2017-02-05 National Cathedral.pdf

I N THE TIME BETWEEN THE TWO GREAT WORLD WARS (or as the historian Eugen Weber the Feast of Candlemas through the work L’Orgue Mystique by Charles Tournemire Washington National Cathedral W a s h i n g t o n , D i s t r i c t o f C o l u m b i a S u n d a y , 5 F e b r u a r y 2 0 1 7 termed the entire era, the “Second Thirty Years War”) there emerged a musical monument which the critic Pierre Giriat called a “sonorous Summa Theologicæ”. It was the culmination of great musical, religious, and philosophical movements which thrived and vied for attention in the Christian Church and through French society. T HIS MONUMENT WAS “L’O RGUE M YSTIQUE” BY C HARLES T OURNEMIRE. This recondite magnum opus of two-hundred-fifty-three movements composed from 1927 to 1932 is fifteen hours in duration and employs over three-hundred chants both as an act of devotion and as musical exegesis based upon a chant libretto with the goal of celebrating fifty-one Sundays and Liturgical Feasts throughout the Church Calendar. Its haunting transcendent beauty and musical allegory, written by a pious, unassuming genius, constitutes one of the greatest single liturgical achievements in music history, and yet its utterances were little heard in the maelstrom of its time. Today’s programme celebrates of the Feast of Candlemas which occurred on Thursday, February 2ND. Also known as the Presentation of our Lord or the Purification of the Blessed Virgin, this fortieth day of Christmas (like All Saints on November 1ST) is a cross-quarter feast day, in this instance occurring at the midway point between the winter solstice and vernal equinox. It recounts the Holy Family’s visit to the Temple when they were approached by the Prophets Simeon and Anna who recognise the Christchild as God Incarnate. It was on this occasion that Simeon proclaimed the Nunc dimittis, the traditional canticle for the Office of Compline (and by extension Evensong) declaring Christ to be the “Light to lighten the Gentiles and the Glory of his people Israel.” We begin with Tournemire’s tone-poem of the Gospel account itself (DIPTYQUE). Hobbling within the bounds of the Temple, one hears the humble prayers of the agèd Simeon, when in wonderment, he comes upon the Christchild and in elation he proclaims the Nunc dimittis. Returning the child to his parents, this ancient prophet takes his leave, his soul enwrapped in joy knowing now that he can rest in peace for he has seen the Messiah. Through this Incarnation, heaven and earth are engaged afresh and humanity becomes cognisant of its place within Divine Creation, for in the Offertory for the Nativity we hear: “The heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: thou hast laid the foundations of the round world, and all that therein is: righteousness and equity are the habitation of thy seat” (TUI SUNT CÆLI). We then look to the Feast of the Circumcision (which takes place on January 1ST, the Octave of the Nativity). This commemoration of Jesus’ Circumcision symbolically marks the union between the Old Covenant established through Abraham and the New Covenant initiated through Christ and heralded by the Prophets. In Tournemire’s FANTAISIE ET CHORAL, the towers of the cathedral of heaven in plangent euphoria chime in the New Year… or indeed the beginning of a new age (Anno Domini) for “God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son.” We return to Candlemas: Hearkening the words of Psalms, we extol the prescient wisdom of the prophets: “Full of grace are thy lips: because God hath blessed thee for ever, and world without end” (DIFFUSA EST GRATIA) for as heralded “All the ends of the world have seen the salvation of our God.” (VIDERUNT OMNES). This was a revelation promised to those who vigil in the sapience of faithful patience: “It was revealed unto Simeon by the Holy Spirit, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Anointed” (RESPONSUM ACCEPIT SIMEON). With this, we conclude with the PARAPHRASE from the Nativity: In the hymn A solis ortus cardine (“From lands that see the sun arise”) we hear the rising of the Sun of Righteousness as his beams of Light enlighten the corners of the earth through the Incarnation. Humanity awakens to the dawn of a New Day, to which the Church responds with its pæan to the Trinity, the Te Deum. The Feast of Candlemas through the work L’Orgue Mystique by Charles Tournemire the custom of the law, Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel. And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him. And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against; (Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed. And there was one Anna, a prophetess, the daughter of Phanuel, of the tribe of Aser: she was of a great age, and had lived with an husband seven years from her virginity; And she was a widow of about fourscore and four years, which departed not from the temple, but served God with fastings and prayers night and day. And she coming in that instant gave thanks likewise unto the Lord, and spake of him to all them that looked for redemption in Jerusalem. And when they had performed all things according to the law of the Lord, they returned into Galilee, to their own city Nazareth. And the child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was upon him. (Saint Luke ii) Proper Lection for the Feast of Candlemas: L e s s o n T saith the LORD God: Behold, I will send my messenger, and he shall prepare the way before me: and the LORD, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in: behold, he shall come, saith the LORD of hosts. But who may abide the day of his coming? and who shall stand when he appeareth? for he is like a refiner’s fire, and like fullers’ soap: And he shall sit as a refiner and purifier of silver: and he shall purify the sons of Levi, and purge them as gold and silver, that they may offer unto the LORD an offering in righteousness. Then shall the offering of Judah and Jerusalem be pleasant unto the LORD, as in the days of old, and as in former years. And I will come near to you to judgment; and I will be a swift witness against the sorcerers, and against the adulterers, and against false swearers, and against those that oppress the hireling in his wages, the widow, and the fatherless, and that turn aside the stranger from his right, and fear not me, saith the LORD of hosts. (Malachi iii) HUS E A E E G o s p e l that time: When the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord; (As it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;) And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons. And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after T P r o g r a m m e XI. PURIFICATION B. MARIÆ VIRGINIS • Pièce Terminale: Diptyque III. NATIVITAS DOMINI NOSTRI JESU CHRISTI • Offertoire: Tui sunt cæli V. CIRCUMCISIO DOMINI • Pièce Terminale: Fantaisie et Choral XI. PURIFICATION BEATÆ MARIÆ VIRGINIS • Offertoire: Diffusa est gratia III. NATIVITAS DOMINI NOSTRI JESU CHRISTI • Communion: Viderunt omnes XI. PURIFICATION BEATÆ MARIÆ VIRGINIS • Communion: Responsum accepit Simeon III. NATIVITAS DOMINI NOSTRI JESU CHRISTI • Pièce Terminale: Paraphrase V. Circumcisio Domini Movements from Tournemire’s L’Orgue Mystique: Pièce Terminale: Fantaisie et Choral (Date of Completion: 21 March 1929) A son trés honoré confrère Paul de Maleingreau, proffesseur d’orgue au Conservatoire de Bruxelles XI. Purification Beatæ Mariæ Virginis E Pièce Terminale: Diptyque (Date of Completion: 15 December 