Harpsichord Notes

Larry Palmer

Program planning

I write this column just as July is about to give way to August; even as a retired academic, this autumnal month nurtures my urge to begin making plans for musical programs of the fast-approaching fall semester! It was my custom through all fifty-two years of university employment to present my faculty recital on the second Monday of September—one week after Labor Day. Sometimes I played both organ and harpsichord, occasionally only one or the other.

This past summer has been especially full of planning (and playing) organ recitals on two very special instruments. One is the 1762 Caetano-Oldovini single-manual organ housed in the Meadows Museum of Art, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, an instrument originally in Portugal’s Evora Cathedral, and, just incidentally, the oldest playable pipe organ in Texas. My two demonstration concerts for the Organ Historical Society during its first conference to be held in the Lone Star State and my tenth annual organ recital program in the TGIF Concert Series of Santa Fe’s First Presbyterian Church, a program and lecture that concluded the tenth anniversary celebration of the Fisk pipe organ, Opus 133, were two separate events that required differing repertoire to show the capabilities of these two very different instruments.

The choices that were made from the organ repertoire are no different than those I usually make when developing programs for harpsichord concerts. Thus, I hope that my thoughts on planning and audience reactions may be of some interest and use to our readers, no matter which instruments they may utilize.

First and foremost, I would suggest that lengthy programming of music by only one composer is generally best reserved for recordings (which allow the listener to choose from the selected repertoire and use the on/off switch if necessary). It seems to me that only a very few composers (such as J. S. Bach) are able to fill an entire program’s span and keep the audience’s attention without a danger of ensuing boredom. A lengthy work such as Bach’s Goldberg Variations is usually accepted with sincere affection and continued interest, especially if it can be done in my favorite form of performance for this monumental work: dividing the playing with another player, each of the two alternating variations on two different harpsichords. While I have only done this once with a brilliant graduate student, it seemed to me that the somewhat contrasting timbres of the two instruments and the respite it gave to each of us as players was beneficial in many ways.

As I was attempting to decide what I would want to play in Santa Fe this past July, I was inspired by an art exhibit that had been mounted earlier this year by the Meadows Museum, entitled Dali—Poetics of the Small, 1929–1936. It comprised a generous collection of works small in format that surveyed the great artist’s output during those early years of his career. The exhibition did not travel to any other venue, but an illustrated catalog is available from the museum, should one wish to investigate the visual stimulation that I tried to emulate with similarly shorter musical compositions from a wide variety of composers.

Thus Poetics of the Small did provide a program of short pieces in many styles and genres. Variety of this sort and careful attention includes choosing pieces both in major and minor keys (plus, perhaps, an occasional piece that detours to yet another idiom—maybe utilizing a mode), the variety of which may keep the ears free from boredom, open, and listening. Thus my Santa Fe program lasted about forty-five minutes (with the rubric that applause was to be withheld until the final chord was sounded), and it consisted of works by composers Healey Willan, César Franck (the program’s one lengthy piece, Fantaisie in C, which is made up of short sections), J. S. Bach, Herbert Howells, Dame Ethel Smythe, Germaine Tailleferre, Calvin Hampton’s Consonance for Larry (1957)—my first commission to the Oberlin classmate, for whom it was also his first commission—and Maurice Duruflé’s Fugue on the Bells of Soissons Cathedral, which I dared to end with a triumphant final major chord, rather than the repeated minor one.

The demonstrations of the 1762 organ were also presented within stringent time limits and with the necessity of including an audience-sung hymn, a requirement for every OHS convention program. Fortunately fulfilling my expressed desire for variety, it was possible to devise a twenty-five-minute program that did just that: a Tiento by Cabanilles was followed by my SMU colleague Simon Sargon’s Dos Prados (From the Meadows) composed at my suggestion in 1997—a stately pavane with variations that utilized every stop on the organ and showed, with particular beauty, the treble half-stop Sesquialtera that allows a melody to be played using the keys from middle C-sharp to the organ’s top C while playing an accompaniment using the notes from middle C down to the lowest C in a bass short octave. Also included were sonatas by Scarlatti and Seixas, the hymn Pange Lingua, and a rousing frolic by Lidon, using the full organ to give all the volume that one could possibly want.

So, I suggest that a wide-ranging variety of musical ideas can keep an audience interested in our historic instruments (or in the modern replicas thereof).

Another idea that I have been pursuing during my long career is the occasional introduction of quite unexpected works from the nineteenth- and early twentieth-century repertoires. I have mentioned some of these previously in various Diapason articles, but has anyone followed through with this idea? I would be interested in hearing from readers who may have done just that. Do not forget that Chopin composed a short Fugue in A Minor, found in his keyboard works; Schuman’s Fugue III on BACH from the organ works requires only a few pedal passages, all of which may be negotiated with the left hand on the harpsichord. Works by Herbert Howells, particularly his Lambert’s Clavichord, contain a selection of delightful pieces that may be played on any keyboard instrument (as I can attest to words that came directly from the composer’s mouth when I first queried him in his Royal College of Music studio in London), plus two volumes of Howells’s Clavichord that comprise many pages of beautiful music to be explored.

Of the Revivalist works, do not eschew Ferruccio Busoni’s Sonatina for Cembalo—not the easiest piece to adapt to the harpsichord, even though he mentions our instrument in the title, he manages to write as least several notes that do not exist on any harpsichord in my collection of instruments . . . . So rewrite a measure or two if needed, but enjoy the piquant harmonies and the very idea that this well-known musician felt compelled to write for our instrument. Francis Thomé’s Rigodon still ranks as one of the earliest pieces to be designated for harpsichord, as does Mulet’s Petite Lied, which has been published in all its small-format glory in an issue of this very journal.

For more recent works I return often to Duke Ellington’s A Single Petal of a Rose (dedicated to Antoinette Vischer, although it had been written earlier for Queen Elizabeth II). It is a piece that is, to my knowledge, unpublished except for the facsimile in a book about the Swiss patroness. I base my own performance copy on an arrangement sent to me in 1985 by Igor Kipnis, who credited jazz great Dave Brubeck as co-arranger. I make many adjustments to cope with wide hand stretches and to keep the feeling of a jazz improvisation, and I can report that it is always an audience toe-tapping favorite.

Among a host of contemporary composers I have my favorites such as Vincent Persichetti, Gerald Near, Neely Bruce, Glenn Spring, Rudy Davenport, Knight Vernon, Timothy Broege, and William Bolcom—all of whom write beautifully and knowledgeably for the harpsichord. To peruse the literally hundreds of possible twentieth-century works, see Frances Bedford’s magisterial catalog, Harpsichord and Clavichord Music of the Twentieth Century  (Fallen Leaf Press, Berkeley, California, 1993).

David Herman

It was the only paying job I’d ever had.

So said Ralph Vaughan Williams, speaking on the biographical DVD, O Thou Transcendent, as he talked about his first—and only—church organist position.

Ralph Vaughan Williams (1872–1958), arguably the most imaginative, prolific, and engaging British composer of the first half of the twentieth century, wrote so relatively few works for solo organ.¹ Why was this? Other twentieth-century British composers (such as Matthias, Leighton, Wills, Jackson, and, especially, Howells) contributed to the organ’s literature in major ways. Some say Vaughan Williams did not like the organ. It is more accurate, I believe, to suggest he did not enjoy playing the organ. It might have been difficult for him; he was, after all, a large man and had (as noted by relatives speaking on the DVD) long fingers and “enormous” feet! Others suggest his personal brand of Christian agnosticism got in the way of composing solo organ music.² But there are, of course, British organs in not only churches and cathedrals but also in many town halls and other non-religious concert venues. There was even an organ set up in his childhood home in Surrey so that he could practice.

Perhaps Vaughan Williams could not quite sort out how to translate some musical thoughts into organistic musical thoughts. In one of his many profoundly important observations on playing the organ, the late Erik Routley once wrote, “The organist must translate the [hymn] score into organ language [author’s emphasis] when he or she plays.”³

It is true that while many places in Vaughan Williams’s organ works have the ingredients for great musical expression, they are not entirely easy to bring off at the organ, due to matters of fingering, pedaling, and especially of texture. The same could be said of organ music by some other composers (Jehan Alain comes to mind), for which the player’s creative imagination must be called upon to combine with the composer’s notes.

