Sunday 8 January 2023 at 8:00 PM
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Scott Dettra
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX (USA)
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Scott Dettra
Southern Methodist University, Dallas, TX (USA)
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Program
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) Toccata, Adagio and Fugue in C, BWV 564 Horatio Parker (1863–1919) Organ Sonata in E flat, Op. 65 I. Allegro moderato II. Andante III. Allegretto IV. Fugue Joseph Jongen (1873–1953) Prière, Op. 37, No. 3 Julius Reubke (1834–1858) The 94th Psalm (Sonata for Organ) I. Grave – Larghetto O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth, shew thyself. Arise, thou judge of the world, and reward the proud after their deserving. II. Allegro con fuoco Lord, how long shall the ungodly triumph? They murder the widow and the stranger, and put the fatherless to death. And yet they say, the Lord shall not see, neither shall the God of Jacob regard it. III. Adagio If the Lord had not helped me, it had not failed, but my soul had been put to silence. IV. Allegro But the Lord is my refuge, and my God is the strength of my confidence. He shall recompense them their wickedness, and destroy them in their own malice. |
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Hailed as a “brilliant organist” (Dallas Morning News), an “outstanding musician” (The Diapason), and described as a “prodigy” by The New York Times at age 13, Scott Dettra is acclaimed as one of America’s leading concert organ virtuosos. Mr. Dettra’s playing is praised for its clarity, rhythmic intensity, and musical elegance, and has been described by The American Organist as “music making of absolute authority and sophisticated expression.” He combines an active performance schedule with his position on the organ faculty of Southern Methodist University, and is organist of The Crossing, the multi-GRAMMY-winning professional chamber choir based in Philadelphia. Throughout 2022, Mr. Dettra is undertaking a 15-city national tour of the complete organ works of César Franck, in celebration of the composer’s bicentenary.
Recent and upcoming performances include appearances in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, San Diego, and Kansas City. Festival appearances include the Lincoln Center Festival, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Arizona Bach Festival, the Bermuda Festival of the Performing Arts, and the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. He has been a featured performer at national conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Association of Anglican Musicians, the Organ Historical Society, and the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, and is in demand as a clinician and adjudicator for master classes, workshops, and competitions.
Mr. Dettra is featured on many compact disc recordings, including The Anglo-American Classic Organ (Gothic), Majestus (Loft), recorded at Washington National Cathedral, and Tongues of Fire (Pro Organo), recorded on the 325-rank instrument at West Point’s Cadet Chapel. Additional recordings may be found on the Gothic, Innova, Lyrichord, Pro Organo, and Linn labels. In addition to commercial recordings, his performances have been broadcast numerous times on such radio programs as American Public Media’s Pipedreams and Performance Today, the BBC’s Choral Evensong, and The New York Philharmonic This Week.
An accomplished conductor, Mr. Dettra’s ensembles have been featured on national radio broadcasts in the United States and the United Kingdom, and at conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society. He has prepared choirs for performances with such ensembles as the National Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard Orchestra, and the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and has also led and taught several courses for the Royal School of Church Music.
A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Mr. Dettra began piano study at age 3 and organ study at age 8 as a student of his father, Lee Dettra, holding his first church organist position at the age of 9. He made his New York debut at Riverside Church at the age of 11. Mr. Dettra holds two degrees from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, where he was a student of Joan Lippincott, and has also studied organ and jazz piano at Manhattan School of Music.
Previous positions have included Organist of Washington National Cathedral, Director of Music at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, and assistantships at the Washington Bach Consort, the Cathedral Choral Society, the American Boychoir School, St. Paul’s, K Street in Washington; St. Mark’s, Locust Street in Philadelphia; and Trinity Church, Princeton.
Recent and upcoming performances include appearances in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Washington, San Francisco, Atlanta, Houston, San Diego, and Kansas City. Festival appearances include the Lincoln Center Festival, the Carmel Bach Festival, the Arizona Bach Festival, the Bermuda Festival of the Performing Arts, and the Piccolo Spoleto Festival. He has been a featured performer at national conventions of the American Guild of Organists, the Association of Anglican Musicians, the Organ Historical Society, and the Association of Lutheran Church Musicians, and is in demand as a clinician and adjudicator for master classes, workshops, and competitions.
