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Hidden Patterns in Jehan Alain’s “Jannequin” Fugato

Margaret Vardell Sandresky

Margaret Sandresky is a graduate of Salem Academy and College with a major in organ performance. She earned a master’s degree in composition with a minor in organ at the Eastman School of Music, and later received a Fulbright Grant for the study of organ with Helmut Walcha at the Hochschule für Musik in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. She has held positions at the Oberlin Conservatory of Music, the University of Texas at Austin, the North Carolina School of the Arts, and at Salem College, where she is Emeritus Professor of Music. Her articles have been published in The Journal of Music Theory, Music Theory Spectrum, The American Liszt Society Journal, Ars Organi, The American Organist and The Diapason. Her seven volumes of organ music are published by Wayne Leupold Editions, and her anthems are published by Paraclete Press. In 2004, she received the Distinguished Composer award given at the AGO convention in Los Angeles, and in 2006 was honored by St. Andrews College with the Sam Ragan Award for distinguished service to the Arts in North Carolina. Volume VIII of her complete organ works was published by Wayne Leupold Editions in July 2010. Her article, “Mendelssohn’s Sonata III: A Composer’s View,” was published in the March 2008 issue of The Diapason.

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Jehan Alain’s Variations sur un thème
de Clément Jannequin received its first performance on February 19, 1938 at the Eglise de la Trinité in Paris, with the composer at the organ. Le Jardin Suspendu and Litanies were also played on the program, and in 1939 these three were published together by Alphonse Leduc as Trois Pièces. The theme, “L’espoir que j’ai”, was taken from Echos de Temps Passé, a volume of old chansons edited by J.B. Weckerlin, belonging to Alain’s grandmother, whose name, A. Alberti, is inscribed on the title page.
Marie Claire Alain’s detailed and informative Critical Notes on the Organ Works of Jehan Alain, which appeared in English translation by Norma Stevlingen in 2003, contains a facsimile of Alain’s thematic catalogue of his own works from 1929 to 1938, where the Variations are number 118, Litanies number 119, and Le Jardin Suspendu, composed in 1934, is number 71.
Of the four named sources for this piece, one is from the family heirs, and one is from Alphonse Leduc; but the two most interesting are from his two friends, for whom he made manuscript copies. In both the latter, Alain gives the full name of his theme, Variations sur l’espoire que j’ai d’acquirir votre grâce, chanson de Clément Jannequin. The first of these is dedicated to his friend from Conservatoire days, Pierre Segond, who, much later, was largely responsible for the restoration of Albert Alain’s famous house organ, for which his son conceived most of his music. Jehan Alain wrote: “The copy is not beautiful but it is from the heart. It should be possible for the musician of the 20th century to preserve the sound of this old music. The language matters little; only the spirit speaks.” And from a manuscript belonging to Aline Pendleton, an organist who played his music, he writes of the “freshness and tenderness of the music of the 16th century.”
The theme, which is presented very simply on the Récit Hautbois 8′, accompanied on Grand Orgue Bourdon 8′ coupled to the pedal, contains a palindrome (F–G–A–Bb–A–G–F) that occurs three times, at measures 3–5, 8–10, and 28–30. This idea is developed extensively in variation two, marked “Fugato,” using the techniques of retrograde and inversion. Alain’s seemingly loose and improvisatory compositional style is very tightly controlled in the episodic material and repeated in various ways six times, labeled alphabetically in the appended examples.
In each episode of the “Fugato,” beginning at measure 86, two voices weave in palindromes. One of the voices consists of an octatonic scalar line moving in alternate whole steps and half steps, first up five steps and then down again in retrograde motion, then repeating itself. Such a scale consists of two tetrachords an augmented fourth apart. (For instance, in a scale on C, they would be spelled
C–D–Eb–F and F#–G#–A–B.) Against this line a second voice moves freely, creating a set of twelve intervals, which are then presented in retrograde, while the scalar line occurs four times in the space of the second voice. Such a plan is suggestive of a serial working out of the material. And indeed, serial reconstruction shows that Alain had a strict plan for these episodes, one that is a further development of the previous material. For instance, he begins and ends episodes on an augmented fourth or its inversion. This interval, worked into the pattern, seems linked to the augmented fourth between the two tetrachords of the octatonic scalar motion. In addition, the octatonic scale sets up a series of alternating triadic sonorities consisting of, among other sonorities, alternate major 6/3 and minor 5/3 triads such as are found in the five chords beginning at measure 52.
In the Leduc editions, each of these two voices is spelled presumably as it occurs in the octatonic scale, resulting in many of the vertical intervals being disguised by enharmonic notation. In the following examples, my notation addresses the passages in vertical diatonic intervallic spellings, in order to make them more easily recognized.
From the attached examples of a serial analysis it is clear that some of the intervals in these editions do not fit into the plan. For instance, Examples A, B, and D begin on an augmented fourth or diminished fifth. In Example C, the first interval should therefore also be a diminished fifth, and the A-flat in the lower voice should be A-natural. Calculated from bottom to top, the following intervals show the discrepancies and how they should read if the pattern is followed accurately:

Example Printed Score Serial Analysis
C1 Ab to Eb A to Eb
C2 C to A B to A
C3 G to Eb Gb to Eb
C4 B to D A to D
C5 F# to G# D# to G#
C6 D to F# B to F#
C7 F to F unison C to F
C8 C to Eb A to Eb
D1 Ab to B Ab to Bb
D2 D to G D to F
D3 G to Bb G to D
D4 Bb to D Bb to E
D5 G to Eb G to D

Examples A and B show Alain’s original intervallic structure and his serial organization. In Examples C and D, the intervals on the staff are a direct transposition of the original and the discrepancies in the Leduc editions are written below the staff. Examples E and F show Alain’s new counterpoint added to the same octatonic scale and illustrate the serial structure.
In the Critical Notes we read the following:

In May 1938, Jehan Alain entrusted copies of his Trois Pièces to Alphonse Leduc Editions (according to notes in his appointment book). ‘Monday, July 4, 1938: 2:00 p.m. M. de Miramon Leducq’ (sic).
A first edition of the Trois Pièces bears the copyright 1939. Therefore it was reviewed by the composer before he left for the army.1
In view of my analysis, I think the performer must wonder if Alain really had the time to carefully proof his Variations, a tedious and time-consuming task for any composer. Perhaps he had to entrust this to someone who was not aware of the beautiful and sophisticated patterns Alain had designed, especially since the doubtful accuracy of pitch content in the Fugato stands in contrast to the careful accuracy of pitch content in Alain’s 1935 intricate dodecaphonic “Fugue”. 

 

 

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Jehan Alain masterclass by Helga Schauerte for Duquesne University

Stephanie Sloan and Rebecca Marie Yoder

Stephanie Sloan and Rebecca Marie Yoder are undergraduate students in the sacred music degree program at Duquesne University.

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On October 8, 2011, the organ and sacred music performance students at Duquesne University, who study under the direction of Dr. Ann Labounsky, participated in a special masterclass given by Helga Elisabeth Schauerte-Maubouet on the organ works of Jehan Alain. A masterclass of this sort was the first in the United States that she conducted along with her newest publication, a three-volume Bärenreiter Urtext edition of Jehan Alain’s music. These volumes are the first German publication of Alain’s music and were studied extensively over the course of this 8-hour masterclass at St. Andrew’s Episcopal Church in Pittsburgh. During the masterclass, the Duquesne University organ students gained much valuable insight into the works of Jehan Alain through the research of Schauerte, organist of the German Lutheran Church in Paris.

Schauerte’s interest in the art of organ playing began when she was young, for at 13 years of age she became the chief organist at a local church in Lennestadt, Germany. The story behind her inspiration to study Alain’s music began with Litanies. The first time she heard this piece was during a performance by her brother in Frankfurt, during which she assisted him with page turns and registration changes. She was struck by the expressive tonality of the piece and desired to know more about it and its composer. Consequently, she began studying at the Conservatory of Rueil-Malmaison with Marie-Claire Alain in 1983, after finishing her degree at the University of Cologne. As she advanced in her studies, Schauerte noticed technical and numerical discrepancies in the available editions of Alain’s compositions.

Thereafter, she decided to perform her own investigations in search of an authentic interpretation of Alain’s works. Her Bärenreiter edition is the result of over a decade of intensive research. It critically compares the earliest versions of Alain’s music preserved in his family archives and scores from the French National Library with all other known manuscripts. As recently as 1975, additional autographs were discovered in the Alain family archives and in 1987 in his friends’ collections.1 Schauerte made a careful effort to ascertain not only an authentic interpretation of Alain’s pieces, but also the correct chronological order of his works. Within this chronology, Schauerte disregards transcriptions and unfinished works. The great significance of this new edition is that it, for the first time, merges Alain’s full organ works with details of the discrepancies between the different manuscripts. The performer can see the reasoning behind the changes made to Alain’s original documents, and also make his own judgments of what Alain originally intended. In addition, these volumes of the complete works of Alain publish the composer’s biography and his commentaries on many of the pieces. There are also thoughtful enhancements for each piece, with a catalogue of all sources consulted. The edition brings Alain’s total compositional effort to 120 titles.

The music of Jehan Alain is important for an organist to study in such detail because of the unique modernist voice Alain brought to 20th-century French organ music. Jehan Alain—a musician, artist, and poet—was born on February 3, 1911, the eldest of four musical children. From his humble beginnings, taking lessons from his father on their homemade house organ, Alain went on to study at the National Conservatory in Paris under André Bloch, Georges Caussade, Paul Dukas, Jean Roger-Ducasse, and Marcel Dupré. When Alain was drafted for the Second World War in 1939, he was just blossoming into creative maturity. Even while performing his duties, he continued to write compositions for organ, piano, orchestra, and voice.2 He drew inspiration from nature, imitating its purity and freshness, and was also influenced by Eastern music. Alain often composed polytonal music, seeking “new colorings created by unusual blends of registers. He experimented with soloistically employed mutation stops” and composed with unique timbres that require complicated registration changes.3 Seventy years after his tragic demise, Alain’s pieces are a staple in nearly every organist’s repertoire, including works such as Litanies, Le Jardin Suspendu, and Choral Dorien.

Litanies was written in August of 1937 under the initial title “Supplication.” On the original manuscript, Alain depicted a grotesque nightmare: a man pushing a three-wheeled cart, behind whom are twenty policemen pelting him with bricks. The students were fascinated by the fact that Alain, in the original manuscript, dictated that he wished the performer to double in octaves the pedal line in measures fifty-two to fifty-eight. This is so that the theme in the pedal will be more prominent than the accompaniment in the manuals. Litanies’ uneven theme, evocative of a tortured soul intoning a desperate prayer, is repeated unceasingly at a frantic pace while transitioning through several modifications that reach the point of breathlessness.4 Alain himself was enduring great hardships at this point in his life. While Alain was writing this piece, his wife and he suffered through a miscarriage. The piece’s creation may also have been preemptive: two weeks later, his sister Marie-Odile died in an Alpine climbing accident trying to protect their brother Olivier from a fatal fall. Both these events gave Alain and his wife personal cause to constantly lift their prayers to God.

Alain dedicated the exquisite Le Jardin Suspendu (1934) to his close friend Marguerite Evain. This was one of his favorite pieces, which describes a “land of cheerfulness and peace.”5 Schauerte told the students in the masterclass to observe that the piece has three distinct sections and to be aware of the variations of the theme throughout the piece. In regard to balancing the registration for the middle section of Le Jardin Suspendu, she mentioned that the triplets should not be so loud that the listener cannot easily discern the primary theme in the chords.

Alain generated the title of Choral Dorien (1938) from the Greek mode, “which refers to today’s Dorian as Phrygian and vice versa.”6 Performers of this piece and other Alain works often misinterpret his tempi indications. Alain did not like the constraints of bar lines and rarely denoted a particular, strict tempo. Instead, he was concerned primarily with the “living pulse of his musical thought” and wrote down the durations of his pieces to determine their relative tempi. Schauerte remarked that the tempo of Choral Dorien should not be too lethargic. She suggested that the performer sing the theme in order to correctly pace the tempo. These indications for Litanies, Le Jardin Suspendu, and Choral Dorien are critical to the correct interpretation of Alain’s pieces and, if applied, form important habits for the pupils of Jehan Alain’s works. 

The organ students at Duquesne University thoroughly enjoyed this intensive study of Jehan Alain’s music with Helga Schauerte as well as her recital the previous evening at St. Paul’s Cathedral. Many were impressed with the excellence of Schauerte’s research and were glad for her attention to detail and informed advice on each piece. Others were amused with Alain’s artwork and were interested to learn more about his life. The masterclass provided a fresh musicological insight into the works and life of an inspiring modern composer whose creative life was tragically cut short during his military service in World War II. 

The experience of a masterclass on the works of Jehan Alain with Helga Schauerte made a lasting impression upon those who participated. Alain’s life and music are inspirations that echo in the works of Jean Langlais and Maurice Duruflé, as well as in numerous organists’ repertoire. Whether through a masterclass, a celebratory dinner with friends of Jehan Alain meeting each other for the first time, or the National French Centenary Celebration of the Birth of Jehan Alain, musicians across the globe delight in studying and internalizing the musical expressions of this inspirational man and will do so for decades to come.7

 

The University of Michigan 51st Conference on Organ Music

Marijim Thoene & Alan Knight

Marijim Thoene received a D.M.A. in organ performance/church music from the University of Michigan in 1984. She is an active recitalist and director of music at St. John Lutheran Church in Dundee, Michigan. Her two CDs, Mystics and Spirits and Wind Song are available through Raven Recordings. She is a frequent presenter at medieval conferences on the topic of the image of the pipe organ in medieval manuscripts. Alan Knight has been music director of Ss. Simon and Jude Church in Westland, Michigan, for the past 11 years, during which time he earned the D.M.A. in organ performance at the University of Michigan under James Kibbie. There, he did research into Renaissance methods of organ improvisation and performed contemporary works of Rorem, Messiaen, Schroeder, and Kenton Coe. He has served as sub-dean of the Ann Arbor Chapter of the American Guild of Organists, organized new music festivals, and contributed to this year’s successful POE. He coaches and writes reviews freelance and has recently written a memorial acclamation for the new English liturgical texts. Photo credit: Marijim Thoene, unless indicated otherwise.

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With unflagging dedication, enthusiasm, and vision, Marilyn Mason planned and organized the 51st Organ Conference at the University of Michigan. European guest artists included Jaroslav Tůma, interpreter of Czech music; Almut Rössler, artist, scholar, and teacher of Olivier Messiaen; and Helga Schauerte, interpreter and scholar of Jehan Alain. It was exhilarating to hear these three artists perform, as well to hear them instruct students and lecture. Many other outstanding performers and scholars participated in the conference, which featured the music of Franz Liszt, Olivier Messiaen, Jehan Alain, Alan Hovhaness, and others. The overarching theme of the conference was celebration—of the bicentennial anniversary of Liszt’s birth and the centennial anniversary of the births of Jehan Alain and Alan Hovhaness.  

 

Sunday, October 2, Hill Auditorium

The opening concerts were played in Hill Auditorium on the Frieze Memorial Organ. Joseph Balistreri, student of James Kibbie, opened the conference, with a memorized master’s degree recital that featured Bach’s Fantasia et Fuga in g-moll, BWV 542, Alain’s Aria, Duruflé’s Prélude et fugue sur le nom d’Alain, and Widor’s Symphonie Romane. His playing reflected an impressive technique and a bristling enthusiasm for each work, especially the Symphonie Romane, which he introduced by singing the chant, Haec dies (after the first reading on Easter Sunday), upon which the work is based. 

