Organ Music by Bulgarian Composers

Sabin Levi, DMA, FAGO, is a Bulgarian composer and organist. He has written three musical books and released five CDs, and is also active as a performer, composer, and teacher.

Part I was published in the October 2009 issue of The Diapason.

The third volume in this cycle of Bulgarian organ composers was published in July 2009, followed by the fourth and fifth in September 2009, and the sixth in January 2010. Additional volumes are currently in progress. The series is published by the Union of Bulgarian Composers (www.ubc-bg.com/). For further information, contact the author at <[email protected]>, or <[email protected]>.
The third and fourth volumes consist of organ sonatas: Artin Poturlian’s Sonata and Velislav Zaimov’s Sonata #1 in the third volume, and in the fourth, Velislav Zaimov’s Sonata #2 and sonatas by Lazar Nikolov and Mihail Pekov. In the fifth volume there are two chorale preludes and a chorale fantasy by Zaimov, and three chorale preludes by Sabin Levi. Also in this volume are two chamber music works: Sonata da chiesa by Neva Krysteva for alto flute, flute and piccolo, and organ; and Landscapes of the Soul by Krassimir Taskov for organ and trombone.
Volume VI contains Sonata Breve by Adrian Pavlov, Five Pieces in Memory of Friedrich Goldmann by Artin Poturlian, Sonatas for Organ #1 and #2 by Yordan Goshev, Prelude and Toccata by Kiril Lambov, and chamber music works by Zaimov: Sonata for Organ and Violin and Sonata for Organ and Cello.
Artin Poturlian’s Organ Sonata, which is in the third volume, was written in the seventies. Its musical language is quite different from his previously discussed organ work, Four Spiritual Chants. The Sonata is a three-movement atonal work, technically demanding for the performer, with some features that are apparent in all three movements. These entail a linear approach, an affinity for unusual, non-square rhythmic divisions, and multi-level canonic figurations related to complex ostinati (Example 1). In addition, one finds polyphonic tools evident in his other organ works, mostly inverse and retrograde canons and intervallic variations.
The musical language of Velislav Zaimov’s single-movement Sonata for Organ #1 is closer to his Fantasy (from Volume I) (Example 2). Throughout his large organ oeuvre, his musical language is quite uniform. Characteristically, he uses consecutive chords, with subtle changes in their internal intervals, repetitive motives, and large-scale thinking, with distinguishable first and second themes and quite large forms. Because of its intervallic structure, the music appears to sound somewhat tragic, while this is not the author’s intention.1 This trend seems to be recurrent in Zaimov’s music.2
Lazar Nikolov’s Sonata for Organ is also a single-movement, large-scale work, but quite different from Zaimov’s. Written in the seventies, this piece would have been called “avant-garde” with its dominance of sonoric effects and an aleatory penchant for non-standard rhythmic divisions. It is not written idiomatically; tremolos, usually uncharacteristic for organ, are abundant. Completely atonal, it is a real challenge for the performer. In addition to traditional notation, this piece uses graphic and aleatoric notation (Example 3).
Graphic language is seen also in the first movement of Mihail Pekov’s three-movement Organ Sonata, dedicated to Neva Krysteva (1975). In this movement, senza misura and measured passages follow one another. The music, somewhat tonal and somewhat modal in sound, is quite calm and serene in the improvisatory segments. In the metered passages, it is more energetic, and the final metered section employs quick triad-oriented movement. The second movement resembles a chorale prelude. The melody is in the pedal, at 4-foot pitch, while there is a slow-moving ostinato texture in the manuals. The two voices in the manuals imitate each other to some extent. Rhythmically, the composer employs multi-level syncopation, which also becomes the main opening motive to the third movement (Example 4).
Velislav Zaimov’s chorale preludes and chorale fantasy employ some of the traditional chorale prelude-related techniques. The author also uses some of his own—i.e., he does not cite any pre-existing melodies; instead, he writes his own, non-diatonic melody, fitted to the pre-existing text. For example, see his melody to Agricola’s text Ich ruf zu dir (Example 5). He uses the Christmas song Es kommt ein Schiff, geladen3 (attr. to Suderman/Tauler, XVII century), also with his own melody. In his chorale he cites the first two stanzas:

Es kommt ein Schiff, geladen
Bis an den höchsten Bord,
Trägt Gottes Sohn voll Gnaden,
Des Vaters ewig’s Wort.

Das Schiff geht still im Triebe,
Trägt eine teure Last;
Das Segel ist die Liebe,
Der Heilig Geist der Mast.

A ship is coming laden,
And rich indeed her hoard;
The Son of God the Father
And his eternal Word.

The ship sails soft, her burden
Of price all measure past:
Her mainsail, it is charity,
The Holy Ghost the mast.

His chorale fantasy follows the same principle. It is based on O Heiland, Reiß die Himmel auf (text by Friedrich von Spee, 1623). The author’s chorale melody is stated twice in the pedal throughout the piece, citing the text’s first stanza:

O Heiland, reiß die Himmel auf,
Herab, herauf vom Himmel lauf,
Reiß ab vom Himmel Tor und Tür,
Reiß ab, was Schloss und Riegel für.

O Saviour, tear open the heavens,
flow down to us from heaven above;
tear off heaven’s gate and door,
tear off every lock and bar.

The Sephardic song Morenica is the cantus firmus of the three chorale preludes of the same name by Sabin Levi. The first chorale uses “coloristic” chorale technique, adding ornaments to the soprano solo line. The second chorale employs a contrasting melody that interplays with the original chorale melody (in the tradition of Bach’s Wachet auf, BWV 645), while the third is a six-voice structure with double pedal. These pieces are tonal, albeit not traditionally so. Levi is working on a cycle of chorale preludes based on Sephardic songs.
Neva Krysteva’s Sonata da chiesa is scored for organ and three different flutes that do not play together. The first movement calls for a normal flute, the second for a piccolo, and the third for an alto flute (in G). The multi-layered structure is often alternated with a light and clear one in all three movements and the vibrati. This is so characteristic of Krysteva’s style and can be seen in numerous places. The flute part is quite idiomatic. The author uses flute harmonics in the first movement. The second movement (with organ and piccolo) is built around an ostinato principle, and the third resembles some scores of Luigi Nono, with a twist. The author’s striving for multi-layered structure is combined with modality, and the lower register of the organ is combined with the sound of an alto flute (Example 6). This movement employs some of the author’s frequent deliberate citations of the opening theme of Bach’s Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543.
Landscapes of the Soul, for organ and trombone by Krassimir Taskov, is the last piece in the fifth volume, and the second representative of chamber music with organ. This atonal work of quite large scale (duration of more than fifteen minutes) is an experiment in color. While there are no registration instructions, the player must use all of the keyboard’s range. There are numerous clusters, glissandi, etc. in the organ part (Example 7).
The sixth volume was published in two formats, A3 (in landscape position) and A4, also in landscape, with the intention that the larger format would be better for performers. This volume opens with Adrian Pavlov’s Sonata Breve, also called Les escaliers enigmatiques, written in 2009. The piece is inspired by the following verse of Bulgarian poet Edvin Sugarev:

Descending, among the closed doors
remembered he, the one, always open
always for him open
alone, among the closed doors.

Thinking about her, he went on,
descending, on and on, and even when
there were no more steps anymore,
there were no more doors.4

The composer seems to favor metric modulation, since it is in almost constant use. In addition to the obvious use of word painting, rhythmic variation is an important source of form building. Serial techniques are in use, employing both rhythmical and tonal sets, which further undergo series of permutations throughout the piece, called “Sonata” only metaphorically by the author. According to him,5 traditional form-building is a term that should be treated more widely, not always implying strict, uniform schemes. The piece is more math-oriented than poetry-derived, and the author placed the verse at the end, after having finished writing it.
Quite different are Yordan Goshev’s two organ sonatas, works written and premiered approximately 30 years ago. While leaning on the traditional side of form and metro-rhythmic language, the melodic language is somewhat chromatic, with quasi-tonal elements and without a written key signature. A German style prelude-and-fugue influence is evident, combined with some recitatives (Example 8).
Artin Poturlian completed his Five Pieces in Memory of Friedrich Goldmann in 2009.6 Here Poturlian’s musical language is different from that used in the Four Spiritual Chants (published in the first volume). For the most part, the pieces’ building blocks consist of multi-rhythmic structures, often imitating bells. Bells are referenced in one way or another in all of the five pieces, and, at the end, the composer wrote the following phrase: “Listen to the bell of your heart!” The subtly mathematical, subtly atonal approach is characteristic throughout. There are changes in rhythmic proportions in addition to the composer’s favorite atypical rhythmic divisions (Example 9).
Kiril Lambov’s boisterous Prelude and Toccata, written in the 1980s, is representative of this composer’s style: “spiced-up,” rather energetic and temperamental, with a solid, albeit ambiguous, tonal base. While the Prelude is rather short, mostly preparing the listener for the Toccata (segue), the latter is extensive, with Prokofiev-like rhythmic ostinati, jazz elements, and a final “apotheosis” section. This is a brilliant and effective concert piece (Example 10). 

In the Three Motets of Serenity 2000), Nine Marian Anthems,and Five Motets in Honour of the Trinity (composed 2000; both still manuscripts), Mawby expresses more overtly than usual a deeply felt nostalgia for the earlier part of his life.31 The quoting of plainsong and composing chant-like melodies suggest his retrospective mood. Another clue is that all these works are a cappella settings of traditional Latin texts, the four-part mixed choir frequently dividing, sometimes into as many as eight parts. The Nine Marian Anthems and Five Motets in Honour of the Trinity  are written for specified days of the Catholic Church's Year, but the Three Motets of Serenity may be performed on any occasion deemed appropriate.

The Three Motets of Serenity are dedicated to the memory of Cardinal John Heenan, Archbishop of Westminster between 1963 and 1975, a period that coincided with most of Mawby's tenure of the Master of the Music position there. For SSAATTBB choir, they are based on three of Mawby's favorite plainsong tunes, which he describes as "superb, evocative and compelling [and] . . . central to the motets."32 In performance they should be treated as serene "musical prayer[s]," should sound unrushed, and display a chant-like meditative quality.33

Organ Music

Mawby had written no organ solos by the age of fifty-five, but Kevin Mayhew had a hunch that there was an as yet untapped vein of talent in that direction in the composer, and offered to publish any that he might care to produce. He had a strong background in organ, having been a fine organist as a boy, and, as was noted earlier, had majored in the instrument at the Royal College of Music. During the years as a church musician he had, on occasions, played for services, and had written many choral works with organ accompaniments. Thus it is not surprising that Mayhew's insight proved correct. What was unexpected was the heavy flow of pieces that poured from Mawby's pen once he started in 1991.

Unique among English organ composers, Mawby has written almost exclusively for church services.34 This may be explained by the role the instrument has played in his life. When he worked for the Roman Catholic Church, he occasionally performed on the organ, but primarily he was a choirmaster, and assistants usually played the instrument. Thus, he tends to see the instrument as a major adjunct to worship, as the provider of accompaniments for vocal music, the creator of "walking music," the furnisher of music to fill awkward silences, and generally supply background music at appropriate mo-ments in services. At the same time, though, he appreciates and values highly the traditional solo repertoire of the instrument. "Organ music," he says, "has a unique power which can move people deeply."35

The scores indicate that he thinks, broadly, in terms of a traditional large, four-manual, Romantic, orchestral instrument, such as the one built between the World Wars by Henry Willis at Westminster Cathedral.36 At least one enclosed division is necessary for the execution of the crescendos and diminuendos that are a part of Mawby's style. There should also be a supply of accessories, in order to realize the occasional terrace dynamics, the gradual orchestral-style piling up of power, and various other dynamic fluctuations within a piece. He quite regularly marks melodies to be soloed, without usually specifying specific stops. The one exception is that he sometimes marks entries of the tuba at climactic moments, a reflection of his lifelong love of the sound of the tuba at Westminster which is sui generis, a rank on thirty inches wind with an agreeable rasp about it, a sort of "edge." In the tradition of early 20th-century English organ composers,37 in loud passages he will sometimes call for a tuba solo in the tenor register in the left hand to roar out within a texture provided by the pedal and right hand. Less frequently, the tuba is given a soprano solo or plays chordal fanfare phrases.

Very prominent in his organ music are verbatim fragments of plainsong melodies or plainsong-like themes and phrases. This reflects his fondness for plainsong that he has felt ever since he sang the ancient chants for the first time at the age of nine.38 His organ works are usually between two to four pages in length, and are for performance by average to good church organists. Homophonic textures are the norm, as is the developing of material in a free, improvisatory manner that usually does not conform to one of the traditional organ forms. His music is almost completely free of the influence of the major organ composers past or present. Thus, there are no preludes and fugues, passacaglias, or sonatas, and hardly any of the other types of pieces favored by organists, such as toccatas, scherzos, intermezzi, and arias. Most of his pieces have been inspired by sacred texts or images, or have been written for situations in church services where organ music is useful, such as processionals, recessionals, and, as noted above, music to fill awkward silences during the service.

The first works, Quiet-Time: Fifteen Interludes for Organ (1991), follow, at least in spirit if not musical details, down the path blazed by his friend, Gregory Murray, in his monumental seven-volume collection of Short Organ Interludes for Liturgical Use (published between 1935 and 1987).39 Mawby's miniatures are untitled except for being numbered, are printed on two staves for an organ with two manuals and pedal, and employ modality, and plainsong or pseudo plainsong mel-odies. One may see an indication of Mawby's future mature organ style in the spirituality of the Quiet-Time interludes, but the pieces occasionally lack the flow and sense of inevitability that surrounds the better pieces that were written later.  Chords frequently fluctuate from four to five and six parts and sometimes more. Dissonances are frequent, quite often being those created by seventh and ninth chords, added seconds, and voice leading that is not always concerned with consonant vertical alignments.

With the trilogy Gregorian Calendar: Thirty Contrasting Pieces for Organ Based on Plainsong Melodies (1993), Gregorian Communion:  Twenty Pieces for Organ Based on Plainsong Melodies (1995), and Gregorian Processionals:  Twenty Pieces for Organ Based on Plainsong Melodies (1996) Mawby supplied a large collection of pieces for the organ in its role as a major adjunct to worship.

