Beyond the Nun Danket of Sigfrid Karg-Elert: On the 80th anniversary of the composer’s death

Artis Wodehouse

Pianist and harmoniumist Artis Wodehouse has a BM from the Manhattan School of Music, an MM from Yale, and a DMA from Stanford. A National Endowment for the Humanities grant led to her producing CDs and publishing transcriptions of recorded performances and piano rolls made by George Gershwin, Jelly Roll Morton, and Zez Confrey. In 2000, Wodehouse began performing on antique reed organs and harmoniums that she had painstakingly restored and brought to concert condition. She founded the chamber group MELODEON in 2010 to present little-known but valuable music from 19th- and early 20th-century America, using her antique instrument collection as the basis for repertoire choice. 

During its prime in the nineteenth-century, the reed organ was the preferred instrument in American homes and also deemed a fit substitute for the more expensive pipe organ. Large reed organs became common in civic gathering halls and smaller churches. Despite the popularity of reed organs in America,¹ music for them consisted primarily of simplified arrangements of European art music, easy-to-play popular and sentimental ditties, polkas, marches, and waltzes, or hymns and other service music associated with worship or civic gatherings.

Toward the end of the nineteenth century it became apparent that design variation from company to company and from organ to organ, even within a given company’s fleet of models, was preventing composers from writing idiomatic original music for the American reed organ. The limited market for music crafted for one or another of the competing designs was too small to sustain widespread printing and marketing of scores.²

Without its own literature, such as had been created during the nineteenth century for its European counterpart, the harmonium, the American reed organ had an uncertain future. It would continue to be regarded at best as “a sort of weak substitute for the church organ.”³ Then, in the mid-1890s, at essentially the beginning of the end of the reed organ era, Mason & Hamlin⁴ began to address the problem by introducing an action design⁵ whose capabilities would “insure the greatest advantages to the composers, at the same time enable the manufacturer to place his instruments on the market at as low a price as possible.” The new action design was called the “Normal-Harmonium.” This was the action design for which the American composer Arthur Bird (1856–1923) wrote his compelling body of reed organ music. Figure 1 shows the Mason & Hamlin American reed organ, with Normal-Harmonium action design. Two knee levers are above the foot pedals. The right lever controls the internal swell shades; the left lever activates the Grand Jeu.

Mason & Hamlin’s Normal-Harmonium action design and Arthur Bird’s creation of a substantial, idiomatic music for the American reed organ came too late. Piano sales that had roared ahead after the Civil War rapidly displaced the reed organ. In the 1880s, reed organ sales slipped below that of pianos. By World War I, the glory days of the reed organ were over.⁶

 

Two competing
19th-century instruments: 

The American reed organ
and the European harmonium 

In the 1840s, United States inventors and businessmen founded companies that offered distinctive fleets of reed organ models. Reed organs were built in a bewildering variety of brands, sizes, and stoplist configurations. They ranged from diminutive four-octave home models that traveled to the West in covered wagons, to large, expensive instruments with powerful tone, full pedalboards, and many stops. 

The American reed organ used one or more sets of brass “free reeds” in order to generate tone. The performer’s foot pumping activated suction bellows that generated a stream of moving air, much like a vacuum cleaner. When the performer depressed a key, this moving air passed through a small chamber in which the reed was affixed at one end, but free to vibrate on the other end (hence the designation, “free reed”). The reeds varied in length, and the longer the reed, the lower the tone. Air rushing through the chamber caused the reed to vibrate, and tone to be produced. When a reed organ had more than one set of reeds, a set could be brought into play or silenced by allowing or blocking the moving air via stop pulls. As with the pipe organ, a set of shutters or swell shades located within the action facilitated dynamic contrasts. The performer opened or shut them on a gradient via a knee paddle. 

The largest and most prominent reed organ companies were Mason & Hamlin in Boston and Estey in Brattleboro, Vermont, but scores of others proved successful. As the nineteenth century progressed, American reed organs became increasingly complex. Inventors developed voicing techniques that produced a broad range of distinctive and contrasting timbres, named using terms derived from pipe organ nomenclature.⁷ Instruments built with multiple sets of differently voiced reeds featured multiple stops and a divided keyboard⁸ so that the player could choose contrasting timbres in the treble and bass of a single keyboard. Large reed organs were sometimes built with multiple keyboards, like pipe organs. The more reeds in an instrument, the more expensive it would be. 

Another keyboard instrument employing differently voiced sets of free reeds in airtight chambers arose in Europe during the nineteenth century. A Frenchman, Alexandre Debain, patented this instrument in 1842, naming it a “harmonium.” (See Figure 2.) 

Like the American reed organ, the European harmonium came to offer a broad range of distinctive and contrasting timbres controlled by stop pulls, and a divided keyboard that enabled the choice of different timbres in the treble and bass. (See Figure 3.)

Despite some similarity in design to the American reed organ, the European harmonium did not employ the American-style bellows system (suction) that pulled moving air in and through the reed chamber. Instead, in the European system, air was pushed through and out via pressure, producing sound like a trumpet or an oboe. The different airflow systems require different technical skills of the performer and produce distinctly different tonal characteristics. (See Figure 4.)

Foot pumping on the harmonium manages two important functions because of the way harmonium bellows were designed to work: the performer maintains constant airflow while simultaneously adjusting the relative airflow speed responsible for dynamic contrasts.⁹ Manipulating airflow velocity to effect dynamic changes was called “expression,” and this function had its own specially assigned stop pull. An additional European innovation for facilitating dynamic contrast was the invention of the so-called “double expression.” It was installed in the more costly European harmoniums. Double expression, a capability arising no doubt from a desire to mimic the piano’s ability to balance melody and accompaniment, allowed the performer to control not only the overall loudness but also the relative volume of the treble and bass on a gradient. Double expression is controlled by two knee levers installed under the keyboard and above the two foot-pump pedals. The skill required to play smoothly and expressively on the harmonium demands much practice.  

Late-speaking reeds, i.e., those with a time lag between the act of depressing a key and the sounding of its corresponding tone, hampered performers on both the American reed organ and the European harmonium.¹⁰ Although quick airflow delivery to the reeds was a design priority for both reed organ and harmonium builders, the Americans felt that beyond a certain point, slight lags were an acceptable characteristic of the instrument for which the performer was expected to make appropriate adjustments. The Europeans, however, took a different approach. To mitigate the problem of late speech (and to provide an additional tonal effect) they positioned small felt-covered hammers next to each of the reeds of the set most frequently used in performance. These little hammers were controlled by a stop pull, referred to as “percussion.” When the percussion stop is pulled and a key is depressed, the little hammers simultaneously strike the sounding reed, causing it to speak more quickly and incisively, like a crisp piano attack. The harmonium’s percussion makes performance of rapid passagework more predictable when compared to the American reed organ.

The most far-reaching advantage the harmonium held over the American reed organ was the standardization of stops generally agreed upon by the European companies. Standardization had two benefits: it made it possible to print in music scores commonly understood registration that could be used across instruments built by different companies. Secondly, performers could move from one harmonium to another with a minimum of adjustment.¹¹

It should be noted that the terms “harmonium” and “reed organ” were and continue to be used interchangeably. Lack of a clear and consistent terminology must be laid at the door of the overlapping and competing terms originally used. In their heyday, American reed organs were most frequently referred to as simply “organs,” but other names were used as well. These included Organ-Harmonium and Cabinet Organ, two different terms used by the same company, Mason & Hamlin. There were also fanciful names such as Phonorium, used by Estey.¹²

 

Harmonium and American reed organ repertoire

The capabilities of the European harmonium and the move towards standardization¹³ attracted several important nineteenth-century European composers. Elgar, Strauss, Schoenberg, Webern, Mahler, Liszt, Tchaikovsky, and Rossini made good use of the harmonium in some of their orchestral and/or choral works. Berlioz, Franck, Saint-Saëns, Guilmant, Widor, and many others wrote high quality solo and chamber music for it. Finally, the German composer Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877–1933) made it his mission to develop a body of repertoire that would exploit the unique sonic and expressive capabilities of the Art Harmonium. During the early twentieth century Karg-Elert wrote what has proved to be the single most significant body of solo and chamber music for the instrument. The popularity of the European harmonium peaked about 1900, slightly later than the American reed organ’s peak of popularity.

Relatively few harmoniums made it across the Atlantic during the nineteenth century. On the other hand, American reed organs were exported and sold in fair numbers throughout Europe, particularly those built by Mason & Hamlin.¹⁴ Also, several European manufacturers such as Lindholm, Mannborg, and Shiedmayer adopted the American suction bellows system for their instruments.¹⁵ Nevertheless, despite significant cross-Atlantic distribution of the American reed organ and the availability of native European instruments with some shared characteristics, the American reed organ never established an artistic foothold through a representative body of high-quality music comparable to that written for the harmonium. This cannot be fully explained by the technical differences between the two as outlined above. Although the American instrument may have lacked the harmonium’s more refined control of dynamics and its useful percussion stop, the best American instruments, such as the Mason & Hamlin Liszt Organ, have a distinctive tonal beauty and a multiplicity of sounds equal to those of their European counterparts. 

The promotional prominence and enlarged, relatively standardized capabilities of Mason & Hamlin’s flagship Liszt Organ may therefore have been the impetus behind Boston-based American publisher Arthur Schmidt to print a few works for it during the 1890s. Schmidt’s publications for the Liszt Organ included both original compositions as well as arrangements of famous European works for organ solo, duets with piano, and chamber pieces. But apart from Eugene Gigout’s excellent Romanza for the Liszt Organ, unfortunately none of the rest rose to a similarly high quality.

 

Arthur Bird, American expatriate composer (1856–1923) 

Around 1896, Mason & Hamlin likely encouraged and may have actually commissioned the American composer Arthur Bird to write idiomatic art music for the standardized action they introduced during the 1890s, called the Normal-Harmonium. 

No documentation has yet surfaced indicating payment to Bird for his work by the firm. Nevertheless, key musical and personal circumstances link Arthur Bird to the most significant people associated with the Mason & Hamlin Company. Central to the connection between Arthur Bird and Mason & Hamlin was Franz Liszt. A canny seer, Liszt bet correctly on the ability of eager young American pianists and composers to hold high the torch of pianism and to carry forward the music of the future. Liszt welcomed them, offering his inspired pedagogy and worldly professional connections free of charge. Liszt’s generosity forged a well-documented bond among his pupils. Liszt’s first American student was the pianist William Mason (1829–1908). Mason studied with Liszt beginning in 1849, and brought back to the United States Liszt’s pedagogic principles through an extensive career of teaching, performing, and publishing. William Mason also happened to be the brother of Henry Mason, who in 1854 co-founded the Mason & Hamlin Company. Henry and William Mason were in turn sons of Lowell Mason, an important American hymn composer and musical educator during the first half of the nineteenth century. 

Liszt owned and wrote music for numerous keyboard instruments provided for him by both European and American companies.¹⁶ Among such instruments in his sizable collection was a Mason & Hamlin cabinet organ that he acquired in the 1870s. Later, Mason & Hamlin’s flagship high-end model came to be named the “Liszt Organ,” a likely outcome of the close connection between Liszt, his pupil William Mason, and the Mason & Hamlin Company.¹⁷ The Mason & Hamlin Liszt Organ was introduced about 1880. Complex, colorful, powerful, and versatile, the Liszt Organ was designed to compete with the best European harmoniums. While the Liszt Organ shared many tonal and functional features with the Normal-Harmonium design, it had a different tessitura (five octaves, C to C, versus the Normal-Harmonium’s F to F) and a different split point (E–F versus B–C for the Normal-Harmonium).

Arthur Bird was also one of Liszt’s American pupils, coming to him during Liszt’s later years.¹⁸ Bird’s musical and personal background strikingly resembled that of William Mason. Born in Belmont, Massachusetts in 1856, Bird’s early musical training came from his father and uncle, who were born-and-bred American church musicians. Arthur’s father, Horace Bird, and his uncle, Joseph Bird, were active in the New England of the 1840s and 1850s as voice teachers, composers of hymns and songs, and editors of singing books written to develop score-reading literacy. Upon the advice of William Mason’s father, Lowell Mason, young Arthur Bird was sent in 1875 to study in Germany at the Berlin Hochschule für Musik. Returning to North America two years later, he took a church music position in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where he began to compose. He returned to Berlin in 1881 to study composition and orchestration. It was during this time that Bird came into the Liszt orbit.  

By his early 30s (in the mid-1880s), Bird had become well established as an organist and pianist. His compositions were published and performed widely in Europe. Bird spent most of his life abroad, mainly in Berlin, where he married a wealthy German widow and apparently lived lavishly. In 1897 Bird returned for some time to the United States in what proved to be a failed attempt to have his comic operetta, Daphne, performed in America. Reading between the lines of William Loring’s biographical work on Arthur Bird, is it possible that Bird wished to forge a closer connection to his native country? Certainly a major production of an opera by a United States-born composer within the United States would be an excellent vehicle for that scenario. During the late 1890s, when the quest for “genuine” American composers was in full swing, Bird may have sensed an opportunity. In any event, in that same year (1897), the first of Bird’s pieces for the Mason & Hamlin “American Harmonium” (op. 37) were published by Breitkopf and Härtel, an important German firm still operating that publishes high-art European music.¹⁹

 

Characteristics of Arthur Bird’s “American Harmonium”

The historic trajectory mating Arthur Bird with the Normal-Harmonium came just at the point when the piano had overtaken reed organ sales. Mason & Hamlin realized that in order to survive in the long term, the reed organ needed some good original music. The publication of Arthur Bird’s music for the “American Harmonium” came at a historic crossroad for the American reed organ, largely due to the rise of the American piano. From the 1850s, pianos, and particularly American pianos, started to benefit from standardization and mechanical manufacturing methods of the industrial revolution. Prior to this time, pianos were mainly handcrafted items. Likewise around 1850, the design of the piano, particularly the American piano, moved rapidly toward increased durability and a greater dynamic and pitch range. Piano types coalesced into three categories: square, grand, and finally, upright. Each of these types served a clear purpose. As a result, consumers began to turn to the piano as a viable keyboard alternative to the reed organ, particularly in the home market, where the reed organ had ruled uncontested.²⁰ Sales of pianos grew steadily through the nineteenth century.

In contrast to the piano industry, American reed organ manufacturers from the 1850s to the 1900s offered consumers instruments of a wide variety of sizes, competing capabilities, nomenclature, and above all, case styles.²¹ After the Civil War, American manufacturers also developed complex instruments of considerable beauty, sophistication, and expense. These large instruments with enhanced performance capabilities were aimed at a smaller “niche” market, for placement in the homes of the wealthy, civic or religious meeting halls, and small churches. But after a sustained growth period lasting about 40 years, sales of the American reed organ began to decline in the 1880s.

