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Organ Spectacular
September 10, 2016, 7pm First United Methodist Church |
Georg Frideric Handel Organ Concerto in F Major “Cuckoo & Nightingale”
Carol Wilson, organ Samuel Barber Toccata Festiva for Organ & Orchestra Deke Polifka, organ Tomaso Albinoni Adagio (adapted by Giazotto) Carol Wilson, organ Marcel Dupré Prelude and Fugue in B Major, op. 7, no. 1 Joseph Galema, organ Alexandre Guilmant Symphony No. 1 for Organ & Orchestra, op. 42 Joseph Galema, organ Pre-concert lecture 45 minutes prior to the concert with Donald Zimmermann, D.M.A., Music Director, Immanuel Lutheran Church The thrill of last season’s Organ Spectacular returns with an all-new program featuring Albinoni’s haunting Adagio and Handel’s charming organ concerto The Cuckoo and the Nightingale. Three of Colorado Springs’ finest organists and lesser-known works by Barber, Dupré and Guilmant round out a program that will take you to the edges of your soul and leave you in triumph. |
Joseph Galema, organist
Joseph Galema is currently Principal Organist at First United Methodist Church in Colorado Springs, a position he has held since August 2014. After almost 32 years of service as Music Director and Academy Organist at the United States Air Force Academy, he retired in July 2014. In September 2008, he joined the Lamont School of Music of the University of Denver as organ instructor, where he teaches private lessons to organ majors in addition to classes in organ repertoire, organ improvisation, and organ accompanying. Joseph was born in West Lafayette, Indiana, and chose to pursue his college education in Michigan. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Calvin College in Grand Rapids. His post-graduate work in organ performance was at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Marilyn Mason and earned both Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. Joseph is actively involved in leadership with the Colorado Springs chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and is Treasurer of the Association of Anglican Musicians.
Joseph Galema is currently Principal Organist at First United Methodist Church in Colorado Springs, a position he has held since August 2014. After almost 32 years of service as Music Director and Academy Organist at the United States Air Force Academy, he retired in July 2014. In September 2008, he joined the Lamont School of Music of the University of Denver as organ instructor, where he teaches private lessons to organ majors in addition to classes in organ repertoire, organ improvisation, and organ accompanying. Joseph was born in West Lafayette, Indiana, and chose to pursue his college education in Michigan. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Calvin College in Grand Rapids. His post-graduate work in organ performance was at the University of Michigan, where he studied with Marilyn Mason and earned both Master of Music and Doctor of Musical Arts degrees. Joseph is actively involved in leadership with the Colorado Springs chapter of the American Guild of Organists, and is Treasurer of the Association of Anglican Musicians.
Deke Polifka, organist
Deke Polifka has been Organist and Choirmaster at Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church since 2006. He directs a comprehensive choir program, serves as principal organist, and oversees the longstanding Taylor Memorial Concert Series. In addition to his duties at Grace, he serves as Assistant Conductor of the Colorado Vocal Arts Ensemble and maintains a small studio of piano and organ students. Deke holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in piano performance and chamber music from the Catholic University of America in Washington, d.c. He recently completed the Artist Diploma in Organ Performance at the University of Denver, where he was a student of Joseph Galema. In 2013, he spent a summer sabbatical in France, playing many of the significant instruments in and around Paris and studying French organ repertoire with Marie-Louise Langlais. An active performer, Deke has presented organ recitals in venues such as the National Cathedral in Washington, d.c., and has been featured in national conferences of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, the Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts, and the Association of Anglican Musicians. In past seasons, he has collaborated with the Chamber Orchestra in performances of the Poulenc Concerto and Joseph Schwantner’s September Canticle. Deke is an Associate of the American Guild of Organists and has served in various leadership positions for the Colorado Springs Chapter. When not rehearsing, directing, or performing, Deke can be found with his wife and three children – hiking, skiing, and cooking.
