Harpsichord Notes

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.

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.

Repetition II

During the week after I finished writing my previous column, I had several experiences, each of which had some bearing on what I wrote about, so I will describe these before continuing and expanding the discussion from last month. One of them was a delightfully well-timed refutation of something that I wrote last month, the others more in sync with my thoughts.

First, a student asked me to review some of the music of Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer with him. We started with the Musicalischer Parnassus, a collection of nine suites published in 1738. I was reminded by reading through the collection that the prelude to the first of those suites follows almost exactly the same harmonic progression as the first prelude from the Well-Tempered Clavier, and it is in triple time. Thus it sounds a lot like my tripled version of that passage from last month: probably more so than the Bruhns excerpt that came to my mind when I contemplated my altered version of the Bach. The relevant measures of the Fischer are found in Example 1.

It is widely accepted that Bach knew Fischer’s music and was influenced by him. Fischer, about whose life not much is known, was probably nearly thirty years Bach’s senior. However, the collection that contains this passage was not published until twenty years or so after Bach wrote the WTC prelude that seems to echo it. Did Bach know this piece in manuscript? Did Fischer know the WTC, which of course was not actually published until decades later? Probably not. This is probably coincidence, and this passage is possibly just another interesting example of the use of repetition to create an aesthetic effect.

Next, I was coaching some musicians on a chamber music project, and I was surprised to be told that they had decided to make cuts to one of the pieces they were to play at an upcoming concert. Specifically, they were going to leave a movement or two out of the very long piece. However, in the longest movement, they were snipping out bits: a few measures here, a few measures there, based on a sense that the movement was too long and repetitive. This caught my attention since I had just written in my February column that, “. . . we essentially never find ourselves wanting to omit any part of a piece that isn’t a repeat. I have never had a student ask me about a through-composed piece ‘should I or should I not play mm. 9–16?’ or anything like that.” And indeed I cannot remember any previous instance of this.

A hypothetical discussion of the ramifications of this choice by these musicians would probably start by invoking respect for the composer and go on to talk about the shape and arc of the piece. It might emphasize “right” and “wrong,” or just attempt to characterize the nature of the changes brought about by this sort of editing. Some people would say that if they didn’t like this piece as is, they should play something else. I did not engage in very much of that discussion with these performers, at least not then. The choices had been made, practiced, and rehearsed. And I am not sure what I would say, beyond just that I was surprised and that I tip my hat to the Fates for delivering this to me at that exact moment.

I have heard debate from time to time about whether or not a performer should take the repeat in the long first movement of Schubert’s Piano Sonata in B-flat Major. Performers and musicologists talk about the length and raise questions about balance. But since there is a fairly long first ending as part of the section that we either do or do not decide to repeat, part of the discussion is about the material in that first ending. I have heard people use it as a reason to take the repeat—so that one does not entirely omit material that the composer wrote. But I have also heard it given as a reason not to take the repeat—on the grounds that the first ending material is boring, not up to the standard of the rest of the piece. This again touches on the question of when we do and when we do not give ourselves permission to second-guess a composer.

Then a student of mine, a former player of a melody instrument, just now getting into keyboard playing, spontaneously asked why so much keyboard music has repeats: is it just because they want to make the pieces longer? I touched on that a bit in the February column as well. It is an idea that we tend to resist, since in a way it could be taken to be disparaging or belittling of the work of composers. That does not mean that it is not true. And whatever the intent, the effect of repeats on length is real. I found it interesting that the question came up naturally for someone whose take on this repertoire was fresh and unspoiled.

The last of these chance occurrences was about the Widor “Toccata” from Symphony V. I wonder how different this piece would seem if the first measure were repeated exactly as is before the (actual) second measure. That second measure starts out as a repeat of the first, but crucially changes on the final beat.

Further questions regarding repetition

One question that I find fascinating in repeat situations is whether the two instances of the same material, one after another, are a statement of something and then a restatement of it, or are a question and an answer. This question itself will not always or often have an answer. However, in some cases for us as players, and for our students, observing our own feelings about this, one case at a time, might be revealing.

It might seem counterintuitive that the exact same notes could be both the question and the answer. However, this is not impossible even with words:

“Really?”

“Really!”

or even more extended:

“Really?”

“Really.”

“For certain?”

“For certain.”

Each of these question and answer groups works. Furthermore, each word or phrase has its own particular feeling. The “really” answer in the second grouping feels different to me from that in the first, because it is not being asked to express finality.

In the realm of music without words, the question and answer attribute is more abstract, more elusive. Attributing this to a passage almost certainly cannot ever be right or wrong or subject to proof, or even perhaps to analysis. But because it cannot ever be wrong, it can always be potentially useful. If thinking of a repetition situation as a question and answer, or as a statement and restatement, perhaps in a different mood or by a different “person,” seems useful or seems to enliven the experience of playing the passage, then it is a fruitful and correct way of looking at it.

With words, the vast majority of attempts to use the same word or phrase as a question and its answer will fail:

“Would you like some toast?”

“Would you like some toast.”

and so on.

The possibility that a repeat will seem like a question and answer can never be subject to failure as such; it can just seem like an interesting idea or not. This brings us to one of the fascinating things about repetition, both signed repeats and the repetition or recurrence of any material, whatever the structure. The fact that we can accept the amount of repetition in music that we do accept invites us to think about the ways in which music resembles or does not resemble those forms of expression that use words or concrete visually based images.

In a work of theater—play, movie, television episode—if a structure in which something happened and then was literally repeated, then something else happened and was also literally repeated, and so on, were to be used, it would be at best some sort of special effect. It is not necessarily the case that this has never been done. But it is not routine or remotely common. It would be possible to go to dozens of plays and movies per year for a lifetime—and watch an almost infinite amount of television—without ever once encountering this form.

But in music it is routine. Why is this so? It should not be that the repetition is inoffensive—acceptable—because it is meaningless. If it were meaningless, then we would not have a vast repertoire in which a substantial amount of repetition has been perceived as valuable by a vast audience over many centuries. (At least that is a fair assumption or a reasonable hope.) But the meaningfulness is abstract, and that seems to be the big difference. The extent to which repetition in music engages our “why are they doing that again?” reflex is limited.

Perhaps because the repetition is abstract, it can also evoke a response to the very idea of repetition itself. That idea is powerful. As much as we like newness, we also like familiarity, and repetition gives a sense of connection to the past and future. It is possible that sometimes, at least when we hear the repeat of a passage, we react as we do when we see an old friend or go back to our favorite restaurant. Repetition may suggest something like resurrection or reincarnation, or hint at some of the things that we wonder about and crave having to do with eternity and infinity. This is especially true of recurrence in composition, as in rondo technique or recapitulation. Certainly these images are overblown and should not be taken too literally or even too seriously. But I am pretty sure that some of these sorts of feelings are there much of the time. It is part of the picture of what repetition can feel like or mean.

In music that has words and is in verses, we expect the music to repeat, but not the words. We can sing any number of verses in a row of a hymn and happily accept that the musical notes will be the same for every verse. However, if the words were exactly the same for each verse it would seem bizarre. A phrase in words might recur. But any sameness of that sort has to be dealt out very differently with words than with music.

The term “repetitive” is, in everyday usage, almost a synonym for “boring.” You never hear someone say “that was a wonderful book: really repetitive” or “that movie was the most repetitive I have seen in a long time. I loved it!” So that suggests that we need to feel a bit of caution about whether repetition, whatever its power, can lead to boredom. This is to some extent the domain of the composer. If we think that a composer’s use of repetition in a particular piece creates boredom, we might just not want to play that piece. But nonetheless as players, we need both to make sure that we do what is necessary to make repeated material interesting and to refrain from overreacting.

I believe that a lot of students tend to overreact to the fear that repeated or recurrent material will be boring. This can manifest itself in wanting to add ornamentation or change stops. There is a kind of fruitful paradox, that if you always change ornaments or change stops on repeats, that in itself becomes repetitive and potentially boring. So everyone should be motivated to limit those sorts of gestures or to think carefully and in an individually tailored manner about when they are the most valuable.

