sjf1967
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Posts posted by sjf1967
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Not again, Richard, please....An old collegue of mine heard him several times at Alexandra palace, and said he was stunning in his heyday. Of course as a Choirmaster he was unrivalled, and still is, particularly today.......
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There are only a few pieces - all good in an austere North German sort of way, but probably not for the very general audience, if you see what I mean; it's not a style which transfers well to all instrument types. Undeniably interesting music, though.==============Oooops!
A rare mistake on my part.I was thinking of Rink!
Don't play any Reinken, am I missing out on something good?
MM
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Thanks, Stephen, that's very helpful. I thought Williams might have something to say on it. As you probably guessed I don't have a copy myself! I really should get one.
Two birds with one stone...Vox - the first 2 Williams vols are now available in one book revised and enlarged - Cambridge. Worth it. Vol 3 (articles about various general aspects relating the organ works) you'll have to hunt around for - I don't think it's been reprinted. pncd - the Forkel biography is translated in the Bach Reader (David and Mendel, rev. Wolff 1998) - should be easy enough to track down - but the Spitta does not exist in a modern translation that I have heard about. http://www.bach-cantatas.com/Books/Book-Bach%5BSpitta%5D.htm will take you to reprint of the 1880s English version. I don't know off hand of a modern Schweitzer translation, but Breitkopf republished the Newman trans in 1990 - should still be available. There hasn't been a general study of the Bach organ works since Williams that I know of - the best general biography by a mile is the Christoph Wolff (OUP).
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Apologies in advance for what some will find a terminally tedious post, but do we have any Krebs/Bach specialists with views on the authorship of this piece?
The version ascribed to Bach is well known (it's the gorgous double-pedal setting in five-part counterpoint). There are, however, four different redactions of it: two with double pedal and the melody in the top part, and two closely related four-part versions (no double pedal) of which one has the melody in the "soprano" and the other in the tenor". All four are printed in vol. 3 of Gerhard Weinberger's edition of J. L. Krebs's complete organ works. I don't have the version with the critical commentary, but in his introduction, Weinberger gives the following information:
No manuscript sources survive. The extant sources are all late:
1. Four-part version with "tenor" cantus firmus:.
C. Geissler's edition of the complete organ works of J. L. Krebs (1848)
G. W. Körner (ed.), Der Orgelvirtuos (no date given, but presumably similar since Körner began his own complete Krebs in 1848, but never completed it).
This is the version to which Weinberger gives primacy; he relegates the others to the appendixes.
2. Four-part version with "soprano" cantus firmus:
G. W. Körner (ed.), Der Orgelvirtuos
3. Five-part, double pedal version (I)
Geissler (1848)
4. Five-part, double pedal version (II = BWV 740)
Vol. VII of the Peter's Edition of J. S. Bach's organ music. In 1847 Griepenkerl (a pupil of Forkel) had cited a "copy by Gleichauf at Schelble" as the source for this.
Weinberger notes that the first five-part version is closer to the four-part versions than to the the one we know as BWV 740, while BWV 740 is several bars shorter and offers smoother contrapuntal solutions. He suggests that the version attributed to Bach may be a first version which Krebs subsequently revised, thereby producing simplified four-part versions of it and that "Seen in this light, all extant versions would have to be ascribed to J. L. Krebs".
I wonder. A point in Krebs's favour is the fact that the cantus firmus is un-ornamented, which is not Bach's usual practice when "soloing out" a melody. Krebs at his best was a first-rate composer. Nevertheless, nowhere else in his organ music does he achieve quite the perfection of the BWV 740 version and I really cannot see this being his work. The three other variants are a quite different matter. These, with their occasionally ungainly twists in the counterpoint seem entirely consistent with Krebs's other music.
Rather than the "Bach" version being Krebs's first attempt which he subsequently ruined with revisions, I wonder whether it isn't the other way around. Could BWV 740 be a case of Bach showing Krebs how he should have written it after his pupil had had several stabs at it himself?
Vox - only had time for a quick dig in Williams, but he suggests that none of the versions is likely to be Bach - even BWV 740 has some inconsistencies and infelicities which JSB is unlikely to have perpetrated. He also suggests that the cf line may be for violin, to be acompanied by 4pt organ texture - there are of course some other Krebs chorales which use an obbligato instrument like this. There's another article in Bach Jahrbuch 2002, which I don't have access to, which makes a case for the 5 pt version being a 19th century construct.
