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The first International Late Medieval and Renaissance Music Course, San Marino, August 27–September 2, 2018

Eva Moreda

Eva Moreda is lecturer in music at the University of Glasgow and specializes in the cultural and political history of Spanish music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her latest book is Music Criticism and Music Critics in Francoist Spain (Oxford University Press, 2016). Apart from her academic commitments, she has a keen interest in the performance of medieval and renaissance music on voice, portative organ, and recorders.

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We quickly managed to build a routine that involved rising early, eating some homemade cake for breakfast, and spending the day singing and playing late medieval music (Las Huelgas, Dufay, Sankt Gallen) on our portative organs, switching between solo, pair, and large group work as need arose, always with a generous pause for lunch in which conversations about medieval sounds and how to make them come alive today flowed generously. There were five of us, and although all of us arrived in San Marino not knowing any of our fellow students, the week we spent together at the Stabat Mater Convent, in the village of Borgo Maggiore, felt like part rehearsal and part retreat, and not so much like just one more summer school.

Officially, though, it was indeed the latter: the first International Late Medieval and Renaissance Course (the latest addition to the San Marino International Music Summer Courses series), taught entirely by Cristina Alís Raurich, one of the most exciting portative organ performers of our day. While I will not go as far as claiming that the portative organ—first documented in the thirteenth century and disappeared, after a long decline, in the sixteenth century—is making a comeback, interest is certainly on the rise from professional and amateur musicians alike. Indeed, three participants in the course had never played a portative organ before, which was no obstacle for them to successfully participate in the student concert held at the end of the course at the Church of San Francesco.

One of the main tenets of Raurich’s teaching philosophy is that the portative organ is not a keyboard instrument, but a wind instrument; the performer, with the instrument placed on his or her thigh or hanging from his or her body by means of a strap, plays the small keyboard (about two octaves) with one hand and manipulates the bellows with the other. It is the ability to modulate one’s pressure on the bellows that renders the music expressive and makes true the medieval notion that the organ is the voice of the doctors of the Church, capable of saying, singing, moving, and persuading. With this in mind, we set out to unravel, with our voices and our organs (sometimes in combination, sometimes separately), some of the repertoire that Raurich had chosen for the course.

The overarching theme was the Sequence. Sequences are liturgical texts that seek to illuminate aspects of the Gospel or the liturgy, and hence tend to be time or place specific: Sequences were composed for specific events of the liturgical year (Easter, Christmas, Pentecost, etc.) and occasionally for specific places (on the feast of a patron saint of a city or community). Originally evolving from the last syllable of the Alleluia that precedes the Gospel in the Catholic Mass, Sequences soon developed independently as new compositions of both music and text and flourished throughout the Middle Ages until the Council of Trent restricted their use.

The earliest Sequences we worked on came from the Castilian Codex Las Huelgas. Dating from the early fourteenth century, the codex is a compendium of the advances in polyphony that European music had seen in the previous two centuries. Working in pairs with portative organs on pieces originally intended to be sung by the female voices of the Las Huelgas monastery allowed us to work on phrasing and expressivity, paying close attention to the text and to each other. There followed two lesser-known pieces by Flemish composer Guillaume Du Fay, dating from approximately a century later than Las Huelgas. Here, Du Fay alternates the original Gregorian chant with interpolations of three-part polyphony: complex counterpoint that took the whole group many hours to put together with instruments and voices, and lots of food for thought on the relationship (musical, textual, rhetorical) between the traditional monophonic chant and the more recent polyphonic glosses.

The sequentiary of Joachim Cuontz was copied in the Swiss monastery of Saint Gallen in the sixteenth century and contains Sequences dating from earlier in the Middle Ages. Unlike the Du Fay and Las Huelgas music, these pieces are notated for one voice with no accompaniment, and so considerable work was devoted during the course to transforming the sparse medieval notation and words into music, adding bourdons and percussion, distributing the phrases between instruments, solo voices, and chorus, and making decisions aimed at conveying the full extent of the rhetorical nuance of each of the texts.

Working on the sequentiary provided one further example of Raurich’s sensitivity as a teacher: instead of holding formal lectures, she chose to introduce a range of theoretical topics pertinent to the history and performance practice of medieval music in a way that never took us far away from the music-making. Certainly, this was the best possible start to the International Late Medieval and Renaissance Course in San Marino, and here’s hope to it becoming established as one of the top summer schools for keen performers of medieval music worldwide.

Course website: www.sanmarinoartist.com

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The Complete Organ Works of Francisco Correa de Arauxo: Correa in the New World

Robert Bates performs

Robert Parkins

Robert Parkins is university organist and professor of the practice of music at Duke University, Durham, North Carolina. He has specialized in early Iberian keyboard literature, and his publications include articles on performance practices in this music as well as the chapter on “Spain and Portugal” in Keyboard Music Before 1700 (Routledge, 2004). His organ and harpsichord recordings have appeared on the Calcante, Gothic, Musical Heritage Society, and Naxos labels. Parkins received his academic degrees from the University of Cincinnati College-Conservatory of Music and the Yale University School of Music. In 1973 he was awarded a Fulbright grant to study in Vienna with Anton Heiller. Other teachers have included Gerre Hancock, Ralph Kirkpatrick, Charles Krigbaum, and Michael Schneider.

The Complete Organ Works of Francisco Correa de Arauxo: Correa in the New World, Robert Bates, organist. Loft Recordings, LRCD 1141–45 (5 CDs), $49.98. Available from www.gothic–catalog.com.

Francisco Correa de Arauxo (1584–1654) was the middle figure among “the three C’s” of early Spanish organ music, between Antonio de Cabezón (1510–1566) and Juan Cabanilles (1644–1712). Like the venerable Cabezón, Correa de Arauxo received his first major appointment in his mid-teens, serving as organist in the Collegiate Church of San Salvador in Seville (1599–1636) for most of his professional life. Later, after a four-year stint at the cathedral of Jaén (also in the southern region of Andalusia), he finished his career at the cathedral in Segovia (northwest of Madrid) from 1640 to 1653.

In 1626, while still employed in Seville, Correa de Arauxo published his Facultad orgánica (Art of the Organ), the only extant volume of Spanish keyboard music to be printed in the seventeenth century. Following an extended preface by the composer, this Book of Tientos and Discursos of Practical and Theoretical Organ Music, consisting of 67 solo organ pieces (plus two intabulated vocal settings), constitutes the whole of his known musical oeuvre. Since Correa’s purpose was partly didactic, he provided a special index that groups the pieces in ascending order of difficulty from 1 to 5.

Robert Bates has completed the daunting project of recording The Complete Organ Works of Francisco Correa de Arauxo on five different organs over a span of seventeen years (in 1997, 2001, and 2014). Three of these are eighteenth-century instruments in the state of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, and two more are late twentieth-century organs in northern California. Subtitled “Correa in the New World,” the five-CD set purports to be the first recording of the complete organ music of Correa de Arauxo in the Americas.

The music of Correa has been said to bridge the Renaissance and Baroque eras in Spain. That assessment could also be applied to the predominant genre of early Spanish keyboard music: the tiento, which evolved from little more than an intabulation of four-voice imitative vocal polyphony in the sixteenth century to a variety of idiomatic subgenres by the early seventeenth century. Of the sixty-nine compositions in Correa’s magnum opus, sixty-two are labeled tiento or discurso, the latter term reserved for more advanced works, although he sometimes uses the two words interchangeably. Notated in Spanish number tablature, each piece is preceded by a few introductory remarks, including occasional nuggets of information on pertinent performance practice issues, such as tempo, ornamentation, rhythmic alteration, and registration. The composer’s valuable comments sometimes offer additional insights on topics already addressed in his detailed foreword.

If nearly every tiento on this recording seems to begin in an eerily similar fashion, it is not only the resemblance of the opening measures to a stile antico motet but also Correa’s directive that the organist should adorn the first note with a short, accentual ornament called a quiebro. The simpler of its two forms is equivalent to a mordent (for shorter pieces like versets), while the slightly more complex one is identical to a turn beginning with the upper neighbor. Less clear is the precise location of the ornament, although beginning the turn-like quiebro before the beat seems more consistent with the prevailing practice at the time to play the consonant main note on the beat. Bates dutifully follows the composer’s recommendation to embellish the initial note with a quiebro, but he elects to follow a more flexible approach to rhythmic placement.

A longer ornament mentioned in Correa’s preface, called a redoble, is in the form of a trill with prefix. Redobles are often indicated in the score by an “R,” sometimes with a prefix actually written out before the consonant main note on the beat. Correa admits that many other types of embellishments are possible, and a number of different redoble variants appear throughout the Facultad orgánica. Bates is not shy about adding some of his own redobles as well as other ornaments described in earlier sources (e.g., Tomás de Santa María’s Arte de tañer fantasía, 1565) in a judicious and stylistically appropriate manner.

The track list for this superb recording is organized according to venue and instrument, yielding a more randomized order rather than the original succession of pieces. Each work is identified by the number assigned when Santiago Kastner edited the first modern publication of the Facultad orgánica (Barcelona: Instituto Español de Musicología; 1948, 1952). Bates, a careful scholar as well as a first-rate performer, relied on Kastner’s edition for this project from the outset—but not without comparing it scrupulously to a copy of the original 1626 publication, now available in facsimile (Geneva: Minkoff, 1981). Two more complete editions have been published since the inception of Bates’s project, edited by Guy Bovet (Bologna: Ut Orpheus Edizioni, 2007) and Miguel Bernal Ripoll (Madrid: Sociedad Española de Musicología; 2nd ed., 2013).

The organizational scheme for the recording focuses special attention on the organs as well as the music. All five instruments share characteristics in common with most seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century Castilian organs. Each possesses only a single manual keyboard, all registers are divided between bass and treble stops at c1/c#1, and the tuning system is meantone temperament (either strict 1/4 comma or the more versatile 1/6 comma). Pedals are minimal or nonexistent, serving only to pull down the low bass notes of the manual when needed. Each stoplist also includes at least one horizontal reed, although Bates is sparing in his use of them since exterior trumpets were not in evidence until after the Facultad orgánica was published.

The first two CDs in this set were recorded in Oaxaca City and nearby Tlacolula, beginning with the organ in Oaxaca Cathedral. Constructed in 1712 by Matías de Chávez (with later additions in the eighteenth century, followed by a number of twentieth-century changes), it was reconstructed by Susan Tattershall in 1997. The current specification lists eight (half) stops in the bass and ten in the treble.

More than half of the compositions in the Facultad orgánica were written for divided stops (a new development in the latter sixteenth century), and CD 1 includes one of Correa de Arauxo’s most alluring works in this subgenre. As the composer indicates in the title, the Tiento de medio registro de tiple de décimo tono (No. 36) is a divided-register piece (in mode 10) requiring a solo registration in the treble (with a more subdued accompaniment in the bass). The imitative contrapuntal opening in “motet style,” a hallmark of the Spanish tiento, is played here on Principals 8′ and 4′. Robert Bates introduces the fourth entry, a solo for the right hand, on the brilliant Corneta, expertly guiding the serpentine melisma of sixteenth notes that emerge from the subject’s initial long notes. The third and last of the five solo entries include diminutions in triplet figures, to be played (as described by Correa elsewhere) unequally for the most “graceful” effect, “almost” like making the first note twice as long as each of the two that follow. Bates’s tempo is on the brisk side, and the rhythmic nuance becomes so subtle that the inequality is just barely noticeable until the tempo relaxes (e.g., at cadences).

