Aristide Cavaillé-Coll

Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (; 4 February 1811 – 13 October 1899) was a French organ builder. He has the reputation of being the most distinguished organ builder of the 19th century. He pioneered innovations in the art and science of organ building that permeated throughout the profession and influenced the course of organ building, composing and improvising through the early 20th century. As the author of scientific journal articles about the organ construction details, he published the results of his research and experiments. He was the inventor of the symphonic organ being able to follow smooth and immediate dynamic changes like a symphonic orchestra. This goal was reached by: a) invention of harmonic flue and reed stops, such as the ''flûte harmonique'', ''trompette harmonique'', ''clairon harmonique'', b) invention of divided windchest with 2-3 different wind pressure sections, c) creation of groups of stops (''jeux d'anches'' and ''jeux de fonds'') allowing for fast dynamics changes without taking hands out of the keyboards by the organist, d) organ specification planning on the base of ''orchestral quartet". His most famous organs were built in Paris in Saint-Denis Basilica (1841), Église de la Madeleine, Sainte-Clotilde Basilica (1859), Saint-Sulpice church (his largest instrument; behind the classical façade), Notre-Dame Cathedral (behind the classical façade), baron Albert de L'Espée's residence in Biarritz (moved finally to the Sacré-Cœur Basilica), and many others. After Cavaillé-Coll's death, Charles Mutin maintained the business into the beginning of the 20th century. The organ reform movement in the 20th century sought to return organ building to a more Baroque style; but since then, Cavaillé-Coll's designs have come back into fashion.

Life

Born in Montpellier, France, to Dominique, one in a line of organ builders, he showed early talent in mechanical innovation. He exhibited an outstanding fine art when designing and building his famous instruments. There is a before and an after Cavaillé-Coll. His organs are "''symphonic organs''": that is, they can reproduce the sounds of other instruments and combine them as well. His largest and greatest organ is in Saint-Sulpice, Paris. Featuring 100 stops and five manuals, this instrument, which unlike many others remains practically unaltered, is a candidate to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Cavaillé-Coll was also known for his financial problems - he focused mostly on the organ building art, leaving finance less attention. The art of his handcrafted instruments, unparalleled at that time, was not enough to ensure his firm's survival. It was taken over in 1898, shortly before his death, by Charles Mutin, who continued in the organ business, but by the 1940s the firm had almost disappeared.

Cavaillé-Coll died in Paris on 13 October 1899 and is buried in the Montparnasse Cemetery.

Organ building innovations

Cavaillé-Coll is responsible for many innovations that revolutionized organ building, performance and composition. Instead of the Positif, Cavaillé-Coll placed the Grand-Orgue manual as the lowest manual, and included couplers that allowed the entire tonal resources of the organ to be played from the ''Grand-Orgue''. He refined the English swell box by devising a spring-loaded (later balanced) pedal with which the organist could operate the swell shutters, thus increasing the organ's potential for expression. He adjusted pipe making and voicing techniques, thus creating a whole family of harmonic stops (flutes, trompettes, clairons) and stops imitating orchestral instruments such as the bassoon, the oboe and the english horn. He popularized the harmonic flute stop, which, together with the ''montre'' (principals), the ''gambe'' (strings) and the ''bourdon'' (flutes), formed the ''fonds'' (foundations) of the organ. He designed the "orchestral quartet" which referred to orchestral four colours of sound - principals, flutes, strings and reeds. He introduced divided windchests which were controlled by ventils. These allowed the use of higher wind pressures and for each manual's ''anches'' (reed stops) to be added or subtracted as a group by means of a pedal. Higher wind pressures allowed the organ to include many more stops of 8' (unison) pitch in every division, so complete ''fonds'' as well as reed choruses could be placed in every division, designed to be superimposed on top of one another. Sometimes he placed the treble part of the compass on a higher pressure than the bass, to emphasize melody lines and counteract the natural tendency of small pipes (especially reeds) to be softer.

For a mechanical tracker action and its couplers to operate under these higher wind pressures, pneumatic assistance provided by the Barker lever was required, which Cavaillé-Coll included in his larger instruments. This device made it possible to couple all the manuals together and play on the full organ without expending a great deal of effort. He also invented the pneumatic combination action system for his five-manual organ at Église Saint-Sulpice, Paris. All these innovations allowed a seamless crescendo from ''pianissimo'' all the way to ''fortissimo'', something never before possible on the organ. His organ at the Basilique Ste-Clotilde, Paris (proclaimed a basilica by Pope Leo XIII in 1897) was one of the first to be built with several of these new features. Consequently, it influenced César Franck, who was the titular organist there. The organ works of Franck have inspired generations of organist-composers who came after him. It is worth to underline that Cavaillé-Coll's concept of symphonic organ was developed during his whole professional career inspired by influenced organists his times.

Legacy

Marcel Dupré stated once that "composing for an orchestra is quite different from composing for an organ... with exception of Master Cavaillé-Coll's symphonic organs: in that case one has to observe an extreme attention when writing for such kind of instruments." Almost a century beforehand, César Franck had ecstatically said of the rather modest Cavaillé-Coll instrument at l'Église St.-Jean-St.-François in Paris with words that summed up everything the builder was trying to do: ''"Mon nouvel orgue ? C'est un orchestre !"'' ("My new organ? It's an orchestra!"). Franck later became organist of a much larger Cavaillé-Coll organ at St Clotilde in Paris. In 1878 Franck was featured recitalist on the four-manual Cavaillé-Coll organ at the Palais du Trocadéro in the Trocadéro area of Paris; this organ was subsequently rebuilt by V. & F. Gonzalez in 1939 and reinstalled in the Palais de Chaillot which replaced the Palais de Trocadéro, then rebuilt in 1975 by Danion-Gonzalez and relocated to the Auditorium Maurice Ravel in Lyon. Franck's Trois Pièces were premiered on the Trocadéro organ.

Film

A documentary film titled ''The Genius of Cavaillé-Coll'' was released in 2012 by Fugue State Films to mark both the 200th anniversary of Cavaillé-Coll's birth in 2011 and the 150th anniversary of his organ at St Sulpice. It won the DVD Documentary Award of the BBC Music Awards 2014.

Existing Cavaillé-Coll organs

''For a complete list of all organs by Cavaillé-Coll, see: ''

In Europe

In France

* Bergerac: Saint Jacques
*Bonsecours: Basilique Notre-Dame
*Caen

HOME


Content is Copyleft
Website design, code, and AI is Copyrighted (c) 2014-2017 by Stephen Payne


Consider donating to Wikimedia



As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases