Recovering the early organ works of John Stanley

John L. Speller

Dr. John L. Speller has degrees from the Universities of Bristol and Oxford in England. As an organ builder he has worked for James R. McFarland & Co., Columbia Organ Works, and Quimby Pipe Organs. He lives in St. Louis, Missouri, and is a frequent contributor to The Diapason and The Tracker.

Next to Stanley’s Trumpet Voluntary, William Walond’s Cornet Voluntary in G major (Op. 1, No. 5) is probably the best-known piece of English organ music to have survived from the eighteenth century. Surprisingly little is known, however, about the composer. The few facts that are known about him are given in Watkins Shaw’s entry in the New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians.1 Walond, described as “of this city,” died in Oxford in 1770, aged 45. This means that he would have been born circa 1725. Described as an organorum pulsator (an “organ beater”), he matriculated to the University of Oxford on June 25, 1757, when his college was recorded as Christ Church. Shortly thereafter he obtained his Bachelor of Music degree, presenting as his musical exercise a setting of Alexander Pope’s Ode on St. Cecilia’s Day. Contrary to what Watkins Shaw says, this does not seem to have been published. Walond did, however, publish two volumes of organ voluntaries, his Opus 1, Six Voluntaries for Organ or Harpsichord (1752), and his Opus 2, Ten Voluntaries for the Organ or Harpsichord (1758). Walond seems to have been highly thought of among his fellow organists, and the subscription list for his first set of published voluntaries includes the names of such eminent musicians as John Stanley. Walond spent most of his career as the assistant of Richard Church, who was the Heather Professor of Music at Oxford and also the organist of both Christ Church and New College, Oxford. It seems that Church mostly looked after the music at Christ Church himself and left his assistant Walond to handle the music program at New College. Walond might have expected to succeed Church in some or all of his preferment, had he not had the misfortune to predecease Church by six years and die at the early age of 45. Walond had three sons, Richard (d. 1831), George, and William Junior (d. 1836), all of whom were connected with church music. William Walond, Jr., was organist of Chichester Cathedral from 1776 to 1801. Richard Walond was a lay clerk at Magdalen College, Oxford, and later a vicar choral at Hereford Cathedral. George Walond was a chorister at Magdalen College, Oxford. That is about all that is known about Walond for certain, but there is confusion even over this. Various Internet sites give Walond’s dates as “1719–1768,” but these dates do not accord with the known facts mentioned above, and the dates “c. 1725–1770”, cited by Shaw, appear to be correct. Part of the problem is that the name Walond (pronounced “Woll-ond”) was very fluid in its spelling, and William, Jr., for example, sometimes used the spelling Walrond. There was indeed an ancient family in the west of England named Walrond. They had estates at Bradfield and Bovey in Devon, and at Ilminster in Somerset, and were prominent Royalists in the English Civil War. It is conceivable that William Walond was an offshoot of this West Country family. It is also just possible that William Walond is to be identified with the William Walland, son of Edward and Elizabeth Walland, who was baptized at St. Botolph-without-Aldgate, London, on August 30, 1724. Since the phrase “of this city”(signifying Oxford) referred to Walond’s residence at the time of his death, there is no particular reason to infer, as some have done, that he was also born in Oxford. He might well have been the pupil of a prominent London organist such as Maurice Greene and then have been recruited to Oxford by Richard Church. Some modern editions have altered the character of Walond’s well-known Voluntary in G (Op. 1, No. 5) by filling out the manual parts and introducing a pedal part. This has occasionally gone along with renaming the piece using titles such as Introduction and Toccata or Toccata for the Flutes. For an authentic performance of Walond’s voluntaries as the composer intended them to be heard, however, we must look elsewhere. There are fortunately some modern editions of Walond’s organ voluntaries that do not stray far from Walond’s original. Gordon Phillips edited the whole of Walond’s Opus 1 and one of the voluntaries from Opus 2 in three volumes of the Hinrichsen Tallis to Wesley series.2 More recently Greg Lewin has produced editions of both Opus 1 and 2, and has also produced a facsimile edition of Opus 1, all under the Hawthorns Music imprint.3 Besides these, a number of individual voluntaries or movements from voluntaries have been published in anthologies edited by C. H. Trevor, Charles Callahan and others. Personally, I particularly like playing from the facsimile edition of Opus 1, notwithstanding that it involves some familiarity with the alto clef, since the music seems to sit more comfortably under the fingers as originally notated by the composer.

Walond’s Six Voluntaries (1752)

The first of Walond’s Six Voluntaries of 1752 is a Voluntary in E minor, consisting of a Largo first movement for “The Diapasons” (the Open and Stopt Diapasons used together), and a second Allegro movement for the Mounted Cornet stop. This is typical of a mid-eighteenth-century “First Voluntary” or organ piece designed to be played during the Anglican services of Morning and Evening Prayer after the Psalms and before the First Lesson.4 The first four bars of the Diapason movement show, as H. Diack Johnstone has pointed out,5 a remarkable similarity with the first four bars of the Diapason movement of John James’s Voluntary in E minor, found in the so-called Southgate Manuscript, and it is possible that Walond knew of and was influenced by James’s work (see Example 1). The Cornet movement has an interesting structure, consisting of an A section, contrasting B and C sections, and a concluding recapitulation of the A section. It is unfortunate that it is rarely played and has never, as far as I am aware, been recorded. By contrast, Walond’s Voluntary in G major (Op. 1, No. 2), another solo Cornet piece, is quite frequently played and recorded, and is probably Walond’s second most popular piece. It is well known mainly because it is the only one of Walond’s voluntaries that C. H. Trevor reproduced in its entirety in his Old English Organ Music for Manuals anthology.6 This may well be because it is the shortest of the Cornet Voluntaries and was thus the one that best suited Trevor’s format of relatively short pieces. Trevor also reproduces the first movement only of the next voluntary, Walond’s Voluntary in D minor (Op. 1, No. 3).7 This is a very fine Siciliana, which once again finds a parallel in another voluntary of the period, the first movement of John Stanley’s Op. 6, No. 1. If one composer knew the work of the other—and Stanley was certainly on the subscription list for Walond’s voluntaries—it is in this instance difficult to know who may have influenced whom, since both voluntaries were published around the same time. The resemblance may as much as anything reflect how English composers of the period approached the crafting of church organ voluntaries in very similar ways (see Example 2). It is again unfortunate that the second movement, once more using the Mounted Cornet stop, is rarely if ever performed and as far as I am aware has never been recorded. It is a voluntary that deserves to be much more widely known. In the early eighteenth century small English organs with a divided keyboard generally had the divide set between c1 and c#1, though after about 1750 a divide between b0 and c1 became more popular. The Voluntary in D minor (Op. 1, No. 3) can be played on a one-manual organ with the divide in the earlier position of c1/c#1. It would be possible to play it on a small organ with the divide in the more usual modern position by temporarily removing or stopping off the middle C pipes of the Cornet stop. The piece that follows, Voluntary in D minor and major (Op. 1, No. 4), is yet another Cornet voluntary, although in this instance each section of the second movement is first played on the Cornet and then repeated on the Flute. The consensus of eighteenth-century scholarship suggests that this would probably have meant a 4-ft. Flute used alone without an 8-ft. stop being drawn. Voluntaries for Cornet and Flute, like this one, were quite popular in the eighteenth century, and in some ways ought perhaps to be considered a separate genre from the basic Cornet voluntary. In this particular one, after the second repeat, the Cornet re-enters at the end for the last three bars. Once again the first, slow, Diapason movement but not the Cornet movement is reprinted in Trevor’s anthology.8 This voluntary is another rather neglected piece, although there is at least one recording of it, performed by Peter Ward Jones on the 1790 John Donaldson organ in the Holywell Music Room in Oxford.9 The fourth voluntary is followed by Walond’s best-known composition, the beautifully crafted Voluntary No. 5 in G major. This is one of the longer Cornet voluntaries, stretching to four pages of the original edition. An interesting feature of the eighteenth-century edition is that in bars 22 and 23 of the Cornet movement Walond has a C# and D in octaves, whereas the rest of the accompaniment is all in single notes. The composer probably did not intend both octaves to be played at once, but rather included them as alternatives. The idea was that if the piece were to be performed on a one-manual instrument with divided keyboard, the lower notes would be played instead of the upper ones. On a two-manual instrument the upper notes would be used. In this way the voluntary could if required be accommodated to a one-manual organ with the divide in either the b0/c1 or c1/c#1 position. The sixth of the first set of voluntaries, the Voluntary No. 6 in D minor, is probably Walond’s finest work. Unlike the other five voluntaries of Opus 1, which are all Cornet voluntaries, Op. 1, No. 6 is an Introduction and Fugue. This means that it is a “Second Voluntary,” the type of organ piece that was generally used at the end of church services. It is a magnificent example of its kind. Written in the Italian concerto style of Arcangelo Corelli, the opening movement uses the Great Organ for the ripieno passages, with the concertante passages being played on the Swell and Choir. In this respect it has some affinities with J. S. Bach’s and J. G. Walther’s arrangements of Italian concerti for the organ. The introduction segues into a majestic double fugue on full organ. This voluntary is also noteworthy for being the first known composition in which markings are used to indicate when the swell box should be opened and closed. Walond uses wedge shapes, similar to the modern “hairpins” except that they are solid rather than open. For an authentic performance this voluntary really requires a G-compass organ since the note AA is several times called for, although it is possible to avoid this by transposing a few notes in the left hand up an octave without too much damage to the texture of the piece. The need for a G-compass organ may unfortunately be one reason why Walond’s tour de force seems to be played and recorded10 so infrequently.

Walond’s Ten Voluntaries (1758)

The second set of Walond’s voluntaries, the Ten Voluntaries for the Organ or Harpsichord of 1758, is much less homogeneous than the first, and contains both some extremely fine pieces and some rather curious anomalies. The first piece, the Voluntary in E major (Op. 2, No. 1), is another fine Cornet voluntary from the same tradition as the first five voluntaries of Opus 1. Like Op. 1, No. 4, it alternates Cornet passages with interludes on the Flute. There is, however, one strange thing about this voluntary, and that is its key of E major. Eighteenth-century English organs were tuned to meantone temperament, and therefore it was not generally considered a good idea to compose music in remote keys. In the key of E major, the third between B and D# would have been particularly unpleasant, and it is puzzling therefore that Walond should have composed a voluntary in this key. There is no evidence, however, that this piece was ever in any key other than E major.11 Furthermore, there is a contemporary precedent for using the key of E major in an organ voluntary by Maurice Greene.12 Indeed, elsewhere Walond was not afraid to modulate into four sharps quite extensively, as for example in his B minor voluntary, Op. 2, No. 2. John Stanley does the same thing in his Op. 7, No. 1, a Cornet Voluntary in A major. It is unclear whether Walond—and for that matter Greene and Stanley—used E major in order to exploit the wolf notes for a particular effect, or whether they intended that the wolf notes should as far as possible be covered over, for example by introducing ornaments where B and D# are sounded together. It would be interesting to hear how Walond’s E major voluntary would actually sound on an eighteenth-century English organ tuned to its original meantone temperament. Op. 2, No. 2 is a Voluntary in B minor, comprising an Andante played on the Swell and accompanied on the Choir Organ, together with an Allegro Moderato, for which Walond rather unusually for the period specifies “the 2 Diapasons, Principal & Fifteenth.” This voluntary was also probably intended as a First Voluntary for use before the First Lesson at Morning or Evening Prayer. It is a pleasant little piece, and is one of the voluntaries that features on Jennifer Bate’s five-CD set From Stanley to Wesley, where it is played on the 1786 John Avery organ at St. Michael’s Mount in Cornwall.13 The third of Walond’s Ten Voluntaries for the Organ or Harpsichord is a very strange beast indeed. It consists of a single movement, an Andante affettuoso, to be played on soft registrations with a Sesquialtera solo in the tenor and bass registers. The Sesquialtera was a tierce mixture found on eighteenth-century English organs. There were generally three ranks though sometimes four or more. A typical example would commence at 17-19-22 in the bass and break back to 12-15-17 around middle C. It is just possible that Walond intended the solo to be played on the Sesquialtera alone, but it seems more likely that he intended other stops such as the Stopt Diapason to be drawn together with it. The movement does not seem to follow the form of any of the usual types of English organ voluntaries, and I am therefore at a loss to suggest the sort of occasion for which it may have been composed. It is nevertheless interesting in being about the closest equivalent we have to a French Tierce en taille in the eighteenth-century English organ repertoire (see Example 3). There is an AA and four GGs in the left hand, so the piece really requires a G-compass organ, although it is once again fairly easy to get around this by playing a few notes an octave higher. On the other hand, whether anyone would really wish to play it, except perhaps as a historical curiosity, is somewhat doubtful. The fourth voluntary in Walond’s Opus 2 is another extremely fine one, a Trumpet Voluntary in D minor and major. Once again this is a fairly typical First Voluntary, made up of two movements: a Grave for the Diapasons, and a Moderato for Trumpet. The Diapason movement is a dignified essay in the style of Corelli. One feature that at first seems strange is that while the rest of bars 1–7 have the left hand moving in octaves, the low C# in bar 4 is omitted, notwithstanding that the diminished seventh chord is the climax of the whole passage. This apparent anomaly, however, is easily explained by the fact that on a “short-octave” G-compass organ, such as Walond’s instrument at New College, Oxford, the low C# was omitted (the low C# key played AA instead), so he simply would not have had the note available. It would probably therefore be desirable to insert the additional low C# on organs that possess this note. I also wonder if a treble D has accidentally been omitted at the end of bar 5, since the passage does not seem to make a lot of sense without it. Nevertheless, bars 4 and 5 are repeated at bars 43 and 44, and the treble D is once again omitted, making it seem less likely that this was a mistake, and the question remains something of an enigma (see Example 4). The Trumpet movement is a very well-crafted one in a slightly archaic style. It has perhaps more in common with orchestral trumpet music from the beginning of the eighteenth century—such as William Croft’s well-known Trumpet Tune—than with mid-eighteenth-century organ voluntaries such as those of Stanley and Greene. Trumpet voluntaries were treated very orchestrally in eighteenth-century England, and generally nothing was demanded of the organ that could not readily be accomplished on the valveless orchestral trumpets of the day. For this reason Trumpet movements were normally written only in the keys of C and D major, and modulations and even accidentals were kept to a minimum. When it was desired to modulate, this would be done on another stop such as the Flute.14 This is precisely what Walond does in his Op. 2, No. 4. The first two pages are played on the Trumpet in D major without the use of a single accidental, and there is then a contrasting one-page Flute passage where variety is provided by modulating into several different keys. Finally the first Trumpet section is repeated. At the end is a ten-bar concluding section in octaves. Although the score does not make this clear, this ten-bar section was probably only intended to be used after the repeat of the Trumpet section. No indication is given in the original that this final section is to played on anything other than the Trumpet, but since there are other eighteenth-century precedents I strongly suspect that Walond intended these final ten bars to be played on full organ.15 Once again, unfortunately, this voluntary contains a few notes that require a G-compass organ, and in this case it is not really possible to move notes up an octave without spoiling the character of the composition. This is a pity as it is one of Walond’s finest works and deserves to be much more widely known (see Example 5). Op. 2, No. 5, Voluntary in C minor, is yet another First Voluntary in two movements, an Andante for the Diapasons and an Allegro ma non troppo that begins on the Swell and then segues into a solo for the Choir Vox Humana or Bassoon. It is another very pleasant little voluntary, as is the one that follows it, Op. 2, No. 6, a single-movement Voluntary in G major. No indication is given of the tempo or registration to be used in the sixth voluntary, and one almost wonders if it was written purely as harpsichord piece, and not as a composition to be played on the organ at all. Or perhaps it was: a minority of churches had a voluntary before the service as well as the usual voluntaries before the First Lesson and at the end of the service. Nobody seems to know quite what these were like, but there is perhaps a certain prelude-like quality to Op. 2, No. 6, and it is therefore conceivable that if this movement was indeed written as an organ voluntary it was intended to be one of these elusive before-the-service pieces. If it were to be played on the organ it ought probably to be played at a Moderato tempo on a mezzo forte registration on the Swell with Choir bass or on the Diapasons and Principal of the Great Organ. The seventh voluntary in Opus 2 is another very strange one. It is a single-movement voluntary consisting of a Fugue in B-flat. Second Voluntaries, for use after the service, did not always have introductory movements, and sometimes consisted solely, like this one, of a fugue. Fugues were usually played on full organ, and though there are again no suggestions for registration in the original, full organ is probably the registration that Walond would have used. Although quite short, it is a rather complicated and academic fugue, with a very tedious subject consisting mostly of the same notes repeated two or three times. It contains quite a few old English beats, printed like inverted mordants but to be played as inverted shakes beginning on the lower auxiliary.16 It seems somewhat archaic in style for a mid-eighteenth-century voluntary. The piece seems hardly to be worth the effort of learning it except, perhaps, for its value as a historical curiosity. Voluntary No. 8 is another fugue, this time in C major, but considerably more accessible and in its way very pleasant. The same may be said of Op. 2, No. 9, the Voluntary in E flat major, although this time there is an introductory Adagio movement as well as the Allegro fugue. Both these movements would normally have been played on full organ. In Voluntary No. 9, however, Walond marks the first movement “Diapasons or Full Organ,” but the reason for him specifying the alternative “Diapasons” registration is by no means clear from the character of the piece. The tenth and final voluntary in the second collection is a two-movement Voluntary in A minor, another First Voluntary. It begins with a slow movement on the Swell and segues into a sprightly Allegro for the Flute stop. This is another of Walond’s finer voluntaries, and like Op. 2, No. 2 it has been recorded by Jennifer Bate in her From Stanley to Wesley set of recordings.17

Conclusion

In conclusion it is perhaps worth stressing that most organists in eighteenth-century England improvised their voluntaries in church, including even fugues, as the leading French organists still do today. Indeed, the word voluntary originally meant an improvisation. Voluntaries were normally only written down as compositions for one of two reasons—either for a special recital such as the dedication of a new organ, or as practice pieces to assist students in learning how to improvise their own voluntaries. As an organist working in the University of Oxford, Walond doubtless had the didactic motive very much in mind in publishing his two sets of voluntaries. There is a case to be made for William Walond having been among the finest composers for the organ in eighteenth-century England but, apart from the two well-known Cornet voluntaries in G, Op. 1, Nos. 2 and 5, until now his works have been sadly neglected. I hope that this article will encourage a wider use of his voluntaries, as well as suggesting some of the rationales that lay behind their original composition and providing some hints about how to perform them in an authentic fashion.

by Peter Hardwick

Basil Harwood was born on April 11, 1859, at the family estate called Woodhouse, near Almondsbury, Gloucestershire, England. He received an education that was broader than that of most British organists of the day. In his teens, he studied piano with J. L. Roeckel at Clifton College and organ with George Riseley at Bristol Cathedral, then, after attending Charterhouse School, Godalming, Surrey, took theory and composition with C. W. Corfe while an undergraduate at Trinity College, Oxford. The youngest son of a wealthy Quaker banker, after graduation from Oxford and working briefly in the Bodleian Library there, he followed in the footsteps of other well off young British musicians, like Hubert Parry and Charles Stanford, taking lessons in composition briefly at the Leipzig Conservatory of Music, Germany. His professors there were Carl Reinecke (who had been a pupil of Mendelssohn and Schumann), and Salomon Jadassohn (a past student of Liszt), of whom Harwood said "he taught me much."1 He then began his career as a church organist, occupying posts at St. Barnabas' Church, Pimlico, London (1883-87), Ely Cathedral (1887-1892), and Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (1892-1909). His father died in 1907, and, being the sole surviving son, two years later he retired from church work in order to assume responsibility for running the Woodhouse estate, and so as to devote his undivided attention to composition. After his death in London on April 3, 1949, his ashes were buried beneath a memorial tablet in the church where his career began, St. Barnabas', Pimlico, London.

 

By the end of his long life, a significant body of solo organ music had been created, but most of it quickly fell out of fashion after his death. Thanks to Stainer & Bell's 1991 six volume The Complete Works for Organ Solo by Basil Harwood, edited by Kenneth Shenton, organists now have another chance to evaluate this music. Admittedly, some of the pieces have an old-fashioned air, but many of them, arguably retaining a timeless freshness and eloquence, may speak to many of us today.

Prior to examining his output, it might be helpful to mention the backdrop against which the compositions were written. When Harwood began to compose in the 1880s, two main influences were dominant in Victorian organ music. One of these was a home-grown quality, which might take the form of a familiar melodic turn of phrase derived from sources such as popular ballads or hymn tunes, or one might detect an indefinable Victorian atmosphere inherited from one or more of such older contemporary organ composers as Samuel S. Wesley (1810-76), William Best (1826-97), Henry Smart (1818-79) and John Stainer (1840-1901). The other influence frequently found was 19th-century Austro-German style, principally that of Mendelssohn, Rheinberger and Brahms, but also, occasionally, Wagner, Reger, and Karg-Elert.

Furthermore, British organ composers in Harwood's youth tended to write music that fell into two broad genres. One genre appealed primarily to the senses. Pieces in this group might have titles like toccata, postlude, grand choeur and fantasia, and were emotionally highly charged and flashy. Others in this category were in more moderate tempos and were sentimental, with names such as nocturne, andante cantabile, and cantilène. Pieces in the other genre--with such titles as sonata, prelude and fugue, and passacaglia--were more highbrow and reserved in tone. In both genres, but more often in the second, late Baroque or Classical forms and idioms might be blended with more recent features. Many composers did not restrict themselves to writing music in only one of the style groups.

Before he began to compose, the very well educated Harwood had had ample time to become well versed in both the native organ repertoire and in the Continental composers. Perhaps partly because of his upper-class family background, and partly through his being organist in High-Church cathedrals, he adopted a highbrow, stylish, often reserved tone in his music for the instrument.

Harwood established his reputation as a composer of organ music with his very first two works for the instrument, Sonata No. 1 in C-sharp minor, Op. 5, and Dithyramb, Op. 7. While the Sonata bears the hallmark of the composer's individual style, it also shares a number of features found in earlier works in the genre that were popular in Britain, including features of Mendelssohn's sonatas, but especially those of Gustav Merkel (1827-85) and Josef Rheinberger (1839-1901). Harwood's three-movement conception was favored by Merkel and Rheinberger.  Similarly, the contents of various sonata movements by them anticipated the Englishman's: a preludial first movement, marked Allegro appassionato, with affinities to sonata form; mono-thematic, song-like Andante second movement; and Maestoso introduction and con moto double fugue finale. Like Merkel and Rheinberger's sonatas, Harwood's work is pervaded with religious fervor. It calls for a large three-manual Romantic organ with a tuba stop,2 and, to pull it off, requires a first class organist like the dedicatee, Walter Parratt (1841-1924),  whom Harwood admired greatly.

Parratt was the champion of "orthodoxy" and "legitimate organ playing,"3 a school that stressed the playing of works originally written for the instrument, fastidious accuracy of the part-playing, clean phrasing, and simple registration. As a corollary of the "legitimate" approach to organ performance, Parratt argued that those who made the instrument an imitator, "a mere caricature of the orchestra" were corrupt,4 a view that led to heated exchanges in 1891 and 1892 with his chief adversary in this matter, Best.5 He would have approved of Harwood's Sonata, as would Merkel and Rheinberger, who were also not interested in writing for the instrument as an imitator of the orchestra.

The Sonata was completed in 1886, near the end of his tenure of the organistship at St. Barnabas', Pimlico, London, but the young composer, being unknown, had to wait until 1890--by which time he was organist at Ely Cathedral--before he could pursuade Schott to publish the whole work.6 It is still generally regarded as probably his best piece for the instrument, and, until about 1950, was seen as possibly the "finest organ sonata written by an Englishman."7 Was this a reasonable claim? British music critics of the day were not prone to make such extravagent claims for a new, native sonata,8 so one might well ask if there were any grounds for applying "finest" to the work. Probably not, unless one were to add certain qualifications. Thus, it might be tenable to assert that the work was the greatest organ sonata that was endowed with Christian conviction by a native son9 in the last two decades of the 19th century--with Elgar's Sonata in G (1895) possibly being its secular counterpart.

The composition is cyclical, the plainsong hymn tune Beata nobis gaudia,10 which is heard in the first and third movements, binding the work together. In the first movement, following the C-sharp minor first theme and second subject in the relative major, the ancient preexistent theme is heard in the unrelated key of B minor in place of the usual sonata-form development section. The sacred theme reappears as the second fugue subject in the finale, first in E major, then, at the end of the movement, in D-flat major (the enharmonic major form of the work's tonic, C-sharp minor).11 While the five-voice, technically polished, double fugue suffers from being a trifle academic and dull, this may soon be forgotten with the maestoso, fortissimo chordal entry of the Beata nobis gaudia plainsong hymn tune in the manuals, over the first fugue subject in the pedals, at bar 106. Harwood's religous fervor injects into this regal passage, and the coda that follows, such conviction that it is hard to imagine any spiritual person remaining un-moved by such a close.

The satisfaction one may feel from experiencing Sonata No. 1 in C-sharp minor's conclusion is in no small part due to the journey that we are taken on by Harwood. At the outset, he successfully juggles the uneasy mix in the first movement of the predominantly capricious, improvisatory style--that results in several inspired harmonic sparks--with Classical sonata form. Delicately balancing these disparate elements contributes to the troubled, pessimistic, dark mood of the minor-mode opening movement, which leads irresistibly along a Romantic path to the jubilant, brilliant light that shines out in the tonic-major close of the score.

 Dithyramb, Op. 7 (composed 1892; published 1893), was also widely admired12 for many decades after its appearance. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the title "Dithyramb" has tended to be applied to music of a passionate, Dionysian character. Harwood's composition is passionate at times, but not Dionysian. Indeed, it had never been his intention to write a wild "Bacchanalian hymn."13 It was to have been the first movement of a second sonata, with the Interlude, Op. 15, No. 2, and Paean, Op. 15, No. 3, being the second and third movements. On the advice of Parratt,14 the composer published the three pieces separately instead.

As in the first movement of the Sonata, Harwood uses Classical first-movement form loosely in Dithyramb. There is an exposition with motivic, fragmented F major first theme and lyrical, legato second group of themes in D flat (bar 24); a development section (bar 65) which is concerned with the first theme and only one theme of the second group; and recapitulation with second themes now in tonic. The character of Dithyramb, however, is not related to the Viennese Classical molds. Almost Lisztian in character, there are Romantic vascillations between loud bombastic passages, and soft, tenderly prayerful ones, with the transitions often improvisatory recitatives or cadenzas that are studied with fluctuating tempo and dynamic markings. Thick-textured sections are juxtaposed with transparent, the latter with many rests and two-part writing. The work's rich ornamentation, and pianistic passage-work and high tessituras, not features of Sonata No. 1, are prophetic of the composer's manner over the middle years of his career.

At the time of its publication, Harwood announced that Dithyramb was to be the first of Twenty-four Original Compositions for the Organ, and he carried out this goal.  Completed in 1931 and filling 245 pages, the 24 pieces are as follows:

1.              Dithyramb, Op. 7 (1893).

2-7. Six Pieces, Op. 15 (1903).

Communion

Interlude

Paean

Short Postlude for Ascensiontide

Requiem Aeterna

Andante Tranquillo

8.              Capriccio, Op. 16 (1904).

9.              Two Sketches, Op. 18 (1905).

No. 1 in A major

No. 2 in F major

10.           Concerto in D major for Organ and Orchestra, Op. 14(1910).15

11.           Three Cathedral Preludes, Op. 25 (1911).

No. 1 in B flat

No. 2 in E

No. 3 in C

12.           Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor, Op. 26 (1912).

1st. mt. Lento ma non troppo

2nd mt. Allegretto serioso

3rd mt. Allegro moderato

13.           Christmastide, Op. 34 (1920).

14.           In an Old Abbey, Op. 32 (1923).

15.           Rhapsody, Op. 38 (1922).

16.           Wedding March, Op. 40 (1924).

17.           Three Preludes on Anglican Chants, Op. 42 (1925).

No. 1 On a Chant by Benjamin Cooke (1734-1793)

No. 2 On a Chant by Matthew Camidge (1758-1844)

No. 3 On a Chant by Lord Mornington (1735-1781)

18.           Voluntary in D flat, Op. 43 (1926).

19.           Processional, Op. 44 (1926).

20.           Three Short Pieces, Op. 45 (1928).

No. 1 in D

No. 2 in A minor

No. 3 in A flat

21.           In Exitu Israel, Op. 46 (1928).

22.           Toccata, Op. 49 (1930).

23.           Lullaby, Op. 50 (1930).

24.           Prelude, Larghetto and Finale, Op. 51 (1931).

Before his death, Harwood wrote five more works. Four of these were published in his lifetime:

Two Preludes on Old English Psalm Tunes, Op. 52 (1932).

I. Salisbury

II. Old 132nd

Two Meditations, Op. 57 (1935).

1. The Shepherd on the Mountainside

2. The Pilgrims nearing the Celestial City

Album of Eight Pieces, Op. 58 (1935).

                  I:              Invocation

                  II:            Eventide

                  III:          Communion

                  IV:          Rest

                  V:            Prelude for Lent

                  VI:          Diapason Movement

                  VII:        Benediction

                  VIII:      The Shepherds at the Manger

A Quiet Voluntary for Evensong, Op. 70 (1946).

The fifth work, Reverie, had been written in 1926 for the Canadian virtuoso organist, Lynnwood Farnam, and was planned for publication in Canada.  It underwent revision in 1931, but remained unpublished until its inclusion in Stainer & Bell's 1991 Complete Works edition. This Reverie and the Sonata No. 1 were the only Harwood works for organ not originally published by Novello.

The composer was at the peak of his career as a Cathedral organist at the beginning of the 20th century, and some regard, with justification, the Six Pieces, Op. 15 (1903) as the high point of his organ output. The collection is a miscellaneous collection stylistically, there being pieces indebted to the Baroque, and others reminiscent of Brahms. Well settled into his organistship at Oxford by 1903, the stops specified in Opus 15 correlate almost exactly with those found on the Christ Church Cathedral Father Willis, four-manual instrument, so there seems no reason to doubt that he wrote with that organ in mind. The Oxford Cathedral instrument was a medium sized British cathedral organ, with 39 speaking stops, half of which were 8-foot stops; only two mixtures, three 2-foot ranks, and one mutation rank.17 Registrations for the Six Pieces, typical of his entire organ output, are mostly of a rather general nature, though there are a few registration features that might be singled out, because they appear in the Six Pieces and in many of the subsequent works. Harwood is precise in his indications as to the manual(s) to be utilized at any given place in a score, but only occasionally indicates where 8, 4, and 2-foot ranks (never mutations or mixtures) should be used. Full swell was marked, and fluctuations in dynamics were indicated by the appropriate symbols, so that he clearly looked for a fair amount of swell-box expression. Solo tuba lines were always indicated, while solos for clarinet and oboe, accompanied unobtrusively on another manual supported with pedal, remained a favorite combination in the ensuing years.

Four of the Six Pieces are based on sacred preexistent melodies. Nos. 1 and 4 are chorale preludes in the Bach tradition at a time when the German composer's music in the genre was not widely known in Britain,18 due partly, perhaps, to their being based on German hymn tunes that were hardly ever sung in Britain. In choosing hymn tunes with which native congregations were familiar, therefore, Harwood improved the chances of his two chorale preludes being appreciated. In No. 1, Communion (On the Hymn Tune "Irish"), the composer places the melody in a slightly embellished form in the soprano, and brief interludes separate the tune phrases. The simple approach is that taken by Bach in his Orgelbüchlein, but, while the hymn tune has Bachian embellishments here and there, Harwood's lower voices are essentially chordal, instead of polyphonic like Bach's. Again, Bach is the distant ancestor of Harwood's Short Postlude for Ascensiontide On the "Old 25th" Psalm Tune, the fourth of the set, in its pervasive counterpoint and presentation of the melody in the soprano in long tones like an ancient cantus firmus, but the rich late 19th-century harmonies and general style are pure Brahms.19

The last two of the Six Pieces are also founded on preexistent sacred themes and are also built on the chorale prelude principle. Harwood had been pleased with the use of plainsong at St. Barnabas, Pimlico,20 and this influence in his formative years led to his using the ancient themes from time to time in his music.  The first occasion was in the Fifth of the Six Pieces, titled Requiem Aeternam, where three musical phrases from the Introit of the Roman Catholic Missa pro defunctis are quoted in the central section.  A reflective work, suitable for performance on solemn occasions such as All Saints' and All Souls' Day, the composer wrote the piece after witnessing a Requiem in the church at Dinant, Brittany, France.21 Later, the composer tried to capture his impressions of this funeral service in Requiem Aeternam, including his recollections of the massive bells producing many harmonic effects in the cavernous Dinant church, and the priest singing the plainsong melody accompanied in unison by a euphonium. Harwood does not follow the centuries old tradition of converting the ancient chant into a barred, metric, tonal version. Instead, he leaves it untouched, to be played senza tempo, in an ethereal, atmospheric setting.22 Encompassing the central plainsong section are a solemn prelude and postlude, which are built over a pedal line that seems to be vaguely derived from the Gregorian chants of the middle. A repeated pedal E-flat resounds like funereal muffled drum beats, and the work closes with a reference to the opening of the Requiem aeternam chant in the tonic E minor. The last of the Six Pieces, the Lenten Andante Tranquillo on the Hymn Tune "Bedford," is, again, based on a Baroque chorale prelude form, but is Brahmsian in idiom.

Interlude, Op. 15, No. 2, marked Lento con espressione, has echoes of Bach and Mendelssohn. It is pervaded with syncopations and grace notes, and features a sweet clarinet solo that is similar in its shapely lyricism to an oboe solo at the end of No. 5. Modest in utterance, this meditation is perhaps as sublime as anything he wrote for the organ.

In Harwood's 19th-century organ music, notably the outer movements of Sonata No. 1, and Dithyramb, the composer demonstrated a taste for brilliance and bravura. The same characteristics are found in the third of the Six Pieces, Paean. Parratt premiered the work at the reopening of the newly rebuilt J. W. Walker organ at York Minster on April 15, 1903, having been handed the manuscript of the as yet unpublished work as he was leaving Windsor for York on the day of the recital. There does not appear to have been an eye witness report of the performance,23 but, when W. Henry Goss-Custard24 played Paean at the dedication of the new Henry Willis 168 speaking stop instrument in Liverpool Cathedral on October 18, 1926, a writer observed that:

In this work many tonal combinations were displayed; contrasts of one department with another; and a gradual working up of tone towards the exciting finale, until the cathedral was ringing with joyful sound; when, suddenly, the ear was arrested by a new tone. The mighty tuba magna, with its colossal and glorious voice, was heard for the first time.25

 

In 1949, Harwood's head boy chorister and soloist between 1900-02 at Christ Church Cathedral, recalled the composer playing Paean, which was composed in 1902, from manuscript.  "One could hardly imagine that such a quiet and gentle person," who was affectionately nicknamed "Billy" behind his back by the boys in the choir, "a shortish man with sandy-coloured hair, a well-kept beard and a sprightly walk . . . could have produced and performed [as he did] such fiery music for the organ." He remembered Harwood more for his "reverent and devotional playing . . . his humility and charming old-world courtesy."26 This observation sums up fairly well Harwood as an organist. Despite the difficulty of a number of his organ works, it should not be assumed that this was a reflection of the composer's own technical prowess.  Not a virtuoso, "Harwood was apt to be uneven though on occasions he could be very fine."27 From innumerable instances in the oeuvre, and because he was a cathedral organist where such ability is a sine qua non, one might guess that he was an excellent improviser.

In loose sonata form, Paean is characterized by the Harwoodian liking for chromaticism,28 in both terms of extensive modulation and coloring of common chords with chromatic embellishing tones. Like Wagner, however, he often accentuates the great moments by a return to diatonicism,  as, for example, at the triumphal start of the Brahmsian first theme at the beginning of the piece, the recapitulation (bar 89), and its last appearance at the entry of the solo tuba at the close of the coda (bar 162). Symphonic in concept, Paean  ideally calls for a Romantic, orchestral organ such as most British cathedrals possessed at the time of its composition. 

Capriccio, Op. 16 (1903) was perhaps an expression of the composer's romantic feelings towards the dedicatee, his wife of four years, Mabel Jennings, who was, incidentally, an accomplished pianist and composer.29 The high flown, agitated, troubled  atmosphere of the D minor thirty-second-note manual broken chords, to be played Tempo irresoluto, over a slower-moving pedal line in the opening and third sections, perhaps recapture the din of the mighty bells reverberating around the Dinant church mentioned above. Are these sections the outcome of Harwood's poetic improvising? Certainly this would account for the dramatic surprise at the end of the opening section, a quasi cadenza (bars 30-35). The passage passionately rises sequentially, stringendo, from the home key of D minor to a fortissimo tonally ambiguous pivot chord, which may be either seen as the supertonic chromatic ninth chord with the root omitted, or the dominant minor ninth with the root omitted in A major (the dominant of the D major next section). This dramatic effect finds release, after a general pause, in a lyrical, sunny, joyous, slower second section. After a return to the D minor flurry of the opening, Harwood's calm after the storm is a peaceful F major chorale prelude setting of Orlando Gibbons' hymn tune Song 13 .

Although Harwood was a church organist for less than a third of his long life, in his music for the instrument he never seems to have left the cathedral organ loft, at least in spirit. This may be seen in the Three Cathedral Preludes, which illustrate Harwood's church service prelude style at it best, it might be argued. Their composition was the result of his happy associations with southwest England. Born on the family estate in Gloucestershire, the composer's association with the Three Choirs Festival was lifelong, especially the Gloucester Festival, where first performances of several of his major choral works were given.30 In 1911, as a token of respect and gratitude for their friendship and assistance in his career, Harwood dedicated the Three Cathedral Preludes to the three Cathedral organists of the day, A. Herbert Brewer of Gloucester, G. R. Sinclair of Hereford, and Ivor Atkins of Worcester, respectively, There is nothing programmatic in them,31 except that they convey the impression of a cathedral organist improvising in a dignified, spacious building before a service.

No. 1 in B-flat is a microcosm of Harwood's peaceful, reflective type of prelude. Example 1 shows the theme on which the piece is based as it is enunciated at the outset.  The composer's musical fingerprints here include a) triplets within the duple meter; b) expressive use of dissonance, as, for example, the suspension in bar 3 (F suspension in the solo clashing against G flat in the accompaniment), and cross relations in bars 3 and 4 (involving E naturals and E flats). (See Example 1.)

Two other characteristics of the first Prelude might be pointed out. First, there is extensive chromatic coloring. See, for instance, the use of the minor triad on the subdominant in a major key in bar 10, and the quite Wagnerian serpentine, chromatic unaccompanied solo cadenza at bars 12 and 13, marked with a series of indications for tempo and dynamics (poco accel. a piacere; rall. e dim.; lento; pp). Second, a keen sense of effective organ sonorities. In Example 2, a Brahmsian sense of nostalgia, and autumnal coloring, is partly the result of the low tessitura of all the parts, with crossing of hands and the final chord's top voice being played by the right foot.

The second of the Three Cathedral Preludes is also peaceful and reflective in atmosphere. The third gradually rises to a resounding fortissimo close. Like the first two, the principal theme of the last Prelude is heard at the start, and there follow several variations on the material, which are interspersed with bridge passages that continue to develop the theme. Harwood builds up from a restrained start to a coda in which he releases a torrent of noble, grandiose emotion that rises to a tense, forceful climactic close.

To believe that the Sonata No. 2 in F-sharp minor, Op. 26 (1912), dedicated to Harwood's predecessor at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, Charles Harford Lloyd, was composed for the thirteen-stop, three-manual instrument built by Bishop and Son for Harwood on his retirement home at Woodhouse defies reality, despite words to that effect printed in parenthesis under the title in the score.32 The lush harmonies and melodies, romantic moods, and symphonic demands of this sonata ideally call for a four-manual instrument along the lines of the Christ Church Cathedral organ, with which he was very familiar. The work, in four movements, the last two played without break, show his characteristic fondness for triplets and grace notes, which had first appeared in Dithyramb. What is new for Harwood in Sonata No. 2, especially in the monothematic sonata form first movement, though cropping up also in the other movements, are perhaps an excessive use of pianistic features associated with Chopin and Schumann, such as complex ornamental filigrees and extended right-hand octave passage-work. These, and Chopinesque frequent detailing of tempo changes that Harwood calls for in the shaping of phrases, may be seen in Example 3.

Other features of the work are the Romantic yearning in the Brahmsian first movement, the gentle, transparent-textured second movement, an Allegretto serioso scherzo in 7/4, and the slow fourth movement, Arietta. This last movement is placid except for a turbulent cadenza near the end, may remind one of the Brahms of the late Intermezzi, in the tonic major.

Eight years passed before the next organ work appeared. This was Christmastide, Op. 34, a fantasia written for the reopening of the Gloucester Cathedral organ in 1920.33 A large-scale programmatic piece that depicts parts of the Christmas story, the score is interspersed with Biblical and liturgical quotations. The first half, in which the text "What joy shall be in the midst of affliction"34 is expressed, is newly composed.  The start of the second half is based on the plainsong Sarum Sequence for Christmas Day, much of which is unmetered, like his treatment of the plainsong in Requiem Aeternam, Op. 15, No. 5. The close of the work is based on the Office Hymn for Candlemas. There are the usual Harwood musical fingerprints. For example, there is writing for the instrument along lines similar to that of the contemporary symphony orchestra--fondness for soloing of melodies played on oboe and clarinet stops, and dramatic shifts in dynamics, sometimes involving crescendos achieved by skillful manipulation of the swell box, and, at climaxes, sometimes involving judicious use of the tuba stop. Another characteristic of the composer in Christmastide is the classical balance in the tonal scheme. He modulates from minor at the start to major half way through--F minor; B-flat minor; A-flat major; F major; B-flat major; F major--the music mirroring the uncertainty of the Old Testament prophecy of Christ's coming giving way to New Testament joy when the Messiah is born.