The Normal-Harmonium action design of the 1890s for which Bird wrote was conceived to meet these market challenges. Mason & Hamlin worked with and adopted the Normal-Harmonium design in collaboration with two entities associated with the company: their German representative Paul Koeppen and the Bender firm in Leiden, Holland.²² Mason & Hamlin’s goal was to provide a standardized instrument that could compete with the piano and its plentiful repertoire. Their instrument had to be sophisticated enough to attract composers to write good music for it and be of a reasonable cost. 

Mason & Hamlin met both of its goals. First, the cost of an instrument with Normal-Harmonium specifications was indeed lower by half or more than that of the top of the Mason & Hamlin line, the Liszt Organ. The price of the Liszt came in at $700, but instruments with Normal-Harmonium capabilities could be had between $260 and $300.²³ Second, the Normal-Harmonium action provided attractive and useful performance capabilities. These included a pitch range of five octaves from F to F and multiple sets of reeds offering an elaborate stoplist. American reed organs with the Normal-Harmonium action design began to be manufactured in the 1890s and continued to be built until the company ceased reed organ production in the early 1920s.

As mentioned previously, inconsistent nomenclature and lack of a simple explanation for actual performance capability plagued the field. Although Mason & Hamlin offered a standardized action design in the Normal-Harmonium, Bird’s music itself was identified on the score as being intended for the “American Harmonium” and/or the “Normal-Harmonium.” Nomenclature had still not jelled. Therefore it must be stressed that the terms “American Harmonium” and Mason & Hamlin “Normal-Harmonium” do not refer to any one specific instrument, but rather to an action design embodying certain specific capabilities. 

Figure 5 shows the overhead view of interior of the Mason & Hamlin American organ with Normal-Harmonium specs. To the upper right is the paddle that is activated to rotate by the Vox Humana stop. The upper left box houses the very large Sub Bass reeds. The specific capabilities of the Normal-Harmonium are as follows. 

 

Stoplist:

Diapason Dolce 8′—the Diapason, mechanically softened. 

Sub Bass 16′—consists of 13 notes, the chromatic octave upward from low C. This stop uses the largest, longest reeds, producing a deep, rich, and powerful sound.

Eolian Harp 2′—two detuned sets of reeds producing a shimmering, ethereal vibrato.

Diapason 8′—pure, organ-like tone. 

Viola 4′—resembles the sound of the orchestral instrument for which it is named.

Viola Dolce 4′—the Viola, mechanically softened.

Vox Humana—adds a vibrato or tremolo. Can be used in combination with any of the other drawn stops in the treble. Activated by the turning of a windmill-like paddle located inside the action.

Seraphone 8′—differs from the Diapason in timbre. Focused and slightly nasal.

Flute 4′—resembles the sound of the orchestral instrument for which it is named.

Melodia 8′—continuation in the treble of the Diapason reeds.

Vox Celeste 8′—another stop combining two sets of detuned reeds that creates a vibrato effect. 

Octave Coupler—when pulled, mechanically connects a note to that of one an octave higher.

Melodia Dolce 8′—mechanically softened Melodia. 

 

The split point on the keyboard is between B and middle C. Stops from Seraphone 8′ up activate the treble, the stops from Viola Dolce, down, the bass.

 

Mechanical devices:

Grand Jeu—activated by a knee paddle located under the keys above the left foot pump pedal. The Grand Jeu causes all the reeds to sound at once, producing the instrument’s fullest and loudest sound.

Swell—activated by a knee paddle located under the keys above the right foot pump pedal. This device controls the internal shutters responsible for dynamic contrasts. (See Figure 6.)

 

Arthur Bird as composer

During his lifetime, Arthur Bird was recognized as an active, widely published, and well-received composer of some stature, particularly in Europe. Incidentally, his successful European career was launched in no small part because of the positive public and private endorsements Bird received from the influential Franz Liszt. 

Bird’s oeuvre is extensive, including opera and theatre works, orchestral music, songs, piano materials, chamber works (particularly those for wind instruments, for which he is best-remembered today), organ, and many other forms. Bird wrote a sizeable number of short solo piano pieces in well-established standard dance forms and topical styles—march, waltz, minuet, gavotte, lullaby, and mazurka. His extensive experience composing in this genre prepared Bird well to write for the American reed organ. Bird’s music is available in score at the Library of Congress through the generous donation of his widow and has been amply documented through the International Music Score Library Project.²⁴

Relatively little of Bird’s music has been recorded.²⁵ What is available tends to confirm the critical reception his work received during his lifetime. Reviewing a performance of [Bird’s] Serenade for Wind Instruments, op. 40, the Berliner Borsen Courier said: “It is distinguished for the freshness and spontaneity of its invention, as well as the clever craftsmanship and the clear and compact disposition of its different parts . . .” Another critic comments: “Characteristically his music is pleasing and melodious in composition. It is coherent and well developed in form. It lies easily within the range of the instruments, and displays no little knowledge of their resources.” Of him, [Arthur] Farwell wrote: “Arthur Bird is known as the possessor of a fertile and truly musical imagination and a thorough technique . . .
Bird is a musician of German training and French sympathies and calls himself a conditional modernist.” Mentioning that Bird composed in almost all forms, [Louis] Elson says of him: “He is an excellent contrapuntist, yet uses his skill in this direction as a means rather than as an end, seldom making a display of his knowledge. It is a pleasure to find an American composer who is not anxious to out-Wagner and who goes along the peaceful tenor of recognized and classical ways.”26 Bird was even described as “the most promising American composer of the middle and late Eighties” by no less than the important conductor,
Arthur Nikisch.²⁷ 

The amount and dating of Bird’s production seem to confirm Loring’s supposition²⁸ that after 1900, Bird’s work dwindled, though his reed organ works of 1905 (op. 45) maintain his previously held high standard. On the other hand, his simplified arrangements, American Melodies Specially Adapted and Arranged for Normal-Harmonium of 1907, appear to have been written simply for profit and lack the artistic value of his earlier work for the American Harmonium.

 

Arthur Bird’s music for the American Harmonium

Those who either possessed or might  have considered purchasing an instrument with the Normal-Harmonium action design would likely be individuals of some performance ability and/or a level of musical sophistication high enough to appreciate the artistic features of the instrument. They would also likely appreciate piano music of the better salon variety, up to and including Schumann’s, Chopin’s, or Grieg’s short works for solo piano. Finally, they would most likely be of the social class that would appreciate hearing this music, most likely in the home setting. 

Bird’s conservatism—informed by fine craftsmanship, deft handling of instrumental color, and fluency in miniature forms—may not have been enough to place him into the compositional pantheon of his trailblazing European contemporaries (Mahler, Debussy, etc.), but his abilities ideally suited him for writing salon-oriented character pieces of the type popularized by Mason & Hamlin’s Normal-Harmonium. An already accomplished American composer, Bird’s impeccable, media-worthy credentials and network of connections to Mason & Hamlin were a further plus. Bird was a perfect fit.

Bird published six opus numbers for the Normal-Harmonium.²⁹ All contain interesting and beautiful music, but the best of these was his first, the ten pieces of op. 37.³⁰ In the first printing, the op. 37 pieces were identified directly on the score’s front pages as being intended for the “American Harmonium”³¹ or for the Mason & Hamlin “Normal-Harmonium.” A page is devoted to an explanation of the stops required and their manner of notation in the score. Bird used circled letters derived from the stop name. For instance, Diapason is D; Viola, V; Voix Celeste, VC; and so forth. Later print runs of op. 37 contain the same explanatory page, but also indicate standard stop numbers, i.e., 1 for Diapason, 3 for Viola, 5 for Eolian Harp, etc., that would correspond to numbers appearing on European suction instruments of equivalent capability.³²

While no piece in the op. 37 set lasts more than three minutes, each exhibits a mastery of craft: beautifully spun-out melodies, masterful counterpoint, subtly personalized inflections of nineteenth-century harmonic practice, and traditional formal structures handled with deft assurance. Bird’s forms are not unusual (ABA, sonata, rondo). But because the Normal-Harmonium’s unique instrumental colors are an integral component of Bird’s structural designs, the listener experiences an additional dimension of thematic transformation. In his music for Normal-Harmonium, Bird’s assimilation of instrumental color as a component of structural rhetoric relates his music to that of the nascent French impressionists at the turn-of-the-century. The following briefly describes salient features of each of the pieces in Bird’s op. 37:

1. Meditation—a sarabande. In this mini-Wagnerian contrapuntal ramble, Bird employs kaleidoscopic stop changes that underscore the evolving melodic twists and turns.

2. Preludium—brooding and dramatic four-part writing in an ABA structure. Registration is simple, but Bird uses the octave coupler at the recapitulation, reinforcing and underscoring the harmonic excursions introduced as the piece moves toward an impassioned final cadence.

3. Adagio—elegiac four-part mini-sonata. Development section comprises a series of recitative-like meandering arpeggios over sustained chords. Recapitulation re-registers the opening material over low pedal points. With more recitative-like arpeggios at the coda, the piece concludes with a simple fadeout on the ethereal Eolian Harp stop.

4. Reverie—features a long-breathed, haunting, and tentative treble melody on the flute stop set against slithering countermelodies registered on the atmospheric Eolian Harp stop. In ABA form, the melody’s return is entirely recast in a fuller texture with the foundation 8′ and 4′ stops. In partnership with a walking bass line, the melody’s tentative first appearance is thereby transformed into an affirmative point of arrival. The coda brings the listener back to the ethereal Eeolian Harp, rounding the piece off as it began.³³

5. Postlude—hearkens back to Bird’s American past, a spirited march that suggests a full wind band.³⁴ Bird’s registration indicates that the piece must be played in its entirety using only one setting, the circled G indicating “Grand Jeu.” Because Grand Jeu causes all the stops to sound at once, finger strength and vigorous foot pumping are required throughout. 

6. Improvisato—a fierce, somewhat virtuosic piece. Registration involving the basic 8′ and 4′ stops is augmented at the recapitulation by use of the Grand Jeu. Rapid, conjunct passagework in the wild coda comes off surprisingly well, despite the lack of a percussion stop. Bird was a hands-on composer and knew what the Mason & Hamlin organ could do.³⁵ 

7. Offertoire—This piece would be suitable for use in a church setting. It is an atmospheric sweet/sour composition with change of mode. 

8. Scherzo—This is the most technically demanding of the set, an extended rondo. Rapid sixteenth notes scattered throughout the piece when the octave-coupler is drawn or the Grand Jeu is activated require finger strength and precise articulation. Not only the performer’s skill is tested: Bird takes the instrument itself to the edge of its mechanical ability to sound quick notes on the fly. Registration is extraordinarily full and rich, suggesting an orchestra. 

9. Auf dem Lande—a melancholy, minor “folksong” melody is transformed to a grand, affirmative conclusion in major mode.

10. Pastoral—perhaps the most inventive and idiomatic of the entire set. Bird’s motivic ideas have a symbiotic relationship with the instrumental colors he brings to bear. Set above continuously sustained low pedal points, a flowing conjunct melody in the treble twines about an ostinato pattern in the mid range. In order to keep the pedal points depressed while so much action is occurring that requires two hands, lead weights must be used to hold down the pedal-point notes.

 

The American reed organ, Arthur Bird, and the future

The composition of high-quality, original repertoire for the European harmonium during the nineteenth century has proved to have far-reaching consequences. Once thought lost to history, beginning in the 1980s the harmonium has been going through a steady revival, centering in the Netherlands. It seems likely the harmonium will continue to reestablish the place it once held in the classical repertoire. While there continues to be a small but passionate interest in the American reed organ,³⁶ a revival similar in scope and momentum has not yet begun.

As the rise and fall of the American reed organ demonstrates, the key to an instrument’s survival is not its mechanical capabilities, but rather the repertoire written for it. Not just any music will do. What is needed is music that will continue to offer listeners an aesthetic experience independent from the era in which it was created.

In the case of the European harmonium, the point where form and function met occurred when distribution was growing and the instrument’s capability achieved sufficient standardization. This favorable environment attracted a fair number of composers to write significant music for it. Unfortunately for the American reed organ, standardization arrived at the very point when distribution was falling. 

Nevertheless, we are grateful that one composer, Arthur Bird, stepped in during a brief moment of opportunity in the history of the American reed organ. With his ideal combination of skills, commitment, and inspiration, he provided us with music that stands poised to move into the future. ν

 

Special thanks to Carson Cooman and Whitney Slaten

 

Notes

1. American publishers also churned out a deluge of reed organ method books intended for the large market of rank amateurs in the United States. 

2. Paul Hassenstein, “The Normal Harmonium And Its Literature,” The Music Trade Review 41:3, July 1905, 87. 

3. Ibid., 87.

4. Mason & Hamlin began as a reed organ manufacturer, but in 1883 started making pianos as well. About 1920 the company ceased making reed organs, but continued their piano line. 

5. “Action design” refers to a specific set of performance capabilities contained within the mechanism of an instrument. Action design was independent of case style. The same action could be enclosed in a variety of cases.

6. Robert F. Gellerman, The American Reed Organ (Vestal, New York: Vestal Press, 1973), 18.

7. Ibid., 97–99. Gellerman’s list of stop names gives some indication of the diversity and lack of standardization among the American reed organ manufacturers.

8. The point of division between bass and treble was called the “split point.”

9. The harmonium did not employ the swell shade of the American system for dynamic contrast because the pressure system made possible quick changes in air speed. Quick control of air speed permits the execution of sharper accents and faster dynamic changes than is typically possible on the American instrument. Simply put, the American instrument is easier to learn how to play, but lacks the degree of potential interpretive refinement offered by the harmonium.

10. The phenomenon is due to inertia. Lowest reeds speak quite slowly: they are the largest reeds, sometimes several inches in length.

11. Gellerman, American Reed Organ, 107.

12. I have consistently used “American Reed Organ” or simply “reed organ” to refer to the suction bellows action design, and “harmonium” to describe the European pressure instrument.

13. Standardized pitch range, split point, sets of stop pulls, shared nomenclature. Nevertheless, as the 19th century progressed, European harmonium manufacturers (like their American counterparts) succumbed to the lure of increased capability that culminated with the celebrated “Art Harmonium.” The Art Harmonium offered a whole new range of attractive colors and capabilities. Music written for the Art Harmonium could not be played on more basic harmonium models.

14. Casey Pratt, e-mail to the author, July 30, 2013. Casey Pratt is a United States reed organ restorer who specializes in the Mason & Hamlin. Exact numbers are not known to date.

15. Ibid. 

16. For instance, Liszt owned a piano-harmonium specially designed for him by Erard and Alexandre and a Chickering grand that was used in his piano master classes. He also collected then “antique” pianos that belonged to Mozart and Beethoven.

17. The Liszt Organ has a set of uniquely voiced, so-called “Liszt” reeds of great tonal beauty. 

18. The main biographical information to date regarding Arthur Bird was amassed by Dr. William Cushing Loring (1914–2002). Loring was a Harvard graduate and an urban sociologist. After retirement, he focused on American art and music, working with Scarecrow Press to develop a series of more than twenty books on various North American composers. 

19. Available at the International Music Score Library Project website: http://imslp.org.

20. Another likely reason piano sales surged ahead of the reed organ resulted from the installment purchase plans offered by piano companies. Once a luxury item of the upper classes, the piano then became affordable to the burgeoning middle class.

21. The flamboyant case styles of American reed organs clearly indicate a function beyond that of simply a musical instrument. In addition to ornate carvings, some reed organ cases featured a façade of non-functional organ “pipes,” mirrors, candle holders, and the like.

22. This information was communicated by Frans Vandergrijn, a Netherlands-based authority on reed organs and harmoniums in a posting on Yahoo’s Reed Organ Restoration newsgroup, August 9, 2013. 

23. Pratt, e-mail to the author, August 10, 2013. To put these prices in perspective, average United States yearly income in 1900 was $438.

24. http://imslp.org/wiki/10_Pieces_for_Harmonium,_Op.37_(Bird,_Arthur_H.)

25. Modern recordings include music for piano 4-hands, op. 23, Vladimir and Nadia Zaitsev, pianists; Introduction and Fugue, op. 16, Tony and Mary Ann Lenti, pianists; Serenade for Wind Instruments, op. 40, Suite for Double Wind Quintet, op. 29 (Naxos), and Carnival Scenes for Orchestra, op. 5 (Albany).

26. William C. Loring, Jr., “Arthur Bird, American,” The Musical Quarterly 29:1, January 1943, 87. 

27. Ibid., 88.

28. Ibid., 86.

29. Op. 37, 1897; op. 38, 1901; op. 39, 1903; op. 41, 1906; op. 42, 1905; op. 44, 1903; op. 45, 1905. All are available at the Library of Congress.

30. Not all of the op. 37 pieces scanned and available in IMSLP come from the original 1897 printing, several being from later editions. The only difference is that additional equivalent registration intended for European suction instruments was added. 

31. My supposition is that Breitkopf titled them for the “American Harmonium” in order to alert purchasers that the intended instrument would be one of American design. European suction instruments could have been more or less acceptable alternatives, but only the Mason & Hamlin Normal-Harmonium would have had the subtle specificity of timbres and tonal balances characteristic of the Mason & Hamlin sound.

32. On IMSLP: http://javanese.imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/2/2d/IMSLP65232-PMLP1327…

33. See performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIC9EwIjmks

34. And Percy Grainger’s later work for the reed organ.

35. See performance at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fi6yjMzjKe.

36. The American Reed Organ Society has been in existence since 1981.

 

References

Archival Sources

Music Division, Library of Congress, Washington, D. C. Music of Arthur Bird. Includes all his published music for reed organ, plus some manuscript scores.

 

Books and Articles

Brown, Andrea Elizabeth. “A Descriptive Analysis of Arthur Bird’s Suite in D.” DMA diss., University of North Carolina at Greensboro, 2010.

Elson, Louis C. American Music. New York, NY: MacMillan Co., 1904.

Gellerman, Robert F. The American Reed Organ. Vestal, NY: The Vestal Press, 1973.

———. The American Reed Organ and the Harmonium. Vestal, NY: The Vestal Press, 1996.

Good, Edwin M. Giraffes, Black Dragons, and Other Pianos. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001.

Hendron, Michael, ed. Manufacturers Music Album Reed Organ Society Anthology Series. Palmer, Massachusetts: The Reed Organ Society Publications Office, 2001.

Hiles, John. A Catechism for the Harmonium. London: Brewer and Company, 1877.

Loring, William C., Jr. “Arthur Bird, American.” Musical Quarterly 29, no. 1 (1943): 78–91.

———. Arthur Bird: His Life and Music. Newton Centre, MA: n.p., 1941.

———. The Music of Arthur Bird: An Explanation of American Composers of the Eighties and Nineties for Bicentenial Americana Programming. Atlanta: n.p., 1974.

Milne, H. F. The Reed Organ: Its Design and Construction. Chancery Lane, England: Office of Musical Opinion, 1930.

 

Recordings

Bird, Arthur. Suite in D. On Bird Songs: Romantic Chamber Music of Arthur Bird, North Texas Chamber Players. Eugene Corporon, conductor. CD (digital disc). Klavier, KCD-11071, 1995.

———. Suite in D. On Collage: A Celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Peabody Institute, 1857–2007. Peabody Conservatory Wind Ensemble. Harlan Parker, conductor. CD (digital disc). Naxos, 8.570403, 2008.

———. Suite in D. University of Cincinnati Chamber Players. Rodney Winther, conductor. CD (digital disc). Mark Records, 7212, 2007.

———. Amerikanische Weisen, op. 23, Three Characteristic Marches, op. 11,  American Souvenirs Piano Music for Four Hands, Nadia and Vladimir Zaitsev, pianists, CD (digital disc), Gleur De Son-Qualiton/The Orchard, 57928, 2004.

Bird, Arthur; Dussek, Jan Ladislav; Liszt, Franz; Grieg, Edvard; and Onslow, George; Forgotten Piano Duets, Vol. 2, Tony and Mary Ann Lenti, pianists, CD (digital  disc), ACA Digital Recording, B004QEZC2, 2011.

Wesley Roberts

The influence of César Franck’s Trois Chorals on the works of early twentieth-century French composers was not significant. One of the few exceptions was the composer Jacques Ibert (1890–1962), the 125th anniversary of whose birth is being quietly celebrated in 2015. Born in Paris on August 15, 1890, Ibert studied at the Paris Conservatoire in the early 1910s with Émile Pessard, André Gédalge, and Paul Vidal and later served as director of the French Academy in Rome from 1937 to 1960.

Ibert’s experience at the Paris Conservatoire found him in classes where the teaching and attitudes of professors was inconsistent from one to another. Gédalge (1856–1926), who taught counterpoint and fugue, disliked the music of Franck and the counterpoint exercises adopted by the conservatory, choosing instead to teach Bach chorales rather than fugues as the basis for study. By contrast, Vidal (1863–1931) taught using the principles of Franck and Riemann, with a strong emphasis upon chromaticism and was undoubtedly pleased when a new society devoted to Franck was established in Paris in 1913. Caught between opposing points of view during conservatory study, Ibert’s compositional ideas became exploratory, and while he utilized a strong melodic line and pleasing harmonies, his style was eclectic, a trend which would extend throughout his life.

To earn a living while studying at the Conservatoire, Ibert gave piano lessons and improvised at the piano for silent films at the American Theater in Paris. He played on weekends and occasional weeknights, sometimes for up to twelve hours at a time, earning fourteen francs on the longest days. Many years later he would describe the experience as an art of deception, functioning as “pianist-composer-improviser-commentator” before the silent screen where “my fingers would try to terrorize or to charm according to the gist.”¹ He was also occupied during the conservatory years helping his father’s import/export business, which had suffered from a disaster at sea and was in difficult economic straits.

Upon the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Ibert attempted to enlist in the armed forces, as did nearly all young French men. He was rejected for health reasons but was finally accepted into the Red Cross as a stretcher-bearer and hospital attendant. In the next two years he would serve in northern France near the front lines, assisting with the wounded and preparing soldiers for emergency surgery, including the administration of anesthesia. During this time he composed for piano and harp. Characteristic of these would be Le Vent dans le Ruins (1915), which one biographer called “an odd combination of Debussy’s Impressionism, Ravel’s clarity, Roussel’s ruggedness, and Liszt’s romanticism.”² In early 1916 he contracted paratyphoid fever and was sent to southern France following a brief stay in Paris to recuperate during the spring. Upon recovery he returned to Paris and by September had composed the Pièce Romantique for piano, a work strongly influenced by late 19th-century chromaticism in a style reminiscent of Franck.

With his health now much stronger, Ibert was allowed to enlist in the navy in May 1917 and was appointed an officer based upon his skill in mathematics, in which he had excelled for his baccalaureate. He was first sent to Sète along the Mediterranean Sea and then to Dunkerque along the Atlantic, serving for eighteen months and participating in the destruction of numerous enemy positions. During his free time, Ibert visited churches in villages along the coastline and liked to play their organs. These experiences inspired him to write four short works for organ between 1917 and 1919. The first was a Musette in 1917, followed by a Fugue and Choral in 1918, and finally the Pièce Solennelle in 1919, the latter as a gift for his bride on their wedding day.³ 

 

Genesis of the Choral

The Choral seems to have been written upon the suggestion of Abbé Joseph Joubert (1878–1963), organist at the Cathedral of Luçon from 1904 until 1935, and later from 1940–1946. Ibert probably met Joubert in Paris while the latter was a student at the Schola Cantorum from 1902–1904. Joubert did not complete his studies at the Schola Cantorum, having been called to the Cathedral of Luçon upon the premature death of the previous organist. A tireless worker, Joubert compiled an eight-volume collection of short organ pieces by over one hundred French and Belgian composers entitled Les Maîtres Contemporains de l’Orgue (Contemporary Masters of the Organ; 1912–1914)⁴. Toward the end of World War I, he embarked upon another large-scale project and began compiling a five-volume collection of organ music  (1921–24) dedicated “to the heroes of the Great War,” titling it Les Voix de la Douleur Chrétienne (The Voices of Christian Suffering). It was for this latter project that Ibert submitted his Choral for publication. 

The Choral is the longest of the four pieces for organ and was written in July 1918. Ibert was undoubtedly touched by Joubert’s dedicatory plan to honor soldiers for their sacrifices. He marked the cover page “In Piam gratamque memoriam” (In pious and grateful memory) and dedicated it to Abbé Joubert, adding a preface quote from the Apocrypha, “Justorum animæ in manu Dei sunt,” Sap. III.1 (The souls of the righteous are in the hand of God, The Wisdom of Solomon III:1). This verse had inspired a Gregorian chant centuries earlier that was used as the offertory in certain Roman Catholic Masses honoring martyrs. Interestingly, Ibert’s manuscript contained the Roman numeral “I” before the title, suggesting that at least one, if not more, additional pieces were in the making. However, no other piece is known to have been composed for a collection.

In a letter a little more than a year later on October 15, 1919, Joubert informed Ibert that the proofs for the Choral were available, and commented that it is “needless to add that I always stay very grateful—and may be even proud—of your kind and artistic collaboration to Les Voix de la Douleur Chrétienne.” The Choral appeared in the first volume of the collection in 1921 along with Voces Belli by Fernand de la Tombelle, the Marche funèbre and Épitaphe by Henry Defosse, and In Memoriam, Quatre improvisations by Joseph Jongen. 

 

Style

Years later Ibert acknowledged that his organ works as a whole were influenced by Franck. He commented, “Franck, whom Gédalge detested, charmed me with a certain appeal through the mystical sensuality of his works.” The Choral was written for a three-manual organ and is nearly eight minutes in duration. Its grandeur approaches that of Franck’s  Trois Chorals but it is shorter and more compact. The melody appears to be original and not derived from an existing plainchant. Ibert’s Choral commences with a chordal passage marked “Andante religioso” in C-sharp minor (Example 1) and proceeds through a series of short homophonic passages, each interrupted by contrasting materials derived from the principal theme. Midway through two recitative-like phrases there is a series of interlocking five-note patterns, which soon climax at fortissimo through a winding set of melodic figures in both hands. A brief reprieve consisting of a four-note phrase repeated three times yields to a fugato on the principal theme in four voices (Example 2). The fugato increases in intensity without delay following the exposition and reaches its peak in a final fortissimo statement of the theme in the parallel major key of C-sharp (Example 3). 

The Choral slipped out of sight not long after publication by A. Ledent-Malay and was soon forgotten. Such seems to have been the fate of most works in Joubert’s massive collection. No information regarding the Choral’s first performance has survived. A performance of it was heard on May 29, 1952, at La Madeleine in Paris by organist Edouard Mignan and then no evidence of performance until the early 1990s, when this writer discovered the score at the Bibliothèque Nationale and began distributing copies to the Ibert family and various organists. With the encouragement of Jean-Claude Ibert, the composer’s son, Leduc republished it in 1999. It has since been recorded by John Scott Whiteley, Philippe Delacour, and John Kitchen. 

An effective piece with deep emotional feeling and grandeur, Ibert’s Choral recalls late nineteenth-century compositional techniques through short sectional passages. Its majestic coda brings the work to a triumphant close at fff in tribute to those whose lives had been lost defending their country.

 

Notes

1. «Mes doigts tentaient de terroriser ou de charmer selon l’action». In a letter from Jacques Ibert to José Bruyr, dated October 29, 1951. A copy of this letter is in the Ibert family archives.

2. Gérard Michel, liner notes, Jacques
Ibert: L’Œuvre pour Piano, Françoise Gobet, piano (long-playing record, Metropole 2599 016, 1979).

3. The Musette, Fugue, and Pièce Solennelle were published as Trois Pièces by Heugel in 1920. See Kit Stout’s article “Jacques Ibert,” The American Organist vol. 14, no. 5 (May 1980), 38–39, for more details about these works.

4. The collection is available online at IMSLP/Petrucci Music Library, imslp.org.

5. «Inutile d’ajouter que je demeure toujours très reconnaissant—et plus fier encore si possible—de votre si aimable et artistique collaboration aux Voix de la Douleur Chrétienne.» The letter also contained a congratulation upon Ibert’s receipt of the Prix de Rome, bestowed upon him only four days earlier. The author is grateful to Jean-Claude Ibert for supplying this information from family archives in a letter to the writer on December 28, 1998.

6. Gérard Michel, Jacques Ibert (Paris: Éditions Segher, 1967), 28–29.

7. Mignan (1884–1969) was organist at La Madeleine from 1935 until 1962. In addition to Ibert’s Choral, Fauré’s Requiem plus a number of short works were performed. The concert was devoted to sacred music and included performances by the Lutheran Chorale and the Orchestre de la Cité.

8. Jacques Ibert, Choral pour Orgue (Paris: Alphonse Leduc, 1999).

9. Whiteley’s recording is on the Priory label (PRCD 619); Delacour’s on the Fugatto label (FUG 009); and Kitchen’s on the Priory label (PRCD 858).

