Gerald Near publication

Shelby Fisher

Shelby Fisher earned Bachelor of Music and Master of Music degrees in organ performance and pedagogy from the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, where she studied under Kenneth Udy. She is organist and director of music at Christ United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, Utah.

Jean Langlais (1907–1991) composed his organ Mass Suite médiévale in 1947, drawing on a rich tradition of French organ suites composed for use during the “low” Mass. Changes to the liturgy after the Second Vatican Council (“Vatican II”) in 1962 drastically reduced the role of the organ during the Mass, thereby eliminating the need for the French organ Mass. Suite médiévale is one example of a body of small-scale liturgical organ compositions that no longer carry their intended relevance due to changes to the liturgy. These works are often neglected in both concert and liturgical settings, yet they can be appropriate for both. Exploring the musical and liturgical heritage that influenced Langlais, as well as the changes resulting from the Second Vatican Council, provides today’s organists with a frame of reference to interpret and understand his organ compositions.

Organ music and the liturgy in twentieth-century France

During the four centuries between the Council of Trent in 1563 and the Second Vatican Council between 1962 and 1965, liturgical organ playing in France became highly developed in large part due to the autonomy afforded French bishops to govern the liturgy within each diocese.

The most widely known liturgy used in France was the Parisian Rite, which was used until the middle of the nineteenth century. Accordingly, most French liturgical organ music from the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries was written for the Parisian Rite.¹ Eventually the Parisian Rite was supplanted by the more universally recognized Roman Rite. This affected the evolution of the French organ Mass in at least two ways. First was the retention of the “low Mass,” during which the organist played for virtually the entire service, pausing only for the reading and homily as described by Gaston Litaize:

During this era, the organist at the main organ normally played two Sunday Masses:

1) The “Grand Messe,” which involved a processional, an offertory, often an elevation, a communion, and a postlude; in addition, he alternated with the choir for verses of plainchant for the Ordinary (Kyrie, Gloria, Sanctus, Agnus Dei); they sang a verse and the organ commented on in, changing registrations for each verset.

2) The “Messe Basse,” where the organist could virtually play a recital. With everything spoken in a low voice [“à voix basse,” hence “Messe basse”], this is what happened: the priest left the sacristy, the organist played a procession, which lasted until the Gospel reading, then came the sermon. The organ then resumed and didn’t stop until there was no one left in the church. So, one could easily play a complete Choral by Franck.²

Second, with the introduction of the Roman Rite, French organists largely moved away from chant-based organ music, favoring all-purpose Offertoires or Grand Choeurs.

A chant revival movement soon made its mark on French liturgical organ music. In 1889, the Benedictine Abbey of Solesmes published a new chantbook based on extensive research of early manuscripts that sought to restore chant to its medieval form.³ Interest in chant revival trickled into Parisian music circles, where in 1894, organist-composers Alexandre Guilmant and Vincent D’Indy founded the Schola Cantorum de Paris. The school’s founding manifesto called for the “performance of plainchant according to the Gregorian tradition; restoration of polyphonic music in the Catholic Reformation style of Palestrina; the creation of ‘new modern Catholic music;’ and improvement of the repertory for organists.”⁴ Guilmant in particular championed a return to organ compositions that used chant, writing that, “The German organists have composed some pieces based on the melody of chorales, forming a literature for the organ that is particularly rich; why should we not do the same with our Catholic melodies?”⁵

No French organist-composer produced more of this literature than Charles Tournemire. He studied at the Paris Conservatory with César Franck and Charles-Marie Widor, eventually succeeding Franck as titular organist of Sainte Clotilde in 1898. His largest organ work was L’Orgue mystique, a cycle of 51 organ Masses, one for nearly every Sunday of the liturgical year. Each Mass comprises five movements: Prélude à l’Introït, Offertoire, Élévation, Communion, and Pièce terminale, all drawing motivic material from the proper chants for the given day.6

Jean Langlais and Suite médiévale

Charles Tournemire mentored only a few private students who showed the greatest promise. One of these students was Jean Langlais. Earlier Langlais had studied organ with André Marchal at the National Institute for Blind Students, then with Marcel Dupré at the Paris Conservatory. Upon graduation from the conservatory, Langlais continued improvisation studies with Tournemire and served as his assistant at Sainte Clotilde. Langlais chose Tournemire as his instructor specifically for Tournemire’s fluency with improvisation on plainchant.⁷

Langlais eventually succeeded Tournemire as organist at Sainte Clotilde in 1945. The Cavaillé-Coll organ at Sainte Clotilde had been enlarged and slightly modified at the end of Tournemire’s tenure, and Langlais was eager to compose for the new instrument. Langlais composed four organ Masses between 1947 and 1951.⁸ His Masses are important not only because they demonstrate both the pervasiveness of the plainchant revival movement and the development of the French School of improvisation and composition, but they are also significant because they are some of the last French organ Masses to be published.⁹

In 1947, Langlais completed Suite médiévale: en forme de messe basse.¹⁰ As indicated by the subtitle, the suite was intended for use at the “low” Mass. Langlais not only followed the same five-part structure as Tournemire, but also used chant as inspiration. However, unlike Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique, Langlais chose chants appropriate for use throughout the liturgical year rather than those tied to a specific day.

The first movement of the suite is titled “Prélude: Entrée” and can be divided into two parts. The first half opens on full organ with a succession of parallel fourths and fifths suggestive of Notre-Dame organum followed briefly by the incipit to the chant “Asperges me, Domine,” or “Thou shalt sprinkle me, oh Lord,” before returning to the fortissimo parallel fourths and fifths. The antiphon, taken from Psalm 51, typically accompanied the Asperges, or ritual sprinkling of the congregation with holy water at the principal Mass on Sunday. The first half ends with the rubric, “If not needed, do not play further,” suggesting the flexibility of the suite to be adjusted to fit requirements of the Mass at the moment of performance. The second half further develops the chant, first in parallel fifths, and then in parallel fifths doubled at the octave in the manuals. In a nod to the Solesmes style of chant singing with its unpredictable pulse, the time signature throughout the “Prélude” changes frequently.

The second movement, “Tiento: Offertoire,” was intended for use during the offertory of the Mass, hence its longer performance length of four minutes. Here Langlais honors Spanish keyboard music of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, constructing a loosely imitative four-voice fugato, punctuated three times in the pedal by the Kyrie trope “Fons bonitatis” from Mass II. The Medieval practice of chant troping, or the insertion of additional texts and/or melodies within the standard chant, had long been abandoned. Langlais’ inclusion of the Kyrie trope is a clever acknowledgment of this historical practice rather than a modern application of chant. The movement ends with a final appearance of the chant accompanied by soft, homophonic chords. In order to keep rhythmic freedom without frequently changing the time signature, Langlais indicated “0” as the beginning time signature, explaining, “The sign 0 signifies free measures as for their length but regular as for their note value.” Langlais continued to employ this practice in later compositions.¹¹

“Improvisation: Élévation” is the calm and meditative third movement, utilizing a simple registration of only a single stop for each manual. It begins in A major, then moves to E-flat Mixolydian just before the introduction of the well-known and ancient Eucharistic hymn “Adoro te.” The final four measures are in E major, a key favored by Frescobaldi and other sixteenth-century composers for use during elevation toccatas.¹² The key of E and its cousin, the Phrygian mode, were traditionally used to express the mystical. The elevation represents the high point of the Mass at which time the celebrant elevates the host and chalice, having been transformed into the body and blood of Christ, so they may be adored by the congregation.¹³

The fourth movement, “Méditation: Communion,” was intended to be played as the congregation receives communion. It is based on two chants: “Ubi caritas,” an antiphon traditionally sung during the washing of the feet on Holy Thursday, but also appropriate as a Eucharistic hymn; and a second Eucharistic hymn, “Jesu dulcis memoria.” Langlais unifies the emergence of these themes with a sixteenth-note motive in multiple keys.

“Acclamations: Sur le texte des acclamations Carolingiennes” is the dramatic postlude of the suite. Langlais uses fragments of the ancient Roman chant “Laudes Regiae” from the Carolingian Acclamations, a hymn historically sung at solemn occasions and adopted by the Holy Roman Emperor, Charlemagne. The melody for the words “Christus vincit” repeats six times in the pedal in alternation with the phrase “Exaudi Christi” from the same chant. Langlais adds two more chant fragments, “Christus regnat” and “Christus imperat,” and repeats them employing an ascending harmonic pattern he often used to create tension. Similarly, the manuals play the “Christus vincit” theme first in F, then in G, and finally in A, to which the pedal responds with “Christus imperat” first in F, then F-sharp and then G. Langlais concludes by introducing a pedal carillon of C–F–G–D played in long notes against the “Christus vincit” theme stated in manual octaves. Marie-Louise Langlais notes that these final measures are reminiscent of the bells of Reims Cathedral, where French kings were crowned during the Medieval period.¹⁴

Langlais’ reaction to the Second Vatican Council

As early as 1900, French clergy began holding grassroots meetings to study the Church’s handling of religious expression, particularly with regard to participation of the congregation at Mass.¹⁵ By 1945 this populist movement became known as Catholic Action, and its followers known as the “new liturgists.”¹⁶ At the heart of the new liturgists’ agenda was the democratization of the liturgy brought about partly through changing the musical context of the Mass. Other clergy and most professional musicians saw the new liturgists as a threat to the traditional practice of church music. The new liturgists championed simple, approachable music that favored congregational singing and the use of the vernacular rather than Latin. Furthermore, many in favor of liturgical reform sought to also diminish the role of both the organ and chant.

Langlais was distraught by the changes the new liturgists brought to the Mass. He regarded these changes as a departure from the artistic mission of the Church and wrote:¹⁷

All religious composers, of which I am one, are deeply discouraged by this movement, which is the negation of art. In my opinion nothing is beautiful enough for God. Our forebears knew this and held that to pray surrounded by beauty was central to worship.

The new liturgist movement reached its peak during the Second Vatican Council. In December 1963, the council issued the Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. Initially the constitution alleviated the concerns of the professional musicians by declaring the musical tradition of the Church as “a treasure of inestimable value, greater even than that of any other art.”¹⁸ While the council supported the use of Gregorian chant and polyphony, it also seemed to support the new liturgists by stating that “to promote active participation, the people should be encouraged to take part by means of acclamations, responses, psalms, antiphons, hymns as well as by actions, gestures, and bodily attitudes. And at the proper time a reverent silence should be observed.”¹⁹ In the practical application of the constitution, it was the new liturgists that seemed to gain the upper hand.

In 1962, Langlais and other organists served on the French Episcopal Commission on Sacred Music, tasked with interpreting the Second Vatican Council’s new guidelines on liturgical music. A second group, the Commission of Expert Musicians, was formed in 1964 to supply new music to accompany the Propers that had been newly translated into French.

The role of the organ was a troublesome point in the new liturgy. Monsignor Maurice Rigaud, who acted as president of both the French Episcopal Commission on Sacred Music and the Commission of Expert Musicians, indicated that silence was to replace the use of the organ after the collect, at the offertory, at the elevation, and at communion; and in addition, that sung chant rather than the organ was the preferred method of balancing music with silence. The organists serving on both commissions lamented to Rigaud that there was nothing left for the organists to do during the Mass:²⁰

If the role of the organist is so reduced to this sort of humming in the background, in this role of “hole-filling” between two verses of songs in French and to serve as accompaniment for eventual new songs, one wonders . . . if it is now necessary to train young organists and to place them in careers that are reduced to such a farce, a career that is so long in its preparation, so costly, so laborious and difficult. One no longer even sees the necessity to maintain organ classes in our Conservatories and Schools of Music.

Musically, Langlais was slow to respond to Vatican II. Though initially supportive of attempts to write music for the new liturgy, Langlais became discouraged not only with the Commission of Expert Musicians’ tendency to favor the opinions of clergy over those of professional musicians but also with the low quality of new music that was admitted. In an interview with L’Est Républicain, Langlais was bold in his opinion of this new music, saying, “The goal of those who are currently writing religious songs is good, but the quality of the music is mediocre.”²¹

Langlais’ shameless musical response to Vatican II was his Trois Implorations, commissioned as the final organ exam piece at the Paris Conservatory in the spring of 1970. The third movement of the set, “Imploration pour la croyance,” expresses Langlais’ continued frustration with the Catholic Church. In his program notes Langlais writes, “The composer has tried to translate the state of the soul of a Christian in revolt against the current desacralizing atmosphere.”²² Langlais uses the chant intonation of the Credo from Masses I, II, and IV “Credo in unum Deum,” answered by staccato chord clusters with full organ as if in protest. The juxtaposition of chant and chord clusters continues until the piece finally ends with five staccato chords that use all twelve tones of the scale simultaneously. Marie-Louise Langlais writes that “Imploration pour la croyance” is Langlais’ way of shouting to the world, “I believe with all my strength, but with all my strength I also suffer from what I hear in the Church.”²³

Conclusion

Langlais represents the culmination of the Sainte Clotilde organist-composer tradition, which began with César Franck and continued with Charles Tournemire. His style represents a unique synthesis of twentieth-century compositional techniques, traditional influences, and theological commentary. His close personal and professional ties to the Catholic Church at a time when it was experiencing major changes significantly influenced his work.

