FRANK MORANA
AmerOrganist 32/3

Malabry, France.  François Eustache Du Caurroy (1569-1609)

was an esteemed mâitre de chapelle who served under three

French kings, and held a place alongside Lasso and Palestrina

in the eyes of his contemporaries. The present edition is drawn

from a larger collection of 42 Fantaisies for which no complete

modern edition yet exists. The works are written

"progressively," in three, four, five, and six polyphonic

parts. They were conceived, not for the keyboard, but for

various unspecified instrumental combinations, and published

in separate instrumental parts. Although they would not

normally have been renderable by an organist without an

intervening transcription, such transcriptions were, in

fact, a normal adjunct to the organ repertoire of the

time. The present transcription consists of Fantaisies 27

through 38. Nos. 29-32 are the only departures from the à 5

rubric, since they belong to a set of five Fantaisies based

upon the a single cantus firmus, Une Jeune Fillette. Nos.

34-35 employ the Pange Lingua and Conditor Alma Siderum,

respectively; the last, no. 38, is a lengthy hexachord

fantasy. The arrangements themselves employ pedal obbligato

fairly consistently, e.g., where a cantus firmus appears in

long notes. It is disturbing to find, however, in one arrangement

(no. 33) that the pedal part has been notated in treble clef,

which is probably not amenable to most organists. A

recurring problem is the unmitigated use of barlines at

regular four-beat intervals for each staff, even where

many measures include long note-values that are

meant to carry over into the subsequent measure. Similarly,

where notes tied across measures are represented by dots,

the dots, inexplicably, appear in the antecedent, rather

than subsequent measures. Still, this volume will be of

great interest to students of French music who might wish to

explore a repertory that predates, by only a few years, the

emergence of the French Classic style; to anyone studying

prima prattica generally; or to organists seeking a late-

Renaissance period repertoire that is well laid-out for both

manuals and pedals.