RSCM book on Sir William Henry Harris

by James B. Hartman

Notes

                  1.              A General History of Music, From the Earliest Ages to the Present Period (1789), vol. 2. (New York: Dover Publications, 1957), 380. Selections from Burney's essay on Purcell, pages 375-416, are reprinted in Michael Burden, Purcell Remembered, 139-141.

                  2.              See "Purcell manuscript acquired by British Library," describing the only known keyboard manuscript of 20 pieces in Purcell's own hand, and the recording of the entire manuscript of Purcell's keyboard works on three period instruments by harpsichordist Davitt Moroney, The Diapason, June 1995, 6.

                  3.              See also The Purcell Companion, edited by Michael Burden (Amadeus Press, 1995), reviewed by Enrique Alberto Arias in The Diapason, November 1995, 8-9. The book contains 11 essays in five sections: Introduction, Background, A Composer for Church and Chamber, Purcell and the Theatre, and Purcell in Performance.

                  4.              The are some inconsistencies in the end date of chapter 2 and the start date of chapter 3, and between the contents outline and the chapter headings in the text, as well as an inaccuracy in the start date of chapter 5.   

                  5.              The date and location of the first performance of Dido and Aeneas has been a matter of speculation. Recent research supporting the title-date connection is cited in King, 173; the problem is acknowledged but not resolved in Burden's introduction to the contemporary reference (Purcell Remembered, 79); Holman concludes "I suspect, however, that the last word has not been said on the matter" (Henry Purcell, 195).

                  6.              (Richard Goodson, the elder?), Orpheus Britannicus, ii (1702, 1711), cited in Holman, 21.

Henry Purcell, by Robert King. London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1994. 256 pages, 103 illustrations, 13 in color. $34.95.

Purcell Remembered, by Michael Burden. Portland, OR: Amadeus Press, 1995. xxv + 188 pages, 17 b/w illustrations. $29.95 hardcover plus $5.50 s&h, $17.95 papercover plus $4.50 s&h. Available from the publisher, 133 S.W. Second Ave., Portland, OR 97204-3527.

Henry Purcell, by Peter Holman. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. xvii + 250 pages, 42 musical examples. $17.95, paper.

Dr. Charles Burney (1726-1814), one of England's earliest and most notable music historians, wrote: "Unluckily for Purcell! he built his fame with such perishable materials, that his worth and works are daily diminishing, while the reputation of our poets and philosophers is increasing by the constant study and use of their productions. And so much is our great musician's celebrity already consigned to tradition, that it will soon be as difficult to find his songs, or, at least to hear them, as those of his predecessors, Orpheus and Amphion. . . ." Burney attributed the disregard of the work of this superior genius, "equal to that of the greatest masters on the continent," to the changeability of taste in music and to "an inferior band to the Italian opera composers, as well as inferior singers, and an inferior audience, to write for."1 Fortunately for Western musical culture, these impediments to the appreciation of Purcell's music no longer exist.

The level of awareness of Purcell's music in recent years has been increased by the discovery of new manuscripts,2 recordings, progress towards the completion of the comprehensive edition of his works, the publication of books, exhibitions, and other special media events connected with the 1995 tercentenary year. The number and diversity of Purcell's creative output--anthems, domestic sacred music, services, catches, odes, secular vocal music, theater works, keyboard works, consort music--present a challenge to complete comprehension.

In recognition of the tercentenary year, eight books have been published between 1994 and 1996; seven of these will be discussed in these pages in two installments.3 The books in the first group, general in outlook, present the historical background of Purcell's time, provide a picture of his life from scattered sources, and establish a credible context for his compositional genres; those in the second group, more closely focussed and which include two edited collections of essays, deal with specific aspects of the development of Purcell's musical style and performance practices, then and now. All of these works contribute much to deepening our appreciation of this 17th-century master from these diverse viewpoints, ranging from the social and musical setting in which he worked to the opinions of critics and musicians across the centuries.

Robert King is one of Britain's leading baroque conductors. While at Cambridge University he founded The King's Consort, a period-instrument orchestra. He has made over 50 recordings; about one-half of these feature the music of Purcell, for which he researched and prepared his own performing editions. His current project is the recording of all of Purcell's odes, welcome songs, secular solo songs, and sacred music. His historically oriented book, Henry Purcell, provides a fitting introduction to this group of tercentenary publications.

The brief Prologue of the book touches upon several themes identified in other books: Purcell's acknowledged genius; the diversity of his compositions for the church, the opera house, the theater, small domestic instrumental forces, and his royal patrons. It also comments on the lack of information about Purcell himself, who left few letters and no personal diaries. Our present picture of Purcell, therefore, is a composite sketch compiled from scanty references in official records set against the wider historical background, which King treats in considerable detail throughout five chapters, each dealing with a politically defined chronological period.

Chapter 1, "A Restoration Childhood, 1659-1668," covers the period from the dissolution of Cromwell's Protectorate parliament to the "Triple Alliance," the diplomatic triumph of King Charles II. In this period Henry Purcell senior was appointed Master of the Choristers at Westminster Abbey, where he worked with his counterpart at the Chapel Royal on the choral and instrumental music for the royal coronation. Also, Thomas Purcell, young Henry's uncle, received an appointment as composer at the royal court. The catastrophic plague of 1665--the cause of the death of Henry's father in 1664 might have been due to an earlier isolated outbreak--and the great fire of London in 1666 undoubtedly left lasting impressions on the young Purcell. Whether "the wistfulness that is so prevalent in Purcell's music could therefore be seen as a manifestation of a little boy still crying for his lost father" (p. 42) is perhaps an excessive psycho-biographical speculation, however.

Chapter 2, "Learning the Trade, 1668-1677,"4 reconstructs the musical scene at the Chapel Royal from the time when young Henry became a chorister there at the age of eight or nine to the death of the eminent musician Matthew Locke, court composer and also a friend of Henry's father and uncle. As a chorister, the young Purcell's musical education included lessons from John Blow and Christopher Gibbons, son of Orlando. Although the Chapel boys were encouraged to compose, no composition by Purcell has survived. Along with other boys, he might have acted in London theatrical performances--a formative experience for his later influential years in that context. When his treble singing days were over, Purcell became assistant-apprentice to the supervisor of the royal instruments ("regals, organs, virginals, flutes and recorders and all other kind of wind instruments whatsoever"), a position that ensured contact with court musicians. Whether or not Purcell ever was a pupil of Matthew Locke, the latter's influence on the youth must have been great, partly through the composer's association with the Purcell family, but more directly through the court performances of Locke's music, whose style is reflected in the ode Purcell composed on the death of Locke.

Chapter 3, "Rising Star: Purcell at the Court of Charles II, 1677-1685," chronicles the period from the time when the teenage Purcell was appointed court composer, succeeding Locke, to the death of the royal patron. Commencing with this chapter, the author's discussions of Purcell's compositions include comments on their editions, scoring, musical textures, harmonic language, structural devices, expressive features, and general aesthetic characteristics, all of which provide condensed program notes for the works described. Purcell's compositions in this period included church anthems, the first small-scale songs to go into print, odes and welcome songs for royal occasions, verse anthems, and various instrumental pieces, including the Sonnata's of III Parts, published in 1683. His first commissioned work for the celebration of St. Cecilia's Day appeared in the same year. Only a year before, Purcell had received an appointment as one of the three organists of the Chapel Royal, and a year later he assumed the position of full supervisor and keeper of the royal instruments, following the death of his mentor. The infamous "battle of the organs," an acrimonious contest in 1684 between the builders Bernard Smith and Renatus Harris over the contract for a new organ for the Temple Church was resolved in Smith's favor, after much hostility and a mischievous act of sabotage; the players on Smith's instrument at the trials were Purcell and Blow.

Chapter 4, "Changing Fortunes: Purcell and King James, 1685-1688," covers the short period from the coronation of King James II, for which Purcell set up an organ in Westminster Abbey and contributed a grand, large-scale anthem, to the King's flight from England following political upheavals. During this uncertain time Purcell maintained his position as one of the three organists in the Chapel Royal, but the position of official court composer went to Blow; accordingly, Purcell turned his attention from writing anthems to developing the devotional song--his solo vocal writing at its best--and to his first royal ode. As Purcell wrote less music for the church and more secular vocal music, his compositions began to appear increasingly in printed editions. Even so, his financial affairs suffered on account of the King's decision to open a new Roman Catholic chapel at Whitehall, staffed by highly paid musicians imported from abroad. Purcell was among the royal employees who had to battle for payment for their services, but eventually he was paid "for repairing ye Organs and furnishing Harpsichords."

Chapter 5, "Maturity Cut Short: Purcell under William and Mary, 1688 [sic]-1695," opens at a critical point in English constitutional history, the declaration in 1689 of William and Mary as king and queen. Purcell had control of the organ loft for their coronation, and he produced the first of six birthday odes for the new queen in the same year. Although royal patronage in music was diminishing, Purcell maintained a busy schedule at court (still as supervisor of the royal instruments) and the Chapel Royal, in addition to his responsibilities at Westminster Abbey. The production in 1689 at a girl's boarding school of an opera, presumed to have been Dido and Aeneas,5 marked the beginning of his career as the leading composer for the London theater. The sources, production, and musical features of his various works for the genre are supplied in appropriate detail throughout this chapter. About a month after the annual celebrations of St. Cecilia's Day in November 1694, Queen Mary died in the smallpox epidemic that was sweeping London; Purcell composed a march and some vocal music for her funeral service in Westminster Abbey, and later, the music for two elegies. Purcell's own premature death at the age of 36, attributed to tuberculosis, was also marked by a ceremony in Westminster Abbey, when some of the music he had composed for Queen Mary's funeral was again played. A brief Epilogue to the book mentions various persons who paid tribute to England's greatest musical figure and to some significant 20th-century performances of his work.