One cannot understand Langlais’ music without considering his Catholicism. To appreciate Langlais’ “other-worldly” harmonies and diverse colors, it is important to understand the religious context that inspired his compositions. Langlais saw himself not just as a composer, but also as a theologian, whose role was to connect the faithful to God. Although Vatican II reforms have erased its original context, Suite médiévale remains an excellent representation of Langlais’ compositional style and techniques; with short movements, contrasting tone colors, and recognizable chant fragments, it is an exciting and convincing work that merits continued recognition in the organ repertory.

Notes

1. Orhpa Ochse, Organists and Organ Playing in Nineteenth-Century France and Belgium (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994), 127.

2. Marie-Louise Langlais, Jean Langlais Remembered (New York: American Guild of Organists, 2016), 136–137.

3. Stephen Schloesser, Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 284.

4. Ibid.

5. Edward Zimmerman and Lawrence Archbold, “Why Should We Not Do the Same with Our Catholic Melodies?: Guilmant’s L’Organiste liturgiste, Op. 65,” in French Organ Music from the Revolution to Franck and Widor, ed. Lawrence Archbold and Willliam J. Peterson (New York: University of Rochester Press, 1995), 203.

6. Edward Schaefer, “Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique and Its Place in the Legacy of the Organ Mass,” in Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought, and Legacy of Charles Tournemire, ed. Jennifer Donalsen and Stephen Schloesser (Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2014), 40.

7. Langlais, Jean Langlais Remembered, 41.

8. Langlais published Suite brève and Suite médiévale in 1947, Suite française in 1948, and Hommage à Frescobaldi in 1951.

9. Schaefer, 31.

10. Langlais, Langlais Remembered, 133.

11. Langlais, Langlais Remembered, 145.

12. Willi Appel, The History of Keyboard Music to 1700 (Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972), 478.

13. John Caldwell and Bonnie J. Blackburn, “Elevation,” In Grove Music Online (Oxford University Press, 2001).

14. Langlais, Langlais Remembered, 138.

15. Ann Labounsky, Jean Langlais: The Man and his Music (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 2000), 211.

16. Labounsky, 211.

17. Labounsky, 214.

18. Anthony Ruff, Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Transformations and Treasures (Chicago, Hillenbrand Books, 2007), 314.

19. Labounsky, 219.

20. Labounsky, 226.

21. Labounsky, 229.

22. Labounsky, 272.

23. Langlais, Jean Langlais Remembered, 263.

Bibliography

Apel, Willi. The History of Keyboard Music to 1700. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1972.

Archbold, Lawrence and Edward Zimmerman, “Why Should We Not Do the Same with Our Catholic Melodies?: Guilmant’s L’Organiste liturgiste, Op. 65,” in French Organ Music from the Revolution to Franck and Widor, ed. Lawrence Archbold and William J. Peterson. Rochester, New York: University of Rochester Press, 1995.

Caldwell, John and Bonnie J. Blackburn. “Elevation,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline/ezproxy/lib/utah.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000023373 (accessed March 22, 2019).

Darasse, Xavier, and Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais. “Jean Langlais,” Grove Music Online, Oxford Music Online, http://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/ezproxy.lib.utah.edu/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000023373 (accessed March 22, 2019).

Donelson, Jennifer, and Stephen Schloesser, ed. Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought and Legacy of Charles Tournemire. Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2014.

Labounsky, Ann. Jean Langlais: The Man and His Music. Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 2000.

Langlais, Jean. Suite médiévale en forme de messe basse. Paris: Éditions Salabert, 1950 (originally published 1947).

Langlais, Marie-Louise. Jean Langlais Remembered, trans. Bruce Gustafson. New York: American Guild of Organists, 2016.

Mahrt, Peter William. The Musical Shape of the Liturgy. Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2012.

Ochse, Orpha. Organists and Organ Playing in Nineteenth-Century France and Belgium. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press, 1994.

Piunno, John. “Restoring Liturgy and Sacred Music in the Latin Roman Rite.” The American Organist 135, 4 (2010): 82–85.

Poterack, Kurt. “Vatican II and Sacred Music.” Sacred Music 125, 4 (1998): 5–19.

Rone, Vincent. “A Voice Cries Out in the Wilderness: The French Organ School Responds to the Second Vatican Council of the Catholic Church.” PhD diss., University of California, 2014.

Ruff, Anthony. Sacred Music and Liturgical Reform: Treasures and Transformations. Chicago, Illinois: Hillenbrand Books, 2017.

Schloesser, Stephen. Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005.

The Parish Book of Chant. Richmond, Virginia: Church Music Association of America, 2008.

Godwin Sadoh

Godwin Sadoh is a Nigerian ethnomusicologist, composer, church musician, pianist, organist, choral conductor, and scholar with over a hundred publications to his credit, including twelve books. His compositions have been performed and recorded worldwide. In 2004 at Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, Sadoh distinguished himself as the first African to earn a doctoral degree in organ performance from any institution in the world. He has taught at several institutions including the Obafemi Awolowo University, the University of Pittsburgh, and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is presently professor of music/LEADS Scholar at the National Universities Commission, Abuja, Nigeria. Sadoh’s biography is listed in Who’s Who in America, Who’s Who in American Education, and Who’s Who in the World.

An important event in the history of church music in Nigeria was observed in 2018. It connotes longevity and continuity as we celebrate the centenary of the oldest choral group in Nigeria (1918–2018), which finds its home in the oldest Anglican cathedral in Nigeria, the Cathedral Church of Christ, Marina, Lagos. The history of the Cathedral Choir began in 1895, when Reverend Robert Coker inaugurated the first Anglican choir in the country. The centenary is associated with the first choir festival celebrated on November 23, 1918, under the mantle of the progenitor, Thomas Ekundayo Phillips. Since then, the choir’s anniversary has been celebrated around this period on the Sunday nearest to Saint Cecilia’s Day in November each year. The choir has gone through several phases in the hands of organists and choirmasters, without losing its standard, tradition, fervor, ethics, and focus on cathedral liturgy and challenging musical heritage.

Singing has always been an integral part of worship at the Cathedral Church of Christ since its inception in 1867. It is referenced that the first organist, Robert A. Coker, just before his appointment as organist, was sent to England to expand his knowledge of church music in order to inaugurate a choir suitable for Christ Church, to be second to none in Nigeria. The choir was expected to be able to sing in a manner worthy of being regarded as a model by other churches. The initial choir set up by Coker comprised women and men. It was later reorganized during the ministry of Reverend Hamlyn, who replaced the women with boys and young men. The present choristers, comprising several choirboys together with the gentlemen of the choir who sing alto, tenor, and bass, continue this tradition of singing into the twenty-first century, providing music at worship services and other occasions throughout the year. The choir also reaches out to a wider audience by singing in live radio broadcasts during Easter and Christmas seasons, and also through their compact disc recordings. The basis of the choir’s ministry is the regular singing at cathedral services, but there are other activities, including choir feasts, picnics, as well as frequent concert appearances in the cathedral and other venues.

Repertoire 

The Cathedral Church of Christ Choir is one of the most respected choral groups in Nigeria and throughout the continent of Africa. It is particularly noted for its wide range of liturgical repertoire, which forms the bedrock of weekly worship in the excellent acoustics of the Gothic cathedral. The repertoire is similar to that of any typical English cathedral choir. It primarily reflects the seasons of the liturgical year, with plainsong antiphons and hymns, challenging festival anthems, and more flamboyant Eucharistic settings, such as Alan Wilson’s Mass Of Light and Mozart’s Mass in B-flat, in addition to the daily music. The repertoire encompasses a broad range of styles and compositions ranging from plainchant to classical, African-American spirituals, contemporary American praise choruses, and Nigerian indigenous gospel music.

The Cathedral Choir repertoire ranges from Orlando Gibbons anthems, motets, and madrigals to Herbert Howells’s strong individuality, to Edward Elgar’s combination of nobility and spirituality of utterance with a popular style. The choir has always incorporated the works of some indigenous Nigerian composers, mainly ex-choristers and present musicians of the Cathedral Church. Among the composers whose music still enriches the repertoire of the choir are the father of Nigerian church music, Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, whose indigenous sacred Yoruba compositions are often heard in the cathedral, and Fela Sowande, whose Responses in English are still sung regularly at Matins and Evensong. Other notable composers include Ayo Bankole, Samuel Akpabot, and Godwin Sadoh.

The choir is polyglot, performing works mainly in English, but occasionally singing in other European languages such as Latin as well as in the Yoruba dialect during special diocesan services of the Anglican Synod, combined mass choir or the augmented choir events,1 and Evensong. In recent years, it has given a few performances of some major works in the cathedral including Felix Mendelssohn’s St. Paul in November 2008 at its ninetieth anniversary concert, and Handel’s Messiah in December of that year. Some other major works that the Cathedral Choir has performed in the past include Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus in 1998, at the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON), Lagos, for its eightieth anniversary, Haydn’s The Creation in April 2001, and Johann Sebastian Bach’s Christmas Oratorio.

As the premier choir in Nigeria, Cathedral Church of Christ Choir has played a major role in shaping the direction and development of church music in Nigeria especially in the Anglican Communion. The choir’s work is felt not only in the Anglican Church, but in other denominations as well. The annual choir festivals, Advent carol services, Festival of Lessons and Carols, classical music concerts, choir feasts, and picnics continue to attract choristers and music enthusiasts from the Methodist, Baptist, Catholic, Charismatic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, Reformed, African, Evangelical, and non-denominational churches such as Pentecostals, from different parts of the southwest region of Nigeria. The choir connects American culture with Nigeria through the use of spirituals in the compositions of its ex-choristers and their musical training in American universities, primarily Fela Sowande.

Organists and masters of the music

The choir has been trained and directed by musicians such as Robert Coker, Thomas Ekundayo Phillips (1884–1969), Charles Obayomi Phillips (1919–2007), Olayinka Sowande (Fela Sowande’s younger brother), Tolu Obajimi, and presently, Babatunde Sosan (b. 1975). From the late nineteenth century to the present, those at the helm of music ministries at the cathedral have been skillful and talented.

Apart from the weekly routine of choir practices in preparation for Sunday worship, the master of the music and choirmasters are responsible for preparing the choir for concerts that feature repertoires of sacred choral, instrumental, and organ pieces. The concert performances are in the form of the annual choir festival, Advent carol service, Festival of Lessons and Carols, Easter cantata, Christmas concert, and various other concerts throughout the year.

Most of the music used for worship is by British composers: John Ireland, William Byrd, John Stainer, Bernard Rose, David Willcocks, John Rutter, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Samuel Wesley, Thomas Attwood, Charles Villiers Stanford, Malcolm Archer, George Thalben-Ball, Sydney Nicholson, Herbert Howells, Hubert Parry, Edward Elgar, Eric Thiman, Healey Willan, Walford Davies, Edward Bairstow, William Harris, Orlando Gibbons, Martin Shaw, William Boyce, William Matthias, Robert Cooke, and Charles Stanley. However, compositions from other European nationalities are occasionally incorporated into worship, including works of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach, Vivaldi, Liszt, Widor, Alain, and Schubert.2

The cathedral has been served by three generations of the Phillips family as organists and masters of the music. Ekundayo Phillips’s tenure was the longest, spanning forty-eight years (1914–1962). His son, Obayomi Phillips, served for thirty years (1962–1992). Tolu Obajimi occupied the same position for two decades (1993–2013). Olayinka Sowande spent the least amount of time in office, July to December 1992. The reason for the short term was that as the sub-organist to Obayomi Phillips for several years, he was next in line for promotion to the position of master of the music; thereafter the Cathedral Church gave him the position in 1992. However, old age did not permit Sowande to stay longer than six months in the position as he was already an octogenarian. Time and circumstances will determine the length of Babatunde Sosan’s tenure.

