.” In these conditions, I could not refuse to write him this note, especially since I have known him for quite a long time. I therefore wrote a small letter to the priest conceived more or less in these terms: “I have been informed that Mr. Emmanuel has left his position as choirmaster at Sainte-Clotilde. If this is true, please allow me to etc. . . .”
Since I always tell the truth, I was going to write this to you, really certain that you did not take this solemn decision until after a series of all sorts of disgusting events in which you did not want to tarnish your dignity.
You remain a Christian and a believer; this is good! Strong souls support without weakness all human iniquities. You are among them!
The last phrase of your letter reminded me of my past. How many times my most sincere efforts remained unknown and were ridiculed and how many times I was treated unjustly and in a biased manner! But like you, I can say that I had “received sympathy from a minor elite, and that a sincere work in view of an elevated art is never entirely lost.”
Madame Dubois joins me and hopes that you will share with Mme. Emmanuel the assurance of our most affectionate sympathy.
Théodore Dubois11

The dedications
The dedications of works by composers from the Sainte-Clotilde Tradition to their colleagues demonstrate their mutual esteem and their fraternal relationships. Samuel Rousseau dedicated his Fantaisie, op. 73, “to the memory of my dear Master César Franck,” the Cantilena of his Fifteen Pieces (Paris, Leduc, 1892) to Léon Cazajus, and an Offertoire funèbre in this same collection to the Abbot Chazot, named second vicar at Sainte-Clotilde in 1889. Maurice Emmanuel dedicated his Three Organ Pieces (Paris, Lemoine, 1986) to his assistant Emile Poillot. Ermend Bonnal dedicated his Prayer and Chorale, op. 27, to the memory of his friend Samuel Rousseau. Gabriel Pierné dedicated the Prelude of his Three Pieces, op. 29, to the choirmaster Samuel Rousseau, and the second piece in this collection, the Cantilène, to Théodore Dubois, who became titular of the Grand Orgue at La Madeleine. Pierné also composed a Tombeau de César Franck for piano (published posthumously), based on one of César Franck’s improvisation themes.
Following Samuel Rousseau, Charles Tournemire dedicated his first important organ work to César Franck, his Triple Choral (Sancta Trinitas), op. 41, written in November, 1910 (Lyon, Janin, 1912) “to the memory of my venerated Master César Franck. This work renders homage to my master’s musical testament, his Three Chorals (1890).” For Tournemire,

the highest expression of organ music is manifest in the choral. The refined style which ensues gives it a special significance. This is not only a question of writing, its significance is higher: it is the result of a special state of the soul. . . . From the instant when the composer enters this temple perfumed with incense, he feels penetrated with dignity: his prayerful soul is filled with light.12

Tournemire’s Triple Choral contains three sources of inspiration:

1st Choral—You are grand, oh Father! You have created the world. You have regulated the grandiose rhythm. You have created life. We glorify you and we love you.
2nd Choral—The one who regulates the immense rhythm of the world, this power that is beyond all our comprehension, in order to save us took on our humanity, was born in a manger, grew up among men, lived a life in a miserable world, taught with sublime maxims, died on a cross between two thieves. Admire Christ’s ineffable sweetness and admire his unfathomable goodness and greatness. Love Christ.
3rd Choral—This grandiose manifestation of the silent march of the stars in space, the sublime act of Christ on the cross, all of these acts beyond our comprehension were dictated by the Holy Spirit.13
Charles Tournemire dedicated several of his works to his substitute organists: in 1930, to André Fleury, no. 15 of the op. 56 from l’Orgue mystique (Laetare), and to Daniel-Lesur, no. 16. In 1934, he dedicated no. 40 (for the XIVth Sunday after Pentecost) to Emile Poillot as well as no. 41, op. 57, from l’Orgue mystique (for the XVth Sunday after Pentecost) to Maurice Duruflé. Duruflé, in turn, reconstituted Five Improvisations for organ, which Tournemire had recorded at the beginning of 1931 for Polydor.
To his former student, substitute, and friend Ermend Bonnal, Tournemire dedicated several of his works: in 1895, Le Ménétrier (one of his Six Pieces for piano, op. 20—Marseille, Georges Kaufmann, 1900), an Offertory in G Major, op. 21, from the Variae Preces for harmonium (edited in Lyon by Janin in 1904, along with an Entrée in B Major, dedicated to Samuel-Rousseau) and in 1931, the 33rd office of l’Orgue mystique, op. 57, for the eighth Sunday after Pentecost (Paris, Heugel, 1931). In turn, Bonnal dedicated to his maître his Paysage landais (Paris, A. Durand & Fils, 1904), and to André Fleury, the third piece of his Paysages pyrénées, rebaptized Paysages euskariens, Cloches dans le ciel. Bernard Schulé dedicated in memory of Ermend Bonnal his Icône, the fifth of his organ pieces entitled Enluminures, op. 12 (Rouart Lerolle et Cie., 1946).
Tournemire dedicated his Fioretti, op. 60, no. 2 (Paris, Hérelle, 1932) to his friend Jean Langlais. It is moving to read the text written to his student, blind since the age of two:

You judge me well because, to punish me for my deep faults you weakened my eyesight and momentarily I lost my sight! Oh! Am I not only too worthy of these tribulations? And don’t I deserve even yet greater ones?14

Let us recall that it was with much emotion that Jean Langlais played this work at a concert at Sainte-Clotilde in homage to Tournemire on November 16, 1989 (to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of his death). This was the last time that Pierre Cogen heard Langlais play in this church that he had served as an artist for 43 years. Too weak to go up to the Grand Orgue tribune, Langlais, who strongly wished to perform this work, decided to perform it on the choir organ. Jean Langlais dedicated his Rhapsodie Grégorienne (no. 9 of his Nine Pieces, op. 40, published in Paris by Bornemann in 1945) to the memory of his maître Charles Tournemire as well as his In Memoriam, op. 231 (Paris, Combre, 1987).
In September, 1986, Langlais dedicated his Three Antiphons to the Holy Virgin, op. 242, for solo voice (or for unison choir) and organ (Pro Organo, 1991) to Father Joseph Choné, who had just been named head priest at Sainte-Clotilde, as well as several works to his colleagues: to his former student and substitute organist Pierre Denis, Hommage à Landino from his Twenty-Four Pieces for Harmonium or Organ, op. 10 (Paris, Hérelle, 1939) and his Suite française, op. 59 (Paris, Bornemann, 1948); to his disciple and substitute organist Pierre Cogen in 1973, “Oh oui, viens Seigneur, viens Seigneur Jésus,” no. 4 from his Five Meditations on the Apocalypse, op. 175 (Paris, Bornemann, 1974); and to the choirmaster François Tricot, Dominica in Palmis, op. 83 (Paris, Schola Cantorum, 1984). Pierre Cogen dedicated several works to his maître: in 1988, Offering (Paris, Combre, 1990) and his Two Chorales (Paris, Combre, 1993); in 1980, he dedicated his Hosanna in exsilio to François Tricot (the first of his Two Hosannas on Gregorian texts; Vienna, Universal, 1985).
To his student and second wife Marie-Louise, Jean Langlais dedicated his “Il était, Il est et Il vient,” no. 2 of his Five Meditations on the Apocalypse, op. 175, and his “Feux d’artifice,” no. 4 of his Rosace, op. 211 (Paris, Combre, 1981). In turn, Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais wrote a biography on Langlais and his work: Ombre et Lumière, Jean Langlais, 1907–1991 (Paris, Combre, 1995). To Jacques Taddei, Jean Langlais dedicated, in 1988, “He is Born,” no. 6 of his Christmas Carol Hymn Settings, op. 243 (H. T. Fitzsimons, 1988).

Improvisation
Improvisation on the Grand Orgue played a primary role in the music at Sainte-Clotilde. As Joël-Marie Fauquet emphasized,
the fame of César Franck as an organist was founded on improvisation. . . . As a composer, he rarely put himself in the forefront. . . . Of the six hours of his class each week, the Master devoted at least five of them to improvisation. This says everything. . . . Franck intended to bring it to a level of perfection that had never been achieved, thus transcending the liturgical requirements which motivated this transient art.15
His two books of improvisation themes, which later belonged to Gabriel Pierné, were used especially at Sainte-Clotilde. This art served as a springboard for his imagination, which he expressed with fluidity, poetry and lyricism. Franck transmitted this art to his students. It is notably Charles Tournemire who understood so well his improvisations and their relationship with specific aspects of the Cavaillé-Coll at Sainte-Clotilde. Maurice Emmanuel was a first-hand witness to this transmission:

Please allow me, as one of Charles Tournemire’s comrades, to share a past experience during a heroic moment when, at Sainte-Clotilde, we attempted to charm our parishioners with music that was far too austere. Several weeks ago, while listening to the brilliant postlude he improvised, this brought back distant memories of how amazed I was when I listened to Tournemire’s musical commentaries during the service; on certain days, during the Postlude, his playing produced furious outbursts from the organ: for this mystic is also a genuine dramatist. If his art voluntarily brings serenity and peacefulness, it can suddenly break forth with energy: and, trembling, he attacks the keyboards, which previously sang meditatively, in response to the liturgical functions.16

Tournemire transmitted this art to his students; his pupil Jean Langlais relates:

His pedagogy, as admirable as it was, was not lacking in originality. For example, concerning a plan for improvisation: First, create the atmosphere . . . Secondly, impose it on your listeners, so that the central part is rich. Rise . . . Rise . . . then, your public will follow you . . . They will begin to pant . . . no longer able to breathe . . . Then play for them two brief and dissonant chords on the entire organ . . . Observe a long silence . . . The audience is dead . . . Then, open the gates of heaven with a poetic conclusion on a Bourdon 8? and a Voix Céleste . . .17

3. In conclusion
All of the musicians who served Sainte-Clotilde during the past 150 years had personalities and religious beliefs that were strongly different. César Franck, who kept Ernest Renan’s The Life of Jesus on his bedside table, loved the splendor of the worship services,

that which exalts the exemplary and transcending quality of sublime drama, above all human, as the pediment of Sainte-Clotilde shows, where the sculptor represented Christ showing his wounds, according to the sad bent of the piety that it thus affirms.18
Samuel Rousseau was kind, cordial, obliging and elegant. His compositions were easily accessible to the parishioners. Gabriel Pierné was neither a practicing nor a fundamental Christian, a true contrast to the great mystics Dynam-Victor Fumet, who was closely associated with anarchists and who married into a family close to the founder of the Theosophical Society, and Charles Tournemire, an emotional eclectic fond of the writings of Ernest Hello, Joseph Péladan and Dom Guéranger. For Tournemire, “all music which is not written to glorify God is useless.” This last statement puzzled Jean Langlais who dared to ask his master in 1931: “But what do you do with Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók?” “USELESS, he responded dryly.”19 A firm Christian believer from Brittany, Jean Langlais was attracted at a young age by the ideals of his professor at the Institute for the Blind in Paris, Albert Mahaut, the author of the book, Le Chrétien: l’homme d’action.20
In spite of the many difficulties encountered throughout the history of this parish, the musicians of Sainte-Clotilde were able to respond as best they could to the aristocratic parishioners’ taste for worldly music, to the various reforms of church music (notably to the separation of the church and state in December, 1905, to the restoration of plainchant and Gregorian chants and to Palestrinian music and much later, to Vatican II). They also kept their artistic ideals, in order to strongly adhere to high-quality music. Maurice Emmanuel, who did not succeed in accomplishing his mission within this parish, remains “historically victorious”21 because he later did so in other contexts, notably in the circles in Saint-Germain-en-Laye and in his classes at the Paris Conservatory, where he formed an entire school of church musicians, notably Olivier Messiaen. His lucidity concerning César Franck and Charles Tournemire sums up the role of the musicians in the Sainte-Clotilde musical tradition:

If Franck ignored the joys that the least of artists can ever know, he was conscious of their force and of their liberty. The survivors of the time when the Saint-Clotilde organ sounded under the fingers of a master, his happiness in playing, his improvisations that he delivered, was recalled by privileged listeners, . . . In his organ loft, Franck was king. It took several minutes for his power to break forth in all its fullness, and it brought forth an orchestral tumult, in which the master played an imposing prelude. To compel him to intone the triumphal hymn, he seemed to shake the keyboards; suddenly the hymn appeared in a grandiose construction . . . More than once the horrible bell, rang by the singers’ accompanist “to tell the organist to stop playing,” announced the end of the offertory and the necessity to conclude . . . Franck, who had just played a series of evocative arpeggios, then began to proclaim: “I have not yet said anything!” or if indeed he was completely inspired: “What a shame.” But he obeyed the bell. During the Vespers, the verses of the Magnificat gave him the opportunity to create brief masterpieces in spite of the clergy’s reprimands and the congregation’s impatience, totally insensitive to the splendors of this art. It is at the organ that Franck spent his best moments when his energies were renewed, where the disdain of his contemporaries no longer troubled him, where the dignity of his life without intrigues received in the Lord’s house its supreme reward.
Art is made of new beginnings, the destiny of artists as well. Franck was not the last of musicians for whom life was sparing of favors. The most noble ones, with character and talent, those who avoid pushing others around, meditate, and only claim of their works that they be written, remain ignored for too long. César Franck, the service finished, delivered treasures to them. Have the times changed? The parishioners, do they listen to the artist who today (1926) through a close alliance with liturgy and with art, equally respecting the religious and musical functions, constructs an edifice built on the themes taken from the service of the day that is as disciplined in its structure, as those by César Franck, of whom he was one of the last students? His master bequeathed to him the gift of these contemplative and impassioned improvisations, sometimes serene, other times tumultuous, and which are like mystical dramas conceived in the secret corners of the soul. The successor of the master of the Beatitudes also buries himself in the meditation of his work and only emerges to express the thousand voices of his organ with much lyrical rejoicing, which the congregation does not seem to understand . . .22
For more information concerning the musicians of the Saint-Clotilde church in Paris, France, one may contact the following associations:
Association E. Bonnal
“Héritage Musical”
Chemin des Jardins
30700 St. Victor des Oules, France
www.bonnal.org
[email protected]

Association Théodore Dubois
Christopher Hainsworth, président
Rue de la Fontaine
34800 Lacoste, France
[email protected]

Les Amis de Maurice Emmanuel
Anne Eichner-Emmanuel, présidente
30, rue Céline
92160 Anthony, France
[email protected]

César-Franck-Gesellschaft E. V.
Internationale Vereinigung
c/o Dr. Christiane Strucken-Paland & Dr. Ralph Paland
Berrenrather Straße 134
50937 Köln, Germany
tel: 0049-(0) 221-5103355
[email protected]

L’Association des Amis de Jean Langlais
Brenda Dean, Présidente
3, rue des Moulins
35560 La Fontenelle, France
www.jeanlanglais.eu
Monsieur Denis Havard de la Montagne
“Le Moulin blanc”
87300 Bellac, France
[email protected]

This article first appeared in French in L’Orgue 2007, II-III, no. 278-279, pp. 177–185.

Acknowledgements
Carolyn Shuster Fournier warmly expresses her gratitude to Francis Dubois, Anne Eichner-Emmanuel, Denis Havard de la Montagne, Helga Schauerte and to the Ruth and Clarence Mader Memorial Scholarship Fund for its grant in 2006.

Choirmasters and Organists at the Sainte-Clotilde Basilica, Paris
The following list was established with the kind assistance of Denis Havard de la Montagne (substitutes and assistants are indicated in parentheses).1

Choirmasters
1857–1863: César Franck
1863–Nov 1868: Théodore Dubois
Nov 1868–1869: Edouard Marlois
1869?–1875: Stéphane Gaurion
1876–1882?: Alexandre Georges
1882–1904: Samuel Rousseau
1904–1907: Maurice Emmanuel (Emile Poillot)
1907–1946: Jules Meunier, replaced during the war by Etienne Audfray (Pierre Besson and Robert Vincent)
Dec 1946–June 1987: François Tricot
June 1987–Sept 1988: Yves Castagnet
Sept 1988–Aug 31, 1989: Philippe Brandeis
1989–1993: Pierre-Michel Bédard
1993–June 1994: Marcel Bardon

Organist Accompanists
1857–1863: Théodore Dubois
1863?–1869: Stéphane Gaurion
1870–1878: Samuel Rousseau (Guillaume Couture)
1879–1887: ? (Dynam-Victor Fumet, organist of the Catechism Chapel in 1884)
1888?–1890?: Clotaire-Joseph Franck
1891–1923: Léon Cazajus (Emile Poillot)
1923–ca. 1964: Pierre Besson
ca. 1964–June 1987: François Tricot
June 1987–Sept 1988: Yves Castagnet
Sept 1988–Aug 31, 1989: Philippe Brandeis
Sept 1989–1993: Pierre-Michel Bédard
1993–Dec 2003: Sylvie Mallet
2004: Olivier Penin

Titulars of the Grand-Orgue
1863–1890: César Franck, but already in 1859 he played the Grand Orgue (Gabriel Pierné, after 1885)
1890–1898: Gabriel Pierné (Georges MacMaster in 1893–1894)
1898–1939: Charles Tournemire, numerous substitutes:
Ermend Bonnal ca.1910
Roger Stiegler ca. 1920
Maurice Duruflé 1920–1927
André Fleury ca. 1922–ca. 1930
Daniel-Lesur 1927–1936
Henriette Puig-Roger in 1929
Antoine Reboulot ca. 1935
Bernard Piché in 1938 and 1939
Bernard Schulé 1938–1945
Dec 1941–Aug 1944: Joseph-Ermend Bonnal (Bernard Schulé until 1945)
Nov 4, 1945–Dec 1987: Jean Langlais (Pierre Denis 1945–1972; Pierre Cogen 1972–1975, then titular; Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais 1979–Dec 1987)
Jan 1976–June 21, 1994: Pierre Cogen
since Easter 1988: Jacques Taddei (Olivier Penin)

Ann Labounsky

Ann Labounsky, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of Organ and Sacred Music at the Mary Pappert School of Music, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Author of Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music, she studied with André Marchal and Jean Langlais in Paris from 1962–1964.

