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Casavant organs

Kewl

New member
In any case, there is a discography link on this site that I`m going to check out shortly, for fun. Hooray internet. http://www.uquebec.ca/musique/orgues/quebec/sjbaptistem.html

Some of these labels are hard to find... May I suggest an organ CD recorded at Saint Jean Baptiste that is readily available: http://www.naxos.com/catalogue/item.asp?item_code=8.557375

I must admit here that I'm not disinterested: I produced the CD. And I'm not saying it's better that the other ones in the list, but it's certainly more available!

By the way, there's also a more up to date discography on Casavant website: http://www.casavant.ca/new_temp/anglais/disc/discography.html
 

acc

Member
I agree with Giovanni that the earlier Casavants tended to be very nice. There is a fabulous one in Montreal at the church of St. John the Baptist. I was always a great admirer of Bernard Lagace, an organist from Montreal, and I had a few lessons with him years ago (in Montreal.) His wife recorded at St. John the Baptist years ago and the record was gorgeous! I heard the organ in person, but not demonstrated well.

I also agree that many Casavants in the "NEO" Baroque style were not too attractive.

I only know St. John the Baptist from this recording, but I agree it's a very nice instrument!

I have heard any of the "neo" Casavants, but from what I read in this discussion, I figure that they must be (part of) the reason behind the "mutiny" of a number of (then) young organists (including Bernard Lagacé), arranging for the three Beckerath organs to be built in Montreal.
 

acc

Member
And no one would go back to the organ-building of the 1930's, I think.

Yes and no.

Let me explain. At some point, some neo-baroque crowds tended to consider the romantic style as intrinsically "bad" and the baroque style (or rather the way they thought about it) as intrinsically "good", and they started building baroque-like organs for that reason. Today, on the other hand, new organs in baroque style are still built (e.g. Ahrend in Germany, Aubertin in France), but the point of view is no longer one of opposition to the 19th century. Besides, one does not only see, say, new Silbermann-like organs, but also new Cavaillé-Coll-like organs, etc., because people (well, most people anyway) have now accepted that different styles can be equally valid. So from this point of view, it may well happen one day that somebody decides to build a 1930-like organ - why not!
 

giovannimusica

Commodore de Cavaille-Coll
Hey folks,

Its official - the firms of Casavant and Dobson have been chosen to install a new organ in the west gallery of Washington National Cathedral. The Cathedral already has a beautiful organ but the sound it produces really never gets to blossom and bloom throughout the nave because of its placement. A less expensive project would have been to move the existing instrument to the west gallery and encased so that it could freely speak throughout the whole nave. This, however, is a humble suggestion. When it comes to spending endowments, thats when there is no restraint.
 

Thomas Dressler

New member
Acc, LOL I HOPE NOT!!!! :) Well, perhaps someday I'll warm up to them, but I spent too much time as a teenager practicing on organs from that time that used the newfangled actions to take lots of shortcuts that were dubious, at least IMHO.

Giovanni, that's interesting news. Yes, it's amazing how some people get to spend gobs of money on instruments, isn't it? Are Dobson and Casavant working together on this? If so, I wonder how they'll divide the project.
 

giovannimusica

Commodore de Cavaille-Coll
Hi Tom,

Yes, I wonder how they'll divide the project? Hopefully one will find out as the work progresses - Ah well...

Cheers!

Giovanni :tiphat: :tiphat: :tiphat:
 

acc

Member
Acc, LOL I HOPE NOT!!!! :) Well, perhaps someday I'll warm up to them, but I spent too much time as a teenager practicing on organs from that time that used the newfangled actions to take lots of shortcuts that were dubious, at least IMHO.

Well, that reminds me of my own situation 20 years ago, when I had to practise on a shreaky neo-baroque chiwawa of the 1970s that comes nowhere near the beautiful Schnitgers and Silbermanns that I learned to know and appreciate later on. That's obviously not the same kind of organs as the 1930 beasts you're talking about, but I still think I can understand how you must have felt!

Actually, I'm not exactly sure how far the 1930 organs on your side of the Atlantic can be compared to those on my side. Could you maybe describe their concept in more detail? How do they differ from, say, late 19th century instruments?
 

Thomas Dressler

New member
Yes, Lars, thanks for the info!

Acc, well, I can only describe the instruments I had experience with. One in particular had tubular pneumatic action (which is neither here nor there--I've played tubulars that not only were very responsive, but had beautiful pipe speech characteristics) that didn't work very well. It was unified all over the place. Also, by the early 20th century, many, if not most, instruments here had just about completely abandoned the idea of upperwork and mixtures. Typical stoplists contained LOTS of 8's, a few 4's, and maybe if you were lucky (but many times not) a 2'--ONE or maybe TWO. Choruses as we know them in Silbermanns, Tannenbergs, and Cavaille-Colls, Hook & Hastings. . .right up to the end of the 19th century, were completely gone. Many of them had HUGE, LOUD, HOOTING 8' Diapasons that would completely cover up the softer flutes and strings. Pedal divisions were often lacking in definition. Because the emphasis was not on ensemble registrations, unification tended to work more. But to play one of these and try to get any kind of traditional Baroque or Romantic ensemble was just about impossible. Very frustrating.

