It is generally thought that the organ, so closely associated with the Mass and the religious hymn, desensualizes and even disincarnates the humble mortal bathed in its waves. A gross error; in truth, organ music, with its obsessive languor and its soft purr, merely disconnects the Christian from the world and from contingency, isolating his mind so that it may turn toward something exclusive and different: God and salvation, quite true, in countless cases; but also, in many others, sin, perdition, lust, and other harsh municipal synonyms for what is expressed by that limpid word: pleasure. The sound of the organ calms the lady and quiets her mind: a flaccid immobility not unlike ecstasy steals over her and she then half closes her eyes so as to concentrate more intently on the melody which, as it invades her, removes from her mind the preoccupations and the petty concerns of the day and drains it of everything that is not audition, pure sensation. That is how it begins. The teacher plays with an agile, self-assured, unhurried touch, in a soft, melting crescendo, choosing ambiguous compositions that discreetly transport us to austere retreats under the monastic rule of Saint Bernard, to street processions that are suddenly transformed into a pagan carnival, and thence, without transition, to the Gregorian chant of an abbey or the sung Mass of a cathedral attended by a profusion of cardinals, and finally to a promiscuous masked ball in a mansion on the outskirts of the city.
