John Abbey (organ builder)

John Abbey (born December 22, 1785 in Whilton , Northamptonshire , † February 19, 1859 in Versailles ) was an English organ builder who made organs for several French cathedrals. He is regarded as a pioneer in adopting elements of English organ building in France.

Life

John Abbey was the son of a carpenter and first learned his father's trade. Contrary to his opinion, he went to London as a teenager to learn organ building with James Davis and later with Hugh Russell. These two teachers were renowned organ builders at the time. When the piano producer Sébastien Érard , who wanted to revive the art of organ building, which was ailing in France, came to England and was impressed by the progress there in the manufacture of these musical instruments, he invited Abbey in 1826 to work on his behalf as an organ builder in France. He was supposed to build an organ in Érard's La Muette castle. In France, Abbey, who lived first in Paris and from 1842 permanently in Versailles, had early success with his small organs constructed according to the English model; for example with the organs he created in 1827 for the industrial exhibition in the Louvre , for the chapel of the Legion of Honor in Saint-Denis and - on behalf of King Charles X - for the chapel of the Palais des Tuileries . However, the latter organ was badly damaged after just a few years during the July Revolution of 1830 and completely destroyed in 1870.

Since Abbey had the support of important musicians and composers working in France such as Giacomo Meyerbeer in addition to his early professional success , he set up his own company in 1830. In 1831 he built an organ installed in the Paris Opera for the performance of Meyerbeer's Robert le diable , which continued to be used there until it was destroyed in a fire in 1873. Abbey was the first to equip French organs with parallel magazine bellows, an invention of the watchmaker Alexander Cumming, as well as swell boxes and collective steps. He also used free-swinging reed stops ( jeux expressifs ) on organs he had created early on .

The main focus of Abbey's activity was the manufacture of choir organs, which at that time were increasingly used as accompanying instruments in church music . He made such choir organs for churches and monasteries all over France, for example for the Cathedral of Versailles (1837) and in Paris for the churches of St-Nicolas-des-Champs , Ste Élisabeth, St Thomas d'Aquin and St Médard. He also built large gallery organs for the cathedrals of Amiens (1833–1838), La Rochelle (1836), Tulle (1839; this exhibition organ won first prize), Viviers (1841–1842) and Bayeux (1843). From 1844 to 1849 he repaired the organ in Reims Cathedral , as did that of Évreux . Abbey's masterpiece is the organ that he built for the cathedral of Châlons-en-Champagne from 1847 to 1849 ; it has been preserved in its original form. He also exported organs to distant countries such as Chile .

Abbey's company got into financial difficulties at times, particularly in the wake of the February Revolution of 1848 and due to competition from large companies such as that of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll . He lost to this around 1833 in the competition to build the new organ in Saint-Denis; and even in a period of ten years he did not succeed in convincingly completing the organ in the Cathedral of Bayeux.

Several important organ builders such as Jean-Baptiste Stoltz studied with John Abbey. After Abbey's death in 1859, his sons Edwin Eugène (1840–1895) and John Albert (1843–1930) successfully continued their father's business under the company name E. et J. Abbey fils . In the second generation, John Marie (François) Abbey (1886–1931) took over the management of the company soon after 1920, the location of which was moved to Montrouge around this time . The company ceased operations in the early 1930s after completing around 500 commissioned works during its 100-year existence. She had had a good reputation to the end.

literature

• L. Clugnet: Abbey (John) . In: Dictionnaire de biographie française . Vol. 1 (1932), Col. 77 f.
• Kurt Lueders: Abbey, John , in: Music in Past and Present (MGG), 2nd edition, Person Teil, Vol. 1 (1999), Col. 18 f.
• WH Husk, Marc Leroy, Stephen Bicknell: Abbey, John , in: New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians , 2nd Edition, Vol. 1 (2001), pp. 8 f.