Sunday, 9 January 2022 at 8:00 PM
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Bruce Neswick
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Portland, OR
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Bruce Neswick
Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, Portland, OR
Program
Improvisation on a submitted theme
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
La Nativité du Seigneur ("The Birth of Our Lord")
V. Les enfants de Dieu ("The Children of God") – To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the children of God. And God hath sent forth the spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Father! Father! [John 1:12; Galatians 4:6]
VIII. Les Mages ("The Wise Men") – The Wise Men departed, and the star went before them. [Matthew 2:9]
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Christ Unser Herr Zum Jordan Kam (“When Jesus went to Jordan’s stream”), BWV 684
Clara Schumann (1819-1896)
Thee Preludes and Fugues, Op. 16
I. G Minor
II. B-flat Major
III. D Minor
Texu Kim (b. 1980)
Ma$HeD (2016)
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Air (from Suite No. 1)
David Hurd (b. 1950)
Te Deum Laudamus (1981)
Toccata – The Acknowledgment
Four Fantasies – The Adoration
Recitative and Hymn – The Humbling
Introduction, Fugue and Chaconne – The Opening of Heaven
Improvisation on a submitted theme
Improvisation on a submitted theme
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
La Nativité du Seigneur ("The Birth of Our Lord")
V. Les enfants de Dieu ("The Children of God") – To as many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the children of God. And God hath sent forth the spirit of His Son into your hearts, crying, Father! Father! [John 1:12; Galatians 4:6]
VIII. Les Mages ("The Wise Men") – The Wise Men departed, and the star went before them. [Matthew 2:9]
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Christ Unser Herr Zum Jordan Kam (“When Jesus went to Jordan’s stream”), BWV 684
Clara Schumann (1819-1896)
Thee Preludes and Fugues, Op. 16
I. G Minor
II. B-flat Major
III. D Minor
Texu Kim (b. 1980)
Ma$HeD (2016)
Florence Price (1887-1953)
Air (from Suite No. 1)
David Hurd (b. 1950)
Te Deum Laudamus (1981)
Toccata – The Acknowledgment
Four Fantasies – The Adoration
Recitative and Hymn – The Humbling
Introduction, Fugue and Chaconne – The Opening of Heaven
Improvisation on a submitted theme
Bruce Neswick is Director of Music at Trinity Cathedral, having come from Indiana University, where he was Associate Professor of Organ. Prior to joining the faculty at IU, Mr. Neswick was the Director of Music at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine, New York City, where he conducted the Choir of Girls, Boys and Adults and had oversight of the musical life of that historic church. Active in the field of church music, Mr. Neswick holds Fellowship degrees from the American Guild of Organists and the Royal School of Church Music. He has conducted dozens of summer camps and festivals for boy and girl choristers and has been commissioned to compose for performers and churches throughout North America.
Mr. Neswick’s skill at improvisation garnered him three first prizes from the 1989 San Anselmo Organ Festival; the 1990 American Guild of Organists’ national convention in Boston; and the 1992 Rochette Concours at the Conservatoire de Musique in Geneva, Switzerland. He is a graduate of Pacific Lutheran University and Yale University, and his organ teachers have included David Dahl, Margaret Irwin-Brandon, Gerre Hancock, Robert Baker and Lionel Rogg. As a recitalist, Mr. Neswick has performed extensively throughout the United States and Europe and has been a frequent performer at national and regional conventions of the American Guild of Organists. In 1994, he played the opening convocation for the national AGO convention held in Dallas, Texas, and he was a featured artist at national AGO conventions in Seattle (2000), Washington, DC (2010) and Boston (2014). |
Program Notes
by Bruce Neswick
Olivier Messiaen - La Nativité du Seigneur
Messiaen, we might claim, is the most original "voice" in the organ world of our time: it is doubtful that anyone has contributed more than he to a reassessment of the role of the 20th century organ in the realms of composition, liturgy and theology.
The Birth of the Lord, dating from 1935, is a nine-movement work, about which the composer had plenty to say. He described The Children of God as a "development in crescendo above a dominant pedal, followed by the cry: 'Father! Father' – and a slow, tender phrase in diminuendo over a tonic pedal." The Wise Men is explicitly pictorial, and Messiaen does not hesitate to call upon the details of the story of the Magi in describing for his listeners the effect of this movement – as when he writes "toward the end, the registration becomes tender and mysterious: the Magi Kings are kneeling before the infant."
