〜Aristide Cavaille-Coll (part I) continued〜
By the close of the 1600s, more than a century before Aristide’s birth, French organ building had arrived at a mature style known today as its Classical period. Sometimes, this name is confusing: When talking about music, we use ‘Classical’ to refer to music of the late eighteenth century — especially the work of Haydn, Mozart and the young Beethoven. Music from 100 years earlier is typically called ‘Baroque’ but, for various reasons, music in France during that same time is often termed ‘Classical’, rather than ‘Baroque’. In part, this designation reflects the view that French music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries achieved a stability and uniqueness that later would contribute to the development of the so-called ‘Mixed Style’, which wedded French and Italian tastes. Regardless of the name we use, French organ building from this period also exhibited a stable set of features that identified it as a unique school of instrument building. To help us understand Cavaille-Coll’s work, we need to explore the features of Classical organ design.
Arguably the most famous characteristic of Classical French organs is the sound of their reeds. These reeds, or anches, as they are known in French, are prized for a kind of raucous quality. So fiery are these stops that, in the Classical organs, they cannot be played in combination with principal stops and choruses, especially not with mixtures — doing so just sounds ugly. Given the power and brilliance of such reeds, French organ builders expanded their use in organ specifications from individual stops (such as Trompettes and Cromornes at unison pitch) to choruses that included multiple Trompettes, either across different keyboards or duplicated within a single manual division — sometimes at 16’ (suboctave), 8’ (unison) and 4’ (superoctave) pitches. Such batteries of reeds became so popular that by the French Revolution in 1789 some of the largest organs boasted 8’ Trompette and 4’ Clairon on multiple divisions, as well as first and second Trompettes in a single division. This is the case in the 1774 Isnard organ at St. Maximin in southern France, for example. Indeed, in 1783 the King’s organ builder, François-Henri Clicquot, worked on the organ at Notre Dame, Paris, even adding 8’ Trompette and 4’ Clairon stops to the Echo division!
Despite their brilliance, and as with reeds generally, French Classical reeds begin to lose power and fullness in their higher registers. In other words, as the organist plays higher and higher toward the top of the keyboard, the reeds begin to sound thinner. And this fact brings us to another noteworthy feature of the Classical organ: the mounted Cornet. To strengthen the treble register of the reed chorus without changing the quality of their sound too much, French builders of this period routinely included this special stop on the Grand Orgue A Cornet stop is often composed of five ranks of pipes, all of them flute-like in character, but playing different pitches of the natural overtone series. Nearly always, this means a stop composed of the following five ranks: unison (8’), octave above the unison (4’), octave plus a perfect fifth above (22/3’), two octaves above (2’), and finally two octaves plus a major third above (13/5’). While all these numbers look a bit strange, the sounds they produce combine into a wonderfully bold yet beautiful tone that helps the trebles of the reed stops sound fuller and stronger. To help the Cornet sound especially pronounced, French builders placed these pipes higher than all the others on the Grand Orgue. Standing on a small windchest that was elevated above the rest of the Grand Orgue — a design feature shared with organs from the Low Countries (present-day Belgium and Holland) — this stop enjoyed a more commanding sound thanks to this added height. (To be continued.)
Your Friend,
Justin