The French Organ Music Seminar: Switzerland, Italy, and France July 9–26, 2017

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.

Nunc Dimittis

Wilbur R. Dodge, 83, died November 20, 2017, in Binghamton, New York, an engineer, physicist, professional photographer, English country dancer, organist, organbuilder, and organ technician. He graduated from Clarkson University and Harpur College (now Binghamton University) with degrees in electrical engineering and physics and followed in his father’s footsteps working at Ansco Film Company.  With Norman Smith, he started their company, R D & D before he moved on to Link Aviation where he worked on simulators for the Gemini and Apollo missions.

Dodge was a member of the choir and guest organist for various churches in the community including Trinity Memorial and Christ Churches. He also maintained and tuned pipe organs in churches throughout the region. He was dean of the Binghamton Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, 1999–2001. 

Wilbur R. Dodge is survived by his partner, Anneliese Heurich; children: Glenn Burch (Bellefonte, Pennsylvania), Michael and Tammy Burch (Deland, Florida), Barbara Burch (Paisley, Florida), and Laura Appleton (Binghamton); several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. A memorial service was held at Christ Episcopal Church in Binghamton on January 20.

 

Mark Coan Jones died December 24, 2017. Born February 25, 1957, in Asheville, North Carolina, he studied organ with Marilyn Keiser and with Donna Robertson at nearby Mars Hill College. For the past 22 years, Jones was director of music and organist for The Pink Church (First Presbyterian Church), Pompano Beach, Florida. He previously served St. Nicholas Episcopal Church, Pompano Beach; First Presbyterian Church, Newton, North Carolina; and Trinity Episcopal Church, Asheville.

Jones appeared with the Florida Philharmonic, New World Symphony, Lynn University Conservatory Orchestra, Young Artists Chamber Orchestra, Palm Beach Atlantic Symphony, and Miami Bach Society, and in collaborations with chamber groups and area choruses, including the Nova Singers, Florida Philharmonic Chorus, Master Chorale of South Florida, Masterworks Chorus of the Palm Beaches, Fort Lauderdale Christian Chorale, and Gay Men’s Chorus of South Florida. He arranged music for organ and brass and performed with the Dallas Brass, Avatar Brass, Empire Brass, Lynn Conservatory Brass, and Eastman Brass. He performed extensively across Europe, Scandinavia, and Russia, in collaborations and solo recitals. 

Jones’s organ compositions have been performed in venues across the United States and in Europe, and have been broadcast nationally. His Three Lenten Hymn Meditations, Trumpet Tune in D, and Lenten Hymntunes have been recorded and performed by various organists.

From 2006 through 2014, Mark was principal accompanist for the von Trapp Children, the great-grandchildren of the singing family made famous by the Rodgers & Hammerstein movie The Sound of Music. His solo appearances and concerts with the von Trapps included performances around the world.

Mark Coan Jones is survived by his parents Hubert Mack and Shirley Williams Jones of Asheville, his sister Suzanne Jones Hamel and husband Richard Anson Hamel of Covington, Kentucky, and his partner Hilarion (Kiko) Suarez Moreno of Deerfield Beach, Florida.

 

Yuko Hayashi died January 7 in Salem, New Hampshire, at the age of 88. She was born in Hiratsuka, Japan, on November 2, 1929. For more than 40 years she was professor of organ at the New England Conservatory and department chair for 30 years. As a performer, she concertized extensively on three continents—Asia, North America, and Europe—giving recitals and masterclasses in Japan, South Korea, the United States, Holland, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. She was the recipient of the coveted Arion Award from the Cambridge Society for Early Music as an “outstanding performer and master teacher of the historical organ.” She was also awarded the Distinguished Alumni Award from the New England Conservatory.

Hayashi graduated with a degree in organ performance from Tokyo University of the Arts in 1948 and for five years was organist for the symphony orchestra of NHK, the Japanese national broadcasting company. She came to the United States in 1953 on scholarship, sponsored by Philanthropic Educational Organization and studied for one year at Cottey College in Nevada, Missouri. She then transferred to the New England Conservatory in Boston where she was awarded three degrees in organ performance: Bachelor of Music, Master of Music, and Artist Diploma. In 1960 she began teaching at the conservatory and was appointed chair of the department in 1969 by then president Gunther Schuller. Her primary teachers were George Faxon, Donald Willing, Anton Heiller, and Gustav Leonhardt (harpsichord).

Her frequent travels to Europe began in 1966 when she went to the Haarlem Organ Academy in the Netherlands and began life-long associations with Anton Heiller, Luigi Tagliavini, and Marie-Claire Alain. In 1971, she studied with Michel Chapuis in France and was introduced to many historic organs in North Germany and Holland by Harald Vogel and Klaas Bolt. This was the beginning of many exchanges of concerts and masterclasses across the Atlantic Ocean between Boston and Europe. It was during this time that Hayashi became organist of Old West Church in Boston, performing on a new mechanical-action organ built by Charles B. Fisk. She served as organist there for nearly 40 years and was the founder and executive director of the Old West Organ Society until her retirement in 2010.

Beginning in 1970, Hayashi crossed the Pacific Ocean yearly to give recitals and masterclasses in Japan. With Italian organist Umberto Pineschi and the assistance of Japanese organ builder Hiroshi Tsuji and his wife Toshiko Tsuji, she founded the Italian Organ Academy in Shirakawa. She was influential in persuading organ committees from universities, churches, and concert halls to commission mechanical-action organs from organbuilders from around the world. Most noteworthy are the instruments for International Christian University (Rieger), Toyota City Concert Hall (Brombaugh), Minato Mirai Concert Hall, Yokohama (C. B. Fisk, Inc.), and Ferris University, Yokohama (Taylor & Boody, Noack Organ Company, and J. F. Nordlie Pipe Organ Company organs).

In 1989, Yuko Hayashi took a leave of absence from the New England Conservatory to accept a position as professor of organ at Ferris University, Yokohama. She taught there for six years before returning to Boston. She also became titular organist at St. Luke’s International Hospital Chapel, which houses an organ built by Marc Garnier of France. She was responsible for relocating a historic 1889 organ built by Hook & Hastings to St. Andrew’s Episcopal Cathedral in Yokohama where her father served as priest for many years.

Yuko Hayashi is survived by two brothers, Makoto Hayashi and Satoru Hayashi, and several nieces and nephews, all residing in Japan. A memorial service for Yuko Hayashi will be held at Christ Church, Andover, Massachusetts, April 28, at 11:00 a.m. Memorial contributions may be directed to: Old West Organ Society, c/o Jeffrey Mead, Treasurer, 72 Trenton Street, Melrose, Massachusetts 02176;  St. Andrew’s Cathedral, 14-57 Mitsuzawa-shimo-cho, Kanagawa-ku, Yokohama City, Kanagawa, 221-0852, Japan; or St. Luke’s International Hospital Chapel, c/o Organ Committee, 9-1 Akashi-cho, Chuo-ku, Tokyo, 140-8560, Japan.

 

Pierre Pincemaille, 61, died, January 12, an international concert organist, church organist, music professor, and composer. Born in Paris, France, December 8, 1956, Pincemaille was awarded five first prizes at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris (harmony, counterpoint, fugue, organ interpretation, and organ improvisation) and won five international improvisation competitions: Lyon (1978), Beauvais (1987), Strasbourg (1989), Montbrison (1989), and Chartres (1990).

In 1987, Pierre Pincemaille was appointed titular organist of the prestigious 1841 Cavaillé-Coll at the Gothic Saint-Denis Cathedral-Basilica. He loved accompanying beautiful liturgy there, amidst the tombs of the Kings of France. Highly inspired by Pierre Cochereau, Pincemaille founded a concert series there, from 1989 to 1994. For his 30th anniversary there, he performed his last concert on November 5, 2017, programming choral works he cherished, conducted by Pierre Calmelet: Louis Vierne’s Messe Solennelle and three of his own recently composed vocal motets (to be published), as well as J. S.
Bach’s Pièce d’Orgue, BWV 572, symbolizing for him the three periods of life.

