The Influence of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll on

French Romantic Organ Building and Organ Music

Timothy Handle

University of South Dakota

November 11, 2013

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The organ is an ancient instrument that has gone through few

fundamental changes over the millennia. It was during the reign

of Ptolemy II, Euergetes (circa 265 BCE) that an engineer from

Alexandria called Ctesibius created or improved upon a hydraulic

water organ (figure 1.) A pipe was placed on top of an opening of

a wind chest and air pressure was increased or decreased by

adding removing water from an attached cistern connected to the

wind chest, which created a clear and steady tone.1 1600 years

later, Cavaillé-Coll (1811-1899) took a similar idea of using

multiple chambers to act as a reservoir to pump air into,

allowing for a steady and continuous flow of air into the organ

pipes (figure 2.) Using knowledge of previous organs and master

organ builders, Cavaillé-Coll was able to push the pipe organ out

of the Baroque and Classical periods and into the Romantic

period. With his organs, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll fundamentally

changed the performance practices of and the literature composed

for the organ by creating greater control of dynamics through the

improvement of and greater use of swell divisions, the creation 1 William Leslie Sumner. The organ: its evolution, principles of construction and use 3rd

ed. (London: MacDonald, 1962), p. 29.Source Fig 1: Peter Williams, A New History of the Organ: From the

Greeks to the Present Day. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), 23.Source Fig 2: Ibid., 167.

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of new orchestral based voicings, and the incorporation of recent

mechanical developments.

Figure 1. Hero of Alexandria’s Hydraulis.

Figure 2. Barker Lever in a Cavaillé-Coll organ.

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Few organ builders are remembered through the ages; during

the seventeenth century, there was Gottfried Silbermann, during

the first part of the eighteenth century, there was Dom Bédos of

France, and then in the middle third of the nineteenth century

there were Cavaillé-Coll of France and Henry Willis of England.

The legacy of Cavaillé-Coll spanned to not only the more than 600

instruments he worked on, but also to the development of new

organ building techniques pioneered by him and the resulting new

compositions that took advantage of them.

When writing his avant-propos for his fifth organ symphony,

Charles Marie-Widor stated about his work that:

The honor for it redounds to French industry and the glory to Mr. A. Cavaillé-Coll. It is he who conceived the diverse wind pressures, the divided windchests, the pedal systems and the combination registers, he who applied for the first time Barker’s pneumatic motors, created the family of harmonic stops, reformed and perfected the mechanics to sucha point that each pipe—low or high, loud or soft—instantly obeys the touch of the finger, the keys becoming as light asthose of a piano—the resistances being suppressed, renderingthe combination of [all] the forces of the instrument practical. From this result: the possibility of confining anentire division in a sonorous prison—opened or closed at will—the freedom of mixing timbres, the means of intensifying them or gradually tempering them, the freedom of tempos, the sureness of attacks, the balance of contrasts, and, finally, a whole blossoming of wonderful colors—a rich palette of the most diverse shads: harmonic

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flutes, gambas, bassoons, English horns, trumpets, celestes,flue stops and reed stops of a quality and variety unknown before.2

Aristide Cavaillé-Coll was born in Montpellier, France on

February fourth, 1811 to Dominique Cavaillé-Coll another organ

builder of some fame in Languedoc, France. Aristide’s

Grandfather, Jean-Pierre Cavaillé, was known for the large organs

he built in Barcelona. This family’s legacy for organ building

can be traced back to before 1700.3 While in his teens, Aristide

learned free reed voicings with his work with Harmoniums and was

able to study batteries with rank upon rank of reeds in Spanish

organs. This Spanish influence on Aristide’s organs would become

very apparent in later years with his great use of solo and

chorus reeds.

Perhaps the greatest accomplishment of Cavaillé-Coll was not

any single invention, but his ability to incorporate the best

aspects of organs and organ development from across Europe into

his own organs. In France, many of the churches and cathedrals

were falling into disrepair by the turn of the nineteenth century

2 Charles Marie-Widor. Symphonie V (Madison, Wis.: A-R Editions, 1993) xviii.

3 William Leslie Sumner. The organ: its evolution, principles of construction and use 3rded. (London: MacDonald, 1962), 210.

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following the French Revolutionary wars. The organs that remained

in the Catholic churches and cathedrals were typical of the

French organ in that the primary importance was placed on color

and contrast. Since France remained Catholic, the organs that

were built during the eighteenth century placed emphasis on

colors in order to highlight the Gregorian chant melodies on

which the music was based. “Every stop in a French organ of the

eighteenth century came to have an appointed purpose, and this

purpose was entirely dictated by liturgical use.”4

This French concern with color, and the association of certain

colors to various points of the Mass can be seen dating back to

1510 with the organ at St. Michel in Bordeaux built by L. Gondet.

