Sunday 10 October 2021 at 8:00 PM
Eccles Organ Festival Recital
Benjamin LaPrairie
Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception, Washington, D.C.

Program

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Concerto in C Major after Vivaldi, BWV 594
         I. [without tempo indication]
         II. Recitativ. Adagio
         III. Allegro – Solo
 
Max Reger (1873-1916)
Introduction and Passacaglia in D Minor

Robert Schumann (1810-1856)
from Studien für den pedalflügel, Op. 56
         II. Mit innigem Ausdruck
         III. Andantino, Etwas schneller
         V. Nicht zu schnell
         VI. Adagio

Pierre Cochereau (1924-1984) 
Berceuse à la mémoire de Louis Vierne

Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
from Symphonie No. 1, Op. 14
         IV. Allegro vivace

Marcel Dupré (1886-1971) 
Cortège et Litanie, Op. 19, No. 2

Gerald Near (b. 1942) 
Solemn Prelude on a Theme of Thomas Tallis

Jean Langlais (1907-1991) 
Fête, Op. 51

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Benjamin LaPrairie serves as Associate Director of Music at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. Since 2011, he has assisted in the leadership of the music department and has regularly accompanied daily, Sunday, and other special Masses throughout the year. Notable liturgies include the Canonization Mass of Saint Junípero Serra, celebrated by Pope Francis, and the Funeral Mass of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia. In May of 2019, Benjamin performed with the Choir of the Basilica in concerts and liturgies in Rome for the commemoration of 35 years of diplomatic relations between the United States and the Holy See. Previous posts include Principal Organist at St. Dominic Catholic Church in Washington, D.C., and Director of Music at St. Patrick Catholic Church in St. Charles, Illinois.
 
As a composer, Benjamin’s works have been performed by the Choir, Brass, and Orchestra of the Basilica, and have been recorded and broadcast worldwide on EWTN, Salt & Light Media, and CatholicTV. His setting of Christus Vincit was premiered upon the entrance of Pope Francis into the Great Upper Church of the National Shrine in September of 2015. Recent works include a new setting of Ye Sons and Daughters for the Choir and Orchestra of the Basilica, and a setting of Joy to the World for the choirs and orchestra of The Catholic University of America. As an organist, Benjamin has performed throughout the United States and abroad, and has been featured as a soloist with the Pine Mountain Music Festival, at Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, NJ, and at the Kennedy Center in Washington, DC in a performance of Louis Vierne’s Messe Solennelle. Upcoming events include the dedicatory series of concerts at St. Andrew the Apostle Catholic Church in Clifton, VA, the Concerts Spirituels series at The Catholic University of America, and the premiere of a new Mass setting commissioned for the centennial of St. Francis of Assisi Church in New Orleans, LA.
 
A native of Michigan, Benjamin is a graduate of the University of Michigan School of Music, Theater, and Dance, where he studied organ with Robert Glasgow. He received a Master of Music degree from the Peabody Conservatory of Music, where he studied organ with John Walker, and was the recipient of the Bruce R. Eicher Prize in Organ. In the fall of 2019, Benjamin was appointed Lecturer in Organ at The Catholic University of America Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art.

Program Notes
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah

Around 1713, when Bach was court organist in Weimar, he arranged five instrumental concertos for organ solo. The longest of the five, the energetic Concerto in C Major, BWV 594, is an arrangement of Vivaldi’s 1711 Violin Concerto in D Major (nicknamed “The Great Mogul”). Although Bach transposed it down to C Major to accommodate the compass of the keyboard, he made surprisingly few changes to Vivaldi’s original notes. The first movement, marked Allegro in Vivaldi’s original, is in ritornello form. Adapting the solo violin figurations to the keyboard in this (and the final) movement particularly challenges the interpretive demands placed on the organist. The improvisatory second movement in A Minor is for the solo violin and basso continuo. Scholars surmise that it was this movement that mainly captured Bach’s interest, as its freely flowing, heavily decorated melody is reminiscent of the coloring of a cantus firmus. The last movement, with its concluding solo cadenza, is also in ritornello form and is the most virtuosic of the three movements.
 
Reger’s parents were both teacher-musicians, and his father taught him the organ. In 1893 Reger became professor of composition at his alma mater, the Wiesbaden Academy; however, illness and depression forced him to return home to live with his family in Weiden from 1898 to 1901. There in 1899 he composed the magnificent Introduction and Passacaglia in D Minor for inclusion in the “Schönberger Organ Album,” a publication of works by several renowned organ composers (e.g., Guilmant, Rheinberger, Widor) intended to fund the new organ in Schönberg im Taunus. Although Reger called this a “little work” that is “intentionally not difficult,” it is neither and has remained from its inception one of his most popular pieces. From the thunderous opening to the hushed initial bars of the passacaglia, it succinctly displays all of the elements of Reger’s musical language while retaining charm and flamboyance.
 
