RICH SPOTTS MUSIC NOTES:

Tenth Sunday after Pentecost: Sunday, 17 August 2025

Prelude:

“Fantaisie-Improvisation sur l’Ave, maris stella” improvised by Charles Tournemire (1870–1939) and transcribed by Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986)

Offertory Voluntary:

“Fantaisie sur l’Introït ‘Gaudeamus’ pour la fête de l’Assomption” from the “Deux Fantaisies” by Dom Paul Benoît (1893–1979)

Postlude:

“Paraphrase-carillon” from “L’Orgue Mystique” by Charles Tournemire (1870–1939)

Musical Notes:

We are within the Octave of the Feast of the Assumption. Alternately known as the Feast of Saint Mary the Virgin by various occidental denominations and as the Dormition of the Mother of God by the Eastern Orthodox Church, the Assumption is commemorated on August fifteenth and is observed throughout Christianity (including the Episcopal Church) as the official feast day of the Virgin Mary, although these various groups emphasise different concepts depending upon their theological leanings. These differences non obstante, the music for today will be adopting a Marian theme in anticipation of this celebration.

We begin today’s service with the “Fantaisie-Improvisation sur Ave maris stella”—one of five improvisations performed by Charles Tournemire (1870–1939) that were subsequently transcribed by his pupil Maurice Duruflé (1902–1986). These famed improvisations (recorded in the early nineteen-thirties by the German firm of Polydor) included the “Cantilène improvisée”, the “Fantaisie-improvisation sur l’Ave, maris stella”, the “Choral-improvisation sur le Victimæ paschali laudes”, the “Improvisation sur le Te Deum”, and the “Petite rapsodie improvisée”. Tournemire won the “Grand prix du disque” on the eighteenth of May 1931 for this cultural musical monument. Jean-Yves Daniel-Lesur (1908–2002) gave an account of these historic improvisations:

"In that era, recordings were made on enormous circular wax cakes with only four minutes per side. Tournemire was on the organ stool, uncommunicative and self-absorbed, waiting for the fatal clock to shed its string of clashes, strikings, and grindings. As for the more elaborate improvisations, which had to be recorded on two sides of a disc, he knew he would have to break off while the wax was changed and warmed up. Not to mention a police patrol which, seeing the church lit up at that unusual hour, suspected burglars and challenged the technicians who were bringing in their equipment. I was anxious, knowing the nervousness and impatience of my maître. In these conditions, would he recapture the spontaneity, the prodigious presence of reflexes which won my admiration each Sunday? I was wrong to doubt it. At the given signal, the flow of music began immediately, and none of the constraints imposed by brute necessity could restrain the freedom, continuity, and splendour of the discourse."

Duruflé received permission from Tournemire’s widow to transcribe these pieces, and therefore, he set out to render these works in written form from 1956 to 1958, publishing them as a posthumous gesture under the title the “Cinq improvisations”.

Recorded on the thirtieth of April 1930, the hymn “Ave, maris stella” (from which this piece is thematically derived) draws upon the metaphor of Mary as a star guiding humanity to a safe harbour while traversing life’s troubled seas.

Today’s communion voluntary is the “Fantaisie sur l’Introït ‘Gaudeamus’ pour la fête de l’Assomption” from the “Deux Fantaisies” by Dom Paul Benoît (1893–1979). Benoît was a Benedictine priest and organist at the Abbey of Saint-Maurice and Saint-Maur in Clervaux, Luxembourg. His compositions being largely based upon Gregorian chant, musically, his works’ structure and æsthetic drew inspiration from the counterpoint of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), the chromaticism of Louis Vierne (1870–1937) and Maurice Ravel (1875–1937), and the free rhythmic structure of Claude Debussy (1862–1918). This “Fantaisie” is derived from the Introit for the Feast of the Assumption—“Gaudeamus omnes in Domino”: “Rejoice we all in the Lord, keeping holy-day in honour of the Blessed Virgin Mary: in whose Assumption the Angels rejoice and glorify the Son of God. My heart is inditing of a good matter: I speak of the things which I have made unto the King.” (Psalm xliv/xlv)

We conclude today with the “Paraphrase-carillon” from “L’Orgue Mystique” by Charles Tournemire (1870–1939). Like the “Cinq improvisations”, this movement from “L’Orgue Mystique” also was recorded by Polydor in December of 1931 as part of its music series from Sainte-Clotilde and is a rare audio example of Tournemire performing his own works. Termed by Olivier Messiaen (1908–1992) as “a masterpiece that all organists should play”, as the name suggests, the “Paraphrase-carillon” draws upon bell imagery while citing the Marian Gregorian chants “Ave, maris stella” and “Salve, Regina” as well as the Easter Matins chants “Venite, exsultemus Domino” and “Ego dormivi, et somnum cepi”. In this piece, one hears the euphoric din of cathedral bells welcoming Mary as she is assumed into heaven.