Sunday 12 September 2021 at 8:00 PM
Eccles Organ Festival Recital Joseph Peeples Salt Lake Tabernacle, Salt Lake City, UT |
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Program
Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
Praeludium in E Minor, BuxWV 143
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Trio Sonata No. 5 in C Major, BWV 529
I. Allegro
II. Largo
III. Allegro
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Fantaisie in E-flat Major (1857)
Jean Langlais (1907-1991)
Cantilène, from Suite Brève
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Sonata No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op.65
I. Allegro con brio
II. Andante religioso
III. Allegretto
IV. Allegro maestoso e vivace
Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
Méditation, from Trois Improvisations
(reconstructed by Maurice Duruflé)
Louis Vierne
Final, from Symphony No. 5 in A Minor, Op. 47.
Dieterich Buxtehude (1637-1707)
Praeludium in E Minor, BuxWV 143
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750)
Trio Sonata No. 5 in C Major, BWV 529
I. Allegro
II. Largo
III. Allegro
Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921)
Fantaisie in E-flat Major (1857)
Jean Langlais (1907-1991)
Cantilène, from Suite Brève
Felix Mendelssohn (1809-1847)
Sonata No. 4 in B-flat Major, Op.65
I. Allegro con brio
II. Andante religioso
III. Allegretto
IV. Allegro maestoso e vivace
Louis Vierne (1870-1937)
Méditation, from Trois Improvisations
(reconstructed by Maurice Duruflé)
Louis Vierne
Final, from Symphony No. 5 in A Minor, Op. 47.
Joseph Peeples became a Temple Square Organist in June 2019, making him the newest staff organist on Temple Square. He participates in the daily recital series on the 206-rank Æolian-Skinner organ, the "Piping Up! Organ Concerts at Temple Square" weekly online stream, and the Tabernacle Choir at Temple Square's weekly radio and TV broadcast, “Music and the Spoken Word.” His duties also include accompanying and teaching at the choir’s training school, the Chorale at Temple Square.
Prior to his appointment, Joseph was University Organist at California Lutheran University in his hometown of Thousand Oaks, California, and Organist at First United Methodist Church in Santa Barbara. He has taught a wide variety of courses in music theory and musicianship at California Lutheran, Pepperdine, Indiana, and Brigham Young universities, and is currently on the faculty of the annual Brigham Young University Organ Workshop. Joseph is a doctoral candidate in organ performance at the Indiana University Jacobs School of Music, where he studied with Janette Fishell, Christopher Young, and Bruce Neswick. He received a Master of Music in organ performance from Brigham Young University, where he studied with Don Cook and Doug Bush. In addition to his responsibilities on Temple Square, Joseph maintains an active organ studio and is a scientific programmer in the optical thin-film industry. Joseph and his wife, Ellen, are proud parents of two sons. |
Program Notes
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah
At age 31 Buxtehude began his lifelong work as organist at St. Mary’s in Lübeck, the most prestigious position in North Germany, but only after agreeing to marry the daughter of the retiring church organist. It is to this church that the young Bach came to hear Buxtehude in 1705. Buxtehude’s music represents the high point of the 17th-century North German organ school, particularly his praeludia, a genre with distinct fugal sections inserted between free, improvisatory sections. Buxtehude, his pupil Bruhns, and later Bach, all left two praeludia in E minor—one large, one small. Buxtehude’s Praeludium in E Minor, BuxWV 143, with its opening pedal solo and pedal points, is the smaller of his two. It is structured as a perfectly balanced five-part arch. Two fugues, one in duple and one in triple meter, are placed between three free episodes: Episode 1-Fugue 1-Episode 2-Fugue 2-Episode 3. The initial episode-fugue pair is exactly the same length as the final pair, with a very brief central transition providing the keystone of the arch. The beginning of the final episode, marked Adagio, provides a dramatic cadence with broken chords and silences before the final tonic pedal point.
