All of Bach

Reflections ten years later

Joyce Johnson Robinson is editorial director of The Diapason. 

In all his studies, D’Arcy Trinkwon has been fascinated by the person behind the musician. An early interest in the Dupré tradition inevitably led to Jeanne Demessieux, and his particular interest in her began when he first heard her recordings in the early 1980s. Over the years he has explored, researched and studied in depth all he could of her, fascinated and inspired by her legend. Inspired by her Salle Pleyel programs, in 1994 he presented eight concerts in as many weeks: “The King of Instruments” was a celebration of the great masterpieces and culminated in a complete performance of her famous Six Etudes—then the first organist to do so in recent time. He has since become particularly associated with them and her other works as a result of his numerous performances of them. He is vice-president of Les Amis de Jeanne Demessieux. D’Arcy welcomes any correspondance on the subject of Jeanne Demessieux and, time permitting, hopes to write a serious and comprehensive biography of her.

The year 2008 marks the fortieth anniversary of the death of Jeanne Demessieux, and it may therefore be interesting to reflect on various aspects of her extraordinary career. Where did this legend begin and what has been her legacy? And what of the enigmatic lady herself—of whom so many have loved to talk, yet of whom so few have ever really known much. This article deliberately reflects more on the person and the artist than would a conventional academic study, and inevitably space here cannot discuss every angle of her career. A more purely biographical article appears by this writer in Organists’ Review, November 2008.
Jeanne Demessieux died on November 11, 1968: born in Montpellier on February 13, 1921, she was only 47. One might even say that she “disappeared,” for the dazzling star of this organist had already dimmed somewhat: once the talk of organists worldwide, a legend in her own younger years, the changes of musical fashions—as well as several unexpected twists of fate—had rendered her almost something of a bygone curiosity. This is reflected in the fact that some who were studying elsewhere in Paris during the ’60s never even crossed the city to hear her play at the Madeleine.
At the time, the circumstances surrounding her passing were only discreetly alluded to and, as with so many musicians of exceptional achievement, much of what she had achieved was all too quickly forgotten, overlooked in favor of newer artists. A large crowd attended her Paris funeral in the Madeleine, and on that day even the organ—of which she had been titulaire since 1962, and that she so loved—mourned. Instead of flooding the church with music as it had so many times under her remarkable hands, it stood silently in respect of her passing, a vast black drape hanging from its gallery to the floor. Only some days before she died, she had told friends “I can hear the flutes of the Madeleine” as she lay convalescing in her bed after nearly two months in hospital. Little did she know she would never play the instrument again.
And how did this woman, once the “Queen of Organists,” become almost overlooked in her later years, bypassed in favor of a younger generation? The spectacular successes and triumphs of her youth have been unparalleled by any other organist, yet the burning apogee of these years seemed almost to burn part of her out as the blaze faded, leaving her inwardly exhausted and bereft. An artist of the great virtuoso tradition, her style became less popular as the so-called Organ Reform movement continued to sweep through and gain ever-greater momentum like a rushing wind. And there was her health. Throughout her life, Jeanne Demessieux battled with serious health problems, undergoing numerous operations beginning in her early 20s. She fought cancer silently in an age when any public knowledge of such an illness was a social taboo that would leave the sufferer ostracized and an outcast.
Few ever got to see the woman behind the public persona; being both very reserved, but also having an uncommon force of character and purpose, she didn’t let many people see the “person” behind, except the few she truly trusted. It must also be surmised that the famous “rupture” with Dupré probably seriously affected her faith, and it was a “scandal” she was aware would never leave her.
In many ways, so many elements of her life seemed always to have two such opposing poles: on one hand triumph and fame, on the other, obscurity; being “the chosen one” of her master Dupré, but then being bypassed and cast out; being very much a “grande dame” when at the organ or mixing professionally, yet being a woman of an (at times) uncomfortably reserved nature. The gentleness and sensitivity she showed those whom she trusted contrasted with her strong opinions and individuality. On one hand she was admired as a great artist—on the other she was viewed with suspicion because her brilliance was such that some simply couldn’t see past that alone, and undoubtedly many seethed with jealousy. Even Demessieux herself was aware of the two poles in her personality—gentleness, sensitivity and creation contrasting with “violence” (although her exact word, it referred more to force and strength of character than any darker force). This duality in her nature reflected the two very different natures of her adored parents: her father—cultivated, artistic, sensitive and affectionate; her mother—highly strung, a forceful, driven nature disguised behind an emotive, gentle façade.
By quite some years, she was the first woman to achieve international fame as a virtuoso organist, and her gender undoubtedly had a serious impact on her career. Not only was she entering what was at the time an almost exclusively male domain, it undoubtedly meant that she had, in fact, to be even better than her male colleagues to be accepted as their peer.
She had immense good fortune; she was taken under the wing of the great Dupré when she was still only fourteen. In her, he saw at last the messenger he had been looking for: someone of unlimited and precocious talent, the prophet who would bear the torch of the glorious French organ school forward from him, as he himself had done from his own master Widor. In addition to his other responsibilities and work, he devoted the next eleven years to her education, tirelessly and meticulously preparing her for the role he knew she could fulfill. Proclaiming her as his true successor, he elevated her prowess to such a level that she simply had no realistic competition; even before her famed 1946 debut, he proclaimed to Léonce de Saint-Martin: “You know that I do not say anything glibly, and I say Jeanne Demessieux is the greatest organist of all.” He proclaimed that posterity would rank her alongside Clara Schumann.
Cocooned in this privileged world of Dupré’s home in Meudon, she was loved and nurtured by him and his family as their own. Yet only a year after her triumphant debut concerts, he abruptly severed all contact with her, cutting her off and out of his life without any explanation. Anyone wishing to understand the possible motives and reasons is strongly encouraged to refer to the excellent article by Lynn Cavanaugh, which offers the best considerations of this issue. [See “The Rise and Fall of a Famous Collaboration: Marcel Dupré and Jeanne Demessieux” by Lynn Cavanaugh, in The Diapason, July 2005.] Although she was devastated and suffered enormously from this, some around her felt it was actually a good thing; they were all too aware that under the gently acquiescent girl was a woman who would be unable to live in another’s shadow. Despite Dupré’s unlimited generosity to her (he did, after all, do everything possible to plan her future triumph and success), they knew she could never be a puppet—however well-intentioned the master.
Again, the reader is refered to the above-mentioned article, which discusses with great clarity the unfortunate situation and “fall-out” of this “rupture.” Undoubtedly, there were some who reveled in the scandal of the “fallen angel” and used the situation both for their own opportunity, and also as an advancement in the “turf war” that undoubtedly existed in the Parisian organ world. Despite the fame she enjoyed outside Paris (and to a lesser degree in France), she was certainly given the cold shoulder by a certain faction of its organists and concert promoters. As a result, even today many in France are surprised to know of the celebrity she had outside their country because of her having been largely ostracized from the French organ world. Her music remains largely unknown there.

The legend begins
Jeanne Demessieux made her debut in 1946 at age 25. Dupré himself had arranged a series of six recitals at the Salle Pleyel, Paris, in which he could launch the career of this, his most exceptional pupil. He planned every detail for their maximum impact, even calling them “Six Historic Recitals.” Even the venue, the restoration of its organ, the setting of the stage were a specific part of their big scheme to launch her career. An audience of 1,725—considerably more than was customary for a debut recital (on any instrument) in Paris at the time—witnessed the level of accomplishment she displayed. It was a level that no other organist had before displayed, and the reaction of the audiences at these concerts was simply sensational. Her debut was compared to those of Horowitz, Menuhin, and Gieseking; Dupré himself said “You have shown us this evening that we are in the presence of a phenomenon equal to the youth of Bach or Mozart . . .”
Of Paris’s finest organists present—including Langlais, Litaize, Grünenwald and Falcinelli—Duruflé more humorously (but no less seriously) declared “Next to Jeanne Demessieux, the rest of us play the pedals like elephants!” The press gave free reign to the emotions felt by all, and noted that not even Liszt himself could have stunned them more—and the musical sensitivity she displayed was compared to that of Vierne. At the conclusions of these recitals she was often almost mobbed by the throngs who came to hear her as they clamored for autographs and a closer glimpse of her; their enthusiasm was like fire.
In short, these recitals were a triumph the like of which had never been seen before and has not since. They heralded what was to be an unparalleled few years.

Her career
That first evening (February 26, 1946), when that young woman walked out onto the stage at the Salle Pleyel, dressed simply and elegantly in a pale blue dress, had an impact on the organ world, and it was never the same again.
As a result of the word spreading—as well as due to the very careful particular public relations that the Duprés had planned—the young Jeanne quickly received a flood of invitations to give recitals throughout Europe. On many of these occasions she was the first woman ever to play in those cathedrals, churches and concert halls. Within a few years she had played in virtually every major European city, having given 200 recitals in only four years. As was the case with outstanding performers in an age before the numerous distractions of society today, her concerts usually attracted and drew capacity audiences—both fascinated by her as a woman, but also stunned by what they heard.
In the autumn of 1947 she gave a second, equally triumphant series of six recitals at the Salle Pleyel.
Her London debut was on February 26, 1947 at Westminster Cathedral (where she would return many times). Attended by the whole of the Willis firm, Willis himself had to attend to a cipher immediately before the recital began! She made five visits between 1946 and 1948 alone, including a concerto at the Proms with Sir Malcolm Sargent, Jeanne loving the great Royal Albert Hall instrument. However, it is worth noting that the English critics were usually fairly hostile and, although not widely known, there was a definite intrigue involved here. In 1947 the London Organ Music Society, then headed by George Thalben-Ball, made a request that she pre-sent herself and undergo something of an audition for them; understandably insulted, she flatly refused such a ludicrous request—but they, with a pompous attitude, never got over the fact that she did. Equally—unlike the Americans—they seemed to have a serious issue with being so outshone (in so many ways) by a woman! At the time, English organ critics were usually organists from this Society, and the mean-spirited reviews they gave were in stark contrast to those given by the Americans whose generosity of spirit and enthusiasm knew no limits. During her years of training and preparation, Dupré had warned her she would undoubtedly encounter elements of jealousy. However, the audiences themselves and non-organist critics in the UK also shared this enthusiasm. Although not widely known, in 1953 Demessieux played, by invitation of the young Queen Elizabeth II herself, at her coronation in Westminster Abbey.
At the time of the Pleyel recitals, Dupré had been both planning and insistent that Jeanne must go and make her debut in America; he saw her potential as an artist to achieve considerable fame and success. She, however, flatly refused to agree to go there unless assured of the best possible terms and conditions; her strong-willed nature was beginning already to assert its independence. It has been written and suggested that Dupré was trying to manipulate her into something uncomfortable—to create a Hollywood-style glamor star—but surely he only saw the very real chances for her to make a great life and in turn give herself the freedom such success would allow to devote herself to music. Dupré left for another of his own tours there the following year. Upon his return he never spoke to or had any dealings with her again.
Jeanne’s first tour in North America did not, in fact, take place until 1953: but it was simply triumphant, the audiences and critics alike stunned by the experience. [See “The American Recital Tours of Jeanne Demessieux,” by Laura Ellis, The Diapason, October 1995.] Perhaps only Virgil Fox displayed a similar degree of virtuosity, although his style was, of course, far more flamboyant and his repertoire far more popular. She returned again in 1955 and 1958, and on each occasion packed audiences from coast to coast rewarded her with feverish ovations.
In the early days of her career, her virtually non-stop schedule of concerts included nearly every major city of Europe and North America—all the more remarkable since travel was in those days more reliant on slow trains and sea. Touring was not something she enjoyed, finding it exhausting and, at times, nothing but a punishment. She made only three tours of North America, apparently refusing any further invitations because of a wish to remain near her aging and ever more frail parents.
Unlike many were beginning to do, Jeanne refused to travel by plane unless absolutely necessary; as result of losing a great friend in a crash in her youth, Jeanne was terrified of flying. Undoubtedly, as the years progressed and younger organists were increasingly leaping on planes to play everywhere, this must have curtailed her activities and left her somewhat behind. Disliking traveling generally, unlike such as Dupré, she never ventured further afield to such places as Australia either.
The apogee of her career was undoubtedly during the late 1940s to the mid-1950s. Although she continued giving recitals widely after that, a new generation was emerging—figureheads of the so-called Organ Reform movement—whose fresh ideas and new approach to the organ were captivating followers, leaving the grander virtuosos of previous generations somewhat bypassed. But certainly no other organist—before or since—could ever claim such an auspicious beginning to a career as Jeanne Demessieux.