1928) A son ami Henri Mulet, organiste de St Philippe du Roule E E E Antiphon • Lumen ad revelationem A L Bcïkcájcv gcájckcàhcgcàhcgcvàhcvgcvf,c{c H A on, &c A- gnum * hæ-re- di-ta-tis &c Alleluia • Multifarie olim Antiphon (Saint Luke ii) - Dor-na * tha-la-mum tu- um Si- M Vcërdz fÃy7z íà^%$cfc[cgcÝvdcfchcygc are we of a great mystery; the womb of her that knew not man is become the temple of the Godhead; he, of a Virgin incarnate, suffereth no defilement; all the nations shall gather, saying: Glory be to thee, O Lord. —Magnificat Antiphon LIGHT to lighten the Gentiles, said he, and the glory of thy people Israel. —Lauds Psalm A VcSRchzHUch.c[cHUcvhcvhcv6z%$chzhcHU8z&à^zjcuh<>c{c E EIRS U-men * ad re-ve-la-ti-on-em gen-ti-um, &c Antiphon • Adorna thalamum tuum Sion E Antiphon • Magnum hæreditatis mysterium A A VcDRc3zMvSRz yÎdz rdcSRz6z%$zJIcj>c[c7z^ß%z #z Ì4EMc{c L- le- lu- &c ia. * LLELUIA, alleluia. = God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son. Alleluia. (Hebrews i) DORN thy bridal chamber, O Sion, and receive Christ the King: embrace Mary, who is the gate of heaven, who herself truly brings the glorious King of new light. She remains a virgin, though bearing in her hands a Son begotten before the Daystar, whom Simeon, taking him in his arms, proclaimed to the people to be the Lord of life and death, and Saviour of the world. —Antiphon during the Candlemas Procession XI. Purification Beatæ Mariæ Virginis Offertoire: Diffusa est gratia (Date of Completion: 15 December 1928) A son ami Henri Mulet, organiste de St Philippe du Roule E III. Nativitas Domini Nostri Jesu Christi A l’ami, au maître, à Joseph Bonnet, organiste de Saint-Eustache E E Offertoire • Tui sunt cæli T T Bcfcsdscfcv vdzFTzÞ$#z4z#@crÌszdfdMc{c U- i sunt * cæ- li, &c HE heavens are thine, the earth also is thine: thou hast laid the foundations of the round world, and all that therein is: righteousness and equity are the habitation of thy seat. (Psalm lxxxviii/lxxxix) E D BcSRcDRGYz ÎhYz ÎhYcfÎhgcg<c[c6.vklkz 9zâ*&ckzkzÐïkhcyg,.c{c Offertoire: Tui sunt cæli (Date of Completion: 13 December 1927) E E Offertoire • Diffusa est gratia If- fu- F sa est * gra- ti- a &c of grace are thy lips: because God hath blessed thee for ever, and world without end. (Psalm xliv/xlv) ULL III. Nativitas Domini Nostri Jesu Christi Communion: Viderunt omnes (Date of Completion: 13 December 1927) A l’ami, au maître, à Joseph Bonnet, organiste de Saint-Eustache E E E each fowl of air. The heavenly chorus filled the sky, The Angels sang to God on high, What time to shepherds watching lone They made creation’s Shepherd known. All honour, laud, and glory be, O Jesu, Virgin-born, to thee; All glory, as is ever meet, To the Father and to Paraclete. Amen. —Nativity Office Hymn (Cœlius Sedulius, d.c. 450; Tr. John Mason Neale, 18181866) Hymn • Te Deum laudamus Communion • Viderunt omnes A V BcFTctfzfcS#cv A@cvsmc[cszÞFTcGYcHIviÐgcìtfz6z%z #Mc{c I- de-runt o-mnes * fi- nes ter- ræ LL &c the ends of the world have seen the salvation of our God. (Psalm xcvii/xcviii) XI. Purification Beatæ Mariæ Virginis Communion: Responsum accepit Simeon (Date of Completion: 15 December 1928) A son ami Henri Mulet, organiste de St Philippe du Roule E E E Communion • Responsum accepit Simeon R Bcvscv F^cv gcv vgcvGYcghgcfcghgc6z%$íghíÍsmc[c &c E-spon-sum * ac-ce-pit Si- me-on I was revealed unto Simeon by the Holy Spirit, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Anointed. (Saint Luke ii) T W thee, the Father everlasting. To thee all Angels cry aloud, the Heavens and all the Powers therein. To thee Cherubim and Seraphim continually do cry: Holy, holy, holy, Lord God of Sabaoth; Heaven and earth are full of the majesty of thy glory. The glorious company of the apostles praise thee: the goodly fellowship of the prophets praise thee. The noble army of martyrs praise thee: the holy Church throughout all the world doth acknowledge thee, the Father, of an infinite majesty, thine adorable, true, and only Son. Also the Holy Ghost the Comforter. Thou art the King of glory, O Christ: thou art the everlasting Son of the Father. When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man, thou didst humble thyself to be born of a virgin. When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death, thou didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. Thou sittest at the right hand of God, in the glory of the Father. We believe that thou shalt come to be our judge: we therefore pray thee, help thy servants, whom thou hadst redeemed with thy precious blood. Make them to be numbered with thy saints, in glory everlasting. = O Lord, save thy people, and bless thine heritage; + Govern them and lift them up for ever. = Day by day we magnify thee; + And we worship thy Name ever, world without end. = Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin; + O Lord have mercy upon us, have mercy upon us. = O Lord, let thy mercy be upon us; + Our trust is in thee. = O Lord, in thee have I trusted; + Let me never be confounded. (Ambrosian Hymn, IV Century) Antiphon • Ego dormivi, et somnum cepi Pièce Terminale: Paraphrase (Date of Completion: 13 December 1927) E E E Hymn • A solis ortus cardine F A BcscÝdcfcGYczscz DTczrdcdMc{v So-lis or-tus car-di-ne &c ROM lands that see the sun arise, To earth’s remotest boundaries, The Virgin-born to-day we sing, The Son of Mary, Christ the King. Blest Author of this earthly frame, To take a servant’s form he came, That liberating flesh by flesh, Whom he had made might live afresh. In that chaste parent’s holy womb, Celestial grace hath found its home: And she, as earthly bride unknown, Yet call that Offspring blest her own. The mansion of the modest breast Becomes a shrine where God shall rest: The pure and undefiled one Conceived in her womb the Son. That Son, that royal Son she bore, Whom Gabriel’s voice had told afore: Whom, in his Mother yet concealed, The Infant Baptist had revealed. The manger and the straw he bore, The cradle did he not abhor: A little milk his infant fare Who feedeth even E De-um lau-da-mus &c E praise thee O God; we acknowledge thee to be the Lord. All the earth doth worship III. Nativitas Domini Nostri Jesu Christi A l’ami, au maître, à Joseph Bonnet, organiste de Saint-Eustache T BcdcvGYcvhcvygchÅIcvuh<>c{v I E BcâkckcvkcvklkcÐkIc/ [ckcïijcbv êHIcv ïijcg<c{c -Go dor-mi- vi, * et so-mnum ce-pi: &c LAID me down and slept, and rose up again, for the Lord Eternal sustained me, alleluia, alleluia. —Easter Matins Psalm Antiphon (Psalm iii) Organ Speci f i cati ons Ernest M. Skinner & Son Organ Company, 1938; Revisions & enlargements, 1963, 1970–1975 I. CHOIR Third bay north triforium II. GREAT (Continued) II Sesquialtera 16' Gemshorn IV Klein Mixtur 8' Chimney Flute IV-V Mixtur 8' Viola Pomposa IV Scharf 8' Viola Pomposa Céleste VI-X Terzzymbel 8'-4' Chœur des Violes V 16' Bombarde (SWELL) 8' Posthorn 8' Viole Céleste II 8' Trompette 8' Kleiner Erzähler II 4' Clairon 4' Principal 8' Trompette en 4' Harmonic Flute Chamade (SOLO) 4' Fugara 8' Tuba Mirabilis (SOLO) 2 2 /3' Rohrnasat III. SWELL (Enclosed) 2' Hellflöte First bay south triforium 1 3/5' Terz 16' Violoncelle III-IV Mixture 8' Montre II Glockenspiel 16' Orchestral Bassoon 8' Violoncelle Céleste II 4' Prestant 8' Trumpet V Plein Jeu 8' Cromorne IV Cymbale 4' Regal 8' Tuba Mirabilis (SOLO) 16' Bombarde 8' Trompette 8' Trompette en 4' Clairon Chamade (SOLO) 8' Posthorn (GREAT) Second bay north triforium 16' Flûte Courte Harp 8' Bourdon Celesta 8' Flûte à Fuseau