Choir training

The outstanding musical standard of the Cathedral Choir today reflects the models established by Thomas Ekundayo Phillips. Some of the ideals instituted by Phillips included strict discipline, clarity of diction and pronunciation, regular and punctual attendance at choir practices, correct interpretation of notes, voice balance, articulation, attack, comportment, reverence in worship, and utmost sense of good musicianship. As a pedantic choir director, his expectations were very high and certainly demanding, but the choir always rose to his standard and taste. Ekundayo Phillips’s philosophy toward choral training cannot be overemphasized. He would detect and correct any musical snag such as faulty notes emanating from any section of the choir. Ekundayo Phillips would also call to order any chorister who did not hold his music book correctly, such as covering his face with it or placing it on his lap while seated.

Before a choirboy or man can be admitted into the choir to sing in Sunday worship, he first goes through the rigorous probationary period that normally lasts several months. In the case of the choirboys, their probationary period lasts eight months, while probation for those who wish to join the choir as adults to sing alto, tenor, or bass is three months. The author remembers his probationary period in 1980 while still in high school. He attended the choir practices on Tuesday and Thursday evenings, but on Sundays would sit in the congregation for worship and was not allowed to sing with the choir until the three months of probation was completed. Whenever the young neophytes complete their probation, they are formally admitted into the Cathedral Choir at a special service in which their parents assist them to put on the white surplice over the black cassock. The induction ceremony is always a moment of joy and pride for the parents.

Choir ministry

The choir leads the congregation every Sunday in hymn singing, responses (antiphonal prayers set to music), special settings of liturgical music such as Venite, Benedictus, Te Deum, Nunc dimittis, Magnificat, Jubilate, and settings of the Eucharist. The master of the music uses the choir to teach the congregation new hymns, service music, and songs. This is realized by the choir first singing all verses of a hymn as an anthem on a Sunday, while the congregation is asked to sing along the following Sunday. Occasionally the choir sings several verses before the congregation joins. The Cathedral Church of Christ proves to be an inclusive culturally blended congregation in terms of hymnals used for worship. The church exemplifies the nature of an interdenominational faith-based organization with the use of hymnbooks from diverse churches. The hymnals used for worship include Hymns Ancient and Modern, Hymns Ancient and Modern Revised, Songs of Praise, Methodist Hymn Book, Hymnal Companion, Baptist Hymnal, Saint Paul’s Cathedral Psalter, Church Hymnal, Alternative Service Book, New English Hymnal, Redemption Hymnal, Broadman Hymnal, Sacred Songs and Solos, More Hymns for Today, American contemporary praise choruses found in Songs for Refreshing Worship, and indigenous hymns written by Ekundayo Phillips as well as other members of the choir.

Concert performances

There are other times in the year that the Cathedral Choir performs concerts in and outside of the church. Oratorios, cantatas, and orchestral works have been performed by the choir such as Mendelssohn’s Elijah in 1989, as well as Hymn of Praise and Saint Paul; Bach’s Christmas Oratorio in 1953; Coleridge-Taylor’s Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast; Handel’s Judas Maccabaeus and Ode on Saint Cecilia’s Day performed in 1998; Haydn’s Creation; Stainer’s Daughter of Jairus and Crucifixion performed in 1916; Davies’s The Temple; and Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance performed by the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir Orchestra at the eightieth anniversary of the choir on November 22, 1998. On March 20, 2016, the Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON), in collaboration with the cathedral, presented Fauré’s Requiem, featuring the MUSON Choir, Cathedral Choir, MUSON Chamber Orchestra, and MUSON Ensemble.

These concerts featured solos, choral, and instrumental music. The events often attract dignitaries, professional musicians, and students from far and near. The venues of the concerts include the Cathedral Church, Glover Memorial Hall, Musical Society of Nigeria (MUSON) Center, and other concert halls in Lagos.

Some of the concerts were specifically organized to raise funds for either the Cathedral Church or to buy a new organ. For instance, Ekundayo Phillips embarked on a concert tour with his choir to Abeokuta on August 24, 1930, and later to Ibadan, to raise funds to build a new pipe organ for the Cathedral Church. In these concerts, the Cathedral Choir performed mostly Ekundayo Phillips’s Yoruba songs to the delight of the indigenes of southwest Nigeria. The concerts were a success because the choir alone was able to raise more than half the cost of the organ.

In 1927, Ekundayo Phillips went as far as England to appeal to British congregations for money to build a pipe organ. He was able to raise a substantial amount through the successful rendition of some of his Yoruba compositions by Saint George’s Church Choir on October 23, 1927. The Yoruba songs were recorded by H. N. V. Gramophone Company in London, while the royalties from the sales of the recording were all given to the Cathedral Church of Christ, for the purchase of an organ in 1932.

The Cathedral Choir has performed for numerous dignitaries. The group performed before the British royal family, first in April 1921 at the cornerstone laying ceremony of the Cathedral Church of Christ, by His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. In January 1956, the choir performed before Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Phillip, when they worshiped at the Cathedral Church; and finally, on October 2, 1960, at the Independence Day service of Nigeria, attended by Her Royal Highness, Princess Alexandra. On an Advent Sunday in 1972, the Cathedral Choir performed with the King’s College Cambridge Choir, during their visit to Nigeria. The first broadcast by the Cathedral Choir on the British Broadcasting Corporation was aired on December 12, 1951.

Compact disc recordings

The Cathedral Choir’s work has not been restricted to only live performances at services and concerts. The choir has recorded some of its favorite works to reach out to the wider church music community. During the tenure of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, the choir recorded two of his songs, Emi O Gbe Oju Mi S’Oke Wonni (I Will Lift Up My Eyes to the Hills—Psalm 121) and Ise Oluwa (The Work of the Lord) for the
BBC series, Church Music from the Commonwealth. In 2006, the choir released its first compact disc set, Choral Music: Volumes I & II. The two CDs contain a selection of hymns, anthems, psalms, Te Deum, and Jubilate that the Cathedral Choir has sung over decades. Composers of the selected works as usual were mostly British with the exception of the Cathedral Choir musicians, in particular, Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, Modupe Phillips, Obayomi Phillips, Soji Lijadu, Fela Sowande, Olusina Ojemuyiwa, Yinka Sowande, and Babatunde Sosan.

Conclusion

In spite of the stability and loyalty to the Anglican worship system, the music ministry at the Cathedral Church of Christ has gone through a transformation to conform with modern trends in Nigeria. The middle of the 1980s chronicles the emergence of the Neo-Pentecostal-Evangelical churches and university campus Christian fellowships all over the country. These were largely driven by an American innovation of worship and evangelistic methodologies. Hence, singing in those arenas is characterized by the adoption of contemporary American praise choruses. The new churches have been founded primarily by Nigerian pastors trained in American seminaries and Bible schools. The pastors, at the completion of their training in the United States, returned to Nigeria to establish an experiential worship that mirrored what they had been exposed to in the United States. Other factors that paved the way for the proliferation of American influences were the abundance of sermons and songs on audio and video recordings, praise chorus hymnbooks with staff notation, and Christian literature sold in local religious bookstores. These influences are interwoven into various strands of worship that undisputedly distinguish the new churches from the well-established Protestant churches such as the Anglican, Baptist, Lutheran, Presbyterian, and Methodist denominations.

On a final note, twenty-first-century congregational singing at the Cathedral Church of Christ is indeed a commixture of traditional hymns and contemporary American praise choruses, a tuneful blending of the American and the British influences. At each service, each congregant’s musical taste is met through the appropriation of a pluralistic worship. It is not only the indigenous members that are being catered to, but also visiting European and American worshippers who comfortably feel at home in the Cathedral Church of Christ with this type of multi-cultural musical repertoire. While all these evolutions continue, the Cathedral Choir and its musicians have painstakingly endeavored to maintain a befitting exceptional musical standard that it is reputed as a role model for other choirs, thereby preserving the legacies of the founding fathers of the choir, namely, Robert Coker, Thomas Ekundayo Phillips, and Charles Obayomi Phillips.

The Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, website: https://www.thecathedrallagos.org

Notes

1. Combined Mass Choir or Augmented Choir is a choral outfit comprising of about a hundred voices made up of choristers from various Anglican churches in Lagos.

2. This essay is derived from the author’s book, The Centenary of the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir, Lagos (Columbus, Ohio: GSS Publications, 2018).

Eva Moreda

Eva Moreda is lecturer in music at the University of Glasgow and specializes in the cultural and political history of Spanish music of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Her latest book is Music Criticism and Music Critics in Francoist Spain (Oxford University Press, 2016). Apart from her academic commitments, she has a keen interest in the performance of medieval and renaissance music on voice, portative organ, and recorders.

We quickly managed to build a routine that involved rising early, eating some homemade cake for breakfast, and spending the day singing and playing late medieval music (Las Huelgas, Dufay, Sankt Gallen) on our portative organs, switching between solo, pair, and large group work as need arose, always with a generous pause for lunch in which conversations about medieval sounds and how to make them come alive today flowed generously. There were five of us, and although all of us arrived in San Marino not knowing any of our fellow students, the week we spent together at the Stabat Mater Convent, in the village of Borgo Maggiore, felt like part rehearsal and part retreat, and not so much like just one more summer school.

Officially, though, it was indeed the latter: the first International Late Medieval and Renaissance Course (the latest addition to the San Marino International Music Summer Courses series), taught entirely by Cristina Alís Raurich, one of the most exciting portative organ performers of our day. While I will not go as far as claiming that the portative organ—first documented in the thirteenth century and disappeared, after a long decline, in the sixteenth century—is making a comeback, interest is certainly on the rise from professional and amateur musicians alike. Indeed, three participants in the course had never played a portative organ before, which was no obstacle for them to successfully participate in the student concert held at the end of the course at the Church of San Francesco.

One of the main tenets of Raurich’s teaching philosophy is that the portative organ is not a keyboard instrument, but a wind instrument; the performer, with the instrument placed on his or her thigh or hanging from his or her body by means of a strap, plays the small keyboard (about two octaves) with one hand and manipulates the bellows with the other. It is the ability to modulate one’s pressure on the bellows that renders the music expressive and makes true the medieval notion that the organ is the voice of the doctors of the Church, capable of saying, singing, moving, and persuading. With this in mind, we set out to unravel, with our voices and our organs (sometimes in combination, sometimes separately), some of the repertoire that Raurich had chosen for the course.

The overarching theme was the Sequence. Sequences are liturgical texts that seek to illuminate aspects of the Gospel or the liturgy, and hence tend to be time or place specific: Sequences were composed for specific events of the liturgical year (Easter, Christmas, Pentecost, etc.) and occasionally for specific places (on the feast of a patron saint of a city or community). Originally evolving from the last syllable of the Alleluia that precedes the Gospel in the Catholic Mass, Sequences soon developed independently as new compositions of both music and text and flourished throughout the Middle Ages until the Council of Trent restricted their use.

The earliest Sequences we worked on came from the Castilian Codex Las Huelgas. Dating from the early fourteenth century, the codex is a compendium of the advances in polyphony that European music had seen in the previous two centuries. Working in pairs with portative organs on pieces originally intended to be sung by the female voices of the Las Huelgas monastery allowed us to work on phrasing and expressivity, paying close attention to the text and to each other. There followed two lesser-known pieces by Flemish composer Guillaume Du Fay, dating from approximately a century later than Las Huelgas. Here, Du Fay alternates the original Gregorian chant with interpolations of three-part polyphony: complex counterpoint that took the whole group many hours to put together with instruments and voices, and lots of food for thought on the relationship (musical, textual, rhetorical) between the traditional monophonic chant and the more recent polyphonic glosses.

The sequentiary of Joachim Cuontz was copied in the Swiss monastery of Saint Gallen in the sixteenth century and contains Sequences dating from earlier in the Middle Ages. Unlike the Du Fay and Las Huelgas music, these pieces are notated for one voice with no accompaniment, and so considerable work was devoted during the course to transforming the sparse medieval notation and words into music, adding bourdons and percussion, distributing the phrases between instruments, solo voices, and chorus, and making decisions aimed at conveying the full extent of the rhetorical nuance of each of the texts.

Working on the sequentiary provided one further example of Raurich’s sensitivity as a teacher: instead of holding formal lectures, she chose to introduce a range of theoretical topics pertinent to the history and performance practice of medieval music in a way that never took us far away from the music-making. Certainly, this was the best possible start to the International Late Medieval and Renaissance Course in San Marino, and here’s hope to it becoming established as one of the top summer schools for keen performers of medieval music worldwide.

