The Cavaillé-Coll organ of Orléans Cathedral, which underwent a questionable restauration at the end of the 1970s, has been restored back to its original state by organ builder Bernard Hurvy. At the time of this writing, a series of inauguration recitals is underway, and the Dutch label Festivo has published a CD recording of the restored organ, with Louis Robilliard playing Widor's Symphonie V and Symphonie Romane.
Hello acc, Good news indeed. Thanks for the links regarding the CD ect. Regards Raymond
Hi Acc
Glad to hear that the C.C. organ at Orleans has been restored to original specs.I'll have to twist my bank manager's real hard for this one,can't do anything with the credit card,it's bust.
That is good news.
judy tooley
Actually, the most important point (in my view) it the restauration to its original pitch, which the previous "restauration" had raised from A=415Hz (I think) to A=440Hz.Originally Posted by Caddis
CC organs are just wonderful, aren't they? I must hunt out the recording and buy it, thanks for the heads up, acc!!
That's a nice bit of news indeed. I've not heard of Bernard Hurvy (but that's not saying much since I don't know a great deal anyway), does he specialse particularly in C-C restorations or just restorations in general?
Interesting point about the tuning too - something to annoy the hell out of players with perfect pitch
Music is made to transform the states of the soul, for an hour or an instant (J. Alain)
I have perfect pitch, so can relate to that
I also have perfect pitch. I never need a tuning device for my guitar.
I laughed at the guys in my class with them. I just sit there tuning
my guitar by ear. It even amazed the teacher.
judy tooley
According to this web page, Hurvy does restorations on organs of all types, but the list of instruments he has already worked on (further down the page) definitely shows a predominance of CC organs.
I'll have to dig out my Frenchlish dictionary to get the gist of that, but it's nice to know the work of CC is in good hands. They are truly the organists' organs.
My wife has perfect pitch and I have quite good relative pitch so between the two of us, we're well insufferable when it comes to getting an ensemble or a choir in tune. Although, she tends to be worse off when it comes to transposition and it's one of the reasons she doesn't sing in the choir anymore because we will often transpose unaccompanied motets (that and the fact that the altos are rarely in tune anyway). She just can't read in one key and sing in another (understandable of course).
Judy, I also tune my guitar (in fact any guitar) by ear once I know what an A or a D is. A few weeks work experience tuning organs when I was a lad had me well and truly knowing what a perfect Perfect 5th was
Now then, this A=415 business has my curiousity piqued, because that's basically our G#, ie, what we presently call Baroque pitch (although by whose definition I don't know because there was no real standard in Baroque pitch anyway - it was all over the place). A=435 I could understand since that's the former "French" pitch (or Continental pitch as it's sometimes called) which was actually passed as a law around the mid 1800s.
But A=415? Hmm, ... excuse me whilst I both ruminate and ponder ...
Music is made to transform the states of the soul, for an hour or an instant (J. Alain)
soubasse - I have real problems with the so called "authentic movment" having adopted the totally stupid 415Hz as their de facto standard ... it's far worse to hear a C major symphony played a quarter of tone flat: makes my skin crawl to the top of my head and jump off ...
I know what you mean. I can't stand it, too
I know, it's annoying isn't it? I mean, who decided - and why - that "Baroque pitch" so called was 415?! There was never any standard across all of Europe, each country had their own, quite arbitrary idea of what an A was and sometimes even within the same country an A on a church organ could be anywhere up to 4 semitones lower or higher than a A on a harpsichord in some composers house!! Sorry if I'm rambling, it's become a bit of a pet topic for me over the past few years as I've been researching into the various applications of pitch/frequency in certain environments.
Even though I don't have perfect pitch, that sort of thing annoys me as well because it won't take too long before I'll realise something is amiss. This also raises the whole issue of how those who possess Perfect pitch became entrained to it. The A that you, and my wife, and everyone else (with perfect pitch) knows as 440 is not the same A that someone with perfect pitch back in the time of Beethoven or Bach knew.it's far worse to hear a C major symphony played a quarter of tone flat: makes my skin crawl to the top of my head and jump off ...
While I'm on this I'll tell you an odd story, (if you're all still awake); When my wife was pregnant with our first boy, would you believe, she was a semitone out!! It happened when I was trying to transcribe a chord sequence from a CD recording but we were nowhere near an instrument at the time. So I asked Cheryl what key this piece was in and she told me, without hesitating, it was D-flat. So, then having the key, I jotted down the chord progression (just using my relative pitch, only occasionally checking with her to confirm). Several days later, I was near a piano and had the CD player with me, so I sat down to check things over. Imagine my surprise when I started playing along to the CD, to hear that it was in D and I was in D-flat! When I alerted Cheryl, she came over to the piano and was quite startled saying that she could see me playing in D but she was "hearing" (or her brain was telling her?) D-flat. After Daniel was born, everything was back to normal. Furthermore, the same thing did not happen when she was pregnant with our second. That was a strange one, but it did alert me to the fact that there are obviously certain biological factors that come into play with the individual's perception of perfect pitch.
Very sorry to hijack the thread ACC - it's simply grown from my curiousity over why an organ builder from the 1800s would tune an instrument at 415Hz. (note to self - I should perhaps change my signature quotation!)
Matt
Music is made to transform the states of the soul, for an hour or an instant (J. Alain)
LOL @ matt - that's a priceless story. My pitch has never wavered ... as to perfect pitch in Bach's day ... it's all relative I guess.
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