Zimbelstern 8' Viole de Gambe Tremolo 8' Viole Céleste II. GREAT 8' Voix Céleste II First bay north triforium 8' Flute Céleste II 16' Diapason 4' Octave 16' Violon 4' Flûte Travesière 16' Bourdon 2 2/3' Nasard 8' Prinzipal 2' Octavin 8' Spitz Prinzipal 1 3/5' Tierce 8' Waldföte IV Petit Jeu 8' Holz Bordun 16' Posaune 8' Salicional 8' 2ème Trompette 8' Violon 8' Hautbois 8' Erzähler 8' Cor d’Amour 4' Oktav 4' 2ème Clairon 4' Spitzoktav Tremolo 4' Koppel Flöte 2 2/3' Quinte Fifth bay south triforium 8' Flûte d’Argent II 2' Super Oktav 8'-4' Chœur des Violes V 2' Blockflöte 8' Éoliènne Céleste II 8' Voix Humaine Tremolo SOLO (Enclosed Floating) PEDAL Fourth bay north triforium First through fourth bays south triforium 8' Diapason 8' Flauto Mirabilis II 8' Gamba 8' Gamba Céleste 4' Orchestral Flute VII Full Mixture 16' Corno di Bassetto 8' Trompette Harmonique 8' French Horn 8' Corno di Bassetto 8' English Horn 8' Flügel Horn 4' Clairon Harmonique 8' Trompette en Chamade 8' Tuba Mirabilis 16' Posthorn (GREAT) 8' Posthorn (GREAT) Tremolo BRUSTWERK First bay north gallery 8' Spitz Prinzipal 4' Præstant 2 2/3' Koppel Nasat 2' Lieblich Prinzipal IV-VI Mixtur 8' Rankett POSITIV First bay south gallery 8' Nason Gedackt 4' Rohrflöte 2' Nachthorn 1 3/5' Terz 1 1/3' Larigot 1' Sifflöte IV Zymbel 4' Rankett (BRUSTWERK) Tremulant GALLERY PEDAL First bays north and south galleries 16' Gedacktbass 8' Oktav 8' Nason Gedackt (POS.) 4' Superoktav 4' Rohrflöte (POS.) 16' Rankett (BRUSTWERK) 4' Rankett (BRUSTWERK) 32' Subbass 32' Kontra Violon 16' Contre Basse 16' Principal 16' Diapason (GREAT) 16' Bourdon 16' Violon (GREAT) 16' Violoncelle (SWELL) 16' Gemshorn (CHOIR) 16' Flûte Courte (SWELL) 10 2/3' Quinte (GREAT) 8' Octave 8' Diapason (GREAT) 8' Spitzflöte 8' Gedackt 8' Violoncelle Céleste II (SWELL) 8' Flûte Courte (SWELL) 5 1/3' Quinte 4' Choralbass 4' Cor de Nuit 2' Fife II Rauschquint IV Fourniture III Acuta IV Gross Kornett 64' Bombarde Basse 32' Contra Bombarde 32' Contra Fagotto 16' Ophicléide 16' Bombarde (SWELL) 16' Fagotto 8' Trompette 8' Bombarde (SWELL) 8' Posthorn (GREAT) 8' Tuba Mirabilis (SOLO) 8' Trompette en Chamade (SOLO) 4' Clairon 2' Zink Charles-Arnould Tournemire C (22 January 1870, Bordeaux - 3 November 1939, Arcachon) HARLES TOURNEMIRE was a brilliant but now largely forgotten musical Titan who through his genius created a seminal work of supernal mystical transcendence which rightly ought to be lauded by each passing generation… L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE. Born in Bordeaux on 22 January 1870, Tournemire began his musical career as a precocious child-organist at the church of Saint-Pierre. In 1886, he moved to Paris to study composition and to privately study piano. Tournemire’s nascent talent led him to the Conservatoire de Paris where he studied organ under the tutelage of César Franck, the renowned organiste titulaire of the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde. Indeed, to understand the heart of Charles Tournemire, one must look ad fontes… to the love he held for his great pious Maître: One never departed from the Seraphic Musician feeling discouraged; his comments, said in a few words, generally gentle, incisive, and salient, brightened the soul and warmed the heart. This “experience” made his pupils smile. How many times, for our part, did we not hear him say: “Try to find yourself.... Years will be necessary....” The goodness of César Franck was immeasurable. If he lived for transcendent Art, he knew, nevertheless how to interest himself with the life of those who came to him. He possessed, to an outstanding degree, the intelligence of the heart. Through Franck, Tournemire experienced a metanoia… a new awareness of Transcendence and a vocational awakening. Exuding an ineffable sapience and a nurturing spirit, and referred to by his students as Pater Seraphicus (the moniker of Saint Francis of Assisi), Franck’s heuristic pedagogical approach had a compositional and improvisational emphasis; but more importantly, he sought to create not simply organists, but artists, imploring his students to seek the Soul of Music. Then in the Spring of 1890 tragedy struck: While riding in a carriage through the streets of Paris, Franck’s cab collided with a horse-drawn omnibus. Although the injuries he sustained seemed innocuous at the time, they in fact proved gravely deleterious resulting in Pleurisy complicated by Pericarditis eventuating in his death on 8 November 1890. In and of itself, Franck’s passing was greatly traumatic to the young Tournemire; yet to add to his grief, Franck’s successor, Charles-Marie Widor (the fêted organist of Saint-Sulpice Paris known by the epithet Le Roi des Organistes Français), compounded Tournemire’s misery. Widor’s relationship with Tournemire could at best be termed frigid, the grieving pupil feeling Le Roi des Organistes Français to be an abysmal replacement for the Pater Seraphicus. Widor’s rigid, formulaic style rooted in Classical pedantry, his emphasis on technique over artistic exploration, along with Widor’s cold demeanor and open denigration of his Maître Franck, horrified Tournemire. Louis Vierne, Tournemire’s fellow student (later to become organist at Notre-Dame in Paris), vividly remembered Widor’s opening remarks upon his succession to the post: “In France we greatly favour improvisation over execution. This is more than a mistake. It is nonsense!” From the onset, Widor condemned Tournemire’s improvisatory style as mere “aquatic music.” Having neglected to do proper obeisance to Le Roi, Tournemire would recollect that there was “a chill that degenerated on the part of Charles-Marie Widor into a profound and absurdly enduring hatred with regard to me.” …a hatred that would come to haunt Tournemire later in life. Rising above the odium however, Tournemire was able to use the principles Widor fostered (or as Tournemire termed it, Widor’s technique formidable) to his advantage, winning the Premier Prix d’orgue in 1891 and acquiring the coveted organ bench of Sainte-Clotilde from Gabriel Pierné in 1898, despite Widor’s attempt to undermine his appointment. It was there, from that tribune, that Tournemire would then be blessed to remain in the edifying spiritual presence of his Maître for the rest of his days. Faith, Music, & Mysticism The music of Tournemire and the mysticism expressed through his Art did not manifest itself ex nihilo, but is part of a greater metanarrative which begins with the theodicy of the Gallican Church as secular society grappled with dramatic political upheaval and the Church struggled for survival and integrity within a disquieted and reactionary culture. Born of the Enlightenment, the demagogues of the French Revolution, viewing the Church with implacable antipathy, sought to abrogate its existence. The fall of the Ancien Régime in 1789 and the resulting chaos of la Terreur saw the predation of the great churches of France and the imprisonment or martyrdom of recusant clergy (the abjuring priests being those who obsequiously renounced Christianity in favour of the Deist Culte de l’Être Suprême). Even the reordering of the calendar into décades sought to suppress the hebdomadal celebration of the Sabbath. Until a tenuous rapprochement was reached via the Napoleonic Concordat of 1801, the Church layed in a moribund state and naturally the vocation of organist well-nigh tumbled into oblivion. Eventually rising from the ashes, the Church’s recrudescence during the Bourbon Restoration and Second Empire periods