Luogo e data di registrazione		Notre-Dame de Guibray, Falaise, Normandy (France) - 13 Settembre 1993 (1,2) Sint-Jan-de-Doper, Begijnhofkerk, Leuven (Belgium) - 2/3 Marzo 1993 (3-11)
	Registrazione: live / studio		studio
	Producer / Recording Supervisor		Wolf Erichson
	Recording Engineer		Stephan Schellmann (Tritonus), Andreas Neubronner (Tritonus)
	Prima Edizione LP		Nessuna
	Edizione CD		Sony "Vivarte" | LC 6868 | SK 53 963 | 1 CD - durata 70' 03" | (c) 1994 | DDD
	Original Cover		"Celebration of the Mass in a Catholic Church" by Hendrik van Steenwijk (1580-1649).
	Note		-

The Parisot Organ in Notre-Dame de Guibray, Falaise (Normandy) Few Normandy organs have survived the vicissitudes of time as well as Claude and Henri Parisot's 1746 instrument at Falaise. The case, action, console, all the windchests with the exception of the Positif and the majority of the stops are all eighteenth-century originals. In all likelihood there was already an organ at Notre-Dame de Guibray in the Middle Ages. A contract survives from 1537 commissioning the Normandy builders Gratien de Cailly and Simon Le Vasseur to build a new organ. This instrument appears to have been damaged during the first of the Huguenot Wars, since it had to be restored as early as 1565. At the same time, de Cailly was instructed to move the organ from a gallery in the transept to the back of the nave. The first mention of an organist (one Dauphin by name) and his bellows blower is found in archival records from 1714. Three years later the same records list repair costs for the organ but give no further details about the builder in question. Clearly the instrument was already in a poor state of repair by this date since, in 1745, the parish decided to have a new organ built. The brothers Jean and Joseph Le Roy were commissioned to build a new gallery. Receipts show that the new instrument was built in 1746 by Claude Parisot and his nephew Henri, who was then twenty years old. Claude Parisot (1704-1781) hailed originally from Lorraine and had already made a name for himself with his work in the churches of St. Remy in Dieppe and St. Sépulcre at Abbeville, as well as the Premonstratensian abbeys at Mondaye and Ardenne, the cathedral at Sées and the Dominican monastery at Caen. The organ case and balustrade at Notre-Dame de Guibray are the work of Jacques Chapelain, who also built the structurally similar case of Parisot’s organ in Sées Cathedral. The Falaise instrument was not regularly maintained, with the result that Claude and Henri Parisot were required to carry out repairs in 1755, 1768 and 1769. The position of organist was held at this time by Jacques Noël Toustain, who occupied the tribune from the date at which the new organ was installed until his death in 1771. His successor was a certain Sieur Fleury, who was replaced in turn in 1775 by an organist called Gervais. Henri Parisot remained responsible for the organ’s upkeep until the Revolution. Although the church was used to store animal fodder from 1792 onwards, the organ continued to be played at secular festivities. Neither the church nor its organ survived the Revolution unscathed. Urgent repair work was necessary when, following the Concordat of 1801, Notre-Dame de Guibray was once again available for religious services. Moreover, no fewer than 146 pipes were missing. An organ builder by the name of Linsel (or Lincel) carried out a series of minor repairs over the ensuing years, but it was not until 1833 that the Claude Brothers from Mirecourt in the Vosges began a relatively extensive overhaul, which they were able to complete only in 1838, following a number of financial problems on the part of the local parish. In the course of this work three of the old stops were rebuilt: the Trompette and Clairon in the Grand Orgue and the Clairon in the Pedal. In 1886 Joseph Koenig overhauled the instrument, prior to carrying out a complete restoration in 1900/01, including an overhaul of the Positif and the addition of an I-Iautbois stop. His son Paul-Marie undertook some minor repairs in 1920. Shortly before the Second World War Parisot’s historic instrument narrowly escaped a fatal rebuild by a wholly unqualified builder, but the church was badly damaged by air raids and the organ itself was affected, with the result that it was no longer playable. In 1955 it was declared a listed monument, a status extended to the organ case some fifteen years later. Restoration work on the instrument was delayed until 1970, when the task of rebuilding the Notre-Dame organ was entrusted to Erwin Muller of Croissy-sur-Seine. He carried out the work in the spirit of French Neo-Classicism, a style which left its mark above all on the instrument’s tonal qualities. Neither the type of construction nor the material used for the new pipes was in keeping with the organ’s original design. The composition of the Mixtures and a few additional pedal stops were clearly influenced by the spirit of the age. In consequence, a new overhaul was necessary by the 1990s. Between 1991 and 1993 the firm of Boisseau et Cattiaux of Béthines near Poitiers restored the instrument to its original state, overhauling all the pipework, replacing the newer pipes by historical reconstructions, removing the modern