Aestival Organ Preludes and Postludes

31 May (Visitation):
Ludwig Sennfl (tablature by Jan z Lublina): Ave Rosa sine spinis
Charles Callahan: Petite Carillon on Ave Maria
3 June (Trinity):
Georg Böhm: Allein Gott in der Höh sei Ehr
Healey Willan: Postlude on Nicaea
10 June (Corpus Christi, observed):
Leo Sowerby: Meditation on Pange lingua
Alexandre Guilmant: O salutaris Hostia, Op. 59, No. 2
17, 24 June: [on vacation]
1 July:
J.S. Bach: Liebster Jesu, wir sind hier, BWV 731
Johann Pachelbel: Toccata in E minor, T. 240
8 July:
Dieterich Buxtehude: Praeludium in C Major, BuxWV 137
Johann Pachelbel: Toccata in C Major, T. 231
15 July: [on vacation]
22 July:
J.S. Bach: Prelude and Fugue in A Major, BWV 536
J.S. Bach: Dies sind die heil'gen zehn Gebot, BWV 635
29 July:
Josef Gabriel Rheinberger: Pastorale, Op. 156, No. 8
Adolf Friedrich Hesse: Postlude in G Major
5 August:
Dieterich Buxtehude: Nun bitten wir den heiligen Geist, BuxWV 208
Dieterich Buxtehude: Wir danken dir, Herr Jesu Christ, BuxWV 224
12 August:
Samuel Scheidt: Ballo del Granduca
Anonymous (from the Dublin Virginal Manuscript): Alman Bruynsmedelijn
15 August (St. Mary the Virgin):
Pablo Bruna: Tiento de 2º tono por gesolreut sobre la letanía de la Virgen
Johann Pachelbel: Magnificat primi toni
19 August:
Orlando Gibbons: Fantasy in C Major
William Byrd: Pavan: The Earl of Salisbury
26 August:
César Franck: Offertoire ou communion in E minor (from L'Organiste)
Edward Elgar: Vesper Voluntary No. 3, from Op. 14

And mark your calendars: on Sunday, 15 July I will be giving a recital at 7:00pm, at St. Vincent de Paul Roman Catholic Church in Elkhart, Indiana. More details to come.

W.H. Auden on Liturgical Reform

I have, of late, been feeling mighty contrary, especially in matters liturgical. This mood was prompted, in part, by reports that suggest I am not alone in my reactionary tastes. When complaining about artless, ugly, and unnecessary liturgical reforms one need not look far to find kindred cantankerous spirits, though few of them appear to be involved in the bodies that decide such things. (One can at least take some comfort in being right, I suppose.) I present here one such spirit, W.H. Auden, whose work I generally enjoy. This letter (dated November 26th, but without a year; it was written while Auden resided at St. Mark's Place in New York) was apparently prompted by alterations to the Episcopalian liturgy.

Dear Father Allen:
Have you gone stark raving mad? Aside from its introduction of a lesson and psalm from the O.T., which seems to me admirable since few people go any more to Mattins or Evensong, the new 'liturgy' is appalling.

Our Church has had the singular good-fortune of having its Prayer-Book composed and its Bible translated at exactly the right time, i.e., late enough for the language to be intelligible to any English-speaking person in this century (any child of six can be told what 'the quick and the dead' means) and early enough, i.e., when people still had an instinctive feeling for the formal and the ceremonious which is essential in liturgical language.

This feeling has been, alas, as we all know, almost totally lost. (To identify the ceremonious with 'the undemocratic' is sheer contemporary cant.) The poor Roman Catholics, obliged to start from scratch, have produced an English Mass which is a cacophonous monstrosity (the German version is quite good, but German has a certain natural sonority): But why should we imitate them?

I implore you by the bowels of Christ to stick to Cranmer and King James. Preaching, of course, is another matter: there the language must be contemporary. But one of the great functions of the liturgy is to keep us in touch with the past and the dead.

And what, by the way, has happened to the altar cloths? If they have been sold to give money to the poor, I will gladly accept their disappearance: I will not accept it on any liturgical or doctrinal grounds.

With best wishes,
[signed]
W.H. Auden

Let Us Now Praise Famous Organists

I have written before about the power of media (books, in particular) as tangible objects. This point was driven home today as I was cataloging (a word that looks misspelled, but isn't) my organ literature. Much of it, as it happens, is inherited, and I hope to someday pass it on to someone else. Much of the inherited stuff, it appears, was itself inherited, for many of the older volumes are marked with the distinctive signature of a Hans Vigeland (a wonderfully Norwegian name). My curiosity piqued, I hurried to the internet, where a summary search reveals that Mr Vigeland was an "internationally acclaimed organist and arranger" from Buffalo, New York. For a man who's been dead for decades, there's a remarkable amount of information to be found about him:

• Before joining (or being conscripted into?) the army, he was organist and choirmaster at First Congregational Church in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. He was a soldier at Camp Croft, South Carolina, and served as organist in town. This hilariously inaccurate 1941 article from the Spartanburg Herald-Journal describes a concert he was to give at the First Baptist Church there. (The article was clearly written by a newspaperman with no knowledge of music: "This piece opens and closes with a light scherzo sounding pattern, the middle section contrasting in touch, in the form of a canon." "The main theme is introduced in the pedal, and because of its treatment is compared to what is nowadays associated as a passacaglia." "Handel, who was Purcell's successor as England's outstanding composer, is said to have been strongly influenced by Purcell's music." Huh!) A guest article Vigeland wrote for the Herald-Journal reviews a performance of The Pirates of Penzance. The money quote? "Miss Platt's singing was as easy to the ear as her appearance to the eye."
  
• From 1949 to 1975 he served as organist at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Buffalo, where he must've presided over the installation of the 84-rank Aeolian-Skinner organ completed in 1958.
  
• His son Nils is now chair of the composition department at the Manhattan School of music, and is famous enough to warrant his very own (one-sentence) Wikipedia page.
  
• Knut Nysted, a notable composer whose choral music you might actually be expected to've heard of, was apparently a friend: he dedicated at least one piece to Vigeland, and in copies of programs (tucked away into the very music I now possess) one sees that Vigeland played pieces by Nysted.
  
• One suspects Vigeland may have had a sense of humor. He was known to "play" Cage's music. He is responsible for the placement of the image of Duke Ellington among the saints in the windows at Westminster Presbyterian.
  
• Vigeland was among the party to greet visiting composer Ralph Vaughan Williams at the Buffalo airport; he spoke to RVW about his admiration for the composer's Christmas cantata Hodie. "I've just learned," RVW replied, "in your state of Texas, that it should be pronounced Howdy."

In any case, it seems Mr Vigeland was quite the fellow. And I now have some of his organ music!

Admirable Words, Vol. V

1. Athwart
   
2. Bint
   
3. Conniption
   
4. Encarnadine (a rarer, but better, spelling than Incarnadine)
   
5. Esplanade
   
6. Glebe
   
7. Lagniappe
   
8. Malinger
   
9. Palanquin
   
10. Termagant