As of April 25, 2014, this montage will no longer be available on Pod-O-Matic. It can be heard or downloaded from the Internet Archive at the following address:
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The Lenten
season is usually an opportunity for me to program organ music, and this year is
no exception. On the Tuesday Blog, we have already featured posts on E. Power Biggs and a set of French Organ Masterpieces, and next month we will revisit a live concert by Virgil Fox. On the Friday
Blog, in addition to this week’s feature, I plan a complete performance of Messiaen’s
Méditations sur le Mystère de la Sainte Trinité.
Olivier
Messiaen belongs to a long tradition of French musicians, who were titular
organists in some of France’s most prestigious churches (many of them were
endowed with organs by Cavaillé-Coll), as well as composers and teachers., The
tradition goes back to César Franck and Camille Sauint-Saëns, and in posts here
and on our other platforms, we have had opportunity to offer posts featuring
many of them.
Somewhat
neglected among that who’s who of the French organ is one of France’s first
such “triple threats”, Alexandre Guilmant.
A student
of his father, then of the Belgian master Jacques-Nicolas Lemmens, Guilmant
became an organist and teacher in Boulogne-sur-Mer, a city ion Northern France
and his place of birth. In 1871 he was appointed to play the organ regularly at
la Trinité church in Paris - the same church and organ Messiaen occupied for 60
years and a position Guilmant himself held for a mere… 30 years.
From then
on Guilmant followed a career as a virtuoso; he gave concerts in the United
States (the first major French organist to tour that country), and in Canada,
as well as in Europe, making especially frequent visits to England. His
American achievements included a 1904 series of no fewer than 40 recitals on
the largest organ in the world, the St. Louis Exposition Organ, now preserved
as the nucleus of Philadelphia's Wanamaker Organ.
In 1894
Guilmant founded the Schola Cantorum with Charles Bordes and Vincent
d'Indy. He taught there up until his death at his home, in 1911. In
addition, he taught at the Conservatoire de Paris where he succeeded Charles-Marie
Widor as organ teacher in 1896.
As a
scholarly organist, Guilmant oversaw critical editions and anthologies (such as
Archives des Maîtres de l'Orgue and l'École classique de l'Orgue.
These anthologies,
despite all the musicological developments which have taken place since
Guilmant's own time, remain very valuable sources of early music that is often
hard to track down elsewhere.
Guilmant
was an accomplished and extremely prolific composer. Unlike Widor, who produced
a great deal of music in all the main genres, Guilmant devoted himself almost
entirely to works for his own instrument, the organ. His organ output includes:
Pièces dans différents styles (published in 18 books); L'organiste
pratique (published in 12 books); and L'Organiste liturgique
(published in 10 books).
Most of his
pieces (and all of the most frequently played ones) are fairly short. Among his
most ambitious pieces, Guilmant's Eight Sonatas were conceived with the
Cavaillé-Coll organ of La Trinité in mind, and are therefore symphonic in style
and form, taking their place alongside the symphonic organ works of Franck and
the Organ Symphonies of Widor. Two of these sonatas (Nos. 1 and 8) were given
extra orchestral treatment and are also known as his two symphonies for organ
and orchestra. These are not “concertos” but rather pieces where the organ is
fully meshed to the orchestra. Despite being championed by great conductors
(Sonate No. 1/Symphonie No. 1 for organ and orchestra, was programmed by Sergei
Koussevitzky in the 1930s), recordings of these works are few and far between.
The recordings retained for today’s montage were part of a two-disc set
featuring Yan-Pascal Tortelier and the BBC Philharmonic in collaboration with
the Liverpool Cathedral titular, Ian Tracey.
As filler,
I added some short works from a recent Naxos release.
I think you will love this music too!
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