Hommage à Frescobaldi, VIII. Épilogue

Jean Langlais (1907–1991) – Hommage à Frescobaldi, VIII. Épilogue sur un thème de Frescobaldi pour pèdale solo

And now, the thrilling conclusion to the entire cycle, movement eight!

The final movement crowns the cycle with a bold synthesis of historical homage and modern virtuosity. Marked Con fantasia for pedal solo, it fulfills that designation fully. This tour de force of twentieth-century pedal technique is relentless, rhythmically driven, and sharply articulated, demanding clarity, endurance, and independence while projecting an almost orchestral weight from a single voice.

The form follows a traditional Baroque architecture: free, strict, free. The fantasia-like rhetoric and uncompromising pedal writing evoke the North German tradition, paying homage not only to Frescobaldi but also to later masters such as Buxtehude and Bach. At the center stands a fugue based “on a theme of Frescobaldi,” drawn from the composer’s canzonas (identified by one scholar in a Bärenreiter edition of Frescobaldi’s works, Band V, p. 53). Langlais’s compact, energetic subject bears clear hallmarks of the canzona style: short-breathed motives, focused tonal direction, and a profile ideally suited to contrapuntal development. As with the chant material earlier in the cycle, Langlais absorbs historical source material and reshapes it within his own musical language.

In the Épilogue, Langlais pays tribute not through imitation alone, but through transformation—recasting Baroque form, rhetoric, and thematic impulse in a modern harmonic and rhythmic idiom. The result is both homage and culmination: a fusion of historical structure, contemporary color, and uncompromising virtuosity. What began in quiet, chant-based meditation now ends in athletic motion and sonic confidence, completing a journey that unites ancient liturgical impulse with the expressive possibilities of the modern organ.

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