GMCD 7188 You can order this CD in our E-Shop under Instrumental/Music for Organ Reviews ***Sound Clips***	MARCEL DUPRÉ Volume 9 Intégrale des œuvres pour orgue Complete Organ Works Sämtliche Orgelwerke   Jeremy Filsell - Organ  www.jeremyfilsell.com

Contents:

DDD Total Time = 62:45 / Recorded at St. Boniface Episcopal Church, Sarasota, Florida, USA - September 1998

Entree, Canzona & Sortie, Op 62
These three little-known liturgical pieces date from the twilight of Dupré’s composing career; modest in their technical demands, and traditional in their harmonic language, they were commissioned in 1967 for a volume of contemporary liturgical music compiled by the Zurich Organists’ Association in celebration of its fiftieth anniversary. The anthology was published by the German firm of Peters, making just a tiny fragment of Dupré’s work available for the first time behind the Iron Curtain, where French publications were largely unobtainable.

The first and last pieces reflect the style of the improvisations of Dupré’s later years, at moments when a ‘joyful noise’ was required; the Entrée in D major is a kind of Marche Pontificale, with full, hammered chords and a dotted pedal theme below, while the D minor Sortie is in the style of a toccata, with a more melodic second theme which is transformed into a hymn of thanksgiving at the end. The little Canzona in A minor features one of Dupré’s favourite textures, which can be traced back to the Symphonie-Passion of 1924 - an undulating, constantly shifting harmonic background created from the interplay of two accompanimental voices, both in regular crotchets, one moving on the beat and the other a quaver behind. Here they accompany a simple modal tune on the Oboe, which then moves down to the pedals as the bass of a flowing trio.

Les Nymphéas, Op 54
This extraordinary unpublished work was inspired by two of the composer’s most personal, private passions - his love of impressionist art and his idiosyncratic conception of ‘the organ of the future’. ‘Je passerai le fin de ma vie ici, dans mon laboratoire, à sonder l’avenir’ (I will spend the end of my life here, in my laboratory, probing the future...): Dupré’s unusual ideas about the organ of the future developed out of his first decisive encounter in 1921 with the electric action and flexible stop-control of modern British and American organs. He was naturally inclined towards music that was essentially linear in conception, and if one thinks of the complex part-writing of much of his later music, especially works like the six-part ricercares, in which each hand plays two independent contrapuntal lines and each foot also has its own independent voice, then one can see how his ideas began to take shape, attracting him to the concept of an instrument that would allow a far greater range of independent colour than was afforded by the conventional organ.

In 1934 Dupré redesigned his Cavaillé-Coll house-organ at Meudon in accordance with his new ideas. The keyboards were extended to 73 notes with numerous octave couplers, and the organ was fitted with sustainers (devices - commonly found on cinema organs - that prolong notes indefinitely without the fingers having to sustain them) and coupures, which enabled a keyboard to be divided so that bass and treble could produce different tone-colours. On each side of the keyboards, an array of electrical switches controlled the adjustable combination action, and later on, during the War, he installed a régistrateur, a device that enabled a complete set of twelve registrations to be recorded on magnetic tape, and then recalled in turn at the touch of a button - in other words an early version of the Sequencer that is now a standard feature of contemporary solid-state technology. Dupré proudly described the rebuilt instrument as ‘an organ for the year 2000’. He also dreamed of further developments, of an organ with even more extensions and coupures, and an individual swell-box for each stop: the art of organ-playing would become the art of ‘orchestration’.

The organ of the future turned out to be a cul-de-sac rather than an exciting new avenue; in the world at large, extension organs and over-sophisticated electrical gadgetry fell into disrepute, in favour of a return to the simplicity and musicality of mechanical action - a trend that Dupré found incomprehensible. Apart from his own instrument, all that remains of the dream is Les Nymphéas, a work that he composed especially for this organ in 1958/9, making full use of its coupures and sustainers. The work has never been published, as Meudon is the only place where it can be played in its original form; Jeremy Filsell has made his own arrangement for this recording.

