Sunday 13 November 2022 at 8:00 PM
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Joshua Stafford
Riverside Presbyterian Church, Jacksonville, FL (USA)
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Joshua Stafford
Riverside Presbyterian Church, Jacksonville, FL (USA)
Program
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Les Corps glorieux (1939)
VI. Joie et clarté des corps glorieux [Joy and clarity of the Glorious Bodies]
(“Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” - Matthew 13:43)
Florence B. Price (1887-1953)
First Sonata for Organ
I. Introduction/Allegro
II. Andantino
III. Finale
Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)
Improvisation on “Nearer, my God, to thee”
Gaston Litaize (1909-1991)
Prélude et danse fuguée
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
O Lamm Gottes unschuldig, BWV 656
Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
Symphonie No. 4, op. 32
I. Romance
Joseph Jongen (1873-1953)
Sonata Eroïca, op. 94
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992)
Les Corps glorieux (1939)
VI. Joie et clarté des corps glorieux [Joy and clarity of the Glorious Bodies]
(“Then shall the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father” - Matthew 13:43)
Florence B. Price (1887-1953)
First Sonata for Organ
I. Introduction/Allegro
II. Andantino
III. Finale
Sigfrid Karg-Elert (1877-1933)
Improvisation on “Nearer, my God, to thee”
Gaston Litaize (1909-1991)
Prélude et danse fuguée
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
O Lamm Gottes unschuldig, BWV 656
Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
Symphonie No. 4, op. 32
I. Romance
Joseph Jongen (1873-1953)
Sonata Eroïca, op. 94
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Joshua Stafford has been Director of music ministries and organist for Riverside Presbyterian Church, Jacksonville, Florida since 2021 and Director of Sacred Music at the Chautauqua Institute in New York since 2020. A native of Jamestown, New York, Joshua Stafford received the bachelor of music degree from the Curtis Institute of Music in 2010 and his master of music degree from the Yale School of Music in 2012. In 2016 Stafford was named unanimously the First Prize Winner at the Longwood Gardens International Organ Competition. Already in demand as a recitalist, improviser, and choral accompanist, Joshua has performed at many notable venues, including the Wanamaker Organ in Philadelphia, the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington D.C., Philadelphia’s Kimmel Center, and Spivey Hall in Georgia.
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Program Notes
(by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah)
Messiaen was admitted to the Paris Conservatory at the age of 10, and at age 22 began his tenure of over sixty years as organist at the Church of La Trinité in Paris. In 1941, after spending a year as a prisoner of war, he was appointed Professor of Harmony, and later Professor of Composition, at the Paris Conservatory until his retirement in 1978. Messiaen completed his monumental seven-movement opus, Les Corps Glorieux [The Glorious Bodies] on August 25, 1939, just one week before the declaration of war. In it his musical language includes for the first time monodies and timbres of Indian music and Gregorian chant as well as the freedom and complexity of Greek and Indian rhythms. Messiaen himself premiered the piece April 15, 1945 at Paris’s Palais de Chaillot. The six outer movements portray different qualities of eternal life. Joy and Brightness of the Glorified Bodies is a splashy movement of light, illuminated with colors and irresistible rhythmic verve. The form is very simple: three refrains of a joyful song including a jazzy trumpet solo, framing two soft, tender couplets. The bizarre registrations bring to mind the brilliant lights of the glorified bodies.
A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Florence Price entered the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston at age 15 where she studied organ with Henry M. Dunham. In 1927 Price settled in Chicago and established herself as a well-respected church organist. That same year she composed her First Sonata in D Minor. Atypically, it does not use African-American musical elements but instead is closely modeled after Parisian organist Alexandre Guilmant’s First Sonata in D Minor which she had performed for Guilmant in 1904 as a student in Boston. The piece begins with massive chords and dotted rhythms leading to the sonata allegro proper. The first theme is in the manuals with chordal accompaniment followed by the second theme in the relative major (F) given out as a pedal solo. The development begins with a canon on the first theme then adds fragments of the second theme in the pedal leading to the recapitulation. The second movement in A major lyrically solos the oboe and flute stops in a legato style fugue. The final movement is a robust toccata in D minor with a 16th-note theme in the right hand over a slower left hand and pedal accompaniment. After a calm middle section, the movement brilliantly concludes on full organ restating the second theme in D major.
