A strange sequence of events in September 2004 landed me in the choir balcony of a Parisian church that has always been shadowed by the City of Light’s bigger and more famous cathedrals. I found myself there at Saint Eugène-Sainte Cécile in the ninth arrondissement standing beneath a craftsman’s lamp. In the light stood Olaf Dalsbaek, owner of the Dalsbaek-Merklin organ building company, who had been charged with nurturing the 1855 Merklin organ back to health. In that moment, my awareness of my reasons for packing my life into a jet bound for Paris congealed into a cloud of gray. I had intended to contribute to my college education, learn the French language in its natural habitat, and quench an unsuppressed and unsatisfied thirst for French art and music. But when I begrudgingly departed from my new home in December, I was equally sensitive to how life had metamorphosized my intentions into quiet distinctions: a love for small bakeries and outdoor markets, a mind voraciously hungry for a respite from American commercialism, and a new daily momentum driven by the spirits of organ building. It was within this context, and inseparable from it, that I received and eagerly embraced my twofold mission from Touve Ratovondrahety, organist of Saint Eugène-Sainte Cécile: work with Dalsbaek-Merklin to reassemble the instrument, and chronicle its spirited story.
Construction in an era of Universal Expositions
The natural point from which to begin my exploration was the church building itself, which, in this case, is an inseparable contemporary of the organ it shelters. The stony façade of Saint Eugène-Sainte Cécile houses a wonder of nineteenth-century architecture, all credited to Louis-Auguste Boileau, architect made world-famous for applying the industrial revolution’s metal processing to the framework of buildings. With Saint Eugène (as it was originally called), Boileau set the standard for a new era of musical acoustics by building a structure ribbed with an unprecedented iron frame. This advancement occupied a natural place in an era plastered with back-to-back and sometimes even simultaneous Universal Expositions and National Expositions. The second half of the 1800s exploded with innovation and ingenuity to outwit and outnumber every precept of the previous exposition. Exhibition categories existed for the latest in everything from fashion to metallurgy alongside the categories for musical breakthroughs that unveiled the advent of the saxophone, pistons for brass instruments, and the famed pneumatic Barker machine. Built for the 1855 Universal Exposition, Saint Eugène’s cutting-edge architecture and the treasure of its pipe organ were no exception in these witty free-for-alls.
Despite the major political events of the time (namely the Crimean War), Napoleon III still managed to commission a new church in the name of Saint Eugène1 for the 1855 exposition to be held in Paris. Inspired by Paris’ famous Sainte Chapelle, the colors of the rectangular room come alive both in stained glass and in the penetrating color of every wall, rail, arch, and vault. The first metal-frame church in the world, only the walls and balcony floor are stone—even the floor of the nave is wood. In contrast, therefore, to most large Parisian churches, the nave of Saint Eugène is held up not by massive sound-deflecting stone pillars, but by slender iron columns that allow bloom of sound in its vaults without introducing reverberation.
Merklin’s debut in France
Such was the space for which Boileau would also have the honor of designing a new neo-gothic organ case for installation at the end of the exposition.2 As the church was being constructed during 1854 and 1855, simultaneously across town in the Palais d’Industrie,3 the main site of the exhibits and festivities, organ builder Joseph Merklin and his brother-in-law Frederich Schütze were at work on an instrument like none that France had seen before. The parish of Saint Eugène had commissioned them to build a new organ for the new church, and the builders decided to display it first at the exposition to establish their company’s recent move to Paris early in 1855, though they still exhibited as the only organ builder in the Belgian section that year. Though previously centered in Ixelles-lez-Bruxelles, a suburb of Brussels, in its heyday Merklin-Schütze & Company oversaw 150 technicians building organs not just in Belgium, but also in France, Germany, Russia, and other European nations. They were indeed, as Merklin historian Michel Jurine offered in the title of his comprehensive thesis, not builders categorized by nationality, but European organ builders.4 This company then was a natural for Paris’ first Universal Exposition, building a 32-stop mechanical organ with the first cone chest in France.
