Théodore Dubois, Offertoire

This is my entry for the secrets of organ playing contest, week 38. As I am the guest judge of this week's contest, it is an entry without competition. I did not want to break my habit of preparing something every week, so here it is anyway. Just for the fun of playing.

Théodore Dubois (1837 - 1925) was a French composer, organist and music teacher. In his teaching and composing he was gifted, yet also rather conservative. As a consequence he did not have a great influence on musical history. Nowadays he is largely forgotten. Even organists, who all love to play his famous Toccata, rarely bother to look up other works by Dubois.

Even though his music was already old fashioned in his own time, it is certainly not without quality or emotional depth. The Offertoire I play here, is a beautiful piece, full of longing and a touch of sadness. And very good if you want to practice playing parallel thirds. There are a lot of them in this piece...

The recording was done with the Hauptwerk software and the sampleset, made by Voxus, of the Stahlhuth/Jahn organ in the St. Martin’s church, Dudelange (https://www.voxusorgans.com/en/product/dudelange).