Karg-Elert lived most of his life in Leipzig and was largely self-taught. He was a virtuoso pianist and came to the organ relatively late in his career. He soon became one of its most noted exponents and exploited its expressive possibilities. Written as a direct response to the sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York in 1912, his Improvisation on “Nearer, My God, to Thee” is based on the tune by American hymnodist Lowell Mason—a nod to the apocryphal story that the ship’s band played the hymn as they sank. The work has been described as “cinematic, dealing with events in a graphic way.” After a fairly straightforward presentation of the tune, the harmony becomes increasingly chromatic and strays further and further from the home key. A quiet close in F major brings temporary respite before the final build-up to disaster. The music becomes increasingly dissonant and Karg-Elert briefly quotes the choral “Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir” [From the depths I cry to thee] before a final majestically bold statement of Mason's tune.
Litaize was born blind and studied organ with Adolphe Marty (himself a blind pupil of Franck) at the National Institute of Blind Youth in Paris. Following Marty’s death in 1942, Litaize not only succeeded him at the Institute but also as organist at Saint François-Xavier for the remainder of his life. His earliest works were composed throughout the 1930s and marry the earlier French symphonic style to a fresh neo-classical transparency and harmony. In 1964 the Paris Conservatory commissioned Litaize to compose Prelude and Fugal Dance for its organ competition. The Prelude, reminiscent of the music of Jehan Alain, begins with a dialogue between flutes and cromorne, followed by a secular dance of syncopated rumba rhythms and strident crashing chords which crescendo to a bacchanalian frenzy on full organ.
The “Great 18” or “Leipzig Chorales” comprise a group of chorale preludes composed by Bach in his Weimar period (1708-1717) which he revised and assembled during the last years of his life in Leipzig. They demonstrate his absolute mastery of craftsmanship at the highest level of sophistication and stylistic diversity. Among the most beloved arrangements in the collection are the three stanzas of the so-called Lutheran Agnus Dei, O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig, BWV 656 [O Lamb of God, unstained]. Bach transforms the chorale from duple to triple meter to pastorally portray the Lamb. The first stanza is for manuals in a three-voice texture adorned with ornaments. The cantus firmus is in the highest voice supported by a beautifully flowing background texture. In the second stanza, still with only three voices on the manuals, the scarcely adorned chorale melody moves to the middle voice accompanied by a new figuration. The descending eighth note motif of the first stanza and the short three-note ascending broken figure of the second stanza both denote acts of prayer. In the final stanza the melody appears as a fourth voice in the pedals. The upper three parts in 9/4 meter become more rhythmic and abounding in strength, like growing faith. Some striking text painting occurs with intense descending chromatic progressions on the words “If not, we would have despaired,” until the moment when the bass intones “Grant us peace.” Then euphoric arabesques spring up and restore the climate of pacified serenity.
Like Litaize, Vierne was born blind. As a child he underwent two operations in 1877 to repair congenital cataracts which restored partial sight. Three years later, he too entered the National Institute of Blind Youth in Paris and also studied organ there with Adolphe Marty. Vierne later served as organist at Paris’s renowned Notre-Dame Cathedral from 1900 until his death. In his six organ symphonies Vierne conveys many moods ranging from effervescent joy to melancholy of an unhappy marriage and divorce, professional disappointments, and the death of both his eldest son and brother in World War I. Curiously, the Fourth Symphony, composed in the summer of 1914, was first published in America and was premiered in Boston by Francis Snow on November 7, 1917. Its penultimate movement, Romance, is marked Adagio molto espressivo and begins with one of Vierne’s most sublime melodies. The central section recalls the gloominess of the symphony’s first movement, after which the first theme returns in tonic D-flat ending the movement in an atmosphere of warm tranquility.
