Recueil de morceaux d'orgue (1863)

The Recueil de morceaux d’orgue à l’usage spécial des élèves de l’Institution impériale des jeunes aveugles de Paris (1863), held in the collection of the Museum of the American Printing House for the Blind in Louisville, Kentucky, contains fifty-four organ compositions in braille music notation written by four blind organist-composers who taught at the Institution des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris: Gabriel Gauthier (1808–53), Marius Gueit (1808–ca. 1865), Julien Héry (1820–98), and Victor Paul (1835–1902). Gauthier and Gueit had been fellow students, friends, and colleagues of Louis Braille (1809–52) at the school around the time Braille was first developing his six-dot writing system.

The Recueil de morceaux d’orgue is divided into four parts: Les harmonies religieuses, a collection of descriptively titled pieces by Gauthier that had appeared previously in ink print around 1853; Dix-huit offertoires de divers auteurs, featuring pieces for the offertory by Gauthier and Gueit; Douze morceaux de fonds de divers auteurs, including pieces by Gauthier and Héry; and Treize morceaux de fonds et offertoires avec pédale ad libitum, featuring pieces by Gauthier, Héry, and Paul for use in the liturgy. All of the pieces in the first three parts, as well as three pieces in part 4, may be played on manuals only and are thus suitable for harmonium as well as organ. The remaining ten works in part 4 call for the use of pedal.