Course website: www.sanmarinoartist.com

The Clavier-Übung Third Part

Michael Radulescu

Michael Radulescu, born in Bucharest, Romania, studied organ and conducting in Vienna at the Academy (now University) of Music and Performing Arts where he taught as professor of organ from 1968 to 2008. His career encompasses work as a composer, organist, and conductor. Since his debut in 1959 he has presented concerts throughout Europe, North America, Australia, South Korea, and Japan. He regularly gives guest lectures and masterclasses in Europe and overseas, focusing mainly on the interpretation and elucidation of Bach’s organ and major choral works.

As a composer, Radulescu has written sacred music, works for organ, voice and organ, choral and chamber music, and orchestral works. He is also in demand as a jury member in international organ and composition competitions and as an editor of early and ancient organ music. Radulescu conducts international vocal and instrumental ensembles in performances of major vocal works. As an organist, he has recorded among other things Bach’s complete works for organ, without any technical manipulation.

For his musical and pedagogical contributions Radulescu was awarded the Goldene Verdienstzeichen des Landes Wien in 2005. In 2007 he received Würdigungspreis für Musik from the Austrian Ministry of Education and Art. In December 2013 Michael Radulescu’s book on J. S. Bach’s spiritual musical language, Bey einer andächtig Musiq . . .,
focusing on the two Passions and the B Minor Mass was published.

When approaching Baroque music in general and spiritual music in particular, it is of greatest importance to take into consideration the fundamental difference between the function and the aims of music in the Roman Catholic rite and the Lutheran conception of music. While Roman Catholic music mainly embellishes and adorns the liturgy, Lutheran music wants to preach, to impress, to move, to convince every single listener. Whereas the mystery of the Canon is at the center of the Roman Catholic Mass, the announcing and the elucidation of the Word of God, spoken by the minister and sung or performed by the church musician, stand at the core of the Lutheran Divine Service.

From this dichotomy results the overwhelming importance of rhetoric, of the musical speech (Klangrede) in Lutheran music. Both the ancient rules of rhetoric and the use of the rhetorical-musical figures determine respectively the overall formal concept of a work as well as the invention of characteristic “speaking motifs.”

In the case of J. S. Bach’s music, however, there also seems to be a more subtle, profound, and hidden means of communicating a message, an interpretation of a text. This happens through the ample use of symbols such as allegories, certain characteristic motifs and specific numerical ratios between different sections of the overall formal concept of a piece, and also, most controversial of all, as numerological entities. The latter aspect has been both heartily emphasized and strongly questioned and even ruled out by scholars and practical performers in recent decades. Nevertheless, a surprising hint at the possibility of Bach’s interest in the use of the “numeric alphabet” seems to be, among others, the theoretical work called Cabbalologia by Johannes Henningius (Johann Henning), published in Leipzig in 1683. This publication is said to have been found also in the famous private library of Bach’s neighbor and colleague Johann Heinrich Ernesti, former rector of Saint Thomas Church in Leipzig.

I

Bach published the Third Part of his Clavier-Übung for the feast of Saint Michael at the end of September 1739 on the occasion of the bicentenary of the Lutheran Reformation in Leipzig. This collection of keyboard compositions is generally known under the titles “The Organ Mass” or “The Dogma Chorales,” neither of which can suggest the complex meaning and the message of the entire opus.

It should be remembered that when Luther introduced his Reformation in Leipzig in 1539 he preached on Pentecost Monday in the Leipzig Pleissenburg Castle on two most crucial themes: the Mystery of the Trinity in the Lutheran Mass and the Lutheran Catechism. Most significantly, Bach takes both these theological categories into consideration and, obviously referring to Luther’s sermon of 1539, treats them consistently in his Third Part of the Clavier-Übung. Of the total of twenty-one chorale settings in the collection, the first nine deal with the Lutheran Missa brevis (which includes only the “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie” and the “Gloria”), while the remaining twelve chorales follow exactly, chapter by chapter, Luther’s Catechism of 1529.

Seen as a whole, the entire Clavier-Übung III seems to suggest a most striking resemblance to Bach’s own organ improvisations as described by his first biographer, J. N. Forkel, in 1802:

a) a great prelude and fugue in Organo Pleno as an opening;

b) a long series of different kinds of chorale settings with a varying number of parts;

c) a great fugue in Organo Pleno at the end.

In Bach’s Clavier-Übung III, these correspond to the following sections:

a) the E-flat Preludium in Organo Pleno also containing the two fugal sections;

b) the 21 chorale settings in 3, 4, 5, or 6 parts, as well as four duettos;

c) the E-flat Fugue in Organo Pleno.

Two further allusions to the Trinity are most interesting in the overall plan of the entire collection. These are manifest already in the title, “Third Part of the Clavier-Übung,” and also in the use of the majestic key of E-flat major, with its three flats in the signature, for both the opening Prelude and the closing Fugue. Also striking is the fact that both the Prelude and the Fugue appear to be determined by the number 3 (three main musical ideas in the prelude and three themes in the triple fugue).

Another obvious hint at the Trinity is the fact that the first 9 chorales dealing with the Lutheran Mass are organized in 3 groups of 3 each: 3 “great” settings for Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie, 3 “small” alio modo settings for the same cantus firmi Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie, and 3 settings for the German Gloria, “Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr.”

The remaining 12 chorales, which follow Luther’s Catechism, are arranged by 3 + 3 groups of 2 each, the first group dealing with the 3 main chapters of the Catechism (The Law of the Lord = The Ten Commandments, The Creed, and The Prayer of the Lord = The “Our Father”), and the second with the 3 chapters concerning the Sacraments and the Penitence respectively (Baptism, Penitence as continual renewal of Baptism, and the Communion). Each of these cantus firmi is treated twice, in a “great” version with pedal and in a “small” version without pedal, mostly in another key.

It has often been suggested that these two contrasting versions may allude to Luther’s “Great Catechism” versus its reduced form, the “Small Catechism” for younger and “more modest people.” This double treatment of the “catechism settings,” however, seems also to allude to the double form of liturgy: as the great, official one “in churches,” versus its “small,” intimate, personal form “at home,” within each Christian family. Interestingly enough, this dualism appears also in the original subtitle of the Clavier-Übung III dedicated to both amateurs (Liebhaber) and connoisseurs (Kenner).

II

The opening Praeludium pro Organo pleno, Bach’s largest organ prelude, suggests, in spite of the original slurring of the dotted rhythms of its beginning, the pattern of a French overture:

a) majestic homophonic section with dotted rhythm, measures 1 to 70;

b) Fugato section, measures 71 to 97;

c) majestic homophonic section with dotted rhythm, measures 98 to 129;

d) Fugato section, measures 130 to 173;

e) majestic homophonic section with dotted rhythm, measures 174 to the end.

The three different musical ideas used by Bach seem to illustrate in a marvelous way the three Persons of the Trinity:

1. majestic five-part homophonic section for God the Father (Example 1);

2. transition passage with staccato notes suggesting drops of tears (as in the Passions and in several cantatas) and a plaintive theme in the right hand, full of suspensions and chromaticisms and going to the “extreme” keys B-flat minor and E-flat minor, respectively (musical-rhetorical figure of parrhesia), suggesting the human sufferings, the Passion and Death of God, the Son (Examples 2 and 3);

3. The fugal sections using the most spiritual writing, the fugue, and a theme which by its shape (musical-rhetorical figure of hypotyposis) suggests the movement and the shape of the flames, the fire of God, the Holy Spirit (Example 4).

III

Considering the 9 chorale settings of the Missa brevis, the great “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie,” the small “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie,” and the 3 “Allein Gott” settings, one notes the following characteristics:

• The first three settings of the great “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie” are written in the ancient vocal, a cappella style, the stylus gravis, using the so called white notation (breves, whole notes, half notes, quarter and, more rarely, eighth notes as note values). According to Bach’s cousin
J. G. Walther the stylus gravis is “majestic, serious . . . and best appropriate to elevate the human soul to God.”

• The respective cantus firmus descends within this first triad from the soprano in Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit (highest part ~ God Father as the Highest) into the tenor in Christe aller Welt Trost (middle part ~ God the Son as the Mediator) and finally into the pedal-bass in Kyrie, Gott, heiliger Geist (bass part ~ God, the Holy Spirit as the universal Basis). This katabasis, i.e., “descending movement,” suggests the descending of God’s mercy upon us and depicts the “eleison” (“have mercy”).

• The tenor cantus firmus in Christe aller Welt Trost stresses the idea of Christ as the Mediator between God and Man, as strongly emphasized by Luther.

• The bass cantus firmus in Kyrie, Gott, heiliger Geist, on the other hand, represents the fundamental Lutheran idea of Justification through the power of Faith; the text of the chorale also prays for “the reinforcement of our Faith.” The final section of this setting, “eleison,” is excruciatingly dissonant, once again stressing human misery awaiting God’s mercy.

• The total number of measures of all three large chorale-settings is a primary, indivisible number:

Kyrie (42 measures) + Christe (61 measures) + Kyrie (60 measures) = 163 ~ indivisibility of the Holy Trinity!

• The three small settings of “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie” strongly contrast with the preceding three works. The cantus firmus is only hinted at by quotation of its first phrase. Their writing is manualiter, without pedal, and in a soft “cantabile clavier style.” This might suggest love and the soft breath of the Holy Spirit by its “cantability.”

• All three small settings end modally on an E-major chord.

• The time signatures of all these 3 chorales also allude to the Trinity, being “progressions” of the number 3: 3/4; 6/8; 9/8 (= 1 x 3/4; 2 x 3/8; 3 x 3/8).

• The three Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Ehr settings fulfill a wonderful anabasis (ascending movement) by the sequence of their keys: following the small “Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie” settings ending all on E major, they rise up to F major, G major, and finally to A major, thus obviously alluding to Gloria in excelsis (Allein Gott in der Höh’/“Glory to the Lord in the Highest”).

• All three settings are trios and written in an “instrumental keyboard style,” the first and the last in a brilliant, light style, the second à 2 Claviers et Pedale imitating violins or flutes accompanied by a basso continuo in the pedal.

• The G-major trio on “Allein Gott” seems to stress Jesus’s role as Lamb of God, alluding to the third stanza of the chorale, “Lamb of God, holy Lord and God, accept the prayer of our misery,” by citing these two verses in canon, a most simple symbol for “one part following another part:” first between the right hand and pedal in measures 78 to 83, and in measures 87 to 92 between the left hand and pedal, and thus alluding to the Gospel of John, 1:29–30: “The next day John seeth Jesus coming unto him, and saith, Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin of the world. / This is he of whom I said, After me cometh a man which is preferred before me: for he was before me” (Example 5).

IV

The density and complexity of Bach’s dealing with the theological message through music is most impressively revealed in the settings of chorales treating the main chapters of Luther’s Catechism: the Ten Commandments, the Creed, and the Lord’s Prayer.

The large setting of Dies sind die heil’gen zehn Gebot is written in five parts distributed on two manuals and pedal. The cantus firmus is carried out as a canon between the two tenor parts played by the left hand while the right hand plays the two free upper parts. Surprisingly, these free parts never imitate or cite the cantus firmus.

Most interesting is the fact that in Bach’s treatments of this cantus firmus (Orgelbüchlein, the cantata BWV 77 Du sollst Gott, deinen Herrn, lieben, and the two settings in the Clavier-Übung), he uses the same key, Mixolydian on G, the “pure” key without accidentals in its signature. Never does this cantus firmus appear transposed: this obviously suggests the “immutability of the Divine Law.” Most consistently, the treatment of the cantus firmus as a canon also evokes the “severity of God’s Law.”

A further symbolic meaning of the musical texture is the setting of the canonic cantus firmus in the two middle parts, which clearly refers to Luther’s commentary in his Catechism, regarding the way to keep the Divine Law through “Christ’s the Mediator’s Intercession.”

The beginning of the chorale is most serene, diatonic, and calm, and takes place over an organ point in the pedal. After four measures of “complete harmony” the character changes in the fifth measure: the alto plays a “harsh” descending chromatic figure (the figure of parrhaesia) while the soprano plays three times a “sighing figure” consisting of a sixteenth rest followed by three sixteenth notes, and followed by two groups of stepwise descending eighth notes (Example 6).

This seems to be a strong allusion to the Book of Genesis describing the Garden of Eden (= full harmony~4 measures) and Adam’s Fall in the fifth measure (Adam in Hebrew meaning man and being symbolized, according to Andreas Werckmeister, by the number 5 for man’s 5 senses, 5 fingers and toes, and also hinting at Jesus’s 5 wounds on the Cross).

Interestingly enough, this “sighing” figura suspirans is played by the two upper parts during the whole piece exactly 33 times, reminding of the 33 years of Jesus’s earthly life.