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What about these people then? (I think that another organisation exists with a similar membership and intent but with different name however at the moment can't remember the name!) A quick scan of the membership will reveal one or two familiar names and some very long lists of qualifications.
http://mysite.wanadoo-members.co.uk/facultylm/index.jhtml
AJJ
PS Later.........Try the LINKS button and the 'other organisation' referred to above (and even more) can be found - I never realised all this existed!
The Burgon society apparently exists solely for the 'study of academic dress'. Marvellous.
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Entertainment through art.
Just to clarify, because I think there is some confusion in recent posts, I mean entertainment in its widest sense. In this sense I believe it is essential. It comes in many forms. Musicians don't have to behave like The Two Ronnies to entertain, but they do have to impart a rewarding experience to their audiences or there's no point in performing. That's still entertainment in my book.
But surely the fact that you appreciated these performances and found them rewarding proves that you found them entertaining - in the sense I mean it above?
Indeed. But the art of succeeding with a new product is to know what the market wants but doesn't yet realise it wants - which requires business acumen.
As far as organists are concerned I can't see anything wrong at all with presenting audiences with new music they will enjoy - or even find challenging. After all, a recital doesn't want to be all of a type; variety is essential (unless you're deliberately setting out to be didactic, as e.g. with a "complete Duruflé" programme - but do such programmes appeal to anyone other than organists?) But if you want to "stretch" the audience, I think drip-feeding is more likely to be better received than a full-frontal assault. I know people who have been "wowed" at hearing Dieu parmi nous for the first time at the end of a recital, but I am also fairly certain that they would have been completely turned off if the programme had consisted of nothing but the whole of La Nativité.
Not sure whether I've made myself at all clear here.
Enthralled maybe the word I want - but I think most uses of the word 'entertainment' in the thread have implied the toe-tapping, tune whistling kind; the Mahler and Brahms recordings I mentioned don't offer any sort of escapism from uncomfortable things - and in that sense I suppose I don't think of them as entertainment.
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Brian - Is the audience not just a tiny bit privileged to have the opportunity to listen to Bach or Beethoven? I agree wholeheartedly that it's not up anyone who is playing to feel smug that they have an audience - but surely both parties (player and listener) need to remember what the point of the exercise is - ie, the music, for which of course the player is just a conduit. Are Mariss Jansons and Brendel, Martha Argerich and Maxim Vengerov, Rostropovich and Carlos Kleiber also on a footing with clowns in the circus? If not, why is it only the organ which has to be 'entertaining' in the way I think you mean? I wonder if it might be this attitude to it as a tool for serious music making which has put us where we are. Once again, I would say that I can't imagine a group of pianists having this idscussion. I recently saw the DVD of Abbado conduct Mahler 9 shortly after his recovery from cancer - nothing less 'entertaining' can be imagined, but my God what a privilege to hear it. Kleiber's last recorded Brahms 4, on DVD from 1996 ( I think) - gruelling and far from entertaining - he's a wreck by the end of the slow movement - but again, an extraordinary experience. I would be surprised if anyone in the hall (maybe there were even a few organists there) felt that the purpose of the evening was to sit back and fold their arms and let it all roll over them with an ice cream to hand....so what's the difference?I wholeheartedly agree with these sentiments. Concert organists perhaps ought to remember that like clowns they are in the entertainment industry and church musicians are in no different a position when they venture onto the concert circuit. The entertainment may be delivered by a different means but that does not mean that being entertaining is not the object of the exercise. Taking a more elevated view of one's status and function is quite likely to lead to disappointment. I think it might be beneficial for some players (no one here ,of course) to remember that they are privileged that the audience gives up its time to come to hear them:not the other way round.Brian Childs
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I don't know about in print Nick, but I've got some old copies, which I think includes the Reinken organ tutor book.
You may borrow them, if you wish. Interestingly, I've also got two books of piano arrangements of the Beethoven Symphonies, in copper-leaf facsimile, which are almost contemporary with Beethoven himself!
They may even be worth something.
MM
MM - J A Reinken, 1632 -1722, wrote an organ tutor? It must be the earliest one extant, and would solve a lot of arguments about fingering....are we talking about the same Reinken that Bach met? The Reinken organ works are published in a new edition by Breitkopf, Nick, and should be easy enough to track down.