Gregorian Calendar comprises works of between two and four pages length for use throughout the liturgical year. Each season has one loud and one soft voluntary, and six shorter pieces for general use are attached at the end of the book. In the Foreword, Mawby says "the chant's rich variety of moods and modes [provided] a generous reference point from which to explore the inherent prayerfulness of the music." Entire Gregorian melodies are used as the basis of some pieces. Others, like the composition based on the All Saints Day plainsong Placare Christe Servulis, are built from one or more Gregorian fragments.

Placare Christe Servulis is developed from the first six tones of the chant. At the outset, the pentatonic plainsong fragment, set in 7/8 time, is enunciated four times, unaccompanied, in the rich soprano register of the tuba, and thereafter reappears periodically throughout the work, each statement being regenerated by some type of transformation. Characteristic of many of Mawby's organ pieces, in Placare Christe Servulis he writes what appears to be a newly-composed melody that is, in fact, derived from the plainsong motif introduced in bar one. Example 8 shows a version of this tune in the right hand part at bars 28-31. Reflecting the unmetered nature of plainsong, the main meter of 7/8, which Mawby usually divided in eighth notes as follows:  3 + 2 + 2 (see bars 32-33), is disturbed by regular changes of time signature, thus disrupting any lengthy impression of metric rhythm. This allows the plainsong style to pervade the piece, and also enervates the forward thrust of the music because it is rhythmically unpredictable. The triads are often larded with seconds and sevenths, less frequently ninths (bar 31), and, occasionally, elevenths (bars 32-33). These added tones create a different acoustical dimension from conventional triadic harmony, a more dissonant accompanimental foundation for his tunes. The off the cuff patchwork of contrasting ideas in Placare Christe Servulis, often heard over pedal points, suggests that the work was originally improvised and then written down.

The methods of Gregorian Calendar continued in Gregorian Communion  and Gregorian Processionals. This may be seen, for instance, in the dreamy improvisational chorale prelude on Adore te devote in Gregorian Communion. Although soloed statements of the opening line of the plainsong are heard near the beginning, and there is a presentation of the second half of the hymn tune near the end, the focus of Mawby's interest is in subtly weaving short phrases of the Gregorian melody into the delicately meandering, dreamy harmonies.  The essence of his use of ancient chants is that he likes one to hear snatches of motifs derived from the original theme, but only rarely quotes them unchanged and entirely. The accompanying left hand and pedal parts of the Adore te devote setting are concordant with the right hand much of the time, but extremely strident cluster chords occasionally result when preeminence is given to the horizontal movement of the parts.

With Hymns for Occasions for Manuals (One Hundred Special Arrangements) and More Hymns for Occasions for Manuals (One Hundred Special Arrangements) (both 1997) Mawby joined the ranks of such 20th-century English composers as Tertius Noble, Edward Bairstow, Eric Thiman, Henry Coleman, Harrison Oxley, Richard Lloyd, and Noel Rawsthorne, all of whom have contributed collections of varied keyboard accompaniments to hymn tunes sung by a church congregation. The above long list of composers suggests that the field was already crowded before Mawby added his arrangements, but some of the earlier collections were hardly usable because they never rose above the mundane and, by the 1990s, others had become old-fashioned.

Furthermore, Mawby's are different from the collections by the men listed above in that he provides more than simply a single varied accompaniment for each hymn. Each starts with an introduction for organ solo that captures the mood of the words and melody of the hymn, and this leads without break into two organ accompaniments for the congregational singing, the first a standard harmonization of the hymn tune, with first ending, marked dal segno, for repeating the same music for more verses, the second ending leading into the last verse, which is a more complex harmonization. Dovetailed into the end of the hymn proper is a concluding flourish of a few bars for the keyboard alone that is often a development of the introduction material. The organist chooses all or part of each arrangement as befits the occasion.

Much of the harmony is conventional four-part hymn style, but the composer is clearly attracted to the tension-creating attributes of dissonance, and he indulges with abandon his liking for this element in the varied accompaniments for the last verses. The end of the setting of  Crimond, shown in Example 9, illustrates the point. Several of the dissonances in this passage are traditional nonharmonic embellishing tones, such as the appoggiatura at bar 42 in the left hand part, and the suspension at bar 44 in the right hand, both of which resolve downwards by step. Dissonant clashes occur between the tonic pedal point and the manual harmony at bars 43-46, and there are numerous mildly dissonant seventh chords that are redolent of the musical theater style of Lloyd Webber.

Some of the touches of chromaticism that ratchet up the element of surprise and excitement in the varied harmonizations for last verses involve seventh chords. See, for instance, the secondary dominant seventh chord at bar 40, the diminished seventh chord at bar 41, and the half diminished seventh chords on the dominant at bars 44, 46, and 50 in Example 9. The major chord on the flattened mediant at bar 49 is a chromatic touch that some may feel is quite exhilarating.

Hymns for Occasions and More Hymns for Occasions are written with a sense of bold confidence and sheer enjoyment, coupled with thrilling, often unexpected delightful harmonic ventures, and they may well revive stale choirs and congregations who have become bored hymn singers.40

Given the above inspired arrangements of hymns, it is something of a disappointment that the composer has chosen to write almost all the twenty or so voluntaries on hymn tunes41 in the improvisational, homophonic, formally free style of the Gregorian trilogy discussed earlier. William Lloyd Webber was particularly fond of the style for some of his pieces based on hymn tunes.42 But he avoided the sameness of Mawby's compositions by sometimes using techniques and forms of the past, such as imitative counterpoint including canon,43 writing alla Bach,44 and casting the music in one of the chorale prelude forms.45 Yet this is not to say that one cannot commend some of the Mawby hymn preludes. Unto Us Is Born a Son (1994) and O Filii et Filiae (1995), for example, are vibrant and alive, and entirely convincing.

Unto Us Is Born a Son is so intensely joyous and melodious, and enriched with warm seventh chords and chromaticisms, that one might not notice the art concealing art, for the preexistent melody is subjected to continuous development, without any sense of it being an intellectual, technical study. The old Christmas tune traditionally associated with this text appears in a multitude of guises. Sometimes it is heard as a soprano melody with or without intervallic or rhythmic modification.  In one ruminative soft passage, there are vague reminiscences of the carol theme showing up fleetingly in a melismatic right-hand solo, accompanied by whole-note chords in the left hand, over a long pedal point. In the growing excitement leading to the closing apotheosis, parts of the Unto Us Is Born a Son melody appear in an inner part over an extended tonic pedal point. At the start of this passage, the first and third phrases of the preexistent melody are stated without break. Then the first two phrases of the hymn tune are presented in a particularly grand and "in the face" manner in augmentation, enunciated in stentorian, raspy tuba chords in the left hand, sandwiched between fortissimo accompanimental right-hand figurations and a pedal point in the feet. The last phrase of the carol tune is never stated in the work.

O Filii et Filiae is unique among the hymn preludes in that it is built around a full, uninterrupted statement of the preexistent melody. Mawby retains the modality and moderate pace of the ancient Easter plainsong tune, but removes the original free rhythms in favor of triple meter. A rhythmic, one-bar motif involving octave leaps in the right hand, over dotted half note left-hand chords, provides the material of the opening prelude, and returns in modified forms in interludes later.  In the first section, this leaping material frames presentations of the first and third lines of O Filii et Filiae in the mixolydian mode on G, followed by a repeat of the third line, now in the mixolydian on C. Next, via an eight-bar dominant pedal point that is ornamented by references to the leaping motif, there is a loud, majestic complete statement of the modal plainsong on C in manual block chords over dotted half notes in the pedals. In the third section, with a growing sense of excitement engendered by syncopations, more dissonance, and a gradual increase in organ volume, the ancient melody is presented a final time, broken into separate phrases and supported by a foundation of material derived from the preludial leaping motif.  The coda is both sublime and breath-taking: above a fortissimo fifteen-bar dominant pedal point, the left hand plays the first two lines of O Filii et Filiae in the tenor register on the solo division tuba stop, accompanied by chords in the right hand on the great manual. Finally, the last phrase of the hymn, marked Adagio, appears in the pedals, under a series of massive, held chromatic manual chords. A thunderous full organ C major chord closes the work.

Compline (1993) is an example of some fifteen pieces composed for the so-called "Reluctant Organist"--someone who can only play simple pedal parts consisting of mainly lower notes (which are easier for beginners to play) under a more difficult keyboard part.46 Such restrictions do not seem to have hampered the composer, for Compline unfolds naturally, with a restrained beauty and calm spiritual tone that is entirely appropriate for Compline, the final service before retiring in the Roman Catholic Church.  Two musical ideas are developed in a series of short alternating sections. The one idea is introduced at the start, and is a solemn, reverent theme in solid quarter and half note chords that are generally dissonant. Noticeably more concordant, the other idea is a faster moving, sinuous, melismatic, widely spaced theme.

The Weekend Organist: Service Music for Manuals (1997) is similar to the Gregorian Calendar, Gregorian Communion, and Gregorian Processionals in that it is a resource volume for church organists. The book comprises eighteen Fanfares, ten Processionals, seven Meditations, and nine Recessionals. The envisaged user is "the busy weekend organist who, while anxious to contribute to a vibrant weekly liturgy, has little time to undertake systematic and concentrated organ practice."47

In the Preface, Mawby suggests that the nine longer Fanfares could be used as an introduction to the hymns on special occasions, or might be played as greetings for an important visitor, or even to mark the arrival of the ordinary procession. They are in the nine most common major keys for hymns:  the first in C major, followed by one piece for each of the major key signatures from one to four sharps and flats.  A large two manual organ that includes a trumpet stop, reed chorus, and enclosed swell seems to be in the composer's mind.  Mawby has a fine grasp of the need, when writing fanfares, for a vibrant sense of dash, staccato articulation, repeated-note rhythms, triadic melodic motifs, and, perhaps in order to keep the audience alert, brief surprising chordal digressions here and there. The harmony is modern-sounding but tonal, with frequent progressions to unexpected chords, and is encrusted with traditional nonharmonic embellishing tones. One does not sense that the composer has labored long and hard on polishing, with the result that there is a pleasant easy flow about the music, which can be magnificent and emotionally stirring.

Mawby says the nine shorter Fanfares should be played as prefaces to the Gospel reading on feast days, but they might introduce hymns at important services.

The Processionals and Recessionals are divided into three categories:  (1) loud two-page works; (2) quiet two-page pieces; and (3) short compositions that are mostly only three systems long.  Mawby envisages them as interchangeable, and may be shortened if necessary.

To some degree, in the Processionals and Recessionals, but especially in the quiet, two-page Meditations, plainsong's contours pervade the melodic material.  The Meditations are also endowed with a contemplative, spiritual mood that is the world of the Roman Catholic Church's High Mass, with its chiming altar bells, smell of incense and candles, and Gregorian chant. Optional cuts, marked by square brackets, are provided in the Meditations, to facilitate the tailoring of the length to suit a particular occasion.

A procession of majestic pseudo plainsong melodies dominates the joyful  voluntary Praise the Lord with Mighty Sounds (1997). Cast in ternary form, a celebratory mood is established immediately in Section A with detached, dense, chordal writing for full organ alternating with skipping plainsong-like interjections. After developing these ideas, a subdued middle section is ushered in with a short lyrical new melody that again suggests the influence of ancient Catholic chant. Initially this tune is soloed in the left hand, accompanied on another manual by detached repeated chords in the right hand, and then it undergoes development, with fragments of the piece's principal melodic material appearing here and there. Section A1 sees a return to the dynamically powerful, dignified ideas of the opening. These are developed briefly, after which, with the organ blazing away at full throttle, there is a closing cadential affirmation of Christ's majesty over his people.

Triptych for Organ (1997), Mawby's only large scale,48 technically difficult work, is for top recitalists. It requires a large Romantic orchestral organ with at least one enclosed division.  In using the term triptych Mawby was likening his three pieces to an altarpiece painting in three hinged-together panels, such as the 1432 Altarpiece by Hubert and Jan van Eyck in St. Bavo Cathedral, Ghent, which he loves.49 The three movements are titled "The Energy and Humanity of Christ," "The Mystery of Communion," and "Christ is Risen, Alleluia!" and are independent programmatic pieces that are related by their Christian theology but nothing more. The work's modality, pseudo chant motifs, free use of successions of different meters, and through-composed, improvisational style are vintage Mawby. Dissonances are much more pervasive and abrasive than usual, notably in the greater than usual use of cluster chords. Despite the religious titles of the movements, the composition is not in cyclic form, but similarities in the main motifs of each of the movements (marked with brackets in Example 10a-c) help to bind the work together thematically.

Marked Allegro feroce, the first movement opens with the principal idea, a five-tone motif, in the pedals (Example 10a). This eventually gives way to subordinate material consisting of a series of syncopated, detached, agitated, repeated-note, sixteenth-note patterns. The opening five-tone motif returns, transformed into a jaunty modal dancing theme, and then is truncated, against a backdrop of savagely dissonant cluster chords. Then a new, less dramatic subordinate melodic idea appears, duplicated at the fourth and sixth below, thus forming parallel first inversion triads. This material returns in various guises throughout the rest of the movement. As the triumphant close approaches, both the principal five-tone motif and the syncopated, sixteenth-note motif are brought together in a series of overlapping entries, against a backdrop of busy, high pitched, sixteenth-note figurations in the right hand. In the breathtaking lead up to the final chord, the first motif is dominant.

The second movement, marked Andante ma un poco rubato, is characterized by a rather static, spiritual atmosphere that Mawby first used in Mass in Honour of Christ the King (1967) and had turned to so effectively a number of times later.50 The structure is a series of smoothly joined sections in which the movement's chief motif (which is similar to the first movement's principal motif) undergoes a series of transformations, against slower moving ethereal-sounding chords. First, it is reiterated like an ostinato in the pedal. Then it turns into a wide-ranging, serpentine, high-pitched, fragmented solo (Example 10b). At the approach to the climax the motif is obsessively repeated, after which it returns to the pedal.

