Tonight, I went to Erica Kerr's Organ Recital in Pease. As I flipped through the program about halfway through, I realized that all of these compositions were from before 1750.
She opened with Prelude and Fugue in B minor and three Bach Chorale Preludes:
Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland
Der Tag, der ist so freudenreich
Lobt Gott, ihr Christen
The Fugue was very light and dance like. Throughought this whole concert, I noticed heavy amounts of imitation. I am not a critical enough listener to trace key changes throughout the concert, but sometimes the program notes will help. The prelude of the Fugue is in b-minor, as the title suggests, but the fugue concludes in a huge B-Major chord.
B-Major is strongly colored, announcing wild passions, composed from the most glaring colors. Anger, rage, jealousy, fury, despair and every burden of the heart lies in its sphere. Because there are no words to this composition, I cannot completely verify that this is true, but I hear (and even the program notes depict) a "moody" scalar subject.
(Unfortunately, the program does not give the key of each of the prelude pieces.)
Antonio de Cabezon (1510-1566)
El Cavallero
This was extremely beautiful and light. It was not nearly as much of a big sound as the other pieces. There is a bunch of sustained notes, and the entire piece is registered very much in the higher range. The accompaniment is absolutely secondary to the beautiful melody. It's hardly there at all. There (surprisingly) is a ton of suspension-resolution in this piece. The program notes suggest that Cabezon was "ahead of his time" because of this composition. I might suggest that the reason for the registry being so soft and high is that it is a woman's voice singing to a messenger:
"Tell the gentleman
Not to complain,
That I give him my faith
That I love him.
Tell the gentleman
Of graceful body,
Not to complain
Secretly."
I suppose it is highly characteristic of the text to match the tone of the piece because of all of the tone painting in the Renaissance. I don't recall listening to any other Spanish Renaissance composers, so I don't have that much in my mental bank to draw on.
Francisco Correa de Arauxo (1584 - 1654)
XXXVI - Eieneo de Medio Rezistro
This composer is also Spanish. This piece was contrasting in sound to the Cabezon piece. This was much louder and more moving. I believe I'm seeing a correlation between loudness and complexity with how late the composer is. I'm also afraid that all organ sounds are starting to sound the same, and It's much more difficult to be critical with listening. There isn't much dynamic contrast, which I believe to be true to the period organ, which until recently I didn't even know existed in the Baroque, much less Renaissance.
Jan Pieterszoon Sweelinck (1562-1621)
Fantasia
Allein Gott in der Hoh sei Ehr
I scrambled my notes, so I don't know which notes apply to which piece, but at times the piece was so exactly imitative, it was antiphonal. The only change was which stops were pulled, where the pitch, rhythm, and register were all the same. This was exciting to me. It was the first antiphonal piece I've heard on the organ. It makes sense because the piece is known as the "Echo Fantasia". He's dutch. Because of this program note, I learned that a "manual" is one of the layers of keys on the organ, usually consisting of 66 notes.
Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
Danket dem Herrn
This is a theme and variations (very baroque).
Apparently J.S.Bach would travel behind Buxtehude around Arnstadt and Lubeck in 1705 just to hear Buxtehude play. He obviously was a big influence on Bach.
The next two pieces, Ten Pieces for an Organ Clock by C.P.E.Bach and Sonata in D Major by Felix Mendelssohn are from after 1750, but were very nice to listen to.
I can appreciate how she programmed her concert to move chronologically (with an exception of opening with Bach) by composer. It was nice to sit back and enjoy observing the development of organ music.
Holy cow my listening logs are getting too long...
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