Attwood: Cathedral Fugue

[Dafydd y Garreg Wen]

Can anyone shed light on Thomas Attwood’s “Cathedral Fugue” in E flat, please?

There is a version here edited by Mike Cutler:

https://imslp.org/wiki/Cathedral_Fugue_in_E-flat_major_(Attwood%2C_Thomas)

The extensive use of pedals suggests this is not the fugue’s original form. I’m guessing that Cutler’s version is based the John E. West arrangement published by Novello in 1906, which I have not seen.

The work is listed in a Novello catalogue of 1866. Bumpas confirms that it was “originally published by Novello in his Select Organ Pieces.” It would be interesting to have sight of this earlier version, or indeed a manuscript (if such exists).

Opinions vary on the fugue’s merits. A 1906 reviewer in the Musical Times calls it a “really fine work,” but in 1938 in the same journal G.D. Cunningham dismissed it as “deplorably dull.” Judging by the Cutler version perhaps a verdict somewhere between these two would be appropriate.

 

[Colin Pykett]

Any interest here for you?

https://www.contrebombarde.com/concerthall/music/17410

The comments found here might well be more useful than the performance itself.  Mike Cutler gets a mention.  Achieving that degree of registrational variety in those days would probably have required the assistance of more than one registrant, all rushing around the console like things demented towards the end.  (Did they actually do such things then?).

Thanks for introducing me to this interesting new piece.  It reminds me of S S Wesley, though doubtless he'd have preferred it played on an organ tuned in meantone ... Joking apart, both he and Attwood were early 'pedallists' in Britain, weren't they?

[Dafydd y Garreg Wen]

Thank you. Yes, I’ve seen that.

I wonder what the source is for the description there of Attwood as ‘the man who "brought the foot pedals" to the English organ’.

It was during his time that Bishop added pedal pipes to the S. Paul’s organ (previously only pull-downs). Presumably, as a pioneer, and of an earlier generation, his pedal technique was less developed than Wesley’s.

For what it’s worth Attwood’s only other organ piece, the Dirge composed for Nelson’s funeral, is playable with the hands only, though it would be easier with the help of pull downs.

 

[Dafydd y Garreg Wen]

On 11/04/2023 at 14:52, Dafydd y Garreg Wen said:

The extensive use of pedals suggests this is not the fugue’s original form. I’m guessing that Cutler’s version is based the John E. West arrangement published by Novello in 1906, which I have not seen.

The work is listed in a Novello catalogue of 1866. Bumpas confirms that it was “originally published by Novello in his Select Organ Pieces.” It would be interesting to have sight of this earlier version, or indeed a manuscript (if such exists).

 

I have gleaned a few more details from the 1866 Novello catalogue.

https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5SZcAAAAcAAJ

The Attwood fugue was no 93 in the series Select Organ Pieces. (There were 108 numbers in total, available separately, in 18 “books” or in 3 (presumably quite bulky) “volumes”.)

It is not one of the few pieces in the series indicated as having “Pedal Obbligato”.