Composition de l’orgue Dom Bedos de Sainte-Croix François COUPERIN: Messe propre pour les convents de religieux & religieuses restauré par Pascal Quoirin en 1997 1 Plein Jeu - Premier couplet du Kyrie 1’25 I Positif II Grand-Orgue III Bombarde 2 Dialogue - 5ème & dernier couplet du Kyrie 2’ (do1 - ré5) (do1 - ré5) (do1 - ré5, sans do#1) 3 Chromhorne sur la Taille - 5ème couplet du Gloria 2’36 Montre 8 ** Bourdon 32 * Bombarde 16 4 Récit de tierce - 8ème couplet du Gloria 1’38 Bourdon 8 ** Montre 16 * Gros cromorne 8 5 Offertoire sur les grands jeux 5’33 Prestant 4 ** Bourdon 16 * 6 Elévation - Tierce en Taille 3’16 Doublette 2 ** Montre 8 * IV Récit 7 Agnus Dei 1’03 Plein-jeu 9 rgs * Flûte 8 ** (sol2 - ré5) Flûte 4 ** Bourdon 8 ** Cornet 5rgs Abraham VAN DEN KERCKHOVEN Nasard 2 2/3 ** Prestant 4 ** Trompette 8 8 Fantasia 5’33 Tierce 1 3/5 ** Doublette 2 ** Larigot 1 1/3 ** Fourniture 2 rgs * V Echo Johann KASPAR FERDINAND FISCHER Cornet 5rgs Cymbale 13 rgs * (do2 - ré5) 9 Chaconne 4’34 Trompette 8 ** Gros Nasard 5 1/3 ** Cornet 5rgs Georges MUFFAT Clairon 4 ** Grosse Tierce 3 1/5 ** 10 Toccata Prima 5’19 Cromorne 8 ** Nasard 2 2/3 ** Pédalier Voix humaine 8 * Tierce 1 3/5 ** (fa0 - mi2) Louis MARCHAND Grand Cornet 5rgs Flûte 16 (du la0) 11 Plein-jeu 1’03 * sans do#1 1ère Trompette 8 ** 1ère flûte 8 12 Basse de cromhorne 1’10 ** La0 à la place de do#1 2ème Trompette 8 ** 2ème flûte 8 13 Duo 0’55 Clairon 4 ** Flûte 4 14 Récit & Dialogue 3’36 Bombarde 16 (du la0) L’accouplement entre le Positif & le Grand-orgue d’une part 1ère trompette 8 John BLOW et entre la Bombarde & le Grand-orgue d’autre part se fait 2ème trompette 8 par tiroir. Ainsi, en jouant le seul Grand-orgue, on peut 15 Voluntary IV 3’15 Clairon 4 faire entendre ensemble ces trois claviers. 16 Voluntary VIII 4’51 17 Voluntary XVIII 2’55 Diapason : La 392 Hz Georges MUFFAT Accord mésotonique 18 Toccato Quinta 6’07 Philippe de Champaigne or Champagne (Brussels 1602 - Paris 1674) Portrait of a man, 1650 Oil on canvas, 91 x 72 cm Paris, Musée du Louvre Philippe de Champaigne felt little sympathy for the universe of Rubens. In 1621 he left Flanders, intending to travel to Italy, and stopped in Paris where, after returning briefly to Brussels in 1628, he was to spend the rest of his life. As painter to Marie de Médicis at the Luxembourg Palace, he kept company with Poussin, and enjoyed the favour of Louis XIII and Richelieu: their sensibility coincided with the aesthetic position of the Flemish artist, perfectly adjusted to the culture of his adopted country. He received commission after commission: official effigies, the Gallery of Illustrious Men at the Palais Cardinal, the Sorbonne chapel... Anne of Austria and Mazarin also called on his services. Little inclined to celebrate the triumphant and worldly concep- tion of religion prevailing under the Regency, but much more in tune with the austere religious sentiment that inspired the Jansenists, he became associated with Port-Royal in the 1640s. This portrait, once said to be of Arnauld d’Andilly, seems to come from this milieu. Behind the frame of a window that opens onto a blind wall, squeezed into his narrow abode, the man gazes towards his right. Over the tunic covering his lace-edged shirt, a voluminous dark blue coat, velvety in texture, deploys its ample and supple folds, and lends the subject nobility and dignity. Yet the painter does not flatter him: a face with a broad forehead scrutinised without indulgence, protruding eyes, a squint [?], an unprepossessing nose, a scar, balding temples, drooping hair. Placed on the edge of the frame, his right hand, keystone in the illusionist trompe-l’oeil, points downwards, in counterpoint to the head turned the other way: nature seeks a balance. And nature Dom François Bedos de Celles is indeed the absolute point of reference of Flemish visual culture, preoccupied as it is with rendering outward appearance. Mingled with a typically French reserve and discretion, realism and colour (reduced, François de Bedos de Celles was born in Caux, into a noble family of the diocese but sumptuous) and the spiritual quality of the light breathe life, beauty, and grace of Béziers, on 24 January 1709, and studied at the Oratorian college in Pézenas. He into this objective, and introspective, human presence. The native northern characte- entered the Benedictine order at the monastery of La Daurade at Toulouse on 7 May ristics fit in easily with the painter’s classical temperament, perfectly in tune with the 1726. We know nothing of his years of apprenticeship as an organ-builder