Jongen spent most of his life in his native Belgium. In 1920, he was appointed as a professor at the Brussells Conservatory and later became its director from 1925-1939. Originally titled Variations, his one-movement Sonata Eroïca, op. 94 was written in five days during the last week of September 1930. Despite the high technical demands, it stands not only as his finest and most-performed solo organ work but also as a pinnacle in 20th-century organ music. It was commissioned to inaugurate the new organ at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussells where Jongen played its premiere on November 6, 1930. Recalling the chromatic language of Vierne, the piece opens with a lengthy and brilliant introduction of declamatory unisons followed by chords of heroic character. The middle section is based on a single folk-like theme first heard on string stops followed by a set of three continuous variations: the first in the pedal, the second in the manner of a Mendelssohn Song without Words, and the third growing in intensity and animation. A lyric interlude on a flute accompanied by undulating strings ushers in the final section and a gradual return to the initial tempo. The work concludes with a finely-fashioned fugato based on the first part of the theme which builds to a thrilling and heroic epilogue for full organ.
(by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah)
Messiaen was admitted to the Paris Conservatory at the age of 10, and at age 22 began his tenure of over sixty years as organist at the Church of La Trinité in Paris. In 1941, after spending a year as a prisoner of war, he was appointed Professor of Harmony, and later Professor of Composition, at the Paris Conservatory until his retirement in 1978. Messiaen completed his monumental seven-movement opus, Les Corps Glorieux [The Glorious Bodies] on August 25, 1939, just one week before the declaration of war. In it his musical language includes for the first time monodies and timbres of Indian music and Gregorian chant as well as the freedom and complexity of Greek and Indian rhythms. Messiaen himself premiered the piece April 15, 1945 at Paris’s Palais de Chaillot. The six outer movements portray different qualities of eternal life. Joy and Brightness of the Glorified Bodies is a splashy movement of light, illuminated with colors and irresistible rhythmic verve. The form is very simple: three refrains of a joyful song including a jazzy trumpet solo, framing two soft, tender couplets. The bizarre registrations bring to mind the brilliant lights of the glorified bodies.
A native of Little Rock, Arkansas, Florence Price entered the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston at age 15 where she studied organ with Henry M. Dunham. In 1927 Price settled in Chicago and established herself as a well-respected church organist. That same year she composed her First Sonata in D Minor. Atypically, it does not use African-American musical elements but instead is closely modeled after Parisian organist Alexandre Guilmant’s First Sonata in D Minor which she had performed for Guilmant in 1904 as a student in Boston. The piece begins with massive chords and dotted rhythms leading to the sonata allegro proper. The first theme is in the manuals with chordal accompaniment followed by the second theme in the relative major (F) given out as a pedal solo. The development begins with a canon on the first theme then adds fragments of the second theme in the pedal leading to the recapitulation. The second movement in A major lyrically solos the oboe and flute stops in a legato style fugue. The final movement is a robust toccata in D minor with a 16th-note theme in the right hand over a slower left hand and pedal accompaniment. After a calm middle section, the movement brilliantly concludes on full organ restating the second theme in D major.
Karg-Elert lived most of his life in Leipzig and was largely self-taught. He was a virtuoso pianist and came to the organ relatively late in his career. He soon became one of its most noted exponents and exploited its expressive possibilities. Written as a direct response to the sinking of the Titanic on her maiden voyage from Liverpool to New York in 1912, his Improvisation on “Nearer, My God, to Thee” is based on the tune by American hymnodist Lowell Mason—a nod to the apocryphal story that the ship’s band played the hymn as they sank. The work has been described as “cinematic, dealing with events in a graphic way.” After a fairly straightforward presentation of the tune, the harmony becomes increasingly chromatic and strays further and further from the home key. A quiet close in F major brings temporary respite before the final build-up to disaster. The music becomes increasingly dissonant and Karg-Elert briefly quotes the choral “Aus tiefer Not schrei ich zu dir” [From the depths I cry to thee] before a final majestically bold statement of Mason's tune.
