ORGAN SPECTACULAR XI

Composed 1743, by George Frideric Handel (1685-1759).

The organ concertos of Op. 7 were published two years after Handel’s death by the English printer John Walsh. Rather than having been composed as a set, however, these concertos were collected by Handel’s student John Christopher Smith, Jr. (1712 – 1795), who assisted the composer during the final years of his life.

After success as a composer of opera, Handel turned his creative genius to oratorio – large-scale works that were performed in concert halls without staging. Faced with an orchestra pit of professional musicians who had nothing to do between acts, he developed the organ concerto as a genre, partly because it served as the perfect vehicle for him to showcase his own talents as a keyboard virtuoso. The concertos were a hit, and they nearly threatened to overshadow the oratorios. The London Daily Post captured the public’s desire for “the latest and greatest” when, on April 4, 1739, it announced “At the King’s Theatre … this Day … will be perform’d a New Oratorio … With several concerto’s on the Organ, and particularly a new one.”

    Since the concertos were performed in the orchestra pit, they utilized small chamber organs with just a few sets of pipes, usually with only one keyboard, and without pedals. In the Baroque, all English organs were smaller than their Continental counterparts; in fact, only one piece by Handel requires pedals. But the English organs had a sweet and full sound, ideal for choral and chamber music.

The Organ Concerto in A Major (premiered February 18, 1743) has four movements. The first, an energetic overture in French style, features dotted rhythms and quick scales. The second movement is a fugue interrupted by virtuosic toccatas. The final movement was originally written in 1741 as the overture for Samson.

Handel was a gifted improviser. According to Charles Burney (1726 – 1814), no one “… had ever before heard such extempore, or such premeditated playing, on [the organ] or any other instrument.” It should come as no surprise, then, to discover places in the score marked ad libitum – places for the organist to embellish a cadence, freely lead into an orchestral tutti, or even improvise (as in the case of the third) an entire movement. According to scholars Eva Gerlach and Ingelborg Schneider, “obviously Handel extended the passage by improvisation and wrote only the bars which establish the theme.” (In today’s performance, we are using material composed in historic style by Dutch scholar and organist Ton Koopman.)

    All three written-out movements use themes from harpsichord works by Gottlieb Muffat (1690 – 1770; the son of violin theorist Georg Muffat). The first movement borrows from Muffat’s Componimenti musicali per il cembalo; the second movement uses the theme of an unpublished ricercar; and the final movement is La Coquette, the sixth suite of the same Muffat composition. (Turnabout is fair play: Muffat borrowed from Handel’s 6 Fugues for Keyboard of 1735.)

Note by Eric Wicks.

Composed 1995, by Emma Lou Diemer (1927-2024)

Alyeska, the “great land.” The land where the world begins in ice. Vast, uncontained, always changing and renewing itself in its own rhythm and time. Stubbornly wild. A place of contrasts: a winter that holds everything in utter stillness and a summer that bursts forth with urgency, knowing its days are numbered. A land where the midnight sun stretches until it loses its edges.

 This sense of breath and expansiveness is captured in Emma Lou Diemer’s Concerto in One Movement for Organ and Chamber Orchestra “Alaska.” Written in 1995 for conductor Madeline Schatz and the Arctic Chamber Orchestra, it premiered in January 1996 at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, with the composer herself as organ soloist.

Born in Kansas City, Missouri, Diemer had a lifelong career as a composer, performer, and educator. She earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in composition from Yale, studied in Brussels on a Fulbright Scholarship and at the Tanglewood Music Center, and completed her doctorate at the Eastman School of Music. After twenty years at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where she helped establish the electronic/computer music program, she became Professor Emeritus in 1991. Her significant contributions to the field were recognized in 1995, when the American Guild of Organists named her Composer of the Year.

 In the “Concerto in One Movement for Organ and Chamber Orchestra”, rather than a literal depiction of geography, Diemer uses evocative musical references in her concerto to explore place and cultural memory. She brings together three distinct musical ideas: an Inuit rhythmic pattern; the opening phrase of the Passion Chorale by the 16th-century composer Hans Leo Hassler (“O Sacred Head, Now Wounded”); and the traditional Hebrew melody Yigdal, also known as the Western hymn tune Leoni (“God of Abraham Praise”).

 These diverse voices come together through a unique relationship between soloist and orchestra. Instead of setting the organist against the ensemble, Diemer creates an interplay in which the orchestra often seems to absorb and reflect the organ’s sound. At times, the orchestral colors seem to extend and echo the organ, blurring the boundaries between the forces.

 The concerto begins with a broad, sustained opening that evokes a frozen, expansive vastness. This icy world is shattered as the music moves into a rhythmic section driven by shifting, asymmetrical pulses drawn from Inuit rhythmic patterns. As momentum slows, a more reflective central section makes room for the sacred melodies: listen for subtle hints of the Passion Chorale while Yigdal emerges in a stunning oboe solo. A brief, virtuosic organ cadenza showcases the full range of the instrument, bridging the music into a finale that drives to a powerful climax.