From measure 6 on this figure appears also “transformed” into another figure called kyklosis or circulatio and suggesting a “turning around,” an “insecurity” or, as in our case, a great joy.

This “transformation” of suffering (“sighing figure”) into joy (“turning around in joy”) perfectly matches Luther’s commentary about the Commandments, stressing that those who keep the Law apparently suffer in this earthly world, but that through Christ they shall live in joy.

Luther also considers the First Commandment as being the most important of the Decalogue. It is this very commandment that is cited in the second stanza of the cantus firmus, the stanza to which the great chorale setting seems to allude the most: “I alone am your God and Lord. Thou shalt not have other gods; thou shalt love me from the bottom of your heart. Kyrieleis.”

It is when the cantus firmus expounds the phrase “Thou shalt not have other gods” that the pedal plays a “huge” and “exaggerated” interval of two octaves,
C – c′ (the figure of hyperbole = exaggeration) and obviously referring to God’s immensity (Example 7).

Astonishing is the fact that the motif of measures 47 and 48 appears altered in measures 51 and 52, transformed insofar as it is now divided between the two upper parts: one part continuing the other, and thus suggesting the idea of “two parts becoming one” (the figure called heterolepsis = meaning this continuity, the unification of two parts, i.e., love, as described by J. G. Walther). It is striking to note how often Bach makes use of this figure when alluding to love, to unification in and through love. Not surprisingly, this figure appears in our chorale setting only two times, exactly where each of the two canonic cantus firmus parts play the notes for lieben mich (love me); as one can easily see in the “transformed” version, the motive is played by two “unified” parts according to the text line “Thou shall love me” (Example 8).

If we take a look at the pedal part we note that it is divided into several sections either by rests or by the recurring long organ point on A in measure 29. A most intriguing and striking speculation presents itself in this context when considering the number of notes of each of these sections:

a) measure 1 to 10 = 37 notes

b) measure 10 to 20 = 60 notes

c) measure 21 to 28 = 47 notes

d) measure 29 to 55 = 147 notes

e) measure 56 = 5 notes

f) measure 57 = 5 notes

g) measure 58 to 60 = 14 notes

 

a) Could 37 represent the monogram JCHR for Jesus Christ? (the number alphabet with the correspondence between the letters of the alphabet and the natural numerical order: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, . . ., Z = 24, with I = J and U = V as in old Latin: J (9) + C (3) + H (8) + R (17) = 37);

b) Could 60 allude to the Old Testament, to the 6 Days of God’s Creation, and also to the 10 Commandments = 60?

NB! Bach occasionally uses the number 6 as allegory for the Creation, for the Entire World (also Orgelbüchlein: Christum wir sollen loben schon, measure 6, where the whole range of the organ is encompassed by the lowest C in the pedal and the highest C in the treble part).

NB! Luther always sees and treats the Old Testament considering the New Testament and vice versa.

c) Could 47 recall the 47th Psalm, mentioned by Luther in his Great Catechism: “O, clap your hands, all ye people; shout unto God with the voice of triumph. / For the Lord most high is terrible; He is a great King over all the earth”?

NB! This third section of the pedal starts in measure 21 where the cantus firmus plays the phrase “Thou shalt not have other gods.” Also, it is here where the pedal plays the enormous, exaggerated interval of the double octave, which also perfectly matches the second verse of Psalm 47.

d) Could 147 recall the 11th verse of the 147th Psalm: “The Lord taketh pleasure in them that fear Him, in those that hope in His mercy”?

NB! Luther himself quotes Ps. 147, 11 in his Catechism, in the chapter dedicated to the Ten Commandments. This could make the assumption mentioned above quite plausible!

e) & f) Could the number 5 possibly allude in this context to mankind (five senses; the five wounds on Jesus’s crucified body) as “the Old” vs. “the New Man”?

g) 14 might well suggest Bach’s own name (B [2] + A [1] + C [3] + H [8] = 14) as his personal commitment as a believer, as the pro me (= “for me”), a central point in Luther’s theology.

Another interesting symbolic connotation is suggested by the general form of the chorale setting. The total of 60 measures is clearly divided into two unequal sections considering the sort of “recapitulation” of the beginning, in measure 29:

28 measures (= 7 x 4) + 32 measures (= 8 x 4) = 60 measures, or 28 : 32 = 7 : 8.

Could 7 allude to the seven days of the week, of the 6 + 1 days of the Creation of the earthly world and 8 to the eighth day (the day of Messiah)? Could this overall form and its “articulation” transmit the message of Redemption?

The “small,” manualiter version of Dies sind die heiligen zehn Gebot seems to have a more obvious, more straightforward approach to the text. It is a fughetta using the theme in both normal and inverted position. The gigue-like theme is characterized by the strongly repeated notes at its beginning and by strong leaps followed by stepwise passages. It is most interesting to note some aspects of this piece:

1) the title in the original print from 1739 is Dies sind die heiligen zehen Gebot consisting of exactly 10 syllables (Ten Commandments?)

2) the repeated G in the theme appears 14 times (BACH’s commitment? See above).

3) the theme appears 4 times in normal, 4 times in inverted, and again 2 times in its normal forms, i.e., 4 + 4 + 2 = 10 times (see above).

4) there is quite a long interlude without the theme between measures 18 and 31, lasting 14 measures (see above).

V

The large chorale setting dealing with the Creed, Wir gläuben all’an einen Gott (Schöpfer) is striking because of its dynamism, abundant syncopations, “modern” 2/4 time signature, constant movement in sixteenth notes, and lack of organ points in the pedal, by the six times of the pedal ostinato, and the flamboyant movement of the manual parts. The theme treated in the manual is rooted in the first phrase of the cantus firmus, and it is this very phrase that appears literally quoted in the tenor in the last 12 measures of the piece. The overall flamboyant, dynamic character of this setting might be surprising, but it seems in perfect coherence with Luther’s idea of a willful, powerful, and passionate personal commitment of each believer aiming to attain personal justification.

Some characteristics of this composition might elucidate its possible further message:

a) the total of exactly 100 measures of the piece might suggest the idea of the totality of the Creation (Gott Schöpfer = God, the Creator);

b) the 6-fold appearance of the pedal ostinato might hint at the 6 “working” days of God’s Creation (see above);

c) the quotation of the first cantus firmus phrase in the tenor, starting in measure 89 might allude to Christ as the Mediator;

d) the last pedal entry is longer than its other entries and has exactly 43 notes; this may well mean: (C [3] + R [17] + E [5] + D [4] + O [14] = 43: CREDO) “I believe.”

NB! Interestingly enough, the score of the first Credo chorus in the B Minor Mass shows the word “Credo” written 43 times and heard 41 times, i.e., J-S-B-A-C-H’s creed.

The small version of the same chorale is written as a short manualiter fughetta in the style of a brilliant French overture. This surprising setting can be seen as an introduction to the large version of The Lord’s Prayer, Vater unser im Himmelreich, written in the same key of E Dorian. More likely, however, it also seems to have the function of dividing the whole set of 21 chorales into 12 + 9. One should remember that, on the other hand, the 21 chorales are also divided into 9, dealing with the Lutheran Mass, and 12, treating Luther’s Catechism and the Sacraments. A very beautiful parallel, indeed!

VI

The large version of Vater unser im Himmelreich is possibly Bach’s most difficult and intricate organ work. It is written in 5 parts distributed once again among the two manuals and the pedal, with the cantus firmus in canon. Unlike the Ten Commandments however, each hand here plays a free voice and a canonic cantus firmus part.

Some characteristics may help understand and elucidate the enormous complexity of this composition:

a) the slow, majestic tempo in the 3/4 time signature suggests the austere character of a slow sarabande;

b) the pedal is treated as a basso continuo without quoting the cantus firmus;

c) the cantus firmus is treated in canon suggesting our intimately repeating the prayer spoken by Jesus according to Saint Mark and Saint Matthew;

d) the alternating order of the canonic parts at each new entry seems to suggest a still dialogue between the believer and Jesus;

e) the free manual parts are based on a theme quoting the richly embellished first phrase of the cantus firmus (Example 9);

f) each hand expounds this theme 3 times, alluding probably once more to the Trinity;

g) the two free manual parts display an enormous rhythmical richness with frequent use of the “plaintive” Lombard rhythms and the staccato triplets (Example 10);

h) this “plaintive” Lombardian rhythm and the overall rhythmical complexity seem to depict Luther’s comment on The Lord’s Prayer expressing the “multitude of human miseries;”

i) the staccato triplets obviously describe Saint Matthew 7:7: “Ask and it shall be given to you; seek and ye shall find; knock and it shall be opened unto you.” As a matter of fact, this very verse appears quoted in practically all older Lutheran hymn books on the page where the chorale Vater unser im Himmelreich is printed. The staccato triplets may also allude to drops of tears;

j) there is only one spot where the pedal quotes the “plaintive” Lombardian rhythm and this happens in measure 41 (J [9] + S [18] + B [2] + A [1] + C [3] + H [8] = J. S. BACH), alluding to the composer’s personal commitment.

After this extraordinary piece, the alio modo manualiter version of the same cantus firmus is a simple, quiet meditation on the Prayer, devoid of all further speculative symbols.

VII

Following Luther’s Large Catechism exactly, Bach now treats the Sacraments of Baptism in Christ, unser Herr zum Jordan kam, Penitence in Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, the latter considered by Luther as the continuation and constant renewal of baptism, and finally the Sacrament of Communion in Jesus Christus, unser Heiland.

The large version of Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam treats Jesus’s baptism as described in Saint John, Chapter 1. The piece is set for two manuals and pedal with the cantus firmus in the latter, the bass in the left hand and the two upper parts in the right hand. This setting is quite full of important symbolic meanings:

a) the tenor cantus firmus in the pedal suggests, as the middle part of the setting, Christ’s role as Mediator between God Father and mankind;

b) the almost constant movement in sixteenth notes in the left hand bass part seems to allude to the flow of the waters of the Jordan River;

c) the two upper parts of the right hand can be seen as a symbol for the Holy Spirit floating above the scene of Christ’s Baptism by Saint John the Baptist. The beginning four notes in each of the two upper parts seem to depict, as a hypotyposis, a cross motif. Also, the most intricate imitations between the small motives of the two upper parts can be seen as a hint to the Holy Spirit proceeding from the consubstantiality of God Father and God Son, as mentioned in the Nicene Creed (Example 11).

d) NB: the final note of the fifth chorale phrase in the pedal d° seems to generate a “wrong” 6/4-chord d° - g° - b′: This is to be seen as a hint to avoid the wrong harmony by the use of a 4′ reed in the pedal if the left hand were based on 8′, or a 16′ basis for the left hand, should the pedal be played only on an 8′ basis!

e) The total number of measures, 81, equals 3 x 3 x 3 x 3 as a most impressive symbol for the Trinity.

The small manualiter version of the same chorale is quite a short fughetta based on the first phrase of the chorale, combined with an “obbligato” counter-subject, both treated in normal and inverted position. Could the theme itself represent Christ and its inverted form Christ’s descent on Earth? Could the countersubject stand for Saint John the Baptist? Interesting enough is the fact that this fughetta consists of 27 measures (3 x 3 x 3) with exactly 81 quarter notes (see above).

The large version of Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir, the German version of Psalm 130, “De profundis,” is an exceptional work, as it is written in the old, solemn, majestic vocal stylus gravis or motet style, which, according to Johann Gottfried Walther’s Musicalisches Lexicon of 1732, is able to “elevate the soul to God.” This setting marks a pinnacle in Bach’s entire organ music insofar as it is written in six parts, four in the manual and two in the pedal, with the augmented cantus firmus of Luther’s chorale melody in the right foot’s part. This obviously seems to be an allusion to the significance of the upper bass part as the voice of the Old Testament psalmist. Most impressive is also the fact that at the beginning of the last verse of the chorale Wer kann, Herr, vor dir bleiben? (Who can, Lord, stand before Thee?) in the seventh to last measure, the upper bass part playing the cantus firmus is the highest part in the whole texture (Example 12).

• The registration should be the Organo pleno, i.e., an 8′ based Plenum  in the (coupled) manual(s) and 16′ Plenum in the pedal, without mixtures but with reeds 16′, 8′, and 4′.

• This setting is obviously inspired by the great pleno settings in five parts, with double pedal, in Matthias Weckmann’s great chorale settings with the cantus firmus in the upper pedal part.

