LDV113-4

The organ of Saint-Sernin and the symphonic aesthetic: the fabulous destiny of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-99) Long before he took possession, at the age of thirty-seven, of his brand- new instrument at Sainte-Clotilde (Paris, 1859), César Franck had already said of his first Cavaillé-Coll organ at Saint-Jean Saint-François (1846): ‘My organ is an orchestra!’ There could hardly be a more explicit image of the new ‘symphonic’ aesthetic that was to influence organ music for several decades. The brilliant organ builder from Toulouse had already invented this new type of organ in the 1840s, ‘wholly conceived’, he said, ‘in a dynamic perspective with a view to a gigantic crescendo’. Fifty years later, when both men were at the height of their respective powers, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll built one of his finest instruments for Saint-Sernin (1889), while César Franck gave the world his admirable Trois Chorals (1890), which he could have come to Toulouse to play if fate had not decided otherwise.