You didn't have instruments like this in Europe?
 

acc

Member
In France, the lack of upperwork and mixtures came much earlier, namely with the young Cavaillé-Coll: many of his small-to-medium sized instruments hardly had any mixtures at all. It was mainly 16'-8'-4' flues plus 16'-8'-4' reeds. Of course, this is also partly because of French tradition, where reeds had always predominated over mixtures, even in the 18th century, but the young and eager C-C, yearning for an "orchestral" organ, went to

Guilmant and Widor eventually learned the lesson, and influenced C-C into revising his position, which can be seen in his later instruments such as St-Sernin or St-Ouen (the mutation series of the 1868 Notre-Dame organ being more of an isolated experiment).

Mutin (C-C's successor) continued moving in the same direction, as can be seen e.g. from the way he changed the specification of the 1898 C-C organ before setting it up in the Sacré-Coeur in 1919.

Around that time, Norbert Dufourcq, Victor Gonzalez and André Marchal started the neoclassical mouvement (roughly the French equivalent of the Orgelbewegung), which insisted even more on restoring the rôle of mixtures and upperwork.

Gonzalez had an obvious talent as a voicer and his instruments can actually be quite beautiful. The bad reputation of his name has much more to do with his successor Danion, who built his instruments under the name "Danion-Gonzalez". Two of Voctor Gonzalez' organs have been recorded:
  • Bailleul (close to Lille in Northern France), by Loïc Mallié (Hortus CD) and by Jérôme Faucheur (MP3s may be found here);
  • Soissons, by Vincent Genvrin (he did his own transcription of Mussorgski's Pictures, a Studio SM CD, long out of print I'm afraid).
Another organ builder of that time was Joseph Beuchet, whose orientation was similar to that of Gonzalez.

As far as I know, unification was hardly used in France, except sometimes in the pedal. I believe it was more common in the UK, but I'm not familiar with the organ history of that country.
 
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Albert

New member
The 3-manual Gonzales in Andre Marchal's studio was recorded by Marchal with his daughter as narrator. I have the LP, and also picked up a CD that was released a few years ago.

I will quote my mother's comment when she heard the 16' reed "What a ghastly sound!" <G>
 

giovannimusica

Commodore de Cavaille-Coll
Hi Tom,

Another anonymous contribution in the latest jests about an organbuilder in the North American Hemisphere: Phelpsavants :whistle:

Cheers!

Giovanni :tiphat:
 

acc

Member
The 3-manual Gonzales in Andre Marchal's studio was recorded by Marchal with his daughter as narrator. I have the LP, and also picked up a CD that was released a few years ago.

I will quote my mother's comment when she heard the 16' reed "What a ghastly sound!" <G>

Well, house organs are entirely different animals, I guess. In particular, you can hardly put a bombarde into such an instrument if you want to keep the peace with your neighbours :crazy:, so that's probably why Marchal put in that admittedly thin ranquette instead.
 

Soubasse

New member
Hi all,

Apart from my post in the "introduce yourself" forum, this will be my first. Very interested to read all this because the cathedral I play for (here in Adelaide) has recently purchased a 2nd-hand Casavant. Us organists were the last to know by the way. In fact we weren't even told that they were thinking of getting a proper instrument back into the building after years of us playing the Rodgers toaster we currently have. Nor were we told about the consultant from Melbourne who made the recommendation. In fact, we were damn well ignored and kept well and truly out of the loop. I could write them a letter but I wonder if they'd care ...:mad:

ANYWAY, despite all that rubbish, it's a nice thought to have another Casavant in Adelaide. Hopefully, the powers that be will deign to let us see the specifications one day, maybe even before it goes in - there's a novel thought. [/sarcasm]

Adelaide's other Casavant is housed in the University and has been a relatively well-regarded instrument. It's entriely mechanical with no registration aids. The voicing is fairly Classical, I wouldn't say it's overtly Romantic but it can manage most of the repertoire very well. If I have any complaint it would be the voicing of the pedal 16s. The reeds are fine, but the Montre and Soubasse suffer in the bottom octave and lack the depth one would expect from these ranks. Curiously enough, the one in the Melbourne Concert Hall which was built at the same time, apparently has the same problem.

Another very odd thing about it is that the tremulant for two of the manuals is winded off the same line. When you pull it on for the Pos, it also operates on the Recit (and vice versa). This can be a little inconvenient at times (sic!) and it is yet to be altered.

I'd be interested to know if anyone else has encountered these problems.

Matt
 
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