Back to the theologically rich sound-world of the organ in twentieth-century Paris, but not straight back to Messiaen – some readers may be glad to know – but rather to another protégée of Marcel Dupré, the brilliant and virtuosic organist Jeanne Demessieux, introduced to the world by Dupré only for a personal rift of some kind to open between them: speculation as to the reason is common, though it is not clear that a definite answer can be determined at this point.

In the 1940s she wrote a set of seven Méditations sur le Saint-Esprit (meditations on the Holy Spirit) which might be thought modelled on Dupré’s cycles and has echoes of Messiaen as well. The pieces are hard, though not the hardest music she wrote, for performers and also at points for listeners. They have programmatic titles:

I. Veni Sancte Spiritus
II. Les Eaux
III. Pentecôte
IV. Dogme
V. Consolateur
VI. Paix
VII. Lumière

Many of these are only what might be expected; the first has audible resonances with the plainchant we know by the same title, the second reflects the spirit moving on the waters of creation, the third a rush of wind throughout the house at Pentecost. Consoler, peace and light are equally likely attributes of the spirit for musical reflection.

With the number seven in the title, however, one might validly wonder why ‘peace’ is the only of the ‘fruit of the Spirit’ that makes it into the list. I cannot answer to the composer’s intention in this regard, but it provoked me to reflect on the one movement title which seemed less obvious: Dogma. The central movement, and one that the composer seems to have preferred, judging by her own concert programmes at least, comes with the forbidding superscription ‘the one who believes will be saved, but the one who does not believe will be condemned’.

There is a sense in some of our churches nowadays that the gifts (charismata) of the Spirit are in some way opposed to the structuring of Christian worship (liturgy) and life, and lead us to a sort of freedom understood as unrestrained, rather than as a peaceful and plenitudinous freedom. The gallic Catholicism that puts dogma at the centre of the life of the Spirit seems to counter some of the often-unspoken assumptions of more charismatic styles of church.

Might it, though, be more of a gentle corrective than a flat contradiction. The Spirit lives in the Church and guides us towards closer union with Christ, and does so through the traditions and teaching of the faith as passed down to us. The Spirit does not lead us each to re-invent the wheel of faith, but rather to inhabit the ongoing life of the body of Christ in the world.