Performance artists are most often remembered after their deaths through the compositions that they leave behind. Organ students learn to play works written by J. S. Bach or Franz Liszt, César Franck or Marcel Dupré, Olivier Messiaen or Jean Langlais; and thus their names and their works live on from one generation to another. For the rest, great performers are remembered during the lives of audiences who heard their memorable performances—great teachers, through the lives of their students.
David Craighead, legendary organ performer and now retired professor at the Eastman School of Music, has often lamented about the fleeting nature of fame. Some, like Arthur Poister, are remembered principally through competitions named for them, as in the Poister competition sponsored annually by Syracuse University where he taught; but even now, a few short generations after his death, there is included in the competition application a biographical sketch telling of his life and work.
For very many, there is no immortality of memory. In the words of the hymn: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, soon bears its sons away. They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” It is a sad dictum that those who do not compose most often decompose without leaving a mark on succeeding generations.
There are exceptions, of course. One thinks, for example, of opera singer Enrico Caruso or conductor Arturo Toscanini, great artists whose names continue to resound with their successor performers and audiences beyond specialists in music history. In those cases, they were people who transcended the limitations of the performance practices of their day, and thus left the arts they served transformed forever. For organists, the name André Marchal, the thirtieth anniversary of whose death is commemorated in 2010, must be added.

Marchal’s legacy
There are reasons for which André Marchal will be remembered as a transformational figure in the history of organ building and organ performance. He had an important impact on the organ reform movement in France, and subsequently in America—an influence that is only now beginning to be understood.
In particular, he influenced the Neo-classical style of organ building and aesthetics, through his association with the French organs of Victor Gonzalez. These instruments, in turn, influenced the aesthetics and registration practices of later twentieth-century French organ composers such as Langlais, Duruflé, Alain, and Messiaen. At the same time, Marchal was a forerunner in the formation of the performance practice now common today, especially in the interpretation of earlier organ works.

Life
André Marchal entered the world at the end of the French Romantic era and lived until 1980. He was born without sight to middle-class parents in Paris, February 6, 1894. Both his father and grandfather noticed his musical talent at a very early age and encouraged his study of the piano.1 At the age of nine he enrolled at the Institute for the Young Blind (Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles–INJA) in Paris, where he studied organ with Adolphe Marty, and harmony with Albert Mahaut, both students of César Franck.
At the age of seventeen he entered Gigout’s organ class at the Paris Conservatory, obtaining first prize in organ and improvisation two years later. In 1915 he succeeded Augustin Barié as organist at Saint-Germain-des-Près. In 1917 he received the Prix d’excellence in counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatory, in the class of George Caussade. Four years later he was hired as an organ teacher at INJA, where he continued to teach from 1919 until 1959. He succeeded Joseph Bonnet as organist at the Church of Saint-Eustache in 1945, where he remained until 1963.

Recital career
His long and distinguished career as an organ virtuoso began in 1923, when he gave the premiere performance of Vierne’s Fourth Symphony, with the composer present, at the Paris Conservatory. Two years later, he followed with his second public performance at the Salle Gaveau in Paris. In 1927 he toured in Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. Again, in 1928, he gave the premiere of a work by Vierne, this time the third suite of his Pièces de fantaisie.
In 1930, he made his first tour of the United States, having no assistance from a guide and without any knowledge of English. (It was through Arthur Quimby—a student of Nadia Boulanger, and Curator of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Art Museum, who had heard Marchal perform in Paris—that the first tour was arranged.) At the Cleveland Art Museum, he played ten recitals of the music of
J. S. Bach. Seth Bingham, who taught at Columbia University, welcomed him in New York City, where he performed an improvised symphony in four movements at the Wanamaker Auditorium in New York City.2 This was followed with recitals in Chicago and in Canada. In 1938 he gave 30 concerts in the United States and Canada.
After World War II he performed in London at the Royal Festival Hall in the presence of Queen Elizabeth. On that occasion he met the English journalist Felix Aprahamian, who became a close friend and accompanied him on the tour to Australia in 1953.
His concert career spanned half a century; between 1930 and 1975 he made 19 trips to the United States to perform and teach.3 His importance as a teacher drew students from many parts of the world to study with him in his home or at INJA. It should be noted that his first American student, Lee Erwin, who made a career as a theatre organist, came to study with him just prior to his tour in 1930 and was responsible for the first recording on his house organ. His recordings, which also spanned over four decades, likewise have had a continuing impact on organists throughout the world.

André Marchal and the Organ
Reform movement
The Organ Reform movement (or Neo-classical movement as it is called in France) began in the 1920s in Germany and France, spreading to the United States in the 1930s. Albert Schweitzer was a pivotal originator. In France, it was realized primarily through the work of three men in tandem: the performer and teacher, André Marchal; the noted historian and musicologist, Norbert Dufourcq (1904–1990); and the organbuilder, Victor Gonzalez (1877–1956).

Victor Gonzalez
Victor Gonzalez, who was originally from the Castile region of Spain, began his career with the firm of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, where he became their chief voicer. He then worked for the firms of Gutschenritter and Merklin. In 1929, after declining to assume leadership of the Cavaillé-Coll firm, he established his own firm with the help, encouragement, and financing assistance of Béranger de Miramon Fitz-James, founder of Association des Amis de l’Orgue, together with a group of de Miramon’s friends. Gonzalez’s first organ was built in 1926 for the home of Béranger de Miramon, followed the same year by an organ for the parish church in Ligugé. By 1937 there were 50 employees at the firm who worked to rebuild the Cavaillé-Coll organ at the Palais de Chaillot, and in the following year to renovate the organs at the Versailles chapel and the Cathedral of Rheims.
From 1929 until 1936, Rudolf von Beckerath worked for Gonzalez on restoration projects for organs in Saint-Eustache, Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, Solesmes, Bailleul, the Goüin residence, and the world’s fair in Brussels in 1935, prior to founding his own firm. Though the Gonzalez name is no longer in use, he was succeeded in the business by his son, Fernand Gonzalez, and then by his son-in-law, George Danion. Fernand Gonzalez, who was killed in World War II, was responsible for the design of the Palais de Chaillot. After his death, Bernard Dargassies was charged with the maintenance of most of the Gonzalez organs.4
In 1931 Victor Gonzalez built an organ for the Condé estate of Joseph Bonnet.5 Gonzalez built this instrument very much in the Cavaillé-Coll style of that time, with two enclosed divisions, the usual plan for his house organs. He departed, however, from Cavaillé-Coll by adding a three-rank mixture on the Swell and a series of mutations. The romantic Merklin organ at Saint-Eustache, which was rebuilt by Gonzalez, and the Gonzalez organ from 1934 in the home of Henry Goüin are landmark examples of the wedding of early music to the recreated sounds of early instruments.6 These instruments included many mutation stops and mixtures, which allowed authentic performances of early music. Under the influence of Marchal and Dufourcq, Gonzalez became the leading builder in France for half a century.

Collaboration with Norbert
Dufourcq
Norbert Dufourcq’s collaboration with Marchal began in 1920, when he became Marchal’s organ student after studying for three years with Gustave Noël at the Cathedral in Orleans. Two years after beginning his organ study with Marchal, Dufourcq became principal organist of Saint-Merry in Paris, a post that he retained until his death in 1990. Dufourcq earned a degree in history from the Sorbonne (1923). In 1927 he was one of the founding members and secretary of Association des Amis de l’Orgue. Between 1932 and 1983 he was a member of the organ division of Commission of Historical Monuments. From 1941–1975 he served as professor of music history at the Paris Conservatory. (He also taught at the Collège Stanislas, Paris, from 1935 to 1946.)
During the years 1941 to 1975 Marchal performed many concerts in which Dufourcq provided the commentary. A gifted musicologist and persuasive public speaker, Dufourcq was able to give a poetic overview of the pieces performed, so that the uninitiated listener could follow. His mellifluous voice and the frequent use of the imperfect subjunctive case were noteworthy. Included in the commentaries was a series of eight concerts, entitled The Great Forms of Organ Music, with genres including prelude and fugue, toccata, chaconne, canzona, passacaglia, the chorale, partita, and fantasia. These recitals continued and included symphonic music and program music.
By 1933, Marchal and Dufourcq had become the leaders of the French national committee for the oversight of historic organs throughout France: the Commission des Monuments Historiques under the minister des Beaux Arts. Many of the nineteenth-century Cavaillé-Coll instruments, and earlier instruments by Clicquot, which were under the control of this commission, had fallen into disrepair and required renovations. This circumstance gave the commission the opportunity to rebuild those organs using the ideals of the Neo-classic design that Marchal, Dufourcq, and Gonzalez favored. Their work could be seen in the restorations at La Flèche, Saint-Gervais, Saint-Merry (where Dufourcq was organist), Les Invalides, the cathedrals of Auch, Soissons, and Rheims, the Palais de Chaillot, and the new concert organ in the French National Radio Studio 103, among many others. Many of the foundation stops were replaced with higher-pitched ranks and the reeds re-voiced. Marchal recorded on many of these instruments in the 1960s.
Influence on the Holtkamp Organ Company
This three-part collaboration among André Marchal, Norbert Dufourcq, and Victor Gonzalez, which affected the Neo-classical organ movement in France, subsequently came to the United States through the work of both Walter Holtkamp, Sr. and his son Walter Holtkamp, Jr., who wrote:

André Marchal came to the microcosm that is the Holtkamp Organ Company soon after World War II. While he had been in this country prior to the war, it was not until after that he brought his many talents to us with such marvelous results…. Both my father and I traveled to many cities of our country to sit with André Marchal at the console to evaluate our instruments. He would play and discourse upon the merits and demerits of that particular organ. From every encounter we came away with a new perspective of our work and our ideas.7
A transcript of one of these conversations with Marchal and the two Walter Holtkamps, Senior and Junior, which was recorded following a Marchal recital on the Holtkamp organ at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland, on May 10, 1957, gives an example of how the Holtkamps relied on Marchal’s advice regarding voicing:
WH (Walter Holtkamp, Sr.): André, we heard last night no 16′ Principal or 8′ Pedal Octave. My son and I would like to go to St. Paul’s and have a lesson on the use of the 16′ and what is lacking in this one.
AM (André Marchal): Your 16′ Principal is too large. There is too much gap in dynamic between the 16′ Subbass and the 16′ Principal. It is too big to be used without the reeds, and when the reeds are on the Subbass does just as well as the 16′ Principal.
WH: Perhaps this is a result of the 16′ Principal being placed against a stone wall rather than in the buffet as in the French organs.
AM: No, I noticed this same character at Baltimore, where the 16′ stands in the open. This is true on all your organs. The 8′ Pedal Octave is also too loud at St. Paul’s, Oberlin, Berkeley, Baltimore.
C (Walter Holtkamp, Jr.): I would like to know Mr. Marchal’s idea of the relationship as to loudness and quality between the Great 8′ Principal and Pedal 8′ Octave.
AM: In theory, the Pedal 8′ should be larger in scale than the Great 8′, but in use I really like the Pedal 8′ to be a little milder than the Great 8′. It could be a little more flutey.8

It is possible that Walter Holtkamp, Sr. heard Marchal’s series of ten recitals of the music of J. S. Bach at the Cleveland Museum of Art in March of 1930. In August of 1956, Walter Holtkamp, Sr. and Walter Blodgett, Curator of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Art Museum, drove to Methuen to hear Marchal play during the Summer Organ Institute, organized by Arthur Howes, and again the following year to hear him perform and record on the Holtkamp organ at MIT. Along with Fenner Douglas, in the early 1960s Walter Holtkamp and Walter Blodgett traveled to France to study the historic instruments there, including many by Gonzalez. In later years Marchal performed and taught frequently on Holtkamp organs at Syracuse University and Oberlin College. (Despite his love of Holtkamp organs, he often spoke of the similarity between the American builder G. Donald Harrison’s reeds and the French reeds that he loved.)

Giuseppe Englert
The composer Giuseppe Englert, another of Marchal’s students, who in 1954 married Marchal’s daughter Jacqueline, served as translator for the Holtkamps and Marchal during Marchal’s tours to the United States and the Holtkamps’ trips to France. The Englerts’ apartment in Paris, across the street from Les Invalides, was home to a Gonzalez organ, with a similar design to one in Marchal’s home. Maurice Duruflé admired this instrument and was inspired by it for the specification for the Gonzalez instrument in his own apartment. (The organ in Marchal’s home was originally a Gutschenritter, which was enlarged by Gonzalez.)

Marchal and performance practice
In the early 1920s Marchal continued to play in the style he had been taught by Gigout, a uniformly legato touch and a non-interpretive approach to the music of Bach and the Romantic composers. Gigout followed the tradition of the Lemmens school, learned from Widor and Guilmant. During his study of the music of the early masters, in preparation for a series of recitals of early music in 1923, Marchal rethought his approach to technique and interpretation. He was the first, in 1929, to play the two complete Masses of François Couperin. In an interview with Pierre Lucet for a series of recitals on the French National Radio in 1979, Marchal explained the process by which he changed his approach to early music and the organs upon which it could be performed:

Pierre Lucet: Maître, permit me to inquire first of all about your approach to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach:
Marchal: It [his approach] was made at two times. I was admitted to the Conservatory and at that time I listened to what was told to me, I learned technique; I was greatly in need of it. And it was from that point of view that I studied Bach. Ten years later [1921], in establishing my repertoire, I began to concertize, and relearned Bach in a completely different manner. This time I studied each piece in depth, trying to understand it in the best way possible; and having assimilated it, I tried to bring out the beauty of each piece by certain ways of playing; for example, the phrasing, the breaths, the registration. Obviously, at that time, there were few organs on which one could register well the music of Bach; we were still in the full Romantic period. But one could still look for lighter stops, clear in any case, which would permit the beauty of Bach’s counterpoint to emerge.
After having obtained my prize in organ [1913], while continuing to play the organ I worked a great deal on piano. Paul Braud, a student of Franck, took an interest in me. I became then more oriented toward the piano, which permitted me to know more music and to play more chamber music. I worked relentlessly . . . I purchased a small mechanical organ to practice my repertoire. It was at that time [1921] that I really tried to express Bach. My colleagues said: “Marchal? He plays the harpsichord”—and that was almost true, since my interpretations that were closest to what I hoped them to be were like the marvelous ones of Wanda Landowska on her harpsichord.9

This process of searching for the appropriate style for early music and the instruments that would bring it to life continued for him through the early 1930s, when he gave a series of recitals of early music on Neo-classical instruments built by Gonzalez. After 1930, Marchal played very differently from his teacher, Gigout, and the other blind teachers from INJA. It was as if he grasped the essence of the music from within himself. His style was powerful, lyrical, and always convincing. His personality was also very strong. There was a radiance about him and a “joie de vivre” that came through in every piece that he played.
His touch was a radical departure from the 19th-century seamless legato that was carried on by Marcel Dupré and his predecessors. He had an infinite variety of touches. By the 1940s Marchal had become one of the most popular performers in France. The public related easily to the musicality of Marchal’s playing and to his vibrant personality. It is not surprising that such a different style—full of authentic poetry and lyricism—would win the hearts of the French public as well as those from other countries. It must also be said that with him and all the other blind organists, there was also something captivating at seeing a blind person being led onto the stage and then left alone to play the instrument, no matter how large, completely independently. When one contemplates the style of playing during the 1920s through the 1950s, which was completely dominated by the legato Romantic style, what is utterly amazing is this new, radically different sound and interpretation. Begun by Marchal, it was later adopted by Marie-Claire Alain and others.
Guilmant and Pirro, in the monumental Archives des Maîtres de l’Orgue, 1897–1910 (volumes 1–10 available online), made available for the first time, at the end of the 19th century, the music of Couperin, de Grigny, Clérambault, and many others. Although Guilmant and Pirro recommended the use of the Cornet registration, their grounding in the 19th-century style of playing and registration prevented them from recommending for this early music a complementary early style and registration. Likewise, the six volumes of Joseph Bonnet’s Historical Organ Recitals series, published between 1917 and 1940, continued the same style of playing and registrations. Bonnet’s role in the movement, however, should not be ignored. He was intensely interested in early music but played it in the manner that he had been taught by Guilmant.
Although he had substituted for his teacher, Eugène Gigout, as organ teacher at the Paris Conservatory, Marchal was never connected to any school in France except at INJA and the summer school of Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau. Nonetheless, so many students requested Fulbright grants to study with him, that by the 1950s he agreed to be referred to as a school himself. In America, many other organists fell under his influence through the many masterclasses he gave at Oberlin College, Syracuse University, Union Theological Seminary, Northwestern University, the universities of Illinois and Indiana, the Eastman School of Music, and the Organ Institute in Methuen.