The organ in the church of Santa María de la Asunción in Tlacolula was completed by Manuel Neri in 1792 (including pipework from as early as 1666). Subjected to alterations in the nineteenth century, it was restored in 2014 by Gerhard Grenzing. The result is a simple disposition (eight registers in the bass and seven in the treble) with separate ranks for the upperwork, as in contemporary Italian organs, rather than mixtures.

Tiento 55, a Discurso de dos baxones (with two solo lines in the bass), is notable for its chromaticism in the main subject, strikingly atypical for Correa. Choosing a registration for a tiento de medio registro in five voices can be problematic, but the mixtureless chorus in the bass yields a penetrating clarity without overwhelming the treble Principal 8′, or Flautado (Correa’s “default” registration for accompanying voices). Sufficiently challenging to play on an organ with a split keyboard (although apparently no problem for Bates), this discurso serves as a useful example of how complicated some divided-register pieces can become when an organist must employ two manuals and pedal to achieve the desired effect. If the two hands (mainly the thumbs) are not allowed to assist each other in managing five parts on the same keyboard, the coupled pedal must supply one of the two bass voices when needed.

Among a handful of compositions not classified as tientos in Correa’s collection is No. 65, a set of sixteen continuous variations on Guárdame las vacas (“Watch the Cows for Me”). The familiar folk tune (and chord progression) had been popular among composers of variations (diferencias) since the early sixteenth century, including Cabezón. Bates skillfully interweaves the threads of migrating diminutions (glosas) among the long notes of the harmonized cantus firmus.

CD 3 takes us to the church of San Jerónimo, Tlacochahuaya, also not far from Oaxaca City. An anonymous builder constructed the organ around 1729 (modified in 1735), and in 1991 its restoration was completed under the direction of Susan Tattershall. With seven bass stops and an equal number in the treble, this modest but beautiful instrument has a Bourdon (Bardón) at 8′ pitch rather than the usual Flautado.

No. 18, a “first level” piece intended for an undivided registration (registro entero), resembles an older style of tiento with only a moderate degree of figuration. Bates’s principal chorus is not precisely the same in the bass and treble, demonstrating that the ingredients can be tweaked a bit to produce a more satisfactory balance in the whole recipe. The organ’s unmodified meantone temperament heightens the contrast between consonance and dissonance, spotlighting in particular several prominent occurrences of an augmented triad (composed of two pure major thirds), a distinctive harmonic feature in seventeenth-century Iberian organ music. The tuning also renders simultaneous cross relations, discussed by Correa in his preface, particularly salient (as in m. 119).

No. 34, a tiento de medio registro de baxón, features a sprightly bass solo. Heeding the composer’s advice to omit the 8′ level in the bass registration occasionally for clarity’s sake, Bates assigns the left-hand solo to the Bajoncillo, a 4′ reed. Musically engaging but fairly predictable, this tiento surprises the listener near the end with a shift to septuple time, one of several instances where Correa experiments with irregular meters or rhythmic subdivisions. At one point in the 1626 print, the bass line actually crosses the “Great Divide” between c1 and c#1, one of myriad errors in the score that Bates had to confront, especially in Kastner’s modern edition.

The last three tracks on the third disc and all of CD 4 were recorded at Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary in Berkeley, California, where Greg Harrold installed a Spanish-style organ in 1989. Modeled after Aragonese instruments (specifically in the area around Zaragoza, ca. 1700), it has since been relocated to Oberlin College in Ohio. With fourteen bass and sixteen treble stops, it is considerably larger than the other organs on the recording.

The fourth disc begins with Tiento 16, described by the composer as being “in the style of a chanson” (a modo de canción). After the typical opening, it becomes a mélange of contrasting textures, rhythms, and meters in the tradition of batallas (including Correa’s own Tiento 23, based “on the first part of the Batalla of Morales”) and other Spanish keyboard pastiches. Bates takes advantage of the sectional structure to make judicious stop changes, ordinarily not feasible in most of these tientos. Particularly noteworthy is a segment of eight measures in a jazzy 3+3+2 rhythm—common among other Spanish composers of the time, but rare and more fleeting in the music of Correa de Arauxo.

On the fifth and final CD, the listener arrives at the last stop on this organ tour, also in the San Francisco Bay Area. The instrument in the Mission San José in Fremont, California, was built by Manuel Rosales in 1989. Although strongly influenced by early Castilian (and Mexican) organs, it adheres somewhat less strictly to earlier historical precepts than the preceding four on this recording. Nonetheless, a fully chromatic bass (rather than a short octave) and a seventeen-note pedalboard do not violate the essential ethos of this instrument as an appropriate vehicle for the performance of Correa’s music. The manual’s twenty half stops are divided evenly between bass and treble, and the pedal enjoys the luxury of a Bardón at 16′ pitch.

Tiento 59, a medio registro de tiple, is one of eight works assigned a difficulty level of 5 and one of only four with diminutions in thirty-second notes. Bates follows Correa’s advice to use a principal chorus (lleno) for the treble coloratura above the quietly moving lower voices. The solo in the right hand exploits a number of irregular rhythmic subdivisions; in addition to the more common triplets, Correa includes groups of five, seven, and nine notes as well. The performer’s goal is to maintain a steady pulse for the long notes while controlling the improvisatory rhythmic shifts as well as the almost frenetic streams of thirty-second notes in the right hand. Bates is more than equal to the task in executing this fascinating tiento, among the longer and more complex pieces in the Facultad orgánica.

Accompanying the CD set is a sumptuous 120-page booklet (25% of which is devoted to a Spanish translation of the English text) that includes a rich selection of full-color photos. A handy “Index of Tientos,” numbered according to the original published order, matches each one with the corresponding CD track and Correa’s suggested level of difficulty. Although providing liner notes on sixty-seven individual pieces would have been prohibitive, Robert Bates offers a succinct overview on the composer and his music in historical context, as well as a brief synopsis of the Facultad orgánica.

In addition to a biography of the performer (who holds a Ph.D. in musicology from Stanford University and retired not long ago as professor of organ at the University of Houston), there are descriptions (including specifications) of the five instruments, as well as a brief essay on historical Spanish and Mexican organs in general. Following a short introduction by Bates on his “considerations” for choices of stops is a detailed list of the registrations used. Last but not least, a contribution by producer Roger Sherman on the “adventures” of recording in Mexican churches lends a lighter tone to the production notes.

Kudos to Robert Bates for this splendid contribution to the culture of early Iberian keyboard music. Although organists are now appreciably more aware of this marginalized repertoire than a few decades ago, it remains unfamiliar territory for many. Congratulations are due also to Loft Recordings for another significant addition to its continuing series of “complete works.” Beyond their sheer musical interest, these integral collections possess an undeniable documentary and instructional value.

Every music library should own this five-disc package comprising Francisco Correa de Arauxo’s Facultad orgánica, a bargain at $49.98 (when ordered directly from Loft). For individual fans of organ music, it is also available for download from the Gothic website as a complete album or as single tracks.

Twelfth International Organ and Early Music Festival, Oaxaca, Mexico, February 14–21, 2018

Cicely Winter

Cicely Winter grew up in Michigan and studied piano and harpsichord at Smith College and the University of Michigan, where she obtained a Bachelor of Arts in music and a Master of Arts in European history; she later studied piano performance at Indiana University. Her principal teachers were Fritz Steinegger and Leonard Hokanson (piano), and Lory Wallfisch and Elisabeth Wright (harpsichord). Winter has lived in Oaxaca since 1972 and has presented numerous piano, harpsichord, and organ concerts over the years, many of which have benefitted community service projects in Oaxaca. In 2000, with the support of philanthropist Alfredo Harp Helú, she and organist Edward Pepe co-founded the Instituto de Órganos Históricos de Oaxaca A.C. (IOHIO), for which she serves as its director. Her professional performances have increasingly focused on historic organs, presenting a broad repertoire of classical, sacred, and folkloric music.

Festival participants

Each IOHIO (Instituto de Órganos Históricos de Oaxaca, A.C.) Festival builds on the success of its predecessors, making this one the best ever. It was also the most extensive, since the restored organ in Jalatlaco could be included in the concert programming.

• More than 120 people from eight countries and seven Mexican states participated in all or part of the scheduled activities. Of these, nearly a third were returnees.

• Eighteen Oaxacan, Mexican, and foreign musicians collaborated in nine concerts on nine restored organs over the course of six days.

• Six young Mexican organ students and one organbuilder received scholarships to participate in the festival, and our own five organists and students were delighted to be their guides.

• The churches were always full for the concerts and hundreds of local people were able to hear the Oaxacan organs in all their glory.

February 14 (Wednesday)

Around twenty organists and organ students met in the San Matías Jalatlaco church for the first event of the festival, a talk by Andres Cea Galán, president of the “Instituto del Órgano Hispano,” entitled “Spanish music: Organs and organists during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries.”

That evening Cicely Winter and Valentín Hernandez presented the first concert of the Festival of Oaxacan Folk Music with music transcribed for organ and percussion in the Basilica de la Soledad. This program always serves as an introduction for the events to come, and people sang along exuberantly to some of the best-known Oaxacan regional songs. Videos of this and all succeeding concerts were projected onto a screen in the church, so that the audience could have a better view of the artists and see the action in the choir loft, particularly how pulling the stops changed the organ’s sound. The magnificent decorated case of this monumental 8′ organ bears the earliest date of any Oaxacan organ: 1686. It was restored in 2000 and is played regularly at Mass.

February 15 (Thursday)

Registration took place throughout the day in the Oaxaca Philatelic Museum (MUFI), giving us a chance to finally meet the people we had been corresponding with and greet old friends from past festivals. The inauguration of the festival that afternoon began with a presentation by Cicely Winter, director of the IOHIO, about the activities and goals of the festival. Joel Vásquez, project coordinator of the IOHIO, spoke about our teaching project and our success in having organs played at Mass every Sunday in five Oaxacan churches by our students or by him. In addition, it is most gratifying that people increasingly request that their private Masses for baptisms, Quinceañeras, weddings, etc., be accompanied by the pipe organs rather than an electronic organ or keyboard. We were honored by the presence of Ignacio Toscano, Secretary of Culture for the State of Oaxaca, and Omar Vásquez, director of the Oaxaca Regional Center of the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH), who commented on the shared goals of their respective institutions and the IOHIO and offered their congratulations for the festival. Winter also expressed special appreciation to Alfredo Harp Helú for his indispensable support of seven organ restoration projects in Oaxaca over the past twenty years, including most recently the organs in Tlacolula and Jalatlaco.

