Music with vigor, vitality and vision: An exploration of the compositions of Harold Stover

David Kelley is Director of Music at Concordia Lutheran Church in Wilmington, Delaware, and Assistant Conductor of CoroAllegro, Delaware’s premier chamber choir. His compositions have been included in The Crowning Glory, a collection of hymn descants, and the Delaware Organ Book, a collection of solo organ works by Delaware composers. Mr. Kelley recently began doctoral study in organ at Peabody Conservatory in Baltimore, Maryland.

An increasingly popular composer of organ and choral music, Craig Phillips was born in Louisville, Kentucky in 1961. By the time he was in his early thirties, Phillips had won First Prize in the Clarence Mader Competition for organ composition (in 1994). Since then, he has published works with increasing frequency, and has completed commissions for the American Guild of Organists, the Association of Anglican Musicians, several American cathedrals, and such notable performers as the Chenaults and Tom Trenney. Phillips’s compositions are engaging and satisfying, and they demonstrate his understanding not only of the voices and instruments for which he writes, but also his audience. He recently launched a website about his work: www.CraigPhillipsComposer.com. Dr. Phillips and I spoke in February 2008.

David Kelley (DK): You have extensive musical training, including a doctorate among other things, but you were not trained as a composer.
Craig Phillips (CP): I was never a composition major; I did study composition when I was an undergrad, for two years as a minor. Then I was a theory minor at Eastman during my graduate studies. I also studied orchestration at Eastman and then coached with Byron Adams here in Los Angeles. Organ was my primary focus during my student years, but I also had been composing since the age of fourteen, and I wanted to keep it going all the time. I think I was mainly known as an organist, especially early on, and it’s just fascinating that I’ve ended up in some ways much more well known as a composer: that’s pretty much since the mid ’90s.

DK: What motivated you initially to start composing? Fourteen is a very early age to begin that!
CP: I’d been playing the piano since I was seven; I would just sit down and improvise and come up with little ditties and so forth; I decided to start writing them down on my own. Then I was encouraged a lot in that direction by the organist at the church I grew up in, a woman named Sharron Lyon, and then when I started studying organ as well, with Peter Fyfe, he also encouraged me in that direction, so that had a lot to do with it.

DK: The liner notes for your CD “A Festival Song: The Music of Craig Phillips” suggest that your theory background is a large contributing factor to the development of your style. Do you think that those studies really enabled you to grow as a composer—or do you even use theory when you compose?
CP: (laughs) You know, I don’t think about it that much at this point! It’s all in my craft, I guess, and because I studied counterpoint and all the theory courses, there is a very solid foundation.

DK: So do you use theory as a tool?
CP: As a tool? Definitely. It’s really the tool that allows you to look at and understand something of how the great masters put their scores together, which in turn can provide an underpinning and foundation for your own work. That being said, once you have that foundation, I think it ultimately frees you to “break all the rules” as it were and forge your own path.

DK: To my ear, one of the things that I admire about your style is its very fluent and mobile harmonic language. You travel very quickly to different places and move very easily.
CP: Yes.

DK: How would you describe your own style?
CP: Well, I don’t think it’s anything you could put a label on—yes, there are modal inflections and that sort of thing, perhaps a sort of romantic, lyrical leaning. I think it’s really an amalgamation of a lot of my influences: the music that I’ve loved growing up and as an organist as well. I think a lot of the organ composers influenced me to a large degree.

DK: I have often heard a little whispering of Herbert Howells, perhaps, in there; maybe a little Duruflé . . .
CP: Absolutely, others have said that as well. I play their music, I know their music—so that becomes a part of me.

DK: Are there any other composers that have been particularly influential?
CP: Of course—Bach—probably the greatest!

DK: The counterpoint?
CP: Yes, and then I’ve always loved the Romantic repertoire as well; I think that’s also a major influence on my style. And I listened to tons of pop music when I was growing up, and even that, I think, has a certain role in what ultimately makes up my style.

DK: Perhaps contributing to your ability to move from one place to another quickly?
CP: (animated) Maybe! I don’t know, because I grew up in the ’70s listening to all kinds of music, Bach, Beethoven, Rachmaninoff, Mahler, Bartók, and so forth, and lots of rock/pop—even film music had an influence I would say, so . . . who knows!

DK: (laughs)
CP: You know, I don’t sit down and analyze my own music that often.

DK: There probably isn’t time for that!
CP: (laughs) This is true, and I’d just as soon leave that to others! I tend to be very instinctive and intuitive about the whole process.

DK: Your organ works are very idiomatic, and they lie under the hands quite well.
CP: I hope so! (laughs)

DK: That indicates to me that you have a performing pedigree, if you will; I have to wonder if you do your composing at the keyboard, or if you do any improvisation—certain elements of the fantasy pieces, the Fantasy on Torah Song in particular, seem almost improvisatory in style. Do you bring those types of elements into your composition?
CP: Let’s see . . . I improvise, but not on that level—I really was not trained in improvisation—I could not just sit down and improvise a piece on the level of, say, the Torah Song. I have to work these things out very carefully, and usually at the keyboard; not necessarily at the organ, but at the keyboard most of the time. But yes, I do think there is an improvisatory aspect towards the way I develop a lot of my ideas—especially the fantasy pieces such as you’re talking about. So it doesn’t bother me if these pieces come off as improvisatory, I think that is just the way my imagination tends to work.

DK: It gives them a spontaneity that is very enticing.
CP: Yes, I think that’s right, and I’ve written several pieces in that same vein actually—some recently—that aren’t yet in print. It seems to be a successful formula for me in terms of organ pieces.

DK: You compose on commission quite a bit.
CP: Yes. I am lucky to have pretty much a steady stream of commissions.

DK: How do you go about tailoring a piece for a commission? I would imagine your own technical ability might lead you astray if you’re writing for a particular audience. Is that ever a problem or something you keep in mind?
CP: Sometimes they stipulate the difficulty level of a piece or specific voicing and so forth. The commissions I’ve had don’t often put limits on me—but I think it’s great discipline to be able to write something that’s very simple if that’s what they’re looking for. I remember the Torah Song fantasy: I think the rules specified that it would be a concert piece, but of moderate difficulty, which is kind of an odd combination—I think I managed to strike a happy medium in that piece.

DK: And that one won a prize.
CP: Yes, the 1994 Clarence Mader Foundation prize in organ composition.

DK: How generalized must you be in assigning registrations to organ works, and how much leeway do you imagine your performers and interpreters having? Some composers, especially French composers, are very specific; many American composers give nothing more than dynamic indications. How do you make those types of decisions?
CP: I have typically put in registrations in most of my pieces, at least as a guideline, but I’ve always told the people I have written these pieces for that they should have leeway to do what works on their instrument, or if they feel strongly about doing something a certain way I’d like to leave a certain amount of freedom to the performer. But I usually suggest various colors or the kind of sound I’m thinking about, and a lot of my pieces do have that sort of French romantic registration ideal behind them.

DK: How much does the instrument at All Saints’ [Beverly Hills] influence—
CP: Oh, probably it does! (laughs)

DK: That’s where you spend most of your time, I imagine.
CP: So it does, I think—the colors that are on that particular instrument often influence what I indicate in my pieces—it’s a pretty comprehensive instrument, I might add! But they can be expanded on.

DK: Well, every organ’s different.
CP: Yes.

DK: I know you have been commissioned by the Association of Anglican Musicians, by Washington National Cathedral, and your works are often performed at All Saints’. Do you feel that you are part of a continuing Anglican musical tradition in the church?
CP: I think I could put myself into that category. Most of my choral commissions have been from Episcopal churches or cathedrals. And the choir that I work with here at All Saints’ is one of the best—I don’t mind saying that I think it’s one of the best choirs in the country in the Anglican tradition, so that’s had a big influence on me, and on my choral writing. We perform a great deal of the English repertoire, as well as American music that flows from that tradition, and I think my own music certainly falls into that continuum.

DK: How would you describe the essential elements of that style?
CP: In terms of the way that I write for the choir, I’m used to a straight-tone sound, and really favor that sound. In the Anglican approach to choral singing there is also a great attention to word accentuation or localized word stress, and that is something that I pay a great deal of attention to in my setting of texts. And as far as texture goes, I use a combination of polyphonic and homophonic textures that ebb and flow—and not strictly one or the other.

DK: A hybrid.
CP: It is sort of a hybrid in a way.

DK: Many English organs are designed primarily as liturgical instruments and choral accompanying instruments, and that certainly has affected many of the composers coming out of those places; do you think that that’s something that you relate to as well, or are you more in that French category where the instrument is more soloistic?
CP: I think maybe I’m a hybrid as far as that goes as well, perhaps leaning to the French side. A lot of my commissions have pretty substantial organ parts—a lot of my choral pieces in general: I like to think of the organ and choir as basically equal partners most of the time, unless specifically it’s not intended to be that way. But, generally speaking, that’s the way I like to treat the organ.

DK: Do you think that there are specifically American traits to the Anglican tradition here that distinguish it from our British counterparts, and perhaps in your works in particular?
CP: I’m sure. I think we take their tradition and make it our own in certain ways, because we have our own unique set of influences—American folk tunes, jazz, spirituals, and popular music. I’m thinking of the New York composers Calvin Hampton, Larry King, and all sorts of people . . . David Hurd and others. I think a lot of that music flows out of that Anglican tradition but is also highly original and very much American, I pretty much see myself falling into that tradition.

DK: Perhaps there’s a little more adventuresome spirit in the American style?
CP: I think you could possibly say that. (pauses) Not to say anything negative about the English at all!

DK: No, no. Well, there’s that classic Anglican restraint, which sometimes we Americans don’t do quite as well.
CP: Probably we’re less restrained. Perhaps. (laughs) I don’t know!

DK: Do you have particular favorites among your own works, pieces that came off particularly well in terms of your expectations when you sat down to write them, or perhaps an organ piece that you like to play a lot?
CP: One of my special pieces is not a solo organ work, but the Concertino for Organ and Chamber Orchestra, which was my first big commission, and it led to all sorts of other things and opened a lot of doors—I think of that as an extremely special piece. Well, I try to make every piece (laughs) something to think of in that way. The chorale preludes are in some ways among the most popular things that I’ve done, and I use those all the time. The Toccata on Antioch, for instance: I sat down and wrote that little set of pieces [Joy to the World: Three Preludes for Christmas] a few years ago, but I use them all the time, they’re very popular, they get played often. Also the Triptych [for Organ] that I wrote in the mid ’90s I use frequently. Those can be played together or separately; I use them separately all the time. They’re quite effective in the service context, and I’ve used them as recital pieces as well. Of my pieces for organ and instruments, the Suite for Organ, Brass [Quintet] and Percussion has certainly been one of the most successful for me.

DK: We spoke earlier about your Fantasy on Torah Song, which is one of my favorites; another I particularly like is your Fanfare. Can you tell me a little about the origin of that work—it was a commission, wasn’t it?
CP: It was commissioned by Pat Gillis, a parishioner at All Saints’, Beverly Hills when we installed a new fanfare trumpet on the organ. It’s a big high-pressure hooded trumpet—it’s quite a brilliant stop—and he actually was the one who paid to have it added to the organ. It was his wish to commission a piece to feature the new trumpet; also it was dedicated to his mother, who was a long-time church organist. So I designed this work to really “show off” the new trumpet stop. It’s basically a rondo with a “big tune” on the solo trumpet making several appearances, and other splashy, colorful things in between. That’s another piece that I think works extremely well as either a recital piece or in the context of a big service or what have you—if you have the right organ.

DK: So, what’s next for you? What’s on your horizon?
CP: Well, I just got today—believe it or not, it was today—confirmation of a commission for the 2010 AGO convention in Washington, D.C. This is for a new work for organ and instruments. It looks like it will be a piece for chamber organ and four winds, probably ten minutes in a single movement . . . the idea is still under development! (laughs) So, that’s kind of a big thing that’s coming up, and there are some other interesting things in the works.

DK: And I believe you told me that you’re launching a website?
CP: Yes, it’s actually up and running now, and has a complete list of my compositions, both published and unpublished, as well as a list of current commissions and other information. You can find it at
<www.craigphillipscomposer.com&gt;.

DK: When you get a commission, how do you decide what to do? I’m sure some of these commissions can be very specific, but others may be rather general.
CP: It depends. If it’s, for instance, a choral piece like what I’ve just been working on, the primary task is to come up with a good text. The people who commission a piece are usually looking for something for a particular occasion, so [we have to find] an appropriate text; usually something in the public domain, or, once or twice, we’ve done things where the text was commissioned simultaneously. So that can be fun, too.

DK: That would be a rather rare opportunity.
CP: I wrote a big Easter anthem a few years ago called On This Bright Easter Morn, which has been very popular. The text was also commissioned and written by a poet named Janine Applegate, who lives in Portland. I collaborated on two pieces with her, which was a lot of fun. But generally speaking I tend to go with things that are in the public domain.

DK: That’s always a safe bet.
CP: It’s a safe bet—less complicated. I’ve set a couple of works to texts by more recent poets—secular pieces—whose foundations, alas, don’t yet allow their texts to be set to music for publication. But they generally specify a length of a piece, and I ponder . . . (laughs) . . . ponder the text or whatever the idea for the piece is, and then just get going. Coming up with the initial idea for a piece, I think, is always the most difficult part—once you have it, and you know it’s right, things begin to flow. With most commissions usually people have a general idea of what they’re looking for. I received one recently through a church and an arts foundation: they’re going to send me some paintings from local artists to look at and then devise a set of pieces based on probably two or three of these paintings— it will be something totally different; I don’t yet know what I’ll do with that!

DK: It will be your own version of Pictures at an Exhibition.
CP: Very much; that’s the idea they had in mind. So that will be something quite different, at least something I have not done before.

DK: Is there anything that you would communicate to a young crop of organists, given the chance?
CP: I don’t know if many of them are interested in composition or not, but I would say it’s good to stay open—to new organ compositions in general, and to the idea that being an organist and a composer is a long, long tradition. Being a performer and a composer was really the norm until fairly recently in the scheme of things, and there’s no reason why it shouldn’t still be that way, in my opinion. Being an organist and a performer and a composer . . . it all works together for me, so . . . (laughs) I think it’s a great combination.

DK: Well, it’s working for a lot of other people, too: they think it’s a good combination for you (laughs) as well!
CP: It’s a good combination for me, but others can do it!

DK: Thanks very much for speaking with me today, and keep up the good work!
CP: Well, thank you very much!

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Craig Phillips Organ and Choral Works, and Recordings
Organized by scoring and title, with publisher and catalog number

Organ Solo
Fanfare (Selah, 160-640)
Fantasia on the tune Finnian (Selah, coming soon)
Fantasia on Sine Nomine (Selah, 160-676)
Fantasy Toccata (Selah, coming soon)
Fantasy: Torah Song (Yisrael V’oraita) (Selah, 160-857)
Fantasy: Terra Beata (Paraclete Press, PPM00431)
Festival Piece (Selah, 160-860)
Glad Praises We Sing (Selah, 160-814). Four Preludes for Organ: Kremser, Hyfrydol, Nettleton, Engelberg
Joy to the World (Selah, 160-815). Three Preludes for Christmas: Divinum Mysterium, Forest Green, Toccata on Antioch
Organ Music for the Seasons, Vol. 4 (Augsburg Fortress, 9780800637507). Prelude on Richmond
Partita on Lobe den Herren (Selah, 160-691)
Partita on Veni Creator Spiritus (Selah, 160-440)
Prelude on Victimae paschali (MorningStar, MSM-10-513), from Three Plainchants for Organ, ed. Lynn Trapp
Psalm Prelude (Selah, 160-875)
Toccata on Hyfrydol (Selah, 160-675)
Tribute (A lullaby for organ) (Selah, 160-682)
Triptych for Organ (MorningStar, MSM-10-941)
Trumpet Tune (MorningStar, MSM-10-926)
Wondrous Love (Fred Bock Music Co., BG0945). 12 Preludes for Organ (includes “Aria”)
25 Harmonizations and Descants (Selah, 160.731). Volume XI of series

Organ and Instruments
A Song Without Words (E. C. Schirmer, #6750), for cello and organ
March for Trumpet & Organ (Selah, 160-970)
Night Song for Oboe and Organ (or harpsichord) (Selah, in preparation)
Pastorale & Dance (Selah, 160-975), for bassoon & organ
Prelude & Exultation for Organ, Brass Quintet, and Percussion (Selah, full score 160-985, organ score 160-986, instrumental parts 160-987)
Serenade for Horn and Organ (Oxford, 0-19-386763-X)
Suite for Organ and Brass Quintet and Percussion (Selah, full score 160-981, organ score 160-982, instrumental parts 160-983)

Unpublished Works for Organ Solo or Organ and Instruments
Concertino for Organ and Chamber Orchestra (1995) c. 13 minutes. 2 flutes, clarinet in A, bass clarinet, bassoon, horn in F, 2 trumpets, trombone, strings. Score and parts available on rental.
Sonata for Cello and Organ (2004). Score available for sale.
Sonata for Organ (1983). Score available for sale.
Second Sonata for Organ (2001). Score available for sale.
Variations on a Kyrie (1995). Concert work for organ duet. Score available for sale.

Choral
A Festival Song (E. C. Schirmer, #5440 & #5441), SATB chorus, soprano and baritone soli, and orchestra
A True Hymn (Selah, 418-624), SATB and organ (text of George Herbert)
And I Saw the Holy City (Oxford, ISBN 0-19-386712-5), SATB and organ
Antiphon: Let All the World in Every Corner Sing (Paraclete, PPM00435), SATB and organ
The Beatitudes (Selah, 410-516), SATB and organ
Benedictus Dominus Deus (A Song of Zechariah) (Selah, 410-887), SATB and organ
Christ, mighty Savior (Paraclete, PPM00538), SATB and organ (alternate version with strings and organ)
Dies Gratiae (Requiem Reflections) (Selah, 440-901), SATB, soprano and baritone soli, and orchestra
Festival Eucharist (Paraclete, PPM00624), choral score with congregational parts, with organ
Festival Eucharist (Paraclete, PPM00624FS), SATB, congregation, descant, brass quintet, timpani and organ
For God So Loved the World (Paraclete, PPM00606), SATB a cappella with solo soprano
Glorious Things of Thee Are Spoken (hymn concertato) (Selah, 425-888), SAB, 2 trumpets, timpani and organ
Gracious God (Paraclete, PPM00132), SATB, organ and flute
Great Is the Lord (Paraclete, PPM00813), SATB and organ
Hodie Christus Natus Est (Trinitas, 4502), SATB and organ
The Holly and the Ivy (Paraclete, PPM00018), SATB and organ
The House of Faith Has Many Rooms (Selah, 410-691), SATB and organ
How the Grandeur of Creation (Selah, 410-639), SATB, organ (optional strings)
I Love All Beauteous Things (Trinitas, 4610), SATB and organ
Keep Watch, Dear Lord (Selah, 420-526), SATB and organ
Light’s Glittering Morn (Paraclete, PPM00427), SATB and organ
(A version with brass quintet and timpani is also available from the publisher)
Missa Brevis (Washington National Cathedral) (Trinitas, 4583), SATB and organ
Morning Glory, Starlit Sky (Paraclete, PPM00835), SATB a capella
On This Bright Easter Morn (Trinitas, 4501), SATB, organ, brass quintet
People, Look East! (Selah, 405-103), unison, organ, and optional descant
The Preces and Responses (Paraclete, PPM00211), SATB and organ
Psalm 34 (E. C. Schirmer, 5364), two-part treble and organ
Psalm 84 (Paraclete, PPM09729), SATB and organ
Psalm 103 (Trinitas, 4507), SATB and organ
Ride on in Majesty (Trinitas, 4580), SATB anthem with organ
The Risen Sun (Selah, 420-337)
Rorate Caeli (Trinitas, 4500), SATB a cappella
So Much to Sing About (E. C. Schirmer, #5365), SATB and organ
Teach me, my God and King (Paraclete, PPM00303), SATB motet, unaccompanied
Thee Will I Praise (E. C. Schirmer, #5718), SATB and organ
Version with organ and brass quintet (E. C. Schirmer, #5719 & 5719A)
There’s a Voice in the Wilderness Crying (Selah, 422-903), two-part choir and organ
Transfiguration (Selah, 405-390), SATB and organ
Two Advent Anthems (Selah, 405-146), SATB, organ and oboe
The Unsearchable Riches (Paraclete, PPM00625), SATB and organ
We Walk by Faith (Trinitas, 4611), SATB divisi and organ

Unpublished Choral Works
Come, my Way, my Truth, my Life (2005), SATB motet, unaccompanied
Lord, You now have set your servant free (2006), SATB anthem, with organ, brass quintet and timpani
Magnificat (1993) c. 9 minutes, score and parts available on rental, SATB chorus, string orchestra and organ
Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in D (2003), SATB canticles with organ
Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis in D-flat (2002), SATB canticles with organ
O Light Invisible (2003), SATB motet, a cappella
The Preces and Responses (A-flat) (2002), SATB, unaccompanied
Rune of Hospitality (2003), SATB anthem, unaccompanied
Send forth your light (2002), SATB anthem with organ, based on Psalm 43
Sweet Music, Heavenly Rare (2006), SATB motet, unaccompanied
The Passion According to St. John (2008), SATB chorus, three soloists, unaccompanied
Though every tongue shall spend its fire (2003), SATB anthem with organ
You Shall Know the Truth (2005), SATB anthem with organ

Recordings
A Choral Feast (2001) (Gothic, G-49126), The Choir of Men & Boys, Washington National Cathedral, Douglas Major, conductor. “Gloria” from Missa Brevis
A Festival Song: The Music of Craig Phillips (2004) (Gothic, G-49207), The Choir of All Saints’ Beverly Hills; Tom Foster, conductor; Craig Phillips, organist.
Song of Zechariah: Benedictus Dominus Deus
Teach Me, My God and King
Serenade for Horn and Organ
Psalm 34
Pastorale for Bassoon and Organ
The House of Faith Has Many Rooms
And I Saw the Holy City
Ride On in Majesty
Fanfare for Organ
Keep Watch, Dear Lord
A Song Without Words for Cello and Organ
A Festival Song
Be Still My Soul (2006) (Gothic, G-49251), The Choir of All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills, Dale Adelmann, conductor. The Risen Sun, Transfiguration, We Walk by Faith
Blasts from the Past Century (2006) (Pro Organo, CD 7197), David Heller, organ. Fantasy Toccata
Burnished Bright (2006) (Paraclete, GDCD 040), Gabriel V Brass Quintet, David Chalmers, organ. Suite for Organ, Brass and Percussion
Easter (1997) (Gothic, G-49097), The Choir of All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills, Thomas Foster, conductor. On this bright Easter morn
On A Sunday Afternoon (2005) (JAV Recordings, JAV 149), Todd Wilson, organ; Yvonne Caruthers, cello. A Song Without Words for Cello and Organ
Organ Americana (2004) (Pro Organo, CD 7196), Tom Trenney, organ. Toccata on “Antioch,” Prelude on “Kremser,” Fantasy on “Torah Song”
Seasons of Festivity (1997) (Arkay Records, AR6162), Marilyn Keiser, organ. Prelude on “Kremser”
Silence & Music (1993) (Gothic, G-49064), The Choir of All Saints’ Church, Beverly Hills, Thomas Foster, conductor. Hodie, Christus natus est
Sinfonia Festiva (2005) (Summit Records, DCD 436), Paul Skevington, organ; Washington Symphonic Brass. Psalm Prelude, Fanfare, Suite for Organ, Brass and Percussion
Small Wonder (2003) (Pro Organo, CD 7190), Christmas at St. Paul’s, K Street, Washington, D. C. The Holly and the Ivy (arr. Phillips)
Spiritual Pairs (1996) (Pro Organo, CD 7067), Marilyn Keiser, organ. If you will only let God guide you

A New Series of Organ Music Established by MorningStar Music Publishers

Marilyn Biery, DMA, AAGO, is Associate Director of Music at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, Minnesota. An ardent supporter of composers and performer of new music, she has collaborated with Libby Larsen, Stephen Paulus, David Evan Thomas, James Hopkins, Pamela Decker, and others. She is editor of the new Concert Organ Music Series at MorningStar Music. Biery earned Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in organ from Northwestern University, and her Doctorate from the University of Minnesota.

It was a frustrating two years of hopeful submissions and
disappointing rejections. Imagine--you are a performer and enthusiast of
new music and you have just been given the greatest gift: a piece of music
written and dedicated to you! You so emphatically believe this composition
should be shared with the world that you do everything you can to find the
piece a publisher, only to be told that it is “a wonderful piece that
won’t sell” or “beautifully written, but the sales it would generate
in today’s market wouldn’t offset the cost of printing it.”

In the spring of 1999, Jim (Biery) and I were given the gift
of an organ duet by one of our composer friends, David Evan Thomas of St. Paul.
Written in the Dust is a symphony for organ duet, written by a versatile composer
whose works have been performed by the Minnesota Orchestra and the Minnesota
Opera, who is Composer-in-Residence at the Schubert Club in St. Paul, and whose
undergraduate years of study at Northwestern University included organ lessons
with Robert Delcamp, currently University Organist at University of the South
in Sewanee, Tennessee. Written in the Dust is
a semi-programmatic work based on the scripture story from John 8: 3-11
about the woman who is caught in adultery, whose punishment was to be stoned
for her sin. Jim and I are convinced that Thomas’ duet is one of the
finest examples of literature written for the genre. We were so excited about Written
in the Dust that after the premiere, I
started sending it off to various publishers for consideration. I tried
publishers in the United States, England and France. All were very impressed
with the work; none agreed to publish it.

In the fall of 2001, I broached my frustration to Mark
Lawson, President of MorningStar Music Publishers. MorningStar was founded in
1987 by Rodney Schrank; in 1997 Mark Lawson became president and has continued
the MorningStar tradition of publishing quality music with particular emphasis
on choral, organ and handbell music. Not only did Lawson agree to publish it,
he suggested that we start a series of music that would fit into this category:
Concert Organ Series at MorningStar. The series would include pieces that were
not composed for worship (although some portions or movements could be used as
such), that would be primarily non-chorale based, more virtuosic, more
extended, and more developed than the music currently published by the houses
which promote (primarily sacred) organ music in the United States today. Lawson
says: “I would like this series to encourage composers to continue to
create concert works, and MorningStar will endeavor to make them available to
those interested in obtaining them.”

The reason that Lawson could suggest such a project without
as much concern for its potential to return the publisher’s investment is
that his investment is minimal. Technology today has made it practical for
composers to print their own publisher-ready scores using a computer program,
and therefore submit camera-ready copy. Some publishers use this system often,
others still have their own engraver convert the computer file so that it
matches their other printed scores. In the case of MorningStar, Lawson decided
to ask each Concert Organ Series composer to submit their score camera-ready,
and then MorningStar would print the copies as needed instead of committing to
a set number of printed copies.

What Lawson has done with the formation of this series is to
make a commitment to supporting composers who are writing for the organ as a
concert instrument, by advertising and making their works available through his
catalog of music for the church. Since the beginnings of the idea in 2001, the
catalog has grown to include music by Herb Bielawa, James Biery, Emma Lou
Diemer, Charles Hoag, James Hopkins, Robert Sirota, David Evan Thomas, and
others.

Emma Lou Diemer, 1995 AGO Composer of the Year, has had
numerous collections of organ pieces published.  In addition to her organ music, Diemer has written many
works for orchestra, chamber ensemble, solo voice, choir and electronic tape. She
has received an ASCAP award for publications and performances annually since
1962. Diemer says of the Concert Series: “This venture by MorningStar is
producing a treasury of new music that every concert organist will want to
delve into.”1

Herb Bielawa is a free-lance composer and pianist, married
to organist Sandra Soderlund. He has written music for instrumental ensembles,
piano, harpsichord, organ, choir, electronics, chamber opera, band and
orchestra. Bielawa recently remarked on the MorningStar series:
“MorningStar’s new series is certainly a beacon in a very dark sky.
Their bravery in embarking on this kind of project to support serious classical
music is truly laudable.”2

James Hopkins, Professor of Music Composition at the
University of Southern California, whose compositions have been performed by
the National Symphony, Denver Symphony, Los Angeles Philharmonic, Seattle
Symphony, Pacific Symphony, Fine Arts Quartet, the Western Arts Trio and the
Washington Choral Society, has received commissions from the National Endowment
for the Arts, Pasadena Chamber Orchestra and the American Guild of Organists.
Hopkins says: “I am very pleased that MorningStar provides an outlet for
music which, because of its technical demands, duration, or other elements will
necessarily not have a large commercial market. Nevertheless, this music, I
hope, merits serious attention by those whose abilities and performance venues
make these compositions entirely appropriate.”3

John Nuechterlein, President and Chief Executive Officer at
the American Composers Forum, based at the home office in St. Paul, is
supportive and enthusiastic about MorningStar’s new series: “Three
cheers to MorningStar for taking this giant leap forward. New work is critical
for the long-term health of the repertoire, and the Concert Organ Series will
offer a visible showcase for the best literature being written for organ
today.”4

Libby Larsen, American composer and tireless advocate for
contemporary music and musicians, says: “To challenge ourselves with the
compelling poetic voices of our time is really the only choice for serious
students and performers of the organ.”5

This new series deserves to thrive under the good will and
support of organists at all levels of experience and technical expertise. Organists
can support this project by collecting these scores either for performance or
for personal libraries of organ music. The list of pieces currently offered by
MorningStar on the Concert Series follows, with some description of each work.

MorningStar Concert Organ Series list of works

Organ Solo:

A Diet of Worms, Michael Horvit

Subtitled “An Entertainment for All Hallows Eve and
Other Cheery Occasions,” A Diet of Worms was written for the first annual
“Monster Concert” of the Houston Chapter of the American Guild of
Organists, held on Halloween night 1979. The title is a play on words, relating
to the two main themes employed in the work. The main body of the piece is a
passacaglia based on the children’s song “The worms crawl in, the
worms crawl out” (the tune from Paul Dukas’ The Sorcerer’s
Apprentice). The other important theme is the chant melody Dies Irae from the
pre-Vatican II Requiem Mass, which Hector Berlioz used as the “Witches
Sabbath” theme in his Symphonie fantastique. In the composer’s mind,
this made a connection to the medieval Church conclave, the Diet of Worms.

h2>Celestial Wind, Robert Sirota

In composing Celestial Wind, Sirota was inspired to write a
brilliant toccata based upon Acts 2:2-3:

And suddenly there came a sound from heaven of a rushing and
mighty wind, and it filled all the house where they were sitting.

And there appeared unto them cloven tongues like as of fire,
and it sat upon each of them.

Sirota’s aim was not merely to imitate the sound of
rushing wind and flames, but to also evoke the sense of awe and ecstasy that
must have been felt by Jesus’ disciples at this manifestation of the Holy
Spirit. (Example 1)

Cityscape, Morgan Simmons

Cityscape dates from 1992 and was composed for inclusion in
an organ recital of Chicago composers as part of the Fourth Presbyterian
Church’s annual Festival of the Arts. The theme of that year’s
festival was “Faces of the City.” This three-movement work, which
depicts facets of the city, is based on a three-note descending scale (C-B-A),
the opening notes of the popular song, “Chicago, Chicago, That
Toddlin’ Town.” Coincidentally, this same melodic sequence marks
the beginning of Old Hundredth, and a citation of that melody occurs in the
third movement. The Fourth Presbyterian Church is located on the part of North
Michigan Avenue which is known as “The Magnificent Mile.” Each of
its Sunday morning services begins with the singing of Old Hundredth, sung to
the text of the Doxology. The first performance of Cityscape was played by
David Schrader, to whom it is dedicated.

Overture to Coriolan, op. 62, Ludwig van Beethoven, arranged
for organ by James Biery

Beethoven composed nine symphonies, eleven overtures, a
violin concerto and five piano concertos, sixteen string quartets, nine piano
trios, ten violin sonatas and five cello sonatas, thirty large piano sonatas,
an oratorio, an opera, two Masses, and numerous smaller pieces, but only one
curious work for the pipe organ, an odd little Prelude which passes through all
the major keys. In 1824 Beethoven wrote to Freudenberg, an organist from
Breslau, “I, too, played the organ frequently in my youth, but my nerves
could not withstand the power of this gigantic instrument. I should place an
organist who is master of his instrument at the very head of all
virtuosi.”6 The opening unison C’s and exclamatory chords of the
Coriolan overture, each followed by some of the most resounding rests in all of
music literature, allow the magnificent King of Instruments to add its own
voice to Beethoven’s powerful music.

Deux Danses, James Hopkins

Hopkins’ Deux Danses for organ was composed in 1983
and was premiered by James Walker at the AGO Far-Western Regional convention in
June of that year. The titles for each of the dances were suggested by two
legends from Greek mythology. The title of the first dance, Mirror of Medusa,
refers to the tale of the Medusa. She was one of the three fearsome monsters
called Gorgons. Her body was covered with scales, her hair was a mass of
twisting snakes, and whoever looked at her turned into stone. In the legend,
Medusa was slain by the Greek hero Perseus, who used a shield of polished
bronze as a mirror with which to see her. The title of the second dance, The
Circle of Bacchants, refers to the followers of Bacchus, the God of Wine. The
Bacchants, being frenzied with wine, rushed through the wilderness
“uttering shrill cries and performing frightful deeds.” (Example 2)

Fantasy on Cortège et Litanie of Marcel Dupré,
James Hopkins

The Fantasy on Cortège et Litanie of Marcel
Dupré was composed in 1986 as a solo piece for concert organist Cherry
Rhodes and first performed by her in October, 1989, at Grace Cathedral, San
Francisco. Because of the very orchestral nature of the writing, the composer
decided in 1994 to recast the work in a second version for small orchestra. The
Fantasy is based on the two main themes of the well-known work Cortège
et Litanie of Dupré. Even though one or both of these themes is almost
always present in some form, there is in fact no direct quotation from the
original work. The harmonic style, while incorporating some fairly dissonant
combinations, nevertheless retains Dupré’s original E major tonal
framework. The first part of the Fantasy consists of several short sections
that evoke a vague, dream-like atmosphere. After a brief cadenza, the
rhythmically driving central portion of the work is heard. A short
recapitulation of earlier material and a final triumphant outburst bring the
Fantasy to a joyous conclusion. Hopkins’ Fantasy won first prize in an
international composition contest sponsored by the Los Angeles Chapter of the
AGO.

Five Pipe Organ Adventures, Herbert Bielawa

This set of relatively short organ pieces dates from 1993
and was written for specific groups of musicians: those who have recently
become interested in the pipe organ, those who have yet to discover it and
those who are intrigued by the pieces themselves. The Adventures were composed
with a capable keyboard player in mind, with minimal skill or experience
playing pedals. The pedal parts are fairly basic and undemanding. The number of
pedal notes in Adventures is limited, changing foot position occurs when manual
activity is minimal, and occasionally no pedal is required at all.

Four Biblical Settings, Emma Lou Diemer

This major work was commissioned by the Ventura, California
chapter of the AGO. The four movements feature a variety of styles, including
minimalism, rhythmic innovation, and subtle dissonances. It was premiered on
June 30, 1993 by Sandra Soderlund in Santa Barbara. The movements are based on
Psalm 90, Psalm 121, Isaiah 11:1 and Isaiah 35:1. The first movement is in a
minimalist style and is innovative in the way that the increments in
“volume” of the crescendo pedal are used not only for drama but to
define the phrase structure of the movement and to express the imagery in Psalm
90. The second movement (Psalm 121) has expressive, upward bending lines. The
third movement (Isaiah 11) weaves in the chorale “Jesu, meine
Freude.” The last movement (Isaiah 35) is characteristically joyful and
rhythmic in its use of various groupings of eighth-note patterns. (Example 3)

Metopes, James Hopkins

Commissioned by the Far West Regional Convention of the
American Guild of Organists, Metopes was composed in the summer of 1990 and
first performed by Cherry Rhodes in June 1991. The work consists of two
extended movements, Arachne’s Web and The Gift of Nessus. These are
connected by the brief “Interlude,” for pedals alone, which serves
to unite the two by motivic transformation. The title Metopes is the
architectural term that refers to the sculptured marble slabs between the
triglyphs of a frieze. These spaces were frequently decorated in low relief
with depictions of scenes from classical Greek mythology.

Arachne’s Web refers to the story of the maiden
Arachne, a mortal who was exceedingly skilled in the art of weaving. She
unwisely challenged the goddess Minerva to a contest. Minerva was greatly
displeased by Arachne’s obviously greater skill at weaving. To punish
Arachne for her impudence, Minerva transfigured Arachne into a spider that
hangs by its own thread. Musically, an almost constant stream of descending
thirds depicts the weaving while above it an ever more ornate melody is spun
out. An angry outburst terminates the melodic elaboration, and the movement
ends quietly with the opening material.

The Gift of Nessus relates to the story of the centaur Nessus
who attempted to run away with Dejanira, the wife of Hercules. Hercules heard
her cries and shot the centaur in the heart. The dying Centaur told Dejanira to
take a portion of his blood and keep it to be used later as a charm to preserve
the love of her husband. Dejanira did so and before long had occasion to use
it. In one of his conquests Hercules had taken prisoner a fair maiden, named
Iole, of whom Dejanira became jealous. When Hercules was about to offer
sacrifices to the gods in honor of his victory, he sent to his wife for a white
robe to use on the occasion. Dejanira, thinking it a good opportunity to try
her love-spell, steeped the garment in the blood of Nessus. As soon as the
garment became warm on the body of Hercules, the poison penetrated into all his
limbs and caused him the most intense agony. The garment stuck to his flesh and
as he wrenched it off, he tore away whole pieces of his body. This movement
begins in a low register as a slow dance with menacing sounds. As the music
gradually moves higher, the dance becomes more complex and animated. A quiet
middle portion that develops the material heard thus far provides a foil to the
dramatic and agonized final dance episode.

Of Things Hoped For, David Evan Thomas

“Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the
evidence of things not seen,” writes Paul in his letter to the Hebrews.
Thomas’ two-part work is based on the idea of faith; the experience of
writing a piece on such a subject enabled Thomas to express his own thoughts:
“Faith and I have an uneasy dialogue, since my own faith is so . . .
mercurial. But just as the act of writing a letter is the quickest way to draw
a friend close, the meditation of writing music often makes the ineffable
concrete. I found when all the notes were down that a reverent murmur had grown
into a crowning shout of praise. Paul’s words came to mind, and thus a
title.”

Of Things Hoped For begins with a modest arching phrase,
supported by a descending pedal line. The ensuing meditation develops a new
melismatic idea along with toccata elements, leading to a grand statement. A
dance follows, based on the melisma, which stretches and flips the material.
The little bass line from the opening reasserts itself as a soprano tune, first
in a quiet B-major episode, then--triumphantly and in D major--in the
trumpet. The two movements may be performed together, or may stand alone; they
would work well in a worship setting. Marilyn Biery commissioned Thomas to
write this work in honor of James Biery’s birthday in 2001; it was
premiered by James in May 2001, at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul,
Minnesota. (Example 4)

Organ Booklet, Herbert Bielawa

The movements in Bielawa’s Organ Booklet are
essentially etudes modeled upon the various “Organbooks” in
history. It was from Bach’s term Orgelbüchlein that he drew the
title for these organ etudes. Bielawa set himself the task of making use of the
classical major and minor triads and manipulating them in unusual ways. The
challenge was to create a fresh marriage of familiar triads with unfamiliar and
unexpected developmental procedures. Whereas the triads are from antiquity,
their combination is from the present.

Prologue, Reflection and Jubilation on York, James Biery

In Biery’s search for possible material on which to
base this commission for The Congregational Church of Green’s Farms,
Westport, Connecticut, he came across the hymn “O Lord, Almighty God, Thy
Works.” The history of the text coupled with the quirky angularity of the
melody proved irresistible. The hymn was one of several “hymns and
spiritual songs” found in the third edition (1651) of the Bay Psalm Book.
The Bay Psalm Book was published by the Congregationalist settlers in the
Massachusetts Bay Colony; in 1640 it was the first book published in English in
North America. “O Lord, Almighty God” was popularly known as
“The Song of Moses and the Lamb” and was sung at the first great
council of Congregational Churches in New England, the Cambridge Synod of 1648.
The hymn is sung to the tune York, which is one of the twelve Common Tunes from
the Scottish Psalter of 1615. At one time in England it was second only to Old
Hundredth in popularity.

Even though the Prologue, Reflection, and Jubilation is
based on the tune York, the entire melody is not heard until the third movement.
The Prologue is a tribute to one of Biery’s favorite 20th century
composers, Maurice Duruflé. The running figuration heard throughout is
built upon the first four notes of the hymn. The main theme, played on the
string stops, begins with the ascending triad of the opening phrase of the hymn
(transformed to the minor mode).

The first movement melts into the second, a serene
“Reflection.” Once again the melodic line begins with the first
four notes of York.

An improvisatory recitative passage leads into the final
“Jubilation.” This movement pays homage to Calvin Hampton, the
gifted and innovative New York composer who died in 1984 at the age of
forty-six. Again the rising triadic motive is prominent, now in the major key.
The hymntune is first heard in the pedal part, and then triumphantly in a final
grand statement. (Example 5)

Psalm 151, Emma Lou Diemer

Psalm 151 was commissioned by Joan DeVee Dixon in 1998 in
honor of Alvin Broyles. The piece moves restlessly with sixteenth-note
figuration, punctuated by melodic ideas that alternate between the hands. Psalm
151 builds to a dramatic close in which an A major chord emerges from the
contrasting sonorities and is sustained full organ to the end. (Psalm 151 is one
of the non-canonical psalms found in the Dead Sea Scrolls at Quamran.)

Scherzo, Emma Lou Diemer

Scherzo was written in 1996 in honor of Carolyn and David
Gell and for the dedication of the Schulmerich Carillon at Trinity Episcopal
Church in Santa Barbara. The piece is mostly for manuals, and sections of it
may be played with various bell sounds contrasting to light organ
registrations. It is in the style of a traditional scherzo, bouncy and bright
in character.

Six Chorale Preludes on Ton-y- Botel, Herbert Bielawa

In Giocoso, the tune is in the pedal for several measures
but turns into a fugal subject in partial imitation. In Cantilena the tune is
embedded inside the staccato “peppering” of the texture. Canone
Doppio is a double canon with fragments of the tune in the pedal. Cadenza is a
flourish for the pedals where the tune is laced into the rush of sixteenth
notes with a few commentaries on the manuals. Preghiera is a prayer in which
very delicate flakes of sound accompany the pedal, which presents the tune.
Maestoso is a grand finale with the tune appearing in the manuals and pedal
alternately. (Example 6)

T.S. Eliot Impressions, Dennis Bergin

T.S. Eliot Impressions (Set 1) was inspired by the four
“Ariel” poems of T.S. Eliot. The poems are entitled “Journey
of the Magi,” “A Song for Simeon,” “Animula,” and
“Marina.” Colorful organ registrations, late twentieth-century
musical language and references to other organ works and chant melodies are
employed in this musical representation of Eliot’s poetry. The poems
mark, in part, Eliot’s conversion experience to orthodox Christianity.
The spiritual theme of T.S. Eliot Impressions is that of a journey from
darkness to light and from despair to hope.

Organ duet, two players, one console:

Auld Lang Syne, Eugene Thayer, edited by Robert C. Mann

The organ works of Eugene Thayer are not widely known today.
Thayer (1838-1889) was a well-known and highly respected organ
recitalist, pedagogue, composer and church musician who held church positions
in Massachusetts and New York. Robert C. Mann has provided this edition of
Thayer’s duet on Auld Lang Syne, which Thayer transcribed for duet from
one of his solo compositions. Thayer used duets as teaching pieces: he would
play the secondo part and his student would play the primo part. Unfortunately,
this duet is printed with each performer having their own score, making it
necessary to have an organ with a wide music desk in order to fit both scores
on it.

Evensong, Charles Callahan

Both of the Callahan duets in the MorningStar Concert Series
were commissioned by Raymond and Elizabeth Chenault. Evensong was premiered in
May of 1987 at the Spoleto Festival in Charleston, South Carolina. It is based
on two evening hymns: Tallis’ Canon and Ar Hyd y Nos. Evensong is quiet in
nature and uncomplicated in texture.

Largo ma non tanto, J. S. Bach, transcribed for organ duet
by James Biery

Biery has transcribed the middle movement of the Bach
Concerto in D minor for Two Violins, BWV 1043, for organ duet. This duet
requires the secondo player to sit in the middle of the bench to play the
ripieno part (which uses pedals), and the primo player to sit off to the right
side in order to play the two solo parts (manuals only). (Example 7)

Ragtime, Charles Callahan

Ragtime was also premiered in 1987 at the Spoleto Festival
by the Chenaults. The title of this piece conveys the compositional style of
this lively and colorful duet.

Psalm Variations, James Hopkins

Psalm Variations was composed originally in the spring and
summer of 2000 for orchestra. The piece was reworked in the summer of 2002 for
organ duet, and is dedicated to Marilyn and James Biery.

Psalm Variations is based on the American folk melody
Resignation. This melody is most often associated with the text “My
Shepherd Will Supply My Need,” a metrical paraphrase of Psalm 23 by Isaac
Watts (1674-1748). Although Psalm Variations is not a religious piece,
the variations do follow the flow of the text.

Written in the Dust, David Evan Thomas

Written in the Dust by David Evan Thomas was inspired by an
address given at the First Unitarian Society of Minneapolis in November 1998 by
the Rev. Dr. Kendyl Gibbons, Minister of the Society. Gibbons’ address
focused on the biblical story from John about the woman, caught in adultery,
whose punishment was to be stoned for her sin (John 8: 3-11). Jesus said
to the crowd “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to
throw a stone at her,”  and
then he dismissed her, saying, “Go and sin no more.” The
semi-programmatic movements of Written in the Dust are entitled “Jesus,
the Woman and the Pharisees” (verses 3-6), “The Writing in
the Dust” (6-8), and “Go, and sin no more”
(9-11). Written in the Dust contains all the ingredients which make this
a masterful, virtuosic work for duet: a brilliant pedal cadenza, “pedal
fans” in the outer movements, motives which are started by one player and
finished by the other, ranges of motion for each player that cover the keyboards,
fast figuration, conversational passing back-and-forth of musical ideas, and
elegant, lyrical writing. All combined, they enable Written in the Dust to tell
a compelling musical story. It was premiered in October 1999 by Marilyn and
James Biery at the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Example 8)

Duet, two organs:

Chantasy, James Hopkins

Chantasy for two organs was a commission from Mount Angel
Abbey, St. Benedict, Oregon, in thanksgiving for the two recently installed
Martin Ott organs. It was premiered by Cherry Rhodes and Ladd Thomas on October
17, 1999 in the Abbey. Hopkins calls it a “chant fantasy” on the
Kyrie and Sanctus of the Missa Cum Jubilo. Much of the harmonic language of
Chantasy is reminiscent of the music of Maurice Duruflé. (Example 9)

Voluntary for Antiphonal Organs, James Biery

The Voluntary for Antiphonal Organs was composed for and
first performed at the 1988 National Convention of the Organ Historical Society
in San Francisco. The piece is constructed using the standard sonata form with
a brief slow introduction.

Organ with instrument:

Divertimento (string quartet), Charles Callahan

A light-hearted piece, with considerable contrapuntal
activity among the instruments and a mystic element of calmly soaring melody in
the quiet sections.

Easter Canticles (organ and violoncello), Robert Sirota

The three movements of Easter Canticles--Vigil,
Crucifixion, and Resurrection--are structured as a triptych after the
iconostasis7 of an Orthodox church. The three panels are meditations on scenes
from the Passion of Jesus Christ: his prayerful agony in the Garden of
Gethsemane, his crucifixion and resurrection. With the combination of cello and
organ, Sirota sought to capture the mysticism of these three moments of the
Passion. The first movement is agonized and restless, the second portrays the
crucifixion, even down to the hammering of the nails into Christ’s hands,
and the third depicts Christ’s light-suffused resurrection.

The Kraken, Charles Hoag

The Kraken is a work for organ pedals with the player also
playing a large tam-tam (or the player could also be joined by a
percussionist). It is based upon the poem by the same name by Alfred Lord
Tennyson (1809-1892). The Kraken is a mythical Norse sea monster. The
opening lines of the poem give the setting for the music, which starts on the
lowest possible pitches and works upward to a frenzy in both instruments:

Below the thunders of the upper deep,

Far, far beneath in the abysmal sea,

His ancient, dreamless, uninvaded sleep

The Kraken sleepeth . . .

Organ and Voice:

Canticle of the Sun (high voice), David Evan Thomas

Canticle of the Sun, a setting of the poem by St. Francis of
Assisi, was commissioned by the Twin Cities (Minnesota) AGO and first performed
by soprano Elizabeth Pauly and organist James Biery in 2000.

The parallel verses of St. Francis’s poem inspired from
Thomas a series of variations on what could be called a Theme of Praise, a
declamatory melodic idea that emphasizes fourths and fifths. After the initial
presentation of the theme (“All praise to you, my Lord”), the
speaker moves from extolling sun and moon to praising each of the four elements
of the medieval world (wind, water, earth, fire) taking in all of creation.
Because the text is concise--only a few key images per variation--it
remains for the organ to develop the material through figuration, texture and
registration, as well as to provide links between sections, each of which
explores a different tonality. A special place is reserved for the human art of
forgiveness. The vocal line here descends into its lowest register, accompanied
by the simplest organ texture, before rising up again in fountains of praise.

Concertos:

Concerto for Organ and Orchestra, Gerald Near

This concerto by Gerald Near was conceived in the grand
traditional manner. The movements follow the usual form for a concerto: Sonata-allegro,
Slow movement (in no particular form) and Rondo (Toccata). It is scored for
chamber orchestra in a desire to make the work more practical and accessible.
Gerald Near’s music is published by Aureole Publications and distributed
by MorningStar.           n

Larry Palmer is harpsichord editor of THE DIAPASON.

Expensive as national conventions of the American Guild of Organists have become, it was still a bargain to be in eastern Minnesota enjoying an extensive program of musical treasures from France, England, and Germany, without the financial challenges of elevated euros or precious pounds. Add the Twin Cities advantages of near-perfect cool summer weather, many events scheduled within walking distance of the central city hotels, and a well-organized charter bus transport package available for travel to sites farther away, for further incentives to participate in the morning-to-midnight musical marathon detailed in the lavish (and heavy) 252-page program book.
Each of the nearly 1800 registrants attending the AGO’s 49th biennial gathering (held June 22–28 in Minneapolis and St. Paul) will have unique impressions of the meeting, based not only on individual tastes, but also on which of the presentations were heard. Many recitals and all workshops were offered concurrently. This report describes what I chose to experience, in this, my 50th year of attending such national meetings. Comments about several events I did not attend are treated as “convention buzz.”

From France: Messiaen Plus
France was represented with quite a lot of music by Olivier Messiaen: it is, after all, the centennial year of his birth. The first organ recital heard on Monday, the first full day of the convention, was played by Stephen Tharp, who gave a masterful account of Messiaen’s Messe de la Pentecôte as the climax of his all-French program on the bright and forthright 2001 Lively-Fulcher organ in St. Olaf Catholic Church. Tharp’s brilliant playing recalled again the visceral shock of this music when first encountered at Oberlin, presented by Fenner Douglass as very recent music. Even now it is not possible to hear the most evocative and accessible movement of the cycle, the Communion Les Oiseaux et les Sources (The Birds and the Springs) without remembering Douglass’s trenchant, if acidic, review of a 1972 performance in a non-reverberant Dallas sanctuary: “The birds . . . called out weakly as they died on the branch, and the drops of water more resembled curds of old cottage cheese.”1
I suspect the late, lamented Professor Douglass would have been happier with Tharp’s account! This time the birds sang jubilantly and chirped ecstatically before flying off into the stratosphere, while the springs burbled gently as they descended to subterranean depths at the piece’s ending.
Following a riveting performance of the final movement from Widor’s Symphonie Romane and works by Jeanne Demessieux, the Mass served as a bracing reminder of just how much hearing a dose of Messiaen’s organ music helps to balance some of the pabulum so often served up as modern church music. But it does remain difficult listening, and oft times more fun to play than to hear. Tellingly, a perusal of the entire convention program revealed no other organ works by Messiaen listed for performance during the entire week! For National Young Artist Competition in Organ Performance [NYACOP] contestants, for the Rising Stars organists, as well as for more established recitalists, the French notes of choice were most often penned by Langlais, Dupré, or Naji Hakim.

. . . at Orchestra Hall
Kudos to the convention program committee for making certain that nearly everyone got some exposure to works by one of the 20th century’s most eminent masters when the entire convention attended the most discussed program at Orchestra Hall on Tuesday evening. All-Messiaen, the concert contained no organ music at all (not surprising, since there is no organ in this major symphonic space); live music was followed by a post-concert showing of Paul Festa’s mesmerizing 52-minute documentary film, Apparition of the Eternal Church.
For more than two hours the assembled church musicians and organists heard readings of three poems by the composer’s mother Cécile Sauvage and secular pieces by Messiaen, performed almost exclusively by women. These were all early works: Theme and Variations for violin and piano, 1932; voice (selections from Poèmes pour Mi, (1936); three of the Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus for solo piano (1944); and, best of all, two of the eight movements from the composer’s chamber masterwork, Quartet for the End of Time (1940–41)—Abyss of the Birds for solo clarinet; and the final eight-minute transcendent Praise to the Immortality of Jesus, for violin and piano—performed with maximum expressivity and intensity by clarinetist Jennifer Gerth and violinist Stephanie Arado with Judy Lin, piano.
Programming the 35-minute closing piece, Festival of Beautiful Waters (1937) for a sextet of Ondes Martenots, provided a probable once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to hear this work expertly played by L’Ensemble d’Ondes Martenot de Montréal. The delicate electronic instruments, their sounds inspired by the changing frequencies of radio dials, produced tones somewhat like Benjamin Franklin’s eerie glass harmonicas (tuned water goblets). Capable of playing only single notes, the keyboard instruments have considerable dynamic and touch-sensitive possibilities. The audience dwindled markedly as the clock approached ten, and passed it: sad, because the short explanation and demonstration of the Ondes Martenots following the performance was both instructive and charming.
I missed the first part of the subsequent film showing while attending a posh Eastman Organ Department reception in the Orchestra Hall Green Room, an especially celebratory event since the first place NYACOP winner this year was current Eastman doctoral student Michael Unger. Something—perhaps as simple as not wishing to walk back alone to my hotel—led me to look in on the film in progress. I stood, totally engrossed, for the remaining third (arriving just as the late harpsichordist Albert Fuller described an early life-changing experience in the low C pipe of Washington Cathedral’s Skinner pipe organ. The unexpected sight and story grabbed my attention!).
A program book disclaimer read, “Please note that the film deals frankly with sex and violence in explicit language . . . However, DVDs are available for sale [at an Exhibition booth], should curiosity get the better of you afterwards.” The filmmaker, Paul Festa, writing of his creation, explained that Messiaen regarded one of four tragedies, or “dramas” of his life experience, to have been that “he was a religious composer writing, for the most part, for nonbelievers.” This film concerns “what . . . the nonbelievers see when they hear his music,” in this case the 1931 organ composition Apparition of the Eternal Church. The film shows responses to Messiaen’s creation by 31 individuals. They range from Yale professor Harold Bloom and filmmaker John Cameron Mitchell to fringe culture and drag figures, as well as Fuller and the composer Richard Felciano, a student of the French composer.2

. . . and in workshops
Messiaen’s music was the featured topic for a pedagogy track during the workshops, a new concept implemented to replace the pre-convention pedagogy workshops of previous years. Charles Tompkins filled in as master teacher for the indisposed Clyde Holloway. His “Windows on Lessons” featured students Brent te Velde (Trinity University), Tyrell Lundman (University of Montana, Missoula), Julie Howell, and Erin MacGowman Moore (both from the University of Iowa).
Youthful scholarship was represented in two juried papers, selected by the AGO Committee on Continuing Professional Education (COPE). I attended the presentation by Yale student Christopher White—“Creating a Narrative in Messiaen’s La Nativité du Seigneur”—in which he assigned certain extra-musical associations to various individual pitches and chords (an example: E=Jesus, E Major=Jesus on earth, as human) and made a convincing case for such an analysis of Messiaen’s nine-movement Christmas cycle. The University of Iowa’s David Crean followed with a complex discussion of “Messiaen’s Sixty-four Durations” (from the extraordinarily complex Livre d’Orgue, possibly the composer’s most abstract organ work).
Indiana University faculty member Christopher Young gave a workshop on “Understanding the Theory Behind the Art in Messiaen’s Organ Works.” However, it may have been the quiet mysticism of the Frenchman’s lush Communion motet O Sacrum Convivium, sung as the opening work at Thursday’s finale concert, that made the most friends for Messiaen’s elusive art.
A fully subscribed workshop (on a non-Messiaen topic) was musicologist John Near’s “The Essence of Widor’s Teaching: Interpretive Maxims.” I arrived slightly after the appointed starting time, learning later that I had missed a brief recorded example of Widor’s voice! Pithy exhortations from the composer—“Let’s learn to breathe,” “Derive tempo from the space in which you are performing,” and an oft-repeated “Slow down” (borne out by each subsequent lowering of the metronomic indications for the composer’s signature work, the Symphonie V Toccata) as well as his instruction to “Respect the work, not the performer”—all ring as true today as they did in the previous century! Dr. Near, currently working on a biography of Widor to complement his stellar editions of the composer’s organ symphonies, continues to do service to our profession by reminding us of the basic root values underpinning the French symphonic tradition. Nearly all the auditors stayed on to engage in further questions and comments.

A French recitalist
French organist Marie-Bernadette Duforcet Hakim’s opening de Grigny Ave Maris Stella was more effective than a jolt of double-strength espresso as a wake-up aid for her early-morning recital on the House of Hope’s large C. B. Fisk magnum opus. This organ’s Grands jeux, weighty, noble, and thrilling, provided a filling mass of sound in this Presbyterian Gothic edifice, which unfortunately lacks an extra five seconds of reverberation that would allow the loud and brilliant organ to bloom. That virtual coffee may have had an adverse effect on the recitalist, resulting in an overly brisk tempo for Franck’s Pièce Héroïque (after all the composer did mark it Allegro maestoso). Mme Hakim’s nuanced performance was stylistic, but any majesty was decidedly of the jet age. It seemed perverse, as well, to be hearing this beloved Romantic work on such unforgiving sounds, when directly before us stood the sanctuary’s other organ, an 1878 instrument by Merklin, created in exactly the same year and country as Franck’s composition.
Like most fine instruments, the Fisk took on the character of its player and served her especially well in her own composition Vent Oblique. After hearing an abundance of bright upperwork, it gave pleasant aural relief to encounter warm and lovely 8-foot sounds in the mid section of Jean Langlais’ Jésus, mon Sauveur béni, based on a hymn popular in his native Brittany. The program concluded with a set of well-crafted short variations on Pange lingua by husband Naji Hakim, and an improvisation that seemed to be based on the Ave Maris, but with an unexpected appearance, near the end, of the hymn tune Ein’ feste Burg as an offering, apparently, to the many Lutherans who call Minnesota their home.

English visitors
From St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, the choir of men and boys was in residence for three convention appearances, repeating a highly successful visit to the 1980 national meeting in the Twin Cities. Mark Williams, a former assistant sub-organist and director of music at the Cathedral School, stood in as the choir’s conductor, replacing an indisposed Andrew Carwood. Visually arresting in black cassocks, with bright red stoles and music folders, all seemed in good shape chorally (save for the occasional trumpeting tenor), and organist Tom Winpenny displayed his sensitive musicianship over and over again, both as soloist and impeccable choir accompanist.
The Monday evening concert took place in the Cathedral of St. Paul in St. Paul—the most apt of venues, a magnificent 1907 Wren-like domed structure blessed with ample reverberation. Major offerings of early English motets by Weelkes, Peter Phillips, Orlando Gibbons, and the Mass for Five Voices by William Byrd were interspersed with organ works: Fantasia in G by Byrd, and the Fantasia of Foure Parts from Parthenia by Orlando Gibbons. The cross relations in these Tudor pieces sounded forth pungently from the three-stop portative organ in the chancel.
Employing the cathedral’s gallery and chancel organs for maximum surround sound, the second part of the concert offered Judith Bingham’s Cloth’d in Holy Robes (2005), an entirely engrossing and striking setting of a poem by Edward Taylor, with spinning wheel-evoking accompaniment supporting both the opening lines and subsequent allegorical references to clothing in this beautiful text. Anthems by Gerald Hendrie (Ave Verum Corpus, sung by the men of the choir) and Stephen Paulus (Arise, My Love) were separated by Paulus’s challenging Toccata for Organ, given an absolutely flawless and viscerally exciting performance by young Mr. Winpenny, who then returned to his accompanying duties for Benjamin Britten’s cantata Rejoice in the Lamb, a performance made particularly memorable by the male treble soloists in the fourth and fifth sections “For I will consider my cat Geoffrey” and “For the Mouse is a creature of great personal valour.”
Is there anything more sublime in Britten’s choral output than the quiet “Hallelujah” that ends this memorable setting of Christopher Smart’s idiosyncratic poetry? It provided an inspired conclusion to an enchanting concert.
Back on the other side of the river, the choir sang both Matins and Evensong in the Minneapolis Basilica of St. Mary. The afternoon program on Tuesday gave us baroque music of John Blow (Cornet Voluntary in D Minor) and his prize pupil Henry Purcell (Hear My Prayer, the anthem Jehova Quam Multi Sunt Hostes Mei, and Evening Service in G Minor) with responses by Thomas Tomkins. The hymn, Bishop Thomas Ken’s 1695 text “All praise to Thee, my God, this night” was sung to the familiar Tallis’ Canon tune (for one retrospect of the Renaissance), the psalm to a 20th-century chant by Walford Davies, and the closing voluntary brought us back to the baroque with music by Purcell’s Danish contemporary, Dieterich Buxtehude, his oft-played Praeludium in G Minor, BuxWV 149, in a stylish, virtuoso performance by Winpenny. The basilica was overflowing with rapt conventioneers who had arrived by bus before our walking group made it to the church. Seated in a far rear pew that was probably in another zip code, it was difficult to hear much except a soothing, but beautiful, wash of reverberated sound.
Matins, early the next day, was quite another matter (conventioneers like to party till the wee hours, so there were only a third as many worshipping at this morning service). I found a pew with good sight lines only several rows back from the chancel; both sound and repertory were worth the early rising! A full program of British 20th-century cathedral music, from Herbert Howells’s Rhapsody in D-flat, complete with a seamless decrescendo at its conclusion; Edward Bairstow’s I Sat Down Under His Shadow, the ecstasy of Bernard Rose’s responses, one of William Walton’s most inspired canticle settings, Jubilate Deo for double chorus (who would not be joyful in the Lord with such music as this?), and the somewhat less inspired, but serviceable Te Deum in G of Ralph Vaughan Williams. Elgar’s The Spirit of the Lord was the anthem, its extended organ introduction beautifully rendered, and the service concluded with organist Winpenny’s brilliant traversal of Fernando Germani’s Toccata, opus 12. That evening the Londoners flew back to Britain, these three convention appearances their sole purpose for the trip across the Atlantic.

Otherworldly Holst
What a gem of an organist is Peter Sykes! Perhaps even better, what a fine musician, whatever instrument he plays or music he chooses to program!3 His own transcription of Gustav Holst’s orchestral suite The Planets was beautifully made and impeccably realized in a Wednesday recital at St. Mark’s Episcopal Cathedral. From the lowest rumblings of the opening movement (Mars, the Bringer of War), with growling reeds and a flawless quick crescendo, to the final Vox Humana above strings (a most satisfactory sound for evoking Holst’s wordless female chorus) as Neptune, the Mystic subsided in echoes of the spheres, Sykes missed nary a nuance with his clever use of organs fore and aft (perhaps most fittingly in Mercury, the Winged Messenger). The Welte/Möller/Gould and Sons organ was an apt partner (continuing this convention’s fine record for careful pairing of instruments and players), but then, how could one go wrong with an instrument possessing a Divine Inspiration stop?4

A welcome German recitalist and some Americans playing
German music
My second recital of the convention introduced an outstanding German artist new to me, Elke Voelker (whose U.S. connections include study with Wolfgang Rübsam at the University of Chicago). Ms. Voelker is the first to record the complete organ works of Sigfrid Karg-Elert. Her program in the Basilica of St. Mary utilized a good-sounding four-manual Wicks organ (1949), greatly enhanced by the spacious six-second reverberation of this domed, marble-interior building, America’s first basilica (according to pew cards in the church). Two major works by Karg-Elert, his Symphonic Chorale: Ach, bleib’ mit deiner Gnade and the monumental Passacaglia (55 Variations) and Fugue on BACH, opus 150, were flanked by Wagner’s Festival Music from Die Meistersinger and Bach’s celebrated Air from Suite in D, BWV 1068, both in arrangements by Karg-Elert: so, in essence an entire program of music by the German impressionist.
Elke Voelker made convincing music from these many notes, handling the organ with panache and ease, managing her own page turns, and giving us many thrilling moments. The opening Wagner brought chills to the spine at the pedal entrances in familiar music from the opera, and the addition of the Chamade Trumpet to the final chord was a capping effect. The Symphonic Chorale, one of the composer’s better-known works, is of a reasonable length and very appealing. As for the lengthy BACH work, I am pleased to have heard it, but would not seek to repeat the experience in the near future.
Further musical highlights of this “German theme” were provided by the sterling American artist Stewart Wayne Foster (winner of the first Dallas International Organ Competition). I have never heard Foster play poorly, and his concert for the convention (heard in its second iteration on Thursday) was another example of superb results made possible by his carefully calibrated articulation always employed in service to the musical line. Foster’s attention to each voice, including the bass, reflects his extensive background in harpsichord continuo playing.
Partnered with the 2004 Glatter-Götz/Rosales two-manual organ of 50 stops, Foster showed what a small number of keyboards could be made to accomplish with skillful use of a sequencer coupled to an ear for color and utilizing stops in various octaves. Karg-Elert again, this time three of his lovely Pastels from the Lake of Constance (not necessarily what one would expect to be played so idiomatically on a two-manual tracker instrument) were prefaced by an attention-gripping reading of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in G Minor, BWV 535, and a rhythmically infectious treatment of Buxtehude’s baroque dance-based chorale fantasy on Wie schön leuchtet der Morgenstern, brightened with two appearances of the Zimbelstern, the second as counterpart to an improvised cadenza leading into the final cadence.
Three North American works, especially Rising Sun by Brian Sawyers, provided the “wow” factor for this program. It was good also to hear two of Samuel Adler’s Windsongs, and the winning work of the AGO organ composition competition, Canadian Rachel Laurin’s Prelude and Fugue in F Minor, with its reminiscence of the Dupré opus 7 work in the same key. Foster’s overall theme for the program, “Atmospheres: A Prayer for the Environment,” demonstrated his special affinity for unusual thematic programming. The organ, with both 16-foot flues and reeds on all divisions, and added 102⁄3 flue and 32-foot reed in the pedal, possessed a gravitas that was welcome in the favorable acoustic of Augustana Lutheran Church, St. Paul.
More German offerings were, of course, to be found in various convention programs. One could characterize Carla Edwards’s program as Germanic (Buxtehude, Bach), or German-inspired (Planyavsky’s lively Toccata alla Rumba, neatly dispatched on the recent two-manual Fisk organ in Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church, Shoreview; and Petr Eben’s astringent take on the ubiquitous Prelude, Fugue and Chaconne in C, his Hommage à Dietrich Buxtehude). A non-Teutonic exception was provided in Triptych of Fugues, an early work by Gerald Near. Though Minnesota-born, Near seems often to be curiously under-represented in programs featuring Minnesota composers. His three lovely contrapuntal movements were played here without the requisite suppleness of line needed for this composer’s idiosyncratic amalgam of lyricism with strict fugal form.
And, of course, the convention buzzed about Cameron Carpenter’s version of THE Toccata and Fugue in D Minor, an arrangement using selected added material from Romantic-era transcriptions by Busoni, Friedman, Godowsky, Grainger, Liszt, Tausig, Stokowski, and Sir Henry Wood, that turned the possibly-not-by-Bach work into a “ . . . sort of cumulative celebration flinging wide the gates of possibility.”5 I did not hear Mr. Carpenter’s program (there were simply too many concerts in one day), but his awesome technical prowess and showman’s style may mark a return to ”the good old days” of the Virgil Fox versus E. Power Biggs opposites in America’s concert life. Carpenter’s popularity seems a positive development if it signals a healthy resurgence of bankable diversity in organ playing. Anyone who can attract more people to organ concerts has my admiration and support. And having fun at a recital? What a great concept!

Final concert: Siegfried Matthus’s Te Deum (2005)
At 8:40 trumpets from the rear gallery sounded the opening fanfare to the ten-minute opening movement of Matthus’s monumental work, composed for the dedication of the reconstructed Frauenkirche in Dresden. One hour later the same trumpets signaled the start of the final movement (Amen), with most of the same music, though some appeared in different sequence. Most magical of all, the cathedral tower bells were used in the very last measures, gently dying away as the chorus quietly intoned over and over again Te Deum laudamus.
English visitors having departed, it was left to local singers to provide the choral forces for this great work. Magnum Chorum, the Minnesota Boychoir, the National Lutheran Choir, and VocalEssence Ensemble Singers and Chorus, each group garbed distinctively, comprised the voices assembled under the confident baton of conductor Philip Brunelle. There were six vocal soloists, plus John Scott (ex London St. Paul’s) playing the significant organ part, not the least of which was his fine rendition of the Bach Toccata in D Minor, above which composer Matthus had set a text from The Organ by Friedrich Wilhelm Zachariae, beginning “Listen to the rushing wind in the silently expecting organ which it is preparing for its sacred song.” Herr Matthus was in attendance for this highly successful first American performance. Ovations were lengthy, loud, and deserved.
The first third of this closing concert united the three European national strands together with a fascinating selection of choral music: the Messiaen motet mentioned earlier and an excerpt from Dupré’s early De Profundis; the curiously moving avant garde work by John Tavener (“Verses Written on an Ecstasy” from Ultimos Ritos) in which four soloists in the chancel, the Magnum Chorum behind us in the nave, with larger forces split on both sides of the transepts, provided a cruciform arrangement of choral forces. The singers mused in ever more significant phrase fragments based on an underlying taped performance of the Crucifixus from Bach’s B-Minor Mass, at first barely audible, but ultimately overwhelming by the end of this effective work. An intense rendition of Stephen Paulus’s modern choral masterpiece, the Pilgrims’ Hymn that concludes his church opera The Three Hermits, realized the exquisitely chosen harmonies that find the simplest of resolutions in the work’s octave unison Amens.
John Scott played a convincing first performance of an appealing organ work commissioned for the convention. Finnish composer Jaakko Mäntyjärvi took his inspiration from a poem by Emily Dickinson, And Hit a World, at Every Plunge. In program notes the composer mused, “. . . it is certainly not a comfortable piece. At some point I realized that I was . . . harking back to the very first time I heard an organ piece by Messiaen.” Organized as variations on an underlying twelve-tone row, the piece is “restless.” In a disarmingly honest description the composer noted that “the variations are very different in character and length, from funeral march to moto perpetuo. Although [the piece] aspires to a triumphant ending, it never quite seems to get there.” Indeed the work ended with three tonal chords, interrupted by cluster-crashes, leading to an ultimately quiet culmination. I found it engrossing, a work I would definitely want to hear again.6
Another convention choral commission, The Love of God by Aaron Jay Kernis, suffered from pitch problems in its first performance. The pre-Matthus part of the concert ended with an audience sing-along of Hubert Parry’s O Praise Ye the Lord (1894), cementing the English choral music arc of the week.

Organ concertos, American and “Jacobean”
Benson Great Hall of Bethel University was the site of this convention’s organ concerto program: four works for organ and instruments, conducted by Philip Brunelle, with organists Stephen Cleobury and James Diaz. A fine American eclectic three-manual 67-stop instrument by Blackinton Organ Company dominated the ample stage and was well balanced in this large, yet intimate-feeling, auditorium.
Ron Nelson’s Pebble Beach, commissioned for the 1984 AGO national convention in San Francisco, opened the program. Diaz’s sparkling playing was abetted by brass and percussion in this loud, lively curtain-raiser. Winner of the 2000 Dallas International Organ Competition, Diaz was also the brilliant soloist for Stephen Paulus’s Grand Concerto (Number 3), a Dallas Symphony commission first heard in 2004 (with the most recent Dallas Competition winner, Bradley Hunter Welch, as soloist).
Paulus is a composer who not only knows his craft, but one who has something to say with that facility. This major work has many impressive moments from its beginning with the organ and lower strings, through a second movement featuring the organ’s Harmonic Flute, then orchestral flute and strings, and finally the organ’s strings—a lovely blend of timbres. Building to a climax, the movement ends with a reference to the hymn Come, Come Ye Saints (a favorite of the composer’s father) and pizzicato lower strings. In the final movement (marked Jubilant) there is joy in virtuosity, especially in the rapid jumping between manuals, a lovely bit of lyricism when the high strings introduce the folk melody O Waly, Waly, and a knock-your-socks-off pedal cadenza. The audience loved this piece, the only one requiring a complete symphonic complement of instruments. Woodwinds and brass having joined the strings, the orchestra made its best showing of the day in this culminating performance. Cheering and ovations were deserved.
The other two concertos were in the capable hands of Stephen Cleobury, who had a rather thankless assignment in Calvin Hampton’s Concerto for Organ and Strings. Understandably, the program committee chose this work commissioned for the previous Twin Cities national meeting in 1980. Preparing at that time for my own concerto program in Orchestra Hall, I did not hear this work by a dear friend from undergraduate days at Oberlin, although subsequently I learned that Calvin himself did not regard the piece highly. Hearing it now I did not find the string writing particularly apt, and I am sad that this was the only piece to represent such a gifted American composer during this 2008 convention. The ending, at least, is memorable, with organ arpeggios providing a bit of filigree above orchestra strings, which were, unfortunately, not well tuned.
Cleobury’s second stint on the organ bench was as soloist in Judith Bingham’s convention commission, Jacob’s Ladder—Concerto for Organ and Strings. (In her notes for the program book, she wrote that her inspiration was derived from the first view of a photograph showing the laddered effect of the attractive organ façade.) Four brief movements bearing programmatic titles showed a fine correlation of component parts to produce an appealing ensemble work. Once again the upper strings were quite messy.
Hindsight is, of course, always more successful than foresight, but it did seem as if three ensemble works rather than four could have allowed more rehearsal time for each, and in a day jam-packed with musical events, would have been quite enough for the audiences as well.
Pipedreams Live (and program long)
We all owe much to Michael Barone for his continuing contributions to the public awareness of the pipe organ, its wide range of literature, and many diverse styles of instruments, as heard weekly in the successful Minnesota Public Radio series. The service he renders to the profession is unparalleled in today’s media. That said, it was fortunate that this Wednesday evening audience in Wooddale Church consisted almost exclusively of the already convinced. Anticipatory at the beginning, fatigued or comatose after a two-hour and fifteen minute program without intermission, many of us would have appreciated an earlier employment of the organ’s cancel button.
As for repertory, it was a program in which the oldest piece heard was Joseph Jongen’s 1935 Toccata, opus 104, the program opener, given a brilliant rendition by this year’s NYACOP winner Michael Unger. Then followed a steady stream of new and unfamiliar pieces played by first-rate players who slid on and off the bench either of the movable console or of the attached mechanical-action one of the large Visser-Rowland organ: Herndon Spillman, Calvin Taylor, Barone himself, splendid jazz player Barbara Dennerlein, Ken Cowan, Aaron David Miller, and Douglas Reed (who brought the marathon to an end with William Albright’s Tango Fantastico and Alla Marcia, aka The AGO Fight Song!).
Along the way, Jason Roberts, winner of the National Competition in Organ Improvisation, perhaps sensing the encroaching weariness, gave a brief example of his art in a French Classic idiom; well-loved Lutheran church musician Paul Manz was warmly applauded after the playing of his chorale-improvisation Now Thank We All Our God by Scott Montgomery; and Isabelle Demers, in the penultimate program slot, played with consummate musicianship a gentle and moving Prelude in E Minor by Gerald Bales and Paulus’s As if the whole creation cried.

AGO business/The business of music
The business meetings of the Guild during national conventions have been fun and musically rewarding during the six years of outgoing president Fred Swann’s administration. This time the afternoon event was held at Central Lutheran Church, where Marilyn Keiser gave first performances of a prize-winning work and a commissioned movement to be featured at the Organ Spectacular (officially scheduled for 19 October 2008) during this International Year of the Organ: Bernard Wayne Sanders’ Ornament of Grace for organ and solo melody instrument (published by Concordia Publishing House) and Stephen Paulus’s Blithely Breezing Along, a seven-minute solo organ piece (available from Paulus Publications).
An impressive number of exhibitors (102) displayed their wares in the exhibition spaces of the Minneapolis Hilton Hotel. From Nada-Chair back slings (for organists with “Bach Pain”) one could wander to composer Stephen Paulus’s booth, often manned by father and son Andrew; or stop by the AGO national headquarters table, where a newly released compact disc of Conversations and Lessons with David Craighead preserves some taped lessons with Judith Hancock as well as more recent responses to queries about various pedagogical topics as posed by an unidentified interviewer. (Buzz has it that the interlocutor is Richard Troeger.) The purchase of this disc also triggered the bonus gift of “A Grand Occasion,” an AGO cookbook from the past. This brought on extreme nostalgia for several familiar figures who contributed some favorite recipes: Robert Anderson [caramelized carrots], Howard (Buddy) Ross [Shrimp Howard], and L. Cameron Johnson [Philly-Miracle Whip Dip]!
Some random items of interest found in various publishers’ displays: the recently republished Distler organ works in an “Urtext” edition at Bärenreiter; a reminder via a special brochure from Breitkopf that 2009 will mark the 200th anniversary of Mendelssohn’s birth; Calvert Johnson’s valuable new edition of Frescobaldi’s Fiori musicali (with variant chromatic alterations from the Torino Manuscript) at Wayne Leupold; from ECS Publishing, free copies of their prize-winning anthem heard at the opening celebratory service, Stephen R. Fraser’s Rejoice, the Lord is King (SATB and organ), with its especially haunting, chromatic shift from a melodic F-sharp to F-natural between the second and third measures of the idiomatic and very effective organ accompaniment; from Oxford University Press, a special brochure on the music of Ralph Vaughan Williams, in commemoration of this year’s 50th anniversary of his death.
A pre-convention mailing had brought advance word of a special recording titled Real French Sounds to be had at the convention, the promotional gift from the Association of French Organ Builders. This two-compact disc set comprises an elegant set of performances by various French organists, including such well-known players as Olivier Latry, Daniel Roth, Thierry Escaich, and Pierre Pincemaille, playing fifteen historic instruments (restored by the firms Atelier Bertrand Cattiaux, Jean-Baptiste Gaupillat, Michel Jurine, Patrick Armand, Giroud Successeurs, Nicolas Toussaint, and Jean-Pascal Villard). It is, overall, a useful demonstration of some lovely organs.
American pipe organ builders were well represented here, as were makers of digital instruments. The Twin Cities provided good examples of outstanding organs from many of the exhibitors, as identified throughout this report. Happily, I acquired only one new trinket, a black stop knob key chain from the Wicks Organ Company. It joins useful previous white ones, giving my collection some needed diversity. A year’s worth of compact discs and DVDs were available for purchase, and all this commerce, especially that transacted during late night hours, was made more pleasant by an accessible cash bar.

Summary thoughts
I heard it expressed several times that “this was Philip Brunelle’s program.” The wide-ranging, often challenging exploration of new music (seventeen commissions and competition prize-winning works were listed on the Convention Evaluation Form), plus the programming of other recent works surely new to a majority of the convention goers, reflected both appetite and taste of the prodigious program chair, this year celebrating his 40th anniversary as organist-choirmaster of Plymouth Congregational Church in Minneapolis. Brunelle certainly generated a great deal of musical excitement, not only as planner, but also as conductor for the two major orchestral and choral/orchestral programs.
That the music of Stephen Paulus held such a prominent place at this convention was particularly gratifying. Currently AGO’s composer of the year, the Minnesotan is one of America’s finest, an artist who consistently produces challenging music for organ and for choral forces as part of his ongoing artistic efforts. He is also a genuinely kind person whose many interactions with convention-goers was much appreciated.
A personal regret was that there was not at least a tad more celebration of Hugo Distler’s centenary, which actually occurred on Tuesday, June 24, right in the midst of this gathering. One workshop, one choral composition (the motet Singet dem Herrn, heard on two days at one of four concurrent worship services presented on Monday and Thursday), and that was all. In Lutheran territory? (At least St. Paul’s Luther Seminary had presented a March symposium on the composer’s life and works!)
Appreciated amenities: possibly the easiest to see, least self-destructing name tags of any convention in my experience, and a many-pocketed, multi-zippered convention tote bag with an external water bottle holder, the whole a classy production that also ranks with the best ever: no expense spared here, and usable at home, too.
And, certainly not least, a smoothly functioning hospitality/information center at the hotel, staffed by Twin Cities AGO chapter volunteers. There one could find nibbles, coffee and water, transportation schedules, gay pride guides, and the occasional leftover workshop handouts, among which two of the more interesting were on Latin American Organ Literature from Cristina Garcia Banegas and Organ Music from Czech Composers from Anita Smisek.

And finally . . .
A tally of convention events from Saturday afternoon through Thursday evening gave these numbers: three open performance and improvisation competition rounds; four evening concerts plus two performances of the daytime concerto program; fifteen organ recitals, each performed twice, plus two carillon concerts and nine Rising Stars organ programs; sixty-six workshops including choral reading sessions; an opening evening church service, four individual daytime worship opportunities, each given twice, plus Evensong and Matins services. [For complete details, refer to the convention website <www.ago2008.org&gt;.]
My apologies to artists whose programs I was not able to attend. Many are friends, or friends of friends, or students of friends. It must be obvious that no one person, not even the proverbial little old one in tennis shoes, could cover as large and event-filled a gathering as this national convention. The time in the Twin Cities remained enjoyable primarily because I did not attempt to do everything.
Throughout the week there were many cherished meetings with people not encountered often enough, individuals who trigger memories of shared experiences, ones who make such professional gatherings personal. To mention a very few of them: Marjorie Jackson Rasche, FAGO, now of Galveston, TX, whom I met at my very first AGO regional convention 52 years ago when both of us were young Ohioans; Carl and Kathy Crozier, of happy Honolulu memories; professional colleagues Jim Christie, Susan Marchant, and Cal Johnson; and new acquaintance, Alexander Schreiner’s son John.
Of memorable chats while traveling on the buses two stood out in particular: one with West Point organist Craig Williams; and another with Patricia Scace from Maryland, who told of acquiring a John Challis instrument that turned out to be the first harpsichord I ever played.
And finally, the realization that as the Twin Cities 2008 national convention became part of AGO history on Friday June 28, there remained only 735 days until the July 4 opening of the 2010 meeting in our nation’s capital city. Start saving up for it now!

Jay Zoller is the organist at South Parish Congregational Church in Augusta, Maine, where he plays the church’s historic 1866 E. & G. G. Hook organ. He holds degrees from the University of New Hampshire and the School of Theology at Boston University. He is a retired designer for the Andover Organ Company and currently designs for the Organ Clearing House. He resides in Newcastle, Maine with his wife Rachel. Zoller, as a high school student in 1961, was fortunate to hear Heinz Wunderlich play at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall on his first American tour. They began a professional relationship in 1989 when Zoller played in a master class that Wunderlich was giving. Since then, Zoller has studied with Heinz Wunderlich and has performed many of Wunderlich’s organ compositions in recital. In addition to writing several articles about Professor Wunderlich for The American Organist and Choir and Organ magazines, Zoller has played in all-Wunderlich recitals in Hamburg, Germany in 1999 and again in 2004. He plans to participate in the 2009 festivities as well.

Old age for most people means a slowing down and a loss of the abilities they once had. If they are among the few who live to their ninth decade, they usually live a very limited existence.
If they are among the very few, often very gifted, artists who are sustained by their art and who, by force of will, work at their art, they continue to be productive in their chosen field. One thinks of the painter Andrew Wyeth who remained active in his work until he died, and was nourished by his deep roots in Pennsylvania and rural coastal Maine. As a young man, after determining what he was about, he remained true to his calling throughout his life, undeterred by different trends that swirled around him.
Heinz Wunderlich has also been sustained by his roots, which reach back to the music of Max Reger, transmitted to him by his teacher Karl Straube. And, like Wyeth, Professor Wunderlich has remained true to his calling, digging deep into the music of Reger and Bach and carrying that tradition into the 21st century with his own works, despite trends that have gone off in all directions.

Hamburg celebrations in 2009
On April 25, 2009, Heinz Wunderlich will turn 90. As happens every five years for Wunderlich’s birthday, all Hamburg turns out for a festival of recitals. This year is no different.
The first concert is to be at St. Petri on Saturday, April 25, and is an organ recital of Wunderlich’s works played by former students: Dörte Maria Packeiser (Heidenheim), Eva-Maris Sachs (Erlangen), Sirka Schwartz-Uppendieck (Fürth), Izumi Ikeda (Japan), Jay Zoller (USA), and Andreas Rondthaler (Hamburg).
Sunday morning, April 26, Wunderlich’s Ökumenische Messe (2006) under the direction of former student and Director of Music at St. Petri, Thomas Dahl, will receive its premiere. On Tuesday, April 28, Heinz Wunderlich will play a recital at Hauptkirche St. Jacobi where the famous Arp Schnitger organ resides. Wednesday the 29th, back at St. Petri, there will be a concert for chorus, organ, and orchestra that will include the Concerto for Organ and Orchestra on the name of BACH by Heinz Wunderlich. The generous acoustics of both St. Petri and St. Jacobi and the high caliber of the artists involved will make each of these concerts an event to remember.
I have always come away from these concerts in the past with a feeling for the great respect and love that Professor Wunderlich’s former students and his Hamburg audiences have for him. His late wife, the violinist Nelly Söregi-Wunderlich, once told me that when he plays in Hamburg the church is always full. I have found that to be true in the concerts I have attended.
At 90, Heinz Wunderlich continues to compose, play concerts, and prepare his earlier compositions for publication. Retirement for him has only meant a change of emphasis from teaching and church work to writing, recording,
and publishing.

Early life
Paul Arthur Heinz Wunderlich was born in Leipzig on April 25, 1919. At the time of his birth, the First World War had just ended and the Paris Peace Conference was meeting to decide the fate of Europe. Indeed, the Treaty of Versailles was signed a mere two months after his birth. The social upheavals that occurred during the next twenty years before World War II did not radically interrupt his childhood, which was very quiet. However, inflation worsened and by 1929 had affected the whole world economy. There was fear and uncertainty as Hitler made his bid for power. In May 1936, the 17-year-old Wunderlich witnessed the destruction of the Mendelssohn Memorial in front of the Gewandhaus and the loss of jobs that many musicians suffered.
As a young child of five, Wunderlich was traveling on the train with his parents when a faulty door latch let the child fall out of the moving train onto the tracks between two moving trains. His father pulled the brake to stop the train and a doctor who happened to be on board administered to the child until they reached the hospital in Leipzig. The train company was found negligent and made monthly payments to the family.
Wunderlich’s family was musical. On his father’s side were pianists, all the way back to his great-grandfather.

I began taking piano lessons from my father when I was ten. I made progress and one year later began studying piano and composition with Joachim Voigt who was the organist at our church. I grew interested in the organ, and when I was fifteen began studying organ with Mr. Voigt as well. I studied the flute for awhile and, for a little time, the violin also, but I cannot play either now.
My father wanted to study piano at the Hochschule, but couldn’t because he had no money for that. His father was a piano teacher and his father, my great-grandfather, as well as his father, my great, great-grandfather, were all piano teachers. I also had an uncle who was a very good cellist, but he died very young.2

On his mother’s side of the family were musicians also.
My mother played the piano a little bit. She played some with me. My mother’s cousin was a conductor in Prague and my grand aunt from the same family as my mother was a singer. She sang in opera and also got her start in Leipzig.

Musical training
At the age of sixteen, Heinz was accepted into the Academy of Music in Leipzig, earning the distinction of being the youngest student at the famous school. It was there that he began organ study with Karl Straube, who had been a friend and colleague of Max Reger. At sixteen he began his study of and lifelong interest in the music of Max Reger.

We were three, four, five students in one four-hour class with Straube. And so we listened to all of the other students as they played and I played too. We played chorales, preludes, music of Bach, the music of Franck, French music, and also Reger. It was at this time that I began studying Reger. It was required of us. Reger had been a teacher in Leipzig and all of the great organists had come to Leipzig to study with Straube and before with Reger. Reger had been the older generation. He died in 1916 before I was born. But, Reger was required study and his compositions were very important.

Wunderlich also began his study of composition and choral conducting with Johann Nepomuk David. The rigorous training he got from this famous composer has stayed with him.

David was a very famous composer. In my last year, I had to write fugues based on the fugues from the Art of Fugue by Bach. They are complicated fugues with their own themes and we had to write our own themes and double and triple fugues. We began our study with fugues of Palestrina and studied all the old techniques and later on we came to modern music. It was very thorough.

When I asked Wunderlich if he remembered his very first compositions he said, smiling, “Yes, it was before this time, when I was 14 or 15 years old. But, I lost them!”
Another part of his musical training was orchestral conducting with Max Hochkofler. Hochkofler was Germany’s most famous conductor at the time and had many students.
In 1937, at the age of 18, Heinz accepted his first organist position, becoming the second organist at the Petri Church in Leipzig. The organist of this church was the second director of the Music Academy. It was great experience for the young man because he played services and pieces with orchestra. It was during this time, in 1938, that he wrote the Kontrapunktische Chaconne g-Moll.
Wunderlich completed his music degree in 1940, but continued to study with Straube through 1941. His examination was the finest testimonial earned up to that time at the academy: “with distinction in masterly organ performance and improvisation.” It was during these student days that he became widely known, not only for his many recitals, but also as an improviser. Wunderlich was the first student that Straube ever let play the Reger Phantasy, op. 57, in public.

Military service
After his additional year of study with Straube he was appointed Church Music Director at the Moritzkirche in Halle in 1941, a position once held by Samuel Scheidt. The German army drafted him, however, and his job had to wait. It was not a desirable time to be enlisted in the army, but because he had had typhoid as a child, he had problems with his heart. So, he was only fit for home duty. The military was also stationed in Halle and so in the evenings when the other soldiers went to drink beer, he could go to church and practice. He was discharged from the military in 1943.
During his time in the military, though, he studied with Heinrich Fleischer, a good organ teacher, who had also been a student of Straube. Wunderlich wrote the Fuga Variata in 1942 while he was a soldier.

Civilian life in East Germany
Upon completion of his military duties in 1943, Wunderlich began teaching organ and harpsichord at the Church Music School in Halle. It was here at his church where bombs fell just ten days before the end of the war. He was hiding in a basement with some other people, and after one of the bombs exploded on the other side of the wall, they were fortunate to be able to escape through the rubble. When they emerged, everything had been destroyed.
A week after the war ended, Wunderlich played a recital in his church, which had apparently been spared. Since there were no newspapers, they had to put up small handwritten notices. At the recital there were 1,000 people crowded into the church, many of whom could not sit down. It was a very emotional experience for all of them.
The Americans were in Halle until August of 1946, and then, because of Potsdam, it was given to the Russians. An American captain who had attended the recital in Halle later arranged a recital in Washington, D.C. in 1962 or ’63. That same captain was by then a professor of music history in Washington.
In 1946 a drunk Russian soldier stuck his pistol in Wunderlich’s face and demanded his papers, which he then said were forged. Wunderlich was ordered to accompany him, and they met yet another drunken soldier. Fortunately for Wunderlich, a Russian officer happened to see them and ordered the soldiers to go with him. Heinz was able, then, to make his escape.
Wunderlich met his first wife, Charlotte, in about 1943 while he was in Halle, and they married in 1946. It was for her that the Partita on “Macht hoch die Tür” was written in honor of their first Christmas together. They had twin daughters, Uta and Christina, born in 1949, and a third daughter, Ulrike, born in 1951.
In 1948 he wrote the Mixolydische Toccata and, just two years later, for the 200th anniversary of the death of Bach, played the complete organ works of Bach in a series of twenty-one concerts. It was also at this time that he became Overseer of Sacred Music and Organ for churches in the area.

There were 150 churches and I had to teach the organists, some of whom were not very advanced; many were not proficient at all. The organs were in need of repair after the war and I advised on what the organs needed by way of repairs and maintenance. Some needed pipes, it included almost anything. It was interesting.

Escape from East Germany
Wunderlich remained in Halle until 1958. One aspect of life under the communist government was that his career could not advance as rapidly as that of his contemporaries in other countries. He had received a number of offers to teach in the West, but as a church musician he was regarded as an enemy of the state. Although he had played concerts in the West including some at St. Jacobi in Hamburg, he could not get permission to leave the East and would have to do so illegally. The officials in Hamburg had expressed an interest in him, but without permission he could not leave. It was a difficult time for his young family. He had three young daughters, two who were nine and one who was seven. They had to go through Berlin before the wall was put up, and although you could go from east to west all the time, to avoid suspicion they could not travel together. So, Heinz went first; his wife and children came on a later train. Then, they met in West Germany much to the relief of all.
Heinz had sent his music and his books all out of the East the previous year to many different people in the West for safekeeping. And in that way, he was able to save much of the more important things. However, he had an organ and a piano in Halle that had to be left behind.

Professional life in the West
I had the possibility of two positions, one in Dortmund and one in Hamburg. We went first to friends in Dortmund, but after a week I thought, no, this is not the right place for me. It was an academy of music, but I had no organ to practice so it was a problem for me. So then, we went to Hamburg where there were organs and one month later I was the organist at St. Jacobi. They had wanted me to come a half year before since my recital there, but it couldn’t be done any faster.

St. Jacobi is the home of the 1694 Arp Schnitger organ, which was to become famous during succeeding decades. It had been saved from destruction in the Allied bombing of Hamburg by the foresight of church officials who removed the pipes and mechanisms to a safe location.

It was at this time that I met Mr. Howes: Arthur Howes, from Baltimore. I played a recital when he died. He came with the American organbuilder, Charles Fisk, who had built an organ in Baltimore. I showed them all the organs in Hamburg. Mr. Fisk was interested in the pipes and examined them carefully. A year later they invited me to play in America. My first performance was in Baltimore on the new organ and then Mr. Howes arranged for me to play at the Methuen Memorial Music Hall in Methuen, Massachusetts. A year later I came back and did a master class in Andover.

Heinz Wunderlich’s schedule was very busy once he began playing at St. Jacobi. By necessity, he played an important part in overseeing the restoration of the large four-manual Schnitger organ. He established the Kantorei St. Jacobi, a 100-member mixed chorus that sang at services and gave concerts. They had an extensive repertoire ranging from Bach and Mendelssohn to Stravinsky. The choir made several tours under Wunderlich’s direction, including one to the United States in the fall of 1978. Concurrently with the St. Jacobi position, Wunderlich was also Professor of Organ and Improvisation at the College of Music in Hamburg. Wunderlich did much promotional work for the important St. Jacobi organ as well. His recitals devoted to cycles of works by Bach and North German composers; his summer “Schnitgerfest,” a summer series of recitals; his authoring a book about the organ; and hosting the endless stream of visitors to the organ loft, all helped to underscore the importance of the organ.

Max Reger
In the years between 1960 and 1970, Wunderlich oversaw the building of another organ for St. Jacobi that would be ideally suited for 20th-century music and particularly the music of Max Reger. Wunderlich studied the music of Reger with a close friend of Reger, Karl Straube, and as a result is one of the few organists in the world today who is in a direct line of succession with Reger. Reger has remained one of Wunderlich’s passions—performing Reger’s music and writing about him (see The American Organist, March 2002). The year 1973 brought the centenary of Reger’s birth, and during three days of a Reger festival at St. Jacobi, Wunderlich performed all of the large compositions, taught a master class, and directed a festival service. I asked Professor Wunderlich if he played all of Reger’s works.

No, no. He wrote more music than Bach. Look, I have all the works of Reger. [He goes over to a long bookshelf and takes about half the books off one shelf.] His early pieces look easy, but they get more difficult. He also has many unimportant works so you have to see what is important.
With Reger’s pieces there are many problems; there are things which cause misunderstandings. For example, his Allegro should be much slower than an Allegro for other composers. Reger himself says “Don’t play my pieces too fast. The tempos we wrote down are much too fast; play everything quite steadily, even if faster is indicated!”
It is also necessary in Reger that you hear everything. You have to hear every change; that is important. Sometimes the changes occur every 16th note and if it is played too fast, it becomes confusing.

The early years at St. Jacobi were very busy years, and by Wunderlich’s own admission he was unable to compose much:

From 1957 to about 1980 I was very busy with my choir and I played all over the world and I simply did not have time for composition; it was impossible to write pieces. After that, I did not have a choir and, although I taught at the Hochschule, I had more time to compose.
In 1982, Wunderlich lost his wife, Charlotte, to cancer. It was also in that year that he decided to resign his post at St. Jacobi, although he continued to teach at the Hochschule. Wunderlich’s large-scale organ work, Hiroshima, dates from 1978 and is based on a theme given him by György Ligeti. Ligeti, also a professor at Hamburg’s School of Music, would often give Wunderlich themes for his improvisations. This piece is based on one of those themes.

Marriage to Nelly
The two decades following 1982 were productive ones for Wunderlich. He married Nelly Söregi, a violin professor at the School of Music, in November of 1984. Thus began a professional musical relationship that was to span two decades, until Nelly’s untimely death in January of 2004. Nelly was born in Budapest, Hungary and fled to Austria in 1945. Later she was to move to Hamburg, where she taught violin at the Hochschule. Nelly was a concert violinist of international stature, and she and Heinz concertized extensively throughout the world, and also made a number of recordings together. They can be credited with creating an awareness of the organ/violin sonatas of Rheinberger and Kodály.

Compositions
In 1988, Wunderlich wrote the Introduction and Toccata on BACH. In the 1990s there followed Dona nobis pacem, Sonata on Jona, Variationa Twelvetonata (violin and organ), and Emotion and Fugue. The Dona nobis pacem was written for the 1000th anniversary of St. Wolfgang.

The piece commemorated 1000 years after the death of St. Wolfgang. In Germany, he was a famous bishop who worked for freedom for Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary in a bad time of war. I wrote the piece for the Community of St. Wolfgang in Austria.
The original version was written for violin and organ, but Wunderlich also wrote a version for organ solo.
One very interesting piece, a monumental work dating from 1996, is the Sonata über den Psalm Jona. Unlike many of the earlier pieces that are developed around a particular musical form, Jona is a programmatic work dealing with the separation that was Jonah’s when he fled from God. The piece even includes in its preface the plea from Jonah as he lay in the belly of the whale. The piece is terrifying in its impact. However, when I discussed it with Professor Wunderlich, he had this to say,

It is not about a fish! You are born, how would you say, reborn. You are in death and you are reborn anew. It is the story of Christ; the story of Easter.

Concerts and teaching
Heinz Wunderlich is a concert organist of international stature. He has played concerts in virtually every civilized country in the world, including 23 tours in the United States alone. In more recent years he has concertized extensively in former Eastern bloc countries. He has also performed for radio, television, and film. His list of CDs is extensive. As a result, Wunderlich’s name has attracted organ students from all over the world, and that list reads like a Who’s Who in the organ world. Without exception, former organ students found him to be patient and kind and sensitive to their needs. A former American organ student, Nancy Boch-Brzezinski, had a typical response:

I enjoyed him as a teacher because of his musicality. Nothing he ever played was boring or unattainable. He found the fire, excitement and beauty in every piece he played. I learned technically from him by watching him, though my German was not great in the beginning. With music, the language barrier doesn’t get in the way.3
Invariably, students recall Wunderlich’s gentle corrections and his ability to demonstrate the most diverse pieces from the literature at a moment’s notice.

Legacy
His compositions are his legacy to each of us. As one begins to look at these works, one understands the depth and complexities of the music, the devices that the composer uses to such great effect, and the enormous contribution to 20th-century organ literature that is contained in the music. One sees the distance Wunderlich has come from the Romanticism of his teachers and is dazzled by the level where Wunderlich lives and performs. It is a place where most of us only dream. The influence of his organ works for the twentieth century is incalculable.

The music
Heinz Wunderlich has continued to prepare his works for publication. His publisher is Editio Musica Budapest, P.O. Box 322, H-1370, Budapest, Hungary. The works can be obtained through their U.S. agent Boosey & Hawkes, New York.

Heinz Wunderlich list of works
Kontrapunktische Chaconne g-Moll (EMB #Z13944), written in 1938 while still a student in Leipzig. The work is highly chromatic and in three sections, each using the chaconne theme. Free variations alternate with canonic variations in double counterpoint.
Praeludium und Doppelfuge im alten Stil (EMB #Z14246), written in 1939 at the beginning of the war while still a student of David. Both themes of the fugue are anticipated in the prelude, which is a highly canonical work.
Fuga Variata (EMB #Z13942), written in 1942 while Wunderlich was in the army. It owes its inception to Samuel Scheidt’s Variation Fugue. There are eight fugal variations in the Fuga Variata, all based on a four-bar theme. It is mildly chromatic and stays in C major throughout.
Partita über “Macht hoch die Tür” (EMB #Z14331), written in 1946 and dedicated to his first wife, Charlotte; this is a wonderful set of variations on the Advent tune “Fling Wide the Door.”
Mixolydische Toccata über “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” (EMB #Z13945) was written for Christmas 1948. It is neo-Gregorian in style and contains a complete statement of the chorale. The third section combines the lyrical Gregorian theme with the German chorale.
Orgelsonate über ein Thema (EMB #Z13946) was written in 1956 for Church Day. The three movements make use of the same thematic material, a falling chromatic phrase, albeit in totally different and highly original ways.
Sonata Tremolanda Hiroshima (EMB #Z13947) was written in 1984 and based on a theme given him by Ligeti. The theme was the perpetual mirror-canon from Ligeti’s La Grand Macabre. Two dodecaphonic themes are used in the work, one by Ligeti and the other by Wunderlich. The piece got its name from impressions Wunderlich had while on tour in Japan. He played the first performance in Hiroshima in 1985.
Introduktion und Toccata über Namen B-A-C-H (EMB #Z13943). Wunderlich wrote this mono-thematic work in 1988. Reminiscent of Liszt, it makes continual use of dynamic contrast. This piece was also arranged in 1990 by the composer for organ and orchestra (EMB #Z13948).
Konzert für Orgel und Orchester über den Namen B-A-C-H (Z.13948), written for 2 flutes, 2 oboes, 2 bassoons, 3 trumpets in C, 2 trombones, tuba, timpani, percussion, 2 violins, viola, cello, contrabass, and organ, is based on Wunderlich’s Introduktion und Toccata über den Namen B-A-C-H for organ. However, it is a much enlarged score at more than twice the length of its corresponding piece for organ.
Invocatio “Dona nobis pacem” (organ solo version EMB #Z14039; violin and organ version EMB Z.14038). This prayer for peace was written in January 1993 especially for his wife, violinist Nelly Söregi-Wunderlich, and they have recorded it on an Organum Classics CD. A haunting melody opens and ends the work with a tremendous climax in the middle.
Sonata über den Psalm Jona (EMB #Z14108) was completed in 1996 and is based on a double twelve-note row. This programmatic work is in two sections—the first a cry of distress from the belly of the whale, and the second longer movement a ferocious toccata ending with a statement of the Easter hymn “Christ is risen.”
Variationa Twelvetonata (EMB #Z14325), written in October 1998, was dedicated to his wife Nelly Söregi-Wunderlich. This very expressive piece is for violin and organ and is an important addition to the literature for that combination. It is very expressive and contrasts the violin with differing colors of the organ.
Emotion und Fuge per augmentationem et diminutione (EMB #Z14364), written in 2002, follows the traditional organ form of prelude and fugue. Based on a theme given him by his teacher, Johann Nepomuk David, in 1940, it consists of ten notes in a chromatically descending line. The fugue contains this theme in its purest form. In the prelude, Wunderlich combines it with a theme of his own devising. Augmentation and diminuation are used throughout.

These works constitute the organ works of Heinz Wunderlich. He has, however, quite a large list of works for other combinations of instruments. A few that I am aware of are:

Graduale für Solo, kleinen Chor und Orgel (EMB #Z14365)
Kanonische Variationen für Klavier vierhändig
“Ein Psalm der Liebe” Variationen für Klavier (Hausmusik)
Introduktion und Chaconne über ein Zwölftonthema für Violine
Chaconne über ein Zwölftonthema für Flöte
Volkstümliches gesungenes Krippenspiel für Soli und Chor
Kantate “Erschienen ist der herrlich Tag” für Chor und Orchester
Kantate “Es kommt ein Schiff, geladen” für Chor, Blockflöte, und Streicher (Bären-
reiter-Verlag)
Weihnachtsgeschichte für Solo und Chor (Bärenreiter-Verlag)
Oratorium “Maranatha” zum Osterfest für Soli, Chöre und Orchester (Bärenreiter-Verlag 2111)
5 Motetten für Chor a cappella (Editio Musica Budapest)
Gesang der drei Männer im Feuerofen für Solo, Chor und Orgel
Kantate “Gelobet seist du, Jesu Christ” für Solo, Chor und Orgel
7 Chorsätze (VEB Verlag Hofmeister Leipzig)
Ökumenische Messe für gemischten Chor (for mixed voices) (Editio Musica Budapest Z. 14 509)

Dr. Peter Hardwick is a retired music professor who, during his career, taught at the University of Guelph, Guelph, and Agincourt Collegiate Institute, Toronto, Ontario. In addition, he served as organist of St. John’s Cathedral, Winnipeg, Manitoba, and St. George’s Church, Guelph.

In 2003, Scarecrow Press published his book British Organ Music of the Twentieth Century. Over the last two and a half years he has been writing a monograph on the life and music of Kenneth Leighton, which will probably be finished sometime this year. Dr. Hardwick has written feature articles and numerous reviews of recordings and organ music for The Diapason

Kenneth Leighton was born on October 2, 1929, at Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. His formal education was at Queen Elizabeth Grammar School, Wakefield (1940-47) and Queen’s College, the University of Oxford (1947-51). He continued his composition studies privately with Goffredo Petrassi in Rome (March-September, 1951). Leighton was principally a composer, but he also appeared quite frequently as a concert pianist, and he gave the first performances of a number of his own piano works. In addition, he was a highly regarded teacher of composition. Except for two years as a lecturer and fellow at Worcester College, Oxford (1968-70), he taught composition in the Faculty of Music at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, from 1956 until his death on August 24, 1988.1

Musical training

The composer was involved with church music throughout his life. In his childhood, the Leighton family were parishioners of Holy Trinity Anglican Church in downtown Wakefield, and Kenneth sang in the choir there, as did his father and brother. In 1938, he gained admittance to the Wakefield Cathedral Choir. Years later, the composer reminisced that

 . . . my career as a Cathedral chorister left some of the most vivid impressions in my mind of that time of life. I didn’t particularly ask to become a chorister . . . but my father had sung in church choirs all his life, my brother had been a choral scholar before me, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world--nobody questioned it--that I should follow in their footsteps. Unlike my brother I didn’t have much of a voice, I fear, and I would never have made a soloist--but I was able to sing reasonably in tune, and I was able to sight-read; and so I became one of those worthy and stalwart leaders at the bottom end of the stalls--hooting away with not a very strong voice--but to be relied on in moments of crisis. . . .

As far as the repertoire it was pretty wide for those days--we sang some Palestrina, we sang the old favourites--Noble in B minor, Walmisley in D minor, and the Stanford (all fine music in its own right--and thank God that we are getting over our prejudices against the Victorian and Edwardian church music)--and we also sang what was then the latest thing--Darke in F minor--a most exciting experience--Warlock carols, and even a piece by Britten which I didn’t like very much because it seemed so outrageously modern and cacophonous. And then there were many great occasions like the Stanford TE DEUM with Trumpets and Drums--and [Handel’s] Messiah for the first time. I was so completely overwhelmed--emotionally--by the Messiah that I was completely unable to control myself and had to escape from the stalls half way through. Curiously enough I have never heard the Messiah since.

On the whole what an extraordinary richness of musical experience it all was--and what a marvellous musical training!2

Wakefield Cathedral was a High Church of England establishment, and during these years, the composer had his first taste of plainsong. He clearly liked the old chants, and later they were sometimes used verbatim in his compositions. In other works, original themes cast in the plainsong mold were introduced. In the Cathedral Choir, he also sang sacred Tudor polyphonic music, which impressed him,3 and he used a modernized version of the cut and thrust of this style in his own counterpoint later.

In 1947, he was awarded a Hastings Exhibition to study Classics at Queen’s College, Oxford, and a year later he gained permission to continue with Classics, but to also focus principally on music under the direction of the Queen’s College music lecturer, Bernard Rose. Vaughan Williams, Walton, and Britten were Leighton’s idols at this time, and they were to have an effect on his music to a limited degree during the next few years. He learned much during his Oxford music studies, but perhaps the only lasting skill that he acquired was his immense contrapuntal technique.

During his six months of composition studies with Petrassi in 1951, Leighton became more aware of modern Continental musical styles, especially those of Bartók, Hindemith, Stravinsky, as well as the techniques of the Second Viennese School’s serial procedures, and, thereafter, Leighton adopted a much more highly chromatic, mid 20th-century style.

Compositional style

However, he did not adopt one style thereafter for all his compositions. For instance, the choral music, including the works for church services, is quite conservative. In the sacred scores, links with traditional musical style are maintained, yet they sound modern. He achieves this partly by retaining elements of tonal and modal music, while making little use of conventional functional harmony and key signatures. The highly dissonant chords, including cluster chords, in the sacred music have a modern ring to them, but most of these are coincidental, the result of linear counterpoint, not, primarily, vertical thinking.4 At least occasionally, in most of the church pieces Leighton likes to cadence on diatonic chords, which help underline his adherence to tonal/modal traditions. There is also a conventional versus forward-looking ambivalence in the voice leading in Leighton’s church music. This is the result of the contours of the vocal lines being essentially conventional, while at the same time there is a liking for such “dissonant” leaps as augmented fourths and major sevenths.