Repertoire
What did Jeanne Demessieux’s repertoire include? As may be expected, her choice of music was very much based on the traditions of the French Romantic school; during her years with Dupré she studied most of Bach’s works (including all the great preludes, toccatas, fantasias, fugues, sonatas, Orgelbüchlein), as well as many of the works that were the cornerstone of Dupré’s own repertoire—including the great works of Liszt, Franck, Mendelssohn. She also studied numerous works of Dupré himself—both sets of preludes and fugues, both symphonies, Evocation, Le Chemin de la Croix, the Variations, Suite Bretonne and Sept Pièces—all of which she performed in Meudon before 1946. And there was the “riddle” of the Etudes he wrote for her, the transcendental sketches he later regrouped. (It may be pertinent to remark that this was not done, as has been incorrectly noted by some, after the “rupture” between them: it was openly discussed between them prior to her Salle Pleyel debut.)
Jeanne’s concert programs are fascinating to study. However—as with all performers who play from memory—the inevitable restrictions of memorized concert repertoire meant there were, as a result, numerous repetitions of the same works. This aside, all her programs show a decided concern for a variety and balance of periods, texture, styles and emotional impact. Despite a certain classical austerity and obvious concern for music of serious quality, purity and refinement—much in the way a concert pianist of the same era would have chosen that instrument’s classics—there was also very much a regard for aural and structural color.
Nearly every program included at least one major work of Bach, often supplemented by an intimate and expressive chorale prelude or two. Although she played all six of Bach’s trio sonatas in a recital at Dupré’s home on March 19, 1942, only very occasionally did she perform one of these in her subsequent programs. By contrast, some of Handel’s concertos (I, II and X) featured regularly in her programs, complete with spectacular cadenzas of her own—and it may be worth noting here that Dupré’s edition of these was, in reality, almost entirely her work, done during her years of study with him. A variety of other Baroque composers featured occasionally in her concerts—some of these obviously being taken from Dupré’s series Anthologie des Maïtres Classiques. She seemed to like opening recitals with Purcell’s Trumpet Tune, something she first played as an encore in one of her Salle Pleyel programs, when she noted how it “refreshed the audience.” From the Hamburg recording we can today hear on CD, she opted for a bright, sparkling approach to this music, this quite in contrast to the heavy, ponderous and pompous style often given to the same work by many English and American players of her time. Mozart’s Fantasia in F minor, K. 608 was obviously another favorite work of hers, and she performed it frequently. Generally, however, she only included the odd Baroque piece as a bit of “fluff” in her early years; in the ’60s she did, however, include more works—such as Buxtehude, sometimes a suite of Clérambault—although she obviously felt her attentions better directed (and requested) towards more specifically “concert” music. Of particular note (for it being unusual) was her including a fugue of Gibbons in a recital at Westminster Abbey on May 3, 1956—also because it appears that was her only performance of anything English. She did not appear to play any American works.
Despite performing all the Mendelssohn sonatas and preludes and fugues in her youth, these were only rarely included subsequently, whereas the three great works of Liszt featured throughout her whole career and were of obvious great importance to her. Occasionally she chose one or two lighter works of Schumann (a fugue, perhaps a canon) or, less often, maybe a Brahms prelude, usually placed as a moment of contrast after or before a big piece. An unusual work in her repertoire (from the ’50s onwards) was her own transcription of Liszt’s Funérailles—one of the first times being at Westminster Abbey on May 3, 1956, and subsequently she played it quite often. She never wrote it out, instead playing her transcription from memory of the piano score. Similarly, many of her actual compositions were never written out until they were exactly as she wanted them in her head.
The music of César Franck was of particular importance to her, and after Bach it appeared more regularly than anything else. It is interesting to note that on the organ in her apartment, an instrument bought on the success of her American concerts, she hung the famous print of César Franck serenely playing the organ of Sainte-Clothilde.
Other than Franck, the only French Romantic composer she performed with any regularity was Widor, the Allegro from the Sixth Symphony being presented often. Only rarely did she perform a complete symphony—occasionally maybe the Gothique—but the variations of both this and the Fifth appeared often, the latter regularly in her later programs. Interestingly, Vierne (whose music would have suited her so well) only occasionally appeared: for example, sometimes the Scherzo of Symphony No. 2 appeared, much in the role of a refresher between bigger works.
Of the twentieth century, only three names ever appeared with regularity: Messiaen, Berveiller and Demessieux herself. Other than her early years—during which they appeared only occasionally—she hardly ever performed any works of her other contemporaries.
She frequently performed one or two of her own pieces. Apart from her very early concerts, she did not play the Six Etudes as a complete set, later often taking just one or two (Tierces, Notes Repetées, Accordes Alternatés and Octaves being those she chose most often). She did sometimes include one of her choral preludes (Rorate Caeli—her own favorite of the set—and Attende Domine appearing most often), and the austere and granite-like Dogme from the Sept Méditations seems a work she had particular affection for, it appearing many times; occasionally she played one or two other movements from this same set. The Triptyque (with its mysterious and poignant Adagio written just a day or so after the “rupture” with Dupré) appeared on programs throughout her career. In the 1960s, the then recently written Prélude et Fugue and the Répons pour le temps de Pâques quite often featured, as had her Te Deum in the years following its own composition.
Jeanne’s association with Jean Berveiller was of significance. Both apparently loved jazz and particularly Duke Ellington—and the influence of this “lighter” music is reflected in Berveiller’s colorful style. His music suited Jeanne’s obvious wish to bring freshness to her programs, and she played many of his works—Epitaphe, the Suite, his transcription of Franck’s Redemption, and Cadence, written for her 1953 U.S. debut (although one wonders why she didn’t include any of her own Etudes there, for they are far more spectacular). And, of course, there was that famous Mouvement—organists sought to unearth the score for so many years. However, not all these works were, as has been variously claimed, dedicated to her.
Messiaen was of particular significance to Jeanne; he greatly admired her, and she was one of his first and most powerful advocates. She regularly performed his pieces in recitals. Movements of both L’Ascension and La Nativité appeared frequently, as did the whole suites occasionally. For example, she gave the first complete performance of the former at London’s Royal Festival Hall on May 15, 1957, and she played the complete La Nativité at the English Bach Festival on July 1, 1964 in Christ Church, Oxford. She also played Le Banquet Céleste, Apparition de l’Eglise Eternelle, and Combat de la Mort et de la Vie regularly. It is also interesting to note that many players of younger generations who later became associated with this music first heard it in performances (either broadcast or live) by Jeanne Demessieux. It is also a measure of the respect Messiaen held for her that he frequently invited her to be an examiner for his analysis class at the Conservatoire.
And Dupré? She performed so much of his music during her years of study, and some pieces also featured in her earliest public recitals outside France. She performed the Prelude and Fugue in B as part of London debut, and the Symphonie-Passion for a recital there on March 13, 1947 for the Organ Music Society. (This recital has often, erroneously due to Felix Aprahamian, been cited as her London debut.) She also performed the Suite in London.
But did she ever perform Dupré after the “rupture”? Very seldom and from the rarity with which she did, one may believe it was only when specifically asked. She never played any in America, but it is poignant to note that she included the Symphonie-Passion in what was to be one of her final recitals—one in Chester Cathedral, as part of the Chester Festival in July 1967.
Whatever her feelings of betrayal and disappointment, her respect for Dupré as an artist, as much as for the values he upheld and represented, never diminished; neither was she ever known to make any remark against him. A testament to this was the article she contributed to Études (Paris, April 1950) entitled “L’art de Marcel Dupré.”

Improvisation
Improvisation featured in all of her recitals, and her extraordinary skill in all forms of this art was widely known. Dupré once claimed that he could train any technically competent organist to improvise a five-part fugue within six months; so, given the extraordinary gifts of this pupil, it is not surprising that he trained her in this skill to be as brilliant (more, some said) as he was himself. At her first Salle Pleyel recital, she improvised a four-movement symphony. She also did the same in her March 1947 London recital, whose brilliance prompted George Thalben-Ball to say—with a reserve of generosity typical of the British organists—that it was “trick” improvisation because “no one can think that fast”! The French prowess at improvising specific and disciplined musical structures was a world apart from the meandering service-style improvisation of the English, and, again, one notes the distinctive “green eye” looking at her.
Of particular note was a recital she gave at the Conservatoire in Liège on March 1, 1957, the entire program of which was improvised! During it she improvised in numerous forms and structures—from choral variations, a trio sonata, prelude and fugue, paraphrase, and various treatments of chorale (polyphonic, contrapuntal, canon, fugue, ornamented).

Concertos
Quite unusually for an organist of her times, Jeanne was invited to perform concertos fairly often. There were the Proms, the performances with orchestras in France, Belgium and elsewhere—although never, surprisingly, America. She wrote her own “concerto,” Poème, in the very early ’50s, giving its premiere in 1952, as well as that of Langlais’ Concerto. In December 1964 she gave the Belgian premiere of Poulenc’s, also performing Jongen’s Symphonie Concertante with the Orchestre de Liège. Less successful was her recording of two of Handel’s concertos with the Suisse Romande orchestra; she found working with its conductor, the aged Ernest Ansermet, very difficult and was infuriated by his despotic wish to control the proceedings—including her playing, and even trying to suppress her cadenzas. Again, her strong will and individuality were far too strong to be so treated by a despotic conductor.

Recordings
Nearly all the recordings Jeanne made were for Decca, in those days probably the most significant recording company. Her first were several 78s, featuring works by Bach, Widor, Franck, Mendelssohn, and Purcell’s Trumpet Tune.
Then she made numerous LPs—several were made at Victoria Hall in Geneva in the early 1950s; in addition to the Handel concertos mentioned above, these included works of Bach, Liszt, Widor and Franck. A recital of Bach and Franck on the organ of St. Mark’s, North Audley Street (an instrument later removed to Holy Trinity, Brompton, where it remains) was also issued. A project a few years later for her to record a series in Notre-Dame (Paris) was never realized, much to her great regret. She did, however, record several mixed selections at the Madeleine a few years before her famous recording of Franck made there, for which she won the Grand Prix du Disque in 1960. Two years later she was appointed Organiste-titulaire of this great church and its organ, an honor she considered so special she admitted she “cried with joy.” She had served prior to this appointment as organist in the church of Saint-Esprit during her teenage years.
In the early 1960s, Messiaen agreed she should record his (then) complete works. Although greatly passionate about this project, her refusal to sign the contract easily and continued questioning and bargaining of its terms meant that by the time of her unexpected death, the actual contract remained still unsigned. On the strength of her extant recordings, one can only imagine how we have missed out from these never being recorded. Her last recording was made at Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral as part of the celebrations of the then new cathedral and its organ.
It was rumored that during the ’50s she recorded the Six Etudes for Decca, although this may have been just a legend. Certainly this writer has failed to unearth any concrete facts about these.
Many of Demessieux’s recordings have now been reissued by Festivo and are available on CD. They testify to an artist of exceptional gifts and clearly disprove the claim of those who tried to brand (even dismiss) her merely as an empty virtuoso.

Performance style
Jeanne Demessieux was a spectacular and transcendental virtuoso. Although the influence and tradition handed down to her by Dupré is apparent, her playing obviously had a personality decidedly her own, one markedly different from his; despite certain similar elements, there are few other similarities. From recordings we can hear her remarkable strength of authority, characterized by the same rigorous heroism and rhythmic power that Dupré demonstrated—but her playing demonstrated very little of Dupré’s rigidity, instead displaying a far more emotional expressive range, even at times being remarkably sensual.
In recitals, critics repeatedly spoke of her commanding mastery, taste, responsibility and respect for the composers and works she played (with the exceptions of those less generous mentioned earlier). Again, from her recordings, it is also very clear that she listened intensely to her own playing and to the inner workings of what she played. She was also very aware of and sensitive to acoustics, which she employed in a very personal way.
Demessieux once remarked “a performer has her rights,” implying that a performer must create an interpretation. Unlike many of the “organ reform” brigade, she, like Dupré and other virtuosos, did not attach great importance to slavishly following the score indications and registrations (as some have insisted we all should) in either her own or others’ music without question or a certain (tasteful) liberty. From her journals we can note frequent questioning of things such as metronome markings and performance indications. Her ambition was clearly to make music “live,” free from rigidity and the dogmatic approach certain other performers favored.
Another point is worth mentioning with regards to certain British and American reviews in which it was claimed she was simply a dazzling virtuoso and nothing more. For one, they missed that her playing—decidedly French—was strikingly different from the often overtly sentimental styles of performance common in both countries at the time. Few players had the exceptional sensitivity and subtlety she was capable of in her Bach chorales, her Franck. Maybe her excessive brilliance actually irritated some who were made all the more aware of their own limitations.
One thing is certain: no one, especially not Demessieux herself, would claim any were “definitive”—for such a claim would only reveal more arrogance and ego than true artistry. But these recordings are a wonderful testament to a great artist; we younger generations have truly missed out, not being able to hear her live.

The performer
The commanding presence of Jeanne Demessieux was widely remarked upon, and she was known for an aristocratic “hauteur” combined with a feminine, graceful demeanor. As with Dupré (and most of his pupils), once seated at the organ she was virtually motionless. Sitting bolt upright with regal carriage, she played with remarkable physical dignity and relaxation, and had no interest in the kind of performing histrionics and display that were customary in America—something often remarked upon by the press. This seemed to cause an even greater impact on the audiences, because the authority and strength of her performances belied her small and fragile physique. Dupré himself had repeatedly spoken of her power and strength as a player, even using the terms “masculine” and “virile.”
In the early days of her career, applause in churches was not customary and recitals were quite a sober affair; she presented herself accordingly in reserved, but elegant, attire. However, in concert halls or more relaxed venues Jeanne brought a sense of occasion and glamor not previously known in recitals and not adopted as the norm for many years afterwards. She was known for beautiful, stylish long evening gowns, often including a train that she would drape gracefully over the back of the organ bench. Perversely, this often obscured the pedals and her legendary pedal prowess from the view of the audience! The silver shoes—with their high Louis XV heels—in which she always played have become part of her legend. However, it would be quite wrong to believe there was anything remotely exhibitionist or “flashy” about her presentation—this was quite contrary to her reserved nature; it was for her just presentation and style.
Other than occasionally during church services, she never used music and played everything entirely by memory, never traveling with any scores. According to Marie-Madeleine Duruflé-Chevalier, who was a loyal and trusted friend, she had little (if any) difficulty in recalling any of the great works of the repertoire from memory.

Teacher
In her years of study, Dupré had repeatedly spoken of his wish that she would succeed him as Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatoire, also expressing his wish that she succeed him as Organiste-titulaire at Saint-Sulpice (“only Jeanne Demessieux can occupy the organ loft of the great Widor” he declared). Indeed, on a few occasions about the time of her first Salle Pleyel recitals, she took his class while he was absent giving concerts. However, after the “rupture” these were just shattered dreams. The conservatoire post was in the end filled by another Dupré disciple, Rolande Falcinelli.
In addition to her concerts, Jeanne did, however, teach both organ and piano throughout her career. In the early days, she was teaching some 25 hours each week, on top of which were 14–15 hours for Saint-Esprit. After all this came the most important call on her time—her own practice; she often worked eight hours a day at the organ, as well as composing. And in addition to all these demands, was the greatest of all—her hectic concert schedule!
In Paris she taught privately in her apartment, also doing some teaching in Nancy. She was appointed professor of organ at the Royal Conservatoire in Liège in 1952, a role she took with great responsibility, traveling every week on the train from Paris for two or three days. She was as exacting with her pupils as she was with herself. However, she managed this imperceptibly, and their testimonies speak always of her kindness, warmth and encouragement as a teacher—and her unlimited generosity in encouraging them to achieve their maximum. She was also enthusiastic, encouraging and aware that a pupil may wish and need to explore other styles and traditions of performance than her own—illustrated by her recommending one student to go to study with Anton Heiller, who was then setting Europe alight with his brilliant interpretations, in a style very different from her own. Among her outstanding pupils were noted virtuosos Pierre Labric and Louis Thiry.
She was also invited to give various masterclasses and interpretation courses—among them Dublin in 1954 and Haarlem in 1955 and 1956, where she also become chair of the jury for the competitions. Following Dupré’s retirement, she was several times invited to be on the jury for the organ class at the Paris Conservatoire.

