St. Omer, 1717-1855 [Hauptwerk]

St. Omer is a northern French city in the department of Pas-de-Calais. A large instrument was originally built by brothers Thomas and Jean-Jacques Desfontaines in 1717. It had 45 stops. The highly decorated organ case is a masterpiece by several members of the family of sculptors, painters and carpenters Piette and Baligand. This organ case is indeed exceptional and it provoked admiration by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. After a visit in St Omer in 1853, he made a proposal to restore, modernize and augment the instrument. The rebuilding of the organ was finished on October 14th, 1855.

St. Omer large organ is therefore to be classified as still a relatively "young" Cavaillé-Coll instrument of the transitional type. The instrument is undoubtedly heading towards the symphonic style in design, voicing, technical means, but it still bears unmistakable signs of the baroque organ sound ideal, because the organbuilder reused a large portion of the previous pipe material.