The definitive documentary celebrating the 200th anniversary of the greatest organ builder of the nineteenth century and the music he inspired.

César Franck was one of the most fascinating of all composers. He had the vision to create the French organ school, and his compositions are played, studied, listened to and loved by organists everywhere.

Three feature-length documentaries trace the history and development of the organ and its music in England from 1550 to the present. Also includes filmed performances of repertoire from Byrd to the present and demonstrations of 33 key historic organs.

The authoritative history of the richest collection of historic pipe organs in the world, those in the Dutch province of Groningen. The documentary film Martinikerk Rondeau features masterful organ-building team Cor Edskes and Jürgen Ahrend, and includes performances by Sietze de Vries of repertoire from Scheidemann to Schumann and a series of historically styled improvisations.

This is the ultimate set of films about the iconic organ of King’s College, Cambridge, with a feature-length documentary about the restoration of the organ and filmed performances by seven of the best former organ scholars.

Cavaillé-Coll’s instruments continue to inspire composers and improvisers into the 21st century. Pierre Pincemaille, Daniel Roth and Olivier Latry demonstrate the organ masterpieces at St Denis, St Sulpice and Notre Dame. Jean-Pierre Griveau plays his variations of the name Cavaillé-Coll, and Michel Bouvard plays noëls by his grandfather Jean Bouvard.

Tom Bell, Loïc Mallié and Carolyn Shuster-Fournier will perform several of Messiaen’s great cycles of organ music: L’Ascension, La Nativité, Messe de la Pentecôte, as well as the magisterial Livre du Saint-Sacrement in its entirety, plus other movements. Thomas Lacôte will explore Messiaen’s improvisation. All will be filmed at Messiaen’s church, La Trinité in Paris, where the composer was organiste titulaire for 60 years. In an accompanying documentary biographer and scholar Christopher Dingle will explore Messiaen’s life and compositional styles and development in relation to his organ music.

In seven thirty-minute films Sietze de Vries performs the entire Orgelbüchlein, demonstrates the organs at the Martinikerk in Groningen and the Petruskerk in Leens, improvises 45 new chorale preludes in the style of Bach, discusses the philosophy of improvisation, and demonstrates how to improvise according to the techniques Bach uses in his great collection of chorale preludes. For the first time on film we can glimpse the enormous scale of Bach’s vision for his Orgelbüchlein.