After the welcoming reception, we walked a few blocks to the church of San Matías Jalatlaco. The second concert of the festival was presented by the Dutch organist Jan Willem Jansen. His program had a theme, “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” and included father and son pairs: Alessandro and Domenico Scarlatti, and Johann Sebastian Bach and three of his sons. The last piece “Ah, vous dirai-je Maman,” familiar to everyone as the theme of “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star,” elicited a chuckle of recognition from the audience. The mainly eighteenth-century repertoire was perfect for this organ built in 1866.

This year marked the festival debut of the Jalatlaco organ as a playable instrument. One of our regular attendees commented on the evolution of this organ during his last three visits: first as an unrestored instrument (2002–2014) when we discussed our hopes for its restoration, then as a restoration in process by the Gerhard Grenzing firm (2016), and finally as a concert instrument (2018). This elegantly proportioned 8′ organ was built by the Oaxacan organbuilder Pedro Nibra and has a 56-note chromatic keyboard and “almost equal” temperament, unlike the other organs heard during the festival with their 45-note keyboards, short octaves, and meantone tuning. It was painted blue around 1880 when Nibra oversaw various modifications to the organ.

Afterwards in the atrium of the church under a clear night sky, we enjoyed bread and chocolate offered by Chocolate Mayordomo and tamales de frijol prepared by Jalatlaco’s favorite tamalera.

February 16 (Friday)

The day started with a bilingual presentation by Cicely Winter in the Francisco de Burgoa Library within the Santo Domingo Cultural Center titled “The Historic Organs of Oaxaca and the Work of the IOHIO.” Although the title of the talk has not changed over the years, the content is updated every year to publicize the advances of our various projects: protection, conservation, restoration, concerts, archive and manuscript discoveries, recordings, teaching, and publications. This was followed by a tour of the splendid church of Santo Domingo de Guzmán, seat of the Dominican order in the Valley of Oaxaca since the sixteenth century, and the Museum of the Cultures of Oaxaca in the former convent, led by guides Pablo Gonzalez and Gabriel Sanchez.

Our next stop has always been San Andrés Huayapam, located on the outskirts of Oaxaca City. This year the plan was complicated by the closing of the church after the tragic earthquakes in September 2017. Luckily it was not severely affected, but religious activities have been celebrated under a temporary roof beside the church until the roof can be repaired. We did not know if the INAH would grant us access, but fortunately the provisional permission came through just days before the visit.

We were received with a customary drink of tejate, traditionally served in colorful painted half gourds. A local specialty of pre-Hispanic origin, this delicious foamy drink is made with ground cacao, corn meal, the seed of the mamey fruit, and the flower of a tree (rosita de cacao), which grows only in or near Huayapam.

This charming church has one of the most beautiful Baroque altarpieces in Oaxaca, whose intricately carved golden columns are referred to as “gilded lace.” Also famous is the collection of antique ex-votos, petitions usually to the Virgin Mary that are painted on small tin plaques. The 4′ organ (1772), large for a table organ, is nearly intact with its original keyboard and pipes. It is simply carved, a style we refer to as a “country organ,” and was probably originally unpainted, then painted bright red, still seen backing the keyboard, and eventually repainted sober maroon in the twentieth century. In Huayapam we savored the first of many local meals, this time mole amarillo, in the atrium of the church.

During free time between the Huayapam comida and the evening concert, some went to see the famous tree in Santa María del Tule, while visiting organists and students had a chance to play a meantone tracker organ with divided registers in the Oaxaca Cathedral.

That night we proceeded to the Oaxaca Cathedral for the third concert of the festival, offered by the eminent Spanish organist and musicologist Andrés Cea Galán with the participation of the Mexican baritone Felipe Espinosa. This is our only concert with a modest admission fee, and the proceeds helped cover the expenses of the Mexican organ students. This monumental instrument was built in 1712 and reconstructed in 1996, having suffered alterations over the centuries that had completely erased its eighteenth-century character. It retains its opulently carved and gilded upper case, although its lower case has been rebuilt several times. Unfortunately no evidence remains of its original appearance, but we know from the contract for its construction that it was once one of the most lavishly decorated organs in Oaxaca.

February 17 (Saturday)

This year more than a hundred people participated in the all-day excursion to the Mixteca Alta. We crossed a river to arrive at the little stone church in Santa María Tinú, and it seemed as though the entire adult population of the town, now reduced to 152 people, was there to greet us. The authorities welcomed us with great ceremony at the entrance of the church, their canes (bastones) of office in hand. During our reconnaissance visit some weeks before, we had suggested that the local women display their handicrafts, which in the Mixteca region means palm weaving (hats, baskets, sleeping mats). But palm has given way to colorful raffia, and what a sight greeted us! Multi-colored woven baskets hung from the trees and lined up atop the walls of the atrium, while the stone cross in the atrium was decorated cucharillas, the white base of maguey leaves. Nearly everyone bought something from the women as we sipped sweet atole.

The Tinú church houses a disproportionately large organ. The date of construction, 1828, and the name of the organbuilder are written inside the case—such luck! Perhaps the organ was originally commissioned for a larger church, then sold to Tinú, or the community simply wanted something grand. The organ, which has not been fully playable in fifty years, is completely intact and still grunts and wheezes when one of the bellows located in the loft above is pumped. Unfortunately because of the reduced population and remote location of the town, a restoration would not be practical.

Our next stop was in the lovely Baroque church of San Andrés Sinaxtla. The case of the organ built in 1791 combines both Baroque and neo-Classic case design elements. The construction is idiosyncratic, since it is the only instrument of this size with direct suspended mechanical action, i.e., no rollerboard. Of particular interest is the inscription across the façade including the name of the donor, the date of construction, and the cost of the organ, but, as is typical, omitting the name of the organbuilder.

Just down the road from Sinaxtla sitting on a promontory overlooking the Yanhuitlán Valley is the church of San Mateo Yucucuí (population 142). This organ built in 1743 is the least altered of all the 8′ eighteenth-century Oaxacan organs and when last played (1930s?), it is said that its sound could be heard for miles around. The organ was never painted or gilded like its counterpart in Teotongo, probably not by choice during that opulent Baroque era, but rather because of the cost. It is richly carved and largely intact, and it is tempting to imagine the pipes and mechanism of the Yucucuí organ inserted into the stunning Teotongo case to make one amazing organ! The floor of the high balcony on which the organ sits is much deteriorated and access to the façade is dangerous, so our efforts to clean and document the organ have been restricted.

The fourth concert of the festival took place in Santo Domingo Yanhuitlán, the sixteenth-century Dominican stronghold in the Mixteca Alta region. With its soaring stone vault supported by lateral flying buttresses and its magnificent altarpieces, it is one of Mexico’s most majestic complexes of Baroque art. Organist David Soteno and clarinetist Lorenzo Meza, both from near Mexico City, thrilled the audience with a program that reverberated throughout the immense nave. This organ, located on a side balcony, was built around 1690–1700 and restored/rebuilt in France in 1998. Its case is one of the most elaborately decorated of all Mexican organs, with Dominican symbols and fantastic swirling imagery, similar to the Soledad organ case, and fierce faces on the façade pipes. Because of earthquake damage to the main altarpiece (retablo), we could sit only in the front half of the church.

The day culminated with the traditional pre-concert festivities in San Andrés Zautla. We were received in the atrium of the church by the local band with fireworks, plenty of mezcal, necklaces of bugambilia, dancing, and finally a delicious meal of estofado de pollo (chicken stewed in almond sauce) served in the municipal library across the street from the church. After dinner, we crowded into the church where many people from the community were already waiting for the fifth concert of the festival. This was the first of three collective concerts, whose goal has been to offer the opportunity to play the organs to as many organists and students as possible. Roberto Ramirez, André Lash, Andres Cea, Willem Jansen, Laura Carrasco, and Christoph Hammer presented wonderfully contrasting pieces to top off such a busy and exciting day. We were honored to have with us José Miguel Quintana from Mexico City whose association “Órganos Históricos de México” financed the restoration of the Zautla organ in 1996.

The case of this 4′ table organ (1726) is exquisitely carved, gilded, and painted with images of saints and angels. A blower was installed in 2017 by Oaxacan organbuilder David Antonio Reyes, and the organ was moved to the other side of the loft away from the stairway. No longer do we have to worry about those startling moments of silence when the bellows pumpers were distracted and lost their rhythm. The registers of table organs are controlled by tabs protruding from the sides of the case, and thanks to the screen projection the audience could appreciate the teamwork involved. Joel Vasquez and David Reyes had to make a detachable music rack to prevent the pages resting against the façade pipes from being blown away. Clearly the organists of past centuries played by memory or improvised, and the position of the keyboard indicates that they stood to play. Thanks to the ongoing support of the Federal Road and Bridge Commission (CAPUFE), a special entrance was opened from the superhighway, allowing us direct access to and from Zautla.

February 18 (Sunday)

In San Jerónimo, Tlacochahuaya, Jan Willem Jansen presented the sixth concert of the festival, “Four European Countries,” featuring repertoire from Italy, Holland, Germany, and Spain. In February 2017 the organ was cleaned, tuned, and voiced by the Grenzing firm and was in perfect condition until the September 7 earthquake jiggled the pipes. Luckily organbuilder Hal Gober was on hand to make the necessary adjustments. The church is one of the loveliest in Mexico with its exuberant interior floral decoration and splendid Baroque altarpieces, all restored in the past twenty years. The 4′ organ was built sometime before 1735 and restored in 1991. The case and pipes are decorated with floral motifs, and the organ harmonizes beautifully, both visually and acoustically, with the architecture of the church.

After a buffet lunch of Oaxacan specialties in the “Donají” Restaurant in Mitla, we ventured on to the small Baroque church with painted ceramic bowls embedded into the bell towers in San Miguel del Valle at the foothills of the Sierra Juarez. The 4′ table organ is unfortunately in poor condition, more typical than not of the unrestored instruments and not such a bad thing for our participants to see. The case is painted blue with neo-Classic decoration; it has only four registers and no accessory (toy) stops. It seems to date from around 1800, making it the last of the Oaxacan table organs. An added attraction of this Zapotec-speaking community is the elaborately embroidered aprons, and once again we were able to support women’s handicrafts with our purchases.

Our friends from “Chocolate Mayordomo” received us with bread and chocolate upon arrival in Santa María de la Asunción Tlacolula. We admired the little 2′ organ, which appears to date from around 1700 as indicated by the style of its remaining painted decoration. Originally located in the choir loft of the Baroque side chapel, it is the smallest Oaxacan organ and has only two registers. Those who needed a break from churches could roam around one of the most famous indigenous markets in Oaxaca and admire the women’s costumes and the stalls piled high with local produce.

The seventh concert of the festival was presented by Andrés Cea Galán featuring sixteenth- and seventeenth-century repertoire that highlighted the beautiful sound of this organ. It was built in Oaxaca in 1792 by Manuel Neri y Carmona, restored by the Gerhard Grenzing firm, and inaugurated during the Tenth IOHIO Festival in 2014. The visual impression of the Baroque-style case, painted red and black and opulently gilded, is striking, and it has the most elaborately painted façade pipes in all of Mexico. Local people began to arrive for Mass following the concert, so by the end the church was packed. It is likely that many were hearing and viewing the organ (on the screen) for the first time, and they must have been amazed by the rich, full sound of the organ.