Mr. Dettra is featured on many compact disc recordings, including The Anglo-American Classic Organ (Gothic), Majestus (Loft), recorded at Washington National Cathedral, and Tongues of Fire (Pro Organo), recorded on the 325-rank instrument at West Point’s Cadet Chapel. Additional recordings may be found on the Gothic, Innova, Lyrichord, Pro Organo, and Linn labels. In addition to commercial recordings, his performances have been broadcast numerous times on such radio programs as American Public Media’s Pipedreams and Performance Today, the BBC’s Choral Evensong, and The New York Philharmonic This Week.
An accomplished conductor, Mr. Dettra’s ensembles have been featured on national radio broadcasts in the United States and the United Kingdom, and at conventions of the American Guild of Organists and the Organ Historical Society. He has prepared choirs for performances with such ensembles as the National Symphony Orchestra, the Juilliard Orchestra, and the Dave Brubeck Quartet, and has also led and taught several courses for the Royal School of Church Music.
A native of Wilmington, Delaware, Mr. Dettra began piano study at age 3 and organ study at age 8 as a student of his father, Lee Dettra, holding his first church organist position at the age of 9. He made his New York debut at Riverside Church at the age of 11. Mr. Dettra holds two degrees from Westminster Choir College in Princeton, where he was a student of Joan Lippincott, and has also studied organ and jazz piano at Manhattan School of Music.
Previous positions have included Organist of Washington National Cathedral, Director of Music at Church of the Incarnation in Dallas, and assistantships at the Washington Bach Consort, the Cathedral Choral Society, the American Boychoir School, St. Paul’s, K Street in Washington; St. Mark’s, Locust Street in Philadelphia; and Trinity Church, Princeton.
Program Notes
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah
Bach’s Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564, dates from his Weimar years (1708-1717). Known for his extraordinary improvisations, Bach was often hired to publicly demonstrate new organs. The character of this piece suggests it may have been used in such “organ trials.” The improvisatory introduction to the Toccata brings to mind the North German praeludium style with a hesitant opening gesture erupting into dazzling scale passages and a joyful pedal solo—a test of the entire compass of the keyboards, even reaching high D on the pedalboard. A snappy polyphonic concerto follows with two-bar motifs echoing from one hand to the other. The ensuing Adagio in A minor is styled after a slow concerto movement with a hauntingly expressive melody accompanied by simple manual chords and pizzicato pedal octaves. An enigmatic bridge marked Grave concludes the movement with suffocating seven-part harmony—a test of the organ’s wind supply (and the stamina of the bellows pumpers!). The spirited Fugue is a 6/8 dance with a melodically simple subject and dramatic rests—a test of the acoustics in the church. Rather than amassing fugal density, the fugue freely evolves with brilliant two- and three-voice counterpoint ending on a brief C major chord.