The evening recital was played by Timothy Tikker, a doctoral student of Marilyn Mason. His all-Liszt program included Präludium und Fuge über
B-A-C-H, S. 260 (1885/1870), two meditative pieces from Consolations, S. 172 (Adagio IV, transcribed by Liszt, and Adagio V, transcribed by A.W. Gottschlag), Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, S. 180, and Fantasie und Fuge über den Choral ‘Ad nos, ad salutarem undam’, S. 259 (1850), Liszt’s first organ piece. Tikker’s careful preparation of these pieces was apparent, as was his emotional investment. His thoughtful comments described Liszt’s stages of grief in Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Zagen, S. 180, his anger and final resignation and acceptance of God’s will expressed in the Bach chorale, Whatever God Ordains Is Right. Tikker noted that the breakdown in western tonality began with Liszt’s Weinen, Klagen.

 

Monday, October 3,

Blanche Anderson Moore Hall

The day began with Czech organist Jaroslav Tůma, who presented a predominantly Czech program, along with Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, and O Mensch, bewein’ dein’ Sünde gross, BWV 622. It was a special gift to be introduced to the repertoire of Bohuslav Matej Cernohorsky, Josef Ferdinand Norbert Seger, Jan Křtitel Kuchař, Jan Vojtech Maxant, and Anonymous from Moravia by such an exuberant artist who made us want to dance. Tůma exploited every possible color on the Fisk organ. His pungent registrations and light touch were especially enjoyed in the eleven movements of Suite of Dances from the Region of Haná by an eighteenth-century anonymous Moravian composer. The reeds, cornet, and flutes shimmered in excited dialogues. Tůma ended his recital with Suite for Clavier (Organ, Harpsichord or Clavichord) by Maxant—a piece of irrepressible circus joy, filled with foot-tapping waltzes and calliopes. 

 

1:30 pm First Congregational Church

German musicologist and organist Susanne Diederich, who has examined over 150 French Classical organs in situ, lectured on “The Classical French Organ and its Music 1660–1719.” Her handout included a succinct summary of the specifications of an R. and J. Clicquot organ dated 1690/1794 as well as a cabinet organ dated 1671 by Etienne Enocq; tables listing the composition of mixtures for a small and large instrument; a table listing families of stops, the combination of ranks involved, and corresponding French title of the composition; and D’Anglebert’s table of ornaments, which J. S. Bach copied. 

Registration and ornamentation of the French Classical School were demonstrated on the Karl Wilhelm organ by Kipp Cortez, a first-year organ student of Marilyn Mason, and Christopher Urbiel, D.M.A., former Mason student and music minister at St. Sebastian Catholic Church in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Both performers played with conviction and energy. Cortez played Plein jeu Continu du 7e ton by Jacques Boyvin, Kyrie from Messe du 2me Ton by G.G. Nivers, and Récit tendre from Messe du 8me ton by Gaspard Corrette. Urbiel played Fugue from Veni Creator by de Grigny, Tierce en Taille by Boyvin, and Dialogue in D Minor by Marchand.

 

3:15 pm Hill Auditorium

Jaroslav Tůma, with Karel Paukert acting as translator and general bon vivant, offered a masterclass in improvisation. Performers included Marcia Heirman (former student of Marilyn Mason), Joseph Balistreri, and Colin Knapp (students of James Kibbie). Tůma suggested experimenting with these techniques in developing a theme: repetition, retrograde, interval expansion, keeping the direction the same; strong rhythmic underpinning; meter change; ABA form; pedal ostinato; skeletal harmony for accompaniment or a regular scale; drone. 

 

4:15 pm Hill Auditorium

A recital of the music of Jehan Alain was played masterfully by students of James Kibbie. Professor Kibbie made this music especially poignant by prefacing each piece with an explanation of the piece, or reading from Alain’s diary. Each student clearly felt great empathy with Alain’s music. The recitalists and works included: Andrew Lang, Première Fantaisie; John Woolsey, Variations sur un theme de Clément Jannequin; Benjamin Woolsey, Fantasmagorie; Joseph Balistreri, Aria; Colin Knapp, Deux danses à Agni Yavishta; Monte Thomas, Choral dorien; Matthew Kim, Variations sur Lucis Creator; Richard Newman, Deuils from Trois danses; Daniel Mikat (organist) and Sara B. Mikat (soprano), Vocalise dorienne/Ave Maria. A recording of Alain’s music by Prof. Kibbie’s students is available on the U of M website, .

 

8 pm Hill Auditorium

It is a great privilege to hear Almut Rössler play an all-Messiaen recital. Her connection to Ann Arbor began in 1974, when both she and Marilyn Mason met as judges at the Chartres Organ Competition. In a very quiet voice, Prof. Rössler spoke about the evolution of Messiaen’s style, saying that he considered the Ascension Suite to be in his “old style” and that his true style did not begin until his Nativity Suite. He began his Easter cycle, Les Corps Glorieux, immediately before World War II. In it is the enigmatic vision of what Prof. Rössler calls “the resurrection of the successors of Christ.” She gave a brief analysis of each of the seven movements. Her assistant, Nancy Poland, a D.M.A. graduate of Michigan and former student of Marilyn Mason, read the text accompanying each work. Included here is the text that accompanies the seven movements of Les Corps Glorieux (1939), and a brief synopsis of Prof. Rössler’s analysis:

1. The Subtlety of Glorified Bodies. “It is sown a natural body; it is raised a spiritual body” (I Cor. 15:44). “For they are as angels of God in heaven” (Matt. 22:30).

A.R.: “The music is totally unaccompanied monody. It is played in alternation on three different cornet stops of varying volume.” 

2. The Waters of Grace. “For the Lamb which is in the midst of the throne shall feed them, and shall lead them unto living fountains of water” (Rev. 7:17).

A.R.: “The strangely ‘fluid’ character of the music is achieved in two ways—by polymodality and registration.”

3. The Angel of Incense. “And the smoke of the incense, with the prayers of the saints, ascended up before God out of the angel’s hand” (Rev. 8:4). 

A.R.: “A monodic main theme in the style of certain Hindu ragas played on clarinet and nazard.”

4. The Battle between Death and Life. “Death and life have been engaged in one stultifying battle; the Author of life after being dead lives and reigns. He has said: ‘My Father, I am revived, and I am again with you’” (Missal, Sequence and Introit of Easter).  

A.R.: “Two armies clash in battle, represented by big chords, the theme of death begins . . . ”   

5. The Power and Agility of Glorified Bodies. “It is sown in weakness; it is raised in power” (I Cor. 15: 43).

A.R.: “The ability to pass through walls and traverse space with the speed of lightning is conveyed in music of powerful vitality. Vehement and robust are the resurrected, agile and strong. This section is monodic.” 

6. The Joy and Radiance of Glorified Bodies. “Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” (Matt. 13:43).

A.R.: “Radiance or splendor is the first attribute of glorified bodies, each of which is the source of its own light and its own individual luster, which St. Paul explains in a symbolical way when he says: ‘For one star differeth from another star in glory.’ These differences in degrees of radiance are mirrored in the shifting tone-colors.”

7. The Mystery of the Holy Trinity. “Almighty God, who with the only-begotten Son and with the Holy Ghost art one God not in the unity of one person but in three persons of one substance” (Preface for Trinity Sunday).

A.R.: “This entire section is devoted to the number 3. It is three-voiced, its form is tripartite, each of the three main subdivisions being in itself in three parts. The middle voice (the Son) has the straightforward tonal color of the 8 flute; the other two (the Father and the Holy Ghost) mix the 16 and 32 with the 2, in other words the very lowest with the very highest. The whole piece is in a remote, blurred pp, against which the middle voice stands out: by his incarnation the Son alone came visibly close to us.”

Also included in the program were Chants d’Oiseaux (IV, Livre d’orgue, 1951), and VI from Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité (1969), the Offertory for Epiphany, based on the text, “In the word was life and the life was the light” (John 1:4). It was a rare privilege to hear Almut Rössler, who has devoted her life to this music, present a profound expression of Messiaen’s sacred beliefs.

 

Tuesday, October 4, Hill Auditorium

At 9:30 am, Helga Schauerte’s lecture, “Jehan Alain: A Life in Three Dances,” reflected her life’s commitment to the study of Alain’s organ music. She was drawn to his music the first time she heard it—she had never heard anything so free. In 1983 Ms. Schauerte wrote the first English and German biographies of Alain. In 1990 Motette released her 1989 recordings of Alain’s complete organ works. The 1990 CDs were reissued in 2004 and include the addition of newly discovered recordings of Jehan Alain playing at the Temple in the Rue Notre Dame de Nazareth in Paris. Schauerte’s years of research, which led her to discover unknown manuscripts, and rugged determination culminated this year in Bärenreiter’s publication of her edition of Alain’s organ work in three volumes.

Schauerte observed that Alain’s life was mirrored in his masterwork, Trois Danses—Joies (Joy), Deuils (Mourning), and Luttes (Struggles). His youth was reflected in Joies; his grief on the death of his 23-year-old sister, Odile, who died in a mountain-climbing accident while protecting her younger brother Olivier, in Deuils; and his life in World War II as a soldier volunteering for risky missions in Luttes. Schauerte said Alain had a premonition of his tragic death, this “coincidencia” he expressed in his music, drawing, and poetry, and he, like Mozart and Schubert, crystallized his whole life’s work within a short period of time. She illustrated biographical details of his life with photographs of Alain’s parents; his childhood home; himself as a child, music student, mountain climber, and soldier; his siblings; his wife and three children; and the place where he was killed in action in Saumur. These were powerful images, filled with the beauty and exuberance of a life ended too soon. Schauerte also showed some of Alain’s whimsical drawings and read from his poetry and diary, offering intimate glimpses into his personality. She said he could be lively and wild one minute and contemplative the next. 

Schauerte stated that among her discoveries are findings from 14 autographed copies of Alain’s work owned  by Lola Bluhm and Alain’s daughter, and they are included in the new edition.  She noted that the only pieces with Alain’s own metronome markings are the Intermezzo and Suite

 

11:00 am Hill Auditorium

In Almut Rössler’s masterclass, Joshua Boyd, a freshman student of Marilyn Mason, played The Celestial Banquet. Prof. Rössler pointed out that these were early sounds for Messiaen—drops of the blood of Christ. In abbreviated form, I include her comments, which are invaluable to anyone playing Messiaen: 

 

The sound of water drops is achieved not by legato playing, but by movement of the leg straight down into the pedal with a sharp release. In the second edition he uses in the pedal registration 4, 223, 2, 135, a kind of cornet without a fundamental. Messiaen can be played on a North German Baroque organ, English and American organs; one must know what is adequate, what is the character, atmosphere, and emotional expression of the work. One must know the inner idea and how to achieve it. The second edition, 1960, is the most important one. Pay attention to slurs; some end at the end of the line, others go to the next line.  Always follow the slurs. Also pay attention to thumb glissandos.  

 

1:30 pm Hill Auditorium 

With her characteristic light touch Marilyn Mason, “the maker of organists” for over a half a century, shared her good luck “secret” with us. She said after one of her recitals at Riverside a woman congratulated her, saying that she was envious of her being so lucky to play so well. Prof. Mason replied, “Yes, and the more I practice, the luckier I get.” She continued, saying, “I always tell my students when they feel like giving up, that’s the time they need to really practice. Never give up.” She then introduced four of her former students who had received the D.M.A. and who proceeded to demonstrate that she’s right! Each of them played with dazzling technique, assurance, and passion. The performers, dates of their degrees, and their pieces follow: Shin-Ae Chun (2006), Prelude and Fugue on the name of A.L.A.I.N., Duruflé; Joseph Galema (1982), Allegro deciso from Evocation, op. 37, Dupré; Seth Nelson (2006), Troisième Choral en la mineur, Franck; and Andrew Meagher (2010), Prelude and Fugue, Jerry Bilik (b. 1933). This was the premiere performance of Bilik’s work, which was commissioned by and dedicated to Marilyn Mason. It features the Michigan fight song, Hail to the Victors (!)—the composer’s grin was as big as ours. 

 

3 pm Hill Auditorium

Peggy Kelley Reinburg, recitalist and Alain scholar, presented an informative lecture, “The Liturgical Potential in Selected Organ and Piano Compositions of Jehan Ariste Alain.” She demonstrated how Alain was influenced by the colors of the French Classical School by playing Clérambault’s Suite du Deuxième Ton. Her description of her visit to the Abbey where Alain played and composed his Postlude pour les Complies allowed us to absorb its stillness and peace. She quoted from his letter, “The abbey organ (Abbaye de Valloires) was beautiful especially after 9 pm,” and commented that this was his first composition written for organ. She suggested that the following pieces be used in a liturgical setting: (organ) Postlude pour les Complies, Choral Dorien, Ballade en mode Phrygien, Berceuse sur deux notes qui cornent, Le jardin suspendu; (piano) Choral—Seigneur, donne-nous la paix eternelle, Romance, Nocturne, Suite Façile—Comme une barcarolle, and Suite Monodique. Reinburg’s elegant performance of these meditative and serene pieces offered convincing support for her argument.

 

8 pm Hill Auditorium

Helga Schauerte’s years of researching Alain’s life and music were abundantly apparent in her recital. Not only was she at one with his music, breathing into it a deeply personal interpretation, but by playing two of Langlais’ pieces—one written in his memory and one dedicated to him—presented Alain the man, the self-sacrificing citizen. Included in her recital was Langlais’ Chant héröique, op. 40, no. 4, inscribed, “To the memory of Jehan Alain, fallen for France as a hero in the Defense of Saumur, June 1940,” and his Resurrection, op. 250, no. 4, inscribed, “dedicated to Jehan Alain.” Of all the Alain repertoire in the recital, which included Fantaisies nos. 1 and 2, Variations sur un theme de Clément Jannequin, Deux Danses à Agni Yavishta, Fantasmagorie, Litanies, and Trois Danses, for me it was in the Trois Danses that Alain’s spirit seemed to dance and leap. One of Alain’s daughters has thanked Schauerte for bringing his music to life, saying that her father lived on because of her. We all say thank you, Helga Schauerte!

 

 

 

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

9:30 am Hill Auditorium Mezzanine

Damin Spritzer shared her extensive research on René Louis Becker, a compilation of many published works as well as original manuscripts. As an Alsatian-born and educated musician and organist, Becker seems to have fit well into the early 20th-century American scene, first joining the faculty of his brothers’ music conservatory in St. Louis, Missouri, and then in a series of church positions in Illinois and Michigan, including his appointment as first organist of the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament in Detroit, Michigan. Spritzer is interested in studying the various organs of Becker’s experience, both in America and in Alsace, as a factor in shaping his organ compositions. It is not always possible to acquire information on these organs. Spritzer suggests his three organ sonatas, which are extended works, as a starting point to appreciate René Becker’s music. 

There are several choral works of Becker’s as well. Well-respected by his contemporaries such as Alexander Schreiner, Albert Riemenschneider, and others, Becker was one of the major organ figures of his day in America, though now largely forgotten and left to the past, even in the churches where he had ministered. However, renewed interest is beginning to flower with new recordings and publications. Becker’s works are not completely catalogued, partly due to discrepancies in opus numbers of works published in his lifetime and those in original manuscripts. Spritzer related that the selection of René Becker for research was suggested by Michael Barone. In this mammoth research task, the descendants of René Becker have lent their assistance. They were present for the lecture. 

 

10:30 am Hill Auditorium

Almut Rössler resumed the masterclass begun the day before on the stage of Hill Auditorium. With Nancy Deacon (Les Bergers) and Kipp Cortez (Le Verbe), she stressed counting the subdivisions of the beat to make the longer notes precise and the rhythmic texture secure as written. “‘Espresif’ does not mean ‘free’” was one of her comments. Also noteworthy was not breathing and lifting between phrases if there are no phrase marks (slurs) indicated. Always play a perfect legato with “old-fashioned” finger substitutions (from the methods of Dupré and Gleason) as well as the thumb glissando. All-important is locating the musical symbols and depictions and playing them according to their own nature, both by the manner of playing and in the registration. One must understand the titles and subtitles to execute the meaning and color of the piece, which is almost always objective. 