Pierre Pincemaille also performed with orchestras under the direction of conductors such as Mstislav Rostropovitch, Myung-Whun Chung, Riccardo Muti, Charles Dutoit, and John Nelson. His recordings include the complete organ works of Maurice Duruflé and César Franck, Charles-Marie Widor’s ten symphonies, selected pieces by Jehan Alain, Pierre Cochereau, Olivier Messiaen, and Louis Vierne, his own improvisations and transcriptions of Stravinsky’s The Firebird and Petrushka, as well as works with orchestra by Camille Saint-Saëns, Hector Berlioz, Joseph Jongen, and Aaron Copland. Several of Pierre Pincemaille’s compositions were published: Prologue et Noël varié [Prologue and Variations on a Noel] (Sampzon, Delatour France, 2007), a 4-voice a cappella Ave Maria (Lyon, À Coeur Joie, 2013), and En Louisiane for trombone and piano (Delatour France, 2017).

Recently, Pierre Pincemaille taught counterpoint at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Paris, harmony at the Conservatory in Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and organ improvisation at the Conservatory in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés for the past 17 years. For the past 14 years, he formed a generation of French and foreign organ improvisers, many who have won prizes in international competitions: among them, six Parisian organists: David Cassan (at the Oratoire du Louvre), Thomas Lacôte (La Trinité), Samuel Liégeon (St.-Pierre-du-Chaillot), Hampus Lindwall (St.-Esprit), Baptiste-Florian Marle-Ouvrard (St.-Eustache), and Olivier Périn (St.-Paul-St.-Louis).

Among his honors and distinctions, Pierre Pincemaille was a Knight in the following three orders: the Academic Palms, Arts and Letters, and St. Gregory the Great. 

Pierre Pincemaille is survived by his wife, Anne-France, and their three children, Claire, Marc, and Éric.

—Carolyn Shuster Fournier, Paris, France

C. B. Fisk, Inc., Gloucester, 

Massachusetts, Opus 148

Centennial Chapel at 

Christ Church Cathedral, 

Cincinnati, Ohio

 

From the Builder

There are precious few places anywhere in the world that offer the splendor of San Petronio, Bologna. From the instant one walks through the West End Porta Magna—adorned with bas-relief sculptures by Jacopo della Quercia—this is overwhelmingly evident. After traversing 132 meters of marble paving under a 45-meter-high vault, arriving finally at the East End of the basilica one observes on the chancel south side the magnificent and venerable organo Epistola. With its original 24′ façade pipes still standing, it was completed by Lorenzo da Prato in 1475. Opposite, facing this instrument from the north chancel, stands the much younger yet still impressive organo Evangelii, built by Baldassarre Malamini in 1596. Together, these two organs speak to the excellence and grandeur that defined San Petronio’s sacred instrumental and choral music in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. That these two organs still exist in playable condition is remarkable, some would say miraculous.

Equally astounding as a small-scale, related instance is the 1588 organ by Costanzo Antegnati found at the Chiesa di San Nicola in the remote village of Almenno San Salvatore, tucked into the foothills of the Alps north of Bergamo. There, perched up high in a side gallery of an exquisite stone chapel that dates from 1488, stands an impossibly beautiful instrument that was built by perhaps the most talented member of the Antegnati dynasty of organ builders. This organ, restored by Marco Fratti in the early 1990s, is in perfect playing condition and opens a wonder-filled window to the long ago past for the sympathetic visitor.

As one would expect, all three of these organs have but one manual, all feature a ripieno whose individual ranks are drawn independently of one another, and all are winded on what we organbuilders today think of as extremely low pressures—from a high of 52 mm water column (da Prato) to a low of 45 mm (Malamini, Antegnati). To play on them and to hear their voices is an experience like no other. Numinous, reposeful, transparent, ageless yet full of youthful exuberance are all apt descriptors of their sounds. The da Prato and the Antegnati especially respond to the acoustics of their respective spaces in marvelous fashion, enveloping anyone present in a gently penetrating, breathtaking embrace of pure organ tone.

It is precisely these elusive qualities that we sought to bring to the chapel organ at Christ Church Cathedral, Cincinnati. Stephan Casurella, canon precentor and director of music, wrote to me in March 2014 inquiring whether C. B. Fisk would be interested in submitting a proposal for an organ in the about to be renovated Centennial Chapel. While visiting Casurella and his associate Shiloh Roby a few weeks later, I discovered the chapel to be a very fine lofty neo-Gothic structure seating one hundred people and with an attractively warm, clear acoustic. Casurella introduced me to Harold Byers, chairman of the cathedral’s music committee and a violinist in the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra, who offered to perform on his Amati violin. While listening to Byers play, accompanied by Casurella on a portative, the idea of an Italian-based instrument took root. Acoustical consultant Dana Kirkegaard, also present, and I agreed that this concept had merit—the space, with its limited floor dimensions and intimate acoustical properties, was in fact impelling us in this direction. Michael Unger, professor of organ at the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, enthusiastically supported the Italian-based concept, opining that such an instrument would offer students opportunities heretofore unavailable in the United States. Another vital aspect of a new chapel organ came to light at this time­—that it must have the ability to be used uninhibitedly in collaboration with other instruments and musicians.

 Visits to relevant Fisk organs in New England followed in early June. These included our Opus 107 (1993) in the Dover Church, Dover, Massachusetts, a small two-manual in a classic colonial meeting house; Opus 72 (1981) in Houghton Chapel, Wellesley College, where Charles Fisk had built his first human-powered wind system; and Opus 84 (1985) in Abbey Chapel at Mount Holyoke College, South Hadley, Massachusetts, where, at the urging of then organ professor Margaret Irwin-Brandon, Fisk experimented with the late sixteenth-century Italian style in several stops of the Great division. There the wind pressure, chosen with some trepidation by Charles Fisk, was 45 mm, and many of the pipe scalings were after those found in Gratiadio Antegnati’s 1581 instrument at the Chiesa di San Giuseppe in Brescia.

Following our submittal of a proposal for a two-manual organ of twenty stops, Italian-based and including a human-powered wind system, C. B. Fisk was chosen in August 2014 to build the Centennial Chapel organ. It became our Opus 148. Soon after, acoustical studies of the chapel space, involving Mr. Kirkegaard, were undertaken. And what turned out to be a crucial research trip to northern Italy took place in November of the same year, with Fisk voicers accompanied by Messrs. Casurella and Byers. Our guide for the tour was Francesco Cera, pre-eminent Italian organist, harpsichordist, conductor, and scholar. Francesco arranged visits to various instruments by the Antegnati and Serassi clans, an important organ by Giuseppe Bonatti, and other less frequently encountered builders including Meiarini, Bossi, and Tonoli. We heard and played organs in Milano, Almenno San Salvatore, Bergamo, Urgnano, Brescia, Rezzato, Desenzano, Mantova, Casatico, and Bologna.

A handful of the organs we studied had substantial impact on the final specifications for Opus 148. The Antegnati in the afore-mentioned Almenno San Salvatore seemed so fitting acoustically to its space and so effortlessly in balance with Byers’s Amati violin that we, in the end, modeled our Manual I, including pipe scales and alloys, after it. The Antegnati at San Giuseppe in Brescia, which had been so central to the Mount Holyoke instrument, also proved influential to our project. Its unforgettable ripieno, all high tin, sounded as a blaze of light in the Chiesa’s barrel-vaulted nave. This organ stands in its own gallery on the north side of the chancel, facing a musicians’ gallery opposite. Opus 148 is placed in a similar location in the Centennial Chapel and, inspired by our observations in Brescia and other locales, looks across the chancel at a newly constructed gallery for collaborating musicians. At the Basilica of Santa Barbara in Mantova we played another organ by Gratiadio Antegnati, this one dating from 1565. It was restored by Giorgio Carli between 1995 and 2006, and to it Carli had added a computer-controlled system of automatically inflating bellows. (Visit https://www.carliorgani.it/alzamantici-wedge-bellows-inflating.asp). This made an impression, and Opus 148 is, as a consequence, empowered with a similar self-inflating wind system; ours, by contrast, is mechanically controlled—to our knowledge a first in the organbuilding world. It is also possible, instead, to make use of the integral calcant pedals and wind the organ via human power rather than the electric blower.

