GAVOTY Bernard (G-21)

French organist, musicologist, music critic, and talk show host. He held a very special place among the students of Marcel Dupré at the Conservatoire. He was renowned as a brilliant speaker, endowed with being a refined writer. A great orator, he made numerous lectures, especially for the Jeunesses musicales de France, and was a famous French music critic for Le Figaro under the pseudonym Clarendon in reference to the main character of Beaumarchais's Eugénie. In 1942, he was appointed the titular organist of the grand organ of the Église Saint-Louis des Invalides which he had rebuilt by the Beuchet-Debierre company in the neoclassical style in 1955. In the 1950s and 1960s, he was frequently present on the single television channel to talk about classical music to its appreciators. In 1976, he was elected a member of the Académie des Beaux-Arts, where he succeeded Julien Cain in the free members section. He was also an agricultural engineer, having graduated from the Institut national agronomique and a wine grower in the côtes de Provence.