No matter who is on the bench in a Rössler masterclass, it is always a rewarding experience to receive her teaching, benefit from her inspiring musicianship, and to upgrade one’s awareness of Olivier Messiaen’s music, owing to her 20 years of close association and study with him. 

 

12:15 pm School of Public Health, Community Lounge

Brandon D. Spence performed for the audience of the Community Lounge, where those on Central Campus can enjoy an organ recital in the “Brown Bag” lunch recital series at the School of Public Health on the Létourneau organ. Included on his memorized program were Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, BWV 731, Bach; Two Meditations, Ulysses Kay; Fuga C-Dur, BuxWV 174, and Praeludium und Fuga g-moll, BuxWV 149, Buxtehude. Spence gave helpful comments on each piece before playing.

 

1:30 pm Hill Auditorium

Marijim Thoene presented an in-depth and authoritative lecture/recital of Alan Hovhaness’s eight organ works, indicating which are unpublished, as well as the published works (C. F. Peters and Fujihara Music Co., Seattle, Washington). Hovhaness is perhaps known more for his orchestral (Mysterious Mountain) and choral (Magnificat) music more than for his organ works. Discouraged by the criticisms of Leonard Bernstein and Aaron Copland of his Symphony in 1943, Hovhaness took the advice of the Greek psychic and mystic painter Hermon
di Giovanno, who persuaded him to study the music of his Armenian ancestors. Hovhaness then became organist for St. James Armenian Church in Watertown, Massachusetts. There he studied his Armenian musical heritage, which was not passed down to him through his family. Thoene noted his “turn toward the East” in musical language and played a recording of the beginning of the Divine (Armenian) Liturgy as well as a few notes on the sho instrument, a handheld, Japanese pipe organ of ancient Chinese origin. Hovhaness strove to incorporate the musical idiom of Eastern peoples into his compositional style and make their modalities his own. 

Thoene performed Organ Sonata No. 2, Invisible Sun, op. 385, Ms.; three pieces from Sanahin Partita for Organ, op. 69: 2. Estampie, 4. First Whirling, and 7. Apparition in the Sky; Hermit Thrush (Sonata No. 3, op. 424); and her own commission, Habakkuk, op. 434 (1995), which is Hovhaness’s last organ work (1995). In this piece, Hovhaness was asked to reflect on Habakkuk 3:17–19: 

 

Even though the fig trees are all destroyed, and there is neither blossom left nor fruit; and though the olive crops all fail, and the fields lie barren; even if the flocks die in the fields and the cattle barns are empty. Yet I will rejoice in the Lord; I will be happy in the God of my salvation. The Lord God is my strength, and He will give me the speed of a deer and bring me safely over the mountains. 

 

Thoene performed this stirring work in an exultant manner. Hovhaness created a new harmonic language in this last organ piece to express both the despair of the prophet and of the triumph of his enduring faith. Thanks to Thoene, this piece exists.

 

2:30 pm Hill Auditorium Mezzanine

Michael Barone celebrated other composers with anniversaries aside from those featured on the conference. Playing recordings of at least two examples each as well as some other discs of interest, Barone offered a very humorous journey from names such as Georg Boehm, Louis Couperin, William Boyer, Jan Koetsier, Nino Rota, Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, Enrico Bossi, Gustav Mahler, Gian Carlo Menotti, and Carrie Jacobs-Bond. In addition, the radio exponent of the pipe organ made a case for Franz Liszt’s influence on music in general and organ music being more extensive than commonly thought. Liszt envisioned the organ beyond a church instrument, giving an influential “push” for the organ in the music world. As inventor of the tone poem, he took the organ (as well as the piano) into the expression of emotional extremes. Several examples of Liszt’s smaller, meditative works intended for private reflection were played, showing that his output of organ music goes well beyond the “big pieces.”

 

8:00 pm Hill Auditorium

Gregory Hand completed the conference, sharing his project of recording the entire corpus of William Bolcom’s Gospel Preludes. He performed Preludes 1–6 (Books I and II) with intermission, followed by Preludes 7–12 (Books III and IV) in Hill Auditorium. Adding to the delight of this performance was the presence of the composer.

This conference was a mind-stretcher in organ literature. Each of the composers—Liszt, Alain, and Hovhaness—created a special musical language of their own. Additionally, their spirituality was wedded with their musicality, often taking on a very personal expression. Thus, a huge panorama of literature, much of it from our time, was offered to the conference participants for possible exploration. At the same time, the conference was a huge dose of spiritual music of a theological bent, from the Gospel Preludes of William Bolcom to the piano pieces of Jehan Alain to Messiaen’s Les Corps Glorieux to Langlais’ Resurrection to Hovhaness’s Habbakuk and many others—attendees took in much inspiration and food for thought. Thanks to Marilyn Mason, the presenters, and the attendees for another dynamic educational event for organ music at the University of Michigan.

 

 

Remembering André Marchal, 1894–1980

Ann Labounsky

Ann Labounsky, Ph.D., is Professor and Chair of Organ and Sacred Music at the Mary Pappert School of Music, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Author of Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music, she studied with André Marchal and Jean Langlais in Paris from 1962–1964.

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Performance artists are most often remembered after their deaths through the compositions that they leave behind. Organ students learn to play works written by J. S. Bach or Franz Liszt, César Franck or Marcel Dupré, Olivier Messiaen or Jean Langlais; and thus their names and their works live on from one generation to another. For the rest, great performers are remembered during the lives of audiences who heard their memorable performances—great teachers, through the lives of their students.
David Craighead, legendary organ performer and now retired professor at the Eastman School of Music, has often lamented about the fleeting nature of fame. Some, like Arthur Poister, are remembered principally through competitions named for them, as in the Poister competition sponsored annually by Syracuse University where he taught; but even now, a few short generations after his death, there is included in the competition application a biographical sketch telling of his life and work.
For very many, there is no immortality of memory. In the words of the hymn: “Time, like an ever-rolling stream, soon bears its sons away. They fly, forgotten, as a dream dies at the opening day.” It is a sad dictum that those who do not compose most often decompose without leaving a mark on succeeding generations.
There are exceptions, of course. One thinks, for example, of opera singer Enrico Caruso or conductor Arturo Toscanini, great artists whose names continue to resound with their successor performers and audiences beyond specialists in music history. In those cases, they were people who transcended the limitations of the performance practices of their day, and thus left the arts they served transformed forever. For organists, the name André Marchal, the thirtieth anniversary of whose death is commemorated in 2010, must be added.

Marchal’s legacy
There are reasons for which André Marchal will be remembered as a transformational figure in the history of organ building and organ performance. He had an important impact on the organ reform movement in France, and subsequently in America—an influence that is only now beginning to be understood.
In particular, he influenced the Neo-classical style of organ building and aesthetics, through his association with the French organs of Victor Gonzalez. These instruments, in turn, influenced the aesthetics and registration practices of later twentieth-century French organ composers such as Langlais, Duruflé, Alain, and Messiaen. At the same time, Marchal was a forerunner in the formation of the performance practice now common today, especially in the interpretation of earlier organ works.

Life
André Marchal entered the world at the end of the French Romantic era and lived until 1980. He was born without sight to middle-class parents in Paris, February 6, 1894. Both his father and grandfather noticed his musical talent at a very early age and encouraged his study of the piano.1 At the age of nine he enrolled at the Institute for the Young Blind (Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles–INJA) in Paris, where he studied organ with Adolphe Marty, and harmony with Albert Mahaut, both students of César Franck.
At the age of seventeen he entered Gigout’s organ class at the Paris Conservatory, obtaining first prize in organ and improvisation two years later. In 1915 he succeeded Augustin Barié as organist at Saint-Germain-des-Près. In 1917 he received the Prix d’excellence in counterpoint and fugue at the Conservatory, in the class of George Caussade. Four years later he was hired as an organ teacher at INJA, where he continued to teach from 1919 until 1959. He succeeded Joseph Bonnet as organist at the Church of Saint-Eustache in 1945, where he remained until 1963.

Recital career
His long and distinguished career as an organ virtuoso began in 1923, when he gave the premiere performance of Vierne’s Fourth Symphony, with the composer present, at the Paris Conservatory. Two years later, he followed with his second public performance at the Salle Gaveau in Paris. In 1927 he toured in Belgium, Switzerland, and Germany. Again, in 1928, he gave the premiere of a work by Vierne, this time the third suite of his Pièces de fantaisie.
In 1930, he made his first tour of the United States, having no assistance from a guide and without any knowledge of English. (It was through Arthur Quimby—a student of Nadia Boulanger, and Curator of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Art Museum, who had heard Marchal perform in Paris—that the first tour was arranged.) At the Cleveland Art Museum, he played ten recitals of the music of
J. S. Bach. Seth Bingham, who taught at Columbia University, welcomed him in New York City, where he performed an improvised symphony in four movements at the Wanamaker Auditorium in New York City.2 This was followed with recitals in Chicago and in Canada. In 1938 he gave 30 concerts in the United States and Canada.
After World War II he performed in London at the Royal Festival Hall in the presence of Queen Elizabeth. On that occasion he met the English journalist Felix Aprahamian, who became a close friend and accompanied him on the tour to Australia in 1953.
His concert career spanned half a century; between 1930 and 1975 he made 19 trips to the United States to perform and teach.3 His importance as a teacher drew students from many parts of the world to study with him in his home or at INJA. It should be noted that his first American student, Lee Erwin, who made a career as a theatre organist, came to study with him just prior to his tour in 1930 and was responsible for the first recording on his house organ. His recordings, which also spanned over four decades, likewise have had a continuing impact on organists throughout the world.

André Marchal and the Organ
Reform movement

The Organ Reform movement (or Neo-classical movement as it is called in France) began in the 1920s in Germany and France, spreading to the United States in the 1930s. Albert Schweitzer was a pivotal originator. In France, it was realized primarily through the work of three men in tandem: the performer and teacher, André Marchal; the noted historian and musicologist, Norbert Dufourcq (1904–1990); and the organbuilder, Victor Gonzalez (1877–1956).

Victor Gonzalez
Victor Gonzalez, who was originally from the Castile region of Spain, began his career with the firm of Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, where he became their chief voicer. He then worked for the firms of Gutschenritter and Merklin. In 1929, after declining to assume leadership of the Cavaillé-Coll firm, he established his own firm with the help, encouragement, and financing assistance of Béranger de Miramon Fitz-James, founder of Association des Amis de l’Orgue, together with a group of de Miramon’s friends. Gonzalez’s first organ was built in 1926 for the home of Béranger de Miramon, followed the same year by an organ for the parish church in Ligugé. By 1937 there were 50 employees at the firm who worked to rebuild the Cavaillé-Coll organ at the Palais de Chaillot, and in the following year to renovate the organs at the Versailles chapel and the Cathedral of Rheims.
From 1929 until 1936, Rudolf von Beckerath worked for Gonzalez on restoration projects for organs in Saint-Eustache, Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, Solesmes, Bailleul, the Goüin residence, and the world’s fair in Brussels in 1935, prior to founding his own firm. Though the Gonzalez name is no longer in use, he was succeeded in the business by his son, Fernand Gonzalez, and then by his son-in-law, George Danion. Fernand Gonzalez, who was killed in World War II, was responsible for the design of the Palais de Chaillot. After his death, Bernard Dargassies was charged with the maintenance of most of the Gonzalez organs.4
In 1931 Victor Gonzalez built an organ for the Condé estate of Joseph Bonnet.5 Gonzalez built this instrument very much in the Cavaillé-Coll style of that time, with two enclosed divisions, the usual plan for his house organs. He departed, however, from Cavaillé-Coll by adding a three-rank mixture on the Swell and a series of mutations. The romantic Merklin organ at Saint-Eustache, which was rebuilt by Gonzalez, and the Gonzalez organ from 1934 in the home of Henry Goüin are landmark examples of the wedding of early music to the recreated sounds of early instruments.6 These instruments included many mutation stops and mixtures, which allowed authentic performances of early music. Under the influence of Marchal and Dufourcq, Gonzalez became the leading builder in France for half a century.

Collaboration with Norbert
Dufourcq

Norbert Dufourcq’s collaboration with Marchal began in 1920, when he became Marchal’s organ student after studying for three years with Gustave Noël at the Cathedral in Orleans. Two years after beginning his organ study with Marchal, Dufourcq became principal organist of Saint-Merry in Paris, a post that he retained until his death in 1990. Dufourcq earned a degree in history from the Sorbonne (1923). In 1927 he was one of the founding members and secretary of Association des Amis de l’Orgue. Between 1932 and 1983 he was a member of the organ division of Commission of Historical Monuments. From 1941–1975 he served as professor of music history at the Paris Conservatory. (He also taught at the Collège Stanislas, Paris, from 1935 to 1946.)
During the years 1941 to 1975 Marchal performed many concerts in which Dufourcq provided the commentary. A gifted musicologist and persuasive public speaker, Dufourcq was able to give a poetic overview of the pieces performed, so that the uninitiated listener could follow. His mellifluous voice and the frequent use of the imperfect subjunctive case were noteworthy. Included in the commentaries was a series of eight concerts, entitled The Great Forms of Organ Music, with genres including prelude and fugue, toccata, chaconne, canzona, passacaglia, the chorale, partita, and fantasia. These recitals continued and included symphonic music and program music.
By 1933, Marchal and Dufourcq had become the leaders of the French national committee for the oversight of historic organs throughout France: the Commission des Monuments Historiques under the minister des Beaux Arts. Many of the nineteenth-century Cavaillé-Coll instruments, and earlier instruments by Clicquot, which were under the control of this commission, had fallen into disrepair and required renovations. This circumstance gave the commission the opportunity to rebuild those organs using the ideals of the Neo-classic design that Marchal, Dufourcq, and Gonzalez favored. Their work could be seen in the restorations at La Flèche, Saint-Gervais, Saint-Merry (where Dufourcq was organist), Les Invalides, the cathedrals of Auch, Soissons, and Rheims, the Palais de Chaillot, and the new concert organ in the French National Radio Studio 103, among many others. Many of the foundation stops were replaced with higher-pitched ranks and the reeds re-voiced. Marchal recorded on many of these instruments in the 1960s.
Influence on the Holtkamp Organ Company
This three-part collaboration among André Marchal, Norbert Dufourcq, and Victor Gonzalez, which affected the Neo-classical organ movement in France, subsequently came to the United States through the work of both Walter Holtkamp, Sr. and his son Walter Holtkamp, Jr., who wrote:

André Marchal came to the microcosm that is the Holtkamp Organ Company soon after World War II. While he had been in this country prior to the war, it was not until after that he brought his many talents to us with such marvelous results…. Both my father and I traveled to many cities of our country to sit with André Marchal at the console to evaluate our instruments. He would play and discourse upon the merits and demerits of that particular organ. From every encounter we came away with a new perspective of our work and our ideas.7
A transcript of one of these conversations with Marchal and the two Walter Holtkamps, Senior and Junior, which was recorded following a Marchal recital on the Holtkamp organ at St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Cleveland, on May 10, 1957, gives an example of how the Holtkamps relied on Marchal’s advice regarding voicing:
WH (Walter Holtkamp, Sr.): André, we heard last night no 16′ Principal or 8′ Pedal Octave. My son and I would like to go to St. Paul’s and have a lesson on the use of the 16′ and what is lacking in this one.
AM (André Marchal): Your 16′ Principal is too large. There is too much gap in dynamic between the 16′ Subbass and the 16′ Principal. It is too big to be used without the reeds, and when the reeds are on the Subbass does just as well as the 16′ Principal.
WH: Perhaps this is a result of the 16′ Principal being placed against a stone wall rather than in the buffet as in the French organs.
AM: No, I noticed this same character at Baltimore, where the 16′ stands in the open. This is true on all your organs. The 8′ Pedal Octave is also too loud at St. Paul’s, Oberlin, Berkeley, Baltimore.
C (Walter Holtkamp, Jr.): I would like to know Mr. Marchal’s idea of the relationship as to loudness and quality between the Great 8′ Principal and Pedal 8′ Octave.
AM: In theory, the Pedal 8′ should be larger in scale than the Great 8′, but in use I really like the Pedal 8′ to be a little milder than the Great 8′. It could be a little more flutey.8

It is possible that Walter Holtkamp, Sr. heard Marchal’s series of ten recitals of the music of J. S. Bach at the Cleveland Museum of Art in March of 1930. In August of 1956, Walter Holtkamp, Sr. and Walter Blodgett, Curator of Musical Arts at the Cleveland Art Museum, drove to Methuen to hear Marchal play during the Summer Organ Institute, organized by Arthur Howes, and again the following year to hear him perform and record on the Holtkamp organ at MIT. Along with Fenner Douglas, in the early 1960s Walter Holtkamp and Walter Blodgett traveled to France to study the historic instruments there, including many by Gonzalez. In later years Marchal performed and taught frequently on Holtkamp organs at Syracuse University and Oberlin College. (Despite his love of Holtkamp organs, he often spoke of the similarity between the American builder G. Donald Harrison’s reeds and the French reeds that he loved.)