Gondet listed his stop combinations as:5

Le Grand Jeu: 8’ + 4’ + 2 2/3’ + 2’ + 1 1/3’ + 1’ and Flutes 8’ + 4’Jeu de Papegay: 16’ + 8’Le Cornès: 16’ + 2’ + 1 1/3’Les Cymbales:16’ + 8’ + 1 1/3’ and Flute 4’Le Fleute: 16’Les Chantres: 16’ + Flute 8’Les Fleutes d’alemant: 4’ + Flute 8’

4 Nicolas Thistlethwaite and Geoffrey Webber. The Cambridge companion to the organ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 10.

5 Peter Williams. The European organ, 1450-1850 (London: Batsford, 1966), 173.

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La Petite cimbale: 16’ + 1 1/3’Les Gros Cornette: 16’ + 8’ + 2’ + 1 1/3Le grand jeu doulx: 16’ + 8’ + 4’ + FlutesJeu de grans cornette: 16’ + 2’ + 1 1/3’ + Flute 4’Jeu de chantres: 16’ + 8’ + Flute 8’

Two separate schools of organ building developed during this

time: the Italian and Southern French single manual organs which

sometimes included a short octave recíts, with no or limited

pedal boards with separately drawn resisters and the northern

organs of Germany, the Netherlands, and Scandinavia with two to

three manuals, large pedal boards, and multiple ranked principal

choruses with many mutation and imitation stops. These two

schools developed due to Protestants desire for powerful organs

to lead congregational singing and the Catholic emphasis on

plainchant and color stops. Prior to the Revolution of 1830, with

the French organs lacking a substantial pedal board and with the

use of less powerful stops, the congregation often sang a

cappella or with only a serpent. Other times the serpent acted as

a surrogate pedal for the organ. These small organs dominated the

organ building scene in France for many years; the only large

scale organ installations prior to Cavaillé-Coll’s installation

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at Saint-Denis in 1841 were Saint-Sulpice in 1781 and Notre Dame

in 1786. Following the war, even small organs started to

disappear from France with only fifty organs total being built or

even repaired between 1824 through 1834.6 Even the great Paris

Conservatory only had a two manual organ with no pedal board up

until 1821.7

In 1832, the twenty-one year old Aristide Cavaillé-Coll met

Giovanni Rossini who was on tour. Cavaillé-Coll was in Toulouse

working on a small free reed “Poïkilorgue” that he and his father

had just invented. Rossini was so impressed he implored them both

to go to Paris for they would find great success there.8 After

getting his affairs in order and after the cholera outbreak

settled down in Paris, the next year in 1833, young Cavaillé-Coll

journeyed forth.

At about this same time in the early 1830s, the Englishman

John Abbey travelled to France to sell his inventions that were

failing to catch on in England. He brought with him the Alexander

66. Frank Newmann Speller III, “Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, organ builder” (DMA diss., University of Colorado, 1968), microfilm, 11.

77. Peter Williams. The European organ, 1450-1850 (London: Batsford, 1966), 203.

88. William Sumner. The organ: its evolution, principles of construction and use 3rd ed. (London: MacDonald, 1962), 211.

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Cumming’s improved bellows and magazines that allowed for greater

air pressure and consistency, Samuel Green’s Venetian swell, and

the refined English voicings.9 These improvements, while failing

to take hold in England, would soon come to dominate the French

organ-building scene and greatly influence the work of Cavaillé-

Coll. The entrance of Cavaillé-Coll into Paris and the arrival of

John Abbey marked a major change in French organ building. During

the decade spanning 1834-1844, over 400 organs were built or

repaired in France, or nearly nine times more than the previous

decade.10

When Cavaillé-Coll arrived in Paris, he met André Borel, a

leading engineer whom was taken aback by Cavaillé-Coll’s

mathematical and engineering understanding. Borel quickly sent

out letters of introduction on behalf of Cavaillé-Coll to the

leading physicists and musicians in Paris.11 It was through these

connections that he met Christophe Berton, the chair of the

search committee to commission a new organ at the Basilica of St.

99. William Sumner. The organ: its evolution, principles of construction and use 3rd ed. (London: MacDonald, 1962), 211.

1010. Frank Newmann Speller III, “Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, organ builder”(DMA diss., University of Colorado, 1968), microfilm, 12.

1111. William Leslie Sumner. The organ: its evolution, principles of construction and use3rd ed. (London: MacDonald, 1962), 212.