February 19 (Monday)

Our two-day excursion to the Mixteca Alta began with a stop in Santa María de la Natividad Tamazulapan where we heard the eighth concert of the festival. This second collective event was presented by organ students Greta Baltazar, Alejandro Lemus, Mario Moya, and Zeltzin Perez, who study in university programs in Mexico City, along with Joel Vasquez from the IOHIO. Arnoldo Perez, a young organbuilder apprentice, pumped the bellows. This church had been closed after the second September earthquake, which particularly affected the Mixteca region. Ongoing negotiations with the priest and the INAH allowed us access to the first half of the church and the organ balcony where fortunately no plaster had fallen from the ceiling.

The 2′ table organ dating from approximately 1720–1730 is situated in a high balcony overlooking the soaring nave of the church and is exquisitely decorated with images of saints and angel musicians. The case and bellows are original, but the pipes, keyboard, and interior components were reconstructed in 1996. The church has one of the most magnificent Baroque altarpieces in all Mexico and includes paintings by the renowned sixteenth-century Spanish painter Andrés de Concha. The second organ in this church, an imposing 8′ instrument, faces the small organ from the left balcony. Built in Oaxaca in 1840 by a member of the renowned Martinez Bonavides organbuilding family, it was once a magnificent instrument and is largely intact except for the loss of nearly all its pipes; only the five largest remain in the façade.

We then proceeded to the neighboring church of Santiago Teotongo, rich enough in eighteenth-century Baroque art to stand as a museum in its own right. The magnificent case of this 8′ organ, though empty, is integrated stylistically with the opulent altarpieces, and statues of angels once stood atop its towers, singing through their O-shaped mouths via pipes passing through their bodies. The organ was stripped of its pipes, keyboard, and more during the Mexican Revolution, and its date is unknown, but the organ’s profile closely resembles that of San Mateo Yucucuí (1743). An added attraction was the eighteenth-century painted armoire in the sacristy, decorated with period figures engaged in their daily activities.

The tour continued with a visit to the sixteenth-century church of Santiago Tejupan, which could also stand as a museum of colonial religious art in this culturally rich area of the Mixteca Alta. The luxuriously painted organ case (1776) was the last Oaxacan organ with religious imagery. Portraits of the donor and his wife being blessed by his patron saint, Saint Nicholas, are depicted on one side and Santiago on horseback on the other, both unfortunately obscured by layers of grime. Another special feature is the information painted on two decorative medallions on the façade, which include the name of the donor, the cost of the organ, and the date of construction, although as in Sinaxtla, omitting the name of the organbuilder. Afterward we were treated to a talk about the Mixtec ball game (pelota mixteca).

After lunch in our favorite restaurant “Eunice,” we walked over to the Dominican architectural complex of San Pedro y San Pablo Teposcolula with its church dwarfed by the enormous sixteenth-century open chapel and atrium. The 8′ organ (ca. 1730–1740) has a similar profile to that of Yanhuitlán. The case was painted white with light green touches sometime after the original construction and, with its delicate carvings, had a graceful look. However, now we refer to it as the King Midas organ, because in 2010 a well-connected architect took the liberty of gilding at great cost all the decorative carvings and moldings, even though it had only been minimally gilded historically, and, in fact, the organ’s overall manufacture is not of the highest quality.

We drove up through the pine forest to Santa María Tlaxiaco. The imposing “fortress church” was the Dominican outpost for this strategic area of the high sierra in the sixteenth century. For the final ninth concert of the festival, Ricardo Ramírez, Laura Carrasco Curintzita, Andrés Cea Galán, Michael Barone, Jan Willem Jansen, and David Furniss offered an eclectic program to close the concert cycle. This monumental 8′ instrument, built around 1800 and restored in 2000, is decorated with typical neo-Classic design elements, painted white and richly gilded; it synchronizes with the altarpieces of the church, all in homogeneous neo-Classic style. We spent the night in the Hotel del Portal on the main plaza and had a chance to wander around the market.

February 20 (Tuesday)

Participants divided into two groups. Many chose to visit the late pre-Classic and Classic (400 BC–800 AD) Mixtec archeological site and the community museum of San Martín Huamelulpan with Marcus Winter of the INAH. Most of the organists and students opted to stay behind to play the Tlaxiaco organ and had great fun trying out their pieces and helping each other with the registers.

Both groups met up in Huamelulpan, then proceeded to the village of San Pedro Mártir Yucuxaco where we were once again formally received by the municipal authorities. The organ here (1740) is complete and in excellent condition, missing only its bellows. It is the least altered of the Oaxacan 4′ table organs, parallel to Yucucui for the 8′ stationary group, and closely resembles the organ in Zautla, although without the painted decoration. The carved pipeshades show two faces in profile, a unique decorative detail, and the keyboard is exquisite.

Our final church and organ visit was in Santa María Tiltepec, for some the crowning visual experience of the field trips. Located in the Dominican sphere of Yanhuitlan and built atop a pre-Hispanic temple, this sixteenth-century church has long been appreciated by art historians for its richly carved asymmetrical façade and stone interior arches. The unrestored 4′ organ, situated on a side balcony, is one of Oaxaca’s oldest (1703) and often elicits a gasp of astonishment when seen for the first time. Unfortunately nothing is known about its history to explain its idiosyncrasies of construction and decoration, and if it did not have the characteristic Oaxacan hips on the sides of the case, we might wonder if it were imported.

We proceeded to the Hacienda Santa Marta in San Sebastian Etla on the outskirts of Oaxaca City for our farewell dinner. A scrumptious buffet awaited us with plenty of mezcal, and a guitar duo serenaded us with numerous Oaxacan folk songs. Toasts and sentimental reminiscences created a special connection with old and new friends who had shared this unique Oaxaca organ adventure.

February 21 (Wednesday)

Around thirty people made the trek up to the archeological site of Monte Albán to enjoy an optional guided three-hour tour with Marcus Winter from the Oaxaca Regional Office of the INAH.

Jean Langlais’ Suite médiévale and Vatican II

Shelby Fisher

Shelby Fisher earned Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in organ performance and pedagogy from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, where she studied under Kenneth Udy. She is organist and director of music at Christ United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Sainte-Clothilde, Paris, France

Jean Langlais (1907–1991) composed his organ Mass Suite médiévale in 1947, drawing on a rich tradition of French organ suites composed for use during the “low” Mass. Changes to the liturgy after the Second Vatican Council (“Vatican II”) in 1962 drastically reduced the role of the organ during the Mass, thereby eliminating the need for the French organ Mass. Suite médiévale is one example of a body of small-scale liturgical organ compositions that no longer carry their intended relevance due to changes to the liturgy. These works are often neglected in both concert and liturgical settings, yet they can be appropriate for both. Exploring the musical and liturgical heritage that influenced Langlais, as well as the changes resulting from the Second Vatican Council, provides today’s organists with a frame of reference to interpret and understand his organ compositions.

Organ music and the liturgy in twentieth-century France

During the four centuries between the Council of Trent in 1563 and the Second Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965, liturgical organ playing in France became highly developed in large part due to the autonomy afforded French bishops to govern the liturgy within each diocese.

The most widely known liturgy used in France was the Parisian Rite, which was used until the middle of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, most French liturgical organ music from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries was written for the Parisian Rite.1 Eventually the Parisian Rite was supplanted by the more universally recognized Roman Rite. This affected the evolution of the French organ Mass in at least two ways. First was the retention of the “low Mass,” during which the organist played for virtually the entire service, pausing only for the reading and homily as described by Gaston Litaize:

During this era, the organist at the main organ normally played two Sunday Masses:

1) The “Grand Messe,” which involved a processional, an offertory, often an elevation, a communion, and a postlude; in addition, he alternated with the choir for verses of plainchant for the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei); they sang a verse and the organ commented on in, changing registrations for each verset.

2) The “Messe Basse,” where the organist could virtually play a recital. With everything spoken in a low voice [“à voix basse,” hence “Messe basse”], this is what happened: the priest left the sacristy, the organist played a procession, which lasted until the Gospel reading, then came the sermon. The organ then resumed and didn’t stop until there was no one left in the church. So, one could easily play a complete Choral by Franck.2

Second, with the introduction of the Roman Rite, French organists largely moved away from chant-based organ music, favoring all-purpose Offertoires or Grand Choeurs.

A chant revival movement soon made its mark on French liturgical organ music. In 1889, the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes published a new chantbook based on extensive research of early manuscripts that sought to restore chant to its medieval form.3 Interest in chant revival trickled into Parisian music circles, where in 1894, organist-composers Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent D’Indy founded the Schola Cantorum de Paris. The school’s founding manifesto called for the “performance of plainchant according to the Gregorian tradition; restoration of polyphonic music in the Catholic Reformation style of Palestrina; the creation of ‘new modern Catholic music;’ and improvement of the repertory for organists.”4 Guilmant in particular championed a return to organ compositions that used chant, writing that, “The German organists have composed some pieces based on the melody of chorales, forming a literature for the organ that is particularly rich; why should we not do the same with our Catholic melodies?”5

No French organist-composer produced more of this literature than Charles Tournemire. He studied at the Paris Conservatory with César Franck and Charles-Marie Widor, eventually succeeding Franck as titular organist of Sainte Clotilde in 1898. His largest organ work was L’Orgue mystique, a cycle of 51 organ Masses, one for nearly every Sunday of the liturgical year. Each Mass comprises five movements: Prélude à l’Introït, Offertoire, Élévation, Communion, and Pièce terminale, all drawing motivic material from the proper chants for the given day.6

Jean Langlais and Suite médiévale

Charles Tournemire mentored only a few private students who showed the greatest promise. One of these students was Jean Langlais. Earlier Langlais had studied organ with André Marchal at the National Institute for Blind Students, then with Marcel Dupré at the Paris Conservatory. Upon graduation from the conservatory, Langlais continued improvisation studies with Tournemire and served as his assistant at Sainte Clotilde. Langlais chose Tournemire as his instructor specifically for Tournemire’s fluency with improvisation on plainchant.7

Langlais eventually succeeded Tournemire as organist at Sainte Clotilde in 1945. The Cavaillé-Coll organ at Sainte Clotilde had been enlarged and slightly modified at the end of Tournemire’s tenure, and Langlais was eager to compose for the new instrument. Langlais composed four organ Masses between 1947 and 1951.8 His Masses are important not only because they demonstrate both the pervasiveness of the plainchant revival movement and the development of the French School of improvisation and composition, but they are also significant because they are some of the last French organ Masses to be published.9

In 1947, Langlais completed Suite médiévale: en forme de messe basse.10 As indicated by the subtitle, the suite was intended for use at the “low” Mass. Langlais not only followed the same five-part structure as Tournemire, but also used chant as inspiration. However, unlike Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique, Langlais chose chants appropriate for use throughout the liturgical year rather than those tied to a specific day.