In an Old Abbey was first conceived for cello and organ in 1919, then arranged for cello and piano, before being finally arranged for organ in 1923.  The dedication of the organ version, to Henry Ley, Harwood's friend and successor at Christ Church, Oxford, suggests that perhaps the "Abbey" the composer had in mind is the medieval monastery priory that became Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, in the 16th century.35 Perhaps he is inviting his listener to envisage the sturdy Norman arches, the fan tracery of the choir vault, and lovely stained glass of the east-end rose window of an ancient church of which he is very fond, Oxford Cathedral?  Be this as it may, there is nothing archaic in the music:  this is late Victorian soiree music.

A sentimental, idealistic mood characterizes In an Old Abbey. Sentimentality pervades the introduction (bars 1-14), which opens in the "wrong" key of E major (the work is in E-flat). Expressiveness in these opening bars is achieved mainly by means of embellishing tones and a chromatic, modulating, developing sequence. In bars 1 and 2, the sequential phrase features the major common chord on the flat submediant in the major key, approached by, and resolving to, the dominant seventh chord in E major. The next step of the sequence, in C-sharp minor, is approached by means of a common-tone modulation. Finally, after several more steps in the evolving, chromatically unstable sequence, tonal bearings are finally established, and expectations are aroused, with dominant preparation beginning at bar 7. The noble principal melody is long (bars 15-30) and, reflecting its cello origins possibly, is wide-ranging, with big romantic leaps. Harwood yanks one from the E-flat of the main theme to the opening B major of the middle section (bar 31) by means of another common-tone modulation, and follows this almost immediately with another abrupt modulation using the same technique in moving from B major to B-flat minor (bar bar 33). In the 1920s, the composer's pursuit of new chromatic colorings led to tolerance of greater, fleeting dissonances that are usually explained by his emphasis of horizontal consideration, of voice leading, rather than vertical outcomes. Such is the case at bar 35, where B-natural, C-sharp, G-sharp and both E-natural and E-sharp, collide simultaneously.  Similarly, at bar 60, there is a harsh crunch when E-flat, C-natural, D-natural, and F-natural are heard together.   Direct quotations and reminiscences of the work's introduction and principal theme, replete with suspensions, appoggiaturas, and upper and lower neighboring tones, make up the nostalgic coda of In an Old Abbey.

The inception of Rhapsody took place when Harwood was examining at the Royal College of Music, London, in 1922 with Walter Alcock (1861-1947)   and Parratt.  Themes that were used by the composer in the examinations were incorporated into the work, and it was dedicated to Alcock, who was already known for his magnificent performances of Harwood's organ music.36 Although a follower of Brahms in style, he does not follow the German's sonata form of the two famous piano Rhapsodies, Op. 79, as Harold Darke had done in his organ Rhapsody, Op. 4 (1908). Nor is there any apparent indebtedness to Herbert Howells' three organ Rhapsodies, Op. 17 (1919), which are loose in form but centered around one principal theme.  Instead, Harwood casts his work in the style initiated by Liszt's 19 Hungarian Rhapsodies (1846-86) that was more commonly adopted by a number of European composers for subsequent 19th- and early 20th-century rhapsodies.37 Thus, Harwood's is in a loose, episodic form; has exaggerated mood contrasts; and quotes a preexistent theme, an untitled  hymn tune by Thomas Tallis.38 Written only four years after the conclusion of the terrible loss of life in World War I, one might hypothesize that Harwood's Rhapsody is an elegy for that carnage. Harwood avoided talking in public about his music, and we know nothing of his thoughts on the matter.  In any case, the work is funereal. A section near the beginning labeled Funeral March returns for a lengthy development later.  Tallis' solemn hymn tune appears in a dignified, forceful manner in the second of three trio sections, with Joseph Addison's text, "When, rising from the bed of death," inscribed parenthetically under the melody in the score, and this melody reappears in the final bars of the piece. Although Harwood's craftsmanship is as fine as ever, one may wonder if it is,  in fact, an artifice, a collage of six unrelated melodies used by the three examiners at the Royal College in 1922.  This impression may be felt, for instance, when, near the end, out of the blue, a three-voice fugal exposition emerges on a thematic idea not heard before.

Among the people that Harwood met at the regular concerts and soirees held at his country home of Woodhouse shortly after 1909, was a highly gifted, young, likable pianist and organist named Douglas G. A. Fox. Shortly after completing distinguished studies by means of organ scholarships at the Royal College of Music College and Keble College, Oxford, Fox tragically had his right arm amputated just above the elbow in a battle in France in late August, 1917, during World War I. For this cocourageous musician, Harwood composed Voluntary in D-flat for left hand and feet.39

Among the remaining Harwood compositions for the instrument, it is harder to find works that rise above the bland.  Was the well of inspiration running dry? Whether or not this is true, one may detect with assurance a change in Harwood's style at this time.  Following the general trend in British organ music in the 1920s, and starting with the Three Preludes on Anglican Chants, he returned to the simpler, less chromatic voice leading of the First Sonata.

This may be seen in the Album of Eight Pieces, which were written between November, 1934, and March, 1935. Programmatic, technically easy miniatures, at the top of each, the title and a line or two from a hymn points to what Harwood is portraying. No. 3, Communion On a French Hymn Melody, cites the opening lines, "Therefore we, before Him bending, this great Sacrament revere," of the fourth verse of Thomas Aquinas' hymn text "Now, my tongue, the mystery telling" and is a chorale prelude on the hymn tune Grafton. First, the preexistent melody is presented in straightforward half and quarter notes as a baritone solo for the left hand, with equally unembellished right-hand and pedal accompaniment. Then the preexistent theme is soloed, slightly ornamented, in the treble register. It is in this varied treatment of the theme that Harwood rises, perhaps, above the average. Here, he captures  exquisitely the Holy Communion sentiments associated with the text and melody, not the least through frequent expressive use of dissonance--appoggiaturas, suspensions, and chromatically inflected tones either singly or in combination--and eloquent little melodic twists in the soprano line. In No. 6, Diapason Movement, we catch a glimpse of the old noble, ebullient side in Harwood's response to the opening line of Henry F. Lye's hymn text based on Psalm 103, "Praise, my soul, the King of heaven," which he achieves without any reference to John Goss' famous hymn tune usually associated with this text. As with No. 3, though the mood in No. 6 is different, there are the same fleeting dissonant crunches created mostly by bold suspensions, appoggiaturas, and numerous cross relations. Unlike the third work, however, chromatic coloring is achieved quite frequently through secondary dominants and common-tone modulations.

The organ pieces of the later years have occasional moments of intuitive truth such as one may detect in Diapason Movement of the Album of Eight Pieces. By and large, though, Harwood, now over seventy years old, was unable, or unwilling, to break free of his Victorian/Brahms roots. Unfortunately, this left his last music sounding dated, at a time when the works of post-Victorians, such as Herbert Howells and Percy Whitlock, were emerging.           

 

Notes

                  1.              Lancelot G. Bark, "Basil Harwood, 1859-1949," The Musical Times, XC (May, 1949), 165.

                  2.              Harwood's sole registration indication in the whole work is for a tuba on the last page of the score.

                  3.              Walter G. Alcock, The Organ (1913), p. 101.

                  4.              Walter Parratt, Music in the Reign of Queen Victoria (1887), Vol. 2, p. 604.

                  5.              Recorded by Henry C. Lahee, The Organ and Its Masters (1902), pp. 219-22. See also W.T. Best's letter of May, 1892, printed as "Organ Arrangements," in The Organ, I (July, 1921), 58-61.

                  6.              In 1887, Schott published the middle movement under the title Andante Pour Orgue.

                  7.              Lancelot G. Bark, op. cit.

                  8.              See William S. Newman, The Sonata Since Beethoven (2nd edition, 1972), pp. 575-92.

                  9.              His use of a preexistent hymn tune here was the first of a number of times that he quoted hymn tunes in his organ works.

                  10.           The melody is from a Constance Psalter titled Psalterium Chorale, printed at Mainz, Germany, in 1510. See Hymn 185, The English Hymnal (1933).

                  11.           Harwood was clearly attracted to hymn tunes old and new. He wrote a number of them--the best known being Thornbury--and was editor of The Oxford Book (1908), he quoted them in several of his organ works.

                  12.           Henry Ley, Harwood's successor as organist at Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford (1909-1926), said that Elgar much admired the work and wished to orchestrate it. See William H. Harris, "Basil Harwood--1859-1948 (sic)," English Church Music, XXIX, No. 2 (June, 1959), 44.

                  13.           Wilfrid Mellers, "The IAO Jubilee at York," The Musical Times, CIX (October, 1978), 886.

                  14.           Henry Ley, "Basil Harwood, 1859-1949," English Church Music, XIX, No. 3 (July, 1949), 40.

                  15.           Omitted from this discussion, because it is not for organ solo. The work was performed at the Three Choirs Festival at Gloucester that year with Harwood as soloist. For an account of it, see [no author] "Dr. Basil Harwood's New Organ Concerto," The Musical Times, LI (October, 1910), 641. The score calls for an orchestra of strings, brass, percussion, harp and celesta, but no woodwinds. Harwood does not write for soloist and orchestra as protagonists, as is usual in the genre, but requires both entities to play almost the whole time. There is a glissando on the pedals.

                  16.           The last work published in his lifetime.

                  17.           For the complete specification, see Andrew Freeman, "Organs of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford," The Organ, XI (July, 1931), 35-42.

                  18.           Nicholas Temperley, Music in Britain: The Romantic Age 1800-1914 (1981), p. 448. As late as 1922, Ivor Atkins, "British Organ Music," The Musical Times, LXIII (October, 1922), 685, asserted that Bach's chorale preludes for organ appeared to have been "practically unknown to all but the most adventurous of Bach's English followers."

                  19.           Over fifty years later, Healey Willan was still composing organ chorale preludes like these in his three sets of ten Hymn Preludes.

                  20.           A Tractarian parish built on the edge of the parish of St. Paul's Church, Knightsbridge, London, and consecrated in 1850.

                  21.           R. Meyrick Roberts, The Organ at Liverpool Cathedral (1926), pp. 36-37.

                  22.           George Oldroyd (1886-1951) was to follow this approach for his Three Liturgical Preludes (1938) and Three Liturgical Improvisations (1948).

                  23.           Vernon Blackburn, "York Minister," The Musical Times, XLIV (May, 1903), 302, appends Parratt's program, but no critical commentary.

                  24.           Organist of Liverpool Cathedral (1917-55).

                  25.           R. Meyrick Roberts, The Organ at Liverpool Cathedral (1926), pp. 36-37.

                  26.           Claude Williams, "Basil Harwood 1859-1949," English Church Music, XIX, No. 3 (July, 1949), 41.

                  27.           Bark, op. cit., p. 166.

                  28.           See C.V. Stanford, Interludes: Records and Reflections (1922), p. 96.

                  29.           Harwood was to dedicate Wedding March to Mabel. It was written in 1923 and revised for their twenty-fifth wedding anniversary the next year.

                  30.           They included Inclina Domine (1898), Love Incarnate (1925), and Ye Choirs of New Jerusalem (1928).

                  31.           Such as was the case with Richard Hall's Three Cathedral Voluntaries (1936), which bear the sibtitles York, Ripon and Durham.

                  32.           For the instrument's specification, see Kenneth Shenton, "The Organ Music of Basil Harwood," The Organ, LXX (October, 1991), 208.

                  33.           The work was, according to the note in the score, "composed for the reopening of the organ at Gloucester Cathedral, 1920." However, the Cathedral Organist, Herbert Brewer, to whom the work is dedicated, played Harwood's First Sonata at the dedication service on November 19.  See [no author] "Gloucester Cathedral Organ," The Musical Times, LXI (December, 1920), 825. William Faulkes (1863-1933) had composed an organ piece along similar lines in 1907, Fantasia on Old Christmas Carols, Op. 103. Faulkes' style is fairly unsophisticated, and he focuses on three carols, rather than mainly reflecting on Biblical texts, like Harwood.

                  34.           The text is not, in fact, a part of the Bible, but a prefatorial phrase provided by the translators of the King James Version (1611) for 28 Isaiah, IX.

                  35.           There is no evidence, however, that Harwood had any specific church in mind.

                  36.           Harris recalled Alcock playing "magnificently" the Sonata No. 1 around 1900 at Holy Trinity Church, Sloane Street, London. See William H. Harris, "Basil Harwood--1859-1949," English Church Music, XXIX, No. 2 (June, 1959), 44.

                  37.           For example, Vaughan Williams' orchestral Norfolk Rhapsody No. 1 (composed 1905; published 1925).

                  38.           No. 92, The English Hymnal (1906), which Vaughan Williams had used for his Fantasia on a Theme by Thoms Tallis (1910; revised 1925) for strings.

                  39.           For a full obituary tribute to Fox, see David Willcocks, "Douglas Fox," Royal College of Music Magazine, Vol. 74, No. 3 (October, 1978), pp. 119-21.

Part 1 was published in the May 1996 issue of THE DIAPASON, pp. 10-13.

by Sally Cherrington

The Introduction of Organ Voluntaries: The Organist as Solo Performer

Despite the emphasis on the organist as an accompanist in
the first half of the nineteenth century, the playing of voluntaries did not
suddenly commence in 1850.  The use
of voluntaries became common in some churches after about 1810, although in
other churches (particularly those in rural locations) voluntaries were not
played until much later in the century. In 1835, Musical Magazine in New York
City published an article complaining about abuses in voluntary playing, which
contained the following comments on the problem of inappropriateness:

Every real proficient on the organ, knows that voluntaries
upon that noble instrument, ought to consist of broken passages, scattered
chords, etc., etc., which will not seize upon the attention of the listener but
rather soothe his mind, into calm collected meditation. Any thing like a
regular air would here be out of place. Even the learned harmonies of the
Germans, impressive and beautiful as they are, prove for the most part too
spirit-stirring, in their influence, for American voluntaries. Some of our
organists, however, have but little invention, and others but little taste. So
when they should either be silent or be endeavoring merely to soothe the
worshipers into devout meditation, they rouse them by a march, an overture, a
sonata, or a thundering chorus. . . . Such abuses, if tolerated, will bring
voluntaries into disrepute; if not lead to the expulsion of the organ from our
churches.57

Orpha Ochse adds wryly that if the situation was so bad in
the cultural and intellectual climate of New York City, one could only imagine
what sorts of things the untutored village organists were playing for
voluntaries.58

The common complaint of too much showmanship, which had been
levelled at the performance of interludes, was also carried over to
voluntaries. For example, Jane Rasmussen notes that Episcopal churches were
often the first in an area to get an organ, and whenever possible they would then hire a competent organist from Europe, New York, or Philadelphia. The organists often played virtuosic voluntaries as a form of advertising in order to attract students to supplement their church salaries.59 Whether justified or not, this virtuosity was generally considered distracting to the tone of the
service.  In non-Episcopal (or less
wealthy) churches, this problem would probably have occurred somewhat later in
the century due to the later technical development of native players, but it
became a problem nonetheless.

Charles Zeuner

Prior to the publication of Zeuner's collections of organ
voluntaries, most organists who played voluntaries improvised them.
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  Zeuner presented an alternative for
those who did not yet possess this skill. Zeuner's Voluntaries for the Organ, published in 1830, was the first collection of organ music published in the United States, and consists of six voluntaries.60 Although the use of the term "voluntary" and his designation of the pieces as "Before Service" or "After Service" suggests that he intended the pieces for church use, Zeuner indicated on the score that the pieces were "composed and dedicated to the Handel and Haydn Society, Boston,"61 a secular musical society. However, his second organ publication, Organ Voluntaries, published in 1840, is clearly a volume for the church organist. This is a longer and more comprehensive work than his first collection, and consists of two parts. The first part involves 165 interludes and short preludes in a variety of keys (to be used with hymns). Part II contains "Practical Voluntaries to be used before and after services in churches," with intended uses specified for each piece.62
style="mso-spacerun: yes">  These voluntaries have no pedal parts,
and contain dynamic markings but only minimal registration indications. This
collection forms a sort of bridge between the earlier "methods" and
the forthcoming collections of music with instructive introductions: it is the
first comprehensive printed collection for church use of interludes and (more
importantly) voluntaries, which were becoming the new focus of most organists,
but it does not yet include any of the descriptions and admonishments for
performing them that the later collections include.

The opposite situation occurs in an article from The
American Journal of Music, published in Boston on February 25, 1845, and
entitled "On the Use of the Stops of the Organ."63 The anonymous
author explains that although the organ is the instrument best suited for
extemporizing (voluntaries in church), he has never seen any "practical
treatises" on this subject. Therefore, he provides stylistic and
registration suggestions for voluntary playing. In contrast to Zeuner, this
instructional treatise is all text and no music.

Thomas Loud

Thomas Loud's organ method with its extraordinarily lengthy
title, discussed briefly in the first of this series of articles, was also
published in 1845.64   As the
title suggests, The Organ Study: Being an Introduction to the Practice of the Organ; together with a collection of Voluntaries, Preludes, and Interludes, original and selected; a Model of a Church Service; Explanations of the Stops and their Combinations; Studies for the Instrument; and Examples of Modulation intended to aid the Extempore Student; accompanied by an Engraving and description of the Mechanical construction of the Organ begins with explanations of organ basics important to Loud. These include descriptions of the basic organ mechanisms and stops, as well as practical matters such as beginning and releasing chords (Loud recommends rolling the notes individually from the bottom until all notes are sounding) and playing shakes. Significantly, he uses this material to lead into pointers on accompanying, illustrated in his model service for the Episcopal Church, before turning his attention to playing voluntaries. He does include two sample voluntaries in his "model service":  an introductory voluntary (shown in Example 1) and a voluntary for before the second psalm or hymn (in other words, an offertory). These voluntaries are musically straightforward, with basic registrations provided. Both include trills (shakes), an ornament that Loud seemed to feel was absolutely essential to the church organist's success. While the first voluntary is manualiter, the second indicates that the organist is to play certain bass clef notes with the pedals. Loud, however, provides small notes at these spots for those organists whose instruments do not have pedalboards.

Loud follows his model service with many pages of hymn
preludes and interludes in a variety of major and minor keys before furnishing
15 pages of voluntaries for church use, composed by himself and a variety of
other composers (Rinck, Cross, Russell, etc.). He does include several
voluntaries which are transcriptions, principally of religious works by Haydn.
He avoids the popular music pitfalls decried earlier in this article; although
he does include one "Religious March" by Gluck, it is quite austere
in character. At the end of this section, Loud adds a page illustrating the
"fine effect" of embellishing the end of a voluntary with a simple
suspension, emphasizing again the modest nature of this music.

At the end of his method, Loud provides some interesting
directions showing how to produce registrations of increasing power on instruments varying in size from four stops to modest three- manual stoplists, as well as ways to achieve particular registrations "effects." This leads into his closing and quite notable conclusions on voluntary playing, with which he ends his method. His concern is that voluntaries be consistently used, but not abused:

The style of performing (voluntaries) on this instrument
should always be in accordance with the use made of it, as forming a part of
the service of the Sanctuary; nothing therefore, opposed to the sacredness of
the place, can with propriety be introduced: whatever may be the character of
the Stops made use of, the music should be chaste and solemn, and all the
variety of the instrument, should (in the hands of the efficient performer) be
made conducive to the same subject. . . . Voluntaries should as much as
possible be suited to the subject of the discourse or character of the service
. . . 65

Loud continues by explaining how specific divisions or stops
can help to achieve these lofty goals. He concludes by explaining how to play
"fancy voluntaries," which his text implies are improvised and
probably not for use in church. 
His final admonishment is still applicable for improvisers today: "
. . . above all, remember to stop in time--a common fault with performers is,
that they never know when they have done enough."66

Cutler & Johnson

Before returning to Johnson's important American Church
Organ Voluntaries (mentioned in the first
article), we will make a brief digression to examine another of Johnson's
publications. Johnson originally published the Voluntaries in 1852 under his
name.  When it was republished in
1856, H. S. Cutler's name was included as well (see Example 2 - portraits of
Johnson and Cutler). A discussion of Cutler and the reasons for his addition in
the second edition is beyond the scope of this article, but apparently his
contribution was minimal (it is thought that perhaps he penned the
"Remarks"). Whatever the case, Johnson had originally intended to
write a second book, apparently planned in conjunction with American
Church Organ Voluntaries, called Instructions in the Art of Playing Voluntaries and Interludes and of Composing Simple Music. This book was conceived as a combination of an organ method and harmony book. It is thought that it existed in draft form and that Johnson was using it to teach his organ students. Unfortunately for the history of organ pedagogy, it was never published.67

Instead, Johnson published in 1854 his Practical
Instructions in Harmony, upon the Pestalozzian or Inductive System; Teaching
Musical Composition, and the Art of Extemporizing Interludes and Voluntaries. This book was unique in organ "methods" published to this point in that it was directed at the more sophisticated music student.68 Basically, it is a book of music theory with practical keyboard exercises. It was probably intended as a successor to Johnson's popular Instructions in Thorough Base which had undergone at least six reprints by this time, testifying not only to the need for these types of materials but also to the growing technical sophistication of the organist.

