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Contents:
DDD 74:36 - Katholische Pfarrkirche Ilanz, 27-31 October 2004 TL This programme illustrates some of the different tendencies in Swiss and German church music in the mid- to late 19th century, and the attempts of composers to revive the great traditions of the Baroque, or reconcile them with the new expressive and harmonic resources of Romanticism.Theophil Forchhammer (1847-1923) is nowadays virtually forgotten, but during his life he was regarded as among the most important and influential organist-composers of his time. Born in Switzerland, in Schiers/Grabünden, he was a member of a prominent family or artists and scholars. He took up his first position as an organist in Thalwil, Switzerland, in 1867, and progressed through a number of different Swiss and German cities before in 1886 he was appointed organist of the cathedral at Magdeburg, in succession to the famous organist August Gottfried Ritter (1811-1885). Forchhammer remained in Magdeburg for the rest of his career; he also became Royal Music Director and a Professor at the University and exercised an influence on musical life throughout the churches of Saxony. He was an outstanding improviser and virtuoso player whose musical thinking was founded on his deep study of J.S. Bach. However, he was also deeply impressed by the music of Liszt, and in his own music – a significant portion of which is now, unfortunately, lost – he attempted a synthesis of Baroque and Romantic principles which makes him a notable forerunner of Max Reger.Forchhammer’s Second Organ Sonata, op.15, was published in 1886 and bears the subtitle Zur Todtenfeier (for a burial ceremony). It is an imposing work partly based on church chorales, but with episodes of extreme romantic expression which mark it out as highly contemporary in terms of its own era. There are also passages in neo-Baroque style, with which Forchthhammer had already experimented in his First Sonata, but in Sonata No.2 these are more integrated into a wide-ranging stylistic palette. The first movement, in C minor, is frankly episodic in construction and features three principal ideas: a majestic, largely chordal Adagio with a more tender and reflective second strain; a fugal Andante; and an Andantino episode centred on the chorale ‘Jesus meine Zuversicht’, which is interpenetrated by recalls of the Adagio’s second strain. A stormy – and very Lisztian – Allegro development starts by transforming the initial Adagio music and works all the main elements together to a forceful climax and then a brief Adagio coda. The ensuing Larghetto in A flat is relatively an idyll, a serenade-like movement that introduces fragments of the chorale ‘Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme’ against a Mendelssohnian ‘spinning-song’ accompaniment. There is an intimately expressive central section, and the movement modulates from A flat to C major to run directly into the finale, Andante con moto. This is an imposing, smoothly flowing and finely-worked fugue on a theme derived from this same chorale, ‘Wachet auf’, which sounds out majestically in long note values in the pedals. Very Lisztian is the cadenza-like change to triple time, after which the fugue proceeds more rapidly until it encounters a quiet ‘cyclic’ recall of the Adagio theme from the first movement. The Sonata then concludes with a massive and triumphant full-organ statement of the ‘Wachet auf’ chorale. Forchhammer’s Choralbearbeitungen zum kirchlichen Gebrauche (Chorale settings for Church use), combining traditional melodies with modern harmony, were among his most admired works. The eight Choralbearbeitungen, op.11, were published in 1887 with a dedication to the composer’s friend Eugen Grüel. We hear two of them in this programme. No.2, ‘Es ist gewisslich an der Zeit’, clothes its melody in graceful subsidiary parts. No.3, ‘Jesus meine Zuversicht’, is a more developed conception, using the same chorale as in the Second Sonata but in very different fashion. Here Forchhammer creates a kind of polyphonic pastoral serenade into which the chorale melody is inserted phrase by phrase as a cantus firmus, with a highly formal concluding cadence. Fürchtegott Theodor Kirchner (1823-1903) was born in Neunkirchen, near Chemnitz. A prodigy who was giving organ recitals at the age of eight, he studied in Leipzig; but in 1843, on the recommendation of Mendelssohn, took up a post as organist in Winterthur, which marked the beginning of a 30-year sojourn in Switzerland. He was eventually succeeded in Winterthur by Hermann Goetz, and went on to teach and conduct in Zurich. Kirchner only returned to Germany in 1873, and led a rather peripatetic life, teaching in Meiningen, Würzburg, Leipzig, Dresden and Hamburg. Though a man of great charm (he is even believed to have had an affair with Clara Schumann in the 1860s), Kirchner was unworldly, impractical, addicted to gambling, and chronically short of money in later life. He often had to be assisted by his more successful colleagues. But he was much respected by them: Kirchner was a friend of Mendelssohn, the Schumanns, and Brahms, who much esteemed his composing talent, as well as Gade, Grieg and Hanslick. Among Kirchner’s feats of transcription are versions of both Brahms’s string sextets arranged as piano trios. After a series of strokes in the 1890s he was left paralysed and had to be looked after by a former pupil until his death. Kirchner