Johann Sebastian Bach - Christ Unser Herr Zum Jordan Kam
Of the seven works of Bach published in his lifetime, four bear the title Clavierübung (literally, "keyboard practice"). Of these four collections, only one, Clavierübung III, contains music specifically for the organ. The contents of this book, published in 1739, include 21 preludes on Lutheran chorales and four duets, the sum of which is framed by the two movements of the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major. Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, Martin Luther’s catechism hymn highlighting the sacrament of baptism, uses a tune by Johann Walther, one of the first prominent composers of the Lutheran movement. Bach’s treatment of this venerable tune assigns the melody in long notes in the pedal. This plan then allows for great freedom of expression in the manuals, with the left hand’s constant rush of 16th notes depicting the waters of the Jordan, and the right hands’ sharply-etched employment of the cross motif pointing to Jesus’ self-sacrifice, prepared for at his baptism.
Clara Schumann - Three Preludes and Fugues
Much has been written about (and will continue to be written about) the romantic and musical partnership of one of the great power couples of all time – Robert and Clara Schumann. Clara was one of the most important musical artists of the 19th century, playing piano solo and chamber music recitals all over Europe to great acclaim. Her teaching was legendary and far-reaching, and, in the years before her husband’s premature death in 1856, she was drawn to the art of composition. Though small in number and largely confined to the piano (solo or in tandem with other instruments), her works, coupled with the resurgence of interest in her life and career over the past 50 years, have given rise to the question of how her compositional career might have developed further had she had fewer pressures on her time. There are three preludes and fugues in the Op. 16 set, and, while they were not originally conceived for the organ, they transcribe well for the King of Instruments. The Schumanns were, in some ways, guardians of the past, exhibiting a life-long interest in earlier musical eras, in general, and in the art of counterpoint (the intertwining of musical voices), in particular. Their interest in and study of the organ was another mark of their devotion to tradition. The inherent restraint conveyed by this attention to classical forms and styles translates well to the organ, a medium that tends to favor moderation over virtuosity.
Texu Kim - Ma$HeD
Texu Kim has been the Composer-in-Residence of the Korean Symphony Orchestra, based in his native Seoul, and is currently AssistantProfessor of Composition at San Diego State University. A graduate of Indiana University (where he won the coveted Dean’s Prize in Composition), Dr. Kim is also a graduate of Seoul National University. About his new work, the composer writes:
Ma$HeD was commissioned by Mark Pacoe and St. Malachy's Church (“The Actors' Chapel”) in New York City for the 2016 Paul Creston Award Celebration Concert, in memory of Margaret 'Peggy' Pugh, honoring Pulitzer and Grammy award winning composer Jennifer Higdon, 2016 recipient of the Paul Creston Award. To be more faithful to the purpose of this event, I quoted Jennifer Higdon’s energetic piece Smash, as well as Paul Creston’s Psalm XXIII and Now Thank We All Our God: all three pieces were on the same program. It is my observation of the organ improvisation tradition that improvisateurs frequently take themes from other pieces in the same program. Bruce Neswick, who was the 2010 awardee of the Paul Creston Award and who premiered this piece, has introduced this tradition to me. I have therefore incorporated some of his improvisational style in the beginning of the piece, though everything is written down. All these ideas and influences are interwoven or ‘mashed up’ into a 7-minute extravaganza.
Florence Price - Air
Florence Price, a prolific composer of orchestral, chamber, choral, piano and organ music, grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. Studying at the New England Conservatory of Music, in Boston, and subsequently serving on the faculty of Atlanta’s Clark University, Price eventually settled in Chicago. There, in the Windy City, her compositional career took flight. Her Symphony No. 1 (first of four) was premiered shortly after its completion by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933, marking the first time the music of an African-American woman had been featured by a major orchestra. Price’s Suite No. 1 dates from 1942, and its four movements have an unabashedly romantic flair about them. The third movement, simply titled Air, offers its principal theme straightaway, then develops it within a richly chromatic (i.e., with notes outside the major scale) harmonic framework.
David Hurd - Te Deum Laudamus
David Hurd, eminent composer and recitalist, is the Organist and Music Director of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, in New York City. His large, four-movement work Te Deum laudamus was commissioned by and dedicated to Larry King, former Organist-Choirmaster of Trinity Church, Wall Street. About his work the composer writes:
TOCCATA – THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT uses the traditional solemn tone for the first verse of the Latin hymn Te Deum as a cantus firmus in the bass. The two phrases of the chant form the opening and closing sections of this movement while the middle section is a short fugue based on the melody of the first phrase.