The 1713 organ by Giuseppe Bonatti at Santuario Santa Maria in Rezzato we found fascinating for a number of reasons. Bonatti was the most important builder of the Schola Gardesana, or Garda Lake School, and he played a significant role in the development of the northern Italian organ in the time period between the Antegnati and Serassi lines. His Rezzato instrument caught our attention due to its strong, intense, almost German sound, partially due, no doubt, to the full semi-circular, barrel-vaulted ceiling, but also due to the style of voicing, which seemed to have had its origins north of the Alps. It was the modified meantone temperament, however, that really piqued our curiosity and which we liked to the point of attempting to decipher. Giorgio Carli, who restored the organ in 2001, graciously sent me detailed temperament information, and this is the temperament we have chosen for the Centennial Chapel organ.

The Serassi instruments we visited in Bergamo and Brescia provided inspiration for several of the voices on Manual II of Opus 148. The organ in the Duomo Vecchio, Brescia, was originally built in 1536 by yet another Antegnati—Giovanni Giacomo. In 1826, while preserving the original pipework and retaining the single manual and 45 mm
wind pressure, Giuseppe Serassi enlarged the organ to include voices that were more in keeping with the times. It was both informative and encouraging to hear how the two styles of pipe construction and voicing, separated by 300 years, knit together so persuasively. This was an important consideration for us, as our Manual II was conceived to add appropriate eighteenth- and nineteenth-century tone colors to a purely sixteenth-century Manual I. These sounds will enable Opus 148 to more fully accompany the Episcopal liturgy and will to a great extent enlarge its potential for repertoire. For a similar reason we decided not to include in the Pedal a wooden Contrabassi 16­′—a seemingly ubiquitous stop in the late sixteenth-/early seventeenth-century north Italian organs. In its stead we opted for two mild 16′ voices of diverse timbres, both of wood—a Violini Bassi and a Bassi Stoppi.

Back at the Fisk workshop, visual designer Charles Nazarian and project manager Andrew Gingery, with input from acoustical consultant Dana Kirke-gaard, worked in tandem to accomplish case and mechanical designs, including interior layouts. Meanwhile, my former colleague Nami Hamada and I, together with Stephan Casurella, Harold Byers, and Michael Unger, brainstormed the final version of the stoplist and, gradually, the tonal design. The case is built of quarter-sawn white oak darkened to match the chancel furnishings, while Morgan Faulds Pike’s carvings, also of oak, are oil-finished to provide a contrasting appearance. The façade pipes, taken from the Manual I Principale and appearing from 8′ CC, are constructed of 95% pure tin, hammered. It was decided early on to implement the Italian horizontal hook-down stop lever system, and, late in the construction phase, to adopt all Italian stop names. The elegant boxwood stop labels were hand-calligraphed at the Fisk workshop where, as usual, were made the music rack, veneered with a handsome quarter-matched black walnut burl, and the keyboards, here clad in boxwood naturals and rosewood sharps.

Opus 148 was installed in the Centennial Chapel in April 2018, and finish voicing will take place throughout the summer and fall months. The instrument will be dedicated October 17–19, with festivities to include a solo recital by Francesco Cera, performances by student musicians from the Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music, and a masterclass given by Mr. Cera.

—David C. Pike, Executive Vice-President & Tonal Director

C. B. Fisk, Inc.

 

From the Director of Music

In 2013 Christ Church Cathedral embarked upon several initiatives to mark its bicentennial and to set the course for a third century of ministry. One of the initiatives included renovation of Centennial Chapel, a beautiful neo-Gothic structure used for Daily Office liturgies, weekday Eucharists, small weddings and funerals, weekly noontime concerts, and other performances. The renovation project was to involve infrastructure updates and cleaning that would be sufficiently invasive to require removal of the existing organ, a 1967 installation crammed into two small overhead chambers in the arches on either side of the chancel.

Removal of the existing instrument raised a stewardship question. Given the organ’s failing electronics, deteriorating leathers, and inaccessibility for regular tuning, would rebuilding and reinstalling the organ be wise—especially since its shrill tonal character was in such sharp contrast to the chapel’s lovely intimacy? Under the leadership of chairperson Harold Byers, the cathedral’s music committee accelerated its study of the matter, concluding that reinstallation of the existing organ would be poor stewardship.

The committee then began exploring the possibility of a new organ for Centennial Chapel. We invited three of today’s finest builders to visit the cathedral and submit proposals. In our request for proposals, we gave minimal parameters so as not to limit the builders’ creativity, indicating only that we sought a mechanical-action instrument that would respond to the warmth and intimacy of the chapel, play the Episcopal liturgy well, and be a superb asset to the greater Cincinnati area for performances of repertoire suitable to its size and specification.

Any of the three builders we approached would have created a beautiful instrument of the highest quality. We were, however, quite taken with the proposal submitted by David Pike of
C. B. Fisk, Inc. It was clear that David had understood Centennial Chapel’s significance to the cathedral’s worship life and to performers and audiences in the community. It was also clear that Fisk would not be building a typical small organ such as those found in countless chapels across the United States, worthy though some of them may be. The Fisk proposal, rather, envisioned a tonal design seldom heard in this country: foundations that offer a “warm, gentle, vocal embrace,” with choruses and a range of color stops to support the Episcopal liturgy and a varied recital repertoire in a similarly intimate fashion. While not a period piece, the proposed instrument would respond to the chapel’s architectural and acoustical environment using very low wind pressure and other tenets of late sixteenth-century Italian organbuilding.

We were delighted when in 2014 the cathedral’s Vestry accepted the music committee recommendation to commission a new organ from C. B. Fisk. Working with the Fisk shop through each stage of the process—research, design, building, installation, and voicing—has been deeply rewarding. The artistry and professionalism of each member of the team is inspiring. Opus 148 is an achievement beyond what I had imagined possible, a work of art whose beauty will inspire worshipers, performers, audiences, and students throughout the region and beyond for generations to come.

­—Stephan Casurella

Canon Precentor & Director of Music

 

Anton Warde

Anton Warde (Cape Elizabeth, Maine) is an emeritus professor of German (Union College, Schenectady, New York) and a past associate of David E. Wallace Pipe Builders, Gotham, Maine. Since contributing his four-part series, “E. Power Biggs in Mozart Country” (June–September 2006), he has served The Diapason as an occasional reviewer of books in the German language.

Licht im Dunkel—Lumière dans les ténèbres [Light in darkness]: Festschrift Daniel Roth zum 75. Geburtstag, Birger Petersen, editor. Bonn: Dr. J. Butz Musikverlag, 2017, 432 pages, hardbound, in German with abstracts in English and French, numerous musical examples, stop lists, and a bonus CD. ISBN 978-3-928412-23-0. €34, available from http://butz-verlag.de.   

We may first think of Daniel Roth as one of today’s elite French organists. And that he most certainly is. But given his bi-cultural heritage as a son of Alsace, as well as his numerous professional links to German institutions, we should not be surprised that the festschrift published to honor him on the occasion of his seventy-fifth birthday comes from Germany.

For most of his adult life, Roth’s activity has been centered in Paris. After completing formal studies at the Paris Conservatory in the early 1960s, principally under Maurice Duruflé and Rolande Falcinelli, he served as Falcinelli’s substitute at the Basilica of Sacré-Cœur for ten years before succeeding her as titular organist in 1973. From 1974 to 1976, Roth took a hiatus from his duties there in order to assume the post of artist-in-residence at the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception and professor for organ at the Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. Upon his return to France, he remained at Sacré-Cœur until his appointment as organiste titulaire at Saint-Sulpice in 1985. He has now presided over the grand Cavaillé-Coll organ at Saint-Sulpice for more than three decades, burnishing its fame as one of the great “destination instruments” of the world.  

