CHRISTIAN LANE, ORGAN

Transcription

1 UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA PERFORMING ARTS presents CHRISTIAN LANE, ORGAN SUNDAY, OCTOBER , 2 P.M. UNIVERSITY AUDITORIUM Sponsored by

2 PROGRAM Imperial March Canzona Scherzetto From Sonata in C Minor Pastorale Intermezzo, Op. 118, No. 9 Allegro from Symphonie VI, Op. 42 Edward Elgar Percy Whitlock Jean Jules Aimable Roger-Ducasse Marco Enrico Bossi Charles-Marie Widor INTERMISSION Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543 Première Sonate, Op. 42 Introduction et Allegro Pastorale Final Johann Sebastian Bach Alexandre Guilmant PROGRAM NOTES Imperial March (1897) Edward Elgar (Born June 2, 1857, in Broadheath, England; died February 23, 1934, in Worcester, England) The work of Sir Edward Elgar finally put to rest the widespread 19th century belief that England was somehow an unmusical country. Elgar, the son of an organist who provided him with most of his musical education, also became an organist as well as an orchestral violinist; initially, he found his youthful ambition to be a composer and performer difficult to realize. His earliest professional engagements were as music teacher at a school for the blind and then as conductor of an orchestra of patients at a mental hospital. From these beginnings finally emerged the masterful composer of oratorios, symphonies, concertos and the Enigma Variations. Elgar became the model of Edwardian artist-gentleman, and in 1904, he was knighted. The Imperial March is one of only three formal marches Elgar composed, each for a ceremonial occasion. In 1896, Elgar s publisher, Novello, suggested he write an Imperial March for the occasion of Queen Victoria s Diamond Jubilee to be held the next year. He did so. The Imperial March was first performed at the Crystal Palace on April 19, 1897 under the direction of Sir August Manns. It was played by several bands together at the Crystal Palace a week later, at a state concert on June 18, at a Royal Garden Party on June 28, which was the actual anniversary of the Queen s coronation, and at the Albert Hall in October. The Imperial March artfully captured the mood of public confidence and national celebration, and was an immediate success. It is a lively, melodious, cheerful and exuberant piece, and yet it displays a sense of restraint in its trio section.

3 Canzona and Scherzetto from Sonata in C Minor (1937) Percy Whitlock (Born June 1, 1903, in Chatham (Kent) England; died May 1, 1946) Whitlock was a prodigiously talented English composer. Whether writing for cathedral or parish use, or for his later involvement as a municipal organist, Whitlock was considered conservative, but his distinctive music was full of rich emotion and sly wit. Mostly, Whitlock composed for the organ; he wrote works that were secular as well as ecclesiastical. One of his most renowned secular works was his monumental Organ Sonata, which includes as its second and third movements this Canzona and Scherzetto. Whitlock studied composition at the Royal College of Music; his professors were Charles Villiers Stanford and Vaughan Williams. When he was 18, Whitlock became assistant organist at Rochester, and for the next 10 years, from that base, he established a solid local reputation as an organist and composer. The cathedral organist Charles Hylton Stewart described him as the finest all-round organist he had ever heard, and added that he was writing cathedral music better than anyone else at the present day. Whitlock preferred the secular musical life; as borough organist at the Bournemouth Pavilion, he was able to express his passion for the concert organ. In 1928, Whitlock was diagnosed with tuberculosis; he spent the last 13 years of his life in Bournemouth; during the 1930s, he became a broadcaster for the BBC, and was recognized as one of Britain s finest concert organists. In 1932 Whitlock took on the responsibility as part-time borough organist at the new Bournemouth Pavilion. The four-manual Compton organ in the Pavilion Concert Hall was, he wrote, a veritable giant among organs. [It] has been most skillfully designed, so that it is possible to perform on it music of the most severe type or the latest fox-trot with equal facility! In Bournemouth, Whitlock found the ideal setting for his gift as a master of memorable melody and deft harmonic coloring, which he was able to incorporate in organ works for both church services and recital. Many contend that Whitlock s monumental four-movement Organ Sonata in C Minor represents a landmark in British organ music of its time; it has been called one of the greatest sonatas in the organ repertoire. Whitlock dedicated it to his favorite detective writer Dorothy L. Sayers. The briefer middle two movements, which you hear in this concert, have memorable melodic invention and structural simplicity as they recreate orchestral writing for the British organ. The Canzona, said to have been inspired by country walks, is an eloquent and tranquil song-without-words, while the high-spirited Scherzetto is charming with unusual, artful rhythms and harmonies that reflect the composer s love of dance music of his day. Critics have found the Scherzetto the finest of the light British organ pieces. It was inspired by a recuperative holiday that the composer and his wife, Edna, took in the spring of 1934, when they visited Bath Abbey and its then organist Ernest Maynard. Arguably one of the best extended light movements written for the organ by an Englishman, one early commentator described it as reflecting Whitlock s puckish sense of humor.