saw the emergence of the monumental instruments of the organ-builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll; yet still sacred music at this time fell victim to the prevailing bourgeois theatrical indulgences of Romanticism. Men like Louis-James-Alfred Lefébure-Wély typified the cloyingly melodramatic organ-playing of the epoch with his specialization in storm scenes, insipidly gooey sentimentalism, and in the use of overtly secular operatic melodies, or as the musicologist Norbert Dufourcq described this liturgical nadir: “the epitome of banality, triviality, and the style de salon.” Then in 1870 the French Second Empire collapsed in the wake of the Franco-Prussian War and the concomitant catastrophic Paris Commune of 1871. The nation, ensanguined from this tumult, paused and engaged in serious ruminations and, as a result, a new generation of artists emerged. Widor, who at that time would assume the role of provisional organist at Saint-Sulpice in Paris (a position he held for sixty-four years), came to embody the sense of gravitas of the new Third Republic with his classical ideals of maturity, nobility, and elegance, eschewing the theatrical frivolity of the Bourbon Restoration and Second Empire periods. Nonetheless, despite elevating the tone of the Catholic Mass, musical grandeur rather than religiosity reigned in the court of Le Roi des Organistes Français; but upon the reopening of the Conservatoire after the chaos of the Paris Commune, a countervailing prophetic voice resounded to challenge the opprobrious state of affairs. That still, small voice who would espouse a more spiritually cultivated vision was the newly-appointed professor, the organist from Liège, César Franck. Franck’s predecessor, François Benoist, had led his organ students in a thoroughly unremarkable direction, and it was felt by the Conservatoire that Franck’s appointment would be equally inconsequential. They could not have been more mistaken. Inculcating his students to heed the great Virtues of their vocation, of Franck’s pious artistry Gustave Derepas wrote: César Franck’s mysticism is the direct expression of the soul, and leaves him his full consciousness in his aspirations toward the Divine.... This music, which is truly as much the sister of prayer as of poetry, does not weaken or enervate us, but rather restores to the soul, now led back to its first Source, the grateful waters of emotion, of light, of impulse; it leads back to heaven and to the City of Rest. Archbishop Darboy (who later was to be assassinated during the Commune), is said to have remarked of Franck to Sainte-Clotilde’s priest, “You have there a marvellous intercessor, my son; he will win souls to God more than we can.” Despite such esteemed sacerdotal accolades, ultimately the more socially acceptable Widor, who adeptly navigated within the upper echelons of the Parisian haut monde, held popular preeminence, while the dowdy, foreign-born Franck suffered baleful indignation in the hands of the secular and xenophobic establishment. To the horror of Franck’s devoted students who held their Maître in hagiographic awe (a coterie later to be known as the Bande à Franck), the vast majority of the Conservatoire faculty quietly boycotted the funeral of the Pater Seraphicus as a subtle and vindictive expression of animus. While the organ world was embroiled with its own philosophical imbroglios, what was to be a key formative musical influence in France was established in 1832 by Pope Gregory XVI in the form of the Benedictine monastery of Solesmes. Under the guidance of the priest, Dom Prosper Guéranger, this abbey (which was partially destroyed during la Terreur) balked the anti-Catholic rancour that pervaded post-revolutionary France. With its Ultramontane proclivities, Solesmes became the focal-point for the palæographic and semiological study of Gregorian Chant, their work culminating in the publication of the Liber Usualis in 1896 (which later would receive official papal imprimatur under Pope Pius X). Their florid, expressive, and highly ornamental chant interpretation having a complex composite duple-triple rhythmical ictus was conceptually revolutionary in its day. In the Méthode raisonée de plainchant (1859), Guéranger explained, “plainsong is an inflected recitation in which the notes have an unfixed value, the rhythm of which, essentially free, is that of ordinary speech.” Prior to this, chant in the Gallican tradition was performed with a very strict note-for-note hymn-like homophonic accompaniment in metrical rhythm with a “modern” diatonic harmony to painfully over-simplified chant renditions. The richly elaborate melodic freedom and nuance revealed through Solesmes’ renascent insights much annoyed men like Widor who believed this style to have “too many ornaments, too many accents, and too many notes.” Widor, who continued to advocate the simplified method which more adeptly reflected his notion of strict metronomical volonté, rather indignantly remarked: The rhythmical freedom of Gregorian chant clashes with our stern metronomic time. What task requires more delicate handling than the transcription into modern notation of a vocal Gradual or of an Alleluia? The transcriber is reduced to the necessity of verbal explanations: quasi recitativo, rubato, expressivo, a piacere, &c. In 1894, inspired by the work of Solesmes, Charles Bordes, Alexandre Guilmant, and Vincent d’Indy founded the Schola Cantorum, a society established to rival the Conservatoire devoted to the performance of plainchant according to the Gregorian tradition and which enjoined the creation of modern liturgical music. Born of the Bande à Franck, the Schola had four goals: The return to the Gregorian tradition of plainchant; the restoration of Renaissance polyphony (in particular that epitomized by Palestrina); the creation of modern choral music which pays homage to Gregorian Plainsong and Renaissance polyphony, and which, most importantly, respects the Liturgy; and finally, the improvement of organ repertoire that it may be more rightly apposite for the Church. Indeed, the Schola marked the dawn of modern musicology looking to the antecedents of the Enlightenment for musical wisdom to incorporate into the modern age. Such opinions did not go without sparking heated vituperation emanating from the famously selfaggrandizing and pugnacious French cultural élite whose laicistic ire was especially fomented in light of the tensions found in the wider political arena. Societally, antagonism toward the Church reached an apogee after 1900 when, as a result of the frenzied vitriolic Republican fervour ignited by the Dreyfus Affair cause célèbre, the government enacted an array of anti-clerical legislative decrees asserting laicistic cultural hegemony eviscerating the Church through the confiscation of Church property and closing of schools, plus the deracinating of monasteries such as Solesmes. The French Premier René Viviani would declare, “We have extinguished in the firmament lights that will never be rekindled.” Not one to sit idly by, the Church tried to reassert its influence in French society. Musically speaking within that wider context, Pope Pius X issued a letter motu proprio in 1903 called Tra le sollecitudini endorsing the work of the Schola and Solesmes: Sacred music should consequently possess, in the highest degree, the qualities proper to the Liturgy, and in particular sanctity and goodness of form, which will spontaneously produce the final quality of universality. It must