Along the way, Roth commuted to extended teaching positions in the French cities of Marseille and Strasbourg, as well as at conservatories in Saar-brücken (1988–1995) and Frankfurt am Main (1995–2007). Other German cities have provided the venue for the debut of each section of Roth’s triptych for large orchestra, Licht im Dunkel (2005–2009), the first of which was performed in Ludwigshafen by the Staatsphilharmonie Rheinland-Pfaltz under the baton of his elder son, François-Xavier Roth, an accomplished conductor based in Germany. More recently, Daniel Roth composed his Missa Beuronensis to serve as the centerpiece for a multi-day master course sponsored by ORGANpromotion at the Benedictine Abbey of Beuron on the Danube in September 2016. (A fine recording of this performance, with Roth at the organ, accompanies the book.) The indefatigable Michael Grüber of ORGANpromotion, located in Horb am Neckar, provided the impulse for composition of the Beuron Mass, as well as for the Roth festschrift itself.

In his foreword, editor Birger Petersen (professor of musical theory at the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz) notes that “it became clear early on that the book would end up forming concentric circles around the themes of St. Sulpice, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, Albert Schweitzer, and the French organ tradition.” Within those fertile spheres we find not only ample attention to Daniel Roth, of course (in brief hommages written by George Baker, Daniel Maurer, Pascal Reber, Gregor Simon, and Jean-Paul Sorg, as well as Michael Grüber), but informative articles on the organ landscape of Alsace (Pierre Chevreau’s “Mulhouse, Albert Schweitzer und die elsässische Orgel von 1803 bis 1981”); on the two Cavaillé-Coll instruments of which Roth became the guardian and master (Yannick Merlin’s “Daniel Roth und die Orgeln von Sacré-Cœur und Saint-Sulpice” along with a short essay by Kurt Lueders on the problematic nature of the term flûte harmonique); on the composers César Frank (Christiane Strucken-Paland’s analysis and contextualization of Frank’s neglected early works for organ), Charles-Marie Widor (Fabian Kolb’s scholarly article on Widor’s push for the organ’s greater role in compositions for large orchestra), and Maurice Duruflé (Jörg Abbing on the influence of Vierne and Touremire on their student Duruflé, followed by Birger Petersen’s analysis of Duruflé’s influence, in turn, on polymodality in the compositions of his student Daniel Roth); and on the organist Marie Claire Alain, in Vincent Warnier’s study of the long friendship between Roth and Alain, his most influential post-conservatory mentor.

Albert Schweitzer, Roth’s revered Alsatian compatriot, six decades his senior, makes an appearance in nearly every essay, most notably in Gilles Cantagrel’s “In Saint-Sulpice mit Widor und Schweitzer,” concerning the unlikely teacher-student friendship between the two and in particular their reciprocal influence in appreciating the music of Bach; and in Wolfram Adolph’s thoughtful essay on Schweitzer’s concept of channeling spiritual unity with the cosmos in the meditative style of his Bach playing.

Like Schweitzer before him, Daniel Roth found his ears beguiled at an early age by the sonorities of the 1732 Andreas Silbermann organ at bucolic Ebersmünster in Alsace. In the words of Schweitzer: “I carry [the Silbermann sound] in my ear always; it leads me.” In the volume’s opening essay entitled “In the Style of a Panégyrique,” Peter Reifenberg cites Roth’s visit to Ebersmünster with his father at the age of twenty as decisive in motivating him—already a prize-winning Paris Conservatory student—to commit fully to the career of a professional organist. And Vincent Warnier suggests that it was at a joint appearance in Ebersmünster that Roth’s and Alain’s paths first crossed in the early 1960s. The young Roth, previously steeped in the music of Franck and other composers of his era, credits Alain, half a generation older than he, with introducing him properly to early music, teaching him the value of composers’ original scores, and equipping him with his fundamental approach to any piece of music: namely to analyze it closely from every angle in order to understand best what the composer would have wanted to hear in its performance.

Regardless of the organ he may be playing, Roth aims to deliver an interpretation that comes as close as possible to honoring its composer’s intent. In his own words as cited by Peter Reifenberg (in my translation), “[I want to place myself] completely in the service of the composer, constantly searching the composer’s universe to determine what . . . will sound correct and authentic [on the instrument at hand]” (p. 220).  

Indeed, it may be Roth’s wide-ranging insights on musical performance that many readers will find most fascinating. Examples appear throughout the volume, but chiefly in the three conversational sections that compose more than one third of the book: a 2017 interview conducted by Professor Jörg Abbing (pp. 213–225), Roth’s own lively 140-page discourse on agogic, rubato, accent, attack, registration, and much more, illustrated with many musical examples and references to specific organs (pp. 265–409), and finally in an engaging conversation with Pierre-François Dub-Attenti, one of Roth’s assistants at Saint-Sulpice (pp. 409–419). He is the young registrant we see seated at Roth’s left in most of the Saint Sulpice performances that are searchable on YouTube and viewable, as well, at http://www.stsulpice.com/. (It is Dub-Attenti we must thank for producing and posting those remarkable videos.)

In his own very readable German, Roth succinctly analyzes, for example, the differing routes of development taken by French organs and German organs, both classical and romantic; and he argues persuasively that the Cavaillé-Coll organ at Saint-Sulpice is not only the perfect organ for the music of Franck but also—as Schweitzer had maintained—for performance of Bach. The key for Bach, Roth explains, is to register a Plein Jeu and add a few discrete reed voices such as Basson or the small, bright Trompette from the Positif. As heard in Roth’s 2012 recording of Bach, re-released in 2017 and available for purchase at Amazon (or to stream in high quality as a complete album by searching within YouTube for “Daniel Roth Plays Bach”), the result is remarkably successful: we get the characteristic Cavaillé-Coll carpet of sound, rich in fundamentals, yet one that seems to match in voice-clarifying overtones the thrilling plenum of the large Gottfried Silbermann organ at Freiberg in Saxony. It helps, of course, that Cavaillé-Coll incorporated many classically French solo stops from the preceding 1780 Clicquot organ in his otherwise symphonic instrument for Saint Sulpice.

Too often, festschriften collect essays that barely relate to the accomplishments of the luminary being honored, or pieces that vary so widely in their focus that there would otherwise be little rationale for publishing (or re-publishing) them in the same volume. But this Festschrift comes as a most welcome treasury of interlocking themes. It will be of interest not only to students of the organ at any level of proficiency but to organ builders and enthusiasts who, incidentally, need not be advanced readers of German. Most of the language is straightforward and clear. The book should reasonably find a home in any library that serves an organ program, as it surely will in the personal libraries of many of the countless friends and admirers of Daniel Roth, who deserves to enjoy many more years of superb music making.

Etienne Darbellay, Bruce Dickey, Susan Ferré, Margaret Irwin-Brandon, and Marc Vanscheeuwijck

Introduction

Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini—organist, harpsichordist, musicologist, teacher, and composer—died July 11, 2017, in Bologna, Italy. Born October 7, 1929, in Bologna, he studied, organ, piano, and composition at the conservatory in Bologna, and later studied organ with Marcel Dupré at the conservatory in Paris, France. He graduated from the university at Padua in 1951, and then taught at universities and conservatories in Bologna, Bolzano, and Parma in Italy, and Fribourg in Switzerland. Tagliavini was a guest instructor at various universities and presented recitals and lectures for several chapters of the American Guild of Organists throughout the United States. He regularly taught organ courses at Haarlem, the Netherlands, and at Pistoia, Italy. He served as organist of the Basilica of San Petronio, Bologna, sharing duties with Liuwe Tamminga. With Renato Lunelli, he founded the journal L’organo in 1960. An active performer, he presented recitals throughout Europe and the United States. Tagliavini was a recognized authority in historical performance practice for the Baroque organ and harpsichord, and was a strong supporter of the historic organ movement in Italy. A prolific recording artist, earning several awards for his LP and CD discs, he was awarded several honorary degrees, including a doctorate in music from the University of Edinburgh and a doctorate in sacred music from the Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music in Rome. As a musicologist, he published numerous papers and edited critical editions of music.

