Pipedreams Organ Tour, Day 5a

5/14/10

"On the bus between Avignon and Nimes, three days into the organ trip of southern France.  This trip has been interesting on several levels: the locales visited, the organ music, the travelers (26 individualistic – I could even say eccentric – organ aficionados, although only about half of them actually play the organ), the history (papal schisms, the Albigensian “heresy”), and of course, the opportunity to learn things I know very little about.”

The above was the only paragraph I managed to write in my journal during the entire Pipedreams organ tour in southern France. We were up and out early every morning, going all day long, and then bussed back exhausted and overwhelmed by our experiences. I usually just collapsed in the hotel bed. I was glad to have had a single room, with no roommate to chat with or keep me awake.

We had spent two nights in Avignon, and the better part of two days visiting churches in the vicinity and listening to their organs, most of which were newly built. The tour through the Popes’ Palace was an enlightening foray into history and religion.

Temple Saint-Martial in Avignon,ancient ruins outside

On the morning of Friday, May 14, we visited another church in Avignon, the Temple Saint-Martial. This is a protestant church, but was originally the church of a Benedictine monastery. Again, the organ is a new one, built by our contemporary organ builder, Pascal Quoirin. In this case, the cabinetry for the metal pipes is quite modern in design, unlike that in the Collegiale Saint-Martin in Saint-Remy. The organ had an enormous, full tone with the stops out. Also, it had a hand bellows, not used for most of the music, although we heard one piece with hand-pumped air, and the sound was large and full. In general, the lower tones were very mellow, although in the higher registers the pipes seemed somewhat shrill. All in all, the sound was as good as, or better than, most of the older organs we have heard.

Modern organ inside Temple Saint-Martial
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PBbckUE2Tyg

From Provence, we crossed into the province of Languedoc, the center of the Albigensian heresy that convulsed southern France for a more than a century. It seems that the Crusade against this “heresy” by the Catholic Church in the 13^th century, and its efforts to stamp out heresy thereafter, ultimately gave rise to the Inquisition that swung into full force during the Protestant Reformation.

Cathedrale Saint-Theodorit

The second church we visited on Friday was the Cathedrale Saint-Theodorit at Uzès. The church is a very old one, begun in the 11^th century, and mostly destroyed in the 17^th century, all except for the bell tower. The bell tower reminds me of the towers of early Christian churches on the east coast of Italy – in Ravenna. The organ is also an old one, constructed originally in the late 17^th century, probably when the church was rebuilt. The organ has been restored twice, in the 19^th and 20^th centuries, with the aim of recapturing its original sound and elegance. The organ has a good tone, and its gilded casing is the most elaborate I've seen so far on the tour.

Again, I've linked recordings of the organs made by Ian Cook and uploaded to YouTube, as well as a recording of the Saint Theodorit organ by Finoskov Productions that illustrates both its magnificant tone and the exquisite baroque cabinetry.

Elaborate17^th-century gilded organ cabinetry
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scDtNldaenU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?NR=1&v=pVOaDmj9RiE&feature=endscreen

 
 

 

Pipedreams Organ Tour, Day 4

Le Pont d'Avignon

 

Avignon is another old and famous city of Provence, and is probably best known in the U.S. for the song that high-school French students are required to learn: Sur le pont/d’Avignon/tout le monde/y danse, danse… (On the bridge at Avignon, everybody dances, dances…) I didn’t realize until college French that this was some reference to the old Popes who once held court there. So, yes, there is a fine remnant of a medieval bridge, half collapsed and half intact (a sort of bridge to nowhere) in Avignon, the actual name of which is Pont Saint-Benezet. More significantly, a huge and marvelously appointed Palace of the Popes, built during the 13^th and 14^th centuries, takes up a large part of the old town. We had time to tour the Palais des Papes that first afternoon, and it was clear how materialistic the church and its administrators had become by the Middle Ages, despite efforts by the likes of St. Francis, a century earlier, to bring the church back to Christian simplicity. This ecclesiastical opulence led eventually (after several centuries) to the Reformation, but not until a great deal of blood had been shed in the interest of maintaining economic (and spiritual?) power on the part of the established church.

The church we visited that morning (Thursday, May 13) in Avignon was the Collegiale Saint-Agricol, a very ancient church (7^th - 15^th centuries). My impression of the organ (a well preserved 19^th century instrument) was that it had a lovely tone with a fantastic emotional range. I almost wept at one point during the demonstration by the organist.

Collegiale Saint-Agricol, outside stonework

 

Again, Ian Cook recorded the organ in Saint-Agricol and Saint-Martin and uploaded them on YouTube. An excerpt of what we had the pleasure of hearing can be found at the link.



Collegiale Saint-Agricol, organ, nave inside


 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEIFF0c-VNk


Luckily, we had time to tour the Palace of the Popes in Avignon, an amazing structure both outside and in. Another bit of luck was that an annual rose festival was being held there, so we were treated to an abundant, luscious display of virtually every variety imaginable of roses, decorating hallways, growing in gardens, festooning cloisters.




Palace of the Popes with roses

From Avignon, we rode our bus to Saint-Remy de Provence, where we visited the Collegiale Saint-Martin. The organ there is a new one, installed in 1983. It was built by the organ builders we had visited previously, Pascal Quoirin, and it was apparently their first really big organ. It is a huge, powerful instrument, very versatile in range and sound. The church, itself, is a neo-classical structure, topped by an odd combination of neo-gothic tower and neo-roman oculus.

New Quorin organ in the Collegiale Saint-Martin
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mSZuUYpJk9Y
 

 

 

We saw and heard another new organ (Saby & Grenzing) at the Eglise Notre-Dame in Caumont-sur-Durance. Unfortunately, I don’t have any photos of that church or organ. I took both stills and movies with my movie camera, which was stolen later on the trip in Russia. Nonetheless, the organ had a clear, sweet sound in the upper registers. A Haydn piece had an almost bell-like tone, but a later Bach fugue sounded a bit muddy. That may have been the playing.

 

JAVS sur le Pont d'Avignon; the Rhone flows on beyond