Among Bach’s greatest and most difficult organ masterpieces are his six trio sonatas. They were composed in Leipzig during the late 1720s for the musical instruction of his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Trio Sonata No. 5 in C Major is the longest of the six. The first movement in 3/4 time is a five-part arch (ABA’BA) and opens with a cheerful question-and-answer exchange, followed by the imitative B theme and brief repetitions of the A theme in different keys before returning to the B theme and a da capo. The ternary (ABA) Largo in A minor is one of Bach’s most moving meditations. Its sad, imitative speaking character portrays emotional outbursts, silences, and chromaticism. Scholars speculate Bach may have composed the movement in his earlier Weimar period, possibly following the death of his first wife, Maria Barbara, in 1720. He previously used it as the middle movement of his Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 545 and of his viola da gamba sonata, BWV 1029. A half cadence leads directly to the joyous final movement in 2/4, wherein a complex rondo-like structure employs two different themes heard not only fugally but also canonically at different scale degrees to bring the sonata to a vigorous end.
At the age of seventeen, Saint-Saëns was appointed organist at Saint-Merry in Paris. Four years later, Cavaillé-Coll rebuilt the church’s dilapidated 17th-century Cliquot organ and added an expressive Récit division. To showcase the new division, Saint-Saëns composed (in two days!) his first published organ work, the two-movement Fantaisie in E-flat Major, and played it for the first time at the inauguration of the organ on December 3, 1857. The opening Con moto begins with acrobatic interplay of staccato alternating chords on three keyboards to demonstrate the organ’s new three sound levels. The ensuing Allegro di molto con fuoco is a joyous 12/8 march, which is interrupted by a short fugato, then culminates with a flamboyant cadenza comprising pianistic scale passages covering the entire keyboard and majestic sforzando chords.
After World War II Langlais succeeded his teacher, Charles Tournemire, as organist at Sainte-Clotilde in Paris. Langlais’s growing fame engendered a request from his publisher in 1947 for a new organ work. The result was his four-movement Suite brève. The first three movements were re-worked from orchestral material previously composed by Langlais in 1946 for a radio drama. The quiet second movement, Cantilène, was originally a baritone solo with orchestral accompaniment. In its organ version, the haunting modal melody is heard on a reed stop in the pedal accompanied by soft chords, then developed canonically between high and low registers, even including a double pedal part. To end, the pedal melody is heard once again with an added flute obbligato in the soprano, a favorite compositional device of Langlais.
Mendelssohn was not recognized as an organist until he visited England for the first time in 1829. He returned nine times in the following eighteen years and played numerous organ recitals. During his eighth visit in 1844, the publishers Coventry & Hollier commissioned him to compose six organ sonatas which he completed in January 1845. Sonata No. 4 in B-flat Major was the last to be finished, and its four distinct movements are the most balanced of the entire set. The grandiose first movement is in sonata form. The first theme of rhapsodic sixteenth-note arpeggios and scales is followed by a martial theme in G minor with dotted rhythms. The recapitulation ingeniously superimposes the two themes in tight polyphony. The contrasting second movement in ternary (ABA) form was originally titled Andante alla Marcia. It features question-and-answer dialogues between two manuals bookended by a lyrical tune with a hymn-like harmonization. Maintaining this spirit of calm, the soft third movement in F major is a 6/8 pastorale evoking a Lied ohne Worte. The long, charming melody in shifting keys is woven around a gently flowing stream of sixteenth notes. The last movement was originally intended by Mendelssohn as just a fugue, but he decided to encase it within a framework resulting in the present three-part prelude-fugue-postlude structure. A vigorous introductory march segues into the fugue whose foreceful Bachian subject, first heard in the pedal, brings to mind the ascending pedal scales of the opening movement.
