Jean Boyer dies of cancer at the age of 56

The European community and in particular, France, lost an important advocate for the organ with the untimely death of Jean Boyer. Mr. Boyer died of cancer on June 28 in Lille, France, at the age of 56.

He was born on October 4, 1948, in Sidi Bel Abbes in Algeria, into a musical family; his organist father was a student of André Marchal. He began his musical studies in Toulouse, a city well known for the quality of its organs. These exceptional instruments played a central role in his musical training, which was completed under the guidance of Xavier Darasse, in whose class he earned a first prize in organ at the Conservatoire de Toulouse in 1969.

In Paris, he was greatly influenced at St-Séverin Church by Francis Chapelet and André Isoir. In 1975 he became co-titulaire of this church, a post he held until 1988; he also served as organist at the historic organ of St-Nicolas-des-Champs until 1995. Mr. Boyer’s recordings have received great praise from the musical press, and in 1972 he was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque. In addition to his concert activities, Jean Boyer was a devoted pedagogue. At the time of his death he was professor of organ at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique de Lyon.

Mr. Boyer was an excellent organist and organ professor, much beloved by his students. He was a scholar and did a great deal to promote the understanding and accurate performance practice of ancient music and was a strong advocate for the thoughtful restoration of historic organs. He was remembered at a Requiem in Lille, France, July 1.

--Gene Bedient

David Messineo, principal university organist at Princeton University, died June 11 of an apparent heart attack at his home in Shohola, Pennsylvania. He was 45. Born on August 14, 1958, in Hackensack, New Jersey, Messineo began playing the piano at age four and took up the organ at age 11. He served as organist at Grace Episcopal Church in Port Jervis, New York, and Rutherford (NJ) Congregational Church while still a teenager. He attended the Juilliard School in New York City, where he graduated with a Mus.B., M.M. and doctor of musical arts with honors in organ performance. During his time at Juilliard, he served at St. Stephen’s Roman Catholic Church in Kearny, New Jersey, and for eight years was associate director of music/organist at the Cathedral Basilica of the Sacred Heart in Newark. For 16 years, he was minister of music at the Glen Ridge Congregational Church, where he played the organ and directed seven choirs. He also taught organ at Montclair State University for many years. Messineo joined the Princeton staff in 2000. He gave recitals across the United States and performed in historical venues in Germany, the Czech Republic, France and the Netherlands. Messineo also played theatre organ, and in 1979, he opened the new Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall and continued as organist there for several years. He studied theatre organ with a former silent movie accompanist and was known at Princeton for his annual performance around Halloween improvising with the 1925 silent movie, “The Phantom of the Opera.” Funeral services took place on June 16 at the Milford United Methodist Church, Milford, Pennsylvania.

Myron J. Roberts, 92, died May 15 in Camden, Maine, after a brief illness. He was born in San Diego, California, January 30, 1912, and at the age of nine he moved with his family to Palo Alto, California. Raised in a musical family, he developed an early passion for piano and organ. By the time he was in high school, he was studying piano and then organ with Stanford University organist, Warren Allen. Roberts completed his undergraduate studies in 1935 at the College of the Pacific (now the University of the Pacific) in Stockton, California, where he was an organ student of Allen Bacon. He completed a master’s degree in the School of Sacred Music at Union Theological Seminary, where he studied with Clarence Dickinson. After two years as an organist in the greater New York area and as an interim organist in Richmond, Virginia, Roberts joined the faculty of the University of Nebraska at Lincoln in 1940, where he taught organ and music theory for 34 years. He also held positions in Lincoln as organist at First-Plymouth Congregational Church, Holy Trinity Episcopal Church and the Roman Catholic Cathedral of the Risen Christ.

Roberts was married to Virginia W. Roberts. Mr. and Mrs. Roberts retired at the same time and moved to Rio del Mar on Monterey Bay in California. After Mrs. Roberts’ death in 1975 Mr. Roberts continued to live in California and resumed playing the organ in public recitals. It was at this time that he met and became long-time friends with Anthony Antolini, who was teaching at Cabrillo College in Santa Cruz County. When Prof. Antolini and his family moved to Maine in 1991 Mr. Roberts decided to join them and moved to Cushing in 1993, where he built a home with a view of the St. George River.

Roberts composed works for organ, choral music and pieces for organ and other instruments. Among his 22 published works are Homage to Perotin (1956), Pastorale and Aviary (1969) and Fanfare and Tuckets (1991) for organ. His best known choral compositions include O Lord, We Beseech Thee (1965), Jubilate Deo (1976) and Magnificat (1977). His most unusual composition is Five for Organ and Marimba (1975). After moving to Maine Roberts continued to compose music and teach organ on a limited basis. He also maintained a lifelong interest in astronomy and gardening.

Roberts was a communicant of the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist in Thomaston, Maine where he took an active part in the work of the organ search committee. In 2003 that committee selected the Bedient Pipe Organ Company of Roca, Nebraska to build its new organ. The president and founder of the company, Gene Bedient, was a student of Mr. Roberts at the University of Nebraska at Lincoln many years ago.