Deke Polifka has been Organist and Choirmaster at Grace and St. Stephen’s Episcopal Church since 2006. He directs a comprehensive choir program, serves as principal organist, and oversees the longstanding Taylor Memorial Concert Series. In addition to his duties at Grace, he serves as Assistant Conductor of the Colorado Vocal Arts Ensemble and maintains a small studio of piano and organ students. Deke holds Bachelor and Master of Music degrees in piano performance and chamber music from the Catholic University of America in Washington, d.c. He recently completed the Artist Diploma in Organ Performance at the University of Denver, where he was a student of Joseph Galema. In 2013, he spent a summer sabbatical in France, playing many of the significant instruments in and around Paris and studying French organ repertoire with Marie-Louise Langlais. An active performer, Deke has presented organ recitals in venues such as the National Cathedral in Washington, d.c., and has been featured in national conferences of the Hymn Society in the United States and Canada, the Fellowship of United Methodists in Music and Worship Arts, and the Association of Anglican Musicians. In past seasons, he has collaborated with the Chamber Orchestra in performances of the Poulenc Concerto and Joseph Schwantner’s September Canticle. Deke is an Associate of the American Guild of Organists and has served in various leadership positions for the Colorado Springs Chapter. When not rehearsing, directing, or performing, Deke can be found with his wife and three children – hiking, skiing, and cooking.
Carol Wilson, organist
Carol Wilson is the organist at First Christian Church in Colorado Springs, where she has served since 1989. She received a Bachelor of Music degree in organ and piano performance from Colorado State University and a Master of Music degree, also in organ and piano performance, from the University of Kansas. For 12 years, prior to coming to Colorado Springs, she taught organ and piano at Ottawa University in Kansas and was University Organist. Carol has held positions as church organist and given organ and piano concerts in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Missouri. She studied organ with Robert Cavarra and James Higdon, and piano with Wendell Diebel and James Winerock, and has played in masterclasses for many notable artists. Today, in addition to her playing duties at First Christian, Carol manages the concert series, teaches piano and organ, accompanies in the community, is an active performer, and is involved in the Colorado Springs chapter of the American Guild of Organists. She is also an adjunct piano instructor at Colorado College.
Carol Wilson is the organist at First Christian Church in Colorado Springs, where she has served since 1989. She received a Bachelor of Music degree in organ and piano performance from Colorado State University and a Master of Music degree, also in organ and piano performance, from the University of Kansas. For 12 years, prior to coming to Colorado Springs, she taught organ and piano at Ottawa University in Kansas and was University Organist. Carol has held positions as church organist and given organ and piano concerts in Texas, Colorado, Wyoming, Kansas, and Missouri. She studied organ with Robert Cavarra and James Higdon, and piano with Wendell Diebel and James Winerock, and has played in masterclasses for many notable artists. Today, in addition to her playing duties at First Christian, Carol manages the concert series, teaches piano and organ, accompanies in the community, is an active performer, and is involved in the Colorado Springs chapter of the American Guild of Organists. She is also an adjunct piano instructor at Colorado College.
Program Notes by Mark Arnest
Hector Berlioz, the father of modern orchestration, advised against combining the organ with the orchestra: “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.” If both organ and orchestra must be used – as Berlioz himself did in his Te Deum – then, he said, they should not play simultaneously. It is indeed a challenge to compose for organ with orchestra, but it’s a challenge many composers have taken up. Today’s program features three works for organ and orchestra, from three different musical eras – one preBerlioz, two post-Berlioz – that give a sonic picture of the medium’s remarkable coloristic potential.
Georg Frideric Händel “Cuckoo & Nightingale” Organ Concerto in F Major Händel was one of the most fluent composers of all time. It’s often noted that he composed Messiah in a mere 24 days; but in fact for Händel this was normal. Just two weeks after completing Messiah, Händel began his oratorio Samson, which he completed in a month; and if that seems poky, he completed the 1743 oratorio Joseph and His Brethren in a mere 17 days. More surprising is the fact that a great composer who was also a great organist did not compose an organ concerto until he was 50. He would eventually compose 20, two sets of which were published in his lifetime, and a third set after his death; this concerto lies roughly in the middle, and was published with the second set in 1740. Because they were secular pieces – composed for the era’s theater organs rather than more sophisticated church organs – registration is simpler than in many organ works; and only one of Händel’s organ concertos requires pedals. But they nevertheless require the performer to make many decisions, due to the liberal use of the term ad libitum. It can mean several things, from ornamentation, to extending a sequence, to improvising an entire movement. Rare in the early concertos, it becomes increasingly frequent as Händel’s vision deteriorated, and he found it was more difficult to write things down than simply to play them. “Thus Händel’s public performances on the organ had come full circle,” writes Händel scholar William Gudger, “from improvisations through full composed concertos and back to improvisation.” Once you reach the middle of the first allegro, this concerto’s subtitle “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale” will need no explanation. The first and last movements are based on the Trio Sonata in F Major, Op. 5 No. 6, published in 1739. (Händel routinely repurposed earlier works – usually his own, but occasionally someone else’s. That sort of thing was a lot easier to get away with in the days before copyright laws.) He thought highly enough of the music to use it once more, in the Concerto Grosso, Op. 6 No. 9. One benefit of Händel’s ferocious speed of composition is spontaneity. The Baroque concerto’s form is looser than the Classical concertos of Mozart and Beethoven: Baroque concertos basically alternate orchestral passages with solo passages. This gives Händel’s imagination free reign, and the dialogue between the organ and the orchestra here is marvelously natural. Händel generally alternates organ solos with orchestral solos (or near solos) – Berlioz probably knew a few of these works in making his judgement – but he also combines the two with good effect at important points. And there are several witty spots during which Händel sneaks in a couple of organ notes during the brief pauses between orchestral phrases.
