Such is the modern organ: essentially symphonic. A new instrument needs a new language . . .

—Charles-Marie Widor, Foreword to Symphonies pour orgue (1887)

“Behind every exquisite thing that existed,” says Lord Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray, “there was something tragic.” One such exquisite thing is the body of gorgeous organ music composed by César Franck, Charles-Marie Widor, Alexandre Guilmant, and their pupils. And as for tragedies, there were two: the first which almost killed off French organ music, and a second, which prompted its miraculous renaissance.

During the French Revolution, the government expropriated thousands of churches. Over four hundred organs, some national treasures, were destroyed, some by mobs but more frequently by cool calculation when their pipes were melted down for bullets. Churches that housed these noble instruments were converted into Temples of Theophilanthropy (Notre-Dame), Victory (La Madeleine), the Renaissance (Saint-Germain l’Auxerrois), or Filial Piety (Saint-Étienne-du-Mont). Saint-Sulpice was converted into a Club de la Victoire, where it served as a gaming and banqueting hall in which the Directory toasted their Utopia to medleys played by François Couperin’s grandson. Paris itself lost over twelve dozen instruments, though some were saved—along with the lives of church staff—when their organists played the Marseillaise and the bloodthirsty Ça Ira to calm invading crowds.

With their livelihoods gone, many organ builders left Paris. Some went into other trades, while others eked out livings in the provinces or in Spain. Fifty years after