It is the goal of this short work to consider Vaughan Williams’s views about and experiences with the organ and to examine the organ works that he left us. In so doing we will note some of the important influences on his compositional life, including his friendship with Gustav Holst, and especially his long and admiring relationship with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach. And, we will see that the organ had an important role in Vaughan Williams’s life from his early teens through his funeral in Westminster Abbey in August 1958.

A final theory offered by some in explaining Vaughan Williams’s relatively small output for the organ is that he simply couldn’t play the organ well.

I cannot tell that I think he is justified in going in for an organist’s career which is his pet idea. He seems to me so hopelessly ‘unhandy’ . . . . I can never trust him to play a simple service for me without some dread at what he may do.

So wrote Alan Gray, Vaughan Williams’s organ teacher at Trinity College.⁴ Vaughan Williams himself, likely with a degree of false modesty, was critical of his own playing. We should take care, however, in believing that he was not a competent organist, as many factors suggest otherwise. To begin with a significant milestone, he studied for and passed (in 1898) the demanding Fellowship exams for the Royal College of Organists (only to resign his membership a few years later). John Francis, Vaughan Williams scholar, author, and vice president/treasurer of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, suggests that the situation above that Alan Gray complained of was due to the fact that Vaughan Williams was “unpredictable rather than technically incompetent.”⁵ Francis continues:

Self-deprecatory remarks by Vaughan Williams in later years have perhaps been taken too often at face value. We have no account of his [organ] playing by anybody who heard him play.

Further, Gray himself followed his lament by adding,

And this he combines with considerable knowledge & taste on organ and musical matters generally.⁶

This essay is not a biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams; fortunately, there are many excellent volumes available, some issued quite recently. Nevertheless, many events in his childhood, youth, and university days are intertwined with a study of his organ music. The reader will note at the end a list of some twenty-four sources consulted. Also particularly useful is the Timeline found on the website of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society: www.rvwsociety.com.

Vaughan Williams’s father was the vicar of Down Ampney (which Vaughan Williams pronounced “Amney”)⁷ in Gloucestershire. He died when his son was only two years old. His mother came from families of means: she was the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood (of pottery fame) and the niece of Charles Darwin.⁸ Let Vaughan Williams’s own words summarize the next few years, as spoken in Tony Palmer’s video, O Thou Transcendent:⁹

At age 11 [1883] I was sent to a horrid school at Rottingdean. Three years later I arrived at Charterhouse [1887]. They still sing my hymns there to this day. From Charterhouse I was sent off to the RCM [1890], and there I met a fellow pupil called Gustav Holst.

In his youth Holst had also secured a church position involving considerable responsibility. Vaughan Williams’s niece, recalling these early days with Vaughan Williams, remarked,

We used to laugh about Uncle Ralph but he wasn’t very good at the organ, and yet he was always playing for funerals or weddings or things.¹⁰

While at Charterhouse he was once greatly impressed by a schoolmate’s playing of Bach’s “St. Anne” fugue—a work that would remain a favorite throughout his life and which he himself designated as the postlude for his memorial service in Westminster Abbey.¹¹

During school holidays he practiced diligently, and the family even arranged for an organ to be installed at Leith Hill Place near Dorking, the seventeenth-century house in Surrey, wherein lived Wedgwoods and Darwins and which had become Vaughan Williams’s childhood home. (He later remarked that Dorking was “my home for nearly 40 years.”¹²) He inherited the house from his brother in 1944, whereupon he gave it to Britain’s National Trust.¹³ Breakfast at Leith Hill was at 7:30, and “Mr. Ralph” normally practiced beforehand. “The trouble about the early morning was finding a blower for the organ.”¹⁴ The butler, housemaids, groom, and gardener all avoided him!¹⁵ On Sundays he would practice long after the rest of the household had started to walk the two miles to church, usually arriving just as the service was starting. While a student at Charterhouse he was allowed to practice on the chapel organ. (One wonders what pieces he was working on!) In any case, from an early age Vaughan Williams seemed committed to the organ.

Throughout his childhood Vaughan Williams was steadfast in declaring his desire to be a professional musician. His family agreed, with the provision that he became an organist. (Thoughts were different in the late nineteenth century!) He later wrote:

I believe I should have made quite a decent fiddler but the authorities [!] decided that if I was to take up music at all the violin was too ‘doubtful’ a career and I must seek the safety of the organ stool, a trade for which I was entirely unsuited.¹⁶

It should be noted that when he subsequently left his only church position after only four or so years, it would seem that, although he disliked being an organist, there is no evidence that he disliked the organ.

The Royal College of Music

Vaughan Williams entered the Royal College of Music in 1890, just prior to his eighteenth birthday, and there became a pupil of Charles Hubert Hastings Parry. His family wanted him to commute, which he usually did by rail but occasionally on foot! (Really? London to Leith Hill in Surrey—some thirty miles! Far from the 200 miles Bach supposedly walked from Arnstadt to Lübeck, but . . . ). He often announced his arrival at Leith Hill Place by first having a go at the organ.¹⁷

While studying at the Royal College of Music he also entered Trinity College, Cambridge (1892), and there experienced a “spiritual awakening.”

As my mother insisted that I had a ‘proper’ education, I was sent to Cambridge . . .
what an awakening that was! You might almost say a spiritual awakening. The sense that even if you didn’t believe in God, there was something beyond. Something mysterious.¹⁸

Vaughan Williams would have heard many organ recitals and services at Cambridge and in nearby Ely Cathedral (whose organist then was T. Tertius Nobel, later to become organist at Saint Thomas Church, Fifth Avenue, New York City). Undergraduates at Trinity College were obliged to attend chapel services, and Vaughan Williams sometimes avoided this duty by retreating to the organ loft. At Cambridge he studied the organ with Alan Gray¹⁹ (organist of Trinity College) and left the university with a B.Mus degree in 1894, returning to the Royal College of Music in 1895. There Vaughan Williams began composition study with Charles Villiers Stanford, with whom he had a famously difficult relationship; Stanford’s comment on Vaughan Williams’s music often consisted only of “All rot, me boy.” Vaughan Williams, however, was in later years to speak warmly of him.

The Church of Saint Barnabas, South Lambeth

Vaughan Williams was appointed organist here in 1895. Since this was to be his first and only church position it seems appropriate to include here some details of the place and his duties. It seems that he held this post until 1899. Vaughan Williams describes his work there, again with some false modesty:

I was appointed to my first and last organ post, at St. Barnabas, South Lambeth. As I already said, I never could play the organ, but this appointment gave me an insight into good and bad church music which stood me in good stead later on. I also had to train the choir and give organ recitals and accompany the services, which gave me some knowledge of music from the performer’s point of view.²¹

This was a large church (originally seating 1,500 people) on Guildford Road in South Lambeth. The parish, as confirmed by the Diocese of Southwark office, exists no more.

The building, however, is still there, having been gutted and refitted as a series of “council flats” (low-income housing). Interestingly, when I visited there, the building manager was astonished to learn that a very famous composer had once served as organist of the church! Vaughan Williams presided over a largish instrument built by Hill and rebuilt by Bishop.²² At the time of his tenure the church supported an ambitious music program with a sizeable budget. The duties, for which Vaughan Williams was paid a salary of £50 per year, were demanding and time consuming.²³ His wife Adeline reported that he worked very hard and practiced on the organ up to five hours per day. For Vaughan Williams the salary was probably incidental to the experience.

He did not need to earn a living, having a healthy but not excessive private income. His work as an organist was for his continuing education, not to keep body and soul together.²⁴

His time at Saint Barnabas was not easy. He told his friend Holst that his choristers were “louts” and the vicar “quite mad.” The vicar insisted on the organist’s taking communion; Vaughan Williams felt that he, as a principled atheist, could not. So he resigned, without any apparent regret.²⁵ First, however, resolving to go abroad to study (with Max Bruch), he requested from the church, and was granted, a leave of absence. It is here that his friend Gustav Holst enters the picture.

Vaughan Williams and Holst

Vaughan Williams met Holst (1874–1934) at the Royal College of Music in 1895, and they remained fast friends for forty years until Holst’s death, going for extended hikes in the countryside and critiquing each other’s compositions. These “field days,” when they played and dissected their respective works were to prove invaluable to them both. Although in his youth Holst also had various tries at being a church organist, he was instead to become a professional trombonist (recommended as a treatment for his asthma).

