Offertoire

Camille Saint-Saëns's Offertory for organ and chromatic horn in C minor was written in Paris in 1857 and remains unknown to this day because, for unknown reasons, Saint-Saëns never finished it. However, thanks to the note left on the manuscript by his friend and publisher Auguste Durand, we know for sure that he did play it on the organ of the church of Saint-Merry where he was the titular organist: “ unfinished, composed for Mr. Halary and performed on the organ of Saint Merry by the author .” Whether Saint-Saëns improvised a final variation, leaving the horn silent, or whether he simply ended with a final chord, we will never know.

Written for a chromatic horn, that is, a horn with a mechanism, as opposed to the ordinary or “natural” horn without a piston, still widely used in France at that time, this unfinished Offertory is constructed in the form of variations on the Easter hymn O filii et filiae written in 1494 by Jean Tisserand. Many composers have used it throughout the history of music, including Lebègue, Dandrieu, Charpentier, Cherubini and Liszt.