NB! In one of the Lüneburg tablatures containing Weckmann’s majestic hymn on O lux, beata Trinitas the opening first movement in five parts with double pedal and the cantus firmus in the upper bass bears the indication that the cantus firmus of the upper bass could be played in the pedal by the right foot, or on the manual by the left hand, or also by both the pedal and the left hand together. This comment seems to confirm the registration mentioned above, with the result that the left foot bass is playing in the reeds-pleno, the manual parts in the mixture-pleno and the cantus firmus in both the reeds- and the mixture-pleno, and thus strengthening the cantus firmus.

The following alio modo manualiter version of the same chorale is written in four parts. Learned contrapuntal imitations in the three lower parts—in normal and inverted form—of each phrase of the chorale, anticipate each phrase of the augmented cantus firmus expounded each time by the treble part.

• Each section of the piece begins with five contrapuntal measures in intricate counterpoint between the three lower parts, followed by eight bars expounding the respective phrase of the chorale in the treble and one supplementary bar concluding each section.

• The overall organization of the piece is quite extraordinary:

Sections a), b), c) & d): 5 + 8 + 1 bars; section e): 5 + 8 + 5

• But 5 + 8 + 1 = 14  [= B-A-C-H = 2 + 1 + 3 + 8] and 8 : 5 stands for the golden ratio.

The large version of Jesus Christus, unser Heiland, der von uns den Zorn Gottes wandt is a trio for the two manuals and pedal with the cantus firmus in the latter. It seems quite interesting that the pedal oscillates between playing the tenor and bass parts. Could this hint at Jesus’s double nature, as God and Man?

• The two manual parts seem to actually symbolize the “Wrath of God” by their extremely virtuosic, agitated, and aggressive movements in sixteenth notes and eighth notes.

• The main theme in the manuals starting with big and then diminishing intervals (tenth-octave-sixth) could possibly hint at Man’s approach to God, whereas, on the other hand, these leaps sometimes occur also in the opposite direction, from smaller to larger (sixth-octave-tenth). The message of these patterns seems to be the “struggle” between God and sinful mankind expecting redemption through communion, Luther’s second sacrament.

The following alio modo version of the same chorale is a very complex fugue in F minor, using as a main theme the first phrase of the cantus firmus. The extremely rich counterpoint and the surprisingly daring new motives seem to recall the big, learned fugues of the Well-Tempered Clavier, Book II.

• The augmented entry of the main-theme in the tenor part in measure 57 might be another symbol for the praise of Christ the Lord, as the mediator between God and Man.

• NB! In order to emphasize this augmented theme in the tenor it should be helpful to use a registration of foundations (principals) 8′ and 4′ and a trumpet 8′.

VIII

Most intriguing and surprising part of the work are the following four duettos preceding the final Fugue in E-flat Major. Some speculations might help justify their presence:

a) Luther adds a “Short Admonition of Confession” after the chapter about Communion. In this short appendix he quotes the various ways of confessing: 1. to the priest/pastor; 2. as an open and common confession in front of the congregation; 3. to the neighbor; and 4. to God;

b) in the first part of his Large Catechism Luther quotes the four elements of the world: 1. Fire; 2. Air; 3. Water; 4. Earth;

c) in his Neu vermehrtes Hamburgisches Gesangbuch (New Hymn Book) from 1739, Vopelius inserts after the Catechism Hymns other hymns for: 1. the morning; 2. the evening; 3. before meals; 4. after meals;

d) taking into consideration the Baroque Theory of Affects one can easily imagine a certain parallel with the four temperaments: 1. choleric; 2. sanguine; 3. phlegmatic; and 4. melancholic temperament;

e) the duettos form a tight unity: their tonal progression ascending from E to F, to G, and finally to A corresponds strikingly to the sequence of keys in the “Trinity chorales” 4 to 9, and thus leading to the first note, B-flat, starting the following fugue;

f) two of the duettos are in a major (II and III) and two in a minor key (I and IV);

g) two are in a ternary (I: 3/8 and III: 12/8) and two in a binary (II: 2/4 and IV: 2/2) time signature.

h) two start with the right hand (I and II) and two with the left hand (II and IV).

It also seems quite remarkable how well the duettos match—by their astonishing variety and by their individual character—both the conception of the four elements (mentioned by Luther in his Great Catechism) and that of the four temperaments and even maybe of the four archangels (Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, and Uriel) as well as the four Evangelists (?).

Duetto I: E-minor key; 3/8 time signature; right hand starts, left hand follows; 73 measures; perfectly symmetrical form based upon the golden ratio (28 measures + 17 measures + 28 measures = 73 measures // 28:17 = ~ 1.64; 45 (= 28 + 17) : 28 = ~ 1.7; 73 (= 28 + 17 + 28) : 45 = ~ 1.62); flamboyant themes and countersubjects suggesting flames of fire; Archangel Michael (with attributes: fire, sword, perfect balance); choleric temperament (?); element Fire (?).

Duetto II: F-major key; 2/4 time signature; right hand starts, left hand follows; 149 measures; perfectly symmetrical form of: 37 + 31 + 13 + 31 + 37 measures. NB! 37 could stand for Christ’s monogram in the Greek alphabet [ChRistos]: X ~ CH (= 20) + P ~ R (= 17); 31 may stand for the Latin “In Nomine Jesu” (In Jesus’s Name): [I (= 9) + N (= 13) + I (= 9) = 31]; 13 could allude to Jesus and his Twelve Apostles at the Last Supper. NB! This section of 13 measures from measures 69 to 78 is the center, the middle of the whole piece in which the measures 74 to 78 are the exact “inversion” of measures 69 to 73; could that maybe hint to Jesus’s death?; element Air (?) (Example 13).

The overall form of the piece is quite complex, insofar as the first section and its da capo recapitulation (both 37 measures) are in major and in a serene, joyous mood, whereas the second and penultimate sections (both 31 measures) are in minor and written as canons; might this “discrepancy” remind one of the sanguine temperament (?); Air; could the three references to Jesus Christ (see above) suggest a link to the Archangel Gabriel, Jesus’s messenger (with the attributes: lily and fish); could the perfect formal symmetry represent the symmetrical beauty of a lily?; could the inversion, the crossing of the parts in measures 69–78 hint at a symbol for Christ’s Cross and Death?

Duetto III: G-major key; 12/8 time signature; left hand starts, right hand follows; 39 measures:

15 + 8 + 15 + 1 = 39 measures; 15 (= 3 x 5) + 24 (= 3 x 8) = 39 (= 3 x 13) = golden ratio (cf. Fibonacci); melancholic temperament (?); could the very serene character of the piece remind of the Archangel Raphael (with attribute: fish)? element Water?

Duetto IV: A-minor key; 2/2 (Alla breve) time signature; left hand starts, right hand follows; two themes are used (a and b); 108 measures arranged as 8 (a) + 8 (a) + 16 (b) + 8 (a) + 8 (a) + 8 (b) + 13 (b) + 8 (a) + 8 (b) + 10 (b) + 13(a); NB! The grouping of measures and themes reveals the scheme of: 9 x 8 (= 72 measures) + 2 x 13 (= 26 measures) + 2 x 5 (= 10 measures), an order once more based upon the progression 5, 8, and 13 as quantities of the Fibonacci progression hinting at the “golden ratio;” the quite robust character of the music seems to allude to the strong phlegmatic temperament, while the very intricate formal scheme of the piece might possibly be a hint to the archangel Uriel (with attribute: fire); element Earth?

IX

The concluding Fuga à 5 Pro Organo pleno in E-flat major perfectly continues the ascending keys movement of the duettos (E-F-G-A) by its starting with a B-flat in the tenor.

The main theme suggests by its shape the form of a cross: connecting on paper the first note with the fourth and the second with the third, respectively the second with the fifth and the third with the fourth, respectively the third with the sixth and the fourth with the fifth, respectively the fourth with the seventh and the fifth with the sixth, one obtains three times (Trinity again!) the Greek letter X = Chi used as a symbol of the Cross, for crossing: cf. also Bach’s original title Da Jesus an dem X stund’ and the English No X-ing or Merry X-mas (Example 14).

This majestic theme dominates the whole first section of the fugue written in the ancient stylus gravis (see above, chorales 1 to 3). The second section of the fugue is in 6/4 meter and based on a strongly contrasting theme characterized by its constant movement representing a lengthy kyklosis (“turning around-figure”), with the main notes E-flat—F—G and thus quoting the first phrase of the first large chorale Kyrie, Gott Vater in Ewigkeit (Example 15).

Exactly in the middle of this second section, the majestic first theme reappears, rhythmically strengthened by its syncopations, and dividing the whole fugue into two equal parts of 36 + 22½ : 22½ + 36 (Example 16).

Finally, the third and last section of the fugue written in 12/8 time signature, expounds a third theme that will later be combined with the first and with a varied form of the second theme. This third theme seems to use a bass cadence formula of C–F, and B-flat–E-flat (Example 17).

Most impressive is the perfect formal symmetry of the whole fugue organized in: (20 + 16 =) 36 measures + (22½ + 22½ =) 45 measures + (16 + 20 =) 36 measures.

Considering the fugue as a whole and the most natural tempo relationship of its three time signatures (half note = dotted half note = dotted quarter note), one can conclude the following:

a) the first and the third sections of the fugue are equal in length lasting 36 measures each, divided into 20 + 16, respectively, into 16 + 20;

b) applying the tempo relationship “half note = dotted half note = dotted quarter note” and taking as a common unity of measurement the smaller quantity, i.e., the measure length of the second fugue (which has only two beats per measure vs. the four beats of the first and the third sections respectively), one obtains the following measurements for the three sections:

72 (= 36 x 2) half-measures; 45 measures and again 72 (= 36 x 2) half-measures

c) all these numbers being multiples of 9, these ratios can be reduced to:

72 (= 8 x 9); 45 (= 5 x 9); 72 (= 8 x 9), or just 8 + 5 (= 13) + 8 = 21

d) this series of numbers 8, 5, 13, 21 belongs to the famous “Fibonacci progression” starting by 1:1:2:3:5:8:13:21 and reaching the golden ratio or divine proportion (= “proportio divina”) in the infinite.

e) NB! according to the Italian Renaissance mathematician Luca Pacioli the golden ratio might symbolize the Holy Trinity:

A (the greater quantity/God Father) : B (the smaller quantity/God the consubstantial Son) = (A + B) : A, or, theologically speaking:

A (God Father) engenders B (the consubstantial Son) and, out of these two, proceeds A + B (the Holy Spirit);

f) could this majestic, astonishingly built fugue thus represent once more the ultimate Symbol of the Holy Trinity?

g) its perfectly symmetrical construction is most impressive:

First section (40 half measures—cadence—32 half measures),

Second section (22½—22½ measures)

Third section (32 half measures—cadence—40 half measures), or, more simply:

40 – 32 – 22½ – 22½ – 32 – 40 measure lengths of the second section.

X

Taking a more attentive, new look at the Third Part of Bach’s Clavier-Übung, one discovers some interesting facts concerning the overall compositional plan, a plan corresponding also to Bach’s work, the B Minor Mass:

a) both cycles contain a total of 27 movements each.

b) these 27 movements are divided into two groups of: 6 “free” works without a cantus firmus (prelude in E-flat, the four Duettos, and the final fugue) and the 21 chorales; NB! the “Missa” and the “Symbolum Nicenum” in the
B Minor Mass have together 12 + 9 = 21 movements and the last section of the B Minor Mass (“Sanctus,” “Osanna,” “Benedictus,” “Osanna,” “Agnus Dei,” and “Dona nobis pacem”) also contains 6 movements.

c) the 21 chorales in the Clavier-Übung are divided twice into: 9 for the Lutheran Mass (“Kyrie-Christe-Kyrie – Gloria:” Trinity) and 12 dealing with Luther’s Catechism plus Sacraments.

d) The 21 chorales are also divided (“musically”) into 12 and 9 chorales by the 13th chorale written as a French overture and thus opening the rest of 9 chorales.

[NB! All these numbers are multiples of 3 (Trinity again!).]

e) could the total number of 27 pieces possibly recall in both the Clavier-Übung and the B Minor Mass the 27 books of the New Testament?

f) could the number of 21 pieces allude to the “Teaching Books” of the New Testament, the 21 Epistles, and the 6 “free works” to the four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the prophetic Apocalypse of John?

g) could one not consider the overall architecture of Bach’s most impressive cycles, Clavier-Übung III and the B Minor Mass, as huge symbols for the New Testament and thereby also for Martin Luther’s Theology?

