Parts 1 and 2 were published in the October and November 2007 issues of The Diapason, respectively.
Improvising and composing
Under the rubric of ‘Performing and Recording’ I sought to clarify Walcha’s concept of the relative places of the objective and subjective, the calculated and the spontaneous, the performance for the moment and the recording for the ages. As discussed, these categories pertained mainly to the role of the performer in interpreting and rendering the compositions of other musicians. In contrast, say, to a Paul Hindemith, Walcha’s primary role and, at least for many decades, the main basis of his reputation, was as an interpreter. This emphasis may have meanwhile shifted somewhat, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon worlds of sacred music, where the four volumes of his own Chorale-Preludes, as published by Peters Verlag, have become liturgical staples, recognized for their quality, originality and accessibility even by younger musicians who may never have heard Walcha’s performances as an organist, and in particular his interpretations of Bach, either live or in their recorded embodiments.
It is useful to understand that these compositions grew out of Walcha’s extensive liturgical praxis—for, of the hundreds if not thousands of worship services he played, virtually all included improvisations, and in particular of chorale-preludes in many diverse styles, idioms, textures, durations, and degrees of “modernity” and complexity. Indeed, these publications are the only form in which Walcha allowed his improvisational art to be preserved. At the same time, as he would be the first to concede, there is a clear line between the spontaneity of improvisation and the fixed and calculated structures of written compositions.
His wife Ursula—indispensable assistant in Walcha’s learning of new scores (she played each voice separately as dictation into his memory), in helping to evaluate his registrations (and, when necessary, pulling stops), and in his travels (these three roles cited from among her innumerable contributions to his welfare and success)—was wont to voice her view that her husband’s compositions, fine as they were, did not quite represent the full glory of his improvisations. Still, we are fortunate to have them for their intrinsic values and as a minimal record of this artist’s most personal—and often moving—manner of conveying the meanings of the tunes and texts of hymns, and of his considerable capacities as a musical thinker within as well as outside of the Bachian “box.”
Provocateur for his times
(Walcha and Reger)
Regardless of whatever preoccupations we may nurture with matters of cosmic order, time (eternity) beyond human or even natural history, perennial philosophies and unalterable truths, we are also all children of our own time, embedded in its more or less chaotic history, and subject, with little recourse, to its shifting winds. For Germans the year 1945 marked the “zero hour,” as Hitler and his minions had severely ruptured the integrity of the nation’s spirit and the opposing Allies reduced a large portion of its “physical plant” to rubble—together also leaving virtually no survivors untouched by loss of friends and family. With World War II coming so close on the heels of—and even more destructive than—the earlier “war to end all wars,” the newly traumatized mood was less one of quick fermentations and liberations than of a need to reexamine the bases of one’s existence, to slough off all that was superfluous, and even to seek renewal in a return to long-lost but once well-tried and venerable traditions. This context may help provide the “logic” behind the postwar decisions of most German Protestant church authorities to remove most of the Victorian-era hymns from the books and—in a sense: artificially, by sheer act of will—to replace them with the sorts of older hymns which, e.g., had still been in common use when Bach included settings of them in his Orgelbüchlein (and elsewhere), but which had long since, by the “organic” processes of history and changes of taste, gone out of use (and out of the hymnals).
I describe these aspects of the broad existential and the related ecclesiastical situations also as the context in which Walcha, at the turn of the decade from the 1940s to the 1950s, committed a bold act, which was in some sense to haunt him for the rest of his life. As a responsible and already established artist in his own 40s, he felt self-confident and also—looking at the world around him—somehow impelled to publish an article, in a widely read sacred music journal, about the organ music of Max Reger (who had died, in the midst of the first world-conflagration, in 1916).