Marchal’s recordings
In the release on CD (Arbiter, 2003) of his first recordings, originally recorded between 1936 and 1948 at Saint-Eustache and the Goüin residence, one can easily understand Marchal’s interest in early music and in the type of instrument that would be well suited to the music of earlier periods. The lyricism, so unlike the usual style of playing during the 1940s, was notably displayed in his performance of the Bach chorale prelude O Mensch bewein dein Sünde gross. His use of free trills, so unlike the measured trills found in the playing of his contemporaries, was quite a departure from the traditional style of playing.
The subtle rubato in all the playing is striking. In the Bach Passacaglia and Fugue, the phrasing of each variation gives life to the great work. The articulation of the pedal line and the variety in the registrations gives much interest to the form of the piece. What is compelling in all of his playing is the strength of the rhythm, especially noticeable in the fugue of this work. While listening to his performances, one senses that it should not be performed otherwise, that it is right.
What we understand today of the stylus fantasticus can already be heard in Marchal’s opening performance from 1948 of Buxtehude’s Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp Minor. There is considerable contrast between the free sections and the fugal sections. His personality comes alive in his commentary for demonstrating each stop, with brief improvisations that give fine examples of this style of organbuilding. The Blow Toccata in D Minor brings out the bass in the reed registers with great clarity. Listening to these improvisations on the individual sonorities of the Gonzalez house organ in the Goüin house gives a clear picture of this aesthetic: a Neo-classical organ that, in America, we would call an eclectic organ.
Other recordings include:
Chefs d’œuvres pour orgue de J.S. Bach “10 de répertoire” en 1989. Zurich, Grossmünster 1964. MUSIDISC 203412 AD 650.
Orgues et organistes français du XXè siècle (1900–1950) by EMI Classics (2002) as well as Jeux et registrations de l’orgue, Improvisations, Toccata de Gigout, Final de la 4ème Symphonie de Vierne, Apparition de l’Eglise éternelle de Messiaen, Choral dorien de J. Alain, Saint-Merry, 1958 et 1976. EMI Classics, 1 CD, 71716 2 (1997), Saint-Merry et Saint-Eustache.
The Organ Historical Society website lists the two recordings available through Arbiter (135 and 111) with these annotations:
The works by Buxtehude, Bach, Blow, Purcell, Sweelinck and Vierne were recorded by André Marchal (1894–1980) in April 1948, on the organ at St. Eustache in Paris, then a Merklin which had been rebuilt by Victor Gonzalez in 1927–32. In 1936, the Pathé firm released a 12-disc set entitled Three Centuries of Organ Music from which Marchal’s performances of Cabezon, Santa Maria, Landino, and Palestrina are taken. These first recordings of these early works are performed on an organ designed especially for early music and completed in 1934 by Victor Gonzalez at the home of Henry Goüin in Paris. Marchal also demonstrates the organ stop-by-stop, and narrates his demonstration. Available on Arbiter-135.
Arbiter 111 is described:

This unique CD reissues the 1956 stereo recordings made by André Marchal on his 3/28 house organ built by Gonzalez. The fidelity of the recording is unusually fine, capturing Marchal’s way with 12 of the Bach Orgelbüchlein, BWV 603–612, 614–615, and Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C, BWV 564. There are no revelations here for most of us, and the organ is located in an anechoic environment. The CD is a must for Marchal fans, who will revel in his spoken description and demonstration of the organ.
Although more difficult to locate, it is possible to find in libraries the Lumen recordings of Franck and early French music (Grand Prix du disque 1952); the Bach large fantasies and fugues by Ducretet Thomson; the Clérambault recordings at Auch Cathedral, by LDE 3231; many of these recordings contain the commentaries by Norbert Dufourcq. The Unicorn recordings from MIT (UNLP 1046–1048) of Bach and early French music on the large Holtkamp organ there from the 1950s are excellent.
Marchal’s Complete Organ Works of César Franck, originally released by Erato, has been reissued by Solstice ([email protected]). This recording was awarded the coveted Diapason d’Or. There are many unpublished recordings (some from Syracuse from 1960s, and two recordings from his last American tour in 1974 at the Church of the Assumption in Bellevue, Pennsylvania and in Rochester, New York) as well as many given on the French National Radio.

His teaching and legacy
His system of teaching usually began with having the student play a chorale prelude from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. He usually heard a piece only one time giving all his ideas in the one lesson. For the early French music he did not use “notes inégales” during the 1960s, but by the 1970s he realized that this was, in practice, the style of this music, and adopted its use. His mind was always engaged and he heard every phrasing and nuance. His use of agogic accents to bring out the shape of a phrase was notable. Above all, he made each part sing independently of the other voices regardless of the period in which it was written. He was demanding especially with his more gifted pupils, desirous that each one achieve his/her highest potential.
His influence is continued not only in the legacy of performance practice and organbuilding. A number of publications and prizes have appeared since 1980: a thesis by Lynn Trapp at the University of Kansas (Lawrence, 1982), “The Legacy of André Marchal;” “Tribute to André Marchal” reprint of the L’Orgue Dossier I in 1997, with the addition of tributes by many American students who did not have the opportunity to be included in the original document; and prizes at the biennial Marchal competition in Biarritz.
The Académie André Marchal was founded in Biarritz, France in 1982 by Denise Limonaire to perpetuate the memory of this musical giant, his innovative style of performance, his neo-classical influence on organbuilding, and his rediscovery of early music. Susan Landale serves as president of the Académie, with Jacqueline Englert-Marchal as honorary president. Among other projects, the Académie has partnered with the town of Biarritz to sponsor the “Prix André Marchal,” an international organ competition with prizes in interpretation and improvisation. The competition is held every two years and has grown in quality and size. The ninth competition, held in 2009, accepted eighteen candidates of twelve nationalities. Americans desirous of supporting this valid and significant mission are strongly invited to become members; dues of $80 for two years may be mailed to Ralph Tilden at P.O. Box 2254, Banner Elk, NC 28604. André Marchal awards are given at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for excellence in organ performance.
His impact as a teacher was important. His blind students who obtained the first prize in organ at the Paris Conservatory included: André Stiegler, 1925; Jean Langlais and Jean Laporte, 1930; Gaston Litaize, 1931; Antoine Reboulot, 1936; Xavier Dufresse, 1952; Georges Robert, 1953; Louis Thiry, 1958; Jean Wallet, 1963; Jean-Pierre Leguay, 1966 (who had studied with both Litaize and Marchal). Two other pupils who obtained the first prize who were sighted were Noëlie Pierront, 1925, and Anne Marie Barat, 1976.
His other pupils included Corliss Arnold, Linda Clark, Craig Cramer, Philip Crozier, Alan Dominicci, Norbert Dufourcq, Giuseppe Englert, Lee Erwin (the first American pupil before 1930), Robert Eshenour, John Fenstermaker, Philip Gehring, Emily Gibson, Lester Groom, Jerald Hamilton, Ruth Harris, William Hays, Allan Hobbs, Howard Jewell, Elna Johnson, Margaret Kemper, Ralph Kneeream, Suzanne Kornprobst, Marilou Kratzenstein, Charles Krigbaum, Ann Labounsky, Susan Landale, David Liddle, Denise Limonaire, Robert Lodine, Alan Long, Robert Sutherland Lord, Chamin Walker Meadows, Kathryn Moen, Earline Moulder, Margaret Mueller, Arsène Muzerelle, Lois Pardue, Garth Peacock, Stephen Rumpf, Daniel and David Simpson, Robert Sirota, Rev. Victoria Sirota, Carl Staplin, Roger Stiegler, Edith Strom, Haskell Thompson, Ralph Tilden, Parvin Titus, Robert Judith Truitt, Marie-Antoinette Vernières, Gail Walton, Nicole Wild, and Mary Alice Wotring.

Influence on subsequent
composers
His influence on subsequent composers such as Langlais, Duruflé, Alain, and Messiaen in their approaches to organ registration is likewise important to this reflection of André Marchal upon the 30th anniversary of his death. Jean Langlais studied organ with Marchal at INJA and at his home and was influenced by the work of Gonzalez in these two venues, as well as the organ at the Palais de Chaillot, where he performed his first symphony in 1943. His choice of the Schwenkedel organs of Neo-classical design, which he installed in his home and at the Institute Valentin Haüy, next door to INJA, shows this influence. The stops that he added to the organ at Sainte-Clotilde in 1962 included a Larigot 11⁄3′ on the Positif, a Prestant 4′ and Clairon 2′ on the Récit, and a Prestant 4′ and Doublette 2′ on the Pédale.10
The many Neo-classical registrations in his pieces likewise show this influence. For example, even the titles of a number of his pieces refer to these types of registrations: Dialogue sur les mixtures (Suite brève, 1947) and all the movements of Suite française (1948), which are based on titles found in classical French organ music such as Prélude sur les grands jeux and Contrepoint sur les jeux d’anches, and Suite baroque (1973).
As I have already mentioned, Maurice Duruflé often visited the home of Giuseppe Englert to study the specifications and dimensions of the Gonzalez organ, which inspired him for his house organ, also built by Gonzalez. Englert’s house organ was based on the specifications of Marchal’s house organ.11 In Duruflé’s organ works, even starting with the Scherzo from 1926, his registrations depart from the normal 19th-century models.
Marchal and Jehan Alain’s father, Albert Alain—an amateur organbuilder—were close friends and worked together on ideas for the specifications for their house organs. Similarities can be seen in the specifications of each.12 When Marchal had built his organ with a rather classic Positif, Albert Alain wanted to do the same thing.13 Jehan Alain’s first experiences of organ music in his home were influenced by the aesthetics of Marchal and Gonzalez. Jehan Alain and Marchal enjoyed playing and improvising together in Alain’s home. A very early work, Variations sur un thème de Clément Jannequin, demonstrates registrations that call for Neo-classical stops as well as the recall of early music in the title of the piece. Another work of Jehan Alain, Le Jardin suspendu, calls for a typically classical French stop, the Gros Nasard 51⁄3′ on the Positif. Marchal was among the first organists to perform Alain’s music, including Litanies, Variations sur un theme de Clément Jannequin, and Danses à Agni Yavishta, and had them transcribed into Braille notation.
Olivier Messiaen was also influenced by the Neo-classical trends in France. He changed the Cavaillé-Coll organ at La Trinité, where he was organist from 1930 until 1991, to include many mutation stops that were not part of the original specification. Even his earliest organ work, Le banquet céleste (1928), is a departure from the normal registration practices of the period, including Flûte 4′, Nasard 22⁄3′, Doublette 2′, and Piccolo 1′ for the pedal line. As he continued to compose, his works called more frequently for higher-pitched sonorities, often to imitate birds. One could say that it was a far cry from D’Aquin’s imitative harpsichord piece mimicking the cuckoo, but these sounds were all part of an interest in both the future and the past.

Conclusion
It is time to re-evaluate André Marchal’s contributions to the organ reform movement in France; his impact on organbuilding in the United States, particularly in his relationships to Walter Holtkamp and Walter Blodgett as well as Fenner Douglas; and his influence on the leading organ composers of the 20th century: Langlais, Alain, Duruflé, and Messiaen. In light of the development of early organ techniques and the number of publications that have been published and used in the thirty years since his death, it is time to listen again to Marchal’s recordings with a discerning mind and ask where his place is in the development of performance practice.
One certainly hears a wide variety of touches in all his playing. What was his “ordinary” touch? What were the main differences between his style and that of Joseph Bonnet, Alexandre Guilmant, and Marie-Claire Alain? Robert Noehren admired the sensitivity of his touch both on tracker and electric actions. It is also time to re-evaluate his influence on organ building; for example, in the composition of the Plein jeu mixture, which reserved the breaks until after middle C to enhance the clarity of the polyphonic line, and his use of different mixtures for each polyphonic composition that he performed.
Consider, too, the changes in the organ registrations in the music of Duruflé, Alain, Messiaen, and Langlais as compared to many other composers of the 20th century. The required foundations plus reeds on each manual, as a given for organ registration, changed as a result of Marchal’s impact on the Neo-classical organ in France. There is, indeed, much to ponder.
Perhaps Norbert Dufourcq, who was the most eloquent of his collaborators, best expressed the essence of his artistry:

André Marchal seemed to have found by himself the sources to which he probed the depths of his rich and attractive personality: the discovery of the works of the French organists of the 17th and 18th centuries, that of the complete works of Bach (he played almost all of it), of Cabezón, Frescobaldi, Buxtehude . . . It was for André Marchal to penetrate the secrets of a page of music, to discover the tempo, in searching the phrases, in marking the strong pulses, the weak pulses, without ever breaking the melodic line nor the polyphonic structure, without ever losing a rhythm which gave a work its forward motion, its line. One has praised the sensitivity of the Maître. It is better perhaps to speak of his sense of poetry.
To this static but mysterious and majestic instrument, he knew how to assure a poetic and lyric “aura” that he insisted on creating in a convincing phrasing with thousands of details in a style made more subtle by the use of minimal retards; of suspensions slightly brought out or by the imperious accents thrown into the center of the discourse. Goodbye to the inexpressive and neutral legato, André Marchal sought to impose on his instrument a suppleness with the use of imperceptible tensions—jolts of the soul—which did not stop. It is in this that he transformed the lens of the entire school of the organ, in France as in America . . . Under his fingers the organ no longer preached in an impersonal manner; under his fingers, the melodies rushed into the nave to touch the heart of each person. But it was never he who descended upon us. It was us, whom he seized with love, and attracted us to him.14 ■

 

Carolyn Shuster Fournier

An international concert artist and musicologist, Carolyn Shuster Fournier is titular of the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at La Trinité Church in Paris, France (cf. www.shusterfournier.com). Dr. Shuster Fournier was recently awarded the distinction of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters. This is her fourth article to appear in The Diapason.

This article is dedicated to my friend Jacqueline Englert-Marchal, the daughter of André Marchal, and in memory of her husband Giuseppe.
Son royaume n’était pas de ce monde, car la musique touche à de vastes et mystérieux univers. Il vivait dans ce royaume féerique; il en était un des génies et son oeuvre variée, touffue, protectrice, ressemble à ces grands chênes séculaires qui, dans leurs frondaisons, abritent des peuples d’oiseaux.

[His realm was not of this world, because music touches vast and mysterious universes. He lived in this magical realm; he was one of those geniuses and his works, varied, complex, protective, resemble large age-old oak trees which, in their foliage, shelter birds of all kinds.]
Ermend Bonnal's tombstone inscription (by Pierre d'Arcangues)1

His musical formation in Bordeaux

Joseph Ermend Bonnal2 (Bordeaux, July 1, 1880-Bordeaux, August 14, 1944) was born into a musical family. His father, Jean-Emile Bonnal (born in 1851), was an amateur violinist who invited his friends to his home twice a week to play chamber music (Beethoven, Mozart, Haydn, etc.). He began to give his son music lessons when he was five years old, starting him on piano at the age of seven (like his younger sister Marthe). At age 12, Ermend Bonnal entered Gaston Sarreau's piano class at the Bordeaux Conservatory and gave his first public recital the following year, performing one of the solos in J. S. Bach's Concerto for Two Pianos in C minor. "Irresistibly drawn towards the organ,"3 he began on his own to learn several of J. S. Bach's preludes and fugues.
While continuing his musical studies, Bonnal received a general education and excelled notably in the field of literature and classical humanities. In 1894, at age 14, Bonnal met Charles Tournemire (1870-1939) on vacation with his family in Bordeaux, his home town.4 Bonnal knew that he was in the presence of an exceptionally talented artist who was animated by high ideals. In appreciation of Bonnal's vast culture and musical talents, Tournemire offered him continuous encouragement and advice. He provided him with a solid organ technique, enabling him to become a substitute organist at Saint-Pierre Church in Bordeaux, where he himself had been organist at the age of 11.
In 1895, Tournemire dedicated to Bonnal one of his Six Piano Pieces, Op. 20: Le Ménétrier [The Strolling Fiddler].5 The title of this Allegretto in D major, a highly rhythmical musette, certainly referred to Bonnal's father. In 1895-96, Bonnal composed three organ verses for the liturgical services at Saint-Pierre Church: according to their manuscripts,6 the first one, a commentary on the third verse of the Magnificat in E-flat major, is based on a popular theme that he had notated during one of his trips to Tournemire's home on the Ouessant Island (in the Finist√®re, the western province of Brittany); the two others (respectively completed in May, 1895 and on November 2, 1896) were written for the Holy Thursday evening service, during which the organist responds in G minor or in B-flat major to the Pange Lingua hymn.