Jonathan Hehn

Jonathan Hehn, OSL, is a musician and liturgist currently serving University of Notre Dame in Notre Dame, Indiana. He is a brother in the Order of Saint Luke, a religious order committed to sacramental renewal and liturgical scholarship, and holds degrees in music from Florida State University (Bachelor of Music, Doctor of Music), Tallahassee, Florida, and theology from University of Notre Dame (Master of Sacred Music, Master of Arts). A passionate practitioner, writer, and thinker, one can find him on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram @JonathanHehn.

Jean Langlais (1907–1991) was one of the best-known organist-composers of the twentieth century. He rightfully holds a place of prominence in the French school alongside his contemporary and friend, Olivier Messiaen. Langlais, who was blind from the age of two, studied organ first under André Marchal at the Institut National des Jeunes Aveugles (National Institute for Blind Children). Later, in the early 1930s, he studied organ with Marcel Dupré and composition with Paul Dukas at the Paris Conservatory.

By 1945 he had been appointed titular organist of the Basilica of Sainte Clotilde in Paris, where he stood in the line of Charles Tournemire and César Franck. Over the course of his lifetime, he performed more than three hundred concerts in the United States and became world renowned as a teacher, especially of the art of improvisation. His published works for organ are numerous, often based on Gregorian chants or hymn tunes.

The suite Cinq Méditations sur l’Apocalypse is an excellent example of the composer’s mature style. It was first published in 1974, and Langlais attested that it was conceived over a more than thirty-year period. Thus this suite represents compositional skills accumulated over a lifetime. It is far more esoteric than some of his other works, even those of the same period. Marie-Louise Jaquet-Langlais has pointed out that, because Cinq Méditations was not a commissioned work, the composer was able to compose it freely, without limits on style, length, or subject matter.¹

Because of the immensity and density of Cinq Méditations, it took me several years to find an opportune time to perform the work in its entirety in a single sitting. I was fortunate to finally be able to do so on All Saints Day, November 1, 2020, in the Basilica of the Sacred Heart on the campus of the University of Notre Dame. The preparation process was intentionally long and careful, and as I prepared each movement, I made note of many instances of errata in the published score, available from Alphonse Leduc/Editions Bornemann. With a work this size, there are bound to be editing errors, and indeed that is the case here. I present here a list of errata in a lightly annotated fashion, along with some simple program notes. My hope, as future organists continue to discover this masterpiece of organ literature, is that those who seek to learn Cinq Méditations can take advantage of that list in their preparations, in order to present the intentions of the composer as accurately as possible.

More than a little gratitude is due to my colleagues Dr. Beverly Howard, professor emerita of music at California Baptist University, and Dr. Marshall Jones, adjunct professor at Flathead Valley Community College and music director at Bethlehem Lutheran Church, Kalispell, Montana. Both are music theorists and organists who offered invaluable advice on some of the more ambiguous spots I address in the score, and who provided clarifying language in many instances.

Performing notes

The overall organizing principle for Cinq Méditations is textual more than it is musical. That is, the movements are each musical reflections on a verse or passage from the Book of Revelation, sometimes referred to in both French and English as the “Apocalypse of John.” Langlais reportedly read the Book of Revelation many times, and the profundity of this suite reflects both his deep understanding of and also deep respect for Saint John’s epistle. Langlais also had a timely reason for finishing the composition of a work pondering the end times; in 1973, just one year prior to the suite’s publication, he suffered a severe heart attack that almost killed him. As Mme. Langlais has also said, this may have proved the impetus for Jean finally completing this long-gestated work.

As with much of the organ music of Messiaen, works by Langlais are often meant to be heard in a church replete with visual splendor, intentional architecture, and a substantial acoustic. In the slower movements, Langlais’ music often moves at an incredibly slow pace, a tool that both he and other composers have used to evoke a sense of eternity. When performing this piece in concert, I often encourage listeners to let their eyes wander and peruse the visual offerings of the space in which they find themselves while listening. Gothic and Gothic revival architecture is particularly appropriate to this exercise, since the design of such spaces is meant to draw the eye upward throughout the room, as if transporting its observers into the eternity of heaven. Allowing one’s gaze to wander upward while listening to pieces such as Langlais’ Cinq Méditations can make clear the natural affinity between the form of this music and the form of the building.

At other times, in both slow and fast sections, Langlais inserts long moments of silence between musical phrases. In so doing, he exploits the acoustics of the room by allowing the sound to slowly dissipate into its far reaches, and the mind of the listener to absorb what has just been heard. Again, live performances given in an appropriate space make clear certain aspects of the work that are not fully graspable when listening to recordings or in a concert hall.

Errata and notes for individual movements

Because the published score does not contain measure numbers, the locations of each error will be noted as page (p.#), system (s.#), measure (m.#), and beat (b.#). Erratum 1 in the following list, for example, is listed as “p. 3, s. 1, m. 1, b. 4,” meaning page 3, system 1, measure 1 of that system, beat 4 of that measure. Where there is no fixed meter, the beat numbers are omitted.

I. Celui qui a des oreilles, qu’il Оcoute (He that has ears, let him hear)

A fugue with a wide-ranging subject, this introductory movement features a recurring statement of the fourth Gregorian psalm tone by the pedal. Each statement of the psalm tone presents a different number of syllables, suggesting that this movement was based on a particular chanted text, though Langlais gives no clue as to what that text might be.

• Example 1: p. 3, s. 1, m. 1, b. 4: the stem is missing in the bass voice G-sharp. It should be a quarter note.

• Example 2: p. 3, s. 2, m. 1, b. 1: there is a missing beam in the bass voice. There should be two eighth notes.

II. Il Оtait, Il est, et Il vient (He is, He was, and He is to come)

This movement is divided into five large sections. The first, third, and fifth sections each feature a constant high drone on the note F, perhaps symbolizing the unity and eternity of Christ, underneath which curling, syncopated motives explore various harmonic intervals against the drone. The second and fourth sections each present a different Gregorian chant related to the incarnation. First, there is “Vexilla Regis Prodeunt,” a hymn of triumph of the Cross: “The Banners of the King issue forth, the mystery of the Cross does gleam, where the Creator of flesh, in the flesh, from the cross-bar is hung.” Then, in the fourth section, there is “Lauda Sion,” the Sequence hymn for Feast of Corpus Christi: “Sion, lift up your voice and sing: Praise your Savior and your King, Praise with hymns your shepherd true.”

• Example 3: p. 5, s. 3, m. 2: “Nazard” should read “ – Nazard,” to indicate taking that stop off. The Nazard has already been drawn in the Positif from the beginning of the movement.

• Example 4: p. 5, s. 2, m. 2, b. 3: Pedal G-natural should be A-natural, since in all other places, the pedal doubles the left hand at the octave.

• Example 5a: p. 6, s. 4, m. 2, b. 3: in the right hand, bottom voice, the second D should be D-flat. If a new edition were made, one might also change the C-sharps in system 3, measures 3–4 to D-flats for consistency and also for voice-leading considerations (Example 5b).

(p. 6, s. 4, m. 2, b. 3)

(p. 6, s. 3, m. 3)

• Example 6: p. 6, s. 4, m. 3, b. 1: in the right hand, middle voice, A-flat should be A-natural to match preceding examples.

• Example 7: p. 7, s. 3, m. 2, b. 2: the right hand is marked as a quarter note but should be an eighth note to accommodate the eighth rest immediately following. The flag is simply missing from the notehead.

• Example 8: p. 10, s. 3, m. 5: the left-hand middle voice, G in the final quarter note should probably be A-flat, because of the presence of the tie and given what is happening in the measures around it.

• Example 9: p. 10, s. 4, m. 1: ties are missing in the left hand at the beginning of the measure. They should have carried over from the previous system.

• Example 10: p. 10, s. 4, m. 2: the last chord is missing staccato marks in both hands. Also, the staccato markings are inconsistently applied in the previous two measures.

• Example 11: p. 10, s. 4, mm. 2–3: possible missing ties in the bottom two voices of the left hand between these two measures.

• Example 12: p. 13, s. 3, m. 2: the last note of the right hand (D-flat) should tie to the pedal C-sharp in the next measure. (cf. all other analogous passages in pp. 14–15).

• Example 13: p. 16, s. 1, m. 5: a slur is missing between the right-hand E-flat and pedal E-natural in the next measure. Even though it is not a common tone as in previous analogous spots, the dangling slur in the pedal makes it clear that it should connect from the right hand in the previous measure.

III. Visions prophetiques (Prophetic visions)

“Visions prophetiques” is the only movement of the suite whose title is not a direct quote from Revelation. It is a sort of bombastic scherzo; an initial section played on full organ registration is repeated later after each of several contrasting sections. Because of its clear form and the range of styles present in this single movement, I have often played it as a standalone piece.

• Example 14: p. 17, s. 1, m. 2: the left-hand part is missing three quarter-note rests.

• Example 15: p 19, s. 2, m. 5: top staff, top voice, last D-natural should be a D-flat. Voice leading suggests all parts should have moved down by a whole step (also cf. the first chord in that measure).

• Example 16: p. 21, s. 1, mm. 1–2: no pedal registration has been indicated for this section, so the indication to add the 4′ flute does not make sense. The texture here and the previous instruction at m. 28 suggest that this section should begin with 16′ and 8′ flutes as well as the Positif to Pédale coupler, adding the 4′ flute as indicated at this transition point.

• Example 17: p. 23, s. 2, m. 3: B in the first left-hand chord is erroneously marked as sharp. It should be A-sharp and B-natural as in preceding measure.

IV. Oh oui, viens, Seigneur Jésus (Even so, come, Lord Jesus)

It is odd that Langlais would choose to place this movement fourth in the suite rather than last, since “Oh oui, viens, Seigneur Jésus” is based on the final verse of the book of Revelation. Through his use of slow tempos, simple textures, and pensive melodies, he is here clearly exploring concepts of eternity, in a way reminiscent of Messiaen’s Le banquet céleste.

• Example 18: p. 24, s. 2, mm. 2–3: there should be a breath mark between measures 2 and 3 (cf. the corresponding passage at the top of p. 26).

• Example 19: p. 24, s. 4, m. 3: Sharps are missing from both pedal notes (cf. p. 26, s. 1, mm. 3–4).

• Example 20: p. 25, s. 4, m. 3: registration indications refer to Positif, not Récit. Also, the indication about which manual to play on is missing. Both hands should be on the Récit as at the beginning.

• Example 21: p. 26, s. 1, m. 3: middle C in the left hand should be C-sharp. The note to which it is tied in the next measure is sharp, and there is also an analogous spot with the C-sharp on p. 24, system 2.

• Example 22: p. 26, s. 2, mm. 2–3: it is possible that a tie is missing between the two A-flats in measures 2 and 3 of this system. This could also just be assumed because of the practice of tying common notes in much of the French repertoire.

V. La cinquième trompette (The fifth trumpet)

The final movement of Cinq Méditations brings to bear the full range of Langlais’ compositional techniques. Besides that, it is the movement perhaps most visually evocative of the readings on which it is based. This movement was the one that initially sparked my interest in the Cinq Meditations. Listen for Langlais’ clear imitation of the fifth trumpet (mentioned in the reading) and the “song” of the locusts, presented similarly to Messiaen’s quotations of bird song. The movement, and the suite as a whole, ends in a glorious and yet also terrifying toccata.

• Example 23: p. 27, s. 3, m. 6: a half rest is missing from the top staff.

• Example 24: p. 29, s. 4, m. 1: the right-hand sextuplet marks are missing but can be inferred from left-hand underlay in m. 49 and from markings present at the top of p. 30. There are similar instances of missing sextuplet markings on systems 1 and 2 of p. 29, but these are less consequential since there is a one-voice texture at each of those points.

• Example 25: p. 30, s. 3, m. 1: a tempo change is called for but is missing from the score. It should return to “Allegro” (100 beats per minute) as at p. 27, s. 2.

• Example 26: p. 30 s. 4, m. 1: the right hand should be played on the Récit (cf. p. 28 and other places).

• Example 27: p. 31, s. 1, m. 1 and following: “8va” marking is missing an end point. It would make the most sense if the bracket ended with the middle C-sharp in m. 71. It looks as if that may have been the intent but the registration instructions interfered with the layout in the engraving process.

• Example 28: p. 34, s. 2, m. 3: the right-hand lower voice should be G-natural both times to be consistent with analogous spots. This also gives consistency to the parallel tritone movement, prevalent throughout this section.

• Example 29: p. 34, s. 3, m. 3: the right hand is missing dots on the whole-note chord, which should match the left hand.

• Example 30: p. 34, s. 4, m. 3: the metronome marking is incorrect. Quarter note = 104 is impossible to play, and should be eighth note = 104.

• Example 31: p. 35, s. 1, m. 2: First five notes of the right hand should be beamed together as in the
following beats.