 Diemer’s life was closely connected to sacred music. For me, the historical connections in “Alaska” are not simply religious references, but cultural artifacts recontextualized through a modern musical lens. I hear “Alaska” as a “hymn to the land,” a prayer of renewal shaped by the awe of a sacred landscape. By bringing the Passion Chorale and Yigdal together with Indigenous rhythmic traditions, Diemer creates a musical landscape shaped by different histories, memories, and spiritual resonances. The “Great Land” becomes more than a geographical setting: it becomes a place where human memory and the natural world meet.

Note by Pamela Chaddon.

Composed 1884, by Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839-1901).

Josef Gabriel Rheinberger was born in 1839 in Vaduz, Lichtenstein, and was among a generation of late 19th-century composers who wrote prolifically for all genres of music including piano and organ, choral, chamber music, symphonies and operas. He was a gifted musician from a very young age, playing organ during church services in his hometown from age seven, and later being offered a professorship at the age of 19 for piano, organ and eventually composition at the Munich Conservatory. Although he did not achieve the lasting fame of contemporaries like Brahms, Tchaikovsky or Dvořák, he was influential as a pioneer, breaking strict rules for motets and Latin Masses for the Catholic Church, and also as an educator for students who would go on to distinguished careers, such as Richard Strauss, Engelbert Humperdinck, and famed Berlin Philharmonic conductor (and composer) Wilhelm Furtwängler.

Today, Rheinberger’s work is being rediscovered and explored, and he is especially appreciated for his elaborate and challenging works for organ. He wrote two organ concerti late in his career, and today we are performing his Organ Concerto No. 1 in F Major, dubbed the “Romantic” by musicologists for being a quintessential example of 19th -century German Romantic compositional style. Combining his skills as organist and composer, he was very judicious with his use of colors in his orchestral accompaniments, notably using only 3 horns and a string section in this concerto. Although his writing style was influenced by contemporaries such as Brahms, and also by earlier Romantic composers such as Mendelssohn, Schumann and Schubert, he felt his most important role models were Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart and Johann Sebastian Bach.

The Organ Concerto No. 1 is comprised of 3 movements, the first being a graceful and noble Maestoso with an introductory 3-note theme at the very outset that serves as seed material for melodies throughout all three movements. He integrates the horns as if they are another organ stop, although allowing them moments to shine independently and add regality to the end of the first movement. The second movement, in the distantly-related dreamy and intimate key of D-flat Major, is a reflective Andante, and begins quietly with organ solo joined by the strings and employing horns as connective tissue throughout. After an energetic development that visits nearly every other key area, the movement winds down as the cellos and violins take the opening melody, allowing the horns and organ to conclude peacefully. The final movement is a lively Con Moto that lets the strings introduce the fanfare-like melody joined shortly by the horns, followed by a sweeping and lush second theme. The two ideas constantly try to outdo each other until Rheinberger uses a full-blown fugue in the development section to settle the “score” between them. An organ cadenza brings us back to the second theme, and the strings try to interrupt with one last statement of the first theme before the organ and horns take us to a rousing conclusion.

Note by Alex Vieira.

Composed 1995, by Craig Phillips (b. 1961).

Known for his choral and organ music, American composer Craig Phillips has built a distinguished career as a composer, organist, conductor, and church musician. In May 2026, the American Guild of Organists (AGO) presented him with its Distinguished Artist Award “for his illustrious career as an internationally acclaimed composer, organist and conductor,” honoring him at an AGO benefit concert and reception in Beverly Hills. He had previously been named AGO Distinguished Composer at the 2012 AGO National Convention in Nashville.

In 2002, Phillips was featured as soloist with the Philadelphia Orchestra in a performance of his Concertino for Organ and Chamber Orchestra (composed in 1995) during the AGO National Convention in Philadelphia. Scored for two flutes, clarinet in A, bass clarinet, bassoon, horn in F, two trumpets, trombone, and strings, the work occupies a major place in Phillips’ list of works. In an interview with The Diapason (June 2009), the composer called it “one of my special pieces,” noting that it was his first major commission and that its success “opened a lot of doors.”

Phillips’ musical language reflects his deep connection to the American organ tradition while remaining distinctly personal. His distinctive harmonic inflections, buoyant rhythmic drive, and idiomatic writing for the organ reveal a musician who understands the instrument not only as a source of grandeur, but also as a flexible and expressive orchestral voice. Drawing on his experience as performer, church musician, and composer, Phillips brings unusual sensitivity to the organ’s role in both sacred and concert music.

Although the title Concertino suggests a smaller-scale concerto, the work’s impact is bright, energetic, and expansive. A contemporary account described the work as a three-sectioned composition of “great melodic and rhythmic appeal,” performed without pause. Phillips places the distinctive colors of the organ in vivid dialogue with a chamber orchestra whose timbres continually extend, contrast, and highlight the solo instrument. Rather than presenting a simple contest between soloist and ensemble, the music moves fluidly among soft and intimate exchanges, full-bodied and brilliant climaxes, and passages of rhythmic vitality. The result is a compact yet compelling work—virtuosic, colorful, and alive with constantly shifting instrumental textures.

Note by Joe Galema.