Johnson's Practical Instructions, however, contains no
discussion concerning church voluntaries, but approaches them from a completely
technical standpoint. This is not the case in American Church Organ
Voluntaries. The volume opens with
"Remarks," wherein the editors comment that one should speak of an
"opening voluntary" rather than a "voluntary before the
service" (as Zeuner does), since this voluntary is a part of the service
and should arouse the proper feelings in the listener for the worship which
will follow. They waste no time in criticizing the commonplace habit of playing
popular music, including bits of opera, as voluntaries. They warn the organist
not to give in to popular opinion which supports this sort of music, even if
they are getting pressure from a wealthy person in the congregation who has
money but no taste, ending by saying that in such cases it is better to
"vacate your office and retain the good opinion of all whose good opinion
is worth having" rather than to give in to "depraved taste."69
In regard to voluntaries after the service, Cutler and Johnson admit that there
are differing opinions on the value of playing music while people are leaving. They justify this practice by saying that there is already unavoidable noise at the end of the service as people prepare to leave, and therefore playing
appropriate music while this is happening will remind people for as long as
possible that they are still in the House of God. "What more appropriate
monitor than the solemn Diapasons judiciously managed?"70 The
"Remarks" answer many of the contemporary complaints mentioned
earlier.

The complete pre-publication title of this anthology, Organ Voluntaries, a Complete Collection, adapted to American Church Service, and designed for the use of Inexperienced Organists who have not Progressed far Enough in Their Studies to be able to Play Extemporaneous Voluntaries (i.e., improvised), indicates Johnson's purpose in compiling this collection--providing music for amateur organists. The voluntaries are all manualiter. Numbers 1-35 are opening voluntaries, while numbers 36-41 are opening voluntaries for use on festival occasions. Twelve closing voluntaries are included. Many of the voluntaries are by either Johnson or Cutler, but works by Haydn, Muller, Rinck, and Mendelssohn are included, as well as works by lesser-known composers of that period. The pieces contain some tempo, dynamic, and keyboard indications. The tempi vary, although in both the opening and closing voluntaries the majority of tempi designations provided are moderate. The voluntaries are one to two pages in length and generally homophonic in style. There are only isolated indications of sections with solo stops, marked in tiny print "solo . . . solo ends" (see Example 3 for the first half of an opening voluntary with these frugal registration markings). Thus there is nothing about these pieces which would relate them to popular music. Pinel suggests in the Foreword to the edition that although these pieces seem very plain to our contemporary ears, they would have been harmonically innovative, even "exhilarating," to mid-19th century rural listeners.71 (The harmony, while hardly daring, is more chromatic than that of the average hymns and service music.) One reason for the lack of excess in these pieces (and those in Loud's method) may have been the fact that Protestants were still strongly affected by the recent appearance of organs and conservative views of the appropriateness of instrumental music in
general.72 

The several printings of American Church Organ
Voluntaries testify to its popularity.
Gould comments that in his travels he did visit some congregations where the
voluntaries were appropriate and therefore useful (although he had many
negative experiences as well). Thus, Johnson and Cutler's music or at least the
approach to service-playing which it and Loud exemplified was represented in
practice and was not just a theoretical goal.

Southard & Whiting

Although organ methods from the Continent, American
materials for playing the harmonium or cabinet organ, and other unannotated
volumes of voluntaries appeared after Johnson's anthology, the next significant
collection was that of L. H. Southard and G. E. Whiting, entitled The Organist (1868). This volume is also an anthology of music for service use, with an introduction discussing registration and other useful information for the church organist. However, as will soon become evident, there are many
differences between this collection and that of Cutler and Johnson, despite the
similarity of their subjects and their separation in publication by only 16
years.

In the second half of the 19th century, one can observe the
rise of concert organs and concert organists. Large organs were built at
Tremont Temple in Boston (1853) and the Boston Music Hall (1863). The
increasing popularity and professionalism of orchestras fueled the popularity
of orchestral transcriptions for organ. 
Organists adopted some of the Romantic excesses of European organists,
such as the fascination in trying to recreate "storms" on the organ.
It is noteworthy that the first piece performed on the new Walcker organ in
Boston's Music Hall was the "Overture to William Tell" by Rossini.73
At the same time, the technical improvements and expanded size of organs made
it more practical to perform legitimate organ literature of greater magnitude
than the voluntaries.  The
dedication recitals of organs in churches now were devoted exclusively to organ
solos, whereas previously these events consisted of vocal solos accompanied by
organ with perhaps a few organ voluntaries.74 Several sources mention that Bach
organ works were performed in America for the first time in this period (about
the mid 1860s). Most of the concert organists, however, were English or
European.

In examining The Organist, these changes in organ literature in the second half of the 19th century are reflected.  The subtitle of the volume indicates that it is "a collection of voluntaries, studies, and transcriptions of moderate difficulty," and includes information on registration (which will be explored shortly).  The editors explain in the introduction that "melodious and piquant Voluntaries" are part of the church organist's responsibilities, and that therefore the aim of this volume is to supply opening and closing voluntaries which meet these requirements, complete with registrations.75 Like the Cutler and Johnson volume, this collection was apparently intended primarily for less experienced players who were not yet adept enough to improvise appropriate service music.  It is interesting that, unlike Johnson who taught improvisation based on models of Bach, Southard and Whiting refer the aspiring church improviser to the piano sonatas of Mozart and Haydn as a basis of study, pointing already to a sharp difference in outlook.

The music supplied for opening and closing voluntaries by
Southard and Whiting differs markedly from that of Cutler and Johnson. Even the
titles underscore this difference: although the term "voluntary" is
used in the introduction, the pieces are entitled "Prelude" and
"Postlude" (or "Postludium"--see Example 4). This implies a
slightly different function than the term "opening voluntary" which
Johnson carefully chooses (probably something closer  "voluntary before the service"). In addition,
several of the pieces have titles like "Reverie" or
"Romanza," reflecting a strong Romantic secular influence. The pieces
are much longer than those in American Church Organ Voluntaries
style='font-style:normal'>, and all include pedal parts on separate staves.
Three of the pieces are identified as transcriptions of Haydn, Mendelssohn, and
Mozart. The pieces are very pianistic technically, and include a multitude of
interpretive marks, including articulation, phrasing, and many dynamic
markings. Big chords alternate with solo passages, with all sorts of pianistic
accompaniment figures; one prelude even has a cadenza (#4), and piece #5, a
"Pastorale," contains running scale passages in 32nd notes. The
Postludes are all loud pieces, but the style of the Preludes varies widely, and
one is not always sure which category the pieces with other titles fall
into.  There is even a
"March," one of the styles specifically attacked by church music
critics of the previous generation.

It is interesting that the final piece in The Organist is Bach's "Celebrated Prelude and Fugue in e minor" (BWV 533), as edited by Mendelssohn. This seems to be a direct reflection of the apparently successful introduction of Bach into the concert organ repertoire at this time. It also suggests that organists were no longer expected to be able to distinguish sacred music from secular or concert repertoire, since both were equally acceptable in church. Apparently the responsibility of the organist to musically interpret the text and mood of the hymns and scriptures which had been emphasized earlier in the century was no longer a principal focus.

One of the most conspicuous differences between the two
organ anthologies, however, is in the treatment of organ registration. Here a
brief digression is necessary to survey the changes which had taken place in
organ construction between the writing of these two volumes. Although Americans
had begun building their own instruments instead of importing them from England
in the first half of the 19th century, the English influence remained very
strong.  By 1850, although loud
organs (by early standards) were increasing in popularity, the basic sound was
light and bright, emphasizing the diapasons and flutes, with some reeds and
strings included.  The manuals and
pedalboards were not standardized--both the Pedal and Swell divisions tended to
have incomplete ranges.76 The first large American organ was the Hook and
Hastings instrument installed in the Tremont Temple, Boston in 1853, with four
manuals and 70 stops.77 Thus, from about 1860 on, the enthusiasm for
increasingly louder organs continued, with a bolder, brighter sound appearing.
Console controls and nuances of the expression pedals became more important.
Organs now tended to be placed in the front of the church rather than hidden in
the balconies, and cases were often eliminated.78

These changes say a lot about the change in the role of the
organ in the church service. Around 1841, one writer complained that the organs
were sometimes unsuited for leading congregational singing, one of the possible
problems being that they were too small to really lead the singers and keep
them on pitch.79 However, by about 1850, Gould writes that performances were
gradually getting louder, complaining that in some churches the choir and
congregation combined could not sing above the organ, satisfying only those
"who are more pleased with noise than with sense."80 Johnson and
Cutler warn the organist about playing too loudly while accompanying in their
opening remarks, explaining that the organ should be subordinate to the
singers.81 However, it is interesting that in The Organist
style='font-style:normal'>, although the organs by this time must certainly
have been louder, this warning is never mentioned.

To return now to the topic of registration, both volumes
include information on registration in their introductions, as well as sample
specifications. (See Example 5 for the basic specification list from the Cutler
& Johnson collection.) As might be expected from the changes in organ
building, a much wider variety of stops is mentioned in the later volume. Both
collections describe stops, but Johnson and Cutler add information on the
purpose of some of these stops in worship.  For example, they recommend the diapason as "well
suited to church purposes in general," but guard against using the flute,
which "is a fancy stop, and generally much abused . . . when used as a
solo stop . . . the effect is suggestive of the theatre, or ball-room, rather
than the church."82 Within the pieces themselves, Johnson and Cutler
suggest only one specific stop in the entire volume, sometimes designating
where a solo stop should be used but not suggesting a particular stop. Southard
and Whiting, on the other hand, provide detailed registration suggestions at
the beginning and throughout every piece, as well as directions to use the
couplers, expression pedals, and tremulant. They also suggest in the
introduction that one of the responsibilities of the organist is to create
"striking and delicious effects of the organ," which they advise
requires the use of varied registrations and separate manuals.83

This emphasis on registration, coupled with the changes in
organs observed above, suggest that the role of the organist was changing by
about 1870. Although Johnson and Cutler provide basic material on registration
for the stops generally appearing on a "modern" organ, they are not
as concerned with how the organist applies or combines these stops as they are
with the spiritual effects that various stops induce.  Southard and Whiting, however, comment from the start that
"the chaotic droning and ridiculous combinations of stops which were
satisfying until within a few years, will no longer be endured by Congregations
of average musical culture."84 This implies a concern that the organist
have a greater technical knowledge of registration than was previously
considered satisfactory. But this comment also suggests that the organist is
now expected to start with the registration concepts of "musical
culture" of the society at large and apply them to the service of the
church, reflecting the increasing importance of musical culture in society in
general. This differs from the earlier outlook on registration which assumes
that the organist chooses stops based on their contribution to solemn worship
without regard for (or deliberately in contrast to) the types of sounds
associated with secular culture.

A final point of contention regarding registration is
illustrated in the closing comment of the introduction to The Organ
style='font-style:normal'>ist,
where the editors comment that they hope that their collection will "tend
to improve the taste and ability of players, and thereby create a general
demand for more complete and effective organs than are often found outside of
two or three of our largest cities."85 This is in marked contrast to
Cutler and Johnson, who, although they would agree with the goal of improving
the taste and ability of players, are trying to "improve" it in the
opposite direction from the goals of Southard and Whiting. It is noteworthy
that Gould writes in 1853 that organists should be careful that their playing
serves no other purpose than to recommend the organ and organ-builder86--what
Southard and Whiting seem to be suggesting as a positive goal.

It is interesting to note that in looking at the two
above-mentioned church music anthologies, there is scarcely any mention of
accompanying hymns and psalms. This may reflect the new rise of the use of
voluntaries and corresponding lack of suitable literature (thus the focus on
this aspect), or it may be considered a commentary on the relative lack of
importance of hymn-playing to these editors.  Southard and Whiting, for example, ignore the subject
altogether.

In studying the voluntaries in The Organ
style='font-style:normal'>ist, it
becomes apparent that some of the registration changes must have required
pistons, which as stated were becoming more popular. This makes the fact that
this volume excludes a discussion of registering hymns even more interesting,
since changes between verses of hymns to illustrate the meaning of the text
would now have been much easier and smoother. Perhaps due to the emphasis in
earlier years on accompanying, the editors were interested in looking ahead to new directions in church music.

William Osborne

William Osborne holds three degrees from the University of Michigan, where he studied with both Robert Noehren and Marilyn Mason. He served on the faculty of Denison University for 42 years as Distinguished Professor of Fine Arts, University Organist, and Director of Choral Organizations. He retired from that position in August 2003 to become music director of the Piedmont Chamber Singers in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. He has played recitals across this country, as well as in Europe and Australia and made three commercial recordings. He is author of numerous articles, as well as of two books: Clarence Eddy: Dean of American Organists (Organ Historical Society) and Music in Ohio (Kent State University Press).

Charles Edward Horsley (1822–76), Mendelssohn’s composition student in Leipzig for two years beginning in 1841 and later a family friend of the composer, first met Mendelssohn in London in 1832 during the second of this well-traveled cosmopolitan’s ten visits to England. Through Horsley, Mendelssohn was introduced to George Maxwell, a student of the then-famed Johann Nepomuk Hummel (1778–1837) and organist of St. John’s, Hyde Park, whose modest two-manual instrument built by J. C. Bishop Mendelssohn had expressed an interest in playing.

Such were the small means placed at Mendelssohn’s disposal, but he made the most of them, and many happy afternoons were spent in hearing his interpretation of Bach’s Fugues, his wonderful extemporizing, and the performance of his own Sonatas, and other Organ pieces, then only existing in his memory. As the reports of these meetings became spread through the town, other and larger organs were placed at his disposal, and at St. Paul’s Cathedral, Christ Church, Newgate St., St. Sepulchre’s, and many other London churches he played on several occasions, giving the greatest delight to all who had the good fortune to hear him. I have heard most of the greatest organists of my time, both [sic] English, German and French, but in no respect have I ever known Mendelssohn excelled either in creative or executive ability, and it is hard to say which was the most extraordinary, his manipulation or his pedipulation—for his feet were quite as active as his hands, and the independence of the former, being totally distinct from the latter, produced a result which at that time was quite unknown in England, and undoubtedly laid the foundation of a school of organ playing in Great Britain which has placed English organists on the highest point attainable in their profession.1

Horsley’s memoir can serve to remind us that Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47), a child prodigy (Robert Schumann was to call the man whose first compositions date from 1820 the “Mozart of the nineteenth century”), prolific composer in virtually every medium available to him, conductor of a vast repertory (for example, for two years as city music director of Düsseldorf, where he mounted performances of at least five Handel oratorios in his own arrangements, and later for a decade at the helm of the famed Gewandhaus Orchestra in Leipzig), keyboardist, teacher (particularly as founding director of the Leipzig Conservatory in 1843), impresario, visual artist and poet was, unlike most of the German giants of the 19th century, very much involved with the organ as a means of musical communication.

Mendelssohn the Keyboardist
Mendelssohn began formal piano study with noted Berlin pedagogue Ludwig Berger (1777–1839) in 1815, and made his recital debut three years later at the age of nine. He then studied the organ with August Wilhelm Bach (1796–1869) (who had no direct familial connection to the earlier Bach dynasty, although he was a staunch advocate of the music of its most famous citizen), perhaps from 1820 into 1823, and wrote his first pieces for the instrument during that period. Bach, then the organist of St. Mary’s Church and later director of the Institute for Church Music, published four volumes of organ works between 1820 and 1824 and surely had a significant influence on his teenaged student.
Although Mendelssohn probably considered the piano his principal instrument, he was obviously fascinated by the organ, was intent on developing a significant organ technique, and seldom missed an opportunity at least to try the instruments he encountered on his extensive travels.2 For example, he wrote from Sargans, Switzerland on September 3, 1831 that “happily an organ is always to be found in this country; they are certainly small, and the lower octave, both in the keyboard and the pedal, imperfect, or as I call it, crippled; but still they are organs, and this is enough for me.” He mentioned turning the D-major fugue subject of the first book of Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier into a pedal exercise:

I instantly attempted it, and I at least see that it is far from being impossible, and that I shall accomplish it. The subject went pretty well, so I practiced passages from the D major fugue, for the organ, from the F major toccata, and the G minor fugue, all of which I knew by heart. If I find a tolerable organ in Munich, and not an imperfect one, I will certainly conquer these, and feel childish delight at the idea of playing such pieces on the organ. The F major toccata, with the modulation at the close, sounded as if the church were about to tumble down: what a giant that Cantor was!3

Alas, the organ on which he practiced in Munich was also “crippled,” as he mentioned in a letter to sister Fanny on October 6, 1831:

I also play on the organ every day for an hour, but unfortunately I cannot practice properly, as the pedal is short of five upper notes, so that I cannot play any of Sebastian Bach’s passages on it; but the stops are wonderfully beautiful, by the aid of which you can vary choral[e]s; so I dwell with delight on the celestial, liquid tone of the instrument.4

He wrote his parents from Düsseldorf on August 4, 1834 about an outing to “Werden, a charming retired spot, where I wished to inquire about an organ; the whole party drove with me there; cherry tarts were handed to me on horseback out of the carriages. We dined in the open air at Werden; I played fantasias and Sebastian Bachs [sic] on the organ to my heart’s content; then I bathed in the Ruhr, so cool in the evening breeze that it was quite a luxury, and rode quietly back to Saarn.” In that same letter he talked of another

handsome new organ [that] has just been put up at considerable expense in a large choir room, and there is no way to reach it but by narrow dark steps, without windows, like those in a poultry-yard, and where you may break your neck in seventeen different places; and on my asking why this was, the clergyman said it had been left so purposely, in order to prevent any one who chose, running up from the church to see the organ. Yet, with all their cunning, they forget both locks and keys: such traits are always painful to me.5

English Organs
His contact with various English organs has been well documented. On his second visit to Britain he often played the closing voluntary or extemporized at St. Paul’s Cathedral, at that point the only organ in the country with a pedalboard sufficient to accommodate the works of Bach without what one observer called “destructive changes.”
On September 8, 1837 he played several Bach fugues on a two-manual instrument in St. John’s, Paddington. Two days later Mendelssohn was the focus of a particularly memorable event following Evensong at St. Paul’s, described in delicious detail by Henry John Gauntlett (1805–76), himself an organist of considerable accomplishment:

[Mendelssohn] had played extemporaneously for some time, and had commenced the noble fugue in A minor, the first of the six grand pedal fugues of Sebastian Bach, when the gentlemen who walk about in bombazeen [sic] gowns and plated sticks, became annoyed at the want of respect displayed by the audience to their energetic injunctions. “Service is over,” had been universally announced, followed by the command “you must go out, Sir.” The party addressed moved away, but the crowd got no less; the star of Sebastian was in the ascendant. The vergers of St. Paul’s are not without guile, and they possessed sufficient knowledge of organ performance to know that the bellows-blower was not the least important personage engaged in that interesting ceremony. Their blandishments conquered, and just as Mendelssohn had executed a storm of pedal passages with transcendent skill and energy, the blower was seduced from his post and a farther supply of wind forbidden, and the composer was left to exhibit the glorious ideas of Bach in all the dignity of dumb action. The entreaties of friends, the reproofs of minor canons, the outraged dignity of the organists, were of no avail; the vergers conquered and all retired in dismay and disappointment. We had never previously heard Bach executed with such fire and energy—never witnessed a composition listened to with greater interest and gratification . . .6

Two days later Mendelssohn improvised and managed to navigate the entire piece on a three-manual instrument in Christ Church, Newgate (built by Renatus Harris in 1690, enlarged by William Hill in 1834 and considerably altered by that builder in 1838).7 Gauntlett, the “evening organist” of the church, was again present:

Many who were probably present on the Tuesday morning at Christchurch [sic], were probably attracted there more by the desire to see the lion of the town, than from an earnest attachment to classical music: but all were charmed into the most unbroken silence, and at the conclusion only a sense of the sacred character of the building prevented a simultaneous burst of the most genuine applause.

M. Mendelssohn performed six extempore fantasias, and the pedal fugue he was not allowed to go through with at St. Paul’s. Those who know the wide range of passages for the pedals with which this fugue abounds, may conceive how perfectly cool and collected must have been the organist who could on a sudden emergency transpose them to suit the scale of an ordinary English pedal board. His mind has become so assimilated to Bach’s compositions, that at one point in the prelude, either by accident or design, he amplified and extended the idea of the author, in a manner so in keeping and natural that those unacquainted with its details could not by any possibility have discovered the departure from the text . . .

His extempore playing is very diversified—the soft movements full of tenderness and expression, exquisitely beautiful and impassioned—yet so regular and methodical, that they appear the productions of long thought and meditation, from the lovely and continued streams of melody which so uninterruptedly glide onwards in one calm and peaceful flow . . .