Les Nymphéas was inspired by the famous series of paintings from the final years of Claude Monet - the eight vast canvases displayed in the Orangery in Paris. The titles of Dupré’s eight pieces do not correspond precisely to the individual paintings, but each movement reflects a different aspect of the artist’s luminous vision. Many writers have described Monet’s ‘visual harmony’ in musical terms (‘Claude Monet handles light-waves like a musician handles sound-waves...’), and in Les Nymphéas Dupré creates a parallel world of sound, an elusive, profoundly original music made up of fragments of melody and dense harmonies that vibrate with subtle, constantly-changing colours. In 1973 Dupré’s protégé Rolande Falcinelli recorded the work at Meudon, and for many years this recording was played three times a week at the Orangery. ‘Each of these impressions’, she wrote, ‘evokes all the poetic and mysterious atmosphere of the final masterpieces of the great impressionist...making the Sunbeams dance in the half-light of the Mists; sketching the flexible yet fragile stems of the Flowers in delicate shades of pink; while after the brief anguish of the purple twilight in Oppressive Weather, the pond ripples gently with the caress of the Breezes, and the Nocturne lingers before the arrival of the luminous, sparkling tints of Dawn, soon overwhelmed by the subtle Golden Haze.’

Suite Bretonne, Op 21
Composed in 1923, the year after Variations sur un Noël, the Suite Bretonne was the second work inspired by Dupré’s encounter with the organs of America. He described the Variations as ‘a synthesis of the orchestral possibilities of the modern organ’, and he continued on this path in the Suite, albeit with less kaleidoscopic changes of tone-colour. In the Fileuse he again exploited the technical possibilities opened up by a light electric action, and in the Carillon he included an important part for that most American of organ stops, the Chimes. Dupré was proud to be a Frenchman, and never more so than during his early years as a touring virtuoso: the Variations were based on a traditional French carol, and the Suite that followed was inspired by the picturesque countryside of Brittany. He always enjoyed painting with water-colours, and the artist’s eye is very much in evidence here; the subtlety and delicacy of this music is also reflected in Les Nymphéas thirty years later, though the harmonic language of the earlier work is much more accessible.

The gently rocking rhythms, the delicate pastel shades of colour, and the pretty canon at the end combine in the opening Berceuse to create the perfect lullaby. The fleeting Fileuse (Spinning Song) was inspired by the sight of an old peasant woman sitting at the spinning-wheel by her cottage door. Two themes - a little dancing motif, and a tiny fanfare for flute - accompany the spinning throughout this vividly descriptive, featherlight scherzo, and the jazzy harmonies that appear near the end are as unexpected as they are delightful. At the end the music disappears to the top of the keyboard and suddenly stops, suggesting the breaking of the thread.

The title of the final movement might lead the listener to expect a typical French toccata or carillon, but the extended finale of Dupré’s Suite Bretonne is a pastoral rhapsody full of soft, evocative colours - a rustic drone, with characteristic crushed notes (reminiscent of The Shepherds’ Farewell from Berlioz’ L’Enfance du Christ), a haunting folksong-like melody on the oboe, the sound of distant bells, all finally fading into silence in the tranquillity of a summer evening.

Poème Héroïque, Op 33
In relation to the two preceding works, the grandiose Poëme Héroïque comes from the opposite end of the musical spectrum. It was composed in 1935 for organ, brass and percussion, for the inauguration of the restored Cathedral of Verdun after the devastation of the First World War, and later arranged by Dupré for organ solo at the request of American publishers. Few composers are at their best when writing self-consciously patriotic music for great public occasions; this is certainly not Dupré’s greatest work, but the eloquent dedication ‘To Verdun’ bears witness to the integrity of his intentions. An introduction of fanfares and pregnant dotted rhythms heralds the arrival of the main march theme above repeated chords, evoking the procession of the doomed soldiers to the battlefront. A second more consoling, elegiac theme is developed at some length before the return of the march, leading to a frenetic Presto coda in which the antiphonal phrases of organ and brass are crowned by the triumph of the second theme.

Page revised Friday May 25 2007