This elegantly produced and thoroughly researched book successfully interweaves highlights of social and political events with the state of music in late 17th-century England. The numerous graphic illustrations of persons, places, and important events of the period that accompany the text, including a double-page, full-color painting of London in flames, bring a sense of immediacy that transcends the verbal accounts. For these reasons this book provides a stimulating introduction to the study of Purcell for the general reader. A useful supplement is a performer's catalogue of Purcell's works intended to aid performers and scholars as a general reference or for concert programming; pieces in the various genres contain information on titles, authors, occasions, composition dates, first performance dates, soloists, choruses, instruments, timing, and Zimmerman classification numbers. A selected discography and a selected reading list of 48 titles, chiefly historical (only six directly on Purcell), complete the volume.

*   *   *   *   *

Michael Burden is Lecturer in Music at New College, Oxford, and directs the New Chamber Opera. He has written widely on 17th- and 18th-century music and 20th-century musical theater. His book, Purcell Remembered, is a unique assembly of selections from various official publications, notices, public documents, letters, diaries, reminiscences, prefaces and dedications to Purcell's published works, and other sources relating to the composer and his times, spanning three centuries. Much of the material derived from these scattered sources is tangential to Purcell's music as such, but taken as a whole it provides an engrossing and instructive account of life in Purcell's day, and therefore it is a useful supplement to Robert King's historical narrative.

An introductory chronology of Purcell's life and works mentions other musical, political, social, and cultural events, some of which may have impressed Purcell. The selections are presented within discrete sections focussing on Purcell's early life and the Chapel Royal, singers and singing, his Sonnata's of III Parts and a battle for an organ, two coronations and a revolution, publishing and pedagogy, the stage, Purcell's death, the Restoration musical scene, recollections and assessments of Purcell's works by commentators, and similar opinions by musicians through the years.

The selections cover Purcell's life span and beyond. For example, several excerpts from the diaries of Samuel Pepys, England's observant and music-loving writer who wrote during the period 1660-1669, include a reference to a meeting in 1660 with Henry Purcell's father or uncle and the composer Matthew Locke, followed by an account of the activities at the Chapel Royal and vivid descriptions of the plague of 1665 and the Great Fire of 1666. Pepys also remarked on Purcell's first composition, a song included in a collection published in 1667. As for Purcell's death in 1695, his will is reproduced, along with a description of his interment in Westminster Abbey, some letters by his wife Frances and the publisher Henry Playford relating to the posthumous printing of some sonatas, and several odes, including Dryden's praiseful lament for "The God-like Man, Alas! too soon retir'd." The nature of Purcell the man remains obscure, apart from passing references to his "mirth and good humour, which seem to have been habitual to him"; his contemporaries and successors confined their descriptions to his musical abilities as a composer. His adult singing abilities were extolled in 1685 as "wondrous skill" in an adoring ode by Aphra Behn, the first professional writer in England. As an accomplished organist, Purcell often adjudicated the appointments of other organists and advised on the building or maintenance of church organs. Relevant passages are reproduced from church vestry minutes and from the writings of the music critic Roger North (1653-1734) concerning the great battle for the organs between the rival builders Renatus Harris and Bernard Smith, in which Purcell and Blow successfully demonstrated the Smith organ, and Giovanni Battista Draghi played the Harris instrument.

References to Purcell's small-scale vocal works highlight two contrasting subgenres; the high-minded and the down-to-earth. One example of the former was the performance of Purcell's ode for the St. Cecilia's Day celebrations in 1692; his songs, on the other hand, some of the ribald variety with their bawdy allusions, provided communal entertainment in public taverns, alehouses, and coffeehouses. An explanation of the musical structure of catches and glees, and instructions for singing them, appeared in an advertisement to John Playford's 1673 edition and later editions, along with some examples. One entertaining rebus referred to the composer:

His surname begins with the grace of a cat,

And concludes with the house of a hermit, note that;

His skill at performance each auditor wins, But the poet deserves a good kick on the shins.

Glimpses into significant historical events of Purcell's time are provided in eyewitness descriptions of the coronation of King James II in Westminster Abbey in 1685, when Purcell was organist there, and of the joint coronation of King William and Queen Mary in 1689, when Purcell attended to his usual duties at the Abbey, including the provision of a second organ. The last days and funeral rites for Queen Mary, for which Purcell contributed some of the music, are chronicled in several documents relating to the event.

Public awareness of Purcell in his own time and after his death was due in large part to the publishers John and Henry Playford, father and son, who brought out the composer's works. Their artful prefaces and self-effacing dedications--short on content, strong on flattery for royalty and the anticipated subscribers among the public--sometimes featured encomiastic verses on the collections or offered biblical justification for the learning of music. On the other hand, Purcell's opening remarks to his Choice Lessons for the Harpsichord or Spinet, published in 1696, were pedagogical in nature, consisting of directions to the performer and "Rules for Graces," a table of ornaments and embellishments. Almost a century later, Charles Burney speculated that Purcell adopted this practice to meet the needs of ignorant and clumsy performers, and that it contributed to the obsolescence of his music.

Today's readers may vicariously visit the productions of some of Purcell's theatrical works over the centuries through the descriptions by witnesses to actual performances, beginning with an account of Dido and Aeneas (?) in 1689; George Bernard Shaw's quirky review of a 1889 production of the same work provides contrast, as do the critical commentaries on later revivals by Gustav Holst and Thomas Beecham. Appropriate selections from advertisements, prologues, reviews, and recollections relating to performances of Dioclesian, King Arthur, and The Fairy Queen are included here, along with several assessments of the state of opera in England through the years. A summing-up by Sir George Dyson in 1932 acknowledged the freshness and beauty of Purcell's music for his stage productions, but attributed their lack of consistent plots and unified design to the entertainment-driven desires of the public.

The assessments of Purcell by musicians, historians, journalists, and other writers over the years consisted mainly of flattering tributes; insightful critical evaluations did not appear until recent times. For example, an unsigned contribution to the Universal Journal in 1734 described Purcell as "a Shakespear in Musick," possessed of "a most happy enterprizing Genius, join'd with a boundless Invention, and noble Design [who] made Musick answer its Ends (i.e.) move the Passions"; William Boyce, writing in 1768, praised him as "a Genius superior to any of his Predecessors . . . . equally excellent in every thing he attempted." Nevertheless, in 1893 C. Hubert H. Parry, while admitting that Purcell was the greatest genius of his age, criticized his excesses in realistic expression and his faulty judgment in matters of choral style that involved occasional lapses into innocent bathos and childishness. Peter Warlock, writing in 1927 about Purcell's fantasias, found their advanced perfection of form and content sufficient to include them in England's most significant contributions to the world's great music. A wide-ranging and perceptive review of Purcell's place in English music, written by Donald Francis Tovey in 1941, opined that Purcell was born either 50 years too soon (to gain access to the resources of Bach and Handel) or 50 years too late (to be master of the Golden Age). Sir Jack Westrup, formerly chairman of the Purcell Society for almost 20 years, writing in 1959, deplored the repetition of the limited amount of Purcell's music performed in inappropriate "realizations" from erroneous copies. Quotations by contemporary British composers Benjamin Britten, Michael Tippett, and Peter Maxwell Davies reveal their attraction to Purcell that initiated performances of his works--Davies deplores note-perfect but emotionally insensitive "authentic" performances--that contributed to the renewal of interest in the master in England and elsewhere.

Michael Burden's three-century harvest of written fragments about Purcell and his times provides in words the same sense of immediacy that Roger King's illustrated historical narrative does in pictures. Purcell Remembered includes a center section of 17 small monochrome illustrations, some of which duplicate the more opulent chromatic pictures in King's volume. A multidimensional understanding of the Purcell could therefore be achieved by reading both volumes in parallel.

*   *   *   *   *

Peter Holman is now Senior Associate Lecturer at Colchester Institute of Music, following a teaching career at the Royal Academy of Music, London, and elsewhere. In addition to writing for scholarly journals, he maintains an active performing career as a harpsichordist, organist, and director of The Parley of Instruments and musical director of Opera Restor'd. His book, Henry Purcell, provides the context for understanding the various genres within which Purcell worked: his small-scale domestic works, both vocal and instrumental, and his large-scale public works in church music, the odes, and theater music.

An opening chapter on Purcell's musical world covers the salient events of his life span: the re-establishment of musical life in the Restoration period, the role of secular musicians and performing groups, Purcell's service as a choir boy at the Chapel Royal and his early musical instruction, his duties as a music copyist, his first post as custodian and repairman of musical instruments, his activities as court composer, his succession to the position of organist at Westminster Abbey, the decline of royal patronage of music, the political accommodations of musicians, and life in the theater. Again, we are reminded that little is known about Purcell the man from direct evidence, but attempts have been made to draw character implications from the handwriting of the person described in a later poetic reference as one whose "Pride was the sole aversion of his Eye, Himself as Humble as his Art was High."6

Nearly all Restoration songs dealt with some aspect of love (usually from the male viewpoint), and Purcell's contributions to the genre--dance songs, declamatory songs, and dialogues--have always been greatly admired. The humble catch, too, was mostly preoccupied with wine and women, although Purcell provided untrained amateurs and off-duty musicians with settings of various topics: politics, loyal toasts, newsworthy events, bell-ringing, and others. The Italian influence in England was felt in both performance practice and repertory, and several ground-bass songs by Italian composers were models for Purcell and his contemporaries. Holman gives some detailed consideration to Purcell's musical language in the songs, such as the affective associations of certain keys, the colors obtained through different keys in unequal temperament, and other melodic and harmonic devices relating words, music, and emotion. Other forms treated in the same chapter include symphony songs (inappropriately called "cantatas") performed in the royal apartments, verse anthems and theater songs, some of which became models for succeeding generations of song writers.