He [Holst] left the College of Music to abandon the eminently respectable career of an organist . . . and to get at music from the inside as a trombonist in an orchestra. The very worst that a trombonist has to put up with is as nothing compared to what a church organist has to endure.²⁶

In taking leave of the organ bench at Saint Barnabas it was natural for Vaughan Williams to think of his friend Holst. There are somewhat differing accounts of the manner in which he broached the subject with Holst. Heirs and Rebels,²⁷ the collection of letters exchanged between the two composers, establishes some clarity. First, in a letter from Vaughan Williams to Holst, probably July 1897:

I am leaving this damned place [Saint Barnabas] in October and going abroad.

And then, contrary to some accounts in which he offered Holst the job, he in fact inquired about the latter’s interest:

Suppose you were offered it would you consider the matter? The screw [sic!] is £50 [per annum] and the minimum duties . . .

And here he lays out what sounds like a demanding list of tasks, working on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, and Sundays, as well as running the choral society and giving occasional organ recitals. Vaughan Williams later states:

Mind I AM NOT OFFERING IT YOU [VW’s caps] only [sic] if you would like it I will do my best to Back you.

He concludes by asking Holst to deputize for him while he is gone and provides many specific instructions on getting through the service (pitches, cues, etc.). He suggests beginning the morning service with a “short and easy voluntary” and concluding with a “long and difficult voluntary.” He notes about the choir:

Those louts of men will slope in about 8.45 and make you mad—the only ones who can sing will be away.

As a postscript VW adds, “The vicar is quite mad.” (Does any of this sound familiar to us today?) In any event, the position was not taken by Holst but probably by William H. Harris (later a faculty member at the Royal College of Music and organist at Saint George’s Chapel, Windsor).²⁸

Vaughan Williams and Bach

Vaughan Williams showed nearly life-long fondness and admiration for the music of Johann Sebastian Bach, whom he placed above all musicians. He regarded the Saint Matthew Passion, a work that he would conduct many times, to be Bach’s greatest achievement. Vaughan Williams had clear and strongly held thoughts on performing Bach’s music. First, he insisted that, for his audiences, the choral works, including the Matthew Passion, be sung in English (a preference shared by the late David Willcocks when he was director of the Bach Choir). He did not have patience with so-called “authentic performance practices” of early music.

Bach, though superficially he may speak the eighteenth-century language, belongs to no school or period.²⁹

Vaughan Williams had a clear and oft-stated aversion to the harpsichord! He used the grand piano as the continuo instrument in his many Bach performances.

The harpsichord, however it may sound in a small room—and to my mind it never [author’s emphasis] has a pleasant sound—in a large concert room sounds just like the ticking of a sewing machine.³⁰

He had similar thoughts about the so-called Baroque organ, which in the 1950s put him distinctly at odds with those planning the new organ for London’s Royal Festival Hall.

By the way, I see there is a movement afoot to substitute the bubble-and-squeak type of instrument for the noble diapason and soft mixtures of our cathedral organs.³¹

It is interesting to note that the opening recital on the Royal Festival Hall organ included Vaughan Williams’s Three Preludes Founded on Welsh Hymn Tunes.

These views on instruments and performing practices may now be considered old-fashioned and out-of-date. They are, nonetheless, the beliefs of a great musician whose musical thoughts and ideas, planted in the mid-Victorian era, grew through more than a half-century of music making. “Vaughan Williams paid tribute to Bach practically, in his non-authentic but deeply moving performances of the major choral works at Dorking.”³² [For the Leith Hill Festivals, founded in 1905, which he conducted from 1905 to 1953.]

The Great War

The effect of war on musicians has been a topic of lengthy and interesting studies. In addition to the English composers who did not return from the First World War, the Second World War took the lives of many composers, including Jehan Alain and Hugo Distler, and affected the lives of countless others. Although space does not permit an excursion on this topic, it seems relative to touch on Vaughan Williams’s army service, which relates to his work as organist and church musician.

Vaughan Williams volunteered for military service in the Royal Army Medical Corps (in 1914, at age 42!) and from May 1915 was stationed at Saffron Walden where he spent considerable time at the organ of the parish church,³³ finding refuge from the horrors of war through playing Bach. At the outbreak of war he was for a time stationed with his unit in Dorking. When there was a death in the company and no organist could be found for the service at Saint Martin’s Church, Vaughan Williams offered to play, providing he could have some volunteers to form a choir. In the same year he was posted to a field ambulance brigade. The following year he was sent to France (at the rank of lieutenant) and was involved in the Battle of the Somme.

Vaughan Williams’s patriotic spirit was evident during the Second World War through his composing of film music to aid the war effort and in many types of volunteer work. For example, he regularly gathered scrap metal. His Thanksgiving for Victory was written and performed in 1945 in celebration of the war’s end.

Vaughan Williams and church music

We have seen that, with the one exception of four or so years at the end of the nineteenth century, Vaughan Williams never functioned as a parish musician. Nonetheless, his many choral works, large (Hodie) and small (O Taste and See), enrich the repertory of all manner of choral organizations, ranging from parish singers to concert choirs. His choral music was written not so much for places (as with Howells’s many settings of the services for various cathedrals and collegiate chapels) but for occasions (coronations, victories, and more).

One of Vaughan Williams’s most monumentally important works in the field of church music was as editor of The English Hymnal. In 1904 a committee headed by the Reverend Percy Dearmer³⁴ set about creating a new hymnbook, in succession to the venerable Hymns Ancient and Modern.³⁵ Vaughan Williams was invited to be the musical editor and, by his own testimony, in the process learned a great deal about music—the good and the bad. He introduced several new tunes of his own creation as well as folk melodies, making it a thoroughly “English” book. He succeeded in purging the new hymnal of many poor Victorian hymn tunes (while retaining the better ones), and those which he was forced to keep he banned to the back of the book in a section he called “The Chamber of Horrors.”

Songs of Praise followed in 1925, once more with Dearmer as general editor and Vaughan Williams, assisted by Martin Shaw, the musical editor. It is said that Vaughan Williams was thrilled by the sound of an enthusiastic congregation singing a great hymn. The same trio of Dearmer, Vaughan Williams, and Martin Shaw worked together again to produce The Oxford Book of Carols in 1928.

Organist friends of Vaughan Williams

Vaughan Williams loved the typical cathedral organs of the first half of the twentieth century and liked hearing them played. In return, many cathedral organists enjoyed playing for him—often at night when the building was closed, often playing works of Bach. Such special playings took place often—by Walter Alcock at Salisbury; Herbert Sumsion in Gloucester; William McKie in Westminster Abbey, as they worked together preparing for the 1953 coronation. After Vaughan Williams’s death in 1958, it was decided to place his ashes next to those of Stanford and Purcell in the Abbey.

Other prominent organists who were friends and colleagues, and from whom he no doubt learned much about the instrument: Thomas Armstrong, Ivor Atkins, Harold Darke, Walford Davies, John Dykes Bower, Alan Gray, Herbert Howells, John Ireland, Henry Ley, Christopher Morris, Boris Ord, Cyril Rootham, Martin Shaw, R. R. Terry, and George Thalban-Ball.³⁶

In considering Vaughan Williams and the organ, Relf Clark suggests an interesting comparison with Elgar:³⁷

Early in their careers, both were briefly the organist of a parish church. Neither of them appears to have enjoyed the experience very much. Both wrote for the instrument a handful of not entirely characteristic works. Both made notable use of the organ in a few orchestral scores. And both enjoyed the friendship and support of professional organists.

In a famous letter to The Daily Telegraph, January 14, 1951, Vaughan Williams makes some views clear, beginning with his thoughts on the “bubble and squeak” tones of continental organs.

Is it really proposed that we should abandon in favour of this unpleasant sound the noble diapasons and rich soft ‘mixtures’ of our best church organs?

He particularly admired the organ at Saint Michael’s Church, Cornhill (Hill; Rushworth & Dreaper), presided over by his friend Harold Darke, and believed it possessed the ideal English organ tone.