Vierne was named organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral in 1900, where in December 1928 he recorded three improvisations for the French label Odéon. These were released on 78 rpm phonograph discs in January 1930. Up to 4½ minutes of music could be recorded on a 12-inch disc; however, the longest of the three improvisations, Méditation in F Major, was only 3 minutes, 50 seconds. It illustrates Vierne’s mastery of form with a long, legato melody in duple time accompanied by triplets. At the request of Madeleine Richepin, the executrix of Vierne’s estate, the three improvisations were transcribed by Vierne’s student Maurice Duruflé and published in 1954.
A few years earlier in 1924, after a hiatus of ten years without producing an organ symphony, Vierne composed his monumental Fifth Symphony. The effervescent joy of his previous four symphonies was replaced by anguish and despair reflecting the melancholy of an unhappy marriage and divorce, professional disappointments, and the death of his eldest son and brother in World War I. Additionally, the symphony displays a Wagnerian aesthetic recalling Tristan with its unprecedented chromaticism and abandonment of tonal references as well as a cyclical double leitmotif. The Symphony’s opening Grave movement introduces the two very different themes integrated throughout the work: the first is diatonic descending by thirds, while the other is chromatic and tormented with vague atonality. Final, cast in sonata form, is the unbridled fifth movement and bursts forth as a French toccata denoting victory of joy over pain. It unexpectedly transforms the first Grave theme into a bright, swinging carillon tune in A major. The central Meno mosso sections reverse the second theme, so it is no longer one of bitterness. The movement concludes in sheer and dazzling virtuosity.
by Dr. Kenneth Udy, University of Utah
At age 31 Buxtehude began his lifelong work as organist at St. Mary’s in Lübeck, the most prestigious position in North Germany, but only after agreeing to marry the daughter of the retiring church organist. It is to this church that the young Bach came to hear Buxtehude in 1705. Buxtehude’s music represents the high point of the 17th-century North German organ school, particularly his praeludia, a genre with distinct fugal sections inserted between free, improvisatory sections. Buxtehude, his pupil Bruhns, and later Bach, all left two praeludia in E minor—one large, one small. Buxtehude’s Praeludium in E Minor, BuxWV 143, with its opening pedal solo and pedal points, is the smaller of his two. It is structured as a perfectly balanced five-part arch. Two fugues, one in duple and one in triple meter, are placed between three free episodes: Episode 1-Fugue 1-Episode 2-Fugue 2-Episode 3. The initial episode-fugue pair is exactly the same length as the final pair, with a very brief central transition providing the keystone of the arch. The beginning of the final episode, marked Adagio, provides a dramatic cadence with broken chords and silences before the final tonic pedal point.
Among Bach’s greatest and most difficult organ masterpieces are his six trio sonatas. They were composed in Leipzig during the late 1720s for the musical instruction of his eldest son, Wilhelm Friedemann. Trio Sonata No. 5 in C Major is the longest of the six. The first movement in 3/4 time is a five-part arch (ABA’BA) and opens with a cheerful question-and-answer exchange, followed by the imitative B theme and brief repetitions of the A theme in different keys before returning to the B theme and a da capo. The ternary (ABA) Largo in A minor is one of Bach’s most moving meditations. Its sad, imitative speaking character portrays emotional outbursts, silences, and chromaticism. Scholars speculate Bach may have composed the movement in his earlier Weimar period, possibly following the death of his first wife, Maria Barbara, in 1720. He previously used it as the middle movement of his Prelude and Fugue in C Major, BWV 545 and of his viola da gamba sonata, BWV 1029. A half cadence leads directly to the joyous final movement in 2/4, wherein a complex rondo-like structure employs two different themes heard not only fugally but also canonically at different scale degrees to bring the sonata to a vigorous end.
At the age of seventeen, Saint-Saëns was appointed organist at Saint-Merry in Paris. Four years later, Cavaillé-Coll rebuilt the church’s dilapidated 17th-century Cliquot organ and added an expressive Récit division. To showcase the new division, Saint-Saëns composed (in two days!) his first published organ work, the two-movement Fantaisie in E-flat Major, and played it for the first time at the inauguration of the organ on December 3, 1857. The opening Con moto begins with acrobatic interplay of staccato alternating chords on three keyboards to demonstrate the organ’s new three sound levels. The ensuing Allegro di molto con fuoco is a joyous 12/8 march, which is interrupted by a short fugato, then culminates with a flamboyant cadenza comprising pianistic scale passages covering the entire keyboard and majestic sforzando chords.
