GMCD 7198 You can order this CD in our E-Shop under Instrumental/Music for Organ Reviews ***Sound Clips***	MARCEL DUPRÉ Volume 11 Intégrale des œuvres pour orgue Complete Organ Works Sämtliche Orgelwerke   Jeremy Filsell - Organ   www.jeremyfilsell.com

Contents:

DDD Total Time = 55:04 - Recorded at St. Boniface Episcopal Church, Sarasota, Florida, USA - September 1998, Plainchant tracks recorded at Charterhouse Chapel, Surrey - March 1999

15 Antiphons, Op 18 ( Vêpres du Commun des Fêtes de la Sainte Vierge)
The penultimate volume of this series concentrates on the liturgical aspect of Marcel Dupré’s music. For virtually the whole of his adult life Dupré’s career as a church musician was centred on the great Parisian church and organ of Saint-Sulpice, where he was Assistant Organist from 1906-33 and Titulaire from 1934 until his death in 1971. But in his early thirties he was also associated with the Cathedral of Notre-Dame. In the summer of 1916, at the height of the First World War, Dupré’s friend and mentor Louis Vierne was compelled to leave France to seek treatment in Switzerland for his ailing eyesight, and he asked Dupré to deputise for him at Notre-Dame for a few months. In the event it was four whole years before Vierne was able to return to Paris, and this extended interlude at Notre-Dame had a decisive influence on Dupré’s career, as he later recalled in his Memoirs:

‘It was at Notre-Dame that I had one of the great strokes of good luck of my career. Two days after the Feast of the Assumption in 1919, I received a letter from an Englishman: ‘I was present on 15th August for Vespers at Notre-Dame. After the service I went to the sacristy to ask who the organist was and what pieces he had played. They told me that the organist was Marcel Dupré, and that he had probably improvised at each of the sung versets at Vespers. If these pieces are published, where can I find them? If they were improvised, would you be able to compose some similar pieces for me? I am offering you the sum of 1500 francs. I shall have then published in London by Novello & Co, but you will retain control of the copyright.’ I felt as if my head were spinning. My correspondent was none other than Claude Johnson, one of the directors of Rolls-Royce.

‘I replied immediately, accepting his offer with gratitude, and at the same time, I confirmed that he had indeed heard improvisations. I explained that I would be unable, obviously, to guarantee an exact reproduction of them, but that I would try to re-establish the same mood.....The pieces were composed quickly; and when Claude Johnson returned from a trip to the United States, he stopped off in Rouen. There I played the versets for him on the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll at Saint-Ouen. The next day I played them for him on the organ at Notre-Dame, where he became a frequent visitor to the organ-loft.....’ (Marcel Dupré - Recollections)

This extraordinary story had an even more extraordinary sequel. The next year Johnson hired the Royal Albert Hall and arranged for Dupré to make his British debut there in the presence of the Prince of Wales; the versets were performed in their liturgical sequence, with the aid of the 600-voice choir of the Gregorian Association, and these colourful but modest pieces became the springboard for an international concert career that was to make Dupré a considerable fortune within a few years.

The practice of alternatim versets for choir and organ was centuries old, and had inspired all the Livres d’Orgue of the golden age of French classical organ music, from Titelouze to the time of the Revolution. The fifteen interludes at Vespers for Feasts of the Blessed Virgin followed a traditional pattern, falling into three groups. The first group consisted of five antiphons to texts from the Song of Songs, which framed the singing of five Psalms; before each Psalm the choir would sing an antiphon, and the ordained repetition of the same antiphon after the Psalm would be played by the organ, ideally in the form of an improvised interlude based on the plainsong. Next came the 9th century Hymn to the Virgin, Ave Maris Stella, with the verses taken alternately by choir and organ (four verses each) and finally the Magnificat, performed in the same way.

For an artist with a strong creative imagination, the Vesper service opened up a whole universe of possibilities, and even in his early years as a teenage organist in Rouen, under the tutelage of his father, Dupré had delighted in the prospect: ‘As soon as my father started me on the study of harmony and two-part counterpart, my dream was to improvise the Versets at Vespers...’ But Albert Dupré would never permit any self-indulgent rambling - every interlude, however simple, must be logically and contrapuntally constructed, and these early efforts confirmed the young Dupré’s natural instinct for a musical style that was essentially polyphonic. Even in the most seemingly improvisatory of the Op.18 versets, the voice-leading is as carefully contrived as the texture, colour and musical imagery - a perfect marriage of technique and imagination that was to characterise all his greatest work in the future.