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Denis. Although several leading organ builders had already

submitted designs and there were only three days left for the

competition, he encouraged Cavaillé-Coll to submit a design. In

that three day time span, Cavaillé-Coll prepared an entire

schematic complete down to the smallest measurements and

compositions, all without any contact with his father. Cavaillé-

Coll, at twenty-two years of age, was awarded the first major

organ refit or installation in France in nearly half a century.

The organ at St-Denis was so successful that Emperor Napoleon III

ordered all the cathedral organs throughout France be rebuilt and

suggested Cavaillé-Coll for the job.

Cavaillé-Coll’s winning proposal for St. Denis was an odd

combination of classical requirements with “eccentric modern

improvements,” all of which could only fit into an immense

instrument.12 Between the initial proposal dated October 7, 1833

and the second document dated January 10, 1834, the size and

scope of the organ was reduced. It went from eighty-four stops to

seventy-one. There was a marked reduction in the number of

mutation ranks, instead favoring stronger batteries of reeds and

1212. Fenner Douglass. Cavaillé-Coll and the musicians: a documented account of his first thirty years in organ building (Raleigh: Sunbury, 1980) 13.

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harmonic flutes in the manuals. The Spanish style horizontally

mounted Trompette expressive was abandoned, instead returning to the

traditional vertical mounting of reeds. The total number of pipes

was reduced from 5621 to 5301. Additional couplers would make it

possible to combine all five manuals together. At the time, this

proposition was impossible, for the resistance of the keys that

would be created by the coupling would render the organ all but

unplayable.13 The final stop list for the St. Denis organ, as

completed one month after its inaugural concert on October

nineteenth, 1841 was:14

Pédale, F to F 2 octavesFlutes

1. Flûte overte 32’ 16’ 8’ 4’2. Gros nasard ou quinte de 8

Reeds3. Basse-contre 16’4. Basson 8’5. Bombarde 16’6. Première trompette 8’ 4’7. Deuxième trompette 8’ 4’Positif, 4½ octaves from C to F

Flutes1. Bourdon 16’ 8’2. Salicional 8’3. Prestant 4’

4. Flûte 4’ 2’5. Nasard ou quinte 3’6. Tierce7. Cymbale IV8. Fourniture IV

1313. Ibid. 18.1414. Ibid. 27, 28, 29.

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Reeds and Harmonic stops9. Flûte harmonique 8’ 4’ 2’10. Trompette harmonique

8’ 4’11. Cor d’harmonie et

hautbois 8’12. Cromorne 8’13. Tremblant

Grand Orgue, 4½ octaves, fromC to F

Flutes1. Montre 32’ 16’ 8’2. Viole 8’3. Bourdon 16’ 8’4. Flûte traversière

harmonique 8’ 4’ 2’5. Prestant 4’6. Nasard ou quinte 3’7. Grosse fourniture IV8. Grosse cymbal IV9. Fourniture IV10. Cymbale IV

Grand Orgue, Reeds11. Première trompette

harmonique 8’12. Deuxième trompette

harmonique 8’

13. Basson et cor anglais8’ 4’

14. Cornet à pavaillon 8’

Bombarde, 4½ octaves, from Cto F

Flutes1. Grand cornet VII2. Bourdon 16’, 8’3. Flûte 8’4. Prestant 4’5. Nasard ou quinte 3’6. Doublette 2’

Reeds7. Bombarde 16’8. Première trompette

harmonique 8’ 4’9. Deuxième trompette

harmonique 8’ 4’

Récit-Echo Expressive, 4½ octaves, from C to F

Flutes1. Bourdon 8’2. Flûte harmonique 8’ 4’ 2’3. Quinte

Reeds4. Trompette harmonique 8’ 4’5. Voix Humaine harmonique 8’

When Cavaillé-Coll started the work on the St. Denis organ,

there was no system capable of coupling the manuals and stops

without creating key action so stiff that the instrument lost its

agility. Cavaillé-Coll recognized this and in a letter to St.

Denis Church dated on the second of December 1839, he discussed

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the problems of stiff key action that occurs with larger organs.

As more stops are engaged and additional manuals coupled,

combined with an increase in air pressure, the force required to

depress the key by the organist increases due to “(1) the springs

holding the pallets closed, and the friction in the mechanism

linking keys to pallets, and (2) the pressure exerted on the

pallets by wind from the bellows.”15

Cavaillé-Coll wrote later in that letter about how he was to

overcome the resistance created by the air pressure through a

device recently patented by the Englishman Charles Barker.