Genre distinctions prevail in the discussion of instrumental music, such as fantasias and pavans in the contrapuntal tradition, and overtures and chaconnes as orchestral forms. Holman draws comparisons with earlier forms by Purcell's predecessors and similar works by his contemporaries, and speculates on Purcell's intentions for them as composition exercises or performance pieces. At the same time, notwithstanding the admiration of English musicians for Italianate sonatas, the relationship between Purcell's sonatas and those by Italian masters remains unresolved, as does the rationale for their sequential order in collections. As for Purcell's keyboard music, recent discoveries of Purcell manuscripts have helped to resolve some questions of Purcell as author or arranger of harpsichord works. Several organ voluntaries are now known to have been falsely attributed to him, and many others undoubtedly never were written down, due their improvisational nature.

Insofar as the tradition of cathedral music was unfamiliar to the generation that had lived through the period of the proscription of singing in church services and the destruction or dismantling of organs, Purcell and his contemporaries had much to do to rescue earlier practices and develop new repertory. Holman's discussion of church music follows Purcell's development from his youthful preoccupation with contrapuntal forms to his later absorption of the melodic, harmonic, and structural features of the Italian style. As a writer of anthems, however, Purcell perhaps owed less to Italian music than to Matthew Locke, whose compositions provided the model for works that synthesized formal counterpoint with expressive, soloistic, vocal writing and daring harmonies, but without Locke's polychoral style. The distinguishing features of Purcell's symphony anthems are discussed in some detail, including the Italian harmonic influences and sense of drama. Some useful background information accompanies the account of Purcell's last church music written for Queen Mary's funeral and performed again at Purcell's own funeral.

Apart from Purcell's three famous odes, Welcome to All the Pleasures; Hail, Bright Cecilia; and Come, Ye Sons of Art, Away, the remainder have been neglected partly on account of the toadying texts of these celebratory or welcoming compositions; besides, little is known about their origins or the circumstances of their performance. Purcell's experimentation in this genre involved contrapuntal and ground-bass writing, along with new ways--including the sophisticated Italian influences--of combining voices and instruments. The superb writing style, controlled structure, and grand scale of the ode on St. Cecilia's Day, Purcell's most popular choral work, inspired Handel to produce a birthday ode; this marked the beginning of the English secular choral tradition, according to Holman.

The reopening of the London theaters around 1660 and the presence of instrumental groups to accompany the plays also offered creative opportunities to Purcell. His first music for the theater was performed in the early 1680s, but he dropped out of the scene for almost a decade for reasons unknown. Equally obscure are the inspiration, circumstances, dating, première, foreign musical influences, and political and allegorical meanings of Dido and Aeneas. The resumption of Purcell's career in the commercial theater in 1690 was marked by the production of more than 40 works in the remaining five years of his life, including the landmark Dioclesian, the first semi-opera, followed by King Arthur and The Fairy Queen of the same genre. Holman's discussion of these and other later stage works touches upon the integration of music and action, in addition to other more purely musical issues.

The discussion of each facet of Purcell's output contains assessments of both its glories and shortcomings, with respectful consideration of unresolved and controversial issues surrounding dating, style, and other historical circumstances. The reader's assimilation of this material, however, could have been aided by a system of subheadings to identify the subtle shifts in focus and subject imbedded in the seamless flow of information within each section. Moreover, the book lacks a concluding chapter that would provide a general assessment of Purcell's accomplishments within his own time and his influence on future generations. Nevertheless, the author's enthusiasm for Purcell's music and his comprehensive treatment of its distinct genres undoubtedly will contribute to the renewal of both scholarly and practical interest in the composer and his music far beyond the heightened exposure both received during the tercentenary year. A bibliography of 204 books, articles, and general reference works; a list of 108 edited music collections; and an index of Purcell's works by genre provide the necessary documentation.      

Nunc Dimittis

William Thomas Farrell, III, died April 27. He was born May 20, 1934, in San Antonio, Texas. He attended San Antonio College, studying organ performance with Donald Willing.

Farrell’s interest in the organ would change from performing to building, voicing, and maintenance of instruments, and he was accepted as an apprentice to Aeolian-Skinner Organ Company’s tonal finisher, Roy Perry, who was based in Kilgore, Texas. He also became affiliated with Jimmy and Nora Williams, the regional installers for Aeolian-Skinner. Farrell assisted in the installation of the firm’s pipe organs in San Antonio’s Central Christian Church and the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, as well as Southwestern University, Georgetown, Texas, before relocating to New York City in 1960. There, he was curator of instruments at St. Patrick’s Cathedral, St. Paul’s Chapel, Columbia University, and Philharmonic Hall (now David Geffen Hall), Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, among others. Farrell would install the pipe organ in the residence of Virgil Fox as well as assisting with many of Fox’s later recordings.

Returning to San Antonio in the early 1970s, Farrell maintained many instruments in Texas, including the Aeolian-Skinner organ at the University of Texas, now relocated to a church in Amarillo, and he tonally finished the first large analog organs built by Rodgers Instruments of Hillsboro, Oregon. In addition, he rebuilt instruments in New Orleans, Louisiana, and Tulsa, Oklahoma, also providing tonal finishing and new installations in the United States for Fratelli Ruffatti of Padua, Italy.

Tom Farrell was predeceased just a few weeks before his death by his partner of 57 years, Louis A. Goedecke, himself a master craftsman in woodworking. Together, they had formed the Farrell Organ Company of San Antonio.

 

James R. Metzler of Sylvania, Ohio, internationally known organist and choral conductor, died suddenly May 19. He was born June 20, 1947, in Worcester, Massachusetts. He began his musical career as a boy chorister in the Choir of Men and Boys at All Saints’ Episcopal Church in Worcester. While a member of the choir, he began lessons on the church’s Aeolian-Skinner organ. 

Metzler earned a Bachelor of Music degree from Westminster Choir College, Princeton, New Jersey, and a Master of Music degree from the Hartt School of Music at the University of Hartford, Connecticut. He also pursued doctoral studies in organ and musicology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His organ teachers included Henry Hokans, Robert Carwithen, Alec Wyton (improvisation), John Holtz, Marilyn Mason, and Martin Neary at Winchester Cathedral in England. Additional studies were taken at the Royal School of Church Music, Addington Palace, Croydon, England.

James Metzler served as organist/choirmaster/director of music at Trinity Episcopal Church, Toledo, Ohio, from 1972 to 1996; Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Little Rock, Arkansas, from 1996 to 2006, where he was appointed Canon of Music; and churches in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from 2006 until 2016.

Metzler received the Choir Master certificate from the American Guild of Organists, earning the highest score in the country, and he was awarded the S. Lewis Elmer Award for the highest score of all diploma candidates. He held a Fellowship diploma from the Cambridge (England) Society of Musicians (FCSM); a Fellowship diploma from the Guild (England) of Musicians and Singers (FGMS); a Fellowship diploma from the Honourable Company of Organists (FHCO), Toronto; and an Honorary Fellowship diploma from the National College of Music and Arts (HonFNCM), London, for services to music. In addition, he was a member of the American Guild of Organists, the Organ Historical Society, and the Royal School of Church Music. 

Metzler presented organ recitals in the United States and abroad, including three in Westminster Abbey, London, two in St. Paul’s Cathedral, London, as well as in Notre Dame Cathedral, Paris, which he considered to be the highlight of his performing career, Norwich Cathedral (UK), King’s College Chapel (Cambridge University, UK), Westminster Cathedral, London, Worcester Cathedral (UK), Ely Cathedral (UK), St. Thomas Church Fifth Avenue, New York City, Washington National Cathedral, and, most recently, at the Church of the Madeleine, Paris, in April 2017. Recordings of his organ and choral performances are available at www.YouTube.com/TheCathedralOrganist. 

As an educator, he taught on the music department faculties at Mitchell College, New London, Connecticut; the University of Toledo, Ohio; and at Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan. As a choral conductor, Metzler directed over 25 choral residencies to England, leading the music for more than 100 services in Westminster Abbey, St. Paul’s Cathedral, York Minster Cathedral, Canterbury Cathedral, Durham Cathedral, Salisbury Cathedral, Norwich Cathedral, Guildford Cathedral, Southwark Cathedral, Chester Cathedral, Liverpool Cathedral, St. Martin-in-the-Fields (Trafalgar Square), Ely Cathedral, Christ Church (Oxford), and St. George’s Chapel (Windsor). In August 1995, he was privileged to direct the music for the British VJ Day 50th Anniversary Commemoration Service in York Minster Cathedral.

A funeral Mass was held at Our Lady, Queen of the Most Holy Rosary Cathedral, Toledo, Ohio, on May 24, 2017.

Godwin Sadoh

Godwin Sadoh is a Nigerian organist-composer, pianist, choral conductor, African ethnomusicologist, and scholar. He is presently professor of music and LEADS Scholar at the National Universities Commission, Abuja, Nigeria.

The arrival of the Christian faith in Nigeria in the mid-nineteenth century dramatically changed the musical landscape in the West African nation through the exploits of the missionaries from Europe and southern United States, as well as the imperial colonial administration from England. The church teachings, curriculum of the mission schools, and the colonial policies exposed the new Nigerian converts to Western classical music repertoire and musical instruments such as the harmonium, piano, and organ. In this thriving musical culture and environment, Nigerian composers began writing compositions of their own from around 1910. Many of their compositions at this time were fashioned after the European baroque and classical styles. However, from the 1960s, Nigerian composers began experimenting with new techniques in their works, such as atonality and twelve-tone rows. The then young composers, fired up by the new twentieth-century compositional devices they had acquired at schools of music in London and the United States, partially abandoned the tonal system of the preceding era. This essay is specially written to commemorate the eightieth birthday of one of Nigeria’s most prolific organist-composers, Ayo Bankole. 