Mr. Samuel Wesley [(1766–1837) Gauntlett’s teacher, who was to die on October 5], the father of English organists, was present and remained not the least gratified auditor, and expressed his delight in terms of unmeasured approbation. At the expressed desire of M. Mendelssohn, who wished that he could hereafter say he had heard Wesley play, the veteran took his seat at the instrument and extemporized with a purity and originality of thought for which he has rendered his name ever illustrious. The touch of the instrument, however, requires a strong and vigorous finger, and Mr. Wesley who is at present an invalid was unable to satisfy himself although he could gratify those around him.8

On September 19, as part of the triennial music festival in Birmingham, Mendelssohn first tried the 1834 four-manual instrument by William Hill in the Town Hall, and then improvised on themes from Handel’s Solomon and a Mozart symphony, both part of the same program.9
On July 9, 1842 Mendelssohn paid a visit to Queen Victoria and Prince Albert in Buckingham Palace and then described the encounter in a charming letter to his mother written in Frankfurt on July 19:

Prince Albert had asked me to go to him Saturday at two o’clock, so that I might try his organ before I left England. I found him alone; and as we were talking away, the Queen came in, also quite alone, in a house dress. She said she was obliged to leave for Claremont in an hour; “But, goodness! How it looks here,” she added, when she saw that the wind had littered the whole room, and even the pedals of the organ (which, by the way, made a very pretty feature in the room), with leaves of music from a large portfolio that lay open. As she spoke, she knelt down and began picking up the music; Prince Albert helped, and I too was not idle. Then Prince Albert proceeded to explain the stops to me, and while he was doing it, she said that she would put things straight alone.

But I begged that the Prince would first play me something, so that, as I said, I might boast about it in Germany; and thereupon he played me a chorale by heart, with pedals, so charmingly and clearly and correctly that many an organist could have learned something; and the queen, having finished her work, sat beside him and listened, very pleased. Then I had to play, and I began my chorus from “St Paul”: “How lovely are the Messengers!” Before I got to the end of the first verse, they both began to sing the chorus very well, and all the time Prince Albert managed the stops for me so expertly—first a flute, then full at the forte, the whole register at the D major part, then he made such an excellent diminuendo with the stops, and so on to the end of the piece, and all by heart—that I was heartily pleased.10

In early 1845 Mendelssohn was living in Frankfurt, where he was visited by W[illiam] S[mith] Rockstro (1823–95), later a composition student of the master. They met at St. Catherine’s, where Mendelssohn played through all six of his sonatas, soon to be published. Rockstro was later to recall the “wonderfully delicate staccato of the pedal part in the [Andante con moto] of the 2nd [published as the fifth] sonata played with all the crispness of Dragonetti’s mostly highly finished pizzicato.”11

Mendelssohn the Romantic?
Mendelssohn lived his tragically short life during that century that we somewhat glibly define as the Romantic Era. Romanticism in the realm of music conjures up imagery of unbridled, passionate expression, particularly through the use of luxuriant chromatic harmonies (with Wagner as the ultimate exponent of such an approach), as well as attempts at musical pictorialism at a time when purely instrumental music was being touted as the ultimate means of expressing the otherwise inexpressible. Mendelssohn surely had a gift for the pictorial; as witness, the “Italian” and “Scottish” Symphonies, his Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage (an “Overture after Goethe”), or The Hebrides (or “Fingal’s Cave”), another orchestral overture, this one generated by a visit to the west coast of Scotland.
However, scholars agree that much of his work was inspired by an obvious admiration of the idioms of Bach, Handel and Mozart, music of balanced formal structures and elegant clarity. This is particularly evident in what he wrote for the organ, as well as what he played on the instrument. He learned his reverence for Bach through his studies in theory and composition with Carl Friedrich Zelter (1758–1832), director of the Berlin Singakademie, who inculcated those contrapuntal principles we find employed so fruitfully in the organ works. Father Abraham Mendelssohn acknowledged the impact of Zelter’s tutelage in a letter of March 10, 1835:

I felt more strongly than ever what a great merit it was on Zelter’s part to restore Bach to the Germans; for, between [Johann Nikolaus] Forkel’s day [1749–1818] and his, very little was ever said about Bach . . . [I]t is an undoubted fact, that without Zelter, your own musical tendencies would have been of a totally different nature.12

It was with Zelter’s Singakademie that the 20-year-old Mendelssohn conducted his famed “revival” of Bach’s Passion According to St. Matthew on March 11 and 21, 1829.
A prime symbol of Mendelssohn’s adulation of Bach is the recital he played on August 6, 1840 in the St. Thomas Church in Leipzig as a means of raising funds to build a memorial to Bach, a goal finally achieved with its unveiling on April 23, 1843. The substantial repertory consisted entirely of works by the honoree:

Fugue in E-flat major (“St. Anne”), BWV 552
Prelude on “Schmücke dich,” BWV 654
Prelude and Fugue in A minor, BWV 543
Passacaglia in C minor, BWV 582
Pastorale in F major, BWV 590
Toccata in F major, BWV 565
The formal recital was framed with improvisations. The first served as a prelude to the “St. Anne” fugue. According to Schumann, the other was based on the Lutheran chorale O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden (the language by Paul Gerhardt commonly translated as “O sacred head, now wounded”) and ended with a fugal passage that included the BACH motto (H equaling B-natural), “rounded to such a clear and masterly whole, that if printed, it would have appeared a finished work of art.”13 Mendelssohn’s adoration of the Leipzig master is also reflected in the fact that, other than improvising and his own works committed to paper, Mendelssohn as an organist, with passing exceptions, otherwise played only Bach.

As a Composer of Works for the Organ
Until recently, most were aware of only two sets of published pieces by Mendelssohn for the organ: the Three Preludes and Fugues, opus 37, issued in 1837 and dedicated to Thomas Attwood (1765–1838), a student of Mozart and organist of both St. Paul’s Cathedral and the Chapel Royal; and the Six Sonatas, opus 65, issued in 1845. However, due to the splendid and meticulous scholarship of Wm. A. Little, since 1989 we have been offered access to a larger corpus of work. Dr. Little studied manuscripts found in libraries in Berlin and Kraków, Poland, and has made available through a five-volume collection published by Novello a considerable number of preludes, fugues, duets, sets of variations and individual movements simply defined by their tempo markings. Many of these are preliminary versions of what was later published by Mendelssohn, and some are inconsequential juvenilia (including Mendels-sohn’s earliest work for the organ, a Praeludium in D minor dated November 28, 1820, written at a time when he was studying with A. W. Bach), but a handful of the truly independent movements warrant performance, and Dr. Little’s work allows the possibility of a better understanding of Mendelssohn’s evolution as a composer by comparing preliminary with more mature versions of familiar movements from the published pieces.
“[Mendelssohn’s] compositions were reflections of his celebrated improvisations, which had as a foundation the polyphonic traditions of the Baroque. The mature organ compositions went beyond a single style of music, however, and exhibited a skillful combination of Baroque and Romantic characteristics, masterfully integrated by his distinctive musical personality.”14 Although finally and distinctly “Mendelssohnian,” one can delineate a handful of distinct idioms in his works for organ: fughettas and fully developed fugues (obviously based on an understanding of the Bachian model, but not slavishly dependent on it); employment of Lutheran chorale melodies as a cantus firmus or as the basis of variation sets; the virtuosic toccata; improvisatory moments, almost approximating instrumental recitative; an awareness of the English voluntary tradition of the preceding century (a slow introductory section followed by a faster, sometimes fugal section); and the lyric, one-movement character piece, the sort of expression that was to flower fully in, for example, Mendelssohn’s Songs Without Words for the piano. Idioms that seem more natural at the piano do appear; Mendelssohn’s virtuosity on the pedals results in demands on the feet that equal those made of the hands.

The Published Works
Three Preludes and Fugues, opus 37
Little, volume I
Published in 1837 simultaneously in London by Novello and in Leipzig by Breitkopf & Härtel
The Novello edition was dedicated to “Thomas Attwood Esqre / Composer to Her Majesty’s Chapel Royal.” The Breitkopf & Härtel edition was dedicated to [in translation] “Mr. Thomas Attwood / Organist of the Chapel Royal / in London / with Respect and Gratitude.”
Prelude and Fugue in C minor
Prelude and Fugue in G major
Prelude and Fugue in D minor
Initial versions of the three fugues had apparently been written earlier (although only that in C minor appears in the Little edition) and were simply mated with preludes written during Mendelssohn’s honeymoon of early April 1837. Organists should be aware of and perhaps consult for stylistic comparisons Mendelssohn’s Six Preludes and Fugues, opus 35, for the piano, which had been written over a period of years prior to their publication, also in 1837.

Six Sonatas, opus 65
Little, volume IV
Published in 1845 simultaneously by Coventry & Hollier in London (Six Grand Sonatas for the Organ), Breitkopf & Härtel in Leipzig (Sechs Sonaten für die Orgel) and Giovanni Ricordi in Milan (Sei Sonate per Organo); 6 Sonates pour l’Orgue ou pour Piano à 3 mains was issued by Maurice Schlesinger of Paris in 1846.
Sonata I in F minor: Allegro moderato e serioso—Adagio—Andante recitativo—Allegro assai vivace
Sonata II in C minor: Grave—Adagio—Allegro maestoso e vivace—Fuga, Allegro moderato
Sonata III in A major: Con moto maestoso—Andante tranquillo
Sonata IV in B-flat major: Allegro con brio—Andante religioso—Allegretto—Allegro maestoso e vivace
Sonata V in D major: Andante—Andante con moto—Allegro maestoso
Sonata VI in D minor: Choral—Andante sostenuto—Allegro molto—Fuga—Finale, Andante
In July 1844 the English publisher Charles Coventry initiated what became opus 65 by commissioning Mendelssohn to write a set of three voluntaries for the organ. On August 29 Mendelssohn wrote Coventry, asking that the label “sonata” replace “voluntary,” saying that he didn’t quite understand the precise meaning of the latter term. He continued to assemble individual movements, some reworked from earlier efforts, some new for the occasion, and finally committed himself to what was published in April 1845. At one point there was discussion about titling the collection “Mendelssohn’s School of Organ-Playing,” suggesting that the pieces could serve a didactic function, but that label was abandoned prior to publication. Given their evolution, it should come as no surprise that these assemblages do not meet textbook definitions of what a typical four-movement sonata ought to be, although No. 1 hints at the conventional (its opening loose sonata-form movement finds a double in the first movement of No. 4). Chorales appear in four of the sonatas. Fugal writing appears in all but No. 5, and No. 3 contains a brilliant double fugue. Even the minimal suggestions of registration and terraced dynamics suggest a retrospective viewpoint.

The Previously Unpublished Works
Little, volume I
Fugue in C minor [Düsseldorf, July 30, 1834]
Fughetta in D major [July 1834?]
Two [Duet] Fugues for the Organ in C minor and D major [Düsseldorf, January 11, 1835]
Fugue in E minor [Frankfurt, July 13, 1839]
Fugue in C major [Frankfurt, July 14, 1839]
Fugue in F minor [Frankfurt, July 18, 1839]
Fughetta in A major
Prelude in C minor [Leipzig, July 9, 1841]
The first two pieces became the basis for the third, inscribed as “Two fugues for the Organ / to Mr. Attwood with the author’s best and sincere wishes.” An accompanying letter informed Attwood that “I take the liberty of sending to you two fugues for the Organ which I composed lately, and arranged them as a duet for two performers, as I think you told me once that you wanted something in that way.” The idea for the duets perhaps arose from an experience of June 23, 1833, when Attwood and Mendelssohn performed a four-hand version of one of the former’s coronation anthems on the instrument in St. Paul’s. The Fugue in C minor later became the second movement of Opus 35, No. 1. The Fugue in C major later became the final movement of Opus 65, No. 2.

Little, volume II
Andante in F major [July 21, 1844]
Allegretto in D minor [July 22, 1844]
Andante [with Variations] in D major [July 23, 1844]
Allegro [Chorale and Fugue in D minor/major] [July 25, 1844]
Con moto maestoso in A major [August 9, 1844]
Andante/Con moto in A major [August 17, 1844]
Allegro Vivace in F major [August 18, 1844]
Allegro in D major [September 9, 1844]
Andante in B minor [September 9, 1844]
[Chorale] in A-flat major [September 10, 1844]
Adagio in A-flat major [Frankfurt, December 19, 1844]
[Chorale] in D major
Allegro in B-flat major [Frankfurt, December 31, 1844]
With its “pizzicato” pedal line, the Allegretto in D minor seems a premonition of the second movement of Opus 65, No. 5 (see Examples 1a and 1b). The Con moto maestoso and following Andante became the two movements of Opus 65, No. 3. The Allegro Vivace became the final movement of Opus 65, No. 1. The Allegro in D major and Andante in B minor became the third and second movements of Opus 65, No. 5. The Adagio in A-flat major became the second movement of Opus 65, No. 1.

Little, volume III
Allegro moderato e grave in F minor [Frankfurt, December 28, 1844]
Allegro con brio in B-flat major [Frankfurt, January 2, 1845]
Andante alla Marcia in B-flat major [Frankfurt, January 2, 1845]
Moderato in C major
Fugue in C major
Grave and Andante con moto in C minor [Frankfurt, December 21, 1844]
Allegro moderato maestoso in C major
Fugue in B-flat major [Frankfurt, April 1, 1845]
Choral [& Variations] in D minor [Frankfurt, January 26, 1845]
Fugue in D minor [Frankfurt, January 27, 1845
Finale—Andante sostenuto in D major [Frankfurt, January 26, 1845]
The Allegro moderato e grave in F minor became the first movement of Opus 65, No. 1. The opening of the Allegro con brio in B-flat major generated the first movement of Opus 65, No. 4 (see Examples 2a and 2b). The following Moderato and Fugue in C major provided the genesis of the third and fourth movements of Opus 65, No. 2, while the Grave and Andante con moto are the obvious parents of the opening movements of that same sonata. The Chorale, Variations and Fugue in D minor, with some reworking became the bulk of the Sonata in D minor, Opus 65, No. 6. The Finale—Andante sostenuto in D major in 3/4 meter was transformed with substantial alterations into the final movement of that same sonata as an Andante in 6/8 (see Examples 3a and 3b).

Little, volume V
Praeludium in D minor [November 28, 1820]
Fugue in D minor [December 3, 1820]
Fugue in G minor [December 1820]
Fugue in D minor [January 6, 1821]
Andante—sanft in D major [May 9, 1823]
Volles Werk [Passacaglia] in C minor [May 10, 1823]
Chorale Variations on “Wie groß ist des Allmächt’gen Güte” [July and August 1823]
Nachspiel in D major [Rome, March 8, 1831]
Fuga pro Organo pleno in D minor [Berlin, March 29, 1833]
Andante con moto in G minor [London, July 11, 1833]
In this volume of early works (including Mendelssohn’s first essays for the instrument), only a single piece seems to have inspired a mature work: The Nachspiel [Postlude] in D major provided the basic material of the Allegro maestoso e vivace of the Sonata in C, Opus 65, No. 2, which blossoms into a quite different fugue from that of the sonata.
For organists Mendelssohn’s works for their instrument admirably fill the void that had developed after the death of Bach, a period virtually devoid of significant writing for the instrument. They have maintained currency to the present and inspired an interest in the instrument on the part not only of Mendelssohn’s contemporaries (as witness, Schumann’s Six Fugues on BACH, opus 60, written in 1845 and published a year later), but several of his successors as well.

by Earl Holt

Earl Holt is a graduate of Elon College, the University of Michigan, and Arizona State University, where he recently completed the D.M.A. degree in organ performance with Robert Clark. Dr. Holt served on the music faculty of San Jacinto College North in Houston from 1982-90, and is currently Director of Music at the First United Methodist Church of Gilbert, Arizona.

Introduction

In Organ Technique: Modern and Early, George Ritchie and George Stauffer summarize the contribution of American composers to organ music of this century:

If the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries belonged to Europe as far as organ building and composition are concerned, the twentieth century belongs to the United States. For it has been America, with its extraordinarily eclectic culture, that has set the standard for the Modern Era.1

Organ building in the United States since the late 1960s has returned, more and more, to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century principles of design and construction; the interest in the tonal resources of these instruments may account, in part, for some American composers' renewed interest in the organ. Another contributory reason for interest in organ scoring is the possibility of early public performances, in comparison to the relative improbability of having large-scale modern orchestral works performed. Logistical difficulty and expense of paying multiple performers, combined with a lack of acceptance of modern art music by aging concert audiences, make orchestral conductors reluctant to program such works. In contrast, compositions for solo instruments or small ensembles are more likely to receive an early hearing. Some composers have written works for organ in combination with other instruments, particularly percussion; an important example of the genre is William Bolcom's 1967 work, Black Host for organ, percussion, and electronic tape.

In her book, Survey of Organ Literature and Editions, Marilou Kratzenstein attributes renewed interest in American organ composition to the Hartt College Annual Contemporary Organ Music Festival, held during the 1970s and early 1980s. She writes that "it is at least partly due to the efforts of this festival that an impressive number of composers not formerly associated with the organ have begun to view the organ as a viable vehicle for expressing contemporary ideas."2 Commissions have undoubtedly played a major role in the creation of new organ works, too. In particular, all four of the American compositions examined in this article resulted from commissions.

Viktor Lukas writes in A Guide to Organ Music that modern American composers "have recognized and been encouraged by the organ's diversity today, but that diversity along with, in the minds of some, the instrument's association with liturgical functions seems to have discouraged many gifted composers from writing on a scale similar to their output for other instruments."3 Lukas cites only Igor Stravinsky and Norman Dello Joio as examples, however, and his observation is more characteristic of the first sixty years of this century than of the last several decades. Lukas's comment has validity, nevertheless; it is questionable, for example, whether the sole organ works of George Crumb or Ellen Taaffe Zwilich would have been composed without commissions.

Major American organ composers of the past two decades have turned increasingly to programmatic, secular subjects. They have also incorporated modern performance techniques into their writing (tone clusters and cluster glissandos, for example), most of which are unassociated with past or present church usage. As a result, works that display these techniques are often inappropriate for church services. Even Bolcom's Gospel Preludes, based on church hymns, are at present more suitable for concerts than for church services. If western-European trends in organ composition are a paradigm, the secularization of the organ is likely to continue in the United States.

This article surveys four selected secular organ works by modern American composers and compiles relevant performance information in an attempt to make the compositions more comprehensible and accessible to recitalists, teachers, and students.

Mysteries by William Bolcom

Background

William Bolcom, born in Seattle, Washington in 1938, attended Mills College, the University of Washington, and Stanford University. At Stanford, he studied composition with Leland Smith; Bolcom also studied composition at the Paris Conservatory with Olivier Messiaen, Darius Milhaud, and Jean Rivier in the 1960s. Bolcom's career has included piano performance and composition; he has written organ, piano, choral, vocal, and orchestral works. In the 1980s he completed his fifth symphony and a violin concerto. The premiere of his first opera, McTeague, was at Chicago's Lyric Opera in October, 1992. Since 1973 Bolcom has taught at the University of Michigan, where he is a professor of music composition.4

Bolcom's organ works are Black Host for organ, percussion, and tape (1967), Praeludium for vibraphone and organ (1969), Chorale Prelude on "Abide with Me" for organ solo (1970), Hydraulis for organ solo (1971), Mysteries for organ solo (1976-77), Humoresque for organ and orchestra (1979), Three Gospel Preludes for organ solo (1979), Gospel Preludes, Book Two for organ solo (1980-81), Gospel Preludes, Book Three for organ solo (1981), and Gospel Preludes, Book Four for organ solo (1984). In all, the Gospel Preludes comprise four books of three pieces each. The third and fourth books, previously available only in manuscript, were published in 1994. The publication of the third book of Gospel Preludes also includes the 1970 Chorale Prelude on "Abide with Me" as an extra piece.5

The work selected for this article is Mysteries.6 Organist and composer William Albright, professor of music composition and associate director of the electronic music studio at the University of Michigan, played the premiere. The performance took place at the University of Hartford's Hartt International Contemporary Organ Music Festival, held July 21-25, 1980.7 Walter Holtkamp Jr. commissioned the work for the festival; it was subsequently published in 1981.8

Structure

Mysteries is a suite of four through-composed movements that are unrelated in motivic material. The movements are "The Endless Corridor," "Eternal Flight," "La lugubre gondola," and "Dying Star." In a note to the player, Bolcom states his preference that "the four movements be played together as a set, for cumulative effect."9

"The Endless Corridor" is a trio, and is the only movement with changing meters. Little stepwise motion occurs in the three voices of the trio, which move almost entirely by leaps of fourths, fifths, sixths, or sevenths. The voices are not imitative and the rhythm of individual beats is varied, so the same rhythm rarely appears simultaneously in two voices. This compositional technique makes each voice appear to move independently. Although the form of the movement is not ABA in the traditional sense of repeated motivic material, the registration does create that impression; one registration in mm. 1-9 and 20-32 flanks a differently colored registration in mm. 10-19, the central one-third of the movement.

"Eternal Flight" is a pointillistic movement with spatial rhythmic notation. It is in three continuous sections: (1) staccato figures and clusters that increase in frequency, tempo, and dynamic; (2) whole-note clusters that increase in texture and dynamic to full organ, and then reverse the process; and (3) staccato chords and short figures that decrease in frequency, tempo, and dynamic.

Viktor Lukas writes that the third movement, "La lugubre gondola," "suggests a gently rocking gondola through soft dynamics and an emphasis on lower registers and gently moving chord changes."10 Except for one short section (11/2-11/3), the movement is unmetered; that section is marked "all values relative," however.11 As in "Eternal Flight," this movement has three continuous sections: (1) low-pitched arpeggios with long note values; (2) overlapping, ascending melodic figures that lead to a few seconds of eighth-note figuration; and (3) another (abbreviated) section of long note values to end the work. Characteristic of this movement is the frequent use of pauses of various lengths that serve as sound objects.