Horatio Parker was born in Auburndale—a Boston suburb. His family attended Auburndale Congregational Church of which his father was the architect and his mother was the organist. At age 14, he began piano and organ lessons with his mother and later studied composition with George Chadwick in Boston. In 1882 he sailed to Munich (a common destination for young American musicians in the 1880s) and studied with Josef Rheinberger for three years. There he also met his wife, a fellow classmate. Upon returning to America, he worked at various New York City schools and churches, including the fashionable Church of the Holy Trinity in Manhattan, where he secured his place in history after composing his apocalyptic oratorio, Hora Novissima. In 1893, he returned to Boston as organist at Trinity Church, and one year later became a professor (and later Dean) at the Yale University School of Music, where some of his best known students were Charles Ives, Seth Bingham, and Roger Sessions. In addition, he oversaw the installation of the 1902 Hutchings-Votey organ in Yale’s Woolsey Hall. Known mainly as a composer of choral music, Parker followed in the footsteps of Rheinberger and also composed organ music, including several small character pieces, a concerto, and among his last compositions, the substantial Sonata in E-flat Minor published in 1908. Given its undertone of euphonious resignation, solid counterpoint, and avoidance of emotional exuberance, it could almost pass for a Rheinberger sonata. The first movement, in sonata form, begins unassumingly with the pedal giving out the first theme punctuated by a notable anapestic (weak-weak-strong) rhythm in the upper voice. The transition from the melodious second theme in G-flat major leads convincingly to a fortissisimo climax before the ensuing recapitulation. The lyrical Andante in B major, set in ABA song form, begins with the oboe over a soft accompaniment, amid small “choral” interjections on the clarinet, and concludes (à la Guilmant) with an 8’ Flute soloed above the Vox Humana. A fugato follows which rises to fortissimo and falls back to pianissimo in just five bars before reprising the beginning. The celebrated and charming third movement, also in ABA form, is a playful romp in B-flat minor utilizing the anapestic rhythm of the first movement contrasted with a bucolic middle section in the parallel major. The final movement, an extensive four-voice fugue in E-flat major, begins in a stile antico 4/2 meter but, anathema to Rheinberger, is interrupted halfway through by a vocal-style theme in A major. Parker cleverly combines the two seemingly incompatible themes to close the work.
Joseph Jongen was a native of Liège, Belgium, where he received his musical training at the conservatory there. He held many teaching and organ appointments in Liège until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when he fled to England for five years as a refugee. After the war, Jongen returned to his homeland and eventually became the Director of the Brussels Conservatory. Stretching Franckian harmony to its limit, his impressionistic and elegant Prière [Prayer] in B major is the third of a set of four pieces commissioned and published by Parisian music publisher Jacques Durand in 1911. It is composed in ABA form with a coda, and the themes reveal chant and folk influences. The especially memorable cello-like theme in the beatific A section stands in contrast to the litany of unsettled opposing phrases in the B section. Rather than the expected ending of submissive resignation, the coda provides a seraphic smile with Jongen’s signature major/minor oscillations.
Influenced by his organ-building father—a proponent of tubular pneumatic organs which advanced the trend of more virtuosic organ playing using less physical exertion—Julius Reubke moved from his native Hausneindorf to Berlin at age 17 to study organ, piano, and composition at the Berlin Conservatory. After attending his first Wagner opera (Tannhauser) there in 1856 under the baton of Franz Liszt, he immediately relocated to Weimar to study with Liszt. Reminiscent of Parker with Rheinberger, Reubke quickly became one of Liszt’s favorite pupils as he rapidly absorbed the Lisztian style of composition. The previous year, in 1855, Friedrich Ladegast had built the largest organ in Germany at nearby Merseburg Cathedral. Before long the cathedral organist invited Reubke to play a recital there, so Reubke set about completing The 94th Psalm, an organ composition he had begun earlier. On June 17, 1857 Reubke premiered what has become one of the cornerstones of organ literature. Tragically, barely a year later on June 3, 1858, the promising 24-year-old composer died from a chronic chest illness. His younger brother Otto, also a brilliant pianist and organist, supervised the publication of his brother's music.