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Absolutely, Vox. It looks from the facsimile on the BBC site as if the copies are in tablature; this could be very significant as most of the Buxtehude sources are later and written in staff notation. There could be some interesting variant readings. Even more exciting is the possibility that there are more significant things waiting to be unearthed - this is the same archive from which the unknown soprano and orchestra piece emerged not so long ago.Indeed it is: http://www.breitkopf.com/suchErgebnis.php?...searchKmpId=796 - though I think there isn't much of it.I imagine the Buxtehude find is especially important, given the state of the sources of his organ music?
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/5303252.stm
Copies, rather than new pieces - but still good news.
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I would suggest that it is to over-simplify to treat "challenging" and "contemporary" as if they were synonymous when applied to music. Surely at the end of the day it is not when a piece was composed but what it sounds like that is the crucial factor in determining its "audience appeal". Personally I still find some of J.S.B's less exciting Preludes and Fugues challenging(at least in terms of keeping my attention !) whilst I am very fond of the Fricker Pastoral
and the Prizeman Toccata holds no terrors for me.
That said, it seems fairly obvious that a considerable amount of modern music is challenging in the sense that it lacks any immediate audience appeal. The interesting question, for me, is why this seems to be seen as a fault in the audience rather than in the composer. A chef who insisted on creating unpalatable meals which made those who ate them violently sick could only have a career in an institution catering to the bulimic. But some composers seem to feel that pleasing the audience is not something to which they should be required to give much, if any, attention. Surely there is a touch of self indulgence, not to say conceit and arrogance in such an attitude ? Obviously tastes in music differ just as widely as tastes in food: some prefer their food far more highly spiced than others but if you are a professional cook then you need to pitch your standard at a level which will be acceptable to a sufficiently broad client base to allow you to have a career. Should not composers be prepared to adopt a similar approach ?
Perhaps those wishing to find a means of allowing contemporary voices to write in an idiom which will be attractive to a broader audience might do worse than study the careers of successful film composers, and those who are inclined to be instantly dismissive of such a suggestion should remember that this list includes Vaughan Williams, Walton, Bliss and Bax as well as Korngold, Jarre, John Williams and Morricone. Those who want to plough a different furrow have every right to do so. What they do not have is the right to insist that others should like what they produce or be prepared to pay to listen to it !
Brian Childs
This is an impossible thing to settle, because we are on that impossible subject, taste, but it's still fascinating! I have to come clean, Brian, and say that I would have the Fricker Pastorale burnt at the stake. However - I'm glad you like it! But the more pressing general question is - why should composers (or indeed any other sort of artist) always 'please' the audience? What does 'please' mean? Was Picasso arrogant to paint Guernica, or Shakespeare arrogant to write King Lear? Of course not. Not many people find Shostakovich 14 an easy listen, but it's an important, and unpleasant, masterpiece. Or the second scherzo of Mahler 10 - M's annotations in the score read 'the Devil dances with me - seize me, accursed one, that I may cease to exist... farewell my lyre...' it's not very pleasant music, but worthwhile and illuminating to the highest degree. Must the organ be excluded from all this? As for pitching your food at the broadest common denominator - tell that to Raymond Blanc or Ferran Adria. They may well get more punters through the door if they dropped the prices a bit, served chips with everything and put brown sauce on the tables, but something would be very wrong....
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I could probably "czech" out the details in my files, but I wonder if Stephen could tell me WHICH Slavicky wrote the work he mentions?
There was Klement Slavicky and Milan Slavicky. Klement wrote a brilliant toccata for piano, incidentally.
Milan Slavicky. Didn't know there were two of them - which I guess rather proves your point....!