If a repeat—or material that comes back or resembles other material—seems intrinsically boring to you, is there a way of framing it aesthetically, philosophically, or through imagery, that brings it to life? Is there a way of playing it with more energy, or less energy, like a response, like an echo, like a reaffirmation, like something thoughtfully reconsidered? A serious engagement with ideas such as these should probably precede choices about out-and-out changes. Any changes in the notes (ornamentation) or the sound (registration) or performance values (articulation, phrasing, use of timing devices, rubato, and so on) will be based on taking the passage as seriously as it warrants, not on halfway giving up on it in advance.

A very practical though mysterious aspect of playing repeated passages or identical material is that the same exact notes can seem easier or more difficult to play depending on whether you are playing them for the first or second time. Sometimes, in a long piece in which something comes back after a long interval, this can be explained by stamina and concentration issues. This is something that I have to remember to think about consciously when I am playing the Bach Prelude and Fugue in E Minor, BWV 548, for example. In each movement there is an extended true da capo. And when the opening material comes back it manifestly does not feel the same. I need to remember consciously to give it an extra dose of concentration to compensate for the effects of playing non-stop for a long time. Also the return of familiar material in a case like that creates the danger of a letdown: “oh, it’s just that old passage again; I did that fine ten minutes ago.”

One way to avoid that letdown is to focus on the possible rhetorical differences alluded to above. Try to remember, whether it is an instant repeat or a return after a good deal of other musical wandering, that by virtue of its not being the initial statement it is a different thing that is going on and needs attention and interest. On a very practical note, if the fingering and pedaling of two passages that are identical in notes can also be identical, that should save time and work and lead to greater security. This is something that seems like it could go without saying, but that is also worth remembering consciously.As I said last month, a lot of this is speculation or ideas that I find interesting to try on for size. I would encourage students to think for themselves as much as possible about what it means to take an interesting and important musical idea and just plain do it again. The ways in which I have framed some of my thoughts about it might be useful to some people, but all the more so if they invite people to come up with their own.

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).

Marilyn Biery is keyboard acquisitions editor at Augsburg Fortress. She is Bridge Director of Music Ministry at Kirk in the Hills in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. She holds bachelor and master of music degrees in organ performance from Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois, and the Doctor of Musical Arts degree in organ performance from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

One of my great delights as a church musician is getting to work with instrumentalists—amateurs, professionals, and students. Therefore, I am always on the lookout for music for them. When I have someone coming to play an obbligato for a work with the choir, I search for repertoire for them to play for preludes or postludes. I discovered that there is a wealth of material available for violin and flute, but not as much for the oboe, particularly for oboe and organ.

Six years ago, I made the acquaintance of Stephanie Shapiro of Ann Arbor, Michigan, who is currently on the faculty at Wayne State University in Detroit as well as the principal oboist for the Lansing Symphony. Since then, Stephanie and I have become devoted friends as well as musical collaborators—we have played numerous concerts and worship services together, and we have found a wealth of repertoire for oboe and organ as well as some pieces for English horn and organ.

During the pandemic, when we were isolated, it occurred to me that there might be music on the International Music Score Library Project (IMSLP) site (imslp.org) that we could transcribe for publication. A year later we had so much music compiled that we decided to split it into separate volumes. We are currently finishing our second volume, and the third has been sketched out. In 2021 GIA Publications published our first collection: Melodies for Two: Music for Oboe, Violin, or Flute, and Organ or Piano, Book One, Composers of Scandinavia, edited by Stephanie Shapiro and Marilyn Biery.

This article will list and briefly discuss the repertoire that we found that was already available and then list and discuss the repertoire in Melodies for Two. For purposes of brevity, I will limit the list to pieces we have either played or rehearsed enough to be able to speak about effectively.

Jacques Berthier (1923–1994): Pastorale, GIA Publications (1987). This lovely pastorale was written for Sherri Batastini, the daughter of Robert Batastini, retired vice president and senior editor at GIA Publications. Sherri was fifteen at the time and already proficient enough to play this piece. Jacques Berthier (1923–1994) was a French composer who wrote most of the liturgical music used at Taizé. Pastorale is in ABA form—two pages of score with a repeat for the A section. The language is modern but very listenable. Of moderate difficulty, it is not hard, but there are numerous accidentals, and the B (“animato”) section has sixteenth-note patterns and wide skips for the oboe. (Examples 1a and 1b.)

