JOBY BELL (b. 1968) garnered the Audience Choice Award and Second Prize in the 2000 American Guild of Organists National Young Artists Competition in Organ Performance. He maintains an active schedule of solo performances and various collaborative projects. He has played numerous times at the invitation of the Victoria Bach Festival, Houston Masterworks Chorus, and individual chapters of the American Guild of Organists. He has performed at AGO conventions in Atlanta (National Pedagogy Conference, 1992), Seattle (National Competition, 2000) and Houston (Region VII, 2001).
     In August 2003, Joby served as visiting organist for weekend Masses at the churches of St-Jean-Baptiste-de-la-Salle and St-Sulpice (Paris) at the invitation of Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin. In 2005 he was a featured recitalist in the Summer Festival Series at the Washington National Cathedral. His concertizing throughout the United States has met with high acclaim while his performances abroad have been enthusiastically received in Paris, Chartres, London, and throughout Scotland, Romania, and Hungary. His service playing is continually hailed as sensitive, supportive, thrilling, and fitting.

     At age 15, Joby won a scholarship to the North Carolina School of the Arts, where he studied piano with Marian Hahn and Robert McDonald. He subsequently earned the Bachelor of Music degree in Organ and Piano Performance from Appalachian State University and the Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees in Organ from Rice University. His teachers include H. Max Smith and Clyde Holloway, organ, and Rodney Reynerson and Allen Kindt, piano. His dissertation, “The Grand Organs of Notre-Dame and Saint-Sulpice, Paris: The Magna Opera of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll and a Critical Comparison of Their Alterations,” takes a new look at these important instruments, their tonal relationships and the subsequent changes made to them.

     While in Houston, Joby served as Associate Director of Music at the Church of St. John the Divine and as Organist at St. Philip Presbyterian Church and First Presbyterian Church. He also served for several years as a vocal coach/accompanist at St. Agnes Academy, Strake Jesuit Preparatory and Houston Baptist University.

     Since 2004, Joby has served on the faculty of the Hayes School of Music at Appalachian State University, where he teaches organ, harpsichord, and sacred music studies and conducts the Appalachian Chorale. His teaching specializes in memorization techniques, practice techniques, service playing, choral accompanying and directing, maintaining grace under pressure, and recruiting.

Dissertation Abstract

The Grand Organs of Notre-Dame and Saint-Sulpice, Paris:
The Magna Opera of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll
and a Critical Comparison of Their Alterations

     Since the time of Cavaillé-Coll, the grand organs of the Cathedral of Notre-Dame and the parish church of Saint-Sulpice, Paris, have enjoyed steady international recognition and attention. This is due not only to their status as Cavaillé-Coll’s two largest creations and among his most famous opera but also for the subsequent tonal and mechanical changes made to them over the years by their titulaires and restorers. Although both instruments were comparable in size and completed within six years of each other, various installation peculiarities and Cavaillé-Coll’s ever-evolving style produced two rather different instruments whose tonal paths have diverged yet more ever since.

     The organ in Saint-Sulpice, of which the majority of tonal resources, mechanisms, and chests are still as they were in 1862, has escaped significant invasive overhaul. In contrast, since its completion in 1868, the Notre-Dame organ has undergone radical alteration more than once and now stands as a monument as much to modern technological progress as to its various builders.

     This oblique divergence between the two organs is largely the result of changes made to the Notre-Dame organ by titulaires Louis Vierne and Pierre Cochereau. However, the modern-day use of these organs also represents important differences between the two. The Notre-Dame organ is now capable of playing literature from all eras of organ music, yet improvisation is the most performed genre on this organ. In contrast, the organ at Saint-Sulpice is better suited to playing French music, yet it is on this organ that the music of German composers such as Bach and Mendelssohn is also regularly played.

     Social matters are also of interest. “Decorum” and guarded admission were de rigueur at Saint-Sulpice during the tenures of Charles-Marie Widor and Marcel Dupré. Such intense social consciousness was not so strict at Notre-Dame. In contrast, today the Saint-Sulpice organ is a weekly host to numerous tourists, but that of Notre-Dame is virtually inaccessible to the unannounced visitor. Finally, although alterations are necessarily shaped by the personalities involved, other factors such as architecture and even the weather have also played important roles in the daily use of these instruments.