Toe or Heel?

Ewald Kooiman

Dr. Ewald Kooiman is Professor Emeritus “Ars Organi” at the Free University Amsterdam, the Netherlands. An international concert and recording artist, he twice recorded the complete organ works of Bach on historic organs.

Finger substitution

It is generally assumed that silent finger substitution was
used extensively in nineteenth-century organ playing and increasingly so in the course of that century. I don’t want to bother the reader with countless citations to support this statement--just one from a recent article by Hermann J. Busch:

It is widely acknowledged that a perfect legato, attained by
an intensive use of silent finger substitution for example, became the basis of organ playing in the nineteenth century . . .1

In his Organ Technique,2
published in 2002, Jacques van Oortmerssen takes a remarkably different
standpoint in this regard, one that goes totally against the prevailing
opinion. According to van Oortmerssen, the technique of silent finger
substitution was used sparingly in the nineteenth century; if it was used at
all, then only in a few special cases.

Generally speaking, I think that it is only to be applauded
if somebody challenges generally accepted opinions. It is to be expected,
however, that whoever does this has done his homework; in other words, he or she offers valid arguments in order to convince the reader.

First off, here is what van Oortmerssen tells us about
manual technique in the nineteenth century:

Silent finger substitution was only allowed on long notes
and over short stretches (Ex. 8); only in chorale-playing was the unlimited use of this technique found.3 

August Reinhard: Studien für Harmonium

If we ask ourselves what the certainty of the author is
based on, we end up with music example 8 from the above citation. Oddly enough, that example does not refer to an organ method or to an organ work, but to the Studien für Harmonium (Studies for Harmonium), opus 74, by August Reinhard. Van Oortmerssen refers remarkably often to this work for harmonium (and indeed to harmonium methods in general) without even trying to prove that we are dealing with an important source of information for playing nineteenth-century organ music here. Nor does he mention or cite a single organ method that might support his statements. His main witness, really
his only witness, is the aforementioned harmonium method of August Reinhard.

Even if I were willing to follow the author’s misplaced line of thought that August Reinhard’s harmonium works can give
us essential information about the interpretation of nineteenth-century organ music, I would still believe that the rules van Oortmerssen thinks to find in Reinhard don’t do Reinhard’s intentions justice. To support this
statement, first of all a citation from the preface to Reinhard’s Studien
style='font-style:normal'>:

. . . [W]hether one attains the most perfect legato by
changing fingers on one key or by skillfully sliding with the same finger from
one key to another is irrelevant as long as one indeed attains it.4

Van Oortmerssen gives the same citation on page 40 of his
book and draws quite a remarkable conclusion from it:

From his examples, it is apparent that this does not mean
that one can choose freely between both techniques. Substitution can take place
only at the moments when there is time to do so.

I fail to see how the above citation would limit finger
substitution to a few special cases, as van Oortmerssen wants us to believe. We
will see in the following that Reinhard’s examples do not at all limit
the use of substitution to long notes. Something similar is found in
Reinhard’s footnote to study no. 19 in the aforementioned book. Van
Oortmerssen cites the beginning of this study but leaves out the footnote. This
is understandable because it puts his rules in a very different perspective:

Series of thirds or sixths that are to be played legato
require a careful, but more or less individual, fingering. Skillful change of
fingers on one and the same key [and] careful sliding from one key to another
will be best to help surmount the difficulties.5

Again, I don’t find any restriction here on the use of
finger substitution. Quite the contrary, sliding and substitution are offered
as equivalent possibilities here.

In the Harmonium-Schule
(Harmonium School), opus 16, by the same author we read the following under the
heading “Der Fingersatz” (Fingering):

Since the harmonium requires mostly perfect legato playing
and since this requires careful fingering, special attention needs to be paid
to the latter. In order to move without any disturbing interruption from one
tone or chord to another, the finger must often be exchanged for another one
while it keeps the key down.6

It seems to me that Reinhard states very clearly here that
finger substitution is a central means for legato playing. Moreover, this is
the only special technique he mentions under the heading “Der
Fingersatz.” I do not find a trace here of the rules that van Oortmerssen
thinks he has found. Here is another clear example in this context from
Reinhard’s Harmonium-Schule (Example
1). It is hard to maintain that these are examples of substitution on long
notes. The technical exercises for finger substitution in the same method are
not limited to long note values either (Example 2).

Even if we were to believe (as van Oortmerssen does) that
the harmonium works of August Reinhard offer central information for fingering
in nineteenth-century organ music, we clearly must conclude that van
Oortmerssen’s rules 
don’t do Reinhard justice at all. Reinhard does not know of any
restriction regarding finger substitution. He does, however, emphasize on
various occasions the individuality of a chosen fingering and points out that
there are usually various possibilities.

Franck’s Bach Fingerings

Since van Oortmerssen discusses finger substitution
elsewhere in his book as well, we will now see whether we can find more
convincing arguments there. After citing Fétis, who praises Lemmens for
his frequent use of finger substitution, van Oortmerssen gives the following
comment:

In practice, finger substitution was rather infrequent.
Fingerings by Franck found in the works of Bach are basically the same as those
found in sources from German-speaking areas. In general, silent finger
substitutions, today so popular because of a lack of something better, were
rarely used. The reasons for restricting these substitutions are very
straightforward: they deform the hand, increase tension, and have a bad
influence on tone production, tone control, position playing, and orientation.7

Let us take a closer look at this reasoning: Franck
supposedly used the same fingerings as his German contemporaries; these fingerings made very little use of silent finger substitution. Van Oortmerssen refers to an article of Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais, published in 1988 in the French journal L’Orgue.8 In this article,
Marie-Louise Jaquet tells us how around 1968 Jean Langlais (her then-teacher and later husband) mentioned to her that around 1887 César Franck had provided fingerings for 31 organ works of Bach, notated in Braille, on request of the director of the Paris School for the Blind (Institution des Jeunes Aveugles; Franck maintained a very good relationship with the organ class at this institute).

At the time Jaquet wrote her article, the young American
organist and musicologist Karen Hastings (a student of Jean Langlais) was busy
deciphering all those fingerings. Jaquet’s article is based on two works
only: the Prelude and Fugue in D Major,
BWV 532, and the Concerto in A Minor, BWV 593. Jaquet notes that Franck makes
frequent use of substitution: “There are many substitutions among those
fingerings.”9

I do not find anything in this article that would support
van Oortmerssen’s statement in the very least, in fact quite the
contrary. But that is not the end of the story. Since 1990, we have extended
and detailed information about this matter from the very person who studied it
carefully: the aforementioned Karen Hastings. She prepared a transcription in
regular music notation of all the 31 organ works Franck provided with fingerings;
analyzed the fingerings and pedaling indications; and published them in The
American Organist.10 (Van Oortmerssen,
however, does not mention Karen Hastings and her fundamental study at all.) One
of the conclusions from this article makes short work of van
Oortmerssen’s claim: “Franck’s fingerings include a multitude
of substitutions.”11 That is completely at odds with what van Oortmerssen
writes: substitution was not exceptional at all; on the contrary, it was used
frequently by Franck in his Bach edition.

In the rest of this article I will show that this is
consistent with what happened in the German countries. Van Oortmerssen is
absolutely right in pointing out the similarities between Franck and the German
tradition; only the similarity is completely different from what he maintains.
His statement about Franck’s fingerings is now proven plain wrong;
moreover, in his Bach edition, Franck frequently prescribes fingerings that, in
the words of van Oortmerssen, “deform the hand, increase tension, and
have a bad influence on tone production.”

Here is a third citation from van Oortmerssen’s book:

Special techniques were often extensively covered in
historical organ method books. Considering the overwhelming quantity of
exercises, one could easily come to the conclusion that a certain technique had
to be applied frequently. Finger substitution is a very good example. The
number of exercises in organ methods could suggest that this technique could be
applied without restriction. Looking at the music itself, we realize that this
is not the case and that finger substitution was, especially in Germany,
chiefly used for chorale playing.12

What is van Oortmerssen saying here? If I understand him
correctly, it is this: many organ methods offer a multitude of exercises for
silent finger substitution; however, do not conclude that this means that this
technique could be used unrestrictedly: it was mainly used for hymn playing.

I find this a very remarkable argument. Why would a method
offer an “overwhelming quantity of exercises” for something that is
used only on a modest scale? And why would a method offer exercises for finger
substitution on short note values, something that did not occur in the practice
of hymn playing (after all, hymns were sung slowly)? And how does the author
know all this? Not on the basis of analysis of nineteenth-century organ
methods, it seems to me, but only because of his penetrating view:
“Looking at the music itself, we realize that this is not the
case.” I find this a very puzzling statement: by “looking at the
music itself” one can ascertain that all those exercises in the methods
were excess baggage, because this technique was only used on a modest scale
anyway.    

I invite the reader to take a careful look at the situation
together. I will first give some citations from nineteenth-century organ
methods and some examples from pieces with fingerings by the writers of the
respective methods. I will then give some more examples from organ works with
fingerings. We have to ask ourselves two questions in order to find out whether
van Oortmerssen’s claims are based on facts: (1) was the use of finger
substitution outside hymn playing exceptional; and (2) was finger substitution
only used on long note values.

Friedrich Schütze: Practische Orgelschule

The Practische Orgelschule normal'> (Practical Organ School) of Friedrich Wilhelm Schütze (1838) was
widely used during the nineteenth century. Many editions appeared of this book
and of its companion volume, the Handbuch zur praktischen Orgelschule
style='font-style:normal'> (Handbook to the Practical Organ School). The
influential author writes in the Handbuch zur praktischen Orgelschule
style='font-style:normal'>: 

Equally important as the passing under and crossing over of
the fingers is--for organ playing in particular--the so-called silent
finger substitution . . . The substitution must always happen as quickly as
possible; after the substitution, the disengaged fingers always have to move
immediately [to their position] over the new keys.13

This citation mentions silent finger substitution as a very
important technique for organ playing (certainly not for hymn playing
exclusively), and the author’s emphasis on quick substitution surely does
not point to any restriction to long note values; after all, on long notes the
player has lots of time for substitution.

August Ritter: Die Kunst des Orgelspiels

August Gottfried Ritter is another author who has been very
influential on the development of nineteenth-century organ playing. In the
earliest editions of his Die Kunst des Orgelspiels
style='font-style:normal'> (The Art of Organ Playing, part 1), he does mention
the use of finger substitution, but we also find fingerings that seem to come
straight from the eighteenth century. This example comes from the third edition
(Example 3).

Over the years we find in successive editions of
Ritter’s organ method an increasingly frequent use of finger
substitution, although he does not strive for the kind of consistency that we later
find with Dupré. That, by the way, is a remarkable quality of many
nineteenth-century fingerings: in addition to finger substitution one also
finds other kinds of fingerings, for example using the little finger or the
thumb various times in a row. That often makes for fingerings that beg the
question: why sometimes finger substitution and in other, similar moments, use
the same finger on successive notes. With all the searching for legato playing,
there was apparently a fairly wide range in the degree of legato that was
desired or attainable. The following two examples with fingerings of August
Ritter and Marcel Dupré, respectively, may serve to clarify the great
differences between nineteenth-century and twentieth-century approaches
(Examples 4a & 4b: Erschienen ist der herrliche Tag
style='font-style:normal'>, BWV 629).

The second part of Ritter’s Kunst des Orgelspiels
style='font-style:normal'>, sometimes called Praktischer Lehr-Cursus
im Orgelspiel, was thoroughly revised by
the Swiss organist Alfred Glaus and published as “Neue Ausgabe”
(New Edition) by Peters (c. 1915); I believe it is still available. Glaus
expands the use of finger substitution even more than Ritter had done in the
later editions; the following example shows that finger substitution is in no
way restricted to long note values (Example 5).

Johannes Worp: Praktische Orgelschool
style='font-style:normal'>

In 1877, the Dutch organist Johannes Worp published a
Praktische Orgelschool (Practical Organ
School). The following examples were taken from this method: they are all works
from the organ literature provided with fingerings by Worp; first, the
beginning of a piece by Kühmstedt (Example 6). On the basis of the
fingerings prescribed here it cannot possibly be concluded that silent finger
substitution was quite rare and limited to long note values. The following two
examples (printed anonymously in Worp’s book) require frequent finger
substitution on eight notes (Examples 7a and 7b).

The above examples from three organ methods may have caused
some doubt regarding van Oortmerssen’s statement; the following two music
examples can only increase this doubt. They are organ arrangements of
Bach’s Fugue in E major (BWV 878)
from The Well-tempered Clavier II.
The first example is from Jan Albertus van Eyken’s Fugen aus
dem Wohltemperirten Clavier, published in
the 1850s15 (Example 8: van Eyken).

The second appears in the aforementioned organ method by
Johannes Worp (Example 9: Worp). There are very remarkable differences between
these two arrangements, both in the use of fingerings and of pedal indications.
Van Eyken uses silent finger substitution sparingly, whereas Worp makes
extensive use of it. Both had studied in Germany, but the differences are
remarkable. Indeed, as far as both fingering and pedaling are concerned,
various traditions coexisted during the nineteenth century.
style="mso-spacerun: yes"> 

I come to my conclusion:

(1) There is no support whatsoever for van
Oortmerssen’s claim that during the nineteenth century silent finger
substitution was used infrequently outside hymn playing, neither in the organ
methods from the period nor in the music itself. In none of the many
nineteenth-century organ methods that I have examined over the years have I
ever encountered anything that points in the direction of van
Oortmerssen’s rules. While it is true that silent finger substitution is
particularly often used in hymn playing, there is no mention anywhere of any
restriction to hymn playing or to long note values.

(2) Van Oortmerssen’s main argument, the reference to
August Reinhard’s Studien für Harmonium, has been shown not to be
convincing or sufficient evidence in the least: I have shown that there is no
mention of restricted use of finger substitution here either.

(3) Van Oortmerssen’s claim that in his Bach edition
Franck makes the same infrequent use of silent finger substitution as his German
contemporaries is completely contradicted by those who have seen and studied
Franck’s fingerings.

If I discuss this matter so extensively it is not in order
to say unpleasant things about a colleague, but because it is my opinion that a
completely wrong picture is drawn here--and disseminated on a large
scale--of both German and French practices during the nineteenth century.

Pedal Technique

On page 40 of his book, van Oortmerssen reaches the
following conclusion about nineteenth-century pedal technique: “ . . .
[T]he heel was used sparingly because its overuse also encouraged tension and
made tone control considerably more difficult.” And on page 37 we read:
“Gliding from one key to the next and silent foot substitutions are two
techniques used sparingly.” Alternating toes in pedal playing remains the
rule, “ . . . even in extremely high or low positions on the
pedalboard.”

During the nineteenth century, a lot of discussion was going
on about what was the best pedal technique, and I agree with van Oortmerssen
that the general tendency is to use alternating toes as the basis and norm of
pedal playing. That does not mean, however, that little use was made of the
heel; some made extensive use of silent foot substitution as well.

On page 39 of his book, van Oortmerssen cites August Ritter
(not from an original edition, but the early-twentieth-century edition by
Alfred Glaus). The citation can be translated as follows: “It is true
that the use of the feet in which the toes of both feet alternate on a regular
basis--which we have practiced until now--has to be considered the
main technique.”16

There is something funny going on in this citation: the
“It is true that” (“zwar,” in the original German)
implies that the sentence does not end where van Oortmerssen put a period.
Indeed, the original text does not have a period here but a semicolon. The text
then continues:

. . .  it is not
sufficient for all situations, however. One uses one and the same foot various
times after in a row by alternating the toe and the heel, or even--e.g.,
with two or three upper keys in a row--the so-called ball of the foot. The
supple strength of the ankle, a prerequisite for elegant pedal playing, will
only get fully developed through this new technique.17

According to Ritter-Glaus, then, toe-heel technique is a
necessary expansion of the technique of alternating toes. If we take a look at
what Ritter himself writes about this matter, things get even more interesting.
We see that Glaus left out a thing or two in his edition; these deletions
happen to be particularly instructive for our topic. In the ninth edition
(1872) of Ritter’s Praktischer Lehr-Cursus im Orgelspiel
style='font-style:normal'>we read:

Although the use of the feet in which the toes of both feet
alternate on a regular basis--which we have practiced until now--has
to be considered the main technique and practiced as such, because it is the
easiest and encourages a clear pedal playing, it is however not sufficient for
all situations. It creates particularly great inconveniences when the pedal
part moves now in the high, now in the low range: a fast motion [down or up] of
one foot would disturb the quiet posture. Similarly, only with great difficulty
can quick runs be played legato and flowingly using this technique. Therefore,
in such cases one and the same foot is used various times in a row by
alternating the toe and the heel, or even--e.g., with three upper keys in
a row--the so-called ball of the foot. Although this greatly facilitates
legato playing, the danger of lack of clarity is lurking. Therefore, attention
has to be paid to a decisive attack by means of the ankle. However, all this
should not be considered the main thing, but only a useful expansion of pedal
technique, and applied accordingly.18

So Ritter states clearly that toe-heel technique comes in
the second place after the technique of alternating toes. But it is
nevertheless an important technique, especially when the feet have to be used
quickly, one after the other, high and low on the pedalboard. Ritter knows yet
another remarkable use of toe-heel technique: in the first part of his Kunst
des Orgelspiels, he says that it is
advisable to play tones that belong to the same chord with the same foot. After
giving pedal indications for the theme of Bach’s Fugue in C
Minor, BWV 546, Ritter prints the chorale
prelude Meine Seele erhebt den Herrn,
BWV 648, with a remarkably frequent use of toe-heel technique (Example 10). It
really is remarkable how toe-heel technique suddenly plays a leading role
here--and how Ritter uses the left foot twice in a row in mm. 30–31,
making legato playing impossible.