The works for organ

This essay offers not so much analyses but comments on Vaughan Williams’s music. For structural and thematic analyses of the organ works see the excellent articles by Hugh Benham [See “Sources and further reading,” B/2] and Relf Clark [See “Sources and further reading,” C]. It would seem that Vaughan Williams’s major organ works were conceived or written at Saint Mary’s Church, Saffron Walden, where he spent a great deal of time practicing while stationed there in 1915. The late Michael Kennedy, the chief authority on the works of Ralph Vaughan Williams, cites the following as “The Organ Works:”

• Three Preludes Founded On Welsh Hymn Tunes, published in 1920 by Stainer & Bell. The second prelude of the set, Rhosymedre, was played at Vaughan Williams’s funeral in 1958. Clark observes that the registrations in the score likely reflected the organ at Trinity College. He further suggests that Vaughan Williams first encountered these tunes when editing The English Hymnal (1906). The preludes are likely among the first works completed after his leaving the army in 1919.³⁸

Bryn Calfaria is at once the most interesting musically and, although fun to play, nonetheless the most challenging to bring off at the organ. It is dramatic and improvisatory; fragments of the tune are given out through a thick and tangled texture. Like many other fine organ works (some of Alain’s come to mind) the piece involves the player as interpreter: adding musical imagination to the text.

Rhosymedre is the most well liked and often played of the three. Simple, quiet, and gently dance-like, it states the tune twice, in a straightforward manner.

Hyfrydol makes a bit of an odd conclusion to the set: a very thick-textured setting of the tune (difficult to play, especially for those with small hands) above a constantly moving pedal part that romps over two octaves (get out your Gleason book to help your feet prepare).

• Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, composed in 1921 for orchestra and first performed in that year at the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford. The orchestral version was performed first (conducted by the composer). The piece was then arranged for organ between 1921 and 1930 (completed in 1921, revised in 1923, published in 1930). Vaughan Williams told the dedicatee Henry Ley that the work was modeled on Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, BWV 546.³⁹ Ley (pronounced “Lee”), then organist at Christ Church, Oxford, commented on the piece’s difficulty. According to Ley, Vaughan Williams said that the work was written in 1915 while he was stationed at Saffron Walden using the organ at Saint Mary’s Church.⁴⁰ The prelude and fugue together occupy some ten minutes.

The Prelude is very well written for the organ. Vaughan Williams was attentive to details of registration (including frequent use of manual 16′s) and manual divisions. The piece has quite a lot of bitonal dissonance. Ley was right: it is not easy play, due to the constantly changing chord colors, large amount of chromaticism, and fast contrapuntal passages. Vaughan Williams employed chords in parallel sweeping lines, often in contrary motion. Thick homophonic passages alternate with longer sections of thinner, busy counterpoint, generating an ABABA design. The quick B sections are terrifically fast at the specified tempo of quarter = 120 beats per minute. Thinking I could not play it that fast, I initially suspected a case of “composer tempo overreach.” David Briggs, however, manages these brilliantly on the two-CD set of the complete organ music (original and transcriptions) of Vaughan Williams, Bursts of Acclamation. (Albion ALBCD021/2, available from the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society, https://
rvwsociety.com).

The prelude is somewhat impressionistic in sound, using parallelism, tonal vagueness (often resulting from mixed modes), the use of ninth and major-seventh chords, as well as tetra- and pentatonic scales. The result: the prelude clearly sounds like Vaughan Williams. It ends suddenly in C major, a somewhat astonishing tonality not really heard before in the piece.

For someone who was a master at contrapuntal writing and an ardent admirer of Bach, Vaughan Williams seems not to have written very many fugues. This fugue is a good one, a double fugue in fact, whose two subjects are first treated separately and then combined at the climax. It begins not so much in C minor but C Aeolian. The omnipresent triplets against duplets, which get a bit wearing (to this player, at least), is an element in both fugue subjects. Parallel chords in contrary motion, drawn from the prelude, occasionally interrupt the rather dissonant fugal entries.

• Two Organ Preludes, founded on Welsh Folk Songs, published in 1956. These are Romanza (“The White Rock”) and Toccata (“St. David’s Day”). These works are generally regarded as being less than indicative of the composer’s skill and imagination and not very “organistic.”

• In 1964 Oxford University Press published A Vaughan Williams Organ Album (still in print) consisting of transcriptions as well as the two organ preludes of 1956. Various composers, including Henry Ley, have made organ transcriptions of several of Vaughan Williams’s orchestral works.⁴¹

• Kennedy mentions an Organ Overture, from 1890 (the manuscript of which is in the British Library).⁴²

• A Wedding Tune for Anne, 1943 (contained in A Vaughan Williams Organ Album).

• Various incomplete sketches left at the time of his death.

Returning to the opening question

There are two Vaughan Williams organ works of relatively major stature, dating from during and just after the time of the First World War: the preludes on Welsh hymns and the Prelude and Fugue in C Minor. A generation later would come Benjamin Britten’s comparable opus, Prelude and Fugue on a Theme of Vittoria (1946). They have not much in common, save being one of few examples of their masters’ contributions to the canon of organ music. Both composers wrote for situations or performances: Vaughan Williams for the Three Choirs Festival in Hereford, for example; Britten’s was a commission from Saint Matthew’s, Northampton (for which he had earlier written the cantata Rejoice in the Lamb, containing some of the most original and dramatic writing for organ in any choral work). These preludes and fugues, valued for their singular stature, are nonetheless not entirely representative of their composers’ genius, language, invention, and musical imaginations.

Douglas Fairhurst suggests that Vaughan Williams, as a great artist, was more at ease and naturally expressive having a larger canvass for his music. Former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams commented that, while it was unorthodox to consider canonization for a non-believer, the Christian church owed a great deal to him for his contributions.⁴³ In any case, after his death in 1958 Vaughan Williams’s ashes were buried in Westminster Abbey, appropriately near those of Stanford and Purcell. Of special note: his was the first funeral service held in the Abbey for a commoner since that of Purcell, nearly 300 years earlier.⁴⁴

Supplement I: some other works in which the organ is prominent

The organ has played a central role in many centuries of choral music. Vaughan Williams realized the expressive and dramatic powers of the organ and used them to good effect in some of his orchestral works as well.

• Job, A Masque for Dancing. In Scene VI (the Dance of Job’s Comforters) we see/hear a vivid representation of Satan and his retinue in Hell. Included is a part for “Full Organ with Solo Reeds Coupled,” supplementing the full orchestra.

• A Vision of Aeroplanes⁴⁵ is a substantial late work (1956) for chorus and organ, setting familiar words from the first chapter of the Book of Ezekiel. It opens with a dramatic, dissonant organ solo that, as with subsequent organ interludes, reminds one of the organ’s use in Howells’s A Sequence for St. Michael, to be written some five years later.

• A Sea Symphony includes passages for organ, more for support, as a member of the orchestra, than for effect.

• However, the dramatic blast of chords occurring about 3/4th through the “Landscape” (Lento) movement in Sinfonia Antarctica, shows the organ as hair-raising, important, and soloistic.

Supplement II: selected choral works in which the organ has a prominent role

[These lists extracted from Neil Butterworth: Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Guide To Research. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1990.]

Vexilla Regis (for the Cambridge B.Mus), 1894

Mass (for the Cambridge D.Mus), 1899

Toward the Unknown Region, 1907

Fantasia on Christmas Carols, 1912

Sancta Civitas, 1923–1925

Three Choral Hymns, 1929

Flourish for a Coronation, 1937

Six Choral Songs: To be sung in time of war, 1940

England, My England, 1941

Thanksgiving for Victory (later A Song of Thanksgiving), 1945

Folk Songs of the Four Seasons, 1949

Fantasia (Quasi Variazione) on the “Old 104th Psalm Tune,” 1949

Hodie, 1953–1954

Supplement III: some choral music for the church

O Clap Your Hands, 1920

Lord, Thou Hast Been Our Refuge, 1921

Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis (The Village Service), 1925

The Pilgrim Pavement, 1934

O How Amiable, 1934

Festival Te Deum in F, 1937

All Hail the Power (Miles Lane), 1938

Services in D Minor, 1939

Hymn for St. Margaret, 1948

The Old Hundredth Psalm, 1953

Te Deum and Benedictus, 1954

A Vision of Aeroplanes, 1956

Notes

1. In this he does not stand alone, of course. The same could be said of RVW’s best friend, Gustav Holst (who around 1930 started what he hoped would be an organ concerto). We wish Alain and Distler could have had longer lives in which to continue their composing for organ. And, although the organ parts in many of Benjamin Britten’s choral works are tour de forces of rhythm, texture, and organ color, Britten, too, left us a regrettably small number of organ works (which reveal relatively little of his musical genius).

