Office No. 15 »Lætare« (from: »L’Orgue Mystique« op. 56, Paris 1930)

After a long period of involuntary inactivity, I am finally able to post a new upload here at Contrebombarde: Office No. 15 »Lætare« from Charles Tournemire's collection »L'Orgue Mystique«:

1. Prélude à l’introït (0:01)
2. Offertoire (1:23)
3. Élévation (4:46)
4. Communion (6:03)
5. Postlude-Fantaisie (9:04)

Tournemire is one of the most idiosyncratic figures in French organ music of the early 20th century: born in 1870, he was appointed organist of the Church of Saint-Seurin in his native city of Bordeaux at the age of fourteen, before moving to Paris in 1886, where he was accepted into César Franck's organ and improvisation class in 1889. Although he only studied with him for six month, Franck was one of Tournemire's most influential teachers; in 1931, he wrote a monograph about the composer. After holding various organ positions in Paris, he became titular organist at the Sainte-Clotilde church in 1898 – succeeding Pierné, who in turn had followed Franck.

Tournemire remained in the position until his death, but from 1919 he also held a professorship in chamber music at the Conservatoire and taught private students such as Duruflé and Langlais in improvisation. Tournemire died under somewhat mysterious circumstances in 1939; four days after going for a walk and never returning to his house in Arcachon, he was found drowned in an oyster farm.

Although Tournemire composed symphonies, piano and chamber music, as well as four operas, his reputation was based primarily on his organ works. While his early pieces were strongly influenced by Franck, he gradually developed a highly individual musical language from his intensive study of Gregorian chant, characterised by a dazzling, often polymodal harmony, great rhythmic and agogic flexibility and subtle treatment of timbre, and was increasingly used by the composer, whose thinking was characterised by Christian mysticism, to express religious ideas. In this way, he had a great influence not least on Messiaen.