The first movement of the suite is titled “Prélude: Entrée” and can be divided into two parts. The first half opens on full organ with a succession of parallel fourths and fifths suggestive of Notre-Dame organum followed briefly by the incipit to the chant “Asperges me, Domine,” or “Thou shalt sprinkle me, oh Lord,” before returning to the fortissimo parallel fourths and fifths. The antiphon, taken from Psalm 51, typically accompanied the Asperges, or ritual sprinkling of the congregation with holy water at the principal Mass on Sunday. The first half ends with the rubric, “If not needed, do not play further,” suggesting the flexibility of the suite to be adjusted to fit requirements of the Mass at the moment of performance. The second half further develops the chant, first in parallel fifths, and then in parallel fifths doubled at the octave in the manuals. In a nod to the Solesmes style of chant singing with its unpredictable pulse, the time signature throughout the “Prélude” changes frequently.

The second movement, “Tiento: Offertoire,” was intended for use during the offertory of the Mass, hence its longer performance length of four minutes. Here Langlais honors Spanish keyboard music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, constructing a loosely imitative four-voice fugato, punctuated three times in the pedal by the Kyrie trope “Fons bonitatis” from Mass II. The Medieval practice of chant troping, or the insertion of additional texts and/or melodies within the standard chant, had long been abandoned. Langlais’ inclusion of the Kyrie trope is a clever acknowledgment of this historical practice rather than a modern application of chant. The movement ends with a final appearance of the chant accompanied by soft, homophonic chords. In order to keep rhythmic freedom without frequently changing the time signature, Langlais indicated “0” as the beginning time signature, explaining, “The sign 0 signifies free measures as for their length but regular as for their note value.” Langlais continued to employ this practice in later compositions.11

“Improvisation: Élévation” is the calm and meditative third movement, utilizing a simple registration of only a single stop for each manual. It begins in A major, then moves to E-flat Mixolydian just before the introduction of the well-known and ancient Eucharistic hymn “Adoro te.” The final four measures are in E major, a key favored by Frescobaldi and other sixteenth-century composers for use during elevation toccatas.12 The key of E and its cousin, the Phrygian mode, were traditionally used to express the mystical. The elevation represents the high point of the Mass at which time the celebrant elevates the host and chalice, having been transformed into the body and blood of Christ, so they may be adored by the congregation.13

The fourth movement, “Méditation: Communion,” was intended to be played as the congregation receives communion. It is based on two chants: “Ubi caritas,” an antiphon traditionally sung during the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday, but also appropriate as a Eucharistic hymn; and a second Eucharistic hymn, “Jesu dulcis memoria.” Langlais unifies the emergence of these themes with a sixteenth-note motive in multiple keys.

“Acclamations: Sur le texte des acclamations Carolingiennes” is the dramatic postlude of the suite. Langlais uses fragments of the ancient Roman chant “Laudes Regiae” from the Carolingian Acclamations, a hymn historically sung at solemn occasions and adopted by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne. The melody for the words “Christus vincit” repeats six times in the pedal in alternation with the phrase “Exaudi Christi” from the same chant. Langlais adds two more chant fragments, “Christus regnat” and “Christus imperat,” and repeats them employing an ascending harmonic pattern he often used to create tension. Similarly, the manuals play the “Christus vincit” theme first in F, then in G, and finally in A, to which the pedal responds with “Christus imperat” first in F, then F-sharp and then G. Langlais concludes by introducing a pedal carillon of C–F–G–D played in long notes against the “Christus vincit” theme stated in manual octaves. Marie-Louise Langlais notes that these final measures are reminiscent of the bells of Reims Cathedral, where French kings were crowned during the Medieval period.14

Langlais’ reaction to the Second Vatican Council

As early as 1900, French clergy began holding grassroots meetings to study the Church’s handling of religious expression, particularly with regard to participation of the congregation at Mass.15 By 1945 this populist movement became known as Catholic Action, and its followers known as the “new liturgists.”16 At the heart of the new liturgists’ agenda was the democratization of the liturgy brought about partly through changing the musical context of the Mass. Other clergy and most professional musicians saw the new liturgists as a threat to the traditional practice of church music. The new liturgists championed simple, approachable music that favored congregational singing and the use of the vernacular rather than Latin. Furthermore, many in favor of liturgical reform sought to also diminish the role of both the organ and chant.

Langlais was distraught by the changes the new liturgists brought to the Mass. He regarded these changes as a departure from the artistic mission of the Church and wrote:17

All religious composers, of which I am one, are deeply discouraged by this movement, which is the negation of art. In my opinion nothing is beautiful enough for God. Our forebears knew this and held that to pray surrounded by beauty was central to worship.

The new liturgist movement reached its peak during the Second Vatican Council. In December 1963, the council issued the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Initially the constitution alleviated the concerns of the professional musicians by declaring the musical tradition of the Church as “a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art.”18 While the council supported the use of Gregorian chant and polyphony, it also seemed to support the new liturgists by stating that “to promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalms, antiphons, hymns as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper time a reverent silence should be observed.”19 In the practical application of the constitution, it was the new liturgists that seemed to gain the upper hand.

In 1962, Langlais and other organists served on the French Episcopal Commission on Sacred Music, tasked with interpreting the Second Vatican Council’s new guidelines on liturgical music. A second group, the Commission of Expert Musicians, was formed in 1964 to supply new music to accompany the Propers that had been newly translated into French.

The role of the organ was a troublesome point in the new liturgy. Monsignor Maurice Rigaud, who acted as president of both the French Episcopal Commission on Sacred Music and the Commission of Expert Musicians, indicated that silence was to replace the use of the organ after the collect, at the offertory, at the elevation, and at communion; and in addition, that sung chant rather than the organ was the preferred method of balancing music with silence. The organists serving on both commissions lamented to Rigaud that there was nothing left for the organists to do during the Mass:20

If the role of the organist is so reduced to this sort of humming in the background, in this role of “hole-filling” between two verses of songs in French and to serve as accompaniment for eventual new songs, one wonders . . . if it is now necessary to train young organists and to place them in careers that are reduced to such a farce, a career that is so long in its preparation, so costly, so laborious and difficult. One no longer even sees the necessity to maintain organ classes in our Conservatories and Schools of Music.

Musically, Langlais was slow to respond to Vatican II. Though initially supportive of attempts to write music for the new liturgy, Langlais became discouraged not only with the Commission of Expert Musicians’ tendency to favor the opinions of clergy over those of professional musicians but also with the low quality of new music that was admitted. In an interview with L’Est Républicain, Langlais was bold in his opinion of this new music, saying, “The goal of those who are currently writing religious songs is good, but the quality of the music is mediocre.”21

Langlais’ shameless musical response to Vatican II was his Trois Implorations, commissioned as the final organ exam piece at the Paris Conservatory in the spring of 1970. The third movement of the set, “Imploration pour la croyance,” expresses Langlais’ continued frustration with the Catholic Church. In his program notes Langlais writes, “The composer has tried to translate the state of the soul of a Christian in revolt against the current desacralizing atmosphere.”22 Langlais uses the chant intonation of the Credo from Masses I, II, and IV “Credo in unum Deum,” answered by staccato chord clusters with full organ as if in protest. The juxtaposition of chant and chord clusters continues until the piece finally ends with five staccato chords that use all twelve tones of the scale simultaneously. Marie-Louise Langlais writes that “Imploration pour la croyance” is Langlais’ way of shouting to the world, “I believe with all my strength, but with all my strength I also suffer from what I hear in the Church.”23

Conclusion

Langlais represents the culmination of the Sainte Clotilde organist-composer tradition, which began with César Franck and continued with Charles Tournemire. His style represents a unique synthesis of twentieth-century compositional techniques, traditional influences, and theological commentary. His close personal and professional ties to the Catholic Church at a time when it was experiencing major changes significantly influenced his work.

One cannot understand Langlais’ music without considering his Catholicism. To appreciate Langlais’ “other-worldly” harmonies and diverse colors, it is important to understand the religious context that inspired his compositions. Langlais saw himself not just as a composer, but also as a theologian, whose role was to connect the faithful to God. Although Vatican II reforms have erased its original context, Suite médiévale remains an excellent representation of Langlais’ compositional style and techniques; with short movements, contrasting tone colors, and recognizable chant fragments, it is an exciting and convincing work that merits continued recognition in the organ repertory.

Notes

1. Orhpa Ochse, Organists and Organ Playing in Nineteenth-Century France and Belgium (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994), 127.

2. Marie-Louise Langlais, Jean Langlais Remembered (New York: American Guild of Organists, 2016), 136–137.

3. Stephen Schloesser, Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 284.

4. Ibid.

5. Edward Zimmerman and Lawrence Archbold, “Why Should We Not Do the Same with Our Catholic Melodies?: Guilmant’s L’Organiste liturgiste, Op. 65,” in French Organ Music from the Revolution to Franck and Widor, ed. Lawrence Archbold and Willliam J. Peterson (New York: University of Rochester Press, 1995), 203.

6. Edward Schaefer, “Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique and Its Place in the Legacy of the Organ Mass,” in Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought, and Legacy of Charles Tournemire, ed. Jennifer Donalsen and Stephen Schloesser (Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2014), 40.

7. Langlais, Jean Langlais Remembered, 41.

8. Langlais published Suite brève and Suite médiévale in 1947, Suite française in 1948, and Hommage à Frescobaldi in 1951.

9. Schaefer, 31.

10. Langlais, Langlais Remembered, 133.

11. Langlais, Langlais Remembered, 145.

12. Willi Appel, The History of Keyboard Music to 1700 (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972), 478.

13. John Caldwell and Bonnie J. Blackburn, “Elevation,” In Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2001).

14. Langlais, Langlais Remembered, 138.

15. Ann Labounsky, Jean Langlais: The Man and his Music (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 2000), 211.

16. Labounsky, 211.

17. Labounsky, 214.

18. Anthony Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Transformations and Treasures (Chicago, Hillenbrand Books, 2007), 314.

19. Labounsky, 219.

20. Labounsky, 226.

21. Labounsky, 229.

22. Labounsky, 272.

23. Langlais, Jean Langlais Remembered, 263.

Bibliography

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Archbold, Lawrence and Edward Zimmerman, “Why Should We Not Do the Same with Our Catholic Melodies?: Guilmant’s L’Organiste liturgiste, Op. 65,” in French Organ Music from the Revolution to Franck and Widor, ed. Lawrence Archbold and William J. Peterson. Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 1995.

Caldwell, John and Bonnie J. Blackburn. “Elevation,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline/ezproxy/lib/utah.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000023373 (accessed March 22, 2019).

Darasse, Xavier, and Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais. “Jean Langlais,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000023373 (accessed March 22, 2019).

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Langlais, Marie-Louise. Jean Langlais Remembered, trans. Bruce Gustafson. New York: American Guild of Organists, 2016.

Mahrt, Peter William. The Musical Shape of the Liturgy. Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2012.

Ochse, Orpha. Organists and Organ Playing in Nineteenth-Century France and Belgium. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994.

Piunno, John. “Restoring Liturgy and Sacred Music in the Latin Roman Rite.” The American Organist 135, 4 (2010): 82–85.

Poterack, Kurt. “Vatican II and Sacred Music.” Sacred Music 125, 4 (1998): 5–19.