Marguerite Roesgen-Champion (1894–1976): Berceuse pour l’enfant Jésus pour Hautbois et Orgue (1956), befoco music; Deux Nocturnes pour hautbois et piano (or orgue), Alphonse Leduc (1950). Berceuse is a perfect lullaby for Christmas Eve or Day, another ABA form with repeat using gentle chromaticism. The first of the Deux Nocturnes is our absolute favorite of all the pieces we discovered, due to the composer’s rich sonorities—fabulous on the 8′ foundations, especially if you add 16′ ad lib pedal. Each piece is about four minutes long, and they make wonderful choices for concert or worship. Roesgen-Champion was a Swiss-born composer who spent much of her life in Paris. These works are of moderate difficulty.

Max Reger (1873–1916): Canzone für Oboe und Orgel, opus 65, number 9, befoco music. Compared to other Reger pieces, this one is not too difficult, but unfortunately our score is missing the last page. Efforts to obtain a score without the defect were not successful. We read it through, and I liked what I saw, but we decided not to pursue it. Canzone is a transcription of a solo organ work, with the oboe taking the top voice; sections with thicker (typical Reger) texture are played by the organ alone. The transcription was done for befoco by Markus Ewald and is of medium difficulty.

Josef Rheinberger (1839–1901): Andante Pastorale und Rhapsodie für Oboe und Orgel, edited by Klaus Hofmann for Carus. “Andante Pastorale” is from “Intermezzo” of the Sonata in A Minor for organ; “Rhapsodie” is from “Andante” of the Sonata in F Minor for organ. This is typical Rheinberger writing. “Andante Pastorale” is another of our favorites; “Rhapsodie” is more challenging. The two make a good set for concert programming and are medium to difficult.

Jan Koetsier (1911–2006): Partita pour Corno Inglese e Organo Manualiter, opus 41, number 1, was published in 1954 by Muziekgroep Nederland, Donemus, Amsterdam. This piece is in five short movements, and some of these could be used individually. The fourth movement is a two-page organ solo that is followed by the last movement, in which the oboe plays Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern. Koetsier was a Dutch composer and conductor. This music is of moderate to medium difficulty.

Henk Badings (1907–1987): Canzona per Oboe ed Organo was published in 1938 by Donemus, Amsterdam. The score is in manuscript form but is clear and readable—about five minutes long. We loved it, but the ending is a bit inconclusive, and we programmed it as the ending of the first half of our recent concert, which left the audience a bit puzzled as to whether it had ended (we were not visible). Badings was an Indo-Dutch composer, and his harmonic language evokes shades of Paul Hindemith. This is medium to difficult.

Piotr Grinholc (b. 1966): Toccata na obój I organy (2010) is available on IMSLP. This piece is great for ending a concert of oboe and organ works. It has brilliant toccata-like passages for the organ, with a lyrical middle section. My efforts to contact him were unsuccessful—we wanted to let him know how much we enjoyed this piece. Grinholc is a Polish organist and sound engineer from Warsaw, Poland. This work is difficult.

Philip Orem (b. 1959): After Reading Mary Oliver—A Suite for Oboe and Organ (2016) and Lullaby for a Bull Moose for English Horn and Organ (2016) are available from the composer: https://po4musik.wixsite.com/website. Lullaby is a delightful little ode to my favorite animal, the moose, a nod to fun and silliness (Example 2). Orem is a graduate of Northwestern University with degrees in piano performance. These works are easy to medium in difficulty.

Daniel Pinkham (1923–2006): The Seven Days, Divertimento for Oboe and Organ, 2002, is published by ECS Publishing: “Flowing,” “Serene,” “Quick,” “Pensive,” “Questions and Answers,” and “Playful Quickstep.” Playing time for this set is about twelve minutes—we have performed it several times, sometimes excerpting some of the movements for a shorter set. The movements are of medium difficulty.

David Evan Thomas: Psalm and Dance (2007) for flute and organ is found in The Minnesota Organ Book: New Music for Organ and Solo Instruments, published by Augsburg Fortress. This piece was commissioned by the American Guild of Organists for its national convention in Minneapolis in 2008 (Example 3). It is equally playable on the oboe with only a few minor adjustments. Thomas is a Minneapolis composer whose organ works are published by Augsburg Fortress. This work is medium to difficult.

