'L'Orgue Mystique' - the music

Blockbuster is an overworked description, but it can be applied with confidence to the extraordinary L'Orgue Mystique composed by Charles Tournemire. This cycle of organ compositions covers the entire Catholic liturgical year, and took five years to compose (1927-1932), It contains more than twelve hours of music, and is one of the largest compositions in western music - running to 1300 pages in the published edition.
Charles Tournemire (below) was born in Bordeaux, and lived from 1870 to 1939. He was a pupil of César Franck, and his influence was acknowledged by Messiaen, who wrote: 'My only organ teacher

L'Orgue Mystique was composed as functional music. Not all organists are skilled improvisers, and the cycle was composed to provide Roman Catholic organists with suitable music to play during the Sunday Masses and feast days along with the parish choir. All the musical themes are based on Gregorian chants, more than three hundred chants are used in the cycle, with the chants linked to the function of the music (introit, offertory etc).
Although L'Orgue Mystique is functional music, it is also technically brilliant. It shares with Bartok the use of polymodality (Tournemire went on to explore expanded modality, and used techniques from Indian music). The virtuoso writing sounds like genuine improvisations on chant themes despite being contained by a conventional score. The dynamic range suggests Messiaen's monumental organ works from the same period, ranging from the mystical sounds of the quietest stops to resounding Sorties- the postlude played at the end of the service (literally meaning exit music).

Fortunately Tournemire's blockbuster is well served by recordings. George Delvallee's excellent complete cycle is available on Accord, and the set is also available as individual 2 CD boxes. For anyone wanting to sample this remarkable, and rewarding, 20th century homage to Gregorian chant Marie-Bernadette Duforcet's 2 CD set of extracts recorded on the organs of La Sainte Trinité (photo above) and La Basilique du Sacré-Coeur de Montmartre in Paris is also highly recommended.
PC speakers are not going to do L'Orgue Mystique justice, but here as a taster is the Choral Postlude Dimanche Dans L'octave De Noël (N°4) played by George Delvallee -
Now read about L'Orgue Mystique - the images
Picture credits - the lead image is from artist Tom Walker's cycle of 51 5-part pastel triptychs inspired by L'Orgue Mystique. Charles Tournemire - Classical Composers Database
Organ of La Sainte Trinité - University of Quebec
Music stream - Amazon.fr
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Comments
A bargain price to pay for sampling this extraordinary work. Email and phone details in the link above.