4 The first, full public performance of the sonata was given by the composer in a recital at the West London Synagogue on March 8, Pastorale (1909) Jean Jules Aimable Roger-Ducasse (Born April 18, 1873, in Bordeaux; died July 19, 1954, at Taillan, near Bordeaux) At the Paris Conservatory, Roger-Ducasse studied piano with Bériot and composition with Fauré. In 1909, he was appointed inspector of singing and teaching in the Paris public schools. Becoming prominent as a teacher of composition, Roger-Ducasse succeeded Fauré as professor at the Paris Conservatory. The little known and rarely performed Pastorale, composed in 1909, was Roger-Ducasse s only solo organ composition; it demonstrates his skillful use of organ colors and requires much virtuosity. In Pastorale, Roger-Ducasse synthesized the compositional styles and techniques of impressionism and classicism. In his compositions, Roger-Ducasse combined classical forms with impressionist harmony and color. The Pastorale is quite a virtuosic masterpiece; the work encompasses motion and stillness, and is simultaneously dramatic and calm. It begins with a serene Siciliano theme, gradually developed with harmonic daring and textural intricacy. Orchestrally conceived, Pastorale requires many dramatic registration changes in order to bring to life the running brooks and the storm it depicts as well as the shepherds songs. To achieve its goals, it embraces a large range of tonal color; it builds up to a dramatic climax, before returning to the peaceful feel of its beginning. Intermezzo, Op. 118, No. 9 Marco Enrico Bossi (Born April 25, 1861, in Salò, Italy; died February 20, 1925, at sea) Bossi, an Italian organist, composer, improviser and teacher, came from a family of musicians. His father was organist at the Salò Cathedral, which has a one-manual Fratelli Serassi organ built in Bossi studied at the Liceo Musicale in Bologna and the Milan Conservatory; his teachers were Sangalli for piano, Ponchielli for composition, and Fumagalli for organ. In 1881, Bossi became director of music and organist at the Como Cathedral, and in 1890 became professor of organ and harmony at the Naples Conservatory. Bossi made numerous international organ recital tours that brought him in contact with well-known colleagues such as César Franck, Marcel Dupré, Alexandre Guilmant, and Camille Saint-Saëns. Bossi also was appointed director at the conservatories in Venice, Bologna and Rome, where he established and implemented the standards of organ studies that are still used in Italy today. His resolve was to bring the organ culture of Italy more in line with the then current European standards. In 1924, Bossi went on a recital tour to New York and Philadelphia, where he played the renowned Wanamaker Organ at the Wanamaker Department Store; it was the world s largest pipe organ. Bossi died unexpectedly at sea while returning from the United States and was interred at Como.