FOUR FANTASIES – THE ADORATION is really four sketches strung together, each representing one of the four bodies of persons or souls which offer praise to God in the hymn Te Deum. The apostles' praise is cast in twelve-tone procedure. The outer portions of this ABA section make reference to the cantus firmus mostly through sustaining of the pitches of the chant melody as they occur in the order of the row. The prophets' praise utilizes the whole-tone scale mostly in ascending thirds. The shape of the chant melody can be recognized in the fugal episodes of this section. The martyrs' praise is characterized by boldly juxtaposed major triads. Like the section immediately before it, the martyrs' praise utilizes the chant melody in fragments, treating it in rhythmic patterns. The Holy Church's praise is heralded by the same fanfare used to begin the first movement. In this five-voice section the cantus firmus is stated by the upper pedal voice.
RECITATIVE AND HYMN – THE HUMBLING begins as an improvisatory flute solo line. In the central section of this movement fragments of the chant melody and recitative are in dialogue. The final section brings the recitative together with the Christmas hymn Divinum mysterium ("Of the Father's love begotten"), the melody of which occurs in the upper pedal voice.
INTRODUCTION, FUGUE AND CHACONNE – THE OPENING OF HEAVEN begins as Dies irae and Victimae paschali – two ancient Latin sequences respectively speaking of death and life – are pitted against one another in jagged rhythm and fiery reed color. At the peak of combat, a short cadenza re-introduces the tone row of the apostles' praise (from the second movement) and climaxes with a recollection of a now altered form of the fanfare figure heard before in the first and second movements. The Chaconne emerges quietly out of the combat. The fifteen variations on a ground, derived from the apostles' praise, call to remembrance the various melodies, textures and colors of all that has gone before in this and other movements, casting it all upward in a triumphant crescendo toward Christ in glory at the right hand of God.
by Bruce Neswick
Olivier Messiaen - La Nativité du Seigneur
Messiaen, we might claim, is the most original "voice" in the organ world of our time: it is doubtful that anyone has contributed more than he to a reassessment of the role of the 20th century organ in the realms of composition, liturgy and theology.
The Birth of the Lord, dating from 1935, is a nine-movement work, about which the composer had plenty to say. He described The Children of God as a "development in crescendo above a dominant pedal, followed by the cry: 'Father! Father' – and a slow, tender phrase in diminuendo over a tonic pedal." The Wise Men is explicitly pictorial, and Messiaen does not hesitate to call upon the details of the story of the Magi in describing for his listeners the effect of this movement – as when he writes "toward the end, the registration becomes tender and mysterious: the Magi Kings are kneeling before the infant."
Johann Sebastian Bach - Christ Unser Herr Zum Jordan Kam
Of the seven works of Bach published in his lifetime, four bear the title Clavierübung (literally, "keyboard practice"). Of these four collections, only one, Clavierübung III, contains music specifically for the organ. The contents of this book, published in 1739, include 21 preludes on Lutheran chorales and four duets, the sum of which is framed by the two movements of the Prelude and Fugue in E-flat Major. Christ unser Herr zum Jordan kam, Martin Luther’s catechism hymn highlighting the sacrament of baptism, uses a tune by Johann Walther, one of the first prominent composers of the Lutheran movement. Bach’s treatment of this venerable tune assigns the melody in long notes in the pedal. This plan then allows for great freedom of expression in the manuals, with the left hand’s constant rush of 16th notes depicting the waters of the Jordan, and the right hands’ sharply-etched employment of the cross motif pointing to Jesus’ self-sacrifice, prepared for at his baptism.
Clara Schumann - Three Preludes and Fugues
Much has been written about (and will continue to be written about) the romantic and musical partnership of one of the great power couples of all time – Robert and Clara Schumann. Clara was one of the most important musical artists of the 19th century, playing piano solo and chamber music recitals all over Europe to great acclaim. Her teaching was legendary and far-reaching, and, in the years before her husband’s premature death in 1856, she was drawn to the art of composition. Though small in number and largely confined to the piano (solo or in tandem with other instruments), her works, coupled with the resurgence of interest in her life and career over the past 50 years, have given rise to the question of how her compositional career might have developed further had she had fewer pressures on her time. There are three preludes and fugues in the Op. 16 set, and, while they were not originally conceived for the organ, they transcribe well for the King of Instruments. The Schumanns were, in some ways, guardians of the past, exhibiting a life-long interest in earlier musical eras, in general, and in the art of counterpoint (the intertwining of musical voices), in particular. Their interest in and study of the organ was another mark of their devotion to tradition. The inherent restraint conveyed by this attention to classical forms and styles translates well to the organ, a medium that tends to favor moderation over virtuosity.