 

Editor’s note: the staff of The Diapason invited Susan Ferré to assemble some remembrances of Maestro Tagliavini. What follows are remembrances from Ferré, Marc Vanscheeuwijck, Bruce Dickey, Etienne Darbellay, and Margaret Irwin-Brandon.

§

It was during a long bus trip to see organs with Maestro Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini that we became friends. He was not obliged to sit beside me. Making sure I boarded the bus first gave him the opportunity of sitting somewhere else. I had interviewed him on public radio, and he knew of my interest in early music and organ restoration. He had read my thesis on Respighi’s organ works and knew of articles I had written on links between Sweelinck and Frescobaldi, through such Neapolitan composers as Giovanni de Macque, Giovanni Maria Trabaci, and Ascanio Mayone, their connections to Antonio de Cabezón, who had traveled to the Netherlands with Prince Phillip, and the numerous questions those links posed, especially concerning the 1635 Frescobaldi Preface.¹ We had a lot to discuss, and I was eager to hear his thoughts, which he shared enthusiastically, even with relish. He could have retreated to safety, but instead, engaged fully, listening as intently as he spoke.

During the years I lived off and on in the French Pyrenees (1969–1972), I enjoyed Italian neighbors and friends whose homes I later visited in the Italian mountains. During those visits and traveling to play concerts with Luis de Moura-Castro in Spain and Italy, Maestro Tagliavini took me to play historic organs not yet restored. It was then I met Susan Tattershall, who, with help from Martin Pasi, was busy restoring some of them, much to the delight of Tagliavini. Our paths crossed in Switzerland, in Haarlem, and in Dallas. His passing removed a most brilliant, most informed thinker, and most generous musician from my world. I didn’t know him well, but the loss of this unassuming, humble, gentle, yet wildly virtuosic musician touched me profoundly. It is with joy that I give voice to the following tributes from those who knew him best.

—Susan Ferré

Director, Music in the Great North Woods, www.musicgnw.org

Director, Texas Baroque Ensemble, 1980–2005

 

I first met Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini in November 1986 at an exhibition at San Giorgio in Poggiale, Bologna, where he was displaying his vast collection of harpsichords and organs for the first time. My next encounter with him was at San Petronio in Bologna, during concerts for the celebration of the church’s patron saint in 1990. Of course, I had also encountered his numerous publications on the history of Baroque music in Bologna while I was working on my dissertation at the University of Ghent and was deeply honored when he agreed to be the external expert reader for my dissertation and defense in 1995. In those years I had also discovered his importance as a scholar in Italian and European musicology, organology, and historical performance practice.

When I was a student in the 1980s, historical performance practice was not considered to be part of “serious” musicology (certainly not in Belgium), which could only be either historical or systematic. Performance questions belonged in the conservatories, not in the university. As a musicologist and Baroque cellist myself, I always needed to have both “sides” inform each other and the idea of being institutionally penalized by seeking a perfect collaboration between musicology and performance practice forced me to look for a job as far away from Europe as Oregon.

Tagliavini managed to be a leading authority as a musicologist and a professional keyboard player—specialized not only in performance practices on organ, harpsichord, spinet, clavichord, and fortepiano, but also in organology and in the preservation and restoration of historical instruments through his collection.

In that sense Tagliavini was probably the most influential figure in my entire career, and he has continued to be so. This influence continues through one of his most eminent and talented students, Liuwe Tamminga, who first became his colleague as an organist in San Petronio, and then the curator of Tagliavini’s collection of instruments when it became a public museum in the former convent of San Colombano in the center of Bologna. Thanks to this collection and my friendship with Liuwe and Ferdinando, I have been able to play such beautiful instruments (his collection is the only one in the world in which every single instrument has been restored in a historically relevant manner), and I have also been able to introduce many of my students from Oregon and from various European conservatories and universities to these sounds of the early modern period and, maybe even more importantly for me as a performing musicologist, to Tagliavini’s approach to musicology and historical performance practice as a scholarly discipline, which fortunately is becoming more mainstream even in European universities. His influence thus continues on both continents, and I am trying to make it happen as far as I can through my own teaching.

—Marc Vanscheeuwijck

Associate Professor of Musicology, Area Head, Musicology and Ethnomusicology

University of Oregon,

School of Music and Dance

 

I think I must have met Maestro Tagliavini about 40 years ago, soon after my arrival in Basel at the Schola Cantorum Basiliensis. I remember that he came to give a talk on tuning and temperament, and that I was astonished, not only by his knowledge of the topic, but also by his extraordinary ability to speak German and English, almost without a trace of an accent and always with eloquence and clarity. After I moved to Bologna in 1985 I came to know him much better and came, at his insistence, to call him Ferdinando, an honor I cherished. I have seldom if ever known anyone who carried his erudition (and in his case it was very substantial) with such lightness and modesty. 

I would like to relate two anecdotes that I think give an impression of his character and personality. Both of these stories relate to rehearsals with the wonderful organs of the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, whose renovation he was, of course, instrumental in securing. On one occasion many years ago, I was rehearsing with him for a concert with some pieces for cornetto and one organ. The morning rehearsal was dragging into the early afternoon, and I asked if we could do one more piece before breaking for lunch. He paused for a moment, then said, “Yes, of course, but I will have to call my mother to tell her to hold off tossing the pasta in the water!” I think he was into his 70s at this point.

The other occasion was some six months before he died. He had been very ill in the hospital and then made a sudden miraculous recovery. Enough of a recovery that he was able to participate in a concert at San Petronio with two organs and two cornetti, together with Liuwe Tamminga and Doron Sherwin. I was with the organ played by Tagliavini. Though he was able to play well enough, he did not have the strength to depress the stop levers without climbing down from the bench and putting all of his weight on the lever. That created some remarkably long pauses between sections of the canzona we were playing. Still, I was thrilled that he was able to play the organs he so loved one last time, and I felt enormously privileged to be a part of it.

—Bruce Dickey

Cornettist, Scholar, Professor of cornetto and 17th-century music, Schola Cantorum Basiliensis (1976—2016)

The following is a personal reflection delivered at the University of Fribourg (Switzerland) on September 21, 2017, excerpted and translated by Susan Ferré:

Tuesday, July 11, 2017, “Ferdinando has disappeared!” That’s what was announced to me in a pithy email message from Liuwe Tamminga. It was like a return to the ice age. The image as dizzying as the sound of a scaffold falling: now a world without him, an impossible world that rocked silently in the real one. As this was surely the case for many of us, it took me time to understand. Decidedly, I hate the inexorable. Occasionally, time, a matter essential to the musician, an engine full of promise, now raw, delivers us dirty tricks, chilling, unacceptable, engaging mercilessly on a path without return. It was not only as announced by our friend Liuwe Tamminga the collapse of an entire library, but even more, it was the final disappearance of a point of fundamental support for the evolving science and art of music, an emulator without precedent, for all those who, like me, had the great good fortune to know him. There are circumstances in which we truly learn the opaque meaning of the word “vacuum.”

More than a teacher who would become a master and a friend, Ferdinando was for me a true spiritual father, a support, a reference of wisdom, insight, and intelligence coupled with rare kindness. Always ready to enter into any serious area of knowledge, whether a random encounter or to solve a particular problem, he was at the same time ready to come out with a joke that demonstrated his unfailing sense of humor, which from a natural distance also afforded him his magical freedom in interpretation, both musical and scientific, open to suggestion and to listening.

His tutelage and his inspiring presence accompanied me in all circumstances of my life in the days when, blessed as a young student and apprentice musician, I met him at the University of Fribourg. His influence had convinced me to sign on to the track of musicology rather than physics, with which I was still hesitant. I have never regretted this choice, and this, was because of his presence in the early days, which never wavered in the following ones.

