The Regent Classic Organ Music Tutorial Series launched in 2016. During this first year we picked some of our own favourite organ pieces to demonstrate in a series of videos. Jonathan plays on a bespoke private client organ that has 84 speaking stops. It is a 3 manual instrument but with a floating solo division.
See the Organ Music Tutorial Series overview for links to more organ videos and information about them. There you will also be able to read more about Jonathan Kingston and the organs being played in this series.
Extract from messe des couvents by Francois Couperin
The Offertoires sur les grands jeux is an extract from the messe des couvents, a collection of short organ works to accompany the formal service of communion. This is Couperin’s less solemn and more intimate setting. The ‘Convent Mass’ is relatively more concise and easy to perform. It is intended for a modest instrument with two manuals although played here on a larger instrument. In all these pieces the ease of modulation, the ornamentation, the imitative writing, canons, fugues and dissonant effects reveal great mastery.
Couperin was born into one of the best known musical families of Europe. His father Charles was organist at Church Saint-Gervais in Paris, a position previously occupied by Charles’ brother Louis Couperin, a highly regarded keyboard virtuoso and composer whose career was cut short by an early death.
If you would like to watch the video tutorial right now – here it is:
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