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Up late - my wife has been singing Kurtag and Feldman at the Proms tonight and needs collecting from the last train! Re-reading the thread on transcriptions from a while back answers some of these questions I think, MM. You said yourself that Hector Olivera, for example, has got it right - but when did he ever play some Weidermann in a recital? He has got rich by giving people what they want (ie nothing challenging) and doing it quite brilliantly, but it's hardly innovative musically as far as I could see from his web clips - Star Wars medleys and turbocharged Jig Fugues are hardly the stuff of artistic revolution. I'm sure he can play the Reubke stunningly - so why doesn't he? The organ is au fond (pardon the pun) nowadays blessed with a dwindling audience that by and large knows what it likes, and likes what it knows. Maybe it always has been. Players don't give listeners what they think they want to hear - I think it IS what they want to hear. Anyone trying to push that envelope is in for a rough ride, or so it seems to me, and what that means for the future is for others to speculate on. I did once programme Slavicky ''Die Augen' at a major venue and was asked by the presenter to drop it in favour of something more 'approachable'. At least I tried, but I've still never found the right venue to play it and fear I may have wasted my time learning it, fine though it is - unless you know of a few Czech venues that would like to hear it played by an Englishman...
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British recorded music archive - or the BBC?Hello, I would be grateful for any help anyone might be able to offer me: I am trying to locate certain recordings for thesis research which are now very difficult to find. As I live in Austria, the chances of finding second hand copies of these are extremely remote! I keep checking Ebay but so far no luck. The records are:Harold Darke on two Pilgrim LPs JLP 139 and JLP 140
International Congress of Organists 1957 on Mirrosonic: there were several volumes of this, but I am looking for just two: Darke's recital, Dykes Bower's recital and the service recordings.
I have some rare recordings of William Mckie playing but perhaps some members here have other material of him, perhaps private recordings on reel-to-reel or disc, about which I would be happy to hear! Ditto for John Dykes Bower and Harry Gabb, no matter whether organ recital or services with their respective choirs.
Thank you very much in advance for your help!
Peter
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Nick Thistlethwaite is your man.This church contains a delightful 1906 Hill organ, built to replace the original instrument lost in a fire in 1904. Those interested might wish to gaze on thisI'm trying to find out some details of the original organ, which was probably installed 1874-6 or so, when the church was first built.
I've been in touch with the British Organ Archive, and we are also having a look at old parish records, but so far without success.
I thought I'd ask the company here assembled on the off-chance that anyone either knows anything about this, or has ideas on how to find out anything.
Any thoughts or information would be welcomed!
Thanks
Dalua
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Cinq Prieres pour chant et orgue - Milhaud. Never heard them, sadly, but they do exist.
Fantastic tip - thanks.
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I remember a visit to Dallas with Ch Ch choir - Highland Park Presbyterian - a 5 manual in the chancel and a three manual in the gallery, both very good. The weekly collections apparently exceeded $50K on a regular basis - that's just from passing the plate around, not to mention pledges and gifts and the like.From some of the sites I have looked at three or four choirs might be a conservative estimate. Indeed, one church was in double figures in terms of number of choirs ! However, there is always a decent no of underlings in terms of assistants and choir trainers.How can they do this? The answer must be in the collection plate !!
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thanks - I've had a listen and she seems to be rather mezzo- ish (mezzoid?). But there's some interesting stuff here - thanks for the link.This CD could give you some ideas. -
Yes, wonderful - but unfortunately it is a bit too low - the soprano in question (my better half) is Queen of the Night altitude...
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After Peter's enquiry about cello and organ got some useful leads I thought I might try one of my own. I am trying to compile a fairly exhaustive library of music for soprano and organ - not arias from Bach and Handel and the like, with the accpt transcribed and played on the organ, but stuff that is originally scored for the combination in question. So far the search reveals (in no particular order of obscurity) - Gorecki, Gavin Bryars, Radulescu, L Boulanger, Heiller, Gabriel Jackson, Norholm, Sebastian Forbes, Simon Holt, Lutyens, Leighton, Philip Moore, Nystedt, Planyavsky, Doppelbauer, Reger, Langlais Missa Brevis, Peeters. Some very obscure Danish bits and pieces too (Per Norgard, I think). I've also got some rarities by Dutch composers like Andries de Braal, and some bits of Barrie Cabena (a lot of the unpublished stuff has been very kindly put my way by Robert and Sally Munns, who rather blazed a trail in this regard). I know about the Karg Elert pieces with violin, and the odd shaving of Saint Saens and Dupre, but are there any gems any of you might know of that I'm missing? I know of a Lutoslawski piece (Lacrimosa) but it's impossible to find. MM - any ideas from Eastern Europe? Any leads gratefuly received. S
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Jonathan - I used to play the whole Suite, and still play the middle two movements from time to time - I'm not so convinced by the outer ones these days. Do you know the recording by Kevin Bowyer at Blackburn? I have a score of Mouvement, supplied on pdf from someone else who plays it, and have played it once or twice. John Scott plays it from time to time. There's also the Berveiller Cadence, of which I also have a copy (now out of print, I think, and also on the KB Blackburn LP).I'd submit Paul de Maleingreau....Poor guy, not only is he noted for one piece, but simply for a single MOVEMENT therin(!)