A similar motif to the first movement's principal idea opens the finale, and this is followed by a bridge passage of agitated sixteenth-note figurations that are also reminiscent of the beginning of the composition. Then a secondary idea, a rhythmic, wide-ranging melodic fragment for a solo reed in the style of a pompous heraldic fanfare, is introduced. With deep, highly emotional religious fervor, the composer alternates the movement's principal motif and the solo reed fanfare idea in an extended, wildly ecstatic movement of metamorphosis. Mawby, as if overcome with enthusiasm, and drawing upon his whole arsenal of improvisational effects, seems to lose himself in what is the most extensive display in his organ music of colorful, sonorous, acoustical effects.

After so many pieces of between two to four pages length written principally for church service use, Triptych's larger canvas  is a major departure for Mawby.  Its positive attributes are the fluency of the writing, the vivid pictorialism, and the courageous daring the composer demonstrates in experimenting on a much larger canvas than before. But the composer's improvisatory, through-composed methods, that work well in shorter structures, are put under unbearable stress in here.

The 20th-century English Catholic composers of significant church music are probably Edward Elgar, Edmund Rubbra, Lennox Berkeley, Anthony Milner, and Colin Mawby. Unlike the others in this group, Mawby has concentrated almost entirely on writing liturgical church and organ music. He has a keen appreciation of, and affection for, religious texts, and responds to them creatively and with finesse. This factor, combined with his superlative mastery of the techniques of writing for voices, accounts, at least in part, for his best church works probably being unequaled by other living English Catholic composer. In the organ works, plainsong has perhaps been allowed to be too influential, and preoccupation with loosely evolving, improvisational development of material monopolizes the scores. Salient positive features of his organ compositions are the excellent under-the-fingers style and feeling for what sounds well, and the music's appropriateness for the occasions for which it has been written--its ability to beautify and bring into focus the moods of the various situations that call for organ music in church services.

The conviction, inspiration, sincerity, and warmth of expression in his church and organ music, are expressions of the two paramount galvanizing forces in Mawby’s life:  his love of God, and devotion to the Roman Catholic Church.

Godwin Sadoh is a Nigerian organist-composer, pianist, choral conductor, and ethnomusicologist. His latest book, Intercultural Dimensions in Ayo Bankole’s Music, will be published by Wayne Leupold Editions. Sadoh is presently Assistant Professor of Music and Coordinator of the Sacred Music program at LeMoyne-Owen College, Memphis, Tennessee.

Musical practice in 21st-century Nigeria can be broadly divided into four major genres: 1) traditional music, 2) popular dance music, 3) church music, and 4) modern African art music. Traditional music can be traced back to the historical roots of the society. It is the music that defines and identifies the people of Nigeria and their culture. The whole gamut of Nigerian culture is embedded in the traditional music, be it cultural, social, political, or religious, historiography, as well as world-view. The music permeates every aspect of Nigerian life. However, the middle of the 19th century witnessed events that transformed the entire cultural landscape of Nigeria. These events were manifested in the form of political governance through the British colonial administration, and through the efforts of Christian missionaries from America and England.
These two domineering forces introduced Western classical music to the main stream of Nigerian socio/cultural life around 1840s.1 Through the colonial and mission schools, as well as churches established by the missionaries, talented Nigerians were introduced to Western music notation, European songs, and musical instruments. It was at these institutions that Nigerians first learned to sing Western songs such as nursery rhymes, folk songs and selected excerpts from major classical works such as Handel’s Messiah and Mendelssohn’s Elijah. In addition, talented Nigerians received private lessons in piano, harmonium, and organ at these schools and churches. All these endeavors consequently led to the emergence of art music composers in Nigeria.

The Golden Age of Church Music (1900–1950)

The first generation of Nigerian composers comprised mainly church organists and choirmasters. They concentrated on writing sacred music for worship in the newly founded churches. Compositions include church hymns, canticles (responsorial prayer songs for soloist and congregation),2 chants for singing Psalms, choral anthems, and cantatas. Their works represent the first attempts by indigenous Nigerians in writing Western classical music. Hence, most of these compositions are very simple, short, and tonal. The harmonization is severely functional following baroque and classical conventions. The music was written for Western musical instruments such as piano, harmonium or organ, and the form, harmony, and style follow European standards.
Nigerian traditional musical instruments were not incorporated into these compositions during this era because they were blatantly prohibited from being used for worship by the early foreign missionaries. In other words, the only instruments that early Nigerian composers could write for were European. However, in spite of the embargo on traditional instruments, it was in this period that we began to witness musical synthesis of European and African idioms. The experiment of conjoining Western elements with traditional African music actually began in the early church. This took the form of employing indigenous languages for texts and using indigenous songs as melodic themes for compositions. Notable composers from the first generation include Rev. Canon J. J. Ransome-Kuti, Rev. T. A. Olude, Akin George, Ikoli Harcourt-Whyte, Emmanuel Sowande (Fela Sowande’s father), Okechukwu Ndubuisi, and Thomas Ekundayo Phillips (Organist and Master of the Music, Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos, 1914–1962). Thomas Ekundayo Phillips was the first Nigerian to receive professional training in music at Trinity College of Music, London, from 1911 to 1914.

The Age of Concert Music (1950–1960)

This era was represented by the most celebrated Nigerian musician, Fela Sowande (1905–1987). Sowande continued to compose sacred music for divine services in the church, yet he transformed art music in Nigeria from a sacred entity and elevated it to the concert platform in public auditoriums, institutions of higher learning, and radio stations. He introduced solo art songs with piano or organ accompaniment, organ solo pieces, chamber music, and orchestral works to the Nigerian art music repertoire. Although Thomas Ekundayo Phillips wrote two short pieces for organ solo, it was Sowande who composed several large works for organ employing traditional folk songs and indigenous church hymn tunes. No other Nigerian composer has written such a large body of solo pieces for organ as Sowande.
Prior to this era, musical activities were confined to the churches during festive occasions such as Christmas and Easter seasons. With the introduction of vocal solos, chamber music and orchestral works, the venue of musical activities shifted from the church to public auditoriums where secular works could be performed without any inhibitions. In terms of tonality, Sowande introduced chromaticism into the musical vocabulary of Nigerian compositions. He refused to align himself with the atonal school of composers, then in vogue in Europe and America. He chose to move his Nigerian audience gradually from the tonal convention of the baroque/classical era to romantic chromaticism. Sowande must have felt that jumping from the traditional tonal system to atonality would have been too wide a leap and too radical for the Nigerian audience to appreciate. Although chromatic passages are prevalent in his organ works, Sowande left the idea of atonality for the next generation of Nigerian composers.
The second generation of Nigerian musical experience also ushered in a new form of musical integration known as pan-Africanism. Sowande, unlike his predecessors, went beyond employing Nigerian folk songs in his works; rather, he included popular tunes from other African countries into his compositions. Hence, one would hear indigenous songs from Nigeria and other African societies in his works. For instance, he borrowed a Ghanaian folk song in his African Suite for String Orchestra.3 In addition, this era introduced the concept of global interculturalism into Nigerian music language. We must give credit to Sowande for being the first Nigerian composer to go so far as to borrow spiritual tunes from the African-American culture. He uses spirituals in his solo art songs and choral anthems, as well as organ pieces.

The Age of Atonality (1960 to present)

The third generation of modern Nigerian composers consists of highly talented musicians, both composers and scholars, who received intensive training in the European tradition in several British Royal Schools of Music, as well as training in ethnomusicology in American universities. Thus, it would be correct to refer to these musicians as composer-ethnomusicologists. From the 1960s, foreign-trained Nigerian composers embarked on intensive research into the traditional music of their society to enhance a better understanding of its component materials, structure, stylistic principles, tonality, function and meaning in the society, the instrumental resources, organization of ensembles, rhythmic basis of instrumental music, organization and techniques of vocal music, melody and polyphony in vocal as well as instrumental ensemble, speech and melody, theoretical framework, and interrelatedness of music and dance. The focal point has been cultural renaissance and the search for nationalistic identity, that is, how to combine the new art music with the African roots.
It is from this period that we witness for the first time compositions involving both traditional African and Western musical instruments. Prior to this era, music notation specified only Western instruments. African instruments were not included in the scores of the early composers but rather used for supportive purposes and to create spontaneous improvised rhythmic background for vocal songs. Such instrumental rhythmic patterns were never notated until the era of the composer-ethnomusicologists. In fact, there are works from this period composed exclusively for traditional instruments such as Akin Euba’s Abiku No. 1 for Nigerian Instruments (1965). This work was composed for a dance drama, Iya Abiku, choreographed by Segun Olusola and videotaped by the Nigerian Television Authority for presentation at the International Music Center Congress on “Dance, Ballet and Pantomime in Film and Television,” in Salzburg, Austria, 1965.4 The third generation composers aim to make the music more appealing to their local audience. In other words, the Africanisms in the music are meant to captivate and draw the larger society to the works.
In terms of tonal organization, this group of Nigerian composers was tutored in the theoretical principles of the early 20th century such as the twelve-tone system, atonality, and octatonic scales. Pioneers of atonal compositions in Nigeria employed these methods in two ways. First, some of the compositions are written strictly in Western idiom following the styles of Arnold Schoenberg, Alban Berg, and Anton Webern. Works in this category are practically European without any interjection of African traditional music. Their form, texture, instrumentation, rhythmic organization, and tonality are Western. The second category of 20th-century compositions in Nigeria incorporated some Africanisms. These compositions are partly Western and partly African. They are best described as syncretic or intercultural compositions—the amalgamation of European and African musical resources. Prominent composers of atonal music in Nigeria are Akin Euba (1935–), Ayo Bankole (1935–1976), Joshua Uzoigwe (1946–2005), and Godwin Sadoh (1965–).

Akin Euba

Akin Euba is a Yoruba composer. He studied piano performance and composition at the Trinity College of Music, London, in the 1950s. In 1966, he received a master’s degree in ethnomusicology from the University of California, Los Angeles, and the Ph.D. in ethnomusicology from the University of Ghana in 1974. Most of his piano compositions were written in the 1960s. Interestingly, these piano pieces are all based on Western atonality and twelve-tone row. Examples of these works include Impressions from an Akwete Cloth (1964), Saturday Night at Caban Bamboo (1964), Tortoise and the Speaking Cloth (1964), Four Pieces from Oyo Calabashes (1964), and Scenes from Traditional Life (1970).5
Euba’s compositional technique in his piano pieces is on two levels: 1) He first creates traditional rhythmic patterns on the score, and then 2) assigns melodies, which are atonal or twelve-tone, over the rhythms. In this way, the clashing dissonances are not easily perceived by Nigerian audiences. The listeners are more immersed in the irresistible rhythms emanating from the pieces, which move them to dance and easily eradicate the contemplative aspect of the musical performance. In terms of rhythmic drive, Euba’s piano works imitate dundun drum music, one of the most popular traditional ensembles among the Yoruba of southwest Nigeria.6 Another way that Euba deploys atonality in his compositions is through the use of ostinati. His approach directly imitates the traditional African technique in which the ostinato accompaniment harmonically is not in consonance with the melodic line, but rather, the ostinato is merely supplying a melo-rhythmic accompaniment. Euba uses the atonal texture to create dissonant percussive sounds as found in traditional drumming among the Yoruba. The dissonant lines help to simulate and reinforce the indigenous sonority in the music and make the piano sound like African traditional drums.

Joshua Uzoigwe

Joshua Uzoigwe belongs to the Igbo ethnic group in Eastern Nigeria. He studied piano and composition at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London, from 1973 to 1977. He later studied ethnomusicology under John Blacking at Queen’s University, Belfast, Ireland, from 1977, and subsequently received the Ph.D. degree in 1981. Uzoigwe uses various types of pitch collections in his compositions, ranging from tetratonic, pentatonic, hexatonic, heptatonic, octatonic, diatonic scales, atonality, and the twelve-tone method. He uses these scale systems to evoke melodic and harmonic nuances of Igbo music7 in his compositions. For instance, he uses the twelve-tone row in Oja for wind quartet. Uzoigwe began to use dodecaphony while studying at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama. Often, he breaks the row into minute ‘cells’ and then shuffles them around to create a very interesting work. The pitch collections are organized into basic sets to create musical form through permutation, repetition, variation, and improvisation. In addition, Uzoigwe uses twelve-tone technique and atonality in a unique way by combining melo-rhythmic patterns drawn from Nigerian musical culture with specific tone colors. Meki Nzewi defines melo-rhythm, his own term, as “a rhythmic organization that is melodically conceived and melodically born.”8
Uzoigwe’s conception of the twelve-tone method differs from Arnold Schoenberg’s. Uzoigwe defines a tone row as an “ordered set of tones which is derived from an ordered set of drums and musically deployed in certain specific procedures and its basic root is in Igbo musical system.”9 Indeed, tonal organization in Uzoigwe’s music is deeply embedded in his traditional musical practice, and his works are based on its theoretical framework. This ‘cultural-tone row’10 method is exemplified in his Ritual Procession for European and African orchestra and the Talking Drum for piano. One of the movements of the Talking Drum is based on a row of ten tones, which is associated with ukom music.11

Ayo Bankole

Ayo Bankole was born on May 17, 1935, at Jos, in Plateau State of Nigeria. He belongs to the Yoruba ethnic group. In August 1957, Bankole left Nigeria on a Federal Government Scholarship to study music at the Guildhall School of Music & Drama, London. He concentrated on piano, composition, organ, harmony, and counterpoint studies. While at Guildhall, Bankole experimented12 with simple works and compositions based on 20th-century tonality. After four years of intense studies at Guildhall, Bankole proceeded to Claire College, University of Cambridge, London, where he obtained his first degree, the Bachelor of Arts in Music, 1964. While at Cambridge as an Organ Scholar (1961–64), Bankole earned the prestigious Fellowship of the Royal College of Organists (FRCO), making him the second and last Nigerian to receive the highest diploma in organ playing given in Great Britain. At the end of his studies at Cambridge University in 1964, Bankole received a Rockefeller Foundation Fellowship to study ethnomusicology at the University of California, Los Angeles. In 1969, he was appointed Lecturer in Music at the University of Lagos, Nigeria, where he embarked on an in-depth research on Nigerian traditional music and presented scholarly papers at conferences. At the University of Lagos, he combined the role of music educator, composer, performer, and musicologist.13 In addition to his academic pursuits, Bankole founded several choral groups in Lagos and was very active as an organist in several churches, including the Cathedral Church of Christ, Lagos (the headquarters of the Anglican Communion Nigeria, and the seat of the Anglican Archbishop) and St. Peter’s Anglican Church, Lagos.