Samuel Barber Toccata Festiva for Organ and Orchestra
Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland arguably represent the high point of American classical music in the period from the mid-1930s until the 1970s. They created a soundworld that was was distinctly American, unequivocally modern, and yet approachable for audiences. These composers, raised in a democratic tradition, had little sympathy for the arcane techniques and forbidding textures of that era’s European classical music. Barber’s music is characterized by a very high level of craftsmanship combined with a bittersweet lyricism that comes naturally to some instruments but has to be coaxed out of the organ. Barber composed Toccata Festiva in 1960 for the dedication of the new Aeolian-Skinner organ at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music – at that time, according to Barber’s biographer Barbara B. Heyman, “the largest movable pipe organ in the world, weighing 200,000 pounds and having 4,102 pipes, three manuals, and seventy-three stops.” This marvelous piece would be featured on programs more often if it weren’t for its particular style and instrumental demands: on the one hand, its density and the vigor of the faster sections make it problematic in many church acoustics, where it can easily sound muddy; and on the other hand, relatively few concert halls have the first-class organ the piece requires. Barber chose the title carefully. Toccatas are traditionally flashy and technically difficult, which applied to this organ part is almost an understatement. (What may be the flashiest bit of all – the second organ cadenza, played entirely by the feet – alas, is generally invisible to the audience.) The “festiva” refers to the jubilant atmosphere, especially at the ending. However, many of the piece’s most memorable moments are melancholic, and in the case of the first organ cadenza, possess an unearthly strangeness. The themes are derived from motifs in the introduction. They’re brief, lyrical, and used very fluidly; despite the size of the forces involved, the impression is of spontaneity and an almost improvisatory freedom. Perhaps surprisingly, Barber hews fairly close to Berlioz’s advice on separating the organ and orchestra. Although the two often play together, at any given moment it’s always clear which is the leading voice. Barber composed the piece not just for a large organ, but for a large orchestra. He later created the version you’ll hear today, for organ with trumpet, timpani, and strings.
Tomaso Albinoni Adagio (adapted by Giazotto) During his lifetime, Tomaso Albinoni composed 81 operas, all but four of which are lost, and reams of instrumental music. (The surviving works include 99 sonatas, 59 concerti and 9 sinfonias.) He was known far away from his native Venice, and Bach thought highly enough of him to compose two fugues on Albinoni themes. So it’s a poignant bit of historical irony that today he is remembered almost entirely for a piece for which he was at most only partially responsible. This Adagio was created in 1958 by Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto, who based it on a photocopy of a photograph, consisting of the bass line with chords, and the sad, dramatically descending first four bars of the melody. (Albinoni also supplies one other brief melodic fragment about halfway through.) No original manuscript has ever turned up, and Giazotto, who initially said he had merely arranged the piece, later copyrighted it as his own composition. While it’s odd that Albinoni’s contribution to his most famous piece is largely harmonic, not melodic, perhaps the pairing of two creators more than two centuries apart is part of the piece’s appeal. The Adagio is not entirely Baroque; the bass line, with its reassuringly Baroque solidity, is overlaid with a melody more sweeping and Romantic than authentic Albinoni. For whatever reason, today it’s one of the bestknown pieces of classical music, having appeared in such otherwise dissimilar movies as Gallipoli, Rollerball, Flashdance, and The Doors, as well as in dozens of other pieces of popular culture.
