LOUIS COUPERIN, Pièces d'Orgue, Édition établier par Guy Oldham. L'Éditions de l'Oiseau-Lyre, Les Remparts B.P. 515, MC 98015 Monaco (Tel. 377 930 0944). The immediate impetus for this new, first edition was a complete recording made for Radio-France some years ago; the more long-term impetus is the promulgation of a manuscript source that has been in the editor's possession for several decades. This manuscript is the sole surviving source for all but two of the seventy pieces. (This number was originally even greater, but nine leaves were excised at some point.) Couperin himself obligingly dated the majority of the pieces––the earliest, from October 8, 1650; the last, from December 5, 1659––though the sequence is not chronological. The editor observes that the manuscript might eventually have served as a reference volume only, rather than as a practical "organ book," owing to the number of unnecessary page turns. Nominally, the pieces fall into three main categories––Fantaisie, Fugue, and chant setting––and though the individual peculiarities of each piece become more and more apparent the closer one looks, the boundary between fantasy and fugue is never really well-defined. To facilitate period performance in alternatum between organ and choir in the chant settings, the editor has assembled text and tune for each of fifteen chants employed, in versions resembling, as closely as may be determined, Couperin's own usage at St. Gervais, Paris. The edition includes only one page in facsimile (that page gives the impression of being a clean calligraphic copy rather than a rough composing score), and a few more facsimile reproductions would have been welcome. Also, it would have been desirable had the original headings and sub-headings been retained exactly over each piece, rather than relegated to the concluding critical notes.