2022.01

Charles-Marie Philbert, his relationship with Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, and the organ at the Royal Conservatory in Brussels
For the construction of a new organ in the Royal Conservatory of Brussels and in the grand hall of the Trocadéro in Paris, the Cavaillé-Coll organs in the Albert Hall in Sheffield (1873) and the Palace of Industry in Amsterdam (1875) served as models.
After his promotion of Cavaillé-Coll as an organ builder in the Netherlands, the French organ expert Charles-Marie Philbert also had influence on a project in Belgium for which Cavaillé-Coll was eager to secure the commission: a new organ for the Royal Conservatory in Brussels.
Following the publication in 1876 of his French-language book on the organ in Amsterdam, Philbert (in consultation with Cavaillé-Coll) sent the first copies to prominent figures in Belgian musical life with whom he already had contacts, as well as to King Leopold II, with a view to a possible commission for the organ in Brussels. Philbert also signed several copies.
After the instrument in Brussels was completed, Philbert, invited by the Belgian government at Cavaillé-Coll’s request, was part of the committee that approved the instrument and wrote an extensive report on it.
Philbert’s efforts, partly thanks to those for the Brussels project, also strengthened the increasingly close ties between him and the great French organ builder, both professionally in organ building and privately. These are further described in this article, using information from Philbert’s private correspondence with his eldest daughter Marie (and from her diary), with Aristide Cavaillé-Coll himself, as well as from preserved letters to the Dutch organ builder P.J. Adema in Amsterdam.