The console
This, Merklin’s first organ in France, is an instrument with three manuals of fifty-six keys (C–g3) with two-millimeter-thick ivory for the naturals, ebony for the sharps, and a flat rosewood-topped oak pedalboard of twenty-seven notes (C–d1). The console is primarily stained and natural oak with elegant scrolls of rosewood for its keycheeks, and earthy drawknobs of rosewood and porcelain with pearwood shafts. The three manuals are labeled Grand Orgue, Trompettes,5 and Récit, but that’s roughly the extent of traditional organ building in this instrument. The console faces away from the organ and towards the altar, affording the organist more ready participation in the ritual below without the use of mirrors. Effects of this reversal include harder key action (as the trackers need more changes in direction), and the reversal of the C and C# sides of the instrument due to the new position of each C and C# key in relation to the case.
Also of curiosity at the console are the three rows of terraced stops mounted against springs. When the organist pulls a stop, it slips down into a hitch that holds it open. To cancel, the organist needs only to tap it up out of the hitch and the spring pulls it in, making registration changes slightly more fluid, though admittedly a bit noisy.
Another oddity noticeable at the console is a space above the pedalboard that appears to be missing a hitch. A 1983 Dalsbaek-Merklin inventory of the instrument accounts for this with a fairly certain supposition that Merklin intended to add a Positif to Grand Orgue coupler, as the organ currently has no couplers to the Grand Orgue (or the Positif for that matter) on account of the physical strength that would be required to play.6 The only couplers are the Grand Orgue to Récit and Positif to Récit, made possible by the Barker machine that buffers the action of the Récit. That is, to play full organ, one must play with arms fully extended at shoulder height on the Récit. According to the same inventory, it appears Merklin soon intended to add a fourth manual as well, at which time all decisions on number and function of couplers would have been mapped out and subsequently installed.
Revolution within
Though the console alone is full of curiosities, the main pride of the instrument lies in the windchests. The key and stop action are both mechanical, but they do not control a slider chest. Hidden within the organ case at Saint Eugène is a cone chest. Earlier nineteenth century organ builder E. F. Walcker takes credit for inventing this type of windchest, though it certainly predates him.7 He is, however, responsible for what light was shed on this experiment that was meant to better support wind pressure in an era when organ builders were constructing instruments with larger numbers of 8¢ and 16¢ sounds and therefore installing big pipes that required hefty air supplies. Merklin apprenticed with this Ludwigsburg builder in 1837–1838 and there learned of this type of windchest that Walcker called Kegellade (literally “cone chest”). On such an instrument, pulling a stop opens a ventil, permitting wind to a chamber that runs under all the pipes of the corresponding rank(s). Pressing a key opens one valve for each pipe of that note on the appropriate division. Therefore, a pipe sounds if both its valve is open and there is air in the chamber of the rank to which it belongs. The total number of organs in France today using primarily cone chests can be counted on one hand, and they are as sparse or more so everywhere except Germany.
The Kegellade system was not, however, the only German component to this Merklin organ. Also contained within is one of the first several uses of harmonic flutes in France and, as all new gadgets are fun, Merklin included not one, but three complete ranks of them: two at 8' and one at 4'. (An additional 4' at the Récit called Flûte Harmonique is actually a chimney flute.) The two 8' ranks are identically constructed, but voiced differently with a rounder sound at the Récit. Evidence of experimental days gone by is clearly indicated in a number of the surviving original pipes that bear misplaced and filled-in holes. Another new stop for the French, if not for the entire organ-building world, was the Corne de Chamois at the Grand Orgue. Its sound, the result of a very slightly conical construction, is meant to be reminiscent of an alpine horn.
Still another strange sight within the instrument is the rank on the Grand Orgue labeled Clarinette. It begins on the second C, but doubled all throughout the range and continuing down through the bottom octave is a second set of pipes forming a metal Bourdon rank. Further inspection reveals sliders just below the toeboards that can close off the wind from the clarinet pipes leaving only the Bourdon to sound. These can only be adjusted by actually climbing up a ladder inside the case and moving them by hand. In the instrument’s initial days, the expert jury that reviewed its tonal colors and playability was delighted with the authenticity of the clarinet sound, but this rank of free reeds may sound to the modern ear more like an accordion than a clarinet. Perhaps the inclusion of such a strange back-up option was a prophecy of changing tastes on Merklin’s part!
