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The organ case

  

The Nicolas Dupont’s concave case splendidly stands on the back tribune and fills the whole nave’s width. It is composed of turrets, and gracious Rocaille style ornaments.

TourelleNicolas Dupont et Jean-Nicolas Jennesson, the latter being the architect, deployed the best of their art in order to give at the same time magnificence and lightness of this 14 meters large, 16 meters high and 4 meters deep case.

Nicolas Dupont previously built between 1751 and 1755 a 42 stops instrument in the Toul Cathedral which organ case is close to the one built in Nancy.

Later, he will build the great organ of the Toul Cathedral (unfortunately bombed and destroyed in 1940), which case will also share the same characteristics.

The known drawings of those organ cases, including the 16ft turrets that are typical of Nicolas Dupont, let us think that he firstly participated to the design of the Nancy’s case.

The main part of the case, which contains four of the five instrument’s divisions, is symmetrically articulated around a singular 12ft high concave turret, now overlooked by the Récit expressif added by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1861, and crowned by carved-wood garlands and the Cathedral chapter’s heraldry, unfortunately harmed during the French Revolution.

SculptureThree turrets of various dimensions, including the 16ft one, surround this central part, on both sides, and several music instrument ornaments on the top of each and acanthus leaves can be seen on the superior part.

The inferior part is composed of oak wood with some vegetal and floral decorations sculpted and added on it.

The Positif case is articulated around a central 8ft turret overlooked by wood-made music instruments and various pots-à-feu ornaments. The overall impression of such a monumental work is refinement and lightness, achieved trough the multiple leaves and music instrument decorations.

The case’s aesthetic has been surprisingly almost not altered by time, except the addition of Cavaillé-Coll’s Récit expressif.

However on September 5th, 1914, at the beginning of the World War I, a German aeroplan dropped two bombs on Nancy, of which one reached the Cathedral’s parvis. Only the church’s facade was hit by shrapnel, not the organ...

The case was sumptuously realized by Joseph-François Brèche dit Labonté and Athanase Lacour, after Jean-Nicolas Jennesson’s and Nicolas Dupont’s design. This magnificent work undoubtedly stays as one of the finest examples of a Rocaille 16ft organ case in the 18th century in France.

 

icone photo galerie Organ case

 

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