Hommage à Frescobaldi, I. Prélude au Kyrie

Jean Langlais (1907–1991) – Hommage à Frescobaldi, I. Prélude au Kyrie

Jean Langlais, a blind composer and organist of the French symphonic school, was a student of both Marcel Dupré and Paul Dukas, and a classmate of Olivier Messiaen at the Paris Conservatoire. His career at Sainte-Clotilde Basilica in Paris—successor to César Franck and Charles Tournemire—cemented his reputation as one of the foremost figures of 20th-century sacred music. Langlais’s style blends chant-inspired modal writing, pungent chromatic harmonies, and rhythmic vitality with a profound liturgical sense.

The eight-movement cycle Hommage à Frescobaldi (Op. 70, 1951–52) pays tribute not through stylistic imitation, but by invoking the same liturgical and musical sources that inspired Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali (1635). Langlais honors Frescobaldi’s legacy of organ music for the Mass—Kyrie, Offertory, Elevation, Communion—by reimagining these functions through his own harmonic language. The result is an homage of source and function, not a Baroque pastiche.

The opening Prélude au Kyrie draws on the ancient plainchant Kyrie cunctipotens genitor Deus, also employed by Frescobaldi. Langlais sets this melody in the pedal on a 4’ flute, slow and austere, beneath luminous manual harmonies that shimmer with quiet tension. The modal counterpoint unfolds in long-breathed lines, evoking both the solemnity of the chant and the contemplative depth of French mysticism. The piece stands as a bridge between centuries—an act of devotion linking the Renaissance Mass and the modern organ loft, united in prayerful continuity. (I used ChatGPT to help compile this information.)

Recorded here on the coming-soon Bryn Mawr Presbyterian Rieger (this is still a beta version) as sampled by Evensong. This is the first installment of the cycle, that I plan to perform in its entirety.