 

A short biography

Ayo Bankole was born on May 17, 1935, at Jos, in Plateau State of Nigeria. Bankole spent the first five years of his life with his father, the late Theophilus Abiodun Bankole, who was the organist and choirmaster at St. Luke’s Anglican Church, Jos, at the time. His mother was also an active musician. She was a music instructor for several years at Queen’s School, Ede, Osun State, a Federal Government high school. Bankole’s father noticed the gift of music in his son at an early age; hence, in 1941 he moved the young Bankole to live with his grandfather, Akinje George, in Lagos; George was then organist and choirmaster at the First Baptist Church, Lagos. Bankole received his first lessons in piano and harmonium from his grandfather, who introduced him to various types of musical styles, and, from the time the boy was seven, would often ask Bankole to play for his friends, thereby showing off the innate genius of his grandson.

While in Lagos, Bankole’s father encouraged his son to join the renowned Cathedral Church of Christ Choir, Lagos, as a boy soprano and private organ pupil of Thomas Ekundayo Phillips (1884–1969), who was then organist and master of the music at the cathedral. At this time, Ayo Bankole’s father had moved from Jos to Lagos, and was now organist and choirmaster at St. Peter’s Anglican Church, Faji, Lagos, a walking distance from the cathedral church. It is not surprising that his father enrolled the young Bankole at the Cathedral Choir and not at the church where he worked. The Cathedral Church of Christ Choir was a model for all churches in Nigeria, and it was the most prestigious church choir at the time. The Cathedral Choir boys were highly talented children who came from musical, upper-middle-class homes and affluent families that were the cream of the Nigerian high-class society. Ekundayo Phillips was the most advanced and the only professionally trained organist and church musician at the time in Nigeria. The Cathedral Choir was the best environment for a talent such as Ayo Bankole to have the right exposure to nurture and develop his musical gifts.

At the age of ten in 1945, Bankole enrolled at the Baptist Academy, Lagos, which was one of the leading high schools in the state. He became more active as a musician at his high school by becoming the pianist and organist of the school. It was at this school that Bankole began to show interest in choral conducting by organizing small groups to perform at special events. Within the span of five years at the Baptist Academy, Bankole participated in several music competitions and concerts organized by the Nigerian Festival of the Arts. This festival was unique because it was one of the few avenues for budding talents in music to earn national recognition. Most of the professionally trained Nigerian musicians participated in this festival at some point during their formative years.

After graduating from the Baptist Academy, Bankole was appointed as a clerical officer at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation in 1954. During this period, he came in contact with notable musicians such as Christopher Oyesiku, who became a colleague and close friend to whom Bankole dedicated several solo songs; Thomas Ekundayo Phillips; Tom Chalmers, the first Director General of the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation; Arthur Langford; Leslie Perron, Controller of Music at N. B. C.; and Fela Sowande. Bankole had great admiration for Sowande and was able to receive advanced lessons in organ playing from him. Between 1954 and 1957, Bankole was already very active as organist in Lagos churches. For instance, he was assistant organist at the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, under the leadership of Ekundayo Phillips. It was about 1957 that Bankole began composing his first major works, Ya Orule and Nigerian Suite, both for piano solo.

In August 1957, Bankole left Lagos on a Federal Government scholarship to study music at Guildhall School of Music and Drama, London. On his arrival at Guildhall, he was appointed to the position of organist and choirmaster at St. James-the-Less. Bankole remained in this position until his graduation in 1961. At Guildhall, he studied piano, composition, organ, harmony, and counterpoint. Some of his teachers included Alan Brown (organ), Harold Dexter (organ), and Guy Eldridge (composition). During his time at Guildhall School of Music, Bankole was exposed to a variety of musical styles from diverse European epochs. His works from this period show the influence of the various contemporary European composers he was studying at the time. He experimented with twentieth-century compositional devices as exemplified in his Three Yoruba Songs for voice and piano (1959) and the Toccata and Fugue for organ (1960). This period marked the genesis of Bankole’s creative career that was to lead to a very personal style of intercultural composition—the synthesis of Nigerian and Western idioms. The works in this period include Sonata No. 1 (Christmas) for piano; Cantata No. 1 (Baba Se Wa Lomo Rere [Father, Make Us Good Children]) (1959); several part songs for female chorus; Sonata No. 2—The Passion, for piano (1959); and Variations, op. 10, no. 1 (1959), based on a Yoruba Christian tune, Ohun a f’Owo Se (also known as Ise Oluwa).

In spite of the hectic program at Guildhall, Bankole found time to sit for external examinations and obtained a series of professional diplomas and certifications such as Associate of the Royal College of Music (piano), Licentiate of the Trinity College of Music (piano), Licentiate of the Royal Academy of Music (Teacher’s Diploma), Associate of the Royal College of Organists, and Graduate of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama (GGSM). After four years of study at Guildhall School of Music, Bankole proceeded to Clare College, University of Cambridge, London, where he obtained his first degree, the Bachelor of Arts in Music, in 1964. As was the practice at Cambridge, a Bachelor of Arts degree (Cantab) automatically becomes a Master of Arts (Cantab) three years after graduation. On July 15, 1964, while at Cambridge as an organ scholar, Bankole sat for the external examination and obtained the prestigious Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO), thus becoming the second and the last Nigerian to receive the British highest diploma in organ playing. Fela Sowande was the first Nigerian and indeed, the first African to earn the FRCO diploma in 1943. During Bankole’s stay in England, he wrote music that he himself could perform. A tremendous amount of music was composed for piano and organ since he was a pianist and organist himself. He also wrote some choral and orchestral works that are technically oriented towards European audiences and performers. The works from this period include Sonata No. 4 (English Winter Birds) for piano, Variations Liturgical (Theme and Nine Variations) for piano, Three Toccatas for organ, Fugal Dance for piano, Organ Symphonia No. 2 for organ, drums, trumpet, and trombone, and a number of choral works such as Art Thou Come (1964), Little Jesus (1964), Canon for Christmas (1964), and Four Yoruba Songs (1964).

After the completion of his bachelor’s degree at Cambridge in 1964, Bankole received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to study ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. At UCLA, Bankole’s composition teacher was Roy Travis, who was then America’s foremost composer experimenting with African music resources in his creative works. Bankole developed a keen interest in the music from other cultures. His training at UCLA enabled him to evolve a personal style that was founded on African traditional music principles. He went further by composing intercultural works that use non-African resources, such as his Ethnophony. This work is a summation of Bankole’s experience in ethnomusicology and an archetype of the conjoining of creative principles with ethnomusicological procedures.

Ayo Bankole returned to Nigeria in 1966 and was appointed to the position of Senior Producer in Music at the Nigerian Broadcasting Corporation (now Federal Radio Corporation of Nigeria), Lagos. He remained in this position until 1969, when he accepted the position of lecturer in music at the Department of Music, University of Lagos, where he continued his research into Nigerian indigenous music. While at the University of Lagos (UNILAG), Bankole pioneered what would later become a common trend among Nigerian professional musicians, that is, the art of embracing all arms of music discipline. Consequently, at UNILAG, Bankole was a music educator, composer, performer, and ethnomusicologist. He was constantly involved in training and encouraged budding serious musicians by giving them private lessons in singing and piano playing. It was also during this time that Bankole intensified his interest in organizing and training independent choral groups. He wrote extensively for these groups and also exposed them to European classical music. Prominent among the choral groups he founded were the Choir of Angels, comprising students from three major high schools in Lagos (Reagan Memorial, Lagos Anglican Girls Grammar School, and the Methodist Girls High School); the Lagos University Musical Society; the Nigerian National Musico-Cultural Society; and the Chapel of the Healing Cross Choir, all situated in Lagos. 

Although Bankole contributed immensely to the development of modern music in Nigeria, he was not able to live long enough to witness and reap the fruit of his labor. In the early hours of November 6, 1976, at the tender age of forty-one, Ayo Bankole and his wife, Toro Bankole, were both brutally murdered by his half brother while sleeping in their own home. Although Bankole is no longer alive, he is still greatly admired by Nigerian musicians for his outstanding contributions to the study of modern Nigerian music as a composer, music educator, ethnomusicologist, organist, pianist, and choral conductor. Bankole was an extremely gifted man who was not able to develop his gifts to full potential.

Wherever modern Nigerian art music is mentioned, verbally or in writing, the name of Ayo Bankole always stands out prominently. Scholarly articles, theses, and books have been written and published about him. His compositions are neatly catalogued in several archival centers around the world, including Iwalewa-Haus, University of Bayreuth, Germany; Center for Intercultural Music Arts (CIMA), London; and the Center for Black Music Research, Chicago, Illinois. To immortalize his name at home in Nigeria, his son, Ayo Bankole, Jr., built a world-class arena in his honor, the Ayo Bankole Music Center for Arts and Cultural Expression (ABC), in Lagos. The center was established primarily as an arts center with the aim of promoting music in particular and the arts in general and to be a vehicle for influencing youths and society positively. The ABC accordingly aims to promote the various aspects of musical endeavor that the late Ayo Bankole excelled in during his lifetime. It is a multi-purpose hall with the necessary infrastructure to make it suitable for a range of performances, workshops, and exhibitions. The ABC runs a mid-week jazz event on Wednesdays. Every Friday the ABC stages a cabaret gig that involves singing different genres of music. Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Saturdays are karaoke days. The last Sunday of each month, the ABC hosts a concert termed “Jazz and Old School with Ayo Bankole and Friends,” where several bands and solo acts (singers, comedians, etc.) are featured. The ABC intends in the near future to introduce a highlife night and also a monthly dramatic production.

 

Three Toccatas

We cannot close an essay about this organist-composer without discussing one of his most mature works for the King of all Western instruments. The Three Toccatas for organ were composed between 1962 and 1964 while Bankole was at the University of Cambridge—a period that marked the second phase of his experimental stage, with works influenced by early twentieth-century compositional procedures as exemplified in these toccatas. These three pieces are infused with various twentieth-century devices that the composer was exposed to while studying in England. It is quite apparent that he was writing these pieces particularly for European virtuoso organists and audiences, but definitely not for African performers. In the 1960s, the only Nigerian organist who would have been able to tackle Bankole’s toccatas was Fela Sowande. Incidentally, Sowande had already immigrated to the United States by the late 1960s, and he was more focused on research, teaching, and musicology at this stage of his career. To date, the author is aware of only two American organists—the late Eugene Wilson Hancock (1929–1994) and Mickey Thomas Terry—who have played through or performed Toccata III in the United States. In fact, Hancock recorded Toccata III on a special audio cassette, captioned A Sampling of Organ Music by Black Composers, produced by the Committee on Educational Resources of the American Guild of Organists in 1992. 

