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2018-19 CONCERT SEASON
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ORGAN SPECTACULAR IV
SUNDAY, SEPTEMBER 9, 2018 at 2:30pm FIRST UNITED METHODIST CHURCH 420 N Nevada Ave, Colorado Springs, CO 80903 Pre-concert talk begins 45 minutes prior to the performance with organist, Don Zimmerman Joseph Galema & Deke Polifka organ Joseph Jongen Symphonie Concertante for Organ & Orchestra Felix Alexandre Guilmant Symphony No. 2 in A Major for Organ & Orchestra, op. 91 Charles Marie Widor Toccata from Organ Symphony No. 5 |
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PROGRAM NOTES BY MARK ARNEST
Concert overview:
The instrument you play says a lot about your musical personality. String players, for instance, are interested in nuance and color, while pianists tend to be musically greedy, wanting access to everything. Organists, and composers for the organ, are temperamentally inclined to favor counterpoint, the art of combining multiple melodic lines – for which those extra two limbs come in handy. This program is not huge in size, but the abundance of counterpoint makes it denser than a typical symphonic concert.
One particular musical procedure will be more apparent here than at most orchestral concerts: The fugue, with which Jongen’s symphony begins and Guilmant’s ends. In this style – thank you, Oxford Dictionary! – “a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts.” It’s related to the round, but infinitely more flexible and sophisticated.
Overview: Joseph Jongen
Born December 14, 1873, Liège, Belgium; died July 12, 1953, Sart-lez-Spa, Jalhay, Belgium
Work Composed: 1926
Why It Matters: Though rarely performed, this is one of the finest compositions combining organ and orchestra.
Joseph Jongen entered the Liege Conservatory in Belgium as a seven-year-old prodigy and remained there for sixteen years, winning virtually every prize the conservatory had to offer – including fugal writing and organ, in both of which his skill is evident in the Symphonie Concertante. His early works are composed in the late-Romantic vernacular of the 1890s, though already distinguished by Jongen’s exceptional craftsmanship.
In the early 1900s he fell under the spell of Claude Debussy, at that time arguably the most modern of the modern composers. Jongen spent the next decade or so digesting Debussy’s Impressionism, which consisted of innovations in both harmony and musical syntax.
But he did not content himself with being an Impressionist, and by the time he composed this organ symphony in 1926, Jongen had expanded his compositional palette even further. His mature works are fundamentally eclectic, with individual works containing a broad range of compositional approaches. What’s common to them is a very assured and flexible approach to thematic development and a preference for dense textures. And he remained an exceptional organist, providing very specific details of organ registration – the stops that create a particular tone – in his compositions.
All these traits are on display in the Symphonie Concertante. The opening movement is a sonata form, a very common form into which Jongen stuffs very uncommon content. The opening theme, far from being a proclamatory initial statement, is a bustling fugue, looking backwards to the busy contrapuntal style of J. S. Bach. Jongen’s mastery of organ textures is immediately evident, as he uses it both in contrast to the orchestra – like the hero of a novel – and as an ensemble instrument, intricately woven in with the orchestral textures.
The second theme has a chordal chromaticism reminiscent of Debussy. Jongen energetically contrasts these styles throughout the movement, which nevertheless ends in rapturous quiet.
The second movement’s themes are also vividly contrasting. The opening – a lengthy passage for organ solo – develops a jaunty, almost sarcastic motif in an unusual seven-beat meter. (Later in the movement, Jongen deftly re-writes this theme to fit a nine-beat meter) The marvelous second theme, marked Religioso, combines folk-song-like accessibility with a solemn character. The quiet ending is a wonderful surprise.
A mournful chromatic falling woodwind theme begins the slow third movement, followed by the organ and full orchestra in a mysterious wash of sound. The main theme is sweet and almost cinematic. The combination of slippery Impressionistic harmonies, sweetness, and mystery creates an almost dreamlike effect; it’s the most Debussy-like movement, aside from the presence of the organ, an instrument for which Debussy never composed.
The fourth movement is a moto perpetuo – “perpetual motion” – in which the organ maintains a torrential stream of 16th notes from start to finish while the textures and moods shift around it. If you wondered why all the previous movements ended so quietly, it was to prepare for this movement’s enormous conclusion.