"Dying Star" begins with rapid, scherzo-like figuration in spatial rhythmic notation. A pedal citation of the chorale melody An Wasserflüssen Babylon then joins the texture. Later, a fragmented version of J.S. Bach's harmonization of the same chorale, in 3/4 meter, alternates with the spatially notated figuration, which gradually becomes more widely dispersed. To heighten the effect of disintegration, which Bolcom describes as "floating in and out, like a radio signal from a distant star," he uses dramatic pauses ranging from seven to thirteen seconds.12 The movement ends with a pppp chorale fragment, and a final pause.

Registration

In a note to the player, Bolcom writes about the desired instrument for Mysteries: "The object is that this music should be equally effective on any type of organ, large or small, Romantic or Baroque--even on electronic organs."13 Each movement can be performed on a two-manual instrument, although a three-manual instrument is optimum. Because the score rarely indicates crescendos or diminuendos that require expression shades, the work can be performed adequately on an instrument without expressive divisions.

Although a large list of specific stops is not required, two movements recommend registrations that are often unavailable on small instruments. First, "La lugubre gondola" requires a 32' pedal Bourdon, but a footnote indicates that a 16' stop may be substituted if a suitable 32' stop is unavailable. Second, "Dying Star" requires a pp 16' and 2'  stop combination for the Bach chorale harmonization.

Bolcom writes that "registration is largely left to the organist, except for a few suggestions here and there."14 Because of the wide latitude given to the performer, and the variety of acceptable instruments, there are many possible registrations. Table 1 has an appropriate registration for a three-manual instrument.

The beginning of "The Endless Corridor" requires a "cool-sounding" 8' pp stop for each manual and a pp 16' pedal stop.15 The upper voice (right hand) requires a "different color" in m. 10 and the middle voice (left hand) requires a similar substitution in m. 14. The change in timbre can result from substituting a different 8' stop, adding a soft mutation, or substituting a 4' stop and playing an octave lower. It is important to maintain the pp dynamic; therefore stops of significant dynamic contrast should be avoided. The two manual voices return to their original registrations in mm. 18-19, and continue to the end of the movement.

No specific stops are indicated in "Eternal Flight." The opening section (5/1-7/2) requires at least two manuals, one with a pp registration, and the other somewhat louder for the sf material. If three manuals are available, the pp material is divided at random between two of the manuals, as indicated in the score.16 The pedal has to alternate between pp and sf dynamics in the opening section; this switch can be accomplished by quickly coupling soft pedal stops to the Great manual for the sf spots only. The middle section (7/2-8/2) is played on the Great manual alone. For the crescendo to fff and the subsequent diminuendo to pp, the crescendo pedal and other expression pedals may be used; if neither is available, a console assistant can add or remove stops. Registration for the final section (8/2-9/4) is the same as at the beginning, with the exception that the Great manual is not used.

The registration shown in Table 1 for "La lugubre gondola" is specified in the score. For the two manuals, Bolcom wants stops of "different but related color."17 In the pedal, a 32' flue is best, although the piece can be performed with a 16' pedal stop.

"Dying Star" requires an "8' soft flute with much 'chiff'''  for the flute figuration that continues throughout the movement.18 On a large instrument, a combination of 8' flute stops, instead of a single stop, is often necessary for sufficient dynamic. Registration for the harmonization of An Wasserflüssen Babylon (16/1), is "2' and 16' only--with a distant, otherworldly registration."19 Because of the ppp dynamic, there is often little choice of stops, however. On a large instrument it may be possible to couple manuals together for the desired pitch combination and timbre. The same chorale registration is coupled to the pedal, because the chorale cannot be played on manuals alone. The 4' pedal stop that was added for the "subliminal" chorale melody at the beginning of the movement (13/1-15/1) is removed before the chorale harmonization begins.

Double pedal technique is necessary for all movements except the first. In addition, pedal clusters are in "Eternal Flight" and "La lugubre gondola." Because of the slow tempos, however, the clusters are easy to play. The pedal clusters in "Eternal Flight" have to be carefully practiced, nevertheless; some require awkward positions--the C to E-flat interval played by the left foot in 8/4, for example.

Interpretation

Because of the programmatic theme of Mysteries, each movement should be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the text associations. For example, in the trio "The Endless Corridor," Bolcom creates the aural impression of three slowly moving, endlessly drifting voices. No tonal, motivic, or rhythmic relationships exist between the voices, no suggestion of cadence or phrase structure occurs, and the angularity of the voices discourages melodic perception.

The rhythm of "The Endless Corridor" is played precisely as written; because the irregular motion of the voices has been created rhythmically, further rubato is unnecessary and contrary to the character of the movement. Legato articulation further enhances the intentional monotony. Selection of thinly voiced, distant-sounding stops is consistent with the "cool-sounding" stops mentioned in the score. Slight shading with expression pedals is appropriate at locations indicated in the score.

In contrast to the precisely notated rhythm of the first movement, the spatial rhythmic notation in "Eternal Flight" allows considerable freedom in rhythmic interpretation. Creating a sense of immense space is important at the beginning, with a certain unpredictability when the pointillistic staccato clusters are played. Near the end of the opening section (6/3-7/1), the clusters and figuration become more densely packed, as if drifting closer and closer in space; the increased density should not be perceived by the listener as an increase in tempo, however. Bolcom indicates short accelerandos at irregular intervals by using arrows (----> ).

A series of ritardando arrows ( <----) reduce the tempo at the beginning of the middle section of "Eternal Flight" (7/2). The middle section has the broadest tempo, the thickest texture, the longest note values, and the loudest dynamic of the movement. The legato, parallel clusters in this section require a considerable amount of finger substitution, but the long note values allow sufficient time.

The third section of the movement (8/2-9/4) reverses the motion of the first section in a gradual process of disintegration: (1) clusters that are at first close together become spaced farther and farther apart; (2) the dynamic decreases; (3) pitch becomes gradually lower; and (4) texture thins to single notes. The performer helps to communicate the disintegration by allowing playing gestures to become gradually slower, to the point that notes in the final few systems are gently pressed down. If the console is in view of the audience, it is vital that the performer not relax his/her body posture, so that intensity is maintained during the increasingly longer periods of silence between the final notes.

"La lugubre gondola" has a stifling, airless quality created by the long note values, low pitches, and pauses of various lengths. Although the movement is almost entirely unmetered, the note values are relative, and must be played precisely in rhythm. Because of the difficulty in counting the long note values, the performer can count quarter notes, at the rate of one per second, as a basic pulse, and write the number of quarter-note pulses over each note in the score as listed in Table 2.20

The comma symbols used for the long pauses of varying lengths are unexplained in the score. The same symbols appear, however, in a previous Bolcom work, Hydraulis, and are defined in a foreword as "pauses, ranging from long to very short, depending mainly on context of the passage." In a recent letter, Bolcom confirmed that the Hydraulis pauses also apply to Mysteries.21

The eighth-note figuration that appears in the metered middle section of the movement (11/2-11/3) is played with light, elegant articulation. In the unmetered final section (11/3-11/4), playing gestures become increasingly slower; intensity must be maintained during the pauses, though.

The title "La lugubre gondola" is from an 1882 piano piece of the same name by Franz Liszt. Liszt had the inspiration for the piece while watching funeral processions by gondola through the Venetian canals, when he was staying with Richard Wagner and Cosima (Liszt's daughter, who had married Wagner) in Venice. Anecdotally, Liszt abruptly quit working on his final oratorio and wrote two versions of La lugubre gondola in December 1882, after he had a strange presentiment--presumably of Wagner's impending death. Irrespectively, Wag-ner died in Venice two months later, and his body was borne by gondola in the funeral procession.22 Although not widely performed, several pianists have recorded the piano piece La lugubre gondola, No. 1; listening to such recordings is helpful in establishing the mood of the Bolcom movement, because the central, metered section of the Bolcom movement quotes the Liszt work.

"Dying Star" begins with thirty-second-note flute figuration marked "legato, even throughout."23 A more detached articulation is appropriate, however, if the room is acoustically live or if the selected flute does not have enough chiff for articulative clarity. Nevertheless, the articulation should not be a mechanical staccato.

The thirty-second-note figuration in the right-hand part continues to the end of the movement, and it is impossible to play all four voices of the An Wasserflüssen Babylon chorale fragments (beginning at 16/1) in the left hand alone. It is therefore necessary for the pedal, coupled to the manual, to play the tenor and bass voices of the chorale. Articulation for the chorale is molto legato for both manual and pedal parts. Bolcom commented on the significance of An Wasserflüssen Babylon to this movement: "That chorale prelude always gave a chilling intimation of eternity; I could imagine a dead Earth with some eternal record[ing] of it [An Wasserflüssen Babylon] playing (or a ghostly organist)."24

During the long blocks of silence (beginning at 16/4 and continuing to the end of the movement) it is important to follow Bolcom's instructions: "These pauses are exactly timed--be sure to remain physically suspended during them so that the tension is not lost."25 As in the second and third movements, the fourth also ends with a gradual disintegration of musical texture in space and time.

No errata were discovered in the score, and Bolcom confirms that he knows of none. Mysteries has not been commercially recorded. Bolcom lists a performance time of seventeen minutes and ten seconds for the entire work, broken down by movement as follows:

The Endless Corridor  [3:35]

Eternal Flight   [2:40]

La lugubre gondola     [5:45]

Dying Star       [5:10]26

Pastoral Drone by George Crumb

Background

George Crumb, born in Charleston, West Virginia in 1929, studied composition at Mason College of Music and Fine Arts (B.M., 1950), the University of Illinois (M.M., 1953), and the University of Michigan (D.M.A., 1959), where his principal composition teacher was Ross Lee Finney. His compositions include chamber, orchestral, vocal, and instrumental works, and he has received many honors, including the 1968 Pulitzer Prize for the orchestral work Echoes of Time and the River. Since 1965 Crumb has been professor of music and composer-in-residence at the University of Pennsylvania.27

The work selected for this article, Pastoral Drone, is Crumb's only solo organ work.28 David Craighead, professor emeritus of organ at the Eastman School of Music, played the official premiere at First Unitarian Church in San Francisco on June 27, 1984, at the national convention of the American Guild of Organists, which had commissioned the work for the occasion.29

Structure

Crumb wrote the following notes about Pastoral Drone in Don Gillespie's book, George Crumb: Profile of a Composer:

Pastoral Drone, commissioned by the American Guild of Organists and composed in the summer of 1982, represents my first essay in the solo organ genre (my Star Child of 1977 included organ as an addition to the orchestral resources).

Pastoral Drone, cast in one continuous movement, was conceived as an evocation of an ancient "open-air" music. The underpinning of the work is provided by relentless drones executed on the organ pedals. The periodical "bending" of the basic drone sound (a lower D-sharp and a higher G-sharp, spaced as an interval of the 11th) announces the principal structural articulations of the work. The drone is overlaid by strident, sharply etched rhythms in the manual parts and the dynamic throughout is sempre fortissimo ("boldly resounding"). The characteristic sound of Pastoral Drone will suggest a kind of colossal musette.30

In the Gillespie book, theorist David Cope writes about Crumb's works from the early 1980s, including Pastoral Drone:

These later works show a progressively more inclusive use of tonality and interesting new approaches to formal organization. Although Crumb's stylistic "fingerprints" are indelibly impressed on every page, one also perceives an ongoing tendency toward new modes of expression.31

Two drones are in Pastoral Drone: a pedal drone based on a perfect eleventh (D-sharp to g-sharp), and a manual drone based on the perfect fifth. The pedal drone continues from beginning to end, interrupted at times by chromatic movement, but always returning to the same interval. The manual drone changes pitch six times, however. These pitch changes delineate the seven main sections of the work.

Each section contains the same three parts: (1) simultaneous pedal and manual drones with ff chromatic clusters constructed from neighboring tones to the drone; (2) a double pedal solo during which the feet move chromatically; and (3) a freely composed part, consisting of rapid manual figuration over the drone bass in the pedal. In sections 2-6 the three parts are presented exactly in that order. In section 1, however, the pedal solo is delayed, occurring in the middle of the manual figuration part. Section 7 is differently ordered, too; it begins with alternating pedal solos and manual figuration, and then concludes with a ff chromatic cluster in both manuals and pedal. Table 3 is a structural outline of the work.

As shown in Table 3, the manual drones, built on the pitches G-sharp, B, D, and F, outline a diminished-seventh chord. The symmetrical structure outlined by these tonal areas forms an arched rondo, with the distinctive manual drone, punctuated by clusters, serving as a ritornello. Besides using the tonal shifts of the manual drone, Crumb emphasizes the symmetrical structure in other ways: (1) quasi danza triplets in sections 3 and 5 flank the central section; (2) the parallel pedal movement from the first section returns, expanded, in the last section; and (3) the order of the parts is skewed in sections 1 and 7, as noted above.

The freely composed parts of each section are improvisatory in character. Each part is based on a unifying rhythm, headmotive, or harmony, and the end of each phrase is dovetailed. For structural material, Crumb uses tritones, perfect fourths in parallel motion, pentatonic sequences and clusters, and both whole-tone scales in simultaneous parallel motion.

The work is in changing compound meter, with only two exceptions to regular compound beats: (1) a single simple beat at m. 44, beat 2; and (2) pedal stop additions that occur on the second half of the simple beat in m. 72, beats 2 and 3, and m. 75, beats 2 and 3. Crumb uses traditional notation for the work, except in mm. 68-69, where a single enlarged accidental affects all five notes of each pentatonic cluster.

Registration

A three-manual instrument is necessary to perform Pastoral Drone. Because the manual compass is F-sharp to c'''', 61-key manuals are recommended. The score indicates three ossia passages (mm. 40-48, 56-58, and 78-84), marked come sopra, that are intended to make the work playable on an instrument with 56-key manuals by playing the passages an octave lower. A 56-key instrument's top key is g''', however, and the pitch a'''--requiring a 58-key compass--occurs in m. 66. In a recent letter, Crumb acknowledges that the pitch a''' was overlooked. He writes: "I was unaware that one note was outside the 56-key range. Perhaps the 56-key notion should be abandoned!"32 Although less common than 56-key instruments, 58-key organs can encompass all pitches, if the performer follows the octave displacement directions in the score.

The same ff registration, listed in the score at the beginning of the work, is needed each time the manual drone ritornello occurs:

            Gt.--full

            Sw.--full with 16'

            Pos.--full

            Ped.--32'16' 8'4'

            No couplers--Sw., Pos./Gt.

At the ritornello, a 16' reed plenum with mixtures is appropriate for the Great manual, with full registrations on the Swell and Positive manuals, too. The pedal drone is marked f sempre. Because the same pedal registration sounds, unaltered, through the first seventy-one measures, it should balance the Swell and Positive manuals, and must not be oppressively loud.

The registration direction "No couplers--Sw., Pos./Gt." is ambiguous at first glance, but apparently refers to the continuous alternation between coupled and uncoupled manuals: the Swell and Positive manuals are coupled to the Great manual during the ff introduction to each section, and then uncoupled for the rest of the time.

Manual changes are clearly marked and should be followed exactly. Additions to the pedal in mm. 72 and 75 are on simple divisions of the compound beat. Table 4 lists an appropriate registration for each section.

If the ossia passages are taken (on an instrument with manuals of fewer than sixty-one keys), the registration must be adjusted to mask the jump to one octave lower (mm. 40-48, 56-58, and 78-84). A footnote in the score that gives directions for this adjustment is unclear, however: "Ossia: play this passage (concluding at *) down one octave without 16' or 8' (come sopra)."33 What it should state is that (1) if 16' stops and couplers are the lowest-pitched stops used in the measure before the ossia, those 16' stops and couplers are removed for the duration of the ossia; or (2) if 8' stops and couplers are the lowest-pitched stops used in the measure before the ossia, those 8' stops and couplers are removed for the duration of the ossia.

Because of the large number of registration changes within the work, an instrument with an adjustable combination action is optimal. Otherwise, the performer will need a console assistant for stop changes.

Interpretation

Clean articulation clearly aids the "precise and sharply etched rhythm" that Crumb prescribes.34 Crisp articulation is particularly necessary in the rapid thirty-second-note figuration that occurs throughout the work. Furthermore, the dynamic, which is never less than f, creates a level of sound that takes time to disperse, particularly in a room that is acoustically live.

Except for the quasi danza parts, the freely composed parts are always introduced by an articulative element that imitates the percussive attack of bagpipes or musettes. Grace notes serve this purpose in sections 1 and 4, mordents in section 2, quintuplets in section 6, and arpeggios in section 7. The grace notes are played before the beat of the principal note; all other figures are played as written. In section 3, a distinction exists, and should be observed, between the dotted and triplet rhythms.

In the final cluster that ends the work, the right thumb has to play three notes at once: f-double-sharp, g-sharp, and a. The tip of the thumb plays the g-sharp, and the base of the thumb plays the two white keys. This maneuver is made more difficult by the position of the hand that is necessary to play seven notes at once.

A tenuto marking occurs at the pentatonic clusters in section 6 (mm. 68-69) and at the arpeggios in section 7 (mm. 73, 76, and 78). The tenuto causes a temporary broadening, and not a dramatic slowing, of the tempo; the passages that flank the tenuto passages are a tempo.

The pedal part is simple; throughout most of the piece, the organist merely holds down the two-note drone. Nevertheless, because of the wide distance between the two notes (a perfect eleventh), the length of time that they must be sounded, and the fact that they must be played by the toes, it is imperative that the organ bench be low enough that relaxed leg weight can be used to maintain the drone. Chromatic movement in the pedal part is marked legatiss. sempre, as opposed to the articulative clarity that is necessary in the manual parts.

C.F. Peters has published two versions of Pastoral Drone. The earlier version is an excellent-quality manuscript reproduction and the later version is typeset. Both are dated 1984, and both have the same cover, title page, and catalog number. Nevertheless, minor revisions in pitch, notation, registration, performance directions, dynamics, and scoring were made for the typeset version.35 Asked about the differences in the two versions, Crumb writes: "The typeset version is the definitive version. I checked the typesetting very carefully (I prepared it myself!)--so I hope there are no errata."36 Table 5 contains a comparison of differences in the two versions.

At the beginning of the manuscript version there are also two short instructions that are not in the typeset version: (1) the beginning registration has the direction "Sw. and Pos. balanced dynamically;" and (2) a footnote on the first page states "All long notes should be full value!"37

Pastoral Drone has not been commercially recorded. Gillespie lists a performance time of eight minutes, but the work is actually only six minutes and twenty seconds in length when played at the tempo indicated in the score.38

Praeludium by Ellen Taaffe Zwilich

Background

Violinist and composer Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, born in Miami, Florida in 1939, graduated from Florida State University and the Juilliard School. Her composition teachers were John Boda, Elliott Carter, and Roger Sessions. Besides becoming the first woman to take a composition D.M.A. degree at Juilliard, Zwilich was also the first woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize in music, which was awarded in 1983 for Symphony No. 1. Most of her compositions are chamber and orchestral works, including two symphonies. She has accepted numerous commissions from major orchestras.39

The work selected for this article, Praeludium, is Zwilich's only solo organ work.40 It was commissioned by the Boston chapter of the American Guild of Organists and published in 1987. Organist James David Christie played the premiere at the Church of the Advent in Boston, Massachusetts on May 1, 1988.

Asked in 1993 if she were planning any other organ compositions, Zwilich wrote: "YES! I will be writing a work for chorus and organ for next season, and I'd love to write more--I love the instrument."41 The work, A Simple Magnificat for SATB chorus and organ (1994), has now been completed and published. The premiere was recently performed at the Yale Institute of Sacred Music, which commissioned the work.42

Structure

In the preface to the score of her first symphony, Zwilich describes her approach to composition:

First, I have long been interested in the elaboration of large-scale works from the initial material. This "organic" approach to musical form fascinates me both in the development of the material and in the fashioning of a musical idea that contains the "seeds" of the work to follow.

Second, in my recent works I have been developing techniques that combine modern principles of continuous variation with older (but still immensely satisfying) principles, such as melodic recurrence and clearly defined areas of contrast.43

This organic approach to the composition of Symphony No.1, whose premiere was in 1982, is similar to the organization of Praeludium, published five years later. The opening Maestoso of Praeludium contains the compositional techniques that shape the work: (1) complex harmonies and dense textures that result from piling up thirds; (2) distinctive articulative elements, or headmotives, used to begin melodic lines; and (3) frequent changes in texture.

Brochure notes in a 1986 recording of Zwilich's Symphony No.1 describe the first movement of the symphony, but they also accurately describe the genesis of Praeludium:

Everything in the work arises from the melodic and harmonic implications of the first fifteen bars, music Zwilich says she felt compelled to write. These [evolutions] work up to a sustained allegro that ultimately subsides into an ending as quiet as the beginning. All the most complex harmonies come from piling third upon third upon third.44

Praeludium develops according to the same construct. It contains four continuous sections: Maestoso, Più mosso, Allegro moderato, and Tempo I. Material from the Maestoso is later developed in both the Più mosso and the Allegro moderato. Both the tempo and dynamic increase gradually until the climax (mm. 168-73). The final section, Tempo I, has the tempo and dynamic of the Maestoso. The structural organization of the four sections of Praeludium is illustrated in Table 6.