Rone, Vincent. “A Voice Cries Out in the Wilderness: The French Organ School Responds to the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church.” PhD diss., University of California, 2014.

Ruff, Anthony. Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations. Chicago, Illinois: Hillenbrand Books, 2017.

Schloesser, Stephen. Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.

The Parish Book of Chant. Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2008.

On Teaching: Repetition !

 

 

Gavin Black
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Repetition I

Recently I have been thinking about situations in which something in a piece of music happens more than once. This encompasses out-and-out repetition—which may be written out or may be indicated by repeat signs—true da capo, the structural element known in some circumstances as “recapitulation,” recurring sections in rondo forms, and any recurrence of a passage identically—even when it is not da capo. This also includes the ubiquitous practice of using recurring motifs—fugue subjects, other motifs treated contrapuntally, any sort of leitmotiv, the repeating bass line of a chaconne or passacaglia, and so on. I want to share some of these thoughts in this column and the next.

These columns will be filled with questions and speculation about a number of different aspects of repetition and how we come to expect it. I will also offer a few practical thoughts about what the concept of repetition and recurrence means for teaching, learning music, and performance. The value of this speculation for teaching lies mostly in the possibility that students may find it interesting, and perhaps it will lead them to further exploration. I also have thoughts about ways in which focusing on repetition and recurrence can help with the practicality of the learning process.

How many times shall we repeat?

Let’s begin with a curious example of repetition. Namely, why did Bach write the first Prelude of the Well-Tempered Clavier like the passage in Example 1 rather than like in Example 2 or Example 3?

In Bach’s composition, the first half of each measure is repeated exactly to form the second half of that measure. (It is so fully exact that he could have used repeat signs.) This pattern persists until the ending, where it is altered to lead to a satisfying cadence. We are deeply accustomed to the piece that is created by this patterning: it is one of the most familiar in the repertoire. But a piece on either of the other two models would have been a perfectly valid musical entity as well. If he had written it one of those ways, we would be deeply used to that.

Or would we? Maybe the “real” version is somehow actually better. I have played through the entire piece with both of these patterns, and it is my feeling that they work. Each one suggests something different about performance. The most striking of these differences is that the three-times-per-measure version feels to me like it should go a lot faster than the other two. It ends up reminding me of this passage from the longer Praeludium in E Minor of Bruhns, at measure 95 (see Example 4). If Bach had written version 3, we might speculate that it was influenced by this passage, which he may have known.

I tend to play the once-per-measure version slower and with more rhythmic freedom than either of the others. It is interesting that a mainstream analysis of the piece, which would be an analysis of harmony, since it is such a pure chord-based piece, would be essentially identical for each of these three very different pieces. I doubt that we can answer the question of why Bach wrote it one way rather than another, or indeed whether one way is better. It seems pretty clear that one repetition is very different both from no repetition and from two or more repetitions. Would writing the chord pattern four or five times in a row be as different from three as three is from two? At what point would it become ridiculous? If each chord pattern were repeated sixteen times, it would be a particular kind of extreme statement: outside the realm of Bachian music or most of what we ever encounter, but valid nonetheless.

So what about repeats as such? We accept it as normal that in many pieces of music, something—a definable passage that has a pretty clear beginning and an end, and not typically just a half-measure—will happen twice in a row. This is a defining trait of late Renaissance and Baroque dance forms: which usually consist of two sections, sometimes more, each repeated, like A-A-B-B. We accept that as routine, but, as with the Bach prelude, we would never expect each such section to be repeated more than once: A-A-A-A-etc.-B-B-B-B-etc. Same question, here applied to bigger increments of music: why not? I mean, why not in both directions? Why is twice in a row effective, and why would more than that not be? The same question applies to other places in common musical structures where repeats are routine, such as the first section (and sometimes other sections) of works in sonata-allegro form.

Tension and release

The most interesting effect and purpose of a repeat does not arise from or during the repeat itself, but rather at the moment when the repeat does not happen that second time. That is, the repeat sets up a tension (about whether it is indeed going to happen yet again, and whether it will end), and the motion to the next section relieves that tension. This tension is a fiction that we allow ourselves to experience, or that the music allows us to experience. After all, we know that the repeated material will not go on forever. We know this for certain if we know the piece, and we know it essentially for certain even if we do not. But there is something in listening to music that allows our reaction—our appreciation—to feel surprise even when listening to something that we know intimately.

I strongly suspect that this dynamic is one of the explanations for the persistent tendency for all of us to feel that “taking the repeats” is a different matter for the first section of a piece in binary form than for the second section. When we come to the end of the second section, first time, the suspense-and-relief scenario has just happened once, and our appetite for it is perhaps satisfied. Also, we know that when the second section gives way, whether after a repeat or not, it will give way to the silence following a cadence, and then perhaps another movement or another piece. That is a less compelling change of direction. This may also tend to explain the almost universal practice of not taking repeats in da capos of the sort represented by the return of the Aria at the end of the Goldberg Variations of Bach.

This may also tend to explain why repeats of sections happen only once (AABB). If part of the point is to set up the moment at which the repeat gives way to something new, it is important for the repeat not to wear out the listener’s interest. Once makes the point, more than once risks irrelevance.

I once heard an experienced concert pianist, playing from memory, repeat the opening section of the first movement of Beethoven’s Waldstein Sonata twice (that is, play the section three times). My impression was that he accidentally started the first ending after the second time through, and that led inevitably to replaying the whole section. I remember having the following reactions: first of all, that it was nice to hear the passage an extra time, just because it is wonderful music; but second to feel a little bit of panic that it would never end!

This experience makes me ponder, how does our enjoyment of a particular passage play a role in interpreting or perceiving repeats? Does this apply in particular to pieces that are short enough that repeats will not try anyone’s patience? In the Bach variation set on the chorale O Gott du frommer Gott the composer follows the structure of the chorale melody as far as repeats are concerned, repeating the first half of each variation, but not the second, at least in most variations. In Variation V and Variation VII he does indeed repeat the second half as well, violating the relationship between the chorale melody and the shape of the variation. Why? Well, I noticed practicing the piece that the opening measures of each of those second halves was especially charismatic, unusual in texture, and harmonically rich. These are moments that I would find myself practicing over and over again just because they are so cool to play and hear. I had to remind myself to practice other bits that needed practicing more. I noticed this before I stopped to think about those repeats. But I wonder whether Bach put in those extra, musicologically “wrong,” repeats just because he liked that bit of music! This is a kind of non-rigorous, taste-driven choice making that we do not associate with JSB. But perhaps we are wrong not to do so.

Do repeats generally have to do with symmetry or logic? I think that we often assume that they do or that they should. If the allemande of a given suite is A-A-B-B, then presumably the courante and the other movements will also be. Otherwise there would be an imbalance. When playing the above-mentioned Bach variations, I have been aware of a pull either to omit the extra repeats in the two variations that have them or to add repeats to all of the “B” sections. And this would be in apparent direct contravention of the wishes of the most august of composers. I once had a student who was working on the Goldberg Variations, and who proposed to omit almost all of the repeats, but to take one pair of repeats, namely in Variation VII. He had an interesting registration idea for that movement, which required four rather than two sections. I have to admit that this bothered me: no logic or symmetry, just going with an aesthetic choice. It is just an interesting light on what I (we?) sometimes want out of repeats.

To play the repeat or not, that is the question.

This brings us to something pretty concrete and specific: “should I take the repeats?” Essentially we never find ourselves wanting to omit any part of a piece that is not a repeat. I have never had a student ask me about a through-composed piece, “should I or should I not play measures 9–16?” or anything like that. Even though we accept repeats, we clearly do not quite accept them. That is, we do not accord the notes indicated by repeat signs absolutely all of the status that we give to other notes. We give this higher status to passages that are a lot like, or exactly like, earlier passages, including actual da capos. Only when a few measures of material are repeated right away, and with such exactness that it can be notated by a repeat sign, do we consider it an issue whether to play those notes or not. In fact, we likely think that way only if the repeat is actually notated by a repeat sign. Once in a while a repeated passage, a literal, full repeat, is written out. In such a case I do not often hear a student, or anyone, suggesting cutting out the similar bits.

For an interesting side note, in his notes for his 1950s recording of Scarlatti sonatas for Columbia, Ralph Kirkpatrick said of his not taking the repeats in the pieces, almost all of them in binary form with repeats indicated, that if listeners wanted to hear them again, they could play them again on the record! This probably indicates as much about his skeptical attitude towards recording as it does anything about his approach to repeats.

As for myself, I recognize a strong tendency to want to take all repeats, in whatever way they are indicated by the composer. I think that this has to do in part with my having spent my life absorbing the ethos of “the composer is always right.” That ethos has grown pretty steadily over the last couple of centuries and has found one expression in certain aspects of the early music movement. And I believe there is a certain logic to that. If a composer put in repeats, why shouldn’t it just be routine to play them? I have this stubborn feeling that there really is not any reason to single those notes out for omission. I also recognize that this could be a different story for pieces that were written in a style that made repeats a matter of routine—early dance movements, say—than for pieces written with no assumptions about repeats—nineteenth-century sonatas, for example—as to which composers made choices about repeats on a custom basis.

I also notice that, of course, repeats make a piece longer. That may seem trivially obvious, but the magnitude of a piece in time is a valid part of its aesthetic. The difference in length between a Haydn or Mozart symphony and a Mahler or Bruckner symphony is of course not even close to the whole difference. But it is not meaningless or insignificant either. If you take no repeats in one of the Bach French suites, it becomes a short piece. There is at least one recording of all six of those pieces, by Thurston Dart from 1961, that managed to fit the whole collection onto one LP. Independent of anything about the playing or the instrument (clavichord) or the recorded sound, that presentation of the whole collection as being that short feels different from a recording twice as long that would have had to occupy at least two LPs. (I say at least because it was a rather long LP.)

Making a piece long by repeating each of its parts is not the same thing as making a piece long by composing a longer amount of new material. And one thread over the long arc of western classical music has been to look for ways to create bigger structures without literal repetition. But in making a choice about whether to take repeats or not, the effect on overall length is part of the equation.

In keeping with some of my thoughts above, I do suspect that when I hear a performance of a piece that features repeats as part of the structure, but are ignored, I usually feel disappointed by the time the second section appears. If the suspense created by the repetition has not been allowed to build, then the resolution of that suspense through moving on to something new cannot have the power that it was meant to have.

To be continued.

On Teaching: Further thoughts about rhythm, part 2

Gavin Black

Gavin Black is director of the Princeton Early Keyboard Center in Princeton, New Jersey.

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Further thoughts about rhythm, part 2

Continuing from my September column, I offer here a few additional anecdotes and ideas relevant to rhythm and the teaching of rhythm. In my next column I will explore the question of how to teach rhythm or “counting” in a way that enables a student to connect those concepts as directly as possible with rhetoric and the student’s interpretive stance.

I begin by revisiting the anecdote from the last column about my colleague who, in the eyes of a particular third party, “couldn’t count.” Since I wrote that, I have had further relevant thoughts. I remember that as I walked into the rehearsal studio after that exchange, I was very sorry to have been told my colleague’s opinion. I did not want to approach my work with this fellow musician with any preconceptions. And while I certainly did not assume that the older colleague was right, I found it hard not to have a question layered on top of my focus during rehearsal. “Was that rhythm correct? Is this where I learn that she indeed cannot count?” That was distracting.