With its catchy themes and expert compositional technique, why is Jongen’s music so little known in concert and recital halls? First, much of it features the organ, not a common instrument in those venues. Second, among the many beautiful moments there are also bombastic, overbearing passages. But that could be said of some other late Romantic composers. Much of the neglect is simply bad luck; Jongen, more than most other little-known composers, deserves a wider audience.
Overview: Felix Alexandre Guilmant
Born March 12, 1837, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France; died March 29, 1911, Meudon, France
Work Composed: 1907
Why It Matters: A majestic late work by a rarely performed Romantic composer.
Until he was 34, Felix-Alexandre Guilmant seemed destined to follow his father’s steps as small-town organist in the northern French seaport of Boulogne-sur-Mer. But he had ambition, and that year he got the job as organist at La Trinite Church in Paris. This brought his talents to a much wider circle of attention, and from there his career blossomed. He became an organ superstar, performing all over Europe and making three tours of the United States. He published prolifically, with nearly all his pieces involving organ or harmonium.
Some of you may recall the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs’s 2016 performances of Guilmant’s first Organ Symphony. In that piece, Guilmant’s second time combining organ with orchestra, his approach was fairly conservative. He tended to alternate the two, heeding Hector Berlioz’s famous advice: “Both the organ and the orchestra are kings; or rather, one is the emperor and the other the pope. Their tasks are different; their interests are too vast and too divergent to be mixed together.”
But by the time Guilmant composed his second organ symphony, he’d had an additional thirty-seven years of experience. The result is an organ part that’s much more integrated into the overall texture. Guilmant still dramatically contrasts the orchestra and the organ; but he had also absorbed Richard Strauss’s advice that the organ “is really nothing but a wind instrument,” and he frequently blends it with the orchestra.
The organ part in Jongen’s symphony is so big as to verge on being an organ concerto; in contrast, this is very much a symphony in which the organ is one of the instruments. Guilmant lets the organ be silent for long sections.
The symphony exists in two versions, which appear to have been created at the same, or nearly the same, time: the first for organ alone, published as his Eighth Organ Sonata; and this symphony, both bearing the same opus number. It’s one of his final compositions.
Stylistically, the piece belongs to the late nineteenth century. In contrast to Jongen, there’s no evidence that Guilmant was even aware that Debussy existed. That’s not to suggest that the symphony lacks originality, however. Guilmant was very much influenced by Saint-Saens, one of whose most pronounced traits was his interest in musical form; and Guilmant’s approach to form in this piece is always interesting and even thought-provoking.
This is evident early in the first movement. The piece begins with a lengthy slow introduction, which leads to a grandiose climax; the following main theme begins like a fugue, but doesn’t continue long in this vein, though the counterpoint continues to be busy. As is typical in Romantic sonata forms, the second theme is more lyrical – but, unusually, it’s also closely connected to the theme of the introduction. Guilmant continues to exploit the contrasting character of these themes throughout the movement.
The tender second movement begins with a wistful melody for organ solo. Guilmant’s mastery of colors is evident here: At the theme’s repeat, he doubles the organ’s left hand – but only the left hand – with the cellos, giving this inner voice a special radiance. And he gives the final statement of the theme to the clarinet, emphasizing the natural connection between the organ and the woodwinds.
The genial third movement contains echoes of Schumann. Its form is slightly unusual, with two trios instead of the usual one. The organ barely appears in this movement, supplying only a few bass notes in the second trio.
The organ returns to begin the fourth movement, which is in an unusual two-part form. The organ solo is slow, warm, and dark. The orchestra joins in with chromatic harmony reminiscent of César Franck. The second half of the movement begins with a horn call leading to a dramatic crescendo, after which the first movement’s suggestion of a fugue now becomes full-blown.
The first section of this fugue is purely orchestral. The organ then introduces a second fugue, which Guilmant combines with the first as the piece rushes to a triumphant conclusion.
Overview: Charles-Marie Widor
Born: February 21, 1844, Lyon, France; died March 12, 1937, Paris, France
Work Composed: 1879
Why It Matters: One of the most famous organ works by a composer not named J. S. Bach, its toccata style influenced a generation of French and Belgian organ composers, including Jongen in his Symphonie Concertante
Widor was the nineteenth century’s most important organist, and among its most important composers of organ music. He was organist at the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris – one of the most prestigious organ jobs in France – for nearly 64 years, from 1870 until his retirement in 1933. (Recordings from Saint-Sulpice in 1932, including this Toccata, show the 88-year-old Widor in fine shape.) Beginning in 1890, he also taught at the Paris Conservatory, where his students included many of the next generation’s most important organists, including Marcel Dupré, Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, and Albert Schweitzer.
