by C. H. TREVOR
From the Concert Hall, Broadcasting
House
Boely, who held important posts as organist in Paris, was one of the first of the French keyboard composers to be influenced by Beethoven, and although little is heard now of more than a handful of his three or four hundred compositions for piano, organ, and chamber combinations, his influence was such that Saint-Saens frankly acknowledged his debt to him, and Cesar Franck's organ music is admittedly influenced by Boely. It was from Boely, too, that many young composers of that time learnt of the music of J. S. Bach, then a composer of whose work practically nothing was known in France.