Registration

In a note to the player, Bolcom writes about the desired instrument for Mysteries: "The object is that this music should be equally effective on any type of organ, large or small, Romantic or Baroque--even on electronic organs."13 Each movement can be performed on a two-manual instrument, although a three-manual instrument is optimum. Because the score rarely indicates crescendos or diminuendos that require expression shades, the work can be performed adequately on an instrument without expressive divisions.

Although a large list of specific stops is not required, two movements recommend registrations that are often unavailable on small instruments. First, "La lugubre gondola" requires a 32' pedal Bourdon, but a footnote indicates that a 16' stop may be substituted if a suitable 32' stop is unavailable. Second, "Dying Star" requires a pp 16' and 2'  stop combination for the Bach chorale harmonization.

Bolcom writes that "registration is largely left to the organist, except for a few suggestions here and there."14 Because of the wide latitude given to the performer, and the variety of acceptable instruments, there are many possible registrations. Table 1 has an appropriate registration for a three-manual instrument.

The beginning of "The Endless Corridor" requires a "cool-sounding" 8' pp stop for each manual and a pp 16' pedal stop.15 The upper voice (right hand) requires a "different color" in m. 10 and the middle voice (left hand) requires a similar substitution in m. 14. The change in timbre can result from substituting a different 8' stop, adding a soft mutation, or substituting a 4' stop and playing an octave lower. It is important to maintain the pp dynamic; therefore stops of significant dynamic contrast should be avoided. The two manual voices return to their original registrations in mm. 18-19, and continue to the end of the movement.

No specific stops are indicated in "Eternal Flight." The opening section (5/1-7/2) requires at least two manuals, one with a pp registration, and the other somewhat louder for the sf material. If three manuals are available, the pp material is divided at random between two of the manuals, as indicated in the score.16 The pedal has to alternate between pp and sf dynamics in the opening section; this switch can be accomplished by quickly coupling soft pedal stops to the Great manual for the sf spots only. The middle section (7/2-8/2) is played on the Great manual alone. For the crescendo to fff and the subsequent diminuendo to pp, the crescendo pedal and other expression pedals may be used; if neither is available, a console assistant can add or remove stops. Registration for the final section (8/2-9/4) is the same as at the beginning, with the exception that the Great manual is not used.

The registration shown in Table 1 for "La lugubre gondola" is specified in the score. For the two manuals, Bolcom wants stops of "different but related color."17 In the pedal, a 32' flue is best, although the piece can be performed with a 16' pedal stop.

"Dying Star" requires an "8' soft flute with much 'chiff' for the flute figuration that continues throughout the movement.18 On a large instrument, a combination of 8' flute stops, instead of a single stop, is often necessary for sufficient dynamic. Registration for the harmonization of An Wasserflüssen Babylon (16/1), is "2' and 16' only--with a distant, otherworldly registration."19 Because of the ppp dynamic, there is often little choice of stops, however. On a large instrument it may be possible to couple manuals together for the desired pitch combination and timbre. The same chorale registration is coupled to the pedal, because the chorale cannot be played on manuals alone. The 4' pedal stop that was added for the "subliminal" chorale melody at the beginning of the movement (13/1-15/1) is removed before the chorale harmonization begins.

Double pedal technique is necessary for all movements except the first. In addition, pedal clusters are in "Eternal Flight" and "La lugubre gondola." Because of the slow tempos, however, the clusters are easy to play. The pedal clusters in "Eternal Flight" have to be carefully practiced, nevertheless; some require awkward positions--the C to E-flat interval played by the left foot in 8/4, for example.

Interpretation

Because of the programmatic theme of Mysteries, each movement should be interpreted in a way that is consistent with the text associations. For example, in the trio "The Endless Corridor," Bolcom creates the aural impression of three slowly moving, endlessly drifting voices. No tonal, motivic, or rhythmic relationships exist between the voices, no suggestion of cadence or phrase structure occurs, and the angularity of the voices discourages melodic perception.

The rhythm of "The Endless Corridor" is played precisely as written; because the irregular motion of the voices has been created rhythmically, further rubato is unnecessary and contrary to the character of the movement. Legato articulation further enhances the intentional monotony. Selection of thinly voiced, distant-sounding stops is consistent with the "cool-sounding" stops mentioned in the score. Slight shading with expression pedals is appropriate at locations indicated in the score.

In contrast to the precisely notated rhythm of the first movement, the spatial rhythmic notation in "Eternal Flight" allows considerable freedom in rhythmic interpretation. Creating a sense of immense space is important at the beginning, with a certain unpredictability when the pointillistic staccato clusters are played. Near the end of the opening section (6/3-7/1), the clusters and figuration become more densely packed, as if drifting closer and closer in space; the increased density should not be perceived by the listener as an increase in tempo, however. Bolcom indicates short accelerandos at irregular intervals by using arrows (----> ).

A series of ritardando arrows ( <----) reduce the tempo at the beginning of the middle section of "Eternal Flight" (7/2). The middle section has the broadest tempo, the thickest texture, the longest note values, and the loudest dynamic of the movement. The legato, parallel clusters in this section require a considerable amount of finger substitution, but the long note values allow sufficient time.

The third section of the movement (8/2-9/4) reverses the motion of the first section in a gradual process of disintegration: (1) clusters that are at first close together become spaced farther and farther apart; (2) the dynamic decreases; (3) pitch becomes gradually lower; and (4) texture thins to single notes. The performer helps to communicate the disintegration by allowing playing gestures to become gradually slower, to the point that notes in the final few systems are gently pressed down. If the console is in view of the audience, it is vital that the performer not relax his/her body posture, so that intensity is maintained during the increasingly longer periods of silence between the final notes.

"La lugubre gondola" has a stifling, airless quality created by the long note values, low pitches, and pauses of various lengths. Although the movement is almost entirely unmetered, the note values are relative, and must be played precisely in rhythm. Because of the difficulty in counting the long note values, the performer can count quarter notes, at the rate of one per second, as a basic pulse, and write the number of quarter-note pulses over each note in the score as listed in Table 2.20

The comma symbols used for the long pauses of varying lengths are unexplained in the score. The same symbols appear, however, in a previous Bolcom work, Hydraulis, and are defined in a foreword as "pauses, ranging from long to very short, depending mainly on context of the passage." In a recent letter, Bolcom confirmed that the Hydraulis pauses also apply to Mysteries.21

The eighth-note figuration that appears in the metered middle section of the movement (11/2-11/3) is played with light, elegant articulation. In the unmetered final section (11/3-11/4), playing gestures become increasingly slower; intensity must be maintained during the pauses, though.

The title "La lugubre gondola" is from an 1882 piano piece of the same name by Franz Liszt. Liszt had the inspiration for the piece while watching funeral processions by gondola through the Venetian canals, when he was staying with Richard Wagner and Cosima (Liszt's daughter, who had married Wagner) in Venice. Anecdotally, Liszt abruptly quit working on his final oratorio and wrote two versions of La lugubre gondola in December 1882, after he had a strange presentiment--presumably of Wagner's impending death. Irrespectively, Wag-ner died in Venice two months later, and his body was borne by gondola in the funeral procession.22 Although not widely performed, several pianists have recorded the piano piece La lugubre gondola, No. 1; listening to such recordings is helpful in establishing the mood of the Bolcom movement, because the central, metered section of the Bolcom movement quotes the Liszt work.

"Dying Star" begins with thirty-second-note flute figuration marked "legato, even throughout."23 A more detached articulation is appropriate, however, if the room is acoustically live or if the selected flute does not have enough chiff for articulative clarity. Nevertheless, the articulation should not be a mechanical staccato.

The thirty-second-note figuration in the right-hand part continues to the end of the movement, and it is impossible to play all four voices of the An Wasserflüssen Babylon chorale fragments (beginning at 16/1) in the left hand alone. It is therefore necessary for the pedal, coupled to the manual, to play the tenor and bass voices of the chorale. Articulation for the chorale is molto legato for both manual and pedal parts. Bolcom commented on the significance of An Wasserflüssen Babylon to this movement: "That chorale prelude always gave a chilling intimation of eternity; I could imagine a dead Earth with some eternal record[ing] of it [An Wasserflüssen Babylon] playing (or a ghostly organist)."24

During the long blocks of silence (beginning at 16/4 and continuing to the end of the movement) it is important to follow Bolcom's instructions: "These pauses are exactly timed--be sure to remain physically suspended during them so that the tension is not lost."25 As in the second and third movements, the fourth also ends with a gradual disintegration of musical texture in space and time.

No errata were discovered in the score, and Bolcom confirms that he knows of none. Mysteries has not been commercially recorded. Bolcom lists a performance time of seventeen minutes and ten seconds for the entire work, broken down by movement as follows:

The Endless Corridor  [3:35]

Eternal Flight   [2:40]

La lugubre gondola     [5:45]

Dying Star       [5:10]26

lists stops suggested in the score for a three-manual organ.

Because the Trompette en chamade 8' is used as a solo stop against the full Great manual, the stop is most convenient on a secondary manual or floating division. If a chamade is unavailable, another loud trumpet or combination of reeds can be substituted. For the last pedal notes in the work, a 32' Bourdon is effective, although a footnote in the score indicates that a 16' Bourdon may be substituted, if necessary.46

Interpretation

 

In the preface to the score, Christie writes: "Praeludium was conceived in the spirit of the 17th-century North German 'Stylus phantasticus' and is to be performed as a fantasia with interpretive spontaneity and much freedom. The articulations are indicated to encourage clarity in all lines and textures."47 Besides working for clarity, the performer should observe the tempo markings in the score. As illustrated in Table 6, the tempo increases at major structural posts until the climax of the work (mm. 168-72).

A vocal 16' principal is specified in the score for the short pedal solo at the beginning of the Maestoso; if the principal is unavailable, 16' and 8' flutes are substituted. The pedal voices should be articulated cleanly, with attention paid to agogic accents that are marked above or below some of the notes. The molto legato marking in m. 3 applies to stepwise movement in m. 3 and mm. 8-10. Because of the wide leaps in double- and triple-pedal textures, an entirely legato articulation is impossible.

The pedal solo is followed by a section of densely textured harmonies that arise gradually out of piled-up thirds. The aural effect of piling up thirds is one of individual melodic lines coalescing into a chord; this recurrent compositional technique serves as a unifying characteristic of the work. During the process, the gradual change from Choir manual to Great manual in mm. 15-18 requires the left hand to "thumb up" to the Great manual while simultaneously holding three notes on the Choir manual. Depending on the instrument and the location of the manuals, it may be possible during this section to "thumb down" to the Great manual from the manual above, thus making this manual change less difficult.

The pedal motive at the beginning of the Più mosso is marked non legato, but the sixteenth notes should be given sufficient length for the pedal reeds to speak. The low pedal thirds in mm. 34-47 can be played by the left foot alone. In mm. 50-55, the accel. poco a poco increases the tempo to 112; restraint is necessary, however, because of a natural tendency to accelerate too much during the long note values. The right-hand part in mm. 62-64 is played one octave lower if the instrument has a short upper octave.

The climactic section, Allegro moderato, is a fugato that contrapuntally combines its subject with motives from the first two sections of Praeludium. Articulation of the staccatos and slurs in this section should be observed exactly as marked in the score. At m. 153 the Trompette en chamade may be coupled to the Great manual to achieve the fff dynamic. Alternatively, additional intramanual couplers or a sfz mechanism can be used.

Three short passages in the third section (mm. 131-34, 153-56, and 160-63) are marked: "Omit upper notes if not available."48 Even if the upper notes are available, though, it may be necessary to omit them if the sound is too overbearing. The extreme dissonance, in combination with full organ and high register, is excessively loud on some instruments.

At the climax in mm. 168-72 it is necessary for the left thumb to take the top two notes of the left-hand chord, because of the thirteen-voice texture at that point. Also, a meter change from 4/2 to 4/4 occurs in mm. 171-74; the note values remain constant, however. At m. 174 the pedal has to be reduced quickly from fff to subito mp.

Finally, the short closing section, Tempo I, serves as a soft codetta to Praeludium. In m. 185 the final pedal interval, a perfect octave, has the instruction: "32' Bd. alone or play the lowest 'A' on Bd. 16' only."49 Another possibility, however, is to play the pitches A and e on the 16' Bourdon; the resultant harmonic produces the desired 32' tone.

The score has one error: Page 6, Measure 81, Beat 2: the sharp in the bass clef should precede the F, not the A.

Praeludium has not been commercially recorded. The performance time is approximately eight minutes, if played at the score tempos.   

Notes

 

            1.         George Ritchie and George Stauffer, Organ Technique: Modern and Early (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, 1992), 304.

            2.         Marilou Kratzenstein, Survey of Organ Literature and Editions (Ames, Iowa: Iowa State University Press, 1980), 190.

            3.         Viktor Lukas, A Guide to Organ Music, 5th ed., ed. Reinhard G. Pauly, trans. Anne Wyburd (Portland, Oregon: Amadeus Press, 1989), 229.

            4.         John Woodford, "His Night at the Opera," Michigan Today 24, no. 4 (December 1992): 1-3.

            5.         Michael Lawrence Mazzatenta, "The Gospel Preludes of William Bolcom" (D.M.A. diss., Arizona State University, 1991), 95; William Bolcom, Letter to this writer, October 20, 1993; Id., Gospel Preludes, Book Three (New York: Edward B. Marks, 1994).

            6.         William Bolcom, Mysteries (New York: Edward B. Marks, 1981).

            7.         "Hartt Contemporary Organ Music Festival," The American Organist 14, no. 7 (July 1980): 22.

            8.         Bolcom, Mysteries, 1.

            9.         Ibid., 2.

            10.       Lukas, 238.

            11.       The symbol 11/2-11/3 refers to page 11, system 2 and page 11, system 3 of the score. All score references to movements 2, 3, and 4 of Mysteries, which are unmetered, will use this system.

            12.       Bolcom, Mysteries, 16.

            13.       Ibid., 2.

            14.       Ibid.

            15.       Ibid.

            16.       Ibid., 5-6.

            17.       Ibid, 10.

            18.       Ibid., 12.

            19.       Ibid., 15.

            20.       A footnote on page ten of the score defines a stemmed double whole note as two times as long as a double whole note.

            21.       William Bolcom, Hydraulis (New York: Edward B. Marks, 1976), 2; Id., Letter to this writer, October 20, 1993.

            22.       Stanley Sadie, ed., The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians (London: Macmillan and Co., 1980), s.v. "Liszt, Franz," §4: Rome and the last years, by Humphrey Searle.

            23.       Bolcom, Mysteries, 12.

            24.       Bolcom, Letter to this writer, October 20, 1993.

            25.       Bolcom, Mysteries, 16.

            26.       Ibid., 2.

            27.       H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie, eds., The New Grove Dictionary of American Music (London: Macmillan Press, 1986), s.v. "Crumb, George," by Edith Borroff.

            28.       George Crumb, Pastoral Drone (New York: C.F. Peters, 1984).

            29.       Byron Belt, "AGO National Convention San Francisco 1984," TAO 18, no. 8 (August 1984): 29.

            30.       George Crumb, "Annotated Chronological List of Works," in George Crumb: Profile of a Composer, ed. Don Gillespie (New York: C. F. Peters, 1986), 112.

            31.       David Cope, "Biography," in George Crumb: Profile of a Composer, 14-15.

            32.       Crumb, Letter to this writer, Oct. 14, 1993.

            33.       Crumb, Pastoral Drone, 9.

            34.       Crumb, Pastoral Drone, 4.

            35.       References to the score in the text of this article are to the later, typeset version.

            36.       Crumb, Letter to this writer, Oct. 14, 1993.

            37.       Crumb, Pastoral Drone (manuscript version), 3.

            38.       George Crumb, "Annotated Chronological List of Works," in George Crumb: Profile of a Composer, 112; Two hundred seventy-nine total beats divided by forty-four beats per minute equals 6.34 minutes.

            39.       Hitchcock, s.v. "Zwilich, Ellen Taaffe."

            40.       Ellen Taaffe Zwilich, Praeludium (Hillsdale, New York: Mobart Music Publications, 1987).

            41.       Zwilich, Letter to this writer, October 21, 1993.          

            42.       Zwilich, Telephone conversation with this writer, April 24, 1995.

            43.       Richard Dyer, brochure notes for Ellen Taaffe Zwilich: Symphony No. 1, New World Records NW336-2, 4.

            44.       Ibid., 5.

            45.       Zwilich, Praeludium, 2.

            46.       Ibid., 11.

            47.       Ibid., 2.

            48.       Ibid., 9-10.

            49.       Ibid., 11.

This article will be continued.

by Sally Cherrington

Introduction

Before examining the history of the development of organ pedagogy in America, it is necessary to understand some background on the early use of the organ in this country. The organ as an instrument of worship had a difficult journey to acceptance in the United States. The Puritans outlawed the use of instruments in their churches, partially as a revolt against what they regarded as the pretentious services of the Church of England1, but principally in support of the anti-instrumental music views of the Fathers of the early church.2

The Lutherans and Anglicans, however, bore no such prejudices, and can be recognized as having introduced the liturgical use of the organ to the colonies. Anglican churches were especially important in the growth of organ usage in the United States because of the number of organs they imported from England throughout the eighteenth century. The wealthier Anglican churches also imported organists; as William H. Barnes comments:

Organists too, were imported and we hear of those who functioned as dancing masters, clerks, and grocers and wine merchants like Boston's organist-composer Selby . . . ship masters and business men were deputized by their parishes to contract for organs, or to hire musicians, whose ability in more than one case, was to "Play upon ye organs with a loud noise!"3

Eventually, Puritan liberals began to raise the issue of using organs in their own churches. Finally in 1786, the First Church in Boston installed a permanent organ, followed in 1790 by the Brattle Square Church.4 The battle for acceptance of organs was not over, but the tide had turned decisively, and the installation of organs began in earnest.

In small city churches and rural churches, the acceptance of organs took a different route. Objections to instrumental music were initially compromised by the introduction of the violoncello to accompany congregational singing, which had sunk to a deplorable state. This was followed, according to Nathaniel Gould (in his significant book, Church Music in America, published in 1853), by the flute, hautboy, clarinet, and bassoon. Gould attributes the final sanctioning of organs to the problems caused by this array of instruments, including their competing for attention in performance and their propensity for tuning while the minister was speaking.5 Despite these problems, the installation of organs into smaller, rural churches was a slow and highly-contested process. Even in the early 1800's (and sometimes as late as 1850) some congregations were still reluctant to install organs.6

Once organs were installed, the difficulties were often only beginning. Accounts of the reactions to the use of the organ in church were varied. Gould, after writing of the complaints of congregations regarding singers, comments that "in regard to the organist, there is less knowledge, and if possible, more complaints, or diversity of opinion,"7 both in regard to the repertoire used in church and the general role of the organist. These issues were complicated by the fact that as organs were finally accepted they were installed at a relatively rapid rate, making it difficult to find competent organists, particularly ones who could play well enough to accompany singers.

Despite the relative abundance of information on early American organs and organ builders and the organ acceptance controversy, there is little information about the organists themselves and how they were trained in the United States for their roles in the church. Louis Elson mentions that Christ Church in Philadelphia had an organ soon after 1700, and that a few music teachers settled there at an early date.8 Boston, New York, and Charleston were also centers where foreign-born professional organists performed and taught.9 One citation from 1799 describes a Mrs. Von Hagen of Boston who taught organ lessons, her curriculum including theory, lessons, sonatas, concertos, and church music.10 These accounts suggest that private organ instruction was already taking place in the 1700's, despite the controversy over the use of the organ in worship (possibly supported at least in part by the existence of a fair number of "parlor organs" during the pre-revolutionary war era in homes).11 However, early organ education in the United States involved not only training enough organists technically to suit the increasing demand, but also training both American and Continental organists to meet the specific service-playing needs of American churches. There is a fascinating relationship between the development of organ "methods" and other instructional publications and the emergence and development of the role of the church organist in worship.

In fact, in examining the overall history of American organ methods, it becomes apparent that the emphases of these works varied rather consistently according to their chronological period. This is the first of a series of articles which will examine the evolution of these changing emphases, their relationship to changes in organ construction and the musical tastes and sophistication of American religious and musical society, and most importantly, how they reflect the development of the role of the organist in American society. This exploration will begin with publications to about 1850 which focus on the role of the organist as a player of hymns and accompaniments.

The Earliest Organ Publications: The Organist as Accompanist and Hymn-Player

The controversy over the appropriateness of organs in worship was not unique to the United States. For several centuries the English battled over the same issue, so that even throughout the eighteenth century the use of organs was only common in large urban churches.12 Two of the most outspoken proponents of instrumental music, Thomas Mace (1676)13 and John Newte (1700)14, justified using the organ in assisting vocal music rather than as a solo instrument in worship. This concept of the church organist as accompanist was carried over to America, where the earliest defense (e.g., James Lyon, etc.) and acceptance of the organ was in accompanying the congregation and later the choir. As Orpha Ochse comments, "their [organs] acceptance has usually been ascribed to a more liberal attitude, but actually, the deplorable state to which congregational singing had fallen prompted some of this liberality."15

A detailed discussion of the attempted "reform" of congregational singing, the advent of American "Tune Books", and the rise of singing schools is beyond the scope of this article. However, several relevant points should be noted.

