Cavaillé-Coll, Aristide

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Cavaillé-Coll, Aristide

Cavaillé-Coll, Aristide, celebrated French organ builder; b. Montpellier, Feb. 4, 1811; d. Paris, Oct. 13, 1899. His father, Dominique Hyacinthe (1771–1862), was also an organ builder. Aristide went to Paris in 1833. He built the organ at St.-Denis, and thereafter many famous organs in Paris (St.-Sulpice, Madeleine, etc.), the French provinces, Belgium, the Netherlands, and elsewhere. He invented the system of separate wind chests with different pressures for the low, medium, and high tones; also the “flûtes octaviantes.” He publ. Études expérimentales sur les tuyaux d’orgues (report for the Académie des Sciences, 1849) and Projet d’orgue monumental pour la Basilique de Saint-Pierre de Rome (1875).

Bibliography

A. Peschard, Notice biographique sur A. C.-C. et les orgues électriques (Paris, 1899); C. and E. Cavaille-Coll, A. C- C: Ses origines, sa vie, ses oeuvres (Paris, 1928).

—Nicolas Slonimsky/Laura Kuhn/Dennis McIntire