François Benoist - Offertoire en Sol Mineur

François Benoist - Offertoire en Sol Mineur
extract from the Bibliothèque de l'organiste No. 11 (1861)

François Benoist, although nowadays a relatively obscure organist and composer, was perhaps one of the more influential organists of the mid 1800s. He was professor of organ at the Paris conservatory from 1819 to his death in 1878 and many of the now famous organists that are nowadays considered the "big names" of the French Romantic organ were students of his. To name a few, Lefébure-Wély, César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Edouard Batiste, Alexis Chauvet and etc. The influence of Benoist's music may indeed, for example, be seen in the compositions of Chauvet, and the early works of Franck. He was considered by many contemporaries to be of a more serious musical tastes, and his own compositions are not in the sort of "grandiose" and "theatrical" style popular among many of the organists of his time (despite his more serious music, he was not ostracized from the musical scene like Boëly). His own organ music, the majority of which was published in the "Bibliothèque de l'organiste" from 1841 to 1861, follows the extremely rapid evolution in French organs of that time, the first few volumes being written for an archaic 5 manual instrument, and perhaps with a more primitive French pedalboard in mind (e.g. St Gervais, etc.) while the last few volumes have been written for an organ with the many, then newfangled, features present on Cavaillé-Coll organs.