French Classical Offertories & Grands Jeux

The French organ repertoire of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is extraordinarily rich, comprising countless works published by their composers in collections known as Livres d’Orgue (Organ Books). These Livres d’Orgue generally consist of short pieces (plein jeu, solo récits in the soprano, bass or tenor register, duos, trios, dialogues, etc.), intended to replace specific verses of the Catholic liturgy (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei, Magnificat, and so forth).

The Offertory, however, constitutes a notable exception. As this part of the Mass is comparatively long, French organists were able to compose more extended works, most often conceived sur le Grand Jeu—that is, using a powerful registration based on the organ’s reed stops.

Today, these brilliant pieces are equally suitable for other contexts, such as postludes at the end of services or concert programmes. It therefore seemed highly appropriate to devote an OrganScore anthology to this repertoire. Limiting such a collection to Offertories alone, however, would clearly have been too restrictive. Other works of a similar character—dialogues, symphonies, overtures, concertos, and the like—also fully deserve their place in such an anthology. For this reason, three volumes are presented, covering a period from the late seventeenth century to the early nineteenth century, with the composers arranged in an approximately chronological order.

These three volumes enable organists to select Grand Jeu pieces with ease, without having to consult a large number of individual Livres d’Orgue by French Classical masters. Each piece spans one, two, three, or at most four pages, which in the latter case results in only a single page turn.

Altogether, the three volumes contain 130 organ pieces.

VOLUME I
Guillaume-Gabriel Nivers (1632-1714), Nicolas Lebègue (1631-1702), André Raison (1640-1719), Gilles Jullien (1653-1703), Charles Pyroie (~1665-~1730), François Couperin (1668-1733)
VOLUME II
Jean‐Adam Guilain (1680‐1734), Matthieu Lanes (1660‐1725), Jacques Boyvin (1649‐1706), Louis Marchand (1669-1732), Pierre du Mage (1674‐1751), Louis‐Nicolas Clérambault (1676‐1749), Jean‐François Dandrieu (1682‐1738), Michel Corrette (1707‐1795).

VOLUME III
Claude Balbastre (1724‐1799), Jean‐Jacques Beauvarlet‐Charpentier (1734‐1794), Josse Benaut (1741‐1794), Guillaume Lasceux (1740‐1831).