A few experienced builders have attempted to modify the pallets to decrease the wind pressure on them. We were also engaged in this attempt when Mr. Barker brought us an appliance of his invention, patented in France, which appliance gives the keyboard all the lightness on might desire, reduces the key dip, and mas no change in the designof the pallets.16

Cavaillé-Coll gained his fame by borrowing, improving upon,

and incorporating ideas and innovation that he collected through

his travels. In addition to use his use of and improvement upon

the Barker lever, Cavaillé-Coll incorporated the Cummings

15 14. Fenner Douglass. Cavaillé-Coll and the musicians: a documented account of his first thirty years in organ building (Raleigh: Sunbury, 1980) 22.

1615. Ibid. 23.

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reservoir bellows, the Abbe Venetian shutters, and the English

composition pedals.17

The use of the Cummings bellows and higher air pressures

allowed Cavaillé-Coll to create more unified sounding ranks and

ensembles capable of producing even tone quality throughout the

whole rank. Cavaillé-Coll devised a system that was able to

produce the correct amount of airflow with the correct amount of

air pressure so that a note would speak properly and fully. Prior

to this work, organs would sound harsh in the lower range, and

thin and weak in the upper range as he noted in the letter to St.

Denis:18

Until now, the wind-pressure used in organs has been no greater than 5 to 10 cm of water: these figures are the limits between which all the instruments that we have measured with a wind gauge have been voiced. Indeed, flue stops seem likely to speak well at these pressures, but it is obvious that reed stops require greater pressure, particularly in the upper registers.Nevertheless, organ building habitually ignores this essential point: each builder chooses the pressure he deems appropriate to his instrument, so that the same wind-pressure is used for every stop, without distinction. The

17 16. Ibid. 22.17. Peter Williams. The European organ, 1450-1850 (London: Batsford, 1966)

201.18 18. Fenner Douglass. Cavaillé-Coll and the musicians: a documented account of his first thirty years in organ building (Raleigh: Sunbury, 1980) 19.

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result is that the flue stops are in danger of being overblown; while the reeds, in contrast, are undersupplied.

Cavaillé-Coll went on further in the letter to compare the

five to ten centimeters of pressure produced by the organs of

that time to what was required to produce sound in a trumpet or

French horn. “Now if we blow on a wind instrument such as the

French horn or trumpet, we readily observe that 50 cm. and more

are required to make them sound. High pitches demand the greatest

pressures, low pitches the least, and the intermediate pitches

require pressures between the two extremes.”19 The way Cavaillé-

Coll accomplished this was by using tiered reservoirs. While the

bellows produced even pressure, the tiered system allowed ranks

and octaves within the ranks to speak consistently and fully.

With the ability granted by the new Cummings bellows to

create different air pressures for different ranks and steady air

pressure through the entire length of a note, Cavaillé-Coll was

able to create new sounds through harmonics or overblown stops.

Although harmonic ranks had been around since the sixteenth

century, it was the mathematical and engineering talents of

1919. Fenner Douglass. Cavaillé-Coll and the musicians: a documented account of his first thirty years in organ building (Raleigh: Sunbury, 1980) 19.

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Cavaillé-Coll that helped create formulas to aid in building and

tuning all pipes as well as locating the precise locations to

place various aspects of a pipe in order to create certain

sounds. He deduced that “the cylindrical pipe is equal to the

quotient of the speed of the sound by the number of vibrations

less 5/3rds the diameter of the pipe.”20 Using this and similar

other ideas, he created new ranks of harmoniques which are large

open cylindrical pipe of metal that is twice the standard

speaking length. As described by George Audsley in writing about

the Flûte harmonique 8’ in the Great of the concert-room organ by

Cavaillé-Coll in the Town Hall of Manchester (1893):21

The lowest harmonic pipe of this stop is g1…. The pipe is 2.37 inches in diameter and 29½ inches in effective length from the mouth line. At a distance of 13 inches from the lower lip of the mouth, a hole 1/8 inch in diameter is pierced…. The mouth is 1¾ inches in width and 11/16 inch in height, having a straight upper lip, and the languid closelyand finely nicked. Through the agency of the small perforation in the body, which prevents the formation of a node in the middle of the internal column of air, and by thepipe being slightly overblown, a not is produced which is about an octave of that which normally belongs to a pipe of the length of 29½ inches.

20 20. Frank Newmann Speller III, “Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, organ builder” (DMA diss., University of Colorado, 1968), microfilm, 57.

2121. George Audsley. Organ-stops and their artistic registration: names, forms, construction, tonalities, and offices in scientific combination (New York: The H.W. Gray Co., 1921) 135.

15

The use of differential air pressure as well as higher air

pressure overall became standard by the 1830s in England

following a visit by Cavaillé-Coll to William Hill’s workshop.