be holy, and must, therefore, exclude all profanity not only in itself, but in the manner in which it is presented by those who execute it. It must be true Art, for otherwise it will be impossible for it to exercise on the minds of those who listen to it that efficacy which the Church aims at obtaining in admitting into her Liturgy the Art of musical sounds. But it must, at the same time, be universal in the sense that while every nation is permitted to admit into its ecclesiastical compositions those special forms which may be said to constitute its native music, still these forms must be subordinated in such a manner to the general characteristics of sacred music that nobody of any nation may receive an impression other than good on hearing them. These qualities are to be found, in the highest degree, in Gregorian Chant, which is, consequently the chant proper to the Roman Church, the only chant she has inherited from the ancient fathers, which she has jealously guarded for centuries in her liturgical codices, which she directly proposes to the faithful as her own, which she prescribes exclusively for some parts of the Liturgy, and which the most recent studies have so happily restored to their integrity and purity. After the Great War, France mollified its harsher laicist decrees as the Church was called upon to entomb the nation’s one-and-a-third million war-dead. A philosophical palingenesis initiated by the war occurred ...a renouveau catholique. Musically within the context of that ameliorative climate, Cardinal Dubois of Paris gave his official approbation for the use of the 1904 Liber Usualis and the Institut grégorien was founded. Then in 1922, the monks of Solesmes were welcomed back to France affording them the opportunity to further promulgate their notions. The vicissitudes endured by the Church and the appeals within the institution for musical integrity proved highly formative upon Tournemire; but then in 1903 he married Alice Taylor through whom he would have his initial foray into mysticism. Her sister was the wife of Josephin “Sâr” Péladan, a French mystic and founder of the Ordre de Rose a Croix in Paris. In the 1890s, Péladan famously hosted salons promoting the literary, visual, and musical Art of the Symbolists, a movement which emerged during the Fin-de-siècle that sought to capture the numinous through allegorical abstraction. In his article L’esthetique au salon de 1883, Péladan defined his vision of Art: Art is man’s effort to realize the Ideal, to form and represent the supreme Idea, the Idea par excellence, the abstract Idea. Great artists are religious, because to materialize the Idea of God, the Idea of an angel, the Idea of the Virgin Mother, requires an incomparable psychic effort and procedure. Making the invisible visible: that is the true purpose of Art and its only reason for existence. As the poet Stéphane Mallarmé argued, the nodus of Truth cannot be copied but can be only pointed to saying that “the ideal is to suggest the object. It is the perfect use of this mystery which constitutes the symbol. An object must be gradually evoked in order to show a state of soul.” As his philosophies ossified, Tournemire found himself in concord with this artistic raison d’être, espousing the Symbolist epistemology where one sees through the glass dimly via allegorical adumbrations of artistic simulacrum. Tournemire became a passionate follower of the works of Joris-Karl Huysmans, Ernest Hello, and Leon Bloy; and in 1922, upon the death of Saint-Saëns, Tournemire was awarded the music chair of the Société Baudelaire, thus further exposing him to the eminent artists and philosophers of the day. Tournemire’s Faith was not a simple a priori assertion, but through scholarly erudition rooted in philosophia perennis, he excogitated a religiously pansophical teleological dialectic... a theosophcal eschatology wherein, having “glimpsed the harmony and flow of things spiritual,” he perceived that God through Xrist, “crucified out of love of the Good,” constituted an ultimate apotheosis. Through this esotericism he sought to sonorously elicit the numinous ontological and broader metaphysical Truths of the Church through the mystically illuminating wisdom of music. Armed with these rarefied insights, he would withdraw to his summer cottage on the Île d’Ouessant off the coast of Brittany on whose property was situated a moulin which he had furnished with a music atelier. There he found his compositional muse where in the serenity of that halcyon hermitage he would “look to the sea for answers.” Music to Tournemire was not a mere métier. Being a man of humble disposition and intellectual acuity, and with a profound entelechial vocational awareness, the nihilism inherently endemic in the secular sphere and the irksome hubris of its musicians were anathema to Tournemire who, through religious and philosophical cognisance, descried the realm of transcendent immutable Verities. He averred a musical axiology opining philosophically facile temporal music as worthless famously proclaiming organ music where God is absent is a body without a soul. In his unpublished treatise, De la haute mission de l’organiste à l’église, Tournemire invoked the words of Hello: “Higher than reason, orthodox mysticism sees, hears, touches, and feels that which reason is incapable of seeing, hearing, touching, and feeling”; and in his biography of Franck (an honorific didactic pæan dedicated to his Maître written while composing L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE), he pronounced: Did not Ernest Hello—the Franck of literature, as Henri Duparc called him—also have a very clear understanding of his own worth when he exclaimed: “I would like to know glory.” He was thinking about the glory to which a gifted, prayerful, and humble writer has the right... Glory, which is to say, “a call which has been heard by souls and is bearing fruit; a call which invariably leads to the praise of the One who saved the world.” A Period of Losses Tournemire’s antebellum period (1898-1914) was a happy one fecund with success. In addition to acquiring the post at Sainte-Clotilde and his marriage to Alice Taylor, his musical output included his first five orchestral symphonies and his cantata Le Sang de la Sirène which won the Concours musicale de las ville de Paris in 1904 ...but then the lamps went out all over Europe. With the Great War (1914-1918), the Romantic ideals which propelled society through the nineteenth century reached an inexorable calamitous end bringing a cultural shift in music and marking the beginning of a period of deep personal despondency for Tournemire. As he grew in years, Tournemire’s Post-Romantic harmonic language initially entered into Impressionism but later moved toward a chromatic polymodality. Notwithstanding his modern proclivities, he became out of step with the disillusioned nihilism of the génération perdue whose avant-garde music then in vogue (epitomised by Igor Stravinsky and Les Six) was a wanton iconoclastic reaction against Romanticism and Impressionism. This cultural and aesthetic shift resulted in Tournemire’s music being buffeted with harsh criticism or, at best, damning praise. In 1925, the critic Émile Vuillermoz lamented that “Tournemire’s vast compositions [would not destine him for] great success among the crowds.” Later noting the same qualities in his organ music, the organist, Flor Peeters, who nonetheless was a great supporter of Tournemire, remarked: Tournemire’s organ music speaks