Giuseppe Englert
The composer Giuseppe Englert, another of Marchal’s students, who in 1954 married Marchal’s daughter Jacqueline, served as translator for the Holtkamps and Marchal during Marchal’s tours to the United States and the Holtkamps’ trips to France. The Englerts’ apartment in Paris, across the street from Les Invalides, was home to a Gonzalez organ, with a similar design to one in Marchal’s home. Maurice Duruflé admired this instrument and was inspired by it for the specification for the Gonzalez instrument in his own apartment. (The organ in Marchal’s home was originally a Gutschenritter, which was enlarged by Gonzalez.)

Marchal and performance practice
In the early 1920s Marchal continued to play in the style he had been taught by Gigout, a uniformly legato touch and a non-interpretive approach to the music of Bach and the Romantic composers. Gigout followed the tradition of the Lemmens school, learned from Widor and Guilmant. During his study of the music of the early masters, in preparation for a series of recitals of early music in 1923, Marchal rethought his approach to technique and interpretation. He was the first, in 1929, to play the two complete Masses of François Couperin. In an interview with Pierre Lucet for a series of recitals on the French National Radio in 1979, Marchal explained the process by which he changed his approach to early music and the organs upon which it could be performed:

Pierre Lucet: Maître, permit me to inquire first of all about your approach to the music of Johann Sebastian Bach:
Marchal: It [his approach] was made at two times. I was admitted to the Conservatory and at that time I listened to what was told to me, I learned technique; I was greatly in need of it. And it was from that point of view that I studied Bach. Ten years later [1921], in establishing my repertoire, I began to concertize, and relearned Bach in a completely different manner. This time I studied each piece in depth, trying to understand it in the best way possible; and having assimilated it, I tried to bring out the beauty of each piece by certain ways of playing; for example, the phrasing, the breaths, the registration. Obviously, at that time, there were few organs on which one could register well the music of Bach; we were still in the full Romantic period. But one could still look for lighter stops, clear in any case, which would permit the beauty of Bach’s counterpoint to emerge.
After having obtained my prize in organ [1913], while continuing to play the organ I worked a great deal on piano. Paul Braud, a student of Franck, took an interest in me. I became then more oriented toward the piano, which permitted me to know more music and to play more chamber music. I worked relentlessly . . . I purchased a small mechanical organ to practice my repertoire. It was at that time [1921] that I really tried to express Bach. My colleagues said: “Marchal? He plays the harpsichord”—and that was almost true, since my interpretations that were closest to what I hoped them to be were like the marvelous ones of Wanda Landowska on her harpsichord.9

This process of searching for the appropriate style for early music and the instruments that would bring it to life continued for him through the early 1930s, when he gave a series of recitals of early music on Neo-classical instruments built by Gonzalez. After 1930, Marchal played very differently from his teacher, Gigout, and the other blind teachers from INJA. It was as if he grasped the essence of the music from within himself. His style was powerful, lyrical, and always convincing. His personality was also very strong. There was a radiance about him and a “joie de vivre” that came through in every piece that he played.
His touch was a radical departure from the 19th-century seamless legato that was carried on by Marcel Dupré and his predecessors. He had an infinite variety of touches. By the 1940s Marchal had become one of the most popular performers in France. The public related easily to the musicality of Marchal’s playing and to his vibrant personality. It is not surprising that such a different style—full of authentic poetry and lyricism—would win the hearts of the French public as well as those from other countries. It must also be said that with him and all the other blind organists, there was also something captivating at seeing a blind person being led onto the stage and then left alone to play the instrument, no matter how large, completely independently. When one contemplates the style of playing during the 1920s through the 1950s, which was completely dominated by the legato Romantic style, what is utterly amazing is this new, radically different sound and interpretation. Begun by Marchal, it was later adopted by Marie-Claire Alain and others.
Guilmant and Pirro, in the monumental Archives des Maîtres de l’Orgue, 1897–1910 (volumes 1–10 available online), made available for the first time, at the end of the 19th century, the music of Couperin, de Grigny, Clérambault, and many others. Although Guilmant and Pirro recommended the use of the Cornet registration, their grounding in the 19th-century style of playing and registration prevented them from recommending for this early music a complementary early style and registration. Likewise, the six volumes of Joseph Bonnet’s Historical Organ Recitals series, published between 1917 and 1940, continued the same style of playing and registrations. Bonnet’s role in the movement, however, should not be ignored. He was intensely interested in early music but played it in the manner that he had been taught by Guilmant.
Although he had substituted for his teacher, Eugène Gigout, as organ teacher at the Paris Conservatory, Marchal was never connected to any school in France except at INJA and the summer school of Nadia Boulanger in Fontainebleau. Nonetheless, so many students requested Fulbright grants to study with him, that by the 1950s he agreed to be referred to as a school himself. In America, many other organists fell under his influence through the many masterclasses he gave at Oberlin College, Syracuse University, Union Theological Seminary, Northwestern University, the universities of Illinois and Indiana, the Eastman School of Music, and the Organ Institute in Methuen.

Marchal’s recordings
In the release on CD (Arbiter, 2003) of his first recordings, originally recorded between 1936 and 1948 at Saint-Eustache and the Goüin residence, one can easily understand Marchal’s interest in early music and in the type of instrument that would be well suited to the music of earlier periods. The lyricism, so unlike the usual style of playing during the 1940s, was notably displayed in his performance of the Bach chorale prelude O Mensch bewein dein Sünde gross. His use of free trills, so unlike the measured trills found in the playing of his contemporaries, was quite a departure from the traditional style of playing.
The subtle rubato in all the playing is striking. In the Bach Passacaglia and Fugue, the phrasing of each variation gives life to the great work. The articulation of the pedal line and the variety in the registrations gives much interest to the form of the piece. What is compelling in all of his playing is the strength of the rhythm, especially noticeable in the fugue of this work. While listening to his performances, one senses that it should not be performed otherwise, that it is right.
What we understand today of the stylus fantasticus can already be heard in Marchal’s opening performance from 1948 of Buxtehude’s Prelude and Fugue in F-sharp Minor. There is considerable contrast between the free sections and the fugal sections. His personality comes alive in his commentary for demonstrating each stop, with brief improvisations that give fine examples of this style of organbuilding. The Blow Toccata in D Minor brings out the bass in the reed registers with great clarity. Listening to these improvisations on the individual sonorities of the Gonzalez house organ in the Goüin house gives a clear picture of this aesthetic: a Neo-classical organ that, in America, we would call an eclectic organ.
Other recordings include:
Chefs d’œuvres pour orgue de J.S. Bach “10 de répertoire” en 1989. Zurich, Grossmünster 1964. MUSIDISC 203412 AD 650.
Orgues et organistes français du XXè siècle (1900–1950) by EMI Classics (2002) as well as Jeux et registrations de l’orgue, Improvisations, Toccata de Gigout, Final de la 4ème Symphonie de Vierne, Apparition de l’Eglise éternelle de Messiaen, Choral dorien de J. Alain, Saint-Merry, 1958 et 1976. EMI Classics, 1 CD, 71716 2 (1997), Saint-Merry et Saint-Eustache.
The Organ Historical Society website lists the two recordings available through Arbiter (135 and 111) with these annotations:
The works by Buxtehude, Bach, Blow, Purcell, Sweelinck and Vierne were recorded by André Marchal (1894–1980) in April 1948, on the organ at St. Eustache in Paris, then a Merklin which had been rebuilt by Victor Gonzalez in 1927–32. In 1936, the Pathé firm released a 12-disc set entitled Three Centuries of Organ Music from which Marchal’s performances of Cabezon, Santa Maria, Landino, and Palestrina are taken. These first recordings of these early works are performed on an organ designed especially for early music and completed in 1934 by Victor Gonzalez at the home of Henry Goüin in Paris. Marchal also demonstrates the organ stop-by-stop, and narrates his demonstration. Available on Arbiter-135.
Arbiter 111 is described:

This unique CD reissues the 1956 stereo recordings made by André Marchal on his 3/28 house organ built by Gonzalez. The fidelity of the recording is unusually fine, capturing Marchal’s way with 12 of the Bach Orgelbüchlein, BWV 603–612, 614–615, and Toccata, Adagio & Fugue in C, BWV 564. There are no revelations here for most of us, and the organ is located in an anechoic environment. The CD is a must for Marchal fans, who will revel in his spoken description and demonstration of the organ.
Although more difficult to locate, it is possible to find in libraries the Lumen recordings of Franck and early French music (Grand Prix du disque 1952); the Bach large fantasies and fugues by Ducretet Thomson; the Clérambault recordings at Auch Cathedral, by LDE 3231; many of these recordings contain the commentaries by Norbert Dufourcq. The Unicorn recordings from MIT (UNLP 1046–1048) of Bach and early French music on the large Holtkamp organ there from the 1950s are excellent.
Marchal’s Complete Organ Works of César Franck, originally released by Erato, has been reissued by Solstice ([email protected]). This recording was awarded the coveted Diapason d’Or. There are many unpublished recordings (some from Syracuse from 1960s, and two recordings from his last American tour in 1974 at the Church of the Assumption in Bellevue, Pennsylvania and in Rochester, New York) as well as many given on the French National Radio.

His teaching and legacy
His system of teaching usually began with having the student play a chorale prelude from Bach’s Orgelbüchlein. He usually heard a piece only one time giving all his ideas in the one lesson. For the early French music he did not use “notes inégales” during the 1960s, but by the 1970s he realized that this was, in practice, the style of this music, and adopted its use. His mind was always engaged and he heard every phrasing and nuance. His use of agogic accents to bring out the shape of a phrase was notable. Above all, he made each part sing independently of the other voices regardless of the period in which it was written. He was demanding especially with his more gifted pupils, desirous that each one achieve his/her highest potential.
His influence is continued not only in the legacy of performance practice and organbuilding. A number of publications and prizes have appeared since 1980: a thesis by Lynn Trapp at the University of Kansas (Lawrence, 1982), “The Legacy of André Marchal;” “Tribute to André Marchal” reprint of the L’Orgue Dossier I in 1997, with the addition of tributes by many American students who did not have the opportunity to be included in the original document; and prizes at the biennial Marchal competition in Biarritz.
The Académie André Marchal was founded in Biarritz, France in 1982 by Denise Limonaire to perpetuate the memory of this musical giant, his innovative style of performance, his neo-classical influence on organbuilding, and his rediscovery of early music. Susan Landale serves as president of the Académie, with Jacqueline Englert-Marchal as honorary president. Among other projects, the Académie has partnered with the town of Biarritz to sponsor the “Prix André Marchal,” an international organ competition with prizes in interpretation and improvisation. The competition is held every two years and has grown in quality and size. The ninth competition, held in 2009, accepted eighteen candidates of twelve nationalities. Americans desirous of supporting this valid and significant mission are strongly invited to become members; dues of $80 for two years may be mailed to Ralph Tilden at P.O. Box 2254, Banner Elk, NC 28604. André Marchal awards are given at Duquesne University, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, for excellence in organ performance.
His impact as a teacher was important. His blind students who obtained the first prize in organ at the Paris Conservatory included: André Stiegler, 1925; Jean Langlais and Jean Laporte, 1930; Gaston Litaize, 1931; Antoine Reboulot, 1936; Xavier Dufresse, 1952; Georges Robert, 1953; Louis Thiry, 1958; Jean Wallet, 1963; Jean-Pierre Leguay, 1966 (who had studied with both Litaize and Marchal). Two other pupils who obtained the first prize who were sighted were Noëlie Pierront, 1925, and Anne Marie Barat, 1976.
His other pupils included Corliss Arnold, Linda Clark, Craig Cramer, Philip Crozier, Alan Dominicci, Norbert Dufourcq, Giuseppe Englert, Lee Erwin (the first American pupil before 1930), Robert Eshenour, John Fenstermaker, Philip Gehring, Emily Gibson, Lester Groom, Jerald Hamilton, Ruth Harris, William Hays, Allan Hobbs, Howard Jewell, Elna Johnson, Margaret Kemper, Ralph Kneeream, Suzanne Kornprobst, Marilou Kratzenstein, Charles Krigbaum, Ann Labounsky, Susan Landale, David Liddle, Denise Limonaire, Robert Lodine, Alan Long, Robert Sutherland Lord, Chamin Walker Meadows, Kathryn Moen, Earline Moulder, Margaret Mueller, Arsène Muzerelle, Lois Pardue, Garth Peacock, Stephen Rumpf, Daniel and David Simpson, Robert Sirota, Rev. Victoria Sirota, Carl Staplin, Roger Stiegler, Edith Strom, Haskell Thompson, Ralph Tilden, Parvin Titus, Robert Judith Truitt, Marie-Antoinette Vernières, Gail Walton, Nicole Wild, and Mary Alice Wotring.

Influence on subsequent
composers

His influence on subsequent composers such as Langlais, Duruflé, Alain, and Messiaen in their approaches to organ registration is likewise important to this reflection of André Marchal upon the 30th anniversary of his death. Jean Langlais studied organ with Marchal at INJA and at his home and was influenced by the work of Gonzalez in these two venues, as well as the organ at the Palais de Chaillot, where he performed his first symphony in 1943. His choice of the Schwenkedel organs of Neo-classical design, which he installed in his home and at the Institute Valentin Haüy, next door to INJA, shows this influence. The stops that he added to the organ at Sainte-Clotilde in 1962 included a Larigot 11⁄3′ on the Positif, a Prestant 4′ and Clairon 2′ on the Récit, and a Prestant 4′ and Doublette 2′ on the Pédale.10
The many Neo-classical registrations in his pieces likewise show this influence. For example, even the titles of a number of his pieces refer to these types of registrations: Dialogue sur les mixtures (Suite brève, 1947) and all the movements of Suite française (1948), which are based on titles found in classical French organ music such as Prélude sur les grands jeux and Contrepoint sur les jeux d’anches, and Suite baroque (1973).
As I have already mentioned, Maurice Duruflé often visited the home of Giuseppe Englert to study the specifications and dimensions of the Gonzalez organ, which inspired him for his house organ, also built by Gonzalez. Englert’s house organ was based on the specifications of Marchal’s house organ.11 In Duruflé’s organ works, even starting with the Scherzo from 1926, his registrations depart from the normal 19th-century models.
Marchal and Jehan Alain’s father, Albert Alain—an amateur organbuilder—were close friends and worked together on ideas for the specifications for their house organs. Similarities can be seen in the specifications of each.12 When Marchal had built his organ with a rather classic Positif, Albert Alain wanted to do the same thing.13 Jehan Alain’s first experiences of organ music in his home were influenced by the aesthetics of Marchal and Gonzalez. Jehan Alain and Marchal enjoyed playing and improvising together in Alain’s home. A very early work, Variations sur un thème de Clément Jannequin, demonstrates registrations that call for Neo-classical stops as well as the recall of early music in the title of the piece. Another work of Jehan Alain, Le Jardin suspendu, calls for a typically classical French stop, the Gros Nasard 51⁄3′ on the Positif. Marchal was among the first organists to perform Alain’s music, including Litanies, Variations sur un theme de Clément Jannequin, and Danses à Agni Yavishta, and had them transcribed into Braille notation.
Olivier Messiaen was also influenced by the Neo-classical trends in France. He changed the Cavaillé-Coll organ at La Trinité, where he was organist from 1930 until 1991, to include many mutation stops that were not part of the original specification. Even his earliest organ work, Le banquet céleste (1928), is a departure from the normal registration practices of the period, including Flûte 4′, Nasard 22⁄3′, Doublette 2′, and Piccolo 1′ for the pedal line. As he continued to compose, his works called more frequently for higher-pitched sonorities, often to imitate birds. One could say that it was a far cry from D’Aquin’s imitative harpsichord piece mimicking the cuckoo, but these sounds were all part of an interest in both the future and the past.

