Interrupted (and Enduring) Traditions

      During this troubled period, musical practices associated with the church--including the playing of the organ--would fall into decay.

      It would take half a century before the desecrated institutions began to recover. Although Napoleon relaxed the strictures against public worship in 1801, the churches (now maintained by the state) remained impoverished. The damaged eighteenth-century organs went unrepaired, and by 1813 the congregations of France could barely sing the simplest plainchant. Competent organists were few, as talented musicians were attracted to more lucrative endeavors.

      This depressing situation was rectified--almost single-handedly--by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll (1811-99). Born to a family of organ builders, Cavaillé-Coll assimilated the new technologies developed during the industrial revolution. Precise engineering, pneumatic levers, and improved sources of wind pressure allowed him to construct organs of unprecedented scale and tonal quality. During his long life, Cavaillé-Coll created the French Romantic organ, and his designs were soon imitated around the world.

      Having built a number of important instruments, however, Cavaillé-Coll soon noticed that there were no organists in France who could exploit them. In 1852, he heard a Belgian organ virtuoso named Nicolas Lemmens and resolved to send--at his own expense--promising young French musicians to study in Brussels. Lemmens's teachers traced their lineage to Bach himself, and by this circuitous route nineteenth-century French organists became heirs to the German keyboard tradition.

      Clement Loret, who was one of the first of Cavaillé-Coll's protegees, returned to Paris and became the teacher of Eugène Gigout (1844-1925). In turn, Gigout taught Maurice Duruflé (1902-1986). Other young organists travelled to Belgium; Cavaillé-Coll entrusted both Charles-Marie Widor (1844-1937) and Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911) to Lemmens's tuition. Widor later served as a mentor for Louis Vierne (1870-1934), who presided at the organ in Notre Dame from 1900 until he died--as he always wished--playing at its keyboard in 1934.

      Each of these organists held important positions in the parishes of Paris, and their compositions often take advantage of the musical resources of their churches. Widor, for example, played at Saint-Sulpice, which contains two magnificent organs--including one (by Cavaillé-Coll, of course) that wields nearly 7,000 pipes. It was for this extraordinary behemoth that Widor conceived the gargantuan Marche Pontifical of his Symphony No. 1. Widor also exploited the second organ, which stood in the back of the church, by having it play in dialogue with the first. Furthermore, by positioning a chorus near each instrument, as in the Messe, Op. 36, Widor could create dramatic antiphonal effects. Other composers, such as Gigout and Guilmant, capitalized on similar resources in their own compositions.

      These musicians also drew upon the alternatim tradition that had already appeared in services at Notre Dame during the twelfth century. In alternatim (latin for "alternately"), two or more contrasting forces take turns performing a liturgical text, which was often presented in plainchant. In some cases--particularly where the choir was not of the highest quality--entire verses of the text were omitted altogether. An organ, however, was often used to present a version of the appropriate chant. This meant that portions of the liturgy were left unspoken, and for this reason the practice was banned by Pope Pius X in 1903. After more than 700 years, however, the tradition has been difficult to suppress; according to a 1986 source, alternatim can still be heard occasionally in the churches of Paris.

      Another French tradition marked the lives of Ernest Chausson (1855-1899) and Théodore Dubois (1837-1924). The Paris Conservatory, France's preeminent musical academy, traditionally awarded a composition prize known as the Prix de Rome. In the nineteenth century, all Paris would debate the merits of the contestants. Chausson was denied the prize in 1881, and--like a true dishonored Frenchman--he quit the institution in disgust. Dubois also left the Conservatory over the Prix de Rome, but he was the institute's director at the time. The cause of the problem was Maurice Ravel, who was already recognized as an important artist while still a student. In 1905, Ravel was excluded from the competition on a technicality, and the resulting public uproar forced Dubois to resign his position.

      The British composers on tonight's program represent--in a variety of ways--the traditional English preoccupation with choral music. Thomas Tallis (ca. 1505-1585) served at Canterbury Cathedral and in the royal chapels of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary Tudor, and Elizabeth I. His If Ye Love Me appears in a manuscript from approximately 1547, thirteen years after Henry VIII broke with the Catholic church. Earlier English liturgical music had used latin texts. The anonymous Rejoice in the Lord Alway appears to date from the same period and may have been written by someone in Tallis's circle.

      The three composers born during the reign of Queen Victoria also contributed significantly to the vocal music of the British Empire. Charles Stanford (1852-1924) entered Queen's College, Cambridge, as a choral scholar and he later became conductor of the London Bach Choir. Stanford's student Edgar Bainton (1880-1956) wrote over a hundred works for chorus, much of it while teaching and conducting in Australia. The best-known music of Charles Hubert H. Parry (1848-1918) is his anthem I Was Glad, which has been performed at every British coronation since Edward VII was crowned in 1902.

      The works of John Tavener (born in 1944) often departs from the Anglican formality found in these earlier British musicians. His music is deeply indebted to the mysticism of Olivier Messiaen, one of France's most influential composers. As if to demonstrate that powerful traditions often find expression in surprising ways, Messiaen himself studied organ with a pupil of Guilmant, Vierne, and Widor; because these artists could trace their musical heritage back to Johann Sebastian Bach, it is perhaps not unreasonable to find in Tavener's spirituality something related--however distantly--to the profoundly religious organist who once made music in Leipzig.

Peter A. Hoyt
Assistant Professor of Music
Wesleyan University
Middletown, Connecticut