The Paris Conservatory

Destined for a musical career by age 17, Bonnal was admitted into Charles Wilfred de Bériot's (1833-1914) piano class at the Paris Conservatory on October 25, 1897. Tournemire had studied with him ten years earlier. Knowing Bonnal's desire to become an organist, Tournemire continued to give him organ lessons so that he could leave Bériot's piano class and enter Alexandre Guilmant's organ class in 1898. He also studied composition with Gabriel Fauré.
Guilmant (1837-1911) had developed an international career as an eminent concert organist, an excellent liturgist, and a strict, disciplined professor. His eclectic repertory, his knowledge of organ building, and his colorful registrations opened up endless avenues of lifelong discoveries for Bonnal and his fellow students: Louis Andlauer (1876-1915), Emile Aviné (born in 1879), Augustin Barié (1883-1915), Auguste Bernard (born in 1877), Nadia Boulanger (1887-1979), Joseph Boulnois (1884- 1918), Felix Fourdrain (1880-1923), René Vierne (1878- 1918).7 They all had studied with Louis Vierne (1870-1937), the assistant of the organ class since 1894. Vierne was quite aware of Tournemire's strong ties with Bonnal.
In October 1901, Joseph Bonnet (1884-1944), another of Tournemire's private students from Bordeaux,8 entered Guilmant's class. Bonnal was four years older than Bonnet, and they were undoubtedly friends since their youth. Bonnal had written the critique for the concert Bonnet had given on April 17, 1901, at Saint-Michel Church in Bordeaux, where he was organist. They remained close friends throughout their entire lives.
In July 1903, Ermend Bonnal and Nadia Boulanger were both awarded the Second Prize in Organ at the Paris Conservatory. During this period, Tournemire wrote to Bonnal's father to assure him that his son would successfully win a First Prize the following year: "[Il] travaille remarquablement . . . et il est doué admirablement." ["[He] does outstanding work . . . and he is wonderfully talented."]9 In 1904, Tournemire faithfully continued to give Bonnal daily lessons to prepare him for his First Prize in Organ (Interpretation and Improvisation) at the Paris Conservatory, which crowned his studies there in July. According to Bonnal:

Quel merveilleux professeur d'improvisation était cet être possédé par la joie de créer librement, spontanément.
. . . je recevais de lui une leçon quotidienne. Il me préparait des thèmes soigneusement élaborés et souvent remplis d’embûches. Quelle n’était pas sa joie quand je parvenais à en triompher, ou lorsque je réussissais un bon développement, une jolie rentrée, une modulation imprévue! C’était alors en guise de récompense, une promenade . . . sans préjudice d’un bon petit dîner.
Dans ces escapades, Tournemire n’était plus pour moi qu’un camarade aussi, gai, aussi primesautier que je l’étais moi-même, avec dix ans de moins que lui.10

[What a marvelous improvisation professor, possessed by the joy of creating with freedom and spontaneity.
. . . I received daily lessons from him. He carefully prepared elaborated themes for me to improvise on, which were filled with pitfalls. He was filled with joy when I successfully came up with a good development, a beautiful recapitulation of the theme, an unforeseen modulation! To reward me, we went for a walk . . . and then enjoyed a good, small dinner together.
During these jaunts, he was a gay companion, as impulsive as I was, ten years his junior.]

His early compositions

In addition to giving Bonnal organ lessons in interpretation and improvisation, Tournemire also taught him composition. In 1898, Tournemire encouraged him to become an active member of the Société des Compositeurs de Musique. Between 1900-1902, Tournemire dedicated an Offertoire in G major, Op. 21, no. 5, to Bonnal. It appeared in a collection of 40 Pieces for the harmonium entitled Variae Preces, which were edited by Janin in Lyon in 1904.
In 1902, Bonnal composed a Petite Rapsodie sur un theme Breton, Op. 6. Dedicated to Guilmant, Bonnal had nevertheless noted down “this popular theme at Conquet—in the Finistère, during a trip to the Ouessant Island.”11 The essentially impressionistic style of this work marks a stylistic break with his earlier three Verses. Again, Tournemire’s influence on Bonnal was quite strong: Tournemire’s own work, Le Sang de la Sirène [The Siren’s Blood], Op. 27, which won a prestigious music competition sponsored by the city of Paris in 1902, was based as well on a legend from Brittany that was set on the Ouessant Island. It also included modal themes.
Bonnal had been fond of the Landes since his childhood vacations in Arcachon and developed a lifelong passion for this picturesque region. Like Charles Bordes (1863–1909), Bonnal was one of the first musicians to incorporate popular Landes traditional songs into his compositions: three such popular themes appear in this work. In 1903, Bonnal composed his Rapsodie landaise for piano and orchestra. He dedicated it to a pianist from the Landes, Francis Planté (1839–1934), who performed it often. This important creation won the Second Prize of the Society of Music Composers, which awarded both Bonnal and Nadia Boulanger their Prix Tolède in 1905.
Bonnal's Paysages landais [Landscapes from the Landes] for organ had been published by A. Durand & Fils in 1904. On January 26, 1905, Bonnet premiered it on the E. & J. Abbey organ12 in the large Salle Pleyel concert hall in a concert organized by the Society of Music Composers. Dedicated to Tournemire, this piece in G minor begins with a Franck-like melody on the Swell Trumpet. After a brief interlude on the Voix Celeste, the theme appears in the tenor on the Positive Gambe coupled to the Great Harmonic Flute; it is then developed on the Great with the Swell foundation stops added, leading to a high D-sharp in the Pedal, which becomes an E-flat. (See Example 1.) The final section begins on the Voix Celeste, with a bell-like motive in the Pedal on soft 16' and 4' Flute stops, then ends peacefully on the Swell Bourdon 8'.
Bonnal's Reflets solaires [Solar Reflections], Op. 17 (completed in April, 1905), was composed in this same spirit. It was dedicated to and premiered by Bonnet on March 17, 1906, on the Mutin organ at the Schola Cantorum (in a concert organized by Société nationale de musique). The program of Bonnet's concert at Saint-Eustache Church on January 22, 1911, describes this piece:

En pleine justification de son titre, ce morceau nous dépeint les jeux et les rythmes du soleil dans les vitraux d’une rosace, sans toutefois que cet impressionnisme nuise en rien à une construction nettement musicale. Deux thèmes de caractères opposés, le second présenté avec insistance dans la forme canonique.

[In full justification of its title, this piece depicts the reflections and rhythms of the sun in stained glass rose windows, without allowing this impressionism to hinder the clearly constructed musical form. Two themes of opposing character, the second presented insistently in the canonic form.] Bonnet provided yet another dimension of this work, in the program notes of a concert he gave in Bayonne in 1930:

Cette pièce d’un grand lyrisme semble évoquer à nos yeux, le matin de Pâques: “Le premier jour qui suit le Sabbat, les Saintes Femmes vinrent au sépulcre alors que le Soleil était déjà levé,” dit l’Evangile du jour. Le deuxième thème est traité en variations canoniques fort savoureuses, écrites avec une grande souplesse de contrepoint.

[This highly lyrical piece seems to evoke a vision of Easter morning: "The first day following the Sabbath, the Holy Women came to the tomb when the Sun had already arisen," as is written in the Gospel for the day. The second theme is treated in some quite enjoyable canonic variations, written with much supple counterpoint.]

In September 1908, Bonnal composed in Switzerland his Four Pieces, Opus 26, for organ or harmonium:13 Allégresse (dedicated to Félix [Alexandre] Guilmant), Prière et Choral (in memory of Samuel Rousseau, with an additional version for organ and string quintet), Petit canon (to Placide Thomas), and Petit Pastorale (to his mother). To supplement his income, Bonnal, under the pseudonym of Guy Marylis, began composing dance music for piano—waltzes, ragtimes, tangos—which was quite popular in Paris at the turn of the century.

His early church positions

Thanks to Tournemire, Bonnal substituted for him in various Parisian parishes (notably for the Vesper services): at Saint-Nicolas-du-Chardonnet Church (beginning in Decembre 1897) and at Sainte-Clotilde Basilica (following Tournemire’s nomination as titular there, on Easter, 1898). Tournemire also arranged for Bonnal to become, in 1899, the official substitute organist at Saint-Séverin Church for Albert Périlhou (1846–1936), who played there until 1914 (along with Camille Saint-Saëns). In 1901, Bonnal was named titular at Saint-Médard Church, succeeding Maurice Blazy, who had been titular there from 1892 to 1901.14 In 1903, Bonnal was appointed choirmaster at Notre-Dame Church in Boulogne-sur-Seine (actually Boulogne-Billancourt).

His first concerts

Bonnal performed concerts on both piano and organ. As a pianist he often performed chamber music, notably his Sonata for violin and piano15; already in 1897 he performed an Allegro (certainly its first movement) in Tournemire’s home, 91, rue de Rome; Bonnal performed often with the violinist and musicologist Eugène Borrel (1876– 1962). He also gave a concert with the organist Henri Letocart (1866–1945) for the Saint-Jean Society (for the Encouragement of Christian Art) in the workshop of the sculptor Edmond de Laheuderie. In 1912, Bonnal created La Quinte, a string quartet with piano, which gave chamber music concerts for over ten years.
In his solo organ recitals, Bonnal performed an eclectic repertory: in addition to works by J. S. Bach and César Franck, he performed his own works as well as those by his contemporaries. Two of his concerts at Saint-Pierre Church in Bordeaux give us a good idea of his programs:

August 18, 1899: J. S. Bach, Toccata and Fugue in D minor
J. Ropartz, On a Theme from Brittany
S. Rousseau, Trio
C. Tournemire, Symphonic Piece
A. Guilmant, Invocation
C. Franck, Third Choral
L. Vierne, Final from the First Symphony

January 16, 1903:
Vivaldi/J. S. Bach, Concerto in A minor
A. Guilmant, Communion
C. Franck, Final
C. Tournemire, Capricietto and Ite Missa est (from his 40 Pieces for the Harmonium, Op. 21).

On March 1, 1910, Bonnal performed three of his own Four Pieces, Op. 26 (all but the second) in a concert organized by the Saint-Jean Society in Paris.
Ermend Bonnal performed on the 15-stop house organ, built by Charles Mutin in 1909 for the home of Count Bérenger de Miramon Fitz-James (1878-1952). He lived on the Dumont-d'Urville Street in the sixteenth district in Paris. He invited young artists with a First Prize in organ from the Paris Conservatory to give concerts with the quartet Gaston Poulet and the violinist Joseph Calvet, both close friends of Bonnal. The Count imposed "a religious silence that was appropriate for such events."16
Bonnal's clear, distinct playing was due to the fact that underneath his absolutely legato melodic lines, he repeated certain notes in the accompaniment. This procedure is evident in many of his organ compositions, such as in his Reflets solaires, in the following passage when the left hand plays the melody on the Positive Clarinet while the right hand accompanies on the 8' and 4' foundation stops with 16' and 8' stops in the Pedal. (See Example 2.) Bonnal was renowned as a stunning improviser, even on small organs, such as the one-manual Gaston Maille five-stop organ at Saint-Léon Church in Anglet (near Biarritz).17 While Bonnal highly approved of improvisations in church services, even considering them to be obligatory for all organists, he did not believe that most people were talented enough to improvise during a recital and that the musical result was often quite poor.18

His departure for Bordeaux and Bayonne

On August 19, 1903, Bonnal married a second cousin, Suzanne Bonnal, a professor of voice. They had two children. What a coincidence that Tournemire also married in this same year, on November 5, to his student Alice Georgina Taylor (1870-1919). Although Bonnal seems to have earned an adequate living, he needed to solidly support his family. Impassioned by teaching, he began to apply for positions as a conservatory director. Louis Vierne, who had dedicated his Canzona to Bonnal in 1913, regretted that he had not pursued a concert career:

Avec Ermend BONNAL, nous regagnons des sphères élevées. Voilà un musicien des plus personnels, un poète ému par la nature, un être d’une sensibilité profonde et émouvante. Ce grand modeste, artiste dans l’âme, est Bordelais—comme TOURNEMIRE et BONNET—et il montre que Bordeaux enfante des êtres généreux. Son passage à la classe de GUILMANT fut celui d’un beau travailleur, doué également pour l’improvisation et l’exécution. Il sortit avec un premier prix sensationnel; jamais je n’ai compris pourquoi il ne fit pas une grande carrière d’instrumentiste; il avait tout ce qu’il fallait pour cela. Comme compositeur, il révéla un tempérament tout à fait original, exprimant sa pensée dans un style hardi mais nullement excentrique; en ce qui regarde spécialement l’orgue, il écrivit tout de suite des pièces significatives comme Reflets solaires, par exemple.19

[With Ermend Bonnal we return to higher realms. Here is a musician with very personal gifts, a poet deeply moved by nature, a man with deep and moving sensitivity. This grand and modest artist from Bordeaux—like Tournemire and Joseph Bonnet—proves that this city has given us people who are generous. While in Guilmant's class, he was a hard worker, equally talented in improvisation and in interpretation. He left with a sensational First Prize; I never understood why he did not pursue a brilliant career as an instrumentalist; he had all one needed for that. As a composer, he revealed a great deal of originality, expressing his thoughts with boldness, but by no means in an eccentric manner. Concerning the organ in particular, he wrote right away some significant pieces, such as the Solar Reflections.]

In spite of Bonnal's robust physical condition, his constant good nature, his appreciation of good wine and gourmet meals, the asthma attacks that he had endured since his childhood had become more violent. In 1914, this illness exonerated him from enlisting in the armed forces. In addition, he was becoming deaf. According to Norbert Dufourcq, Bonnal possessed

une intelligence supérieure, une culture des plus vastes, un coeur exquis et cette haute et noble silhouette . . . et ses yeux lumineux et bons, qui parfois reflétaient une naïveté d’enfant, parfois la douleur de celui qui n’entend pas.20

[a superior intelligence, a very vast culture, an exquisite heart and this noble silhouette . . . with enlightened and warm eyes, which sometimes reflected a childlike na√Øveté, sometimes the pain of those who do not hear.]
Fortunately, an effective hearing aid enabled him to continue his musical career.
Due to his chronic asthma, in 1914 Bonnal returned to settle in Bordeaux, where he was named titular organist at Saint-Michel Church. In 1915, he gave over 100 benefit concerts throughout France for the Red Cross. From 1916-1920, Bonnal presented a series of organ recitals each Sunday at his church, during the mass at 11:15 a.m., like those of Bonnet at Saint-Eustache in Paris. In spite of the war, over 100 concerts were announced in the papers and their programs were printed. Bonnal performed an immense repertory, from the Baroque and Classic periods (works by Frescobaldi, Zipoli, Bach, Buxtehude, Pachelbel, Walther, Clérambault, de Grigny, Roberday, Mozart) to the contemporary period, with numerous premiere performances (of pieces by A. Barié, E. Bernard, P. Dukas, H. Mulet, A. Périlhou, C. Quef, F. Schmitt, D. de Séverac, F. de la Tombelle, L. Vierne). His playing fascinated and inspired the young Henri Sauguet (1901-1989), who discovered Franck's organ works.

Son jeu me fascinait. Je lui dois d’avoir entendu, pour la première fois, l’oeuvre intégrale de César Franck qu’il interprétait d’une manière incomparable, inoubliable dans sa grandeur, sa conception, de virtuosité, et de richesse des registrations qui lui étaient personnelles. Il m’a révélé la savoureuse et exquise littérature des oeuvres des organistes français des XVIIe et XVIIIe et tant de pages immortelles de Bach. . . . Il fut l’un des premiers à donner à l’orgue contemporain une richesse harmonique, un éventail de nuances, une variété de registres saisissants et qui devait plus tard ouvrir la voie à un Olivier Messiaen, par exemple.21

[Thanks to Bonnal, I had the privilege of listening to the entire works of Franck for the first time, which he interpreted in an incomparable manner, unforgettable for their greatness, their conception, their virtuosity and their rich registrations. . . . His tasteful and exquisite interpretations of works by French organists from the 17th and 18th centuries and countless immortal pages of Bach were a revelation to me. . . . He was one of the first to give to the contemporary organ a harmonic richness, a wide range of nuances, a variety of fascinating stops, which later prepared the way for an Olivier Messiaen, for example.]

