• About the Colors of the Organ

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The Organ: Antique Colors and New Hues

«A music like stained glass, a swirl of complementary colors»... Thus described Olivier Messiaen his own music in 1946.

Stained glass, swirl of colors: what other instrument could inspire in the organist such a notion, such a vision of music? None other than the organ itself. Certainly, one can speak of musical coloris in orchestration: the popular cliché of comparing the orchestra to an artist’s palette on which the composer compares and associates the «colors» of each instrument... but orchestral palettes are slowly losing their individuality as musical techniques and methods of instruction become increasingly uniform, and once a work is written, its sound when performed can be altered only slightly.

If one may truly establish a connection between sound and color, as did Scriabine and Kandinsky with various degrees of precision, the organ should be the palette instrument par excellence, a veritable kaleidoscope of an instrument. In fact, not only does each organ offer an impressive array of timbres through its different stops and sound possibilities, but the sounds may also vary from one instrument to another, so that the musician, when given a choice of instruments, may actually re-create a musical work in his own new and original manner.

A painting is created one time only. If several versions exist of the same painting, each one will retain a certain individuality. A musical composition, on the other hand, exists only virtually until interpreted - that is, until the musician translates the abstract written notes into the language of sound. On the organ, the musician may choose the garments of sound with which to clothe his composition; he has the choice on a given instrument as well as a choice of instruments. In a recording, where the purpose is to make the piece endure indefinitely, it is obvious how crucial the latter choice may be. Recording a Baroque composition on an instrument from the Romantic period would be like only knowing a de la Tour pastel through a mediocre 19th-century oil copy, the hue as dull as painted asphalt. Conversely, rediscovering music that seemed rather lifeless on ordinary organs, interpreted at last on the appropriate instrument, inspires the same emotion, the same stunning realization, as when the colors in Michelangelo’s frescoes were restored to their original brilliance.

This magnificent sense of the appropriate, the refreshing poetic return to the original, can be found here in the music of Clérambault or the joyful Christmas melodies, varied by Daquin or Beauvarlet-Charpentier, on the organs of Poitiers and Saint-Pons de Thomières, two triumphs of the art of French organ construction of the 18th century, proving that, in this area as in others, the efforts have not been in vain.

But symphonic music, as organ repertoire was called when it began acquiring a more orchestral dimension, is also worthy of the vigor and majesty of such instruments as were built by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the child of an era which included both the World Fair and the novels of Jules Verne. The instruments of Saint-Ouen de Rouen or Notre-Dame de Paris, aided by the generous acoustics of the cathedrals, evoke in the music of Vierne, Gigout or, later on, of Pierné or Dupré, images of an imposing, enchanting cathedral organ inspiring the author to romantic literary honors, from «The Duchess of Langeais» to «Twenty Thousands Leagues Under the Sea».

Beyond such «ideal» associations where one searches for the perfect relationship between the style of the instrument versus that of the musical work, there are different points of comparison, which are more difficult to discern but may shed a new and captivating light on certain types of music, as a foreign language translation may aid in clarifying the meaning of a literary text. Thus the musician may interpret the Brahms chorales on a romantic French instrument : surely the most distinguished of the Germanics would derive a certain pleasure from reading Gérard de Nerval’s translation of Goethe’s Faust...

Furthermore, the art of the organ continues to live on, more than ever, through contemporary handwork. Whether the craftsman chooses to delve into the traditions of the past, or decides on the contrary to invent his own personal sound ideal, he creates new instruments, previously unheard of in the most literal sense. It is therefore to be expected that an organist would present music from the past to contemporary listeners on a contemporary instrument, as if to bring it up to date. This idea underlies the choice of such organs as the Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire, Notre-Dame des Blancs-Manteaux, or Ménéstrol to interpret the music of such time-honored composers as Bach and Mozart.

If the organ has often been branded as monochromatic in the past, it is probably because a large portion of its repertoire has been kept in the dark to preserve its dignified image. For example, who could define the organ as melancholy after hearing - with the many gesticulations of Gran Cassa, Capelli Cinesi and Banda Militaire, Rossini’s Sinfonia for organ - the venerable Father David of the Franciscan order of Bergame, who, like the author of the Petite Messe Solennelle, must have apologized to the Good Lord for the foul stench of opera in his music! In this vein but to a greater extent, the music of Nino Rota, actually composed for organ, adorns the «Pope of the instruments» with the same irreverent decorations that one finds in the famous ecclesiastical fashion show scene in Fellini-Roma.

One must still resist the established notion of the organ as a solitary instrument. The traditional combination with a choir dates back to early liturgical times, a style often alluded to by the Alternatim ensemble. The union of the organ with another wind instrument may sometimes resemble the battle between David and Goliath... the solution surely lies elsewhere than in the summarized transcriptions of Baroque concertos, unchanging, performed routinely by trumpet/organ duos on endless concert tours which eventually make first-rate - or, more frequently - last-rate jukeboxes of them.

A repertoire can be conceived to achieve such alluring unions of sound - a repertoire in which the different hues of sound can be reconsidered, through the natural yet paradoxical confrontation between the expressiveness of a trumpet or flute with a monumental instrument which itself contains rows of pipes referred to as «trumpets» or «flutes».
Oh! Only a nuance may bind
A dream to a dream, a flute to a horn
... wrote Verlaine...
We mentioned earlier the idea of the instrument as a kaleidoscope... and we hope that the listener, in allowing this instrument to form a telescope with its various colors of sound, will see this anthology as the sort of absurd yet marvelous journey one can only experience in dreams... and that, in the words of Kandinsky - the artist who treated «colors as sounds» and who cited Schumann, Wagner and Schönberg among the inspirations for his paintings - he may «attain the primordial goal of true contemplation of color, evoking a vibration of the soul... an internal resonance.»

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