It was here, 50 years ago, seen at the top of the stairs, with a firm footing, he would head toward a large table on which he posed some music or a book. He would concentrate for a few moments, then, without emphasis or oratorical effect, he would begin to speak on the topic of the day, sometimes with a slight smile and an enigmatic look without a target, which gave us the impression that he was reading in his head. He never stumbled or searched for his words, and in all these various data he was consistently accurate. Throughout his life, he possessed a phenomenal and infallible memory, regardless of the field. What struck me most as a student was his mastery, almost discouraging to his colleagues and students, in all areas of music history and in all languages, including Latin. He would jump without difficulty from the exegesis of a grimoire of the eleventh century to the explanation of a technique of composition in “our” century (the twentieth), or the rapport between the voice of the piano in a song of Schumann opposed to Schubert. Nothing would escape his expertise or encyclopedic knowledge. Recently, I actually saw him in Bologna where, as usual, I went to consult with him about a few issues related to the completion of the edition of the Frescobaldi manuscripts.

Often he demonstrated at the blackboard, very precisely, an idea or a particular mechanism, whether a problem of solemnization or even a calculation of temperament. This last area in which he was incredibly competent (in the image of his friend Patrizio Barbieri) was one of his favorite areas of exploration: at the end of the explanation, the board was covered with numbers, fractions, with values of four or five numbers, which he knew by heart, and which he could infallibly recognize by ear! Often he created a demonstration on a small harpsichord that he himself had brought before class for the occasion, or he would gather us, clustered around the instrument, opening our confused ears.

Noting our notorious incompetence in counterpoint, knowledge of which was indispensable in order to follow his course on any particular writing technique of the Renaissance, he set up a kind of accelerated pro-seminar where he taught us with his usual virtuosity the basics and essential tips, the best courses of “music theory” I have ever had!

The biggest revelation of all—when we were touched by his teaching—was without a doubt, those blessed moments when he rose from his small chair to go to the keyboard—normally one of the big beautiful old Steinways, brown from use. Everything became pure magic. Whether sight reading from any large keyboard or full score (for example a Mahler symphony), he gave us a living example of how to prepare a concert following the rules. His virtuosity, his ease, and his proverbial musical insight were marvels. For example, during a course on Frescobaldi, I discovered this fascinating music­—totally unknown to me­, and with which I became a prisoner—a music that served as a passage between us, a ford over the river of life that separated us until the last months before his death. Having become my preferred subject of study and subsequently an area of specialization, it was this bridge that brought me back constantly to him, after my degree and my PhD, as part of the complete critical edition by the Italian Society of Musicology, an edition for which he was the initiator and, always, the ultimate validating reference. I owe so much to Frescobaldi: it is thanks to Frescobaldi that I stayed in almost permanent contact with Ferdinando, Frescobaldi’s first and most important prophet, both as a performer as well as a musicologist.

He loved teaching, and he loved his students. He spent as much time as he could with them. When he conducted a thesis, I think that none of those who have lived the experience would contradict me in saying that he followed it relentlessly, helping the student in the face of difficulties while reading the work with unfailing attention. For me, it was not only a help, but a pleasure, and major assurance as I walked with my clumsy feet in his most personal garden. I cannot forget to mention that his sympathy for his students almost always brought him to share with them his fondness for fondue. How many times did the fondue at the Café du Midi in the street of Romont (Fribourg) serve as an extremely joyful and festive climax to a semester or a business meeting? Besides, the tradition continued in Geneva, where Ferdinando agreed repeatedly to the thankless task of thesis jury, accepting this burden for many of my students who, even today, are grateful. But the fondue there was not as good . . . .

One of the aspects that characterized Ferdinando the best throughout his life was his taste in riddles—perhaps a form of self-satisfaction in view of his incredible ability to solve them. His students of the 1970s and ’80s remember: be it the Album of the Countess (a nineteenth-century manuscript that he had found, containing if I remember correctly a piece by Liszt and which offered several weeks of hilarious and passionate discussions), or a mysterious inscription between two planks of a newly found old instrument that he had discovered in Italy or elsewhere. Each week he reserved for us the surprises of these little mysteries that he presented with his characteristic smile of satisfaction, that he could still be the one to rule over his new find. With his proverbial passion for antique musical instruments, the organ at the top of the list, these are clearly the different traits of passionate curiosity that led him to establish, almost despite himself, the most important collection in the world of instruments of this type, which he gave to the Foundation Carisbo de Bologna, in order to institute at San Colombano a museum of “living sonic monuments.”  

His immeasurable respect for history and masterpieces of the past rendered him uncompromising in the face of inaccuracies in modern editions of early music. When he was confronted in a modern edition with an inaccuracy due to a colleague, he gave us an informative example without blaming or judging, sometimes even excusing it as a teaching example. His tolerance and kindness were also as proverbial as his mastery without compromise.

In the field of organology, it was the same for thoughtless and reckless restorations of organs or harpsichords. One of his recent battle cries was the problem of successive restorations with the set of choices to which they led. It is the same problem as in the restoration of art: does one scrape the Van Gogh in order to find the Courbet, and then the Courbet to find the Cantarini? The evolution of taste is part of the story: the traces that it leaves on the witnesses, too, are newsworthy, which must be documented. In fact, the ideal situation is the reversibility of any intervention. Ferdinando taught us the vital importance of respect for all who, in history, made history.

Ferdinando was world renowned as an interpreter, even if his audience was unaware of his other talents, which, in the first place, was musicology. We have witnessed many times the enthusiastic way in which young people followed him with lots of gear to record and preserve some exceptional moments, like the amazing concert in Bösingen to inaugurate a restoration of the organ. The exceptional quality of his playing, both in vivacious music and in its technical perfection, always had the same impression on his audience which was to experience one of those exceptional moments of existence that one remembered always, between ecstasy and levitation, of “musical Tiepolo.”

I still think back more than 30 years ago of a concert at San Petronio (Bologna) on two organs, with Tamminga: dazzling, aerial virtuosity played with acrobatic garlands of sixteenth-century Venetian ornamentation, the rhythmic vivacity of which has had no parallel. Not so long ago, he told me the amazing story that just happened to him in Messina where he had inaugurated the restoration of a famous organ. Approaching in a car with a friend, he found himself stuck in the city because of incredible traffic. He then said to his friend in the form of joke. “It is because of my concert!” And the last straw was that it was true! It almost didn’t happen, as they had to clear a passage for him in a crowd estimated by newspapers the next day to be about 5,000 people. As the maximum that the church could hold was about 400–500 people, he had to give the concert two more times in the following days to satisfy the frustrated audience.

Thanks to him, therefore, I discovered the organ, its stylistic peculiarities so differentiated in its creation according to Italian or Nordic styles. This is true for the harpsichord in its extreme refinements. Ferdinando also gave us several organology classes dedicated to his chosen instruments, their construction, their sound principles, and their history.

With his disappearance, it is really the first time he leaves us. I have the impression of floating in a world without anchor, disoriented, whose entire grounding has disappeared. This weightlessness confuses me, and the void it digs is called loneliness, a kind of erasure of all landmarks, a general loss of meaning. As with all of those who have had the chance to appreciate him, I will need much courage to continue without him who will remain in our memories and our hearts until we face our own deaths.

­—Etienne Darbellay

Honorary Professor

University of Geneva,

Musicologist

 

It was 1962 when I first heard the name “Tagliavini”—a name associated with Italian organs and “early” Italian music. He was, I believe, on his first visit to the United States to give a course on playing the music of Frescobaldi. A young woman in our church choir had attended this course and, knowing I was an organist, would speak of nothing else. Six years later I began to understand why, when I attended the Haarlem (Netherlands) Academy for Organists and took the Maestro’s course. This mind- and life-altering experience, three weeks of daily classes, excursions, concerts, and earnest discussions led me to further investigations of the Italian organ landscape—first through participation in a traveling conference of the Gemeindshaft der Deutsche Orgelfreunde, under the guidance of Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, during which we visited mostly antique organs, many of which were still playable but in need of restoration—and finally concluding at the Basilica of San Petronio in Bologna, where the two now-famous organs (da Prato and Malarmini) face each other across the choir, both restored under his watchful eye.