A memorial service was held on June 20 at the Episcopal Church of St. John the Baptist, Thomaston, Maine. There were also two performances of the Dvorák Requiem by the Down East Singers in memory of Mr. Roberts on May 23 at St. Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church in Augusta, Maine, and on May at the Rockland Congregational Church, Rockland, Maine.

An in-depth biographical interview with Mr. Roberts was published in the June 1997 issue of The American Organist.

--Anthony Antolini

Carolyn Shuster Fournier

Dr. Carolyn Shuster Fournier thanks Father Michel Chausson, James David Christie, Jean-Louis Coignet, Pierre Farago, Jean Fonteneau, Yves Fossaert, André Isoir, Alain Louvier, Yvonne Mills, Francis Prod’homme, and Pascale Rouet for their assistance in preparing this article. Author of numerous articles for The Diapason, she is a French-American organist, musicologist, international concert organist and titular of the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at La Trinité in Paris, France. She has premiered numerous contemporary works, collaborating with composers such as Jacques Castérède, Jacques Chailley, Jacques Charpentier and Daniel Pinkham. In April 2009, she recorded a CD in homage to Nadia Boulanger at La Madeleine in Paris. She is Chevalier in the Order of Arts and Letters.

Vital music-making is the heartbeat that animates André Isoir. Honorary organist at the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris, Chevalier of Arts and Letters and recipient of the National Order of Merit, André Isoir has received the highest distinctions as an international concert and recording artist, with a vast repertoire and more than sixty recordings to his name. An eminent professor, he has taught over 900 organists from all over the world. A Renaissance man, he is also a composer who has made many transcriptions. Fascinated by organ building, he has been a consultant for numerous organ restorations and has served as a corresponding member of both the French Historical Monuments Commission (1970–85) and the Commission of Unclassified Historical Monuments from (1980–84).

Initial inspiration
André Isoir was born on July 20, 1935 in Saint-Dizier (in Haute-Marne, near Reims). He played the bugle in the city band. At age fourteen, his life was transformed when he heard J. S. Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, played on the organ in the chapel of his school. He immediately fell in love with this instrument. For the next two years, he studied on this organ with a Salesian priest and accompanied on the harmonium a church choir led by his father, an amateur musician. When Noëlie Pierront1 came to Saint-Dizier with the Philippe Debat Vocal Ensemble2 and performed a stunning rendition of Marcel Dupré’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, Isoir had the opportunity of playing Bach’s Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542, for her. Impressed by his immense talent, she encouraged him to come to Paris to study at the César Franck School.3

Musical training
In 1952, André Isoir enrolled at the César Franck School, then located on the rue Vavin, near Notre-Dame-des-Champs, in the Montparnasse district. After studying piano with Germaine Mounier, he then studied with two of Louis Vierne’s former students: Geneviève de La Salle and Édouard Souberbielle. First he entered de La Salle’s organ class.4 An excellent musician, she enabled him to acquire a firm technique and taught him to play with elegant phrasing, varied articulations, and refined registrations. She excelled in the art of registration so much so that Joseph Bonnet requested that she spend hours with him preparing for his concerts and recordings on the Gonzalez organ at Saint-Eustache. She gave her lessons on a Pleyel studio organ with electro-pneumatic action,5 teaching the works of Bach, Alain, Duruflé, Franck, Messiaen, and Vierne, leaving aside those by Widor and Gigout. In February 1956, when Geneviève de La Salle left to teach at the Gregorian Institute in Lisbon, Isoir succeeded her as organist and choirmaster at Saint-Médard in Paris.6
To acquire a solid musical formation, Isoir studied Gregorian chant as well as improvisation and harmony with René Malherbe,7 harmony with Yves Margat, counterpoint with Marcel Bitch, and continued piano with Germaine Mounier. This prepared him to enter Édouard Souberbielle’s8 organ class. This “true aristocrat of the organ” possessed a vast culture and an eminent spirituality that deeply influenced all of his students. He expanded each student’s personal perceptions by making them feel uncomfortable with their own opinions. This enabled them to acquire an elegant style.
In Souberbielle’s class, Isoir continued to play, notably, works by Bach and Franck, but more importantly, he began to play the early French composers. Influenced by his son Léon,9 Édouard Souberbielle served as consultant for the construction of a Roethinger organ in the French classic style (curiously enough with electric action) at the Benedictine Abbey in Limon (in the southern part of the Île-de-France). Voiced by Robert Boisseau, this organ included a Plein-jeu as described by Dom Bédos. It thus served as an inspiration to future constructions in this style by Philippe Hartmann and Pierre Chéron. In addition, Souberbielle’s refined and inspiring approach to improvisation, enrobed with Ravel-like harmonies, concentrated on the free treatment of a theme and, of course, the fugue.
In order to launch a career, it was necessary to obtain a First Prize in organ from the Paris Conservatory. While still enrolled at the César Franck School in September 1957, André Isoir entered Rolande Falcinelli’s10 organ class and Olivier Messiaen’s analysis class at the Paris Conservatory, where his fellow students included Xavier Darasse and Yves Devernay. He remained there for three years, taking lessons on a “really horrible organ”11 and received his Second Prize in organ on June 15, 1959. On June 22, 1960, he unanimously obtained, with the strong support of Maurice Duruflé, a First Prize in organ performance and improvisation. Fifteen days earlier, Isoir had received the ultimate degree that really mattered to him—the Superior Diploma in organ and improvisation at the César Franck School.
At the César Franck School, Isoir met many of his future friends and colleagues: Denise and Michel Chapuis, Jeanne Joulain, Éliane Lejeune-Bonnier, Elisabeth and Joachim Havard de la Montagne, Simone and Jean-Albert Villard, Émmanuel de Villèle, Paule Piedelièvre, and others, as well as his future wife, Annie Kergomard, whom he married in 1961.12 During his military service, from 1960 to 1962, he played brass instruments in a military band, along with Francis Chapelet, who became one of his closest friends.13

