GREAT ORGANS AND ORGANISTS OF PARIS


Beautiful Music for Anytime of Year.

                                                      The five keyboard organ at Saint-Sulpice

G-pa’s view

Everybody knows Paris is a famous capital of art: the Louvre, the Musée d’Orsay, the Picasso Museum and scores of other world-renowned museums and galleries.

What about classical music – and the emperor of keyboard music, the pipe-organ? Paris is a paradise of church organs, offering at least 234 of them, many from the 16-17th and 19th centuries. It also harbours scores of world-class organists, from Philip Roth to Marie-Claire Alain.

The majestic sounds of their organs are a secret treat for the average traveler, a too-often-unheard echo of the grandeur of Western civilization.They remind us of why the great Russian cellist Msistslav Rostropovich called Johann Sebastian Bach, the Cantor and master-organist of Leipzig’s Church of St. Thomas, “the God of Music.”

   If you’re visiting any of the hundreds of Paris churches – and especially around Christmas or Easter – you can hear many of the greatest organs and organists of all time. Here are a handful of the stars:

Saint-Sulpice
Dominating the square of that name in the sixth arrondissement, this church of the Sulpician Order has a mission since 1641 to train priests. Novelist Dan Brown made it the locale of his fantasy The Da Vinci Code. It harbours a world-famous five keyboard organ originally built by François-Henri Clicquot. This was inaugurated in 1781, then renovated in the late 19th century by master-builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.

The church has had many famous organists, including in the 20th century Charles Widor and Marcel Dupré.The latter was an ingenious improviser; Widor is best known as a composer: his dazzling Toccata in F from the final movement of his Fifth Symphony has brought a sense of  joy to wedding recessionals and Easter celebrations throughout the world.


                                                                      L’église Saint-Sulpice

 

 Saint-Eustache
With 8,000 pipes, its 16th-century organ is the largest in France and one of the world’s most renowned instruments. Its free Sunday concerts draw huge crowds. Queen Elizabeth attended its rededication with Paris mayor (and later president) Jacques Chirac. Its long-sitting organist Jean Gillou has greatly contributed to preserving the organ`s worldwide reputation.

The organ at Saint-Eustache has 8,000 pipes.

* Notre-Dame
Its most famous organist was Louis Vierne. Born almost blind – he fought glaucoma and congenital cataracts all his life, finally composing in Braille. But his genius – recognized at age two — won him the organ at Notre-Dame against fifty rivals. His friends were the great Charles Widor and his pupil Marcel Dupré. With feeble vision, and a leg shattered by a street accident that forced him to re-learn his pedal technique, he spent his life fighting severe glaucoma. Nevertheless, he became a legend. His works still fill out the standard organ repertoire.


Notre Dame

   Église de la Madeleine

      Church par excellence of society weddings, la Madeleine also shines through its superb organ concerts.

 

                                                         Église de  la Madeleine

*Sainte-Clotilde : The great Belgian organist César Franck spent his entire life here from 1858 as organist, improviser, composer and teacher to several other virtuosos, including the masterful composer Louis Vierne of Notre-Dame Cathedral.

* Église de la La Trinité
Famous for its now-deceased organist –composer Olivier Messiaen. The organ was still another triumph of the late-19th-century master-builder, Arisitide Cavaillé-Coll.

Summing-up: France, and especially Paris, is arguably the world capital of organ music: construction, composition and virtuoso performance. All perpetually inventive. Worth a few more trips just for this?

Read more
http://www.organsofparis.vhhil.nl/

Watch and Listen
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQx4GSbWVYI

 

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 Gracie’s Thoughts

When I listen to organ music, I can clearly feel the power and the majesty of the instrument, whether soft or loud (though I definitely would not have it is as my alarm clock!).

It’s a shame that some people (mostly my age, I am afraid to say) do not appreciate this kind of classical music that takes you to another world. I will not say that organ music is really my kind of every-day all-day tune but I would listen to it after a great accomplishment or while reading an exciting book…because it makes everything so much more real!

The best thing to do when listening to organ music is to settle down in a comfy chair with a cup of tea, and listen to it with headphones on, so that you can hear every little thing that remains almost inaudible without headphones. 🙂

 

 

 

 

 

Grandpa and Gracie (G & G Blog)

voltaire2siteVOLTAIRE

Grandpa’s Thoughts

François-Marie Arouet (1794-1778) became Voltaire to the entire intelligentsia of 18th-centry Europe – kings, scientists, fellow philosophers and writers in many genres. A consummate gadfly of the powerful, he knew the Bastille from the inside and enjoyed stimulating exile in England and Switzerland.

As perhaps the continent’s leading advocate of free thinking and free expression, he enraged the powerful of church, state and high society. Happily, he was taken in by several famous admirers, including Prussia’s Frederick the Great (who bored him) and the beautiful, brilliant Marquise du Châtelet, his multi-dimensional long-term mistress (who drove him wild and did not bore him)…

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Gracie’s Impressions

Voltaire? That old French writer and philosopher who was known for causing trouble? Yes, that’s the one.Well, I visited the place where he lived. I ate at the restaurant dedicated to the famous man…with my grandpa. Helped by delicious drenched-in-chocolate profiteroles, I understood Voltaire much better. I learned about his attitude that got him sent to England (he asked for it, literally) and how the French fell for all his little tricks. He was ‘going out’ with a wild lady, Madame de Châtelet, who drove him crazy, just like the crowded métro station that was named after her.
 