Bankole: Toccata and Fugue

Nigerian composers began experimenting with new tonal resources in their works from the 1960s. This era can be regarded as radical and avant-garde in the history of musical composition in the country. The then young composers, fired up by the new 20th-century compositional devices they were exposed to at the schools of music in London, partially abandoned the tonal system of the preceding era. I am very careful to choose the word ‘partially’ because some of the compositions in this period are also tonal. In 1960, Bankole wrote his first composition for organ entitled Toccata and Fugue.14 In his notes to the music, Bankole informs us that this work represents one of his first attempts in the world of atonality. Being his first product in this musical language, the work is more of a blending of several musical styles of the European epochs. At this early stage, while trying to break away from the ‘old order’ of tonality, the Toccata and Fugue is more of a transitional musical work between the 19th and 20th centuries. The young composer had not yet arrived in the world of atonal writing. According to him, this piece maintains structural allegiance to the king of baroque, J. S. Bach. However, while the overall structure and the process of thematic development are in strict accord with the baroque tradition, the melodic style is not. This is because, although there is no serial line to dictate melodic progression, freedom of tonality has been achieved through the preponderant use of severe neo-impressionistic chromaticism. Apart from these points, the music belongs to several ages of musical experience, absorbing Beethoven’s surprise build-up and “power-cut,” Brahms’ dark orchestration, Bach’s virtuosity (especially his powerful cadenzas) and chord clusters suggesting certain moments of Max Reger.
The composer emphatically states that, “no conscious effort is made to inject African traditional styles (or for that matter any of the styles mentioned above) into the work, and if these are felt, their roles should not be exaggerated.”15 Hence, a discussion of this piece will strictly be in Western theoretical style.
The Toccata is built on several short chromatic figures, which are later employed as themes for the Fugue. Generally, the chromatic figures consist of ascending and descending melodic cells as well as ‘jumping’ intervals. The melodic cells appear in various forms: simple eighth notes, rapid-moving sixteenth notes, and triplets. Structurally, the toccata is in three-part form. The A section introduces the main melodic cells in the manuals and the pedal. Following the introduction are various manipulations of the thematic materials (measures 1 to 35). Example 1 shows the A section of the toccata. The B section commences from measure 36 and ends in measure 47. Here the left and right hands are filled with massive chords, while the pedal is occupied with descending sequential passages. The pedal part comprises virtuosic fast-moving intervals of 4ths, 5ths, diminished 5ths, and inversion of wide leap intervals from the A section. The A section returns in measures 48 to 69. In the final section, the pedal is occupied with sequential repetition of the descending chromatic figure. Example 2 shows the B section of the Toccata.
Bankole’s choice of chords in this toccata includes open 4ths, 5ths, 6ths, octaves, diminished 5ths, minor 7ths, and tone clusters. He deliberately avoids functional harmony and conventional cadential resolutions. Some of his cadential resolution techniques include 1) octave descent in the pedal (mm. 16–17); 2) ostinato in the pedal to distillate tonal resolution; 3) sequential repetition in pedal; and 4) pedal point. With these four methods, Bankole was able to confine this composition within a contemporary milieu. Although it is not easy to pinpoint the exact key of the toccata, the piece opens with a pedal point on E and it closes with the third inversion of F-sharp chord resolving finally on E (mm. 68–69).
The Fugue has two main themes; hence, it is a double fugue. The fugal themes are derived from the ascending and descending chromatic figures (m. 9 R.H. and mm. 11–12 L.H.) as well as “jumping” intervals (m. 9 in the pedal) from the Toccata. It opens with the first theme in the left hand (mm. 1–4) and a real answer in the right hand (mm. 5–8). Following is an introduction of the second theme group in m. 11. The first and second theme groups are supported by counter subjects. The exposition closes with a reappearance of the first theme group in the pedal while the manual accompanies with the counter subject. Example 3 shows the two theme groups in the exposition.
The episode (mm. 17–75) presents the two ideas in diverse varied forms: diminution (m. 32 R.H.), augmentation (mm. 33–40 pedal), short fragments (mm. 26–27 L.H.), pedal sequence (mm. 45–49), and an alternation of modified versions of first theme and second theme groups in the pedal, while the manual accompanies with thick chords, diminished 5ths, and tone clusters (mm. 64–75). The final entry of the first and second themes appear in the pedal from measures 76 to 87. Example 4 shows an episode of the Fugue. Bankole closes the fugue with a virtuosic pedal cadenza derived from the two theme groups (mm. 88 to the end). This wonderful piece ends with an unusual dominant seventh chord resolving on C in m. 97. Bankole did his best to avoid functional harmony in this masterpiece; however, he found it very difficult to evade the sonorous nuance of dominant seventh resolution.16 Example 5 shows the pedal cadenza in the finale of the fugue.

Conclusion

Modern Nigerian composers have produced a large repertoire of art music from their introduction to European classical music in their home country and abroad. A critical study of these compositions reveals dynamic growth of musical language from the established tonality of the baroque/classical era and the romanticism of the 19th century, to the early 20th-century atonality and twelve-tone method. Indeed, the musical language of contemporary composition in Nigeria has been dynamic. At this point, it is important to stress that the third generation of Nigerian composers did not rely exclusively on atonal writing; some of their solo songs, choral anthems, piano and organ pieces, chamber music, and orchestra works are based on other types of pitch collections such as diatonic, octatonic, and pentatonic scales. Nigerian audiences appreciate the interjection of well-known songs in classical pieces, and these songs are mostly in tetratonic and pentatonic modes. Furthermore, Ayo Bankole’s Toccata and Fugue (for Organ) is one of the few exceptions in terms of thematic usages. Pan-Africanism and global interculturalism became more pronounced in the works of the third generation of Nigerian composers. Popular folk tunes, traditional songs, indigenous Christian hymn tunes, and dance band themes from different ethnic groups within Nigeria and other parts of the African continent are incorporated into art music compositions. Some of the composers even went as far as the Middle East, India, and America to incorporate musical resources into their works. Prominent features of African-American music in Nigerian art compositions include spirituals, gospel, and jazz idiom. Musical creativity in Nigeria today is nationalistic, Pan-African, and globally intercultural.

Sarah Mahler Hughes is Associate Professor of Music and
Chair of the Department at Ripon College in Ripon, Wisconsin, where she teaches
organ, piano, music history, and directs the Collegium Musicum. She is the
author of articles on French Baroque dance rhythms in Couperin's organ Masses
and the piano works of Veronika Dussek Cianchettini.

The music of Dame Ethel Smyth (1858-1944), like that of her
older contemporary Johannes Brahms (1836-1897), simultaneously embraces the
language of Beethoven and Schumann and the contrapuntal techniques of J.S.
Bach.  Although works for organ
comprise but a small part of their respective oeuvres, both Smyth and Brahms
composed a set of chorale preludes for organ. Whereas Brahms' settings have
been widely studied and remained in print as a staple of organ repertoire,
however, Smyth's disappeared and were only recently reprinted.1 This discussion
will focus on the relationship between Brahms and Smyth and examine their
respective settings of the chorales "O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid," and
"O Gott du frommer Gott," comparing and contrasting Brahms'
well-known settings with Smyth's much less familiar ones. The question of whether Smyth's works were merely overshadowed by Brahms', or were relegated to
obscurity because she was outside the musical establishment and,
coincidentally, a woman (her own view) inevitably arises in the context of such
a discussion.

Ethel Smyth, in the course of her long life, distinguished
herself as a composer, suffragette, and writer whose best-known musical works
are the monumental Mass in D (1891) for chorus, soloists, and orchestra, and
the opera, The Wreckers (1902-04). She counted the leading musical figures of
her day--Grieg, Tschaikovsky, Brahms, Clara Schumann, Bruno Walter, Sir Thomas
Beecham--among her friends, and she moved comfortably in aristocratic circles
despite her radical views on women's suffrage. Smyth's achievements were recognized in Britain by the universities of Durham, Oxford, and St. Andrew's, all of which conferred honorary D. Mus degrees upon her. In 1922, she was made a Dame of the British Empire, the equivalent of knighthood. In 1877, however, Ethel Smyth was a merely a young and very determined Englishwoman who had
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  embarked on a course of study at the
Leipzig Conservatory after overcoming the opposition of her equally determined
father. Upon her return to England in 1884, she became interested in the organ
and its repertoire. Her works up to that point had consisted of piano pieces
and chamber music.  In her own
words, "I became bitten with organ-playing, which, as a sort of athletic
exercise, appealed to me far more than the violin, not to speak of the prospect
of tackling Bach on his own instrument."2 A friend took her to Bramshill
where Smyth heard Sir Frederick Ouseley, a pupil of Mendelssohn, improvise on
the organ. Smyth found his improvised fugues "Immensely musical and
effective . . . I was much impressed." 3 Smyth subsequently studied organ
with Sir Walter Parratt (1841-1924) of St. George's Chapel in Windsor. Smyth's
organ studies resulted in the composition of Short Chorale Preludes (1884,
published 1913). In this collection, Smyth set five chorales: "Du, O schönes Weltgebäude!", "O Gott du frommer Gott" (2 settings), "Schwing dich auf zu deinem Gott," "Erschienen ist der
herr-lich' Tag," and "O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid."

Johannes Brahms was at the height of his career when Smyth
began her studies in Leipzig. She had heard Brahms' music for the first time at
a Saturday "pops" concert in London on which the
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Liebeslieder Walzes were performed by a
solo quartet. She wrote afterwards with characteristic enthusiasm, "That
day I saw the whole Brahms; other bigger and . . . more important works of his
were to kindle fresh fires later one, but his genius possessed me then and
there in a flash."4 Smyth later met Brahms at the home of Heinrich and
Elizabeth (Lisl) von Herzogenberg, two of Leipzig's most prominent musical figures. Herzogenberg composed and, with Philip Spitta, founded the Bach Society (Bach Verein) in Leipzig. Lisl was a gifted amateur pianist and, next to Clara Schumann, Brahms's closest musical confidant. Lisl von Herzogenberg also became Smyth's confidante and dearest friend (As Time Went On, 300.) for a number of years. Brahms was a frequent guest at the Herzogenbergs, where Smyth heard him play the piano.

I like best to think of Brahms at the piano, playing his own
compositions or Bach's mighty organ fugues, sometimes accompanying himself with
a sort of muffled roar, as of Titans stirred to sympathy in the bowels of the
earth. The veins in his forehead stood out, his wonderful bright blue eyes
became veiled, and he seemed the incarnation of the restrained power in which
his own work is forged. For his playing was never noisy, and when lifting a
submerged theme out of a tangle of 
music he used jokingly to ask us to admire the gentle sonority of his
"tenor thumb."5

Smyth, the neophyte composer, writes, "To me
personally, he was very kind and fatherly in his awkward way, chiefly, no
doubt, because of the place I held in his friend's [Lisl's] heart; but after a
very slight acquaintance I guessed he would never take a woman writer
seriously, and had no desire, though kindly urged by him to do so, to show him
my work." Smyth's instincts proved correct. One day Lisl von Herzogenberg
showed Brahms one of Smyth's unsigned fugues, and when Smyth came into the room
she heard Brahms analyzing it, "simply, gravely, and appreciatively."
In her delight and surprise she revealed her authorship, asking eagerly,
"Don't you think if I feel it that way I have a right to end on the
dominant?". The result was electrifying:

Suddenly the scene changed, back came the ironic smile, and
stroking his moustache he said in a voice charged with kindly contempt: "I
am quite sure, dear child, you may end when and where you please!" There
it was! he [sic] had suddenly remembered I was a girl, to take whom seriously
was beneath a man's dignity, and the quality of the work, which had I been a
obscure male he would have upheld against anyone, simply passed from his mind.6

After the above encounter, Smyth continued to
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  admire Brahms' music while understandably deploring his views on women. She accused him of subscribing to a
"poetical variant of the Kinder, Kirche, Küche axiom" then
prevalent in Germany, "namely that women are playthings."7 On the
occasion of a dinner party at the Herzogenbergs' she wrote a sarcastic little
poem whose last verse ran:

Der grosse Brahms hat's neulich ausgesprochen:

"Ein g'scheidtes Weib, das hat doch keinen Sinn!"

D'rum lasst uns einsig uns're Dummheit pflegen,

Denn nur auf diesem Punkt ist Werth zu legen

Als Weib und gute Brahmsianerinn!

(As the great Brahms recently proclaimed:

"A clever woman is a thing of naught!"

So let us diligently cultivate stupidity,

That being the only quality demanded

Of a female Brahms-admirer!)8

Brahms enjoyed this diatribe hugely and showed the poem to
everyone who approached him that evening to praise his work, insisting they
read it.  For his part, he liked to
say that everyone resembles some orchestral instrument, and he called Smyth
"the oboe."  Smyth's
portrait of Brahms in the first volume of her memoirs is candid and fair-minded
and totally devoid of hero worship. 
She wrote:

From the very first I had worshipped Brahms's music, as I do
some of it now; hence was predisposed to admire the man.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  But without exactly disliking him, his
personality neither impressed nor attracted me, and I never could understand
why the faithful had such an exalted opinion of his intellect. . . I saw
integrity, sincerity, kindness of heart, generosity to opponents, and a certain
nobility of soul that stamps all his music; but on the other hand I saw
coarseness, uncivlizedness, a defective perception of subtle shades in people
and things, lack of humor, and of course the inevitable and righteous
selfishness of people who have a message of their own to deliver and can't run
errands for others.9

Their relationship, although uneven, remained cordial even
after Smyth left Leipzig in 1884; she once called on Brahms in Vienna in later
years and he urged her to come back for a meal on her return trip.
Unfortunately he was away, and the two never met again.