Beginning a musical career: skills as an improviser and a composer
Following his studies, Isoir’s international career was launched when he won various competitions: in Saint Albans (England), where he received the First Prize in 1965, and in Haarlem (Holland), where he won prizes for three consecutive years (1966–1967–1968). He also won the “Challenge Prize” and is the only Frenchman to have earned that distinction since the beginning of this competition in 1951. Isoir excelled in the ephemeral art of improvisation that enabled him to express his thoughts eloquently. For him, even a minimum amount of imagination, when it’s coupled with an assimilation of various styles and a sufficient preparation of an abundance of fresh ideas, can enable one to improvise well. He was fascinated with presenting, in a short span of time, a coherent form with appropriate registrations that bring out the style of the proposed theme. His vital musical personality, ready to receive and develop unexpected ideas (it is not surprising that he is an avid fisherman!) has been fully revealed through his improvisations.
Animated by a love of accompanying the liturgy, André Isoir used his improvisation skills to prepare the parishioners to pray and become spiritually receptive. From 1956 to 1971, he served as organist and choir master at Saint-Médard in Paris.14 He began his concert career by giving a recital in this church in October 1963, of classical works from the Flemish and German schools (Leonhard Kleber, Sweelinck, Wilhelm Karges, Scheidt, Lübeck, Pachelbel, Buxtehude and Bach). He played in such a manner that the romantic Stoltz instrument (1880) sounded like a German baroque organ!15 Throughout his career, he constantly presented lesser-known works in his programs.
In 1970, he was named as one of the four organists at Saint-Séverin, along with Michel Chapuis, Francis Chapelet, and Jacques Marichal, re-establishing the former Parisian tradition of having four organists. In 1963, Alfred Kern had successfully reconstructed the 1745 Claude Ferrand organ in a neo-classic aesthetic (under Michel Chapuis’ guidance, with Philippe Hartmann redoing the action). Isoir has many fond memories of the pre-Vatican II repertoire that he accompanied there. While at Saint-Séverin, he composed a Ravel-like Agnus Dei, with the text in French. (See musical example.) In 1973, after having served as a consultant for the reconstruction of Haerpfer-Ermann’s organ at Saint-Germain-des-Prés, he was appointed organist there, along with Odile Bayeux, following a long line of blind organists who had served there (notably Augustin Barié, André Marchal, and Antoine Reboulot).16
In February 1974, Les Amis de l’Orgue awarded him with a First Prize for his first organ composition, Variations sur le Psaume 92 [“Variations on a Huguenot Psalm”]. James David Christie was in the audience for this occasion. When he told André that he really loved his piece more than any other and wanted to play it regardless if it won the prize or not, Isoir gave him his personal copy of the score on the spot! When the work was published by Forberg Verlag in Germany in 1979, Christie noticed that one variation had not been published:

When I asked André about this several years later, he told me in his very humble and self-effacing manner that he felt the piece was too long with seven variations and six were enough. The work is an absolute masterpiece and the audiences love it; I have played it in concert often since 1975. I tried to commission André in 1989 for another major organ work, but he refused. He said he found composition too stressful and preferred improvising and performing the repertoire of others. I have often lamented the fact he did not devote more time to adding great repertoire to the organ. I always felt his glorious, exciting improvisations would have been the seeds of many a great composition.17
André Isoir has made numerous transcriptions, many of which have been published by Delatour France.

Interest in organ building and in early French music
Fascinated with mechanics in his youth, Isoir has always loved to tinker with and repair broken clocks. In the early 1960s, at an antique dealer’s near Saint-Séverin, he acquired an eighteenth-century barrel organ [a serinette] from Nancy, a cylindrical instrument that was used to teach domestic birds how to sing. He then constructed a copy of this instrument and installed ten pipes: C, D, E, F, G, A, B-flat, B-natural, C, and D. He reconstructed the cylinder with eight tunes, according to the indications specified by Engramelle, and incorporated an air by Couperin, La petite chasse. He has also built two regals and a virginal.
Francis Prod’homme, the organizer of concerts at Notre-Dame in Pontorson, near Mont Saint-Michel, has related an example of André Isoir’s generosity.18 During one evening meal, Isoir observed that Francis’s clock was not well-regulated and that it needed to be “tuned.” As on numerous other occasions, Isoir proclaimed “I will take care of that for you.” In several minutes, and with a delightful child-like smile that lit up André’s face, the clock was once again happily chiming in universal harmony.
Isoir’s close friend, the organ builder Jean-Georges Koenig,19 taught him how to construct wooden pipes. His friend, Father Michel Chausson (a priest who built organ pipes) taught him how to construct metal pipes. In addition, in 1965, Isoir constructed his first regal with Jean-François Clément and worked with Gérard Fonvielle, who built him a harpsichord. Isoir is not in favor of building exact copies of instruments; he prefers to play mechanical-action instruments that enable the performer to bring out the vocal polyphonic lines and to play a large part of the repertoire. His repair kit has accompanied him on his various concert tours, and he has admitted that on many occasions that he has spent more time repairing and tuning the various organs than rehearsing on them!
The composer Alain Louvier attests to André Isoir’s capacities as a “solitary navigator” [“navigateur solitaire”]:

André Isoir could have constructed a hydraulic organ, an aeolian, solar or geothermal . . . and could have taken it on a non-stop trip around the world on a trimaran sailing raft . . . he knew how to do everything, to repair anything. One would have thought that he was born in an organ case! A true genius in making repairs, with practically nothing he could fix a tremolo, a reed pipe, even its mechanism.
I imagine him—as an organist in the Iron Age—busy cutting down trees, carving wood, casting tin, hammering it, and, finally, creating his own organ, the fruit of his ear and his unbounded imagination.20
Isoir’s innate inventive spirit in improvisation and organ building led to his fascination with the interpretive possibilities of “recreating” early French organ works. Right from the start, Isoir realized that the organs he had played in the 1950s and 1960s in Paris, most of them in the neo-classical style, were not suitable for early French repertoire. This had not stopped interpreters such as Abel Decaux, Joseph Bonnet, and André Marchal from playing this repertoire. With restorations of magnificent organs like Jean-Esprit Isnard’s 1772 basilica organ in Saint-Maximin-en-Provence (restored by Pierre Chéron in 1954) and François-Henri Clicquot’s 1790 organ at Saint-Pierre Cathedral in Poitiers (restored by Robert and Jean-Loup Boisseau in 1971–1972), organists began to discover the splendid sound of these organs as well as a lively, variable wind and a suspended mechanical action, which allowed one to vary the attack.
Obtaining a varied, responsive action is extremely important to André Isoir. The French classical organ, with its sensitive action and lively wind, needs only a minimum amount of material to offer a maximum sound effect. For example, in Poitiers, with a wind pressure of 110 mm., four or five stops suffice to fill the cathedral. Following Alfred Kern’s reconstruction of the Saint-Séverin organ in 1968, René Delosmes, Pierre Hardouin, Jean Fellot, Alain Lequeux, Michel Chapuis, Francis Chapelet, and André Isoir, presided over by Jean Fonteneau, united to protect early French historic organs: they founded the French Association for the Preservation of Early Organs (A.F.S.O.A.—Association française pour le sauvegarde de l’orgue ancien).21
By consulting early sources, Isoir discovered that the early French repertoire can be moving and expressive. Once he had studied the various treatises and documents, notably with the musicologist Jean Saint-Arroman, he realized on the one hand that the knowledge of these texts did not suffice to bring this music to life; on the other hand, he was also aware that spontaneity and freshness never come by chance. To attain the elegance, distinction and well-proportioned expressions that are so characteristic of French art, one must study the various imperative rules and then put them aside, along with any automatic mechanical responses. Instead, one must use one’s intuition to find a harmonious balance, continually determined by good taste, the ultimate guide. As with wine tasting, it is so much more important to “taste” its fragrance than to recite texts about it. Isoir was especially guided by the writings of Eugène Borrel, who wrote that eighteenth-century art was “elegant, distinguished, warm without excessiveness.”22 Simplicity is a sign of real intelligence. Isoir particularly loves playing early French music because it gives the interpreter a great deal of freedom in bringing this music to life.

Organ professor
For André Isoir, teaching is a sacred mission, enabling one to give priceless treasures to others, helping them to feel completely at ease while playing. He taught organ and harmony at the Angers Conservatory (1966–79);23 at the conservatoires in Versailles and Orsay (1974–83);24 and from 1982 to 1996 at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory as well as at various summer academies: Lagny (1982, 1985, 1986), Meaux (1983), Mitry-Mory (1984), Luxembourg (1989) and Nemours (1993). Among his 900 students are Jörg Abbing, Michel Bouvard, Jean Boyer, Monika Dabrowska-Beuzelin, Frédéric Denis, Frédéric Desenclos, François Espinasse, Pierre Farago, Yves Fossaert, Dominique Fournier, Jean-Louis Gil, Juliette Grellety-Bosviel, Emmanuelle Haïm, Makiko Hayashima, Léonid Karev, Joachim Kunze, Sven-Ingvart Mikkelsen, George Ritchie, Henri de Rohan, Pascale Rouet, Christophe Simon, Liuwe Tamminga, Timothy Tikker, Jean-Michel Verneiges, Francis Vidil and Haru Yamagami, to name but a few. Convinced that knowledge about organ building is indispensable to improving one’s interpretation, notably in the art of registration and touch, he also taught his students the rudiments of organ construction and maintenance. According to organist and composer Pierre Farago, his successor as organ professor at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory,
When André Isoir taught and played, the instrument was transformed under his fingers, and relinquishing its mechanical aspects, became purely organic—if I dare say—like a living being gifted with flowing expressiveness. His teaching is subtle and complex, insisting on utmost rigor, with utmost patience, without ever expressing it in the form of a dogmatic principle. The scores we studied were never cenotaphs, empty monuments or museum graphics, but rather sleeping beauties which ought to be brought back to life.25
In the early 1980s, the composer Alain Louvier, Director of the Conservatory in Boulogne-Billancourt, met André Isoir during the construction of the Koenig organ in the concert hall there. In spite of the fact that the city did not really want to invest in what the “very cultivated and refined” mayor Georges Gorse referred to as an “accordion for the wealthy,” Louvier appreciated Isoir’s “sense of humor, in addition to his wide-ranging competence, which both worked wonders.” Louvier had included stops in this organ with the seventh and eleventh harmonics that produced quarter tones. He was astonished by Isoir’s use of these stops:

By combining these experimental stops with the voix humaine, he was able to produce a sort of strange Bombarde 16 on the pedal that the city could not afford . . . thanks to his extraordinary acoustical intuition, one could play a Bach chorale with quarter tones, that were not noticed as such.26
In his teaching, André Isoir constantly emphasized the importance of acquiring a more fluid technique, of becoming sufficiently inventive in bringing music to life. At my first lesson at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory in 1983,27 we spent two hours looking at possible interpretations of the first movement (a Plein-Jeu) of Jean-Adam Guilain’s First Suite. I felt as if André were an optician who kept inserting different lenses to ask me if I could read the letters. It was necessary to understand the structure and the vital expression of this work from the inside out, to let the notes speak naturally. A deep harmonic and melodic analysis of each work, coupled with a fantastic imagination, enables one to perform this music spontaneously.
In the eyes and ears of a great artist, no detail is too small to be taken into consideration. An authentic artist with a vital personality abandons all preconceived static conceptions with prefabricated formulas and continually externalizes his capacity to listen to his playing, thus enabling him to understand more fully and to communicate an inner musical message. Each artist is a medium who communicates the deep spiritual message of the music. When I wrote to Frank Taylor in 1983, to share my experiences with him, he replied:

I’m happy you are studying with André—I think he’s perhaps the greatest eclectic (all round good) organist in the world. And I would rather hear him play anything, than anyone else I can think of. Give him my very most affectionate best wishes when next you see him.28
Recognized as an excellent teacher, in 1991 André Isoir co-authored, with Dominique Ferran and François-Henri Houbart, a practical catalog of the organ repertoire, in order of difficulty for the first ten years of organ lessons. It presents exercises and methods, early music until the seventeenth century, separate chapters on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the traditional notation and new notation in the twentieth century, concertos and unclassifiable pieces.29

International concert and recording artist with an eclectic repertoire
André Isoir first gave concerts in North America in the 1960s, thanks to his friend Jean Fonteneau, an assistant organist at Saint-Séverin. In 1971, Isoir performed in Oberlin (Ohio), Quebec, Montreal, at Harvard University, and in New York. At that time, Fisk was building his famous organ for the Old West Church in Boston. Isoir provided him with numerous details concerning the construction of the French-style reed stops incorporated into this instrument, thus contributing to the movement in favor of restoring instruments to play early French music in the United States. In 1974, he performed in Toronto and in Buffalo, where he met with the early French music specialist David Fuller. In 1975, he played concerts in Toronto and Montreal. In 1976, he returned to Harvard and gave recitals in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
In November 1989, James David Christie invited André Isoir to come to the United States for a mini-tour in Boston. He testifies to Isoir’s memorable performances in Wellesley and Worcester:

He played a fantastic concert at Wellesley College on the meantone Fisk organ, complete with short octave, sub-semitones, a three-octave keyboard range, etc. He ended his program with a super-charged, exciting performance of his transcription of Bela Bartók’s Roumanian Folk Dances (originally for piano solo).
He played at Holy Cross, Worcester, and ended the program with an incredible improvisation on “B-A-C-H.” I think there is an archival recording of the Holy Cross concert; it was just stunning and André was in his usual top form, having the time of his life.30
During this last tour to the United States, Isoir also gave masterclasses on the Charles Fisk organ at the Old West Church for the AGO national convention. On this occasion, Isoir has quite fond memories of the moments he spent with Frank Taylor, Barbara Owen, and Charles Fisk.
Isoir has inaugurated at least eighty organs. I was privileged to attend the memorable inauguration of the Gonzalez organ at Meaux Cathedral on June 8, 1982. That year, he also inaugurated the Grenzing organ at Saint-Cyprien (in the Périgord, where he also served as a consultant) and the Marc Garnier organ at the church in Esquelbecq. On November 3, 1990, he was especially pleased to inaugurate the restored Aristide Cavaillé-Coll organ in Saint-Dizier, his hometown. In addition, he often plays with other musicians. In 1973, he toured with Georges Brassens in Paris and the Île-de-France, playing twenty-one concerts on a positive organ built by Jean-Loup Boisseau.
Isoir has given numerous concerts outside of France, performing in Freiberg on September 18, 1983. In 1988, he was absolutely delighted to perform for the first time on the magnificent organ in Weingarten, in Sion in 1989, in Lübeck and Hamburg in 1990. He has also performed on numerous occasions in Japan: in 1978, 1987, 1990 and 1993. In 2006, he toured Russia, performing in Moscow and St. Petersburg.
In addition, he performs regularly on the four-stop, one-manual organ that the builder Philippe Vialle built for him. Isoir had added a tremolo and a “cymbale” made up of fifteen pipes that he “invented,” only to discover since then that it is present in several diverse and unknown pieces. He rarely ever plays the same piece on the same organ.
The variety of styles in his eclectic repertoire is revealed by the pieces that four composers have dedicated to him. In June 1973, Jean Langlais acknowledge his “classical side,” appropriately dedicated to him his Plein-Jeu, the first movement of his Suite baroque, op. 176.31 In 1983, Alain Louvier’s Etudes for Aggressors, Book Six for Organ (Études pour Agresseurs, livre 6 pour orgue), published by Alphonse Leduc in 1987, were written for the mechanical-action three-manual Koenig organ in the concert hall at the Boulogne-Billancourt Conservatory. He dedicated these pieces to Isoir, who premiered them.32 They use the same techniques as in his previous five books for piano and harpsichord (ten fingers, two palms, two forearms, without fists), but with the addition of two feet! The two last pieces are appropriate tributes to André Isoir, who also plays the trombone and the French horn: Lionel Rogg’s Finale (written in the spring of 1994) was inspired by the sumptuous sonorities of the American big band;33 Pierre Vidal’s piece, entitled Cromorne, was written in 1996.36
In 1971, Jacques Le Calvé, the director of Calliope, was so impressed by Isoir’s performance of this repertoire that he asked him to make his first record at the Church of Saint-Jacques in Compiègne (L’Orgue français au Grand Siècle, works by André Raison, Jacques Boyvin and Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers).
Among his favorite historic French organs, Isoir has recorded numerous times on the J. Boizard (1714) historic organ of the Abbey of Saint-Michel-en-Thiérache: in 1987, The Couperin Dynasty, François “the Great,” Armand-Louis, Gervais-François Couperin (ADDA 581063); in 1993, Nicolas de Grigny, Complete Organ Works (Erato S.A./Radio France, MUSIFRANCE 4509-91722-2); and in 1997, Jean-Adam Guilain, Four Suites for the Magnificat (1706) with the Demoiselles of Saint-Cyr, directed by Emmanuel Mandrin (France Musique, Tempéraments, TEM 316012, Distribution Harmonia Mundi).
André Isoir has always felt comfortable playing a vast repertoire (although never ever Reger!). Among his recordings of romantic works, two were made on the Cavaillé-Coll organ at Luçon Cathedral: César Franck’s Complete Organ Works (Calliope, CAL 9920/1, 1987, recorded in 1975) and The Romantic Organ, works by Boëly, Lefébure-Wély, Guilmant, Pierné, Widor, and Ropartz on the Cavaillé-Coll in Luçon and on the Isnard/Cavaillé-Coll/Boisseau organ in Pithiviers (Calliope, CAL 5922). In 1996, he recorded The Organ in Compiègne during the Second Empire on the Carlier/Plet organ at Saint-Antoine in Compiègne (Calliope, CAL 9934).
Isoir loves performing on successful neo-classical organs, such as the Pascal Quoirin in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence and the Haerpfer-Ermann at Saint-Germain-des-Prés in Paris. Among the recordings that bear witness to this, he recorded François Couperin’s Messe des Paroisses and French Noëls on the Saint-Séverin organ (Calliope, Le Livre d’Or de l’Orgue français).
Rodin’s most penetrating thoughts concerning French taste that have been perpetuated from the eighteenth century to the twentieth century sum up André Isoir’s approach to an eclectic repertoire:

The additions of previous centuries in our cathedrals, in different styles—chapels, stained-glass windows, decoration—do not destroy the harmony of them, because throughout the various periods these embellishments have been determined by the same French taste.35
In the same spirit, it is not surprising that in November 2000, Isoir recorded repertoire from the fourteenth century to the end of the nineteenth in celebration of the 500th anniversary, in 2001, of the Renaissance organ in Lorris, one of the oldest organs in Europe.36 This is in spite of the fact that this organ only has a 48-note keyboard with a 14-note coupled pedalboard and is tuned at A=405/408! Father Michel Chausson, who initiated the restoration of this historic instrument, admires André Isoir: he is among “all those who have provided great poetical inspiration to twentieth century organ interpretation.”37 Our world needs such a spirit more than ever.
From 1976 to 1993, Isoir crowned his career with an ultimate homage to his great teacher Édouard Souberbielle, by recording J. S. Bach’s complete organ works on six different organs by German builders (fifteen CDs produced by Calliope, 9703-17). His greatest joy was recording Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue on Josef Gabler’s monumental stunning organ (1737–1750) at Weingarten Abbey, a legendary instrument conceived around the number 6: the number of the beast of the Apocalypse, six windows, six tonal plans, 6,666 pipes.
Grenzing’s Saint-Cyprien organ is among Isoir’s favorites, where he rerecorded, in 1993, Bach’s four Toccatas and Fugues along with the Fantasy and Fugue in G Minor. In 1988 and 1989, André Isoir played in European television broadcasts, notably on the France 3 channel, in programs written and hosted by Gilles Cantagrel and in Alain Duault’s “Musicales.”
In all his interpretations, Isoir’s deeply human approach gives a spiritual dimension to his artistic offerings. His interpretations are well conceived and prepared, yet spontaneous. His wife Annie observed that it was very rare to hear him play a piece in its entirety during his practice sessions. He usually works fragment by fragment, even measure by measure. More than searching for perfection, he aims at playing as naturally as possible. His eyes, ears and mind are constantly receptive to discovering new elements of a musical score. Adapting to each particular circumstance, his elegant playing moves his audiences. As Yves Saint-Laurent said, “without elegance that comes from the heart, there is no elegance.”
Thank you, André, for sharing your immense joy in making beautiful music and for so generously enlightening your audiences and students throughout the world.