After World War II Langlais succeeded his teacher, Charles Tournemire, as organist at Sainte-Clotilde in Paris. Langlais’s growing fame engendered a request from his publisher in 1947 for a new organ work. The result was his four-movement Suite brève. The first three movements were re-worked from orchestral material previously composed by Langlais in 1946 for a radio drama. The quiet second movement, Cantilène, was originally a baritone solo with orchestral accompaniment. In its organ version, the haunting modal melody is heard on a reed stop in the pedal accompanied by soft chords, then developed canonically between high and low registers, even including a double pedal part. To end, the pedal melody is heard once again with an added flute obbligato in the soprano, a favorite compositional device of Langlais.
Mendelssohn was not recognized as an organist until he visited England for the first time in 1829. He returned nine times in the following eighteen years and played numerous organ recitals. During his eighth visit in 1844, the publishers Coventry & Hollier commissioned him to compose six organ sonatas which he completed in January 1845. Sonata No. 4 in B-flat Major was the last to be finished, and its four distinct movements are the most balanced of the entire set. The grandiose first movement is in sonata form. The first theme of rhapsodic sixteenth-note arpeggios and scales is followed by a martial theme in G minor with dotted rhythms. The recapitulation ingeniously superimposes the two themes in tight polyphony. The contrasting second movement in ternary (ABA) form was originally titled Andante alla Marcia. It features question-and-answer dialogues between two manuals bookended by a lyrical tune with a hymn-like harmonization. Maintaining this spirit of calm, the soft third movement in F major is a 6/8 pastorale evoking a Lied ohne Worte. The long, charming melody in shifting keys is woven around a gently flowing stream of sixteenth notes. The last movement was originally intended by Mendelssohn as just a fugue, but he decided to encase it within a framework resulting in the present three-part prelude-fugue-postlude structure. A vigorous introductory march segues into the fugue whose foreceful Bachian subject, first heard in the pedal, brings to mind the ascending pedal scales of the opening movement.
Vierne was named organist of Notre-Dame Cathedral in 1900, where in December 1928 he recorded three improvisations for the French label Odéon. These were released on 78 rpm phonograph discs in January 1930. Up to 4½ minutes of music could be recorded on a 12-inch disc; however, the longest of the three improvisations, Méditation in F Major, was only 3 minutes, 50 seconds. It illustrates Vierne’s mastery of form with a long, legato melody in duple time accompanied by triplets. At the request of Madeleine Richepin, the executrix of Vierne’s estate, the three improvisations were transcribed by Vierne’s student Maurice Duruflé and published in 1954.
A few years earlier in 1924, after a hiatus of ten years without producing an organ symphony, Vierne composed his monumental Fifth Symphony. The effervescent joy of his previous four symphonies was replaced by anguish and despair reflecting the melancholy of an unhappy marriage and divorce, professional disappointments, and the death of his eldest son and brother in World War I. Additionally, the symphony displays a Wagnerian aesthetic recalling Tristan with its unprecedented chromaticism and abandonment of tonal references as well as a cyclical double leitmotif. The Symphony’s opening Grave movement introduces the two very different themes integrated throughout the work: the first is diatonic descending by thirds, while the other is chromatic and tormented with vague atonality. Final, cast in sonata form, is the unbridled fifth movement and bursts forth as a French toccata denoting victory of joy over pain. It unexpectedly transforms the first Grave theme into a bright, swinging carillon tune in A major. The central Meno mosso sections reverse the second theme, so it is no longer one of bitterness. The movement concludes in sheer and dazzling virtuosity.