Franz Liszt, the famous pianist/virtuoso/composer/teacher, was one of the most significant features in the 19th century musical landscape. His roster of pupils reads like a "Who's Who" of late Romantic music, especially when joined to a list of the composers he supported and promoted. His music for the piano stands alongside the works of Chopin, Schubert, and Brahms at the centre of the Romantic piano repertoire.
That being so, it's always surprised me that Liszt's music for the organ is so little known. In all, he composed about 20 works for the organ, but among them are three monumental pieces that have been cited by some experts as among the greatest organ works of the nineteenth century.
All three of these large-scale masterpieces are linked, in some way, back to the ultimate centre of any organist's repertoire, the works of Johann Sebastian Bach. Even so, they are harmonically very much of their time and even look forward to the yet more startling musical developments to come in the early years of the next century. All three of the works I'm considering here were written during the 1850s and early 1860s.
Last one first. Liszt composed his "Variations on Weinen, Klagen, Sorgen, Sagen" in 1862. The theme in question, from a Bach cantata, is recognizably set upon the same descending bass line as the "Crucifixus" of Bach's Mass in B Minor. Liszt uses this descending bass line as the foundation of a set of variations of ever-increasing complexity. His harmonic practice reaches far beyond Bach's own, yet the structural model of Bach's organ variations and partitas is unmistakable.
Liszt took inspiration from the master of Leipzig in another way in his "Fantasia on B-A-C-H." This chromatic musical motif is based on the German notation of the musical scale, where "B" represents B flat and "H" represents B natural. The work opens with an arrhythmic cadenza in which the four-note motif is repeated over and over at steadily increasing speed. The character of this little cell ensures that the complete work based on it is highly chromatic, intense, and powerful. The style definitely harks back to the free-form fantasias for the organ composed by Bach. Perhaps because of its flashy virtuoso character, this showpiece concert work is the most-played and most-recorded of Liszt's organ works.
While both these pieces are far from negligible, they (and almost all other organ music of the 19th century) stand in the shadow of the "Fantasia on Ad nos, ad salutarem undam." The chorale theme of this work is not a genuine Lutheran chorale, but rather a theme taken from Meyerbeer's opera, "Le prophète." Again, the harmonic features are very much of their time. But the structure underlying the work is pure Bach, raised to the level of musical epic. In three connected sections, it lasts for some 35 minutes in performance.
The opening fantasia section uses short motifs taken from the chorale theme to build long sequences of melody, rising and falling stepwise, with elaborate chordal and pedal accompaniments. Quieter passages intervene, but the music remains technically elaborate. Fanfare-like passages erupt and lead back into the fast-moving runs. The dramatic intensity of the music is as unmistakable as the virtuoso skill needed to play it.
A cadenza in free rhythm eventually winds its way down into an intense silence, and now -- about 10 minutes into the work -- we hear the entire chorale theme complete for the first time, played very quietly at a slow tempo. The continuing quiet slow movement at the centre of the work consists of several variations on the chorale, the theme always given complete, with short linking sections between them. The last of these beautiful variations weaves a delicate filigree of arpeggios around the theme.
With a sudden eruption of fortissimo runs on the pedalboard, the peace and beauty of the slow movement vanishes utterly. At first the texture reminds us of the opening section of the work, but very soon a cadence and pause is succeeded by a fugue subject, in which the chorale's first line is transformed by a dotted rhythmic pattern in 3/4 time. This fugue unfolds along classical lines for several minutes, complete with episodes and stretto, before a series of fanfare figures bring in another free fantasia passage. This is succeeded by a second, looser fugal exposition accompanied from its outset by endless running figures which generate tremendous momentum.
All of this headlong rush of energy erupts in a tremendous buildup over a sustained pedal point which leads us into the culminating page: a majestic, chordally harmonized rendition of the complete chorale theme on full organ, marked fortissississimo (ffff) which brings this monumental work to its overwhelming conclusion.
I've only heard the complete work played once, and the very dry acoustic of the church in which the organist was playing cruelly exposed his technical difficulties with this supremely challenging music. To put it bluntly, he was in way over his head.
Back in the days of the LP, American organist Daniel Chorzempa recorded these three works, and several shorter ones, on two discs from Philips. When the two were reissued as a box set, I bought it and listened to the records so often that I eventually wore them out. Sadly, I have never yet found a replacement copy. I have to say that because I have never heard any other recording in which the organist's selection of stops as clearly opened up and highlighted the composer's often dense textures. Chorzempa laid down a magisterial performance that deserved far wider circulation.
The opening fantasia section uses short motifs taken from the chorale theme to build long sequences of melody, rising and falling stepwise, with elaborate chordal and pedal accompaniments. Quieter passages intervene, but the music remains technically elaborate. Fanfare-like passages erupt and lead back into the fast-moving runs. The dramatic intensity of the music is as unmistakable as the virtuoso skill needed to play it.
A cadenza in free rhythm eventually winds its way down into an intense silence, and now -- about 10 minutes into the work -- we hear the entire chorale theme complete for the first time, played very quietly at a slow tempo. The continuing quiet slow movement at the centre of the work consists of several variations on the chorale, the theme always given complete, with short linking sections between them. The last of these beautiful variations weaves a delicate filigree of arpeggios around the theme.
With a sudden eruption of fortissimo runs on the pedalboard, the peace and beauty of the slow movement vanishes utterly. At first the texture reminds us of the opening section of the work, but very soon a cadence and pause is succeeded by a fugue subject, in which the chorale's first line is transformed by a dotted rhythmic pattern in 3/4 time. This fugue unfolds along classical lines for several minutes, complete with episodes and stretto, before a series of fanfare figures bring in another free fantasia passage. This is succeeded by a second, looser fugal exposition accompanied from its outset by endless running figures which generate tremendous momentum.
All of this headlong rush of energy erupts in a tremendous buildup over a sustained pedal point which leads us into the culminating page: a majestic, chordally harmonized rendition of the complete chorale theme on full organ, marked fortissississimo (ffff) which brings this monumental work to its overwhelming conclusion.
I've only heard the complete work played once, and the very dry acoustic of the church in which the organist was playing cruelly exposed his technical difficulties with this supremely challenging music. To put it bluntly, he was in way over his head.
Back in the days of the LP, American organist Daniel Chorzempa recorded these three works, and several shorter ones, on two discs from Philips. When the two were reissued as a box set, I bought it and listened to the records so often that I eventually wore them out. Sadly, I have never yet found a replacement copy. I have to say that because I have never heard any other recording in which the organist's selection of stops as clearly opened up and highlighted the composer's often dense textures. Chorzempa laid down a magisterial performance that deserved far wider circulation.
