Dame Gillian Weir
Dame Gillian Weir, DBE, one of the foremost musicians in the world and a star of the London music scene will perform one night only in Providence at the Cathedral of Sts. Peter and Paul. Come hear why 2 million Britons a week tuned into her BBC television series. Having toured, taught and televised worldwide, she is the recipient of numerous awards, honors and prizes. In the summer of 2006 she was the first organist to record on the newly renovated organ of fabled Royal Albert Hall, the largest organ in the British Isles. She is also the Prince Consort Professor of Organ, Royal College of Music, London.
Program
Three pieces from the Livre d'Orgue Nicolas de Grigny (1672-1703)
Dialogue sur les Grands Jeux
Recit de Tierce en Taille
Dialogue sur les Grands Jeux
Nicolas de Grigny was appointed organist of Reims Cathedral, France, in 1697. He died at only 31, leaving a widow, seven children and a single published volume of organ music, the Livre d'Orgue of 1699. It was this book which Bach admired so highly that he copied it out by hand, and it represents the highest point in the highly stylised but profoundly expressive organ music of its period in France. In this "Golden Age", style in organ music split into two - the so-called Parisian style, exemplified in Couperin le Grand's exquisite evocation of courtly dance and song disguised as liturgical music, and the "Provincial", led by Grigny. The word suggests today the simple or bucolic, but the reverse is true: it came to indicate music of great sophistication, less dashing and elegant than its Parisian counterpart; instead serious, devout (usually firmly based on plainsong) and often complex, but always beautiful.
Most of the Livre consists of a magnificent sequence of versets for performance during the Mass, but there are also settings of verses from plainsong hymns, and the first Dialogue tonight forms the final verse of Grigny's setting of the Whitsun hymn Veni Creator Spiritus. The Grands Jeux combination of stops mimics the sound of the orchestra one might hear at one of the divertisssements held nightly at the Court of Louis XIV, the Sun King, and these Dialogues reflect both regal and ecclesiastical pomp and splendour. The sensuous sounds of the Tierce combination convey the sublimely mystical Recit, which comes from the Gloria of the Mass. The second Dialogue is written for four keyboards and again has the grandeur and pomp of a Cardinal's procession through the great Cathedral; it is the last verse of Grigny's setting of the Marian hymn Ave Maris Stella - the Virgin enthroned as Queen of Heaven and Star of the Sea.
(a) Communion: Les Oiseaux et les Sources Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
from Messe de la Pentecote
(b) Joie et clarte des Corps Glorieux
from Les Corps Glorieux
(c) Sortie: Le Vent de l'Esprit
from Messe de la Pentecote
Olivier Messiaen bestrode the 20th century like a Collossus. Born 8 years after its start and dying 8 years before it ended, Messiaen and his art developed in a parallel progression, as the music worked it way from gentle naivete through rigid rhythmic and harmonic experimentation back to a masterly simplicity. He is regarded as the most important composer for organ since J.S.Bach, famous for the drama and passion of his music, and for its originality.
The Messe de la Pentecote - Whitsuntide Mass - dates from 1950, and consists of 5 movements which correspond to a Low Mass. It comments on different aspects of the mystery of Pentecost, which is the Feast of the Holy Spirit. (a) The Tongues of Fire: "And there appeared unto them cloven tongues as of fire, and it sat upon each of them." Messiaen brilliantly conveys the jagged shapes of flames, darting from one extraordinary tonal color to another on the manuals while the pedals play a searing melody on the 4' clarion.
The suite Les Corps Glorieux was written in 1939, and concerns the life of the resurrected. "The life of the resurrected ones is free, luminously colored. The timbres of the organ reflect these characteristics." In "Joie et clarte", the sixth vision, Messiaen quotes, "Then shall the righteous shine as the sun in their Father's kingdom". The ecstatic joy of the righteous bursts out in a jazzy trumpet solo, the notes bounding across the range of the keyboards and glittering around the building.
(c) The Wind of the Holy Spirit: "A rushing mighty wind filled all the house." The descent of the Holy Spirit on the Apostles as they sat in the Upper Room is conveyed by a brilliant, formidable toccata - a storm, portraying the irresistible power of spiritual life as well as the physical Power from Above. In the middle section the song of the Lark - the bird which flies higher than any other and therefore signifies freedom, the freedom of the resurrected in their new life - is heard above two rhythmic lines which signify the flow of Time, here flowing in opposite directions. The joyous lark, swooping in arabesques from ceiling to floor before springing into the heights again, sums up the overwhelming energy and power of this extraordinary movement.
Allegro vivace Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937)
from Symphony V in F minor
Charles-Marie Widor was organist of St. Sulpice, Paris, from the age of 25, and one of the greatest virtuosi of his time. His teaching at the Paris Conservatoire widely influenced organ playing throughout the western world, and with Vierne he was responsible for nurturing the new image of the organ - begun by Franck - as a symphonic medium. His avowed aim was to move the listener - expressed on one of his scores as "To soar above!"
The last movement of the symphony, the famous Toccata, has become, with Bach's D minor Toccata and Fugue, the world's best known organ piece. The first movement however, rivals it in excitement; a magnificent set of variations, it runs the gamut of organ sound and of the emotions.
Etoile du Soir Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
A pupil of Franck and Widor and in the line of the tradition of the great Parisian organists, Vierne won his way to the coveted post as titulaire of Notre-Dame Cathedral but found time to write symphonic and chamber music of some worth, as well as his harmonically original organ pieces (which include six symphonies). He was organist at Notre-Dame for 27 years, and lived and indeed died under highly Romantic circumstances; tragedy pursued him up to the moment of his final dramatic collapse at the console of his beloved Cavaille-Coll organ.
The 24 Fantasy Pieces are dazzling, piquant and tender by turns, always charming and intriguing, and written with immense skill and feeling for organ color. Shimmering strings perfectly evoke the beauty of the silvery Evening Star, and the Hymn to the Sun celebrates the heat of its rays with blazing French reeds.
Choral III in A minor Cesar Franck (1822-1890)
The Belgian-born Cesar Franck was organist of Ste-Clotilde, Paris, for over 30 years, and from 1872 onwards, Professor of Organ at the Conservatoire. His works for the organ form a much more important and distinctive contribution to its repertoire than their number might suggest. The three chorales, written at the end of his life, are completely characteristic of his harmonic style and a structural freedom which reflects his gift for improvisation. Franck uses the word "chorale" not in the German sense (of a Lutheran hymn-tune) but to designate an original theme harmonized in choral fashion and then subjected to very free variations.
This, his last work, was corrected from his death-bed and is his best-loved. It is a perfect example of the Romantic idea of struggle between opposites - the impassioned outburst at its start is challenged by a second theme of the utmost serenity. Eventually the one is merged with the other in a triumphant conclusion.
Toccata Marcel Lanquetuit (1894-1985)
Marcel Lanquetuit's dazzling Toccata is a musical Baked Alaska, ending our musical banquet with a shower of sparks. Lanquetuit was organist of the Cathedral of Rouen, and wrote this Toccata in 1926 before leaving for a concert tour of the USA. He was a particularly fine improviser. The piece is dedicated to Widor.
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