pedal stops, replacing the parallel bellows with wedge-bellows, opting for a composition of Mixtures based on Dom Bédos and restoring the original pitch (a' = 415 Hertz) and the irregular temperament prescribed by Michel Corrette and typical of the mid-eighteenth century. Following its most recent restoration, the organ at Notre-Dame de Guibray provides valuable evidence of the art of eighteenth-century organ building, while at the same time constituting the best preserved of Parisot’s instruments. As such, this historic and sensitively restored instrument is admirably suited to performing French music of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Peter Goltfuss Organ in the Beguine Court Church of St. John The Baptist at Leuven (Belgium) The Goltfuss organ in the Church of st. John the Baptist in the Great Beguine Court at Leuven is one of the best preserved of seventeenth-century instruments. It is clear from a recently discovered contract that the organ builder Peter Goltfuss was commissioned to build a new organ for the Beguine Court Church in 1690. The Goltfuss family of organ builders enjoyed a high reputation in Brabant and Flanders at this time. The head of the dynasty, Hans Goltfuss, came originally from Keulen, but had settled in Haacht around 1642. He is known to have helped in building the organ in St. John's Cathedral in ’s-Hertogenbosch, to have undertaken restoration work on the instruments in St. Peter’s in Leuven and Park Abbey at Heverlee and to have built the new organ in the Abbey of Our Lady of the Vineyard in Leuven. He died in 1658, leaving a six-year-old son, Peter, and a widow, who married his master-journeyman, Jan Dekens. Dekens ran the business until Peter Goltfuss was old enough to take it over. From this period date the organs in Averbode Abbey and St. Germanus’s in Tienen. Only two organs by Peter Goltfuss (1652-i697) are known to have survived: the organ in the Augustinian Abbey of St. Maartensdal at Leuven, now in Longueville, and the organ from the Beguine Court Church in Leuven that can be heard in the present recording. This last-named instrument was completed in 1696 and shows the influence of Hans Goltfuss, with its large central tower positioned between two pipe flats which are framed, in turn, by two smaller towers with dummy display pipes. The substructure of the oak case rests on the gallery balustrade. Like the Goltfuss organ in Longueville, the Leuven instrument is decorated with ornate carvings. In spite of extensive enquiries, it has proved impossible to identify the artist responsible for the Baroqug cas. Between 1857 and 1860 P. A. van Dinter of Maaseik undertook substantial rebuilding work on the Leuven Goltfuss organ, although it is obvious from early nineteenth-century engravings that changes to the Larigot pipes had already been made at an earlier date. In accord with contemporary taste, van Dinter increased the wind pressure, redesigned the feet of the pipes and raised the pitch by altering both the length of the pipes and the height of the cutup. Stops which he regarded as "too shrill" he replaced by Romantic voices such as Viola da Gamba 8' and Dulciana 4’ and restor the Trompette, which was divided into bass and treble. The compass of the keyboard was extended to g"' by incorporating additional chests. During the twentieth century the instrument was maintained by the firm of Van de Loo. Electric bellows were installed but proved too noisy. Following substantial restoration of the Beguine Court Church, the parish decided to have the organ overhauled, too. Since much of the original instrument had survived, the builder G. Potvlieghe-De Maeyer of Ninove was able to restore Goltfuss’s instrument to its original state. In the course of the work, which lasted from 1983 to 1986, it was discovered that the old wind supply, with its three wedge-bellows and hand pump, still existed. This can now be used as an alternative to the restored electric bellows. Potvlieghe-De Maeyer also restored the keyboard, which now has a compass of C - c''' with a short first octave. The pedalboard (C - c), which is coupled to the manual, was reconstructed on the model of the Goltfuss organ in Longueville. The low notes here are arranged not according to the principle of the short octave (with the keys of E, F-sharp and G-sharp playing C, D and E respectively) but in chromatic order, a system found in a number of Spanish instruments. The opportunity was also taken to retum the stoplist to its original state. Tuning and voicing were undertaken in collaboration with A. Fauconnier and K. Van der Linden (Netherlands). Meantone was adopted, and the present pitch is around three-quarters of a tone lower than modern a‘ = 440. Peter Goltfuss’s instrument in the Beguine Court Church in Leuven is the first organ in Brabant to be rigorously restored using the latest insights into the type of construction and tonal picture of seventeenth-century organ building. In consequence, the instrument is a unique example of the type of organ being built in South Brabant at that time and is thus particularly well suited to performances of works by Flemish composers such as Lambert Chaumont and Abraham van den Kerkhoven. Dorothee Hütte (Translation: © 1994 Stewart Spencer)