2. Many have pondered this seeming contradiction between belief and the creative settings of sacred texts. One factor: he had, of course, a life-long love affair with Elizabethan English.

3. Church Music and the Christian Faith, by Erik Routley. Carol Stream, Illinois: Agape, 1978, p. 105.

4. Quoted in Aldritt, p. 55.

5. Francis/2. [The booklet pages are not numbered.]

6. RVW/3, p. 42.

7. Palmer.

8. Reference to the famous remark about Darwin is irresistible. As a child, VW asked his mother what was all the fuss about Great-Uncle Charles? She replied that the Bible says the earth was created in six days; Great-Uncle Charles believes it took somewhat longer.

9. Palmer.

10. Ibid.

11. Aldritt, p.30.

12. Palmer.

13. VW/3, p.258.

14. Ibid., p. 28.

15. As stated by J. Ellis Cook, son of the gardener at Leith Hill Place; quoted in Tributes, p. 25.

16. VW1, p. 134.

17. Aldritt, p. 37.

18. Palmer.

19. “Our friendship survived his despair at my playing and I became quite expert at managing the stops at his voluntaries and organ recitals.” And then wrote Alan Gray: “I cannot tell him that I think he is justified in going in for an organist’s career which is his pet idea. He seems to me so hopelessly ‘unhandy.’ I can never trust him to play a simple service for me without some dread as to what he may do.” Aldritt, p. 55. VW clearly achieved significant improvement by 1898, when he passed the F.R.C.O. exams!

20. The British title “organist” usually implies “organist and choirmaster.”

21. VW/1, p. 146.

22. Clark, p. 9.

23. In addition to services, these included four choral rehearsals each week as well as giving occasional organ recitals. Kennedy, p. 41.

24. Heffer, p. 18.

25. Ibid., p. 19.

26. VW/1, p. 71.

27. VW/4, pp. 5–6.

28. F/5, p. 9.

29. VW/1, p. 122.

30. Ibid., p. 123.

31. Ibid.

32. Mellers, p. 158.

33. F/2 (pages unnumbered).

34. Vicar of Saint Mary’s, Primrose Hill, where his organist was Martin Shaw.

35. Hymns Ancient & Modern, first published in 1861, continues to be found, in subsequent editions, in some British church pews today, often next to The English Hymnal.

36. All listed in B/3, Personalia, pp. 315–345.

37. Clark, p. 7.

38. Ibid., p. 10.

39. F/4, p. 8.

40. F/3. p. 16.

41. For details of these, see Randy L. Neighbarger’s, “Organ Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Descriptive List of Original Works and Transcriptions,” The Diapason, October 1991, p. 10.

42. K/2, p. 3.

43. Palmer.

44. Ibid.

33. Written for RVW’s good friend Harold Drake, organist at the Church of Saint Michael’s, Cornhill, the work sets the dramatic account of the whirlwind, cloud, and fire from the book of Ezekiel.

Sources and further reading

A: Aldritt, Keith. Vaughan Williams: Composer, Radical, Patriot—A Biography. Ramsbury, Wiltshire: Robert Hale Books, 2015.

B/1: Barber, Robin. “Vaughan Williams in Hamburg, 1938: A Brush with Nazi Germany.” Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, Issue 66, June 2016.

B/2: Benham, Hugh. “Music for Solo Organ by Ralph Vaughan Williams.” Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, Issue 55, October 2012, 3–8.

B/3: Butterworth, Neil. Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Guide to Research. New York and London: Garland Publishing, Inc., 1990.

C: Clark, Relf. “Vaughan Williams and the Organ: An Anniversary Review.” Organists’ Review, August 2008, 7-15.

F/1: Francis, John. Vice-Chairman of the Ralph Vaughan Williams Society (UK) in correspondence with the author.

F/2: Francis, John. Notes in the booklet accompanying Bursts of Acclamation, two CD recordings of organ works by RVW published by Albion Records.

F/3: Francis, John. “Composers of the Great War Revisited.” Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, Issue 65, February 2016, 15–16.

F/4: Francis, John. “Ralph Vaughan Williams and the Organ.” Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, Issue 63, June 2015, 3–11.

F/5: Francis, John. “A Question of Chronology.” Ralph Vaughan Williams Society Journal, Issue No. 74, February 2019, 9.

H/1: Heffer, Simon. Vaughan Williams. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2000.

H/2: Holmes, Paul. Holst; Illustrated Lives of the Great Composers. London: Omnibus Press, 1997.

K/1: Kennedy, Michael. The Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1964; 2nd edition,1996.

K/2: Kennedy, Michael. A Catalogue of the Works of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996.

M/3: Manning, David, ed. Vaughan Williams on Music. Oxford University Press, 2008.

M: Marshall, Em. Music in the Landscape. London: Robert Hale, 2011.

M/2: Mellers, Wilfrid. Vaughan Williams and the Vision of Albion. London: Barrie & Jenkins, 1989.

N: Neighbarger, Randy L. “Organ Music of Ralph Vaughan Williams: A Descriptive List of Original Works and Transcriptions,” The Diapason, October 1991, 10–11.

T: Tributes to Vaughan Williams: 50 Years On. A reprint of The RCM Magazine, Vol. LV, No. 1, Easter Term 1959.

P: Palmer, Tony. O Thou Transcendent (a video commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of Vaughan Williams’s death). Isolde Films, 2007.

VW/1: Some Thoughts on Beethoven’s Choral Symphony, With Writings on Other Musical Subjects. London: Oxford University Press, 1953.

VW/2: National Music and Other Essays. London: Oxford University Press, 1987.

VW/3: Vaughan Williams, Ursula. R. V. W.: A Biography of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1964.

VW/4: Heirs and Rebels: Letters written to each other and occasional writings on music by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Gustav Holst. Edited by Ursula Vaughan Williams and Imogen Holst. London: Oxford University Press, 1959.

Photograph of Ralph Vaughan Williams by Frank Chappelow (used with permission)

Larry Palmer

Christmas gifts:
a few suggestions

Writing this column in mid-October means that I have not given much thought to Christmas shopping. Instead I have spent most working hours planning programs (and then practicing) for the second in our annual schedule of three house concerts, enjoyed the opening nights of Dallas Opera’s fall season by attending Wagner’s Flying Dutchman and Bizet’s Carmen, and preparing for the first-ever wedding to take place in our spacious music room. (After all, with a pipe organ and seating for forty guests, why not?)

However, now as you read these December Harpsichord Notes, I hope they may contain some suggestions that could be of help for all who have yet to make gift selections. So, tally-ho and read on!

• Eagle-eyed subscribers to The Diapason will have seen the notice of J. William Greene’s new compact disc Christmas Ayres and Dances in the Here & There section (page 12) of our October magazine. The disc (Pro Organo CD 7281) comprises Greene’s performances of his genial compositions played on a Gerrit Klop continuo organ and a single-manual harpsichord by Peter Fisk. The clever Baroque-style arrangements of familiar carols and secular songs of the season are sure to delight the ears of music-loving friends. Among my personal favorites is Greene’s Bell Fugue (based on Jingle Bells), sure to be a hit. For colleagues who are fellow keyboardists, why not purchase not only the compact disc, but also the printed scores for these captivating arrangements? All three volumes are available from Concordia Publishing House. Bell Fugue is the final piece in Volume II.

• An earlier publication by Edwin McLean (born 1951) bears the title A Baroque Christmas—Carols and Counterpoint for Keyboard (New Interpretations of traditional seasonal pieces for piano, organ, or harpsichord), issued in 2003 by Frank J. Hackinson (FJH Publishing Company), Fort Lauderdale, Florida. With works somewhat easier than Greene’s compositions, McLean offers a single forty-page volume of charming and useful pieces equally suited for all the instruments mentioned in his introduction, including digital keyboards. Eleven tunes are set: Noël Nouvelet, God Rest You Merry, Greensleeves, Coventry Carol, Kings of Orient, Pat-A-Pan, In dulci jubilo, Veni Emmanuel, Tempus Adest Floridum, Stille Nacht, and Adeste Fideles. I have used most of these for church and concerts and continue to enjoy them very much.