There has never been a greater evangelist for the Italian organ and its music than Tagliavini. Through his herculean efforts, and in support of the efforts of others, scores of organs now shine as they once did in centuries past. The treasures of musical composition are opened to new eyes, hearts, and minds. But perhaps the most tangible evidence of his passion is to be found in the Museo San Colombano, Tagliavini Collezione, where upwards of 80 keyboard instruments (and a couple dozen various others) are now on display, in playing condition, and open to the public without charge. In October 2017, a convocation dedicated to Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini, “Il cembalo a martelli: da Bartolomeo Cristofori a Giovanni Ferrini” (the harpsichord with hammers: from B. Cristofori to G. Ferrini), was held at San Colombano, with concerts in the museum and in the Basilica of San Petronio, and papers by scholars in the field. It was my honor to be included as a harpsichordist in one of these memorial concerts, one particularly unusual, in that it included ten of his former students and colleagues, in a program that moved chronologically from Frescobaldi, 1615, to Johannes Brahms, op. 118. This breadth of musical composition in no way traced the boundaries of Tagliavini’s interests, but was clear in its meaning. Music. Music, at the center of his life.

Attending the events of this colloquium the maestro’s two brothers, extended family and friends, shared in the legacy that I believe will accompany his memory in years to come—his keen scholarship, illuminating performance, insightful and inspirational teaching, love of life, jokes, puns, frivolity—all evident in his brilliant fulfillment in a life of music.

—Margaret Irwin-Brandon

Founder/Director, Desert Baroque, Southern California; Director Emerita, Arcadia Players Baroque Orchestra, Western Massachusetts;

Originator, Organs of Italy Tours.

Notes

1. Preface to Fiori Musicali (1635) and its relation to Il secondo libro di toccate (1627).

Joyce Johnson Robinson

Joyce Johnson Robinson is editorial director of The Diapason.

While the Sistine Chapel—la Cappella Sistina (which takes its name from Pope Sixtus IV, who reorganized it in 1471)—is a must-see for many who travel to Rome, it is unlikely they will hear music performed there, as any services and concerts in the chapel are usually not open to the public. The Sistine Chapel Choir is the pope’s personal choir, singing at all the liturgical celebrations of the Supreme Pontiff—in the Sistine Chapel itself, at St. Peter’s Basilica, and at outdoor services. 

During a 2014 visit to Rome, I was able to meet with the titular organist of the Sistine Chapel, Juan Paradell-Solé. A native of Spain, he received his early training in Igualada, near Barcelona, with Father Albert Foix, and studied organ with Montserrat Torrent at the conservatory of music in Barcelona.

In 1973 Paradell-Solé moved to Rome for study in organ and composition with Monsignor Valentí Miserachs. He subsequently studied in Germany for three years with Günther Kaunzinger. He served as organist at Rome’s Basilica of St. Mary Major (Santa Maria Maggiore)for 30 years, and assumed the position as organist of the Sistine Chapel in 2011. 

 

Joyce Johnson Robinson: At what age did you begin studying music?

Juan Paradell-Solé: I was eight years old.

 

Do you come from a musical family?

Yes. My maternal grandfather was a musician—including in church, because at that time one did a bit of everything. He had a band, played piano, and they made appearances in nearby towns, but he also always played in church.

 

What about your parents?

My parents, no. I attended a school run by the Scolopi Fathers and one of the priests there, Father Albert Foix, was a musician, and had formed a Pueri Cantores choir. He visited classes and looked for children who wanted to sing . . . And this priest was very good with Gregorian chant. He was quite serious and even though he was dealing with children, he taught music using solfège. I had learned piano and around the age of nine or so I began to accompany the Pueri Cantores on the harmonium, during sung Masses, getting accustomed to sacred music. Thus thanks to my first maestro I was already, as a child, learning Gregorian chant and sacred polyphony.

 

How is that you came to be in Rome?

After some study with Father Albert Foix, I enrolled at the conservatory in my city, Igualada, which is near Barcelona, for study of solfège and piano. In the late 1960s, a priest musician from a nearby city, who had studied in Rome, started coming during the summer. This was Maestro Monsignor Valentì Miserachs; he played organ in the basilica and gave concerts. So I met him, and he prepared me for the entrance exam for the Barcelona Conservatory, and to study with Montserrat Torrent. In the early 1970s Miserachs became maestro di cappella at the papal basilica of St. Mary Major in Rome. Thus I asked him if I could come to Rome to study with him, and there I was on my way to the Eternal City.

 

What are some of your early memories of learning the organ?

Lessons with Montserrat Torrent took place in the Palau Nacional, in which there was a large Walcker organ, enormous, five manuals, and I began to take lessons on that organ. It had over 100 registers—mamma mia! (laughs) It seemed to me as though I were in the cockpit of an airplane—it almost scared me! This huge machine, these keyboards—it was a very beautiful instrument, mechanical action; its original keyboard was from the 18th century.

At that time, the organ world in Spain almost didn’t exist. There was only Montserrat Torrent, who held courses and gave concerts . . . while here in Rome at that time there were these big names, such as Fernando Germani and Ferruccio Vignanelli.

 

What music did you study with Montserrat Torrent?

Always music of every period—certainly not only Spanish music. She began with easy Bach pieces, Baroque works, pre-Bach composers such as Böhm, then little by little moved on to French Classic works, and gradually later French works. Montserrat is an organist who plays everything—much early Spanish music, but also Bach, Duruflé, Reubke, Reger. She is “360 degrees,” playing all the repertoire. Today there are organists who play only early music. Montserrat is still active, even in her eighties. In 2013 she played a challenging program in Rome, including even Alain and Duruflé.

 

You also studied in Germany.

I spent three years in Germany, studying with Günther Kaunzinger.

 

Can you describe the organ world in Spain after the civil war?

In Spain, gradually things changed after Franco—new organs began to be built. In Spain, during the civil war, many historic organs were destroyed. But some organs were saved—all the organs in the south of Spain, and in the Basque regions, in special cases, some were saved. For example, let me tell you about an eighteenth-century organ in Igualada, my native city.

Someone saw children in the town square who were playing with very small pipes from an organ that was being taken apart. So he called the city’s music teacher: “Maestro, someone wants to destroy the organ—come right away.” And the maestro asked what the person was doing, and was told, “This organ is of no use anymore.” The maestro answered, “What are you doing? This is a musical instrument. It’s not just used in the church; it can also be used for dancing, for tangos . . . ” And he succeeded in convincing him. So they dismantled the organ and stored it in a convent school during the civil war; thanks to this it was saved.

But many others were in ruins, included a beautiful, large Cavaillé-Coll in a cathedral in Catalonia. Starting in the 1980s many organs began to be rebuilt, concert halls constructed, and many organ students, like me, went abroad to study. So now in Spain there are many fine organists, new instruments, and the organ world in Spain has changed a great deal.

 

You have concertized throughout Europe, South and North America, and even in Syria!

Yes, Syria—in Damascus. There was an organ in the Franciscan church there; I think it was the only organ in Damascus. The concert had been organized through the Cervantes Institute—the institute for Spanish culture. It was very interesting: a concert of Spanish music and poetry, with a Spanish actress. Last year we recorded a CD on that organ, also Spanish poetry and music. This CD, Aquesta divina unión, will be released in late September 2015.

 

What sort of concert repertoire do you favor?

I perform much Spanish music, to help make it known—although not too much early music, because early Spanish music is familiar. There is a large repertoire from the late nineteenth–early twentieth century up to now, written by composers from the Basque countries.

 

Do you mean the Euskarien region?

Exactly. The Euskarien region is not very big but has a large collection of Romantic-Symphonic organs that’s unique in the world—many by Cavaillé-Coll, Merklin, Mutin, Stoltz Frères, Puget, and Walcker. And these instruments haven’t been touched—they have not been changed, they are as they were.They’ve been maintained but nothing has been changed. So musicians from the late nineteenth century onwards grew up with these instruments, and many wrote for the organ. It’s a large body of Spanish symphonic literature that is very little known.

 

You’ve recorded some of this repertoire.