except for predominantly ascetic tendency of Parisian art of the 1650s, the melting pot from the fact that he became friendly with Jean-François l’Epine l’aîné, and was to keep in which the classicism of Louis XIV’s reign was to emerge. An artistic synthesis ap- close contact throughout his life with the latter’s two sons Jean-François and Adrien, propriate to the discreet world of the recluses whose logicians cultivated the clear both of whom also entered the profession. He was already known for the quality ordering of thought. Is the man portrayed here one of the ’gentlemen’ of that retreat of his work when he was called to the abbey of Sainte-Croix at Bordeaux in the amid the fields that was Port-Royal? The overall atmosphere of the painting, which early 1740s by its prior Dom Joseph Goudar. Elected secretary of the abbey chapter is not without recalling the severe probity of certain portraits associated with Dutch in 1745, he began around that time to build a 16’ organ with five manuals which Calvinism, leads one to think so. was finished in 1748. As a recognised builder, he was often invited to build, repair, or give expert opinion on other organs, or to advise their builders: thus he visited Denis Grenier Clermont-Ferrand, Sarlat, Le Mans, Montpellier, Dijon, Pézenas, Toulouse, Tours, Department of History Narbonne and Paris, amongst other towns. Laval University, Quebec As a monk of notable erudition, Dom Bedos was elected to membership of the Académie Royale des Sciences of Paris in 1758 and admitted to the Académie Royale Translation: Charles Johnston of Bordeaux the next year. In 1760 he wrote and published a treatise entitled La Gno- monique pratique ou l’Art de tracer les cadrans solaires avec la plus grande précision (‘Practical gnomonics or the art of plotting sundials with the greatest precision’). In 1763 he retired to the abbey of Saint-Denis, where in 1766, in response to a com- mission from the Académie Royale des Sciences of Paris, he began to write a treatise on the theoretical and practical aspects of organ-building which was to take up the last years of his life. Published from 1766 to 1778, L’Art du Facteur d’Orgues is a mo- numental survey of the French classical organ of the eighteenth century, which is still The Dom Bedos organ of the former abbey church of Sainte-Croix, accepted as the authoritative work by today’s organ-builders. Dom François died on Bordeaux Thursday 25 November 1779, and was buried in the abbey cloisters the next day. In his memoirs, Ferdinand-Albert Gauthier, organist of Saint-Denis from 1763 to 1793, speaks of him in these terms: 1. The Great organ of an abbey at the peak of its prosperity ‘He was a man of exceptional merit, who did honour to the abbey of Saint-Denis by The construction of the instrument by Dom Bedos is authenticated by an inscription his great talents. […] This artist excelled in several spheres. A man so precious and re- specifying the date of 1748 and the name of the prior at the time, Dom Joseph Gou- fined is but rarely encountered, and it is difficult to imagine the full extent of his quali- dar. Until the recent restoration of the instrument, its stop-list was not known with ties. He was a learned mathematician, and made all his own tools and instruments. He absolute certainty, owing to the fact that the inventories by Bordonneau (1756) and used to say that he would not have found workmen of sufficient skill to make them Lavergne (1795) contradict each other on several important points. It was known that for him. In sum, he was one of those men who are useful to Society, and to this he the instrument was a large 16’ one with five manuals and a 32’ Bourdon on theGrand added the qualities of a good monk: gentle, affable, obliging and very hard-working, orgue, and that it comprised 44 or 45 stops. Lavergne, whose task was to value the pro- esteemed by the erudite and enjoying a reputation well earned through the superiority perty confiscated from the monastic congregations and the clergy, also specifies that of his talents, on which he never prided himself.’ the case was ‘painted green, with all its mouldings and decorations gilded’. When he finished this instrument, Dom Bedos was aged thirty-nine, and he was perhaps put- ting his name to the finest achievement of his whole career as an organ-builder, and certainly, in any case, the most important organ by him that has come down to us: it stands comparison with the greatest instruments of the kingdom, thanks in particular to the richness of its grand plein-jeu, unique in France today.