O Traurigkeit, O Herzeleid

Similarities and contrasts between
Smyth's and Brahms' settings of the same chorales become readily apparent upon
examination. Both composers used the chorale, "O Traurigkeit, O
Herzeleid" (anonymous melody, 1628; text, Johann Rist, 1641) as the basis
of a prelude and fugue. Each composer placed the chorale melody in the soprano
in the preludes, which are brief (Smyth, 11 measures, Brahms, 16). Both Smyth
and Brahms rely on Baroque models for their settings and use the rich harmonic
language of late Romanticism to color their works. Beyond these similarities,
however, individual stylistic traits emerge for each composer.

Brahms had composed his Prelude by July 1858. He presented
an autograph manuscript of it to his piano student Friedchen Wagner before
leaving Hamburg that summer but made no arrangements to publish the piece.
Fifteen years elapsed before Brahms composed a companion Fugue, which he gave
to Philipp Spitta (without the Prelude). Spitta praised the Fugue, which he
classified as a Choralfantasie, finding it "worthy of its great Sebastian
Bach models in its art and pensiveness, in its warmth."
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Spitta hastened to add that the piece
seemed no "mere copy" but was "a self-reliant imitation."10
By 1878 several of Brahms' friends, including the conductor Hermann Levi and
Elisabeth von Herzogenberg, had obtained copies of both the Prelude and Fugue,
and it was probably during this period that Brahms revised the Prelude. In
1881, Brahms submitted both pieces to E.W. Fritzsch for publication in the
journal Musikalisches Wochenblatt, modestly describing the pair as "really
not too bad."11

Throughout the Prelude, Brahms uses flowing triplet figures
in the left hand to accompany the unadorned cantus firmus, thus creating a
unified setting in the manner of the Orgelbüchlein chorales. These
"drooping melismata" 
reinforce the sorrowful Affekt of the text ("O sorrow deep, who
would not weep with heartfelt pain and sighing?/God the Father's only Son within
the grave is lying").12 Brahms scholar Vernon Gotwals hears in these
opening measures an echo of the beginning of Bach's St. Matthew Passion, a
resonance reinforced by the shared tonality of E minor and the triplet
figuration.13 (Example 1)  The following fugue in three voices over a pedal cantus firmus uses as its subject a
descending stepwise figure that is "only tenuously connected with the
chorale."14 This subject is answered by its inversion, revealing Brahms'
economy of means and contrapuntal mastery. A muscular, ascending countersubject
(alto, m. 2, beat 3; inverted in the soprano, m. 5, beat 3), balances the
sighing subject (Example 2). The Prelude's "intricate and peaceful
counterpoint" in three parts is confined to the manuals while the chorale
sounds in the pedal.16 An intricate sixteenth-note figuration that begins in m.
4 carries the music steadily forward to its serene conclusion over a tonic
pedal point.

In her four-voice prelude on this chorale, Smyth places a
highly ornamented cantus firmus against 
supporting parts in the left hand and pedal. Interestingly, Smyth's
setting is a fourth lower than Brahms (E minor versus A minor).16 The
accompanying voices begin imitatively in the manner of Bach and continue in
like manner throughout the piece (Example 3). Rather than exploit a single
motive, however, Smyth underpins each phrase of the cantus firmus with a new
figure. The integration of this point of imitation technique into a smoothly
flowing whole reveals a degree of control over  musical material as great as Brahms' economical
counterpoint.

The four-voice fugue which follows Smyth's prelude treats
each phrase of the chorale melody imitatively. A textural crescendo (reinforced
by the composer's directions of "piu f") begins with the appearance
of the third and central phrase in m. 23. Rhythmic activity intensifies at this
point with the introduction of triplets against the cantus firmus. The climax
of the fugue occurs in m.32ff with the fortissimo entrance of the chorale in
the pedal (Example 4). As an 18-measure decrescendo begins in m. 36, the fourth
phrase of the chorale appears but is interrupted by the reappearance of a
now-subdued phrase three. Fugal activity comes to a gradual halt over a
dominant pedal (m. 49-51) and a half cadence. The last section of the piece,
marked 'Adagio', recapitulates the entire chorale in a simple, homophonic
texture (Example 5). Smyth demonstrates skill in her handling of the musical
materials of this piece. The contrapuntal writing is deft, building to the
climax of the piece halfway through and subsiding thereafter, and the
pianissimo ending captures the intensely sorrowful nature of the text. Smyth's
fugue is impassioned and full of contrasts, whereas Brahms' reflects peaceful
resignation and a uniform gravitas. Smyth's setting bears the same dramatic
stamp as her subsequent  Mass in D
and her works for the stage.

O Gott, du frommer Gott

Both Brahms and Smyth use a "salient thematic
motive"17 in pervasive imitation throughout their respective settings of "O Gott, du frommer Gott" ("O God, Thou Faithful God"). This
motive, derived from the first four notes of the chorale, appears in a slightly
different guise in each prelude (Example 6).

Brahms uses vorimitation to prepare the entrance of the
chorale in measure 7. The first phrase of the chorale (A of the AAB bar form)
appears in unornamented half notes in the soprano (m. 7-10). Vorimitation
intervenes again before the repeat of A in m. 17. This entrance is accompanied
by a Baroque-like harmonic sequence and a disjunct, energetic bass line
à la Handel. The vigorous figuration of Brahms' setting reflects the
text, which prays for good health, a pure soul, and a clear conscience.

Brahms maintains the pattern of presenting unornamented
chorale phrases separated by passages of vorimitation throughout the remainder
of the prelude. The beginning of the B section is heralded by "impressive,
trombone-like chords" with a chain of thirds in the bass.18 The texture,
heretofore strictly three-part, thickens momentarily in anticipation of the
majestic closing measures (58-62) of the piece. Thirds, both falling and
rising, figure prominently in the intricate texture that Brahms weaves
throughout. Brahms reveals his Titanesque nature in this stirring conclusion
when the pedal enters, for the first time, in thundering counterpoint with the
chorale in the soprano. The unusual and dramatic dynamic markings in this piece
(introduction and interludes are 
forte, whereas until the last phrase, the chorale is piano) have been
remarked upon by Gotwals, who maintains that the pedal "supports the forte
[of the last phrase] that must follow the dying away after ein unverletzte Seel
(a Soul inviolate).19 Brahms' debt to Bach is apparent in the Baroque
techniques of vorimitation, harmonic sequences, rhythmic figuration, terraced
dynamics, and pervasive imitation based on a single motive derived from the
cantus firmus.

Smyth likewise reveals her assimilation of Bach's
Orgelbüchlein techniques in both settings of "O Gott du frommer Gott." The brevity of these pieces (hereafter referred to as G1 and G2), at 15 and 16 measures respectively, reflects the careful organization of material  characteristic of counterpoint exercises. In G1, Smyth places the unadorned cantus firmus in the soprano, which is supported by a three-part (manuals and pedal) imitative texture (see Example 6). This setting, in plain common time, is straightforward and compact, without the cushions of vorimitation used by Brahms. G2 is cast as a canon between the soprano and bass. The alto and tenor voices engage in pervasive imitation in flowing eighth notes. These rhythms in the
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  12/8 meter and quicker tempo marking
("Andante con moto" rather than G1's "Andante larghetto")
give a lilting, steady swing to the piece. The choice of C minor, a darker key
than the A minor of Brahms' setting, imbues Smyth's settings with a quality of
solemn introspection--perhaps earnest soul-searching for the path to a healthy
life and clear conscience. If G1 reflects, however, G2 strides purposefully
forward.  Echoes of Smyth's
vigorous, intense personality which was always subject to "the pull of
life and the constant longing for calm, the fascination of difficulties and
barriers, the need of human contact and affection, the love of one's own
ways--in short, . . . Lebensteufel,"20 may be heard in her settings of
"O Gott du frommer Gott." Because they complement each other, a
strong argument may be made for performing them as a unit.

In formal terms, G2 displays one rather odd feature: the second A section of the chorale is not repeated. Colette Ripley, in her prefatory notes to this edition, states, "Because of the use of the canonic
compositional device, Smyth does not repeat the opening line of the melody as
is done in the chorale."21 Since both canonic voices finish at the same
half cadence in m. 5, however, this opening material can be repeated with no
discernable effect on the canonic structure.22 (Example 7)
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Perhaps Smyth was experimenting--she
prided herself on originality in all things--or perhaps she simply neglected to
write out the repeat.

Without a doubt, in their chorale settings for organ both
Brahms and Smyth were influenced by Baroque models. The Orgelbüchlein of
J.S. Bach, in particular, is the musical and spiritual ancestor of these
late-nineteenth century pieces. Brahms' esteem for the music of Bach and
Handel, as well as that of earlier composers, is well-known, and his
scholarship advanced the fledgling field of musicology.23 Brahms frequently
performed Bach's organ preludes and fugues on the piano in recital and in his
youth studied counterpoint assiduously with his friend Joseph Joachim. Smyth's
participation in the Leipzig Bach Verein and enthusiasm for the works of Bach
have already been noted. She was profoundly moved by the St. Matthew Passion,
which she first heard at the Thomaskirche on Good Friday, 1878. The following
year Smyth participated in the same annual performance (playing in the second
violins!).  She recalled later that
"the church seemed flooded with the living presence of Bach . . . I
suppose that every artist can say of one or two hours in the past that in these
he touched the extreme height and depth of his emotional life; such hours were
mine during a certain Passion performance . . . "24 The massive choruses,
religious intensity, and dramatic structure of this work are echoed in Smyth's
own Mass in D.

German-speaking composers from Mozart onward studied the
extant works of Bach as contrapuntal and affective masterpieces, and Brahms and
Smyth were nourished in that tradition. The admiration that both composers
sustained for the music of Bach indubitably led them to compose for the organ
even though neither became proficient organists or indeed, showed a lasting
interest in the instrument. Much has been written about Brahms' choice of the
organ as a medium for his early and last works with an intervening fallow
period.25 In a striking parallel, Smyth, after her early chorale settings,
turned to other things (principally opera, choral, and chamber music) but
returned to the organ in her last published work, the Prelude on a Traditional
Irish Air, written for Edith Somerville in 1938.

Why did Smyth's chorale preludes disappear from sight for so
long? Their length (useful for service music) and modest technical demands
should have assured them a place in late-Romantic organ repertoire alongside
the chorale preludes of Brahms and the op. 67 and 135a chorale preludes of Max
Reger, which they resemble stylistically. The answer may lie partly in
historical circumstances:  Smyth
came of age during an era in which several well-established (male) composers
dominated the field. This phenomenon has occurred in every age, but one
critical difference distinguishes the nineteenth century from preceding eras.
The creation of a musical canon during the course of the century, incipient in
the efforts of the Bach Gesellschaft in the 1830s and nurtured by the
musicological studies of Spitta, Chrysander, and others, secured the posterity
of composers like Brahms and Wagner. Lesser composers, male as well as female,
were relegated to a secondary status. In addition, British-German antagonisms
during the Boer War and World War I played no small part in the disruption of
Smyth's career, forcing the cancellation of performances and severing contacts
in Germany.

Smyth felt herself an outsider on several counts:

Now it may be said that hundreds of artists are called on to
endure the like [neglect of their work], but in my case was a disheartening
element no man has to cope with . . . that given my sex, my foreign musical
education, and the conditions of English music life as I was coming to know
them, if I were ever to win through at all it would not be till I had one leg
in the grave.26

In 1933, assessing her career during the past fifty years,
she elaborated upon the "conditions of English music life":

The difficulty in my case has been that from the very first
. . . for some reason or other what I call 'the Machine' was against me.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  If you ask me, "What is 'the
Machine'?"  I can only answer,
"I don't know," but apparently it is a complex construction, made up,
say, of units from every section of our music life; heads of Musical Colleges,
leading publishers, dominant members of music committees throughout the
country, the Press, and so on.27

Despite these and other (admittedly self-imposed) obstacles,
Smyth did achieve a high degree of success and recognition as both a composer
and writer, reflected in the honors bestowed upon her during her lifetime and a
revival of some of her works in our time.28 Contemporary opinion of her
large-scale works varies,29 but Smyth's chorale preludes for organ, indebted to
Bach and late-nineteenth-century German Romanticism, bear an original stamp and
certainly compare favorably with those of Brahms. It is tempting to speculate
what he might have thought of her chorale preludes had he seen them in an
anonymous manuscript. (There is no indication that Smyth ever showed Brahms
these or any other of her works--the result would have been too predictably
patronizing.) The Titan's endorsement might not have made that much difference
to her, however. Throughout her career, Smyth refused to be deterred by any
real or perceived lack of approbation of her works. With characteristic
firmness, she penned encouraging words for future generations: "I do not
think the future looks too black for women composers who have something to say
and are not afraid of saying it after their own fashion
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  . . . All one has to do is go straight
on and pay no attention!"30    

John Collins has been playing and researching early keyboard music for over 35 years, with special interests in the English, Italian, and Iberian repertoires. He has contributed many articles and reviews to several American and European journals, including The Diapason, and has been organist at St. George’s, Worthing, West Sussex, England for almost 26 years.

This year we commemorate the 300th anniversary of the death of Bernardo Pasquini. Although much attention has been given in the past few decades to Pasquini’s dramatic and vocal music, of which the scores for twelve operas and seven oratorios in addition to many cantatas and motets are known to survive, his extensive corpus of keyboard music has only comparatively recently received the attention it deserves. Considered one of the major Italian composers for keyboard between Frescobaldi (d. 1643) and Domenico Scarlatti (b. 1685), Bernardo Pasquini, teacher of Francesco Gasparini (author of the influential L’Armonico Pratico al Cimbalo, Venice 1708), left well over 200 pieces for keyboard.