On December 28, 1919, Bonnal premiered his Noël landais in a concert at Saint-Michel Church. According to the program, Bonnal wanted to give its original theme a simple character and invoke the call of the shepherds during their march towards the star. This piece, composed in 1918 and published by Durand in 1938, was dedicated to Mademoiselle Jehanne Paris, organist of Sainte-Eugénie Church in Biarritz. During this period, Bonnal also composed numerous religious songs for voice and organ or harmonium (occasionally with violin and/or harp)‚Äîmany settings of Ave Maria, O Salutaris, etc.
The year 1920 was a crucial turning point in Bonnal's life. His first wife died of tuberculosis in May. Thankfully, Bonnal accepted the city of Bayonne's proposition to direct their School of Music, situated in the heart of the Basque region, which Bonnal loved dearly; he remained there for 21 years, until 1941. In addition to fulfilling his functions at the conservatory, he continued to compose, to teach and to play chamber music: in 1922, he founded the Société des Amis de la Musique; in 1931, he conducted the L'Association des Concerts Jean-Philippe Rameau as well as Les Chanteurs de la Renaissance, an orchestra of more than 70 professional and amateur musicians. Due to his demanding occupations, Bonnal no longer composed for the organ.
In 1921, Bonnal remarried, to Hélène Chevenot, an art historian, a pianist and singer who was very religious. They had nine children.22 Their home, the villa Amentcha (the "house of dreams"), was continuously open to visiting artists from all over the world.

His mature compositions, influenced by the Landes

Bonnal continued to compose works based on Basque folklore themes: in 1921, his Chansons dans le style landais; in 1929, his Chansons d’Agnoutine—a cycle based on texts by Loÿs Labèque, a poet from the Landes. Among his chamber works, his two string quartets (1925 and 1934) were performed often by the famous French Calvet, Loewength, Pascalet and Parenin quartets;23 his String Trio (1934) was dedicated to, premiered and recorded by the Trio Pasquier; it received the Grand Prix de Disque in 1935.
Among his piano pieces that were inspired by Basque folklore are Berceuse des pins (1926) and the Petite Suite basque (1934).24 In 1938, Bonnal produced Le Ballet basque. The Paris Opera had accepted this work due to the Count Miramon Fitz-James, who sent the scenario for this ballet to its director, Jacques Rouché,25 but the war prevented its presentation.
During this period, Bonnal remained in contact with Tournemire who had come to give a chamber music concert at the Théâtre Municipal in Bayonne on Saturday, April 12, 1924. Tournemire accompanied on the piano his future wife, Alice Espir (1901-1996), a violinist with a First Prize in the class of Lefort at the Paris Conservatory, as well as a singer and a violoncellist, Yvonne Simonot. Tournemire and Miss Espir performed works by Buxtehude and Bach. Tournemire also accompanied the premieres of his own Poème for violoncello and piano, his Mélodies based on poems by A. Le Braz, and his Trio for violin, violoncello and piano. Bonnal accompanied Miss Espir in the first performance of his own Légende for violin and piano, and also premiered his own Nocturne, Soir aux Abatilles for piano.26
In 1925–1926, Bonnal composed his most important and his favorite work: his Poèmes Franciscains (Ariettes pour les Anges) for soloists, choir and orchestra, set to 19 mystical poems by Francis Jammes (1868–1938), the poet from Béarn.27 These calm and noble meditations that last 65 minutes evoke the major mysteries and the most beautiful feasts of the liturgical year. On December 27, 1926, they were performed at the Théâtre Municipal in Bayonne. In 1929, Bonnal won a composition competition from the Society for the Advancement of Music in Synagogues in San Francisco, for his psalm Adon Olam, for soloists, choir and orchestra.
Tournemire was proud of Bonnal’s achievements. On January 2, 1929, he had written: “Et puis, comme disait Liszt, il n’y a pas d’élèves, il n’y a que des collaborateurs.” [“And my dear friend, as Liszt said, there are no students, there are only collaborators.”]28 On March 22, 1929, he wrote to express his admiration for his First String Quartet: “une oeuvre extrêmement intérieure, pleine de poésie, originale, raisonnable . . .” [“an extremely interiorized work, full of poetry, original, reasonable . . .”]. Tournemire had spent two hours presenting it to his chamber music class at the Paris Conservatory.
When Tournemire had sent Bonnal one of the cycles of his L’Orgue mystique,29 Bonnal responded, in a letter addressed to “mon bon Maître et Ami” on March 25, 1929,

J’ai reçu l’exemplaire de l’Orgue Mystique et j’ai été émerveillé. Vous parlez une langue nouvelle: l’orgue, ce qui semblait impossible après pape Franck! Bravissimo! Merci aussi.
[I received the score from l'Orgue Mystique and I was amazed. You speak with a new language: the organ, that which seemed impossible after pope Franck! Bravissimo! Thank you as well.]

According to a letter from Bonnal to Tournemire, written on February 27, 1930, Bonnal requested that the library of his conservatory order the complete collection of Tournemire's L'Orgue mystique.

His compositions for Les Amis de l'Orgue30

In 1930, Bonnal also composed a triptych for the first composition competition organized by the "Amis de l'Orgue."31 The candidates were to compose a work in three movements in the form of a fantasy or a programmatic work. This competition took place on June 20, 1930, at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris. The following members—Gabriel Pierné (president), Nadia Boulanger, Joseph Bonnet, Pierre de Bréville, Alexandre Cellier, Claude Delvincourt, Jacques Ibert, Adolphe Marty, Achille Philip, Albert Roussel, Charles Tournemire and Louis Vierne—awarded their prize of 5,000 francs to Maurice Duruflé for his Prélude, Adagio et Choral varié sur le Veni Creator; a very honorable mention was given to Bonnal for his Paysages euskariens [Euskerian Landscapes] (entitled Paysages Pyrénéens [Pyrenean Landscapes]), and congratulations were given to Henriette Roget for her Suite sur un thème de l'office de Noël.
Impregnated with Basque folklore, Bonnal's three Euskerian Landscapes depict the peaceful Basque countryside, with its green valleys and hills. The first, La Vallée du Béhorléguy au matin [The Béhorléguy Valley in the Morning], is Bonnal's most popular organ work. In the tonality of e (the transposed mode of b), its poetical impressionism evokes the serenity of the Béhorléguy peak, in the Basse Navarre, near Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. The second movement, Le Berger d'Ahusquy, is a calm pastoral on the Flute stops with the Clarinet. The last movement, Cloches dans le ciel, is a virtuosic carillon in the vibrant tonality of E.
On June 12, 1930, Tournemire wrote to Bonnal, his student who had become a master:

Votre oeuvre est grandiose. Le début, sur un thème basque (peut-être de vous) est d'une fraicheur incomparable. . . . Votre Toccata en pleine de force, de puissance.32

[Your work is grandiose. The beginning, on a Basque theme (perhaps by you), has an incomparable freshness . . . Your Toccata is full of force, of power.]

On the other hand, Tournemire encouraged him to avoid composing in Franck's style, which leads to too many long passages. He continued:

Vous, vous êtes un maître. De plus, vous avez l’âge des grandes choses. Et votre oeuvre m’a donné grande joie. Vous avez écrit un chef d’oeuvre.

[You, you are a master. In addition, you are at an age of great achievements. And your work filled me with great joy. You have written a masterpiece.]

On August 19, 1930, he offered a Petite Elevation to his daughter Marylis. (See photo 2.) In January, 1931, Bonnal had also composed a charming Petit Noël in A major. On February 3, 1931, Louis Vierne, the godfather of Bonnal's daughter Mayette, wrote a letter to "his dear friend" Bonnal, congratulating him for his honorable mention. In spite of Vierne's recommendation, the Lemoine editors did not accept Bonnal's triptych for publication. Durand published its movements separately in 1931.33
It appears that after this competition, in preparation for their publication by Durand (January 1932), Bonnal rewrote certain passages of his Euskerian Landscapes and added the names of the dedicatees. The first movement was dedicated to his friend and organ student, Count Christian d'Elbée. Bonnal dedicated the second movement to his dear friend, Count Bérenger de Miramon Fitz-James, the president-founder of Les Amis de l'Orgue, who had advised him to rewrite its conclusion:

. . . refaites un autre épisode médian—qui vous laisse dans le plein-air. . . . qui fasse une trentaine de mesures et nous ramène le carillon. Il n’y a pas—si je ne m’abuse—de thèmes spécifiquement euskariens dans ce final—n’est-ce pas le cas d’en introduire un et ne tombez pas à la renverse, si je vous dis que dans l’intérêt de l’exportation, si un pâtre venait se promener là dedans avec quelques chèvres bélantes—mais bêlant ‘à la mystique’, cela ne serait pas maladroit.34

[. . . write another intermediary episode—which leaves us in the open air. . . . which constitutes about thirty measures and which leads us to the carillon. There are not—if I am not mistaken—any specific Euskerian themes in this last movement—wouldn’t it be appropriate to introduce one? And don’t fall off your chair, if I tell you that, from a viewpoint of the export [of this work], if a shepherd began to walk around with several bleating goats—but bleating ‘mystically’, this would not be inappropriate.]

This second movement, in total keeping with this letter, ends mystically with 28 measures on the Voix Celeste, with a solo on the 8' Harmonic Flute. (See example 3.) The third movement was dedicated to André Fleury, titular organist at the Saint-Augustin Church in Paris.
On February 16, 1931, Bonnal wrote to Tournemire that he had taken out all of the accents that were too Franck-like, but that he left all that could recall Tournemire, Fauré or Debussy: “cela c’est encore permis, paraît-il!” [“that it is still allowed, supposedly!”].
On February 28, 1931, Tournemire finally finished composing the 33rd office of his L'Orgue mystique, Op. 57 (for the eighth Sunday after Pentecost), which he dedicated "to his dear student and friend, an eminent musician, Ermend Bonnal, Director of the Bayonne Conservatory."33 Bonnal only received his personal copy on April 21. He immediately wrote to Tournemire:

Il n’y a pas une heure que le Facteur m’a remis mon office et déjà je le connais à fond, parce que je me suis précipité au piano pour le lire. Quelle belle chose claire, pure, lumineuse comme le ciel de mon cher pays basque! Oui, c’est vraiment cet office qu’il fallait me dédier! Quelle poésie dans les morceaux courts et quelle joie dans l’Alleluia! Je suis très fier que mon humble nom soit inscrit en tête de tant de Beauté. Vous m’avez fait un grand honneur et une grande joie. Laissez moi vous en remercier de toute la sincerité de mon Coeur ému, et vous embrasser Filialement.

[It was not yet one hour ago that the mailman delivered my cycle and already I know it deeply, because I ran to the piano to play through it. What a beautiful piece, clear, pure, full of light like the sky of my dear Basque country! Yes, it was indeed this service that ought to have been dedicated to me! The short pieces are so poetic and what joy in the Alleluia! I am very proud that my humble name be printed at the beginning of so much beauty. You have rendered so much honor and great joy to me. Allow me to thank you most sincerely from my deeply moved heart, and I embrace you as a brother.]
 

Carolyn Shuster Fournier

An international concert artist and musicologist, Carolyn Shuster Fournier is titular of the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at La Trinité Church in Paris, France (cf. www.shusterfournier.com). Dr. Shuster Fournier was recently awarded the distinction of Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters. This is her fourth article to appear in The Diapason.

On June 15, Tournemire played the final “Alleluia” movement in a concert at Sainte-Clotilde that was broadcast live on Paris Radio.
In 1931, the Institut de France had awarded Bonnal the Charles Berthault Prize with 500 francs. Bonnal, however, was looking for other financial awards for his compositions. On March 29, 1932, he admitted in a letter to Tournemire that the private music lessons he gave did not at all cover his expenses:

. . . et vous n’êtes pas là pour m’encourager . . . Je desespère parfois! . . . Alors, je m’endette terriblement . . . et je ne sais ce que je vais devenir.

[ . . . and you are not there to encourage me . . . I sometimes become desperate! . . . Then, I am deeply falling into debt . . . and I don’t know what will happen to me.]

He even began to apply for other posts as a conservatory director in Belfort and in Aix (where he was refused). On February 3, 1932, Bonnal wrote to Tournemire to express his gratitude and ongoing support:

sans doute ma destinée est-elle de mourir à Bayonne. Je m’en réjouirais au reste si ma situation y était en rapport avec mes charges familiales. Je vous remercie de tout Coeur de l’aide précieuse qu’une fois encore (après tant d’autres!) vous m’avez généreusement et cordialement consentie.

[without doubt my destiny is to die in Bayonne. I would really be thrilled if my position was in keeping with my family expenses. I thank you from the bottom of my heart for the precious aid (after so many others) which you have so generously and cordially granted.]

On April 25, Bonnal admitted to Tournemire that he was behind schedule and that he hoped to send something to the next competition of the Amis de l’Orgue. In May, 1932, Bonnal composed at Amentcha his most monumental work: his Symphonie d’après “Media vita,” Répons du temps de la Septuagésime in C-sharp minor. Maurice Duruflé played it during the second “Amis de l’Orgue” composition competition, which took place at Saint-François Xavier Church in Paris on June 20, 1932. This time, Bonnal won First Prize and received 4,000 francs. The members of the jury were Gabriel Pierné (president), Alexandre Cellier, Maurice Emmanuel, Arthur Honegger, Paul Le Flem, Henri Mulet, Henri Nibelle, Achille Philip, Gustave Samazeuilh, Florent Schmitt, and Canon François-Xavier Mathias. An honorable mention was granted to André Fleury for his Prélude, Andante et Toccata, and congratulations were given to Daniel-Lesur for his work La Vie intérieure.
Bonnal’s symphony is a free paraphrase in three movements that correspond to the following texts from Septuagesima Sunday, the first of three Sundays before the Lenten season:

1. In the midst of Life we deal with Death. To whom can we turn if not to You, Savior, who has suffered so much for our sins.
2. Holy and Merciful Savior, do not deliver us to a bitter death. Our fathers have hoped in You, and You have delivered them.
3. Our fathers have cried toward You; they cried, and they were not disappointed. Holy God, God full of strength, do not deliver us to a bitter death.
The first movement, rather slow and very calm, presents two themes: the first one is contrapuntal; the second is like a chorale. In the second movement, a luminous trio—a sort of colorful arabesque (with the Positive Nazard, Flute 4' and Tierce 13⁄5' in the right hand, the Swell 8' foundation stops in the left hand and the Pedal 8' and 4' stops)—seems to express the hope mentioned in the text; after a section on the Swell Voix Celeste with a Flute 4' in the Pedal, the piece ends on an A-flat major chord with a quiet 16' in the Pedal. The third movement, which uses themes from the other movements, becomes increasingly flamboyant, leading to a free, lyrical second melody on the Positive Clarinet 8', followed by an arabesque on the Great Harmonic Flute 8'. After a progressive crescendo with the theme announced tutti in the Pedal, two measures of silence and a brief return to the Clarinet solo, there is a final distressful cry. Bonnal dedicated this work to his friend Joseph Bonnet who greatly appreciated it:
Ta nouvelle œuvre est magnifique, d’une grande profondeur de sentiment d’une haute sérénité musicale et poétique. Tu as tiré un parti excellent de la mélodie si belle et traduit les sentiments exprimés par le texte littéraire sous l’âme d’un grand artiste chrétien. Ton œuvre, comme toutes les précédentes du reste, témoigne d’une haute sincérité humaine et artistique.35

[Your new work is magnificent, a very deep, peaceful expression of great musicality and poetry. You have brought out the best in the beautiful melody and translated the feelings contained in the literary text as expressed by a great Christian artist. Your work, like all of your previous ones, testifies to an utmost human and artistic sincerity.]

In this same letter, Bonnet advised Bonnal to contact the publisher Leduc, who, thanks to Bonnet’s intervention, published this work in 1933. Bonnet played this symphony on numerous occasions, notably for a mass at Saint-Eustache Church in Paris on January 28, 1934. He also recorded it for the BBC. Encouraged by these successes, which placed him in the upper ranks of the French organ scene, Bonnal participated in a series of eight recitals organized by the Amis de l’Orgue on the Mutin organ at Saint-Bernard College in Bayonne.

