Bernard Gavoty

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

After being a pupil of Louis Vierne, Bernard Gavoty entered the Conservatoire de Paris where his classmates for the organ included Denise Launay, Michel Boulnois, Antoine Reboulot, Félicien Wolff and Jean-Jacques Grunenwald.

Renowned as a brilliant speaker and refined writer, he gave numerous lectures, especially for the Jeunesses musicales de France, and was a noted music critic for Le Figaro under the pseudonym Clarendon, a reference to the principal 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 in 1955 had rebuilt by the Beuchet-Debierre [fr] company in the neoclassical style.

He was also an agricultural engineer, having graduated from the Institut national agronomique [fr], and a wine grower in the côtes de Provence.