Marcel Dupré Prelude and Fugue in B Major, Op. 7 No. 1 Marcel Dupré was the most famous student of Guilmant, who follows him on this program, and one of the 20th Century’s most important organ composers. Well-trained as a pianist as well as an organist, he pushed the boundaries of organ virtuosity by applying piano techniques to the organ. This prelude is an excellent example: the hands drum alternately on the organ, a technique exploited to great effect by Franz Liszt and subsequent pianist-composers. Dupré also showed great talent as a composer, winning the 1914 Prix de Rome, the most prestigious award a young composer could receive. (The award may literally have saved his life: it exempted Dupré from the horrors of the First World War, in which many of his classmates would perish.) However, Dupré’s awesome abilities as a performer meant that, like Sergei Rachmaninoff, he would be better known during his lifetime as a performer than as a composer. The Prelude and Fugue in B Major is one of a set of three composed by Dupré while still a student at the Paris Conservatoire. The form – iconic since the time of Johann Sebastian Bach – consists of a free-form prelude followed by a fugue, an imitative style in which the musical voices (in this case, four of them) chase and wind around one another. The prelude is striking both for its pianistic textures and for its harmony, which resembles Debussy as much as it does Bach. The fugue subject has a striking rhythm that pauses on the fourth beat; the fugue itself features kaleidoscopic modulations that take it into many keys remote from B major. The climax is a stretto in augmentation – a music theorist’s way of saying that the fugue subject is played simultaneously in both its original version and in a version with all the notes twice as long. (This sort of effect must be worked out very early in the compositional process.) For the very end, Dupré brings back elements of the prelude. No less an authority than Charles-Marie Widor, the most famous French organist of the day, declared this piece to be unplayable; and indeed, for several years, Dupré was the only one who could play it.
Felix-Alexandre Gulmant Symphony No. 1 for Organ and Orchestra, Op. 42
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 Trinité 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. After his death he was gradually forgotten, only to be revived in the last two decades of the 20th Century. In Guilmant’s case, neither the neglect nor the revival are diffi- cult to fathom. There’s nothing distinctive about his style, and his work is rarely ravishingly beautiful; in general he sounds like Saint-Saëns on an average day, but without Saint-Saëns’ harmonic curiosity or his perpetual searching after original form. On the other hand, his tunes are catchy – not as easy to do as Guilmant makes it sound – and everything is well-crafted and approachable. If you’re an organist looking for something later than Bach that isn’t Franck, Guilmant isn’t a bad place to look. Concerts can be awfully serious occasions, and there’s a place for pieces that are meant to be fully comprehended the first time. Though the piece is Op. 42, it was only Guilmant’s second time combining organ and orchestra, so it’s not surprising that his approach towards mixing the two is fairly conservative. Hewing to Berlioz’s advice, Guilmant often alternates them; but he also frequently uses organ and orchestra to punctuate and support one another, with excellent effect. The piece opens with dramatic dissonances. The first theme is darkly determined; the second theme is sweetly chromatic and almost chorale-like. It’s a delightful surprise in the recapitulation when this theme arrives as a climactic fortissimo. The second movement is the work’s strongest, a sweet pastorale echoing the religious music of Liszt and Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, a movement from which Guilmant transcribed for organ. Guilmant deftly handles the gentle intertwining of the musical strands, and in the middle section truly combines his forces, giving the organ the accompaniment beneath muted violins. The effect is marveous. The finale is a dramatic toccata. If the first movement’s second theme was chorale-like, this movement’s second theme is a full-blown chorale. The development section brings the themes close together without actually combining them. At the end, the second theme is presented with maximum bombast, bringing the piece to a triumphant conclusion.
Hector Berlioz, the father of modern orchestration, advised against combining the organ with the orchestra: “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.” If both organ and orchestra must be used – as Berlioz himself did in his Te Deum – then, he said, they should not play simultaneously. It is indeed a challenge to compose for organ with orchestra, but it’s a challenge many composers have taken up. Today’s program features three works for organ and orchestra, from three different musical eras – one preBerlioz, two post-Berlioz – that give a sonic picture of the medium’s remarkable coloristic potential.
