Chaitanya Jyothi Museum Opening, 2000
RAMANAM
In the Name of The Father, and of The Son and of The Holy Spirit, Amen.
Countrymen,
ORBIS NON SUFFICIT
SOLUS DEUS SUFFICIT
I am always behind the times. I discovered this guy, Vincent Dubois, today making the Duruflé Suite Opus 5. There was a composer named Théodore Dubois, early 20th Century. Vincent may be related to Théodore, I do not know.
Sometime if you have 30 minutes to spend and are looking for a different thrill, might I suggest this video above?
Maurice Duruflé is IMO the greatest organist and organ composer of the 20th Century. Wrote very little music, threw out piles before he died. Reworked almost everything right up until he died. Celebrated in his time but never really famous like Marcel Dupré, who was also great but IMO Duruflé is the greater genius of the two.
Duruflé is an example of a point I was making yesterday with our daughter: that the greatest of a field usually comes at the end of a stylistic period, not at the start of one, the most eminent example being the incomparable J. S. Bach. Duruflé is to the end of French Chromatic Romanticism what Bach was to the end of German Baroque Pietism. Both are Fin de Siècle personalities and producers.
This Vincent Dubois is a full match for Duruflé’s Suite Opus 5. He feels the music exactly as I did when I played, although because of physical restraints I could never play this Duruflé, which is only for concert/cathedral-level organists. His gestures, the internal movements externally expressed, all look and feel so familiar to me. First time I have had that experience other than with Glenn Gould and his one self-avowed influence, Rosalyn Tureck, of course.
Camera work allows you to see Vincent using the electro-magnetic action and the combination pistons under the manuals and above the pedalboard. Regrettably one cannot see his feet but you can infer the dancing from his knees and pivoting torso. During one movement, a quiet one, of the Suite (a musical term of art which means a collection of dances), you will hear very high notes that do not match what you see his hands doing. That is because those very high notes, higher than those played on the manuals, are played by his feet on the pedalboard using an upper-register (high notes) stop, a lovely flute I think, probably what we call a 4’ stop or maybe a 2’ stop, meaning the longest pipe of the rank is 4 feet or 2 feet long. The shorter the pipe the higher the pitch, and vice versa.
He plays entirely from memory, which, given this music, is remarkable, a sign of genius. Most of all, Vincent is musical, a rare endowment. Most musicians are not musical, or are only moderately so. I am musical in some abundance but physically impaired so making music was not good for me because my physical limitation frustrated me and that made me angry, so I stopped trying and the anger subsided.
The Organ is at the Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Reims and clearly a new console, fully electrified. No mechanical connections to the pipework there. I do not know the dates of the pipework.
AUM NAMAH SHIVAYA