James Hopkins: Partita on Cranham for Oboe and Organ (2002) is published by E. C. Schirmer. This piece is trickier than the Pinkham, but well worth learning. It was commissioned for the twenty-second annual Baroque Music Festival in Corona del Mar, Burton Karson, artistic director, by Jerry and Roberta Dauderman. If you know James Hopkins’s organ writing, you will see the same characteristics in this piece—innovative writing with colorful and unique organ registrations. This is medium to difficult.

Calvin Hampton (1938–1984): Variations on Amazing Grace for English Horn and Organ is published by Wayne Leupold Editions. Stephanie and I have looked at this piece several times, but we have not performed it. It is a concert piece with ten variations—we simply have not had the opportunity to program it. The variations flow into one another, so taking one or two out to play would not really be an option for worship. Still, this is worth looking at, especially for lovers of Hampton’s music. The music is difficult.

Melodies for Two: Music for Oboe, Violin, or Flute, and Organ or Piano, Book One, Composers of Scandinavia, edited by Stephanie Shapiro and Marilyn Biery. This book presents works of composers from the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Some are household names, such as Grieg and Sibelius, while others are not well known—Laura Netzel, Amanda Röntgen-Maier, and Elfrida Andrée. Some selections were composed for solo piano (Grieg, Sibelius), others were composed for oboe and piano (Carl Nielsen), one for vocalist and piano (Netzel, Ave Maria); the rest were written for violin and piano (Röntgen-Maier, Andrée, Frederik Matthison-Hansen, Netzel). We included parts for flute and violin, which are available as a free download with the purchase of each book.

My paternal grandmother emigrated from Sweden in the early part of the 1900s. My father always loved anything Scandinavian. When I was searching for music to transcribe, the piano pieces of Edvard Grieg (1843–1907) came to mind, and I found four pieces that work beautifully for oboe and organ: “Elegie,” opus 38, number 6; “Elegie,” opus 47, number 7; “Grandmother’s Menuet,” opus 68, number 2 (Example 4, page 15); and “In der Heimat,” opus 43, number 3. These are easy to moderate in difficulty.

Jean Sibelius (1865–1957): Another transcription from a piano piece is Impromptu Number 6 in E Major, opus 5, by Sibelius, a Finnish composer and violinist, widely regarded as his country’s greatest composer. His seven symphonies are regularly performed in his home country and internationally. Some of his works were inspired by nature, some by Nordic mythology. This example is moderately difficult (Example 5, page 15).

Frederik Matthison-Hansen (1868–1933) was a Danish organist and composer who came from a musical family, as his father, grandfather, and uncle were all organists and composers. His father and uncle were his first teachers. He worked as an organist and singing teacher—most of his music was written for the church. His Cantilena makes a perfect prelude for any level player—easy enough for a student and well worth playing for a professional. It is easy to medium.

Carl Nielsen (1865–1931): Fantasistykker, opus 2, consisting of “Romance” and “Humoresque,” was written for oboe and piano, and it makes for a wonderful transcription for organ. Nielsen was a Danish composer, conductor, and violinist, considered to be one of his country’s most prominent composers. He attended the Royal Danish Academy of Music, after which he became a second violinist in the Royal Danish Orchestra, a position he held for sixteen years. In 1916 he began teaching at the Royal Danish Academy, a post he held until his death. The movements are medium to difficult.

Three Swedish women are featured in this collection: Elfrida Andrée (1841–1929), Laura Netzel (1839–1927), and Amanda Röntgen-Maier (1853–1894). Andrée, an organist, conductor, and composer, was the first woman to graduate in organ studies (1860) from the Royal College of Music in Stockholm, where she also studied composition. She was the first woman appointed a cathedral organist in Sweden. Her position as organist at Gothenburg Cathedral began in 1867 and continued until her death. She was active in the Swedish women’s movement and worked to bring about the revision of a law to allow women to hold the position of organist in Sweden. We included her Två Romanser (“Larghetto” and “Allegro”) in the volume, works that are medium to difficult.