Larry Palmer

The 2012 inaugural meeting of the new Historical Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA), formed by the merger of the Southeastern Historical Keyboard Society (SEHKS, founded 1980) and its slightly younger sibling, the Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society (MHKS, organized 1984), was an historic event in itself. The late March gathering in Cincinnati included both the seventh iteration of the Jurow Harpsichord Playing Competition and the eighth occurrence of the International Aliénor Composition Competition, plus scores of scholarly presentations and short recitals, loosely organized into ten sessions, each with a general connecting theme.  

For my contribution to Session Seven (The Old Made New) I attempted to craft a title enigmatic enough that it might pique the curiosity of a few potential auditors, but with the higher goal of providing information about some of the earliest and relatively obscure “new” compositions for harpsichord from the early 20th-century. I hoped, as well, to underscore, at least by implication, the major stimulus for a continuing creation of new repertoire that has been provided by the Aliénor’s prizes, performances, and publications since its inception in 1980. 

 

Woodhouse plays Cecil Sharp

As early as July 1920, Violet Gordon Woodhouse, the most prominent and gifted of early 20th-century British harpsichordists, recorded three of folksong collector Cecil Sharp’s Country Dance Tunes. Thus Sharp’s 1911 piano versions of the tunes Newcastle, Heddon of Fawsley, and Step Back serve as the earliest “contemporary” music for harpsichord committed to disc.¹

These were followed, in 1922, by recorded performances of two more Cecil Sharp transcriptions, Bryhton Camp and the evocatively titled Gathering Peascods.² While the 1920 recordings were already available in digital format, courtesy of Pearl Records’ Violet Gordon Woodhouse compact disc,³ I had never heard the 1922 offerings. Peter Adamson, an avid collector of these earliest discs, assured me that he could provide the eponymous work listed in the title of this article. Both of us were surprised to find that Gathering Peascods was never issued in the United Kingdom, but Peter was able to send me some superior dubs from the original 1920 discs, as well as a few seconds of authentic 78-rpm needle scratching. Combining this acoustic noise with Sharp’s keyboard arrangement, quickly located online via Google search, made possible the restoration of Peascods to the roster of earliest recorded “contemporary” harpsichord literature. It is equally charming, though perhaps less historically informed, when performed without the ambient sound track. 

 

Thomé

New harpsichord music composed for the earliest Revival harpsichords⁴ actually predates any recording of the instrument: Francis Thomé’s Rigodon, opus 97, a pièce de claveçin, was written for the fleet-fingered French pianist Louis Diémer, and published in Paris by Henry Lemoine and Company in 1892.⁵

 

The first 20th-century harpsichord piece?

There are currently two contenders for “first place” in the 20th-century modern harpsichord composition sweepstakes. The first may be Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s English Suite, originally committed to paper in 1909 during his student years in Florence, then recreated in 1939 shortly after the Italian composer’s immigration to the United States. That version, sent to prominent harpsichordist Ralph Kirkpatrick in 1940, seems to have been ignored by the artist, but it was ultimately published by Mills Music in New York in 1962.⁶

A second contender (dare we call it a “co-first”?), which is, thus far, the earliest published 20th-century harpsichord work, is Henri Mulet’s tender and charming miniature Petit Lied. Mulet is most often remembered, if at all, for his ten Byzantine Sketches for Organ, a set that ends with the sometimes-popular toccata Tu es Petrus (Thou art the rock). Comprising a brief seventeen measures, Mulet’s “Little Song” is dedicated to fellow organist Albert Périlhou, who was characterized by his more famous contemporary Louis Vierne, as “a composer of the 18th century.” So perhaps this delicate, nostalgic work, published in 1910 “pour claveçin [ou piano]” was intended to pay homage to Périlhou’s antiquarian tendencies.⁷

 

Busoni

1916 saw the publication of Ferruccio Busoni’s 1915 Sonatina ad usum infantis Madeline M.* Americanae pro Clavicimbalo composita⁸—a strange, but ultimately satisfying keyboard work that, with some imaginative editing, is playable on a two-manual harpsichord, which one assumes the composer did, since he was also the proud owner of such a 1911 Dolmetsch-Chickering instrument.⁹   

 

Delius

Often described as “unplayable,” the very original Dance for Harpsichord (for piano) by Frederick Delius came into being in 1919, inspired by the artistry of Violet Gordon Woodhouse. Kirkpatrick included it in a unique program of 20th-century harpsichord music presented at the University of California, Berkeley in 1961¹⁰ and Igor Kipnis recorded it in 1976.¹¹ I have occasionally enjoyed playing Delius’s purple-plush harmonies in a shortened version arranged by Baltimore harpsichordist Joseph Stephens. Each time I play the work I find fewer notes to be necessary, and decide to omit more and more of them, often an approach that best serves these piano-centric harpsichord refugees from the early Revival years. Since Delius surely ranks among the better-known composers who attempted to write anything at all for the harpsichord, it seems worth the effort to forge an individual version that serves to bring this quite lovely piece to the public.

 

Grainger

Inspired by the recent anniversary year (2011) of the beloved eccentric Percy Grainger (he died in 1961), it seemed fitting to rework another of my own arrangements, that of his “Room-Music Tit-Bits,” the clog dance Handel in the Strand, particularly after coming across Grainger’s own mention of the harpsichord’s influence on his compositional career. In a letter to the pianist Harold Bauer, Grainger wrote:

 

. . . the music [of my] Kipling Settings . . . [is] an outcome of the influence emanating from the vocal-solo numbers-with-accompaniment-of-solo-instruments in Bach’s Matthew-Passion, as I heard it when a boy of 12, 13, or 14 in Frankfurt. These sounds (two flutes and harpsichord . . .) sounded so exquisite to my ears . . . that I became convinced that larger chamber music (from 8-25 performers) was, for me, an ideal background for single voices . . .¹²    

So why not present Grainger’s Handelian romp edited for one player, ten fingers, and two manuals? Grainger’s own arrangement (“dished-up for piano solo, March 25, 1930, [in] Denton, Texas” according to the composer’s annotation in the printed score) provides a good starting place.¹³

 

Persichetti and Powell

Two major solo works from the 1950s composed for the harpsichordist Fernando Valenti deserve more performances than they currently receive: Vincent Persichetti’s Sonata for Harpsichord (now known as that prolific composer’s Sonata No. One), still, to my ears, his most pleasing work for our instrument, and Mel Powell’s Recitative and Toccata Percossa—another wonderful work included on Kirkpatrick’s contemporary music disc.¹⁴

 

Duke Ellington

For aficionados of jazz, the 44 measures of Duke Ellington’s A Single Petal of a Rose comprise three manuscript pages now housed in the Paul Sacher Foundation (Basel, Switzerland), available only as a facsimile in Ule Troxler’s invaluable volume documenting the many commissions bestowed on contemporary composers by the wealthy Swiss harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer.¹⁵ About Ellington’s unique work, Mme. Vischer wrote to the composer late in 1965: 

 

Just on Christmas Eve I received your marvelous piece . . . I am very happy about your composition and I want to assure you of my greatest thanks. . . . could I ask you the favour to give me the manuscript with the dedication to my name as all other composers are doing for me, with a photo from you who always belong to my collection . . .¹⁶  

 

When Igor Kipnis asked whether I had any idea as to where he might find this score, I shared the citation information with him. Some years later he reciprocated by sending an arrangement made in collaboration with jazz great Dave Brubeck. A damper pedal would certainly make playing even this somewhat more idiomatic keyboard arrangement easier, but the gentle beauties of Ellington’s only “harpsichord” work deserve to find their place in our repertoire. In the spirit of jazz improvisation, I suggest adapting the written notes to fit one’s individual finger span, as well as assuming a free approach both to some of the notated rhythms and repeats, and not being afraid to toy with the tessitura by changing the octave of some notes in order to achieve a more lyrical legato line on our pedal-less instrument.

 

Prokofiev (for two)

In 1936 Sergey Prokofiev surprised the western musical world by forsaking Paris and returning to live out the rest of his days in his native Russia. One of his first Soviet musical projects was the composition of incidental music for a centenary production of Pushkin’s play Eugene Onegin. In this dramatic and colorful orchestral score a dream scene is integrated with the house party of the heroine, Tatyana. 

In his recent book, The People’s Artist, music historian Simon Morrison writes,

 

The party scene opens with the strains of a . . . polka emanating from a distant hall. Aberrant dance music represents aberrant events: much like Onegin himself, the dance music offends sensibility. It sounds wrong; it is a breach. Prokofiev scores the dance (No. 25) for two provincial, out-of-tune harpsichords, the invisible performers carelessly barreling through the five-measure phrases at an insane tempo—a comical comment on the hullabaloo that greets the arrival . . . of a pompous regimental commander. There ensues an enigmatic waltz (No. 26), which Prokofiev scores first for string quintet and then, in a jarring contrast, for the two harpsichords . . .¹⁷   

 

One wonders just how many provincial harpsichords there were in mid-1930s Russia, but this Polka from Eugene Onegin, played at a slightly more moderate pace, has served as a delightful encore for performances of Francis Poulenc’s Concert Champêtre when that enchanting work is performed as a duo with piano standing in for the orchestral parts, just as it was presented by Wanda Landowska and Poulenc in the very first, pre-premiere hearing of Poulenc’s outstanding score.¹⁸   

 

The Old Gray Mare, at last

Having fêted a pompous general with Prokofiev’s Polka, it is time to explain the reference to The Old Gray Mare. American composer and academic Douglas Moore composed a short variation set based on the popular folk tune to demonstrate the culminating amicable musical collaboration between the previously antagonistic harpsichord and piano, a duet that concludes the mid-
20th-century recording Said the Piano to the Harpsichord. This educational production has had a somewhat unique cultural significance as the medium through which quite a number of persons first encountered our plucked instrument. While Moore’s variation-finale remains unpublished, it is possible to transcribe the notes from the record, and thus regale live concert audiences with this charming entertainment for listeners “from three to ninety-plus.” 

Other musical examples utilized in this clever skit include a preludial movement, the mournful Le Gemisante from Jean-François Dandrieu’s 1èr Livre de Claveçin [1724]; the violently contrasting Military Polonaise in A Major, opus 40/1 by Fréderic Chopin, in which the piano demonstrates its preferred athletic and happy music and then goads the harpsichord into a ridiculous attempt at playing the same excerpt, sans pedal. That confrontation is followed by Jean-Philippe Rameau’s ever-popular Tambourin, which manages to sound nearly as ridiculous when the piano tries to show that it “can play your music better than you can play mine!”—an attempt heard to be futile when the harpsichord puts that notion to rest by playing it “the way it ought to sound.”

 

The 2012 Aliénor winners chosen by judges Tracy Richardson, David Schrader, and Alex Shapiro from some 70 submitted scores: Solo harpsichord (works required to emulate in some way the Mikrokosmos pieces by Béla Bartók): composers Ivan Božičevič (Microgrooves), Janine Johnson (Night Vision), Kent Holliday (Mikrokosmicals), Thomas Donahue (Four Iota Pieces), Mark Janello (Six Harpsichord Miniatures), and Glenn Spring (Bela Bagatelles). Vocal chamber music with one obbligato instrument and harpsichord: Jeremy Beck (Songs of Love & Remembrance), Ivan Božičevič (Aliénor Courante), and Asako Hirabayashi (Al que ingrate me deja).¹⁹ ν 

 

Notes

1. Jessica Douglas-Home, The Life and Loves of Violet Gordon Woodhouse (London: The Harvill Press, 1996). Discography (by Alan Vicat), p. 329. 

2. Ibid. Matrices issued in France with the catalogue number P484.

  3. Great Virtuosi of the Harpsichord, volume 3. Pearl GEMM CD 9242 (1996).

4. Three newly constructed two-manual harpsichords built by the piano firms Érard and Pleyel, and by the instrument restorer Louis Tomasini, were shown at the Paris Exposition of 1889, and heard in performances at the event. The modern harpsichord revival is often dated from that year.

5. See Larry Palmer, “Revival Relics” in Early Keyboard Journal V (1986–87), pp. 45–52, and Palmer, Harpsichord in America: A 20th-Century Revival (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989; paperback second edition, 1993), pp. 4–6; page six is a facsimile of the first page of Rigodon.

6. See Larry Palmer, “Mario Castelnuovo-Tedesco’s English Suite for Harpsichord at 100.” The Diapason, December 2009,
pp. 36–37.

7. See these articles in The Diapason: Donna M. Walters, “Henri Mulet: French organist-composer,” December 2008, pp. 26–29; Harpsichord News, August 2010, p. 11; and, for a complete facsimile of the original publication, the issue of January 2011,
p. 12. 

  8. Edition Breitkopf Nr. 4836 “for Piano Solo.”  

9. See Larry Palmer, “The Busoni Sonatina,” in The Diapason, September 1973, pp. 10–11; Palmer, Harpsichord in America: “Busoni and the Harpsichord,” pp. 25–26; the first harpsichord recording of this work is played by Larry Palmer on Musical Heritage Society disc LP 3222 (1975). A fine 2002 digital recording, Revolution for Cembalo (Hänssler Classic CD 98.503) features Japanese harpsichordist Sumina Arihashi playing the Busoni Sonatina, as well as Delius’s Dance, Thomé’s Rigodon, and other early revival works by Ravel, Massenet, Richard Strauss, and Alexandre Tansman.

10. The list of included composers is given in Palmer, Harpsichord in America,
p. 146. Kirkpatrick also recorded this program in 1961. 

11. “Bach Goes to Town,” Angel/EMI S-36095.

12. http://www.percygrainger.org/prog not5.htm (accessed 20 October 2011).

13. Published by G. Schirmer.

14. Persichetti’s ten sonatas for harpsichord are published by Elkan-Vogel, Inc., a subsidiary of the Theodore Presser Company, Bryn Mawr, PA 19010; the First Sonata, opus 52 (1951), was published in 1973. The Powell work remains unpublished.

15. Ule Troxler, Antoinette Vischer: Dokumente zu einem Leben für das Cembalo (Basel: Birkhäuser-Verlag, 1976). Published by Schott & Co. Ltd., London; U.S. reprint by G. Schirmer.

16. Ibid., pp. 99–100. 

17. Simon Morrison, The People’s Artist—Prokofiev’s Soviet Years (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009). The quotation is found on page 130. I assembled the two harpsichord parts by cutting and pasting them from the orchestral score of Eugene Onegin (his opus 71).  I am unaware of any other published edition.