• Now for something completely different: author Mark Schweizer has made a slight deviation from the fourteen murder mysteries that began with The Alto Wore Tweed and progressed through the various vocal ranges (The Tenor Wore Tapshoes, The Diva Wore Diamonds, The Organist Wore Pumps, etc.), a series of novels that has captivated so many of us.  A fifteenth story, also set in St. Germaine (Schweizer’s fictitious small town in North Carolina), is replete with the familiar cast of characters headed by Hayden Konig, police chief and organist/choirmaster extraordinaire of St. Barnabas Episcopal Church. But in the shorter novella titled simply The Christmas Cantata the author deviates slightly from the others in his series. It is available in the original paperback format (95 pages) or as a more recent hardback edition, both of which present exactly the same text, but the second edition is in a slightly smaller book format that requires 128 pages—more elegant and better, perhaps, for stocking stuffing. ’Tis a gentle tale, still filled with hilarious episodes, musical references, and sly liturgical guffaws: available from St. James Music Press (SJMP Books). You may wish to include a special handkerchief in that stocking, for the denouement is beautifully touching and may bring tears to the eyes. Also, a warning: this author’s mysteries are habit forming; I sincerely doubt that anyone can read just one! In a surprise email, received as I write this essay, Schweizer announced the fifteenth, and final, St. Germaine mystery: The Choirmaster Wore Out. Definitely a brand-new entry for acquiring and giving away!

• Thanks to my mother I began listening to operas at a tender age. Each Saturday afternoon in fall and winter, beginning when I was nine years old, my ears would be focused on our radio speaker as Mom and I listened to the New York Metropolitan Opera broadcasts in our small town of Corsica, Pennsylvania. I am grateful for this background as well as for my grade- and high-school experiences as a wind player, especially the ones after I began to play oboe. That, plus the choral directing experiences that were part and parcel of my graduate work and early professional engagements taught me a great deal about phrasing and making the music “breathe” in natural ways. I firmly believe that every keyboardist needs this type of training to become a better musician. Later these experiences engendered many a humorous moment in organ or harpsichord lessons when I would stop a student to suggest some necessary phrasing here or there, and often end with the comment, “I still can’t believe that you pay all this tuition for me to remind you to breathe and count!”

As an aid to the development of vocally informed musicality I would suggest as a Christmas gift, both to “self” and “others”—and a most unusual one, at that: ARC, which is the title of the Decca Records debut CD performed by countertenor Anthony Roth Costanzo. This artist (who has been selected as “Vocalist of the Year” by Musical America) has put together a program that demonstrates his self-admitted 50% love of Baroque music and 50% devotion to contemporary works. On this magnificent disc Costanzo performs works by Philip Glass and George Frideric Handel. This modern mastersinger of both styles convinced me of the beauty to be found in each, and I have listened repeatedly, enraptured by his musicality. Costanzo made his Dallas Opera debut on October 30, 2015, in the world premiere of Jake Heggie and Terrence McNally’s opera Great Scott. Since that magical evening I have been following Costanzo’s brilliant career. His artistry, both as singer and actor, earns him my highest recommendation and admiration.

• Another Handelian who could bring tears to the eyes with her exquisite vocalism was the mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, who began a musical career as violist, but soon was discovered to have one of the great female voices of the twentieth century. Sample her exquisite singing on the Avie CD 30, released in 2002—only four years before her untimely death at age 52. Lieberson is ably abetted by the Baroque specialist, conductor, and harpsichordist Harry Bicket, playing an Italianate single-manual harpsichord by Douglas Maple (after Zenti). This recording is another musical experience that just might be life changing.

• August 16, 2019, will be the sixtieth anniversary of Wanda Landowska’s death. The “mother of us all,” this pioneering harpsichordist still resonates through her recordings and through the memoirs contributed by her devoted friends (and occasional detractors). I was incredibly fortunate to have known Mrs. Putnam Aldrich, known universally as “Momo,” Landowska’s first private secretary during the years they spent together at Wanda’s “Temple of Music” in Saint-Leu-la-Forêt, France. I became acquainted with Momo through our mutual friend Richard Kurth, a fellow Ohioan who has spent most of his career teaching French and Spanish at the Kamehameha School in Honolulu. Richard, who drove Momo to the local Alliance Française meetings, actually accomplished our mutual introductions, and thus resulted my invitation for Momo to tell her account of those years for The Diapason. For many subsequent winters I spent my Christmas holidays visiting Richard and Momo in Hawaii (a tough choice, but someone needed to do it), interviewing Mrs. Aldrich year after year and taking notes that eventually found their way into Harpsichord in America: a Twentieth-Century Revival.

It was during one of these remarkable meetings that I, quite brazenly, asked Momo who might inherit a caricature of Wanda that was prominently displayed in each of Momo’s dwellings (she changed addresses several times during these years). That query remained unanswered until the last day of that year’s Honolulu sojourn when Momo handed me a wrapped package, approximately eight and a half inches by six and a half inches. I knew without looking what was enclosed in that brown paper, and I said, “You must keep this! I know what it means to you.” But Momo insisted, and, I confess, I did not argue with her for very long. The caricature, an unsigned watercolor, is widely considered to be the finest of all such drawings, especially in its perfect details.

When I arrived home in Dallas I immediately had some photographs made, and sent them to Momo so she would not be without that beautiful image. Eventually I loaned a professional high-decibel print of “my” Wanda portrait to Martin Elste for his 2009 Berlin Landowska Symposium and Exhibition, and it served as the signature work of that event. It also is published in Dr. Elste’s magnificent book Die Dame mit dem Cembalo [The Lady with the Harpsichord] (Schott Music, 2010, Order Number ED 20853; ISBN 978-3-7957-0710-1). The full-color print of the caricature may be found on page 98. The book’s text is entirely in German except for the four pages from the memoirs of American harpsichordist Irma Rogell: “Walks with Wanda,” on pages 146–150. Even if one is not fluent in German the comprehensive range of Elste’s illustrations (many of which are photographs that he travelled far and wide to make) places this deluxe 240-page volume at the top of the list as the most comprehensive pictorial history of our beloved “Mamusia.”

• I was tremendously moved by Martin Pearlman’s generosity with his Armand-Louis Couperin Edition, made available for all of us to download and print, free of any copyright restrictions. In a recent email Martin included a shorter URL for accessing his gift: http://tinyurl.com/ALCouperin. I pass it on to our readers as per Martin’s suggestion, and wish you, once again, a happy downloading experience.

It is with a small, Pearlman-inspired gesture that I offer my Christmas gift to our readers: free use of my Landowska caricature. Like Martin, I urge you to use it wherever and whenever you wish, copyright free. And, I would ask only that you use the credit “Larry Palmer collection, gift of Momo Aldrich.”

• As my final Christmas suggestion: if you have a friend or acquaintance who does not subscribe to The Diapason, why not present that lucky person with a year’s subscription to this journal? It would benefit your friends and help to ensure that the magazine continues in its beautiful, full-color format for many years to come. What could be nicer? And twelve times a year you make your friend(s) happy­—and perhaps more involved in your musical world.

Larry Palmer

Gottlieb Muffat and his Componimenti Musicali

Since February is the shortest month (even though this leap year does add a twenty-ninth day), it seems right and proper to submit a shorter essay! After all, one must cram a month’s work into a shorter period, so there should be fewer words to read or write.

Way back in 2019, as I was searching for my autographed copy of Christopher Hogwood’s book on Handel, the tome next to it fell out of the bookcase. Since one of the joys of retirement is the gradual reading of many items that were not read previously, I opened the errant volume to see what it was all about. One hundred sixty-six pages in a format about the size of a choral anthem copy, the hardbound surprise was musicologist Friedrich Chrysander’s 1894 Handel Supplement V in English translation: its content, the listing of ample borrowings from the publication, Componimenti Musicali for Harpsichord (1739), that The Messiah’s composer found in this work by his fellow German Gottlieb Muffat (born in Passau in 1690, deceased in Vienna in 1770). Included in Chrysander’s interesting book was the whole content of Muffat’s delightful publication. Since I had never played even one single work by this composer, I read through the entire oeuvre of six enticing suites and a seventh stand-alone piece, Ciacona with 38 Variations. I will admit that I did not play every note in this final work, but the composition inspired me to go searching for my performance copy of Handel’s Chaconne in the same key of G major.

