Combination

The Plein jeu

The combination of the organ’s foundation stops with the fourniture and cymbale: a chorus of fifths and octaves, to be treated gravely and majestically.

Combination

What it is

The plein jeu rests first of all on two compound stops, the fourniture and the cymbale, which never speak alone. The fourniture has three to seven ranks of narrow-scaled pipes of fine tin; the cymbale, higher, has more “breaks” in the progression of its ranks: seven instead of three. “The Cymbale always goes with the Fourniture,” writes Dom Bedos; together they “take the name of Plein-Jeu”.

All builders agree on including only fifths and octaves, never thirds. Alone, the fourniture and cymbale would produce disagreeable chords; mixed with the foundation stops, they merge into the fundamental sound. Hence the full combination: the montres, the 8-foot stops, bourdons, prestants, doublettes, fourniture and cymbale, on the great organ as on the positive.

L'Art du facteur d'orgues

What Dom Bedos says

Tout ce qu’il y a de plus harmonieux dans l’Orgue, au jugement des connoisseurs & de ceux qui ont du goût pour la vraie harmonie, c’est le Plein-Jeu, lorsqu’il est mélangé avec tous les fonds qui le nourrissent dans une juste proportion.

TranslationThe most harmonious thing in the Organ, in the judgement of connoisseurs and of those with a taste for true harmony, is the Plein-Jeu, when it is mixed with all the foundation stops that nourish it in just proportion.

Dom Bedos de Celles, L’Art du facteur d’orgues, Part I (1766), ch. IV, sect. I, § 178, p. 50.

In practice

In the music of the Couperins and their contemporaries

In the repertoire, the plein jeu is found in the Kyrie and Gloria of François Couperin’s masses as in Grigny’s hymns. Boyvin gives its make-up in 1690; Dom Bedos, in 1770, draws all the foundation stops, all the fournitures and all the cymbales of both coupled keyboards, with the trompette and clairon in the pedal. He distinguishes the grand plein jeu, to be treated gravely and majestically, with broad strokes of harmony, syncopations and dissonances, from the plein jeu of the positive, played more lightly, where brilliance is allowed.

He never adds a tierce, nazard or quarte, which would blunt its edge. The plein jeu also accompanies the plainchant carried by the pedal trompettes, and supports a well-filled choir. In his Part IV, Dom Bedos regrets that it is banished from concert rooms, whereas in Germany it is used to accompany singing.

The works