Texu Kim - Ma$HeD
Texu Kim has been the Composer-in-Residence of the Korean Symphony Orchestra, based in his native Seoul, and is currently AssistantProfessor of Composition at San Diego State University. A graduate of Indiana University (where he won the coveted Dean’s Prize in Composition), Dr. Kim is also a graduate of Seoul National University. About his new work, the composer writes:
Ma$HeD was commissioned by Mark Pacoe and St. Malachy's Church (“The Actors' Chapel”) in New York City for the 2016 Paul Creston Award Celebration Concert, in memory of Margaret 'Peggy' Pugh, honoring Pulitzer and Grammy award winning composer Jennifer Higdon, 2016 recipient of the Paul Creston Award. To be more faithful to the purpose of this event, I quoted Jennifer Higdon’s energetic piece Smash, as well as Paul Creston’s Psalm XXIII and Now Thank We All Our God: all three pieces were on the same program. It is my observation of the organ improvisation tradition that improvisateurs frequently take themes from other pieces in the same program. Bruce Neswick, who was the 2010 awardee of the Paul Creston Award and who premiered this piece, has introduced this tradition to me. I have therefore incorporated some of his improvisational style in the beginning of the piece, though everything is written down. All these ideas and influences are interwoven or ‘mashed up’ into a 7-minute extravaganza.
Florence Price - Air
Florence Price, a prolific composer of orchestral, chamber, choral, piano and organ music, grew up in Little Rock, Arkansas. Studying at the New England Conservatory of Music, in Boston, and subsequently serving on the faculty of Atlanta’s Clark University, Price eventually settled in Chicago. There, in the Windy City, her compositional career took flight. Her Symphony No. 1 (first of four) was premiered shortly after its completion by the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in 1933, marking the first time the music of an African-American woman had been featured by a major orchestra. Price’s Suite No. 1 dates from 1942, and its four movements have an unabashedly romantic flair about them. The third movement, simply titled Air, offers its principal theme straightaway, then develops it within a richly chromatic (i.e., with notes outside the major scale) harmonic framework.
David Hurd - Te Deum Laudamus
David Hurd, eminent composer and recitalist, is the Organist and Music Director of the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin, in New York City. His large, four-movement work Te Deum laudamus was commissioned by and dedicated to Larry King, former Organist-Choirmaster of Trinity Church, Wall Street. About his work the composer writes:
TOCCATA – THE ACKNOWLEDGMENT uses the traditional solemn tone for the first verse of the Latin hymn Te Deum as a cantus firmus in the bass. The two phrases of the chant form the opening and closing sections of this movement while the middle section is a short fugue based on the melody of the first phrase.
FOUR FANTASIES – THE ADORATION is really four sketches strung together, each representing one of the four bodies of persons or souls which offer praise to God in the hymn Te Deum. The apostles' praise is cast in twelve-tone procedure. The outer portions of this ABA section make reference to the cantus firmus mostly through sustaining of the pitches of the chant melody as they occur in the order of the row. The prophets' praise utilizes the whole-tone scale mostly in ascending thirds. The shape of the chant melody can be recognized in the fugal episodes of this section. The martyrs' praise is characterized by boldly juxtaposed major triads. Like the section immediately before it, the martyrs' praise utilizes the chant melody in fragments, treating it in rhythmic patterns. The Holy Church's praise is heralded by the same fanfare used to begin the first movement. In this five-voice section the cantus firmus is stated by the upper pedal voice.
RECITATIVE AND HYMN – THE HUMBLING begins as an improvisatory flute solo line. In the central section of this movement fragments of the chant melody and recitative are in dialogue. The final section brings the recitative together with the Christmas hymn Divinum mysterium ("Of the Father's love begotten"), the melody of which occurs in the upper pedal voice.
INTRODUCTION, FUGUE AND CHACONNE – THE OPENING OF HEAVEN begins as Dies irae and Victimae paschali – two ancient Latin sequences respectively speaking of death and life – are pitted against one another in jagged rhythm and fiery reed color. At the peak of combat, a short cadenza re-introduces the tone row of the apostles' praise (from the second movement) and climaxes with a recollection of a now altered form of the fanfare figure heard before in the first and second movements. The Chaconne emerges quietly out of the combat. The fifteen variations on a ground, derived from the apostles' praise, call to remembrance the various melodies, textures and colors of all that has gone before in this and other movements, casting it all upward in a triumphant crescendo toward Christ in glory at the right hand of God.