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The brevity of the pieces that the organist had the time to play necessarily implied that he must endeavour to concentrate the musical material. Unlike a German organist, therefore, he had no opportunity to develop his themes. Nor could he write a long fugue according to all the formal rules of counterpoint. He had to establish a given mood as quickly as possible and strike the listeners at once. This was the art of allusion and euphemism, in which ideas were alluded to rather than elaborated on. Philippe Beaussant has shown in his beautiful study of François Couperin, that the art of the latter was akin to that of the painter Antoine Watteau (1684-1721), and we might suggest that the music of the French organists of the period could best be understood in the light of this comparison, or, one might add, if compared to the art of the writer Jean de La Fontaine (1621-95). Not unlike Jean de La Bruyère (1645-96) in his Characters, the organist composed short vignettes, just as harpsichordists painted musical portraits that were meant to move the listener in some half-hidden way, without being too long, without ever seeming too complex. Grace and ease were the all in all. “For my part, I frankly confess that I would much sooner be moved than be astonished”, Couperin wrote in the preface of his 1st book of Harpsichord lessons in 1713, and this could be given as an apt motto for the works of most of his contemporaries. Often considered superficial, French baroque music was in reality an art of elegant illusion, in a court society in which appearance was content. You were what you looked. And, similarly, it was the impression produced by the music which mattered primarily, not its inner intricacy that only the specialist musician could be in a position to assess. The way the French tackled the fugue is a good case in point. In the German school, a fugue was built systematically, each subject being followed with a counter-subject, and each part taking up both of these in due order, etc. In France, on the other hand, a fugue simply gave the illusion of an organised construction of successive entries, but nothing was carried systematically to the end. Less well structured and less developed, the fugue was therefore conceived as a hall of mirrors, where parts echoed as it were with one another in a discourse of freedom and fanciful suggestion.
How was this reflected in the organ itself? Considering that the foremost goal of the organist was to strike his listeners and give a strong contrasted impression, the quality of the sounds was of primary importance. But not only did the organ have to sound beautifully – it also had to provide a great variety of colours, so that each verse would sound totally differently from the previous one. Surprise, variety and contrast were therefore key aesthetic criteria. Like a good French meal, the French Ancien Régime organ was all about change of flavour. Monotony and equality of tone were proscribed. Each specific registration was therefore treated as a different character stepping onto the stage one after the other, each being the actor of a precise, albeit abstract, part: the plein-jeu, full of majesty and solemnity; the reeds, glaring and triumphant; the tierces, colourful, warm and supple; the fond d’orgue, grave, soft and meditative; the various solo reed stops – cromorne, voix humaine, hautbois – each with its distinctive voice to express either melancholy, or naive innocence; the grand jeu, exuberant and powerful, apt for the celebration of God’s – or the Kings’ – greatness and glory. The French organ was theatrical. It was an instrument that reached its maturity at a time when the tragédie lyrique and ballet were the first of the arts at the court of Versailles: this shows in the dance movements used by the composers in their organ verses, of course, as well as in the shape of these récits directly inspired by opera arias; but it is also manifest in the way this organ speaks, “highly and proudly” (“hautement et fièrement”), to use the words of an 18th-century “Noël”. It belongs in the same world as that of Bossuet’s emphatic orations pronounced in St. Gervais, the very church whose organist was François Couperin. Short though its interventions might be, this organ spoke with majesty and eloquence. Another consequence of the need to put varied sonorities at the disposal of the organist was the number of keyboards. On the largest instruments, there could be as many as 4 or even 5 keyboards (Grand Orgue, Positif, Récit, Écho, Bombarde). This enabled the organist to use a variety of combinations, not only with his hands on two separate keyboards, but even sometimes with the two hands touching three keyboards at the same time, which, added to the pedal part, permitted the performance of colourful quartets, such as those written out by Jacques Boyvin, Louis Marchand or Jean-Adam Guilain. De Grigny wrote beautiful, complex fugues à 5 that make full use of the possibilities provided by the contrasted sonorities of the different manuals and pedal.
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