Recent discoveries of significant collections of organ music from the French Baroque (Louis Couperin, Livre d’orgue de Montréal, Livre d’orgue de Limoges) are now supplemented by the Berkeley and Caumont manuscripts. The Berkeley MS contains five hymn suites: Ave maris stella, Ave verum, Victimae paschali, Pange lingua and Veni creator, and the Caumont MS (1707, published by Lyrebird Music in 2021) contains no fewer than 111 pieces, of which 81 are unattributed. However, Jon Baxendale has presented strong evidence that the composer was Jacques Boyvin (1649-1706), the organist of Rouen Cathedral from 1674 until his death.

Jean-Baptiste Robin gives excellent performances of all five hymn suites from the Berkeley MS and a selection of 19 of the unattributed pieces from Caumont, plus a tierce en taille by Jacques-Denis Thomelin (1635-93), François Couperin’s teacher. The Chapelle Royale’s generous acoustics are wonderfully captured on this recording, with no loss of detail and characteristic colour from the marvellous Grand Orgue. Very highly recommended.

DAVID PONSFORD

Jean-Baptiste Robin, organ by Robert Clicquot and Julien Tribuot (1711)/Louis-Alexandre Clicquot (1736)/François-Henri Clicquot (1762)/reconstructed by Jean-Loup Boisseau and Bertrand Cattiaux (1995), Chapelle Royale, Versailles

CVS097 [68:33]

★★★★★