On New Music

The classical music canon needs little defending. Time has the effect of weeding out bad music, which is why nearly everything we hear from the seventeenth century is so good: the forgettable composers have been justly forgotten. We may tweak that Auden quotation about books to make it relevant here: some music is undeservedly forgotten, but none is undeservedly remembered. This also goes some way towards explaining why so much new music is tedious, pointless, or asinine: time hasn't distanced us from it yet. (As for whose music is tedious, pointless, or asinine? Well, the task of filling up the blanks I'd rather leave to you. / But it really doesn’t matter whom you put upon the list, / For they'd none of 'em be missed.)

So there is reason to mistrust one's senses when appraising new music. (Why do I doubt my senses, you ask? Because a little thing affects them. A slight disorder of the stomach makes them cheats. John Rutter may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.) Current broad popularity is no indication of lasting value. Indeed, even things that I like may prove less than durable. We are, all of us, susceptible to novelty, which blinds us. Like every chorally-inclined high-schooler in the year 2004, I liked the works of Eric Whitacre, which I now loathe. (Add him to the list of cheap purveyors of artless unprepared dissonance, a club he shares most prominently with Morten Lauridsen and the late Stephen Paulus.) Seven years ago it was Nico Muhly, about whom the word Wunderkind was tossed about with wearying regularity.

My current new-music infatuation is with the music of Caleb Burhans, which — for now, at least — I enjoy quite a bit. He's of the same New York classically-trained Radiohead-listening crowd, which sets off several alarm bells. But I find his Jahrzeit striking: it is more than the tiresome timbral experiments that comprise most new composition, though of course it does employ extended techniques. Burhans' Magnificat and Nunc dimittis are charming, and practical enough that I would actually consider using them in a liturgy. (That's another bone I have to pick with so many composers: music does not need to be difficult to be worthwhile. Indeed, it takes a more skillful composer to write defensible music that can be performed by the average parish choir than to write music for a professional ensemble, where in theory there are few constraints imposed by the performers.) But what will I think in five years? I simply don't know. One always must assume one's own tastes are unimpeachable, I suppose.

Robert Herrick: "A Christmas Carol"

What sweeter music can we bring,
Than a carol, for to sing
The birth of this our heavenly King?
Awake the voice! Awake the string!
Heart, ear, and eye, and every thing
Awake! the while the active finger
Runs division with the singer.

Dark and dull night, fly hence away,
And give the honour to this day,
That sees December turned to May.
If we may ask the reason, say;
The why, and wherefore all things here
Seem like the springtime of the year?

Why does the chilling winter's morn
Smile, like a field beset with corn?
Or smell, like to a mead new-shorn,
Thus, on the sudden? Come and see
The cause, why things thus fragrant be:
'Tis He is borne, whose quick'ning birth
Gives life and luster, public mirth,
To Heaven, and the under-Earth.

We see Him come, and know him ours,
Who, with His sunshine, and His showers,
Turns all the patient ground to flowers.

The Darling of the world is come,
And fit it is, we find a room
To welcome Him. The nobler part
Of all the house here, is the heart,
Which we will give Him; and bequeath
This holly, and this ivy wreath,
To do Him honour, who's our King,
And Lord of all this revelling.

An Introduction to Freely-Composed Organ Works

In my former treatise, I explained the chief difficulty of the average organist: (s)he is not an organist at all, but rather a confused and irritable pianist. In the second part of this series, I here recommend a number of freely-composed organ works that should be somewhat accessible to beginners. Links to IMSLP are given, whenever possible.

(attr.) J.S. Bach: Little Preludes and Fugues, BWV 553-560
These eight prelude-and-fugue pairings are most organists' introduction to the freely-composed works of Bach, which is a bit odd, because compositionally they don't resemble much else he wrote for the instrument. Nobody is really quite sure whether these were actually intended for the pedal harpsichord, or written by one of Bach's students, or what. The point is, their textures and proportions suggest that... something's up. Questionable provenance notwithstanding, they are useful pieces, and the counterpoint is generally good, even if not obviously Bach's. Difficulty: easy to moderate

Paul Benoit: Elevations
Dom Paul Benoit was not a major composer, but his harmonic language (akin to Debussy or Ravel, at times) is pleasant, and these pieces are quite useful for service playing, particularly during Communion. I use them regularly.
Difficulty: easy

Edward Elgar: Vesper Voluntaries, Op. 14
It is a pity that Elgar wrote only a few organ works, for these voluntaries are both charming and admirably succinct. (As anyone who's heard The Dream of Gerontius knows, Elgar has his longeurs.) They work nicely as a set in recital, though most can also be easily excerpted. They were originally written for harmonium, and thus require little or no pedaling. Difficulty: easy

César Franck: L'Organiste
Franck is one of the giants of French Romantic organ music, but his larger pieces are far beyond the capabilities of the average church organist. Happily, he also wrote this indispensable collection of short pieces for harmonium. Difficulty: easy

Adolf Hesse: Easy Preludes
Nineteenth-century German organ music has a reputation for being, if contrapuntally correct, perhaps a bit stodgy and uninspired. Better composers of the era, however, wrote some perfectly serviceable music. This collection by Hesse is a good place to start, being designed with students in mind. (The fingerings and pedalings in this collection, by the way, are good: you should use them!) Difficulty: easy