18. Personally I find the balances for the Poulenc much better in duo performances than in live harpsichord and orchestra ones. Another interesting possibility, at least as demonstrated by a recording, may be heard on Oehms Classics compact disc OC 637, where harpsichordist Peter Kofler is partnered by organist Hansjörg Albrecht and percussionist Babette Haag in a compelling performance, recorded in 2009 in Munich.

19. For more information about Aliénor and its history, consult www.harpsichord-now.org.

 

2012 marks the 50th anniversary of harpsichord editor Larry Palmer’s first published writing in The Diapason: a brief article about Hugo Distler in the issue for November 1962. Since those graduate student days he has taught at St. Paul’s College and Norfolk State and Southern Methodist Universities, served as President of SEHKS from 2004–2008, and is a continuing member of the advisory board for Aliénor. At the Cincinnati gathering in addition to “Gathering Peascods” he played Glenn Spring’s Bela Bagatelles at the Awards recital and chaired the Sunday session devoted to “Swingtime—The Mitch Miller Showdown.” 

Jonathan B. Hall

Jonathan B. Hall, FAGO, ChM, is the author of Calvin Hampton: A Musician Without Borders and of many articles on the organ and sacred music. He is past dean of the Brooklyn AGO chapter, director of music at Central Presbyterian Church, Montclair, New Jersey, and teaches music theory at the Steinhardt School of New York University.

The debate over the authenticity of BWV 565, the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, has continued for thirty years. This article summarizes and critiques key points of that debate, taking the position that J. S. Bach is not the composer. A candidate composer is presented, Cornelius Heinrich Dretzel of Nuremberg (1697–1775). A stylistic comparison of his Divertimento Armonico to BWV565 reveals a very high level of congruity, arguing for his authorship.

 

The problem

For about thirty years, the question of the authorship of BWV 565—the famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, long attributed to J. S. Bach—has been raised civilly but persistently. Broached in 1981 by Peter Williams,¹ the question has spawned a variety of imaginative answers: that the piece is definitely by Bach, from his earliest youth;² that it is possibly a transcribed violin work;³ that it is certainly a transcribed violin work;⁴ that it may have been intended for five-string ‘cello;⁵ or even better, for lute;⁶ or that it may have been written for harpsichord;⁷ that it may have been written by Kellner;⁸ that we may, one day, figure out who wrote it;⁹ and so forth. Everyone agrees that the piece is wonderful. While all of these are interesting, none is convincing, save the last, which admits no argument.

The young-Bach or pre-Weimar theory is based, in essence, upon the multipartite nature of the piece, its extensive use of passagework, and its perceived emotionalism; yet the open-ended, improvisatory structure is not clearly akin to the five-part präludia of Buxtehude or his ilk. It is also too distinctive, too fluently assured, to be the early effort of a student, even a brilliant one. One also notes the clear Italian influence in harmony and style, the absence of internal sectional cadences, and the simplicity of the counterpoint: all atypical of North German practice. (Surely, given the work’s famous final cadence, a young Bach would have noticed opportunities for internal cadences as well.)

Also, we have a specimen of Bach’s youthful writing, his Capriccio sopra la lontananza del suo fratello dilettissimo, BWV 992; the keyboard idiom and harmonic language are both dissimilar to those of 565, the fugal writing in particular. We possess as well a number of chromatic, high-strung, ‘Arnstadt’ chorale settings, such as BWV 715; very possibly the infamous variationes so displeasing to the Arnstadt consistory in 1706.¹⁰ One cannot realistically imagine their composition after a very early stage, certainly not as teaching pieces. In any case, they are a far cry from the fluid idiom and transparent harmonies of 565, even if they display a predilection for fully diminished harmonies. Their harmonic language and keyboard idiom are too opaque, and for all their off-putting audacity lack anything like the genuine dramatic import of 565.

It would seem, in any case, that Bach’s formation as an organist is more the work of north German composers such as Böhm and Buxtehude, not to mention the transplanted Bohemian Johann Kuhnau, his predecessor in Leipzig. Bach’s early fascination with (and perhaps moonlight copying of) works like the Fiori Musicali would not have exposed him to the seconda prattica represented in 565. The Toccata and Fugue is assigned to Bach’s teenage years, ultimately, because it is least out of place there. 

Christoph Wolff states firmly that 565 is indeed an early work of Bach; he relates it to Forkel’s description of the undisciplined enthusiasm of Bach’s earliest work.¹¹ However, for this writer, Forkel’s description does not suit the Toccata and Fugue, though it applies well to the chorales just mentioned. One notes again the economy of the toccata and the fluency of the fugue, which strikes one as the work not of immature genius but of mature ingenuity—neither undisciplined nor early. Like Gandalf, it arrives (complete with magical fireworks!) neither early nor late, but precisely when it means to.

As to the work’s purported violinistic roots, due note is taken of the bariolage technique that is emulated in much of the work, including the fugue subject; but no candidate composer comes forth, nor any evidence for the conjectured A-minor original. Williams’s seminal article rests, at least in part, on a reversal of the burden of proof: the work cannot be proven to be for the organ.¹² The balance of his argument relies on the work’s evocation of string idiom, and thus the comparative ease with which the work may be paraphrased on violin—albeit transposed and thinned out!

Johann Paul von Westhoff is mentioned, even though his music bears no trenchant similarity to the work in question. He is chiefly useful as an example of ending a violin piece with an open fifth, a common enough occurrence and one which, here, helps beg the question of the inconvenient final minor chord. (Also avoided in this violin ‘reconstruction’ is the poor 4–1 resolution in the bass line in the final cadence in the organ work—it simply disappears, replaced by a leading tone that resolves quite properly.) Meanwhile, a touchier question—why a pedal solo in the middle of a violin piece?—is not raised, because it cannot be answered. What else could that passage be? What other raison d’être can it have, how can it even avoid risibility, if it is not there to display pedaliter pyrotechnics?

In several recent studies, Williams is willing to leave the question open. In the earlier, he mentions in particular the cello theory; in the later, he hews to agnosticism.¹³ Here and elsewhere, he remains undecided whether the work is a transcription, or by someone else.¹⁴

In another article, Bruce Fox-Lefriche states with finality that 565 was written for violin solo.¹⁵ No choice is offered: the essay asserts that there is “no doubt” that the piece cannot have been written either by Bach or for the organ, because it is “unidiomatic” and “far too clumsy.”¹⁶ (In fact, it is neither; it is thoroughly idiomatic to the organ, and quite fluid throughout.) It would seem evident that any attempt to ‘reconstruct’ a violin ‘original’ is a prima facie impossibility, because there is nothing to reconstruct it from. Yet the magazine offers two excerpts from his violin arrangement, the editor (not the author) claiming outrageously that it was “reconstructed” from “an 18th-century manuscript that is also the basis of the organ work”¹⁷ (emphasis mine). This “basis” is, of course, Ringk’s manuscript of the organ work.

To his credit, Fox-Lefriche recognizes the problems with the early-Bach theory, for some of the same stylistic reasons I shall mention below. He rightly notes the unisons and solos, the odd abruptness of the arpeggio in bar 3, the long stretches of unvaried harmony, and the apparent disregard of basic rules—all signally foreign to Bach’s style.¹⁸ I believe he is certainly correct when he says that “Bach had nothing whatsoever to do with the piece, either for violin or for organ,”¹⁹ at least insofar as authorship is concerned.

Similar problems accrue to the ‘cello and lute theories. Both take note of idioms familiar to their instruments of choice, and wish to claim the work as their own. However, neither of these theories is presented dogmatically. (Mark Argent, in particular, advances the ‘cello hypothesis with welcome caution.) Certainly, this writer has no trouble whatsoever with transcriptions or arrangements of the work: nay, the more the merrier: come fiddle, come xylophone. But they must be acknowledged as transcriptions or arrangements, and never as paths to an imagined Urtext.

The harpsichord theory cannot explain the sustained chords over a prolonged tonic pedal in bar 3 of the toccata; or the sustained and untrillable dominant pedal tone in the left hand during the fugue (bars 105 and following); or the adagissimo section towards the end. All of these depend on the unique sustaining power of the organ; I cannot imagine any application of style brisé that could do them justice. (And again: why a pedal solo? The piece is equally unsuited to a pedal harpsichord.)

I find that the piece is conceived in and saturated in organ idiom, so that no degree of arrangement or copyist intervention can be conjured to account for the received text. This idiom does not demonstrate anything more than stylish feints at string technique. Its antinomian pretensions, such as the long unisons, “trivial” part writing, ambient plagality and final chords, must be dealt with; they cannot be solved by subtracting the pipe organ from the equation. In fact, the organ is not the source of discomfort, but rather Bach himself.

As far as a different organ composer is concerned, 565 is closer to Kellner’s style than to Bach’s, but it is also not Kellner’s style. This conjecture, advanced by David Humphreys, cites two examples of Kellner’s organ writing.²⁰ They are striking, displaying both facility and drama. Still, they do not altogether convince, because the style, though facile and dramatic, is not convincingly similar to that of 565. Still, it is easy to see the attraction of this hypothesis, especially if a closer match is not forthcoming. Meanwhile, a computer-based, quantitative study by van Kranenburg (2007) is fittingly inconclusive; he will not award the piece to either Kellner or Bach.²¹

The exhaustive study on the authenticity of 565, by Rolf Dietrich Claus, concludes that the piece is not by Bach. This conclusion comes after considering the transmission of sources, the style and form of the work, and in short every aspect of the problem imaginable. It is a fascinating book, even though Claus does not propose a likely composer. He does, however, conclude that the chances of finding one are “not bad.”²²

The question thus remains open. On the one hand, serious doubt has been growing regarding Bach’s authorship, and there are strong reasons both to share it and to decide in the negative. The structural and stylistic reasons are many: the extensive use of octaves is unheard of in the free works, as are the harmonies of the final cadence; the counterpoint in the fugue is light and the voice-leading inconsistent. The subdominant answer, though logical and necessary, is atypical, and Bach nowhere (else) uses a theme of this nature. The work is also not found in autograph, but only in the hand of Johannes Ringk, via Kellner (would he really not claim authorship?); and so on. But on the other hand, if the question has gained traction, a proposed answer has not.

 

Cornelius Heinrich Dretzel

Recently, in studying some of the re-attributed keyboard works in the Bach catalogue, I encountered BWV 897, a Prelude and Fugue in A Minor. The prelude is now attributed to Cornelius
Heinrich Dretzel (1697–1775), an organist highly respected in his native Nuremberg and a student of Bach.²³ I was forcefully struck by clear parallels to 565, in particular the Toccata, and investigated the piece more closely. 

Cornelius Heinrich Dretzel came from a long line of musicians in his native city of Nuremberg. The most famous member of the family was his forebear Valentin (1578–1658). He almost certainly studied with J. S. Bach around the end of the latter’s time in Weimar, probably in 1716–1717. He is mentioned twice in the Bach-Dokumente as a student of Bach. In one of these passages, C. D. F. Schubart writes:

 

In Nuremberg . . . in the churches I heard students of the German Arion, the immortal Sebastian Bach, which made me feel in the first place how rare a good organist is. The names of Drezel, Bachhelbel, Löffeloth, Agrell, assuredly deserve more thanks and fame than the annals of music history have accorded them.²⁴

Dretzel’s career was discussed at length by Georg A. Will in 1802, who ended with this impassioned tribute:

 

[He is] recognized as one of the greatest virtuosos of his time in performance and composition, so that his name and fame are very great even outside his fatherland. His compositions, especially in church music, will forever be accounted as treasures.²⁵

The article in MGG (which calls him Georg) also quotes Schubart’s commentary on him:

 

. . . Drexel, a student of the great Sebastian Bach and indeed one of his best. He played the organ with great force, and especially understood registration, and composed with spirit for his instrument . . . he chose fugue themes for their songfulness, and handled them gracefully throughout . . . he understood counterpoint thoroughly . . . ²⁶

 

Dretzel served in the most famous churches of his native city, his career culminating in the prime position, that of St. Sebald. In two churches, St. Egidius and St. Sebald, he followed Wilhelm Hieronymous Pachelbel, scion of another family of Nuremberg musicians and prime representatives of the so-called Nuremberg School of organists. Nuremberg itself needs no introduction as a city devoted, not only to music, but to the arts of rhetoric and singing as well. Known for centuries as a cultural and commercial crossroads, its culture remains cosmopolitan, with an Italian influence, and its churches are both Lutheran and Catholic. Dretzel worked for churches of both confessions during his long career.

C. H. Dretzel died on May 7, 1775, and it is needless to add that his name and fame have not endured, even within his fatherland. Biographical entries shorten in every successive encyclopedia. In 1883, Fétis called him an ‘organiste habile,’ but had little else to say, even approximating his birth year.²⁷ Dretzel is forgotten today, probably because he published so little music. For years, he was remembered chiefly as the editor of a large collection of hymns, Des evangelischen Zions musicalische Harmonie.²⁸ Another composition, a brief alla breve, was published in Christoph Gottlieb von Murr’s magazine Der Zufriedene in March, 1763.²⁹ (Murr was also a collector of Bach manuscripts.) A divertimento for keyboard was sometimes mentioned but believed lost.

Then, in 1969, the harpsichordist and scholar Isolde Ahlgrimm published an article dealing with a unique score in the National Széchényi Library in Budapest.³⁰ The work turned out to be Dretzel’s lost keyboard work, titled both Divertimento Armonico and Harmonische Ergözung³¹ [sic]. Its catalog number is Z 41.618; the score once belonged to Franz Joseph Haydn, and came to the library through the Esterházy family. The bilingual title page, and use of the word Concerto/Concert, led Ahlgrimm to suspect publication after Bach’s Italian Concerto in 1735. (The title page may, if anything, refer to the Musikalische Ergötzung, published in 1695 by the most famous Nuremberger organist, Johann Pachelbel.) The work is only certainly datable to between 1719 and 1743, when Dretzel (as he states on the title page) was organist of St. Egidius.³²

The second of the Divertimento’s three movements, titled adagiosissimo in the original and molto adagio in Schmieder, was the same piece as BWV 897.1. Ahlgrimm’s conclusion is that Dretzel did not appropriate the prelude from Bach, but composed it himself; and she ascribes “glory” to Dretzel for having written a work worthy of being attributed to Bach. The reader is advised to make a mental note of this last point: Dretzel has fooled us before.

On examining this readily available Dretzel piece, BWV 897.1, I was struck by features I associate with BWV 565, and with no other piece ascribed to Bach, or to anyone else. The feeling grew swiftly that this unlikely composer is the likeliest, by far, to have composed the famous work in question. Certainly, he offers us a far closer stylistic match than those previously suggested. Ahlgrimm is right in deducting this prelude from the Bach corpus. I suggest that, once deducted, it takes 565 with it.

