Charles Tournemire composed L’Orgue Mystique between 1927 and 1932 for the Latin Mass, in which the schola sang the Proper of the day in Gregorian chant; each of the 51 offices consists of five organ pieces that accompany this chant from the Introit to the end of the Mass. In the booklet Father Laurentius M. Schlieker OSB of Gerleve describes the music as song without words: the melodies, often heard as a cantus firmus, owe their meaning to the text and illuminate its significance for the occasion. Many of these connections were dissolved by the liturgical reform of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965), and this volume shows it with particular clarity.
Office No. 6 (Le Saint Nom de Jésus), dated 22 April 1929, belongs to the Cycle de Noël Op. 55. The feast, which arose in the Franciscan order and was introduced for the Roman Church in 1721, was celebrated on the Sunday between New Year and Epiphany until the liturgical reform. The Communion, marked “Adagio”, stands out from the other movements with chromatic sonorities that constantly change colour over deep pedal points. In the Variations the Vespers hymn “Iesu dulcis memoria” and the antiphon “Iuvenes et virgines” are interwoven; the postlude in six to eight parts fades away pianissimo on a bare fifth. Office No. 12 (Septuagésime) from the Cycle de Pâques Op. 56, dated 16 November 1929, is for the first of the three pre-Lenten Sundays, whose Mass texts arose in sixth-century Rome under the threat of barbarian invasions; the reform abolished the pre-Lenten season. In Clameurs et Choral the melisma of the Tract “De profundis”, set in rapid runs and with in-between notes as cries from the depths, enters into dialogue with the Vespers hymn “Lucis creator” in the pedal.
Office No. 30 (Ve Dimanche après la Pentecôte) from the Cycle après la Pentecôte Op. 57, dated 10 January 1931, centres on love of one’s neighbour and reconciliation, as demanded by the Gospel of the day from the Sermon on the Mount. The Elévation ends on an unresolved chord of five notes of the whole-tone scale, A sharp, C, D, E and F sharp; in the Alléluia N° 2 the closing cadence of the Alleluia jubilus is presented four times in warm sonorities, interrupted by toccata runs. Office No. 9 (IIe Dimanche après l’Epiphanie), dated 10 June 1929, tells of the wedding at Cana. In the Communion the steward’s “Servasti” sounds positively crooked and tipsy before it is repeated “correctly” in chords. The Fantaisie-Paraphrase combines three antiphons: “Ego dormivi” from Easter Matins as a wake-up call and frame, “Deficiente vino”, quoted by the pedal trumpet, and “Nuptiae factae sunt”.
The recordings were made in July 1996 at the Liebfrauenkirche in Bottrop-Eigen, immediately after those for the fifth volume. The organ, built in 1929 by Ernst Seifert Söhne and looked after by the Ernst Weyland workshop since 1933, received new slider chests between 1979 and 1984 and has electric key and stop action.