Felix Mendelssohn: Six Sonatas, Op. 65
One can say, without any hyperbole, that Mendelssohn was the greatest German organ composer of his century, and that these six sonatas represent the summit of his output for the instrument. They are terribly useful for recitals — they work on just about any kind of instrument — and nearly all of the individual movements can be excerpted for use as service music, too. Difficulty: easy to difficult

Gustav Merkel: Twelve Organ Pieces, Op. 102
Much like the works of Hesse, I don't find these to be especially inspired, but they are easy enough, short enough, and compositionally sound. Merkel's other collections of organ music are much the same. Difficulty: easy

Johann Pachelbel: Preludes, Toccatas, Fantasias, Fugues, and Ricercars
These selected freely-composed works are a good assortment of pieces suitable for preludes or postludes. In the context of American liturgies, the more serious contrapuntal works (particularly the ricercars and longer fugues) serve well as preludes; the toccatas, in particular, can make for short, showy, and effective postludes. Difficulty: easy to moderate

Max Reger: Twelve Pieces for Organ, Op. 59
Reger is not a particularly accessible composer for inexperienced organists, but this collection has all his best freely-composed pieces for beginners. The Benedictus (No. 9) may be Reger's most-performed work, while the Toccata and Fugue (Nos. 5-6) are probably Reger's easiest prelude/fugue pairing. Difficulty: moderate to difficult

Josef Rheinberger: Twelve Trios, Op. 49
These pieces are a good place to start if you're new to playing trio textures, and they can work as pleasant, short preludes or postludes. Difficulty: easy to moderate

Charles Villiers Stanford: Six Short Preludes and Postludes, Op. 101
Stanford is a notoriously fiddly composer: I find it difficult to play anything he wrote fluently without a good deal of work. (Perhaps this mirrors his difficult personality.) But these six pieces are well-worth the effort. No. 2 of the collection is a rousing postlude, and No. 6 (based on St. Columba, "The King of Love my Shepherd Is") suggests Stanford's lyrical side. Difficulty: moderate to difficult

John Stanley: Voluntaries, Opp. 5, 6, and 7
For some reason Stanley is pooh-poohed by many serious (read: academic) organists, but I find his output to be both practical (it is all manuals-only, and generally quite thin, texturally) and compositionally defensible. These are some of the very first pieces I would recommend to beginning organists looking for service music. Difficulty: easy

Louis Vierne: Twenty-Four Pieces in Free Style, Op. 31
This charming selection of pieces, originally composed for harmonium, is an invaluable resource: Vierne's harmonic language provides welcome variety, and the pedaling in this collection poses few, if any, challenges. I particularly recommend the Berceuse (No. 19), Arabesque (No. 15), Lied (No. 17), and Carillon (No. 21) — which is one of my favorite postludes. Difficulty: moderate

The above suggestions are a good place to start, but there is scarcely a limit to the variety of organ repertoire one might suggest. Consider also Buxtehude praeludia (which vary widely in length, complexity, and difficulty), or some of the easier Bach preludes and fugues (BWV 533 or BWV 549, to start). Jean Langlais has a variety of organ compositions, of varying quality, but you could start with his Organ Book, Op. 91. The English keyboard school (Byrd, Gibbons, Tomkins, in particular) offers much in the way of manuals-only voluntaries. The charms of French classical organ music, on the other hand, are so heavily reliant on the particular colors of the French classical organ that I cannot in good conscience recommend the genre for most American organists.

Lincoln in the Bardo

When it was published this past winter, I made a mental note that I wished to read George Saunders's Lincoln in the Bardo. The reviews, to be certain, were rapturous, and the subject represents a confluence of several of my interests (Lincolniana, postmodern literature, melancholy). I just finished the book, and highly recommend it. Here's the gist: the body of Abraham Lincoln's son Willie has just been interred in Oak Hill Cemetery, and his soul lingers there, instead of passing on ahead to — whatever follows. The story is related by the souls of the dead men and women of the graveyard, those who have also refused to leave, over the course of a single night in 1862. Narratively, then, Lincoln in the Bardo resembles the transcript of an audio play, for the dozens of characters interrupt, contradict, reinforce, argue. Some readers have found the narrative effect disorienting, but I liked it very much. (Apparently the audio book captures the spirit of the book very well, as it is narrated by an appropriately large cast of voice actors.) To say Saunders is a terrific writer is a feeble understatement. I'll simply quote, here, one of my favorite passages in the book. (It's lightly edited for flow, as the original is narrated by two of the main characters. I've condensed it into two paragraphs.)

His [Lincoln's] mind was freshly inclined toward sorrow; toward the fact that the world was full of sorrow; that everyone labored under some burden of sorrow; that all were suffering; that whatever way one took in this world, one must try to remember that all were suffering (none content; all wronged, neglected, overlooked, misunderstood), and therefore one must do what one could to lighten the load of those with whom one came into contact; that his current state of sorrow was not uniquely his, not at all, but, rather, its like had been felt, would yet be felt, by scores of others, in all times, in every time, and must not be prolonged or exaggerated, because, in this state, he could be of no help to anyone and, given that his position in the world situated him to be either of great help or great harm, it would not do to stay low, if he could help it.

All were in sorrow, or had been, or soon would be. It was the nature of things. Though on the surface it seemed every person was different, this was not true. At the core of each lay suffering; our eventual end, the many losses we must experience on the way to that end. We must try to see one another in this way. As suffering, limited beings— Perennially outmatched by circumstance, inadequately endowed with compensatory graces. His sympathy extended to all in this instant, blundering, in its strict logic, across all divides.