wrote a few chamber works of his own, but no orchestral music at all; on the other hand he was a natural miniaturist and produced a copious number of songs, over a thousand short piano pieces, and many works for organ. His collection of miscellaneous organ compositions, op.89, was published in Leipzig in 1890. Of the seven works by Kirchner on this disc, six are drawn from that collection. The G minor Präludium (No.2) starts and ends with a full-organ proclamation of real grandeur, between which comes a swift-moving toccata-like passage powered by busy semiquaver motion. The second volume of op.89 has the title Lyrische Blätter, and the serene G major Andante (No.5), which manages to stretch its melodic invention over the entire range of manuals and pedals, is certainly a lyrical outpouring of the kind for which Kirchner was renowned. So are the fragrant yet strangely fragmentary Andantino cantabile in E (No.8) – which reminds us that Hermann Kretschmar singled out Kirchner’s ability to entrust warm emotion to virtual epigrams – and the more expansive Andante cantabile in G flat (No.12). So too is the gentle, lullaby-like E flat Andante, op.82 No.9. The deeply meditative piece in D minor marked Langsam (No.11 of op.89) has a troubled middle section and lingers long in the memory Finally the grand, richly-coloured, contrapuntally masterly Quasi Sarabande in G minor (op.89 No.4) shows the ultra-Romantic Kirchner imbibing the lessons of J.S.Bach. Benedict Jucker (1811-1876) had a more direct connexion to Bach. He was a student of Johann Christian Heinrich Rinck (once famous for his pedagogical work, ‘Rinck’s Practical Organ School’) and succeeded him as organist at the cathedral in Basle in 1846. As Rinck had studied with J.S. Bach’s pupil Kittel, Jucker could trace his pedagogical lineage back to ‘old Bach’ himself, and among Jucker’s organ works his Fantasie und Fuge über das Thema BACH, on the famous musical ‘signature’ B flat – A – C – B natural, is perhaps the best known. He composed his Nine Choral-Vorspiele, op.7 in 1867 and dedicated the set to his friend, the composer, organist and organ-builder Johann Gottlob Töpfer, on the occasion of the latter’s 50 years’ service in Weimar. The calm ascending and descending polyphony of ‘Mein Jesu, dem die Seraphinen’ (No.8 of Jucker’s op.7) derives very directly by diminution from the shape of the chorale melody, which is then serenely integrated into the overall texture. No.7, ‘O, wie so gar sanftmüthig’ is a mellifluous, serenade-like conception, its chromatic passing-notes betraying its period and the chorale appearing only fragmentarily as a cantus firmus. Finally No.2, ‘Ach, bleib’ mit deiner Gnade’, in which the chorale melody largely remains in the pedals, opens as a placidly-flowing berceuse but accumulates force with the final appearance of the chorale in octaves. The best known of these four composers, Josef Gabriel Rheinberger (1839-1901), was born in Liechtenstein and was such an obvious musical Wunderkind that he was appointed organist in the parish church in his home town of Vaduz at the age of seven. He subsequently studied in Munich, becoming in time the piano professor of the Conservatoire there as well as working for the Court Opera. In due course he became professor of organ and of composition at the Conservatoire and director of church music for the Bavarian court. One of the outstanding musical personalities of his time, Rheinberger was an astonishingly productive composer, writing in almost every genre including opera, but it is largely for his organ works – including 20 sonatas and two concertos for organ and orchestra – that he is remembered. Naturally, however, he wrote copious choral music, among which he completed some 18 masses for differing vocal forces and accompaniments. Though a comparatively small-scale work, the Mass in F minor, op.159, for SATB choir with organ accompaniment, has been one of the most admired of these. The Mass was composed in May and June of 1889 and published the same year in Leipzig, with a dedication to Franz Xaver Haberl (1840-1910), the musicologist, church music reformer, and director of music at Regensburg cathedral. The work was also arranged for chorus and orchestra by one Johannes Meurer, but on this disc we hear Rheinberger’s original. Rheinberger did not altogether follow the precepts of the Cecilian movement, which aimed to restore a Palestrina-like purity to Latin church music, but he was certainly influenced by it. In this Mass it was his intention to achieve both clarity and simplicity of technique. The organ part is straightforward and used almost entirely to support and amplify the vocal texture, any solo episodes being kept very short. This is a very lyrical Mass, its romanticism apparent in Rheinberger’s glowing and frequently chromatic harmony, handled with great confidence and resource. While the chorus writing in some movements (eg. the Gloria) is predominantly homophonic, Rheinberger also makes use of freely imitative counterpoint (as in the Kyrie) and mixes styles to sometimes dramatic effect, notably in the Credo, which makes effective excursions into D flat and ends with triumphant Amens in F major. The intense Sanctus in A flat is followed by a canonic Benedictus and a pure and song-like Agnus Dei that begins with implications of D minor but works through to a peaceful F major close. Notes © copyright Malcolm MacDonald
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