Death of an eminent French organist, 61

Howard Goodall says:

In France, ages ago, early 20th c., around the time they dismantled their choir schools & cathedral choir foundations. There’s a strange paradox at work – on the one hand, French sacred spaces are classified as historic monuments and their upkeep (including often its contents, like organs) is funded by the state, so in some ways ‘safer’ than their UK counterparts, whereas the assault on choral & organistic music-making during services has been unremitting, in favour of a liturgy that is ‘easily understood’. It’s a bizarre irony that the best place to hear eg catholic Renaissance polyphony in the form of mass in Latin etc, during a service, is in a cathedral/abbey/collegiate chapel in Anglican Britain, since Latin is (actually) outlawed in French churches and choral foundations only sporadically exist to sing them anyway. All tourists will recognise the odd experience of visiting a cathedral in France or Italy or Spain where there is little organ-playing or choral singing in their services but where they play recorded sacred music on CD (made elsewhere, sung in forbidden Latin) over the PA system for the benefit of visitors during the day. That said, France is overall a country where composers, musicians and artists of all kinds are accorded way more respect than in the UK and their contribution to the overall culture greatly valued, and choirs from everywhere are welcomed throughout the year to sing whatever sacred music they like in the context of concerts in religious buildings, and well supported in so doing by local authorities and audiences alike. Swings & roundabouts, or balançoires et ronds-points, as they say in France.

Shayne Doty says:

Pierre was gracious to me, inviting me to play a concert at Saint-Denis and then showing me the organ before leaving me locked in that splendid basilica for five wonderful hours of rehearsal before the next day’s concert. He had an infectious sense of humor.