GMCD 7164 You can order this CD in our E-Shop under Instrumental/Music for Organ Reviews ***Sound Clips***	MARCEL DUPRÉ Volume 5 Intégrale des œuvres pour orgue Complete Organ Works Sämtliche Orgelwerke Jeremy Filsell - Organ  www.jeremyfilsell.com Classic CD February 2000 - Page 78

Contents:

DDD Total time = 65.17 Recorded at St. Boniface Episcopal Church, Sarasota, Florida, USA - September 1998

Paraphrase sur le Te Deum, Op 43
This liturgical paraphrase was commissioned in 1946 by the American editor David McK.Williams for inclusion in his two-volume Modern Anthology. Dupré’s setting of the familiar Gregorian theme is by no means a conventional hymn of thanksgiving, and the barrage of staccato chords on the opening pages introduces a wild and slightly unsettling mood, an evocation perhaps of the dark wartime years that had just come to an end. Inspired throughout by the different phrases of the hymn, the music passes through a variety of different textures and tone-colours, including two softer interludes, before a hammered rhythm of repeated notes, initiated by the pedals, introduces the final march-like climax.
Angélus, Op 34
During the two decades between the wars Dupré rapidly reached the summit of his profession as an international performing artist and teacher, but he was content to remain as ‘Assistant Organist’ at Saint-Sulpice until his fiftieth year. In 1934 the aged Widor retired, and Dupré finally succeeded him as ‘Organiste Titulaire’. During the 1930s he was too busy with other projects to devote much time to organ composition, but his new status is perhaps reflected in some short liturgical pieces which he published in 1935/6. Delicately registered for soft combinations of flutes and strings, with the Angelus bell gently chiming in a repeated high pedal note throughout the first two pages, Angélus (1936) is one of his most memorable miniatures.
Épithalame (1948)
This unpublished piece was composed for the wedding of Dupré’s daughter Marguerite in 1948. When Marguerite announced her engagement on 29th January 1948, Dupré improvised some variations in celebration of the event, on the ‘little organ’ in his home at Meudon (an old instrument that had soon been superseded by the acquisition of a larger organ from the former home of Alexandre Guilmant, just up the road). Using a theme by J.S.Bach, Giovannini’s Aria from the Anna Magdalena Notebook, which had also once been used by Beethoven, Dupré ‘placed the happiness of our beloved children under the protection of those two great and venerated geniuses’, as he wrote on the manuscript of Épithalame. This written composition is based on his improvisation, and it was played at the wedding in April 1948 by Dupré’s friend and pupil Marcel Lanquetuit, Organist of Rouen Cathedral.
Annonciation, Op 56
Dupré maintained a lively interest in the visual arts; he enjoyed painting in water-colours, and his love of art is also reflected in two of his organ works, Les Nymphéas (1957, inspired by Monet) and Annonciation (1961). Although there is no mention of this in the printed score, the manuscript specifies that these two short meditations were inspired by the two figures in the Annunciation of Leonardo da Vinci - the angular intervals of the Clarinet melody in the first piece representing the hieratic stance of the Angel Gabriel with upraised fingers - ‘Hail, thou that art highly favoured’, and the serene meditation of the second piece suggesting the humble acceptance of the Virgin Mary.
Suite, Op 39
Offrande à la Vierge, Op.40
Trois Esquisses, Op.41
These three works share a common origin, but it was not revealed until six years after Dupré’s death, with the publication in 1977 of extracts from the wartime diaries of his pupil Jeanne Demessieux. Dupré first encountered the phenomenal talent of Demessieux in 1936, when she was 15; immediately taking her under his artistic protection, he personally prepared her for entry into his Organ Class, from which she emerged with a brilliant premier prix in 1941, and he continued to give her private lessons for the next five years, in preparation for her sensational debut recitals in 1946. Working together constantly in Dupré’s music room at Meudon for the duration of the War, master and pupil developed a close artistic relationship, which was abruptly and inexplicably terminated by Dupré on his return from an American tour early in 1947; the causes of this ‘rupture’ remain a mystery.