Toccata I is a tonal work in G major and is in three-part form. The first section (measures 1–26) is characterized by fast-moving eighth notes in the right hand, while the left hand and pedal supply the harmonic framework. (See Example 1.) The piece is based on a theme by Bankole’s father and it is in the right hand of the first section (measures 15–18). The homophonic middle section (measures 27–39) comprises a continuous tremolo highlighting open thirds and fourths in the right hand with chordal accompaniment in the left hand. The final section (measures 39–72) is a restatement of the first section with rapid eighth notes, the theme harmonized in the right hand, and pedal ostinato. The piece is generally characterized by chromatic passages, ostinato on the manual and pedal, repetition, and bitonality. 

The second toccata is not as exciting as the first. It is more pianistic and may work better on piano than on organ. (See Example 2.) The most prominent pianistic features in the piece are the excessive use of Alberti bass and arpeggios that pervade the entire piece on the manuals. The second toccata is also based on an original theme by Bankole’s father. It is a sectional work in which the first two phrases of the principal theme are in the pedal (measures 2–17). The concluding two phrases of the theme are placed in the left hand on the manual (measures 32–35). Following this is a brief section in which the composer plays with the third phrase of the theme in both the right hand and the left hand (measures 40–53). A fairly long homophonic section (measures 54–86) on the manuals precedes the final section (measures 87–105), where the pedal returns triumphantly playing a tuneful, mostly pentatonic melody. The piece closes with this melody in the pedal and polytonal chords on the manuals. 

Toccata III is slightly longer than the second. It is interesting to note the increase in length among these three pieces: Toccata I is 72 measures long, Toccata II is 105 measures, and Toccata III is 135 measures. Bankole elongates each toccata by about thirty measures as he writes them. Toccata III is the only one conceived in pure atonality even though it closes with a B chord in the last two measures. Structurally, it is in three-part form with a short fanfare and Adagio as introduction (measures 1–18). The first A section is atonal but closes with a fairly long chromatic chord passage (measures 19–48). The middle B section (measures 49–112) is characterized by frequent meter changes that eventually culminate in rapidly moving arpeggios and scale passages (measures 99–110). The piece finally finds repose with the return of the opening A section from measures 116 to 135. It closes with a bravura section of massive chromatic chords in the manuals (see Example 3). Other interesting features in Toccata I–III are the pedal points and the ostinato patterns.

 

Conclusion

Ayo Bankole’s musical odyssey exemplifies typical experiences of modern Nigerian-trained musicians defined by three cultural phenomena: Nigerian/African, European, and American. His musical language and style are vividly influenced by the incorporation of resources from the triune cultures, a co-existence of the old and the new in one pot. Bankole’s religious background and convictions in the Christian faith significantly influenced his creative output. Many of his instrumental and vocal compositions are sacred. 

As a prolific composer, Ayo Bankole contributed extensively to modern art music in Nigeria through his vocal and instrumental works. He represents the forerunners of avant-garde composition in the country through the use of diverse twentieth-century tonal schemes and creative techniques. Bankole is also well respected among Nigerian musicologists as a scholar for his research and documentation of Nigerian music. Even though he departed this world almost four decades ago, his music lives on after his death as a doyen of modern Nigerian art music.

 

Ayo Bankole’s compositions

Most of Bankole’s works are unpublished, since in his day, there was not a single publishing firm in Nigeria to put his works into print, and black composers had serious problems at that time publishing their compositions in Europe and the United States. (Most of the works of other composers of Bankole’s generation—such as Akin Euba, Samuel Akpabot, Lazarus Ekwueme, Meki Nzewi, and Joshua Uzoigwe—are also unpublished.)

All works listed here are unpublished except as noted.

 

Organ Works

Organ Symphonia Nos. 1 and 2, for organ, drums, trumpet, and trombone (1961–64)

Fantasia for organ (1961–64) 

Three Toccatas for organ (1962–64) 

Fugue for organ (1967) 

Toccata and Fugue for Organ (Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press, 1978)

 

Solo Art Songs

The Lord is My Shepherd, for female voice and organ (1959) 

Ten Yoruba Songs, for voice and piano (1959–66) 

Adura fun Alafia (Prayer for Peace), for voice and piano (1969) 

Three Songs for Diana, for voice and piano (1971–72) 

Three Yoruba Songs for Baritone and Piano (Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press, 1977).

 

Christmas Works

Kristi, Ma Wole (Christ, We Greet You), for voice and piano (1958) 

Christmas Comes But Once a Year (1959)

Ni Owuro Ojo Keresimesi (Christmas Day) for voice and piano (1959) 

Keresimesi Odun De (Christmas is Here), for voice and piano (1960)

And Art Thou Come, for voice and piano (1964) 

Little Jesus, Gentle Jesus, for voice and piano (1964) 

Canon for Christmas, Eyo, Eyo, Odun De O (Rejoice, Rejoice, Christmas is Here), for chorus and piano (1964) 

Salzburg Carol, for eight-part chorus and piano (1964) 

 

Choral Works

Cantata No. 1 in Yoruba, Baba Se Wa l’Omo Rere (Father Make Us Good Children), for female chorus and chamber orchestra (1958) 

Requiem, for chorus and organ (1961) 

The Children of the Sun (1961) 

Choral Fugue (1962) 

Cantata No. 3 in Yoruba, Jona, for soprano solo, speaker in English, drum, piano, tambura, and orchestra
(1964) 

Eru O B’Omo Aje (A Child of a Witch is Fearless) 1964 

Be Prepared, for female chorus (Girl Guide’s Jubilee Song), 1966 

Ore-Ofe Jesu Kristi (The Grace of Jesus Christ), for unaccompanied chorus (1967)

Salve Christe (1968)

Opera: Night of Miracles, for chorus, soloists, and orchestra, including Nigerian traditional instruments (1969)

Cantata: Ona Ara, for full chorus, soloists, organ, and Yoruba musical instruments (1970) 

Fun Mi N’Ibeji Part I and II, for unaccompanied chorus (1970) 

Death Be No More: A Dramatic Cantata on a Poem by Cosmo Pieterse, for soprano soloist, chorus, and ethnophonic instruments (1972) 

Love Everlasting (1972) 

Mighty Africa Games (1973) 

Cantata No. 4: FESTAC, for soloists, chorus and orchestra of Western and traditional Nigerian instruments (1974) 

Lullaby (1966)

God Rest You Merry (1966) 

Angels from the Realms (1966) 

Keresimesi Tun Ma De O (Christmas Is Here Again), for chorus and piano (1968) 

Christus Natus, for chorus and piano (1968) 

Grand Little One (Words by Meki Nzewi) 

Three-Part Songs for Female Choir (Ile-Ife: University of Ife Press, 1975)

Gbogbo Aiye, Eyo, E Ho (Let All the World, Rejoice and Shout) 

 

References

Alaja-Browne, Afolabi. “Ayo Bankole: His Life and Work.” M.A. thesis, University of Pittsburgh, 1981, pp. 15–28.

__________. “A History of Intercultural Music in Nigeria.” In Intercultural Music vol. 1, eds. Cynthia Tse Kimberlin and Akin Euba. Bayreuth African Studies Series, No. 29, 1995.

Floyd, Jr., Samuel. International Dictionary of Black Composers. Chicago, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 1999.

Nketia, Kwabena. “Developing Contemporary Idioms Out of Traditional Music.” Studia Musicologica Hungaricae 24 (1982): 81–96.

Omibiyi-Obidike, Mosunmola. “The Process of Education and the Search for Identity in Contemporary African Music.” In African Musicology: Current Trends, vol. 2, eds. Jacqueline Codgell DjeDje and William Carter. Atlanta, GA: Crossroads Press, 1989.

Sadoh, Godwin. “A Profile of Nigerian Organist-Composers.” The Diapason Vol. 94, No. 8 (August 2003): 20–23.

__________. “Hybrid Composition: An Introduction to the Age of Atonality in Nigeria.” The Diapason Vol. 97, No. 11 (November 2006): 22–25.

__________. “Twentieth Century Nigerian Composers.” Choral Journal 47, No. 10 (April 2007): 33–39.

__________. Intercultural Dimensions in Ayo Bankole’s Music. New York: iUniverse, 2007.

__________. “Ayo Bankole’s FESTAC Cantata: A Paradigm for Intercultural Composition.” The Diapason, Vol. 102, No. 7 (July 2011): 25–27.

Southern, Eileen. Biographical Dictionary of Afro-American and African Musicians. London: Greenwood Press, 1982.

Uzoigwe, Joshua. “Nigerian Composers and Their Works.” Daily Times, August 25 and September 1, 1990.

 

Other articles of interest:

 

A history of organs of the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, Nigeria

 

The centennial of the Cathedral Church of Christ Choir, Lagos, Nigeria

 

Ayo Bankole

 

Ann Labounsky

Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought and Legacy of Charles Tournemire, edited by Jennifer Donelson and Stephen Schloesser. Church Music Association of America, P.O. Box 4344, Roswell, NM 88202 (musicasacra.com), 2014, $40.00, ISBN 978-0-9916452-0-6, 456 pages.

Visions of Amen: The Early Life and Music of Olivier Messiaen by Stephen Schloesser. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2014, $40.00, ISBN 978-0-8028-0762-5, 572 pages.