to an intelligent, spiritually-oriented listener, in short, to an élite. By contrast Vierne’s organ music, with its simple lines and wonderful effects, addresses itself to a larger audience. In 1919, Tournemire was granted the Ensemble Class professorship at the Conservatoire, but this was simply believed to be a stepping-stone, for he was generally accepted as the Professor of Organ presumptive heir-apparent in continuance of the lineage of his Maître Franck. The organist Eugène Gigout (who had succeeded Widor) had taken on the position emphasising improvisation and chant accompaniment, so Tournemire was seen as destined to carry the baton into the future; however, through the machinations of Tournemire’s nemesis Widor, he was glossed over for Widor’s protégé Marcel Dupré who, through his well-cultivated performanceoriented career and prodigious cult-following, stole Tournemire’s apparent birth-right. However, Tournemire’s sense of personal anguish caused by this criticism and rejection in the shadow of those who basked in societal éclat paled in comparison to the tragic loss of his loving wife Alice in May of 1920 which launched in him a disconsolate period of deep and haunting darkness. The Aging Tournemire After this period of personal tragedy, Tournemire voraciously busied himself with some of his most profound musical output climaxing in 1927 when he began perhaps his greatest work, the landmark L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE. Written in the context of the interbellum renouveau catholique, this colossal cycle, consisting of fifty-one Offices each with five liturgical movements to be performed during the Mass, is often credited with being the Catholic equivalent to the Lutheran Cantatas of Bach. Indeed, this mammoth fifteen hour-long opus alone exceeds in duration Bach’s entire collected organ works. Yet despite the noble grandeur and profundity of his achievements, his endeavours, which invariably were intellectually and spiritually recherché, continued to be disregarded by a culture with more plebeian sensibilities, causing the discomfitted Tournemire to repine, “I did not intend to create a museum.” In his dotage, Tournemire’s mercurially emotive nature (a personality trait common to those from Bordeaux) could transform into explosive irascibility, especially when piqued by the braggadocio of his more acclaimed, immodest, meretricious, and philosophically nescient colleagues. His feelings of estrangement only increased after he remarried in 1934 to the young besotted Alice Espir, whose protective (if not possessive) adoration exasperated the situation. Of Tournemire’s perceived enigmatic froideur, the organist Daniel-Lesur insightfully noted: In him, the man and the artist were one and the same: Of noble character, he remained aloof from all kinds of intrigue and, if he suffered deeply from being ignored by his peers, he was entirely aware of his worth. He could be difficult. Relaxed, Tournemire let a more familiar aspect of his personality appear, most often good-natured, occasionally not so good-natured, always spontaneous. Endowed with a highly emotional nature, it was not rare to see him go in several instants from calm to the most vehement indignation. One sensed that he held to an absolute value: grandeur. The eclectic along with the dilettante were, without doubt, intellectual attitudes in direct contradiction to his temperament. His love of nature was intense. Each year saw him carry back from his retreat on the Île d’Ouessant one or another new chef-d’œuvre, pondered while facing the ocean. The ocean’s presence marked his character with a sense of universal grandeur. The ocean and the cathedrals. On 3 September 1939, war with Germany was again declared. The “just and lasting peace” proclaimed after the Great War had merely created the justification for a new and even greater war. During the psychologically tense preamble to hostilities known as the drôle de guerre, SainteClotilde was closed due to the threat of bombardment citing its proximity to the French War Ministry, moving to a small chapel on rue La Cases. Bereft of an organ and his cherished SainteClotilde, Tournemire and his wife retreated to his sister’s cottage in the coastal village of Arcachon and it was there that the unthinkable happened. Tournemire left the house on 31 October 1939 only to be found by an oyster farmer drowned in the Bassin d’Arcachon four days later. Due to chaos caused by the onset of the war, his body was hastily buried without autopsy or funeral. The mystery surrounding his shocking and shadowy demise and abrupt interment sans the obsequies only fitting for a man of such dedicated Faith has ignited rampant rumour and intrigue with pervasive mutterings suggesting suicide. Though vehemently condemned by Tournemire’s disciples as incongruous with his famed piety, there is an unuttered, dolorous acknowledgement of an inexorable possibility: The imminent probable fall of France to Nazism, the personal loss of his precious Saint-Clotilde, his career rife with discomfiture and the sense of perfidy he felt from those whom he had trusted, increasing financial woes which threatened the loss of his home in Paris, his life-long pensive and melancholic emotional sensitivity, and a diagnosis of prostate cancer which resulted in a surgery that rendered him gravely enfeebled... Collectively these all may well have led to the collapse of his spirit. It was as though the vicious world had said to Tournemire that it was time and, in the shadow of All Soul’s Day, looking to his beloved oceanic source of wisdom and peace, he yielded himself to its pelagic embrace. An Improvisor of Genius Ironically, despite Tournemire’s enormous and incredibly profound compositional output, he is still most famously known as an improviser extraordinaire. In fact, most organists fail to know him beyond his Cinq Improvisations. Recorded on cylinder at Sainte-Clotilde in 1930, they were posthumously transcribed by Maurice Duruflé, one of Tournemire’s most renowned students, thereby bequeathing to the ages a veiled glimpse of Tournemire’s ephemeral Art from its otherwise sepulchral silence. Remembering a post-Mass Sortie, Duruflé described one of Tournemire’s fervid improvisations: Carried away by the music that sprang forth spontaneously from his fingers, he could no longer control his reflexes. He had departed elsewhere. When he played upon the Récit, he would close his eyes at the same time as the expression box. During a crescendo he could be seen becoming animated little by little, emphasizing with an involuntary grimace a particularly dissonant harmony. Then as he reached the tutti, at the reentrance of the themes in pedal octaves, he suddenly stood on the pedal keyboard for several measures, to the great astonishment of his guests, all the while continuing to improvise. He rarely finished the sortie on full organ. He generally preferred to conclude in softness and ecstasy. All organists knew the following anecdote: One Sunday, after Tournemire had finished his sortie very quietly on a Récit Bourdon, one of his guests discreetly moved to his ear, intending to do him a favour, and said to him in a low voice, “Maître, this is the sortie.” The Maître suddenly glanced at him and calmly replied, “Well, my dear friend, sortez.” Béranger de Miramon Fritz-James, founder of Amis de l’Orgue, commented that “the feverish inspirations” of Tournemire’s passionately pious Symbolist organ improvisations had revealed him to be a “liturgical