Although Reubke subtitled his masterpiece a Sonata, it is really a symphonic tone poem akin to Liszt’s 1850 Fantasia and Fugue on Ad nos, ad salutarem undam—only more connected and concise. True to Liszt’s mantra that a musical composition is a “sequence of states of the soul” [Folge von Seelenzuständen], with a single theme Reubke uncovers an array of emotions using the orchestral organ palette. While the recital program for the first performance in Merseburg printed the entirety of Psalm 94, the published score was prefaced only with selected verses. These verses are not meant to be taken as a literal program, but rather to provide the emotional coloring of each of the four major sections (played without pause). Beginning in no discernible key, the cyclic theme sounds in the pedals and is immediately repeated a half step lower. After a survey of the rhythmic aspects of this theme, the musical texture decreases rapidly to a monodic recitative which, as in the Ad nos, provides a transition to the modulating and polyphonic Larghetto. After a vivacious volley of arpeggios with a gradual increase of pace and harmonic tension, the section finally erupts into the Allegro con fuoco, constructed in quasi-sonata form. The first subject results from the theme in heroic dotted values. The same idea, played at half speed with Lisztian swirling 16th-note arpeggios, provides a second subject which is developed in alternation with the first. A quiet coda announces the tender and expressive Adagio in A minor. This part flows seamlessly from what has gone before and then adds a darker, more consoling theme to the earlier material and ends quoting the first bars of the work. In a final transformation the initial theme becomes the subject of a two-part neoclassical fugue. The first part (Allegro) gives way to a developmental interlude of combative fury recalling the earlier Allegro con fuoco. The second part (Più mosso) begins with strettos ultimately overtaken by warrior fanfares and a boiling toccata which leads to the terrifying and vengeful climax.
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah
Bach’s Toccata, Adagio, and Fugue in C Major, BWV 564, dates from his Weimar years (1708-1717). Known for his extraordinary improvisations, Bach was often hired to publicly demonstrate new organs. The character of this piece suggests it may have been used in such “organ trials.” The improvisatory introduction to the Toccata brings to mind the North German praeludium style with a hesitant opening gesture erupting into dazzling scale passages and a joyful pedal solo—a test of the entire compass of the keyboards, even reaching high D on the pedalboard. A snappy polyphonic concerto follows with two-bar motifs echoing from one hand to the other. The ensuing Adagio in A minor is styled after a slow concerto movement with a hauntingly expressive melody accompanied by simple manual chords and pizzicato pedal octaves. An enigmatic bridge marked Grave concludes the movement with suffocating seven-part harmony—a test of the organ’s wind supply (and the stamina of the bellows pumpers!). The spirited Fugue is a 6/8 dance with a melodically simple subject and dramatic rests—a test of the acoustics in the church. Rather than amassing fugal density, the fugue freely evolves with brilliant two- and three-voice counterpoint ending on a brief C major chord.
Horatio Parker was born in Auburndale—a Boston suburb. His family attended Auburndale Congregational Church of which his father was the architect and his mother was the organist. At age 14, he began piano and organ lessons with his mother and later studied composition with George Chadwick in Boston. In 1882 he sailed to Munich (a common destination for young American musicians in the 1880s) and studied with Josef Rheinberger for three years. There he also met his wife, a fellow classmate. Upon returning to America, he worked at various New York City schools and churches, including the fashionable Church of the Holy Trinity in Manhattan, where he secured his place in history after composing his apocalyptic oratorio, Hora Novissima. In 1893, he returned to Boston as organist at Trinity Church, and one year later became a professor (and later Dean) at the Yale University School of Music, where some of his best known students were Charles Ives, Seth Bingham, and Roger Sessions. In addition, he oversaw the installation of the 1902 Hutchings-Votey organ in Yale’s Woolsey Hall. Known mainly as a composer of choral music, Parker followed in the footsteps of Rheinberger and also composed organ music, including several small character pieces, a concerto, and among his last compositions, the substantial Sonata in E-flat Minor published in 1908. Given its undertone of euphonious resignation, solid counterpoint, and avoidance of emotional exuberance, it could almost pass for a Rheinberger sonata. The first movement, in sonata form, begins unassumingly with the pedal giving out the first theme punctuated by a notable anapestic (weak-weak-strong) rhythm in the upper voice. The transition from the melodious second theme in G-flat major leads convincingly to a fortissisimo climax before the ensuing recapitulation. The lyrical Andante in B major, set in ABA song form, begins with the oboe over a soft accompaniment, amid small “choral” interjections on the clarinet, and concludes (à la Guilmant) with an 8’ Flute soloed above the Vox Humana. A fugato follows which rises to fortissimo and falls back to pianissimo in just five bars before reprising the beginning. The celebrated and charming third movement, also in ABA form, is a playful romp in B-flat minor utilizing the anapestic rhythm of the first movement contrasted with a bucolic middle section in the parallel major. The final movement, an extensive four-voice fugue in E-flat major, begins in a stile antico 4/2 meter but, anathema to Rheinberger, is interrupted halfway through by a vocal-style theme in A major. Parker cleverly combines the two seemingly incompatible themes to close the work.
