Earlier this year, I was approached by Titus Grenyer, a Sydney organist and composer, and assistant organist at St Mary's Cathedral, to facilitate access to the 1890 Puget organ in the chapel of Kincoppal-Rose Bay, School of the Sacred Heart Sydney. He recorded a number of pieces and, together with these, he asked me to do a demonstration of this rare 19th century French symphonic organ. The organ was originally in the Sacré Coeur Convent in Bordeaux, France, until 1904. This period was a very difficult one for the church as the anticlerical French government had banned the teaching of religion in the schools and the Sacré Coeur order was founded after the French revolution to re-educate the daughters of France in the faith. Forty-five Sacré Coeur convents were forced to close which meant that the students had to be released and, in practical terms, the movable belongings of the order had to be spirited out of France lest the government confiscate them. The arrival of the Puget organ in Sydney can be considered an historical accident.
