L’Orgue Mystique

IN THE TIME BETWEEN THE TWO GREAT WORLD WARS (or as the historian Eugen Weber termed the entire era, the “Second Thirty Years War”) there emerged a musical monument which the critic Pierre Giriat called a “sonorous Summa Theologica”. 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.

THIS MONUMENT WAS “L’ORGUE MYSTIQUE” BY CHARLES TOURNEMIRE. 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.

X X V . I n F e s t o P e n t e c o s t e s

Prélude à l’Introït: Spiritus Domini
Offertoire: Confirma hoc Deus
Élévation: Sic Deus
Communion: Factus est repente de cælo sonus
Pièce Terminale: Fantaisie-Choral

X X V I . I n F e s t o S a n c t æ T r i n i t a t i s

Prélude à l’Introït: Benedicta sit
Offertoire: Benedictus sit Deus Pater
Élévation: Benedictus es, Domine Deus
Communion: Benedicamus Deum cæli
Pièce Terminale: Triptyque

L I . D o m i n i c a X X I I I p o s t P e n t e c o s t e n

Communion: Amen dico vobis
Pièce Terminale: Fantaisie sur le Te Deum et Guirlandes Alléluiatiques

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