From his Symphonie de la Passion (written BEFORE Dupré's, BTW) "Tumult in the Praetorium"
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Most of us are likely unaware that he wrote 2 FURTHER organ Symphonies, and a total of over 100 opus numbers(in various genres), only 30-40 of which were ever published.
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Some chaps deserve to be one-hitters.... (just explore their further output) some were simply never championed by influential people...
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One more - Jean Berveiller, made famous by Jeanne Demessieux and her performance of his "Mouvement". Most are unaware he wrote also a fine Suite (very similar in concept to an organ Symphonie, and with a RAVISHING Adagio movement) as well as 2 other organ works. I'm told that all of the rest of his works remain unpublished (along with the elusive Mouvement)
Cheerio,
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No specific works to suggest, Peter, but you quite often find interesting things lurking in the catalogues of Breitkopf, Doblinger, Peters and the like. Have you done much commissioning?Hi everyone and greetings from Sydney.My cello playing partner and I give many recitals together and we're looking to build up a list of preferably original works for the two instruments. If anyone can help with suggestions we'd love to recieve them.
My email direct is petejellis@hotmail.com. Also anyone wishing to drop in at St. James' Church (www.stjameschurchsydney.org.au) and have a play is more than welcome to contact me.
Thanks
Peter Ellis
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Had a few piano lessons when I was a kid, then blundered through my teens without any lessons, becoming fascinated by the organ from the age of about fifteen. I played the organ a little at Cambridge (I read mathematics at Churchill College 1973-76), and spent a lot of time reading about the organ and listening to it.
I didn't play much after leaving university, but spent most of my spare time playing trains on the Keighley & Worth Valley Railway, becoming a director, the secretary and eventually the chairman of the organisation.
In 1999 I went to the St Albans festival and was talked into starting to play again. Through the railway, I fortuitously made the acquaintance of Philip Tordoff, MA (Cantab) FRCO at about the same time, and have been taking lessons from him ever since at Halifax Parish Church. I don't consider myself much of a player, as I haven't got the technique to tackle the major works of the repertoire. I really only play for my own amusement, plus the odd flower festival, and one nerve-wracking recital at HPC.
My musical tastes are pretty wide, covering the 15th to the 20th centuries, but I am somewhat lukewarm these days about the period from (say) 1730 to 1860.
I pay the mortgage by writing software.
Stephen Farr, Organist/D of M of Guildford Cathedral since 1999. Formerly assistant at Winchester and Ch Ch Oxford, and before that Organ Scholar of Clare College Cambridge and a postgrad for a year or two after graduation (Bach's late style and edition of JSB's trasncriptions of Vivaldi Estro Armonico). I was going to give a website address, but some nice people called ncr builders seem to have taken up residence there today.
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Anything by Brendel - especially his poetry.I was fishing out books to take on holiday earlier. Any good summer musical reads anyone would care to share? Mine are/have been/will be:Humphrey Carpenter - biography of BBritten
Gerald Moore - Am I Too Loud
Stephen Banfield - Finzi biography
Slominsky - Lexicon of Musical Invective
And, if it ever turns up, the Clucas book full of salacious gossip on Westminster Abbey.
Carpenter book on Britten way out in the lead so far - refreshingly thorough after that awful Andrew Marr thing on R4 a few months ago ("Here is an in depth 45 minute documentary about Britten, his life and work. So, was he a pedo?"). Pick up your copy today!
A rare mistake on my part.
Winchester Cathedral / Lunchtime Recitals
in General discussion
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32 reed is mild in the stalls - it's in the Nave that damage is done! The Nave organ isn't really a Nave organ - it's on the choir side of the screen and can be used as a Positif at mp-mf or as an an extra Gt chorus from f - ff. Very good Cornet V. You can use it pretty freely for Solo playing.