Who loves organ music?

[Chilperich]

I have a sort of love/hate relationship with the organ.

The love element is connected to all the great music that has been specifically composed for the instrument (Bach especially, but also Mendelssohn, Franck, the Eleven Chorale Preludes of Brahms and the huge edifice of Reger).

The hate element comes from my patchy knowledge of the mechanics of the instrument. I have a sort of general idea about stops and registration, but a real organist would detect the gaps in my knowledge very quickly. Consequently, I labour under a general inferiority complex.

I have two friends who are both brilliant organists: Tom Corfield (who is Assistant Organist at Derby Cathedral) and Martin White (who has toiled unrewardingly for a musically indifferent Roman Catholic church for rather too many years). Martin has given me some informal instruction on the not very good organ of his church (some of the easier chorale preludes from the Orgelbuechlein), and I have a copy of C. H. Trevor's The Oxford Organ Method, but although I have a vague (if persistent) ambition to play the instrument properly I doubt if I could get a regular gig in a skating rink, let alone a church!

My great 20th-century musical hero Franz Schmidt composed a number of immensely important but generally neglected organ works. (He later orchestrated the vast Chaconne.) They are available on a four-CD set (on the Capriccio label), performed by Andreas Juffinger, but Tom Corfield (who is an expert on Schmidt's music) is unimpressed by the performances. (Still, this is the only complete set that we have yet.)

Many of Schmidt's organ works (the already-mentioned Chaconne, the Prelude and Fugue in C, the Prelude and Fugue in E flat) are on a comparable scale to similar works by Reger; however, in contast to Reger, they are not composed for the romantic organ (which Schmidt, in a polemical essay, dismissed as a "feebly roaring monster") but for the classical organ. (The myth dies hard that Schmidt's music in general greatly resembles that of Reger, but if anything demonstrates its falsity it is the organ music.)

Most of these works are fairly easy to obtain in score (although they are monstrously difficult to play). I'd strongly recommend them to any real organists who are unfamiliar with them.

[Goldie]

Philidor, That sounds like one of the best Christmas experiences ever.

[Philidor]

Originally Posted by Goldie

Philidor, That sounds like one of the best Christmas experiences ever.

Yes, It was lovely. I don't like the Old Testament 'eye for an eye' vengeful stuff (which leads to the whole world going blind) plus the endless lists of names: Jerimiah begat Clint begat Tracy begat Wayne. But the raw New Testament message -- return hate with love -- shines through at Christmas. The Church of England, a hopelessly wet organisation, does it very well.

:xmasgrin:

[Chilperich]

I write as an atheist rather than as a religious person, but the Lex Talionis ("an eye for an eye, etc.") has been widely misunderstood.

It was apparently evolved to break the cycle of blood feuds and vendettas that were usual at the time, and is therefore not to be taken literally, but as a general metaphor for proportional (and therefore limited) justice.

[Philidor]

* pokes Chilperich in eye *

:xmasgrin:

(I bow to your Biblical scholarship)

[micrologus]

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qccBF1beTmY&feature=related"]YouTube - Hand-pumped organ[/ame]

[semiquaver]

That's marvellous, micro. Every village should have one!

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by Goldie

Philidor, That sounds like one of the best Christmas experiences ever.

You should have heard Philidor leading the congregation in 'O Come All Ye Faithful'. And doing the harmonies on 'The First Noel'.

Stirring, it was.

[Florestan]

Originally Posted by micrologus

YouTube - Hand-pumped organ

That certainly beats aerobics as a way to keep fit!

[haydnguy]

Practicing must have been difficult in those days when you had to have TWO people show up!!