In it Walcha made several key points that I recall from my own reading—I had, a decade after its publication, to seek the article out in the library. He dared to express a less than positive evaluation of the pervasive chromaticism, grandiosity and hyper-expressivity of Reger’s idiom—in conversation, at least, I recall a comparison with the overbearing decadence of the Völkerschlachtdenkmal (Monument to the Battle of the Nations) in Leipzig. More importantly, he claimed that Reger’s organ music was not, in the truest sense, organ music! It wrote out explicitly, in mountains of notes, the very octaves and other overtones that the organ “produces by itself,” by virtue of its tonal structure, e.g., in the mixtures of the principal chorus, in the realization of much simpler, basic notations that indeed have been appropriately reduced, by real organ composers (e.g., Bach), to the bare contrapuntal and harmonic essences of the music. Not only the sound, but even the appearance of Reger’s music, Walcha implied, was overladen and pretentious and tended to hide the presence of ideas, which, once reduced to their essences, might prove to be relatively insignificant.
Not leaving it there, Walcha proceeded, in notational form, to reduce the opening strains of one of Reger’s grandest and most renowned organ opuses to such essences, to their “actual” musical meanings, expressed in plain four-part harmony. Having thus “unmasked” the reality, the professor—he had his naïve side—evidently expected dyed-in-the-wool Romanticists to close the book and go home, now cured of their Reger addiction. Or, he didn’t care . . . And he went on to unmask the late-Romantic master in yet another respect. He quoted lengthy samples of inner voices from fugues by Reger, voices which were, indeed, distinguished by being undistinguished, if not virtually shapeless. He implied that such voices can be retained only on a short-order basis—they lack the kind of identity that would enable them to penetrate to the deeper layers of musical apperception. This demonstrated, too—here, the coup de grâce—that Reger was writing fugues on paper only, fugues that had some visual “earmarks,” but lacked the substance of genuine polyphony. Again, the late gentleman is revealed to have been something of a four-flusher . . .
In a concession, Walcha acknowledged the likelihood that it was not merely ignorance that prompted Reger’s lavishly doubled and tripled notation: it was probably made necessary by the relative lack of overtones in the tonal structure of the organs with which Reger had contact, organs built, self-evidently, before the Orgelbewegung (the neoclassicist reform movement of the 1920s) had succeeded in bringing back the earlier type of instruments with their richer overtone resources. But this too becomes evidence against the continuing credibility—or viable use—of Reger’s organ compositions: designed for organs that required the use of so many fingers all at once, they will sound harsh, if not ridiculous, if applied to our current instruments that have all these overtones already—and properly so—built into their tonal structures! No, Reger—Walcha believed—would be found to have not much going for him in this newly “essential” world of 1950.
And then the consequence. In the light of the foregoing considerations, he said, “I have decided to strike Max Reger from the list of composers whose works students at the Frankfurt Hochschule are required to play.” One might ask: If students here in New Haven in 2007 are not required to play Reger, why should students in Frankfurt in 1950 have been required to? But those were different times, and in a different country. The article occasioned “storms” of professorial protest in endless letters of rebuttal in subsequent issues of the journal. Part of the trauma was due to a conflation of “not required to” with “forbidden to.” Another part was a nervous fear of a creeping return of the kind of authoritarianism and censorship that had characterized German cultural life during the “thousand year empire” from 1933 to 1945. Another element was no doubt simple envy of and dislike for Helmut Walcha, coupled with an outspoken rejection of his opinionated outspokenness. Another may have been a sense that as the duly appointed head of the Frankfurt school’s Church Music Institute, Walcha had the prerogative to make such decisions without enduring such a challenge—but did it have to be with that rationale, and that provocative publicity?!
If not already in that written context, Walcha did eventually offer the additional explanation that while in wartime he was memorizing the 48 W.T.C. Preludes and Fugues in the country retreat, he came to realize that there was not enough room in his mind to accommodate their highest-density substance and still hold on to the discursive Reger organ extravaganzas that he had learned and often played in his younger years; something had to give. A related question cannot be repressed: Is there anyone alive who knows and plays, or was there ever anyone who knew and played—during the same period of life—the entire Well-Tempered Clavier as well as a set of giant Reger organ works, both from memory?