Conclusion
It is time to re-evaluate André Marchal’s contributions to the organ reform movement in France; his impact on organbuilding in the United States, particularly in his relationships to Walter Holtkamp and Walter Blodgett as well as Fenner Douglas; and his influence on the leading organ composers of the 20th century: Langlais, Alain, Duruflé, and Messiaen. In light of the development of early organ techniques and the number of publications that have been published and used in the thirty years since his death, it is time to listen again to Marchal’s recordings with a discerning mind and ask where his place is in the development of performance practice.
One certainly hears a wide variety of touches in all his playing. What was his “ordinary” touch? What were the main differences between his style and that of Joseph Bonnet, Alexandre Guilmant, and Marie-Claire Alain? Robert Noehren admired the sensitivity of his touch both on tracker and electric actions. It is also time to re-evaluate his influence on organ building; for example, in the composition of the Plein jeu mixture, which reserved the breaks until after middle C to enhance the clarity of the polyphonic line, and his use of different mixtures for each polyphonic composition that he performed.
Consider, too, the changes in the organ registrations in the music of Duruflé, Alain, Messiaen, and Langlais as compared to many other composers of the 20th century. The required foundations plus reeds on each manual, as a given for organ registration, changed as a result of Marchal’s impact on the Neo-classical organ in France. There is, indeed, much to ponder.
Perhaps Norbert Dufourcq, who was the most eloquent of his collaborators, best expressed the essence of his artistry:

André Marchal seemed to have found by himself the sources to which he probed the depths of his rich and attractive personality: the discovery of the works of the French organists of the 17th and 18th centuries, that of the complete works of Bach (he played almost all of it), of Cabezón, Frescobaldi, Buxtehude . . . It was for André Marchal to penetrate the secrets of a page of music, to discover the tempo, in searching the phrases, in marking the strong pulses, the weak pulses, without ever breaking the melodic line nor the polyphonic structure, without ever losing a rhythm which gave a work its forward motion, its line. One has praised the sensitivity of the Maître. It is better perhaps to speak of his sense of poetry.
To this static but mysterious and majestic instrument, he knew how to assure a poetic and lyric “aura” that he insisted on creating in a convincing phrasing with thousands of details in a style made more subtle by the use of minimal retards; of suspensions slightly brought out or by the imperious accents thrown into the center of the discourse. Goodbye to the inexpressive and neutral legato, André Marchal sought to impose on his instrument a suppleness with the use of imperceptible tensions—jolts of the soul—which did not stop. It is in this that he transformed the lens of the entire school of the organ, in France as in America . . . Under his fingers the organ no longer preached in an impersonal manner; under his fingers, the melodies rushed into the nave to touch the heart of each person. But it was never he who descended upon us. It was us, whom he seized with love, and attracted us to him.14 ■

 

Clavierübung III of J. S. Bach: Theology in Notes and Numbers, Part 2

Alexander Fiseisky
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Part 1 was published in the October issue of The Diapason, pp. 22–25.

Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott
[We all believe in one God]
(BWV 680–681)

The arrangement of the chorale Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott, the Protestant version of the Credo, opens a series of dramatic chorale preludes in the Clavierübung III. Their themes are built on the minor keys and gravitate around the interval of the fifth.
In this piece the fugal upper voices are contrasted against a melodic line in the bass that occurs seven times. (Example 9) This melody is based on a leap of a fourth followed by a downward move within the octave and displays a structural similarity to the theme of the so-called Dorian Fugue (BWV 538).55 The ostinato motif appears altogether six times in the pedal; once (the sixth appearance) in modified form on the manuals: there only the beginning of the motif appears, repeated three times.
Not just the relationship (6 + 1) in the use of this striking melody is important, but also the fact that its form is changed in the one time it is used on the manuals. Naturally, this begs the question as to the purpose of this change. We have here possibly an allusion to the Old Testament injunction: Six days you shall labor and do all your work, but one day must be reserved for prayer and spiritual needs. From here stem the characteristics of one of the developments: an elevation of the tessitura, the use of only upward leaps, the softening of the harshness of the harmonic minor, and finally the heterolepsis figure used in the upper voices.
The manual voices are developed out of the beginning of the melody of the chorale Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott. The first four notes of this motif in a tonal answer form a musical rhetorical figure, often encountered in the works of Bach, which Boleslav Javorsky called the predestination motif.56 The origin of this motif lies in the chorale melody Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh’ allzeit [What my God wills may always happen] and is usually used by the composer as a culminant, dramatic or recapitulating figure (Fugue in G Minor, BWV 542, Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543, etc.). The whole musical fabric of this chorale prelude is shot through with this predestination motif.
Towards the end of the composition, Bach quotes in the tenor, first in its entirety, the first line of the cantus firmus (bars 89–98). Typically, the subsequent figure in the pedal that accompanies the chorale melody is enlarged, not only in its range (two octaves), but also in the number of notes (to 43—CREDO). One can also hardly describe it as a coincidence that the work has 100 bars: Bach could not have found a better numerological symbol to underscore the idea of “We all believe in one God.”
If we had the task of finding within Bach’s output a work for organ where the dramatic element was more pronounced, we could, paradoxically, hardly do better than choose the small 15-bar manualiter fughetta on the chorale melody Wir glauben all’ an einen Gott in the Clavierübung III. Written in Handelian style,57 it is very chromatic. The traditional double dotting, the richly ornamented musical fabric, the use of characteristic rhetorical figures—tiratas—all combine to sharpen up the harmonic impact of this three-voice fughetta to the highest degree.
The high point of the piece comes in the 12th bar, which results in the interesting proportions of 4:5.58 The density of chords in this bar is a rare example in Bach’s organ works. (Example 10) The diminished seventh on the strong beat contains seven notes. The following diminished seventh from D sharp–C contains six notes, which together makes 13 notes—most certainly another numerological symbol and one that needs no explanation. The impact of the intensive harmonies is strengthened by “talking pauses” and the declamatory answers on the “weak” beats of the bars. The intonations from the introduction (viola da gamba solo) of the aria Es ist vollbracht from the St. John Passion (BWV 245) can be heard in the music. (Example 11)
The descending seconds in Lombardic rhythm, with articulation marks written out in full by the composer (bar 11), the key role of the striking diminished seventh from D sharp–C at the high point of the work, and the key chosen—this is by no means a complete list of the methods the composer has used to create a smooth transition to the subsequent part of the composition.

Vater unser im Himmelreich
[Our Father in Heaven]
(BWV 682–683)

In the extensive arrangement of the chorale melody Vater unser im Himmelreich we encounter an example of a trio that is from time to time expanded to five voices by means of the cantus firmus in canon. This is one of the rare works of Bach full of articulation marks. Thoroughness of articulation shows how important this aspect of organ playing was for the Leipzig cantor.
Already, the choice of key says a great deal about the associative structure of this music. E minor is the key of the opening chorus of the St. Matthew Passion (BWV 244), the Crucifixus from the Mass in B Minor (BWV 232), the Prelude and Fugue for organ (BWV 548), the chorale prelude Da Jesus an dem Kreuze stund (BWV 621) from the Orgelbüchlein, and many other works in which Bach created an atmosphere of grief, sorrow, and misfortune.
The narrative flow of the music in the greater chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich creates an atmosphere of stillness and calm, and invites the hearer to intense prayer. The movement in seconds in Lombardic rhythm59 is akin to the sighs of a humble soul turned towards God. Time moves gently, so as not to disturb the state of intimate prayer.
This composition is literally suffused with thematic symbolism. Allow me to name just a few (following B. Javorsky): the descending third – a symbol of grief; a smooth chromatic movement of 5 to 7 notes – pain; a progression in triplets – fatigue, weariness; a movement along the notes of a first inversion – a symbol of inevitable realization; and so on.
The musical fabric of the composition resembles the tenor aria Wo wird in diesem Jammertale für meinen Geist die Zuflucht sein? [Where will my spirit find its refuge in this vale of tears?] from the cantata Ach, lieben Christen, seid getrost [Ah dear Christians, be comforted] (BWV 114), which Bach completed in Leipzig in 1724. Without a doubt there is an inner connection between the two works. The text of the aria, especially the treatment of the key word “Jammertal” [“vale of tears“ in German] can give the performer the right feeling for the interpretation of the greater chorale prelude Vater unser im Himmelreich.
Another interesting detail of the work is the movement in seconds in Lombardic rhythm in the pedal. This occurs only once in the whole work, at bar 41
(JSBACH), an allusion to the composer’s unseen participation in the prayer to God the Father. (Example 12)
The intricately crafted rhythms of the greater chorale prelude Vater unser im Himmelreich give way in the manual version to flowing linear movement in sextuplets. This sharp contrast has not gone unnoticed by scholars. “As complicated as the rhythms in the large Our-Father prelude may be, so simple is the calm flow of the 16th notes in the manuals version . . .” wrote Christoph Albrecht.60 An interesting explanation for this contrast has been put forward by Albert Clement, who connects the greater chorale prelude with the text of the fourth verse of Luther’s chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich,61 and the smaller prelude with the following verses (5–8). The fourth verse appeals to God’s patience in a time of sorrow, while verses 5–8 speak of trust in His compassion and assistance.62
The placid wave motion of the accompanying voices in the manuals version of the chorale prelude Vater unser im Himmelreich gently prepares us for the stormy motion of the 16th notes in the greater chorale prelude Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan kam [Christ, our Lord, to Jordan came] as the following section of the Clavierübung III.

Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan kam [Christ, our Lord, to Jordan came] (BWV 684–685)
The greater chorale prelude Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan kam presents us once again with something quite out of the ordinary. This is the first occurrence in the whole work of the cantus firmus being transferred to the pedal in a high register. The composer indulges here in musical picture painting: the 16th-note runs produce a sort of perpetuum mobile and create the impression of waves on the Jordan. The music is dominated by an atmosphere of waiting for the miracle of God’s appearance and with it, the forgiveness of sins through the ritual of baptism. (Example 13)
Attempts have been made by various authors to see in the upper voices a dialogue between the Savior and St. John the Baptist,63 a view that I personally do not find very convincing. Built on the symbolic motifs of the Cross and Willingness to Sacrifice,64 the dialogue in the upper voices is often syncopated or transformed into a typical Bachian motion. It does not seem in the least to be associated with the dialogue between God’s Incarnation and His forerunner, but rather serves, as does the stormy motion of the bass, to create a state of what I would call “joyful excitement”—an atmosphere that is typical of many iconographic depictions of the Feast of the Baptism of the Lord.
The appearance of the Holy Trinity—as the Spirit in the form of a dove descending from heaven and as the supernatural light surrounding Christ at His baptism in the waters of the Jordan—is present in this prelude at the deeper level of mystical numerological symbolism. The cantus firmus appears nine times against the three-voiced accompaniment (9×3 = 27), while the total number of bars in the prelude is 81 (27×3).
Each appearance of the cantus firmus is built on a particular number of notes: in four cases it is nine notes, in the other five cases it is eight. And they occur in a strict sequence: 9 + 8 + 9 + 8; 8 + 9 + 8 + 9 + 8. The symbolism of the numbers 3, 9, 27, 81 focuses our attention on the picture of the Holy Trinity, while the number 8 is associated with the heavenly chronos or with the Coming of the Messiah.65
The legitimacy of the numerical proportions in the greater chorale prelude is borne out by the numerological symbolism of the manual fugato in three voices on Christ, unser Herr, zum Jordan kam. The fugato is written in simple triple time and has 27 bars (27×3 = 81). The main theme—the first line of the chorale—occurs three times in the original and three times in the inversion, and each time it is accompanied by a counter-melody based on thematic material in diminution, which forms a kind of canon. (Example 14)
In the opinion of Christoph Albrecht, this is a musical representation of the Gospel words of St. John the Baptist: “He [Jesus] must increase, but I must decrease” (John 3:30).66 It is worth mentioning that the bridges in the fugato (bars 8–10 and 18–20) have an evident three-part structure containing the countersubject (= the diminished theme).
All in all, the composer introduces the theme a total of 14 times (three times the original theme, three times inverted, and eight times diminished).67 The concluding development of the theme in its original form (bass in bar 20) has been slightly altered through the introduction of the Willingness to Sacrifice motif as an anacrusis. This results in interesting proportions for the presentation of the thematic material: 2 + 1 + 3 + 8. It is not difficult to see that these numbers represent a numerical version of the name of the composer (BACH).

Aus tiefer Not schrei’ ich zu dir
[Out of the depths have I cried unto Thee] (BWV 686–687)

The only organ work of Bach written in true six parts with double pedal is the chorale prelude on Psalm 130 (129) Aus tiefer Not schrei’ ich zu dir—a further example of the stile antico in his work. Each verse of this monumental penitential chorale,68 welling up out of the depths of the heart, is introduced in the fugal-like exposition that concludes each time with the cantus firmus in the upper pedal voice. This gives the work, written in the best tradition of J. Pachelbel, the form of an unbroken chain of seven fugues, corresponding to the number of verses of the chorale.
Albert Schweitzer’s attention had already been drawn to the “motif (rhythm) of joy” that first greets one in the initial phrases of the countersubject. As the music develops, this symbolic motif is further elaborated and at the end totally dominates the musical fabric. (Example 15) Schweitzer proposed a dogmatic interpretation for its presence: “Bach . . . is trying to represent the Lutheran doctrine of repentance, according to which all true repentance leads of itself to the joyful certainty of salvation.”69
Schweitzer’s observation is, of course, interesting and not without subtlety, but in my opinion one is dealing here less with joy, but rather with the cleansing power of repentance and the resulting confidence of the penitent in his own future. The motif under consideration conveys just this feeling of confidence.
What motives led Bach to introduce the chorale prelude Aus tiefer Not schrei’ ich zu dir into the Clavierübung III at all? Penance was not a component of the Ordinary of the old Mass, although it had been included in the liturgy in Saxony since 1601. Neither was penance dealt with by Luther in his Great Catechism, although he sometimes mentioned it along with Baptism and the Eucharist as one of the Sacraments. This was apparently the decisive argument for Bach to place two fantasies on Aus tiefer Not schrei’ ich zu dir between the parts relating to Baptism and the Eucharist.
Numerological symbolism plays an important role in both works. As has already been said, the seven fugues that make up this work correspond to each of the seven verses of the chorale. The cantus firmus that crowns each fugue always consists of nine notes, whereas it is interesting to note that it first occurs in the ninth bar. In addition, the length of the cantus firmus from its first to last note always has the same length of eight half-bars.
This changelessness of the cantus firmus, with its connection to the numbers nine, eight, and seven is obviously meant to signify the objective, almost unearthly quality of the beneficial cleansing power that flows over the penitent sinner. An additional indication can be found in the fact that at each occurrence the cantus firmus is first woven into the musical structure only after the completion of the exposition with its five voices. (We recall that the number five symbolizes “sensual Mankind.”)
Our attention is also drawn to the relationship between the number seven (seven verses of the chorale and the seven fugues) and the number five (the five-part musical structure70). These two numbers have an interesting internal proportion: 7:5 = 1.4 (BACH). One could probably regard this as pure chance, were it not that these two numbers occur again within this work. The chorale prelude has 75 bars, where the number 75 is the numerological expression of the word ELEISON (5 + 11 + 5 + 9 + 18 + 14 + 13). The relevance of this cry for mercy in a work dealing with remorse can hardly be doubted.
It is characteristic that the manualiter version of the chorale Aus tiefer Not schrei’ ich zu dir displays the same numerological symbolism as the greater version. A slight change in the rhythmical structure makes the initial motif of the theme correspond to the eighth fugue of the Ariadne Musica Neo-Organoedum Per Viginti by Johann Caspar Ferdinand Fischer (ca. 1660–1746).
Bach’s work impresses us by its architecture. Just as in the first chorale prelude, we encounter an unbroken chain of fugues that treat the seven verses of the chorale one after the other, both in its tonic form and its inversion, where each is brought to a close by the statement of the cantus firmus in the soprano. This results in seven fugues. Six of them are of the same length. The cantus firmus occurs after the fifth bar and lasts for eight bars. But here we encounter an interesting new development: after the cantus firmus has run its course, Bach does not immediately begin with the following fugato, but each time inserts an extra bar as a sort of résumé. Thus the six units have the following structure: 5 + 8 + 1. It is not difficult to see that the résumé thus occurs in the 14th (BACH) bar of the appropriate unit.71
The last and seventh unit differs in its structure from the preceding six, and introduces a proportion that we have already encountered in the greater choral prelude on Credo (6+1). After it has started as all the preceding units (five bars of fugato without the cantus firmus, followed by eight bars with the cantus firmus), this seventh unit has instead of the “Bach résumé” an extension of the second cantus part for a further five bars, resulting in the new proportion of 5 + (8 + 5). It is not difficult to see that this new proportion brings us close to the Golden Rule: 8:5 = 1.6 whereas 13:8 = 1.625. This is not altogether surprising. Thus when the composer understood the combination 6 + 1 as the biblical command to labor for six days, but to keep the seventh as a Sabbath for your God, then it was appropriate that this “special” seventh day be not simply adorned with ordinary music, but be bejewelled with golden tones!

