Introduction: “Sunday Morning in a Paris Organ Loft”

Summary

Like a king's box at the royal opera: private, desirable, magnetic. Our king plays both the host and the organ—equally skillfully; for, since admirers come (on invitation only), it is essential to possess both social and digital technic.

In short, we come to the Mass and go from a reception. This reception is punctuated not by drinks, but by music, very largely Gregorian responses to the phrases sung by the choir at the opposite end of the church; also Bach, followed by original pyrotechnics.

Widor—it is his reception at St. Sulpice to which I refer—chats in the best French to some. To those who have no best French he speaks, in a discreet adagio, the language whose past participles are always behind time [German]. The new operas are discussed prestissimo (when in Gallic), after which he vigorously pulls the signals for the “wind” and the Leipsic Cantor's C major Prelude begins.

These lulls in the conversation, which exist only when musical masterpieces hold sway, form the only silent devotions of the “second story guests” (for we are high above the heads of the worshippers and almost function on the astral plane!).

When Bach is laid aside we hear the chancel organist, a hundred and fifty feet away, working hard at his task of accompanying. He is the soldier who works overtime; “ours” is the general who appears on the field only at signifi- cant moments …

Last, the postlude, woven most originally and beautifully from the rythmic [sic] essence of the plain song for Trinity Sunday.

That is what Sunday mornings in Paris were made for: conversation and marvelous improvisations.

A last brief summing up reception and one passes down by the spiral staircase so often trod by the genius of organ builders, Cavaillé-Coll.

A morning in the organ loft is uplifting—although we may neither see nor hear what is taking place below.

This is the modern salon!

—T. Carl Whitmer

The Way of My Heart and Mind, 166–68.