Today you’re hearing two organ works by French composer, Léon Boëllmann, who only lived to be 35. In Paris, there are a number of prestigious and grandiose churches, whose resplendent acoustics and glittering stained glass are made possible by towering arches that catapult the vertical dimension of these structures into the heights of heaven itself. It was the invention of the gothic arch, combined with the clever engineering of the flying buttress, that made it possible to construct lofty walls that were filled with floor-to-ceiling windows whose brilliant shards refracted sunlight into a gluttonous color-feast for the eyes. The impossible, vertical proportions seem to capitulate gravity itself, some miraculous force keeping it from collapsing into a pile of rubble. When you walk into one of these structures, the sheer volume of space is truly overwhelming. Why is space so important? It’s like silence, it’s essential, yet totally unnoticed. The sky, for example, is just empty space, but when you look at it, it captivates you, it makes you pause, and it means so much!

As engineering improved, the development of architecture now allowed buildings to contain unfathomable, internal space to teach people about God. How God holds the world together is with an invisible force, all bound together with space. Even science can tell you that 99.99% of the universe is empty space. So-called solid objects also are mostly space. So, it must mean something, right?

Eventually the concept, the size, and the function of the pipe organ evolved to reflect the profundity of the growing spaces in liturgical architecture. The music grew too. What happened to the organ in France was in part due to the symphonically-conceived music of César Franck, and the new concepts of organ-building by a man called Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. Together, they helped change the concept of the organ from being an instrument used to accompany voices (singing) to one whose celestial and fiery sounds highlighted liturgical action (no singing).

Léon Boëllmann was a part of that generation of organists, who wrote organ music that was intended to highlight the various, dramatic components of the mass. From the ethereal sounds of the string and flute stops, rising like incense, to the bombastic, clarion calls of the trumpet and chorus stops, the organ punctuated the liturgy, transmuting its presence from the background of worship to the foreground, so to speak. The French organists created flair and drama in the liturgy, and the organs being built at this time allowed them to do this, like a theatre organist who accompanied silent films in the 1920s.

French organists usually improvised on the Gregorian chants used in the service. In today’s prelude, the musical basis is one of those chants, Adoro te. If you’re not familiar with the melody, you’d most likely not recognize that this piece even had one. The words of the chant are a medieval hymn, written by Saint Thomas Aquinas:

I devoutly adore You, hidden deity, who are truly hidden beneath these appearances. My whole heart submits to You, because in contemplating You, it is fully deficient.

Words are deficient, aren’t they? Music helps us clarify what we cannot comprehend with words. That’s what makes instrumental music so powerful. I like the idea of using the organ to punctuate the unknowable nature of our creator, much like space is used in architecture to help us understand. I like how Boëllmann “hides” the melody of this prayer inside of other notes, making it obscure. It’s just like God – obscure, usually hidden in the space around what we see and hear. If we knew who God was, as a tangible, pinpointable “thing,” we wouldn’t need to make meaning out of anything. There wouldn’t be much point to my job, would there?

I love singing, and I love words, and I love things, to be honest. But I love space, silence, and music without words – probably more. Because of the limit of words, when I write, I struggle to pinpoint exactly what I mean. When I speak, I struggle to make myself clear. When there’s too much stuff around me, I struggle to feel free. However, when I’m quiet, I know exactly who I am. When I’m out in nature, surrounded by the spacious firmament, I know exactly whose I am. When I play the organ, I feel like I can communicate like the divine, and “say” exactly what I mean, without having to utter a single word. Soli deo Gloria!