The feeling continued to grow upon examining the balance of the Divertimento; first, the excerpts in the Ahlgrimm article, and then a digital scan of the entire composition, provided by the staff of the National Széchényi Library. If there is any influence at all from Bach’s Italian Concerto, it is limited to the linguistic affectations of the title page—which are matched by a bilingual preface to the Cortesissimo Lettore/Geneigter Leser.³³ (Bach uses the phrase Gemüths-Ergötzung in his subtitle as well.) This preface refers to the score as “this first attempt” in publication (questa prima prova/dieser erste Versuch). Turning to the score, which is elegantly engraved, one notices first that the right-hand part is written in soprano clef throughout—like Ringk’s manuscript of 565 and, according to Russell Stinson, interesting although not a definitive indicator of date of composition.³⁴ The suggested time frame would include the year of Dretzel’s study in Weimar, and is also consistent with his identification of the Divertimento as his “prima prova.” Perhaps it also argues for an earlier, rather than later, date for the composition of 565; Wolff notes other “archaic” features in Ringk’s manuscript.³⁵

The Divertimento Armonico consists of three movements: allegro, adagiosissimo [sic], and fuga. All three display significant stylistic congruence and closely parallel passages—one might say intertextuality—with 565. The most compelling resemblances come in the second and third movements, which form an adagio-fuga pair quite like 565 itself. Meanwhile, the difference in medium—organ versus harpsichord—is not particularly important in this context, as certain elements of keyboard idiom and many of style easily cross over.

 

Points of similarity 

I believe that noting points of similarity between the two pieces—making concrete comparisons—is an appropriate method of demonstration. After all, it is the basis of Humphrey’s article, cited above; and it is a straightforward way to synthesize a view both of the unfamiliar Divertimento, and the perhaps too-familiar 565.

I cannot offer a theory of provenance; I do not know how the manuscript came to Kellner, an indefatigable collector and traveler. Possibly von Murr, also a collector, was involved. Possibly the work was an early thunderbolt. Perhaps it postdates the Divertimento (on stylistic grounds, I believe this is likelier). We know we have no autograph of 565, but only a copied text that has engendered perplexity. The evidence for my thesis is drawn from the two works in question; with the additional notandum that all other known circumstances of time and place are, at least, not opposed to my thesis. In other words, I am aware of no specific evidence to the contrary of my idea, no adverse circumstances to account for; frankly, this is an advantage over the other arguments heretofore adduced. I believe that the composer of the Divertimento Armonico is also the composer of 565.

1. The opening of the Divertimento is quite unlike anything Bach ever wrote, in that the first phrase is repeated verbatim. Bach always varies his antecedent and consequent phrases, either harmonically or melodically. Never—even once, as far as I can see—does he simply say the same thing twice. It is still odder to find the second of three repetitions varied by diminution. [Example 1] It is needless to adduce examples of Bach’s own practice. I might mention the opening of the Italian Concerto, the aforementioned Capriccio, the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue, among many others for examples of balanced, but not simply reiterated, phrase structure.

2. Throughout this first movement Dretzel shows a strong predilection for simple harmonizations in thirds and sixths; he will also do this in the fugue. Also, he often makes use of solo passages, including one that is virtually identical to an episode in the fugue of 565. [Examples 2, 3, and 4] Commentators have long used words like “trivial” to describe the similar harmonizations found in 565/ii.

3. The second movement, remarkably, is marked adagiosissimo. This peculiar word is best known to organists from the conclusion of BWV 622, “O Mensch, bewein,” in Orgelbüchlein. The term is also found at the third movement of Bach’s early Capriccio. MGG takes note of this occurrence by following it with an exclamation point in parentheses.³⁶ This strange tempo designation occurs in early Bach, somewhat less-early Bach,
C. H. Dretzel, and (to my knowledge) nowhere else.

4. Triple gestures: three mordents in 565, three large, full chords in adagiosissimo. In both cases, the commanding opening triplicate is followed by repetitious passagework and arpeggiation; and tension is introduced with a dominant harmony over a tonic bass. Basic to the style of both is a penchant for nearly obsessive, non-sequential, naive repetitions of a simple idea: compare bars 4 ff. in 565, toccata. [Example 5]

5. Frequent use of large chords of a widely varying number of notes. In Dretzel, up to ten notes in a chord (adagiosissimo, measure 16). In the Toccata, chordal structures of five through nine notes. Where else does Bach simply “lay on” in the manner found in the Toccata—regardless of instrument? (He certainly minds his voice-leading in the Toccata in F, in the French Overture, and in the Italian Concerto.) In Bach, a particularly thick sonority generally signals a beginning or ending, like the gong in a gamelan; in general, one can account for all voice parts. Both the Divertimento and 565 demur from the principle that neatness counts. The allegro and fuga have passages where, for dramatic purposes, handfuls of notes are called for—frequently set off with fermate. A prominent feature of the Divertimento is its frequent use of these, both as prolongations of chords and rests, and to mark the end of movements. Williams notes the presence of these in the Ringk ms. as raising questions of authenticity.³⁷

It is true that thick sonorities of different size are found in the Chromatic Fantasy and Fugue. However, that is virtually the sole similarity between the two pieces (see previous heading), and an uncommonly thick texture is more justifiable in harpsichord than in organ performance.

In these two examples, the “drama” chord is also in the third inversion. Compare the Toccata, bar 21. (This device occurs quite a bit more frequently in the Divertimento than it does in 565.) [Examples 6 and 7]

6. In both the Divertimento and 565, there is a marked preference for diminished harmonies; for diminished harmonies followed by their simple dominant-seventh versions; for third-inversion dominant harmonies, presented emphatically for rhetorical purposes; and for dominant harmonies over a tonic pedal or bass note.

7. There is a very strong resemblance between a run of diminished triplets in adagiosissimo, measure 6–7, and those in the Toccata, measure 22 ff. The figuration is for all practical purposes identical; in the Toccata, it is “harmonized” in two voices, but the pattern is virtually the same, including the occasional reversing of direction. [Example 8]

8. Several of the above examples also show Dretzel’s pervasive use of bariolage: string idiom as a basic style feature. In both works, the fugue subject is nothing but bariolage (but see also Toccata, 12 ff.) The bariolage style is never quite so expressly invoked in the Bach canon (nor the public quite so overtly courted.)

The theme of the fugue, and its extremely simple handling (Example 3), may well strike the reader as reminiscent of the famous theme in D minor. Ahlgrimm’s commentary on the Divertimento fugue is resonant:

 

One sees . . . that Dretzel’s music is composed after the taste of his day, aimed chiefly at the amateur; Italian influence is clearly discernible . . . It seems that Dretzel strove to show that a fugue can be accessible and joyous, so that it is not just for the amusement of the connoisseur.³⁸

Note that the Divertimento fugue begins with an upward arpeggio, tonic to tonic. This device, though not particularly interesting in itself, allows for a real answer in the dominant. This is essential in order to preserve the punchiness of the repetitions of the fifth scale degree. In 565, however, the fugue subject begins directly on 5, a dramatic and effective choice, which also requires an unusual solution if it is to be maintained. Hence, the highly unusual subdominant solution. (This subdominant argument is appropriately echoed in the final plagal cadence.)

On the grounds that the fugue of 565 dramatically dispenses with the setup needed for a real answer, I incline to the theory that Dretzel composed it later than his Divertimento. I might adduce other stylistic grounds for my inclination, including the tightness of the Toccata versus the diffuse nature of the adagiosissimo; as well as the greater variety of treatment in the D-minor Fugue. Of course, the piece could have been a “bolt from the blue,” composed in a fit of inspiration conferred by the ambience of Weimar and the proximity of Bach.

9. The use of a surprising cadence to set up a virtuosic passage or especially a coda: Dretzel, 21; Fugue, aforementioned recitativo, and the link from adagiosissimo to presto, 132–133. In both situations—one following immediately after another—an unexpected resolution hangs in the air, then dissolves into a shower of notes. [Example 9]

10. Final cadences. The cadence ending the adagiosissimo cannot simply be called a Phrygian or “Corelli” cadence, because the leading tone occurs, and there is a strong tritonic resolution in context of a “French Sixth” sonority. Nothing in the literature, of course, is quite comparable to the cadence of the fugue of 565. [Example 10]

One could, of course, continue to argue that 565 is a very unusual work by Bach, or accept (as I do) that it is a characteristic specimen of Dretzel. I do not think it is an immature work by a great composer, but rather a mature work by a very good composer.

There are some specific issues with 565 that raise further doubt. One is the troubling first episode in the fugue—measures 34–39—uniquely atypical of Bach in its strangely-approached unisons and fifths, and the frequent noticeable fourths, fifths, and octaves. [Example 11]

Dretzel is similarly unconcerned when an empty unison or fifth, or a perfect fourth, falls on a strong beat. Refer to Example 3 for an example. There is also the following passage in the allegro. [Example 12]

Also, there are rules concerning resolution of a tritone, and these are egregiously broken by the C–G movement in the pedal in measure 140–141. This is the problem alluded to earlier that “disappears” in the Williams violin arrangement. Note also the inconsistent number of voices and the questionable movement in the alto from B-flat to C-sharp. [Example 13]

These minor solecisms are unlikely to trouble the modern ear, but they are telling. I believe we are dealing with a composer to whom the grand gesture matters more than the fine points. Bach never trades one of these off for the other; he need not.

The Fugue of 565 is of tighter construction than its Toccata, but its peculiarities have also long been noted. Among these are a theme that prominently features the fifth scale degree; a solo annunciation of the theme in the pedal in the middle of the piece; a statement of the theme in the subtonic minor key; and in general the driven, almost monomaniacal character found throughout. Meanwhile, there are no signs of advanced counterpoint, such as stretto, augmentation, or the like. Where Bach is inclined to pile on artifice as he reaches a conclusion, this piece devolves into passagework, linking it back to the toccata.³⁹ (The work, overall, seems to bear the hallmark of the classic threefold rhetorical plan of introitus, centrum, and exitus.) All of these features—save the pedal solo!—are to be found in the third movement of the Divertimento. The theme is always harmonized in thirds and sixths; the counterpoint is minimal; the episodes are either a solo line or a simple harmonic sequence. As to strange keys, the fuga of the Divertimento wanders (albeit very briefly) into B-flat minor.

 

Conclusion, performance notes

I alluded earlier to Williams’ recent
J. S. Bach: A Life in Music. His comments on 565 hit a double bull’s-eye with the Divertimento: he points to “a few rhetorical gestures, thin harmonies, simple shape, much repetition and virtually no counterpoint.”⁴⁰ This “thin” work also evokes universal delight; people who know nothing else about the organ know and thoroughly enjoy that piece. It must be admitted that this is not the usual reaction to the magnificently intelligent and often arcane Bach.

In a review of Williams’s The Life of Bach, Jan-Piet Knijff speaks for many when he asks “ . . . who on earth could have been the composer?”⁴¹ It is precisely because this question is daunting—who on earth could have been the composer?—that an answer is delayed. We have had to choose: to remain faithful to an unhappy marriage, or to start all over again in the treacherous world of dating. Finding a likely candidate is as much a matter of good luck as anything else.

Still, we knew what we were looking for. We sought a German composer with some Italian blood, strong technique, and a recognizable, facile voice; someone from a rhetorical community other than the North German. We sought someone who composed to a popular, gentlemanly taste; no fatiguing artifice of counterpoint, please, and arresting cadences are a plus. We needed someone who is not Bach: early Bach, late Bach, or Bach with a few bits left over. We needed someone who was a lesser and different composer, and probably younger; possessing an audience, an organ bench of note, and a finished identity in his own right. The work is neither early nor late; it is right on schedule. Whose schedule is the only question.

Cornelius Heinrich Dretzel fills these criteria remarkably neatly, and what we possess of his music is cut from the very same cloth as 565. Once we see the possibility that a now-forgotten organist from Nuremberg is the likely composer, the pieces show a striking inclination to fall into place. Perhaps all that stands in the way is our own surprise.

A note on performance. If 565 is southern German in origin, as I believe it is, it may best be realized with less grandeur and Angst than has been typical. One might seek smaller and lighter South-German organs; not a “little village church in Saxony” per Williams,⁴² but an exquisite city church in Bavaria, with a silver-toned organ, few reeds, and an Italian inflection. Playing the Toccata and Fugue in a dignified, lyrical, and fluent way lightens and clarifies the piece in a way that works for this writer.⁴³ Fox-Lafriche is on the right track when he argues for the piece’s “brilliance, lightness, intimacy, and grace.”⁴⁴

It may help to visualize some of the more remarkable organ cases from this region: gleaming in white rococo splendor, toothsome as a dessert; but offering a modest, simple, clear, tonal design. Like 565, these organs make a magnificent show but contain surprisingly few ingredients—the equivalent of egg whites and sugar. Dessert, in fact, is probably the perfect gustatory metaphor for the composition in question.

If one is prepared to entertain the idea that a once-famous and now-forgotten composer wrote the greatest “hit” the organ has ever known, a door opens to a more egalitarian, less Bach-centric view of German organ culture. We might examine a successful popular approach to the instrument and the musical public that is not entirely attributable to a learned Bach, or to the Bach of hagiography. Pierre Boulez reminds us: “History is not a well-oiled machine that advances smoothly along rails composed of masterpieces . . . ”⁴⁵ The masterpieces themselves, and the posthumous careers of their creators, do not always advance smoothly on rails of due attribution.

Perhaps C. H. Dretzel was, in popular terms, a “one-hit wonder.” Perhaps more of his compositions await rediscovery. I am left wondering about what we may have lost. In any case, it could well be that Nuremberg is home to another, and marvelously unanticipated, Preislied. ν

 

*The author thanks the Germanisches National Museum, Nuremberg, as well as the Országos Széchényi Könyvtár, Budapest, for their prompt and professional assistance. Otto Krämer of Straelen and Leonardo Ciampa of Boston assisted with German and Italian languages. Bill Powers assisted with research.

 

Notes

1. Peter Williams, “BWV 565: A Toccata in D Minor for Organ by J. S. Bach?” Early Music (July 1981), 330–337.

2. Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York:
W. W. Norton, 2000), 169. “Bach’s Toccata in D Minor and the Issue of Its Authenticity,” Perspectives in Organ Playing and Musical Interpretation (New Ulm, MN: Heinrich Fleischer Festschrift Committee, Martin Luther College, for the Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde, 2002), 85–107.

