About the Program
Notes by John Henken
Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) was a literal heir to the French organ tradition, born as he was into a family of organ builders. His family was on close terms with the pioneering organ builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, who arranged for Widor to begin his formal studies in Brussels with Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens and François-Joseph Fétis in 1863. He moved to Paris in 1869, and in 1870 was appointed to a provisional one-year term as the organist at the church of Saint-Sulpice, home to one of Cavaillé-Coll’s finest instruments. Widor remained there for 64 years. He also became professor of organ at the Paris Conservatoire, succeeding César Franck. His students included Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, Darius Milhaud, Marcel Dupré, Arthur Honegger, Edgard Varèse, and Albert Schweitzer.
The orchestral voicing of Cavaillé-Coll instruments encouraged writing of symphonic scope and texture, although Widor consistently urged his students not to consider the organ a substitute for the orchestra. “The modern organ is essentially symphonic; for this new instrument we must have a new language and a different ideal from that of scholastic polyphony,” Widor said. He composed ten symphonies for the instrument, referring to the suite-like first four of Op. 13, however, as “collections.” He created the template for the new form with the four symphonies of Op. 42. The power of the Cavaillé-Coll designs inspired the blazing chords of the main theme of the Sixth Symphony’s opening Allegro, while the toccata-like swirlings that alternate with it emphasize color and fluency.
Although large-scale toccatas and fugues get most of the concert glory today, chorale preludes were the Baroque organist’s principal stock-in-trade in Protestant churches. These were usually pieces that introduced congregational singing or were used between verses. As such, working organists needed many of them, and Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) wrote more than 140 of them in widely varying styles and forms. He gathered 18 of them in a manuscript in the mid-1740s, known as the “Leipzig” Chorales, since that is where he was working at the time, although most of them probably date from Bach’s Weimar years originally.
The centerpiece of the “Leipzig” Chorales is a triptych of settings of the Advent hymn “Nun komm der Heiden Heiland.” The first of these, BWV 659, is an introspective reverie in one of the most common chorale prelude forms. A highly embellished statement of the chorale melody appears in the right hand, a phrase at a time, over a walking bass line and two accompanying lines that begin by foreshadowing the melody.
There are also three settings of “Allein Gott in der Höh’ sei Her” in the Leipzig Chorales – not surprising since this chorale was sung every Sunday in Leipzig except on special festival days, and there are ten versions of it in Bach’s hand. The text is a paraphrase of the Gloria from the Latin Mass and the tune is based on a plainsong chant. This setting, BWV 664, is a joyful three-part invention in style, the two treble parts alluding to the chorale tune, which finally enters in the pedals at the very end (and then only the first two phrases).
Widor’s pupil Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) took first prizes at the Conservatoire in piano, organ, and fugue, and he succeeded Widor at Saint-Sulpice in 1934, remaining in the post until his death. Like his teacher, Dupré came from a musical and organ-connected family – his father was an organist and another friend of Cavaillé-Coll. A virtuoso performer himself, Dupré was noted both as an improviser and as an interpreter of Bach – he was the first to perform Bach’s complete organ works from memory in a series of concerts at the Paris Conservatoire in 1920. He became professor of organ at the Conservatoire in 1934, and his students included Olivier Messiaen, Jean Langlais, Jehan and Marie-Claire Alain, and Jean Guillou.
Dupré wrote only two solo organ symphonies, although his large-scale works for the instrument also include three symphonic poems, as well as a symphony and a concerto for organ and orchestra. The Symphony No. 2 in C-sharp minor, Op. 26, was written in 1929. It is a haunted work of free-wheeling fantasy throughout. The large Preludio develops three contrasting themes in several sections, and the Intermezzo is a set of spooky variations that rise to a flamboyant climax before dwindling away like a poltergeist dancing off the end of the keyboard. The aggressive, multi-sectional Toccata reminds us of Dupré’s technical virtuosity, while recalling elements of the previous movements.
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847) was as remarkable a prodigy as almost any in music. When he was 17 he saw a production of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Berlin with his sister Fanny, and immediately composed a piano duet for them portraying characters and scenes from the play. He quickly orchestrated it and called it an Overture, although it was another 15 years before he attached it to incidental music for a production of the play staged for the King of Prussia.
Within the structure of classical sonata form, Mendelssohn uses themes and orchestral color to summon aural images of Shakespeare’s fantasy: wind chords and horn calls evoking the forest mysteries, lightly scurrying strings for the fairies, full orchestra for the majesty of Theseus’ court. The Canadian organist Samuel Prowse Warren (1841-1915) transferred Mendelssohn’s vivid tone painting to the organ in this transcription.
Best known for his harmonium and organ music, Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933) was influenced by a theater organ when he composed his Op. 142 pieces about 1930. “These things are quite exceptional and not in my true style,” he said, “but I played one day on a fabulous cinema organ… and was almost drunk with it. In this intoxication I wrote these five pieces, which sound astonishingly effective. May Saint Cecilia forgive my sins!” The first of a triptych called Three New Impressions, “Voices of the Night” flickers quickly through varied moods, including expressive swells influenced by Karg-Elert’s love of the harmonium.
American composer Stephen Paulus (b. 1949) has written prolifically in practically every musical genre and medium, and is particularly noted for his operas and choral music. His organ music includes two concertos and two books of solo pieces. “Blithely Breezing Along” from the Baronian Suite (named in honor of Michael Barone, host of the public radio program “Pipedreams”) was commissioned for the American Guild of Organists’ 2008 Organ Spectacular. Fleet and rhythmic, it begins with urgent pedal solos and burgeoning chromatic runs that seem to redefine the concept of “blithe” – aggressively jaunty, perhaps.
The Faust legend, of the old artist/scholar who sells his soul for youth and love, was hugely attractive to Romantic artists and writers in every field. The personal history of Franz Liszt (1811-1886) reversed that story line – flamboyant virtuoso and legendary lover becomes saintly Abbé – but he dealt with it in several forms, including A Faust Symphony and multiple renditions of a Mephisto Waltz.
In its original version, the Mephisto Waltz No. 1 (1860) was called The Dance in the Village Inn, as the second of “Two Episodes” based on Nikolaus Lenau’s Hungarian treatment of the story. In Max Harrison’s summary of the program that Liszt gave in a preface to the work, “Faust and Mephistopheles enter a country tavern where peasants are dancing. Mephistopheles takes a violin and intoxicates everybody with his playing. Two by two they slip out into the woods and, in Lenau’s phrase, ‘sink in the ocean of their lust.’ Some of the music is truly demonic, but when the orgy has spent itself the stars are still shining and a nightingale sings.” Liszt conveys this narrative brilliantly in his music.
John Henken is Director of Publications for the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association. [Summary]