Georg Frideric Händel “Cuckoo & Nightingale” Organ Concerto in F Major Händel was one of the most fluent composers of all time. It’s often noted that he composed Messiah in a mere 24 days; but in fact for Händel this was normal. Just two weeks after completing Messiah, Händel began his oratorio Samson, which he completed in a month; and if that seems poky, he completed the 1743 oratorio Joseph and His Brethren in a mere 17 days. More surprising is the fact that a great composer who was also a great organist did not compose an organ concerto until he was 50. He would eventually compose 20, two sets of which were published in his lifetime, and a third set after his death; this concerto lies roughly in the middle, and was published with the second set in 1740. Because they were secular pieces – composed for the era’s theater organs rather than more sophisticated church organs – registration is simpler than in many organ works; and only one of Händel’s organ concertos requires pedals. But they nevertheless require the performer to make many decisions, due to the liberal use of the term ad libitum. It can mean several things, from ornamentation, to extending a sequence, to improvising an entire movement. Rare in the early concertos, it becomes increasingly frequent as Händel’s vision deteriorated, and he found it was more difficult to write things down than simply to play them. “Thus Händel’s public performances on the organ had come full circle,” writes Händel scholar William Gudger, “from improvisations through full composed concertos and back to improvisation.” Once you reach the middle of the first allegro, this concerto’s subtitle “The Cuckoo and the Nightingale” will need no explanation. The first and last movements are based on the Trio Sonata in F Major, Op. 5 No. 6, published in 1739. (Händel routinely repurposed earlier works – usually his own, but occasionally someone else’s. That sort of thing was a lot easier to get away with in the days before copyright laws.) He thought highly enough of the music to use it once more, in the Concerto Grosso, Op. 6 No. 9. One benefit of Händel’s ferocious speed of composition is spontaneity. The Baroque concerto’s form is looser than the Classical concertos of Mozart and Beethoven: Baroque concertos basically alternate orchestral passages with solo passages. This gives Händel’s imagination free reign, and the dialogue between the organ and the orchestra here is marvelously natural. Händel generally alternates organ solos with orchestral solos (or near solos) – Berlioz probably knew a few of these works in making his judgement – but he also combines the two with good effect at important points. And there are several witty spots during which Händel sneaks in a couple of organ notes during the brief pauses between orchestral phrases.
Samuel Barber Toccata Festiva for Organ and Orchestra
Samuel Barber and Aaron Copland arguably represent the high point of American classical music in the period from the mid-1930s until the 1970s. They created a soundworld that was was distinctly American, unequivocally modern, and yet approachable for audiences. These composers, raised in a democratic tradition, had little sympathy for the arcane techniques and forbidding textures of that era’s European classical music. Barber’s music is characterized by a very high level of craftsmanship combined with a bittersweet lyricism that comes naturally to some instruments but has to be coaxed out of the organ. Barber composed Toccata Festiva in 1960 for the dedication of the new Aeolian-Skinner organ at Philadelphia’s Academy of Music – at that time, according to Barber’s biographer Barbara B. Heyman, “the largest movable pipe organ in the world, weighing 200,000 pounds and having 4,102 pipes, three manuals, and seventy-three stops.” This marvelous piece would be featured on programs more often if it weren’t for its particular style and instrumental demands: on the one hand, its density and the vigor of the faster sections make it problematic in many church acoustics, where it can easily sound muddy; and on the other hand, relatively few concert halls have the first-class organ the piece requires. Barber chose the title carefully. Toccatas are traditionally flashy and technically difficult, which applied to this organ part is almost an understatement. (What may be the flashiest bit of all – the second organ cadenza, played entirely by the feet – alas, is generally invisible to the audience.) The “festiva” refers to the jubilant atmosphere, especially at the ending. However, many of the piece’s most memorable moments are melancholic, and in the case of the first organ cadenza, possess an unearthly strangeness. The themes are derived from motifs in the introduction. They’re brief, lyrical, and used very fluidly; despite the size of the forces involved, the impression is of spontaneity and an almost improvisatory freedom. Perhaps surprisingly, Barber hews fairly close to Berlioz’s advice on separating the organ and orchestra. Although the two often play together, at any given moment it’s always clear which is the leading voice. Barber composed the piece not just for a large organ, but for a large orchestra. He later created the version you’ll hear today, for organ with trumpet, timpani, and strings.