In any case, the occasional determined Frankfurt student did propose Reger for study in the lessons over the ensuing decades and did not necessarily find Walcha unreceptive. There were two possibilities: if the work was to be one that Walcha himself had once played, he might well take it on, and—relearning it quickly from listening—would soon also even be able to demonstrate it again at the console . . . If it were a piece unfamiliar to Walcha, there were other, often quite willing teachers available at the school. [Disclosure: during my own Frankfurt time, Armin Schoof studied Reger’s great F-minor work with Walcha—though it is not specifically included in the Coppey-Kunz repertoire list—while I enjoyed learning the much smaller, but also tellingly “Regerian” Prelude in A Minor from Opus 69 with Prof. Hartmann at the cathedral downtown.]
In wrapping up this episode, which I have narrated in detail because I believe it to be of interest yet perhaps not readily accessible to other American organists, my own feelings are that, despite a number of inherent misunderstandings, it formed a characteristic, if marginal part of the process of cleaning up from the vestigial messiness of some Romanticism along with some forms of potential brutality, which that emotional/artistic nexus had left behind in the political and cultural sphere [the line, say, from Wagner’s to Hitler’s anti-Semitism], and that the controversy engendered by Walcha’s boldness was needed, or useful, in 1950, as a healthy means to help clarify both aesthetic and human rights positions in certain German musical circles—and this even if perhaps there is now no one left who could still agree in all specifics with either Walcha’s or some of his critics’ theses.
Lifestyle, discipline, personal time, hobbies
The Walchas’ personal lifestyle was characterized primarily by modesty and simplicity, an almost vegetarian diet, herbal teas, regular afternoon naps, an occasional glass of wine; after the international success of his recordings—his D Minor Toccata and Fugue recording alone, he once told me, financed his house organ—the couple could have lived in much greater opulence; but they chose not to do so. For one thing, such a change could have impinged on the accustomed quietude and focus requisite for his ongoing musical attainments. His discipline, structured by his sense of time, was extraordinary; on top of all the organ and harpsichord music, and the entire Lutheran hymnal—including the words of hymns with thirteen verses—he also had his datebook in his head. When I once gave him a long-playing album for his birthday in October and a few days later asked if he had heard it, he said, “Oh no, I won’t be able to listen to that until February—it’s scheduled for the 19th, after my afternoon nap.” When at my lesson on February 20th I remembered to inquire if he’d yet had a chance to listen to the album (the early Swingle Singers singing Bach), he responded immediately, “Oh yes, we listened to it yesterday, as planned, right after my nap . . .”
Helmut and Ursula (though I never used those words) made time for quiet social events with the students—often in their home—and with their friends. There was never an impression that they were rushed, under deadline pressures, or had not gotten enough sleep. In the summers they loved to take long walks in the Black Forest—and, after a few explanations, he had the layout of the landscape memorized (just as he knew, and could give you a guided taxi tour of the Frankfurt cityscape). They also managed to attend concerts, of his colleagues, or of students such as myself who might be performing in other media (e.g., he wanted to hear recorder, he wanted to hear counter-tenor; or, if I happened to play an organ concert near where they were vacationing, they might show up unexpectedly and socialize with us afterwards—other students have told similar stories . . .).
In retrospect, it is hard to imagine how all this was possible, especially inasmuch as he could read neither words nor music in Braille. They listened to some radio, and he alluded to their reading entire books (including novels) together, she reading to him regularly in the evenings. He was curious, and the questions he asked of people were meaningful and well formulated; it was a pleasure to try to answer to his satisfaction. His main hobby, I think—as well as a way to practice—was playing his house organ. In his retirement he did so purely for fun, telling me, for instance, how nice it felt to be freed from the compulsion of always playing for note perfection. Though his harpsichord playing seemed not as idiomatic, sensuous, mellifluous as, say, Gustav Leonhardt’s (or as his own organ playing), he did enjoy the East German cembalo he had at home.
In his retirement he turned also to other enjoyments—listening to Wagner (as he had in his youth)—or learning French(!), something he felt he’d missed out on throughout his music studies and professional life. Of course he had to approach this in his own systematic way, starting with the music: from his tutor he wanted first to find out how to pronounce all the nasal word endings, in, en, an, on, un (hard enough to distinguish in context . . . ). “Good luck, Helmut!,” I thought when he told me this. (But if anyone could do it . . . ) This did not of course mean that he was going to start learning to play some French music—there seemed to be an uncrossable line there; yet at least he wished to find out more about the language behind it . . .