In the five Psalm antiphons he took the opening intonation of the relevant chant as the basis of each piece; the four hymn versets quote the whole melody, and are more in the nature of chorale preludes; the Magnificat versets are free improvisations, taking their inspiration from the spirit of the text. Conceived as part of a greater whole - just one element in an ensemble of music, poetry and prayer - the 15 Antiphons lose much of their effect when they are divorced from their original context: they are therefore presented here in a liturgical performance, complementing and contrasting with the sung portions of the chant, as the composer intended.

Five antiphons on texts from the Song of Songs:
While the King sitteth at his table - a regal procession for the tutti
His left hand is under my head - a tranquil meditation for 8ft foundation stops
I am black but comely - a floating flute solo above a gentle undulating accompaniment
Lo, the winter is past - an animated fugue for mixture choruses
How fair and pleasant art thou - a flowing meditation for massed foundation stops

Ave Maris Stella
v.2 When the salutation Gabriel had spoken - a modal trio, with the chorale in canon at the fourth between the soprano and the bass
v.4 Jesus’ tender mother, make thy supplication - chorale on the Cromorne in the tenor, beneath a strangely expressive two-part accompaniment based on the repetitions of an ostinato four-note phrase, in the style of a litany
v.6 So now as we journey, aid our weak endeavour - chorale ornamented on the Cornet in the soprano above a chromatic accompaniment, ‘in the style of J.S.Bach’
Amen - A fiery toccata

Magnificat
For he hath regarded the lowliness of his handmaiden - a swiftly flowing invention for flutes
For he that is mighty hath magnified me - a majestic piece in severe, classical style
He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud... - the proud are well and truly scattered in the energetic counterpoint of this bizarre chromatic movement
He hath filled the hungry with good things - a flowing Cantilena for oboe above a rippling flute accompaniment
As he promised to our forefathers - a slow chordal piece with strangely dense, hollow registration, misterioso e adagiosissimo
Gloria (Finale) - a storming toccata ends the Magnificat in a blaze of glory

Regina Coeli, Op 64
The other works on this disc are also based on Gregorian Chant, and they too are presented here in conjunction with the plainsong which inspired them. Composed in 1969, when Dupré was 83, Regina Coeli is dedicated to the memory of a former pupil from his wartime Organ Class, who had later become a nun: ‘A la mémoire de Denise Raffy, Organiste du grand orgue de l’Immaculée Conception d’Elbeuf (En religion: Soeur Marie Denise de Jésus, du Carmel de Chartres). The theme (Queen of Heaven, rejoice) is one of the most popular traditional antiphons of the Blessed Virgin, and its flowing contours suffuse all the voices of Dupré’s serene meditation, in an atmosphere of simple trust and resignation. 

Choral & Fugue, Op 57
Like the 15 Antiphons, Dupré’s Choral & Fugue had its origins in an improvisation. On his 76th Birthday on 3rd May 1962, he gave a gala commemorative recital at Saint-Sulpice in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the Cavaillé-Coll organ, ending the programme with an Improvisation sur un thème liturgique. M.Gillet, the Curé of Saint-Sulpice, suggested two well-known plainsong themes, the Marian antiphon Salve Regina and the Easter Dismissal Ite Missa est, Alleluia, and Dupré used these melodies as the basis of a prelude and fugue. Afterwards the Curé requested that the improvisation should be crystallised into a written composition as a souvenir of the occasion, and this was the origin of the Choral & Fugue. The sombre contrapuntal Choral is typical of Dupré’s conception of the liturgical chorale paraphrase, treating the Salve Regina as a cantus firmus on Trumpet and Clarion, first in the pedal, then in the right hand, and then in canon between the two. The Easter theme forms the first subject of the lively double fugue, but the Salve Regina is soon caught up in the prevailing jig rhythm to serve as second subject; the closing section bristles with Dupré’s beloved inversions and stretti before the two themes are briefly superimposed in a brilliant peroration.

Page revised Friday May 25 2007