 

These two new books present the results of academic research on Charles Tournemire and on the life and works of Olivier Messiaen. Through the efforts of Jennifer Donelson, the guiding light behind the academic outreach of the Church Music Association of America and the managing editor of Sacred Music (the official publication of the CMAA), there have been two conferences on Tournemire, the first in Miami in 2011 and the second in Pittsburgh in 2012. Mystic Modern is a reproduction of the papers given at the Miami and Pittsburgh conferences. Stephen Schloesser, author of Visions of Amen: The Early Life and Music of Olivier Messiaen, is a Jesuit priest and professor of history at Loyola University, Chicago, and also the author of Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933. 

Mystic Modern was published in the summer of 2014 in time for the annual CMAA Colloquium in Indianapolis. Schloesser’s Messiaen book was also published in July 2014, coinciding with the American Guild of Organists’ national convention in Boston. Beyond the coincidence in publication dates, what is remarkable about the two books is the relationship between Tournemire and Messiaen. Tournemire influenced Messiaen to a much greater extent than is normally assumed; but Messiaen eclipsed his mentor by gaining greater fame during his lifetime. Book after book has been written about Messiaen, while Tournemire has remained in relative obscurity until fairly recently.

A first glance at both of these books reveals that there is much more to understand about Charles Tournemire and Olivier Messiaen than one can know only through a study of their musical scores. This “much more” element encompasses knowledge of the personal lives of the two men and the personal relationship between them. It also focuses on how history, culture, theology, literature, symbolism, and aesthetics affected them both. Mystic Modern and Visions of Amen are a must read not only for scholars or devotees of Tournemire and Messiaen, but for those interested in liturgy, music, and theology. Fortunately both books can be read in small sections, slowly and with the help of excellent indices. In the case of Visions of Amen, Messiaen’s important duo-piano work from 1943, a link to an audio recording of a live performance is included in the text.

Tournemire was certainly a modern composer who influenced Messiaen, Langlais, and many other 20th-century French composers. The extent of his “modernism” led many to dismiss his music as obtuse, and his mysticism certainly was another reason that many dismissed his music as unapproachable. Stephen Schloesser explains Tournemire’s “modernism” in his 2005 book, Jazz Age Catholicism:

Tournemire imagined the musical devices representing ‘passion’—chromaticism, polytonalism, and the perceived resulting ‘dissonance’—as the most appropriate material carriers of the ‘eternal’ and unchanging Latin forms. Images of dress abounded in ancient chants were imagined to be ‘clothed’ in ‘modern’ musical fashions.¹

The main Tournemire scholarship consists of a doctoral dissertation by Ruth Sisson, a picture book of photos by Ianco Pascal, and the notated catalogue of his works by Joël-Marie Fauquet from 1979.² Stephen Schloesser devotes a large part of Jazz Age Catholicism to the study of Tournemire. Lastly, Marie-Louise Langlais has published on the Internet portions of Tournemire’s Memoires that specifically address music (http://ml-langlais.com/Tournemire). The French journal L’Orgue is in the process of issuing the complete Tournemire Memoires. The editors of Mystic Modern had access to the complete version and quoted extensively from it in their essays, The Composer as Commentator: Music and Text in Tournemire’s Symbolist Method and How does Music Speak of God.

Charles Tournemire (1877–1939) died in the same year that I was born, and perhaps for this coincidence, I felt a special connection to this man. My first exposure to the “mystic modern” Tournemire was during the 1950s, in hearing my first organ teacher Paul Sifler play some of Tournemire’s music on several recitals. I remember the music sounded strange and exotic, like the music of Olivier Messiaen that Sifler played, which I, as a teenager, did not understand. It was later, as a pupil of Jean Langlais in Paris during the early 1960s, that I came to know Tournemire’s music in a different way. Langlais often played Tournemire’s music at Sainte-Clotilde on the organ that Tournemire knew and loved and often played the Eli, Eli, lamma sabacthani from the Sept Paroles of Tournemire. This blind teacher taught me the first movement and the last movement (Consummatum est) at Sainte-Clotilde during late Wednesday evenings in a dimly lit, empty church with the incomparable sounds of the Cavaillé-Coll organ. And he spoke about Tournemire as someone he knew well—little things about how he taught, how his personality was particularly quirky and unpredictable. He encouraged me to meet Tournemire’s second wife, Mme. Alice Tournemire, in her apartment—the apartment where her late husband had lived and taught. She read portions of his Memoires regarding the Symphonie-Choral, which I was planning to perform at Sainte-Clotilde. The more I played and heard Tournemire’s music, the more fascinated I became with it. His music was not instantly appealing; rather, it permeated my being slowly and compellingly.

 

Mystic Modern

The contents of Mystic Modern are divided into three sections, which develop the theme of Tournemire’s legacy as liturgical commentator, music inventor, and littéraire. In the preface, “Tournemire the Liturgical Commentator,” Donelson discusses Tournemire’s role as organist in the Roman Catholic Church and especially his place in the long line of composers incorporating Gregorian chant into both their composed works and their improvisations. 

 

The liturgical commentator

“The Organ as Liturgical Commentator—Some Thoughts, Magisterial and Otherwise” by Monsignor Andrew R. Wadsworth, begins with Wadsworth’s recollections of Messiaen’s improvisations during a Low Mass at La Trinité and then discusses the liturgical norms with an historical overview of the documents pertaining to them. He implores organists to follow Tournemire’s example in L’Orgue mystique: to improvise on the chants proper to each Sunday’s liturgy.

“Joseph Bonnet as a Catalyst in the Early-Twentieth-Century Gregorian Chant Revival,” by Susan Treacy, explains Bonnet’s decisive role in encouraging Tournemire to write L’Orgue mystique. Through explanations of Bonnet’s work as a liturgical organist in churches where he served, Treacy explains why Bonnet did not write any chant-based organ music. Although Bonnet was an abbot in the Benedictine order and was devoted to the propagation of Gregorian chant, he made a distinct difference between his published secular pieces for recital use and his improvised chant-based pieces for the liturgy. As a pupil of Charles Tournemire and fellow native of Bordeaux, Bonnet’s relationships with Dom Mocquereau and Justine Ward were also important in the founding of the Gregorian Institute. Even Bonnet’s church wedding, with a schola from the Gregorian Institute and with Tournemire as one of the organists, reflected his devotion to the propagation of Gregorian chant.

In “Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique and its Place in the Legacy of the Organ Mass,” Edward Schaefer gives an exhaustive summary of the development of the organ Mass, its specific usage in various countries, and the ecclesiastical documents governing organ Masses. A number of charts give illustrations of the use of the organ at the various parts of the Mass. There is a long list of the ecclesiastical ceremonials governing the use of music in the Mass and a chronological list of organ settings of the Mass. Schaefer concludes that with the renewed interest and practice of the Extraordinary form of the Mass, the practical use of Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique is possible. This was demonstrated during the first Tournemire symposium. Some of the material is based on Schaefer’s dissertation from Catholic University.³

“Liturgy and Gregorian Chant in L’Orgue mystique of Charles Tournemire,” by Robert Sutherland Lord, was originally published in 1984 in The Organ Yearbook, edited by Peter Williams. The seminal importance of this article lies in Lord’s identification of all the chants from L’Orgue mystique and their origin, Tournemire’s original plan for the composition of the work, and the ways in which the composer departed from his plan in the choice of chants. The chants from the Liber Antiphonarius (Solesmes, 1897) were the sources of most of the chants that Tournemire used for the Elevation. This volume of chant is out of print, but Lord obtained a copy from the former assistant organist at Notre Dame, Paris, Pierre Moreau. Lord includes copies of these chants in the article.

In “The Twentieth-Century Franco-Belgian Art of Improvisation: Marcel Dupré, Charles Tournemire, and Flor Peeters,” Ronald Prowse discusses differences in techniques between written compositions and improvisations in the works of Dupré, Tournemire, and Flor Peeters and cites musical examples from the chant Ave Maris Stella. Using works by those three composers, Prowse deftly compares the techniques that all three of them used in treating the same chant. He often cites his own experiences studying improvisation with Pierre Toucheque, who had been a pupil of Peeters. He often quotes Tournemire, from his book on improvisation, Précis d’exécution, de registration et d’improvisation à l’orgue, stating that a master improviser creates illusions.⁴ The issue of the difference between written composition and improvisation echoes throughout this collection of essays and remains in some ways an unanswered question.

 

The musical inventor

Prowse’s essay leads logically into the second section, “Tournemire the Musical Inventor,” which deals with Tournemire’s musical language, including his choice and sense of tempo—as well as his compositional process and impact, not merely on the Sainte-Clotilde school, but on modern French organ repertoire in general. 

