A copy of an historic Quebec organ has been commissioned from Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders. In the 1980s, Quebec musicologist Élisabeth Gallat-Morin found letters written by a certain Canon La Corne to his confrères at the Cathedral of Notre Dame in Quebec City concerning his search on their behalf for an organ for the cathedral.
Apparently sometime after renovations to the cathedral were completed in 1744, the canons in Quebec sought to purchase a new organ of exceptional quality from a Parisian builder. In 1753, they asked Canon La Corne—who was already residing in Paris—to negotiate the purchase. Having been alerted to Gallat-Morin’s discovery, French musicologist Pierre Hardouin found a 1753 contract for an organ ordered by the canons from the Parisian builder, Robert Richard. A contract having been signed in early March 1753, the completed one-manual instrument with pull-down pedals and fewer than a dozen stops arrived in Quebec City that same year. Six years later, the instrument was destroyed during the siege of Quebec.
In honor of the 400th anniversary of the founding of Quebec City, Juget-Sinclair Organbuilders has been commissioned to construct a replica of this instrument, which is to be installed in the chapel of the Musée de l’Amérique Française in 2009—the culmination of ten years work by an ad hoc committee set up to recreate this key instrument in Quebec’s musical history.
January 23, 2009
THE DIAPASON