Netzel, a composer, pianist, conductor, and concert arranger, was born in Finland into the family of Georg Fredrik Pistolekors, a nobleman and high-ranking civil servant. Her mother died a few months after her birth, and the family moved to Stockholm shortly thereafter. It was not considered proper for high-born ladies to seek a career as a musician, so she studied piano and voice privately. She studied composition with Wilhelm Heintze in Stockholm and Charles-Marie Widor in Paris, where many of her works were published and performed. Like many other women of her time, she wrote under a pseudonym, “N. Lago.” She was active in social causes, supporting poor women, children, and workers.

We included four of Netzel’s pieces in this book. Three were originally for violin and piano: Andante Religioso, opus 48; Berceuse, opus 28; and Tarantelle, opus 33 (Example 6); the fourth, Ave, Maria, opus 41, was written for voice and piano. These pieces are medium to difficult.

Röntgen-Maier, a violinist and composer, was the first woman to graduate with a degree in music direction from the Royal College of Music (1872), where she also studied violin, organ, piano, cello, composition, and harmony. She continued her composition and violin studies in Leipzig, where she met and married the composer Julius Engelbert Röntgen, the son of her violin teacher in Leipzig. The marriage ended her performing career, but she continued to compose. She contracted tuberculosis in 1887 and died at the age of forty-one. We included two movements from her set Six Pieces for Violin and Piano, “Allegretto con moto,” and “Tranquillamente” (Example 7). These are of moderate difficulty.

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Our second collection of Melodies for Two includes music of the Baroque and Classical periods. There are instrumental parts for oboe, flute, and cello/continuo. These pieces have the degree of difficulty that you would expect of pieces from the Baroque and Classical periods.

• “Siciliano,” from Flute Sonata in E-Flat Major, H. 545, by Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (formerly attributed to J. S. Bach as BWV 1031);

• Air in E-flat Major, attributed to Johann Christian Bach;

• “Allegretto” and “Andante grazioso,” from Violin Sonata in G Major, opus 16, number 2, by Johann Christian Bach;

• Ich steh mit einem Fuß im Grabe, BWV 156, by Johann Sebastian Bach;

• Sinfonia/Arioso, from Orchestral Suite Number 3 in D Major, BWV 1068, by Johann Sebastian Bach;

• Fantasia in F Minor for Oboe and Organ, Krebs-WV 604, by Johann Ludwig Krebs (transposed from the 
original key);

• Violin Sonata in G Minor, HWV 364a, opus 1, number 6, by George Frideric Handel;

• “Andante,” from Oboe Concerto in C Major, attributed to Joseph Haydn/Ignaz Malzat;

• “Largo,” “Presto-Tempo giusto-Presto,” “Andante,” and “Allegro,” from Sonata for Oboe and Continuo, TWV 41g6, by Georg Philipp Telemann, from Tafelmusik, part 3.

There is a wealth of music available to transcribe. We will continue doing so—the third volume is in initial stages and includes nineteenth- and early twentieth-century music from Central Europe.

Celebrating Herbert Howells

Born on October 17, 1892, Herbert Howells lived until February 23, 1983. While he was seeking information needed to write his book on Domenico Scarlatti, Ralph Kirkpatrick found several Scarlattis listed in a Spanish telephone directory, phoned them, and discovered that they were, indeed, descendants of the great master. Imitating that search for knowledge, I found Howells’s address and phone number in the phone directory for greater London and made my telephone call to his Barnes home during a visit to the UK in 1974. I have often thought that Mrs. Howells, by this time hard of hearing, may have thought that I was Herbert’s biographer, Christopher Palmer, when she directed me to contact her husband in his studio at the Royal College of Music. I made an appointment for the next day, and, with the utmost delight, spent one of the most stimulating and memorable visits of a lifetime, one that initiated a foundation for several subsequent meetings, and ultimately resulted in my commissioning the Dallas Canticles for St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Dallas, Texas, the only set Howells composed for an American parish church. As our friendship blossomed he also transferred to me the copyright for his glorious Dallas “Magnificat” and “Nunc Dimittis,” and we had quite a prolific correspondence about the various legal matters involved.

