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Madison Symphony
Orchestra Program Notes Overture Concert
Organ Series No.1 96th Season Michael Allsen
October 19, 2021
Welcome to
the opening
program of the 2021-22 Overture Concert Organ Series! In this
concert, the
Madison Symphony Orchestra’s principal organist, Greg Zelek,
performs four
works, beginning with an arrangement of Elgar’s beautiful Nimrod, from the “Enigma”
Variations. Next is one of the most familiar works of
Bach, the powerful Toccata
and Fugue in D minor. Zelek then
presents his own arrangement of a waltz by Satie. The closing
work is one of
the organ symphonies of the great French organist Widor:
virtuoso music
designed to use all of the sonic resources of a large concert
organ.
Edward
Elgar (1857-1934)
Nimrod, from Variations on an
Original Theme (“Enigma”),
Op. 36
arranged for organ by Jonathan Scott
Writing to his
friend August
Jaeger in 1899, Elgar described a recently-completed
composition: a set of
variations that depicted thirteen of his musical and non-musical
friends. Elgar
incorporates several “enigmas” into this work. The first is the
theme itself,
which he labels “enigma.” Each variation is titled according to
the person
represented, but their identities are hidden by his use of
initials and
nicknames. (Elgar himself soon gave away the secret identities,
however.) He
also states that there is another larger theme, which is never
actually played,
that nevertheless runs “through and over” the entire work.
Elgar’s biographers
have expended reams of paper in pursuit of this mystery.
Possible candidates
proposed for the “larger theme” include: A
Mighty Fortress is Our God, God Save
the Queen, Rule Britannia, Auld Lang Syne, a theme from
Mozart’s Cosi fan tutte,
and the major scale. It
has also been suggested that this unplayed theme might be a
non-musical concept
such as friendship. The usually articulate Elgar was notably
vague on this
point. There is even the possibility that Elgar, whose sense of
humor was well
known to his friends and associates, was being deliberately
obscure as a joke!
The Enigma Variations was
the first
of Elgar’s works to be widely heard, and it remains his most
popular orchestral
work today. It consists of a brief theme and fourteen
variations: with the
final variation a self-portrait.
The longest and
most famous
section of the piece is Variation 9, which Elgar titled Nimrod. The title is a labored pun on the name of
August Jaeger,
one of Elgar’s closest friends: “Jaeger” in German means
“hunter,” and Nimrod
was the “mighty hunter” of the Book of Genesis. This movement is
not a portrait
of Jaeger’s forceful character, but instead depicts a
fondly-remembered
conversation between Elgar and Jaeger on the grandeur of
Beethoven’s music. Elgar
provides some reminiscences of the slow movement of Beethoven’s
“Pathetique”
sonata in the opening bars. There is a long tradition of
excerpting this
gorgeous, slowly-developing variation as a separate piece, and
of arranging it
for different media. Here, it is played in a lush arrangement
for organ.
Johann Sebastian Bach
(1685-1750)
Toccata and Fugue in D minor, BWV 565
Johann Sebastian Bach was known in his day
primarily as one
of Germany’s great organists—as a keyboard composer and a
powerful improviser. It
is ironic then, that there is some doubt that the organ work by Bach that nearly everyone knows
today—the famous Toccata
and Fugue in D minor heard
here—is in fact by Bach. A little background... There is no
original copy of
the work in Bach’s handwriting, and the earliest surviving
version was copied
by another organist, probably after Bach’s death. This in itself
is hardly
unusual—most of Bach’s keyboard music survives only in copies by
his sons or
other musicians. Most biographers have assumed that this bravura work was one of the showy pieces a very
young Bach wrote
for his first important professional position, as church
organist in Arnstadt,
1703-06. However, since the 1980s others have challenged the
attribution of the
work to Bach, noting that there are some technical crudities and
other details
that are inconsistent with Bach’s undisputedly authentic
works—even suggesting
that this later copy was an organ arrangement of a violin work.
Biographers
such as Christoph Wolff have countered that some of the unusual
features in the
work may in fact have been ingenious adaptations to the
limitations of the
organ Bach used at Arnstadt. All musicology aside, however, this
work is now
inextricably tied to Bach! There is a long tradition of adapting
it for
soloists and ensembles, beginning with Leopold Stokowski’s
famous orchestral
transcription of 1927. It is heard it here in the original organ
version. The
work begins with a free-form toccata—an improvisatory-style
piece used as
prelude. After a grand conclusion, the fugue begins with a
complex and spiky
subject. This is developed in intense counterpoint until the
end, where there
is a dramatic return to the texture of the toccata.
