— Organists and Organ Playing —

Hog heaven!

October 23, 2022

As we were leaving the service this morning at the Basilica of Immaculate Conception here in Lourdes, France, I made a remark to my sister, “if Carl were here, he’d be in hog heaven!” referring to my late husband who was a church musician extraordinaire. I’m sure that his influence on me STILL is why I like visiting churches and attending services even on vacation—because that’s what we always did on our travels together.

This morning, for example, we first attended the international mass at the Eglise Sainte Bernadette, a building which is the newest on the Lourdes “campus,” and fourth of the basilicas. By “international,” I mean that we heard various languages during the service. The specification of the organ is here.

The organ is by Barthélémy Formentelli and was inaugurated in 1992. It has 3 manuals and 37 registers. It had a nice sound but I was a little disappointed because I thought the organ was too small and did not fill the room,
Look at all the green chasubles (the vestments the priests are wearing)

We next attended the Italian language service at the Immaculate Conception, where I was excited to see the historic Cavaillé-Coll organ. The organ was built in 1872 and inaugurated on September 8, 1873. It was classified as a historic monument in 1977. 

Alas, they didn’t use this organ during the service, but used a small pipe organ on the side. It had a very nice sound but the nun who was playing it only used two stops!

Photo by Jieun Kim Newland

Earlier, we had visited the Basilica of Our Lady of the Holy Rosary, which features Byzantine-inspired architecture and has a large pipe organ in the rear. I’m sorry we didn’t spend more time here, but I did find this YouTube video of the organ:

While we’re at it, I found this short video clip of a Kyrie sung in the underground basilica of Pius X. You can hear the organ in it.

This place has an embarrassment of riches!