All of the citations in French were translated by the author.
All photos are from the Collection A. Isoir, and are published with his kind permission.

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.

The world’s most distinguished concert organist, Marie-Claire Alain, died at the age of 86 on February 26, 2013, in Le Pecq, France

James David Christie

James David Christie holds positions as the Distinguished Artist in Residence at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, Chair and Professor of Organ at the Oberlin College Conservatory of Music, Oberlin, Ohio, and serves as College Organist at Wellesley College, Wellesley, Massachusetts. He has previously held positions at Boston Conservatory, Harvard University, M.I.T., and Boston University. He has served as organist of the Boston Symphony Orchestra since 1978. 

James David Christie has made over fifty tours of Europe and performs regularly in Canada, Asia, Australia, and Iceland. He has recorded for Decca, Philips, Nonesuch, JAV, Northeastern, Arabesque, Denon, RCA, Dorian, Naxos, Bridge, and GM and has received several awards for his solo recordings, including the Preis der Deutschen Schallplatten Kritik and the Magazine d’Orgue: Coup de Coeur. In the fall of 2010, he was on sabbatical in Paris, France, where he served as visiting Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatory.

 

The world’s most distinguished concert organist, Marie-Claire Alain, died at the age of 86 on Tuesday, February 26, 2013, in Le Pecq, a small French commune located next to her home city of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. She had been in failing health for several months and the cause of her death was reported as a cardiac arrest. Madame Alain performed around the entire world, but always held her many American friends and audiences in her heart as her favorite public. She performed over 2,500 concerts and made over 280 recordings during her lifetime.

Marie-Claire Alain was born in Saint-Germain-en-Laye on August 10, 1926. Her father was the organist-composer Albert Alain (1880–1971) and her mother was Magdeleine Alberty (1890–1971). She had three siblings, all excellent musicians, who preceded her in death: her older sister, Marie-Odile Alain (1914–1937), and two brothers—the renowned organist-composer Jehan Alain (1911–1940) and Olivier Alain (1918–1994). Her father, Albert, was the organiste titulaire of the Church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye from 1924 until his death in 1971. Marie-Claire began assisting her father at the church in 1937 at the age of 11. She was appointed her father’s successor upon his death in 1971 and faithfully served as organiste titulaire for the following 40 years. She resigned in 2011 because of her declining health. 

She studied at the Conservatoire national supérieur de Paris, where she was an organ student of Marcel Dupré; there she also studied harmony with Maurice Duruflé and fugue with Simone Plé-Caussade. At the Paris Conservatory, she won first prizes in organ, improvisation, fugue, harmony, and counterpoint. She studied organ privately with Gaston Litaize and André Marchal; both of these famous teachers were important mentors in her career and played a great role in her artistic development.

Marie-Claire Alain was an extraordinary teacher and her students have won a staggering number of international competitions. Today her students hold some of the most important and prestigious teaching and church positions around the world. Marie-Claire Alain was professor of organ at the Conservatoires nationaux de région in Rueil-Malmaison (1978–1994) and Paris (1994–2000). Prior to and even after 1978, she always had a very large private studio and taught many of the most famous organists of today on her Haerpfer-Erman house organ at her homes in L’Étang-la-Ville and Maule, as well as at the Church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye. Madame Alain taught every summer in the Netherlands at the Haarlem Summer Organ Academy with her close friends and colleagues Anton Heiller and Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini from 1956–1972; after 1972, she returned to teach at Haarlem on three occasions in 1974, 1982 and 1994. She also founded and taught at the Académie Jean-Sébastien Bach de Saint-Donat from 1971–1991. From 1991 to 2009, she was a permanent member of the organ faculty for the Académie d’orgue de Romainmôtier, Switzerland. In 1985, Marie-Claire Alain donated the family house organ, built by her father between 1910 and 1971, to the Jehan Alain Association in Romainmôtier. Madame Alain’s last teaching in North America took place at the McGill Summer Organ Academy, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, in July 2007, and her very last trip to North America was as a juror for the First Canadian International Organ Competition in Montreal in the fall of 2008.  She served on that jury with five of her former students: John Grew (Artistic Director of the CIOC), Dame Gillian Weir, James David Christie, Ludger Lohmann, and James Higdon.

