CARVAILLE COLLS MONU ORGAN PROPB

Aristide CavailleColl 18111899 is often referred to as the greatest organ builder of all time The pipeorgan being the most complicated musical instrument mechanically and tonally as well as the most expensive adds significantly to that worlds greatest designation The talents required to be such a person range far from musicmaking to advanced physics architecture and engineering That plus the obvious knack to raise vast sums of money CavailleColls Monumental Organ Project for Saint Peters Rome Bigger Than Them All by Ronald Ebrecht is the story of the quest to build the largestever mechanicalaction organ in the biggest church at the time CavailleColls model for that organ and the book he wrote outlining his proposal are the core of Ebrechts discussion CavailleColl bestrode a century as well as an artform His century complicated the project with the most intricate intractable problems SaintPeters Square now a part of the Vatican City State was then part of the newlyunited Italy which had just deposed the pope as ruler of the center of Italy and taken the papal lands The east end of the basilica facing the square and the Tiber became a much disputed boundary It was a part of the Italian state so hotly contested that the Italian Republicans would not accept the concept of an organ hanged from the basilica wall lest it shift Before or since has the music sphere ever provoked such a question that could bring nations to swords