Aristide Cavaillé-Coll

Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (born Feb. 4, 1811, Montpellier, Fr.—died Oct. 13, 1899, Paris) was a distinguished French organ builder and initiator of the orchestral style of French organ building and composing.

Descended from a family of organ builders and a talented protégé of his father, Dominique, a well-known builder of Languedoc, he early became a competent and experienced engineer, winning at 22 a prize for the invention of a popular circular saw. At the suggestion of the composer Gioacchino Rossini, Cavaillé-Coll went to Paris in 1833. There he was awarded a contract for a large organ for the basilica of Saint-Denis; completed by 1841, this instrument became in tone and mechanism a model for many later French organs. Napoleon III put Cavaillé-Coll in charge of rebuilding a number of important cathedral organs, and thereafter his fame spread. Eventually over 600 instruments bore his name, a number of them in England, where he had considerable influence.

Among Cavaillé-Coll’s contributions to organ building were a number of improvements in mechanism and pipework aimed at making the organ as expressive and versatile as a symphony orchestra. He largely standardized the layout of keyboards and stop controls and achieved excellent balance and uniformity of tone in each set of pipes through careful voicing, while maintaining the strong contrasts of tone colour characteristic of romantic, symphonic organs. Although Cavaillé-Coll successfully imitated the sound of several orchestral instruments, he sacrificed the transparency and clarity of tone that distinguished Baroque organs, so that his instruments are not well-suited, for example, to the music of J.S. Bach. Yet, he influenced a new school of organ composition, and 19th-century composers of the stature of César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Charles-Marie Widor, and Louis Vierne wrote particularly with the Cavaillé-Coll sound in mind. Many of his instruments are still in regular use.