Friends, successors
When it came time to think about his successors, at school and church, Walcha, as might be expected, thought judiciously. While there were several of his former students, on both sides of the Atlantic, who he believed would be qualified to succeed him in either or both positions, he also thought it wiser—at least in making suggestions to the school administration—to move outside of “the family.” The Geneva organist and recording artist Lionel Rogg and he admired each other’s playing and had exchanged views in letters; on balance, Rogg seemed a worthy candidate both to carry forth the pedagogical work within a congenial aesthetic tradition and to sustain the prestige of the church music division of the Hochschule. Coming from Geneva, however, Rogg was understandably less than enthusiastic about the contours and ambiance of post-war Frankfurt as a city; while the chance to preside over the Schuke across the river just might have been able to persuade him, Walcha was still yearning for a few more years of unencumbered work at his Dreikönigskirche. In the end, the successor at school was Edgar Krapp, who, it is said, convinced Walcha and the others with an especially cogent rendition of the C-minor Passacaglia and Fugue.
Later, at church, Walcha was succeeded by his recent student Renate Meierjürgen, who had already been directing the choir and was something of an expert on his Chorale-Preludes. This appointment kept matters at the church, literally, in the family for the rest of the Walchas’ lives, inasmuch as Frau Meierjürgen, a single woman, had also agreed to move in with the Walchas on Hasselhorstweg, where she became instrumental in helping both of them to cope with the difficulties of old age and now continues to reside. Her successor at the church became Andreas Köhs, a concert organist and choral-orchestral conductor as well as a music editor with a major publisher. Like most German organists today, given the slow attrition of the churches’ budgets under the continuing system of church financing via state-collected taxes, and with a dwindling congregation as almost everywhere, he faces an ongoing struggle to maintain, if not expand the program—meaning, in this case, to continue Dreikönigs’ traditional contributions to the city’s cultural life in a manner worthy of the memory of the relatively recent tenures, at this institution, of such stellar historical figures as (the conductor and, later, Thomas-Kantor) Kurt Thomas and Helmut Walcha.
The Walchas had several concentric circles of friends, relatives and associates. Among their closest friends in their later years, in addition to Frau Meierjürgen, were the late composer Kurt Hessenberg and his wife Gisela; harpsichordist Maria Jäger-Jung, who died this year; the organist Karl Köhler, formerly in charge of much of the liturgical organ program at the Hochschule and still residing in Frankfurt; the late Berlin painter Gerhard Rechenbach (who painted the portrait of Helmut Walcha that still adorns the living room on Hasselhorstweg), and the loyal Adolf Kirschner, still living in Frankfurt, with whom the friendship dated back to the year 1935. In addition it is clear that they enjoyed a close relationship with Christel North-Wittmann (the oldest daughter of Pastor Paulus North), who at one time directed the church’s choir, and her family, as also with Helmut Walcha’s former assistant Agathe Calvelli-Adorno (a niece of the late eminent philosopher) and her brilliant scientist-husband Rainer Jaenicke. Of course there were important friendships lost to death—I think of the late Erich Thienhaus, who on behalf of Deutsche Grammophon recorded many of Walcha’s early albums, and his companion—a couple to whom, in my recollection, the Walchas referred quite often. Helmut Walcha and many of his former students, on both sides of the ocean, kept in touch with each other, some in more rigorous, some in looser ways. But the affections from and for the Walchas were and are spread around the planet. Nowhere do his work and person continue to be more revered, for instance, than today in Japan.