Schumann began composing music at age seven. After his father’s death in 1826, he went to Leipzig to study law (to meet the terms of his inheritance). Four years later, he left the study of law to return to music. In 1843 he took a teaching position at the Leipzig Conservatory which Mendelssohn had founded that same year; however, by 1844 his nerves were in such a state that he suffered a complete breakdown, so in December he and his family moved to Dresden. Schumann took with him a pedal attachment for his piano—he had first encountered the device at the Conservatory, where it was introduced as an aid for the organ students—and there composed his Studien, op. 56 comprising six canons—or rather, romantic miniatures disguised as canons. Dedicated to Schumann’s first teacher, Zwickau organist Johann Gottfried Kuntzch, the contrapuntal studies are all built in ABA structure with the canons spaced apart at different intervals and bar lengths. Nº 2 is an expressive and sensitive elegy in A Minor with the canon found in the imitating chord repetitions of the upper parts. The 16th-note accompaniment of Nº 3 in E Major evokes the romantic universe of the piano. Nº 5 in B Minor is in the style of a march with staccato chords and appoggiaturas. In Nº 6 a noble B Major adagio is interrupted by a fugal middle section.
 
A renowned concert organist (with 25 tours to the US alone), Pierre Cochereau was appointed organist of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris in 1952. He had the cathedral organ enlarged and modernized with combination action to facilitate multiple varieties of sound. This launched his departure from the previous French symphonic tradition to create a new post-symphonic language. His masterful improvisations impressed audiences sometimes with their sheer vitality and sometimes with their lyricism as exemplified in his Berceuse à la mémoire de Louis Vierne improvised at Notre-Dame in May 1973. It recalls the celebrated lullaby composed by his predecessor, Louis Vierne, based on the French children’s song “Dodo, l’enfant do,” (dodo is a lullaby and a child’s word for “bye-bye,” or sleep) that Vierne sang to his infant daughter, Colette. Cochereau develops this theme in a spellbinding and tranquil manner, with changing timbres, chromaticism, numerous modulations, and subtle harmonies. The improvisation was transcribed by Frédéric Blanc and published in 1997.
 
Louis Vierne was the cathedral organist at Notre-Dame from 1900 to 1937. His six organ symphonies continued the symphonic tradition of the French organ school revitalizing it with more modern and colorful harmonic language. Vierne finished composing his First Symphony in D Minor in 1899 while still assisting Widor (his teacher) at Saint-Sulpice and Guilmant (the symphony’s dedicatee) at the Paris Conservatory. It has remained popular since Widor played it at Saint-Sulpice for Vierne’s wedding on April 22, 1899. Like Widor’s First Symphony, Vierne’s has six movements. The fourth, Allegro vivace in A Minor, is the earliest of Vierne’s incisive and diabolical scherzos, a genre for which he would become famous. Within its ABA form, the wispy A sections contrast with the peaceful B section, a canon played on the trumpet, but both themes are unified by an anapestic (weak-weak-strong) rhythm. In 1925, the movement became the first of Vierne’s organ compositions to be recorded.
 
Marcel Dupré (Vierne’s pupil and Cochereau’s teacher) originally composed his popular Cortège et Litanie in 1922 as one of five incidental pieces scored for a small eleven-piece orchestra to accompany a friend’s play. Dupré subsequently transcribed it as the second of Quatre Pieces, op. 19 for piano solo. During his 1922-23 American tour, he played the piano version one evening at a private party in New York, leading his impresario, Alexander Russell, to suggest that Dupré arrange it for organ solo as well as for organ and orchestra. Both of these arrangements were published in 1924. The opening Cortège consists simply of an opening chorale. Litanie follows with a chanting melody. After many repetitions of this melody, both themes are played simultaneously. This work ushered in a new genre of organ music based on the repetition of short succinct themes such as Jehan Alain’s Litanies.
 
Both Benjamin LaPrairie and Gerald Near studied organ with the late Robert Glasgow at the University of Michigan. Near is considered one of today’s finest American composers. His Solemn Prelude on a Theme of Thomas Tallis dates from 2009 but is based on a much older Phrygian (third mode) psalm tune (also famously used by Vaughan Williams) which Thomas Tallis composed for The Whole Psalter of 1567. Tallis was one of the few Tudor musicians who served during the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth I and managed to remain in the good favor of both Catholic and Protestant monarchs. He was court organist and composer from 1543 until his death, composing music for Roman Catholic masses and Anglican liturgies (depending on the monarch). Near’s setting is filled with great expressiveness and has a fluid, forward motion.
 
Blind from age 3, Jean Langlais was another student of Dupré and one of the most prolific French composers of the 20th century. Like Vierne, he studied at the National Institute for Blind Children and later at the Paris Conservatory. His first composition after World War II, Fête (“festival”), not only celebrated the liberation of Paris but also his long-awaited appointment as organist at Sainte-Clotilde. Filled with joyful exuberance and rhythmic excitement, Fête juxtaposes bold, repeated chord patterns against tightly syncopated figures and running 16th notes, grounded in quartal accents. This concerto-like alternation continues non-stop, interrupted only by a short interlude on the Cornet, and concludes with an animated frenzy that finally lands on an E-major chord.