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DDD 79:16 - Recorded: Lincoln Cathedral, 19-21 September, 2005 TL Charles-Marie Widor grew up in a distinguished musical family in Lyon: his father was organist of the church of St-François-de-Sales for fifty years, and his younger brother Paul was a talented amateur musician who became a lawyer of national repute. During the 1860s Widor began to establish his reputation in Paris, with regular concert engagements both at home and abroad. In 1868 he was invited to take part in the opening celebrations on the new organ in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame; in 1869 he became assistant to Saint-Saëns, the Organist of the fashionable church of La Madeleine; and in 1870 he was appointed temporary Organist of the magnificent parish church of Saint-Sulpice – on a trial basis of one year, as some of the clergy were concerned he might be too young. In the end this temporary appointment lasted for 64 years, and by the time he finally retired at the age of 89, Widor had become one of the most respected and influential figures in the world of French music, after an extraordinary career which extended from the age of Rossini at one end to the age of Messiaen at the other. During his first 20 years at Saint-Sulpice Widor made his living purely as a professional composer and organist. A cultivated all-round musician, he became a popular figure in the fashionable salons of Paris, and composed quantities of elegant and idiomatic chamber and piano music and songs, not to mention symphonies, ballets and a number of operas. But in 1890 his horizons began to broaden when he took on a new commitment, succeeding César Franck as Professor of Organ at the Paris Conservatoire. In 1896 he transferred to a Composition Class, where he remained for 30 years, teaching a wide variety of young composers. Then in 1914, at the age of 70, he was elected Perpetual Secretary of the Académie des Beaux Arts, an influential position which took him to the very heart of the cultural life of France. As the new century progressed, and as he grew older and older, Widor’s philosophy of music remained firmly rooted in the past, and he became a kind of musical fossil; in the Paris of Ravel and Poulenc, his compositions had little to offer, and most of his work had fallen into neglect long before his death in 1937 at the age of 93. The concept of the “Organ Symphony” originated in France in the second half of the 19th century, as a result of the innovations in organ design introduced by the great French organ-builder Aristide Cavaillé-Coll. César Franck paved the way with his pioneering Grande Pièce Symphonique (1863), but it was Widor who published the first organ symphony, in 1872, when he was just 28 – and not just one symphony, but a set of four. As Widor later described them, the essential features of the “symphonic organ” which inspired these works were firstly, “a great blossoming of marvellous colours – harmonic flutes, gambas, trumpets, voix celestes, flue and reed stops of a quality and variety hitherto unknown”; and secondly, the introduction of pedal-operated ventils to control the louder trumpet and mixture choruses. In the old days an organist generally selected his stops at the beginning of a piece and then played it through without touching them again; but Cavaillé-Coll’s ventils brought a new flexibility to the instrument, and made possible the construction of extended movements in which the volume and intensity of tone could be adjusted to correspond with the ebb and flow of the music. “The new instrument”, said Widor, “demands a new language…” Until the latter part of the 19th century there were few opportunities to hear the great organs and organists of Paris outside the context of the Sunday services, apart from occasional inaugurations and special events. But this all changed in 1878, when an enormous concert-hall was built for the Universal Exhibition held in Paris that year. At the back of the concert platform Cavaillé-Coll installed one of his finest instruments, and a series of celebrity recitals was organised to take place throughout the summer and autumn. The fifth recital was given on 24 August 1878 by Widor, and he began his programme with the first performance of his “Fifth Symphony” in G minor. Widor’s first four Organ Symphonies were designed as suites of contrasting movements, most of which could be played individually during the course of a church service; he would probably never have envisaged a complete performance of a whole symphony, even if the opportunity arose. The Fifth and Sixth are more cohesive and much more substantial; they always work best when they are played complete, and this new approach was almost certainly stimulated by the new Trocadéro organ and the opportunities which it offered for full-length organ concerts by a single player. These two magisterial works were published together in 1879, and their numbering was changed: the G minor Symphony became “No.6”, and the title of Fifth was given to another new and equally impressive Symphony in F minor. During the 1870s Widor had begun to enlarge his compositional horizons, embracing the more demanding forms of orchestral symphony, concerto, and ballet. At the age of 34 he was now an experienced composer, and this is everywhere evident in the skilful developments and imaginative textures of the F minor Symphony – and not least in its tunes. Instantly memorable, and masterly in its extended melodic and harmonic structure, the theme of the first movement forms the basis of a set of free variations; after three distinct and separate variations (in the third of which there is more than a hint of the ballet), there follows a more solemn, chorale-like interlude, and then the music presses forward in a more integrated style to a tempestuous conclusion. This remarkable piece represented a new and exciting departure for the French organ music of that time; neither of Widor’s most important contemporaries, Franck and Guilmant, could match the real symphonic surge of power and energy that animates its closing pages. In the second movement, the song-writer comes to the fore. This is a charming song-without-words, in dialogue between the organ’s Oboe and Flute stops; solo interjections from the main theme punctuate the chordal central section, before a shortened reprise of the opening material. The third movement is a curious scherzo; starting at a moderate tempo with a melodic pedal theme (built round the interval of an octave) and a flowing chorale, it then accelerates into a real scherzo, with the pedal theme transformed into an insistent pedal ostinato. Finally the opening music returns, and the movement ends quietly. The fourth movement is a short contrapuntal Adagio of delicate sensibility – a prelude to the ever-popular finale, which bursts in like a clap of thunder. In its brilliantly effective combination of rapid staccato figuration on the manuals with a majestic legato tune in the pedals, Widor’s Toccata set the pattern for countless similar pieces in later years. But however effective it may be as a postlude for a wedding, it always sounds much more inspiring when it is performed or recorded, as here, in its proper context. * Entitled Chorale & Allegro in the programme for the first performance at the Trocadéro, the first movement of the Sixth Symphony is one of Widor’s most majestic and memorable inspirations. The arresting opening theme, with its sonorous chords and double pedalling, is followed by a second idea (a single line of rapid flowing triplets), and as the movement proceeds these two motifs are developed and combined in music of relentless dynamic energy and high virtuosity. The Symphony contains two slow movements, both in keys that are quite remote from the G minor and major of the surrounding movements. The first of the two is a lyrical Adagio in B major; the opening exposition of a theme for soft string stops is followed by a more animated central section before a solo flute takes up the original tune again, bringing the piece to a peaceful close. The newspaper review of the premiere described this movement as “very gracious”, and considered that “it brings to mind, by its descending half steps, the style of Wagner.” The pungent, rhythmic G minor Intermezzo forms the scherzo movement of the symphony; the precise, needle-sharp staccato touch which this piece requires originated with Widor, and was one of his most important contributions to the development of organ technique. In the early days, however, it was something very new – as was the whole idea of the organ as a concert instrument divorced from its traditional liturgical context – and the reviewer commented that it was “brilliant, but written for the piano rather than the organ, as are other parts of this work in fast tempo…” The second slow movement is entitled Cantabile, and it begins with an expressive melody in D flat, for the oboe; after some dialogue with a solo flute, the tune is finally repeated as a trumpet solo over a rippling accompaniment, and the movement ends with a poetic coda. The Finale moves into the brighter key of G major, and alternates a triumphant motif in fanfare style with a precipitous second theme that descends through an octave and a half in a zig-zag pattern of fourths and fifths. This brilliant virtuoso display is one of Widor’s most exciting creations, and it ends the whole Symphony in a veritable blaze of sound. © David Gammie 2006
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