Charles Tournemire’s L’Orgue Mystique is a singular monument of twentieth-century organ music. Between 1927 and 1932 the organist of Sainte-Clotilde in Paris wrote 51 Offices for the Sundays and feast days of the Catholic church year. The collection falls into a Christmas, an Easter and a Whitsun cycle. With its Prélude à l’Introït, Offertoire, Elévation, Communion and Pièce terminale, each Office follows the course of the Mass.
Gregorian melodies are the load-bearing material. Yet Tournemire does not merely quote them; he paraphrases their lines freely, so that modal turns, suspended planes of sound, highly chromatic concentrations and transitions that sound improvised grow an unmistakably modern language out of the old chant. The terse middle movements often retain an intimate liturgical character, while the closing pieces unfold chorale, fantasy, toccata or fugue into great architectural arcs.
The sequence draws an arc from the art of variation in the Feast of the Holy Name by way of the austere Clameurs of pre-Lent to the broadly swinging Fantaisie-Paraphrase. The Offertoire from Office No. 12 in particular, with its circling harmony and polytonal frictions, already brings Messiaen to mind.
The fixed five-movement plan gives orientation without making the individual Offices uniform. Tournemire responds to the content of the feast, the chant model and the liturgical function with changing proportions and sound characters. Often the strongest effect arises from contrast: a barely moving Elevation may be followed by a Communion rich in colour, and a line that seems monophonic may develop in the closing piece into a many-voiced web. This dramaturgy turns each Office into a small sacred symphony.
Sandro R. Müller shapes the music with clear phrasing and a pronounced feeling for colour. At the large Seifert-Weyland organ (1929/1933), Liebfrauenkirche Bottrop-Eigen, even dense fields of chords become transparent; flutes, strings and reeds trace the differing liturgical moods. For all the variety of instruments used, the cycle remains coherent as interpretation: meditation and ecstasy appear as two poles of the same spiritual movement.
This recording is part of the Cybele complete edition, assembled over more than two decades. It documents not only one of the most extensive organ cycles ever written but also Tournemire’s historical position between César Franck and Olivier Messiaen. The album therefore works equally as a programme in its own right and as one chapter of a musical journey through the whole church year.