In his essay “Performance Practice for the Organ Music of Charles Tournemire,” Timothy Tikker describes his lessons with Langlais and Langlais’s reports of his study with Tournemire. Tikker’s account matched what I had learned from Langlais, including the story of Langlais’s meeting with Tournemire and the invitation to become the latter’s successor at Sainte-Clotilde. The two works Tikker analyzes in detail regarding interpretation (No. 7 from L’Orgue mystique, Epiphania Domini, and Mulier, ecce filius tuus, Ecce Mater tua, from Sept Chorals-Poèmes, op. 67) were pieces that I also had studied with Langlais, and I agree with his conclusions. Tikker gives detailed graphs with measure numbers indicated and, in some places, metronome markings. Of particular interest in this essay is Tikker’s extensive discussion of the Sainte-Clotilde organ. Tournemire’s specific registrations in L’Orgue mystique include the use of sub couplers and the term petites mixtures, which indicates soft mutation stops such as gamba with a nazard. It is interesting to note that Tournemire played all of L’Orgue mystique on his nine-stop house organ, regrettably never at Sainte-Clotilde. Tikker quotes this specification from Tournemire’s Précis. One of Tikker’s particularly insightful points is his comparison of German Romantic organs and their influence on the compositions of Reger and Karg-Elert, which used the full organ in the lower registers, and Tournemire’s use of full organ that was based on the “treble-ascendant voicing for its success.”⁵

“Catalogue of Charles Tournemire’s ‘Brouillon’ [Rough Sketches] for L’Orgue mystique BNF, Mus., Ms. 19929,” by Robert Sutherland Lord, is the result of Lord’s studying the 1,282 pages of rough sketches of Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique found in the Bibliothèque Nationale after Lord had written an extensive article on this seminal work of Tournemire. From these sketches Lord was able to determine the exact date of each office and how Tournemire departed from his original plan. Lord’s conclusion stated: 

 

After having completed the manuscript catalogue, we can verify that the “Rough Sketches” document—in sharp contrast to the “Plan” considered in my 1984 study—is far more than a mere framework for L’Orgue mystique. The “Rough Sketches” provide the harmonies, the rhythms, and the paraphrases for forty-two of the fifty-one offices. The BNF Ms. 19929 remains the only evidence we have of Tournemire’s musical preparation for any organ work he composed.⁶

From the harmonic and rhythmic details of Tournemire’s plan for L’Orgue mystique, Bogusław Raba’s article, “Creating a Mystical Musical Eschatology: Diatonic and Chromatic Dialectic in Charles Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique” continues the discussion of the conflict between the diatonic and chromatic dialectic in Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique. Raba uses the term dialectic as follows: 

 

Tournemire’s musical poetics in L’Orgue mystique are constructed by means of a dialectical process of diatonic and chromatic textures. This procedure (along with its symbolic functions) seems to be inherited from the Romantic Liszt-Franck tradition and is used in the service of a large narrative formal structure.⁷

Raba equates diatonicism with “eternal peace” and chromaticism with emotional “passion.” For Raba, the melding of these two elements creates pandiatonic textures, which he believes are Tournemire’s legacy to Messiaen. Finally, Raba confesses that Tournemire’s style goes beyond any structural system, and he calls this a “mystical musical eschatology.” Raba makes interesting parallels between Tournemire’s use of dissonance and that of Scriabin and earlier composers such as Frescobaldi in the Elevations from his organ Masses.

Raba’s observations on dissonance from the numinous leads into the next essay, “From the ‘Triomphe de l’Art Modal’ to The Embrace of Fire: Charles Tournemire’s Gregorian Chant Legacy, Received and Refracted by Naji Hakim” by Crista Miller. Miller’s article locates Middle Eastern elements and Arabic improvisation (taqasim) present in Hakim’s organ works with common elements with Tournemire’s Sitio (I thirst) from the Sept Paroles and Hakim’s Embrace of Fire. Miller compares these techniques with Langlais’s Soleil du Soir. She also probes the creative process of these composers. Were they aware of the techniques that they were using? In interviews with Hakim, she explains that Hakim claimed that his process was “subconscious”—in other words, he was not consciously aware that he was using a particular technique, so much was it a part of his psyche.

I had also asked this question regarding synthetic and octatonic scales with both Langlais and Daniel Lesur, both of whom reported that they were unaware that they were using these scales. The question of awareness is one that pervades our study of these composers’ works and is especially relevant to their improvisations. Miller also examines the specialized use of the Vox humana in works by Tournemire, Langlais, and Hakim.

Miller and Vincent E. Rone both discuss the use of octatonic and synthetic scales in their complementary writings. Rone’s essay “From Tournemire to Vatican II: Harmonic Symmetry as Twentieth-Century French Catholic Musical Mysticism, 1928–1970” focuses on the means by which Tournemire, Duruflé, and Langlais expressed Catholic musical mysticism and, in the case of the two younger composers, the ways in which they did so in response to their frustrations during the period of the Vatican II council. Rone concentrates on the use of octatonic and whole-tone scale patterns in the three composers’ music; he uses examples from the final pieces in Tournemire’s Nativitas and Resurrectionis offices. As examples of post-Vatican II disillusionment, Rone cites Duruflé’s Messe ‘Cum Jubilo’ and Langlais’s Imploration pour la croyance, referring to the former as privileging the Ordinary’s “transcendent and eschatological imagery through harmonic symmetry and stasis, combining a synthetic scale with subtle linear unfolding of two whole-tone collections, third-related, and bitonal harmonies.”⁸ In the latter, however, the expression is pure anger. Rone refers to Ruth Sisson’s dissertation and the discussion of the “Tournemire chord,” which employs a C#-major triad with a G-major 6/3 chord over it. The musical examples are particularly helpful to the reader in understanding these compositional and aesthetic concepts. 

 

The littОraire

The final section, “Tournemire the Littéraire,” deals with the literary aspect of Tournemire’s music and dwells on the relationship of the symbolic character of Tourmemire’s musical “commentaries” (and the legacy of this role in Messiaen’s oeuvre). It also includes Charles Tournemire’s obtuse and convoluted language in his biography of Franck. Finally, it analyzes Tournemire and Messiaen’s shared inspiration, drawn from Ernest Hello’s writings and Tournemire’s eschatological reading of history. The editors took great care with the ordering of the essays to provide cohesion to the book, and the end of each essay includes a summary. 

Stephen Schloesser’s first essay, “The Composer as Commentator: Music and Text in Tournemire’s Symbolist Method,” shows the importance of the texts in Dom Guéranger’s L’Année liturgique to Tournemire. So what then is this symbolist method? Schloesser describes it simply as “ . . . an essential relationship between a work and the literary text upon which it is based.”⁹ And he further states: 

 

For the symbolists, realism, naturalism, and positivism evacuated human existence of any mystery, fantasy, imagination, or dream world. In opposition to the positivists’ exclusive privileging of the visible, Symbolists gave pride of place to the invisible.¹⁰

 

As has been stated, Schloesser’s research on Tournemire was first published in Jazz Age Catholicism (2005). As a historian with appealing linguistic, writing, and musical skills, Schloesser has a gift of getting behind the events he is describing and going to the heart of their meaning. Here Schloesser shows how the literary texts in Guéranger’s L’Année liturgique directly inspired L’Orgue mystique. Schloesser hand-copied one example from Guéranger’s work—the Introit for the Feast of the Assumption—to demonstrate this important link between the text and the music. (It is possible to study the entire Guéranger work hand in hand with L’Orgue mystique and easily follow the plan for the entire work.) The important point is that the music is a commentary or a paraphrase of the linguistic text. All the tone painting and symbols that Tournemire uses are related to the texts, and it is important to study the texts first. Lest there be any confusion, Schloesser quotes Tournemire’s preface, which clearly states: “ . . . plainchant is, in sum, freely paraphrased for each piece in the flow of the works forming this collection.”¹¹ 

Schloesser then contrasts Messiaen’s straightforward use of textual references in all his organ works and explains how Messiaen was indebted to Tournemire for this example. Schloesser subsequently refers to numerous recital programs of Tournemire in which the term paraphrase is used in the program. The notion of symbolism, for Schloesser, comes from Tournemire’s models, Claude Debussy and Richard Wagner. Evidence of Tournemire’s deep involvement in the symbolist movement is carefully presented in the next six pages. Schloesser documents examples of Tournemire’s extensive use of the Wagnerian style of leitmotif, with the chant Ego Dormivi, the antiphon from Holy Saturday based on Psalm 3, used in ten of the L’Orgue mystique offices. Schloesser goes beyond what others have previously explained regarding Tournemire’s use of this leitmotif, relating the composer’s decision both to personal and professional circumstances. Schloesser refers to other music programs and cites the texts that Tournemire used to plan those programs. Particularly moving is the intent behind his concert at the church of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul in 1932, which opened with a tribute to Leon Boëllmann, the deceased organist of the church. The program is a good example of Tournemire’s manner of presenting an organ recital; it included three selections from L’Orgue mystique with explanations of the importance of the texts behind them. Tournemire’s choice of works by other composers showed his sense of his place in history alongside Bonnet, a musicologist (Bonnet was editor of the multi-volume set of Historical Organ-Recitals), a symbolist, and a truly modern composer. Also touching was Schloesser’s description of the reasons for Tournemire’s choice of themes for the last office of this great work and his four-year struggle to complete it. It is clear in studying Schloesser’s excellent essay that any serious student of L’Orgue mystique must become intimately acquainted with Guéranger’s 15-volume pivotal work, which is available in several English translations.

Again, acknowledging the superb manner in which this book is organized, it is appropriate that Elizabeth McLain’s Messiaen-oriented essay “Messiaen’s L’Ascension: Musical Illumination of Spiritual Texts After the Model of Tournemire’s L’Orgue mystique” follows that of Schloesser, whose discussion of Messiaen’s early life and influences in Visions of Amen is also covered in this review. McLain’s main point is that Tournemire’s use of commentaries on sacred texts in his compositions profoundly influenced Messiaen, but that unlike Tournemire, Messiaen’s quest was to take music inspired by sacred texts out of the church and into the concert hall. McLain’s essay explains that this early opus of Messiaen had its birth as an orchestral work, premiered in Paris before he had arranged it for organ. McLain gives many musical examples from the orchestral version of the work and clear structural and harmonic analyses of the entire work.

“Desperately Seeking Franck: Tournemire and D’Indy as Biographers” by R. J. Stove is the shortest of all the essays, but it is a fascinating comparison between Tournemire and D’Indy’s biographies of Franck. Anyone who has read any of Tournemire’s own writings can certainly agree with Stove’s description of Tournemire’s writing style as an “exotic jungle.” And further, “His high-flown French is a burden to imitate in any other language, let alone a language which lays as much stress on understatement, irony, and clarity as modern English usually does.”¹² Stove’s critical assessment of the two biographers, themselves students of Franck, explains much about the differences in their personalities and a possible jealousy on the part of Tournemire toward D’Indy, on account of the differences in the successes of their respective careers and their relationship to Franck. D’Indy had known Franck for two decades, while Tournemire had known him for only two years.

