[Fantaisie sur le Regina caeli]
written into Mersenne’s own copy of his

Traité de l’harmonie universelle (1636)


One of the few French organ works dating from the period between Titelouze’s publications of the 1620s and Louis Couperin’s works of the 1650s – discovered in 1929 in Mersenne’s own copy of his Traité de l’harmonie universelle (1636) – is a single Fantasie on ‘Regina caeli’ by Charles Racquet, written at his friend Mersenne’s request ‘to show what could be done at the organ’. Racquet came from a family of Parisian organists and was organist of Notre-Dame de Paris from 1618. The work is close in style and technique to Netherlandish examples, showing that not only organbuilding but also organ composition from the Low Countries exerted an important influence in France at this time. The present work, based upon the incipit of an antiphon traditionally sung at the end of the Office in Eastertide, falls into several clear sections: 
1  imitative counterpoint with several countersubjects; 
2  imitative counterpoint on an ornamented version of the subject, with faster counterpoints;
3  subject as a cantus planus, stated once in each voice with free counterpoint;
4  a bicinium in which the cantus planus in one voice is accompanied by faster figuration in the other) building into a four-voice texture; 
5  a toccata above a pedal point.
program notes
