Gradually over the decades and with the advent of massive potential for publication and unlimited conveying of material over the internet, access to the remotest corners of artistic endeavor from the past has become ever readier. However, it seems that appreciation of the riches thus opened up is not correspondingly disseminated across a broad spectrum of receivers: increased supply does not automatically enhance demand, while curiosity and discovery, to the extent they require initiative and discernment, have not necessarily benefited in effective proportion to the wonders of the new technologies and channels of communication.

Charles-Marie Widor provides, within the confines of the Belle Époque in France, a stellar example of a figure of truly grand stature who has for decades fallen through the cracks of daily musical awareness and practice. Whether a victim of monoculture saturation, with his ubiquitous, prototypal Toccata ensconced in its double-edged-sword popularity, or simply a creator of all too subtle distinction for our nuance-averse epoch, he epitomizes the nineteenth-century maître secondaire, “unfairly neglected” at present as much as he was feted in his own day.

Paradoxically, it is precisely as an organist that Widor could be seen as an ultimately one-sided or, more accurately, monolithic figure. His teaching is remembered for its laudable, indeed crucial, professional rigor and seminal reinstatement of healthy principles of repertory, technique, phrasing, and esthetic approach, although the strength of the French school he contributed to so lastingly comes largely from the playing out of his input against that of complementary, highly contrasting personalities, particularly Guilmant and Gigout; this fecund and biodiverse seed could not have fallen upon more fertile terrain than that of the Tournemire/Vierne and later the Dupré/Bonnet generations. It is well enough recognized that Widor improvised inspiringly, but he seldom did so in formal concert settings, leaving this calling card to the likes of Lefébure- Wély, Franck, Guilmant, and Gigout. (This is an interesting aspect of his particular affinity with Lemmens.) Finally, his legitimately lofty view of his chosen instrument, but all the more the demands of his multifaceted activity overall, led him as a performer to restrict himself to (or fall back on?) a most narrow, peak-of-the-pyramid repertory consisting, fundamentally, of Bach and himself.