The organ remained largely unchanged from its original form when the builders dismantled it at the end of the 1855 Universal Exposition for the move from its exhibitive state in the Palais d’Industrie to its long-term functioning existence in the church of Saint Eugène. The most notable change was the addition of the 2' Octavin in the Positif, possibly a move already at that time towards enlarging the organ. Astonishingly, without this addition, the instrument was completely devoid of 2' stops! The method by which this rank was added is noteworthy in the scope of the instrument as well: adding another wind chamber to the back of the Positif platform would have been nearly physically impossible in terms of space and wind flow. Instead, the valve under the 4' Prestant was blocked open, keeping its chamber constantly pressurized. With additional holes bored, the Prestant and Octavin were both mounted on the one toeboard with sliders underneath for independent control. These two stops require noticeably more force to activate at the console.
Initial festivities
The church of Saint Eugène-Sainte Cécile held its dedication ceremonies December 20, 1855, graced by music played on the usable portion of the organ that still awaited complete installation. Students of the Niedermeyer School of Classical and Religious Music8 played interpretations of chants including Veni Creator, Ecce Sacerdos, Te Deum, and Alma Redemptoris Mater. The organ received its own official initiation some four months later on May 9, 1856. Performers on the inaugural concert included first organist of the parish Renaud de Vilbac, Georges Schmitt (then organist of Saint-Sulpice), several students of the Niedermeyer School, and Joseph Wakenthaler, organist of Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs and professor of organ at the Niedermeyer School. They were privileged to play both repertoire and improvisations for a full church. Since then, the parish has enjoyed a respectable heritage of organists including celebrated French pianist and composer Raoul Pugno, Clément Lippacher, opera composer Xavier Leroux, later Niedermeyer School student and composer Pierre Kunc, Roger Boucher, and Amédée de Vallombrosa, student of Vierne and Widor and later longtime choir organist at Saint-Eustache. More recent titulaires include the late Henri Morint and current organist of the Basilica of St. Denis, Pierre Pincemaille.
Years of use and misuse
Since the initial days of the parish, many years of wear and tear have taken their toll on the organ, and only in recent years have the church and instrument both begun to return to the signs of life they knew in the nineteenth century. In 1983, French organ expert Jean-Louis Coignet proposed that the instrument, as property of the state (since church and state separation laws of 1905), become a historical monument. At that time, Olaf Dalsbaek made an inventory and secured work on the instrument despite a number of other builders both within and outside of France desiring the contract to restore what many had heard of, but few had seen: Merklin’s first organ in France. Owned by Dalsbaek since 1976 and today called Dalsbaek-Merklin, it was this small company out of Lyon that discovered the organ in a bewildering state of disarray, which they believe probably happened in the middle of the twentieth century. In the Grand Orgue, the Clarinette pipes had been removed and stacked in a pile outside the swell box and replaced with some 4' and 2' principal pipes held in place by wires. Sixty pipes from the Fourniture were found piled in a box inside the organ and replaced with a Plein Jeu taken from the smaller choir organ in the west side of the balcony plus eighteen pipes from the 4' Prestant in the Positif division. Some of the pipes removed from the Fourniture made their way to the 4' Prestant and 2' Octavin in the Positif. A third rackboard was devoid of pipes altogether. In the Positif division, the 16' Bombarde rank was missing and pipes from the Récit Dolce inhabited the space for the 8' Dolciana. In place of the Dolce then in the Récit was an unknown string rank from the choir organ with the Viola di Gamba trying to be its Celeste. With rows of shoelaces straining to contain these modifications, only the Pedal division had the good fortune of bearing all the pipes too big and heavy to be easily rearranged, sold, or arbitrarily dispensed with.'
Wondrously though, with the exception of an electric blower added by Charles Mutin at the end of 1913, no organbuilder has ever altered or modernized the organ. Obviously the ideal course would have been consistent maintenance over the years, but rare are the few and lucky aged organs still functioning today that can claim such a legacy. How fortunate then that most of the puzzle pieces in the balcony of Saint Eugène-Sainte Cécile were merely rearranged and weathered by time, and that there were no intermittent enlargements, modifications to the console, or attempts to revoice the pipework to reflect contemporary trends. In this project, Dalsbaek-Merklin has carefully labored with nothing other than pure Merklin history.