Organ building
What is less known is that Jeanne Demessieux had a passionate interest in organ building: she was fascinated by traditions and future ideas for organ building. Again, it was Dupré who had awoken this, and again—as with everything she did—she cultivated her own views and knowledge. She admired many diverse types of instrument—the great Cavaillé-Colls of course (particularly those in Rouen, Saint-Sulpice, the Madeleine and Notre-Dame), but also many older instruments, such as those in Weingarten and various great Dutch instruments.
In the 1960s, she began a major project for the French government to undertake a classification and study of the great instruments throughout France. Her private papers include a large file of her notes written in longhand analyzing many aspects of each of the numerous instruments considered in detail.
Perhaps least favorite for her were some of the large, heavy and ponderous American instruments. One note in her diary remarked a certain instrument was flat, dull and heavy in sound—“unfortunately, just what Dupré would love!”

The person
Jeanne was a person of complex personality—although not in the “temperamental” way. She could have great charm, yet be very aloof and display noted reserve with people. While not displaying any offensive ego or arrogance, she was well aware of her capabilities and stature: how could she not have been?
Her “duality” has been touched on earlier. A woman of highly intellectual capacity, with a remarkable ability to learn and retain, she was not interested in the superficial—thus she found many of the inevitable post-concert receptions (these being especially part of the American scene in the days she played there) quite dreadful; she loathed them, and even felt she’d earned her money just by enduring “ordeals,” as she called them! She seemed to have confused many—some saw her as very shy, others as reserved, some as charming, some as distant and impersonal. Yet under these various exteriors was a woman who was perhaps exactly all of these things by turn. She was also an observer of others—she noted in her diary how, on one of the boat trips going to play in America, she asked to dine alone at her own table—so that she could watch all the other passengers from a distance, but not have to mix with them or exchange superficial conversation. She also remarked elsewhere that she did not like the “snobbism” of certain artistic and cultural circles, some of whom were there merely because it was “the thing to do.”
Few—realistically only a mere handful—ever knew the real person behind the woman. Of those who did, all have spoken without limit of generosity of her kindness, gentleness, distinction, warmth and charm; to these people she was never affected by her celebrity, but remained a person of modesty and humility. She retained a sincere loyalty and friendship with those she trusted. Possibly the “rupture” with Dupré scarred her here too, for she never allowed many to ever become close to her again.
When relaxed, she had a sparkling and engaging personality, and to some she was a breath of fresh air from the usual, more drab male colleagues whom promoters had to entertain. Her correspondence to friends reflects a charming and effusive spirit; the radiant and effusive tone here was of great warmth, energy and spirit.
What was not publicly known in her life was that she suffered precarious health throughout much of her life, battling cancer in particular. It must be remembered that, until only recent generations, the discussion of illness—particularly serious illness—was an absolute social taboo; knowledge of any serious illness could often leave a person socially outcast, even professionally ruined. In addition to cancer, she had repeated bouts of “nervous exhaustion”—undoubtedly exacerbated by constantly fighting cancer plus her own fragility in order to continue working. Her drive, however, is reflected in that on several occasions she was up and traveling merely days after one of the many operations she underwent.
It was typical of her reserve that she lived in only modest accommodation—her apartment being only two rooms in a suburb of Paris. Yet she died owning multiple properties.

The last years
The auspicious successes and good fortune of her youth did not follow her through to middle age. Although the center of everyone’s attention in her youth, this changed. Despite the unswerving loyalty and love of her family, Dupré—the man she loved as her mentor and second “father”—turned against her (as did many in the wake of this), and the wider organ world began to look at new and emerging younger artists, rather overlooking her in the process. Understandably, for someone as sensitive as she undoubtedly was, this must have been immensely difficult to endure.
In the mid 1960s, she began to look back on her life and reflect, sometimes quite plaintively, and began to speak to those she trusted of her exhaustion and serious inner fatigue. Some who met her in these years spoke of her displaying quite visible inward sadness, despite the smiling and charming exterior. In addition to the enormous drain her illness must have had on her, her soul seems to have become disillusioned not with music itself, but with it as a profession and with all it had demanded of her. Despite her luck, she felt trying to establish her career had been a constant battle, many having viewed her either with suspicion or envy (often both). The dreams of her youth were shattered and soured, the sadness of her broken alliance with Dupré had distressed her immeasurably. Instead of looking back on a happy childhood, she began to look back with resentment on a childhood of solitary study, on a life of great personal disappointment, of disillusioned sadness at betrayed trusts. As a performer, the outstanding fame of her youth had waned.
One wonders how Dupré must have felt when she died, something he is never known to have divulged. Once as dear to him as his if she was his own daughter, to whom he had promised so much (and against whom he had turned against violently), she died—as did his own daughter, Marguerite—from cancer far too young. One wonders what he felt, and notes how pointless all those wasted years of non-communication surely were.

The legacy
The legend of Jeanne Demessieux has been of far greater importance than many have considered, or been willing to admit. Maybe some even felt such discussion would have distracted from their own achievements? To many, the star of this brilliant artist has always been something quite untouchable, and many organists (this writer among them) have practiced themselves into a frenzy in the hope of attaining just a little of her level of brilliance. Many openly freely admit how much they have been inspired by her image, and nearly every outstanding female organist since has, inevitably, at some stage been compared to her. Some people were, of course, less generous (as is their right) or simply didn’t appreciate her style, and undoubtedly there were also those who may even have been well served by the waning of her star and her passing because it gave them more space to grow. Yet she still remains one of the most talked of organists of all, a name virtually every organist knows.
Today there is renewed interest in her both as performer and composer and younger generations are discovering a legend anew. Her music is being discovered and performed more than ever before. Her influence is a great deal more than just the eternal talk of “the silver shoes.”

Further reading
Jeanne Demessieux, “Un Vie de Luttes et de Gloire” by Christiane Trieu-Colleney, Les Presses Universelles 1977
Jeanne Demessieux: Témoignages de ses Elèves et Amis, published by Les Amis de Jeanne Demessieux, 1901
“Six Etudes, Op. 5, of Jeanne Demessieux,” by Marjorie Ness, The Diapason, August 1987, pp. 9–11.
“The American Recital Tours of Jeanne Demessieux,” by Laura Ellis, The Diapason, October 1995, pp. 14–18.
“The Rise and Fall of a Famous Collaboration: Marcel Dupré and Jeanne Demessieux” by Lynn Cavanagh, The Diapason, July 2005, pp. 18–21.
The recordings of Jeanne Demessieux now reissued by Festivo contain excellent writing by one of her devoted friends, Pierre Labric.

Websites:
Les Amis de Jeanne Demessieux: http://cat.uregina.ca/demessieux/

Jan-Piet Knijff has taught organ, harpsichord, fortepiano, chamber music, and performance practice at Queens College/CUNY for the past ten years. A Fellow of the AGO and a winner of the Grand Prix Bach de Lausanne, he holds the MM/Artist Diploma from the Conservatory of Amsterdam and the DMA from the CUNY Graduate Center; his organ teachers have included Christoph Wolff, Piet Kee, and Ewald Kooiman. Articles relating to performance practice of Bach’s music have been published in Bach Notes and the Dutch Journal of Music Theory; a series of articles on hymns in recent American Lutheran hymnals appeared in CrossAccent. In addition to music, he teaches community classes in Latin and Ancient Greek. He recently accepted a position as Lecturer in Music at the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales.

