(Fr.). 19th-century designation of the Full organ and of pieces using it. The Classical French organ had always strictly distinguished between two major, mutually exclusive ensembles: the Plein jeu and the Grand jeu. As bellows systems, pipe design and specification schemes evolved, 19th-century organists came to combine registration elements more freely, speaking in terms of choeurs or choruses; ultimately, application of the Barker lever from the 1840s onwards made the playing together of all the stops of the organ technically feasible, yielding the grand chorus or grand choeur. The corresponding musical style often took the form of march or stately overture textures. The aversion in the mid-20th century to monolithic, orchestrally inspired sounds led to a generalization of the more neutral word ‘Tutti’ (already used by composers such as Widor and Tournemire) to designate full organ; curiously, the old term lingered in the controversial Grand choeur léger, an historically unprecedented combining of the Mixture chorus of the Principal manuals with the full Récit, epitomizing postwar French theoreticians' endeavour to reinstate the classical organ while retaining what they saw as the useful facets of 19th-century tonal design.
See Registration, §I.
KURT LUEDERS