The list of awards and honors given to Marie-Claire Alain is immense. She received honorary doctorates from Colorado State University, Southern Methodist University, the Sibelius Academy (Helsinki), the Boston Conservatory, McGill University, and Johns Hopkins University. She was awarded the Prize of Les Amis de l’Orgue, the Edison Prize (Holland), the Golden Disque Award (Japan), the Prize of the President of the Republic (Académie Charles-Cros), and the Buxtehude Prize (Lübeck). In addition, she was awarded the Grand Prix du Disque (Académie Charles-Cros) sixteen times, the Léonie Sonnig Foundation Prize (Copenhagen), the Franz Liszt Prize (Budapest), the Golden Laser Prize of the Académie du Disque Français, and 1984 International Performer of the Year (New York City chapter of the American Guild of Organists). She has received numerous “Diapasons d’or” for her outstanding recordings. Marie-Claire Alain was a member of the Royal Academy of Music, Stockholm and the Royal Academy of Music, London. She was made a Chevalier in the Royal Order of Danneborg (Denmark). She held the rank of Commandeur in the Légion d’honneur, the Ordre national du Mérite and the Ordre des Arts et Lettres. French President François Hollande promoted Madame Alain to the rank of Grand Officier in the Ordre national du Légion d’honneur on July 14, 2012.

Marie-Claire Alain’s impressive list of recordings includes three versions each of the complete organ works of J.S. Bach, François Couperin, Nicolas de Grigny, and Jehan Alain, two versions each of the organ concerti (with orchestra) of G.F. Handel and the organ works of César Franck, and complete recordings of the organ works of Buxtehude, D’Aquin, Bruhns, Böhm, and Mendelssohn. She recorded organ concerti by Poulenc, Charles Chaynes, Haydn, C.P.E. Bach, Vivaldi, Mozart (Church Sonatas), and two recordings of Symphonie III of Saint-Saëns. Madame Alain appeared as a continuo artist on dozens of recordings, many with the Jean-François Paillard Chamber Orchestra. She also has recorded many works by Liszt, Pachelbel, Vierne, Widor, Messiaen, and others. Madame Alain performed and recorded with the legendary flutist Jean-Pierre Rampal and the acclaimed trumpet virtuoso Maurice André. For a complete discography, please consult Alain Cartayrade’s thorough listing in the French publication L’Orgue, Cahiers et Mémoires No. 56, 1996; the listing may also be read online: www.france-orgue.fr/ (to access the listing, type in “Marie-Claire” in the box marked “Recherche rapide organist” on the right side in the middle of the page).

Marie-Claire Alain married Jacques Gommier, a musician and choral conductor, in 1950; he died in 1992. Monsieur Gommier was a wonderful husband and often handled her correspondence and did musicological research for Madame Alain. He never complained or corrected anyone when he was addressed as ‘Monsieur Alain’ when he accompanied his wife on her many North American tours! They had two children: a son, Benoît, who died in 2009 at the age of 57, and a daughter living in Paris, Aurélie Decourt, musicologist and author of several books on the Alain family. Dr. Decourt organized a national French celebration and festival held in Saint-Germain-en-Laye for the 2011 centenary of the birth of Jehan Alain; she also appeared at Alain centenary events in the United States. [See articles in The Diapason: “Marie-Claire Alain—80th birthday tribute” (July 2006), “National French Centenary Celebration of the Birth of Jehan Alain” (November 2011), “Jehan Alain—The American Festival: Wichita State University” (January 2012), and “Jehan Alain: His Life and Works” (July 2012).] She took extraordinary care of her mother in her last years, and this was greatly appreciated by Madame Alain’s family and friends. In addition to her daughter, Marie-Claire Alain’s survivors include six grandchildren, one nephew, and two nieces (the three children of Jehan Alain: Lise, Agnès, and Denis).  

Madame Alain’s funeral took place at the Church of Saint-Germain-en-Laye on Friday, March 1 at 10:00 am. Her coffin was placed under the Grand Orgue in the church before and after the service. The church was full and the congregation was filled with her many friends from Saint-Germain-en-Laye and Paris, as well as musicians and many organists from Paris, France, and western Europe. Several organists played works of J. S. Bach and Jehan Alain for the service, including former Marie-Claire Alain students Vincent Warnier, Daniel Roth, Bruno Morin, Jean-Baptiste Robin, and Jean Ferrard. A small Gregorian choir sang parts of the Requiem Mass. Her daughter, Aurélie, gave a touching eulogy and spoke lovingly of her mother’s last difficult weeks and how optimistic she was about life. When she would ask her mother how she was feeling, she would respond that she was getting ‘better and better each day.’ As Madame Alain held the rank of Grand Officier in the Légion d’honneur, an honor guard carried the French flag into the church and gave a military homage when her coffin was taken outside the church at the end of the service. Marie-Claire Alain was buried next to her husband in the Gommier family plot in the “New Cemetery” of Saint-Germain-en-Laye.  

The world has lost a great artist—we have lost a great inspiration, an exceptional human being, and a great friend. Thank you, Madame Alain, for making our lives so rich and so full of beauty—we will never forget you. May your soul rest in peace, now and forever—Amen.

 

 

Ann Labounsky

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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