I enjoyed making this CD (Orgues en Duos, by Daniel Pandolfo et Juan Paradell-Solé on the Merklin and Koenig organs, Pamina SPM 1520 393 CD) because some of these pieces are very interesting—for example, Usandizaga, and Jesus Guridi, for instance. It was recorded in Alsace on a Merklin organ. And Daniel Pandolfo (who’s French, though of Italian ancestry) and I recorded some duets, utilizing a second, choir organ.

 

You’ve also done a lot of concertizing.

However, I am at heart a liturgical organist—I have been a liturgical organist for all my life. For me the church is important. The liturgical organist can seem to some people perhaps of less value, but that’s not true. The liturgical organist must have many more competencies, really a 360-degree skill set: know how to immediately accompany Gregorian chant, accompany a choir, transpose, must know how to improvise. A concert organist studies pieces; if he learns them well, he moves on to the next ones. Of course, a liturgical organist also plays the great literature, but must have an even broader skill set. I remember when I was twenty, I went to St. Peter’s to hear Vespers, and sometimes also the morning Mass, sung by the Cappella Giulia choir. The director, Maestro Armando Renzi, who was very famous in Italy, said to me, “If you don’t know how to do these things you’ll never be a good organist, because beyond playing concerts, an organist must be able to do these things.” And it’s true.

 

What is a typical week like for you? 

Most of my weeks are quite similar. Fortunately, my schedule allows for at least a half day of practice at the organ. I begin in the morning as soon as possible, with a bit of piano technique and then I continue on organ. The afternoon is normally dedicated to study and private lessons. Tuesdays and Wednesdays are my days at the conservatory [Conservatorio Licinio Refice, Frosinone], where I teach organ, Gregorian chant, modes, and basso continuo.

Normally during the week I don’t have rehearsals with the Sistine Chapel choir. The choir rehearses every day, but reheases with the organ only for something particular, such as a piece in a concertato style with the organ. Otherwise we rehearse together a day or two before an important celebration.

During the weekend there are often celebratory liturgies in the Vatican. Then I am involved both for the Mass that the Pope says on some Sundays, as well as for important feastdays that can occur during the week.

 

How is your position at the Sistine Chapel different from that at St, Mary Major?

My work as an organist for the choir of the Sistine Chapel—the pope’s choir—is not much different from that at St. Mary Major: namely, that of a liturgical organist. At St. Mary Major, there was a short rehearsal before every Mass. After an improvisation on the Introit, I accompanied the various types of song and also played during and after the motet. I also played the offertory and a final piece from the literature at the end of Mass. And the papal celebration is not very different. Whether a Mass or a Vespers, it is similar, only in St. Peter’s there is much more time for playing the organ, above all before and at the end of the Mass or Vespers—since the basilica is so large, one needs to play until almost all of the assembly has exited the basilica. But it’s essentially the same.

 

How much of your work is accompanying the Sistine Chapel Choir, versus playing repertoire (for example, during postludes)?

Papal celebrations, with the Sistine Chapel Choir, certainly involve much accompanying of the choir, especially during Mass, meaning all the parts of the Ordinary or the Propers of the Mass, or the various parts of Vespers. But there is also much opportunity for being able to play organ literature, repertoire­­—above all before Mass. Often I must play even for 30 to 45 minutes before the Mass, or the arrival of the Holy Father, or at the end of a Mass or Vespers, accompanying the papal procession and while the entire assembly leaves. So there is a lot of time in which to play plenty of literature. 

During the Mass, often the Offertory is sung first, before the choir sings a motet. But often the organ must continue improvising, in the same style of the motet that was sung. There are other moments when there is a lot of time for the organ—for example, in the baptismal liturgy, during the ordination of a priest, in a penitential service—where the organ must play quietly. And those are times when the organist must play for 45 minutes, or even an hour.

 

In accompanying chant and Psalms, do you use written-out accompaniments, or do you always improvise?

For Gregorian chant, normally I improvise the accompaniments. I’ve spent many years studying the accompaniment of Gregorian chant, and I also teach this in the conservatory. I like to improvise chant accompaniment, so that it is not always the same. Sometimes I use accompaniments that I wrote, which were published in various musical journals. For psalmody, normally the psalm is composed by the Sistine Chapel choirmaster—at present, Maestro Palombella—and he also writes the accompaniment. But this doesn’t mean that I cannot change accompaniments during the verses and create my own on occasion.

 

What is involved when you must play for a Mass outdoors in Piazza San Pietro (St. Peter’s Square?)

During Masses that are said outdoors in St. Peter’s Square—from Palm Sunday through the summer—the situation varies greatly, and for the choir there is the difficulty of singing outdoors. Another difficulty is the loudspeakers that transmit sound through the piazza, and that transmit for radio and television. 

Regarding the organ, a movable radio-controlled console is used, which controls the organ in the basilica. I must say that the sound of the organ is very good; even though the organ is inside the basilica, the organist can hear it immediately. Logically this requires speakers; this system, however, has had some problems lately. Until a better solution is found—and this is just a temporary solution—when we are in St. Peter’s Square, I play an electronic organ. Another problem, when we are all outside in the piazza, is that of weather. Sometimes we are out in the rain, other times with strong sun in our eyes; there is wind (many times the wind has blown my score away!). I have had to take shelter and improvise. So to work around these problems—weather as well as the difficulty for the choir of singing outdoors—in the last couple years the choir has been standing in the atrium of the basilica, covered, so this is much more comfortable. The choir and organ can mutually be heard well, and we can coordinate everything much better, almost as if we were within St. Peter’s Basilica. 

 

Who plans the music for Masses?

The music for papal celebrations is chosen by the office of papal celebrations, headed by Monsignor Guido Marini, together with the director of the Cappella Musicale Ponteficio Sistina, Maestro Don Massimo Palombella, of course under the guidance and approval of the Holy Father. It’s not unusual on occasion for the pope himself to choose particular music that he would like to have performed. For example, for Mass last Christmas, Pope Francis himself personally asked that the “Et incarnatus est “ from Mozart’s Mass in C Minor, be sung during the Credo—and certainly it was. Thus, the staff together with others decide on the music for each occasion.

As for the music that the organist must perform, I must say that no one forced me to play anything—they allow the organist to choose, based on his good sense and liturgical understanding. Of course, the organist must always know how to choose, from the liturgical point of view, which works from the literature are most suitable; certainly the Christmas season is not the same as Lent, or Easter, or a penance service. So the organist chooses from the repertoire.

 

You have played for historic events, such as the ceremony starting the conclave that elected the new Pope, and for Pope Francis’s first Mass.

[When the conclave began] I went to the gathering of the cardinals in the Sala Nervi . . . The Office of Terce was sung at the beginning. I went every morning to play; each day cardinals from all over the world were arriving. Then there was the ceremony to open the conclave. Before the conclave began, there were other people inside the Sistine Chapel, and all the cardinals must swear an oath. I had to play during the swearing-in, and then once the master of ceremonies declared “Extra Omnes” (“everybody out”), I had to quickly grab my scores and run out. I was the last to exit the Sistine Chapel.

After the election of the new pope, the next day there was his first Mass in the Sistine Chapel, for the cardinals only, and then there was the first Mass, in St. Peter’s Square, for the whole world. 

 

Deutsche Gramophon has recorded some of this (Habemus Papam, includes the Mass for the election of the Roman Pontiff, Entrance into the Conclave, Mass with the Cardinal electors, and Mass for the beginning of the Petrine Ministry; DG B0022404-02).

Yes. It was recorded live and includes music from the conclave, the Mass in the Sistine Chapel with the cardinals, the Mass in St. Peter’s, and the Mass for all the world. I presented a copy to the pope.

 

What are your future plans and goals?

Goals: I hope to continue to play for papal celebrations for many years!

As for projects, in summer 2015 I have many concerts throughout Europe (Spain, France, Austria, Germany, Denmark, Italy), and on August 28, I play in St. James Catholic Cathedral in Orlando, Florida. In 2016 there will be much to do at the Vatican, marking the Holy Year, the Jubilee of Mercy, with celebrations, concerts, and other events. Then in summer 2016 there will be many concerts—in Japan and South America—and recording a new CD.

 

Thank you very much, Maestro Paradell-Solé—grazie mille! ν