Johann Sebastian Bach, Clavier-Übung III, ed. George B. Stauffer (The Complete Organ Works, Series I: Volume 8). Colfax, NC: Wayne
Leupold Editions, 2010, $58;
<A HREF="http://www.wayneleupold.com">www.wayneleupold.com</A&gt;.
Wayne Leupold Editions has embarked on what may be the publisher’s most ambitious project to date: a new edition of the organ works of J. S. Bach. The complete series will contain no fewer than fifteen volumes of music (Bärenreiter’s New Bach Edition managed with eleven) and three volumes of background information, in addition to introductions and commentaries in each music volume. The Wayne Leupold Bach edition clearly aspires to the highest level of present-day Bach scholarship; to make this possible, Leupold has enlisted the help of some of America’s (if not the world’s) most prominent Bach scholars: Christoph Wolff as consulting editor, George Stauffer as general editor, and Quentin Faulkner as performance issues editor. At the same time, the edition is to serve the very practical needs of the American organist. To meet this goal, every volume is extensively reviewed and “tested” by a large group of American organists and their students (p. vii of the present volume is filled with the names of all the reviewers). From one such survey Leupold learned, for example, “that having convenient page turns is one of the most desirable qualities of a Bach edition.”
My first impression is that the book doesn’t feel very pleasant in my hands. I personally like neither the quasi-calligraphic font nor the light-brownish color of the cover, but all this is, of course, a matter of taste. Inside the book, the margins seem remarkably small, both of the pages with text and of those with music. The music notation often looks quite dense to me. One might object that that is because I am used to the Bärenreiter edition, which Leupold, in the advertisement for the Bach edition, dismisses as “very widely spaced.” In fact, Leupold, with some 102 pages of music, is hardly 10% more concise than Bärenreiter (112 pages of music). By comparison, Bach’s own edition has less than 77 pages of music; and the Bach-Gesellschaft edition, much of which is now available in Dover reprints, 88. A very nice feature of the Leupold edition is the large number of facsimiles: no fewer than 22, with four of them in full color. (The color facsimiles are especially helpful, because in his personal copy, Bach made corrections in red ink.)
Aside from page turns, perhaps the biggest problem in editing Bach’s organ works is the notation of the pedal. Bach, after all, notated the vast majority of his organ works on two staves, with the pedal sharing the lower staff with the left hand. Of the works in this volume, Bach notated only the pedaliter settings of Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot, Vater unser im Himmelreich, and Aus tiefer Not on three staves. As convenient as three-staff notation may seem to the present-day organist, the process of assigning the correct notes to the pedal is not at all unproblematic in earlier music. I personally consider the notation on two staves the single most important advantage of Michael Belotti’s edition of Buxtehude’s organ works (Broude Brothers): it has clarified many passages that had puzzled me for a long time, and has helped me enormously to understand this repertoire better. Although the question of using pedal or not is, of course, much less of an issue in Bach’s organ works, problems do remain, and the best solution for these would be to offer the music on two staves, just as Bach did most of the time.
A well-known example of such a problematic passage is the echoes in the E-flat-major Prelude: it’s hard to believe that the bass note finishing off the echoes is to be played in the pedal (except if you quickly adjust the registration, which most people will find too cumbersome or else will dismiss as foreign to eighteenth-century performance practice). Yet, in Bach’s edition, the notation of that note with the stem down on the bottom of the staff, looks no different than the forte note two measures earlier—or, for that matter, the pedal part in the opening section of the piece (Example 1a). If one plays from two staves, the problem becomes a purely academic one: the obvious way of playing the passage is to use the pedal for the forte measures, and to play the piano bass note with the left hand on the echo manual. But for an editor having to decide which notes to put on the pedal staff, this passage can become something of a nightmare; in a way, no solution is fair to both Bach’s notation and the modern-day three-staff organist. The Leupold team has opted for a separate pedal staff; in the case of the echo passages in the Prelude, the bass part has been put in the left-hand staff; the pedal staff is empty apart from the barlines (no editorial rests have been supplied); with a symbol, the reader is referred to the Commentary, where the problem is explained in detail (Example 1b). On the other hand, both the Prelude and the E-flat-major Fugue are also printed on two staves in an appendix (Example 1c). (I personally greatly prefer this two-staff notation; not only does the pedal feel more like an integral part of the texture, the relationship with other keyboard pieces is much clearer this way.)
In the “great” Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, too, assigning the pedal part to its own staff can cause misunderstandings. Stauffer addresses the problem in the editorial report, pointing out that the left-hand part is really “the bass voice of a four-part score. Thus one would have the option of registering it with a 16′ foundation.” On the other hand, the pedal part carrying the cantus firmus “is the tenor voice . . . of the four-part score. Thus it would appear to call for an 8′ solo stop.” I think the problem is in fact a bit more complicated. In my mind, a 4′ stop for the pedal cantus firmus is at very least a possibility (I personally prefer it that way); but if one decides to play the cantus firmus at 8′ pitch, the left hand must have a 16′ in it to avoid undesirable inversions (for example in mm. 18 and 43 of Leupold’s edition; Example 2).
In the “great” Jesus Christus unser Heiland, the cantus firmus is also played in the pedal. Like Christ unser Herr, this piece was printed on two staves in Bach’s original edition: the right hand occupies the upper staff (with an occasional note on the lower staff), the left hand moves between the lower and the upper staff (using three different clefs!), and the cantus firmus is written on the lower staff with the stems consistently down. While I agree with Stauffer that the cantus firmus is best played “with an 8′ solo stop,” I don’t understand how he knows that “the Pedal part is the tenor voice . . . of the three-part score” (emphasis mine). Bach’s notation of the cantus firmus with the stems down doesn’t seem to support this (Example 3); and in almost half the number of its measures, the cantus firmus (when played at 8′ pitch) is the actual sounding bass of the piece (assuming the left hand is also played at 8′ pitch, as one would expect it to be). It seems to me that labeling the parts as voices is simply not very helpful in this piece; it is probably best to simply refer to them as right hand, left hand, and pedal.
An important advantage of the
Leupold edition is that the division of the inner voices over the staves is in principle identical with Bach’s original edition. In the fugetta (that’s how Bach spelled that word, although fughetta is correct Italian) on Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot, it is clear that the three upper voices are often to be taken together in the right hand. In the Leupold edition, these right-hand chords are clear right away, in contrast to the Bärenreiter edition, which tried to emphasize the polyphonic nature of Bach’s music by writing the tenor in the left-hand staff as consistently as possible. The problem however is that, on the one hand, Leupold is not always consistent in this regard and, on the other, that the space between the staves is so much bigger in Leupold’s edition than in Bach’s; so that where Bach could conveniently be somewhat ambiguous, placing notes exactly “in-between” the two staves, Leupold was forced to make many tricky choices.
Towards the end of the manualiter version of Aus tiefer Not, some notes are obviously to be played in the right hand, and this is clear from Bach’s original edition; Leupold places some of these notes in the lower staff—the player’s loss, I think (see, for example, Leupold’s mm. 68 [last two notes in tenor]; 69 [last two notes in tenor]; 71 [first two notes in tenor]; 74 [last two notes in tenor]). In the fughetta on Dies sind, the Leupold edition keeps the tenor notes in m. 31 in the upper staff, even though they technically landed in the lower staff in Bach’s original; I agree with Leupold here, as these notes can only be played in the right hand. But a measure later, Leupold places the tenor in the lower staff, while—as is clear from Bach’s original—these notes are obviously to be played in the right hand. The last note in the left hand of m. 25 in the same piece is double-stemmed in Bach’s original, underlining that it and the following two notes are obviously to be played in the left hand. The Leupold edition obscures this by separating the alto from the tenor and placing it in the upper staff.
Although it is understandable that Bach’s original stemming is not necessarily followed in the Leupold edition, it is sometimes unclear why this is not done. The very beginning of the fughetta on Dies sind is stemmed down in Bach’s original but up in the Leupold edition (Example 4a/b). It is true that this is technically the tenor part, but it is also true that the listener (and in a way the player) doesn’t really know this until the bass enters in m. 8. (Moreover, Leupold stems the tenor down all the way from m. 23 to m. 27.) By stemming the tenor up, a serious problem occurs in mm. 6–7. At the end of m. 6, the alto joins the tenor on the lower staff (in fact, this is somewhat arbitrary as the C is right in the middle between the two staves, at the same height as the alto C earlier in the measure). Of course, the alto is now the higher of the two lower-staff parts and is therefore written with the stems up. Consequently, starting with the last note of m. 6, the tenor is stemmed down. As a result, the voice leading is completely obscured; in fact, one is inclined to think that the alto crosses the tenor at the last eighth of m. 6.
In m. 14, the C-sharp in the alto—right in the middle between the staves—is stemmed up by Bach, with the following G stemmed down. From Bach’s notation, it is immediately clear that the C-sharp is to be played in the left hand; the
Leupold edition, by placing the note in the upper staff, obscures this—a great loss, in my opinion.
Although Leupold, supported by his reviewers, greatly prioritizes convenient page turns, one is surprised to find a number of unnecessary, awkward turns in this volume. In the Bärenreiter edition, I found 28 inconvenient page turns; Leupold does a much better job, but I still counted thirteen “bad” page turns. In some pieces, perhaps most prominently the “great” Jesus Christus unser Heiland, this is obviously unavoidable, but not always. In the fughetta on Jesus Christus unser Heiland, the very unpractical page turn is at the end of m. 38. A few measures earlier, however, I can easily free up my left hand and I have almost a measure to turn the hypothetical page (Example 5). In the third Duetto, turning after m. 24 is hardly possible; six measures later, it would have been a breeze. It seems to me that Leupold should have been able to print those six measures on the previous page; it is true that this would have meant five two-staff systems on pp. 96 and 97, but elsewhere, Leupold has no difficulty with as many as twelve staves on a page (see pp. 30 and 31, for example). In the E-flat-major fugue, too, Leupold missed a chance: the turn at the end of m. 109 is, I think, not possible unless one possesses three hands; but turning in the middle of m. 111 would have been quite manageable. A different problem is posed in the second Duetto, where one has to turn back to play da capo. In my experience, this is asking for trouble; I don’t see why the da capo couldn’t have been written out. Alternatively, the whole piece could have been printed on two pages, as it was in the old Breitkopf edition (the one edited by Heinz Lohmann; it is about to be replaced by a new edition).
The history of the corrections in the known copies of Bach’s own edition is a bit complicated—so much so that some corrections in a copy in the British Library seem to have been overlooked until now. This copy appears to be a second personal copy of Bach’s; at least, the corrections (in black ink) are thought to be in his hand. The most spectacular of these is the additional trill on the penultimate chord of the E-flat-major fugue: the trill in the soprano is “mirrored” by one in the tenor (on the F). The Leupold edition is the first to include the additional trill, a remarkable world première, to be sure (Example 6)!
Despite the extensive editing process, this first volume does contain a number of fairly serious errors. In m. 21 of the F-major Allein Gott, the third beat is simply missing. In m. 47 of the “great” Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, the prolongation dot is missing in the alto. In the second Duetto, it seems to me that a dashed barline is missing before the da capo. At the end of the “great” Jesus Christus unser Heiland, the two rests are missing in the soprano. In the introductory essay, Stauffer refers to variations 14 and 28 of the Goldberg Variations as a “Scarlatti-like Italian essercizo.” The word is indeed spelled with two s’s by Scarlatti himself, though standard Italian has only one; in any case, the singular of esercizi is esercizio. The list of known copies of the original edition includes one in “Gravenhage, Netherlands.” That village, home to the Dutch government as well as the International Court of Justice, is commonly called Den Haag in Dutch these days; the official alternative, ’s-Gravenhage, with its tricky beginning, is too cumbersome even for the Dutch. English on the other hand has long adopted the name The Hague for this fair city.
An interesting theoretical issue occurs in m. 61 of the fughetta on Aus tiefer Not (Leupold’s numbering; it is apparently unavoidable that three different Bach editions can count measures in as many different ways). The second half of the first beat has a B in the tenor, but Stauffer proposes in an “ossia” to play a C-sharp instead (Example 7). Although Stauffer suggests that the ledger line may be missing in the original, a simple glance at a facsimile edition proves that this is not the case: the note is written significantly lower than the two nearby C-sharps. The emendation may have a long history (it comes from the Bach-Gesellschaft edition), but I don’t agree with Stauffer that it “appears to produce a better harmonic effect”: I hear the C-sharp in the soprano and the A in the bass as passing tones over a held B-minor chord, which is indicated as minimally as it is beautifully by the B in the tenor.
It is perhaps fair enough that English translations of the titles of the chorales are included in this American Bach edition, yet I personally would have preferred these in a convenient table in the back of the book. And in addition to English, why not include the titles in French, Spanish, even Korean? Paradoxical as it sounds, that would make the edition even more American.
The Leupold Bach edition is an excellent initiative. With some improvements, this could well become the edition of choice for many American organists. 

Jan-Piet Knijff has taught organ, harpsichord, fortepiano, chamber music, and performance practice at Queens College/CUNY for the past ten years. A Fellow of the AGO and a winner of the Grand Prix Bach de Lausanne, he holds the MM/Artist Diploma from the Conservatory of Amsterdam and the DMA from the CUNY Graduate Center; his organ teachers have included Christoph Wolff, Piet Kee, and Ewald Kooiman. Articles relating to performance practice of Bach’s music have been published in Bach Notes and the Dutch Journal of Music Theory; a series of articles on hymns in recent American Lutheran hymnals appeared in CrossAccent. In addition to music, he teaches community classes in Latin and Ancient Greek. He recently accepted a position as Lecturer in Music at the University of New England, Armidale, New South Wales.

Johann Sebastian Bach, Clavier-Übung III, ed. George B. Stauffer (The Complete Organ Works, Series I: Volume 8). Colfax, NC: Wayne
Leupold Editions, 2010, $58;
<A HREF="http://www.wayneleupold.com">www.wayneleupold.com</A&gt;.
Wayne Leupold Editions has embarked on what may be the publisher’s most ambitious project to date: a new edition of the organ works of J. S. Bach. The complete series will contain no fewer than fifteen volumes of music (Bärenreiter’s New Bach Edition managed with eleven) and three volumes of background information, in addition to introductions and commentaries in each music volume. The Wayne Leupold Bach edition clearly aspires to the highest level of present-day Bach scholarship; to make this possible, Leupold has enlisted the help of some of America’s (if not the world’s) most prominent Bach scholars: Christoph Wolff as consulting editor, George Stauffer as general editor, and Quentin Faulkner as performance issues editor. At the same time, the edition is to serve the very practical needs of the American organist. To meet this goal, every volume is extensively reviewed and “tested” by a large group of American organists and their students (p. vii of the present volume is filled with the names of all the reviewers). From one such survey Leupold learned, for example, “that having convenient page turns is one of the most desirable qualities of a Bach edition.”
My first impression is that the book doesn’t feel very pleasant in my hands. I personally like neither the quasi-calligraphic font nor the light-brownish color of the cover, but all this is, of course, a matter of taste. Inside the book, the margins seem remarkably small, both of the pages with text and of those with music. The music notation often looks quite dense to me. One might object that that is because I am used to the Bärenreiter edition, which Leupold, in the advertisement for the Bach edition, dismisses as “very widely spaced.” In fact, Leupold, with some 102 pages of music, is hardly 10% more concise than Bärenreiter (112 pages of music). By comparison, Bach’s own edition has less than 77 pages of music; and the Bach-Gesellschaft edition, much of which is now available in Dover reprints, 88. A very nice feature of the Leupold edition is the large number of facsimiles: no fewer than 22, with four of them in full color. (The color facsimiles are especially helpful, because in his personal copy, Bach made corrections in red ink.)
Aside from page turns, perhaps the biggest problem in editing Bach’s organ works is the notation of the pedal. Bach, after all, notated the vast majority of his organ works on two staves, with the pedal sharing the lower staff with the left hand. Of the works in this volume, Bach notated only the pedaliter settings of Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot, Vater unser im Himmelreich, and Aus tiefer Not on three staves. As convenient as three-staff notation may seem to the present-day organist, the process of assigning the correct notes to the pedal is not at all unproblematic in earlier music. I personally consider the notation on two staves the single most important advantage of Michael Belotti’s edition of Buxtehude’s organ works (Broude Brothers): it has clarified many passages that had puzzled me for a long time, and has helped me enormously to understand this repertoire better. Although the question of using pedal or not is, of course, much less of an issue in Bach’s organ works, problems do remain, and the best solution for these would be to offer the music on two staves, just as Bach did most of the time.
A well-known example of such a problematic passage is the echoes in the E-flat-major Prelude: it’s hard to believe that the bass note finishing off the echoes is to be played in the pedal (except if you quickly adjust the registration, which most people will find too cumbersome or else will dismiss as foreign to eighteenth-century performance practice). Yet, in Bach’s edition, the notation of that note with the stem down on the bottom of the staff, looks no different than the forte note two measures earlier—or, for that matter, the pedal part in the opening section of the piece (Example 1a). If one plays from two staves, the problem becomes a purely academic one: the obvious way of playing the passage is to use the pedal for the forte measures, and to play the piano bass note with the left hand on the echo manual. But for an editor having to decide which notes to put on the pedal staff, this passage can become something of a nightmare; in a way, no solution is fair to both Bach’s notation and the modern-day three-staff organist. The Leupold team has opted for a separate pedal staff; in the case of the echo passages in the Prelude, the bass part has been put in the left-hand staff; the pedal staff is empty apart from the barlines (no editorial rests have been supplied); with a symbol, the reader is referred to the Commentary, where the problem is explained in detail (Example 1b). On the other hand, both the Prelude and the E-flat-major Fugue are also printed on two staves in an appendix (Example 1c). (I personally greatly prefer this two-staff notation; not only does the pedal feel more like an integral part of the texture, the relationship with other keyboard pieces is much clearer this way.)
In the “great” Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, too, assigning the pedal part to its own staff can cause misunderstandings. Stauffer addresses the problem in the editorial report, pointing out that the left-hand part is really “the bass voice of a four-part score. Thus one would have the option of registering it with a 16′ foundation.” On the other hand, the pedal part carrying the cantus firmus “is the tenor voice . . . of the four-part score. Thus it would appear to call for an 8′ solo stop.” I think the problem is in fact a bit more complicated. In my mind, a 4′ stop for the pedal cantus firmus is at very least a possibility (I personally prefer it that way); but if one decides to play the cantus firmus at 8′ pitch, the left hand must have a 16′ in it to avoid undesirable inversions (for example in mm. 18 and 43 of Leupold’s edition; Example 2).
In the “great” Jesus Christus unser Heiland, the cantus firmus is also played in the pedal. Like Christ unser Herr, this piece was printed on two staves in Bach’s original edition: the right hand occupies the upper staff (with an occasional note on the lower staff), the left hand moves between the lower and the upper staff (using three different clefs!), and the cantus firmus is written on the lower staff with the stems consistently down. While I agree with Stauffer that the cantus firmus is best played “with an 8′ solo stop,” I don’t understand how he knows that “the Pedal part is the tenor voice . . . of the three-part score” (emphasis mine). Bach’s notation of the cantus firmus with the stems down doesn’t seem to support this (Example 3); and in almost half the number of its measures, the cantus firmus (when played at 8′ pitch) is the actual sounding bass of the piece (assuming the left hand is also played at 8′ pitch, as one would expect it to be). It seems to me that labeling the parts as voices is simply not very helpful in this piece; it is probably best to simply refer to them as right hand, left hand, and pedal.
An important advantage of the
Leupold edition is that the division of the inner voices over the staves is in principle identical with Bach’s original edition. In the fugetta (that’s how Bach spelled that word, although fughetta is correct Italian) on Dies sind die heilgen zehn Gebot, it is clear that the three upper voices are often to be taken together in the right hand. In the Leupold edition, these right-hand chords are clear right away, in contrast to the Bärenreiter edition, which tried to emphasize the polyphonic nature of Bach’s music by writing the tenor in the left-hand staff as consistently as possible. The problem however is that, on the one hand, Leupold is not always consistent in this regard and, on the other, that the space between the staves is so much bigger in Leupold’s edition than in Bach’s; so that where Bach could conveniently be somewhat ambiguous, placing notes exactly “in-between” the two staves, Leupold was forced to make many tricky choices.
Towards the end of the manualiter version of Aus tiefer Not, some notes are obviously to be played in the right hand, and this is clear from Bach’s original edition; Leupold places some of these notes in the lower staff—the player’s loss, I think (see, for example, Leupold’s mm. 68 [last two notes in tenor]; 69 [last two notes in tenor]; 71 [first two notes in tenor]; 74 [last two notes in tenor]). In the fughetta on Dies sind, the Leupold edition keeps the tenor notes in m. 31 in the upper staff, even though they technically landed in the lower staff in Bach’s original; I agree with Leupold here, as these notes can only be played in the right hand. But a measure later, Leupold places the tenor in the lower staff, while—as is clear from Bach’s original—these notes are obviously to be played in the right hand. The last note in the left hand of m. 25 in the same piece is double-stemmed in Bach’s original, underlining that it and the following two notes are obviously to be played in the left hand. The Leupold edition obscures this by separating the alto from the tenor and placing it in the upper staff.
Although it is understandable that Bach’s original stemming is not necessarily followed in the Leupold edition, it is sometimes unclear why this is not done. The very beginning of the fughetta on Dies sind is stemmed down in Bach’s original but up in the Leupold edition (Example 4a/b). It is true that this is technically the tenor part, but it is also true that the listener (and in a way the player) doesn’t really know this until the bass enters in m. 8. (Moreover, Leupold stems the tenor down all the way from m. 23 to m. 27.) By stemming the tenor up, a serious problem occurs in mm. 6–7. At the end of m. 6, the alto joins the tenor on the lower staff (in fact, this is somewhat arbitrary as the C is right in the middle between the two staves, at the same height as the alto C earlier in the measure). Of course, the alto is now the higher of the two lower-staff parts and is therefore written with the stems up. Consequently, starting with the last note of m. 6, the tenor is stemmed down. As a result, the voice leading is completely obscured; in fact, one is inclined to think that the alto crosses the tenor at the last eighth of m. 6.
In m. 14, the C-sharp in the alto—right in the middle between the staves—is stemmed up by Bach, with the following G stemmed down. From Bach’s notation, it is immediately clear that the C-sharp is to be played in the left hand; the
Leupold edition, by placing the note in the upper staff, obscures this—a great loss, in my opinion.
Although Leupold, supported by his reviewers, greatly prioritizes convenient page turns, one is surprised to find a number of unnecessary, awkward turns in this volume. In the Bärenreiter edition, I found 28 inconvenient page turns; Leupold does a much better job, but I still counted thirteen “bad” page turns. In some pieces, perhaps most prominently the “great” Jesus Christus unser Heiland, this is obviously unavoidable, but not always. In the fughetta on Jesus Christus unser Heiland, the very unpractical page turn is at the end of m. 38. A few measures earlier, however, I can easily free up my left hand and I have almost a measure to turn the hypothetical page (Example 5). In the third Duetto, turning after m. 24 is hardly possible; six measures later, it would have been a breeze. It seems to me that Leupold should have been able to print those six measures on the previous page; it is true that this would have meant five two-staff systems on pp. 96 and 97, but elsewhere, Leupold has no difficulty with as many as twelve staves on a page (see pp. 30 and 31, for example). In the E-flat-major fugue, too, Leupold missed a chance: the turn at the end of m. 109 is, I think, not possible unless one possesses three hands; but turning in the middle of m. 111 would have been quite manageable. A different problem is posed in the second Duetto, where one has to turn back to play da capo. In my experience, this is asking for trouble; I don’t see why the da capo couldn’t have been written out. Alternatively, the whole piece could have been printed on two pages, as it was in the old Breitkopf edition (the one edited by Heinz Lohmann; it is about to be replaced by a new edition).
The history of the corrections in the known copies of Bach’s own edition is a bit complicated—so much so that some corrections in a copy in the British Library seem to have been overlooked until now. This copy appears to be a second personal copy of Bach’s; at least, the corrections (in black ink) are thought to be in his hand. The most spectacular of these is the additional trill on the penultimate chord of the E-flat-major fugue: the trill in the soprano is “mirrored” by one in the tenor (on the F). The Leupold edition is the first to include the additional trill, a remarkable world première, to be sure (Example 6)!
Despite the extensive editing process, this first volume does contain a number of fairly serious errors. In m. 21 of the F-major Allein Gott, the third beat is simply missing. In m. 47 of the “great” Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, the prolongation dot is missing in the alto. In the second Duetto, it seems to me that a dashed barline is missing before the da capo. At the end of the “great” Jesus Christus unser Heiland, the two rests are missing in the soprano. In the introductory essay, Stauffer refers to variations 14 and 28 of the Goldberg Variations as a “Scarlatti-like Italian essercizo.” The word is indeed spelled with two s’s by Scarlatti himself, though standard Italian has only one; in any case, the singular of esercizi is esercizio. The list of known copies of the original edition includes one in “Gravenhage, Netherlands.” That village, home to the Dutch government as well as the International Court of Justice, is commonly called Den Haag in Dutch these days; the official alternative, ’s-Gravenhage, with its tricky beginning, is too cumbersome even for the Dutch. English on the other hand has long adopted the name The Hague for this fair city.
An interesting theoretical issue occurs in m. 61 of the fughetta on Aus tiefer Not (Leupold’s numbering; it is apparently unavoidable that three different Bach editions can count measures in as many different ways). The second half of the first beat has a B in the tenor, but Stauffer proposes in an “ossia” to play a C-sharp instead (Example 7). Although Stauffer suggests that the ledger line may be missing in the original, a simple glance at a facsimile edition proves that this is not the case: the note is written significantly lower than the two nearby C-sharps. The emendation may have a long history (it comes from the Bach-Gesellschaft edition), but I don’t agree with Stauffer that it “appears to produce a better harmonic effect”: I hear the C-sharp in the soprano and the A in the bass as passing tones over a held B-minor chord, which is indicated as minimally as it is beautifully by the B in the tenor.
It is perhaps fair enough that English translations of the titles of the chorales are included in this American Bach edition, yet I personally would have preferred these in a convenient table in the back of the book. And in addition to English, why not include the titles in French, Spanish, even Korean? Paradoxical as it sounds, that would make the edition even more American.
The Leupold Bach edition is an excellent initiative. With some improvements, this could well become the edition of choice for many American organists. 