Sources and early editions
The great majority of Pasquini’s works are preserved in four autograph manuscripts, including 121 in the autograph MS of Landsberg 215. A further partial autograph section is included in British Library MS 31501, I–III; to be found in part I are the 14 sonatas for two bassi continui, 14 sonatas for basso solo, and in parts II and III no fewer than 314 short versi, also in figured-bass format. More substantial works in MS 31501, part I, include a long Tastata, a Passagagli with 24 variations, a set of variations on the Follia and, at the end of the section, numerous short arie, more of which are to be found in part II. A few toccatas are also to be found in British Library MS 36661, which almost certainly predates the autographs by some years.
Very few of his works were published during his lifetime; three pieces entitled Sonata, ascribed to N.N. of Roma, were published in 1697 in a collection by Arresti, two of which were included in an English “abridged” edition, and other pieces were included in a collection of toccatas and suites published in 1698 by Roger of Amsterdam, which also appeared in England in 1719 and 1731. Others were included in assorted manuscripts; see bibliography for further details. In the preface to his edition of MS 964 at Braga, Portugal, Gerhard Doderer has speculated that some of the over 30 Italian (mainly Roman) compositions included therein (on folios 218–230 and 253–259) may well have been composed by the school of Pasquini, if not by Pasquini himself; certainly some of his compositions seem to have been known throughout Europe.
Pasquini’s compositions for keyboard cover all the main genres of his time, embracing some seventeen dance suites (although the term suite is not used in the manuscripts) as well as single movements, fourteen variations on both self-composed arias and stock basses, four passacaglias, sonatas including the 28 figured bass pieces mentioned above, over 30 toccatas and tastatas, about a dozen contrapuntal works, and a large number of versets. His numerous pupils in Rome included Casini, Zipoli, and possibly Durante and Domenico Scarlatti, in addition to J. P. Krieger and Georg Muffat, as well as Della Ciaja, who published a set of mercurial four-movement toccatas and retrospective ricercars and versets. It is highly probable that Handel met Pasquini in Rome in the early 1700s.

Modern editions
In addition to the facsimile edition of the Landsberg MS, there are two modern editions of his pieces. An edition by Maurice Brooks Haynes for the Corpus of Early Keyboard Music (American Institute of Musicology) was issued in seven volumes in 1964; this had the advantage of grouping pieces by genres rather than following the somewhat haphazard order in the manuscripts, but contained many printing errors and a somewhat sketchy approach to sources and evaluation. A new seven-volume edition, under the general editorship of Armando Carideo and Edoardo Bellotti, was issued in 2002; the first volume contains 60 versets and a pastorale from a recently discovered manuscript in Bologna, edited by Francesco Cera. The pieces from the Landsberg manuscript are included in volumes 2–5, with the pieces from MS 31501 in volumes 6 and 7. A further volume containing pieces from other sources, including as yet unpublished fugues in three and four voices as well as pieces of uncertain attribution, is in preparation. This edition is far more accurate but unfortunately much harder to obtain; see the bibliography at the end of this article for full details of these editions.
Below I shall summarize Pasquini’s extant keyboard music by genre; despite its shortcomings, I have used the AIM edition, and all numbers and titles cited are from this edition. Because of their extremely limited interest to the average player, I have not included the fascinating figured-bass sonatas for one and for two players, or the figured-bass versos, in this discussion.

Contrapuntal works
Pasquini is known to have made copies of the works of Palestrina and Frescobaldi, the influence of the latter being identifiable in both the toccatas and the contrapuntal works. Only eleven pieces that fall into this category seem to have survived, and two of these are incomplete. Those that survive are variable in quality, but several of them demonstrate the continuation of the variation technique so prevalent in Frescobaldi—they are included in book 1 of the Haynes edition. The first piece, in D minor, is entitled Capriccio by Haynes (although in the manuscript it is entitled Fantasia); its first section closes in the dominant and second section in the tonic. Both sections move mainly in quarter and eighth notes. In the third section the subject is introduced in 16th notes, followed by a triple-time section in 3/2. The piece concludes with a return to C time, the subject in its original time being accompanied by florid 16th-note writing (see Figures 1a–1d).

The second piece, entitled Capriccio, opens with a ricercar-like subject in 4/2, followed by a triple-time section in 3/2 that moves into 6/4, and a closing section of six bars consisting of half-note chords against 16th-note figures derived from the opening subject. The following short binary form piece is headed “Sigue al capriccio antecedente.” The third piece, regrettably incomplete in the MS, is entitled Fantasia and is another slower-moving, backward-looking work in quarter and eighth notes. The fourth piece, a ricercar in 4/2, is also slow-moving, on an archaic subject that proceeds through its 100 bars in half and quarter notes, with further subjects appearing during the piece.
By far the longest piece at some 345 bars is the Ricercare con fuga in più modi. This piece is in many sections, including the subject in diminution to half and quarter notes from bar 69, a return to original values from bar 123, a section in 6/4 from bar 209 to 246, which includes 16th-note writing, a section in C time that closes in bar 265 followed by a further section in 6/4 to bar 311, after which 12/8 takes over to the close of the piece. There is scope for shortening this piece, which makes considerable demands upon the performer.
Of the three pieces entitled Canzone Francese, the first in C major runs to only 32 bars, the second in F opens with the typical canzona rhythm of quarter note followed by two eighth notes and has a second section in 6/4, and the third piece in A minor opens with six repeated eighth-note Es (the repeated note fugal subject was very common in Germany as well as Italy, with examples by Reincken, Pachelbel, Kerll, and Buttstedt, among others) and soon becomes a moto perpetuo in 16th notes, which slows to eighth and quarter notes briefly in bar 56, the 16th notes taking over again in bar 66. A deceleration achieved via a cadence leads to a section barred in 3/4 (although headed 6/8), which starts in bar 106 and runs to bar 157. Of the next section entitled Alio modo la tripla, only seven bars survive, a great pity since this piece is of a high standard (see Figure 2a–2b). The ninth piece, of 24 bars, entitled Fuga, is an example of very loose imitative writing; the subject in the RH has LH passagework beneath it immediately.
Of the two pieces entitled Sonata, the first is also a loosely fugal work with a subject that opens with an ascending run of six 16th notes followed by an eighth note, another eighth note an octave below, and then returning to the note—now a quarter—before falling a tone, where the sequence is repeated a third below the original opening note. The second sonata opens with a short toccata-like flourish over a pedalpoint, followed by quarter-note chords modulating to the dominant; the second section is imitative, the subject rising a fifth in eighth and 16th notes, and has similarities to a Corellian fugue. Both were included under the name of “N. N. di Roma” in a collection of 18 sonatas for organ by various authors printed in Bologna ca. 1697, of which twelve pieces, including no. 10 here, were included in a London reprint by Walsh & Randall ca. 1710.
The two ricercars, nos. 139 and 140 in volume 7 of the Haynes edition, are both in G minor, the first opening with a canzona rhythm (half note followed by two quarter notes, all at the same pitch, in this case D) and proceeding in mainly quarter-note movement with a few eighth-note runs and two RH runs of 16th notes, bar 25 being repeated an octave higher at bar 34. There is tonal ambiguity at the close of the subject, which covers the minor scale descent from E-flat to G via B-natural followed by B-flat, which lends the piece charm. No. 140 is a longer piece at 83 bars that also proceeds mainly in quarter notes, with a further example of tonal ambiguity in the subject (also between B-flat and B-natural). Of interest are the written-out trill in the treble commencing on the upper note in bar 19 and the written-out alto trill in the penultimate bar with its Lombardic rhythm in the first two beats.

Suites, individual dances, and arias/bizzarrias
Pasquini’s seventeen “suites” for keyboard that are included in volume two of the Haynes edition are probably the first such examples in the Italian keyboard literature that contain several dances grouped together in the same key—the term “suite” is not used in the manuscript. They include Alemanda, Corrente and Giga, based, however, not on the examples of Froberger and the French school, but rather on Italian ensemble music. Several movements are untitled, others carry such terms as Bizzarria; but since the movements are grouped by key, they may well have been intended to form unified groups as presented in this volume. These “suites” comprise two to four movements in various combinations. Also included in this volume are several short pieces in binary form, including four entitled Bizzarria and no fewer than twenty-eight entitled Aria, all of which are attractively tuneful. By their nature the dances, bizzarrias, and arias are more suited to stringed keyboard instruments, although performance on a chamber organ would have been quite probable; for this reason a more detailed account has been omitted here.

Variations
These pieces are to be found in volumes three and four of the Brooks Haynes edition. The twenty-two sets of variations include four based on dance movements with just one or two variations, two sets on the Follia, two on the Bergamasca, with a further one on its Saltarello, and four sets entitled Variationi based on aria/dance-like themes that may well have been by Pasquini himself. Further sets are entitled Capricciose a Inventione (perhaps implying an original theme), Partite diverse sopra Alemanda, and Fioritas, with another set being entitled simply Variationi. Four passagaglie complete this genre.
A Bizzarria has just one variation in which the RH has the 16th-note figuration in the first half, the LH in the second; an untitled piece that is almost certainly an Alemanda has two variations in flowing 16th notes; a Corrente mainly in quarter notes has one variation in eighth notes; and a Sarabanda also mainly in quarter notes, some dotted, has one variation in 16th notes in which parts appear and drop out at will.
The set of variations on Fioritas has only six variations, but the manuscript contains the heading 7th, which clearly implies that Pasquini intended to write more. The Variationi Capricciose, on another tuneful theme that may have been original, is in seven partite. The theme is the first, the second in 3/4 is headed “in corrente”, the fourth is a sarabanda, the fifth in 6/4 is in quarter-note motion, and the sixth in C time makes great demands on the player, with an extended trill in the alto in each half as well as occasional simultaneous trills in the tenor. The final variation is in 3/4, with LH 16th notes against a mainly chordal RH in the first half and at the conclusion of the second half.
Of much greater substance are the remaining three sets: the Variationi a Inventione contains eleven partite; again the theme is considered to be the first variation (its first half has mainly chords in the RH over a moving eighth-note bass; the second half sees more 16th-note movement in the RH over quarter-note chords or moving eighth notes). The third set in 6/4 is in quarter-note movement in one part against dotted half-note chords throughout; the fourth, although headed 12/8, is barred in 3/4 and 6/4, this time with 16th-note passagework formed from a sequential figure against chords. The fifth to seventh sets are headed Corrente and are distinctly backward-looking, being similar to Frescobaldi’s Corrente in his two books of Toccate. Broken chord figures feature in the sixth, and insistent eighth-note movement appears in the seventh. In the eighth and ninth sets there is a further reminder of Frescobaldi in the time signatures: in the eighth the RH is in C time against 6/4 in the LH (see Figures 3a and 3b).
In both hands, eighth notes are grouped in duple as well as triple rhythms, and the figure of dotted quarter followed by two 16ths is passed between the hands. In the ninth partita, the RH is in 12/8 against a LH of 8/12, with the insistent pattern of dotted eighth followed by 16th. The tenth partita is headed 3/4 but barred as 6/4, again a corrente in form, with more broken-chord writing, sometimes in contrary motion between the hands. The final partita is headed Gagliarda and is unusually in C time (examples in C time are also to be found in Pasquini’s Spanish contemporary Juan Batista Cabanilles). Further broken chord figures and figures of ascending or descending thirds with the first note held on occur throughout, and neat syncopations in thirds in the RH appear towards the end of the second part.
The theme of the Partite diverse sopra Alemanda moves in quarter notes, but each half is followed by a written-out repeat in eighth notes, with imitation between the parts, broken chords, and contrary motion. The theme is followed by seven partitas, the first of which is in 16th-note movement, with the by-now usual figuration. The second, in binary form, is another rhythmic conundrum, with the RH in C12/6, and the LH in C6/12; this can be played most successfully as 12/8, much of it being in two parts only. The third, fifth, sixth, and seventh partitas are all headed 3/4 but barred in 6/4, the fourth actually being headed 6/4. In the third, flowing eighth notes soon give way to treble and bass quarter notes, with an alto eighth note after a rest, a figure that becomes wearing when used so relentlessly as here. The fourth partita moves in quarter notes, the second half opening with one bar of eighth-note imitation before a figure of rest followed by two quarter notes is passed between the hands.
The fifth partita has broken-chord writing in the RH over a quarter-note bass, with the LH also having broken chords in the repeats; in most of the piece, the top and bottom notes in figures are held on to produce a tonal build-up, but this is relieved in the middle of the piece by only the bass notes being held, which has the effect of acceleration. The sixth partita is based around a five-note eighth-note figure passed between the hands, while other parts have held half notes or dotted half notes; occasionally a third part in quarter notes is used as well. The final partita has continuous, mainly conjunct eighth-note motion against either full chords or just one other voice, concluding with a veritable virtuoso flourish of eighth notes in contrary motion.
The work entitled Variationi occupies some twenty pages in the Haynes edition, and consists of a theme in C time in mainly two-part texture in quarter and eighth notes followed by thirteen partite. The first is mainly RH eighth notes against LH 16th notes, the second is in 3/4 and, although not headed as such, is a corrente with a preponderance of two-part writing. The third partita is headed altro modo and has far more arpeggiated eighth-note motion. The fourth is headed 3/4, but only two bars are in this rhythm, the rest being in 6/8, again with much arpeggiated figuration beginning on the second eighth note. The fifth is in 16th notes, with frequent rhythmic imitation; the sixth is in 3/4 with eighth notes, sometimes in broken-chord format, against quarter notes; the seventh has mainly conjunct eighth notes against quarter notes in the first section, the second section with eighth notes in arpeggiated figures.
The eighth variation is another Frescobaldian corrente, with mainly quarter-note movement in the RH, against either quarter notes, dotted half notes, or half notes in the LH. The ninth has an oscillating 16th-note figure in the LH, with RH eighth notes. The tenth is constructed entirely around an eighth note in the RH followed by two 16ths in the LH, frequently in octaves. The eleventh is another movement with extended trills—in the first section placed in the alto lasting throughout the section, in the second in the tenor for just the first six beats after which imitative passagework against half notes progresses (see Figure 4).
Although the twelfth partita is headed Sarabanda, it has more in common with a corrente as it progresses in quarter-note motion with several instances in the RH of the figure of dotted quarter bearing a t (for trill) followed by two 16th notes and a quarter. The final partita is in 3/4; after the first bar it is in two parts with eighth-note figuration throughout, sometimes in contrary, sometimes in parallel motion, but also with one hand moving quite differently from the other; this virtuosic movement brings the work to a fine close. It may have been intended as a compendium of compositional techniques for students. There is a precedent in Bernardo Storace’s Passo e Mezzi in his Selva of 1664 for including variations headed corrente and gagliarda.
Together with Buxtehude’s roughly contemporary arias, the four sets of variations based on aria/dance-like themes are some of the earliest examples of keyboard variations on original subjects after Frescobaldi’s Aria detta La Frescobalda; they almost certainly pre-date Pachelbel’s set of six arias with variations published in 1699 as Hexachordum Apollinis; they have six, five, eight, and ten variations respectively (although in the latter there seems to be an error in the Haynes edition: what looks like the second half of the binary form theme is headed variation 1; this would mean that there are actually only nine variations). The first three are in the rhythm of a gavotte. All of the themes are in C time, but the first set contains variations in 3/4 and 6/8; the second has two in 6/8 including the final one; the third has two in 6/8 (one headed as 3/4, which may just be a remnant of the tempo theory mentioned by Frescobaldi in his books that related tempi to time signatures); and the final one has variations in 3/4, 6/8, 3/8 and one that is in 3/8 in the manuscript, although barred as 6/8. Again there is much variety of texture including pseudo-polyphony, violin-like figuration in the RH, and sequential figuration, with several variations requiring an advanced technical ability.
The two sets based on La Follia are very different in character. The first has fourteen variations after the initial statement and displays Pasquini’s mastery in transferring the string idiom to the keyboard in a wide variety of rhythms. Noteworthy are the continuous triplet eighth notes in the RH in variations 5 and 9, and the LH in variation 6, the figure of three quarter notes followed by a burst of 16th notes in the RH of variation 7 (see Figure 5), the virtuoso passagework for both hands in variation 10, the highly chromatic RH in the thirteenth, and the written-out trills and eighth-note figures in the final variation.
The second set has only three variations, which move in eighth notes, with thematic imitation prevalent in the first and second, and rhythmic imitation (quarter note or rest followed by two eighths and a quarter) in the final variation. The Bergamasca sets are similarly varied, with eight and twenty-four in the C time sets, and seventeen in the Saltarello, which is in 3/8 as would be expected. Although in the longer works some of the movements do not rise above the formulaic, there are many variations that carry the melodic freshness and tunefulness of an accomplished composer.
The four passagaglias are in B-flat, with twenty variations on the theme, C with seventeen (with probably more either not transmitted or never completed), D minor with twelve (again almost certainly incomplete), and G minor with twenty-four. All stress the second beat and apart from the C major, which is chordal and in 3/2 and is closer to a ciacona, they are melodic and in 3/4 (see Figures 6a and 6b). The writing in the B-flat and G minor pieces becomes increasingly virtuosic as they develop.

