When we went out this morning, Bill reminded me, “It’s cold today. You’ll need your jacket!” and for the rest of the day, we battled downpours, raining cats and dogs, umbrellas turning inside out from the wind, and a sore back (for me) — due to a sudden lurch on the metro yesterday which threw my back out.

After breakfast at the bakery across the street, we set out for Saint-Gervais, where members of the Couperin family were organists here from 1653 until 1826, a period of 173 years! Louis Couperin was appointed organist while a teenager in 1653 until his death in 1661; he was succeeded by his brother, Charles and François, uncle of the famous François who was only ten when his uncle died. The church decided that François should take the post at age 18, but in actuality he was just short of his 17th birthday. Several generations followed, ending with Célèste-Thérese Couperin (1793-1860) “filled in for a few months at Saint-Gervais, then moved to Saint-Jean Saint-Franços until 1830, when she was obliged to resign following complaints from parishioners about the poor quality of her playing. She was the last musician in this extraordinary musical dynasty.” (Nigel Simeone: Paris, a Musical Gazeteer)

Carl and I visited this church 15 years ago and heard an American organist play. I remembered that there were small square stools for sitting in the nave rather than pews.

Outside Saint-Gervais was a moving memorial to a terrorist attack on November 13, 2015, using broken bits of concrete as part of the design. On that day, a cell of the Islamic State of Iraq committed a string of attacks, resulting in 130 people dead and hundreds wounded.

Next stop was Saint-Sévérin, which I remembered from our previous 2010 visit, especially the columns with the swirling design. Camille Saint-Saëns was organist here while he was a teenager. I was pleasantly surprised to find that Christophe Mantoux is now the organist here — he was the tour director for a past organ study tour I took. He also was a classmate of Hawaii Symphony concertmaster, Ignace “Iggy” Jang, and asked how he’s doing!

After leaving Saint-Sévérin, Bill thought we could take a bus to Sainte-Clotilde, but it meant walking quite a distance to the bus stop, and then waiting more than 20 minutes in the pouring rain for our bus number 87. We gratefully boarded the bus, only to have it make an unexplained stop only two stops away, leaving us in the rain again. Our shoes got completely soaked, and my umbrella turned itself inside out countless times.

We decided then to try going to La Madelaine, a church where Gabriel Fauré was the organist and premiered the beloved Requiem in 1888 for a parishioner. When Fauré himself died in 1924, the Requiem was performed for his funeral. The funeral for composer Frédéric Chopin was also held here.

We decided to try once more to visit Sainte-Clotilde and this time we were successful. This was the church of César Franck, Gabriel Pierne, Charles Tournemire and Jean Langlais, which has a Cavaillé-Coll organ from 1859.

Sadly, all good things must come to an end, and tomorrow morning we’ll be on our looooong trek home. Our itinerary will be Paris-Zurich-New York JFK-Newark-San Francisco-Honolulu and will necessitate an overnight stay on the East Coast. This has been another great trip, full of good food and many adventures. All of the Paris churches I had visited before but I didn’t have such a good camera on my phone. I’m afraid I’ll have to hit the ground running on my return home, having to play a funeral at the Lutheran Church of Honolulu this Saturday for a former parishioner and my routine responsibilities at Nuuanu Congregational and St. Mark’s Episcopal Church, plus all my organ students are waiting for my return.

Thanks for joining me on this trip!