The Genius of Cavaille-Coll

A film by Fugue State Films exploring the life of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the greatest organ builder of the 19th century and also probably the most famous of all organ builders. Creator of such instruments as those in St Sulpice, Paris, and St Ouen, Rouen, he devised a new way of building organs that led directly to the development of the French Romantic school of organ composition.

Building an organ in nineteenth-century France

Drew Cantrill-Fenwick traces the processes whereby an organ was build for La Madeleine, Paris, by an increasingly influential Aristide Cavaille-Coll.  His archival research allows us to see, stage by stage, the construction history of this much-lauded instrument.  The project was a multi-disciplinary affaire in which the influence of the artisan was replaced by that of the scholar, the administrator, and the politician.

Organs, liturgy, and spaces at Lincoln Cathedral before 1702

Magnus Williamson recounts the archival and archeological detective work that has taken place at Lincoln Cathedral, in conjunction with the Byrd quatercentenary.  By bringing the building in line with post-Restoration practice in 1702, the Dean and Chapter also ended a spatial arrangement which had once generated the rich pre-Reformation tradtions of organs and voices in ‘alternatim’.  The characteristics of the building, and their musical implications, are probed in detail.