The long-lived Marcel Dupré (1886 - 1971, and active darn near every year of it) was never as famous a composer as he was an organist, but he still produced ream after ream of music throughout the years.

The Trois Préludes et fugues, Op. 7 (3 Preludes and Fugues), are among the earliest of this music; he was still a student at the Paris Conservatoire, two years away from graduation and the Prix de Rome, when he wrote them in 1912. You might be tempted to call the Op. 7 pieces conservative or tradition-inclined because prelude-and-fugue composition had been an important proving-ground for organists for centuries by the time Dupré tried his hand at it; but don't be fooled—the very first bar of the first prelude in the Op. 7 set, filled to the brim with stacked perfect fourths and fifths, makes it abundantly clear that the music that Dupré has poured into the venerable form is hardly of the type that a Buxtehude or a Bach would have composed, or even recognized as possible. Dupré was no avant-garde, but this is most definitely modern music.

The Prelude and Fugue, Op. 7, No. 1, are in B major and, as mentioned above, are built from a body of un-textbook-like perfect intervals; but there is nothing esoteric about the music, whose bright and brilliant sound fills the far reaches of the cathedral (or, if need be, concert hall). The fugue subject, like so many of Bach's, is a long and winding thing in sixteenth notes.

Op. 7, No. 2, is rather more difficult to grasp on first hearing. The Cantabile Prelude begins plainly enough, with some staccato sixteenth notes that present a pleasing cross-rhythm and a self-revealing little theme; but soon the sixteenths begin to take quirky chromatic turns, and the listener must stay focused if Dupré's plan, which is well thought-out, is to be followed. The Fugue subject is, on the other hand, perfectly traditional in design.

The third Prelude and third Fugue are in G minor; the Prelude is something of a moto perpetuo, while the Fugue romps through a gigue-like Vif.

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