Charles Tournemire, L'Orgue Mystique

Prepare for an extraordinary musical journey with L’Orgue Mystique, Charles Tournemire’s magnificent magnum opus! Comprising 253 movements in 51 booklets, this incredible musical work has a total playing time of almost 15 hours. Designed to be performed over the course of a year, it is one of the most extensive musical cycles in history — a mystical epic on a par with masterpieces such as Homer’s Iliad, Dante’s Divine Comedy and Wagner’s Ring. Most amazingly of all, however, this music is entirely liturgical in conception! Tournemire’s composition include a Prélude à l’introïte, an Offertoire, an Elevation, a Communion, and a Pièces terminale for almost every Sunday and important feast day of the year, based on ancient Gregorian chants prescribed by the liturgy.

Imagine this: it’s almost 100 years ago, and Tournemire has just written L’Orgue Mystique. France is still Catholic, and the Mass is a mystical, spiritual Gesamtkunstwerk consisting of sacred texts and ritual acts, of architecture, painting and scultpture, of music and incense. It was a truly awe-inspiring work of art, encompassing the entire span of human development, from the archaic orientation of the priest towards the rising sun, the almost magical transubstantiation of the offerings and ancient, cross-cultural, mythical tales, to the sublime beauty of late antique prose and high medieval poetry in orations and hymns. All of this was housed in majestic Gothic cathedrals, which are nothing short of awe-inspiring examples of ancient metaphorics of light and, at the same time, shining examples of engineering excellence! And again all of this was filled with life and elevated to mystical transcendence through chants more than a millennium old — music that truly embodies the unity of art and religion, of cult and culture – the very nucleus of all Western music!

Tournemire spent his days immersed in this cosmos interwoven with transcendence, He continued to work on this amazing edifice spanning time, space and the world, becoming part of it. In the genesis of his magnum opus, he exemplifies, in miniature, the blossoming of Western culture out of the spirit of Catholic liturgy. The opus is an emanation, a manifestation of this spirit, it is the Logos made flesh — or rather, music — and simultaneously a higher-dimensional unfolding of the freely vibrating garlands of Gregorian chant.

Tournemire’s ingenuity and imagination, not to mention the incredible variety of subtle atmospheric moods he achieved, cannot be overestimated, especially given the limitations imposed by the liturgical purpose. While it has been said that Tournemire’s music is more poetic than mystical — the original title was ‚L’Orgue Glorieux‘ — he often seems to evoke the mysterium tremendum rather than the gentle whispering of the wind in the thorn bush. Poetic, mystical, glorious, delicate and terrifying — all embedded in a mystical, sensual and transcendent soundscape — these terms come pretty close to describing Tournemire’s music.

As already mentioned, Tournemire’s starting point for composing this powerful cycle was the mysticism of the Catholic liturgy, which manifested itself in his mind as distinct ideas of sound. Even before he composed the first note, these ideas were realised in the form of detailed instructions for the organ’s registration. However, it was only after completing the composition that Tournemire enlarged the Cavaillé-Coll organ he had inherited from his revered teacher César Franck by ten stops, in order to realize at least some ( but by no means all ) of his tonal visions.

By selecting a virtual organ based on an exact analysis of the registration specifications in L’Orgue Mystique, I am merely continuing Tournemire’s idealistic approach to finally realize his vision.

But let’s first take a step back to the historical circumstances:

From 1898 until his death in 1939, Charles Tournemire was organiste titulaire at the organ of S^te. Clotilde in Paris, built in 1859 by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll.. Here is the original disposition: https://orgue-clotilde-paris.info/uk/index_htm_files/1859.pdf.

After extensive preparatory work, Charles Tournemire composed his magnum opus, L’Orgue Mystique, between 1927 and 1932. The 1665-page original manuscript in the Paris National Library appears to have served as the model for the print. The musical text and the careful entries in reddish-purple ink correspond to the printed score, apart from a few minor errors. You can follow this autograph, page by page, on my YouTube videos.

The myriad highly differentiated details regarding registration and the opening and closing of the swell boxes are striking. The registration style that is revealed here only occasionally draws on French Romantic registration practice, which is based on the jeux de fonds and supplemented by the jeux d’anches. Instead, it reflects the contemporary shift in sound aesthetics. Tournemire makes extensive use of mixtures and mutation stops and does not shy away from exotic registrations such as Flûte 4 · Nasard 2 ⅔ (without 8′ register) or Gambe 8 · Octavin 2.

However, the following is crucial: it is quite obvious that all manuals must be expressive. But if all manuals are expressive, it would be aesthetically unsatisfactory if the pedal remained rigid. At least one passage, in the Offertoire of Ascension ( → Video No. 23 from 2:08 ), proves beyond doubt that Tournemire also wanted a swellable pedal. 