In her essay, “How Does Music Speak of God? A Dialogue of Ideas between Messiaen, Tournemire, and Hello,” Jennifer Donelson compares in great depth the approaches to addressing God through music in the writings of Tournemire, Messiaen, and the mystic writer from Brittany, Ernest Hello (1828–1885). She explains how the writings of Hello, particularly his 1872 work L’Homme: La Vie—La Science—L’Art, “encapsulates an understanding that was friendly to the Symbolist and anti-positivist tendencies of both composers.”¹³ Hello’s influences on Tournemire are found in Tournemire’s writings, particularly in his unpublished memoirs and correspondence between the two composers. Donelson explains with great care the differences in philosophy between Messiaen, seeking a perfect expression of the Catholic faith, and that of Tournemire. In conclusion she sums up the answer to the title of her essay in quoting Hello:

In a “clear vision of the role of the Catholic faith in art and culture, Hello saw spiritual realities as more real than material (indeed, as their source) and concluded that, for art to be truly beautiful or ‘sincere,’ the artist must have a clear vision of the world as redeemed by God with the Incarnate Christ at the center of God’s plan for salvation.”¹⁴

Peter Bannister’s essay, “Charles Tournemire and the ‘Bureau of Eschatology’” explains the meaning of eschatology in the historical context of the first half of the twentieth century in France. Bannister quotes frequently from the 20th-century Swiss Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar. The author’s reference to “Bureau of Eschatology” refers to Balthasar’s quote from Troeltsch’s dictum, “The bureau of eschatology is usually closed,” explaining that “this was true enough of the liberalism of the nineteenth century, but since the turn of the century the office has been working overtime.”¹⁵ Bannister explains the notion of life as a progression from darkness to light, often quoting from Léon Bloy, the French agnostic who converted to a strict form of Roman Catholicism, and Tournemire’s unpublished memoirs, and symphonies. Bannister laments the paucity of writings about Tournemire, citing the lack of primary source material. Bannister does not mention that this problem will soon be rectified; a forthcoming issue of the French review L’Orgue will be devoted to the difficult and highly secretive diary of Tournemire, Memoires.

I, for one, am not as pessimistic as Bannister when he states: “The likelihood is that for years to come, Tournemire will sadly continue to be regarded as an obscure figure outside the (dwindling) organ world . . . ”¹⁶ The two Tournemire conferences and these essays belie his conclusion. Consider that such composers as Bach, Mendelssohn, Rheinberger, and Langlais were less appreciated during their lifetimes than after their deaths, and certainly today they are not considered as “obscure figures.” 

Tennille Shuster’s cover, a surrealistic picture of the front of the Basilica of Sainte-Clotilde with dramatic reddish-brown clouds in the background, reflects the book’s mystical nature. The typeface and illustrations are exquisitely reproduced. 

Drs. Donelson and Schloesser are to be commended on the physical beauty of the book and the depth of scholarship that the book represents.

 

Visions of Amen

Messiaen’s Visions de l’Amen is an esoteric, extremely difficult seven-movement work for two pianists at two separate pianos, and its difficulty lies both in its technical demands (requiring extremes in dynamic range and tessitura) and in its obscure symbolism (which deals with astrology, theology, angels, saints, and birds). In the biographical aspect of this latest book on the early life of Messiaen, Stephen Schloesser develops the themes surrounding the composer’s connections with the mystic Charles Tournemire. 

The driving force behind the book came from Schloesser’s collaboration with pianists Hyesook Kim (Calvin College) and Stéphane Lemelin (University of Ottawa), with whom Schloesser received a $5,000 grant from the Calvin Center for Christian Scholarship for a project entitled “Olivier Messiaen’s Religious Perspective and Performance of Visions of l’Amen.” In 2004–2005 the two pianists performed the work at a number of locations in the U.S. and Canada, with Schloesser giving lecture notes on the work and Messiaen’s life. Their original plan was to produce a compact disc with liner notes written by Schloesser. The Messiaen centennial in 2008, however, yielded a plethora of new material for Schloesser, and the project subsequently grew into the present book format, with a link to the audio recording on the Internet. A detailed analysis of the work with timings from the recording makes it possible to follow the work without the score.

The title of the book leads one to believe that Schloesser focuses on the early life and music of this composer. But the extent and depth of the material goes far beyond a discussion of Messiaen’s early years. Schloesser examines Messiaen’s entire life, giving explanations of literary, symbolist, surrealist, mystical, and theological forces that inspired his compositions. In many of Messiaen’s biographies and his own writings, the writers Paul Éluard, Dom Columba Marmion, and Ernest Hello are mentioned, but Schloesser goes farther with extensive quotations from these authors, showing their influence on Messiaen’s music. For example, in the discussion of Messiaen’s Nativity of the Lord (1935), Messiaen frequently quotes Marmion’s book Christ in His Mysteries:

 

But the main reason for keeping alive such feelings within us is our status as children of God. The Divine Sonship of the Father’s only-begotten is of the essence and eternal. But, in an infinitely free act of love, the Father has willed to add a sonship, a childship, of grace.¹⁷ 

Schloesser divides the book into four sections. The first, dealing with Messiaen’s parents, Pierre Messiaen and Cécile Sauvage, covers 1883–1930. This section can be read by itself without reference to Messiaen’s compositions as an introduction to the psychological underpinnings of his personality. Part two, “Budding Rhythmician, Surrealist Composer, Mystical Commentator: 1927–1932,” continues this psychological approach and discusses in some detail his earliest works. The third part, “Theological Order, Glorified Bodies, Apocalyptic Epoch, 1932–1943,” delves into a detailed description and analysis of Visions of Amen. For musicians, a study of Messiaen’s score is helpful, but even without the score, Schloesser gives a detailed analysis of each movement, with timings from the recording in an appendix. Part four, “Legacy, 1943–1992,” includes a discussion of Messiaen’s last work: Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum. Throughout the book, Schloesser’s use of extensive footnotes on the same page as the text is helpful. The appendix of scriptural references is logical and welcomed.

The recording by pianists Kim and Lemelin is of high quality, with a wide range of dynamics and tessituras. This is a work that Messiaen and his second wife Yvonne Loriod played together frequently, and it is dedicated to her. Much of Messiaen’s piano music is extremely difficult technically and demands the utmost in coordination between the two performers here on two pianos. One could wish that a compact disc had been included with the book, so that one could listen to the performance without using a computer.

But even if the reader has no interest in this difficult piano work, composed during the darkest period of World War II when Paris was occupied by the Nazis, there is more than enough material about Messiaen’s personal life and that of his parents to engage the reader. It is well known that Messiaen’s mother was a poetesse; the drama of her life and the struggles she endured with her husband Pierre is explained in great detail. In the introduction, Schloesser explains his approach as a “history of emotion.” In this age of a “confessional” approach to biography, it is impressive how Schloesser combines very personal material with scholarly writing.

Visions of Amen can be read on two levels: first, theological—the birth of creation, the passion of Christ, angels, saints, birdsong, judgment; and second, as a personal statement of Messiaen’s love for Yvonne Loriod. In general, “Amen” signifies “So be it,” but for Messiaen and other French composers, it was also a code name for an expression of love. This code reference using his second mode of limited transposition is also found frequently in Messiaen’s Turangalila Symphony and throughout Messiaen’s oeuvre. 

 

Notes

1. Stephen Schloesser, Jazz Age Catholicism: Mystic Modernism in Postwar Paris, 1919–1933 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 281.

2. Ruth Sisson, “The Symphonic Organ Works of Charles Arnould Tournemire” (Ph.D. dissertation, Florida State University, 1984). Ianco Pascal, Charles Tournemire ou le mythe de Tristan (Geneva, Editions Papillon, 2001). Pascal knew Madame Odile Weber, the niece of Tournemire’s second wife Alice Tournemire, who shared many of her photographs with him. Joël Marie Fauquet, Catalogue de l’œuvre de Charles Tournemire (Geneva, Minkoff, 1979).

3. Edward Schaefer, “The Relationship Between the Liturgy of the Roman Rite and the Italian Organ Literature of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries” (Ph.D. dissertation, Catholic University of America, 1985).

4. Charles Tournemire, Précis d’exécution, de registration et d’improvisation à l’orgue (Paris, LeMoine, 1936).

5. Tikker, in Mystic Modern: The Music, Thought and Legacy of Charles Tournemire, edited by Jennifer Donelson and Stephen Schloesser (Church Music Association of America, 2014), 131. 

6. Lord, in Mystic Modern, 137.

7. Raba, in Mystic Modern, 186.

8. Rone, in Mystic Modern, 230.

9. Schloesser, in Mystic Modern, 266.

10. Ibid., 267.

11. Ibid., 257.

12. Stove, in Mystic Modern, 312.

13. Donelson, in Mystic Modern, 317.

14. Ibid., 318.

15. Hans Urs von Balthasar, “Some Points of Eschatology” in Explorations in Theology, Vol. I: The Word Made Flesh (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1964), p. 255, translated by Bannister. 

16. Bannister, in Mystic Modern, p. 352.

17. Stephen Schloesser, Visions of Amen: The Early Life and Music of Olivier Messiaen (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014), p. 230.

 

Ann Labounsky earned a Ph.D. in musicology from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.Mus. from the University of Michigan studying with Marilyn Mason, and a B.Mus. from the Eastman School of Music, studying with David Craighead. She studied in Paris with André Marchal and Jean Langlais on a Fulbright Grant and holds diplomas from the Schola Cantorum and Ecole Normale. Author of the biography Jean Langlais: the Man and His Music (Amadeus Press, 2000), she recorded the complete organ works of Jean Langlais for the Musical Heritage Society (reissued on the Voix du Vent label) and narrated and performed in a DVD of his life based on this biography, a project sponsored by the Los Angeles AGO Chapter. Labounsky is chair of organ and sacred music at Duquesne University, active in the American Guild of Organists, the National Pastoral Musicians, and the Church Music Association of America, and serves as organ artist in residence at First Lutheran Church, Pittsburgh.