Erik Satie
(1866-1925)
Je te veux
arranged
for organ by
Greg Zelek
The innovative and enigmatic Erik Satie was
one of the most
unorthodox composers of France’s “Belle Époque”—the period
between the end of
the Franco-Prussian War in 1871 and the beginning of World War I
in 1914 that
saw radical changes in music and all of the arts. Satie would
spend his entire
career in Paris. He would eventually become a success when he
was in his
mid-40s, when his innovative works were championed by Ravel and
other younger
composers. But for much of his career, Satie worked in relative
obscurity,
producing music that was unconventional in style, and often
satirical in tone:
his works include Flabby Preludes for a Dog, Three Pieces in
the Form of a
Pear, and
Sketches and
Provocations of a Portly Wooden Mannequin! He
cultivated an equally
strange personal image: his quirks included eating only white
food and dressing
every day in one of several identical velvet suits.
In 1887, the 21-year old Satie, who had
dropped out of the
Paris Conservatory, moved to Montmartre, the grubby Paris suburb
that was the
home of many of the musicians, artists, and poets who were
leading the avant garde.
Montmartre was also one of
the centers of Parisian nightlife, and over the next several
years, Satie
scratched out a living playing piano in nightclubs, particularly
in the cabaret
shows of the Chat Noir (Black Cat). He also published a few
popular songs in
this period as a way to pay the bills. One of the singers Satie
accompanied at
the Chat Noir was Paulette Darty, known at the time as “the
queen of the slow
waltz”—a reference to songs that often had seduction as their
theme. In 1897
Satie wrote the song Je
te veux (I want you)
for her, setting a steamy
poem by his friend Henry Pacory. (It begins: “I understand your
distress, dear
lover, and I give in to your wishes. Make me your mistress.
Wisdom is far away
from us; no more sadness. I look forward to the beautiful moment
when we will
be happy. I want you.”) The song was published in 1902, and
Satie later
published it in various versions, including one for solo piano.
This piano
version is the source of Greg Zelek’s arrangement for organ. Je te veux was a song
written for
popular consumption, and there is nothing remotely avante garde about its music, aside from a few
unexpected twists of
harmony. The outer sections are based upon a simple, limpid
waltz theme, and
the middle section begins with slightly more agitated music that
hints at the
turbulent feelings expressed in the text.
Charles-Marie Widor
(1844-1937)
Symphony No. 6 in G minor, Op. 42, No. 2
Charles-Marie Widor had
a long career as one of France’s greatest organists, beginning
with his
appointment at age 25 as organist at the church of Saint-Sulpice
in Paris, a
position he would hold for some 64 years. In 1890, he also
succeeded César
Franck as organ professor at the Paris Conservatory, where he
would be a
powerful influence over the next generation of French organists
and organ
composers. As a composer, Widor wrote four operas and a host of
works for
orchestra, chorus, and chamber ensemble, but it is his organ
works that are
known today. Particularly popular are his ten symphonies for
solo organ. These
are large multimovement works designed
to exploit the vast range of timbres available on a new
generation of large
organs, pioneered in the 19th century by organ builder Aristide
Cavaillé-Coll. The
organ Widor played at Saint-Sulpice, rebuilt by Cavaillé-Coll in
1862, is
widely considered to be the builder’s masterpiece.
Widor’s Symphony No.6
is one of four organ symphonies he published in 1879 as his Opus
42. The
composer played its premiere on August 24, 1878, at the
inauguration of a
magnificent new Cavaillé-Coll instrument installed in the Palais
de Trocadero,
a Paris concert hall. Its opening Allegro
is among his more frequently-played works today. It opens with a
thundering
chorale theme that serves as the basis for a free set of
variations. Widor’s
dense, sometimes intensely chromatic counterpoint throughout
testifies to his
devoted study of J. S. Bach. After the stormy opening movement,
the Adagio, played on
the organ’s string and
flute stops, is a quiet moment of reflection. The Intermezzo (Allegro)
serves as the symphony’s scherzo movement, with a fierce theme
decorated by a
wild countermelody. The central section is more lyrical,
spinning out over a
long-held pedal note, before the movement ends with a return to
the opening
idea. The Cantabile
is built upon a
gentle melody played on the oboe stop and varied above a quiet,
chromatic accompaniment.
The rousing Finale (Vivace) is a rondo
built upon a forceful
theme heard at the beginning, which alternates with other more
rhapsodic ideas.
It ends with a grand echo of the first movement’s closing chord.
________
program
notes ©2021 by J.
Michael Allsen