• Example 32: p. 36, s. 1, m. 1: the left-hand bottom voice should be E-natural (see the tie in preceding bar and cf. p. 26, s. 4, m. 3).

• Example 33: p. 37, s. 1, m. 1: the high F-sharp in the right hand should be D-sharp as in all other
surrounding measures.

• Example 34: p. 41, s. 2, m. 2: the right-hand low A-natural is missing a courtesy accidental, since the A is already flat in the left hand, b.1.

• Example 35: p. 41, s. 2, m. 3: there is a wrong number of beats in left-hand and pedal rests at beginning of the measure. There should be a sixteenth followed by a dotted sixteenth to match the right-hand rhythm.

Notes

1. Liner notes by Marie-Louise Langlais, translated by Roger Greaves, for the compact disc Suite Médiévale/Cinq Méditations sur l’Apocalypse, by Jean Langlais, Bruno Matthieu (organist), Naxos Records 8.553190, 1996, p. 3.

Cinq Méditations sur l’Apocalypse, by Jean-François Langlais. Copyright (c) 1974 by Alphonse Leduc Editions Musicales. International Copyright Secured. All Rights Reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard, LLC.

Robert McCormick

Robert McCormick has been organist and choirmaster of Saint Mark’s Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia, since 2016. Previously he held similar positions at Saint Paul’s Church, K Street, in Washington, D.C., and at Saint Mary the Virgin, New York City. He is represented in North America exclusively by Phillip Truckenbrod Concert Artists, LLC.

Introduction

The art of improvisation at the organ has enjoyed a renewed interest in recent years, perhaps in part due to competitions such as the American Guild of Organists’ National Competition in Organ Improvisation (NCOI) and to the many recordings by celebrated improvisers such as Pierre Cochereau and Gerre Hancock. This article is in two parts—the first is an introduction to a planned series of interviews and discussions with a diverse array of American practitioners of the craft; the second is the first in that series. We begin with Matthew Glandorf, long-time member of the faculty of the Curtis Institute of Music, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and a church musician with a wide range of denominational experience, including Roman Catholic, Lutheran, and Episcopal churches, among others. He presently serves as organist and choirmaster of the Episcopal Church of the Good Shepherd, Rosemont, Pennsylvania, and preceded me at Saint Mark’s Episcopal Church, Locust Street, Philadelphia, where I have been organist and choirmaster since 2016.

Background

I began “making things up” at the piano before learning to read music; playing by ear was a skill that developed alongside my musical training. I cannot recall a time when I did not try to concoct my own music. Will all those to be featured in this series be able to recall similar memories? Is this a near-universal experience for those who gravitate toward improvising? (To be clear, I think it is never too late to begin!)

Throughout childhood and adolescence, especially as I began playing in church and then took up a weekly position in high school (first for a United Methodist church, and subsequently for a Southern Baptist congregation, a far cry from my more recent Anglo-Catholic/high church Episcopal environs), improvisation on hymns (both as hymn preludes, of a sort, and for congregational singing) was a frequent endeavor. I learned many harmonic progressions and “dirty chords” before I understood what they were, in any formal sense, or was able to do any sort of analysis. Is this, too, commonplace among improvisers? (Eventually my understanding of music theory caught up, but not for a long time, it seems.)

A watershed moment for me was being appointed organist and director of music at the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, Times Square, New York City, in 2001, just after graduating from Westminster Choir College. The elaborate liturgies and long processions of “Smoky Mary’s” required a great amount of substantive improvisation, and I was a bit intimidated. I realized that I had to go beyond the so-called “Anglican fudge,” with a few dirty chords thrown in, learning to extemporize something that did more than merely fill time—because often there was a lot of time to fill. How many others began to study improvisation seriously not just of interest but of necessity? (That marvelous organ and the church’s acoustic became great teachers, as well.)

Shortly thereafter, I began regular study both in improvisation and repertoire with McNeil Robinson, longtime chair of the organ department at the Manhattan School of Music and a distinguished predecessor of mine at Saint Mary the Virgin. Robinson and Gerre Hancock were, to my mind, the greatest American organist-improvisers from the 1960s to the early twenty-first century. (Both were, of course, fine composers as well.) Robinson was a brilliant musician and formidable pedagogue, and I was terrified to improvise for him, but what an education I received! Much of it was away from the console: writing phrases, periods, and counterpoint; undertaking harmonic analysis, and so on.

All these things and more were then translated to the console. Robinson taught improvisation as composing in real time, that is, as the same process. (In a way, I studied composition with him just as much as I did improvisation.) He encouraged and enabled me to develop my own musical language by which to undergird structurally coherent, extemporized pieces. In this series, I hope to learn more about the primary teachers of some of my colleagues and how they were taught. Additionally, who else influenced them? (Hancock was an inspiration to so many of us. I only had one private lesson with him in improvisation, but it was one of the best lessons of my life.)

I recall well the first time, upon request, I improvised in recital. It was a daunting task: it is one thing, I thought, to accompany liturgical action, but to hold an audience captive only to listen to my musical imagination? (Nowadays, I nearly always improvise in recital, though never want to overstay my welcome; so far, no one with a hook has pulled me off the console, and the improvisations seem to be well received and appreciated. Whew.) What led some of my colleagues to begin improvising outside a liturgical context?

What about competitions? How have they shaped others as improvisers? I only ever entered one, the Saint Albans Organ Festival, still very young and green; it was a terrific learning experience, though never to be repeated, for whatever reason. Were competitions a major influence, or not, on other improvisers?

There are a few further questions I hope to explore in this series. Is there a distinctively American manner of improvising, and do others feel there is something “American” about their musical language or general approach? Is their harmonic vocabulary unique to themselves or a synthesis of various styles and composers, or both? Is there a major distinction to be made between improvising as literally composing in real time, as opposed to imitating historical models or styles? (McNeil Robinson had me imitate historic styles as a pedagogical exercise, and to this day I do so from time to time to try to keep sharp, but aside from liturgical miniatures I rarely improvise in public in anything other than my own “voice.” For what it is worth, I would regard both Hancock and Robinson as improvisers nearly always in their own distinct voices, with occasional forays into the imitation of others.) Which approach do my colleagues favor, or both? Or is that a distinction without a difference?

Discussion

And now, let us learn from and about Matthew Glandorf, an extremely imaginative improviser who extemporizes marvelously both in liturgical and concert settings.

Robert McCormick: When, how, and why did you start playing by ear and inventing your own music? How did it coincide with your childhood music training?

Matthew Glandorf: As far back as I can remember, I was either making things up at the piano and organ or “figuring out” pieces I had heard. I started on the violin at the age of four and piano at seven. My piano teacher gave me a notebook of manuscript paper, and I was encouraged to write my own pieces. However, at this point I barely read music, so there was a disconnect between what I played and what I had written. My father, who was a Lutheran pastor as well as an organist, collected reharmonizations for hymns, and I became familiar with “dirty chords.”

How did you employ improvisation in public over the course of your childhood? Did you improvise in church in some way?

While my family was living in Germany, I was appointed to my first church job at age ten, playing for services at the nearby Royal Air Force and military base. I usually improvised my own preludes and postludes on a spinet piano, and in retrospect I realize that I would try to vary the style so that it didn’t sound the same week after week.

Once I began playing at my home parish it was customary to play short chorale preludes in a free style. Additionally, after I had formal training in four-part writing, I used the chorale book with the melody only, creating my own harmonizations.

Did you understand the music theory behind what you were doing, or did that understanding catch up later?

I think I had a natural sense of harmony and voice leading. I was lucky to have a phenomenal piano teacher in Germany who spent an hour at each lesson on music theory and figured bass before we even started on literature.

Was there a watershed moment that inspired you to develop your skills seriously?

My family had a record of Gerre Hancock improvising at Saint Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, which was a huge influence on me. I started off imitating what Hancock was doing and gradually began to develop my own language from that. But since early childhood I knew that that was what I wanted to be able to do! I always improvised alongside learning the literature.

Who were your principal teachers and influences in improvisation? How did you learn from them?

Strangely enough, I never had any formal training in improvisation! I wanted to take lessons with Gerre Hancock, but I went and played for him, and he said, “I think you’re doing fine on your own.” (Although I was disappointed, I now take that as a huge compliment.) My mentor as a student at Curtis, Dr. Ford Lallerstedt, who had been a student of Vernon de Tar as well as of Hancock at Juilliard, gave me further encouragement. Ford, too, is a brilliant improviser, with one of the finest ears I’ve ever encountered. I did my graduate studies with McNeil Robinson at the Manhattan School of Music, yet he, too, seemed disinterested in working on improvisation. However, I also think Robinson was one of the finest improvisers in the country. Other notable improvisers who influenced me were Pierre Cochereau, Philippe Lefebvre, and eventually Wolfgang Seifen and Sietze de Vries. The latter two really opened my imagination to improvising in historical styles.

When did you first improvise in a concert setting?

In my early twenties I began to gain the courage to include improvisations in my concerts. Now, I would prefer only to improvise and leave the literature for more capable players than myself!

Did you ever enter a competition in improvisation?

I did enter the NCOI in the early 1990s in Dallas. Frankly, I didn’t play that well: somehow having the spotlight on me in that fashion caused me to freeze up creatively. By that point I realized that I predominantly leave everything up to “inspiration in the moment.” Discipline doesn’t come naturally to me, but gradually I have refined practice techniques to strengthen my chops, so I can always have something to rely on if the mood isn’t “just right.”

Do you consider yourself to have your own distinct musical language? Is there anything distinctly “American” about your improvising? For you, how does the creative process differ when you are imitating a historical style? Is it a different process altogether or a different side of the same coin? What about improvising in different liturgical traditions, for instance, Lutheran versus Anglo-Catholic?

For me the real fun of improvising is to be able to make a statement that feels appropriate to the moment. This is especially true in liturgical improvisation, when much of the point is to create a specific mood, or to comment on the liturgical action. I also try to match the style with the hymns or choral music being sung so they are in some sort of dialogue. Although the requirements for improvisation in the Lutheran tradition versus that of the high Anglican are different (there is more need for occasional improvisation in a high church liturgy for the censing of the altar, processions, etc.), I try to be eclectic in style, ranging from Sweelinck to Howells to Vierne to Messiaen to Mendelssohn. I think having a distinctive voice as an improviser happens by accident, so I try not to fuss too much about that.

In terms of the process of improvising in historical styles, I try to study scores and read through literature to see how it’s done from the inside out. For example, if I am working through the French Baroque, I’ll read through a handful of that repertoire, getting a sense of the harmonic progressions, melodic contours, and, of course, the ornamentation. Then it’s about practicing the same way I practice literature. Whether I am improvising in a historical style or something avant-garde, it is always premeditated, starting on the macro level, in terms of the general shape and form, adding melodic and rhythmic motives that will serve as an underlying structure. But the essential discipline for me is never far away from written composition.

In terms of an American identity, I was born in the United States, grew up in Germany, was raised Lutheran, became an Episcopalian, and was heavily influenced by French organ music. One of the interesting developments of common liturgical practices of the mainline denominations over the past fifty years is how Roman Catholics now sing hymns from the Protestant tradition, Anglicans sing German chorales, and Lutherans sing hymns of Charles Wesley. Anglicans and Lutherans have moved away from Morning Prayer to weekly Eucharist. This ecumenical dialogue really opens possibilities for eclectic and diverse forms of liturgical improvisation.

Although I improvise in different styles from across the centuries, often I cross-pollinate say, French Baroque, with a more contemporary language. In that sense, such a hybrid approach is distinctly American.

How does improvisation differ from composing to you? If you prefer improvising, why?

I have composed over the years, but I don’t consider myself a “capital letter” composer. I don’t feel like I have anything truly important to say. At times, listeners have asked me why I don’t write down my improvisations. I always say that would ruin the spontaneity of the moment in which the creation was happening. I believe we listen differently to improvisation, as we are hearing composition in real time. And that is unique!

Finally, I would conclude that the study of sixteenth-century species counterpoint (a subject shamefully not taught nearly enough) has completely informed me as an improviser. It is my favorite subject to teach because it simply is the grammar of music and voice leading. Counterpoint and imitation are the two most important ingredients in good improvisation. Even if I’m doing something that is “way out there” and experimental, I still believe that good voice leading skills and the ability to imitate are paramount.

Conclusion

Already I have learned much from Matt Glandorf, how his experiences and practices both are like and unlike mine, and I hope readers will find both perspectives illuminating. Please stay tuned for further installments in this series, as we explore improvisation with gifted exponents of a fascinating and sometimes mysterious art.