His adherence to the neo-classical organ
Around 1930, Bonnal had been appointed titular organist at Saint-André Church in Bayonne, a neo-Gothic church built 1856–1869. The 32-stop, three-manual organ was built in 1863 by the Wenner et Götty firm from Bordeaux (Georges Wenner and Jacques Götty founded their firm in Bordeaux in 1848). This organ was a gift to the city from Napoléon III. When a vault collapsed above the organ loft in December 1895, Gaston Maille, who had taken over the Wenner firm in 1882, restored this symphonic organ from 1898 to 1902; an electric blower was installed probably during the 1920s. (See photo 3.)
In 1933, Bonnal supervised the restoration of this instrument by Victor Gonzalez, in collaboration with André Marchal, who had a home in Hendaye, and Norbert Dufourcq, much of whose family lived in Labastide-Clairence, a village about 20 kilometers from Bayonne. Bonnal described its neo-classical aesthetic:
on the Swell, we added a Plein-Jeu II and a Clairon that came from the Positive; on the Positive, some new stops were installed: Nazard, Doublette and Tierce, replacing the Gambe, Trompette and Clairon; for early music, the Clarinet was transformed into a Cromorne . . . The deteriorated pneumatic elements were replaced with a modified tubular system which provided more rapid and perfect precision . . .36
Finally, this 35-stop instrument was entirely revoiced to give more fullness to the foundation stops and more distinction to the reed stops. (See photo 4.)

Saint-André Church, Bayonne
Wenner et Götty / Maille (1902) / Gonzalez (1933)

I. GRAND ORGUE (56 notes)
16' Montre
8' Montre
8' Bourdon
8' Flûte Harmonique
4' Prestant
22⁄3' Nazard
2' Doublette
Plein-Jeu IV
Cornet V (C3)
16' Bombarde
8' Trompette
4' Clairon

II. POSITIF (56 notes)
16' Bourdon
8' Principal
8' Bourdon
8' Salicional
4' Flûte
22⁄3' Nazard
2' Doublette
13⁄5' Tierce
8' Cromorne

III. RÉCIT (56 notes)
8' Cor de nuit
8' Violoncelle
8' Flûte Harmonique
8' Voix Céleste
4' Flûte Octaviante
2'/1' Plein-Jeu II
8' Voix Humaine
8' Basson-Hautbois
8' Trompette Harmonique
4' Clairon

PÉDALE (30 notes)
16' Flûte
8' Flûte
16' Bombarde
8' Trompette

Combination Pedals: Thunderstorm Pedal, G.O./Péd, Pos/Péd, Réc/Péd; Pos./G.O., Réc/G.O.; Réc./Pos; Réc/G.O. 4, Pos/G.O. 16. To activate the Reeds: on the Réc, Pos and G.O. To activate the G.O. keyboard. To activate the Pos Mixtures; Réc Tremulant.

Pistons under the G.O. keyboard: Soft Foundation stops, Foundations 8 and 4, Foundations 8, 4 and 2, Tutti Plein-Jeu, General Tutti.

Bonnal performed the inaugural recital on September 27, 1933:

I.
J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue
A Sarabande grave by François Couperin
Father Martini’s Gavotte (for the new “carillon-like stop” [the Swell Plein-Jeu II])
N. de Grigny’s Trio en dialogue (utilizing the Cromorne stop)
D. Buxtehude’s Fugue in C major

II.
C. Franck’s Third Choral
Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique, Op. 57 (nos. 1–4), which had been dedicated to him
Joseph Bonnet’s Epithalamé, Op. 5 (1909)
E. Bonnal’s Cloches dans le ciel (first public performance).
On November 8, 1933, Bonnal’s organ students gave another concert:

Irène Darricau performed two pieces by J. J. Lemmens
Jeanne Larre (Vierne)
Renée Gemain (Franck)
Marylis Bonnal [his daughter] (a piece by Périlhou)
Mady Galtier, the organist at the Saint-Charles Church in Biarritz (a Bach Fugue)
Christian d’Elbée (Franck’s First Choral)
Ermend Bonnal (his own Paysages euskariens).

This beautiful organ has remained unchanged to this day and was classified as a historical monument in 2001. According to the present titular organist, Etienne Rousseau-Plotto, in addition to the French symphonic repertory, French organ music from the 1930s sounds absolutely spectacular on this organ.37
In 1933, the same year as the restoration of the Saint-André organ in Bayonne, Tournemire had requested the Société Cavaillé-Coll firm to modify his own historic 1858 A. Cavaillé-Coll organ at Sainte-Clotilde Basilica in Paris. According to an article by Bérenger de Miramon Fitz-James,38 following the reinauguration of this organ on June 30, 1933, the following ten stops had been added to this instrument: a Cornet on the Grand-Orgue; a Tierce and a Piccolo on the Positif; a Quintaton 16', a Nazard, a Tierce, a Plein-Jeu IV and a Bombarde on the Récit; and a Bourdon 16' and a Quinte 51⁄3' in the Pedal. The wind pressure was lowered on the Positif, the Positif Unda Maris was transformed into a Salicional, and the Positif Clarinet was moved to the Récit. In addition, a new console was installed with three 61-note manuals and a 32-note pedalboard, along with numerous pedal combinations. Following this restoration, a series of seven benefit recitals was given to help cover the restoration expenses. On March 22, 1934. Bonnal ended the fourth concert, given with the following artists who performed their own works:

Daniel-Lesur – La Vie intérieure
Olivier Messiaen – Diptyque
André Fleury – Prélude, Andante, Toccata
Maurice Duruflé – Adagio and Choral varié on the “Veni Creator”
Ermend Bonnal – Symphonie sur le Répons “Media Vita”

In 1934, Bonnal was awarded the Prix Durand (with Guy Ropartz) as well as the Grand Prix of a wine competition in Bordeaux for his Hymn au Vin. Bonnal then gave a series of prestigious organ concerts. On March 28, 1936, he performed a recital on Emile Bourdon’s organ at the Monaco Cathedral. On September 1, 1936, he inaugurated, with André Marchal, the organ restored by Victor Gonzalez at the Bayonne Cathedral. On January 28, 1937, he performed his own La Vallée du Béhorléguy au matin in the eighth concert of La Spirale at the Schola Cantorum, with his fellow colleagues: Jehan Alain (Suite), Olivier Messiaen (Jules Le Febvre’s Prélude, Aria et Final and selections from his La Nativité du Seigneur [Les Bergers, La Vierge et l’Enfant, and Les Anges]); Daniel-Lesur premiered his own Cinq Hymnes; Jean Langlais, his own Hommage à Francesco Landino and Mors et resurrectio; and André Fleury, his own Deux mouvements (Très lent and Vif et agité). How exciting it must have been to attend this concert! On April 26, 1937, Bonnal inaugurated the Debierre organ in the Preparatory School at the Aire-sur-Adour Seminary.
In the mid 1930s, both Bonnal and Tournemire were drawn to St. Francis of Assisi. On July 19, 1933, Bonnal had thanked Tournemire for having sent him his Fioretti pieces:

J’admire qu’après le monument qu’est l’Orgue mystique vous puissiez écrire d’autres pièces en renouvelant encore votre style. Une telle abondance dans sa richesse est une chose magnifique et si rare qu’on ne l’avait pas vue depuis Bach! Quel haut exemple vous êtes pour nous: vos disciples! Donc merci mon bon maître et ami d’être la lumière qui nous aide à avancer dans la voie difficile, mais belle!

[I admire that after the monument which is the Orgue mystique that you can write other pieces while continually renewing your style. Such a rich abundance, so magnificent and rare, has not been seen since Bach! What a noble example you are for us, your disciples! Therefore, thank you my dear master and friend to be such a light which helps us to advance on the difficult but beautiful path.]

A year and a half later, on May 7, 1935, Bonnal’s Franciscan Poems39 were performed in a concert at the Grand Théâtre in Bordeaux, broadcast live on the radio. That same year, Tournemire and his second wife, Alice, became members of the third order of Saint Francis of Assisi. In 1937, Tournemire finished a theatrical work that crowned his career: Il Poverello di Assisi, Op. 73 (five lyrical episodes in seven scenes on a text by Joséphin Péladan).40 Both Bonnal’s and Tournemire’s two monumental works, centered around this great saint, certainly prepared the way for Olivier Messiaen’s future opera Saint François d’Assise (1983).

His positions in Paris
In 1938, the French Institut awarded Bonnal the coveted Prix Lassere for his compositions. On September 3, 1939, the Second World War broke out. On November 3, Tournemire died mysteriously, leaving the organist post vacant at Sainte-Clotilde Basilica in Paris. However, since the government had closed the church (which was located just across from the Ministry of War) for fear of bombings, no successor was named. Bonnal did indeed write a text for L’Orgue in homage of Tournemire, entitled “L’Homme et L’Oeuvre,” which was published in March, 1940.41
In the summer of 1940, Sainte-Clotilde Basilica reopened. The organ was played during services by Bernard Schulé (1909–1996), an organ student of Joseph Bonnet who was the titular at the British Embassy Church since 1935 and who had substituted at Sainte-Clotilde for Tournemire since fall 1938. Schulé was a close friend of both Norbert Dufourcq and André Marchal.42
In 1941, Bonnal returned to live in Paris, where he was appointed to work with Henri Busser as Inspecteur Général de l’Enseignement Musical à la Direction des Beaux-Arts [General Inspector of Musical Education for the Direction of Fine Arts] throughout France. Dufourcq then organized a competition to determine Tournemire’s successor at Sainte-Clotilde. It was supposed to take place on December 20, 1941, precisely at 1:30 p.m. According to the announcement, the public was invited to attend with free admission; the church was to be heated. The candidates (Jean Langlais, Antoine Reboulot, and Daniel-Lesur) were to improvise a prelude and fugue and the verses of a hymn and to perform a work each by Bach, Franck, and Tournemire. Daniel-Lesur, who was supported by Olivier Messiaen, was hoping to compete. However, this competition was cancelled, due to the fact that many of the possible candidates were held as prisoners or were demobilized in the free zone during the war, thereby preventing them from coming to Paris to officially apply for this post. This was, in any case, Daniel-Lesur’s situation. On December 14, 1941, Norbert Dufourcq wrote a letter to Jean Langlais, informing him that the competition would occur at a later date.43
Then it was decided that an interim organist would be designated at Saint-Clotilde until a competition could be held after the war. When Sainte-Clotilde reopened in February, 1942, Canon Verdrie, the church priest, named Bonnal as titular without a competition, due to his fame as a well-known and respected musician who had been highly recommended by Count Bérenger de Miramon Fitz-James. After his nomination to this prestigious post, Bonnal thus became the successor to his lifelong friend and professor, Charles Tournemire.44 According to Bonnal’s daughter Marylis, numerous prominent musicians encouraged him to accept this post (notably Norbert Dufourcq, Béranger de Miramon Fitz-James, André Marchal, Noëlie Pierront, Gaston Poulet, René Calvet). Bonnal rarely remained in Paris since he often traveled throughout France to inspect conservatories. Thankfully, Schulé was able to substitute for him. (See photo 5, page 28.)
Bonnal felt that making music in French conservatories during this tragic time represented a sign of hope for the future. He encouraged students to maintain the following objectives:

D’abord le travail et la discipline dans l’effort: c’est à dire les deux ferments qui forgent, grandissent et trempent les caractères, purifient et annoblissent les ambitions. Ensuite: la recherche constante de la qualité. Songez qu’il ne doit pas vous suffire d’être d’excellents virtuoses possédant de sérieuses qualités techniques, il vous faut devenir d’authentiques musiciens.
La musique vous la découvrirez dans la pratique quotidienne, dans la fréquentation permanente des grands musiciens, des Bach, Mozart et Beethoven, pour n’en citer que trois parmi les plus grands. Vous devez par la méditation fréquente, essayer d’entrer en communion avec l’âme de ces grands humains qui furent de très grands penseurs. N’en jouer, même parfaitement, que le texte musical, c’est n’en connaître que la lettre, mais cela ne suffit pas, il vous faut en rechercher l’Esprit.
Soyez donc très ambitieux spirituellement et vous aurez un jour la surprise de découvrir la musique là où elle se trouve, en son seul domaine qui est celui des mouvements de l’Ame, de la connaissance humaine . . . en un mot: de la poésie!
Je n’ai jamais oublié ce mot admirable que me dit un jour mon cher ami Paul Dukas: “il n’y a pas d’art sans poésie.”45

[First of all, one must work and discipline one’s efforts: this will forge, expand and solidify one’s character, purify and ennoble one’s ambition . . . Constantly search for quality; it’s not enough to be an excellent virtuoso with a serious technique, you must become authentic musicians.
You must daily discover the great musicians: Bach, Mozart and Beethoven, to mention only these three among the greatest. Through frequent meditations, you must try to enter in communion with the souls of these great people who were very great thinkers. It does not suffice to play the musical text perfectly, this only allows you to know the letter; you must look for the Spirit.
Dare therefore to be spiritually ambitious and you will one day be surprised to discover that music belongs to the exclusive field . . . of poetry!
I’ll never forget the admirable words of my dear friend Paul Dukas who told me one day: “There is no art without poetry.”]

During the war, Bonnal took his vacations each August at Saint-Sever (in the Landes). He stayed in the home of Father Binsoll, the priest in Arièle, a nearby village. Each day, Bonnal visited his dear friends Ambroise Dupouy (organist at the Abbatial Church in Saint-Sever since 1840—who was responsible for the installation of its beautiful A. Cavaillé-Coll organ there in 1898—who died at the end of World War II), and his son Jean Dupouy (1896–1965), who succeeded him. Ambroise Dupouy’s daughter Jeanine, born in 1922, took daily lessons with Bonnal and her father. She has testified to Bonnal’s rigorous and severe approach, emphasizing his noble ideas and his meticulous care concerning details of touch, phrasing and fingering.
At the beginning of his summer vacation in 1844, Bonnal gave an organ concert with Jean Etchepare’s Double Vocal Quartet at Saint-André Church in Bayonne on Monday, July 31, 1944 at 3:45 p.m. This may seem like an odd time to give a concert, but this was due to the fact that many of the organ concerts in churches at that time served as an introduction and a conclusion to the exposition and benediction of the Holy Sacrament. Bonnal’s eclectic programs combined classical music with the popular traditional Basque repertory:

J. S. Bach: Toccata and Fugue (in D minor)
C. Franck: First Choral
A Basque Cantique (sung by the Double Vocal Quartet)
C. Franck: Second Choral
E. Bonnal: Joie et Joie for a men’s choir, set to a text by Loÿs Labèque
C. Franck: Third Choral
Improvisation on a given theme (by E. Bonnal)

E. Bonnal: O Salutaris
Josquin des Près: Ave Vera Virginitas
E. Bonnal: Tantum Ergo (in the Basque style) (sung during the exposition and benediction of the Most Holy Sacrament)
To conclude, Bonnal played J. S. Bach’s Chorale on the Veni Creator (most certainly his Fantasia super “Komm heiliger Geist, Herre Gott,” BWV 651).

Following this concert on July 31, Bonnal went to Saint-Sever to rehearse for a “Grand Concert Spirituel” that he was planning to give on Friday, September 8, 1944, at the Abbatial Church there, in collaboration with the Calvet Quartet and the Parish Schola directed by the organist Jean Dupouy. The proposed program:

I.
J. S. Bach: Toccata and Fugue (in D minor)

II.
N. de Grigny: Trio en dialogue
F. Couperin: Sarabande grave
N. Clérambault: Dialogue du 1er Ton
Cl. Balbastre: Noël (“Joseph est bien marié”)

III.
Händel: Sonata (in D major) for organ and violin (with Joseph Calvet)

IV.
E. Bonnal: Paysage landais
Noël landais
Improvisation (on a given theme)

V.
Maurice Ravel: Quatuor (played by the Calvet Quartet during the exposition and benediction of the Holy Sacrament)
At the end, Bonnal had programmed C. Franck’s Final.

During his visits to rehearse in Saint-Sever, the following photo was taken (See photo 6).
Unfortunately, Bonnal’s deteriorating health, due to his many personal sacrifices and concerns during the war, provoked a stroke that led to his death in Bordeaux, on August 14, 1944. This occurred just two and a half years after his appointment to Sainte-Clotilde46 and only twelve days after Joseph Bonnet’s own death.47 In the midst of the liberation of Paris, Bonnal’s daughter Marylis learned about her father’s death while listening to the radio! During this difficult time, Bonnal was buried in Bordeaux.
In 1945, Bonnal’s wife Hélène moved with her young children to Anglet. She survived, thanks to the generosity of an American organist, Mr. MacEvans, who was an officer in the American Army. He also directed a choir at the American University in Biarritz. To this day, Bonnal’s family is still extremely grateful for Mr. MacEvans’ kindness. In addition, André Marchal gave several benefit concerts for Bonnal’s family. On September 18, 1949, at Saint-André Church in Bayonne, with the singer Madame Malnory-Marsillac, the program included works by Bach, Couperin, Franck, Tournemire, and Bonnal (the second movement of his “Media Vita” Symphony). On May 15, 1952, Marchal performed another concert on the Saint-André organ in Bayonne, in Bonnal’s memory, with commentaries by Norbert Dufourcq, for the Jeunesses Musicales de France. This group was highly promoted in the Basque region by Bonnal’s very close friend, Joseph Calvet. Marchal’s eclectic program displayed the various tonal colors of this organ:

Louis Couperin - Chaconne in G minor
François Couperin – “Kyrie,” 5 verses from the Mass for the Parishes
J. S. Bach – Chorale: Christ lag in Todesbanden
C. Franck – Prélude, Fugue et Variation
Louis Vierne – “Final” from the First Symphony.
In 1975, Ermend Bonnal’s body was transported from Bordeaux to the Arcangues cemetery, in the Pyrenees mountains, an area he loved dearly. For this occasion, Henri Sauguet rendered homage to Bonnal’s positive inspiration on his own personal career as well as his contribution to 20th-century French music. Sauguet evoked Francis Jammes’ poem written in homage to Ermend Bonnal:

Taillé dans le dur bois d’un chêne harmonieux,
Ton pur profil, Bonnal, se confond avec l’orgue;
Mais de nous déchiffrer le silence des cieux
Ne te remplis jamais de vile et sotte morgue.
Comme aux astres, le jour, voilés par leur pudeur,
L’ombre est ce qui convient à ta noble carrière.
Ah! que tombe la nuit, et toute ta splendeur
Saura la consteller de notes de lumières.