5 Bossi wrote more than 150 works for orchestra, as well as operas, oratorios, choral and chamber music, and pieces for piano and organ. Except for his organ compositions, his works are still largely unknown. Intermezzo is a work simple and intimate in nature, one that could be characterized as quiet and reposeful. Allegro from Symphonie VI, Op. 42 (1880) Charles-Marie Widor (Born February 21, 1844, in Lyons; died March 12, 1937, in Paris) Charles-Marie Widor s long and productive life allowed him to be acquainted with composers as widely separated in time and style as Rossini and Milhaud. His own family members were organ builders, and he followed in a similar path. He became the organist at the Lycée in Lyons when he was only 11. Later, he studied with J. N. Lemmens, whose organ teachers could be traced directly back to Bach. By 1870, Widor became the organist at Saint-Sulpice in Paris, a position he held for 64 years. Around 1880, he became the music critic of a daily newspaper, L estafette, and in 1890, he succeeded César Franck as Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatory. There he also became professor of composition, and over time, taught Albert Schweitzer, Marcel Dupré, Arthur Honegger, Lili and Nadia Boulanger, Darius Milhaud, Edgar Varèse, Louis Vierne and Charles Tournemire. Widor continued performing regularly until he was 90 years old. Despite his many other compositions, Widor is best remembered as an organ composer, having composed 10 secular organ symphonies. These compositions demonstrated an extraordinary musical maturity and a mastery of symphonic form. Symphonie VI, of which the Allegro is the first of five movements, is one of the greatest of the ten symphonies. In late 19th century France, organs were developed that could fill the role of symphony orchestras. Until then, the organ had been generally associated with sacred music, but by the late 18th century, it was used less because of the anti-clerical mood of the time. New organs, built with symphonic sound, appealed to masses of people, and composers began to write secular organ symphonies for these instruments, most of which were, because of size, still located in great cathedrals. Widor s organ symphonies, inspired by the magnificent Cavaillé-Coll organ at Saint-Sulpice in Paris, revolutionized the art of organ playing and composition in France. Widor opined, 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. The orchestral voicing of the Cavaillé-Coll instrument favored writing of symphonic scope and texture, although Widor consistently cautioned his students not to consider the organ a substitute for the orchestra. In the Sixth Symphony, composed in 1878, Widor displays complete mastery of the orchestral style that he was perfecting in his earlier symphonies. The tremendously virtuosic Allegro from Symphonie VI has been judged one of Widor s finest works, assuring its continuing popularity in the repertoire. Instead of an opening movement in sonata form, Widor begins with a theme and variations, featuring a huge, majestic march-like chordal theme followed by a restless, scalar recitative, which reappears throughout the

6 movement. Massive chordal progressions are joined with rapid toccata passages that emphasize color and fluency. The development section is very demanding for the organist who must manage the initial theme over very soft pizzicato pedals with cross-rhythms in both hands and feet and then one of the most exciting crescendos in the organ repertoire; it leads to a recapitulation in which the two themes are combined. Widor premiered the Symphonie VI on August 24, 1878, at the fifth of the recitals inaugurating Cavaillé-Coll s organ at the Trocadéro. Four years later, Widor orchestrated the first movement, Allegro and the Final, along with the Andante from the Second Symphony, to comprise his Symphonie pour orgue et orchestre. Prelude and Fugue in A Minor, BWV 543 Johann Sebastian Bach (Born March 21, 1685, in Eisenach; died July 28, 1750, in Leipzig) Bach seems to have composed the Prelude and Fugue, BWV 543 early in his career, probably in Weimar, where he served on the Ducal musical staff from 1708 to 1717 (and where he was thrown into jail for four weeks for having dared to try quitting his job.) Evidence suggests Bach first tried out this work in the harpsichord Fugue in A minor, BWV 944 of 1708 or earlier. Most of his keyboard works from the pre-leipzig years survive in copies made by Bach s pupils rather than in autograph scores, making reliable chronology impossible. From the beginning of his organ composition, Bach took an independent stance contrary to the inherited 17th century tradition and abandoned the conventional fusion of repertory of the organ and harpsichord, choosing rather to write specifically for one or the other. His inflexible use of obbligato pedals is a distinguishing mark of that tendency and of the distinctiveness of his organ style. This free form Prelude and the richly textured Fugue make up an elegant work whose parts are closely related in substance though they are very different, of course, in treatment. Some commentators feel that this chromatic toccata-like prelude has the style of Bach s early, north German-influenced works, while the fugue perhaps was composed later. Bach frequently adapted or joined together newly composed music with previously composed pieces to create new pieces. The dramatic Prelude is a large work with a chromatically descending theme. It has great weight, becoming more ponderous when the theme occurs in the pedals in the work s mid-section. At the climax in the concluding section, an exhilarating passage demands much virtuosity from the organist. The Prelude and Fugue is a tightly organized tripartite structure, prelude fugue coda, with the three parts tightly organized and the pedal part very well integrated. The general public in the 19th century did not known Bach s music, but composers from Mozart to Beethoven to Chopin attested to its beauty and its value. Mendelssohn is often given a great deal of the credit for the so called Bach Revival. It is this piece that Mendelssohn chose to perform at his first big recital at Westminster Abbey.

