The 'City of Music' in the La Villette district of Paris offers concert halls, instrument museums, well-stocked music libraries, and here everything revolves around the Conservatoire National Supérieur de la Musique et de la Danse, the most important institution of its kind in Europe, if not the world.
The conservatory has a modern architectural structure and here some numbers make one shudder: over 1200 students, almost 300 pianos.
After the Rieger organ in the auditorium, three more instruments were added to allow the students to compete in various musical repertoires.
A two-manual baroque organ made by Blumenroeder and a romantic-symphonic instrument, also with two manuals, made by Peter Meier and Marco Venegoni.
But it is with the third instrument that the two organ teachers, Olivier Latry and Michel Bouvard, wanted to take a major gamble: not yet a historical copy but the creation of an innovative organ, capable of stimulating and bringing out the students' moods, an organ designed for organ improvisation.
A chameleon-like instrument, capable of adapting like a glove to whoever plays it, thanks to the ductility of the electric drive, a good phonic base ingeniously redistributed over the three manuals, plus a whole series of innovative functions.
After all, in France, improvisation is as much a staple as interpretation. Improvisation requires something beyond the mastery of theory, literature, harmonies, it requires a transversal imagination, capable of tapping into sensations and transforming them into music.
Also for this reason, the two lecturers of the organ chairs were supported from the earliest design stages by a pool of students from the advanced courses, who were able to orient the project towards new and contemporary requirements and who were able to draw new nuances and colours from every possible reed and combination.
A challenge, therefore, that seems to have been won, since the first comments from the students are enthusiastic, it could only be so, after all, the designers are a guarantee.
THE ORGAN
It consists of a three-manual console that controls 13 registers with differentiated extensions. The transmission, which is electric, was expressly requested by the consultants in order to bring students closer to the real world (electrically transmitted organs make up the majority of existing instruments) where console-organ distances, acoustic delays, require special skills and knowledge.
Thanks to the technique of one magnet per note, the 13 real registers that make up the instrument have been utilised in a differentiated and varied manner in the 49 registers that make up the phonic arrangement of the organ.
Basically, the pressures, reed cuts and register voices are close to the French tradition; in fact, it was a French organ builder, Nicolas Toussaint, who oversaw the intonation of the instrument built in Italy.
While G. Organo, Positivo and Recitativo have distinct personalities, they can merge into infinite combinations by swapping manuals, dividing into solo/accompaniment, coupling in any tone, all easily managed by the organist. The same goes for the Pedal section where it is possible to divide the pedalboard into two sections, a low one capable of playing the registers of the pedal and a high one that takes on different functions with the union with the manuals: for example, a note held in the basses plays the Pedal section while other notes pressed at the same time in the treble play the corresponding notes of the manuals joined to the pedalboard.
The Sostenuto function in its two variants (addition or substitution) allows the holding of notes or chords on the keyboard.
The Pizzicato function allows this particular effect on the coupled keyboard, just as the Soprano function allows only the highest note of a chord to be played on the coupled manual.
Programmable couplings make it possible to create unions at will between manuals outside the canonical ones: Recitative to the Positive at 2.2/7′, G Organ to the Pedal three semitones above, there are no limits to the colours that can be achieved.
Here, not only do we take full advantage of the modern possibilities provided by electronics, but we test the 'acoustic conditions' that an organist may encounter when performing a concert, preparing for it by setting a simulated delay at the touch of the keys to recreate in the small hall the acoustic delays of large concert halls or churches.
The entire organ is equipped with two expressive speakers, one inside the other, which allow for an infinity of gradations of volume and colour and make it capable of simulating a wide variety of instruments and environments in a studio room.
It is not only a versatile organ but a veritable miniature workshop that can inspire the organist and release the spontaneity of everyone who plays it without tiring, just like a child in a candy shop.
PHONIC COMPOSITION
| A | Bourdon * | 16′ - 8′ |
| B | Montre * | 8′ |
| C | Bourdon | 8′ - 4′ - 2′ |
| D | Prestant * | 4′ - 2′ |
| E | Gambe | 8′ - 4′ - 2′ |
| F | Flûte | 4′ - 2′ |
| G | Basson | 16′ - 8′ |
| H | Hautbois (Dessus) | 8′ |
| I | Plein - Jeu III * | 1.1/3′ |
| J | Quinte - Larigot | 2.2/3′ - 1.1/3′ |
| K | Tierce - Sèptieme | 1.3/5′ - 1.1/7′ |
| L | Voix Cèleste | 8′ |
| M | Clarinette | 8′ |
Italian 
English 