In his aforementioned Bach edition, Franck sometimes asks
for remarkably modern pedaling too. The following examples are taken from the
article of Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais (Example 11).

An important difference with modern pedal technique is the
frequent use of silent foot substitution. What van Oortmerssen says about this
technique, namely that it was “used sparingly,”19 is simply not
true. Precisely the authors who strongly favor the use of the toes make
frequent use of silent foot substitution. To me, that seems a perfectly logical
consequence of their preference for playing with the toes alone: by means of
silent foot substitution, legato can be attained also on large intervals. Here
is an example, again from van Eyken. It is the Fugue in C-sharp Minor
style='font-style:normal'>, BWV 849, from The Well-tempered Clavier I
style='font-style:normal'> (Example 12).

As we see, van Eyken takes the use of alternating toes as
his point of departure, which often leads to impractical solutions in our
modern eyes. If alternating toes is not possible, he favors silent foot
substitution over the use of the heel.

In hymn playing, silent foot substitution was used very
often. I could give countless examples, but will limit myself to two. The first
one is from Güntersberg’s Der fertige Orgelspieler
style='font-style:normal'>20 (Example 13: 1 = right foot; 2 = left foot). My
second example comes from the aforementioned Praktische Orgelschool
style='font-style:normal'> of J. Worp (Example 14).

On page 39 of his book, van Oortmerssen tries to make a
connection between the pedal technique and the style of the work; in other
words, the degree of the use of the heel would depend on the style of the work
in question. He remarks that “[i]n a non-legato style the heel was not
used at all.”

As an example, he gives the beginning of a movement from the
Sixth Sonata of Samuel de Lange Jr. Van Oortmerssen clearly thinks he can
derive a rule from this single case. Such a rule never existed, however. An
example? August Ritter gives in his Praktischer Lehr-Cursus im Orgelspiel
style='font-style:normal'>, opus 15, a trio whose pedal part is to be played
non-legato (“sempre staccato”). This is quite similar to the
indication in the trio by Samuel de Lange, printed on page 39 of van
Oortmerssen’s book: the original edition reads “poco
stacc[ato]”21 (Example 15).

It is clear from Ritter’s pedal indications that there
is no question here of exclusive use of the toes. Finally, close study of the
two organ arrangements of the fugue from The Well-Tempered Clavier II
style='font-style:normal'> printed above makes clear how far the opinions about
pedal technique were apart. With van Eyken, we see a strong preference for
alternating toes, some use of silent foot substitution, and the heel used very
sparingly. Worp, on the other hand, makes extensive use of toe-heel technique
and--as a consequence--hardly uses silent foot substitution.

I believe that the reality of pedal playing in the nineteenth century was much more complicated and colorful than what van Oortmerssen leads us to believe.  

The author extends his thanks to the Nederlands
Muziekinstituut, The Hague, for making available photocopies of compositions by
van Eyken; and to Dr. Joris Verdin for making available various Reinhardiana.

Translation: Dr. Jan-Piet Knijff, Queens College/CUNY.

* This article first appeared as “Zin en onzin over
stomme vingerwisseling en pedaalapplicatuur in de 19e eeuw” in Het Orgel
100 (2004), no. 3.

by Joseph Horning

Johannes Brahms, who died 100 years ago on April 3, 1897, composed the final installment of his musical legacy--the Eleven Chorale Preludes, Opus 122 --during the last year of his life. They were written during his summer holiday at Ischl, where Brahms had vacationed annually from 1889. But his final visit was clouded by Clara Schumann's recent death and his own illness, cancer of the liver, which had taken his father twenty-five years earlier and the symptoms of which he likely would have recognized.1

 

When considering Op. 122, it is valid to ask: "Are these works all that special?"--because no composer created an endless string of pearls. Indeed, Peter Williams revealed his reservations in a review in The Organ Quarterly:

[While] the stature of the man makes all his works interesting in some way or another, there is something depressing about this music.  I do not mean merely the death-centered theme of Op. 122 but the general tenor of the musical idioms found here, the kind of organ sound most suitable for them and the weird absence--considering who their composer was--of melodic flare or that dramatic sense of sonority and rhythmic impetus we know from the composer's symphonies.2

As these works are chorale preludes, Mr. Williams' mention of "melodic flare" is peculiar. And his comparison to the "sonority and rhythmic impetus" of Brahms' symphonies is irrelevant, as these are clearly miniatures, each wonderful and satisfying when played in an empathetic manner. But it is perhaps unfortunate that the complete organ works of Johannes Brahms--his four early works dating from 1856-7 and the "Eleven"--fit so conveniently on one CD, for they are becoming the most frequently recorded set of organ works, second only to Boëllmann's ubiquitous Suite Gothique. Unlike the latter, however, Brahms' "Eleven" are a collection rather then a suite, and their effectiveness is diminished when heard all at one sitting. I feel they have far more impact and are more enjoyable inserted one or two at a time into an eclectic program.

Clearly, what can be a small masterpiece in the hands of one can be tedious in the hands of another--and even more so for Op. 122.  For with these works, Brahms has hidden eleven treasures inside a maze. In this essay, we will examine the "Eleven" and discuss ways to make these treasures come alive.

Form of the Chorales

To begin, see Table 1 for a survey of the forms Johannes Brahms used in Op. 122.  In addition to simple harmonized treatments, Brahms embellished some chorales into aria form, extended some with interludes, or used each phrase as a motif for the accompanying parts (Pachelbel style), or surrendered to a free fantasy form in which the original melody is almost totally lost.3

One can see from Table 1 that half are on Passiontide or requiem themes.  But only number 10, based on the "passion" chorale, expresses the depths of the emotions implied by the text: "My heart is ever yearning for blessed death's release." Of those based on other themes, numbers 5 through 8 are warm, lovely and contemplative and number 4 is an outburst of joy. Even O Welt, ich muss dich lassen, the last of the "Eleven" and Brahms' final composition, is a gentle farewell to life. E. Power Biggs summed up these works very well in the Preface to his edition of Op. 122:

Composed in memory of his dearest and most faithful friend, Clara Schumann, at the same time the Preludes are a revealing document of Brahms' thoughts on his own life. One biographer, Niemann, points out that most of the Preludes are: "A retrospect and an epilogue, a salutation to youth and its ideals, and a farewell to this world which is, after all, so fair." Somber as many of the Preludes are, they yet have a warm, autumnal quality that is all Brahms' own.4

Baroque or Romantic?

Since the "Eleven" are cast in the traditional German form of chorale preludes, and since Brahms had applied himself diligently to the rediscovery of early music, in particular Bach with whose music he was quite conversant,5 there is the question of whether the interpretation should reflect performance practice of the late 19th century or early 18th century. The great body of Brahms' compositions show that he was a thoroughly Romantic composer of great power. His Classical inclinations, however, restrained him from some of the delicious excesses of, say, a Tchaikovsky. Brahms' "Eleven" require the performance practice of Brahms' age, not the Baroque. When Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras, or Dupré's "Chorale in the Style of J. S. Bach" (Fifteen Antiphons), or Franck's Three Chorales are performed--all of which took their inspiration from Bach --the interpretive style should be that of the composer's age, not the 18th century.  So also with the "Eleven." Robert Schuneman makes a key point when he says:

One should not be deceived by the brevity of the chorale preludes, nor with an initial reaction to the printed page which makes them look like chamber music. Their religious nature, the sacredness, otherworldliness, the transcendental quality--all of this is expressed by Brahms (as in other Romantic music) with grandeur, monumentality, and weightiness in terms of organ sound in acoustic space.6

An initial look at the printed page has misled many an organist to think that the "Eleven" are as easy to play as they are short, but Brahms sophisticated writing often seems to jig where the hand wants to jog. Simply learning the notes is the organist's first task.  But it is remarkable how many organists confide that these works are often poorly played even if the notes are correct.  Indeed, Schuneman decried " . . . the stiff, unyielding, ungraceful and ragged performances which are so often heard . . . "7

A Romantic Framework

For idiomatic interpretations of Brahms' "Eleven," it helps to consider them within the context of the 19th century. Born in 1886 in Belgium, the renowned organ virtuoso Charles M. Courboin provides a link with that sensibility. His pupil, Richard Purvis, discusses Courboin's approach:

Courboin always returned to three elemental principles in the consideration of any piece. First, one had to consider the architecture of the work; second was texture; third was emotional content. The architecture was most important. "Where are the high points," he would ask, "and how are you going to do them justice? Where are the transitional points, at which you leave one mood and go to another?"

If the architecture defined the parameters of the piece, the texture was the actual landscape for which Courboin often used visual imagery as might describe an oil painting, an etching or a watercolor.  At other times he would discuss texture in more strictly musical terms: was it contrapuntal, harmonic, a combination of the two?  And what tools were you going to use to emphasize the texture rather than obscure it.  Once you had the architecture and had done justice to the texture, you could then afford to explore the fine points of the emotions you were trying to communicate.  Courboin constantly asked, "What emotions does the piece involve, conjure up, portray?"8

The Brahms Organ

Brahms did play the organ to some degree in the 1850s when he wrote the four early compositions. But as he was never a professional organist associated with a specific organ, there has been an active debate over the years concerning the ideal Brahms organ sound. For example, registrations recommended by Walter E. Buszin and Paul G. Bunjes reveal their ideal Brahms organ to be a Baroque affair on which one should draw no more than one 8' stop per division.9 The result is far from weight, grandeur and monumentality.

A key year in this discussion is 1833, the year of Brahms' birth and the year in which E. F. Walcker completed his first major achievement, a 3-manual, 74-voice trendsetter for the Paulskirche in Frankfurt.10 The Oberwerk had five 8' flues and the Schwellwerk had six. The structure of the 23-voice Hauptwerk was as follows: 32,16,16,16,8,8,8,8,51/3, 4,4,4,31/5,22/3,2,2,13/5,1,V,IV,V,16,8. Walcker built hundreds of organs based on similar principles throughout the 19th century, including a 3-manual, 61-voice instrument built in 1878 for the Votivkirch in Vienna,11 an organ which was certainly known to Brahms as he had settled permanently in Vienna in 1868.  The Oberwerk of the Votivkirch organ had four 8' flues and the Schwellwerk five. The structure of the 23-voice Hauptwerk is: 16,16,8,8,8,8,8,8,8,51/3, 31/5,4,4,4,22/3,2,2,VI,III,V,16,8,4.12 Franz Ebner, who recorded the "Eleven" on this organ, stated:

The instrument on which Brahms' art can most suitably be realized is not the Baroque organ but that type in which the endeavors of the 19th century to attain a full, warm, immediately arresting tone found fulfillment.13

However, a "Brahms organ" does not have to be huge or even large.  As Max Miller pointed out in his article, "The Brahms Chorale Preludes--Master Lesson," the small instruments in every organ culture aspire to the effects of large instruments and thus clearly indicate the idealized sound of the time.14 He offers this 1869 German stoplist in which 60% of the manual voices are of 8' pitch:

Hauptwerk: 16,8,8,8,4,III

Oberwerk: 8,8,8,4

Pedal: 16,16,8.

For a fuller discussion of organ design in 19th century Germany, see Robert Parkins' series of articles in The Diapason: "Rediscovering the German Romantic Organ" (January, February and March, 1989).

Registrations

Robert Schuneman devoted a full page of his Brahms article to excerpts from Hugo Riemann's Catechism of the Organ, which gives an insight into German organ playing from the period 1845 to 1895. This is most valuable reading for those who play Brahms. One of the key concepts is horizontal registrations.  That is, one first combines a succession of 8' stops--from the softest to the Diapason--to create a bed of unison sound to which one adds the Octave, the 16', the 22/3' Quinte, the reed, the 2' and the Mixture in that order. The manuals are coupled to achieve fuller effects, and "gap" registrations like 8'+2' are to be avoided unless the composer has specified it.15

In "Some Thoughts on the Sound of the Organ," John David Peterson offers valuable insights into the ideal Brahms "sound":

Brahms' orchestrations call for a rich blend of dark colors. His favored instruments were the horn, viola, violoncello and clarinet, and his piano works challenge the player to call forth half- and counter-melodies from the tenor register of thick textures. It is not surprising that his organ works share the same sense of musical color.16

The key word which sums up registrations for Op. 122 is "warmth." Thus it is surprising that Robert Schuneman would have said: "Strings, as we know them today [1972], and especially celestes, are not appropriate."17 German 19th century stoplists had many a Gemshorn, Salizional, Fugara and Viola da Gamba and the celesting stops Unda Maris and Voix Celeste were to be found.  If these sounds were part of the organ culture of Brahms' time, and if one of his favorite orchestral effects was massed cellos and violas, what better way can there be to realize Op. 122 than by including strings in the registrations? The quieter chorales--Nos. 5, 6, 8 and 11--are excellent candidates for a celeste. If one has a broad Violoncello Celeste, it might be just the thing for the pedal cantus in No. 10. And how better to let the final notes of No. 11 O Welt, ich muss dich lassen float up into heaven than with a quiet celeste?

Brahms' Markings

While Brahms didn't indicate registrations, he left dynamic indications which, coupled with the precepts in Riemann's Catechism, may well amount to the same thing (see Table 2).

The dynamic markings and performance indications would seem to be clear enough, with the possible exception of "dolce." In Dynamics in the Music of Johannes Brahms, Imogen Fellinger says that dolce implies a weakening of the given preceding dynamic strength, just as expressivo is an intensification of the predominant dynamic strength.18 This may well be so where the dynamic marking is forte. Thus "forte ma dolce" in numbers 1, 3, and 11 would translate "loud but sweetly" or "loud but not strident." However, it seems a bit of a stretch to say that "dolce" in numbers 5 and 8 actually implies a dynamic slightly softer than the indicated "piano." It probably calls for a "sweet" or "gentle" interpretation and has nothing to do with dynamics. In support of this, note that only numbers 2, 7, 9 and 10 are without the "dolce." What is different about them from the rest? Both 2 and 9 are sturdy and forthright (the latter remarkably so), number 7 is a combination of urgency and melancholy, and number 10 is characterized by great pathos.

Tempo

In preparing this article, I studied fourteen organ recordings of Op. 122 and two of the Busoni piano transcriptions of Nos. 4-5 and 8-11. The range of tempi is remarkable. The slowest interpretations of the complete "Eleven" take 42 minutes whereas the fastest last but 21 minutes--half as long, or twice as fast.  The median19 duration was 321/2 minutes. See Table 3.

It is easier and clearer to discuss the tempos of these works, which as Romantic works are subject to considerable rubato, using the duration of the piece rather than metronome indications. The player who wishes to play Brahms musically would be well advised to avoid the extremes of tempo. Speeding through these works with the fastest tempos renders them meaningless and trite, but performances with the slowest tempos lacked energy and were often boring and stultifying. I found it of passing personal interest that the tempos at which I play these pieces are, in most cases, pretty close to the median. These median durations would seem to be a good starting place for those attempting to discover the ideal tempos.

Rubato

In his essay, "Playing Around With Tempo," Robert Schuneman describes tempo rubato:

Most music is mechanical without it in some form. On the other hand, the same music may turn into a caricature of its own intent and content with too much of it poorly applied. It is the most difficult of all musical terms to describe in words, and it takes an extremely sensitive player to use it well.20

As rubato is so difficult to describe in words, I would recommend Arthur Rubenstein's renditions of the Chopin Nocturnes as a most exquisite example of rubato in 19th century music.21

One might divide music into two types: objective and subjective. With objective music, of which Brahms' early a-minor and g-minor Prelude and Fugue are two good examples, if you play all the notes in a reasonably steady tempo, you achieve 80% of the composer's intent.  With subjective music, of which the "Eleven" are an excellent example, if you simply play all the notes in a reasonably steady tempo you realize absolutely none of the musical content the composer put into the work. The worst performances (with the notes played correctly) one will ever hear of Op. 122 are those in which, to paraphrase the popular song, "the beat goes on."

Schuneman makes an excellent point which is quite relevant to Op.122:

With the emergence after 1830 of free forms, program music, salon music, and the seeking out of emotional content over form, declamatory expression (free tempo rubato) became much more indispensable to good performance.  Furthermore, as the 19th  century progressed, tempo rubato became increasingly tied to dynamics. Accelerando means crescendo and vice-versa; ritardando means diminuendo and vice-versa.22

The most important performance points here are that in Op. 122, the beat itself is modified, which is a considerably further modification of tempo than the 18th century notion of rubato, where the melody in the right hand was subject to rubato but the beat in the left hand was not.23

Chorale No. 5, Schmücke dich, provides a clear illustration of the above points. Consider Figure 1, which is a harmonization of the chorale, as it would be sung. The added crescendo and decrescendo markings--not to be overdone, of course--simply indicate what any good choir would do intuitively. This music, all music, for that matter, is meant to be performed expressively. So apply this dynamic pattern to Brahms' realization of the chorale in Figure 2 (expression marks added to the Henle edition). If played on the Swell 8' flues, subtle opening and closing of the swell box is no problem. Per the above discussion of rubato, a subtle accelerando would accompany the crescendo and a ritardando comes with the diminuendo. One might alternatively describe this as a slight increase and decrease in intensity. Then there is the syncopated rhythmic pattern in the left hand which Brahms notated as shown in Figure 3, the way George Bozarth would have preferred to notate it in the Henle edition.24 Then there are the delicious dissonances, Brahms beloved major seconds, which Samuel Swartz always said "Brahms put there to linger over." And finally, there are the notes here and there to which, in expressive playing, one gives agogic accents. Integrate all of this into a performance and one has a small masterpiece. Play it straight on through ignoring these factors, on the other hand, and one has a very trite rendition.

Another excellent example of the necessity for rubato is in Chorale No, 11, O Welt, ich muss dich lassen. The structure of the work has a forte section followed by a piano section followed by a pianissimo section--which is repeated six times. Whether Brahms is simply using a series of echos or is referring to the vigor of youth, the mellowness of middle age and the weakness of old age we cannot know. But all of the pianissimo sections need to end with a ritard and a pronounced pause before beginning the next forte section. It is truly amazing that many play this work as if a metronome were clicking inside their heads, rushing past the pianissimo to get at that forte just in the nick of time. See Figure 4 for the interpretation marks I would suggest, and heed Max Miller's advice:

The variables of building and organ will dictate how much time is to be allowed and how freely the echoes should be taken. The non-harmonic tones require spaciousness and breadth in performance.  Time, for Brahms, has with this last composition ceased its hurry and its very meaning.25

Yet another reason for rubato is to give meaning to one of Brahms' favorite rhetorical gestures, the sigh motiv.  Consider the first four bars of O Gott, du frommer Gott (Figure 5), where the sigh motives are indicated by a bracket.  They are descending in mm. 2-3 and inverted in mm. 4-5.  Played in a metronomical tempo, these gestures are as musical as the regular clicks and whirs of factory machinery.  Played with a slight relaxation of tempo, they define the essence of Op. 122.

Indicated Phrasing

In addition to the dynamic and tempo markings, Brahms indicates a wealth of phrasing. Consider the first four bars of No. 1 in Figure 6. Brahms clearly and deliberately sets out a phrasing pattern which leaves little doubt of his intentions. In No. 3, however, there may be some question about the two-note slurs (see Figure 7). Some organists misinterpret these slurs as phrasing marks, and play the two eighth note figures as an eighth and a sixteenth, with a sixteenth rest before the next group begins. This misguided approach gives a jerky, frenetic sound which is the antithesis of the feeling of the chorale, O Welt, ich muss dich lassen. What Brahms meant by these markings was to give a slight stress to the first note of the groupings of two eighth notes. If strings played this piece, there would be the slightest, almost infinitesimal, pause in the sound as the bows changed direction between the eighth-note groupings. And this is precisely how it should be played on the organ.

It is in the very pianistic No. 4 that the precision markings in the Urtext Henle edition clearly communicate Brahms' intentions--markings which are changed or omitted in some other editions. See Figure 8 for the first four bars of No. 4. The quarter notes in the alto voice form a melody in which some notes are held longer than the precise note values, as indicated by the secondary slurs. In bars 1 and 3 the notes marked A are held for two beats,26 in bar 2 the note marked B is held for five beats, and in bar three the note marked C is held for three beats. This is consistent with 19th  century piano practice.

Leslie Spelman, who has spent a good bit of his extraordinarily long career promoting the "Eleven" in both recital and masterclass, sees a parallel to the above technique in No. 10 (see Figure 9). The notes with the horizontal bars added above them form a melody, and Dr. Spelman suggests holding them beyond their indicated value. The notes with the added slurs are to be held even longer. All the while, observing Brahms' molto legato indication and keeping the pulse nicely articulated in the bass.27 This exquisite chorale is also very pianistic and, in fact, is marvelously realized on the piano with a cello playing the cantus. Organists have been ending this piece with an a minor chord for nearly a century, and the A Major ending in the new editions--correcting an error in reading Brahms' autograph by the original editor Mandyczewski--sounds very strange to ears accustomed to the minor ending. But Henle edition editor George Bozarth points out that all of the minor-key preludes in the "Eleven" do, in fact, end with a Picardy third.28 A pronounced ritard in the penultimate measure and a generous observance of Brahms' indicated Adagio in the final bar does "set up" the A Major chord.

Soloing Out Melodies

In several of the Chorales, Brahms allows a clearly discernible melody in the soprano to move moments later to an inner voice where it can be obscured by the accompaniment above it. For example, this happens in measures 5-6 and 14-16 of Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen and measures 28-31 and 38-41 of O Gott, du frommer Gott. There are two schools of thought on this challenge.  Vernon Gotwals feels it is wrong to solo out melodies because this:

. . . shows an unawareness of the abstract nature of Brahms' conception.  It is wrong to emphasize any voice in the manner of the piano in these organ pieces, as Brahms knew that the melody would be lost when it dipped into the tenor in No. 7 or climbed from tenor to alto in No. 8. His subtle conception is destroyed by those who cannot forebear going beyond his precise registrational directions simply because it is physically possible to do so.29

Of course, this implies that in Op. 122 Brahms' conception was a total departure from almost everything he had written before. In his previous compositions, the pianists, instrumentalists and vocalists were able to emphasize and bring out musical lines in a way most suitable for the performance. I find it very unlikely that Brahms would prohibit emphasis of these obscured melodic lines--in fact, he probably would find the very question incomprehensible.

There are two ways to treat these lines. One can choose "solo" stops of exactly the same character as the accompaniment so that the principal difference between solo and accompaniment is volume, or one can choose a contrasting tone color. The former approach is probably more characteristic, although I must confess that the temptation to solo the tenor portions of Es ist ein Ros' on a Clarinet is very strong. The Clarinet was one of Brahms' favorite instruments, and if one has a nice one it may serve quite well. One doesn't have to play these works exactly the same way each and every time. The tenor melody in Es ist ein Ros' can be played on the pedals as suggested in the Biggs' edition (see Figure 10). But an alternative solution, which Leslie Spelman learned from Joseph Bonnet, is to play both the bass and tenor on the pedals starting on the third beat of m. 5, leaving the left hand free to solo the melody (see Figure 11).30

O Gott, du frommer Gott is one of the longest and most graceful of the chorales. One can very easily play the cantus on the Pedal 4' Chorale Bass. Draw 8' stops (at least the 8' Diapason and flute) on both the Great and Swell and couple them. Thus in the forte sections played on the Great, the Swell box can give an arch to the line. And in the piano sections played on the Swell, the box allows expression and perfect balance whether the solo soars out above or is buried within the accompaniment. The timbre of the Chorale Bass would be quite similar to the Diapason and flute of the Swell, with just a boost to the volume (see Figure 12). For emphasis one can add the Swell 4' Octave in measures 22-26, 50-54 and during the final five bars, but there is no indication that the forte section with which the work concludes should be significantly louder than the forte section with which it begins.

Repeated Notes

In the slower of Brahms' chorales, repeated notes in the soprano and bass should always be articulated, but there are some decisions to make about the inner voices. No. 11 O Welt, ich muss dich lassen is an excellent case in point. Though instances occur throughout the piece, the final three bars with their implied molto ritardando are critical. One might very well separate all the repeated notes in a room with five seconds reverberation. But see Figure 13 for a suggestion of adding ties on the inner voices to have the feeling of repetition without choppiness. This is not to say that Brahms should "ooze." In mm. 24-25 of the same chorale are two instances where added phrasing marks in the left hand and pedal can help set up the ending (see Figure 14).

Conclusion

Brahms' Chorale Preludes are very special compositions. As Fenner Douglas once observed, it's too bad for organists that Brahms didn't have a church job for a while, so that we might have more works from this master. I would urge those interested to seek out the cited articles by Bozarth, Gotwals, Miller, Peterson and Schuneman for a broader scope and fuller understanding of the problems and possibilities these works present. Playing these works expressively on the piano is also very helpful, as is experimenting with legato and super legato touch on the organ. Those who unlock the secrets of Op. 122 will not just have gained eleven lovely pieces for their repertoire--they will have learned things of inestimable value which they can apply in countless other works. n

Appendix: Survey of Opus 122 Recordings

The Early Recordings

Of the four late '50s and early '60s recordings, the best are by Robert Noehren and Franz Eibner, but none of them leaves you wishing for a reissue on CD. Dr. Noehren's Brahms (Lyrichord LLST 7123) is well played with sufficient rubato and convincing transitions between sections. But both of the Noehren organs he recorded on were totally unenclosed 2-manual organs with Positiv rather than Swell. The lack of a swell box and absence of registrational variety limited this recording.

Franz Eibner (Teldec SLT 43018-B) had the best organ of the early LPs. The 3-manual, 61-voice Walcker in Vienna's Votivkirche dates from 1878 and was certainly heard by Brahms. The organ's sound--with its rich palette of flutes, strings and principals--is most appropriate to Brahms. Eibner's playing, though consistently a bit stiff, borders on satisfactory, with suitable rubato at times but some awkward transitions. Some chorales, like Schmücke dich, he trots through with no regard to musical subtleties.

The other two early recordings are very disappointing. Karl Richter's recording on the Steinmeyer in the Herkules-Saal in München (Deutsche Grammophon 138906 SLPM) features a most unattractive organ sound. His registrations overemphasize screechy upperwork and de-emphasize the fundamental, sometimes creating a "music box" effect. Richter's playing is completely insensitive to the music, charging right through Opus 122 from start to finish.

Kurt Rapf's recording on the organ of Vienna's Ursulinenklosters is even worse, with an organ sound lacking fundamental but featuring prominent chiff on the manuals and a loud, deep and murky pedal sound. The plenum on No. 11 has searing mixtures, snarly reeds, booming bass and no "middle." Rapf's playing displays the fastest tempos at which these pieces have ever been recorded. All of the notes are there, but none of the music.

The Best of the Modern Recordings

(Note: All the CDs except Arkay include the complete works of Brahms.)

One of the most satisfying recordings to date is by Carole Terry on the 4-manual Flentrop of St. Mark's Cathedral in Seattle (Musical Heritage Society MHS 512523M). Blessed with a rich palette of principals and flutes in a gorgeous acoustic, the organ has a fine sound although the pair of Gemshorns on the Swell are a far cry from real strings. This recording was made before the recent rebuild added a wonderful 32' Posaune to the Pedal and an 8' Trumpet to the Great, plus enabled the 32' Prestant to actually speak. Ms. Terry's playing is simply elegant. She has a real empathy with Brahms and uses rubato and phrasing to create a truly musical result. The two settings of Herzlich tut mich verlangen are the high point of the recording: No. 9 is quite virile on a big registration and No. 10 is the essence of sensitivity.

Another fine recording on LP, unfortunately out of print, is by Bernard Lagacé (Titanic TI-38).  He recorded Opus 122 on the 1977 2-manual 23-voice Wolff organ in New York's Eighth Church of Christ Scientist. The neoclassic design has its limitations for Brahms, but Lagacé uses it fully and well. His playing is inventive, lively and sensitive.  Hopefully this recording will be reissued on CD.

Nicholas Danby made an elegant recording on the organ of the Church of the Immaculate Conception in London (CRD 3404). This 3-manual 44-voice organ is of some historical interest, having been built by Anneesens in 1876, rebuilt by Bishop in 1914, and completely remodeled in 1926 by Henry Willis III to the designs of G. Donald Harrison and Guy Weitz (organist from 1917 to 1967). Its virile plenum (with tierce mixtures), typically English reeds, rich foundations and colorful flutes make for a varied listening experience. Unfortunately, Danby failed to use the two sets of strings, but his playing is imaginative, solid and sensitive. A high point is an attractively up-tempo rendition of Herzlich tut mich erfreuen with well handled transitions between the forte and piano sections, and a sensible (that is to say, slight) volume differential between the sections. All in all, a rewarding experience.

The Interesting Middle Ground

Georges Athanasiadès has made a charming recording on the huge 103-stop Jann organ of 1989 in the lush acoustics of the wildly Baroque Basilica of Waldsassen (Tudor 790). It missed the first tier only because of a severe lapse of taste on the chorale No. 1, where the cantus in the pedal is registered on flue stops plus a set of tubular bells--the effect is ghastly. But in the remaining ten chorales, Athanasiadès proves to be a resourceful player who provides the most tasteful registrational variety of all the recordings. In Herzliebster Jesu and O wie selig he goes to an extraordinary effort to solo out the melody--unnecessary, but interesting and not at all unpleasant. He makes tasteful use of the tremulant on the pedal cantus of the second Herzlich tut mich verlangen and on a splendid rendition of Es ist ein ros'. In the final chorale he exhibits a sensitive balance between the forte, piano and pp sections, with a very attractive string celeste based pp section. Clearly Mr. Athanasiadès has many good ideas and much to offer on this CD.

Jean-Pierre Leguay, one of the four titular organists of Notre Dame in Paris, has made an impressive recording on the monumental 4-manual 1890 Cavaillé-Coll at the Abbey of Saint Ouen in Rouen (Euro Muses 590073 AD 184).  This organ--lavishly equipped with diapasons, a great variety of flutes, several sets of strings and reeds galore--is actually not far from what one might consider an "ideal" Brahms organ. All the stops are colorful, and there is a great amount of variety in the 8' range. The massed unison stops, which are exhibited in Herzliebster Jesu, sing beautifully. For a climactic effect, nothing in the recorded literature of Opus 122 quite matches the final section of the first chorale, where Mr. Leguay adds the 32' Bombarde to an already grand plenum. Some of the chorales, Nos. 4-6 and 11 for example, are given a rather indifferent treatment, but O Gott, du frommer Gott sparkles in a high-energy high-volume treatment with reeds in both the forte and piano sections. A tasteful Es ist ein Ros' alternates a beautiful string celeste with a quiet flute. Opting for contrast and clarity, Mr. Leguay gives the pedal cantus in Herzlich tut mich verlangen to a Trompette. This recording is recommended for generally excellent playing and a quite stupendous sound.

Jacques van Oortmerssen chose the 1906 Setterquist organ of the Kristine Church in Falun, Sweden for his recording of the works of Brahms (BIS-CD-479). This 2-manual 30-stop instrument is based on the French Romantic organs of Cavaillé-Coll, but the sound is a far cry from St. Ouen. There are some lovely individual stops, but the plenum with pedal is murky and a 2' Octava sticks out rather than blending. Oortmerssen's usually elegant playing is uneven, with one chorale singing and soaring and the next plodding quirkily along. He does observe the implied crescendo in O wie selig and builds to a satisfying forte.

Herman Schäffer chose a 4-manual 92-stop 1911 Steinmeyer at the Christuskirche in Mannheim for his Brahms recording (Motette CD 10711). This instrument offers generally attractive sounds and great variety, but Schäffer's playing is uneven. Herzliebster Jesu has no energy and a painfully slow O Welt, ich muss dich lassen (No. 3) falls flat, but these are followed by an energetic and stylish Herzlich tut mich erfreuen.  Schäffer loves contrast, and solos the melody in Schmücke dich on an oboe, the pedal cantus in Herzlich tut mich verlangen (No. 10) on a trumpet, and the melody in O wie selig on a Nazard combination (with the bass played on a heavy and murky 16' pedal). In Es ist ein Ros', Herzlich tut mich verlangen (No. 9) and O Welt, ich muss dich lassen (No. 11) the contrast between the forte and piano sections is far too great. Within these works, however, there are registrations of great beauty, including some luscious string celestes. In sum, the playing and interpretations are uneven and the largely original historic organ is of interest.

Recordings Of Lesser Merit

One might think that recording Brahms on a 1965 4-manual 56-stop Marcussen organ would give a thin, chiffy and uncharacteristic sound (Nimbus NI 882 286-909). On the organ at the Odense Domkirche this is not so, although the upperwork (used only in the first chorale) is too intense. Kevin Bowyer's registrations prove that this instrument can give an appropriate sounds to Opus 122. His playing is another matter, though--tempos seem either to be too fast or too slow. For example, he makes a race out of Herz-lich tut mich erfreuen. But whether the tempo is fast or slow, he doesn't offer much more than the notes. In O Welt, ich muss dich lassen (No. 3) he misinterprets the slurs over the two eighth note groups for a very choppy result. His favorite chorale would seem to be Herzlich tut mich verlangen (No. 10), as he gives a very sensitive performance of it (at 4:38 the slowest of all the recorded performances) with a lush sound and a lovely articulate solo flute with tremulant for the cantus solo. Would that the other ten chorales had had this degree of attention.

Jonathan Dimmock recorded Opus 122 on a 2-manual 26-stop Frobenius at St. Stephen's Episcopal in Belvedere, California (Arkay AR 6113). A visceral involvement with the music seems to be missing, and there are some note problems. Dimmock followed a basically conservative approach to registration, passing on the opportunity for a true forte even for No. 9 Herzlich tut mich verlangen. Although he did make good use of the Gambe Celeste in two chorales, it was an unfortunate choice to solo the melody in O Gott du frommer Gott on the Swell Oboe, because this precluded a significant contrast between the forte and piano sections, a key element of the work.  Whereas O wie selig is satisfying with a nice Oboe combination, No. 11 O Welt, ich muss dich lassen receives a perfunctory performance without the crucial implied ritards between the pp and forte sections.

Robert Parkins recording on the large Flentrop in the Duke University Chapel would seem to have a lot going for it (Naxos 8.550824). A lush acoustic, large organ, talented performer. Large as the Flentrop is, however, is has no expressive divisions and no strings--one wonders how Opus 122 would have fared on the spectacular Aeolian at the front end of Duke Chapel. Parkins gets around this limitation well, however, and the massed 8' tones provide needed warmth. His tempos are the key problem--Nos. 1, 2, 3, 7 and 9 are or are among the slowest tempos on record. The energy of these pieces drains away and you are left wanting to shout "Get on with it!" Balance this criticism with artful performances of No. 4, 6, 10 and an especially sensitive rubato in No. 11. Interesting though flawed, but at a bargain price.

Rudolph Innig's performance of Opus 122 has little to recommend it (Dabringhaus and Grimm MD+GL 3137). The 3-manual Klais organ at St. Dionysius in Rheine is a lightweight neoclassical design with lots of mutations which Innig, unfortunately, uses.  His interpretations feature separated pickups, which are decidedly un-Brahmsian, and a general lack of sensitivity to the music.

 

Notes

                  1.              Heinz Becker, "Johannes Brahms," The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 1980, Vol. 3, p. 161.

                  2.              Peter Williams, Review in The Organ Quarterly.

                  3.              Anonymous essay on "Brahms' 11 Chorale Preludes" on Lyrichord LP (LL 123).

                  4.              E. Power Biggs, Preface, Brahms' Chorale Preludes, Mercury Music Corporation, 1949, p. 2.

                  5.              Becker, op. cit., pp. 173-174.

                  6.              Robert Schuneman, "Brahms and the Organ," Music/The AGO-RCCO Magazine, September, 1972, p. 34.

                  7.              Schuneman, op. cit., p. 34.

                  8.              Jonathan Ambrosino, "Lessons with Dr. Courboin--A Conversation with Richard Purvis," The Erzähler, Volume 4, Number 3, January, 1995, pp. 3-4.

                  9.              Brahms' Complete Organ Works, ed. by Walter E. Buszin and Paul G. Bunjes, Edition Peters.

                  10.           Peter Williams, The European Organ 1450-1850, published by The Organ Literature Foundation, 1967, pp. 94-95.

                  11.           Vernon Gotwals, "Brahms and the Organ," Music/The AGO-RCCO Magazine, April, 1970, p. 42.

                  12.           Günter Lade, Orgeln in Wien, Austria, 1990, p. 184.

                  13.           Franz Ebner, Program Notes to Teldec LP: SLT 43018-B.

                  14.           Max B. Miller, "The Brahms Chorale Preludes Master Lesson," TAO, April, 1979, pp. 43-46.

                  15.           Schuneman, op. cit., pp. 32-33.

                  16.           John David Peterson, "Some Thoughts on the Sound of the Organ," The Diapason, April, 1981, p. 16.

                  17.           Schuneman, op. cit., p. 34.

                  18.           Imogen Fellinger, Uber die Dynamik in der Musik von Johannes Brahms, (Berlin and Wunsiedel: Hesse 1961), p. 20. Translated by and cited in Schuneman, op. cit., p. 34.

                  19.           The "median" is the middle value in a distribution of data--half of the times are shorter and half are longer than the median.

                  20.           Robert A. Schuneman, "Playing Around With Tempo," The Diapason, May, 1970, p. 16.

                 21.           Arthur Rubenstein, The Chopin Nocturnes, RCA 5613-2-RC (two CD set).

                  22.           Schuneman, "Tempo," op. cit., p. 16.

                  23.           Peter Hurford, Making Music on the Organ, Oxford University Press, 1990, p. 67.

                  24.           George S. Bozarth, "Brahms Organ Works: A New Critical Edition," The American Organist, June, 1988, p. 56.

                  25.           Miller, op. cit., p. 46.

                  26.           Less a brief "lift" on the first quarter note in measure one, so it can sound again on beat three.

                  27.           Leslie Spelman, in a February, 1995, masterclass.

                  28.           Bozarth, op. cit., p. 57.

                  29.           Gotwals, op. cit., p. 48.

                  30.           Masterclass, February, 1995.

Permission to reproduce segments from Werke für Orgel granted by G. Henle Verlag.

 

Other articles of interest:

Franz Liszt and Johann Gottlob Töpfer: A Fruitful Relationship in Weimar

Théodore Dubois and César Franck at Sainte-Clotilde

Brahms Opus 122 in score

Part 1 was published in the May 1996 issue of THE DIAPASON, pp. 10-13.

by Sally Cherrington

The Introduction of Organ Voluntaries: The Organist as Solo Performer

Despite the emphasis on the organist as an accompanist in
the first half of the nineteenth century, the playing of voluntaries did not
suddenly commence in 1850.  The use
of voluntaries became common in some churches after about 1810, although in
other churches (particularly those in rural locations) voluntaries were not
played until much later in the century. In 1835, Musical Magazine in New York
City published an article complaining about abuses in voluntary playing, which
contained the following comments on the problem of inappropriateness:

Every real proficient on the organ, knows that voluntaries
upon that noble instrument, ought to consist of broken passages, scattered
chords, etc., etc., which will not seize upon the attention of the listener but
rather soothe his mind, into calm collected meditation. Any thing like a
regular air would here be out of place. Even the learned harmonies of the
Germans, impressive and beautiful as they are, prove for the most part too
spirit-stirring, in their influence, for American voluntaries. Some of our
organists, however, have but little invention, and others but little taste. So
when they should either be silent or be endeavoring merely to soothe the
worshipers into devout meditation, they rouse them by a march, an overture, a
sonata, or a thundering chorus. . . . Such abuses, if tolerated, will bring
voluntaries into disrepute; if not lead to the expulsion of the organ from our
churches.57

Orpha Ochse adds wryly that if the situation was so bad in
the cultural and intellectual climate of New York City, one could only imagine
what sorts of things the untutored village organists were playing for
voluntaries.58

The common complaint of too much showmanship, which had been
levelled at the performance of interludes, was also carried over to
voluntaries. For example, Jane Rasmussen notes that Episcopal churches were
often the first in an area to get an organ, and whenever possible they would then hire a competent organist from Europe, New York, or Philadelphia. The organists often played virtuosic voluntaries as a form of advertising in order to attract students to supplement their church salaries.59 Whether justified or not, this virtuosity was generally considered distracting to the tone of the
service.  In non-Episcopal (or less
wealthy) churches, this problem would probably have occurred somewhat later in
the century due to the later technical development of native players, but it
became a problem nonetheless.

Charles Zeuner

Prior to the publication of Zeuner's collections of organ
voluntaries, most organists who played voluntaries improvised them.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Zeuner presented an alternative for
those who did not yet possess this skill. Zeuner's Voluntaries for the Organ, published in 1830, was the first collection of organ music published in the United States, and consists of six voluntaries.60 Although the use of the term "voluntary" and his designation of the pieces as "Before Service" or "After Service" suggests that he intended the pieces for church use, Zeuner indicated on the score that the pieces were "composed and dedicated to the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston,"61 a secular musical society. However, his second organ publication, Organ Voluntaries, published in 1840, is clearly a volume for the church organist. This is a longer and more comprehensive work than his first collection, and consists of two parts. The first part involves 165 interludes and short preludes in a variety of keys (to be used with hymns). Part II contains "Practical Voluntaries to be used before and after services in churches," with intended uses specified for each piece.62
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  These voluntaries have no pedal parts,
and contain dynamic markings but only minimal registration indications. This
collection forms a sort of bridge between the earlier "methods" and
the forthcoming collections of music with instructive introductions: it is the
first comprehensive printed collection for church use of interludes and (more
importantly) voluntaries, which were becoming the new focus of most organists,
but it does not yet include any of the descriptions and admonishments for
performing them that the later collections include.

The opposite situation occurs in an article from The
American Journal of Music, published in Boston on February 25, 1845, and
entitled "On the Use of the Stops of the Organ."63 The anonymous
author explains that although the organ is the instrument best suited for
extemporizing (voluntaries in church), he has never seen any "practical
treatises" on this subject. Therefore, he provides stylistic and
registration suggestions for voluntary playing. In contrast to Zeuner, this
instructional treatise is all text and no music.

Thomas Loud

Thomas Loud's organ method with its extraordinarily lengthy
title, discussed briefly in the first of this series of articles, was also
published in 1845.64   As the
title suggests, The Organ Study: Being an Introduction to the Practice of the Organ; together with a collection of Voluntaries, Preludes, and Interludes, original and selected; a Model of a Church Service; Explanations of the Stops and their Combinations; Studies for the Instrument; and Examples of Modulation intended to aid the Extempore Student; accompanied by an Engraving and description of the Mechanical construction of the Organ begins with explanations of organ basics important to Loud. These include descriptions of the basic organ mechanisms and stops, as well as practical matters such as beginning and releasing chords (Loud recommends rolling the notes individually from the bottom until all notes are sounding) and playing shakes. Significantly, he uses this material to lead into pointers on accompanying, illustrated in his model service for the Episcopal Church, before turning his attention to playing voluntaries. He does include two sample voluntaries in his "model service":  an introductory voluntary (shown in Example 1) and a voluntary for before the second psalm or hymn (in other words, an offertory). These voluntaries are musically straightforward, with basic registrations provided. Both include trills (shakes), an ornament that Loud seemed to feel was absolutely essential to the church organist's success. While the first voluntary is manualiter, the second indicates that the organist is to play certain bass clef notes with the pedals. Loud, however, provides small notes at these spots for those organists whose instruments do not have pedalboards.

Loud follows his model service with many pages of hymn
preludes and interludes in a variety of major and minor keys before furnishing
15 pages of voluntaries for church use, composed by himself and a variety of
other composers (Rinck, Cross, Russell, etc.). He does include several
voluntaries which are transcriptions, principally of religious works by Haydn.
He avoids the popular music pitfalls decried earlier in this article; although
he does include one "Religious March" by Gluck, it is quite austere
in character. At the end of this section, Loud adds a page illustrating the
"fine effect" of embellishing the end of a voluntary with a simple
suspension, emphasizing again the modest nature of this music.

At the end of his method, Loud provides some interesting
directions showing how to produce registrations of increasing power on instruments varying in size from four stops to modest three- manual stoplists, as well as ways to achieve particular registrations "effects." This leads into his closing and quite notable conclusions on voluntary playing, with which he ends his method. His concern is that voluntaries be consistently used, but not abused:

The style of performing (voluntaries) on this instrument
should always be in accordance with the use made of it, as forming a part of
the service of the Sanctuary; nothing therefore, opposed to the sacredness of
the place, can with propriety be introduced: whatever may be the character of
the Stops made use of, the music should be chaste and solemn, and all the
variety of the instrument, should (in the hands of the efficient performer) be
made conducive to the same subject. . . . Voluntaries should as much as
possible be suited to the subject of the discourse or character of the service
. . . 65

Loud continues by explaining how specific divisions or stops
can help to achieve these lofty goals. He concludes by explaining how to play
"fancy voluntaries," which his text implies are improvised and
probably not for use in church. 
His final admonishment is still applicable for improvisers today: "
. . . above all, remember to stop in time--a common fault with performers is,
that they never know when they have done enough."66

Cutler & Johnson

Before returning to Johnson's important American Church
Organ Voluntaries (mentioned in the first
article), we will make a brief digression to examine another of Johnson's
publications. Johnson originally published the Voluntaries in 1852 under his
name.  When it was republished in
1856, H. S. Cutler's name was included as well (see Example 2 - portraits of
Johnson and Cutler). A discussion of Cutler and the reasons for his addition in
the second edition is beyond the scope of this article, but apparently his
contribution was minimal (it is thought that perhaps he penned the
"Remarks"). Whatever the case, Johnson had originally intended to
write a second book, apparently planned in conjunction with American
Church Organ Voluntaries, called Instructions in the Art of Playing Voluntaries and Interludes and of Composing Simple Music. This book was conceived as a combination of an organ method and harmony book. It is thought that it existed in draft form and that Johnson was using it to teach his organ students. Unfortunately for the history of organ pedagogy, it was never published.67

Instead, Johnson published in 1854 his Practical
Instructions in Harmony, upon the Pestalozzian or Inductive System; Teaching
Musical Composition, and the Art of Extemporizing Interludes and Voluntaries. This book was unique in organ "methods" published to this point in that it was directed at the more sophisticated music student.68 Basically, it is a book of music theory with practical keyboard exercises. It was probably intended as a successor to Johnson's popular Instructions in Thorough Base which had undergone at least six reprints by this time, testifying not only to the need for these types of materials but also to the growing technical sophistication of the organist.

Johnson's Practical Instructions, however, contains no
discussion concerning church voluntaries, but approaches them from a completely
technical standpoint. This is not the case in American Church Organ
Voluntaries. The volume opens with
"Remarks," wherein the editors comment that one should speak of an
"opening voluntary" rather than a "voluntary before the
service" (as Zeuner does), since this voluntary is a part of the service
and should arouse the proper feelings in the listener for the worship which
will follow. They waste no time in criticizing the commonplace habit of playing
popular music, including bits of opera, as voluntaries. They warn the organist
not to give in to popular opinion which supports this sort of music, even if
they are getting pressure from a wealthy person in the congregation who has
money but no taste, ending by saying that in such cases it is better to
"vacate your office and retain the good opinion of all whose good opinion
is worth having" rather than to give in to "depraved taste."69
In regard to voluntaries after the service, Cutler and Johnson admit that there
are differing opinions on the value of playing music while people are leaving. They justify this practice by saying that there is already unavoidable noise at the end of the service as people prepare to leave, and therefore playing
appropriate music while this is happening will remind people for as long as
possible that they are still in the House of God. "What more appropriate
monitor than the solemn Diapasons judiciously managed?"70 The
"Remarks" answer many of the contemporary complaints mentioned
earlier.

The complete pre-publication title of this anthology, Organ Voluntaries, a Complete Collection, adapted to American Church Service, and designed for the use of Inexperienced Organists who have not Progressed far Enough in Their Studies to be able to Play Extemporaneous Voluntaries (i.e., improvised), indicates Johnson's purpose in compiling this collection--providing music for amateur organists. The voluntaries are all manualiter. Numbers 1-35 are opening voluntaries, while numbers 36-41 are opening voluntaries for use on festival occasions. Twelve closing voluntaries are included. Many of the voluntaries are by either Johnson or Cutler, but works by Haydn, Muller, Rinck, and Mendelssohn are included, as well as works by lesser-known composers of that period. The pieces contain some tempo, dynamic, and keyboard indications. The tempi vary, although in both the opening and closing voluntaries the majority of tempi designations provided are moderate. The voluntaries are one to two pages in length and generally homophonic in style. There are only isolated indications of sections with solo stops, marked in tiny print "solo . . . solo ends" (see Example 3 for the first half of an opening voluntary with these frugal registration markings). Thus there is nothing about these pieces which would relate them to popular music. Pinel suggests in the Foreword to the edition that although these pieces seem very plain to our contemporary ears, they would have been harmonically innovative, even "exhilarating," to mid-19th century rural listeners.71 (The harmony, while hardly daring, is more chromatic than that of the average hymns and service music.) One reason for the lack of excess in these pieces (and those in Loud's method) may have been the fact that Protestants were still strongly affected by the recent appearance of organs and conservative views of the appropriateness of instrumental music in
general.72 

The several printings of American Church Organ
Voluntaries testify to its popularity.
Gould comments that in his travels he did visit some congregations where the
voluntaries were appropriate and therefore useful (although he had many
negative experiences as well). Thus, Johnson and Cutler's music or at least the
approach to service-playing which it and Loud exemplified was represented in
practice and was not just a theoretical goal.

Southard & Whiting

Although organ methods from the Continent, American
materials for playing the harmonium or cabinet organ, and other unannotated
volumes of voluntaries appeared after Johnson's anthology, the next significant
collection was that of L. H. Southard and G. E. Whiting, entitled The Organist (1868). This volume is also an anthology of music for service use, with an introduction discussing registration and other useful information for the church organist. However, as will soon become evident, there are many
differences between this collection and that of Cutler and Johnson, despite the
similarity of their subjects and their separation in publication by only 16
years.

In the second half of the 19th century, one can observe the
rise of concert organs and concert organists. Large organs were built at
Tremont Temple in Boston (1853) and the Boston Music Hall (1863). The
increasing popularity and professionalism of orchestras fueled the popularity
of orchestral transcriptions for organ. 
Organists adopted some of the Romantic excesses of European organists,
such as the fascination in trying to recreate "storms" on the organ.
It is noteworthy that the first piece performed on the new Walcker organ in
Boston's Music Hall was the "Overture to William Tell" by Rossini.73
At the same time, the technical improvements and expanded size of organs made
it more practical to perform legitimate organ literature of greater magnitude
than the voluntaries.  The
dedication recitals of organs in churches now were devoted exclusively to organ
solos, whereas previously these events consisted of vocal solos accompanied by
organ with perhaps a few organ voluntaries.74 Several sources mention that Bach
organ works were performed in America for the first time in this period (about
the mid 1860s). Most of the concert organists, however, were English or
European.

In examining The Organist, these changes in organ literature in the second half of the 19th century are reflected.  The subtitle of the volume indicates that it is "a collection of voluntaries, studies, and transcriptions of moderate difficulty," and includes information on registration (which will be explored shortly).  The editors explain in the introduction that "melodious and piquant Voluntaries" are part of the church organist's responsibilities, and that therefore the aim of this volume is to supply opening and closing voluntaries which meet these requirements, complete with registrations.75 Like the Cutler and Johnson volume, this collection was apparently intended primarily for less experienced players who were not yet adept enough to improvise appropriate service music.  It is interesting that, unlike Johnson who taught improvisation based on models of Bach, Southard and Whiting refer the aspiring church improviser to the piano sonatas of Mozart and Haydn as a basis of study, pointing already to a sharp difference in outlook.

The music supplied for opening and closing voluntaries by
Southard and Whiting differs markedly from that of Cutler and Johnson. Even the
titles underscore this difference: although the term "voluntary" is
used in the introduction, the pieces are entitled "Prelude" and
"Postlude" (or "Postludium"--see Example 4). This implies a
slightly different function than the term "opening voluntary" which
Johnson carefully chooses (probably something closer  "voluntary before the service"). In addition,
several of the pieces have titles like "Reverie" or
"Romanza," reflecting a strong Romantic secular influence. The pieces
are much longer than those in American Church Organ Voluntaries
style='font-style:normal'>, and all include pedal parts on separate staves.
Three of the pieces are identified as transcriptions of Haydn, Mendelssohn, and
Mozart. The pieces are very pianistic technically, and include a multitude of
interpretive marks, including articulation, phrasing, and many dynamic
markings. Big chords alternate with solo passages, with all sorts of pianistic
accompaniment figures; one prelude even has a cadenza (#4), and piece #5, a
"Pastorale," contains running scale passages in 32nd notes. The
Postludes are all loud pieces, but the style of the Preludes varies widely, and
one is not always sure which category the pieces with other titles fall
into.  There is even a
"March," one of the styles specifically attacked by church music
critics of the previous generation.

It is interesting that the final piece in The Organist is Bach's "Celebrated Prelude and Fugue in e minor" (BWV 533), as edited by Mendelssohn. This seems to be a direct reflection of the apparently successful introduction of Bach into the concert organ repertoire at this time. It also suggests that organists were no longer expected to be able to distinguish sacred music from secular or concert repertoire, since both were equally acceptable in church. Apparently the responsibility of the organist to musically interpret the text and mood of the hymns and scriptures which had been emphasized earlier in the century was no longer a principal focus.

One of the most conspicuous differences between the two
organ anthologies, however, is in the treatment of organ registration. Here a
brief digression is necessary to survey the changes which had taken place in
organ construction between the writing of these two volumes. Although Americans
had begun building their own instruments instead of importing them from England
in the first half of the 19th century, the English influence remained very
strong.  By 1850, although loud
organs (by early standards) were increasing in popularity, the basic sound was
light and bright, emphasizing the diapasons and flutes, with some reeds and
strings included.  The manuals and
pedalboards were not standardized--both the Pedal and Swell divisions tended to
have incomplete ranges.76 The first large American organ was the Hook and
Hastings instrument installed in the Tremont Temple, Boston in 1853, with four
manuals and 70 stops.77 Thus, from about 1860 on, the enthusiasm for
increasingly louder organs continued, with a bolder, brighter sound appearing.
Console controls and nuances of the expression pedals became more important.
Organs now tended to be placed in the front of the church rather than hidden in
the balconies, and cases were often eliminated.78

These changes say a lot about the change in the role of the
organ in the church service. Around 1841, one writer complained that the organs
were sometimes unsuited for leading congregational singing, one of the possible
problems being that they were too small to really lead the singers and keep
them on pitch.79 However, by about 1850, Gould writes that performances were
gradually getting louder, complaining that in some churches the choir and
congregation combined could not sing above the organ, satisfying only those
"who are more pleased with noise than with sense."80 Johnson and
Cutler warn the organist about playing too loudly while accompanying in their
opening remarks, explaining that the organ should be subordinate to the
singers.81 However, it is interesting that in The Organist
style='font-style:normal'>, although the organs by this time must certainly
have been louder, this warning is never mentioned.

To return now to the topic of registration, both volumes
include information on registration in their introductions, as well as sample
specifications. (See Example 5 for the basic specification list from the Cutler
& Johnson collection.) As might be expected from the changes in organ
building, a much wider variety of stops is mentioned in the later volume. Both
collections describe stops, but Johnson and Cutler add information on the
purpose of some of these stops in worship.  For example, they recommend the diapason as "well
suited to church purposes in general," but guard against using the flute,
which "is a fancy stop, and generally much abused . . . when used as a
solo stop . . . the effect is suggestive of the theatre, or ball-room, rather
than the church."82 Within the pieces themselves, Johnson and Cutler
suggest only one specific stop in the entire volume, sometimes designating
where a solo stop should be used but not suggesting a particular stop. Southard
and Whiting, on the other hand, provide detailed registration suggestions at
the beginning and throughout every piece, as well as directions to use the
couplers, expression pedals, and tremulant. They also suggest in the
introduction that one of the responsibilities of the organist is to create
"striking and delicious effects of the organ," which they advise
requires the use of varied registrations and separate manuals.83

This emphasis on registration, coupled with the changes in
organs observed above, suggest that the role of the organist was changing by
about 1870. Although Johnson and Cutler provide basic material on registration
for the stops generally appearing on a "modern" organ, they are not
as concerned with how the organist applies or combines these stops as they are
with the spiritual effects that various stops induce.  Southard and Whiting, however, comment from the start that
"the chaotic droning and ridiculous combinations of stops which were
satisfying until within a few years, will no longer be endured by Congregations
of average musical culture."84 This implies a concern that the organist
have a greater technical knowledge of registration than was previously
considered satisfactory. But this comment also suggests that the organist is
now expected to start with the registration concepts of "musical
culture" of the society at large and apply them to the service of the
church, reflecting the increasing importance of musical culture in society in
general. This differs from the earlier outlook on registration which assumes
that the organist chooses stops based on their contribution to solemn worship
without regard for (or deliberately in contrast to) the types of sounds
associated with secular culture.

A final point of contention regarding registration is
illustrated in the closing comment of the introduction to The Organ
style='font-style:normal'>ist,
where the editors comment that they hope that their collection will "tend
to improve the taste and ability of players, and thereby create a general
demand for more complete and effective organs than are often found outside of
two or three of our largest cities."85 This is in marked contrast to
Cutler and Johnson, who, although they would agree with the goal of improving
the taste and ability of players, are trying to "improve" it in the
opposite direction from the goals of Southard and Whiting. It is noteworthy
that Gould writes in 1853 that organists should be careful that their playing
serves no other purpose than to recommend the organ and organ-builder86--what
Southard and Whiting seem to be suggesting as a positive goal.

It is interesting to note that in looking at the two
above-mentioned church music anthologies, there is scarcely any mention of
accompanying hymns and psalms. This may reflect the new rise of the use of
voluntaries and corresponding lack of suitable literature (thus the focus on
this aspect), or it may be considered a commentary on the relative lack of
importance of hymn-playing to these editors.  Southard and Whiting, for example, ignore the subject
altogether.

In studying the voluntaries in The Organ
style='font-style:normal'>ist, it
becomes apparent that some of the registration changes must have required
pistons, which as stated were becoming more popular. This makes the fact that
this volume excludes a discussion of registering hymns even more interesting,
since changes between verses of hymns to illustrate the meaning of the text
would now have been much easier and smoother. Perhaps due to the emphasis in
earlier years on accompanying, the editors were interested in looking ahead to new directions in church music.

by Gregory Crowell

Gregory Crowell is university organist of Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Michigan, where he also teaches harpsichord, music theory, and music history. He also serves as director of music at Trinity United Methodist Church in Grand Rapids and is secretary of the Midwestern Historical Keyboard Society. Crowell holds degrees from the New England Conservatory and the University of Cincinnati, and has studied with Yuko Hayashi, Bernard Lagacé, Mireille Lagacé, Harald Vogel, and Roberta Gary. He has performed as organist, harpsichordist and clavichordist in Europe, Japan, Canada, and the United States. In 1994 he was invited to speak on the music of Bach for the AGO national convention in Dallas, and in 2000 he was the only non-Japanese invited to lecture and perform at St. Luke’s Bach Week in Tokyo.

One defining characteristic of late twentieth- and early twenty-first century musical culture has certainly been a devotion to the reconstruction of the performance traditions of the past.1 Defunct instruments like the viola pomposa have been eagerly researched, and their historical playing technique scrupulously recreated.2 Everything from the proportions of Bach's fingers3 to the cost of his candles4 has been examined in an attempt to understand the atmosphere and circumstances in which his music was made. While many such pursuits have taught us much about the music's genesis and relevance, sometimes the result has been an enthusiasm-induced myopia that has kept us from seeing the true possibilities. For example, a generation of harpsichordists played Bach on their copies of late eighteenth-century French harpsichords before recognizing that the eighteenth-century German harpsichord was a different animal altogether--indeed, one that has yet to be fully revived. And it has only been in very recent years that the not unimportant role played by the early German piano in Bach's late life has come to be appreciated and explored. This state has largely been caused by a simple deflection: the mere recognition of a larger truth (e.g., Bach played the harpsichord and not the modern piano) has sometimes been sufficient distraction to urge us down a side-winding path toward the most convenient solutions.

 

The same can be said of the situation with Bach's keyboard continuo instruments. Early on in the revival of historical performance practices, it was recognized that a keyboard instrument was needed to reinforce the bass and fill out the harmony in Bach's music. Yet the full extent to which the chosen keyboard instrument can influence the total sonority of a work was given little attention. In fact the debate quickly degenerated into the essentially unimportant and uninteresting argument of whether to use organ or harpsichord in Bach's vocal works.5 Once the dust settled over this question however, few musicians felt compelled to look much further into the matter. Among the groups that are currently recording Bach under the umbrella of historically informed performance, not one can claim to be truly faithful to the total body of historical literature on the sonority of Bach's keyboard continuo.

The first question to ask, then, is: what instruments were being used for continuo playing in Bach's time? It might surprise many to learn that there is very little evidence of box-shaped portable organs6 resembling our continuo organs in use in Central Germany in the eighteenth century. Bach certainly knew very small organs. There was a four-stop organ as well as a regal at St. Michael's in Lüneburg, where Bach went to study in 1700.7 In Leipzig there was a harpsichord and a small organ in an auditorium adjacent to the Cantor's office in the Thomasschule,8 and Bach used a small organ built in 1628 and tuned to choir pitch at St. Paul's in Leipzig when he accompanied the eight-part motet Der Geist hilft unsre Schwachheit auf (BWV 226) in 1729.9

None of these organs still exists, but we do have some idea of what was considered an average small organ at the time.  Positiv organs were sometimes found in a private house or a palace chamber, but also in churches and church rehearsal rooms. Standing anywhere from seven to ten feet tall, and containing anywhere from four to eleven stops, these instruments were distinguished from larger organs by two outstanding features: they had only one manual, and they lacked a Pedal division. Such organs may or may not have had an 8' Principal.

A few organs of this size by Bach's friend Gottfried Silbermann still exist. The organ presently in the undercroft of the Cathedral in Bremen, Germany,  was originally conceived for a small church in Etzdorf bei Roßwein in 1745. (See Illustration page 20; the Pedal in the photograph is a later addition.) The instrument contains eight stops and numerous registration possibilities:

                  8'             Rohrflöte

                  4'             Principal

                  4'             Flöte

                  3'             Nasat (treble only)

                  2'             Octava

                  11/2'      Quinta

                  1'             Sifflöt

                                    Sesquialtera (treble only)

A positiv organ by Silbermann from 1728 still survives in Tiefenau. It contains nine stops, including an 8' Principal.

                  8'             Principal

                  8'             Gedackt

                  4'             Octav

                  4'             Rohrflöte

                  3'             Nasat

                  2'             Octav

                  11/3'      Quinte 

                  1'             Sifflöte

                                    Zimbel II

There is still one small organ in existence definitely used by Bach for continuo: the small Zacharias Hildebrandt organ in the village church of Störmthal.  On November 2, 1723 Bach dedicated this organ with a performance of his cantata Höchsterwünschtes Freudenfest (BWV 194). The original specification was:10

Manual

                  8'             Principal

                  8'             Gedackt

                  8'             Quintadena

                  4'             Praestant

                  4'             Rohrflöte

                  3'             Nasat

                  2'             Octave

                  13/5'      Terz 

                  11/2'      Quinte

                  1'             Sifflöte

                                    Mixtur III

                                    Cornet IV

Pedal

                  16'          Subbaß

                  16'          Posaune

For the most part, however, organ continuo accompaniments would have been played on a large instrument. During his time in Weimar, Bach had at his disposal an organ of twenty-four stops in a gallery high above the altar in the castle chapel. When desired, a sliding unit could be engaged to close off the gallery's opening into the main body of the chapel, thus creating a separate music rehearsal chamber containing (besides the organ) a harpsichord, a spinet, and other musical instruments. In St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, the organ Bach used would have been most likely the three-manual, thirty-six stop organ in the rear gallery, or, for special effects (such as in the St. Matthew Passion), the two-manual, twenty-one stop swallow's nest organ that was situated high above the crossing.

With all of these resources at the continuo player's fingertips"organs small, medium, and large"it is no surprise that continuo players were creative in their continuo realizations. Before delving into some of the more impressive registrations, it is would be worthwhile to consider the stop most commonly heard in continuo realizations today, the Gedackt 8'. It is true that the Gedackt 8' was often regarded as the basic continuo stop. Indeed, Bach's colleague in Leipzig, Johann Adolph Scheibe, specified that one should use a Gedackt 8' in soft arias and recitatives,11 and Bach himself asked for a Stillgedackt 8' for his organ in Mühlhausen for playing concerted music.12 Nevertheless, an 8' Gedackt on Bach's instruments in Weimar or Leipzig would have had a substantially more supportive voice than the very small-scaled stops found on the average trunk organ.

With all of this in mind"the size of the instruments used by Bach and the presence their larger-scaled stops must have made"it is surprising that virtually no modern conductors have ventured beyond the now-traditional use of the four-to-six-stop trunk organ. One Dutch musician who is currently traversing the Bach cantatas in the recording studio acknowledges that the effect of the trunk organ used in his performances is remarkably different than that of the organs used by Bach.13 Yet he justifies his decision by explaining that the trunk organ offers greater convenience in tuning and logistics"advantages, he says, that must outweigh the loss in sonority. What is bothersome about this argument is that it admits to purchasing convenience at the cost of musical effect. Indeed, where else does an historically conscientious approach to performance begin than with an attempt to use the right instrument?

The present preference for the trunk organ may be no more than a symptom of a lingering neo-baroque reticence to trust the evidence that has come down to us. A simple example will explain. In his proposal for the rebuilding of the organ in Mühlhausen in 1708 Bach proposed a manual Fagotto (Bassoon) 16' "that sounds delicate in concerted music."14 Ton Koopman confessed that he has tried using a 16-foot reed as a continuo support, but that it so seriously compromised the dynamic flexibility of the continuo group that he found it impractical. The truth is, however, that evidence of the use of a Bassoon 16' in continuo among Bach and his contemporaries is simply too great to ignore, no matter how puzzling it may seem, at least initially. For example, the organ builder Heinrich Gottfried Trost, whose organ in Altenburg Bach played and admired in 1739, stated that the Bassoon 16' "can be well used in concerted music."15 As with all historical registrations, however, the effectiveness of the use of a Bassoon 16' as a continuo stop will largely depend on the texture and character of the music in which it is used. Bach gives us no clue as to his intentions, but his contemporary Johann Friedrich Walther stipulated that the Bassoon 16' in a 1732 Joachim Wagner organ in Berlin was useful specifically for playing running basses in continuo.16 The experience of using such a stop in faster-moving basses might teach us a great deal about what sort of instrumental playing and ensemble that continuo stop supported. The result could well be revelatory, prompting a reevaluation of how we expect Bach's music to sound. This sort of evidence confronts us once again with the chicken-and-egg question that has been part of the performance practice argument from the very beginning: Were the tools at Bach's disposal an inspiration or a limitation?  A deeper look at the evidence will convince us to view these tools as not only an inspiration, but an invitation as well.

Let us examine some alternatives to the trunk organ's small-scaled 8-foot Gedackt. Jacob Adlung recommends accompanying a soft voice with a single flute, such as a Gedackt 8' or a Quintatön 8'. According to Adlung, one can also use a Principal 8' or a Gemshorn 8' for difficult recitatives, or if the singer is insecure. Running passages on the manuals, however, can be played with Violdigamba 8' with or without a Principal. Ideally, the organist should have one or two flute stops drawn on one manual, and a Principal on another manual, in order to facilitate quick dynamic changes.17 Unlike the trunk organ, which relies on upperwork for color, sources such as Adlung clearly called for great color flexibility at the eight-foot level.

Adlung then adds that the organ must play out in chorales, especially since chorales usually involve full choir and congregation. For chorales he recommends Principal 8', Oktave [4'?], or Quinte 3'.

The Principal 8' seems to have been a valued continuo stop altogether. Among other sources close to Bach that mention the importance of the Principal 8' as a continuo stop are Walther,18 Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel,19 Christoph Gottlieb Schröter,20 and Johann Samuel Petri.21 Supported by a fuller-sounding continuo, even small ensembles will be encouraged to play with the sort of full-throated, forceful sound that we know so well from German Baroque organs like those of Arp Schnitger and Gottfried Silbermann.

With only a handful of stops, the skilled organist at an organ of some size then had the resources to play a wide variety of dynamics, at the same time making a substantial contribution to the overall color of the ensemble. For example, in 1738 Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel required the following stops for concerted music at the large two-manual Trost organ in Altenberg:

Principal choir with mixtures

Quintaden 16' and 8'

Bordun and Gedackt 8'

Gemshorn 4'

Nasat 22/3'

Subbaß, Violonbaß22

While Stölzel used a Principal chorus, the use of higher and more powerful Principal stops is not always sanctioned. Adlung notes the habit in village churches of accompanying the choir at the end of pieces with full organ, adding that one does not hear the singers or instrumentalists well.23 Petri warned against using reeds, mixtures, or mutations in continuo.24

Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel named the stops Subbaß and Violonbaß among his continuo stops, and this fact reminds us of an important function of the continuo, and one that is completely unfulfilled by the use of a trunk organ. The continuo player is not just to fill out the harmony, but should make a substantial contribution to the overall sonority of the bass line itself. A number of sources mention the use of 16-foot manual stops to strengthen the bass. These include:

1. Jacob Adlung, who recommends Quintatön 16' or Bordun 16', even strengthened by an Oktav and a quiet 8-foot, especially if one is playing staccato.25

2. Heinrich Gottfried Trost, who recommended Flute traverse 16' und Spitzflöte 8' (as found on the organ at Altenburg).26

3. Daniel Gottlob Türk, who stipulated that "one can still lend to the bass the needed depth and emphasis by means of one or two [!] 16-foot registers in the Hauptwerk. . . ."27

4. Johann Gottfried Walther, who stated that Gedackt 16, 8, 4 "are the most accommodating for the general bass."28

While many of these sixteen-foot stops are manual stops, clearly organists were called upon to double the bass line in the Pedal as well, another practice virtually ignored in modern performances. The number of contemporary sources that describe playing the bass line on the Pedal is simply overwhelming. Petri writes:

. . .Im Pedale ein 16füßiges [ziehen], oder wenn sie nicht stark sind, zwey: und höchstens noch ein 8füßiges Principal zum forte, und zum äußersten forte noch ein 4füßiges Principal, welches jedoch besser wegbleibt, es wäre denn, daß gar keine Violons, Violoncelli und Fagotts mitspielten, und der Organist den Baß allein machen müßte, wie auf dem Lande. . . .

. . .In the Pedal, [draw] a 16', or, if the [Pedal stops] are not strong, two, and at least an 8-foot Principal for the forte, and for extreme forte a 4-foot Principal as well, which is better left out if there are no violones, cellos, and bassoons playing along, and the organist must play the bass alone, as is done in the country. . . 29

Türk states the case clearly:

Daß aber die ganz tiefen Register, z. B. Posaune 32 und 16 Fuß im Pedale nicht einmal geschwind ansprechen, und noch überdies mehr ein Getöse machen, als einen deutlichen Ton angeben, lehrt die Erfahrung. Außerdem muß man freylich, ohne einen hinlänglichen Grund, das Pedal nicht weglassen. . .

Experience teaches that the very low stops such as Posaune 32' and 16' in the Pedal do not speak quickly, and furthermore [they] produce more of a racket than a clear tone. Otherwise one must certainly not leave the Pedal out without sufficient reason. . . . 30

Sufficient reasons to leave the Pedal out are explained in a footnote: when the violone (i.e., an instrument playing at sixteen-foot pitch) drops out, when there is a senza basso indication in the score, when a short passage is repeated an octave higher, and when the bass pauses in fugues. In these cases the bass should be played only on the manuals without a 16-foot stop.

Sources closer to Bach include Johann Friedrich Walther (Pedal Principal 16 "gravitaetisch," used in large ensembles; Pedal Violon 16 "sehr tief und kräftig"),31 Gottfried Heinrich Stölzel32, and Friedrich Eberhardt Niedt (who recommends Pedal 16', even a reed 16', to make the Pedal clearer).33

Indeed, many sources state that Pedal stops need not be restricted to Principals and Flutes. In 1719 E. Lindner ordered a reworking of the Pedal Posaune at the famous Silbermann organ in Freiberg to make it more suitable for use in concerted music.34 Just how such a stop could be used in continuo is difficult to imagine, at least until one considers a work like Ein' feste Burg ist unser Gott (BWV 80). The manuscript of the Leipzig version (a copy by J. C. Altnickol from 1744) specifies a double continuo: Violoncello e cembalo for the first bass (i.e., 8-foot), and organ and violone for the cantus firmus bass (i.e., 16-foot).35 The manuscript specifies "Pedal Posaune 16 Fuß." What performers today would seek to find an instrumental, choral, and acoustical solution to justify such an overwhelming registration?

Perhaps all that has been discussed here can be summed up and amplified best by a remarkable source of information on continuo practice that is very little known in the English literature on the subject. That it is so little known is lamentable especially because it may well be the most telling witness to the continuo registrations practiced by Bach and his associates in Leipzig.

The registrations by Christoph Gottlieb Schröter (1699-1782)36 summarized at the end of this article provide a glimpse of the sort of continuo registrations used on Saxon organs in Bach's immediate circle. Schröter and Bach knew each other well. Like Bach, Schröter was a member of Lorenz Christoph Mizler's Society of Musical Science in Leipzig. When Bach's music came under attack 1749 by the critic Scheibe, Bach turned to Schröter, a friend of some thirty years,37 to muster a counterattack in the musical press. Undoubtedly, Schröter was intimately familiar with Bach's music as well as with Bach's performance style. Though these registrations were not published until the 1770s, they were recorded in the early 1750s, at which time Schröter was organist in Nordhausen,38 a city about halfway between Leipzig and Göttingen, where he played a sizable organ built in 1729 by Johann Georg Papenius.39

There are several extraordinary things to note about these registrations, including:

1. The frequent use of more than one 8-foot stop together.

2. The tendency to avoid stops higher than 4-foot for chordal, i.e., non-solo accompaniments.

3. The practice of combining quick-speaking stops (such as a Flute) with slow-speaking stops (such as a String).

4. Dynamic flexibility, largely achiev-ed by manual changes.

5. The general size of the registrations, including those suggested for recitatives and ariosi (with the left hand on the Hauptwerk).

6. Color extended even to recitatives, where four-foot stops are included.

7. Varied registrational color according to the obbligato instrument used (oboe, flutes, muted strings).

8. The simply fantastic registrations for organ obbligato.

There is still a lot to investigate in the matter of continuo sonority in Bach's music. For example, there is the question of pitch. While many organs were tuned to choir pitch (Chorton A = 460-490), many had certain stops tuned to the lower chamber pitch Kammerton A = 390-415)40, giving them a handful of stops suitable for accompanying instruments tuned to chamber pitch.41 Some organs even had entire keyboards tuned to different pitches, or a manual division that was playable at either Chor- or Kammerton.42 And then there is the entire question of harpsichord sonority, including the use of a 16-foot register in continuo accompaniment. And then there are fortepianos, Lautenwerke, Geigen-Claviere, keyed pantaleons, and any number of other instruments awaiting a willing and wondering ear to explore how rich and how varied the sonority of Bach's continuo realizations must have been.43

It has not been the intention of this article to vilify completely the use of trunk organs today; indeed, their usefulness and often their beauty are undeniable. Nor is there any desire to throw verbal cold water on the vital music making of great musicians like Ton Koopman, Philippe Herreweghe, Masaaki Suzuki, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, or Gustav Leonhardt. It is not the trunk organ's existence, but its pervasiveness that is so limiting, serving as an ever-present reminder of our anti-baroque insistence that the continuo must somehow live in the shadow of the real music. Perhaps it is time for us as continuo players to step forward from behind the little box and become a full voice in the total sonority of Bach's music.

After playing a prelude, the organist takes off all stops except the following:

Hauptwerk: Principal 8', Gemshorn 8', Viola di Gamba 8', Octava 4'

Rückpositiv: Quintadena 8', Gedackt 8', Flöte 4', Rohrflöte 4'

Brustpositiv: Gedackt 8', Gedackt 4', Violetto 4'

Pedal: Principal 16', Principal 8', Violon 16'

Couple Hauptwerk to Pedal

Accompany full chorus and orchestra on the Hauptwerk. For passages with orchestra alone, play with the right hand on the Rückpositiv.

For echo passages, leave out the Pedal and play with the right hand on the Rückpositiv.

For various kinds of recitatives:

1. Use the same registration above, removing the Pedal coupler and the Hauptwerk Octava 4'.

2. Use the registration above, playing on the Hauptwerk with the left hand, and on the Rückpositiv with the right hand.

Aria with oboe obbligato accompanied by violins:

Hauptwerk (left hand): Principal 8', Gemshorn 8', Viola di Gamba 8'

Rückpositiv (right hand): Quintadena 8', Gedackt 8', Rohrflöte 4'

Pedal: Principal 16', Violon 16', Hauptwerk to Pedal

Aria with one or two flutes and muted strings:

Hauptwerk (right hand): Flauto traverso [8'], Gemshorn 8'

Rückpositiv (left hand): Quintadena 8', Gedackt 8'

Pedal, uncoupled: Violon 16', Principal 8'

 

Mournful aria with a single solo instrument (e.g., oboe) and organo concertato, without other accompanying instruments:

Hauptwerk (left hand): Viola di Gamba 8', Gemshorn 8'

Rückpositiv (right hand): Vox humana 8', Quintadena 8'

Pedal, uncoupled: Violon 16', Principal 8'

Aria with more than one solo instrument, organo concertato, and other accompanying instruments:

Hauptwerk (left hand): Principal 8', Gemshorn 8', Viola di Gamba 8'

Rückpositiv (right hand): Quintadena 8', Gedackt 8', Rohrflöte 4', Principal 4', Octava 2'

Pedal, coupled: Principal 16', Violon 16', Principal 8'

Notes

                  1.              This article began as a lecture delivered at the Improvisation Symposium held at Eastern Michigan University in November 2000, and was sponsored by the Ann Arbor Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. I am grateful to Dr. Pamela Ruiter-Feenstra, Professor of Organ at EMU, and the Ann Arbor Chapter of the AGO for affording me the opportunity to delve into these matters.

                  2.              Ulrich Drüner, "Violoncello piccolo und Viola pomposa bei Johann Sebastian Bach: Zu Fragen von Identität und Spielweise dieser Instrumente" Bach Jahrbuch (1987), pp. 85-112.

                  3.              Quentin Faulkner, J. S. Bach's Keyboard Technique: A Historical Approach (St. Louis: Concordia, 1984), p. 18.

                  4.              Christoph Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach: The Learned Musician (New York: Norton, 2000), p. 540.

                  5.              These arguments were finally given a rest by Lawrence Dreyfus, Bach's Continuo Group: Players and Practices in His Vocal Works (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987).

                  6.              Also referred to as trunk organs, positive organs, continuo organs, Kastenorgeln, or Truhenorgeln.

                  7.              Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach, p. 477.

                  8.              Ibid, p. 250.

                  9.              Ibid, p. 316.

                  10.           As the organ survives today, only the specification of the Pedal has been slightly altered.

                  11.           " . . .da man hingegen bey schwachen Arien und bey Recitativen allein des Gedackt acht Fuß gebrauchen darf." See J. A. Scheibe, Critischer Musicus (Leipzig: 1745), p. 415.

                  12.           "Stillgedockt 8f., so da vollkommen zur Music accordieret". See Frans Brouwer, Reinoud Egberts, Hans Jansen, Paul Peeters, Maurice Pirenne, editors, Bach's Orgelbüchlein in nieuw perspectief (Utrecht: Hogeschool voor de Kunsten, 1988), p. 172ff. The term Music as used in this context most certainly refers to concert music. Gott-fried Silbermann, in his proposal for the organ in Freiberg, described his Gedackt 8 as being gently voiced for concerted music ("Gedacktes 8 Fuß zur music liebl. intoniert"). See Frank Harald Greß, Die Klanggestalt der Orgeln Gottfried Silbermanns (Frankfurt and Wiesbaden: Bochinsky and Breitkopf und Härtel, 1989), p. 132.

                  13.           Ton Koopman, "Aspekte der Aufführungspraxis" in Christoph Wolff and Ton Koopman, Die Welt der Bach Kantaten (Stuttgart and Weimar: Bärenreiter and Metzler, 1996), vol. 1, p. 222.

                  14.           ". . .in der music delicat klinget." See Brouwer, et. al., Bach's Orgelbüchlein, p. 172ff.

                  15.           Quoted in Ewald Kooiman, Gerhard Weinberger, and Hermann J. Busch, Zur Interpretation der Orgelmusik Johann Sebastian Bachs (Kassel: Merseburger, 1995), p. 163.

                 16.           See Brouwer, et. al., Bach's Orgelbüchlein, p. 181. The organ was in the Garnisonskirche. Jacob Adlung also mentions the Bassoon's usefulness as a continuo stop. See J. Adlung, Anleitung zur musikalischen Gelahrtheit, Erfurt, 1758, p. 386.

                  17.           Adlung, Gelahrtheit, p. 386ff.

                  18.           Principal 8 "unter dem Tutti einer Music." See Brouwer, et. al., Bach's Orgelbüchlein, pp. 181-82.

                  19.           Specifically on the Trost organ in Altenburg. See Greß, Klanggestalt, p. 132.

                  20.           Christoph Gottlieb Schröter, Deutliche Anweisung zum General-Baß, Halberstadt 1772, pp. 187-90.

                  21.           Johann Samuel Petri, Anleitung zur praktischen Musik, 2. Auflage (Leipzig, 1782), p. 169ff.

                  22.           Greß, Klanggestalt, pp. 132-33.

                  23.           Adlung, Musica mechanica organoedi (Berlin, 1768), p. 171ff.

                  24.           Petri, Anleitung, p. 169.

                  25.           Adlung, Anleitung, p. 386. Elsewhere Adlung even suggests using a Principal 16'. See Musica mechanica organoedi, p. 171ff. One assumes the staccato reference is because 16-foot stops alone generally do not speak quickly enough to perform staccato notes successfully.

                  26.           Kooiman et. al., Interpretation der Orgelmusik, p. 163.

                  27.           Daniel Gottlob Türk, Von den wichtigsten Pflichten, (Halle, 1787), p. 156.

                  28.           ". . .so zum G[eneral B[aß] am bequehmsten ist." See Johann Gottfried Walther Musikalisches Lexicon (Leipzig, 1732), p. 275.

                  29.           See Petri, Anleitung, p. 169ff.

                  30.           Türk, Pflichten, pp. 156-57.

                  31.           Brouwer, et. al., Orgelbüchlein, p. 183.

                  32.           Greß, Klanggestalt, pp. 132-33.

                  33.           Friedrich Eberhardt Niedt, Musikalische Handleitung (Hamburg: 1710-12).

                  34.           Greß, Klanggestalt, p. 132.

                  35.           Dreyfus, Bach's Contiuo Group, pp. 15-16.

                  36.           Christoph Gottlieb Schröter, Deutliche Anweisung zum General-Baß, Halberstadt 1772, pp. 187-90.

                  37.           Wolff, Johann Sebastian Bach, p. 423.

                  38.           Julie Ann Sadie, Companion to Baroque Music, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990, p. 192.

                  39.           See Johannes Schäfer, Nordhäuser Orgelchronik (Berlin: Buchhandlung des Waisenhauses, 1939), pp. 54-56.

                  40.           See Daniel R. Melamed and Michael Marissen, An Introduction to Bach Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), pp. 142-45, for an introduction to this thorny issue.

                  41.           Adlung stipulates just which stops are to be tuned to Kammerton: In the Pedal at least the Subbaß and in large churches an 8-foot and a 16-foot flute as well.  In the Positiv the Musikgedackt, in the Hauptmanuale "as much as is needed for an obligato bass" ("so viel, als ein obligater Baß nöthig hat"). He then goes on to say that the castle organ in Merseburg has the following stops in Kammerton: Gedackt 4', Principal 4', Grobgedackt 8', Pedal Subbaß 16' and Octav 8'. See Adlung, Gelahrtheit, p. 386. The Wagner organ in the Cathedral in Brandenburg had a Gedecktes 8 Fuß Cammer Thon in the Obermanual. See Andreas Kitschke, Die historische Wagner-Orgel im Dom zu Brandenburg/ Havel (Passau: Kunstverlag-Peda, 1998), p. 15.

                  42.           The Johann Michael Röder organ built 1722-1725 for St. Magdalena in Breslau had a Pedal Kammerbass 16' and Kammerbass 8' (tuned to Kammerton), and Chorbass 16', tuned to Chorton. The entire Unterclavier could be played in either Chorton or Kammerton.

                  43.           See John Koster, "The Quest for Bach's Clavier: An Historiographical Interpretation," Early Keyboard Journal 14 (1996), pp. 65-84.

by Earl Holt

Part 1 was published in the January, 1996 issue of The Diapason.

es ist genug... by Sten Hanson
Background

Sten Hanson, born in 1936 in Klövsjö, Sweden, has been chairman of the Society of Swedish Composers since 1984. Although self-taught as a composer, he has been chairman of the Fylkingen language group, and an executive committee member of the International Society for Contemporary Music (ISCM), and Electronic Music Studio (EMS). For the last thirty years he has worked in experimental music, literature, and art, producing instrumental, vocal, and electro-acoustic music for radio and television performances. The premiere of Hanson's Wiener-Lieder for soprano, piano, and recorded tape, took place at the 1987 Swedish Music Spring Festival. Hanson tours internationally as a lecturer and artist.30

Music journalist Göran Bergendal writes that "the initial point of departure for Sten Hanson's art is literature--with underlying associations with popular and oral traditions of poetry."31 Hanson has treated historical and political subjects in his compositions, and even used the science fiction of Edgar Rice Burroughs in a 1982 work, The John Carter Song Book.

Hanson has composed two organ works: Extrasensory Conceptions III for organ solo (1964) and es ist genug... for organ solo (1985), the work selected for this article.32 Extrasensory Conceptions III, however, was written for the late organ virtuoso Karl-Erik Welin, who was recognized for creativity in graphic score interpretation. Hanson writes that the work is "so closely related to this now deceased performer that it hardly can be used again." Hanson is currently composing a new work for organ and tape, "with the loudspeaker placed in the opposite side of the room in relation to the organ," for well-known Swedish organ virtuoso Hans-Ola Ericsson.33

Swedish National Radio produced a live broadcast of the premiere of es ist genug... (it is enough...) on February 8, 1986, as performed by Ericsson at the Jacob's Church in Stockholm. The piece, which is dedicated to Ericsson, has received approximately 150 European performances and has been broadcast in several countries, according to the composer. It was published in 1988, al-though the score lists no publication date. The title of the piece is correctly written in lower-case letters and is followed by three ellipsis points.34

Although es ist genug... is based on J.S. Bach's setting of the Lutheran chorale, the piece is not the expected chorale prelude, intended for a church service. Moreover, Hanson has always expressed extreme criticism of the Church and its tenets. Ericsson writes: "In this scherzandolike piece he [Hanson] drives his own criticism in absurdum, and the end gesture, a great cluster in diminuendo which concludes in major/minor tonality, says 'Enough of that now!'"35 es ist genug... is therefore Hanson's commentary by double entendre on religious dogma, and is not a church work based on the chorale text.

Structure

As a musical allusion to the four-syllable title of es ist genug..., the primary motivic material is taken from three four-pitch fragments of the chorale melody: (1) A, B, C-sharp, D-sharp--the distinctive, ascending whole-tone phrase that begins the chorale; (2) C-sharp, B, D, C-sharp--taken from the penultimate phrase of the chorale; and (3) E, C-sharp, B, A--the descending final notes of the chorale. The three fragments are treated individually in sections linked by clusters or extended rests. As pointed out by Ericsson, the rapid repetition in absurdum of the motivic fragments is the predominant compositional technique used in the piece. Table 3 shows the structural organization of es ist genug... .

es ist genug... is primarily a tonal piece, since it is based on the original Bach harmonization of the chorale in the key of A major. Non-tonal elements do occur, however: (1) dissonant harmonizations of the chorale in mm. 14, 20-21, and 50-56; (2) clusters, which serve to accompany the figuration in mm. 57-64, and to punctuate areas of rapidly repeated motives throughout the piece; and (3) the graphic notation and A-major/minor chord at the end of the piece (m. 71).

Registration

A three-manual instrument is necessary to perform the piece, since extended sections of rapid changes are divided among three different manuals. It is not feasible to make quick registration changes on a two-manual instrument, even with the help of a console assistant. Also, since these changes contribute greatly to timbral variety, and occur at irregular intervals, it is unacceptable merely to alternate between two manuals.

Dynamic changes in the piece require significant use of the Swell expression pedal, although stop changes can be made by an assistant if the instrument has no expressive divisions. The piece requires 56-key manuals and a 29-key pedal clavier, and thus can be performed on instruments with short upper octaves or limited pedal ranges.

Registration is outlined in the score. Table 4 lists the individual registrations specifically indicated for each manual.

Interpretation

As outlined in Table 3, note values of the motivic figuration decrease steadily throughout the piece, from eighth notes to sixteenth notes to thirty-second notes. Therefore, the beginning tempo must be slow enough to accommodate both the accelerando in mm. 51-56 and the thirty-second notes in the final pages. No tempo is printed in the score. The tempos in Ericsson's compact disc recording are useful as a guideline, however: the initial quarter note tempo of 44 has increased to 68 by the end of the accelerando in mm. 51-56.

With the exception of the final arm cluster in m. 71, all manual clusters are played as chromatic palm clusters, performed by playing as many black and white keys as possible within the range outlined. Each palm cluster is held the length of a quarter note, unless tied to another cluster. Tied clusters occur in mm. 47, 49, and 65; they follow the customary rules for tied notes.

Although the left hand can sustain both black and white keys in the long palm cluster in mm. 57-64, the feet will be able to cover only the white pedal keys in the accompanying pedal cluster. A console assistant, if available, can play the lower part of the pedal cluster and the left-hand palm cluster on the Swell manual. This assistance makes it possible for the performer to position one hand on each manual for the quick changes. It will also enable the performer to close the Swell expression pedal with the right foot. If the pedal dynamic has to be reduced to balance the manuals, the assistant can remove stops. As the cluster sound diminishes, the manual figuration emerges gradually from the cacophony.

During each section of rapid motive repetition, a form of staccato articulation is printed in the score: (1) stacc., mm. 24-34; (2) molto stacc., mm. 36-46; and (3) staccatissimo, mm. 50-64. The increasingly detached articulation maintains clarity as the note values decrease throughout the piece.

Almost all dynamic changes in the piece are accomplished by stop changes. Nevertheless, the Swell expression pedal is used in mm. 14-15, 21, 51-64, 67-69, and 71. These dynamic changes made with the Swell pedal are structural and must not be arbitrarily omitted if the instrument has no expressive divisions. A console assistant can make the changes by gradually adding or removing stops.

The first recording of es ist genug... was a compact disc recording by Ericsson on January 19, 1986, three weeks before the premiere, at the Jacob's Church in Stockholm. In 1989, a Russian organist, Alexander Fiseisky, made another recording on the Melodya label. Hanson writes: "I have heard his [Fiseisky's] version in a concert in the chapel of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, but I have never received a copy of the record, not even before the present Russian chaos."36

On the Ericsson recording, the final ffff cluster (m. 71) takes sixty seconds for the resolution to the A major/minor chord and for the diminuendo to ppp. The cluster is struck initially with both arms, reduced gradually to palm clusters, and then resolved poco a poco to the final A-major/minor chord. For the diminuendo, the expression pedal is gradually closed, or stops are removed by an assistant.

The Ericsson recording, made from a preliminary version of the score, differs somewhat from the 1988 published score, as shown in Table 5.

In mm. 1-12 and 16-19, Ericsson plays five repeated notes per measure, instead of six, taking advantage of the vast tonal resources of the five-manual instrument in the Jacob's Church in Stockholm. He plays each of the five notes on a separate manual, using five different timbres in the process.

Ericsson's omission of m. 9 is logical, since the measure appears to be an erroneously printed duplicate of the preceding two measures. Because the pitch b' occurs twice at this point in the original chorale melody, only two corresponding measures are correct in the score, and not three. Measure 9 is therefore included in the list of errors in Table 6.

In a recent letter, Hanson explained the difference between Ericsson's recorded version and the 1988 score:

After this [Ericsson's] first performance I was a little unhappy with the beginning of the piece, where the desired quality of "boredom" does not come out properly. I have later corrected that by adding a sixth note in each of the bars where a single note is played, as well as by rejecting the performers' frequent jumps from one registration to another in the beginning of the piece. Ericsson's recording follows correctly the first version of the score and the changes in the score vis-a-vis the record[ing] are the results of the later revision. The recording was made in connection with the first performance without my presence or assistance, [otherwise] I would have asked the performer to wait for my revised score.37

The 1988 published score, not the recorded version, is therefore definitive. The score has a number of errors, however. (See Table 6.) Hanson has reviewed the errata and writes that they are identical to the errors he has found. A forthcoming reprint of the score will have the necessary corrections.

The performance time on Ericsson's compact disc recording is five minutes and nineteen seconds. As indicated in Table 5, however, the early version of the score used for the recording omits mm. 27-34 and 38-46, thus shortening its length. If the 1988 printed version is performed in its entirety, therefore, the piece will be approximately forty-five seconds longer, or six minutes and four seconds.

Gesänge der Toten by Hans-Ola Ericsson
Background

Hans-Ola Ericsson was born in 1958 in Stockholm where, as a child, he sang in the Stockholm Boys' Choir. His first counterpoint, composition, and organ performance teacher was innovative Swedish composer Torsten Nilsson (b. 1920), to whom Gesänge der Toten is dedicated. Ericsson's first public organ recitals began in 1974, the same year his first organ compositions were written. In 1977 he was admitted to the State Academy of Music in Freiburg, Germany, where he studied composition with Klaus Huber and Brian Ferneyhough, and organ with Zsigmond Szathmáry. Further composition study was with Luigi Nono in Venice in 1984.38

Ericsson has performed at many European festivals, and on French, Japanese, and American radio. Since 1986 Ericsson has been principal instructor of organ performance at Piteå College in Piteå, Sweden. At present, he also teaches solo organ performance and courses in interpretation of modern organ music at the State Colleges of Music in Stockholm, Malmö, and Göteborg. As a virtuoso organist, he is well-known from tours of Europe and the United States, and from recordings for radio and compact disc. He has recently recorded the complete works of Olivier Messiaen on seven compact discs for the BIS label.39

Ericsson's works for organ are Gesänge der Toten for organ and percussion (1977), J'Ecris Ton Nom for organ, percussion and electronic tape, Niemandsland for organ and electronic tape, Orgelsymphonie in tre Satzer for organ solo (1975-76), Via Dolorosa for organ solo, and Melody to the Memory of a Lost Friend XIII for organ and electronic tape (1985).40

The work selected for this article, Gesänge der Toten (Songs of the Dead), was composed in January 1977 and published the same year. The score is a legible photocopy of the manuscript.

Structure

Gesänge der Toten is based on a chorale of unknown origin that occurs monophonically (mm. 10-16), as a jazz variation (mm. 23-40), as the pedal line during the climax (m. 51), and in a four-voice harmonization (mm. 53-62). The chorale is present sporadically; thematically unrelated sections of arpeggios, improvisation, and graphically notated clusters constitute most of the piece. Meter is either 3/4 or 4/4, except for four instances of free meter (mm. 8-9, 41-44, 51, and 68-69), measured in clock seconds. Although the piece contains areas of chromaticism and extreme dissonance, it centers on the key of the chorale, F minor.

Despite areas of tonality and the presence of the chorale, the piece has no conventional form. The chorale serves chiefly to unify the piece by providing a recurring theme; its treatment and occurrences, however, are irregular. Table 7 is a structural outline of the work.

Registration

The manual compass for Gesänge der Toten is C to g''' and the pedal compass is C to f'. The manuals must therefore have at least fifty-six keys. The note g''' only occurs four times, however, in ten-voice dissonant arpeggios over triple pedal (m. 7); it can be omitted, virtually unnoticed, on fifty-four-key manuals.

The score specifies a three-manual instrument, but the piece can be performed on two manuals. Only one instance of rapid interplay among all three manuals occurs--improvisatory figuration and a sequence of twenty-four palm clusters in mm. 8-9; a console assistant can alternate stops to produce the three distinct timbres. An assistant is necessary, anyway, to manipulate percussion stops: the Röhrenglockenton (tubular bells), Xylophon 4', and Cymbelstern. The assistant must add and remove the Röhrenglockenton at specific points indicated in the score in mm. 60-65, and must stop the Cymbelstern in m. 64. If an adjustable combination action is unavailable, an assistant will also be indispensable for stop changes.

Besides the organ percussion stops, a bass drum ostinato occurs in mm. 51-63; the drum can be played by a second assistant or by a percussionist. The ostinato is simple and does not require a trained drummer. If the available organ does not have the necessary percussion stops, a percussionist can produce most of the percussive timbres--the Cymbelstern in mm. 51-63 and the tubular bells in mm. 60-65, for example. To heighten the dramatic intensity, the organist screams ffff in m. 8, before beginning a "wild outburst" on the manuals--an improvisatory section with palm clusters.41

The Swell expression pedal is used in mm. 2-7, 9-16, 39-40, and 51, although the console assistant can make gradual stop changes if no expression pedal is available. Table 8 lists a complete registration, based on the score, for a three-manual instrument.

Interpretation

Gesänge der Toten is a dramatic, violent, macabre work, characterized by extremes in dynamics, pitch, note values, and dissonance. A number of similarities--coincidental or not--to American composer William Bolcom's Black Host (1967) suggest his influence: (1) the use of percussion, including tubular chimes and bass drum; (2) a centrally placed dirge, accompanied by a jazz background at a slow tempo; (3) the use of a chorale, or psalm tune, especially at the end of the work; (4) graphically notated arm clusters used at the climax; and (5) a deliberate, brutal style. Obvious differences exist, too; Ericsson's piece is much shorter and does not incorporate an electronic tape. As illustrated in Table 8, the quarter note tempo increases steadily at major structural posts--from quarter note = 46 at the beginning of the piece to 112-126 at the end. That the piece is a kind of procession is emphasized in the score at the outset: "In the tempo of a very slow march."42

At the beginning, twenty-eight successive, ascending arpeggios--one per beat--are played in exact rhythm. Each hand must play and sustain five notes from each ten-voice arpeggio, spanning intervals of a ninth or tenth. Because of the difficulty in spanning these wide intervals, it will be impossible for some performers to play the piece. The arpeggios increase dynamically and rise in pitch until m. 8, where the performer suddenly screams ffff (using the vowel A, as in "father"). The scream appears on a separate staff with a speaking clef (talklav); it begins as loudly and as high in pitch as possible, and then slides downward in pitch. A footnote in Swedish in the score allows a substitute screamer: "A scream, executed by the performer or by someone in his place."43

Before the scream ends, a "wild outburst" of graphically notated improvisation in free meter begins. The first six seconds of improvisation have swirling figuration and occasional clusters that are distributed among three manuals (m. 8). In a commentary at the end of the piece, Ericsson describes the figuration as "rapidly vibrating movements of the fingers and the palm within the indicated range."44

In m. 9 the improvisation continues with ten seconds of palm clusters divided at random among the manuals. The first six palm clusters are notated as 2048th notes (with nine ligatures); the note values then increase gradually to eighth notes. This exaggerated notation produces, in effect, the indicated ritardando. The improvisation concludes with an eleven-voice chord that becomes arm clusters, and then gradually decreases in texture and dynamic over twenty seconds.

The monophonic statement of the chorale in mm. 10-16 begins tranquilly and ends with a crescendo to fff. A section of ascending arpeggios, similar to those at the beginning of the piece, begins in m. 16. This time, however, the arpeggios in the last measure of the section (m. 21) are changed to two cluster arpeggios and a cluster glissando that embellishes an arm cluster. Those clusters and the three arm clusters in m. 22 are played precisely in the march rhythm; both black and white keys are struck.

The jazz section in mm. 23-40 is loosely based on the chorale theme, which is treated as a highly embellished solo against a blues accompaniment; the section contains two tremolos (mm. 27-28), two tied trills (mm. 26 and 29), and a few other basic licks. The subsequent pedal solo begins with a low-register cluster glissando (m. 41) that can be played by the right foot on the black keys and by the left foot on the white ones. The graphic notation in m. 44 represents a fast improvisation, with toes and heels rapidly striking pedal notes at random within the range indicated. The 32' reed, added at the beginning of the measure, is unlikely to speak during the random figuration because of the fast tempo; the stop is probably added in anticipation of the three long notes that follow the improvisation. The pedal solo ends with a white-key glissando played by the left foot (m. 47).

The rhythm of the pedal solo in mm. 45-47 is repeated for the palm clusters in mm. 48-50. Then the Cymbelstern sounds, unaccompanied, for four seconds at the beginning of m. 51, before the organist and drummer begin the climactic crescendo. The bass drummer begins a five-note ostinato, accenting the note-heads that have an "X" superimposed on them. At the same time, the organist begins a slow, eighteen-second crescendo by using both arms in a cluster glissando that covers the entire Great manual. The glissando starts with the left elbow sustaining a few low notes. Gradually the entire left forearm is lowered onto the manual; the right wrist is added near the center of the manual and the right forearm is gradually lowered onto the manual until the elbow is completely down. Meanwhile, the Swell expression pedal, if available, has been opened halfway at this point; alternatively, the console assistant could have gradually added stops. The manuals are silent for four seconds while two more notes of the chorale are played in the pedal. The organist then improvises rapid manual figuration with fingers, palms, and elbows for eighteen seconds more--until maximum cacophony is reached, the expression pedal is fully opened, and the chorale in the pedal has been completed.