metaphysician, and illustrator, and musical preacher.” L’Orgue Mystique On 4 January 1927, Tournemire played for the marriage of his student, Joseph Bonnet, and at the wedding, he announced in the presence of Dom Joseph Gajard (choirmaster at the Solesmes Abbey) and Louis Vierne that he would begin work on what was then termed L’Orgue Glorieux, something Bonnet had long been advocating. Spurred on by the technological and tonal advances of the nineteenth-century organ-builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, Paris saw the rise of the Messe basse pour orgue, a peculiarly French invention where the Grand-Orgue made a full liturgical cantillization of the Mass in lieu of a choir. While popular, the disconnect between the altar and the organ (or indeed the adversarial relationship between the two) became notorious, the event essentially becoming an organ concert where a Mass just happened to be taking place. L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE, through its liturgical sensitivity, would challenge this concert ethos rendering a musical beau idéal purely ad majorem Dei gloriam. Hoping to elevate the Mass to its full theological musical grandeur, Bonnet, seeking to enkindle the flame of inspiration, had gifted Tournemire with Dom Guéranger’s magnum tome, L’Année liturgique, which ultimately would serve as a liturgical and theological guide for what Tournemire initially called L’Orgue Glorieux. After Bonnet’s wedding, having found his muse, Tournemire organized the chants to be cited in a grand plan using the 1922 Paroissien romain edition of the Liber Usualis and the 1897 edition of the Liber Antiphonarius as musical sources. His modus operandi was to begin with the feast days, establishing the work’s soteriological emphasis by starting with Easter Day (which Tournemire termed “a sun that shines around him a multitude of worlds”), completing this Office on 11 November 1927. Upon the composition of the final feast day (All Saints) on 16 March 1928, Tournemire renamed the work L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE. Then composing the rest of the year in liturgical sequence, he finished the last Office on 5 February 1932. Consisting of over a thousand pages of printed music (frontispieces, forewords, &c. makes final page-tally around thirteen-hundred), the score took a gruelling eight years for the publisher Heugel to complete. In the Foreword to L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE Bonnet wrote: A great musician was needed for its accomplishment, a master of organ technique and composition, having a great Spirit of Faith, loving the supernatural beauty of the Liturgy and of Gregorian melodies, a disciple of J. S. Bach and his Latin forerunners who created for Gregorian themes different forms that the Great Cantor resumed in the chorale preludes. This great musician had to work in peace and meditation as an artist must do. It is a splendid evocation of the architecture of our cathedrals, of the rich colour of their stained glass, of liturgical splendour revealed to us in the Monastery of Solesmes as we would like to find in every church of the Catholic world. Our modern musical writing is extraordinarily fit to adorn the Gregorian melodies. [Alternate translation: Our contemporary musical language possesses astonishing aptitudes to paraphrase Gregorian melodies eternally young.] So without sacrificing anything of his rich imagination, of his brilliant originality, Charles Tournemire has succeeded in creating such a mystical frame for the liturgical melodies. In losing the Organ Professorship to Dupré, Tournemire would surpass Dupré in musical achievement through L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE both in substance and scope. Each of the fifty-one volumes of L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE consists of five movements to be offered during the Grand Messe: PRÉLUDE À L’INTROÏT Based on that chant, to be played after the Asperges me or Vidi aquam as the priest returns to the Altar prior to the Introit. (Omitted Sabbato Sancto) OFFERTOIRE Based on that chant, played after the Offertory as the Host is prepared. É LÉVATION Derived from an Antiphon from one of the Offices of the day, to be played during or following the Elevation. In truth, Tournemire preferred silence during the actual Verba Testamenti with this Elevation music to be played concurrently with the second half of the Canon. (Omitted Sabbato Sancto) COMMUNION Based on that chant, to be played prior to the Antiphon ending Communion. PIÈCE TERMINALE Derived from Hymns, Graduals, Alleluias, Antiphons, &c. related to that Feast, to be played as the Sortie or Postlude. Stylistically, Tournemire’s musical impetus had a nineteenth-century French symphonic organ foundation while being infused with Post-Romantic and Impressionistic elements— his ardent faith finding its voice through the language of Gregorian Chant. Over three-hundred chants are incorporated into the two-hundred-fifty-three movements of L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE. What’s more, his Symbolist semiotic approach made each composition a musical exegesis based upon the chant libretto. He frequently used the term paraphrase which refers not merely to the musical rendering of a cantus firmus, but the piece’s theological hermeneutic. In fact, he called the Pièce Terminale a résumé or a compilation of thoughts for each feast; hence, it is not simply Tournemire’s musical exploitation of chant which makes L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE significant, but the theological elucidations which Tournemire evinced through chant combined with his ability to educe within the heart of the listener the latent human intuitive ken of the Divine through his Art that makes it a monumental pinnacle of sacred music. Prima facie, L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE sounds like an improvisational dithyramb conjured in the nonce; yet in truth this chef-d’œuvre exhibits Tournemire’s Franckian Post-Romantic structurally nuanced approach where thematic reiterations are adroitly transmogrified through Beethovian deductive cyclic techniques. Whilst utilizing such traditional styles as fantasias, toccatas, chorales, and fugues, and being rooted in the Gregorian tradition, L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE is hardly an atavistic expression of antediluvian musical archaicism, for he bedighted these ancient formulæ in modern vêtement or, as Stephen Schloesser termed it, a futural past. Foregoing key-signatures, in addition to the Occidental modes, Tournemire employed extreme chromaticism and musically heterodox Octatonic and Carnatic scales, thus serving as a bellwether for Messiaen (with whom he enjoyed a philosophical propinquity). In superimposing Gregorian monody and organum over diaphanous Impressionistic sonorities and impassioned Romantic dissonance, his music exhibits a sui generis chiaroscuro of harmonies. Of particular note is the Tournemire Chord (akin to the Wagnerian Tristan Chord or Scriabin’s Prometheus Chord) whose rich complexity forms a harmonic climax or theological dénouement. In performance, Romantic rubato and Gregorian rhythmical nuance rather than metronomical volonté shapes note duration, thus mensural time is abandoned in favour of a sonorous sense of Eternity. Including up to seven staves indicating different manuals, the score often has visually confusing hand-inversions in addition to having a great deal of onehanded