The earliest extant music printed in the United States was an appendix to the Psalm Book of 1698 printed for colonists in Boston. Directions given at the beginning were extremely basic, and indicated the very low level of musical knowledge in the United States at that time. Under each note was the initial of a syllable used to sing the pitch.16 Over the next 100-150 years, many more of these tune books were published, although it was not until 1804 in the Bridgewater Collection that instrumental accompaniments or interludes first appeared.17 Sacred vocal music monopolized the American publishing scene. George Hood, in his annotated listing of all music books printed in America to 1800, lists only singing and psalm books,18 while Frank Metcalf, in 54 pages of descriptions of American books on sacred music between 1721 and 1820, lists only one book related to keyboard music, Andrew Law's The Art of Playing the Organ and Piano Forte, published in 1809 (to be discussed shortly).19 Up to this point, the absence of organ materials speaks eloquently of the organ conflict.  Daniel Bayley, in his A New and Compleat Introduction to the Grounds and Rules of Musick (1766), offers some pro-organ comments in the preface to Book One, but then comments at the end of the introduction that his work is specifically not intended for instrumentalists. After covering the rudiments of music in his introduction, he comments "There are some other things that occur . . . (especially) in Instrumental Music; but as they do not concern this undertaking, I shall take no notice of them."20  Similarly, Thomas Walter's method of 1721 explains that there are "Rules for the right Management of an Instrument"21--but he does not explain what they are.  Clearly organists are left to fend for themselves--or to turn to European teachers or methods.

In 1786, the first American document which provides instructional directions for the church organist appeared in the form of a letter written by Francis Hopkinson (1737-1791), an eminent statesman, organist, and composer. Hopkinson's stated purpose was to "suggest a few rules for the conduct of an organ in a place of worship, according to my ideas of propriety."22 Hopkinson examines the musical parts of the Episcopal service, making interpretive and technical suggestions for the organist and emphasizing the role of music in accompanying and interpreting the spoken and sung texts of the worship service.  However, his letter was addressed to Bishop William White of Christ Church and St. Peter's, Philadelphia, and therefore apparently was not intended primarily for the edification of his fellow organists. Its instructional merit may have been realized later, since the letter was reprinted between 1827 and 1829 in several Episcopal periodicals in articles on the organ and church music.23 In any case, his didactic comments would be useful only to organists who had already acquired their basic technique elsewhere and required instruction in specific aspects of service-playing.

Andrew Law, however, took a different approach. Law (1748-1821) published his Harmonic Companion, and Guide to Social Worship . . .  in 1807, and two years later published a companion guide for a keyboard player: The Art of Playing the Organ and Piano Forte, or Characters Adapted to Instruments. Law taught extensively along the eastern seaboard, and devised a "shaped note" system for indicating the sol-fa syllables of pitches.24 (The use of these syllables dates back to the earliest tune books.) Law's system involved the use of four shapes without regular staff notation. This system is used in both of the aforementioned methods. In The Art of Playing the Organ, Law states that his main purpose is to train people to play from the same music as the singers (presumably making it easier to accompany them). Law makes some interesting comments in the Introduction, where he states that this method will allow a child to learn to play the piano forte in one year as well as he could from the "old method" in two years. He goes on to state that this is important because:

it may be asserted with truth that there are a hundred who learn vocal music to one who learns instrumental of any kind. If therefore it should appear, that no gain is made in instrumental music, still the gain must be vastly great in a full view of the subject.25

Law's The Art of Playing the Organ is more significant for its appearance than its content, as it is the first American organ "method". After the five pages of the Introduction, which is mostly commentary, he spends only three pages on charts of symbols with brief explanations, making the entire "method" eight pages in length. (See Example 1.) However, his work was recognized as significant even in his own time. Samuel Worcester, the pastor at the Tabernacle Church in Salem, Massachusetts, gave a significant address on sacred music in 1810 in which he recommended Law's work. Worcester speaks at length on the need to select good hymnody and psalmody and perform it well, concluding with an endorsement of musical societies "since so little encouragement is given in our country to good musical instructors."26 It is interesting to note that in his Essays on Music Law comments on the difference between sacred and secular music and does not limit his definition of sacred music to psalmody27; however, he never publishes or endorses any keyboard music beyond that required to accompany the singing of psalmody.

Many people apparently tried Law's organ method, lured by the promise of learning to play psalmody quickly. However, as Gould suggests, they found it took longer than they had anticipated.28 Although influential in its day, Law's method was never revised or reprinted.

By the end of the first quarter of the nineteenth century, the debates over the suitability of organs in worship had generally ended. A new body of writings appeared: suggestions for the role of the organist and complaints about how the instrument was being used.29 In 1822, Thomas Hastings wrote a notable treatise, Dissertation on Musical Taste, which raises some important considerations in these areas. Hastings concludes that the organ is a useful accompanimental instrument when played skillfully, which apparently was not the case very often. He goes on to make a plea for the proper training of organists by quoting the Bible: he cites the psalmist's charge to "play skilfully [sic]" as well as a passage where the chief of the Levites "instructed in the music because he was skilful.[sic]"30 This treatise is interesting from several aspects. First, it indicates that the focus at this point was still on accompanying rather than solo playing. Second, it shows the progression in acceptance of the organ. In earlier years, it was common practice to quote scripture in defending the use of organs themselves, while this treatise takes this technique a step ahead and applies it to organist education.

Hastings makes two other thought-provoking comments. One is an elusive remark that "printed instructions are readily obtained"31 on the subject of style in instrumental music. Since this comment follows the section discussed above on the necessity of training for organists, it would be interesting to know what sort of "printed instructions" Hastings is addressing.

The other intriguing comment has to do with Hastings' disappointment in the effect achieved by instrumental accompaniments. He suggests that perhaps organists should only perform pieces they can play easily, and then wonders how much their abilities should be "heightened by cultivation."32 Hastings clearly emerges later as a champion of organist education. However, his comment raises the possibility that the lack of native organ instructional materials in the first part of the nineteenth century may have been due at least in part to a lack of interest in having organists develop a more advanced technique unnecessary for accompanimental duties.

The next organ "method" to appear was Instructions in Thorough Base; Being a New and Easy Method for Learning to Play Church Music upon the Piano Forte or Organ, published in 1844 by Artemas Nixon Johnson (1817-1892). Johnson was a well-rounded musician: a European-trained theoretician, music educator, music publisher, and a practicing church musician, principally at the Park Street Church in Boston. Johnson's wide array of instructional materials were based on the principle of "learning by doing."33 In the introduction to Instructions in Thorough Base, Johnson states that "this book is, strictly, an instruction book in the art of playing Church Music."34 Johnson presupposes that the student will be "acquainted with the Elements of Music, . . . and also know at least enough of the Piano Forte, to be able to find the letters readily."35 The book contains forty lessons followed by nine "miscellaneous examples", with explanations of the exercises in the back of the book (in case the book is used without a teacher). Aside from Johnson's own exercises, the music includes exercises by Lowell Mason and German chorales, which Johnson recognizes as "some of the most difficult exercises."36 The lessons train organists to accompany not only psalms and hymns but also anthems, thereby going one step further than Law's method. (See Example 2 for  a lesson and its accompanying instructions).

Johnson's "thorough base" method apparently answered a need which had developed since the tune books of Law's day which often used symbols and solmization syllables.37 All tune books by this time used normal musical notation for the vocal parts, and many added a figured bass accompaniment which was optional. One tune book, however, notes in the introduction that,

Instead of a figured bass, the music has all been carefully arranged for Organ or Piano-Forte, from the conviction that many performers on those instruments have not had the opportunity to perfect themselves sufficiently in the science of music, to play the harmony with facility, even of plain psalmody, from figures.38

Like Law's method, Johnson's approach was claimed to be fast and effective. George Root testifies that he started using this book after only two weeks of organ lessons, and that he was able to begin playing for prayer-meetings immediately.39

By the middle of the 19th century, then, the primary responsibility of a church organist was still to accompany choral and congregational singing. Thus far, however, the materials examined have been "methods" which have addressed specific basic techniques of reading music without exploring any other aspect of how to accompany.40 The several books on sacred music in the United States (principally histories) which appeared around the middle of the century are full of suggestions. For example, Nathaniel Gould (1853) speaks at length of the responsibilities and problems of accompanying the choir or congregation in hymns and psalms; he says that organists are successful in this when "instead of placing the crash of the organ before the voices, and obliging them to fight their way not with but after them, the organ lays a foundation, and sustains the harmony, and even seems to assist them in speaking and giving expression to words and sentiment, altogether making a solid body of harmonious and devotional sound."41 This section emphasizes not only the necessity for the organist to play in such a way technically that his hands stay together and he is with the congregation rather than ahead of them, but also the importance of the interpretation of the hymn text.

Gradually, toward the middle of the nineteenth century, sources finally appeared for the organist which provided instruction in aspects of church music beyond reading notes. The first of these publications was Church Music, consisting of New and Original Anthems, Motets and Chants, for Public Worship (1831), by Charles Zeuner, a well-known organist in Boston and Philadelphia. As its name suggests, this book is a collection of vocal music, but it includes a lengthy and cleverly-written Preface. Although the majority of the text is devoted to vocal music, Zeuner also makes some comments on organs and accompanying rules for organists.  His approach clearly contends that the organ is subservient to the singers. For example, he cautions the organist not to hold out the final notes of a piece longer than the singers do:

On the contrary, it must stop a little before, in proportion as the final notes or chords are longer or shorter, playing, where there are long or final rests or pauses, the bass alone--perhaps an octave lower--in order to give opportunity for a display of the voice.42

Zeuner was a pious Lutheran concerned with establishing a more pure style of church music. One Boston magazine wrote of him in 1840, "he has contributed materially toward elevating our style of church music by his publications."43 It is significant that his instructional comments for organists appear in the Preface to one of his vocal collections and make no mention of any other purpose for organs beyond accompanying, although he does advocate the installation of larger and better organs. Zeuner did publish collections of his own organ voluntaries for service use, although these books contain no Prefaces.

In 1845, Thomas Loud published an important method which details the breadth of his concerns in its lengthy title: The Organ Study: Being an Introduction to the Practice of the Organ; together with a collection of Voluntaries, Preludes and Interludes, original and selected; a Model of a Church Service; Explanations of the Stops and their Combinations; Studies for the Instrument; and Examples of Modulation intended to aid the Extempore Student; accompanied by An Engraving and description of the Mechanical construction of the Organ. Loud describes himself as the "Organist of the St. Stephens Church, and until recently, Organist of St. Andrews Church."44 After providing some basic information on the organ, Loud discusses how to accompany singers before moving into the more technical aspects of his method, reflecting the continuing importance of this topic. He provides specific instruction on stops to be used, emphasizing that "the organ is the accompaniment, not the principal in vocal music."45 His general accompanying guidelines are particularly interesting; he explains how the previous practice of introducing a chant, psalm, or hymn with a "shake" (trill) is now out of style. Instead, organists are urged to " . . . close the prelude or interlude with the final chord, and then lead up, from the bass note, the first chord of the tune (the voices falling in when the chord is full) . . . "46, reversing this process at the end. This concept is exemplified in Loud's "Model Service for the Episcopal Church," which includes voluntaries, chant accompaniments, psalms, hymn tunes, introductions, and interludes, along with some notes on their proper performance. (See Example 3.) Loud's method will be discussed at greater length in the next article in this series.

A final significant book of the mid-nineteenth century in linking the role of the organist to instructional materials is American Church Organ Voluntaries, published originally in 1852 by A. N. Johnson. Johnson wrote some of the compositions in this volume and an introduction on the church music and organs of his time, as well as editing and publishing it. Thus, this anthology is significant both for being the earliest anthology of organ music compiled by a native American, and the earliest published by an American.47 In addition to Johnson's important commentary which touches on a variety of topics related to the church organist, the collection contains opening and closing voluntaries for service use. Johnson was noted for his American bias and rejection of European influences,48 thus making his volume an excellent source for studying the relationship between theory and practice in the role of the American organist. It is also important because it is the first book of American organ repertoire with instructions for the organist, rather than being a vocal collection or accompanimental manual.

Cutler and Johnson address the subject of hymns and accompaniments briefly in their "Remarks". They comment that "the organist should watch carefully the varying sentiment which the different stanzas of the Psalm or Hymn express, as by want of attention in this respect, all efforts on the part of the singers to give an appropriate rendering of the music, will be unavailing."49 Their emphasis, then, is not on the technical aspects of hymn-playing, but rather the interpretive aspects. According to Stephen Pinel, this concern with the texts reflects a very American aspect of this volume, since Europeans of this period were noted for their secular approach to music during the Mass.50 It also implies a spiritual or ministerial facet of the role of the organist in the interpretation and illustrating of texts.

The concern for the integrity of the hymn is carried over into Cutler and Johnson's comments on hymn interludes, which they say should "partake of the general style of the tune to be sung."51 They give specific instructions for the length of interludes (they should be as long as the last line of the hymn), so that the congregation does not lose the rhythmic connection to the rest of the hymn. Although there were no examples in the main body of Cutler and Johnson's American Church Organ Voluntaries, there are some sample interludes by John Zundel in an advertising section in the back of the book, added in the 1856 edition. These interludes are generally 4, 6, or 8 measures long, and most begin with an anacrusis. Several are unusual in that there is a sudden stylistic change in the middle, combined with a change to a solo registration featuring an hautbois or flute melody. One can only presume that these were justified as a transition between verses with different textual meanings.

The admonishing comments by Cutler and Johnson regarding hymn playing were apparently warranted in view of practices which were developing into problems. For example, a worshipper in 1835 described the problems with lengthy and highly-embellished hymn introductions by saying that "I have often seen persons, who were in the habit of singing in church, shut up their hymn book, supposing some new production was to be performed, though in fact they were perfectly familiar with the air."52 He goes on to add that by the time the congregation figured out the tune and started singing, it was time for the interlude, which was equally showy and often included a modulation, so that the congregation did not want to start singing again and interrupt the organist.53 Episcopalian writings from Hopkinson's letter of 1786 to "Suggestions for Congregational Singing" included in The Tune-Book of 1858 include allusions to this problem,54 and Thomas Loud's "Model Service for the Episcopal Church" of 1845 offered examples of short, proper interludes. Interlude abuse was apparently very widespread.

Oddly enough, one of the best instructional sources for playing interludes is not a method or collection for the organist but another mid-century book, Our Church Music: A Book for Pastors and People by Richard Storrs Willis (1819-1900). Willis describes specific ways in which interludes were abused in his chapter on "Mutilation of Hymns". He goes on to make specific suggestions for playing formal interludes, relating to the use of keys, cadences, etc.55 Although his language is not extremely technical, it clearly uses more music theory terms than the "pastors and people" would generally understand.

The basic issue underlying the complaints about hymn interludes and introductions was the tendency to showmanship on the part of the organist and its appropriateness in church. This problem will be discussed in more detail in Part  Two, when the rise of solo playing brings this issue to the forefront.

The earliest history of organists in the United States, then, is principally that of accompanist to congregations and choirs, with some opportunities for personal expression in the hymn interludes. This was due not only to the slow approval of organs, but also the instruments themselves, which were generally quite limited in their dimensions. The format of the earliest materials allowed them to be self-taught, reflecting the interest in developing a number of organists as quickly and easily as possible. Despite this intent, most organ training was apparently done in private lessons, using either the few available American materials or imported methods. The increasing popularity of organ playing, however, is illustrated by the documentation that some private religious schools (at least Episcopalian ones) were beginning to include organ instruction as part of their curriculum.56 As the interest in organ playing grew and the basic skill level of organists improved, there was also a rising concern in educating organists to recognize their role in the church as interpreters of the texts they were accompanying, as reflected in new educational materials which were textual rather than (or in addition to) technical. In the transition which occurred near the middle of the century from basic note-reading approaches to more sophisticated interpretations of the organist's role, a new epoch in the position of the organist and in church music in general was beginning.            

Notes

                  1.              Nathaniel D. Gould, Church Music in America (Boston: A. N. Johnson, 1853), p. 168.

                  2.              Robert Stevenson, Protestant Church Music in America (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1966), p. 49.

                  3.              William Harrison Barnes and Edward B. Gammons, Two Centuries of American Organ Building (Melville, New York: Belwin Mills, 1970), p. 9.

                  4.              Barbara Owen, The Organ in New England: An Account of its Use and Manufacture to the End of the Nineteenth Century (Raleigh: The Sunbury Press, 1979), p. 4.

                  5.              Gould, p. 174.

                  6.              Orpha Ochse, The History of the Organ in the United States (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975), p. 107.

                  7.              Gould, p. 206.

                  8.              Louis C. Elson, The History of American Music (New York: MacMillan Company, 1915), p. 25.

                  9.              Byron Adams Wolverton, Keyboard Music and Musicians in the Colonies and United States of America before 1830 (Ann Arbor, Michigan: University Microfilms Inc., 1967), p. 436.

                  10.           Henry C. Lahee, The Organ and Its Masters (Boston: L. C. Page & Company, 1927), p. 245.

                  11.           Barnes, p. 8.

                  12.           Ralph T. Daniel, The Anthem in New England before 1800 (Evanston IL: Northwestern University Press, 1966), p. 30.

                  13.           Thomas Mace, Musick's Monument (London: T. Ratcliffe and N. Thompson, 1676), pp. 9-12.

                  14.           John Newte, "Preface" to Henry Dodwell, Treatise concerning the lawfulness of instrumental musick in holy offices . . . (London: printed for W. Hawes, Henry Clements, and W. Burton, 1700), p. 2.

                  15.           Ochse, p. 45.

                  16.           George Hood, A History of Music in New England: with Biographical Sketches of Reformers and Psalmists (Boston: Wilkins, Carter and Company, 1846), p. 57.

                  17.           Owen, p. 5.

                  18.           Hood, p. 154- .

                  19.           Frank Metcalf, compiler, American Psalmody, or Titles of Books, Containing Tunes Printed in America from 1721 to 1820 (New York: Charles F. Heartman, 1917), introduction.

                  20.           Daniel Bayley, A New and Compleat Introduction to the Grounds and Rules of Musick, in two books (Boston: Thomas Johnston, 1766), p. 24.

                  21.           Thomas Walter, Grounds and Rules of Music Explained . . .  (Boston: J. Franklin, 1721), p. 1.

                  22.           Francis Hopkinson, "A Letter to the Rev. Doctor White, Rector of Christ Church and St. Peter's on the Conduct of a Church Organ" (1786) in Ochse, p. 427 (Appendix).

                  23.           Jane Rasmussen, Musical Taste as a Religious Question in Nineteenth-Century America (Lewiston, New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), "Notes", Chapter One, #47, p. 466.

                  24.           Russel N. Squire, Church Music (St. Louis, MO: The Bethany Press, 1962), p. 220.

                  25.           Andrew Law, The Art of Playing the Organ and Piano Forte, or Characters Adapted to Instruments (Philadelphia: Jane Aitken, 1809), p. 5.

                  26.           Samuel Worcester, An Address on Sacred Musick, delivered before the Middlesex Musical Society and the Handel Society of Darmouth College . . . (Boston: Manning & Loring, 1811), p. 21.

                  27.           Andrew Law, Essays on Music (Philadelphia: "printed for the author", 1814), p. 20.

                  28.           Gould, p. 180.

                  29.           It is interesting to note that this is about the same time that Francis Hopkinson's letter, dealing with these issues, was printed for public use.

                  30.           Thomas Hastings, Dissertation on Musical Taste; or General Principles of Taste Applied to the Art of Music (Albany: Websters and Skinners, 1822), p. 80.

                  31.           Hastings, p. 81.

                  32.           Hastings, p. 62.

                  33.           Jacklin Bolton Stopp, "A. N. Johnson" in The New Grove Dictionary of American Music, Volume Two (E-K), ed. H. Wiley Hitchcock and Stanley Sadie (London: MacMillan Press Limited, 1986), p. 576.

                  34.           A. N. Johnson, Instructions in Thorough Base; being a New and Easy Method for Learning to Play Church Music upon the Piano Forte or Organ (Boston: George P. Reed, 1844), p. iii.

                  35.           A. N. Johnson, p. 86.

                  36.           A. N. Johnson, p. iii.

                  37.           Some tune books in the late 1700's also used figured bass; see for example, Jonathan Benjamin, Harmonia Coelestis: A Collection of Church Music (Northampton: Andrew Wright, 1799).

                  38.           Joseph Muenscher, "The Church Choir; A Collection of Sacred Music, Comprising a Great Variety of Psalm and Hymn Tunes, Anthems, and Chants Arranged for the Organ or Piano-Forte" (Boston: Oliver Ditson & Co., 1839) cited by Jane Rasmussen, Musical Taste as a Religious Question in Nineteenth-Century America (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 1986), p. 206-207.

                  39.           George F. Root, The Story of a Musical Life (Cincinnati: The John Church Company, 1891), p. 10-11.

                  40.           Francis Hopkinson touches on this subject. However, his letter was probably unknown outside of Episcopal churches, and there is no way of determining how widely it was read even within the Episcopal church.

                  41.           Gould, p. 181.

                  42.           Charles Zeuner, Church Music, c