[Carved in the hard wood of a harmonious oak tree,
Your pure profile, Bonnal, is merged with the organ;
But we must fathom the silence of the heavens
Which never fills you with a vile and foolish arrogance.
Like the stars, during the day, veiled by their modesty,
Darkness is most suitable to your noble career.
Ah! May the night fall, and all of your splendor
Will spangle it with enlightened notes.]

Conclusion
Joseph Ermend Bonnal belonged to a generation of artists from Bordeaux who possessed a high degree of moral perfection in their art and in their personal lives. They all shared a common, spiritual artistic vision, devoid of material ambitions, only desiring to serve music with deep, devoted love and passion. Inspired by the renewal of both traditional and early music, Bonnal formed numerous musical societies to promote this repertory. He left us an important heritage of deeply poetical pieces inspired by the rich culture of the Basque region. The intact organ at Saint-André Church in Bayonne testifies to his adherence to the French Neo-Classical organ. A prominent composer, music educator and administrator, a first-rate improviser and performer, Bonnal was indeed a dignified successor to his master and friend, Charles Tournemire, as titular organist at the Sainte-Clotilde Basilica in Paris. Bonnal served his art with humility. In spite of the numerous obstacles he encountered during his lifetime, Bonnal’s noble aspirations, along with the faithful support of his friends, enabled him to pursue his ongoing quest for perfection.

Acknowledgements
Carolyn Shuster Fournier warmly expresses her gratitude to: Mayette Bonnal, François and Marylis Raoul-Duval (members of Bonnal’s family), Madame Catherine Massip and Madame Vallet-Collot of the Bibliothèque nationale de France, Cécile Auzolle, Madame Marie-Françoise Romaine Brown-Bonnet, Aurélie Decourt, Madame Janine Dupouy, Brigitte de Leersnyder, Jacqueline Englert-Marchal, Adolphine and François Marchal, Yannick Merlin, Etienne Rousseau-Plotto Marie-Christine Ugo-Lhôte, and to the Ruth and Clarence Mader Memorial Scholarship Fund for its grant in 2006.

Carolyn Shuster Fournier

Carolyn Shuster Fournier expresses her gratitude to Pierre Cogen and to Ann Labounsky for providing material and advice for this article, to Marie-Christine Ugo-Lhôte for the loan of her father’s collection of the review L’Orgue, to Mifa Martin for having read through the text, and to the Ruth and Clarence Mader Memorial Scholarship Fund for its grant in 2006.
An international concert artist, Dr. Carolyn Shuster Fournier is titular of the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at La Trinité Church in Paris, France. She has written several articles for The Diapason. In October 1983, she was privileged to perform Jean Langlais’ Double Fantasy for Two Organists with the composer, in his concerts during his last tour to England: at the Royal Festival Hall in London (on October 26), at the Salisbury Cathedral, and at the Christ Church Chapel in Oxford.

The Sainte-Clotilde Tradition1 is based on the lineage transmitted in a teacher/student relationship from Franck to Tournemire to Langlais.2 Especially beginning with Charles Tournemire, these organist/composers, as well as many of their substitutes (among others, Maurice Duruflé, André Fleury, and Daniel-Lesur), the choirmaster Maurice Emmanuel,3 and other titular organists at Sainte-Clotilde—notably Joseph Ermend Bonnal, Jean Langlais, and Pierre Cogen—had an intimate, spiritual understanding of the Gregorian chants used in the traditional Catholic liturgy. This was manifest in their deeply poetic and colorful interpretations, and in their use of Gregorian chants in their improvisations and compositions. They all served their art with humility. This article is dedicated to Pierre Cogen, a French organist-composer in the Sainte-Clotilde Tradition.

Pierre Cogen’s musical formation under Jean Langlais’ guidance

Pierre Cogen (see illustration 1) was born in Paris on October 2, 1931. From 1944 to 1951, he studied at the Petit Séminaire de Paris in Conflans.4 He sang in the Schola choir, directed by the Abbot Jean Revert.5 Such a framework provided Cogen with a musical training in the ancient, pure classical tradition—in a church choir school that sang Gregorian chants as well as the classical polyphonic choral repertory. At the age of 14, Cogen began to accompany this choir on the 12-stop Cavaillé-Coll organ6 in the school chapel. Each year, Jean Langlais was invited to give a concert on this instrument. When Cogen heard him improvise brilliantly on the Gregorian Sunday mid-Lent Introit, Laetare Jerusalem, he was moved so deeply that he immediately requested to become his student. At the age of 19, Cogen studied privately with him, taking lessons either on the two-manual harmonium with a pedalboard in Langlais’ home, on the Cavaillé-Coll organ in his class at the Paris Institute for the Blind, or on the chapel organ at Cogen’s school.
After graduating from this school in 1951, at the age of 20, Pierre Cogen studied for one year with Edouard Souberbielle at the César Franck School in Paris, during Langlais’ first tour to the United States. This distinguished and cultivated professor helped Cogen to solidify his technique. Cogen then continued to take private lessons with Langlais, studying organ interpretation (especially of the works associated with the Sainte-Clotilde Tradition), and also harmony, counterpoint, fugue, and improvisation (notably of the fugue). Cogen also studied harmony with Jean Lemaire and took preparatory courses for the exam that would qualify him to become a music professor with Eliane Chevalier (Marie-Madeleine Duruflé-Chevalier’s sister) and Raymond Weber. After obtaining his Certificat d’Aptitude as a music education professor, he taught in Paris, in public schools and at the private Alsatian School from 1961 to 1993. In the meantime, from 1952 to 1966, he directed a children’s choir, Les Petits Chanteurs de Championnet, which sang four-voice a cappella music from Palestrina to Langlais. It toured, notably to Germany in 1964 and 1965.
From 1952 to 1979, in exchange for numerous lessons, Cogen assisted Langlais’ wife Jeanne7 as a musical secretary, notating Langlais’ compositions onto paper and proofreading them for publication. In 1954, he helped Langlais prepare his edition of C. P. E. Bach’s Six Sonatas.8 When Langlais urgently composed his Salve Regina Mass for the Christmas Eve midnight mass at the Notre-Dame Cathedral in 1954, his wife notated the text during the day; each night, Cogen prepared the separate vocal scores. Among other compositions, he notated Langlais’ In Paradisum (Triptyque grégorien) in a hotel in Haarlem, during the International Improvisation Competition in 1978. In 1971, Pierre Cogen decided to complete his musical training, in both organ and improvisation, as well as in counterpoint and fugue. He therefore enrolled at the Schola Cantorum—in Langlais’ organ class from 1971 to 1973, then in Yvonne Desportes’ fugue class from 1974 to 1976—obtaining the Prix de Virtuosité in organ and improvisation in 1973, and Superior Diplomas in harmony, counterpoint and fugue in 1975–76. During the first term of 1973, when Langlais took a leave of absence for illness, Cogen took lessons with his substitute, André Fleury, studying his Prélude, Andante and Toccata, acquiring a more dreamlike interpretation of the Prélude and a more flamboyant spirit in the Toccata. Fleury insisted upon absolute precision and rigor in carrying out registration changes. Cogen greatly appreciated his honesty, his rectitude of character, and his constant friendship.9
In July 1975, Pierre Cogen participated in an improvisation academy in Nice with Pierre Cochereau, driving from Paris to Nice with the American organist George Baker. When Cogen improvised an “Elevation,” Cochereau immediately put him at ease, with his customary simplicity and warmth. Cogen recalls that they began with modulation exercises, all types of canons and toccata formulas, developing numerous forms: the sicilienne, various suite movements, and, of course, the fugue. Among the advice that Cogen retained:

Carry out your effects tactfully. Don’t say everything initially!
Interweave all of the elements, one upon another.
Don’t abuse the use of major and minor scales.
Establish the tonalities of your development.
Beware of your repeated chords, too many arpeggiated formulas.
How can you return to the principal tonality? And the 6/4 chord!10

In 1979, Pierre Cogen obtained, by competition, the Aptitude Certificate for Teaching Organ and Improvisation (C.A.) in the national French conservatories. In 1984, he created the organ class at the Maurice Ravel Conservatory in Levallois, near Paris, remaining there until his retirement in 1993.

Titular at the Sainte-Clotilde Basilica in Paris

Beginning in 1955, Cogen began to substitute for Langlais at the Sainte-Clotilde Basilica when his official assistant, Pierre Denis,11 was not available. The Grand Orgue gave solemnity to the church services, and prepared and prolonged the atmosphere of the liturgical chants during the masses, vespers, weddings and funerals. When Langlais asked him to substitute for him, Cogen played for three Sunday morning masses: the 9:30 a.m. high mass was in Latin and Gregorian chant; the two others, at 11 a.m. and noon, were low masses. At the high mass, Cogen played the Prelude, the Offertory, the Elevation, the Communion, and the Postlude. During the low masses, he played continuously while the celebrant recited his prayers in a “low” voice. During the church services, Cogen based his improvisations and his choice of repertory on the appropriate chants of the liturgical year. For the vesper services, after playing a processional entrance, he improvised fifteen verses, first for the repeated antiphons that follow each of the five psalms, then, in alternation with the choir, for the verses of the hymn and the Magnificat, and then again for the antiphon.
In 1972, Pierre Cogen played the organ regularly, becoming Langlais’ official assistant. During this period, he only played two Sunday morning masses, at 11 a.m. (preceded by a long prelude) and at noon. Although the vespers were no longer held, he still played for weddings and funerals. At the beginning of 1973, when Langlais fell ill, Cogen played for all of the services. When Langlais resumed his activities, he dedicated to Cogen the fourth of his Cinq Méditations sur l’Apocalypse: “Oh oui, viens, Seigneur viens, Seigneur Jésus.”12
On January 31, 1976, at Langlais’ request, Pierre Cogen was named as a co-titular organist at Saint-Clotilde. He still played for the same number of masses. Even more important, since he had unlimited access to the organ, he became well integrated into the Sainte-Clotilde Tradition, playing much of its related repertory. On the occasion of his nomination as co-titular organist, Langlais presented him with Léon Vallas’s biography of César Franck13 with the following inscription (see illustration 2).
From 1978 to 1985, in addition to the two morning masses, Cogen played for a traditional low mass in Latin every Sunday at 6:30 p.m. (except in the summer). On May 17, 1987, Cogen accompanied Langlais’ Messe Solennelle for four-part choir and two organs15 while Langlais played solo pieces during a televised Sunday morning mass that celebrated Langlais’ 80th birthday. In April 1988, when Langlais resigned at the age of 80 due to a bad heart condition, he was named “Honorary Organist at Sainte-Clotilde.”16 Cogen succeeded him as titular, and Jacques Taddei was also named as titular, joining the list of their illustrious predecessors:

1863–1890 César Franck17
1890–1898 Gabriel Pierné
1898–1939 Charles Tournemire
1942–1944 Joseph Ermend Bonnal
1945–1988 Jean Langlais
1976–1994 Pierre Cogen
1988–present Jacques Taddei

After his nomination, Cogen dedicated his Offrande to Langlais and premiered this work during the 11 a.m. Easter Mass at Sainte-Clotilde on April 3, 1988, the day he succeeded Langlais as titular. At the beginning of this piece, a beautiful pentatonic melody is harmonized with refined simplicity (see illustration 3). After Langlais’ death on May 8, 1991, Cogen and Taddei, with other instrumentalists and choirs, played for his funeral on May 30.
From 1988 to 1991, in addition to his service playing, Cogen organized organ concerts at Sainte-Clotilde every Friday after the noon mass. These concerts continued until the church was closed in 1992 for restoration work. When it reopened in 1993, Cogen and Taddei only played for the 11 a.m. mass, but a song rehearsal that immediately preceded the mass prevented them from playing a prelude. On June 21, 1994, Cogen retired at the age of 62, after 39 years of service to this parish (21 years as a substitute organist and 18 years as a titular). On April 2, he played there for the last time—for the Easter Vigil and the midnight Easter mass, ending it with the following postlude: Langlais’ Incantation pour un jour saint, which combines the Lumen Christi chant from the Easter Vigil and the Litanies, which had been sung by the congregation during the vigil to implore heavenly aid.

International concert organist and recording artist

As a concert organist, Cogen had the privilege of premiering several of Langlais’ pieces. On December 30, 1979, he inaugurated his Noëls avec Variations, Op. 204, at the Saint-Louis des Invalides Church in Paris. On November 18, 1985, he premiered Langlais’ Talitha Koum, Op. 225, at a second concert that celebrated Langlais’ 40 years of service as an organist at Sainte-Clotilde. On Sunday, December 13, 1987, at Sainte-Clotilde, Cogen premiered, with Claire Louchet, soprano, Langlais’ Antiennes à la Sainte Vierge, Op. 242, for one voice and organ.
On February 1, 1987, Pierre Cogen performed at the Madeleine Church in Paris, along with François-Henri Houbart and Georges Bessonnet, in a concert that celebrated Jean Langlais’ 80th birthday. On February 15, 1987, Langlais’ 80th birthday, he attended Cogen’s recital at the Notre-Dame Cathedral. Cogen performed Langlais’ Chant de joie, Rosa mystica, Triptyque, and Dans la lumière, an extract from L’Offrande à une âme. At Sainte-Clotilde, Cogen also performed in several memorable organ concerts: one was held in Tournemire’s honor on November 16, 1989. It is particularly moving to note that Cogen heard Langlais play for the last time during this concert—a moving rendition of the second of Tournemire’s Sei Fioretti, which had been dedicated to him 57 years earlier, in 1932!18
Also at Sainte-Clotilde, Cogen played in two concerts that celebrated the centenary of Cesar Franck’s death in 1990 and in several recitals that were held in Langlais’ memory in 1991. On Good Friday in 1989, 1990 and 1991, Cogen was privileged to perform at Sainte-Clotilde Tournemire’s Sept Chorals-Poèmes pour les Sept Paroles du Christ, Op. 67. Father Choné, the church priest, introduced each piece with a commentary of the Gospel.
Cogen also rendered homage to his two predecessors by recording their works on the Sainte-Clotilde Grand Orgue:
1. Langlais’ works (carried out in the composer’s presence): Incantation pour un jour saint, Ave Maria, Ave Maris Stella, Offrande à Marie, Suite medievale (a 33 rpm record published by Tempo FR 760310), 1976;
2. Langlais’ Première Symphonie, Suite folklorique, Triptyque by Cybélia (CY-867), 1986; 3. Tournemire’s Sept Chorals-Poèmes pour les Sept Paroles du Xrist en Croix, L’Orgue Mystique (the Assumption and the Epiphany Offices) (CD, Cybélia, CY-883), 1990. In 1997, he also recorded Langlais’ Suite médiévale, Suite brève, and Suite française on the organ at the Church of the Holy Spirit in Mannheim (CD, Aeolus, AE-10081).

Pierre Cogen’s organ works

After retiring from his post at Sainte-Clotilde in 1994, Pierre Cogen was able to devote more time to performing and to composing. His compositions were inspired by Tournemire’s poetic language and by Langlais’ colorful harmonies. The influence of the Sainte-Clotilde Tradition is also manifest in Cogen’s use of modal tonalities, Gregorian chants, and the imitation of bells. Several of Cogen’s organ works were commissioned, notably by the Austrian organist and composer Thomas Daniel Schlee, by two organists in Switzerland, Eva and Marco Brandazza, and by the Austrian organist Herbert Bolterauer. In the following list of Cogen’s works, the titles are given in French, along with information concerning their dedications, their premieres and their publication. A brief description of each piece provides the composer’s remarks concerning his works.

