Saturday, September 19, 2015
Today and tomorrow, all over France, public buildings are open to the public at no charge. Some which are never, ever open (like the President's residence le Palais d'Elysee and Le Quai d'Orsay) admit visitors.
L'Eglise de Saint Vincent, where I attend the Saturday evening "vigil" Mass, opened its organ loft to visitors this morning for a guided tour by the Chief Organist, Henri Ormieres, as part of the Jours du Patrimoine. Saint Vincent is a monument historique and as such, gets 50% of any money for repairs and restoration from the French state, that it is a house of worship in a country more strictly secular than the U.S. notwithstanding.
Quibbles aside, the organ is one of the best I have ever heard, anywhere. It compares with that of Saint Sulpice in Paris, whose most famous organist was Cesar Franck; it compares with Saint Clotilde, also in Paris, which I heard in June. The sonority of Saint Vincent's organ is out of this world: M. Ormieres explained that this is due to the homogeneity of tone throughout the instrument's register.
Which itself is due to the genius of its maker, Theodore Puget. Puget was the chief competitor of the maker of Romantic organs, Aristide Cavaille-Coll. Cavaille-Coll created enormous, extraordinarily decorative organs, but he also pioneered innovations that permitted the sound of the organ to imitate a "symphonic" sound. The Puget organ of Saint Vincent is "Romantic" in being encased in a wooden cabinet painted burnt sienna and highly burnished using a wax made of boiled rabbit skins. ("Yes!" --boiled rabbit skins.)
The organ is also "symphonic" in its capacity to resonate in the church's vast space. There are German organs that have incorporated a carillon, although Saint Vincent's does not --it uses a separate carillon of over fifty bells. In the world of organs, German organs are the most technically advanced, although French organs by Puget and Cavaille-Coll bear comparison. Spain and Portugal, on the other hand, never incorporated the 19th century advances and remain "Baroque" in style.
To help us understand better how the organ of Saint Vincent achieves its wonderful sound, M. Ormieres took us "backstage" --into the guts of the organ, behind the buffet, as the organ cabinet is called. There we were confronted with "pillows" that inflate and deflate mechanically --and regularly. That regularity is essential to the homogenous sound of the organ. Before electrical bellows were invented in the 1930s, souffleurs --bellows pumpers-- were employed to keep the air moving through the organ pipes when the organist touched the keys.
Which gets to the difference between a piano and an organ. The piano is a percussion instrument, the organ is closer to a bagpipe --or tens of bagpipes made to work in concert via the medium of a keyboard or keyboards. The organ at Saint Vincent has four keyboards: three resembling a piano keyboard, the fourth a keyboard of pedals worked by the organist's feet.
The organ then, is more like a symphony orchestra than a piano Indeed, 20th century American innovations to organ manufacture have resulted in organs that mimic individual symphony orchestra instruments like the oboe. The organ at Saint Vincent does not sound like these organs, which were built for theaters like Radio City Music Hall. (Indeed, the organ there --the Mighty Wurlitzer-- is the largest Wurlitzer built, having four keyboards above the pedals and fifty-six pipes.) The sound of the organ at Radio City Music Hall is enormous, but for my taste, it lacks the subtlety of the French organs.
The organ was originally a pagan instrument that developed in the Middle East and traveled West. The simplest version was small and not used to play religious music until the Middle Ages, when it was originally used to accompany monks singing services, then played to provide incidental music to break up the flow of words of the liturgy and chant.
Every organ sounds different, and every organ needs constant maintenance; and eventually, rebuilding, which poses a dilemma for the chief organist: During the rebuilding, the organ cannot be used. At Saint Vincent, the small organ behind the altar was used until the 'great' organ was back in service again. And, during rebuilding, a great organ's life hangs in the balance: a clumsy rebuilding can destroy the original sound; a great organ builder can breathe second life into a venerable instrument, as happened at Saint Vincent.
"A great organ builder has to be a great musician as well as a great engineer", M. Ormieres says. "An organ builder with no 'ear' will not be able to build a great organ."
Saint Vincent was lucky. The the half million euros needed for restoration of the organ took four years to raise. Renovations began in 2001 and were finally completed in 2005. The builder was careful, M. Ormieres confided:
"For the first two days he did not do anything, he just listened to the sound of the organ and studied it --I knew doing that he was 'getting to know' the organ, adding to his already great knowledge. And that the rebuilding would restore the organ to its original sound."
The ability to hear this extraordinary instrument keeps me coming back to Saint Vincent, a half an hour from Caunes. I have become "an organ groupie".
(Monsieur Henri Ormieres will be playing a concert at Central Synagogue in Manhattan Tuesday, October 18 2016.)
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