Canadian Organ Duettists Sylvie Poirier and Philip Crozier on tour in summer 2003

Philip Crozier was born in Preston, England, and was a boy chorister in Blackburn and Carlisle Cathedral Choirs. In 1979 he graduated from Cardiff University, and was awarded the Glynne Jones Prize for Organ in two consecutive years. Between 1978 and 1980 he studied in Paris with André Marchal.

For the past several years my wife Sylvie Poirier and I have had the pleasure of traveling extensively giving concerts of organ duets. In the course of numerous concert tours we have amassed a considerable number of very happy memories, sprinkled with some less delightful tales.

It may be worthwhile at this point explaining how all this began. Sylvie and I first met in 1982 as candidates in the Chartres International Organ Competition and at the time lived on opposite sides of the Atlantic. Sylvie was born and living in Montréal, while I am from England. One thing led to another, culminating in my immigration to Canada and our marriage in 1984. The result was that we pooled together our respective collections of organ music and recordings, learning a lot from each other in the process. Our duet playing began later that decade when we decided to try out some organ duets we had bought--enough to make a complete program in two halves which then became the subject of a broadcast on Radio-Canada in May 1990--our debut concert as duettists. That one event was so well received that we were urged and encouraged by several kind folk to continue and do more, so we were stimulated to expand beyond this one concert and examine the available repertory, increase it by commissions and promulgate it by performances and recordings. In 1991 we played in Germany for the first time as duettists, our international debut as such, and it has since grown and grown. We have now commissioned and premiered seven organ duets by composers from Canada, Germany, France and Britain, and released three CDs of organ duets.

From the outset we have preferred to concentrate on original organ duets (the Mozart and Beethoven works excepting, which we consider valid as organ duets) because we are always fascinated by how and why a particular composer would have conceived an organ duet and how he handled this form of  music making, rather than someone taking an existing framework and adapting it for two players. It is also very exciting to unearth original works that have long been out of print, but there is still a lot we are looking for.

Planning a tour

It has become an annual event for us to travel to Europe during the summer when I have vacation time from St. James United Church and Temple Emanu-El-Beth Sholom in Montréal. Undertaking a concert tour that lasts around forty days presents a number of challenges. A good part of the success or otherwise is a direct result of what happens in the weeks before the plane is boarded, so a significant amount of preparation is obviously necessary; there are so many diverse  eventualities to cover. Planning the actual traveling requires some time consulting train schedules and maps. Occasionally we have had to postpone concerts to subsequent years because of the impossibility of reaching a destination in time.

The choice of repertory for the individual concerts is always carefully  planned to include a good representation of standard duet works which are quite often hardly known at all, taking into account the suitability of the instrument to the music and the availability of playing aids (because we do our own registration unaided, pistons or not, with rare exceptions). Our programs are submitted well in advance, always to include Canadian content, and fulfilling requests that are asked of us, when possible. We also like to include some of our own commissioned works. Organ duettists are relatively rare, and the repertory is not enormous, so concert organizers often prefer to hear duet works that the audience and organists alike are happy to discover or rediscover.

2003 Tour: “Cancelling summer”

The planned tour for summer 2003 was all working out well when I received an e-mail in January  from  David Rogers of Doncaster, England, a long-time friend who in addition to being a fine musician, improviser and recitalist (albeit a reluctant one), is a recording specialist with a huge knowledge of repertory and recording technique. He had made the acquaintance of one individual named Nick, an organ enthusiast who does not play and is not a recording technician, but whose plan was to start a record company devoted to organ music, to be recorded and edited by David. At Nick’s request David asked if I could record the Reubke Sonata on the 94th Psalm--a piece I had never played, but have known well since childhood as a listener, initially through an old LP of the never to be forgotten magisterial reading of Brian Runnett. David had made Nick familiar with my organ playing through private recordings of concerts I had given some twenty years ago. So I eagerly began learning this wonderful work and completed the task in due course.

Sylvie and I also greatly admire the organ works of Petr Eben whom we met in Prague in 1995 and 2000, and it was also suggested we record some of his works with the upcoming 75th birthday of the composer in mind. In 1993 we had broadcast Job and Faust on Radio-Canada (performances that Petr Eben himself was delighted with), but this music remains quite unknown in Canada. Consequently we invested much time, energy and enthusiasm into this new project where we had been assured all funding was in place, greatly encouraged by this unexpected recording opportunity. The organ of Fulda Cathedral in Germany seemed entirely suitable to the repertory in our opinion, and its availability was negotiated and booked. After all the required arrangements had been made with the cathedral, the repertory approaching where we wanted it to be for the recording (it is vital not to “peak” too soon) and a crescendo of excitement building day by day, Nick suddenly sent us an e-mail five weeks before our departure, citing a family problem and ending “my business will have to be sidelined temporarily, so, as they say in the satirical press, Summer is cancelled.”

Shocked and dismayed, we respectfully requested that the recordings could still proceed in his absence with David alone (Nick had insisted on being present at all recording sessions), since these had now become mitigating circumstances and by this stage the planning and preparation for the recording was so far advanced. This was refused outright so we were in a terrible dilemma: do we cancel and possibly jeopardize everything later, or wait, hoping the issue can be resolved, or do we continue alone? The impasse with Nick was not advancing anywhere and we began doubting the sincerity and goodwill of what had been achieved thus far in the project we had embarked upon.

A swift decision had to be made--every day counted with our departure for Europe approaching rapidly. It became more and more apparent that we were going to have to go it alone if these recordings were to be realized. Those final five weeks were spent frantically trying to salvage the situation, soliciting donations from friends and organizations so we could begin the actual  recording. This took up so much of our time that hardly any organ practice was done in those five weeks--not the best situation to be in before a tour of twelve concerts and a recording project! With much regret I decided to abandon the Reubke--this after all was to have been only half of one CD, the other half being taken up with the Piano Sonata by a pianist of repute. There was precious little time remaining before our departure and this had to be principally devoted to the Eben pieces which demand so much concentrated work, in spite of the monumental distractions preying on our minds constantly.

Limburg

It was relaxing in a strange way to be on the plane flying to Europe on the evening of July 16 after the turmoil of the preceding five weeks; we had done all we could, securing enough funding to cover the production of two compact discs. Arriving at Charles de Gaulle airport, Paris, it was clear that our flight connection to Frankfurt was beyond reach. Six hours later, with a good meal along the way, we were airborne again. We were met at Frankfurt by Markus Eichenlaub, organist of Limburg Cathedral where we were to play the first concert. After the hour drive to Limburg and settling in to the Priester Seminar, our home for the next three nights, we were taken to the cathedral by Mr. Eichenlaub. A pleasant fifteen-minute walk from our residence, the thirteenth-century cathedral has a commanding presence over the surroundings, perched on a hill overlooking the River Lahn.

The organ by Hans-Gerd Klais (1978) is a large four-manual with eight combinations, spread across the west gallery and will likely be restored in a year or so. Mr. Eichenlaub suggested we hear it from downstairs as he demonstrated its many colors, and it was of great value to hear it played beforehand. He is a very gifted improviser, and it felt somewhat surreal with the fatigue of the journey starting to bite hard as we wandered  around this magnificently beautiful building, with the evening sunshine streaming through the windows.

Then we were left to explore it for ourselves and begin registering the program which included Two Pieces for Organ Duet by Ronald Arnatt, a first for us. It proved to be quite a challenge to make this particular piece work on that organ; the second movement is aptly named “Octopus Music.” There was a video hook up for the concert itself (which was very well attended). We needed to change the pistons as we progressed since we had also chosen this as the venue to give the German première of our most recent commissioned duet, the 2me Suite pour orgue à quatre mains by French organist Jean-Luc Perrot. Following the concert we went to an excellent Spanish restaurant with our hosts and some of their friends.

During our time in Limburg we also enjoyed a barbeque on the lawn with the organist and his wife and son. We were the only visiting residents in the seminary, home to just a few nuns, in a spacious new building, so were alone and basically had the whole place to ourselves, with easy access to the small two-manual tracker organ in the chapel. Finally we were able to really concentrate on practice, instead of answering the telephone, meeting people to explain and discuss the aforementioned imminent recording project, and sending multiple e-mails and letters. Just being at the organ and making music was very therapeutic--how we wished life could always be like that!

