Organ music for the Third Sunday in Lent

Prelude
Agnus Dei – Frank Martin (1890-1974)

Postlude
Agnus Dei from Messe pour les Paroisses – François Couperin (1668-1733)

Today's organ music dwells on the theme of Agnus Dei, the Lamb of God. We are familiar with this phrase in the Eucharist, where it is used as the prelude to our receiving communion: 'Jesus is the Lamb of God...' The pieces we will hear both come from music written for settings of the Agnus Dei movement in the Mass.

Frank Martin was born in Switzerland, the youngest son of a Calvinist pastor. Although he was interested in music from an early age, Martin did not come to formal music studies until he was in his early twenties. Martin's musical language has a mystical character, full of pulsing textures and dramatic power, which can be heard in his transcription for organ of the Agnus Dei from his Mass for Double-Choir. The Mass was composed between 1922 and 1926, during a time when Martin was looking back to the compositional methods of Josquin and Palestrina, and to the rhythmic influences of Indian music as well as contemporary jazz. The organ version of the Agnus Dei conveys this with the steady pulse of the accompaniment, which provides the ground for a melody that has a more jagged rhythmic shape. In many ways this is a musical counterpart to the stylised shape and line of a Byzantine icon, which offers a contemplative focus for the ear.

François Couperin, nicknamed le Grande, was the greatest of a dynasty of musicians who served as organist at the church of Saint-Gervais in the Marais district of Paris from 1656 to 1826. Couperin published his Livre d'Orgue in 1690, containing two sets of organ versets for the Mass, reflecting the different practices of celebrating the Mass in parishes and convents. Couperin’s organ music arose out of distinctive liturgical practices in France, where the plainchant of the Mass alternated each phrase between the choir and the organ. In practice, this meant that the choir would sing the first phrase of the chant and the organist would improvise a verset for the second phrase while the priest recited the text, and so on. This movement is a dialogue on the Grands Jeux, a combination of stops that emphasises the reed colours (stops with names such as trumpet or cromhorne) of the organ, and was intended to take the place of the third petition of the Agnus Dei. The music develops a simple theme to express the sentiment of the text – “Lamb of God, that takest away the sins of the world: grant us thy peace” – but in the dramatic effect of alternating episodes of quieter and stronger combinations of sound also reflects the influential fashions of music for the stage. With Couperin, we can enter the drama of the liturgy.