double-keyboard play as well as double-pedalling. Many times the chant is fully cited, but more often than not, the figuration of the chant is manipulated to the point of deformed obscurity where simply the meaning behind the devotional odes and biblical pericopes of the epigraph are allegorically realized through the aesthetic. Tournemire also shattered the restrictive paradigms which shackled classical stop registration, opening the organ to heretofore unheard timbres, all in aid of effectuating a new mellifluous dimension to his theological meditations. Perhaps the most remarkable movement within each Office is the Pièce Terminale. Most commonly frequenting concert settings, the Pièce Terminale exhibits the wide-ranging palate Tournemire had at his fingertips. It ofttimes disappoints those seeking superficial organ-bombast, flamboyant whimsy, or mere piquant witticism, for Tournemire’s sense of Divine grandeur and spiritual intimacy seeks not to incite congregations to surge for the door after Mass with a mighty din, but calls humanity to a more profound, reflective response (much to the stultification of the aforementioned jejune archetypes). Often having a duration of eight to twelve minutes, these climatic closing movements hardly conform to the notion of a brief, boisterous, postludal flourish as is common praxis. Even Tournemire’s observance of Easter defies expectations, reaching its rapturous terminus not with a sforzando, but with a spiritually ecstatic pianissimo expressing the intense elation of a newly-redeemed humanity. Tournemire saw L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE as the quintessence of vocation reified... an ambrosial paragon to be seen as both a liturgical exemplar and a monolithic work of sacred Art. With an amorphous sense of metre and tonal centre, freely moving from religious modal purity to vexed Romantic chromaticism, L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE floats unfettered between the realms of Eternity and tellurian passion contextualising man’s subastral human frailty under a God of transcendent aseity yet allembracing immanence. Indeed, the aura of beatific stupefaction and pious pathos imparted through L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE echos words found in Hello’s Paroles de Dieu (1877): “This magnificent replacement of fear by awe [de la peur par la crainte] which opens the window for adoration.” A Musical Monument Lost to History The public and critical commentary concerning L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE spanned the spectrum, but all were stunned. A critique in Le Monde Musical of a concert given by Duruflé of two pieces from L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE still in manuscript form seemed to capture the dichotomy: [The first piece was] played in encore with enthusiasm. It was ravishing. [But the second,] filled with fantaisie, seemed to describe —in the manner of the gargoyles of our very oldest basilicas— the very worst moral ugliness, nightmares of sins, accursed hallucinations. The mind is not moved when the ear is shocked. Yet, in that same critique, the author conceded that Tournemire had created “something of beauty.” Messiaen, one of the great supporters of L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE, deferentially remarked that its “rhapsodic liberty” defied “all analysis” as though to suggest that all one could do is behold the work in awe and gasp. The work’s acclaim climaxed on 24 April 1932 when the great organists of the next generation: Maurice Duruflé, André Fleury, Jean Langlais, Noëlie Pierront, Gaston Litaize, Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur, and Olivier Messiaen, performed L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE in a nationally broadcasted concert from Sainte-Clotilde thereby establishing it as one of the great works of the century. The critic Pierre Giriat, drawing a parallel to Saint Thomas Aquinas, called L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE a “sonorous Summa Theologicæ”...“daring” and “overwhelming.” He continued: The Art of Charles Tournemire is one of the most subtle of our time. It is appealing to traditionalist on account of its return to the spirit and to the modal forms of a past extending even anterior to Bach, yet it is evolutionary in its adoption of modern polytonality denounced as diabolical by conservatives. Tournemire mixes together harmonies like the poetry of cathedrals alloys mystical perfumes. [Posterity] will remember the work of Tournemire as one of the most exceptional and the freest in a petty and troubled epoch. If only this were true. History has been grievously neglectful of Tournemire’s music and obdurate to his Ideals, and understandably so: His music’s intimidating intellectual content, the chaos enveloping the world at that time, the ever-burgeoning myopic apostasy of the secular postwar period where Faith is held as a pejorative state of being, as well as the abnegation of the metaphysically transcendent Tridentine Liturgy which came to be decried as a ritualistic shibboleth by a generation favouring puerile cozy informality... These all played a role in his modern obscurity. Indeed, the year after the completion of L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE, the world, enveloped in the Great Depression, negligently acquiesced to the accession of Hitler to power as it slowly marched down the road to madness. L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE and its creator came to be included among the many victims of this overwhelmingly tragic era; yet still, the man would become an iconic progenitor whose prophetic vision opened the burgeoning minds of a budding generation of future artists, his music embodying the Augustinian notion of ab exterioribus ad interiora, ab interioribus ad superiora. On the tenth anniversary of Tournemire’s death, Langlais, Tournemire’s eventual successor at Sainte-Clotilde, offered this panegyric: On 4 November 1939, the news of Charles Tournemire’s death struck the musical world. It was then, the day of his feast, that this great master, whose message was so in advance of our conception of Art, left us. But thanks to his work, he lives.... He erected a monument, a religious summation, in his L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE, which makes him one of the greatest servants of Christian Art and even of Art in general. Such an anniversary must deeply grieve all who are attached to Sainte-Clotilde, which he served with passion, and, with a feeling so common to many great men, that of not being understood except by a small number of devotées. Indeed, the man and his musical legacy are known but to a privileged few, yet L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE is a supernal masterpiece ...ne plus ultra... which needs to be shared among this increasingly spiritually void and vacuous world with its heartbreaking evanescent cognisance of Divinity. A miraculous work of true Art, L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE in a sense exhibits potentia obœdientia in the Verities its euphonic allegory reveals, invokes, if not embodies. Truly, it is difficult to think upon Charles Tournemire and not utter the word genius... for Tournemire would discover that the search for the Soul of Music extolled by his Maître Franck was in fact a quest to know the ultimate SOUL. P er • as p era • s p era THROUGH ADVERSITY , HOPE —The epitaph on the tomb of Charles-Arnould Tournemire