After the climax, the manuals are silent and the pedal sustains a perfect fourth, C-F, on soft 32' and 16' flues; the Cymbelstern continues to sound, and the bass drum begins a diminuendo. The organist plays the first seven measures of the harmonized chorale (mm. 53-59); when m. 60 is reached, the console assistant begins to add and remove the Röhrenglockenton stop four times, at locations in mm. 60-65. The Cymbelstern and bass drum are tacet at the first beat of m. 64, where the pedal takes over the ostinato from the bass drum. Stops and couplers are added at m. 67 for the end of the piece. In m. 68 the half notes with arrows through the stems are sustained while the unstemmed notes are played during a fifteen-second period of free meter.

The score contains several errors. (See Table 9.) No commercial recording of the work was located. The performance time is approximately six minutes.

Notes

                  30.           Peterson, s.v. "Hanson, Sten." by Stig Jacobson.

                  31.           Roth, 52.

                  32.           Sten Hanson, es ist genug . . . (Stockholm: Svensk Musik, [1988]).

                  33.           Hanson, Letter to this writer, October 18, 1993.

                  34.           Ibid.

                  35.           Ericsson, brochure notes for Organo con Forza, 4.

                  36.           Hanson, Letter to this writer, October 18, 1993.

                  37.           Ibid.

                  38.           Anders Ekenberg, brochure notes for Olivier Messiaen: the Complete Organ Music, vol.1, BIS CD 409,26.

                  39.           Ibid.

                  40.           Walter A. Frankel and Nancy K. Nardone, eds., Organ Music in Print; 2d ed. (Philadelphia: Musicdata, 1984), 89; Ericsson, Organo con Forza.

                  41.           Hans-Ola Ericsson, Gesänge der Toten, (Munich: Edition Modern, 1977), 4.

                  42.           Ibid., 2.

                  43.           Ibid., 4.

                  44.           Ibid., 12.

Carl Parks

Carl Parks, a freelance writer, is organist-choirmaster of Gloria Dei Lutheran Church in Holmes Beach, Florida, and a past dean of the Sarasota-Manatee Chapter of the American Guild of Organists. Photographs are by the author.

Saxony’s Organs and Bachfest Leipzig 2004: A study tour of Bach, Luther & Silbermann

Every organist dreams of playing the Saxony region’s baroque organs that were designed, performed on, and approved by Johann Sebastian Bach. That, combined with the annual Bachfest Leipzig 2004, proved irresistible.

The annual Bach Festival in Leipzig, Germany--with day trips to hear and play over a dozen historic organs, many known to J. S. Bach--provided 27 of us an unforgettable study tour May 12 to 26. The tour included 16 festival concerts, lectures by Bach scholar Dr. Christoph Wolff of Harvard University, guided tours of the cities visited, and the opportunity for masterclasses with Thomaskirche organist Ulrich Böhme. It was Historic Organ Tour 50 led by the University of Michigan’s University Organist Dr. Marilyn Mason.

After a bus tour and night in Berlin, we proceeded on May 14 to Wittenberg. Our walking tour took us through the Luther House, which is the world’s largest museum of Reformation history, and the Schloßkirche, where Martin Luther presented his 95 theses and is now buried. After lunch next door in the Schloßkeller we arrived in Leipzig on time for the festival’s opening concert at the Thomaskirche, where Bach was Kantor for 27 years. Three settings of Psalm 98, by Bach (BWV 225 and 190) and Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy (Opus 91) were given a world-class performance by the church’s boys’ choir, soloists, and the Gewandhaus orchestra conducted by Georg Christoph Biller. The Sinfonia in D from the Easter Oratorio (BWV 249) opened the concert.

Leipzig

Our walking tour of Leipzig the next morning showed a city coming to life again since the collapse of the German Democratic Republic (DDR) and the reunification of Germany. Construction is everywhere. Historic buildings are being cleaned and restored, while the big, vacant housing projects and other Stalinist architecture are about to be torn down. One grim building about to be razed sits on the site of the University Church, which the Communists dynamited. The church will be rebuilt with an organ designed but never built by Gottfried Silbermann, the great master of organ building during the baroque era. Unfortunately, unemployment in Leipzig is around 20 percent, while in other eastern cities of the former DDR it is as high as 28 percent.

Leipzig is a city of music. Excellent street musicians play the classics everywhere within the ancient confines of this once-walled burg. Walks to the Bach Museum, Mendelssohn House, Musical Instrument Museum or a concert are always a treat. We often paused to hear a flautist, a xylophonist, even a full brass choir playing Henry Purcell’s Trumpet Tune in D.

Thomaskirche

The first of Saturday’s three festival concerts opened with Ulrich Böhme playing Bach’s Passacaglia and Fugue on the Bach Organ in the north gallery of Thomaskirche. This 4-manual, 60-stop organ was built by Woehl in 2000 and replaces an earlier 3-manual instrument built in 1966 by Schuke. It duplicates the organ that Bach knew as a boy in Eisenach. While its location is certainly not what Bach would specify, the large-scale principals and overall tonal design provide the “gravitas” he found so necessary. And the organ sounds well throughout the church despite its location on the side. Jürgen Wolf playing all 30 Goldberg Variations on harpsichord at Nikolaikirche followed. The evening concert in the Gewandhaus featured fortepianos and orchestra in performances of Bach and Mendelssohn works.

Sunday’s services at Thomaskirche and Nikolaikirche are like those in Bach’s day and always include the performance of a Bach cantata at the liturgy of the word. The afternoon festival concert, again on the Thomaskirche Bach Organ, was a reconstruction of Mendelssohn’s organ recital of August 6, 1840, performed by Michael Schönheit. His improvisation on the Passion Chorale in the style of Mendelssohn was similar in structure to the Sixth Sonata and brought a standing ovation, a much less common occurrence in Europe than the United States.

Among the many excellent concerts, Matthias Eisenberg’s Ascension Day performance of  Max Reger’s Fantasie and Fugue on B-A-C-H stands out in particular. The entire sell-out crowd remained through a long, standing ovation until he improvised an equally stunning encore on Thomaskirche’s west gallery organ. That instrument was built by Wilhelm Sauer in 1899, who then extended it to 88 stops in 1907. A fund to restore this big tubular pneumatic has so far raised 100,000 of the 300,000 euros being sought.

Nikolaikirche

A similar romantic organ is almost restored in the west gallery of Nikolaikirche, but was not ready for this year’s Bachfest. It was built by Friedrich Ladegast in 1862 and expanded to 84 stops by Sauer from 1902 to 1903. Near the apse, the church also has a 17-stop organ that was built by Eule in 2002 in the style of Italian organs of the baroque era. As Kantor of Thomaskirche, J. S. Bach was also was the city’s civic director of music, giving him duties at Nikolaikirche. Thus, it was here that many of his cantatas and other works were performed for the first time.

Rötha

A bus trip on May 17 took us to Rötha, a city with two Silbermann organs. Dedicated in 1721 by Johann Kuhnau, the Silbermann in St. George church was the model for the Marilyn Mason Organ built by Fisk for the University of Michigan. A smaller Silbermann at St. Mary’s church was dedicated in 1722. Some of our group joined a masterclass with Ulrich Böhme, while others went on to Weimar. The pedalboards on these old Silbermann organs take some getting used. Not only are they flat, but the spacing is different from modern pedalboards. They also lack a low C-sharp and other notes at the top end. As Marilyn Mason explained, heel and toe pedaling worked out for pieces learned on a modern pedalboard must be changed to a technique using mostly the toes.

European acoustics demand slower tempi and proper phrasing to a greater extent then the dry acoustics of most American churches. For speech reinforcement, Germans take an approach that differs from our boom-box public address systems. Stässer loudspeakers, measuring approximately 18 x 21/2 x 21/2 inches, are mounted on each of a church’s columns, with electronic reinforcement delayed to match the time sound takes to travel. This permits clarity of the spoken word without compromising the divine ambiance for which the music was composed.

Gottfried Silbermann

Gottfried Silbermann was born in 1683, the son of a craftsman-woodworker. From 1702 to 1707 he studied organ-building with his elder brother Andreas in Strasbourg and Thiery in Paris. A condition was that Gottfried would not work in his brother’s territory. So in 1710 Gottfried returned to his native Saxony and set up shop centrally in Freiberg. His first commission was for a small, one-manual and pedal, 15-stop organ for his hometown of Frauenstein. So well-received was this first instrument, completed in 1711, that in the same year Freiberg’s Dom St. Marien (Cathedral of St. Mary) invited the young builder, then only 28 years old, to construct a new organ of three manuals and pedal with 44 stops. This was completed in 1714. Thereafter Silbermann built some 45 instruments, 31 of which are still extant. All are located within or very close to the Saxon borders. 

Gottfried Silbermann was given the official title of Court Organbuilder by Frederick I, at that time King of Poland and Duke of Saxony. Similarly, J. S. Bach had the title of Court Composer. The two were great friends, and often discussed the techniques and acoustics of organ building. Silbermann was Carl Philipp Emmanuel Bach’s godfather and a regular visitor to the Bach home in Leipzig. The two even worked together on the escapement mechanism for the world’s first fortepianos.

Silbermann believed that an organ should look as beautiful as it sounds, and his organ cases are truly beautiful. Also, in a play on words of his name, this “silver man” was known for the silver sound of his pipes. His organs typically have a Hauptwerk that is scaled for gravitas, a Brustwerk scaled to be delicate, an Oberwerk to be penetrating, and a Pedal scaled for a grandness of sound that produces foundation without necessarily using a lot of pipes. Compared to Arp Schnitger, the organs of Silbermann are more spacious with the pipes less densely arranged. 

Eisleben and Halle

Another bus trip took us to Eisleben. Here we visited the houses where Martin Luther was born and died, and the church where he was baptized. Further on in Halle, we stopped to play two organs in the Marktkirche, where Georg Friedrich Händel was baptized and learned to play the organ. That organ is a one-manual instrument of six stops built in 1664 by Reichel. It has all of its original pipes as well as meantone tuning. At the other end is a much larger organ in a baroque case. It is a three-manual, 40-stop instrument built by Schuke in 1984. Both had recently been restored, following extensive damage to the church from a broken city steam pipe. We then visited the Handel House, which has several chamber organs, and we took turns playing the newly restored organ built by Johann Gottlieb Mauer in 1770.

Altenburg, Störmthal and Pomßen

On May 21 we visited Altenburg. It is here that Heinrich Trost built an organ in the Schloßkirche from 1736 to 1739, the same year Bach played it. Eule restored it in the mid-1970s. After walking up well-worn stone steps in one of the castle’s circular stairwells, we found ourselves in the balcony opposite this magnificent instrument. Demonstrating was Dr. Felix Friedrich, a scholar of Johann Ludwig Krebs. Marilyn Mason, who was familiar with the instrument, pulled stops for those of us who played and offered suggestions. Among the more interesting stops is a viola that speaks with an attack and harmonic development nearly identical to that of a bowed string instrument, making it ideal for trio sonatas. 

Further on in the village church of Störmthal is the only Hildebrandt organ still in its original condition. Zacharias Hildebrandt was a student of Gottfried Silbermann. He built the two-manual instrument that was inspected and approved by his friend J. S. Bach in 1723. Kantor Thomas Orlovski demonstrated the instrument and registered it for those of us who played. 

The afternoon took us to Pomßen’s 750-year-old Wehrkirche. Originally built as a fortress, this Romanesque church is home to the oldest organ in Saxony. The instrument has one manual and pedals that play 12 stops, plus a Cimbelstern and Vogelgesang. Built in 1570, the organ was purchased second-hand to save money, and it was installed in 1690. It has been well maintained since its restoration in 1934 and was a thrill to play. 

Naumburg

Several of us had expressed an interest in playing the newly restored organ in Wenzelkirche, Naumburg, which was not on our tour. It is the largest instrument built by Zacharias Hildebrandt from 1743 to 1746, comprising 53 stops on three manuals and pedals. His old teacher Gottfried Silbermann examined the instrument and approved it, finding it to be as beautiful as his own but much larger. J. S. Bach had assisted with its design; and, when he played it, he found all the qualities he liked: thundering basses, strong mixtures, and beautiful solo stops. We convinced enough in our group to charter a bus and rent the organ the morning of May 22. 

Words can describe neither the baroque splendor nor the divine ambience of the vast St. Wenzel interior. There, Kantor Irene Greulich demonstrated the organ. Frau Greulich is a fine organist who has performed and given masterclasses at the University of Michigan. She and Marilyn Mason have a friendship that began before Germany’s reunification, when the organ had been playable from an electro-pneumatic console of the 1930s in the balcony below. They registered the organ for those of us who played, thus ensuring that nobody touched the original pen and ink inscriptions in the drawknobs.

A walk to the Dom SS. Peter and Paul revealed a handsome new organ under construction in a fenced-in area in the nave. No information was available, but among the pipes to be installed were wooden resonators, presumably for a Posaune. The building is late Romanesque and Gothic from the 13th century.

That evening we attended a very fine concert of The Creation by Joseph Haydn at the Hochschüle for Music and Theater. It was sung by soloists and choir from the school and the Leipzig Baroque Orchestra, Roland Borger conducting. We heard it as Die Schöpfung, Haydn’s own translation from English for German audiences.

The last day of Bachfest included breathtaking performances of the St. Matthew Passion, the Mass in B Minor, and pieces written for organ, four hands, played by Ulrich Böhme and his wife Martina at Thomaskirche. The Matthäus-Passion performance was a reconstruction of that given by Mendelssohn on April 4, 1841. Thus, orchestration made use of instruments that had replaced those of Bach’s time. A continuo organ was played with the orchestra. The chorales, however, made use of the Gewandhaus’ 89-stop instrument built in 1981 by the Schuke-Orgelbau of Potsdam. The festival closing concert of the B-minor Mass was in Thomaskirche, with 85-year-old Eric Ericson conducting.

Freiberg and Frauenstein

After we checked out of our hotel, our bus took us southeast to Freiberg. There, in the Freiberg Dom we played two fine Silbermann organs. The larger was built from 1711 to 1714 and has a particularly remarkable case with ornamentation by Johann Adam Georgi. It has 44 stops across three manuals and pedal. The small organ of 1719 has 14 stops on one manual and pedal. 

We continued to the Silbermann Museum in Frauenstein, located in a medieval castle, and the only organ museum devoted to just one builder. There, Dr. Marilyn Mason played a short recital on the museum’s replica of a Silbermann organ. It is a copy by Wegscheider Organ Builders, Dresden, of an instrument Silbermann built in 1732 for Etzdorf, and is a working model demonstrating the basic principles of Baroque organ construction.

Part of the attraction of a Marilyn Mason tour is her ability to unlock the doors to organ lofts. She was the first woman to have played in Westminster Abbey, Egypt, and many other places around the world. She is also a very helpful coach in unlocking the secrets of performance for a broad array of organ literature. Dr. Mason offered our group many pointers on the performance of baroque music, and personally advised me on ways to practice the difficult passages and tricky rhythms of Jehan Alain’s Trois Danses, which she had worked out for her own brilliant performances.

Dresden

In Dresden, our excellent tour leader, Franz Mittermayr of Matterhorn Travel, treated us with a surprise visit to the Hofkirche (Roman Catholic cathedral). There we played the magnificent three-manual, 47-stop Silbermann of 1755 that had been hidden in the countryside during World War II. This cathedral was destroyed in the allied firebombing, but the organ was back among us in a newly restored building. For that we gave grateful thanks. Unfortunately, another fine Silbermann in the Frauenkirche was destroyed. A 3-million euro restoration of that church is nearing completion using original, numbered stones wherever possible. A new organ will replicate the destroyed Silbermann. 

It has been said that Germany has too many churches. This is because, like elsewhere, church attendance is down. In Germany approximately nine percent of the population is Protestant, while two percent is Roman Catholic. In the former DDR of Eastern Germany under the Communists, religion was discouraged, so attendance fell even further. Maintaining and restoring these ancient churches is beyond the reach of most congregations, so they survive through tourism and entrance fees. Many are considered museums and are given government funding. In Naumburg, for example, the city paid for the restoration of the Hildebrandt organ. On average, a group pays an entrance fee of 150 euros or about $185 U.S. for each church visited. In Leipzig, the group paid entrance fees on top of concert ticket prices. This was all included in the cost of our tour. An organist traveling alone to play benefit recitals will pay rental fees of similar amounts. 

For a first visit to the Saxony region, this tour provided the best way to play these instruments and learn about them. While our personal playing times were seldom more than five minutes each, the cost was spread over the entire group. An organ tour also makes all the preliminary arrangements to open doors that are otherwise locked. The University of Michigan is known for its excellent tours, and this one proved why. Matterhorn Travel provided us with a guide who had extensive knowledge of the area, numerous contacts, and the ability to run things so smoothly that we never encountered delays.