One of my reasons for wanting to speak with Herbert was that he had never responded to my written questions about the persons named in each of the twelve pieces that comprise Lambert’s Clavichord, the first contemporary music for the instrument to be published in the twentieth century. I wrote about his generous answers in The Diapason issue of December 1974 (pages 7 and 8), but there have been some interesting addenda in various publications since that time, and what better way to celebrate the 127th occurrence of HH’s natal day than to share this information?

The first mention of Howells’s neo-Elizabethan keyboard works came during my very first year of harpsichord study with Isolde Ahlgrimm in Salzburg (1958–1959). In 1961 I acquired my first copy of Lambert’s Clavichord (Oxford University Press). It is a reprint in larger format of the original printing, which was a deluxe limited edition of 175 hard-bound copies autographed by Lambert (with a faint pencil signature below the photograph of Howells and the clavichord built by Lambert, who was a famous photographer, and autographed also by the composer, who numbered each volume and signed his name in bold black ink). I acquired my prized copy of this deluxe edition (number 8) at a London antiquarian bookshop in 1981. The hardbound volume is the perfect size for a clavichord’s music desk: 10 inches wide by 61⁄4 inches high, exactly one half the height of the later trade print edition.

Very briefly, the reason that Howells composed all twelve of the keyboard pieces was that, in gratitude for his being the next-to-youngest composer photographed and included in Lambert’s 1923 publication, Modern British Composers (from Elgar, born 1857, to Howells and Goossens, born 1893), he wrote the first piece (“Lambert’s Fireside”) while at the photographer’s home and decided to invite his fellow composers to create a similar gift for Lambert and his clavichords. All of them responded in the affirmative, but a year or more later, no other musical offering had been received, so Herbert decided to write the remaining eleven pieces himself. Each is dated, and each has a designated musical figure in the title (not necessarily one of the photographed composers).

All of the identities spoken to me by Dr. Howells are confirmed by the “other Palmer,” Christopher (1946–1995), who died at age 48, but left an amazingly large list of compositions and studies of musical figures. In his 1978 Novello small book, Herbert Howells: A Study, CP’s listings of the Lambert’s Clavichord titles agree with my 1974 verbatim ones from the composer himself, except for one: the dedicatee of “Sargent’s Fantastic Sprite.” Howells told me that it was meant for Sir Malcolm Sargent, the conductor; however, in Christopher’s copy of the score (as quoted in the Novello volume) Howells wrote: “There never was another Sargent save the painter.” So one might choose a favorite, or mention dual remembrance, since both the composer and author have passed on. I rather think the music could suggest the painter, but . . . who knows?

Music by Howells is never far from my various music desks, and much of the inspiration for this column was through a chance finding of a score that I had forgotten: Six Pieces from Lambert’s Clavichord, arranged for oboe and piano. The half of the collection chosen—“Lambert’s Fireside,” “Fellowes’s Delight,” “Hughes’s Ballet,” “My Lord Sandwich’s Dreame,” “De la Mare’s Pavane,” and “Sir Hugh’s Galliard”—are my favorites, too, and I hope to program them, using harpsichord, later during the 2020 season. (The pieces are published in one volume by Oxford University Press; the arrangements are by Patrick Shannon.) That these pieces were favorites of the composer is evident, both from his own mouth, and from yet another source, thanks to Christopher Palmer. In his very comprehensive book, Herbert Howells: A Centenary Celebration (London: Thames Publishing), I noticed on page 458 a listing of three arrangements for cello and piano from the RCM Library Howells manuscripts: “My Lord Sandwich’s Dream,” “Sir Hugh’s Galliard,” and “De la Mare’s Pavane”—it might lead one to make some transcriptions of one’s own, should any of the other movements be special favorites.

And finally, two suggestions for those of us who play the organ: a gentle, lovely two-page “Cradle Song,” Howells’s contribution to the Organists Charitable Trust Little Organ Book: eleven pieces for solo organ from the nineteenth to the twenty-first centuries, selected and edited by Martin Neary, published by Novello (2010). And, reminiscent of his close friendship with Ralph Vaughan Williams, Howells’s Master Tallis’s Testament, another ravishingly lovely creation, and another indication of how comfortable he felt dealing with the harmonies of Elizabethan music.