The organ in the musical world
Our instrument is grandly self-contained and we are, with few exceptions, not required to interact with other musicians in order to enjoy it; in addition, it usually sits, not portable, in church buildings and liturgical contexts a good step or two removed from the venues and concerns of the larger—and secular—musical world. We congregate less with other musicians than among ourselves, and then with clergy and church people for whom music is often one of several means toward approaching religious goals but rarely an end in itself. In these circumstances it may not be surprising that some organists have, over the last seven or eight decades, been drawn to doctrines that advocate simplistic solutions to the problems of musical interpretation—cries of “everything legato except repeated notes!, everything detached!, everything portato except for occasional couplets!, no Romanticism!, no Classicism!, only Eclecticism is American!, organs without tremulants!, no thumbs!, never legato over the bar-line!, no cases!, no swells!, no electric bellows!, no combinations!, no more tracker-action!, choral accompaniment only on British organs!, never play from memory!, always play from memory!, historical temperaments only!, Spanish Renaissance organs to the rescue!”—etc.
Is there a reader who has not heard all of these cries? Is it a problem that none of them ever crossed the lips of Helmut Walcha? It is a problem, for us—I submit—that almost none of them ever crosses the lips of an oboist or a singer or a violinist or a composer or a pianist . . . For any of these people, to advocate such creeds would soon render them dysfunctional as musicians. For them the issue is, and has to be, the virtually endless variety of means available, and required!, for convincing, communicative interpretation of music. How and where have we, do we (through our isolation?), go wrong, become so narrow? Out there, also—scratched beneath the surface—even the Harnoncourts and Hogwoods, Herreweghes and Gardiners would admit that delving ever deeper into the cave of history, to retrieve from its dim light ever greater jewels of truth, of authentic instructions from the dead (instructions then to be enforced by a kind of Early Music Police, analogous to composers’ Avant-garde Music Police of the 1960s), is not actually the way, not the primary way, in which musical interpretation evolves (or “improves”)—among people living in a 21st century.
Helmut Walcha was no more opposed to good historical research than to subjectivity or spontaneity; indeed he knew that, as an intrinsic part of our lives and times, it contributed inevitably and often usefully—or usably, for it needs to be used and not worshipped—to change, via those endless hermeneutic cycles (no matter how often we like to believe an endpoint has been reached . . . ) of reconsiderations and revisions without which life and history are not possible. But the primary focus of his work and teaching was the artist’s obligation to deal responsibly—a path at least as challenging—with the immanent structure and character of each individual work, not by subjecting it to a patented solution, but by minute examination and analysis—of its specific language and being and discernible structure and expressive intentions—by the eyes and intellect and heart and (rather than by theories) via the inner ear informed by these three human faculties and supplemented by such intriguing general stylistic mandates or suggestions as are contemporaneously proffered through the insights or opinions of historians.
I have enjoyed listening to recordings and performances by some of the brilliant young organists entering church and concert life today. Much of their work conveys a fine visceral excitement—passion has not been lost! While the generations may be well advised to eschew directly “interfering” with each other, empathy and respect for the mysteries of new (or old) perceptions and of different internally driven emphases need perhaps not preclude some beneficial reciprocal stimulation and cross-fertilization (as another part, indeed, of the ineluctable historical hermeneutic). While I can—and have tried to—learn from attending to playing-styles informed by the most recent historiography, and even from such seductively looser and more “casual” kinds of musical gestures as seem favored among some of the younger artists, I confess that what I do find largely missing these days is a sense of the deep interpretative responsibility to the essence of each individual work, and the consequent specific and lucid internal organization of each musical rendition, which characterized and was so widely appreciated half a century ago in the work of Helmut Walcha. Perhaps, prompted by his centennial, a broad and detailed reconsideration of the sound recordings of this artist, in conjunction with his educational legacy, could facilitate a reformulation (resolidification?) of our interpretative priorities—within a new hermeneutical cycle of consciousness—and thereby also contribute, in analogy to his work’s earlier direct appeal beyond the confines of the organ world, to bringing our instrument and its repertoire yet a step closer—as most of us desire—toward the center of mainstream contemporary classical music culture.
It is my hope that, by way of encouraging such an undertaking or at least discussion, recollections by others who knew or felt strongly about Helmut Walcha—along with other relevant comments or critiques prompted by this article—will be forthcoming in the pages of The Diapason.■
