Vitrail, Op65

This piece has been a very long time in preparation. I bought the score in 1976/1977 and I duly made a start on learning it soon after. However, it joined a very long list of works that for various reasons I never completed, and I’m now on a mission to shorten that list.

I didn’t know it at the time, but the score I bought was actually incomplete. I suspected something was amiss because there was a bar at the top of a new page which didn’t really didn’t seem follow on from what went before, not least because there was a tied note, which wasn’t tied to anything. I did some research and found out that the typesetters had omitted a bar and the proofers hadn’t spotted it.

“Vitrail” in French means stained glass window. This piece is nearly always said to have been inspired by the rose window in the St Ouen Abbey in Dupré native city of Rouen, though I recently read a piece which suggested that it was inspired by the east window of St Patrice’s church there but I’m not convinced by this; it’s the first and only time I’ve come across of this idea.

Op65 is Dupré’s last work, written in 1969 (although there is a very short piece for organ/harmonium, rather curiously numbered Op65b). It’s based on three themes over six highly contrasted sections. I was surpirsed to find that, as far as I can tell, there are no other uploads of the work on CBCH.