Fulda (First visit)

Leaving Limburg on Sunday July 20, we took the train to Fulda and were greeted that afternoon by Domorganist Hans-Jürgen Kaiser and taken to the Priester Seminar where we had individual rooms with a shower. It was relatively spartan accommodation, home to several priests in training from all over the world, including French-speaking from Africa, but quiet and comfortable, and situated just behind the cathedral. There was also a rail timetable thoughtfully posted on the notice board. Our good friend David Pearson in Kiel had supplied us with various train times for our travels; he acts as our agent in Germany and was a key player in all the Fulda arrangements.

The cathedral was built in the new Baroque manner (1704-1712) to the design of the architect Johann Dientzenhofer and is an outstanding work of art. Inspired by the Roman Baroque style, it reuses the architectural core of the ancient Abbot Ratgar’s Basilica (9th century). In keeping with the splendor of the building in which it is housed, the organ is truly magnificent. The glorious case dates from the time of the cathedral’s construction, and today the organ consists of 72 speaking stops, including some 24 from the large Sauer organ of 1876/77 which was rebuilt and enlarged by Christoph Glatter-Götz of Rieger-Orgelbau and completed in 1996. The specification can be found on the company’s website <www.riegerorgelbau.com/db/pdf/Fulda.pdf&gt;. The four-manual console is well equipped with a multiple memory system (32x12 generals), two-way sequencer and additional electric action for some of the couplers. What a great thrill it is to play this wonderful instrument, and Mr. Kaiser was most helpful during our time in Fulda. We were allowed access to the organ in the evenings and partly during the lunch hours when we could play quietly.

David Rogers arrived the day after with his very specialized and compact recording equipment. At last the much anticipated recording project of organ works by Petr Eben was about to begin. Over several nights spread over one and a half weeks, Sylvie recorded Job (a narrator in Montréal has recorded the French text of the Biblical readings to go between the movements), and I did Faust, A Festive Voluntary and A Small Chorale Partita. There were a few unexpected interruptions--on one evening a private guided tour, and on another evening a trainee priest began practicing the organ in the chapel behind the high altar. Because it is also a monastery and a major learning place, from time to time there were some extraneous noises that had a tendency to arrive just as the last chord was dying away! Despite this, there was hardly any traffic noise because the cathedral is perfectly situated away from roads. We had been lent a set of keys, and on one evening had considerable trouble locking the cathedral door. Something was wrong with the lock and it was fixed the next day.

Rheda-Wiedenbrück

We interrupted our time in Fulda later that week and rented a car driven by David Rogers to go to Rheda-Wiedenbrück, our next port of call. As we went to collect it we noticed a German newspaper photograph with major headlines from Iraq and two familiar faces front and center. One fact about concert touring is that we tend not to follow the news, and in Fulda we had neither radio nor television. On the journey, in which we ran into some very heavy rain, we picked up news on the car radio. The hotel in Rheda-Wiedenbrück was the first time we had seen a television screen since leaving Montréal, and the demise of these two individuals was the big news of the week, along with gruesome photos.

Upon arrival we were met by a lady at the hotel who gave us the church keys; we deposited our cases and went to eat. We were ravenous and found a pizzeria close to the church and went in about 7 pm, fully expecting to be out by 8:30 pm--the organ was available all evening. In the end it took nearly forty-five minutes after placing the order before the soup was served and nearly an hour after that for the pizza, which was very ordinary. It was approaching 10 pm before we left the restaurant, irritated by the apparent indifference of the patron, and not in the mood to have a good practice. It was almost dark by this time and we fumbled around in the gloom trying to find switches and keyholes. We registered the program, grateful for the playing aids, and returned to the hotel.

The next day, Friday July 25, David Pearson arrived for a surprise visit in time for the concert at St. Clemens Kirche, where the three-manual organ is by Fischer & Krämer (1984), details of which can be found at <www.fischer-kraemer.de/rheda.htm&gt;. It was our third concert in this church where a few years ago we first met Ralf Bölting, composer of several organ duets. Our program included one work we commissioned from him in 2000, the Toccata on “Vom Himmel hoch” (the third movement of the Triptych on German Christmas Carols), but unfortunately he could not attend the concert. We have several good original Christmas duets in our repertory, but are frequently asked not to play them during the summer, so we were happy to be able to include it.

Zwillbrock

On Saturday the four of us filled the rented car and headed to Borken to stay with our good friend Kurt-Ludwig Forg, director of the music school there, a recitalist and author of numerous articles and a frequent visitor to North America. We left David Pearson in Münster so he could take the train north to Kiel because of services the next day.

On Sunday afternoon July 27, we played a concert to a capacity audience at the Barockkirche St. Franziskus in Zwillbrock, a delightful small village on the Dutch border. The website (in German) <www.zwillbrock.de/barockkirche/&gt; contains information about the historic two-manual organ and an interior photograph of this beautiful baroque building. It is possible to perform a complete concert of original organ duets on a small instrument and gain very satisfactory results, and this particular one served the repertory really well. The program included Fugue à six parties et deux sujets à 4 mains by Clément Loret and Petite Suite by Canadian organist and composer Denis Bédard, and many of our CDs were sold afterwards. We have given concerts on organs of all sizes and found repertory that is suitable in each case.  That is the challenge for the performer--to construct an interesting program on the organ that is available. We aim to exploit the resources of repertory and instrument as much as possible. It is amazing what some of these smaller instruments can do.

Fulda (Second visit)

Then it was back to Fulda to begin the second week of recording sessions, having fulfilled our concert duties for the time being, and avoiding the heavy service schedule in the cathedral over the weekend. Because we had the car we took a pleasant day off and made a pilgrimage to Eisenach which is not far away in former East Germany. The border is no longer apparent, but passing through the flowing landscapes of Thuringia familiar to Bach and entering the town of Eisenach, there is much evidence of reconstruction. We parked the car close to the Georgenkirche where Bach was baptized. It was also the scene of major protests in 1989, as documented in several photographs in the church aisles depicting all three galleries filled with the townsfolk as the Communist era was nearing its final sunset there. The Bachhaus, Bach’s birthplace, was the first museum to be dedicated to Johann Sebastian Bach and is well worth a visit. Established in 1906 through the Neue Bachgesellschaft, its collection includes archives, household items and other treasures from the time of Bach, in addition to a valuable assortment of musical instruments. The visit includes a live demonstration of these historical  instruments. In the souvenir shop we purchased several recordings, a poster of the Bach Family Tree, and a tie and umbrella of Bach’s handwriting. Meanwhile a baseball cap (which at one time I would never have imagined wearing) provided invaluable protection against the burning sun.

During that last week in Fulda we also visited the Michaelskirche adjacent to the cathedral; it is one of the most notable medieval sacred buildings in Germany--its crypt dates from Carolingian times originating between 819 and 822 as the burial chapel in the former Benedictine monks’ cemetery on the same site. Daily at 6 pm the bells peal forth from both the cathedral tower and  the Michaelskirche. What a glorious sound this is, which David Rogers captured on tape. We have decided to add it to the end of Sylvie’s CD.

For the recording sessions we stayed in the cathedral until around midnight every night, finishing the proceedings in the congenial surroundings of a neighboring hostelry where we mulled everything over before turning in for the night. Finally we accomplished what we set out to achieve, two compact discs of works by Petr Eben. One night we were treated to a spectacular thunderstorm and on another night, returning to the seminary at about 1:45 am, we could hear the organ in the cathedral and quietly went to investigate. The great instrument on the west gallery was being played, along with the one at the other extremity of the building in the chapel behind the high altar. A work for two organs--both organists were remarkably together, but we never found out who they were.

Itzehoe

On Friday August 1, we went our separate ways; David Rogers headed back to England and we travelled north to Kiel to stay with David Pearson, with whom we took the train to Itzehoe on Saturday where we found the four-manual 1905 Sauer to be quite disappointing, despite a relatively comprehensive specification, far from what the stoplist had promised by way of sound selection. The program included the very first organ duet by a Canadian composer, Duet for Organ by Frederick R.C. Clarke dating from 1954. This concert attracted the lowest audience of the tour with about twenty-five in attendance. However we played an encore on the other instrument that shares the gallery, some four stops that contain original Arp Schnitger pipes from 1716-1719.

Estonia

Our first visit to Estonia began on Monday August 4, when we took the airport bus from Kiel to Hamburg and boarded the Estonian Air flight to Tallinn where we were to give three concerts in the Tallinn XVII International Organ Festival, the first Canadian organists and duettists to be invited to perform in this prestigious festival which came into being in 1987. As such we were the grateful recipients of a grant from the Canada Council for the Arts under their International Performance Assistance in Music (Pilot Project). Our programs acknowledged that support.

The meal on the plane was surprisingly good, and upon arrival we were met by Eva-Maria Asari from the Canadian embassy and Tiiu Valper, assistant to Festival Artistic Director Andres Uibo, and driven to the hotel in old Tallinn where all the performers are lodged, aptly named “Old Town Maestro’s.” This was the beginning of a lovely week which included a guided tour of the Canadian embassy with its magnificent view over a part of the city walls, and the harbor. We received an invitation for lunch a few days later with the Canadian Ambassador, His Excellency Mr. Robert Andrigo, and his wife, along with other representatives from the embassy and the festival. It was of course an honor and pleasure to be guests of the ambassador and his staff and to discuss our career and performance plans. My mother arrived in Tallinn also, staying in another hotel outside the old town. This was the only time on the tour we could meet up because once again a trip to my native England was not possible this year.

The festival itself featured artists from several countries and each generally performed in three different venues, not just in Tallinn but in other towns as well, and attended each others’ concerts when possible. On the  first evening we attended an excellent organ recital by Andras Viragh from Hungary in the cathedral (Tallinna toomkirik) where there is a large three-manual Sauer (1913). This church also has one of the largest collections in all of Europe of coat-of-arms epitaphs of well-to-do families dating from the medieval era. Later in the week Andres Uibo gave a splendid concert at the Niguliste muuseum-kontserdisaal (Niguliste Museum-Concert Hall) which included a fine Fuge in D minor by Rudolf Tobias (1873-1918) whose picture appears on the 50 Krooni note alongside an organ, the only banknote in the world that has an organ on it (also available on a souvenir fridge magnet).

On August 9 we attended a most satisfying program entitled “Dance and Mass.” The dance was in the first half, the dancers being the Vilnius Camargo Troupe, and the Estonian Baroque Soloists playing Lully, Campra, Bach, Vivaldi and others from the period, all choreographed. “A Mass for Sunday Misericordia Domini” was the title of the second half consisting of Gregorian chant and North German baroque organ music. Peter van Dijk from Holland performed Scheidemann, Hasse, Praetorius, extracts from the Tablature of Martinus Leopolita (ca. 1580), Sweelinck, Karges and Buxtehude. The choral Mass sections were sung by the ensemble Vox Clamantis, which comprises a diversity of musicians, singers, composers, instrumentalists and conductors who all have a common interest in Gregorian chant, under the direction of Jaan-Eik Tulve. The musical forces were a finely balanced complement all the way through the concert.

Our first recital was on Tuesday August 5 in the impressive Pärnu Concert Hall which is less than one year old and fully equipped. Pärnu is a very popular holiday resort in Estonia, particularly favored by politicians. The organ builder Martin ter Haseborg was present when we arrived and was available should there be problems with the instrument. There remained a few pipes that still needed to be connected and some finishing touches to the instrument here and there, but this did not affect our program during which we gave the Estonian premières of three of our commissioned works: Sinfonietta by Denis Bédard; Dance Suite for Organ Duet by South-African born Canadian organist and composer Jacobus Kloppers; and the aforementioned 2me Suite pour orgue à quatre mains by Jean-Luc Perrot. The specification of the three-manual organ along with photographs can be found at <www.concert.ee/eesti/parnu/orel/index.php&gt;.

The second concert was originally scheduled to be in Viljandi on a two-manual instrument but in due course this was changed to Räpina Church on Thursday August 7. Räpina is a somewhat bare place near the Russian border not far from Lake Peipsi, the fifth largest lake in Europe. The priest welcomed us, along with the local organ maintenance technician. Before the concert the priest and his wife invited us to their home for some refreshments. The audience was spread around the church and on the gallery, and the organ was in many ways the most satisfying instrument we played in Estonia. The program included  the Sonata in G minor (op. 50) by Leberecht Baumert, a fine duet that has only recently become generally available, and the Estonian première of the Petite Suite of Denis Bédard. The concert closed with some prayers led by the priest. There was  not a great deal of time to rehearse, as in Pärnu, and we collected a poster bearing a variant of my name-- Sphilip Crozier. The return journey was beautified with a fabulous sunset,  around 11 pm in early August.

I should mention that we had a preview of Estonia three years ago when Karl Raudsepp, a Montréal-based organbuilder, gave a very captivating talk and video presentation to the Montréal Centre of the RCCO on Balticum 2000, the ISO Congress of that year that visited Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. Karl is the only member of his family not to have been born in Estonia, and he has been preparing an inventory of Estonian organs. I am grateful to him for the following information:

The organ in Räpina Church is a fairly large two-manual instrument, built by August Terkmann in 1934. It also incorporates some stops from the 1857 organ originally built by the Tartu organbuilder, August Kessler. The new stoplist was worked out in conjunction with the well-known Estonian composer and organ teacher, August Topman. It was the last instrument built by Terkmann. Among his employees at the time were the brothers Oskar and Voldemar Gutmann as well as Otto and Alfred Gutdorf.

