Messe pour les Paroisses sung by the Choir of Buckfast Abbey with Ralph Downes (organ)
From Buckfast Abbey
Three programmes of French organ music. Couperin's two organ masses (of which La Messe pour les Paroisses was the first) were written during the years immediately preceding 1692, when a royal privilege for the publication was granted. They represent the culminating point of a great French tradition in liturgical music for choir and organ in alternation, which saw its earliest effective beginnings in the organ masses of Attaingnant and was continued throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries by De Grigny, Marchand, Le Begue, and Gigault. D. S.