7 Première Sonate, Op. 42 Felix Alexandre Guilmant (Born March 12, 1837, in Boulogne, France; died March 29, 1911, in Meudon, near Paris) The French composer Alexandre Guilmant, one of the most famous organists in history, performed in Paris St. Sulpice and Notre Dame, where he became honorary organist at the instigation of the composer, Louis Vierne. As professor of organ at the Paris Conservatory, Guilmant s students included Nadia Boulanger, who became a renowned teacher of 20th century composers. Guilmant s teaching led to a vast improvement in the technical abilities of organists as well as to the quality of organ performance in general. He was a world-renowned performer and improviser who helped to bring about a greater appreciation of the organ and organ music. Guilmant made three American tours, the last of which was in 1908, when he performed 40 recitals at the St Louis Exposition on what was then the largest organ in the world. (The organ later was transferred to Wanamaker s Department Store in Philadelphia and became known as the Wanamaker organ.) Guilmant s organ music can be understood as belonging to either of two large divisions, concert works or works written for church service. Foremost among his concert works are eight sonatas, written between 1874 and Guilmant also wrote two symphonies for organ as well as many masses, psalms and motets. In addition to the music of Handel and Bach, that of German Classical and Romantic composers, whose pedal technique was considered revolutionary in France in the 19th century, inspired Guilmant significantly. The piano styles of Chopin and Liszt also had a formative influence on him. In France, Guilmant was the first one to introduce the genre of the sonata for organ. Guilmant composed his classic-romantic Sonata No. 1, in D minor, Op. 42, in 1874 for the French organs of Cavaillé-Coll. He dedicated the work to and premiered it in the presence of Prince Leopold II in 1878 at the World Exhibition in Paris. Although written for the symphonic organ and subtitled Symphonie, the sonata has an intimate chamber music feel that contrasts with the organ symphonies of his contemporaries. The sonata, much influenced by Beethoven, has a stately introduction, Introduction et Allegro, before the central part of its sonata form first movement. The pedals introduce the dramatic first subject. The second theme has an expressive long line, and eventually the two themes are combined. The second movement, a charming Pastorale, Andante quasi Allegretto, starts with a simple, rustic first subject, and in the movement s center, there is a chorale-like theme. Guilmant remarked that this movement depicts the peaceful, quiet French countryside, interrupted only by monks singing in a monastery. This pastorale, too, pays its debt to Beethoven. The third movement, Allegro, takes the form of a rondo with an intense, brisk and turbulent toccata-like main subject. The second theme, a romantic hymn-like chorale, recalls Mendelssohn s organ sonatas. The coda, a majestic march, makes a reference to the movement s first theme. The finale is extremely demanding, at times requiring 11 notes to be sounded simultaneously four in each hand and three in the feet. Program notes copyright Susan Halpern, 2015

8 CHRISTIAN LANE Winner of the 2011 Canadian International Organ Competition and Vice-President of the American Guild of Organists, Christian Lane is one of America s most accomplished, respected, and versatile young organists. A true artist whose gratifying musical maturity is demonstrated through playing that is suave, elegant, and exciting (The American Organist), he holds a bachelor s degree from the Eastman School of Music, where his mentor and teacher was David Higgs. He subsequently completed graduate work with Thomas Murray as a Robert Baker Scholar at Yale University. Passionate about commissioning new music and using the organ in collaborative settings, he frequently performs throughout the United States, Canada, and Europe. He has premiered commissioned works of several composers, including Nico Muhly and Carson Cooman, and regularly performs joint programs with internationally-acclaimed soprano, Jolle Greenleaf. Increasingly established as a pedagogue, Mr. Lane maintains a large and vibrant organ studio in Boston and has taught on several summer programs, including England s venerable Oundle for Organists. As an accompanist, he has recorded several discs with choirs; his first solo disc was released on ATMA Classique to critical acclaim in 2012, and two discs, Sounds of the Yard, featuring the new instruments at Harvard University were released in Mr. Lane has been privileged to serve within several of the United States most prominent parish music programs; included are the Episcopal Churches of Trinity-on-the-Green (New Haven) and Saint Thomas Fifth Avenue (New York City). From 2008 to 2014, he was Associate University Organist and Choirmaster at Harvard University; he currently serves as Director of Music at All Saints Episcopal Parish in Brookline, Massachusetts.