Bernard Georges-Marie Gavoty (2 April 1908 – 24 October 1981) was a 20th-century French organist, musicologist, music critic, and talk show host.

Biography

Bernard Gavoty was born in 1908 to Raymond Gavoty (a deputy of the Var department; 11 March 1866 - 20 January 1937 in Paris) and Geneviève Magimel (9 October 1875 in Paris - 17 October 1946 ibid.) the 8th arrondissement of Paris; the capital city of France.

After being a pupil of Louis Vierne, Bernard Gavoty entered the Conservatoire de Paris where he had Denise Launay, Michel Boulnois, Antoine Reboulot, Félicien Wolff and Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, among others as classmates in the organ class.

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 [fr] 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.^[1][2] 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 [fr] and a wine grower in the côtes de Provence.^[3][4][5]

Personal life

In 1944, Bernard Gavoty married Victoire Vignon (1916-2003). They had two daughters: Marie-Ange (born 1945) and Cécile (born 1949).

Gavoty passed away in the autumn of 1981 in the 7th arrondissement of Paris, aged 73.