Widor will always be linked to Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the nineteenth century’s most influential organ builder. Cavaillé-Coll was a close friend of Widor’s father, and helped the son with his education. For his part, Widor made full use of Cavaillé-Coll’s innovations, inspired by Saint-Sulpice’s magnificent Cavaillé-Coll organ.
Widor ennumerated Cavaillé-Coll’s innovations in his preface to the Organ Symphonies:
It is he [Cavaillé-Coll] who conceived the diverse wind pressures, the divided windchests, the pedal systems and the combination registers; he who applied for the first time Barker's pneumatic motors, created the family of harmonic stops, reformed and perfected the mechanics to such a point that each pipe—low or high, loud or soft—instantly obeys the touch of the finger.… From this result: the possibility of confining an entire division in a sonorous prison—opened or closed at will—the freedom of mixing timbres, the means of intensifying them or gradually tempering them, the freedom of tempos, the sureness of attacks, the balance of contrasts, and, finally, a whole blossoming of wonderful colors—a rich palette of the most diverse shades: harmonic flutes, gambas, bassoons, English horns, trumpets, celestes, flue stops and reed stops of a quality and variety unknown before. (translation: John Near)
This new wealth of color and dynamic shading made possible Widor’s Organ Symphonies – solo organ works of symphonic scale. He composed ten; this toccata comes from the fifth of them, where it is the fifth and final movement. It is frequently performed as recessional music at Christmas and wedding ceremonies, including the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
The toccata – from the Italian word meaning “to touch” – is an early form that stressed the performer’s virtuosity, usually on a keyboard instrument. Its heyday was the Baroque, when J. S. Bach raised the form to astonishing artistic heights; but it virtually disappeared during the Classical period, and of the few Romantic toccatas before Widor’s, only Schumann’s has found a place in the repertory. Widor’s toccata launched a vogue for the form that lasted several decades, inspiring works by Debussy, Ravel, and Prokofiev, among others.
This already grand and exciting piece will be rendered even grander and more exciting with a new supplemental orchestral part created by Chamber Orchestra of the Springs conductor Thomas Wilson.
Concert overview:
The instrument you play says a lot about your musical personality. String players, for instance, are interested in nuance and color, while pianists tend to be musically greedy, wanting access to everything. Organists, and composers for the organ, are temperamentally inclined to favor counterpoint, the art of combining multiple melodic lines – for which those extra two limbs come in handy. This program is not huge in size, but the abundance of counterpoint makes it denser than a typical symphonic concert.
One particular musical procedure will be more apparent here than at most orchestral concerts: The fugue, with which Jongen’s symphony begins and Guilmant’s ends. In this style – thank you, Oxford Dictionary! – “a short melody or phrase (the subject) is introduced by one part and successively taken up by others and developed by interweaving the parts.” It’s related to the round, but infinitely more flexible and sophisticated.
Overview: Joseph Jongen
Born December 14, 1873, Liège, Belgium; died July 12, 1953, Sart-lez-Spa, Jalhay, Belgium
Work Composed: 1926
Why It Matters: Though rarely performed, this is one of the finest compositions combining organ and orchestra.
Joseph Jongen entered the Liege Conservatory in Belgium as a seven-year-old prodigy and remained there for sixteen years, winning virtually every prize the conservatory had to offer – including fugal writing and organ, in both of which his skill is evident in the Symphonie Concertante. His early works are composed in the late-Romantic vernacular of the 1890s, though already distinguished by Jongen’s exceptional craftsmanship.
In the early 1900s he fell under the spell of Claude Debussy, at that time arguably the most modern of the modern composers. Jongen spent the next decade or so digesting Debussy’s Impressionism, which consisted of innovations in both harmony and musical syntax.
But he did not content himself with being an Impressionist, and by the time he composed this organ symphony in 1926, Jongen had expanded his compositional palette even further. His mature works are fundamentally eclectic, with individual works containing a broad range of compositional approaches. What’s common to them is a very assured and flexible approach to thematic development and a preference for dense textures. And he remained an exceptional organist, providing very specific details of organ registration – the stops that create a particular tone – in his compositions.