Tomaso Albinoni Adagio (adapted by Giazotto) During his lifetime, Tomaso Albinoni composed 81 operas, all but four of which are lost, and reams of instrumental music. (The surviving works include 99 sonatas, 59 concerti and 9 sinfonias.) He was known far away from his native Venice, and Bach thought highly enough of him to compose two fugues on Albinoni themes. So it’s a poignant bit of historical irony that today he is remembered almost entirely for a piece for which he was at most only partially responsible. This Adagio was created in 1958 by Italian musicologist Remo Giazotto, who based it on a photocopy of a photograph, consisting of the bass line with chords, and the sad, dramatically descending first four bars of the melody. (Albinoni also supplies one other brief melodic fragment about halfway through.) No original manuscript has ever turned up, and Giazotto, who initially said he had merely arranged the piece, later copyrighted it as his own composition. While it’s odd that Albinoni’s contribution to his most famous piece is largely harmonic, not melodic, perhaps the pairing of two creators more than two centuries apart is part of the piece’s appeal. The Adagio is not entirely Baroque; the bass line, with its reassuringly Baroque solidity, is overlaid with a melody more sweeping and Romantic than authentic Albinoni. For whatever reason, today it’s one of the bestknown pieces of classical music, having appeared in such otherwise dissimilar movies as Gallipoli, Rollerball, Flashdance, and The Doors, as well as in dozens of other pieces of popular culture.
Marcel Dupré Prelude and Fugue in B Major, Op. 7 No. 1 Marcel Dupré was the most famous student of Guilmant, who follows him on this program, and one of the 20th Century’s most important organ composers. Well-trained as a pianist as well as an organist, he pushed the boundaries of organ virtuosity by applying piano techniques to the organ. This prelude is an excellent example: the hands drum alternately on the organ, a technique exploited to great effect by Franz Liszt and subsequent pianist-composers. Dupré also showed great talent as a composer, winning the 1914 Prix de Rome, the most prestigious award a young composer could receive. (The award may literally have saved his life: it exempted Dupré from the horrors of the First World War, in which many of his classmates would perish.) However, Dupré’s awesome abilities as a performer meant that, like Sergei Rachmaninoff, he would be better known during his lifetime as a performer than as a composer. The Prelude and Fugue in B Major is one of a set of three composed by Dupré while still a student at the Paris Conservatoire. The form – iconic since the time of Johann Sebastian Bach – consists of a free-form prelude followed by a fugue, an imitative style in which the musical voices (in this case, four of them) chase and wind around one another. The prelude is striking both for its pianistic textures and for its harmony, which resembles Debussy as much as it does Bach. The fugue subject has a striking rhythm that pauses on the fourth beat; the fugue itself features kaleidoscopic modulations that take it into many keys remote from B major. The climax is a stretto in augmentation – a music theorist’s way of saying that the fugue subject is played simultaneously in both its original version and in a version with all the notes twice as long. (This sort of effect must be worked out very early in the compositional process.) For the very end, Dupré brings back elements of the prelude. No less an authority than Charles-Marie Widor, the most famous French organist of the day, declared this piece to be unplayable; and indeed, for several years, Dupré was the only one who could play it.
Felix-Alexandre Gulmant Symphony No. 1 for Organ and Orchestra, Op. 42
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 Trinité 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. After his death he was gradually forgotten, only to be revived in the last two decades of the 20th Century. In Guilmant’s case, neither the neglect nor the revival are diffi- cult to fathom. There’s nothing distinctive about his style, and his work is rarely ravishingly beautiful; in general he sounds like Saint-Saëns on an average day, but without Saint-Saëns’ harmonic curiosity or his perpetual searching after original form. On the other hand, his tunes are catchy – not as easy to do as Guilmant makes it sound – and everything is well-crafted and approachable. If you’re an organist looking for something later than Bach that isn’t Franck, Guilmant isn’t a bad place to look. Concerts can be awfully serious occasions, and there’s a place for pieces that are meant to be fully comprehended the first time. Though the piece is Op. 42, it was only Guilmant’s second time combining organ and orchestra, so it’s not surprising that his approach towards mixing the two is fairly conservative. Hewing to Berlioz’s advice, Guilmant often alternates them; but he also frequently uses organ and orchestra to punctuate and support one another, with excellent effect. The piece opens with dramatic dissonances. The first theme is darkly determined; the second theme is sweetly chromatic and almost chorale-like. It’s a delightful surprise in the recapitulation when this theme arrives as a climactic fortissimo. The second movement is the work’s strongest, a sweet pastorale echoing the religious music of Liszt and Berlioz’s L’Enfance du Christ, a movement from which Guilmant transcribed for organ. Guilmant deftly handles the gentle intertwining of the musical strands, and in the middle section truly combines his forces, giving the organ the accompaniment beneath muted violins. The effect is marveous. The finale is a dramatic toccata. If the first movement’s second theme was chorale-like, this movement’s second theme is a full-blown chorale. The development section brings the themes close together without actually combining them. At the end, the second theme is presented with maximum bombast, bringing the piece to a triumphant conclusion.
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