Combination

The Grand jeu

The most brilliant combination of the French classical organ: all the trompettes and clairons, supported by the cornet and the prestant.

Combination

What it is

The grand jeu brings together the reeds and the cornets. Dom Bedos makes it up thus: on the great organ, the grand cornet, the prestant, all the trompettes and all the clairons; on the positive, the cornet, prestant, trompette, clairon and cromorne; the keyboards coupled, and in the pedal the same stops as for the plein jeu. The bombarde, if there is one, may be added when the character of the piece calls for it.

He includes no tierce, quarte or nazard: these would rob the reeds, which make all the beauty of the grand jeu, of their grace, and make them slower to speak. The cornet, on the other hand, is indispensable, because the trompettes and clairons are naturally weaker in the treble.

L'Art du facteur d'orgues

What Dom Bedos says

La raison de cette différence est que la fonction du grand Cornet est de fortifier & fournir dans les dessus du Grand Jeu, dans lequel on fait jouer les Trompettes & les Clairons. Ces Jeux sont naturellement plus foibles dans les dessus que dans les basses.

TranslationThe reason for this difference is that the function of the grand Cornet is to strengthen and fill out the treble of the Grand Jeu, in which the Trompettes and Clairons are played. These stops are naturally weaker in the treble than in the bass.

Dom Bedos de Celles, L’Art du facteur d’orgues, Part I (1766), ch. V, sect. I, § 252, p. 72.

In practice

In the music of the Couperins and their contemporaries

In the repertoire, the grand jeu gives its title to offertories, caprices, dialogues and points d’orgue “sur les grands jeux”. Dom Bedos makes it the usual combination for the fugue de mouvement. In his Part IV he recommends it to accompany “large choruses in quick tempo”.

He blames organists who almost never play it without the tremblant fort: they are never, he says, the most skilled, since the tremulant spoils the fine harmony and strips the pipes of their velvet. The dialogue alternates the grand jeu with the “petit jeu”, its reduced version, on the positive.

The works