All these traits are on display in the Symphonie Concertante. The opening movement is a sonata form, a very common form into which Jongen stuffs very uncommon content. The opening theme, far from being a proclamatory initial statement, is a bustling fugue, looking backwards to the busy contrapuntal style of J. S. Bach. Jongen’s mastery of organ textures is immediately evident, as he uses it both in contrast to the orchestra – like the hero of a novel – and as an ensemble instrument, intricately woven in with the orchestral textures.
The second theme has a chordal chromaticism reminiscent of Debussy. Jongen energetically contrasts these styles throughout the movement, which nevertheless ends in rapturous quiet.
The second movement’s themes are also vividly contrasting. The opening – a lengthy passage for organ solo – develops a jaunty, almost sarcastic motif in an unusual seven-beat meter. (Later in the movement, Jongen deftly re-writes this theme to fit a nine-beat meter) The marvelous second theme, marked Religioso, combines folk-song-like accessibility with a solemn character. The quiet ending is a wonderful surprise.
A mournful chromatic falling woodwind theme begins the slow third movement, followed by the organ and full orchestra in a mysterious wash of sound. The main theme is sweet and almost cinematic. The combination of slippery Impressionistic harmonies, sweetness, and mystery creates an almost dreamlike effect; it’s the most Debussy-like movement, aside from the presence of the organ, an instrument for which Debussy never composed.
The fourth movement is a moto perpetuo – “perpetual motion” – in which the organ maintains a torrential stream of 16th notes from start to finish while the textures and moods shift around it. If you wondered why all the previous movements ended so quietly, it was to prepare for this movement’s enormous conclusion.
With its catchy themes and expert compositional technique, why is Jongen’s music so little known in concert and recital halls? First, much of it features the organ, not a common instrument in those venues. Second, among the many beautiful moments there are also bombastic, overbearing passages. But that could be said of some other late Romantic composers. Much of the neglect is simply bad luck; Jongen, more than most other little-known composers, deserves a wider audience.
Overview: Felix Alexandre Guilmant
Born March 12, 1837, Boulogne-sur-Mer, France; died March 29, 1911, Meudon, France
Work Composed: 1907
Why It Matters: A majestic late work by a rarely performed Romantic composer.
Until he was 34, Felix-Alexandre Guilmant seemed destined to follow his father’s steps as small-town organist in the northern French seaport of Boulogne-sur-Mer. But he had ambition, and that year he got the job as organist at La Trinite Church in Paris. This brought his talents to a much wider circle of attention, and from there his career blossomed. He became an organ superstar, performing all over Europe and making three tours of the United States. He published prolifically, with nearly all his pieces involving organ or harmonium.
Some of you may recall the Chamber Orchestra of the Springs’s 2016 performances of Guilmant’s first Organ Symphony. In that piece, Guilmant’s second time combining organ with orchestra, his approach was fairly conservative. He tended to alternate the two, heeding Hector Berlioz’s famous advice: “Both the organ and the orchestra are kings; or rather, one is the emperor and the other the pope. Their tasks are different; their interests are too vast and too divergent to be mixed together.”
But by the time Guilmant composed his second organ symphony, he’d had an additional thirty-seven years of experience. The result is an organ part that’s much more integrated into the overall texture. Guilmant still dramatically contrasts the orchestra and the organ; but he had also absorbed Richard Strauss’s advice that the organ “is really nothing but a wind instrument,” and he frequently blends it with the orchestra.
The organ part in Jongen’s symphony is so big as to verge on being an organ concerto; in contrast, this is very much a symphony in which the organ is one of the instruments. Guilmant lets the organ be silent for long sections.
The symphony exists in two versions, which appear to have been created at the same, or nearly the same, time: the first for organ alone, published as his Eighth Organ Sonata; and this symphony, both bearing the same opus number. It’s one of his final compositions.
Stylistically, the piece belongs to the late nineteenth century. In contrast to Jongen, there’s no evidence that Guilmant was even aware that Debussy existed. That’s not to suggest that the symphony lacks originality, however. Guilmant was very much influenced by Saint-Saens, one of whose most pronounced traits was his interest in musical form; and Guilmant’s approach to form in this piece is always interesting and even thought-provoking.