3. Williams, “BWV 565.”

4. Bruce Fox-Lefriche, “The Greatest Violin Sonata that J. S. Bach Never Wrote,” Strings (October 2004), 44–55.

5. Mark Argent, “Stringing Along,” The Musical Times, 141/1872 (Autumn 2000), 16–20, 22–23. (Also available as “J. S. Bach’s Toccata and Fugue in D Minor (BWV 565) Revisited,” from www.markargent.com.)

6. Eric Lewin Altschuler, “Were Bach’s Toccata and Fugue BWV 565 and the Ciacona from BWV 1004 Lute Pieces?” The Musical Times (Winter 2005), 77–86.

7. Bernhard Billeter, “Bachs Toccata und Fuge d-moll für Orgel BWV 565: ein Cembalowerk?” Die Musikforschung 50/1 (1997), 77–80.

8. David Humphreys, “The D Minor Toccata BWV 565,” Early Music 10/2 (April 1982), 216–217.

9. Rolf Dietrich Claus, Zur Echtheit von Toccata und Fugue d-moll BWV 565 (Cologne: Verlag Dohr, 1998), 123.

10. Peter Williams, The Organ Music of J. S. Bach (Cambridge University Press, 2003), 454.

11. Wolff, Learned Musician and Perspectives on Organ Playing.

12. Williams, “BWV 565,” 332.

13. Peter Williams, The Life of Bach, “Musical Lives” series (Cambridge, 2004), footnote 11, 161. J. S. Bach: A Life in Music (Cambridge, 2007), 82.

14. William, Organ Music of Bach, 155 ff.

15. Fox-Lefriche, “Greatest Violin Sonata,” 53.

16. Ibid., 53.

17. Note by Elisa M. Welch, Fox-Lefriche, “Greatest Violin Sonata,” 54.

18. Fox-Lafriche, “Greatest Violin Sonata,” 50.

19. Ibid., 53.

20. Humphreys, “D Minor Toccata.”

21. Peter van Kranenburg, “On Measuring Musical Style: The Case of Some Disputed Organ Fugues in the J. S. Bach (BWV) Catalog.” Online, author-preferred version via author’s website, http://www.lodebar.nl/pvk/. Originally published as “Assessing Disputed Attributions for Organ Fugues in the J. S. Bach (BWV) Catalog,” Computing in Musicology 15 (2007–9).

22. Claus, Zur Echtheit.

23. There are several references to Dretzel in connection with Bach in Bach-Dokumente (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1972), volume 3, and in other sources, albeit displaying variants of his name. Dretzel is also usually included in lists of Bach’s students during the latter’s final year at Weimar.

24. Christian Friedrich Daniel Schubart, “Bach-Schüler in Nürnberg,” Bach-Dokumente, vol. 3, article 837, 330.

25. Georg Andreas Will, Nürnbergisches Gelehrte-Lexicon, ed. Christian C. Nopitsch (Altdorf, 1802), 251–252.

26. Schubart, Ideen zu einer Ästhetik, 1806, quoted in Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 2001), Personenteil 5, 1411. See also Bach-Dokumente (Kassel: Bärenreiter, 1972), volume 3, article 903a, 411. Schubart refers to Dretzel as ‘Drexel,’ leading some to confuse him with the Drexel who was organist in Augsburg–even though this man was born in 1758.

27. F-J Fétis, Biographie universelle des musiciens (Paris, 1883), 58. He can only give Dretzel’s birth as “au commencement du dix-huitième siècle.”

28. See, inter alia, Johann Georg Meusel, Lexicon der vom Jahr 1750 bis 1800 verstorbenen teutschen Schriftsteller (Leipzig, 1803), 426–427.

29. The final page of the March 17, 1763 issue of this little magazine contains a short piece called “Alla Breve dal S^re. D.” It is a light, forgettable work in two voices; even here, though, elements of style such as facile dialogue and perfect intervals on strong beats can be seen.

30. Isolde Ahlgrimm, “Cornelius Heinrich Dretzel, der Autor des J. S. Bach
zugeschribenen Klavierwerkes BWV 897,” Bach-Jahrbuch 1969, 67–77.

31. Ergötzung: from ergötzen, to regale or feast (someone).

32. I am grateful to the eminent Bach scholar Daniel Melamed of Indiana University for his feedback on my research. In particular, he has pointed out a number of occurrences of the word Ergötzung in musical publications of this period. Its use seems to be linked to the Liebhaber side of the Kenner/Liebhaber divide: indicating a piece written for general enjoyment, rather than for the delectation of the connoisseur.

33. It is also true that the allegro movement uses a ritornello form, and thus is to that extent superficially similar to the first movement of the Italian Concerto.

34. Russell Stinson, “Toward a Chronology of Bach’s Instrumental Music: Observations on Three Keyboard Works,” Journal of Musicology, Volume 7, Number 4 (Autumn 1989), 443.

35. Christoph Wolff, “Bach’s Toccata in D Minor and the Issue of Its Authenticity,” Perspectives in Organ Playing and Musical Interpretation (New Ulm, MN: Heinrich Fleischer Festschrift Committee, Martin Luther College, for the Gesellschaft der Orgelfreunde, 2002), 90.

36. Die Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart (MGG), Personenteil 5, 1411.

37. Williams, Organ Music of Bach, 155.

38. Ahlgrimm, Bach-Jahrbuch, 72, 73, translated by the author.

39. It is true that Bach’s youthful work often places passagework at the end of a fugue; those works, however, invariably display hallmarks of North German style and less polish.

40. Williams, J. S. Bach: A Life in Music, 82. 

41. Jan-Piet Knijff, review of The Life of Bach, Bach Notes, number 3 (spring 2005), 8. 

42. Williams, “BWV 565,” 330.

43. In this connection, it is useful to mention that the issue of short bottom octaves (without low C-sharp) would not have come up, in particular at the Egidienkirche, which was rebuilt around the time Dretzel took up his post there, succeeding the younger Pachelbel.

44. Fox-Lafriche, “Greatest Violin Sonata,” 53.

45. Pierre Boulez, “Aesthetics and the Fetishists,” Orientations, tr. Martin Cooper (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1986), 35.

 

 

Yves Rechsteiner

Yves Rechsteiner studied organ and harpsichord in Geneva and specialized in fortepiano and basso continuo at the Schola Cantorum of Basel. A prizewinner in several international competitions, including Geneva, Prague, and Bruges, he was appointed basso continuo teacher and head of the early music department at the Conservatoire Supérieur of Lyon in 1995. He has recorded various projects involving a transcription process: Bach on pedal harpsichord in 2002, Rameau in 2010 (awarded “Diapason d’or”) and Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique on the Puget organ of la Dalbade in Toulouse in 2013. Rechsteiner has founded a duo with percussionist H. C. Caget and developed further arrangement of Frank Zappa’s music to rock progressive music including an organ version of Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. He is the artistic director of the Festival Toulouse les Orgues, France.

Since the Renaissance, keyboard repertoire has included pieces originally written for other instruments. Beginning in the nineteenth century, the transcription became a genre of its own. Arrangements for organ have been popular since the nineteenth century, and they belonged to the virtuoso’s repertoire. From Edwin Lemare to Cameron Carpenter, arrangements range from spectacular showpieces to well-known tunes, treated so as to make use of the most up-to-date instruments.

Adapting pieces originally for other instruments to the organ (or another instrument) was not limited to the nineteenth century. Bach played his sonatas and partitas for violin on the clavichord. Earlier, Jean-Henri D’Anglebert made beautiful harpsichord pieces out of Jean Baptiste Lully’s best-known tunes. In the other direction, Jean-Philippe Rameau converted some of his harpsichord pieces into dances, airs, and choruses in his operas; these same pieces were played later by his pupil Claude Balbastre on the concert organ for Le Concert Spirituel in Paris. Haydn’s music was already arranged for organ in his lifetime, and from Liszt onwards, organ transcription became a strong tradition.

My interest in this transformative art form—whether called transcription, arrangement, or adaptation—has led me to focus on J. S. Bach’s sonatas and partitas for violin, Jean-Philippe Rameau and the French Classic organists, Franz Liszt, and Hector Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique. This essay will describes some features of these period transcriptions, especially the surprising liberties that were sometimes taken with the original musical text, and will give a few examples of my own attempts at transcription.

 

Johann Sebastian Bach

Bach’s arrangements for organ or harpsichord are well known. In his youth he arranged several of Vivaldi’s concerti grossi for organ, and others for harpsichord. Much later he edited what are known as the Schübler Chorales, which are in fact movements from his church cantatas. But the most fascinating examples are the keyboard versions of part of his Three Sonatas and Three Partitas for Violin, BWV 1001–1006, because of the richness of the new parts added in the transcription. Examples 1–3 show various techniques. Reducing an orchestral texture for an organ implies other techniques than expanding a violin texture on the keyboard. Transferring a trio for voice, oboe, and continuo on the organ requires nearly no effort, since each part can simply be played by one hand or foot. 

Let us examine Bach’s way of playing Vivaldi on a baroque German organ. One approach Bach used was “interpreting” the original writing with little changes. Example 1 shows Vivaldi beginning his concerto (RV 565) with a duo of two solo violins. In Example 2, Bach takes the repeated bottom D notes and makes a continuous new “cello” part with it. He does not really change the notes, but reorganizes them slightly.

Another technique involved changing notes, adding ornaments or embellishments. Example 3 shows a short passage from a Vivaldi continuo part, with Bach’s version shown in Example 4. Examples 5 and 6 show again how Bach ornaments Vivaldi’s line and how he does not hesitate to add new material, if the musical logic suggests it. Analyzing Bach’s version, we find that he:

­• frequently plays a motive one or two octaves higher or lower than written

• changes notes in order to fit into a compass limit

• does not respect all of Vivaldi’s tutti/solo indications. 

The same liberties can be found in Bach’s keyboard version of his sonatas for violin. Bach’s transcriptions can reveal a “hidden polyphony.” This can be seen in Examples 7 and 8. An original violin part is shown in Example 7; its keyboard version is shown in Example 8. 

Changing of notes and adding ornamentation can be seen in comparing Examples 9 and 10. In the latter, Bach does not only embellish a cadence, a common practice in the Italian Corellian style, but he also adds entirely new figuration in place of plain notes. Bach would also add new parts, voices, or accompaniments. The original violin opening of the Sonata in C Major for violin, BWV 1005 (Example 11), becomes under Bach’s hand the passage shown in Example 12. Clearly “Bach the transcriber” makes no attempt to respect the characteristics of an original piece. On the contrary, in each transcription one is astonished by the creative hand of “Bach the composer” and “Bach the organist.”

Johann Friedrich Agricola gives this wonderful testimony: “Bach would often play them (the violin sonatas) on the clavichord, adding as many harmonies as he found necessary. Thus he recognized the need for a harmony of sound which he could not fully attain in that composition.”¹ 

 

Rameau, Daquin, and Balbastre

Jean-Philippe Rameau (1683–1764) began his career as an organist in central France. He was employed in several cities, including Avignon, Dijon, Lyon, Clermont, and Paris.

He published harpsichord pieces with some success and later gained respect for his complex and rich theoretical writings. His impressive Traité de l’harmonie [Treatise on Harmony] was published in Paris in 1722. But it was only at the age of fifty that he begun his career as an opera composer!

Rameau left no music for organ, but his pupil Claude Balbastre (1724–1799) was already playing airs from the composer’s operas in 1757 on the organ in the Tuileries Palace, used for the Concert Spirituel, one of the first public concert series. This institution, which had been created in Paris by Anne Danican Philidor in 1725, housed the first French concert organ. Audiences appreciated the organ in its secular role, moreover, to the point that some listeners, though used to the virtuosic feats of other instruments, were literally “lifted out of their seats” by what they heard. 

Thanks to detailed programs, we know precisely what Balbastre played for his public. Apart from his own organ concertos, his favorite pieces were by Rameau—the overtures to Pygmalion and Les Sauvages. A couple of other overtures are mentioned among other pieces by Rameau, Jean-Joseph de Mondonville, and Pancrace Royer. Since no music is preserved, one can only guess how Balbastre treated Rameau’s melodies. In order to get some ideas, one must understand how the classical French organist used to play. The great names from that time include Louis-Claude Daquin (1694–1772) and Balbastre, both mainly known today for their Noëls, tunes that were traditionally played around Christmas by organists. Publications of Noëls appear regularly through the entire eighteenth century.

Interestingly, Daquin’s Noëls for organ look very similar to Rameau’s variations on “Les Niais de Sologne,” an air found later in the opera Dardanus. Both composers develop variations, called “double,” every time in a shorter note value. Examples 13 through 15 by Daquin show the theme, the first double, and the second double. Daquin also utilizes the various divisions and registrations of the organ to achieve dynamic effects, including interesting use of the French Grand Jeu, Petit Jeu, Cornet, and Echo. Compare them with the similar technique used by Rameau in Examples 16 through 18.

Regarding the lively dances like gigues, gavottes, or the pastoral musettes, one remembers Charles Burney’s testimony about Balbastre’s playing all these dances during Mass at Notre-Dame.² Luckily Dom Bedos de Celle helps us in giving detailed registrations for these typical pieces, recording again a regular playing of dance movement on the organ.³

Balbastre’s own descriptive pieces of battle, with clusters, rapid scales, and quickly repeated chords, anticipates the fashion of orage one or two generations later. It is therefore not too difficult to play a similar effect with some of the orchestral orages (storms) already present in Rameau’s operas. Examples 19 through 21 show the author’s version for organ of the “Air for the African slaves” from Rameau’s Les Indes Galantes, realized in the same spirit: simple two-voice writing at the beginning, then a double, and finally a new harmonization.

Finally, if one looks into Rameau’s own way of transcribing his harpsichord pieces into orchestral movements, one is struck by the importance of melody. The Air is the only musical element that remains unchanged. Rameau seems to like composing new basses, changing arbitrarily the harmonies, and adding new counterparts when he needs it—using a simple melody successively as a solo aria, then in duo form, before becoming a quartet and a chorus! Again, “Rameau the transcriber” cannot be detached from “Rameau the composer.”

 

Hector Berlioz and Franz Liszt

It seems rather provocative to play Berlioz’s Symphonie Fantastique on the organ. This music was very innovative in its refined and rich orchestration, but Berlioz is known to have had no interest for the organ. The impossibility to swell the sound was considered by Berlioz to be barbaric, and he considered the mixtures to be a series of parallel fifths and octaves. . . .⁴ 

It must be remembered that most of the French organs at the time of Berlioz’s composition of the Symphonie Fantastique (1830) had no swell boxes, and that the (de)crescendo possibilities were very limited. Departing from that evidence, it seemed necessary to imagine Berlioz on a later instrument equipped at least with a swell box and some appel d’anches. (See Examples 24–26.)

