La suite Française classique le livre d’orgue du père Pingré

Luc Ponet organ B. Formentelli Leuven

The Livre d’Orgue of Père Pingré:
anonymous French works from the 18th century

Forty-two works by various composers
Manuscript n° 2372 in the Bibliothèque
Sainte-Geneviève in Paris The manuscript that lies at the heart of this recording was compiled by a certain Père Pingré (1711-1796). The volume as a whole contains not only the forty-two works by various composers mentioned above but also works for organ by François d’Agincourt. The forty-two works by various and generally unknown composers are here recorded complete.

The Formentelli organ in the former Lemmens Institute in Leuven, now the Leuven University - College of Arts, Lemmens campus. Jozef Joris, the former director of the Lemmens Institute, had already convinced those around him of the need for an inspiring and style-oriented diversity of organs at the Institute towards the end of the 1970s, well before the launch of grandiose and prestigious European projects for the re-evaluation of historical organs. Originally the only organ available there for the training of organists was the Crutchley/Klais concert organ in the chapel of the Institute. Then there came a new Middle-German baroque organ built by Marcussen in 1978, followed by a more Flemish-Brabant Loncke organ, an authentic pneumatic organ by Pierre Schyven from a seminary in Mechelen, and finally an Italian Ragone organ from 1843.

Luc Ponet was born in Hasselt and studied at the Lemmens Institute (Leuven University College of Arts) in Leuven and at the Hochschule für Musik und Darstellende Kunst in Vienna. He was professor of organ at the Lemmens Institute from 1982 to 2000. He was appointed an inspector for musical training for the Flemish community of Belgium in 2000, since when he has been a guest lecturer at the Lemmens Institute.