Some 32,000 working hours are going into the construction of a new organ in Clervaux, at a cost of more than €3 million.
It is the largest organ ever built in Luxembourg. The commission was awarded to Manufacture d’orgues Thomas, a family-run company based in Clervaux by the American Cathedral in Paris. The Anglican church, dating from the late 19th century, is located on Avenue George V, between the Champs-Élysées and the Seine.
The organ pipes will be distributed throughout the cathedral, creating a unique sound and acoustic experience. According to managing director Samuel Thomas, the instrument will comprise 84 real stops and, with extensions, will reach a total of 111 registers. In terms of size, he explained, it will come just slightly below the scale of the organ at Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris.
Responsibility for shaping the organ’s sound lies with his brother, Dominique Thomas. While the pipes are tuned in the Clervaux workshop, the final adjustments, effectively the fine-tuning, will be carried out once the instrument has been installed in Paris, a process expected to take several months.
The organ manufacturer has been working on the project for a year. From design and planning through to construction and installation, the instrument will ultimately represent around 32,000 hours of labour. The price tag reflects that scale, amounting to over three million euros, excluding VAT.
The organ will be transported to Paris at the end of this month for installation in the American Cathedral. Once completed, it will rank among the ten largest organs in France.