The stoplist is as follows:

Manual I

16’             Bourdon

8’                  Principal

8’                  Gamba

8’                  Flauto amabile

8’                  Doppelgedackt

8’                  Gemshorn

8’                  Salicional

4’                  Oktav

4’                  Hohlflöte

22/3’        Quinte

2’                  Oktav

                        Cornett III-V

                        Cymbel III-IV

                        Subkoppel II-I

                        Superkoppel II-I

                        Superkoppel I

Manual II (under expression)

16’             Gedackt

8’                  Geigenprincipal

8’                  Quintaton

8’                  Flöte

8’                  Lieblichgedackt

8’                  Viola

8’                  Vox celeste

4’                  Principal

4’                  Rohrflöte

2’                  Koppelflöte

                        Mixtur III-V

8’                  Trompete

                        Subkoppel II

                        Superkoppel II

                        Glocken

                        Tremolo

Pedal

16’             Principalbass

16’             Subbass

16’             Gedacktbass

8’                  Oktavbass

8’                  Cello

102/3’   Quinte

16’             Posaune

                        I-P

                        II-P

                        Superkoppel II-P

The Echo organ, planned for installation in the gallery behind the altar, and playable from Manual II, was never built due to the lack of funds. It would have comprised the following stops:

Echo

8’                  Fernflöte

8’                  Undamaris

4’                  Gemshorn

Karl also added in a further e-mail to me that August Terkmann is credited with introducing many new technical innovations into organ building in Estonia, including the use of electricity. His instruments are renowned for their gentle voicing and singing quality. Räpina’s organ stands out as a remarkable example of his work.

Our third concert was at the Niguliste Museum-Concert Hall on Sunday August 10. Details and photographs of this former church can be found at <www.ekm.ee/english/niguliste/&gt;. The organ was built in 1981 by the Rieger-Kloss company and has 4 manuals and pedal, 63 registers, and 4711 pipes. The  program included two movements from one of our commissioned duets, Suite de noëls by Canadian organist and composer Gilles Rioux, as well as the Bombardo-Carillon by Charles Henri Valentin Alkan for pedals alone, and ending with the Toccata Française (sur le nom de H.E.L.M.U.T.) by Ralf Bölting which is a real showcase work. The concert was attended by the ambassador and the full staff of the Office of the Canadian Embassy and broadcast live on Estonian Classical Radio. Before this concert I recorded an interview for the same program that was aired during the interval.

At the conclusion of the concert there was a fine reception hosted by the festival which is run by the State Concert Institute Eesti Kontsert and in our experience is extremely well organized. Ground transportation in the form of comfortable mini buses belonging to Eesti Kontsert was provided from the airport and back, and for the two-hour drive to Pärnu and three-hour ride to Räpina. In each of these venues outside Tallinn we received the same courtesy and warm welcome extended to us in Tallinn. The driver himself, an employee of Eesti Kontsert, was responsible for the distribution of programs in Räpina where everything ran smoothly. We had the chance to explore a bit during some of the free time that week. It was most interesting to go into a supermarket, something that always fascinates me in different countries, and it was very well stocked with all the usual household necessities. Milk products were in abundance, so they have their act together on that one. Just a visit to a supermarket can give a snapshot of the location--and if this was anything to go by, Estonia is on the right path.

Garding

The week passed very quickly in Estonia, before we returned to Kiel on Monday August 11, for the next venue a couple of days later in Garding, some two hours by train. It is a beautiful small town, and the delightful ancient St. Christianskirche was completely full for the concert which we opened with the Duet for Organ by Samuel Wesley. The organ was built in 1974 by the Schuke company of Berlin. The organ case of the Hauptwerk dates back to 1512, and as such is the oldest unchanged organ case in North Germany. The casework for the Rückpositiv was completed in 1680. The specification is below:

Hauptwerk (C-f3)

8’                  Regal

8’                  Prinzipal

8’                  Rohrflöte

4’                  Oktave

2’                  Oktave

                        Mixtur IV-V

8’                  Trompete

Rückpositiv (C-f3)

8’                  Gedackt

4’                  Rohrflöte

4’                  Prinzipal

2’                  Gemshorn

11/3’        Quinte

                        Sesquialter II (from c0)

                        Scharff III-IV

Pedal (C-f1)

16’             Subbaß

8’                  Prinzipal

4’                  Choralbaß

                        Hintersatz IV

16’             Fagott

Saarbrücken

After a couple of days rest in Kiel we headed south to Saarbrücken on Friday August 15 to play at the Basilika St. Johannis. We met our host Bernhard Leonardy, organist of the basilica, later in the evening, and visited the town in his open top sports car. This was a first for us too, exhilarating to experience the fresh midnight air like this. We had only one hour on the organ before the 11:30 am recital the next day, but fortunately the five-manual Hugo Mayer from Saarland organ has a multiple memory system. Further information about the church and a specification of the organ with photographs of the console can be found at <www.basilika-sb.de/&gt;.

Wiesbaden

After the concert we ate at a small snack bar near the station because we had our luggage with us and needed to be at the station for the train that gave us good connections to Wiesbaden. Travel from Saarbrücken to Wiesbaden was plagued with rail problems, beginning with the non-arrival of the ICE that was running one hour late, forcing us to take a taxi from Mainz to Wiesbaden. Gabriel Dessauer, organist of  St. Bonifatius, had left instructions for us to be at the church to collect various keys after the Saturday evening Mass. He was away and was only returning in time for our concert on Sunday afternoon. Over the years we have developed a technique for working rapidly on a new instrument--we prepare for the eventuality that there is often a short amount of practice time on the instrument due to circumstances beyond our control--but we do find it is invaluable to gain access to the organ the day before the concert. On this occasion we almost missed an evening on the three-manual Mayer organ which has 640 pistons allowing for instant comparison of various registration options and is “user-friendly.” Information about the church and organ and music are on the church website <www.st-bonifatius-wiesbaden.de/&gt; and there is an English section too.

Gabriel Dessauer arrived the day of the concert to greet us. Our visit coincided with an annual Fest going on in the town, with a huge selection of wines, beers and food on stands in the main town square. It was so good to be part of this great celebration but a huge downpour of rain, essential though with the heat wave going on at the time, watered it down somewhat. The church with its vibrant acoustics was akin to a sauna bath.

Heiligenhafen

Following Wiesbaden we returned north to Kiel, breaking the journey for a second visit to Borken to see Kurt-Ludwig Forg for a couple of days. Such free days are much appreciated in a concert tour. The last concert in Germany was on Thursday August 21 at the Stadtkirche in the coastal town of Heilgenhafen which boasts much tourism and fish restaurants, but lacks reasonable public transportation, not being served by a railway, and a bus service that finishes before the end of the concert. David Pearson came with us for the day trip and we were well received by the organist Dörte Czernitzski. The concert was very well attended; one special characteristic was that the organ bench was polished to perfection, enabling us to slide forward straight into the pedalboard with effortless ease. So we had to be vigilant all the time! 

Paris

The next day we had an early start for the long train journey to Frankfurt airport from where we had an evening flight to Paris. Late trains and missed connections had become quite rife on this trip (not typical of Germany, I might add), so we decided it was better to be safe than sorry. In Paris we were met by Sylvie’s brother who has lived in France for more than thirty years. On Saturday afternoon we went to rehearse at La Madeleine to find that there were two weddings so we had to return in the evening.

General Kalck, who is in charge of concert organization, proudly demonstrated the organ to us. As he was explaining the various registers and their history, I was observing and memorizing their location. One interesting fact about this organ is its shortage of 8’ diapason stops. There is a wide plethora of sound at 8’ pitch, but only one Montre 8’ on the Grand Orgue and Positif respectively, and not on the other two manuals. The absence of more principal sound at 8’ pitch is not so noticeable. A multi-memory system accelerates matters much faster in the relatively short practice time available. He left us to it, giving us precise instructions and exact telephone numbers to call when we had finished so we could be let out of the building. Reassuringly, they matched those posted on the organ console, so we enjoyed exploring the delights of this wonderful monument of French organ building, with its grandstand view down into the nave (not so easy if one is afraid of heights).

La Madeleine has had a long succession of distinguished organists including  Camille Saint-Saëns (1857-1877), Théodore Dubois (1877-1896), Gabriel Fauré (1896-1905) and Jeanne Demessieux (1962-1968). After about three hours we had done all the necessary work and then telephoned but could not obtain a free line. Half an hour later, with no joy whatsoever, it seemed we were doomed to spend the night in the Madeleine. Sylvie stayed upstairs, trying the telephone again and again, while I went hunting for exit points and other telephones. Thus I discovered just about every door in the building, various tunnels, spiral staircases and iron grills. Tourists do not usually have the freedom and privilege of such explorations; what a wonderful place it is! In the sacristy I found another telephone in the dark but  still could not get a line, then a portable one that I took back into the church so I could see better. Between us we tried everything but nothing worked. I continued walking around, sincerely hoping I would trigger an alarm somewhere, but after about forty-five long minutes a voice shouted from high up over the high altar to enquire if we had terminated for the night because the organ was no longer being played. It was a janitor and we informed him that obtaining a telephone line was impossible. After checking the telephones and finding them to be in order he let us out. It was a relief to be outside on the street. The next day General Kalck greeted us with a question “what happened last night?” Then he added “did you add a zero to the number?” That was the key to the problem.

The concert was attended by over 500 people, many of them Parisians returning to the city after their traditional month away. Jean-Luc Perrot and his wife also came to hear the performance of his 2me Suite pour orgue à quatre mains which in fact was its première in France. François-Henri Houbart, organist of La Madeleine since 1979, was away for that weekend, performing a concert elsewhere so we did not have the opportunity to meet him.

The next day we flew back to Montréal, arriving home tired but fulfilled. Before the trip we purchased some good disposable cameras so we could have a record of everything because our own camera had recently become non-functional. We took numerous photographs including all the organs and their consoles and most of the people mentioned in this article, and eagerly awaited their development. When I went to collect them they were unrecognizable! The photographs had been mixed up with another customer when they were forwarded to a central processing plant and were never traced. The photos here are by David Rogers.

List of repertory performed on this tour (all organ duets)

*Sinfonietta, Denis Bédard (1950-)

Petite Suite, Bédard

Two Pieces for Organ Duet (1989), Ronald Arnatt (1930-): “Sarabande with Variations,” “Octopus Music”

Fantasie in f-Moll, KV 608, W. A. Mozart (1756-1791)

Fantasie in f-Moll, KV 594, Mozart

Fuge in g-Moll, KV 401, Mozart

*Dance Suite for Organ Duet, Jacobus Kloppers (1937-)

Fugue in D major, Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy (1809-1847)

Adagio, WoO 33/1, Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

*2me Suite pour orgue à quatre mains, Jean-Luc Perrot (1959-)

Sonate g-Moll, op. 50, Leberecht Baumert (1833-1904)

Duet for Organ, Frederick R. C. Clarke (1931-)

*Toccata on “Vom Himmel hoch,” Ralf Bölting (1953-)

Toccata Française (sur le nom de H.E.L.M.U.T.), Bölting

Duet for Organ, Samuel Wesley (1766-1837)

Vier variierte Choräle für die Orgel zu vier Händen, op. 19, Christian Gottlob Höpner (1799-1859)

Fugue à six parties et deux sujets à 4 mains, Clément Loret (1833-1909)

Sonate in d-moll, op. 30, Gustav Merkel (1827-1885)

Präludium und Fuge in B-dur, Johann Georg Albrechtsberger (1736-1809)

Praeludium und Fuge in C-dur, Albrechtsberger

Introduction und Fuge in d-Moll, op. 62, Franz Lachner (1803-1890)

Fugue in e-Moll, op. posth. 152, Franz Schubert (1797-1828)

*Suite de noëls (extracts), Gilles Rioux (1965-): “L’Attente” (Venez divin Messie), “La joie” (Il est né le divin Enfant)

Bombardo-Carillon, Charles Henri Valentin Alkan (1813-1888)

* Organ duets commissioned and premièred by Sylvie Poirier and Philip Crozier

Joyce Johnson Robinson is associate editor of THE DIAPASON.

James Kibbie is perhaps best known through his position as professor of organ at the University of Michigan, where he has served on the organ faculty since 1981. Also quite active as a performer and clinician, Kibbie is at present involved in a project to record all of J. S. Bach’s organ works, with the recordings to be made available, free of charge, through Internet distribution rather than CDs (see www.blockmrecords.org). A portent of this is Kibbie’s own website (www-personal.umich.edu/~jkibbie/), where the professor has presented a yearly “Christmas card” of a downloadable performance, recorded on the Létourneau instrument at his home. We talked with James Kibbie during a visit he made in May 2007 to Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois to present a recital and masterclass.

Joyce Robinson: Let’s begin by asking how you got “the bug.”
James Kibbie: I’m from Iowa! A lot of organists are from Iowa, and the way I got interested in the organ was the way that every single organist does, by hearing it played in church. It is a really valuable thing for churches to allow young musicians access to the organ. That was the case in the congregation where I grew up, and I think that experience is what creates organists.

JR: Did you come from a musical home? Were your parents musicians? Did they encourage your musical studies?
JK: My mother was a pianist, and I begged her to teach me to play. She was a school teacher, and she knew kids pretty well. She was smart enough not to try to force me to practice. Instead, the rule was that either I practiced regularly, or I had to give up completely and never touch the piano. That was enough motivation (sometimes just barely). My father was also a teacher, and he believed fervently that young people should pursue their own dreams and goals, wherever that led them. He always encouraged me, though I think it was a surprise to him to have a musician for a son.

JR: I notice you are wearing a POE shirt!
JK: This is from Sioux Falls, South Dakota, a couple of years ago. I am so hot on this idea of pipe organ encounters! They have been enormously successful. I’ve taught at a number of them with somewhat different formats, and it turns out that any format for the POE works, because if you just bring young people together with the organ, the instrument sells itself.

JR: AGO statistics don’t show college enrollments going up. By now POEs should have had an effect, but they don’t seem to be increasing enrollment in organ programs.
JK: We’re doing well with enrollment at the University of Michigan. Not just in numbers, but in terms of quality—phenomenally gifted students, particularly undergrads. We routinely see now on résumés from students who are applying that they have as high school students attended at least one, many times more than one, POE. We definitely see the results—not just in numbers, but in the level of preparation for students.

JR: That’s reassuring. Now where did you get your bachelor’s degree?
JK: What at that time was called North Texas State University. It’s now the University of North Texas. I got bachelor’s and master’s there, with Donald Willing.

JR: And then you went on to Michigan, and you studied with Marilyn Mason—who’s now your colleague!
JK: Yes. I was really lucky—I had those two master teachers, who are very different as musicians and as people, but they were both so kind to me. And it turned out later that they were both exactly the right teacher for me at that particular time in my development.