Jesus Christus unser Heiland
[Jesus Christ our Savior]
(BWV 688–689)

The last two chorale preludes in the Clavierübung III deal with the events surrounding the Last Supper. Viewed from a cultural perspective, the iconography of this subject centers around two key moments. The first is the Transubstantiation of the bread and wine into the Body and Blood of Christ. The second moment concerns the circumstances of Judas’s betrayal.
The greater chorale prelude Jesus Christus unser Heiland is woven out of three voices. The cantus firmus, based on an intonation of fifth, is written out in long notes and appears in the pedal. The lively duet in the upper voices simultaneously spins out the three-note stepwise motif (according to Javorsky, a motif of reconciliation), both in its tonic form and its inversion. (Example 16)
We have already encountered this characteristic method in the Clavierübung III: in the greater chorale prelude on Kyrie, Gott heiliger Geist. Its use with quickened tempi produces a mood of agitation and worried concern. A special feature of the musical language is the frequent use of unprepared dissonances that heighten the sense of drama. Speaking personally, this music always conjures up for me Leonardo da Vinci’s famous Milanese fresco of the Last Supper, where the disciples of Christ, unsettled by his prophecy of betrayal, turn to the Savior with just one question “Surely not I, Lord?” (St. Matthew 26:22).
The cantus firmus appears altogether four times in the pedal as the embodiment of Christ’s serenity and his willingness to drink the Cup of his Passion. Its 44 notes are arranged as a pattern of 10 + 12 + 10 + 12. It would appear that the composer has applied this numerical pattern to emphasize the union of the Old Testament (the Law) and the New Testament (the Testament of Christ). Obviously, it is appropriate to remember at this point that St. Augustine considered the number twelve to be a symbol of the Church of Christ. The universal, catholic character of the Church is portrayed by the numerical symbol 144 (= 12×12). Note that the three-note motif of reconciliation in the manuals occurs exactly this many times in the musical texture of this composition.72
Another mysterious symbol is embedded in the score. When one connects the first and the sixth notes of the first bar, and the second and fifth notes, and the third and fourth notes (d1-d2, f2-f1, e1-e2) with a straight line, one produces a graphic figure which resembles the Greek letters X (Chi) and I (Iota) superimposed on each other. (Example 17)
This figure is the emblem of God made Man (Ιησυ Χριστ – Iesus Christos), and one must assume that the composer intentionally built this motif into the structure of the chorale prelude, a chorale that begins with the words “Jesus Christus unser Heiland” [Jesus Christ our Savior]. Typically this emblem occurs 72 times within the work, something that can hardly be attributed to chance. In accordance with tradition, this symbolic number corresponds to the 72 biblical names of the Lord, 72 biblical angels, the 72 nations of the ancient world, and the 72 disciples that Jesus sent out to preach his gospel. The Old Testament book of Numbers tells of 72 elders who received the gift of prophecy from God (Numbers 11:24, 26).73
The manualiter version of Jesus Christus unser Heiland (an extensive fugal composition in four voices) displays a very interesting feature—the placement of the theme does not match the metrical structure. The use of such a technique in the final chorale work of the Clavierübung III undoubtedly has good reasons. Perhaps Bach wanted to underline that the teachings of Christ have an eternal relevance that is not bound by the confines of physical time.
The theme of this fugue displays a striking structure. It consists of 13 notes74 and is based on two elements, which have a significant structural function in the whole cycle: a leap over a fifth and a stepwise motif over a third. The first notes of the tonal answer replicate exactly the final cadence of the chorale Was mein Gott will, das g’scheh’ allzeit, which (following Javorsky) we have interpreted as a predestination motif. (Example 18)
The countersubject is worked out with a circulatio figure that represents the Cup of Sorrows. The theme occurs 17 times altogether, with the final statement in augmentation. Bach undoubtedly considers the number 17 to be the union of ten and seven, especially as the eleventh statement is introduced by a longer bridge passage. The number ten is associated with the Law of the Old Testament (The Decalogue), while according to Werckmeister, the number seven is the symbol for purity and peace.
Thus one can summarize the conjunction of all these symbols as follows: The predestination from above (predestination motif) and the reconciliation prophesied in the Old Testament (reconciliation motif) through the suffering of Christ on the Cross (the Cup of Sorrows motif) purifies the fallen world (13) and gives it eternal peace and bliss (7).

Four Duets: E minor, F major,
G major, A minor

Scholars agree that the four duets of the Clavierübung III are very difficult indeed to interpret. As Hermann Keller remarked, the duets are “so unique and in part so difficult to understand that one must almost be led to believe that Bach wished to express something very special, but no one has yet found the key to them.”75 And in fact the opinions of the experts concerning both the content and the meaning of these works are indeed very contradictory. Some of them are of the opinion that they should be played during the Eucharist, while others see them as symbolic representation of the four Gospels.76 Albert Schweitzer is most probably the furthest removed from the truth with his opinion that they have only found their way into the Clavierübung III by mistake. He thus underestimates the significance of numerical symbolism within this work. Above all he did not “notice” that with the addition of the four duets the total number of works in the Clavierübung III reached the “cosmic” number of 27.
How does this music present itself?
All four pieces are highly individual and represent the highest achievement within the development of the genre of keyboard music for two voices known as inventions. They display no direct connection to the church chorales, but one is aware that while they have an element of tone painting it would not be illogical to interpret them as representations of the four material elements of this world: fire, air, water, and earth. Indeed, just this sort of interpretation was first suggested by Rudolf Steglich.77
Let us now look at the musical design of the duets.
The duet in E minor (BWV 802) is pure energy. Whole rivers of fire flow in the rapid succession of 32nd notes and the broken line of the syncopated motif recalls tongues of fire. The jagged melisma, the semitone movement within the range of diminished thirds: all reinforce a pervading feeling of tension. An almost pagan cult of fire dominates this music. (Example 19)
The F major duet (BWV 803) is built on the idea of contrast. The sphere of air is represented as a contrast of light and dark elements. The main theme, the embodiment of light, occurs in a major key in both the exposition and the recapitulation. The central part gives the impression of sudden twilight, which shrouds all life and transforms everything into a ghostly world of shadows. The contrast of major and minor suggests conflict—the elements of light struggle to free themselves from the chains of the mythological shadow world. (Example 20)
The G major duet (BWV 804) paints a picture of a body of water sparkling in the rays of the morning sun. Murmuring and iridescent flowing passages stirred by a light breeze create the impression of an unending stream of flowing water, magically calling to us by its freshness and purity. (Example 21) The musical texture of this work shows a high degree of similarity to the aria Von der Welt verlang ich nichts [From the world I nought desire] as the seventh part of the cantata Sehet, welch eine Liebe hat uns der Vater erzeiget [See what love the Father has bestowed on us], 1 John 3:1 (BWV 64). (Example 22)

The duet in A minor (BWV 805) has a different character. Behind the slow unfolding of its ideas, behind the gravity of its utterances one can discern an unbending internal force that holds everything in its thrall and directs all things. The extended, epically expanding theme strives to embrace all earthly things. The rocklike solidity of this musical picture calls to mind the immovable foundation of the earth. (Example 23)
Unlike Rudolf Steglich, Albert Clement suggested another approach. He sees in the duets a connection to the tradition of home prayer.78 In the opinion of this expert, the four duets serve as a musical illustration of the 194th chapter of the book Geistliche Erquick-Stunden Oder Dreyhundert Haus- und Tisch-Andachten79 [Hours of Spiritual Refreshments, or 300 Prayers for Home and Table] by the renowned theologian Heinrich Müller (1631–1675). Entitled “Von vier süßen Dingen” [On Four Sweet Things], this part of Müller’s monograph is devoted to the interpretation of the religious essentials: the Word of God, the Cross, Death and heavenly Bliss.
Let us now look at the structure of the duets in detail (Figure 1). One’s attention is immediately drawn to the emphasized strictness in the handling of the meter and the thematic material in all four duets. This is especially apparent in the first and second duets.
In the third duet, the length of the bridge-passages creates an interesting relationship (Figure 2).
The theme of the fourth duet is exceptionally long (48 notes) and consists of two parts: the first part has 11 notes, while the second contains 37 notes. All three numbers have clear sacred connotations: 11 is the symbol for sin, 37 for the monogram of Christ, and 48 is the numerical equivalent of the abbreviation INRI (Iesus Nazarenus Rex Iudaeorum).80
The first duets contain not only the numbers 11 and 37 but also other numbers that are relevant to the theme of Golgotha: 13 (death), 17 (symbol of spirituality), 31 (the numerical equivalent of PNC as the abbreviation of Pro Nobis Crucifixus). It is remarkable that these are simply different combinations of just three numbers—one, three, and seven—and that 137 is itself the numerical equivalent of DOMINUS DEUS.
It is also noteworthy that the sum of 22 + 15 (first duet) and 18 + 13 (second duet) lead us again to the symbols 37 and 31. Moreover, the combination of the pairs 17 (first duet) and 31 (second duet), as well as the pairs 11 (first duet) and 37 (second duet) both lead to the above-mentioned key number 48. The same number results from the addition of 11, 31 (third duet), and 6 (fourth duet).
It is clear that Bach wove the numerical symbolism into the duets to illustrate the content of these works. The numerology leaves no doubt as to the subject of these works: the music of the duets revolves around the theme of the Passion.
The idea that the four duets in the Clavierübung III symbolize the Cross was first suggested by Gerhard Friedemann.81 His work contained a number of highly original ideas about numerical significance within these pieces, but also many valuable observations concerning the biblical symbolism present in the other sections of the Clavierübung III.
Unfortunately it would be beyond the scope of this article to discuss further in depth the many other interesting details that are to be found in the four duets. So I would like to confine myself to bringing just a few salient points to the attention of the reader. The total number of bars in all four pieces is 369, which is in itself an indication of the association of these works with the Passion.82 The number 16 (4×4), which forms the basis of the A minor duet, is a numerical representation of the Cross. 112 (the sum of the numbers of bars in the E minor and G major duets) is the equivalent of CHRISTUS (3 + 8 + 17 + 9 + 18 + 19 + 20 + 18), and 149 (the number of bars in the F major duet) represents RESURREXIT (17 + 5 + 18 + 20 + 17 + 17 + 5 + 22 + 9 + 19).83
It is difficult to deny the validity of Gerhard Friedmann’s conclusions, based as they are on the analysis of the numerical structure of the duets. But this raises a further question: Is there a connection between, on the one hand, the hidden numerological references to the Cross in the four duets of the Clavierübung III and on the other hand the obvious descriptive character of the music?
Yes, one can indeed find such a connection! It is well known that in earlier times the cross was used as a symbolic representation of the four elements. But with the coming of Christendom, it became an object of adoration and so lost the association with the pagan worship of fire, air, water, and earth.
So now we wish to put ourselves in the shoes of the composer and try to answer the following question: How is it possible to portray musically a Cross, the product of human hands, soaked with the divine Blood of the Savior and transformed by the divine Will into an object of salvation? The answer is obvious. The best way to accomplish this is that chosen by Bach in the four duets of the Clavierübung III.

Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major
The Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major forms an overreaching arch that encloses the whole cycle. It is a work on a truly symphonic scale and is in this respect without parallel in the world’s organ literature. Its epic stature is complemented by the vividness and the passion of the musical language.
In both the prelude and the fugue the composer introduces three different musical spheres nevertheless bound together by such characteristics as common key and thematic material. The work is most commonly thought of as being an expression of the Holy Trinity. But no one to date has been able to produce a truly convincing proof for this view. As a result a number of unresolved controversies exist: which part of the fugue, the second or the third part, represents the Holy Spirit, and which Jesus Christ?
The very existence of these controversies should suggest to us that the work has not yet been sufficiently examined. To say nothing of the “echoes” episodes of the prelude, which most experts have associated with the Son of Man. How should we understand this embellished fluttering “in the spirit of the Rococo” to be a picture of the Savior?
In my opinion one should not view this music as one would a picture on a wall.
It is indeed Bach’s purpose to sing the praises of the Triune God, but it is not his intention to paint a musical picture of God. Three parts that are characterized through changes in the musical texture—in both the prelude and the fugue—are always the same God, the One, the Indivisible, the Holy and Consubstantial Trinity.
With what means does the composer accomplish this task? Let us first examine the prelude.

This article will be continued.

 

McGill Summer Organ Academy

July 5–14, 2005, Montréal, Canada

Lynn Cavanagh

Lynn Cavanagh holds a M.M. in Church Music from Westminster Choir College and a Ph.D. in Music Theory from the University of British Columbia. She is an assistant professor in the Department of Music, University of Regina, where she teaches music theory. Her research on the career and musical compositions of Jeanne Demessieux was funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, and her article, “The Rise and Fall of a Famous Collaboration: Marcel Dupré and Jeanne Demessieux,” was published in the July 2005 issue of The Diapason.

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Ear-opening . . . challenging . . . and inspiring: these are just a few words to describe the ten courses and eight recitals that comprised last summer’s organ academy in Montréal, presented under the auspices of McGill University. The 2005 event, the fifth to be held biennially since the Academy’s inauguration in 1997, attracted eighty-two regular students and a number of day auditors over the roughly two-week period. As a point of clarification, connoisseurs of pre-romantic-era keyboard music should look beyond the word organ in the Academy’s name: courses and recitals took advantage of not only McGill’s French Classical-style organ and seven of the more centrally located of Montréal’s many excellent organs located in churches, but also the university’s harpsichords, and its 2005 fortepiano by the Belgian builder Chris Maen.

