Organ Showpieces from St. Paul's Cathedral Herbert Murrill (1909 - 1952) Carillon Max Reger (1873 - 1916) Toccata in D Minor, Op.59, No.5 Fugue in D Major,...
Organ Showpieces from St. Paul's Cathedral
Herbert Murrill (1909 - 1952)
Carillon
Max Reger (1873 - 1916)
Toccata in D Minor, Op.59, No.5
Fugue in D Major, Op.59, No.6
Flor Peeters (1903 - 1986)
Aria, Op.51
Theodore Dubois (1837 - 1924)
Toccata (Douze Pièces, No.3)
Max Reger
Benedictus, Op 59, No.9
Cesar Franck (1822 - 1890)
Choral No.3 in a Minor
Jean Langlais (1907 - 1991)
La Nativite (Poèmese evangeligues, No.2)
Eugene Gigout (1844 - 1925)
Scherzo (Dix pièces, No.8)
Jean Langlais
Hymne d'action de grace Te Deum
(Trios paraphrases gregoriennes, No.3)
Louis Vierne (1870 - 1937)
Carillon de Westminster
(Piecex de fantaise, troisieme suit, Op. 54, No. 6)
The English organist and composer Herbert Murrill was born in 1909 and
trained at the Royal Academy of Music before becoming an organ scholar at
Worcester College, Oxford. He was for a time music director for the Oxford Group
at the Westminster Theatre and subsequently worked for the BBC, before and after
the war, while continuing to serve as a professor of composition at the Royal
Academy, from 1933 until his death in 1952. His Carillon is a fanfare-toccata,
an impressive piece of changing rhythms and metres. It remains possibly the best
known of his organ compositions.
Max Reger, often spurred on by the desire to provide his friend Karl Straube
with ever more difficult works to perform, made very significant additions to
the repertoire of organ music. He was born in 1873 at Brand in Bavaria, the son
of a schoolmaster and amateur musician. After early lessons from Adalbert
Lindner, town organist of Weiden, he became a pupil of Riemann in Sondershausen.
In his many organ compositions, some 220 in all, Reger, although a Catholic,
continues largely the Protestant tradition, particularly in his Chorale Preludes
and Chorale Fantasias. After a period in Munich, he settled in 1907 in Leipzig
as professor of composition and director of music, moving four years later to
Meiningen as director of the orchestra .He spent his final years in Jena.
Reger's Opus 59, published in 1901, consists of twelve pieces. Three of these,
including the Benedictus, are based on movements from the Mass, and
contain Gregorian elements. The D minor Toccata and D major Fugue
from the same set of pieces provide a magnificent development of earlier forms,
justifying Reger's recognised position as the most important German composer for
the organ since Johann Sebastian Bach.
The Belgian composer and organist Flor Peeters enjoyed a distinguished
reputation as a concert performer as well as in his capacity as a teacher and
editor of early music. His well known Aria, which has been much transcribed, is
music of particular charm.
Flor Peeters has been said to combine features of Flemish and French style.
Theodore Dubois belongs firmly to the great French tradition of organists, as a
pupil of Benoit at the Paris Conservatoire, where he studied the piano with
Marmontel, winning the Prix de Rome in 1861. After serving as maitre de chapelle
at Ste Clotilde and at the Madeleine, in 1877 he succeeded Saint- Saëns at the
latter church, while serving as professor of harmony and composition at the
Conservatoire, of which he became director in 1896, succeeding his former
teacher Ambroise Thomas. He resigned as director in the aftermath of the affaire
Ravel, when he was succeeded by Faure. Dubois wrote a considerable amount of
organ music. His Douze pieces were published in 1886 and include the
notable Toccata, written, as so often, with the splendours of the Cavaille-Coll
organ in mind.
For over thirty years Cesar Franck was organist at Ste Clotilde, with its
Cavaille-Coll organ, installed there in 1859. Born in Belgium and originally
intended by his father for a career as a virtuoso pianist, Franck eventually
made his career in Paris as an organist, teacher and composer, his innate modesty attracting a loyal group of pupils but militating against the wider success of
his music in his own life-time. He is undoubtedly the greatest French organ
composer of his time. Among his most popular organ compositions is the Choral
No.3 in A minor, one of a set of three written in the last year of his life. In
ternary form, the Choral has a slow lyrical central section, framed by more
vigorous outer sections.
Jean Langlais studied at the Institut des Jeunes Aveugles in Paris and was
later a pupil of Marcel Dupre at the Conservatoire, where his composition
teacher was Paul Dukas. He had lessons from Tournemire, who was for forty years
organist at Ste Clotilde, succeeding him in 1945. His three Poemes
evangeliques were written in 1932 and have programmatic elements, evident
in the second, La nativite. The three Paraphrases gregoriennes were
written in 1934, the third of the set based on the Te Deum.
Born in Nancy in 1844, Eugene Gigout was trained and later taught at the
Ecole Niedermeyer, where he had been a pupil of Saint-Saëns and a
fellow-student of Faure. He later succeeded Alexandre Guilmant as professor of
organ at the Conservatoire. He was appointed organist in 1863 at St. Augustin,
where a Cavaille-Coll organ was installed in 1868, and remained in this
position for some sixty years. It was Gigout who gave the first performance of
Franck's Choral in A minor. His Scherzo, one of ten organ pieces,
provides a brilliant addition to French organ repertoire.
Louis Vierne, almost blind as a child, studied at the Paris Blind Institute,
the Institut des Jeunes Aveugles and was a pupil of Franck and of Widor at the
Conservatoire, succeeding the latter at St Sulpice and at the Conservatoire, and
in 1900 becoming organist at Notre Dame. The Carillon de Westminster is a well
known show-piece, a large-scale fantasy that recalls the familiar sound of the
bells of London's Westminster.
Andrew Lucas
Andrew Lucas was born in Wellington, in the English county of Shropshire, in
1958 and studied the organ with John Birch at the Royal College of Music in
London, where his composition teacher was Herbert Howells. After graduation from
the University of London, he continued his study of the organ with Peter Hurford
and with Piet Kee at the Sweelinck Conservatory in Amsterdam. After earlier
appointments, Andrew Lucas became in 1990 full-time Sub-Organist of St. Paul's
Cathedral in London, his earlier recordings with the cathedral choir being
followed by his first solo recording in 1991. Andrew Lucas has also appeared as
a recitalist on the mainland of Europe, in Australia and in the United States
and has worked as a harpsichordist and organist with orchestras including the
Academy of St. Martin-in-the- Fields and the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra.