Aristide Cavaillé-Coll

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Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (February 4, 1811–October 13, 1899) was a French organ builder. He is considered by many to be the greatest organ builder of the 19th century. His innovations to the art of organ building permeated throughout the profession and influenced the course of organ building through the early twentieth century. The organ reform movement sought to return organ building to a more Baroque style, but in the last few decades of the twentieth century, Cavaillé-Coll's designs came back into fashion.

Contents 1 Life 2 Organ building innovations 3 Legacy 4 Existing Cavaillé-Coll organs 5 Further reading

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 magnificent instrument is a candidate to become a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

Cavaillé-Coll was also well known for his financial problems. The art of his handcrafted instruments, unparalleled at that time, was not enough to ensure the firm's survival. His firm was acquired in 1898, shortly before his death in Paris, by Charles Mutin. He continued in the organ business, but by World War II, the firm had almost disappeared.

Organ building innovations

Cavaillé-Coll is responsible for many innovations that revolutionized the face of organ building, performance, and composition. Cavaillé-Coll placed the Grand Orgue manual as the lowest manual instead of the Positif, 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 pipemaking and voicing techniques, thus creating a whole family of stops imitating orchestral instruments such as the bassoon, the oboe, and the english horn. He invented the harmonic flute stop, which, together with the montre, the gambe, and the bourdon, formed the fonds (foundations) of the organ. He introduced divided windchests which were controlled by ventils, allowing for the use of higher wind pressures. Higher wind pressures allowed for the organ to include many more stops of 8' (unison) pitch in every division, so complete fonds "choruses" could be placed in every division, designed to be superimposed on top of one another. 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 pneumatic assist 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 an ingenious pneumatic combination action system for his five-manual organ at Saint-Sulpice. All these innovations allowed the organist to execute a seamless crescendo from pianissimo all the way to fortissimo: something that had never before been possible by the organ. His organ at the church of Ste. Clotilde (proclaimed a basilica by Pope Leo XII in 1897) was the first to be built with several of these new features. Consequently, it influenced the works of César Franck, who was the titular organist there. The organ works of Franck have influenced generations of organist-composers who came after him.

Legacy

Marcel Dupré stated once that "composing for an orchestra is quite different than composing for an organ... with exception of Mr. Cavaillé-Coll's symphonic organs, in that case one has to observe an extreme attention when writing for such kind of majestic instruments." Almost a century beforehand, César Franck had ecstatically greeted his discovery of a Cavaillé-Coll instrument with words that sum up everything the builder was trying to do: "Mon nouvel orgue? C'ést une orchestre!" ("My new organ? It's an orchestra!")

Existing Cavaillé-Coll organs

• Parr Hall, Warrington, England
• Église de St. Sulpice, Paris
• Ste. Clotilde, Paris
• Saint Michael's Abbey, Farnborough
• Bolshoy Hall of Moscow Conservatory, Russia

Further reading

• Cavaillé-Coll, Cécile (1929). Aristide Cavaillé-Coll: Ses Origines, Sa Vie, Ses Oeuvres. Paris: Fischbacher.
• Douglass, Fenner (1999). Cavaillé-Coll and the French Romantic Tradition. New Haven: Yale University Press.de:Aristide Cavaillé-Coll

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