I wondered why he wanted me to focus my attention on her rhythmic deficiencies. Why did it matter in the overall picture? Why tell me as I headed into the rehearsal that “she can’t count” rather than that “she is an amazingly compelling performer?” This seems like a manifestation of bias in favor of that which can be quantified—that which seems more objective or safer to describe.

Since that day decades ago, I have become very aware that there is a strong pull in all sorts of areas of life to focus on things that can be measured and described in a way that is objective to some extent. It is a truism that in evaluating a competition, for example, or even just in reviewing a concert or a recording, it is relatively easier to note that a performance either does or does not get all the right notes, or that the rhythms are or are not all in strict accordance with the notation, or that the tempo is or is not the same as what the composer requested.

It is much more difficult to describe how expressive or moving a performance is. This is not a bad thing, and competition judges and reviewers certainly do not fail to grapple with the elusive side of things. But this has some bearing on teaching rhythm and counting. On paper, rhythm is one of the most objective matters about music—at least with our familiar rhythmic notation. Quarter notes are twice as long as eighth notes, etc. In a way, some of what is non-objective can even be described objectively. Certain dotted-note patterns, for example, are not meant to be what they apparently look like on the page, and we can often describe the ways that they differ from that presentation.

But how do we teach subtle variations in rhythms that look the same on paper? Is it an acceptable part of our understanding of rhythm for there to be such variations? If we think not, is that for musical reasons, or is it because of this pull toward the objective? If a quarter note is really always exactly twice as long as an eighth note, if all the eighth notes are really exactly the same as one another, what does that mean for a student or for how we teach? And if they are not, what does that mean? Is it possible that rhythmic notation means “these notes should be in any rhythmic relationship that would be expressed more closely this way than any other way?”

Another story from many years ago: I was coaching an amateur chamber music group—a violinist, a flautist, and a pianist who was exploring the harpsichord as part of this project. At that time, in my own work as a player I was exploring Sweelinck and beginning to discover some ideas about freedom of rhythm. At one point I played a segment of a Sweelinck toccata for the members of the group and drew their attention to a particular passage. This was one where I felt that the rhetorical force and expressiveness of the music could be enhanced by playing very freely. I had an approach to that passage that involved drawing out the development of harmonic tension and, when it was resolved, using timing to make it seem difficult to go on. That is a trite and inadequate description, but the point is that it called for freedom, and the musicians in the room found it very effective. I also played through the passage as written, and they found that almost embarrassingly boring and pointless, which was exactly what I intended to convey. So far, so good. But when we had finished this and were ready to get back to rehearsal, one of the musicians said, “Of course, you couldn’t do that with Bach.”

So, the question I had, and still have, is, “Why not?” Anyone may or may not appreciate the rhythmic choices performers exercise. In theory, there could be a plausible analysis of a Bach piece that concludes that free rhythm, or any particular approach to rhythm, might not be effective. And the question of what the composer himself would have thought always looms over our thinking about an issue like this. But none of that is what was meant by that remark that day. We discussed it, and the ensemble member specifically meant that since listeners’ expectations about Bach were pretty well formed already, unlike their expectations of Sweelinck, it would be imprudent to go too far in violating those expectations. To some extent, the way that music had been played and heard in then-recent decades had become part of the actual identity of that music. This seems to be another way in which something objective can gain a kind of privilege or priority that it might not have earned in any substantive way.

Another question that I will delve into more next month is, why rhythm? That is, what is the goal of having music organized into regular or somewhat regular micro units of time? Is it to create a sense of pulse or momentum? Is it something about comparability of experience throughout the duration of a piece or a movement? Is it very specifically about creating the palpable sense of a regular beat in the listener’s ear?

I mention it here to introduce an experiment I once conducted that was predicated on the observation that many people are of the opinion that Helmut Walcha’s recordings are rhythmically conservative. I obtained an interesting result.

I had always reacted to Walcha’s recording of Sweelinck’s Fantasia Chromatica as having both extreme steadiness and inexorable forward momentum. At the time that I did the experiment, I took it for granted that the way to achieve those qualities was to keep the beat very steady. But I must have suspected something that led me to investigate. I put on the LP and measured the beat at the opening. I then picked the needle up and dropped it a bit farther in. I measured again. I did it a third time, maybe a fourth. They were all quite different. This led to the intriguing notion that maybe inexorable forward momentum, and even the very sense of steadiness itself, might sometimes come from something other than regimented sameness of beat.

I have now repeated this exercise using more modern methods: the piece playing on my computer and an online tempo tool. The beat at the beginning hovered around 118, and later on it was over sustained passages as high as about 126 and as low as the mid 90s. That is very much like what I measured thirty years ago. I am intensely interested in the relationship between literal sameness of beat—or departures from that—and a subjective sense of steadiness, momentum, and pulse. Is it possible that sometimes a performance that features a doggedly steady beat comes across as uneven to listeners? If so, how can this be?

There are two games that I have played while riding in a car that both have to do with the use of time in music. First, if you are riding along a fairly busy two-way street or highway, pay attention to the sound of the cars passing on the opposite side. On a busy road cars will space themselves out almost regularly, since all else being equal, people pay at least a little bit of attention to following distance in front and behind. But there’s an emphasis on “almost.” The line of cars is never spaced out exactly evenly. So as the “whoosh” of each successive car goes by, see how far from even those sounds can be and if you can still accept them as conceptually even. How far apart can sounds 2 and 3 be—compared to the time between sounds 1 and 2—and can you still hear that timing as rubato or agogic accent rather than just discontinuity? For me there is a wider range of timings that I can assimilate to evenness than I would have expected.

If you can accept a stream of not quite even cars as conceptually even, is there anything interesting about the shape of the unevenness? Does it have any rhetoric to it, groupings or patterns of weak and strong beats, or impulses? One fascinating feature of this exercise is that each instance of it is ephemeral: you can hear it only once, never again the same way.

Another exercise I enjoy while driving is this: when going under an overpass, I try to experience the time in the shadow of that overpass as lasting forever. Since it will come to an end, usually in seconds or less than a second, I attempt to experience it as simultaneously brief and infinite. This feels even more intense if it is raining. It seems to me this has implications for rhythm in music. The ostensible rhythm, flow, motion of any increment of music is always about the next thing: when will the next beat come? But the state of being of each note, harmony, sonority, or beat, is also a thing that exists for as long as it exists, and that has identity and importance.

(It is probably best to do the above exercises as a passenger rather than as the driver, unless you are very sure that none of it will distract you from driving. I wonder how different any of this will seem if we have nothing but self-driving cars on the road!)

Are there other little slices of everyday life that might illuminate aspects of rhythm and the role of time in music? Rain is an interesting one. There are pieces of music that are inspired by or attempt to depict rain. What is the rhythm of rain like? It is more regular when it is fairly light. What about walking? How regular is that, and how does walking respond to outside conditions? Can one walk while hearing in one’s head a passage of music that moves at a pace different from the footsteps?

It occurred to me a few years ago that I often experience trills as containing some of that simultaneously brief and infinite quality that I get out of my second driving exercise. I sometimes suspect that that is what trills are essentially about, though that is speculative and unknowable. The fast and unmeasured quality of (usually) the middle portion of a trill seems to take it out of time, while, like all music, it is in the end bounded and defined by time.

I will pick this up again next month.

Spotlight on improvisation, part 3: an interview with Jason Roberts

Robert McCormick

Robert McCormick has been organist and choirmaster of Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia, since 2016. Previously he held similar positions at Saint Paul’s Church, K Street, in Washington, DC, and at Saint Mary the Virgin, New York City. He is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.

Jason Roberts

Editor’s note: Part 1 of this series may be found in the May 2022 issue, pages 20–21; Part 2 may be found in the September 2022 issue, pages 12–13.

Introduction

This is the third in a series of articles on improvisation, incorporating interviews with distinguished and distinctive American exponents of the art. The first two articles included enlightening contributions from Matthew Glandorf and Mary Beth Bennett, respectively; this article contains a discussion with Jason Roberts. Roberts is an alumnus of Rice University, Yale University, and the Manhattan School of Music. In recent years he has served numerous notable Episcopal parishes, and now is the director of music at the (Roman Catholic) Church of the Blessed Sacrament, New York City. Notably, he won the American Guild of Organists National Competition in Organ Improvisation (NCOI) in 2008. I have known Jason for nearly twenty-five years, and in addition to many other compliments that I easily can give him, in 2002 he also introduced me to the person who now is my husband, something for which I am most grateful!

As will become clearer later in the article, Jason’s responses led me to enjoy a fair bit of nostalgia. He and I met in the summer of 1998 in Macon, Georgia, my hometown. Jason and his family had moved to town the year before, and he spent his senior year of high school at the same school from which I had graduated the preceding year. For several summers running, while home from college, often we would “hang out” only as nerdy teenaged organists might—driving around town, playing organs, listening to sacred music, and discussing churches and church music in great detail. (I had forgotten that we specifically listened to Gerre Hancock, as Jason mentions, or that I improvised for him; I shudder to think what those efforts may have been!)

Going further back in memory, I have been thinking in greater detail about my early musical experiences, some of which I shared in the first article of this series. I grew up in a large downtown church in Macon, Mulberry Street United Methodist Church, with a strong tradition of formal worship and great music. My first influence, teacher, and mentor was Camille Bishop, for many years organist and director of music at Mulberry Street. Now retired from regular church work, she is an organist’s organist and musician’s musician. I suspect she does not give herself enough credit for playing fluently “off the page,” because on countless occasions I have heard her extemporize glorious hymn accompaniments, especially on the piano. I am not sure that I would be doing what I am now without her tremendous influence. Subsequently, when I was about nine or ten years old, at a summer church music conference with a group from my church, I heard the late Paul Oakley play services. Though sadly deceased, in the later years of his career he became known more as a choral conductor than an organist. Yet I would bet that not a few readers of The Diapason will share my recollection of his tremendously creative hymn improvisations and accompaniments. I wish I had a time machine to go back and listen to him again. 

All these influences, coupled with regular piano lessons yet only sporadic organ lessons until later in high school, led me to be brave and bold (. . . those poor listeners. . .) in improvising, mostly on hymns, at the organ and piano. My first-rate childhood piano teacher, Marian Gordon, even allowed me to improvise in her annual studio recitals. I believe all of this gave me a marvelous blend of inspiration and opportunities that shaped the musician I am today. How grateful I am to all these people and for all those experiences. By the time I got to college, I had not yet played a note of Dupré or Messiaen, something that seems now hard to fathom, but I had the good fortune to develop harmonic fluency and a willingness to extemporize. It has been eye-opening for me, in this series thus far, to learn more about when and how others began improvising. 

Discussion

Back to Jason Roberts. Jason is particularly gifted at the imitation of specific composers, periods, and styles, and that is one of the facets of improvisation that I wished to explore with him. 