Perhaps it was the guardian angel who was on duty that day or just good fortune that was trying to equal the scales of justice after the recent tornado that caused so much damage to the section of Dallas in which I live, but the second score that I rescued from a pile of harpsichord music in a very large drawer was nothing less than Gottlieb Muffat’s Componimenti Musicali in a much larger print format—the Ut Orpheus Edition published in 2009 as a splendid volume edited by the late lamented early music specialist Christopher Jarvis Haley Hogwood (1941–2014)—an edition that includes yet one more welcome bonus: the first publication of another solo harpsichord work by Muffat—his seven-movement Suite in D Minor, Hogwood’s discovery, found in the library of the Berlin Sing-Akademie. Equally special is the note that I had placed in the front cover of this beautifully legible score: a note from former editor of The Diapason Jerome Butera, who had passed it on to me for reviewing.

Hogwood’s extensive introductory notes include his helpful remarks on the proper performance of various ornament signs as well as his tracing of the Componimenti Musicali’s historical significance and publication history. Especially fine is the larger size of the many, many notes in this more recent edition, a particular boon for those of us who, like me, may be having problems with aging eyes!

Do not hesitate to procure and utilize this tome of delightful music, compared by several noted performers to be the equal of works by François Couperin or of those by Muffat’s Viennese mentor, Fux. The Ut Orpheus Edition, published in Bologna, bears the ISBN number 979-0-2153-1639-3. I recommend it whole-heartedly.

So, dear readers, I wish you much happiness in this month of Saint Valentine, and may you fall in love with these delightful harpsichord pieces of Gottlieb Muffat—surely a gift both from and to the gods of musical happiness—and join me in programming at least one of the suites to help in spreading this worthy newfound joy.

Larry Palmer

Scarlatti’s cat in London, Vienna, and Texas

Our story begins with Thomas Roseingrave, born in Winchester, England, in 1688. He emigrated to Dublin, Ireland, with his father, his first music teacher. In 1707 he entered Trinity College, but did not complete his degree. A life-changing trip to Italy was financed in 1709 by Saint Patrick’s Cathedral, “to improve himself in the art of music that hereafter he may be serviceable to the Cathedral’s music program.”

It was at the home of a nobleman in Venice that young Roseingrave was invited to play the harpsichord. As he related to music historian Charles Burney some years later, “finding myself rather better in courage and finger than usual, I exerted myself and fancied by the applause I received that my performance had made some impression on the audience . . . .” Burney continues,

". . . a grave young man dressed in black and in a black wig had stood in one corner of the room, very quiet and attentive while Roseingrave played. Being asked to sit down at the harpsichord, when he began to play, ‘Rosy’ said he thought ten hundred devils had been at the instrument. He never had heard such passages of execution and effect before. Inquiring the name of this extraordinary performer he was told it was Domenico Scarlatti, son of the famous opera composer Alessandro Scarlatti. Roseingrave did not touch the harpsichord for a month following this experience, but, after his hiatus he became very intimate with the young Scarlatti, following him to Rome and Naples, and hardly ever leaving him during his time in Italy . . . ."

Returning to England in 1714 or 1715, Roseingrave continued to champion Scarlatti’s music, producing one of his operas at the Haymarket Theatre and publishing an edition of forty-two Scarlatti sonatas in 1739, a volume that included some examples from the 1728 Essercizi, including Kirkpatrick number 30, the “Cat’s Fugue,” which came to bear the descriptive title that is often credited to the composer Muzio Filippo Vincenzo Francesco Saverio Clementi, born in 1770 in Bonn. And why, you may ask, is it universally known today as something to do with a cat?

That answer derives from its wide-ranging fugal subject that begins on the G below middle C and continues upward dotted quarter note by dotted quarter with these intervals: G–B-flat, E-flat–F-sharp, B-flat–C-sharp, then cascades downward in eighth notes: D, C-natural, B-flat, A, G, F-sharp, G—a rather strange subject, but, bearing Scarlatti’s original tempo indication of “Moderato” this 6/8 theme does indeed sound rather like a middle-aged tabby cat walking on its favorite harpsichord keys!

I would emphasize the moderate tempo should you wish to play this audience-pleasing harpsichord or organ sonata! A Lyrachord recording by a very fine harpsichordist who is excessively fleet of finger rather destroys the fun and enjoyment of the quite unusual harmonies generated. Of course, I, too, have been guilty of playing too quickly many times, but once I approached retirement age I found that I really preferred to dwell longer on sonorities that I find beautiful. (Although my late-in-career students would probably counter, “But he always mentioned that he would prefer a slightly slower tempo!”)

Roseingrave made a number of changes to Scarlatti’s score of K. 30: these included a few differing notes, some octave doublings, and the replacing of many dotted quarter notes with a plain quarter, followed by an eighth rest rather than a dot—making these passages much more suitable to the organ and to the resonant acoustics of London churches. Speaking of which it may be of interest that Roseingrave, in 1725, became the organist of Saint George’s, Hanover Square, the parish church of none other than George Frederic Handel, the longest-lived of the 1685 triumvirate.¹

If one should wish to play from Roseingrave’s score, the best edition of K. 30 is a 1972 publication from Alfred Music, New York, edited by Willard Palmer (who used to say when I was performing in his presence, “Unfortunately, no relation”) and Margery Halford, both Houston-based early-music supporters. These intrepid researchers compared all the earliest printings (there is no autograph known to exist)—and their edition contains a facsimile of the work from the first printed edition (London, 1738) of which the first copy was presented by the composer to his patron King Joâo V of Portugal. Roseingrave’s changes to the score are given in smaller staves directly above the affected measures, and other divergences are indicated by footnotes referencing a copy of Scarlatti’s first edition that was reprinted by Witvogel in 1742 and Clementi’s version, published about 1811 in the second of four volumes comprising Clementi’s Selection of Practical Harmony. All of these useful addenda resulted in a score of 10 pages: the most comprehensive edition that I have found of this iconic work.

To continue with the references found in my title, I used an April 2019 recording from a demonstration concert performed on the oldest playable organ in Texas, the Caetano Oldovini organ built in 1762 and now housed in Southern Methodist University’s Meadows Art Museum. This instrument was originally in the Monks’ Gallery of Evora Cathedral in the university city of that name in Portugal, where it was one of three organs in the building.

Vienna: Reicha

A composition that I have never encountered on anyone else’s concert programs is the Fugue on a Theme by Domenico Scarlatti, opus 36/9 by Antoine Reicha. I found this delightful homage in Volume 2 of Bohemian Piano Music from the Classical Period, edited by Peter Roggenkamp, published by Universal Edition, Vienna (UE18583), in 1990. Perhaps Reicha, an exact contemporary of Beethoven (both born in 1770) felt some special kinship when he moved from Prague to Bonn with his parents in 1785?

In 1799 Reicha traveled to Vienna with the hope of provoking interest in his newly composed opera. His first visit was not to Beethoven, however, but to his idol, Josef Haydn, to whom his opus 36, a collection of contrapuntal works, is dedicated.

Eventually Reicha moved to Paris, where in 1818 he was appointed professor of counterpoint and fugue at the Paris Conservatoire, where his classes included such now well-known figures as Hector Berlioz, Franz Liszt, and, for the ten months prior to his death in 1836, as special mentor to César Franck!

Reicha’s “Cat Fugato” (pun intended) with its tempo indication of “Allegro moderato” may portray a slightly younger cat than Scarlatti’s, but the theme is the same, and the full title Fugue on a Theme from Domenico Scarlatti leaves no doubt as to the homage work that it is. Gently swirling sixteenth notes sound lovely on the harpsichord, and I enjoy, immensely, introducing this beautiful novelty to audiences. Depending on my mood of the moment I sometimes make the piece even more special by changing the concluding chord from minor to major; thus far, no thunderbolt has reached me from the heavens (nor from below the earth), so I suspect that I have the composer’s blessing.

Thus we have fulfilled the offerings named in the title of my presentation for the May conference of the Historical Keyboard Society of North America (HKSNA) held this year at Huntsville, Texas, in the beautiful venues provided by Sam Houston State University. I made an ad hoc quick recording of Reicha’s Fugue utilizing my Richard Kingston Franco-Flemish double harpsichord, to complement the organ solo of Scarlatti’s original Fugue. A neighbor did the recording, and, with the multiple duties of preparing for the trip, I did not check the disc that was offered. Thus, when I checked its suitability and compatibility with my computer, I had the shock of its not being playable.

