Pierre Cogen, a French Organist-Composer in the Sainte-Clotilde Tradition (part two)

Carolyn Shuster Fournier

Carolyn Shuster Fournier expresses her gratitude to Pierre Cogen and to Ann Labounsky for providing material and advice for this article, to Marie-Christine Ugo-Lhôte for the loan of her father’s collection of the review L’Orgue, to Mifa Martin for having read through the text, and to the Ruth and Clarence Mader Memorial Scholarship Fund for its grant in 2006.
An international concert artist, Dr. Carolyn Shuster Fournier is titular of the Aristide Cavaillé-Coll choir organ at La Trinité Church in Paris, France. She has written several articles for The Diapason. In October 1983, she was privileged to perform Jean Langlais’ Double Fantasy for Two Organists with the composer, in his concerts during his last tour to England: at the Royal Festival Hall in London (on October 26), at the Salisbury Cathedral, and at the Christ Church Chapel in Oxford.

14. Laetare, Jerusalem, Ouverture pour le dimanche de mi-carême [Overture for the Sunday of mid-Lent], 2004, dedicated to Father Théo Fleury, titular organist at the Einsiedeln Abbey in Switzerland; Pierre Cogen premiered it in his concert at La Madeleine Church in Paris on March 21, 2004.
To be published soon by Combre Editions in Paris (5').
Ever since Cogen heard Langlais improvise on this theme in his youth (cf. above), Cogen meditated on it over a long period of time. His mid-Lent concert at La Madeleine Church in Paris in 2004 gave him the opportunity to compose a piece that was both in keeping with the liturgy of the day and that celebrated the newly installed horizontal reeds on the Grand Orgue. According to Cogen, this piece expresses the joy of the pilgrims of the Old Testament who go to Jerusalem to offer a sacrifice at the Temple, as well as the joy of Christians who gather together around the altar to commemorate Christ’s sacrifice—the outer joy of the Introduction, which intones the first notes of the theme three times on successively higher degrees; the inner joy of the exposition that sings the Gregorian melody on a solo stop while the foundation stops sustain a harmonic accompaniment that is firmly modal. After a development, a psalmody element in the Gregorian fifth mode is presented apart like a fanfare. The principal elements of the work are then combined, ending in jubilation on the full organ.

Conclusion

Pierre Cogen is a spiritual heir in the Sainte-Clotilde Tradition. Jean Langlais had prepared him to become his successor, to pass on this tradition. Cogen’s solid musical formation served as a firm foundation that enabled him to develop freely his own personal style as a liturgical and concert organist, an improviser, a professor and a composer. Although he retired from Sainte-Clotilde in 1994, Cogen continues to maintain this tradition in his concert programs and his compositions.