With their clear formal design and their manageable demands on technique, these pieces reflect Guilmant’s basic precept of creating works  for church and concert performance.<br>
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Stylistically, they are noteworthy for their evocative and confessional  mood and their  straightforward, highly melodious workmanship.<br>
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The first four-piece cycle might be termed a “Gregorian Suite”; the second is a Christmas  suite with Chorale, Magnificat and La Crêche . The Trois Oraisons can be regarded as Guilmant’s swan-song: here the composer expressed his  spiritual concerns, creating a  transfigured idiom for the organ in a meditative and improvisatory vein while  ingeniously  blending Wagner’s tonal language with  Lisztian  intimacy.<br>