Michel Chapuis - Nicolas de Grigny: Premier livre d'orgue (1987)

Though he lived to be only 31, Nicolas de Grigny is remembered more than any of his contemporaries as epitomizing the French classical organ tradition. Technically and in his creative ideas Grigny demanded much more of his instrument (and his poor team of blowers!) than any of his predecessors, a fact that makes his works stylistically more akin to harpsichord than to organ practice at the time. In 1703, the year of his death, his wife published a first edition of his complete solo organ works, Premier Livre d’orgue (organists at the time typically composed only one or two books, then spent the rest of their lives improvising on them). A copy of this less-than-100-page volume eventually found its way to Germany and impressed a certain J.S. Bach enough that he reproduced it by hand for his own study. We can only imagine Bach’s delight, for instance, with Grigny’s opening Kyrie en taille 5–a grand, broadly paced work that abounds in rich sonic texture and subtle yet powerful counterpoint.