F. Couperin Mass for Parish Services
View record and artist detailsRecord and Artist Details
Composer or Director: François Couperin
Label: Harmonic
Magazine Review Date: 9/1991
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 68
Catalogue Number: H/CD8613
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Messe à l'usage ordinaire des paroisses |
François Couperin, Composer
Ensemble Organum François Couperin, Composer Jean-Charles Ablitzer, Organ Marcel Pérès, Conductor |
Composer or Director: Pierre du Mage, François Couperin
Label: Harmonic
Magazine Review Date: 9/1991
Media Format: CD or Download
Media Runtime: 0
Catalogue Number: H/CD8615
Tracks:
| Composition | Artist Credit |
|---|---|
| Messe pour les couvents de religieux et religieuse |
François Couperin, Composer
François Couperin, Composer Jean-Charles Ablitzer, Organ |
| Livre d'orgue contenant une suite du permier ton |
Pierre du Mage, Composer
Jean-Charles Ablitzer, Organ Pierre du Mage, Composer |
Author: Nicholas Anderson
The two organ masses comprising Couperin's pieces d'orgue are his earliest surviving compositions. They were the fruits of his first royal privilege which he had taken out in 1689. The two Masses consist of organ music for the liturgy. The Parish Mass is the grander of the two and was designed for use on the principal church feast days. That for the convents is more intimate in character, technically easier for the performer and shorter in length. The two Masses are similarly laid out but the Parish Mass additionally carries the plainchant Cunctipotens genitor Deus as a cantus firmus in the opening versets to each section. The work itself is performed here in the context of an extended Easter introit Christus resurrexit a mortuis. The plainchant interpolations occur between the musical sections of the Mass and very authentic they sound too; by which I mean, at least in part, that it is somewhat crudely sung by the Organum Ensemble but in just the highly ornamented way that we might have expected to hear in late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century France. Couperin's music does not intrinsically suffer if the plainchant is missing but its eloquence is greatly enhanced by the punctuation imposed by its presence.
Jean-Charles Ablitzer is a new name to me, though I would imagine organ specialists are acquainted with his playing (he has also recorded Buxtehude for the same label). If these Masses are anything to go by then he is an organist of considerable ability, for although Couperin provided details of registration he left matters of tempo, phrasing and ornamentation to the performer's discretion. Ablitzer does not always indulge in the grandiose gestures of Andre Isoir (Calliope / Harmonia Mundi, 6/90) or Pierre Bardon (Pierre Verany, 3/87—not currently available in the UK), and sometimes I miss the baroque splendour which these organists have so successfully evoked. On the other hand I have a feeling that Ablitzer is an organist who is more particular over detail and perhaps more fluently versed in the musical language of the period.
Here are two splendid performances which do considerable justice to Couperin's magnificent contribution to French organ literature, a remarkable debut for a 21-year-old composer. Ablitzer plays the famous organ in the Basilica Saint-Nazaire et Saint-Celse at Carcassone in the Parish Mass. For the other he plays the organ in Saint-Julien et Sainte-Basilisse at Vinca in the Pyrenees. It is this fine instrument on which he also gives us theLivre d'orgue of Couperin's contemporary Pierre du Mage. Both discs are well, if not fully, documented—I should have liked to know more about the organs themselves—and admirably recorded.'
Jean-Charles Ablitzer is a new name to me, though I would imagine organ specialists are acquainted with his playing (he has also recorded Buxtehude for the same label). If these Masses are anything to go by then he is an organist of considerable ability, for although Couperin provided details of registration he left matters of tempo, phrasing and ornamentation to the performer's discretion. Ablitzer does not always indulge in the grandiose gestures of Andre Isoir (Calliope / Harmonia Mundi, 6/90) or Pierre Bardon (Pierre Verany, 3/87—not currently available in the UK), and sometimes I miss the baroque splendour which these organists have so successfully evoked. On the other hand I have a feeling that Ablitzer is an organist who is more particular over detail and perhaps more fluently versed in the musical language of the period.
Here are two splendid performances which do considerable justice to Couperin's magnificent contribution to French organ literature, a remarkable debut for a 21-year-old composer. Ablitzer plays the famous organ in the Basilica Saint-Nazaire et Saint-Celse at Carcassone in the Parish Mass. For the other he plays the organ in Saint-Julien et Sainte-Basilisse at Vinca in the Pyrenees. It is this fine instrument on which he also gives us the
F. Couperin Mass for Parish Services
F. Couperin Mass for Convent Services
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