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Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wely


Louis James Alfred Lefébure-Wély (13 November 1817 – 31 December 1869) was a French organist and composer. He played a major role in the development of the French symphonic organ style and was closely associated with the organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, inaugurating many new Cavaillé-Coll organs.

His playing was virtuosic, and as a performer he was rated above eminent contemporaries including César Franck. His compositions, less substantial than those of Franck and others, have not held such a prominent place in the repertory.

Lefébure-Wély was born in Paris, son of an organist. He studied with his father, Isaac-François-Antoine Lefebvre (1756–1831), who had changed his name to Antoine Lefébure-Wély after being appointed organist of the fashionable church of Saint-Roch in the 1st arrondissement. The boy was musically precocious. In the manuscript of an unpublished Mass by his father is a note:

This Mass was played on Easter Tuesday 1826 by my little boy Alfrede, age eight years and four months, on the organ of Saint-Roch to the satisfaction of everyone present. He retained throughout the Mass an extraordinary presence that surprised the people who were near him at the organ.

Within two years of that occasion Antoine Lefébure-Wély suffered a stroke, paralysing his left side. For the next five years his son deputised for him. When Alfred was fourteen Antoine died, and the son succeeded the father as official organist of Saint-Roch. While holding the post he entered the Paris Conservatoire in 1832, studying with François Benoist. In 1835 he won first prize for organ. Following that he studied composition with Berton and Halévy. In 1838 he began a long association with the organ-builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, performing to a huge audience on the new instrument at Notre-Dame-de-Lorette. A reviewer in La France musical praised Lefébure-Wély's technical skill, but advised him to play music of a more serious style than he had developed. Lefébure-Wély, however, knew what the public wanted, and continued to perform music of a popular type. When a new Cavaillé-Coll organ was installed at Saint-Roch in 1842 Lefébure-Wély incurred critical disapproval for playing a fantasia on themes from Meyerbeer's popular opera Robert le diable.


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