Gat Šmānê
Meditation for Great organ
(2025)
Duration : ca. 10′
Commissioned by the Festival Le-Printemps-des-orgues-2026
for the international Organ Contest Jean-Louis Florentz – Académie des beaux-arts
First performance: 26th april 2026 – Cathedral Saint-Maurice – Angers.
Meditation for Great organ
In Aramaic – the language spoken by Jesus of Nazareth – “Gat Šmānê” means “the oil press,” better known for its slight distortion in ancient Greek: “Gethsemane.”
It was the Gospel of John that made it possible to locate this place more precisely in an olive grove overlooking Jerusalem, the famous “Garden of Olives” where homeless people came to take shelter during the Jewish holidays, and where the disciples of Jesus came to rest while the latter addressed to his Father a vibrant prayer.
This meditation for organ can be understood as a paraphrase of that painful moment when doubt and anguish break through.
A few monodic phrases with hesitant character betray from the beginning an intense solitude, but are developed in a song to luminous diatonism which wants to be the revealer of a serene and confident soul.
Then follow volutes with more tormented harmonies, precursors of a concern that will gradually be confirmed: first of all in a hieratic range where the distorted return of the initial phrases gradually converges the polyphony towards the lowest register; then through the progressive magnification of a huge cluster betraying the dread of inevitable torment.
The lively and obsessive section, which is linked to the dying cluster, is an unequivocal reflection of a violent inner revolt: “Father, take away from me this chalice!” Chromatic swirls reflect the refusal of a destiny all traced, itself made by the regular strokes of the pedal board. Two cries, two injunctions, fold the chromaticism towards the rediscovered diatonic clarity – a mission that cannot be dispensed with…? All culminating in a last monodic call: the imperious voice of destiny…?
Then silence… reflection. We find the initial atmosphere, with its hesitant sentences where doubt still breaks under dark and voluminous chords.
The light that concludes the piece, with its diaphanous volutes and its final lines drawn by the acute register, far from reflecting a pale resignation, illuminates what makes man great – hence that of God – – the will!
Patrick Burgan