Artistic director John Grew had once again assembled almost a dozen performer-scholars, all at the forefront of their fields, to teach and give recitals. The prominent organist, composer and musicologist Guy Bovet (Musikhochschule of Basel, Switzerland) joined the Academy’s faculty for the first time to teach the course on early Spanish music. McGill musicologist and fortepianist Tom Beghin, representing a new generation of interpreters of classical and early classical era keyboard music, attracted a group of both experienced and aspiring students of the early piano. Courses in improvisation this year were led by two more faculty members new to the McGill Summer Academy: William Porter (Eastman School of Music and McGill University) and Thierry Escaich (Conservatoire national supérieur de Paris). Two other new (or largely new) classes had been planned—in 19th- and 20th-century English organ music, and in 20th-century Canadian and American organ music—but these, unfortunately, were cancelled due to insufficient advance registration.

Many faculty members from past years returned in 2005. The long-celebrated Marie-Claire Alain (Conservatoire National de Région in Paris) presented an overview of the various genres of J. S. Bach’s organ music. John Grew offered his course on French Classical organ music. James David Christie (College of the Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and Oberlin College Conservatory) was back to teach the course on 17th-century North German music, and Oliver Latry (Conservatoire national supérieur de Paris) again attracted a large following for a course on French organ music from the first few decades of the twentieth century. As in 2003, Hank Knox (McGill University) and Patrick Wedd (Christ Church Anglican Cathedral, Montréal) taught two of the skills that tend to be neglected in one-on-one university organ instruction: continuo playing and service playing, respectively.

Students included both active participants (who were afforded practice time on the instruments) and auditors. Each course convened in a two-hour session, four times a week, in one of three time-slots. A typical active participant, during either or both of the two weeks, came prepared to perform in one course, leaving time to audit a course in another slot and to schedule practice time in the third slot. (A pure auditor could take three classes, one in each of the three slots, if prepared to do all the necessary bus and subway travel from point to point.) As might be expected, courses incorporated informal lectures, a masterclass approach aimed at illustrating interpretive and technical points for all of the participants and auditors, and opportunity for questions and answers.
The eight evening recitals were performed by the Academy’s faculty members to large and enthusiastic crowds. The standard was so uniformly high that it would be impossible to pinpoint one or the other recitalist as having been an audience favorite. Academy students were afforded plenty of opportunity for spontaneous discussion with faculty over food and drink, the option of a field trip to hear selected organs of interest just outside Montréal, and an invitation to attend an ecumenical worship service at Christ Church Anglican Cathedral on Sunday morning.
This writer heard all of the recitals and audited some of the courses, attending all eight of Grew’s classes, seven taught by Latry, three by Wedd, two by Alain, and one by Bovet. Some common themes espoused by these instructors included:


• Thinking beyond the published score—immersion in period treatises, manuscripts, early editions, composer biographies and recommended literature on performance practice.

• Educating one’s auditory imagination in the sound-world of the composer or style period, as the means for judging—moment-to-moment touch, when to articulate and when to simply “think” phrase endings, the length of silence between sections, and ultimately, how to “play the room.”

• Advantages afforded by familiarity with works for other mediums that are contemporary with the keyboard repertoire at hand, and of having experience in performing period music in collaboration with singers and other instrumentalists.

• Experience in discerning in what repertoires, and at what moments, to pursue a literal application of directions in the score and when and how to add and subtract from these for the sake of a stylistically satisfying interpretation.

• The musician as someone broadly knowledgeable in a variety of the arts.

Week 1 of John Grew’s course was organized as a survey of the fundamental principles of playing organ music of the French Classical school. Participants began by performing prescribed movements from the organ suites of Louis-Nicolas Clérambault and continued with their choices of movements by François Couperin. Week 2 progressed back in time through de Grigny, D’Anglebert and Boyvin. Aiming that participants both capture the sound in their ears and understand the underlying principles, Professor Grew emphasized elegant articulation, natural-sounding ornamentation, expressive phrasing, and notes inégales that make the music “swing.” A true master pedagogue—recipient of his Faculty of Music’s Performance Teaching Award in 2005—Grew patiently reinforced each concept with repetition and a variety of teaching methods. In his lectures he simplified our understandings of fingering practice and notes inégales, but without over-simplifying. He handed out copies of tables of ornaments and lists of terms for registration and genres. Through example and counterexample he guided and corrected players’ ears, hands and feet. He allowed time for us to troop down to hear alternative registrations from the hall as well as from the organ gallery. Amidst listing corrections to editorial blunders in the available modern editions, Grew alerted us to the planned release in 2006 of a new scholarly edition of the Livre d’orgue of Nicolas de Grigny (L’Oiseau Lyre, ed. Kenneth Gilbert).


Guy Bovet brought to his course the fruits of his own intensive research. During Week 1 of Siglo de Oro español (“Century of Spanish Gold”), participants performed selections from the tientos and variation sets of sixteenth- to seventeenth-century Spanish composers Antonio de Cabezón, Sebastián Aguilera de Herédia, Juan Cabanilles and Pablo Bruna, and the seventeenth-century Portuguese composer Pedro de Araújo. Professor Bovet advised on ornamentation, tasteful use of diminutions, registration for the divided and undivided keyboard, and metric proportions. In contrast to the gently balanced finger action cultivated for French Classical music, in the Spanish organ music class the pipes of the Guibault-Thérien organ at St-Léon-de-Westmount (built 1995) were activated by high, strong finger strokes. Week 2 of this course focused on the 1626 Facultad Orgánica by Francisco Correa de Arauxo, a treatise on organ playing and ornamentation that contains 69 pieces (mostly tientos) of varying difficulty. Bovet’s own edition is to be published by Ut Orpheus in Bologna in the summer of 2006. For this year’s class, he dictated corrections to the Unión Musical Española edition, spontaneously translated Correa’s explanatory preface to each piece that was played by students, and followed the facsimile of the original tablature during their performances.

Guy Bovet’s recital, on the famous 1960 von Beckerath organ of St. Joseph’s Oratory, juxtaposed the unusual with the unexpected. We heard a Batalha from around 1700 and two Tientos by Correa, followed by the recitalist’s own transcription of a Concerto in A minor by Vivaldi. Next came an Elevation and a Polonaise by Antonio Diana (an Italian composer, fl. 1860s, whose works Lefébure-Wély admired). The intermission preceded two more popularly styled nineteenth-century pieces—Prélude en sol mineur and a Benedictus—both by C. V. Alkan. Bovet’s admittedly light, but nonetheless historically fascinating, program concluded with three of his daring Tangos ecclésiastiques (2000).


Olivier Latry lent his brilliance and energy to the very first recital of the 2005 Academy, a program of twentieth-century French organ music performed on the electropneumatic-action organ of Église du Très-Saint-Nom-de-Jésus (Casavant 1914, 1999). Part I of the recital opened gently with Dupré’s Cortège et litanie and a quiet work by Litaize (Lied), followed by music of Langlais (Thème et variations), Jehan Alain (Aria) and Messiaen (Les Anges and Dieu parmi nous). Part II maintained a fiery mood throughout with an impressive, though perhaps over-long, piece by Messiaen student Jean-Pierre Leguay entitled Péan IV (Création), Deux poèmes (Eaux natales and Vers l’espérance) by Thierry Escaich, and, finally, a stunning improvisation that fully exploited the 91-stop organ.

Latry’s class, entitled “Dupré and His Students,” began at Église St-Jean-Baptiste but, due to sudden malfunction of this instrument, soon moved to Très-Saint-Nom. Week 1 was fashioned around selected works by Marcel Dupré (B-major and G-minor Preludes and Fugues from Op. 7; Variations on a Noël), and works that students had elected to play by Gaston Litaize (Lied and Scherzo from Douze Pièces), Jean Langlais (Te Deum) and Jehan Alain (Aria, Variations sur un Thème de Clément Jannequin, 2e Fantaisie, Deux Danses à Agni Yavishta, Litanies). Week 2 surveyed the organ works of Olivier Messiaen written through 1935.

The course title, “Dupré and His Students,” encapsulated a curious contradiction, evident on two counts. To begin, Marcel Dupré would have been the first to declare that he had no students, certainly not among the generation of organists who, like Langlais, Messiaen, Litaize, and Alain, earned their prizes in organ and improvisation at the Paris Conservatory in the 1930s. As Latry pointed out in his opening remarks, despite the many famous names on Dupré’s class rosters during the second quarter of the twentieth century, none of those whose compositions and performances are best remembered by posterity ever credited their musical formation or consummation to him. Reflecting an apparent personal ambivalence toward Dupré’s role in twentieth-century French organ music, Latry emphasized that other French organ teachers of the time, particularly his own master, Gaston Litaize, were highly critical of Dupré’s interpretations of the organ literature, his pedagogy, and the retrospective state of organ requirements and exams that remained in place at the Paris Conservatory during his tenure.

Second, the phrase “Dupré and His Students” implies a legacy handed down from teacher to students, or, at the very least, a significant compositional link. Nevertheless, Latry’s only mention of a connection between the organ works of the other composers considered in the course and those of Dupré was confined to a small matter sometimes neglected by class participants in their performances: tying of the note commune between voices (whether indicated or implied in the scores of these composers), which Dupré made a rule for all style periods in his pedagogy. No mention was made of the truly significant way in which he had influenced the younger composers—through his pioneering demonstration of musically imaginative virtuoso writing for the organ. It is worth mentioning that Dupré’s first three Preludes and Fugues for organ (composed c. 1911 and published in 1920 as his Opus 7) were so innovative in the second decade of the twentieth century as to be deemed unplayable, except by the composer for whose hands and feet they were written.1 During the 1920s, though, these works passed into the repertoire of Dupré’s younger colleagues, thereby “raising the bar” of French organ technique generally.2 From among the pieces played by class participants, Litaize’s Scherzo (written between 1930 and 1937), Langlais’s Te Deum (1933/34), and Litanies by Alain (1937) show the influence of early Dupré in their combination of bravura with musical depth. Similarly, had it not been for the sonorities of Dupré’s organ compositions prior to 1929, Messiaen could not have left us such works as his Diptyque (composed in 1929), Dieu parmi nous (1935), and Transports de joie (1936).3 For that matter, neither Jeanne Demessieux (1921–68) nor Pierre Cochereau (1924–84) would have improvised with such dexterity already in the 1940s had it not been for Dupré’s example. It was, therefore, mildly ironic that, while guiding a participant in an interpretation of Dupré’s 1922 Variations on a Noël, Latry advised, “Variation 5 should sound like a Cochereau improvisation” and commented that the last chord of Variation 7 is a “Cochereauesque touch.”

In contrast to the oblique manner in which he approached the works of Dupré, Latry was entirely at one with the remainder of the course repertoire. Latry originally learned the Litaize pieces under the composer, and has closely studied the backgrounds to Alain’s organ works. He recalled for us advice he had received directly from Messiaen, and shared interpretive ideas based upon his close study of Messiaen’s own, multiple performing copies of all his organ compositions. A fascinating teacher of interpretation, Latry lent his tremendous musical imagination to devising vivid metaphors for difficult-to-interpret passages that transformed good performances into eloquent ones.


Patrick Wedd brought historical acumen and intensive experience as an accompanist, composer, conductor and church musician to the course on service playing, taught using the four-manual, 50-stop Casavant organ at Ascension of Our Lord Church. Students learned how to adapt their instrument and diversify their technique to the requirements of congregational hymns and psalms on the one hand, and the repertoire for choir and organ—both small and large-scale works—on the other. Countering dogma and unreflective habit, Wedd demonstrated that there is a time and place in organ accompaniment for appropriate and varied degrees of detached playing that project the meter (for instance, in an organ transcription of the viol accompaniment for Gibbons’s “This is the record of John”), and a time and a place to “glue your fingers to the keyboard” (as in “My Eyes for Beauty Pine” by Howells). Students who played anthem accompaniments from English repertoire of the first half of the twentieth century were coached on executing crescendos and decrescendos by means of the swell pedal, and gradually adding or subtracting stops in imperceptible fashion.


Participants in the Bach course performed on the two-manual, 33-stop Karl Wilhelm organ at Saint Matthias Church. In lecture and masterclass modes, Marie-Claire Alain’s approach was a synthesis of ideas gained during what must be almost 70 years of work on Bach’s music. She dwelt on both the music’s contents (“You have to have written fugues yourself in order to play Bach’s fugues”) and contexts (“Play Leipzig organs in order to discover the variety in plenum registrations that work for Bach’s music”). At the close of the course, Alain commended her thorough-going process of study to the class by explaining why she has recorded the complete organ works of Bach so many times: she did so at more than one stage of the early-music movement, as a result of more opportunities to play historic organs and study Lutheran theology, and because every time she practices she “improves.”

During week 1 Marie-Claire Alain played an all-Bach program on the 78-stop organ of St. Joseph’s Oratory to an almost capacity audience. The spiritual and biographical facets of her study of Bach’s music were reflected in the construction of her program. Between large-scale works that acted like sonic pillars, Alain grouped together similar, small pieces in Bach-like, compendium fashion—for example, three successive settings of Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr, BWV 662, 663 and 664. A set of five extracts from The Art of Fugue culminated in the abrupt trailing off of an unfinished Fuga à 3 soggetti (Contrapunctus 19), which Alain followed by a pause and then the chorale setting traditionally associated with Bach’s deathbed, Vor deinen Thron tret’ ich, BWV 668.


James David Christie taught and performed on the 38-stop von Beckerath organ of Église de l’Immaculée-Conception. His recital began with works by Buxtehude, Johann Christoph Bach and J. S. Bach. Following the intermission, Christie featured Miracles for Flute and Organ (1978) by Daniel Pinkham (b. 1923), assisted by flutist Denis Bluteau and narrator Louis Cyr. Pinkham, the composer of a significant body of music for organ solo and for organ with other instruments, was present to acknowledge the audience’s warm applause for these five inspirational pieces. No. 2, “The Miracle on the Lake,” which alludes to St. Luke’s telling of the story in which Jesus is called upon to quell a frightening windstorm on the Sea of Galilee, demonstrated that “storm music” for organ need not be gratuitous and can even be appropriate in a spiritual context.


A 17th- to 18th-century British-inspired organ (by Hellmuth Wolff, including some stops preserved from previous organs by Warren and Casavant and other stops after Dom Bédos) at Saint John the Evangelist Church was the scene of William Porter’s intermediate-level class in improvisational forms based on a cantus firmus. In recital on the same organ, Porter played works of Buxtehude, Johann Ludwig Krebs, Ermend Bonnal (La Vallée de Béhorléguy, au matin from Paysages Euskariens) and Bach. He improvised a flawless set of variations on a pair of submitted hymn tunes and, after the Bonnal, an extended fantasy on a given chromatic theme. As encore, he executed an apparently spontaneous chorale prelude in the style of Krebs, the composer with whose works he had begun the recital.


In contrast to the large, or very large, ecclesiastical settings of six of the organ recitals, McGill University’s Redpath Hall was the venue for two evenings of two half-recitals each. These comprised a first half played on an intimate-sounding keyboard instrument and second half played on Redpath Hall’s 1981 Hellmuth Wolff organ. The first such evening opened with harpsichord works by Sweelinck and Frescobaldi performed by Hank Knox. Knox’s performances were vibrant with energy; the closing “Partite cento sopra il Passachagli” from Frescobaldi’s Il primo libro de Toccate was downright sensual. John Grew then performed some rarely played but excellent organ music by Louis Couperin and Henri Dumont, and finished the evening with two favorite movements from François Couperin’s Messe pour les Paroisses. The first half of a parallel recital in Week 2 featured two sonatas by Haydn, Hob. XVI:34 and 39, and Mozart’s Adagio in B minor, K 540, all superbly played by Tom Beghin on a Chris Maen fortepiano modeled after an instrument of Anton Walter (fl. in Vienna 1780–1825). Just as expertly, but in an utter contrast of musical sensibilities, Patrick Wedd then played a half-recital consisting of Lionel Rogg’s Livre d’orgue, Ardennes by Montréal composer Bruce Mather (written for the Redpath Hall instrument) and, true to his Anglophile background, a Prelude and Fugue (Alkmaar) by Arthur Wills.