Almost a third of the ninety-six published works in The Kenneth Leighton Trust’s Opus Index are for use in church services. They consist of nineteen anthems, motets and carols; ten masses and communion services; eight canticles for matins and evensong; one set of preces and responses; five hymn tunes; and two hybrid works that may be sung at the Mass or as concert works.5

Like most 20th-century English church composers, he generally wrote for a four-part all-male choir consisting of trebles, altos, tenors, and basses, and quite frequently called for one or more vocal soloists. In his fondness for centuries-old poetry and prose of the highest literary quality, he showed decided insight into what words blended best with his elevated, emotionally intense musical style. In particular, he set many passages from the King James I version of The Holy Bible of 1611, and the Church of England’s The Book of Common Prayer, whose origins may be traced to 1552. The other old British religious writers whose work he set include Robert Herrick (1592-1674), George Herbert (1593-1633), Sir Thomas Browne (1605-82), Isaac Watts (1674-1748), and Christopher Smart (1722-71).

The organ parts in the church music are idiomatic and important, yet Leighton was not fond of the instrument. He revealed his feelings as early as 1952, when, after playing the new organ in Wakefield Cathedral, he wrote: “It is a very large instrument with five manuals but . . . I don’t like the organ very much. On this instrument, one can produce magnificent effects but I find it incapable of expressing those fine feelings which are the secret of a truly human music. It is an instrument without heart.”6 His reservations were reinforced later when he heard the criticisms of British Romantic/Orchestral instruments of his colleague in the Edinburgh University Faculty of Music, the celebrated organ historian, Peter F. Williams.7

Three Carols

Among the earliest works in the genre is the miniature a cappella Three Carols, Op. 25 (1948-56), for soprano soloist and SATB choir. The modality, occasional open fifth chords, and Picardy third cadences match well the archaic English language and imagery of the texts.

These points are illustrated in the second carol, titled Lully, Lulla, Thou Little Tiny Child. One of the composer’s most celebrated sacred choral works, it echoes, characteristic of his music of the late 1940s, with the style of Vaughan Williams. There is much word painting. For example, the introductory gentle rocking motion of the ostinato musical phrases, as the choir repeatedly sings the words “Lully, Lulla, thou little tiny child,” paints an intimate scene of Mary lovingly, and with gentleness, caring for the baby Jesus in the cradle. The music’s Mixolydian modal harmony enriched with seventh chords, and two cadences containing a Picardy third, enhances the ancient ambiance of the old words. In addition, the waves of close position concordant triadic upper vocal lines over a pedal in the bass capture in sound the image of the nativity scene, with the mother rocking her child to sleep in her arms. (Example 1)

In the second strophe, a loud setting of the words “Herod the king, In his raging, . . . All children young to slay,” the mood changes from the idyllic happiness of verse one to deadly chilliness. This iciness reaches a peak at the word “slay,” which is sung to a dissonant forzato chord consisting of two simultaneous augmented fourths.

With verse three, a setting of words beginning “That woe is me, Poor child for thee!,” there is an abrupt return to the mystical, cradle-song style of the first verse. The choir softly performs a varied version of the music heard at the start of the carol, with the harmony consisting of leisurely paced block chords, embellished with faster moving harmonic and non-harmonic tones. Over this rich four-part choral writing, the soprano soloist effortlessly floats a soaring obbligato line. The juxtaposition of contrasting sonorities, textures, and moods, such as exists in the three verses of Lully, Lulla, Thou Little Tiny Child, is a hallmark of Leighton’s style.

Works of the 1960s

The anthem Give Me the Wings of Faith (1962) is a setting of the All Saints’ Day hymn text of the same title by Isaac Watts. The performing forces are typical of much of the church music the composer wrote in the 1960s: soprano and baritone soloists, SATB choir, and organ. Overall, the anthem is written in a lean, prickly, non-functional harmonic language in which there tend to be many transient dissonances.

There is a mental struggle in Give Me the Wings of Faith, and the mood is complex. At the start, the tone is one of uncertainty and anxiety. Leighton seems to have found disturbing the notions of the human soul rising above into heaven and seeing the saints, who had, like us in our time, wrestled with sins, doubts, and fears. This is depicted in the soprano solo “Give me the wings of faith,” in which the organ accompaniment slithers snake-like in small chromatic intervals. However, the depressing mood, while never completely dispelled in the work, gradually gives way to a more optimistic tone as the saints find their eternal rest through Jesus’ sacrifice on the Cross. The somewhat triumphant final section, which is perhaps best described as being “on” D major, rather than in that key (even though the D major key signature is used), is launched by the baritone soloist singing “They marked the footsteps that he trod” to a bold, wide-ranged melody. This theme is developed at length chorally, and the choir closes with a triumphant chordal setting of “Our glorious Leader claims our praise.” However, the full organ alone has the last word, blazing out majestically, yet with a trace of nervous uncertainty, on a B minor chord with an added C sharp.

A hallmark of Leighton’s style is idiomatic writing for voice, and this is certainly true in Give Me the Wings of Faith. The same could be said of the organ, whose role is to contribute to the singers’ word painting, and provide a continuous web of sound that links up the choral sections. A fondness is evident for flowing manual lines that have chains of parallel perfect fourths and fifths, supported by slower moving pedal parts.

His only arrangements of preexistent church music are O Leave Your Sheep (1962) and Wassail All Over the Town (1964).8 O Leave Your Sheep is a setting of the four-strophe French traditional carol text of the same title, and the tune with which it is usually associated, Quittez Pasteurs. For SATB choir and organ, the work is uncharacteristic of Leighton’s mature style in its tonal idiom, and the scaled-down technical demands. As such, it is accessible to the amateur choir and organist. The preexistent melody undergoes a limited amount of variation after the first verse, and is easily recognizable throughout. Verse one, in F major, is sung by a soprano soloist or by all the sopranos, with a light and transparent organ accompaniment that is almost entirely in the treble clef. In verse two, which is in D major, the melody is treated to four-voice imitation, with sustained organ chords in the bass register. The D minor, a cappella third verse is much more ruminative, almost improvisatory, and the preexistent melody is treated more freely. After this section of relative repose, an energetic mood is introduced by the staccato, highly rhythmic organ introduction to the last verse, and this is followed by imitative entries of the voices. The chordal vocal writing gradually increases in excitement and becomes exultant, while the organ accompaniment adds further to the joyous sound with long flowing chains of parallel thirds in the manuals over sustained bass notes in the pedals. O Leave Your Sheep ends ecstatically with a più largo block chord phrase and perfect cadence in D major alla Handel for choir and organ.

The ten-minute setting of the matins canticle Te Deum Laudamus (1964) for soprano and baritone soli, SATB chorus, and organ, is arguably one of Leighton’s first great liturgical masterpieces. It marked a major confluence in the development of the composer, where, at last, his creative inspiration was matched by his mastery of the tools of his profession.

Most of the hallmarks of his style are present in the work. Among these elements is the taste for soloists, with the traditional Church of England SATB choir and organ. Other aspects of his style, already noted in previous works, that are also found here include a freely dissonant, non-functional harmonic idiom; plainsong-like melismatic vocal embellishments; masterly imitative counterpoint and abundant word painting.

The opening is a good example of the style. Over a series of held, close-position cluster chords on the organ, each of which begins with a Scotch snap articulation, the soprano soloist declaims the words “We praise thee” over and over again, “praise” being embellished more elaborately with each repetition, much along the lines of settings of joyous words in Gregorian chant. One by one the choir sections enter and rise in excited acclamation as they surge forward to the first loud grand climax, a moment endowed with a sense of glorious revelation, at the word “everlasting” on an F major chord.

There is a lull in the rejoicing at the words “When thou tookest upon thee to deliver man: thou didst not abhor the Virgin’s womb,” which are set in a polymetric,9 syllabic style reminiscent of ancient chant.

The counterpoint is frequently linear and imitative, supported by a foundation of rhythmic figuration in the organ accompaniment. This may be seen, for example, in the setting of “When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death” (bars 83-91). Cruelly painful cut-and-thrust imitative counterpoint, in which simultaneous seconds create flashes of hard sharp dissonance, are heard over a backdrop of vaguely menacing syncopated, rhythmic detached chords in the organ manuals, and a more sustained pedal line. (Example 2)

The ancestry of such musical pathos might be traced to the choral settings of similar texts by late Renaissance and early Baroque English composers, such as Tallis, Byrd, and Weelkes. In passing, one might also mention the two-part polyphony in Example 2: sopranos and tenors singing the same line in octaves, altos and basses singing the other line in octaves. This was a type of doubling of pairs of voices at the octave that Vaughan Williams had utilized in contrapuntal passages in, for example, his Te Deum in G (1928), O How Amiable (1934), and the Benedicite (1939).10 Britten also wrote passages like this in such works as Antiphon (1956), a setting of sacred words by George Herbert for choir (with optional soloists) and organ. The Te Deum appears to be the first work in which Leighton used this texture. He was to use it many times in his subsequent church music, partly, one might suspect, because it sounds effective, but also because two parts are easier to sing than four parts, and this offers relief from singing in four real parts.

The bustle of the setting of “When thou hadst overcome the sharpness of death” ends dramatically with fortissimo cluster chords on the organ that create a cacophony of sound, followed by general pause. After the silence, a volcanic blast of sound erupts as choir and organ present the words “We believe that thou shalt come to be our Judge.” Leighton obviously is struck with grave misgivings, possibly fear, at the thought of the Last Judgment, and the music of this short, highly dissonant passage, marked Lento sostenuto and fortississimo, is pervaded with a sense of bewildering awe mingled with anxiety. The emotionally distraught mood is initiated by a loud, low pedal point on the organ pedals, and twisting, snake-like chromatic counterpoint in the manuals. Then the voices enter in a five-part stretto-like point of imitation. (Example 3)

An element of prayerful hopefulness ensues at the start of the last section of the work, as the baritone soloist sings softly and with contrition in a plainsong-like chanting style “We therefore pray thee help thy servants.” The setting of “Day by day we worship thy Name: ever world without end” is bright and joyful, but this is halted abruptly by a sense of dread and fear in an acridly dissonant chord at the word “sin” in the phrase “Vouchsafe, O Lord, to keep us this day without sin.” With reminiscences of the organ music with its Scotch snap rhythms that had been heard at the opening of the composition, the choir then presents “O Lord, have mercy upon us” with very expressive, pianissimo, ethereal phrases. Finally, after the choir’s last, prayerful entreaty, “O Lord, in thee have I trusted, let me never be confounded,” the organ ends the work with a whispered F-sharp major chord.

Less than a year after the Te Deum Laudamus, Leighton wrote an anthem on George Herbert’s hymn text Let All the World in Every Corner Sing (1965) for SATB choir and organ. Since both the Te Deum and Let All the World texts are joyous, and the pieces were composed close to each other, it is hardly surprising to note similarities between them. For example, at the start of the anthem he uses the two-voice canonic imitative style between the altos and basses singing the same line in octaves simultaneously, and the paired sopranos and tenors in octaves simultaneously, that was noted in the Te Deum. Such two-voice canonic imitation appears several times in the anthem, and there are also several passages in which, in like fashion, the four voice parts divide into pairs singing in octaves, though not in imitation.

In the first section, the organ has staccato, fragmented phrases against which the voices joust. As in the Te Deum, there is a departure from conventional, rhythmically square, metric writing. This occurs in the short polymetric setting of the words “The heavens are not too high, His praises may thither fly,” where the music slips quickly from 3/4+3/8 to 4/4, 7/8, 4/4, and 7/8, before settling in 4/4. (Example 4)

In the concluding passage of the anthem, the words and a variation of the music of the opening return in the manner of a recapitulation. However, here there is a much greater sense of excitement, of breathtaking denouement. Contributing to this sense of rousing celebration is the thickening choral texture to five parts, with the sopranos dividing into two parts, and all the voices being called upon to sing in their upper ranges. The organ also adds to the drive to climax. Far more flamboyant and bombastic than at the opening of the anthem, the instrument’s assertive role is to provide rhythmic excitement with short motivic groupings of ejaculatory cluster chords, punctuated by short general rests. In addition, the organ has numerous short joyous rushing ascending scales that are reminiscent, possibly, of one of Leighton’s musical heroes, Howells, who was fond of these embellishing figures as an expression of joy in his church music organ parts. After so much astringent dissonance, the organ brings down the curtain on the anthem with an appropriately shrill, dissonant chord: C-sharp and D major chords played simultaneously--in effect the simultaneous sounding of tonic and dominant harmony, a tonally ambiguous ending.

First Masses

In the 1960s Leighton composed his first Masses: Missae Sancti Thomae, Op. 40 (1962), Mass, Op. 44 (1964), Communion Service in D, Op. 45 (1965), and Missa Brevis, Op. 50 (1967).

The twenty-six-minute Mass, Op. 44, for double mixed chorus, is arguably a masterpiece. The first of only two Latin Masses by the composer,11 it is a cappella, except the Credo, which calls for organ, and is in the Palestrina style, as seen through a 20th-century prism. Among the innumerable remarkable passages in the Mass is the opening of the Kyrie Eleison, which starts with a solo voice singing in the minor mode, and surges irresistibly to an immense, fortississimo climax for double chorus at bar 17. The passage’s penitential, bittersweet opening that quickly changes to a great paean of confident optimism is so characteristic of Leighton’s mercurial nature. (Example 5)

An Easter Sequence, Op. 55 (1968) is a fourteen-minute piece in five movements, for boys’ or female voices and organ with optional trumpet. Considering the crème de la crème choir for which the work was written,12 one might have expected a more technically demanding, showy composition. In fact, the vocal writing is tonal; the melodic contours conventional, and there are no gallery-pleasing virtuosic fast melismatic lines. Nor is the organ part especially difficult. In the absence of a trumpeter, the solo trumpet part may be played on a trumpet stop, if one is available on the organ being used.

An Easter Sequence is not a sequence in one of the traditional music history or theory meanings of the word. It is a homogeneous series of pieces,13 setting in English of four Roman Catholic liturgical texts and Psalm 23.14 If the five movements are performed at Mass, they are to be sung as the Introit, Gradual, Offertory, Communion, and Sortie. The work may also be sung on the concert platform.

One may notice similarities between An Easter Sequence and Britten’s Missa Brevis in D (1959) for three-part boys voices and organ, written for the boys of Westminster Cathedral Choir. As in Britten’s composition, there is much three-part writing for the voices, though single- and two-part music is more common. Several passages of canon-like imitation, and a number of ostinatos in the organ accompaniment in Leighton’s work are also Brittenesque.15 In addition, like Britten, the Yorkshireman is especially adept at word painting. For example, he captures the mostly joyous Introit text, “Alleluia. Rejoice in God our helper: Sing aloud to the God of Jacob,” with buoyant, dancing vocal lines that leap lightly, and with staccato articulation. See also the setting of Jesus’ words “Peace be with you” in the Gradual. This music is ethereal, and consists of a soft, glossy, heavenly halo of sustained four-part chords--the only four-part phrase in the composition. The pastoral imagery of Psalm 23 is captured immediately in the opening gentle, reflective organ solo. The melody, in the organist’s right hand, is a chromatic, sinuous, rhythmically complex line oscillating within a narrow pitch range. The left hand accompaniment consists of a close-position cluster-chord that undergoes slight alterations over a pedal point.

In the Sortie, the organ part is much heavier and dominant than in the earlier movements, and it shines forth in a most thrilling manner. This is illustrated in the instrument’s slow improvisatory introductory solo section, with its chromatic, serpentine lines. Then the main section of the movement begins, in the style of a very fast fanfare for voices, organ, and trumpet. Against a backdrop of brightly registered, rhythmic, often stabbing organ chords, the choir, in unison throughout, declaims in brief snappy phrases “God is ascended in jubilee,” and short trumpet obbligato phrases rasp out as the choir sings “and the Lord in the sound of the trumpet” in short, motivic, rhythmic fanfares.

This material is heard again in the coda of the Sortie. First, a greatly transformed variant of the chromatic organ introduction to the movement is presented over a pedal C. Then, the choir sings the stirring vocal fanfare-like phrases “God is ascended, and the Lord in the sound of the trumpet” that were heard early in the movement, while the organ pursues its own path of syncopated, rhythmic, stabbing, highly dissonant manual chords. As so often happens with Leighton, the organ (with trumpet) has the last words: an emotionally gripping tonic C major chord combined with the dominant chord.        

This article will be continued.