When, how, and why did you start playing by ear and inventing your own music? Did it coincide with your early music training?

I never took piano lessons as a child, but my parents were both pianists, so I was always around lots of music. Not surprisingly, I refused to take any kind of formal advice from my parents, preferring to figure out how to play the piano on my own. I remember learning my first hymn. I practiced “While shepherds watched their flocks by night” (Winchester Old) for about two weeks, laboriously figuring out each note. I would play by ear quite a lot, but I wouldn’t say I really improvised. That came later.

Did you employ improvisation in public over the course of your childhood? Did you improvise in church in some way?

My early church experience was in the garage behind our house, which I transformed into a “cathedral” complete with makeshift rood screen and high altar. My closest friend played the archbishop, wearing vestments created out of old sheets with the proper liturgical colors, and I was the organist, playing an electronic keyboard. I would improvise enough to cover the “liturgical” action, but it really wasn’t anything to write home about.

Was there a watershed moment that inspired you to develop your skills seriously?

It’s odd that you, Robert, should be the one asking me about this, because you are the person who introduced me to the world of improvisation. When I was a senior in high school in Macon, Georgia, you had just started your degree at Westminster Choir College. You would come home for the summers and call me up, and we would drive around town and play every organ to which we could get access. You would play recordings of Gerre Hancock and sometimes improvise for me. It was the first time I realized that some people made an art of improvisation, and I thought it was fascinating and wonderful. 

To the extent that you improvised as a child, did you understand the music theory behind what you were doing, or did that understanding catch up later?

I think for me the theory came first. I’m not always so intuitive, so I would tend to get stuck if I didn’t know what was coming next. When I discovered musical forms, suddenly I could make a plan. It also allowed me to relate my improvisations to pieces that I knew. A hymn interlude could be organized like the development section of a sonata form, and there are thousands of models from which to draw inspiration. I learned ways to build musical tension and ways to extend a motive with sequences. When I discovered a new technique or form, I always was eager to find a way to use it and make it my own. 

Who were your principal teachers and influences in improvisation? How did you learn from them?

Bill Porter was a major influence on me. He encouraged his students to practice and perfect their improvisations. I know a lot of people think that this isn’t true improvisation, and maybe it isn’t. But I have found that when I practice a compositional technique enough, my speed can improve. I might have spent a week practicing my first fugue. Later, I could make one in a day, and now I can make one without any practice, provided the theme isn’t too complex!

McNeil Robinson was another great influence. I know it has been mentioned in these interviews already, but he taught improvisation and composition as one subject. I learned mostly by watching him work. He would take a theme and work out all its possibilities on paper. How could the theme be broken down? What were the most recognizable motives and their inversions? What were the implied harmonies? Then he would sit at the piano and try out what he had written, making phrases and sequences by recombining all the fragments. 

Even though I only met him once, I feel that I have learned a lot from Pierre Pincemaille. I know him primarily through his recordings, and I think I learn something every time I listen to him play. The same is true of Wolfgang Seifen. They are amazing musicians with so many wonderful ideas and the technique to turn their ideas into music.

You won first prize in the NCOI; to what extent has that influenced your career and your identity as an improviser? Have you entered other improvisation competitions?

The NCOI gave me an excuse to practice improvising, but it also made me think of improvisation as a legitimate pursuit—it was OK for me to spend my time on this. Later, having won the competition, I felt like it was all right for me to improvise in a concert or even just to improvise more in church. I might have been a little embarrassed to do this before. After all, it takes quite a lot of confidence to think that people want to sit and listen to music that I have just made up!

I entered the Haarlem Improvisation Competition once, and it was a great motivation for me to practice playing in more harmonically progressive styles. Often, competitors in Haarlem are given twelve-tone or free-atonal themes. It takes a completely different set of tools to extemporize a piece using such a theme.

When did you first improvise in a concert setting?

I think my first concert improvisation was a silent film accompaniment. It was a great start for me, because the film was really the center of attention. I was free to try out all sorts of things, and although some of them weren’t so successful, it was a good film and I think that covered my shortcomings!

Do you consider yourself to have your own distinct musical language? Is there anything distinctly “American” about your improvising?

I have two thoughts about this. First, even when trying to play in a historical style, a musician can’t help sounding unique. We all have our own voices, whether we like it or not. Second, I think it’s extremely rare to have a truly new musical style. If I improvise a twelve-tone piece, that has been done before. If I play in the style of Mendelssohn, that has also been done before. 

The question of style seems like it is more easily answered if one is a part of a school of playing. Pierre Pincemaille, one of my favorite improvisers, sounds a lot like Pierre Cochereau. But rather than saying that he was an imitator of Cochereau, we might say that they are both part of the French school of improvisation.

I don’t hear the same level of consistency among American improvisers. Some are influenced by jazz, but many are not. Some are more harmonically conservative, but others are not. So, I would say that there isn’t an American school of improvisation. This isn’t a criticism—it can be good that we’re not expected to sound a certain way. But it can also lead us to expect ourselves to come up with a completely new and unique style, which is extremely difficult. As for me, I don’t intentionally try to sound unique.

How does the creative process differ when you are imitating a historical style or particular composer? Is it a different process altogether, or a different side of the same coin?

All music has a style, whether it is one that has been around for a long time or not. I like music that is consistent, so I try to set limitations, regardless of the style in which I am playing.

What’s your procedure for practicing improvisation in historical styles?

My goal is usually to find out what compositional technique is generating the music and isolate it. This can be done in terms of harmony, texture, or form. I keep a list of harmonies, textures, and forms that I like to use in any given style. I will practice them on their own, and then will mix them. For example, I might make a piece using a sequence I like, and not be concerned with anything else. Then I might use the same sequence with several textures I like, often imitating pieces. (Can I play something that sounds like Louis Vierne’s Naïades using a circle of fifths sequence?) Finally, I’ll try to make a piece using my chosen sequence and texture in song form, or another form I have chosen. So, in the end I’m practicing three things at once. Sometimes these exercises sound a little dry, but often they yield good ideas.

What is your favorite sort of improvisation, either a form, or environment in which to improvise, or both?

I like liturgical improvisation. Probably my best improvisations are postludes, since after the service is over I don’t have to be worried about cadencing when the priest is ready to begin!

How does improvisation differ from composing to you? Do you prefer one or the other?

I like to compose at the keyboard, and I try to envision an entire piece before I work out the details and begin to write. This involves improvising until I settle on ideas that I want to include. I think the main difference between a composed piece and an improvisation is that the composition has to stand up to repeated hearings. Improvisations are heard just once, and music that might be perfect for a specific moment in time can sound dull or even ridiculous when it is recreated later. Composing gives me a chance to take an improvisation and improve its structure, its counterpoint, or its melodic appeal, so that it isn’t painful to hear repeatedly. Of course, notating music takes a very long time, so it’s probably more fun to stick with improvisation. 

How does your voice differ when composing versus improvising? Do you try to make it more “unique,” for better or worse?

As mentioned above, it seems that truly new musical styles are extremely rare, and they are usually not received well. We know that Stravinsky and Monteverdi wrote masterpieces that many people at the time did not even consider to be music. But there are also lots of composers who achieve a unique sound by mixing ideas from other musicians. I think Herbert Howells has a unique sound, but it’s not because he is doing anything new; instead, he is combining the modality of Vaughan Williams with some jazz harmony and maybe some impressionism. He does this masterfully, and the mixture is wonderful and decisively unique. 

I have never invented anything truly new. I think that my most successful compositions have been novel mixtures of things. I once wrote a piece with the same form as Mozart’s Fantasia, K. 608, which has a bold introductory motive and two fugues with a set of variations in the middle. My piece was in a Gershwin-esque style, and it came out sounding unique because I don’t think Gershwin would have considered writing a densely packed organ piece full of counterpoint! So, to answer your question, in both my improvisations and compositions I will look for undiscovered combinations of musical textures and forms, but the musical language for these styles is not my invention at all.

Reflection

I am grateful to Jason for terrific food for thought in all his responses. Perhaps the keenest insight I have gained from him is his helpful and clear distinction between “new” and “unique” musical styles. I would have to agree that a totally new musical language is a very rare thing indeed. I also note that both Jason and Matthew Glandorf said something similar about seeking a unique musical voice: Matthew said that he believes that “having a distinctive voice as an improviser happens by accident, so I try not to fuss too much about that.” Jason said that “[expectations of an American style] can also lead us to expect ourselves to come up with a completely new and unique style, which is extremely difficult. As for me, I don’t intentionally try to sound unique.”

I think I can safely say that I have never come up with a groundbreaking, new, musical language, myself! I have realized, however, more than ever, that I do aim to sound distinctive. Matthew Glandorf is probably correct that it would happen regardless, whether intentionally or not. Yet perhaps I have a previously undervalued fear of sounding only like a cheap imitation of some other composer or other improviser? I don’t mind at all if a listener hears a snatch of Howells there, or Vierne elsewhere; clear influences are inevitable, to be sure, in any composer or improviser’s music, as Jason also notes. (There have been occasions, however, when I have intentionally sought to pay homage to a particular composer by explicit imitation, yet those occasions are the exceptions to the rule.)

Something else that Jason wrote that will stick with me is, “Even when trying to play in a historical style, a musician can’t help sounding unique.” My assumption to date has been that if an improviser is attempting to imitate, say, Couperin, it should aim to be more or less indistinguishable from another improviser doing the same. Jason’s viewpoint is a new one for me, and I suspect it will bear fruit in my own endeavors. I shall ponder that, going forward!

Regarding whether or not there is a distinctive American school of improvisation, both Matthew Glandorf and Mary Beth Bennett (interviewed in the second article of this series) suggested that a blend or even melting pot of musical style might in itself be distinctly American, perhaps something of an American manner of improvising that happens by accident.

Yet, in the introduction to this series, I cited Gerre Hancock and McNeil Robinson as perhaps the foremost American improvisers of their generation. I wish that I could ask them some of these questions. In thinking both of their improvisations and written compositions, though they were very distinct from each other, each could be nothing else but American, to my mind and ears, with decided French influences of various sorts. 

Before closing, I would like to expand just a bit on the intersection of composing and improvising, a topic this series has begun to explore. Jason contrasts the two, saying, “. . . the main difference between a composed piece and an improvisation is that the composition has to stand up to repeated hearings. Improvisations are heard just once, and music that might be perfect for a specific moment in time can sound dull or even ridiculous when it is recreated later.” I believe there is a great deal of truth in this statement. I like to think that my own best improvisations might stand up to repeated hearings, but there have been more than a few I never wanted to hear again! (And like any performance, sometimes in listening back, the things I had thought might have been the best of the lot were in fact less so, and vice versa.) Some version of Jason’s assertion has been part of my response often when asked to transcribe my improvisations, that they were for a particular time and place. (The other part of the response is that I am too lazy to spend the time transcribing! Please forgive the shameless plug, but I recently relented and commissioned another trusted musician to transcribe three improvisations by request of Selah Publishing Co., which published them in June.)

At this juncture, I have just as many questions as possible answers to all these matters, and I am eager to continue to explore them as the series proceeds. Stay tuned!

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