It is from Demessieux’s diary that we learn of the long-concealed existence of a set of 12 transcendental studies which Dupré composed for her between 1941 and 1943, with the intention of strengthening and challenging her incredible pedal technique. Early the next year Dupré decided - for reasons that are not entirely clear - not to publish his studies in their present form. He arranged instead for Demessieux to write some of her own (her legendary Six Études), and he decided to remodel his own studies into ‘a Suite and some Esquisses, etc’. The movements that were grouped together and published as Op. 39, 40 & 41 do not, however, account for all twelve studies, and the original manuscripts appear to be lost, or maybe even destroyed, for after the ‘rupture’ Dupré concealed almost every trace of the existence of these works.
The F minor Allegro agitato that opens the Suite is a unique and remarkable invention, teeming with hectic semiquaver figuration in scales and broken thirds. On one occasion Demessieux ‘dared to reveal something of my poetic impressions of the Études: I find in them an intense life, which is typified by the F minor. Concerning this last, I suggest to the Maître that one needs to have heard the agitation of millions of molecules in a forest to be able to assimilate this independence of writing...’ To which Dupré replied, with characteristic modesty: ‘You have seen the living side of the Études. Yes, I did wish to capture the swarming activity of life; but I am afraid that it may just be agitation, that everything is moving too fast at the same time...’ The G major Cantabile is an exquisite six-part ricercare, of the kind that Dupré loved to improvise, with two parts each for each hand and 8ft pedal; the voices move dreamily through this rich contrapuntal texture, and the canon between soprano and first bass passes almost unnoticed. On 27th August 1943 Demessieux played during her lesson ‘five of the Études by heart, twice...The Maître exclaims ‘After all, maybe they are not so bad as compositions’. He is in a very good mood, and claims to have discovered ‘a bit of the accordion’ in his music’. This must surely refer to the captivating Scherzando in B flat, a syncopated staccato study which requires considerable digital and pedal dexterity in the negotiation of its sequences of dancing thirds, sixths and octaves. After the more delicate and transparent textures of the preceding movements, the Suite ends with a powerful Final, a swaggering march in C minor that exploits the full resources of the instrument.
The three movements of the meditative Offrande were developed out of some of the quieter Études, but much more remodelling and rewriting was required here, and it seems that most of the second piece may have been based on new material. Dedicated to the memories of three of Dupré’s own pupils who had been killed in the War, these pieces reflect on the traditional attributes of the Blessed Virgin. In Virgo Mater the 4ft pedal melody suggests the rocking of the cradle of the infant Christ, alternating with other evocative motifs in an atmosphere of serene tranquillity. The Mater Dolorosa is more troubled; it opens with bare harmonies above an ominous pedal ostinato, but it is the plaintive lament of a soft solo reed that makes the most memorable impression, and after further developments it is the lament that has the last word. The ecstatic final meditation invokes the Virgin as the medium of prayer; it is richly scored for flutes and strings, and its origins as a technical study can perhaps still be detected in the density and complexity of its chromatic textures.
Dupré prepared three of his Études for publication under the title of Esquisses, but in the end he only published two of them; the C major piece was discovered in his library after his death, and published by his executors. The ‘new’ No.1 is an uneasy, restless, virtuoso pedal study that rises to a ferocious central climax and then dies down again. In complete contrast, the E minor Esquisse is a delicate study in manual repeated notes, in which the pedals have only brief flurries of activity, accompanying the chordal second theme. In April 1943, shortly after a heavy German bombardment close to Meudon, Dupré presented Demessieux with ‘the tenth Etude, which he describes as tumultuous’; this must surely have been the final Esquisse in B flat minor, a titanic study in octaves in which one can almost hear the bombs, especially on the frenetic final pages.

Page revised Friday May 25 2007