Toccatas and Tastatas
In volumes five and six of the Haynes edition, thirty-four pieces are entitled either Toccata (twenty-five) or Tastata (nine), there is one piece entitled Preludio, one Sonata–Elevazione; one Sonata in two sections, the second headed Pensiero; two further toccatas are included in volume 7. The choice of keys is still very conservative, not exceeding two flats, which is used for no. 83 in C minor, and two sharps used for no. 81 in A major. Space does not permit a detailed discussion of this substantial contribution to the repertoire, therefore comments have been limited to generalizations and to those pieces that are of greater interest.
Most of Pasquini’s pieces are in one movement, but at least five (70, 98–101) are in several sections, of which nos. 98–101 are included in the earlier British Library MS 36661. No. 70 is one of the most ambitious, the sections being in C time, 3/4, C time, concluding with a binary-form corrente-like movement with a variation. No. 71 opens with two bars of chords suitable for arpeggiations (indeed, in no. 94 the instruction “arpeggio” is included, relating to the first two chords) before motives are passed from hand to hand over long-held pedal notes; also featured are passages in parallel tenths (see Figure 7).
There are several toccatas that either open with chords or contain chordal passages within the piece; in some the instruction to arpeggiate is included, in others it is implicit (see Figure 7a). Pedals are also required in no. 101 throughout the first section, which is markedly similar to Frescobaldi’s Toccata Quinta from his second book; the second section is imitative, starting in C time followed by a variation in 3/2 before a short closing section in C time in which 16th-note passagework against quarter-note chords is passed from hand to hand, the final four bars again requiring the pedals for the long-held notes.
Several pieces include the old Frescobaldian written-out accelerating trill commencing on the upper note (two 16th notes followed by four 32nds) (see Figure 7b); in others it is implied via the letter t placed over the first note, normally a dotted eighth followed by a 16th one degree below. Although quite a few of Pasquini’s toccatas do contain passages that remind the player of Frescobaldi’s writing, there is not the same degree of nervous discontinuity and far more reliance on sequential writing.
It would seem unlikely that most of the suggestions on playing toccatas contained in Frescobaldi’s prefaces to his two books are applicable to these examples, although there is scope for shortening those pieces that are presented in sections, and some of Pasquini’s pieces do indeed carry the indication to arpeggiate half-note chords. Certainly there does not seem to be any reason to adopt Frescobaldi’s suggestion of dotting 16th notes in those passages in which eighth notes in one hand are set against 16ths in the other. However, his injunctions to treat the beat freely can be applied cautiously here, as can the eminently sensible comments on pausing before beginning passages in 16th notes in both hands and retarding the tempo at cadences. In the longer sequential passages, there can be a judicious slackening and taking up again of the tempo to allow the music to breathe and not degenerate into mechanistic exercises. Almost certainly, all trills should commence on the main note, this being appropriate also for every compositional genre.
One of the most popular and virtuosic pieces is no. 81, the Toccata con lo scherzo del cucco, which is based on the descending minor third. The cuckoo call is heard in eighth notes against 16th-note passagework, punctuated by sections in half notes marked arpeggio or by the nervous rhythms and modulations by chords of the seventh. At bar 47 the RH breaks briefly into triplets (although printed as 32nd notes they are actually 16th notes), and from bar 79 onwards a long-held A, first in the tenor and then in the alto, is marked trillo continuo, which will pose a most severe test to the player to maintain it against the other part to be played by the same hand. This piece is not too dissimilar to Kerll’s own toccata on the same theme (see Figure 7c).
The Elevazione-Adagio (no. 105) is also included in the Arresti publication, where it is entitled Sonata; after a slow introduction the writing continues in 16th-note figuration based effectively on sequences. The second piece entitled Sonata (no. 106) is in two sections: seventeen bars of 16th-note figures passed from hand to hand are followed by a short chordal link marked arpeggio that leads to further sequential passages. The second section, headed Pensiero—itself in two sections—is nothing like the intricate contrapuntal pieces of that name published in 1714 by Giovanni Casini, but opens with imitative passages based on a rhythmic motive, before its second section opens with passages derived from a further rhythmic motive that leads into passages based on the rhythmic motive of the first section and its inversion.
The one piece entitled Preludio, no. 95, is also in two sections, the first alternating long-held chords with 16th-note passagework against chords passed from hand to hand. The second section is again based on passagework passed between the hands, varying between conjunct movement and from bar 64 arpeggiated figures (see Figure 7d).
The two toccatas included in volume seven (nos. 141 and 142) are each in three sections, an opening and closing one in C time enclosing central sections in 12/8 and 3/2 respectively. In no. 141 much is made of sequential figures and trills, both indicated and implied; the 12/8 section is homophonic and leads to a final section in C time, which makes much of seventh chords, before a brief coda based on two 16th notes followed by an eighth note passed from right hand to left hand; a written-out trill in the left hand against this figure is reminiscent of Frescobaldi. In no. 142 the opening consists of four bars of 16th notes covering from treble G to tenor C, before a passage over a held tenor G moves into a section that includes a further example of a chromatic progression on the third of the scale, prefiguring the imitative triple-time section; the closing C time consists of only two bars—in the penultimate bar the LH consists of a written-out trill, with closing notes on tenor B, the opening two beats being a C–B in reversed dotted rhythms.

Versetti, Pastorale and other works
Francesco Cera has recently published a group of pieces that he discovered in a manuscript in Bologna. Included are an Introduzione e Pastorale, and 60 Versetti. The 27-bar Introduzione leads into a Pastorale of almost 90 bars. Both are in triple time and make much use of a dotted rhythm. Long-held notes in soprano, alto, and bass imitate the droning of bagpipes, and particularly noteworthy is the use of the Neapolitan sixth as well as the false relation (see Figure 8).
The Versetti are mainly short imitative pieces, many not exceeding five bars (they are similar to the short versetti in the 1689 collection from Augsburg known as Wegweiser), but five of them (nos. 33, 34, 42, 43, and 45) are miniature toccatas, with 16th notes against held chords. The first four of these are built on passagework against held chords, but there is some imitative writing in no. 45 (see Figures 9a–9c).
The grouping by keys in the manuscripts implies use as a series (see table). The subjects of the versetti range from archaic subjects in longer note values (nos. 1, 2, 9, and 46, for example) to more lively subjects using eighth and 16th notes (such as nos. 4, 6, 8, 13, and 14, etc,). A canzona-like dactylic rhythm of eighth note followed by two 16ths and two eighths is common, as is the figure of two 16th notes followed by two eighths and a quarter. Also notable is the insistent giga-like rhythm of dotted quarter followed by an eighth and quarter in almost every bar of no. 54. The most lively is no. 49, with its subject in 16th notes treated in inversion at the end.
There is one example in 3/8 and three in 6/8 in equal eighth notes, two in 3/2, and 10 in 3/4, with the majority in C or cut C. The part writing is relatively loose but effective. Keys used cover up to A major and C minor, with the old key signatures of one less accidental than present usage retained (i.e., two sharps and flats respectively).
Also included in Haynes’s volume seven are ten short pieces (from four to fifteen bars) without title, which are tentatively entitled Versi by Armando Carideo in volume seven of the Italian edition. Four of these are in 3/4 and have mainly continuous eighth-note motion in one hand against long chords, while the others in C time are close to the miniature toccata style noted in the versetti above. There are ten Accadenze (or cadences), which again are very short, with either toccata-like figures or based on short rhythmic figures. A different Pastorale opens with a repeated multi-section movement in 3/2 leading to a movement in C time full of dactyl rhythms, which includes the traditional drone bass that disappears and reappears at will.

Performance practice
A few general notes on performance practice relating to 17th-century Italian organ music may be helpful in determining answers to some frequently asked questions.
Ornaments: The only ornament sign found in Pasquini’s pieces is the letter t, which occurs on note values down to a 16th note. It is found frequently over the first note of a dotted eighth-16th pair (and by extension should probably be played in this figure even when not specifically indicated) and indicates a trill, probably better commencing on the main note, especially in the more retrospective pieces. It is worth mentioning, however, that Lorenzo Penna does describe the trill beginning on the upper auxiliary in his Li Primi Albori Musicali of 1656, reprinted in 1672, 1684 and 1696. On short notes only three notes (i.e., C-D-C) can be played; on longer values there can be more repercussions, possibly even pausing on the main note before trilling. It is also possible that an ornament equivalent to the mordent or pincé, with the lower auxiliary (i.e., C-B-C), could be used in ascending passages, particularly in pieces in the French style. In two pieces (Variazioni 11 and Toccata con lo scherzo del cuccu) the comment “Trillo continuo” is found. The instruction “Arpeggio” is found in some of the toccatas. Naturally there are possibilities for adding further ornaments when not expressly marked, although care should be taken not to use anachronisms such as the turn.
Fingering: This was still based on the concept of “good” and “bad” fingers for strong and weak beats, which was described in great detail by Diruta in Il Transilvano in 1593 and 1609, when he proposed using 2 and 4 as strong fingers, in direct contrast to other European treatises of the period; but during the 17th century, more theorists (including Penna, and Bismantova in his Compendio musicale of 1677) were following Ban-
chieri’s use in L’organo suonarino of 1605 of 3-4 in the RH for ascending and 3-2 for descending when beginning on strong beats, and beginning off-the-beat passages with 2 or 4 in the RH for ascending and 4 for descending.
For the LH, 3-2 is recommended for ascending when beginning on strong beats, and beginning off-the-beat passages with 2 or 4 on weak beats, and 3-4 for descending when beginning on strong beats, and beginning off-the-beat passages with 2 or 4 on weak beats. Also used were 1-2-3-4, then either repeated or followed by 3-4 for RH ascending and 4-3-2-1 repeated descending, and in the LH 4-3-2-1 for ascending, then either repeated or followed by 2-1 and 1-2-3-4 descending, then either repeated or followed by 3-4 in LH descending.
Articulation: While non-legato was still the main touch, apart from rapid divisions and passagework, the gaps between notes should be noticeably less on the organ than on the harpsichord, as described by Diruta. Not until well into the eighteenth century did a predominantly legato touch become the norm.
Registration: The Italian organ of the seventeenth century generally showed little advance on the Renaissance model, consisting primarily of a Principale chorus on one manual, from 8′ right up to the 33rd, in separate ranks that could be combined to form a Ripieno. Flute ranks were present at 4′, 22⁄3′ and 2′, but very rarely at 8′, and were not recommended for combining with the Ripieno, and reeds were also rare in most of the country, although the trumpet was very common in Rome. In addition, during the seventeenth century a Flemish influence made an impact on native development, including provision of a second manual allowing dialogues and echo effects. The manual compass was extended from a3 to f3. The Principale, and sometimes the Ottava, flute, and reed stops were divided, usually between middle e and f or f and f-sharp.
There is no evidence that Pasquini adhered to Diruta’s system of registration by mode included in the 1609 volume of Il Transilvano, but the legacy of Antegnati in offering registrations based on the type of piece and its function in his 1608 volume were still followed well into the seventeenth century (e.g., for Canzone alla Francese, the Ottava plus Flauto in ottava [4′ Flute], Principale plus either Ottava or Flauto in ottava plus Flauto in duodecima [Twelfth Flute], or even Principale plus Flauto in duodecima were suggested).
There is plenty of scope for varied and contrasting registration in many of Pasquini’s works in sections or multiple movements, but performers on modern organs need to ensure clarity and to avoid heavy reeds and fat Open Diapasons. It should be noted that pedals, if present, consisted in the main until well into the 18th century and later of pulldowns from the short octave bass in the manual, and covered an octave from C to B, with the only black note being a B-flat; some added the tenor C, and occasionally eleven notes were found, including an E-flat and A-flat. Playable in most cases by toes only, their function was primarily for long-held bass notes or to reinforce cadences. Very few instruments had a 16′ Contrabassi.
Tempi—Proportional notation: There is an interesting description of how to play triple-time (including 6/4 but not 12/8) sections in Frescobaldi’s prefaces to his books of toccatas and capricci, which, contrary to other theorists’ work, are NOT based on exact proportional interpretation but on speed by time signatures, ranging from adagio for 3/1 to allegro in 6/4, but there is no evidence from later theorists as to how proportions were treated. A mathematical rhythmic proportion can be applied successfully in Pasquini’s contrapuntal pieces far more readily than in his toccatas.
The great majority of Pasquini’s works can be performed successfully on harpsichord, organ or clavichord, although the suites and dance movements are clearly better suited to the stringed instruments. Many are not overly difficult, and their melodic charm will provide many hours of pleasure to players, from informed amateurs to professionals. In this anniversary year of his death, the best possible commemoration would be for his pieces to take their place in concerts.