Joseph Jongen was a native of Liège, Belgium, where he received his musical training at the conservatory there. He held many teaching and organ appointments in Liège until the outbreak of World War I in 1914, when he fled to England for five years as a refugee. After the war, Jongen returned to his homeland and eventually became the Director of the Brussels Conservatory. Stretching Franckian harmony to its limit, his impressionistic and elegant Prière [Prayer] in B major is the third of a set of four pieces commissioned and published by Parisian music publisher Jacques Durand in 1911. It is composed in ABA form with a coda, and the themes reveal chant and folk influences. The especially memorable cello-like theme in the beatific A section stands in contrast to the litany of unsettled opposing phrases in the B section. Rather than the expected ending of submissive resignation, the coda provides a seraphic smile with Jongen’s signature major/minor oscillations.
Influenced by his organ-building father—a proponent of tubular pneumatic organs which advanced the trend of more virtuosic organ playing using less physical exertion—Julius Reubke moved from his native Hausneindorf to Berlin at age 17 to study organ, piano, and composition at the Berlin Conservatory. After attending his first Wagner opera (Tannhauser) there in 1856 under the baton of Franz Liszt, he immediately relocated to Weimar to study with Liszt. Reminiscent of Parker with Rheinberger, Reubke quickly became one of Liszt’s favorite pupils as he rapidly absorbed the Lisztian style of composition. The previous year, in 1855, Friedrich Ladegast had built the largest organ in Germany at nearby Merseburg Cathedral. Before long the cathedral organist invited Reubke to play a recital there, so Reubke set about completing The 94th Psalm, an organ composition he had begun earlier. On June 17, 1857 Reubke premiered what has become one of the cornerstones of organ literature. Tragically, barely a year later on June 3, 1858, the promising 24-year-old composer died from a chronic chest illness. His younger brother Otto, also a brilliant pianist and organist, supervised the publication of his brother's music.
Although Reubke subtitled his masterpiece a Sonata, it is really a symphonic tone poem akin to Liszt’s 1850 Fantasia and Fugue on Ad nos, ad salutarem undam—only more connected and concise. True to Liszt’s mantra that a musical composition is a “sequence of states of the soul” [Folge von Seelenzuständen], with a single theme Reubke uncovers an array of emotions using the orchestral organ palette. While the recital program for the first performance in Merseburg printed the entirety of Psalm 94, the published score was prefaced only with selected verses. These verses are not meant to be taken as a literal program, but rather to provide the emotional coloring of each of the four major sections (played without pause). Beginning in no discernible key, the cyclic theme sounds in the pedals and is immediately repeated a half step lower. After a survey of the rhythmic aspects of this theme, the musical texture decreases rapidly to a monodic recitative which, as in the Ad nos, provides a transition to the modulating and polyphonic Larghetto. After a vivacious volley of arpeggios with a gradual increase of pace and harmonic tension, the section finally erupts into the Allegro con fuoco, constructed in quasi-sonata form. The first subject results from the theme in heroic dotted values. The same idea, played at half speed with Lisztian swirling 16th-note arpeggios, provides a second subject which is developed in alternation with the first. A quiet coda announces the tender and expressive Adagio in A minor. This part flows seamlessly from what has gone before and then adds a darker, more consoling theme to the earlier material and ends quoting the first bars of the work. In a final transformation the initial theme becomes the subject of a two-part neoclassical fugue. The first part (Allegro) gives way to a developmental interlude of combative fury recalling the earlier Allegro con fuoco. The second part (Più mosso) begins with strettos ultimately overtaken by warrior fanfares and a boiling toccata which leads to the terrifying and vengeful climax.
