Qui Tollis.

Alexandre Pierre-François Boëly - Qui Tollis.

Plein Jeu. Ped. d'anches

Here is the tenth and final recording in a series comprising an organ mass taken from the ms. 169 (municipal library of Versailles). This piece being a verset for the gloria as a moe traditional "plain chant en taille". There are no further versets associated for use with the Sanctus, Agnus Dei and etc. Considering the multiple copies of this organ mass that Boëly made, this (unfinished in the traditional sense of a full organ mass) was presumably the intended state of completion.

Now concerning the organ mass and my recording of it as a whole, these recordings were made using a copy of the MS. 169. There exists another copy with more "primitive" versions of the versets, the pages of which are dispersed in various manuscripts. I have been able to piece together a mostly complete (the page containing the first piece "rentree de procession" being the sole page I have yet to obtain) presumably original version. From this version, this organ mass was composed between July - August 1834. While a number of pieces in this earlier version do not contain registration indications, I find interesting that none of the pieces that are written for the plein jeu in the ms. 169 version are not marked "plein jeu" at all, so it may be presumable that when Boëly wrote the original in 1834, this organ mass may have been destined for the organ of St. Gervais, which at the time, due to a work done in 1812 under the supervision of the last Couperin, the Plein Jeux were removed. Also to consider is that J-N Marrigues, then the organist of St- Gervais and a good friend of Boëly, dies in March 1834, and a few months later in November, Boëly being officially named the provisional organist of St-Gervais, this organ mass being composed between these dates.

With that, that concludes this series of recordings of the "Messe d'Orgue" of APF Boëly