This is evident early in the first movement. The piece begins with a lengthy slow introduction, which leads to a grandiose climax; the following main theme begins like a fugue, but doesn’t continue long in this vein, though the counterpoint continues to be busy. As is typical in Romantic sonata forms, the second theme is more lyrical – but, unusually, it’s also closely connected to the theme of the introduction. Guilmant continues to exploit the contrasting character of these themes throughout the movement.
The tender second movement begins with a wistful melody for organ solo. Guilmant’s mastery of colors is evident here: At the theme’s repeat, he doubles the organ’s left hand – but only the left hand – with the cellos, giving this inner voice a special radiance. And he gives the final statement of the theme to the clarinet, emphasizing the natural connection between the organ and the woodwinds.
The genial third movement contains echoes of Schumann. Its form is slightly unusual, with two trios instead of the usual one. The organ barely appears in this movement, supplying only a few bass notes in the second trio.
The organ returns to begin the fourth movement, which is in an unusual two-part form. The organ solo is slow, warm, and dark. The orchestra joins in with chromatic harmony reminiscent of César Franck. The second half of the movement begins with a horn call leading to a dramatic crescendo, after which the first movement’s suggestion of a fugue now becomes full-blown.
The first section of this fugue is purely orchestral. The organ then introduces a second fugue, which Guilmant combines with the first as the piece rushes to a triumphant conclusion.
Overview: Charles-Marie Widor
Born: February 21, 1844, Lyon, France; died March 12, 1937, Paris, France
Work Composed: 1879
Why It Matters: One of the most famous organ works by a composer not named J. S. Bach, its toccata style influenced a generation of French and Belgian organ composers, including Jongen in his Symphonie Concertante
Widor was the nineteenth century’s most important organist, and among its most important composers of organ music. He was organist at the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris – one of the most prestigious organ jobs in France – for nearly 64 years, from 1870 until his retirement in 1933. (Recordings from Saint-Sulpice in 1932, including this Toccata, show the 88-year-old Widor in fine shape.) Beginning in 1890, he also taught at the Paris Conservatory, where his students included many of the next generation’s most important organists, including Marcel Dupré, Louis Vierne, Charles Tournemire, and Albert Schweitzer.
Widor will always be linked to Aristide Cavaillé-Coll, the nineteenth century’s most influential organ builder. Cavaillé-Coll was a close friend of Widor’s father, and helped the son with his education. For his part, Widor made full use of Cavaillé-Coll’s innovations, inspired by Saint-Sulpice’s magnificent Cavaillé-Coll organ.
Widor ennumerated Cavaillé-Coll’s innovations in his preface to the Organ Symphonies:
It is he [Cavaillé-Coll] who conceived the diverse wind pressures, the divided windchests, the pedal systems and the combination registers; he who applied for the first time Barker's pneumatic motors, created the family of harmonic stops, reformed and perfected the mechanics to such a point that each pipe—low or high, loud or soft—instantly obeys the touch of the finger.… From this result: the possibility of confining an entire division in a sonorous prison—opened or closed at will—the freedom of mixing timbres, the means of intensifying them or gradually tempering them, the freedom of tempos, the sureness of attacks, the balance of contrasts, and, finally, a whole blossoming of wonderful colors—a rich palette of the most diverse shades: harmonic flutes, gambas, bassoons, English horns, trumpets, celestes, flue stops and reed stops of a quality and variety unknown before. (translation: John Near)
This new wealth of color and dynamic shading made possible Widor’s Organ Symphonies – solo organ works of symphonic scale. He composed ten; this toccata comes from the fifth of them, where it is the fifth and final movement. It is frequently performed as recessional music at Christmas and wedding ceremonies, including the 2011 wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton.
The toccata – from the Italian word meaning “to touch” – is an early form that stressed the performer’s virtuosity, usually on a keyboard instrument. Its heyday was the Baroque, when J. S. Bach raised the form to astonishing artistic heights; but it virtually disappeared during the Classical period, and of the few Romantic toccatas before Widor’s, only Schumann’s has found a place in the repertory. Widor’s toccata launched a vogue for the form that lasted several decades, inspiring works by Debussy, Ravel, and Prokofiev, among others.
This already grand and exciting piece will be rendered even grander and more exciting with a new supplemental orchestral part created by Chamber Orchestra of the Springs conductor Thomas Wilson.
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