JR: You went on to win some competitions—the Grand Prix de Chartres and the Prague competition. You had recorded and played music of Czech composers—Ropek, for example—was that an outgrowth of the competition?
JK: This was in 1979, at the height of the Cold War, so it was a very different place than the Czech Republic is now. After the winner’s recital at Dvořak Hall in Prague, Jiří Ropek came up and introduced himself and invited me to have dinner with him and his family. He was professor of composition at the Prague Conservatory and also organist at St. James Church, which is a historic church in the Old Town section of Prague. That started a long, warm friendship. In fact, one of the pieces I’m playing tonight is his variations on Victimae Paschali—he gave me a copy of the score to those variations at that first dinner, and said that he hoped maybe I would learn them and perform them, and I have performed them many times over the years. He passed away in 2005.
During the first years that I knew him, we corresponded—though not too often, because he said if he received too many letters from the West, it was a red flag to the Communist authorities, and he got in trouble, because he was a known opponent of the Communist regime, so it was certainly easier for him after the fall of Communism. He had earned a doctorate at the Carolinian University in Prague, but the Communist government had prevented it being awarded. Finally, in 1990, when Communism ended, the university could officially award him the doctorate that he earned over 40 years earlier. It’s remarkable!

JR: You’ve been at the University of Michigan now for over a quarter of a century!
JK: That’s right, 26 years. I love it! I get up most mornings looking forward to most of the things I’m going to do that day. I realize that’s a gift that not everyone has.

JR: Over the course of over a quarter of a century you must have noticed some changes, both in the program and in the students.
JK: There have been big changes in the field of church music, and all of us are either working as church musicians, or teaching students who will work as church musicians, so it’s central to everything that we do. I don’t think anyone of us could have foreseen all of the ways that church music has changed over the past 25 years. That means we can’t foresee how it’s going to change in the next 25 years.
I’ve been thinking about this—how do I prepare my students when I can’t foresee exactly all of the ways they’re going to need to change and adapt professionally? The answer must be to return to core values—to teach the commitment to excellence. If I can communicate to students that there’s one standard of music-making for everything that we do—our best effort—that is the thing that will serve them well no matter how the field changes.
If I’m coaching how you play an ornament in Bach, or how you achieve a legato line in Franck, I’m not just dealing with that repertoire, I’m modeling for the student this attention to detail and integration of all of the elements of performance that they’re going to have to rely on to create music in ways that I might not be able to imagine right now.

JR: Do you talk with your students about the job situation in church music?
JK: Yes, and without apology, we position our students to compete for the jobs at the top end. There the situation is quite favorable—salary, working conditions, the artistic content of the jobs—can be very satisfying. Where our profession is really struggling is in the part-time positions, particularly in some communities where there is not a tradition of paying well for church musicians. Those aren’t the kind of jobs necessarily that our graduates from the University of Michigan apply for, but they’re the jobs that the majority of our professional colleagues nationally are holding.

JR: Have any of your prior students been in touch with you and communicated that a church job they were in was starting to go in the “happy- clappy” direction?
JK: Oh my, yes, sure! (laughter) But if nothing else, we can take Johann Sebastian Bach as our model—if things don’t go well in a church job, you look for another one, but you don’t quit the present job until you find the new job first, which is what he did!

JR: Can you discuss the imbalance of today’s high level of talent, yet fewer college teaching positions and fewer upper-rank positions for church musicians?
JK: I recall something that I heard about the American jurist Daniel Webster. When he was a young man, he apparently wanted to become a lawyer. He went to his father and said, “I’m interested in the law as a profession, but it’s very crowded. I’m not sure about the job prospects.” His father said, “Remember—there’s always room at the top.” I’ve told that story to my students countless times. The answer for them is that they have to position themselves in terms of their abilities and their résumé and their preparation to compete at the top.

JR: How has your teaching changed over the last 25 years? Do you use different method books now?
JK: The longer I’ve taught, the more comfortable I’ve become communicating my own point of view. That’s what students come to their teacher for, and ultimately it’s all the teacher has to offer. I’ve used several method books successfully, but I keep coming back to The Organist’s Manual (love the pun) by Roger Davis. It has a superb selection of repertoire and just the right amount of technical exercises and explanations. If students balk at the price, I explain how expensive it would be to buy all of the repertoire separately.
When I was a freshman organ major, I assumed I’d study the “canon” of great organ music. Most organ students still expect that today, but there has to be room in our canon for great, noble music by living composers, including women, and music from many cultures and traditions—African-American composers, for example.

JR: At the University of Michigan there is a scholarship fund established in your name. How’s that going?
JK: It’s going very well! It’s endowed permanently, so we award it in perpetuity every year. It’s one of a number of named scholarships that we have and it is so necessary. You know that the costs of education are far beyond many families’ ability to pay, and church musicians don’t have the potential for large income after graduation the way some other fields do, so we have to have scholarship funding for our students. It’s essential.

JR: That’s quite a tribute. It was your students who set that up.
JK: They did, and it was done at the conclusion of the complete Bach works series that I played in 2000. It was announced at the final concert of that Bach series. They “passed the hat” at that concert, and then one of my alums, Dr. Edward Maki-Schramm, led the fund-raising, and it’s done very well since.

JR: As musicology evolves there’s always something new in performance practice. Do you keep integrating this with your teaching?
JK: I do, and particularly for older music—Bach and Buxtehude—there are so many questions that all of us have that must be answered just to play the piece. That’s what I concentrate on—the practical performance-based decision-making that performers must face. I have gradually come to understand that some of those questions—for example, in Bach’s time—had a precise answer. Whether or not I can discover it after more than 250 years is another question. Some of those questions never had a single answer. There was a range of possibilities open to the performer, and the individual performer was expected to make personal choices from that range of what was possible or appropriate.
That’s what resulted in a unique personal performance, which is so vital to all music, especially Baroque music. Performing Bach or Buxtehude is more of a partnership between the composer and the performer than is true of music of some later generations. I have increasingly moved in teaching to encouraging students to identify what that range of possibilities, historically, is, and to make their own choices within that range to create a performance that might be very different from my conception of a work—or someone else’s—but still faithful to the intent of the composer.

JR: Do you have an overall philosophy of performance practice?
JK: What I value most in music performance is the sense of certainty—a compelling performance, a convincing performance: “This is the way it goes!” Dr. Karl Schrock, one of my doctoral students years ago, said to me, “I think the most authentic performance is a convincing performance.” I have decided that what creates that sense of being so convincing is not just making effective decisions about all of the issues of performance—registration, tempo, ornamentation, articulation, nuance—but that intuitive ability of some performers to integrate all of their choices into a single vision of the music.
That’s what I concentrate on in teaching. When I judge competitions, I think that’s what I respond to—not necessarily looking for somebody who plays the piece the way I do, but who creates that sense of certainty.

JR: Some performers maintain that Bach, for instance, should be played in a certain way.
JK: Anybody who knows the nature of the historic record has to acknowledge that there is so much we don’t know. The answer to so many of these questions is—we don’t know. If anyone pretends to know how Bach played the organ, they’re deluding themselves. We have to be intellectually honest enough to be able to say the words “I don’t know.”

JR: Bach was such a musician and so knowledgeable about the organ; if he had the instruments and technology we have today, would he have used them?
JK: He might have written very different music. All of these people—Bach, Buxtehude, Franck, Dan Locklair—are using the materials that they have at hand to create great music: the kind of organs, the way people play the organ, the abilities of the musicians they’re working with. And because they’re geniuses, they use that raw material to create great musical works. So then if, after the work is created, I depart from that, I introduce anachronisms—the word means “out of time,” something that doesn’t belong to the time of the composition—I weaken it.
Even though it’s true that Bach might have used different sorts of organ effects that weren’t available to him then, the fact is that not having had them, he wrote music that doesn’t need them. Actually, by introducing them, we’re weakening the musical content of what he provided us. Our generation’s contribution to the understanding of performance practice has been that the music sounds best if you hear it approximately in the context of how the composer conceived it. Within that, as I said, there’s so much that we don’t know.
Our generation hasn’t grappled with what may be the central question: if I can create a 100% authentic performance, if I could play the organ exactly as it existed, the instrument that Bach knew, in exactly the acoustics, and play every detail of the performance exactly as Bach did it, my audience would be listening to it with 21st-century ears, not 18th-century ears. As a result, it’s a radically different piece of music.
We have not begun to address that limit on authenticity, and I think it’s probably the next generation that’s going to have to grapple with that. Our generation seems not to have been willing to think about that.

JR: One of the current trends in organ building is in the direction of larger scales and higher wind pressures—we’ve moved away from the Orgelbewegung and now we’re in another direction. Is this a fad?
JK: The best organ builders may draw inspiration from various historic periods, but they invariably build instruments that are of their own time and their own place, and that reflect the personality of that builder. The artistic direction of the particular builder doesn’t come essentially from historic models; you can learn from E. M. Skinner or Arp Schnitger or whomever, but the finest builders must gradually develop their artistic personality. I am not as interested in historic modeling as I am in the quality mechanically and tonally of the instruments, judged by contemporary standards.

JR: You have a Létourneau instrument.
JK: In my house—I’m so proud of it. We have another Létourneau at the University of Michigan. My colleague Michele Johns recently led a project to relocate that organ to a newly created small concert hall that’s a joint project of the School of Music, Theatre & Dance and the School of Public Health. It will be the focus of an ongoing series of chamber music concerts and will also be used for teaching and practice. The room is great—cabaret seating, a catering kitchen, and even a rose garden.

JR: Let’s talk about the instruments at the University of Michigan.
JK: Our students typically have some of their lessons on the big four-manual E. M. Skinner/Aeolian-Skinner organ in Hill Auditorium, some lessons on our Fisk in the style of Gottfried Silbermann, and some lessons on one of the two studio organs. We also have the Létourneau organ in its beautiful new hall, and we have a number of tracker and electric-action practice organs. All are pipe organs, of course. That’s what students expect, and only a pipe organ allows for performance of the repertoire to the standards we require. We also have access to some fine organs in local churches—Ann Arbor is a great “organ town.”

JR: Did you choose a Létourneau for yourself because of the one at the university?
JK: Yes, and because I had worked as consultant on a number of projects where Létourneau had been the builder chosen, and I developed a particular fondness and respect for his instruments. When I got this house organ in 2000, I wanted to make a little recording—sort of like a baby picture, you know, the proud parent!—so I recorded a partita Hugo Distler had written for his own house organ and put it on my website as a free download at Christmas time. That began what’s now an annual tradition.

JR: Your Christmas card!
JK: Yes! And I tracked the month-by-month downloads for those various recordings, and where the requests for downloads were coming from. It’s phenomenal, the number of people that month after month download these little house organ recordings—from Romania, China, western Europe, South Africa—all over the world! That’s what alerted me to the importance of this field of Internet downloads, and it’s one of the things that made me decide to release the Bach recordings as free Internet downloads rather than as commercial CDs.

JR: Do you have a grant for the Bach recordings?
JK: It’s very expensive, about $60,000 over three years to make the recordings, plus the expenses connected with the website. I puzzled a long time over how it could be possible. Then Dr. Barbara Sloat came to see me. I hadn’t met her before, but she explained she wanted to do something to honor her husband Barry, who was nearing the end of his life. He had attended all 18 recitals in the complete Bach series I had given at the University of Michigan in 2000. She wanted particularly to recognize Barry’s interest in the organ and in Bach, and she offered a very generous donation toward my Bach recording project. The University of Michigan has provided the remainder of the funding.
It’s a three-year project to record the complete organ works of Bach on historic 18th-century organs in Germany. As the recordings are made and mastered, they’re put on this website (www.blockmrecordings.com), sponsored by the University of Michigan, so that they can just be downloaded free by anybody, anywhere in the world.

JR: Your project is recording Bach on historic instruments. What were the criteria you used for choosing instruments to record on?
JK: There’s no single “Bach organ,” because he wrote for such different instruments over the course of his life, from the North German organs he knew in his youth to the late Baroque organs of his Leipzig years. I haven’t tried to make my recordings an anthology of historic organs. I’ve chosen a limited number of instruments, so I can deal with each instrument in detail. The 2007 recordings are on three Silbermann organs, the one-manual and two-manual instruments in Rötha, and the magnificent three-manual organ in the Dresden Kathedrale. About seven hours of repertoire on these organs is now posted on the website.

JR: Robert Clark recorded on the organ at Naumburg. Is that one of the instruments?
JK: No, instead I’m using two Trost organs next year that have a similar late-Baroque character, in Waltershausen and Grossengottern. But I love that recording of Robert Clark! I think the performer, the repertoire and the organ all match perfectly. He must have thought a long time in putting it together—selecting not only the organ, but the pieces that would go with the organ and go with him and what he wanted to do. I think it’s one of the great Bach recordings.

JR: What will you tackle next after your Bach project on the Internet?
JK: Bach is enough to think about right now, but I’ve already decided that my reward in 2009, when I finish all of the Bach recordings, is going to be particularly to go back to the organ works of Franck. It’s been several years since I’ve performed Grande pièce symphonique, for example. I’ve performed all of the Franck works, but I’m looking forward to going back to them as a sort of reward for finishing the Bach project.

JR: Do you have any favorite instruments that you like to play, besides your own?
JK: Instruments that belong to the time and place where they were built, not instruments that try to do everything, but instruments that do one thing, or one slice of the pie, particularly well. If you have a beautiful instrument, it lends its beauty and its integrity to anything that you play on it. Silbermann never thought of his organs playing anything other than contemporary music—music of 18th-century Germany—and yet churches with Silbermann organs have very multi-faceted musical programs, and the organ is central to that music program now in the 21st century as much as it was in the 18th, in ways that Silbermann couldn’t imagine. Because the instrument is so beautiful and so well built, it becomes flexible over time.

JR: Do you have an overall hopeful view of the organ world, especially in our culture? Ours is a culture of mediocrity, feeding off the bottom. How do we who feed off more lofty things deal with this?
JK: I’m enormously optimistic. The level of organ performance right now in this country is the highest that it’s been, I think anywhere, historically. The students, particularly the undergraduate students that we’re getting at the University of Michigan, are some of the finest talents that we’ve ever had. The quality of organ building is as high as it’s ever been in this country; there are new pipe organs being built all the time, including some really significant instruments in high-visibility venues. I am not worried!