Fig.1
Restitution of the pipe to the MIM by Wilfried Praet (right), in the presence of Pascale Vandervellen (curator keyboards, left) and Bruno Verbergt (director a.i., middle)
Fig.2
The Moissac organ pipe (left) and its copy made by Wilfried Praet (right)
Fig.3
Extract from the descriptive and analytical catalogue of the instrumental museum of the Royal Conservatory of Music in Brussels
Fig.4
Organ pipe, Jean Haon, Moissac (France), 1665, inv. 0463
On 21 June 2023, the organ builder and organologist Wilfried Praet returned to the MIM an organ pipe that had been missing from the inventory for many years (fig.1). He himself had received it from an enthusiastic listener after a concert and made a copy of it (fig.2). Wilfried Praet knew nothing about its provenance. When he began cleaning the pipe, he discovered the inventory number 463 on the mouthpiece. Wilfried Praet then made the connection with the description given in the Catalogue descriptif et analytique du musée instrumental du Conservatoire Royal de musique de Bruxelles by the museum's first curator, Victor-Charles Mahillon (1841-1924): « 463. Tuyau d’orgue en étain de l'anc. coll. Tolbecque. Il provient de la montre de l'orgue de l'abbaye de Moissac, instrument dû à la munificence de Catherine de Médicis » ; which we can translate as ‘ 463 Tin organ pipe from the former Tolbecque collection. It comes from the organ of Moissac Abbey, an instrument made possible by the munificence of Catherine de Médicis’ (fig.2).
The pipe is made of embossed tin (fig.4). With an acoustic length of some 580 mm and an external diameter of around 48 mm, it corresponds, according to Wilfried Praet, to a C or C# pipe (A 440 Hz). Originally, it was placed in the front of the organ built in 1665 for Moissac Abbey by Jean Haon (John Hew), an English organ builder active at the time in south-west France.
When Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-1899) 'modernised' the Moissac organ in 1863, giving it 24 stops, the original pipes were abandoned. One of them was acquired by cellist, erudite collector and instrument maker Auguste Tolbecque (1830-1919), whose collection of old instruments were bought by the MIM in 1879.
Text: Pascale Vandervellen