Suite Gothique: Prière à Notre-Dame

Léon Boëllmann left his native Alsace at age nine to study at Paris’s École Niedermeyer, a school dedicated to training church musicians. While there, he studied with Gustave Lefèvre and became a protégé of organist Eugène Gigout. After Boëllmann graduated, he became assistant organist, and eventually cantor and principal organist at the Parisian church of St Vincent-de-Paul. He spent the rest of his tragically brief career there and was amazingly prolific in this short time, managing to publish some 150 works. The most popular of these is his 1895 Suite Gothique, Op 25. The work was composed for the inauguration of a relatively small new organ at the 13th-century Gothic church of Notre-Dame de Dijon. The third movement, Prière à Notre-Dame, was inspired the “black virgin” of Dijon, a wooden sculpture of the Virgin Mary dating to the 11th century. The Suite Gothique is mostly composed in either C major or C minor, but for this movement, Boëllmann uses the distantly related key of Ab major. This is quiet, meditative music with an unhurried cantabile melody. There is a more active middle section before a return of the opening mood.

Although the organ at Nancy Cathedral is much altered as a whole, the Récit division of the remains almost unchanged since Cavaillé-Coll's rebuild, completely retaining the character of his instruments. It is thus perfectly suited for this music, especially with the church's glorious acoustic.