Jeremy Filsell - Michel Boulnois Organ Music (2022)

Prior to Dupré’s influence, Boulnois’ earliest inspiration was probably his father Joseph (1884-1918), an organist-composer too, and virtually an exact contemporary of Dupré (he was the dedicatee of Dupré’s Prélude et Fugue en sol mineur, op. 7, no. 3). Boulnois senior had been a student of Louis Vierne and Alexandre Guil­mant and left a significant number of piano and chamber works (his cello sonata is worthy of revival). Of the few organ works, one has remained in concert repertoire (if on the fringes): a Franckian-inspired but ambitious Choral for organ. Sadly, Joseph succumbed to the world­wide flu epidemic of 1918, dying aged only 34 years, and thus essentially becoming a spiritual men­tor to his then 9-year-old son.

Michel Boulnois entered the Conservatoire de Paris in 1934 and studied with André Bloch (harmony), Georges Caussade (fugue), Abel Estyle (piano accompaniment), Henri Büsser (composition) and Dupré (organ), graduating in 1937 with a premier prix in organ. He succeeded Henri Mulet as organiste titulaire at L’Église de Saint-Philippe-du-Roule in Paris that same year, a post he then held for the following 53 years. Longevity-in-post indeed extended beyond ecclesiastical associations, for after a spell as a Professor of Musical Education within the city of Paris (1935-1946), he was appointed Divisional Inspector of Music Education in the City of Paris in 1946, another position he held until his retirement. After the war years, he also fulfilled a journalistic role as music critic for Gabriel Bender’s review, Le Guide du Concert.

Boulnois’ compositional output throughout a long life was perhaps sporadic but not insignificant. In the great 20th-century tradition of Parisian organist-composers, he wrote some impressive, dramatic and beautifully crafted music, demonstrating a clear communality with the artistry of aforementioned colleagues and contemporaries, all of whom exhibited a similarly profound understanding of craft, contrapuntal integrity and structural command, instilled by the then-­rigorous academic demands of the Conservatoire training, if not a specifically organistic discipline imparted by Dupré.

That Gregorian melody infuses Boulnois’ music as much as that of any of his contemporaries should be no surprise, for they all were brought up within the environs of a plainchant-rich and aesthetically aspirational liturgy. Plainchant shapes and contours infuse all of Boulnois’ music. The incisiveness of Dupré, the rythmicien, can also be felt in his work too, in particular within the dramatic and dynamic four-movement Symphonie of 1944 – a work of great ambition which sits happily alongside similarly large-scale organ works by, amongst others, Fleury, Langlais, Joseph Gilles, Augus­tin Barié (for whom Vierne was argaubly la plus haute montagne). Beyond his symphony, Boul­nois’ improvisatory-born plainsong paraphrases, preludes, fugues and classical symphonic forms are foremost. In such pre­di­lec­tion, he embodied the Dupré-­oriented vision that one should always adopt “forms already used by others rather than [create] your own.” Alain and Messiaen perhaps became the exceptions!

Along with Marie-Louise Girod and Norbert Dufourcq, Boulnois devised many varied collections of original organ works of other composers (published by Schola Cantorum) during his career, and as an educator, he produced in the 1940s a number of volumes of solfège studies for the municipal schools in the city of Paris. His wife, Suzanne Sohet (d. 1995), taught at the Cours Normal de la Ville de Paris, and was the author of several didactic works on musical education published between the 1930s and 1970s.

Boulnois died just a month after celebrating his 101st birthday, in Provins (Seine-et-Marne), and was buried in the cemetery of Villemomble (Seine-Saint-Denis), the town in which he had resided for many years.

Boulnois’ Symphonie (1944) is the principal work on this recording. It was published by Lemoine in 1949 and is touchingly dedicated “A mon maître, Marcel Dupré, en tèmoignage d’affectueuse reconnaissance.” However bold and successful the work, Boulnois expressed mild dissatisfaction with it late in life to his student, Jean-Marc Lesquivin, “If I had to write it today, it would be quite different…!” It is nonetheless a grand, dramatic and ambitious work, worthy of a place within the wider French symphonic canon. If its construction remains indubitably classical, this makes for ready comprehensibility in both its thematic divisions and its energetic developments. Two ideas of great clarity dictate the dialogue of the first movement: one rhythmically animated, the second of lyrical tendresse. Those of the Sarabande are respectively sparsely melodic and lusciously harmonic, while the scherzo’s playful dual motifs are similarly differentiated. A monothematic Toccata concludes the symphony, and adopts the fairly common French-­toccata custom of the opening being in a brooding minor key before a late transition to the tonic major. Much of the symphony perhaps recalls the monumentalism of Vierne’s great works, while the scherzo often seems to align with the piquancy and tongue-in-cheek character of many of Dupré’s op. 50 Inventions.

The improvisatory-style Paraphrase de l’Alleluia draws its melodic shapes from a common liturgical Alleluia. Rhythmically liberal and quasi recitativo, the music delights in massed ensembles and harmonic largesse; characteristic Cavaillé-Coll sonorities hardly seem far away.

Variations sur l’hymne Sacris Solemnis is one of three pieces Boulnois wrote for the Feast of Corpus Christi (1952), and it is dedicated to the memory of his father, Joseph. The musical spirit of classmate Jehan Alain seems to hover over this numinous and modal music, as indeed it perhaps does in the Paraphrase de l’Antienne O Quam suavis – dedicated specifically to the memory of Alain, who had lost his life prematurely but heroically during the Second World War. The plainchant basis of both works is taken from the Corpus Christi liturgy, and particularly notable is the alluring final variation of O Quam suavis, set in outer-part canon at the 5th against swifter-moving triplet parallelism within the inner voices.

Variations on Veni, Creator Spiritus were written for the review Orgue & Liturgie under the direction of Norbert Dufourq, Félix Raugel and Jean de Valois in 1976. While the central variations are somewhat rudimentary harmonisations of the Pentecost plainchant melody, the opening paraphrase and splendidly intense and beautiful closing fugue form a somewhat convincing “prelude & fugue,” created as such here. The fugue itself seems to recall the haunting beauty, contour, style and even harmonic world of Maurice Duruflé.

Two pieces here are taken from Boulnois’ music for the Marian Feast of the Annunciation (1963). The Prélude à l’Introït pour la fête de l’Annonciation is based on the Introit for the second antiphon of the feast day’s Vespers, initially forming a calm and gentle paraphrase study in open 4th s. The central passage develops the plainchant in harmonized canon between soft fonds d’orgue and the 8’ Cromorne. The Pièce terminale pour la Messe de la fête de l’Annonciation takes the well-known Ave Maris Stella as its basis, the contours of both prevalent toccata motifs and primary thematic substance outlining the plainchant’s opening lines. It is a remarkably fine liturgical sortie.

The Berceuse du Petit Négre is a short but charming piano piece dedicated to Boulnois’ son Alain (who was to die prematurely in 1982 at the age of 39, echoing somewhat the premature demise of his grandfather). Effective as an organ piece, the melancholic air proves a neat vehicle for the solo hautbois.