Thanks to a friendly waiter and a mention about this blog, we saw Voltaire’s REAL window; not facing the Louvre but looking at a courtyard covered wall-to-wall by lilacs. So, if you ever heard that Voltaire died looking at the Louvre, it’s false.
A taxi strike slightly dampened the day but the métro was pleasant enough (although I stepped in dog poop and that we were going the wrong way).
 
Mais bon, we had a wonderful time that I would qualify as ‘awesome’ and, although visiting Voltaire’s apartment is not permitted, you can contact the lady who inhabits the place now and visit it!
 
Do you think Voltaire’s ghost comes down to visit the restaurant that was built in his honor?

Olympe de Gouges and George Sand

Grandpa’s Views

Many think that French feminism began in the 20th century with tart-tongued Simone de Beauvoir and Benoîte Groult. Not true. Forgetting the immense inherited power of Anglo-French Queen Eleonor of Aquitaine and the string-pulling of famous royal mistresses like Diane de Poitiers, Madame du Barry and Madame de Pompadour, the real pioneers were Olympe de Gouges and George Sand. Both wielded pens mightier than swords, and annoyed men magnificently – in de Gouges’ case, alas, at the cost of her head.

Olympe de Gouges

Olympe de Gouges

 

 Gracie’s Impressions                         

Olympe de Gouges

This feisty French revolutionist, known for standing up to men, lived over 200 years ago and yet she is remembered all over France. Although, until 100 years ago, she was not yet considered as a hero and just as ‘a widow who defied men’. But she was much more than that. She wrote the ‘Declaration of the rights of the Woman and the Female Citizen’ the women’s version of the Declaration of the rights of Men and the Citizen’. She pretty much broke every law stating that women had no rights by demanding that women get the right of voting and of being respected. She was also against slavery. But she paid for her reasonable demands.
 
Olympe de Gouges was guillotined in 1793 and wasn’t really acknowledged until 150 years  later but she hasn’t been forgotten.
 
George Sand
George Sand
George Sand
She acted and looked like a man but wrote like and was a woman. A respected lady who was born a tomboy and who shocked the French by leaving her wealthy husband, smoking cigars and dressing up as a man! She was a wonderful author who wrote under the pen name of George Sand so that people would buy and read her books. Her pen name name was a bit shorter than Ama
ntine Lucile Aurore Dupin, no?
Here is a short list of her novels: ‘La Petite Fadette’
‘Mauprat’; ‘Indiana’.
La Petite Fadette

La Petite Fadette

 

 




			

		

				

		
Grace and Grandpa’s Paris Visit 6: La Marquise de Sévigné

			

				
Grandpa’s Thoughts


MADAME DE SÉVIGNÉ


When her stupid young husband got himself killed in a duel over another woman, she decided to spend her time being the most desired woman in France. And for her hapless daughter, the most meddlesome mother in France.

When the poor girl married a minor aristocrat in a southern town called Grignan, mommy wrote her almost every day with advice. Lucky us: her letters remain models of style, and Grignan has created an annual festival devoted to something we digi-nuts can`t even fathom: the art of writing letters.


Marquise de Sévigné
Marquise de Sévigné


Gracie’s Impressions


booksThe Marquise de Sévigné, a somewhat overly protective mother and widow at 25, is famous for writing beautiful letters to her daughter in polished French. We visited her apartment in the Musée Carnavalet, located in the 4e arrondissement near Victor Hugo’s house, including several other wings on the French Revolution, the Hundred Year War, and more! Sadly, the Marquise’s wing was shut down for construction but I still got a pretty good idea of who she was and what she did, reinforced by delicious pastries at ‘La Carette’.

			

		

				

		
Grace and Grandpa’s Paris Visit 5 – Descartes

			

				
Grandpa’s Thoughts


Why do French debaters and writers exasperate you so much? Because they were stuffed full of philosophy (including techniques of arguing) in high school.

The chief culprit was 17th-century polymath (fancy word for know-it-all) René Descartes, who stripped down problems to their core, then reassembled the pieces in an irresistible, coherent sequence. So, at least, claim the “philo” profs who, to Anglo ears, often sound as though they are putting, well, Descartes before the horse…


Gracie’s Impressions


‘I think, therefore I am’.


Yes, we visited M. René Descartes, the famous philosopher and mathematician who invented the Cartesian coordinate system. His house, nestled near Place de la Contrescarpe in the 5e, is near Ernest Hemingway’s apartment.

Passing by, you can see a plaque saying the dates of the philosopher and what he is famous for!

And for the French, he is famous for

‘Je pense, donc je suis’.

But is he wrong? Is life just a dream?