TOULOUSE

FRANCE

Toulouse is a first-class organ-city, first of all because of its exceptional patrimony of instruments dating from 1612 to today.

Furthermore due to the making use of this heritage. The “Arts Renaissants” and their founder Xavier Darasse gave the stimulus. The summer-academies have succeeded one another since 1978 and the prestigious organ competition will be carried out for the 8th time in October 2002.

In addition, the musical landscape of Toulouse has become unthinkable without the “Festival International Toulouse Les Orgues”. Lovers of music are eagerly looking forward to coming October, when they can encounter those miracles unknown for ages, that are brought to life by the organs in Toulouse for everybody and to our benefit. Both, sacral and profane music, the repertoire is infinitely varied, which can be witnessed every year. However, this so “localised” festival from its beginning on caused raving amongst other European cities disposing of historical organs, leading to the creation of a network of seven cities in Toulouse in 1997: Treviso, Innsbruck, Alkmaar, Zaragoza, Lisbon and Roskilde, more recently joined by Freiberg and Gothenburg. This network is aimed at developing the extraordinary heritage and at organising exchange.

Pierre Baudis and Xavier Darasse certainly could not anticipate the impact, their measure was going to have, when they undertook the restoration of the organs in Toulouse 30 years ago.

It is up to us to allow this heritage to bear fruit!