Search - Alexandre Guilmant, Ernst Breidenbach :: Guilmant: Duos for Piano & Harmonium

Lost Art of the Belle Époque...

Sébastien Melmoth | Hôtel d'Alsace, PARIS | 07/27/2007

(5 out of 5 stars)

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F.-A. Guilmant (1837-1911) was an associate of Franck and Saint-Saëns; too, he was mentor to Louis Vierne Louis Vierne: Complete Organ Symphonies . Remarkably, he had a sizable 28-register Cavaillé-Coll house-organ installed in his home--on which he and Vierne would have played. Alexandre Guilmant Complete Organ Sonatas



More ubiquitous than such an house-organ was the harmonium--of which Mustel in Paris is the most famous builder of these fine instruments. The harmonium, of course, is a wind & reed keyboard instrument, about the size and shape of a large upright piano, likened to an huge accordion.



At the Fin de Siécle, during the Belle Époque, and slightly later, the harmonium was a very important instrument in bourgeois households, smaller churches, in the concert hall, and also in the early cinema where its eerie vibrations perfectly corresponded with German Expressionism. But these charming pieces were originally intended to be played at a concert of fin-de-siècle art music.



In large prosperous 19th Century European bourgeois households, it was not at all uncommon to find both a piano and an harmonium. The piano was the more desired; the harmonium, both cheaper and easier to maintain. Moreover, the two together form a delicious duo which timbrally complements one another: the punctuating piano is underscored by the droning pedal point of the harmonium. Just add two bourgeois daughters and have a little tea-party concert.

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