Litaize was born blind and studied organ with Adolphe Marty (himself a blind pupil of Franck) at the National Institute of Blind Youth in Paris. Following Marty’s death in 1942, Litaize not only succeeded him at the Institute but also as organist at Saint François-Xavier for the remainder of his life. His earliest works were composed throughout the 1930s and marry the earlier French symphonic style to a fresh neo-classical transparency and harmony. In 1964 the Paris Conservatory commissioned Litaize to compose Prelude and Fugal Dance for its organ competition. The Prelude, reminiscent of the music of Jehan Alain, begins with a dialogue between flutes and cromorne, followed by a secular dance of syncopated rumba rhythms and strident crashing chords which crescendo to a bacchanalian frenzy on full organ.
The “Great 18” or “Leipzig Chorales” comprise a group of chorale preludes composed by Bach in his Weimar period (1708-1717) which he revised and assembled during the last years of his life in Leipzig. They demonstrate his absolute mastery of craftsmanship at the highest level of sophistication and stylistic diversity. Among the most beloved arrangements in the collection are the three stanzas of the so-called Lutheran Agnus Dei, O Lamm Gottes, unschuldig, BWV 656 [O Lamb of God, unstained]. Bach transforms the chorale from duple to triple meter to pastorally portray the Lamb. The first stanza is for manuals in a three-voice texture adorned with ornaments. The cantus firmus is in the highest voice supported by a beautifully flowing background texture. In the second stanza, still with only three voices on the manuals, the scarcely adorned chorale melody moves to the middle voice accompanied by a new figuration. The descending eighth note motif of the first stanza and the short three-note ascending broken figure of the second stanza both denote acts of prayer. In the final stanza the melody appears as a fourth voice in the pedals. The upper three parts in 9/4 meter become more rhythmic and abounding in strength, like growing faith. Some striking text painting occurs with intense descending chromatic progressions on the words “If not, we would have despaired,” until the moment when the bass intones “Grant us peace.” Then euphoric arabesques spring up and restore the climate of pacified serenity.
Like Litaize, Vierne was born blind. As a child he underwent two operations in 1877 to repair congenital cataracts which restored partial sight. Three years later, he too entered the National Institute of Blind Youth in Paris and also studied organ there with Adolphe Marty. Vierne later served as organist at Paris’s renowned Notre-Dame Cathedral from 1900 until his death. In his six organ symphonies Vierne conveys many moods ranging from effervescent joy to melancholy of an unhappy marriage and divorce, professional disappointments, and the death of both his eldest son and brother in World War I. Curiously, the Fourth Symphony, composed in the summer of 1914, was first published in America and was premiered in Boston by Francis Snow on November 7, 1917. Its penultimate movement, Romance, is marked Adagio molto espressivo and begins with one of Vierne’s most sublime melodies. The central section recalls the gloominess of the symphony’s first movement, after which the first theme returns in tonic D-flat ending the movement in an atmosphere of warm tranquility.
Jongen spent most of his life in his native Belgium. In 1920, he was appointed as a professor at the Brussells Conservatory and later became its director from 1925-1939. Originally titled Variations, his one-movement Sonata Eroïca, op. 94 was written in five days during the last week of September 1930. Despite the high technical demands, it stands not only as his finest and most-performed solo organ work but also as a pinnacle in 20th-century organ music. It was commissioned to inaugurate the new organ at the Palais des Beaux-Arts in Brussells where Jongen played its premiere on November 6, 1930. Recalling the chromatic language of Vierne, the piece opens with a lengthy and brilliant introduction of declamatory unisons followed by chords of heroic character. The middle section is based on a single folk-like theme first heard on string stops followed by a set of three continuous variations: the first in the pedal, the second in the manner of a Mendelssohn Song without Words, and the third growing in intensity and animation. A lyric interlude on a flute accompanied by undulating strings ushers in the final section and a gradual return to the initial tempo. The work concludes with a finely-fashioned fugato based on the first part of the theme which builds to a thrilling and heroic epilogue for full organ.