Restoration
A decade after Dalsbaek-Merklin’s initial survey of the organ, Jean-Pierre Decavèle, technical counsel to the French Minister of Cultural Affairs for organs in the Paris region, made a second inventory of the status of the instrument during 1993 and 1994. Bureaucracy and financial issues, however, allowed dismantling of the organ only in 1996. Beginning that year, a team of several people from Dalsbaek-Merklin carried out the rebuilding of the reservoirs, blowers, and Barker machine at the workshop in Miribel, suburb of Lyon. Cleaning the case happened in Paris within the church from behind a masquerade of facemasks; cleaning the large façade pipes was a project for the sidewalk outside with sawhorses and a hose under the curious expressions of passersby.
Two years into the project, authorities realized the balcony floor beneath the instrument would also need serious work and contracted a separate company to replace it altogether. With the entire instrument including the case dismantled, Dalsbaek-Merklin therefore halted all work on the organ from spring of 1998 until near the end of the year when they remounted the freshly reconstructed blowers and windchests along with the case. No sooner had they begun again when the state suspended all work indefinitely while hunting for the money to finish the project.
Dalsbaek-Merklin closed its doors completely for about two years, the workers dispersing to other organ builders for work until the long-hoped-for green light was again given. The last stage of restoration began only in August 2004. By that time, most of the pipes and interior framework of the instrument had been subject to approximately seven years of storage in the east balcony of the church wrapped in industrial strength plastic wrap. Dalsbaek recovered a number of them damaged from unfortunate encounters with unsupervised laypeople and set to work repairing the pipework a second time.
Much of the woodwork on the entire instrument remains original from 1855, including the varnished red pine case, the woods of the console, most of the trackers, and every single wooden pipe. Other materials did not survive quite so well. A number of new metal pipes had to be constructed with tin proportions as close to original as could be ascertained, including the entire Bourdon for the Clarinette, the vast majority of the Positif Dolciana, most of the Positif Octavin, half the Grand Orgue Fourniture, and most of the Positif 16' Trompette. Despite the hundreds of fresh pipes, though, the number of usable originals is fairly remarkable considering the time and energy involved in relocating them and determining their rightful place in the instrument. The Barker machine, reservoirs, and blowers were reconstructed with fresh but historically accurate materials including cardboard, wood, sheepskin, and bookbinding paper. With governmental restrictions inhibiting changes to the organ due to its status as historical monument, the only difference resulting from the restoration process is the expansion of the pedalboard from 27 notes to 30 to facilitate performance of modern repertoire. The three new notes are available on couplers only and therefore required no additional pipes and little mechanical modification. Pedal pumps to one side of the organ case were replaced to allow the exhausting option of manually supplying the wind.
Restoration of the interior of the church was completed in 1987, well ahead of the organ, with a carillon added in 2000 (made possible by the fact that the Conservatoire de Paris moved out of its long-time residence directly across the narrow rue Sainte Cécile where chiming of bells every fifteen minutes would have been considered a nuisance). At the time of restoration, the parish name was officially changed to Saint Eugène-Sainte Cécile after many years of being referred to by the name of the street on which it stands instead of its given name decreed by Napoleon III more than a century earlier. The double name preserves the honor of Saint Eugène as original patron of the parish while maintaining the familiar identity of the parish under the patron saint of music.
Today and tomorrow
Restoration of the organ was completed in March 2005. An inaugural recital will be performed on November 27 at 5 p.m. by organist Touve Ratovondrahety, titulaire of Saint Eugène-Sainte Cécile and pianist for the Paris opera ballet corps. After a tenure of accompanying from the choir organ everything from weekly evening masses to grand Easter festivals, he finally commands a reliable, colorful instrument worthy of and meant for the church’s beautiful space. Those people who have cheered this project on from the beginning, those with mild supportive interest along the way, and those who delved into its deep caverns relatively late in the story all await the first moments of festivity when the organ’s colorful sounds will return them again to the bustling, creativity-driven days of the nineteenth century, and bring together the builders, parishioners, emperors, musicians, restorers, and travelers whose journeys have intersected in this organ.