Nota bene: At the time L’Orgue Mystique was composed, the organ at S^te. Clotilde was still in its original state. Tournemire was therefore unable to realize virtually any of his ideas. Only after completing the composition did Tournemire have ten stops added to his organ ( https://orgue-clotilde-paris.info/uk/index_htm_files/1933.pdf · https://orgue-clotilde-paris.info/uk/orgues-d.htm ).

A careful inventory of the registration instructions in L’Orgue Mystique clearly reveals Tournemire’s vision of an ideal organ. However, the devil is in the detail: Does the Gambe 8 belong to the Grande-Orgue and the Salicional 8 to the Positif, or vice versa? Should the Quintaton 16 be placed in the Positif or the Récit? To find the best solution, each individual passage must be studied in depth. For example, it is important to consider which stops are required simultaneously in the other manuals. One issue that has repeatedly been discussed is clear, however: the Clarinette belongs in the Positif ( although Tournemire had it moved from the Positif to the Récit in 1933 ). 

This brings us to another point that deserves careful attention: the role of the Positif. The extensive solo passages of the Positif, accompanied by the Récit, suggest a division that unfolds prominently in space — possibly a Rückpositiv that can be swelled. On the other hand, Tournemire often uses the Positif as an extension of the Récit, or as an additional Récit. Only a four-manual organ with five swells would provide an adequate solution.

But where could such an organ be found in actu? And if it were found, would there be enough time to record such an extensive work with the necessary care? The obvious solution to the problem is to create a virtual version of Tournemire’s virtual organ.

The Hauptwerk community is delighted with the sample set of the Cavaillé-Coll organ at S^t. Etienne in Caen, which is one of the organ builder’s later instruments. This organ is somewhat larger than the one Tournemire had at his disposal in ^Ste. Clotilde and even includes some of the stops that Tournemire did not have installed until 1933. Furthermore, Sonus Paradisi has added four more stops that were included in Tournemire’s 1933 extension.

Even before I became acquainted with Hauptwerk, Jake – a Canadian computer scientist and organ enthusiast – had, together with the Hauptwerk community, expanded this sample set into a bombastic four-manual organ. This is not a composite sample set, combining ranks from different organs: All ’new‘ stops are taken from the original Cavaillé-Coll/Sonus Paradisi samples. As a result, the sound design options of the original sample set, such as front/rear mixer, pipe tuning, and pipe coupling effect, also affect the new ranks.

This extended version already covers a large part of Tournemire’s wishes. Jake and I only had to add a few quiet stops, such as the Dulciane 8 in the Récit and the Flûte douce 8 in the Grande-Orgue. Of course, we also made all manuals and the pedal expressive. ( → stop list )

To faithfully reproduce spatial sound, Sonus Paradisi provides a rich impulse response (IR) library for the Caen sample set, offering one or more impulse reverbs for each of the four divisions ( GO, Pos, Réc and Ped ), with front and rear aspects for each. This requires a multi-channel setup with eight mixer bus groups, or 16 channels, which are routed to four perspectives left-right, front-rear. 

This brings out even more the character of the Positif as a Rückpositiv. On the other hand, the access to the room acoustics provided by the IRs allows the already pleasantly restrained Grand Chœur of the extended version of Caen to be placed virtually as a Positif in the main case. In order to use this newly gained Positif in Tournemire’s sense, a few ranks had to change position. Of the original Cavaillé-Coll stops, Salicional 8, Unda Maris 8, and Flûte douce 4 were moved to the Grand Chœur, i.e., the inner Positif. 

Grand Orgue, Positif, Pedal and also the Grand Chœur/Positif are divided into C and C sharp, the treble on the inside, the bass on the outside. The Grand Orgue is wider than the Positif, and the Pedal is on the outside on both sides. I traced this with the stereo balance tool. The Récit runs from back to front.

Since some stops have been given special treatment ( Soubasse 16 and Bourdon 8 make up the Kleinpedal ), we now have 32 channels. 

For my private use, I doubled the four loudspeakers in the height and routed the 32 channels accordingly.

Finally, Michael Brändli of Hardstudios Winterthur created a 7.1.4 Dolby Atmos mix and a classic stereo downmix.

All in all, the 104 stops and five swells of this four-manual „Tournemire ideal organ“ allow for a more nuanced interpretation than would be possible on a physical organ. Together with the Dolby Atmos technology, Tournemire’s vision is manifested here in an immersive sound experience of a truly „mystical organ“.

Special thanks to Jake for programming the organ and Michael for Atmos mastering.

L’Orgue Mystique and the Chants → pdf

From December 8, 2024, to November 16, 2025, I will be publishing an Office on YouTube and the relevant streaming portals more or less weekly. You can find the exact dates here: → Calendar

Christoph Maria Moosmann at the Goll organ in the Collegiate Church in Schwyz, Switzerland

Offices 1·10·11·15·18·21·26·29·30·33·35·37·38·44·46·48·51

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