This visit greatly influenced not only Hill, but also many of the

other English organ builders of the time. The use of the higher

air pressure system was seen with Hill’s Tuba Mirablis in

Birmingham’s Town Hall (1840).22 The continued effect of

Cavaillé-Coll on organ building in England was further seen while

comparing Henry Willis’ organ at Albert Hall (1871) with

Cavaillé-Coll’s organ at St. Sulpice (1862) and the close

relationship the two organs share with their voicings and ranks.

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Cavaillé-Coll created several more ranks now possible with

the improved air pressure available to him. In addition to the

Flûte harmonique he created harmonic reeds such as the Trompete

harmonique. With the accurately placed piercing in the back of

the pipe to prevent the formation of nodes in the column of air,

these stops were able to be combined into rich families of sound

22 22. Frank Newmann Speller III, “Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, organ builder” (DMA diss., University of Colorado, 1968), microfilm, 55.23 23. Ibid., 556

16

instead of only as unreliable solo voices as was the case in

earlier organs.24 When combined with the powerful Montre metal

foundation stop, the string gambe, and the bourdon, created the

fonds or foundations of the organ.25

Cavaillé-Coll also created and improved upon a large family

of additional orchestral tones that could both blend together and

speak as a solo voice. These included the flute and trompette

harmonique, clairons, extending the hautbois by adding a bassoon

as well as altering its tone quality to a more orchestral

mixture. Instead of using mutations in the traditional organ

sound, he used them to create additional orchestral colors. In

his 32’ fundamental, he included a 4 4/7’ septième, or the

seventh harmonic of that pipe. This led Louis Vierne to describe

the sound “like a master of double-basses.”26 Cavaillé-Coll

incorporated earlier Baroque style bombarde divisions to the

manuals adding brilliance to the organ through the open reed

sounds of the bombarde, trompette, clarion, and grand cornets

VII. Later in his career, he would expand on this and return to 2424. Peter Williams and Barbar Owen. The New Grove musical instruments series: the

organ (London: WW Norton & Co., 1988).2525. William Leslie Sumner. The organ: its evolution, principles of

construction and use 3rd ed. (London: MacDonald, 1962), 213.2626. Ibid. 212.

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the Spanish tradition, of which he grew up in, by placing the

reeds horizontal with the open ends pointing into the church.

The fundamental changes to the performance practices of and

the literature composed for the organ by creating greater control

of dynamics through the improvement of and greater use of swell

divisions, the creation of new orchestral based voicings, and the

incorporation of recent mechanical developments continued into

the future. Cavaillé-Coll created a detachable council able to be

moved to several locations allowing the performer to see his

audience. He standardized the manual layout with the lowest to

uppermost manuals to Grand orgue, positif, récit, bombarde.

Modern organs continue follow the same layout with the exception

that the positif and the grand orgue are reversed.

In England, following Cavaillé-Coll’s visit to Hill and

Willis, the organs grew in size. Prior to the meeting the organs

were very small; the Cathedrals at Canterbury, Carlisle, Choster,

Durham, Ely, Exeter, Gloucester, Lincoln, Norwich, Oxford,

Peterborough, Wells, and Chichester did not even have a pedal

board.27 In the 1870s-80s Cavaillé-Coll organs were imported into

2727. William Leslie Sumner. The organ: its evolution, principles of construction and use 3rd ed. (London: MacDonald, 1962), 216.

18

North American were they had a large and lasting effect.

Companies continued up through recent years to try to prove their

connections to Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.

In a symposium held in on the centennial of Cavaillé-Colls

death at McGill University in 1999, Jacquelin Rochette presented

how his company, Casavant organs, had an unbroken line of descent

from Cavaillé-Coll. He asserted that the founder of the company,

Claver Casavant, spent several years in France studying with

Cavaillé-Coll; their company imported and purchased pipework from

Cavaillé-Coll; and when the Cavaillé-Coll company was floundering

after Aristide’s death, Casavant was the targeted company with

whom to merge.28 It should be noted, however, that numerous

builders in North America purchased pipe work from Cavaillé-Coll;

many builders went France to study the Cavaillé-Coll organs

including Ernest M. Skinner; the merging of the two companies

failed. This lecture did display the profound influence of

Cavaillé-Coll has on organ builders through the current day.

While technology and aesthetic tastes in organ building have

changed over the past century, modern organ building continues to

2828. Jacquelin Rochette, “The influence of Cavaillé-Coll chez Casavant”(lecture, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, July 1, 1999).

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grow using ideas pioneered by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll over 150

years ago.

20

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21

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