Call me a
romantic if you like, but in the days leading up to Christmas one of things I
like best is to sit in a half-dark church, muffled up in my coat, hat and
gloves, while hidden in the organ loft up behind me someone is sending one crashing,
pulsing wave of sound after another out into the emptiness.
Paris is
remarkable in so many ways it’s easy to overlook its church organs, unless
you’re an organ enthusiast. It has over 300 of different ages and
sophistication, more, I believe, than any other capital city. We are fortunate in the 18th
arrondissement where I live. The église St Bernard de la Chapelle, the church at
the end of the road facing my flat, has one of them, built by France’s most
famous 19th century organ builder: Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. Cavaillé-Coll’s
most famous organ is in the church of St Sulpice. He built the one in the église
St Bernard about the same time and although it may not have the ‘hundred
speaking stops’ of the St Sulpice monster, it still packs a punch, filling the
church to reverberation point or sending out a trickle of notes like a string
of Christmas lights.
the organ of St Sulpice
The resident
organist in any church, known in French as ‘le titulaire’, is appointed by the
Parish Council and accountable to them for the music s/he plays, for finding a
substitute when s/he takes a holiday and so on. I went to a poorly advertised
concert at the église St Bernard last week, to begin my personal pre-Christmas
music fest. Jorris Sauquet, the titulaire of the organ at the église Notre-Dame
du Rosaire was playing. Twenty-five of us – all that music for only twenty-five
people - heard him play pieces by Ravel, Widor, Lefebure-Wely, Franck and
Bizet. When I left, the basket for donations at the entrance had maybe half a
dozen notes in it – the concert itself was free.
Quite by
chance I heard Sauquet again last night when I went to another concert, in a
very different type of church down in the 4th arrondissement. No
stained glass, no candles, apart from three lit for Advent (the fourth unlit
until this coming Sunday). We were in l’église des Billettes, one of the few
Lutheran Protestant churches of Paris, in surroundings austere enough for even
the most committed Calvinist.
The concert
was given by the Ensemble Vocal Beata Musica, a group of 15 singers,
‘sensibilisés à l’interprétation baroque’ as the programme notes explained. Jorris
Sauquet played the organ for us. This concert was also free, apart from a
modest charge of 2 euros for the programme. There is an excellent website for
anyone wanting to know where organ recitals are on each week: www.france-orgue.fr. Many of these ask
for only a token donation.
I slipped out
into the street at the interval, having noticed as I arrived, a large crowd
gathering in a cafe opposite the church. It was 10 pm by the church clock and
the party over the road was in full swing. A couple of projectors had been set
up at the windows on the first floor of the cafe and trained on the church
walls. The logo of the cafe jazzed about on the stones and every few minutes
jets of steam came rushing out of the same open windows. There couldn’t have
been a starker contrast with what was going on only yards away inside the
church.
There was no
contest for me. After the interval the ensemble were singing ‘Est ist ein Ros’
entsprungen’ which must be one of the most beautiful Christmas hymns ever
written. I learnt it by heart at the age of fifteen, in the first weeks of
starting German at school. We had a Bavarian teacher as I remember, a woman who
spoke virtually no English and whose chief virtue was to get us singing songs
and hymns. I can’t think of a better way to begin to learn a language.
“Est ist ein
Ros’ entpsrungen
Aus einer
Wurzel zart,
Wie uns die
Alten sungen,
Von Jesse kam
die Art,
Und hat ein
Blümlein bracht
Mitten im
kalten Winter
Wohl zu der
halben Nacht...”
The église
itself has an interesting history. It stands on the site of a house owned by a
Jew who was burnt on the Place de Grève in 1290 for desecration of the ‘Host’
and, according to the church’s own
guide, the cloisters, built by les frères de la Charité, are the only remaining
medieval cloisters in Paris.
It was not
far off 11 pm when the concert finished, the party across the street still on
but with rather fewer guests. I made my way to the metro which, true to form,
delivered its own comédie, musicale and ‘humaine’. I got on with two very
muscular queens, both rather disconcertingly clad: from the waist down grey
wool leggings which left little to the imagination, and lashings of bling above
the waist – wicked nails in red and black, enough make-up to do a whole troop
of actors, lots of flicking of hair and preening and an unmistakable sense that
they were loving their impact on their conventionally-dressed fellow passengers.
And why not? What would be the point if no-one noticed?
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