Regarded as one of the most spiritually committed of Roman Catholic composers, as well as a virtuoso organist of legendary improvisational skills, Charles Tournemire wrote a large amount of liturgical music in which he expressed the fullness of his faith. His Chorals-Poemes (7) for organ, Op. 67, "Seven Last Words of Christ," date from 1935, near the end of his prolific career; and next to his monumental L'Orgue Mystique, these meditations amount to a Summa of both Tournemire's musical and religious thought. For ease of description, if not accuracy, this vast work is often compared to César Franck's Three Chorales, and stylistically it owes much to the older composer's rich keyboard output. However, it is much more expansive in form, denser in harmony, and looser in counterpoint than anything in Franck's oeuvre; and these contemplative pieces seem more truly derived from the Lisztian symphonic poem. Listeners who appreciate economy in their organ music may find Tournemire's free fantasies on Christ's final sentences on the cross to be excessively drawn out and more than a little meandering; and Tournemire's quietly mystical passages, where little happens except chromatic variations on slow-moving chord progressions, can be quite dull to any but the most dedicated. Still, this is music that is seldom played and rarely heard, so organist
Martin Jean deserves kudos for playing it with consummate skill and considerable sympathy on this 2006 album from Loft. Offered with the first of
Jean Langlais' Paraphrases Grégoriennes and
Maurice Duruflé's amazing reconstruction of Tournemire's Choral-Improvisation on "Victimae paschali," the Chorals-Poemes have as good a presentation here as they are likely to receive for some time, so fans of post-Romantic French organ music should get this disc before it becomes a rarity. Loft's audio quality is quite good, though the Newberry Memorial Organ at Yale was recorded with an enormous frequency range, so the softer passages require attentive listening.