1. Deux Chorals, dedicated to his dear master Jean Langlais, composed as birthday presents for him; they were premiered privately, on Langlais’ house organ, on February 15, 1974 (the second choral) and in 1977 (the first choral): “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen,” 1977; “Herzlich tut mich verlangen,” 1974.
Published in Paris: Combre (C 5464), 1993 (6'30").
The association of these two chorals recalls two vital extremities, one’s birth and death, as Cogen explains.
The first choral, with its inherently intimate character, uses the famous Praetorius Christmas carol in a clear, contrapuntal style, with particularly soft registrations (Gambe and Voix Celeste, Bourdon 8', with a soft Pedal Flute). The melody, in long note values in the soprano, is accompanied by a discreet movement of eighth-notes in the inner voices, while syncopated rhythms in the bass line (played on the pedal) lull the upper voices.
Cogen was studying improvisation with Langlais when he composed the second choral. Langlais had insisted that the pedal part should not stagnate in the lower notes. His student followed his advice far beyond his master’s wishes, since the pedal sings entirely in the upper range on the following stops: Flute 4', Nasard 22⁄3', Larigot 11⁄3' and Piccolo 1' (registration that was dear to Messiaen in his Banquet céleste). The choral melody, resolutely sustained with homophonic writing, is confined to the manuals (Bourdon 8', Voix Humaine and tremolo on the Swell or, if this is not available, on 8' foundation stops that can sufficiently balance the opposing chant in the pedal). If the pedalboard does not contain a G3, it is possible to play the entire pedal part an octave lower on a registration based on 2' stops.

2. Nocturne sur un thème populaire Breton, 1976, dedicated to Michèle Vermesse, his future wife; premiered by Ann Labounsky in a concert at Sainte-Clotilde in Paris on May 21, 1979.
Published in Paris: Combre (C 5396), 1992 (7'30").
Recorded by Hans Leitner at the Passau Cathedral in 1995, in Klangfarben der grössten Kirchenorgel der Welt, CD 118, Symicon, Passau, and by Ulrich Karg at the Saint-Vith Church in Belgium, 1999, in Organs in Wallonie, a province of Liège, Blawète Records, Liège.
The theme of this nocturne is a Breton hymn proposed to Pierre Cogen as an improvisation theme to conclude a concert given at Douarnenez (in the southern Finistère) on August 17, 1975. This evening hymn affirms a faith as solid as the granite that is exposed to harsh atmospheric conditions; it is presented as such in the old Breton night legends (ankou, korrigans, etc.). Cogen tried to bring this atmosphere to life in this symphonic, three-part Andante: following the triple exposition of the theme, interspersed with mysterious bell tolls, a sombre and anguished central section develops certain fragments of the theme; then a re-exposition is calmer and more lyrical. This piece finishes with a reminder of the bell tolling: at the beginning and the end of this work, two chords are superposed in the lower keyboard range, solely on the Nasard 22⁄3' and the Tierce 13⁄5' stops.

3. Chorale “Erbarm dich mein, ô Herre Gott,” 1978, unpublished (5').
In an ecumenical approach, Pierre Cogen had planned on writing several suites that would combine Lutheran chorales with Gregorian themes. This is the only work that was completed. In a particularly slow tempo, the chorale theme passes successively from the lower to the upper ranges, from pianissimo to triple forte with dense polyphonic writing, whereas the Gregorian theme, Miserere mei, Deus, serves as a countrapuntal element.

4. Deux Hosannas sur des textes grégoriens: I. Hosanna in exsilio, 1980, to François Tricot; II. Hosanna Escalquensis, 1982, to Jeanne Langlais, in memoriam.
Published in Das neue Orgelalbum II, Vienna: Universal Edition (UE 17480), 1985 (7'30").
The first piece begins with an excerpt of the Sanctus from the Missa Orbis Factor. Then, a two-part development built around a group of four descending notes is followed by a recapitulation with a canon at the seventh and a brief coda. The fear-stricken character of the music alludes to the title of the piece: we are not in heaven (in excelsis), but in this world of banishment (in exsilio), to which the Salve Regina alludes.
In the second movement, the theme, a fragment of the Missa Cunctipotens Genitor Deus in the second mode, appears three times. A fugato, based on a fragment of the theme, introduces the development section. A large-scale rallentando leads to a mysterious carillon: that of the Escalquens Church (near Toulouse), where Jean and Jeanne Langlais are buried. This carillon is played very slowly (see illustration 4, page 28). The bell tolling and the thematic fragments are developed with a crescendo, leading to a brilliant, luminous presentation of the theme in a canon at the interval of a fifth.
5. Psalmodie, composed at Cernay la Ville on December 31, 1985, dedicated to his mother.
Published in Pedals Only, Vienna: Universal Edition (UE 18601), 1988 (5').
The author could have inscribed an epigraph under the title of the piece, citing the passage in the Gospel of St. Luke (chapter I, verse 39), following the text concerning the Annunciation: “Mary left hastily to visit her cousin Elizabeth in the mountains.” At the beginning of Psalmodie, a series of three groups of three quiet F-sharps on the Flute 4' stop recall the Sainte-Clotilde church bells when they toll for the Angelus.19 As Cogen explains, after this introduction comes a three-voice fugue, whose joyful subject is none other than that of the psalmody in the eighth mode, sometimes used to sing the Magnificat. After several expositions and divertimenti, the movement is accelerated while the subject is compressed through several canons (strettos), leading to the tutti, a radiant B-major chord. Two codas are proposed, with solo pedal or with the addition of the manuals.

6. Offrande, 1988 (initially composed in 1963 for an a cappella four-voice choir with the title Le Lotus d’Or), dedicated to his dear master Jean Langlais; premiered by Cogen during the 11 a.m. Easter Mass at Sainte-Clotilde on April 3, 1988, the day he succeeded Langlais as titular.
Published in Paris: Combre (Collection Horizon), 1990 (3').
Recorded by Andrew Cantrill, at St. Paul’s Cathedral in Wellington, New Zealand.
This is a unique piece: Cogen’s only work from the 1960s, when he was strongly influenced by early twentieth-century composers such as Debussy, Ravel, Stravinsky, Bartók, and Milhaud. It is based on a Birman folklore melody in the pentatonic mode and is structured according to its four original strophes. The melody initially appears in the soprano on the Swell Oboe 8', accompanied by the left hand on the Positive Salicional 8' and a soft 16' and 8' in the Pedal. In the second strophe, a trio, the melody appears in the left hand on the Positive Cromorne, while the alto is played by the right hand on the Swell Cornet, with a Grand Jeu de Tierce in the Pedal. In the slightly agitated third strophe, the melody in the soprano is sustained by the two voices in the alto, which develop in imitation before sounding together in parallel thirds. The work finishes peacefully on the Swell Gambe and Voix Celeste stops that accompany the melody on the Great Bourdon 8'. As Cogen indicates, the absence of the B and E notes in the pentatonic melody allowed him to truly modulate: while the first and the last strophes maintained their “white” key signature, the B-flat intervenes in the second strophe and joins the E-flat in the third one.

7. Fantaisie sur une Antienne for organ with four hands and pedal, 1988, finished at Cernay-la-Ville, near Paris, on November 4, 1989, dedicated to Claire and Thomas Daniel Schlee; premiered by Cogen and Schlee in a concert that celebrated 50th anniversary of Tournemire’s death, at Sainte-Clotilde on November 23, 1989, along with T. D. Schlee’s Prisme, also a work for four hands and pedal.
Published in Vienna: Universal Edition (UE 19550), 1988 (7').
Recorded by Eva and Marco Brandazza at the Schloss Church in Bad Mergentheim (Germany), in Ite, missa est, Organum Musikproduktion, Öhringen, 1996; and by Sylvie Poirier and Philip Crozier on the Casavant organ at the Très Saint Sacrement de Jésus Church in Montréal, Canada, in Historic Organs of Montreal, CD 1.
Pierre Cogen’s fantasy contains three main sections of polyphonic writing—Lento, Andante and Allegro—that alternate with freely expressive recitatives. The Lento section sounds like a funeral march on the soft 8' foundation stops, After progressing from the lower to the upper registers, a heavy pedal note imitates a bell-like toll on low C. The Andante presents a fugue whose vigorous rhythmical theme appears in the alto, then in the tenor and in the bass. In the final Allegro, a litany-like dialogue on the foundation stops with the mixtures, the composer presents the Gregorian antiphon on which this piece is based: the “Ego dormivi” from the Easter matins, which Tournemire used several times in his L’Orgue mystique, notably in his Paraphrase Carillon. Cogen’s work ends majestically on the full organ.

8. L’Epiphanie du Seigneur, 1991, in homage to the painter, Werner Hartmann, dedicated to Geneviève and Daniel Hartmann; premiered by Pierre Cogen on November 10, 1991, for the tenth anniversary of the death of this painter, at the Parish Catholic Church in Gerliswill-Emmenbrücke, near Lu-cerne, Switzerland. Unpublished (14')
Werner Hartmann’s series of large paintings (5.60m x 1.90m) of the Epiphany of the Savior, which inspired this piece, are located in the choir of the Catholic church, Pfarrkirche Gerliswill, in the Gerliswill-Emmenbrücke district of Lucerne. They depict the three miracles related in the Epiphany Gospel: the star followed by the Wise Men (who ride on horses instead of camels), the water changed into wine, and the descent of the Holy Spirit during Christ’s Baptism. While looking at these paintings, Cogen was struck by their link with the Gregorian antiphon in the first mode, the “Tribus miraculis” from the Magnificat of the Second Vespers of Epiphany. Since this work is based on this theme, it may be sung as an introduction.
According to Cogen, in the first movement, “The Star, the Three Wise Men and the Manger Scene,” mysterious and stark sonorities (due to the light discord on the Nazard stop) recall the night and the starlit sky. The central part of this movement recalls the Wise Men (who travel on horseback to follow the star that led them to the cradle). At the end, a slow descent leads to a lulling movement, a sweet evocation of the manger scene.
In the second movement, “The Wedding at Cana and the Baptism of Jesus,” light flutes sound a discreet carillon, while the rustic reed stops introduce a folk melody full of Mediterranean light. The development, initially calm, becomes more intense, leading up to a brief and turbulent agitato that represents the servants’ astonishment when the miracle takes place. Then, the melody is transformed into a Grand Plein Jeu—solemn and hieratic—the manifestation of the Divine Presence. This fragment finishes with the first notes of Ubi caritas et amor, Deus ibi est.
The Baptism of Jesus by John, a penance baptism, begins with low notes and rustic sonorities that depict the universe filled with minerals and the dry desert where John the Baptist carried out his mission. This long tension is resolved in less dissonant harmonies, the first fruits of the salvation announced by John the Baptist. The quotation of the Veni Creator recalls the descent of the Holy Spirit onto Jesus. The work concludes in a luminous atmosphere with the initial Gregorian theme—that of the antiphon Tribus miraculis.

9. L’Exaltation de la Sainte Croix, Diptyque for Organ, 1994, dedicated to Monseigneur Jean Revert, Honorary Choirmaster at the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris, for the 50th anniversary of his ordination to the priesthood; premiered by Pierre Cogen at the Notre-Dame Cathedral on Palm Sunday, on March 27, 1994. Unpublished (11')
According to Cogen, this work is a grand Gregorian paraphrase in the spirit of similar pieces by Tournemire and Langlais. The title refers to the Feast of the Holy Cross. The melodic material is taken from several liturgical antiphons and hymns from the Holy Week, in particular, the antiphons Ecce lignum Crucis, Crucem tuam adoramus, and the hymn Vexilla Regis. A Meditation on the Mystery of the Cross, an instrument of Christ’s torture but also a symbol of the Redemption, this work is in the form of a diptyque in two connecting parts:
I. After an introduction inviting one to the Adoration of the Cross, a somber procession intones the hymn Vexilla Regis in the lower ranges of the organ. This first part ends peacefully, in expectation of the Resurrection.
II. At the very beginning of the second part, the atmosphere changes. A theme of exaltation, Exaltavit illum, first in the upper range of the organ, gives birth to a fugato. Profiting from secondary episodes, the theme of the hymn Vexilla Regis winds its way into the low ranges before powerfully bursting forth. The work concludes with a fanfare, recalling its various themes.

10. Lucernaire for two organs, “Paravi lucernam Christo meo” (Ps. 131/132, v. 17), for the Christmas season or for a celebration of the Light, 1994, commissioned by Eva and Marco Brandazza and premiered by them on January 10, 1995, at the Jesuit Church in Lucerne, Switzerland (with Eva on the choir organ and Marco on the tribune organ). Unpublished (17')
Recorded by Eva and Marco Brandazza (see item 7 above).
Underneath the title, the composer placed a verse of the Psalm 131 (132): “I have prepared a lamp for my Christ.” According to Cogen, this expectation and coming of the Light, an idea that repeatedly occurs in the Christmas season liturgical texts, guided him during his preparations, from the antiphon O Oriens (for the winter solstice) and the Lumen ad revelationem gentium of the Feast of the Purification, until the hymn Jesu, Redemptor omnium and its verse. By referring to these texts that were sung during the vespers of the Christmas season, the composer thought of structuring his work in the manner of an evening service, notably the one that was formerly referred to as Lucernaire, because one lit lamps during this service. In addition, the composer did not neglect to bring out the similarity between the Latin word lucerna, the lamp, and the name of the city of Lucerne.

11. Cortège, 1996, in memory of Adrien Maciet, the organ builder; Herbert Bolterauer premiered it on November 8, 1996, at the Mariahilf in Graz, Austria.
Published in Paris: Combre (C 05909), in Enluminures. Dix Pièces pour orgue sur un thème donné, 1999 (5').
Herbert Bolterauer, the organist at the Mariahilf Church in Graz, Austria, had requested nine different composers to write a short piece on a theme by Alexandre Schrei. The title of this collection, Enluminures [Illuminations], refers to the way the composers, through the variety of their styles, were able to “illuminate” the various aspects of the thematic material. Since Cogen’s piece is a memorial one, he chose a writing style that is essentially contrapuntal, quasi-vocal. He begins his piece in a slow and grave tempo: Schrei’s theme initially appears when the pedal enters. The piece intensifies until its conclusion. According to the composer, each interpreter can choose either to maintain its restrained character throughout the work, or to increase the sonorities, leading to a maximum of sound at the end of the piece.

12. Psalm “De Profundis” for organ and brass, 1998, in memory of his father-in-law, Edouard Vermesse; Pierre Cogen premiered it on July 17, 1998, with the brass ensemble Hexagone and the solo trumpeter Pierre Dutot, at the Abbatial Church in Guîtres, France (in Gironde, near Bordeaux). Unpublished (8')
This piece develops the various aspects of Psalm 129 (130), from its initial distressful plea to its message of the Lord’s kindness and redemption expressed in verse seven. It uses various Gregorian melodies: the antiphons from the Requiem and the Christmas Vespers, the Offertory from the twenty-third Sunday after Whitsun, and the chorale Aus tiefer Not schrei’ ich zu dir (the Lutheran equivalent of the De profundis).

13. Introduction, Thème et Variations sur “Innsbrück, Ich muss dich lassen” (Variations on a song by Heinrich Isaac), 1999–2002, dedicated to Thomas Daniel Schlee; on July 8, 1999, Cogen premiered an excerpt of this work at the parish church in Igls-Innsbruck; he then premiered it in its entirety on June 18, 2002, at Saint-Sulpice in Paris, France.
Published in Paris: Combre (C 06460), 2006 (13').
In 1996, when Cogen gave a concert in Igls, in the immediate vicinity of Innsbruck, he was inspired to compose a work on Isaac’s tune known as Innsbrück. The association between its name and that of the river Inn inspired him to write an introduction followed by five variations on this theme. As in most variations, this work enables the performer to present the various tonal colors of the organ. An initial Andante introduction develops several motives of the theme, on the foundation stops and the Swell Trumpet 8¢; the theme is then presented un poco più vivo, on the 16', 8', and 4' foundation stops. After the addition of the manual mixtures and the Pedal Basson 16', Isaac’s theme is entirely presented on the full organ, with harmonies reminiscent of those of the fifteenth century, when the melody was originally composed. The following five variations present the various colors of the organ:
Variation 1: an Adagio presents the theme in the lowest part of the pedalboard, using the Swell Bourdon 8', Voix Humaine 8' and tremulant, with the Pedal Flutes 8' and 4' and, if possible, the mutation stops forming the Grand Jeu de Tierce;
Variation 2: an Andante, with the theme played by the left hand, in a light character, on the Gambe stops;
Variation 3: a lyrical movement that dislocates the theme, using dissonances and “harsh” sounding reed stops, such as the Great horizontal Trumpet 8' with the mixtures;
Variation 4: a Moderato movement on the Swell Gambe 8' and Voix Celeste, with a canon between the alto (played by the right hand) and the soprano (played on the Pedal Flute 4');
Variation 5: a vigorous Fugue, Allegro ma non troppo, that begins on the Swell 8', 4', and 2' foundation stops with the mixtures; a progressive crescendo leads to the triumphal return of Isaac’s song, in a “resolutely modern harmonization” (P. Cogen).
A coda concludes this work on the full organ, resounding an open fifth: D–A.