Toccata for 3rd Advent's Sunday, from "L'Orgue Mystique"

This toccata is, in Tournemire’s Orgue Mystique, the postlude for 3rd Sunday of Advent (Gaudete), the only one during Advent when some organ music was allowed during services.

So, it’s not an heroic toccata with big reeds, but a gentle toccata on flutes (and strings, or even soft mixtures, here and there) quite in Advent-Gaudete mood. It’s written on the Advent hymn “Creator Alme siderum” and is in a multi-sectional form which alternates :

- Calm quotations of the hymn (1:07 3:20 5:17 for instance);
- Whirling passages (1:56 2:50 3:40 4:29 etc);
- Sections with short toccata-like formulae (4:57 5:40 6:10 etc)
- And an aetheral peaceful conclusion at 6:30

To sum up, a kind of free rondo whose refrain would be the hymn.

Sure it’s not so sexy as some old Noel, not so “obviously correct” as some choral prelude, but I know few organ pieces which manage to express as adequately the calm happiness and confident expectation for Christmas. I never saw any angels squadron flapping wings in some aerial show, but some moments of this piece might help to imagine how it could look (please and of course, feel free not to approve this adventurous statement :)