Let us examine some period transcriptions for organ, in order to again have some models. In France, Edouard Baptiste played a lot of arranged pieces (especially Beethoven) on the monumental organ at Saint-Eustache in Paris, but despite precise and inventive registrations, his organ transcriptions remain surprisingly similar to piano reductions. Obviously Liszt, a close friend to Berlioz, is a better model. Not only was he the first transcriber of the Symphony Fantastique on the piano, but he left an organ version of his own Orpheus, showing directly how he would proceed. Example 22 shows a passage from the orchestral version of Orpheus, while Example 23 shows Liszt’s organ transcription.

Like Bach, Liszt takes numerous liberties, which would not be prescribed today:

• no attempt to respect the orchestration through similar colors on the organ

• playing the melody an octave lower as soon as the limits of the keyboard are reached, without making further effort of registration to keep it entirely at its proper place

• modifying entire accompanying patterns. Some complex arpeggios on the violin and the harp are replaced by one slower arpeggio taken in the left hand. This new compositional element can even be used longer than in the orchestral version, in a measure where the orchestra pauses under the soloist

• abandoning secondary musical elements

• adding new measures in order to get a better crescendo

• composing entirely new passages when the orchestral version seems to be too difficult to reduce.

 

Conclusion

In all historical examples, we see a rather creative approach in the transcription process. During the Baroque period, few details had to be abandoned from the orchestral score; but sometimes, to enliven this keyboard version, various ornaments, embellishments, or new parts needed to be added. Obviously these additions were made in the style and according to the character of the piece.

In any case, when the complexity of the orchestral writing did not allow exact transposing on the keyboard, one chose carefully the parts to be kept, according to their musical importance. A subtle hierarchy existed between the main melody, important counterparts, the bass, and some accompanying material. These secondary parts, like broken chords and florid fast notes, were likely to be radically transformed in order to sound better on the keyboard instrument. It was also a way to make a passage more comfortable to play and avoid any useless difficulty due to its origin on a foreign instrument.

In this process, the transcription is no longer a reduced version of an original piece, but it becomes literally a new organ or harpsichord work, using the same idioms, techniques, and musical possibilities as the best pieces written explicitly for the organ. Bach’s versions of Vivaldi’s concerti grossi show that, on one hand, Bach loses some of the sound qualities of the concerto grosso for strings, without mentioning the stiff sound of the organ compared to the violins. But on the other hand, Bach introduces sufficiently new elements that enrich his keyboard version and make a proper organ piece of it.

This approach seems to be still alive at Liszt’s time, but the increasing development of transcription in the nineteenth century also created a rejection of it. The defense of the proper organ repertoire became until recently the rule; the transcription was despised because it would only be some virtuoso’s amusement and not suited to the character of the organ.

The above examples show that, on the contrary, a good transcription fits the nature of the instrument by using the right means, playing techniques, and registrations according to the style of music.

Notes

1. Johann Friedrich Agricola, Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek, Berlin, 1755.

2. Charles Burney, Music, Men and Manners in France and Italy, Paris, 1770, quoted in Preface to Claude-Bénigne Balbastre, Pièces de Clavecin d’Orgue et de Forte Piano, ed. A. Curtis, Huegel, 1973, p. viii.

3. Dom Bedos de Celle, L’art du facteur d’orgue, Paris, 1766, pp. 523–536.

4. Hector Berlioz, Traité d’instrumentation et d’orchestration, Paris, 1844, see chapters “Organ” and “Harmonium.”

 

Larry Palmer

Recital programming: Program notes

Seated one day at the harpsichord, I was weary and ill at ease because the mid-July deadline for this column was approaching too rapidly, and my mind, in its summer mode, seemed frail as a lily, too weak for a thought as I searched for a topic. And then, a miracle: the printed program from my harpsichord recital at the 2012 East Texas Pipe Organ Festival fell out of a score. Rereading it brought not only a wave of nostalgia, but also a sense of continued satisfaction at both the balance and variety of the chosen pieces, selected painstakingly to present contrasting musical styles as well as offering a bit of respite to the ears of the festival participants who heard a number of organ recitals each day.

Some vignettes about the unusual logistics required to present this program at Trinity Episcopal Church in Longview on my 74th birthday may be found in The Diapason’s Harpsichord News column published in February 2013 (page 20). If any readers are curious, I refer them to that issue, which also contains Neal Campbell’s thoughtful commentaries on the entire 2012 festival. What follows in this month’s column has not appeared previously in The Diapason. These are my “notes to the program.” I present them now as examples of brief word pictures intended to aid a listener’s understanding of music that, for many, was probably being heard for the first time. As for the selections, I specifically tried to choose at least some works by composers who might be familiar to organists, while offering a variety of musical styles, durations, and tonalities both major and minor. 

 

The program notes

Introduction to the Program: The Italian composer Giovanni Maria Trabaci wrote in the Preface to Book II of his Pieces ‘per ogni (all) strumenti, ma ispecialmente per i Cimbali e gli Organi’ [1615]: “the harpsichord is the lord of all instruments in the world and on it everything may be played with ease.” [“il Cimbalo è Signor di tutti l’istromenti del mondo, et in lui si possono sonare ogni  cosa con facilità.”]  

While I am not totally convinced of the ease of playing offered by some of these contrasting selections from the contemporary and Baroque repertoires, I do suggest that each one of them has musical interest. The pieces by John Challis and Duke Ellington are probably unique to my repertoire since they remain unpublished.

 

The program

A Triptych for Harpsichord (1982)—Gerald Near (b. 1942). In addition to writing a wonderful Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings for me to premiere at the American Guild of Organists national convention in the Twin Cities in 1980, Gerald responded to my request for a new work to play at a recital for the Dallas Museum of Art’s major El Greco exhibition in 1983. The three brief contrasting movements suggest bells (“Carillon”), an amorous dance (“Siciliano”), and a homage to the harpsichord works of Domenico Scarlatti and Manuel de Falla (“Final”). 

Sonate pour Claveçin (1958)—Bohuslav Martinů (1890–1959). During the final year of his life, in response to a commission from the Swiss harpsichordist Antoinette Vischer, Martinů composed this compact, but major, Sonate. Essentially it is a piece in one movement with three sections: the first and last are kaleidoscopic, filled with brief colorful musical ideas; the second is gentle and nostalgic, as the homesick expatriate composer makes short allusions to two beloved iconic Czech works: the Wenceslaus Chorale and Dvorák’s Cello Concerto. While quite “pianistic” in its demands, the Sonate also allows brilliant use of the harpsichord’s two keyboards in realizing both Martinů’s magical sonorities and his occasional use of bitonality.

“Chaconne in D Minor” (Partita for Solo Violin, BWV 1004)—Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), arranged for harpsichord solo by John Challis (1907–1974). One of Bach’s most-often transcribed works, this particular setting for harpsichord by the pioneering American early instrument maker survives only in a manuscript submitted for copyright (on Bach’s birthday in 1944), now preserved in the Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Challis also was an early advocate of variable tempi in Baroque music, serving as a mentor in that respect to organist E. Power Biggs, who proudly owned one of the builder’s impressive large pedal instruments.¹

A Single Petal of a Rose (1965)—Duke Ellington (1899–1974), edited in 1985 by Igor Kipnis and Dave Brubeck, and by Larry Palmer in 2012. Edward Kennedy Ellington responded to Antoinette Vischer’s request for a piece by sending her a piano transcription of his A Single Petal of a Rose, a work already dedicated to the British monarch Queen Elizabeth II. When American harpsichordist Kipnis asked if I could point him to Ellington’s unique work for harpsichord, I referred him to the facsimile of Ellington’s manuscript published in Ule Troxler’s book Antoinette Vischer, which details the works to be found in the Vischer Collection at the Sacher Foundation in Basel, Switzerland. (See “The A-Team,” The Diapason, February 2017, pp. 12–13.) Years later, Kipnis sent me his one-page transcription for harpsichord, an arrangement made in collaboration with his friend, the jazz great Dave Brubeck. To fit my hands and harpsichord I have made some further adjustments to their arrangement of this lovely, gentle work.²

La D’Héricourt; La Lugeac—Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727–1799). These are two of the most idiomatic of French harpsichord works from the eighteenth century, and none is more so than the one honoring M. l’Abbé d’Héricourt, Conseiller de Grand’ Chambre. With the tempo marking “noblement,” this composition stays mostly in the middle range of the harpsichord, a particularly resonant glory of the eighteenth-century French instruments. In contrast, the boisterous, “music-hall” qualities of La Lugeac suggest that it may be named for Charles-Antoine de Guerin, a page to King Louis XV. Known subsequently as the Marquis de Lugeac, the former page became secretary and companion to the Marquis de Valery, the king’s representative to the court of Frederick the Great. The American harpsichordist and conductor Alan Curtis, who edited Balbastre’s keyboard works, noted that “few Italianate jigs—Scarlatti not even excepted—can match the outrageously bumptious and attractive La Lugeac.”

“Lambert’s Fireside,” “De la Mare’s Pavane,” and “Hughes’ Ballet” (from the collection Lambert’s Clavichord, 1926–1928)—Herbert Howells (1892–1983). The composer was the next to youngest person pictured in a 1923 book of Modern British Composers comprising 17 master portraits by the photographer and clavichord maker Herbert Lambert of Bath. As a tangible expression of gratitude for this honor, Howells requested 11 of his fellow sitters each to contribute a short characteristic piece to be presented to the photographer. All acquiesced, but one year later, only Howells had composed anything for the project, so he wrote the additional 11 pieces himself. Issued in 1928 by Oxford University Press, Lambert’s Clavichord was the first new music for clavichord to be published in the twentieth century. Several questions regarding names found in the titles as well as a few printed notes that were suspect led me to schedule a London interview with the composer during a 1974 trip to the UK, a meeting that led ultimately to my commissioning the Dallas Canticles, as well as a respectful, unforgettable friendship with the elderly master.³

Toccata in E Minor, BWV 914—J. S.
Bach. The shortest of the composer’s seven toccatas for harpsichord, the E Minor consists of an introduction (with an organ-pedal-like opening figure insistently repeated six times); a contrapuntal   “poco” Allegro; a dramatic recitative (Adagio); and a driving, perpetual motion three-voice fugue. Musicologist David Schulenberg (in The Keyboard Music of J. S. Bach; Schirmer Books, New York, 1992) noted the close similarity of the fugue’s opening and some subsequent passages to an anonymous work from a Naples manuscript ascribed to Benedetto Marcello. While it was not unusual for Baroque composers to borrow from (and improve upon) existing works, the amount of pre-existing material utilized in this particular fugue is greater than normal; however, as Schulenberg concludes, “[Bach] nevertheless made characteristic alterations.” I would add that in no way do these borrowings detract from the visceral excitement of Bach’s propulsive and dramatic conclusion.

 

Heads up: Registration for the 2017 ETPOF

According to the East Texas Pipe Organ Festival website there is still an opportunity to register (at discounted prices) for the star-studded programs planned for this year’s festival. But do not delay: the opportunity for savings expires on September 15. Visit: http://easttexaspipeorganfestival.com.

 

Recent losses 

Elizabeth Chojnacka (born September 10, 1939, in Warsaw) died in Paris on May 28. Celebrated for her virtuosic keyboard technique, Chojnacka was known primarily as an avid and exciting performer of contemporary harpsichord music. Her renderings of all three of the solo harpsichord works by Ligeti are highly lauded, and the composer honored her by dedicating the third, Hungarian Rock, to her.

Luigi Ferdinando Tagliavini (born October 7, 1929, in Bologna) died in that Italian city on July 11. Organist, harpsichordist, scholar, and instrument collector, Luigi was well known to us in Dallas, having been a guest at Southern Methodist University on several occasions. Most memorably, he was part of the so-designated “Haarlem Trio” organized by Robert Anderson as a week-long postscript to the 1972 American Guild of Organists convention in Dallas. The three major European visiting artists for that event—Marie-Claire Alain, Anton Heiller, and Tagliavini—each gave daily masterclasses for the large number of participants who remained in Dallas for a second week of study with these annual leaders of the Haarlem Summer Academies in the Netherlands, resulting in what may be the only time in Southern Methodist University history that the organ department achieved a financial surplus rather than a deficit!

Two vignettes from that stellar week have become an unforgettable part of   Dallas’s musical history: Luigi’s chosen workshop topic was the organ music of Girolamo Frescobaldi, and he had assigned to the prize-winning finalists from the AGO Young Organists’ Competition all of the pieces contained in that composer’s liturgical settings for organ, known as Fiori Musicali. One of the finalists who had not won an AGO prize left Dallas in high dudgeon. Unfortunately, this participant had been assigned the very first piece in this set of “Musical Flowers.” Professor Tagliavini began his afternoon class with a brief overview of the work’s history and importance, and then peered over his glasses as he announced, “And now we will hear the first piece, Frescobaldi’s ‘Toccata avanti della Messa’.”

The total lack of response became embarrassing; there was no respondent. So our guest teacher moved on to the next piece. And thus it was that each afternoon session began with the same question from Luigi: “And who will play the ‘Toccata avanti della Messa’?”—always followed by total silence. A stickler for completeness, on the fifth and final day of the course Luigi made his same query, again to no avail. So with his usual smile and slight lisp he intoned, “Then I shall play the ‘Toccata avanti della Messa’!” And so he did with total mastery and grace. And all was well within the Italian Baroque solar system,  for Frescobaldi’s magnum opus was, at last, complete in Dallas!

The second vignette, equally Luigi-esque, occurred when Dr. Anderson, always volatile and energetic, and I were awaiting Tagliavini’s arrival to play an evening organ recital for the workshop audience. It was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m. and by five minutes before that hour Dr. Anderson was pacing the corridor near the door to the Caruth Auditorium stage. With less than two minutes to spare, Luigi ambled down the hallway. Bob called out, “Luigi, hurry!” To which the unflappable Italian stopped walking, carefully placed his leather briefcase on the floor, and, with his characteristically kindly smile, said, “Why, Bob? Has the recital already begun?” ν

 

Notes

1. For further information see my essay, “John Challis and Bach’s Chaconne in D Minor,” in Music and Its Questions: Essays in Honor of Peter Williams, edited by Thomas Donahue (Organ Historical Society Press, 2007); and my CD recording of the Bach transcription on Hommages for Harpsichord (SoundBoard 2008).

2. Concerning Lambert’s Clavichord, see my chapter on Herbert Howells in Twentieth Century Organ Music, edited by Christopher Anderson (Routledge, 2012).