Jonathan B. Hall, FAGO, ChM, is the author of Calvin Hampton: A Musician Without Borders and of many articles on the organ and sacred music. He is past dean of the Brooklyn AGO chapter, director of music at Central Presbyterian Church, Montclair, New Jersey, and teaches music theory at the Steinhardt School of New York University.

The free organ works of Johann Ludwig Krebs (1713–1780) are eminently enjoyable to learn, perform, and listen to. They are available to any well-trained organist willing to invest dutiful practice. They pose no particular conundrums of registration. They please almost any audience. In a nutshell, they’re good music. It seems unfair to point out that they simply aren’t as great as the works of Johann Sebastian Bach, who taught two generations of Krebses (Johann Ludwig and his father, Johann Tobias). What organ music, after all, is as great as Bach’s? The composers certainly reflect a similar idiom—breathe the same air. The influence of teacher on student, and their shared culture, is abundantly clear.
Indeed, it often seems more than clear. Anyone who is well acquainted with Bach’s free organ works will find more than a shared Zeitgeist with his student. One can often identify a clear model for a given Krebs work. It is interesting, even amusing, to walk through the two volumes published by Peters and note which Bach works leap to mind on page after page.
However, a closer look reveals that Krebs’s musical borrowing is far subtler than it first seems. While certain ideas are clearly taken from Bach, others are just as conspicuously left out. Further, in a given piece, there is often more than one Bach model in evidence. Understanding this is the key to a really fruitful engagement of Krebs, not as a second-rate Bach or copycat, but as an original artist, fully a product (almost the only product) of the “Bach School.” Though he was pervasively influenced by his great teacher, this should not lead us to dismiss his work as altogether derivative. It is not. It just sounds that way . . . at first.

Editions
The best source for the free organ works is the two-volume Peters edition. The volumes appeared widely spaced in time: the first, edited by Walter Zöllner, dates back to 1938; the second, by Karl Tittel, to 1974. Both editors are a bit nervous about the family resemblance between Krebs’s works and Bach’s. Zöllner writes: “In the present selection, we have not included works which are too obviously founded on a Bach model . . . ”1 Tittel writes:
The five preludes and fugues published by Zöllner do not display any overstressed evidence of Krebs attempting to emulate Bach’s style of writing. In this respect it is perhaps of interest to cite Spitta who remarks that, although Krebs was fond of imitating the thematic material and adopting in full the form of Bach’s works, he nevertheless displays a certain originality.2

The impression is given—confirmed upon examination of the pieces—that Zöllner got the “most unique” [sic] pieces, and Tittel must labor to justify the works that have fallen to him. Both editors sense an uncomfortable proximity; but it was not the job of either to analyze it.

Praeludium und Doppelfuge
Regardless, there are strong echoes of Bach in both volumes; perhaps more so in Volume II, but perhaps more interestingly in Volume I. Consider the Praeludium und Doppelfuge in F minor, Volume I, page 16 ff. The parallels between the prelude and the Prelude in B Minor, BWV 544, are immediately apparent. There is a strikingly similar employment of 32nd notes; there is almost-identical passagework in the pedals; there is the same thinning-out of texture. Above all, there is the same high tragic tone. What spares the piece the stigma of plagiarism is, in part, the very different harmonic profile of the opening: where Bach offers dialogue, Krebs restates his theme repeatedly, in a lower register each time. Texturally, as well as rhetorically, there is not a great deal of difference.
Meanwhile, the fugue bears no resemblance at all to the B-minor fugue; that emulative honor goes to the double fugue in D minor in the same volume, page 58 ff. Here, the theme is constructed of conjunct eighth-note motion, like the fugue of 544. This fugue, however, contains a remarkable string of quotations in its midst. Starting in measure 192, there is an unmistakable parallel to measures 51–53, inter alia, of the “Wedge” prelude, BWV 548, followed immediately by a clear reference to the ending measures of the C-minor Passacaglia, just before the thema fugatum (measures 194–196 in Krebs, 165–168 in BWV 582). Just as this latter quotation concludes, the second theme of the double fugue is announced: the same material as Bach, at the same structural point.
So much quotation, in such a little space, from such disparate works! It is fair to infer that Krebs was so full of Johann Sebastian Bach that there wasn’t always room for himself: so far from “the only Krebs in the Bach,” sometimes only Bach was in the Krebs.
I have noticed a general tendency for Krebs not to use the same model for both halves of a prelude-fugue pair. Whether this comments on his sense of Bach’s intended pairings or lack thereof, is the matter of another study. In general, though, he tends not to imitate the pairs as we have received them. I note a few possible exceptions to this. First, the Prelude and Fugue in E Major, in Volume I, starting on page 1, is perhaps reminiscent of the F-major toccata BWV 540, albeit with antiphonal effects reminiscent of the “Dorian” toccata BWV 538. The fugue, appropriately enough for either model, is cast in a vocal, stile antico fashion, at least up to a point. Also, in Volume II, the D-major (page 1 ff.) seems exuberantly modeled on the G-major, BWV 541, start to finish. (This prelude and fugue has long been the author’s personal favorite.)

Prelude and Fugue in C Minor
In Volume II, some of Krebs’s borrowings are obvious. Consider his Prelude and Fugue in C Minor, overtly modeled on Bach’s C-minor Prelude and Fugue (also in D minor), BWV 549/549a. The similarity is clear at the outset, with a pedal exordium that is almost directly copied (Examples 1 and 2). Krebs’s fugue subject, while shorter than Bach’s, uses a similar antecedent-consequent, or “question and answer” format (Examples 3 and 4). The surprise is that the fugue turns out to be a double fugue, much closer in form and style to the “Legrenzi,” BWV 574, among others. (This fugue, as well, begins with a repetitive subject.) As we have seen before, the prelude-fugue pair does not look to the same model.
Meanwhile, gone altogether from Krebs are the North German stylus fantasticus sections that feature prominently in all three of his models, the prelude and both fugues. What Krebs consistently omits to borrow is just as intriguing as what he uses—here, the archaic features of the early Bach canon. There are, for example, no showy showers of passagework at the final cadences. The pieces, rather, show a marked preference for straightforward, even unsentimental conclusions.
So, in Krebs’s C-minor prelude and fugue, we have a prelude that clearly references a Bach prelude, and a fugue that betrays an intertextual web of references. (Intertextual: a term from literary criticism, applied to music by such theorists as Robert Hatten. He distinguishes one kind of intertextuality, called strategic, where specific quotations or references are marshaled; from another called stylistic, a pervasive and general spirit of reference.3)

Prelude and Fugue in A Minor
Another prelude-fugue pair of Krebs, in A minor (volume II, page 23), shows the same approach to borrowing. The prelude is easily mapped: it is solidly based on the Toccata in F, BWV 540. The time signature is the same, as is the opening passagework over a tonic pedal. After some time spent with canonic manual figurations, there is—guess what?—a pedal solo! There are many harmonic divergences between the two, though sequences involving third-inversion secondary-dominant harmonies are highly evocative of the model. The piece is well crafted and exciting, and would doubtless have a secure place in the canon, if only we could forget about Bach!
So much for the prelude. The fugue is another matter altogether. Here Krebs’s borrowing is again very different, much subtler, and quite interesting. We have nothing even remotely resembling the fugue that follows the Bach toccata. The A-minor fugue is not a double fugue, nor does it contrast alla breve and stile nuovo. If anything, its theme bears a slight resemblance to BWV 546 (Example 5)—but it lacks the melodic coherence and harmonic promise of its model (Example 6).
This is not a great, or even particularly good, subject. The coiled watchspring of the Bach theme has been unwound, its potential energy lost. The main charm of Krebs’s theme consists in its more-than-fair share of surprises, most of them intervallic. In eight measures, we have an augmented second, a diminished fourth, two diminished fifths, and two octave leaps! But rather than conjure magic from simple means, Krebs offers us a few striking thematic peculiarities up front, and makes comparatively little of them. Similarly, his rhythmic profile can’t (or won’t) settle between stile antico and a kind of emergent classicism.
This theme admits of a real answer in the dominant, yet for some reason Krebs gives it a tonal answer in the subdominant. This choice—which strikes one as capricious—is no borrowed Bachian gambit. If anything, it is a minor milestone of changing musical style. Its very capriciousness, like that of the theme, is mannered, an affected neurosis, the handling of a musical form no longer instinctively understood. Finally, the keyboard idiom is noticeably awkward throughout—a marked contrast to the fluency of the toccata. (One can almost hear Krebs exclaim, “Fugues were supposed to be weird!”)
Thus far, insofar as borrowing is concerned, we have little to go on, except an echo of a quotation and a familiar stylistic context: both strategic and stylistic intertextuality. But at measure 91, we run abruptly into another Bach model—once again, the “Wedge” fugue (Examples 7 and 8). The “Wedge” is of course the subject of many a study; one of its most-celebrated attributes is its complex architecture. Astoundingly, the entire exposition is repeated, sonata-like, giving the whole a vast ABA form. In the B section, the Vivaldian model prevails, with alternations between concertino passagework and the ripieno return of the subject. Further reiteration of this information is needless.
While Krebs’s passagework, running from m. 91 to 116, certainly looks and feels “Wedge-like,” the resemblance turns out, again, to be only skin-deep. For one thing, the fugue’s overall architecture is completely different from that of the “Wedge.” There is no return to the exposition; the form is not ABA, but ABC. Krebs works with his theme for a while, takes a break, and then carries on again, much as if to say, “Now, where was I?” But in the B section itself, there is neither any symmetry nor any returns of the theme. Scalar passages in the circle of fifths yield to ornamental figurations over an ostinato pedal. The B section then itself takes an AB form. Meanwhile, the outer wings of the work—sections A and C—are through-composed, Krebs simply “following his bliss.”
Ironically, Krebs has another fugue, formerly attributed to Bach as BWV Anh. 181, in A minor, which is unmistakably indebted to the “Wedge” for its theme (Example 9). But to return to the first A-minor fugue: to be sure, Krebs honors what by his day was a set rule of fugue writing, when he enters his theme in four voices and follows with an episode. The basic model of theme–episode–theme informs the strictly fugal sections of the work, with a soupçon of virtuosity in the middle. (BWV Anh. 181, by contrast, is an orthodox Spielfuge, with neither interludes nor ritornelli.)

Differences in contrapuntal treatment
Another feature lacking here—as in most of Krebs’s organ works—is any of the contrapuntal pyrotechnics expected in Bach. There are no sudden and surprising inversions, augmentations, or retrogrades. There is no stretto. There are none of the superlative eruptions of chromaticism that Bach dishes out so inimitably in the final bars of so many of his best pieces.4 (When, on very rare occasion, Krebs sets a theme in inversion, he announces it all over again, while calling attention to the technique with a superscription.5) Whether Krebs lacks the inclination for harmonic and contrapuntal pyrotechnics, or the chops, is an interesting question.
We do know that, by the time the third fugal voice has entered in measure 17, the piece has yielded up its last surprise, unless the B section is surprising. We cannot evade the implicit judgment of Art, which teaches us that it is nobler to bring much out of little than the reverse. It has to be said candidly, if with regret, that this fugue is at least to some extent an exercise in parvum in multo.
I have not, by any means, fully explored the intertextual ground of Krebs’s free organ works. Further examples could have been cited; many another paper could be written. The question should also be asked: how are these pieces different? Critics speak of an emerging classical style in Krebs, a new architecture no longer sure what to do with Baroque building materials. There is some truth to this. There are passages where Krebs almost seems to be marking contrapuntal time, far more interested in harmony or emotional content. For this author, much of the previously discussed fugue in A minor (see, in particular, measures 156 ff.) fits this description. Little is accomplished of contrapuntal moment; the right-hand part feels almost crude. At times, one almost wishes for a damper pedal! Yet a certain mass of sound is achieved, perhaps pointing towards another esthetic altogether.
But therein also lies a precious insight. A sympathetic student of Krebs should not hold the composer up to comparison with Bach; would you like that standard applied to you? Rather, one should try to see past the borrowings—the persistent sense of pastiche—and try to hear what Krebs is trying to say. If this can be done—if one can hear Krebs despite the echoes—the organist will sense a kindred spirit, and can, I believe, really start to enjoy this repertoire.
Johann Ludwig Krebs outlived Bach by a good 30 years, and Bach was widely considered conservative, even dated, in his day. In his awkwardness with fugal form—in his frequent overreaching and lack of formal plan—was Krebs looking forward, even as he thought he was looking back?
Also, in encountering the organ works of Krebs one has an opportunity to hear something much closer to the mainstream. What was it really like to go to church in Germany in the long afterglow of Bach, and hear one of the best practitioners at work, playing with Kraft and Feuer? With genius comes a certain isolation; Krebs may be more representative of the norm than the transcendental Thomaskantor could ever be.
There is in Krebs’s music a joy, an exuberance, an earnest good nature, that should be judged on its own merits. The shadow of a genius makes a brilliant man almost disappointing. It takes empathy to accept the clear Bach references in Krebs, and then hear past them to a distinctive and strangely fresh voice.