1672–1703 · France · Baroque
Nicolas de Grigny was a French organist and composer from Reims who lived from 1672 to 1703. He left a single surviving collection of organ music, the Premier livre d'orgue, published in 1699. Its demanding polyphony and exacting pedal writing made it a book that Johann Sebastian Bach copied out for his own use.
Reims was Grigny's birthplace, and his parish was Saint-Pierre-le-Vieil. No record of the day he was born exists, but he is known to have been baptised on 8 September 1672. Music ran in the family: three relatives held organ posts in Reims: his father at the cathedral, his grandfather at the Basilica of Saint-Pierre and his uncle Robert at the Church of Saint-Hilaire.
Few details of Grigny's life survive, and nothing is known about his childhood and youth.
In 1693 Nicolas went to Paris to study further. There he learned from Nicolas Lebègue, who had become a foremost French writer of keyboard music. Alongside his lessons, Grigny worked as organist at the abbey of Saint-Denis, where his brother André held the post of sub-prior.
The Paris period lasted until 1695. That year the composer married the daughter of a Parisian merchant. The couple had seven children in all.
After the wedding the young family soon moved back to Reims. By the end of 1697 Grigny had taken his father's post at Reims Cathedral and become its titular organist. The exact date of the appointment is not known. He kept the position until the end of his life.
In 1699 the Premier livre d'orgue, the "First organ book", was published in Paris. Its full French title can be rendered as "First organ book, including a mass and hymns for the main feasts of the year". It is Grigny's collection of organ pieces, and he left no other such volume.
The collection became known beyond France. Johann Sebastian Bach copied the whole volume out by hand for his own use in 1713, and Johann Gottfried Walther did the same later.
Shortly before his death Grigny began to combine his work at the cathedral with a post at one of the small churches of Reims, Saint-Symphorien. He died suddenly in Reims on 30 November 1703, at the age of 31.
The composer's widow outlived him and helped bring about a reissue of the book in 1711. That reissue remained the only known edition for a long time: only in 1949 did a surviving copy of the first printing of 1699 turn up in the French national library.
The first modern edition was prepared by Alexandre Guilmant in 1904, and it was based on the 1711 reissue.
The Premier livre d'orgue falls into two parts. The first is a mass for organ and the second five hymns written for the main festivals of the church calendar, each hymn having several versets, that is, separate pieces. They are Veni Creator Spiritus, Pange lingua, Verbum supernum, Ave maris stella and A solis ortus. There are 42 pieces in all. The book has no preface, although many French organ books of the period did have one.
The mass has nine Gloria versets and five Kyrie, along with an Offertory, an Elévation, a Communion, two numbers each for Sanctus and Agnus Dei, a single Benedictus and a closing Ite, missa est. Its basis is the chant Cunctipotens genitor Deus, as the Caeremoniale Parisiense of 1662 prescribed. The chant melody appears in the Gloria, in the opening Sanctus and Agnus Dei, and in the first and last of the Kyrie settings. The book also contains a point d'orgue, a movement built over a sustained bass note.
Grigny's music is one of the high points of the French organ tradition of the seventeenth century. He uses the forms usual in his day: preludes, fugues, duets, trios. But his polyphony is more complex than usual, since he cultivated the five-part fugue, and the player has a hard task, especially in the pedal part.
Besides the organ book, one ouverture for harpsichord by Grigny survives. Our site has the organ piece Fugue à 5 at intermediate level, a place to start getting to know the composer.