Thierry Escaich loomed large at the 2005 McGill Academy in his roles as instructor of improvisation in large-scale forms, performer, and composer. His performing career, with its emphasis on the Romantic, symphonic and contemporary repertoires, and his compositions for numerous media have won for him several prizes in France and beyond. Escaich’s thrilling, closing recital at Église du Très-Saint-Nom-de-Jesus wove together all three strands of expertise. From the symphonic repertoire we heard Le Monde dans l’attente du Sauveur by Dupré, Alleluias sereins from L’Ascension by Messiaen, and Duruflé’s Toccata, Op. 5. The improvisation in Part I of the recital, “prélude and fugue” en style romantique, made one wonder if Schumann, Saint-Saëns or Franck ever aspired to extemporize in so vast a symphonic vein. Surpassing even this, Escaich’s Improvisation sur 2 thèmes donnés at the end of Part II was both monumental and technically mind-boggling: at the climax, glissando-like, two-handed scales, ascending and descending several times through the entire length of a keyboard, required his torso to tilt rapidly from side to side. From the recitalist’s composed works, we were treated to a paraphrase on one of the Ave Maris Stella chants (entitled Récit) and three Esquisses pour orgue. Both idiomatic to the organ and sonorously inventive, these pieces attested to the fact that the organ is an eminently viable compositional medium at the turn of the twenty-first century.


The Saturday excursion focused on organ-building, past and present. Our first two stops were to hear small historic organs: one from 1898 by Eusèbe Brodeur in the town of Les Cèdres, the other from 1871 by Louis Mitchell in Vaudreuil. The last stop was at the shop of Juget-Sinclair in the town of Lachine, where we were saw the tools of the craft and examined an organ being built for Wellesley, Massachusetts.
Our longest visit that Saturday was to Lachine’s Église Saint-Anges-Gardiens Church, where Casavant Frères was renovating and rebuilding one of their instruments from 1920. Church, community and government supporters of the renovation project celebrated our presence among them with welcoming speeches, a mini-recital and a superb lunch. Following lunch, Jacquelin Rochette of Casavant Frères delivered a presentation on the Saint-Anges-Gardiens project and showed slides of a new organ in progress for the Brick Presbyterian Church in New York.

A set of controversial points for discussion raised by Guy Bovet, during an impromptu response to Mr. Rochette’s presentation in Lachine, drew attention to something that was missing from the 2005 event as a whole: panel discussion. Constrained as he was by time, Rochette was able to reply to just one of Bovet’s points. Students concentrated intensely during this exchange. Their scattered discussions as they reboarded the bus suggested that opportunities to hear experts with different viewpoints talking about an issue amenable to panel discussion, with time for students’ questions, would be welcome another year. Clearly, though, such an activity would be a challenge to moderate.
In conclusion, participating Montréal and area churches, with their organists, are owed a debt of thanks. Above all, executive director Debbie Giesbrecht (borrowed from the Calgary Organ Festival) and artistic director John Grew are to be highly commended for organizing such an artistically satisfying event.

J. L. Krebs: Borrower Extraordinaire

Jonathan B. Hall

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

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The free organ works of Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713–1780) are eminently enjoyable to learn, perform, and listen to. They are available to any well-trained organist willing to invest dutiful practice. They pose no particular conundrums of registration. They please almost any audience. In a nutshell, they’re good music. It seems unfair to point out that they simply aren’t as great as the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, who taught two generations of Krebses (Johann Ludwig and his father, Johann Tobias). What organ music, after all, is as great as Bach’s? The composers certainly reflect a similar idiom—breathe the same air. The influence of teacher on student, and their shared culture, is abundantly clear.
Indeed, it often seems more than clear. Anyone who is well acquainted with Bach’s free organ works will find more than a shared Zeitgeist with his student. One can often identify a clear model for a given Krebs work. It is interesting, even amusing, to walk through the two volumes published by Peters and note which Bach works leap to mind on page after page.
However, a closer look reveals that Krebs’s musical borrowing is far subtler than it first seems. While certain ideas are clearly taken from Bach, others are just as conspicuously left out. Further, in a given piece, there is often more than one Bach model in evidence. Understanding this is the key to a really fruitful engagement of Krebs, not as a second-rate Bach or copycat, but as an original artist, fully a product (almost the only product) of the “Bach School.” Though he was pervasively influenced by his great teacher, this should not lead us to dismiss his work as altogether derivative. It is not. It just sounds that way . . . at first.

Editions
The best source for the free organ works is the two-volume Peters edition. The volumes appeared widely spaced in time: the first, edited by Walter Zöllner, dates back to 1938; the second, by Karl Tittel, to 1974. Both editors are a bit nervous about the family resemblance between Krebs’s works and Bach’s. Zöllner writes: “In the present selection, we have not included works which are too obviously founded on a Bach model . . . ”1 Tittel writes:
The five preludes and fugues published by Zöllner do not display any overstressed evidence of Krebs attempting to emulate Bach’s style of writing. In this respect it is perhaps of interest to cite Spitta who remarks that, although Krebs was fond of imitating the thematic material and adopting in full the form of Bach’s works, he nevertheless displays a certain originality.2

The impression is given—confirmed upon examination of the pieces—that Zöllner got the “most unique” [sic] pieces, and Tittel must labor to justify the works that have fallen to him. Both editors sense an uncomfortable proximity; but it was not the job of either to analyze it.

Praeludium und Doppelfuge
Regardless, there are strong echoes of Bach in both volumes; perhaps more so in Volume II, but perhaps more interestingly in Volume I. Consider the Praeludium und Doppelfuge in F minor, Volume I, page 16 ff. The parallels between the prelude and the Prelude in B Minor, BWV 544, are immediately apparent. There is a strikingly similar employment of 32nd notes; there is almost-identical passagework in the pedals; there is the same thinning-out of texture. Above all, there is the same high tragic tone. What spares the piece the stigma of plagiarism is, in part, the very different harmonic profile of the opening: where Bach offers dialogue, Krebs restates his theme repeatedly, in a lower register each time. Texturally, as well as rhetorically, there is not a great deal of difference.
Meanwhile, the fugue bears no resemblance at all to the B-minor fugue; that emulative honor goes to the double fugue in D minor in the same volume, page 58 ff. Here, the theme is constructed of conjunct eighth-note motion, like the fugue of 544. This fugue, however, contains a remarkable string of quotations in its midst. Starting in measure 192, there is an unmistakable parallel to measures 51–53, inter alia, of the “Wedge” prelude, BWV 548, followed immediately by a clear reference to the ending measures of the C-minor Passacaglia, just before the thema fugatum (measures 194–196 in Krebs, 165–168 in BWV 582). Just as this latter quotation concludes, the second theme of the double fugue is announced: the same material as Bach, at the same structural point.
So much quotation, in such a little space, from such disparate works! It is fair to infer that Krebs was so full of Johann Sebastian Bach that there wasn’t always room for himself: so far from “the only Krebs in the Bach,” sometimes only Bach was in the Krebs.
I have noticed a general tendency for Krebs not to use the same model for both halves of a prelude-fugue pair. Whether this comments on his sense of Bach’s intended pairings or lack thereof, is the matter of another study. In general, though, he tends not to imitate the pairs as we have received them. I note a few possible exceptions to this. First, the Prelude and Fugue in E Major, in Volume I, starting on page 1, is perhaps reminiscent of the F-major toccata BWV 540, albeit with antiphonal effects reminiscent of the “Dorian” toccata BWV 538. The fugue, appropriately enough for either model, is cast in a vocal, stile antico fashion, at least up to a point. Also, in Volume II, the D-major (page 1 ff.) seems exuberantly modeled on the G-major, BWV 541, start to finish. (This prelude and fugue has long been the author’s personal favorite.)

Prelude and Fugue in C Minor
In Volume II, some of Krebs’s borrowings are obvious. Consider his Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, overtly modeled on Bach’s C-minor Prelude and Fugue (also in D minor), BWV 549/549a. The similarity is clear at the outset, with a pedal exordium that is almost directly copied (Examples 1 and 2). Krebs’s fugue subject, while shorter than Bach’s, uses a similar antecedent-consequent, or “question and answer” format (Examples 3 and 4). The surprise is that the fugue turns out to be a double fugue, much closer in form and style to the “Legrenzi,” BWV 574, among others. (This fugue, as well, begins with a repetitive subject.) As we have seen before, the prelude-fugue pair does not look to the same model.
Meanwhile, gone altogether from Krebs are the North German stylus fantasticus sections that feature prominently in all three of his models, the prelude and both fugues. What Krebs consistently omits to borrow is just as intriguing as what he uses—here, the archaic features of the early Bach canon. There are, for example, no showy showers of passagework at the final cadences. The pieces, rather, show a marked preference for straightforward, even unsentimental conclusions.
So, in Krebs’s C-minor prelude and fugue, we have a prelude that clearly references a Bach prelude, and a fugue that betrays an intertextual web of references. (Intertextual: a term from literary criticism, applied to music by such theorists as Robert Hatten. He distinguishes one kind of intertextuality, called strategic, where specific quotations or references are marshaled; from another called stylistic, a pervasive and general spirit of reference.3)

Prelude and Fugue in A Minor
Another prelude-fugue pair of Krebs, in A minor (volume II, page 23), shows the same approach to borrowing. The prelude is easily mapped: it is solidly based on the Toccata in F, BWV 540. The time signature is the same, as is the opening passagework over a tonic pedal. After some time spent with canonic manual figurations, there is—guess what?—a pedal solo! There are many harmonic divergences between the two, though sequences involving third-inversion secondary-dominant harmonies are highly evocative of the model. The piece is well crafted and exciting, and would doubtless have a secure place in the canon, if only we could forget about Bach!
So much for the prelude. The fugue is another matter altogether. Here Krebs’s borrowing is again very different, much subtler, and quite interesting. We have nothing even remotely resembling the fugue that follows the Bach toccata. The A-minor fugue is not a double fugue, nor does it contrast alla breve and stile nuovo. If anything, its theme bears a slight resemblance to BWV 546 (Example 5)—but it lacks the melodic coherence and harmonic promise of its model (Example 6).
This is not a great, or even particularly good, subject. The coiled watchspring of the Bach theme has been unwound, its potential energy lost. The main charm of Krebs’s theme consists in its more-than-fair share of surprises, most of them intervallic. In eight measures, we have an augmented second, a diminished fourth, two diminished fifths, and two octave leaps! But rather than conjure magic from simple means, Krebs offers us a few striking thematic peculiarities up front, and makes comparatively little of them. Similarly, his rhythmic profile can’t (or won’t) settle between stile antico and a kind of emergent classicism.
This theme admits of a real answer in the dominant, yet for some reason Krebs gives it a tonal answer in the subdominant. This choice—which strikes one as capricious—is no borrowed Bachian gambit. If anything, it is a minor milestone of changing musical style. Its very capriciousness, like that of the theme, is mannered, an affected neurosis, the handling of a musical form no longer instinctively understood. Finally, the keyboard idiom is noticeably awkward throughout—a marked contrast to the fluency of the toccata. (One can almost hear Krebs exclaim, “Fugues were supposed to be weird!”)
Thus far, insofar as borrowing is concerned, we have little to go on, except an echo of a quotation and a familiar stylistic context: both strategic and stylistic intertextuality. But at measure 91, we run abruptly into another Bach model—once again, the “Wedge” fugue (Examples 7 and 8). The “Wedge” is of course the subject of many a study; one of its most-celebrated attributes is its complex architecture. Astoundingly, the entire exposition is repeated, sonata-like, giving the whole a vast ABA form. In the B section, the Vivaldian model prevails, with alternations between concertino passagework and the ripieno return of the subject. Further reiteration of this information is needless.
While Krebs’s passagework, running from m. 91 to 116, certainly looks and feels “Wedge-like,” the resemblance turns out, again, to be only skin-deep. For one thing, the fugue’s overall architecture is completely different from that of the “Wedge.” There is no return to the exposition; the form is not ABA, but ABC. Krebs works with his theme for a while, takes a break, and then carries on again, much as if to say, “Now, where was I?” But in the B section itself, there is neither any symmetry nor any returns of the theme. Scalar passages in the circle of fifths yield to ornamental figurations over an ostinato pedal. The B section then itself takes an AB form. Meanwhile, the outer wings of the work—sections A and C—are through-composed, Krebs simply “following his bliss.”
Ironically, Krebs has another fugue, formerly attributed to Bach as BWV Anh. 181, in A minor, which is unmistakably indebted to the “Wedge” for its theme (Example 9). But to return to the first A-minor fugue: to be sure, Krebs honors what by his day was a set rule of fugue writing, when he enters his theme in four voices and follows with an episode. The basic model of theme–episode–theme informs the strictly fugal sections of the work, with a soupçon of virtuosity in the middle. (BWV Anh. 181, by contrast, is an orthodox Spielfuge, with neither interludes nor ritornelli.)

Differences in contrapuntal treatment
Another feature lacking here—as in most of Krebs’s organ works—is any of the contrapuntal pyrotechnics expected in Bach. There are no sudden and surprising inversions, augmentations, or retrogrades. There is no stretto. There are none of the superlative eruptions of chromaticism that Bach dishes out so inimitably in the final bars of so many of his best pieces.4 (When, on very rare occasion, Krebs sets a theme in inversion, he announces it all over again, while calling attention to the technique with a superscription.5) Whether Krebs lacks the inclination for harmonic and contrapuntal pyrotechnics, or the chops, is an interesting question.
We do know that, by the time the third fugal voice has entered in measure 17, the piece has yielded up its last surprise, unless the B section is surprising. We cannot evade the implicit judgment of Art, which teaches us that it is nobler to bring much out of little than the reverse. It has to be said candidly, if with regret, that this fugue is at least to some extent an exercise in parvum in multo.
I have not, by any means, fully explored the intertextual ground of Krebs’s free organ works. Further examples could have been cited; many another paper could be written. The question should also be asked: how are these pieces different? Critics speak of an emerging classical style in Krebs, a new architecture no longer sure what to do with Baroque building materials. There is some truth to this. There are passages where Krebs almost seems to be marking contrapuntal time, far more interested in harmony or emotional content. For this author, much of the previously discussed fugue in A minor (see, in particular, measures 156 ff.) fits this description. Little is accomplished of contrapuntal moment; the right-hand part feels almost crude. At times, one almost wishes for a damper pedal! Yet a certain mass of sound is achieved, perhaps pointing towards another esthetic altogether.
But therein also lies a precious insight. A sympathetic student of Krebs should not hold the composer up to comparison with Bach; would you like that standard applied to you? Rather, one should try to see past the borrowings—the persistent sense of pastiche—and try to hear what Krebs is trying to say. If this can be done—if one can hear Krebs despite the echoes—the organist will sense a kindred spirit, and can, I believe, really start to enjoy this repertoire.
Johann Ludwig Krebs outlived Bach by a good 30 years, and Bach was widely considered conservative, even dated, in his day. In his awkwardness with fugal form—in his frequent overreaching and lack of formal plan—was Krebs looking forward, even as he thought he was looking back?
Also, in encountering the organ works of Krebs one has an opportunity to hear something much closer to the mainstream. What was it really like to go to church in Germany in the long afterglow of Bach, and hear one of the best practitioners at work, playing with Kraft and Feuer? With genius comes a certain isolation; Krebs may be more representative of the norm than the transcendental Thomaskantor could ever be.
There is in Krebs’s music a joy, an exuberance, an earnest good nature, that should be judged on its own merits. The shadow of a genius makes a brilliant man almost disappointing. It takes empathy to accept the clear Bach references in Krebs, and then hear past them to a distinctive and strangely fresh voice.

 

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