French Romantic organ music

Traces the elements that Marcel Dupré's biggest organ work has in common with the better-known epics of Messiaen, one of his star pupils; but these features ultimately matter less than the stylistic differences separating the two men. This article is based on a talk originally given at Monash University during April 2018.

A late nineteenth-century renaissance in French organ building partitioned organist, organ, and audience while expanding the instrument’s size and adding "swell" boxes shuttering pipes from public view. In theater, concert, and church organs, the organist is hidden behind the console or is seated in an adjoining chamber, under the floor, or high in a loft. Cary Howie’s book, "Claustrophilia" (2007), examines how hermetic cloisters might be understood as erotic spaces in medieval literature and practice. In this paper, I argue that the enclosure of the organ, along with its promise of campy power, made it attractive to gay men in the 20th century, inscribing it as an extension of the closet. According to Cameron Carpenter, "most American organists are gay or at least […] questioning," while Virgil Fox complained that organists have historically been "hiding behind the woodwork." Popular French literary depictions of the organ, notably Leroux’s "Le Fantôme de l’Opéra" (1910) and Verne’s "Vingt mille lieues sous les mers" (1870), portray it as an expressive mode of repressed, reclusive villains. Rops’s etching, "L’Organiste du Diable" (1886), shows a nude woman playing an organ bedecked with penises propped against each other in a homoerotic configuration, while the film adaptation of Jean-Claude Forest’s "Barberella" (1964), introduces the "Excessive Machine," an organ-like musical orgasmatron that houses victims in its bellows, dousing them with lethal sexual energy. These texts and images indicate toward a French-influenced rendering of the organ in the 20th century that registered it as an enclosure for queer mechanisms and episodes.

The phenomenon of music has unique axiomatic features such as arousing emotions, provoking thoughts, providing spiritual atmospheres. For music performers who perform, music teachers who teach, and researchers who investigate such delicate art crafts, it is an intellectual responsibility and inevitable requirement to not only read notational documents but also have as much background information as possible in order to obtain and transmit abovementioned features in the most correct way possible for their performances and classes.
In this thesis, I primarily aim to ‘‘uncover’’ the existence of the symbolism of a denominational Christian credo known as the Holy Trinity in César Franck’s Prélude, fugue et variation pour orgue, Op.18 as a musico-rhetorical tool employed by the composer on purpose. Hence, this can also provide music performers, music teachers and researchers who are interested in playing/teaching Franck, Franck studies, religious music, musico-rhetoric, numeric symbolism, and Romantic organ repertoire a more tangible and reliable information about the piece. People who are interested in theology and/or aesthetics studies can also benefit from this work.

En esta comunicación se da noticia de los modelos de órganos pequeños que el organero español Aquilino Amezua construía de manera seriada en sus talleres y se analiza brevemente cada uno. La construcción de instrumentos en serie es una característica de la adaptación de la organería al capitalismo: se busca que los instrumentos para las iglesias menos pudientes fueran baratos, de forma que estuvieran construidos en serie de acuerdo a modelos establecidos de probada eficacia; sin embargo, dada la pobreza de las instituciones religiosas en buena parte de España en ese momento (inicios del S. XX), Amezua construyó pocos órganos de este modo.

In the early nineteenth century, the Paris Conservatory adopted various aspects of Italian teaching methods, especially partimenti. This French tradition began with Charles-Simon Catel’s treatise (1802) and was developed in the works of François Bazin (1857), Théorore Dubois (1891), and Charles Koechlin (1927–30). Henri Challan’s 380 Basses et chants donnés (1960) is one of the last publications of the French partimento tradition. The present article gives an overview of Challan’s treatise. Challan presents various cadences and sequences that also appear in the organ works of César Franck, Gabriel Fauré, Alexandre Guilmant, and Louis Vierne. Such voice-leading models were integral elements of the improvisational practice of these organist-composers. Among the most typical voice-leading patterns of the French romantic style are cadences that I term »plagal variants,« since they deviate from typical plagal cadences. Many stylistic characteristics typical for composers of this school were influenced by the partimento tradition at the Paris Conservatory.