Bernard Aubertin’s triumphant success in East Sussex
Gavin Barrett
The epitaph, placed by his son, to Sir Christopher Wren in his masterpiece St Paul’s Cathedral, Si Monumentum Requiris, Circumspice, does more than record his name and the results of his prodigious endeavours. It alludes to the combination of skills, beliefs, passions and experiences that made this monumental achievement possible. The same homage can properly be applied to Bernard Aubertin, the French organ-builder who, while relatively under-represented by instruments in the UK, is an influence that significantly has touched the organ-building profession internationally.
Organ building and restoration is, at best, a precarious enterprise, and each firm involved in it has had to adopt a demanding, and often compromised, commercial policy to ensure survival. Thus, there are firms which see their success rooted in quasi-industrialised processes, with a marked degree of uniformity and, rather like major car manufacturers, relying on the integration of diverse external supply-chains rather than being self-sufficient. At the other end of the scale there are individual craftsmen who, while naturally pursuing economic survival, are making personal statements employing a high degree of self-sufficiency in achieving their numerically limited but refined output of instruments – usually small in scale and scope.
Bernard Aubertin (b. 1952) is one, amongst a handful of organ-builders, whose philosophy of building organs is based on deeply-held beliefs and historically-informed practices. His focus, without all but essential compromise, has been on realising, in the most vivid terms, the beauties of the French Baroque organ, echoing centuries of exceptional artisanal tradition.