My rescuer in this debacle was newly minted DMA Silvanio Reis, a star pupil of Temple University’s Joyce Lindorff (who, incidentally, succeeded me as president of the Southeastern Historic Keyboard Society, one of the now-merged components of the current national organization). His computer was receptive to MP-3 recording, and he not only operated the sound for this second selection, but also took over the earlier disc of the organ fugue, which made my morning presentation much easier than I could have imagined. Dr. Reis also made his own presentation, “The International Idiom in the Keyboard Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti,” during which he played examples from six sonatas as apt musical preludes to my more verbal and humorous offering.

Note

1. Dates given in Gerald Gifford’s article for Grove’s Dictionary of Music, Fifth Edition.

Editor’s note: the staff of THE DIAPASON congratulates Dr. Palmer on being named a member of the International Advisory Panel for the Historical Keyboard Society of North America.

Larry Palmer

Marches for March

March: the third month of the year in the Gregorian calendar—the only month with a name that has a musical connection. March: a ceremonial procession in 4/4 time. March: a title for a musical composition (unfortunately not found very often in works for harpsichord). While I was searching for a subject to explore this month these definitions popped into my mind. What follows are the titles and some comments about pieces that include the word “march” in scores that I found in my library of harpsichord music.

From Henry Purcell (1659–1695) we have three short examples to be found in his Miscellaneous Keyboard Pieces (edited by Howard Ferguson for Stainer & Bell, Ltd.): in the “Second Part” of Purcell’s Musick’s Hand-Maid (1689) numbers 2 and 4, each comprising sixteen measures in C major, and from A Choice Collection of Lessons (1696/1699), number 19 (also in C)—twenty-two more measures, all three entitled “March.” Ferguson’s second of the two volumes that present his scholarly edition of Purcell’s complete works for harpsichord does not offer a single march in the composer’s Eight Suites. I mention this because I had also perused a Kalmus reprint of the same Eight Suites edited by the Austrian musicologist Ernst Pauer (1826–1905) who took the liberty of adding one of the aforementioned marches as an addition to Purcell’s Suite No. 5 in C Major—a rather extended addition since Pauer also assured that each of the two sections would be repeated by removing the optional repeat marks in both A and B sections, and then making them seem obligatory by printing each section a second time.

From the 1725 Little Notebook for Anna Magdalena Bach we find three short marches: numbers 16, 18, and 23. In order: twenty-two measures in D major and the same number of measures in G major, both credited to C. P. E. Bach; and twenty-eight measures in E-flat major, the composer unknown—all presented in the Henle Urtext Edition. Interestingly those three marches are vastly outnumbered by nine menuets in this iconic volume of Bach family favorites.

Moving on to France, the only François Couperin entry in the “Marche-Fest” is to be found in that great composer’s Fourth Ordre: “La Marche des Gris-vêtus.” I asked author Jane Clark if I might quote her description of this marching piece as it appears in the book (written with Derek Connon), The Mirror of Human Life. With her generous permission,

"A drinking song in honor of the famous regiment with grey uniforms, the words of which go: ‘Let us sing the glory of the grey coats; Let us sing their virtues when we drink, and pay respect to their strength.’"

[My thanks to the author who informs me that a third edition of this indispensable guide to Couperin’s harpsichord works is forthcoming from London’s Keyword Press.]

More French music: from composer Jean-François Dandrieu (1682–1738) we find “Les Caractères de la Guerre” as the final work in his Premier Livre of which “La March” (eighteen measures) is the second section of this suite (Edition Schola Cantorum, 1973, edited by Pauline Aubert and Brigitte François-Sappey). And finally, an inspired and moving composition by Claude-Bénigne Balbastre (1727–1799), who signed his manuscript “le Citoyen [Citizen] Balbastre, 1792—the first year of the Republic”—obviously an astute survivor of the French Revolution and a patriotic one, as well: Marche des Marseillois et l’Air Ça-Ira. A wonderful, vigorous setting of the French national anthem with variations, it is one of my favorite recital pieces, especially during July. This march has Scarlattian hand crossings and a bass C with a downward squiggly line, marked “Canon” (for which I love to use my elbow to make it a thundering tone cluster, usually enough to wake any dozing persons among the listeners). Originally this work was designated for fortepiano, but it also works well as a harpsichord piece (Edition Le Pupitre 52, edited by Alan Curtis for Heugel, Paris).

§

There is a paucity of American-composed marches for harpsichord. A careful perusal of the indices in Frances Bedford’s magisterial catalogue of twentieth-century works for harpsichord and clavichord did not include even one such work for the revived instruments. And so I turned my attention to the earlier history of music on this side of the Atlantic Ocean. Eureka! At least our forefathers’ musical tastes will provide several entries for this month’s topic!

In W. Thomas Marrocco and Harold Gleason’s 371-page survey, Music in America: An Anthology from the Landing of the Pilgrims to the Close of the Civil War 1620–1865 (New York: W. W. Norton, 1964), chapter nine includes both words and music for several delightful additions to our keyboard repertoire. First and foremost is the one-page gem “Washington’s March” from George Willig’s Musical Magazine (Philadelphia, 1794–1795)—eighteen measures of pompous musical delight that I have enjoyed playing on both harpsichord and organ. Early versions of our national anthem and other patriotic songs are also of interest, and at least two Civil War favorites could be adapted for keyboard use: “When Johnny Comes Marching Home” (1863) and “Marching Through Georgia” (1865).

Although it does not have the “m” word in its title I think several voluntaries by William Selby (1738–1798) deserve to be mentioned. The composer, English born, emigrated to Boston, where he became organist of King’s Chapel from 1771 until his death. The beautiful Voluntary in A Major was published in London circa 1770 in a volume of pieces by a host of contributors—ten pieces in all “for the Organ or Harpsichord.” The Selby piece is also included in the book by Gleason and Marrocco and is also the second of two Selby Voluntaries edited by a more recent organist of King’s Chapel, the composer and early music enthusiast Daniel Pinkham (1923–2006). This edition was published by E. C. Schirmer Music in 1972.

Moving southward from New England, I can also recommend a delightful rarity that I purchased from a shop in the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., in 1975: A Little Keyboard Book: Eight Tunes of Colonial Virginia Set for Piano or Harpsichord by James S. Darling, who was, for many years, organist and choirmaster of Bruton Parish Church in Williamsburg. During my seven years of teaching in Virginia (1963–1970) we met fairly frequently, and both of us had the good sense to purchase a harpsichord from America’s master builder William Dowd.

For Darling’s choice of pieces from Colonial Virginia he selected eight from the manuscript books of the Bolling family, plantation owners in Buckingham County. Following introductory material the first musical item is “Trumpet March,” and the last piece, “Lord Loudoun’s March.” Also of interest to historically oriented musicians is the publication here of the only known work (“Minuet”) by Peter Pelham, organist of the Williamsburg church and jailor for the municipality. This delightful small volume was published in 1972 by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation (ISBN 0-910412-93-6).

Lastly, I recommend the volume Baroque Folk by Willard A. Palmer (1917–1996), “Moderately Easy to Early Intermediate Piano Solos That Teach”—sixteen familiar melodies arranged in Baroque style (Alfred Music Co., New York, 1969). Opening with three two-part inventions and two minuets, a single march is based on the Israeli National Anthem, Hatikvah. Only one page in length, it is cleverly constructed of imitative counterpoint, and I should think that quite a few of our readers may be organists for Jewish houses of worship as well as for Christian denominations and might, therefore, find special appreciation for their usage of this iconic tune. I will not disclose the other familiar melodies that are presented in new guises in this clever and charming volume. I use several of the arrangements quite often, especially for encores, and it is always a good way to send one’s listeners on their ways, chuckling and humming a favorite tune.And so, dear readers, enjoy the employment of marches in March, and, just perhaps, we might be able to encourage (or commission) one of our American composers to write a new march for use in the year 2021? I have my own particular favorite in mind—or perhaps if we cannot achieve that lofty goal we might just improvise or commit to paper or screen something that we invent for ourselves. Happy March!